She knows the Heimlich she won't choke, not Daphne (farsick) wrote in caged, @ 2013-12-24 14:23:00
Who: Blaise Zabini and Daphne Greengrass. What: A day at the museum is only marginally less eyebrow-raising than a trip to Diagon Alley. Where: The London Museum of Wizard History. When: Monday, 23 December 1997. Early afternoon. Status: Complete log.
When she met Blaise in Diagon Alley a few hours past, it had only taken them a few minutes of wandering before there was unspoken mutual agreement that it was not the place to be today. Or, perhaps, at all; not with the war on. Darkened shop windows and the occasional blown-out store front signalled probable arrests and otherwise miserable states of business. Then there was the prevalence of the sorts of people generally only found in Knockturn, if that. Daphne and Blaise had passed by at least three hags, greenish-tinged skin and tatty robes and all, and a tall, spindly warlock who leered at Daphne wolfishly as they made their way past and tried to avoid eye contact. It seemed only a matter of time before a chance encounter with a particularly desperate and daring Wandless, or worse, and Daphne couldn’t help thinking of Sully and Tracey’s experience months before. By the time they’d hit Ollivander’s--also an empty, darkened shell, cracked windows unmended--the two Slytherin students decided to make their plans for lunch at the museum an immediate and formal tour. It was open and, last she’d checked in June, largely unaffected by the winds of war.
That had been the assumption, at least. It was nice to find the place largely empty. Daphne supposed not many people considered a day at the museum a fantastic way to spend a free afternoon two days before Christmas. Last-second shopping no doubt took precedent there, and she was glad she’d sent out her gifts that morning and didn’t have to worry over it any longer. The museum was, at first glance, as it always was. Security Wizards and Witches roamed exhibits in silence, their deep purple robes marking them as staff as they kept a watchful eye over anyone who dared pull a camera or get too close to an artefact or display piece; every so often, a curator shuffled by, evidently in a hurry; and, in another room, the voice of a tour guide floated over the otherwise relative quiet.
Rather doubting Blaise’s especial enthusiasm for their choice of diversion today (or, if he had any enthusiasm, that it would reveal itself in any way whatsoever), Daphne had taken it upon herself to act as guide, having been here countless times since she was small and often counting it among her favorite places to be within the confines of her home country. She sometimes wondered what it was like to be so utterly unimpressed by everything one happened across, and today was entertaining herself by attempting to mirror some of Blaise’s detached demeanor.
As they came to pause in front of a display on the Soap Blizzard of 1378--complete with an enormous, glass-domed, soap-covered diorama of the extent of the storm, which evidently encompassed most of England and Scotland--Daphne shuffled her feet a little and looked at it judiciously.
“I forgot this one,” she said after a moment, recalling that it hadn’t been out over the summer. “I think they roll the giant snowglobe look out for this time of year especially.”
Although Blaise hadn't expected too much out of Diagon and Knockturn, and it possibly wasn't the nicest thought, he had at least expected them to clear out the wandless for the holidays. Perhaps put them with the Muggles if they were that undesirable. And, frankly, some of the hags could be the Wandless for all he knew. The ones that tried talking to him didn't look any less green or blue from the cold, and he didn't really want them touching him or breathing on him. Snow on the ground was yellowed from their urine.
He had been to plenty of museums before, as a tourist trap and for the occasional fundraiser. His mother was patron at a few, possibly including this one. But many exhibits stayed the same, and Blaise preferred quietly building history rather than re-living it. Objects in the foreign collections were from places he had been, and items similar to them were already seen. Everything mostly felt repetitive to him, until they encountered the globe.
That was new, and at first, he continued looking on with disinterest and mild disdain. That was pretty kitschy. British, but kitschy, although he found the two to be synonyms at times. However, the expression on his face changed slightly, and he leaned a little closer to examine it with greater interest. Of course, it wasn't too much interest, but with the looks Blaise usually wears, interest could only go up.
He scrutinized it a bit, walking around to look at it from another angle as well. Eventually, he straightened and said, "It's good they used expensive soap. The cheap ones melt." He expelled a breath and looked around for the next destination.
“Ah, can you tell?” Daphne replied, mildly interested but mostly wondering what difference it made in this case. It wasn’t as if anyone was using it to wash with. And she found the faint scent of lilac that drifted from the display to be dubious. In her opinion, the whole thing more likely reeked of tallow at the time, but who wanted that these days? “I suppose they can afford it here, so they may as well have.”
She caught Blaise’s gaze wandering already, and had seen this particular display enough times to have the placards practically memorized. Economic bubbles and epic clean-up times and people slipping along the streets for a week, mostly. Following his lead, she straightened up and glanced in the direction of the special exhibits. There was always something interesting to be found there, no matter the season. It had been a while since she’d kept up with the schedule, given how busy she had been at school and otherwise.
