[nospaces]

[attr="class","cbg"]

[attr="class","cbgtop"]

[attr="class","cimg"]

[attr="class","clbox"]

[attr="class","ctopline"]Seven devils all around you

[attr="class","cscriptde"]seven devils in my house

[attr="class","cline"]

[attr="class","clyrics"]They were there when I woke up[break]
I'll be dead before the day is done

[break][break]

[attr="class","cbody"]Things were going as well as could be expected, in Sloane’s opinion. As well as they could possibly go when they were still without magic and there had been very little updates coming from the hospital, the Ministry, or even just Andromeda herself. But she was also well aware of how much pressure she was under, and how much work it was to try to keep everything going. If she had any political skillset whatsoever, she would have offered to take a job at the Ministry—anywhere that Andromeda needed someone, as long as it could be done without magic, obviously. But she had never worked at the Ministry before. Her skillset was more in business than it was anything else. She supposed she could still offer, could still see if she needed anything, but she still wasn’t all that sure how much of a help she could actually be.
[break][break]
Merlin knew that she had been kept busy enough as of late anyhow. Running a business that mostly operated on foreign soil when she couldn’t leave the country was a little bit of a struggle. It wasn’t as if she had been jetting off to Norway every day or anything like that. Quite the opposite. She had always tried to go as little as she possibly could. Her former in-laws had never gotten over their suspicions that she’d had something to do with Ralf’s death, which meant that visits had always been unpleasant.
[break][break]
But she’d still had to go there on occasion if there were any problems that needed to be addressed or any meetings to attend, and that was something that she couldn’t do anymore. A part of her was concerned that one of her former brothers-in-law would take this opportunity to try to oust her. To say that she couldn’t be an effective leader when she couldn’t even be there when she needed to be. She was sure that there had been whispers of that throughout their family, but it hadn’t gained any ground in the company. Not yet, anyway. Most of her employees preferred her to them anyhow. She’d made sure of that. She wouldn’t have killed Ralf if she hadn’t thought she’d have the support of the company when the will came out. That would have just been poor planning.
[break][break]
It didn’t change the fact that she was a little concerned that those whispers would grow louder the longer she was unable to go to Norway. Yes, she had opened up a branch distillery here, but most of their operations was still in Norway. If the borders stayed closed, eventually there was a chance that more people would listen to those whispers.
[break][break]
Sloane knew that there was no reason to worry about that yet anyhow. There was plenty for her to do here. She could run things from their distillery here, she had Brenna to worry about of course, and keeping everything going at home—the housewife thing still mattered too, despite everything. Luckily, at least some of that came to her easily enough. Enough to get by, anyway. And what she couldn’t do, especially without magic, the house-elf could. They were getting by okay. She could tell that Carlisle was frustrated, but she thought that getting that job at Locksley had helped. And she had plans for his mood later tonight but, for now, she had decided she was going to visit her cousin on the job.
[break][break]
She hadn’t known for sure if Griff would be working today, but it hadn’t stopped her from making some pasta salad for lunch. She figured she would surprise him with a visit and make him take his lunch with her. That had sounded like a great plan to her anyway. Maybe she would even visit Andromeda while she was here and actually vocalize her offer of help. Business savvy could help in the Department of Commerce, maybe. If they needed help, anyway. But it wasn’t like she was professionally trained, so maybe it was a ridiculous thought. She really didn’t know.
[break][break]
But she brushed the thoughts aside as she knocked on Griff’s door, barely waiting for a reply before she pushed it open. “Surprise, cousin. I brought you lunch.” She said, her smile all charm as she let the door close behind her. “You’re not busy, are you?”
[break][break]

