closed RP in the potions lab for bicycles
Jul. 25th, 2007 04:13 am![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png)
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Grind. Stir. Blend, methodical and precise. Potion-making could be messy, but a controlled mess. If done properly, the result would be a clean one.
Stephen addressed himself to the task with a sort of forced focus. He preferred to contemplate these controlled and harmonious mixtures, their outcomes entirely predictable. He scarcely noticed when Lily entered the laboratory, and why should he? She worked here not infrequently; the wards were set to admit her. Blank-faced, economical in his movements, he worked on.
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Date: 2007-07-25 08:28 am (UTC)He'd been, for the past several days, in something of a funk. Stephen wasn't exactly gregarious in the best of times, but over the months they'd worked together they had formed a friendship. And Lily knew him, knew his normal mood, and this wasn't it. He was impassive and closed off. Something was wrong.
And today Lily decided it'd gone on long enough. Putting down the knife she'd absently picked up, Lily walked over to him. "You know," she said conversationally, green eyes sweeping his face, "if I didn't know any better, I'd say something was bothering you." Lily offered Stephen a small smile. "Why don't we have a cuppa, yeah? I've been staring at books all morning; I could use a break before I get started and I hate to drink alone."
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Date: 2007-07-25 08:39 am (UTC)As it was, he could do with a disburdening of the soul. Shepherd Book had been popcorn lo these many months, and Lily was as close as Stephen had to a real confidante here nowadays. Since the matter did not involve espionage, he could speak as he would. He had spoken somewhat to Camilla, but since she was part and parcel of it all, there had only been so much he could say, not to mention the other reasons it seemed inadvisable to speak with her at length.
"We should not partake of tea in the laboratory," he said. "My office, shall we say?" Removing his protective goggles and gloves and the protective robes that were the wizarding equivalent of a lab coat, he cast a quick cleaning charm on his hands just to be safe, and offered her his arm.
Once they were safely ensconced in his office, behind wards and locks, and each with a cup of Aloysius's famous potion-free tea, he took a deep breath and said, "One feels one's age, sometimes. That is the long and the short of it, no more."
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Date: 2007-07-25 09:00 am (UTC)Legs crossed and arms resting loosely on her knees, Lily waited for Stephen to speak. He did not make her wait long; with a wry half-smile, Lily chuckled darkly in agreement. "I know the feeling." Though, with her, it was more the disconnect between the age she thought she was and the age she'd actually lived to. "Is there anything in particular that's brought this about?"
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Date: 2007-07-25 09:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-25 09:13 am (UTC)"Susan." It was not a question.
One smooth twist of her wand changed the teacup to a highball. "I think we need something a bit stronger for this conversation." She left the specifics up to Stephen. Folding her legs under her and resting her chin in her hands, she tilted an eyebrow at him. "So. Why do you, then? I have to admit, I like Susan, I do, but she seems..." Reckless? Naive? Imprudent? "Well, not the type I'd picture you with."
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Date: 2007-07-25 09:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-07-25 09:25 am (UTC)"And Susan...knows this, yeah?" She said it delicately, with a hint of doubt in her voice. "Because... Well, perhaps I misread her, but that's not the impression I got," Lily tried to sound diplomatic. Truth was, if there was one thing she could do well, it was read people. Especially about something so basic. She'd gotten the understanding that Susan and Stephen were some kind of couple. To hear Stephen deny it was... Well, it didn't bode well.
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Date: 2007-07-25 09:38 am (UTC)"I should certainly hope so. I should certainly hope her senses have not yet so deserted her as to imagine words have been spoken that have never so been spoken by me to her. I confess an attachment only, a strong but informal attachment." He placed emphasis on informal. "With this I see nothing amiss in and of itself." It was extraordinarily difficult to speak without indelicacy of this matter, he was finding to his chagrin. There was no real way to say to Lily that, rather than any declaration of feeling or offer of commitment, Stephen's words to Susan after the consummation of their mutual attraction had been 'Would you like this to happen again?'
"What concerns me rather is the change in her. It has little to do with matters of intimacy, and far more to do with her essential character. I have known Susan practically since we both arrived at Hogwarts well over a year ago; she has been one of my dearest friends; and I have always admired in her a certain hardheadedness, a certain practicality, what one might call good sense. Now I come to find her anything but sensible. I come to find her hazarding life and limb for no apparent reason (http://community.livejournal.com/hogwarts_hocus/1386506.html), and I have not the ground to find fault with it or to say her a word of reproach. All well and good; her business is her own; but I find this connexion intolerable, under the circumstances."
That, he had not said even to Camilla. It was something he would rather not have said -- something he would rather not admit even to himself.
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Date: 2007-07-25 09:49 am (UTC)The rest of what Stephen said was more disturbing, and Lily found herself sighing softly. "I've healed her on at least two occasions from wounds she got whilst being slightly less than sensible. I don't claim to know her as well as you do, Stephen - the first time I've spoken to her was during my class - but... Well the words you use - practicality, good sense - are not ones that would exactly leap to mind. She's so..." Lily paused, waving one hand in the air as she tried to find the right way to put it. "Young."
