Absit Omen RPG

Role-Play Boards => Godric's Hollow => Elsewhere in Britain => Gamp House => Topic started by: Lyra Gamp on December 15, 2019, 09:31:44 AM

Title: [29 Jan] Everything's Fine Today [Gamps]
Post by: Lyra Gamp on December 15, 2019, 09:31:44 AM: One day everything will be well, that is our hope. Everything’s fine today, that is our illusion.

Voltaire

“Not sure I like it,” Orion wrinkled his nose, looking up and around himself.

He had his hands stuffed in the pockets of his skinny jeans, resting on the heels of his boots. He turned on the spot, still looking upwards. His long brown curls and beard framed his tanned face, and he sported a faded green t-shirt branded in a foreign script, beneath his favourite leather jacket.

“I mean imagine if yo- imagine if our father saw this.” He gestured to Andromeda’s redecoration of a once very floral drawing room (https://absitomen.com/index.php?topic=18333.0). It had sported cream carpet, blue hydrangea sofa with matching cushions. The floral patterns were gone, and everything was rather plainer, simpler, and very much more practical. The paintings with their heavy guilted frames remained.

He drifted from one room to the next, inspecting each with fresh eyes. Last time he’d been there, it had been a wreck (https://absitomen.com/index.php?topic=18697.0), of course. The ridiculous Ministry had been through everything and not at all left it tidy.

There was the smell of roast dinner wafting through the rooms of the Gamp family home in Godric’s Hollow. Enough to make Ri’s stomach rumble with anticipation of Solly’s excellent cooking. The house elf saw Andromeda as her primary master now, of course.

“Would family be seated now, Solly is ready to serve!” The elf’s voice rang out from down the hallway. Orion skipped a step out of the drawing room and into the adjacent dining room (https://absitomen.com/index.php?topic=18333.0).

“This is what I came back to England for! Not for you lot.” Orion jokingly announced, seizing the back of the chair his mother had once ordinarily taken for dinner, and then rethinking, opting for their father’s old chair instead at the head of the long table.
Title: Re: [29 Jan] Everything's Fine Today [Gamps]
Post by: Andromeda Gamp on December 26, 2019, 06:37:00 AM: Orion did not like the redecoration. Andromeda had not liked the decor her parents picked. If her big brother picked it they would have deep red wallpaper or ebony wood. Maybe it would be filled with stuff from his favourite souk. Certainly a huge drinks cabinet in any room. She did not care for his tastes. She did not remember Orion having much opinion on the original decoration. His complaints fell on deaf ears.

Andromeda uncorked the wine for lunch. Cepheus had the glasses. Solly the house elf had the food under control. She was very excited to have Ri back home. The house elf loved to cook for the family. She put her all into Christmas dinner. It had not gone to plan. A vampire had killed a muggle. Cepheus had arrived very late. Solly had been overjoyed to see him even then.

Ri came into the dining room. Andromeda noticed him decide where to sit. He did not sit in his old seat opposite their mother's old seat. He had touched her chair first. Maybe he sensed her eyes on him. He took the seat at the head of the table. Andromeda had expected to sit there. Ri was eldest yes. But she had the house. She would let him off this once.

"Do not let sitting there go to your head Ri." Teased Andromeda.
Title: Re: [29 Jan] Everything's Fine Today [Gamps]
Post by: Cepheus Gamp on December 27, 2019, 12:26:39 PM: “This is what I came back to England for! Not for you lo.” Ri joked. Cepheus couldn’t help but grin and laugh.
“Oh like that is it?” He retaliated, joking just the same, “back for Solly’s dinners and sod the rest of us.”

He held out a glass for Andromeda to pour into as Orion picked his seat. He took the head of the table, which had once been Mortimer’s chair. Cepheus figured it was fitting, Ri was the eldest.

“Do not let sitting there go to your head, Ri.” Their sister teased.

“You sit where mum did,” Cepheus suggested, “I’ll take Ri’s old place. That’ll be about right. Short of that, we’ll play musical chairs and fight it out.” He approached Ri who had taken a seat and shoved him with a hip to the shoulder before putting down a glass of wine beside his place setting.

