Noncomformity Rules

Jack lie in bed, eyes open, mouth silent. It was a weekend, so everyone had plans to sleep in. She, however, had work to get done before Chase and Calvin arrived to visit. Usually she would go down and work at the table, but she knew if she got out of bed, the rest of the inhabitants of the house would wake up. Clemmie would be disturbed, Goose would be hungry, Ollie would be irritating, and Ari would be irritable.

Instead, she slowly sat up in bed, blinking away the last of the sleep and running a hand through her hair. She glanced over to see Ari still dozing and she grinned, reaching out to tussle his hair- which would have surely annoyed him had he been away. That was one the perks of this whole marriage thing- messing with your partner while they were unable to respond.

She reached over and grabbed the journals and a quill on her beside table and curled her knees up, setting the journals against her legs. Surely, the owl would have already arrived with the morning post. Jack got a lot of mail lately- requests for help from the Ministry, news on the whereabouts of certain packs, updates from the Order and a lot of hate mail. She especially liked the hate mail. People did not like that she was trying to find a place for werewolves in society. It was fun for her though, getting a letter that said 'you're crazy to think you can go among them and survive!' and then sending that person back their letter with a clipping from the daily prophet, discussing her successful negotiation with a group of foreign werewolves who had been terrorizing a village because they had been denied their license to owning a business, with a smiling picture of her shaking hands with the leader. For this reason, she loved the hate mail.

It was not all easy- more times that not, werewolves rejected her help, thinking she was scamming them. But most werewolves hated their curse just as much as the wizarding world did, and they wanted to hear her out. She found it was easier to deal with the werewolves than the wizards, though, because at least the werewolves listened to her.

She scrawled down in her journal some information she had received about a werewolf hate crime that had been reported in Hogsmeade. She closed that journal and began recording the events of two days before at the Ministry when she had helped handle an adolescent Chinese Fireball that had somehow gotten lost and ended up in London. That had been a mess and when it came down to transferring the irritable Fireball back to Chinese delegates and dragon handlers, Jack had been the only one in her department willing. She would never understand people. The little tyke was only capable of tearing off a few fingers, he wasn't nearly as dangerous as they all thought he was. It had gone well because Jack kept her head.

She heard a noise and looked up to see a big white wolfhound in her doorway. She smiled. Elliot liked to change shapes, as Gytrashes did, but he seemed to favor the wolfhound- which just so happened to be her patronus. She smiled at him and whispered, "Go watch Clemmie for me. I don't want her waking up." He trotted off, having a higher intelligence than the average dog and usually able to understand her. She stared after him and then turned to look at her other pup, brushing his hair again. She let one hand rest on his arm while she continued to scribble silently in her journals, fully absorbed in the task she wanted to get done as quickly as possible..

Werewolf dreams were somewhat different to Human dreams. No, they were not dreams about village massacres - before anyone suggests it. Ariel’s dreams were rather vague but always full of light, full of happiness and full of a great deal of hope and promise for the future. These dreams flooded Ariel’s mind during the weekend lay-ins he took great delight in indulging himself with. He could run breathlessly through nameless forests. He could fling himself off of a cliff and hit the water without so much as a splash. They were so vivid. He could feel the sand between his toes as he wandered aimlessly, contently, up a never-ending beach. He could smell the salty sea hair and the pine cone laden forest floor. He could feel fingers rake through his hair. He could...feel fingers rake through his hair.

With a grunt, the blonde rolled over and wound his arms around the pillow he had been resting his head on. He squeezed the impossibly soft, plump pillow against him and gave a little content whine. His breathing began to speed a little bit and his heart started to pump the blood around his body, waking up all of the sleepy organs and, more importantly, preparing the sleepy body for the day ahead.

It certainly didn’t take long for Ariel to come to. His eyes flickered open to a sound of a scribbling quill and he gave another little whine as he stretched his body out, his joints clicking welcomingly after a good night’s rest. He turned over and took in the form of his wife; Mrs. Jaquellene Greyback. It still amazed Ariel every day that she’d said yes. It amazed him even more to think that she’d walked down the aisle to him in a perfectly feminine dress. But she was his; that was what he had to keep reminding himself - she was his. She was his and he was hers. That was the way it had always seemingly been. It was a flimsy piece of paper that bound them in the eyes of the law but it was so much more than that. Ariel loved her a little more every day. Seeing her now didn’t just add to the love he felt for her -- it increased it ten-fold.

