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Tweak says, "When I was a young warthog..."

Susan Amelia Bones (susanamybones) wrote in finnigans_rpg,
@ 2015-03-27 16:29:00

Entry tags:

character: lucy spinks, character: susan bones

RP: Cohabitation (Backdated to March 24)
Who: Susan and Lucy

What: Moving in

Where: Hanover Terrace, Regents Park

When: Tuesday 24th of March

Rating:SFW

Susan took a moment to flitter around Lucy's room, making sure everything was in it's place. After some consideration, she'd decided to leave the room decorated in it's light gold and cream, figuring that she and/or Lucy could change things around as needed.

She was just shooing Shadow out of the room when there was a polite knock on the door. She grinned to herself, and headed quickly for the stairs and down to the upper ground floor to fling open the door - fervently hoping it was Lucy and not one of her more amorous neighbours bent of asking her to come for a "ride on his pleasure boat" again. She flung open the door and smiled brightly. "Well hello you! Nice to finally see you!"

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addingvalue
2015-03-27 02:08 pm UTC (link)

It was already dark by the time Lucy managed to get to the address Susan had given her. She'd spent Monday night at the Leaky, then worked her usual hours. She'd worked through lunch so she could leave at four, but getting home and packing up enough of her things to last her several days had all taken time. On top of that, she'd argued with Jenny - whispering angry words at one another behind a locked door so none of their housemates would overhear. It was exactly the kind of thing Lucy hated about trying to live as a muggle - the lying, the sneaking around, the inability to be open... She'd ended up crying on the floor by her bed while Jenny looked on, baffled.

But Lucy didn't have time to cry for long. On the tube with her suitcase an hour or so later, she'd run through her list of things to do: find Susan's, try to do some research on International Exports, make sure her interview suit was cleaned and ironed, find her make-up and shoes. She didn't have time for anything, not even dinner.

Wishing she could remember - or cast - the spell that Justin had always cast on her trunk to lighten it before she went home from Hogwarts, Lucy dragged her suitcase behind her, crossing at the lights and making her way down the street until she found what she fervently hoped was the right house. She'd known it would be big, but hadn't expected it to be quite so huge or grand. Suddenly nervous, she lifted her hand to knock, prepared to be told she'd got the wrong place after all.

Instead, Susan jerked the door open and Lucy didn't know whether to be relieved she didn't have to go traipsing around the rest of Regent's Park to find her or daunted by the place she lived. "Hi," she said, lifting a hand to brush her fringe out of her eyes. "It's been a really long day..."

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susanamybones
2015-04-01 02:32 pm UTC (link)

Susan clucked her tongue in agreement and led Lucy into the house, levitating the trunk out of the way once they were out of the view of any of her neighbours. "So tell me about your day then," she said as she gently tugged the other woman past the kitchen and into a chair in the living room at the back of the house.

"Would you like something to eat or drink," she asked, pointing vaguely in the direction of the kitchen. "Or would you like me to give you the grand tour?" She was interrupted by any further questions by the sudden and spectacularly energetic arrival of Shadow, who gave Susan's hand a cursory lick before turning her gaze adoringly on Lucy. "Ah, this is Shadow. My dog," she said, eyeing the dog's posturing with vast amusement. "Apparently you are her new chosen one?"

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addingvalue
2015-04-01 04:28 pm UTC (link)

Lucy followed Susan, equal parts grateful not to have to drag her suitcase and awed by the house. "Uh," she said, stopping to drop into the comfortable chair with a satisfied groan. "I don't know where to start," she said honestly. "Everything's happening so fast. I've got a meeting with Richard Summerby tomorrow. I mean, I think it's a meeting and not a job interview, though I did send him my CV."

Food was definitely high on Lucy's list of things she needed - much higher than a tour, which could wait until her feet didn't hurt quite so much. "Coffee?" she asked hopefully. "And then I'll help with some food, if you haven't eaten." At least that way she could sit down for five minutes first.

