commiseration congregation [quinn]

Alex read about it in the newspaper first. It was nice to have siblings you could keep track of that way. Falmouth seeker Regan was quickly dispatched by a bludger to the head, leaving the snitch free for a Wigtown victory. He winced. It was fun to watch, but why anyone actually wanted to play quidditch was beyond him.

He’d spent quite a few days over the last month restraining himself from bothering Quinn. She had a life of her own, after all, and just because he was doing nothing didn’t mean she was doing nothing. But this seemed like a good excuse. His sister didn’t take losing well, and her season so far had been pretty rubbish. What good was he if not for cheering up? Excited to have plans, he bounded out of bed in the morning as gracefully as he could manage these days and quickly dressed.

On the way he stopped to get them a bit of Ogden’s, just in case.

He apparated outside of the fence of Quinn’s house near Falmouth, scaring Basil away from the bushes. With an apologetic grimace at the cat, he hopped up the steps and knocked. When Quinn opened the door, Alex held up his bottle of firewhiskey by the neck. “I’m here for the Screw Wigtown party,” he said with a hopeful, lopsided grin. He could pretend drinks at Quinn’s house was a party, something to make a day of. It made him feel better.

Sleep hadn't helped, tea hadn't helped, yoga hadn't helped. Basically, nothing helped. Quinn was laying quite still, stretched out on the carpeted floor next to the plushy sofa in her living room. The morning light was filling the room, annoying Quinn and every fiber of her being. She had had quite a few owls that morning already, and she had successfully ignored every one. After the third or fourth one, she had set all her cats outside as a sort of makeshift guard, but really, they were useless. The owls weren't as frequent as they had been the night before, but she was still ignoring them. If she didn't acknowledge her defeat, maybe it hadn't really happened.

The woman wasn't about to fall asleep, though her body was exhausted. She hadn't slept through the night, finally rolling out of bed this morning before the sun was up, doing some angry journaling while she sipped peppermint tea. Her yoga practice during sunrise had been less than pleasurable and did absolutely nothing to help clear her mind of any of the thoughts clouding it. She kept replaying the match in her mind, her left hand squeezing in and out of a fist as she recalled her first bludger hit to her arm. She did her best to will herself to see things from different angles to figure out if she should have been able to dodge that last bludger but so far kept coming to the same conclusion that really, she wasn't at fault.

Quinn let out a dramatic sigh aimed towards the ceiling, unsure what her next attempt at making herself feel better would be. She could think of one incredibly physical activity that would help, but the fact that she wanted to do that with one specific someone was not helping in the least. Her next dramatic sigh was rudely interrupted by a knock at the door; were owls really not enough that now someone had to come bother her in person? The woman sat up slowly, grabbing hold of the sofa to pull herself the rest of the way up.

She snatched her wand off the table, fully intending to hex whoever was on the other side of the door. That would at least make her feel better. Still, she stretched up on her toes to peek through the peephole to size up her would-be target. When she saw her brother standing there, half of her was pleased to see him, and the other half was disappointed that she wouldn't be hexing anyone right off the bat. Quinn opened the door, not returning his grin. "It's in full swing," she said with a shrug, backing away from the door and pulling it open far enough for Alex to let himself in.

Quinn quickly resumed her spot on the floor, pulling her hands up to cover her face. "You better not be here to make fun of me."

She looked dreadful. Not even attempting to smile when she saw him. “Sure looks like a party,” Alex commented on her sullen face. His eyes flicked to her wand in her hand, and he chuckled. “Who were you expecting?” He was glad he’d escaped her fire, even if she didn’t look particularly pleased to see him.

He followed her in, setting his bottle on a side table. “Come on now, would I do that?” he teased. He might have, with enthusiasm, and she would make fun of him mercilessly right back. But this wasn’t one of those moods. Alex joined her on the floor, falling a little ungracefully, and pulled one of her hands away. “Bludger to the face and you’re still prettiest player in the league.” Leaning back on his hands, he looked at her. Usually a loss didn’t get her this wound up.

“Anything else on your mind?” he asked. He wasn’t sure if he expected her to admit it in this sort of a mood. “Whatever it is,” he said, “you look like someone who needs to forget some stuff.” And if she did, he was all in.

