WHO: Elliot Alderton and Elsie Alderton
WHAT: Two people who probably won't show up at work tomorrow
WHERE: Their humble abode
WHEN: ...TONIGHT!?
Elliot’s eyes slowly opened, but he refused to move a muscle. He was comfortably draped over his wife, though how comfortable it was for Elsie he wasn’t sure. He’d actually been in a
sound sleep, a much needed one, and tried to convince his mind that there was no reason to wake up. He shut his eyes again, not moving an inch. His favorite place to be was in bed with Elsie, and yes, while there were usually more vigorous activities occurring under the sheets, having a peaceful sleep was an escape from the real world. Even their kids had some innate knowledge that they were not to be hungry, cry, or get into trouble while Mum and Dad were in bed. So, no, he was not going to risk it by doing a silly thing like
moving or even thinking too much.
He’d almost drifted back into sleep, his breaths nearly evening out, when the jolt of hearing a
voice made his entire body shiver. Elliot lifted his head from the pillow, annoyed that he’d been awoken, but alarmed because their closest neighbors were too far down the road to hear. He kept still, listening, hoping it was just in his dreams, but---
Elliot slipped out of bed, grabbing his wand from the night stand. He moved to the open doorway of the bedroom and put a keen ear toward the stairwell. There had been some reports of teenage vandals in the nearby village, and Elliot smirked, thinking that they were going to get quite the shock if they dared tried to break into
his house. He heard Elsie rustling awake behind him and was ready to joke that these kids were going to get the scare of their life, but then a light shone in through the downstairs window and Elliot’s expression turned hard.
“Stay up here,” he said, sending Elsie a quick glance, gesturing toward the nightstand before he headed toward the stairs, “and get your wand, okay?”
She had been roused awake by the loss of the comforting pressure and warm of being tangled up with Elliot afforded her, and further still by the suggestion of a distant noise in her ears. Elsie wondered groggily what the disturbance could be, until she thought of the children. Scrubbing her hand across her face to wake herself further, she prepared to roll out of bed when she could see Elliot already moving out the door, warning her to retrieve her wand.
The instrument was in her hand before she knew what was happening, and her husband's strange reaction caused her to worry for the few seconds she had to puzzle over it before she as well crept from the room.
He wasn't going for the children, as their door remained close and he was nowhere to be seen on the landing. Frowning, Elsie still wasn't sure what had raised Elliot's suspicions, but felt the hairs on the back of her neck standing straight up. What had he realised or seen or heard that she hadn't?
She slipped into the children's room and quickly knelt by Liam's bedside, shaking the sleeping boy awake. "Liam," she whispered urgently, "Liam, my heart, I need you to wake up."
To his credit, the boy opened one eye and was instantly striving for alertness. "What's happening?" asked Liam drowsily.
"Take Elysia," Elsie said quietly, rubbing his little shoulder. "I need you to stay with her in here—keep the door shut until I say it's all right. Can you—" Before she had even finished the sentence, she heard loud noises from the floor below.
"Elliot?" Elsie called. It happened again, a second time, louder than before, and—was that
smoke she began to smell? By the third, Liam had raced to the crib and Elsie tore from the room, screaming, "
ELLIOT!"
Elliot had quickly moved down the stairs at the sight of the light because it was one thing to be outside the house, it was another to start looking
in. He jumped the last few steps and slid into the lit up living room, his wand tight in his hands. The lights bobbed up and down outside the window as Elliot moved forward to scare the intruders away. A good bat-bogey hex would work, yeah? Or perhaps he could stun the bastards and hang them by their pants in the tallest tree in the woods.
The explosion of glass knocked Elliot off his feet and he slammed into a bookcase. Books littered the floor and the living room was ablaze with a flurry of---
spells, hexes, jinxes! Even though he could
see the magic, it still took Elliot a few seconds to realize that the harmless teenagers he thought he was going after were in reality vicious wizards. He gaped, stunned, until a spell hit the wall beside the bookcase as he jumped back into life.
