Fic: Martin Crieff, Ravenclaw (no challenge)
Title: Martin Crieff, Ravenclaw
Summary: See title. :l Written for Isa.
Characters/Pairings: Martin Crieff
Genre: Crossover with Cabin Pressure
Rating/Warnings: none
Word Count: 2044
i.
He laughed along, but whenever Arthur made a poor joke of the public school he went to, and Douglas chimed in with the esteem his brought him, he could only pretend to be half-interested, sometimes-ashamed of where he went.
"Nottingham," was usually the first answer he came up with whenever conversation would then turn to him, and the question of where he went came up.
"Nottingham... Public School?" Douglas would prod, and he'd nod and mumble yes and try to leave it at that.
Except that one time when Douglas, instead of shrugging off his awkwardness and chalking it up to another scenario of Martin being Martin, raised an eyebrow and asked, pointedly and in that obnoxiously aristocratic way he had: "But last time it was Nottingham Primary, Martin. And the time before that, Nottingham Elementary. So which is it, really?"
And Martin had gotten red, his cheeks burning bright and the nerves that often came to plague him in high-stress situations returning to fluster him so that he could barely get a word in edge-wise whilst Douglas then went on, in brilliant Holmesian deduction style, to all but nail Martin in his lies.
"All right!" he said finally, snapping at Douglas. "It had different names, whatever, I just--"
"I never even saw any school with those names, Martin," Douglas concluded, smirking in his all-smug Douglas way. "Nowhere near--"
"I was homeschooled!" he hissed. "All right? Are you happy?"
And Douglas raised an eyebrow (as if his eyebrow could be raised further, but what can Douglas not do, really?) but he seemed satisfied enough with this answer. "That quite explains a lot," he said in conclusion, and Martin could tell he was already preparing a dozen or so homeschooling-related zingers next time Martin did something moronic, or anything of the sort.
And Martin didn't quite care, because at least maybe homeschooling was a lie he could more easily live with.
It wasn't like Douglas would believe him if he told him either, anyway, and there were statutes to consider.
And then Martin thought--what truth could Douglas not prise out of him, and wouldn't it just be his luck to break that one rule in his life he was supposed to keep, and oh, gods, if Martin didn't start fretting anew.
ii.
He didn't have to make up a lie when he was growing up, because his parents didn't have anybody they needed to lie to then. As one of the oldest families to reside in the primarily wizarding village of Hogsmeade, Mr and Mrs Crieff couldn't stop telling anyone who asked that their son Martin was heading to Hogwarts that year.
"Oh, he's quite excited, you know," Mrs Crieff would tell any patron who dropped by the The Magical Neep, Hogsmeade's greengrocery. "We're taking a trip to London this Saturday, get him his things from Diagon Alley."
"He'll be a Hufflepuff, sure thing," Mr Crieff boasted at The Three Broomsticks, winking at Rosmerta as she topped off his glass with more Firewhiskey. "Long line of badgers, the Crieffs are. We were nearly married to Helga Hufflepuff's line too, at one point, did you know?"
Martin himself had been looking forward to going to school at last, and if most children his age were excited because they'd be going to school the same time Harry Potter was ("I bet he's Prefect this year, he's got to be, he's the best most brilliant student Hogwarts has seen in forever!") he was personally excited for his third year, when he could pick and choose classes as he desired and where, he thought, he could get a hold of the Muggle Studies curriculum earlier.
He had some worries, of course-- he didn't know what was going on with the Lord Who Must Not Be Named lark (his parents talked about that in hushed voices late at night, when they thought Martin couldn't hear) nor was he too knowledgeable about the incidents that had been happening the years prior (he remembered when Sirius Black had gotten loose; it was the most excitement Hogsmeade had seen all his life!) but for the most part, and here he made a list, he was looking forward to being in school, and quite possibly even meeting a couple of Muggleborns and learning more about them, and what they were like, and how they were different from wizards like him.
