Here We Go Again [Ranger]

[grey xavier slater]

The Monsters

walk among us

Grey had somehow escaped Cecelia and the Prefect’s Bathroom unscathed. He guessed that being patient and listening to his housemate’s problems was probably the best way to have gotten off the hook, as well as offering his unsolicited advice on how to handle everything that was going on her life. A lot of that good advice he had given could be applied to his own life, and Grey was contemplating all of that now. It had bothered him how Cecelia had painted Ranger, and his attitude towards everything. Grey had virtually ignored the other Gryffindor boy for the majority of their years there, despite the two living in the same dorm room all seven years. There was no love lost between the two of them, as far as he could tell. Respect each other’s space and that was pretty much it. Existing only when they occupied the same room was a pretty simple task, especially when they had never formed any close bonds. Still, to hear that someone was capable of being so cruel to another person without realizing it baffled Grey. It was hard not to immediately take Cecelia’s side after seeing her in that condition.

After leaving the Prefect’s Bathroom hours ago, Grey had decided to wander the castle, as usual, instead of immediately heading back to the common room like he had promised Cecelia. He had gotten out of trouble once already tonight, so he felt like pushing his luck a little bit. Sitting in a little corner going over everything that had happened, Grey eventually made his way back to the Gryffindor common room. There was no way it wasn’t already past curfew, especially since he had already snuck past a few Prefects, professors, and Aurors on the way back. He was sure more than a few noticed him sliding by, but since he was heading in the direction of the common room they probably let him off. They weren’t stupid, and neither was he. Completely erasing one’s presence in a castle the size of Hogwarts when a bunch of professional police officers were walking about was probably nigh impossible. A few minutes of walking later though, and the Fat Lady came into sight. Dropping the password and ignoring her warnings of being past curfew, Grey climbed into the common room, hoping anyone on the other side would just ignore him.

grey xavier slater & @ranger
395
Deeper Than Shallow by Roo Panes

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOX 2.0

[Deleted]

grey xavier slater

sleep was something that had been escaping him in the last few weeks. he lay in bed for hours when he tried to go to sleep, staring at the roof in the dorm or out the window by his bed. he'd never felt so tired in his life, it was like he was just existing and walking around with his head floating about thirty centimeters above his head. today had been a trying day which probably hadn't helped. he'd run into cecelia again. safe to say their meeting had gone as well as their last one had. granted maybe he'd been more mean than he should have but he was tired of defending himself against her, trying to convince herself that what she thought happened, hadn't actually happened and her opinion of him had been a self centered one on her part. he was currently sprawled out in the gryffindor common room, writing out homework they had been given earlier in the week. the light of the fire flickered on the paper before him as he suddenly heard the portrait open and he frowned slightly, reaching to grab the wand he had laying beside him and he sat up on his knees. only the students and teachers had the password to the common room so it was more than likely that it was a gryffindor that had been out past curfew, but after what had happened at his house the thought of intruders was on his mind more and more. he relaxed a little when he saw it was grey slater, a fellow seventh year and he put the wand back on the ground and settled into laying on the floor by his homework again. "you're past curfew grey" he said as he reached for his quill again. he wasn't going to do anything about it. after all it would be a little hypocritical considering he himself had been up every night after the students were supposed to be in bed. he hadn't taken to wandering the halls yet but it had been something he'd considered.

[grey xavier slater]

The Monsters

walk among us

He wasn’t trying to sneak in by any means, but at the same time, it was preferable to storming in and making a scene, announcing to everyone in Gryffindor that he was back. Grey didn’t care for the theatrics that some people tried to put on when they made their grand entrances into the common room. There were enough Gryffindors like that, he didn’t need to add to their number. Despite all this, he was still relatively loud walking in, letting the painting slam shut behind him, a muffled yell by the Fat Lady quickly following it. She was so mouthy and obnoxious all the time, no wonder he hated her, and vice-versa. Strolling into the common room area, he saw the one person he didn’t want to see: Ranger. It looked like he wasn’t too enthusiastic about Grey being out and about, but also wasn’t going to reprimand him for it. That was kind of good.

