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| Tweet Topic Started: May 9 2012, 03:25:07 AM (547 Views) | |
| PJ Beckett | May 9 2012, 03:25:07 AM Post #1 |
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12 May 2039 Thusday 12:37pm It was an absolutely beautiful day, the kind that made PJ glad to have recess duty. She would have hated being stuck inside eating or running copies on a day like this. It was breezy, just barely, and both sunny and pleasantly warm. She was happily seated at the picnic tables, braiding ribbons and flowers into hair while other girls watched or waited or attempted their own versions. She glanced up periodically to make sure that nobody was bleeding or floating or anything else serious. With sixty five-,six-,and seven-year-old witches and wizards, anything was possible. She looked briefly for her counterpart. Jacob McGovney was running and blowing his whistle as two kids leapt from the swings, landing impossibly far away. He should have taken precious recess time, of course, but found himself nodding in approval. Sarah rubbed a dandelion on PJ's chin. "Ooooo. I think Miss PJ's in looooooooooove," she said grinning. "One would hope," PJ answered with a laugh. If not, she had some major problems. “Miss PJ?” Tilly asked. “Yes?” She answered, hands busily braiding Poppy’s hair. “When you were little, what did you want to be when you grew up?” “Hmm…I wanted to be a zookeeper or an artist or a veterinarian. What about you?” “I don’t know, maybe a teacher,” Tilly answered, thinking hard. “Excellent choice.” “What’s a vetermarium?” Poppy asked. “Oh!” PJ said, suddenly remembering that they might not know. “It’s an animal doctor. I mean, it’s sort of like an animal healer. People who can’t do magic have doctors, not healers.” “You weren’t a witch then?” Poppy asked, confused. “I was, I just didn’t know it yet.” PJ told them, finishing Poppy’s hair and tying it. Tilly slid into her place. “Were your mum and dad magic?” Jillian asked, knowing a bit more about these things than the others. “Nope,” PJ said simply. “Neither were my granmum and granddad. She’s a librarian and he’s a dentist.” “What’s a dentist?” Poppy asked. PJ sighed, but smiled. This conversation could go on for ages, and she was their Muggle dictionary. That was alright, though. She was hoping, afterall, that these kids would need to be more...muggle-literate? Edited by PJ Beckett, May 9 2012, 12:06:19 PM.
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| Trent Beckett | May 19 2012, 01:26:14 AM Post #2 |
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"Aunt PJ, look what I found!" Natalie Beckett, two days away from six years old, held her cupped hands out to her teacher-aunt so that she might see the small, black, fuzzy caterpillar. Her new-since-Christmas magenta framed glasses sparkled in the sunlight and her grin rivaled their shine. Her expression changed from one of glee to curiosity has she caught sight of something beyond her aunt. She stood, arms still absent-mindedly outstretched, as she watched a little over a dozen people appear just on the edge of the school yard. She'd never seen people apparate during recess before. They were wearing all black, but only a few wore robes. "Are they aurors?" she asked her aunt curiously. She couldn't think of any other type of person they could be. |
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| PJ Beckett | May 21 2012, 12:41:37 PM Post #3 |
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PJ smiled. She liked it when Colin’s nieces and nephews called her “Aunt PJ.” It made her feel more like part of the family. She reached a hand over and gently stroked the caterpillar with one finger. She was about to suggest that they bring it inside- she had a caterpillar habitat- but something had distracted Nat. For a moment, PJ’s heart stopped. If there were aurors at Forsyth, she could think of only one reason, and that reason was herself. She casually glanced over her shoulder, and then turned back around. It did little good to be inconspicuous, of course. The little girls at the table were all starring where Natalie was. She hadn’t gotten a very good look, but she didn’t think that they were aurors. They didn’t look like aurors, and there were far too many of them to simply be coming after her. If they weren’t, though, then who were they? What was going on? All of that flew through her head at the same time, and a split second later she had decided what to do. Protocol dictated that the building be locked down whenever there were suspicious persons lurking. They’d always been in their classrooms when they practiced lockdown, though, not outside at recess. She could line them up and take them inside. That would take a while, though, and put them all in one nice, neat little unprotected spot. It would never do. She didn’t even bother answering Natalie, she had a gut feeling, a bad one, and she wasn’t sure that she had time. What she needed was help. “Sarah, Jillian, run inside and tell the Headmistress that my purple folder is on the playground,” PJ told the two oldest girls quickly as she hastily tied off Tilly’s hair. There were no purple folders, of course. ‘Teachers, your purple folders are needed in the office,’ was the lockdown code. Hopefully she’d understand. She started to yell for Jacob, but just then he saw them, too. He looked at her, clueless as she was. |
