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slumberI'm very staunchly a Harry Potter writer, or so I thought until lately, when more and more crossover-y things have been bleeding into my writing. It's difficult to take crossovers seriously, though, so I have decided not to. Thus, cracky crossover fics. :|
Anyway, just posting these here for posterity's sake.
Title: The Attack of the Venusian Cupidae
Summary: In which Mrs Zabini's multiple husbands are explained, and Blaise Zabini copes with being a wizarding timelord.
Characters/Pairings: Blaise Zabini, Mr and Mrs Zabini
Genre: Crack, Doctor Who Crossover
Rating/Warnings: PG-13
Word Count: 1778
Notes: From this post, mixed in with the![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
hh_sugarquill prompt Cupid. So. This happened.
Blaise was five years old the first time his father died.
The house was quiet and still, the elves busy bustling around doing what they thought they were supposed to do. He stayed in his room and then his mother came in, smiling at him with her rich red lips and kneeling in front of him.
"Do you understand what's just happened, love?" she asked, her long fingers busy tying the bow on his robes.
He nodded. "Yes, mother."
"Good," she said. "Good, my darling." Then she kissed him on the forehead and got to her feet, smoothing out the wrinkles on her long mourning robes before she held out a hand for Blaise to take.
He stayed at his mother's side for all of the ceremony, even when the minister asked his mother to come up to the stage and say a few words about his father. (Blaise followed her to the dais, stayed a little way behind, watched the crowd as they dabbed at their eyes and sniffled into their handkerchiefs.) At one point his mother's voice broke, and the minister apologized, and then Blaise took his mother's hand and led her back down to their seat.
"We are so sorry for your loss," he heard multiple times that day, and in response he stayed quiet, let his mother acknowledge their condolences. She gave him a single rose to throw in after his coffin ("He's always liked roses," she murmured beside him.) and he watched as the rest of them started to bury his father's coffin with dirt and soil, until all that remained was a mound of fresh ground, a tombstone-- (Giovanni Zabini, beloved husband, loving father)-- and fresh flowers to mark the grave.
By the time everyone else had left it was nearly sunset, and Blaise was beginning to feel the itchiness and discomfort that came with wearing the starched formal robes he wore that day. His mother picked him up, kissed his cheek and told him he'd been such a good boy that day, such a patient boy, and Apparated them back to their manor.
"About time you lot returned; I'm starving," a man that didn't look like anyone he'd ever known said. He was sprawled in the sitting room settee, arms dangling round its back and legs propped up on the coffee table. He was fair of skin and his hair was a mess of muddy brown. "What shall we have for dinner?"
"The least you could have done was make it while we were away," his mother said, setting Blaise down and walking over to the man. "Your lips are too thin."
"I've got sideburns!"
"Your nose is too long.."
"I can tell you something else that's too long."
"In front of Blaise, really?"
"Sorry--" the man looked around Blaise's mother, eyes catching Blaise's, and his face turned tender. "Hello, Blaise."
If Blaise had been curious (and he had been, mildly), the way he said those words erased any doubts. "Are you my daddy?"
"Yes, son," his father said. "Yes, I am."
***
His father died two more times before he could even set foot in Hogwarts. The first time there was something called the Daleks running amok, the second it was Cybermen or other. He knew not everyone's father was likely to return after dying, that much at least his mother told him, so he did try very hard to look sorry and sad the next times he's had to attend his father's funerals.
It was easier not to look too sorry, then-- the first funeral he'd been in a foul mood early that day, the second he'd been sleepy after only pretending to fall asleep but really staying up late to play with his Christmas presents-- because at least nobody expected him to be very sad considering they thought it was his stepfathers that had died.
He didn't really understand all of it, not entirely. His parents tried to explain, something about time lords and alternate dimensions and a broken tardis, a honeymoon gone wrong, but at the end of it all he knew was this: his father can die, but he'll come back. He always will.
For Blaise, that's more than enough.
***
By the time Blaise was a teenager, he'd grown slightly more wise to the ways of being some kind of wizarding time lord hybrid. (The wizarding part he'd always been iffy about, as his parents barely ever used wands and when they did, they only waved about little pudgy things that made weird noises and blinked blue lights, pulling it off by some well placed perception filters or other, as they tried to explain to him once. He can somehow use magic-- "a side effect of having been created in this world," he was able to catch from his father's mad rantings at one point-- but his parents, as far as he was concerned, could not.)
In any case he knew there to be a certain bevy of truths that he could always hold dear to his heart. He knew that at any given time his parents would be off fighting to save the world from some threat, different and not to be mistaken from the threats that faced Harry Potter, of course ("mustn't interfere in that one, oh no, it has been written," his mother said). He knew that any of those moments could result in a death, the likes of which could mean him returning to a new father-guised-as-a-stepfather, only half the time he didn't much like (he'd usually get so used to the current form that any new ones irritated or irked him til he realized really, it was still his father underneath all that). He knew that the Aurors would then come to pay his family a visit; sometime in the last few years his mother had turned from perpetual victim to perpetual suspect, but he was only glad that she always remembered her manners and never actually died on him, because that would be awfully difficult to explain to anyone. And he knew that, despite all the bickering his parents did before, during, or after threats, at the end of the day they liked it, and they came home to each other.
"Son, we've got a problem," his father said, popping in one day in the middle of Potions.
"Excuse me," Professor Snape began to bristle, to which his father only nodded his hello and signaled Blaise over.
"Hope you don't mind, important business we've got to discuss-- Blaise, come here please."
"I've-- we're in the middle of--"
"Oh, it's only Potions, I can teach you all of that and then some in under five minutes," his father said, winking at Professor Snape, who had turned an interesting shade of red. "The Beta Gamma Gamma population was well reknowned for it, you know. Spent a year or so in their colony and picked up a thing or two there."
At that point, Blaise could only choose to follow his father, lest he offend his professor further and embarrass Blaise in front of his classmates. "I'm not your son," he said as he walked up to him. He cast a withering look Snape's way. "Sorry, Professor."
Once they were alone, Blaise having dragged his father to a shaded alcove where few would pass by, he made his father tell him the story from beginning to end. It was a difficult task-- usually his father dove into anything and everything head-first and simply figured things out as he went along, but Blaise was a little bit more disciplined than that and twice as stubborn. He'd refuse to do anything until he knew exactly what he was headed into, a fact his father took some time to get used to given the type of companions he'd apparently kept before his mother came along.
"Venusian Cupidae," his father told him. "Your culture has painted them to be naked winged babies with love-struck arrows but the real ones, the ones that come from Venus-- well, they're slightly more lethal than that. They dip their arrows in some kind of aphrodisiac and they feed off the energy produced from the, er--" at this point his father trailed off, perhaps realizing that his son was only just fifteen.
