Stephen & James: Mis-communication. (Finished RP)
((James goes to Stephen, worried about Lily and hears more than he expected. Stephen is old, old school [and stuffy ;p ] ))
If probably wasn't good etiquette to show up at a Professor's office with a bottle of firewhiskey, far less two. But James figured it never hurt to be polite. And things at the school were strange enough anyway, what harm could it really do. He knocked at the door, and tried not to look how he felt, a nervous seventh year boy. Because this had nothing to do with school, or maybe only a little bit to do with school. He knocked again.
"Oi, Sir? James Potter, here. If I've your office hours wrong, could you tell a bloke?"
Stephen had spent most of the morning and afternoon reading up on modern advances in the scientific understanding of cellular structure. The interruption of a student's voice at the door came as a welcome diversion. "If I am in my office, you may take it as office hours," he said, rising to open the door and allow the student to enter. Unlike the laboratory, where a sudden interruption could spell disaster, the office could perfectly well accommodate unexpected visitors. "Do have a seat, Mr Potter." He indicated a chair reasonably comfortable and free of clutter.
James thrust the two bottles in his hand over. "Uhm, I brought pressies, sir. These are not bribes. In no way , sir, are you to think of them as bribes." James sighed.
"Bloody hell. This is much easier when I actually knew the Professors. I haven't been this idiotic since..." He paused and counted on his fingertip. "I was five and I couldn't figure out how to get the cake batter without actually asking for it."
He exhaled. "Better just out with it., yeah? Have you found yourself missing any stores, sir? Any potions ingredients at all gone low? Or too much used during a class?"
Stephen noted, and wondered at, Potter's nervousness. At the bottles of Firewhiskey he would have raised an eyebrow, ordinarily. It needed no sign of disapproval in this instance, he thought, so he merely took the bottles and set them on the desk. Depending on the drift of upcoming conversation, he could either hand them back to Potter at the meeting's conclusion, or crack open one of the bottles if called for.
He listened, expression shifting from amiable neutrality to something rather colder. "I assure you my storeroom and laboratory are amply locked, warded, and safeguarded from intrusion or tampering. I should like to know what occasions the question."
James exhaled. "Well it's my...wife?" There was a pause. "The mother of my son - Evans, sir. Lily Evans. She...well she's always been aces at potions. And I've heard her talk about everything she went through after we left school and well, sir, she's been dead and come back again. And now she's dating. And I wondered if she might have nipped in for something to make some sort of potion to make everything feel alright in her head again."
James shrugged. "Of course I may just not be understanding the type of relationship we had. I am aware that not every married couple, even happily married does things traditionally behind closed doors. But I bought a pensieve recently and the memory she shared with me showed me something good."
Shaking his head and a hand, James shrugged again. "It was only a thought, sir. The whiskey was in case I took up your time un-needed. But if nothing's missing, then I really did and I apologise. But I had to ask."
"Ah. Lily Evans, yes. I know something of her, through a mutual friend." Whether Potter had an idea of who was meant, or to what degree Stephen knew said 'mutual friend', concerned Stephen not at all. He would reveal more if pressed on the subject of said friend's credibility; otherwise, not.
A sigh. "You had best sit, Mr Potter." And Stephen went to ensure the door was not only closed, but locked and warded. What he had to say was not for chance visitors to hear. When he returned to his own seat behind the desk, James had done as requested, looking understandably on edge.
"Now, as to Miss Evans. She has been in one class I held, and that class did not afford any opportunity to pilfer potions ingredients, save perhaps some sneezewort. Certainly nothing she could use for the kind of project you fear. I will say, however, that she once offered to be Obliviated, in another specific context having to do with the friend she and I have in common, nothing to do with you. Had she sought to do so in relation to your marriage and history together, it would of course have required no potions experience or ingredients whatsoever, only the memory charm. I know nothing of her proficiency at Charms.
