just don't boggart my last bag of weed.
I kept hoping Avery and Dolohov would bust out of Azkaban, you know? Get an apartment together somewhere, just hang out, like those guys on friends. YOU KNOW YOU'VE THOUGHT ABOUT IT.
Since the day he met Antonin, Lawrence had been very careful not to say anything that might set the other boy off. He had been very calm, very patient, very stupid and very forgiving- the last two usually ran together in their line of things. He couldn't imagine any other reason he agreed to this, that he didn't argue the point more thoroughly with Malfoy when they told him to keep the convict put. Regardless, he set up a bed along the threadbare couch and kept his head until Antonin left a body in the kitchen.
"Antonin, what the fuck. Seriously." Antonin didn't make any motion that he heard Avery, but Lawrence knew he was listening. Even when Antonin was away on assignments for weeks, Lawrence still had the feeling he's overhearing every word of the firechats with Rookwood. "I'm not touching that."
"Thank you." Listening wasn't a good description of how Antonin regarded conversations. Because the words seem to go into his head fine, but the things that come out of his mouth made Avery want to leap out the window. That's not a response! You're missing the point and you're a horrible person and why did you come to hide when I wanted a fucking life? He hadn't seen his fiancee in weeks and felt sick when he thought of what would happen if she called when he wasn't home.
"I could smell it from the first floor." The most horrifying part of the bloody mess in the corner was that Lawrence didn't too feel phased about it. He couldn't think of what else he expected, leaving his new roommate alone. A roommate with a history for bizarre acts of violence against muggles staying in a complex full of them tended to tilt towards the most predictable acts of carnage. "Somebody probably called the police- you can't just leave this- thing- here!" He tried not to notice the funny angle the arm was bent against the white cupboards, black and blue bruises all alone the bones calling Avery's attention. It was the neatest thing on the whole body. "Who is going to clean this up?"
"I just thought you'd be interested to see."
"See what?" The room was still smoky with spells and it was adding to Lawrence's headache. "I'm not going to prison because you wanted to show me something so- God, Antonin-!" He finally had the decency to turn around and Avery cringed. You-Know-Who was a breathtaking sort of hideous, something that smarts the eyes with dark magic lacing the very outlines of his form. With Antonin it was unintentional evisceration and Avery hadn't seen the Lestranges but imagined they couldn't possibly look that bad, even after the same twelve years.
He remembered opening his door to Antonin with the Azkaban numbers still blazing like fire on his skin. He asked, 'did you come to kill me too?' And watched numbly as Antonin smiled so wide his cracked lips burst blood over his chin.
"Rookwood left another message." He gestured to an illegible scrawl near the fireplace. Lawrence sighed and left the body to fetch the message.
"Thank you."
-
By the third week Lawrence had resigned himself to his fate. He was going to Azkaban, whether through Antonin's morbid hijinks or the sheer untrustworthiness of Rookwood's confidence. It was pretty terrible, of course, and it wasn't as if he was looking forward to it, either. But he had just spent the last dozen or so years in denial that these problems and people would stride up to his doorway again- even if he had moved several times since that Halloween. He wasn't yet sure if he wanted to die instead of the imprisonment, though looking at the recently escaped convicts helped tighten the noose.
"Finally," Antonin replied when Avery confided his fate.
"I'm sure you liked it there." He didn't expect to be forgiven for acting his way out of jailtime, but it was downright sickening to be continually looked down on for staying free. There wasn't the same sort of damning evidence between them. Better yet, Avery didn't confess to ripping out the infamous Prewett brother's eyeballs when a Hit Wizard picked him up for petty muggle baiting. Antonin probably did want to go to Azkaban, the way the Prophet reported how he carried on at the trial. Longbottom nearly climbed into the Wizagamot chamber to hex him, it said, and now Avery didn't think he blamed her. Lawrence used to keep the newspaper clippings that mentioned his old friends, but eventually it was all bad news and he was never really friends with the newsworthy deatheaters anyway.
"You are?" Antonin was lying back on his side of the couch, arm drawn over his eyes. He had been living there for a week and still acted as though the sunlight was too much of a strain on his eyes.
"Did you see something awful?" He had to admit, he felt a little guilty for assuming Antonin would have enjoyed it. Asking details made it only seem a thousand times more uncomfortable, but he felt as if he needed to know how terrible a place it was from the mouth of someone who made Avery's own life particularly miserable as of late. "I mean- The Dementors- I've heard-"
"My sister." He could remember now, mentioning his roommates to his parents and their commonplace interjections. ("Prince was a good witch, waste of her time, marrying a muggle." or "Rosier's woman made a big mistake too.") But that the Dolohovs had copious amounts of filthy children, married off to immediate relatives to try and earn enough galleons to feed themselves. He thinks Antonin mentioned he was going to marry his one of his sisters, or Lawrence conjured it up in a nightmare. Fenwick was the only name worth associating with, his parents assured him, so he forgot the rest of the details. The only one who abandoned them, too.