"Father," Blaise said, deciding to take matters into his own hands. "Are you to tell me these cupids fire lust arrows at people and get off from the mad sex that ensues?"
"Ah. Yes. That. Oh, dear. You were perhaps a little too young for that, weren't you? Your mother wouldn't like that, would she?"
Blaise rolled his eyes. Just last summer he'd gotten to second base with Daphne Greengrass; he was quite capable, thankyouverymuch. "Why didn't you bring her along instead, then?" At the look his father gave him, Blaise raised an eyebrow. "What's going on?"
"Your mother," his father hedged. "Um. They might have-- they might have gotten her, actually."
"What?"
***
Here was the problem: technically, his father was not his father yet. Or his stepfather. Between forms he was supposed to allocate some time between for the requisite courting of his mother, a rule that Blaise privately thinks was instituted only because his mother liked the attention (as well as making his father jump through hoops for her). They'd been engaged not too long ago, but again, an engagement was only a promise, and promises are meant to be broken.
"Why isn't she attracted to you?" Blaise demanded. This didn't make sense-- his parents were always, always attached at the hip. Had the Cupidae's shot been fired, the natural first person his mother should have seen was his father.
"Ministry gathering, there was a crowd involved-- the whole Ministry's a mess, to be honest," his father said. "Anyway, I've locked her up in a room away from Fudge--"
"She wants to shag the Minister?" Blaise roared.
"And Fudge wants to shag Umbridge; it's all a huge mess, really," his father explained. "And if they don't consummate within twenty-four hours the Cupidae consume their life force--"
Blaise felt ill. This was a horrible, terrible, convolutedly sick game of Shag-Marry-Cliff. "So what's the plan?"
"The plan?" his father asked, as though he'd never heard the word before.
Blaise groaned. Of bloody course. He grit his teeth, gripped his wand, and prepared to follow his father's lead. It's killed his father a few times before, but maybe in his next form he'll get rid of the bowties. (They weren't cool, no matter how much he claimed they were.)
"Fine," Blaise said. "After you."
His father beamed. "Attaboy, Blaise. Hey, did I ever tell you why your middle name was Alonso?"
Title: Martin Crieff, Ravenclaw
Summary: See title. :| Written for Isa.
Characters/Pairings: Martin Crieff
Genre: Crossover with Cabin Pressure, a radio play that's got Benedict Cumberbatch voicing the character of one Martin Crieff, pilot.
Rating/Warnings: none
Word Count: 2044
i.
He laughed along, but whenever Arthur made a poor joke of the public school he went to, and Douglas chimed in with the esteem his brought him, he could only pretend to be half-interested, sometimes-ashamed of where he went.
"Nottingham," was usually the first answer he came up with whenever conversation would then turn to him, and the question of where he went came up.
"Nottingham... Public School?" Douglas would prod, and he'd nod and mumble yes and try to leave it at that.
Except that one time when Douglas, instead of shrugging off his awkwardness and chalking it up to another scenario of Martin being Martin, raised an eyebrow and asked, pointedly and in that obnoxiously aristocratic way he had: "But last time it was Nottingham Primary, Martin. And the time before that, Nottingham Elementary. So which is it, really?"
And Martin had gotten red, his cheeks burning bright and the nerves that often came to plague him in high-stress situations returning to fluster him so that he could barely get a word in edge-wise whilst Douglas then went on, in brilliant Holmesian deduction style, to all but nail Martin in his lies.
"All right!" he said finally, snapping at Douglas. "It had different names, whatever, I just--"
"I never even saw any school with those names, Martin," Douglas concluded, smirking in his all-smug Douglas way. "Nowhere near--"
"I was homeschooled!" he hissed. "All right? Are you happy?"
And Douglas raised an eyebrow (as if his eyebrow could be raised further, but what can Douglas not do, really?) but he seemed satisfied enough with this answer. "That quite explains a lot," he said in conclusion, and Martin could tell he was already preparing a dozen or so homeschooling-related zingers next time Martin did something moronic, or anything of the sort.
And Martin didn't quite care, because at least maybe homeschooling was a lie he could more easily live with.
It wasn't like Douglas would believe him if he told him either, anyway, and there were statutes to consider.
And then Martin thought--what truth could Douglas not prise out of him, and wouldn't it just be his luck to break that one rule in his life he was supposed to keep, and oh, gods, if Martin didn't start fretting anew.
ii.
He didn't have to make up a lie when he was growing up, because his parents didn't have anybody they needed to lie to then. As one of the oldest families to reside in the primarily wizarding village of Hogsmeade, Mr and Mrs Crieff couldn't stop telling anyone who asked that their son Martin was heading to Hogwarts that year.
"Oh, he's quite excited, you know," Mrs Crieff would tell any patron who dropped by the The Magical Neep, Hogsmeade's greengrocery. "We're taking a trip to London this Saturday, get him his things from Diagon Alley."
"He'll be a Hufflepuff, sure thing," Mr Crieff boasted at The Three Broomsticks, winking at Rosmerta as she topped off his glass with more Firewhiskey. "Long line of badgers, the Crieffs are. We were nearly married to Helga Hufflepuff's line too, at one point, did you know?"
Martin himself had been looking forward to going to school at last, and if most children his age were excited because they'd be going to school the same time Harry Potter was ("I bet he's Prefect this year, he's got to be, he's the best most brilliant student Hogwarts has seen in forever!") he was personally excited for his third year, when he could pick and choose classes as he desired and where, he thought, he could get a hold of the Muggle Studies curriculum earlier.
He had some worries, of course-- he didn't know what was going on with the Lord Who Must Not Be Named lark (his parents talked about that in hushed voices late at night, when they thought Martin couldn't hear) nor was he too knowledgeable about the incidents that had been happening the years prior (he remembered when Sirius Black had gotten loose; it was the most excitement Hogsmeade had seen all his life!) but for the most part, and here he made a list, he was looking forward to being in school, and quite possibly even meeting a couple of Muggleborns and learning more about them, and what they were like, and how they were different from wizards like him.
So while his father insisted a mistake had been made, and his mother forced a smile and pretended she was proud, he really didn't mind when the Sorting Hat placed him in Ravenclaw.
iii.
Martin was five when he first saw an aeroplane. It was during his first trip to Diagon Alley, the first time he'd ever been outside Hogsmeade, and his parents made themselves all sorts of silly as they tried to navigate through the distinctly un-wizardliness of downtown London. (Normally wizards could go through their entire lives not engaging in anything Muggle, but the Floo network was down that day and his parents were feeling uncharacteristically brave about the trip.)
