hey sister
do you still believe
in love i wonder

❧

Elliot wasn’t a big fan of being sick. With his new position, he wasn’t sure that he even had the sick time to be sick – he’d barely been working at Kavanagh for more than a month and he’d caught some sort of bug on Friday. Yes, he’d managed to make it through the day without much problem, but towards the afternoon, he’d felt like he’d been run over by a truck. His nose was out of control, his headache verged on unbearable, and the coughing…the bloody coughing! Elliot could barely go five minutes without coughing. Hopefully, things would clear up by Monday, he reasoned. If that were the case he could be back to work feeling tip-top and ready to go. He was a healer, wasn’t he? Elliot was supposed to be good at things like this…taking care of others, but also himself. Merlin’s Beard he needed to get better. On Friday, he’d called in his own prescription of a few potions and was taking great care to make sure he didn’t pass it to Ella. He’d even worn a facemask during dinner last night because he was too afraid that he was going to cough on her and cause her to catch something. He wasn’t just protecting her anymore, he was protecting both of them.

It was still hard to believe that she was going to be a Mum. That was the way that he looked at it. His wife – the woman that he had grown to love with all of his heart – was going to be a mother. Which meant, he knew, that he was going to be a father.

Part of him wasn’t sure that he would be great at it. Then again, Elliot thought, no one was perfect at something the first go around. He had been particularly good at taking care of Van Gogh, though. Elliot laughed to himself…taking care of a dog wasn’t quite like taking care of a baby. There would be far more dirty napkins to sort out now that there was going to be a baby.

He’d wanted to tell Lou for weeks, but Ella insisted that they wait. It was important that she reached a stable point in the pregnancy – which Elliot understood. But he couldn't wait any longer. He’d owled his sister and invited her over for lunch so he could tell her…and catch up on everything that he’d missed in her life over the past few weeks. It would be a grand little reunion luncheon.

As if on cue, the doorbell sounded. “Lou, hi!” he said, opening the door. He reached up and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her close and then loudly coughing. “Sorry – gah, I’m sorry, sis,” he said withdrawing and motioning for her to come inside. It had been far too long since they had seen each other. There was so much to catch up on – he had so much to tell her about working at the Dragon Reserve. Sometimes he was sure that he was living in a dream. How could things have possibly worked out so perfectly? Elliot couldn’t imagine a better career scenario than the one that he had right now. He got to continue to practice Healing and continue his apprenticeship. Yes, everything was working out just as it should. Except for this damn cold. “Haven’t been feeling good. Afraid the whole MacGuffin clan is feeling a little under the weather,” he shook his head, closing the door behind her.

Now that he was married, it was difficult to fit in the amount of hanging out that they had once had. Elliot didn’t make it over to Lufkin as much as he liked and Lucy was busy with her classwork and training. They both had their own lives to worry about, but Elliot didn’t want to lose the special relationship that they had – not ever. “Glad you could make it for lunch, though,” he grinned. He really had missed her. “I cooked.” He was rather proud of himself, though the turkey sandwiches that were in the kitchen did little to attest to his culinary prowess.

Lucy Janet MacGuffin | 685 | Outfit

[attr="class","cred"]MADE BY VEL OF WW + ADOX 2.0

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Hey brother!

There's an endless road to rediscover

Why out of all days did she have to have a cold today? It had started yesterday, so it could really be gone by the next day. But today she had woken up with the exact same stuffed nose and had continued her coughing just like yesterday. She should have stayed at home yesterday. But then, she wouldn’t have met that nice man yesterday. But probably she had infected him and he’d end up with a cold too. That wouldn’t be very nice of her. But the worst thing right now was that she was in a poor state to see her brother. And she really needed to see him, it had been too long. That was the bad thing about him being married, there was someone else who had a right to his presence. Not that she’d resent Ella for that, she dearly loved her, but… it was hard. She was missing him every single day she couldn’t see him. So when he invited her, not the most stuffed nose in the world would have been able to keep her from accepting his invitation.

