(closed RP for Henry Winter and Stephen Maturin)

[estebanmd]

Stephen had rather wanted to talk with Henry Winter at length, if for no other reason than to cement his hopeful deduction that Henry's recent wedding had well and truly laid to rest the remnants of old animosity concerning the woman who was now Mrs. Winter. Unfortunately, there had simply been no time for conversation. Stephen had brought little

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[estebanmd]

The idea of spending time voluntarily being harangued by Chance Silvey struck Stephen as immensely bizarre and therefore amusing. "Were I not desirous to keep my head on my shoulders, and my eardrums unpunctured, I might inquire of Dr Silvey concerning the creature and the study thereof. You must indeed have wished most strongly to be free of Hogwarts for a time, to have volunteered for such an expedition."

Henry and Dax Stephen could imagine engaged in 'dangerous espionage', Henry under the guise of the introverted scholar he actually was (much like Stephen himself) and Dax under the guise of eternal intergalactic tourist-cum-researcher. Chance Silvey, not so. She did not seem to Stephen much talented in dissembling, nor inclined toward such. She did, however, seem the kind of woman whom Stephen might have imagined to appeal to Henry, had Stephen never met Camilla. She was gruff, and taciturn, and plain, and not given to wasting time. She was pretty well nigh the opposite of Camilla.

"You are perhaps fortunate to have been suspected of espionage rather than more mundane entanglements," Stephen noted, along this line. The remark was not without a certain ruefulness: Diana had once suspected Stephen of the reverse, suspected him of infidelity when in fact he had only given the appearance thereof due to the exigencies of espionage.

"Sure you must have been surprised, to return to such an abrupt and definite answer?"

[h_m_winter]

Henry raised an eyebrow. He had known nothing of any animosity between Chance and Stephen, though to be sure he'd never before mentioned one to the other. He did have a feeling that Chance was likely capable of making displeasure known in no uncertain terms, however.

"I was," he said. "I had to get away, for at least a little while--if it hadn't been to America, I would have found some other pretext. As to more mundane enanglements--" and he thought he knew quite well what that meant "--I don't think it would ever occur to Camilla. She really is much more likely to suspect me of some kind of top-secret mission." What said mission might be, and what its ultimate purpose, he couldn't even begin to guess.

They'd reached the garden, and Henry gently lowered the wheelbarrow, scouting out the lay of the beds in a search for the best possible place to put his little friend Xipe. "I was very surprised," he said, circling a pruned-back shrub. "Camilla, when confronted with something she doesn't want to deal with, can prevaricate endlessly--I was more than half afraid that she'd do so with me. It wouldn't be an outright refusal; it would just be a refusal to give any answer at all." He had no way of knowing that his question--that he himself--was too important to Camilla to be given such treatment.

[estebanmd]

Stephen stood back, waiting until Henry should find the right spot for the hideous grinning bloodthirsty pagan idol, at which point Stephen would offer assistance in moving it from wheelbarrow to ground.

(Personally, Stephen would not want to eat anything that had been grown in ground sanctified by the Flayed God of the Aztecs.)

He thought of the hundred little ways Diana had found to put off commitment, and the way he had hopelessly followed in her wake despite it all, and felt he understood exactly what Henry had been afraid would happen. "This would be why I wondered how you had secured her consent," he said, speculatively, half-squinting to try picturing Xipe Totec amid the autumn-dying plants.

[h_m_winter]

At last, he found what looked to be the perfect spot--a small mound near one of the now-mutilated shrubberies. "So far as that goes, I have to admit, I have very little idea," he said. "I knew what a huge, huge thing I was asking of her, and part of me is still amazed that she said yes. It had been unspoken between us for ages that nothing could control Camilla but Camilla herself, and that she was answerable to no one." Largely because of Charles, damn him. "For a long while she didn't understand why her actions should have any affect on me, and once she realized that they did, I think her thoughts on the matter began to change."

He tugged aside the sacking base he'd wrapped around the statue, eying it and the ground, wondering how far it would sink once he'd set it down. This was only a brief thaw; the ground was squishy in some places, but frozen beneath, and he didn't really need the statue to wind up locked into the earth next time the temperature dipped. "In the end, she did it because she wanted to," he said. "Which is the only reason she ever does anything. That I should be lucky enough that she should want to remains something of a source of wonder."

[estebanmd]

"In your place," mused Stephen, "I should have been quite apprehensive -- I should have wondered whether she might change her mind, up to the very exchanging of vows, indeed perhaps even afterward. A woman of that kind can prove startlingly changeable." Diana, after all, had left him both before and after their marriage -- after both weddings, come to think of it. "Then, too, there is always the local strangeness to which Hogwarts is prone. There was something of a disturbance on All Hallows' Eve." That had been only days before the Winters' wedding.

[h_m_winter]

While admittedly Henry had been a little nervous, he also felt that, once her answer was given, Camilla would likely stick with it. She could be changeable, yes, but she could also hold to something with all the tenacity of super-glue when she wanted to--hardly a romantic metaphor, but apt nonetheless. Again, that strength that so few people ever saw.