The only issue Grey took with the little encounter was that it looked like Ranger had just put down his wand once he noticed it was Grey entering. Why did he have his wand pointed at another Gryffindor? “I guess I am. Oh well.” He shrugged off the other seventh year nonchalantly. In a way, he was kind of hoping to provoke Ranger, especially after what Cecelia had told him earlier. He wanted to see for himself exactly how awful the boy could be. Walking past where Ranger was laying, doing work, Grey stopped for a second and decided to test Ranger’s patience. “Any specific reason you had your wand pointed at me when I walked in? Might want to be careful who you point that at.” He said, not looking at Ranger at all. Grey was fixated on moving to the stairs, but he wanted to hear what Ranger had to say first. It wasn’t common for him to intentionally provoke someone, especially if they were a Gryffindor. Something just didn’t sit well with him after talking to Cecelia about Ranger. The other Gryffindor kind of pissed him off, and Grey wanted to make that known.

grey xavier slater & @ranger
354
Ran Before The Storm by Roo Panes

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[Deleted]

grey xavier slater

“Any specific reason you had your wand pointed at me when I walked in? Might want to be careful who you point that at.” ranger sighed a little and rested his head in his hands as he lay on the floor. he hadn't had it pointed at grey, just in his hand. he ran his hand through his hair and shook his head slightly. "i didn't have it pointed at you grey" ranger said simply, though people seemed to have a habit of not believing him at the moment. "i had it in my hand. the castle was attacked last year. students were part of the group that attacked us. who knows if any of them are in this house or not or if they'd be willing to break into another dorm" he said as he shifted to pull the papers back together. he didn't think he could focus on homework anymore. he'd try again in a few hours if he was still awake. the castle being attacked was a big reason ranger had grabbed his wand but the bigger one was he had a thing about intruders at the moment. his whole family had been blown apart by people invading somewhere he called his home and while the gryffindor dorm wasn't exactly his home it felt like it. he was also a prefect which meant the students in it, it was his job to protect them as best he could. he didn't look back at his fellow seventh year, kept his eyes on the flickering flames of the warm fireplace before him. he should have been pressing grey about where he had been and reminding him of the curfew that was in place for a reason. but something in him didn't want to. he'd had a confrontation that day and he didn't really want another one.

[grey xavier slater]

The Monsters

walk among us

Even if Ranger hadn’t had his wand pointed at Grey, the fact that he had it out in his hand when Grey happened to walk in was enough for him to know that the thought had passed through the other Gryffindor’s head. He was a Prefect though, so it made more sense for him to react like that when someone wandered in after hours. “I’m well aware of what happened last year. But it looks like our trusty guard dog to protect us as we sleep.” Or attempted to at least. Grey didn’t even know if today was going to be one of those rare days where sleep decided to be his friend. Lately it hadn’t. Elevating any kind of situation with Ranger would get him going though, solidifying the no sleep routine for sure.

It didn’t look like Grey had managed to get under his skin yet though. Maybe Ranger’s argument, or whatever it was, with Cecelia had drained him as much as it had with her. That piqued Grey’s interest because Cecelia had made it sound like Ranger didn’t feel anything from it. Clearly his lack of enthusiasm to put Grey in his place for being late and an asshole meant something. He had heard about Ranger losing someone, recalling that names of an auror and his wife dying over the summer matched up with the prefect’s. Was that who he was trying to compare with Cecelia’s sister? Grey knew it wasn’t really his business, but it was wrong for Ranger to do that to Cecelia, and he wanted to make that known. “I don’t really know what you said or did to Cecelia earlier, but I can tell you that it makes you look like an asshole. Just saying.” Grey had a feeling Cecelia was going to follow through with the plan to ignore Ranger, but someone had to let him know about the damage he had done, whether he cared or not.

grey xavier slater & @ranger
326
San Diego by blink-182

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOX 2.0

[Deleted]

grey xavier slater

“I’m well aware of what happened last year. But it looks like our trusty guard dog to protect us as we sleep.” ranger rolled his eyes slightly at the papers he was tidying up but he made sure grey didn't see it. he didn't feel like giving grey anything to use against him in that moment. it was well known what grey was like though ranger didn't actually know all that much about him. they both had different friends and were different people so it was no wonder they didn't actually know anything about each other. "woof" he said with a sigh as he shoved the papers into the book bag that was sitting by the overstuffed lounge behind him.

“I don’t really know what you said or did to Cecelia earlier, but I can tell you that it makes you look like an asshole. Just saying.” of course he knew about that, ranger was pretty sure she was going to tell the whole student body. he just hoped some of them were smart enough to not buy into the one sided version she seemed to have concocted up in her head. "if you don't really know what happened or what i said .. how can you say it makes me look like an asshole?" he asked grey as he looked at him. there was no heat or aggravation in the question but he wanted to know. if grey didn't know what he'd said how could it paint him as an asshole? "but it's a good thing i don't care about looking like an asshole then isn't it." he said as he tucked the bag under the chair and moved to sit in it. "i asked her a valid question, i wasn't trying to upset her" he added. though he did feel bad about it and he knew it would show on his face, he wasn't one that could hide when he was feeling bad about something.

