WHO: Alexander Rowle & Matthew Avery. WHEN: Thursday, May 4th. WHERE: The Rowle island estate in the Outer Hebrides. SUMMARY: These two are The Worst. WARNINGS: N/A.
“I can’t fucking believe it,” Matthew said, lobbing a bottle at an abandoned Muggle building on the far side of the Rowle’s island. It smashed against the wall with a satisfying sound, and he turned to Alexander. “We lost. We actually fucking lost, and now who the fuck knows what’s going to happen to the wizarding world, what kind of diluted and half-assed, Muggle loving society we’re going to become. And we’re screwed,” he continued. “You know that, right? You and me and the rest of HEP are going to be strung up in some kind of witch hunt like the Muggles love to do and we’re going to be made examples of just for trying to protect wizards.”
Alexander stopped chewing the skin on his finger for a moment as he looked over at Matthew. Everything the other boy had said was something he himself had wonder and thought over the past few days. Try as he might, he couldn't come up with any answers concerning that night.
“Most of the HEP will be fine,” he said after he resumed his chewing. “We’re screwed. Thorfinn and your father are in custody, which isn't going to bode well for us. We’ll be the ones strung up while the others cry they were just trying to protect their friends or some other fucking excuse.”
“Dammit, for once I wish I weren't of age. If we were 16 maybe we could get away with playing dumb, but they're going to treat us like adults because we're older.”
He stared off at the waves crashing against the island for a moment, and then turned to Alexander. “Do you think we could try and blame someone? Say we were being threatened or Imperiused or something?” He wasn't entirely sure the Imperius route would work, it had been played out quite a bit the last war. But there had to be a way of avoiding responsibility, they just needed to find it.
“Fuck. I hadn’t even thought about age thing,” he muttered as the chewing intensified. His parents hadn’t thought about it either, but they were too busy dealing with their oldest son’s injuries and arrest. Suddenly, things seemed even more dire. “Well we have to think of something. I’m not going to be sharing an Azkaban cell with Thorfinn here. But we’re a bit in short supply of people to blame. I’m not going against blood and trying to place the blame on the Carrows.”
“They're already fucked, it's not like anything we say would make things worse for them,” he argued, but his stomach still turned at the idea of throwing another pureblood under the bus. There were so few of them left, and considering the recent arrests there would be even fewer. “Can we blame it on one of the half-bloods? Maybe one of the Dumbledore's Army kids that died? Say they threatened us or something?”
Alexander perked up considerably. “We should definitely blame one of the dead kids.” To him, it was a rather genius plan as there was absolutely nothing that could be done to disprove it. And if the Ministry had been dumb enough to believe the Imperius defence, they certainly would be dumb enough to believe something like this. “But if we blame one of those brats we would have to listen to them whine and cry about it. Maybe we could blame Hugh? We are in the same dorm, after all.”
“He's only half, that could work,” Matthew said thoughtfully. “But his ex survived, and she might vouch for him since they were saying at the start of this year. I think they broke up over Christmas? That might be enough time for us to say he became a hardass. Vincent could be another, but do you think Greg and Draco would come after us?”
“Didn’t they only date for a minute? Not like they were together since third year or anything. People change,” he replied. “And fuck. What if they are planning on using Vincent? We all can’t use him!”
“Okay, okay, we could use Hugh,” Matthew agreed. “Simon's dead so he won't contradict us, and I bet David is going to try to stay away from any and all of this mess, just like he pussied out of HEP. So what, he egged us on? Threatened us? I doubt they'll believe Imperius this time around, though everyone will vouch that we learned it and were expected to practice it on each other so…” he shrugged.
Nodding his head, Alexander went back to his chewing. “I think the threatening angle might be the best one to go with on this. We just have to make sure our stories match and we don’t falter from them.”
“Yeah,” Matthew agreed, feeling a little bit better than he had in days. They had a plan. “We just have to pretend like we feel bad about pinning it on him, don’t speak ill of the dead, all that. But we can figure something out. I think we might be okay.”
“We are going to be okay,” Alexander insisted. “We won’t be going down with this sinking ship.”