So while his father insisted a mistake had been made, and his mother forced a smile and pretended she was proud, he really didn't mind when the Sorting Hat placed him in Ravenclaw.
iii.
Martin was five when he first saw an aeroplane. It was during his first trip to Diagon Alley, the first time he'd ever been outside Hogsmeade, and his parents made themselves all sorts of silly as they tried to navigate through the distinctly un-wizardliness of downtown London. (Normally wizards could go through their entire lives not engaging in anything Muggle, but the Floo network was down that day and his parents were feeling uncharacteristically brave about the trip.)
To Martin, though, the entire thing had been an adventure. He peered at the turnstiles with rapt curiosity, insisted on paying his fare with his card himself, and asked his father a hundred and one questions about the so-called cars that rode down the streets.
But the highlight of the day most definitely had been looking up at the sky, just before they got into The Leaky Cauldron, and spotting this thing up there that didn't look at all like a bird but still flew like one.
"Mum, Mum!" he whispered, tugging onto her arm in excitement. "There's-- up there! What's that?"
There was a snort behind him, a muttering of "What, the kid's never seen an aeroplane before?", and his mother pulling him inside The Leaky Cauldron.
"What's an aeroplane?" he asked his father, who wrinkled his nose as he usually did when Martin asked him about something he didn't like explaining.
"It's something Muggles do because they can't fly brooms," he said.
"So it's a flying broom for Muggles?"
"Hardly," a Leaky customer piped up. "It's a large chunk of metal that holds large numbers of people to transfer them from one place to another in a shorter period of time. It's like a flying broom and the Floo Network!"
"Stop feeding my child buffoonery, Arthur," his father said gruffly.
"This your boy, then, Marvin?" the man grinned at Martin. "Arthur Weasley. Pleasure to meet you, young man."
Martin shook his hand. "But how do they make them fly?" he asked. "They don't have magic."
"Exactly," Arthur said, and Martin thought then: wasn't that infinitely more magical?
iv.
The first year of his schooling at Hogwarts was relatively dull, if you take away the fact that his Defense Against the Dark Arts professor was a terribly saccharine woman who thought too fondly of pink and kittens and made you write lines if you stepped out of line. Martin never did, thankfully-- he knew well enough not to ever speak out of turn or anything, that was for sure-- it was his Potions professor that may have been the primary monster in all of his nightmares. But his Charms professor and Head of House was fantastic, thankyouverymuch, and even made Martin feel a lot better for being the smallest boy in his year, because if Professor Flitwick could be a dueling champion, well, Martin Crieff could be anything.
Including, he hoped, a pilot.
Because, as he had rightfully suspected, the Hogwarts library was indeed chock-full of material about Muggle things, most texts of which were written by wizards studying them, but some of which were also written by actual Muggles. He got his hands on as many books as he could, and talked a few of his Muggleborn classmates to get him whatever other books they could get during the holidays.
And he drank it all up, read it all through. For planes to fly, he soon learned, they needed more than just one kind of magic-- science, the Muggles called it. There were all sorts of branches involved: physics and engineering and mathematics and Martin was in a dream, he knew, a proper dream, because he just couldn't get enough and he knew this was what he wanted, this was what he was going to do. He would fly planes for a living.
His father was less than pleased as soon as he heard of this plan, of course. "What about The Magical Neep?" he demanded. "Simon's not going to have time with all his work at the Ministry--"
"Caitlin can have it," he said. "I don't care about The Magical Neep, it's--"
And that may have done it then, in retrospect, because he'd never seen his father quite as purple or as furious, and his mother hastily attempting to calm him down.
"Perhaps you should go to your room, Martin," was all she said, though he could still hear the shouting and the banging from underneath his bed covers, tucked with his favorite book on Amelia Earhart.
v.
Martin Crieff never liked being a wizard. It didn't help that in his third year they took Muggle Studies for some stupid reason, Death Eaters had taken over the school and he couldn't even stay at home anymore because they were all over Hogsmeade as well, and would have come after him if they'd tried to do something. His Muggleborn friends were in hiding, or arrested-- who arrests thirteen-year-olds?-- and once or twice one of the Carrows found him with a book on aeroplanes and subjected him to Crucios for his troubles.
