Welcome to TB, an all levels Harry Potter roleplay with no word count. Our main purpose and plot is to go through the books with one exception: the addition of original characters and what changes that can make (which means that we are AU). We accept all kinds of creatures and beings in the Harry Potter canon including: vampires, werewolves, veela, ghosts and even centaur, squibs, muggles & more. Come join us and discover how your character can grow and evolve in the world of Harry Potter.
Two years ago, Voldemort and the Death Eaters were defeated. The wizarding world has been rebuilding and the British Ministry has a good reputation once more. It has been two years since Hogwarts was rebuilt and students are finding new changes and rooms in the school (though the castle has had that reputation for centuries). Are they new additions to the school, or was it like that all along?
Outside of Hogwarts are dark forces are looming, each with their own motivations. The Aurors of all Ministries have their work cut out for them in this post second wizarding war world. Will these different forces unite or will it be a clash of the villains?
kneazle - 0
occamy - 5
lethifold - 0
ashwinder - 10
-----------------------
year 27 - gryffindor
year 28 - slytherin
year 29 - slytherin
year 30 - hufflepuff
{read more...}
all the concepts and main plots belong to the administration. the current skin and all its images belong to eliza of tb/shadowplay. the canon belongs to j.k. rowling, while all original characters, plots and graphics belong to those who created them. you steal, you get eaten by a wyvern. if you really wanna go that route... but on second thought, i really dont suggest it.
news
When you are sorted, you'll be put in your year for 2000-2001 (that term will start on May 5th).
MAY 3RD. It'll be the new term in 2 days. If you're a professor, get ready to post lessons and if you're a student, get ready to participate in lessons. (: Gringotts, class schedules & Hogwarts Letters will all be set up & PMed soon. <3
APR. 19TH.It's the end of term ACTIVITY CHECK, so make sure to post there if you wish to keep your character(s). Also, remember to post in the EXAMS - It's the only way to move up your character a year. <3
APR. 12TH. The end of term is nearing fast! If you're a student, make sure to complete your EXAMS! Don't worry - they're faster than ever and only take 5-10 minutes. (Term will end approximately April 26th.) MAR. 29TH. The Third Task is up! Either watch it as an audience member or participate if you're a Champion. Professors, make sure to get a lesson up in the next week or so because I'll need those grades by the end of April. (:
MAR 24TH. It's now April. The Third Task will arrive soon! We don't have any mass threads right now, so if you want to make a party or something, go ahead. (: Just PM me so I can announcementize it for you. <3
MAR 24TH. At the end of term, those who earned the most House Points through the year get a special award. So far, the top five are: Sire (1), Seph (2), Eliza (3), Rachel (4), Meows (5). You can earn points by attending classes and posting in mass threads. <3
MAR 19TH. We have a new skin, yeyy! (: It's called TRIWIZARD 1999 if you want to switch to it. <3 Also, there's current a mini-activity check, so check it out. <3
[style=width: 201px; border-right: 10px solid 1b5800; background-color: fff; color: 1b5800;text-shadow: #CECECE 1px 1px 0px; font-family: orator std; font-size: 20px; text-align: center; letter-spacing: -2px; line-height: 100%;]I'M RUNNING AGAIN[/style] [style=width: 190px; font-family: arial; font-size: 7px; padding-right: 5px; padding-left: 5px; color: #fff; line-height: 100%; text-align: justify; ] AND WHEN I GET THERE IT WON'T BE FAR ENOUGH I'M A RENEGADE IT'S IN MY BLOOD. IF EVER I GET THERE IT WON'T BE FAST ENOUGH. I'M A RENEGADE I ALWAYS WAS. AND THE SPARK NEVER LIT UP A FIRE THOUGH I TRIED AND TRIED. THE WIND CAME FROM YOUR LUNGS A HURRICANE FROM YOUR TONGUE. I'LL KEEP YOUR SECRETS WITH ME RIGHT BEHIND MY TEETH. I'LL KEEP RUNNING, KEEP RUNNING
TAGGED FOR RAFE WITH LYRICS BY PARAMORE SET IN A MUGGLE TRAIN STATION, LONDON AREA [/style]
[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=style, background-color: 000, border-bottom: 5px solid 50b438; width: 420px; height: 100px;] [style=width: 380px; font-family: arial; font-size: 10px; padding: 5px; color: #000000; line-height: 90%; background: #ffffff; text-align: justify; ] Her posture shifted nervously, and she checked her watch for what felt like the millionth time. Still three minutes to go. On September first, when she had been dropped off in front of the familiar scarlet steam engine like always, she'd done something many people might not have expected: she missed the train. Missed here meaning she'd ducked into a bathroom only to run as fast as she could with her heavy luggage trolley when the coast was clear. She was a Slytherin and a half-blood, no target for this little vendetta that was all the rage these days. Certainly, her blood would not be considered pure enough for some, but she would not seem to be in any immediate danger. And yet, she was worried. Her older sister was an idiot most of the time, but that didn't mean Ilyana actually wished her dead. No, she wasn't technically dead, she was just shaken and blubbering like an idiot in their family's kitchen half the time.
It was just more than any of them wanted to deal with, and definitive proof that none of them were safe here right now.
That childcare place where she'd started work last year (fitting, as she treated all people like small children no matter what) had been attacked by Death Eaters during the summer. It was just too much for her to deal with. These people were attacking little kids. Not as an inevitable casualty of large raids a la muggle warfare, but specifically targeting small children that couldn't fight back to keep their parents scared and unwilling to say a peep against their new lords and masters. Meanwhile, they had gotten a pamphlet by mail with a shade of pink suspiciously reminiscent of her fourth year of school. She would have just gone to France or Italy like she had heard some Muggleborns were doing if she knew the first thing about how. She just wanted to be somewhere that wasn't completely run by mad people. No one had contacted her because it was thought she wasn't in any danger. But everyone was if they were still here. Beverly was proof of that.
The school had probably contacted her parents now that it was clear she had missed the train and was not about to turn up at the front gate claiming to have been lost along the way. It would hopefully become apparent that she wasn't hiding out there either. She'd been holed up in a dinky little motel room on the east side, waiting until a couple of weeks had passed with the notion that they would be on the lookout for truants more in the first week. The muggleborns that were of school age, the people that were previously homeschooled and were now trying to skirt the new mandatory attendance. It was just common sense that if one was being threatened by predators, walking into their den unarmed was a bad decision. So far this wasn't working out very well either. She'd swapped out her heavy school trunk for a muggle suitcase that was both easier to carry and less conspicuous on the train, abandoning her textbook-laden trunk in her garden shed. Her parents had never even noticed she was there. Probably upping their average blood alcohol level to cope with the state of things. It was what they did.
Still no sign of the train. She was starting to get a bad feeling about this; it was now ten minutes overdue. But that was nothing, trains ran late, it happened. So why did she feel uneasy? Two men stepped onto the platform, and one nudged the other, glancing in her direction. She tightened her grip on her luggage. She didn't have anything on her that would give her away as a witch, did she? Her wand was one of the only thing she hadn't abandoned in her trunk. The rest of the incriminating evidence was all in the shed. Well, she also had a few ingredient pouches wrapped in her socks, just in case anything needed brewing. But there was no way anyone could know that, if these even were guys with the secret police forces she'd heard about. And her attire had gone totally muggle - an old band t-shirt from the 80s, denim shorts with slightly frayed hems, and a pair of black knee high socks with her converse.
Completely and utterly nonmagical, every bit of her; the advantage of having one muggle parent to teach her to blend in with this world. These men looked a bit scruffy, though they had donned slightly formal coats compared to their unshaven faces. This could only mean trouble. But not for her, couldn't be. There was no one else on this lonely platform but an elderly woman on the bench. Maybe catching a train. Please be catching a train. One of them sidled up to her.
"Shouldn't you be in school?" She arched an eyebrow, then fixed her eyes determinedly on the empty train tracks, willing her escape to appear. Not necessarily hunting Hogwarts truants - and she was seventeen anyway - but definitely at least the mundane variety of creep. "Nice pin." Ice sank in the pit of her stomach. Damn it, why had she kept that stupid sodding thing when it had never caused her anything but pain? Her silver Slytherin prefect's badge was still pinned to her tall socks, where she had always worn it in school defiant of those that had deigned to leave her with it.
"Cachu," she hissed to herself. The first man smirked. The train wasn't close enough to save her now. Well, then, this would be the reckless fleeing part of her trip. Having three weeks of good luck was too good to be true, she should've known. Rather than continuing to swear in Welsh, she hoisted up her luggage with the other hand and ran to the edge of the platform. An old industrial area sprawled out in front of her, largely abandoned. "Fall mewn twll, idiots." Ana jumped down from the raised platform, rolling on the impact. Her case landed near her. That seemed to have surprised them, but this was definitely running time, and the wind had been knocked out of her. [/style]
[style=width: 345px; height: 10px; background-color: 925d43; padding-left: 5px; padding-top: 6px; padding-bottom: 8px; text-align; center; font-size: 8px; font-family: arial; color: fefdfd; text-transform: uppercase; text-align:center; letter-spacing: 1;]In these bodies we will live, in these bodies we will die.[/style][style=width: 337px; font-size: 9px; padding-right: 5; padding-left:5; margin-bottom:-20; color: 504f4f; line-height: 10px; line-space: 1px; background-color: fefdfd; text-align: justify; border-left: solid 3px 925d43; overflow:solid;] Rafe had known things were going to go south, what he hadn’t anticipated was how fast it would go to hell. In the last summer he’d been disowned by his parents and they’d tried to kill him along with others loyal to Voldemort. He’d barely made it out of Ireland alive, course he’d always knew his parents didn’t hold anything but contempt for him in their hearts and for a long time that didn’t bother him. However having your mother actually shoot a killing curse at you without a hint of remorse put things into prospective. For the last few weeks he’d been living in a tiny flat to avoid death eaters, living like a muggle, he’d had a job at a coffee shop to pay his bills and allow for some food. That was all gone now though, he was on the move, it turned out his parents decided they needed to sort out their little trader and weren’t going to let him simply disappear with his life.
They had no problem finding help either, the death eaters were more than happy to go after him. He may not have been a half blood, but he’d always been plenty vocal about how his beliefs differed from Voldemort’s and that hadn’t won him many friends in his world, being constantly surrounded by ex-death eaters and blood purist extremists. Sitting leaned against a pillar in the train station, he was hiding behind it to be completely honest. Out of nervous energy he fiddled with a zipper on his back pack, it was all he could get together before masked men busted down his door and smacked his head against a wall. As a result of the attack he had a busted lip and bleeding ear, the train was late and with every second it didn’t make it’d arrival time cause his heart to speed up a bit more. He fit into the muggle world, even the way he dressed.
Today it was green jeans paired with a white screened tee, a black hoodie finished with a leather jacket and black high top converse. Carrying a black back pack he looked like any normal kid going on a trip. A normal kid with a busted lip and bloody ear.
This wasn’t fair, he’d never really worried about anything in his life and with every moment he stuggled to keep it, he wondered if life was worth it – worth trying and struggling. People all over the wizarding world were struggling, fighting for not only their own lives, but the lives of their friends. Rafe just simply couldn’t decide whether there was any point to the struggle. With every day he found it harder to smile and with every second he found it harder to laugh. For him, those were the most important things in the world to have. It seemed he wasn’t the only one either, even in the muggle world it was as if they could sense what was coming, what was happening under a thin veil that slowly spilled into their magic less world.
