sturgis podmore (hitsyouhard) wrote in find_horcruxes, @ 2010-02-20 21:34:00 |
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Edgar started at his fruit cup with distaste, a rather dry mouthful sitting on his tongue. He looked around frantically for a napkin in which to spit the offending lump of cherry cocktail, what the fuck into, and after a desperate moment--what sort of fucking hospital doesn't have a tissue box in every fucking room!--Ed said to hell with it and ripped a strip of paper out of the Witch Weekly magazine sitting on the table beside the bed. After spitting the offending material straight onto the latest advertisement for snitch-shaped bundt pans, he crumpled the wad up and set it on top of the rest of the magazine, along with what was left of his poor excuse for a light afternoon snack. "What's a bloke have to do to get a fucking biscotti in this place?" he asked no one, leaning back in the bed again with exhaustion, wincing at the tug of pain in his leg. He'd never walk upright and proper again; he'd always have a gait, and might have to use a cane. Age wouldn't be kind to it. Well. What could you really expect of having a splinter the size of a large cat wedged straight through your upper-thigh? Sturgis Podmore had narrowly avoided being thrown out of the hospital three times. The Healers remembered him from the month before when his girlfriend had been in the Spell-Damage Ward, and they weren't keen on having him set up his murder investigations in the waiting room yet again. Sturgis had bugged them and bugged them while they concluded that no, Edgar Bones was not going to spontaneously die on them, and finally at long last, they allowed him in to see his best friend of nearly twenty-five years. "Biscotti?" he queried, making a snerled-nose face. "What the fuck is a biscotti? Something to put in your fake-ass gourmet coffee?" Damn, Edgar looked like he'd been through a shredder. His leg was bandaged up mightily; Sturgis didn't even want to know how much it was going to hurt him to start walking on it again. But he said nothing on it. Sturgis wasn't the sort to sit and ponder the mysteries of life. Ed was alive, and that meant that it was primetime to bug him, because the alternative meant personal reflection, and Sturgis hated personal reflection. Edgar looked up in surprise at the interruption in his vocalized longing for something that was labeled "fruit" but actually cardboard. At the sight of Sturgis he couldn't stop his face from breaking out into a smile. They'd never been much for discussing feelings and the not being straight up honest with each other about what their relationship had come to mean over the years was just something understood. They conveyed their affection by calling each other names, hitting one another, and making the other person's personal belongings explode on occasion. They had a system. Up until now it had worked just fine. "Good to see you too, shitface," he replied, voice somewhat hoarse. "You know a real mate would've brought me some of my fake-ass gourmet coffee. Or something even remotely edible because what they serve here isn't fit for sewer-people." Sturgis liked their system of derision and insults. It neatly covered up the fact that he'd been twitching in the waiting room the first two hours they'd brought Ed and Calypso in, or that when they'd been told that they'd both live, Sturgis very nearly fell out of his chair as some of that bottled-in tension dissolved. Sturgis thought about food for a moment and started digging in his coat pockets. "I have... a fruit cup that a healer gave me, two breathmints, and a piece of licorice that's warm from my ass. Any of that appeal to you?" As soon as he got out of here, he'd pick Ed up something dripping in grease. He suspected that Lydia was going to go into baking shock before too long, as well. "Not particularly and especially not your ass," Edgar answered wryly, shifting upward so he could sit up a bit better, grimacing with pain as he did so. The injury to his leg throbbed massively, the sort of hurt that raked your body when you so much as twitched your eyelashes in a way it didn't like. It didn't help that Edgar wouldn't take more pain potions unless a healer was doing rounds and practically forced him to, or when the pain was to a point he was ready to chew the skin right off of his knuckles. "Of all the possible outcomes of that, lumber through the thigh was not something I could've predicted." "Even your house was trying to kill you, mate," Sturgis observed mildly. "That's dedication. I'm gonna go over what I've got, and you tell me if any of it's wrong, right?" Because try as he might, Sturgis couldn't help but be an investigator. "Five Death Eaters - two of which were our own. The remaining three were Inner Circle. They attacked you at twenty-thirty hours, working their way in by breaking the wards. Attack