Lyulyak Lodge, Bulgaria
When Igor had asked that morning, in his most affable manner, "And where shall we be going today, my friends?" there had been no reason for him not to expect an easy and a pleasant day.
On nearly every other day of this assignment, the so-sleek Englishman and his fuzzy hair either did not wait in the hall for Igor in the morning because after the first day he was able to take himself the National Magical Assembly in the great castle of Ustra without help, or he asked Igor to bring him to the estates of such noble and official wizards as Igor might, at this point in his career, if he met them in certain circumstances, hope to greet with a respectful half-bow without being demoted to tea-boy. Rosy and his paint-box would spend great portions of the day closeted together with such people, and then Igor would be called for.
At this time, he would ask to be taken either to the most beautiful place Igor had not shown him yet—in which case he would either instruct that Igor go at once to sit outside whatever door his companion was within until called for, and then deliver him—or ask to be taken to some new outdoor marketplace. On these occasions, he did not have the sense to keep Igor by him for safety, but nevertheless he had never yet complained of having all his gold stolen, or even of being cheated. It was, of course, most likely that he did not know how much he was being cheated.
Igor had once tried dutifully to stay by him anyway, and to haggle on his behalf. Finally, he had argued the witch down to a good price for the tablecloth that Rosy wanted. It was a price that Rosy should have been happy with, because it was not a good tablecloth, even if the lace must have taken the woman's very young daughter a long time to make as she practiced on it, because that was Igor's idea about how the ugly thing had been made.
But Rosy had not been standing next to him, waiting in grateful appreciation like a good tourist. Rosy had been half the table away, not buying the tablecloth at all but paying the witch's old mother a very high price that was not cheating him for a very good set of intricate gossamer window curtains, having them wrapped for owl-travel in bad weather, lying through his too-perfect teeth to the old lady about his dear mother-in-law who made lace for her own family back in England and would be in love with the old witch's wonderful art. But there was no such mother-in-law to love this lace, because Rosy was not married.
In the early days of April, Igor had been given the assignment to be the guide of a group of young ladies from the Salem Witch's Institute who were spending a week in Bulgaria as part of a 'study abroad' program that their American nation-state encouraged. Of course, they could not have the 'exchange program' with Durmstrang that the American nation-states kept trying to negotiate for with European wizarding nations, but Bulgaria was happy to let them visit the country in a more informal way.
While he had been their guide, Igor had heard many American words with which the translating spell had not been able to help him. Some of them he had been able to make sense of on his own, some not. When the girls had made a certain face behind the back of the Bulgarian Ambassador to Magical North America and called him a word the spell did not know, Igor had not felt that he needed them to explain.
Igor thought that Rosy might be this such of a 'sleaze.' Only a fool smiled all the time, as everyone knew, but to be a fool was not the same as to have a heart of gold.
However, Igor's usual day did not have to begin with the spoiled young nobleman's high-handedness. The other, the hard and lithe one with the eyes of ice and coals, he woke hours earlier. Igor thought perhaps he did not eat in the morning, for he always shared his coffee with Igor and did not offer him food, but instructed the innkeeper to bring up a breakfast tray to the room at a certain time as he and Igor left. The tray was always gone by the time Rosy called for Igor, but Snap did not arrange for food for two in any case.
Snap did not ask to be taken to the sort of person that Igor's office called important, as Rosy did. He spoke to many lowly sorts of people who had respect among those who knew them and who needed their craft. He told Igor that Igor did not need to stay with him and the potion makers, but Igor stayed—not outside the door, but inside with Snap—when he spoke to the teachers and to the apothecaries. Snap said that no one but a brewer could translate between brewers, but also said it was as well to have someone to prevent misunderstandings when Snap spoke to other sorts of people.
Igor was not sure how useful he had been to Snap in this way. Snap seemed to expect everyone to take offense at strange times. As the days went on, Igor did notice that these were the points in a conversation at which Rosy would say something soft and dishonest, like oil, just as the Ambassadors to English-speaking nations did. But Snap only spoke straightforwardly, as anyone might, except that sometimes he flinched after he had spoken his mind and then people blinked at him and asked if he had been stung by a bee.