He was glad when he found the Room of Requirement, huddling together in the hammocks with a few of his classmates, quite disappointed when he realized they were still expected to go to classes after all that. Every night he sat witness to another torturing, another cruel and nasty curse sent a student's way, and he tried hard to help where he could but he was only a third year, he didn't know enough about many spells yet or anything of the sort. Those days he couldn't help wishing strongly for the ability to fly away, fly somewhere far, far away.
The years after that nightmare of a term were better, somewhat. Easier to live with. But Martin did less well in school since he returned, and the professors must have thought it was the trauma of the year prior because they let him submit Troll-quality papers with acceptable marks. It was all well and good, he supposed, because as he shied away from his lessons he started reading up on what Muggle textbooks he could get hold of-- there were O-levels and A-levels and he thought; well, toyed with the idea, really, only just, but he thought maybe, just maybe, if he studied really hard he could perhaps qualify to go to flying school.
"You don't need flying school!" his father roared as soon as he heard of Martin's plans. "You can fly anything with a whisk of your bloody ruddy wand, why can't you just--"
And Martin didn't bother hearing the rest, because he knew what was coming. Why couldn't he be a normal wizard, why couldn't he just do what his parents expected him to do, but what's the point of making something fly just with a flick of your wand anyway? It isn't as fun, or as interesting, and it wasn't worth it.
So he studied away anyway, somehow found a way to pay for the qualifications, and he didn't even tell his father when he got accepted to flying school. At the end of seventh year he sat with his Housemates during the Leaving Feast, smiling along and laughing along when they spoke of their plans and where they were going to go next, demurring when he could when they asked him what he planned to do. When the Feast ended he took Hogwarts Express to King's Cross-- the first time he'd ever done it, now that he thought about it-- and armed only with his wand (he had to, if he wasn't going to have much money to go by) and his best book on aeroplanes, he got ready to fly.
Evy/Claw/68 pts
Summary: See title. :l Written for Isa.
Characters/Pairings: Martin Crieff
Genre: Crossover with Cabin Pressure
Rating/Warnings: none
Word Count: 2044
i.
He laughed along, but whenever Arthur made a poor joke of the public school he went to, and Douglas chimed in with the esteem his brought him, he could only pretend to be half-interested, sometimes-ashamed of where he went.
"Nottingham," was usually the first answer he came up with whenever conversation would then turn to him, and the question of where he went came up.
"Nottingham... Public School?" Douglas would prod, and he'd nod and mumble yes and try to leave it at that.
Except that one time when Douglas, instead of shrugging off his awkwardness and chalking it up to another scenario of Martin being Martin, raised an eyebrow and asked, pointedly and in that obnoxiously aristocratic way he had: "But last time it was Nottingham Primary, Martin. And the time before that, Nottingham Elementary. So which is it, really?"
And Martin had gotten red, his cheeks burning bright and the nerves that often came to plague him in high-stress situations returning to fluster him so that he could barely get a word in edge-wise whilst Douglas then went on, in brilliant Holmesian deduction style, to all but nail Martin in his lies.
"All right!" he said finally, snapping at Douglas. "It had different names, whatever, I just--"
"I never even saw any school with those names, Martin," Douglas concluded, smirking in his all-smug Douglas way. "Nowhere near--"
"I was homeschooled!" he hissed. "All right? Are you happy?"
And Douglas raised an eyebrow (as if his eyebrow could be raised further, but what can Douglas not do, really?) but he seemed satisfied enough with this answer. "That quite explains a lot," he said in conclusion, and Martin could tell he was already preparing a dozen or so homeschooling-related zingers next time Martin did something moronic, or anything of the sort.
And Martin didn't quite care, because at least maybe homeschooling was a lie he could more easily live with.
It wasn't like Douglas would believe him if he told him either, anyway, and there were statutes to consider.
