alicia spinnet (longtallally) wrote in fourteenshades, @ 2014-05-25 08:02:00 |
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Entry tags: | alicia spinnet, bridget dunstan |
WHO: Bee Dunstan and Alicia Spinnet
WHAT: After drinking her feels the night before, Alicia awakes with a sore head. Bee is the hangover fairy and generally the cutest thing ever. Welcome to House 5.
WHERE: House 5
WHEN: Saturday morning. Backdated to the day after Alicia arrives.
RATING: PG
STATUS: Complete.
“Ugggggghhhhmphhhhh.” Upon waking, Alicia made a noise that sounded like an animal of some kind dying a slow and excruciating death, and flopped over onto one side, fumbling for a pillow to shade her eyes with. Merlin, it was bright. Far too bright. It seemed to take a hangover for her to appreciate just how… sunny… the sunshine really was, and currently, she was feeling anything but appreciative. Her head was throbbing and her mouth felt like she had swallowed some bizarre concoction of gin and sawdust. Untangling the blanket from around her bare legs, she heaved herself into a sitting position on the sofa, rubbing sleep from her eyes and trying to ignore the way the room was tilting ever so slightly at the edges of her vision. Bee had a new roommate. Max, her black cat, had informed her of this development sometime late last night when he stood on her bladder until she had to pee. She'd heard someone in the front room as she padded to the loo. She was too asleep to care, and she didn't want to wake herself up enough to make sure it wasn't some Death Eater who might kill her while she was sleeping. When she woke up this morning, she moved about the house quietly in order to keep from arousing the young woman asleep on the couch. Whoever had dropped her off should have thought to put her in the other room. Bee loved the purple couch she'd bought for the place when she first arrived. It held some bittersweet memories, but it wasn't the best thing for most backs. She also hoped there would be no puking. Deciding to work from home so the girl didn't wake up alone, Bee set herself up on the kitchen table. She forwent a hot breakfast, but she needed her tea. It wasn't until later in the morning that she finally heard sounds of life coming from the front room. Standing, she filled a large glass with water and grabbed the bottle of acetaminophen and a bucket. She made sure to make a little noise to keep from frightening her guest as she walked into the living room. "Hiya," she said gently, her voice lilting in her Northern Irish brogue. "I'm Bridget Dunstan, but everyone calls me Bee." She handed the young woman the glass and two pills. "Take and drink," she ordered, sitting on the coffee table and positioning the bucket near where her head might be if she spewed. “Alicia Spinnet,” Alicia responded, reaching up behind her to give her red dress a tug and make sure it was covering everything that it should have. She decided that the best order of business was to drape the blanket around herself, like a toga, before reaching for the offered water and pills. “And thank you.” How did you greet someone who you had never met before, and who you were now living with? And who had just handed her a glass of water and what was hopefully the solution to the steady throb in the front of her head. Alicia took a mouthful, then another, finally feeling as though her tongue wasn’t threatening to stick to the roof of her mouth. “I hope that I didn’t wake you getting in,” she eventually decided upon, her voice still somewhat hoarse with dehydration. Bee waved off Alicia’s worry. “Not at all. I tend to sleep like a rock. It comes from having four brothers. The only reason I knew you were here was because my cat stood on my bladder, and I heard you jumping on the couch.” She stood and moved into the kitchen again, where she made toast and tea. The fact that she didn’t spew the water the second it hit her stomach was encouraging, and Bee knew Alicia needed to get something with more substance in her to fight the obvious hangover. Carrying the small breakfast on a tray, also holding butter and some jam, she returned to the girl. She set the tray on the table before making herself comfortable in the oversized chair with her own cuppa. “When you can stand without the room tilting, I’ll show you your room. I know the furniture in here is kind of mismatched, but I lived on my own when I first arrived, and my roommates since haven’t made me change anything.” “Oh no, I like it,” Alicia protested, her brown eyes widening in earnest. “I’m not a big fan of furniture sets. Mismatched looks more… welcoming, I suppose. And besides, we’re wizards. You could make them look identical if you really wanted to, couldn’t you? I like everything the way it is.” Well, what she had noticed of the place when Ron had half-carried her here, that was. But even if she didn’t like things, Alicia viewed herself as being a guest. It wasn’t as though she would suggest that her new flatmate change anything. My roommates since haven’t made me change anything raised all sorts of possibilities in Alicia’s mind. So other people came and went, then? However, she tucked that question to one side of her mind for now, filing it away in the ‘too hard and complicated’ category, and instead reached for a slice of toast. “Mmm, that smells amazing.” Smiling her thanks, she nodded as she sipped her tea. She could change the colours if they ever bored her, but the purple wasn’t terribly garish, and it did look nice with the black chair and side tables. Maybe a bit like a villain’s lair in some ways, but the window treatments were a nice lavender that brightened the room. Yeah. It wasn’t so bad. “Whole grain. It’s good for soakin’ up whatever alcohol is still left in your system. If I had any on hand, I’d have given you some banana bread. It always does the trick. But toast and jam is a good second.” Her journal pinged, and she set her mug down to grab it. with a quick tap of her wand, she sent one of her cat-sized, delivery bugs out the cat door to fill an order at Mike’s Corner. “When are you from, Alicia?” It was an odd question, but one that was often asked. She picked her mug up again and turned politely curious eyes on the girl. “Well, this looks