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Tweak says, "plot > pb"

michael corner is reluctantly growing up (mlcorner) wrote in pandorarpg,
@ 2012-01-30 17:30:00

Entry tags:

!status: complete, ^date: november 14 2003, character: agatha bole, character: fenrir greyback, character: lavender brown, character: michael corner

Characters: Lavender Brown, the Brown family, Michael Corner; later Agatha Bole & Fenrir Greyback
Setting: Lavender's home, Eastbourne, 14 November 2003, 12:14pm
Rating: PG-13 for language and imagery
Summary: Checking on Lavender after the news, being surprised by Greyback.

Michael had had a pretty shitty morning overall. With Greyback breaking out which he knew would set Lavender on edge (and was obviously not good for any of them - not just Lavender), he wanted to do his best to make sure she was at least not losing her mind about all of this. She probably didn't feel safe at all and even if her flat was back in order, was she going to move back into it? He had no idea, but he had a feeling it probably was a no.

But besides that, he had the potions mucking people's minds up. Apparently instead of helping it was making the nightmares even worse for them which was both mind boggling and ridiculous at the same time. But most of all, it meant that Michael had fucked up royally and ruined things for his friends. He should have anticipated something like this happening, having the knowledge of potions that he did, but he was so keen on helping these people that he overlooked some of the most important things he should have done.

So he wasn't in the best of moods when he apparated to Eastbourne, but he had to try his best to comfort Lavender right now. He walked out of the wood behind their house and to the front door, knocking firmly on the front door and doing his best to put a smile on his face for Lavender and her family that he might be talking to on the way. Her needs were a bit more than his at the moment and he wanted to make sure he kept her from taking anymore of the potion while he was there anyhow.

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mlcorner
2012-01-31 06:09 am UTC (link)

Michael nodded and grinned. "I like to colour too. What's your favourite thing to colour?" he asked her before she added the bit about Lavender. He wondered what the pictures might have been that would have made her upset but he didn't want to get into that with the girl so he didn't ask her about it.

He could hear Lavender a few times from the other room but he wasn't going to go in there uninvited so he wandered around in the front room with Jessica on his hip for a bit, looking around at pictures. "Jessica, do you know how to play pat-a-cake?" Michael asked her suddenly and sat her down on the floor and kneeled next to her. He wanted to try and distract her from whatever was going on and also himself because really, he could use it. He held up both his hands for her to hit and smiled, thinking of his sister again. It had been fourteen years now and he could still picture her face easily enough when he closed his eyes.

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lavishly
2012-01-31 02:28 pm UTC (link)

Getting closer to the front of the house she heard someone, probably Michael, playing pat-a-cake with Jessica. That was good, they were fine, and suddenly her plans changed. Rather than heading into the living room, Lavender stopped at the mud room, off the kitchen, to go ahead with her original plan. She wanted to get out of here. Of course her mother wasn't fat behind.

"Lavender, what are you doing?" Bailey and Baby Girl were sitting in the kitchen watching the whole ordeal unfold in front of them.

"What does it look like I'm doing, mother?" She said rummaging through the stuff in the mud room looking for the second lead. And if a few smaller items went flying toward her mother, well, it was purely accidental. Finally she found what she needed and started to clip the dogs to the leads, one after the other.

"It looks like you're seven years old again and trying to run away from home, but at least then you were smart enough to back a bag."

Lavender turned around pulling sharply on the leads, causing Bailey to start yipping. "Are you joking? You must be --" she paused seeing Matthew again and her whole stomach just feeling sick. Why had she saw that stupid picture? It took a bad day and just made it so much worse. She opened the back door and the dogs quickly shuffled outside ready for the escape as well. "I am going out," she said loudly so that Michael might hear in the other room, "With my dogs, and if Michael is here - well, he can make up his own mind about what he wants to do." Her words were quite spectacularly timed with the mud room door slamming shut behind her.

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mlcorner
2012-01-31 06:45 pm UTC (link)

Michael slowly patted his hands against the small girl's and then against his thighs and back again, reciting the accompanying song he had learned a long time ago. He wondered off-handedly if Lavender enjoyed this game with her niece and nephew because she actually baked, but then he heard some commotion and Lavender's voice from the other room and looked up, still moving his hands in time with Jessica's.