[attr="class","cnotes"]720 ● @griffith ● outfit

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

[googlefont=Dancing Script]
[newclass=.cbg]width:400px;background:#262626;padding:30px;[/newclass]
[newclass=.cbgtop]width:400px;height:120px;text-align:left;[/newclass]
[newclass=.cimg]float:left;width:100px;height:100px;padding:10px;border:1px #aaa solid;[/newclass]
[newclass=.clbox]float:right;height:100px;margin:15px 5px auto auto;text-align:justify;width:257px;[/newclass]
[newclass=.ctopline]font-size:9px;letter-spacing:2px;text-transform:uppercase;font-family:verdana;color:#aaa;[/newclass]
[newclass=.cscriptde]font-size:23px;margin-top:-3px;font-family:Dancing Script;color:#125235;[/newclass]
[newclass=.cscriptde span]color:#ccc;[/newclass]
[newclass=.cline]height:1px;background-color:#888;margin:3px auto;[/newclass]
[newclass=.clyrics]font-size:8px;letter-spacing:1px;text-transform:uppercase;text-align:justify;font-family:verdana;color:#999;[/newclass]
[newclass=.cbody]font-family:verdana;color:#999;font-size:10px;text-align:justify;line-height:14px;letter-spacing:0.5px;[/newclass]
[newclass=.cnotes]font-size:9px;letter-spacing:1px;text-align:center;opacity:0.8;[/newclass]
[newclass=.cred]text-align:center;font-size:6pt;color:rgb(132, 132, 132);letter-spacing:1px;font-family:verdana;[/newclass]
[newclass=.cred a]color:rgb(132, 132, 132);font-size:6pt;letter-spacing:1px;font-family:verdana;[/newclass]

seven devils

all around you

seven devils in my house

It was the weekend, but for Griff that didn’t mean that worked stopped. Quite the opposite in fact. He wasn’t sure when the last time that he hadn’t gone to the office had been. Christmas, maybe. He hadn’t gone on Christmas. But even then, he had been there until nearly midnight on Christmas Eve, and he had gone in first thing in the morning on the twenty-sixth. He hadn’t wanted the job. There was no sense in pretending otherwise. He hadn’t. But then he had taken it, and he was determined to do it well. The Epidemic had just made that complicated.

And now it was nearly April, and things were in no way slowing down. They seemed to only be getting crazier, and he was worried. But he thought that they all were. Anyone that could see the numbers adding up. Anyone that could get a look at Andromeda’s face. At Lucius Malfoy’s face. They were going to run aground here soon, and he knew that they were all going down with this ship. There was nothing that they could do though. Unless they started opening the borders back up and risked exposing the rest of the world to whatever this was, he knew that they were screwed.

How badly the fall out was going to be, he didn’t know. They weren’t going to be able to do much of anything. And he had no idea what was going to help or hurt at this point. They were going to have to do something. They couldn’t go on like this. They were failing. There was only so much that they could do. And if this didn’t change soon, they were going to find themselves in dire straits. What they did then was anyone’s guess. He didn’t think that it was going to hit the aurors first though. He though that they were safe for the moment. It was the economy that was taking the hit.

You didn’t have to be a genius to see that. Or to know that a country isolating itself wasn’t going to work out in the end. He wasn’t a very learned man. He hadn’t gone to university, he wasn’t as smart as the majority of the people in this building. Certainly not as smart as Andromeda and Malfoy and Graves, and the rest of them. But even he knew that a country in isolation was going to collapse. And they couldn’t afford to collapse. They were Great Britain. They had to rise above this, and they had to cure this.

That was the main thing. He knew that this illness was really what had destroyed them. Yes, the whole mudblood issue had been something else entirely. But he wasn’t convinced. He wasn’t convinced that she wouldn’t have done more about it if she would have had the time. Things had been changing. They had been taking the steps that they needed, in the right direction, to make all of it work. And then the Epidemic had come along, and it had made everything worse. Every little fissure was now kilometers wide, and they had to figure out how to fix the wounds.

He didn’t know how to help with that though. He didn’t know anything about medicine, or money, or the economy. All he knew was what he was doing here. He could run the police force. He could run the aurors. He was good at that. And he thought that this was where he would have been in any version of reality. He would have always been an auror. He would have always been right here, trying to do what he could to help. And that meant weekend shifts. That meant patrol shifts. That meant anything that they needed. He was one of the few that still had magic.

Griff looked up at the knock on the door. There weren’t all that many people here on a Sunday, and so the call of, “Come in.” was a casual one. He wasn’t expecting anyone, but he thought that anyone that was here was probably here for some sort of purpose. There had to be a reason that people were milling about on the weekends after all. No one came to the Ministry for no reason on the weekends. “Hey… No, not busy.” He chuckled a little bit, “Have a seat.”

