Pepper is the sword-arm of crazy (pickledpepper) wrote in blurred_lines, @ 2009-03-18 11:17:00 |
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Entry tags: | ! [1980-03] march, grady bell, octavius pepper |
Who: Grady and Pepper
When: Tuesday, 17 March (St. Paddy's) [late afternoon]
Where: Bell Ranch then a baker's in Kildare
What: Reminiscing, making plans, avoiding alcohol
"Tha' should do it," Grady sighed, hopping off the counter once the last of his Mam's good dishes were shrank and secure inside a large brown box. At one time the old Irish woman would have clocked him upside the head for getting scuffs all over her nice clean kitchen but now it didn't really matter. Mary Bell and the majority of her offspring were dead and buried further up the hill, on the other side of the woods between the ranch and her brother-in-law's property. The fact didn't stop Grady from glancing over his shoulder once he hit the floor. To be honest, he would have given anything to see her rounding through the open door, or even hear her voice shouting from the sitting room. If he just closed his eyes tight enough.....
Manual labour was hardly how Pepper was used to spending his St Paddy's days, but then, a lot of things had changed since the years before. And, honestly, it was sort of good to keep his mind off things, though with two weeks now since he'd got on this whole sobriety kick, at least the bloody withdrawal was calming down. It was strange to think, though, that this was the last time he'd visit the Ranch - since Grady had sort of barreled into his life Way Back When he'd been here more times than he could easily count off the top of his head, and to see it now, all the old family heirlooms gone or packed to be gone, empty except for the two of them, was a little maudlin. He leaned against the table, no Ma Bell around to scold him for it, taking a drink of his ginger beer (which was a pale imitation of the real thing, really, but at least it was cold) and looking around one last time. "Time to get back to the horde, then?" he asked; the size of Grady's family, even now, was always a bit weird for him.
Nearly twenty-four years of memories passed through Grady's mind. Birthdays, mornings, summer hols, family dinners, all of them had been spent in that old farmhouse, well, most anyway. Pepper's voice drew him back to the present just as he was remembering the first time Meg had sat at the very same table. "Yea," he forced a chuckle. The 'horde', as his best mate called it, was considerably smaller and hardly worth the title, at least in his opinion. Frannie and the kids had been shipped out to a smaller farm on the outskirts of Seaford in East Sussex. It was a far cry from the comfort and smells of Ireland, but at least they were only a short distance away from the port in Newhaven. Grady hoped that being so close to the border might prove in handy someday, either for his own family or others attempting to escape the new Ministry.
He stepped away from the counter to lean against the doorway, staring out into the sitting room which was now completely bare save the larger pieces of furniture. It saddened him that the first memory which popped into his head was of attempting to comfort Ryan on the sofa the night their family was massacred. Standing there for another minute, he drank in what he could before rubbing at his eye with the palm of his right hand. If he got misty now there would be no hearing the end of it. Picking up the box he said, "I promised Frannie we'd be back before night." The promise had been more for Ryan than his sister. The seven-year-old was still very shaken up anytime his uncle went away. Considering what happened the last time he was gone after nightfall, Grady couldn't blame him. Whipping out his wand, he shrank the box even further and placed it inside the pocket of his coat. "Where'd we put th' others?"
"There's two boxes still on the landing." It was funny how you could just reduce everything down to nothing like that - the boxes from upstairs contained beds, for chrissakes, but with the aid of magic they could just neatly pack them away and carry them off like they were... nothing. Pepper would never wish to live without magic, could never, but sometimes he wondered if having it took something away from how they all viewed life. "It's a while before night, though," he noted, glancing out the window. "Sun doesn't set at three in the afternoon anymore." He reached up to rub absently at the scar tissue on the side of his neck, as though it itched, though the raggedly healed skin there didn't feel anything at all anymore. "We could practically walk back and be in time."
