Post by TED ASHER TONKS on Aug 30, 2014 19:52:46 GMT -6
[googlefont="Yanone Kaffeesatz:400"]
That right there is a glowing example of something that would typically come out of my mouth. I’m not saying I’m proud of it, but damn did I have some attitude problems as a kid. I was labeled as misguided which is the nice way to put it when someone makes an absolute mess of everything he touches and then laughs about it. Especially in the hey everyone, look at me sort of fashion, which I tended to do a lot of. To say I was a bit of an attention seeking prat would be a bit of an understatement, but I didn’t know what else I was supposed to do. My social skills weren’t all that developed by the time I went to school. I spent most of my days holding the ball of yarn while my grandmother knitted, where the hell was I supposed to learn how to act around other kids? But it was okay, because I was that kid. I wore as a badge of honor more than anything.
Because by the age of about fourteen I had a lot more stuff figured out than I had at the age of eleven. My quests for constant attention had died down considerably, I wasn’t so much of a problem child anymore, at least not audibly so. I still had my run of the school. There were still people who knew that when something went atrociously wrong in the back of the potions room it was probably me that had done it, but I’d gotten over the whole laughing at myself concept. It seems that people tend to like you more when they get to decide when you’re being funny or when something you do is worth attention. I no longer had to draw attention to myself, I had all of the attention I needed without trying. I had successfully figured out what it took some people their entire lives to figure out: Nobody likes you when you’re being a prick. With that revelation, it was almost like I had a new lease on life. A new understanding of what it meant to be that kid, because turns out, in addition to wreaking all sorts of havoc, I needed to be good at like… my course work.
I went from problem child to good student faster than the new Cleansweep, which I actually think is pretty impressive. Anyone who’s mastered the art of setting off a commotion in one corridor and still managing to make it in class on time across the castle deserved some sort of award. And while I might no longer have had the issue of misguidance my attitude problems and over-inflated ego didn’t ever seem to fully wear off. People found that a bit charming though, yeah? I mean, I didn’t go around screaming my praises at the top of my lungs or anything, I was subtle about it. The way I saw it, I didn’t need to go around telling people that I was perfect, they should’ve already known it if I was doing my job right. I had a big head, lots of confidence, but I managed to keep that all in check. Or I guess others sort of kept in in check for me.
I wasn’t a Quidditch star by any means, but I liked nice trying. Our team wasn’t’ completely worthless, and I made a more or less… decent keeper. And I kicked some serious ass at Wizard’s Chess, was a fair dueler, and got a shiny badge that said I had authority, which was just… brilliant. Because I needed more stuff going to my head at that point.
By seventh year I’d officially mastered the art of Ted – the toned down addition. I was mature… enough. I buckled down enough to get my NEWTs on. I was quietly taking over the world with satirical cartoons of Professors and well placed, clever quips that at that point garnered nothing more than eye-rolls and a few Thank you for your unsolicited input Mr. Tonks. I was ready to take on the world.
“Right, I understand that. But if all you’re going to be printing is that propagandic bull shit, the least you could do is let them look at a pretty picture.”
After school the real world hit hard. But that was okay with me. I was out of my parent’s house in less than three hours, kissing mum on the top of the head as I went and promising I’d be round for dinner as often as possible, both because I had absolutely no source of income at that point and would therefore need the free food, and because I loved the old woman, and she deserved to see my pretty little face. (Remember that I said I’d mostly matured past that stage.).
