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Stephen Cornfoot ([info]bp_stephen) wrote in [info]breaking_point,
@ 2010-12-08 11:35:00

Previous Entry  Add to memories!  Tell a Friend!  Next Entry
Entry tags:*complete, 2025 12, character: alastor moody, character: astoria malfoy, character: audrey odgen, character: bill weasley, character: callum moody, character: caradoc dearborn, character: cassandra urquhart, character: charlie weasley, character: craig lawson, character: dominique weasley, character: dorcas meadowes, character: draco malfoy, character: dylan vaisey, character: edward chambers, character: hannah abbott, character: hermione granger, character: hestia jones, character: jacob selwynn, character: james sirius potter, character: julius rosier, character: józsef khuen von belasi, character: katherine yaxley, character: katie bell, character: lenora walker, character: leopold mayr von melnhof, character: louis weasley, character: lucy weasley, character: marcus flint, character: margot mckinnon, character: marlene mckinnon, character: pansy nott, character: patrick pucey, character: percy weasley, character: regulus black, character: remus lupin, character: ron weasley, character: scorpius malfoy, character: sirius black, character: stephen nott

RP: Lighting Ceremony
Who: Stephen, Pansy, any and all wizards and witches. (add your tags)
Where: Nott Manor
When: December 8 (Post starts around 4 pm, right after sunset) {Pre-dated by 4 days}
Summary: The Nott family is hosting the annual Lighting Ceremony

For centuries, the Nott family had held Lighting Ceremony. It was the one time of the year when bloodlines and money didn't matter; everyone was the same. Even the house elves took part to the celebration and were treated as equal (not that Stephen liked to treat them as slaves the rest of the year), and the ceremony was open to everyone with magical ability. It was one tradition Stephen was quite pleased to uphold, even if it felt strange to do it without his father there.

In the morning, he and his mother had had breakfast together before helping the house elves with the decorations. He probably should have asked Andromeda, but this was family and Andromeda wouldn't be family for much longer. In fact, they barely spoke anymore. If he was truthful, he would have rather invited Azriel, but he didn't think either Azriel or his mother were ready for that, and today it was the Immaculate Conception, a day to honour Mary and mothers. Stephen would not upset his mother unduly.

In the afternoon, they had gone to the chapel for the Mass, before heading off to where the party would be. They had set up, as usual, right in the middle of the park, the only flat land with a perfect view of all the trees. They had created special protections for the dragons to prevent idiots from sneaking into the reserve and getting eaten, although Stephen thought that if they were that stupid, they deserved what they got, but then it would spoil everyone else's Christmas and he couldn't allow that. There was Christmas music echoing through the land and tables set up with hot cider, tea, champagne and lots of food. Everything was self-services as even the house elves had a day off and their own private party from where they could see the lightening of the trees.

At dusk, father Luke said the blessing, and finally when the sun went down, the lights came alive. Every tree in the land lit up creating an amazing game of colours, creating a winter wonderland that would last until the Epiphany. For Stephen, this represented a day of hope, the beginning of a new liturgical year and hopeful of a solar year without so much pin and suffering. Today, the Christmas season began.


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Re: Edward and Hestia
[info]bp_hestia
2010-12-07 06:43 pm UTC (link)
"Ah is that how it works?" Hestia asked. "It's really no wonder I never fit in well with this sort of crowed - I like my head being of the normal size." She might have been a pureblood, and her family might have even had a bit of influence at one point or another, but she'd never been able to really subscribe to that feeling of superiority some had when it came to their status - whether because of their blood or their money. She was quite happy living life in the middle.

"Miss Jones." Hestia clarified, "It's a pleasure to meet you Mr. Chambers, but please call me Hestia - being called Miss Jones makes me feel like I'm working or at Hogwarts all over again, and I'm not in a hurry to relive those years."

"Despite everyone I seem to encounter being of the wrong age, it seems that has more to do with me than them, I find myself in a state of living once again though I don't recall ever not being in this position." She shook her head - she'd had this conversation a number of times so far, but the more she did the easier it got in most ways. "And are you suffering the same fate?" Hestia guessed from his own words on the matter.

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Re: Edward and Hestia
[info]erchambers
2010-12-07 10:14 pm UTC (link)
Edward hummed softly. "That's how it works. It's the self-honesty that does it. In order to know you're better than everyone else, you have to constantly examine yourself. But, there's always someone who has more money, a purer lineage, more dashing looks, a quicker mind, better luck. Have to put distance between yourself and them to avoid the unfavourable comparisons.

"Hestia, then," he said with a chuckle. "But, only if I am Edward in return."

