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hogwartsexpressed2021-03-28 03:36 pm
1castle4houses) wrote in hogwartsexpressed2021-03-28 03:36 pm
Entry tags:
the history of magic meme
welcome to AU hell
RULES;
1. tag in
2. tag around!
3. mix and match - pick a setting from the first column and an AU from the second column (or use RNG if you like to live on edge -- there's 10 prompts per column)
4. have fun
HINTS;
We welcome and encourage all OCs. Add a little blurb about your character so other players have an idea what to play with, and feel free to add your preferences and permissions.
Ship, don't ship; make out, don't make out - all is fair game.
PROMPTS;
Setting |
AU |
1. Ancient |
a. Soldiers on the same side |
2. Middle Ages |
b. Arranged marriage |
3. 1600s |
c. Great new discovery |
4. 1700s |
d. Childhood friends |
5. 1800s |
e. Met on the road |
6. 1900s |
f. Rags and riches |
7. Roaring 20s |
g. Members of two feuding houses |
8. 1940s |
h. It's all about the art |
9. 1970s |
i. Co-conspirators |
10. WILDCARD |
j. WILDCARD |
no subject
But when he mentions Muggle literature and alludes to a particularly Muggle story, Tonks lights up. "It's absolutely a hobbit hole! Cozy and warm and perfect for second breakfasts."
"My dad's Muggleborn, so he read me the classics. Hobbit, Bedknobs and Broomsticks," She motions to the bedknob and its bloomed flowers. "And Mary Poppins -- I think she's a witch, really."
no subject
Muggleborn. Oh, pfsbthp, of course, that was it. Stories reconciled.
GodMerlyn was it ridiculous how generations didn't… It was ridiculous."Well, she definitely uses an undetectable extension charm, apparition, mobilicorpus, and has pioneered some method of going into moving portraits… crumbs, that would be incredible… I've always had so many questions about… for lack of a better word, souls, and mortality, and those pictures… and at the very least travel…"
He stopped himself babbling, and contented himself just to grin foolishly at her.
"Anyway, yeah. Definitely a witch. So I'll bet PL Travers was. I'd guess… I wonder how many witch and wizard authors snuck our world into muggle books—or snuck their books into the muggle world—maybe to guide muggle-borns to their own magic."
On sudden irresistible impulse, Remus said, "You're brilliant. Do you… they… know… does anyone tell you that?"
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And he's got an amazing smile.
So she's admiring it as he talks about Mary Poppins and the types of spells she cast, and the idea of the author sneaking real knowledge into the Muggle world. She's listening! Just admiring as she does.
"Mm!" She plans to interject with her thoughts in return, the idea that children's books and fantasy literature are the perfect hiding places, when Remus compliments her. It's sudden and completely unexpected and causes her hair to bloom from roots to tips bright red in a blush.
"I-- thank you!" Had anyone told her that? The obvious answers are there -- her parents and friends. Sirius mentioned it once or twice with a (what Tonks had hoped was pointed) 'Right, Moony?'.
"Can you remember that, please? When our timelines meet again?"
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"Will I need much reminding? It won't be as obvious to me then as now?"
…That's an unusually swishy line for Remus. It could perhaps sound artificial, like Sirius or James wrote it for him, or he's trying to imitate them. But any winceworthiness is negated by it being a real question—and a slightly frowning worried one.
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"I'm not sure, really. Maybe not as obvious as other things you think get in the way?"
She scoots in closer then, close enough to talk quietly in his ear. "But I don't care about those things, Remus Lupin. I like you." She kisses his cheek gently before sitting back up.
"Apparently no matter your age." This Tonks says in amusement, more toward herself than anything else.
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She's nailed him, perfectly, across all time and space.
How awful that the result is for him to demonstrate and prove it.
He should lean into that kiss, blushing deeper and not knowing what to do with himself, but it's okay; Remus is not the kind of teenage boy [not necessarily through fault of their own] whose ego violently abhors embarrassment; he cherishes her laughter, this unique moment, something that's never happened to him and he never thought he'd get to be a part of, and how joyful to do so with specifically her, this moment of wonderful befuddlement.
Instead the kiss—that should feel electric and magnetic—feels like electric shock. Antimagnetism repulses him to jolt, even microscopically, back, craning his neck away to stare at her.
Nothing in his body language or expression are negative about her. No hostility, no judgment, no antagonism. But, no less devastating (and misguided precisely for not being about her, not allowing her choice and agency and impact on the situation): horrified, on the defense (of him and her both), trying to solve every puzzle at once, like he's woken from sleep at the wheel just shy of a crash.