He shifted from foot to foot becoming more and more anxious and aware of his own wounds. He looked like he’d been in a fight and wouldn’t be surprised if that drew attention to him. Even more than his own appearance unnerving him, was the quiet of the train station – too quiet it seemed. He scanned the station as he had at least fourty times, but it must have been a while since his last patrol, because this time something had changed, his eyes fell on a familiar red headed girl. How had he missed her? He was beginning to wonder if maybe he’d been falling in and out of consciousness or if he’d just somehow managed to miss the only familiar face he’d seen in months. Both seemed a bit improbable, but so did the idea that he’d managed not to scan the station for the last couple minutes or could it have been hours.
Either way he was simply happy to see her and forced himself off the ground preparing himself to head in her direction. As he slung his back pack over his shoulder he watched as two men approached Ilyana and hung back readying his wand in case she would need back up, it seemed strange to think in a strategic way about everything, but those were the times they were living – trust no one times. Seeing her here basically proved the rumors about Ana’s blood status were true, not that he cared, but it was common knowledge that most of the muggle borns weren’t going to be stupid enough to return to Hogwarts. Whereas he wasn’t he was also graduated anyway and he knew for a fact that Ilyana was not.
He heard her say something that sounded a bit like a sneeze and then darted off in his direction and jumped off the platform, he step out from the pillar as the men were in hot pursuit of her and silently spoke a disarming spell before following Ilyana off the platform. Jumping down with ease, crouching down beside her, he grabbed her by the arm and pulled her up to her knees “ you okay freckles?” she looked okay, but he didn’t want to hoist her to her feet if something was twisted. Rafe did have the tendency to hurt people and make situations worse, even when he had no intention of doing so. Ilyana was one of the only people in the world he didn’t want to hurt in anyway. Not that he really set out to hurt people all the time, but it seemed to just happen whether he intended it or not, so why not just go with what you’re good at, right?
Standing up he peaked over the platform and saw both the men had retrieved their wands and were heading toward them. “time to run” he said helping her to her feet and tugging her wrist. He felt like a ridiculous action hero.
[style=width: 201px; border-right: 10px solid 1b5800; background-color: fff; color: 1b5800;text-shadow: #CECECE 1px 1px 0px; font-family: orator std; font-size: 20px; text-align: center; letter-spacing: -2px; line-height: 100%;]I'M RUNNING AGAIN[/style] [style=width: 190px; font-family: arial; font-size: 7px; padding-right: 5px; padding-left: 5px; color: #fff; line-height: 100%; text-align: justify; ] AND WHEN I GET THERE IT WON'T BE FAR ENOUGH I'M A RENEGADE IT'S IN MY BLOOD. IF EVER I GET THERE IT WON'T BE FAST ENOUGH. I'M A RENEGADE I ALWAYS WAS. AND THE SPARK NEVER LIT UP A FIRE THOUGH I TRIED AND TRIED. THE WIND CAME FROM YOUR LUNGS A HURRICANE FROM YOUR TONGUE. I'LL KEEP YOUR SECRETS WITH ME RIGHT BEHIND MY TEETH. I'LL KEEP RUNNING, KEEP RUNNING
TAGGED FOR RAFE WITH LYRICS BY PARAMORE SET IN A MUGGLE TRAIN STATION, LONDON AREA [/style]
[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=style, background-color: 000, border-bottom: 5px solid 50b438; width: 420px; height: 100px;] [style=width: 380px; font-family: arial; font-size: 10px; padding: 5px; color: #000000; line-height: 90%; background: #ffffff; text-align: justify; ] Dust had wound itself into her airways on impact, leaving her struggling to catch her breath as a jet of light illuminated the air above her. Someone was in so much trouble, doing magic out in public. Then again, weren't they all in trouble? All of them whose only crime was being born in this time, in this place, when crazy murdering people had a free run of the state. And all she could do about it was call them crazy murdering people to herself, to deny them that small sense of legitimacy as a real organization, not just an assembly of some of the worst the wizarding world had to offer.
She was only just seventeen, and now the world had decided she would be stuck fighting for her life. Or running, more like, as she was actually not stupid enough to tangle with the proper adults fully trained in the dark arts that would fight her if she remained here in the open. Magical means of transportation had been sealed off for the most part; they didn't want a mass exodus from the country. She'd heard a few kids got out before the hammer fell with some people that had seen the way things were going. Bully for them.
Many more people remained at home, hoping they would just be left alone if they kept their heads down and said nothing about the recent changes in their government. They didn't want to risk retaliation against their families if they did or said anything rebellious. While she would feel bad for her parents if they were sober enough to understand the danger they were in, she had no such bliss on her end.
Ilyana was the retaliatory target here; after the Set had been attacked, she could have sworn she saw someone watching their house. Sometimes a different person, but both dressed in black robes. The sort of thing no Muggle would ever even think to put on, that telltale marker of someone raised entirely in wizarding society that took to blending in with Muggles like a fish on a trampoline. Beverly had moved back home after the incident because she was injured, and because she had a fun new habit of jumping when doors closed too loudly. Bev had always been a bit of an idiot, but getting the hell beat out of her had shaken her. And it hadn't looked like they were done with them yet.
Some might never consider striking out and running for the hills at seventeen, without even finishing school. She was still technically two years out from graduating properly, thanks to dragon pox. But when had she ever backed away from something because it wasn't a common thing to do?
Another body landed beside her, though this was a much more graceful leap than her own crash off the raised platform. Lucky jerk of a Snatcher. Lucky - "Wha-" Rafe Cavaliere, the boy that would be king of the outcasts. She stowed the question, grabbing for her suitcase, which she'd dropped in the fall. It was still intact and ready to be hustled out of here. However much she really didn't need the extra weight while running, she needed clothes. She might posture a bit for her peers that were so eager to reject her, but she wasn't so tough that she would enjoy going without clean socks. There was a logical streak in her yet. "I'll live. I hope." She pushed herself to her feet and looked up at the platform. So he'd been the one getting magical in public while she was enjoying the fine local sediment.
"If only I'd stretched my quads." Rafe was just about the last person she had expected to meet on a windy train platform in this run-down industrial district. While he had a habit of turning up in odd spots in her life, seeming to come and go as he pleased with just enough of a presence to remind her she wasn't completely crazy yet, this was still pretty out there. After all, he was a pureblood, no questions asked, no worries about running into gangs of Snatchers that would want to report him to whatever sort of secret police were running this joint. She followed in the direction he'd tugged her, keeping one hand firmly on her suitcase.
With her free hand, she drew the wand she had been concealing and pointed it at their pursuers. "Incendio!" She aimed not at the men, but at the ground, where a fire sprang up. They would have the sense to block a hex she sent right at them after they had been attacked once, but they would need to take time to put the fire out. That was time for them to get away. "Look ma, no Trace," she muttered, grinning slightly to herself. Okay, so she was a little proud of her quick thinking; people had always been so eager to assume she was an idiot. Maybe she was an idiot for running away, but this idiot was still smarter than those idiots.
She waved Rafe towards a corner where a side street stretched out to a row of warehouses. "We've gotta get outta sight. They might have backup, but this place is massive." It was one of the reasons she'd chosen to hide out in the area. It felt too large and empty for anyone to ever find her and drag her away to whatever fate awaited truants, even the ones that were legally old enough to break the Trace. The steel warehouses stood like skeletons on the landscape. She indicated a door bound by a chain that led to a silent building. by the rust on the place, it probably hadn't been fully operational in a while. That was good. Noise might hide them, but she was not pushing her luck playing around with heavy industrial equipment. "Relashio." The chain sprang back with a clink and a groan. She'd just need to replace that before those guys got back here. "It seemed safe enough. Probably. Ladies first?" She indicated the door to him. While those Gryffindors had their pluck to ward off those evil, evil Slytherins, they had gallows humor. [/style]
[style=width: 345px; height: 10px; background-color: 925d43; padding-left: 5px; padding-top: 6px; padding-bottom: 8px; text-align; center; font-size: 8px; font-family: arial; color: fefdfd; text-transform: uppercase; text-align:center; letter-spacing: 1;]In these bodies we will live, in these bodies we will die.[/style][style=width: 337px; font-size: 9px; padding-right: 5; padding-left:5; margin-bottom:-20; color: 504f4f; line-height: 10px; line-space: 1px; background-color: fefdfd; text-align: justify; border-left: solid 3px 925d43; overflow:solid;] In all honesty, he didn’t have to worry about Snatchers as long as he wasn’t around a, well, what they called mudbloods’. However, that did not mean he was safe. He could have been, if he’d just bowed to his parent’s demands for him to become a Death Eater he’d be fine on that front, but he knew he didn’t have it in him, even to save his own pretty face. He wasn’t an evil soul as much as he’d like people to believe he was. To be honest after spending the entire summer on his own he was happy to not be alone right now, he would have saved Benjamin Carter if it meant he didn’t have to be alone anymore. Not to say he wasn’t over joyed it had been Ilyana whose company he enjoyed and had some balls rather than Ben whom he equated with annoyance and soul crushing incompetence. Yes, he was very happy to see the ginger girl he liked so much.
In school, though he’d never admit it, he had a bit of a crush on the girl he coined freckles. Not to mention even with their odd and unplanned ways of occasionally just running into each other at random times he considered her a good friend of his. Because every time they did run into each other they acted as if they’d been hanging out all year, teasing each other like they’d known each other their whole lives. Often he wished they had, it would have made his childhood easier to know there were people out there that got him and his beliefs. The funny thing was in all honesty Rafe had been alone his whole life in a way. That had changed now, he’d got on the run from Snatchers Death Eater’s and anyone else who threatened the one person who made him feel understood.
Even if she didn’t need it, he’d protect her for giving him that.
A small smile spread across his face as she assured him she was fine in her own wickedly humorous way. “well if I have anything to do with it you will” he smirked at her teasingly. Nodding he responded to her next comment with a feigned superior demeanor “stretching is important”. It wasn’t so hard to smile when you had a friend, so he allowed another smile to creep across his lips. “though, height helps to” he said patting her head implying she was a very short person, though being six foot two himself a lot of people were short to him. Funny how they were standing here joking as if they were still raiding the Hogwarts kitchens after hours. They weren’t though, they were in a muggle train station with Snatchers, which would more than likely try to retaliate to his magic, no matter how public the venue may have been.
Though, he may not admit it, that could have been his fault for striking first, but he needed to buy time in case Ana was actually hurt. They needed to begin running now and as they did he released Ilyana arm reluctantly and she threw another spell out for the Snatchers. “quick thinking freckles!” he proudly yelled, he was too concerned with finding a place that would allow them to lose the Snatchers to worry about how she was sixteen year old and would be alerting the ministry to where they were. Even if she wasn’t sixteen, he’d never known she was delayed by dragon pox and was actually a year older than her year suggested or if he had he’d forgotten it the moment he heard it. Nor could he hear well enough through his bleeding ear to hear her mutter about the fact that she no longer had the Trace.
Either way, it didn’t matter that he wasn’t thinking about the Trace, because she didn’t have one on her anymore anyway and he just would have looked stupid scolding her about it.
Turned out he didn’t need to find a place for them to duck into, Ana had already taken care of that. It was oddly a very beautiful place to him, one he might enjoy if he weren’t worried about being viciously torn apart by Snatchers. He wasn’t quite sure what the punishment for blood trader was in Voldemort’s world, but his parents assured him he would not enjoy himself. He was next to her in a flash as she waved him over and nodded at her assessment of their situation. A smirk crawled over his lips as she took care of their entry to the building as well, she was always smarter and a better witch than people assumed. Good for her, proving all those snooty professors wrong, even if they couldn’t see the amount of grace under pressure she was exuding in this situation – they were wrong about her.