Together, Daphne and Blaise made their way to the stone archway that led into that wing of the museum, and she stopped them to have a look over the tall, attention-grabbing posters that flanked each side of the arch. They were identical, bright purple and gold, and depicted a scene that reminded her very much of the statue that stood in the Fountain of Magical Brethren in the Ministry’s atrium. Not the old one, with the goblin and centaur and elf. The one that her mother had described dispassionately over dinner a few nights ago, when the latest changes in policy came up briefly--a Wizard and a Witch sitting proudly atop a throne made of countless Muggle bodies. Here, the image was ostentatiously depicted in full color and topped by the words MAGIC IS MIGHT in heavy lettering, with the words History In The Making! scrolled in fine script beneath.
“Huh.” Daphne planted her hands on her hips and looked from the posters to the banner above the archway, which read the same. Raising an eyebrow and feeling rather annoyed, she threw a look at Blaise. “Special exhibit. Who knew?”
Although Blaise did think being magical was far superior to being a Muggle, and he thought Daphne would feel the same, the image was weirding him out. The Muggles were dressed appallingly -- though that was no surprise. A dangling leg with an absurd platform shoe was a focal point, as were the two on the throne. At the very least, this exhibit was a somewhat new experience. He was quite sure it would be banned in most countries.
Blaise looked back at Daphne with his eyebrows drawn together, allowing a clear "wtf" expression on his face, and it was obvious he thought something about this was tacky. Then he adapted a neutral one and glanced around. First, he looked behind them to see if people were watching them. He looked through the arch. The wall contained writing urging them to go left and follow the timeline through magic's superiority throughout history. It promised art and artefacts. And to the right was an arrow indicating the exhibit's exit and a gift shop.
He crossed his arms and had his usual look of disdain. This was like an exhibit devoted to Muggle Studies class. After reading the wall, he continued facing it but side-eyed Daphne, as if to ask whether they were going in. He was giving off his usual enthusiasm for things.
Daphne, too, thought this hit far too close to an expanded version of their so-called Muggle Studies course, and passingly wondered if they would find the Carrows acting as tour guides upon entering. She could quite easily picture them in the navy robes of a tour guide, a shiny nameplate affixed near their shoulders and a benign grin on their faces. Luckily, no such thing seemed to be the case, though a guide did choose that moment to emerge around the corner to the left. She was plump and blonde and trotted up to them expectantly.
“Good afternoon!” she chirped, looking pointedly from Daphne to Blaise. According to her nameplate, her name was Holly. Daphne didn’t recognize her, and thought she must be new. “My, aren’t you two adorable?”
Daphne barely managed to keep from looking affronted, and instead smiled blandly back at the guide. “Hello. We were just--”
“Have you had a chance to see our new exhibit?” Holly inquired, interrupting Daphne. “It’s only been open since the beginning of the month, and it’s had such marvelous response that we’ve extended its run into the spring!”
“Oh. Well, that’s very nice to hear. I do love the special exhibits.” Daphne threw a look at Blaise. He still appeared utterly unimpressed and unruffled. She thought it highly likely that he was judging each aspect of Holly’s appearance the longer they stood face to face with her. After a moment, Daphne fixed her eyes back on the left-hand path, the beginnings of a timeline etched into the wall. If not for the tour guide’s hawkeyed interest, Daphne may have considered passing it by, in no mood for more insulting proselytism. Now, she had to admit she was morbidly curious.
“Er. I suppose we were just going to take a stroll through. We’re in a bit of a hurry,” she lied, trying to avoid eye contact. She really didn’t feel like being led through this by the nose and made to stop for five minutes in front of each little piece of interest.
Blaise had regarded the woman with undisguised contempt, and he even looked around the room with disinterest in hopes of spotting someone else for the lady to turn to. But oddly -- or conveniently for Holly -- everyone else had vanished. He was, indeed, judging her. For her appearance. For her word choice in calling him and Daphne "adorable". For her line of work in shilling dodgy exhibits to unsuspecting visitors. That two out of three of these things might be beyond her control didn't occur to him.
Her still chirping, "Well, let me start you off…" didn't really endear her to him either. She started reaching for Blaise's elbow. Deterred by his look, she reached for Daphne's instead to guide them through the arch. "You start off this way. The other way is the gift shop…"
Oh God, this woman was not taking the hint. Daphne sensed from that gentle and yet insistent touch to her elbow that Holly the New Tour Guide was set on making sure her adorable charges got their money’s worth and had a proper tour of all the wonderful history they must surely have missed at school. Most would have understood that “take a stroll” and “in a hurry” actually meant “please, leave us alone, we don’t particularly want a formal tour of your creepy exhibit and so you should probably go find someone who cares.” The fact that all of her weird simpering was reminding Daphne far too much of Umbridge was the last nail in the coffin.
