WHO: Wayne Hopkins & Morag MacDougal WHEN: Thursday evening's Astronomy lesson (sorry it's a wee bit late!) WHERE: Astronomy tower. SUMMARY: Wayne "volunteers" to let Morag utilize his telescope when hers breaks. Surprisingly civil conversation ensues! RATING: PG STATUS: Complete
Morag’s fingers moved with painstaking care as she adjusted the focal length on her telescope’s primary lens, belying the usual work of her hands: swinging a Beater’s bat as hard as she could. Still, both required precision. But where her bat was a solid piece of easily replaced equipment, her telescope was extremely old and she’d acquired it secondhand from somebody who’d acquired it secondhand from somebody who’d probably fished it out of a trash heap.
The concentrated nature of the work helped her to banish, or at least bottle for a little while, the foul feelings she’d been carrying since that afternoon’s encounter with Seamus. But when she heard the splintering creak from deep within the device, she knew her reprieve had ended. The telescope had endured a number of repairs, but a hastily whispered Reparo! wasn’t going to get her through that evening’s lesson. She’d be lucky if she could fix it at all.
“Shite,” she hissed, only just resisting the urge to kick one of the wobbly tripod legs. The other students remained focused on that evening’s assignment, and her eyes settled on the person nearest to her. She didn’t want to attract Professor Sinistra’s attention and risk the woman feeling charitable, so she shuffled around her broken telescope to the meek Hufflepuff plotting coordinates on a large sheet of parchment.
“Oi, Hopkins. Scoot over. You don’t mind sharing, right?”
It wasn’t a question.
Wayne was so invested in his charts that he hadn’t really taken notice of much of what was going on around him. When Morag spoke to him so unexpectedly, his gaze jerked upward from his work, causing his quill to trail a wide arc of ink that he had not intended across his parchment. He blinked at her, wide-eyed, looking not unlike a mouse having been cornered by a spiteful cat.
“Oh. I’m sorry. Pardon me. No, of course not. By all means. Please, uh. Please feel free.” he said, gesturing toward his telescope and giving her ample room to work with it. He shifted his parchment over and gave her a nervous smile, not knowing what to expect.
“Thanks,” Morag replied gruffly, gathering her own parchment and quill and placing them beside Wayne’s. She noted the swathe of ink he’d sketched with a raised brow.
“You know, if the comet goes that way, we’re all going to die a wretched, fiery death,” Morag mused, closing one of her eyes as she peered with the other through Wayne’s telescope. She plotted the next point on her parchment. “But at least it’ll be quick.”
He quirked an eyebrow. “I’m sorry? I don’t know what you’re - oh.” Wayne looked down at his parchment and caught the error he’d splashed across his carefully plotted trajectory. His lip trembled slightly when he realised what he’d done, and he hesitated for a moment before using his wand to carefully try to charm the mistake away. “Sh- “ he began to mutter under his breath before he remembered that he was in public and caught himself just in time. “ - darn it.”
When at last most of the stray ink had been removed, he took a deep breath and admired his handiwork, feeling rather pleased even if his charmwork had not been perfect. “There. Saved the world. Thank-you for pointing that out. How’s uh, how’s yours coming along?” he asked conversationally. He felt as though it would be rude to not try to at least engage with her, although if she thought he was being intrusive and told him to sod off, he would have been fine with that as well. Then, at least the choice to talk or not to talk would be hers, not his.
Morag smirked as Wayne caught himself nearly cursing, stepping away from his telescope a moment to review her notes. It was also a way of leaving it wide open for him to continue his work, as well, without it seeming like she was being gracious.
It was Wayne’s telescope, after all.
“Slowly,” she answered after a moment, lips pursed to a thin line. Wayne’s catastrophic collision was more preferable, in that moment, than the plodding course of the comet. She looked up from her parchment, narrowing her eyes at the Hufflepuff. “You really sure the world was worth saving?”
Wayne stole a glance through his telescope in a perfunctory fashion and tried not to hog it too terribly much. Doing otherwise would be impolite, after all. At least, in his mind, it would be. He continued working on his chart with the details he’d memorised, however imperfectly.
At her question, Wayne glanced up at her, head tilted slightly to the side. He examined her face curiously, unsure of what kind of answer to give her. He bit his lip.
“That’s an existential question,” he replied, cryptic. “What would you have done?”
He peeked quickly through the telescope once again, then left it alone.
Grinning, Morag peered through Wayne’s telescope, not looking at the Hufflepuff when she answered.
“Let ‘em burn, naturally.”
