I Guess I Just Feel Like (Tagged)

[parvati patil macmillan]

Late October 2025

As much as she had tried to ensure that Dusti and Rusti Flint were part of her children’s lives, Parvati knew that she couldn’t force it. All of the “children” in the equation were adults, as she was, and she couldn’t make them do anything that they didn’t want to do. She couldn’t exactly sit them down and force them to spend time with one another; for Merlin’s sake, it was hard enough to see her own children. Bringing Dusti and Rusti into the picture was a challenge. Although they were biologically Sav and Shreya’s siblings, they had grown up believing Marcus Flint to be their father. Parvati wouldn’t have believed it, either, at the time, but it was what it was, and she had her own hand to play in the mess that had been everything that had happened. There were few silver linings, but one was that at least that hadn’t been what had dissolved her marriage to Ernie and that she’d already found her way there before finding out the whole story. But, as hard as it had been for her, she wasn’t the only one whose feelings she had to consider.

Truthfully, she wasn’t sure how else to get all of them to sit down together, like some semblance of a family. Dusti and Rusti had their other siblings, of course, but trying to maintain some sort of communication to prove that maybe the cards that they had been dealt weren’t quite as damning as they’d seemed… It seemed like the right thing to do. A dinner party was bound to be uncomfortable, so Parvati had tried to avoid as much chaos as possible by ordering takeaway from the Violet Hound for all of them. Fine dining it was not, but the fact that all four of the young adults had agreed to it and not found an excuse to bolt was a miracle; Parvati wasn’t going to aim for that luck with food that she’d prepared herself.

Her flat in Hogsmeade wasn’t exactly purpose-built for entertaining, but it was private, and she’d scooted an additional chair up to the table to fit five place settings instead of four. “Cozy” was probably the word for it, though Parvati hoped that it wouldn’t be so bad. They had one thing in common, anyway, already: her ex-husband. Ernie was the one who had wrecked things for all of them, in some way. All she was doing was picking up the pieces—and making some last-minute preparations.

“Dinner’s from the Violet Hound,” Parvati noted, trying to keep things casual without immediately bringing up how strange the whole arrangement was. “I hope no one minds takeaway.” Hogwarts aside, she didn’t employ house-elves, and it was probably best to let someone else do the cooking.

@sav
@shreya
@dusti
aurelia edith flint
OOC: I’ve done enough threads that take ten years to answer the door. I don’t want to bother with that. Whatever posting order naturally develops is fine by me.

[Deleted]

Family dinner. Two of the words Sav hated most in the world. Especially when they were said together. Yet, there he found himself. In his mother's flat in Hogsmeade village with his sisters. And it was weird. Not that he had anything against any of them. It was just his father that he hated. His mother, annoying as he found her, was doing her best and he didn’t blame her for her tendency to hover - most of it was probably in his head anyway. He knew he had a tendency to be dramatic, especially when it came to his family and their dynamic. And his sisters, both his twin and his half-sisters were fine. Though he couldn’t exactly say that he was close with either of the Flint girls. It wasn’t as if he had a reason to be close to them until the last few years. And then he couldn’t imagine that anyone expected them to suddenly be a close knit family.

“Looks good, mum.” Savtaj replied when she said that the food was taken out from the Violet Hound. It did look good and Sav was excited to eat. If anything it was a good distraction for everything else going on in his life and would be a nice contrast to the meals he normally ate; either pub food on the way home, or cereal. He took a seat at the little table and felt like he was too big to be seated around it. His knees nearly hit the underside of it. “Thanks for having us.” he added, politely.

parvati patil macmillan
@shreya
@dusti
aurelia edith flint

[aurelia edith flint]

▲

Why was she even here? It was uncomfortable, awkward, and there was zero purpose for her to exist in the same area as her supposed ‘half-siblings’. Rusti knew that technically the term included the ones she grew up with too, and Dusti was her only true full sibling, but it was still weird over a year later. She had only agreed to show up because she figured that her since her sister was going it was better than leaving her to handle it on her own. Not that Dusti couldn’t handle it. She was more worried about her twin’s explosive nature and the fact that it was totally unpredictable what could happen during the dinner. Tagging along was more for her own peace of mind at this point. But she was still going to hate every second of it.

