Lupines! You make me sleepy
readingredhead requested Remus Lupin "living the life of the mind". The first is a much better answer to this prompt, but it's heavy so I tried to do a lighter version to end on (it is very silly, be warned).
The Hypocrisy of the Mind
Tuesday is library day but it's really no different than any other day of the week for Remus. He has tea and maybe a little toast at the window sill (only if his stomach is feeling up to it). He takes the train to Oxford and then the bus from the station where he walks to the special wizarding section of the Bodleian. More often than not he manages to set off the dark creatures detection barrier around the Maleficarium & Dark Arts section prompting two aged ghosts in Victorian dress to check his clearance again. They smell faintly of loose leaf and coal dust, and the one not wearing a wig tries to make conversation. He can't see how they died but he expects it must being something like Professor Binns. When they check his charmed id card their fingers pass through it again and again before he remembers to hold it up for them. Yes, he was here on research. Yes, the Defensive Arts Research Kouncil Kingston-upon-Thames (DARKK for short), and yes, old master Quedgeley sends his regards. Their hands are the ancient blue-grey of a coastal storm, their touch very light and curiously textured. It reminds him of something but he can't put his finger on it. A wedding veil maybe, he muses later on the train home.
He likes Oxford, the Thomas Cranmer plaque, Blackwells, the Camera. He likes looking upwards to the surprise of gothic vaulted ceilings how his shoes, old and pinched in the toes, clack on the cobbles. He dreamed of going here when he was young, Magdalen, Christ Church or maybe Brasnose. The host of other research institutes hidden from the muggle eye. His father bringing him up here on day trips during summer hols, buying him books from the crammed back alley shops, pointed out the confetti in the gutters, "From the end of term, see" his father said. Cut from mylar in shiny pinks, greens and yellows they waited to be washed from the street by the light summer showers, as a child Remus's mind completed the rest of that carnival fantasy: Champagne corks, stumbling through dark streets moist with day's rain shoulder to shoulder after exams, the warm arm around his waist and a high familiar war whoop.
It was only during his second year at Hogwarts he realizes that having impeccable grades and a good demeanor might not be enough. There's an intense interview process for Dark Arts Studies and while it's illegal to discriminate "How could you ever remain impartial?" they ask him before sitting back, lighting a cigarette with their shaking arthritic hands and looking him over with new curiosity. So now he cultivates small pleasures. Sometimes when he finishes early Remus stops at the special Wizarding section of the Pitt-Rivers museum crammed with its macabre cabinets and displays: vampire fangs (2) source: Transylvania courtesy of B. Stoker, Celtic bronze mirror #6 thought to cracked by Basilisk, a set of werewolf pelts with very peculiar burns. Authenticated, he reads below them on the little yellowed tag, by silver reduction.
Tuesday is library day but it's really no different than any other day of the week for Remus. He has tea, maybe a little toast at the window sill (although his stomach is never up for it, really). He takes the train to Oxford and then the bus from the station and walks the last mile to the Bodleian. He spends the day a kilometre underground among the screamy books, and the books spelled shut and chained to the shelves, with grimmories full of diagrams of vivisection and men with the heads of dogs; the whole testament of their bloody, awful history under preservation charms, kept by rote and ink. Sometimes he thinks he will go mad with it, the great cochlea of it all spiraling, crushing him under the weight of printing presses, painstakingly inked illuminated manuscripts, and slabs of bluestone carved thousands of years before with hammer and chisel by the light of a torch. Of so many things he will never know, and so many things he used to (Sirius laughing at the kitchen window on a Sunday afternoon, sheets of sunlight on his body). How he had once been young and was now only poor, buried alive among ghosts.
A/N: For the record I am actually very fond of libraries AND the Pitt-Rivers Museum in Oxford, but you know, Academia can be very hypocritical. Also the idea of testing werewolf authenticity by silver is from rhoddlet in a much superior fic of the same name.
Light Version
"Remus," Sirius announces as he throws open the doors to the dormitory, "I need milking."
"Oh, that erhm" says Remus quill poised over his essay on the advantages of Bowtruckles in pollination of magical/non-magical fruit trees in the United Kingdom (excluding the magically contested territories of Calais, Avalon, and portions of Iwernia).
"Is that our cue?" Peter says feet propped on James's teetering nightstand.
"No, they can leave. Coitus can be had anywhere as Pads well knows. Unless," James says peering out over the top of his glasses, a habit he's picked up from Dumbledore, "Sirius has grown breasts in which case he can stay."
"Very conciliatory Mr. Prongs, I commend you."