Still, sometimes there was a custom or a turn of phrase that being able to understand Bulgarian words with magic did not help Snap with, as it so often went with tourists. In this Igor could help him, for he often noticed Snap looking only just a tiny blink of blank where Snap's hosts did not, even many of the teachers, and of course he was more practiced in explaining these things to foreigners.
It was also so that Snap asked many questions about Igor's childhood with great interest, for Igor had been to school at Durmstrang. Snap did not ask to be taken to the school, was not interested in the way it was built or any such of its secrets, or even what spells and magics were taught there. So Igor did not have to tell him no, he could not answer.
Snap only wanted to know what it had been like for Igor to live there, to sit in classrooms and be taught with teachers ruling over him, to sit at tables and sleep in rooms with other children, to strive against them and work together with them. He wanted to know about the teachers that Igor had thought were good at the time, and bad, and if he still thought so, and what the teachers had done to make him think this way.
He was interested in the way Igor's teachers had spoken to his parents and written to them. When Igor, who had not been privy to these conversations, offered to introduce Snap to his parents so Snap could ask them these questions in person, Snap was most interested in the samovar that had come down to his mother from many generations, and did not tell her that her banitsa was bad, even though even Igor would admit—only to himself—that it was very bad, always burned and almost as greasy as the kind from a shop, and he had never seen Snap eat a pastry when he had another choice.
This was not Mama's fault. When igor was a child and before he was born, no one had the time for making pastries, even if there was clean flour. Mama had had other things to do with her wand and her bread knife. Still, her baking was very bad. Igor was ashamed to give his guest such cooking—although not to give anyone his mother's cooking!
But Snap did not tell her it was bad, even with his face. He asked how the cheese was made, and when Mama said the banitsa was too greasy, he said that where he was from a child was very lucky to get greasy fried fish and potatoes once in a month, although in some parts of the town it was a Friday treat, and they put a vinegar made from malt on it and ate it out of a newspaper. He gave Mama a recipe for this vinegar. It was in German, not Bulgarian, but this was not so hard to have translated as English would have been.
Igor had pleasant and interesting days on this assignment, except for those short moments when Rosy needed to be moved to certain places, and at those times when Rosy asked for him to bring Snap to where Rosy was and then Snap sometimes forgot that Igor was there without saying goodnight.
Most of the times, in fact.
Rosy was, Igor would give him this, very good at placing himself so as to make a striking picture against the beautiful places to which Igor had brought him, in front of the exact spot he knew Snap would appear.
Igor supposed that perhaps if a painter could not manage to create a dramatic scene from the most beautiful places in Bulgaria, which was the most beautiful place on Earth even in its dreariest muggle areas, important people would not wish to be painted by him. It was, Igor supposed, the least that should be expected.
He had pleasant and interesting days, and the very fact that he was asking them both at once how this day would go was proof that it might be different, but he could not have known how very different it would be.
The reason he was asking them both at once was that Snap had not called for him at dawn, as Snap usually did. Igor did not go before Snap called him, but he called every day at their room at the inn at ten, whether he was sitting with Snap and some teacher or apothecary or Snap had let him go so that Snap could spend all day waving his limber hands excitedly while talking a hundred kilometers to the hour with some potion-maker, usually in such classical Greek that Igor's translation spell sounded as if it had been badly miscast.
Usually, when he called at ten, either Rosy would have stuck a flower in the keyhole to tell Igor that Rosy had gone alone to Ustra, or Rosy would be waiting in the hallway with his paint box, leaning against the hall with a polite and patient look that said to Igor that Igor was late, although Igor never was.
Today, Rosy had not been there for Igor to see, but neither had the flower. So Igor had knocked, and after a pause, Snap had said, without opening the door, that Igor might come in.
When Rosy posed against the evening for Snap, it was in Igor's opinion the very least show he could make of Snap's importance to him. The Englishers had a very good word for their young men like Rosy, which was 'lackadaisical.' It was perhaps more descriptive of them than vyal or even otpusnat, because it would not allow you to say it quickly. Caring enough to spend a moment, with no preparation, to make an impression, it did not make him worthy of even a lowlier wizard than himself who was both more intelligent than he and a gentleman.
