[mp] cloudy days in front of us [ariana]

"Jesus Christ." Camm let out a low whistle as he took in the previous issues of Sunday Prophet he'd missed, as well as the latest one in print. There was a time when he couldn't trust what the Prophet printed, and he wished that that time could be now. He couldn't believe what he was apparently reading. Gaius Purcell sighted? Since when were Death Eaters allowed to go on a freakin' holiday? How had the Minister let something like this happen? Blimey, who'd have thought that Russia would become the most liberal of liberals with all the protests that's been going on? He certainly didn't.

He was still engrossed in the paper when he heard the door open, and followed up with a habitual 'morning'. It took him two seconds to realise the contact he'd initiated and cringed. Camm didn't know if what he was doing qualified as avoiding Ariana, although he very much wanted to avoid the boy she seemed to be taken with. The overseas assignments were real– he'd never do that, tell a bold-faced lie, but he did find himself volunteering for these assignments more often, and finding excuses to stay out for longer periods of time. That was how he'd missed all these news about what was going on in Britain. For someone who worked in the newspaper, he really didn't pay much attention to what was actually being published. He was just a photographer, it wasn't like his opinions on the news were suddenly going to matter.

"There's eggs and tomatoes," he gestured at the iron skillet with his chin, "but I could cook up some bangers and mash if you want a bigger breakfast." That was actually his breakfast, but he didn't mind. If he acted like nothing was wrong there was a chance Ari would go along with it. He hoped that she'd be confident in his cooking skills; he wasn't great, but he definitely won't poison her.

"So, I'm thinking of writing mum," he said, carefully avoiding eye contact or any talk of her love life just yet. "She's been getting The Prophet, and it's not like there are other reputable sources of news out there, y'know?" Ari knows he doesn't get along with his mother, but there are signs of her turning around instead of just blindly listening to Bruce like she tended to. "I just thought I'd ask you and see what you thought about that given this," he waved his hand over the paper he put down,"situation. Can't imagine it's easy on you during training. And Russia too. Where did that come from?"

@Ariana Laurier

Ari slipped into the apartment quietly. She was often gone for entire weekends now, spending them in France with Prosper just as he spent weeknights with her here in London. Something her boyfriend had planned with his guy friends and a particularly early Monday morning for her conspired to bring her back early, but she didn't know if Camm had gotten used to the quiet and didn't want to disturb her roommate. She felt a little bad; she was spending less time with him now than she'd originally planned when they began rooming together, and than they had at the beginning. It didn't help that he was gone all the time now, and it didn't help that Prosper made him uncomfortable. Ari had hoped things would get better with time, but if she had hoped that time together might ease his opinion slightly, there hadn't been all that much of that. She hadn't really properly seen him for weeks by now.

Still, he greeted her, and she grinned at her oldest friend. "Hey. Haven't seen you around much, how have the trips been?" Camm offered her food and she peeked in the pan, letting out a small "mmm" as the aroma hit her nose. It smelled good--just because Prosper was a major fan of ambitious recipes didn't mean she didn't still appreciate the simple things. That said, she wasn't about to accidentally steal his food. She'd eaten a croissant on the way to the Portkey station. "I'd love some but you can't have expected me today, did you already eat?"

She turned to look at him, but he was still looking at the paper. Ari frowned slightly, but the fact that he'd drawn her attention to the goings-on in the paper distracted her from any potential concern over their friendship. She let out a little huff through her nose, eyes narrowing. "It's ridiculous," she exclaimed, venting even though she knew full well that Camm would know exactly how she felt. "They keep talking about how important Sweden is to the economy, like murder and fear isn't bad for the economy, or something! All they say at work is that there were reasons for his release. I'm not the only one who's pissed about it but we don't really feel comfortable talking about it much unless it's after work." She'd chatted with older Aurors like Alex Regan about it a few times. She was pleasantly surprised that at least one pureblood Slytherin was not thrilled about the events. "And it seems like the opposite in Russia. I just don't know." They hadn't talked much about that at the meeting. Russia was a little farther away than wherever Gaius Purcell was now, and they hadn't actually enacted any terrible policies yet, or broken out into violence. "Anyway, someone told me the Quibbler might try actual reporting again, but I don't know it it'll actually happen." She tilted her head. "When's the last time you talked to your mum?" Camm had been keeping her at arm's length for a long time, and it was only easier with his own place and no extended holidays to go home for.

Camm shrugged. Work was work. He never really hung around after those assignments and was always more focused on getting the job done as quickly as possible. It was honestly a little pathetic to bring up, so he decided that not saying anything was better. A lot of his friends assumed he was having the time of his life, and he didn't mind if they kept on thinking that was the case.

"Sure," he kept his reply vague on purpose, "I probably shouldn't eat all of that anyway. Something about cholesterol? Dunno, I wasn't paying attention to that health seminar I got dragged to. You should definitely eat though, looks like you could use it. How hard are they working you at the ministry anyway?" He had a feeling that they'd be talking about some not-so-savoury topics anyway, and he was bound to lose his appetite at some point. Glenn would probably make fun of him for having a weak stomach or something, and Catriona would just look worried. Merlin knows where Logan would stand.

When Ari's attention turned to the contents of the newspaper, he stayed silent and just let her say her piece. He couldn't imagine the amount of invisible pressure there must be in her work environment. He'd heard some of his colleagues talk while they skived off during lunch break, about how this is all on the ministry and they done screwed up, big time. He nodded along with her sentiments about Russia. It was quite unexpected really, he never thought Russia of all places was the progressive sort. What she said next manage to pique his interest, "Quibbler? Who's gunna do that then? Didn't think old Lovegood would be up for that anymore."