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| Trent Beckett | May 21 2012, 05:30:35 PM Post #4 |
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"Nobody move!" Someone called from the group of newcomers. Spells started started flying- clearly a few Impedimenta at first as running kids slowed to a stop, Colloportus as doors squelched and sealed. Children were screaming and then they were't- Silencio. The strangers approached the yard swiftly, but without running- there was no need for that- and with a uniformity that almost matched marching. Natalie Beckett slowly lowered her hands and put the caterpillar in the breast pocket of her uniform shirt. It would be safe there. "Stay on the teachers! Black the windows! Watch the doors! Form a perimeter!" One of them barked. At once, they were no longer a pack, separating to preform their tasks. Two of them stayed in line with the one shouting orders; each of them with their wands trained on the teachers. "Where's the Beckett girl?" the loud one demanded. Natalie froze. She was a Beckett girl. Did they mean her? Her heart pounded in her ears. She would run and kick and scream and- and what she really did was involuntarily send all the playground balls zooming at the strangers. |
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| PJ Beckett | May 21 2012, 07:00:16 PM Post #5 |
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PJ absolutely loved Natalie as the balls went flying, but she didn’t have time to dwell on it. Unlike Natalie, PJ was very aware of the fact that there were indeed three “Beckett girls” currently on the playground. She had no idea where Ava was, but she had better stay there. She wished Natalie wasn’t so close. She was almost certain that it was her that they wanted, though why she had no idea, and she hadn’t felt like a girl for quite some time. There had been a handful of applicants when PJ was hired at Forsyth. One thing, and one thing only, had sealed the deal for her. It had nothing to do with what she could do, and everything to do with what she could undo. PJ was unusually good at undoing magic, whether she knew the spell that had cast it or not. She sent about four silent confunding charms flying, nothing that would hurt the kids, before she broke the silencing charm on herself and Jacob and leapt to her feet quite quickly for someone about six months pregnant. Her robes did that cool billowy thing like they do in the movies, and she probably would have looked quite fierce had they not been coral in color and covered in white polkadots. “Stupefy!” Jacob yelled, aiming at the man trained on him before anyone realized that he was mobile and capable of speech. “You’ll get fired!” PJ shouted to him between two separate incarcerous charms. They were supposed to do whatever they were told in these situations, no fighting. Jacob was going to be in deep shit. He still had a lot of kid in him, though, and at times he felt invincible. He didn’t answer her. “Silencio!” she shouted at the loud one, hoping that shutting him up would confuse the others. |
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| Trent Beckett | May 21 2012, 08:31:51 PM Post #6 |
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A lady in bright green St. Mungo's robes appeared exactly where the Strangers had been only moments before. Wand at the ready, Marie Beckett waited for no one. Playground balls flew at and sufficiently distracted most of The Strangers, hitting several. Three Strangers by the school building dropped. One tied up from PJ's knots, another it's seemed from some sort of tripping jinx, and the third must have fallen prey to a cunfunding charm; he walked straight into the wall- the wall won; he dropped. A playground ball bounced on his head. Jacob's stupefy missed it's intended target and headed for Marie. She blocked it with a shield charm, then returned fire on Jacob's Stranger with a disarming charm. He blocked, sent a leg-locker jinx toward Jacob, and then turned on Marie. The loud one shouted something silently. He waved his wand violently, breaking the silencing charm, then tried again. "No one has to get hurt!" He shot off disarming spells at his opponents and hopped for the best- which wasn't much; he hadn't aimed carefully. "We just want-" But whatever he wanted was cut off by Natalie Beckett breaking through her own silencing charm by sheer force of will and crying out. "MUMMY!" |
