[torquay] ohana means family [puff posse]

family means no one gets left behind. or forgotten.

Ari's fingers were awkward as they hovered indecisively over the buttons on the DVD/VCR machine. She was plenty used to the VCR that her grandparents used to own from the days when she and Ed and Kate would spend the whole summer at their house in Torquay, but they'd recently gotten one of the combined machines that had come out a few years back, to her grandad's immense excitement, along with a new TV that was supposed to make everything sharper. "Send the kids over to check it out!" he'd written her mum insistently, several times, until finally Ari caved. Maybe it was a Hufflepuff thing -- something about loyalty to her siblings, to be the one to step up, and loyalty to her grandad too, to not disappoint him. It had quickly evolved from just duty, though: a casual mention of it to Cordelia had turned into a convenient recommendation from one of her cousins, which had turned into Camm promising to obtain the DVD, only released in the US, on an assignment, which had turned into a full-day seaside outing between the friends. Ari had spent the day showing her friends around various places from her childhood, including Kents cavern, the Babbacombe model village and the beach, still pretty if not balmy in the pale winter sun, but here at the last she was less assured.

"Merlin," she muttered as she accidentally hit the eject button for the VHS tape instead of the DVD before picking the right one and watching the disc slide in. "I feel like an old lady."

"I heard that!" called her nan as she walked in with a divided tub of sweet and salty popcorn. Ari threw a guilty look over her shoulder and thanked her for the food instead. "You sure you don't need help?" she teased affectionately, but let Ari chase her out as she assured her that Camm could handle any electronics problems, though not without an admonishment not to give the 'nice young man' too many problems and a telltale wink. Ari groaned. "She just wants me to date a 'nice English boy,'" she grumbled as she walked out. Ari wasn't entirely sure whether she was joking or not, but chose for her own sake to believe she was, whatever the case might be. She dropped onto the sofa next to Cordelia--avoiding giving her nan any more ideas by sitting next to her roommate--jostling her friend lightly as the padding creaked underneath them and passed her the remote, exchanging it for a handful of sweet popcorn. "Do the honors? What's this film about, anyway?"

@Cordelia Leighton @Camm Erskine

It was always a challenge to connect to the Muggle side of the family, even before the war. Cordelia's father had grown up close to his cousins and had managed to preserve that relationship into adulthood, but it was harder to connect to second cousins even before accounting for the Statute of Secrecy. The existence of magic in the family was not exactly secret, but certainly glossed over and ignored by most beyond Cordelia's grandparents. And after the war - well, how did you explain a secret coup and brief military takeover of a country, but not the country that they knew, a hidden underground society? How do you explain Dementors and Azkaban? How do you explain what exactly happened to Lowell? How do you explain how Luke died?

Cordelia, with her knack for stories, came up with most of the Muggle friendly versions, but grief transcends the barrier between magical and non-magical family. Surprising everyone, the Muggle Leightons' became much closer to Cordelia's family in the years that followed. A few cousins Cordelia even got to know and like, and keeping up with them meant she still had one foot in non-magical society. So when Ariana had mentioned her own Muggle grandparent's new Digital Video Disc machine, she knew of a few Muggle movies that could be fun to watch.

"My cousins really like Disney films," she had said, lounging in Ari and Camm's apartment, beer in hand. "There's one about an alien in Hawaii that came out recently, made Marg cry, it's animated." A letter home and a trip to the US by Camm later, and here was the disc, locked in a white plastic clamshell that seemed as alien to Cordy as Stitch himself.

Her legs still sore from the lovely walk in the caves and on the beach, Cordelia had no problem letting her longtime friend futz with the DVD machine. "You're not old yet," Cordy said, gratefully taking the tub of popcorn from Ari's grandmother. "You're just a wizard. Learning magic drives Muggle stuff right out of our brains or something." She glanced over at Camm and nudged his shoulder. "Present nice English boys excluded, of course." It was pretty impressive how handy Camm still was with Muggle technology. Cordelia was in no way behind the times, she had a typewriter and everything, but Camm was with, or maybe in front of them. Cordelia wouldn't say it, but she was glad that this had stayed a get together for the three of them, and certain wizards of French origin hadn't been invited along.

"Oi, the popcorn," Cordelia yelped as Ari plopped down beside her, but she was laughing. The remote was oddly shaped, like a half brick, but pointing it at a screen was almost like wielding a wand (which was tucked in her bag in the entranceway, far from the TV, just in case). She clicked the buttons, relying on her memory of the TV at her own gran's to start the disc and skip through the previews. "It's about, uh," what did Marge say again? "It's about chosen family, and siblings, and also aliens." There was the disc case - she held it up. "Pretty sure the blue one is the alien. It's aimed at kids, I'm sure we'll be able to figure it out."