truly began when one blasted out the ceiling from below, right?" Sturgis had the grace to wince. "...sorry mate. You know how Sully is about her charts, and I want to get all our i's dotted and t's crossed right off the bat." "They blew up the kitchen, killed Peaches," Ed replied in an almost rehersed tone. "I flung the sitting room furniture at them and we managed to get upstairs, but I'm supposing they heard us, and yeah. Ended with some fairly intense bouts of the Cruciatus. One gave me a few solid body hits upside the wall. Felt like he was holding a grudge to say the least. I think it might've been the same one I fought at Halloween." "I'll ask Sully to add it to the chart," Strugis said, taking a few notes out of habit. That finished, he stuck the piece of parchment in his coat pocket, leaned over in his chair, and exhaled, long and loud. "Fuck," he said, because he couldn't think of anything else to say. "Just... fuck, Ed." He looked up, quirking the side of his mouth, looking as if he hadn't slept in nearly forty-eight hours (which he hadn't). He was probably violating the 'no-serious-talk' rule but goddamit. Ed had nearly died. Cally had nearly died. "Are you guys going back to your parents for the time being? I'd offer you my place but it's the size of a fucking pea and the icebox bites back." Edgar started to respond and then stopped. He inhaled deeply through his nose, nostrils flaring. "I don't know," he answered honestly. "There hasn't exactly been... any real opportunity to discuss the matter, but I don't suppose we have much choice given the state the house is apparently in." He started chewing on his fingers, looking at the pattern on the hospital blanket instead of at Sturgis. "Christ. We lived there for sixteen and a half years." Sturgis pursed his lips, saying nothing. He had a million memories of that house, and it counted for shit, because Edgar and Calypso had had a million more. They'd thrown a laidback garden party out back the spring the Lydia was round with Lacey, with twinkling fairylights and lemon meringue so light it actually floated. A couple of years ago, Lacey had locked Noah in one of the many closets and somehow couldn't get the closet back open, and had begun to hysterically cry until Edgar had figured out how to reopen the door a good hour later. The half-ass crib that Sturgis and Edgar had attempted to make had probably been stored up in the attic somewhere, along with bad Christmas presents and trunks from their time at Hogwarts and family albums and old playbills and all the sorts of things the Boneses had collected over the years. And it was all gone. "You're okay, Cally's okay, and the kids are fine," Sturgis said quietly, officially done pretending that this wasn't affecting him. "That's all that you can ask for." Edgar nodded slowly, because it was true. And that he owed to Sturgis showing up at just the right moment, just in time to prevent the green light from some anonymous Death Eater's wand bringing about his and Calypso's end. There had never been any question in Ed's mind that he could trust Sturgis Podmore with his life and something this whole situation did do was cement the fact that the two of them could count on each other in a crunch. It didn't change the fact that the place he and Cally had very much made home was, for all intents and purposes, gone--the birthday parties when the house was filled with screaming children, the Christmas mornings when the sitting room had been a sea of wrapping paper, the day they'd brought Evander home from the hospital and the first thing he'd done when they'd gotten him inside was cry--all that seemed... suddenly very far away. He looked at Sturgis then, something between regret and self-loathing caught in his features, and said, "Thank you." "Eh," Sturgis answered, shrugging his shoulders awkwardly and whomping Ed on the back and letting his hand linger there for a few seconds more. It'd pass for a hug. "No problem, asshole. I don't like wakes anyway, so thanks for interrupting that." It could've been a wake for the Bones family, he knew - five minutes later, and it might've. "On the plus side," Sturgis added, attempting to lighten the mood slightly, "I not only managed to set my own spy on fire, but I concussed yours." He smiled, got to his feet, and did a quick dance step. "Ta-daaaa!" The temporary somberness of the moment was broken, Edgar snorting at the sight of Sturgis' little jig. "So they were both there, then," he said, still chortling. "I couldn't tell. Someone set a ward against the other lot of them and said it was mine. That I figured was Regulus, but from the muffled voices and everything else it was just so impossible to tell. Which I'm guessing is why you elected to light one on fire and give the other a head injury. I wonder if we ought to be providing them benefits, or if the Death Eating gig has a good health plan." "I gotta say, I got to see the Winter 1980 Death Eating cloaks up close tonight, and I'm a little miffed," Sturgis answered, always willing to take a stupid joke another mile or two. "They were practically fur-lined, and their elegant shape was both functional and classic. Dumbledore had better stop holding out on us." He paused, realizing that he didn't sound much like himself. "....Turpin left some of her damn fashion magazines lying about again," he muttered by way of explanation. "Oh don't be telling me that shit; Cally and I have a bet on the two of you and I want to see Turpin become a caffeine addict and a swear-machine," Edgar mock-complained, smirking. 