alfiecattermole (alfiecattermole) wrote in changedrpg, @ 2011-07-20 00:04:00 |
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Entry tags: | !date: 1997 - july, alfie cattermole, julien dorny |
Who: Alfie Cattermole and Julien Dorny
What: Giraffe?
Where: Brixton
When: Last Week
Status: Incomplete
Rating: Low, PG
Summer had been an average one for Julien this year, despite what was happening back in the Wizarding world. He always found something to study, some book to read while he was awake, but spent the bulk of his time asleep and trying to pretend that he wasn't missing Daydream charms like they were crack. His parents put it down to adolescence and pretty much left him alone, which was actually situation normal for them as a family.
He still had strange dreams and slips of visions in the backs of teaspoons that had him blinking and looking twice, usually to find his own irritated expression looking back at him but he couldn't do anything about it. It was only after a glimpse of dark hair in a passing bus window that he remembered that Alfie had asked him to come by sometime, hang out. Julien didn't have many friends but he supposed he could count Alfie was one of the few? Honestly, there was something about the Hufflepuff that made Julien vaguely uncomfortable; he felt a funny around the other boy, a little loopy, a little less grounded and down to earth but not in the same way that he felt during a Daydream charm.
Or no, just like before a charm, that same tickling anticipation; it had to be a fluke, he didn't know what it was.
He took the Northern line from Waterloo to Stockwell, drawn into himself and shivering at the press of bodies around him in the small space, and then jumped onto the Victoria line to Brixton where he had to find a space free of the public to duck into and get his breath back; he really hated crowds.
He wandered aimlessly for a while on purpose, trusting his feet to take him where his gift led and by the time he snapped out of it he found himself to the side of a stall manned by a boy with a very familiar face. There was that weird fluttering feeling again...
"Hey, Alfie." he called with an awkward half-smile.
Alfie had been working for his granddad over the summer, like he did most summers. It wasn’t bad work, really, and he’d grown up so used to the loading and unloading and to cashing out and sacking up customers, he could almost do it in his sleep.
….Which was pretty close to what was happening. He was thinking about Quidditch. About how this year, damn whatever else was going on, needed to be Hufflepuff’s sodding year, and he needed to make the starting line. Problem was, he couldn’t really practice over the summer, and his broom was old, and he was trying to figure out a way around both of those things when someone calling his name jolted him from where he was rinsing off lettuce heads.
He blinked, confused for a second but them coming back to reality and turning off the hose. “Hey! Dorny! You came by!” It was a little new, actually. Most of his mates from Hogwarts did their own things during the summers, so he didn’t see much of them.
Despite having been the one to visit and the first to call out, Julien still looked surprised at where he was standing, but more so at the welcoming tone in Alfie's voice, so much so that it took him a while to recover.
"Yeah, well... oh, it's not a bad time, is it?" He asked, already on his back foot to retreat, feeling stupid for not warning Alfie he was coming. "Sorry, just, you know-" he shut his mouth, not wanting to sound anymore stupid than he already did and not wanting to give away the fact that his premonitions brought him here. "Are you busy?" No Julien, of course he was, that much was obvious. "I mean, do you need a hand? I mean..." he shook his head and tried resolutely to keep his big mouth shut.
“Huh? No!” Alfie shot Julien a wide, easy sort of smile and then looked around. “Barely anyone by today anyway. I was about to head off for lunch somewhere. You want to go with?” He wasn’t going to let a friend run off when he’d come all this way - though for all Alfie knew Julien was going to be around Brixton anyway and just popped by. Still, Alfie wasn’t the sort to question good fortune, or friends showing up to save him from being bored to death by lettuce.
“I can tell my granddad I’m heading off? He won’t mind.” Especially if he told him a mate from school was there. His granddad, even though he was muggle, was fascinated with the magical world that his mum (and dad, and he and his sisters, of course) were part of.
Julien couldn't help but answer that smile with one of his own and again he had to wonder where the looping feeling in his stomach were coming from. He didn't say anything about it, supposing that he just needed lunch.
