Open RP: Henry in the library.

[onewinteryday.livejournal.com]

Camilla had warned him about the dog-Latin he would have to endure if he wanted to find any spells here. And yet he's ploughing through several books, snorting incredulously at points, it's true--but still reading them.

It seems his intent is to learn all the spells in the Hogwarts library by rote. He hasn't even got a wand yet. He is, however, making notes with a very expensive-looking pen, pages upon pages of cramped handwriting.

His eyes hurting him a tad, Henry Winter takes off his glasses and idly looks up, to see if anybody else is around.

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[c-macaulay.livejournal.com]

From between two bookcases, Camilla slips into view just in time to catch the sight of a surprisingly agile old man leaving the table where Henry's ensconced. She alights on the seat beside her lover captor friend classmate and gives him a very curious look indeed.

"Who was that?" she whispers.

[onewinteryday.livejournal.com]

'One ex-headmaster of the school,' he says quietly back. 'Albus Dumbledore. We had an interesting discussion on the nature of magic.'

He moves papers off the chair the other side of him, so she can sit.

[c-macaulay.livejournal.com]

"Oh." Camilla's eyes widen. "He's in Hogwarts: A History. He's dead."

[onewinteryday.livejournal.com]

Stupid, stupid, stupid, he curses himself. The history first, never the language. Too often he forgets this is a different world.

'Yes, but so am I,' he points out, trying to save face. 'What is he notable for, besides being the head?'

[c-macaulay.livejournal.com]

"I can't even say what all," Camilla says. "The extent of the index under his name is ... fairly long. He was headmaster here for almost half a century. And he was involved in some wars. And he's apparently linked with some important alchemists." She's still whispering. Her voice gets even quieter and she has to lean in toward his ear to make herself heard when she says this last: "What did he want from you?"

[onewinteryday.livejournal.com]

'Apparently nothing,' Henry says, slightly angry, sounding like a petulant child. 'He advised me to get a wand and complimented me on my grasp of magical theory. He didn't even offer private lessons, though he admitted he gave them.'

[c-macaulay.livejournal.com]

"He does?"

A thinly perceptible vein of greed shooting through that whisper, now, and glinting metallic in her eyes.

"Did he say he wouldn't teach you? You know how Julian always was," Camilla muses. "With Richard, remember, for example ..."

[onewinteryday.livejournal.com]

'Well...'

Henry sits back and considers. 'No. He didn't. But I don't like him half as much as I liked Julian. He mentioned reading as a child--and you know how I did it.'

He smiles, though. 'Richard--there's a name I haven't heard in a while.'

[c-macaulay.livejournal.com]

Camilla smiles too, no warmth in it. "Don't you miss our old friends?"

[onewinteryday.livejournal.com]

'There was only one ever worth missing,' he tells her.

[c-macaulay.livejournal.com]

It doesn't even occur to Camilla that Henry could mean Julian. Julian was never her friend. Her teacher, yes. Perhaps even her god, at one time, insofar as Camilla could ever worship anything outside the closed circle of herself. Nothing so close as a friend.

(Could Camilla ever consider as friend someone constitutionally incapable of desiring her?)

Now, what he does mean, that she can't decide with complete certainty. At first she thinks, of course, it's her he means. But -- would Henry call her a friend? They haven't been lovers since before he died. They circle around one another, each only approaching so far. She's not sure when that pursuit will end, or how it will end -- if she'll allow herself to be caught.

(Do you call your prey a friend? Do you call your goddess a friend?)

Delicately she reaches to lay her hand lightly over his, his left hand, the one that isn't holding the pen. "At least you came back."

[onewinteryday.livejournal.com]

'I found a way,' he smiles. 'It wasn't too hard.'

It was hard. He is lying. But it was worth it.

He did mean Julian then. Camilla is not a friend, but she's something more special. He just wishes he knew what she was.

Who is the predator, and who is the prey?

[c-macaulay.livejournal.com]

"You always did," she says. "Find a way." Does she admire him for that? Yes and no. She takes it for granted. It's Henry. It's what Henry does.

Find a way to give her what she wants.

That he can influence her, guide her to want things and not to want others, doesn't really cross her mind. She's always been so self-contained. Of course it was her idea to get away from Charles. Her idea to go to ground in the Albemarle. Why wouldn't it be? She's never questioned it.

What she wanted at Hogwarts was for Henry to come back from the dead. And he did that.

Though she's never asked him ...

"Why did you?"

[onewinteryday.livejournal.com]

'Come back? I thought that would have been obvious,' he says. 'To keep my philosophy strong. To see you. 'Live forever.''

[c-macaulay.livejournal.com]

She laughs outright, library-quiet, thin hoarse sweet sound that Richard would have misread as warm. It's never warm. "You're never obvious, Henry."

[onewinteryday.livejournal.com]

'Why, thank you,' he says, opening the book again. 'Care to join me?'

[c-macaulay.livejournal.com]

Camilla takes up and uncaps a spare pen. He's always got more than one, those Meisterstucks he learned to love from Julian. "I thought I already had," she says, reaching without compunction or shyness for the notes he'd earlier tucked away from Dumbledore's sight, because she knows she'll be allowed to see them.

And she begins to read.

[onewinteryday.livejournal.com]

He watches her read, smiling a little. He won't hide anything from her unless Charles arrives.

He takes down 'Advanced Rune Translations,' and starts a new page.