Who: Adrian and Morag Where: Nymph and Kneazle & then Auror HQ When: Saturday night What: It had to happen... Morag finally gets arrested
Truth be told, when Morag had entered the Nymph and Kneazle a little over an hour ago, somehow she hadn't expected to be drunkenly trying to keep her balance as she attempted to cast the right charm that would make the stupid idiots that had decided she was worth fighting over to stop. It had started all right enough; she'd entered the bar ready for a bit of fun and already having had more than a few drinks. It didn't stop her, however, from accepting a drink from the first bloke she'd caught the eye of, nor had it deterred her from accepting from the second, or from the third for that matter. In fact, the accurate thought she'd had then had been the more the merrier.
She'd continued for the next forty-five minutes, easily dividing her attention between the three as she resolved to not think about anything beyond the current moment - not her father or the owl he'd sent recently, not her public image, none of it, teasing them with ideas that she might consider actually leaving the pub with them, which, quite possibly, may have been the start to the downfall of the night. It felt like harmless competition at first - if one would make her smile, another would attempt to make her laugh, things like that. And then Bloke Number One, who Morag suspected had a few anger issues, decided the best way to win her over would be to hit Number Three, and Number Two didn't seem to take kindly to being left out of the disaster and attacked the other two.
She then remembered the last time when a night of flirting had ended in closed fists and the eventual hexing attempts that would land someone in St. Mungo's, and she watched for a moment as the bartender and a patron unsuccessfully attempted to break up the fight, only to be hit for their troubles. Obviously, she'd realised, the only person who actually stood a chance of stopping it was her, and that was what possessed her to use the barstool she'd been sitting on to climb onto the bar, easing her wand out as she racked her brain for a hex or charm. They were all mixed up in her head, though, like a puzzle, and as much as she did love solving them, now wasn't the time, so she settled for yelling the first ones that came to mind.
Adrian was just about to wrap up for the night and head home. He'd been hitting the books at work for some extra study since the exam date was galloping ever closer and he was determined to reach his goal of getting top marks. Pulling on his cloak, he stretched and yawned, fishing around in the pockets of his robe for his cigarettes and wondering whether he would stop by a bar for a couple of pints or just got straight home to bed. Belatedly he realised he could also stop by Dez's place and then frowned, annoyed with himself for feeling guilty. It wasn't his fault he was a busy man - although he was feeling a bit bored with the relationship. The excitement was gone now, he mused as he wandered towards the lifts, and things were going to stagnate unless he took the step to introduce her to his family - properly. But did he want to? That implied permanence after all and was this really a permanent thing?
These thoughts were swirling around in Adrian's mind when a shout raised him from his musings. "Oi! Pucey! Got a call from the N and K - there's some doozy of a fight going down and they want an Auror there pronto!"
"Oh fuck it," Adrian growled. If Aurors were being called to a bar fight then it meant some nit was using magic.
Five minutes later, Adrian arrived at the pub and was greeted by mayhem. Some of the patrons were sporting various hexes and sprawled in heaps, but others were battling on. Turning his head, he saw the one responsible for the magic using and recognised her as Morag MacDougal, a well known troublemaker. She was obviously drunk and he didn't even need to see the muddled hexes she was using to know it. Perhaps Witch Weekly had been right, she was a lush.
With a sigh, he cast a full body bind on the girl and used accio to secure her wand and then, just to be sure, cast a cushioning spell so if the body bind caused her to fall she wouldn't get badly hurt. With the main troublemaker secured, he set to stopping the fight. "All right you louts, Auror in the house so break it up! Don't even think about it, idiot," he cast another body bind on the man rushing at him with a broken bottle.
Morag wasn't even dimly aware of the arrival of an Auror as she was much too caught up in the very serious task of trying to stop the fight, not that she was being too successful. Alohomara apparently wasn't the only charm that turned out to be quite difficult when drunk. She raised her arm in another attempt to hex the fighting parties when, almost simultaneously, her arms and legs were bound close to her body and her wand was out of her hand. Dimly, as she tried to keep her balance, she was aware of the fact that she'd been put into a full body bind, and then she toppled back onto the counter, thankful for the cushioning charm that broke her fall. She heard the voice of an Auror, silently thinking that it made sense as she resigned herself to staring at the ceiling. So much for a fun night out.
