InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "Get your own butterfly."

Meaghan had emerged from the locker rooms in her robes, so Hamish had brought her back to his place to change, grateful that his Muggle housemates were definitely gone for the weekend. He really needed to get his own place, finally. Soon. He was going to make it happen one way or the other.

But right now he had a frustrated and angry Keeper to deal with, so he'd cracked open a bottle of beer and was waiting for her to come downstairs and see what she needed to do next. And maybe see why she'd decided to skip out on the team, even if that was likely to start an argument. Maybe he could dodge that.

Maybe.

She had showered to get rid of the stink of failure, and used up all the hot water in the process. Part of her wanted to stay there even after the water ran cold, but in the end Meaghan just wasn't good at making herself suffer. Anyway, it wasn't like it actually changed how she felt.

So she dried off with the towel that looked cleanest and put on the street clothes she'd worn to the stadium earlier that day, before the loss.

"One for me?" she said as she spotted the beer. Maggie'd said not to drink much but fuck that, Meaghan was getting plastered tonight. Not like Maggie wasn't pissed at her anyway, what difference would it make?

The fridge at the Castle of Drifters was sparingly stocked with food but it did hold plenty of beer. Hamish grabbed one for Meaghan, opened it, then handed it over. "So," he said calmly. "What's going on?"

The answer had to wait until Meaghan finished her long swig. "I fucked it up," she said. "You were there, you saw." She'd promised a wall and she'd been shite.

"I saw a billion shots being taken, yeah," Hamish said. It had pretty much been unreal, the pace of both teams' chasers. "But I also wasn't expecting you out of the locker room before the rest of your team had a chance to get down there."

He gave her a shrug, because expecting it or not, it didn't surprise him that much, even if quidditch was a team sport and losing was a team effort.

"Anything going on or just an off match?" he asked her, curiously. So far, so good. This was just a conversation.

"That wasn't just a off match," Meaghan retorted in angry disbelief. She'd said it herself first, and she knew it well enough, but it still stung to hear someone admit she hadn't done well. Even if she would've been far angrier if he'd tried to lie that she was fine. "Godricssake, you seen me play enough. It takes more then smartarse chasers to do that to me."

"So what was it then?" Hamish asked. "Because you're right, I have seen you play enough and something was getting to you out there."

Meaghan squeezed her eyes shut, rubbed them with her free hand. "S'just all the -- it was everywhere, an' kept on flashin' by. Both sides an' damn near everyone, and in the stands too, there was nowhere -- free to look. Just -- voosh, voosh," she said, making her hand dive past her face, and then back the other way, her bottle hand forgetting itself for a moment and sloshing out some of the beer.

Hamish just looked at Meaghan for a moment, trying to make sense of her explanation. It wasn't happening. "What was everywhere?" he asked.

"All that fuckin' pink!" she said, opening her eyes and waving both arms at once in an I-give-up gesture. The beer sloshed again, and she swore and took another swig. "It wasn't as bad before but now, everyone or damn near it just about. Can't get away from it."

He looked at her for a long moment, having been wearing a pink scarf of his own earlier at the match.

"You know what I don't get?" he asked. "Why you're against it. I mean, you hid my best mate at your place during the war, didn't ya?"

Meaghan shook her head immediately. "This ain't the same."

"How so?" Hamish asked, more curious than anything. It wasn't, after all. The war was over but he understood the movement and the desire and need for it. He didn't understand why Meaghan was against it, so he gave her a chance to explain.

"Folks ain't dyin'," she spat, as if that was all the explanation you could possibly need.

"No, they're not," he said, considering her. "War's over and all… That doesn't mean all opinions have changed though?"

Meaghan slashed her hand through the air in front of her, angrily dismissive. "I don't give a fuck 'bout people's opinions. Opinions ain't shit. How many of those bastards wearing it d'you think would of done a goddamn thing for anyone then? How many did?" She shook her head again. "It's just fuckin' politics, tryin' to make folks feel shitty for not doin', then make 'em feel better by wearin' a goddamn colour. It doesn't do anything. It doesn't help anyone and it sure's hell ain't savin' any goddamn lives. It's all guilt and tellin' folks what to do, and they got no bloody right."

"I wear pink," Hamish pointed out. "And yeah, I didn't do enough, I know that. I should've gotten involved sooner, done more. But it was Muggleborns who started with it and I think they have that right?" he offered. "And then more of us joined in because they shouldn't have to stand alone. That's how I see it at least, but go ahead and tell me I didn't do shit. I know that. And maybe it doesn't actually do anything but that's sorta the point of a symbolic gesture… Sorta like turning your hair purple for a match."

He found himself surprisingly defensive, stemming from the fact that he really didn't do enough during the war.

Meaghan flushed. "It ain't a damn thing like -- I wasn't talkin' 'bout you."

“How many people wearing pink went to Azkaban then?” He asked. “Yeah sure maybe some people wear a pink shirt to lessen their guilt at not doing a damn thing or are only doing so cause it’s become a thing and no one needs to be forced into it either but it stems from people who were there in the middle of things asking the world to not fuck this up again in a few more years like last time.”

Hamish sighed, finished off his beer then stood to get another one. “I don’t wanna argue, Meaghan, but you can’t write off the entire thing just cause some arseholes don’t know what they’re doing. And you shouldn’t feel guilty if you don’t wanna wear it but I can see where that’s a sticking point…”

He didn’t know what else to say about that because she was right, no one need to feel guilted into wearing it and various teams had made statements by all wearing it in some form, including the Pride.

