chasing all these shadows

"I'm not going," Jae grumbled for what felt like the hundredth time. He kicked at some dirt as they walked down the road in Isaac's neighborhood, his hand shoved deep in his pockets. He had come to Isaac's earlier, with the intent on going to Billie's party later together. Apparently some of Isaac's dumb friends were going to apparate them there. "I don't trust any of those clowns to not splinch me on the way there," he added for justification.

Not that that was the real reason. Not at all. He had a very long list of reasons, in fact. With bullet points and creatively constructed arguments and explanations for each. But he had only given Isaac the most surface level ones.

Jae brushed his now-blonde hair back off his forehead, only for it to flop back down and he sighed. He had already had a little fight with Mavis earlier today when she came over to ask if he wanted a ride. He had said no, of course. Jae had his own plans to go to the party. Not that he was going now. The thought still niggled in the back of his mind about what would happen at the party if he didn't go. He couldn't decide if going or not going was worse.

"It's not like we didn't just see everyone a few days ago at school," he added instead, annoyed at himself and the world.

@Isaac Hackney

“Yeah, can not blame you there,” Isaac shrugged; his friends were idiots, but whatever, they were also seventeen, and they could apparate. It was better than sitting on the train for an hour and a half and then walking who knew how long to Billie’s house. Isaac turned around as they walked, facing Jae and the others, and decided he was in charge. “Any of you fucks splinch us, and Jae here is going to kick your ass.” He tilted his head toward the Hufflepuff, and the hood of his sweater fell, and then he gave Jae a nod as if Isaac had just done him a favor and deserved a thank you.

Falling back in line with the group, they headed out behind the flophouse down the block from his apartment building, and Isaac was careful not to step on any broken glass in the alley. The train whizzed by them, and Aaron MacClerie’s older brother, Malcolm, threw a beer can at it and missed. The others laughed, someone lit up a cigarette, and a siren sounded in the distance.

“Yeah, but she will be there,” Isaac offered Jae, a little lower, a little less for everyone but not just because he was looking out for the Hufflepuff. As much as Isaac knew Jae had a thing for Mavis Nandamuri, Jae knew about Isaac’s current obsession with Magnolia Hawkins. And the less any of the others knew, the better it was for the both of them. Cleverly, about two seconds before one of the others caught wind, Isaac covered his words quickly with something far more typical.

“And if that doesn’t work out, I think Shauna said she’d let you snog her.” But, of course, she hadn’t, and Isaac laughed as Shauna, her boyfriend Aaron, and probably Jae gave him a dirty look.

Any of you fucks splinch us, and Jae here is going to kick your ass. Jae flipped him the bird as Isaac's friends - not his - tittered and guffawed with laughter. His ears got hot and he avoided looking at any of them. He questioned why he was here in the first place, but couldn't quite get that look on Mae's face out of his mind when she had said 'pretty please' to come to the party.

He was so dumb and he knew it.

The fifth year knew instinctively who Isaac meant by 'she' and he furtively glanced up at the other delinquents that Isaac called friends just to make sure they didn't overhear. It wasn't exactly a secret, or maybe it was, hell if he knew, but he really wasn't in the mood to deal with their ribbing. But Isaac was right and Mae had pretty much begged him to come to the party and he would be a liar if he said he didn't want to see what sparkly mess she had probably dressed up in for the party. But then, he remembered she had a boyfriend and he didn't have any right to think any of that.

It made him scowl as Isaac joked at his expense and he looked off into the distance with a sigh and an unamused look. "No, thanks," he called out clearly to placate Aaron, contradict Isaac, and assure Shauna that he in no uncertain terms was definitely not interested. Did Shauna seem miffed by it though>? He honestly couldn't keep up with girls and their feelings.

"Did Nola say she was going to be there?" Jae asked, more to needle Isaac than of actually wanting an answer. If rumors were true, Nola had practically planned it out with Mavis and he knew her well enough, maybe not as well as Isaac did, that she wouldn't miss party, ever.

