sturgis podmore (hitsyouhard) wrote in find_horcruxes, @ 2010-02-15 20:00:00 |
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Entry tags: | caoimhe sullivan, sturgis podmore |
RP Log: Caoimhe & Sturgis
Who: Sturgis Podmore & Caoimhe Sullivan
When: Valentines Day... a really crappy Valentines Day
Where: Sturgis's flat
What: They learn of Doc and Charity's deaths, and try to fathom what on earth to do next.
Rating: PG-13 for language
The best part about Valentines Day was probably the sex, Sturgis Podmore thought to himself as he lay draped beside his girlfriend in a bout of uncommonly domestic bliss. The roses he'd owled to the library were on the table, and the record player was still playing the same side of the Foreigner album she'd obligingly given him a lapdance to, and for the first time in a while, he was feeling relaxed, happy, and at peace.
It wasn't a feeling he was able to entertain all that often. Between his demanding job, the Order, and making sure that he was a good Daddy and ex-husband, there was precious little time in his schedule to just... let go. Caoimhe had given him that, and whatever soppy feelings he was trying hard to ignore, he certainly owed her for that.
Which was of course when his journal, sitting innocuously on the nightstand beside them, began to buzz. Sturgis groaned. "Fuck... that's probably one of my other girlfriends... wishing me a happy Valentines Day."
...and then Caoimhe's journal all the way back in the living room began to buzz as well. Sturgis sat up, instantly more alert, exchanging a worried glance at Caoimhe. Was probably nothing, nothing at all... Probably Cally and Ed, or Lydia, taking the piss. Maybe even the Marauders. Not everything needed to be doom and gloom.
Caoimhe had been about to reach over and smack him on the arm when she heard her journal start up as well. If it was both of them...that meant probably something to do with the Order. And when it was an out-of-nowhere message from the Order, it so seldom meant anything good. She sat up, wrapping the sheet around her and ready to get moving quickly to her clothes if she had to.
"See what it is," she quietly requested. If it was Order business, he could have a look and they'd both know at once. If it wasn't, well...she could go have a look at her journal in a minute.
Sturgis leaned out of bed and winced as his back cracked, grabbing his journal and opening it up to flip to the most recent page. He scanned the entries, looking for the ward that had set off the journal's alarms, and finding it.
"It's MacDougal. Morgan," he said out loud, not wishing to keep Caoimhe in undue suspense. "She's saying that-" Please, he thought to himself, reading quickly, please let it be some general vampire thing. Not Lydia. Not the castle. Not Ed and Cally, Not--
Charity Burbage and Doc Dearborn.
His mouth opened. Sturgis didn't close it. Surely he'd read it wrong. Not both of them. Not--
But no, it was right. Dark Mark in the sky, and Morgan had found the bodies.
"Charity Burbage and Doc Dearborn were found dead," he managed to say out loud, and he wondered how his voice could be so steady. Sturgis always held it together, though. "Looks like the Killing Curse. There was a Dark Mark in the sky over the house, and signs that Death Eaters had ransacked the place."
It was one more lesson in always assuming the worst. Caoimhe's eyes closed, her lips pressing together as the bad news hit, and hit hard. This wasn't so awful for her as Benjy, but she had been fond of silent Doc Dearborn. Charity had helped her put maps together for hunting down lost cities and secret places. They had been part of the fight, and now there was one more pair of them down, so soon after losing Benjy.
And they hadn't even been on any kind of mission. They had just been minding their own business, probably having a quiet night at home for Valentine's Day, and now...
"Bloody hell." The words were just a whisper, and right on the heels of the grief came a series of questions that presented all kinds of problems for them all. "Why them?" Caoimhe asked. "She's Muggleborn, I know, but were they under suspicion of being trouble for Death Eaters?"