She was just debating how to broach the topic of her family when what appeared very like a ball of white fluff bounded into the room and turned to stare at Lucy. "Hi, Shadow," she said, holding out a hand as the dog came closer. She'd never had a dog, her mum was more a cat person, but she liked them well enough. "Aren't you friendly." She scratched Shadow's nose and smiled. "You need to stay far, far away from my nice clean black suit, though."

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susanamybones
2015-04-08 03:41 pm UTC (link)

Susan lifted her eyebrows for a moment and smiled. "Richard Summerby is it," she asked with a nod. "That might not be too bad for you. The man runs a Muggle side to his company, and likes to use all their technologies in his business. He was in Hufflepuff too, and I recall that he takes house pride very seriously."

"I think I have coffee somewhere," she suggested, wrinkling her nose as she left Lucy to be adored by Shadow. She wandered into the kitchen, eventually locating the beans for the ridiculous coffee machine her brother had enthusiastically bought for her. Dubiously, she filled the water compartment, and placed a mug under the drip, and pressed a button. The resulting sound sent her stumbling back with a muttered oath. "Merlin's tits why does it have to be so loud," she muttered, before zoning back on Lucy.

"Shadow leave the poor woman alone," she called, nodding as she complied. "What type of food would you like," she called. "I haven't eaten yet, so I thought maybe some sort of stir fry or a pasta dish?" She grabbed the filled coffee mug and wandered back over to the sitting area. "Here you go darling," she said, handing it over.

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addingvalue
2015-04-13 04:08 pm UTC (link)

"It's nice of him to get involved," Lucy said, determined not to get her hopes up - though anything with a muggle side and using muggle technology would definitely suit her better. "I don't really remember him, honestly. Or at least, I remember a Richard. I'm not sure it's even the right one." With as hard as she'd had to work just to keep up, Lucy hadn't ever had much time to get to know the Hufflepuffs beyond her own year group.

Lucy was about to offer to make the coffee herself when Susan seemed to find them right button on the machine - and even as tired as she was, Lucy had to laugh. "I take it you don't drink much coffee. I'll buy some instant on my way home, then all you have to do is boil water." She took the cup from Susan as she approached, giving Shadow one last scratch behind the ears.

"Pasta's good." Though the idea of a magical kitchen was quite daunting. Lucy hoped she'd be able to find something to do to make herself useful while Susan took care of anything that couldn't be done by hand. "This place is huge, Susan," she finally added, looking around. She'd grown used to people being better-off than she was years ago, but this was something else.

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susanamybones
2015-04-18 02:33 pm UTC (link)

"Mmmhmm," Susan agreed absently. "He's like that, is Richard: nice. Like Helga Hufflepuff herself descended from the heavens, grabbed his knackers in her vice-like grip and demanded that he embody the very essence of our house. That said, half the 'Puff men seem to be same. I wonder if there was something we weren't privy to?" She turned and looked at Lucy, who seemed slightly worried. "Don't worry, I'm sure you'll get the job? You're a broom in, I'd imagine."

She groaned and then joined the other woman's laughter. "This infernal device was given to me by dear Edgar for the express purpose of him being able to drink his fancy bitter rubbish whenever he pleases. That said, I remember where the button is now so it should be fine from now on." She winked and popped her hip. "You know you don't have to show me something twice," she quipped.

"Excellent, pasta it is," she said enthusiastically. She paused at Lucy's words and turned around. "I suppose it is, but then what's the point of having obscene amounts of money if you can't have an obscene house to go with it? At least you're here to help me fill it up?" She stood there for a moment, feeling - not for the first time - oddly self-conscious about her wealth, and hoping that Lucy wasn't judging her too harshly for it. This was a house she eventually wanted to have children, and Merlin help her, grandchildren in - not that she'd admit that to anyone, even under the Cruciatus. "Well come on then," she said, recovering quickly, and leading the way airily into the kitchen. "Can you cut some peppers for me," she asked, casually pointing her wand to send a couple of peppers zooming over, and another to obligingly impale one with a cutting knife. She then turned her attention on a pair of onions and summon the ingredients for the sauce from her fridge.