And then Martin thought--what truth could Douglas not prise out of him, and wouldn't it just be his luck to break that one rule in his life he was supposed to keep, and oh, gods, if Martin didn't start fretting anew.
ii.
He didn't have to make up a lie when he was growing up, because his parents didn't have anybody they needed to lie to then. As one of the oldest families to reside in the primarily wizarding village of Hogsmeade, Mr and Mrs Crieff couldn't stop telling anyone who asked that their son Martin was heading to Hogwarts that year.
"Oh, he's quite excited, you know," Mrs Crieff would tell any patron who dropped by the The Magical Neep, Hogsmeade's greengrocery. "We're taking a trip to London this Saturday, get him his things from Diagon Alley."
"He'll be a Hufflepuff, sure thing," Mr Crieff boasted at The Three Broomsticks, winking at Rosmerta as she topped off his glass with more Firewhiskey. "Long line of badgers, the Crieffs are. We were nearly married to Helga Hufflepuff's line too, at one point, did you know?"
Martin himself had been looking forward to going to school at last, and if most children his age were excited because they'd be going to school the same time Harry Potter was ("I bet he's Prefect this year, he's got to be, he's the best most brilliant student Hogwarts has seen in forever!") he was personally excited for his third year, when he could pick and choose classes as he desired and where, he thought, he could get a hold of the Muggle Studies curriculum earlier.
He had some worries, of course-- he didn't know what was going on with the Lord Who Must Not Be Named lark (his parents talked about that in hushed voices late at night, when they thought Martin couldn't hear) nor was he too knowledgeable about the incidents that had been happening the years prior (he remembered when Sirius Black had gotten loose; it was the most excitement Hogsmeade had seen all his life!) but for the most part, and here he made a list, he was looking forward to being in school, and quite possibly even meeting a couple of Muggleborns and learning more about them, and what they were like, and how they were different from wizards like him.
So while his father insisted a mistake had been made, and his mother forced a smile and pretended she was proud, he really didn't mind when the Sorting Hat placed him in Ravenclaw.
iii.
Martin was five when he first saw an aeroplane. It was during his first trip to Diagon Alley, the first time he'd ever been outside Hogsmeade, and his parents made themselves all sorts of silly as they tried to navigate through the distinctly un-wizardliness of downtown London. (Normally wizards could go through their entire lives not engaging in anything Muggle, but the Floo network was down that day and his parents were feeling uncharacteristically brave about the trip.)
To Martin, though, the entire thing had been an adventure. He peered at the turnstiles with rapt curiosity, insisted on paying his fare with his card himself, and asked his father a hundred and one questions about the so-called cars that rode down the streets.
But the highlight of the day most definitely had been looking up at the sky, just before they got into The Leaky Cauldron, and spotting this thing up there that didn't look at all like a bird but still flew like one.
"Mum, Mum!" he whispered, tugging onto her arm in excitement. "There's-- up there! What's that?"
There was a snort behind him, a muttering of "What, the kid's never seen an aeroplane before?", and his mother pulling him inside The Leaky Cauldron.
"What's an aeroplane?" he asked his father, who wrinkled his nose as he usually did when Martin asked him about something he didn't like explaining.
"It's something Muggles do because they can't fly brooms," he said.
"So it's a flying broom for Muggles?"
"Hardly," a Leaky customer piped up. "It's a large chunk of metal that holds large numbers of people to transfer them from one place to another in a shorter period of time. It's like a flying broom and the Floo Network!"
"Stop feeding my child buffoonery, Arthur," his father said gruffly.
"This your boy, then, Marvin?" the man grinned at Martin. "Arthur Weasley. Pleasure to meet you, young man."
Martin shook his hand. "But how do they make them fly?" he asked. "They don't have magic."
"Exactly," Arthur said, and Martin thought then: wasn't that infinitely more magical?
iv.