He responded to her teasing with some of his own as he scoffed and whined as he stomped his foot “well where are we gonna find one of those?” he smirked and gave her a small wink before gently shoving her though the door way and followed behind her shaking his head. It was good she still had buckets of humor at inappropriate times in a time like this “Are you sure you’re alright, sometimes adrenaline can mask things” he said sounding knowledgeable on accident. Even if Rafe was intelligent he didn’t like others knowing about it for some reason, he liked to be underestimated – it worked for him.
Right now he wasn’t worried about masking his intelligence; he was worried Ana would collapse from some adrenaline masked internal bleeding or something. Course he didn’t really want her to know he cared all that much. As he brushed dirt off of her shoulder he realized he probably wasn’t doing a very good job concealing it by fussing over her. Quickly dropping his hand back to his side he sighed heavily as his green eyes scanned the environment, Snatchers probably wouldn’t expect them to duck them in such a dank looking building, it was a brilliant place really. As if he needed any more proof of Ana’s impeccable brilliance. Underestimation really was a dangerous as he’d always thought. Not that he himself ever underestimated the ginger in front of him.
[style=width: 201px; border-right: 10px solid 1b5800; background-color: fff; color: 1b5800;text-shadow: #CECECE 1px 1px 0px; font-family: orator std; font-size: 20px; text-align: center; letter-spacing: -2px; line-height: 100%;]I'M RUNNING AGAIN[/style] [style=width: 190px; font-family: arial; font-size: 7px; padding-right: 5px; padding-left: 5px; color: #fff; line-height: 100%; text-align: justify; ] AND WHEN I GET THERE IT WON'T BE FAR ENOUGH I'M A RENEGADE IT'S IN MY BLOOD. IF EVER I GET THERE IT WON'T BE FAST ENOUGH. I'M A RENEGADE I ALWAYS WAS. AND THE SPARK NEVER LIT UP A FIRE THOUGH I TRIED AND TRIED. THE WIND CAME FROM YOUR LUNGS A HURRICANE FROM YOUR TONGUE. I'LL KEEP YOUR SECRETS WITH ME RIGHT BEHIND MY TEETH. I'LL KEEP RUNNING, KEEP RUNNING
TAGGED FOR RAFE WITH LYRICS BY PARAMORE SET IN A MUGGLE TRAIN STATION, LONDON AREA [/style]
[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=style, background-color: 000, border-bottom: 5px solid 50b438; width: 420px; height: 100px;] [style=width: 380px; font-family: arial; font-size: 10px; padding: 5px; color: #000000; line-height: 90%; background: #ffffff; text-align: justify; ] So this was real? That was interesting. Well, for a minute there it might just have been one of those out of body experiences she'd heard about from people eating dangerous plant matter. She rubbed at some more dust that she imagined had accumulated on her nose when she wasn't looking. It seemed like an agreeable way to avoid making a right fool out of herself here. She was honestly glad to see him once the shock of 'he's here and a pureblood, right, I thought he was and all but now he's here and not somewhere he really ought to be' had worn off. He'd been her teen defect in arms or whatever the hell you'd call it; he'd been there with her in school and going through a lot of the same problems. That there was someone she could be honest with had been a weight off her shoulders, though she would never admit it out loud to him. He didn't need any ego fluffing.
There was plenty she wouldn't quite admit out loud to him anyway, and she always assured herself it was to keep that boy's ego in check, lest it run wild and spook the Muggle populace. And it was easy to imagine his hedonistic ego spooking poor little old ladies out shopping for cat food at the corner shop. Much easier than attempting to express any emotion towards him. She was readily programmed, for lack of a better word, to snark her way out of any situation. Mister Optimist looked like he'd been hit in the face with an oncoming train by the time she'd gotten through with him, and all without breaking a sweat. One should never dish something they couldn't take. And that was still easier than expressing a genuine 'it's really good to see you' on the rare occasion that she was actually very glad to see someone for a change. Feelings were her alien territory. As bad as Divination. If only they could debate a bit, she could probably work in how much she appreciated him then, and every other feeling she was definitely not admitting out loud to her only friend.
"Some of us didn't have the bleedin' jolly green giant for a parent, eh?" She grinned right back at him. Ilyana actually hadn't smiled like this in weeks. There'd just been so much else to deal with, and it had taken a lot of effort in being preoccupied with this situation at hand. Mental effort, like, taking up all of that concentration she might otherwise have directed towards more entertaining endeavors. She really didn't like to be in a constant mire of gloom. Not that she suspected anyone was particularly keen on it, but she didn't live to take life so damn seriously all the time, and yet here she was, stuck doing that very thing.
She took another look at him once they were out of sight of the Snatchers, and even her "I hear street corners are a great place to start," was a little halfhearted. Could she be blamed for being distracted? Once she wasn't getting an eyeful of pavement or pyromania she had a very clear view of some rather recent injuries on his face. Either he'd gotten into a losing fight with a weed whacker or something else had pushed him to this. Had to be something bad if it pushed a pureblood out here with the rest of the useless bait in this New World Order everyone was so keen to stay quiet about. "It wasn't that big ova fall," she said dismissively. "I could do worse falling out of a tree in a yard than that, it just looked real dramatic because I was putting on a show for them." Not entirely true, she had just done what she normally did in a crisis and ran for it without much second thought. Having him come along had actually forced her to think a little bit of this whole thing through, map out escapes and evasive tactics like she had before the imminent danger had demanded her to fling herself haphazardly away. If nothing else, she didn't want him to think she was a complete idiot.
She listened at the door, then frowned slightly at him as he brushed at her shoulder. What was a bit of dirt going to do? She looked away just as quickly as he dropped his hand, leaving them both quiet in the old building for a long moment. She broke the silence by stepping away from the door and beckoning him to follow her. The only light filtering in came from a set of broken windows along the far wall, high above their heads. Those were definitely not another way out, but they were helping her navigate. "Oh, cachu. Lumos." The tip of her wand ignited, revealing a metal maze of rusty, out of date equipment, left here to gather dust as the outside world had moved on. There was probably some sort of poetry in it for people that had poetic inclinations. She was more concerned about making sure they would see the opening door before anyone there saw them.
"What're you doin' here?" she asked, keeping her voice low in case they were somehow listening in. Ana moved behind a silent conveyor belt to train her eyes on a control panel while she spoke. "I mean, no offense, I just thought you were a pureblood. Only purebloods I thought they were hunting down was that Dumbledore group. Not that I'm not glad to see you, dork," a bit of her usual inflection and confidence had returned by this point, though she was still keeping her voice down, "I mean, I really am. But you're liable to get yourself hurt." Hurt more, that was, than whatever had already managed to attack him before he got here, as the injuries were fresh enough to see clearly but didn't seem to be actively bleeding. Because of the two of them, he hadn't taken a rather idiotic leap from the platform and landed face first. [/style]
[style=width: 345px; height: 10px; background-color: 925d43; padding-left: 5px; padding-top: 6px; padding-bottom: 8px; text-align; center; font-size: 8px; font-family: arial; color: fefdfd; text-transform: uppercase; text-align:center; letter-spacing: 1;]In these bodies we will live, in these bodies we will die.[/style][style=width: 337px; font-size: 9px; padding-right: 5; padding-left:5; margin-bottom:-20; color: 504f4f; line-height: 10px; line-space: 1px; background-color: fefdfd; text-align: justify; border-left: solid 3px 925d43; overflow:solid;] Her snarky words caused a smirk to form on Rafe’s lips “I wish” he teased, “though, maybe not, because I’ve heard that big men have tiny weenies” he nodded satisfied with how straight he’d managed to keep his face with that one. Course he was not at all sure if he’d ever actually heard that or not, but that wasn’t the point of his statement. In all honesty though, this was not the time to be joking about certain parts of the male anatomy… or anything really and he knew that, yet, there they were. Maybe this was just simply how the two of them dealt with being close to dying any second – teasing each other and joking around. He wasn’t sure if their antics were acceptable “running for your life” antics, but he was sure of one thing, he was glad to see her and if he’d already thought about that he was thinking it all over again. In fact she was the only thing allowing him to make jokes about ridiculous subjects that probably bordered on lies.
Finally, he felt a piece of himself again and he knew that was probably due to Ana, good or bad a bit of him was back with her reappearance in his life. Though, he was still being reduced to acting like an over protective mother wiping dirt from her robes and badgering her about whether or not she was actually harmed in all the activity. He hadn’t had to worry about anyone else though over the last couple months, he could run as fast as he could without looking back to make sure he wasn’t losing anyone and now he was worry about losing the one person he didn’t want to lose. As cheesing and ridiculous as that sounded to him, he wouldn’t admit that she had an influence over him, but she did. He liked her and wanted her to think he was an okay dude, the type of person she wanted to spend time with. Someone she’d want to be on the run with.
As much as Rafe hated to admit his own faults he’d admit he wasn’t of much help to her at the moment, which could have been why he began to find meaningless things like brushing dirt from her jacket to do – help him feel useful. Oh, gosh, well that made him feel a bit mentally deficient, so that couldn’t be it. Though, he didn’t like the idea that maybe he thought dirt had suddenly become dangerous either. Habit, it had to be simple habit and a touch of the obsessive compulsive. That sounded a bit better to him. In all reality though, he was just fussing over her because he was worried, but he wouldn’t admit that. It was all part of their friendship, keeping things from each other; mostly feelings. Feelings seemed to be a crippling subject for both of them.
Giving a large sigh he shrugged “well how and I supposed to know, you rolled like a gerbil in one of those-gerbil-ball-things” he looked off into oblivion cursing his own lack of better words and cleverness in this particular moment, before allowing his eyes to fall on her again trying to pretend he didn’t know how absolutely idiotic he just sounded. “I suppose I should have guessed that though, considering compact people are less prone to breaking” he said matter-a-factly.
Most likely she was just saving face… well that’s what he was going to believe anyway. He couldn’t really blame her though, after all there were things he’d said or done that he’d like to take back; like that gerbil ball comment. If he had some time to think about it and wasn’t so distracted he could think of something loads more clever. Likely he’d think of something hours later and wish he’d said that instead. He looked over “there’s that hacking sneeze sounding thing again, what is that?” he said as if he were scandalized by the sounds she was making. It was obvious the boy didn’t speak Welsh and even if he did figure it was something in Welsh considering the girl saying it was, he knew nothing about what it meant only that it sounded funny. Though, most people would probably think Irish Gaelic sounded funny too.
Turning to the light he looked after the girl and ignited his own wand, another good idea from Ilyana; light. Freckles three, Irish zip, Rafe thought to himself while simultaneously coining himself with his own classic Rafe nicknames. Why he’d always been so fascinated with bestowing people with nicknames he had no idea, but now he was nicknaming himself, which likely meant he’d been alone for too long.
Coming up beside her his dusky green eyes fell on her face as she asked him why he was here “what do you mean you brought me here” he said stupidly before realizing as she went on that she meant in this particular situation, he smiled trying to pretend he’d meant to appear daft and answered “haven’t you heard I’ve become a Dumbledore butt buddy like the rest of them” he nodded with feigned excitement. He didn’t care if the dude was dead he still didn’t like him or his merry band of boy scouts... and girl scouts. Of course he was avoiding telling her the real and dirty reason he was here. Oh yeah he could see it now “you know when most kids disappoint their parents and they get sent to their room, well I get murderous psycho’s sent after me”
A smile appeared on his face once more “aw, I’m glad to see you too freckles” he said taking the chance to pulled her into a smothering hugs, scoffing he said “hurt myself, I’m not the one diving off platforms” he like her to stay there in his arms for a bit, but that was completely up to her and he knew she’d likely squirm around until she reached freedom from his obvious display of affection. However he hoped she let him keep his arms around her for at least a short time before she started to squirm like a puppy trying to get out of its leash.