Another returnee, then, he surmised. Edward didn't bother trying to think if he should know her or not. If he should, it was likely from his later years and he hadn't lived those. Otherwise, he'd spent too much time straddling two worlds and several centuries to keep track of the modern age.

"The lady is correct with the first guess. I find it's not the return to a state of living I mind, so much as the shortness of the intervening time between what I knew and what is now. Not enough has changed." Realising that made no sense to any who didn't know him, he added, "It's an occupational predisposition. Archaeology. I like time preserved in dirt, instead of newspapers."

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Re: Edward and Hestia
[info]bp_hestia
2010-12-07 10:44 pm UTC (link)
And perhaps that was her problem, Hestia never thought she was better than everyone else - better than some people of course, but she figured most people were safe with that sort of comparison about themselves. To think she was better than everyone was a step too far in her mind, because as Edward had said there is always someone who was better. "I suppose that's why you've been on your own then? A bit of separation from all the competition?"

"Of course, Edward then." Hestia nodded, she much preferred using a person's given name, though some people liked to take all sorts of issue with that, and so she'd learned it was always best to get permission first.

It wouldn't get any easier meeting others who had also returned from the dead - it was one thing to know that she herself had been so displaced, but to know that there were others in the same position seemed odd to her. Easier to accept in her own case and harder to believe in others. "That seems to be my own issue with this returning business." She agreed when he made comment on the brief amount of time that had passed between there and here. "I'm only missing twenty years, a great many people I used to know are still here, just a bit older than I remember." She shook her head. "I don't have quite the same affinity for time, but it makes all of this rather more confusing, finding people I knew to be younger than me now older with children more than half my age."

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Re: Edward and Hestia
[info]erchambers
2010-12-07 11:47 pm UTC (link)
"Observing the competition from afar before re-entering the fray." The corner of Edward's mouth quirked up. Really, the only thing he lacked in an even match against the societal 'elite' was the pedigree. He had never doubted his own intellect and rarely lacked for lovers when he wanted one. Luck was a crapshoot by anyone's standards. And, he'd apparently worked his way up the ladder to reasonable wealth, even if it was mostly muggle (Gringott's didn't care so long as they weren't losing money on the exchange rate), in the fourteen years from where he was now to where he'd been when he died.

Only the fact he was most likely a muggleborn and therefore a complete undesirable, stacked the scales out of his favour.

"I have only fourteen separating me from my peers," he shared easily. "But, even that is enough to be off-putting. Those peers are now pushing fifty. Former professors are younger than I." Of course, the most disconcerting was that he couldn't resume his life in the muggle world as easily as he had returned to it here in the wizarding one. Too many people were still alive who would know 'Edward Chambers', who would wonder at his sudden youth, his return from the dead. Had he ever thought to look for his own birth parents, it might have been different. He could have used their name. But, now, without resorting to glamours or changing his habits and haunts, that world was closed to him.

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Re: Edward and Hestia
[info]bp_hestia
2010-12-08 12:11 am UTC (link)
"Ah coming up with a battle plan then." Hestia nodded moving so that she could stand along side Edward and look over the group that had gathered for the occasion. She tapped a finger against her lip considering them and shrugged. "So how does it look for you? Promising or no?"

She couldn't imagine turning every interaction into some kind of battle though she knew well enough there were plenty of people who did just that every time they opened their mouth. Hestia had always preferred simply saying what was on her mind than trying to hide it behind colorful words and half hidden insults. Why bother when you could just tell someone they were being an idiot? After all if they were an idiot would then even understand a veiled insult?

No doubt her demeanor was part of the reason she hadn't risen higher at the Ministry, but Hestia liked what she did and didn't mind terribly that she wasn't running a department or something like that.

"Thankfully I haven't had a chance to run into any former professors, but I can imagine just how strange that would be." She liked her professors to remain in their position of authority, and so she was planning on avoiding Hogwarts at all costs. "It is still a bit odd working for someone who I remember as a child."

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Re: Edward and Hestia
[info]erchambers
2010-12-08 02:10 am UTC (link)
"Something like that. Battle Plans, Marketing Strategies..." Edward chuckled, watching her with a slight smile as she surveyed the assembled celebrants. "For this evening, much brighter than anticipated. Tomorrow? who knows."

He needed to find some way of getting back to work soon. Perhaps there was a way to work solely with the Clio Wing without having to interact with the muggle portion of the museum? After the holidays he'd look into, find old wizarding contacts in the field. It was funny that her thoughts seemed to be heading along the lines of employment as well, given the direction his had taken.

Not that he had much but his work in life at the moment.

