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hh_mirrorSarah had asked to change the routine of their days, and Stephen had acceded readily. Their previous routine had really only been his routine, insofar as he had one -- whatever he felt like doing and she went along with doing. Now they fell into a new rhythm of prescribed contact, something he might have seen as micro-dates had he been really familiar with the modern concept of dating. They had breakfast together every morning, often discussing the day's work ahead or current laboratory research, the difficulty of procuring some rare potion ingredient, whatever business might be at hand. They worked together as smoothly as they had before, the laboratory always having been a space free from personal issues. Had they stopped all physical contact that might not have been possible, but they had not, and so there was no deprivation to distract them from their work.
When there was no laboratory work to be done, they did not see one another until the agreed-upon interlude after dinner, when they would meet in the Ravenclaw common room. Nominally, the meetings were to be for drinks and conversation. Actually, the first night he had wanted to gloss over any occasion for awkward silence, so suggested that he teach her to play piquet, and since then, they had played the game every evening. The stakes occasionally took them to his room upstairs. If they fell asleep afterward, there was no fuss made over it, nor did it create the impression of a domesticity they both had agreed to forfeit.
What Sarah did with the remainder of her time, he knew only a little about. She had not allowed him to mourn River alone, had insisted on intruding upon that grief. Now he knew she was doing something similar with Ryuuji, whether Ryuuji wanted it or not (from his own time with Ryuuji at the popcorn room, Stephen suspected Ryuuji was largely indifferent to the presence of others). He said nothing about his disapproval, nor did he examine it closely enough to understand it had little to do with Ryuuji or the present situation, and much more to do with resentment for not having been allowed that initial time alone in the wake of River's passing. It made little difference anyhow; Ryuuji would do his own mourning in his own time, once the shock of loss faded enough, he thought. That was what Stephen had done. (Had he not?)
He still wore the wedding ring River had given him, and he would always wear the literal scar she had incised. He had never let go of her, though to the school at large it must have seemed as though he had forgotten her completely, giving her over in favor of a new amour before her kernel had even hardened. In the first few days after he lost her, he sometimes thought he glimpsed her, a ghost of her, in his peripheral vision. If anyone could have found a way to haunt him, it would have been River. But in all his solitary visits to the popcorn room since then, he had seen nothing, heard no revenant voice.
Life had continued after River's death as it had after Diana's death and the deaths of all the other people he had known and loved in varying degrees and functions. He battled the other-memories that plagued him, and made his own sort of truce with them. His own memories, though, he did not address. How could they be addressed? There was no priest at Hogwarts, and Shepherd Book had long since gone the way of the kernel himself. It had never occurred to him that he should seek out someone River had known. Even after it happened -- he and Ryuuji meeting by chance at the popcorn room, sharing memories of River as Ryuuji grieved his brothers -- Stephen did not sense the significance of that sharing.
He was from a time before the theory of the unconscious mind, and unconscious shifts could take him by surprise, introspective though he was. If he realised at all that he found himself thinking less often about River, and more often about Sarah, he chalked it up to the old saw that absence makes the heart grow fonder, that sleeping apart from her made him appreciate her more or some such thing. For a man capable of gauging tricky political situations with cold and immediate precision, Stephen could be remarkably obtuse about the workings of his own heart.
Lying awake late one night with a monograph on marsupials, he remembered how Sarah reminded him of a koala bear. He had not sent her notes by Aloysius unless prompted by a note of hers first (one sequence of which had led them, breathless, back to the Room of Requirement), but he thought it would do no harm to send her something that was not a note or a request of any kind. So the next day, he wrote to a shop in Hogsmeade, and had a small something delivered to Sarah's room in Gryffindor.
The impulse was simple enough. He did not think about it long enough to remember he had never told her she reminded him of a koala ...
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Date: 2006-10-21 06:44 am (UTC)She had no idea what this was supposed to mean, as she had never expressed any interest in koala bears, even if she had seen them in a zoo and thought them adorable. Like all gifts of Stephen's that were a bit unique, there had to be some association or reason behind this gift. The jam had been the first strange gift he had given her (and by far her favorite) and the connection had been easy to make. The pajamas as well had been easy to determine, even if there had been no note attached. This, however... she wracked her brain and could not come up with anything off the top of her head. He had compared her to a feline before, so that kind of stuffed animal would be understandable - koalas though? This meant research was required so, stuffed koala in hand - after all, she had just gotten it, she was not going to leave it behind! - she made her way to the library after leaving God and Cleo with toys to distract themselves with.
