#competent and pathetic is apparently my type

[corpiote]

I need to do work... I am thinking about kagari and his waist

[chaifootsteps]

putting aside the way HB continually lies to its audience and spreads no good very bad ideas about what abuse and sexual coercion is or isn't to a fanbase that skews disturbingly young for a sec

from a creative writing perspective, Stolas is like one of the most frustrating characters to have ever been

like, there's three or four different versions of him at this point. he was a competent antagonistic force once. he had hidden depths.

now he's a pathetic passive whiny creature who is somehow a prince despite doing most of his duties poorly. he has the interior mental landscape of a child. he stakes his happiness on a lower class man who he's trapped with him through his economic need, and he blames that man for his own inability to handle his feelings like an adult.

he wears a godawful romper (sorry, I just can't get past the outfit redesign. it's so distractingly bad)

it just really strikes me watching episodes like The Circus when he as literal imp servants from childhood, or Western Energy when he goes to a cafe where the whole gimmick is imps pouring tea for bluebloods, that like

there could have been a character here, if the show just acknowledged the power Stolas had been born into and is so used to he doesn't even seem to notice that his monthly hookup is the same class as servants he's used and abused his entire life

if the show recognized what a sad wet cat Stolas is, and not in the 'feel sorry for him!!!' type of way

instead we're getting increasingly liberal lectures on 'royalty have feelings just like everyone else, they can't help being rich :(' and all the setup - the mirroring of Blitzo being sold as a child then as an adult to Stolas, the class difference, the rich pitting poor against poor - all goes down the drain, because the show can't bear to have us judge Stolas even slightly

and on top of all that, he isn't even good at wielding the power and privilege he does have. he apparently only bothers using his book once a month for his job, he doesn't memorize his spells, he doesn't teach his oh so important heir magic to defend herself with, he lends out his grimoire with no safety precautions as long as he can be dicked down once a month

funniest thing is if you point out Stolas sucks at his job on top of all his other flaws you'd probably get the 'they're in Hell!' excuse

if that's the case why does the show keep insisting he's perfect? why isn't there more of an Always Sunny sense that we're supposed to enjoy the characters sucking at everything? I maybe could have liked a show like that

There isn't even all that much I can say to add to this...you took the words right out of my mouth, every single one.

[ihateliterature]

Sariel Route Review

So I finished Sariel's route yesterday and here are my thoughts on it. Obviously spoilers for Sariel, Clavis and Luke’s routes

A lot of people disliked Sariel's route for its apparent lack of romance, but I love it. Now, that's probably because I am in the incredibly funny position of being an aro playing otome games and making myself gag with how sappy they are, so for me the romance is not a part I enjoy in most routes, just something I have to deal with.

"Why do you even play then?" Says the clueless alloro.

For the characters, soft porn, one liners and, of course, the LORE! Give me a YouTube channel and call me MatPat cause I'm all about that lore.

Back to Sariel.

For me Sariel’s route was basically perfect, it had intrigue and suspense and didn’t stop the action in its tracks just so the characters can make googly eyes at each other for half the chapter.

First for the things I didn’t like. I don’t like Sariel’s backstory, it’s much too cluttered. They wanted to make him this super accomplished person before he came to the palace but also have him grow up with the princes. So they made him a famous 10 y/o gang leader. It’s so fucking weird and I’m amazed I didn’t see more people talking about it. It would have been fine if he had a group of five or six other kids and they were known in their own town for beating people with pipes and small robberies and the like. But the scale we are shown is just ridiculous, they could have fixed this very easily if they would have made him arrive at the palace just a few years later. A famous 15-16 y/o gang leader is still ridiculous but not as much as a kid that hadn’t even started his puberty yet. 

I liked the MC. She is smart, a quick learner, adapts easily and she’s a good improviser, all of this coupled with being really knew into that life and having little to no experience makes her pleasant to follow, she is probably my favorite MC, closely followed by Clavis’. She didn’t ride on her status as Belle and took her responsibilities as Sariel’s apprentice very seriously even if it was only a cover. I really liked that she proved herself to be not only a competent Belle but also a skilled Minister with the potential to greatly help the country in the future.

Hot take but I really like Sariel and MC’s dynamic. A lot of people hated it but I like it. I’ve seen people say that they felt like the romance kinda came out of nowhere at the end without any built up, but I disagree. There is definitely A LOT of pinning between them during the route, on MC’s part but also on Sariel’s. The reason why they only acted on it at the very end was because both of them, and the story, recognised that there was no time for romance and it wouldn’t have been appropriate.

Relationships between a superior and an employee in the workplace are complicated. Now, I’m no moral crusader and I would’ve adored to have Sariel fuck MC on his desk between lessons since Chapter 2, and frankly the whole game toys with power imbalance in relationships because that’s just the nature of royalty dating commoners. Unfortunately Sariel is not the type to abuse his position in that way (regardless of how hot it would have been, I should write a fic about boss!Sariel and secretary!Emma). Sariel was keenly aware of his position the entire time and acted accordingly. At the end MC becomes Sariel’s apprentice for real and they start dating but at that point I see them as colleagues more than master and apprentice, even the princes treat MC as a full on Minister by that point.

Here comes my favorite part . . . the KING.

I fucking hate the King. He is just like every pathetic guy I’ve ever met.

I think Cybird made a good job of portraying someone who is so shit, through the idealised lense of the one singular person who liked him.

Sariel had a toxic father-son relationship with the man. They’ve known each other since Sariel was 10 and the King was more of a father to him than to any of his children. But even keeping that in mind, Sariel still had to essentially care for the emotional needs of a man child, becoming his only confidant and carrying on his desires and hopes for the country alongside his own grief, because Sariel was the ONLY one that actually grieved for that man.

Look, I don’t like saying bad things about Jin’s mom, but she chose wrong. We are told that there were no complaints about the King before the previous Belle was chased out but I highly doubt this. We are told this by Sariel, who wasn’t there and has probably found out about this FROM the King. The man was also full of shit, he claimed to love the country but he never showed it. He let Sariel and his sons rule his country WHILE he was alive. I can understand the very end, when he was too sick to move, but there was Blood Stained Day. Not even an invasion motivated this man to get off his ass. The princes had to go and fight themselves and I don’t think that we, as a fandom, realise just how young they were. Most of them were in their teens, only Chevalier and Jin were adults, Chevalier, the guy who sacrificed war prisoners was 20 or 21 and Clavis, the mad man who ran to save them and almost died in a fire because of it was 19 or 20, only Jin could have been considered an actual adult at the time, and he was 22. And what was the King doing during all of this? Throwing himself a pity party, like usual.

He did this in basically every flashback, called himself incompetent and a bad King, and he was right. 

Not only was he a bad King and a bad father, but he was an atrocious husband. Anita is the clearest example of that. I can understand why he didn’t like the Queen and the other two marriages were purely political, but he wanted to marry Anita, this was something that he WANTED, no one could have or would have forced him to do it. Regardless of that he completely ignored her after she gives birth, he pitied her, sure, but he never extended a hand towards her. He saw how her mental health was going to shit and he cried when she died, for her and the twins, but he did nothing to prevent this, he could’ve but he didn’t.

The King was not a broken man, he was a pathetic one. He spent his entire life after his girlfriend was chased out throwing himself a pity party, ignoring his duties and hurting people. He was most likely depressed, yeah, but that doesn’t excuse abandonment, neglect and rape.

Oh yeah, let’s talk about the two giant pink elephants floating around in Sariel’s route, the two KNOWN sexual assaults inflicted by the King upon Leticia Lelouch and Luke’s mom. 

They are not mentioned, which is weird considering that two princes are the product of that and one happened WHILE Sariel was at the court. This man was utterly despicable. What he did to Luke’s mom can be argued as the King quite literally losing his mind out of grief and because she looked like the previous Belle (a stupid argument, but fine, I’ll take it), but what he did to Leticia was downright monstrous. He wanted to hurt her; he wanted to torture her; he did that out of pure malice, because a maidservant pestering him to have tea with his wife from time to time pissed him off so much.

Sariel is not stupid, it’s not that he is unaware of all of this, he is just consciously choosing to not think about it. He never tries to argue against it, he never tries to convince Luke that the King was “a good guy, actually”, because he knows what kind of man he was. When a loved one is proven to have done something horrible, many people are more inclined to ignore it, excuse it or deny it, because they love that person too much to abandon them, even after something like that. Sariel does the same thing, for him it doesn’t matter that the King was a horrible person, it only matters that he was good to him.

Sariel’s route portrayed this dynamic perfectly, it might have been infuriating, but I enjoyed this direction and the care the writers took to tell the audience just how shit that man was while maintaining just how dependant Sariel was on him, to the point of ignoring his wrongdoings any chance he got.

[lindlie]

Tumblr's Favorite Poor Little Meow Meow: Female Animated Characters Edition- MASTERPOST

One of the wisest nuggets of wisdom you can hear is to "be the change you want to see in the world". Don't sit back with your complaints; take charge and make things happen.

In a landscape of Tumblr polls and Poor Little Meow Meow contests, there is one overlooked category of Meows that have yet to be targeted: female animated characters. So, with the help of my roommates, I created a comprehensive bracket of 32 Meow candidates who will fight their good fight over the next handful of days. With the exception of a couple slots, characters have been limited to 1 per piece of media.

Each quadrant of the bracket represents a different type of Meow Meow: upper left is for the war criminals, upper right is petty villains and bureaucratic menaces, lower left is for the truly wettest wet cats, and bottom right is the characters with negative social skills. Compete to see what exactly we define as the Poorest Poor Little Meow Meow: what's the perfect ratio between problematic, pathetic, and admirable? Must the winner have all 3, or be weighted in a single direction?

I can't post results and new polls at exactly the 24 hour mark- college student life and classes and obligations and such- but I'll do my best to keep it within the calendar day of the previous poll ending. Please be understandable for any delays if they happen! You can find everything here, whether its a notice of delay, announcement of each winner, or a fresh new poll. Be on the lookout for the meowboss or meowboss poll tag if something goes wrong here, though.

And, most of all, please keep discussion kind, respectful, and courteous to your fellow voters. This poll is meant to be in good faith, and we can disagree about who wins each round in a civil manner.

With that being said, here's the hyperlinks list for each poll! As I make each poll, I'll post the link right here :)

ROUND OF 32:

LEFT QUADRANTS:

RIGHT QUADRANTS:

ROUND OF 16:

LEFT QUADRANTS:

RIGHT QUADRANTS:

ROUND OF 8:

POLLS:

SEMIFINALS:

POLLS:

FINALS:

THE POOREST LITTLE MEOW MEOW POLL:

May the Poorest Little Meow Meow win!!

[crystalelemental]

Unit Teambuilding - Leon

After two whole years, Leon finally gets rerun, and I just want to say that is nonsense.  I get that gachas are about limited availability and FOMO, but two years?  It may as well not even exist at that point.   Things need to be recurring for them to matter, guys.  This took way, way too long.  It's a serious problem.  Fix it.

General Overview I would describe Leon as “Anni Lillie-esque.”  Which is funny because he came first.  That’s what you get for taking so long to rerun.

Leon’s Inferno is high BP, but nothing remarkable by modern standards.  In fact, for having a pathetic 50 accuracy, it’s...fairly weak.  183BP for 50 accuracy is weaker than SC Emmet’s Megahorn (189), which has better accuracy (85).  I think it’s just wild to see how much DeNA tends to value status application as a secondary effect, because I legitimately don’t think it’s worth the trade.  But because of this tradeoff, Leon’s DPS barely breaks top five, slightly managing to outperform his eternal rival, Sygna Suit Red.  But he’s miles behind SS Hilda, SS May, SS Hilbert, and even SS Lysandre.

What allows Leon to compete, and even become best in show, is Super Preparation 4.  When he lands that Supereffective Up Next, he’s far and away the highest Fire-type DPS.  It is only a 50/50 to get it though, so the average of his typical damage is somewhere around SS May level power.  Which isn’t bad!  His Flying-type DPS, with Super Preparation active, is also highest in the type.  Ground...doesn’t even break top 5.  Ground got really competitive.  Cynthia’s up there twice because Slash apparently gets ridiculous too.  I love it.

To add into Leon’s success, they finally gave him Max Moves!  This means he’s got a sudden pop damage across all three of these types!  That’s really handy!  But for Gauntlet purposes, where you may not have any supereffective matchups, picking which one matters, and...look, it’s Flying.  His Fire-type move was translated as Fire Damage Field like Stealth Rock, and I have confirmed from my wife’s account that every single fight has Fire DF Resistance 9, so it deals nothing.  Shoulda been Trap.  Just saying.  So Flying is optimal, because +2 speed with his gauge costs is really nice.

All that said, Leon’s damage is his selling point, but his flaws are woefully apart.  Aside from the ever-present issue of needing to always roll Super Preparation 4 to sustain best DPS, his sync is atrocious.  Without SEUN, we’re talking on the level of Blarcanine.  With it, he’s closer to SS Hilda, but it’s a lot to ask.  And his setup is atrocious.  1MP move that gives +2 offenses and +1 crit, +1 sync cooldown, but then cuts defenses by -1.  The 1MP is what kills me.  MP Rekindle is supposed to be the saving throw, allowing him to be fully self-sufficient over time.  But there’s the rub.  Over time.  CS does not give you time.  You need to hit them right now.  And it’s kinda wild to me that Leon ever caught on, given that CS was the first mode.  This can be somewhat excused in Gauntlet, but CS is having none of it.  And this is an era before the Sp Atk/Crit buffers came along.

I think this accounts for how long SS Red remained the fan favorite.  Leon’s DPS was way better, but in a category where that improvement wasn’t necessary, and only under specific conditions.  And in absence of those conditions, he’s just like SS Red, but with infinitely worse self-setup.  And truth be told, this issue is not rectified.  Fire is an easy type to shop for, and Leon doesn’t exactly provide anything groundbreaking.  It’s fairly sad that the bigger selling point is almost his Flying DPS.  Really tells you something about Flying types.  But realistically, the self-setup remains his biggest problem.  Anni Lillie may not be top DPS anymore with SS Korrina, but her immaculate setup sets her apart.  Unless Leon receives similar boons, I imagine he’ll always kinda lag behind.

EX and Move Level? Neither is necessary.  Leon lives and dies by his base skills, and Inferno spam in particular.  You need nothing else.  His grid can offer a 30% multiplier to move damage and a 50% multiplier to sync when a foe is burned, but I don’t consider it strictly necessary.

Team 1: Leon, SS Morty, Lucian/Anni Raihan Just because SS Morty isn't ideal doesn't mean we can't make it work.  In fact, if you have 3/5 Morty and take the extra Team Gimme Five node on grid, Leon can cap out his offenses with one MP Burst, so it's possible.  All you add in is some special defense dropping.  Lucian is, as always, my ideal man, hitting AoE and boosting team speed.  Though Anni Raihan is very worth mentioning, with his own Fire-type Max move that actually does set sun, and potential for special defense debuffs on a trapped foe on his 3/5 grid.

Team 2: Leon, SS Brendan/P!Mallow, Blaine Thing is, I'm not really convinced this one works, but I'll try anything once.  Anti-Cobalion.  The main reason I bring this up in this particular structure is that SS Brendan can fix all of Leon's offensive needs instantly, and provides special defense drops alone.  Palentine's Mallow can also kinda do it, but is much slower about the whole thing, in exchange for better team defense.  Blaine just needs to add Sun for maximum Inferno damage.  The question is, can this one-shot Cobalion from half-HP?  And I'm gonna say no.  If it does, great, you've got yourself an answer.  But Cobalion becomes immune to burn halfway through Bar 2 unless you're evaporating it at once, so like...consider.  But hey, at least this answers Uxie?

Team 3: Leon, MU Torchic, Agatha Anti-Bulu. I mean, it's not like that's a particularly difficult thing to accomplish, but you know.  MU Torchic can buff Leon's offensive needs perfectly, while Agatha is your best sleep bot, capping her own speed and getting MGR9 on Hypnosis.  Leon’s Max Move can be used in Bar 3 to potentially just end a fight.

Final Thoughts I tried really hard, but couldn't figure out a team composition for Cresselia that didn't result in the same Haze/Snatch support that always gets used.  Piercing Gaze is supposed to be a big deal, but I don't think it does enough.

Ultimately, Leon's a pure Striker, with absolutely no frills.  He exists to spam his high DPS moves, and nothing else.  Which is all well and good.  But he's a Fire-type.  And Fire is the most saturated offensive typing you can imagine.  Like, did you pull SS Hilda?  Congrats, Leon is outright irrelevant.  She outdamages him, and has immediate turn 1 setup, with an actually good sync nuke.  SS May can get sync a whole turn early.  Anni N is having his rerun right now too, and has spread damage on his move, that also debuffs the foe each hit, AND he can get pep rally for better gauge control.  Leon's gauge control is awful.  Hell, Silver.  Silver may have bad DPS, but his sync nuke is unreasonably strong on-type and under Sun, and he's got reasonable self-setup now too.  What the hell do you need Leon for?

I know, initial Master Fair compared to more modern stuff, but I think it's wild that even on first release, the comparison to SS Red was not always favorable.  Sure his damage was higher, but so were his demands, and I feel like he's in a really awkward spot now.  Gigantamax could have, and should have, added a ton to him.  But instead of a really valuable trap effect, they gave him something that I doubt will add up to more than a couple hundred damage in a match.  He's...fine. Good enough to perform, but not good enough that I feel like he does much you can't do elsewhere.

[tossawary]

In regards to Shangjiu, why Original Shen Qingqiu could appeal to Shang Qinghua is more immediately obvious. He’s a tall, gorgeous, icy asshole with his own flavor of abandonment and trust issues. That’s kind of Shang Qinghua’s type. (Shen Qingqiu probably has some beef under those fancy robes, being an accomplished cultivator, though I don’t imagine him being anywhere near as incredibly built and heavy as Mobei-Jun. Mobei-Jun has beef beef.) 

So, it’s like, okay, why would Shang Qinghua ever appeal to Original Shen Qingqiu? Shang Qinghua is more average-looking as far as cultivators go and, more importantly, he’s a fucking clown. 

But you could ask that question about Mobei-Jun too. Why would Shang Qinghua ever appeal to Mobei-Jun? And I think the answer is actually pretty similar. Not exactly the same, of course, because Mobei-Jun and Original Shen Qingqiu are pretty different, but still remarkably similar: I think that it’s in part because Shang Qinghua is a fucking clown. 

Shang Qinghua has no issue with looking or acting pathetic. He will wail and sob and beg at a moment’s notice. (Which actually comes back to that “Shang Qinghua and Luo Binghe are... the same...” rant I’m still brewing. Neither of them seem all that bothered by humiliation. They have their own sense of internal worth/superiority and have no issue embarrassing themselves to manipulate other people and get what they want. Time to cry like a bitch? Bro, you’re making me do this; it doesn’t have to be this way! Airplane Bro just doesn’t have the super OP protagonist powers as backup for that.) 

Mobei-Jun and Shen Jiu are, especially by comparison, extremely concerned with appearances and specifically with appearing dignified. I think to some extent they would both actually envy Shang Qinghua’s ability to disregard (ignorance, sometimes? But also he doesn’t really give a shit) for social norms and/or expectations. Shang Qinghua has no room to judge Shen Jiu when he’s behaving like that, which kind of makes him safe. 

