On My Father's Wings

Beckett Archibald Graves || Outfit

Lyla knew that she tested the waters when it came to her behavior sometimes. She knew that she pushed it when it came to the schools rules, and she especially pushed it when it came to her father's rules. It wasn't that they had been brought up with terribly strict rules or anything, on the contrary, Lyla thought that they had been given quite a good length of rope with which it was possible to hang themselves if they weren't careful. Neither she, nor Callahan, had ever really done anything that was going to get them in particular trouble for anything. They were Beckett Graves' children, they didn't necessarily follow all of the rules, but they were Olivia Graves' children too. They knew exactly where the line was, and how to toe it to make sure that they were within the limits of what was allowed, while still seeming to get away with something that wasn't strictly on the 'okay' list. They were clever like that. A snake and an eagle, born of a snake and an eagle. And really, Lyla thought that it was going to be a toss up to see where Anderson would end up in a couple of years. 

If she had to guess, she would say Slytherin. He was just that much more Dad than he was Mum, but she supposed you never really knew. He could end up a Gryffindor, and shock them all. Somehow she doubted it. But Nick and Ana had both been Gryffindors, so it wasn't completely out of the realm of possibility. It wasn't like they didn't know any. There were just a lot more snakes and eagles than there were anything else in their family. She figured that that wasn't even really all that much of a stretch. There were a few of them that she could have seen going either way. Cal was smart enough to be a Claw, and so was Aunt Odelia. But she thought that Mum and Delilah could have swayed Slytherin too. It was what it was though, and Lyla though that they were all pretty happy with the ways that their lives were turning out. Whatever Cal wanted to do next though, she didn't think that he had that all the way figured out yet, and she knew that his time to figure it out was kind of running short. They world was his oyster, and all that, but he just had to pick something. 

She knew that this time next year she was going to have to be picking something too. But she thought that she had it all figured out. She was just going to be a lawyer, like Mum, but do international law, and focus on Quidditch. Because there were enough rules, and regulations, and everything else that came with the World Cup, and matches all of that. It was something that took litigation, and manuvering, and there were always lawyers involved in such things. So Lyla thought that making the best of both worlds, would be best thing that she could do. She didn't think that she could handle being as caught up in all of the Ministry stuff as Mum was, and she did want more than just Quidditch itself. So it seemed like a happy middle ground. And no one could argue that she wasn't stubborn enough, and witty enough, to be a lawyer. She had come by that silver tongue naturally. Shaking her head she smiled a little bit to herself as she thought about what her grandfather would have to say about that. Never involve lawyers... 

Stopping at Ireland's desk Lyla asked if her father was busy, and when she had received confirmation that he wasn't, she tucked her hair behind her ear and knocked lightly on the door as she opened it. "Dad?" This wasn't the department that Lyla was supposed to be in, but it was still early enough in the morning that she didn't think that they had even missed her upstairs yet. No one paid all that much attention to them, so long as they got their stuff done. There were two of them, after all. She and Amelia Zabini were both supposed to be interning for Lord Rowle's department, and really, Lyla thought that if they managed to do everything that needed done, then there was no need for both fo them to stick around and play goody two shoes about the office. Amelia could do that, Lyla would stick to being her usual, rule bending, self, and make her way to see whichever of her parents she thought would be less busy. And now that the Cup was over, and they just had the World Cup to focus on for the moment, she suspected that that would be her father. 

ON MY FATHER'S WINGS

OUTFIT

The argument about babies had been one that was getting old. It had been getting old for months--for nearly a year now. Olivia had always liked babies--so did he. Even though they hadn’t planned on having kids, it had never been a problem when she had gotten pregnant. It had never been a bad thing. He liked kids. He hadn’t known that he would until he’d had some of his own, but he did, so it had been all right. But that didn’t mean that he wanted to spend the rest of his life raising them. Cal was nearly out of Hogwarts. He would be out on his own soon, figuring out what he wanted to do with his life. Lyla would be right behind him soon enough and that would just leave Anderson. He would get through Hogwarts eventually, and then they would have no kids in the house. As much as he loved his kids, he thought that he was rather looking forward to him and Liv being able to do whatever they wanted without having to deal with babysitters, and without the constant parenting. He thought that all parents were pretty ready for their kids to get out of the house by the time they got to that age. It was just… sort of how it worked.