[style=width: 201px; border-right: 10px solid 1b5800; background-color: fff; color: 1b5800;text-shadow: #CECECE 1px 1px 0px; font-family: orator std; font-size: 20px; text-align: center; letter-spacing: -2px; line-height: 100%;]I'M RUNNING AGAIN[/style] [style=width: 190px; font-family: arial; font-size: 7px; padding-right: 5px; padding-left: 5px; color: #fff; line-height: 100%; text-align: justify; ] AND WHEN I GET THERE IT WON'T BE FAR ENOUGH I'M A RENEGADE IT'S IN MY BLOOD. IF EVER I GET THERE IT WON'T BE FAST ENOUGH. I'M A RENEGADE I ALWAYS WAS. AND THE SPARK NEVER LIT UP A FIRE THOUGH I TRIED AND TRIED. THE WIND CAME FROM YOUR LUNGS A HURRICANE FROM YOUR TONGUE. I'LL KEEP YOUR SECRETS WITH ME RIGHT BEHIND MY TEETH. I'LL KEEP RUNNING, KEEP RUNNING
TAGGED FOR RAFE WITH LYRICS BY PARAMORE SET IN A MUGGLE TRAIN STATION, LONDON AREA [/style]
[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=style, background-color: 000, border-bottom: 5px solid 50b438; width: 420px; height: 100px;] [style=width: 380px; font-family: arial; font-size: 10px; padding: 5px; color: #000000; line-height: 90%; background: #ffffff; text-align: justify; ] Now that one was even worse than the last one. Yes, she was making a show mostly for the sake of it, but it had been a while since she'd been able to make any sort of fool of herself. Everything had been so serious and dire; Death Eaters had taken over and were chasing people down, her sister had been attacked in plain daylight in that silly kid's place she worked at. They had actually broken that usual taboo and gone after kids specifically. Proving their evil credentials or something like that, she supposed. Warning off the other dark wizards that they were the worst ones around and they'd go after their kids if need be. She wasn't terribly impressed with their antics, but she had been convinced to stay well away. She gave his joke a dramatic pained groan. "I am sending you the bill from my future therapist, you know that." Ana smirked. If she was going to run for her life from a band of dark wizards, she was going to do it like a sarcastic 80's movie teen.
She would have given him a playful punch in the arm if he hadn't been going all mother hen with her new layer of trainyard dirt there. So long as she had no cuts to get infected, she could live with a few minor bruises. What she really needed was a hair band, come to think of it. This stuff was getting in the way. She fished one out of the pocket of her denim shorts, a neon green band that showed up easily against her dark red hair when she tied it back, holding her wand between her teeth. A tug and a toss satisfied her that her hair was securely out of her way, and she returned to aiming her wand light at the old equipment, just in case anything in here wasn't as stable as it appeared. With time and rust, who knew what could happen. She only knew that she did not want to go down as 'that one idiot that dug her own grave' about it. Getting Rafe killed in an industrial accident was also a very bad plan, even if some of his jokes were grade A cheddar.
"I was not a gerbil or gerbil-esque. I was soaring majestically through the air like a mighty...deer. Piloting a blimp." What was humor, if one was incapable of laughing at oneself? Mighty one-sided, though that sounded almost punny when she attempted to phrase it formally. She didn't do posh very well. She was a Welsh girl through and through, not a hint of posh in her system. He could probably pull off a much better act. All the right breeding, dark curls, and a certain level of mocking arrogance that they could both claim, he could probably pull off the act, though it wasn't his natural state of being. He really had all the luck there, didn't he? He might be able to pull off the act if he tried, but he wasn't genuinely part of that shallow crowd. They were missing out on a whole lot in life, after all. Going through their paces with a whole lot of money and not a bit of sense, advocating for inbreeding as a method of improving the magical gene pool and all. Money was so wasted on the wealthy.
Caught swearing, she rubbed the back of her neck with her free hand like a cornered child that knew that they were about to be given a time out. While Rafe lacked any authority to make her sit on a chair in the corner, it was an old habit. Getting sent to the corner for swearing had been...well, a sizable enough portion of her childhood to leave quite an imprint on her. It had never stopped her cursing like a sailor when the neighborhood kids came around. Being sent to a corner was a small price to pay to see them running home to tell their parents about the new words they'd learned. She had been a bad influence on people from a very early age; positively precocious. If she had a chance, maybe she could tell him all about little Timmy, the son of a minister, who thought he'd learned how to greet a dignitary. She didn't know if he'd really care, but it sure beat chatting about Death Eaters, right? Ana shrugged. "It doesn't really mean much. Just something we say." In truth, it wasn't actually a very dramatic curse; she knew ones much better for getting that boring old minister's blood a-boiling. Teach him to insinuate things about her. Well, actually, it hadn't; if anything he'd become more convinced she was a bad seed. Ah well.
"Then again...Dydych chi ddim yn gwybod beth i ddim yn dweud, do you?" She had just suggested that he had no idea what she was saying, in a language she was pretty sure he didn't understand. Ooh, fun with irony. See, Welsh was still popularly spoken back home. Every sign was bilingual, and the more out into the open country you reached, the more likely it would be you'd run into the local tongue rather than English. She stuck a hand in her pocket. "Want to learn a new word? ffwl. It just means fool, really, not that impressive, but foolish is ffôl. You can frighten your friends and neighbors." She finished with a half-hearted attempt at jazz hands to showcase how much fun he could have fooling people he might never see again. That was just a bit depressing. She just needed to attempt to break the tension any way she could. Those Snatchers were likely still in the area. It might even take them a while to give up searching.
Ilyana looked up at him (oh curse that height difference), frowning slightly until he corrected himself. Aha. She wasn't sure if that had been a joke or not, but she let it slide in the tension. The second answer did seem like a joke. There was no doubt that something had happened, but that wasn't high on the list of likely possibilities. "I didn't think they even let Slytherins join the girl scouts," she teased. Those uniformed bunch of cookie selling weirdos in those commercials during cartoons on Saturday mornings had been the first thing that popped into her mind. Yes, she could pass for Muggle because she was plenty familiar with Muggle culture. She could figure out to walk through train stations in t-shirts and shorts. Even if she hadn't realized her badge was still on her sock; that was a minor stupid move. Incredibly stupid. "What, seriously? They should go in for grounding sometime." Ana shook her head in amazement. "That makes alcoholics look downright nurturing. They'll just ignore you leaving, they won't try an' kill you."
At least he had made it out alright, and out here, not getting kidnapped by snatchers that hoped to get rich quick arresting them. Idiots. "I was only gettin' stalked a while. Did you hear about the Set getting blown up? My sister worked there. Then there were death Eaters on the street." Or people working for Death Eaters, as she couldn't possibly be a high priority target for anyone. That was still not exactly a welcome sight on the sidewalk under the tree across the street staring down their house. He tugged her into a hug without warning, the sort of physical affection she was unused to. She stood still in it for a moment, inhaling slowly and taking in the warmth of another body in such close proximity. She really had been alone for a while, more truly alone than she had ever been before. If he wasn't too busy to stick around here..they could try to stay off the radar, and she wouldn't be quite so alone. "You were never hugged much as a child, were you?" That was the first sign that she was about to get a little antsy, which she was, moving slightly back before she got all red in the face. She had never exactly been hugged much as a child either, and now she just didn't know what to do about physical contact. [/style]
[style=width: 345px; height: 10px; background-color: 925d43; padding-left: 5px; padding-top: 6px; padding-bottom: 8px; text-align; center; font-size: 8px; font-family: arial; color: fefdfd; text-transform: uppercase; text-align:center; letter-spacing: 1;]In these bodies we will live, in these bodies we will die.[/style][style=width: 337px; font-size: 9px; padding-right: 5; padding-left:5; margin-bottom:-20; color: 504f4f; line-height: 10px; line-space: 1px; background-color: fefdfd; text-align: justify; border-left: solid 3px 925d43; overflow:solid;] Rafe had always found it strange how he could dislike people he was supposed to be genetically predisposed to love so much. The only conclusion he’d ever come too was it was all hog wash, genetic love, because wouldn’t that mean his parents had to love him too? What was even stranger, so strange he wouldn’t even admit it to himself was – as much as he hated them, he loved them still to. How’s that for madness? Maybe it was genetics or maybe it was just the idea of parents he loved, but never the less he found himself missing his mother’s constant ridicule of his hair as she rifled through his curls. Even the wonderful conversations he had with his father’s fist was beginning to look like good times. Most of all however, he missed his little leprechauns – the house elves that showed him some semblance of affection and kindness. Maybe they were his real family, like when wolves adopt a human child or when gorillas adopt a tiger cub. Two completely different species finding a common bond… the need for family.
As nice as that sounded, he was here, in an abandoned warehouse. The closest thing he had to family was the company of Ilyana and to be quite honest it was probably all he’d ever have. The company of another person was the closest he’d get to love. Right now though, that was alright with him. He’d rather have that than nothing at all. He wouldn’t admit it, but he didn’t actually like being alone. Rafe hadn’t thought any of this through, he saw Ana roll as she hit the ground and he acted; instinctively, not a thought or a plan crossed his brain. In all honesty after helping her to her feet he was next to useless do to that fact. It turned out okay though, because she’d had a plan or maybe she was acting on instinct as well, but she seemed to be better at it than he was. Rafe was reckless whereas Ilyana was calculating and that probably made her a better fugitive than him. However, his vast magical talents probably still made him a nice companion to have on the run with you. Not that Ilyana seemed to lack magical prowess either.
“Have at it freckles, once my parents bite the big one I’ll have enough to buy the tower of London” he teased with a devious smirk. Oddly enough even though he’d lived in the United Kingdom his entire life he’d never been to the tower of London. It was especially odd considering it would probably be something his parents would enjoy quite a bit, imagining all the contraptions in action on muggleborns. Maybe it require too much interest in learning, the history of it all and everything. His parents were dafter than all the Hufflepuffs combined after all. Most of all they didn’t like things that brought attention to this particular fact.
Ilyana coaxed another smile out of him as she compared leap to a majestic deer at the helm of a blimp, he looked off thoughtfully “do you pilot a blimp? I always though they just kind of floated around aimlessly… or is that a hot air balloon?” after thinking a moment longer he shrugged and gave her one of his winning smiles. It was good that she didn’t take herself too seriously. Rafe probably wouldn’t like her nearly as much, because to be quite honest she likely wouldn’t have ever poked fun at him back if she did, she would have walked away with the first teasing remark he’d ever made about her. She never would have showed him she had serious moxie and could keep up with him, she was just as quick if not quicker with her silver tongue and he admired that about her. Course he admired a lot more about her as well, including how cute she looked in her shorts and knee highs, but as they were running for their lives he felt he should try to ignore that particular part of his admiration.
Looking at her with stern eyes he narrowed his eyes slightly as too signify disbelief in her answer. As she said a fully sentence in Welsh his eyebrows shot up, he pouted slightly as he spoke “you know it’s rude to speak in a language people don’t know, I could go around saying things like hug, áit ar an taephota… but I don’t because it’s rude” he tried to keep a straight stern face, but ended up breaking into laughter as he’d just said hey where's the teapot in Irish. Some people didn’t even know the Irish had their own language other than English, people used to run around saying hey, look I can speak Irish it the worst Irish accent Rafe had ever heard. It wasn’t the least bit funny to anyone, but the people saying it, but as the doors once said “people are strange”. Which Rafe would edit to people are daft. “are you getting at something here freckles?” he put his hands on his hips and puffed his chest out like a superhero – he’d coined it the Superman – before continuing on to say “cause I’m no fewl” he was simply teasing, but he hadn’t gotten to tease someone in a while so he felt it give it his best.
