Ron Weasley (weasleyis) wrote in eighth_rpg, @ 2011-01-01 09:59:00 |
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Entry tags: | lia moon, ron weasley |
Who: Lia Moon and Ron Weasley
What: Some yelling. And tarot!
Where: Lia's "office" at the Ministry
When: Saturday, 1 January
Rating: Some swearing and the like.
First Harry had called Lia Moon's office the stupidest thing ever, which had made Ron slightly curious as to just what it was like. But then Ginny had practically raved about how accurate her tarot reading by Moon had been, and that had made Ron angry. How dare someone mess with his sister after everything that had happened!
He hadn't said anything to Ginny about that, thinking the funeral hadn't been the best place to bring that up. Instead, he had only told her that it was nice she was getting some direction, and then wandered off before he said something he'd regret.
But now it was time to confront this Lia Moon, and, admittedly, see just how stupid her office really was. Swiftly making his way to the Department of Mysteries during a break, he found her office and invited himself in.
And then halted in his tracks. Harry hadn't been lying. Ron's jaw dropped as he took in the absolute absurdity of the scene around him, staring at the pillows and candles and wondering why the hell someone was getting paid to sit in an "office" that looked more like some freakish room for taking naps. The Ministry considered this important?! Important was going and finding the Death Eaters and killing them, not... well, whatever this was. No wonder Harry hadn't been impressed.
Spotting Lia, Ron addressed her rather harshly. "Moon! What business do you have messing with my sister's head? She's not exactly in the best place for that right now with all this Seeing rubbish!"
He figured she shouldn't have been surprised to see him, seeing as how she should have "Seen" him coming. He rolled his eyes.
--
Lia had been minding her own damn business, levitating a good two feet off of her platform: Severus Snape was so clear, she could practically touch him, his greasy hair hanging down in front of his face as he scribbled something into a book with an arrogant flourish. She tried to narrow in on his writing: something...damn it, lower your shoulder!...something Half-Blood Prince...
What distracted her wasn't the ungraceful way her door banged open, no, it was five seconds before that, when reading that...was it a nickname? A...title? Who was the Half-Blood Prince?...made her have such a clear vision of Harry Goddamned Potter that she yelped and went crashing down into the cushion, its charm catching her gently as she thumped down. Potter was to her what Khan was to James T. Kirk.
Already rattled, when Ron came in half-cocked (and honestly, with a pretty looney look in his eyes), all she could manage was a dumb stare. The hell?! After he finished, she blinked slowly a few times and then sighed, closing her eyes and rubbing at her face. "Harry fucking Potter," she mumbled, low and under her breath, before pulling her hands back.
"I was very sorry to hear about your parents, your mother was an extraordinary woman." She looked down for a moment and took the ring off of her middle finger, putting it on her other hand. "Anyway. Are you going to keep yelling at me, or are you finished? I just want to know if I should get some water first."
--
Ron returned Lia's stare with one of his own. Why was she commenting about his mum? It stunned him momentarily, until he realised that he had come down here with a purpose. Well two, really, but he had already decided that he agreed with Harry's assessment that this was the dumbest thing ever.
"Thank you," he answered almost automatically, as he had during the entire wake. "But I still want to know why you found it necessary to mess with my sister's head, and I'm not leaving until you tell me."
--
"You can fix the clock, you know," Lia said, almost sighing, as she righted herself on the platform and then paused to Accio her bottle of water from her desk. "It's unnerving to have their hands and Fred's hand permanently stuck to mortal peril, but you don't want to take them off, either. You need to reset the clock: stop the pendulum and rewind the hands once clockwise; when you set the pendulum swinging again, a new 'time' will appear: at peace." She looked at Ron as she popped the bottle open. "So. I'm sorry."
She let herself take a few gulps before dealing with whatever his issue was: Ginny?! Really? "I didn't find it necessary, I found it optional. And your 'messing with her head' was actually explaining to her that bathing in her own indecision was destructive so that she could be the brave, assertive sister that you love. But whatever, your term's a lot shorter," Lia shrugged.
