WHO: Seamus Finnigan and Morag MacDougal WHEN:Last Saturday afternoon WHERE: Disused classroom near the Library SUMMARY: Seamus is a top-notch teacher, see. RATING: PG-13 for one Fbomb. STATUS: Complete
“Where are we going?”
Morag asked as Seamus guided them past the library and down yet another corridor. Her hand felt bone-light in his, an anxious bird determined not to tremble. Despite what he’d said yesterday (and what she’d said, for that matter, though it hadn’t been directed at him), there was a small part of her that wondered if this weren’t some elaborate ploy to find an empty classroom in which to snog.
Which she wouldn’t have minded.
But even before he answered, Morag was felt certain that wasn’t his (primary) aim. Seamus was full of surprises, lately. Or perhaps Morag had simply been underestimating him for years.
"Set up an empty classroom for trainin'," answered Seamus, which was true, and "we're gonna try that juggling idea," which wasn't. He gave her hand a squeeze to make clear that it was a joke, and nothing ominous was waiting, even if he didn't feel at liberty to say anything where someone might overhear. There was a tapestry at the end of the hall, which Seamus lifted to reveal a narrow staircase leading back up. The other end of the passage was covered by a portrait that swung out, and they arrived at the end of a hall that split into a T. Seamus chose the left, and passed two more doors before reaching the last, which had been left unlocked by Professor McGonagall after Seamus' request for a room spacious enough in which to practice expansion of large scale Transfigurations. He opened it and let Morag through first.
It was a disused sort of space, one of several throughout the castle that weren't regularly occupied by teachers or staff, and while it lacked the cavernous ceilings that some of the other classrooms offered, nearly a whole wall was devoted to windows that looked out over the road down to the village. Heavy blackout curtains obscured the grey autumn light from most, but one was enough to illuminate the rest of the room. It was empty except for a heavy old desk sitting askew at the opposite end and nearly a dozen mismatched chairs Seamus had cleared to the side after morning Quidditch practice.
“Training?” Morag asked once they were inside and the door closed behind them, her expression a blend of curiosity and sly doubt. They were a number of things this secluded classroom could be useful for. “Training for what?”
"Juggling, I said." Seamus tugged another set of curtains open, leaving his wand stowed in the pocket of his robes in favour of pushing the drapery behind the holdbacks by hand. It was a change he had decided to start making, a quieter sort of objection to the current administration - whatever required magic to be done he would use it, and whatever didn't, Seamus was going to refrain. He turned around to grin at Morag. "You don't believe me?"
Morag smirked, slipping her wand out of the pocket of the slim black trousers she wore and warming it in her palm before pointing it mock-menacingly in Seamus’ direction.
“Well, if it’s going to be geese, I’m better at Transfiguration than you are, so. I hope you like feathers.”
Seamus held his tongue from issuing a retort about tying her up and shrugged instead. "Much harder to start working on a Patronus when a goose is teaching ya, but suit yourself."
Morag’s wand hand dropped to her side, surprise plain on her features. The Patronus Charm was highly advanced magic and something Morag had long ago given up hope of learning, as her performance in Defense Against the Dark Arts was less than spectacular. And she highly doubted it was going to be a part of Amycus’ curriculum.
Despite feeling markedly less than up to the task, and more than humbled by Seamus’ offer, she dodged the overtly emotional response, not surprisingly, with a joke.
“I’d hate not to put everything back in the right place, when I haven’t even gotten the chance to find it all yet.”
"Well there aren't feathers," Seamus riposted, reaching for his belt buckle.
He wasn't sure what he had been expecting exactly, but his imagining had been something more enthusiastic than a blank face and evasive tactics. Had it been a mistake to offer? It was something they ought to have been working on, all of the seventh years, especially since Dementors were allowed freely onto the grounds, but a knot of awareness at how ill-advised this might have been twisted now in his stomach. Was she going to say something to someone?
“I only got an A in my Defense Against the Dark Arts O.W.L. so we may end up juggling geese after all,” Morag admitted, glossing over Seamus’ joke with a subdued eagerness that nevertheless betrayed her house. She hadn’t even brought anything to write with. “Do you have everything memorized, or are there theories I should review? Can I see yours first?”
There was the girl who had wanted to sort Ravenclaw in hopes of fellows who would understand each other. Snarking wit and a drive to study, both things that Morag had in spades. Seamus shook his head. "I don't have any of the books or know too much about the in-depth theory of it," he admitted. "Harry taught a few of us, back when Umbridge was around and Hermione made sure some of the Gryffindors got a chance to do things proper, rather than just read about them. She'd know more about the text and Harry knew more just how to tell you what to do. I think it was Lupin, who taught him."
