April 15th, 1891 — Robins Residence, Pennyworth

After a long day at work, George was quite happy to be in his own home. He had given a kiss to Mamas cheek and been informed that Gus was not home yet. The ghost cat that kept following him despite his best efforts was trying to get at the canaries. Of course, all she managed to do was fly through them but it was still disturbing the little birds.

He tried shooing it away but all it did was curl up on the bed with Mama. George decided to let it be and began cutting up some vegetables for a stew. He had brought home some fresh bread from the Backus Bakery that they could have with it.

It was not long until the scent of the stew filled the home and wafted out the open kitchen window.

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Augusta Robins / Elias Grimstone

  

“Mm, I’m famished,” Gus said brightly, sticking her head briefly through the open window to give George his due warning that she was back before she ducked round to the door and let herself in. She always felt a little that she was disturbing the peace, when she was the last home and it had just been George and their mother in the house - she couldn’t picture her brother ever being loud, particularly not when he was alone.

Still, she didn’t like to let her brother do all the work when he’d come back from all day at his Ministry job - although it was not as physical as her career, it sounded tiresome sometimes all the same - so she rolled up her sleeves. After splashing her face upstairs, she thudded back down and ripped off a small piece of bread to chew discreetly as she began pulling bowls out from the cupboard.

“How was - your day?” She said, through her maybe-not-so-discreet mouthful of bread, too busy to notice that the graze at her elbow (where she’d scraped it against the hoops at practice) was beading up with blood again.

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George smiled as his sister stuck her head through the open window. “You’re just in time. Then. The stew is just about finished,” he informed her. He made the finishing touches while Gus went to splash her face.

As she set out the bowls, George placed the cauldron of stew in the middle of the table. ”It was a long one. And another ghost cat has followed me home,” he said, indicating the ghostly feline lounging with their mother.

Noticing the blood, he gasped a little as he grabbed a cloth. ”You’re b-b-bleeding. Did a bludger hit you?” He had already worried about Gus’s safety before that Quidditch game where a bludger had killed a woman. He knew Gus was well equipped to deal with it but worrying was what he did.

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Gus shook her head as she began doling out the stew into portions (small for their mother, who rarely had the energy to eat a full meal, larger for Georgie, who was giant and really ought to eat more than he did, and a fair size for her, because she hadn’t been exaggerating about being famished. Well, not much.) 

“Nah, I’m marvellous at dodging bludgers, I only ran into the hoop,” she said in easy amusement, waving off his worry with the arm in question, until she realised she was dropping tiny blood spatters on the table. (Fortunately not in the stew.) Teasing the cloth from his hand to deal with that, she slid him his bowl of stew instead and dropped into a chair, holding her elbow up at an awkward angle until the bleeding stopped.

“So, tell me about this one,” she pressed with a grin, jerking her head in the vague direction of the ghost cat. George’s work tales were always entertaining to her (- though possibly sometimes frustrating to him -) but the ghostly animals were often especially adorable. “And how you did it. You didn’t accidentally lure it along with a... ghost-mouse, or something?” Gus teased.

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"Oh, only. All right, then," George said teasingly. He was always worlds more comfortable with his family. Thus, he obviously spoke more freely than he would in the office or most anywhere else outside of their home.

George took a spoonful of his stew and took a moment to chew before answering. "Oh, Merlin no. It just... kept following me. No matter how much I shooed it." Living animals and ghostly animals, it didn't matter which. They tended to attach themselves to him even if he would rather that they didn't.

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Gus grinned, glad he had stopped making a fuss and started teasing her so she didn’t have to knock him about the head to encourage it. She leant forwards to try and reach her spoonful of stew without lowering her elbow, which looked about as ungainly as it would have had her brother invited a mountain troll to tea, but she was too hungry to wait to eat until the bleeding had stopped.

“Better than a ball of string, aren’t ya?” she joked, as George explained his magic touch, quite at home with his sheepishness, though she liked it better when he answered back in his sweet teasing way. But her brother had gotten the best of them, ought to be made of nothing but sunshine and daisies, and she suspected these ghost-cats could sense this more than the goblins had. (Or perhaps that had been George’s problem with the goblins. They could probably smell his kindness.) “I like the ghost strays,” she admitted brightly; she didn’t mind a live stray either, but they didn’t have the time nor funds to care for too many living creatures, and she had always been a little too practical, though her next was teasing still - “Much less mess from them.”

