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


"I don't want to go out."

"It was your idea."

"Well, I changed my mind. I don't feel well."

"Which is it, Milly? You changed your mind, or you don't feel well?" Charles didn't bother to affect real annoyance. Her obstinacy was almost endearing, at present; he could afford to like it, because it was a good sign. It showed she wasn't happy. It was very much in Charles's interest that Camilla be unhappy at present. So he let a fond familiarity suffuse the words instead.

"I changed my mind because I don't feel well."

"Fine, we'll go without you. Susan will miss you though."

Camilla sighed. "I think you'll have plenty of fun without me." Was that a little jealousy in her voice? Oh, Charles hoped so. He very much hoped so.

He whistled all the way back to Ravenclaw dorm, until he got to the hallway where Susan's room was, and there he exchanged the spring in his step for a more somber tread.

"Hello?" He knocked at her door. "It's me, Charles. Camilla says she can't make it. She's not feeling well. We might as well stay in."



(( Eventual warning for unemotional non-cesty smut. It's not gratuitous for our purposes, as there are plot reasons for it, but if you don't care for that sort of thing, don't read this. ))

Date: 2007-12-11 05:56 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] usethepoker.livejournal.com
Susan opened the door and let him in. "She's not feeling well? Damn, that's too bad. I was hoping she could see a teahouse that wasn't as revolting as Madam Puddifoot's."

She hadn't been ready to go, anyway; somehow, tidy though her room was, she'd managed to lose a boot. She'd looked everywhere, and had finally come to the conclusion that some house-elf smart enough to get past her wards had snuck in and stolen it. The other one was in her hand, and she eyed it a moment before tossing it back in the closet. "We can have tea here, at least--gods know I've got enough of everything." A dozen cannisters of tea leaves ranged along a bookshelf, next to the kettle, teapot, and assorted other crockery. "Go ahead and sit down, and I'll deal with the water." She nodded to the fat armchair near the desk, disappearing into the bathroom for a moment to fill the kettle at the sink. When she returned, she set it atop a small converted Bunsen burner, turning the flame up high. Who needed warming spells when there were such fascinating little gadgets?

"I just hope the rest of us won't catch it, whatever it is," she said, sitting cross-legged on the bed. "I don't know that I necessarily trust the hospital wing."

Date: 2007-12-11 06:15 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] usethepoker.livejournal.com
It was just as well there was no tea yet, or Susan would have snorted it out her nose. As it was, she tried to choke back a laugh and didn't quite succeed.

"...Ah," she said, somehow managing a straight face. "Right. Well...what's the phrase? More power to her, I suppose, though it's a bit more information than I needed."

Date: 2007-12-11 06:35 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] usethepoker.livejournal.com
Susan felt her face reddening. "Oops," she said. "I put my foot in that one." That unfortunate habit still hadn't fully gone away since she'd left the Death-ness behind; her ability to judge inflection was still piss-poor. She'd explained it to Charles not long after they'd met--mainly as a warning, in case she committed some glaring faux pas, and apparently it was an explanation well-warranted.

"What makes you say that?" she asked. "That marriage isn't agreeing with Camilla?" Once again, her relative inability to read most people kept her from being any kind of accurate judge--and Camilla was difficult for almost anyone to fathom, so Susan was at an even worse disadvantage.

Date: 2007-12-11 07:53 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] usethepoker.livejournal.com
Susan, unobservant of most people though she might be, could at least tell that Camilla's soaring good spirits had taken a dive. It was a gentle sort of dive, but it was there, and until now Susan had just thought it might be the effect of being back in cold and drippy Scotland after the comparative warmth of this Greece place.

"I'd noticed, yes," she said. "Why do you say it's Henry's fault, though?" From what she'd seen--everything she'd heard in talking to both of them, all that had gone on after the hoboness, etc.--Henry and Camilla were unusually devoted to one another. They, along with Shaun and Liz, were what Susan considered one of the few bastions of hope for romantic relationships. She wondered why Charles, who obviously knew both of them much better than she could, would think such a thing--what he could have seen that would bring him to such a conclusion.

The kettle began to sing, and she got up to take it off the burner and fill the pot. "Pick your poison," she said, nodding at the cannisters on the shelf. "If you don't see anything you want, I can send a house-elf for more."

Date: 2007-12-11 09:23 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] usethepoker.livejournal.com
Susan packed some leaves into the strainer and put it in the pot. She hadn't chosen the jars for their aesthetic value, but they really were pretty, in a way. On an idle side note, she did rather like Charles's aftershave.