You know that hilarious 1999 Toyota Corolla Craigslist post? That’s kind of Airplane Shooting Towards The Sky in this situation. 

This car's got history. It's seen some shit. People have done straight things in this car. People have done gay things in this car. It's not going to judge you like a fucking Volkswagen would.

Shang Qinghua isn’t going to judge you like fucking Yue Qingyuan and Liu Qingge other people would. Shang Qinghua is like a judgement-free zone to some extent. He’s safe. You could embarrass yourself in front of him and it’s fine because Shang Qinghua is going to shove his foot into his mouth immediately afterward and allow himself to be bullied into “forgetting” it ever happened. 

At the same time, Shang Qinghua clown act is pretty clearly at least partially an act, at least if his terrible muttering habit and occasional bouts of spectacular competence are anything to go by. If Shang Qinghua was a 100% genuine fool instead of a clown putting on a show (who is occasionally a genuine fool), then Shen Jiu (and Mobei-Jun) wouldn’t be able to respect him. 

Shang Qinghua can also be a straight-up bitch, a bastard, and an asshole. (I still hold the headcanon that Mobei-Jun honestly thinks Shang Qinghua is very funny.) Shang Qinghua can have a sharp tongue sometimes and bite back viciously - or at least bark back viciously - which is another thing Shen Jiu can probably respect. Shang Qinghua doesn’t put on airs about being better than anyone or noble and righteous. He talks shit properly. 

Shang Qinghua is also pretty reliable. He’s steady and supportive. He’s also cool with laying on the flattery to soothe any fragile egos! And he’s apparently cool with being bossed around and rescued! 

So, on that post where I was talking about Shang Qinghua seducing Shen Jiu through stories of bad or comedically disastrous sex stories for my Shangjiu Friends with Benefits AU, why would Shen Jiu find that appealing?! 

It’s because Shang Qinghua is clearly observant, wryly funny, knows a lot about sex, uninterested in romance, and also uninterested in pushing his partner around in an unpleasant way. (I think Shang Qinghua and Luo Binghe both like being in control of the situation, but that they also don’t mind giving up control or giving over at least some control to their partners.) Also, clearly, Shang Qinghua is desperate and pathetic and has low standards, which makes him “safe” for someone looking for some no-strings experimentation and relief. 

He’s also not... not cute? 

Also, he’s the one who brought up all those sexual acts in great detail - incredibly graphic detail - so now they’re stuck in Shen Jiu’s head. 

Shang Qinghua needs to take responsibility for that. And then tell no one that this ever happened - anyway, no one will ever believe him and also Shen Jiu will kill him. If it’s bad, Shen Jiu can also just kill him. 

Shang Qinghua: (internally) “Note to self: bro, stop getting hung up on beautiful assholes who are incredibly mean to me.” 

[douxparadies]

Butterfly effect

SUMMARY: Draco knows when his life was ruined, when the selection hat shouted Gryffindor over his head instead of Slytherin.

Pairing: slight Draco Malfoy x Oc 

Word Count: 13k.

A/N: This idea had been going around in my mind for quite some time and, only now, I managed to pass it on to the keyboard. I hope you like it, as I like to write it.

This idea quickly covers the original books, but perhaps if they like it, it will cover a little more of their adult life or some particular time. This story might actually be a long story in some future, but it is still in meditation.

                                                        ♦♦♦

 Draco Malfoy has a perfect life, is a pure blood and is at the top of the wizarding society. His life was always surrounded by perfection, even if his father was sometimes too strict, it was the best for him. The supremacy of blood, his father insisted every day, as if he had to engrave it in his memory. His mother, although she did not seem to support him in everything, not that she complained, was the perfect wife who obeyed her husband. So, he grows up tough, he can't play all the time and he has to be perfect like his family.

We are better.

She remembers her father commenting one day in Diagon Alley, pointing to the family of red hair. His father is the man he admires, so when he sees him despise others, he does the same.

But his life does not go as planned.

Draco can define the exact moment and the word that ruins his life from an early age. Where his whole perfect world falls apart in a single moment, where the nightmare seems to begin and where his life gives an unexpected change from what it should have been.

“Gryffindor” is the cry of the hat, after a long period of deliberation in his head.

The room is completely silent.

He is petrified.

Draco had been completely sure that he would go to Slytherin, his parents were in that house, that was his destiny. Almost as a joke he remembers his father wanting to send him to Durmstrang, but his mother changing her mind because she wanted to keep him close to home. How much he would have wished not to be in this house, how much he would have missed being at another school.

His parents were going to kill him.

He walks almost like a dead man, to that bright red table where nobody applauds and they look confused when he sits as far away as possible. He thinks of his suitcase full of green clothes, he thinks of his father who had practically demanded that he be in the snake house. He doesn't look up all night, almost clenching his fists in annoyance.

His usual arrogance, which he always imitates from his parents, doesn't show.

He doesn't have it at that moment.

He ignores that the first-year students follow their superiors, he runs following the teachers, almost skating when he sees the director talking to his godfather Snape. He had a frightened face when he was left in the lions' house. He practically begs, ignoring that his father would be ashamed, he begs to be moved from the house where he should be.

“I'm sorry, my boy, your home is now Gryffindor," Albus admits with some regret in his eyes.

Draco turns his face to Snape in a last attempt to help, but he just looks away and his hopes are dashed. There's still one left, his father would never let it end that way, he would find a way for it to go to the house it was meant to be.

But as Draco learns at a young age.

Things don't happen the way he wants them to.

Ignoring that he has to spend a week in the tower of Gryffindor, with a bunch of useless people who hate him almost as much as he hates them, ignoring above all Harry Potter (who is the last of his problems at the moment with the redheaded boy) and practically behind everything in his classes. He doesn't go out to eat if he can avoid people and just waits for the moment when his father fixes all this misunderstanding.

And it happens.

When Snape quotes him after his potions class in the principal's room, a genuine smile appears on his face as he enters and sees his father standing in front of Dumbledore. A boastful smile appears on his face when he feels that he will finally get out of the hell he has lived through in a week.

But at that moment, it was where all start.

The slap comes so quickly, that even the pain, seems not to appear and he feels that he is still in the middle of a nightmare. An ironic part inside him thinks that all this is a dream, that at any moment his mother would enter his room scolding him because they would be late. That he would be in Slytherin in a few hours.

“A complete disappointment, you can't even enter a house, what a shame to have a useless person sharing my blood” every word from his father, makes his smile fade from his face.

It makes him incredulous.

Your father sees him with hatred, as he always sees those of dirty blood, as he sees those inferior to them.

Draco turns to see everyone in the room, thinking that all this was a bad joke, that this is a nightmare, he almost begs someone to wake him up. But when he sees his mother in the distance of the room, lowering her gaze, when he sees the uncomfortable look of Snape or the pity look of the director.

Something inside him breaks.

I am a failure.

It is his thought, before turning around and running away, that he does not stop when he leaves the castle or when he enters the forbidden forest. In the middle of the forest he lets out his tears, as he kneels down embracing himself, feeling the perfect dream where he had lived this time.

It is destroyed.

                                                        ♦♦♦

Draco wonders why he still attends classes, his father had practically given up on him in an alarming way and his mother, following his father, does not send him letters or other things. It's as if he never had any parents and they never had a child, which sucked. He finds himself lost in the castle, not feeling part of the lion's house, but nowhere either. Snape sometimes seems to want to help him, but he couldn't care less. Even his housemates who hate him seem to leave him behind when they see him so depressed.

The world sucks.

It assumes when he starts eating monotonously when everyone else does, only the farthest thing from everyone else.

He is depressed.

As pathetic as that can be.

Sometimes his gaze falls on the house of the snakes, seeing them with envy and wishing he were there, everything would be easier. His parents wouldn't hate him or reject him as it happened, he would probably be the best of his generation, the popular type because of his blood. But no, he was at the bottom of the food chain, he was pathetic, with no friends, no family, no status.

He sighed, waving his boring fork at the food.

His life was ruined and he didn't know what else to do.

He always thought that the people who came to Gryffindor, were the people who were sad to see, he was indeed right. Now he was a pathetic person who was embarrassed to see that.

A person takes a seat in front of him, ignores him as best he can until he hears him clear his throat. He gives his worst death stare to Harry Potter who appears in front of him. They have been in school for a little over a month and honestly, it was not someone he wanted to see. His father always told him stories about the boy who lived, as if it was his duty to be friends with someone so popular. Who turned out to be a very simple and annoying boy.

Although he was sincere.

Now he didn't care about that.

“What do you want?” he grumbled before shoving a potato into his mouth with a bit of rudeness.

This one seemed a little uncomfortable in front of him.

“I'm sorry, Ron was being a bit of an asshole, telling me not to go near you because you're a pain in the ass, but you really look...bad” the last word comes out of his mouth with hesitation as he grimaces as he speaks.

A humorless laugh comes out of his mouth.

No one knows your misfortune.

He was a nobody.

The memory of his father's cold eyes, make him angry for no apparent reason.

“You should have listened to that blood traitor” he mumbles weakly.

Was he a blood traitor too?

His father treated him worse than one.

He notices a grimace on Harry's face.

“You're making Ron's point.”

“Look Potter, not that I'm interested, but what do you want from me?” he asks boringly this time.

Make fun?

Most of his Gryffindor ‘companions’ had clearly mocked him in the last month, about how someone of pure blood has to be with mere mortals. Like this how a Slytherin's mocked him as he passed by, saying that it was a shame that a pure-blooded person with his lineage ended up in that house. He clearly didn't fit in anywhere and was beginning to get tired of people looking for something of his own.

He didn't meet the standard they set for him.

To be a failure.

“Well, you look lonely, I thought we could be friends” says the boy with ease, who doesn't seem to be the same boy who almost rejected his friendship in the stair.

When everything was perfect and I wasn't in this horrible house.

He saw him confused, before getting up upset.

“I'm not looking for your fucking pity Potter and I'm not looking for your fucking friendship either” he grunt in anger before turning around and leaving the room.

He was angry.

He ended up in the library, feeling like a horrible book rat like the Ravenclaws, but it was the only place he felt he was calm. The only good thing was that he had taken advantage of this time to improve in all his classes, being alone and without friends, he would be a competent wizard, hoping that that way his father would not be disappointed in him.

He would be the best in his house.

Although Granger's bitch was making it difficult for him.

                                                       ♦♦♦

Childishly and still hopefully, he thought that the Christmas holidays were what he occupied, a few days away from all those Gryffindor (ignoring that he was one) and return to his home, where everything would be as it always should be. Of course, nothing goes as he hopes and the icy look on his father's face confirms that he still hates him. He tries uselessly to approach him every day, with the flame of hope, light but existing. But the only words I pronounced for him, was refusing to attend the party they used to do for Christmas.

That 24th of December, he spends in his room looking at nothing.

He felt that his family had abandoned him.

Going back to Hogwarts was stupidly better than being at home.

At least there he would just get away from everyone.

Following his plan to study as much as possible to be the best in his class and to prove to his father that he was worthy, even though he never had to work hard at anything in his life, it doesn't seem to be working. The letters he sends to his mother are mostly ignored, his father seems uninterested in acknowledging him and everything seems worse when Granger mercilessly sweeps away every damn exam.

Sometimes Potter takes a seat with him at meals, his friends seem to see him badly, but sometimes the Granger girl seems to follow him, to the grimaces of the Wesley boy, who never comes close.

“I hope you have a good day Draco” greets kindly Hermione, who seems encouraged that they are some kind of rivals in her house.

Both of them were the ones who contributed the most points.

He ignores her.

“You should come and see me play sometime,” says Harry sometimes, almost rubbing him the wrong way round, as he could get into the quidditch even though he's a year younger.

Of course.

It's Harry Potter.

But he who wants to move house, the laws cannot be flexible for him.

Ignore them both.

He ignores everyone in his first year, although when the time comes to return home, even though Harry Potter and company had to fight against, he really doesn't care what with, it ceases to be important when he is alone in a train carriage. When he arrives at the station, he can see how most children are welcomed by their family, but he feels the cold in his body when Dobby appears shyly in front of him.

His parents are busy, he says.

He laughs with irony.

His life sucks.

                                                           ♦♦♦

Being at home is more boring than being at Hogwarts, which is saying a lot. He eats at times when his father is away, his mother does not speak to him and he feels more alone than ever. He decides to go for a walk, with nothing to lose and almost wishing lightning would strike him to end that misery. He wants to get lost in the middle of the forest, never appear and stay there forever. His father had always tried to show him the pride of being a pure blood, but a part of him doesn't make sense.

His father loves prestige.

As he was no longer someone in his image, someone to be presumed, he was discarded.

He was useless.

He was not good enough for his father.

His only comment when he arrived home was that he was so useless, that a dirty blood it had beaten him on his grades.

He kicked a tree hard, not feeling the pain in his foot.

He hadn't asked for that, he hadn't asked to be in a family like that, he wanted his life before what was happening now.

“Kicking a tree is not very useful” a somewhat shrill voice speaks next to him.

He turns his face confused, not understanding where he was, he didn't know how long he had been walking and where he was, shit. The one who speaks is a girl, younger than him with red hair and brown eyes, who has clothes that do not look new and can identify as a member of the Weasley family.

As if that thought attracted them, two red hairs of identical face appear moments later.

“Look who Ginny has found.”

“Something quite curious in the forest.”

The Weasley twins speak in a somewhat scary coordination, he grimaces uncomfortably. The twins hadn't bothered him as much as others in the lion's house, but they were known as potential troublemakers.

The girl tilts her face in confusion.

He clicks his tongue.

His father would probably say something like "blood traitors" inciting him to walk away or make fun of them, but if he was sincere, his father treated him almost the same way at this point.

His stomach seems to ring at the wrong omentum and he blushes with shame.

What was missing.

The twins laugh in a not so discreet way. The girl gives them a reprimand before putting her hands on their hips and looking somewhat threatening.

He wants to die.

‘Never show weakness’

His father used to say.

“Are you hungry?” asked the girl with something like mercy.

He wants to treat her badly, he wants to run and tell everyone that he hates them, he wants the life he should have had, he doesn't want to be there.

He wants his life.

He wants to be Draco Malfoy, the powerful Slytherin he was meant to be.

But it doesn't happen, even in a world full of magic like this one, where nothing seems impossible, his wish is never fulfilled no matter how much he seems to ask for it.

“No” it is cursed that his voice comes out so hollow.

The girl's smile seems to be intact.

He feels a chill on his back.

                                                        ♦♦♦

No one says ‘No’ to Ginny Weasley, learns Draco sooner rather than later. He feels uncomfortable and in a parallel world when he enters the house of the "Weasley" family which the three children present as the burrow. He shouldn't be there, he thinks when the mother of the children sees him with big bulging eyes when they force him through the door, but a dog face to die from Ginny and commenting that he hasn't eaten anything, makes the matriarch even with doubts in her eyes, make him pass.

“This must be a joke," says Ron when he comes down to eat and sees him sitting at the table.

‘I wish’ Draco thinks ironically, thinking that this is the first time that they both agree on something.

Dinner (it's later than he thinks) is both a rumble and a twist, with the twins playing pranks on him, Ginny sitting next to him, excited and asking about Hogwarts, Ron giving him murderous looks, Percy looking confused and ignoring him for a book, even the father of the children watching him cautiously.

In spite of everything.

The dinner is quite good.

His father would probably kill him for eating something low class, along with blood traitors, but for the first time, he doesn't care. Because for the first time in a long time, the overwhelming silence of his home and the feeling of disappointing everyone is overshadowed by a meal that is too noisy.

“Why don't you stay over?”  Ginny asks innocently.

Everyone turns to see her as if she had gone mad, including him, it's not something anyone wants.

But as he learns and reaffirms.

Nobody can say no to the girl.

                                                         ♦♦♦

His parents ignore his letter where he says that he is sleeping at a friend's house, they do not ask, they do not look for him and that makes him feel worse. He could come back through the Flu network, but honestly, in this house where he does not feel comfortable, they seem to treat him better than his parents, which leaves a lot to be said. He begins to doubt Mrs. Weasley's mentality, which not only lets him stay without many explanations but also puts him in the same room as Ron.

Bad omen.

He practically vomits the way he has, so he is not surprised to sleep on the floor. What he is surprised about is how little he cares. He had never gone to sleep in someone else's house, always in his comfortable bed, surrounded by people he thought loved him. At least in that place people don't seem to ignore him completely.

Anyway, the floor is uncomfortable.

Draco does not know if Ron commented on something or started a conversation, he does not know if it was that he was too upset by his words or if he seemed resentful, what he do know is that he started the first blow. But in his defense, Ron also threw the next punch and they were both on the floor fighting like people without magic.

“For a brat in a golden cradle, you fight like a girl," he grunted before receiving a punch from him.

And it feels good.

To get out the anger and the rage he've accumulated for a year.

Fighting like a person without magic, his father would reproach him for falling so low, but he doesn't care when he throws himself on Ron and leaves him motionless on the ground. His cheek is hot and his eye is swollen, but he has never felt more alive than when Ron gave him a header to knock him down.

The sound seemed to alert the rest of the family, for I soon heard footsteps.

But he ignore them.

“You don't know how much I wish a family like yours” he grunts when Ron has punched him, he stops short, looking frozen by his sad look, even his body's pain from the struggle doesn't seem to matter “at least they don't ignore or despise me for being on Gryffindor” he adds before leaving his body flabby.

He does not want to keep fighting, he already took out the anger and his thoughts, that he never imagined having.

He?

Wanting to be part of a family of traitors, he had fallen so low, his father would probably despise him as much or more than he does now.

There is a chaos at the door that seems to have been opened long ago, before Mrs. Weasley starts to scold her son and he is pushed aside. He walks without much emotion behind the patriarch of the family, who sits him in the room and starts using magic to heal his wounds. He doesn't ask when he sees a scar on his arm, which definitely wasn't made by Ron, that it was his father's fault for throwing him a cup of hot tea that has cut him and nobody in his house wants to heal.

But this man that his father despises, treats him better than his father.

He assumes, a little late and a year after being ignored by his parents, that it is time to see people on their own and not by them.

“Life takes many unexpected turns Draco, but one thing I can tell you, is that it always gives us choices” says Arthur with a friendly smile.

He turns his uncomfortable face.

“This life has put you in Gryffindor, like a butterfly effect as the Muggles say, the little flutter of a butterfly can create a storm.”

“That sounds stupid.”

“You may be right, but what I mean is that a small change can bring about very big changes in life. I know you didn't plan to be on Gryffindor, but now you are, it's your destiny that's at stake and you can choose what decision you're going to make now”

He doesn't know if it's because he's the first adult or male figure who seems to recognize his existence or someone who seems to be able to help him. He ignores his father's mental voice, rebuking him for talking to him, he swallows all his bad thoughts, which seem to have his father's voice and not his own.

“I don't think I should have been at Gryffindor” he admits in an uncomfortable voice.

The only time he admitted that, both Snape and Dumbledore practically left him to his own devices.

A hand on his shoulder, it makes his eyes freeze in Arthur's kind.

“It's just a house, Draco, even though all my children are at Gryffindor, if my daughter Ginny went to another house, it doesn't matter, it's just a house, you're the one who decides your fate” he admits with a smile full of kindness, that he wants to make him cry.