"I --" Here he hesitated. This was, in essence, none of his own business, and no man would welcome the news he had been crowned with a cuckold's horns, no matter how irregular the marriage. Yet Potter's palpable anxiety moved him. The youth had come to him in all confidence and trust, and Stephen had information that might help him. And, too, it would accomplish something that he knew Sarah wanted and he had advised her against undertaking herself. Her tearful words came back to him: Someone needs to know she is in danger ... Maybe when we get back, I can send a note to one of her friends ...
"I have been given to understand that Miss Evans has not exactly been acting the part of the grieving widow," he said, carefully. "Whether that is of her own doing, I cannot say, and I would hesitate to blame her. A young woman, far from home, to be the object of attention from beings thousands of years old, and one of them no less than the Serpent himself -- well, I am not sure at all I would lay blame for her behaviour at her own doorstep, not full blame. And it is true she has displayed behaviour I would call erratic as of late. I say this not as a judge or arbiter of morality; Lord knows I have no place to do so; I say it as a physician and as one who cares for someone that would be deeply affected were any harm to come to Miss Evans."
"The Serpent?" The words were soft, James was quite so clearly trying to put all the pieces of the puzzle being presented to him in order. He wasn't unknowledgable of the role Muggle Religion had played in the persecution of the wizarding world. He'd wanted to know from the moment he had the chance to be in school and look up the histories if any of those accused had ever been dark arts users; if the Muggles had had some true inkling even if they used words and terminology he didn't understand.
"It's more than Cox then? Or is he the one who's thousands of years old? Perry Cox? I haven't met him yet, though either I or my best mate'll be there when he meets our son." James gave a wry smile. He was still getting used to saying that, even if it did mean the world to him not to be the last Potter, the last person with his family line's blood.
He bit his thumb for a moment looking young, younger maybe. Cox was pushed aside momentarily. "I'd forgotten the Oblivate charm, sir. But she's crap at the complicated stuff. She could have tried it and messed her mind. But she remembers us and I've seen one of her memories, no blank spots, no white spaces. Her son's first birthday party had me in it too."
He paused again and met Maturin's eyes. "I'm not her husband, sir. The father of her child, yes. But not her husband. I remember not even four dates. I remember still being surprised she said yes, that I was an option. For her to move on - I'm not hurting from young romance, sir. It's ... I've a best mate who's also a Professor here, Remus Lupin. He wants very much to put it all behind him and move on. I can understand him not wanting to remember. His life is better as it is now. And well, I'm alive, Lily's alive, that's more than he'd have hoped for on top of stability. But he lived the years. Lily, hasn't. "
James almost stood up again, and then he remembered that Maturin had mentioned a mutual friend. He had some stake in this. "Is Cox the one claiming to be the Muggle's devil, sir? She told me he's not a cad, but it's hard to believe he's not taking advantage of a widow, no matter how you think she hasn't been grieving. Every time I see her she's almost in tears."
"Cox?" This was the first Stephen had heard of a romantic link between Perry and the widow. He did recall the other doctor ushering the lady in question out of Spider Jerusalem's Sorting, she spitting invective all the way, nonsensical invective from Stephen's point of view. "Gracious, no, Cox is a mere mortal, whatever extraordinary healing powers he may claim." He frowned a bit. As much as he did not care for Cox, he would not like to see him pitted against the likes of the immortal Methos and the demon Crowley.
"What I wonder," he mused aloud, "is what these creatures, this immortal and this demon, see in her, why they want to win her over. It really makes not much sense. She is only a young woman, a half-blood at that; her greatest claim to fame is having mothered a celebrity, so to speak, not that I speak ill of your son, mind." Stephen paused, puzzled. "That, and having fought against Voldemort, a fight many now here have shared ... No, things do not add up here, at all. Miss Evans claims to have suffered certain torments of war, some of which do not quite line up with her present behaviour either. Mr Potter, it is no secret I have seen war, close at hand, and for many years. I served as ship's surgeon in His Majesty's Navy for over a decade. The war Miss Evans fought and did not survive -- the one you of necessity cannot remember, having not reached that point in your life yet, the years you had yet to live -- it was a war of magic, but some realities of combat, and of attendant vicissitudes -- capture, torture -- I believe should map equally onto any form of war, whether it be with cannon or with wand or with the obsidian axes of our forebears."