There was something decidedly naughty about it all. The dining room had been the scene of so many formal dinners throughout their lives, and now with no older generation present, they were acting just like the kids they’d always been treated as. If their parents had been able to see them, they’d have had a fit, Cepheus was sure. Even if he suspected they might have laughed at the antics.

A bell rang from the kitchen, and the three siblings hastily lifted any limb from near the table top as Solly performed her greatest trick. Dinner transported from the kitchen table to the dining table in an instant. A beat later, the elf herself appeared with a bow. Feeling upbeat, Cepheus applauded the Gamp family elf for the feat.
Title: Re: [29 Jan] Everything's Fine Today [Gamps]
Post by: Lyra Gamp on December 28, 2019, 04:48:03 PM: “Sitting here? What, head of the table, head of our lordly manor?” Orion asked, leaning back in the dining chair. “Surveying all that is mine.” He rested his elbows on the arms of the dining chair and splayed his arms to either side like a king. He just lacked the crown.

“You sit where mum did, I’ll take Ri’s old place…” Cepheus, ever the mild one, placated a potential power battle between siblings. With a shove from his brother’s hip, perhaps not! Orion turned in the chair and looked offended at his younger brother. The cheek! The exchange lasted single seconds as Solly presented dinner and began to serve. Orion seized his wine glass and taste tested it, sure Andromeda probably wasn’t keeping the wine cellar cold enough. Even so, the wine went down a treat and his glass was now two-thirds empty.

“Huhm.” Orion tapped the base of his depleted wine glass, glancing in Solly’s direction. His siblings were busy co-ordinating who wanted some carrots. Pity Ariadne couldn’t be there, given she was busy following quidditch games. He’d have quite liked her company that afternoon. But work was work. At least she had a job. Something to be proud about. The house elf obediently refilled his glass. “Hm.” Orion nodded once appreciatively before shooing the elf away and grasping his napkin. There was a sudden moment of realisation he was just following the conventions of a family dinner at the old house, and as the eldest brother he was here to be rebellious. He considered the peach material and then shoved it in his collar like a heathen.

“Cheers!” He announced, lifting his refilled glass. “To family reunions!”
Title: Re: [29 Jan] Everything's Fine Today [Gamps]
Post by: Andromeda Gamp on January 18, 2020, 10:31:37 AM: It was going to Ri's head. Typical Slytherin. He even tapped the base of his wine glass like their mother had. Their mother did it to hurry the house elf. The hairs on the back of Andromeda's neck raised. Solly filled Ri's glass. He shooed her away. Raised a toast. Andromeda blinked twice. It was like a ghost had entered the room. "To family reunions!" She said. Raised her glass. "Thank you Solly." The house elf was proud. She bowed to Andromeda.

"I am sorry Ariadne could not come." Andromeda said. "But all three of us here is a celebration. Why did you come back now?" Andromeda asked. "We thought you might come for Christmas? Did you run out of money?"
Title: Re: [29 Jan] Everything's Fine Today [Gamps]
Post by: Lyra Gamp on February 16, 2020, 08:54:22 AM: “Me, run out of money?” Orion asked his sister, the sarcasm evident in his tone. “I am offended at he suggestion, sister.” He gestured grandly with both hands in Andromeda’s direction. “No, I felt it time. The universe’s suggestion that it was time to come home. Be with you all. But if you’d rather I sod off…” he made as if to get up, though there was no true intention.

“I’ll catch up with Ariadne before long. I’m glad she’s become a slave to the wage at last. It’ll get Nadine off her back, for starters.” Of Ariadne’s two parents, Orion had never been that bothered what Ariadne did after Hogwarts, as long as she was happy and out of serious trouble. “Go round her place in Diagon, teach her flatmates how to really roll one…” Orion gazed off into middle distance, and came to with a little shake of his head. “Her loss.” He added more definitively, tucking into dinner at last.

“You caught any decent criminals?” He asked Andromeda, half a roast potato on route to his lips.
Title: Re: [29 Jan] Everything's Fine Today [Gamps]
Post by: Andromeda Gamp on February 23, 2020, 11:58:45 AM: "Yes you run out of money." said Andie. Dead. She blinked. Her oldest brother thought he was Ariadne's best friend. He was wrong. Andie was not going to correct him. He would find out the hard way. "You went to that retreat. It made you want to come home." Andie looked at Cepheus. "Must have been bad."