Two boxes. Three in total. It didn't seem fair that all of his memories, all of his family, their lives, were reduced to three measly boxes. Four, if he included what little he took from the flat in Dublin before it had been sold. That place had been his home with Meg and Katie, but now it belonged to some jackeen who just needed a place to get away from his overbearing parents. It wasn't fair. The fella should have been thankful he even had his parents!
Downing his own bottle of beer - ginger as well, seeing as he did not want to tempt Pepper despite the day - Grady tossed it toward a trash can by the far wall. He overestimated the shot and the glass shattered against the wall. "An' there's why I never made Chaser," he quipped, attempting to keep the mood light. He took a step foward to pick up the shards himself but then thought better of it. Yes, there was still time to the day, but he didn't really feel like being there anymore than was necessary. Each minute which passed just seemed to make turning his back on the ranch that much more difficult. Instead, Grady took out his wand and floated the shards into the basket before exiting to fetch the final boxes. As he was shrinking them, he called back to inquire, "Did you want t' go through town then?" Town might not be so terrible. The journey would prolong saying goodbye, yes, but the thought of doing it slowly, walking away rather than apparating, seemed easier on his mind.
Pepper well knew that there were times that people asked things hoping to get a certain answer-- that sometimes, they offered something up as an option because it was what they wanted, rather than because it was what they thought someone else wanted. It was the sort of social game he knew about, though he suspected that not everyone who played it even realised. Certainly Grady was not the type for Slytherin-esque antics. Leaving Kildare, though, while a Moment for him, was even bigger for Grady. Grady was a homebody, this place to him was... more than just a place. More than Seamus' ghost in the barn.
"Yeah," he agreed, perfectly willing to let Grady dictate how they should leave it. "That'd be good. We can.. you know, stop by the bakery for old time's sake, or something."
'Stop by the bakery.' Grady could not help but hear the slight difference in tone when the store was mentioned. A small, genuine grin tugged at the corners of his mouth as he stepped back into the kitchen doorway. "D'you think it'll be open?"
"Drunk people spend money," Pepper pointed out playfully, draining the last of his beer and tossing it in the rubbish with a childish 'ha!' when he got it in. That was one good thing about not drinking - not spending. "It's a nice day, they have ovens going, they'll want a breeze." Silly Muggles - this was why he couldn't live without magic, this helplessness, this inability to increase your own bloody comfort. Without magic he'd probably have gotten himself hypothermia up in the wilds of Scotland two months ago. Worked out well, though, because that open window was a legacy, their final hurrah, no matter how stupid it was stealing a loaf of bread they didn't need. Though, maybe they did need it - not the bread, at least, but one tiny thing to laugh about.
Grady couldn't help but let the grin spread at the idea of re-living childhood delinquencies. The tradition of stealing a loaf of bread - and not just any bread, but stone-milled rye - had begun nearly half his life ago after Pepper first came to visit for the summer hols. The original intentions for the boyhood crime were lost on him now, though he liked to believe it was due to a sustenance-or-starvation ordeal. After sitting through an hour-long mass and going without breakfast beforehand, he could understand why any two boyos would want to nibble on a bit of freshly cooling pastries. It was a rush back then, filled with the knowledge that the worst which could happen was a scolding from their parents afterward. Now, though, the alternative to not being caught was prison. They weren't kids anymore. "Think we really should?" he asked, just to be absolutely certain.
The risk of getting caught would have been worse in the wizarding world, where the crime - where Pepper was concerned, at least - would be less petty theft and more terrorism and treason and other dramatic T-words that generally ended up with a life sentence in Azkaban. In comparison, this venture was a giddy romp through the fields. "It's the sort of adventure that doesn't end with explosions and death," he pointed out, an attempt at levity that really may have been rather ill-fated, considering. He'd had rather enough of explosions and death, lately. It was a wonder they had any friends or family left. He straightened, moving over to pick up one of the boxes the Muggle way - no good waving his wand around and floating things through the air through the village, no matter how drunk everyone was. That would be a little too conspicuous. "Come on. Let's go be criminals."