But he holds back.

It couldn't be more pathetic.

Someone clears his throat and blushes, it seems that Mrs. Weasley has been listening for a while, because her distrustful look seems to have faded and she sees him with kindness, also some pity, but he ignores that because of her poor mental health.

“I think it's time to sleep, the twins accepted you in their room” she says with a pitiful look.

He nods before going to the twins' room, who smile politely, he thinks it's not so bad.

The next day he wakes up with purple hair.

He hates them, but laughs just as much when Ginny scolds them for being so childish, and for the first time in many days, he feels at peace.

                                                         ♦♦♦

When his father finds out where he's been, the slap comes so quickly that he can't help it, but even on the floor or that his mother seems upset for the first time, they don't compare when he's out of it, throws a cruciatus at him and something inside him, which is not the unimaginable pain, breaks. His mother screams in agitation and jumps to stop Lucius, who seems somewhat horrified at the sight of his wand, as if he doesn't believe that she did that to his son, but Draco couldn't care less. On the ground, he sees his father with a blank stare, while his mother tries to hug and comfort him.

But he doesn't.

That day he cuts off all relations with his father in a sentimental way.

His mother, on the other hand, seems to stop seeming important, because she doesn't say anything to her father and doesn't seem to do anything to stop him from ignoring him, calling him a blood traitor.

Returning to Hogwarts was a breath of fresh air.

                                                        ♦♦♦

Something changes that year, not only that Ginny was admitted to Gryffindor and greeted him kindly, but the twins who also seem to recognize him, pull some pranks on him, which he tries not to be a part of, but ends up in the middle. Harry and Hermione still sit down next to him to eat, but now Ron does too, he also gives him a look that looks like an apology and he shrugs his shoulders. It's not like they need to say anything out loud, what they said, or didn't say, was enough.

Harry seems happy when he starts answering his usual questions, which he didn't answer before.

Hermione seems excited when she arrives at the library and they study together.

Ron massacres him at chess and seems to help his self-esteem.

Ginny, who sometimes seems a little distant, smiles vaguely at him and he feels that something is wrong.

“Your sister acts strangely” he muses in a distracted way one day when Harry is at quidditch practice.

“What are you talking about?” Ron asks selflessly.

He doesn't know how to explain it, the memory of the kind and smiling girl who drags him all over the place, it's hard to connect with the girl who seems far away from every one, with big circles under her eyes and who acts paranoid.

“I'm not sure” he muses more to himself.

He stops when Hermione drags him to study and includes Ron, who complains loudly about it. At one point they both start to fight furiously, which he sighs for, preferring when Harry is around, so he can at least entertain himself with someone else.

                                                        ♦♦♦

“I'm not going to play quidditch, I only know the position of seeker and that one is occupied” he comments one day that he is reading his book, while Harry makes an angry gesture.

Last week they played quidditch in the playground for fun, the children were surprised that he wasn't bad, which he explains, it's a sport he plays as a child. Ron is not good and Hermione, well she is in a category of her own. Harry whines about having a capable partner in the middle of the team who is a friend of his or who is in the same year.

He ignores him and continues to study.

“You're a book eater like Hermione” says Harry, bored.

He throws a pillow at he mercilessly that hits he face.

“You could be good chasers”

 “I'm ashamed of you for being our seeker.”

The twins laugh at his comment, he laughs before dodging Harry's spell without much thought.

                                                          ♦♦♦

The year was not so bad, supposes Draco when he sees that this time he has many more people in his car back at the station. Ignoring that he and Harry ended up fighting a basilisk and that Ginny was possessed by a newspaper, it wasn't so bad. He has friends, he guesses, he never had any friends before and now he has them. Hermione seems delighted with her third year, Ron seems a little uncomfortable with the whole situation with his sister, who seems to be a little withdrawn at his side, he and Harry had rescued her for a very short time, but clearly she would have been traumatised.

When they get off the station, he sees everyone saying goodbye to him nicely.

“I think you'll be all right, if you survived that poem to Potter it can't be that bad” he jokes with Ginny, who for the first time since it happened.

Roll your eyes.

Draco is surprised to see her father at the train station, but this time he is not happy, that man is no longer someone he respects and his presence is intimidating. He swallows his saliva before it grabs him roughly by the hand and drags him out of the place.

This cannot be good.

And it is not.

His father slaps him saying that he is a fool, that he has interfered again with the return of the dark lord, while slapping him non-stop. This time his mother is not present before the next cruciatus he receives, or the three others that follow. Lucius now shouts that he is an idiot and that he is ruining his plans, before ordering Dobby to take him to his room, without remembering that his own stupidity set him free a few weeks ago with Harry.

He remembers it with pleasure.

A new Cruciatus is what he feels before he becomes unconscious.

                                                    *****

The next time he is conscious, he is in St. Mungo's hospital all alone, he sighs before going back to sleep, he raises one hand, the right one, which now has a horrible scar from his wrist to his elbow, his eyes are glazed over, the memory of the cruciatus is strong in his mind. Two days later he leaves the magic hospital, his mother picks him up, but he says nothing on the way home, which makes him feel sick, he won't say anything about the man who tortured him and cursed him until he lost consciousness.

He wants to laugh when they enter the house, which no longer feels like home.

“Andromeda, my sister, she could take care of you” she suddenly muses when they enter the place.

He looks at her with disbelief, before laughing bitterly.

“That man doesn't want me here anymore," he muses underneath, but her mother doesn't deny it.

It was true then.

You mum soon places a key in he hand, which makes him look confused, his eyes seem alarmed and he makes his lips in a thin line. He doesn't want to think about her eyes that look worried, when for two years she has practically left him at the mercy of mistreatment and her father.

“It's in my golden room at Gringotts, you can take anything you want, it's part of my Black heritage" she says quickly and he looks at her angrily.

“You can't do anything either," he muses with sarcasm and a murderous look.

His mother's eyes seem to apologize and he takes the key with hatred.

He hates the key.

But he is not an idiot either.

He runs to his room, taking some things he knows he will need, before going to the Flu net without seeing his mother and shouts the only place he can think of.

                                                       ♦♦♦

Mrs. Weasley seems to be incredulous when shyly asking for accommodation in her home, but it is quickly Arthur who accepts it with a friendly smile. He explains that he will pay for his maintenance, but they practically ignore him before going to Ron to tell him that he will be his new roommate. He doesn't seem happy, but doesn't ask much when he sees his gaunt face or the scar on his hand. "I had to get out of there" is all he says and this one doesn't press him, Ginny is the one who quickly makes him feel at home.

Her eyes, which do not look like those of a child, smile warmly when she sees her scar.

He understands her look.

It is as if she can tell him something.

The twins also soon seem to be playing their tricks on him and Percy seems pleased with his notes. But it's not until one night, when Mrs. Weasley scolds him for not being warm and gives him a gray knit jumper with a "D" on it, that he feels like he's going to cry. The twins joke that she will probably give him another one at Christmas, but he ignores it.

Harry seems surprised when he shows up days later and he shrugs his shoulders.

“We have a disgusting family", says his friend with a laugh and he can't help but laugh with understanding.

They both have that in common.

Actually, they have a lot in common.

They high-five when it's their turn to play quidditch with the twins and still win.

                                                         ♦♦♦

Draco looks on with pity on the first day of school when Harry seems destined to die, it's as if every year he's in the middle of bad and very bad luck. Although in his defence, it was as if all the bad things happened to him. For his part, ignoring the fact that he had practically abandoned his home, everything seemed to get better somehow. Mr. and Mrs. Weasley were not in the habit of sending him things, but at Christmas they had given him a jumper and food. His mother had sent him a letter, which seemed to be hidden from his father, so he ignored it as much as possible.

“But she just appeared out of nowhere” Ron grunted one morning about Hermione that he ignored.

Lately Ron and Hermione had been arguing more.

It was annoying.

“They like each other," whispered Ginny to her funny side, which he agreed with her.

Although the friendship was mainly between Harry, Ron and Hermione, after they adopted him, somehow Ginny started to spend more time with them (a way of compensating for last year), also the twins and that boy called Neville who at first seemed to be afraid of him, but after seeing him and doing nothing to him, he spent time with him.

Not that Gryffindor had changed, of course, they didn't bother him like in his first year (for having friends he supposed) but everything seemed a little better.

Calmer.

He felt at peace.

This was his path, not one he would have chosen willingly, but it was the one he had and he would work at it.

"Like your obsession with Potter" taunts back to Ginny, who mercilessly tries to cast a spell on him and he knows it is better to run away.

When he passes through the corridor, the Slytherins look at him and make fun of him, he ignores them, but sometimes he thinks about what would have happened if he had been in that house.

Would things be different?

He had no idea.

                                                        ♦♦♦

Luna was a strange girl, but she was a friend of Ginny's. Probably, he thought ironically and sarcastically, his father would not approve of the strange girl's friendship, one more reason to let her study with both of them in the middle of the library. He seemed to space himself out a bit and ask her clearly indiscreet questions but tried to ignore him and not be so arrogant. Sometimes his natural side, the arrogance and pride that he had for so many years, would come out unintentionally, Harry would reprimand him, Hermione kindly pointed him out and with Ron they would hit each other sometimes, but it was okay, they taught him.

But now there was Ginny.

And Ginny was scary.

He wouldn't mess with her if he could help it, a wise lesson he and the twins used as their mantra.

“I can sit with you; you seem smart and I need help” spoke a voice beside him.

I turn his face with boredom.

A girl with short dark brown hair and light brown eyes was standing next to him with a somewhat silly smile. He recognized her as a Hufflepuff student who sometimes stood next to the girl Hannah, who sometimes stood by Neville and he unknowingly ignored her.

What was her name?

"I am Camile” she introduced herself when she sat down without waiting for a statement from him.

Just like the destructive Ginny.

Luna's madness.

This girl did not seem normal, too smiling and expert in spells, she seemed to know nothing about Runes and almost begged him to help her. He wants to refuse, but Ginny's gaze makes him sigh and accept her in the impromptu Wednesday study group.

She's about her age, but it seems a miracle that she made it this far.

“I'm good at the duels club” she says this one in a funny way before walking away at the end of the study.

He ignores her, not that he cares.

                                                       ♦♦♦

“How come we always end up on the brink of death," says Draco boringly in the middle of the infirmary.

After Harry's godfather, who turns out not to be bad and who is somehow (very distantly) related to him, ran away with a hippocriph that tried to attack him at the beginning of the year (but which he didn't do by chance). It also turns out that Professor Lupin was a werewolf and that Snape almost died trying to rescue them. Although he had some cuts on his hands, he ignores everything that Harry and Hermione did with the time-turns.

He just wants to sleep.

“In my defence I'm not looking for this” grunted Harry with his arms crossed somewhat annoyingly.

Out of the corner of his eye they both watch Ron and Hermione continue to argue.

They look at each other out of the corner of their eye before sighing.

“I think I'll bet they'll notice until the last year” he mumbles under Harry about the bet between the Weasley family and them both.

He shrugs his shoulders.

“I'm telling you Potter, Ron's going to propose, he's stupid, but it's my money on the line," he says with a slight yawn.

He sees how Hermione seems to be about to kill him, which makes him hesitate a little.

Harry laughs as he bets on Hermione.

He may be on a stretcher, two broken ribs, wounds all over his body, but he can't help but feel happy surrounded by friends.

                                                        ♦♦♦

Draco had a dream, one where he stayed at Slytherin's house, where he had everything he ever wanted in his first year. Also in the middle of the dream, he treated Harry and the rest of his friends badly, humiliated them, tried many bad things against them and at night in his bed, he didn't seem to feel good about it. Then he woke up, seeing all the red around him and realized that everything that happened, had been a silly dream, probably of his childish desires.

He did not like that dream.

Although he had the life he once wanted, he did not feel happy.

“I hate my life” snarled Harry across the dining room the next day.

Sigh.

Although they were all friends, Harry and Ron were the best of friends, but when the former was selected for the Triwizard Tournament which now had four participants, Ron seemed to walk away angry from his friend. He and Hermione were juggling each other to try and bring them together as friends again.

But it was difficult.

“You're unlucky and, I'll say this, it leaves a lot to be desired” he mumbles with amusement reading a book about potions.

Last year it didn't go so well and Snape, who was his godfather, seemed about to send him off for yet another failure.

With that kind of godfather.

“I didn't put my name on it.”

“I believe you.”

“Why doesn't Ron do it?”

Clearly the lack of his best friend affected him, he grimaced at the idea of admitting that Ron was clearly jealous. He was always jealous even of himself, until he explained about his family and they hit it off, Ron saw him as an equal, but with Harry.

They occupied something that would make them friends again.

If only Ron knew what he had and when he and Harry were jealous.

Things would be different.

“Give him time” he mumbles boringly.

Harry keeps ranting for several minutes, exchanging boring looks with Neville who shrugs his shoulders, there's not much to do.

                                                     ♦♦♦

“Hey blonde head” says one afternoon Camile appearing from nowhere.

He sighs bored and a little annoyed.

He is still studying with Ginny and Luna, many times Hermione joins them, but Camile was occasional, sometimes she spent weeks in a row with them and other times she almost didn't show up at all. The laughing girl was part of the dueling club and studied with Professor Mcgonagall because she wanted to be an animagus.

He loved it when she didn't show up.

She was annoying.

“What?” she says with more annoyance than she feels.

But the girl keeps smiling.

“I need help with a class," he says, still smiling and with both hands together as if she were asking for help.

He sees her with annoyance.

This brat.

“Look how low Draco has fallen, he's not only with the dirty blood and the traitor, now he surrounds himself with mestizos “ says Pansy Parkinson passing by with a group of Slytherin.

He looks at her with annoyance, but this disappears when, out of nowhere, Camile passes by and punches Pansy who leaves her on the floor crying. She grimaces at the sight of her bloody, swollen nose, Camile's wand moves faster and the other two girls are turned into little Chihuahuas with alarming ease.

I didn't know she was so good.

He sees her impressed, this one seems bored.

“You know not all Hufflepuffs are so patient” she admits with a shrug.

He goes to say something, but a teacher comes over to scold Camile, which seems not to be the first time he has done something like that.

They end up at the address.

He wasn't to blame, but he's still an eyewitness.

                                                       ♦♦♦

He can't help but be curious, Snape is kind and explains what he knows. Camile Marsell is a half Spanish and half French witch. It seems that her mother was from a fairly powerful lineage in the French country from one of the highest pure-blooded families, but she fell in love with a Muggle. She gave up everything she had to follow a Spanish man (who loved music) and Camile was born out of that relationship. The laughing girl had great potential for magic, but seemed a little confused like Harry at first.

half Blood.

The word collides in her mind.

Something that her father abhorred, over his pure-blooded supremacy.

Wizarding like Harry or Camile were not entirely unpleasant, Hermione was certainly a genius at magic.

There was nothing wrong with them.

Her father was wrong.

“You don't have to defend me," he snarls at Camile when Dumbledore gives him a scolding.

She smiles, ignoring his words.

“Friends help each other," she says, smiling.

He wants to ask her how long they've been friends, but he's tired and prefers to go to bed early.

                                                        ♦♦♦

He applauds Harry when he manages to survive a fight with the dragon, which finally manages to calm the friendship between Harry and Ron, to the relief of him and Hermione. But soon the idea of a ball of the chosen ones, comes to stay in his group of friends and the whole school actually. He is about to say that he does not intend to go, but his friends end up dragging him along before he can refuse. He watches with amusement as Hermione accepts that someone has invited her and Ron seems incredulous as if he is indignant. He doesn't say anything about seeing Victor, a professional player, invite Hermione the other day.

Laughs when Ginny admits defeat in accepting Neville's invitation, almost dying of not being able to help Harry.

Harry who is rejected by Cho.

His friends are involved in many romantic dramas.

“Who will you go with?” asks Ron one day with suspicion in the middle of the great hall.

A memory of the last week comes to his mind, not that he thought about looking for a partner, but since he is going to the ball, he thinks that going alone would be pathetic, for a moment he thinks about inviting Luna, but he regrets it immediately. She may be Ginny's best friend, but she doesn't think she can be with her, without the intervention of the redhead for a long time. Hermione is clearly not available, so he thinks of the only girl besides them with whom he has contact.

One of those afternoons he walks to the library, where he sees Camile concentrating, or rather, not concentrating on the study but on making magical circles in the air.

He wants to run, but reluctantly walks to her.

“Do you want to go to the ball with me?” she asks when he takes a seat next to her.

He does not know if he has read her mind or she is really looking for a pair.

He shrugs her shoulders.

She smiles as always.

He doesn't tell Ron what really happened.

“I'm going with Camile, she's a Hufflepuff we studied with” he admits without telling the truth.

Draco has a pride to bear.

He sees Ron's completely betrayed face; Harry seems to laugh vaguely at the misfortune.

                                                        ♦♦♦

The ball is not as bad as he thinks, Ron and Harry seem completely unhappy at some point, but Hermione really looks like fun, he has run into Ginny who greets him cheerfully several times, giving him funny looks every time Camile forces him to dance. Camile is strange, in a way he doesn't understand, she always seems to smile and has a lot of energy. Her father would be horrified that he considers her a friend and inwardly rejoices and hopes that he will ever find out, only to see her face horrified.

The memories of the cruciatus make him shiver, making Camile curious.

“You look like a boy with secrets” she says amusingly when they finish a dance and have a drink.

He ignores her by shrugging his shoulders.

Out of the corner of her eye, he sees Ron lose his dance partner for giving Hermione a dirty look, Draco feels the family's bet in her pocket.

“I like boys with secrets," adds Camile, making him spit out a little of his drink and look incredulous.

She lets out a loud laugh before forcing him to dance to a song, which he doesn't know like the others, making him look, probably, ridiculous.

But she smiles so big that she forces herself to be there.

When the dance is over, Ginny catches him from behind before whispering to him to accompany Camile to her door. He thinks it's ridiculous, but as long as the girl doesn't see him with big eyes, he accepts. Camile doesn't seem to mind when they walk together in comfortable silence.

She is finally tired of talking, he thinks briefly funny.

Everything in his mind seems to die when a pressure on his lips makes him freeze, it lasts a few seconds, but when he separates, he sees Camile as a fish out of water. He has never kissed a girl, he is ashamed to admit it, especially because in his first kiss, he was not initiated by him. Male pride on the floor. He sees the spark of fun in the girl's eyes.

Who has a beautiful green dress, his long hair in a hairstyle that only a girl could do and light makeup.

She is pretty.

Admits reluctantly, not bad for a first kiss.

He takes her behind the head and now it is him who kisses her, to recover a little of his pride, he would never admit in a million years that it is because he has liked the first one.

They kiss a little more.

When Draco lies down on her bed, a satisfied smile fills her face.

                                                      ♦♦♦

Everything seems to be in chaos when Credic dies, he feels fear and terror for what it means. Even when no one seems to want to believe Harry, he believes him, because his father for years talked about the awakening of the dark lord and now, they are living it. He is afraid, he is horrified and in his fifth year, he understands that nothing good can come of this. The holiday in the burrow seems like a distant dream, which he now wishes to recover. Harry's visions clearly do not help at all and everything seems to be a whirlpool of desolation.

“So much for a quiet year” confesses Ginny one afternoon that they are together in the corridors.