"I don't feel guilty for it," Meaghan said, her face set. They didn't have anything on her there and she knew her rights and what was right too. Not mandatory was not mandatory, you couldn't switch it after and no one could make her do anything she didn't wanna. "Only they're tryin' to make me feel and fucked it all up from there."

Her voice had gone tight, so she turned away from Hamish as she finished her beer, and set it on the counter with a hollow clunk. All she wanted was five, ten, twelve more beers and life to be normal again, to be celebrating a win with folks who gave a shit about her. It wasn't like she asked that bloody much, but she couldn't even get that now.

"So are you against Uplift or the fact that they had the entire team out in pink?" he asked. That had been the week she'd been rested, and she'd been benched after that, if he was remembering correctly. Her anger made sense then. He got her another beer as well, then sat back down. "Cause it's not going away. Y'know that, right?"

His voice was softer on that last question, and he wasn't necessarily referring to just people adding pink to their uniforms. The world had changed, and hopefully it was on an upswing. Normal was gonna mean something different now for all of them.

Meaghan had taken a grateful swig as soon as the new bottle was in her hand, closing her eyes like that would make it work faster. She let out a laugh. "Hard not to know, way everyone keeps bloody tellin' me. Real helpful I don't think."

"So what would help?" he asked, the question genuine.

She set down the bottle fuller and sooner than she expected, and rubbed her forehead with both hands. "I dunno," she said quietly. "If I knew I'd get it or do it already." Probably, anyway. If it was something she could do. She wasn't wearing pink for anybody.

Hamish nodded. He didn't know either, but that wasn't a simple question. It didn't come with a ready made answer.

"You wanna stay here? Or go to the Seer?" he asked her, changing the subject slightly. "Plenty of beer in the fridge." He didn't wait for an answer though, and instead moved his chair closer to her so he could drape his arm around her, noting her temporarily abandoned beer.

"Alright?"

Meaghan shook her head and leaned back against him, further away from the bottle than she'd intended on getting tonight, or even five minutes ago. But bottles weren't people and it wasn't the same as having a person near.

"I was shite up there," she said, quietly, as if she didn't want someone -- herself, maybe -- to hear. She was better than that. She was better than this. Why couldn't she keep it together anymore?

"It was one match," Hamish pointed out. "You'll rebound. You always do."

He took a sip of his own beer, thinking. He still didn't think she was against Uplift, just how all of that was bleeding into quidditch, but he wasn't sure about pressing the issue. Not now. Probably.

Quidditch was full of ups and downs, Meaghan knew that. She'd been riding them for years. Losing was shite but you had to come back from it. As much as she liked to pretend she'd only ever had victories, she'd pulled herself back up after plenty of losses. It wasn't like this was the first time.

But she'd had a more solid place to come back to then, and more people to pull each other up together. She'd been a part of something, a team, for so long that it never occurred to her it could slip away like this, even after losing Bart and Dunbar and the other chasers after the war, even after Old Cap earlier in the season. Everything had shifted so much in all the upheaval that she didn't know where to find the right handholds anymore, and no one cared enough to reach down and drag her up to safe ground. They didn't even care to look for her. It was like they'd yelled her name a couple times, then gone on with their hike while she was clinging to the cliff just below them, trying to catch her breath.

She couldn't help but worry that this time, maybe she wouldn't rebound.

"S'not usually like this," she mumbled.

No, it wasn't. Usually after a loss Meaghan was ready to set the world on fire and good luck if you managed to be in her way. This was different, considerably so. He set his own bottle down so he could hold her in both arms. "What's going on?" he asked, quietly. "I can't read your mind."

Meaghan leaned into him, eyes shut, face tight, hands clenched. "Team hates me," she said, and she would have left it at that but her mouth wouldn't let her. "And Joy says I gotta try still and fix it and reach out or whatever but I dunno them, and I dunno how to do that anyways. Mostly it goes back normal onnit's own or someone else does something or whatever but I dun think it's gonna this time. I keep tryin' to think but I just got nowt."

"Well," Hamish said easily. "You can work on all that, can't you? But for now, why not just breathe?" That was a lot all at once, thinking that the team was against her, and trying to fix her game while being distracted by politics hitting the pitch. He could see that, though he was fairly confident she could find her way back.

He was also rather certain that she was more of a leader than she realised.

"Tchuh, another thing I gotta do," Meaghan snorted. But she took a deep breath -- one, two, three, four, five -- and then slowly let it out to the same count. She did it again, and her hands started to unclench themselves. "Howzat?" she asked, opening her eyes.

She took that more literally than he'd meant but that worked. As in he could actually feel her starting to relax and that was the point, wasn't it? "Seems to be working, huh?" he asked. Followed by, "You'll figure this out, you know. You've never stayed down long."

Meaghan quirked a smile. "Yeah." She closed her eyes again, still breathing. Resting like this, she could almost believe it.

"Here," she said quietly.

"Here?" he asked softly, but didn't say anything else, not wanting to disturb the calm that had settled her down. He didn't always understand how the sport could have such an effect on her, but he was starting to realise it was far more than quidditch getting to her lately. Stuff she needed to deal with properly, but that didn't have to all be settled at once.

Meaghan didn't have to settle anything right now. She just had to breathe.

And that was about her limit anyhow. It was no use trying to go out and be around a bunch of people, especially not ones who'd know her, though normally the noise and energy and movement would be all she wanted. But all these godricdamned feelings kept leaking out and she couldn't have that in public. All she could do was soak in the energy of one person. Thank Merlin Hamish had so much of it.

"Yeah," she said. Still breathing. "Here."