Naturally, his words only piqued her curiosity yet further--something he had to have known would happen, though of course she herself did not know he'd want to. "No, tell me." Susan might not be any good at giving moral support, but if one of her friends needed it, she at least wanted to know about it. Camilla had helped her through so very much, and Susan didn't want to drop the ball if the favor needed returning.

Date: 2007-12-11 10:11 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] usethepoker.livejournal.com
That was an odd thing to say. To an extent it was true, at least with silly little things like horrible teashops, but Susan had a hard time applying the idea to Camilla and Henry's actual relationship. It had survived the hoboness and subsequent shooting match, after all; they'd gone through a hell of a lot together just at Hogwarts, nevermind anything that came before. To Susan, that spoke of a certain level of devotion.

Speaking of 'before', though... "What happened at college, if you don't mind my asking?"

Date: 2007-12-11 11:40 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] usethepoker.livejournal.com
Susan blinked. It was some moments before she spoke, moments spent arranging the rest of the tea things, and finally she said, "Seriously?" It was a Shaun-ism, and those usually didn't come out unless she was honestly surprised. That was a story of which she had heard absolutely nothing, but then all the college history was surrounded by such an intense vaccuum that it was certainly possible.

Susan knew that Henry was decidedly unusual, and often quite prickly, but she didn't really have a problem with that because she was largely that way herself. She also knew that that was where their similarities ended, but good grief, she couldn't imagine doing such a thing--doing it, or having it done. True, Camilla was very different than her, but she still couldn't fathom how anyone could go along with anything like that.

"He moved her out, and didn't tell any of you where, or why?" But really, it didn't take much stretching of her imagination to believe--again, post-hoboness, he and Stephen had actually gone out and shot one another, and from what she understood it had been Henry's idea (though to this day she thought they were both fools for doing it, especially the way they did. If you were going to duel someone, do it righ--use something sharp and pointy, dammit.) She knew he was protective of Camilla, but it wasn't hard to make the leap from 'protective' to 'jealous'. "I really hate to say it, but I could see him doing something like that. What I can't understand is why on earth Camilla would agree to it." The Camilla she knew didn't seem like the type who'd be content to be shut up like, as Charles put it, a princess in a tower, but then Camilla had been much younger then. As young as Henry currently was, having been dead all the intervening years, and while it was easy to forget his age, very occasionally he'd do or say something that reminded her that, in some ways at least, he was little more than a boy.

She poured out the tea, considering as she added cream and sugar to her cup. Gods, if someone had tried that with her, no matter what the reason.... Her next words were laced with an irony of which she was wholly unaware, but which Charles would not be. "Honestly, I would have shot anyone who tried to do that to me."

Date: 2007-12-12 03:47 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] usethepoker.livejournal.com
Well, no, Camilla most certainly didn't do anything she didn't want to. Still, whatever had gone before notwithstanding, she certainly wasn't anything like brainwashed now. Henry didn't seem freakishly persuasive to Susan, but he did have an 'air of authority', in his own way. Could something like that actually have any sort of influence on Camilla, though? From what Susan had seen, Camilla wasn't really influenced by anything outside herself. Why on earth would either one of them do such a thing? Unless they were very different people in this Hampden place, which was always possible. Weird.

"They lived together for months before this," she mused, stirring her tea. "Why would she be unhappy now, so suddenly?"

Date: 2007-12-12 05:01 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] usethepoker.livejournal.com
Susan snorted. Ah, the tent village. "I ended up married to a demonic serial killer," she said, sipping her tea and smiling a little dryly. "All my cats have taken to following him around, rather than me. You might have seen him at the wedding--tall man, irritating smirk, probably smoking like a chimney."

She thought back--she'd still been Death, while everyone had been in the village, and while her memories were perfectly clear, she had to stop and re-assess them from a more human standpoint. "Neither one of them wanted her to be married to that Richard," she said. "That was patently obvious. I never did find out the history there, but there's obviously some bad blood. And Richard really does have terrible taste," she added, thinking back to the ring that was so ugly that even she had found it tacky.

Date: 2007-12-12 05:55 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] usethepoker.livejournal.com
Susan had to agree so far as 'pathetic' Richard was concerned. As to the rest--she didn't recall ever hearing how long Henry had been there with Camilla, but it probably was the same day. Again, protectiveness, or so she'd thought. Hmm.