He took out his wand, but hesitated. "I don't know if it'll go right," confessed Seamus. "You need to be happy, to be thinkin' about happy things, to get it to really work." Morag knew just as well as anyone - it was a harder thing to manage, this year.
“In that case, I’m proper fucked,” Morag said drily, neither wanting to assume Seamus would have the same troubles, or presume she could help with them, either. The impulse to do something to make him happy, though, overpowered her doubt that she could, and she took a few steps closer.
"Aren't we all?" It was a sentiment that echoed through more than it should have; not just Patronus casting, not just Hogwarts. For whatever reason, they were facing off against people who enjoyed the thought of destruction. A new world order, maybe, but Seamus wasn't entirely certain that their end goal had anything to do with a simple peaceful pureblooded life, so much as exterminating the planet. He shrugged as Morag drew closer. "You said ya wanted to know how."
“I do,” she insisted, urging him with a nod of her head. Her lips quirked. “Do you need me to take off my top, or what?”
Seamus laughed, a quick bark of surprise with eyebrows raised in arches opposite his grin. "What are ya tryin' to do, encourage me or distract me?" he teased, though if she kept up this line of attack, he was going to be capable of only the briefest weak resistance. "It isn't that kind of memory, really," Seamus continued. "I mean, it could be if circumstances were right, but it's not just a fun day, like when Ireland won the Cup, it has to be - you have to use the best one you've got."
It was why his own Patronus was paltry, now. Long gone was the summer's eve the week before the Cup, when Da had been ground down and agreed to take Seamus and Dean out to the back roads to teach them how to drive the truck. Thinking back on it only made him sad, longing for something that he couldn't know if he would ever get the chance to do again.
"It's somethin' to fight off a soul-suckin' creature o' evil," he finished, smile more bemused. "And not that I question the perfection of your tits, but…"
Nodding her understanding, Morag’s stomach knotted, cold with the knowledge that if she needed a memory that had made her deeply happy, she might never cast a Patronus.
“They could be bigger,” she insisted, but her expression was dark. “But I get it.”
Seamus rolled his eyes and pulled his wand from his pocket. He didn't think of her tits, but he did think of her, windswept and airborne with red cheeks and a tattered old hat. "Expecto Patronum!" he shouted, and though the silvery fox didn't leap forth and bound across the room, the shield of vapor had a hint of a figure to it, smallish and four legged. It wasn't the best, and it wasn't the worst, much like the memory used to forge it.
"It could be bigger," he said wryly, "but ya get it."
Morag smiled. Seamus might not have been satisfied with his showing, but it was considerably more impressive than Morag’s limited experience with the spell, restricted exclusively to what she’d read in books and heard in radio dramas.
“What’s the significance of the animal?” She asked, wondering if the theory behind one’s Patronus was akin to what she’d read about Animagi, that it spoke to something deep and inherent about the caster. That Seamus’ was a fox, or supposed to be, didn’t surprise her. Hers would probably be a mongoose.
Or worse, a kitten.
Was there any? Seamus wasn't sure. "I dunno," he admitted. "It's just what it is, innit? It's not like the Sortin' Hat, listenin' ta find out where you want to go or what's best for you, it just comes out proper once you've got a good enough memory for it." Or maybe Hermione had some sort of logical explanation, but Seamus wasn't going to pose this idea for Morag, now. "One like that, it's more like a shield - you'll hold 'em off alright, but you won't drive 'em away until you make a corporeal one."
A good enough memory.
Morag frowned. There were any number of things she found amusing, things that made her laugh; surprising gestures of kindness that filled her with a rare warmth, like Seamus taking her hand unexpectedly, or Patrick giving up the evening with his friends to play Exploding Snap with his intractable older sister. But a truly happy memory, unfettered with self-conscious doubt or pretense or worry?
The incantation and form seemed simple enough, but the casting would be anything but.
“I think I’d better kiss my soul goodbye,” she grumbled, smirking weakly. “Literally.”
He reached out for her, taking a hand and pulling her closer to wrap his hands around to her lower back. "Or just keep kissin' me 'til you find the right memory, and I'll keep an eye out for your soul in the mean time." It wasn't the same, and Seamus knew it, but even with Dementors knocking at the castle doors, the threat of having them attack students didn't seem imminent.
“What, taking my top off wasn’t going to be enough for you, and I’m supposed to manage a Patronus from a kiss?” Morag said dubiously, but she was grinning, and pinned Seamus’ mouth with her own before he could rebuke her. She was stalling, certainly, from having to try to cast the spell herself, but his plan wasn’t a terrible one.