He looked at Stephen, curious--he'd wondered if anything would be mentioned of Halloween. "I heard a very little about that," he said. "Camilla and I didn't notice a thing at the time, but Susan mentioned some sort of madness going around."

[estebanmd]

"Thank your stars you noticed nothing," said Stephen, a little sourly. "It was a monstrous thing, worse than most of the little madnesses that sweep this place."

[h_m_winter]

"So I was told. From what I inferred, it must have been rather terrible." Though he did not share Camilla's view that it had to have been utterly horrible. "I realize I have no right to ask, but what precisely was it? I could gather precious little from Susan; she seemed much more interested in figuring out why meditation didn't actually work."

[estebanmd]

Stephen regarded the savage face of Xipe Totec, who seemed viciously amused. "You are to consider there has not been much opportunity to compare notes with many persons afflicted. That being said, I believe the effect -- whatever its cause, I cannot say -- the effect was to strip its victims of all morality, every vestige and scrap of moral probity."

[h_m_winter]

Henry went quiet, thinking about this. He did not know either Stephen or Susan very well, but the thought of either of them stripped of all morality was...well. It sounded like the stuff Greek tragedies were made of. The rather unflattering fact that it might not have had any appreciable effect on himself and Camilla did not occur to him.

"If it did that to any number of people at all, it's just as well we have the Rule," he said, meditatively. "Was it widespread at all? I've heard nothing of it from anyone else, but then Camilla and I have been either occupied or away from the school entirely since then." Francis would have said something, if he'd been affected (though Henry still didn't know about what had happened to his friend's room), and if Charles had...well, they'd have known.

[estebanmd]

Having no way of knowing exactly what served Henry and Camilla for morality (or lack thereof), Stephen nodded grimly. "I should think the event occasioned all manner of personal misfortune for a good many people. Little wonder most have kept silent about it; thus I cannot estimate how many, or how few, were so unfortunate as to be affected, other than those I witnessed personally while myself afflicted, and at that time my own judgement would have been suspect. Subsequently my perceptions were further muddled by a sort of magnification lent by Susan, an experimental thing of hers."

[h_m_winter]

His last words made Henry wince. "Ah," he said. "That. I hope your experience wasn't as terrible as Camilla's and mine. I know Susan meant well, and she did warn me when she gave me the stuff, but there really is no kind of accurate warning for such a thing." It might not have been so terrible for them, if not for the precedence of the bacchanal; they'd both undergone such abandon before, with extremely unfortunate results. Even then, while under the potion's influence, they had feared nothing; it wasn't until after it had worn off that they had really frightened one another.

All things considered, Henry didn't consider it politic to admit he had reason to believe it hadn't been as horrible for Stephen as it had been for himself and Camilla--terrible or no, it was completely overwhelming, far more so than any normal human could stand. "I think she's thought better of the idea, now," he added. "Camilla and I both let her know it really wasn't something she ought to be sharing. Though I have to say that if that's how she experiences the world all the time...well. I'd go mad, myself, and I should think almost anyone else could say the same." Once upon a time he'd craved those semi-divine senses, but now, having experienced them (twice), he was quite happy to remain a dull plodding human.

[estebanmd]

"She can demonstrate extraordinarily poor judgement at times," Stephen said, quite keenly aware that he himself could be advanced as an example of her poor judgement.

[h_m_winter]

The unfortunate implication was not lost on Henry. It also, in some measure at least, explained the past hoboness, though that was of little consequence now.

"She wanted to share it," he said, after a moment. "And I certainly didn't protest trying it. I think many would want to at least sample the senses of the--not divine, I suppose, but the immortal. Having sampled them, though, I now think most others should not. Also, as I said, if that's indeed how she experiences things all the time, I'm amazed she's got any judgement at all." Some of the things he and Camilla had done--well, they'd always wanted to live without thinking, and for a time they'd most certainly done it.

[estebanmd]

As for the past hoboness, Stephen chalked that up to a predictable combination of drunken excess and the dizzying effect of beauty. Henry of all people should understand what effect Camilla could have on a person.

The sensory amplification that Susan's experiments sought to confer, though -- that was something Stephen indeed deemed far from horrible. It was something he expected anyone would want, something he himself still wanted, a craving only a series of past lessons in addiction could keep at bay.

"Maddening, yes, but wonderful, did you not find?"

[h_m_winter]

Henry thought about this a moment. "At the time, very wonderful," he said, his eyes unfocusing for a moment as his mind threw up all sorts of fascinating images--the glint of starlight on the sea, the amazing softness of sand under his feet, the sweetness of Camilla's hair. "Unlike anything I've even imagined. I think it's how the gods must have felt, whenever they visited the earth. Even now, knowing what it did to us--how terrible it was, afterward--part of me would like to try it again. My rational mind might know better, but some deeper, more primal part of me craves it."

He shook his head, resting a hand on Xipe Totec's head. "And the dangerous thing about Susan is that I think she would give it again, if any of us asked. I'm certain she won't give it to anybody else, but I'm not so sure she understands either the nature of addiction, or just how very alien her senses truly are to the rest of us."