InsaneJournal

It had been a long match and Roger sat on a bench afterwards, still in his quidditch robes with his broom held loosely in hand. They’d won, at least, but it had been a hard-fought win and he was bloody exhausted. He needed to get up and change into his normal clothes, but he said there for a moment, closing his eyes only briefly. When he opened them again, his surroundings had changed completely.

If he’d been tired before, the change was enough to jolt him wide awake. The strange note offered an explanation, but he wasn’t sure if he could believe it. “Merlin’s tit,” he muttered as he read it a couple more times. This had to be a dream. He must have fallen asleep on that bench, but no amount of pinching himself was waking him up.

There was an address on the note, an apartment that was apparently his - if he believed this wasn’t a hallucination or dream of some kind, of course. Roger pulled out his wand and murmured a spell that would serve to point him in the right direction. The streets of this city weren’t familiar to him, but magic helped to get him to the right place and soon he found himself walking through the door.

Chewing on the end of a reusable straw Alicia was writing a ‘what the fuck I do for work now’ list. She missed her mates, her teammates and family but she did her best not to show any of that to anyone, especially the other people from home.

She heard the door open and looked up expecting to see her flatmate Laura but instead, she saw the familiar face of her best mate.

“ROGER BLOODY DAVIES!” She yelled as she leapt up from where she was and ran up to him practically launching herself at him.

“ALICIA?” Confused and exhausted or not, Roger grinner broadly as her caught his favorite Spinnet in his arms and spun her around as he hugged her. It hadn’t been long at all since he’d last seen her, but if there was anyone he wanted with him in a crazy alternate reality or wherever the hell this was, it was Alicia Spinnet.

Still grinning as he set her back down moments later, he shook his head. “I should have known if there was some strange adventure afoot, you’d be right in the thick of it,” he teased.

Laughing she looked at him up and down as if making sure it was really him.

“Well, can’t miss being kidnapped to not New York!” She added looking back to the kitchen.

“I was just writing a list of job ideas while waiting for the dough to rise, but we’ve got some chopping to do, and I did do a bit of a fix on the oven to make it ready for tonight.” She spoke quickly.

“We’re having pizza night, and I haven’t a clue how many people are going to show up.”

Roger laughed at that. “I guess I have good timing.” Leave it to Alicia to be throwing some kind of party straight away. Roger had known her too long to be fazed by the fact it was happening or her assumptions he’d help, because of course he would. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d lent his chopping skills to one of her dinner parties. Not that you could pay him to miss homemade pizza night.

Besides all of that, Roger was easygoing enough to just roll with things and go with the flow. “How many of us are there?” he asked. Her comment about not knowing how many people would show up had piqued his curiosity.

“You finally figured out the good timing, we should get a photo and put it on a trophy!” She teased as she started getting out some things for him to chop, the good news was that she didn’t need to tell him what to do.

“Well, there is Hannah Abbott, she seems a bit freaked out, that Capper girl from Hufflepuff, don’t really know.” She shrugged. “And that’s it as far as I’ve been able to tell, people from loads of other places though, you’re living here yeah? Our flatmate is Laura, she’s cool.”

“Haha.” Roger gave her a light, playful smack. “My timing is always impeccable, thank you very much.” He grabbed a knife and one of the peppers to get started, nodding as she told him about the others, from their world and from others. “Seriously? What other places?” he asked, looking up for just a second.

Raising an eyebrow she shook her head. “I’ll give you this time, but some others are questionable.” She challenged with a look for him to tell her otherwise. Glancing back down as she started working on a few of the meats she glanced back up. “Not really sure about all of them, but the actual New York, Gotham, loads and loads of different sorts of places.”

Ignoring Alicia’s teasing for the moment except for an eyeroll, he listened to the places she said some of the people she’d met were from. “Gotham?” Roger had heard of New York, obviously, but Gotham was a new one on him. He wondered how many other places everyone was from. It sounded kind of cool, getting to meet people from a lot of different places and he was glad he’d showed up in time for this party, even if the circumstances were strange.

“Don’t have a clue,” and Alicia really didn’t. “Oh, there is a little bloke from Queens that is supposed to show up soon to help with the prep, didn’t know I’d have you around, had to find better help!”

“Better help?” Roger scoffed, giving her a look of mock offense. Alicia knew he wasn’t easily offended, but her knew she would play along – this was just their normal teasing banter.

“He at least says he takes direction well,” she said holding up a knife in her hand as she spoke. “Hey!” Alicia added quickly. “Don’t go about flirting with everyone you run into here on day two okay! We need time to vet them all.”

“Hey!” He mocked her a little by matching her tone. “I do have some standards, you know. Don't worry, Als, I'll save the good looking blokes all for you,” he teased.

“All of them?” Alicia teased right back. She hadn’t really thought about it much until Roger had showed up and she figured he’d have loads of fun flirting. “Should we say flatmates off limits?” Alicia asked with a smirk.

“Why? Is our flatmate cute?” He smirked back and shrugged. “You can have the blokes, I'll take the women and everyone’s happy.” He was half-joking – Roger wasn't that bad, but that hardly mattered at the moment.

Smirking she nodded. “Everyone huh?” She tilted her head glancing over. “Don’t forget to cut those thin!” She added. “Yeah, Laura’s nice, I think you’ll like her, sort of forgot to ask her when I decided to host this thing and she was game for it.”

“Absolutely. Who wouldn't be?” He grinned at her, rolling her eyes at the unnecessary reminder. It wasn't the first time he'd worked in a kitchen with Alicia and he knew how she liked her ingredients prepped for a good homemade pizza. “She’d have to be mad to object to one of your parties, Als.” Roger might be biased, but he was definitely a fan.

“She doesn’t really know me all that well yet, we did all just sort of show up here not even a week ago,” Alicia countered. “A bit of a shock really, lots of confusion, loads of upset people. Still got a lot of questions, that’s partly why I ended up really wanting to do this, good way to help.”

Roger nodded, briefly a little more serious. “Believe me, I know that. I'm not sure I'd believe it was real without you here,” he admitted. There were few people in the world her trusted like he did Alicia. Roger was the type to go with the flow most of the time, but that didn't mean he didn't find this all a bit mad. Focusing on helping Alicia in the kitchen was a bit of normalcy that he was honestly clinging to right now, mostly because that was easier than really thinking about the bizarre circumstances they were all in.

“Sometimes I still wonder if it is real,” she admitted but quickly turned to another focus. “I do think this all-powerful something or other that put us here could have done a better job with kitchen space, but don’t tell anyone else I said that!”

Roger couldn't help a chuckle. “Perhaps we should send them a message,” he teased. “Dear mysterious entity, we really need a larger kitchen. Love from your eternally grateful guests.” He was joking but was a bit curious as to whether this entity would really answer.

Alicia looked around the kitchen as nothing changed at all. “I don’t think he or she heard you.” Alicia shrugged. “Seems a bit random, who is ending up here and who isn’t.”

“At least we’re here together.” There wasn’t a lot that was comfortable about this situation, so maybe Roger was clinging to the one thing that was.

Glancing up she nodded. She completely agreed, she felt lucky someone she trusted had shown up. “Hey, think you can run out and get some wine?”

Finishing up his chopping, Roger moved to the sink to quickly watch his hands. “I’m on it,” he assured her, giving her a mock salute and a grin.