But I was a young, idealistic, broke, starving artist with a pencil, a camera, and a mission to change the world. Which started at the Daily Prophet where I was sure I was going to be able to make a difference with my political cartoons and hard-hitting images of—Well, okay. So they had me taking pictures of birds and they wouldn’t publish anything I drew. But everyone had to start somewhere, and I got enough money from giving them what they wanted to pay rent on the dump of a flat I lived in. And all the while, I was warming them up to the idea that I had more talent than they were giving me credit for. Here was this eighteen year old kid out to prove something, and there they were with their heads up their asses, only peeking out occasionally to tell me that I’d done something wrong. To call it aggravating would be… An understatement. And for the most part, I held my tongue as I slowly climbed through the ranks at the Propeht and occasionally sold my stuff to other publications who’d actually print it. It was a good enough gig. Certainly something to tide me over while I figured out what it actually was I wanted to do with my life. I was constantly wired in to what was going on in the world around me because I was where the magic happened. I started writing, because they needed me to. But never had stories they felt like publishing, because much like the things I continued to draw about the incompetence at the ministry and all that rot, the stuff I had to say didn’t exactly paint the prettiest picture in the world, but some assignments they dropped on me weren’t exactly pretty. They had me covering Wizengamot trials and a lot of that wasn’t shit I could make up. But it also gave me my first real look at the Ministry and how things were… going there.
Three weeks later I was out the door. Camera and pencil safely tucked into my bag. I had more important things to be doing if I wanted the world to change. Instead, I landed myself a fairly good gig at the Misuse of Magic office, something I was allowed to be proud of. Department of Magical Law Enforcement. It’s like a giant party. Except… It was a lot less of a party, because I really hated the way things were handled in that department and really the Ministry as a whole. I got to sit on the sidelines and watch justice be served, still running documents to the Wizengamot or popping down the the Auror office to see how swamped they were, I slowly realized that pretty much everything about the system that was protecting us had gone to complete and utter shit. And I was getting paid a healthy sum of money to watch it do so. Instead of commentating on the things that the Ministry were doing wrong, I got to be the one who did it all. It was at once infuriating and enlightening. But I held my own. I did my job. I still occasionally sold things to various media outlets, though these were all published anonymously, given my position. It was a really interesting ordeal, one I’m technically still living out. Because they say you ought to keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.
“Well yeah. But there’s like… girls. And then there’s like… her. Shit. I really am in trouble, aren’t I?”
Bet you thought I was going to spare you the nitty gritty details of my life. The parts you actually cared about. But fear not, because my less-than-perfect love story is upon us. And unfortunately, as the above indicates, I was very—unprepared for it all.
In school I was never the biggest ladies man. Don’t get me wrong. I had a lady friend or two. I wasn’t completely hopeless. I was sort of cute, one of those guys that girls picked up not because they wanted to change them but because they’d heard through the rumor mill that I was either good for a nice shag or would make an excellent person to take home to their mother’s. A lot of the time, I didn’t really question which of those two it was. I was content with the fact that I had a girl on my arm at all. Let’s be honest, I was a goofy teenager who had no idea what he was looking for in a girl. So I guess the idea was to just sort of… Date them all until I figured out what I was looking for. All that ended up teaching me, I assure you, was what I didn’t want in a lady friend. There might not have been an overabundance of them, but there was enough to know that they weren’t what I wanted.
And then I found her. It was stupid really. We’d never really gotten on at all, I didn’t really know who the hell she even was. I was muggleborn, we don’t know this shit about fancy families or whatever. She was hot, I was bothered, and we accidentally wound up in a broom closet or in the locker room after I got out of Quidditch practice, or passing stupid notes to one another in the library. And it was god awful, because I knew it wasn’t going to work out, knew that she wasn’t going to end up with the likes of me. Hell, she told me that on more than one occasion, but over the years, the last couple at school, I seemed to wear her down. It went from never to later to after school is out. Which was fine with me. I was fine with biding my time. I think… I think other people knew. The ones that cared enough about either of us were too good to say anything and the ones that hated one of us, and by that I mean me, weren’t ever going to be any more cruel to me because they’d all already hit their low. That meant that me snatching one of their own from under them wasn’t going to get me into any more trouble than I was in for simply existing.
It hit me like a ton of bricks too. I tried to drink my way out of it. Tried to talk my way out of it. Tried to convince myself that I was wrong. Or that it was wrong. Or that I was just being delusional. And even up until the last few seconds before I kissed her for that first time, I was trying to talk myself out of it. Because I didn’t need the distraction that a girlfriend could bring. Because I’d made a promise to myself back when I was six years old that I wasn’t ever going to like these people. That I wasn’t going to do something stupid like fall in love with one of them. And then what do I go and do?