The drunken fighters outnumbered Adrian, but he still managed to quell and disarm them thanks to a clear head and his ruthless attitude. A few would have bruises in the morning from his tough tactics, but he figured the majority would put it down to the fight and even if they did remember, he wasn't sorry. After the most intoxicated were sobered and healing spells administered to a couple of broken noses, Adrian turned his attention to the cause of the trouble.
Taking hold of Morag, not releasing her from the bind, he pulled her down from the counter and set her on her feet. Without a word, Adrian administered a charm to clear her head a bit and then unbound her legs, while keeping her arms bound to her sides. "Morag MacDougal, you're under arrest for using magic when intoxicated and causing a public disturbance."
It was as she stood before the Auror, who Morag almost instantly recognised as Adrian Pucey, with her mind cleared and her legs no longer bound, that she took in the disaster surrounding them, wincing at the sight. "Fucking hell," she muttered to herself. Why was it that every single time she decided to come to this bar, something had to go wrong?
"Sorry?" It came out as more of a question, though she tried to give him her best 'I'm really sorry' face.
He shook his head, the impassive expression Adrian usually adopted for work cracking into a small smile that was a cross between rueful and amused. "Come on," he took her elbow and guided her towards the door. "It's a nice night in the 'hotel' Cell block for you."
Once they were out of the bar, Adrian apparated them both to the Ministry. "MacDougal, you're turning into a self-fulfilling prophecy, you know that?" he commented conversationally as he walked her towards the processing room.
With a sigh and a thought that this really was the complete opposite to the way she'd seen the night progressing, Morag allowed Adrian to guide her out of the bar. Of course, it was less of her allowing, and more that there really wasn't another choice as far as she was concerned.
"I've noticed, yeah," She replied, biting her lip at the unwanted thought of the owl that would be forthcoming when her father heard about this. If it wasn't a Howler, she'd be surprised. "I'm not having a very good week." Or weeks, she thought to herself.
"Wouldn't that be weeks?" Adrian's mouth quirked into a wry smile as he unknowingly echoed her thought. He seated her in the processing room and unbound her arms after setting a large drink of water in front of her. He then set up the recording spells to book her. "Morag Macdougal, arrested at twenty-two hundred after inciting a fight, using magic while intoxicated and hexing several individuals. Do you have any statement to make, Ms Macdougal?"
Somehow, Morag hadn't thought it was that obvious, but then she figured that her arrest had been impending for months now. She almost wished it could have been for something more fun, like indecent exposure or something of that sort, and while she mostly didn't care, there was a part of her that was worried about her father's reaction, or if the news would lead to another conversation during which Padma acted like her mother. Or maybe Susan would take a half-serious remark completely serious again, and this time call her out her name. She shook her head, pushing the thoughts away and silently took a seat, shaking her arms a bit when they were unbound before placing her hands in her lap. Unconsciously, she played with one of the charms on the bracelet Stephen had given her. "You mean other than the fact that I should have taken choice A and stayed home? No."
"There are other choices," Adrian said briskly. Although Aurors were not counselors, they were expected to steer people on the right path if possible but his comment wasn't said in a tone of false sympathy but more irritation. "Other people manage to have a good time outside the house without causing mayhem," he shot Morag a penatrating look. From his observations, people didn't throw themselves headlong into a self-destructive lifestyle if they were happy with their lives.
"In any case, you've been on our watch list for a while now and we'd like to make this your last arrest. So while this time you're going to get a fine and a night in a cell, I must strongly recommend that you take stock of your lifestyle and if necessary seek some professional assistance to deal with what ever problems you have that are pushing you to behave in such a disorderly manner," Adrian trotted out the speech in a level, almost bored tone. "For the record, Morag Macdougal will be fined 100 galleons for disorderly conduct and use of magic while intoxicated causing injury. Your wand will be returned to you tomorrow morning." He put an end to the recording spells and sat back, regarding her with a neutral expression. "Off the record, I don't give a damn whether you put yourself into an early grave, but if you want to make life easier on yourself then I'd suggest you take a close look at how you're living," he smirked slightly. "Think of that as a friendly suggestion."