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George chuckled in response to Gus's joking comment. He didn't know why the spirit animals chose to attach themselves to him. He did nothing to actively encourage it.

"All the fun of a pet without the cleanup," George said, though he would much rather a pet he could play with. "I think I wouldn't mind a cat I could pet though."

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“Ah, see, I don’t need a pet to pet,” Gus replied, a – loving – smirk on her face, “I’ve always had you.” She couldn’t quite reach him across the table, not with the stew between them and the scrape on her arm, but she mimed ruffling his hair in the air all the same. In fact, she only really had a hope of even reaching the top of his head when he was sitting down, nowadays; trying to achieve that on level ground had been a problem for a decade at least. But she wasn’t giving up the memory of being able to, not now.

“But,” she acknowledged, lowering her tone a little, lest her mother should hear (and her mother was more attached to the birds than she was) “when the canaries –” she mouthed kick the bucket, and the birds didn’t live especially long so he wouldn’t have particularly long to wait, “I expect you’ll be bringing home a live stray the very next day, won’t you?” And – well, she’d live. George would take care of it and it might fall asleep on their mother’s lap and Gus would try not to step on its tail as best she could.

That was not a problem with the ghost ones. They were more likely to give her a fright than the other way round, poking their heads through walls and all.

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George snorted when Gus said she didn't need a pet to pet. "You would need to be able to reach first," he teased lightly as he broke his bread apart so that he could dip it into his stew. His height was not something he was always comfortable with. It sometimes drew attention all on its own but it sometimes came in handy.

"If neither you nor Mother minds, I might like to," George admitted quietly before taking a spoonful of his stew. "A nice, little stray that might otherwise have gone cold anyway."

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   Augusta Robins

“I can balance on my broom if I need to,” Gus threatened, with a broad grin. He might be a giant in comparison, but he would always be her little brother, like it or not; they could be fifty and fifty-two and she’d never let him give up the title.

But the fact remained that she would give him anything, anything in her power that he wanted, if it would make him happy. Maybe she oughtn’t feel this way – she wasn’t his parent – but she felt as good as. Their father had left them; their mother wasn’t well; Gus had energy and ambition and affection in abundance, and had assigned herself parent and protector and friend as well as sister enough years ago, and unless George, now that he was all grown up, told her to stop one day, she damn well wasn’t going to. “Then have your stray, Georgie,” she said, with a fond little smile and a shake of her head. “How could anyone ever say no?”

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George chuckled in response to his sisters threat. He would not put it past her to do so. Most especially if he annoyed her enough. Not that he did so often, he liked to think. But sometimes a bit of annoyance came with the territory between two siblings as close as they were.

George smiled as Gus agreed to his stray. Not that he wished death on their birds, of course. "Maybe not the next day, though. That would be a little insensitive." Was there a mourning period for canaries? He should try finding out.

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Gus only shrugged at that, caring less about insensitivity to dead birds than scooping up a grand old mouthful of stew for herself. “Well, as long as you don’t let things get too quiet around here,” she joked, sure that a new pet of any kind could prove a comfort when their mother had one of her worsened periods and everything indoors felt stifling and quiet and orderly. She didn’t mind being the loud one in the family, but another mess of a creature probably would make her feel more at home about it.

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"With a live cat, I doubt that would be the case," George mused. "Besides, won't it be nice for Mother to have something soft and warm to cuddle up with?" Much as he liked the canaries, he didn't much see the appeal of a pet that you really just looked at or listened to. He would personally much rather have a pet you could cuddle and play with. Maybe he would teach his future cat some tricks like one did a dog. They were smart creatures, he was sure it must be possible.

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“‘Course,” Gus agreed with a lopsided smile, but she shook her head in something like exasperation as she went back to shovelling her food into her mouth – she’d already agreed to his little venture to get a cat, and though it was sweet he was thinking of their mother as much as of himself, Gus was now more interested in the stew he’d made than any pets. She pointed her spoon at him with a stern air of finality. “But I draw the line at one.”

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wrap? <3

  

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