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addingvalue
2015-04-20 05:39 pm UTC (link)

"Oh, and the Hufflepuff women aren't?" Lucy asked, laughing at Susan's description. "I seem to remember you, Hannah and Megan falling over yourselves to be the first to be nice to me." It was a good memory - and Lucy didn't have too many of those from school. She smiled - then laughed again as another memory came to her. "Remember when Wayne tried to turn the stairs down from our dorm into a water slide?" It hadn't entirely worked - and Professor Sprout had been torn between outraged indignation and inappropriate giggles.

It took Lucy a moment to remember who Edgar was. Years ago, she'd known her friends siblings names by heart, nearly as well as she'd known her own. Time had dulled that memory a little - but it eventually came back to her. "Edgar's your brother?" she checked. "How is he? Is he living here too?" She hadn't thought to ask whether there any more people living here than just the two of them.

"Can you really say there's a point to having obscene amounts of money?" Lucy asked, not particularly wanting to get into a discussion of economics, but not willingly to meekly stand down either as she once might have. She stood, joining Susan in the kitchen and giving a little shriek as the knife whizzed its way towards her. She knew Susan was in control of her magic, far more so than Lucy was, but it was still disconcerting. "I think I can just about manage to cut peppers," she said as she removed the knife and carefully removed the top of the first pepper. "When we've got more time, I'll show you the new recipe I've been experimenting with. It's amazing."

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susanamybones
2015-04-24 02:14 pm UTC (link)

Susan snorted and poked her tongue out in an utterly undignified manner. "That's completely different! You're awesome and therefore we were required to be nice to you. Plus, um, I have no other adequate response to that," she said, sashaying a hip and making a funny face at the other woman, before dissolving into a fit of giggles at the memory Lucy mentioned. "Yes well, that's perfect Wayne for you isn't it? Always trying to do something stupid, or flirty, or both!"

She smiled at Lucy's momentary confusion - which was perfectly natural, as she'd probably had little reason to think of Edgar over the years, just as Susan would be hard pressed to remember the names of Lucy's siblings. "He is my brother yeah," she affirmed with a wink. "He's excellent, little turd that he is. He's nearly finished with his Cursebreaking apprenticeship!" She tilted her head at the question, then shook her head. "Nah, he lives at my old house now - though he might occasionally be found sleeping on my sofa if he's drunk. He seems to be thaumaturgically attracted to my sofas when he's drunk."

"Not particularly," she agreed, eyeing the expression on the other woman's face with interest. "The point more or less stands that far too many generations of Bones' married ridiculously wealthy Muggle-borns in between respectable halfbloods and purebloods, and thus I'm left with a bank vault filled with money that I've not earned but nevertheless have to use." She turned quickly from her onions at the sound of Lucy's shriek. "I figure you're definitely up to the prospect of cutting peppers," she said, furrowing her brow in concern. "Are you okay though? That was quite a noise!" She turned her attention back to the onions, absently flicking her wand to summon some tomatoes and some minced meat. "Oh yes, what recipe's this then," she asked, heading to the stove with a large saucepan and lighting underneath it with another flick of her wand.

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addingvalue
2015-04-27 08:39 am UTC (link)

Lucy rolled her eyes slightly. Though her confidence had improved in her years out of the magical world, she was under no illusion that 11-year-old Lucy, confused and homesick and appalling at magic, had been 'awesome'. "It certainly was," she agreed. She'd seen Wayne once since her return to the magical world - and he'd seemed a lot more serious, though still a little flirty.

