WHO: Seamus Finnigan and Morag MacDougal WHEN: Evening, August 20th, 1997. Hannah and Megan's party. WHERE: The Cloisters, Hannah's house, by the fire pit. SUMMARY: There's some macabre and drinking and misunderstandings. RATING: PG-13 for swears. FORESHADOWING, WHAAAAT STATUS: Complete
The night had cooled and the crowd had thinned, and Seamus had pulled a sweatshirt on to offset his shorts and sandals before heading back outside from the loo. The fire drew his eye in the growing twilight, and kept his attention long enough to see a parade of miniscule shadows, marching forward to doom. They were throwing themselves on the fire, and little high pitched screams followed each of them as the brittle, brown leaf lords flashed into ash. It wasn't terribly difficult to source out the wand responsible from the little crowd around the fire, even though the responses from the others varied from amusement to mild horror.
Seamus took the top off a beer bottle and made his way down the little path to the circle of warm faces and cool bums. "Well that's dark," he commented, standing over her shoulder. It wasn't a criticism or praise, as Seamus couldn't determine which would be a better fit with his current mood.
Morag cast a look over her shoulder, brows lifted in a mildly challenging expression. In the dancing firelight she could only see parts of Seamus’ face, and never all at once, making his features difficult to read. She was nursing a ridiculous concoction - she’d ditched the elaborate straw, at least - and didn’t feel much like fighting. Not yet, anyway.
“It’s not a party without the macabre,” she answered with a smirk, flicking her wand and lifting a leaf from beside Seamus’ foot. It folded in on itself in mid-air, gangly legs poking out where brittle veins had been. Another flick of her wand set the little creature on the lip of Seamus’ beer bottle.
“Give him one good reason to go on living.”
He put his hand out and dropped the little fellow onto it, pouring a slight splash of beer into his cupped palm to give the sucker his first - and last, given the fates of his brethren - liquid meal. "There was a Yank who said beer's proof that God loves us," Seamus mused, watching the leaf lap it up. "Pretty sure that makes you Satan though, or the Spanish Inquisition at least."
“What is it the muggles say, ‘NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition’?” She didn’t have all of the context for the joke, but the clerk in one of the record shops she’d frequented the summer following fifth year had quoted Monty Python religiously. Her lips thinned as she observed the creature in Seamus’ palm. “Somebody’s got to be the bad guy.”
Even if the bad guy is a fool.
"Why Morag, are you volunteering?" Seamus asked, setting the leaf, already wobbly by nature and now enhanced by inebriation, on the boulder beside her. It was a weird conversation, with all of the macabre and metaphor, and Seamus wasn't entirely sure what it meant that Morag hadn't turned the insult around on him. Since when did she of all people quote out of date television programmes, rather than slander something lacking from his intelligence or looks? "Do villains ever admit their role in things, anyhow?"
That one, that one had more heft to it, if you broadened the context to include the absences of several of their peers from the party, and who was responsible for it.
Morag eyed the leaf creature, nudging him this way and that with her wand, but no nearer the fire.
“It’s my understanding that they love a good monologue. But I don’t suppose Gryffindors make much time for reading unless the books have got pictures in.”
"That's Crabbe and Goyle," protested Seamus. "They're the thickest mugs in our year, utterly incapable of drumming up a monologue between the both of 'em, and yet, if you're really on the hunt for someone to throw into the fire…"
Morag sipped her drink, expression flat as a slate when next she spoke.
“Crabbe’s too fat to burn.”
"Never use water to put out a grease fire," Seamus advised. He reached down and plucked the lush leaf from the rock, dropping his own arse down to share the seat with hers and settling the wee lad on his knee. "So the drunk ones get mercy?" he asked, pointedly taking a swig of his beer.
Quirking a brow, Morag tapped her wand menacingly against her knee.
“Or maybe I’m just plotting something especially terrible for him. Isn’t that what a proper villain would do?”
Not that she was feeling properly villainous. The party had been mild and boring but she couldn’t pretend she was sorry she’d come. It would have been just another night loitering places she didn’t belong or was rushed away from when the hour grew too late. And then, home.
Morag wondered if she was the only student there who was actually anticipating the start of term, even if it was just exchanging one kind of prison for another.