Above all, with Dolores Umbridge hovering around.

Annoying and toad-faced.

Touching his hand briefly with bandages, having supported Harry was not such a good idea when they both shared the punishment, but he was her friend.

“Well at least someone is doing well with the plan to outdo Harry Potter”- he comments amusingly before pushing her playfully.

This one sees him incredulous, before wanting to put a spell on him.

“You haven't told me more about Camile after I saw them kissing” says Ginny in a funny way.

She had caught them that Yule ball, but had the decency not to say it out loud and only to harass him when he was alone.

Kind, he assumed.

Or blackmailing.

“We didn't talk much” he admitted something uncomfortable.

They have greeted each other in the corridors, studied with everyone, but nothing has happened between them. It's as if the ball was just a fleeting dream one night and it bothers him to admit that it irritates him more than he wants to admit.

“Who would say, both suffering from unrequited love.”

“At least I kissed her.”

Ginny's bat mucus appears so quickly and painfully, that he can only shake his hands feeling that he is drowning.

But the satisfaction remains within he of winning a verbal fight.

                                                      ♦♦♦

Draco looks uncomfortably, as clearly the students of the house Slytherin have a clear preferential treatment for the toad face. He sees them as annoying when they keep making fun of him, but more than annoying, inside he feels uncomfortable. He has dreams where he sees himself in the house of the snakes and that makes him sleep uneasy, he does not like what he sees, that Draco that bothers others (as they do with his person) and that intimidates his current friends. He is afraid to say that to them, since he is a person that he does not like.

It is like hating a part of himself.

Because he knows, if he had stayed at Slytherin's house, he would have done it.

He was so fooled by the man who is his father, so full of resentment towards those who are not pure blood.

Most of the wizarding society is not pure blood.

Idiot.

“Draco?” calls Harry when they go to their private of forbidden classes on defence against the dark arts.

All because of his current teacher.

He sucked.

“I was thinking” he muses quietly, making Harry raise an eyebrow to see him confused, but he doesn't dare say his thoughts, maybe he shouldn't have been a Gryffindor as he was a coward “don't look at me like that, at least my date didn't cry all afternoon” he adds in a mocking tone.

Harry groans clearly ashamed and feels a little satisfaction at seeing him suffer for normal things.

Draco stops uncomfortably when in the middle of the room when he sees how Camile seems to have convinced Hannah to join "Dumbledore's army", all thanks to Ginny, he doesn't know whether to kill his pseudo little sister or thank her.

Harry sees him confused, Draco is grateful that he is an idiot in those matters, he had enough tragedy with Hermione and Ginny, besides Neville.

“Potter” starts Camile by his side humming funny and giving him a curious look, which he ignores as best he can.

“Camile, I'm glad you and Hannah could come, the more people the better” Harry spoke shyly, but glad to see her.

He whimpered when he admitted that, although they were not friends, Camile used to have casual conversations with the boy, especially about Quidditch.

The girl smiled too much, for his taste.

“There are cute boys to see around here, of course I'd come," she says honestly and without any apparent shame.

Harry is shocked, she turns to him and gives him a flirty wink before leaving. It's thanks to that that Harry turns to see he with an incredulous mouth, he prefers to leave quickly next to someone else, trying not to let the red of his cheeks be so noticeable.

                                                       ♦♦♦

He looks incredulously at Hermione and Ginny sitting in front of him, both ranting about men, almost ignoring him at the time. He sighs thinking about how he agreed to study with them, turns his face to the window, almost wishing he could be out with Harry and Ron, but he had made a decision, he regretted it, clearly, but he is not one to go back on his word. In his suitcase in his room, a letter from his mother asking him to stay away from any trouble indicated that, soon, there would be trouble.

Not just the attempt on Arthur's life.

He felt uncomfortable, like a bad feeling.

A blow to the forehead made him his before he saw Ginny badly who let out a funny laugh.

“In the Malfoy clouds?” her asked amusingly, moving his eyebrows amusingly.

“Mind your own business Weasley," he grunts back equally amused.

Hermione rolls her eyes, exchanges a funny look with Ginny, both knowing the girl's problem with Ron.

He admits, only to himself and probably to Ginny (who in some way he doesn't understand is his best friend) that he might, in some younger way, have had feelings for Hermione. Not only were they competing all the time, the girl was growing up and she was cute, of course adding that would have bothered his father, made everything very attractive. But when he became friends with them, it only took a second to see the interaction between Ron and Hermione to know that he didn't want to get into anything romantic between them.

The image of a long-haired, funny-smiling Hufflepuff girl momentarily surrounded his head.

“Hermione what you occupy is giving my brother a kiss (which is disgusting) and touching his buttock to make you happy” says Ginny shamelessly.

It takes no more than that comment for Draco to grab her by the neck and start running around the common room, with a red Hermione of shame as well as anger.

They end up on the floor laughing and their task forgotten.

Amidst the laughter, Draco cannot help but think that both of them and the rest of his friends they were a family that occupied.

                                                      ♦♦♦

Draco loves his friends, although he must admit that being friends with Harry Potter has put him on the brink of death, many more times than he likes to admit. The idea of going to the magic ministry is stupid, he tries to convince him before doing such a stupid thing, but, although he doesn't succeed, he ends up accompanying them. It is when everything seems to be in chaos, when they find out that Sirus is alive, that the order is safe (secret that they trust him for being a kind of honorary Weasley) and the crazy Bellatrix who is somehow distant relative, pursues them both to Sirus and to him to kill them.

All the people with whom he shares blood are crazy, they decide in the end.

Sirus at first had this uncertainty about himself too, until he told he that he was in Gryffindor and seemed happy that he was not the only black sheep in the Black family.

He was not a Black.

Although his mother was.

Everything was confusing.

Although he admitted to being a fairly competent duelist, Bellatrix was crazy (there was nothing positive to say in that situation) and as little as he avoided that dark spell. Whimpered when her hand began to bleed, proving that it was not by chance.

“Lucius no doubt raised a useless” he snarled that woman with a dismissive tone.

He saw her rolling her eyes.

Unbelieving buffoon.

“You're crazy, demented and no doubt I'd rather spend my life with blood traitors than a lady who's a whore behind Voldemort” he shouted the first offensive words he came up with.

The Cruciatus was not long in coming.

How many times can a person endure so much pain?

From his blood family, for worse.

Whimpering when he fell backwards, before Sirus started a battle against her, but they were walking too close to the veil. Sirus, like Harry, had a strange suicidal tendency, he decided when even trembling, he should throw himself with Sirus to avoid a curse from Bellatrix so that he wouldn't fall in the middle of the veil.

He feels every bone in his body ache.

But he's alive, she surmises with irony.

“That bitch is crazy” murmurs before Sirus brings him by the neck so that both of them manage to dodge another attack.

“Boy!” calls Sirus over him, but his vision begins to blur, before he bites his lips and stands up shaking.

They must fight.

Stupid Potter thinks with irony, before following Sirus and Bellatrix's duel with barely open eyes, with a nimble spell he makes Bellatrix fall backwards, before feeling an attack from his back. Bites her teeth as she feels pain all over her body again.

This time he is knocked unconscious.

                                                      ♦♦♦

When he opens his eyes again, a room he detects from St. Mungo’s receives him, and he is measured to get into his bed, feeling pain all over his body. He looks at his bandaged hands and feels pain in his back, but he is alive. Memories of the battle in the ministry haunt his mind and he cannot help but feel terrified. A war, they had not been many and he hardly thinks if they survive, but that only seemed a prelude, a prelude to imminent war. A sound distracts him and he is paralyzed when the curtain that separates his bed is opened and Molly Weasley appears on the other side, this incredulous whimpering wakes him up and wraps him in a hug.

He can't help but wonder when his real mother hugged him for the last time.

He also can't believe how stupid Ron is, to be jealous of Harry or him, when he has a family like this one.

“I'm glad you're awake, honey," she says with sincerity and tears in her eyes.

He doesn't move, not believing that anyone else is crying for him.

He smiles slightly, before everything turns to chaos in his room.

Ignoring the visit of all the Weasleys, including Sirus (he doesn't quite understand what has happened to set him free), Harry and Hermione, Ginny is the one who tells him the story. He had received several unforgivable curses, a cruciatus and another that has left a scar on her back, which like her hand, cannot be healed. He was unconscious for two weeks.

Ginny seems worried about himself, just as her mother cries when she sees him, Hermione hugs him in a protective way and cannot help feeling at home.

“YOU ARE ALIVE!” both twins shout with emotion, before shaking their hair.

He feels pain all over his body.

His head does not stop hammering.

He wants to sleep.

But he wouldn't change for anyone in the world.

                                                            ♦♦♦

Snape never treats him badly, even though since he left his father they have hardly had any cordial contact, but that does not mean that he is any less concerned when he obtains the role of professor of defence against the dark arts in his sixth year. Harry, who has always hated his godfather, doesn't seem too thrilled about the affair either, because although Sirus is declared innocent, he doesn't have the power to uphold it or something stupid said Dumbledore. He tries to remind him that he will soon come of age, but Harry can be stubborn and prefers to ignore him.

The fact that Ginny spends all her time with her boyfriend also seems to put him in a bad mood.

Her four best friends are in love, but not together.

Bad luck.

He and Neville seem to jump between the two of them, trying to keep the issues from getting too sensitive.

“Dean is a pain in the ass, he's cute, but I can do things on my own” complains Ginny in the common room with an annoyed grimace.

He ignores her for reading his book.

Dean's subject is a sensitive one for both of them, not only does the boy seem to hate him since his first year, they also share the same room and he seems to hate him because Ginny declared that he is her best friend. Although he repeats a thousand times that he has no romantic feelings for the girl, her boyfriend always seems to see him out of the corner of his eye as a potential enemy.

Pathetic.

“You're only with him because you're with someone," he says before turning the page in the book on oclumacy.

Even though Snape doesn't treat him like he used to, he has given him that book in his fourth year, so he tries to study it. Sometimes after school in his fifth year, he would instruct him, he almost had the trick of doing it without difficulty.

He worried about why her godfather gave her that.

“Dean is cute and kisses well, but I like my space, yesterday I reproach myself because I spend a lot of time with you” she grumpy is carelessly settling in his lap.

He rolled his eyes.

“Because of things like this he is upset," he says without taking his eyes off the book or making her feel uncomfortable.

He's used to it, as a child Ginny was very loving and he was clearly a carrion for his family. Like a sister she never had, Ginny began to follow him when her brothers ignored her, laughing and telling her things, which he did not ignore for a fact.

She was the first one to speak to him.

The one who took him to the Weasley house.

She was family.

He owed her a lot.

Besides, her lively and cheerful personality, helped him when he was not feeling well. Because he had the fake family of now, sometimes he remembered that his parents had given up on him, that they were on the side of the dark lord and the scars on his body were witness to the fact that both had taken different paths.

“It's stupid, Harry and Ron found me last night making out with Dean and took on the role of big brother, they should be like you.”

“You know I'd protect your dignity too, but you'd throw a bat booger at me and not take my help.”

“Exactly, thank you for noticing.”

He sees her thinking it was no joke and she with her head in her lap puts on an innocent smile, making both of them laugh slightly. Distracted he puts a hand on Ginny's head and starts to massage her hair, she makes a sound that reminds him of a cat and thinks she is a brat.

“I feel offended that that book is more important than your best friend.”

“This book would beat you at anything.”

A whimper comes out of his mouth when it punches him in the face, with force the lance of his lap and this wheel on the ground. Both of them burst out laughing when she throws herself at him, in his lap, and seems to want to hang him, but he hardly resists.

A sound of annoyance distracts them, causing them to turn to their right where Ron and Harry are standing.

Draco reacts a second later, with Ginny on his legs too close to his body and face.

His forehead is shaded in blue.

“Now you're going out with Draco too," says Ron in an accusatory tone.

Bad idea.

Faster than a flash, Ginny casts a spell on him that throws him on his back. She seems to want to go and kill him, but not in play as with him, so he holds her by the waist preventing her from committing a murder.

“Draco is my best friend asshole, now I'll kill you” she says this in a sadistic tone.

He decides he prefers to be on the girl's good side, so he lets her go and it's Hermione who finally manages to stop her from committing murder. The worst thing decides Draco, is the look of complete hatred of Harry, who does not know when or how, it seems that finally he has feelings for Ginny.

He snorts underneath when Hermione yells at Ron that he is a fool and drags him into the library.

Now Ron sees him angry too.

He whines.

He doesn't do anything.

                                                         ♦♦♦

He decides for his own mental (and physical) sake to stay away from his friends, until they solve their love problems with each other, he doesn't want to get caught in the crossfire. Therefore, in his free time, he prefers to be out reading some book, sometimes thinking that he could have stayed in Ravenclaw, although he still doesn't manage to beat Hermione in notes. New Year's resolution decides. It is an afternoon in the middle of a bench, when a shadow appears in front of him. He tries not to look surprised when he sees Camile in front of him with her usual friendly smile.

He's ignoring him as usual; she takes a seat next to him and starts to move his feet.

He gets tense.

He forgets that not only his friends have these romantic problems. The girl next to him kisses him in his fourth year at the yule ball, but after that she ignores him, sometimes she talks to him as if nothing happened and he is clearly confused.

Not only are Harry and Ron bad with girls.

He is too.

Shit.

He would never admit it out loud.

“You look at me with bulging eyes, it's funny” she says she's pointing at him shamelessly; she blushes and this one laughs “I'm not going to do anything to you that you don't want to” she adds with a flirty wink.

That bothers him too, those shameless flirtations, make him feel uncomfortable.

He looks at her out of the corner of his eye, noticing that her long hair is now a little more controlled and longer than before, that her face is starting to stop looking like a girl's and her body is becoming very beautiful. He hates the hormones inside him and that this girl is by his side.

Just like Ginny and Hermione this one seems to be at ease next to her.

But it is not the same.

Is different and he doesn't understand how.

“Of course,” he says in a boring way trying to control himself, this one sees him as a bit annoying.

“You know for a guy, you're not very good with girls," she says, as if reading her thoughts.

Draco blushes before seeing her with disbelief, curiously this seems to be serious as she almost never shows it because she is smiling.

“That's rude” grunts before returning to her book.

This snort.

“Rude is kissing a girl and never bringing it up” she points out with clear annoyance.

His blushing increases and he sees her angry, as she seems to take it easy and he is a sea of nerves at this moment.

“You kissed me first.”

“And then you.”

“You acted as if nothing had happened.”

“I'm a Draco girl, we like to see an interest in a boy and not do all the work.”

Both are upset and look angry, he does not understand what she wants and she seems to want to claim something from him. The girls are annoying, he decides in the middle of something that he does not understand, only it seems that she expected him to look for it and it is ridiculous because he.

Because he...

He looks away, ready to get up.

“You are a nuisance” mumble without knowing what else to say.

He had enough family problems to add this girl to his life, his friends are now in danger and he doesn't know how long before everything goes to shit. It takes studying, it takes being a better wizard to help them when the time comes.

He should go.

But when he sees the girl sideways, still sitting, almost looking downcast and with sore eyes, he curses himself internally.

Only once.

He says to himself when he sits down again. Camile opens her eyes in disbelief when now it's him who initiates the kiss, because just like Ginny's eyes, but in another way, he doesn't understand, and doesn't care, he can't see his sad eyes.

He is not a scum.

He is not her father.

They separate and he is embarrassed but internally happy to feel his pride back for initiating the kiss. She smiles in a way he has never seen before, softer and more sincere, which also reaches his brown eyes, which he now notices have flashes of other colours.

It is beautiful.

“You're annoying too," says this one with a slightly broken but funny voice.

Then, ignoring his previous thought, he kisses her again.

Shit.

                                                          ♦♦♦

“Draco has a girlfriend and won't die a virgin” celebrates Ginny in the common room, making him snarl in annoyance and Hermione laughing by his side.

Neville has a funny smile at his side, which he wants to smash with one punch.

He was still a virgin.

But he wasn't going to make that clear out loud.

Ginny continues to hug him excited, saying that Camile was a sun for putting up with him, that he should not ruin him. Hermione commented on everything he had to do to be a good boyfriend, Neville seemed just as tortured as he was.

“At least now Harry and Ron will no longer see me as competition” he muses, making Neville nod in agreement.

Hermione and Ginny look confused.

He snorts.

Who's the blind man now?

Who would have thought that, of the group of friends, he is the first to get a steady girlfriend.

                                                        ♦♦♦

Many things are happening before his eyes, war seems closer and closer and Dumbledore's death is the trigger. When the great wizard dies, he feels that, within him, the world is lost, when a powerful wizard could not help it, they definitely could not do anything. At the funeral he is sitting there with a lost look in his eyes, he wants to think that he has nothing to do with this place, but he knows what happens to his father and mother, the bad guys of history and how this war was getting closer and closer to breaking out.

He sees the sky in confusion.

Was this his destiny?

When the hat chose him at Gryffindor.

What was he thinking?

“Everything will change," muses Neville sitting next to him and he nods his head.

He sees his hand for a few seconds, feeling a little pain in the scar on it as in his back. He grinds his teeth knowing that somehow that hat decided his fate.

'A butterfly effects.'

Arthur called once.

On the way to where Harry was with Ron and Hermione, the three of them had made a choice and given him the opportunity to choose. When he arrived at them, his three friends saw him with big eyes with questions, they had given him a choice because they knew the situation of his biological family,

“I'm in” admits in a serious voice.

Hermione nods.

Ron sighs.

Harry looks at him with gratitude.

They are friends.

While they go off, the rest go to look after Hogwarts. He looks sideways at where Ginny is next to Neville, Luna, Hannah and Camile. Her best friend smiled slightly, knowing that this would also be a battleground next year.

Camile gives him a slight smile.

A part of him, decided, was an idiot for not talking to her before and taking advantage of the time a little more. By her side, he had been very warm and different, a different good in his life that he thought he wouldn't have. But now is not the time to back out.

                                                         ♦♦♦

The search took a long time, both good and bad experiences passed. Since Ron left them, he felt lost at the thought of his parents behind all this, struggles and losses. When they arrive at the castle after a whole year away in the middle of death (which he jokes about all the time with Harry telling him that he is unlucky) and ready to start a war, he feels confused. In the middle of the fight where he attacks and protects, he wonders what would have happened if his life had been different, as in his dreams.

Maybe he would be on the other side of the battle and that destroys him.

Why the other side is wrong.

Voldemort is wrong.

That is why when the Selector Hat appears, almost at the same time as Voldemort's snake, when Harry's body appears. For the first time he understands why he is in Gryffindor, when the sword of his creator is held in his hand to kill the snake.

Ignoring his number of wounds.

Ignoring that his parents behind Voldemort see him in disbelief.

He makes his choice at that moment, it is not like before that he only accepts the fate that others chose for him, no, he decides his path and the sword shines in his hands. Voldemort seems angry with himself, but he couldn't care less.

He is not afraid of him.

Not after all he's been through.

And then Harry seems to come back from the dead.

Before he knows it the battle is over, but he doesn't feel well, he is tired, a heart-rending cry from someone, is also the sign of a series of dead to be picked up.