The kicker was that the food had been picked up from the Violet Hound, which was right around the corner from her store. If she had known that’s what they would be eating, she wouldn’t have gone there for lunch earlier in the day. Or even for lunch at all that week. It was her usual, and she barely had to remind them what her order was anymore. That was how much of a regular she was. So yeah, Rusti enjoyed the pub’s food. Doubling down on it for lunch and dinner had definitely happened before, but that was because she had been lazy and forgotten to pick up ingredients. The plan was one day to kick the habit of eating out all the time. For now, she was fairly content with keeping things the same. At the same time, she couldn’t really be disappointed that this was what they were eating, but it was hard to admit that she ate there almost every single day of the week, and this was only adding to the problem she had been trying to kick for a while now.

Even with the comfort food sitting right in front of her, she still didn’t want to be there. She muttered a ‘Thanks’, following Sav’s lead and also taking a seat, but also looking at Dusti every so often to make sure that she was doing the right thing. From the very beginning of all of this, she hadn’t been good at interacting with this part of the family, and she had always felt like Parvati was secretly trying to gleam something from how she and Dusti acted. Completely ignoring all of this and going on with their lives definitely seemed preferable at times, and sometimes she wondered why she didn’t do just that.

@dusti or @shreya ● 439 ● My Sweet Refuge by Roo Panes

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOX 2.0

[Deleted]

Shreya wasn't sure why she'd ever said yes to the invitation. The tension around the table was so thick she was certain she could cut it with a scalpel. She was sitting with her half-siblings from her fathers side for dinner with her mother. Somehow that felt like too many levels of bad for this moment in the timeline. Maybe if it had happened when they'd been younger it would have felt normal. Now Shreya just felt it was another mad attempt at playing happy family, although this time with the dysfunctional label. She was far from amused and didn't exactly have a bond with anybody at the table. She didn't know her half siblings that well, her twin had understably shut her out after the news about their parentage and her mother... well she just kept on proving her choices were questionable at best. It always seemed like it was designed to keep up the idea that they were all fine. None of them could be anything remotely related to fine with everything that was going on.

The one blessing? At least she hadn't decided to cook. It was just take out. Shreya looked at the food, which was certain to be good and heard the polite offers of thanks going around the table. Shreya didn't really feel like stretching reality that far too be nice. It felt like a downright lie to thank her mother for getting food when she invited them all over for the most awkward possible dinner party. The only thing she could thank her mother for at this point in time was not cooking and that seemed horribly inpolite. She refused to lie, even if only to keep her mother happy. "The food smells good." She said, which was really all she could say at this moment without being horribly rude. She was certain her discomfort with the entire situation was showing but well, there were a billion places she'd rather be. She'd experienced dates less awkward than this and she'd been on a few really bad ones. She just had to sit through it now that she'd committed. Maybe work would call her in early? Now there was something to wish for...

@dusti
also parvati patil macmillan @sav aurelia edith flint

[Deleted]

Lake October 2025
parvati patil macmillan , @sav , aurelia edith flint , @shreya

This was stupid. She was only here because she had thought Rusti already agreed when Parvati had asked her. Something the twins should have discussed, instead of just assuming the other had already agreed. That and Dusti felt like her sister, being the milder tempered of the two, would be interested in getting to know their other half siblings. Either way, Rusti couldn't come alone, so she'd agreed for her sister's sake. Though, to say she was "calm" was a bit of an understatement. She was already bristling a bit. Like an agitated cat. Not quite angry, but definitely on edge. It didn't help that the apartment, while average sized, felt crowded with five people. Dusti intentionally chose a seat at the edge of the table, so that only Rusti could sit next to her and the others would be across. Even though they were "Family", she clearly didn't trust them. Though they should take it to hard. Dusti trusted very few people.