Apparently no matter your age indeed.
"Auribus tenere…?" he asked, voice suddenly very… not cold, no, but… coming from far away.
…but wait just a fucking minute… WAIT.
If she knew in the future and was treating him like this.
That could only mean good things.
Right?
You are the wisest person I know but sometimes it's bigger than just us
Unless he was about to screw it up right now.
"…what things?" he says instead, trying too hard, too late, not to show too much.
no subject
But it's when he begins the question in Latin that she can't fully contain herself. Even as he asks 'what things' she reaches over and tugs his ear. Not hard, but just enough to show that she knew the saying. That she was't just holding the ear of supposed danger, but tugging on it. That the saying has no power over her.
It should have no power over him.
"Wolf things." She says plainly so that he understands under no uncertain terms. "Things that I have a right to decide for my own damn self."
content warnings: depression, suicidal ideation, animal endangerment… sorry for going so dark
He collapses. Sadly, he still can’t sink to to her, but it’s something that he doesn’t sink away either. He sinks back in his seat, in on himself.
Maybe this proves it. That being here with her is after all a purposeful gift. Clearly she had to tell him this, tried to, so many times. But now, here, she’s the older one. And! the one who knows what the future holds, not just with more evidence to theorise but definitively. So here, he's not the one who knows it's wrong but can't undo a lifetime of trying to take responsibility; instead this younger Remus collapses in abject needful relief. Still the version of himself ever yearning for someone who actually knows enough to guide him, but he hasn't yet given up on that—and in this pocket reality, he's found them.
"So you know how I got these?" He points vaguely toward his face. The three symmetrical scars seem dramatic. They're actually mild (compared to his torso, having been repeatedly, frequently raked across and across, so the flesh is so raised and mottled, it doesn't look clawed, it looks deeply burned). They're just among the few he can't hide with clothes.
Whatever he reads in her face or body language makes him go on—or maybe he's just so relieved to be able to say these things aloud. "Sirius gave them to me. That first night they came to the Shack. They weren't really prepared for the reality of it, you know? It's… upsetting. Especially the… process. So Peter couldn't transform. Not that I think the desired effect would have happened right away. It's kind of bonkers it worked at all, ever. It was a taming process. This probably would have been necessary regardless. But Padfoot—the dog—gave them to me over the course of him and the stag fighting me off trying to kill Peter all night.
"In the morning, we were all so hurt and bloodied. We kind of carried each other back to the castle. Peter couldn't look at me for a week. But I wasn't looking at any of them. And as soon as we got back, I found a room to lock myself in and locked all of them out. I'd never done that before. I tested my Defensive magic for the first time in earnest… that was when I found out I really was good at it… because I was better than they were. They couldn't get to me. I didn't let them in.
"I only came out and reconciled with them, finally, 'cause… Lily Evans came in after me. I couldn't keep her out. She talked me down and convinced me to reconcile and I owe her for that. We all do.
"Thing is… the reason it all went down that way…
"I wasn't in on the animagus plot. For two years, they kept it from me. That night, they surprised me with it. Sirius genuinely thought I'd be pleased.
"And yes. It led to some of the happiest times I've ever known in my damn life.
"But I've been thinking about it ever since. And a lot of the ways they talk about… M…Moony and… even the way they have me talk about it sometimes… Usually I try to be grateful and I think it has helped in some ways, but sometimes it still makes me… angry… or… lonely. Like… painfully lonely even when I'm right there with them. And I don't know why and I hate that I don't know why, and I assume it's just the wolf asleep inside me making me crazy.
"Because that's part of it, you know… not part anyone talks about because no one talks about it. Not the people who have it as still being people, when they are still… No one talks about being afraid to have intense emotions even though you know the moon won't be full for another week, but what if… what if it's not really you, it's the wolf, this anger, this fear…
"That's not… that's a different… anyway, it's…
"I"m still trying to figure it out but…
"I think what gets me…
"They keep my secret. They get that it's bigger than us. That they can't protect me if they just go shouting to everyone that I'm… that I have this thing.
"But at the same time. They act like just because it's not an issue for them… that I have no reason to have a hard time with it when I'm around them, either. That them accepting me should mean that I should just accept it too. Like the only bad feelings were because I was scared they wouldn't like me for it, and that's solved so why am I still bothered?