To Martin, though, the entire thing had been an adventure. He peered at the turnstiles with rapt curiosity, insisted on paying his fare with his card himself, and asked his father a hundred and one questions about the so-called cars that rode down the streets.
But the highlight of the day most definitely had been looking up at the sky, just before they got into The Leaky Cauldron, and spotting this thing up there that didn't look at all like a bird but still flew like one.
"Mum, Mum!" he whispered, tugging onto her arm in excitement. "There's-- up there! What's that?"
There was a snort behind him, a muttering of "What, the kid's never seen an aeroplane before?", and his mother pulling him inside The Leaky Cauldron.
"What's an aeroplane?" he asked his father, who wrinkled his nose as he usually did when Martin asked him about something he didn't like explaining.
"It's something Muggles do because they can't fly brooms," he said.
"So it's a flying broom for Muggles?"
"Hardly," a Leaky customer piped up. "It's a large chunk of metal that holds large numbers of people to transfer them from one place to another in a shorter period of time. It's like a flying broom and the Floo Network!"
"Stop feeding my child buffoonery, Arthur," his father said gruffly.
"This your boy, then, Marvin?" the man grinned at Martin. "Arthur Weasley. Pleasure to meet you, young man."
Martin shook his hand. "But how do they make them fly?" he asked. "They don't have magic."
"Exactly," Arthur said, and Martin thought then: wasn't that infinitely more magical?
iv.
The first year of his schooling at Hogwarts was relatively dull, if you take away the fact that his Defense Against the Dark Arts professor was a terribly saccharine woman who thought too fondly of pink and kittens and made you write lines if you stepped out of line. Martin never did, thankfully-- he knew well enough not to ever speak out of turn or anything, that was for sure-- it was his Potions professor that may have been the primary monster in all of his nightmares. But his Charms professor and Head of House was fantastic, thankyouverymuch, and even made Martin feel a lot better for being the smallest boy in his year, because if Professor Flitwick could be a dueling champion, well, Martin Crieff could be anything.
Including, he hoped, a pilot.
Because, as he had rightfully suspected, the Hogwarts library was indeed chock-full of material about Muggle things, most texts of which were written by wizards studying them, but some of which were also written by actual Muggles. He got his hands on as many books as he could, and talked a few of his Muggleborn classmates to get him whatever other books they could get during the holidays.
And he drank it all up, read it all through. For planes to fly, he soon learned, they needed more than just one kind of magic-- science, the Muggles called it. There were all sorts of branches involved: physics and engineering and mathematics and Martin was in a dream, he knew, a proper dream, because he just couldn't get enough and he knew this was what he wanted, this was what he was going to do. He would fly planes for a living.
His father was less than pleased as soon as he heard of this plan, of course. "What about The Magical Neep?" he demanded. "Simon's not going to have time with all his work at the Ministry--"
"Caitlin can have it," he said. "I don't care about The Magical Neep, it's--"
And that may have done it then, in retrospect, because he'd never seen his father quite as purple or as furious, and his mother hastily attempting to calm him down.
"Perhaps you should go to your room, Martin," was all she said, though he could still hear the shouting and the banging from underneath his bed covers, tucked with his favorite book on Amelia Earhart.
v.
Martin Crieff never liked being a wizard. It didn't help that in his third year they took Muggle Studies for some stupid reason, Death Eaters had taken over the school and he couldn't even stay at home anymore because they were all over Hogsmeade as well, and would have come after him if they'd tried to do something. His Muggleborn friends were in hiding, or arrested-- who arrests thirteen-year-olds?-- and once or twice one of the Carrows found him with a book on aeroplanes and subjected him to Crucios for his troubles.
He was glad when he found the Room of Requirement, huddling together in the hammocks with a few of his classmates, quite disappointed when he realized they were still expected to go to classes after all that. Every night he sat witness to another torturing, another cruel and nasty curse sent a student's way, and he tried hard to help where he could but he was only a third year, he didn't know enough about many spells yet or anything of the sort. Those days he couldn't help wishing strongly for the ability to fly away, fly somewhere far, far away.
The years after that nightmare of a term were better, somewhat. Easier to live with. But Martin did less well in school since he returned, and the professors must have thought it was the trauma of the year prior because they let him submit Troll-quality papers with acceptable marks. It was all well and good, he supposed, because as he shied away from his lessons he started reading up on what Muggle textbooks he could get hold of-- there were O-levels and A-levels and he thought; well, toyed with the idea, really, only just, but he thought maybe, just maybe, if he studied really hard he could perhaps qualify to go to flying school.
"You don't need flying school!" his father roared as soon as he heard of Martin's plans. "You can fly anything with a whisk of your bloody ruddy wand, why can't you just--"
And Martin didn't bother hearing the rest, because he knew what was coming. Why couldn't he be a normal wizard, why couldn't he just do what his parents expected him to do, but what's the point of making something fly just with a flick of your wand anyway? It isn't as fun, or as interesting, and it wasn't worth it.
So he studied away anyway, somehow found a way to pay for the qualifications, and he didn't even tell his father when he got accepted to flying school. At the end of seventh year he sat with his Housemates during the Leaving Feast, smiling along and laughing along when they spoke of their plans and where they were going to go next, demurring when he could when they asked him what he planned to do. When the Feast ended he took Hogwarts Express to King's Cross-- the first time he'd ever done it, now that he thought about it-- and armed only with his wand (he had to, if he wasn't going to have much money to go by) and his best book on aeroplanes, he got ready to fly.
Title: Iris Makes Love to a Kiwi
Summary: ....or: shenanigans that happen when Iris and Sas move into a London flat.
Characters/Pairings: Iris, Sas, surprise guests from HP! and other fandoms! Sort of!
Genre: Crack
Beta: I would never subject anyone to this
Rating/Warnings: I BLAME IRIS, SAS, AND ISA.
Word Count: 1575
"Sas," Iris asked, kicking aside the overflowing box and bending over to pick up the brown... green... mossy... thing that she'd noticed was peeking out of the corner.
"Mm?" her new roommate was off in the corner of their brand-spanking new flat, bustling in and out as she was wont to do, humming some song to herself as she did.
"What is this?" Should she even touch it, she wondered now, the slimy sticky gross substance between her fingers. It was a good thing that Iris always wore gloves--well, not always always, just when they were doing dirty work, like gardening and cleaning and moving in and eating food with your hands. It helped to always be clean and sanitary, she thought, and just in case this happened to be some sort of Sas family heirloom, she didn't want to just throw it away without asking. That wouldn't be very roommate-ly, would it? (Her plan was to ask, and then throw it away.)