--
Fix the clock? What the bloody... oh.
Ron didn't have anything to say. He just stared at Lia, mouth hanging open, half tempted to leave right then, not to get away from her, but because the clock had been unnerving. And he wanted to see if it worked. But she continued speaking, about Ginny, and he wasn't sure what to say to that either.
"Uh... sorry," he mumbled. "But how the bloody hell...?!"
Ron clearly didn't put a lot of faith into divination, but she had definitely made him wonder.
--
Lia let out a long breath through her nose and picked up her wand again, sending another bottle of water to her. She held it out towards Ron, gesturing with it for him to sit down.
"Because this is my talent. No matter what your girlfriend thinks, Divination is real. Why else would Hogwarts devote a subject to something if it was total bullshit?" she asked, opening her bottle top again. She liked screwing the top on and off, on and off. "Some of us can actually do this, Ron. We're not here to hurt. There's no such thing as seeing the future, there's only Seeing a future, and all I helped your sister do is see that she has different paths ahead of her and how to look at her options." She hesitated. "You'll have to forgive me, but what I See specifically for someone else is confidential. As much fun as it might be to run around and tell everyone that some poor guy got The Grim, I get my kicks in other ways."
--
"Right," Ron said, not entirely convinced because all he knew of Divination at Hogwarts was Trelawney and Firenze, and it was hard to take the subject seriously. However, curiosity was getting the best of him quickly, and he took the offered water bottle, opening it and taking a sip before sitting down.
"So uh, what do you See for me?" he asked, trying his best to seem more skeptical than curious.
--
She kept her wand nearby, not to get more water, but because this was Harry's blood buddy; if Harry was a raging twat, who knew about Ron? She'd be hexing this time, not yelling. And calling security. The big guy who stared at her chest all the time. He'd totally kick Ron's ass in her honor.
But then again, when Harry sat down, he looked like he was being stabbed; Ron had done so willingly. And he wasn't hostile--well, not anymore. Lia flipped the bottle top like a coin off of her thumb, looking at Ron with a perplexed shrug. "Uh...you putting off your laundry for another day?" She shrugged again, giving him a crooked grin. "That's not how it works. Like, sometimes, I'll see flashes of things--like, when you and Harry went drinking the other night, he spluttered at something you said, and he got firewhiskey on his shirt. I saw myself slipping on some ice the other day. But usually...that's not how I See the future. You ask a question, and we try to use a divining tool to find an answer."
--
"Oh," Ron said, looking more skeptical again. "What sort of question? And can you use tarot cards?" He wanted to see what Ginny had been on about, after all. Before he decided that the woman reading them was completely off the hook.
--
Lia flipped the cap again. "Any question you'd like--I don't want to put something in your head, because it should be from you, but...about relationships, a problem at work, concerns about your family, a decision you have to make...anything, really. But whatever you pick, don't tell me right away."
Okay, she didn't even try to hide her surprise: Ron wanted a reading? She squinted at him for a moment. Had Harry put him up to this? After a moment, she relented and nodded. "We can, if that's what you would like? We'd do a different spread than I used with Ginny because we haven't had as much time to prepare the deck."
--
Ron tried to think of any specific question that he wanted answered, but he couldn't narrow it down. The only question that had come to mind was, What the fuck now? He was pretty sure that wasn't what she was asking for, but that's what she was getting. Or he was getting. He didn't even know. It was just something he'd wondered for some time. After the breakout, after his parents had been killed. Now.
"Yeah," he agreed. "Got a question... kinda, and I don't mind about a different... whatever." As if he'd know any difference. He just wanted to see what she or the cards or whatever would say. Especially to that particular question. Could they even say anything?