Morag barely listened to his speech, having heard similar to it for years now, though the look he gave her made her feel uncomfortable enough for a moment that she shifted in her seat before pushing the feeling away. As it was, the conversation was no longer being recorded and her initial response was to give a short laugh that resulted more from surprise than out of finding anything humorous.
"Such a friendly suggestion could have used just a little more friendliness in order to truly be considered one," she said, strategically ignoring the mention of her early grave, and though she didn't exactly believe the words, it didn't stop her from saying, "And anyway, my life is fine. At least in my opinion, though I'm well aware of the fact that not everyone agrees."
"That's about as friendly as I get with people who cause me to work overtime," Adrian snorted at the pronouncement her life was fine. "Yeah, of course you're fine and everyone else is an idiot for telling you otherwise," he sneered. Adrian had no time for people who chose drinking as a way to escape their problems. He'd had to deal with being a Death Eater's son, losing a stepfather, watching his mother sink into depression, arrest a former friend and cope with being head of the family at a relatively young age, but he didn't succumb to the temptation to get pissed out of his mind every night. Coming around the table, he grabbed her upper arm and pulled her to her feet. "Delusions are fun, but one day you'll wake up and see what a silly little girl you are."
Her jaw tensed when he pulled her out of the seat she'd been sitting in, coupled with his words. It wasn't so much the action that bothered her so much as it was what he said, and she glared, refusing to see any truth there may have been to his words. When the moment passed, she looked away, thinking as she took a breath that the odds were highly against her being around long enough for that day, and the intense fear gripped her for a second longer than she needed it to because the last thing she needed was to go down this road in the middle of being arrested when she couldn't even be drunk and intensely philosophical for the ordeal.
Pursing her lips, she looked at him. "Or, maybe, I'm still the same person when you get to the bottom of it," she frowned, muttering. "Merlin, I hope I'm still the same person. If I start acting like Sorcha, I think I might kill myself."
Walking Morag out of the door and towards the night cells, Adrian looked down at her with one eyebrow raised, his expression tinged with amused mockery. "Start being someone else and then you know you're in trouble. Never said you weren't yourself, Miss Macdougal."
"Oh, I know. I don't actually think I could stop being myself if I tried, nor would I." Morag replied as she kept with Adrian, though she wasn't at all looking forward to the sleeping arrangements. Rambling, as per usual, was a great distraction for Morag, in so many ways. "But you've met Sorcha, haven't you? I mean, she's years ahead of me, but it's entirely possible, yeah? Anyway, she's one of those types who, when they've married a 'good' catch go on about how wonderful their husband is - until you want to act out one of those scenes, like in the game, the Muggle game. My favourite's... 'in the study with a candlestick.' I always imagine I'd be Miss Scarlett. Oh, and when she talks about her son, she goes on about him, too, like he's a genius...oh and his birthday was yesterday. Dunmore will not be happy. But, anyway, you ever think there'll be a Wizard version of the game? Like...little pieces acting out the murder? I'd love that."
"I've met her," briefly, at some function he didn't even remember much about. Adrian privately agreed that Morag's sister was annoying. "Why don't you invent it?" he asked as they rounded a corner and started going down.
"Invent it?" She echoed, a frown forming on her face as she thought about it. "I mean, yeah, it'd be fun trying to figure out the exact magic to make it work, breaking down the charms to find the correct ones. Not sure about being able to do it for the public, though."
"Never know until you try, right?"
They reached the night cells and Adrian opened the first one. It was sparsely furnished but not hideous, although there wasn't any natural light, just some magical lighting by the bed. "Something to think about tonight anyway, since there's not much else to do," he guided her inside and then stepped back to the entrance. "See you in the morning, Miss MacDougal."
"Right," Morag agreed, sure that it would be a good distraction from thinking of other things as she stepped inside of the cell Adrian opened for her. She turned back to face him, nodding. "'Night." She went over to her bed for the night and flopped onto it, settling in for a long night of thinking.
"Night," the nod and the smile were a bit more friendly now, but Adrian didn't say anything more as he stepped back and closed the door on her. One incantation later and the cell was securely locked until he - or another Auror - returned in the morning. Yawning, he headed back to the office to finish up the paperwork and then go home.