i know that i've got issues, but you're pretty messed up too.
either way, i found out i'm nothing without you.
You’d think a castle would be majorly exciting, wouldn’t you?
Wrong. Maybe it was exciting for the first few hours, but after eight weeks of being cooped up Poppy is having to resort the lowliest of practical jokes in order to keep herself entertained. She’s just finished carefully putting an overflowing wastepaper basket on top of an ajar door at exactly the moment when her magic decide it’s bored too, and catapults it back into her face. Extremely unamused (yes Microsoft, that is a word, because I decided), Poppy coughs and stumbles backwards, tripping over Penguin and landing smack on the back on the cold stone floor. Ouch.
These haven’t been a good few weeks. Poppy is cold a lot of the time (mostly because she hasn’t the sense to stay in the great hall where it’s warm, but rather spends most of her time wandering through the chilly corridors) and has already lost a lot of weight. For the first time in her life, she has what she deems to be acceptable thighs – but they’ve come at the cost of being starving hungry all the time and having to eat shoes. Everything that can possibly be eaten is being boiled down for grub – including anything made of leather. Nice. When they get out of here, Poppy is going to learn how to cook and then make a mahoosive roast dinner with roast chicken, homemade gravy, roast spuds, Yorkshire puddings, petite pois peas, green giant sweetcorn and (wtf Microsoft? Sweetcorn is a word!) raw carrots. Mmm. All that and a pint of Spingo (Cornish beer) would just be heaven right now.
Unfortunately, all she has instead is a headache, an empty stomach and fingers numb with cold.
Muttering like Muttley, the 1019 year old teenager kicks Penguin (who yelps pitifully, making her feel kinda bad – but it’s his fault for being in the way) and pulls herself back to her feet, shoving her hands in her pockets moodily. Life is full on sucking right now. (You don’t recognise sweetcorn as a word but you’ll accept that as a grammatically correct sentence? WTF?) (And you’ll accept WTF as a word?!) The only mood pick-me-up she gets is when she returns from her aimless wanderings to the great hall, where Draco nearly always is. He has this amazing ability to make everything all right just by being there, even if he’s being chauvinistic and vain like he usually is (Poppy is usually being stupid and annoying, so all’s fair in love and war, really). Although it’s only early afternoon, she decides to head back to the great hall anyway – it’s not as if she hasn’t explored every single nook and cranny in this boring old castle a million times anyway. The hall isn’t far from here; just along the corridor and turn right into the entranceway, then right again. She can hear the general murmur of noise from here.
Perked by the thought of seeing Draco again, Poppy opens the door, bounces through it and collides instantly with something rather solid which sends her smack on the back on the cold stone floor again. Ugh. Why did she even bother getting up? Letting loose a torrent of extremely rude words in Bulgarian, Poppy rubs her head, glances up and, for a moment, thinks she’s seeing Draco standing in the doorway. Although she’s grown up used to the concept of pregnant men (the person who gave birth to her was her father), Draco is the only one she’s actually seen before and is consequently the only one she really associates it with. It takes her a moment to remember that a) Draco isn’t pregnant, because she would have noticed before now if he was blowing up like a balloon, b) Draco doesn’t have black hair and c) Draco is better looking. Sorry, Patrick. If it helps, she is kinda biased.
She does remember Patrick. Even with Poppy’s lifestyle, it’s hard to forget the rush of adrenaline she got from hoisting him up to the safety of the clouds just nanoseconds before his familiar was going to sink her teeth into his flesh. He had been a little podgy then, but now he’s freaking massive. There is no way just one baby in there. Springing back up to her feet with more energy than she ought to have given the situation, Poppy flings her arms around him and hugs him. Mmm, body heat. Penguin tries to cosy up too, but she pushes him away with her knee; ‘go find your own heat source,’ she scolds him telepathically. He whimpers pathetically and gives her the puppy eyes, which she ignores.
“Hi Patrick,” she says cheerily, still not letting him (the heat) go. “You didn’t get eaten in the end, then? Epic. I always think it’s a good start to the day if I wake up and I haven’t been eaten.”
POPPY
and honestly,
my life would suck without you.
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