--
Ron's question hurt: it was like overeating, feeling stuffed so full that she wanted to slump down on herself and just loll there, paralyzed and miserable. Lia closed her eyes, just breathing for a few moments until the feeling settled and shrank into a sad little ball beneath her heart. "What the fuck now...what the fuck...what the fuck should I use?" she mumbled, her eyes darting around as she thought.
"Alright," she said suddenly, accioing a specific Tarot deck but directing them to Ron's hands. "The Phoenix deck, since that's pretty appropriate on a lot of different levels. Start shuffling those between your hands, try to touch every single card, don't be afraid to rub them, and when you finish, set the deck down on the...well, this table," she said, charming Ron's cloak to lift up and create a flat surface for the cards to go.
Lia squinched up her eyes. "I'm not sure...a Hagall spread is really helpful in times of personal crisis, but it's a heavy spread, I don't think we can do that yet..." She looked back at Ron. "Alright, there are two options. A single card read, which can be very blunt in giving you a very simple, quick and dirty look at the situation. Or we can do a Celtic Cross, which is the most common layout, it doesn't require a lot of you being acquainted with the cards to answer you well. It'll take longer, though, so that's up to you."
--
When Lia repeated his question aloud, though mumbled, Ron's skepticism went away. It did, however, make him slightly nervous about shuffling the deck, but he did so as directed, though he wasn't really certain what he was doing or why he should be rubbing the cards. And he felt weird doing it.
After a while he set the deck down though, and considered his options. "The Celtic Cross." The other option sounded rather unpleasant, even if it was faster. Plus he was curious, moreso than he'd ever been trying to stay awake in Trelawney's class. "If you really don't mind, that is," he added quickly.
--
"I don't mind," Lia shrugged, though she gave a look at her desk, unseen in the shadows but piled full of paperwork. Still, she forced herself to clear her mind and focus only on Ron, not her backlog of work. "We'll need to find you a Significator--it's a card that can stand in for you and guide the direction of the reading, since we haven't done much to get the cards acquainted with you." She waved her hands over the deck, making the suit of wands appear; then she singled out the court cards. "The wands represent fire, they respond well to redheads," she explained, letting the page card lift above the others and come to a rest in front of Ron. "The Page of Wands. He'll anchor you."
Lia cleared her throat and let all of the other cards come together again in a neat pile. "Randomly choose ten cards with your non-dominant hand and place them in a stack in front of you. I'll then lay out the cross."
--
All this talk about the cards becoming acquainted with him seemed a bit weird to Ron. It wasn't as though they were living things, and he wanted to joke and ask if he should properly introduce himself. But he did not, instead choosing to follow instructions, selecting ten cards at random and placing them down on his cloak.
He had to admit that she didn't seem nearly as weird as Trelawney. So that was a start, he figured, as he waited for her to make the cross.
--
After her experience with Ginny, Lia figured perhaps it was best to suspend the cards between her and Ron from the outset, like she was putting them up on the wall. After she laid the cards out on his cloak, she charmed them in suspension, staring at them in silence before sighing, the pain in her chest seeming to grow.
"Well," she began, screwing her water bottle top back on. "Maybe we should switch over." Lia leaned over and pulled up a pillow, revealing a little trap door in the floor where a hollow hiding place was, just big enough for a Lia-sized person to hide (though uncomfortably). Pulling out a bottle of Muggle tequila--the good kind from Mexico, the really good kind that goes down smooth and then makes you burn and shiver--she set out two shot glasses on the cloak table. "My boss installed that himself, in case the Ministry is ever under attack again and Muggleborns like me have to hide. In the meantime, I think it's a good place to hide the stash." She poured her shot and clinked it against Ron's. "Salud."
--
It didn't take any gift of Sight to realise that Lia didn't seem to think the cards he had chosen were all that great, and that was before she broke out the liquor. Ron was instantly reminded of Divination with Trelawney, and his apprehension grew. However, he wasn't going to turn down a drink, even if he didn't recognise the label on the bottle.
