Magpie to the Morning

David had thought whether what he was doing was the right thing to do at all. Was it really his place to interfere? He shook his head at that thought, of course it was, Ursula not only lived in the country that he had control of, she was also someone he would like to call a friend, or at least someone on their way there. It wasn’t interfering

He didn’t like the fact that she felt the need to be ‘running away’ or so it seemed. Wasn’t it his job to make sure people felt safe here? They shouldn’t feel the need to ‘get away for awhile’, especially not when this was their home.

He had told Martha to deal with all of his appointments for today, he wouldn’t be going into the office this morning and this afternoon if need be. He had told her he had a couple of things to deal with, seeing if he could help Ursula was only one of them. The other, well, the owl he had received that morning was rather curious and he had yet to decide whether to go along with it or not.

He stood on the doorstep, straightened his tie a little and played with the cuffs on his sleeves before knocking gently on the door. He waited to see if anyone would answer, maybe he was too late, maybe they had changed their plans, maybe they had left already and there would be nothing he could do about it.

A sudden chill ran up David’s spine as he stood there, although it was morning it was fairly warm and he had the horrible feeling that someone was watching him. He glanced over his shoulder and all around him but there was no one, not even a flicker of a curtain of a nosy neighbour. He was about to give up, turn around a leave, when he heard a small click of the door as a key turned in the lock.

Ursula sets the final set of shoes into the intricate formal shoe wear compartment and stroked the red patent complatively. They were her favourite shoes and she wore them when she had a bad day. On her interview day for Hogwarts too.

Craning her head to the left, Ursula pricks her ears and tries to listen for the sound that has interrupted her memories of the first days of Hogwarts. Sounded like a knock. Her back stiffened, and her hand snaked into her pocket for her wand. Oops, wrong pocket. She forgot she was back to wearing the floaty summer dresses again. Because of summer, obviously.

She reached the door in record time, striding down the stairs and momentarily forgetting she could disapparate (but not to a good degree, of course. Too many things to get rid of in your head), passing by Emily's room on her way and breathing a small sigh of relief. Ursula moves the elaborately patterned blind to see who is at the door and winces reflexively. David.

But to check...
"Whose fault was it that we met last?" she asked through the tiniest slither of light of the door to him.

David was taken aback by the question, but it also sent a pang of worry through him. If she was taken this many precautions there had to be something she was really worried about. He played with the cuff of his sleeve again and tried to come up with the answer.

The only thing is he knew they both had different ideas on whose fault it had been.

“Well I stand by it being my fault, for the meeting in the skies that morning, but,” he shook his head, this was silly, all he wanted to do was help and he wasn’t able to do that stood out on the doorstep, the sense of being watched kept growing and he just wanted to sit down and talk, “but you are going to insist on it being your own fault, I hope you enjoyed the cheesecake.”

David tried to give her subtle information that told her it was truly him, things that an impersonator wouldn’t really know. In the magical world it was rather easy to steal someone’s face for a few hours, although polyjuice potion took a month to brew it wasn’t that hard to come by if you knew where to look.

“Ursula please, it’s me,” he stood on the doorstep feeling more and more helpless, “I only want to help, at least let me in so we can talk, I don’t like the fact that you are running away from something or someone, not when I have the whole of the ministry at my disposal to deal with something like this.”

All he could do was wait and hope that she would at least open the door, if he wanted he could have called several members from Magical Law Enforcement and forced his way in, but he was not here as the minister, he was here as a friend.

Ursula turned when she heard him begin to reply. She didn't really want to listen to him anyway, not really. In her mind the fact that he had approached it in the gentlemanly way David was prone to doing just proved that it was him. No-one could quite pass class off like David. Of course, that wasn't exactly a hard thing to fake, but she wasn't really thinking about that. A wave of nausea rushes through her, although its tainted with some sort of affection for the girl still packing upstairs and it concerns her as to what it is.

She's not had this feeling before.
She's really protecting her cub.

David says cheesecake, and Ursula knows that this is where she's supposed to realise it's him. She relinquishes hold on the door, and moves her foot. He can come in, but she's still facing the stairs blankly, terrified to reach into her pocket and fully take her wand out. If it's them, taking it a step further, and she's opened the door into their home because they took merely took the shape of the face that she-

When he sounded pleading, Ursula whelped, and her lip trembled. Pleading sounded so wrong in his voice. So, awry. "I'm not running," she said defiantly. That was true, though. She wasn't running, but she wasn't staying here with her head high to let people get to her. That's what they were doing, just that she wasn't running.

Isolating the problem.

David doesn’t hear anything from the other side of the door, but it moved slightly as she seemed to back away. Was that her letting him in? He placed one hand on the door and gently pushed it open; he wasn’t entirely sure what he was expecting to see but when he poked his head around the door he was saddened to see that she had her back to him. Could she not even face him?

He pushed the door open all the way and stepped into the empty hall, his footsteps seemed to echo in the silence and he closed the door behind him making sure it clicked in place.

“Ursula, I’m,” but he was cut off when she said that she wasn’t running, “I’m sorry, I don’t understand what’s going on.”

He had no idea. How was he meant to help when he didn’t know what the problem was? It was like trying to solve a crossword without any clues.

He stepped a bit closer placing, what he hoped was a reassuring hand on her shoulder. David didn’t like to deal with sensitive situations like these, he always felt nervous, that he would make it worse. That he would over step a line, or say something stupid that would make the situation a whole lot worse. But nonetheless he remained stood there for a few moments not saying anything while he tried to form a sentence in his head.