"I had always assumed he was being protective," she said aloud. "I mean, it's the sort of thing that would drive me up the wall, but clearly Camilla didn't mind." She paused. "Or didn't seem to, at least. I know he can be extremely jealous, but I've only ever really heard of it harming anyone once. He and I had a fairly massive falling-out around then, too." There were a few bits of that she could actually relay, even if the whole of the thing would never, ever be spoken of. To anyone. Ever. And especially not to Camilla's brother, of all people. "Can I assume that's not the first time something like that has happened? That he's gone off and hurt someone over some jealous suspicion, validated or not?"

Date: 2007-12-12 08:15 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] usethepoker.livejournal.com
Something Henry had said (http://community.livejournal.com/hogwarts_hocus/1461226.html#cutid1) a while back came back to her now--it had been a generality about the confusing nature of mankind, but he had clearly meant it about Camilla as well. Granted, even in her current state Susan was often bewildered by humanity, but then she wasn't properly human herself; Henry, on the other hand, had no such excuse. Hmm.

She shook herself out of her reverie. "No, he didn't hurt me," she said. "He shot a dear friend of mine, who at the time was rather more than a friend. Granted, he got shot in turn; it was some stupid form of a duel, I think, and Stephen was hardly blameless himself. I could have shot both of them, especially because I only found out about it because Camilla sent me an owl before she packed off to London."

A pause, thoughtful. "And Henry followed her. Somehow they made it up, while they were there, but it was a long while before Henry and I managed to be on civil terms again." And that had really only been because the immortal part of her had taken over for a while, and thus she was nothing like the Susan Henry had known, and she viewed Henry quite differently herself. No mention had ever been made of the incident by either of them since--it was the sort of thing best left alone, and there had been no further cause for animosity.

Granted, what she couldn't tell Charles was that Henry had had every reason to be furious. It certainly shouldn't have gone to the stupid lengths it had, but it wasn't as though his anger was completely irrational or baseless. Susan had wished for quite a while afterward that Henry had given her the chance to enter that duel, too, simply so she could have shot him herself. She'd been terribly irritated with Stephen, too, at the time, for he hadn't told her about it, either. What she still didn't know was that Henry had wanted her in on it as well, and Stephen had talked him out of the idea. Had she known that, she would have been infuriated, but Stephen had been wise enough to simply tell her that any duel including her would be grossly unfair, thanks to what she was. Letting her think it was for Henry's protection, rather than her own, had been by far the smartest thing Stephen could have done. "And the really stupid thing was that they went off-grounds to do it. Stephen has almost frightening accurate aim, and I gather Henry does not, but it still could have bloody killed one of them."
Edited Date: 2007-12-12 08:15 pm (UTC)

Date: 2007-12-12 09:49 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] usethepoker.livejournal.com
If Charles and Henry really didn't get along, Susan could see why Camilla would choose not to tell him. She couldn't imagine what it must be like, having two people very dear to you who couldn't stand one another. She knew a little about the idea of brotherly protectiveness, thanks to Shaun, but she realized that it was a very different thing than the situation between the three of them.

She watched Charles with not a little concern. Unfortunately, Susan really didn't know what to say in this sort of situation, so she said the only thing she could think of. "She didn't really tell anyone. I think the only reason she even told me was because Stephen was involved, too." She really did suck at the whole gentility/comfort thing, but she meant it well. "Anyway, it's long over. Or I thought it was, anyway. I really don't know what to think, now." This new information troubled her--so much had gone into bringing about Camilla and Henry's wedding, so much from so many people, and to hear it wasn't the successful thing they'd all expected it to be was...worrisome.

Date: 2007-12-12 11:23 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] usethepoker.livejournal.com
Bah. Ten to one she'd just gone and made everything worse.

"If you're missing anything, I am, too," Susan said. "I'm pretty sure that's all that happened, but given the fact that the only one who told me anything was Camilla, I can't say for sure. I don't know why she didn't tell you, but then I don't understand half the things she does." She really was much worse than Henry, on that score.

She watched Charles--watched him try to get a lid on what had to be a fairly large dose of anger. At least that she could understand. "Sometimes," she said, "and believe me, I speak from experience on this--sometimes people can just have very, very poor judgement." The entire mess had been the result of poor (or, in places, completely lacking) judgement, that had just snowballed into something monstrous. "Sometimes we do very stupid things, and only come to regret them when it's too late," she added quietly--she spoke from multiple experiences on that one, but it could just as easily be interpreted as being applied solely to Camilla and Henry.

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