"Oh, that's the moss!" was Sas' cheerful answer. She came over, examined the green substance from Iris' hands, and took it from her. "Been looking for that all over the place, thanks!"
"What-- but-- you brought it here?" Iris asked, frowning in confusion. "On purpose?"
"Yes, see--" Sas went over to the corner, where she'd set up a small plant in a small box. There was some dirt all around it, the sight of which made Iris twitch a little, and Sas went ahead and added the moss there. "Gives it character, doesn't it?"
'Character', as far as Iris was concerned, was an English word that meant, among other things: appearance, attribute, aspect, caliber, trait, type, ethos, personality. It did not, as far as she knew, mean 'a look of utter mess and dirt that must be cleaned up at once.'
"Sas," she tried again. "I do not think that word means what you think it means."
"What are you talking about?" Sas turned to admire her little corner of plant-and-dirt-and-moss. "It looks perfect!"
Iris was at least glad that this was not some sort of sentimental issue. It was just a taste issue, but she could talk Sas out of it. Later. Maybe. If she tried very hard to look past the corner really fast, she bet she could ignore it too. So she shook her head, wandered to their rooms for a moment. (Maybe she could convince Sas to take her little corner of perfection to her own room, she thought. Since, you know, it's perfect and everything.)
"What happened to the lights?" she asked.
"They're in that box next to you!"
"Box? I meant--" Iris looked up. The lights that were supposed to be on the ceiling were no longer there, and the sleek black modern lamp they'd seen when they first visited the flat to see if it was something they might like to take with them was gone as well. She looked down to her right where a half-open box lay. Kneeling beside it, she took out a string of fairy lights and... more of that string of fairy lights. "These aren't--"
"Ah, you found them!" Sas said, coming into the room with a bright smile. "I was thinking we'd put them up all over the flat-- proper lights are a little too bright for me, don't you think? And these are so much more lovelier!"
"But we need proper lights," Iris tried to say, blinking as Sas went ahead and put everything up. 'Put everything up' being a vague way to describe how she sort of... wrapped the fairy lights all artistically around the room, of course. Iris had seen Sas' flat in Brighton before, had admired the way she'd strung her fairy lights by her bed then. She wasn't quite sure she liked the idea of having those lights everywhere in their new place though...
"Hang on, let's see it on," Sas said, plugging the lights in and drawing the curtains close to dim the room some. In a moment they were awash in soft orange light, and actually, Iris had to admit that made everything look a little bit prettier.
She still thought they maybe needed real lights, though, but just as she was about to mention as much, someone began to knock on their door.
"Are you expecting someone?" Iris asked Sas, who shrugged in response.
"I was about to ask you that," she said. "Maybe it's someone from the building? Or the landlady? Mrs. Hudson seemed the sort to check in on us and all."
"Yeah, she did say she'd probably stop by," Iris said, wondering what their landlady could be up to. She wove her way through the piles of boxes and things that the two of them had, in the madness of moving, placed all over any even surface in the living room. "Coming!" she said, opening the door.
"Morning!" a young man around her age said. He smiled warmly, soft brown eyes like chocolate twinkling as he held out a small pie.
"We're the welcoming committee!" another young man behind him said cheerily. He had a long mess of stringy black hair and smoky grey eyes. "Name's Sirius, this is Remus--"
"I'm James," a third man said. He had a mop of black hair and round glasses.
"Oliver," a fourth added. "Oliver Wood."
"Hello," Iris said, the most she could. They were all drop-dead gorgeous, and there were four of them. From her years studying mathematics, probability, and number theory, her expert opinion told her that she'd just opened her door to very, very good odds.
"Who is it, Iris?" Sas said, coming in from the other room. "Oh, is that pie?"
"Kiwi pie," Remus said. "I was going to get the regular pecan but Sirius--"
"I LOVE KIWI," Iris blurted out. She felt her cheeks flush some, and immediately she wanted to take back her words. "I mean--"
"No, no, it's the texture, right?" Sirius said.
"And the hair, yeah," she said, laughing nervously.
"See, Remus? Told you they'd like it!" Sirius said with a laugh, winking at Iris like they shared some sort of special secret. (They probably did, it was the secret of how awesome kiwi was.)
"Um, this is amazing-- I mean, this is really nice of you, thank you," she said, regaining her senses some now that she knew she wasn't being foolish or anything.
"Oh, no problem," Oliver said (was that a Scottish accent she heard? Yum. I mean. Nice. Yes. Nice.). "It's just it's been a while since we've had anyone new in the building, and we thought, hey, might as well be neighborly and everything, yeah?"
"And you brought pie," Sas said with a happy sigh.
"She loves pie," Iris explained, realizing all of a sudden that they were all the way out in the hall, crowding around her tiny little door, while she and Sas were on the other side, in the wide open space of their new flat (or, well, it would be wide and open soon enough, she thought; for these gentlemen, they would make space too). "Why don't you come in? We've both just moved into the city and it'd be nice to get to know some of our neighbors, yeah?"
"We'd love to!" James said, and Iris stepped back to let them all in.
"I'll go cut the pie," Sas announced, hurrying into the kitchen and leaving Iris with the boys.
"Sorry about the mess," she tried to say, stepping around the boxes and sort of toeing some of them out of the way as she did. "It's just--"
"Hey, no problem, we've moved in places before," Oliver said with a laugh. "We know it can be messy and all."
"Yeah," Iris said. "How long have you been in the building?"
"Oh, a while," Remus said. "Me and Sirius and James, we live together up in third. We've got a fourth roommate but he's off with his girlfriend today."
"Oh, Jane? Is he still going out with her?" Sirius asked.
"Jenna, Sirius, it's Jenna," James told him. "Anyway, yes, he is, and Oliver here's in the one-bedroom down the hall from you."
"Oh, okay," Iris said. "It's good you've become friends with each other then. Sometimes it's hard to meet new people when you move in to new places, you know?"
"Yeah," Oliver said. "I ran into Sirius a few weeks after I just moved in, he invited me out for drinks with his roommates, and the rest is kind of history, really."
Iris smiled. "That's cool. Any other neighbors we should know about?"
"Oh, hm." Remus scrunched his face up in thought. It was quite adorable really. "Mrs Hudson's very nice, you know her already, obviously. She'd prefer quiet, but other than that feel absolutely free to come down and have a cuppa with her, otherwise she'll start poking her nose in when you least want her to."
James laughed. "Yeah, and the blokes in 221B, well, best keep out of their way," he added.
"How come?"
"One of them's friendly, but the other's pretty much a prick," Sirius said. "Just stay out of their path and you'll be fine."
"Okay," Iris said, listening to the rest of the gossip about all of their new neighbors. London, she had to admit, was looking mighty promising.