The last preview skipped, Cordelia put the remote away and leaned back into the couch and the comfort of the trio's friendship as the film started. "I guess this is a court- hey," she stopped mid-sentence. "Doesn't the lady alien look a little like..." Cordy trailed off. Four years later, and it still felt wrong to say You-Know-Who's name.

He didn't want to admit it, but right before he was supposed to meet up with Ariana and Cordelia for movie night he made a trip back to Carnoustie and got a last minute handyman lesson from his dad. Not that he was trying to impress anyone, but he also didn't want to come off looking too bad after he said he'd take care of things if anything went wrong. He also could not for the life of him figure out how to 'region unlock' the US dvd on his own with a friend's borrowed computer, and he had no shame turning to Duncan during moments like this. He, unlike Camm, was professional. The girls seemed reasonably impressed so he's going to keep that bit of information to himself.

Still, he was pretty confident that he'd put in a decent amount of work himself, getting the work assignment to the States to even get the bloody disc in the first place. It was worth it though, spending a day with his friends, getting to see Ari's childhood experiences. Camm didn't really care for the beach. It's hard to get invested in something he's never really known very well, but the model village was neat.

What was supposed to be the main event then became a nice way to end the day's activities. Camm would help Ari with the machine, but he had to admit he enjoyed watching her get all flustered over technology. He just didn't get to see that side of her very often, and it was hilarious. He even ignored Cordy's jab about the "nice English boy". Thank everything Ari didn't think she needed to bring her boyfriend to movie night.

"Aliens?" Camm asked, scooting over just enough so that the three of them were still comfortably smushed on the sofa, and eyed the disc case that Cordy passed over. He's been in the wizarding world so long that the concept of animation was sort of foreign to him. Drawings that moved? Somehow that was even more implausible than moving photographs, which'd been a hard adjustment period for him as a child. "Oi, Cordy! We're watching a kids' movie to relax, not to make parallels to the current political climate."

A few more minutes passed, and Camm let out a low whistle. "That kid is right creepy. Are we supposed to be on her side of the story? 'My friends need to be punished'... Reckon anyone did that to one of us in school? Like some weird, voodoo nonsense?"

"Well, of course, I take solace in knowing I can't ever be old next to you, Cordy," Ari teased. The girls were exactly seven months apart, but given that Cordelia had been a year ahead of them in school, she had been the butt of many a joke about her age over the years. "There's just too much to remember when you've a foot in both worlds, no wonder our friends' parents can never dress properly when they have to be inconspicuous," she complained. "We'll have to institute a yearly group shopping trip, or something, just to make sure we don't end up like them someday. And yearly movie nights," she grinned, looking forward to the film. Wizards had never seen the point of television, for whatever reason. Ari didn't feel like she was missing something not having one around most of the time, but it did make these occasions feel a bit of a treat.

"The popcorn will be fine! You know, because I'm a wizard, I can lift the dust off 'em if they fall out," she laughed, fishing her wand out of her sleeve and brandishing it in circles like her idea of a Muggle's idea of a wizard before stuffing it back up so it wouldn't be a nuisance. She did remember that Cordelia had said it had made her cousin cry, and the subject matter did sound like a bit of a tearjerker, minus the aliens. She glanced to the side at her two friends with a momentary contented look, before looking back at the alien on the disc case. "You know, I always thought aliens would be really small or really huge or something, instead of sized kinda the same as us. Like planet sized or something, and we're just little ants. But this alien looks kinda cute so I'll give it a pass."

Picking Camm's vein of response to the idea, Ari looked critically at the alien judge or whatever she was and concluded "She has way more interesting fashion sense. D'you think we're supposed to be on her side? The other guy is talking about being an evil genius, which is hardly reassuring, but the little alien is on the cover of the movie. Much less cute looking now, though." The music started playing after around ten minutes or so, and Ari's eyes widened at all the fish. "Hey, Camm, your assignment wasn't in Hawaii, was it? I want to go, looks so pretty." Camm seemed more focused on the girl though. "Wow, no compassion out of this one," she declared. "Look how mean they were all being! She called them friends, what would you do if those were the best friends you had?" She considered the question anyway. "Voodoo's real anyway, isn't it? I think they study it at Ilvermorny. I doubt some random Slytherin like that deranged Grodd who stabbed Emma could make it work, if that's any reassurance." Ari's default antagonist remained a Slytherin.

She stared wide eyed as the two sisters yelled at each other. "I don't know whether to laugh or cry, this is just like the time Kate knocked over all the pots when I was the only one at home." She turned her head a little to look at Cordelia in her peripheral vision, in case she looked like she needed a hug. Ari was the only one with a sister-sister relationship,  but she had to be thinking about Luke, a little. Ari did too just then - Luke the summer before he and Edmund went to Hogwarts, going way faster than Ari could on her little-kid broom model, the fun big brother figure to Edmund's cautious safe harbor. She reached out and gave Cordy's hand a brief little squeeze.