“Good morning,” He murmured, sliding up and placing a kiss on her cheek. Ariel brought his chin down and rested it on her shoulder, peering at her journal though not electing to read what she’d written. “Are you working already?” He asked, quirking a blonde eyebrow up towards his hairline. “My, my...aren’t you a busy little bee?” He questioned with a smirk. “Take the morning off,” He told her. “Spend it with your loving husband that just had a dream about Merlin only knows what. I think it was something to do with lasagne, Clemmie and another pet of some description. It was horrifying,” Ariel dropped a kiss to her shoulder. “How long have we got until Mister and Missus Ransom show up - child in tow? Better yet, how long until Clemmie wakes up with a mind to get some sort of aquatic creature?”

Oh, how he loved his family.

Jack heard Ari moving around next to her , but she was only barely conscious of it, so focused on completing her task that it was not until she felt him kiss her cheek that she actually became aware that he was awake. She turned and smiled, to see his head resting on her shoulder. "Good morning, starshine, the earth says hello." She grinned, knowing full well how dorky she sounded- and not caring.

"Someone's gotta work," she grumbled, though she grinned. "I knew today was going to be hecktic and I wanted to work on all of this here, before going down and waking the zoo." She grinned widely, knowing full well it was true. It seemed if one woke up, all of them did. She continued to scribble and answered him, "I will.. once I finish this description of the Fireball. That dream sounds absolutely wonderful- we just got in a horde of stray kneazles that won't stop roaring that someone needs to take care of." She smirked.

She really did like being with Ari. She had never wanted marriage simply because she did not think the ceremony and the lisence actually meant anything, but she knew how much it meant to Ari, and being able to please him that much had meant the world to her. Besides, he had used the puppy dog eyes, and while she was not usually susceptible to that.. he was too fluffy to refuse.

She glanced up, checking the time and sighed, closing her journal. "Any minute. We can count on Calvin getting lost or falling down a well or something to give us some time, but they'll probably be here in time for breakfast- well, lunch," she corrected, checking the time again. She slipped out of bed and rummaged through a drawer. Suddenly, one of her socks yelped out a curse word. She paused and picked up the sock.

Fred lept out from her drawer, murmuring curse words- apparently, he had fallen asleep in her sock drawer as he was prone to do. She laughed, "That's what you get for being a fool!" She picked up the Jarvey, the small ferret like creature wriggling and cursing and dropped him on the ground, saying, "No cursing when Chase and the family arrives. Or I will let Ari eat you." He muttered under his breath, turned, and bounded out.

She rolled her eyes and slipped into the bathroom, quickly changing and brushing her hair, cleaning up for the day ahead. She left and went back to her sock drawer, grabbing a fistful of old socks and holding them up, explaining to Ari, "For Mongo. I don't want him eating Calvin's favorite Yoshi socks." She laughed and strode over the bed, leaning forward to kiss Ari, knowing she would be too distracted by the day to give him all his due affection. "Thanks for playing zookeeper with me," she said, with a smile. "I'll tackle Goose, you can have Clemmie- otherwise you know I'll agree to bring her home a pet- and unfortunately the only fishy-type creature we have now is an orphaned grindylow." She smirked and left, striding down the hall to Goose's room.

She banged on the door before pushing her way inside. "WAKEY WAKEY!" she bellowed, grinning. Goose and Jack had a special relationship- more like older sister and younger brother than mom and son, since Goose was not her son and they were only a little over a decade apart. Goose also happened to be a muggle child with an incurable disease. So Jack let him into their world and treated him like a friend.. that she occasionally told to clean his room.

He sat up, blearily. Now at eleven, he was sleeping in more and more, and his ears had begun to grow faster than the rest of his body. He rubbed his eyes with one hand and his sandy brown hair with the other. "Whadarewedoin?" came out of his mouth and she strode over to the window, opening the blinds. "Getting ready to greet the Ransoms. C'mon, chop chop."

”Avada cadabra!"