                                                       ♦♦♦

That night he walks to his old bedroom, which is somewhat destroyed but stable. He throws himself on his bed, followed by Ron and Harry on theirs. Hermione ignores that it's not the girls' bed and remembers one that must have been Neville's, the four of them are exhausted, the battle has been over for a few hours, but there are many dead, much pain and much blood. He feels too tired to talk or say anything, he just wants to sleep all night, but he feels that he will have nightmares.

“I'm exhausted” says Hermione with her arms stretched out.

The thought of her bewitching her parents and sending them to Australia runs through her mind, they will have to go and get them soon, they had decided in the middle of their journey in moments of stress.

Where they were thinking about the end of the war.

Where they were optimistic.

“I'm hungry” mumbles Ron against the pillow.

Everyone laughs slightly.

“By the way, Potter, technically Ron made Hermione kiss him, so you owe me money," he says, sitting on his bed.

Harry laughs when Ron and Hermione turn red.

"Hermione kissed him so you owe me money” counter this scathing, but funny-looking one.

Maybe.

It has a point.

“You made me lose money Weasley, you owe me” he grunts at he with feigned annoyance and this one throws a pillow at he face.

The four of them laugh like kids and he throws himself back on the bed with a peaceful smile. But his smile fades slightly as he remembers the number of dead, especially that of one of the twins who hurts him to the core. A selfish part of her inner self has been happy to see Camile among the survivors, she herself had a terrible wound on her leg from a werewolf, but she only laughed saying that it was not that serious.

They would have to wait until the next new moon.

But she was alive.

That comforts him.

“Hey Draco", says Harry out of the blue, turns to see him confused and he smiles at him “I'm glad you're my friend” he talks a bit corny, but he understands.

Friendship is important.

It reminds him of how Sirus talks about his friendship with Harry's father and with Lupin.

“Don't get cheesy Potter, I have a girlfriend unlike a guy who got brave and left her” he comments funny and this one whines indignantly.

A move at his side, makes him see Hermione sitting next to him.

“I'm also glad you're my friend Draco, if I had a brother I'd be like you and Harry.”

“Yes, because if I were Ron I'd be incest.”

A pillow from Ron makes him laugh when he just pats his head, but he high-fives himself.

The four of them laugh, before the four of them end up in their bed, in a knot of hands and legs, sleeping together. Draco at that moment thinks about what his life could have been different, if he had been selected in another house, but when he feels Harry's elbow, when Ron snores or when Hermione babbles by his side.

He knows.

He wouldn't trade it for anything, this feeling of being filled.

And he hoped that, in a few years, everything would be just like this moment, the four friends.

The house of Gryffindor.

His house.

[dessarious]

The Angel of Death Pt17

Inspired by this Story Starter by @someone-ev

AO3   Prologue   Beginning   Previous   Next

Three days. That’s all it took for Tris to decide that she wanted nothing to do with this school or the teachers who insisted on talking down to her because she knew their material better than they did. One even had the audacity to correct her and when she cited six different primary sources to back up her position he’d sent her to the headmaster's office. The man didn’t seem to know what to do with her, no one in the school did.

“Which teacher did you piss off this time?” She looked up from her seat outside the office to see Adrien coming towards her. His always cheerful expression made her worry about him sometimes but he was pleasant to be around.

“All of them.” He let out a bark of laughter but then frowned at her.

“You’re not serious are you?” She just frowned back.

“Of course I’m serious. What else would I be?” He didn’t seem to know how to respond to that. “They’re all in there trying to get the headmaster to expel me.” His eyes grew wider with every word.

“By all of them you mean…”

“All of them. Even the study hall teacher because apparently he took offense to my comment about it being a wasted period since the classes here are far too rudimentary to require any serious study.” Adrien coughed to cover a laugh before pulling out his phone. She didn’t see what was funny about any of this. “What are you doing?”

“Texting Chloe. If she finds out I knew about this and didn’t warn her so she could make sure you stay enrolled I don’t think anyone would find my body.” Tris rolled her eyes, but given that Chloe's father had hired the Angel of Death it was possible she could find someone capable of that. Not to mention Kagami was a bit of a wild card. Tris couldn’t be sure exactly what the girl’s skill set was.

“Tell her not to bother. There’s absolutely no point in my being here to learn if no one is going to teach me properly.” They didn’t even teach proper study techniques given the fact that she’d helped all her roommates, including Luka, with their study habits. It was no wonder burnout was an issue when they didn’t give their students the proper tools.

“What if you switch classes to subjects that you don’t already know so much about?” Adrien was still typing away on his phone and it sounded like an off hand comment but Tris frowned in thought.

“Given some of the misinformation I’ve heard come out of the teachers here I’m not sure I trust the staff to teach me anything accurately. But I suppose I could supplement their teaching with my own research. What kind of classes though?” Adrien gave a thoughtful hum.

“Well you’ve been banned from the gym so sports are out.” She scowled at the reminder. She still didn’t think it was her fault that the teacher had told her not to hold back and she ended up breaking another student's nose within the first five seconds of the match. She also didn’t understand why the boy had cried about it. “There’s music, art, architecture, religion and cultural studies, design… oh and they just started a graphic design and video game development course!”

“Why would anyone waste time on such a useless pursuit? Video games are a complete waste of time when you could be doing something productive.” Adrien’s expression fell and she was once again reminded of a kicked puppy. She really didn’t like that look. “I guess art or design wouldn’t be terrible.” At least the knowledge would be useful and creative thinking was always an asset.

“Great! I’m sure Chloe will get everything figured out. Just try not to injure anyone else, or make another teacher cry.” He sounded extremely amused by the last part though she couldn’t understand why. Watching a grown man cry as she picked apart what was apparently his doctoral thesis had been rather pathetic. If he can’t handle the criticism he  should have put more effort into it in the first place. She’d heard a rumor that he’d taken a sabbatical and checked into a mental institution, but wasn’t sure she believed it.

“If the teachers were competent it wouldn’t be an issue.I should not have to correct their misinformation and it honestly worries me that so many people have been taught such flawed curriculum.” Adrien let out a sigh before sitting down next to her. They all seemed to be under the impression that she was being far too critical of the school.

“Perhaps you’re right, but nothings going to change and long as you keep putting their backs up. People get defensive when someone challenges them. Maybe you could try being nicer about it? That way they might actually be willing to listen to what you have to say. Because right now all you’re doing is forcing them to stick to their flawed teaching or admit that a student that has far less education than them knows more about the subject they’ve basically dedicated their lives to. No one likes to admit they’re wrong, especially if they feel like it’s being rubbed in their face.”

Tris considered his words carefully. Criticism had been a daily, if not hourly occurrence in her life from the time she was taken. It had ceased to bother her not long after, but she did vaguely remember being annoyed when anyone corrected her at something she felt she knew. She hadn’t realized that’s what she was doing to those teachers. She still thought they needed to get over it, but this might be one of those things she was supposed to learn.

“I’ll try to be more sensitive in the future.” Adrien beamed at her.

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[kinetic-elaboration]

April 25: 2x16 The Gamesters of Triskelion

Finally watched some more Star Trek. I feel like it’s been forever...

Today’s ep is The Gamesters of Triskelion, which is... okay. It’s not terrible but I think its best aspects are the most familiar: the type of alien, the moral values at play; and its weakest are its most unique.

I think Spock likes it when Kirk says “mind the store.” What a folksy human thing to say!

Plus now that he’s Captain he gets to sit in the chair.

This conversation between Spock and Scotty is hilarious. “I’m assuming you mean they disappeared in an unusual way??” “Uh, yeah?? Do you think I’m dumb?”

This alien looks like Lady Gaga c. 2010

Kirk is being very Dramatic today.

Come on, Spock, gotta get your man.

You know Spock is worried when he mentions hope. That is, as McCoy says, a human emotion.

“Collars of obedience.” Kinky.

Stylish pink jail.

I’m really feeling this Spock and Bones interaction today. That’s a great eyebrow lift.

If the random alien is leaving, Uhura must have been his ass down.

“Nourishment interval.” We need to bring this into our modern vocabulary.

Not one, but TWO ladies in command gold today (one at Communications, and one at Spock’s station).

Wild aquatic fowl.

I feel like this episode is another example of a writer putting her alien sex fantasy on television. Like, a hardcore alien sex fantasy. The obedience collars, the training harness, the whipping, the weird flirtation between Chekov and his “training thrall”--herself a very androgynous alien, just to throw some gender play in there.

Kirk turning up the charm again. I missed Charming!Kirk. I mean, picking up a silver platter to use as a mirror and saying “That’s beautiful”? This man has no shame.

I feel like this episode shows how Spock’s logic is actually a very effective life strategy. He’s facing a very mysterious situation with high stakes--literally his best friend/soulmate/captain lost, plus two more crewmen--but he isn’t defeatist like McCoy or defensive like Scotty. He just follows the evidence, even when the evidence seems wild. And he was right.

Detective Kirk time!

“Are they computers?” He’s hoping so, since he’s very good at defeating computerized enemies.

Could it be instead another example of aliens who have transcended their physical bodies?

He is really laying the charm offensive on thick here.

I get how people have vague memories of TOS and remember Kirk as slutty, because certainly there are lots of shots of him kissing ladies, but like... 90% of the time he's using charm as a weapon, like he doesn't like Lady Gaga, he just wants to get off this planet.

“Love, for one thing.” Time for Kirk to be a Romantic Nerd again. He sure does love love!!

See imo just as it’s ridiculous for him to limit love to being one of the most important things on Earth, since he barely even spends any time on Earth and his general thesis is about what all intelligent creatures can care about besides their basic needs being met by “Providers,” I think it’s silly to limit love to being between men and women. And just as he’s kinda lying about the Earth thing, I think he’s lying about the heterosexual thing.

People in love “live together, help each other, make each other happy.” I love his definitions of love!! Like with Edith, he center helping each other in the definition.

McCoy and Scotty think they can take on Spock lmao. The Captain’s life is at stake; he’s not fooling around. And he’s right too so y’all can shush!!

Honestly, that leaning down to talk quietly to them--I know it’s because he doesn’t want to say the word “mutiny” too loud where other people can hear him, but it really reads like he’s mocking them.

Shauhna is harassed at work.

Spock’s like ‘screw a landing party, I will retrieve my space husband by myself... and I guess McCoy can come too.’

McCoy’s voice was the one Kirk heard but he still calls out to Spock.

Mmm, yes, disembodied alien brains.

I like the painted background behind them, too. Which is apparently stolen from Devil in the Dark. S2 needs more painted backgrounds.

“You think YOU’RE competitive? A race that does nothing but gamble? Well you’ve never met humans lol.”

Since when has Kirk ever competed for a woman? Hardly a competition when he always wins.

“Fresh thrall” something so... ugh about that phrase.

Ah, yes, an Andorian.

I’m starting to feel like this is Spock’s Pre-Reform Vulcan Sex Fantasy.

I feel like Shauhna will eventually become the leader of the Triskellion people. My mom thinks it would be cool for Kirk to meet her again in the future. I feel like there’s a fanfic in there somewhere...

“I didn’t lie, I just...lied.”

Honestly, don’t bother leaving everything to these disembodied colorful brains, just take Shauhna with you and enlist her in Starfleet. Or at least, like, high school.

...And after all that she STILL has a crush on Kirk. The man is too powerful.

What, no return to the Enterprise? No Kirk appearing shirtless on the bridge? No everyone acknowledges that Spock was right the whole time? No awkward little joking time?

I guess perhaps Kirk is embarrassed.

So overall... again, B basically.

As far as commonly used tropes in Star Trek go, this one is actually one of my favorite ones. I like it more than “godlike man must be defeated” and probably even more than “computer runs society,” though not as much as “old Earth tech becomes sentient.” But generally speaking “aliens transcend corporeal bodies by becoming too smart” is a good trope and I like seeing the different spins on it: the Organians, who can choose corporeal bodies if they want and are incredibly peaceful; the aliens from Return to Tomorrow, who wish they still had bodies; the aliens from The Cage/The Menagerie, who do have bodies but can’t do much with them, who must rely on aliens they capture to do physical work on the planet’s surface for them; and these aliens, who are so bored they must rely on arbitrary wagers using enslaved aliens just to have something to do. There’s something sort of... sad but fitting about that fate. Understandable, awful, pathetic. Still, I wouldn’t call this my favorite take on the trope.

But the specifics of the story, outside the “brain-aliens trope,” I didn’t like so much. The BDSM kink stuff mixed in with like actual slavery made me super uncomfortable. I know it’s based on Ancient Rome but like... even though it was a clear bread and circuses situation, that was not what I was thinking of tbqh.

This is a good episode for showcasing Star Trek Values, which overall I would say are my values. I do see how some people today would criticize them for being a little... well. How to say it. Colonizer-savior. I completely disagree that this is the reading that should be given to them and in fact I think it’s a bad faith reading but people are the way they are and certain things are in vogue sometimes and not others, so. I just mean that when Kirk says that they (the Federation, one would assume) have helped other civilizations “progress” or whatever word he uses, it sounds a little like they came in and made alien societies better using their own values. But I would say that what we actually see, in specific examples throughout the series, is the Federation wanting the civilizations it interacts with to be free, in fact requiring members state to be free, and that is really the one value a free society can impose on others or require of others--choosing slavery or dominion is choosing to relinquish all future choices, and thus cannot be allowed by any society that values freedom. That catch-22 that we see so much now. So, my point is, I think the values Kirk epitomizes for the show are freedom, self-determination, and a certain conception of progress, too: the ability to grow and develop, the avoidance of stagnation. And certainly this episode shows a clear case: having everything provided for you in exchange for being the professional playthings of a bunch of disembodied brains is objectively bad! Surely we can all agree on that. But this obvious example is used as an excuse for Kirk to speechify on the topic of what a utopian future will look like, what the best of humans can be, and what the rest of the universe could be like if it learns from our best traits (and not our worst). Which is overall something I find very comforting.

I’d just been thinking, at the beginning of this episode, that I think S1 is a better Kirk season than S2. S2 has too many episodes that problematize his leadership or his heroism, or that barely even use him--even episodes like The Trouble With Tribbles that outright mischaracterize him imo. But this episode really was Classic Kirk and I appreciated that. We see him being charming, smart, selfless, strong, creative, romantic... coming in at the end to embody the utopian values of the series.

Spock was so well characterized and so smart and so heroic, too, that he kinda was the mvp for me, though... Don’t take away my Kirk stan card lol. Spock was just so In Command... You can see how he could become a captain later, even if being in command never really interested him much.

I don’t entirely get why Kirk bargained for the thralls to all stay and make their own government (or to be trained in self-governance by their enslavers... a whole different issue tbqh), given that it’s already been established that most/all of them have been kidnapped from other planets. Should they not be... returned?

And if most/all of them are 2nd or later generations, that’s a whole other complex issue that could perhaps use third party mediators or something...

I also wondered about Shahna's origins. Was she the descendant of another civilization that is native to the planet, or is it just that her people were kidnapped so much earlier that she herself, personally, has never lived anywhere else?

I think it both makes more sense and is a more fitting ending if it’s the first. It makes sense to me that the first peoples enslaved by the brains were natives of the planet: more convenient that way. Also, I think we need to see more alien planets with more than one humanoid or human-intelligence level species.

And, if her people are native to the planet, having them become leaders of their own right again and not just possessions of the glowing brains is more powerful. Otherwise it's kinda sad: yes, they can form their own government here, but they've still been robbed of their real history and their real homeland, which they don't even remember.

Also as my mom pointed out, it’s not clear the brains themselves are native to the planet. They could have been invaders--the last real thing they did before they started wagering fake money--and Shauhna’s people the natives.

I really did like Shahna a lot and I hope she becomes the leader of whatever government they set up and eventually does get to travel into space.

Imo this was one of those TOS eps where the potential back story and the hints of world building are more interesting than the actual story.

Also apparently the actor who played Galt was trying to walk in a gliding manner so it wouldn’t be clear what he was hiding under those robes and... I have to say, definitely wheels.

Next up is A Piece of the Action, one of my favorites. Great plot, great fun, great sci fi concept, great Kirk material!

[auroraluciferi]

a white supremacist apparently had an issue with this random post I made.

my post was about the shocked reactions people all over the world were apparently having to American ads for prescription drugs played on the break during the Meghan Markle interview.

the point I was trying to make is that the avalanche of consumer ads for prescription medicine is yet another insane hallmark of the profit-driven US healthcare system which most people fortunately do not experience and no one seems to fully understand.

I feel this one detail helps to breach the facade shielding the dystopian reality which divides us, and it helps to explain for many why the United States has been especially crippled by the effects of the global pandemic. the suffering, deprivation and cruelty of our health infrastructure is an essential feature of capitalism, not a glitch. For many people it has been a time of reckoning.

so this worthless asshole clearly decided now was the time to plant his racist flag - he messaged several times over two days, then I guess he got upset with what I was saying and blocked me.

what follows is unpleasant and contains racist and deeply offensive language, copied verbatim from my inbox and chat.

it has been formatted to fit your television screen.

dee6000 submitted:                                    

Can your socialist BS. The ads/big pharma are separate from or profit medicine. What harmed US medicine was result of democrat politicians copying Europe’s socialists that treated citizens rights with contempt. In the past US medicine was the envy of the world, British, Europeans, Canadians many others would travel here to receive care. Dems blocked enforcement of immigration laws hospitals went bankrupt and taxpayer funded medicaid was overburdened. Just as the influx of tens of millions of illegal aliens and migrants caused rents to skyrocket and wages to be dragged down. Hospital based infection skyrocketed as well hospitals started hiring illegal aliens who did not follow cleaning rules. These infections weren’t new, they are the norm in Latin America and other third world countries. Years later these hospital infections started showing up. Obamacare requires doctors under threat of fines to refuse to perform some diagnostic testing on some patients. Socialist and communist countries have even worse outcomes. And Britain and Europe are experiencing the results of 3rd world imported substandard doctors and nurses.

@auroraluciferi:

lmao. "ads/big pharma" are somehow "separate" from for profit medicine and everything else is the fault of these filthy immigrants from the third world

good luck with whatever ax you're trying to grind

dee6000:

Lmao, people controlling their own labor, by charging for their work, unlike in your communist, socialist sewers where the government elites enslaves people and profit off those slaves like parasites.Big pharma came about under globalism, globalism is Trotskyite international communism. Prior to Clinton’s pushing manufacturing out of the US, US pharmaceutical companies manufactured product here, under fda law, the drugs were tested. Now drugs made in communist China and socialist India are not manufactured safely, there is no oversight, illnesses have resulted as a result and while workers in those countries are abused hypocrite Chinese and Indian elites profit. You might resent truth but that is your problem. Superbugs took hold in western countries as they started allowing displacement of their citizens in health care jobs, from cleaning, nursing, etc with third world people, who yes do not respect hygiene and health and safety rules. That is a fact. When US citizens cleaned hospitals and nursing homes there were no superbug outbreaks, before illegal aliens were illegally working in US food manufacturing, children weren’t  being sickened and killed from eating ecoli, salmonella, and mold contaminated peanut butter and peanut products as dozens of children and adults were in 2008-2009 when Peanut Corporation of America machinery then operated and “maintained” by illegal alien Mexicans, had developed toxic black mold because the illegals didn’t bother cleaning the machinery despite knowing that was the jobs they were paid to do. Hearings in congress were held and parents spoke about it. I don’t care what you think, I know you are a fascist

@auroraluciferi​:

Okay then, I'll humor you - honestly I feel sorry because it clearly took a lot of effort and mental gymnastics to type up that word salad you sent me. Let's look at each of the "points" you just tried to make.