"Yes, please." he confirmed, tucking in out of the way of a passing mother and buggy as he did and managing not to look as though it bothered him. "As long as you don't get into trouble." he added after hearing about Alfie's grandad - he'd feel terrible if Alfie was told off for running off in the middle of the day just because he'd shown up. "Are you sure it's okay?" He asked again, fingers picking at the cuff of his army green jacket - the British summer was waning and he had a feeling it would rain today.
“Sure, just wait a sec...” Alfie grinned at Julien again, and then turned and disappeared inside of the small shopfront - which really just served as a refrigeration unit for the stand. With the door open, he could be heard to say, “Granddad! A mate from school came by. I’m going with to get lunch, yeah?”
There was a muffled sort of answer, and then Alfie appeared again, followed by a tall, elderly man who smiled the same easy sort of smile when he saw Julien.
“Friend from school, eh?” He asked Julien, and Alfie rolled his eyes and took a few bills from the pocket of the apron he was wearing and shoved them into his pocket, then took off the apron and handed it over to his grandad before taking Julien by the arm and hauling him back into the street.
“Come on, he’ll talk your ear off if you let him. We’d starve.”
Julien was almost as bad around adults as he was around kids his own age (he was at his worst around small children) and the approach of the harmless old man had him seized up in uncertain social terror.
He let out a breath of relief at Alfie's hand on his arm and it wasn't until much later on that he realised how incongruous that had been.
"It was nice to meet you!" he called over his shoulder as Alfie led them away, turning and gently disengaging from the other. "You should have brought a coat." he said without thinking, but then blushed because quite apart from the fact that the sky only had a few little puffs of cloud scuttling over the sky he realised that he sounded like someones mother. "Uhm, so, where are we eating?" he asked, trying not to give Alfie a chance to respond to his stupid coat comment.
Alfie cocked an eyebrow just a little at the comment - he was in an worn teeshirt and jeans that had a few rips in them and had definitely seen better days, mostly because they’d unloaded the produce that morning and it was hard work, but it was also generally what he’d be found in in the summer if he could help it. But he let it pass and shrugged, looking around at the street.
“Have about anything you can want close by. What do you feel like?”
Julien caught the slight twitch in facial expression and he cringed, wishing he had better control over his mouth. He hadn't expected to be asked what he wanted to eat though, and it stopped him short on the berating train, shocking the words "Giraffe" out of him, entirely without his permission.
"I mean, we could eat at Giraffe." He corrected, the slight blush a seemingly permanent fixture now. "They've got some interesting stuff on the menu and it's not too expensive." he was planning on paying for them both anyway.
“Ooh... they have a lamb burger. Good idea, mate.” Alfie bumped his shoulder to Julien’s in a friendly way, then started that direction. He was a touchy sort of guy with his friends, and always had been. At first in their tutoring he’d thought it made Julien upset, but then he’d figured that the other boy was just shy or something, and also figured he’d get over it. Mostly because Alfie couldn’t really stop himself - he didn’t think things through too much.
Alfie was planning the same thing with paying, of course, which was why he’d taken the money from his apron. “D’you think somewhere they eat actual giraffes?”
Alfie didn't say anything about his sudden verbal explosion and that little mercy meant that he forgot to flinch away at the contact that followed it, or so he convinced himself. Alfie touched so frequently, so casually and so completely without prejudice that his body would have exhausted itself if it flinched each time there was contact; it had just had to get used to it, and all this without Julien's knowledge.
He was pleased at the approval and let himself walk, knowing that he'd get there in that way he always had. "I'm not sure." he said, taking the query seriously. "I'd imagine they'd be too large to consume without a lot of waste, but then again you don't see many dead giraffes lying around on TV shows about Africa and such, do you."
“Guess not...” Alfie hadn’t thought about it either of those ways, which wasn’t surprising, really. He was definitely better at thinking up strange questions than he was at actually trying to figure out the answers to them. That was why Ravenclaws existed, right?
“We could get the bus if you want?” It wasn’t that long a walk, but Alfie didn’t know how long Julien had been running about today, either.
"Do we need to take the bus?" Julien asked, snapped out of his directed daze to blink at Alfie, curious. While he tended to fade out a little and use the walking trick to get him anywhere he needed to go it stopped working when he travelled by any other means.
