InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "In your head they are dying."

Leena Silton // Lyra Silvertongue (thelittleliar) wrote in expresslogs,
@ 2012-08-19 15:44:00

Entry tags:

!plot, {james potter, {lyra silvertongue

Who: Lyra and James Potter
What: maybe borrowing a baby, meeting the roommate.
Where: infirmary, then Lyra and James' room.
When: Sunday afternoon
Rating: low
Status: closed and complete!

Her curiosity had finally won over her, and she trooped to the infirmary to see if she recognised any of the babies that were left there. Maybe there would be a little Will! Or a little Lee! Her excitement built to a plateau as she pushed open the door to the infirmary, cautiously peeking about. There was one baby, and Lyra wrinkled her nose as she approached.

"Cleopatra," Lyra read, frowning. "Pan, why is that familiar?"

Pan, who had been by her feet, jumped up next to the baby to look her over. It wasn't coming to him either. She was about to turn away when it hit her, "That awful girl who is going to rot in the land of the dead forever, this was hers."

Well, Lyra wasn't going to let that stand. Whatever influence Quinn had on her needed to be undone, and fast. "We'll teach her all about the Republic of Heaven, Pan," Lyra said, making up her mind. She carefully picked up the infant, cooing at her. Never mind that she didn't have a room to stay in - she might go back and kick that James Potter out of it. Or drive him out. Either way, she was going to make sure that Cleopatra turned out right.

She turned to leave, grabbing a blanket as she did. The lack of a daemon bothered her far more than she would ever admit, but she would still be alright, right? She looked to Pan for assurance, who nodded. She was nearly out the door, when she realised writing a note, and probably snagging a bottle would be a good thing. She scrawled off a hastily written note, leaving her room number and explaining she had the baby, then grabbed several bottles of formula and set off.

Getting back to the room was a bit more difficult, as Cleo started to cry, and Lyra tried her hardest to shush her, nearly crying herself. It wasn't fair - this tiny helpless infant didn't have a daemon to comfort her! She must be so sad and scared and lonely. She didn't even have to ask Pan; he jumped to her shoulder, then carefully nuzzled the baby, keeping her quiet. Lyra's insides twisted, her stomach tingling. It was shocking to feel Pan interact with someone else, even if was an infant. But it was for the good of the baby, and Lyra soldiered on, fumbling with her door handle, and finally, after a good few weeks of kipping in one of the parlour cars, returning to her room.

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mapmaker
2012-08-20 09:06 am UTC (link)

Turned out that things weren't all that bad aboard the train. As long as James didn't bother thinking about his home, the war, Lily, anything remotely related to his future in which he might or might not have a son with Lily (who he wasn't thinking about, steadfastly, resolutely, at all), or, oh give or take a few thousand other things, he could go about quite---not exactly happily, but contentedly enough, for certain.

He'd taken to rambling around the train at all hours of the night since Sirius was hard to hang onto in the state he was in of late and it wasn't like he'd ever been a consistent sleeper. James had always figured he'd have time to sleep when he was dead. There was a world out there to be living in. Lights out was the worst time of the day for him by that measure. There simply wasn't anything good to come of sleeping.

James managed to get back by the room he'd been assigned usually once or twice a day to shower, nap rather than sleep, or catch up on whatever was happening out on the train's unusual "net" structure. He'd been back for some hours at the stage that it was when a young woman burst in with a baby in tow complete with some sort of animal.

Blinking owlishly at her from behind his lenses, James asked, "Are you the other occupant then? I wasn't aware you came with a menagerie, but I'm always up for something new. D'you need me to move anything? I've tried to be neat enough, but I'm not really used to picking up after myself and, as I've not seen you here yet, I wasn't sure how much of the room to take up."

One might think that was almost a ludicrous statement to make given that James had shown up in a set of sleep pants and nothing else -literally nothing else- but he had a tendency to spread out into a space. Gryffindor Tower had basically been his room by the time he'd gotten to fifth year at Hogwarts and everyone there had learned to live around it since it was easier than trying to pick up after him. The more they tried to tidy up his things, the more lost everything got for James which only resulted in him tossing things about even more trying to find what he'd been looking for originally before it'd been placed somewhere so-called "sensible." Honestly. Who really thought that all their clothes should fit in a single trunk? He didn't want his Quidditch gear in with his school robes. Everything would only wind up manky. He had a system. Mostly.