"People controlling their own labor by charging for their work" - that is a laugh. How exactly do you control your own labor if you are forced to sell it to the lowest bidder, competing against millions of others? If a business lays you off or goes bankrupt due to mismanagement, market fluctuations, accidents or a natural disaster, your labor then becomes worthless. The choice you are given as an employee or contractor unsupported by social welfare programs is "accept whatever pathetic wage we decide your labor and time is worth" or "lose your home and starve to death".

Your idea of "control" is an illusion in an economic system where human survival is based on abritrary market conditions and greed rather than the quality of life itself.

"Big pharma came about under globalism, globalism is Trotskyite international communism." - are you suggesting that some of the largest and most profitable companies on earth are the result of a global, communist conspiracy? Johnson & Johnson, Bayer AG, GSK and others follow the corporate conglomeration and consolidation model pioneered and perfected by 19th and 20th century capitalists and industrialists like John D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, William Hearst, and Cornelius Vanderbilts. Hardly a group of jaded communist revolutionaries.

The multinational companies they founded and combined have systematically destroyed competition within their respective industries, forced both their consumers and employees to accept substandard, dangerous products and poverty wages, then used their wealth to influence both conservative and liberal politicians to deregulate industries and labor laws for their own benefit. All done by willing and eager students of Adam Smith, not Karl Marx.

"Prior to Clinton’s pushing manufacturing out of the US, US pharmaceutical companies manufactured product here, under fda law, the drugs were tested." - I assume here you're talking about NAFTA and Clinton-era regulations, both of which were enormous gifts to those same companies I just described.

These manufacturers left America to gild their pockets by voluntarily exploiting the workers of countries that do not have labor laws, have substandard or nonexistent environmental protections, and would accept even lower wages than Americans. They could have easily remained in the US, paid higher wages to American workers, followed the most basic regulations, and still would have made obscene levels of profit - the demand of shareholders for more profit motivated the outsourcing of US jobs, not because a spineless corporate lackey like Bill Clinton forced them to.

At the same time, NAFTA enabled US agribusiness to flood the Mexican and Central American economy with cheap, government-subsidized corn - instantly destroying the ability of Mexican farms to collectively set fair prices, driving millions facing starvation and poverty into cities and ultimately North into the United States. It's pretty ironic that your illegal immigration crisis was created by massive corporations supported by the US government, but I guess that's inconvenient history for you.

Again, this is another pretty obvious feature of capitalism, not communism or socialism. Businesses have a natural tendency to cut expenses and maximize profit any way they can. In an actual socialist system, there would be no incentive to do that - healthcare and medicine would be provided as a right, rather than a paid-for privilege as exists in our current system. Workers would not have to compete with each other to survive if their basic needs were provided for.

Also just thought you should know, the FDA regulations apply both to drugs that are imported just as they are to drugs that are manufactured in the US. Furthermore, there would be no FDA at all without American socialists, reformers and consumer advocates pressuring Congress into creating it - not sure how you can pretend otherwise. It was made specifically to address how the 19th-20th century market failed to "self-regulate", resulting in toxic food and drugs manufactured here, in the US.

"Superbugs took hold in western countries as they started allowing displacement of their citizens in health care jobs, from cleaning, nursing, etc with third world people, who yes do not respect hygiene and health and safety rules." - This is pretty racist, and also the opposite of reality. "Superbugs" are the natural result of bacteria and viruses adapting and evolving to ever increasing levels of antibiotics, antivirals, and hyper sanitation in our food supply and cleaning products, as well as natural mutation. Diseases like the coronavirus are inevitable - the US has failed to respond effectively because our for-profit healthcare system does not have a market incentive to create stockpiles or public infrastructure to combat an outbreak, whether it's from China or Cleveland, Ohio.

People from other countries know how to wash their hands. They know how to clean. You have absolutely no evidence which would dispute that, just your own feelings and the idea that filthy brown people caused this totally avoidable disaster rather than a lack of basic planning.

Finally, when people are sickened by improperly cleaned equipment or tainted food and medicine, it is the result of a failure by the manufacturer or producer to properly train and supply their facilities out of negligence, to save on operating expenses, or because they ignore existing regulations and are not penalized for doing so - not because there is an army of dirty, ignorant Mexicans at the controls. Untrained, underpaid, and unsupervised workers will have a greater tendency to make mistakes regardless of if they are White Americans or immigrants.

"Facts" and "truth"? I don't see anything besides your own personal bias, poor logic and uncited bullshit that you have no proof of. The American healthcare system and things like advertising for drugs on TV are mocked and reviled across the rest of the world because people can clearly see how vulnerable it is to inevitable pandemics like this.

But I guess there will always be people like you who are happy to ignore reality and instead demonize normal working people for fleeing their capitalist-raped economies and come here in an attempt to provide for their families - exactly the same thing you would do in their situation.

dee6000:

Lmao! Then explain why for decades and they, the WHO, Doctors Without Borders and other wastes of resources still bemoan the fact that in Latin America, take Mexico for example the majority of the people not only don’t wash their hands before eating a meal, they don’t wash their hands after going to the bathroom. They send nurses into schools to make a game of washing one’s hands but it doesn’t take. Next you’ll tell me that it isn’t true that child rape is part of Latin American culture. Mexico is so substandard health and hygiene wise that it’s water supply is contaminated with feces. Which is why foreigners are warned not to drink it or anything with ice in it. Because intestinal diseases, parasites are the norm. Go into any hospital in the US that employs illegals and they do not smell like antiseptic but dirty. I do not care what you think, the data shows superbugs started showing up in the US a decade after hospitals and nursing homes felt entitled to ignore employment laws and hire illegals. And yes, US corporations that off shores and were indulged by  communist China and the rest that have no environmental regulations, no labor laws (because under communism and socialism the people are slaves of the state) are only paid what the government thinks they deserve which is very little) they could profit more, or so they think. They became addicted to it and allowed their patents etc to be stolen. Under capitalism a worker has the right and power to reject a low wage. Under capitalism in the US a middle class grew and flourished, and poverty shrank. Under democrats and RINOs, who serve the same interests as democrats, the Clinton, Bush’s and Obozo the middle class was decimated, and poverty skyrocketed. Under Obozo more people became homeless, more so than during the Great Depression. You can spin and spin all you like. Your lies fall apart easily. Under illegal alien invaded democrat run California, the streets are tent cities, cholera, typhus and the plague have been found in Los Angeles, as well as other diseases.

At this point, he apparently blocked me. I didn’t realize this until after I was done writing my response, but here it is anyways

@auroraluciferi​:

It's pretty clear you feel all of your grievances can be blamed on those black and brown people and "Communist" China that you hate so much. I feel sorry for you, but I don't actually believe that anything I say is going to change that.

Your illusions are so wrapped up this weird ethnocentric pride and your comforting blanket of privilege that you're basically helpless against what's coming. You're burning all this energy being angry at people of color for "wasting" resources you apparently feel you are especially entitled to, when you can't even see that the scarcity of those resources is a dominant feature of capitalism.

The wealthy and powerful who benefit from that scarcity - both here in the US and in China - look down at sad little racists like you and they clink their champagne glasses together and smile. By blaming their crimes on Mexicans or whoever it is you clutch your pearls about, you're just making it easier for them to divide and conquer the working class globally.

So go ahead, do their work for them - whatever makes you happy.

Waste all your time and energy hating someone you do not know, whose experience and culture you do not know. Blame all the diseases and scarcity and crime on them, instead of on the cruelty and pointless waste of capitalism

Squabble over the pathetic little crumbs they kick down to you from above or whatever you can compete with against your neighbors for, then proudly claim your little dirt heap for an imaginary concept of white culture.

Like I said before, good luck with that.

[enthusiasticsobrietyabuse]

Parent Manipulation Part 1 - Originally posted in 2005 OnTheEmmis.com, a Meehan Program Survivor Website and Discussion Forum. (ICECAP is the former incorporation of enthusiastic sobriety programs, it has since dissolved due to the effectiveness of OnTheEmmis.com)

Part of ICECAP’s selling point is just HOW unorthodox they are. Counselors are trained to peddle the ‘shock’ value of a non-traditional program. It makes sense to many parents, because they see the professional community pathetically limping in the dust of young drug addicts in America today. Then they see ICECAP. Within its walls are dozens of young souls who are just absolutely ecstatic about being there. Where else is this happening in the world of rehab? While I am sure these places exist, my experience has been that they are few and far between.

ICECAP milks that point to no end. On the surface, I can see it being very difficult to deny that any ICECAP facility is producing some kind of positive results. Desperate and nearly to the point of hopelessness, many parents are willing to cloud their better judgment for the sake of something…ANYTHING that will help their children recover from their current nightmares. To these parents, ICECAP is a godsend. They see something different…that is apparently working, and they submit to the fever of potential miracles.

Even the skeptical parent will have a hard time denying the lure of ICECAP. Eventually they become involved with the parent group, and there they meet average Joe Dad and Jane Mom, who are just like them and are saying all these wonderful things about ICECAP. All the red flags are carefully lowered and the cautious and suspicious parents are disarmed through a process that involves the meticulous coordination of staff/parent group/younger group/client and then finally parent…though not always in that order. They have an answer for everything…from the late nights and no school, to the smoking and irresponsible lifestyle. All the answers make sense and seem so logical…

If I may, I would like to take some (a lot of) posting space to poke some holes in this seemingly infallible construction of moral high ground and loving happiness that ICECAP claims to be delivering from.

To begin, ICECAP is in fact extremely attractive. Not just because of the reasons I pointed out above, but for many reasons. Walk down the hall and through the doors of an ICECAP meeting. What do you see? A bunch of cool guys wearing slick clothes, hot girls adorned in the latest fads that the mall has to offer, rock star counselors and smiling suburban parents. Wow.

What you don’t see is the ugly sight of a genuine crack head detoxing. You don’t see the sickness of heroin withdrawal, or the brutality of the world that real addiction and drug abuse/alcoholism has to reveal. Rarely, if ever, will you find in ICECAP the wild madness and insanity that drug addiction has to offer humanity. When these unfortunates do happen to stumble through ICECAP’s door, they almost invariably do not recover there. I know, because I have seen it, but more on that later.

I find it interesting that ICECAP targets white middle/upper middle class families almost exclusively. There is absolutely no effort by ICECAP to reach beyond this demographic at all. Why? When you think about it, wouldn’t someone who comes from the depraved background that Meehan claims to come from be at least slightly interested in helping those whose stories are more like his? How many ICECAP clients are repeated felons, heroin junkies, or murderers? Almost none of them are. In my opinion, this set up is the first element of being disarmed that a parent encounters.

What wealthy, or semi wealthy parent wants their kid in a place where a bunch of ex-violent criminals hang out at? My guess is that when presented with the ICECAP pitch, which at nearly every ICECAP facility includes the line about how they do not accept insurance; your average suburban upper tax-bracket parent takes a silent sigh of relief. If they don’t accept insurance, then they know that the place does not harbor certain ‘undesirables’, because those types of people would never be able to afford ICECAP treatment. In that there is a certain mutual agreement of ‘silence’ going on between the parent and ICECAP. ‘We won’t ask why this facility is full of white suburban kids as long as you keep my kid around safe white suburban kids’.

That would be fine except for one thing: the reason there are so many ‘attractive’ kids from well-off families in ICECAP is because ICECAP primarily does not target true drug addicts. If they did, you would certainly see more of those ‘ugly’ cases that I mentioned above. The truth is; ICECAP primarily targets kids who have quite commonly and naturally stumbled into experimentation with mind altering substances. Left to their own devices, I am of the opinion that most of the kids that become involved in ICECAP would have gone through their adolescence just fine, despite some dabbling in the drug and alcohol culture.

I realize that it may sound as though I am condoning the use of drugs and alcohol by adolescents to some extent. Believe me; I know there are kids out there, even particularly young ones; that need some sort of intervention and rehabilitation when it comes to drugs and alcohol. However, there are few of those kids in ICECAP.

To put what I am saying into perspective, let me share with you an experience I had when I was 15.

I was at a party full of teens from my high school. There were perhaps 50-60 kids at this get-together. Every one of them were drinking and/or smoking pot, many of them were participating in sexual activities, and every single one of them WANTED to and was trying to do all of the above. This was not a party exclusively for ‘dope fiends’ or ‘freaks’ or anything like that. Most of the kids at this shindig were truly just your average high school teens, and many of them were at an identical party just a week before. Many of them would be at an identical party the next week.

Tell me, what seems to make more sense to you: That EVERY ONE of these kids was in need of being yanked out of school and subjected to an outpatient rehabilitation facility, or that they were for the most part kids being kids? I can’t say that I’ve kept up with each of those teens at that party, but I find it really hard to believe that they are every one of them sitting in gutters right now with needles hanging out of their arms.

The truth is that almost NO PARENT likes the idea that THEIR kid is in fact one of those kids at that party. However unfortunate it may be, chances are your kid IS one of those kids. ICECAP knows this, and knows it well.

The truth is that as far as ICECAP is concerned, every single one of those kids at that party IS fit for and IN NEED of their $6,000 outpatient program.

Of the 50-60 kids that were at that particular party, each one of them has one of two kinds of parents that could potentially find themselves in an ICECAP intervention: The ‘worried sick and hopeless parent’, and the ‘clueless’ parent. ICECAP has a brilliant line for both of these types of encounters.

For the worried sick and hopeless parent, they are already full of fear; so that is one obstacle that the given ICECAP counselor does not have to overcome, and can proceed directly to its exploitation. After meeting for over an hour with their child, the counselor then asks the parent/parents to then sit down with him, without the child. They are usually first presented with the structure of ‘enthusiastic sobriety’, and then carefully guided through the counselor’s ‘diagnosis’ of the child, at which point the fear they walked in with is thoroughly taken advantage of. He tells them, ‘first of all, to what extent you THINK your child is using, you can safely double or triple that. Your son/daughter has been for quite some time falling into the pitfalls of a very attractive and powerful drug and alcohol counter culture. It is nearly impossible to wrench young people today from the grip of this diseased phenomenon once they are into it to the extent that your child is. I know this because…’ At which point the counselor shares a true or untrue account of his own experiences with drugs and the drug culture. By the time he is finished, thanks to all of that plus clever little catch-phrases such as ‘true, Billy/Jenny may not be shooting heroin today, but at his/her rate of progression, you can bet on that nightmare down the road’ the parent has gone from being terrified to utterly mortified. The hook has been cast at this point, and it is here that the counselor begins to discuss the ‘solution’.

A recap of how brilliantly ‘enthusiastic sobriety’ competes with this vaunted ‘counter culture’ is usually in order here, followed by a description of outpatient. Another testimony by the counselor involving his own experience with IOP is conveyed, and then the cost.

If the parent is reluctant, or can’t afford it, emotional blackmailing goes into overdrive here, and is perhaps the most insidious aspect of the ‘intervention’. The parent/parents is told in so many words that their son/daughter will DIE if they do not get the ‘intensive level’ of ‘necessary treatment’ that outpatient provides, that the support group alone cannot hope to accomplish.

If the parent continues to flounder after this underhanded attempt to ‘guilt’ them into paying for IOP, then the counselor will usually back down and explain that while he feels the support group (just meetings and functions) is at this point a ‘disservice’ to the child, if that is all they can do then that’s the route they’ll go. He convinces the parent to attend parent meetings and functions rigorously for at least 30 days (same commitment as the kid), and thanks them for their time.

None of this ends here, of course. After the parent has left, this is what a ‘good’ counselor does:

He offers the name of the parent to either the ‘parent coordinator’ or a trusted parent on steering committee. He tells them that he felt as though the kid really needed IOP, but Mom/Dad couldn’t afford it or was skeptical of the idea, and that he would like this ICECAP parent to ‘work on them’. As the ‘intervention’ parent continues to attend parent meetings, they are relentlessly pushed by other parents at the direction of the parent coordinator to figure out a way to get their son/daughter into IOP.

Meanwhile, the kid is going to meetings and being told by other kids that he/she should go into IOP…that it is the ‘coolest’, and you really get the ‘gnarly’ shit about the group in IOP. This will turn from innocent prodding to downright peer pressure very quickly, and eventually the kid is going home and asking, sometimes begging mom/dad to get them in IOP.

If by now the parent is still not willing to do the $6,000 dollar shuffle, what usually occurs is sad and much of what continues to anger me about ICECAP’s tactics. The counselor will keep tabs with the parent, keeping them updated and developing a ‘relationship’ with the parent. Often, this is what goes down: The kid feels so much pressure from both staff and peers to attend IOP that he/she will quickly realize (usually with the help of the counselor), the reasons why he/she cannot go. Kids aren’t stupid, and Billy knows that either mom doesn’t think his problem is serious enough, or she just isn’t willing to call up grandpa for the dough. So he goes out and gets high one night.

The counselor, of course is ALL OVER THIS ‘relapse’, and schedules an appointment immediately with the family. After 30 minutes of what pretty much amounts to ‘I told ya so’ from the counselor, the parent takes out a second mortgage or calls up grandpa or takes out a line of credit and coughs up the $6,000 for outpatient.

ICECAP staff would argue that these are merely ‘imperative measures’ to take in order to ‘help this kid get better’, to ‘save his/her life’. I argue that this is a carefully constructed sequence of manipulation to paint a false picture of a fairly normal kid as a ‘dope fiend’ in order to sucker well-off families out of six grand.

The ‘clueless’ parent is dealt with in almost the same way, except the counselor must first instill the fear into the parents who have ‘no idea’ that their kid is so ‘sucked in to the world of drug and alcohol abuse’.

I challenge anyone to tell me the story of the family who was told: ‘Your kid really doesn’t have much of an issue. He/she could probably be a bit wiser about what friends they choose, maybe come to some meetings and see a more positive lifestyle…but really they don’t need intensive treatment from us…’ by ICECAP.

The only instance that I can think of in the ten years I was involved with ICECAP, was that of a young man who convincingly conveyed to everyone that he truly was a non-abuser, and that he simply went to a meeting to see a friend. IOP was not pushed on to this kid or his family, but being on staff at the time, I can tell you that the idea to somehow worm this kid into treatment was definitely kicked around.

I went into this aspect of ICECAP as the first part to a series about the structure of ICECAP and its functions. The intent is to provide sound knowledge and information to potential or current clients of ICECAP. The reason I wanted to expose this particular area of ICECAP’s doctrine first is because I believe that there are more clients there who fall into this school of thought than any other. These are the kids who aren’t quite ‘non-abusers’ as ICECAP would like to call them, but certainly aren’t ‘dope fiends’ as ICECAP would have you believe.

Next I intend to focus on the consequences of these manipulative tactics. Where’s the harm? If they never are at one of those high school parties ever again and spend the next two to five years of their lives steeped in the principals of love, patience and understanding…then what’s so bad about it?

PLENTY.