This lackadaisical person who could be very nearly bothered to strike a pose was not the Rosy in Snap's room with him. The Rosy that Igor knew was a sleek fellow, for all his fluffy hair, with dapper shoes that never committed either of the usual English-wizard sins of being stubby and pockmarked or slavishly copying the Italians. He seemed to have a hundred caped waistcoats to make him look warm and friendly or something like a cool breeze, and Igor had not realized before that they all made him also look smaller.
He realized now because Rosy was curled into Snap's lap on the inn's sofa in front of a cold hearth, and Rosy did not quite fit. He was the taller, and when he did not wear his soft-armed shirts, Igor became suddenly and uneasily aware that he was more powerfully built in the chest and shoulders than Igor would have thought a painter needed to be.
Although Snap's gaze at Igor was chilly as he tugged Rosy's thin green dressing gown higher and farther closed with no help from Rosy, it was not what disturbed Igor. He did not expect Snap to be one to change in himself before something was changed for him.
What showed Igor that things might not be as he had thought was Rosy's face, which had barely noticed that Igor had come in, just as Snap sometimes forgot to say goodnight. Rosy looked doubly shaken, even shattered.
Igor had, as it was said, 'been to Sofia,' and Rosy had the look of a man who had just had his first night with the veela. But Igor also knew many old men who had fought in the war about Grindelwald. Rosy was clinging to Snap not only as if Snap was himself a veela (to find that bloodline in Snap would not be unexpected; his nose had something of the beak about it), but as if Snap had pulled Rosy out of the path of a disemboweling curse that had spattered the man behind him into a stinking puddle before his eyes.
And yet, Igor had read the morning paper. Furthermore, since Snap had not called him, he had gone to the office and had coffee with everyone else waiting for an assignment, or waiting for their assignments to call for them, or writing their reports. All had been quiet all night, as far as anyone knew. Poliakoff had mentioned his wife complaining about the Albanians flooing in very late almost without notice to accuse a Bulgarian apothecary of cursing one of their major fig groves after a dispute about either ripeness or wasps, Poliakoff had not been certain. That was all.
So it had just been a thing that had happened between Snap and Rosy. So Igor, as an Embassy guide, was not intended to consider it his business even if he was most curious, and even if he thought it likely to have an effect on the remainder of his time with them And so he asked, in his most affable manner, as though nothing was strange, "And where shall we be going today, my friends?"
"Can't we just stay in?" Rosy asked, turning his face away from Igor and into Snap's chest. Snap, too, was wearing a dressing grown, a richly blue one with, of all things, a white boar on one shoulder, and Rosy's fingers had curled in it. Unlike Rosy, though, the modest Snap had a shirt on beneath. "Just once?"
"No," Snap said. Since he was on the job, Igor did not smile to hear such a firm refusal given, however gently, to one so spoiled. "Or, rather, I expect we will, but not today. It's time, I think."
Rosy stilled and then sat up, and annoyed Igor with his stomach. However, if Igor was less exercised, at least he could make a better showing it came to the hair of his front. If Rosy was so deficient, then perhaps he had no beard because it too would be wispy and insignificant. As a potion-maker, Snap would not be clean-shaven for the same reason but only for safety; no doubt he was manly enough behind his black shirt.
Unsettling Igor further, Rosy's ever-bleary pondwater eyes became suddenly clear and curious as they honed in on Snap's face. "That was sudden," he remarked, and just as suddenly he sounded neither pathetic and whining nor half-asleep.
Igor took half a step back before he recovered himself.
Snap's alert black gaze darted to him, and Snap very nearly smiled, which was as close to a smile as one saw with Snap. As these near-smiles went, this was a sly one, an invitation to share a joke. Igor did not understand this joke, but a word that came into his mind was 'sparkling.'
Snap did not speak to him, though, but to Rosy. He said, "Much as I dislike the reason, I think you can handle it now."
Rosy's dull-colored eyebrows slid up. It was almost, but not, the lackadaisical Rosy that Igor knew who mused, "Shall I ask first what makes the obvious the reason, or why you decided I couldn't handle it in the first place?"