[grey xavier slater]

The Monsters

walk among us

Grey rolled his eyes as Ranger made a woofing sound following his comment about being the guard dog. He gave him credit though for having some kind of sense of humor at this hour, especially after the way Grey had been talking to him. He imagined it wasn’t easy dealing with an unruly student, that unruly student being a rather angsty Grey Slater as of late. There was really no reason for him to keep going after Ranger since it was easy enough to walk away there and end it, but Grey still felt like following up about Cecelia. Ranger didn’t seem quite as affected as she had been, or at least what Grey had gleamed she had been like before he arrived in the Prefect’s bathroom, but he had assumed that being reprimanded for being out after hours was definitely supposed to be happening right now, not this complete role reversal of Grey being the one dominating the conversation.

“Unlike you, I saw the aftermath of whatever heated debate the two of you went through. I’m smart enough to know that a normal conversation between two people who are supposed to be working together shouldn’t turn out like that.” Grey had never inquired how long Cecelia had been in the Prefect’s bathroom, but the more he had thought about it that night, the more he realized that she hadn’t been at dinner either. Now, he wasn’t one to constantly be looking around for people he had never talked to before, but it was pretty obvious when a Prefect wasn’t at dinner. From the way she looked too, it had been a long time since she had left the bathroom, and Grey was the first and only person to disturb that. Grey shrugged his shoulders as Ranger said he didn’t care about looking like an asshole. He agreed with him on that. There had been plenty of times Grey had gone through the same thing, just for the other person to find out he didn’t really care. That was usually enough to shake them off, but not Grey with Ranger. Now that he had seen and heard Cecelia’s side, Grey was practically begging to know the other side. “What exactly did you say then? Because it obviously did a little more than upset her.”

grey xavier slater & @ranger
384
A Little Boy Named Train by Green Day

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOX 2.0

[Deleted]

grey xavier slater

“Unlike you, I saw the aftermath of whatever heated debate the two of you went through. I’m smart enough to know that a normal conversation between two people who are supposed to be working together shouldn’t turn out like that.” he sighed and ran his hand through his hair. clearly grey wasn't going to let this go anytime soon though ranger wondered why. what did he have to gain by pressing it? it wasn't anything to do with him. not really. even if cecelia had spilled her guts to him about what had happened, he wasn't involved in anyway so there was no reason to be pushing the subject. then again it was grey. “What exactly did you say then? Because it obviously did a little more than upset her.” he shrugged his shoulders lightly and looked at the fire before him. "i asked her just how clear she was thinking in the days after her sister was murdered .. since she expected me to be clear headed enough to help her three days after my parents were killed" he folded his arms over his knees and rested back against the couch. maybe it had been wrong to ask that but since she'd jumped to the conclusion he was a heartless asshole who had watched her get into trouble and ignored her, why couldn't he react to her in the same way, make assumptions and accusations about her actions. it was only fair right? he knew he was supposed to be the bigger person and he would be. he'd let it go in a little while but he was entitled to be angry at her just as she was to be at him.

[grey xavier slater]

The Monsters

walk among us

It kind of ticked Grey off at how dismissive Ranger was about the whole thing. Too casually talk about death, especially the death of family members, like it was nothing was scary. When Cecelia had told him about how her sister died, it was like she was forcing herself to reopen those memories, subjecting herself to the torture of it all over again. He had never asked her when it had happened, but it had to have been relatively recent. Ranger’s misfortune wasn’t that long ago, so maybe he was still in the aftermath stages of grief, where things didn’t seem real yet. There was no telling what was going through Ranger or Cecelia’s heads. Grey couldn’t read minds, and even if he was able to, he wasn’t sure if tapping into what these two were going through would be the smartest decision. He felt invested enough after helping Cecelia out that he was in the right talking to Ranger about it. The thing was though, Grey had expected some kind of dissonance and instead was met with passiveness.