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| PJ Beckett | May 21 2012, 10:02:38 PM Post #7 |
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PJ had no idea who she had hit with what. There wasn’t time to see who was down. Who was up demanded her attention. She was surprisingly quick. Dodging, ducking, spinning, firing. She saw Jacob fall out of the corner of her eye. It had to have been a leg lock, because his top half was still sending curses into the air. She heard Natalie’s screaming, too, but she didn’t have time to find her or look at for Marie. PJ wasn’t hard to pick out, and a combination of her bright robes, the fact that she was pregnant, and the hexes she had sent flying had drawn quite a bit of attention to her. She had her hands full. Most of the strangers stepped far around Jacob, who was still firing curses blindly from his back. Finally someone took the time to disarm him, as was evident by the switch from curses to sheer profanity and insults. PJ hit the loud one with yet another silencing charm, just because it seemed to have pissed him off the first time. She kept up with the binding curses, because they were effective but not that dangerous if she hit a kid. She took out two more before the green-eyed man with the wand came up in front of her. She blocked a curse, dodged another and sent two hurtling at him in rapid succession. Unfortunately, he seemed to have given up blinking. A stunning spell hurtled at her, she spun, and then she returned the favor with her own spell. He dodged it, but as he spun, she caught him in that back with another. |
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| Trent Beckett | May 21 2012, 11:44:58 PM Post #8 |
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Marie couldn't help it. She instinctively turned towards her daughter's cry. She saw her stupidly brave little girl start running straight for her. "Natalie, no!" Marie screamed. "Stay where you are!" she felt a jinx wiz just past her shoulder. She fired leg-locker curse at The Stranger closest to Natalie, then turned her attention back toward her assailant. Playground balls were flying everywhere, whirlwinds of playground sand were forming into formidable tornadoes and two things were becoming very clear: first, that many of the Strangers did not have wands, and second, that 60 underage witches and wizards scared out of their minds could do things with magic they never dreamed. Then the monkey bars came to life and started to give chase. Marie fired curse after curse. Leg-locker, Impedimenta, tripping jinx, disarming charm- anything that would stop her assailant but not do too much harm if she missed. But he was quick to dodge and shield. Well, so was she. She'd have to give him something he couldn't dodge. She took control of one of the sand tornadoes and sent it right at him. Her daughter screamed. Marie whipped around just in time to see a Stranger clap his hand over Natalie's mouth, silencing her scream, as she kicked at him; already held tight in his grasp. Her wand pointed at him dangerously. "Let her go!" Playground balls bounced almost harmlessly off his head and back- more of an annoyance than anything else. The Loud One broke the silencing charm on himself once more. "We're not here for-" "You don't get to decide that!" The man holding Natalie interrupted. A sand tornado tried to meet The Loud One head on- he dissolved it with an effortless flick of his wand. Marie took a cautious step forward and addressed the man that held her daughter captive. "What are you here for? Hostages? Take me instead." Marie had not been there at the beginning, when they had made their play clear. "We do NOT-" The Loud One started, but was cut off again. "Shut up!" the Hostage taker yelled. Someone must have agreed with him, because the Loud One's mouth opened again, but no sound came out. Another silencing charm. The man who had succumbed to Marie's re-directed sand tornado was now barred down on top of the monkey bars, along with two other Strangers. Another Stranger had taken a hold of Jacob who now looked to be stupified. "Okay," the Hostage Taker agreed with Marie's proposal. "You for the girl." The Loud One clearly did not like this, but he had other priorities at the moment. His left hand man was being held captive by monkey bars and his right hand man hand just fallen prey to a pregnant school teacher's curse. He turned on her instead. She was who he really wanted. |
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| PJ Beckett | May 22 2012, 01:20:52 PM Post #9 |
