dramaturgy (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dramaturgy) wrote2005-11-08 04:55 pm
dramaturgy) wrote2005-11-08 04:55 pm
Happy Birthday to Heather - Fic - Harry Potter - Peace, Imagine That
This is, um. Well. The ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
propheting fic that she bought from me, so it's kind of a birthday present that she bought for herself, but nonetheless, it is here. She asked for Roger/Lav and... I gave her Roger/Madeline with a bit of Lavender, so I guess that's about 50%. Par for the course, anyway.
Um. Much like with the AUBonesfic, this probably won't make sense to people who dont' know what 'verse I'm working with, but the lowdown is that we were in this Post-Hogwarts game together where the Death Eaters were winning and basically going everywhere they possibly could, and then when the game died we kept playing from time to time because we love our characters so much. So what's happened is that Roger went with a group of Ministry people to New York to get zomghelp from the Americans, but the Americansare being jerks are being slightly difficult, and so they're hanging out there. He took Lavender with him because it's twue wuv. Ha.
So. Um. You could read if you'd like, but this is all for Heather. Happy birthday Bean!
Needless to say, Roger and Lavender had not been expecting it when Roger’s sister suddenly Apparated into their flat on 71st during Saturday morning breakfast. Lavender jumped up from her seat at the breakfast counter that usually became a lunch and dinner counter as well if not covered in legal documents and put the table between herself and the intruder. Roger had his wand leveled in half a second, poised for action that Auror training had taught him.
Madeline Davies’s blue eyes appeared over the top of her sunglasses and she looked at her brother. “What happened to ‘I’d be welcome in New York’?” she asked, the corner of her mouth twitching.
“Damnit, Madeline,” Roger breathed, lower his wand immediately.
“Well?” she said, standing straight with her hands expectantly on her hips, sunglasses now in one hand.
“Let me get my heart out of my ears and my stomach out of my chest,” he half-snapped, leaning back on the stool. The blood was pounding in his ears and he was slightly light-headed from the adrenaline. “Lav, Maddie, you know each other.”
Lavender let go of the chair, her knuckles had begun to go white. “Hello,” she said, thinking she might want to throttle Roger’s sister and ask why she’d just burst in on them like that.
“Bonjour,” Madeline replied conversationally, sitting in a chair at the table. “Don’t you have wards on this place? Any old Death Eater could just Apparate in here.”
Roger was going to ask back why exactly she had tried in that case, but the point was moot. “I do have wards on here.”
“He’s not stupid,” Lavender felt it necessary to point out.
“Of course not stupid, but boys don’t always think straight,” Madeline said.
“Your brother is a straight-thinking boy,” she informed her in return.
“Anyway,” Roger interrupted, deciding that this was quickly becoming Rather Uncomfortable. “The wards allow blood relations to Apparate in and out.”
“What if I were a Death Eater?” Madeline postulated.
“You’re not,” Roger evaded the question, pretending not to notice the startled look on Lavender’s face. “Why are you here, Maddie?” Pause. “It’s not mum and dad, is it?”
“Merlin’s balls, no, Rog.”
“Madeline Elissa.”
“Well, anyway,” Madeline waved it off. “No, it’s not mum and dad, but they’re still hale and hardy and want to stick it out at home.”
Roger nodded, swallowing hard. While Madeline had gotten herself settled in wizarding France after Hogwarts safe from the long arms of the Death Eaters and he had brought Lavender with him to New York in order to plead their case with the American wizarding government, their parents had refused to leave their home. They said they would rather die in their country rather than exile. Roger hardly thought of it as exile, self-imposed or otherwise, but he knew the truth anyway, and so did Madeline. Leaving would mean that they had chosen a side and that they had something to be frightened of. But eventually the Death Eaters would do away with those who were being neither help nor hindrance, and Roger hoped they could get the Americans to see reason before that day came.
But still, it was a relief. “So what is it?”