The difference was this: in the usual way that the usual Rosy might have said those words, or another young English wizard of his class, if Igor had spoken in that way as a child, his mother would have slapped him. This was a Rosy who was used to his friend Snap acting in this way, and had years ago taken on a friend's duty to remind Snap that he was mortal and not king.
Snap shrugged, and told Rosy, "When you talked about it before to that Auror, you started salivating about skin tones and like that."
"Oh, that 'it's time,'" Rosy commented, still listening, as though something had become clear.
"Yes. Whether or not I'm 'for' what I can do for anyone in particular—"
At this point Igor started forward, because Rosy had made an indignant grumbling noise and elbowed him very hard, but Snap only smirked and went on.
"We had, I believe, agreed that at the very least it's advisable that I sit on you when you're…" Here Snap paused, eyed Igor, and clearly said something other than what he had begun to say. "When your interests getting the better of you seems like an extraordinarily terrible idea."
"That's not exactly what we agreed," Rosy said, in a slow and droll voice that was more his own than what he had been using so far that morning. "I do take your meaning, but I think you might be overreacting, S—you know."
"I think not," Snap said, at once definite and thoughtful. "I've been considering it. We don't know as much about them as other species, other than what has and hasn't worked as weaponry, but we do know that they're predators, and we know what is common in predators. Prey animals are more likely to survive if they have a wide field of vision, predators if they have binocular vision and can judge distance, if their attention is alerted by movement."
Rosy looked thoughtful, and then looked startled and afraid as his gaze shot to the window. Igor's eyes jerked to it in alarm.
There was absolutely nothing but sky, trees, and rooftops to be seen through the window. When Igor looked at Rosy again, he had pressed Snap into the corner of the sofa and was kissing him as though the only air in the room was in Snap's mouth. It was only a moment; he seemed to be trying to finish before Igor turned back around. He had perhaps not counted on Igor being able to see them in the glass.
Igor decided that the gift of the breathless, aching, helpless gladness in the split second before Snap returned his face to its cool English impassivity was one that Igor would wrap up to enjoy for himself later. Of course it was not meant for him, but it had not been kept from him very hard. "Is there something wrong?" he asked, turning back to them. "I don't see anything."
"Oh, sorry, my eyes were ambushed," Rosy said, looking embarrassed, "but it was probably just something like a raven. Or maybe a black swan, you have those here, don't you, Karkaroff?"
"You are ridiculous," Snap informed him, color rising in his pale cheeks.
With hot eyes, Rosy purred, "But am I absurd?"
"Certainly," Snap agreed with a scornful sniff, his arm tightening. "I might go so far as to say daft."
Rosy snuggled in as though being insulted were all he could wish, and said magnanimously, "But you were saying, about predators?"
"That the successful ones, which is to say, the ones whose species thrive—don't make me thump you," he threatened Rosy. Igor silently agreed that Rosy looked likely to crawl into Snap's face again. He appreciated this warning, for his own part. "The successful ones have senses that are particularly keyed to help them pick out their prey. Their prey, successfully. Birds of prey being outrageously farsighted and able to pick out small, well-camouflaged animals at distances that would stagger human vision and so on."
"Don't make me make you thump me," Rosy threatened, smiling.
Snap's mouth quirked a bit. "Well, consider. In the predator-prey relationship under consideration, if the predator wanted to find the easiest possible target, what would it look for?"
Rosy tilted his head. As he had not bound back his hair for the day, this resulted in far more ostentatious Anglo-Saxon sunshiny gleaming than was, Igor considered, in any way necessary. "Solo target, few connections, appearance of not being well, er, groomed…?"
"No, you're thinking like a human," Snap corrected him. "You're thinking like a human sort of criminal predator who'd like to avoid being caught, or at least to avoid being punished in any meaningful way. Put yourself in the mind of a predator's looking for food and isn't interested in the social behavior or connections or consequences attached to the prey animal. Don't think about what's smart. Think about what's easy."
Rosy did think, and after a moment he began to look discomfited. He shook his head, and said with a note of stubbornness, "Not following, S—Snape."