Ours isn’t a relationship that most would be able to withstand. On every other Tuesday I’m convinced that she’d murder me. I couldn’t count the number of times we’d called it quits. Longest time we’d ever really spent apart in terms of Teddy is definitely not dating Dromeda at the moment lasted... months, during which I could barely leave the house and certainly had no intention of making good on my promise to find somebody better or any of the other nasty things I shouted at her during the fight. But really, no matter how many times we got into it with one another, it was clear it wasn’t going to do us any good. She was my everything and I was hers but, that wasn’t ever really going to be good enough. I guess I probably always knew that. Knew that eventually my being in love with her would bite me in the ass. Because when you love someone as much as I loved her… You let them go when you’ve got to. And it got to the point where I had to.
The way I saw it I had two options – Make a complete and total ass of myself, prove to her that I was a selfish bastard, and rip her away from her parents and her world because I wanted her to me mine and only mine. And I tried that, I honestly did. Proposed to her and everything. But that wasn’t my ultimatum, it was theirs. And so I know that this isn’t my fault. Because I stepped away when she said she didn’t want to give all that up. I wasn’t going to require her to give it all up, not like they were. I wasn’t them. I was never going to be them. They hated me because of who I was born as, and I got that. I understood and respected their right to their opinion. But I’d be dammned if that stopped me from loving her. And that’s where we were different. That’s where I know I won. Why I know I’m in the right about this whole damn thing. Because if they loved her that much, they would’ve let her go. Let her marry me when she wanted to because I know that without them as a factor she would’ve.
We went our separate ways for a few months. And then I got the owl that pretty much – killed me. I’ve never put any thought into the concept of fatherhood other than knowing I’d be damn good at it. But this – wasn’t the way it was supposed to happen. I’d been noble, I’d done the decent thing for her, I’d let her go back to her family and all. And now – She was back in my life, but part of me thinks it’s only because she was – biologically obligated to do so. Our wedding wasn’t spectacular, but I knew – What I wanted from our relationship. And some day – I think we’ll get there. But for now it’s business as usual. We’re back to our old antics or well, worse than our old antics. At least when we were shouting at one another, throwing wine glasses – we were communicating. Now it’s like we’re strangers that share a house. And a daughter. Dora was the reason we got together and I know for a fact she’s the reason Dromeda sticks around. But there’s a light at the end of this tunnel. I know there is. Some day I’ll have my arm slung around her, with my lips pressed to her temple as we watch Dora skipping off toward the train for the first time. We can weather this storm, just like we’ve gotten through all the rest.
“Yeah, well while you’re out there stopping them from pulling the world apart, I’m stitching it back together as you go. They see you running around throwing curses just like the see the bastards in masks you’re trying to stop.”
We’re at war. You’re either blind or stupid if you’ve not figure that bit out by now. And I like to think that I, uh, do my part. I’ve got special contact with the muggle media, I’ve been shifted from my post in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement to the Muggle-Worthy Excuse Committee, which, right now, is one of the most powerful bodies at the ministry. I’m good with words. But there’s only so much words and excuses can cover up. Muggle and magical innocents are being killed off in hordes. Rounded up like cattle for the slaughter, and we’re supposed to find some way to excuse that. I do my job because it keeps the world from descending into absolute panic. We’re going to hell in a fucking hand basket, but there are five of us sitting in a room trying to keep a majority of the populace calm.
I see it all. Auror reports about who we’re supposed to warn the muggles about next. The Minister stopping by to discuss his liaising with the other Minister. It’s… A mess. And while I might not be one of those vigilantes running around, trying to make the world a better place, I’m doing what I’ve got the power to do and I’m damn good at it too. I’m a fucking superhero. I just do it from my desk the proper way.