Avery had altogether forgotten Antonin even had a family until that moment, when it came rushing back at him. It was like his reflection in the dark- for a spilt second it looked like it could still be Hogwarts aged Lawrence Avery, but then the lights came on and he was old. The lines on his face didn't seem so terrible now that he had finally seen what had happened to the Lestranges. Rookwood always looked awful and Antonin was never quite human, but the Lestranges weren't even recognizable. He thought maybe someone had turned Bellatrix and Rabastan inside-out, that all of their pureblood good looks receded and their foul insides surfaced along their skin. It was the only thing that could explain why they finally looked the way they acted. Rodolphus was quietly changed, waxy and drawn and if Avery wasn't so afraid of the lot of them he might have mourned their deterioration.
"That doesn't sound so bad," he breathed and Antonin laid there, looking mutinous in expression but holding his tongue. "Why didn't you stay with your family instead?" Why did you volunteer me to be dragged down with you? was more or less the real question.
"Why didn't you?" Lawrence sighed, pressing his spine into the couch cushions and looking to the ceiling panels. It was hard to be patient with him, but getting angry only made Antonin go mute, which was more alarming than the bodies he strung from the ceiling fan. He could still see the smear of blood if he squinted.
"Because I'm not a wanted criminal, Antonin. I don't need to hide, I can live on my own." He cooperates better with that sort of response as well. Lawrence wished there was someone he could commiserate with. But Madeline had stopped calling and Rookwood gives Dolohov the cold shoulder and did he really just list Rookwood after his fiancee? thinking of her made Lawrence's breath go short.
"Did I kill Benjy?"
"Did you forget?" Lawrence's voice felt so sudden and savage against his throat that he didn't immediately recognize it. "You killed the Prewetts too." And the McKinnons and that muggles you leave for me to find here and thousands more, sure. But that didn't matter so much as Benjy. Nothing mattered so much as Benjy, left only as a chest cavity while the other Deatheaters dueled with Lupin and Podmore and Avery just stared.
"It was a trap," Evan twisted his wand between his fingers and sat between Lawrence and despair. "It's his own damn fault for being the first in Dumbledore's pathetic scouting line. He made his choice." He had a feeling Evan wasn't as resolved to forgoing his humanity and former friendships as he made himself seem, but Avery knew better than to argue with his feigned resilience.
"But how could Antonin-"
"Are you completely fucking stupid, Avery? If Antonin had disarmed his own trap just because it was Fenwick-" Avery flinched. Benjy, his name was Benjy and we lived with him for seven years (though it felt like six, looking back on it) and we killed him. "-The Dark Lord would have dismembered him for showing mercy." Lawrence didn't forget the way Evan stared at him next, not only because Evan was dead a month later but because it seemed like his expression meant something rational in their war. "Everyone makes their own choices- everyone but you, it looks like." And that it was true.
Lawrence didn't think he'd ever forgive Antonin for killing Benjy. It was misplaced blame, probably, because the Deatheaters were an assembled force to wipe out all resistance against Him and Benjy joined the Order willingly. So, all in all, a collection of Dark Wizards had executed Benjy, not simply the person who rigged up the hidden assault. But Avery was a member of that collection and it hurt to think he killed Benjy of all people, so blaming it all on Antonin helped him keep from getting sick. When he didn't remember all of that, or when Dolohov didn't leave a corpses like a cat bringing home a mouse, Lawrence enjoyed the company.
Antonin shook his head.
"I didn't forget," he assured Avery. He had stopped shaking, but that only drew more attention to how thin he was. I buy food, but you don't eat it. He didn't want to mother a murderer, but they were schoolboys friends once and Malfoy would be nettled if Avery let him starve to death. "His arms came off and landed behind the others and-"
"Don't say-!" He didn't let Antonin into his house because he thought the bastard had changed, but Lawrence was still taken aback by the recounted details. He wondered if it was worth it, staying alive just to hear Dolohov's gruesome rambles and then prison. "You're not sorry, are you? Why did you have to come here?" If he wasn't afraid whatever had gutted Antonin was a catching disease, he would have shook him by the bony shoulders. "Why did you come back?"
"Because He's back," and it was all back to where they had started. Antonin and Avery floo to the meeting together and Avery stood very still and quiet, wondering if Voldemort's return was the only reason Antonin chose him as his victim.