When he heard the door slam he sighed. "I'm sorry Lavender got upset, Jessica, but you know she's not upset with you, yeah? She's had a scary morning," Michael said and he picked her back up again, going in search of Lavender's mother now, following the sound of where Lavender's voice had been. When he found Sylvia there was also Matthew around. He lowered Jessica down from his hip so he could kneel down in front of the boy he had yet to meet until now and held out his hand. "Hi there, I'm Michael, I'm Lavender's friend. Sorry I haven't been able to talk to you yet. Lavender's not having a good day so if she wasn't very nice, don't think she's cross with you, okay? If anything it's usually my fault that she's angry so you can just blame me." Michael grinned crookedly and then stood up.

He looked at Sylvia again. "Er, Mrs. Brown do you mind if I-" and he motioned toward the side of the house rather generally, not really wanting to go into things in front of the kids.

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lavishly
2012-01-31 09:03 pm UTC (link)

Jessica's brow furrowed at the commotion in the kitchen, not really liking all of the yelling an not entirely sure what to make of it. "Matthew had a scary morning too," she said quietly as Michael picked her up to see what was going on. When she got there and saw that grammy's arms were open, she went right over to her and calmly waited to be picked up, so she could better see everything.

In the kitchen, Matthew was trying to put on his big boy face, especially now that there was company. Really, he just looked tired, pulling quite the face at Michael's explanation. "I just wanted to talk to her because she was upset over my picture. And I didn't even really mean to draw it. I was drawing and I drew that. And I know mum doesn't think Lavender is smart, but I think she knows something, but she won't talk to me." He might have been a King in name, but how he was acting or rather talking, there was no doubt this boy was a Brown by blood.

"Alright," said Sylvia suddenly. "Why don't you two go get washed up for lunch and I'm sure Michael here will go talk to Lavender and make sure everything is okay." Normally, it was something she would do after giving Lavender a few minutes to have her little tantrum, but today she had other children to look after. So, it was good that Michael was here to fill that role.

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mlcorner
2012-01-31 11:27 pm UTC (link)

Michael sighed. He supposed Matthew's morning had been scary if he had fought with Lavender. Poor kids - it probably stunk when your aunt wasn't getting along with you and it wasn't even about you but her other problems.

He nodded to Matthew. "I'm sorry, mate. I'm sure things will get better for you, though." He smiled when Sylvia said he'd go talk to Lavender and nodded to the both of them. "It was nice to meet you both." Michael walked through the mud room and out the door that Lavender had slammed not too long ago, looking around for where she might have gone. The quickest way to find her was to transform because he could smell her and the dogs faster than he could find them with his eyes, but he'd never transformed in front of Lavender and all things considered, he knew better than to do so now. He was stuck looking the old fashion way so he began walking around the yard listening for Lavender and the dogs with his less keen human ears and finally thought he heard them and made his way toward them.

"Hey," he said as he approached her.

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lavishly
2012-02-01 03:12 am UTC (link)

Normally Lavender just took the dogs to the park down the street, but that was just too close. She needed to get out of her head, needed to get away from her house and her nephew. It was horrible, but she just couldn't do that right now. It was about a mile and a half to the shore and there were plenty of places to sit and think there. Not to mention the vast nothingness of the ocean to stare out at.

She was just coming upon the golf course when she heard Michael. A part of her wanted to just keep walking, except the dogs didn't allow her the agency. With a put upon sigh, she stopped allowing Baby Girl, the traitor to stop and smell Michael. At least Bailey settled right next to her side. She might not have always liked him better, but she did right now.

"I'm taking the dogs for a walk," she said in that same tone she used on her mother. Except things that worked with her mother who was distracted with grandchildren wasn't always applicable to Michael, like not at all, but she was going to try.

