Absit Omen RPG

Tea he could do easily, and it would seem odd to be so pompous to ask the house elf to tend to it. Besides, if Robin was staying with them a while, he’d need to know where the most important room of the house was. So he led him through. The dogs watched him fill the kettle and set it over the fire, so retreated to their food bowls in suggestion and the huskies briefly protested over the ownership of a bone.

“We were,” Johann agreed, “took a road trip down the west coast, first time I’d really been over that way.” The kettle ticked as the water began to heat. Despite Robin’s suggestion he’d already eaten on the train, he rustled up shortbread for a sober welcome to Scotland at the very least. Tea mugs, teaspoon, plates, teapot all danced gracefully from their homes to the end of the table nearest Robin.

He wondered if they were meant to look Robin up while they were over there. But looking up your ex while you’re on honeymoon didn’t quite sit right. The thought of looking up Arcturus Hollingbury… Johann’s mouth twitched at the ridiculous thought. North America was a whole continent, after all. He glanced back to Robin, trying to read him.

“Understandable,” he sympathised instead with being distracted to write, “big change in your life that. I have a couple of good friends who are the same. One’s a healer, though, not at St Mungo’s any more.” That had been quite the transition for Hannah, but she seemed happy enough being a healer for Azkaban. She never was conventional. “That’s what’s brought you over here, right?” He asked, approaching the fireplace and looking back over his shoulder in a futile attempt to hide his curiosity, “a job at the hospital?”

A forearm shake, different, but not unknown. Empty right hands clasped had shown for longer than man remembered that strangers were not holding weapons and bore no ill will towards each other. Even so, it gave Johann a moment to adapt his expectation, but just added to his assessment of the other man. Nice coat, lean, slightly weathered face, yes he could quite see how Balfour would like the wizard, especially in their younger days.

His name sounded strange in a Canadian accent, but he had done well to repeat his own pronunciation of his name with the yoh. Johann was however quite accustomed to the British referring to him more like Joe. Nobody would ever butcher it as much as Hannah’s mother.

Robin’s gaze was up and about them as he stepped into the manor’s entrance. This was ordinary for any first time visitor. It was an impressive but homely space, decorated by generations past, but now adjusted to the present occupants taste. Robin’s bag floated gently to the foot of the stairs.

“Took the train in from Paris and apparated here.”
“Agréable, little more refined than the international floo.” The European wizarding trains were naturally comfortable, retaining a style from an age of refinement. These days Muggles crammed themselves into trains which resembled tin cans, especially on the Tube. Johann would rather apparate than be forced upon that again too soon.

“You’re not what I was expecting.” There was no attempt to hide the visual examination, which was fine, as Johann had been doing the same. Well, that was a rather lovely smile. “Nice to meet you. Bal not around?”

“Unfortunately not,” Johann addressed the insecurity of their guest first, “he wanted to be here to greet you, but had to floo to London an hour or so ago to take care of something at the office.” He closed the door behind Robin. “He’ll be back as soon as he can,” he gestured for Robin to explore inwards of the building, permitting his curiosity.

“Tea, coffee? Have you eaten lunch?” He offered hospitality, subsequently dithering on their destination. “We’ve some leftover chicken legs we were going to use for lunch, only they’ve probably got something down there now.” One of the dogs gave a subdued bark at the mention of chicken, knowing it shouldn’t speak. “Ahh… they’re hoping you say no.”

On Wednesday it would be a year since Felix unexpectedly arrived in the night. Johann and Balfour had woken with hangovers from Knox and Carr’s wedding to find a young wizard curled on the sofa. But this year they weren’t expecting another illegitimate son to kip on the furniture, but a fully grown wizard from Balfour’s past instead.

“He’s rough around the edges,” Balfour had explained, to Johann’s raised eyebrow, curious, “… but mostly kind.” Mostly. Mostly. Merlin…

“Hrrrgh.” Johann shrugged off the lingering memory of scepticism at this interaction the other day. He put down his cup of tea, realising he’d been staring out of the window rather than ensuring some of the feed bills were paid for the many beasts that were tended to on the estate.

Balfour had been keen to lay out the welcome mat for their arrival, and Johann had reminded himself that they were married wizards now, so he should contain any green-eyed monster that might arise. Besides, he understood Robin Louvelle might be ‘easy on the eye’, though ‘rough around the edges’ in other senses. Did that work, or wasn’t that a oxymoron?


Johann scrawled his new signature with a pleased grin. No St but Sp these days. He was a spook too.


Whiskey heralded an arrival and there was an almost imperceivable shudder through the old house as it felt it too. Johann inhaled, rose from his desk chair and strode through the otherwise empty house.