@ cousin • 726 • griffith's outfit

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOX 2.0

[nospaces]

[attr="class","cbg"]

[attr="class","cbgtop"]

[attr="class","cimg"]

[attr="class","clbox"]

[attr="class","ctopline"]SEVEN DEVILS ALL AROUND YOU

[attr="class","cscriptde"]seven devils in my house

[attr="class","cline"]

[attr="class","clyrics"]THEY WERE THERE WHEN I WOKE UP[break]
I'LL BE DEAD BEFORE THE DAY IS DONE

[break][break]

[attr="class","cbody"]She had always loved her family. Growing up, she was closer to her cousins than she was to her brother, in all honesty. It wasn’t that she didn’t love him too, because she did. But there had always been a separation between what her father taught Conall and what he taught her. Yes, there were times when he let her tag along and learn whatever it was that was so important for Conall to know. But there were also plenty of times where that hadn’t been allowed. Plenty of times when she had felt that separation between them and she hadn’t had that with Griff or with Kate. Especially Kate. Obviously, they were both expected to learn the same sort of thing and since Sloane didn’t have a mother to teach her those things, that made sense. The woman figure in her life had always really just been her aunt.
[break][break]
But she had still been close with Griff too. They had been in the same year at Hogwarts. They had grown up together and had taken the Dark Mark at the same time. She had always trusted him, more than nearly anybody else. And she should have been at the Battle of Hogwarts with him too. After everything else that they had done together, that should have made the list. But it hadn’t. She hadn’t been there, and he had gotten hurt, and her husband had not even let her leave Norway to visit him in the hospital.
[break][break]
There had been so many times when she had been tempted to just leave anyway. To go back there, to check on Griff, on Kate, on Conall. Her father had been sent to Azkaban. There had been so many reasons for her to go home, and so many times where she had wanted to ignore what Ralf and his family had to say about it. But she had never been able to. Sloane knew that part of that had been her fault. It wasn’t as if they’d locked her in the house and warded her in the country. It wasn’t as if they had taken away her wand or prevented her from going to the Ministry to get a portkey authorized. They had just told her no and, for whatever reason, she hadn’t fought back.
[break][break]
She knew why she hadn’t, of course. As frustrating as it was to look back on now, she did know why. Sloane had stayed put because that was what her father had wanted her to do. She hadn’t wanted to disappoint him, even when he was in Azkaban and unable to be disappointed, per say. He had made it clear to the Østbergs not to let her come back under any circumstances, and with so much having already gone wrong, she hadn’t wanted to ruin the marriage that her father had put together for her. That her father had deemed important enough to send her away for. So, she’d stayed put because, at the end of the day, that was what her father had wanted. It hadn’t been respect for her in-laws, or Ralf, or any love for Norway. She just hadn’t wanted to disappoint her father.
[break][break]
Even knowing her reasoning back then, she still hated that she hadn’t been able to be there for her family. She hadn’t been able to visit Griff in the hospital or keep Kate from going off the rails. She hadn’t been able to comfort Vitalia or sit in the hospital with them. She should have been here. She should have been, but she hadn’t been. A part of her was always going to hate herself a little bit for that. Hate that she hadn’t fought back against her new family. Even though she had been young then, even though she certainly fought against them plenty now. Sloane still couldn’t fully forgive herself for not coming home, for letting everything go down the way that it had.
[break][break]
But it was so far in the past now. Bringing it up wasn’t going to do them any good at all. Sloane didn’t think that an apology to Griff for not visiting him in the hospital would do anything except for bring up bad memories at this point. There was no reason to dwell. Not when there was so much going on anyway. She wanted to focus on trying to get things back to normal. Or as normal as they could be with her and Carlisle both without magic, with her having crippling visions that she could no longer control. She didn’t really want that part to become the new normal, but she at least wanted to try to live around it. At this point, it was the only thing that she could do.
[break][break]
There was no real reason to think that Griff would be at the Ministry on a weekend apart from the fact that he worked a lot these days. He seemed to need to. There wasn’t any harm in at least checking in and finding out. If he wasn’t here, she could surely find some family member that was, and give them the pasta salad instead. “Not busy but at work on the weekend,” she teased, shaking her head as she sat down across from him. “I made pasta salad—and don’t start, because I’m a great cook.” Sloane leaned forward to set the food down on his desk, before settling back in her chair.
[break][break]

