Finding himself in combinations with people is endlessly incredible to him. Finding people is incredible. What each of his [marauding?] friends gives and does to him is a miracle, a life saver, a transformation, a drug, an addiction, a nourishment, a complement, a compensation, a discovery, an adventure, a hallucination… Lily is an affirmation, a validation, a calm center, a generosity, a strength, a meditation, a rest, a charm.
This with Dora…
No nouns apply. Though he's captivated by her… there isn't the flight to her away from him… He feels… to be… himself. Because there has to be a him in order to be with her.
And… he doesn't mind.
He's never known this before.
It's…
…it's not intellectual… it's…
All he knows is that it feels amazing to lean gently on each other as they walk, and he keeps his fingers brushed barely against hers on the table when they sit.
"A… hidden talent."
Thank Merlyn she said talent. That handily eliminated The Hidden Thing, so he didn't have to lie by omission.
It did make him, again, have to step a little from this unprecedented… smooth mirror lake… plane of… just being… here, with her, as himself… in order to think.
What's a 'talent'… He didn't want to offer something from his youth of devouring Muggle fantasy and science fiction literature, because that might be a conversation stopper. (Though Dora was half-blood too and they'd had the music exchange… Still, nah. Because at its core it also had the thread of his disease and loneliness.) The ways he could use his magic…? That hardly seemed to count among fellow practitioners, unless maybe it was a discipline he'd invented maybe…
"I… uh… I'm working on inventing a study aid," he said.
He regretted it the moment he said it. But too late to stop.
"I got the idea because of Sirius, actually. But also now that I'm a prefect, I see lots of other students with the same issue. You probably already know this… Sirius spent a lot of time thinking he was stupid. Incapable of thinking technically or strategically… or thinking much at all. Not intellectual. But in fact, he's brilliant… he's an inventor. He can come up with the most ingenious devices and spells. He uses them for pranks so he doesn't think of himself as… studious, but they're incredible. He thinks that if he hadn't been in Gryffindor he'd have been in Slytherin… I actually think, if he hadn't had his idea of himself so twisted around, he'd have been in Ravenclaw.
"The main problem is that he needs things to be interactive from the start. So I was thinking, how to make reading that, even when you're presented with a scroll, a wall of text, even if you don't have access to other people to help or don't want to damage the material. Not just reading aloud like for those with limited sight or difficulty reading, but for someone like Sirius who really needs to have a partner or an audience to wrestle in order to first absorb any idea.
"So… you know marginalia in illustrated manuscripts? Those weird figures and doodles that rarely make sense, even in the Magickal realms? Like a lance-wielding rabbit riding a manticore while holding a snail on its wrist like a falcon… or completely unrecognisable animals doing even stranger things with abstract patterns clouding around them.
"My charm would be that you could pick and, not actually imprinting the paper, just in the air above, transpose one, or even draw one yourself with your wand; and it would hop along the text—or you could have as many as you like… and it would be like a study group or debate team or commentary panel or… just… really irreverent peanut gallery, reading along with you; there to be consulted or challenged or just make things less boring as you go.
"And they could also be inaudible to everyone but you if you're stuck doing this work in… say… detention." (Well, he had designed it for Sirius.)
"I don't know if that counts as a talent. …It's probably more James and Sirius's talent that I've been picking up from them. The inventing."
Never a problem! ^_^
This with Dora…
No nouns apply. Though he's captivated by her… there isn't the flight to her away from him… He feels… to be… himself. Because there has to be a him in order to be with her.
And… he doesn't mind.
He's never known this before.
It's…
…it's not intellectual… it's…
All he knows is that it feels amazing to lean gently on each other as they walk, and he keeps his fingers brushed barely against hers on the table when they sit.
"A… hidden talent."
Thank Merlyn she said talent. That handily eliminated The Hidden Thing, so he didn't have to lie by omission.
It did make him, again, have to step a little from this unprecedented… smooth mirror lake… plane of… just being… here, with her, as himself… in order to think.
What's a 'talent'… He didn't want to offer something from his youth of devouring Muggle fantasy and science fiction literature, because that might be a conversation stopper. (Though Dora was half-blood too and they'd had the music exchange… Still, nah. Because at its core it also had the thread of his disease and loneliness.) The ways he could use his magic…? That hardly seemed to count among fellow practitioners, unless maybe it was a discipline he'd invented maybe…
"I… uh… I'm working on inventing a study aid," he said.
He regretted it the moment he said it. But too late to stop.
"I got the idea because of Sirius, actually. But also now that I'm a prefect, I see lots of other students with the same issue. You probably already know this… Sirius spent a lot of time thinking he was stupid. Incapable of thinking technically or strategically… or thinking much at all. Not intellectual. But in fact, he's brilliant… he's an inventor. He can come up with the most ingenious devices and spells. He uses them for pranks so he doesn't think of himself as… studious, but they're incredible. He thinks that if he hadn't been in Gryffindor he'd have been in Slytherin… I actually think, if he hadn't had his idea of himself so twisted around, he'd have been in Ravenclaw.
"The main problem is that he needs things to be interactive from the start. So I was thinking, how to make reading that, even when you're presented with a scroll, a wall of text, even if you don't have access to other people to help or don't want to damage the material. Not just reading aloud like for those with limited sight or difficulty reading, but for someone like Sirius who really needs to have a partner or an audience to wrestle in order to first absorb any idea.
"So… you know marginalia in illustrated manuscripts? Those weird figures and doodles that rarely make sense, even in the Magickal realms? Like a lance-wielding rabbit riding a manticore while holding a snail on its wrist like a falcon… or completely unrecognisable animals doing even stranger things with abstract patterns clouding around them.
"My charm would be that you could pick and, not actually imprinting the paper, just in the air above, transpose one, or even draw one yourself with your wand; and it would hop along the text—or you could have as many as you like… and it would be like a study group or debate team or commentary panel or… just… really irreverent peanut gallery, reading along with you; there to be consulted or challenged or just make things less boring as you go.
"And they could also be inaudible to everyone but you if you're stuck doing this work in… say… detention." (Well, he had designed it for Sirius.)
"I don't know if that counts as a talent. …It's probably more James and Sirius's talent that I've been picking up from them. The inventing."