"Even though they know… I've told them… how my whole childhood… we moved house every six months because we were always afraid people would notice I was strange; the things we'd have to do to the house on moving in and moving out to diminish the terror of me breaking out to hurt my family and the realtors figuring it out to report us when we left; how I couldn't go to school and couldn't have any friends and until that visit from Dumbledore I lived assuming I never would so I spent my childhood just waiting for my parents to die so I could kill myself without hurting them more… it still haunts me that if I hadn't written him a fan letter, would he ever have come, would that just have been my life…?
"But it's still not just that, not just about me being miserable… It was watching them. My parents couldn't make friends either. They had to sit in the living room every four weeks—and it's more than one night, you know—listening to me change, and be awake all night with Dad's wand pointed at the basement door…
"They talked about Mum getting a gun and she refused but they talked about it.
"And sometimes I did break out and… they would try to lie to me when I killed… something I don't want to think about… pets and… but I knew. I never bit anyone, but god, I hurt people. Including my dad.
"They had to try to give me some semblance of a life except I—we—kept retreating from each other more and more until not only did we have no life or connections outside the house, we had no connections to each other inside either. And my dad blamed himself, and my mum tried not to blame him, but how could… My mum. I was so little but I remember she used to be so… vibrant, so lively and creative and…" his eyes definitely slipped away from Tonks's hair, "colourful, and over my childhood she just got paler and paler and thinner and thinner until she was like a skeleton…
"I only said it once. That maybe we should just stop running. Don't wait for someone to discover me. Just go ahead and send me to St Mungo's ourselves. It wasn't the worst scenario anymore; it'd be better than Azkaban. …And they immediately said 'no'. And I didn't really mean it because at that point they would have gotten in trouble for harbouring me. But I finally said it aloud because I wanted to see it in their eyes. And I did. We all wondered: would it actually be worse than what our homes had become?
"The reason Sirius started the whole Animagus thing was because he convinced me to let him give me some of his old clothes, and he tricked me into letting him be in the room while I tried some on, and he saw me shirtless. I never let anyone see me without… He did it on purpose of course 'cause he had a theory I was being abused. And I mean, he was right, he just assumed my abuser was someone in my family because that was his story and we all project ourselves. He didn't know my abuser was myself. I finally told him to get him not to go after my poor parents—who were my victims too.
"Whether someone who likes me—even loves me—accepts me or not… No. That's not the whole battle. That's not enough to make it okay for me within myself. And I know… I'm learning better control… even if not as the wolf, then as a wizard… so much is different… and people will say that they're better able to take care of themselves but my dad was a wizard too and… Someone saying they accept me, they like me… I know. I know I may not be rational. But that's still not the only active variable to overcome my conviction that I'm a death sentence. And they think they know what I mean. Yeah. I mean maybe from the world's politics resulting in homelessness. Yeah, I mean maybe from getting horribly suddenly killed. Yeah, I mean maybe getting bitten. But also I mean maybe a very slow one. And when people just tell me I'm being stupid…"
He glanced up… and the look wasn't for her, it was somewhere past her… but for a moment his eyes glinted like an animal's reflecting the moon.
"I don't know who's right and who's wrong. But if the goal with that is to make me pull away less and be less mournful and angry… It doesn't fucking work."
The glint faded. What was left was a teenage boy looking at her, looking so empty, like he'd never gotten to say that in full to anyone before, and he'd so wanted and needed to… but now that he had, especially to her who he didn't want to feel blamed or disliked at all, he also regretted it so badly. It hadn't even been in response to anything she said, beyond revealing she knew. Stick a pin in him and all the air came out.
"So… maybe… in the future… That might help? Get around my defensiveness? 'Cause I think adult me would be so stupid not to… try… to get out of his own way with you.
"But I don't think people show enough… um… It totally backfires how people are so dismissive, without having lived it, to what 'his'—'my'—'own way' actually is. It's not just the political stuff. Which is bad too."
…
He still doesn’t know who provides this gift. Hopefully, exactly as she says, only not an accident: her.
[ooc: being a little ahead of his time, both in maturity and in sociopolitical ideation. But why that bloody scene in whichever book it was made me, even then, fucking furious. Not from Tonks but from friggin' everyone else just calling him 'ridiculous'.
I usually don't pay attention to anything not in the books for RP backstory, but Hope Lupin's likely deterioration/death from this is from HPwiki/Pottermore]
Tonks wants to give him cookies and hugs
Contrary to what some people may think, Tonks is rather good at listening.
