Erin S. Troy (erintroy) wrote in novsila_rpg, @ 2014-10-26 10:32:00 |
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Entry tags: | ! challenge thread, conrad bradley, erin troy |
Who: Conrad Bradley & Erin Troy
What: Shamrock Green Challenge!
Where: Start: Small Irish Pub & Beyond!
When: October 26-27th
Rating/Status: Low | Complete!!!
Erin Troy (~erintroy)
Conrad Bradley (~namesnotconnie)
Erin didn’t really feel like going to the Three Quaffles again, not that she didn’t like it, it was just harder to have a conversation in Russian when someone was always coming up to speak to one of them. That was the only problem with the place. Otherwise she loved it, if she wanted to be social, or if she wanted to find people she knew, she was there! This was different though. Erin wasn’t completely comfortable with her Russian, so speaking it with just Conrad hearing her made things much more comfortable for her.
She’d owled him early that day with the address of the small Irish Pub. It was easy enough to get to and was in a smaller more wizarding based town in Ireland. Erin had been speaking Gaelic with a gentlemen when she saw Conrad coming up towards her. Bidding him farewell she headed a few steps towards Conrad.
When they were about 2 feet apart from each other, all of a sudden out of the cracks between the wall came what looked like an overgrown shamrock, before either of them could really do much about it it wrapped them up in a big hug throwing them together as it started muttering about St. Patricks Day…
They were only stuck for a few moments and the next thing they knew they tumbled out into the snow!
Her suggestion of drinks that night though had surprised him but he’d told her sure and met her at the pub she’d owled him the address to. He hadn’t been there before but he’d been able to find it easily enough. The fact that it was a small town helping that. He’d stopped a little bit away with his hands in his pockets when he saw, and heard her, speaking Gaelic to some gentlemen. He knew enough to recognize the language even though he couldn’t tell what was being said.
He thought his shock must have shown on his face when the shamrock picked them up and he heard the plant muttering something that sounded like St. Patricks Day. “What the hell is th-” his words cut off as they got thrown out into the snow. He’d been through some weird things lately in England but this - this took the cake.
He stood up and held his hand out to Erin to help her out, wishing that either of them had dressed for the cold. “The pub do that often?” he asked, smiling at her to show he was joking. Mostly. He was a little unnerved by what had happened.
“I…” Erin said as her face started to turn mildly red. She wasn’t dressed for winter, well neither of them were! She pushed aside her awkward feelings as she took his hand, the one not holding her wand and stood up. Glancing around it was clear they were still in the general same area, but a lot was off. Some of the store fronts were different, the weather was different… And, it just felt different.
“Never.” She said looking up noticing that he was smiling, which actually surprised her a little bit. Erin managed a small but awkward smile, she wasn’t really able to hold in how shocked she was. “I’ve never…” She started but stopped. “Did you see where it went?”
He looked around them for any sign of it. “Think we’d be lucky enough that it would have gone back into the wall?” he asked, looking back at her.
Wrapping her arms around her she turned to look at the direction it’d come from. “Come on, let’s go inside, maybe we can at least figure when we are, because this clearly isn’t September anymore.”
Erin turned heading towards the door looking back as she reached it. “I don’t know, I don’t know if we need it to get back to well… I don’t know if we need it or not.” She said shrugging slightly. “Come on.” She said opening the door. Erin might sometimes come off as being sweet and innocent and very much a traditional Hufflepuff but the girl was more capable than not.
He didn’t doubt for a second that Erin was completely capable of handling whatever life threw at her. It didn’t have anything to do with what house she’d been in - it was just her. And honestly, if he had to be in this situation he’d rather be stuck in it with Erin than just about anyone else. “Want to grab a drink while we try to figure out when we are and how to get back home?” he asked, surveying the interior. It was a little crowded but not too bad. He could easily believe that this was probably the way it looked most of the year, regardless of the weather so if they could get past the weirdness - it should be about the same experience right?
She looked to the bar and back to Conrad. “Yeah, let’s get a drink and see what we can learn from the bartender. Might be able to get some information and well… maybe a clue of how to get the thing back so we can get home.” Erin said as she nodded to the bar. “What do you think?”
“I’ll buy while you ask questions. I have a feeling it’ll go better if you talk to him about it. Better people skills and all that,” he told her as they walked over to the bar. He wasn’t lying - she had better people skills. Plus if the bartender spoke better Gaelic than English that was another reason for Erin to handle the talking.
He ordered their drinks, paying as they were set down in front of them. Normally he’d have found out about running a tab but he was hoping they wouldn’t be here long enough to make a tab worth it. Well not while they were stuck in...whenever this was at least. If they got home and chose to go on ahead to the pub - he might look into it again. Although he didn’t really see himself wanting to hang out in the area after they got home. He didn’t really trust that shamrock not to show up and do this again.