Madeline suddenly became silent, shifting slightly. The kitchen rang with silence and the sound of the street eight floors below was the only sound otherwise. Then, slowly, Madeline lifted her left hand and held it in front of her face, as if it were a shield. A slight move of her hand, and a diamond on a very important finger. Lavender’s eyes widened, and Roger froze. “I better be seeing things,” he finally said.
“You’re not,” Madeline told him, still not taking her hand down. “I’m getting married, Roger.”
Roger slumped back against the counter, rubbing his hand over his face.
“It’s a beautiful ring,” Lavender said helpfully.
Roger obviously didn’t find it very helpful. He Looked at Lavender and then turned back to Madeline. “We’re going for a walk,” he told her summoning his trainers from the small front corridor and putting them on his feet. He gave her another look. Her clothes would pass for Muggle, especially in New York. He moved towards Lavender and gave her a quick kiss on the mouth and said, “We’ll be back soon.”
Lavender raised an eyebrow at him and pulled his head down to whisper in his ear. “Be nice with her, love, she’s come all this way.”
Roger didn’t find it a particularly taxing expenditure of energy to Floo internationally from Paris to New York, but didn’t think this was a time or a place for an argument, so he nodded. She kissed him again, this time on the cheek. “Go on, then.”
“Back soon,” he emphasized to her before guiding Madeline out of the flat by her elbow and down the hall. He pressed the call button on the lift and she gave him a confused look. “Muggles live in this building. We’re not going to Apparate in and out in plain sight,” he said. “Not to mention it looks weird on their security tapes if they see us coming in and not going out.”
“But I won’t look weird going out when I didn’t come in the traditional way?” she raised an eyebrow.
He didn’t answer her and pulled her into the elevator with him. They descended to the ground floor and went out the front door. At this point, she was apparently becoming quite annoyed with her brother’s manner, and jerked her arm from his grasp and straightened her skirt. It was obvious enough what she was thinking there, and so Roger stuffed his hands in his pockets. They walked down 71st and then up the avenue a bit, and Roger turned them in to Central Park. They went past the Imagine mosaic and Strawberry Fields for a bit and sat on a bench. They could see the Bethesda fountain, but were away from the crowd, which wasn’t easy to do in New York. For a long time they were silent, until Roger spoke up. “So talk. What’s going on, Maddie?”
“Nothing’s wrong, Roger, I just told you I was getting married, for the love of Merlin,” she snapped. “So, I don’t know, you can’t just smile and be happy for me?”
“Are you pregnant?” he asked, and then blushed. That had come out before he’d had a chance to think that one over in his head, and from looking at Maddie, now he was going to have to pay for his lack of foresight.
“No, I’m not,” she said in a low tone as her face turned the color of a radish. “I’m not and I am appalled that you have the nerve to even say that to my face. I’m twenty not eleven and am responsible enough to make sure that I do not get into any trouble, particularly of that sort.”
“You are, but is he?”
“Roger.”
“Well, excuse me, then. An hour ago I thought I was going to get to spend the day doing absolutely nothing with Lavender and my sister Apparates in and tells me she’s getting married.”
“Because I thought you’d like to actually know beforehand if you wanted to come or something instead of just getting a postcard from the honeymoon.”
She had a point, and he didn’t want to admit it. He probably shouldn’t have even asked her that, and maybe even dragged her out away from the flat. It probably would have just been easier to say “That’s nice, Maddie” and feed her whatever they had in the cupboards.
But no one ever said that it was going to be easy.
“Do mum and dad know?” he asked.
“No,” she answered, and exhaled heavily to blow her fringe out of her face. “Although given the reaction you’ve just displayed, I’m not sure how to tell them. The popping in and saying ‘Hi! I’m getting married!’ doesn’t seem to work so well.”
“It’s just—“ Roger wasn’t sure how to list all his objections. She was very young. No one in the family knew this man. She hadn’t been living in France all that long, she couldn’t have possibly known him all that long. That was presuming that the man was French. “You’re so young,” he finished lamely.