There on the doorstep that balmy Saturday afternoon was a wizard, as described. Johann affixed his best smile, throwing open the front door. Whiskey and the other hounds poured out to investigate, tails wagging, tongues lolling in the warm weather. The linguist's lanky form was clad in a white linen shirt, untucked over faded dark blue jeans, his feet hidden by green socks with an owl pattern on them, framed by the doorway.

“Robin!” He greeted, with exuberance that was actually a bit more genuine than it had felt five minutes before. “Welcome!” He gestured to himself. “Johann, Balfour’s husband, good to meet you." He thrust his hand out to shake.

"Here, come in” he stepped back, and clicked his fingers to indicate to the dogs to relent in their nose poking. “Come in," he repeated, moving to draw his wand to levitate any baggage. "You made it. How was your journey?”

His mother was fussing with his curls, muttering to herself in her native tongue. She twisted one around her forefinger and frowned over his head into the mirror propped on the desktop. Johann caught her expression in the reflection and looked up from his cards. Despite their many revisions, scribbles, crossings outs, edits, re-edits, he didn’t need them. He had committed to memory everything important: his vows, his soon-to-be-husband’s middle name and the names of every Spectre expected to fill the house. In less an hour and a half there’d be one more. Him.

“Maybe my husband will be able to tame it,” Johann suggested with a smirk. Balfour had cut it more than once, but Johann’s hair seemed to grow back almost the instant it was cut. Camille took a beat to let the smile transform her concern.
“Well, I suppose he’s chosen to marry it!” She gestured with both hands at his dark hair. It was the neatest it had been in a long time, expertly tended to first thing that morning by a witch with enchanted scissors.
“And the rest of me, I hope.”

The humour was to cover the fluttering in his chest. Excitement mixed with nerves had been steadily growing all week. He’d dreamt he’d been terribly late, then that he’d woken up to find Balfour had vanished. Last night, the marquee had blown away with them and all the guests in it. The sun had just begun to lighten the night sky as he’d rushed to the window to check it was still there on the grounds, glad it had been just a bad dream.

“Warts and all.” His mother confirmed, her reflection smiling affectionately at him as she squeezed his shoulders with both hands, her grip keen over his cream shirt. Johann knew it was possible, his mother had loved his late father unconditionally once too, but in Johann’s eyes, his and Balfour’s relationship lacked any warts, metaphorical or actual. They’d weathered Ira Almasy, Layton and a surprise son in the time they had been together. Not even Balfour’s favourite dragon had successfully intervened, nor Johann’s sleeping potions.

“Not today,” Johann uttered under his breath to fate. “Today we’ll be married.”

The moment was brought to a conclusion by their impending departure. Balfour had appeared at the door to the room, dressed for lunch. He nonchalantly listed off the family waiting for them downstairs, but Johann's attention was on his handsome appearance, naturally.

Feliks was ready in an instant, stomach ruling him like every young boy. Johann's rumbled quietly at the suggestion of lunch approaching, so like boy like man. Father? Hm.

"I could eat a hippogriff!"
"Don't say that around the hippogriffs."

"Are they coming to lunch too?" Johann asked, getting to his feet, clasping his fiancé's hand automatically, beaming. He leaned in to place a kiss on Balfour's lips, in response to the tilt of his future husband's head. In that moment of fresh cologne, humour and expectant lunch guests, everything was perfect.


End

"... how different it is here for me. But you understand."

"Mm." Johann replied, understanding exactly how that felt. It wasn't that they were strangers to it all, just had both grown up in very different places to great Scottish estate and a house full of relatives. Different for sure.

"I am sorry if I make you and Papa worry." Feliks offered in a rather sober tone. Johann couldn't help but look him up and down to read for something more behind that, a suggestion of a prevailing guilty conscience. He tilted his head ever so slightly to the left, blue eyes narrowing.

"I believe that comes with being a parent, and being a son," he suggested after a momentary consideration. "But talking more never hurts." Hypocrite.

His expression softened from scrutiny to affection once more. "We are all just looking out for you, but same goes both ways. We are sorry if we make you worry." Balfour was still regularly in reach of lethal dragons, for goodness sake.

Despite Johann's unintended fumbling of the explanation, Feliks got the gist almost immediately. He was there all of a sudden, sweeping his short arms around the wizard's upper body and squeezing tight.

"I can call you father?"
"You can call me whatever you prefer," the end of an eyebrow lifted, "as long as it's not rude..."

He hadn't expected such eager acceptance, but he hadn't anticipated great resistance either. Perhaps just awkwardness, or a request to think on it. But Feliks had a unique way to bounce from one strange thing to the next in his life and eagerly consume it, as growing boys did with food.

"Does Oma know?"
"She... she knows I intended to ask you." Johann explained, recalling his mother's continued excitement at anything to do with Feliks being in any sense her first grandchild. "But she obviously doesn't know your answer." He gave a little shrug, tone a clear suggestion that Feliks was welcome to share the news.