He waited until Erin finished talking and then turned to look at her. “He know anything?”
Nodding, she actually didn’t disagree although she didn’t think his people skills were horrid, they also weren’t exactly as smooth as some others were. She tended to be able to talk to most people. Actually Conrad was one of the few people in the world that she tended to butt heads with easily. Otherwise Erin was really easy to get along with. Something about him just pushed her buttons and she wasn’t even sure what it was about him that made her react the way she did sometimes. As he went to go order she started to speak with bartender, she started out with English but switched to Gaelic quickly.
The conversation started out just about the weather, but she slowly started to get him to talk about events during the year, frowning slightly she nodded as she put together the pieces of what he was saying. That was when she started looking at the fashion around them. Shit. She thought but didn’t say anything. Erin managed to get him to comment about some strange things that happened occasionally but he wasn’t clear about it giving Erin the impression that he had heard of strange things but wasn’t the one to talk to. When she asked him who might know about such things he pointed towards the entrance where a rather grumpy looking old man was sitting with a full drink. After thanking the bartender she turned and looked at Conrad, her eyes showing shock and uncertainty for a moment before she blinked and pulled herself together.
“It’s the seventh or March….1979.” Erin said. The height of voldemort, hell she wasn’t even born yet! Luckily they were in a small town that from her memory hadn’t been hit by the evil wizard. “Um, he also says we should talk to that guy over there.” She nodded to the man she’d been pointed to earlier.
“Did you say 1979?” he asked, lowering his voice and leaning towards her, disbelief obvious on his face. He couldn’t have heard her right. That...thing couldn’t have sent them back that far in time. He set his beer down on the bar and groaned as he shook his head and muttered in Russian that this couldn’t be happening.
“So we need to talk to him about the shamrock that sent us twenty years into the past...dinners on you since the drinks are on me,” he said getting off the stool he’d been sitting on and grabbing their drinks. “Lead the way.”
“Listen to the ones speaking English, it’s completely different set of conversation than we have in our time.” She said glancing up. “Yup. 1979.” Erin said as she smiled slightly as he muttered in Russian. Really she couldn’t blame him, she really understood that need to well… vent.
“You’re such a gentlemen.” She teased rolling her eyes but she smiled all the same nodding in agreement. She didn’t mind getting dinner, assuming they got to get dinner, hopefully in their own time. Erin however lead the way to the man she was told to talk to.
Smiling at him she asked him as politely as possible in gaelic if they could talk to him for a little bit. There was a strange glint in his eye as he nodded. He seemed to be the only one to notice that Erin and Conrad didn’t exactly fit in with the rest of the group. He leaned close to Erin muttering quickly in a mix of English and Gaelic that they better finish their drinks fast and get back outside of they’d miss their ride!
Erin thanked him but he kept his eyes on Conrad not saying much but his eyes were locked on Conrad for a good few extra seconds. Thanking him again she looked up at Conrad speaking in Russian. “We should finish up our drinks, we don’t want to miss our ride!”
He didn’t know why the man Erin was talking to stared at him while answering her but it gave him an uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach for some reason. He looked at Erin as she spoke to him in Russian, tearing his gaze away from the man and answering her in Russian, “Yeah. I don’t want to be here any longer than we have to be. And next time I’m picking the pub.” The question of why she was talking to him in Russian would have to wait until later. Once they were home. He finished his beer and stood up, giving a polite thank you to the man who Erin had been talking to. “I’ll be waiting outside,” he told her, slipping back into Russian.
Erin just felt as though speaking Russian would have been better for both of them, and it would avoid most of the people overhearing what they were saying. She nodded as she started to finish her drink. She hadn’t exactly made it through her drink by the time he’d finished his and was headed out the door. “Okay, thanks for waiting.” She muttered under her breath in English. She drank down the rest of it quickly putting the glass down and hurrying out after him.
Once they were out of the pub she took a deep breath just letting the cold air settle in her lungs for a moment. “Well…” She said looking around wondering if they were going to make it, or if the freaking shamrock would show up and get to them again. Erin was just about to turn and ask Conrad what he thought but it didn’t matter because in that moment she saw the flash of green.
Once again the shamrock burst out at them wrapping them up and this time singing off key about March 17th, St. Patricks day. It felt like a longer trip this time and this time when they came flying out of the shamrock it wasn’t snowing anymore, in fact it looked like a perfectly nice day, almost too nice from the day that they left.
“Well, take a look around?” Erin asked.
There was no snow on the ground, which he was glad of but knew it was no guarantee that they were actually home. That damn mental Shamrock could just have easily taken them to a warm day that was still in the past. “Look about back there - I just needed to get out of the pub, get some air. I shouldn’t have taken off like that on you though,” he said, the closest he’d come to actually apologizing to her. At least for right then.