"Of course you would," the woman said from behind her hands, not wanting to look at what she was sure would be a smile on her brother's face. "And I wouldn't blame you," she added honestly, well aware of her embarrassing display the day before. Thankfully she wasn't aware of any member of their family being at the match, and if anyone had been there, they weren't making a big deal about it, for which she was grateful.

She didn't resist when he pulled her hand away, leaving her other there for posterity's sake. She looked up at him from her spot on the floor, managing a smile at his next comment. He really did have a good point. She did somehow manage to stay the prettiest player even after getting a bludger to the face. "That's true," she said, smirking the tiniest bit. Quinn knew that he was just saying things now to make her feel better, but she appreciated it all the same.

Until she remembered that she really shouldn't be the one complaining. Alex had always been the one exception to her rule of putting her own feelings first, and that had only gotten worse since he had come back from his ordeal with the dome. Quinn wasn't sure how he felt about it, but she was treading lightly around their usual relationship of Alex saying something witty and clever and Quinn having an even wittier and more clever comeback.

She sat up, trying to get as close to eye level as she could. "Nothing at all," she said quickly. Whatever non-quidditch issues she had could wait until she had figured out where exactly they stood. As much as it would make her feel better to hex him, she actually felt a twinge of guilt for wanting to do that in the first place.

Plus, there wasn't anything to tell him besides quidditch. This time last week she had been a little excited at the prospect of there maybe being some new man-related story she could share with him, but as it had been a week since she had sent Oliver a letter without reply, she wasn't keeping her hopes up. So there wasn't anything to tell Alex, anyway.

"Were you wanting some of that?" Quinn gestured to the bottle of whisky on the table. She wasn't about to join him, not-so-fondly remembering the hangover part of her morning last week, but she wasn't about to deny her guest his gifted alcohol even if it was still morning.

“Oh, alright, I might’ve,” he chuckled. “From what I hear it was a pretty laughable performance.” But he hadn’t been on the top of his game lately either. Normally he would take her teasing, when he was knocked out in the first ten seconds of battle or took out one of his fellow aurors by accident, but he wasn’t feeling up for it at the moment. Maybe he’d misjudged the mood. It wasn’t Quinn who didn’t want to laugh at herself, it was him. He hated that. It was just a stupid explosion, just a stupid leg. He didn’t want to be changed.

“It is true,” he said, and then he forced it with a grin. “Just because I don’t play, of course.”

Quinn sat up close to him then, quite seriously. Alex narrowed his eyes and looked back. What was she hoping to see? Some difference? Some vulnerability? He wished she wouldn’t do this. He would tell her how he felt, she didn’t need to go sleuthing.

Thankfully, she changed the subject. "Oh, only if you did," he said. Which he’d expected. Quinn wasn’t normally one to pass up a drink, even at this hour if it was after such an embarrassing loss. “Or, you know, keep it for another time. If your season keeps on going this way you’ll need it.” Alex laughed and stretched his legs out on the floor. It didn’t look like they were going anywhere. “Anything else you need?”

Quinn scowled up at her brother as he finally made fun of her. "That's what I heard, too," she agreed, "but thankfully I was unconscious before I could hear any of it." But she was conscious enough now to read what the Prophet had to say about it, and her few discarded issues were exactly why she had such a nice little fire going in the fireplace. She sighed again, adding a small "Thanks," with a roll of her eyes. "You really know how to cheer a girl up." But really, having him there at all actually was helping.

"If you played, I'd switch to beater just so I could have an excuse to launch things at you," she said with a laugh, deciding not to touch on the question she had in the back of her mind for weeks now: can he still ride a broom at all? Even if he wasn't very good at quidditch, he always seemed to indulge her whenever she bullied him into flying around with him. "And I'd have to aim for your face, of course." She returned his grin as she sat up, though it felt like there were things that needed to be said that neither of them wanted to make an attempt at.

She shook her head slowly. "I think I'll pass," she said with a slight grimace at the bottle. "I think I've already met my hangover quota for the season." She laughed, thankful that her brother had managed to make her do so. Having too much to drink on more than one occasion the past couple weeks was just one excuse she was using for her performance on the pitch. "And wow, thanks for your vote of confidence." She shifted her weight just enough to be able to punch Alex lightly in the shoulder, though she wasn't hoping to impart any damage.