“Did you ever think that maybe that wasn’t the best thing to ask someone that was still in pain?” Merlin’s beard that wasn’t what he wanted to say at all. It just slipped out. The same could be said about Ranger when he was asking Cecelia about that. Grey rubbed his eyes and sighed. It was far too late to try and come up with comprehensible reasons to be angry at someone he barely knew on behalf of another person. All he had done lately was try to fight other people’s fights for them without their permission. Grey had never been like that before, so he wasn’t sure why it was happening now. First it was his sister, now he was doing the same thing with Cecelia. “Listen, I probably shouldn’t be talking like I understand everything, because I don’t. I got frustrated at you because of the state Cecelia was in. I shouldn’t have been quick to judge you, especially with what you’ve been through lately.” His entire life as of late consisted of jumping to conclusions and then having to apologize once he drove himself into a corner. That wasn’t him, and yet it was.

grey xavier slater & @ranger
376
Homecoming by Green Day

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOX 2.0

[Deleted]

grey xavier slater

"cecelia and i probably care the same amount about each other's feelings. which is not at all" he said as he looked at grey. he hadn't been trying to upset cecelia and yeah he did feel a little bad about it but it wasn't for the fact he had hurt her feelings. that had been the least important thing on his mind in the heat of the moment. “Listen, I probably shouldn’t be talking like I understand everything, because I don’t. I got frustrated at you because of the state Cecelia was in. I shouldn’t have been quick to judge you, especially with what you’ve been through lately.” he shook his head and rubbed his hands over the back of his neck and sighed. "the only person to blame for the state cecelia was in is her. she should have thought about how someone would react to her after she tried to hex them. i didn't mean to make her upset, but she was blaming me for something she did" he said as he looked at her. "so the next time you see her, let her know" he told grey as he leaned back against the couch. okay he was biting more than grey was but he was tired, over arguing which didn't make any sense because here he was unable to stop the words coming out of his mouth but he felt that if he was going to get blamed it wasn't exactly fair. "sorry, my brain is just .. all over" he mumbled as he dropped his chin onto his knees. he didn't want to argue but he was struggling to make sense of his brain, one moment it was passive and the next it made his back raise. "don't be late tomorrow night okay? i can't let you off two nights in a row"

[grey xavier slater]

The Monsters

walk among us

He couldn’t exactly argue with the fact that Cecelia and Ranger probably didn’t care too much about each other, but there was an even larger problem at hand that neither of them had really brought up yet: they still had to work together as Prefects. Cecelia had slightly mentioned it, and Grey had offered her the solution, by avoiding Ranger during duties, but they still held the same position. It would be nigh impossible for either of them to pull that off. That didn’t mean they had to be friends, or even nice to each other, they just had to learn boundaries of where they had to stop. Grey really wanted to tell Ranger this but decided to hold back. He knew Cecelia was already going to do her best to ignore the other Prefect so there was no reason to repeat the same thing to Ranger. If he couldn’t figure that out, which Grey assumed he would, then there were problems that ran much deeper between the two Prefects, problems Grey preferred not to get in the middle of. This situation was already more than enough for him, mainly because it was all on accident.

Ranger continued to talk as Grey stayed silent. He apparently still blamed Cecelia for what their argument was about. Grey kept quiet, even after Ranger finished. This was kind of what he had wanted to hear early on in their conversation, something that made Ranger sound like everything that had happened was Cecelia’s fault. But Grey was done trying to bait the Prefect into an argument. It had gotten old fast, and that wasn’t how he normally was. The frustration of hearing it from Cecelia had gotten the better of him, and then adding on the freak occurrence of running into Ranger right after felt like the opportune moment to let it all out. He was done now though. There wasn’t much left to say anyways, and this was ultimately a problem that needed to be solved between the Prefects, if they wanted to fix it, and not by Grey. “Yeah, I can tell her that,” he said bluntly. He would have preferred if Ranger had done it himself, but obviously that wasn’t going to be the prettiest result.

Grey continued to watch Ranger think over whatever was going on his head, and decided that there wasn’t much left to say. Mentioning something about his brain being all over, Grey spoke up. “I’ll leave you to it then. Maybe now wasn’t the best time for me to say all of this.” He tried to make that sound as apologetic as possible, after all, the guy did just have his parents killed. Grey couldn’t come close to imagining what that was like. Even though he didn’t exactly enjoy his parents presence in his life, they were still family. “Trust me, I won’t. I’ve pushed my luck a few times already today.” Grey turned to leave the common room, before looking back at Ranger. “So, the Prefect’s Bathroom password, you’ll probably be getting a new one soon. Just wanted to let you know.” Rotating his head back to face the stairs as he headed up to the dorms, Grey could feel a small grin form on his face. That last bit had definitely been worth the entire conversation.

grey xavier slater & @ranger
552
Deeper Than Shallow by Roo Panes
Grey Out!

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOX 2.0