“We might as well take a look. Maybe it actually brought us home,” he said, trying not to get his hopes up.
Reaching out she put a hand on his shoulder and smiled just a little bit and nodded. Erin didn’t trust words at that moment, she was a little bit too shaken by everything and while she got it, she still didn’t really emotionally get it. Dropping her hand she nodded and looked back towards the front door which clearly looked like it was still the same place but she wasn’t going to trust anything at this point. She mildly wondered if it did, but she felt like that’d be too easy.
“We can hope so.” Erin said in Russian before turning towards the bar and looking up at it. With a deep breath in she pushed the door open and walked in but stopped rather suddenly. The inside still had some of the same old world charm but there was a number of things that didn’t look anything like they should be. The clothing was insane, and just… The taps were different everything looked… Strange.
“Conrad.” She said but didn’t look back. “I don’t think we are home.”
“Yup.” She said. “So, go in, or wait out here to see if we actually get to go home? It could be kind of fun to learn about the future though…” She said glancing up at him.
“Yeah, I guess I’m just glad you haven’t decided to avoid me all together.” She said as she pushed her way into the pub. It wasn’t really as crowded as last time, but it was much brighter and the decorations had mixes of what she’d seen in their time, what they’d seen in the 70s and however many years it’d been. Erin headed to the bar and asked the bartender if he had today’s paper laying around by chance. As he nodded and asked if they were going to order something she turned to Conrad to see what he might like as she took the paper and pretty quickly keyed her eyes onto the date. April 4, 2045.
He waited until the bartender walked away to lean in and ask her quietly, “It would probably be a bad thing for me to borrow that to look at the stock page right?”
“Lager.” She sad answer his question as she flipped through the paper a little bit. The title on the page wasn’t that different, another scandal in the ministry, seemed to be that sort of thing happened a lot. At his comment she laughed and found the financial section and handed it up to him. “Well, probably, but you never know the future could change. We could change it with our current knowledge of the future when we get back.” Time travel was confusing.
“I was looking around for our friend from before and no luck,” he told her, slipping into Russian as their drinks arrived but keeping his voice low. He took a sip of his drink before continuing. “Well lager doesn’t change in the future thankfully. Think we should go ahead and take our chances with that mental shamrock again to try and get home?” he asked her. It had worked in the past. They’d wanted to go to the future and it had taken them there. Maybe if they specified that they wanted to go home to their time, it would take them.
Erin nodded as he told her he hadn’t seen that insanely oddly creepy but well helpful bloke. She couldn’t see over most of the people around them so she couldn’t be as useful. Taking a sip as he mentioned the lager tasted the same she laughed. “I guess we know barley and hops haven’t completely vanished in the future.” She said with a smile.
“Um, last time we spent about 26 minutes in here before catching it, I’m guessing it’s on a 24-26 minute run, we should keep that in mind, and both say the date, with the year we want to get back to when it grabs us…” She said thinking out loud.
“That sounds like a good plan to me. Better than the vague hope it takes us to the future I think I said last time,” he told her, sitting down on an empty stool as he finished his drink. Watching the people around them curiously. He’d never admit it to her but this night had been more fun than he could remember having in a while. And before he knew it 20 minutes had passed.
“We should probably get a move on. Just in case our ride is early,” he said giving a friendly smile to the man on Erin’s other side who had been trying to talk to her. He’d learned from what he’d done in the past to wait for her to be ready to go before heading for the door.
Erin didn’t sit down, she was too wired to really sit and as she sipped her beer she didn’t say much as she watched people, she was glad that he was there though, because being in this alone would not have been nearly as amusing. She occasionally made a comment about something strange they saw, and was actually a little disappointed when the 20 minutes had passed so quickly.
“Yeah, lets see if we can get home.” Erin said putting down her glass which wasn’t completely empty but it was empty enough and headed towards the door, happy he’d actually waited for her this time and hadn’t vanished on her! Erin opened the door and felt the breeze of the night air catch her a little bit. Erin moved to where the Shamrock had caught them before and looked up at Conrad waiting for it to happen again.
As the insane laugh of the thing started to come Erin said very clearly the date and time they wanted to get to. She felt weird as they were once again tossed into the time traveling insanity. This time though when they popped out it didn’t look exactly like when they’d come from… It was for one morning, the sun was just starting to raise but the paper that was sitting on the front step of the now closed pub had a picture of the current Magpie’s owner on it looking exactly as he had the last time Erin had seen it. She didn’t hear it but Shamrock muttered something about welcome home and they were missing a great ride. Erin however moved to pick it up and read the date.
“Well, looks like we just got to travel all night…” She said handing the paper to Conrad. “I guess we just missed a night.” Erin said shaking her head a little bit trying to figure out if she should say something else…