"Thank you Mr. Wormtail, I'll be here all evening." James, no doubt having observed the breast-less state of the room's occupants, returns to his copy of Busty and Bewitched.
"Ha-coitus." Sirius sniffs propping a hip on Remus's pile of books and leaning over to look at at James's mag. He goes sloe eyed, says "I'll coitus your mum" voice a little rough as he points something out on the page, James nodding emphatically.
Remus delicately wets his quill and re-reads, he's having trouble describing the set of intricate movements that characterizes the bowtruckle pollination ritual:
...favoring such English specialties. Pears, apples, and figs especially, as these are fruits brought to England along the pilgrim road from the Mediterranean which is thought to be the Bowtruckle's native home. In fact the flowering of these particular fauna have temporal correlations with the mating ritual of the English Bowtruckle--
Sirius, hand roving behind him, tweaks his nipple. Remus squeaks, quill shuddering to a stop. It'll blot he think slightly horrified by the idea in the split second before Sirius turns fully around and licks a long stripe up the back of his neck. The phrase hot under the collar sticks ridiculously in his head, before Sirius breathes in his ear, "Did you like the reference O bookish one? Did it get you tingly in unexpected places?" Remus would very well like to say yes, he did although Milton and tingling are not things he likes to think of juxtaposed, and the word tingly really makes him think of-of athlete's foot, but Sirius smells like woodsmoke and hasn't shaved today and it's all rather moist and hard to tell at that point, really. Really.
"Pete stop messing with my chair will you. You know I hate that groaning." James mumbles sometime later from his mountain of masturbatory material.
"'s not me, is't." Peter says pointing out flying limbs and half-shucked pants.
"Oh hell."
Later exhausted and lying half on a bed that smells of Lancelot's Luxurious Locks Pomade Remus composes the rest of his essay in his head, lassitude (he shudders to used the word 'sated') it seems has it's advantages:
...the mating ritual of the English Bowtruckle could most easily be described as a dance, part well-heeled constraint and part playful compulsion, nevertheless the results are most delicious for all involved when the fruition period reaches its climax.
A/N: Embarrassing. Sirius' "literary reference" is supposedly a quote from Milton, who in the late years of his life would cry out to his daughters he needed to be 'milked' in reference to his lyrical composition for the day which he couldn't write down himself (because he was blind) and thus would have to dictate to someone. Yeah, not what I thought the first time I heard that.
More to come. These took forever to finish. Next batch is Naruto!
The Hypocrisy of the Mind
Tuesday is library day but it's really no different than any other day of the week for Remus. He has tea and maybe a little toast at the window sill (only if his stomach is feeling up to it). He takes the train to Oxford and then the bus from the station where he walks to the special wizarding section of the Bodleian. More often than not he manages to set off the dark creatures detection barrier around the Maleficarium & Dark Arts section prompting two aged ghosts in Victorian dress to check his clearance again. They smell faintly of loose leaf and coal dust, and the one not wearing a wig tries to make conversation. He can't see how they died but he expects it must being something like Professor Binns. When they check his charmed id card their fingers pass through it again and again before he remembers to hold it up for them. Yes, he was here on research. Yes, the Defensive Arts Research Kouncil Kingston-upon-Thames (DARKK for short), and yes, old master Quedgeley sends his regards. Their hands are the ancient blue-grey of a coastal storm, their touch very light and curiously textured. It reminds him of something but he can't put his finger on it. A wedding veil maybe, he muses later on the train home.
He likes Oxford, the Thomas Cranmer plaque, Blackwells, the Camera. He likes looking upwards to the surprise of gothic vaulted ceilings how his shoes, old and pinched in the toes, clack on the cobbles. He dreamed of going here when he was young, Magdalen, Christ Church or maybe Brasnose. The host of other research institutes hidden from the muggle eye. His father bringing him up here on day trips during summer hols, buying him books from the crammed back alley shops, pointed out the confetti in the gutters, "From the end of term, see" his father said. Cut from mylar in shiny pinks, greens and yellows they waited to be washed from the street by the light summer showers, as a child Remus's mind completed the rest of that carnival fantasy: Champagne corks, stumbling through dark streets moist with day's rain shoulder to shoulder after exams, the warm arm around his waist and a high familiar war whoop.
It was only during his second year at Hogwarts he realizes that having impeccable grades and a good demeanor might not be enough. There's an intense interview process for Dark Arts Studies and while it's illegal to discriminate "How could you ever remain impartial?" they ask him before sitting back, lighting a cigarette with their shaking arthritic hands and looking him over with new curiosity. So now he cultivates small pleasures. Sometimes when he finishes early Remus stops at the special Wizarding section of the Pitt-Rivers museum crammed with its macabre cabinets and displays: vampire fangs (2) source: Transylvania courtesy of B. Stoker, Celtic bronze mirror #6 thought to cracked by Basilisk, a set of werewolf pelts with very peculiar burns. Authenticated, he reads below them on the little yellowed tag, by silver reduction.