She'd been very silent up until this point, her icy gaze keeping watch on her half siblings and their mother. The food was mentioned and two of the more polite siblings thanked the older woman (Sav and Rusti), while the other two remained silent. Dusti knew manners, and pleasantries. They'd been drilled into her as a child. Did she actually practice them though? Rarely. It was like her final "screw you" to the Flint parents. Though it seemed even Shreya deigned to say something. Dusti, on the other hand, did not. Instead, she just glanced at the Macmillan mother out of the corner of her eye, then Rusti, then her half siblings.

(>.> I forgot about this thread...)

[parvati patil macmillan]

Late October 2025

"Looks good, Mum. Thanks for having us."

Parvati was surprised to hear Sav's reaction, mostly because he was being agreeable to the situation. Of all of the kids, she would have expected him to be the one to have some issue with it. Nothing about their being there and trying to have a family meal was perfect or anything close to "normal" by most people's standards. The least that she could do was provide them with some nice food and maybe some conversation that wasn't solely about how awkward it was for all five of them. She knew that they were uncomfortable. Even though she had had her doubts, recognizing that they could move beyond what had happened was something that they all needed. The awkwardness, pain, anger, resentment—Parvati felt it, too, but what else could she really do?

From what she knew, Ernie hadn't shown any indication of wanting to be in Dusti and Rusti's lives, and she did feel bad for them because of it. She knew what he was like; he wasn't going to make the effort, and not out of the goodness of his heart. Quite obviously, Dusti and Rusti weren't her own children, but Parvati didn't want the girls to feel like houseguests. She hoped that it might help that her flat was a relatively neutral space; Sav and Shreya had never called it home, even if that had been her original intention for it.

She wanted to do right by her own children, too. She didn't get much out of Shreya, other than a comment about how the food smelled good, but that was better than something snarky.

Seeing that Sav was already cramped up against the table, Parvati frowned, though. None of them were exactly short. "Shall I conjure up another table?" she offered. Sticking another table that wasn't quite as wide as the first beside it would give them all a little bit more room—enough room that they wouldn't be sitting elbow-to-elbow. She also wasn't going to make them go around the table and share one good thing about their day or anything of that sort. She wasn't oblivious to the tension, though Dusti remained quiet.

"I wasn't sure what you would prefer," Parvati explained to Dusti and Rusti, "so I might have bought more than was actually necessary." Sure, it was practically a sample of the whole menu from the Violet Hound, but she had at least plated the food so that it wasn't just sitting around in the containers on the table. It wasn't as though she'd tried to pass it off as her own cooking; anyone who knew her would have been able to call her bluff on that.

They didn't need to wait for her to sit down in order to start eating, but Parvati guessed that it was a combination of that and the lack of a conversation topic apart from the food that had left the kids so quiet. Sighing, she knew that not addressing how stilted it all felt would only make it harder. "I promise I'm not expecting miracles. I just thought that maybe it would be nice to—you know—quit treating this as some shameful thing."

@sav
aurelia edith flint
@shreya
@dusti

[Deleted]

Sav wasn’t sure what he was expecting out of this. Or, what anyone else around the table was expecting either. To be honest it was shocking that everyone was here. He couldn’t think of a time, ever, that all of the siblings had been in one place. He had the odd conversation with the Flint girls from time to time, nothing too serious of course, and he spoke with his own twin a bit more often. But he was only just coming to the decision to let Shreya back into his life a little more, he wasn’t sure he had space for everyone at the moment, or if he wanted to make space. However, he knew who he was beneath the surface, and they were his sisters, regardless of how he wanted to feel about them.

