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last online Mar 29, 2024 5:16:26 GMT -7
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Jul 8, 2017 16:02:24 GMT -7
Post by Deleted on Jul 8, 2017 16:02:24 GMT -7
When you were a dog, there was arguably no better place to be in the world than at a carnival. Everything was bright and happy and there were tons of people - and even better, tons of food. Poe knew that he ought to feel a little bad for going through the carnival in his Animagus form just to get some free snacks, but he also knew that he would have ended up as a dog anyways. He was spending more and more time outside of work as a dog, to the point where he seemed more comfortable that way than as a human. Besides, as a dog, his senses felt so much sharper, and he could actually take in the beauty of the carnival. The owner of one of the food stands had seen him padding through the carnival unattended, and Poe had been a bit worried that he was going to be unceremoniously evicted. Instead he had just been given a pretzel to eat - one that had been folded incorrectly and thus was made unsellable. Poe didn't really care - he ate half of it in one gulp and was currently carrying the other half around in his mouth as he continued to weave through the various games and attractions and food vendors. He loved carnivals, he thought, as his tail began to wag. When he raised his nose to the air, Poe could have sworn that he smelled another dog's scent on the air, but he couldn't really be sure. Poe plopped himself down in an open stretch of the grass, and took another big bite of pretzel happily.
@kathryn
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last online Mar 29, 2024 5:16:26 GMT -7
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Jul 9, 2017 18:47:26 GMT -7
Post by Deleted on Jul 9, 2017 18:47:26 GMT -7
For some reason, Kat found herself at the Hogsmeade carnival that day. She wasn't really comfortable with large crowds, especially without Logan there by her side. Sadly, her boyfriend had to work, but she knew this sort of event was what Arrow would enjoy, and he had been such a calming presence in her life since her attack last year. So, here she was, walking around with her faithful labrador by herself. Arrow attracted attention from fellow carnival goers, and Kat let him have the attention, He deserved all the attention and Kat could tell he rather reveled in it, wagging his tail and giving doggy kisses to some of the younger attendees. Children didn't cause Kat's anxiety levels to rise rapidly, but Arrow was also intuned with how she was feeling.
As they continued walking, Kat noticed an American pitbull dog munching happily away at a pretzel. Arrow whined briefly, and Kat laughed softly. "Alright Arrow, we'll get you a pretzel too," she said, ruffling his ear as he wagged his tail excitedly as they walked over to the stand. She bought two, one for herself and one for Arrow and then led him over to the other dog. "Hi there fella," she said, crouching down as Arrow sniffed the other dog interestedly. "Do you have an owner around here?" she asked him, looking around to see if anyone was searching for a lost dog.
@poet
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last online Mar 29, 2024 5:16:26 GMT -7
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Jul 10, 2017 13:08:40 GMT -7
Post by Deleted on Jul 10, 2017 13:08:40 GMT -7
Poe really should have been better about escaping situations before the word owner came into the mix. How could one explain to a fellow human that he didn’t have an owner, because he happened to be a man walking around in a dog’s skin, without actually showing them that he was a human? Poe was lucky because his Animagus form didn’t really have any distinct human-like markings, mostly because Poe the man didn’t have any distinct markings or features. He was just… Poe. At least there was another dog, so Poe could pretend to be preoccupied with it. That, however, became rather boring. Poe loved dogs, but humans were so much more interesting to talk to… because he couldn’t talk to dogs, mostly. Poe swallowed the last bit of his pretzel and watched as the other dog began to wolf down his own pretzel. How to communicate, how to communicate? Well, there was always barking. Ideally, he could distract the woman long enough to shift back into his human form… Ah ha! Without warning, Poe took off. It seemed like people liked to chase dogs went they went running. Once he had run for a half a minute, Poe turned a corner and immediately shifted into his human form, hoping that the woman would have chased the dog version of him and would thus run into him when she rounded the corner herself.
@kathryn
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last online Mar 29, 2024 5:16:26 GMT -7
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Jul 14, 2017 13:12:05 GMT -7
Post by Deleted on Jul 14, 2017 13:12:05 GMT -7
“Oh! I didn’t mean to frighten you!” Kat exclaimed, paling a little as the dog took off. Arrow looked up from his pretzel, confused as to where his new friend had gone. With a bark, Arrow took off after his pitbull friend; luckily Kat had a tight hold on his leash and she was able to jog alongside him. “Arrow, calm down,” she exclaimed, getting him to heel as the other dog turned a corner. Not wanting to scare the poor thing, Kat walked cautiously towards the corner, and peered around it.