"That has to be downright weird." There was really no other way to describe that. "Does your boss remember you as well? I think that's the part that disturbs me, knowing some of my professors are younger than me. How much do they still know? I haven't spoken to any of them, yet. But, I've seen an old Defence professor walking about here whom I barely recognised and appears my own age. I know there are others working at the school still. At least the Headmaster is still older, though too young, still."

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Re: Edward and Hestia
[info]bp_hestia
2010-12-08 03:13 am UTC (link)
Hestia nodded sagely while Edward mentioned marketing strategies, it wasn't so difficult to imagine social interactions as one might do with a business interaction - though that certainly would get tedious, or more than they all ready could be. "I suppose the best you can do is take things as they come."

"Oh it really is." She agreed. "I remember when she was still a student at Hogwarts, though she had gotten older before all of this." Hestia said with a vague wave of her hand to indicate well everything, getting older, her sudden trip through time. "But she's older than me now - I don't think I'll get used to that any time soon."

"It's just all very strange, nothing much has changed socially - there are a few new laws around this time that weren't there before, but the biggest difference I see are people around not being the right ages. It's disconcerting."

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Re: Edward and Hestia
[info]erchambers
2010-12-08 03:44 am UTC (link)
"It does seem the most prudent course." Taking things as they come was about all anyone could do these days when it seemed even death wasn't a sure thing.

Edward nodded, understanding the vague 'this' very well. "It almost seems more like being dropped into one of those parallel dimensions fiction speaks of, rather than moving through time. Just enough familiarity that you're lulled into a false sense of knowing what's happening. And then something just different here or someone not quite the same there, throwing you for a loop all over again."

Banishing the now empty champagne flute, he tilted his head curiously at her. "So, what is it you do, if I may ask?"

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Re: Edward and Hestia
[info]bp_hestia
2010-12-08 04:00 am UTC (link)
"I do appreciate a little prudence." Hestia nodded, nothing might have made sense these days, but that was no reason to go and lose one's head over it.

Hestia nodded a bit more enthusiastically with Edward's summation of their current situation. "Yes, that is it exactly." She thought of her parents, of their issues with her return to life - she was just familiar enough to them to know she was their daughter and yet different enough that they had difficulty accepting her. It went both ways it seemed. It would have been easier if she'd come back from some different time, if she'd been killed longer ago. "When I thought of the future before it was always something much more different than the life I lead." But then perhaps the future was always like that.

Hestia smiled when Edward asked about her profession. "I work in the Home Office." She told him. "And you? Or are you simply in the business of people?" She'd met more than enough purebloods in her life to know that some considered that a profession in and of itself.

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Re: Edward and Hestia
[info]erchambers
2010-12-08 04:36 am UTC (link)
"The Home Office, hm. So, that would make your boss one Hermione Granger?" Shaking his head, Edward laughed inwardly. It would seem they shared a similar time warp. Of course, the information also gave him an idea of when in time she was from, at least generally. If she was only missing twenty years and had known Granger when they were younger, she was likely not too far from them in time.

"I'm in the business of ancient people, actually. Lapsed archaeologist turned freelance antiquities expert. So, I suppose I'm truly in the artifacts left behind by ancient people business." He shrugged thoughtfully. "I never really thought much about the future before, not very far beyond looking at the past's influence on it, really. The future has nothing to teach the present until it's too late. The past has a wealth of information and lessons as yet uncovered. Probably why this future seems so strange. It's somewhat disconnected from the past by the very nature of how we've returned."

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Re: Edward and Hestia
[info]bp_hestia
2010-12-08 04:53 am UTC (link)
"That's correct." Hestia nodded, that was the thing about working in the Ministry, people had a pretty good idea at least of who you were working for in most cases. Hestia was just glad her own job did not require her to spend time with the press, she much preferred to do her work behind a desk. She'd leave the talking about what they did at the Ministry to people like James Potter.

She laughed when he admitted to being in the business of people in a way, but nodded as he explained further. "Oh good, I do appreciate someone with a real profession." She shook her head, as much as Edward had joked about his ego she could respect it more knowing he did actually work, instead of just talked to people at these sort of functions for some kind of work.

"But that seems to be the problem people found themselves in now - no one is interested in the past - or very few are. It seems had they paid more attention they might not have repeated many of the same mistakes we did at one point or another."

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Re: Edward and Hestia
[info]erchambers
2010-12-08 05:50 am UTC (link)
"She would be one of those peers I mentioned. She and Potter and Weasley were a couple years behind me in school." Not that he'd known any of them at all well. But, from his third year on it was impossible not to at least know who they were. Besides, Weasley had been the reason they lost the final match against Gryffindor Edward's last year at school. Pants at Keeper all year and the boy finally figures out what he's doing when Edward was going for his shot.