But then his mother said something that he couldn’t ignore. She wanted them to all be together and stop having to act like it was some shameful thing. “So we’re just going to ignore the fact that it is a shameful thing? You want to pretend that Ernie didn’t bring shame on everyone here?” Sav hated the man more than anything else in the world. He didn’t really care how anyone else felt about him. But he wasn’t going to sit here and listen to a lecture on forgiveness and moving on if that was what this was going to be.

parvati patil macmillan
aurelia edith flint
@shreya
@dusti

[aurelia edith flint]

▲

Rusti almost buckled under the pressure. To be the amenable one at the table. It wasn’t because she wanted to be under the spotlight or to be the one talking, but because she had been programmed to know when to be present in a conversation. She absolutely hated that it almost surfaced again, as she had been working on breaking that habit since graduating. Unfortunately Parvati was the type of person where Rusti felt like she had to talk, or else she was being rude. And that was even worse than talking at the right moments. She looked to her sister for guidance while their host talked about the food, but Dusti’s glare told her everything she needed to know about what her twin was currently thinking. Everyone there knew what the elephant in the room was. The fact that they had all showed up was a miracle. Or maybe a curse. She hadn’t decided which yet, since nothing had happened to sway her decision one way or the other.

Knowing she couldn’t turn to her twin for help, Rusti started to open her mouth, only to talk about how the food was fine and how she ate there a lot (which moments earlier she hadn’t wanted to do), but Sav cut in before she could get a word out. He apparently decided to jump right into it, and Rusti could only manage to stare down at her plate as he challenged his mother. If this had been her parents…well, she wouldn’t have done that in the Flint household. This also wasn’t her business to butt into, even though it was discussing their shared biological father. She had her own thoughts on that, but she didn’t think they really mattered. It didn’t change much of anything, since he had never played a role in her or Dusti’s lives, and probably never would going forward. So instead of adding on, which she continued her silent vigil of staring down at her plate.

@shreya ● 331 ● Halloween by Phoebe Bridgers

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOX 2.0

[Deleted]

Leave it to their mother to pretend there was nothing awkward or weird about the situation. Leave it to their mother to try and play happy family despite everything pointing at the fact that this wasn't designed to be a situation. Forever trying to capture that seemingly impossible dream. Shreya didn't really want to play along with that game any longer. She'd played it her entire childhood without knowing it until it all fell apart and she'd been gutted. Everything she'd thought she knew had unravelled and she'd taken it hard. She knew she was being a lot harder on her mother than she probably strictly had to be but she felt that her efforts to reconcile were currently still plenty for the situation. She just didn't want to make the same mistakes for herself, if that point in her life ever came around. Shreya was mostly silent, but she couldn't help but be completely in agreement with her brother when he pointed out that no matter how their mum decided to treat the situation, it was shameful and awkward. All of them shared the same father because the man hadn't been able to keep it in his pants, causing needless pain to all at the table and more. She couldn't imagine they were very happy. Yet Shreya did what she'd been raised to do (in her own mind) and calmly set her plate and put food on it. She commented in an almost offhand manner as not to make it much worse than it already was, "Besides, it's not like any of us seem to be particularly comfortable." She said as she politely took a bite from her plate.

Shreya could be a master of saying things without words or leaving out a whole lot of information in an endless stream of words. She could be as much of a Slytherin as any in that house but the sorting hat had still placed her in Gryffindor because she valued other things and her more Slytherin traits had not been so obvious back when she'd been sorted. They were a product of her school time, she supposed. "I doubt a bigger table will force out the elephant in the room." She added on, ever so polite with a people pleaser kind of smile as she took a sip of her drink. "The food is really good though, even if you have enough to feed twice the current company." She didn't really mean it as an insult to her mother but well, Shreya could be a little testy at times, even more so if she felt she was being dragged into a hole of dishonesty against her will. Pretending this was a happy family was an outright lie that they all would be telling themselves. It was exactly why she'd been wary of coming to begin with. If Sav hadn't shown up she certainly wouldn't have. She didn't blame the Flint girls, not did she feel any hostility towards them, although she wasn't quite sure that was mutual. As long as dinner didn't end in duals she figured there wasn't all that much to lose if they at least treated the situation honestly rather than pretend it was something other than what it really was. Shameful and really awkward.

parvati patil macmillan
@sav
aurelia edith flint
@dusti