“Will you not talk to me? Explain to me what’s going on?” he gave a gentle squeeze on her shoulder and turned her slightly so that he faced her, “Tell me what I can do to help. I’ll get on a broom and fly to the arctic if it’s the north pole that you want. Just please, speak to me.”

While she appreciates that David is being kind and trying to take an interest, she has things to do and it isn't in her to pour her heart out to someone, well, anyone. Too independant, or too sure of what other people think of her. "Oh shut up," she says, walking into the kitchen. That's all people want to do, get in the way and stop her when she's on a roll.

"Emily?"
Time is dragging.

He squeezed her shoulder and she shivered. "Not yet. Not ready yet."
Ursula thinks that she's regressed into being young again- really young. Ariel used to tell her Mum that Ursula had been playing with her make-up bag again and when her Mum asked her to admit it, Ursula would ball her hands up and tell her Mum not yet. She wasn't ready to say it yet.

Something tells her that not only was she not ready to move, not ready to be attacked, she hadn't been ready for David either.

As David followed Ursula through the house he realised that he must have just caught them before they were about to leave, there was very little left to say that this was a home rather than just a house.

David was so torn, did he just leave it? His instinct of flight was to just leave, leave her to it, it didn’t seem like she wanted to talk to him and he was afraid of making things worse. But there was also the instinct to fight, he wasn’t going to fight her, or force her to do what she didn’t want to do, but maybe there was some way he could still help her.

He had turned up unannounced, given her no warning of his intended visit, mainly because he hadn’t really planned it himself but it still must have been a shock to her.

“Okay, okay,” he tried his best to console her, feeling her shaking beneath his hand, “You don’t have to. It’s okay.”

He lead her to a seat and sat her down, he was slightly worried that she may not stop shaking and collapse or something, he wasn’t entirely sure but he thought it best that she didn’t have anywhere to fall just in case.

“If I can’t help you here,” he began taking a seat himself, “at least let me help you on the other side, I can help you find somewhere to stay, or something like that?”

David was grasping at straws now, he felt hopeless himself, he had no idea what he was supposed to do. What was causing her to act like this?

In spite of herself, Ursula couldn't help but laugh. David Oswald, the object of her dreams for many years now worrying about her. It was a twirly whirly kind of laugh though.
"You just caught me at a bad time," she said honestly, doing as she was told and sitting down. "I'd have been fine if you weren't here."

Fact one being it was easier to keep up pretenses with children. Fact two David was David and seemed to know everything about everything and if he knew everything then he knew what was happening and-

Don't explode.
"I have accomodation for us. We're to go on holiday, and then after that it's Emily's choice where we stay. It isn't permanent," she added hastily, hoping that's what she said on the letter also.

She crossed her arms across her stomach and bit into her nails, watching David. "It'll all die down when we go abroad."

Which reminded her to get the ball rolling. Emily must've been packed by now. She'd given the girl more than enough time. Plus, she'd packed her clothes the night before for her. Child's play.

"I'm going to check on Emily. Don't feel the need to stay," she added, tapping his knee and doing just what she said.

She just laughed at him, he was trying to help and she just laughed. Maybe he had got this all wrong, maybe she wasn’t in as deep as she made out to be. If there was nothing she wanted him to do, nothing he could do what was the point in sticking around to help. He had thrown out so many lines for her, offered her so many hands to help her up, but she had knocked him down every time.

“I understand,” he just looked out the window of the kitchen, he didn’t though, in fact he didn’t understand any more than he had done this morning before the visit, if anything he just felt a little bit more confused.

He nodded his head as she explained her limited plan to him, it seemed to him as if she was just upping and leaving, that she hadn’t really thought through it in the long run. But he guessed it wasn’t his place to say anymore, she had made it clear to him about that.

He watched as she left the kitchen and he sat there for a few moments, it seemed that she didn’t need him; she was an independent woman and seemed to be insistent on remaining that way. He then stood, took a breath and ran a hand through his hair.

He walked back through to the front door, he had been pretty much told to leave, so that’s what he would do. He opened the door, taking one last glance over his shoulder and murmured, “Good luck Ursula Sparrow.”

She took a long enduring walk back down to the kitchen as Emily finished off the very last of her things. The one thing Ursula had kept from her luggage, however, was still in her pocket. If she stood still on the steps, she could feel it pulsating slightly. It made hairs on her arm stand on end.

David had gone. Hadn't even had a drink. She whelped a little at that thought. Very discourteous of her to do, but in a way she thought it fitting. Both had left in places of each other's in ways that seemed to be because of the hosts. Then again, she knew being cruel to be kind was much easier than dragging everyone up to the roof and shooting them off into the heart of a sun.

Emily was coming downstairs now, already finished. Finally. Not final enough. Still needed more time to get this to process, to get the ball rolling, to get the ball to stop, to get the ball to think about what was happening so it could bloody well tell Ursula.

A sombre look on her face stood as Emily came past her on the stairs, as she thought about David. There weren't many friends that had stayed around up until now, otherwise they'd have been in her thoughts too. Most of all, however, she hoped that the people that were after her wouldn't go after him.

And after Emily is taken care of, I hope they come after me.

Ursula pushed Emily forward through the door, and then came back to get their luggage, scarpering back to check Emily was still there.
She took hold of her niece's hand, checked all of the bags were strapped together and digging into one of Ursula's arms, and disapparated.