DISTANT GAME ━ charlie weasley

vi. the grey stallion

But you'd never see Avery openly admit that this change came out positively. For all you'd think, Avery was as begrudging as a bear being brought out of hibernation early. Her stubborn attribute was blatantly obvious to everyone when it was quite clear to see that, as stressful as it could be sometimes, Avery enjoyed being the Head Girl.

Avery is near-oblivious to the quiet pecks of chatter surrounding her in her old dorm as she allows her fingers to delicately trace over the picture in her hands, the remainder of a rustic beige envelope overlapping underneath. The picture — one sent by her beloved Uncle Douglas — blanketed her heart with warmth and trickled a gentle smile up onto her rosy lips. The baby was called Abigail — after her grandmother — and from what the letter attached within the envelope had depicted, she'd just reached over five months old. The resemblance was unmistakable — Jenna had the dark onyx eyes of her father's and delicate wisps of blonde hair like her mother, Laurel, and whose petite smile basked in mirth, as seen in the picture, held equally between the arms of the new parents, bouncing within the moving picture frames.

     Douglas Carmichael was, to put it fairly, a man of immense bloom. Douglas was the youngest of two children to Ross and Abbie Carmichael (wizard and Muggle respectively) and the younger brother to Valerie Carmichael, two years age difference between the two. Douglas attended Hogwarts a Ravenclaw, THR same as his sister, excelling in Potions and Arithmancy. Much like his older sister, Douglas was a fan of football and attended Celtic games with his parents and sister, though he was admittedly a bigger quidditch fan. He played as a chaser for the Ravenclaw quidditch team, captaining it in his sixth and seventh year, his thin frame and agile reflexes allowing him to be a quick and undetectably remarkable player. (He still has the same thin stature to this day — no amount of increased butter in Abigail Carmichael's cooking was able to help Douglas gain a firm bit of weight.)

     When Douglas left Hogwarts, he was... lost in himself, to say the least. All around him, his friends seemed to have it all sorted out — and people thought Douglas had it sorted out too — getting themselves into internships, part-time studying, travelling; Douglas wasn't the same. People said he should follow a quidditch path and truly become something. They said he had potential. A prospect. And Douglas knew it too — he knew he could become a firm quidditch player. But it just wasn't what he wanted. He was a man of severe intellect, a man whose time was better spent among literature and knowledge — but nobody else seemed to see that. Perhaps Douglas couldn't see it himself, either.

This apparent 'loss of identity' and forcing himself to be what everyone else wanted to see led him into a bad place for many years. The year Valerie Carmichael married Oliver Hearst, Douglas dropped out of a scholarship with Pride of Portree quidditch team when he realised that he just didn't... belong there. He felt out of sorts anywhere he went — to his got-it-all-sorted-out friends right up to his own sister, who was never condescending in any way whatsoever, but just overwhelmed him with her increasing successes in life. It was only when the death of his four-year girlfriend died from generational leukaemia, that Douglas Carmichael was truly driven off the edge.

Douglas was always close to Valerie. Despite their personality differences, they were always on an even footing with each other and Douglas was grateful to have someone support him like Valerie did. But it wasn't enough. Even with Valerie's support, and her reassurances that he could find his place again, Douglas didn't know how to cope. He pushed Valerie, his parents away. He turned to drugs, alcohol no longer filling the void he'd occupied it with for so long before.

And so, he fell off the pedestal. He'd drawn himself into a new world consumed by addiction, remorse and detachment. Douglas became the train wreck he never wanted to be. Nearly two years passed, two years of no contact with his family, his friends, and he had barely witnessed the birth of his nephew by the name of Jeremiah Chalmers Carmichael — Chalmers, after Stevie Chalmers, one of the best strikers Celtic FC had ever seen. (A court favourite of Valerie's — Douglas remembers the glee upon Valerie's face whenever Chalmers scored within the homely nets of Parkhead Stadium.) Then Avery Cesar Carmichael was brought into the world, and Douglas recognised that he needed to fix something inside of him.