"Alright," Sas announced, coming back out from the kitchen with a few paper plates and utensils. "Who wants pie?"
Anyway, just posting these here for posterity's sake.
Title: The Attack of the Venusian Cupidae
Summary: In which Mrs Zabini's multiple husbands are explained, and Blaise Zabini copes with being a wizarding timelord.
Characters/Pairings: Blaise Zabini, Mr and Mrs Zabini
Genre: Crack, Doctor Who Crossover
Rating/Warnings: PG-13
Word Count: 1778
Notes: From this post, mixed in with the
hh_sugarquill prompt Cupid. So. This happened.Blaise was five years old the first time his father died.
The house was quiet and still, the elves busy bustling around doing what they thought they were supposed to do. He stayed in his room and then his mother came in, smiling at him with her rich red lips and kneeling in front of him.
"Do you understand what's just happened, love?" she asked, her long fingers busy tying the bow on his robes.
He nodded. "Yes, mother."
"Good," she said. "Good, my darling." Then she kissed him on the forehead and got to her feet, smoothing out the wrinkles on her long mourning robes before she held out a hand for Blaise to take.
He stayed at his mother's side for all of the ceremony, even when the minister asked his mother to come up to the stage and say a few words about his father. (Blaise followed her to the dais, stayed a little way behind, watched the crowd as they dabbed at their eyes and sniffled into their handkerchiefs.) At one point his mother's voice broke, and the minister apologized, and then Blaise took his mother's hand and led her back down to their seat.
"We are so sorry for your loss," he heard multiple times that day, and in response he stayed quiet, let his mother acknowledge their condolences. She gave him a single rose to throw in after his coffin ("He's always liked roses," she murmured beside him.) and he watched as the rest of them started to bury his father's coffin with dirt and soil, until all that remained was a mound of fresh ground, a tombstone-- (Giovanni Zabini, beloved husband, loving father)-- and fresh flowers to mark the grave.
By the time everyone else had left it was nearly sunset, and Blaise was beginning to feel the itchiness and discomfort that came with wearing the starched formal robes he wore that day. His mother picked him up, kissed his cheek and told him he'd been such a good boy that day, such a patient boy, and Apparated them back to their manor.
"About time you lot returned; I'm starving," a man that didn't look like anyone he'd ever known said. He was sprawled in the sitting room settee, arms dangling round its back and legs propped up on the coffee table. He was fair of skin and his hair was a mess of muddy brown. "What shall we have for dinner?"
"The least you could have done was make it while we were away," his mother said, setting Blaise down and walking over to the man. "Your lips are too thin."
"I've got sideburns!"
"Your nose is too long.."
"I can tell you something else that's too long."
"In front of Blaise, really?"
"Sorry--" the man looked around Blaise's mother, eyes catching Blaise's, and his face turned tender. "Hello, Blaise."
If Blaise had been curious (and he had been, mildly), the way he said those words erased any doubts. "Are you my daddy?"
"Yes, son," his father said. "Yes, I am."
His father died two more times before he could even set foot in Hogwarts. The first time there was something called the Daleks running amok, the second it was Cybermen or other. He knew not everyone's father was likely to return after dying, that much at least his mother told him, so he did try very hard to look sorry and sad the next times he's had to attend his father's funerals.
It was easier not to look too sorry, then-- the first funeral he'd been in a foul mood early that day, the second he'd been sleepy after only pretending to fall asleep but really staying up late to play with his Christmas presents-- because at least nobody expected him to be very sad considering they thought it was his stepfathers that had died.
He didn't really understand all of it, not entirely. His parents tried to explain, something about time lords and alternate dimensions and a broken tardis, a honeymoon gone wrong, but at the end of it all he knew was this: his father can die, but he'll come back. He always will.
For Blaise, that's more than enough.
By the time Blaise was a teenager, he'd grown slightly more wise to the ways of being some kind of wizarding time lord hybrid. (The wizarding part he'd always been iffy about, as his parents barely ever used wands and when they did, they only waved about little pudgy things that made weird noises and blinked blue lights, pulling it off by some well placed perception filters or other, as they tried to explain to him once. He can somehow use magic-- "a side effect of having been created in this world," he was able to catch from his father's mad rantings at one point-- but his parents, as far as he was concerned, could not.)
In any case he knew there to be a certain bevy of truths that he could always hold dear to his heart. He knew that at any given time his parents would be off fighting to save the world from some threat, different and not to be mistaken from the threats that faced Harry Potter, of course ("mustn't interfere in that one, oh no, it has been written," his mother said). He knew that any of those moments could result in a death, the likes of which could mean him returning to a new father-guised-as-a-stepfather, only half the time he didn't much like (he'd usually get so used to the current form that any new ones irritated or irked him til he realized really, it was still his father underneath all that). He knew that the Aurors would then come to pay his family a visit; sometime in the last few years his mother had turned from perpetual victim to perpetual suspect, but he was only glad that she always remembered her manners and never actually died on him, because that would be awfully difficult to explain to anyone. And he knew that, despite all the bickering his parents did before, during, or after threats, at the end of the day they liked it, and they came home to each other.
"Son, we've got a problem," his father said, popping in one day in the middle of Potions.
"Excuse me," Professor Snape began to bristle, to which his father only nodded his hello and signaled Blaise over.
"Hope you don't mind, important business we've got to discuss-- Blaise, come here please."
"I've-- we're in the middle of--"
"Oh, it's only Potions, I can teach you all of that and then some in under five minutes," his father said, winking at Professor Snape, who had turned an interesting shade of red. "The Beta Gamma Gamma population was well reknowned for it, you know. Spent a year or so in their colony and picked up a thing or two there."
At that point, Blaise could only choose to follow his father, lest he offend his professor further and embarrass Blaise in front of his classmates. "I'm not your son," he said as he walked up to him. He cast a withering look Snape's way. "Sorry, Professor."
Once they were alone, Blaise having dragged his father to a shaded alcove where few would pass by, he made his father tell him the story from beginning to end. It was a difficult task-- usually his father dove into anything and everything head-first and simply figured things out as he went along, but Blaise was a little bit more disciplined than that and twice as stubborn. He'd refuse to do anything until he knew exactly what he was headed into, a fact his father took some time to get used to given the type of companions he'd apparently kept before his mother came along.
"Venusian Cupidae," his father told him. "Your culture has painted them to be naked winged babies with love-struck arrows but the real ones, the ones that come from Venus-- well, they're slightly more lethal than that. They dip their arrows in some kind of aphrodisiac and they feed off the energy produced from the, er--" at this point his father trailed off, perhaps realizing that his son was only just fifteen.
