Owl, lightly warded, to Camilla Macaulay

[richardthegreek.livejournal.com]

backdated to just after Richard's sorting


Camilla,

A hat made me professor of Ancient Runes. It's odd, but great. Something to keep me busy, and money in the pocket, so to speak. Would you care to celebrate over dinner?

--Richard

(owl carries a wee bottle of champagne for Camilla)

Comments

*heavily warded reply*

[c-macaulay.livejournal.com]

Richard --

that's lovely; congratulations! Of course I'll come to meet you. Are you in Ravenclaw after all? their common room is I'll meet you somewhere else, shall I? We can dine in the Great Hall; do you know where that is?

- C.

Re: *heavily warded reply*

[richardthegreek.livejournal.com]

Camilla,

I haven't been there yet, no, but I'll find it. What time?

- Richard

Re: *heavily warded reply*

[c-macaulay.livejournal.com]

Richard --

Why, what time do you usually eat dinner? Seven is good, I think. I'll send a house-elf to show you the way.

- C.

Re: *heavily warded reply*

[richardthegreek.livejournal.com]

Camilla,

That's fine. I have a meeting with Henry in the afternoon, but we should be well finished by then.

- Richard

Re: *heavily warded reply*

[c-macaulay.livejournal.com]

Richard --

Oh! Would you like me to bring him along to dinner?

- C.

Re: *heavily warded reply*

[richardthegreek.livejournal.com]

Camilla,

Thanks, but let's just let this first time be us. I may need someone to talk to, after seeing Henry for the first time since his death, only just before.

-Richard

Re: *heavily warded reply*

[c-macaulay.livejournal.com]

Richard --

Of course. I'm sure you'll be happy to see one another again, but you can always talk to me, I hope you know. Just us, then, at seven.

- C.

(( and rethread! (http://community.livejournal.com/hogwarts_hocus/1308643.html?thread=66612963#t66612963) ))

[c-macaulay.livejournal.com]

Just as she promised, Camilla sent a house elf round to fetch Richard. He might be capable of alarming and surprising things, but Hogwarts had a way of shifting its geography and she doubted he'd yet be acclimated to that. She was already waiting at one of the long tables in the Great Hall; hardly intimate. Privacy, though, could be had using wards, and he would know that, as she'd already done it once, at his Sorting.

She waved when she caught sight of him. "Over here," and she was smiling.

[richardthegreek.livejournal.com]

I followed the odd little elf into the Great Hall, and saw Camilla smiling and waving. I smiled. She was lovely, as always. I went to her, and sat down.

"Hi," I grinned. I leaned in to give her a brief kiss on the cheek as a greeting. "How are you?"

[c-macaulay.livejournal.com]

"Curious," she said, smiling, and gestured to the seat beside her. "How did it go? What did you think?"

[richardthegreek.livejournal.com]

"Of Henry? It went fine. Why?" I looked down, and saw that the plates before us had bloomed, literally, with food. I was amused. "Does it always do that?"

[c-macaulay.livejournal.com]

Camilla shrugged. "Not if you don't want it to." To her, Hogwarts had long ago ceased to present much novelty. "What do you mean, why?"

Her voice was almost ... excited. Unlike Hogwarts, Henry's resurrection would never cease to be a novelty.

[richardthegreek.livejournal.com]

"I was being facetious, Camilla. It was shocking, and wonderful, to see Henry alive. I couldn't have imagined it, ever - not before coming here, anyway." I smiled. "Honestly, it was odd at first, but... good. Sometimes the formality of small talk can help one get past the first hurdles of renewed acquaintance - especially when they are as unusual as this."

I looked down at my plate. "But it was tempered - mostly - by talk of Bunny. That was not a pleasant surprise." I looked at up at her face. "He says you and he are working on something to take care of him. I asked him if I could help. He said he didn't know, and that was pretty much that." He hadn't told me what he was working on, either. Turning Bunny into a bunny didn't seem like a Henry-type plan at all. Too innocuous.

I tried to change the subject. "So, what's for dinner?"

[c-macaulay.livejournal.com]

Camilla had to laugh. He was asking her what was for dinner, when it was already on the plate in front of him. "Goodness, I don't know," she said. "Whatever it looks like, I'm sure. If you're lucky they haven't glazed the chicken with something pumpkin. Wizarding cuisine has this fixation with pumpkin."

She looked at his face intently. "It's so very good to have you with us again. What did you think of him? How did he look to you?"

[richardthegreek.livejournal.com]

I laughed, realizing that she was right. It looked like some kind of meat pie with potatoes and vegetables, good, standard British Isles fare.