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mlcorner
2012-02-01 03:35 am UTC (link)

Michael nodded, shoving his hands in his pockets. "Yeah, you said that when you left the house and slammed the door. Y'know, your nephew was standing there, saying something about a picture he drew and Jessica said you got cross about it. I haven't heard the full story yet." He shrugged innocently, though he knew better than to stoke a Lavender fire like this, but maybe what she needed was to talk about it with someone other than family. Sometimes family was just too difficult to deal with. Michael knew the feeling, seeing as he had fled his parents' home as soon as he had the chance because his mother was smothering him. He knew that it was difficult when you lost a child to not get terribly attached to the other ones - and it probably didn't help that Michael was a lot like Lawrence in most ways - but Merlin, the woman was relentless.

"I can walk with you. And the dogs," he added, finally taking a hand out and letting the dog who was smelling him sniff his hand and see if he was friendly enough or not.

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lavishly
2012-02-01 03:48 am UTC (link)

She wasn't sure if she could talk about it without breaking down. And with all she had already cried this morning, to the point where she literally cried herself to sleep, she wasn't really in the mood for a repeat. "That's Baby Girl," she said as a means of not answering question right away, "She apparently likes you like a whole lot. And this is Bailey."

"Here," she said handing him Baby Girl's lead. They were both well behaved dogs - especially Bailey who was an oddly calm terrier, that was unless you tried to play stick with him then he was more like a proper Jack Russell.

Once Michael was settled, she started walking again. Lavender let this odd sort of silence fall between them resisting the urge to talk just for a little while. "How did you know I'd be here?" She said finally. It was a simple sort of question and made it clear they would be taking the long way to answers today. "Did you talk to Dean?"

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mlcorner
2012-02-01 04:26 am UTC (link)

Though Michael's Animagus form was a wolf, he tended to get fairly chummy with dogs too. He supposed that was because they weren't necessarily too far from one another and he could relate to them easily enough. He pet the dog a few times and watched as Baby Girl wagged her tail in approval. Michael accepted the dog's lead and began walking next to Lavender with Baby Girl in front of him.

When she mentioned Dean, however, he looked at her with a confused and almost annoyed face. What the fuck did Dean have to do with anything? Had Dean talked to Lavender? And what about, exactly? Bloody hell, he didn't like the sound of that. "Talk to Dean? Talk to Dean about what? I mean, I talked to him a couple of days ago but not since then." Michael shook his head, trying to change his face because he probably wasn't giving a very good impression. "I owled you this morning at around seven, but your mum owled me back and said you'd just gone to sleep. She told me where you were though; said I could stop by. Here I am." While things were generally awkward between them anyway because of their situation being whatever it was, he was abnormally worried about her now and it made things even more awkward than normal, if that were even possible.

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lavishly
2012-02-01 04:57 am UTC (link)

"Dean owled me this morning around ten," she said scrunching her face up at his reaction about simply mentioning Dean. Yeah, Seamus was being an idiot right now, but that didn't mean Dean had to be too. Only - he had owled her this morning, way before Dean did which made it better, up until the part he had exchanged post with her mother. Post that her mother hadn't shared.

Now she definitely didn't like the way her mother had said friend. As she needed her mother and her aunt, because it was only a matter of time before she knew too, about this thing with Michael and probably ruining it. It wasn't perfect, it might be a bit broken in parts because she was a bit broken in parts, but it was still good, very good.

Lavender wanted to ask him all sorts of questions about what he and her mother talked about, but like he said: here he was. Over the past couple of weeks she was starting to realize that he was exactly there in an always sort of way. She couldn't help but wonder how their lines might be so intertwined. She slowed to a near stop, looking at him carefully.

She was already a mess of emotions today and sometimes it was just easiest to go with whatever one came to the surface, especially when they were good. And she needed good night now, needed something to hold onto that was a whole different kind of, sort of productive, suffocating. Shifting the lead into her other hand, she reached over to brush her hand over his cheek as to lead him into a kiss. "Thank you, for being here." The words were quiet and the kiss that followed left no room for him to say anything. It was better that way.

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mlcorner
2012-02-01 05:22 am UTC (link)

"Oh. No, I didn't talk to him today," Michael said, inwardly kicking himself for reacting so stupidly at the mere mention of Dean. There was still no guarantee that Dean even knew anything or suspected, but he just had this feeling that the more he talked to him, the more Dean might figure it out. Anthony might have an idea, but Anthony was a different sort of person so he didn't count.