They were ready and not ready all at the same time. He’d be ready for them to go until they actually had to and then he would miss them. But along with missing them, he would be glad to have the house to themselves, glad that they could take time off and travel and do whatever they wanted. It was something that he was looking forward to. But then the baby fever had started, and Liv had not been willing to drop it. It was something that he couldn’t understand. It had all sort of started when Aurora had died but he didn’t know if it was that, or if it was just something else entirely. Even though he knew a hell of a lot about Olivia Graves, he didn’t know everything. He didn’t know the motives behind every decision that she made. Sometimes he was completely in the dark, and he thought that was pretty true in this case. He didn’t really know why she had wanted another baby as much as she did. Arguing about it was not something that he liked doing. He had promised himself a long time ago that he would spend the rest of his life making Liv happy. She had deserved that after everything he had put her through with Eliza.

So if she wanted another baby, he knew that he should really just stop arguing about it and let her at least try. They could try. There was no telling if it was even going to happen. It had been years since she had gotten pregnant with Anderson and they weren’t getting any younger. There was no telling if it would be all that easy for her to get pregnant again. So he had eventually decided that giving in and trying would just be the best option that they had. It had been a long drawn-out argument, a lot of which had happened at Ares’ house. That had been an interesting night. He hadn’t expected Ares to come over and tell him that his wife had his newborn, because everyone knew how Liv was with babies. He wasn’t surprised that Ares didn’t want to get his own baby away from her. The argument hadn’t started off all that serious really, but when it had he had been glad to take it home and finish it there. That was when he had mostly decided that he would think about it. But he thought that they were going to at least try.

It was just something that he wasn’t going to think all that much about. It wasn’t that he was entirely against the idea for any kind of serious reason. He was just older than Liv was. His mind was on another eighteen years of having a kid under their roof, and how old he would be when they were free of kids and able to do whatever they wanted. He would be in his late sixties. That wasn’t too old by wizarding standards, but still. It was hardly young. That wasn’t something that Liv seemed to be thinking all that much about, and it wasn’t something that she was worried all that much about. He knew that it wasn’t the best of logic--but it made sense to him. He wanted them to still be able to enjoy themselves once the kids were out of the house. He didn’t want to be old, and they still had another ten years before Anderson would be out of the house. He would be close to old already, so he didn’t think they needed to make it any worse. Beckett shook the thoughts from his mind when he heard a knock and then a familiar voice. “You lost, sweetheart? Your department is…” He paused like he was considering it, then pointed off in a random direction. “That way?”

It wasn't like she had a real reason to be in the Department of Games and Sports, or the Department of Justice, but really, she thought that she had thought her internship through well enough that International Affairs could have to do with either one if someone wanted to really harp on her for not being where she was supposed to be. For the most part though, no one really seemed to question it, and she was grateful for that. She knew that she got away with murder really, but so long as that trend kept up, she thought that she would gladly accept it. It wasn't like she took advantage took advantage. It was only when she really wanted something that Lyla thought that she was going to have to push the limits of what was actually a part of the rules. Being down here in her father's office was not against the rules. She was a Ministry intern, she could wander around the Ministry as she pleased… The rest of it though… She thought that her plans for lunch were probably a little outside the realm of what was allowed, though she didn't think that anyone would mind if she said that she was just stepping out for lunch.

Stepping out of the country… Well, at least she wasn't going alone. Delilah was taking her, and she thought that it was the best trip with her cousin yet. And they were known to go plenty of places that they didn't tell their parents about. So long as no one caught them, and Lyla was in her seat in Charms by the time that the clock in the clock tower struck one… They couldn't get mad at her if she didn't get caught, and no one was going to catch them. They were going to be just fine. It wasn't really Dad that she was worried about catching her anyway. Lyla thought that she could smile her way past her father. He was strict, when he needed to be, but she didn't think that he would be as strict about lunch as she was about the height of her heels. That was one rule that she did stick to, there was no bending it, because Lyla wouldn't have been surprised to find him holding her heel in his hand, measuring the height of the heel if he thought that it was too tall.