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PJ’s eyes settled on the Loud One, who had apparently decided that he was going to have to do this himself. Far too many of his assailants were unconscious or bound or tangled up in monkey bars. PJ grinned and then wiggled her eyebrows at him. It was the same look that she gave Colin when she wanted him to follow her to their bedroom. The intention was different, but the message was the same: Come get me. He sent a stupefying curse at her, but she blocked it. Then she blocked a full body bind and a leg lock. She gave him an over-exaggerated yawn. She wanted him angry, unsettled. It was quite obvious that he was the leader, and probably more level-headed and capable than the rest. His face did turn a little red with anger, and she flicked away an incarcerous charm and another body bind, finally retaliating. She had hoped to catch him off guard, but while he did hesitate, he didn’t hesitate that much. He sent two stupefying hexes at her in rapid succession, both of which she dodged, and it was on. Multiple spells were flying in both directions now. PJ wasn’t even taking time to shield. She was zigging and zagging and spinning and making every spell offensive. The loud one wasn’t quite as quick as she was, and he did have to shield, which bought her some time. Still, it seemed as though it would come down to sheer luck. Who would get hit first by the numerous jinxes flying through the air? PJ wasn’t even sure that it wouldn’t be her own that took her down. That’s when PJ decided to take a lesson from her students. They had already set the jump ropes to writhing like snakes, and she sent them after the man hissing and snapping. He incinerated them easily, but they distracted him long enough for PJ to send two picnic tables charging after him, bucking like bulls. He obliterated them both, but not before the first one had struck him. His was bleeding, but not down, and furious. “Nobody has to get hurt,” she mimicked, sending two more jinxes at him. The hexes started flying again. She sent a rather nasty one at him before she remembered where they were. Fortunately, it hit nothing but dirt. PJ didn’t see the aurors starting to appear just off the playground, trying to assess the chaotic situation. She sent incarcerous after incarcerous at the Loud One, while his own spells got progressively more unfriendly. She was starting to think that the battle would go on forever, when finally, the man failed to block a jinx and fell to the ground bound in ropes. PJ panted, out of breath, and started to look for a way of escape. She felt a hand on her left arm, grabbing her from behind, pulling her backward. It was one of the strangers who was supposed to be holding the perimeter. He’d missed most of the action. She managed to stay on her feet, despite her balance being off already, though it did little good. “Fiesty little thing,” he commented as he twisted her arm behind her back, causing the wand to fall from her fingers involuntarily. “Aunt PJ!” PJ heard the hysterical screaming, but there was nothing she could do. Madeline Dinwiddie had just drawn far too much attention to herself. She felt someone grab her own little arm and pull her back, hard. It hurt quite a bit. A shock that felt like electricity ran through it to the man, but he didn’t let go. He fell backward, pulling her with him. She landed on top of him, knocking the wind out of him, but he still didn’t let go. PJ had continued her own conversation through their scene. “Well that’s not fair at all,” PJ complained, trying to ignore the pain. “Why don’t you come around and play?” “I GOTTER PEEJ,” Kevin Homilton yelled to PJ, trying to brush curly hair out of his face. It was an all-too-familiar feeling. That sentence scared Maddy even more, though. She started fighting harder, kicking, but he had both arms tight around her now. He sat up, Maddy in his lap, though she continued to struggle against him. Thankfully, he was quite a bit stronger than she was. He’d been shocked, knocked on his butt, and he was going to be black and blue. He was probably going to be in quite a bit of trouble, too, because this wasn’t what he was supposed to be doing. He just hadn’t been able to help himself. He’d instinctively reached out to stop her, and he wasn’t going to let go now. He wasn’t letting her go. Not with PJ, his childhood friend, his first girlfriend, his best friend in adulthood, about to be kidnapped. Knowing that she loved him didn’t help, either. There was nothing he could do about her being taken. The only comfort he could give her was that he had her niece, and damn it, he was going to take care of that little girl whether she wanted him to or not. He wished she’d stop kicking, though. A weak, and brief, smile presented itself and Kevin caught it through Maddy’s hair. He knew PJ had heard him. In response to PJ’s question, the man she didn’t know twisted her arm harder. Her vision swam and turned green. She suddenly felt very sick. “Maybe later,” he told her, and then they were gone. Edited by PJ Beckett, May 22 2012, 02:21:06 PM.