Andromeda could join the dots. She had an idea why now. Orion did not want to talk about. Andie was an auror. Orion did not have to talk to give it away.

"What criminal is decent?" Andie poked out her tongue. "Me and Longbottom seized Musgrave. Ceph and I went to see some vampires. I survived raiding Ira Almasy. I thought that was fucked up until I saw his other house we searched. You ever heard of pentrals?"
Title: Re: [29 Jan] Everything's Fine Today [Gamps]
Post by: Cepheus Gamp on March 08, 2020, 01:14:09 PM: “Cheers!” Cepheus echoed, lifting his own glass. So different to see his big brother in their father’s carved wood dining chair.

“I am sorry Ariadne could not come. But all three of us here is a celebration.” Andromeda declared. Cepheus agreed, lifting his glass again, nodding fervently.

“Why did you come back now? We thought you might come for Christmas? Did you run out of money?”

“Me, run out of money?” Cepheus laughed at his siblings.
“Yes you run out of money.” Andie’s deadpan delivery only made Cepheus chuckle more.
“I am offended at the suggestion, sister.” As if Orion had never run out of money. He had always been trying to make an extra knut, or better, a galleon. He’d once tried to teach Cepheus how to nick things from Diagon Alley shops, only the younger Gamp brother had been far too well-behaved to dare.

“No, I felt it time. The universe’s suggestion that it was time to come home. Be with you all. But if you’d rather I sod off…”
“You went to that retreat. It made you want to come home. Must have been bad.”
“Only so many chakras to align before you’ve done them all?” Cepheus suggested.

Then there it went. Everything was back to normal. Conversation turned to rolling joints and catching criminals. Well, until Andie dropped pentrals into the mix.

“Just when we thought dementors were all we had to worry about,” Cepheus uttered. “Without someone’s soul sleeping on our mental sofas.”
Title: Re: [29 Jan] Everything's Fine Today [Gamps]
Post by: Lyra Gamp on March 29, 2020, 05:11:26 AM: Andromeda summed up a year of auror-ing highlights in one breath. Never change, sister.

“Ceph and I went to see some vampires.”

Orion looked to his other sibling with mild surprise. He knew it came with the job, but that was plucky for Cepheus. Hadn’t they all gone through a phase as kids when they were convinced their father had become a vampire? Turned out he was just doing long hours at the Ministry in winter months, so never left and returned to the house in daylight hours. It had been a little anti-climactic.

“You ever heard of pentrals?” Andie asked.
“Just when we thought dementors were all we had to worry about, without someone’s souls sleeping on our mental sofas.” Cepheus added.

Orion purposefully fed himself a full mouth of food in time with this question to ensure he thought carefully about the answer. He laboured unusually over chewing, drawing his eyebrows together in what he hoped appeared to be mild confusion.

“Mental sofas?” He echoed his brother. “Why, what are they? The new death eaters?”
Title: Re: [29 Jan] Everything's Fine Today [Gamps]
Post by: Andromeda Gamp on April 04, 2020, 04:04:01 PM: "No." Said Andromeda. "They are like souls unattached to their owners. They seek out another body. Like cuckoos lay their eggs in other bird nests." Andromeda did not know the very specific detail. Enough to know it was a threat. "It is like someone kissed a dementor but they caught the soul before it got eaten." However they were made it had to be horrible. "Pentrals inhabit living magical people. They take over. Personality changes. Physical control. They have a particular liking for squibs."
Title: Re: [29 Jan] Everything's Fine Today [Gamps]
Post by: Lyra Gamp on April 04, 2020, 04:12:59 PM: “They had a number of patients at St Mungo’s with them,” Cepheus explained. “The dementors seem particularly drawn to them. I guess if you have two souls, you’re extra ‘tasty’ to them.” His younger brother shrugged, though didn’t look like he found the subject particularly funny.

“Mental sofas, right…” Orion mused. “Tasty souls. I get you now.” He gazed off into middle distance, as if a thought had suddenly occurred to him. There was an oddly delighted expression on his face, which on realising his siblings were noticing, he quantified with, “I always thought there might be something behind it when muggles think they’ve been possessed by a demon…” He seemed to forget the very delicious roast dinner before him suddenly. “Tell me more…”

End