The glare Ignan was suddenly receiving could have made most men quiver. Her eyes were dark, threatening as she stared at him, lips pressed together. Miranda could see no joke in their circumstance and while most of the time she’d have been pleased for such a reaction from her husband, today it incensed her.

“He isn’t an ex” her voice was cold.

 "Poor sod, still infatuated with you decades on. He really must be mad." The comment took her off guard and Mira’s expression softened.

“You’re mad.” Finally she did place her wine glass down, sit back and take a chip.

"Oh, I made peace with that fact years ago, my love." Ignan replied, "But you still married me." He gave Miranda a genuine smile and finally felt as if he was relaxing again. They were talking, he wasn't trying to take chunks out of her verbally. She seemed remorseful, scared of the fact she might have killed him, as much as Ignan was fearful. His tactic was to distract them from it. If Lawrence Musgrave crawled into a ditch and never came out, then the world was a better place.

He picked up a fork and began to break apart his fish in the paper. "It was Lene Larsen." Ignan said quietly, in an attempt to even out the field. "She was a zufrieden, pretty, somewhat clever. I did it for a bet, my friend's rival wanted to ask her to dance. When she found out she tried to curse me. My father demoted her to a dreg. Couldn't look her in the eye even after we left." He folded one leg over the other uncomfortably.

"So we're agreed. Badge, don't let anyone in, and no assassination requests. Good."

Ignan’s little tale caused no obvious reaction from his wife. She simply listened as she ate some chips, wondering why he felt the need to share when she’d just embarrassed herself with a bit of honesty. She was pretty sure Lene Larson wasn’t a convicted criminal and she was completely certain that Ms Larson wasn’t trying to kill or hurt either of them. His story was pointless if one took away the nicety most felt about sharing their past with their partner.

“Yes boss.” Eyebrows were raised and she sighed. The truth of Ignan being right didn’t deter from the fact that he was laying down a law she wasn’t prepared to fully accept. Being told what to do was tough. Knowing you’d messed up was tough. She wanted it all over and forgotten about. That wouldn’t happen for a while.

“Oh…erm…” Miranda frowned, remembering something she hadn’t mentioned to her husband. Out of all possible reactions he could have had, she didn’t seem him being too pleased about this new information. “I’m having an interview with Lil Snigger, Koko Yukawa. To set the record straight.”

Well that was settled then. Miranda had given in. Was that too easily? Sometimes he was suspicious when he got his way. Normally he let Miranda have her way, it was an easier life. But there had been a good example of when Miranda's way was downright dangerous. Enough. They had chewed over it for days, and now they had to put it behind them.

His wife found a change of subject before he attempted to consider one, admitting her intensions with Lil Snigger. Ignan's eyebrows shot up in surprise at this.
"To hell with Musgrave at school, what brought that on? Are you taking sleeping potion to meet her too?" Ignan asked, blue eyes looking over Miranda with genuine surprise. Lil Snigger had a real name then? It was just a penname, and not parents with a terrible sense of humour. "You trust a reporter to not twist your words - what is your plan?"

Surprise was an acceptable response to the information. Miranda could work with surprise.
“I trust her boss to make sure she doesn’t.” She hadn’t told Ignan about Sandy. Instead she’d dealt with the situation herself. The two didn’t need to meet. One hadn’t needed to know of the other.

“These articles have to stop. Since when did we become interesting enough people for public gossip? I’m a bloody healer and you’re a teacher. I’m going to show that stupid troll just how boring and uninteresting we are.” It was no secret Mira hated being in a public spotlight. She wanted power and influence without the press and public opinion. no other head healer had had such trouble.

A knife and fork were taken and the witch began to take her frustration over witch weekly out on the fish in her lap.
“I’d get caught using sleeping potion… I have motive.”

"Struck a deal?" Ignan asked rhetorically, impressed, and listened to her explain as he continued eating.

"Pity." Ignan remarked quietly. "Wouldn't it be nice, to be boring and perfectly uninteresting?" He spoke nice with clenched teeth, as if he was repulsed by the word. "Not to have parents who hate your choice of husband, a daughter with a respectable job and a suitable partner, a hospital not blighted by tainted supplies and a full morgue, a husband who comes home, doesn't have an illegitimate son. To work a normal shift pattern, and not be pursued by Ministry's most wanted."