The thought that he’d never see his neighbors again hadn’t crossed his mind until then, to be quite honest he’d been trying to keep very naïve about how serious this war was until just recently. Now he was thinking about it, never seeing the horrific sight of old Mrs. Mcflaggen walking out to retrieve her newspaper with the bottom of her firmly tucked into her no so tighty whities. Or hear Mr. O’Connell babbling incoherently and Della, his first kiss who often sun bathed topless he may never pretend to trim the shrubs again. Maybe never seeing any of them in all their eccentricities again was a depressing thought. He couldn’t think about that right now though, he had to keep his own moral up, which was easier to do when he had Ana to help him. She’d never know how grateful he was for her company. He shook his head “they don’t, no, we have too hard a time with their law” He remembered girl scouts showing up at his door one day reciting the girl scout law, something about honor, trying and helping people at all costs, etc. etc.
Had he said that last part out loud? He thought he’d just thought it, but he must have said it unless Ana had suddenly become a mind reader and suddenly he became uncomfortable, as if she knew too much now. Rafe never talked about his parents truthfully. He was glad she’d given him something else to talk about “I did, is your sister alright?” In this brave new world Rafe was beginning to morph in to a new boy, maybe even verging on manhood. No, Rafe was not hugged much as a child, nor had he hugged others much in his life, there weren’t many people he even considered touch worthy in his life. “is it that obvious” he said as he felt her moving. Releasing her from his grasp he let her slip from his arms fighting the instinct to pulled her back, if for no other reason than to keep her close and safe. The discomfort of a hug for him made it a bit easier for him to ignore that instinct. Hugs were reckless, they revealed to much and put too much of yourself on the line. Rafe was always reckless though.
[style=width: 201px; border-right: 10px solid 1b5800; background-color: fff; color: 1b5800;text-shadow: #CECECE 1px 1px 0px; font-family: orator std; font-size: 20px; text-align: center; letter-spacing: -2px; line-height: 100%;]I'M RUNNING AGAIN[/style] [style=width: 190px; font-family: arial; font-size: 7px; padding-right: 5px; padding-left: 5px; color: #fff; line-height: 100%; text-align: justify; ] AND WHEN I GET THERE IT WON'T BE FAR ENOUGH I'M A RENEGADE IT'S IN MY BLOOD. IF EVER I GET THERE IT WON'T BE FAST ENOUGH. I'M A RENEGADE I ALWAYS WAS. AND THE SPARK NEVER LIT UP A FIRE THOUGH I TRIED AND TRIED. THE WIND CAME FROM YOUR LUNGS A HURRICANE FROM YOUR TONGUE. I'LL KEEP YOUR SECRETS WITH ME RIGHT BEHIND MY TEETH. I'LL KEEP RUNNING, KEEP RUNNING
TAGGED FOR RAFE WITH LYRICS BY PARAMORE SET IN A MUGGLE TRAIN STATION, LONDON AREA [/style]
[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=style, background-color: 000, border-bottom: 5px solid 50b438; width: 420px; height: 100px;] [style=width: 370px; font-family: arial; font-size: 10px; padding: 10px; color: #000000; line-height: 90%; background: #ffffff; text-align: justify; ] She arched a brow at him. That he disliked his parents was no great surprise, given what he'd already said about them and the fact that they had apparently sent people after him. That took it several notches up from the neglect she had been so accustomed to as a child to downright loco in the cranium. It made a pretty solid case to dislike anyone. But damn if that wasn't a right line he was feeding her. "What you want the tower of London for? I thought part of the point of running for it Muggle style was to avoid going to prison, yeah? Downright pointless if you'd just go and get a prison after." She grinned. Hey, it was even true; they were trying to avoid prison or whatever other consequences awaited those deemed unfit to be part of this grand new world they thought they were building here. Undesirables were probably better off not going near prisons if they could help it.
"Money is simply wasted on the wealthy." She put the back of her hand on her forehead and gave a dramatic sigh to make her point. If she ever got money, she would...well, she would do something fun and terribly impractical with it. Like look for a pirate ship. Or buy a train. But she wouldn't go trying to create a new world order or crush the rest of the world under her boot. Her boots were just fine on the ground, here. Especially since they weren't boots at all, but slightly worn down Converse that she had owned for a couple of years. She wasn't interested in crushing others so much as getting them to stop trying to jump her on a platform. They would have to warn her in advance when they planned to chase her around in a flashy, theatric manner. Rich people had that sort of power over others. If she did buy a train, though, it would have arrived on time and she wouldn't be stuck in a warehouse to wait. Then again, she might not have noticed that Rafe was there as well if she hadn't taken her majestic blimp dive from the raised platform. Wow. Now she was even trying to look on the bright side. He was clearly messing with her mind.
Blimps and hot air balloons were a bit similar, though the latter was smaller, and the former had a famous cigar shaped example. Oh, the humanity. She nodded enthusiastically at him. "Course you do. You pilot both of 'em actually. Hot air balloon, yeah, you control a lamp and let in hot air to make it rise or not, since hot air rises." If only Hogwarts had given out tests on basic science she had learned from children's television programmes. Then she would have been a grade A egghead. Her Saturday mornings had been spent glued to the television as a child, watching cartoon animals attack each other in spite of all the laws of physics, followed by apologetic educational television. It had taught her about societal attitudes and why oil and water didn't mix. She knew that whether or not blimps were in fact piloted was not the point of the joke, but it helped to toss in a real fact every now and again. Kept people on their toes. "Airships are actually a really safe Muggle way to travel. Like the Hindenburg, which was a famous cigar shaped balloon. Heard of it?" Now that, kids, was the lying portion of her answer. Bonus points for knowledge of disasters.
Feigning great offense, she clapped a hand to her mouth. She had no idea what it meant, or if the comment had even been about her. Therefore the safest course of action must be to be seriously offended by every bit of it. Logic! She didn't think he had any intent to seriously insult her, or he would have done so already, back when they were sharing a cold dinner after an evening of well-earned detention. Playful banter, albeit with a bit of a sting to it, wasn't quite the same as genuine offense - racial slurs or actual threats. Most people just couldn't grasp that distinction like he could. And he'd provided the perfect introduction, announcing that he was no fewl. "And I am most certainly not a taephota," she declared. The word left her lips hesitantly, awkwardly, with all the finesse of the aforementioned blimp. If it wasn't about her, oh well. She would just have to be doubly offended or something. She would solve that problem when she careened face-first into it, as she solved most of her problems.
"And their dress code. Sashes and little skirts. Though I bet you've got the legs for it." It was really the attitude of those little badges she'd always considered to be a turn-off. They were so proud of their minor accomplishments, and they only felt validated with the adult watching them gave them those badges. That was probably unhealthy or something. Their happiness depended on the whims of someone else. "Well, she's unemployed now, what with the lack of a workplace. But she's not dead. That's probably close enough." She had been released from the hug, leaving them standing close to each other in the dimly lit space without touching. There was that issue of feeling and honesty again, where it was so much easier to make a joke, but impossible to try to explain that she really didn't hate him, she just didn't know what to do with physical contact. She didn't exactly know how to express her emotions properly. More of that good old fashioned but mostly harmless neglect.
The rusty door at the far end creaked, then the lock scraped against the metal wall. They must be checking in here. Merlin's favorite slippers, why were they doing that? Ilyana let out a string of curses under her breath that would have made her mother blush and mentally extinguished the wand light. Though the resulting darkness provided good cover, she tugged wordlessly at Rafe's sleeve as she crouched down. Just in case they pointed a light in this direction. Her heart was hammering against her ribcage, a furious tempo that seemed impossibly loud in the abandoned place. But they were just looking in to see, clearly they were just a little too thorough for their own good. Nothing to really worry about. Of course.
v promises to read the code properly before copying it to the notepad next time [/style]
[style=width: 345px; height: 10px; background-color: 925d43; padding-left: 5px; padding-top: 6px; padding-bottom: 8px; text-align; center; font-size: 8px; font-family: arial; color: fefdfd; text-transform: uppercase; text-align:center; letter-spacing: 1;]In these bodies we will live, in these bodies we will die.[/style][style=width: 337px; font-size: 9px; padding-right: 5; padding-left:5; margin-bottom:-20; color: 504f4f; line-height: 10px; line-space: 1px; background-color: fefdfd; text-align: justify; border-left: solid 3px 925d43; overflow:solid;] Rafe tilted his head to the right and tightening his mouth gave Ilyana a look that told her she was a silly girl “that’s where they hold a lot of the crown jewels, so it’d be quite expensive… that’s what I meant” he shrugged “would you have preferred it if I said Buckingham Palace?” he teased. No, he was not set to inherit enough money to buy Buckingham Palace nor the Tower of London, but Rafe had always had a knack for over dramatizing things, especially when it suited him and put him in a slightly more flattering light. Not that he thought Ana was a money grubbing gold digger, but no one liked being poor. He’d had plenty of friends that probably didn’t actually like him much, but liked being around him, because it made them feel more financially secure. Again not that he believed that was the reason Ana was around. In fact for once he knew why she was around, he’d forced her hand by being at the platform at the right time – a brilliant coincidence if you asked him, but Ilyana was sometimes hard for the Irish to read and he wasn’t sure she liked the idea of him being around as much as he did her.
As much as Rafe seemed like a confident boy he often wasn’t so much. Even if she told him she was glad to see him, he’d still wonder, because to be totally honest he didn’t think he was so great. Also she seemed to be doing fairly well without him, so he likely wasn’t making a huge contribution to her safety. Not that he’d admit any of that of course. Rafe began pacing as he did often now, he just couldn’t sit still since all this happened – his adrenaline just wouldn’t let him. To be honest he’d always been a ADD anyway, so to have all this added excitement made him worse, much worse. He shrugged as she spoke about money be wasted on the rich “yeah, I’m gonna buy a bowling alley” he said thoughtfully looking up and off into the air before turning to her with a wide smile on his face. He’d always liked bowling for some reason, some people didn’t, but it was pretty much the only legitimate sport he’d ever been really good at.
Then he’d be horribly smart, never work a day in his life and just travel to random places, maybe buy a ship and sail the ocean blue like that guy he heard about, who supposedly found America. “maybe I’ll use one of those then” he said with his usual abruptness and tendency for speaking as if he’d been sharing his thoughts with the rest of the class… even when he wasn’t. “thanks for the science lesson by the way… you so muggle” he teased putting on a mock flamboyant voice. One thing that could be said for the boy – he’s perfectly comfortable in his own manhood. Even after being asked several times if he “played for the other team” he still did his voices and let his wrist fall limp – He never once gave up his flair for all things dramatic. It wasn’t that he was effeminate; he was just good at pretending to be.
The world had gone to hell though and no one cared about his sexuality or acting skills anymore, they had bigger things to worry about – like say surviving the night. It was actually a bit freeing for him really. Suddenly all those school labels were gone and all that remained were pureblood, mudblood, good, bad, deatheater and the order. Strange how that happens, suddenly everything that used to seem so important was completely and totally obsolete. No one cared if you had money, status or a girlfriend – they cared only if you were with or against them. Friend or foe, that seemed to be the game these days. It made perfect sense to him though, one had to adapt or perish. That was never truer than today in this darkening world. The only friend Rafe was ever sure about was standing in front of him now, only a couple steps away. Was she capable of betraying him? Of course, but he trusted her not to and for him that was a huge and dangerous step to take. Yet there he was, trusting the freckled Welsh girl with his life – quite literally mind you.