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| Trent Beckett | May 23 2012, 06:21:47 AM Post #10 |
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"Alright, then let her go," Marie told the Hostage Taker. She realized he was unlikely to comply while she was still pointing her wand straight at him, but it didn't hurt to try. As if on cue, "Drop the wand." "I drop the wand, you let her go- Natalie, you run straight home and stay there! Wait inside for daddy if he's not there." Natalie stopped kicking, shocked at her mother's words. She was not allowed to walk home by herself and she had definitely never been home alone. "I'm not letting her go until you're secured." The Hostage Taker took a step back as if to prove his point. Natalie started kicking again. "I won't let you take me until she's out of your hands," Marie countered, stepping forward. "Unarmed, I'm as good as caught." Suddenly, Marie was not the only outside help. More people were appearing just outside the playground. Unfortunately for her, it was all happening behind her and she was completely unaware. The Hostage Taker saw them and knew he would not have the upper hand in this situation for much longer. If he wanted her at all, he had to agree. "Have it your way," he started to set Natalie on the ground as a sign of good faith. Marie opened her hand and let her wand drop to the ground. The Hostage Taker released his grip on the child and she took off in a run, right towards her mother, screaming "MUMMY!" as she ran. "Natalie, no!" Someone grabbed Marie from behind, and for once in her life she did not fight back. "Run home, sweetheart! Mummy loves you. Be a good girl- do as I say." Natalie stopped running, confused, as tears ran down her face. "I don't want to go without you, Mummy," she said, her bottom lip trembling. Marie heard Kevin shout. So help had come. "Be brave," she told her daughter, giving her an encouraging smile. She saw out of the corner of her eye that they had PJ, too. And the other teacher. Her captor twisted her arm. "That's enough," he hissed. But Marie barely heard him, because out of the cacophony she heard her husband's voice as clearly as if he were standing next to her. "YOU LET HER GO!" She was jerked around and now saw him clearly charging toward her, brandishing his wand. She shook her head desperately and Trent shook his head back. And in doing so caught sight of his daughter for the first time. He nearly stumbled. He looked back to his wife one last time, nodding in understanding. "I lov-" she had started to say; but she was gone. They all were. The Strangers had left the playground and only the children and aurors remained. And Trent. And he did not stop running. Natalie cried out in anguish, and her voice was joined my the cries of dozens of other children as the massive silencing charm finally broke under the stress. Trent dropped to his knees in front of his daughter and wrapped her in tightly in his arms. Natalie gripped his shirt and cried against his chest. "My brave girl," he kissed the top of her head. "I've got you," he choked out. "Daddy's here." Natalie released his shirt and wrapped her arms around his neck. "Mummy's gone!" she sobbed into his neck. He felt like she sounded. He would have loved to just break down sobbing with her, but he couldn't. "That's why we have to be brave." All around them, the chaos was starting to settle down. Order was returning at the hands of the aurors, the recently-blasted-a-hole-through-the-wall Headmistress, and the second form teacher who climbed through the wall after her. They hadn't secured the perimeter yet, as stopping runaway picnic tables and monkey bars from accidentally trampling youngsters took precedence. As such, three more people managed to make it onto the grounds before they sealed it off completely: two parents who worked for the Ministry and overheard by chance, and Colin Beckett. |
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| Colin Beckett | May 23 2012, 06:22:14 AM Post #11 |
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Colin couldn't find the person he was looking for, but in his search he found the next closest thing. Dinwiddie hair was unmistakable. Maddy was struggling against Kevin Homliton's arms. That didn't make any sense. Well, okay, she didn't know Kevin, so her struggling made quite a lot of sense. But why Kevin had her didn't make sense. Where was PJ? He'd caught sight of Trent; that didn't make sense, either. How had he known so quick? The clues should have been adding up in Colin's head, but the plain truth was that he didn't want them to. He knew what happened here. He knew and he was going to put himself in denial about it because he was the only person that would be coming for that head of Dinwiddie hair today. Her muggle parents couldn't get there on their own if they tried. And PJ... he knew better than to call attention to himself by calling her name. He knew it was futile. But he wasn't letting this happen to him right now. Maybe it hadn't. Maybe PJ was still inside even though all her students weren't. Maybe things hadn't gone terribly wrong in the worst way. "Let her go, Kev!" Colin shouted above the noise as best he could as he ran towards Kevin and Maddy. "You're terrifying her!" There might have been a good reason why Kevin was holding his six year old niece captive, but Colin didn't care. He caught up to them and crouched down beside them, arms open to the little girl. "You don't have to fight anymore, Maddy; you're safe now." |
