The Home Front

The weather had not decided what it wanted to be all week but had finally decided on one of those perfect rainy days. The patter of the rain beat their windows at a steady pace, and every once in awhile a roll of thunder would shake their garden fence, rattle the panes of the greenhouse, make the house creak and moan as it stretched its beams. The grass and the odd plants that filled up their yard drooped beneath the weight of raindrops.

The day had started perfectly - Coach cancelled practice. Neither shop needed her, and she had not planned on going into work, as the kids had a holiday, and she wanted to arrange their day. With absolutely no commitments, now, she could spend the day spending time with the little people she loved most.

She had still woken up early - as Sunny had awoken them all to announce that it was, indeed, raining. Her rain boots on her hands she had not left the room until Jack had rolled out of bed, yanking a sweater on.

Breakfast made. Max was seen off. She double and triple checked that Goose and Sunny were dressed for cold weather, and then they were released. For a good hour or so, she sat on the small porch with a mug of hot tea, swathed in a blue sweater and a beanie, watching Goose and Sunny play knight and dragon - in which the dragon was the good guy, of course.

She should have relaxed during that hour, let her mind rest, should have just enjoyed watching her kids, her family, play and be merry on a day where her only obligation was to enjoy them. But as she watched them, her heart ached with the love she had for them. And it felt somewhat akin to another ache, an ache she had finally recognized and owned up to. Because it wasn't just the sickly boy and the feisty girl who occupied her heart. Her bedmate had rented space there as well.

It had been a week and not much had changed, except for the tone of the house. Somehow it was sweeter and tenser. As fortune would have it, work had called them both to work late that week and neither had seen much of each other, and when they did, they were both exhausted and unable (and secretly too scared) to break the silence on the topic of their feelings. Because Dyllan-Morrisons didn't talk about feelings. Dragons, werewolves, Quidditch, muggles, and mac n' cheese... sure. Love and family and not-divorce... no thanks.

All of that thinking was much earlier in the day. Night was falling now. Charlie was holed up in her room as well, probably nursing her newest weird plant that had not taken so kindly to the rain. Lize had come over and she and Sunny were building a fort, while Goose read aloud from his favorite book of medieval poetry. Jack had been attempting to fill the house with the smell of a gourmet apple pie... that had been charred to a crisp. She masked the smell with brownies and began working on a pork stew that Goose particularly loved and seemed right for a rainy night.

It had been a long day full of nothing. It was just what she had needed.

There had been a great explosion at Layabout Lane. There was no collateral damage to their possessions and the emotional fallout did not hang over the house but nevertheless Max Morrison had been rattled. It was almost worse that he and Jack had been thrown back into their lives by the beckoning of work. Their lives were going on exactly as before but Max was increasingly regretting his wishes for exactly that only a week ago. Part of him wondered if they remained busy and silent for too long then Jack would start to reconsider the sentiments that had so taken him by surprise. 

Max had been the tiniest bit jealous when Jack had announced that she had the day off due to the weather. They had breakfast and then she mercilessly sent him off into the rain for a long day at the office while she got to enjoy the company of, well, the entire company. When Max arrived at the Ministry he briefly had hopes to speed through his paperwork and get home in time to catch lunch or an afternoon board game. But luck was not on his side and the man had not been at his desk for ten minutes when the first miniature emergency arrived which, upon resolution, was almost immediately succeeded by more unexpected work. 

By the time Max dotted his last i and closed his last file even the artificial light coming out of the underground windows had completely disappeared. Max grabbed his briefcase and snapped it shut, threw his coat over his arm, and snuffed out the oil lamp that illuminated his desk, removing the last soft golden glow from the Muggle Relations department. The path through the dark office cubicles wasn't difficult after years of taking it and Max could imagine the path to the main hallway as clearly as if it had been noontime. 

