The Happy Worker [Sindri]

Frey was under instructions to dress in comfortable, old clothes that gave him a wide range of movement despite his protestations that only half of his body actually worked. Nevertheless, he had obliged with the order and was dressed in a comfy t-shirt, one of Jon's childhood jumpers with a colourful argyle pattern and a silly bobble hat that his maybe-boyfriendy-type-thing had bought him to stop his poor wee lugs getting cold this winter. 

For a pureblood, who for most of his life had grown up wearing nothing but wizarding fashion, it was odd how quickly he'd adjusted to muggle clothing. These days he found more and more that actually preferred them - it was so much easier to dress himself if he could sit whilst doing so and robes made that incredibly difficult. Plus he had a fair amount of handmedowns from Jon and so just wearing them took him to his happy place.

He didn't know why he had to dress comfortably, but knowing Sindri it probably had something to do with a forest or a lake or something. The young Trickett had offered to get him out of the house and doing something whilst Jon was away with work, apparently having decided that four months of moping around a fancy townhouse was enough for Frey.  To be fair, although the mugglebox had like three million different channels, somehow he seemed to have already watched most things. The only show worth watching this week had been Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It was funny quite how wrong the muggles got vampires and witches and so on, but the episode had been gripping and hella-creepy and now Frey was mildly afraid of the quiet.¹  Everything else seemed to either be stories about his favourite Murder Granny that he'd already seen or some intolerable bigots getting far too excited about cars. So getting out and about sounded good to Frey, although given the cold snap they were currently having he hoped wherever they were going wasn't too remote and had some kind of heating that didn't involve having to fell trees first.

Grabbing a handful of floo powder off the little side table it lived on, Frey manoeuvred the wheelthrone into the grate and in a puff of green flame started travelling along the network to the address Sindri had given him.  When he emerged, it was into a room filled with pieces of furniture or rather pieces of pieces of furniture, piles of sawdust, tools strewn everywhichway and no sign of his friend.  In short, it was in general disarray.  Frey quickly raised his wand to defend himself and Sindri should it be necessary as a reflex to the carnage until he realised that no, the place hadn't been raided, it was just a workshop. In fact, it reminded him very much of his old lab at work just with wood rather than potions ingredients and was rather more ordered and tidy than his had been.  He let his wand drop again and rolled himself out of the grate.

Unfortunately he didn't get far.  The bed of wood shavings and chips on the floor made progress difficult and any movement a bit bumpy.  Frey soldiered on though, like the good little paragon of independence he hoped one day he would be again, until disaster struck. Or at least his wheel struck... a particularly thick puddle of sawdust where it just span and could not get purchase.

He called out: "Sin? You about? I need to talk to you about your disabled access!"


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¹ I looked it up because I do research for my posts as well as add footnotes. Yep yep.  December 14th 1999 the episode of Buffy "Hush" aired.  Although to be fair, this was more than likely in the states. But I say Jon's house gets American TV. How? A wizard did it.

Oh, today would be fun.

Sindri Trickett reminded himself of this little mantra as he shot out of bed on the Saturday that he had arranged for Frey to come to his loft. The twenty-two year old had a whole morning of activities planned for the two of them, all with the goal of getting his mate a hobby and getting him back out into the world. War had not been kind to most wizards, he reminded himself frequently, but especially not to Frey, who had lost the use of his legs and with that a lot of his exuberance for life.

After the accident Sindri did everything in his power to keep Frey from succumbing to depression, even spending weeks building an elaborate 'wheelthrone' as he liked to call it, staying up all through the night to perfect it. It seemed, though, that only time and healing could help the man, so the ex-Gryffindor waited patiently for the time to come when he could properly lend a helping hand. Turned out, a promise of surprise did just the trick.

"Just a minute!" Sindri flew around the upstairs of his loft, making certain that he had everything the duo would need for their craft day. His new set of chisels, check. Paint brushes and paint, check. He was certain he was forgetting something, of course. Instead of dwelling on it, he bound down the stairs, taking two at a time excitedly. "Oh give me a break!" Sindri groaned, eagerly kicking a path out of the way so that Frey could get to the work spaces he had set up the night previous.

"If you made it over here more, I might have a reason to be more prepared for the throne," He stated matter-of-factly over his shoulder. "So busy over with that Emerson bloke I could've sworn you'd be off and married by now," Sindri smirked, just as his hazel eyes reached the wheels of the throne which he noticed looked a little worse for wear. "Tolfreeey, He croaked, kneeling down by the wheels to run a thumb over the gold that was once impeccably clean. "What did I tell you about the potion for cleaning these? Once a month, at least," He made a face.

Frey beamed at Sindri as the furniture maker appeared, his eye's lighting up with a glint of mischief as he responded to the admonishment Frey had greeted him with.  Soon though it was the Scottish man's turn to be admonished and the cheek drained out of his eyes as he felt the pang of guilt brought on by his failure to visit friends as much as he should. Before he could look sorrowful and apologetic though, a third emotion came on, this time embarrassment at the crack Sindri made about getting married.

Frey had been careful not to say anything to anyone about his ... whatever it was with Jon because a) he didn't know what was actually going on between them anyway - it wasn't as if they'd sat down to talk about it - and more importantly b) he didn't know whether Jon's family had any idea about his romantic leanings and didn't want to get him into trouble with them. Tegan was about the only person he had said anything too... did Tegan even know Sindri? Frey wasn't sure, but he would kill his welsh cousin if she'd said anything to him! He began to open his mouth to protest and try to weasel out of Sin what he'd heard and from who but was interrupted with another telling off before he could form any words.

"Sindriiii," he imitated the other man's whining voice, "do you have any idea how difficult it is for me to reach those bits without getting stuck on the floooor?" Of course, it was actually fine and he could do it from seated in the chair by just rotating the wheels a bit to reach the whole rim, but he hoped that the Trickett wouldn't think of that and he was damned if he was gonna give him the chance. "Besides, they've only been wheels again for the last few days. We were in Finland last week, and wheels plus snow equals no go, so they were skiis. It was great fun. I wish we got snow here more often. I love snow." Frey was getting somewhat distracted but he noticed and caught himself before getting too carried away on this wintry tangent.

"I've made some other modifications over the last few months too. I think you'll be impressed. At least I hope you will.  Want a demo?" Frey didn't wait for a response as he was too enthusiastic about the various enhancements he and Jon had made to the wheelthrone. He got his wand and docked it into the recess designed for it, then leaned it this way and that to demonstrate the automatic maneuvering based on the wand joystick thing. "It's automatic now! Muggles gave us the idea.  They have some really ingenious things." Frey noticed there was also a path to the stairs, so he took the wheelthrone over to them and backed up to the banister where the stairlift charm automatically took effect and took him halfway up the stairs before Frey reversed its direction and was conducted back to the floor, beaming and looking pleased with himself.

"So anyway, what's the plan?" the excitable little Scotsman asked as he skidded back to join Sindri at the workbench. He started fiddling with all the implements on it, picking them up and looking at them with curiosity. "Why's this wand got hair?" he asked innocently. Having lived with an artist, he obviously knew full well what a paintbrush was, but he couldn't help but have a little fun at his friend's expense.