"Well, now I am flattered. Most non-academics wouldn't consider mucking about in dusty holes looking for shards of broken pots a real job." Oh, Edward was as arrogant and self-important as they came. But, he'd worked hard to get to that point and he wasn't blind enough to think new money meant much of anything to the rest of them. It was part of why he snubbed the snobs as much as those he considered less than his equal.

He shook his head. "I don't think most people of any era are overly interested in the past. If they were, we wouldn't have such clichéd sayings as 'he who ignores the past is doomed to repeat it'. Even those who count their worth by their ancestry tend not to look much farther into the past than their pedigree. It's sad they didn't pay attention, but unsurprising in the long run."

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Re: Edward and Hestia
[info]bp_hestia
2010-12-08 06:39 am UTC (link)
"Oh well now that's just strange." She said laughing, before she pressed her hand to her mouth. She remembered Hermione when she was just a girl, and now apparently Edward had gone to school with her. Yes a few years older, but still it was a bit odd to think that this man who looked near to her age now was someone who could have gone to school with Hermione and her friends - no she would never get used to these sorts of things.

"I'm not sure what else you would call it - 'mucking about in dusty holes' is a bit cumbersome, it's better than what some would consider to be real professions." She assured him. In any case it was entirely surprising that Edward, for all his outward arrogance ever spent time in a hole, dusty or otherwise.

She nodded. "Yes well - I think we demonstrated quite well our inability to learn from the past with the second war, and it seems despite that no one was interested in paying any particular attention. I suppose we'll be doomed to repeat this again at some point. Though I'd like to miss it again if at all possible, I've lived through two wars now I'd prefer not to try and add to that number."

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Re: Edward and Hestia
[info]erchambers
2010-12-08 08:37 pm UTC (link)
"Welcome to the Time Warp. It's a bit of a mind flip." Edward joined in her laughter because, truly, there was little else to be done. They could hardly ask the school to put things back the way they should be. Despite it all, he wasn't sure he'd want to, anyway.

"Personally, I call it fascinating and humbling." He smirked, teasing but semi-serious. "It's more of a quest than a profession. Appraisals, consultations, authentication, that's a profession. Mucking about in dusty holes is something else entirely." The rest gave him money to live well and maintain his own collection of memoires from ancient cultures. But, being on site, brushing aside a bit of earth to reveal a find, that was intoxicating, almost better than a lover's touch on most days.

There wasn't much Edward could say to that. He'd missed all the wars. He had been a toddler when Potter became a legend at age one. He'd been on a dig out of the country when Voldemort took over the country. And, this time, he'd been dead. "Perhaps yet another cliché will prove true and this third time will indeed be the charm," he proposed.

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Re: Edward and Hestia
[info]bp_hestia
2010-12-08 11:23 pm UTC (link)
"It definitely is that." Hestia agreed shaking her head. Just when you felt like you were getting a handle on all of this, something changed, and really there wasn't much else you could do but laugh - well Hestia supposed she could completely close herself off from everything, but she'd never been the type to do that and she wasn't going to let a few missing decades turn her into a shut in.

"Well profession or not, it's far better than somethings you could spend your time doing." Hestia assured him. She found it interesting the way he spoke about it, the two aspects of what Edward did were put into contrast the way he spoke about them. "Do you mind if I ask how you got into something like that?" She wondered.

She laughed and nodded. "One can only hope, we have clichés for a reason after all - they must hold some bit of truth to them." She couldn't rightfully say how much people would change after dealing with yet another war, if they would finally see the ways they had gone wrong or not.

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Re: Edward and Hestia
[info]erchambers
2010-12-09 04:24 pm UTC (link)
"My father, actually. He teaches Anthropology at Oxford Brookes. While my friends were getting 'Hansel and Gretel', I was getting Henry Balfour and Claude Levi-Strauss. Well, and Indiana Jones, of course. Muggle cinema," he clarified, knowing most wizards and witches wouldn't have a clue who the character was. "An adventuring archaeologist, absolutely unrealistic, but fun."

How often had he heard his father rant about Edward's love of those films? Not real archaeology, he'd bellow, which of course they weren't. But, they sparked the imagination of a young boy eager for adventure. "Finding out I was a wizard and learning about how the two worlds used to intersect only capped the early interest, particularly when it seemed so many simply forget pre-Statute of Secrecy history exists. As my interest lied more with finding out the mysteries of the past than how the people of the present worked, I opted to specialise in Archaeology instead of the Cultural Anthropology my father favoured.

"And what about you? What drew you into working at the Ministry?"

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