RP: Lorcan and Corrie
Date: 19 August Characters: Lorcan Scamander and Corrie Pye Location: Min Private/Public: private Rating: Summary: There's a boggart in the pantry. Things get worse from there.
Lorcan could always tell when Corrie was in the house. Despite the fact that he'd asked Min to soundproof Corrie's room, despite the fact that most of the time there wasn't even a door from the main part of the house into Corrie's room, only the door from the outside of the house -- despite everything, he could tell. It was probably because she kept Min busy when she was there.
Today, Lorcan got back late after putting up flyers in Hogsmeade for Lucia's website, and as soon as he walked in the door, he knew Corrie was already there. It was something about the quality of silence.
He shrugged resolutely, told Min not to bother with lights, and walked through the darkening halls to the kitchen. The kitchen was still bright, with white cabinets catching the golden rays of the sun as it dipped toward sunset. Lorcan smiled at the orientation of those windows. Min hadn't forgotten him.
Since he was late, Lorcan decided not to cook; he just assembled a large sandwich and set an apple on the plate beside it. He'd eat it out on the porch on the other side of the house from Corrie -- not because he was trying to avoid her, he could avoid her in here. Just to give her plenty of room. He opened the pantry to get a packet of crisps and blinked, non-plussed. For a second, he thought there was a mirror in the cupboard, and then he thought Lysander was hiding in the pantry as some sort of surprise and started to laugh, but the laughter died in his throat.
The person in the cupboard had a bitter expression ground indelibly into his face -- he definitely didn't look anything like Twin after all -- and a permanent exhausted slump. His eyes were dull and hopeless, but his movements were quick. While Lorcan was staring, he reached forward and grabbed Lorcan's wand out of his pocket. "You really ought to get rid of this," he said reasonably. "You know you can't use it."
"Just watch me!" Lorcan said and snatched at the wand, but his twin in the pantry held it out of reach and pushed Lorcan roughly away. The casual violence from someone that looked like his twin -- or himself -- shocked Lorcan more than the appearance of this anti-twin. He drew in a breath, but before he could say anything, the anti-twin spoke.
"Don't be stupid, you know you can't do magic," he said flatly. "I can't do magic, you can't do magic, we can't even get it to fail on us. This wand, it's not even dangerous to us, it's just a piece of wood."
The anti-twin's lips twisted wryly, and Lorcan shifted, trying not to listen, waiting for an opportunity to grab his wand back. It was just out of reach, but if the anti-twin moved forward just a little more...
"There are days when I wish it was dangerous," the anti-twin said. "I'd die for the sake of doing magic. But it's futile. We might as well snap it in half."
"Don't!" Lorcan said, galvanized into action as the anti-twin held the wand up and started bending it. Lorcan leapt across the space between himself and the anti-twin, and got his hands around the anti-twin's before the wand snapped. His arms shook with the effort of keeping the anti-twin's hands apart. Their strengths were evenly matched; the harder Lorcan tried, the more immovable the anti-twin seemed to be.
Lorcan tried to move his foot around to trip his opponent, and in that moment of distraction, the opposing pressure disappeared and Lorcan's hands moved unopposed to save his wand -- and then bend it in the opposite direction. The wand snapped.
Lorcan fell back, clutching the two halves and breathing hard.
The anti-twin laughed bitterly. "See? Gone, and what do we care? It's just a piece of wood. I'm doing this for our own good."
"You're just a boggart," Lorcan said. "You don't know anything." But his heart was beating too fast as he looked at the lines in the face that looked just like his, and he could barely breath around the lump in his throat. He looked down at the pieces of wand in his hands and blinked back tears. For his wand? It had served him well until lately. For his world? For his magic?
"Cry," the anti-twin said approvingly. "Give up. There's nothing else to do. We can batter ourselves against an uncaring world, or we can accept the truth. There is no magic. Not for us."
Lorcan turned and fled, down the hallway and up the winding stairs, the tears drying and his throat clearing under the necessity of moving, of getting away from -- it had to be a boggart. What else hid in the pantry and acted like your worst nightmare?
Through the library and up the ladder to the attic, and Lorcan realized that he had options. He kept a spare wand or two around ever since he'd had to buy a new wand after messing up his magic the first time he'd tried to learn the animagus transformation. He'd gotten out of the habit of using the others, but--
"Min, my spare wand on the hall table," he said, and continued running. Down the ladder on the other side of the attic, through the hall, and there was the wand. Lorcan snatched it up and turned, wand at the ready.
