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Auggie doesn't venture out of doors at Milliways that often, but after nearly tripping over a waitrat and what sounded like a miniature elephant, and then running into a booth that wasn't there five minutes ago, he's feeling kind of frustrated with the main room. Outdoors is considerably less mutable, or at least less crowded.

Wandering down the path towards the forest -- slowly, with his laser cane scanning the ground in front of him for dips and obstructions -- is calming him down, anyway. He can hear the lake distantly to his right, and the breeze in the trees up ahead.

The week after Valentine's Day finds Professor Anderson in his office late -- past dinner time.

It's partly the latest batch of papers he has to grade; it's partly the letter from Wilcox that came this morning. No news of Natalia -- there never is -- but there are a few unpleasant rumours in the Scottish wizarding community about nasty spates of Muggle-baiting, and complaints of harassment against Muggle-borns. Wilcox phrases it as if he wants Anderson's professional opinion on the situation, but the true point behind it is obvious: make sure your family is safe.

He just doesn't feel up to navigating the Great Hall tonight.

Another day, another dollar, another drug lord deposed as he got off the boat from Central America. As ops go, this one went about as smoothly as you could ask for: sure, the boat was an hour and a half late, and sure there were some shots fired, but nobody died.

Auggie finally gets off work around nine -- practically early -- and heads down to the locker room to shower the stress away.

And gets the bar, instead.

Well, a beer is almost as good as a shower. He sweeps his laser cane over the floor once to check for waitrats, then heads towards the counter to order a drink.

So after a fairly tiring day, Auggie and the Starks decide to get out of the house the next day and hit the Bronze.

It's the first time they've been there since they started . . . dating, sleeping together, whatever this is -- and Auggie is intensely aware of how much he's not touching them, aside from what's necessary for them to lead him around.

February.

The third years are onto boggarts by now, the fourth years are on defensive spells; the fifth years are unfortunately taking to the new hexes and counter-hexes like grindylows to water. The sixth and seventh years are more and more focused on their N.E.W.T. preparation.

Or at least, they're supposed to be. Valentine's Day fever has, as it always does, provided a great deal of both welcome and unwelcome distraction around the castle. Anderson has followed the lead of the older teachers and retreated to his office to avoid the worst of the chaos.

This has not, much to his dismay, prevented the delivery of several boxes of chocolates from secret admirers. They're both shaped like hearts, and they're both set squarely in the middle of his desk.

"Bloody hell."

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has marked as possibly inappropriate for anyone under the age of 18. )

Hokay, so, here we have a placeholder. Dayum, you might say, that is a sweet placeholder.

[ooc: ~~Talk about kinks and~~ Straight-up sex contained herein.]

Late January at Hogwarts tends to be a gray, claustrophobic sort of time. The excitement of coming back from Christmas holidays has worn off, Valentine's Day is still a few weeks away, and the weather's terrible. A recent cold snap has kept people indoors more than usual, and a nasty cough has been making its way through the Hufflepuffs.

Tempers are short.

Professor Anderson wanders the halls in the evenings after dinner, keeping an ear out for trouble. It's Hogwarts; the chances that some student, somewhere, is doing something dangerous are practially 100%.

Getting back to work after weeks away was a lot more difficult than Auggie anticipated. The first couple days weren't bad -- the first thirteen-hour day wiped him out, and he barely made it through the ten, twelve, and nine-hour days that followed.

He finally wanders back into Milliways after eight hours of work on a Saturday. The sound of the bustling bar beyond the door to his apartment is thoroughly welcome; he slips inside and makes a beeline for Bar to order pizza and beer.

August Anderson. Youngest of five boys. Scottish father, American mother, both Muggles. His parents met in Chicago, got married, and lived in Illinois for ten-eleven years. They moved back to Britain when August was five. August is bidialectical, lowland Scottish and Midwestern, and does a pretty fair middle-class English. ~~Yes I stole this idea from John Barrowman's life.~~

He gets his letter at age 11 and has no idea what to do. It's his oldest brother who ends up helping him out after Auggie shows him the letter. They concoct a fake boarding school that Auggie has been invited to, Julius goes to London with Auggie to buy his supplies, etc. Julius basically acts as Auggie's cover for his first few years of school, until Auggie knows enough magic and enough wizards and witches that they can take over the ruse.

Auggie goes to Hogwarts (where, to his bewilderment, "August" is not considered at all a weird name) and is top of his class in DAtDA and Charms. He's a Chaser for the Ravenclaw Quidditch team in his sixth and seventh year. Graduates with great OWLs and NEWTs in 1996, the year after the return of Voldemort, and quickly enters Auror training at the Ministry of Magic. He graduates to the rank of full Auror in 2000.