Max emerged into the empty hall and made his way to the elevators. The notice regarding an abnormal golf-cart had kept Max later than the vast majority of his colleagues and the building felt eerily deserted, only the sound of a single pair of keys typing came out of a small office behind him. "Have a good night, Branson!" Max called through the oak door to which he heard a muffled call of goodbye back. 

The numbers above the elevator were blinking. Level 5, Level 4, Level 3, Diiing. Golden grates were pulled aside and Max stepped in to join another man. The Hufflepuff gave a passing smile to his companion as the doors slid shut and the pair began to plummet towards the lobby. Max set down his briefcase in order to pull on his jacket, preparing for the cool weather that had turned out to be so lucky for Jack. Max turned towards the man as he bent back down to retrieve his bag but suddenly froze as he was confronted by a wand pointed at the bridge of his nose. 

A muttered incantation, a puff of green smoke. 

Max was sure he was floating. Truly, he felt quite wonderful. He realized how silly it was to fret over.. whatever he had been fretting about. The mundane tasks of his day were being cleared away to be replaced with a delicate, nonsensical bliss. Max felt nearly drunk as he swayed like a flower as the lift bounced and changed direction. His world was soft and foggy, relaxing and refreshingly nondescript. There were no thoughts that needed to be thought or actions that needed to be acted. 

And then there was a voice that told him to go home. So Max did. 

His body moved seemingly without command, its owner so withdrawn that the path home was done completely on autopilot. Down the lane and through the front gate, up the steps and through the door. Every inch of Layabout Lane was engrained in Max, even the toys that migrated around the floors seemed to be known entities. He stepped as effortlessly as the thought, following the voice that instructed him to move to the living room. 

Charlie Dyllan lay haphazardly across an arm chair, lazily sketching out notes on her latest crop of wolfsbane. Her foot bounced lightly to a tune that played only in her head, completely oblivious to the wand that was being raised by the man just within the doorway. 

A creak in the floorboards. The mop of red hair spun around and upon a half second assessment the new arrival an expression of confusion immediately fell across her features. "Max-?" she asked timidly. He wore no expression at all, the gentle joy he felt counteracting the angry determination of his puppet master to create a canvas of terrifying blankness. His wand raised in a fluid motion and Charlie threw herself towards the floor as a streak of yellow light flew past her. 

A scream of panic. A shot of light crossed the living room, this time red. Another scream filled the air, higher and more desperate out of pain rather than fear. The fabric of Charlie's shirt was destroyed and still smoldering lightly where the curse had brushed across her shoulder and upper arm. The skin underneath had not been disintegrated but was an awful color and added an unpleasant smell to the general aroma of brownies and pot roast. Charlie scrambled backward, desperately hiding behind the sofa as she clutched the lower part of her arm to hold it steady. 

Max thought this seemed a bit silly but, honestly, he really didn't think too much about it to care one way or the other. He was too busy floating.

Jack was attempting to reorganize the cabinets while she waited for the brownies to cook. Thus far, her attempts had gone as follows : she had taken everything out of the cabinets, put them on the counters, and was now staring at boxes of cereal, pasta, and snack food at an utter loss as what to do with it. Several times, she would put two or three boxes of pasta on a shelf before realizing there was not going to be enough room for the rest of the pasta would not fit, or there was one box too large for the cabinet.

She was not good at organization.

She had just sort of given up. Pasta was placed alongside cereal, cans of vegetables pinned packets of sauce between their aluminum sides, etcetera. It struck her that there was probably room in the current cupboard that held all of the pots and pans, and she began yanking them out, as they skittered and banged on the tiles. Among all of that noise, she heard the door open. She meant to call out to Max, but her mind was so absorbed with the pots and pans that were now tumbling out... "Oh.... bother."

It was Goose's phrase that the family had begun adopting. It was the pause between the 'oh' and the 'bother' that sold it, that made it so sweet and interesting and worth repeating. It was as though he was searching for another word, a more sophisticated word, a better word... but everyone knew he was just going to say 'bother' anyway.