Though she wasn't entirely sure what cursebreaking was, Lucy figured she could probably guess. "Sounds... exciting," she said, quickly replacing the word 'dangerous' that had immediately sprung to mind. She nodded, making a mental note not to be too alarmed if she found a strange man sleeping on the sofa one day. Though, really, if that were the most unexpected place she found a strange man it would actually be less alarming than certain things that had gone on in her previous house.

She snorted in slight annoyance. "I've had a long day and you sent a knife zooming in my direction," she said. "I'm allowed to make a noise." She decided to let the topic of money drop - as much as she was of the opinion that Susan didn't 'have' to use the money she'd inherited, or that she could have used it for more charitable ends, she was aware it was bad manners to say so when Susan was currently using at least a little of it to house her. "It's a mexican mole sauce," she answered. "Chocolate and chillies and loads of other ingredients - takes forever to shop for, but it's delicious."

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susanamybones
2015-04-29 02:10 pm UTC (link)

Susan snorted and nodded. "I sometimes miss the times when things were simpler. Not that we had an idyllic childhood, what with Voldemort turning up at the school every other year." She tilted her head and repressed a snort at Lucy's hesitant declaration of cursebreaking as 'exciting.' "I don't know that breaking into old tombs and getting your eyebrows blasted off by three thousand year old automated curses is exactly my idea of exciting... But then I regularly chase people down, pepper them with hexes, and make them cry for their mothers so what would I know eh?"

She blinked several times, and then began to laugh weakly. "Sorry dear, I forget that you wouldn't a) be used to knives flying at you all the time, and b) probably didn't use magic much while cooking in your old house." She poured the onions into the saucepan with some olive oil, and began absently breaking the meat up. "Merlin's teeth that sounds amazing! What do you need for it, I think one of the stallholders at the goblin markets is Mexican, maybe we could get some of the stuff from her?"

"So," she said, in what she hoped was a nonchalant manner. "What's the whole deal with you being advised to live away from Muggles? Is it an issue with your erm, magic?" She started breaking up the meat with a wooden spoon, before remembering that she needed garlic, and pointing at a jar of it to summoning it to herself. "I was going to ask around, but I thought that would be a bit invasive of me." She finished breaking up the meat and turned to look at her friend. "I figure when received the journal it kind of helped set you on the path again, yes?"

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addingvalue
2015-05-02 04:59 pm UTC (link)

"I don't," Lucy said decidedly. "At least, not those times." Sometimes she thought about what it would be like to go back to before she got her Hogwarts letter, when she'd just been a normal girl playing football with her friends and making cookies with her sisters. When she'd first found out about it she'd thought magic would be an amazing thing that would change her life - but it had never been anything like that easy. "I like who I am now. I like knowing I'm actually good at things - even if..." She trailed off, then shrugged. "Even if those things aren't magic." Susan had been with her all six years at school, she knew Lucy wasn't good at magic.

She snorted slightly at Susan's description of her job. These new adult versions of her old friends were taking some getting used to. They'd all changed so much, and yet in some ways were just the same - it felt like Lucy kept missing a step when trying to walk down stairs. "If we can get authentic stuff that would be even better," she said. "I've been using basic Sainsbury's ingredients and it's really good just with those. I've got a list somewhere." She hadn't remotely managed to memorise the massive ingredient list yet - but sometimes she liked a challenge when she cooked.

Once they were all chopped, Lucy pushed the peppers over to Susan to add to the saucepan. "It's so stupid," she complained bitterly. "I had one magical accident and the Ministry got involved, sent me a letter 'reminding' me not to magic around muggles." She added air-quotes around the word as she spoke. "Then months later I get that vanishing sickness and my hand disappears on the fucking tube as I was trying to get myself to St Mungos." She paused, trying to tamp down the irritation - Susan did work for the Ministry, after all. She popped a stray cube of green pepper into her mouth and crunched through it before she continued. "After that, I had to go see them and fill out loads of paperwork and get one of Alicia's lawyers involved. In the end it seems like they can't force me to stop living and working with muggles - not unless there are several more instances in a twelve-month period - but when an owl showed up at work and just flapped outside the window for hours I sort of gave up."