Four years later, he leads a team into a hostage situation: five Death Eaters holding two dozen Muggles in an Underground station. (The end of the war with Voldemort was hardly the end of the Death Eater movement, of course, just like WWII wasn't the end of the Nazi movement.) Of course, the thing about Death Eaters and hostages is that they're not really in it to get any demands met, they're just in it to torture and slaughter Muggles. August leads a team of four other Aurors in; in the resulting fight, four Death Eaters and three Aurors are killed, five Muggles die and seven more are injured, August is blinded, and his lover/partner Natalia Petrovna goes MIA. One Death Eater -- the one who cast the blinding spell that hit August -- escapes. August is awarded the MInistry's equivalent of the Purple Heart and is given a desk job, which he's anxious to get away from.

Clearly in the wizarding world you can openly be an Auror, but he's never read any of his family in except Jules.

Born: 1979
First Year: 1990
Seventh Year: 1996
Begins Auror training: 1997
Auror in the field: 2000-2004
Auror in the office: 2004-2007
Sabbatical: 2007-2008
Begins teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts at Hogwarts: School year 2009-10

Saturday, in the park -- the twelfth of May, not the fourth of July. The rest of the week passed with less excitement than the weekend.

When Elizabeth called up and invited Auggie out on an afternoon walk, he was more than happy to accept. It's only natural for them to link arms once they get off Vivi -- she's being his guide, after all.

Well that was a shitty day.

Nobody seems much inclined to go out after everyone gets back to Langley: it's late once they're done with debriefing, Joan is annoyed and taking it out on everyone equally, and there's nothing to celebrate in any case.

Auggie has a snippet of song stuck in his head on the ride home that he can't trace. There's the wonder of the thing--

Whatever. Joan wants him in tomorrow to start sifting through Casotto's life to see if there are any useful connections to be made. Yet another seven-day work week. At least he gets comp time.

When he gets home he puts on a Mingus CD and heads straight for the shower.

So things got awkward and Auggie moved his stuff back out of the Stark household into Milliways.

And he's been totally fine with it. Honestly. It's been kind of a relief not to have to keep such a close eye on himself the last three or four days. Milliways is kind of anxiety-inducing, but less anxiety inducing than living in a house with those two young men.

Of course, he misses the easy camaraderie. But it's not like this is the first time he valued safety over friendship.

So. That happened.

In spite of some of Auggie's lingering feelings of awkwardness, he's still a regular visitor at the Stark household. Tony keeps asking him over to consult on pieces of code, or to beta-test bits of hardware, and he usually ends up staying a night or two, up late listening to music with Sherlock or soaking in the California warmth outside.

(Staying away from Milliways too long makes him slightly antsy -- what if his door unlocks and he doesn't notice? -- but the Stark household is a good deal more stable than the bar.)

So in a series of events that no one could possibly have foreseen, Auggie has been turned into a kitten.

An adorable kitten.

An adorable, gray, blind kitten.

Lucky he has sympathetic friends, huh?

Happy Hour at Allen's is, as usual, loud with competing voices and scents, all of which are less important to Auggie than Annie and Jai's laughter and the second beer in front of him.

Well. Almost all. Occasionally Auggie cocks his head at the sound of heels or the floral scent of shampoo and listens to Jai and Annie's reactions. Jai has one chuckle for redheads and another for brunettes, while Annie has a groan for blondes that Auggie is told is rather hypocritical of her.

"Did the last three girls all have tequila, or was it just one carrying enough shots for her whole party?" he wonders.

"The last four," Jai corrects, audibly smirking. "Your nose must be getting tired."

"I don't get it. Cinco de Mayo is tomorrow -- you'd think people could hold off on the faux-Mexican debauchery until Saturday."

He hears Annie sit bolt upright.

"Oh crap, it's Friday, I have a thing with my--"

"Sister," Auggie and Jai chorus with her. Auggie grins, in spite of the dirty look he's sure she's giving him, and adds, "Jai, you owe me ten bucks."

Jai sighs and digs in his pockets. "Which ought to just about cover your cab ride." He slaps the money onto the table at Auggie's ten o'clock. "Annie, I'll walk you to your car, I'm headed that way."

"Now there's a Pyrrhic victory," Auggie says, with a sigh of his own. "Annie, did he really give me a ten?"

"Yes!" Annie says, laughing, and squeezes his shoulder as she stands. "You're so paranoid."

"I'm wounded that you don't trust me," Jai agrees, also standing.

"You'll heal, I'm sure. Have a good weekend, you two. Don't do anything I wouldn't do."

"Same to you, Auggie," Jai says, with an eyeroll crystal-clear in his voice.

"That'll be a boring weekend, then," Auggie calls after Jai's cologne and Annie's heels, then turns back to his beer. Now where is he going to find a ride with all these tequila-soaked early birds?