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EDWARD A. TONKS
RIFF || EST || PM OR AIM
[PTabbedContent][PTab=I]twenty-five
ORDER SUPPORTER
MUGGLEBORN
gryffindor
CARTOONIST/MWEC MEMBER
AARON TVIET
[/PTab={background-color:#444444; font-size:9px;padding:5px;tab-hover-background-color:#000;tab-selected-background-color:#000;}height:82px;][PTab=II]▼
“Yes. I understand that nobody’s perfect. But that’s what I’m trying to tell you. I’m not nobody. I’m somebody and I assure you, I am perfect.”That right there is a glowing example of something that would typically come out of my mouth. I’m not saying I’m proud of it, but damn did I have some attitude problems as a kid. I was labeled as misguided which is the nice way to put it when someone makes an absolute mess of everything he touches and then laughs about it. Especially in the hey everyone, look at me sort of fashion, which I tended to do a lot of. To say I was a bit of an attention seeking prat would be a bit of an understatement, but I didn’t know what else I was supposed to do. My social skills weren’t all that developed by the time I went to school. I spent most of my days holding the ball of yarn while my grandmother knitted, where the hell was I supposed to learn how to act around other kids? But it was okay, because I was that kid. I wore as a badge of honor more than anything.
Because by the age of about fourteen I had a lot more stuff figured out than I had at the age of eleven. My quests for constant attention had died down considerably, I wasn’t so much of a problem child anymore, at least not audibly so. I still had my run of the school. There were still people who knew that when something went atrociously wrong in the back of the potions room it was probably me that had done it, but I’d gotten over the whole laughing at myself concept. It seems that people tend to like you more when they get to decide when you’re being funny or when something you do is worth attention. I no longer had to draw attention to myself, I had all of the attention I needed without trying. I had successfully figured out what it took some people their entire lives to figure out: Nobody likes you when you’re being a prick. With that revelation, it was almost like I had a new lease on life. A new understanding of what it meant to be that kid, because turns out, in addition to wreaking all sorts of havoc, I needed to be good at like… my course work.
I went from problem child to good student faster than the new Cleansweep, which I actually think is pretty impressive. Anyone who’s mastered the art of setting off a commotion in one corridor and still managing to make it in class on time across the castle deserved some sort of award. And while I might no longer have had the issue of misguidance my attitude problems and over-inflated ego didn’t ever seem to fully wear off. People found that a bit charming though, yeah? I mean, I didn’t go around screaming my praises at the top of my lungs or anything, I was subtle about it. The way I saw it, I didn’t need to go around telling people that I was perfect, they should’ve already known it if I was doing my job right. I had a big head, lots of confidence, but I managed to keep that all in check. Or I guess others sort of kept in in check for me.
I wasn’t a Quidditch star by any means, but I liked nice trying. Our team wasn’t’ completely worthless, and I made a more or less… decent keeper. And I kicked some serious ass at Wizard’s Chess, was a fair dueler, and got a shiny badge that said I had authority, which was just… brilliant. Because I needed more stuff going to my head at that point.
By seventh year I’d officially mastered the art of Ted – the toned down addition. I was mature… enough. I buckled down enough to get my NEWTs on. I was quietly taking over the world with satirical cartoons of Professors and well placed, clever quips that at that point garnered nothing more than eye-rolls and a few Thank you for your unsolicited input Mr. Tonks. I was ready to take on the world.
“Right, I understand that. But if all you’re going to be printing is that propagandic bull shit, the least you could do is let them look at a pretty picture.”
After school the real world hit hard. But that was okay with me. I was out of my parent’s house in less than three hours, kissing mum on the top of the head as I went and promising I’d be round for dinner as often as possible, both because I had absolutely no source of income at that point and would therefore need the free food, and because I loved the old woman, and she deserved to see my pretty little face. (Remember that I said I’d mostly matured past that stage.).