The shrill squeal of a small child split Calvin’s ears, and he woke with a start from the nightmare he’d been trapped in previously. For an hour, he’d been in the clutches of his darkest memories, until Xander had done Calvin the favor of freeing him. Calvin’s heart thudded beneath the skin of his chest as he stared at the ceiling above him, only to find that it had been stained green by the blotch of vibrant color that the curse within his nightmare had left him with. The curse had been so unbearably bright, Calvin remembered; when he'd nearly been killed by the curse many years prior, the light of the Killing Curse had nearly blinded him. Perhaps that was what lead to the death of many who had that particular Unforgivable fired their way; perhaps they were blinded by the flash of brilliant green first, and this lead to the inability to doge the curse...

Calvin shuddered; he could not bear nightmares, and was quite grateful towards his son, as Calvin most certainly would not have been able to wake himself from the dreadful memory without the infant’s help.

“Hey there, X-man,” Calvin replied to the child’s complaints as he climbed out of bed, leaving Chase’s side. It was his turn to tend to their son’s needs, as Chase had already spent a good deal of the evening prior speaking softly to Xander in an attempt to calm him. “What’s wrong? Hmmm? Are you an early bird, too?” Calvin asked the child as he swept him up in his arms, and out of his cradle. Immediately, the infant quieted, and Calvin smiled widely at the child, despite the fact that his heartbeat had not yet normalized. He brushed his lips against the child’s smooth forehead gently. “Good morning to you too…” he greeted Xander, and held him against his chest, rocking him ever-so-slightly.

Calvin was becoming quite fond of calling his son by nicknames such as ‘x-man’ and ‘professor X’. When Chase had found out that she was pregnant with their child, Calvin had gone through every comic book character, and video game name that he could come up with, until he and Chase had agreed upon Xander, a name which was not straight from Calvin’s list of his favorite fictional characters, but had been too interesting for him to turn down.

They were two peas in a pod; Calvin and Xander; both boys could not stand to sleep through a perfect, sunny morning, and though Xander was not yet a year old, his head was already covered in the same, untidy brown hair as his father. While Kitty was the spitting image of Chase, Xander had inherited Calvin’s looks; big, brown eyes, freckled cheeks, rapidly growing hair, and all.

“Come on professor X, let’s go watch Spongebob,” Calvin spoke to the child, and, after glancing in Chase’s direction with a love-drunk smile, made his way to the living room sofa. “We’re going to visit Jack and Ari later, you know,” he informed his son quietly, so not to wake Chase. “That should be fun; Jack is great at magic tricks! I’ll ask her to show you a couple,” he continued, speaking just as quickly as he always had. It would be a miracle if Xander ever learned proper English, what with the way that Calvin was constantly spiting out as many words as possible, as quickly as he could.

Calvin was having nightmares again.. don't ask Chase how she knew it.. but she just did. He never twisted and turned so often in bed, this early. But her own slumber was interrupted not by Calvin rustling around in bed, but by Xander making noises that he was awake. Ever since he was born he had been having troubles sleeping.. specially when Calvin was having bad dreams.. the boy would wake up and cry, if only for the purpose of waking Calvin up from the nightmare. Chase rolled over unhappily. She had been kept up late trying to make Xander sleep, often resorting to holding him and rocking with him in the rocking chair they now had for that purpose in the living room. Or singing to him and speaking gently.. she had been up rather late helping to get him to sleep. Katie on the other hand had not had that trouble yet.. and was still soundly sleeping in her room.

Chase felt Calvin get up out of bed next to her, and she rolled over so that she could crack an eye open and watch him as he got up and spoke quietly to Xander, trying not to wake her. She couldn't help but smile as she watched him interact with their child. She had been over-thrilled to find out that she and Calvin were expecting, and though it was obvious that a child, and falling in love, as well as a few unhappy circumstances had forced Calvin to grow up a bit more, he was still the same old Calvin.. if a bit more careful now, specially with two children to take care of. Chase pretended to be asleep when Calvin looked over at her, smiling in his usually silly manner, before he walked out of the room, muttering something to Xander about Spongebob. Chase smiled and rolled over onto her back, staring up at the ceiling.