Tuesday is library day but it's really no different than any other day of the week for Remus. He has tea, maybe a little toast at the window sill (although his stomach is never up for it, really). He takes the train to Oxford and then the bus from the station and walks the last mile to the Bodleian. He spends the day a kilometre underground among the screamy books, and the books spelled shut and chained to the shelves, with grimmories full of diagrams of vivisection and men with the heads of dogs; the whole testament of their bloody, awful history under preservation charms, kept by rote and ink. Sometimes he thinks he will go mad with it, the great cochlea of it all spiraling, crushing him under the weight of printing presses, painstakingly inked illuminated manuscripts, and slabs of bluestone carved thousands of years before with hammer and chisel by the light of a torch. Of so many things he will never know, and so many things he used to (Sirius laughing at the kitchen window on a Sunday afternoon, sheets of sunlight on his body). How he had once been young and was now only poor, buried alive among ghosts.
A/N: For the record I am actually very fond of libraries AND the Pitt-Rivers Museum in Oxford, but you know, Academia can be very hypocritical. Also the idea of testing werewolf authenticity by silver is from rhoddlet in a much superior fic of the same name.
Light Version
"Remus," Sirius announces as he throws open the doors to the dormitory, "I need milking."
"Oh, that erhm" says Remus quill poised over his essay on the advantages of Bowtruckles in pollination of magical/non-magical fruit trees in the United Kingdom (excluding the magically contested territories of Calais, Avalon, and portions of Iwernia).
"Is that our cue?" Peter says feet propped on James's teetering nightstand.
"No, they can leave. Coitus can be had anywhere as Pads well knows. Unless," James says peering out over the top of his glasses, a habit he's picked up from Dumbledore, "Sirius has grown breasts in which case he can stay."
"Very conciliatory Mr. Prongs, I commend you."
"Thank you Mr. Wormtail, I'll be here all evening." James, no doubt having observed the breast-less state of the room's occupants, returns to his copy of Busty and Bewitched.
"Ha-coitus." Sirius sniffs propping a hip on Remus's pile of books and leaning over to look at at James's mag. He goes sloe eyed, says "I'll coitus your mum" voice a little rough as he points something out on the page, James nodding emphatically.
Remus delicately wets his quill and re-reads, he's having trouble describing the set of intricate movements that characterizes the bowtruckle pollination ritual:
...favoring such English specialties. Pears, apples, and figs especially, as these are fruits brought to England along the pilgrim road from the Mediterranean which is thought to be the Bowtruckle's native home. In fact the flowering of these particular fauna have temporal correlations with the mating ritual of the English Bowtruckle--
Sirius, hand roving behind him, tweaks his nipple. Remus squeaks, quill shuddering to a stop. It'll blot he think slightly horrified by the idea in the split second before Sirius turns fully around and licks a long stripe up the back of his neck. The phrase hot under the collar sticks ridiculously in his head, before Sirius breathes in his ear, "Did you like the reference O bookish one? Did it get you tingly in unexpected places?" Remus would very well like to say yes, he did although Milton and tingling are not things he likes to think of juxtaposed, and the word tingly really makes him think of-of athlete's foot, but Sirius smells like woodsmoke and hasn't shaved today and it's all rather moist and hard to tell at that point, really. Really.
"Pete stop messing with my chair will you. You know I hate that groaning." James mumbles sometime later from his mountain of masturbatory material.
"'s not me, is't." Peter says pointing out flying limbs and half-shucked pants.
"Oh hell."
Later exhausted and lying half on a bed that smells of Lancelot's Luxurious Locks Pomade Remus composes the rest of his essay in his head, lassitude (he shudders to used the word 'sated') it seems has it's advantages:
...the mating ritual of the English Bowtruckle could most easily be described as a dance, part well-heeled constraint and part playful compulsion, nevertheless the results are most delicious for all involved when the fruition period reaches its climax.
A/N: Embarrassing. Sirius' "literary reference" is supposedly a quote from Milton, who in the late years of his life would cry out to his daughters he needed to be 'milked' in reference to his lyrical composition for the day which he couldn't write down himself (because he was blind) and thus would have to dictate to someone. Yeah, not what I thought the first time I heard that.
More to come. These took forever to finish. Next batch is Naruto!