The severity of that trust was not lost on him, though he wasn’t aware of it at the moment. Instead he was smiling at the girl, she’d brought it back as if it’d never left his face. For a while he thought a smile might crack his face in two, but she proved him wrong; as she often did. Was she too good to be his friend? Yes, but she didn’t mind that, she stuck around him anyway and treated him as if he were worthy of her company and friendship. With each second his smiled lasted on his face he found himself loving her just a little bit more. Not even in the romantic sense of the word, he did like her that way, but he knew she didn’t think of him the same and he was fervently lucky to be her friend at all, so no, he wouldn’t muddy his love for her with romance, just love – pure and kind. Though, in their true fashion, he’d keep that to himself.
“No, you are most certainly not a teapot” he said in a mock dignified voice, with his nose in the air, though the smile didn’t leave his face, the whole thing was rather amusing. The two of them learning words from the other’s language as if it were just another day at school, they were apparently good at that – distraction. Whether it was actually a good thing remained to be seen. Sticking his leg out in response he answered “I do yes” he bowed his head a little before straightening out and putting his hands on his hips “you’ve got the knee socks down though” he said pointing at her black socks, scrunching his nose at them he looked up at her “why do you still have your prefects badge on them, that probably how the snatchers made you” he said stupidly. As if she didn’t already know, as if that mistake hadn’t already occurred to her at the beginning of all the mayhem. For a smart boy he could be incredibly dumb sometimes.
He could tell she was not comfortable with talking about her sister, so he simply answered “I’m sorry” he spoke in a consoling tone, which he very rarely employed and didn’t push it further.
Rafe extinguished his wand in unison with Ilyana and followed her without protest. Crouching himself down next to her he wondered if it was his own heart he could hear pounding or hers. He readied his wand incase the snatchers needed to be reminded of the sewer they crawled out of as he positioned himself protectively in front of Ilyana. No, the girl didn’t need protecting, he knew that, but he’d try regardless.
[/style] [style=width: 348px; height:10; background-color: 000; padding-left: 5px; padding-top: 7px; padding-bottom: 7px; text-align; center; font-size: 8px; font-family: arial; color: 383838; text-transform: uppercase; text-align:center; letter-spacing: 3;]tagged ilyana | notes sorry bit later than I thought it would be | lyrics credit mumford & sons [/style][/style]
[style=width: 201px; border-right: 10px solid 1b5800; background-color: fff; color: 1b5800;text-shadow: #CECECE 1px 1px 0px; font-family: orator std; font-size: 20px; text-align: center; letter-spacing: -2px; line-height: 100%;]I'M RUNNING AGAIN[/style] [style=width: 190px; font-family: arial; font-size: 7px; padding-right: 5px; padding-left: 5px; color: #fff; line-height: 100%; text-align: justify; ] AND WHEN I GET THERE IT WON'T BE FAR ENOUGH I'M A RENEGADE IT'S IN MY BLOOD. IF EVER I GET THERE IT WON'T BE FAST ENOUGH. I'M A RENEGADE I ALWAYS WAS. AND THE SPARK NEVER LIT UP A FIRE THOUGH I TRIED AND TRIED. THE WIND CAME FROM YOUR LUNGS A HURRICANE FROM YOUR TONGUE. I'LL KEEP YOUR SECRETS WITH ME RIGHT BEHIND MY TEETH. I'LL KEEP RUNNING, KEEP RUNNING
TAGGED FOR RAFE WITH LYRICS BY PARAMORE SET IN A MUGGLE TRAIN STATION, LONDON AREA [/style]
[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=style, background-color: 000, border-bottom: 5px solid 50b438; width: 420px; height: 100px;] [style=width: 370px; font-family: arial; font-size: 10px; padding: 10px; color: #000000; line-height: 90%; background: #ffffff; text-align: justify; ] The crown jewels, well, he was setting his figurative sights a bit high, wasn't he? Not that she knew about anything like that, of course. She knew there was a Queen, that those dodgy Brits all fancied they spoke her English except the ones that completely botched both pronunciation and grammar, and that she had quite a few jewels, as Queens so often do. But she didn't claim to be any sort of expert on that subject. She had one Muggle for a parent, but that didn't mean she was also an expert on water-skis or the exact mechanics of airplanes, just like everyone with proper magical blood wasn't automatically an expert on South African folk magic for it. Were they held in the Tower of London, the infamous prison? Entirely possible. It was also entirely possible that he was having a laugh at her expense, and if she played along she'd be falling right into a very carefully laid trap. She couldn't begrudge him that, but she could try to avoid the predicament entirely.
She put a hand on her hip and fixed him with her very best imperious stare. The sort of stare that warned off first years that might think it was a good idea to pester her with obvious questions because she was not their tour guide to things two feet away. "Buckingham Palace would hardly let you through the front doors - you're some sort of wanted criminal, you know." So was she, for that matter. A truant. The word sounded altogether boring. And what was it, a noun, a verb? One could be truant, but was that because they could be a truant, or because they could truant, an action, to truant. She didn't know. At Hogwarts they just handed out detention to anyone that thought ditching class seemed a fun idea. And given that the teachers did know how to use magic, and that it was a boarding school, hanging about in the corridors instead of going to class would get noticed. She preferred to earn her detentions from late-night wandering where she shouldn't be and blowing off homework rather than skiving off boring lessons.
"What, you bowl?" she asked, grinning at him. "How terribly Muggle. You're a downright bad influence on me. 'Nless you were just planning to buy one as a vanity piece. Trot it out when the neighbors visit." That would be something, actually. 'Oh Mrs. Snob, have you seen our bowling alley? It's imported from Brighton.' That all seemed very posh, or what she imagined posh was, given that no one was ever likely to let her within ten feet of that whole culture. They liked their insular ways, the upper classes, and they weren't so keen on rude Welsh gingers crashing any of their parties. Not like she was hanging on the edge of her seat for an invite anyway. Rafe wasn't about that though; yes, he had money, she was pretty sure. His family's money was so old it would draw social security of the wizarding world had any such thing. He was making jokes about buying a bowling alley. Even though he was a pure-blood and rich to boot, that had never been what he was about. He didn't parade his wealth about as anything but a punchline, he didn't put on airs that might encourage her to hit him, and he didn't go in for touting about in masks in the hopes of injuring people.
In other words, he didn't quite fit in there. He was more like her, stuck in a place he didn't quite belong in because there was really nowhere else to go. There was a certain freedom to being a social pariah. You could say things that other people would only ever dare to think because honesty might make others see them differently. Nothing had to be too serious. Except, of course, when angry dark wizards with certain bits of their anatomy properly stuffed came to call to demand that all sense and fun stop immediately. Not on their watch. They were going to make the wizarding world safer by killing people and threatening them all into compliance with a brand new Eugenics program. Bravo progress. It probably wasn't so surprising that someone like Rafe would have gotten in trouble even with his blood status as protection. People like that saw people like them as a threat, because they weren't concerned enough with being part of the group to take to their worldview like a feel good self-help text from the 1970s. Those usual routes of fear of authority and social pressures were much less effective. That left everyone's good friend brute force to save the day. Super.
Ana had found that she could actually play this game. She could play it rather well because she was doing what those so-called purists never would: she was taking the back routes, the Muggle tricks, and absolutely anything else that would give her an edge. They didn't fear dark magic or the potential dueling prowess of a seventeen year old witch, but a bus route could completely throw them off if it wasn't a purple triple decker bus that weaved through traffic by magic. They didn't know how to cope with the Underground. That was where she had them on the ropes, that element of the world they had closed themselves off from so completely. For once, the world might see why she had been sorted into Slytherin when the rest of the house seemed so at odds with her. Except with that one glaring error in her judgment. "Yeah, I know, ex-nay on the upid-stay. I just always wore it on my sock, I honestly forgot it was even there. 'S not your fault though, none of it. Doesn't matter."
She shrugged helplessly, then crouched lower in the darkness. She didn't know how much help she could be to Rafe, now that he'd gone and made a show of himself in front of the snatchers that had only started a fight over her. Then again, she could hardly do worse than whoever had already attacked him with her stumbling through this. And maybe she liked having him here. Really liked having him here. But that was silly and she didn't really need to get into that, did she? She had already proven that expressing feeling of any sort was not in their area of expertise. She just had to hope that not getting killed in an old industrial district was. Her breath caught as a beam of wandlight passed above their heads, casting eerie shadows on the wall. If they looked in just the right spot, they would see their runaways bold as you please, and all of that escaping would be just about useless.
They would have to fight if they were seen, she knew, but they didn't stand such a great chance in a flat-out duel as they did in running and hiding in here. Running only required diversions, and she could think on her feet enough for that. Hiding here took advantage of the death-y types not knowing much about Muggle technology, even the older variety. She tugged her bag back, silently cursing to herself when the zipper scraped against the stone floor. It wasn't that loud, not really, but every single solitary sound was currently going off like a ringing gong in her ears. Her pulse was racing too; she hated the feeling of being cornered, absolutely hated it. There was nothing more frustrating than the anticipation. He was trying to block her, she thought, putting himself at that angle. No doubt terribly noble, but also terribly foolish. She needed a human shield far less than she needed a living and whole friend. Ana got a firm grip on his shoulder, trying to pull him further back into the shadows. It would be simpler if she could tell him to stop finding a noble streak and move back, but she had to settle for grabbing at him to avoid their friendly neighborhood search light. [/style]
[style=width: 345px; height: 10px; background-color: 925d43; padding-left: 5px; padding-top: 6px; padding-bottom: 8px; text-align; center; font-size: 8px; font-family: arial; color: fefdfd; text-transform: uppercase; text-align:center; letter-spacing: 1;]In these bodies we will live, in these bodies we will die.[/style][style=width: 337px; font-size: 9px; padding-right: 5; padding-left:5; margin-bottom:-20; color: 504f4f; line-height: 10px; line-space: 1px; background-color: fefdfd; text-align: justify; border-left: solid 3px 925d43; overflow:solid;] Often times Rafe assumed – wrongly of course – that Ilyana knew everything about muggles and their culture. Furthermore even with the constant reminder of her Welsh accent he forgot that she wasn’t English and therefore did not necessarily know about their history either. Wales wasn’t England any more than Ireland was and yet he constantly forgot this and he would argue to his death bed that it was all Princess Diana’s fault. Needlessly most likely as people probably didn’t care why he constantly thought Wales was a part of England, they just figured it was because he was a daft ignorant little prick – most likely. To be honest they likely thought that anyway. He’d admit when it came to the subject of geography he was a bit daft, but he didn’t really care where things were, just that they were there for him to see. Yes, he’d admit it would be rather embarrassing to ask for a ticket to Wales, England, but he wouldn’t let it bother him. That just wasn’t who he was – one to let simple mistakes embarrass him that is.
He wouldn’t tell Ana that he often mistook her country for a part of England though. It could upset her and to be quite honest he didn’t have enough friends to start upsetting them. After all if he pissed her off enough to drop his company he wouldn’t have any friends. Frankly, Rafe had absolutely no idea how he knew so much about England, after all he grew up for eleven years of his life solely in Ireland, which had the Irish Sea between the two islands. A body of water separated them and he still could spout large quantities of their history, furthermore their muggle history. Not to mention he also knew their slang quite well. Yes, that was a bit strange. Poor little Wales, they probably got confused for part of England a lot, or maybe it was just him. He’d never accept that though. No, he was sure that Do-gooder Diana had led more young lambs astray. “Phibbh! Muggles don’t know I’m a social criminal!” he teased, to be honest he wasn’t sure how informed that muggles were about the situation.