I looked at Camilla, my eyes holding hers. "It is good to be with you again," I said, seriously. You especially, I thought firmly. I shrugged. "He looked - like Henry. The same. You know?"

[c-macaulay.livejournal.com]

"It's good to hear you say that. Both things. That you're glad to be with us -- I really don't think Charles is very happy to be here. And that Henry looked well to you." Biting her lip, she looked away. "He doesn't always."

[richardthegreek.livejournal.com]

"Not the headaches still?" I said, surprised. "Can't they handle that here?"

[c-macaulay.livejournal.com]

"We're handling it," Camilla said, but without any strong conviction. "You remember how bad it used to be. No one knows about them who didn't know before, except his doctor, but, well -- Bunny knows everything. I don't even know what all Bunny knows." An odd look crossed her face. "Bunny probably knows more than I do." Camilla, after all, had never read Henry's diary; and the diary Bunny had read was no longer available for the reading even had she been inclined to snoop for it. It'd gone up in the fireplace at the palazzo where Bunny and Henry had spent that ill-fated vacation so long ago.

[richardthegreek.livejournal.com]

"Ah, Bunny. What are you working on to 'handle' him?" Henry wouldn't say, perhaps Camilla would. I wanted to help.

[c-macaulay.livejournal.com]

If Richard hoped Camilla could shed light on Henry's plans, he was in for a disappointment. Camilla didn't know what Henry was planning any more than Richard did.

"He doesn't tell me," she said shortly. "He reads a lot, but he always did."

[richardthegreek.livejournal.com]

I nodded. Henry was keeping his own counsel, as always. "What does he read? That might give us a clue as to how to help?"

[c-macaulay.livejournal.com]

Camilla looked heavenward. "Richard, it's Henry. What doesn't he read?"

[richardthegreek.livejournal.com]

I sighed audibly. I know I wasn't holding my temper well, but I was getting a bit frustrated. Yes, I loved her... but, come on.

"Camilla, I need to know if I am going to help. Do you still not trust me? I mean, didn't I do enough the last time around?" I pushed my plate away. "What is it going to take?"

[c-macaulay.livejournal.com]

She pushed her chair back far enough to let her turn her full body to him, face him fully.

"Richard." Her voice was tense. "I'm telling you I honestly don't know what he's doing. He won't tell me."

Gray eyes wide, desperate. "It's not that I don't trust you. It's that he doesn't trust me."

[richardthegreek.livejournal.com]

Her eyes. Her rainwater-gray eyes that always undid me. And, God help me, I believed her. I always did.

I reached out to her, and took her face in my hands. I kissed her, before she could say anything, passionately and fully. I trust you, no matter how much you lie to me, I said wordlessly. Henry doesn't deserve you if he doesn't trust you.

I broke the kiss, pulled back for her reaction.

[c-macaulay.livejournal.com]

She tasted of the wine she'd been drinking. She let him kiss her, but when he broke away, her eyes were even wider.

"My God, that wasn't even warded." Quickly she pulled out her wand, murmured the necessary incantations. "We have to be careful."

Already complicit.

[richardthegreek.livejournal.com]

I dropped my face to hide my disappointment. Then, I felt new resolve. If it had to be secret, then let it be. It's not like we weren't already intimate with secrets and lies.

I took her hands in mine, looked deep into her eyes. "Camilla, I will have you on any terms. Secretly or openly, just me, or any time you can spare for me.
"And I do want to help you. I want to help you with Bunny. I want to help you with Charles. I want to help you with Henry. I want to make your life happy. I will do whatever you want - have you ever, ever considered what you want, Cam? Ever? Not as Charles' Milly or Henry's Camilla, or even my angel - but what would make you truly, truly happy?"

[c-macaulay.livejournal.com]

These was an exceedingly difficult question. Richard seemed to have acquired an unnerving talent for asking difficult questions.

The last time he'd asked her a difficult question, it had literally changed her life. He'd asked her to marry him, and she'd considered it, truly considered it; what she found in her heart that day had determined the course of action that brought her to Hogwarts, and to the one place Henry's shade could have materialised.

She'd thought having Henry back was what would make her happy. It'd only made things more complicated. Though she was happy, sometimes.

She didn't think that was what Richard meant.

So she thought about it -- really, really thought about it, as he held her hands and held her gaze so she couldn't evade it.

"What would make me truly happy," she said, "is for us all to be friends again. And we can't ever have that."

[richardthegreek.livejournal.com]

"Oh, Cam," I sighed, and pulled her close. "We can try. I will see to it. We will try."