Ever since she and Calvin had figured out their emotions.. things had just become.. right for Chase. She had gotten a good job, gotten married, and had another child with the love of her life... how she hadn't realized she loved him as much as she did she had no idea.. he had simply been the person she had gone to when she needed a friend.. and after being kidnapped by Felix Barker.. it was almost like her life turned out right... in a way she could almost thank Barker for kidnapping her.. because without that.. Chase wouldn't be as happy as she was at that moment. Lazy and tired in bed, the sound of Spongebob coming from the front room. Chase rolled out of bed, and grabbed her robe from the floor, and wrapped it around herself, tying it carefully on the side, and checking her hair before leaving the room and wandering into the front room.

"Good morning early birds... why are you guys up so soon? We aren't supposed to see Jack and Ari for a few hours yet." She said sleepily, smiling at Calvin and sitting down beside the two. She leaned over and kissed him gently on the cheek, before grinning at him and making a face at Xander, who giggled merrily. "You two... if you wake up any earlier.. I'll have to start wearing earplugs so I can get some rest." she giggled and crossed her arms over her chest, curling her feet under her and smiling at Calvin happily. "Though I am happy to see my men up so early... that means you can make breakfast Calvin." She giggled, and leaned her head against his shoulder.

The term ‘taking your work home with you’ seemed to apply to him and Jack more than it did any other couple in the world. Normal people took paperwork home - they took animals home and sometimes, even the animals weren’t enough - they had to have Werewolves crashing in one of the guest rooms while the recuperated from the Full Moon. Ariel didn’t exactly bring his work home with him but he was considering it. It was difficult to keep an eye on the werewolf women if they weren’t nearby. He hated having to fly to wherever the pack had gathered and he was usually out there for days at a time, weighing up his options as to whether it was best to induce the wolf before the Full Moon. Once the babies got too big, they too turned and in the womb, things got dodgy. Ariel didn’t know what was worse though - trying to make up his mind whether to get the pup out or not, or trying to nurse a child knowing that in a few weeks it would go through the worst pain imaginable. Both were equally horrendous and it definitely explained the Firewhisky in the cabinet.

Zoo was an understatement. If it was up to Jack and Clemmie, there would be more animals then there were of them. In fact, if Ariel didn’t know any better, then he would have said that they had already achieved that feat.

“You need a day off once in a while.” Ariel told Jack, kissing her shoulder. “How does a holiday strike you fancy? Not immediately. Just...sometime soon, eh?” Ariel raised an eyebrow at Jack before laughing. “If he fell down a well that would be it; we’d spend the rest of the day trying to get him out.”

The idea didn’t attract Ariel at all. He would have rather stayed in bed all morning with his wife. Though, it was rare for him to actually get Jack to sit and stay. She had a need to always be doing something. He had previously had no intention of getting up but she was eager to get started. So, when that sodding Ferret sprang from the sock drawer, Ariel buried his face into the mattress, wishing he was asleep again.

“Tell them we’re not home.” He mumbled. “They’re stupid enough to believe that aren’t they? Owl them and tell them that I’ve got an infectious disease or something.” Ariel barked out a laugh after that and added. “Oh wait, too late for that.”

Ariel pushed himself up so he was onto his knees and he ran a hand through his hair before accepting Jack’s kiss. He reached out to grab her hand, to try and persuade her to say, but she left the room before he had a chance to make her his prisoner. Ariel sighed and rolled out of bed, landing on the floor with little grace. He pulled himself up using the bedside table and looked around the room for the pair of jeans he’d wriggled out of the night before. He found them, oddly, by the hamper, and congratulated himself on his aim. Ariel shoved his legs into them and buttoned them up before wandering out of the bedroom, rolling his shoulders around as he tried to wake up his sleepy body.

Padding down the corridor, Ariel tried to shrug off his sleepiness. He stopped outside Clemmie’s door and opened it without knocking. He found her as he’d left her, tucked up in bed, cuddling her bear to her chest. Ariel smiled at the little scene and stepped inside, slipping his toes into the carpet. He crossed the room and knelt down beside her bed, placing his hand on her shoulder and rubbing it gently.

“Wake up, puppy,” He murmured.

She thought about the idea of a holiday and wondered what that consisted of- she rarely took breaks from work. When you had a job that excited you and kept you stimulated, it was hard to want to take a vacation- and it was very demanding too. God forbid they skip out on a full moon. But it would probably be nice. "That's sounds fun. We could go exploring." She paused, realizing her family probably wanted to slow down. "Or do nothing." She laughed.