The first year of his schooling at Hogwarts was relatively dull, if you take away the fact that his Defense Against the Dark Arts professor was a terribly saccharine woman who thought too fondly of pink and kittens and made you write lines if you stepped out of line. Martin never did, thankfully-- he knew well enough not to ever speak out of turn or anything, that was for sure-- it was his Potions professor that may have been the primary monster in all of his nightmares. But his Charms professor and Head of House was fantastic, thankyouverymuch, and even made Martin feel a lot better for being the smallest boy in his year, because if Professor Flitwick could be a dueling champion, well, Martin Crieff could be anything.
Including, he hoped, a pilot.
Because, as he had rightfully suspected, the Hogwarts library was indeed chock-full of material about Muggle things, most texts of which were written by wizards studying them, but some of which were also written by actual Muggles. He got his hands on as many books as he could, and talked a few of his Muggleborn classmates to get him whatever other books they could get during the holidays.
And he drank it all up, read it all through. For planes to fly, he soon learned, they needed more than just one kind of magic-- science, the Muggles called it. There were all sorts of branches involved: physics and engineering and mathematics and Martin was in a dream, he knew, a proper dream, because he just couldn't get enough and he knew this was what he wanted, this was what he was going to do. He would fly planes for a living.
His father was less than pleased as soon as he heard of this plan, of course. "What about The Magical Neep?" he demanded. "Simon's not going to have time with all his work at the Ministry--"
"Caitlin can have it," he said. "I don't care about The Magical Neep, it's--"
And that may have done it then, in retrospect, because he'd never seen his father quite as purple or as furious, and his mother hastily attempting to calm him down.
"Perhaps you should go to your room, Martin," was all she said, though he could still hear the shouting and the banging from underneath his bed covers, tucked with his favorite book on Amelia Earhart.
v.
Martin Crieff never liked being a wizard. It didn't help that in his third year they took Muggle Studies for some stupid reason, Death Eaters had taken over the school and he couldn't even stay at home anymore because they were all over Hogsmeade as well, and would have come after him if they'd tried to do something. His Muggleborn friends were in hiding, or arrested-- who arrests thirteen-year-olds?-- and once or twice one of the Carrows found him with a book on aeroplanes and subjected him to Crucios for his troubles.
He was glad when he found the Room of Requirement, huddling together in the hammocks with a few of his classmates, quite disappointed when he realized they were still expected to go to classes after all that. Every night he sat witness to another torturing, another cruel and nasty curse sent a student's way, and he tried hard to help where he could but he was only a third year, he didn't know enough about many spells yet or anything of the sort. Those days he couldn't help wishing strongly for the ability to fly away, fly somewhere far, far away.
The years after that nightmare of a term were better, somewhat. Easier to live with. But Martin did less well in school since he returned, and the professors must have thought it was the trauma of the year prior because they let him submit Troll-quality papers with acceptable marks. It was all well and good, he supposed, because as he shied away from his lessons he started reading up on what Muggle textbooks he could get hold of-- there were O-levels and A-levels and he thought; well, toyed with the idea, really, only just, but he thought maybe, just maybe, if he studied really hard he could perhaps qualify to go to flying school.
"You don't need flying school!" his father roared as soon as he heard of Martin's plans. "You can fly anything with a whisk of your bloody ruddy wand, why can't you just--"
And Martin didn't bother hearing the rest, because he knew what was coming. Why couldn't he be a normal wizard, why couldn't he just do what his parents expected him to do, but what's the point of making something fly just with a flick of your wand anyway? It isn't as fun, or as interesting, and it wasn't worth it.
So he studied away anyway, somehow found a way to pay for the qualifications, and he didn't even tell his father when he got accepted to flying school. At the end of seventh year he sat with his Housemates during the Leaving Feast, smiling along and laughing along when they spoke of their plans and where they were going to go next, demurring when he could when they asked him what he planned to do. When the Feast ended he took Hogwarts Express to King's Cross-- the first time he'd ever done it, now that he thought about it-- and armed only with his wand (he had to, if he wasn't going to have much money to go by) and his best book on aeroplanes, he got ready to fly.
Evy/Claw/68 pts