Snap looked down at him with affectionate skepticism. "Yes, you are."
Shaking his head again, Rosy said, "No, I… I have a picture, but I don't have it, if you see what I mean."
"Of course you have a picture," Snap murmured. At speaking volume, he asked, "What's the picture?"
Rosy wagged his shoulders in a so-and-so sideways motion against Snap's chest, which Igor considered to be showing off. "Sort of… snakes and baby birds, which as we know doesn't actually happen—"
"It certainly doesn't," Snap agreed, rolling his eyes.
"And that time in, what was it, fourth year? When you made Bagman wet his pants."
"I did not make him wet hi—for pity's sake," Snap growled. "It's not as if I hexed the idiot."
Rosy grinned, and now he was inviting Igor to share a joke Igor didn't understand, which was much stranger. "No, you just threw him against a wall and hissed at him."
"I didn't throw him against the wall. Anyway, he tried to cheat off my exam," Snap said sulkily. "He deserved it."
"He certainly did," Rosy agreed, and squeezed him soothingly around the back of the neck. "Anyway, that's the picture I have. Are you thinking about the smelling fear thing?"
"No, although it wouldn't surprise me in the least. Smelling fear is useful because it allows a predator to track prey that's running away. But suppose, Evan, that… The myth about snakes is, of course, merely a combination of lidless eyes having a certain quality to them and prey species sometimes having an instinctive freeze reaction to a threat, rather than to fight or flee. Suppose, though, that in a particular species that is preyed upon, some of the members are, for whatever reason, entranced, or let us say fascinated, or even vulnerable to becoming fascinated, by the predatory species, or its specific members."
There was a brief silence, during which the two looked at each other. Igor could not read Rosy's expression, except that there was something taken from behind and something reluctant in its suddenly still waters. He could read Snap's easily, for Snap was communicating pointedness very strongly, but Igor did not know what he meant by it.
"…Mm," Rosy grunted, eventually.
With the look and in the voice of a man who suspected that his audience would pretend not to understand him if given the least opportunity, Snap pressed at him, "A successful predatory species would develop senses to detect prey fascination. A successful culture of predators would develop propaganda to encourage it, behavior to feed into that propaganda and capitalize on it. A successful culture of predators who had been hunted to endangerment, Evan, would learn to fear fascination, and to eliminate its sources before they could gather or disseminate information about them."
Rosy looked at him uneasily. Igor thought that Rosy looked as if he wanted to protest, but wasn't exactly certain of how to do it. Igor still didn't know what they were talking about.
"No," Snap answered Rosy's silence as if he had spoken after all. "I don't know what we're dealing with. Which is rather the point, isn't it? We don't know. We don't know, but Moody was right, it's a dangerous proposition even without complicating factors. With them, I mislike the odds. Insofar as they're calculable. Which they're not. I'm not stupid enough to go in without backup, Evan, but your state of mind wasn't encouraging."
"I do not know where you wish to go," Igor put in, "but the Balkan Embassy will extend more security than even," he put his hand over his heart and gave a half-bow, "a capable guide, within reason, should it be needed. Your Ministry was most clear that we should be prepared for such a request."
"And a trained defense specialist who knows the region in question well might well be most welcome," Snap replied, more smoothly than was his wont. "But while such assistance would know the area and might be able to predict the danger, they would not be my eaxlgestealla; they could not predict me."
Igor frowned as Rosy's face changed in another way he could not read. He couldn't read Rosy's face, but Rosy suddenly did not look small at all, or as if his soft, sleek, tailored clothes would suit him. "I beg your pardon, Snap," Igor said, although he was having some difficulty seeing Snap past the Rosy who was sitting on him, now that Rosy had straightened and stopped curling his shoulders in. "My translation spell does not know this word."
"No," Snap agreed, simply and unhelpfully, and Igor thought there was a smile in his voice if there was not one on his face. "No, it wouldn't."
"Dead language, Karkaroff, your spell's fine, I shouldn't worry," Rosy assured him absently, sliding off of Snap into the other corner of the sofa, the better to gaze at him as if he were some sort of a puzzle, or a sunrise to be painted. "You said my state of mind wasn't encouraging?"