[attr="class","cnotes"]904 ● @ cousin ● outfit

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

[googlefont=Dancing Script]
[newclass=.cbg]width:400px;background:#262626;padding:30px;[/newclass]
[newclass=.cbgtop]width:400px;height:120px;text-align:left;[/newclass]
[newclass=.cimg]float:left;width:100px;height:100px;padding:10px;border:1px #aaa solid;[/newclass]
[newclass=.clbox]float:right;height:100px;margin:15px 5px auto auto;text-align:justify;width:257px;[/newclass]
[newclass=.ctopline]font-size:9px;letter-spacing:2px;text-transform:uppercase;font-family:verdana;color:#aaa;[/newclass]
[newclass=.cscriptde]font-size:23px;margin-top:-3px;font-family:Dancing Script;color:#125235;[/newclass]
[newclass=.cscriptde span]color:#ccc;[/newclass]
[newclass=.cline]height:1px;background-color:#888;margin:3px auto;[/newclass]
[newclass=.clyrics]font-size:8px;letter-spacing:1px;text-transform:uppercase;text-align:justify;font-family:verdana;color:#999;[/newclass]
[newclass=.cbody]font-family:verdana;color:#999;font-size:10px;text-align:justify;line-height:14px;letter-spacing:0.5px;[/newclass]
[newclass=.cnotes]font-size:9px;letter-spacing:1px;text-align:center;opacity:0.8;[/newclass]
[newclass=.cred]text-align:center;font-size:6pt;color:rgb(132, 132, 132);letter-spacing:1px;font-family:verdana;[/newclass]
[newclass=.cred a]color:rgb(132, 132, 132);font-size:6pt;letter-spacing:1px;font-family:verdana;[/newclass]

seven devils

all around you

seven devils in my house

If he thought about it long enough, he almost wished that he had given Rodolphus back this job when he had had the chance. But he hadn’t pressed him to take it back, and he had settled for the other job in the department, and things had continued to be the same as they had been for months now. Long nights, and even longer days. Griffith thought that he had been to the Ministry every day of the year so far. There had not been one single day that he hadn’t set foot in this building. At this rate he thought that he was here more than Andromeda was.

Honestly, he knew that he was here more than Andromeda was. Because he wasn’t also the one trying to parent his kid. Davina was at home with Ava Blair, and that helped. If he thought that he would have had to do that too, he didn’t know what he was going to do. But she hadn’t complained about not being able to go back to work, and until she said that she was ready to, he didn’t think that he was going to bring it up. They could always get a nanny, if she wanted to go back to work. That wouldn’t have been a problem, but he thought that she might just like being at home.

She could go back to work whenever she was ready, and until then, he wasn’t going to bring it up. She would tell him. There had never been a time when he thought that Davina was going to shy away from telling him what was on her mind. And he loved that about her. She wasn’t going to sit down and just take things. And he knew that even when they fought, it was productive. They had fought about foolish things, and they had fought about bigger things. But they were the kind of fights that everyone had. They were the kind of fights that you had when you were going to spend the rest of your life with someone, and you didn’t understand why you needed so many of one thing. Or even less of this other thing.

They were the kind of fights that you had when one person was spending more time at work than at home. And he knew that. But he also knew that he couldn’t help it. HE hadn’t asked for this job, but he had it. And he had ot do it well. He couldn’t only have it because of the nepotism that had landed him here. His uncle was the Head of the Department. Rodolphus had practically handed the job to him as a Christmas present sixteen months ago. And he hadn’t asked for it. Griff knew that he was a better auror, a better soldier, than he was behind a desk. But he was behind a desk now.

This was his life, and he just had to get used to it. He had spent a long time getting used to it. And he still wasn’t. He could admit that every day he would have rather been in the field. Every day he would have rather been on the streets, or protecting Andromeda, or doing something more useful than sitting behind this bloody desk doing the paperwork that had to be done. But he thought that they were honestly more caught up on their paperwork than they had ever been. The Justice Department wasn’t breathing down their necks for reports, because they were done.

They had too many people on desks to not have things finished in a timely manner these days. He didn’t like the idea of anyone going out in the field until they were ready. And while they had been training with muggle weapons for months, it was still a learning curve that a lot of them had had to get used to. They had had to make the adjustments and learn how to work with what they were given. Most of them had. But it hadn’t stopped there from being quite the lull in there for a while.

“The perils of being me I’m afraid.” There was never a time when he wasn’t here on the weekends. “I didn’t say anything…” he had been thinking it though. Liquor she could make, he trusted her with that. But food? Taking it from her he lifted the lid of the container, and pretended to sniff it for poison, or some other noxious fume that was going to have him down for the count at his desk.

@ cousin • 762 • griffith's outfit

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOX 2.0