Rafe could figure that possibly the Prime Minister knew, maybe even the royal family, but likely the everyday muggles didn’t have a clue in hell what was going on. “Muggles don’t fiddle in our affairs” he continued putting on a very snooty voice as he puffed his chest in feigned arrogance and stuck his nose up into the air. Looking out of the corner of his eye down at her a smile crept across his lips. He lowered his chin at stared at her with his big, proud smile. Rafe had no idea if he was a criminal by muggle standards in anyway, with everything he knew about them he paid very little attention to their laws. Hell, he barely knew Wizard laws, likely, that was the reason he was constantly breaking them. It wasn’t usually to the point where he’d have to do any hard time, but these days under their current government that had changed. Now everything he was, was against the law except his blood status.
“I do” he nodded, it was a good thing he was around friendly ears, he was forgetting where the line was between muggle and wizard things. If he’d publicly slipped about his muggle recreation around the unsavory sort he’d be thrown into Azkaban for muggle loving or something absurd like that. I’d be fairly true, from a young age he was enthralled with muggles, he viewed them as something alien and strange. As he got older he studied them further and found out they were essentially retarded wizards, handicapped by their inability to do magic, but otherwise pretty much the same. Humans were Humans apparently – shocker. Rafe’s eyes widened at her suggestion “say, that’s not a bad idea, freak a bunch of purebloods out with the muggle object…” he nodded thinking a moment before shrugging “that is if there are any left after all this” he feigned a sad face “what if by the time this is all over I’m the last of my kind?” making his lips quiver at the end, he then split his lips into a toothy smile again. It was important to smile after one pretends to be something so everyone knows you’re not actually a sappy, butt cheeks baby.
Blood status was obviously not important to him and he didn’t believe that pureblood were another breed of wizard like some did. No, he knew that if some had the ability of a wizard, that meant they were simply a wizard whether their parents were or not. After all that snooty fizz ball proved it, since she was better than most of the purebloods in her year. Ilyana herself had proved that she was worth her wizarding salt back on the platform even if she was a year behind what she should be. That wasn’t her skills – it was a bad case of dragon pox a perfectly valid excuse in his book, he’d seen them before and they did not look fun. Rafe knew she wasn’t from a “pure” stock either, so really his beliefs were only proven correct with every so called mudblood he met.
They weren’t an inferior breed of wizard; they just didn’t have the horrible family histories to “live up to”. It seemed all the pureblood wizard families only stayed that way due to prejudice and pride. If Rafe lived through this war he had every intention of mudding the Cavaliere name as all the Purebloods he’d ever met were usually in some way deficient due to likely inbreeding. Since his parents were too stupid to know to cut one off you needed you rewrite your will, he would likely inherit a hefty sum of money from them once they died and though it didn’t matter to him much whether he had money or not, it did tend to make things easier as long as you didn’t care about it too much. He shrugged “I know, I just said it because I’m supposed to” Rafe never did anything he was supposed to which is why as Beverly Foss put it once, he practically lived in detention. He didn’t want to admit to Ilyana that he thought he may have done anything wrong to cause anything that had befallen her.
Though he knew his parents knowing she was his only real friend could put her in grave danger, which made him all the more happy that he was there with her, in case they decided to try and find him through hurting her. Not that he had any real feelings towards her… of course. The fact that he did have real actual feelings for her friendly or otherwise was not a secret to him, he didn’t even feel the need to deny it at this point. He’d never been very good at actually liking people though.
As her bag’s zipper scraped against the floor Rafe’s eyes darted to it in the pitch black. The boy knew dark magic and he was perfectly capable of killing someone with it. However, he didn’t really want to have to use it. He would though, he Avada Kedavra the entire world if it meant keeping the freckled ginger next to him safe. Pathetically romantic he was becoming, wasn’t he? It was annoying to him to be honest that he was constantly trying to hold on to something and actually cared about losing anything from his life – for once. Course it was a girl, because he had to be such an epic cliché like that. Rafe felt her tug him back and down lower, he wished he could risk whispering a joke about how she was at a height advantage in this particular situation. He minded her scrunching his body further to the grown, but keeping his wand at the ready in case the scraping of her zipper was as loud as it sounded to the two of them.
[/style] [style=width: 348px; height:10; background-color: 000; padding-left: 5px; padding-top: 7px; padding-bottom: 7px; text-align; center; font-size: 8px; font-family: arial; color: 383838; text-transform: uppercase; text-align:center; letter-spacing: 3;]tagged ilyana | notes dun dun dun the suspense! | lyrics credit mumford & sons [/style][/style]
[style=width: 201px; border-right: 10px solid 1b5800; background-color: fff; color: 1b5800;text-shadow: #CECECE 1px 1px 0px; font-family: orator std; font-size: 20px; text-align: center; letter-spacing: -2px; line-height: 100%;]I'M RUNNING AGAIN[/style] [style=width: 190px; font-family: arial; font-size: 7px; padding-right: 5px; padding-left: 5px; color: #fff; line-height: 100%; text-align: justify; ] AND WHEN I GET THERE IT WON'T BE FAR ENOUGH I'M A RENEGADE IT'S IN MY BLOOD. IF EVER I GET THERE IT WON'T BE FAST ENOUGH. I'M A RENEGADE I ALWAYS WAS. AND THE SPARK NEVER LIT UP A FIRE THOUGH I TRIED AND TRIED. THE WIND CAME FROM YOUR LUNGS A HURRICANE FROM YOUR TONGUE. I'LL KEEP YOUR SECRETS WITH ME RIGHT BEHIND MY TEETH. I'LL KEEP RUNNING, KEEP RUNNING
TAGGED FOR RAFE WITH LYRICS BY PARAMORE SET IN A MUGGLE TRAIN STATION, LONDON AREA [/style]
[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=style, background-color: 000, border-bottom: 5px solid 50b438; width: 420px; height: 100px;] [style=width: 370px; font-family: arial; font-size: 10px; padding: 10px; color: #000000; line-height: 90%; background: #ffffff; text-align: justify; ] She smirked easily at that. A social criminal, it had a certain ring to it, didn't it? Though it spoke more of vandalising government property with a can of spray paint than being on the run from the genetic ideals of idiots that now controlled the entire government. She could see it now. A bandana over the lower half of his face (to obscure his secret identity, of course, that was always important and covering just a little bit of the face area seemed to do the trick) and a can of paint in hand, he'd swagger on up to a Muggle courthouse and write 'the Ministry are morons' in red on the side of the building. Then he'd run like hell from the friendly neighborhood officers come to take him to the Muggle courthouse to answer for his crimes against architecture. Really, now that she had given it a go it was quite easy to picture him as what a Muggle might call a social criminal.
"They would do in a short while, though, you're not so subtle with your anti-social tendencies." Ana kept grinning, enjoying the distraction from the situation at hand. Anti-social was the hip new term to attach to it - though the very fact that she felt compelled to say hip about the situation was an indication that the supporters were all remnants of the jurassic age. Reaching that age seemed like a good occasion to resign from drafting public policy and judging other people. But then, that would be the sensible thing to do. No one ever went for that route while some angry and overly emotional alternative awaited. Look at who was running the ministry now. Ideas right out of the middle ages - specifically, the Inquisition. Elderly people making bad decisions and not using logic, that was the way the world worked.
It was sort of like Muggles complaining about elderly drivers, how they moved at a snail's pace and often caused accidents because their eyesight and reflexes were going. Elderly purebloods, possibly too 'pure' to have all their mental faculties in order. Not that she would elaborate on that to Rafe, anyway, considering that he was a pureblood as well. It wasn't all genetics, clearly. It couldn't be. How else would he exist? A pureblood that didn't fancy killing Muggles for sport or donning a uniform to parade around down Diagon Alley. They were quite interested in their own power, Death Eaters. Never shy about showing it off. "Oi, how could they possibly destroy every single Muggle object over?" she protested, putting one hand on her hip and gesturing at the room with the other. "Have you seen this stuff? No way they could get rid of it all completely. 'Sides, Muggles outnumber us at least one hundred to one on a good day. Even they can't be that mad."
They might not have magic, but Muggles definitely had numbers on their side. Magical blood had been at a steady percentage in the population, rising in numbers with the general population following the second world war. They had never been anything close to a majority, and the way they kept themselves secreted away precluded any greater force. The statute of secrecy...no doubt these idiots planned to overturn it and start a war against the Muggles eventually in the hopes of taking everything over. Then they would all be in trouble. That whole Inquisition comparison? All over. She hadn't been quite as confident as she tried to sound about the Death Eaters not being mad enough to try it. "The last what? The last mouthy Slytherin that got stuck in detention at least once a week?" she teased, latching onto a subject much safer than rather literal witch hunts.
Ilyana found that rather more difficult to believe than anything else she'd heard. He could have said he'd personally flown them in because he was secretly an espionage agent, and that would have made more sense than Rafe Cavaliere doing things simply because he was supposed to. That had never really stopped him before. Given that they had first met after a rousing round of writing lines for two different professors and finding themselves needing a late dinner, it could be safely assumed that requirement and propriety were not high on his list of priorities. Still, she gave him a thin-lipped smile and held up one finger for silence, rather than seek out a biting retort. She didn't know why these idiots had been hanging about in a train station. Probably not Death Eaters - it was something of an exclusive club, by the rumors. But they had a lot of resources now that they were in charge. These two had all of the ingelligence of a pair of cabbages, which suggested that she was not at the top of some most wanted list somewhere. At least she had that.
The metal door of the abandoned factory clanged shut, and the loud complaints of the two men receded. "Apcray," she exhaled, flexing the fingers of her wand hand to relieve the tension. Yes, she knew a bit of pig latin. Like any good rule-breaker, she couldn't have whatever authority figure she was flouting listening in on her plans. "That was way too close." A few counties too close, really. She wanted to get out of here, but if they were guarding Muggle train stations too, that could really complicate matters. "What do you reckon? I can't see them being bright enough to double back. I'm surprised they even thought to look once." She was still speaking in a low voice, crouched behind the equipment in the dark. Even if the immediate threat had passed, she was worried now. She tugged her bag further out of the way, just in case. Lesson learned on that account. [/style]
[style=width: 345px; height: 10px; background-color: 925d43; padding-left: 5px; padding-top: 6px; padding-bottom: 8px; text-align; center; font-size: 8px; font-family: arial; color: fefdfd; text-transform: uppercase; text-align:center; letter-spacing: 1;]In these bodies we will live, in these bodies we will die.[/style][style=width: 337px; font-size: 9px; padding-right: 5; padding-left:5; margin-bottom:-20; color: 504f4f; line-height: 10px; line-space: 1px; background-color: fefdfd; text-align: justify; border-left: solid 3px 925d43; overflow:solid;] Proper moral values weren’t exactly Rafe’s forte. Yes, he believe genocide was wrong in any situation – killing someone for where or who they were born to was a ridiculous notion to him. It just didn’t make sense, besides Rafe never believed that men had the right to dictate who was worthy of life or not. The simple fact that human beings are fallible denied them of such a rite in his eyes. So he must have some moral standards, he just didn’t like authority and generally did the opposite of what they told him was acceptable as long as it didn’t weigh on his conscience like a cinder block. When he was rude to people he just considered it as being honest without sugar coating – bluntness with finely worded metaphors was a good friend of his. However, his talent for such things was not exactly a friend to others.
Shrugging at Ana’s assessment of his tact he gave her a knowing grin before replying “life’s too short and people are too stupid for me to be subtle”. Rafe had never been a boy who gave people much credit, nor did he particularly care for life, however growing up around the catholic roots that still prevalently lived in Ireland he was raised with a set of values that did not believe you had the right to choose whether your own life was worth living. Besides Rafe couldn’t kill himself, he’d be depriving the world of his excellence. It was also his home land that gave him his favorite retort for his teachers back in his days at Hogwarts ‘Only God can judge me’. Rafe never really had a particular faith, but he liked to shout that at the teachers to see their shocked faces. It was always as if they didn’t know how to respond to something like that.