The anti-twin had kept up with him easily, and it smiled sadly at him now. "We have to admit--"
"Riddikulus!" Lorcan shouted.
It felt like acid rebounded out of the wand and traveled up his arm. "--that without magic Min here is also impossible. Aren't you, Min?"
"Don't talk about Min," Lorcan snapped. He ignored the pain and raised his wand again. "Riddikulus!"
"Eventually, she'd turn into nothing but a tumble-down old shack that can't so much as shake a shutter."
Lorcan took a deep breath, trying to gather his thoughts, trying not to listen to the boggart.
"Wouldn't you, Min? Turn into a tumble-down shack."
To his horror, Lorcan realized that Min was listening to the boggart. Everywhere where he looked, crisp lines were dissolving, and pristine surfaces were gathering grime.
"Don't listen to the boggart, Min," he said.
The anti-twin laughed. "You'll have to do better than that. I'm you. We're us. Min will start getting holes in her walls and--"
A hole started growing right in front of Lorcan's eyes.
"cracks in her ceilings..."
Lorcan took a deep breath as a webwork of cracks spread across the ceiling. "Don't listen to me, Min," he said firmly. "Don't listen to anything I say."
"The roof will fall in..."
Lorcan held his breath. Nothing happened. Lorcan let out his breath.
"...and you won't be able to do anything but watch because..."
Riding on the wave of relief, Lorcan raised his wand. "Riddikulus!" he said. The boggart turned insubstantial and its voice faded into a high whine, the process continuing until it was nothing but the faint whisp of a ghost. Lorcan managed to summon a shaky laugh from somewhere, and the whisp turned and fled.
Lorcan laughed harder, even though it really wasn't the least bit funny. "Much more of that and I'd have--" He didn't know how to complete that sentence. "You can clean up now, Min," he added, not really thinking about it.
Nothing happened.
"Damn," Lorcan muttered. He'd told Min not to listen to him. He was an idiot. He could have told Min not to listen to him for half an hour, but no, he'd told Min not to listen to him. Full stop.
He sighed, trying to think. There were ways around that, but not many without magic, and his arm still hurt from whatever had happened with the first spell, though not nearly as much as it had in the first few seconds.
He wandered into the nearest room and sat down on the shabby sofa, leaned back, and closed his eyes. A spring poked at his back and he slipped his wand into his pocket and reached back to push it to the side, but for some reason he couldn't grasp the spring. His fingers kept slipping, and he couldn't really feel what he was doing.
He turned around so he could see what he was doing, and blinked. He could see through his hand. "Damn," he said. Somehow he'd riddikulused himself into a ghost. Or no, just his arm. He was sitting on the sofa and he could feel it, and he could lean on his other arm, and he could actually pass his other arm through his ghostly arm.
"This isn't happening," Lorcan muttered. "It really isn't." He shook his head and started laughing again, weakly. Then he thought of something else. He got out his wand, and yes, it was a ghostly wand too.
"I give up," Lorcan said. "Maybe I'd be better off as a muggle."
That sobered him.
"Poor Min," he said, rearranging the springs of the shabby sofa with his good hand and leaning back to try to think. Pema could fix Min, of course, but she was in Tibet. Twin could, or Luna or Rolf...
Corrie could fix Min, he realized abruptly. Not as easily, since she only had Min's attention in one room, but there were ways around that.
But Corrie. He should just take Min to Italy, except of course he couldn't ask Min to go anywhere. He should just do it with magic, easy enough even with a ghost wand, but then he might end up with a ghost house -- or worse.
"Fine," he grumbled, and got up. He didn't trust her with Min, not if she ever got angry at him, and this would be showing her exactly how to take over Min if she ever wanted to. And he was uncomfortably aware that he also really didn't want to ask her for any favours. But he didn't really have any choice.
Passing a mirror, he stopped to straighten his clothes and hair and peer in bewilderment at a long scratch on his face -- he had no idea how he'd got it -- and then he continued out the front door. He had to open the door by hand, which made him feel uncomfortably like Min was dead. He closed it carefully behind him and went around to the side and knocked on Corrie's door. The first time nothing happened because he used his right hand, but then he remembered and knocked with his left.