Who: Aloysius and a large number of drunk Scotsmen When: 23 April 1980, late.... very, very late. Where: A pub What: Aloysius gets drunk and falls down a lot. Sometimes he has help with that. Rating: PG-13 for language Status: COMPLETE
Aloysius walked into the pub and sat down at the bar, ordering a whiskey when the barman came over. He knew he shouldn’t be here, shouldn’t be doing this but he needed to get out, get away, lose his mind for a little while. He wanted to hurt someone. Snape, maybe. Travers, definitely. And if he stayed in Gairloch he’d probably hurt someone there.
He couldn’t remember ever feeling like this before. There was so much anger and frustration and helplessness and rage just roiling around inside. He might be a bit frightened by it if he could think straight. The idea of Jo being turned into some kind of Stepford wife like those wretched pureblood ninnies made him want to vomit. And he was genuinely worried that if that happened, he would lose Pepper for ever and all time. He could understand Rufus’ point of view, he genuinely could, but he wasn’t sure he could lose two friends and remain standing.
He tossed back the whiskey and beckoned to the barman to pour him another. After a moment’s thought, he tossed a couple of crisp notes on the bar and told him to leave the bottle. He got a dubious look for that but the bottle remained and the notes disappeared. He knew this wasn’t normal for him but there was nothing about this situation that even remotely resembled ‘normal’ so he figured he was entitled to one night of being abnormal.
He tossed down a second, third and then a fourth drink and let the world start to slip into a slightly alcoholic haze. He knew he was drinking way too fast but he was losing the will to care about it as well. It was about at this point that it occurred to him that he probably should have told someone where he was going and what he was doing. He shrugged and poured himself another drink. No point worrying now. He’d left his journal at Gairloch anyway.
The fifth drink disappeared as quickly as the four before it and he’d just poured himself a sixth and was about to lift the glass from the bar when a hand was suddenly placed on top of the glass, keeping it where it was. He turned to see who had done that, an outraged expression on his face.
"I probably don’t want to know why you felt the need to drink half a bottle of whiskey in twenty minutes but I do know we’re going to have to call an ambulance for you if you keep going."
The man was probably about Aloysius’ age and probably about 10 kilos heavier in straight out muscle. He was greying a little at the temples and he had a look of ineffable sadness on his face as he stared at Aloysius.
"So?" Aloysius said rudely, turning back to his drink and shoving the man’s hand away.
"So I don’t think you really want to experience alcohol poisoning," the man said firmly.
Aloysius tossed the drink down his throat almost defiantly. "Who are you? My fairy godfather?" he sneered.
"Just a good Samaritan," the man said patiently. "You’ll thank me in the morning."
"I’ll thank you to fuck off right now," Aloysius said, the obscenity said with a savageness that might have startled him had he been anywhere remotely near the land of sober.
The man reached for the bottle but didn’t quite get there before Aloysius tossed down his drink (seven!) and shoved his hand away.
"I told you to fuck off!" he snarled as he took a swing at the man.
The man ducked out of the way, an easy task given the state Aloysius was in, and Aloysius’ fist instead brushed past the ear of the man standing behind the good Samaritan. He, unfortunately, was not a good Samaritan and his response to the perceived attack was to turn around and let rip at Aloysius. The roundhouse punch caught Aloysius on the jaw and sent him crashing to the floor.
The pain made his head ring but the alcohol stopped him from caring and he clambered to his feet just in time to intercept the second punch from the man who wasn’t a Samaritan. This one collected him on the cheekbone and he went down again. The ringing in his head got a little louder but it still wasn’t enough to stop him from getting up for a third time… and finding himself on the receiving end of a fist for the third time.
This time however the fist didn’t belong to the man who wasn’t a Samaritan. It seemed the better part of the pub had taken the small fight between Aloysius and the man who wasn’t a Samaritan as the cue to stage a much larger fight and as a result this time Aloysius had gotten himself in the way of a random fist that had come flying out of the general melee.
He sat on the sticky, filthy floor of the pub and rubbed at the side of his face before yanking his hand away since that just made it hurt more.
"Ow," he whined, rubbing the blood on his hand on the floor, making the mess just a bit worse down there.
Someone... or several someones... bumped into him and Aloysius decided he’d had enough of being hit by stupid Scotsmen who wanted to take away his alcohol, completely forgetting that the nice Scotsman who’d wanted to take away his alcohol hadn’t been the one to hit him. He crawled over to the bar and used one of the stools to pull himself up and came face to face with his half-empty bottle of whiskey.
He was just about to grab it when someone else got in before him and used it as a club on someone else’s head. Aloysius watched his precious whiskey soak into a mop of red hair and slumped to the floor again, pouting rather adorably if only anyone had been taking notice.
He made a small harrumphing sound then slowly and somewhat unsteadily crawled through the shifting moving bodies, often acting a large, human-shaped tripwire, until he reached the door. He used the door handle to pull himself to his feet then turned to face the brawling pub.
"I... am going home," he announced rather grandly with blood trickling down his face. "You’re all nasty people who take my alcohol and hit other people over the head with it."
He opened the door, turned around and promptly fell onto the sidewalk. "Ow!" he pouted again then he decided that if crawling was good enough for the pub, it was good enough now and crawled around the corner and into the smelly, wet alley behind the pub.
"Ew," he said as he stared at the green, slimy thing sticking to his hand. He sat down with his back to the pub and peeled the green, slimy thing off, dropping it next to him on the ground. He then pulled his wand out and concentrated very, very hard. He was drunk and he really didn’t want to leave part of himself behind. He liked every part of himself and he’d get lonely if he lost any of himself.
He closed his eyes to aid the apparition process and disappeared with a crack, arriving back at his basement. He opened his eyes and was pleased to see that all of him had managed to make the trip then he frowned when he realised he was sitting above his basement and not in it.
He stuffed his wand in his robes and started crawling around. He knew there was a trapdoor here somewhere. Obviously he’d hidden it before he’d left. Which he had to admit was very sneaky of him. He was clearly a very smart man.
He crawled around the ruined house, searching for his trapdoor and getting grumpier and grumpier when he couldn’t find it. He finally ended up back in the room he’d started in and... there it was! It was like magic the way it had appeared! He grinned and crawled over to it, fumbling it open then tumbling down the stairs.
He lay on the floor and stared at the ceiling. "Ow" he said petulantly then a little orange cat wandered over and started licking his forehead. "Hi, Ata... At... Atl.... kitty," he said with a dopey grin.
He tried to get to his feet a few times but on the third failure he sighed and gave in. "This floor is comfy," he said with the decisiveness that only comes to the drunk. Atalanta purred and crawled up onto his chest, shortly joined by two more cats who curled up on his stomach. "Argh, heavy," he complained. "Laurel. And. Hardy. Off" He poked at the two cats with each word and was rewarded with indifferent yawns. He sighed again and closed his eyes. "Fine. Stay there then. See if I care."