She had agreed to nothing taller than ten centimeters, and she thought that that was probably a little high even, but it was good to know that they had negotiated up from the flats that he seemed to think were all that she needed to wear. Lyla wouldn't have even been bothered by it that much, except that she was the shortest. She was shorter than mum by at least five centimeters. And Cal was nearly as tall as Dad… It wasn't even that she was short. She wasn't. She was just… average. They were all freakish. And Nick and LJ were that way too. Everyone was just giant around her. It made her a decent size for a speedy player on the pitch, but it didn't make her all that aggressive, or tall when she was standing around talking to her family. She was destined to be the shortest, and she was just going to have to make her peace with that someday. Today though, did not appear to be the day. There was no making peace with being shortest going on right now.

Lyla figured that if she was bugging her dad she could always leave him alone, but she knew that he wouldn't really mind. She wasn't pestering him in the middle of playoffs or something. They had all learned really early in their lives that finals were not the time to be pestering Dad about things that they didn't need to pester him about. When Quidditch playoffs were happening, you went to Mum first, and then if you really needed Dad you could test your luck there. Most of the time Lyla was the one that was brave enough to go in there. Even when they had been little, and Callahan had wanted something, he had told Lyla that she was the one that wanted it. Then she went and tried to convince Dad. That way they got what it was that Cal wanted. Her brother had been clever, but when Lyla had gotten big enough to understand the process, she hadn't exactly stopped either. She smiled when he pointed off in a direction that they both knew that her department wasn't. "I think you're about…" she lifted her own hands up as if she were trying to find the angle, "Ninety-three and a half degrees off…" She dropped her hands, though her grin remained, "It's early yet though, you can be forgiven for lack of coffee..."

on her father's wings With courage as my light

Until preparations for the league season and the World Cup really started up, he didn’t have all that much to do. It was undoubtedly a little bit of a quiet month or so--for March and for much of April. Then they really had to start to get ready for the league season and for the World Cup matches. Having two teams make it past qualifiers was a big deal. Obviously if they hadn’t, they wouldn’t have to concern themselves at all with the World Cup. It would mean less work for him, but he was glad that they’d done well. He’d rather be kept overly busy at work because their teams had done well than have less to do because they had done poorly. It just was a much better option, in his opinion. But until they really had to start worrying about that, their department was far quieter and less busy than normal. It was too bad, really, because he thought that he could use the distraction. He would like to have the chance to think about something other than the arguments that he kept having with Liv. But with little else to worry about at work, it was what his mind kept coming back to. He wished he understood why she wanted another kid so badly. He really did. It was times like this when he wished that he could read his mind just so that he could understand the motives behind her decisions. He knew what she had told him, of course. That none of their pregnancies had been planned and while that hadn’t made them any less wonderful, apparently she wanted one that was planned. And she wanted one where she was a Graves and they were married for it. But he didn’t know why that really mattered. They were still a family. They were always going to be a family. The last name that she’d had when she’d had Cal, Lyla and Anderson didn’t mean anything. He thought that there was more to it than that, and that was why he wished that he could know what she was really thinking. He just didn’t understand. He loved their kids more than anything… and he always would. But he had thought that three was a good stopping point. Years had passed since Anderson was born and they weren’t exactly young anymore. By wizarding standards, sure, but he was certainly getting up there in age as far as having another kid went. It just hadn’t felt like Liv had cared all that much about his reasoning. At least, it didn’t seem like she had taken it all that seriously or tried to look at it from his point of view. As much as he loved them, he had been looking forward to the house being empty. Granted, that was still a decade away, but still. Their kids were going to grow up, they were going to have families of their own, and they would have a house to themselves after… hell, twenty-seven years or something like that. By the time that Anderson graduated, it would be around twenty-seven years of their life with kids under their roof and by then he thought that they would be ready to have a little bit of time to themselves. They could travel or do whatever they wanted, they could have a break and not have to worry about kids at Hogwarts or toddlers or changing diapers anymore. He had honestly thought he’d changed his last diaper, at least until grandkids came along. But now that Liv wanted another kid, now that she wasn’t really listening to the reasons that he didn’t, they would be in for an extra near decade of parenting. More years without sleep because of a newborn and a toddler… potty-training… everything that he’d thought they’d been done with once Anderson had gotten old enough. It was just frustrating that she didn’t seem to be hearing him but since he’d promised himself that he was going to try to spend the rest of his life making Liv happy, he’d given up trying to argue. She wasn’t dropping it. She clearly wasn’t going to drop it and he didn’t want to fight about it anymore. Maybe she wouldn’t even be able to get pregnant again and this fight would all be for nothing. It was a sort of mean thing to hope for, but at least then she could be glad that they’d tried. Beckett knew that he needed to keep his mind off of all of it, so he was glad for the distraction when his daughter walked into the room. “Ninety-three and a half, huh? I really do need coffee if I’m that far off.” He said, shaking his head. His daughter showing up was not something that surprised him; her internship had her here pretty much whenever she had spare time. “How’s school?” It hadn’t been too long since he’d spoken to her but he still liked keeping up with how everything was going.