Goodness, she loved her family.

She had put away about half of the pots when something felt weird. She paused in the middle of her organisation when a scream drove her to her feet, a heavy pan in hand. She moved swiftly, not exactly on alert as screaming was an incredibly common occurrence in her home. But, the feeling from earlier made her more keen to investigate. But what could truly be wrong? Max was home. 

But there was another scream, and Jack didn't waste time, not one second more. She spun on her heels and appeared instantly in the living room, where the sound had come from. 

Charlie was the first thing she saw. It looks like her shirt had been blown up and her skin was taking the blow. Jack took a step towards her before realizing someone had to have done that. She spun and saw Max, standing there, looking glazed.

She took a step back, trying to take in both Max and Charlie. "What the f*ck is going on?"

She glanced up, as Goose, Lize, and Sunny's heads popped up along the opposite doorway, looking curious a the noise. 

Something. was. wrong.

Charlie pulled herself up, back pressed protectively against the end of the sofa, clutching her elbow tightly against her chest in an effort to keep the damaged skin from moving. She mumbled curses to herself as she squeezed her eyes, wincing in pain. While there was absolutely no denying that the open wound crossing her shoulder hurt, the Dyllan girl was able to handle the sensation better than most as its familiarity eliminated some of the shock of it all. 

The only true surprise in this pain was its source. 

A cracking sound filled the room and Charlie's head spun around to pop over the top of her blockade at the noise. Her cousin stood stationary as she surveyed the scene, processing the impossible. Through quick, shallow breaths Charlie tried to explain.. to warn.. 

"Max -"

Maximus Morrison should have been nothing to Charlie. He was not a father, brother, cousin, or any sort of blood relation. He was barely even tied to her by a false marriage, a second or third cousin at best. But Max had lived here even longer than she had, making him an absolute feature of her life at Layabout Lane. Jack's roommate/accidental husband had good heartedly beaten her at monopoly, made her chicken noodle soup the day after a moon, and bought her plant presents for no other reason than he had seen them and thought of her. She lived with him, she knew him, and there was no way this was the same Max. 

The redhead turned away from her older cousin and out of the corner of her eye spotted three little faces peeping through the doorway. A new panic welled up in Charlie as she glanced between Max and the young ones. The man's attention had been caught by Jack's dramatic entrance and he turned towards her, slowly at first and then stepping forward with increasing certainty. 

Without thinking, Charlie took the moment to jump towards the door that contained her surrogate siblings. "Upstairs now" she ordered quietly, taking Goose by the hand with her good arm and moving the small group down the hallway as quickly as she could. 

In a matter of seconds Max was advancing on his wife, wand raising until it was level with the ground and pointed towards the center of her chest. 

With a voice as dead as his eyes, the shell of Max Morrison spoke. "Marley Harris sends her regards." 

And then he fired. 

Jack was struggling to look at anything that wasn't Max, because she just... didn't get it. What had happened to Charlie? She slowly turned her head and saw that Charlie's wounds were real, and that they were serious. These weren’t scratches, and the fact that Charlie seemed to be in actual pain concerned Jack. The girl was used to monthly broken bones and organ failure. Typically, she would come into the house with burns or scratches from plants and look as though she had only been minorly inconvenienced.
 
But no. Her face was screwed up in pain. Her breaths were shallow.
 
She slowly turned to look at Max, and into the blankness that was his face. And for the first time ever, a very familiar word flitted into her head for a familiar face she would have never connected it to… Enemy.
 
Charlie took off running and Sunny and Goose were immediately dragged upstairs. Goose was not about to fight, and Lize was clinging to Sunny’s hand in terror, but the littlest redhead was pissed. “No! What’s wrong? I want to help Max! Charlie!” Goose suddenly shot Sunny the most serious look she had ever seen and the words died in the little girl’s mouth. Goose looked up at his adopted… whatever-Charlie-was. His adopted babysitter. She was very obviously in pain.
 