'Don't let her hear you waxing poetic about Death Eater fashion. I want to win." "What!" Sturgis's mouth flew open even as his eyes narrowed. "For fuck's sakes, you prick! You're already half-dead; don't make me kill you the rest of the way! You have a bet going?!" "Whine, whine," Edgar replied, waving a hand dismissively. "You'd think I'd just said 'oh by the by, Sturgis, I'm converting to purism' rather than 'so my wife and I made a dirty bet over you and your sunshine-y assistant'." "We've got to stick together you wanker," Sturgis returned, snerling his nose. "We can't have a bet about Turpin while I'm supposedly going to destroy Angus MacDougal's life! And don't think I've forgotten about it, either," he added. "But I gotta wait for people to stop dying and getting attacked before I feel right about striking." "You could be waiting for years, in that case," Edgar replied with a slight smile. "Or at least until the war is over. While I suppose provides you the element of surprise as he'll likely have put it out of his mind by that time." "Vampires never forget," Sturgis answered solemnly, with the sort of weight to his tone that seemed to imply that he'd legimately gotten elephants and vampires confused with one another. "But he is going to wish he'd been kissing daylight by the time I'm through with him, the completely useless pillock." He eyed Ed's leg for a moment. "They think you're going to be mobile again soon?" To that Ed sighed and shrugged. "They don't bloody well know. The only thing certain is that the damage is extensive and that at the very least I'm going to be stuck with a cane--don't fucking laugh, you twat--or some other type of support for the rest of my life. They'll be able to better judge it over the next few days, but. If it's too bad I could be looking at a serious reduction in what I'm able to do." "Don't use a cane; just use Noah. He's about the right height," Sturgis said, always willing to suggest child labor over tacky and cumbersome walking tools. "'Sides, physical therapy's going places these days. Barring that, maybe you could talk the trainees into putting you on a travel-dais and they could lug your sorry arse all over the Ministry." To the Noah comment, Edgar snorted, a grin breaking out across his face. "You're ridiculous," he said, shaking his head. "Though I suppose I could start wearing a toga and make them call me Ceaser. And I'll use a whip. Hi-yah, trainees! Mush!" "Please, let Dorcas Meadowes lead the pack," Sturgis begged. "She spends entirely too much time mouthing off at me and not enough time baking me goddamn biscuits. I will buy you a goddamn pack of Jammy Dodgers if you do at least that much for me." "I'll see what I can do," Edgar laughed. "But you really bring it on yourself there, Pickles. You start writing in big, block, capital letters that you're going to hunt people down and that they should shut the fuck up and it only really encourages them to take the mickey." "Don't fucking call me Pickles," Sturgis sulked, but he wasn't actually upset by any of this. While it was vaguely annoying to be compared to a cute and cuddly bunny (rabbit), he figured if it made people laugh, well, at least someone was laughing in this damn war. "Jesus Christ. On that note, I'm gonna let Granny Bones get some sleep before he gets awful cranky." "Aren't you a sweetheart, Pickles," Edgar replied, and stuck out his tongue. "Get the hell out then. Maybe even try for a bit of sleep yourself, if the opportunity arises. I hear it's good for you." Sturgis grunted. "I'm gonna go see my twenty-seven year old girlfriend, shag her, and then sleep for days. Have fun with hospital food and physical therapy, tosser." He gave Ed an affectionate sort-of armpunch/hug/painful smack thing. "Don't fucking nearly die on me again. I'm so over it." "Have a good time you great, whiny twat," Edgar replied. "I'll try not to keel over between now and when you wake up." "If you do, put me in your will," Sturgis suggested by way of parting shot. "I'll need to take care of Cally in the manner she's accustomed." That accomplished, he gave a wave and headed out, feeling somewhat less like he was going to kill someone than he had previously that day. |