Ari obviously had not planned on waking up at this time, because we was throwing a little fit, something that entertained Jack to no end. He and Goose were similiar in this. She picked up two of his socks and flung them at him in response. "Okay, Mr Grump, we'll just tell the sun to go back to bed too." She smirked and he kissed her back. She high fived his out stretched hand and hurried on to wake up the caged animals.

Goose must have stayed up late playing his gameboy. He rolled over and mumbled something about five more minutes as she tossed a pair of jeans and a shirt onto the ground next to his bed for him. She flicked her wand behind her and the blankets on his bed fell off. He let out a groan and flipped over a few times. Jack turned and grabbed one of his old teddies that he kept around so he could fight with Clemmie about- and promptly threw at him.

"Fine! I'm up, I'm up," he mumbled, sitting up and rubbing his eyes, looking thorouhgly disgruntled, though Jack knew he loved the excitement of their weird life. "That's what I thought," Jack said. "Now get up! Chase and Calvin are coming over." He sat up. "Calvin?! Do you think he'll play Mario Kart with me?" Jack grinned- only the classics were allowed in her house. "Get up and dressed and set up the Nintendo and I'm sure he won't be able to resist."

She grinned as he began to do so and she left, whistling for Mongo. She went downstairs and into the living room to see the blue striped footstool banging into the armchairs and whatnot. She laughed and tossed the socks to him, which he began to devour. She walked into the kitchen and stared at the appliances- here, she was useless.

"ARI!" she called. "Feed me!"

She was spoofing. Ariel knew that the little wriggler had heard his wake-up call but seemingly she had no interest in getting up to amuse anyone that morning. That made two of them. Ariel wasn’t about to wake up Clemmie just yet, especially not if she didn’t want to. Those extra moments would give him a little bit of time to wake himself up. He wasn’t looking forward to Chase and Calvin’s visit if he was going to be honest with himself. He didn’t like people and he certainly didn’t like people in his house. He’d put up with them though, for Jack’s sake. It wasn’t as if he disliked them but he didn’t like them exclusively either. He just about put up with Ollie; having to deal with Jack’s numbskull friends was the icing on the cake for him really. To think that he’d have the idiot, the even bigger idiot and the idiot’s wife in the same house as him at the same time was horrifying. Ariel was foreseeing a long time being spent down the pub.

“Daddy...can we get a llama?”

A blonde head poked out from underneath the sky blue bedding and Ariel smiled as Clemmie crawled out of the bed and onto the covers. She clambered onto his lap and Ariel embraced her, his head coming down to rest on her shoulder as he inhaled the sweet scent of apple that clung to every lock of hair on her head. She giggled in his ear and crawled out of his lap before bouncing across the fluffy mauve rug that covered the floor toward the toy box that was, much to Ariel’s dismay, bottomless, and contained everything a small child such as Clemmie would ever want. Ariel would have been jealous if he’d been a child, peering into the toy box over Clemmie’s shoulder. She was awfully generous though. She was forever giving her toys away and she didn’t seem to realise that what she did was odd to both her father and those who received. Of course, to Ariel it made sense that she of all people would but it was the gesture; it rarely - if ever - happened.

“Can we get a llama?” Ariel echoed with a mischievous smile on his lips. “Clemmie, sweetheart, I think you already know the answer to that one...”

Clementine whirled around, her legs spread far apart and her hands on her hips - like Peter Pan. Her lips pursed and her bottom lip stuck out. Her eyes grew in size and began to water as she started to well up. Ariel rolled his eyes and stood up, his head nearly hitting the lampshade as always. He swerved his head out of the way of the bright pink lampshade and leaned over to scoop his little Clementine up. She shrieked and kicked Ariel but as ever it had no effect; he merely slung her under his arm and carried her down the stairs at Jack’s call. He swerved into the kitchen and handed the apple-flavoured package to his wife before heading over to the fridge.

“Take that,” he told Jack with a smirk as he opened the fridge up. “I found it hiding under a quilt. Right, so what do you ladies want?”