To be continued…

[artbymintcookies]

if ur taking requests still.. could we get foggy antagonizing matt in the office? i read a fic once where karen didn't know about dd and came back in the middle of an out of control throwing-shit battle instigated by foggy who kept throwing things at matt's head to see if he could catch them (he could) anyway matt didn't want to out himself to karen so he took a textbook to the face n that scene lives within my brain forevermore

hope you don’t mind more words! Also Idk if this is what you had in mind but these boys are straight up mean to each other. under the cut bc long

wait how did this lowkey turn into a full kinda sad fic i’m so sorry

Foggy was angry at him. He knew this because Foggy had told him as much, but also because there was no way any person who was not driven to insanity through passionate rage would put rancid coffee in the coffeemaker. It was from the tin at the back of the cupboard that no one dared touch, liquid tar sitting in their kitchenette just to waft into Matt’s nose until someone did something about it.

Foggy, meanwhile, had a nice steaming cuppa from the coffeeshop across the street. He had bought one for Karen as well.

Finally, noon rolls around, and the stench had been looming around the office for long enough that he broke. He dumped it into the sink, worsening the smell as it coated the drain.

Tersely, he brought the empty carafe into Foggy’s office and plopped it down onto his desk.

Slowly, Foggy looked up to him.

“Can I help you?” he asked sweetly.

“Do I have something to apologize for?” Matt shot back.

“Was there something off about the coffee?”

“I’m not doing this right now,” he said, storming out of the room and trying to focus.

-

Foggy clicked his pen when he was peeved. It was usually only semi conscious, with the added benefit that it bored into Matt’s skull every time.

Matt could take precisely 6 minutes of it before he stormed into Foggy’s office, felt around for a capped pen, and replaced it in Foggy’s hand.

“This is a red pen. I’m not writing notes with this,” Foggy said flatly.

“As long as the clicking stops, I don’t care,” Matt retorted. “Is this also part of my torture?”

“I’d hardly call it torture.”

“You’ve been rude to me all week, and I don’t know what I did wrong.”

“If you don’t know, you don’t know.

-

Foggy continued not to talk to him for another week. Matt developed an urgent need to punch something. So he did, repeatedly and hard, every night for a week, and then he stumbled into Karen’s apartment with bloody knuckles because he sure as hell wasn’t going to talk to Foggy about it.

“Woah, hello there, Mr. Devil. Doesn’t your partner usually look after you?” Karen asked, opening the window to let the man enter.

“‘Usually’ being the operative word,” Matt spit bitterly.

“On the outs again?”

“Rough patch,” he corrected. “I’ll fix it. I just need to find out why he’s being so pissy.” 

“Ouch,” Karen deadpanned. “Why can’t he just be legitimately upset at you?”

“I haven’t done anything.”

Karen sighed. “What do we know? Inaction can sometimes be as harmful as action. Willful ignorance, negligence leading to serious harm, what have you.”

Matt paled. “What did I miss?”

“Well, a couple weeks ago, you were supposed to meet Foggy for dinner with his mother.”

“The Rosalind dinner,” he said, horror dawning on his face. “I had to stop a bombing on the other side of town. Did he do it himself?”

“I had to come to his rescue, a half hour late. Apparently, when he had told her she’d be meeting his partner, she had assumed he had meant business partner. She congratulated us on our engagement, by the way.”

“Yeah?”

“I mean, she hated that I was the tardy type. She said she’d ‘loathe to have her son tethered to a flaky type.’ Now, usually, I would hate to agree with the reason Foggy has to take Xanax, but just this once, I see where she’s coming from.”

“I’m so sorry.”

She shrugged. “Don’t tell that to me. I wasn’t the one losing out there. Foggy is a surprisingly good kisser.”

“Okay, yeah. Just invite me to the wedding,” Matt waved at her over his shoulder, booking it out the window.

“You owe me one!” she called after him.

-

The window to Foggy’s bedroom had a trick lock. Normally, it wouldn’t matter because he lived on the 11th floor and no one was ever trying to open it from the outside. Matt thought maybe he should let Foggy know as he shook it open and climbed inside. He could hear Foggy in the kitchen, which wasn’t good because it smelled like he was eating sugar cookies at 11pm, which was a definite depression meal.

“Hey,” Matt said, tapping Foggy on the shoulder. He dropped his plate and it shattered in a deafening noise.

“Get out.” Barely a whisper, and barely concealed irritation.

“I came to apologize.” He put his hands above his head in a show of surrender. “I’m sorry I missed dinner. I’m sorry you had to suffer Rosalind alone.”

Foggy paused for a long moment and shoved him out of the way to get a broom.

“I wasn’t alone. I had Karen.”

“Congratulations on your engagement, by the way.”

It earned Matt a jab in the ribs. It wasn’t gentle, but it wasn’t as violent as it could have been, so he took it as a good sign. “Shut up, I’m still mad at you.”

“And how can we expedite your anger so you go back to loving me?” Matt was suddenly glad no one else seemed to be able to hear heartbeats, because it was hammering in his chest. His palms were clammy in his gloves. What if Foggy still refused?

Foggy was silent as he cleaned up the stray ceramic. The pieces jangled into the trash before he spoke. “Just be better, Matt. I’ve been begging you for years.”

Shedding his gloves, he places them carefully on the counter, and his mask along with it. He felt all the ways his hair is disheveled, the myriad directions it was being pulled. He wanted to look away, but he needed Foggy to see his face.

“I can’t do that if you don’t give me another chance.”

“How many more will it take, Matty? How many other chances am I supposed to give you?”

“I’ll get it right one day, don’t you think?” He tried to smile sheepishly, and hoped it didn’t read as smug.

“Your track record says otherwise.”

Matt frowned, felt his muscles lurch downward grotesquely. He took a step forward and reached for Foggy’s hand. It was selfish, but he wanted to chase it when Foggy slipped out of his grasp. “I can’t lose you, Fogs. Don’t tell me that ship’s already sailed.”

A sigh. “You know, for the first time since maybe ever, I think Rosalind was actually proud of me. She was happy that there’s a firm out there with my name on it big enough to have employees, and that it’s competent enough to win cases more than it loses. I mean, I’m still poor as dirt, but at least I’m not a failure. She was proud that I found a smart and pretty woman to love me. You know what she said?”

“Foggy-”

“She said, ‘thank God you’re not so attached to that Murdock fellow anymore. You were getting a little codependent, were you not?’ I mean, what can I say to that? It’s not like it wasn’t true. She had investigators look you up. Came in with a stack of files three inches thick on everything that you’ve done that might reflect badly on me. And that’s just the Murdock side of you. Can you imagine if they found out about Daredevil?”

Matt felt his chin quiver.

“She called it a proposal. She wanted us to split. And it was so tempting, you know? All these years later, chasing her green light. Pathetic, don’t you think?”

“Is this a break up?”

Foggy shook his head. “No, Matt. I told her to fuck off, and that you’re my best friend and that she won’t be the one to split us up. Stormed out of there faster than Rosalind could be billed. Because I show up, for you, Murdock. I can’t do this if it’s not reciprocal.”

“It’s reciprocal I swear. I had- I’m sorry, I know it’s not an excuse, but there was a bombing on the other side of town.”

“Yeah, in Queens. You could have let Spider-Man handle it. Hell, he showed up to the scene faster than you did, according to the Bugle.”

Matt scrubbed at his face. “Okay, maybe Rosalind scares me a bit,” he admitted.

Finally, it got a chuckle out of Foggy. Dry and barely amused, but present nonetheless. “Yeah, she scares me, too.”

Before they could help it, they were laughing and collapsing onto the floor, and melting into each other’s arms.

“I really am sorry, you know. I’ll never let you face her alone ever again,” promised Matt, finding Foggy’s pinky finger to loop it around his own.

“See to it that you do. And you’re paying next time.”

“I can work with that. Just don’t leave me. Please.”

“It’s a deal, I guess.”

[im-abanana]

@geekgirles  (FoRgIvE mE!)

Oof, my hand slipped again, and faster this time. But I’m having too much fun with your AU, really. I HAD to write something (1155 words, y’know, I like to keep it simple ahah) about Creek’s little outburst.

I know I’m a pain friend, but pls bear with meeeh <3

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“No?” despite the tinge of displeasure that was coating his tongue, Creek’s face was uncharacteristically emotionless as he asked for clarity. “Why won’t you marry me, Poppy?” 

The pink-haired girl in question chewed on her lower lip, averting her eyes from the still kneeling man and the ring he was offering her. Not so long ago, that sparkling jewel and the future it symbolized would’ve been a dream come true, but not anymore. “No, Creek. I will not marry you. I’m really sorry,” Poppy declared, surprised by her own determination. “but we’re not meant to be.”

The ring box closed with a sharp, reverberating snap as Creek slowly got back on his feet. Towering over Poppy thanks to his greater height, his purple irises bore into her skin and flesh, making her feel horribly exposed. 

“But of course we’re not. Now there’s someone else in your heart,” Creek’s voice, always so gentle and silky and kind, had become unrecognizable in a matter of seconds. Rather than being the delicate, velvety caress Poppy was familiar with, it was now full of menace and malice. ‘Like a razor sharp blade brushing against the throat,’ was the first thing that came to her mind.

“I don’t understand. W-what do you mean, someone else?” Poppy knew that getting defensive was the worst thing to do, or at least her instinct told her so, but she just couldn’t do otherwise. Creek wasn’t simply able to make her feel exposed, apparently— he could read her like an open book. 

It was frightening.

His mocking laughter echoed in every corner of the kitchen, bouncing from wall to wall. “Oh, Poppy. You sweet, innocent, clueless girl. You think you have so many friends, so many contacts… and you probably do. But unfortunately for you, I’ve got some too,” without leaving time for her to elaborate, Creek pulled a crumpled piece of paper out of his pocket, sneering in triumph as her mouth fell open. “So, when exactly were you planning on telling me that the precious, professional and oh-so-competent tutor of yours is your kid’s biological father?”

The whole world ripped apart and came tumbling down on Poppy’s head at the same time, leaving her speechless. They’ve been found out— worst of all, they’ve been found out by Creek. “How did you get those documents!?” she demanded, ignoring the blood pumping and ringing and boiling furiously in her ears.

A straightforward, unconcerned shrug was his response. “It’s not important. What truly matters is that everybody will know the truth about you,” the greenish-haired boy mused, waving the sheet of paper like a trophy as he bend slightly over, getting face to face with her. “Because you’re nothing more than a stupid, spoiled girl who got knocked up by some pathetic grump and got stuck with the consequences. Speaking of which,” Creek rejoiced in the child’s small squeal of terror as he captured his confused, terrified gaze. “there you are. Hiding behind the kitchen table, are you? Come here, you little brat.”

The unexpected strength with which Poppy shoved Creek back sent him crashing against the sink. “Don’t you dare say my son is a consequence, Creek! Leave him out of this, your quarrel is with me, and only me!” she snarled with fury, acting as a human shield to protect her son, roaring fire dancing and cursing through her veins. She was definitely not letting him near her child. “Get out of my house, before I make you. We’re finished.”

Despite the throbbing pain in his side and the wince it caused, Creek’s amused smirk reappeared faster than predicted. Too fast. “No, my dearest. I don’t think we are,” he whispered smoothly, at this point far too collected for Poppy’s taste; it’s not that she was afraid of him, or for herself. She feared for her child, who was shaking like a leaf just a few meters from her. It was actually Creek’s lack of any type of negative emotion— rage, resentment, fury —the thing that deeply disturbed her. Now more than ever, he reminded her of a sociopath. “On the contrary, we’ve barely begun.”

The slam of the front door, the sound of running feet, a third, deeper voice yelling “No, you’re not!” and then the brutal, unrelenting force ramming into Creek’s flank. This time, the yoga instructor was literally thrown to the hard kitchen floor.

Branch was standing there, wheezing and red-faced from exertion— but despite the fatigue, anyone could detect the protectiveness he was radiating with. The black-haired tutor regarded his child with a tender, reassuring smile. “You did the right thing by calling me, kid. Good job,” then, he turned to Creek with an aggressive growl. “Poppy’s been crystal clear, get out of this house, immediately!”

As massive as Creek’s ego might’ve been, the yoga instructor wasn’t a fool and had learned to analyze people, situations and opponents; for that reason, he decided to trust his brain when it suggested that messing with 190 pounds of pure, thick muscle probably wasn’t the brightest of ideas. Sometimes, you just have to accept defeat and wait for your chance. After all, he had the documents— he could still ruin Poppy’s life.

“Alright. Alright, mate. I’ll leave, but you know what?” Creek finally conceded, slowly getting up and smoothening his own clothes, gathering all the dignity he had left. Just before he headed towards the entrance door, stumbling with a visible and painful limp, he spat: “Perhaps I was wrong all along. You two really deserve each other.”

The young tutor didn’t even bother wasting his breath, that snake’s sentence did not deserve an answer anyway, but Branch made sure Creek had truly left the apartment before checking on Poppy and the child. “Are you both ok? Did he hurt you? Do you need me to call the cops or your father, Pop—” before he could finish his question, Branch found himself wrapped in a tight hug, his son squeezing his legs and Poppy grasping his chest. 

“You came for us,” Poppy croaked, her voice finally cracking and breaking like a rotten stump in a storm, wearily leaning her forehead against his shoulder. All her energy, her previous anger and determination had been drained so suddenly, she needed the physical support of his firm body.

“It’s ok, it’s ok now. Of course I came,” Branch let out a deep sigh of relief, holding the two of them as close as he could. Together like family, his family, in his arms— the blood of his blood on one side, and the love of his life on the other. “I’m here, and if you want me to stay, I won’t go anywhere. I promise.”

Is that what it felt like, the sense of belonging? The primordial instinct of protection? The uncontrollable love overflowing from his heart? ‘If it is, it feels nice,’ Branch decided. 

Very nice, actually.

[davey-dammit]

Fashion often changes in broad, pendulum-like swings, and this is a good example of the phenomenon. But while the question is deceptively simple, the answer is complex, because it involves explaining several social and historical convergences. Bear with me, if you will, and I hope all will become clear: In the early 70's, there came about, pretty abruptly, a strong visual backlash against the electric, high-chroma,"psychedelic" colour palette that was such an iconic feature of the late 60's hippie culture; in short, the style got old very fast. The reasons were multiple: America was now deep in a quagmire of war; thousands were being drafted and returning home in coffins, mere weeks after their induction; protesters were being beaten and jailed; every day, the newspapers (!) revealed our leaders to be ever more egregiously stupid crooks, liars and fools. Madness and anarchy seemed to lie around every corner. Somehow all that celebratory, fun, acid-saturated colour now seemed ... silly and self-indulgent. It became as inappropriate as wearing a "Smile" t-shirt to a schoolbus rollover. And all the gentle social upheaval and genial questioning of institutional values that those bright colours once cheekily promised? Well, they no longer carried much appeal. In fact, they seemed frightening - just more uncertainty and conflict, in already uncertain and conflicted times. People were suddenly in the visual mood for something more muted, contemplative and restrained. The faintly mournful "autumn" colour palette - dark orange, oxblood, copper, brown, harvest gold, avocado green - filled that need so well that, as you point out, it literally became symbolic of the decade. Perhaps simply because it reminded folks of a less complex time, when subtle, visually digestible, vegetable-based dyes coloured our surroundings, rather than incomprehensible, knock-your-eyes-out chemical pigments (whose colours were actually meant to approximate the livelier visual effects of a hallucinogenic experience!). Concurrently with the shift in colour preferences, smaller, meticulously repeated patterns once again began to appear on fabrics and wallpapers, as sharp stylistic counterpoint to the free-form, Yellow Submarine-esque, "supergraphic rainbow" visuals that had overwhelmed every available wall surface during the previous decade. Those autumn colours also thematically supported, and were cross-fertilized by, the decade's nascent "natural" movement. Still inspired by the lofty ideals of their older siblings' recently failed hippie paradigm, and boosted by the first vague stirrings of the modern ecology movement, '70s boomers forsook (at least temporarily) their parents' blatant consumerim, and instead embraced the generationally dormant, homespun handicrafts of their grandparents: macramé, crochet, bargello, weaving, leatherworking, cutting down old beer bottles into drinking glasses. The handicrafts they created and proudly decorated their homes with were mostly made from organic materials, so they just looked better when surrounded with earth-tone colours. Chromatic colour was out, because it detracted from the workmanship - which was, after all, what differentiated handmade-and-unique from factory-extruded and common. This attitudinal shift towards muted, "homemade" colour and texture, and away from slick, obviously industrial colours and finishes was, at least in part, probably a subconscious side-effect of the 70's generation's fast-growing resentment of both the politician-buying industrial complex, and its ongoing material support for a war they despised. (Yes, the war ended in '75, but resentments lingered.) It was, if you will, a form of protest, or boycott: a generation's tentative, somewhat pathetic attempt to re-exert control over their own visual destiny, and to wrest whatever tiny part of their environment they still could, away from the overbearing and apparently malignant industrial and commercial forces that were threatening to overwhelm them socially, financially and politically. At the same time as these colour and design changes took hold in home decor, people began gradually shifting their wardrobes back to natural wools and cottons. After a decade and a half of collecting increasingly slinky, shiny, uncomfortable, odiferous and obviously synthetic garments - which were themselves a pendulum-swing away from the ossified white-cotton-shirt, gray-flannel-suit ethos of the two decades following WWII, the fabric-choice pendulum was again swinging back. And in clothing, as in interior design, autumnal, natural colours were generally seen to be more complementary to natural materials than chromatic colours. That all being said (whew!), the prevalence of the autumnal palette wasn't really as all-encompasing as retro media like That 70's Show would have us believe. (Btw, what was up with the anachronistic, so-90's, industrial loft-tech, cheese-grater kitchen lights? Obvious clanger.) Designers frequently go kind of over-the-top when they try to recreate a period look, a generation or more later. Frankly, even Mad Men, though certainly very well researched, is visually a little overbearing in its representation of the period; after all, not everything in the Sixties was of the Sixties; some of it hailed from the Fifties and Forties, even the Thirties. Just as we still occasionally see an 80's wood panelled Buick land-shark station wagon in the Walmart parking lot, or a suitcase-sized VCR parked under a friend's tube TV, I long to see a cheap postwar suit on some poor agency schlub who supervises the steno pool. Instead, everybody wears Brooks Brothers. All the time. It is also instructive to realize that within any fashion era "look" you'd care to examine, competing visual ideas constantly jousted with one another for dominance. Visual style is a roiling river, not a still pond. Remember that the "natural, homespun" 70's were also the era that gave birth to platform boots for men, polyester lounge suits, "designer" jeans, disco, the New York Dolls, foil wallpaper, smoked glass coffee tables, naugahyde sofas, spherical stereo speakers, shag carpet, gold-veined mirror tiles, chrome overhead lamps, and pink Christmas trees; and may God forgive my generation for those particular stylistic trespasses. For further proof, take another look at Goodfellas, with an eye to the set decoration and costumes; it is a veritable omnibus of questionable 70's design. (And a showcase for some very clever designers!) Next instalment: why the theme colours of the late '50s and early '60s were red, pastel green, chrome yellow and teal, and why commercial printers suddenly stopped putting type into straight lines. Source: Lived through it all. Also, history of design in theatre school.

theartfulcodger (reddit post from 2014)

A really well thought out and interesting answer to the question “Does anyone really know why brown and orange were so popular in the 70s?”

[butididnottried]

“The Rise od Skywalker” spoilers.