"I don't mind, if you wanted to." he decided.
Alfie shrugged again, grinning at him. Julien sometimes seemed like he was daydreaming, but Alfie didn’t think that was all that strange. “Just if you didn’t want to walk. It’s not that far. If I remember where it is...”
Julien cocked his head a little at Alfie with a smile he didn't use often on his face, one he was barely aware of because it was a soft, fond one, to be used with friends. He hadn't smiled like that much at all.
"Would it be easier to take the bus?"
Alfie looked a little helpless, though he was still grinning. “If I remember which stop to get off...” He laughed then, shaking his head. “I’ve only been there a few times! We can walk it, though. I think I can remember.” He didn’t say that he only ever was around here to help with the greengrocery, and most of the time side-alonged in with his mum.
Julien shrugged a little and his smile quirked into his usual public facing one before he stepped out and let fate take the reins again. It was difficult keeping his Seer powers under wraps at times like these, but tehn no one had ever really gotten close enough to him before that he'd had to hide them this well, which was sad really considering that the boys were still on the cusp of friendship.
"I think it's this way, does that match you?" he asked, just in case.
Alfie looked the way Julien was headed, then fell in step beside him easily. “Sure. I mean, even if we don’t find it, there’s always places to eat, yeah?” It felt like the right direction, though, and he didn’t have much of a problem letting Julien lead. “Do you live close?”
"Oh, no, I mean, not far. I live in Hampshire." he said. It was about an hour away by train, two if you were unlucky on changes. "But I've eaten at this place before." he said quickly. He hadn't, but he knew it would just look suspicious if he said so.
“You came all that way?” Alfie looked surprised, but he grinned again, following Julien and wondering if coming to visit him was really the only reason he’d come? “We live in Keswick now, though. Only time I ever get in here is to help out at the stall... usually my dad apparates in for work and I side-along.” None of which was information Julien had asked for, but Alfie didn’t really notice that.
Julien didn't blush through sheer force of will, and bewilderment at why he wanted to. He just nodded and hitched his shoulder a little in a 'no big deal' kind of manner.
"Do you work here all the time in the summer?" Julien asked, curious.
“Not every day, but yeah...” Alfie shrugged, and when he looked around at the corner, he thought he had a better idea about where he was headed and turned in the right direction without having to wait for Julien to lead him.
“Mum and my sisters work too, but granddad says more work gets done while I’m here...”
Julien followed the change in step like they'd been doing this together for years, his attention on the conversation. "Most of the week? Do you get weekends off?" he smiled at that last bit, only because it wasn't big enough to be called a grin. "Diligient Hufflepuff, right?" he complimented.
“Well, I get off whenever I want, really.” Alfie laughed, shaking his head. “But I don’t work Wednesday or Thursday because I have practice, and then Sundays are games, so...” he trailed off, turning another corner. “This way, right?”
Julien nodded absently, his expression quizzical. "Practice for what?" He queried, even as Quidditch immediately came to mind before being just as quickly shaken away as a stupid idea unless Alfie was spending time in the Wizarding World too.
“Football.” Alfie said, as if wondering what else anyone would play in the summer.
"Oh." Julien said, trying to sound accepting if not enthusiastic, but not like it bored him to tears, which it did. "What position do you play?" Because even if he didnt like the sport, Alfie did and it was clearly something he enjoyed; Julien wasn't really one to rain on someone else's parade.
“Midfielder. Just in the summers, obviously, I mean my mates are all playing all year and I’m...” He trailed off when he realized what it was in Julien’s expression that seemed off to him. “Oh. You don’t like football. I get it, I mean, it’s nothing near as cool as Quidditch, but...” he shrugged as if to say he didn’t have any other options in the summer.
Julien shook his head, holding his hands up and feeling awkward - the familiarity of it was almost a relief after the weirdness that had set up camp in his tummy while he'd been speaking to Alfie.
"No, I don't, but I don't mind hearing about it if you like it." he said hurriedly, not wanting to upset Alfie, even if it didn't seem he was.
Alfie shrugged, pushing Julien’s hands down with a playful laugh and then shaking his head and starting to walk again. “Nah, that’s okay. If it’s boring for you. My team’s pretty good, though. You’re missing out.”
