Liam Rivers is a quidditch ninja (icommentate) wrote in flippedrpg, @ 2012-09-24 00:54:00 |
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Entry tags: | ch: knap: liam rivers, p: abby |
Who: Liam Rivers and Family!
What: It's a wedding! Inside the Pensieve – Player’s Choice
When: September 16, 1979
Where: Penshurst Place, Kent, England - Ballroom and a "dressing room"
The dresses chosen had been a tasteful shade of blue; dresses for the bridesmaids, dress robes for the groomsmen... While planning the event, someone had thought it would be cute to do it this way... As he looked around, Liam still couldn't formulate an opinion on the matter, especially when he himself seemed to wearing one too. It took him a moment too realize exactly where he was. Or rather when he was. The gathering, the clothing… Around him he saw many people that it took him a second to identify: former Hogwarts, students, family, friends of the family. They were people that Liam knew. So many that he hadn’t seen in years. All people that…
"I always said you needed to carry a step ladder around with you.” It was Liam’s voice. He hadn’t said it. But looking around he had. His arm found its way around the waist of a young woman much shorter than he. Carren. Carren Werner, a failed girlfriend from his seventh year who looked over her shoulder and rolled her eyes at her boyfriend.
"That would be rather tedious," she said with a frown. "It would be heavy and clunky and-"
"Are you a witch or not?" Liam was 17-years-old again and had one of his trademarked huge grins on his face. Carren Werner. He hadn’t thought about her in years. They were young, he realized. The two teenagers, both on leave from school for the event: For his brother Frank’s wedding to Miss Antonia Larson, his longtime girlfriend… Shelly’s parents.
It was one day that Liam hadn’t thought about in such a long time. But… being back at Hogwarts. He’d found himself thrown back into memories that he hadn’t even realized that he needed. Every bit of it reminding him of a past that he had worked so hard to push aside in order to focus on the future. A future that he needed, that his children needed. Originally it had been for Shelly, and for himself. Then Cindy. Then the others. But he missed them. All the time. But Hogwarts had brought all of it home.
At the age of seventeen, now that age again as he watched in the pensieve, Liam had been taken out of school for a week, helping prepare for the wedding. He had had to spend much of the time with his parents greeting the guests today. Not such a hard job, there had been enough parties hosted at the manor in the past for him to know how to act as a proper host... Schmoozing was second nature to him...
Carren looked at him for a moment, before unwrapping his arm from her waist and linking arms with his. "Your mother is signaling us, again..." she whispered with fake frustration.
"She's having a grand time," Liam heard himself said with a laugh, surveying his mother as she talked with those in the room. One person that was strangely absent, someone he hadn't seen for over twenty minutes was-
"William!" And that was his mother. The woman who was a force of nature in her own right. Prim and proper Yvonne Rivers never let anything get to her and had a drive that rivaled almost anyone he knew. They had had their kids rather young in life, a socialite she never really had understood his sister’s want for a real career, but that hadn’t stopped her from supporting Tabitha… Today she had a light tone to her voice, but Liam knew better than to ignore it... He started to walk towards her, with Carren in tow, until he was sidetracked. His arm found itself linked with another’s and he was suddenly walking backwards, dragging Carren with him.
"Wha-" Liam turned around to see just who it could be.
"Oh hush."
"But-"
His sister Tabitha looked at him over her shoulder, not paying attention to any of the guests that were looking at the three younger persons, one walking forwards, two backwards. Carren looked from Tabitha to Liam and shook her head.
"I'll just leave the two of you alone." She was still walking backwards as she gave Liam a kiss on the cheek and broke off from the group to heed the call of Yvonne Rivers, a soft-spoken yet formidable woman...
Tabitha Michelle Rivers was the only member of Liam’s immediate family left. Their mum and dad had died of natural causes, those blows had been hard enough… in fact after the wedding, they wouldn’t survive two years. Antonia would survive until mid-October 1981, when she was killed doing her job as an Auror… but Frank… Liam tried hard not to think about it. The three siblings had always been thick as thieves. But this… This was a wedding. He should be happy now, watching this again.
Tabitha kept pulling her younger brother, still in his backwards state, until they left the hall and were standing in the corridor outside a room. More specifically it was the room that had been designated the groom's dressing room. When she finally stopped walking Liam tugged his arm away from her and shot her a questioning look.
"What the bloody hell was that about?!" he asked. "Are you crazy? Mum was calling me! I'm the bloody best man! I don't want to get shipped back off to Hogwarts before the ceremony!" He knew that his mother wanted everything perfect for today, Liam remembered this well. He'd been warned that there would be no antics today, lest he be left out of his own brother's wedding... For all his childishness, that was not something that Liam was willing to chance.
"Oh please," Tabby rolled her eyes. "Trust me; she is not going to care." She was serious, and kept glancing from one hallway to another, then back to her younger brother. "Look there are bigger problems on our hands." There were other things she'd rather be doing now... like seeing if a certain someone has arrived yet...but for the moment such things were on the back-burner.
This Liam didn't quite understand. "What problems? Everything's been taken care of. Mum signed off on all the arrangements last week."
"Troubles of the Frankin-kind." Tabitha sighed and rubbed her temples, leaning against the wall. "Look, he's having his normal last minute jitters... only this time he isn't listening to me. I'm all out of options. It's your turn," as she said this, she pulled a small vial from her purse and handed it to him. "Take this. You might need it."
"Wait... you-" he stuttered. "But Mum'll kill me!"
She shook her head. "No she'll understand." She put her hand on his shoulders and steered him towards the door. "It's your turn. Good luck." And giving him a push towards the door, sending him off his balance, Tabitha walked back towards the hall to take over Liam's job of schmoozing the guests....
