#fighting. and instead dedicate their time to fucking around with the lifeforms and putting those fuckers in Situations to see how theyreact

[nomaishuttle]

ran out of space Continuing in rhese tags

[asriels]

would love to hear more about your lucy weasley, if you have the inclination?

Lucy really has him this time. One finger on the recordbutton, two fingers up to Carnaby (backwards, obviously, because it’s just notthe time for him to play the douche-bag), her whole being inclined furiouslytowards the Unspeakable currently lounging on the marble steps in front of her.

‘Wouldn’t you say, Mr Flint,’ she says, radiating certainty,‘that it’s a stated fact that the Ministry has an entire floor dedicated onlyto your department?’

Flint doesn’t even blink. Lucy leans in closer.

‘And wouldn’t you also say, Mr Flint, that it’s a statedfact that five Unspeakables have now died within the Ministry itself? On your veryfloor, in fact. And—’ here she has to elbow Carnaby, who has really picked abad day to make a nuisance of himself, ‘—isn’t it also a stated fact that thosefive bodies have all turned up, somehow, in the Thames, in full view ofMuggles, with bizarre injuries and emitting a kind of radiation never beforeseen, even by Muggle Physics experts?’

‘Lucy,’ Carnaby hisses in her ear,proving once again that he is a world-class nonce, ‘we need to get. He’s called in Aurors.’

Lucy can’t tell him to fuck off withthe tape still recording, but by Merlin she’d like to.

‘And,’she continues, elbowing Carnaby again, ‘wouldn’t you say, Mr Flint, that it’seminently possible that the Ministry has, in fact, captured an alien lifeform,and that that alien lifeform is currently proving… shall we say difficult… to contain? Judging by the bulletmarks and strange lights that have recently plagued our eminent ministers?’

‘Lucy!’ growls Carnaby, but she doesn’teven hear. Flint is on the move at last, all 6’4” of him pushing himself offthe bannister he’s been leaning on, gloved fingers flexing as he descendstowards her. She refuses to back off even as Carnaby plucks helplessly at hersleeve.

‘Well?’ Her voice is icy, her composurelike steel. Flint comes to within half a metre of her and she refuses to backoff. He smells like metal and overpriced aftershave. The ruby in his tie-pin isbig enough to buy her whole flat twenty times over and leave enough for ayacht.

‘You,’ he says slowly, ‘are playinga very dangerous game, Miss Weasley.’

Lucy grins. ‘I don’t know if you’ve heard,but my family are rather good at dangerous games. Why don’t you ask your fatherabout his encounter with my Uncle Bill? Oh, wait, you can’t. We both know whocame off better in that little tussle. How is Azkaban, these days?’

Flint’s eyes gleam, bloody murder inthem, and that’s when Lucy’s friend Minnie sprints up to them at full pelt andcrashes bodily into her.

‘Aurors,’ she pants, her brown hair wrappingfully around her face as she turns to stretch her wand out towards Flint. ‘He calledthem. Some bullshit harassment thing.’

‘Not now.’ Lucy tries to fight herway around Minnie, but her friend isn’t having any of it.

‘Live to fight another day, Captain Kirk,’says Minnie, and apparates them both away. As Lucy is pulled into therubber-tube-squish of apparition, she catches Flint’s eyes. Resolve hardens inher stomach as she sees it harden in his. If she doesn’t finish this, he will.

They come out in their joint flat,Lucy still panting with irritation, Minnie blowing her hair out of her eyes andtucking her wand back into her boots.

‘Jeez! Close shave.’

Lucy stares daggers. ‘I bloody hadhim, Minn.’

‘You didn’t.’ Minnie sails off,pulls out three mugs for tea. ‘Carny boy texted me. Said you were on the rocks.’

‘Bullshit. All that money and allthose bodies—they’re going somewhere. Doing something. And there was that thingover—’

‘Yeah, yeah.’ Minnie throws teabagsinto the mugs. ‘The spaceship over Brixton, blah blah. Some druggy’s having ariot with you, Loop-poop. It’s all bollocks.’

‘Stop calling me that.’ Lucy plonksherself down at their rickety kitchen table and begins to extract notes fromher satchel, the corners catching on the worn leather. ‘We’ve got to get him.They’ve got something in there.’

‘Of course they do,’ says a newvoice, and Minnie turns around to shoot a smile at their third housemate as sheweaves into the room. Carefully, neither she or Lucy say anything about the freshbruises on Hekate’s cheekbone.

‘You think there’s something there?’demands Lucy, instead of asking the important question, which is: did you really think going to visit yourparents was a good idea?

‘Course there is.’ Hekate sits downnext to Lucy and clears a space amongst the papers to put her own notebook on. ‘Justnot an alien.’

‘What, then?’

‘God, it could be anything, Luce.’Minnie pours boiling water into the mugs, scalds herself, sucks at a burntfinger as she grimaces. ‘It’s the bloody Unspeakables.’

‘Exactly.’ Hekate, ever socarefully, writes a strange curse on a blank page. Lucy and Minnie exchange alook, but neither of them ask the question then either.

‘Honest, Luce, it’s time to take a break.’Minnie dumps tea in front of her and pushes one towards Hekate. ‘Why don’t youget back to that equate-thingy you were doing? That was going so well.’

‘Equation.’ Lucy accepts the tea,blows on the top to cool it. ‘Can’t. I need a supercomputer to check it, and thenearest one’s in a Muggle uni. I’ll never get in.’

‘I still think we should just startour own,’ says Hekate, the old argument creeping back into her voice. ‘Imaginewhat we could do if we really did it. Combine magic and astrophysics.’

‘Stars,’ agrees Minnie, her eyesshining, and Lucy has to laugh.

‘Idealists,’ she teases, and the twogirls laugh right back at her.

‘Pot, kettle!’ Minnie crows, andHekate nods in furious agreement.

‘No money, anyway,’ points out Lucywhen they recover.

Hekate lifts a shoulder, half ashrug. ‘There will be. I’m the only Lestrange in this generation, remember?They had to disinherit Athos when he went to Nurmengard. I get everything whetherthey like it or not.’

Lucy and Minnie share the lookagain. The twin brother they don’t talk about is best where he is, and that’sthe surefire truth. Better Athos never comes anywhere near Hekate ever again,and Minnie and Lucy both would lay down their lives to ensure it happened.

‘I’m not taking your money,’ saysLucy instead of anything else. ‘Maybe we can look into grants or something. Idon’t know. This alien’s more important for now.’

‘There’s no bloody alien,’ wailsMinnie, but Lucy’s already on the move. Tea in hand, she shucks her boots offand weaves absently over to the phone.

‘I’m going to call in the gang. Youguys want to come?’

Minnie wavers. ‘Will there be pizza?’

‘I’ll get pizza,’ promises Hekate, ‘butonly if Lucy promises to drop the alien thing.’

Lucy, phone halfway to her ear,grins wide enough to split her face in two.

‘Guess I’d better get one of theboys to pick up Chinese, then.’

Her friends both groan, and she justgrins wider as she dials the first number.