He listened, all the way through. This was information he needed. An immortal, a demon and a doctor. Lily had three suitors? She'd only mentioned one. She'd only mentioned things progressing enough to tell him with that one, Cox. Trying to pay attention and think at the same time James caught 'half-blood' perhaps out of context.
He still turned staring daggers at the man in front of him. "Do not use that term for Lily, sir. She's a witch. Being muggle-born does not make her any less a witch or any less skilled as someone from an old line. I don't believe in the term and I'm rather surprised you'd use it, being muggle-born yourself. As I've yet to meet a wizard who was part of Britania's Navy. "
Which led to other troubling thoughts. His parents had lived through a war, and they'd been his stability growing up. he didn't think Lily needed to get to St. Mungo's. But he wasn't qualified to know. In this place, Sirius walked around with no one thinking of what it meant for him to have survived Azkaban or a Dementor's kiss. It was done, over with, he should move on. It was a bit curious how they, everyone around him and Lily too, were all about moving on, forgetting the past as if it never happened, even if they said something to the contrary.ry.
Stephen strongly disliked the youth's tone of voice. It was out of place and unacceptable, not only in that it defied the school's given hierarchy, but in that Potter had come to him as as supplicant and was now presuming to dictate vocabulary. It was with every inch the cold correctness that silenced even admirals that he now addressed his visitor.
"Mr Potter, you are to consider where you stand and to whom you speak. You will not use the imperative with professors at this school, whether you consult me in my official capacity or no, and I will certainly call a spade a spade, whether it please your sensibilities or no. I find niceties and euphemisms to be if anything a form of self-deception when one comes to seriously sift intelligence; in thinking through your present problem -- which is none of mine -- I have done you the favor of speaking plainly to you. It seems I erred in doing so." He stood and picked up the bottles of Firewhiskey, holding them out to their donor. "Nonetheless, you have had from me the information you sought and more, without a sugar coating. What you do with it or whether you heed it is entirely in your hands. I bid you good day."
He could find it within himself to pity the man -- boy, really, not much more than a boy -- thrust into a world not his own, with responsibilities he had not lived to take on. However, Stephen had also seen midshipmen of yet tenderer years forced to take on the responsibilities suited to much older men, or even to no one at all depending on one's beliefs; and they had risen to the occasion, had grown into the challenge, and had managed to keep order while doing so.
"Favour?" James said incredulously. "Favour? As if I can believe anything that comes out of the mouth of a self admitted bigot?!" He took the Fire-whiskey bottles back and moved to the door.
"I thought I was speaking to a Professor and then I thought I was speaking to an honest man, an interested man, one who cared about the welfare of others. But what do you know, all along it was a self-hater. You are Muggle-born. And even if you think there's something wrong with that, I don't. Self-deception my arse. My. arse. You are who you are and it's what you do that makes the true difference. Not blood. Not position. Sometimes not even intelligence. Brilliant men have led truly despicable lives. And I have to say I'm disappointed that your intelligence is only a front. Or are you despicable? Good day to you, sir. And have a happy time self-hating. I'll be sure not to take your class. No doubt you can't be open minded or even handed there either."
James as at the door seconds after he'd said his piece. A spell was thrown at the lock to disengage it and then he was slamming it shut behind him.
Eyes narrowed, Stephen watched Potter leave, making no move to intercept him. It seemed that everything he had said to the youth had fallen on deaf ears. Of all people, Stephen set little stock in birth, and had not a shred of shame at having been born outside the wizarding world -- indeed, he found much within wizarding society to be inefficient at best, preposterous at worst. Indeed, Stephen himself did believe quite firmly that deeds, not blood, made the man.
Assumptions, though, had been the order of the day, assumptions and false conclusions, and that suggested to Stephen that his words had been wasted on Potter, all of them. For one thing, he seemed to have construed 'intelligence' rather differently than it had been meant: Stephen meant data, pure and simple.