To her immense surprise, there was no dog, but a man, one that looked somewhat familiar. Perhaps a fellow Ministry worker? Either way, she was not prepared for a human interaction, and she felt her throat close up. “Oh…” she stammered, backing up a few steps. Strangely though, Arrow tried to get closer to the, trying to sniff him - almost as if his scent was familiar. “Did you see a pitbull run down this way?” she blurted out, reining in Arrows’ leash to bring him closer to her. Arrow wasn’t growling, so he didn’t sense danger, but Kat wanted to be able to make a quick getaway if she needed to. Instinctively, she reached into her pocket and felt that her wand was still there, safe and ready to use.
@poet
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last online Mar 29, 2024 5:16:26 GMT -7
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Jul 14, 2017 14:43:17 GMT -7
Post by Deleted on Jul 14, 2017 14:43:17 GMT -7
The sound that the woman made as she peered around the corner felt like it was squeezing Poe’s heart. Her voice didn’t seem to be all that strong, and she backed away from him like he was dangerous. Poe also took a step back, putting his hands up, palms towards the woman to show that he wasn’t a threat. Now that he was getting a good look at her, as a person and not as a dog, Poe felt a flicker of familiarity. Maybe she worked with him? Not as an Auror of course (then he definitely would have recognized her, even as a dog), but at the Ministry. She asked if he had seen a pit bull, and Poe shook his head. If he sent her on a wild goose chase for the dog version of him, he would feel bad. And then they wouldn’t get to properly talk, either. “Must be easy to lose a dog in a crowd like this.” He commented. “It’s a good thing yours is leashed.” He knew that the other dog wasn’t hers, but hopefully the woman didn’t realize that he had made that assumption. Poe searched for something else to say, but came up blank. When in doubt, introduce yourself. “I’m Poe, by the way. You work for the Ministry?” He asked, in an attempt to start something.
@kathryn
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last online Mar 29, 2024 5:16:26 GMT -7
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Jul 25, 2017 13:50:27 GMT -7
Post by Deleted on Jul 25, 2017 13:50:27 GMT -7
Kat was still hesitant; she didn’t like talking to people she didn’t know, at least not without Logan around as her protector. Still, Arrow hadn’t started growling, and the man seemed to sense her discomfort. Kat tried to relax, and was able to breathe a little easier, though she still remained alert. “Arrow knows not to stray far from my side,” she told the man, and Arrow barked as if in agreement. A smile escaped Kat’s lips as she looked down at her dog. Arrow wagged his tail and leaned into her gently, as if to tell her this man was okay, that he wasn’t going to hurt her.
Kat looked back up at the man as he introduced himself. Poe from the Ministry, the name certainly did ring a bell to her; how many Poe’s were there in the world? “I do yes, Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, Beast Division,” she rattled off by heart. The department name was a mouthful; Kat had suggested on more than one occasion to shorten it to just Department for Magical Creatures, but that change had yet to go into effect. “I’m Kathryn Lloyd-William, Kat for short,” she introduced back. She hesitated, then extended her hand to shake his. “Aren’t you an Auror?” she asked, remembering where she’d seen his name before.
@poet
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last online Mar 29, 2024 5:16:26 GMT -7
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Jul 29, 2017 17:52:55 GMT -7
Post by Deleted on Jul 29, 2017 17:52:55 GMT -7
Poe continued to smile at the woman as she answered his comment about her dog not getting lost in the crowd. “He’s better behaved than most people I know, then.” Poe said, cracking a joke in hopes of keeping the mood light and the woman at ease. He knew how easy it was to lose someone in a crowd, especially if that person didn’t want to be seen. It happened all too often when he had to hunt someone down… though Poe almost always managed to find the person in the end. Crowds weren’t permanent – they were like organisms, shifting and changing as the environment around them changed, and sometimes disappearing completely. When you were patient enough to track those changes, it was easy to see the person who was trying to move against the flow of the crowd and disrupting the delicate homeostasis that the “organism” had reached.
The woman said that she worked for the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, and Poe paled a little. He was glad that his own job title wasn’t quite as wordy, because he would feel somewhat pretentious rattling it off like that. “I was, then I wasn’t, and then I was again.” Poe said when the woman – who had introduced herself as Kat – asked if he was an Auror. “Recently returned.” He corrected himself, in a more concise manner of saying what had already been said.