“I’ve always been young to you,” she said, facing him. “Just like you’ve always been old.”
Little sisters should not make sense. Ever. “You’re only twenty,” he said. “It’s not all that old.”
“You’re only twenty-seven and becoming a curmudgeon,” she snapped in return. She turned away from him and crossed her arms across her chest, and Roger nearly laughed. He wondered if she knew how petulant she looked at that moment. He’d seen the profile many times. Her eyebrows were furrowed in a look of indignation, and seemed to make the slant of her nose more severe, and mouth firmly set – he’d heard that this was a look they shared, but always refused to believe it.
“I just – I think you’re a little young,” he repeated.
“You said that. I still think that’s all shite.”
“I guess I don’t understand then,” he snapped, and then winced. It came out a lot harsher then he meant it to. “Just… why?”
“I love him,” she said simply, as if Roger’s question were the stupidest question in the world. “I love him, he loves me. He gets that I’m never going to like marmalade on toast and I get that he is tone deaf… but he still listens when I’m playing and I let him keep marmalade in the flat. It’s simple as that and I’m not sure why I’m explaining, you’ve been in love.”
Am in love, he thought, and his heart trembled in his chest at his word choice. “Love will wait,” he said.
“No it won’t, Roger. Not these days. Death Eaters are starting to sneak into every country on the continent and even Brits living abroad aren’t safe. It’s like I’m walking around with a huge target on my back, and I’m just waiting for someone to take aim,” she said, clearly slightly panicked at the idea. Not that he blamed her. For all his little sister’s virtues, bravery was not really one of them. “I thought you of all people would be able to understand love.”
Roger smiled dryly. “Does anyone really understand love?”
“Prat,” she muttered. “No, I guess not. Certainly not me.”
“Not me, either,” he told her. She seemed to have said her piece, so he tried to continue. “I’m… try to understand, I’m just trying to wrap my head around it,” he said. “It’s quite a bit to consider. My baby sister, after all.”
“I’m not a baby,” she said.
“Yeah right, midget,” he smirked, tagging her and then jumping up and running away the way they’d come.
“Not a midget either!” she yelled, struggling to keep up with him in her heeled shoes. He laughed over his shoulder at her and then she finally caught up to him, jumping on him. “Got you!”
“No you haven’t,” he said, trying to throw her off in any way humanly possible, but she had too tight of a hold. For an Auror, this was just embarrassing. He could defend himself against any number of fell things, creatures and Dark wizards, but he couldn’t throw his sister off his back. “…Yes, yes you have,” he corrected himself.
“Ha!” she cheered triumphantly.
“And now you can get off,” he said.
“Getting too old to carry around your baby sister?” she teased.
“You’re not a baby,” he quoted at her. “Actually it’s more that your knees are far too boney to be sticking in my side.”
“Oh, fine,” she replied and slid to the ground. Her feet flat on the pavement now, she looked up at him and asked, “You understand now?”
He understood well enough, if he’d just thought to look at her. The look in her eyes said she wouldn’t be able to stand the thought of dying before she had the chance to commit herself to this man completely. “I do,” he told her. “Let’s go back to the flat.”
Madeline nodded, and they walked out the way they came in. She stopped to look curiously at the Imagine mosaic. Roger had seen it before, of course, and looked at it again. “What does it mean?”
Imagine.
“A famous Muggle by the name of John Lennon wrote a song called ‘Imagine’… it’s about peace,” he said. “You had a roommate who liked the Beatles, right?” He’d had two, she had to have at least one.
“Oh, right,” she said, looking at the mosaic again. Small bouquets of cheap flowers laid along the edge, and others stared at it in contemplation, another pulled out a camera and took a picture.
“He was a Beatle too,” Roger added inconsequentially. Madeline stayed in silent deliberation for a moment later, and he did not interrupt her further.