"Mum?" He pursed his lips and thought for a moment. "It's been a while, yeah? I mean I wrote her for her birthday and sent her a little cash, which I think she appreciated. She just seems to be softening up now. Seems interested to be a mum again, you know? Not that she ever was." Camm's laugh at the end was a little dark, but he knew it wasn't something that Ari was going to be surprised by. His family problems were probably the only constant thing in his life, what with the war and stuff. "I just thought it might be good to talk to her again, 'specially about Catriona coming to stay with us for the hols instead of going back to hers. But I dunno, everything's been right messy, and I guess I wanted your opinion on how to bring it up to her." Tactfully, not like the bumbling way he'd normally approach things.

Ari's eyes traveled from the pan to her friend and back to the pan, her look skeptical as he proferred excuses to a very simple question. "Cholesterol's only bad for you then, not me, huh?" she quipped. Camm did this sometimes, prioritizing a combination of generosity and lack of confrontation that she had to take into account instead of just taking everything at face value. If she did, she'd probably end up taking advantage of him twenty times over. Shaking her head, Ari slipped her wand into her hand and split the pan's content onto two plates, dropping a fork onto each one and levitating them both over to their slightly battered old table. Dropping her bag on the floor and tossing her coat over the back of her chair, she perched on it, hugging her knees up to her chest as she speared a piece of egg. "Training's okay. We started dueling again."

She shook her head. "I dunno who's in charge of it, or even if it'd happen, there was just some talk." She hesitated slightly about how much to say about her sources, for their sake, but it was Camm, and if Ari was wary of new people he was one of the people she'd trust with her life. "Something Edith said." The older woman's name had become more of a kitchen table subject than she probably ever imagined, or feared, in the last few months. Once it had been in Purcell's lips, it was clear it'd spiraled into something else entirely. Wasn't coming clean with your identity something that was supposed to help you keep control of your own narrative?

She wasn't about to ask when his mum's birthday was--she knew his dad's, but hadn't bothered to keep track of his mum's given their relationship--so his answer didn't entirely clarify much, but she gave a half-smile, a little sad but tinged with a little hope. That was the thing about parent relationships--not that Ari knew all that much about bad ones, she was pretty close to her parents, but she'd seen other people's--there was always that hope that things would get better. Unlike a toxic friend you could give up on, you were stuck with the parents you had, for better or for worse. Ari's opinion of Camm's mother was pretty sour by this point, even with the allowances for pity she gave her from having such an awful husband, but she couldn't help but buy in a little to imagining a world in which Fiona Campbell suddenly got her act together after twenty years, for Camm's sake. "What's that thing they say about never knowing what you have until it's gone? Maybe she's feeling a little of that now that Catriona's nearly an adult."

Dropping her feet to the floor, she scooted forward on the chair to rest her chin on her hand while she thought about the issue, chewing absentmindedly. "Well, would she like it better if it were Catriona's idea instead of yours? You could let your sis bring it up first instead. Probably need a good ulterior reason in any case though...maybe come up with a way it'd help her after school? Like we know someone she can job shadow for a bit while she's here, or she might want to have the experience to see whether she wants to get a job here in London or search somewhere else?"

ooc: ping me if I got ages wrong, idk when catriona's birthday is??

He pinched his thumb and forefinger close, sizing up his friend's decidedly small figure, and looked at her sceptically with one eyebrow raised, "I don't think the same rules apply when you're half my size." Besides, and he hated thinking about this, he probably needed to stop eating like he still had weekly Quidditch trainings. It's too bad there weren't any Quidditch interest groups that got together on the weekends to play. But then Quidditch for adults was just... proper Pro-Quidditch, wasn't it, and if people had half the interest in playing as opposed to just watching, there wouldn't be as many Quidditch stars, he thought sourly. He missed Ari's slight disapproval, accepting the portion of food with a vengeance.

Camm nodded at what she said about training as he shovelled food into his mouth, not really knowing what to say. Duelling was probably still a necessary part of training, right? He only paused when she mentioned Edith, a name he hadn't really heard in a while, but not something entirely foreign to him. Camm still remembered her stint with the paper and the ad she put up. It almost became some sort of unspoken rule not to mention her in the office. "Edith, eh? Should I be worried about some underground resistance movement?" He tried not to pry, but he hoped that the question made it obvious that he very much wanted to know what they'd been getting up to.

The conversation turned to his mum again and Camm almost smiled at what Ari said. "If you're suggesting she has empty nest syndrome I don't think I have to remind you that she's the one who pushed us out first." Unlike his usual harsh indifference, this time he sounded a little hesitant. He wasn't entirely without hope that his mum could wake up from whatever spell — ha, the irony — Bruce cast on her, even after so many years. "But... maybe. Alright, we'll see," he said agreeably, getting up to put his dish in the sink.

Slowly, to show that he was paying attention, he lathered up the dish brush to start scrubbing the pan, giving a grunt here and there as Ari gave him suggestions. He still liked doing things the 'muggle way', having never strayed far from his bridge between the two worlds. His handling of the pan got just a bit harder when Ari brought up job shadowing. "I dunno, she's only just turned sixteen. Isn't that a bit young?" He turned around to face his flatmate, resting his hip against the sink and crossing his arms. A shadow of a frown creased the corners of his face. Camm didn't recognise his own hypocrisy, having started working odd jobs since he was fifteen, and he didn't realise that she didn't actually have to get work, just a good enough excuse so she could get away for the summer. "Who else do you know that's trustworthy enough in the ministry now?" Which was really just a nice way of saying he wouldn't trust Catriona with anyone their age; bloody idiots, the lot of them.