"I'm James. Potter. I tend to forget we're most of us strangers here when some days I feel as if I've been aboard forever, if you know what I mean."

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thelittleliar
2012-08-22 09:10 pm UTC (link)

Lyra took a look around. He'd certainly spread out in the time that she'd been gone. "I know you're James," she said, somewhat curtly. "As it's your name on the door."

She looked around again. "I need a space for the baby," she said. "Pan needs room to run around unless you want him messing about your stuff, I won't stop him." Pan would stop Pan, and he shot her a quick look before nuzzling back with Cleo.

She wan't cross with him, she really wasn't. She was just cross at him. Amy had left to go be with Rory, then Amy had left the train. Samantha had left not a week after she'd roomed with Lyra, then it had been that Regina woman ... and Lyra was staying far from them. The Huntsman and others had offered their help, but Lyra wasn't going to put herself in a position to take it.

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mapmaker
2012-08-22 11:27 pm UTC (link)

Friendly, James decided at her response. He wasn't entirely certain that he'd blame her if he'd come back to his room to realize that some unknown had sprawled his things about haphazardly while he had an infant and a---whatever that was to take care of already. It wasn't as if he'd known though. Not really. He'd mostly just---done as he'd always done at home which was likely where all the fuss would come in as James had never been the best at remembering to think of others.

Using Peter's wand, he summoned several things from around the room to his bed before saying a quick cleaning spell to hopefully take care of anything he'd tracked in. James hadn't noticed whether or not he'd tracked in anything from the last stop. Who knew what cleaned the place up? Better safe than sorry.

An almost astringent scent of lemon lingered in the air after he'd finished and his face flushed a bit in reaction.

"Sorry there," he murmured, "I'm not precisely the best with cleaning charms. Should do for you and yours though. Is the infant there actually yours or one of the strays someone loosed on the train?"

Sensitivity wasn't one of his better qualities. James didn't quite know what to make of her pet either, but he'd seen magical folk with strange familiars so that actually seemed less odd than the fact that she was carrying a baby around on the Orient. He couldn't understand how the train could see fit to bring someone's infant aboard with all the dangers he'd already encountered while a passenger himself.

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thelittleliar
2012-08-22 11:37 pm UTC (link)

Lyra watched, fascinated as he used his wandstickiethingie and cleaned the room. Not even the witches she knew could do that. It was highly peculiar how he could manipulate reality.

"Have you ever found another world with ... that?" she asked, curiousity getting the better of her.

"And this infant was found by a horrible girl who shouldn't have had her in the first place, which is why the train sent her away. Or killed her and she's stuck in the land of the dead forever because she's -"

The baby stirred, and let out a cry, and Lyra stopped her rant on Quinn to sit down on the sofa (she wasn't going near the bed) and put Cleo gently down next to her. She rolled over, sighed contentedly, and went back to sleep. Pan stayed on her shoulders, never taking his eyes off James while Lyra fussed over the baby.

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mapmaker
2012-08-23 12:12 am UTC (link)

"Another world?" James considered, trying to determine what she might mean by that when she went on to describe, fairly graphically, how she'd come to acquire the baby she had.

There really wasn't much like the train in his experience. Magic was one thing; the world of the Orient was completely random which was an entirely different thing. James had never been a stickler for the rules, but he was beginning to appreciate them a bit more now that they all seem to have flown right out the proverbial window on him.

He watched the girl tend to the infant as if she really cared whether the baby were sad or hurt or crying. It was oddly fascinating to him as he really hadn't been around many babies in his life. James found infants terrifying on the whole and was quite glad to stay on his side of the room far, far away from her and the tiny girl. They'd told him that he had a son on board the train; that had him wondering if he got over that fear and how that came about or if maybe Lily simply charmed the whole house to make it infant-proof.

As it stood, James couldn't imagine a world in which he was actually a father.