"Feliks," he reached out a pale, long-fingered hand in anchor, "thank you. I know it's not always straightforward for you since you arrived, but I'm always glad you're here. And I will be as proud to call you my son as I will be to call Balfour my husband."

There was a strange tension, not a bad sort, just a new sort. He broke it with a nod and gentle smile.

A smile broke out on Johann's face at the sight of the sketchmap. Plans for summer already underway. Feliks always brought such energy to any conversation, whether it was his wish to share things - with so much being new to him - or his curiosity.

".. we can even travel? My friends at school travel too..." Johann nodded, agreeing at the possibility. "... with their mamas and papas."

"Of course. Me and Papa won't have all the fun. We'll be glad to have you home, or with us in any case." The smile renewed. "There was something I wanted to ask you, actually, Feliks." He tilted his head slightly, a strangely nervous anticipation in his stomach growing.

"Like you mentioned, your school friends have their 'mamas and papas'," Johann had his Mutti and Vati until he was perhaps eight years old when his father had insisted on the slightly more formal Mutter and Vater.

"And when your papa and I marry next week, we'll be husbands," That phrase always brought colour to his cheeks, "and I'll be a Spectre too. Balfour will always be your papa, and I will never replace your mama," good grief, what a thought.

This wasn't quite coming out as he'd rehearsed it in the mirror...! 

"But, I wondered if you would like me to also become your parent? Another father if you like." His gaze didn't leave the young wizard's face. "You can decide what you'd wish to call me, of course." Johann raised his shoulders in a shrug, and then lifted his hands from the knot they'd tied themself in on his lap, gesturing towards the boy.

"What I mean is, Feliks, is that I would like to adopt you, officially, I mean, as my son... is that something you would like, too?"

The house was filling with people. Noise, voices, presences. One could never quite be alone, but somehow, when one wanted to be, one still could be in the numerous rooms. It was gone eleven months since it had officially become home to a lanky, dark-haired German wizard, and nearly eight since it had become home to the rapidly-growing, sometimes equally-as-lanky and dark-haired Feliks. Balfour's son.

The elves had been busy preparing the other rooms for the new arrivals due that evening. This time next Saturday they would be right in the thick of it, getting married in front of family and friends. There was a nervous buzz of anticipation occupying Johann from the moment he woke to when he finally got to sleep. A good kind of nervous, an excited kind.

While Balfour had taken Feliks and the dogs out for a long, drizzly walk, Johann had caught up with things. Things included time with Knox, Carr, and nearly one-year-old baby Cam, who unlike the other babies Johann encountered in his life of late, remained steadfastly silent from the curse. She made tiny hand gestures from her parents arms, and though it was a simple conversation, Johann was forever thrilled to practise a new language.

Johann had dressed early for lunch, anticipating Balfour would want a decent soak in a bath, so had leaned over the soap-suds gingerly to kiss his fiancé before negotiating the hallways in the direction of Felik's room.

He knocked politely, and heard a query.
"No, not quite yet," he replied cordially to Feliks, "but you are ready, aren't you?" He stepped into the room, dressed somewhat smartly in a suit, akin to one he might wear for work, but with a little more colour. He hadn't slipped on his shoes yet, so his feet crossed the floor in stripy socks.

Feliks in contrast wore sandy colours and blue jeans which suited his pale complexion well. It took Johann a moment to spot him on the floor, legs out before him, an oversized book propped on them.

"I'm not interrupting, am I?" He asked, somewhat rhetorically as adults often did, as he sank down on the end of the neatly made bed, twisting to face Feliks by the fire.

"Did you have a good walk with B-Papa?" It was still not quite habit to refer to Balfour by this other name, only because Feliks had been at school two terms now and home only sporadically therefore.

Memorandum
To: B.Spectre, Department for Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures
From: J.Storm, Department of International Magical Cooperation
Date: Thursday 8th March 2012, 10:45am

Re: Mrs L, stop reading

I thought you ought to know I love you.

I might have said it more than once this morning, but it's days like this[1] you can't say it enough.

Also, apparently a year today your beautiful eyes regained their sight after the accident[2].

Don't be trying to earn another award tonight.[3]

All my love,

xx

1.	Full moon
2.	1st March 2011 Help, I'm Alive
3.	5th March, 2011 - Daily Prophet: Beast Division Misadventure

Being nosey, Johann absorbed Quill’s comments about Heathrow to Gabrielle, but held any burgeoning remarks. One of the decent sorts from Level One had appeared in the form of Brinley Abbott.

“I should come by more often!”
“See, Hester? This is what I’ve missed: the organised chaos.”

Johann answered simultaneously with Hester’s:
“Oh, you just missed me then?”
      “Are babies not organised chaos?”

He decided he didn’t want to give her any reason to call him childish and it didn’t bear repeating.