Michael stalled to a stop, following Lavender's lead, worried that she was going to break down suddenly like she normally might in these situations. So it was odd to have Lavender initiating a kiss of all things because it was usually Michael that did that and not always with her approval either. He had opened his mouth to respond to her but she had kissed him which had made it a bit more involved than she might have meant it to be, but at least it felt right. His free hand that was not holding a dog lead found its way to her waist and he was comfortable and the things that had happened the other night did not seem to really change anything for him in the least, which made him wonder just how deep he was in this already. Well, he already knew that, but he was beginning to wonder if there were levels to this that he was previously unaware of and it was just a whole new sort of uneasy.

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lavishly
2012-02-01 05:48 am UTC (link)

In just that moment, it was almost like they were a normal sort of couple that things came easy for. They were just two young adults out walking their dogs and got caught up in a kiss. It was nice in a fleeting moment to have that feeling to settle all of the other peaks and valleys, and everything else. This was the part where it was good because she liked being able to kiss him.

Still, even as much as she liked kissing him and in her youth had no problem throwing herself all over whoever her boyfriend or 'boyfriend' was at the time, it was different now. She was different now and not in a monster ruined my life way, but in an actually grew a little in those years and learned that it wasn't about the spectacle. It was about that uneasy, twisty, turny feeling in her stomach that she knew was love, but had no clue what to do with it.

Just as carefully as she started the kiss and went with the unexpected intensity, she broke it off pressing one smaller kiss to his lips. "So thank you," she said staying close for a moment longer, looking him right in eye. If there had been any doubt about what would happen if they had sex with the mess it had been those years ago, it was gone for her. She was too far in it now and maybe, just maybe, she had actually grown in that regard too.

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mlcorner
2012-02-01 06:43 pm UTC (link)

Michael rubbed his thumb against her side a bit, wondering if this was what it felt like to be normal for once. If you stripped away the fact that he refused to label his feelings or whatever relationship he might have with her, and the fact that the monster who had changed her life forever had just escaped from prison - well they could possibly be considered almost normal at that point. But he knew better than to play at those sort of things, especially where Lavender was concerned. She might be kissing him and thanking him now but in a few minutes she could be kicking him so he had to always be on guard. In many ways, it was the most compelling thing about her; Michael never would have enjoyed a boring relationship anyway. Not that this was a relationship.

"You're welcome, Lav. But honestly, I wouldn't be anywhere else, love. This isn't something I can let you deal with alone, even if there really is nothing I can do for you. I'm just sorry I didn't get to talk to you before you went to sleep..." He looked at the ground, feeling the shame well up in him again. "Lav, did you take the potion last night?"

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lavishly
2012-02-02 12:01 am UTC (link)

She scrunched her nose at him before turning to keep walking before the dogs started whimpering about the lack of walk on their walk. And the walking gave her something to focus on as they slowly delved into more serious conversation topics. "I did, actually and it worked."

It was the first night she managed to take it before going to sleep. The night he gave it to her, she had been distracted by other things and last night, she had sort of unexpectedly ended up at home and didn't really have much of anything. "Well, I mean I didn't like feel like it was me again or anything. But I couldn't really move within it and that just sort of made it weird, but not like a bad weird just weird."

But he must have already known that because other people had taken the potion before she finally got around to it. "Why?"

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mlcorner
2012-02-02 01:52 am UTC (link)

Michael continued to walk with her and the dogs, watching Baby Girl as she sniffed things along the way. He knew what it was like and had the urge to transform right now rather than explain to Lavender that he had absolutely failed at creating these potions. First, he said, "I'm glad that it made it better for you. Or well - tolerable maybe. Or whatever it made it for you. I think it's been different for everyone who's taken it."

Sighing, he ran his free hand through his hair. "You can't take it again, Lav. It won't work. The potion will make the nightmare worse, apparently. Anthony owled me this morning and told me. I should have planned for something like this, especially considering how odd they have already acted during the experiment Luna and I did. But I let you lot take them and now Anthony and I don't know who else has had even worse nightmares than before and it's my fault. I'm such a fucking idiot." He shook his head. "So don't take it anymore."

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