hh_mirror | closed RP: Camilla and Susan go shopping.

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closed RP: Camilla and Susan go shopping.

Traveling had always made Camilla nervous. Her parents had both died in a car accident when she was almost too young to remember; the dangers of travel weren't just statistical abstraction. Her quest to bring Henry back from the dead had made her intrepid in comparison to what she once had been, but she still couldn't get onto a train, or into an airplane, or even take a car ride of more than a few hours, without real trepidation.

She'd been delighted to learn that wizards could Apparate. Her safety wasn't reliant now on the vagaries of machinery or of other travelers, only on her own talent, and she'd proven quite talented indeed, which came as little surprise to her. Splinching was the only danger, and she knew she wouldn't splinch.

About Susan, she couldn't be certain. The greater the distance, the more difficult the Apparition. Even if Susan didn't splinch, Camilla wanted to be certain they ended up in the same place. Fortunately, she'd made a point to learn Side-Along Apparition, when she'd first hired tutors, long before Henry had arrived. She wasn't sure what he'd be capable of doing if she were able to resurrect him. The ability stood her in good stead now.

They had to Apparate into an inconspicuous place, and take taxis from there. Camilla's planned destination was Knightsbridge, but along the way, she wanted to stop at a rather obscure rare-book dealer, and that was nowhere near the shopping street. Brisk, all business -- they had to get all this done in a day! -- she towed Susan along.

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Camilla shook her head. "If he doesn't like you in that dress, honestly, he probably doesn't like women," she said seriously.

Susan snorted. "Oh, he'll probably like me in the dress," she said. "That does not, however, mean he'd like to get me out of the dress. Stephen is...Stephen. You just never know."

Camilla raised an eyebrow, taking the meaning but refusing to acknowledge it. "You don't have to take it off," she said.

Susan matched the expression. "Well, I certainly don't want to leave it on," she said. "It's a beautiful dress; I'd rather not wreck it. One way or the other." She managed to keep a straight face, but only just.

"Dresses can be replaced." She was amused, but she also meant it. The idea of actually caring about whether the dress survived the encounter was a new one to her. "You can wear something of his after."

Was there something wrong with the fact that she found the idea of wearing Stephen's clothes quite appealing? Well, of course she'd worn them twice, technically, but she'd also been inhabiting his body at the time, which somewhat detracted from the effect.

"There was a particular shirt I like, when we bodyswapped," she said. There really was something wrong with that sentence--or would be anywhere outside Hogwarts, anyway.

" ... Oh, did you?" Camilla had been subject to a bodyswap, once, when she'd spent the day in Nessarose Thropp's body. "Mine wasn't nearly so interesting." Now she was a little jealous.

"Oh, it was mortifying at the time. I don't remember the first occasion well--it was before I popcorned--but on the second I had, for some reason, a massive abdominal wound I'd tried to take care of myself. Stephen woke up in my body and gave me a lecture for not coming to see him." The eyebrow-incinerating kiss had also taken place then, but she didn't think she wanted to mention that. It was bad enough that they'd both lost their eyebrows; the fact that they'd switched bodies only made it sound even weirder.

She had to laugh. That did sound like Henry. "Of all the things to do at a time like that, a lecture." Then she tilted her head to one side. "Goodness, so you know exactly what you're missing, don't you?" How very, very strange.

In all her, uh, speculation, Susan had never thought of that. "Well, sort of," she said. "We both tried to be as respectful as we could while in one another's bodies. At that point, this whole thing hadn't occurred to either of us, which was part of why it was so embarrassing." Though, as she recalled, the second time hadn't been so embarrassing because they'd been too busy trying to deal with suddenly-combusting eyebrows. That kind of thing tended to distract from any lesser concerns.

This was very, very interesting. This added an entirely new dimension to what Henry had termed the equivalent of a novel written by Jane Austen if Austen had been schizophrenic.

"So," she said, folding her hands and looking at Susan attentively, "if it hadn't occurred to either of you, why the kissing?"

Susan laughed. "Actually, given the present situation, it's infinitely ironic. The kiss was experimental--an experiment undertaken to see if we could indeed be attracted to each other." She finished off the last of her lamb. "How terribly wrong is that?"

"If you could be, or if you were?" It was by no means an insignificant distinction to Camilla. "For the first couple of years I knew Henry, I think I would have laughed had anyone told me I'd fall in love with him. Not that it'd have been funny, but ... improbable."