However, Potter's had not been wasted on him. As much as it displeased him to do so, Stephen would need to write to the caretakers. Order must be kept; detention would be necessary.
If probably wasn't good etiquette to show up at a Professor's office with a bottle of firewhiskey, far less two. But James figured it never hurt to be polite. And things at the school were strange enough anyway, what harm could it really do. He knocked at the door, and tried not to look how he felt, a nervous seventh year boy. Because this had nothing to do with school, or maybe only a little bit to do with school. He knocked again.
"Oi, Sir? James Potter, here. If I've your office hours wrong, could you tell a bloke?"
Stephen had spent most of the morning and afternoon reading up on modern advances in the scientific understanding of cellular structure. The interruption of a student's voice at the door came as a welcome diversion. "If I am in my office, you may take it as office hours," he said, rising to open the door and allow the student to enter. Unlike the laboratory, where a sudden interruption could spell disaster, the office could perfectly well accommodate unexpected visitors. "Do have a seat, Mr Potter." He indicated a chair reasonably comfortable and free of clutter.
James thrust the two bottles in his hand over. "Uhm, I brought pressies, sir. These are not bribes. In no way , sir, are you to think of them as bribes." James sighed.
"Bloody hell. This is much easier when I actually knew the Professors. I haven't been this idiotic since..." He paused and counted on his fingertip. "I was five and I couldn't figure out how to get the cake batter without actually asking for it."
He exhaled. "Better just out with it., yeah? Have you found yourself missing any stores, sir? Any potions ingredients at all gone low? Or too much used during a class?"
Stephen noted, and wondered at, Potter's nervousness. At the bottles of Firewhiskey he would have raised an eyebrow, ordinarily. It needed no sign of disapproval in this instance, he thought, so he merely took the bottles and set them on the desk. Depending on the drift of upcoming conversation, he could either hand them back to Potter at the meeting's conclusion, or crack open one of the bottles if called for.
He listened, expression shifting from amiable neutrality to something rather colder. "I assure you my storeroom and laboratory are amply locked, warded, and safeguarded from intrusion or tampering. I should like to know what occasions the question."
James exhaled. "Well it's my...wife?" There was a pause. "The mother of my son - Evans, sir. Lily Evans. She...well she's always been aces at potions. And I've heard her talk about everything she went through after we left school and well, sir, she's been dead and come back again. And now she's dating. And I wondered if she might have nipped in for something to make some sort of potion to make everything feel alright in her head again."
James shrugged. "Of course I may just not be understanding the type of relationship we had. I am aware that not every married couple, even happily married does things traditionally behind closed doors. But I bought a pensieve recently and the memory she shared with me showed me something good."
Shaking his head and a hand, James shrugged again. "It was only a thought, sir. The whiskey was in case I took up your time un-needed. But if nothing's missing, then I really did and I apologise. But I had to ask."
"Ah. Lily Evans, yes. I know something of her, through a mutual friend." Whether Potter had an idea of who was meant, or to what degree Stephen knew said 'mutual friend', concerned Stephen not at all. He would reveal more if pressed on the subject of said friend's credibility; otherwise, not.
A sigh. "You had best sit, Mr Potter." And Stephen went to ensure the door was not only closed, but locked and warded. What he had to say was not for chance visitors to hear. When he returned to his own seat behind the desk, James had done as requested, looking understandably on edge.
"Now, as to Miss Evans. She has been in one class I held, and that class did not afford any opportunity to pilfer potions ingredients, save perhaps some sneezewort. Certainly nothing she could use for the kind of project you fear. I will say, however, that she once offered to be Obliviated, in another specific context having to do with the friend she and I have in common, nothing to do with you. Had she sought to do so in relation to your marriage and history together, it would of course have required no potions experience or ingredients whatsoever, only the memory charm. I know nothing of her proficiency at Charms.
"I --" Here he hesitated. This was, in essence, none of his own business, and no man would welcome the news he had been crowned with a cuckold's horns, no matter how irregular the marriage. Yet Potter's palpable anxiety moved him. The youth had come to him in all confidence and trust, and Stephen had information that might help him. And, too, it would accomplish something that he knew Sarah wanted and he had advised her against undertaking herself. Her tearful words came back to him: Someone needs to know she is in danger ... Maybe when we get back, I can send a note to one of her friends ...