The irony of Lily proclaiming Susan (who was actually several years her senior) as such was lost on her.
"To be naive can be endearing, even appealing, but there is a limit. Susan...well, she needs looking after. Your ward, perhaps, would be a better role for her?" That was said with a hidden grin, a slight bite in the words. Lily considered Stephen a good friend. Susan, though nice, was an acquaintance. She simply didn't know the other woman well enough to count her as anything closer; and it was hard to get into Lily's inner circle. If not for the fight against Evil Clowns, it was highly possible Stephen himself would not have made it. She felt no consternation for expressing such a
bitchyblunt opinion.no subject
Date: 2007-07-25 10:06 am (UTC)Though she might as well have been, damn it all to hell. He had to suppress a wince all over again recalling the occasion on which he had actually had to say to her and Teatime: Shall you separate peaceably, or shall I have Aloysius fetch the hose?
"More, I have taken pains to make clear to her that it is not for her to say what is rash and what is well-considered behavior on my part. Therefore I wholly deny any right I might have had to correct her behavior in turn. I would not even wish to do so; I would not so presume. She is a woman grown, a full twenty-five years of age -- even if she does not seem to act it, at all, these days -- and what is more, she herself has had the care of children, as a governess. She should see for herself what is the behavior expected of a civilised person." Morosely he stirred his tea. "Had I not shot that man -- but that is neither here nor there; were I inclined to inform her of the particulars, she would have to see that anyhow."
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Date: 2007-07-25 10:15 am (UTC)"Twenty-five?" Lily repeated, looking surprised. "Merlin, I'd not have guessed that." Lily had never seen twenty-five; or, by her own reckoning, was fifteen years beyond it. In any case, she had assumed Susan to be much younger.
The duel she, of course, knew about, as Stephen and Henry had shown up in the Wing for medical care. And though she found using Muggle devices for duels something quite stupid - why use a gun when you had wands? - she was quite sure Stephen had known what he was doing.
"I... Well, I hate to even bring it up, but..." Lily winced, hesitating, before forcing herself to continue. "Susan was popcorn at one time, was she not? I have to ask, Stephen..." Lily fixed her gaze on Stephen steadily. "Are you quite sure it's your own Susan who came back? Or that she came back as whole as she once was?"
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Date: 2007-07-25 10:26 am (UTC)The question of popcorn he refused to entertain. "It is true she was popcorn, sure. She recalled me when she returned. Had she not been the same person, she would not have recalled me, as we did not know one another before Hogwarts." More, to question the continuity of popcorned persons who laid claim to said continuity would be to shake his faith in what River had been, when she returned, before she lapsed again into kernelhood. He simply could not accept the possibility.
"No, I do not question her identity. I question only the soundness of her judgement; and that, only insofar as I can find it supportable, and can justify tacit support thereof by continuing to be party to her decisions." He sighed heavily. "Courage is one thing, folly quite another. In short, Lily, I find what was once an attraction to be now ... considerably diminished."
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Date: 2007-07-25 10:44 am (UTC)"I know well the trials of having a temper," she admitted with a self-deprecating grin. "And I did see her boggart. I spoke to her, afterward. I don't know how she can justify this intense need for violence, to go after someone with such single-minded obsession, when she seemed so worried about what she might become. And her vendetta seems completely random to me. Granted, I only know of it in bits and pieces, but the man she is going after is..." Lily paused, then shook her head. "Laughable. Prosaic in every way. I gave him detention. He's nothing more than a boy spouting the same madness every future dictator shouts. If he was ignored, he would fade away. Paying attention to his ranting only encourages him."
If she sounded frustrated, that's because she was. Sylar was nothing more than a want-to-be Voldemort, someone who saw himself as above everyone, able to pass judgment and decree who lived and who died. A sociopath without conscious or reason. But he was not a threat. Not in a place where no one could die. And Susan giving him credence was, to Lily, insulting. To grant respect to someone like Sylar was madness itself. Watch him, sure. Be willing to step in should he go too far. But an active vendetta? Sylar wasn't worth that.
"I've done many things in my life, fought many battles, because I had to. I can't remember a time I went looking for a war." She shrugged, her wand passing between her fingers, twirling around and around as Lily considered the whole matter. "Perhaps it's because she is now seeking to embrace something she once thought to push away? Or maybe she just feels her life is lacking excitement? Either way, she's being a right idiot."
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Date: 2007-07-26 01:31 am (UTC)"You may be right," he allowed tersely -- reluctantly, even. "You are almost certainly right. I am not one to judge such matters. I have declined to do so; as I have declined to inquire. I decline even to contemplate her motives." Though Lily's suggestion -- maybe she just feels her life is lacking excitement -- added yet another aspect to his malaise: perhaps what Stephen had undertaken as a serious if informal attachment, Susan would have pursued only for entertainment, relief from boredom, in the same way she now pursued her schoolyard squabbles.