So, i saw it. I was on a whole night marathon and saw all three movies one after another. I actually like “The Last Jedi”. Like, i really like it. I know all issues and problems that people have with this one, i understand it, and it’s still Very Good to me and there will be some comparisons. Also, i’m not sure if this is important, but SW is not a part of my childhood and i have no nostalgic feelings toward those movies. Hi there, i’m an average fan?

So.

Tbh i expected a pile of thrash on fire after what i read about this movie, because people are only complaining, without really recalling anything good (but i also avoided big and long and detailed reviews to avoid as much information as i can xD). And there are good thing in it, and i had surprisingly a whole amount of fun while watching it. But still, at the end, overall this whole movie can be summarize into CONFUSED WHAT.

Good stuff:

- J. J. Abrams know how to invoke a fell and spirit of grand adventure. At the beginning this move has a crazy amount of it, until Rey split from Finn and Poe. They just need to go after this mcguffin dagger to find another mcguffin, they need to go to this palce to find that or someone, they need to go somewhere else and there are problems but there’s a solution, but they need to go to third place to again find someone. I would be kinda annoying if we wouldn’t have all three of them together - Rey, Finn and Poe. Finally! I really like them all being together, being friends, bantering, being dumbasses and smartasses and me gusta very much those dorks.

- They do not conform that, but let’s face it - Finn and Poe are married. There’s no heterosexual explanation for their relationship in this movie. I’m aware that in script they weren’t particularly wrote like that, and maybe it’s because actors were playing their character in this way, but there’s another explanation. A few months ago in review of “X-Men: The Dark Phoenix” i read that Hollywood just don’t know how to wrote real male friendship, full of emotions, and they end up using romance tropes and cliches. And Finn and Poe are perfect example to uphold that theory. Like, really, look at them, they’re bantering like an old couple.

- I really like Reys path in this movie. Seeing all three movies together shows how much she grow with every next installment. In TFA she is nice and joyful character, but kinda basic; in TLJ she learn more about how world works, about herself and choose her own path. And now in TROS she is very conflicted, torn apart and sacred of her own powers, while trying to stay herself. And Daisy Ridley really hit the spot with her performance.

- Leia had an lightsaber? And was training with Luke? And now she was teaching Rey? Like... FUCK YEAH?! And also Finn? Force sensitive? YEAH BABY!

- Rey and Kylo fight on ruins of Death Star surrounded with raging ocean and those exquisitely animated giant and heavy waves. So good? SO GOOD.

- Palpatine went full Thor and every cell in my body was hollering with laughter. As soon as it’s possible someone need to edit this “unlimited power!” yell to this scene. Please.

- ahahahahaha, Hux, you magnificent, pathetic, petty asshole, ahahahahaha.

- this is not about movies, but there was a fake fanboy at my screening. Between TLJ and TROS this dude behind me was explaining sequels to his friend and i was typing a message to my friend, so the only thing that i heard was “the first movie did Abrams, you know, the one that made LOTR, and the second one did Johnson , and he is ooold.” I have no idea what to do and think about this.

- new ways of using force. Hell yeah. Force the shit out of this. Stronger force skype? Totally. Teleportation things on purpose through force? Absolutely. Being almost in two places at once through force. I’m totally here for that. Rey being probably the most competent person in force? Kick their asses baby, i’m holding yo flower!

- MERRY!!!???

??? stuff:

- apparently reylo is incest, because Rey and Kylo are related. Really? How? Is there in any movie any, even smallest, hint that Skywalkers and Palpatines are blood related? I have no idea.

- The way how droid are treated in those movies is troubling. Are they alive? Are they self-conscious? Or they’re an artificial intelligence so developed that they can with no problems fake that?

- sooo... Kylo. I love this problematic asshole. Well, in case of genocidal murdered word “problematic” is very mild, but whatever. What i read about this movie, people were raging because woman (Rey) exist only to heal a man (Kylo) that was abusing her, but i don’t see that this way. Like, not at all. And how i see how Rey and Kylo plot is developing makes it hysterical, especially after TLJ where Kylo was established as main villain. Because in this movie with every scene Kylo exist more and more as support to Rey story, he’s an walking exposition for Rey and motivation for her to doing things. He was less and less his own character, and was more and more existed for Rey. Like, he totally could be put in the fridge. xD When Rey stabbed him i thought “oh, so they’re killing him now? When were not even close to the end? Well, ok, i do not see a more purpose for him in this plot, so yeah, kill him” but then Rey saved him and i was like ??? because what more you want him to do? And then he disappears for a big chunk of time and show again at the end and he even wasn’t needed here and don’t do that much? Just... lol. Ok, he did That, because it’s “Star Wars” and SW just Works. Like. That. or it’s not Real and True “Star Wars” boo-frikin-hoo. But on that later.

- as a example for Kylo being a lesser character and more of a tool for the sake of the plot is fact, that in TROS Darth Tantrum is weirdly collected and put his shit together. At the beginning when he finds Palpatines lair and learns that this dude was behind all of this, behind forming First Order and all voices in his head, Kylo should lost his marbles and just murdered Palpatine. But even if somehow not, at the news that Rey is emperor granddaughter he absolutely should throw the biggest tantrum in all history of tantrums and not only obliterated Palpatine but also this whole place. But no, he made A Plan and decide to once again to “propose” to Rey. Like she didn’t rejected him definitely in previous movie and like they both not decided that when they meet next time, only one of them are going to survive. But hey, let’s go with this “i want you by my side to rule the galaxy” plot again. :/

- and there they go with that helmet again. In TLJ scene where Kylo destroys his helmet it’s a very powerful moment. Not only for him, but for direction with which the story would go. Because he is not Darth Vader. Because we do not need another Darth Vader. Buuut, on the other side i can let this a pass, because since he agreed to join Palpatine and once again is going to lead The Knights, he needed to wear this helmet again to prove this loyalty and make them trust him. So, hard pass on that. And tbh, that ugly mask looks a lot better with those bright red cracks.

- And also Leia, that was also there only for her son, because as a mother she can’t be anyone else. Aaand... idk about that. Leia force connected to Kylo so he could turn back to the light? She sacrificed herself for him? Eeeeh... it was weird scene. And there’s no clear explanation why? Only Kaz Manata said that this will use Leias all life force that she has? Did i missed something? Did movie forgot about something? For me it looked like Leia was distracting Kylo, because it look like Rey was going to loose this fight, she was more and more angry, and in this moment she would fully go on the dark side. So Leia saved Rey, she felt Reys struggle. At least i it’s how i interpreted this scene, because it’s one of the most baffling one. Just ???

- there’s whole sith culture. Just. There is. But if there’s only two of them at most at a time, they probably exist for far longer to develop all of this, and to build all of this, and to be cooperative with each other? Which is not their strongest trait? And all these people in emperor throne room were past siths force ghosts or real people?

- apparently being a sith and making lightning came out of your palms is genetic? At least i understand that like this. Because the reason why Rey shot lightning while trying to rescue Chewie was not because she was angry and mad and doubting, but because shes Palpatine? What?

- this is a very minor thing, but when Rey enters Death Stars ruins there’s stormtroopers armors lying almost everywhere, but there’s not even a one bone?

- oh wow, a planet get blow up with even more miniaturized death star ray. And they have hundreds of these. And hundreds of destroyers. And no one notices there was whole space army built. How? I can understand that they ignored the space nazis rising again because, well, just look what is happening in real life, but using money and resources at this scale is however something else, very expensive and i can’t believe no one noticed this.  

Bad stuff:

- Rey is Palpatine. What. I mean... what? It’s just... uuugh... Why are you making me thinking about Emperor having sex? I only hope that was some crazy nazi fangirl that totally wanted to fuck him. Or maybe it was artificial insemination? Well, doesn't matter, it’s BIG EEEW in every option. And i don’t want to think about other way. :/ At least it makes sense why Emperor procreate? In other stories al these evil dudes that want to live forever and rule everything are having children just... because they have children. For drama or something, because story needs someone to betray this evil dude, or some other eye-rolling stereotypical reason. Like, having offspring especially to posses their bodies and live forever in this way is not very original, but it’s something.

- TLJ was like “you can be from nowhere, you can be from the bottom of society, you cen be the poor and miserable, without family or amazing heritage, and you can still do amazing things, you can climb up and make a difference, you can be better and better, you can make your own story despite your awful background” and TROS be like “fuck that, viva la royalty, you need a powerful heritage, you need a powerful and important bloodline or you’re nothing”. Oh, how nice is that. :/

- that opening crawl. It’s bad. Just bad. Even worse than “The Phanom Menace” babbling about economy.

- PALPATINE IS NO FUN AT ALL!!! HOW DARE YOU NOT MAKING IAN MCDIARMIND NOT ENJOYABLE AT ALL???!!! SHAME ON YOU ABRAMS!!! SHAME ON ALL OF DISNEY!!! ...well, ok, this was this one small thing, BUT STILL!!! AUGHR!!! I’m so mad about this. I was expecting not a very good movie, but at least i was hopeful that emperor would be such a treat.

- pulling emperor out of nowhere was an mistake. They should stay with what TLJ established and made Kylo main villain. No redemption, no bullshit like “there’s still light in him”, no Ben Solo, no forgiveness, no nothing. Just Rey beating the shit out of him and killing him. End of story. But no, “Star Wars” can’t be like that, it’s not how this world works, THIS IS NOT REAL “STAR WARS” WAAH WAAAH WAAAH. You’re a genocidal murdered? A space nazi? You’re ruling a regime that is weltered in blood of the innocence? Doesn't matter, there’s always hope. Just do one small, good thing and you will be at peace. Fuck off with that. At the end of TLJ when Kylo entered that mine, and rebel survivors entered deck of Falcon, and Rey and him were still force connected, and she cutted off him because she understands that there are things that can’t be forgave, and there are people that do not want help and just don’t want to be better and fuck “Steven Universe Future” did that a lot better on eleven minutes, and SW series is struggling with this since beginning. Because there’s white and black, good and evil, and there’s nothing in between, and when someone comes from one side to another they become a completely different person because yes that how it works. And people are totally here for this because it’s for kids and it needs to be simple and we can’t let this story grow beyond that stupid absolute duality. I know that there are people that were on far right but they changed and become better and good for them, but if you want to do that in your story, show the struggle of this difficult path and let this scum survive and face the consequences. Take at least a minimum of responsibility of what you’re showing to kids. :/ But nooo, he was stabbed, his mom died, his dad showed up and said... something, and now Kylo is dead, and Ben alive again. Sarcastic yay. Also, if you’re repeating dialogue from first movie, in almost this same situation, but in a different context, EARN IT. Second also, that kiss. Eeeeh... If you really need to be Like That and made some weird understanding between them, maybe just make they touch their foreheads? And oooh, yes, i almost forgot. At my screening when Kylo flopped at the ground, died and vanished, the whole audience laughed. But it wasn’t a loud, merry laugh, but a nervous and awkward, like “did i just saw this cringy shit?”. Amazing.

- they remembered about Knight of Ren. And did nothing with them. They just were showing up here and there through the whole movie without any purpose. But that’s Johnson fault, that he did not include them in TLJ. No wonder that they did not have time for them in TROS. Just waste.

- the amount of fanservice is killing me. I have nothing against it, if it’s just a nice treat for fans here and there, but when a whole movie is dedicated to it it’s just not very bearable. And plot suffer from it, because instead of write a good story they’re focusing at how to connected these thing from original trilogy.

[malyceaduncastellan]

Only Human

Well, at the end of the day, I’m still obsessed with Ethan and not satisfied with the amount of content we get (GIMME MORE PB) so… Another piece for our emotionally destroyed doc.

Written with Kaleo - Way Down We Go in musical background.

It was one of those days when Ethan felt particularly low without any special reason. No one was dead today, none of his patients, none of his colleages, not Banerji nor his dog. Yet, he was watching the city beneath his feet on the balcony of his apartment, sulking, giving into his fantasies, trying to dull the ache in his heart.

He scoffed, thinking about how much of a walking cliché he was right now. That tall broody black-haired man hovering darkily over a sleeping city made him think of another rich man who saved folks.

He felt something nudging his feet and wasn’t surprised to find Jenner, watching him with his puppy eyes, just like he did when he knew his human didn’t feel well.

Ethan sighed. He was pathetic. What wouldn’t he have given to be at the hospital right now, working to stop thinking. Or literally anywhere to keep his mind off his thoughts. He’d turn on the TV if he had wanted to watch anything, he’d read if he could actually be distracted by substranceless stories. He’d talk if he had someone to listen to. He’d make his dreams reality if he could. He’d make mistakes. He’d heal if he only knew what disease affected him. But nothing could make him do anything like that now.

His phone rang, and he closed his eyes, hoping the sound would fade to nothing if he just ignored it. When it hopelessly displayed this annoying music he hated so much he chose it specifically to be sure to pick up his phone fast, Ethan sighed for something like the tenth time before answering.

-Harper? Why’re you calling me at… Nearly 1 am? he said, trying to sound as casual as possible.

-Because I know you’re not sleeping. What took you so long? I called five time, I was ready to take my car and drive by your place to check if you were okay.

-Shower, he lied between his teeth.

-Geez, you’re taking royalty time to trim that beard of yours. Have you considered saving entirely or just letting it live? It would save you those missed calls.

-Harper, if you don’t have anything important to tell me, I suggest we end this one.

Silence suddenly surrounded him and he frowned, wondering if she had took him seriously. But then Harper spoke again, with her tone inherited for now months of service as his boss.

-Right. Sorry, I was just trying to lighten up the atmosphere because what I’ll be telling you is bound to angry you.

-You’ve decided to take down the intern competition when some only lately showed they were competent enough to integrate the team to hire an annoying doctor from who-knows-where Hospital?

-...Sometimes, I forget how snarky you can be. Harper sighed, then continued. No. I’m gladd you think it has been a good idea anyway.

-Hardly, but at least I’ll know just how insufferable the new addition to the diagnostic team will be.

-Actually, I want to talk to you about one of your interns.

Ethan rolled his eyes to the ceiling.

-If they say I’m “mean” or anything like this, tell them they’re not ready for being doctors and they should back off to Kindergarten teaching.

-I’ve actually recently got a report saying you’ve been relatively… friendly, lately.

-I made only three of them cry this week when you think about it.

-That’s not what I meant, Ethan.

-What did you mean then?

-Casey Valentine.

He fell silent for a moment, pondering Harper’s words. Friendly? When he repeatedly rejected her even when she didn’t come for him? When he was twice as hard on her just because he didn’t want to take risks in favoring her?

-What, I’m more friendly with the other interns than with Doctor Valentine? he said after a while.

-So you recognize you’re acting differently with her.

-She’s currently the best intern. She will probably integrate the team, she needs to understand what it will imply. So yes, I’m extra hard on her.

-You weren’t with Aurora.

-Because you would have been pestering me!

He heard Harper sigh on the other side of the phone.

-People don’t say you’ve been extra hard on her. Apparently she was crying and you comforted her, which you don’t do normally.

-That.

It was all he could say without getting angry. This had nothing to do with Casey. At least, not his feelings for her.

-Do you know somebody’s sabotaging her, Harper? he finally blurted out, unable to keep quiet any longer.

-What?

-During the last week, I’ve been supervising her patients. I checked if she took care of everything in their files and like magic, when she had to present it to Doctor Mirani, the files were incomplete or empty. And you know I’m not slacking off when I’m checking on those files. I was there to shut Mirani up while he was on his way to humiliate her in front of the other interns. By the way, your niece seemed very pleased by this development. Less when I stepped in saying those weren’t Doctor Valentine’s files since I had those checked.

-... I didn’t know any of that. But does that have to do with you cheering her up?

-I wasn’t cheering her up, Harper. You know that’s not my type.

-No? From what I have, you were kind of cozy.

-She explained to me that this was relatively recurrent lately. I merely told her that this wouldn’t affect her ranking since I knew first-hand that it obviously wasn’t her doing. Someone turned off her pager, Harper, this isn’t small matter. People could have died.

Ethan felt anger building up inside him when he told everything to Harper. He couldn’t stand that sort of competition. Casey was kind. Incredibly so. Humorous, always smiling, hardworking. All the more reasons to love her, for him. He quickly put those thoughts aside, focusing on whoever was able to put her in that position.

-So you swear there’s nothing personal between the two of you?

-Is that a personal or a professional question? Nothing between us, Doctor Emery.

He was making sure of it. And it hurt so bad it was going to kill him. But better that than to kill all of her hopes, her dreams, her future.

-But you love her.

He didn’t stay silent for long.

-Again, is that personal or professional? She reminds me of myself is all.

-Last time I checked, she wasn’t brooding nor insulting anyone when deemed incompetent but... I see.

-Are you finished?

-... I am. Good night, Ethan.

He didn’t answer and simply clicked the red button on his phone, seriously considering that maybe throwing it out of the window would be a good idea. Instead, he let his fingers run on the screen, calling a number he could dial by heart now.

-I hope you have a good reason for waking me up.

-Casey, Harper know about the sabotaging.

Casey yawned and Ethan couldn’t suppress a laugh.

-Do me one better than that. Please.

Her voice had faded to a whisper on the last word and Ethan felt anger ripping him apart once again. He would have been angry to anyone for sabotaging other interns, but hearing Casey of all people with that much hurt in her voice?

God, he had it bad.

-Doctor Ramsey?

-Ethan.

Suddenly sounding more awake than ever, Casey answered with worry in her voice.

-What is going on?

-I…

All of his loneliness, his grumpy mood, his dark thoughts came back all at once when he tried to tell her. To tell her what actually? Nothing he wanted to tell her was… good. Nothing was supposed to be told. Nothing was appropriate. He shouldn’t have been doing this even, calling her in the middle of the night.

Yet here he was.

-Ethan…

Her voice was soft. Agonizingly soft, music to his ears, soothing his tortured mind.

-I need you.

It was all he managed to say before ending the call without even a goodbye. He was so screwed.

He didn’t know how long he stayed there, head bent, eyes closed, listening to absolutely nothing and just reminding again how much of a pitiful human he was. A hopeless man who had everything except what he really wanted at the moment.

When he felt two arms wrapping around him, he barely reacted, as if he hadn’t even noticed. What woke him up was Casey’s voice whispering his name. How did she even enter.

-Your door was open. I… God you had me worried.

She had her nose buried in his back and Ethan could tell the young woman was trembling. He caught her hand in his fists with the intention of pushing her away, but when he turned and he found her, tired, exhausted even, worry painting her usually so bright eyes, not only did he feel even more pathetic but he knew he couldn’t let go.

-What do you need me for, Ethan?

He stayed silent, considering her for a moment. He didn’t even realise how he had suddenly pushed her against him, her head resting on his shoulder while he buried his face in her neck. Her smell surely made his heart beat a whole lot faster, but he hadn’t felt so calm in a while and he even shivered when she enveloped his frame.

-Stay.

If he said anything more he knew it wouldn’t be pretty. She simply nodded and soon enough they fell on his couch, snuggling into each other’s warmth.

For Ethan it felt like he clang to life itself. This was wrong. He wasn’t supposed to and he damned himself for how weak he was, damning Casey and her pretty face.

He had stopped believing in God for a long time, but when he saw her he began to think maybe she was a miracle. His forbidden little fragment of peace.

Hell damned him, who was Ethan Ramsey, mere human, to resist an angel?