"Salud," he echoed, having no idea what it meant, before drinking down the shot. "So how fucked am I?"
It was harder now to give her the benefit of the doubt.
--
She hedged for a moment. "Okay, so your question wasn't...the best. Like, if I looked up vague in the dictionary, your question would be waving back at us. This Tarot is limited, and it doesn't mean that all is lost, not in the slightest, Ron. This is short term--I mean, you used the word 'now,' and the cards heard that."
Lia spun the glass around and shrugged before looking back at him. "But yeah, things are gonna be kinda shitty."
--
Again, with the cards acting, this time hearing what he'd said. Ron wondered if he was mental for even being there. But he had ventured down to Lia's office, then asked for a reading so he wasn't about to leave now.
Besides, his curiosity (now mixed with dread) was only growing stronger. So he simply nodded at her. "Well, tell me."
How much worse could things get, really?
--
Lia brought a card from the center of the spread out for Ron to see; it had been hidden by the card over it. "This is the Ace of Wands, Reversed. It's the atmosphere that surrounds your central question. The Ace of Wands can stand for birth and invention, but in the reversed position, it speaks to the inception of a crisis, an unleashing of dangerous elements--dangerous elements in motion."
She shifted that back into place and lifted that top card. "The reason why it's obscured is because your question is being blocked by an event that has crossed your life: this is The Tower." She gave him a ghost of a smile, slightly sad and wry. "A lightning struck tower." Tucking her hair back, she continued, "The Tower is unforeseen catastrophe. A tower should be a place of safety, but the lightning destroys it. It doesn't take Hermione to understand that the lightning strike is the murder of your parents."
With a wave of her hand, both cards hovered together, side by side. "Together, these cards are very clear: there is danger that is only beginning to unfold."
--
Ron stared at both cards for a moment, having listened intently as Lia spoke. Beginning to unfold. "Brilliant," he muttered. Though he didn't really need tarot to know that. His job was dangerous in and of itself, but with recent events, it would only become more of a risk.
But it had struck closer than ever before, and there was a sinking feeling in his stomach, as he contemplated what could possibly lie ahead if losing his mum and dad was only the beginning. Part of him didn't want to know, or rather, wanted to dismiss all of this as pure rubbish, but he found he couldn't so easily now, and he wondered if there was anything better remaining in the reading.
"Alright," he said after a bit, a cue for her to continue because he didn't feel like saying much more than that.
--
The top of the cross was next: "This is your goal, what you hope can get with what you have now: The Three of Wands--it's Virtue," she said, tucking her hair again. "You have strength of character, and it's come from all of your trials being at Harry's side and from battling your own demons--when you left them in the forest, you went back, even though you didn't have to. Your character is honorable, despite darkness, and this strength can be used to achieve a distant goal, that hope of ending this struggle once and for all.
"You're really going to need that strength, because you're coming headlong into what has precipitated this situation: The Knight of Pentacles, Reversed." Lia brought out the card at the bottom of the cross. Her shoulders ached for some reason; she felt like she had been carrying bricks. "The Knight of Pentacles is the earth behaving as fire, like the crawling of lava. It's not swift and brutal, it's slow and suffocating. Something that lacks imagination and is utterly unwilling to try new things and approaches, so the same old mistakes happen." She let the cards rest as she looked at Ron. "A place where they are slow to action, even in the most urgent circumstances.
"The Ministry."
--
"I had to," Ron answered quickly. "I couldn't leave Harry and Hermione on their own. I would have right away if not for..."
He paused, and frowned. She couldn't have known about that any other way. He knew Harry hadn't said anything during his visit. If she could truly See all of these things, it felt almost intrusive. Painful. To have his faults known by someone he had only really just met.
Pondering what she had said about the the card though, he wasn't sure that he had as much strength of character as she had said. It hadn't been a choice, really. Going back. Just a really horrible decision to leave.