"Tea then?" Quinn sat up a little straighter, picking up her wand again once she had a clear view into the kitchen. The kettle was just visible enough for her to put it on to boil without having to get up, though she was pretty sure she would have to get up once the water was ready. Until then, however, the woman decided to lay back down, letting out another sigh, "I really need to teach the cats how to fetch the tea for me."

She turned her head to look up at Alex, "You better have been really busy yesterday since you missed my match, even if I only played for ten minutes."

“That’s what I’m here for,” said Alex with a soft, earnest smile. All teasing aside, easing Quinn’s moods could have been considered his side job. It never bothered him. Instead it felt like a privilege, that she trusted him enough to let him in.

He shook his head and laughed. Sometimes he wondered why she hadn’t gone for the position that got to take out the opposition, but then again, she’d chosen the most glorified, the most important. He got it. “You already do whatever you like without an excuse,” he said. “What’s the difference?” Mockingly, he put a horrified hand to his face at her next words. “Goodness, Quinn, I’ve already lost a leg, you wouldn’t damage my dashing good looks too?” It was probably a stupid thing to say. Quinn didn’t seem eager to touch on what had happened, and he’d been all too happy to act like nothing was different. But Alex didn’t think his body was sacred, couldn’t be spoken of, joked about. Maybe it was best to break the ice.

He raised his eyebrows as she admitted to drinking too much. “Merlin,” he said with a little chuckle, “what have you been up to?” His reluctance to bother Quinn had resulted in him being rather uninformed about her life as of late, a state that was quite unusual. “Besides losing, of course,” he added. It didn’t feel right to go a sentence without at least one jab in there.

“Tea sounds nice,” he said as she lay back down, peering at his sister. “I can get it if you’d rather wallow in despair.”

She was accusing him, then, of blowing off her last match. Alex looked away. Why hadn’t he gone? He looked back to the day and could barely remember what he’d been doing. Probably slept until two and ate too much the rest of the day. “Oh, you know, just been busy recovering from psychological trauma,” he joked rather than admit he’d been slacking. “Watching my sister get hit in the face might’ve made things worse.” In truth going to quidditch games was the sort of fun, everyday activity he was probably supposed to be doing. He had a desire to resume a normal life, but it wasn’t enough. He’d lost drive, forward motion. And he hated it.

She knew he was kidding with his mock horror, but that didn't stop Quinn from feeling horrible about her threat to bludger him in the face. She wasn't about to apologize for it though, knowing that would only make it worse. "Don't tempt me," she did her best attempt at a smile, though it probably didn't come across quite as sincere as she was hoping. Only one of them could be the most attractive of their siblings, and she wasn't about to relinquish her self-proclaimed title without a fight.

"Well," she began with a grin despite the queasy feeling she got when she thought about just how much she had been drinking in the past few weeks, "We had two bye weeks after we beat Portree." Surely that should be explanation enough? Free time coupled with an actually great match wasn't a combination she had lately, so it was a good reason for celebration. "And I finally had some time to see some people," she added, implying that she was catching up with old friends, which wasn't a complete lie. They hadn't talked about the most personal aspects of their lives since before last September, and she wasn't about to start that up again now by telling him all the finer details of her most memorable night out.

Quinn shook her head as best as she could from her position at his offer to get the tea. "Forcing myself to be hospitable is probably for the best. Plus you always make it wrong," she said with a smirk, peering back at him. That also wasn't a total lie, but only because Quinn had very particular tastes when it came to tea and it was usually easier to just make it herself, especially since she was fairly certain that Alex messed hers up on purpose.

She watched with wide eyes as Alex looked away, already regretting her decision to chide him for missing the match. The leg was a good excuse, you idiot, she scolded herself. But then he turned it into a joke, even though she was absolutely sure that seeing her take that bludger would have made his life much worse. He would have been too worried for his own good, so it was probably for the best that he hadn't seen it. "We only have one match this month, but you should come," she said as she reached over and placed her hand on his, giving it a gentle squeeze. "I promise not to get hit in the face."

The kettle started whistling from the kitchen, and Quinn gave Alex's hand one last pat as she got up to get everything together for the tea. She was back in a few quick minutes, a bright yellow teapot in one hand and two mismatched teacups bobbing along behind her, her free hand clutching her wand. She set everything down on the closest table to where Alex was sitting and poured them both a cup. The woman resumed her seat next to her brother, moving to bump his shoulder lightly with hers as she sat.