He looked across at his wife as the wine bottle lifted to pour into her glass. "Or, maybe we could just live our lives and not worry so much about the press. The more you try to curb them, the more they dig for dirt. They didn't even need to dig to get under our skin." Ignan speared his dinner with more force than he intended, stabbing his leg with it through the newspaper with a start.

"Just be careful." He added more quietly, to both himself and Miranda.

Ignan’s summation made Miranda feel like her life was from a hyperbolic romance novella read by her mother in the long nights when her father was at the hospital. The principals in them suffered from love affairs, heartbreak and the most ridiculous storylines imaginable. Her mother had loved them, an escape from the drudgery of real life looking after five children and an absent yet overbearing husband.

Now Miranda was on the other side, suddenly acutely aware of how people found other’s lives of such interest. To speculate about someone’s own far interesting life was what some people lived for. It was unfortunate that the Storms had fallen into the category of having interesting lives.

“So you just suggest letting her continue to write the slanderous crap about us and say nothing?” Mira stabbed her fish and looked up to her husband. “People may be too scared to comment to you, big man, but I’ve had patients asking me who I am going to sodding well choose between the father of my unborn child and my secret criminal lover. One lady asked me if one hand is really enough!” Miranda took a bite of her chip in a manner much akin to ripping the head off a small human. “That bitch needs shutting up.”

Ignan let out a heh of amusement as he watched Mira rip the metaphorical head off the chip with her teeth.
"It depends what you do with it." He replied softly, chuckling. "The only reason the students don't is because I can give them detention. I'm sure there's ways of under-dosing the pain relief."

He smirked. Miranda wouldn't do that of course. She had ethics. She would be sorely tempted, and he reckoned she might do it just a little, but not a lot. Whereas he'd do it without pain relief entirely, amputation, reattachment, whatever it was. It was either that or respond with a ridiculous answer. That the three of them were planning to live together, and raise the non-existent baby together.

His own internal humour turned a little sour at the thought.

"Lil Snigger has a real name then. What did you say her name was again?"

"...I'm sure there's ways of under-dosing the pain relief." Ignan commented as Miranda began to realise just how hungry she'd been after her shift. Today she'd not stopped for lunch. In truth, she rarely stopped for lunch. Lunch breaks were the privilege of the unbusy and unburdened. Therefore any meal available on her return home was appreciated, even if it was fish and chips accompanied by a grumpy old man telling her how she'd nearly killed herself.

"I'm glad you never became a healer..." The witch muttered as she cut into the fish and continued to eat. "With suggestions like that I'd have sacked you myself." However, much in the opposite direction, Teaching had never been Miranda's calling. It was an escapism. She had considered before, however, that had she remained at Hogwarts as their healer, Ignan would possibly have been her superior. The realisation was not one she planned on sharing with her husband.

"Koko Yukawa." Her tone revealed distaste for the mere name. "I'm expecting a yo-"
Miranda was interrupted by a loud cry, sounding suspiciously feline. Next she heard Gerda their house elf started shouting "No kitty out out!"

Mira quickly exchanged confused looks with her husband before she stood just in time for a black cat to charge into the living room from the kitchen, through her legs, up over the back of the armchair and behind the closed curtain.
Gerda also ran in, looking weary yet determined.
"Sorry Mistress! Kitty ran in through the door. Gerda tried to catch it but it's too fast Mrs Miranda."

"That cat," Ignan snapped, "has been hanging around since the start of the week. It must belong to a neighbour."

He inwardly cursed Charmaine Donovan. The wards he'd placed on his house at Godric's Hollow would take out her dogs if they strayed, and so had ensued a disagreement. Given that Ignan knew their new neighbours did have cats, and Miranda had agreed with Donovan's sentiments, he'd not warded against conventional small animals. He and Gerda had seen the cat more than once while sorting out the mess of the roof and the garden.

"No Master, Gerda asked Master," their faithful house elf responded. Her ears were flat against her head and she bent her little knees, creeping forward to try and spy where it had gone, both her hands up ready to catch, or cast elf magic, Ignan wasn't sure which.