She tried to veer towards her room but Goose tugged her towards Jack’s room, his eyes wide with meaning. “Medicine,” was all he said. In a small cabinet in Jack’s room were vials and pouches full of magical and natural remedies. It was fortunate that Charlie was a Herbologist, as she would probably be able to find something that could be of use to her. And Jack’s room probably had a weapon. Just in case. He really didn’t want to think like that if he didn’t have to.
 
Downstairs, Jack could only be certain that her little ones were out of the room – now she would be able to figure out what was wrong with Max. This wasn’t like him. Obviously, some accident had happened… why wasn’t he falling all over himself trying to apologize or make up for whatever had happened. Instead, he was just staring at her, looking insane.
 
”What the f*ck is going on here?”
 
The question hung in the air. And when the answer came, Jack didn’t get much of a chance to think about it. Because she was busy throwing herself out of the way of what looked like an Unforgivable curse.
 
“What the HELL?!” she bellowed at Max, sprawled across her armchair. She shoved herself up, the frying pan still in her hand. “What are you doing?!”

The world was foggy. Not in a mysterious 'vampires at midnight' way but more like 'I'm floating through a sunny cloud' way. Indeed, all of Max felt pleasantly warm like he was falling asleep in his armchair by the fire or had been drinking hot cocoa. Max's thought pattern resembled being on the edge of sleep - so vaguely aware of his surroundings that they could be chalked up to dreams. And what strange dreams he was having now. 

Max was only somewhat aware that he was in his home. His nose took in the familiar scents of pets, detergent, and soil while his eyes took in the decorations that were so well known to Max but not to his puppet master. The soft-hearted Hufflepuff was all too willing to let his body be pulled his way and that, aware of the motions but not of the actions they created. 

And his actions were unthinkable. 

Max fired another curse towards Jack. It missed and the light skimmed armchair that supported her, leaving a line of faintly black scorched fabric. Max moved forward purposefully, first blasting the coffee table out of the way with his wand and then kicking what remained of it off to the side. Closer. In one fluid motion Max's arm swung out and his wand emitted a force that sent Jack flying back down into the chair she had risen from and knocked two pictures off the mantelpiece behind them with a great shatter. 

Immediately Max had moved to stand above her, wand steadily pointed downwards at her heart, the most emotionless of smiles appearing on his lips. 

She pushed herself off of the armchair, her mind whirring as she tried to figure out exactly what was happening. How was it possible that Max was doing this? The whole thing felt impossible. It wasn't like Max was the protector of the household - that was her job. But he had never even so much as squashed a bug, had never felt right about Charlie clipping the halfway-animated plants. How could that spirit of gentility so suddenly turn on her and wage war on their home.
 
She was barely up when she had to flinch out of the way of yet another lethal-looking curse. Her peripheral vision caught sight of the armchair, which looked unfortunate in its new state. This was bad – he wasn’t trying to hurt or scare her. He was trying to destroy her, absolutely demolish her. He blasted furniture on his way towards her and she took a vicious step towards him, but a force sent her falling back onto the chair, the wand tipping out of her hand as she gasped for breath. He slowly advanced on her and she began to crawl up the chair.
 
That was when she spotted Eliot, her Gytrash. He had taken his usual shape of a white wolfhound and was slowly growing, expanding, growing into a large, white dire wolf. Her eyes met his just as he released a single, resounding bark that seemed to fill the space. Max turned to look – Jack locked eyes with Eliot and nodded, commanding him to run upstairs to protect her family while she took care of them downstairs.
 
And in the second that Max wasn’t look, Jack sprung. She lept from the chair and fastened her arms around Max’s waist, letting out a low cry to propel her forward as she took him down the ground.
 
((hope you didn’t mind the godmode))

Max hit the ground like a crash test dummy, the meeting of flesh and floor audible even over Jack's cry and Eliot's fading growls. His hands flew out on instinct in a attempt to break the fall but proved useless as his head bounced lightly on impact. In fact, it was only Jack's hands that proved to be any sort of cushion as the pair tumbled downward. 