But I was a young, idealistic, broke, starving artist with a pencil, a camera, and a mission to change the world. Which started at the Daily Prophet where I was sure I was going to be able to make a difference with my political cartoons and hard-hitting images of—Well, okay. So they had me taking pictures of birds and they wouldn’t publish anything I drew. But everyone had to start somewhere, and I got enough money from giving them what they wanted to pay rent on the dump of a flat I lived in. And all the while, I was warming them up to the idea that I had more talent than they were giving me credit for. Here was this eighteen year old kid out to prove something, and there they were with their heads up their asses, only peeking out occasionally to tell me that I’d done something wrong. To call it aggravating would be… An understatement. And for the most part, I held my tongue as I slowly climbed through the ranks at the Propeht and occasionally sold my stuff to other publications who’d actually print it. It was a good enough gig. Certainly something to tide me over while I figured out what it actually was I wanted to do with my life. I was constantly wired in to what was going on in the world around me because I was where the magic happened. I started writing, because they needed me to. But never had stories they felt like publishing, because much like the things I continued to draw about the incompetence at the ministry and all that rot, the stuff I had to say didn’t exactly paint the prettiest picture in the world, but some assignments they dropped on me weren’t exactly pretty. They had me covering Wizengamot trials and a lot of that wasn’t shit I could make up. But it also gave me my first real look at the Ministry and how things were… going there.
Three weeks later I was out the door. Camera and pencil safely tucked into my bag. I had more important things to be doing if I wanted the world to change. Instead, I landed myself a fairly good gig at the Misuse of Magic office, something I was allowed to be proud of. Department of Magical Law Enforcement. It’s like a giant party. Except… It was a lot less of a party, because I really hated the way things were handled in that department and really the Ministry as a whole. I got to sit on the sidelines and watch justice be served, still running documents to the Wizengamot or popping down the the Auror office to see how swamped they were, I slowly realized that pretty much everything about the system that was protecting us had gone to complete and utter shit. And I was getting paid a healthy sum of money to watch it do so. Instead of commentating on the things that the Ministry were doing wrong, I got to be the one who did it all. It was at once infuriating and enlightening. But I held my own. I did my job. I still occasionally sold things to various media outlets, though these were all published anonymously, given my position. It was a really interesting ordeal, one I’m technically still living out. Because they say you ought to keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.
“Well yeah. But there’s like… girls. And then there’s like… her. Shit. I really am in trouble, aren’t I?”
Bet you thought I was going to spare you the nitty gritty details of my life. The parts you actually cared about. But fear not, because my less-than-perfect love story is upon us. And unfortunately, as the above indicates, I was very—unprepared for it all.
In school I was never the biggest ladies man. Don’t get me wrong. I had a lady friend or two. I wasn’t completely hopeless. I was sort of cute, one of those guys that girls picked up not because they wanted to change them but because they’d heard through the rumor mill that I was either good for a nice shag or would make an excellent person to take home to their mother’s. A lot of the time, I didn’t really question which of those two it was. I was content with the fact that I had a girl on my arm at all. Let’s be honest, I was a goofy teenager who had no idea what he was looking for in a girl. So I guess the idea was to just sort of… Date them all until I figured out what I was looking for. All that ended up teaching me, I assure you, was what I didn’t want in a lady friend. There might not have been an overabundance of them, but there was enough to know that they weren’t what I wanted.
And then I found her. It was stupid really. We’d never really gotten on at all, I didn’t really know who the hell she even was. I was muggleborn, we don’t know this shit about fancy families or whatever. She was hot, I was bothered, and we accidentally wound up in a broom closet or in the locker room after I got out of Quidditch practice, or passing stupid notes to one another in the library. And it was god awful, because I knew it wasn’t going to work out, knew that she wasn’t going to end up with the likes of me. Hell, she told me that on more than one occasion, but over the years, the last couple at school, I seemed to wear her down. It went from never to later to after school is out. Which was fine with me. I was fine with biding my time. I think… I think other people knew. The ones that cared enough about either of us were too good to say anything and the ones that hated one of us, and by that I mean me, weren’t ever going to be any more cruel to me because they’d all already hit their low. That meant that me snatching one of their own from under them wasn’t going to get me into any more trouble than I was in for simply existing.