"Hrmph." Ignan replied, "Another stray trying to get in our house." He landed his bundle of fish and chips back on the table, and got to his feet, wand in hand, rounding Miranda's chair in the opposite direction to the elf. There was a low mrow and a streak of fluffy black fur. Gerda pounced, but the cat shot out and over the coffee table and up onto the sofa, straight into the warm spot where Ignan had previously been sitting. Cheek of it!

"Alright Lawrence," Ignan addressed it sarcastically from Miranda's left. A flick of his wand and the cat was frozen, mid lick, pink tongue out and yellow eyes wide open. 

Mira wasn't sure which to tackle first; the fact Ignan had just used the stunning charm on a probably friendly but scared neighbourhood cat, or the fact he'd decided to name said feline Lawrence. Both problems needed attending to but the poor puss currently frozen mid lick was perhaps the priority. Ignan was no an animal friendly wizard, his wife was already well aware of this. He sing a stray cat simply confirmed it.

Having quickly recovered from the surprise of the furry visitor, Miranda's dinner joined Ignan's on the coffee table and her wand was out of her pocket, pointed to the cat that she quickly approached. The hex was released with a quick flick and she grabbed the furry creature before he could dart back out of the room or be victim to a worse hex from her husband.

Surprisingly, Lawrence didn't fight her. He was more than willing to be taken into her arms and held close.

"I don't think so. He's hungry." She didn't know. She just guessed.

"Animals are always hungry," Ignan replied scathingly, brushing off the sofa cushion before sitting back down again. "Perhaps it drinks hot chocolate."

The pointed remark did not get past his wife, but Ignan couldn't resist the opportunity to compare. He only hoped Musgrave was not an animagus, which left an uneasy feeling. He couldn't check while Miranda had it wrapped in her arms.

"Mind it doesn't have fleas." Ignan looked to the elf who was regarding Lawrence the cat with big round eyes. Ignan had never kept pets, nor his father before who Gerda had been acquired to look after for the last few months of his life. However, she'd encountered enough on her travels around Godric's Hollow and Hogsmeade since they moved there. He knew Gerda well enough now to know she was weighing up possibilities on what to offer in service.

"Would Mistress like Gerda to feed Lawrence?" Gerda asked, not realising Ignan had just sarcastically nicknamed it.
"I'm sure Miranda would prefer to feed Lawrence herself." Ignan smirked, retrieving his fish and chips, his appetite fully recovered along with his sarcasm. "He seems so very fond of her."

In her arms Miranda could hear Lawrence happily purring, pleased to be held. She absentmindedly gave his head a rub while glaring across at her husband with a dark stare. Until starting as a healer at hogwarts a couple of years back, Miranda had always kept pets. Having spent a decade living on a dragon ranch amongst fearsome dragons and a variety of other animals, she was far more accustomed to being in their presence than the grumpy old wizard now comparing the stray cat to their unwanted visitor at the weekend. It was far too soon for that.

"Oh I'll feed Lawrence." Miranda's voice betrayed some irritation but maintained her usual reservation. With one arm still wrapped around the cat, she took Ignan's fork, stabbed his fish and lifted it for the cat to sniff. The purring grew louder and the cat me owed quietly before licking it on the fork.

Dark eyes shot over the cat to Ignan. "You didn't tell me you'd adopted a cat, dearest."

"Apparently so." Ignan replied shortly, watching Miranda offer his fish to the cat with disdain. Gerda looked between them and Ignan shrugged his shoulders dismissing the fact Miranda was now feeding a stray cat. It needed a good brush and probably a wash. He wasn't surprised Miranda wanted to show it some sympathy, she was much more of an animal person than he was. Throughout his life he'd never kept pets, only a minority of working animals along the way like the hippogriff he'd had to slaughter and eat. He'd never been in one place long enough to be responsible.

"Gerda will get a bowl and some water, Mistress," their house elf suggested, of her own initiative, and vanished from beside them. Ignan decided to continue eating his chips with his fingers instead, now his fork had been commandeered. In the next room he heard Gerda lock the back door properly again and rifle through the cupboards.

"It's more practical than a hippogriff, I suppose," the older wizard remarked, given the conversations with Balfour earlier in the year over dinner. He knew he was unlikely to get his way over Miranda's will in this situation, and in honesty a cat would distract her from the recent troubles.

End