"What were you doing yesterday, really?" She asked him before she could stop herself, knowing that he probably could use a bit of space from her in his life, but she missed him too much to let his alone time last for too much longer.

Quinn’s face had gone a little funny, and Alex’s insides tightened. He shouldn’t be being so flippant. He’d probably put Quinn, along with the rest of their family, through a great deal of trauma. His feelings on the matter were one thing, but with everyone else’s feelings in consideration, joking about it so casually made him a bit of a dick. Deciding it was best to return to the ignoring-it thing, he responded to her smile as if it had been genuine. “If my gorgeous face is that threatening to you, go ahead.”

“I see,” he said. She wasn’t being very specific. He must not have caught her in a particularly sharing mood. Maybe she just didn’t have anything to complain about. Complaining was a lot of what they did together. Quinn shook her head at his offer, so Alex settled against the couch. He grimaced as she insulted his tea-making skills but didn’t take it too much to heart. She’d always been an if-you-want-something-done-right-do-it-yourself sort of person. He’d gotten used to it by now.

“Oh, I'll definitely come,” Alex promised, and glanced down at the surprisingly tender hand on his. He was getting a lot of that lately, even from the more unexpected places. At least today Quinn was interspersing it with barbs and punches; it wasn’t like at St. Mungo’s. “Maybe I’ll be your good-luck charm.” He was tempted to add that clearly he wasn’t his own, but his self-imposed moratorium on leg-related humor prohibited him. Instead he flipped his palm up and squeezed Quinn’s hand before she got up to make the tea.

She returned with the tea and he took the warm cup in his hands. “Nothing, really,” he said. “I’ve been doing a lot of nothing. It’s murder.” He disliked being idle. With a dramatic sigh, he leaned his head on Quinn’s shoulder. “Let’s do something today.”

"Nothing would drive me crazy," Quinn sympathized, not considering meditating for hours on end to be nothing but not too many shared in that opinion. She had been close to asking Alex to move in with her, if only for a little while, when he was still in the hospital, but she had chickened out before she took the chance. She hadn't dwelled for too long on why she didn't end up asking him, knowing it was probably because she was too selfish to try to deal with someone that wasn't herself. Even if that someone was Alex. Still, she couldn't help but feel like it was her fault he had been doing nothing.

She straightened up as much as she could to make Alex more comfortable as he rest his head on her shoulder, in turn leaning into him and matching his dramatic sigh. Not knowing what to say around him wasn't something she was used to. Thank Merlin he suggested that they go do something, even if he didn't follow that up with an actual suggestion about what they should do.

Quinn set her cup down after taking a long sip of tea, trying to come up with something for them to do. They were currently doing exactly what she had planned for her day, but that wasn't going to be enough for him. Especially if she kept running out of things to say to him. "How about..." she drew out her last word, trying to buy herself as much time as possible as she still hadn't come up with anything.

"We could degnome my garden," she suggested seriously, having put off that particular chore for longer than she really should have as the gnomes were to the point now of terrorizing the cats. Yet as she said the words aloud, she realized that even with Alex helping her, she didn't want to put forth any effort into her garden today. "Or," she said loudly, suddenly remembering one of her former Broomfleet teammates telling her about this place in Lisbon the team had been frequenting when they had a particularly rough match.

She stood up and held her hand out to help Alex stand up as well, out of habit more than actually thinking he needed help. "I have a perfect idea." She left long enough to throw on a cleaner shirt and a pair of shoes, reentering the living room excitedly. "Follow me," she told him, not giving him the opportunity to protest. This was his idea, after all. Quinn was at the fireplace in a few steps, grabbing a handful of floo powder form the jar of the mantel and throwing it in the fire.

She gave the name of the magical area of Lisbon after she stepped in, and with a last grin to Alex, she was gone. Her stopping grate was a nice little coffee shop, full of people having a lazy Sunday morning. She stepped to the side of the new fireplace to give Alex plenty of room to arrive, assuming he had decided to follow her at all. And if he had decided against it, she would be quickly getting over feeling sorry for him as she hexed him.