-
check out ladylisse's much better Avery recounts!
Since the day he met Antonin, Lawrence had been very careful not to say anything that might set the other boy off. He had been very calm, very patient, very stupid and very forgiving- the last two usually ran together in their line of things. He couldn't imagine any other reason he agreed to this, that he didn't argue the point more thoroughly with Malfoy when they told him to keep the convict put. Regardless, he set up a bed along the threadbare couch and kept his head until Antonin left a body in the kitchen.
"Antonin, what the fuck. Seriously." Antonin didn't make any motion that he heard Avery, but Lawrence knew he was listening. Even when Antonin was away on assignments for weeks, Lawrence still had the feeling he's overhearing every word of the firechats with Rookwood. "I'm not touching that."
"Thank you." Listening wasn't a good description of how Antonin regarded conversations. Because the words seem to go into his head fine, but the things that come out of his mouth made Avery want to leap out the window. That's not a response! You're missing the point and you're a horrible person and why did you come to hide when I wanted a fucking life? He hadn't seen his fiancee in weeks and felt sick when he thought of what would happen if she called when he wasn't home.
"I could smell it from the first floor." The most horrifying part of the bloody mess in the corner was that Lawrence didn't too feel phased about it. He couldn't think of what else he expected, leaving his new roommate alone. A roommate with a history for bizarre acts of violence against muggles staying in a complex full of them tended to tilt towards the most predictable acts of carnage. "Somebody probably called the police- you can't just leave this- thing- here!" He tried not to notice the funny angle the arm was bent against the white cupboards, black and blue bruises all alone the bones calling Avery's attention. It was the neatest thing on the whole body. "Who is going to clean this up?"
"I just thought you'd be interested to see."
"See what?" The room was still smoky with spells and it was adding to Lawrence's headache. "I'm not going to prison because you wanted to show me something so- God, Antonin-!" He finally had the decency to turn around and Avery cringed. You-Know-Who was a breathtaking sort of hideous, something that smarts the eyes with dark magic lacing the very outlines of his form. With Antonin it was unintentional evisceration and Avery hadn't seen the Lestranges but imagined they couldn't possibly look that bad, even after the same twelve years.
He remembered opening his door to Antonin with the Azkaban numbers still blazing like fire on his skin. He asked, 'did you come to kill me too?' And watched numbly as Antonin smiled so wide his cracked lips burst blood over his chin.
"Rookwood left another message." He gestured to an illegible scrawl near the fireplace. Lawrence sighed and left the body to fetch the message.
"Thank you."
-
By the third week Lawrence had resigned himself to his fate. He was going to Azkaban, whether through Antonin's morbid hijinks or the sheer untrustworthiness of Rookwood's confidence. It was pretty terrible, of course, and it wasn't as if he was looking forward to it, either. But he had just spent the last dozen or so years in denial that these problems and people would stride up to his doorway again- even if he had moved several times since that Halloween. He wasn't yet sure if he wanted to die instead of the imprisonment, though looking at the recently escaped convicts helped tighten the noose.
"Finally," Antonin replied when Avery confided his fate.
"I'm sure you liked it there." He didn't expect to be forgiven for acting his way out of jailtime, but it was downright sickening to be continually looked down on for staying free. There wasn't the same sort of damning evidence between them. Better yet, Avery didn't confess to ripping out the infamous Prewett brother's eyeballs when a Hit Wizard picked him up for petty muggle baiting. Antonin probably did want to go to Azkaban, the way the Prophet reported how he carried on at the trial. Longbottom nearly climbed into the Wizagamot chamber to hex him, it said, and now Avery didn't think he blamed her. Lawrence used to keep the newspaper clippings that mentioned his old friends, but eventually it was all bad news and he was never really friends with the newsworthy deatheaters anyway.
"You are?" Antonin was lying back on his side of the couch, arm drawn over his eyes. He had been living there for a week and still acted as though the sunlight was too much of a strain on his eyes.
"Did you see something awful?" He had to admit, he felt a little guilty for assuming Antonin would have enjoyed it. Asking details made it only seem a thousand times more uncomfortable, but he felt as if he needed to know how terrible a place it was from the mouth of someone who made Avery's own life particularly miserable as of late. "I mean- The Dementors- I've heard-"
"My sister." He could remember now, mentioning his roommates to his parents and their commonplace interjections. ("Prince was a good witch, waste of her time, marrying a muggle." or "Rosier's woman made a big mistake too.") But that the Dolohovs had copious amounts of filthy children, married off to immediate relatives to try and earn enough galleons to feed themselves. He thinks Antonin mentioned he was going to marry his one of his sisters, or Lawrence conjured it up in a nightmare. Fenwick was the only name worth associating with, his parents assured him, so he forgot the rest of the details. The only one who abandoned them, too.