"I have been given to understand that Miss Evans has not exactly been acting the part of the grieving widow," he said, carefully. "Whether that is of her own doing, I cannot say, and I would hesitate to blame her. A young woman, far from home, to be the object of attention from beings thousands of years old, and one of them no less than the Serpent himself -- well, I am not sure at all I would lay blame for her behaviour at her own doorstep, not full blame. And it is true she has displayed behaviour I would call erratic as of late. I say this not as a judge or arbiter of morality; Lord knows I have no place to do so; I say it as a physician and as one who cares for someone that would be deeply affected were any harm to come to Miss Evans."
"The Serpent?" The words were soft, James was quite so clearly trying to put all the pieces of the puzzle being presented to him in order. He wasn't unknowledgable of the role Muggle Religion had played in the persecution of the wizarding world. He'd wanted to know from the moment he had the chance to be in school and look up the histories if any of those accused had ever been dark arts users; if the Muggles had had some true inkling even if they used words and terminology he didn't understand.
"It's more than Cox then? Or is he the one who's thousands of years old? Perry Cox? I haven't met him yet, though either I or my best mate'll be there when he meets our son." James gave a wry smile. He was still getting used to saying that, even if it did mean the world to him not to be the last Potter, the last person with his family line's blood.
He bit his thumb for a moment looking young, younger maybe. Cox was pushed aside momentarily. "I'd forgotten the Oblivate charm, sir. But she's crap at the complicated stuff. She could have tried it and messed her mind. But she remembers us and I've seen one of her memories, no blank spots, no white spaces. Her son's first birthday party had me in it too."
He paused again and met Maturin's eyes. "I'm not her husband, sir. The father of her child, yes. But not her husband. I remember not even four dates. I remember still being surprised she said yes, that I was an option. For her to move on - I'm not hurting from young romance, sir. It's ... I've a best mate who's also a Professor here, Remus Lupin. He wants very much to put it all behind him and move on. I can understand him not wanting to remember. His life is better as it is now. And well, I'm alive, Lily's alive, that's more than he'd have hoped for on top of stability. But he lived the years. Lily, hasn't. "
James almost stood up again, and then he remembered that Maturin had mentioned a mutual friend. He had some stake in this. "Is Cox the one claiming to be the Muggle's devil, sir? She told me he's not a cad, but it's hard to believe he's not taking advantage of a widow, no matter how you think she hasn't been grieving. Every time I see her she's almost in tears."
"Cox?" This was the first Stephen had heard of a romantic link between Perry and the widow. He did recall the other doctor ushering the lady in question out of Spider Jerusalem's Sorting, she spitting invective all the way, nonsensical invective from Stephen's point of view. "Gracious, no, Cox is a mere mortal, whatever extraordinary healing powers he may claim." He frowned a bit. As much as he did not care for Cox, he would not like to see him pitted against the likes of the immortal Methos and the demon Crowley.
"What I wonder," he mused aloud, "is what these creatures, this immortal and this demon, see in her, why they want to win her over. It really makes not much sense. She is only a young woman, a half-blood at that; her greatest claim to fame is having mothered a celebrity, so to speak, not that I speak ill of your son, mind." Stephen paused, puzzled. "That, and having fought against Voldemort, a fight many now here have shared ... No, things do not add up here, at all. Miss Evans claims to have suffered certain torments of war, some of which do not quite line up with her present behaviour either. Mr Potter, it is no secret I have seen war, close at hand, and for many years. I served as ship's surgeon in His Majesty's Navy for over a decade. The war Miss Evans fought and did not survive -- the one you of necessity cannot remember, having not reached that point in your life yet, the years you had yet to live -- it was a war of magic, but some realities of combat, and of attendant vicissitudes -- capture, torture -- I believe should map equally onto any form of war, whether it be with cannon or with wand or with the obsidian axes of our forebears."