But even as Quinn was thinking about hexing her little brother, he was there, and she wasted no time grabbing his hand and leading him out of the shop. It was much brighter here on these streets than it had been in Falmouth, so she moved as quickly as they could, eager to get to where she was taking him. It only took a few minutes of Quinn pulling and reassuring him that it would be great before they were there.

The door was pretty nondescript, with a simple hand-painted sign that said "Campo de Tiro" in large block letters. "This is it," she said, pulling the door open and allowing Alex to walk in before  her, though she was close behind him. The inside was a brightly lit warehouse type, with halls going in each direction from the little lobby they were standing in. Quinn stepped around her brother and quickly bought them both a few hours of time before motioning to the hallway to Alex's left.

It was a long hallway, with little booths running along the right side. But once they could see into one of the booths, it became clear that they were in a magical shooting gallery, all set up with dummies, both moving and not, at least 50 meters away. "Pick a spot," she said, indicating all the empty spaces.

“Oh, it’s the worst,” Alex mumbled. “Of course, not that I’ve been doing much to change it.” He’d gotten into lazy patterns these last few months and had not yet dug himself out of that hole. “I walk around, I go places,” he clarified. Looking at the walls of his room got old and stifling, made him feel guilty. “But it’s different than needing to be someplace, you know?”

Quinn hesitated after he suggested they do something. Clearly she had no ideas, and he felt bad for leaving that up to her. His brain hadn’t been in his left knee, after all, there was only so much coddling he could get away with. “Er, we could—“ he began, but then she spoke. He laughed. “We very well could,” he said. “I will literally do anything.” And throwing gnomes about would be satisfying. It had always been his favorite chore.

But she appeared to have arrived at another idea. His head lost its rest as Quinn stood up and he took her hand to be pulled up along with her. “Is it a surprise, then?” he called after her when she gave no details and left the room. She did this too much, she knew he liked surprises. She returned wearing a different top and went immediately to the fireplace, tossing in powder and saying the name of a place he recognized. “A walk down memory lane?” Alex asked with a smirk. They’d spent some time in magical Lisbon during his visits when Quinn had played in Portugal. But she again offered no explanation, simply commanded him to follow. He followed.

Alex skidded out of the fireplace ungracefully. Must have just been the new weight imbalance throwing him off, but it was still embarrassing in a shop full of wizards. Thankfully they were out of there quick and moving fast.

Still trying to piece together “campo” and “tiro” into something that made sense with his limited Portuguese, he waited with Quinn in the lobby of the place and followed her down the hall. Once he saw the the booths and the dummies, however, his face lit up. There was something like this in the auror facilities at the Ministry. He’d toyed with the thought of sneaking Quinn in on occasion when she seemed particularly stressed. He didn’t know there was one open to the public.

Wandering into one of the booths, he set his sights on one of the moving dummies and pulled his wand from his pocket. He whipped his wand quickly toward the target and shouted “Bombarda Maxima!” just for the pure pleasure of being as loud as possible, of watching the dummy stop in its tracks and explode. He’d be more refined later. The dust and fragments from the explosion began to re-form, until the dummy was whole and ready again.

He laughed. "I kind of want to punch it," he said.

Quinn grinned, seeing Alex's face look much happier than it had been back in England. "Knew it," she said, referring to the fact that she had selected the perfect thing for them to do this morning. She pulled out her own wand and picked the booth to the immediate left of her brother. She was already feeling better and she had yet to destroy anything; things could only get better.

Still, she probably should have picked something else for them. Having not finished her education, Quinn's dueling and general spell effectiveness were not as impressive or refined as Alex, a card carrying Auror. Quinn would definitely not be leaving this building feeling superior to him. But it was too late now to change her mind, and maybe showing off would improve Alex's day, even if it was at the expense of Quinn's ego.

She waited until Alex's dummy had exploded before she called out her own spell: "Confringo!" Quinn's dummy wasn't moving as she was trying to give herself every chance to actually be successful in this. Still, even though she aimed to hit the dummy square in the chest, she was far off, just narrowly hitting it near the bottom. The spell was still effective though, causing the dummy to burst into flames.