“… I’ll see to the Minister as well. I’m sure he’s thanking the heavens that I finally returned from maternity leave.”
“He’s been fine without you.”

Oh this was almost too delicious, Johann thought, watching Hester squirm. A big, shit-eating grin was developing on Johann’s face as he looked from one boss to the other. He caught Pinn’s eye and it just suggested don’t.

“You left him in good hands. I mean…. doing it as a courtesy.” Hester descended, and Brinley dissolved the tension by declaring a pastry tax. He was too charming and grown up to wind the witches up, Johann thought.

“.. any other bits you lot have for me?”

“Yes, I’ve got a question,” Johann asked, gesturing to the table with another pastry, grinning, “Is this a regular thing, or only when you abandon us for more than a week?”

“Yes, honeymoon in the States,” Johann nodded, but paused momentarily at the comment about Balfour’s team. “I’m sure they’ll be fine.” He drew out the word fine for emphasis. Maybe famous last words, but he’d be the other side of the world not to worry about it, and hopefully far from a Ministry owl.

“Pepper is loaning you a car right? In America, not here.”

“He might be…” the linguist suggested evasively, “until he sees our driving.” He had gathered his paperwork now, and slid it across the highly polished table and into his arms. “You’ve never fancied driving one yourself?” He asked Brinley, curious.

“If we get back,” Johann corrected, though they could not abscond forever, he could dream. Feliks would return from Hogwarts eventually! “Nauseate we shall,” he agreed.

As if to express commiseration with the Americans, one of the dogs grumbled from the floor of the bothy, and Johann laughed at the timing. He was quite sure the Americans would be able to stomach them both. For all Balfour was forward and confident, he felt that was standard in those he had met from across the Atlantic, especially in British culture.

He rolled onto his front, all the better to peer at Balfour from. He propped himself up on pale elbows, his laughter leaving a blithe expression, eyes bright.

“In 48 days we’ll be getting married,” he reminded them, as if it were not front of mind for both. “Six more weeks of living in sin before a whole lifetime of it together,” his blue eyes left Balfour’s expression to look up, thoughts casting back to a warm September evening, margaritas, masks and a lemongrass bath. He bent his knees, crossed his ankles, toes drawing a lazy circle behind his crown of messy dark curls. “Husbands,” he added, “parents,” he met Balfour’s loving gaze once more, closing in, “and I hope, forever.”

The coffee Pickler made was near empty, not the sort to top itself up from a source elsewhere. Their meetings rarely ran longer than one pot, both wizards efficient in their delivery.

“Does everyone say that?”

Johann’s lips curled into a smile at the self-awareness.

“Only four… five times a day,” he assured Brinley, “rising to seven or eight of late…” He puckishly enjoyed Abbott’s reaction and then laughed, reaching out to slap the man heartily on the shoulder. “I jest, it’s only three at most, and you’re the first today.”

He sat back, crossed his ankles beneath the table. “We’re nearly there, only a few things that have to be done just before, you know. Final fittings, seating plans, vows…” he ticked off his fingers, “but truth be told we get rather distracted once we’ve done a few things on an evening.” He flexed his fingers outwards rolling his eyes.

“You best be getting the day off, or I will confund Glass. Blow if there won’t be some national emergency of magical kind on the day and lose half our guests.” He leaned forward suddenly, “Don’t let him make any serious decisions that week, will you? Permitting Pepper’s flying machines, promoting Iravani - no, actually if he can get her out the country, that’d be the best wedding gift…” His words were quick, and he’d closed the distance between them.

“I’m getting ahead of myself,” he announced quite suddenly and sat back, scooping the paperwork back into a neat pile with his long arms.

Well, that was settled then. Not that he should have been at all worried! Of course Balfour was going to support such a proposition! A knot untied in Johann’s mind, and he forgot to correct Balfour on the whole ‘cool parent’ business. Balfour would forever be the cool one in Joh’s eyes. Leather trousers, terpsichorean hips and friends for miles, there was no competition which could compete, and that was before the whole list of reasons to love him.

“Brisk!” Johann agreed, laughing. “Have you ever - I mean - one might assume, but have you really?” He was genuinely curious. The whole bit about underpants and kilts seemed like a running joke for the Scots, and he’d been inclined to disbelieve anyone would. Wasn’t wool itchy, for one? “Not sure I’ve worn long socks and bare knees since I was half the age Feliks is.” He stretched his legs out, wiggling this toes as he inspected them, trying to picture the sight in his mind’s eye.

“Next you’ll be suggesting I wear a garter,” he looked back suggestively, well aware of the conclusions some had drawn on the news Johann had decided to take Bal’s name when they got married. “Suppose I can’t deny you…” He leaned in, stole a kiss. “But I’ll be looking up the best warming charms, Spectre, otherwise it’ll drop off.”