"Father," Blaise said, deciding to take matters into his own hands. "Are you to tell me these cupids fire lust arrows at people and get off from the mad sex that ensues?"
"Ah. Yes. That. Oh, dear. You were perhaps a little too young for that, weren't you? Your mother wouldn't like that, would she?"
Blaise rolled his eyes. Just last summer he'd gotten to second base with Daphne Greengrass; he was quite capable, thankyouverymuch. "Why didn't you bring her along instead, then?" At the look his father gave him, Blaise raised an eyebrow. "What's going on?"
"Your mother," his father hedged. "Um. They might have-- they might have gotten her, actually."
"What?"
Here was the problem: technically, his father was not his father yet. Or his stepfather. Between forms he was supposed to allocate some time between for the requisite courting of his mother, a rule that Blaise privately thinks was instituted only because his mother liked the attention (as well as making his father jump through hoops for her). They'd been engaged not too long ago, but again, an engagement was only a promise, and promises are meant to be broken.
"Why isn't she attracted to you?" Blaise demanded. This didn't make sense-- his parents were always, always attached at the hip. Had the Cupidae's shot been fired, the natural first person his mother should have seen was his father.
"Ministry gathering, there was a crowd involved-- the whole Ministry's a mess, to be honest," his father said. "Anyway, I've locked her up in a room away from Fudge--"
"She wants to shag the Minister?" Blaise roared.
"And Fudge wants to shag Umbridge; it's all a huge mess, really," his father explained. "And if they don't consummate within twenty-four hours the Cupidae consume their life force--"
Blaise felt ill. This was a horrible, terrible, convolutedly sick game of Shag-Marry-Cliff. "So what's the plan?"
"The plan?" his father asked, as though he'd never heard the word before.
Blaise groaned. Of bloody course. He grit his teeth, gripped his wand, and prepared to follow his father's lead. It's killed his father a few times before, but maybe in his next form he'll get rid of the bowties. (They weren't cool, no matter how much he claimed they were.)
"Fine," Blaise said. "After you."
His father beamed. "Attaboy, Blaise. Hey, did I ever tell you why your middle name was Alonso?"
Title: Martin Crieff, Ravenclaw
Summary: See title. :| Written for Isa.
Characters/Pairings: Martin Crieff
Genre: Crossover with Cabin Pressure, a radio play that's got Benedict Cumberbatch voicing the character of one Martin Crieff, pilot.
Rating/Warnings: none
Word Count: 2044
i.
He laughed along, but whenever Arthur made a poor joke of the public school he went to, and Douglas chimed in with the esteem his brought him, he could only pretend to be half-interested, sometimes-ashamed of where he went.
"Nottingham," was usually the first answer he came up with whenever conversation would then turn to him, and the question of where he went came up.
"Nottingham... Public School?" Douglas would prod, and he'd nod and mumble yes and try to leave it at that.
Except that one time when Douglas, instead of shrugging off his awkwardness and chalking it up to another scenario of Martin being Martin, raised an eyebrow and asked, pointedly and in that obnoxiously aristocratic way he had: "But last time it was Nottingham Primary, Martin. And the time before that, Nottingham Elementary. So which is it, really?"
And Martin had gotten red, his cheeks burning bright and the nerves that often came to plague him in high-stress situations returning to fluster him so that he could barely get a word in edge-wise whilst Douglas then went on, in brilliant Holmesian deduction style, to all but nail Martin in his lies.
"All right!" he said finally, snapping at Douglas. "It had different names, whatever, I just--"
"I never even saw any school with those names, Martin," Douglas concluded, smirking in his all-smug Douglas way. "Nowhere near--"
"I was homeschooled!" he hissed. "All right? Are you happy?"
And Douglas raised an eyebrow (as if his eyebrow could be raised further, but what can Douglas not do, really?) but he seemed satisfied enough with this answer. "That quite explains a lot," he said in conclusion, and Martin could tell he was already preparing a dozen or so homeschooling-related zingers next time Martin did something moronic, or anything of the sort.
And Martin didn't quite care, because at least maybe homeschooling was a lie he could more easily live with.
It wasn't like Douglas would believe him if he told him either, anyway, and there were statutes to consider.
And then Martin thought--what truth could Douglas not prise out of him, and wouldn't it just be his luck to break that one rule in his life he was supposed to keep, and oh, gods, if Martin didn't start fretting anew.
ii.
He didn't have to make up a lie when he was growing up, because his parents didn't have anybody they needed to lie to then. As one of the oldest families to reside in the primarily wizarding village of Hogsmeade, Mr and Mrs Crieff couldn't stop telling anyone who asked that their son Martin was heading to Hogwarts that year.
"Oh, he's quite excited, you know," Mrs Crieff would tell any patron who dropped by the The Magical Neep, Hogsmeade's greengrocery. "We're taking a trip to London this Saturday, get him his things from Diagon Alley."
"He'll be a Hufflepuff, sure thing," Mr Crieff boasted at The Three Broomsticks, winking at Rosmerta as she topped off his glass with more Firewhiskey. "Long line of badgers, the Crieffs are. We were nearly married to Helga Hufflepuff's line too, at one point, did you know?"
Martin himself had been looking forward to going to school at last, and if most children his age were excited because they'd be going to school the same time Harry Potter was ("I bet he's Prefect this year, he's got to be, he's the best most brilliant student Hogwarts has seen in forever!") he was personally excited for his third year, when he could pick and choose classes as he desired and where, he thought, he could get a hold of the Muggle Studies curriculum earlier.
He had some worries, of course-- he didn't know what was going on with the Lord Who Must Not Be Named lark (his parents talked about that in hushed voices late at night, when they thought Martin couldn't hear) nor was he too knowledgeable about the incidents that had been happening the years prior (he remembered when Sirius Black had gotten loose; it was the most excitement Hogsmeade had seen all his life!) but for the most part, and here he made a list, he was looking forward to being in school, and quite possibly even meeting a couple of Muggleborns and learning more about them, and what they were like, and how they were different from wizards like him.
So while his father insisted a mistake had been made, and his mother forced a smile and pretended she was proud, he really didn't mind when the Sorting Hat placed him in Ravenclaw.
iii.
Martin was five when he first saw an aeroplane. It was during his first trip to Diagon Alley, the first time he'd ever been outside Hogsmeade, and his parents made themselves all sorts of silly as they tried to navigate through the distinctly un-wizardliness of downtown London. (Normally wizards could go through their entire lives not engaging in anything Muggle, but the Floo network was down that day and his parents were feeling uncharacteristically brave about the trip.)
To Martin, though, the entire thing had been an adventure. He peered at the turnstiles with rapt curiosity, insisted on paying his fare with his card himself, and asked his father a hundred and one questions about the so-called cars that rode down the streets.