But the Knight of Pentacles? That made sense, and was a source of his frustration that he seldom voiced. The fact that the Ministry wasn't doing enough. "Got that right," he muttered.
Ron regarded Lia for a moment, unable to even guess what she was thinking which bothered him slightly, before nodding again. "Makes sense so far."
--
"You're in an organization that, instead of changing, turned its back on Albus Dumbledore, and it might hold you back from what you need to do to. Keep that in mind," she urged. "You and your friends have operated outside of the system before; there might come a time to do that again."
Lia's chest hurt. She was starting to get a headache; Ron's sister had been open, but it felt like Ron was pushing back. She had a vision--not a Vision, but a vision, a thought, a tiny, mean daydream--of him and Hermione, laughing at whatever crap Harry had said about her. She battled against an urge to just tell him to go, but if she prided herself on being ethical with what she Saw, keeping this truth from Ron would be wrong. So she tried to stretch her shoulder and twisted her rings again, focusing on the next card.
"This is the Eight of Wands--swiftness. It's the same suit as your Significator, that firey suit. This is your impulse, what you want to do: you want to solve this, end this, battling against your natural impatience. You might be quarreling more or just feeling really anxious because you're not necessarily getting a release."
Pausing, Lia went for her water bottle. "Okay, before we keep going, are these your cards? Have these adequately described your past and present? Because I don't want to move into your future unless we're talking about you." Ethics, ethics, ethics...
--
Ron stared at her as she described the Eight of Wands, then asked him if the cards were describing him.
"Yes," he said without hesitation.
--
Lia almost smiled as she took another drink. "Alright."
Then she did smile, all the way, bringing the sixth card for Ron to see. "This, the Two of Cups: this is love. This card represents a thing that you are to embrace, fully and completely, as you move forward. Hermione--well--she's your good."
--
Ron had been hoping that there was something better in this spread, and there it was. He grinned as she held it up. "Doubt even she could argue with that bit of the reading."
But it was true. And again he didn't need a tarot card to tell him this, that the best thing he had going in his life right now was his relationship with Hermione, but it was good, in a sense, seeing his life reflected back at him.
"I certainly won't argue."
The smile on his face was genuine, and he was considerably more relaxed now than he had been only moments before.
--
She smiled back. "I just want you to keep in mind, the card is telling you to embrace this: remember, the context here is of an unfolding crisis, and your relationship will be tested in ways that you can expect--and others that you won't, just like the tower that started this all. Keep your hands tight around your love with Hermione, no matter what the challenge or what the strain."
Taking in a deep breath, she sighed it out slowly. "Alright. The next three cards, I personally think, can and should be read in conjunction: the representation of your role as the crisis begins to mount; the environment you are in; and then your hopes and fears, even elements of surprise. These all are what you are about to confront as you move forward.
She slid her rings on and off as she nodded at each card. "Strength, Reversed is first. Which implies what you will think: it's weakness in the face of obstacle." Her head lolled to one side, and she gave a kind of shrug. "It doesn't mean that you yourself are weak, it's that you might not be prepared for something, that tremendous power is released at the wrong moment and you don't know how to defend yourself or react. A lot of things are coming together swiftly to equal your inability to respond the way you want to--and the way that you can."
--
Ron nodded as she told him to keep focus on his love for Hermione, but his smile quickly faded as she revealed the next card. Couldn't she go back to the previous one? That had been good.
He had to think about it for a moment, trying to take in what she was telling him, before he asked, "But, if I know that something like that is coming, I might be able to be more prepared?" That almost made sense to him.
--
"You might?" Lia suggested. "I mean, this Tarot is a snapshot of you now, and how your future projects from this moment. If you make changes in your life, this isn't necessarily your future. But if your fate is related to your actions, it is also based on the actions of others that impact you. You might be faced with an event that you could have never anticipated. Still, you can try to work right now on crisis, on being prepared and handling other scenarios that you can think of."