“Peace. Imagine that,” she said quietly, and laughed, but there was no joy in her laughter.
“It will happen,” he told her, squeezing her hand and taking her out of the park.
propheting fic that she bought from me, so it's kind of a birthday present that she bought for herself, but nonetheless, it is here. She asked for Roger/Lav and... I gave her Roger/Madeline with a bit of Lavender, so I guess that's about 50%. Par for the course, anyway.Um. Much like with the AUBonesfic, this probably won't make sense to people who dont' know what 'verse I'm working with, but the lowdown is that we were in this Post-Hogwarts game together where the Death Eaters were winning and basically going everywhere they possibly could, and then when the game died we kept playing from time to time because we love our characters so much. So what's happened is that Roger went with a group of Ministry people to New York to get zomghelp from the Americans, but the Americans
So. Um. You could read if you'd like, but this is all for Heather. Happy birthday Bean!
Needless to say, Roger and Lavender had not been expecting it when Roger’s sister suddenly Apparated into their flat on 71st during Saturday morning breakfast. Lavender jumped up from her seat at the breakfast counter that usually became a lunch and dinner counter as well if not covered in legal documents and put the table between herself and the intruder. Roger had his wand leveled in half a second, poised for action that Auror training had taught him.
Madeline Davies’s blue eyes appeared over the top of her sunglasses and she looked at her brother. “What happened to ‘I’d be welcome in New York’?” she asked, the corner of her mouth twitching.
“Damnit, Madeline,” Roger breathed, lower his wand immediately.
“Well?” she said, standing straight with her hands expectantly on her hips, sunglasses now in one hand.
“Let me get my heart out of my ears and my stomach out of my chest,” he half-snapped, leaning back on the stool. The blood was pounding in his ears and he was slightly light-headed from the adrenaline. “Lav, Maddie, you know each other.”
Lavender let go of the chair, her knuckles had begun to go white. “Hello,” she said, thinking she might want to throttle Roger’s sister and ask why she’d just burst in on them like that.
“Bonjour,” Madeline replied conversationally, sitting in a chair at the table. “Don’t you have wards on this place? Any old Death Eater could just Apparate in here.”
Roger was going to ask back why exactly she had tried in that case, but the point was moot. “I do have wards on here.”
“He’s not stupid,” Lavender felt it necessary to point out.
“Of course not stupid, but boys don’t always think straight,” Madeline said.
“Your brother is a straight-thinking boy,” she informed her in return.
“Anyway,” Roger interrupted, deciding that this was quickly becoming Rather Uncomfortable. “The wards allow blood relations to Apparate in and out.”
“What if I were a Death Eater?” Madeline postulated.
“You’re not,” Roger evaded the question, pretending not to notice the startled look on Lavender’s face. “Why are you here, Maddie?” Pause. “It’s not mum and dad, is it?”
“Merlin’s balls, no, Rog.”
“Madeline Elissa.”
“Well, anyway,” Madeline waved it off. “No, it’s not mum and dad, but they’re still hale and hardy and want to stick it out at home.”
Roger nodded, swallowing hard. While Madeline had gotten herself settled in wizarding France after Hogwarts safe from the long arms of the Death Eaters and he had brought Lavender with him to New York in order to plead their case with the American wizarding government, their parents had refused to leave their home. They said they would rather die in their country rather than exile. Roger hardly thought of it as exile, self-imposed or otherwise, but he knew the truth anyway, and so did Madeline. Leaving would mean that they had chosen a side and that they had something to be frightened of. But eventually the Death Eaters would do away with those who were being neither help nor hindrance, and Roger hoped they could get the Americans to see reason before that day came.
But still, it was a relief. “So what is it?”
Madeline suddenly became silent, shifting slightly. The kitchen rang with silence and the sound of the street eight floors below was the only sound otherwise. Then, slowly, Madeline lifted her left hand and held it in front of her face, as if it were a shield. A slight move of her hand, and a diamond on a very important finger. Lavender’s eyes widened, and Roger froze. “I better be seeing things,” he finally said.