But the highlight of the day most definitely had been looking up at the sky, just before they got into The Leaky Cauldron, and spotting this thing up there that didn't look at all like a bird but still flew like one.
"Mum, Mum!" he whispered, tugging onto her arm in excitement. "There's-- up there! What's that?"
There was a snort behind him, a muttering of "What, the kid's never seen an aeroplane before?", and his mother pulling him inside The Leaky Cauldron.
"What's an aeroplane?" he asked his father, who wrinkled his nose as he usually did when Martin asked him about something he didn't like explaining.
"It's something Muggles do because they can't fly brooms," he said.
"So it's a flying broom for Muggles?"
"Hardly," a Leaky customer piped up. "It's a large chunk of metal that holds large numbers of people to transfer them from one place to another in a shorter period of time. It's like a flying broom and the Floo Network!"
"Stop feeding my child buffoonery, Arthur," his father said gruffly.
"This your boy, then, Marvin?" the man grinned at Martin. "Arthur Weasley. Pleasure to meet you, young man."
Martin shook his hand. "But how do they make them fly?" he asked. "They don't have magic."
"Exactly," Arthur said, and Martin thought then: wasn't that infinitely more magical?
iv.
The first year of his schooling at Hogwarts was relatively dull, if you take away the fact that his Defense Against the Dark Arts professor was a terribly saccharine woman who thought too fondly of pink and kittens and made you write lines if you stepped out of line. Martin never did, thankfully-- he knew well enough not to ever speak out of turn or anything, that was for sure-- it was his Potions professor that may have been the primary monster in all of his nightmares. But his Charms professor and Head of House was fantastic, thankyouverymuch, and even made Martin feel a lot better for being the smallest boy in his year, because if Professor Flitwick could be a dueling champion, well, Martin Crieff could be anything.
Including, he hoped, a pilot.
Because, as he had rightfully suspected, the Hogwarts library was indeed chock-full of material about Muggle things, most texts of which were written by wizards studying them, but some of which were also written by actual Muggles. He got his hands on as many books as he could, and talked a few of his Muggleborn classmates to get him whatever other books they could get during the holidays.
And he drank it all up, read it all through. For planes to fly, he soon learned, they needed more than just one kind of magic-- science, the Muggles called it. There were all sorts of branches involved: physics and engineering and mathematics and Martin was in a dream, he knew, a proper dream, because he just couldn't get enough and he knew this was what he wanted, this was what he was going to do. He would fly planes for a living.
His father was less than pleased as soon as he heard of this plan, of course. "What about The Magical Neep?" he demanded. "Simon's not going to have time with all his work at the Ministry--"
"Caitlin can have it," he said. "I don't care about The Magical Neep, it's--"
And that may have done it then, in retrospect, because he'd never seen his father quite as purple or as furious, and his mother hastily attempting to calm him down.
"Perhaps you should go to your room, Martin," was all she said, though he could still hear the shouting and the banging from underneath his bed covers, tucked with his favorite book on Amelia Earhart.
v.
Martin Crieff never liked being a wizard. It didn't help that in his third year they took Muggle Studies for some stupid reason, Death Eaters had taken over the school and he couldn't even stay at home anymore because they were all over Hogsmeade as well, and would have come after him if they'd tried to do something. His Muggleborn friends were in hiding, or arrested-- who arrests thirteen-year-olds?-- and once or twice one of the Carrows found him with a book on aeroplanes and subjected him to Crucios for his troubles.
He was glad when he found the Room of Requirement, huddling together in the hammocks with a few of his classmates, quite disappointed when he realized they were still expected to go to classes after all that. Every night he sat witness to another torturing, another cruel and nasty curse sent a student's way, and he tried hard to help where he could but he was only a third year, he didn't know enough about many spells yet or anything of the sort. Those days he couldn't help wishing strongly for the ability to fly away, fly somewhere far, far away.
The years after that nightmare of a term were better, somewhat. Easier to live with. But Martin did less well in school since he returned, and the professors must have thought it was the trauma of the year prior because they let him submit Troll-quality papers with acceptable marks. It was all well and good, he supposed, because as he shied away from his lessons he started reading up on what Muggle textbooks he could get hold of-- there were O-levels and A-levels and he thought; well, toyed with the idea, really, only just, but he thought maybe, just maybe, if he studied really hard he could perhaps qualify to go to flying school.
"You don't need flying school!" his father roared as soon as he heard of Martin's plans. "You can fly anything with a whisk of your bloody ruddy wand, why can't you just--"
And Martin didn't bother hearing the rest, because he knew what was coming. Why couldn't he be a normal wizard, why couldn't he just do what his parents expected him to do, but what's the point of making something fly just with a flick of your wand anyway? It isn't as fun, or as interesting, and it wasn't worth it.
So he studied away anyway, somehow found a way to pay for the qualifications, and he didn't even tell his father when he got accepted to flying school. At the end of seventh year he sat with his Housemates during the Leaving Feast, smiling along and laughing along when they spoke of their plans and where they were going to go next, demurring when he could when they asked him what he planned to do. When the Feast ended he took Hogwarts Express to King's Cross-- the first time he'd ever done it, now that he thought about it-- and armed only with his wand (he had to, if he wasn't going to have much money to go by) and his best book on aeroplanes, he got ready to fly.
Title: Iris Makes Love to a Kiwi
Summary: ....or: shenanigans that happen when Iris and Sas move into a London flat.
Characters/Pairings: Iris, Sas, surprise guests from HP! and other fandoms! Sort of!
Genre: Crack
Beta: I would never subject anyone to this
Rating/Warnings: I BLAME IRIS, SAS, AND ISA.
Word Count: 1575
"Sas," Iris asked, kicking aside the overflowing box and bending over to pick up the brown... green... mossy... thing that she'd noticed was peeking out of the corner.
"Mm?" her new roommate was off in the corner of their brand-spanking new flat, bustling in and out as she was wont to do, humming some song to herself as she did.
"What is this?" Should she even touch it, she wondered now, the slimy sticky gross substance between her fingers. It was a good thing that Iris always wore gloves--well, not always always, just when they were doing dirty work, like gardening and cleaning and moving in and eating food with your hands. It helped to always be clean and sanitary, she thought, and just in case this happened to be some sort of Sas family heirloom, she didn't want to just throw it away without asking. That wouldn't be very roommate-ly, would it? (Her plan was to ask, and then throw it away.)
"Oh, that's the moss!" was Sas' cheerful answer. She came over, examined the green substance from Iris' hands, and took it from her. "Been looking for that all over the place, thanks!"