Avery had altogether forgotten Antonin even had a family until that moment, when it came rushing back at him. It was like his reflection in the dark- for a spilt second it looked like it could still be Hogwarts aged Lawrence Avery, but then the lights came on and he was old. The lines on his face didn't seem so terrible now that he had finally seen what had happened to the Lestranges. Rookwood always looked awful and Antonin was never quite human, but the Lestranges weren't even recognizable. He thought maybe someone had turned Bellatrix and Rabastan inside-out, that all of their pureblood good looks receded and their foul insides surfaced along their skin. It was the only thing that could explain why they finally looked the way they acted. Rodolphus was quietly changed, waxy and drawn and if Avery wasn't so afraid of the lot of them he might have mourned their deterioration.
"That doesn't sound so bad," he breathed and Antonin laid there, looking mutinous in expression but holding his tongue. "Why didn't you stay with your family instead?" Why did you volunteer me to be dragged down with you? was more or less the real question.
"Why didn't you?" Lawrence sighed, pressing his spine into the couch cushions and looking to the ceiling panels. It was hard to be patient with him, but getting angry only made Antonin go mute, which was more alarming than the bodies he strung from the ceiling fan. He could still see the smear of blood if he squinted.
"Because I'm not a wanted criminal, Antonin. I don't need to hide, I can live on my own." He cooperates better with that sort of response as well. Lawrence wished there was someone he could commiserate with. But Madeline had stopped calling and Rookwood gives Dolohov the cold shoulder and did he really just list Rookwood after his fiancee? thinking of her made Lawrence's breath go short.
"Did I kill Benjy?"
"Did you forget?" Lawrence's voice felt so sudden and savage against his throat that he didn't immediately recognize it. "You killed the Prewetts too." And the McKinnons and that muggles you leave for me to find here and thousands more, sure. But that didn't matter so much as Benjy. Nothing mattered so much as Benjy, left only as a chest cavity while the other Deatheaters dueled with Lupin and Podmore and Avery just stared.
"It was a trap," Evan twisted his wand between his fingers and sat between Lawrence and despair. "It's his own damn fault for being the first in Dumbledore's pathetic scouting line. He made his choice." He had a feeling Evan wasn't as resolved to forgoing his humanity and former friendships as he made himself seem, but Avery knew better than to argue with his feigned resilience.
"But how could Antonin-"
"Are you completely fucking stupid, Avery? If Antonin had disarmed his own trap just because it was Fenwick-" Avery flinched. Benjy, his name was Benjy and we lived with him for seven years (though it felt like six, looking back on it) and we killed him. "-The Dark Lord would have dismembered him for showing mercy." Lawrence didn't forget the way Evan stared at him next, not only because Evan was dead a month later but because it seemed like his expression meant something rational in their war. "Everyone makes their own choices- everyone but you, it looks like." And that it was true.
Lawrence didn't think he'd ever forgive Antonin for killing Benjy. It was misplaced blame, probably, because the Deatheaters were an assembled force to wipe out all resistance against Him and Benjy joined the Order willingly. So, all in all, a collection of Dark Wizards had executed Benjy, not simply the person who rigged up the hidden assault. But Avery was a member of that collection and it hurt to think he killed Benjy of all people, so blaming it all on Antonin helped him keep from getting sick. When he didn't remember all of that, or when Dolohov didn't leave a corpses like a cat bringing home a mouse, Lawrence enjoyed the company.
Antonin shook his head.
"I didn't forget," he assured Avery. He had stopped shaking, but that only drew more attention to how thin he was. I buy food, but you don't eat it. He didn't want to mother a murderer, but they were schoolboys friends once and Malfoy would be nettled if Avery let him starve to death. "His arms came off and landed behind the others and-"
"Don't say-!" He didn't let Antonin into his house because he thought the bastard had changed, but Lawrence was still taken aback by the recounted details. He wondered if it was worth it, staying alive just to hear Dolohov's gruesome rambles and then prison. "You're not sorry, are you? Why did you have to come here?" If he wasn't afraid whatever had gutted Antonin was a catching disease, he would have shook him by the bony shoulders. "Why did you come back?"
"Because He's back," and it was all back to where they had started. Antonin and Avery floo to the meeting together and Avery stood very still and quiet, wondering if Voldemort's return was the only reason Antonin chose him as his victim.
-
check out ladylisse's much better Avery recounts!