On My Father's Wings

i will fly

Lyla knew that she was probably not the one to ask about being proper. She didn’t exactly follow the rules to the letter. There was a reason that despite her parents both being prefects when they had bene in school, neither she nor Cal had been. Of course, that wasn’t really surprising. She thought Cal would have been better at it than she was. He would have at least pretended to try, like LJ pretended to be Head Boy. But Lyla knew way too many loopholes, she was always one step ahead and trying to figure out just where it was that she was supposed to be, and go, and all of that, because if she kept ahead of them, then they weren’t going to be able to catch her doing anything that might have been considered bending the rules. Because she didn’t break them. She was very careful about that. Breaking them would never do, and that would likely disappoint her parents. Bending them… Bending them to her will was enough to make them proud of her, and more than just about anything else, that was all that she wanted from them. She just wanted to make them proud.

It wasn’t particularly hard to make them proud of her. She had been raised in a way that just didn’t leave much room for people to think all that poorly of her or leave her making bad impressions on people. She wasn’t going to think that they were just perfect, or anything. That wasn’t the case at all. But they were Graves, and she knew that her parents had worked hard to get them to where they were. Sure, Dad was a Death Eater, but Mum wasn’t. And they didn’t really seem to care as much about that as they did about the other aspects of their life. Lyla had never had to want for anything. Work for things, of course, they didn’t just hand them whatever they wanted, unless Mum really wasn’t paying attention and she had somehow managed to work her magic puppy dog eyes on Dad… But she hadn’t done that for a while. It had worked better when they were littler. When she and Cal had decided that they wanted something, and Mum had turned them down, so they went to Dad and Lyla gave him the look as she said please, and Cal promised that they would deserve it.

That didn’t have quite the same effect as it had when they had been four and five, but on occasion she thought that it could still work. If she timed it right, and she didn’t ask for anything too extravagant. She had almost considered trying to use it on him today to get him to go upstairs and distract Mum while she went and met Delilah, and the two of them took the portkey that they had managed to acquire, all the way to Prague for lunch. That was probably on the scale of bending the rules, but all that it said was that when she was at the Ministry she got an hour-long lunch break, the same as they had at Hogwarts. The only difference, was that at Hogwarts, they were trapped at Hogwarts, and here she was free to come and go as she pleased. She had a passport, she wasn’t breaking any rules, really, it was just lunch, and no one would be the wiser. Hopefully. The last thing that they needed was someone realizing what they were doing and getting angry at them for it. Though, she thought that Aunt Odelia would be more angry angry, and Mum would be more mad that they hadn’t invited her, or brought home breadsticks…

