[identity profile] estebanmd.livejournal.com posting in [community profile] hh_mirror


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.

Date: 2007-07-25 08:28 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] lilypotter60.livejournal.com
Lily had set her bag down in the corner. As usual when she went to work, she was in her Hogwarts uniform, hair pulled back and ready to deal with the tasks ahead. But today she simply stood at the table and watched Stephen for a few long, silent minutes.

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."

Date: 2007-07-25 09:00 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] lilypotter60.livejournal.com
Honestly, Lily was vaguely surprised that Stephen had assented so quickly. He knew her fairly well; and Stephen probably knew when Lily was going into her (as Cox had often called it) 'meddling' mode. But she simply smiled up at him and took his arm, walking with him to his office. After accepting a cup of tea from Aloysius with her thanks, Lily sipped it slowly while studying Stephen's face. There were several things that might be bothering him - something to do with Evil Clowns or Professor Homsar or even the current furry crisis. But, somehow, Lily thought that the reasoning behind Stephen's current mood might be more personal.

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?"

Date: 2007-07-25 09:13 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] lilypotter60.livejournal.com
Question and answer was Lily's modus operandi. At least, with her asking and the other person telling. It very rarely went in the opposite direction. Following what Stephen was saying with an increasingly sardonic smile, Lily paused, then tipped back the rest of her tea in one swallow, leaning back in her chair.

"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."

Date: 2007-07-25 09:25 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] lilypotter60.livejournal.com
Well, that earned both eyebrows raised. Lily set her glass on Stephen's desk and nodded to it. "Oh, yeah. Most definitely need something stronger than tea." She considered him; there was no reason to believe he was being untruthful or even evasive. Stephen had started this conversation of his own free will. He was too smart to get suckered into the whole 'let's have a cuppa' routine without knowing exactly what he was getting in for.

"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.

Date: 2007-07-25 09:49 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] lilypotter60.livejournal.com
"She's a woman, Stephen," Lily tried to explain without condemnation. "And women, we...form attachments. You're sleeping together, you're close friends, there's obviously an attraction... It's only natural that Susan should want more. Should believe there is more. She probably assumes."

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 bitchy blunt opinion.

Date: 2007-07-25 10:15 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] lilypotter60.livejournal.com
Biting her lip in thought, Lily twirled her wand absently through her fingers. "She strikes me as...reckless. For no good reason, that I can see." Lily looked up to Stephen. "Do you know of any?" As someone who opened up fully to a very limited number of people (in reality that number was one, Sirius, and then in a smaller sense to her son), Lily did not expect all the details. Nor was she trying to discover them. This was not a fact-finding mission, after all. This was her trying to be supportive of a friend who was in need of it.

"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?"

Date: 2007-07-25 10:44 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] lilypotter60.livejournal.com
She accepted his avowal of Susan having come back correctly with nothing more than a nod. It was not her place to push that particular matter. Stephen knew her, he was the one who could say for certain. As to the rest...

"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."

Date: 2007-07-27 05:05 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] lilypotter60.livejournal.com
Stephen, Lily knew, was not one to speak unnecessarily. He did not waste words, nor time, on subjects that he felt didn't matter. And so, as he went on, though her eyes were fixed on his desk and only occasionally raising to his face and her wand twirling through her fingers, Lily gave weight to every word, every sentence. When he'd finished she thought for a moment before offering Stephen a half-smile.

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?"

Date: 2007-07-29 04:03 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] lilypotter60.livejournal.com
Ah. Lily sat back again. "So, you're well off of her, then?" It wasn't really a question. Not after everything Stephen had told her. There was nothing but sympathy for the loss of whatever Stephen had had in her voice.

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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