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| PJ Beckett | May 23 2012, 02:40:01 PM Post #12 |
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Kevin probably should have let go of Maddy the second that the intruders disappeared, but instead he continued his desperate effort to calm her down. “Shhh. You’re alright, Maddy,” he knew her name, because she had literally been all that PJ had talked about for months after she was born. He had been bombarded with pictures for years. It had been annoying, then, but he more than understood the compulsion. He was way worse with Ruby than PJ had been with her niece. “Listen, I’m a friend of aunt PJ’s. You’re alright. I won’t hurt you. I have a little girl, too. She’s seven, almost eight months old. You’re just fine-” He looked up to see who was yelling at him. Merlin, it had to be Colin, didn’t it? He was reluctant to let Maddy go. To be blunt, he doubted Colin’s mental state, or at the very least what it would be when he found out. Did he know yet? He hoped so. He did not want to be the one to explain it. Colin seemed much too alright, though. Maddy had looked up to see who was shouting at them when her captor did. She had never been so happy to see Colin in her entire life. She thought it was strange that someone wasn’t family one day and was the next. However, when he crouched down for her, she suddenly squealed “Uncle Colin,” and threw herself forward. Kevin did let go, then. It would have been cruel not to. Maddy launched herself at her uncle and threw her arms around his neck. He took the opportunity to stand up and dust himself off a bit. There was a good chance that he was actually going to be sore in the morning, beaten up by a 6-year-old girl. At least it was a Dinwiddie girl. They were all part wolverine or something. He couldn’t quite decide what to say. "I wasn't trying to hurt you," he told Maddy instead. |
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| Colin Beckett | May 23 2012, 04:32:30 PM Post #13 |
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"Niece Maddy," Colin responded automatically as he wrapped his arms around Maddy and picked her up, standing only because Kevin had. He held Maddy close and leaned his cheek against her hair. That hair was going to undo him. He squeezed his eyes shut against his thoughts. Colin opened his eyes and looked back over at Kevin when he spoke. "Don't talk to her right now. She's frightened to death of aurors as it is," he bit out at him. It was his default reaction to suppressing all his other emotions: anger. "If a strange man grabbed your daughter, wouldn't you want her to fight him off with all her strength?" Colin aksed rhetorically. "You did the right thing, Maddy," he assured her as he ran a hand over her hair. "If a stranger grabs you, you fight back. Use your magic. Don't give up." He looked back at Kevin. "Bad people will lie to you about everything." His voice took on a dangerous tone. "Tell me you didn't know this was coming. Tell me you had no idea. And don't lie. Not today." He took a shaky breath. "I have given you so much." He wanted to shout it at him, but knew he couldn't. He'd already stayed too long- someone else was bound to notice soon him and then they'd try to arrest him and he just did not have the time for that right now. He had told Kevin the main points in every major plan, everything ever, and he had only asked for one thing in return. One thing. |
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| PJ Beckett | May 23 2012, 06:30:00 PM Post #14 |
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Kevin was taken aback by how very angry Colin was with him for trying to help Maddy. He hadn’t hurt her or scolded her or anything, not once, and Colin was acting like he’d hit her with a cruciatus curse. He’d expected him to be a little unhinged, though. Then he called him a liar, or at least implied it to his niece. He knew that it had been meant for his ears, not the little girl’s. His ears turned red and his fists clenched. Everyone thought that he was a liar these days. Briar did. Work did. Colin did. He had extra motivation not to hit him, though. A six-year-old girl’s head was between his hand and Colin’s face. Once Colin had her, Maddy had finally calmed down enough to cry. It was all she was doing. She held onto his neck and buried her face in his shoulder and cried. She didn’t understand why. She didn’t know what they’d do with her. All she knew was that very bad people had taken her Aunt PJ away, and that was bad. She wondered, if the redheaded man was a bad guy and a liar, why he hadn’t disappeared