"No, I've never discovered another world. I wound up here without any discovering necessary. You seem quite fine with her. I suppose it's a good thing the train, err, sent away the one who found her originally, as you're doing a bang-up job as far as I can tell. I can't understand them myself. They're too small. I'm always worried they'll get hurt or something because I'm not the most careful of fellows. You really don't mind having her?"

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thelittleliar
2012-08-24 05:07 pm UTC (link)

She supposed not. So the wands were limited. Still. Curious that they held so much potential. Even Pan was concerned, digging his claws into her shoulder tightly.

Once she was sure the baby was really sleeping, she stood and brushed off her hands. "Right, I don't mind at all. If you're not going to be careful, don't go near her. At all." Her tone was sharp and she glared at him.

Why did Rory have to show up and take Amy from her? She wasn't even this resentful of boys normally, the train just had her missing Will - and it was nobody but Will, ever.

"You don't have any other wand people to stay with?"

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mapmaker
2012-08-25 07:30 pm UTC (link)

There was no intention in James at all to go near that infant. He thought it was likely she'd come to harm if he even got too close because that felt like the sort of luck he'd had of late. It seemed a safer bet to stay on his own side of the room from her.

Holding his hands up, James agreed instantly, "Oh no worries there. I'm quite happy over here. Far from her. I've had tremendously poor luck of late. I don't want to spread that around to helpless infants."

Did he have other wand people to stay with? That was a loaded question if he'd ever heard one. The girl he'd thought to be with for possibly ever was aboard, yet with another wizard. His best mate was aboard yet he was in a room with some bird neither of them had ever heard of before. The other "wand people" were from different time periods or other types of worlds and he simply had no clue as to where that left him with them.

"No," he decided, "I don't think that I'd say I have other people from my world to stay with though I suppose I could find a place to be if it'd make you more comfortable. I'm not above trying my hand at making a place for myself aboard."

There were cars that simply held seats to travel in and areas that people could do nothing more than sit quietly. James didn't imagine people would mind if he made himself a place to be in one of those areas. He could always transfigure a chair a bench into a divan.

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thelittleliar
2012-08-27 05:13 am UTC (link)

"Good," Lyra said, pleased for the first time during the conversation. She liked that James Potter was so readily accepting of her asserting dominance over her room.

She nodded, "I've been living in one of the parlour cars, it's certainly manageable. Since you seem to have poor luck, I wouldn't want that extending to Cleo here."

Though it did make her wonder - "Why are you having such bad luck?" Which was quite possibly the kindest thing she'd said to James Potter so far.

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mapmaker
2012-08-27 08:07 am UTC (link)

Why was he having poor luck?

James turned the question around in his head a few times, testing it out, feeling the way it rolled over all the thoughts in his head to coat them in bitterness and regret and hateful feelings that churned in his stomach. He rolled off the bed suddenly, his feet nearly itching to get out of the door, away from that baby the girl had brought in and the questions he didn't even want to think about the answers to much less get asked.

There was nothing good to come of staying.

He looked at her and bluntly stated, "I'm not certain why my luck's gone all wrong myself. I'd like to know why and, as it appears this train has no respect for time, I'm thinking I might manage to do something about it if someone would enlighten me as to what I did or will do to wind up here, now, and in this mess."

Sirius had to be around somewhere. The only thing James really needed to pull out of the room was Peter's wand, but he did a quick look around to see if he'd left anything out from before. It all looked well enough, he supposed.

"If you find out what supposed sin I'm atoning for? Be a dear and share that information with me. I hope you and---and Cleo there sleep well. I'm off to find a place out of the way to do some of that myself. Lovely to meet you," James offered before giving her a nod in farewell as he ventured out the door in search of a bench that looked as if it could use a good transfiguration.

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thelittleliar
2012-08-28 10:03 pm UTC (link)

Lyra blinked as the man quickly left. She had been trying to be nice with the question.

She stared at the door as he left, then back at the sleeping Cleo.

"Well, Pan," she murmured. "We've got our room back. When do you reckon he'll be back?"

The little pine parten hopped off her shoulder in response, sniffing at the bed, the door, the sofa where Cleo slept. He had no answer for Lyra.

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