Who: Avis and Tomas Booth
What: Late night excursions leading to life altering events. Srsly!
Where: Their house, then the crime scene
When: BACKDATED to AUGUST 9TH (...his birthday :])
She had
finally gotten off work and she'd brought home all his favorites for dinner. There had been casual foreplay and now --
now -- at two in the morning things were
finally going where they had been headed all night. Oh -- yes, let him put his hands there so she could arch up against him and let her fingers curl in the sheets -- what was that noise?
Hoot.It was nothing, of course. Maybe Booth had taken to making strange animal noises in the throes of his passion? She wouldn't put it past him.
Hoot.
Avis paused, placing a light, hesitant hand on the middle of his chest. "Tomas." Her stern working tone was definitely not one he heard often in bed, despite what people probably thought about their sex life.
"
Avis," he let out, not in the tone he'd been muttering her name before, but in the more exasperated, frustrated way that Tomas often said his wife's name, when she was playing hard to get or hiding something from him or---this was
birthday sex, damn it, there was nothing that should be able to interrupt this.
Hoot!
Now that his attention was away from the knickers he was currently hooking his fingers around (damn it, damn
it), Tomas' mind was able to focus on the noise coming from his side, presumably the window, because if there was something
hooting in their room, they'd be in a lot more trouble than he'd like to imagine. His eyes squinted in the dark toward the window, and his mouth dropped in annoyance, "Who the fuck is---it's two in the morning--"
Late night owls
usually meant trouble, but the ministry owls were usually far more insistent than the one on their sill was being.
Oh,
that tone never did anything good to Tomas' chances of getting laid. The owl began to peck
hard at the window and she scowled a little, sliding her hands down to his wrists to tug them away from her (lacy, for once) panties.
"Tomas," she managed blandly, "If I do not get out of bed this instant, that owl is going to peck through
our window and
you are going to have to clean up shattered glass off of the floor arse-naked. Is that appealing?"
Avis rolled out from underneath him and padded over to the window with the intent of opening it.
The whine Tomas let out as he buried his face in the pillow (yeah, no,
she could open the mail on
his birthday. Thought technically it
wasn't his birthday anymore, but---). He had very few things these days outside of his lovely wife that made him giddy, and his birthday was something Tomas had
never let anyone take away from him. Honestly, being an auror, you had to take all the little joys in life that God gave you,
so. His birthday was a big fucking deal to him.
He pushed his face to the side to stare at his wife (pulling up the covers while he was at it) as she received the letter or whatever it was from the bloody owl. The one time one of these bloody
nocturnal creatures actually decides to live up to what nature wanted it to, it was during sex. Of course.
"What is it?" he muttered, obvious in his annoyance.
There was no answer from Avis. She was far too busy grabbing her clothes off the floor --
off the FLOOR -- to shove them on with the urgency that she had when she realized that she'd forgotten to place a compound on the correct shelf before heading home. The fact that she was using dirty clothes was ... well, it
should have been enough to get Tomas' attention.
She threw his clothes into his face and barked, her voice just a little strained, "Apparating. Two minutes, pants or not." Avis swallowed hard and scribbled down an answer for the owl before she all but tossed it out the window and turned on her heels, throat still tight.
"
MOVE!"
Crap. That meant he was going to probably have to kill someone tonight.
Tomas let his annoyance turn into something mental, and jumped into action, finding his pants first (because there had
definitely been close calls in that department) before flinging on his auror robes, wand already jammed into it holster. He was ready in impressive time, considering he'd just been
this close to shagging his wife less than a minute before.
"All right, I better get some fucking over time for this," he muttered, grabbing onto Avis' wrist. He should probably have asked what the hell they were apparating into, but sometimes you just need to improvise. And he was tired.
"You didn't even ask where we were going," she muttered as they apparated with a loud
crack to a quiet front yard. Several figures turned behind dark curtains and Avis didn't hesitate for a second before she shouted out a flurry of stunning and immobilizing spells. The fact that she hadn't even checked whether they were civilians...
She was sometimes not so good at keeping her husband in the loop, but when one got a letter that said 'no one left, hurry
now' one didn't have time for information sessions.
"Inside as fast as possible!"
Didn't people know that it was his birthday?
Didn't they know that today was not the day to attack random families and destroy lives? He'd made a journal entry,
didn't he? This was fucking ridiculous, this was
not right and---
That stunning spell should probably have not sent the cloak figure soaring as far as it did, but emotion
did tend to heighten ones magical skills. Surveying the area (they were busting down the front door now), it seemed the he and Avis had arrived just as the attackers were leaving. Good for him, at least--the job would be done quickly and smoothly, even if he
was now frustrated about the fact that there had been an attack at
all and---
Too many conflicting emotions. Time to switch it off. Shooting off a
homenum revelio into the main area, a few lights began to shimmer. Tomas grimaced at the sight of the lifeless bodies strewn across the living room.