"What-- but-- you brought it here?" Iris asked, frowning in confusion. "On purpose?"
"Yes, see--" Sas went over to the corner, where she'd set up a small plant in a small box. There was some dirt all around it, the sight of which made Iris twitch a little, and Sas went ahead and added the moss there. "Gives it character, doesn't it?"
'Character', as far as Iris was concerned, was an English word that meant, among other things: appearance, attribute, aspect, caliber, trait, type, ethos, personality. It did not, as far as she knew, mean 'a look of utter mess and dirt that must be cleaned up at once.'
"Sas," she tried again. "I do not think that word means what you think it means."
"What are you talking about?" Sas turned to admire her little corner of plant-and-dirt-and-moss. "It looks perfect!"
Iris was at least glad that this was not some sort of sentimental issue. It was just a taste issue, but she could talk Sas out of it. Later. Maybe. If she tried very hard to look past the corner really fast, she bet she could ignore it too. So she shook her head, wandered to their rooms for a moment. (Maybe she could convince Sas to take her little corner of perfection to her own room, she thought. Since, you know, it's perfect and everything.)
"What happened to the lights?" she asked.
"They're in that box next to you!"
"Box? I meant--" Iris looked up. The lights that were supposed to be on the ceiling were no longer there, and the sleek black modern lamp they'd seen when they first visited the flat to see if it was something they might like to take with them was gone as well. She looked down to her right where a half-open box lay. Kneeling beside it, she took out a string of fairy lights and... more of that string of fairy lights. "These aren't--"
"Ah, you found them!" Sas said, coming into the room with a bright smile. "I was thinking we'd put them up all over the flat-- proper lights are a little too bright for me, don't you think? And these are so much more lovelier!"
"But we need proper lights," Iris tried to say, blinking as Sas went ahead and put everything up. 'Put everything up' being a vague way to describe how she sort of... wrapped the fairy lights all artistically around the room, of course. Iris had seen Sas' flat in Brighton before, had admired the way she'd strung her fairy lights by her bed then. She wasn't quite sure she liked the idea of having those lights everywhere in their new place though...
"Hang on, let's see it on," Sas said, plugging the lights in and drawing the curtains close to dim the room some. In a moment they were awash in soft orange light, and actually, Iris had to admit that made everything look a little bit prettier.
She still thought they maybe needed real lights, though, but just as she was about to mention as much, someone began to knock on their door.
"Are you expecting someone?" Iris asked Sas, who shrugged in response.
"I was about to ask you that," she said. "Maybe it's someone from the building? Or the landlady? Mrs. Hudson seemed the sort to check in on us and all."
"Yeah, she did say she'd probably stop by," Iris said, wondering what their landlady could be up to. She wove her way through the piles of boxes and things that the two of them had, in the madness of moving, placed all over any even surface in the living room. "Coming!" she said, opening the door.
"Morning!" a young man around her age said. He smiled warmly, soft brown eyes like chocolate twinkling as he held out a small pie.
"We're the welcoming committee!" another young man behind him said cheerily. He had a long mess of stringy black hair and smoky grey eyes. "Name's Sirius, this is Remus--"
"I'm James," a third man said. He had a mop of black hair and round glasses.
"Oliver," a fourth added. "Oliver Wood."
"Hello," Iris said, the most she could. They were all drop-dead gorgeous, and there were four of them. From her years studying mathematics, probability, and number theory, her expert opinion told her that she'd just opened her door to very, very good odds.
"Who is it, Iris?" Sas said, coming in from the other room. "Oh, is that pie?"
"Kiwi pie," Remus said. "I was going to get the regular pecan but Sirius--"
"I LOVE KIWI," Iris blurted out. She felt her cheeks flush some, and immediately she wanted to take back her words. "I mean--"
"No, no, it's the texture, right?" Sirius said.
"And the hair, yeah," she said, laughing nervously.
"See, Remus? Told you they'd like it!" Sirius said with a laugh, winking at Iris like they shared some sort of special secret. (They probably did, it was the secret of how awesome kiwi was.)
"Um, this is amazing-- I mean, this is really nice of you, thank you," she said, regaining her senses some now that she knew she wasn't being foolish or anything.
"Oh, no problem," Oliver said (was that a Scottish accent she heard? Yum. I mean. Nice. Yes. Nice.). "It's just it's been a while since we've had anyone new in the building, and we thought, hey, might as well be neighborly and everything, yeah?"
"And you brought pie," Sas said with a happy sigh.
"She loves pie," Iris explained, realizing all of a sudden that they were all the way out in the hall, crowding around her tiny little door, while she and Sas were on the other side, in the wide open space of their new flat (or, well, it would be wide and open soon enough, she thought; for these gentlemen, they would make space too). "Why don't you come in? We've both just moved into the city and it'd be nice to get to know some of our neighbors, yeah?"
"We'd love to!" James said, and Iris stepped back to let them all in.
"I'll go cut the pie," Sas announced, hurrying into the kitchen and leaving Iris with the boys.
"Sorry about the mess," she tried to say, stepping around the boxes and sort of toeing some of them out of the way as she did. "It's just--"
"Hey, no problem, we've moved in places before," Oliver said with a laugh. "We know it can be messy and all."
"Yeah," Iris said. "How long have you been in the building?"
"Oh, a while," Remus said. "Me and Sirius and James, we live together up in third. We've got a fourth roommate but he's off with his girlfriend today."
"Oh, Jane? Is he still going out with her?" Sirius asked.
"Jenna, Sirius, it's Jenna," James told him. "Anyway, yes, he is, and Oliver here's in the one-bedroom down the hall from you."
"Oh, okay," Iris said. "It's good you've become friends with each other then. Sometimes it's hard to meet new people when you move in to new places, you know?"
"Yeah," Oliver said. "I ran into Sirius a few weeks after I just moved in, he invited me out for drinks with his roommates, and the rest is kind of history, really."
Iris smiled. "That's cool. Any other neighbors we should know about?"
"Oh, hm." Remus scrunched his face up in thought. It was quite adorable really. "Mrs Hudson's very nice, you know her already, obviously. She'd prefer quiet, but other than that feel absolutely free to come down and have a cuppa with her, otherwise she'll start poking her nose in when you least want her to."
James laughed. "Yeah, and the blokes in 221B, well, best keep out of their way," he added.
"How come?"
"One of them's friendly, but the other's pretty much a prick," Sirius said. "Just stay out of their path and you'll be fine."
"Okay," Iris said, listening to the rest of the gossip about all of their new neighbors. London, she had to admit, was looking mighty promising.
"Alright," Sas announced, coming back out from the kitchen with a few paper plates and utensils. "Who wants pie?"