Once she'd finished speaking, her shoulders sagged a little, making her even shorter than she usually was. She still wasn't sure this was for the best, no matter how she tried to convince herself. Both magical and muggle worlds had drawbacks, and she still wished she could have struck a more equal balance. "It definitely set me on a path. I guess we'll see if it was a good one..."

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susanamybones
2015-05-04 02:28 pm UTC (link)

"Hmmm," Susan agreed. "I guess it's more thinking wishfully of a time before most of my family was murdered for standing up for what's right, you know? Plus some school nostalgia." She looked at Lucy closely for a moment. She'd always had a weird intuitive suspicion that Lucy hadn't been matched to her wand properly - something that happened far more with purebloods who passed wands down family lines then sensible people like Lucy, who got an Ollivander's original. "Your worth is not measured by your ability to do magic, not in this house anyway," she replied at last.

"Excellent," she replied enthusiastically. "I like the idea of making this. It can be fun little dinner thing for us to do eh? Who knows, maybe your presence means that I'll eat more." She stired the onion medatively for a moment. "So where'd you get the recipe from anyway?"

She pushed the peppers into the mix as she listened to Lucy. "I'm so sorry darling," she said with genuine feeling, wisely deciding to not mention such trivialities as the fact that making sure magic wasn't used in front of Muggles was a major purpose of the Ministry. "Merlin's teeth! I knew you Vanishing Sickness, but goodness I didn't realise you were on the train system" she cried, whirling around in concern. "Did I know this? I feel like I should have known this!" She reached over and grasped the other woman's shoulder warmly and turned back to focus on their dinner. "Yeah, that sounds about right. They always get their way eventually. I'm sorry that you've been forced to leave your comfort zone, but hopefully you'll like living here?"

Susan smiled to herself and nodded. "Good, I'm glad. I imagine whoever tracked you down took a lot of effort to do so."

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addingvalue
2015-05-06 02:07 pm UTC (link)

Lucy winced slightly. It wasn't that she'd forgotten about Susan's family, but she was just so tired and stressed out that she hadn't been thinking about it. "I'm sorry," she said genuinely. "Of course it's different. If I think wishfully about anything it's going to be my primary school days. But there's no guarantee that I'd have figured out I was good at anything in the muggle school system either. I certainly wasn't showing any unusual promise when I left." Her mother had always said she'd be a late bloomer - though she'd been talking about Lucy's height, which had never changed much.

"I like recipes," Lucy said. "I've got more cookbooks than I know what to do with. I left most of them at Jenny's, for now." The thought reminded her of the awkward way she'd left things with her sister - but she didn't want to dwell on it right now. "That one's in a book of chocolate-based recipes," she said, picturing the book cover in her mind but unable to recall the exact title. "It's mostly cakes and biscuits and things, which I'm not so good at, but it has a few savoury dishes too."

Susan's genuine apology was appreciated, even if Lucy knew it wasn't Susan's fault that any of this had happened. "I woke up with my leg gone," she said, repressing a shudder. Even once she'd realised her leg was definitely still there, she'd panicked. "So I just... put on jeans and socks and tried to get to Diagon Alley so I could floo from the Leaky Cauldron." She couldn't remember whether or not they'd talked about it. The only person to comment on her panicked journal at the time had been Gwenog. She managed a small smile as Susan tried to re-orientate them to the positive. "I'm sure I'll like living here," she agreed. Even if the house was a little intimidating...

She hadn't thought about the sender of the journal in months, but she nodded in agreement. "I guess so. I mean - don't owls just sort of know where people live?" Lucy had certainly sent things without knowing where the people she was sending them to were living, and they seemed to have arrived.

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