She pointed to the next card. "This is the environment you are in: the Two of Wands, the card of dominion. It means leadership: people are looking to you for guidance, to lead them. You might look to others, to Harry or Hermione or your supervisors in the Auror office, but know that people are looking to you and this is your future. And this last card is the hope or unexpected influence, and it's the Page of Pentacles, the absolute element of earth. Solidness."
She swirled her hand around the three cards. "Together, the cards are predicting a future where you are an active agent of change, not merely as a support system. In the past, you've had your moments--that's something that the Two of Wands urges you to do, to look back and see how you've handled yourself in similar moments of crisis, but instead of seeing those moments as aberrations, you need to become a true leader, and your successes--" She pointed at the third card. "--will be greater than your failures," she finished, gesturing at the first card. "The Page of Pentacles is a hope, and you're already expressing it: the hope to be one who comes through in a crisis. I think you'll surprise yourself with how well you do react, so don't let the times of failure throw you off course."
--
Ron took in everything Lia was telling him, but remained quiet as he did so. Harry and Hermione were who he turned to. His past examples of taking charge were few, and only when necessary. And most of them paled in comparison to what they were facing now. Somehow that lifesize game of Wizard's Chess didn't quite match up with facing down Death Eaters on a regular basis. Or finding them, even.
It all sounded well and good, but he had no real idea of how to become a "true leader" as she had said.
There was one card that she hadn't revealed, so he gestured to that. "I hope the last one isn't terrible." The past few had been mostly positive, a change from the early ones.
--
For the first time, Lia touched the card, plucking it from where it hovered and looking at it. "This is the the card that speaks to the future for the path you are now on: the Five of Wands, reversed. Wands again--your suit," she pointed out with a mild smile.
Lia started to say something and then stopped, staring hard at the card for nearly a minute. "This is reversed," she said slowly, "but in symbolic terms, the Five of Wands speaks to a great battle. I saw the Five of Wands so much during the build up to May..." She stopped and then slowly started again, her words picking up a little steam. "The Five of Wands is the battle, and it's a five of wands because fives are the balance point in the numbered cards of the suit: if you lose, you confront the Four of Wands, but if you win, the Six of Wands stands for victory. Five of Wands is strife, Six is victory, and it's Seven that is holding your ground...so...a Five of Wands, reversed..."
She stared at a place over Ron's shoulder, and then literally hit her forehead with the ball of her hand. "Oh, well, duh: Ron, you guys won the battle, right?" she said, turning the Five upright. She then reversed it. "Now you have to deal with the aftermath. It's the dark shadow of the battle, where everything is upside down, when your victory comes into question. Now you have to deal with the underbelly of the battle, the lingering elements that won't go away. This is what is waiting for you, and it won't be easy, but there is one consolation, it won't be as hard as the original battle itself." She gave him a rueful smile. "Though it may not feel like it at times."
--
Well hell. He knew the victory was coming into question without tarot cards telling him that. But it was still interesting to him. The cards really said that? They had pretty much laid out his life as it was, and that was weird enough on its own.
"Won't be as bad, huh?" Ron asked, looking almost wistful. And then suddenly remembered that he'd come down here on his lunch break, and that was about over, if he wasn't late. How long had that reading taken?
"I need to get back to work," he said quickly, standing. "Uh, despite all this stuff about having to keep fighting and everything, happy new year?"
--
Lia matched Ron's wistfulness with a shaded smile of her own. "In some ways."
She drew in a breath and nodded. "Yeah. Happy new year," she said back to him, giving her rings a final twist. Fuck her work: she was so tired right now, going home, getting in bed, and watching some recorded episodes of The Simpsons was just what she needed. To try to relax and be with the one in the whole world who wouldn't think of her as some asshole to be yelled at or only good for a Tarot read or two:
Her bunny, Bob. He might have carrot breath, but she could overlook that, this time.