Open.

[supercilious]

Who: Various. (Arthur, Merlin, Remus, possibly Lust, Shirley, Tonks, whoever else wants a thread...)
Where: The Clinic.
When: Whenever it needs to be? For the Bellatrix plot?
What: Arthur gets a worrying glimpse of bespelled Lupin and, completely undermining the intention of his original message, drags Merlin off to act as deus ex machina and fix

Comments

PERSONAL REF, this is sept fifth and super early/super late.

[thenobledie]

[ and being as it is rather early or rather late, depending on who you ask, shirley shouldn't be in the clinic. it's not her shift, and she's moved on from haunting lupin's little library on a nightly basis. but it is in her opinion that lilly need not know about dealing with bellatrix. safer, anyway. (still deciding on what to do about lupin himself, though.)

so here, she is. currently, transferring an orange liquid to a couple phials. ...it's a potion, ok. ]

[supercilious]

[ Once here there's not exactly a lot Arthur can do, bar wait for Merlin to return from... wherever. He feels like they've been swept up in the situation and though he doesn't mind, not these people, he's impatient to contribute something. ]

[ When he finds Shirley he smiles, a private joke. And there's still a part of him that's young and idiotic and comes to sit on the stool to watch her work, breathe the clean and comforting citrus scent, even as he understands better now what it is she's making, or knows properly that he doesn't understand at all. ]

[ And he kicks his feet, waiting, deeply unhappy in ways he can't express but content with this one moment in time, letting the silence linger. ]

[thenobledie]

[ softly, without turning from her work: ]

It's good to see you well.

[ and from shirley, it is utterly honest. she doesn't think he needs protection - one of the few with a head on properly, in her opinion, and he was a young man in her mind, first. but she is fond of him, and it feels distinctly young in a way she can't place. ]

[supercilious]

[ He watches her hands. ]

And you.

[ Two people who know how to give their platitudes some real weight. ]

Remus. You can't...?

[ A hand, circled, in the air beside his head. These days that's Arthur for magic. Can't or won't, but they're synonymous at the moment, as he wouldn't bother to try to convince her. If she could, if she would, she'd be there. But the question is akin to pointing at a branching road, and saying, this path? Shall we? (Shirley has the only map.) ]

[thenobledie]

[ keeping step with his vocabulary: ]

I don't know.

[ alas, she is still consulting the map for a completely different forest. ]

[supercilious]

How can you not know?

[ in the sense of, don't you know nearly everything? and, haven't you tried? ]

[thenobledie]

[ her expression shifts to amused in a heartbeat, but she keeps her attention to the potion before her. ]

Am I to know everything?

[ NOT LIKE YOU PURPOSELY GIVE THAT IMPRESSION SOMETIMES OR ANYTHING, SHIRLEY... ]

[supercilious]

What, don't you?

[ He sounds a little mocking but he's actually deadly serious. ]

[thenobledie]

The world would be all the more dark, if I did.

[ a light tone but it's honest. shirley is one of those clairvoyants that is happiest when proven wrong. alas, it's not a common occurence. ]

[supercilious]

Well, you're very good at pretending.

[ wait, that makes it sound as though he's calling her a know-it-all, and that's not what he means to say at all. ]

That is, your... self-assurance. Your confidence. I mean, er.

[thenobledie]

[ oh, goodness. shirley is laughing (okay, it's chuckling more than much else) at you, arthur. ]

I have had many years to practice.

[supercilious]

May I ask... how many?

[thenobledie]

More than ten millennia.

[ like it's the weather they're talking about. ]

[supercilious]

I can't even imagine.

[ He has no concept of that much time, let alone as a human lifespan. It could just as easily be eternity. ]

[thenobledie]

[ it p much is eternity. ]

Neither can we.

[ and here, she holds out a corked vial of the potion for him, the orange shimmering through the glass. ]