Her head tilts and she reaches out slowly, not touching him (even if she just wants to hug the shit of out him) but leaving her hand beside his, a reminder to them both that she’s right there, staying quiet as he talks. As he does, she takes the information given and allows it to paint a fuller picture of what she already knows of the man. Idly, she wonders if the strange magic of the bedknob gave her her friend as he is now because she needs the younger one to better understand the older one.
He's spoken about how his childhood was difficult, but not to this extent. Not in such a raw manner. And she watches as he pointedly looks away from her, from her hair specifically, the physical embodiment of colourfulness as he talks about his mother. Things begin to make more sense to Tonks than they ever had.
Not that it changes her mind in the slightest, but she understands more now. Why he fights back so much.
As Remus quiets down, Tonks smiles ruefully because her brain is jumping around in a million places. There are questions, myriad questions, she wants to ask and things she wants to say and she can’t figure out where to start. It’s all there, an open book of expressions on her face, and finally she presses her lips together for a moment before choosing a place to begin.
“To die will be an awfully big adventure.” She starts softly, hoping that he takes the quote from the boy who never grew up as the meaning that it’s intended. Death and dying are a part of life, Tonks knows that. She also knows that, like Peter Pan, the adventure to that juncture is the whole point of it all.
Tonks continues though. Because no, she does not and could not understand. Only in pieces, only in the fragments that her own unique nature – in its through-the-looking-glass version of lycanthropy -- allows her. But she wants to.
Their childhoods are, in that not-alike-but-somehow-not-dissimilar way, inversions of the other. He knows her now, Dora the child, as a five year old..and it's one of the last peaceful years for many people in the Wizarding World. It was definitely the last peaceful one she'd remember for a few years. But whereas the Lupins moved constantly, trying to survive by outrunning, the Tonkses survived the first war by closing up ranks, the house and small family of three only open to those closest. Those trusted. The fallen from grace sister of Voldemort's second-in-command made for a huge target, after all. So Dora's nursery school years were lonely as well.
But discussing that with this Remus breaks time travel rules. Instead, she brings up a different time in her life. “My boggart in school was a mirror with no reflection.”
“There are exactly two books in the entire Hogwarts library that even mention Metamorphmagi. We’re -- I’m -- not rather common, apparently.” She’s older now, and can take the hits from stuffy old books with a wry smile, which she flashes. “But those two books…weren’t the most flattering. They theorized that creatures who could take on the face of anyone have no real reflection. A mirror shows things at face value, yeah? Can’t show what you don’t have without taking from someone.”
Her fingers shift, idly tracing a line along the table. “Know who else doesn’t have a reflection? Vampires. Because they don’t have souls. So guess what else the books theorized?” She looks up at him, head tilted before she chuckles lightly. “I think Muggle literature treats us a bit more fairly than our own society.” Werewolves and shapeshifters don’t seem to get as much of the shaft.
“Now. Add the theory of having no soul to the worry of a teenaged girl about going batshit insane like Bellatrix Lestrange.” And why would plucky Tonks even think about that old hag? “That’s my mum’s sister.” And insanity runs in bloodlines, doesn’t it? “So I get being afraid of how big your emotions can be.” She still worries about it sometimes. Not often, but in the heat of the battle, anger in her veins, a curse on her lips. The ability to cast stronger curses just there, ready to use. Easy to take because Dark Magic isn’t really about evil or non-evil. It’s about power, and the easy, corruptible way to it. But that’s neither here nor there at the moment.
“I’m rambling, I’m sorry.” She realizes too late and smiles apologetically. “But…my point is..what if no one’s right? Or everybody’s right?” She moves again, turning her head to look Remus full on. “I don’t think you can live life and love people without hurting them. That’s part of being human.” And before he argues that point, she stares at him pointedly. “Your worry about the implications of you – both parts of you -- is decidedly human.”
Tonks ruffles her hair, grateful for the insight but still flustered at the impasses she comes across. “There’s a song..you won’t hear it for another handful of years..” But she sings a part of it softly.
To die by your side…well, the pleasure and the privilege is mine.
AAAAAH AMAZING!!! <3 <3 <3
He got it. Pale rays of light tiptoed across the waters; and by and by there was to be heard a sound at once the most musical and the most melancholy in the world: the mermaids calling to the moon.
He looked up from nothingness to see her hand on the table; then looked further up to her eyes.
She's leading him gently, by exactly the right landmarks. Maybe the older him, mid-war, would be less able, but this Remus goes so readily, ready for all the confirmation that she not only knows him, but he may also know her.