Quite a sight she likely looked in the resulting time spent researching, in a chair with her leg tucked under her and one arm wrapped around a stuffed animal in her lap. Despite the wizarding world being far more suited to researching magical creatures, she was able to find enough information on koalas to start trying to make the connection. She doubted the connection was anything hugely significant or possibly even obvious, so she read it all. Noting that koalas were generally silent animals, she snorted softly. No, that definitely was not her.
Something in her reading caught her eyes and she grinned, reading the passage several times before thinking she might finally have figured this out. Eucalyptus, though poisonous to many creatures, was the primary food and water source for koalas. That did remind her a bit of Stephen, so perhaps that was the connection? She still was not entirely sure where he was going with it if that was the case, but it seemed the most reasonable when she could not figure out why else she would be linked to koalas in his mind.
Finally, deciding that even if she had no idea what she could have possibly done to remind him of a koala, this still had to be it so she spent some time refreshing her memory on a few charms and transfiguration spells and, when she was done, had a perfect and never-wilting piece of eucalyptus. This she sent back to Stephen via Muninn, without a note just as the koala had come without a note.
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Date: 2006-10-21 08:27 am (UTC)Ruefully, he noted too a similarity between himself and eucalyptus beyond the vague tenuous connection that the comparison of Sarah to a koala dictated. Eucalyptus leaves, it seemed, were 'fibrous and low in nutrition'; it took a specialised animal indeed to find them digestible let alone palatable, or to thrive on them. The piece of eucalyptus she sent made him smile, she having made her own associations from the look of it; he kept it on his desk, carefully set apart from the jumble of papers and books that resided there.
Out of a belated impulse to clarify, he sent something in return, cryptic as his efforts at clarification so often were: a picture of a koala clinging to a tree in the way she had clung that made him think of koalas in the first place:
It did not come unaccompanied this time. There was also a short note:
The note and picture were wrapped around a jar of raspberry jam.
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Date: 2006-10-21 08:58 am (UTC)Attention returned to the note again, mulling over the words with a soft smile. Eyes widened as something occur to her at his words and the offering of jam, something that vaguely reminded her of having jam used to make nasty medicine more palatable as a child. Was he honestly suggesting what she thought he was?
Only one way to find out.
With a grin on her face and the jar of jam in her hand, she made her way to his office. Finding the door ajar, she slipped inside and shut it behind her, and then made her way to the side of his desk, schooling the grin into something less obviously 'up to something' as she held the hand holding the jam behind her back.
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Date: 2006-10-21 09:11 am (UTC)He smiled to see her. He could tell she had something behind her back, but not what. "It seems it is an afternoon for surprises," he said.
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Date: 2006-10-21 09:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-21 09:42 am (UTC)He looked up. "So the answer to that question, I suppose, would be no."
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Date: 2006-10-21 09:52 am (UTC)"But, if I'm not interrupting, I have something to test," she continued, trying not to let that smile widen. "An experiment of sorts that only you can help me with."
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Date: 2006-10-21 09:57 am (UTC)"I should be glad to assist with your experiment," he said, obviously happy for an excuse to get away from matters mathematical. "Whatever you have behind your back, it cannot be the laptop, at least." Unless somewhere she had found an even smaller laptop, or shrunk the laptop using a charm.
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Date: 2006-10-21 10:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-21 07:43 pm (UTC)Not for a moment did he think this had anything to do with the somewhat childlike image with which he had amused himself, of a koala eating jam.
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Date: 2006-10-22 03:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-22 03:29 am (UTC)Well and truly surprised, he did not have time to react before her mouth sought his. He was very much the passive party here, allowing her to nibble away at the sticky sweetness. When she had finished, though, he was laughing. "What is this, now? Am I toast?"
He meant toasted bread.
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Date: 2006-10-22 04:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-22 04:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-10-23 09:49 am (UTC)Quickly, she screwed the lid back on and set the jam aside, turning to smile at him before sliding of the desk to settle into the chair with him, one knee on either side of his body. She wrapped her arms around him, a full body hug more than an outright cling, and rested her forehead against his, nodding slowly.
"I understood," she said softly and smiled. "Took me a bit and clarification was needed, and yes, I could have used a few more clues early on, but I figured it out. And I loved it all." A light kiss then, soft and sweet, and another smile. "Just like I love you." An apt comparison, the one between odd gifts that she adored and the odd man she loved.
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Date: 2006-10-23 09:51 pm (UTC)