Originally she had wanted to wait until the cold was over, which couldn’t last too long, but this was too important. So she had brewed Pepperup Potion, confident that this would solve the problem, and Apparated outside of Elliot’s new home. Ears still smoking, she walked over the ground and rang the doorbell. And in this moment, she coughed again. This was weird, normally the potion worked immediately…

But then Elliot opened the door and chased any other thought away as she happily returned his embrace. “I’ve missed you,” she started to say when she was interrupted by a cough, this time from her brother. “Bless you!” she said as she stepped into the house and tossed her sandals off her feet, looking around in the hallway. She hadn’t been here too often yet, and it still felt somewhat alien. Too fancy. Not at all like the rustic home of their childhood. But if Ella needed this to feel comfortable, then it couldn’t be helped. She had grown up differently from them, and now she and Elliot had to find the perfect combination between their life styles. As long as her brother was the same as ever, she’d do nothing but be happy for them. And Elliot would never stop to be perfect, that was certain. “Seems so. I’ve been coughing a lot too yesterday,” she said, looking at him with slight worry. The cold certainly wasn’t serious, but Elliot still had his old injuries and these could react sensitively even to such minor sicknesses. They might not keep him from anything any longer, but that didn’t meant they had just gone away. They would always be a part of her brother’s life, no Healer could do anything about that. “But I took Pepperup just before I came as you can see.” She pointed at her smoking ears. “So I’ll be fine now. You should have told me you’re sick, then I’d have brought you some.” Just as she finished, a bout of coughs shook her. Now she started to worry that she had somehow managed to mess up the potion. It was supposed to work instantly. Unless it was a magical flu… maybe a very mild variant of the Dragon Pox? If it hadn’t disappeared by the evening, she probably should look this up.

But that wasn’t urgent. It was a little irritating to have a cold now, but it would most likely stop before she even noticed. And on the plus side, she couldn’t infect Elliot when he was already sick. She now just hoped that Ella was well. What mattered in the moment was that they had time for each other. “That sounds ominous,” she said with a grin. “Should I worry?” Linking arms with her brother to walk to her culinary fate, she continued, “How is it to be working with dragons again? Oh, and have you heard that I’ll be going to Lig-na-Paiste from this autumn on for Dragonology? Isn’t the guy you work with also there? How is it at the Kavanagh reserve? Tell me everything!”

[attr="class","reason2"]

[attr="class","reasonbg2"]

[attr="class","reasonbig2"]

hey sister,

[attr="class","reasonsmall2"]Oh, if the sky comes falling down, For you, there's nothing in this world I wouldn't do

[attr="class","reasonbod2"]“I’m sure we have some around here somewhere,” Elliot said as he ran a thumb across the stubble on his child. Surely two Healers had potions on hand, didn’t they? Though Elliot couldn’t remember the last time that he had actively sought one out at the home. He wasn’t even sure where they’d decided to keep all that stuff. Living here – at MacGuffin Hall – was still somewhat strange to him. It was like living in a castle when he’d grown up a pauper. The MacGuffin family wasn’t poor, by any stretch of the imagination, but Hazel and Miles had never been overly showy. The owned a bookshop, for Merlin’s sake.

But this was his new life – a strange blend of the two words that he had somehow managed to intersect. He would have never imagined that things would have ended up like this: married to Eleanora Mountbatten by way of an “arranged marriage.” But here he was. Happy.

He knew that Lucy probably still thought that it was strange. Elliot could remember vividly the reaction she’d had when he’d told her about their father’s request. Even more so the shock when he’d told her that he would be marrying Ella. She hadn’t expected it – neither of them had. But now that things had settled into a steady normalcy, Elliot knew that they were back to normal. They could pick up as if things had never changed. Because they were Elliot and Lucy. They would always be thick as thieves, no matter what sort of strange waves rocked their lives.

“You should be very afraid,” Elliot said with a cheeky grin before he wrapped his hand around his sister’s and led her towards the kitchen. He couldn’t have possibly messed up turkey sandwiches, could he? Suddenly, Elliot wasn’t sure.