He listened, all the way through. This was information he needed. An immortal, a demon and a doctor. Lily had three suitors? She'd only mentioned one. She'd only mentioned things progressing enough to tell him with that one, Cox. Trying to pay attention and think at the same time James caught 'half-blood' perhaps out of context.
He still turned staring daggers at the man in front of him. "Do not use that term for Lily, sir. She's a witch. Being muggle-born does not make her any less a witch or any less skilled as someone from an old line. I don't believe in the term and I'm rather surprised you'd use it, being muggle-born yourself. As I've yet to meet a wizard who was part of Britania's Navy. "
Which led to other troubling thoughts. His parents had lived through a war, and they'd been his stability growing up. he didn't think Lily needed to get to St. Mungo's. But he wasn't qualified to know. In this place, Sirius walked around with no one thinking of what it meant for him to have survived Azkaban or a Dementor's kiss. It was done, over with, he should move on. It was a bit curious how they, everyone around him and Lily too, were all about moving on, forgetting the past as if it never happened, even if they said something to the contrary.ry.
Stephen strongly disliked the youth's tone of voice. It was out of place and unacceptable, not only in that it defied the school's given hierarchy, but in that Potter had come to him as as supplicant and was now presuming to dictate vocabulary. It was with every inch the cold correctness that silenced even admirals that he now addressed his visitor.
"Mr Potter, you are to consider where you stand and to whom you speak. You will not use the imperative with professors at this school, whether you consult me in my official capacity or no, and I will certainly call a spade a spade, whether it please your sensibilities or no. I find niceties and euphemisms to be if anything a form of self-deception when one comes to seriously sift intelligence; in thinking through your present problem -- which is none of mine -- I have done you the favor of speaking plainly to you. It seems I erred in doing so." He stood and picked up the bottles of Firewhiskey, holding them out to their donor. "Nonetheless, you have had from me the information you sought and more, without a sugar coating. What you do with it or whether you heed it is entirely in your hands. I bid you good day."
He could find it within himself to pity the man -- boy, really, not much more than a boy -- thrust into a world not his own, with responsibilities he had not lived to take on. However, Stephen had also seen midshipmen of yet tenderer years forced to take on the responsibilities suited to much older men, or even to no one at all depending on one's beliefs; and they had risen to the occasion, had grown into the challenge, and had managed to keep order while doing so.
"Favour?" James said incredulously. "Favour? As if I can believe anything that comes out of the mouth of a self admitted bigot?!" He took the Fire-whiskey bottles back and moved to the door.
"I thought I was speaking to a Professor and then I thought I was speaking to an honest man, an interested man, one who cared about the welfare of others. But what do you know, all along it was a self-hater. You are Muggle-born. And even if you think there's something wrong with that, I don't. Self-deception my arse. My. arse. You are who you are and it's what you do that makes the true difference. Not blood. Not position. Sometimes not even intelligence. Brilliant men have led truly despicable lives. And I have to say I'm disappointed that your intelligence is only a front. Or are you despicable? Good day to you, sir. And have a happy time self-hating. I'll be sure not to take your class. No doubt you can't be open minded or even handed there either."
James as at the door seconds after he'd said his piece. A spell was thrown at the lock to disengage it and then he was slamming it shut behind him.
Eyes narrowed, Stephen watched Potter leave, making no move to intercept him. It seemed that everything he had said to the youth had fallen on deaf ears. Of all people, Stephen set little stock in birth, and had not a shred of shame at having been born outside the wizarding world -- indeed, he found much within wizarding society to be inefficient at best, preposterous at worst. Indeed, Stephen himself did believe quite firmly that deeds, not blood, made the man.
Assumptions, though, had been the order of the day, assumptions and false conclusions, and that suggested to Stephen that his words had been wasted on Potter, all of them. For one thing, he seemed to have construed 'intelligence' rather differently than it had been meant: Stephen meant data, pure and simple.
However, Potter's had not been wasted on him. As much as it displeased him to do so, Stephen would need to write to the caretakers. Order must be kept; detention would be necessary.