"Well, you have a new toy, now, don't you," Snap asked him sourly. "I should bring your sketchbook along and work on it while I negotiate, if I were you."
Rosy sighed. "As things I might have been set to go, it could be so much worse, S—Snape. You do realize."
"Evan. First, you were just sitting on me. I appreciate the effort, but under the circumstances, really. I think we may take it as read that Karkaroff understands we are on a first-name basis." Rosy's nose made the scratchy noise of having a laugh inside of it, although he did Igor the courtesy of trying to trap it there. Igor, in return, did him the courtesy of pretending to have heard none of this. Snap surged ahead, perhaps, Igor thought from looking at his face, wishing to get past it as quickly as possible. "Second, do you understand how… how rust works? I'm sure we've been through this."
Rosy looked exasperated. "No, I do know what you mean, but what I don't know is what you expect me to do about it."
"Just… be aware," Snap said, his eyes gone starkly naked in a way that Igor had to look away from, as he had not looked away from them in the window. "We do what we must, but we do it because we must, for the reasons we stepped onto the path to begin with. Not because we allow some joy the path can tempt us with to consume us. We remember not only who we are, not only what we want, but what these sticky stones we tread are made of. We remember that the warm aroma of ambergris is nothing more than whale bile, and that although the whale's body wants to be rid of it, when we have it, it's more usually because human greed killed the damn whale."
Igor did not mind this. It was sometimes difficult for him to follow Snap's conversation when they visited the apothercaries, as well. Igor did not understand how ambergris and whales had come into the conversation, but this was what speaking with Snap was like. At times, it was necessary to simply accept that one had become lost, and begin to look for the new landmarks.
Or, when Igor was very lost, to ask for directions. Igor would not allow a tourist to see him do this when it came to travel, but as a translator of culture it was not permitted to be so proud. "But what is this danger, my friends?" he asked. "Please, you must forgive me. After all this speaking of these animals and those, I do not think you are wishing to visit the Zoopark or the Zoo Sofia, yes?"
"Correct," Snap nodded sharply. "Not a zoo, and not in Sofia. Not in Bulgaria at all, in fact. Your Embassy's remit extends through all the Balkan states. Yes?"
"It is so," Igor agreed proudly. "Although of course Bulgaria is the greatest and the most beautiful, and all throughout the mountains the children come to Durmstrang to learn."
"Quite," Rosy agreed, with his eyelids lowered and in that murmuring tone he used when he was agreeing like an Englisher, without agreeing at all.
"Not currently the point at issue," Snap said, rolling his eyes. Igor thought this eye-rolling was for them both, and so it pleased him, because one did not expect a foreigner to have enough understanding to agree that Bulgaria was the most beautiful of all nations, even an intelligent foreigner. He had not been brought up to see things in the proper manner; one could explain matters patiently but it was of no use to blame him for being foolish in this way. "The point is that you, or this within-reason Embassy security you mention or both, can guide and guard us within Romania."
Igor had been working at the Embassy for nearly a year now, and so he did not say Romania, bah! and spit on the ground. As a good guide, he said, "It can of course be done, Snap. What do you wish to see, in Romania?"
Rosy sighed with a face of resignation, and said in the gloomiest of voices, "Vampires."
Igor wondered whether, if he should go back to the Embassy at once and turn in his resignation, his mother would tell all the women of the village that he was a coward, or only beat him like a child.
Prizes!
All questions are answered by the characters. Their veracity, civility, and sanity are answered for by no one.
Plutoplex: If you could only be proficient in one spell, which spell would you pick? I'll ask Dumbledore and Severus.
Albus: Why, I think I should have to choose one which would bring peace into people's hearts. Although one should never underestimate the power of a wonderful cup of hot tea, or a favorite sweet, or a gift of hand-knitted socks from a caring relative in winter...
Severus: ...And let's by no means examine when one might choose to bring peace into the hearts of others, or how much peace, no indeed. Let's just assume that we're bringing it only when they're sad, and not when they're attempting to sort out a pressing and difficult moral quandary, or are justly angry, or uncomfortable because we've suggested they do something they know damn well they don't want to do. Let's just assume that 'bringing peace into the heart' is a temporary effect that leaves the heart capable of feeling other things later, that leaves the mind intact, that is not, in fact, simply a metaphor for death...