She had so many questions and he had so many for her. It was as if they had been starved for the attention that they had once given each other. The MacGuffin siblings had always been close – Elliot felt that Lucy was the first human being he was ever actually able to understand. And she was the first person that understood him. From childhood on, it had created a special, unbreakable bond. “Lig-na-Paiste? That’s prestigious of you. Though I’d expect nothing less from the great Lucy MacGuffin.” He raised his eyebrows and broke their hands so he could move into the kitchen and pull the two sandwich plates from the refrigerator.

“Tah dah,” he said with an overly dramatic flourish as he sat them both down on the countertop.

“Dragons are just about as terrifying as making turkey sandwiches,” he joked before he offered his sister one of the counter-top height bar stools. “Incredible, Lou. Really,” it was obvious by the sparkle in his eye that he had missed his old life. “It’s good to be back, though. Seems like I never left.” Though, that was far from true. Elliot didn’t have a debilitating back injury the last time he had worked at a Reserve. This time, however, he felt more prepared for the path ahead. He felt as if he knew what he was doing. He took a seat next to her. “You’ll like Brennan. Professor Kavanagh, he’ll be to you. Good guy – knows more about Dragons than most. I’ll bet he’ll take your class to the reserve. You’ll love it there, Lou.”

He and his sister had more in common than anyone in the world. Elliot appreciated their differences, though. She was bubbly and outgoing…he was more reserved. And yet, somehow, they had ended up on very similar career paths. He was thankful for it – it was nice to talk about Dragonology with someone that understood his passions.

[attr="class","reasontag2"]@ lou | 618 | OUTFIT

[attr="class","cred2"]MADE BY VEL OF WW + ADOX 2.0

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This coughing was getting really annoying. She had expected it to be gone by the time she’d be at Elliot’s. It’d be a bit of a miserable visit if they’d both kept sneezing like crazy. “Yeah?” she said. “Maybe more than the usual dose is required. I’d think I got it from the jarvey that’s been nesting behind our parents’ house since spring — they can sometimes carry more stubborn magical diseases, I learnt that this last semester… what was I going to say?” That sometimes happened to her, that she wanted to say so many things at once - especially when there was as much to talk about as with Elliot after not seeing him for too long — that she ended up not having the slightest idea anymore what she had originally wanted to say. But a moment’s deliberation usually helped. “But there seems to be a small flu epidemic in the country right now,” she said once she remembered. “I was out shopping for a little yesterday, and there was a lot of sneezing going on. But at least it’s nothing but a cold, so I don’t think St Mungo’s will be overrun and I’ll have to work endlessly until uni starts.” She was working a lot anyway to compensate for all the time she wouldn’t be able to because of university work. But she didn’t want to have her last days of study-free time completely taken from her by being more at the hospital than she already was.

In moments like this, she became aware how much of her time work and uni absorbed. She hadn’t had the time to visit her brother even a quarter as often as she’d like to so that it felt incredibly weird to see him at the door of a house that looked as un-MacGuffin as possible. Yet, the place bore their name. MacGuffin Hall. If she had been told as a child to paint a place with that name, she’d have ended up drawing… a farm most likely. Something old, maybe even spacious, but definitely rustic. And this place was the least rustic building she could think of. But Ella undoubtedly fitted in here. And looking at Elliot now… it wasn’t like he seemed out of place either. But then, she had never doubted her brother’s perfection for simply anything in the world. If someone didn’t fit here, then it was her, but as long as Elliot was with her, she’d belong too. Elliot was as much home as any place could be.