Liam turned around and watched her go, promising he'd get her back for this... this was not his forte... He didn't even knock before he opened the door... his hand on the knob, he could already hear movement from inside.
"Frank?"
The door open, he got a better view of what was going on.
Franklin Rivers didn't even look up as his younger brother made his presence known.
Liam was just an observer here, but Liam would have done anything to go to his brother. To run to him, embrace him, tell him how much he’d missed him. It had been almost six years since he’d been found dead behind the Prophet offices in Diagon Alley. Six years where he’d been raising his daughter as his own. Six years without the joking, without the banter, without the usual questions or accusations that was doing things intentionally and being a bad role model for Shelly. Six years without the slow sad songs that he’d play on the piano in the sitting room when they’d been visiting.
There was so much that he wanted to say, but he was trapped. Trapped by the memory. Trapped by the notion that nothing he did would change anything. Unless he stuck to the script…
Frank just kept moving... kept pacing. Liam could have sworn he could see wear marks on the carpet. Nothing he did seemed to get his brother's attention, and as such, he went to plan b... Casting a silencing charm on the door as he closed it, he took the vial in his hand and threw it to the floor. A colored smoke billowed from the spot, accompanied by a large 'boom.' The sound not only got Frank's attention, but caused him to jump back.
"Well that did the job," Liam muttered. "Wonder why Tabby didn't do that herself." But he knew why. If anyone had heard, the only one who truly would have been able to get away with doing this, without consequences, would have been Liam.
"WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT!" Frank yelled, jumpy after being jarred from his thoughts so suddenly.
Liam looked at his brother for a moment as if this had been the most normal thing in the world, and it had been. For a time. He sat down in a chair, sweeping his dress robes under him as he put his feet up. "Welllll..." he said putting his arms behind his head and sitting back, "someone told me that you were making a hole in mum's carpet. So I was sent in to see what the matter was." He shrugged nonchalantly.
"Yeah. Like I believe that."
"Alright, alright. Tabby sent me," Liam said sitting forward, taking his feet down. "But you can't rightly blame her. Said you weren't listening to her, she did. And what brother doesn't listen to his older sister?" He already knew what the answer was going to be.
"Hey, I'm the older one, by three minutes-"
"And you never let her forget it," he'd done it just to get some kind of reply that wasn't sarcastic. "But really, she's worried. Now c'mon. Tell the troublemaker what's wrong."
Frank looked at Liam skeptically. "Did you really just say that?"
"Well if your ears are workin' I guess I did, now enough stalling. There are people to be talking to outside, after all."
"That's part of the problem." Frank leaned up against the wall and shook his head. "Here we are, who knows how many people outside. And I'm getting married in less than half an hour!" he then started walking again. "All we wanted was a small ceremony!"
Liam listened. He'd heard all of this before.
"Mum turned it into a huge social event!" Frank continued, throwing his arms up into the air in defeat. "Does she not understand that we're not safe like this?!"
This hadn't been the first time this argument had been made.
"Frank, take a breath and calm down. This isn't good for a man your age."
"I don't rightly care! This isn't what we had in mind... do you realize that everyone out there is at risk!? What if there was an attack?" he said looking his brother in the eye. "The Furgusons were killed last week. Out of the blue! No one saw it coming! Called it a freak accident. But how often do those sort of things really happen?"
Liam stood up and put his hands on his brother's shoulders. "And how many of our friends and family knows how to fight? Eh? Let’s see... all of them? Well maybe not the little ones, but come on." He gripped his brother's shoulders, making the older man look at him. "Frank, for Merlin's sakes, you're getting married! Please, try to calm down," he was dead serious on this, and the look in his eyes said it all.
"Easier said than done..."
"I know, but try. You have Tabby worried beyond words, you didn't respond to her... she had to give me that thing just so I could get your attention," he said, removing his hands and giving him a brotherly slap on the back. "Now take a drink," he indicated the tray of water on the table, "and calm down. 'Tonia's waiting in her room, and just so you know, she looks gorgeous, don't say you weren't curious, because I can read you like a book. So take a seat, and we'll get you when it's time."
There was nothing said from the Groom, just a nod, and Liam, satisfied, left the room, making his way back to the hall, where he made his way to his sister, talking to several of her former year-mates, and just nodded. As if to say 'Mission accomplished.'
~~~~~~~~
Franklin Rivers stood at the front now... things had seemed to go so quickly. Liam watched, standing next to his brother as he slipped the ring on his wife's finger... Their mother was crying, their father was beaming with joy. These were things that he must have seen at some point, but for the life of him couldn’t remember until this moment. Every sight, every sound. He wanted to keep it as long as he could. All the people around him, fellow Order members in attendance, now dead or gone, his family so many of them casualties, of age, of the war, of their own problems.
Every sight. Every moment was precious. But still in his seventeen year old body, he was following what he’d done in the past. Bounding with energy as he followed his brother and new sister-in-law back to the staging area the house elves had set up for them adjacent to the ballroom, smirking when he walked in on them kissing.
“Oi!” he called knocking. Antonia was slipping into a pair of flats, and seemed to make herself focus on that task when he came a-knocking. Liam of course having no trouble in embarrising his brother, but not his new sister.
"So it's all clear?" He remembered this. They were waiting for his cue to enter the reception.
"Is this magic!" Liam said taking his own wand out and making some fake fireworks as if that was an answer.
"Show off," Frank said with a raised eyebrow.
"Hey, you know what they say," Liam said with a grin. "When you've got it, and you aren't going to be called on it by the Ministry for being underage, flaunt it." he walked away with a wink, waving his wand in his wand hand as he went, much to the amusement of Frank and his new bride.
END MEMORY