Julien pulled his hands back a little too fast as Alfie urged them down, his skin seeming to tingle where they'd touched. Julien hoped he wasn't getting unwell.
"I could watch you play." He offered casually. "What's your team called?"
“The Fireballs...” Alfie rolled his eyes, laughing. “You can imagine the jokes. But, we’re good. You don’t have to pretend to like footie, though. I have mates who don’t.” They were mostly girls, but he didn’t add that bit.
“Hey, look.” Alfie broke into a big smile again, nodding to the restaurant. “We didn’t get lost.”
Julien looked up and smiled, pleased that they'd made it before holding the door for Alfie. "The Chiswick Fireballs?" he asked, amused. And then, "Oh, don't get the risotto."
And where that had come from Julien had no idea.
Alfie rolled his eyes again, but headed into the Giraffe anyway, laughing again. “I never get the risotto. Don’t like it. It’s not good here? But it’s not good anywhere.”
Alfie, bless him, gave Julien the perfect out. "Oh, yeah, I had it once and it made me sick. Probably just a fluke, but you never know, especially with seafood." he semi-babbled as they were seated and menu'd. Julien ordered a coke and the sushi rice salad, knowing he'd just pick at the salmon inside.
Alfie got a coke and the greek burger, if just because he liked lamb and he’d had it once the last time he was here and liked it. “Sushi, huh? Raw fish?” He made a face, then grinned at Julien again. “So, what’ve you been up to?”
Julien made a similar face before sighing a little and speaking in a conspiratoral tone. "It's just the smoked salmon, okay? I can eat a whole packet of the stuff. I can eat it 'til I'm sick." he said that last with a wicked little smirk before sitting back. "Nothing much really." he answeered normally, which was true in his case. "Reading. Sleeping. Nothing interesting." Or productive. He felt like his brain was atrophying.
“Whatever, it’s still mostly raw...” Alife laughed, though, and drained half of his coke when it came. “Reading? You can do that at school, Jules!” He didn’t realize he’d used the nickname as he said it. He also didn’t realize the irony in talking about reading at school, when the fact that he never did was the reason Julien had had to coach him through his OWLS.
Julien thanked the waiter hesitantly and then just sipped through his straw once his coke came, not quite as thirsty as Alfie seemed to be. He looked down at his hands at the gentle exclamation though, embarassed and annoyed that he was embarassed because why shouldn't he read on his holidays if that's what he liked doing? He played with the straw uncomfortably and shrugged in reply.
Alfie noticed the change, though, and frowned, not quite sure what he’d said. “Yeah. Yeah... Ravenclaws, I know. Libraries and museums and stuff, right? Thrilling? My sister....” he shook head, and Julien would know that his baby sister was about to be in fourth year in Ravenclaw. “You know me. I’m just thick.” And, when it came to it, not all that bothered by the fact he didnt’ do too well with school.
Julien's brows drew together a little as he frowned at that. "Hey now, you're not thick. You do fine, you just have to be... encouraged to stay on the right track." he said diplomatically, poking at his coke with his straw and looking back up at Alfie, unsure but a little more open, less wounded than before.
Alfie rolled his eyes. “I’m pretty sure when we get back our OWL results, you’ll be singing a different tune.” He was pretty sure he’d gotten enough to at least move into NEWT level classes, but probably just barely.
Julien raised an eyebrow. "Only if that tune is I told you so - I've seen the work you've put in while we were studying, you deserve a good mark because of that alone." He sipped at his coke, using the straw to give his hands something to do other than amble towards Alfie for reasons he couldn't fathom, unless they wanted to reassure him themselves. "You'll do fine. You're not stupid."
Alfie rolled his eyes. “The last time I checked, we weren’t marked on how much work we put in.” He thought Jules probably put in more work trying to get him to focus than he did actually focusing. He was just hoping he didn’t do so bad he had to repeat them again. Being at Hogwarts longer than his sister would be hideous.
Julien shook his head, dismissing that. "You're not, but it'll show through." he said with conviction, and not because he'd tutored the Hufflepuff but because he'd seen how hard the other boy had worked; he felt sure that Alfie would get a passing mark, at least.