She let the guide pull her along for a foot or two, then slowed her gait and began to veer off into the direction of the gift shop.
“Oh, gifts,” Daphne said with the slightest hint of longing and, perhaps, the urgency of someone who had just realized she forgot someone very important on her Christmas list. How convenient. Glancing at her wristwatch to marvel at the time served the extra purpose of relinquishing her elbow from Holly’s grip, and she looked at the woman with an apologetic smile. “I would love to see the whole thing, but I do think this will have to be a trip of its own. Our time is running a bit short, and you know, it seems it’s either this or finish off that shopping list. My sister will positively kill me if I try to get away with gifting her another bag of Galleons this year.”
Holly looked expressly put out, probably because they really were the only ones in this wing right now, but quickly replaced her look of disappointment with another practiced smile. “Quite all right, dears. They’ll be adding new material soon, no doubt. You may be in for more of a treat by waiting anyhow. But here--” She reached into her pocket and extracted two pamphlets, handing one each to Daphne and Blaise. “--take these, and bring that ticket back when you return. You’ll get a percentage off!”
Daphne pocketed the thing after glancing at it, then nudged Blaise before thanking Holly again and beating a hasty path for the gift shop before the museum worker could find anything else to offer them.
“Lucky us,” she sneered under her breath, once they were out of earshot and in the thick of the shop. “As if we need a percentage off anyway.” Still bristling a bit over the intrusion and some other annoyance she couldn’t place, Daphne went on, “What a waste of perfectly useful space.”
Blaise, who had been sorely tempted to make an exit and leave Daphne to fend for herself, had grudgingly followed along for the few steps, all the while continuing to look like he thought this was beneath them. It also took Daphne's nudge for him to take the pamphlet, because he was regarding it like he had been offered a used handkerchief. He glanced around the shop again upon entering, noting where the salesperson was. He paused by a display of those posters. And at waist-level, there were statue versions of the wizards and the Muggle throne.
"You could bring one back for our professors," he replied, sounding bored again. He picked up a throne and offered it to Daphne. The wizards perched on top waved and smiled, while one of the Muggles in the pile still had a leg that gave the occasional twitch. "What would you put up instead?"
She took the statue and looked at it, thinking that it was quite ugly and wondering how many people had actually bought on and put it on a shelf or a table in their home. It felt cheaply made, and she suspected that the charmwork that made it move would wear off within a week or so of purchase.
“They probably already have one apiece,” Daphne said, placing it back into the row of countless others like it. A little further down was a display of toy wands, crafted to resemble those of various Witches and Wizards noted for their heroic victories over the Muggle menace other inferior beings. There was the oak wand of Tarquin McTavish, who’d trapped his Muggle neighbor in a tea kettle; the willow wand of Yardley Platt, the infamous serial killer of goblins; even Herpo the Foul’s laurel stave. With a “hmm” of bland interest, Daphne picked up the stave and gave it a little twirl, being careful not to knock anything over.
Responding at last to Blaise’s question, she muttered, “I’m not sure. Last year there was a trove of artifacts uncovered in the Yukon. Loads of objects from a lot of the native Magical populations…really old magic, and most of its been lost in the ice for centuries. They didn’t use wands, they used-- Well. No one even thinks about it, probably, especially not over here across the sea. But the people running this place could easily do something with that. The displays alone would be gorgeous.”
The other items had failed to attract Blaise's attention, and he was giving various postcards and stationery judgemental looks. When he turned the carousel, there was even a series based on the posters that were at Hogsmeade. The eyes on that one seemed to follow him. And while Blaise didn't faze easy, he still gave the carousel an extra rotation so they wouldn't be facing him.
Worse, still, was a set of robes with, "I survived a history of Muggles. Ask me how!" emblazoned on them. The rack contained a multitude of colours, all questionable. Blaise moved on. He was listening to Daphne, and certainly paying more attention to her than he was to some of the tripe in the store. Almost absently, he scratched a spot on his arm, like this whole experience was giving him a rash. He nodded to Daphne's words. Judging from the gift shop -- some mugs, some cheap-looking "replicas" of exhibit items -- anything would be better. "Wanna go?"
“Yes, please,” Daphne said airily, giving the stave one final flourish and nearly (possibly not entirely accidentally) knocking over a row of the statues. Luckily, her swing just missed and only caused one at the end of the shelf to teeter a little bit before settling back in its place. She slid the stave back into its holder and decided that of everything in here, it was likely one of the least tacky items available. Even sort of pretty, if one overlooked the association.
Eying the offensive robes with nothing less than deep-seated distaste, Daphne stuck her hands into the pockets of her cloak and gestured for Blaise to follow her to freedom beyond the gift shop. “I think I’m put off lunch here. Let’s take our adorable selves somewhere that’s serving food without any surprise extras.”