"Not that I knew of," came Sturgis's reply, immediate and quick. It was completely unexpected, which was all the more unnerving. He'd been battening down for the news that the Boneses were attacked ever since Ed's public denouncement of purism, but Doc and Char? Where had it come from? How had the Death Eaters known? "Think, think," he muttered to himself, and flipped through his journal.
"The ring," he said suddenly, remembering. "Marvolo Gaunt's ring. They must've been looking for that." Oh Jesus Christ. He ran his fingers through his hair, and then out of duty grabbed his quill and wrote a quick response before taking his journal and quite literally throwing it and the quill off the bed as hard as he could manage.
"Fuck," he said, sharp and brittle. "Shouldn't have been that way."
Caoimhe flinched just barely at the sudden movement, but she didn't move away. She gave a slow, shaky nod of agreement to his statement, but couldn't think of anything at all useful to say. She was still thinking it over. How would the Death Eaters know to look for the ring with Doc and Charity? And if they knew to look for the ring, how much did they know about the Order's search for the Horcruxes? Could they trust that their double-agents weren't informing in the opposite direction as well? And speaking of them, how in the hell was it that they had two inside men, and somehow they were still always the ones on the run and the ones getting attacked and dying? Her hands wound up tight in the sheet, clenching into fists from equal parts anger and worry. Her jaw tightened at the same time, teeth pressing hard together as she tried to figure out what to do.
But there was nothing to do now, was there? Doc and Charity were already dead. Aurors would already be on the scene. They would all have to wait until the next day before they could find out much of anything. A month before, she would have been checking to make sure Benjy was all right...but that obviously wasn't necessary now, was it? Tension was curling up tighter in her all the time, and Caoimhe didn't have a clue how to manage it when she felt neither like hitting something or crying, or maybe felt like doing both.
"'s not right," she whispered. "And I'm fucking well sick of it all 'round."
Sturgis was sick of it, too. For every good moment there was, it seemed that someone paid with their life. He could feel Caoimhe raging silently beside him, mostly because he, too, felt like raging silently. Or not even silently.
He got to his feet, sliding on his trousers to at least rage in semi-decency. Sturgis padded around the bedroom, head down and shoulders tight as he tried to figure out how they could have known. It didn't have to be that the Death Eaters knew of the ring, of course, though that could be a likely culprit. Could it have been Baby Black or Snape's, doing? Possible. They would be two easy people to blame for it, of course, but there wasn't a shred of evidence that either of them even knew of the ring's existence. Who did they work with that there on the list? Charity, no one suspicious, but Doc...
"Dylan Selwyn," he said clearly. "Oblivator." Shit, Sloane Vaisey's brother, and Joanna had been hanging out at the Vaisey's greenhouses...
Caoimhe shook her head. "Can't be," she countered. Her clothes were mostly out in the living room, but she'd found a shirt of his to pull on. She had never been terribly comfortable sitting around in nothing anyway, but once a serious conversation started clothing of some sort was definitely a necessity.
"Morgan mentioned him as a likely Death Eater weeks ago," Caoimhe went on, still thinking even as she explained her reasoning. "Doc would've known to watch his step with him. Might be the source for how they found where they lived and got through their wards, but not the first suspicion."
"Veritaserum," Sturgis muttered. "The Imperius. Something. There's gotta be something we're missing. It's staring us right in the face, Sully; I can feel it."
He pulled out his notes, unfolding the foldouts and the hastily-scribbled writing, eyes scanning over and over. But they held no clue that he could see. "I'm thinking it, too," he said, giving her a dark glance. "The spies. Baby Black knows of horcruxes, at least, and compromising their cover might be worth a double-hit. Problem is, and this means fucking nothing... my gut says no." He snorted, disgusted, riled up. Anger was either than grief, for however long it would last.
"One of them would have handed you or Edgar over first," Caoimhe murmured. She had been thinking that over, and it made more sense. If they were feeding the other side information, why not go for a bigger fish?