Wayne couldn’t help but to let out a little snort of laughter at her comment. He shook his head and grinned.
“Seems like they’re doing a good enough job all on their own,” he said with a shrug.
Morag glanced up at Wayne, surprised at his reply. Her answering smirk was appreciative, however.
“Too bad their messes aren’t as easy to clean up,” she mused, indicating with her quill where he’d mostly cleared his parchment of his earlier mistake.
Wayne returned her smirk with one of his own, but quickly looked away. He was unused to admitting to having an opinion on anything, and he wasn’t about to venture much beyond vague remarks.
“If they were, saving the world would be that much easier,” he said. “It’s far easier just to sit back and bask in the glow of the flickering flames.” He framed his words with his usual polite, unassuming smile, but his tone was tinged with uncharacteristic bitterness. He quickly caught himself waxing philosophical, though, and decided that he didn’t want to wade too deeply into it. He barely knew Morag, after all, and the last thing he wanted to do was to say anything to anyone that might come back to bite him.
“I’m sorry - should I move this a little bit closer to you?” he asked, and began to nudge the telescope toward her. It was a mostly useless gesture, but it was better than risking saying something he might regret later. He glanced over at her telescope and briefly considered asking her what was wrong with it, but then decided that perhaps it was none of his business and changed his mind. Offering to try to fix it might be perceived as insulting, and he did not wish to make an enemy of someone who beat things with a bat for fun.
“Please let me know if I’m in your way at all,” Wayne said.
Morag rolled her eyes. Just when she was beginning to think the Hufflepuff had a backbone...
“Hopkins, relax. I’m in your way, but I’m almost done,” she said, making a small adjustment to the focus before punctuating her chart with the last few measurements Professor Sinistra had asked for. Good enough.
Wayne let out a small sigh; whether it was one of relief or one of frustration with himself was not entirely clear. He returned to his usual people-pleasing mode as though he’d never just implied that he’d like to stand by and watch everyone else destroy one another.
“I am relaxed. You’re not in my way at all. I don’t mind.” he insisted. “If your telescope’s still broken next time, you can use mine again.” He sounded almost hopeful.
Eyeing her telescope with no small amount of irritation, Morag nevertheless crossed to the infernal device and began to pack it away into its equally shabby case.
“You’re going to regret that,” she said drily. “There are medieval artefacts in better working condition than my telescope.”
Wayne stepped toward the telescope and looked it up and down thoughtfully as she began to put it away. It definitely appeared to need a bit of TLC, yes, but that didn’t necessarily mean that it was not salvageable. Perhaps he was being too optimistic.
“I don’t know. My family’s been building and repairing timepieces since what’s probably the dawn of time, so I’ve seen worse. I mean, not that they’re the same thing, or anything. Or even close. I just mean, maybe there’s some way to fix it. At least it’s still in one piece?” he was trying to be helpful, but he worried that he was just being annoying. He shrugged, just in case it seemed like he cared too much about the state of his classmate’s Astronomy equipment.
“Yeah?” Morag was surprised by Wayne’s admission. She considered asking him to take a look at it, but she didn’t like the idea of being indebted to the Hufflepuff. She couldn’t pay. She couldn’t even promise to be nice.
Instead, she rolled her parchment in preparation of turning in the evening’s assignment, and collapsed the telescope's legs into the base before laying it in the raw velvet interior of the ancient case.
“One piece of shite, anyway,” she muttered, loud enough for Wayne to hear but continuing in a more neutral tone, “I’ll figure something out.”
For a moment, Wayne actually thought that Morag might take him up on the offer that he hadn’t quite made, but then she didn’t inquire any further, and he was left feeling silly and sheepish. Oh well. It was probably for the best. How stupid would he have looked if he’d offered to attempt to fix the telescope and been unable to figure it out? What if he’d made it worse? Still, he was more than a little bit disappointed that he hadn’t been able to help, and he looked put out as he stood there, arms dangling uselessly at his sides as she packed up.
“It might not be all bad,” he said. Before he could stop himself, despite the fact that he’d already decided not to, he added, “and you know, if you change your mind, or whatever, let me know. I’ll uh, see if I can do anything. It would be a welcome distraction from the… well, you know.”
Wayne lingered there for a moment, scratching awkwardly at his mousy brown hair, before turning around and shuffling back to his telescope. He was already regretting how absolutely ridiculous he’d probably just made himself look. He picked up his parchment and carefully rolled it, mentally willing himself to just keep breathing. Inhale, exhale, repeat. That’s all there was to it.