@kathryn
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last online Mar 29, 2024 5:16:26 GMT -7
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Aug 17, 2017 11:42:55 GMT -7
Post by Deleted on Aug 17, 2017 11:42:55 GMT -7
Kat momentarily cracked a small smile at Poe’s quip; indeed Arrow was rather well behaved compared to most, but that was because of his extensive training and strong bond with her. “He’s been trained as a therapy dog; he knows he’s not allowed to run off,” Kat explained, leaning down slightly to scratch between Arrows’ ears. She didn’t elaborate that he was a therapy dog for her socially debilitating anxiety and panic attacks. She barely knew the gentleman in front of her, and he didn’t need to know that the attack by the Muggles the previous year had completely shattered her personality and ability to be on her own at any given point. If Logan wasn’t present with her, Arrow was; she preferred to have both, but she’d take one or the other if she had to.
“It is quite a long title,” Kat admitted, noticing the look on Poe’s face after she rattled off the name of her position within the Ministry. Typically she just said she was part of the Beast Division, but in and around Hogwarts she tried to be more specific in case she came into contact with those unfamiliar with the various departments within the Ministry of Magic. She gave a nod of understanding as he explained how he’d recently returned from a sabbatical of sort from being an Auror. “Did you do anything interesting while you weren’t an Auror?” Kat asked. She wasn’t about to ask the stranger why he had left; that was personal. But she had a sense he didn’t just sit around twiddling his thumbs in the interim either.
@poet
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last online Mar 29, 2024 5:16:26 GMT -7
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Aug 19, 2017 12:49:31 GMT -7
Post by Deleted on Aug 19, 2017 12:49:31 GMT -7
Poe nodded when Kat explained that her dog had been trained as a therapy animal. “Well that would explain it.” He said with a firm nod. Therapy dogs needed to be reliable and well-trained in order to carry out their function of supporting their owners, so it wasn’t a surprise that Arrow would be, as well. Poe just hadn’t been aware that he was a therapy dog in the first place. Luckily enough for Poe, he had enough practice with this sort of situation – that was, a situation where more information changed everything suddenly – to be able to steer it in a direction that didn’t make it awkward. “That was something that my mother wanted to do for a while, I think. She wanted to a be a pilot-slash-dog-trainer. And she got me instead.” He said with a loud laugh. Poe’s mother had never treated him like a burden, but he sometimes wondered how many more thousands of miles she could have flown in the months when she was incapacitated by having a newborn.
“I think I might feel a little inadequate.” Poe teased when Kat admitted that her own title was rather long. His was just one word, two syllables: Auror. When he had been a trainer, it was a whole two syllables longer, but still nothing approaching the length of Kat’s label. She asked about his work when he wasn’t an Auror, and Poe was more than happy to indulge her. “I moved to New York City and wrote poetry in a bunch of hipster coffee shops. So not interesting, but also… interesting.” He said with a small laugh. Whether or not that change of pace was interesting really depended on the person.
@kathryn
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last online Mar 29, 2024 5:16:26 GMT -7
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Aug 31, 2017 12:23:02 GMT -7
Post by Deleted on Aug 31, 2017 12:23:02 GMT -7
Kat just smiled at Poe’s quip; Arrow may be a friendly dog with quite a personality sometimes, but he had been trained well and to not leave her side if she needed him. “A pilot and a dog trainer, that’s an interesting combination,” Kat commented, her smile widening ever so slightly. “I can just imagine a dog co-piloting the plane with her, with the proper gear on and everything,” she added, letting out a tinkering of a laugh. It used to take nothing at all to get her to laugh; now she barely did. The sound seemed almost foreign to her; when was the last time she had actually had a good laugh with a near stranger? She couldn’t remember.
“It’s a mouthful; I’ve been trying to figure out the best way to shorten it without doing a disservice to my duties in the department,” Kat admitted, shrugging slightly. She cocked her head to one side, curious at one of the words he had used. “Hipster? What’s hipster?” she asked. She knew the word sounded familiar, but she rarely ventured out nowadays so the meaning slipped by her. She felt it wasn’t necessarily a good thing to be a hipster, and from Poe’s initial description she had a feeling she may be right. “I’ve been a bit...out of touch with the lingo lately,” she added.
@poet
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