Seamus had to chuckle. "Maybe you are." He still drank again. "Maybe you're thinking about all the creative ways to describe death by fire, weighing which fits best in the context of the oratory pattern." And then, because it was fun and he didn't anticipate being tossed into the flames himself, Seamus smiled, and held the beer out toward her, beyond the reach of the leaf atop his knee.
The gesture surprised Morag, who was far more used to shouting at Seamus than sharing a drink, but she didn’t have to decide what to do about it. She raised instead the stemmed glass she’d been slowly draining. Even in the low light, the pink blush and delicate fizz of the drink were discernable.
“I’m already drinking liquid girl.”
She paused, considering, before taking another fruity sip.
“Tastes like second year.”
It was amusing, a bit; the notion of a twelve year old Morag, already tackling hard liquor even swathed in juice and seltzer. No wonder she was the way she was. "You had one hell of a second year compared to me then," Seamus said, shaking his head and turning his face toward the orange blaze. Second year had been marred with worry that Dean was going to be turned to stone, and at the time it had seemed like a monumental worry. Was this all going to be remembered as child's play, someday five years from now? If it was, Seamus wasn't sure he wanted to imagine what that future was like.
Another swig of beer, and Seamus lifted the leaf man from his knee, mimicking Morag's original offering and hanging it on the lip of her glass. "Your turn to play god."
Morag snorted at Seamus’ assumption, but didn’t make any attempts to correct him. If he wanted to think her far more worldly than she was, or at least more daring, it was certainly more exciting than the truth.
Instead she turned her attentions to the wobbling creature who appeared likely to drown himself by tipping into her drink before Morag had a chance to decide what to do with him. Her work had gotten a little sloppier as more people had taken notice, and the spell was beginning to wear off.
“What’ll it be, you poor little bastard?” She swore softly, grinning, but the smile didn’t quite reach her eyes. Morag held out her hand and the creature tottered onto it. “I’m not sure that I believe in god, let alone a merciful one.”
As it was, she was spared proving herself one way or the other. A wind kicked up and snatched the leaf man from her palm, carrying him up and over the threat of the fire, into the dark and the unknown.
With the last of Morag's creatures vanishing into the darkness rather than the blaze, Seamus couldn't help but feel as though more than one spell was breaking. "I used to," he admitted.
Now all that was left of a youth that included time served as an altar boy was the guilt he imagined all bad Catholics had, seared into their very souls, and a longing for something to prove his failing faith wrong. Maybe man had been given the gift of free will and all of the responsibilities and burdens that came along with it, but were he God the Father, Seamus would send angels to do battle with the likes of You-Know-Who, not teenagers.
On the other hand, if God did exist, and cared about every act of blasphemy, intoxication, fornication, and the rest of the licentious lot, Seamus was going to have to spend an entire day in the confessional. Possibly two.
"I should go," he said, dismissing the case temporarily. "I promised Dean I'd come round his before I go home."
Quirking a brow at Seamus’ admission, Morag said nothing. Seamus appeared deep in thought, which was a condition she had to respect.
For a minute, anyway.
When he mentioned Dean, her lips curled into a more familiar smirk.
“Running away together?”
It was too close to home for Seamus to laugh, or come up with a snappy retort. He stared flatly for a moment, uncertain how to read the tone in her voice. Was it his own hurt that made it sound as though she wasn't bothered by Dean having to make the choice between leaving all of his life behind or possibly being cast into Azkaban without committing any crime? "Not together," he said finally, and stood up from the rock.
Morag didn’t say anything at first, staring blackly into the dying fire as she finished her drink. She was thinking of Mandy now, what Padma had written in her letter. Mandy followed the rules, and was bound to have trusted the Ministry to do the right thing. And while Morag had never been particularly fond of the girl, even she couldn’t live with someone for six years and not give a damn about what happened to them.
“Well, good. Dean’s got a big enough mouth. If he’s got any hope of hiding he doesn’t need your loud Irish ass along.”
"Fuck off, Morag," said Seamus, and even that was hollow, absent of anger and affection both. He strode off, away from the fire and the warmth it provided, hunting for Hannah or Megan to give one last expression of thanks before Apparating to the bedlam that was Dean's London home.