It hit me like a ton of bricks too. I tried to drink my way out of it. Tried to talk my way out of it. Tried to convince myself that I was wrong. Or that it was wrong. Or that I was just being delusional. And even up until the last few seconds before I kissed her for that first time, I was trying to talk myself out of it. Because I didn’t need the distraction that a girlfriend could bring. Because I’d made a promise to myself back when I was six years old that I wasn’t ever going to like these people. That I wasn’t going to do something stupid like fall in love with one of them. And then what do I go and do?
Ours isn’t a relationship that most would be able to withstand. On every other Tuesday I’m convinced that she’d murder me. I couldn’t count the number of times we’d called it quits. Longest time we’d ever really spent apart in terms of Teddy is definitely not dating Dromeda at the moment lasted... months, during which I could barely leave the house and certainly had no intention of making good on my promise to find somebody better or any of the other nasty things I shouted at her during the fight. But really, no matter how many times we got into it with one another, it was clear it wasn’t going to do us any good. She was my everything and I was hers but, that wasn’t ever really going to be good enough. I guess I probably always knew that. Knew that eventually my being in love with her would bite me in the ass. Because when you love someone as much as I loved her… You let them go when you’ve got to. And it got to the point where I had to.
The way I saw it I had two options – Make a complete and total ass of myself, prove to her that I was a selfish bastard, and rip her away from her parents and her world because I wanted her to me mine and only mine. And I tried that, I honestly did. Proposed to her and everything. But that wasn’t my ultimatum, it was theirs. And so I know that this isn’t my fault. Because I stepped away when she said she didn’t want to give all that up. I wasn’t going to require her to give it all up, not like they were. I wasn’t them. I was never going to be them. They hated me because of who I was born as, and I got that. I understood and respected their right to their opinion. But I’d be dammned if that stopped me from loving her. And that’s where we were different. That’s where I know I won. Why I know I’m in the right about this whole damn thing. Because if they loved her that much, they would’ve let her go. Let her marry me when she wanted to because I know that without them as a factor she would’ve.
We went our separate ways for a few months. And then I got the owl that pretty much – killed me. I’ve never put any thought into the concept of fatherhood other than knowing I’d be damn good at it. But this – wasn’t the way it was supposed to happen. I’d been noble, I’d done the decent thing for her, I’d let her go back to her family and all. And now – She was back in my life, but part of me thinks it’s only because she was – biologically obligated to do so. Our wedding wasn’t spectacular, but I knew – What I wanted from our relationship. And some day – I think we’ll get there. But for now it’s business as usual. We’re back to our old antics or well, worse than our old antics. At least when we were shouting at one another, throwing wine glasses – we were communicating. Now it’s like we’re strangers that share a house. And a daughter. Dora was the reason we got together and I know for a fact she’s the reason Dromeda sticks around. But there’s a light at the end of this tunnel. I know there is. Some day I’ll have my arm slung around her, with my lips pressed to her temple as we watch Dora skipping off toward the train for the first time. We can weather this storm, just like we’ve gotten through all the rest.
“Yeah, well while you’re out there stopping them from pulling the world apart, I’m stitching it back together as you go. They see you running around throwing curses just like the see the bastards in masks you’re trying to stop.”
We’re at war. You’re either blind or stupid if you’ve not figure that bit out by now. And I like to think that I, uh, do my part. I’ve got special contact with the muggle media, I’ve been shifted from my post in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement to the Muggle-Worthy Excuse Committee, which, right now, is one of the most powerful bodies at the ministry. I’m good with words. But there’s only so much words and excuses can cover up. Muggle and magical innocents are being killed off in hordes. Rounded up like cattle for the slaughter, and we’re supposed to find some way to excuse that. I do my job because it keeps the world from descending into absolute panic. We’re going to hell in a fucking hand basket, but there are five of us sitting in a room trying to keep a majority of the populace calm.
I see it all. Auror reports about who we’re supposed to warn the muggles about next. The Minister stopping by to discuss his liaising with the other Minister. It’s… A mess. And while I might not be one of those vigilantes running around, trying to make the world a better place, I’m doing what I’ve got the power to do and I’m damn good at it too. I’m a fucking superhero. I just do it from my desk the proper way.