perfect.” The jam appeared to be homemade, but it was probably too acidic for her delicate stomach currently, so instead Alicia spread butter on her slice and took a bite. She chewed slowly, and then - when the first didn’t threaten to make a reappearance - she took another mouthful of bread. It struck her that as she had been on her way to a dinner date, she hadn’t eaten since yesterday lunch. Frédérik would be frantic. Or - no, he wouldn’t be actually - if what Bletchley had said the night before was true and there was instead still a copy of herself running around. Or was she the copy? It was all a little too much to examine currently, so again, it got tucked away to the ‘too complicated’ side of her brain. Fortunately the sight of the delivery bug distracted her. She gave a brief cry of pleasure - cars had captured her attention during Muggle Studies classes - then a twinge of discomfort through her forehead reminded her that laughter was perhaps not the best medicine for the time being. “1996. August 1996.” It wasn’t a strange question, considering how the village worked. Neither would asking someone how old they were be, even though it was highly rude back in the real world. “I had taken my NEWTs a few months earlier; You Know Who had returned. I was working in Gringotts, had just started renting out a room from a widow.” Alicia had felt very grown-up, with her new flat and her new job, but it occurred to her that to the other woman, she likely was still a child. “So, what do you do?” she asked. “Aside from being an angel of mercy for hungover people, that is.” “I’m from June 1997, but I’ve been here for thirteen months and change. It’s a lot to take in at first, but you get used to it eventually, if you just take it one moment at a time.” Bee quickly did the math, and this girl was a first year when Bee was a sixth, and she was definitely in a different house. Bee laughed. “I run the delivery service for the village. I take it from your reaction you know what a car is. I missed mine. My parents, before I went into hiding from the Ministry--which is in your future--bought me a purple Volkswagen Beetle. I missed it so much when I arrived, but I found a model of it in Smuggled. I made it the size of a cat and started sending things to people in it. When Mike Corner opened his food court, I started Bee’s Bugs. Now anyone can order food, ice cream, send letters and gifts, with my little cars, and there’s no mess like if owls were flying around everywhere.” She sat back in her chair proudly. “I’m very pleased with them.” “Yes, I took Muggle Studies from third to seventh year,” Alicia explained. “They didn’t really talk about Muggle culture as much as I would have liked; more how electrical appliances worked and how Muggles use technology as a replacement for magic. Which sounded fairly complicated, but it’s quite clever.” For Bee’s parents to buy her a car, she must have recent Muggle ancestry herself. Alicia had known students who had one Muggle or Muggleborn parent in Gryffindor, but the family still tended to live a by and largely magical lifestyle. June 1997. A whole year of information that Alicia didn’t have. She wanted ask Bee about it, but not today. Still, when someone mentioned “went into hiding,” it seemed hard-hearted not to ask them about it. “You went into hiding… from the Ministry?” she repeated, her brow furrowing thoughtfully. Sure, they had been a bit incompetent and highly corrupt in her time, but they hadn’t been that bad. Bee quirked an eyebrow at that statement. “It’s not that they we replaced magic with technology. It’s that we advanced further. Do you realise how much wizarding folk rely on their magic? How much they don’t have to. Most of the homes I visited in magical villages still used candles as their main source of light. They spent the evenings squinting at each other because the lighting was too dim to see properly. We have electricity, which lights our homes and makes our water hot. The magic disappeared in the village for a bit, and so many people didn’t know how to take care of themselves because they no longer had their magic to fall back on. It’s become a crutch for so many.” She sat forward in her chair. “Don’t mistake me, though. I love having powers. My delivery service wouldn’t be possible without them. But--” she shook her head. It was a small soapbox for her, one she rarely got on. “It’s not a replacement. It’s just a different advancement.” She sighed and smiled apologetically. “My da is, technically, a squib. His family gave him up when he never developed magic. So I come from a Muggle family. I’ve lived in both worlds.” Bee nodded. “It was safer for me and my family if I left England for a while because they were rounding up Muggleborns and half-bloods and questioning them about where they got their powers. They made people register. I didn’t want to leave, but my parents insisted.” For what Bee said of magic, Alicia could also argue for with technology. She doubted that many present day Muggles would know how to cope if they were thrown back in time a millennia or two, without supermarkets for their food and modern conveniences at the touch of a button. However, she tended to avoid debates with people if that particular issue was close to their heart - it just wasn’t worth it if feelings ended up hurt - so she merely said “right,” showing that she’d received Bee’s remarks. “It looks like I have a lot to catch up on,” she concluded with a rueful smile. Bee smiled sadly. “You’ll find out a lot, whether you want to or not. Some secrets stay that way for a long time. Others come out without a second thought. I suppose it depends on who’s doing the telling.” Her journal buzzed again, and she checked the message. “Shite. One of my bugs broke down and it’s oozing pasta.” “Your room is the second door on the left. The loo is across the hall from that, and the tub is fantastic. Help yourself to whatever toiletries you need until you have a chance to go shopping. You have some money already, and you’ll earn more when you start working.” Another buzz, and she stood up, staring at the page. “Apparently the sauce is now a volcano.” She shook her head, smiling. “Message me if you need anything from the shops while I’m out.” |