The scuffle began immediately, Max's hands pushing against Jack's shoulder blades in an attempt to detach. The grip unbroken, the couple rolled across the littered floor until Max rested on top, his weight pressing against his wife as he struggled to regain control of the situation. The puppet's hands scrambled for anything they could find, one settling on pinning down her wrist and the other pressing upon her mop of hair. Max's face loomed over Jack's, calm even in his precarious position. 

Meanwhile, Charlie had heeded Goose's direction and pulled the kids into Jack's office. She guided everyone to the back of the small room and immediately dragged the desk chair to prop against the door. It was probably the weakest defense she could have mustered but at that moment, wandless, even the slightest barrier between Maximus Morrison and his children made her feel more secure. 

When Charlie turned back to the others Goose was already rummaging through the unlocked drawers of Jack's desk. Without hesitation, the older girl joined him in a quietly frantic search for something, anything, that might help if the worse should happen. 

Now, tackling someone who meant to cause you bodily harm wasn't always the best thing, nor the smartest thing. But Jack wasn't know for being the best nor the smartest. She was a woman of action - she did things. She took a step, jumped, forged her way onwards and upwards. And in times like this, when she could not think, when experience could not lead her one way or another, she had to just do something. And launching from the ground and taking down the attacker, wedding rings or not, seemed like a viable option. It came easily, instinctually.

That was probably very telling of her.

She had hoped that the shock of the fall would jar Max out of... whatever this was. But it didn't take long once they had crashed to the ground for the fight to begin. He was attempting to shove her off, but she twisted her shoulders, trying to keep his arms down. With her arms pinned between him and the ground, she was running out of options. Suddenly, the world switched and her head bumped against the ground. She quickly pulled in her arms, moving to grab his shoulders.

This...whatever this was, was a good fighter. Before she could help it, her hand was pinned to the ground and a hand crushed her hair. She let out a short cry, but her face immediately turned to anger, as her free wrist clambered to grab his hand, scratching at it to free herself. She found her footing and swung her legs around him, attempting to roll him over again. Doing so caused more pain to her tender scalp and she gritted her teeth, glaring up at Max.

His eyes. They were blue, certainly, the typical bright blue. But they weren't quite as bright as usual. There was a lack... a cloud...

Holy shit, this wasn't Max.

"M-Max," she said, barely managing the word. "Max, you've been cursed. You've been cursed and you're hurting me."

If Max felt his hand being clawed at it didn't appear to phase him. Jack was struggling underneath him and let out a cry as she twisted, her legs suddenly wrapped around him in an attempt to topple his unsteady control. 

Max felt soft and delicate. A feather blowing about in a gentle breeze as he moved without effort or direction around the room. He was an astral projection, flickering just out of sight of the human world. Max's thoughts were as fuzzy as his form felt. He took in only the slightest portion of the scene and what he did grasp was abstracted and vague like an unfocused photograph or through a foggy window. Max was a feather, an autumn leaf, a plastic bag blowing in the wind. 

Then a single pinprick of light poked it's way through the fog. "Max" 

The voice only made Max feel lighter, moving just a little of his energy from listlessness to a more directed soaring. It was such a lovely voice. Max couldn't place it, only knowing it was as familiar to him as the placement of furniture and the smell of his home. That voice was home. Max had never felt so untroubled as he did at this moment, finally having a target for his tranquil affection. "Max, you've been cursed." 

Max's eased up even so slightly on Jack's hair. His hand began loosening from her wrist. His fingers brushed against her arm for only a second before jumping upward and, without hesitation, clasping around her neck. The sudden movement was enough to throw off whatever balance Max had held. The weight of Jack's legs toppled the pair of them, sending Max back to the ground as continued to reach for a grasp on her neck.