He knew defensive spells. Shields and charms that he had to put up in the locked cage that he transformed in. Elliot did them over, and over, and over, never fully trusting himself, but now--he flung the shield up over the broken window. The sound of the spells bouncing off of it rung in his ears and it almost flooded out the sound of his wife’s screams.
“ELSIE!” Elliot shouted, turning back as she appeared. “GO! THEY’RE WIZARDS! GET OUT!”
He couldn’t---Elsie had to
leave and get the children to safety, “Get to Eliza’s!”
What was he going to do, what was he going
to do? He wasn’t a fighter, he wasn’t a dueler, he wasn’t---Elliot’s fists clenched as more bangs and shouts were heard from all around the house. They were attacking his
home, wizards were attacking his home! What could they possibly….Elliot’s thoughts were just as frantic as the spells bounding off his house, but one stuck vividly in his head. Elsie was the perfect citizen, the perfect person, his children were perfect, but him? But Elliot, the werewolf, the
monster? The war was long over, these wizards---
A dangerous flash of anger coursed through him, one that reminded him of the madness that overtook his mind when the full moon neared his peak. Elliot rarely experienced wolf like tendencies outside of his cage, but the threat on his family propelled him to the front door to confront these wizards. He threw the front door open, snarling, and immediately began to attack.
She was torn.
In those precious few moments, Elsie was hopelessly torn between rushing to her husband's side and seeing her children to safety. Elliot was her life, her whole life, but as she doubled back to the nursery, she told herself she had to trust that he could take care of himself.
"Liam!" she called, as soon as she had shut the door swiftly, but as quietly as possible. There was no telling if these attacks were made by people who knew who the inhabitants of the home was— she didn't want to draw their attention up here if she could avoid it. "Liam, where are you?"
The boy wriggled out from beneath a pile of clothes, clutching Elysia to him, and doing his very best not to look terrified. "What's going on?" he asked.
"Come here, come to me," whispered Elsie, ushering the two children close to her and taking deep breaths. Liam was very still, and held the uneasy Elysia tightly even though Elsie's arms enveloped them. It had been an age since she'd Side-Along Apparated someone, let alone two children. Elysia was so small.
Though her heart beat so quickly that she felt nauseated, Elsie screwed her eyes up tightly and counted backwards from ten. She had no idea what was happening downstairs, and that lack of knowledge
terrified her. But they had to go to Eliza's, and they had to go now.
Releasing the breath she held slowly, she tightened her grip on them and—
BOOM!Her eyes flew open just as the nursery faded from view and Eliza's front door appeared, only the sight was accompanied by a screaming pain in her right shoulder. She didn't dare look.
Elliot tore into the front lawn, hollering loudly and flinging whatever miserable hexes he could think of. His brother-in-law had insisted one evening that he teach him some ‘must-know’ spells during the war, and though Elliot was unsure why Dedalus was so knowledgeable on hexes and jinxes, but he wasn’t complaining now. The attackers---it had seemed like there would be more people, but it was only a group of three popping out and back in around the lawn, didn’t even notice his arrival, and Elliot quickly disapparated and reappeared behind one of the men closest to the house. He grabbed the back of the man’s neck, and slammed him forward into the side of the house.
“Who the
fuck do you think you are?!” Elliot snarled, jamming his wand into the man’s neck. The other wizard’s arms flew up, wand dropping to the grass.
“Don’t! Don’t hurt me!” he cried.
“You attack
my home and---”
“Are you the wolf?! Look man, I don’t give a shit about you but they gave me a bag of galleons and---”
Elliot’s grip tightened and the man let out a yell as the tip of his wand burned red. He had heard about anti-werewolf groups before, but there hadn’t been such an attack in ages, not since the war---how had they even known? The ministry records were confidential---
“Who sent you?” Elliot hissed, but as the words left his lips the air crackled like lightening about to strike and his
bones rattled with the shock of the hex. He dropped to the ground and the other man disappeared into the night. He twitched from the shock and somehow managed to roll onto his side. The other men backed away and off the yard, into the darkness, shouting at him some cruel epithets.
Elliot’s vision was scrambled and blurry, head spinning as he tried to push himself upright, but it was pointless. Before he passed out the crescent moon escaped from behind the clouds, nearly drowning him in its light.