Isaac was still busy laughing at his stupid joke when Jae brought Magnolia into the mix, and his smirk faded quickly. Too quickly, he scrunched his nose at the other boy. “Yeah, of course,” he said, rolling his eyes as if he didn’t care, but it was all an act. And while the others might have been too distracted (or self-absorbed) to notice, Isaac had the feeling Jae wouldn’t let it slide. Or maybe he would; who knew. “Like the Queen of Hogwart’s Gossip would miss a party,” he tacked on before tucking his hands into the pockets of his pants.

They headed around the apartment building, closer to the alley between the rows of tenements and the train tracks. Isaac was glad they didn’t have to go far and that some of his friends were old enough to apparate because taking the train to Maidstone would have sucked. He already had to sit on the ferry for forty minutes every time he wanted to go to Gravesend. There weren’t many things the boy could be thankful for, but he was grateful to have an October birthday. He was closer than a lot of the fifth years to being 17, and of course, he was counting the days.

“I think just about everybody is going to be there.” Isaac mused as they passed a few overflowing dumpsters and a discarded sofa he was pretty sure had been there since last winter. It’d been covered in snow and then soaked to the frame when the spring thaw came, and now the upholstery looked a bit oily from the elements. The whole thing was leaning, half on the grass and broken. Like every other bit of blight on the neighborhood, Isaac shrugged and looked away. It wasn’t his problem.

“Hope no one invited Horus-fucking-Heyward, though.”

"True," Jae said simply. He figured Nola might die rather than miss a party as big as this. Jae wasn't quite sure what the appeal was though. Getting drunk and acting like a damn fool wasn't very high on his priority list, but then again, he was still going so he didn't really have any room to talk.

As they headed around back to the apartment building, out of muggle's view, Jae started eyeing Isaac's friends a little more closely. Who would he have to apparate with? He wanted the best bet of not getting splinched and he didn't really trust Shauna or her boyfriend the way they were glaring at him. They'd probably do it on purpose. He couldn't wait until he was 17, something he and Isaac had in common. They had both complained about it in the boat house more than once.

At the mention of a particular Raveclaw, Jae smirked, stepping over some crushed beer cans and plastic bottles half-covered in snow. "What don't you like about Horus?" Jae asked innocently, knowing full well what reason Isaac might have to hate the supremely mundane and astoundingly average Horus. "I think he's nice." He didn't, but he just wanted to needle his friend.

"Here's good as any," one of Isaac's friends said and the couple popped away without warning or care about the other two boys that couldn't apparate. Jae felt a sudden swoop in his stomach, as if they might make him walk all the way out here and then 'forget' to bring him along. Luckily (or unluckily) depending on how you looked at it, Duncan gave an exaggerated sigh and said, "Get over here, not waiting all day, ladies." Jae slapped his palm into Duncan's and gave a sigh himself before he felt himself melting into oblivion seconds later. 

/end

"Oh, piss off," Isaac gave Jae a look and felt the sudden urge to pick up something from the ground around them just so that he could turn and chuck it at his friend. No one liked Horus Heyward the Whatever, and Isaac knew the Hufflepuff was trying to get under his skin. "Who the hell decided you were a good fit for Hufflepuff, anyway," he said, a bit of his train of thought escaping from his mouth. This was just how it always was between the two wizards.

They were unlikely friends, and it might have even looked like they weren't friends at all from the outside. More than half of the conversations were built up around making fun of the other, and the other half were usually negative about something else. Regardless of how it might have looked, somehow, the friendship worked. In a lot of ways, Isaac liked Jae a lot more than his Slytherin buddies, not that he'd ever feel like saying as much.

They got to the deserted part of the alley, and Isaac turned to look at the rest of the group as if to say, 'hurry up' and then stepped toward one of the older wizards. Shauna and Aaron took off, and Duncan called out for them to hurry up. Jae reached for Duncan, and Isaac placed his hand on the older boy's forearm, and in a snap, they were gone from the shitty town Isaac had grown up in and set down in the middle of some field outside London.

/end