(…which also means, yes, older-him would agree with present her: younger-him is a much better advocate and intermediary for himself, obviously much wiser on this front than he'll grow to be. But then…
First War—embedded with werewolves, bereavement and alienation from Marauders an unrealised trauma on its own, 1978-1981. End of the world, Halloween 1981. Homelessness 1982-1986. Near-total hermitry, 1987-1993. Horribly, the worst for Remus Lupin was yet to come. And "It's not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes…")
There are qualities that stay the same, at least. One, likewise, is being a good listener.
When she recounts the books' judgments on metamorphmagi, he makes a sound of angry shock. Shock, clearly, that he didn't already know most of this—so many connections not only, as she's excellently pointing out, to his situation, but to all of his studies; but, yes, another of her points proven: actually rather an obscure subject. …And anger because, exactly… "Don't these pillocks know the harm they create," he… yeah, the word, more literally than usual, was growled. In part, feeling like a guard dog, in defense specifically of her.
When she mentions Bellatrix Lestrange, Remus's expression, intently listening, had a new aspect, like a rain, wash down it. A slightest change of frown, not better or worse, just… specific.
He hesitated on this one. "…I shouldn't tell. Because you know him. So you may know already, but maybe especially for that…" He bit his lip, then slightly shook his head. "Just promise not to show you know. All right? …The reason I took my specialty in Defense Against the Dark Arts. …I got into it cleaning up after Sirius. He is so… afraid… so violently opposed… to being like… those members of your extended family—that mindset of the House… the strength of that anger and resistance, itself… when he gets angry, it kind of explodes and… he becomes exactly like that." He looked down, and now his hand moved ever so slightly closer to hers. "I'm so sorry."
When she said she was rambling, he gave a disagreeing exhalation and self-deprecating smile. Compared to me? But he stayed quiet to keep listening.
Decidedly human. Yet another new kind of silence as he digested that.
The song… her voice… When silence fell, Remus looked utterly wrung out. Like he'd been laughing or weeping or he might start either or both.
If he were older here and now, he might have asked if he could kiss her. But it was maybe better he wasn't. He didn't actually want a snog anyway… he wished he could lie down with her somewhere warm and curl up together like cats until they both felt calm again, and safe.
But I do feel safe with you. …I get it. I'm sorry I won't feel safe enough everywhere else.
"Thank you," he finally managed.
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As for Sirius, she nods solemnly. "It's all one of those..what are they called? Self-fulfilling prophecies, isn't it? Try so hard to steer clear from something that you end up becoming what you didn't want?"
But when Remus thanks her, she smiles and lifts her eyebrows a little. She should be thanking him. So she does. "Thank you. I know it's hard..opening up. And I really appreciate every time you do."
Each time he does, she genuinely cherishes it. And not always the shiny things, the happy things, though she loves that. But the scary things. The things that help her understand how to keep him safe. The world isn't ready to be that safe harbor for either of them..but if she can just be a little calm in the storm, a little safety net for him to come home to, then she can let him be the same.
She pauses for a moment before voicing a part of that thought. "..I work with a partner, as an Auror. And I like that. Having my partner's back is just as important as knowing they have mine."
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Another shy, but this time hopeful, smile dawned on Remus's face. This was definitely the kind of question they probably weren't supposed to ask… But he'd just broken his One Rule, and it was better having done so. So why not give it a try. And I really appreciate every time you do—
"So we do get there?"
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Tonks smiles, a tinge of wistfulness briefly there before it brightens more. "I'm fairly sure we want to." She hopes so, at any rate. And this, the ability to talk with him in his younger and more open self, gives Tonks a sort of confirmation of it. That it's not as one-sided as she sometimes worries.
The timing is awful, of course. And she knows that plays a part as well. It's a screwed up paradox, considering that without the war she and Remus might not have gotten close to begin with.
She mentally shakes that off and lifts her eyebrows. "I do have my ways of making you talk." She grins cheekily. "And you humor me with it."
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"I can't wait," he said softly.
But he has to. Because they can't pursue anything now. Risk interfering with it then.
Not least because, right now, he's underage. And even in a place like this, that probably wouldn't be good on any level.
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She taps her fingers against his lightly, playful and ready for a subject change. But before the next bout of mischief can be decided upon, she notices the bedknob -- still on the table but now with the petunias strewn around it rather than on it -- glowing a warm brassy red colour.
"Think that's our lot." She glances over to her companion with an apologetic smile.
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"I'll remember," he vowed—with the tiniest edge of desperate hope.