Which brought her back to square one, of course. "They've been working at the Gaunt house. A spy there, maybe? Observation charms?" That would explain the fact that the Death Eaters had gone after them, specifically. It would explain the ransacking of the house. It would also mean that the rest of the Order was in no more danger than they were the day before - if the Death Eaters hadn't tortured any further information out of them. They had to consider that as a possibility as well. Just thinking about that happening to Doc and Charity made Caoimhe sick to her stomach, but once the thought was there it had to be considered, coming out in a voice barely above a whisper. "We need to find out if they were tortured. If they got anything out of them before killing them."
Sturgis liked the idea as little as Caoimhe, but torture made a sick degree of sense. Depending upon how they'd been found and what the autopsy would reveal, they might determine if there were any potions in their systems or if their bodies had undergone strain prior to death.
Autopsy. The word was revolting. These were their friends, their co-workers. And they'd be split down the middle and prodded with instruments, all in the name of finding out what the hell had gone wrong.
They'd been found together. Sturgis glanced at Caoimhe, his closed face softening slightly. It might've been them. "Come here," he requested, and there wasn't a note of coddling or comfort. He didn't like the former and couldn't think how to provide the latter. But they were both hurting, and she was too far away, all of a sudden.
Caoimhe got up without a word, crossing the room to slip her arms around him as she thought along much the same line. Charity and Doc, a pair of kind, quiet people who had wanted to do the right thing despite how hard it was, despite the risks...and they had paid the very worst price for it. To think of what the Death Eaters might have done to them, or the fact that they were really and truly dead with all the cold and emptiness that implied rattled Caoimhe more than she liked to admit. It was a reminder of exactly what chance they were all taking, close on the heels of so many other reminders.
There couldn't be any comfort from it, not really, but she felt better with her forehead resting on his shoulder than sitting on the bed by herself. Her thoughts still raced over what had to be done next, but at least now she didn't feel as if she were isolating herself with them.
"I need to get Doyle out of here," she murmured. Because if it came to it, she knew Doyle wouldn't be able to defend himself. The wards on her flat were about as good as wards got, but it was still a flat. There was only so safe anybody could be there, and Doyle was there by himself for hours every day while she was at work - and of course nights like this one. It wouldn't take too much of a slip for someone to find out what kind of research she spent her free time on, and then it could be her flat being ransacked, the Dark Mark over her building, and Doyle's body found by the medics. Caoimhe wouldn't be able to bear it, watching that happen.
Sturgis was quiet as she mused about her brother, but his hands on her back and waist were firm. Doyle really had a crap end of it; Sturgis's first reaction was to suggest that he seek to live with their parents, but no, they were Muggles, and he suspected that landlords would be extremely picky when it came to tenants that turned into foaming, ravenous beasts each month.
But Caoimhe was right - Doyle was a sitting duck. The thought occured to Sturgis that Lydia had better be informed about her ex-husband's activities as well. Joanna, he worried less about - she had an Auror watching her, after all.
"I'll see what I can find about landlords that are werewolf friendly," he muttered into Caoimhe's ear. "I will probably be speaking with Lydia, as well."
"Good idea," Caoimhe quietly agreed. Lydia was safe enough at the castle, sure, but the castle wasn't the only place she went. She probably knew enough to watch her step just based on the fact that she was Muggleborn and her ex-husband was a loudmouth hitwizard, but it was clear enough this was no time to be taking chances.
It made her think that getting Doyle to go to stay with her parents might be a better idea than finding him another flat. A place could only be warded so well as the people who you shared walls with, and her parents' pub and the rooms above it where they lived were already fairly well taken care of. With a little more work done, she might be able to get them in a little better shape - and of course it helped that they were out in the Muggle world running a pub in a tourist town full of pubs, and that she hardly ever talked about them, and that everybody these days was too paranoid to answer random questions about a friend. And then of course there was the matter of rent, which right now Doyle had no means of paying, and Caoimhe could only manage so much herself. It might be good to have someone who knew what magical trouble looked like and how to watch for it staying with their parents anyway - it just couldn't be Caoimhe, given what a magnet for trouble she had become lately. She'd talk with Doyle the next day.