"If we could be." Her mind was very firm on that. "At the time...well, at the time, we weren't. Neither one of us realized this until...really, until a few days ago. Though," she added, reflectively, "once I did, I could look back and see how early on it started, without me being aware of it."

Camilla had never really dissected her own relationships in such a way. She'd never felt prompted to do so. Charles she'd been born with. Henry had been given to her -- by Julian, by fate, by whatever inexorable machinery drove him, by his own agency. If there had been any groundwork laid before the bacchanal she wasn't aware of it -- had, in fact, probably blithely ignored any signs there were. "How early on was that?" she asked, leaning her chin on her folded hands, fascinated, as the waiter took away their plates and brought them little dishes of white chocolate mousse.

That...was a difficult question to answer.

"Well, I don't really know, honestly." Susan eyed the mousse--she hadn't had anything like that since she couldn't remember when. "You see, I knew Stephen before I popcorned, but my memories of that...incarnation...are sketchy. So on my part, it's really since around Valentine's day." She smiled, somewhat ruefully. "We went and attacked the Whomping Willow, and both wound up with concussions. Then we went and sang karaoke."

Camilla, on the other hand, had no qualms about the mousse. The passionfruit coulis she wondered about, but mainly because she wasn't certain white chocolate and passionfruit were such a logical pairing. It turned out to be a good deal nicer than she'd expected. So she spooned mousse and listened. It took every grain of her well-trained courtesy to keep from laughing at what Susan said. Attacking a tree? Karaoke? It was beginning to sound so absurd she wondered whether Henry would cease to be amused and start to be mildly disgusted.

"Well, that must have been a bonding experience," she said, pleasantly.

"Well, I was drugged at the time," she explained, taking some of the mousse herself. "Something at the party...I got it into my head to go attack the tree, and Stephen came with me so I wouldn't wind up breaking every bone in my body. It hit him, too, so we were a pair of concussion victims. It, ah, didn't lead to the best judgment calls," she said, smiling wryly. "At least nobody cast it up to us later."

And Susan was ... still attracted to this man. Well. Camilla really didn't know what to say.

"So that's when you really began to develop an attachment?" The query was kept entirely neutral.

Susan considered this. "I think so," I said. "It takes a certain level of devotion to follow your drugged friend off to whatever idiot endeavor she takes into her head, and another still to wind up with a concussion because of her." Which, in their own horribly dorky way, was true.

Camilla looked a little confused.

"That's completely normal for friends, I'd think," she said.

This said more about Camilla's friends than it did about anything else, really.

Susan looked at her curiously.

"Maybe it is. I wouldn't know, really--I've not had many close friends. Rather like Stephen, I can be somewhat...intractable." Which was putting it mildly, really. "Whether it is or isn't, I think that's what let my mind start to wander in that direction. Stephen and I...we've been close for as long as I can remember being at Hogwarts, just...not like this. Not until now." She sighed. "You know, when I first figured this out, I tried to find a potion to get rid of it?"

Camilla blinked. Curiouser and curiouser. Talking to Susan was incredibly strange. It raised questions she'd never had before.

"Why would you want to get rid of it? Don't you enjoy it?" she asked, honestly puzzled. "Even if it doesn't happen the way you want it to, it's still an emotion, an experience."

"I...well, I didn't want it to wreck our friendship," she said. "Part of the reason we got along so well was that we were completely comfortable in one another's presence, and then all of a sudden I wasn't. And I thought, at the time, that there was no way in the seven hells that he'd ever return it.

She picked at her mousse. "And then there was target practice the other day. Stephen was going to teach me to use a gun, and...I've never had such a hard time holding my self-control in my life. This was before I, ah, had any reason to suspect that he might reciprocate all this, and I was certain if I said anything--showed anything--it would turn terribly awkward and ruin everything." Finally taking a bite, she added, "that's when I saw the...look, actually, the one I think I'm meant to be watching for. I didn't know what it signified, at the time." And what might have happened, if she'd stayed, if she hadn't misinterpreted everything he'd said and, well, fled?

"Maybe you weren't meant to know yet." A very small smile, barely a smile at all. "It mightn't have been the right time. As for wrecking friendships -- " the smile faded.

What would make me truly happy is for us all to be friends again. And we can't ever have that. (http://community.livejournal.com/hogwarts_hocus/1308643.html?thread=67121379#t67121379)

"Some things can't be saved."

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