“Yup. Coffee is a must.” Dropping down in chair opposite of her father’s desk, Lyla thought about how lucky she was to have gotten the parents that she had gotten. They weren’t overly one way or the other. They weren’t pushy, but they had solid expectations for them. They weren’t blasé about their lives, but they didn’t breathe down their necks every second of the day either. She knew that she had it a lot better than some of the others that she had grown up with. And not even just the purebloods. They had a whole set of standards that were all their own. But some of the other halfbloods, the ones that were just like her, only they had parents that expected them to be perfect, and join six clubs, and make exemplarily marks, and play on the quidditch team, and sing in the choir, and have an internship, and still manage to sleep, and eat, and have friends. Lyla thought that that was impossible. And while she didn’t really have a whole lot of friends, she did think that it was important to be thankful for what she did have, and that was her family. When her dad asked how school was she just shrugged, “It’s school. It’s the same as it’s always been. I just get to be here now instead.” That made it easier, getting to be in the Ministry instead of cooped up with a bunch of teenagers that she didn’t like to be around all of the time.

@ beckett - Lyla's Outfit

► kaigra ◄

[Googlefont=Audiowide][Googlefont=Marck Script]

To places I
have never been

❧

Beckett had always known that he had wanted to work in the Ministry. It wasn’t something that he had ever doubted. There had never been a time in his life when he’d ever wanted to do anything else--never a time that he’d even thought about doing something else. He knew that had a lot to do with how he was raised. Graves men went to the Ministry. It had been that way for years. Politics was in their blood, in some ways. It wasn’t like they were pressured to go into it or anything like that. If he’d wanted to do something completely different with his life, he was quite sure that his parents would have been all right with that. They would have been surprised, obviously, but he didn’t think that they would have had any problem with it. It just had not even crossed his mind. Politics had always been what he’d wanted to do, and he had worked hard at it. He’d had to. His ambitions hadn’t been to become Minister or anything like that. He had gotten exactly where he wanted to be.

He was proud of where their children had gotten as well. Just like his parents before him, Beckett wouldn’t have minded if any of them had wanted to do something else with their lives. He wouldn’t have cared if Cal had wanted to go into Quidditch, or if Lyla wanted to become a reporter for The Prophet, or anything in between. But he thought that they were all leaning toward the Ministry as well. Cal was graduating this year, and he was decently sure that he’d decided on going into commerce or some other department in the Ministry. Lyla, obviously, had her internship here. He knew that didn’t mean that she was going to go into the Ministry after graduating, but he thought there was quite the chance of it. It just didn’t surprise him. They could surprise him, he supposed, but he wouldn’t know until they made those decisions for themselves. And he would support them no matter what they decided to do. And Merlin knew what interests would catch Anderson’s eye once he got into school. He thought at least one of them would end up surprising them.

Beck knew that Lyla got along with adults better than kids her own age. It was something that had not been all that difficult for him to notice over the years. He didn’t see it at school, obviously he didn’t know what she was like there, but he thought that she’d always had a way of talking to people much older than she was. She could hold her own in those sorts of conversations. It was why he was sure that she liked being at the internship more than she liked being at Hogwarts. That was obvious just from the fact that she was here as much as she was. He didn’t know if she realized that he’d noticed that--internships weren’t something that had happened while he was at Hogwarts, but he wasn’t stupid. He knew that she likely wasn’t supposed to hang around as much as she did. But as long as she wasn’t taking advantage of it, he didn’t think that it was a bad thing. As long as her grades were halfway decent--maybe a little better than just halfway decent, then he saw no reason to call her out on being at the Ministry as much as she was.