Despite the volume of the television, Calvin’s ears picked up the soft sound of Chase’s feet against the hardwood floors of the sitting room, and turned in place on the sofa to watch her near them. “I’m so sorry Chase,” Calvin greeted the redhead with an apologetic smile, “I tried not to wake you up. You didn’t get much sleep…” but there was no chance of successfully convincing Chase to return to bed after she’d joined them on the sofa, Calvin knew. It had been quite evident that Chase wore those figurative pants that everyone spoke of in their relationship. “So that's a few more hours for you to rest!” Calvin tried, only to give up attempting to convince Chase to sleep when her lips met with the skin of his freckled cheeks.

Calvin exhaled slowly as Chase curled into him; he hadn’t realized just how shaken his nightmare had left him until the relief of having Chase near him settled in. Calvin wrapped one of his gangly arms around Chase’s shoulders and planted a gentle kiss atop her head, breathing in the familiar smell of her hair for a moment. Strawberries and sunlight. Calvin never had learned how her vibrant locks had managed to absorb such an impossible scent – in fact, before the very first time he’d embraced Chase, Calvin had assumed it impossible for sunlight to smell of anything at all. “Good morning, love,” Calvin greeted her properly, as his first attempt in doing so hadn’t exactly gone as planned.

Calvin laughed heartily at the mention of a pair of earplugs. “I’ll buy you some the next time we go to the market,” he promised her and smiled against her hair, before shifting so that his back was rested against the back of the sofa that they were occupying when Xander began to squirm on his lap. “He loves dancing, doesn’t he?” Calvin giggled and leaned over the infant’s shoulder to kiss him on the cheek once more.

Hugs, kisses, and laughter were in abundance in the Ransom residence. It would have made any outsider sick with envy.

“Pancakes with sprinkles?” Calvin asked hopefully; while he had learned a few things about cooking breakfast without setting the cabinets alight, he still preferred frying pancakes over anything else. As Calvin had become quite skilled in the art of flipping pancakes, he enjoyed the process, as well as the taste of the sugar meal when it was finished, but he did not expect Chase to agree to eating the same thing every morning. “Or…” Calvin began again as he attempted to read Chase’s facial expression, “maybe something else?” he offered.

Calvin glanced in the direction of the television screen before him for a moment, and watched as a colorful animated character danced across it. “No, Patrick. they're laughing next to us,” Calvin whispered Spongebob’s next line along with him, and smiled.

That sponge was Calvin’s hero. Muggles were brilliant.

Chase giggled when he apologized for waking her up. "No, it's okay Calvin." She said smiling at him. "I'm just, tired... I need some coffee is all." She smiled at him and cuddled closer to him as he wrapped his arm around her, snuggling her face against his shoulder happily. It was just so comfortable, being next to her husband, reaching forward and gently holding onto her son's hand, as he stared intently at the character on the tv. His eyes were so wide, and open, he was sitting up using Calvin's leg to keep himself up, and his hand had clamped around Chase's finger.

Chase looked up at Calvin and smiled at him. "Nah, I like being awake with my boys." She said smiling, and reaching up to gently brush a strand of hair out of Calvin's eyes. She rested her cheek on his shoulder. "Callvvinnn.... you are going to rot your teeth, and Katie's teeth out of your mouths!" Chase shook her head. "Maybe some eggs.. you can make some pancakes.. but no sprinkles today." She said giggling at him and taking a hold of his hand gently. Chase's attention was brought back to Spongebob, but not for long, because shortly after she was distracted by the cartoon, a five year old girl left a room from down the hall, and came into the room, curling up in Chase's lap. "Good morning Katie." Chase said holding her first born. Shocking red hair, and deep soulful eyes, made it nearly impossible to tell that she was related to the Krum's at all. This early in the morning, she was very sleepy, and was to tired to even show that she was very talkative, and had a very bright personality.

Chase grinned at Calvin, and looked around at her family. To think.. she had been in such turmoil before this.. that she hadn't been this happy.. that her life could have been completely different, but now.. she had Katie, and Xander, and Calvin.. a small, but extremely happy family. "I love you." She whispered in general, before looking up at Calvin and smiling, gently stroking her daughter's hair, but looking at Calvin and smiling. Katie whispered a sleepy 'I love you' back, but was busy watching Spongebob as well.