To be totally honest Rafe didn’t know what he believed in, but he knew what he didn’t and he always figured that was the most important thing anyway. “well, I meant the blood purist pure bloods, but If Voldie had his way all muggle’s and their artifacts would be destroyed by some crazy dark magic” he spoke with a level of thoughtfulness, he pondered the possibility of his beloved muggles being snuffed from earth like flickering candles – what a dark world that would be. “Numbers are helpful though, but so is magic against creatures that have no real defense against it” Rafe’s voice dropped into a more somber tone, he could picture it already Voldemort killing muggles in droves without a single effort. Muggleborn’s at least had some defense, not that he thought what Voldemort was doing to them was anymore forgivable.
What was wrong with him, now he’d taken to depressing himself? After a moment of silence, he looked back at Ilyana forcing a smile “ Moving on” for once he didn’t actually have anything to follow that up, but he figured he didn’t really have to say anything else. It was probably depressing to her to her parents being muggle’s and all. Last thing he wanted to do was dim her candle, he felt almost as if she was lighting his way, making sure he didn’t stumble off a cliff and die sort of thing. She was more important to him than she probably knew – like most important people in his life. Rafe could tell people things like that for some reason, as if, if they knew they would leave.
It was probably a good thing Rafe didn’t fancy himself the sane sort. Logical? Yes. resourceful? Sure. Sane? not necessarily. In fact he’d always had an air of insanity about it him, he knew he wasn’t, his parents had him tested enough times to prove that. Nor was he in any way mentally deficient, he knew this for the same reason, though he never doubted his own mental capacity, he only made sure his parents would. They had no idea what he was capable of and he wanted it that way. It especially came in good handy when they were trying to kill him, but unfortunately they were getting more vindicated about his abilities to the point that he was actually having close calls more often than not.
As the men retreated from the building empty handed he heard Ilyana let out another word he didn’t understand, scrunching up his face he questioned “why does everything in your language sound like a sneeze?” he teased slightly trying to break the tension of almost having the very real possibility of being caught. He wondered every once and a while if there was any special punishment for being a blood trader... you know – other than death. He hoped they wouldn’t go all English on him and torture him for days before finally just chopping his head off or in a wizards hitting him with a nice merciful Avada Kedavra. He never understood why everyone mourned for those hit with the killing curse so much as far as he was concerned it was much better than being tortured out of you mind. Yet, it seemed like people thought if you were alive when it was over, you were better off. As if those who lost their minds were still with those left behind.
Rafe nodded as she concluded it was too close of a call “yeah I thought I was gonna have to open a can of Irish Hospitality on their pimpled arses”. He shook his head “not a chance they’d double back” he said without much he said looking off into the distance thoughtfully before turning back to her “right? An impossibility, right?” he said putting his hand on his hips “tossers, no conviction or conscience” He frowned deeply, his eyes glaring at some phantom by the door.
[/style] [style=width: 348px; height:10; background-color: 000; padding-left: 5px; padding-top: 7px; padding-bottom: 7px; text-align; center; font-size: 8px; font-family: arial; color: 383838; text-transform: uppercase; text-align:center; letter-spacing: 3;]tagged ilyana | notes I'm so very sorry about the wait on this one! | lyrics credit mumford & sons [/style][/style]
[style=width: 201px; border-right: 10px solid 1b5800; background-color: fff; color: 1b5800;text-shadow: #CECECE 1px 1px 0px; font-family: orator std; font-size: 20px; text-align: center; letter-spacing: -2px; line-height: 100%;]I'M RUNNING AGAIN[/style] [style=width: 190px; font-family: arial; font-size: 7px; padding-right: 5px; padding-left: 5px; color: #fff; line-height: 100%; text-align: justify; ] AND WHEN I GET THERE IT WON'T BE FAR ENOUGH I'M A RENEGADE IT'S IN MY BLOOD. IF EVER I GET THERE IT WON'T BE FAST ENOUGH. I'M A RENEGADE I ALWAYS WAS. AND THE SPARK NEVER LIT UP A FIRE THOUGH I TRIED AND TRIED. THE WIND CAME FROM YOUR LUNGS A HURRICANE FROM YOUR TONGUE. I'LL KEEP YOUR SECRETS WITH ME RIGHT BEHIND MY TEETH. I'LL KEEP RUNNING, KEEP RUNNING
TAGGED FOR RAFE WITH LYRICS BY PARAMORE SET IN A MUGGLE TRAIN STATION, LONDON AREA [/style]
[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=style, background-color: 000, border-bottom: 5px solid 50b438; width: 420px; height: 100px;] [style=width: 370px; font-family: arial; font-size: 10px; padding: 10px; color: #000000; line-height: 90%; background: #ffffff; text-align: justify; ] Hm. Was that an insult? Might be. Now that depended entirely on whether or not she was people in this scenario. "If people are stupid, what's that make me?" Being classified as a quadruped would probably be a worse insult than being unable to take a hint. That went from slow on the uptake to serious primitive or serious physical disorder. And yes, that was actually a thing. (Long story short, she was never letting her mother pick documentaries while on the bottle ever again.) No, focus. Focus. Danger, running for her life, and one of the only people she sort of didn't mind if she was going to be cornered into admitting feelings. Deal with that now. Freak out about her parents' attempts to set new stereotypes for Welsh alcoholism later. She was okay with prioritizing in general, no doubt to the shock of every professor she had ever had.
Setting very low expectations worked for her. It didn't matter if she failed - though people could actually be a little bit impressed when she didn't - and she didn't need to compete with the grade-grubbing types. No pressure, no responsibilities, until some idiot decided to go ahead and name her a prefect for her house. Seriously, who did that? Not like that mattered now, so long as she remembered to actually take her stupid badge off her sock now that she was some sort of wanted truant. At any rate, she didn't want anything to live up to, though she had her sister's shining lack of disciplinary problems hanging over her head no matter what she did. Beverly never ran away, after all. She never flaunted the law in such a brazen way. She just sat there and let people push her around. Her classmates had undoubtedly recognized that she was gone, since they would be needing a new prefect, but it wasn't likely to affect anyone's lives too terribly. Other people were generally irritating.
"Oooh, nicknames for a dark wizard. You are a little bit rebel now. I don't even know if having nice clean blood would make anyone up for that," she said, trying to contain the snicker that threatened. It was audacious, it really was. She might have told a girl off for having about as bad a mustache as her spotty boyfriend when annoyed, but even she didn't generally dare offer that up in conversation. "But don't go spouting off his name, got it? I heard it's got a Taboo now. Idiot might've been going on just for the sake of it, but I really don't want to have a whole heap of angry ministry security on my tail because you thought you'd try it." There had been some freshly out of school kid talking about it in hushed tones with his younger brother on their way to Platform 9/3 when she had missed the train. Not that those two looked to have been in danger of using it, but they were discussing things like that while passing crowds of Muggles, where it was safe to provide the warning without looking over your shoulder for Ministry personnel. Even talking too much about it might indicate some sort of rebel attitude. She couldn't really blame people for being afraid for their children. That everyone in charge had let this happen was stupid beyond belief, but ordinary people had a lot to lose.
And then there were other questionably ordinary people that hauled their trunks off and never boarded the train, thereby resolving the conflict of causing harm to others. She had just wanted to get out. She was still going to have a go at that. Ana looked down. "Muggles are pretty damn good at killing when given half the chance." It shouldn't be suggested that Muggles were helpless little bunny rabbits in a field. They had their murderers and two proper world wars under their belts, which had definitely killed more people than every goblin rebellion combined. "But that's still not a pleasant thought." There wasn't really a joke that could be made there, it seemed. 'Genocide: it's quite unpleasant, actually.' She had nothing to rationalize there. This was probably what maturity felt like or something; she wasn't a big fan thus far. "Yeah, I reckon," she sighed, leaning against a piece of machinery.
This was probably a good time to solve the earlier problem. She reached down and detached the small silver pin with the letter P from her sock and dropped it into the pocket of her denim shorts. It would probably wind up in her suitcase later, tucked underneath a spare pair of jeans. She didn't need it, and goodness knew she didn't care for the silly error of judgement, but if she had stolen it from the school sort of by accident she should probably keep track of it. For safekeeping. Maybe if someone that wasn't supportive of hunting her down came to power, she could give it back and call that her good deed for the decade. She glanced back at Rafe. With the danger past, more completely this time, she was able to think further ahead, plan out what she could do now that it seemed people were watching the local trains. They were so against the impure, and then they wouldn't let them leave. It was like they wanted to make their lives more difficult. Or they wanted to kill them painfully...
"Does not, you tosser," she protested, laughing weakly. The cover of tension that had been pressed back onto the room was beaten right back by her indignant defense of her language, which was probably part of the goal. He was clever, she thought. She'd thought that before now, and not only because he seemed to understand her sense of humor readily without sharing their house's traditional 'my blood is holier than thine' outlook. It was more that he seemed to understand everything else. He rejected tradition in favor of logic, even though he, as a pureblood, most likely came from a culture that would have trained him otherwise. But fawning over him for that impressive amount of individual will was definitely not an option either. Ana didn't think she'd ever in her life told anyone that she truly cared about them, not even her own family. And she did care about Bev, however annoying her do-gooder attitude and lack of a spine might be. She had still never said it. Possibly because no one had ever said it to her. It was a cycle of poor communication skills, and she was doing her part.
She crouched over her suitcase, unzipping an outer pouch while she frowned up at him. "Irish Hospitality? 'S that when you toss someone over a bar?" They were the ones with the alcoholism stereotype, after all. Her lot usually got the sheep bit. "They're hunting down truants and unregistered Muggleborns. Lack of conscience is a bit implied for the job." She retrieved a bit of Muggle money and stuck it in her other pocket, just in case. She was using what her pursuers couldn't understand, what they willfully ignored. Which had been a much more secure strategy until they turned up at a Muggle train station, setting a whole set of worries loose. But it was still her best shot. "So where were you headed? Anywhere in particular?" The south of France was supposed to be quite scenic, and also monumentally out of her price range. Right now she would settle for any number of places that included 'not being arrested' in its amenities. "I reckon I should maybe stick around, in case anyone else stops by. Your bad luck in finding me," she declared, grinning. Yes, asking 'perhaps while we're both running from Snatchers, we could run together' would have been too polite and socially functional. She really didn't do foot shuffling teenage girl anyway. State it as a fact, and they could work from there. [/style]
![[Search This Thread]](http://images.proboards.com/new/buttons/search2.png "[Search This Thread]")
![[Share Topic]](http://images.proboards.com/new/buttons/share.png "[Share Topic]")
![[Print]](http://images.proboards.com/new/buttons/print.png "[Print]")
Author
![[image]](http://i183.photobucket.com/albums/x307/AirMaidenSapphire/chartext/ana.png "[image]")
[/style] 
Logged
![[avatar]](http://i1126.photobucket.com/albums/l613/killing-joke/rsgif4.gif "[avatar]")
![[image]](http://i1126.photobucket.com/albums/l613/killing-joke/rsz23.png "[image]")
[style=width: 345px; height: 10px; background-color: 925d43; padding-left: 5px; padding-top: 6px; padding-bottom: 8px; text-align; center; font-size: 8px; font-family: arial; color: fefdfd; text-transform: uppercase; text-align:center; letter-spacing: 1;]In these bodies we will live, in these bodies we will die.[/style][style=width: 337px; font-size: 9px; padding-right: 5; padding-left:5; margin-bottom:-20; color: 504f4f; line-height: 10px; line-space: 1px; background-color: fefdfd; text-align: justify; border-left: solid 3px 925d43; overflow:solid;]![[image]](http://i1126.photobucket.com/albums/l613/killing-joke/rafe3233.png "[image]")