He chuckled as she spoke again. “I feel like you’re too young to already know that. But it’s too late now.” Once the need for coffee set in, it never went away. It was an absolute necessity for him, and Liv, and apparently Lyla had caught onto that already. He couldn’t remember when he’d first started drinking coffee. He didn’t think that he had been as young as Lyla was, but at this point he barely remembered. Beck thought that he’d tried to develop a taste for it and hadn’t liked it for a while. Now, something like that was just impossible to fathom. “It’s the same as it’s always been is not really an answer.” He shook his head. What was it with teenagers and giving answers that didn’t really say anything at all? At least when it came to school. “There’s nothing interesting going on at all?” He thought that there had to be something. It was where she was all of the time when she wasn’t working at the Ministry. There had to be something going on there.

@ lyla

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

[newclass=.cred]text-align:center;font-size:6pt;color:rgb(132, 132, 132);letter-spacing:1px;font-family:verdana;margin-top:5px;[/newclass]
[newclass=.cred a]color:rgb(132, 132, 132);font-size:6pt;letter-spacing:1px;font-family:verdana;[/newclass]

On My Father's

Wings

Growing up the way that they had Lyla knew that it was important to work for the things that she wanted. She knew that she had to do her best, at whatever she was doing, if she wanted to succeed. There was only one way to go from wherever she was, and that was up. Lyla was determined to always keep moving forward. It was the only thing that she could do. She could keep going, keep growing, keep pushing. That was just how it worked, and she thought that, for as long as it took to get her to where she wanted to be, that was just what she was going to have to do. She was going to have to keep pushing forward. And maybe that wasn’t the most solid plan that she had ever made in her life, but Lyla thought that it was better than no plan. She just didn’t’ want to disappoint them. She wanted her mum and dad to be proud of her, and she wanted to earn the name that she had been given. Graves was not a name that she wanted people to ever look down on, and she knew how important a name was. Even Mum had kept hers for a long, long time.

Olivia Drake had been a force to be reckoned with, and even now, Olivia Graves was the same shark. They were strong, and they had been as strong before as they were now. Lyla wanted to live up to that. She wanted to be that way. She wanted people to say her name and think about a reputation that she had built for herself. She didn’t want them to think Beckett and Olivia Graves’ daughter. She wanted them to think Lyla Graves and have them think of her. Of the things that she had achieved all on her own. That was who she wanted to be, and she thought that she could get there. They had set them up to succeed. All they had to do was put in the effort. Because they were spoiled, but it was the kind of spoiled where they had still had to earn it. It was the kind of spoiled that, at least in Lyla’s opinion, was turning them into decent people. They weren’t going to be the best people in the world, and they weren’t flawless. But they were pretty great. All on their own.

Cal had had the same chances that she had had. They were treated the same. There had been nothing less for her just because she was the girl. There had been nothing less for her because she was the second born. And Lyla thought that Mum and Dad treated Anderson the same way that they had treated them. They were a little better at making sure that he was just a normal kid. She thought that she and Cal had always been treated like adults, because there wasn’t really all that much that Mum and Dad had known about kids the first time around. And it had been the first time around for both of them. They were only eleven months apart. They had raised them together. Anything that Cal could do Lyla could do better. It had been that way since she was little, and she was determined that that was how it was always going to be. They were going to be 100 years old, and she was still going to be saying that anything Cal did she could do better. That included being here. Working in the Ministry. If Cal could do it, so could she. They were the same. And yet they were so different.

Shaking her head at her Dad Lyla couldn’t help up chuckle at that. “I think it’s been too late for that since you guys started talking to us like adults. We knew what the difference between the markets for domestic and international trade was before we could do arithmetic on our own.” They had always talked to them like they were adults. Like they could hold their own in conversations like that. “Between Mum talking about the world as a whole, and you talking about politics and quidditch and international affairs, we were never too young for coffee.” There was a smile on her lips though, because Lyla couldn’t have imagined any other kind of breakfast conversations over the years. Those were the things that were important, that was what they had talked about. When her dad probed for more information Lyla shrugged a little bit. “LJ is working on some new plays for the team. If we’re going to beat Cal and the rest of Slytherin we’re going to need them.” Quidditch probably hadn’t been the answer that he was looking for either, but if she could distract him with that she wouldn’t have to keep talking about school at all.

@ daddy - 816 - lyla's outfit

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOXOGRPHY 2.0