The woman took a step back to admire her work, picturing the Wanderers' seeker in place of the dummy. It was pretty cathartic, but she still had at least six more members of the Wanderers to destroy. Quinn was drawn out of her reverie by her brother's voice and she turned to look at him, laughing as she agreed. "If you want to punch him, I'll keep a look out."

By then her dummy had extinguished itself and moved backwards by a few meters, and Quinn steeled herself as she readied herself for her next try. "Alex," she called from her own booth, wanting him to abandon his work and come over. "Show me something fun," she pleaded, only coming up with exploding or setting the dummy on fire again, and neither of them seemed gruesome enough to fix her feelings.

Quinn seemed to have similar desires. Alex grinned as she set her dummy aflame. “There we go,” he said, watching the flames lick up it. He hadn’t realized how much he needed to feel better until now. His sister had read his mind, as usual, even though this was supposed to be about her. It had been an excellent idea. They could have blown stuff up at home, probably. But destroying other people’s property had a perverse satisfaction that breaking one’s own dishes didn’t.

He took a moment to consider her request. With people, stunning usually did the trick. But that was practically the opposite of fun. He could show off his superior aim, perhaps. But finding some other way to destroy the target seemed more interesting to watch. Inspiration striking him, he cast a spell he’d never have cast on a real person. It took a couple seconds for the dummy to start showing the effects: first distorting, slow bubbles forming, then finally bursting in an explosion of molten goo.

“So who was that?” he asked Quinn as the dummy began to re-form from the liquid that coated the walls and ceiling.

"Ooh," Quinn cooed as she watched the dummy get destroyed once more. "That's perfect." She didn't bother asking if he had learned that in his Auror training, preferring not to know where he had learned to destroy a person so perfectly. She made a mental note that she ought to remember this one, silently cursing the fact that they weren't allowed to carry wands on the pitch.

She had a long list of people she would like the dummy to be, but she would settle for one of the most recent entries to the list. "Wally Parkin," she said, grinning, naming the beater that knocked her out of the match the day before. "Though really I think that's mild compared to what he ought to get," she sighed dramatically, rubbing her cheek at the spot the bludger had made contact.

"Either way, I'm definitely going to use that one," she said, talking about the spell Alex had just used. She stepped up to the edge of the booth once more and after receiving confirmation from her brother that her pronunciation was correct, she aimed at the newly reformed dummy. However, despite her correct pronunciation, she did not have the best aim. That was just one more reason she was a seeker and not a chaser.

The hex missed the dummy to the far right of its head, bounced off the back wall, and came back towards them. Thankfully the range had prepared for exactly this and had some sort of one-way barrier set up directly in front of where the wizards stood and it rippled quickly as it absorbed her reverberated hex. Quinn groaned, only more upset now than when they had first arrived.

She summoned the dummy closer to her and shot at it again, this time making contact with her target. It had the same reaction as when Alex hit it, though to a slightly lesser degree, the burst of molten goo not going quite as far. "Ugh," she groaned again. "This is stupid," she muttered, unhappy that she had picked something that Alex was better at than she was. "Better than degnoming the garden, though." Somehow it was frowned upon to make gnomes explode in a mess of molten goo.

“Poor Wally,” said Alex, amused. He came up beside Quinn, resting an arm on her shoulder. “I don’t think I’m up for bloody murder, but I’ll help jelly-legs the shit out of anyone you need.” He really should have been uncomfortable that the targets they were blowing up were person-shaped. Painless was more his style. But it was figurative, what they were doing. Like ripping up a photograph. Nobody had particularly earned his ire lately, but he was all too happy to help Quinn blow off steam.

Deciding to cool off a little on his next go, he made the dummy sprout flowers all over with a flick of his wand and grinned at his handiwork.

As he glanced back, though, Quinn was looking quite frustrated. She’d been trying to repeat his spell, but was having some problems with aim. “If it’s stupid we don’t have to stay,” he said. “This is a Quinn day. We do whatever Quinn wants to do.” He hoped she wouldn’t try to make it an Alex day too. It wasn’t like he’d just been dumped or anything, he didn’t want to be a big deal.

“We could hang around here,” he suggested. “It’s been a while.” They’d ruled magical Portugal when they were together here. The sort of things they’d gotten up to then were perhaps not a very good idea now, if Quinn wasn’t in the mood for a drink. But maybe a bit of reminiscing was in order.