Albus: Now, Severus, you do me a disservice there.
Severus: Note at which point he protests.
Albus: I protested at the point where you seemed to be winding down, my dear boy. I assure you, I've no wish to interrupt! As well as being rude, it would deprive me of the pleasure of watching you debate. And you were asked, yourself, you know.
Severus: I don't understand the question. What counts as a spell? Are potions spells? What about runic engravements and arrays? A better argument for them can be made than for potions, but the distinction becomes distinctly fuzzy when we venture into the realms of Transfiguration. And then, when we consider those Dark Arts which aren't black magic, they almost by definition aren't spells as the term is usually defined, but informal and unstructured expressions of will, imagination, and innate power...
Albus: (leans back in his chair and knits happily)
Evan: (in a stage whisper) (points at Albus) Persuasion that feels like safety. (points at Severus) Confusion that feels like conviction. (Flashes a peace sign and curls up for a nap)
Severus: ...Says the Greek Chorus who looks like a Viking fop.
Evan: See? Conviction that looks like confusion! I'm on your side, Spike! :D :D :D
Severus: ...
Melodyssister: My first question, basically to everyone in the older generation: Why are they not saying out loud that Lord Voldemort is Tom Riddle? If Evan has already worked out that there is something fishy going on, surely he's not the only one? This is something that really bothered me in canon, and I'd be very interested to read your explanation.
A/N: I feel like I forgot something in between when I read this question and when I actually wrote the answers to it. So.. in case I ever remember that, don't hold me to these? Especially to what his admiring Slytherin classmates say... n,n;;;
Darius: When a fellow goes to all the trouble of having his name legally changed and obliviating the clerks and stealing all the records and not setting fire to them until they're well out of Ministry sensor range, it's only decent to go along with it, even if it does make conversations a touch cumbersome.
Abraxas: It gets rather painful when one forgets. And I don't merely mean the initial chilly silence.
Walburga: Why would anyone mention that jumped up mudblood under any name? It would only give him an exaggerated idea of his own importance, and he needs no help in that department.
Minerva: You must be joking, and I must say that it's in very poor taste. Poor Tom never came back from his trip to Europe, and just because we never found out what had happened to him is no reason to besmirch his name. In retrospect, I wonder if we shouldn't have tried harder to dissuade little Quin Quirrell when he wanted to go, but he was so excited about doing better at DADA in his second year—not to mention the alehouse tour, or whatever he called it. He was almost more excited about that, I think, to tell you the truth; he couldn't even see how icy Severus got every time he wanted to talk about German beer, and he was usually quite a sensitive lad.
Filius: (coughs) You see how it is. Riddle was quite a popular boy; if he was content to bury his old reputation along with his given name, who were we to argue?
Melodyssister: Second, and more frivolous: What do the various characters smell in Amortentia?
Lily: Well, I can smell that sort of hot-summer-on-grass-sunshine, smell, only not hay, but—
Severus: If Miss Granger had answered that question in my class, in a year when she knew herself to be surrounded by enemies—and not merely potential spies, but enemies in that very room with her, enemies both known by her to be opportunistic themselves and very strongly suspected of having sound familial connections to more bloodthirsty enemies yet—
Horace: Now, really, Severus, what possible harm—
Severus: IN A YEAR when the Ministry had already begun putting its nearly useless broadsides whose sole useful point was to remind people that their best screen against imposters is intimate knowledge! If she'd given up such personal information in my class, with our without prompting, I would have—
Lily: Docked her twenty points?
Severus: Given her a detention for stupidity, and docked her fifty points as a fee for my having to obliviate the entire bloody class to keep her and her feckless twits of friends safe again.
Lily: Evan, tell him he's being unreasonable.
Evan: (juggles satsumas/clementines and hums like no one has been talking the whole time)
Severus: You're using a levitation charm, you can't juggle.
Evan: It's still juggling if it's magic!
Lily and Severus: No, it's not.