He drank his cooling tea and cast about for words. "None of this is my province. There are battles worth fighting in this time as in my own: evil clowns, furries, such monstrosities as would make even vile Napoleon blanch. Susan's ill-chosen battles are not mine to fight. We have a tacit understanding, she and I, that what is not a mutual concern need not become a mutual concern. Lily, I speak most candidly and without an ounce of reservation when I say I have no desire to check the course she has elected to run. What saddens me is only that seeing that course, I find it exceedingly difficult to respect her as I once did. I am no idealist; I believe trust is no prerequisite to love. Respect, though -- there can be no love without respect, without a genuine esteem."
For he had loved her, in his way, never breathing a word of it -- or, rather, he had loved what he believed her to be.
This had happened once before, with Diana*, and it had left him just as bereft, just as baffled and empty. He had thought he would always love Diana, and when he saw what she had allowed herself to become, he found his own self-assessment lacking. It was that, more than anything, that had disturbed him then, and that was what disturbed him now. The true object of his discontent was not his erstwhile beloved but himself.
* (( This emo moment is to be found in book 6, The Fortune of War: "His indifferent eye fell on the note, addressed in that familiar hand, and he drew a sheet of paper towards him. 'If I no longer love Diana,' he wrote, 'what shall I do?' What could he do, with his mainspring, his prime mover gone? He had known that he would love her for ever - to the last syllable of recorded time. He had not sworn it, any more than he had sworn that the sun would rise every morning: it was too certain, too evident: no one swears that he will continue to breathe nor that twice two is four. Indeed, in such a case an oath would imply the possibility of doubt. Yet now it seemed that perpetuity meant eight years, nine months and some odd days, while the last syllable of recorded time was Wednesday, the seventeenth of May. 'Can such things be?' he asked. He knew from examples that this had often happened to other men; and that other men also lost their minds or contracted cancer. Could it be that he was not, as he had implicitly supposed, exceptionally immune?" ))
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Date: 2007-07-27 05:05 am (UTC)She did not agree with his statement about trust and love. In Lily's mind, there could be no love without a fundamental trust behind it. She had trusted James, in the midst of so much uncertainty, with every part of her; without that, their marriage would not have stood nearly so strong. Their love would not have run as deep.
Of course, she trusted Sirius just as much. With all of her. ...At least, with most of her. Shifting uneasily, Lily considered the difference. Since she and Sirius' long and colourful string of fights, she'd been working on being more open. On not shutting him out. But that was the problem, wasn't it? It was work. Hard work, at that. And it was nowhere near perfect - there was still plenty she kept from him, still so much that she simply bypassed when she was with him. There was her life, and then her life with Sirius, and the two were not the same. And, thinking back, it hadn't been like that with James. Not that she expected the two men to be interchangeable, not at all, and yes, she'd changed in the year since her death. But not this much. Not to the point of becoming cold, distrusting. Not to the place where she was becoming Stephen, so hardened that he simply assumed that even love wasn't a reason to let down his guard.
This was not how she should be. The realization hit her like the proverbial ton of bricks. She was turning into someone she didn't like, not in the least, and what was more, she was hurting Sirius with it. And he didn't even know; because this Lily - the closed off, angry, defensive one - had been around since the start of the relationship.
However she had gotten here, to this place she despised and was just now seeing clearly, Lily knew she had to stop. She needed to get back to how she had been, before all of shite had somehow soured her. This was not what Lily wanted her life to become, and she was determined to figure out how to fix it.
...Later. Right then she was still talking with Stephen. Clearing her throat, Lily leaned back in her chair, curling her legs up and resting her chin on her knees.
"There are two things I've learned," she said slowly. "The first is that you can't change people. You can want more for them, you can expect things from them, but, in the end, they'll be who they are and nothing else. Not love, not respect, not friendship, not hope, not trust - nothing can change that. Susan is who she is, and she makes the choices she deems best for her. I don't doubt you want her to live her own life, much as you want to live yours. And if, in the end, the decisions she makes are not ones you can live with, there's little to be done." There was something melancholy in Lily's eyes as she watched Stephen; some distant sorrow that had healed but not been forgotten. To have a friend, to have someone you trusted, make decisions you could not abide, that you had to walk away from... She knew this all too well. Severus had done that, years ago. And then Peter in a far more cataclysmic event. But to lose a lover to their ill decisions... That had to be worse.
"And the second," she said after a moment, shaking off the memories, "is that life is too sodding short to waste being with someone who doesn't make you want to get up in the morning. Someone who doesn't ignite your soul and make you hum in the shower." Lily grinned wryly at him. "Mate, if Susan doesn't do that, if being with her is a chore with no reward, if you can't respect her, then what's the point? What are you hoping will change?" She paused for a moment, then ventured, delicately, "And, perhaps, Stephen, part of the problem is the age difference? It's not really my place, but do you think that being with someone who is closer to you in maturity and life experience might...help?"
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Date: 2007-07-29 02:51 am (UTC)"There is nothing I hope to change," he said simply and quietly. "Certainly I agree that once a connexion is seen to be false or undertaken in error, it should come to an end."
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Date: 2007-07-29 04:03 am (UTC)Then a half-smile lifted the corner of her mouth. "Good for you. Susan is a nice girl, but...well, she's just that. A girl." And this from someone a few years younger - but Lily was completely unaware of the irony. "You need someone of your own maturity level, really."
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Date: 2007-07-29 04:09 am (UTC)