“Oh my,” she sighed as she let him lead into the kitchen. “At least you didn’t burn anything,” she said, sniffing the air, though when his next destination was the refrigerator, she had to grin. “Cooking” seemed to be a rather lax term in her brother’s vocabulary. But she hadn’t come here today because she had expected culinary highlights. She had wanted to see him, to be near him, to talk to him. He was her bestest of best friends and the one who understood her more than anybody else on the planet. “I wanted more practial work with the dragons,” she said excitedly. “There’s been a bit too much theory at Lufkin. Nothing against theory, but I simply learn better by doing, you know that. I’m sure Lig-na-Paiste will be great in this respect. I’ve went and looked around a little already…”

She nodded, trying to suppress the smile that was forming on her lips at the pride with which Elliot presented two plates with sandwiches to her. “Let me guess, you prefer dragons,” she joked back as she slid on the offered stool. The smile that then spread over her face was bare of sisterly mocking. His joy at being able to work with dragons again was infectious, both because he had not been able to for so long and because she knew exactly how it felt to be around dragons. “That’s wonderful! What are you doing? What kind of dragons are you looking after? You’re taking care of your back, aren’t you?” She looked at him with some of the old concern returning while she took the first sandwich, listening to what he had to say about the Kavanagh reserve. “Oh, I’m sure,” she replied. “Though I might run off to look for you instead of the dragons. It’ll be a tight competition what's more important.”

[attr="class","reason2"]

[attr="class","reasonbg2"]

[attr="class","reasonbig2"]

hey sister,

[attr="class","reasonsmall2"]Oh, if the sky comes falling down, For you, there's nothing in this world I wouldn't do

[attr="class","reasonbod2"]Elliot was beginning to wonder if they’d both picked up the same sort of bug. Maybe they had Dragon Pox, or something awful. Then again, they would’ve started to experience those blasted itchy little bumps all of their skin, wouldn’t they? His symptoms were much different than the usual dossier of Dragon Pox. Coughing here and there, sneezing, stuffy nose, fever…when was the last time he’d checked his temperature? Merlin, he was really going to have to avoid Ella, wasn’t he? He couldn’t have her getting sick. Not with the baby…

He shook his head. Ella was going to be just fine. They would just have to be careful. He could conjure up a Bubble-Head Charm or something to make sure that he didn’t get her sick. Worst came to worst, she could always work from MacGuffin Hall, couldn’t she? Surely they had some sort of work from home Healers’ Training Program. If they didn’t maybe he could suggest one.

His sister always got caught up in what she was thinking. But Elliot liked that about her. Usually, he learned more than one thing he hadn’t known before. This time, namely that his parents had led the overly large ferrets' nest in their backyard. How had he missed that? “Mum and Dad have Jarvey? Imagine that. They were so hesitant to let me get a dog,” Elliot laughed as he opened a few of the cabinets.

“Probably just a muggle thing,” he said, opening a few more doors. Where did they keep the medicine? Elliot made a mental note to ask Ella for a drawn map of everything that they kept in the kitchen. Still, another sneeze and he knew better than to give up on finding something to help them both. After a few minutes, he managed to find a couple of potions — presumably in the potions cabinet that he didn’t know they had — and quickly poured them both a large dose of Pepperup. “Cheers,” he said, handing one off to Lucy and downing the other quickly. They’d be spouting steam from their ears for a few hours, but it was nothing in exchange for a reprieve from all the coughing and sneezing.

“Practicality can do wonders for your education,” Elliot had been a practical learner. It was the reason that he was at the Dragon Sanctuary all those years ago. It was also the reason that he suffered incurable problems with his back. Practicality was good…within reason. But Lou would be careful….wouldn’t she? Merlin, he was going to spend his whole day worrying about her at the Sanctuary. She’d be off learning about the most wonderful creatures in the world and he’d ben in the Medical Ward worried sick about her. At least he wouldn’t be too far away, though. “But, I will always prefer Dragons. Unless it’s a choice of Dragons or my sister,” he said with a grin as he took a seat next to her.

The sandwiches were nothing to write home about. Simple and put together with what Elliot had found in the refrigerator. But it was nice to spend time with his sister without all the pressure of pureblood society. Here, they were just Lucy and Elliot. It felt like old times. Or at least, old times and new marble countertops. “A little bit of everything, but I think the Hebridean Black has taken a liking to me. And, course I am,” Elliot smiled, but it faltered for a moment. His back. He’d had to take more than a few painkillers over the past few months. He was overworking it, but the excitement of being back in the field was…too much to put behind him.