[c-macaulay.livejournal.com]

She shook her head sadly. "You don't understand how bad it's gotten. Charles hates me. I mean, really hates me. And Charles and Henry hate one another as much as they ever did. They came to blows at Charles's Sorting -- it was really awful; Henry ended up on the floor." Which didn't make a good deal of sense when you thought about it, but unlike Charles, Camilla hadn't figured out the truth of that little incident. "And Bunny -- you saw Bunny. He said the most awful things to Charles and me."

[richardthegreek.livejournal.com]

I rubbed my jaw, ruefully. "I did see Bunny. He and I acted like Charles and Henry did, then." I could imagine what Bunny could have said to them. I stroked her hair in sympathy.

"If only... there may be a way to make people forget - forget the bad, and only remember the good. If only."

[c-macaulay.livejournal.com]

There was, in fact, a way: memory charms, Obliviation. But Camilla had no intention of telling Richard about it. Telling him about it would be like asking him, as a former pre-med undergrad, to perform brain surgery. And she loved Charles; she didn't want him magically lobotomised.

Also there was the not-insignificant fact that Richard could just as easily use a memory charm against her, or against Henry.

"I don't think it can be that easy," she said, choosing her words carefully. Her gaze was clear and, to all appearances, guileless. "We can't get greedy, Richard. We have to be happy with what we can have. You're here with me -- isn't that enough?"

Silently, she qualified that you as second person plural. She didn't think Richard would.

[richardthegreek.livejournal.com]

Her clear gaze held me, and I just enjoyed looking at her, for another moment. "Well, we'll find a way to get along somehow. And being with you, that is enough for me."

For me. For her, hopefully, too. She had taken her time answering. This might be something for me to look into. Bunny had to be stopped - but, hell, I missed the him too. I missed all of it, the long, languorous days in Francis' country house, before... before everything. It was enough to have the band together again - so to speak. We broke the world - we could put it back together again.

I smiled into her gray eyes.

[c-macaulay.livejournal.com]

She missed those days too. That was what she wanted back.

"Remember the lake?" she said, a bit dreamily. It had been wonderful, then. "Going out in the boat, or wading ..."

Henry pulling the glass from her foot. Consummatum est.

[richardthegreek.livejournal.com]

The lake. Camilla a golden being in the sun.

I smiled, remembering, and kissed her again. "You were a goddess. Even when you stepped on the glass that time. You were beautiful, even in pain."

[c-macaulay.livejournal.com]

"It didn't hurt," Camilla denied. "Much." But she was secretly pleased, and kissed him back more readily this time, pliant.

[richardthegreek.livejournal.com]

I broke, slightly, murmuring against her lips. "Come see my room?"

[c-macaulay.livejournal.com]

"We haven't even had our dinner yet," she demurred. "Aren't you hungry? I'd like to see your room, though, and your office."

[richardthegreek.livejournal.com]

I grinned. "Later, then." I resumed eating, if only to get to later that much faster. "By the way," I said, "I will need a research assistant... as a professor, that is. Someone who's been here a while, who can inform me about the wizarding world, stay up late, one-on-one in my office, you know... things like that." I looked over at her. "Interested?"

[c-macaulay.livejournal.com]

Camilla took her time about answering, a deliberate forkful between her and a definite yes or no. Finally, after a sip from her wineglass, she said: "I've never seen myself as a teacher." Though in truth, she'd assumed Julian's manner so often in the past years, just to get herself through any number of unfamiliar situations, that she could probably have led a class very easily. "Research I can manage. You're wise to see you need someone to show you the ropes."

Stay up late, one-on-one in my office, you know ...

In a sense, it was the smartest thing she could do. In another, it was far from a good idea.

"I don't mind, if you want me to," she said casually, and picked up her fork again.

[richardthegreek.livejournal.com]

"I do want you to. You can take me on a library tour, for starters." And then I can take you on my office desk, I thought. Whole long hours, just Camilla and me. Doing research.

[c-macaulay.livejournal.com]

"All right. Did Henry tell you about the library here? It's wonderful really, a wonderful old place, everything hidden away. As a professor, of course, you'll have access to the Restricted Section, which is where the more dangerous things are. Carnivorous books, amazing things."

And as his assistant, so would she. Not that there weren't other ways of getting the kinds of books that Hogwarts kept under guard. But this way was nicely convenient.

"You'll probably want a teaching assistant too," she said. "To wrangle the students. The class sizes can be very large, because the classes are so infrequent." And he wouldn't want to waste Camilla's time with things like grading.