american beauty | ashley

The charm Kate had put on her shower in her temporary accommodations to play music came to an abrupt halt when the water stopped as well. She drained her long brown hair, belatedly humming the Queen song that had been floating over all the steam and idle noises of the water, and thought about how she would never be able to listen to Queen again without thinking of Charlie. Or their wedding, which had contained quite the multitude of Queen songs. One of the very first movies they’d watched together had been a documentary on Freddie Mercury’s life, and Kate could have sworn she’d seen him getting misty eyed when the subject of his death came up.

Her interim apartment was magical, because her father had arranged things for her, to tie up any loose ends she still needed to in London. The longer she thought about it, though, the more she didn’t want to entirely ditch and cut the people she’d met here out of her life.

Kate was considering buying her own apartment here in London, and she rather liked this suburb, Chelsea, but she’d be willing to consider other areas. As long as she could feel safe walking around in the evenings alone. Charlie would go for nighttime walk and talks with her, slightly buzzed, after dinner, holding hands and chit chatting about what had gone on during the day. Kate had never felt so protected in her life. Living alone was something she’d never done before, and she felt inexplicably lonely at times. Having music playing and her cat, Simon, were two things that saved her thoughts from taking unhealthy turns.

She told her ex she was considering all this the last time he’d “visited,” and she wasn’t sure how he thought of her now. Not that it mattered. He wasn’t the (entire) reason she was considering putting some roots down here: there was Emma, Ariana, … Noah. Oliver. Newer friends she’d made, who actually seemed to enjoy her as a person. She would miss them. And maybe she would spend more than half of her time at the villa, but maybe it would also be nice to have a brand new place that was hers. That her father hadn’t hooked up for her or that her ex-husband hadn’t conspired with her older sister to buy and surprise her with. Everything was loaded of fucking memories of how things were supposed to have been, and it haunted her.

Kate found herself weighing whether or not to get an apartment in a magical or a muggle part of London--he had affected her that much. In three years.

The petite witch stepped out of the shower and yanked the curtain closed before she wrapped a fluffy towel around her body, knotting it at the top to meander into the kitchen for a glass of water. The window at the back of her home, however, made way for an extensively disturbing sight: a man. In her backyard. Whilst she was wet and naked under her towel.

Her hands flapped in front of her frantically as she decided, within a split second, how to proceed. She had no telephone to call; her wand was all the way in her bedroom and she couldn’t send a message by owl straight away, she didn’t have one as a pet. “HEY!” Kate shrieked, right up on the glass of the window now, and banged on it with her tight little fist to make an obnoxious clong clong noise out at him. “Who the hell are you?!” Her muffled voice was loud enough to travel out to him; “What the fuck are you doing in my yard!”


@Ashley Morigan

He hadn’t exactly heard about this legally, but damned if he wasn’t going to be a part of it. Call him paranoid, but he liked to know what the ministry was up to. He had a very illegal wireless radio hacked into the police frequency, and he almost sputtered when he heard what he thought he heard. A Lethifold? In Chelsea? Without question, he knew exactly where it was coming from. He made his way down to the condo of old Greg Johnson, with haste. Greg was harmless, sort-of, but his collection of beasts was far from harmless. He considered himself a freelance magizoologist, only rather than studying beasts he kept them, as many as he possible could, and as dangerous as they could possibly be, in his mom’s old condo in Chelsea. The cops didn’t know about Greg, and Ashley really didn’t want to be the one to bust him for having XXXXX creatures in his home, but sometimes there was no avoiding it.

Greg was helpful, surprisingly. He was usually a drunk, but Ashley could relate to that on a spiritual level. Even though Ashley turned down the drink offered, he felt for the guy. He thought he was helping, sort of. He thought they were his babies. His lethifold had, indeed, gotten out. Ashley had needed to wheedle that information out between blubbering drunken sobs, but he now knew a time frame. He was a step ahead of the cops. He knew where it had been spotted and where it could be between when it got out and then. There weren’t many places. It had to be in a very specific part of their apartment complex. Ashley followed the signs of it, passing from shadow to shadow. He knocked on three or four doors with no luck and only one threat the call the cops before he found himself in Kate’s backyard.

This was the last house. There was no where else it COULD be. He broke the lock on the gate and weaseled his way into the backyard. He pulled out his wand and looked carefully for a rug, a blanket, a sheath, or anything. Unfortunately, the porch was covered, which meant it could have entered the house.

Thinking the house was unoccupied, he pressed his face against the glass, not noticing he’d left a sweaty faceprint there, and had pulled away by the time he saw Kate enter the hallway, wrapped in her towel. He pulled a face, embarrassed and a little scared as she yelled at him. “Hey hey, no. I’m with the Ministry.” He started, flashing his badge. He was with the American Ministry, but that wasn’t the same thing at all. He strictly-speaking had no business being here, it was crossing lines with the British Ministry’s services. Unless Greg had called him, or he’d found out himself…. Maybe he just happened to visit Greg that day and had forgotten to call in the other pets….

Fuck, he hoped she wouldn’t notice. “There’s a dangerous creature on the loose. Can I come in and check the house?” He yelled at the glass door.  “I mean, it’s like a level five. It could fucking eat you in one gulp and it’s not even that big. Let me in.”