with the others. She didn’t ask, though. She just held on tighter. Kevin threw his hands up in frustration. “You won’t trust that I’d protect her, and work won’t trust that I wouldn't.” He clenched his fists again and took a deep breath. He reminded himself that Colin had just lost his wife and his child in a kidnapping, and he spoke as calmly as he could. “I don’t think that anyone knew. They wouldn’t have let it happen here,” he told him honestly. They might not have prevented anyone from taking PJ, but they wouldn’t have put 120 young witches and wizards in danger. Children were already being rounded up and checked for injuries. The healers from spell damage would be arriving shortly. Relatively few of them were injured, none too badly, and most of those injuries were from the children’s magic. It was amazing, really. “By the time we got here-,” he shook his head. He didn’t want to recount this yet, especially not to Colin. |
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| Colin Beckett | May 23 2012, 09:03:50 PM Post #15 |
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Now Colin really didn't trust him. He didn't say 'I did the best I could' or anything to imply that he'd actually done anything at all to protect her. He just lamented that nobody trusted him. Not what he wanted to hear. He believed the next thing Kevin said, though. He believed The Ministry would have let 'it' happen if they'd known, but never here. Nobody does that to their own children. Right? "Save your excuses," Colin replied to the last thing he'd said through clenched teeth. He couldn't talk about 'it' right now. His vision started to blur with tears. 'It'. Kevin couldn't even say it. He started to walk away, murmuring to Maddy that she didn't have to be scared anymore and that they were leaving. But he stopped. He couldn't leave. He had to know; he had to know now or he would fall apart. He turned back toward Kevin. "Did you watch it happen?" And now the tears were streaming down his face. "Did she..." he couldn't find the right way to phrase it. 'Could you tell if my wife was still was alive? Because that information is vital to my continued sanity. Also, if I lose her, I lose my unborn son. Thanks much.' He shook his head, willing those thought to leave, and found the right words then. "I need to know that she was fine when they took her," he choked out. |
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| PJ Beckett | May 23 2012, 11:04:28 PM Post #16 |
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*Laney; s:c | w:d
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“I missed the fighting,” Kevin admitted. He couldn’t tell Colin what spells she’d been hit with, or if she’d been hit at all. He didn’t know if she’d tripped and fell. He didn’t know anything. “When I found PJ, he was grabbing her. She ran for her,” he nodded at Maddy, “So I caught her. After I recovered, there was only a second before they were gone.” He shook his head. His own chest was tightening, remembering the look she had given him. He ran a hand through his hair. “She didn’t seem hurt,” he said. Saying she was fine would have been an overstatement. Then he remembered the way the man was holding her. Arms could be broken like that. Kevin knew how to do it. He wasn’t going to worry Colin with it, though, if he didn’t know. Kevin’s recount sent Maddy’s mind to replaying it. Her fingernails dug into her uncle’s shirt. “You should take her wand home. For when she comes back,” the little girl choked out between sobs, remembering seeing it fall. Kevin summoned it from the grass and held the handle end out to them. Ash. 11 ½ inches. Dragon heart string. He’d been at the wrong end of it more than once. |
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| Colin Beckett | May 25 2012, 04:29:02 AM Post #17 |
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*Kara; s:t | w:d
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Colin didn't respond to Kevin's news. He looked away from the other man and stared across to the edge of the schoolyard, tears streaming down his face. 'She didn't seem hurt' was probably the most optimistic version he'd ever get. He turned to start walking away again, but Maddy spoke before he could take a step. Colin thought for sure they would have taken it with them. He didn't even think to look. "That's very thoughtful, Maddy," he told her, his voice quiet and strained. Colin turned back around to find Kevin holding PJ's wand out to him. He was going to be sick. He couldn't move. He took a deep breath, swallowed down his bile, shifted Maddy and reached out and took his wife's wand. He didn't want to think about how it felt in his hand, so he clinched his fist tight around it and wrapped his arm back around Maddy, holding her close. "Don't-" he started to say something to Kevin, but either couldn't find the right words or couldn't force himself to say them. He pressed his eyes shut tight for a brief moment, then turned and walked away. |
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12:29 AM Jul 11