“You’re not,” Madeline told him, still not taking her hand down. “I’m getting married, Roger.”
Roger slumped back against the counter, rubbing his hand over his face.
“It’s a beautiful ring,” Lavender said helpfully.
Roger obviously didn’t find it very helpful. He Looked at Lavender and then turned back to Madeline. “We’re going for a walk,” he told her summoning his trainers from the small front corridor and putting them on his feet. He gave her another look. Her clothes would pass for Muggle, especially in New York. He moved towards Lavender and gave her a quick kiss on the mouth and said, “We’ll be back soon.”
Lavender raised an eyebrow at him and pulled his head down to whisper in his ear. “Be nice with her, love, she’s come all this way.”
Roger didn’t find it a particularly taxing expenditure of energy to Floo internationally from Paris to New York, but didn’t think this was a time or a place for an argument, so he nodded. She kissed him again, this time on the cheek. “Go on, then.”
“Back soon,” he emphasized to her before guiding Madeline out of the flat by her elbow and down the hall. He pressed the call button on the lift and she gave him a confused look. “Muggles live in this building. We’re not going to Apparate in and out in plain sight,” he said. “Not to mention it looks weird on their security tapes if they see us coming in and not going out.”
“But I won’t look weird going out when I didn’t come in the traditional way?” she raised an eyebrow.
He didn’t answer her and pulled her into the elevator with him. They descended to the ground floor and went out the front door. At this point, she was apparently becoming quite annoyed with her brother’s manner, and jerked her arm from his grasp and straightened her skirt. It was obvious enough what she was thinking there, and so Roger stuffed his hands in his pockets. They walked down 71st and then up the avenue a bit, and Roger turned them in to Central Park. They went past the Imagine mosaic and Strawberry Fields for a bit and sat on a bench. They could see the Bethesda fountain, but were away from the crowd, which wasn’t easy to do in New York. For a long time they were silent, until Roger spoke up. “So talk. What’s going on, Maddie?”
“Nothing’s wrong, Roger, I just told you I was getting married, for the love of Merlin,” she snapped. “So, I don’t know, you can’t just smile and be happy for me?”
“Are you pregnant?” he asked, and then blushed. That had come out before he’d had a chance to think that one over in his head, and from looking at Maddie, now he was going to have to pay for his lack of foresight.
“No, I’m not,” she said in a low tone as her face turned the color of a radish. “I’m not and I am appalled that you have the nerve to even say that to my face. I’m twenty not eleven and am responsible enough to make sure that I do not get into any trouble, particularly of that sort.”
“You are, but is he?”
“Roger.”
“Well, excuse me, then. An hour ago I thought I was going to get to spend the day doing absolutely nothing with Lavender and my sister Apparates in and tells me she’s getting married.”
“Because I thought you’d like to actually know beforehand if you wanted to come or something instead of just getting a postcard from the honeymoon.”
She had a point, and he didn’t want to admit it. He probably shouldn’t have even asked her that, and maybe even dragged her out away from the flat. It probably would have just been easier to say “That’s nice, Maddie” and feed her whatever they had in the cupboards.
But no one ever said that it was going to be easy.
“Do mum and dad know?” he asked.
“No,” she answered, and exhaled heavily to blow her fringe out of her face. “Although given the reaction you’ve just displayed, I’m not sure how to tell them. The popping in and saying ‘Hi! I’m getting married!’ doesn’t seem to work so well.”
“It’s just—“ Roger wasn’t sure how to list all his objections. She was very young. No one in the family knew this man. She hadn’t been living in France all that long, she couldn’t have possibly known him all that long. That was presuming that the man was French. “You’re so young,” he finished lamely.
“I’ve always been young to you,” she said, facing him. “Just like you’ve always been old.”
Little sisters should not make sense. Ever. “You’re only twenty,” he said. “It’s not all that old.”