Sturgis sighed, the set of his shoulders tired where only five minutes ago they had been jaunty, light. Every time he thought that he'd had this business handled, things took another turn for the worst. They'd just buried Benjy, and now they'd have to start planning for Charity and Doc's funerals as well. What was important was figuring out how the Death Eaters had made the connection. Had they overhead? Planted spies at the Gaunts? Imperius'd? They wouldn't know tonight, that was for certain, but at least the ring had been destroyed completely.
Of course, that didn't mean that the Death Eaters would stop looking for it.
His hand crept up her side, shoulder, and throat, cupping her face. Sturgis was absolute shit at comforting people, and even worse at talking about feelings or pledges of ardor, but he hoped that the sad half-smile on his face said enough, or that his fingers on her cheek indicated just how heavily the thought of her being in danger weighed. They were what they were, he knew - but that didn't mean that he'd celebrate the thought that any moment might be their last.
Caoimhe caught the meaning well enough without him having to say anything. She had spent enough of the last full moon worrying about him taking on werewolves on no sleep that she recognized the look as one she'd worn herself. She had never been good at conveying emotion verbally either, though, so her reply came in the form of a step closer, her arms tightening around him, and a kiss pressed to his jaw.
"Maybe Severus or Black can give us something on how they knew, or what they knew," she murmured. The odds weren't good, low on the totem pole as those two were, but they were the best chance they had at the moment. "If they can't, I suppose we need to have a look at the Gaunt house. See if we find any surveillance there. Aurors'll be checking that at Doc and Charity's house already, yeah?"
"We'll need to go disguised head to foot," Sturgis said, "just in case whatever charm's informing there is still live. And even then, we should probably toss someone whose identity's already compromised. The Prewetts. Meadowes." He hated to say as much, but the less chance that the rest of them would be exposed, the better. "I'll ask Snape tonight if he knew anything. And I'll get Ed to ask Black."
He sighed, ducking his face against hers as she kissed him, hands curving at her back. "Sorry, love. Knew you liked 'em both. So did I. They were good people. But we're gonna find who did this," he said so calmly that he might've been discussing the weather, "and we're gonna rip them to pieces."
It sounded like a good plan to Caoimhe, who was good and tired of seeing her friends end up dead for trying to do the right thing. She wanted to see the people who were responsible for Benjy Fenwick's closed-casket funeral hang, and she didn't much care how anymore. She sometimes felt as if her spirit was getting just a little darker each time she put on black for another funeral, growing colder with each new attack. There was something a touch ironic in the fact that Sturgis made her feel a little lighter, given that he was at least as bad as she was if not worse for that sort of thing.
"Anything we can do for that tonight?" she asked quietly. If there was, she wanted to get on it. If there wasn't...probably a good idea to have a glass of something that would put her to sleep so she'd be ready to hit the ground running first thing in the morning.
Sturgis shook his head. "Moody's on the case," he said. There was a relief in that. "There's nothing we can do tonight but sit and stew, I guess. And drink," he added. There was always drinking.
Fifteen-year-old Sturgis would have hated to know that his adult self drank just as much as his alcoholic father had. But really, in a world like this, was there much surprise in the fact? Their friends kept dying. The victories lasted moments before defeat came and kicked them in the nuts. Sturgis had no idea what the fuck he was supposed to do.
And so he pulled away from Caoimhe slightly and headed toward the kitchen. "Your poison?"
"Whiskey tonight," she said. It was too quiet a night for tequila, and wine was just for relaxing. This was an evening for whiskey if ever there was one, and she knew it was what he'd be drinking anyway, so why worry with two bottles? A glass of that would be just enough to make her sleepy, and then maybe she wouldn't spend so much time on the sitting and stewing. Her first good Valentine's Day in years, and this was what had come of it. Bloody hell.