"Check them out," he motioned from Avis to the bodies, his wand at the ready because a light had begun to glow and spread out from the bottom of what looked to be a cupboard door. Someone was hiding away in there.
"
Try not to be an idiot," she hissed as she stepped toward the bodies, muttering a protection spell to keep whatever magic hadn't dissipated inside of the house. Who knew how long it had been since they'd been killed, though?
Death Eaters would linger as long as they had to in order to find what they were looking for, after all. She exhaled quietly and then knelt next to the bodies, taking a tally. She ... recognized their faces.
"Damnit," she frowned. At least a father and a daughter, probably a mother.
He barely heard Avis' warnings as he was busy throwing open the door, wand ready to attack the death eater that was about to pop out. Fortunately for Tomas, only a few brooms came scattering to the ground, and they started to cry.
Wait.
"
Lumos!" he started, and sticking his wand into the cupboard, Tomas spotted something moving in the back, underneath a red and black tartan blanket. The crying was definitely emminating from there, and his heart tugged harshly as his mind figured out what was going on. Bending down, Tomas scooted into to the cupboard and gently pulled the blanket off of the cat---
---wait, no, that was a
baby.
"Ah--" he let out, eyes widening at the sight of the boy (he thought it was a boy, he was wearing
blue--). "Come...here?"
Avis hadn't been sure whether that was directed at her or whatever she thought she'd seen move in the closet -- the moment that she'd caught sight of something and secured the perimeter she'd slipped in behind him, hands on her hips.
"It's the Hooper family," she whispered as she rested one hand on his shoulder (making sure to scourgify first for various reasons). "We'll have records on them once the back-up gets here..." She trailed off once she realized just what Tomas was reaching out for.
Oh, bloody hell. It was a
kid -- things always got complicated when it came to children and -- and -- what were they supposed to
do with it?!
The boy was yelling 'NO!' now, and Tomas looked over his shoulder at Avis with an intense look of worry. Five minutes ago they were about to shag, and now they were in a house full of dead bodies and a hysterical child. Brilliant. Such was the life of an auror.
That is why he needed his birthday to be fucking amazing.
"All right, come on," Tomas said, taking on an authoritative tone. He was usually pretty good with kids (at least, Olivia hadn't hexed him for how he played with Annabelle), but right now, they needed to get him out of the house and into a safe zone--the death eaters had targeted his family for a reason, they could be back to fetch what the others may or may not have found.
"We need to get back to the ministry," he said, standing with the squirming boy in his arms, who was now shrieking madly. Tomas struggled to keep him to his chest, and sent a look toward Avis, "I mean---there are others on their way, and we can't just---let him sit in that room."
He knew what they did with the orphans of war, it was the saddest fucking sight he'd ever seen---the blank, grey room that had a box of old and used toys. The ministry was really losing their minds.
Oh, he just
had to give her
that look. She shifted uncomfortably when he glanced over to her and grudgingly nodded -- that room made even
her frown horribly -- before she reached out a hand for the boy in order to tilt his chin and get a good look at his face before she spoke again.
"We are not. Going. To hurt you." Avis gave his nose a hesitant beep for good measure and then brought her hand to cover Tomas'. "What do you suggest we do, then?" Because leaving the kid at the Ministry wouldn't solve anything in the long-run. He'd end up in the room eventually.
"He's not an
alien, Avis," Tomas muttered, an unexpected grin flickering over his face. It quickly faded, given the situation, but he let out a breath and leaned back, chest pushing into the still squirming boy as he got a good look at him. "We---"
He had no idea. They couldn't just send the kid to a daycare, or something. It was the middle of the night, and they'd have to find out if the family had any other relatives and if he
did, would they be willing to take him (he had no idea if people
had to, or not, but why wouldn't you--) and then there was the paperwork, and--
"We get out of here," he said, "and then we--find out his paper work and...do...that."
Tomas had never had to deal with one of the victims like this, not this close up and never had he had to...to just give them up to the ministry. Oy, he'd heard about this feeling, this hero complex that--he knew Dawlish had done it the year before, taken in an orphan, but--that was ridiculous, right?
"Let's...let's stay with him, while we do," he offered, his eyes amusedly noticing that the boy seemed to be dipping into slumber. "It would be bad to leave him alone after he got all---used to us."