“I am more important, clearly, Lou,” Elliot winked and took a bite of his sandwich. She was growing up. Today, more than any other day, Elliot saw her as an adult. Not just the blonde little girl trailing after him in the gardens. “I won’t be offended if you split your time though. That’s a fair compromise.” 

[attr="class","reasontag2"]@ lou | 667 | OUTFIT

[attr="class","cred2"]MADE BY VEL OF WW + ADOX 2.0

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A cold was definitely not how she had planned starting into autumn. But here she was anyway. This month also started started with a visit at her brother’s, which was what she’d focus on, and then she’d sooner or later stop coughing automatically. An illness was worst if there was nothing to distract from it. A light cold was easy to forget about. Being with her brother was the number one thing to make her stop thinking why her nose was stuffed. When she had started her education at the hospital, she had fallen sick countless times, but for quite some time her immune system had everything figured out, and there was no reason to fear this cold. And neither would she have to worry about Elliot. He was as used to a hospital environment as she was, and even if his new job had taken him away, there was still Ella working at St Mungo’s. He didn’t have a weaker immune system, just a stubborn back. It would be more painful if he was also coughing and had sore bones, but she’d be confident that this wouldn’t happen. This cold would be gone as suddenly as it had come. They just had to keep thinking positively. They’d laugh themselves back to health.

“I don’t think they’re exactly happy about the Jarvey,” she grinned as she moved to sit down, Elliot rummaging around in a cabinet. “They just didn’t get to chasing it off. Plus, I told them I need it for studying purposes. It’s been incredibly handy. But Mum’s spent the whole summer asking me whether I finally finished my paper on it. I had so hoped she’d forget about it.” She tried to sigh dramatically but, considering how she couldn’t stop smiling, failed completely.

The longer she remained sniffing and coughing, the more she was thinking about this cold. It was silly. A waste of time. There was not one reason to still be thinking about it. If she thought about it like that, it was sort of funny, wasn’t it? Just keep on thinking positively and ignore the symptoms. Yes, that was the best way to go about it. “I think so too,” she said, managing to sound as cheerful as ever. “It’s what makes the most sense. Thank you!” She took the offered potion and drank it up as quickly as possible. Probably she had made a mistake with her Pepperup Potion. That might explain its ineffectiveness. She was an okay potioneer, but it did happen that she slipped up when she wasn’t completely paying attention.

“Yes, that’s what I always found!” she agreed enthusiastically. “Most of what I learnt I did by watching you and trying to imitate. And I did survive until now, so it can’t have been too bad. I don’t know, though, how many times I fell down and scraped my knees running after you and Monet.” But callused knees had their advantages too, whatever they may be. At least, she had learnt early to just stand up after falling down and not be disheartened, and Elliot had always been the best support, even if he’d sometimes forget how much longer his four years older legs were.

“Don’t let Ella here that,” she snorted, sniffing the sandwich. That smelled like… turkey? Oh, well, she supposed she could eat it. As an exception. For Elliot. He had done his best after all, she could for once not be “picky” as their mum put it. It’d be a waste to spend their time together talking about food. “Huh, do you mean like one special Hebridean Black?” she asked, leaning forward expectantly. “How are they? Are they really that much more aggressive? You have the direct contrast with the Welsh Green now, haven’t you?” She did hope that she’d see more dragons interacting with each other soon. There was nothing more fascinating than observation. “Are you?” she asked, frowning. She knew her brother too well not to notice the moment of hesitation. “Maybe you should go to a physio-therapist? Just to make sure that you’re treating your back correctly?” It felt weird to give Elliot advice, but then they knew each other. They both could occasionally use someone who reminded them that will was not the answer to every problem.

“You know what?” she said, finally starting on her own sandwich. It was turkey. She’d get through this. “I’ll just grip your hand, like when we were little, and you’ll have no choice but to guide me around the reserve yourself. Little sisters are annoying aren’t they?”