Alfie heard the conviction in that - Julien really thought he’d done well academically? It might be the first time that anyone, ever, had believed that of him, and it made him blush a little and rub at the back of his neck bashfully, as he mumbled a ‘thanks’.
Julien could see the discomfort but he couldn't pick up on the cause and he backed off a little, tilting his head with a little 'no problem' before hiding in his coke again. "You think the food is going to take long?" he asked, mostly to change the subject but also because he wanted that salmon.
Alfie shrugged, and he got over his moment of embarrassment fast, at least, taking a drink of his coke and then shrugging. “Depends on how many people are working, I guess? Mine will probably take longer than yours. I mean, they actually have to cook mine.” With that last bit, there was a slight edge of friendly teasing in his voice.
Luckily, Julien picked up on the teasing tone and it didn't cow him like it might have done. He did have a sudden cautious feeling of 'this is my friend, an actual friend, who doesn't mean anything against me and might be genuine' but he treated it very gingerly.
"You never know - they might be smoking the salmon. We could be here a while."
“Had to send someone out to catch it first. It’ll be hours.” Alfie grinned, and then would have mocked more, except that the waitress appeared with their plates, and he rolled his eyes and mumbled, “Or not,” under his breath, grinning at Julien and then picking at his chips.
The Ravenclaw quirked a seldom-seen grin to that and then picked up his fork once the food had been set down, trying not to pick out the salmon first but failing and lifting some up with a little scoop of rice and even lesss whatever-the-salad-bit-was before putting it into his mouth.
"Hm, s'okay." he said, thinking that the rice could have been a little more cooked but the salmon was, well, smoked salmon. "How about yours? Okay?"
Alfie was decidedly not a picky eater. He dug into his chips first, but by the time Julien had asked about, he was already a good few bit bites into the burger, and he mumbled a ‘mmmhmm’ around the bite in his mouth, because at least if he ate like a pig, he had some manners that his mother had instilled in him to go along with it.
Julien laughed softly at Alfie's clear enthusiasm for the food and then set about carefully picking out the bits of the salad that he wasn't going to eat, leaving mainly a pile of sushi rice, salmon and green leafy bits. He sipped his coke again before stabbing at the leaves and carefully resisting picking up some salmon this time. "Don't choke." he warned humourously.
“Don’t worry,” Alfie said after he swallowed another bite of lamb. “Got lots of practice,” And somehow the way he said that was teasing and maybe a little like a dirty joke that he hadn’t quite meant. He blushed a little again, hearing how it sounded, and took another bite to shut himself up.
The double entendre almost slipped by Julien, but he caught it in time not to choke on his salad and raised an eyebrow instead, choosing not to comment and denying to himself that he was blushing at it too.
"Are you back to work after this?" he asked instead.
Alfie rubbed at the back of his neck again, still a little flushed from what he’d said, but shrugged and took another bite before he answered. “Guess so. Granddad won’t care, and I think my mum was coming back this afternoon too, but I didn’t have anything else planned. You doing something?”
Pausing like he was trying to remember, Julien eventually shook his head as the nagging little feeling of premonition he sometimes had remained silent.
"No, but I can just hop a train back, it's not a problem." he said with a smile, partially to show Alfie that it really wasn't an issue and partially because he'd finished the green stuff and could reward himself with the salmon, which he ate with a happy little noise.
Alfie ate a few more chips, frowning a little at that. “Well, if you come into the city at all, you could let me know when you’re coming and we can plan to do something? Or you could just let me know if you want to... we don’t have to do things here. The only mate I really have in London anymore is Harmony Summers, do you know him?”
Despite the fact that he'd come down to see Alfie on nothing more than an old offer (and some hefty precog booting) the offer to meet up again still surprised Julien. He tilted his head a little in thought, trying to match a face to the vaguely familiar name.
"I don't think so..." he decided. "But I'm not sure."
“Erm... loud boy in my dorm? He’s always in detention. Oh, he rode the stairwell once when it changed while were were all leaving Charms?” He knew that Harmony was in classes with them - Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw were always combined - but that didn’t mean Julien hadn’t been paying too much attention to professors or whatnot to notice him or know his name.