“You’re only twenty-seven and becoming a curmudgeon,” she snapped in return. She turned away from him and crossed her arms across her chest, and Roger nearly laughed. He wondered if she knew how petulant she looked at that moment. He’d seen the profile many times. Her eyebrows were furrowed in a look of indignation, and seemed to make the slant of her nose more severe, and mouth firmly set – he’d heard that this was a look they shared, but always refused to believe it.
“I just – I think you’re a little young,” he repeated.
“You said that. I still think that’s all shite.”
“I guess I don’t understand then,” he snapped, and then winced. It came out a lot harsher then he meant it to. “Just… why?”
“I love him,” she said simply, as if Roger’s question were the stupidest question in the world. “I love him, he loves me. He gets that I’m never going to like marmalade on toast and I get that he is tone deaf… but he still listens when I’m playing and I let him keep marmalade in the flat. It’s simple as that and I’m not sure why I’m explaining, you’ve been in love.”
Am in love, he thought, and his heart trembled in his chest at his word choice. “Love will wait,” he said.
“No it won’t, Roger. Not these days. Death Eaters are starting to sneak into every country on the continent and even Brits living abroad aren’t safe. It’s like I’m walking around with a huge target on my back, and I’m just waiting for someone to take aim,” she said, clearly slightly panicked at the idea. Not that he blamed her. For all his little sister’s virtues, bravery was not really one of them. “I thought you of all people would be able to understand love.”
Roger smiled dryly. “Does anyone really understand love?”
“Prat,” she muttered. “No, I guess not. Certainly not me.”
“Not me, either,” he told her. She seemed to have said her piece, so he tried to continue. “I’m… try to understand, I’m just trying to wrap my head around it,” he said. “It’s quite a bit to consider. My baby sister, after all.”
“I’m not a baby,” she said.
“Yeah right, midget,” he smirked, tagging her and then jumping up and running away the way they’d come.
“Not a midget either!” she yelled, struggling to keep up with him in her heeled shoes. He laughed over his shoulder at her and then she finally caught up to him, jumping on him. “Got you!”
“No you haven’t,” he said, trying to throw her off in any way humanly possible, but she had too tight of a hold. For an Auror, this was just embarrassing. He could defend himself against any number of fell things, creatures and Dark wizards, but he couldn’t throw his sister off his back. “…Yes, yes you have,” he corrected himself.
“Ha!” she cheered triumphantly.
“And now you can get off,” he said.
“Getting too old to carry around your baby sister?” she teased.
“You’re not a baby,” he quoted at her. “Actually it’s more that your knees are far too boney to be sticking in my side.”
“Oh, fine,” she replied and slid to the ground. Her feet flat on the pavement now, she looked up at him and asked, “You understand now?”
He understood well enough, if he’d just thought to look at her. The look in her eyes said she wouldn’t be able to stand the thought of dying before she had the chance to commit herself to this man completely. “I do,” he told her. “Let’s go back to the flat.”
Madeline nodded, and they walked out the way they came in. She stopped to look curiously at the Imagine mosaic. Roger had seen it before, of course, and looked at it again. “What does it mean?”
Imagine.
“A famous Muggle by the name of John Lennon wrote a song called ‘Imagine’… it’s about peace,” he said. “You had a roommate who liked the Beatles, right?” He’d had two, she had to have at least one.
“Oh, right,” she said, looking at the mosaic again. Small bouquets of cheap flowers laid along the edge, and others stared at it in contemplation, another pulled out a camera and took a picture.
“He was a Beatle too,” Roger added inconsequentially. Madeline stayed in silent deliberation for a moment later, and he did not interrupt her further.
“Peace. Imagine that,” she said quietly, and laughed, but there was no joy in her laughter.
“It will happen,” he told her, squeezing her hand and taking her out of the park.
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Your writing style makes me wibble in joy, Liz.
You are brilliant. As is this present. And oh my gosh, the children need squeezes. ♥