Seamus kissed her back, happy for any brief moments that allowed him to push off everything else that was happening this year in favor of a little mindlessness. It wasn't that he didn't think about the struggles surrounding them all, what Dean had been forced to do, the hundreds imprisoned unjustly, the letters from his mother that assured him nothing had happened at home - yet. It was that he did, often, and Morag offered an escape from all that, a few hours of respite, peppering weeks otherwise fully occupied by misfortune. "You can have whatever you want," he murmured, keeping her near. "But I'm not saying I'm much worthy of 'happiest moment of your life,' even if I take me whole kit off and do a little dance for you."
She could’ve pushed him, she knew, allowed her hands to drift and take full advantage of the relative seclusion of this classroom. But what stopped Morag was feeling like she was losing control, that she was being pulled, too, into something that she had to take more seriously than idle flirtation and fooling around after evening Astronomy lessons.
And so instead of daring to slip her hand under Seamus’ belt, she was wary, tucking her chin against his chest and inhaling his scent: primarily brisk and clean, but there was something tantalizing about it, too, something she couldn’t name.
“I might fail on purpose, just to see you dance.”
Nothing had really prompted him to want to know how to dance in a serious way before - funnier was usually better during the formative years of Seamus' youth - but now he would have liked to take her hand in his and hum some little tune. He settled for second best, a slow sway and a near tone-deaf likeness of something Sinatra his mother liked to listen to in her office at the inn. There was still a smirk spread across his cheeks, keeping the tone from dipping where Morag's hand hadn't. "Are you gonna give it a go?" he asked. "Do you want me to be a gentleman and turn 'round?"
Morag snorted, first at Seamus’ singing and second at his offer. But her cheeks were warm when she stepped away from him, and though she wanted very much for him not to be able to see her face when she failed, she stubbornly stood her ground beside him.
When had she been happiest? Before she’d started school, certainly, and when she was too young even to realize she ought to have been disappointed with, well, everything. How poor they were. How stupid her parents could be. Her memory ought not to feature her family at all, really.
But no, that wasn’t right.
She’d been seven years old, spending the afternoon with her father’s sister hiking in the Cardrona Forest. Morag had always liked her aunt, though she’d not seen much of her then and even less in recent years as she and Morag’s mother had never gotten on. And she’d usually had to share Aunt Kiera with Errol and Magnus and Patrick, but that day, she hadn’t.
Morag breathed deeply, remembering every detail. She could almost smell the damp soil, feel the shed needles bristling under her palms when she’d bent to tie a loose shoe lace. A sharp intake of breath from her aunt caused her to look up, and when she did, her eyes met those of a golden unicorn foal stepping around a fallen tree. She’d felt rooted to the spot, but the fearless creature had trotted right over to her, nuzzling the hand she hadn’t even realized she was holding out. In that moment she’d been given a spectacular gift. She’d been special.
Morag closed her eyes.
“Expecto Patronum!”
A small wisp of silver escaped Morag's wand, not dissimilar from Seamus' own beginnings or the other DA members. It wasn't the effect of an animal prancing or swimming or soaring through the room, but it meant that she'd at least gotten the incantation and movements correct. "It's good, for a first time," Seamus assured her. "It might not be the right memory, but you did the action right, so you'll get there. Just have to work at it more."
Shrugging, Morag lowered her wand and tried not to look disappointed. She was hardly surprised. The memory was a bittersweet one, followed by the knowledge that she’d never be so innocent, so at peace with the world, ever again.
She wanted to ask Seamus what his memory had been, but it felt too personal, somehow, so Morag held her tongue, studying him with a sidelong glance. There were a lot of things she suspected she didn’t know about the Gryffindor, but it wasn’t in her nature to pry, and she was too guarded to show just how curious about him she was. When Morag did finally speak, her voice rustled low, silky.
“Might need your help with that.”
"First time's always iffy," he said with a shrug, one hand pushed in his pocket and one holding his wand at his side. "Good news is that you've got a patient teacher who, despite evidence to the contrary, has some clue what he's up to."
Seamus knew he was being coy and full of double entendre, but teasing Morag was something he couldn't give up, even if he now had the luxury of being able to kiss her instead. The last was more solemn, and something he fervently hoped was true, not about patronuses, or sex, but about life and the hardships they were having to cope with things that no one, but especially not teenagers, should have been asked to cope with. "It'll get better, Mor."
Morag pocketed her wand, closing the little distance between them and looping her arms around Seamus’ waist. She shook her bangs out of her eyes, peering into his with none of her usual impenetrable pretense; tough she might’ve been, but wary and wanting, too. A few weeks ago she wouldn’t have said anything, and certainly not this.