Julien's eyes widened as the knowledge came back to him and he nodded. "Oh, him. Yeah, I know OF him..." he agreed somewhat distantly, trying to remember how the boy looked instead of remembering the feeling of waiting for the boy to fall to his death - although possibly not, because surely they had Charms against that sort of thing in the stairwells... surely.
“Yeah, him. He’s a mate...” Alfie laughed. “Sometimes we meet up in the summer, since he lives around, but you could always come along with us.”
Julien felt a little unsure about hanging around a boy whose death he expected to have a vision of on an almost weekly basis but if Alfie felt comfortable around him then maybe it was rumour more than fact. "Sure, if you think he won't mind." he agreed, albeit a little nervously.
“He won’t mind,” Alfie shrugged again, and finished the last few bites of his hamburger with just as much gusto as he’d started it with. If he wasn’t so active, he’d probably be a little pudgy. “My sisters like to do things in the summer in town anyway.”
Julien scraped his fork around his plate, pushing the food leftover about like it made it better that he'd left it. Oddly, it did make him feel less like he was wasting a lot of food and he lay his cutlery down before reaching to finish up his drink. "Mm, what do they do?" he queried.
Alfie just shrugged. It was girl stuff. Even if he was close with Ellie, he spent most of his times with with his muggle friends or working during the summers, so they didn’t do as much together as they used to do. “What do you usually do?”
Julien dropped his gaze to his empty plate, removed the straw from his mouth to stir at his coke instead. "Nothing. I don't really do anything. I read mostly." he admitted in pieces, aware that confessing his introverted hobbies usually resulted in ridicule. He didn't think Alfie would, but it was hard to break years worth of habit.
Alfie had already teased him a little about being able to do that at school instead, and that hadn’t gone over well, so he didn’t tease this time. Instead he finished a few more of his chips, then pushed his plate toward Julien to see if he wanted to share what was left of them. “I’d go crazy stuck in the house with my mum all summer.”
The offer of chips relaxed Julien back down, even if he did take one and then refuse the rest. He sat up a little more at that though, concerned although he didn't feel that there was anything amiss.
"How come?" he asked, casual but alert for any signs of something untoward.
Alfie looked a little confused at the question, then laughed around another chip. “Because it’s being stuck. Inside. With my mum? I don’t know. I mean, there’s only so many times she can tell me to clean my room before I want to go and meet up with my mates, right?”
Julien watched carefully, suspicious, but he still wasn't picking up anything bad and so eventually relaxed, nibbling at his pilfered chip. "I suppose." he agreed, the smile back. His mum didn't really talk to him anymore and apart from Alfie he had no other mates to meet up with. But he could kind of get Alfie's point.
Alfie didn’t really understand the turn the conversation had taken, but he was willing to let it slide when Jules was grinning again. Whatever he’d missed, and he did get the idea he’d missed something, it couldn’t have been that important. “Well, we’ll have to do something before we go back to school. If nothing else, meet up with my sister and me when we go to buy supplies. Can’t wait to get our owls for the summer... I want to see what Hagrid’s thinking this year.”
Julien had never had friends to go pre-school shopping with before and the idea made a little warm curl turn around and yawn in his chest. "Really? That's really nice of you to invite me." he said, genuinely touched. "Though I do tend to spend a bit too much time in the bookshops..."
Alfie laughed at that and ate the last few of his chips before he said, “Good. You can watch Maisie then. You’ll be in the same places.” Not that his fourteen year old sister really needed to be watched over anymore.
Taking that as the real motivation behind Alfie's invitation would have been acting a little to paranoid for Julien to handle, although he did hide away the thought in some dark part of him that this was the case. He didn't think Alfie would be cruel like that, despite the fact that he was sure anybody else would be, and he didn't get a bad feeling about it that might have tipped him off. "I've never really met anyone who spends as much time in them as I do." he warned, and then said, thoughtfully, "except maybe Madam Pince."
“Eh...She could rival you, but she’s a little too old for someone to have to make sure bookshelves don’t crush her now,” Alfie shrugged, grinning again at his friend and then grabbing fast at the cheque when the waitress came back to sit it down.