Jareth Dorny (musicnoted) wrote in lazarustheic, @ 2017-02-26 18:41:00 |
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Entry tags: | !narrative, !thread, character: jareth dorny |
who ? Jareth Dorny and Sarah Dorny (NPC)
when ? Sunday, February 26th, most of the day
where ? Muggle London
what ? Visiting and things
warnings/rating ? SFW
status ? Complete
The morning before his birthday, Jareth woke up much the same as he had for one day shy of four weeks - to the blank white walls of his bedroom, in his flat, after being dead for eight years, eight months, and twenty-eight days. As with every morning, he had to lay there for a few minutes, just soaking in the knowledge that he was alive and breathing, letting it sing along in his heartbeat and bloodstream until he couldn’t wait any longer and got up to face to the day.
He rushed through getting ready, barely remembering to tie his shoelaces before grabbing a bagel off his counter to eat for breakfast while walking to the Owl Postal Service office in Hogsmeade. It was comforting, to see that it hadn’t seemed to change all that much, many of the same businesses in the same places he remembers from his time in school. The sign on the next to the door stated they were only open from 10:00 to 12:00 on Sundays, but a middle-aged woman in pale purple robes had been nice enough to smile at him, let him in and helped him get his letter to Andrew sent fifteen minutes early. Jareth was still a little nervous about that, but there wasn’t really etiquette for ‘how to interact with people you used to know before you died and then came back to life’.
For his first expedition of the day, Jareth was headed out to the Muggle side of London, with plans of finding a keyboard for his flat, because Marlene was right, it was better than nothing. The first two shops he tried had been long out of business, but it’s at the third that he found what he was looking for. Luckily, the little old man behind the counter had been happy to let him try it out while he was in the store, and after just a few minutes, Jareth had it packed up, paid for, and slung over his shoulders. It was only slightly awkward, what with it having a full 88 keys, but he wasn’t patient enough to leave it behind to be delivered after the searching he had done for it. Especially since the Muggle music shop couldn’t exactly deliver to his flat in Bethany Village, which would mean it would have to go to his parent’s, which would then be another trip, and it was just easier in the long run to take it with him now.
Since he was in the neighborhood, he jumped on the Tube for two stops and walked the couple of blocks to his parent’s house, the route familiar underneath his feet. Jareth stood on the same welcome mat that had been there since he was a child (Wipe your paws!, it claimed with tiny cat footprints along the edges), indecisive for a few moments, before he knocked twice and let himself in.
“Mum? Dad?” he called out, setting the keyboard down in the front hallway where it would be easily accessible when he left. A short haired-tortoiseshell cat that he didn’t remember and therefore didn’t know the name of, came out of the living room to investigate him. Jareth knelt down and extended his hand to it, giving it the opportunity to sniff at him before it nudged at his hand, and he scratched behind one of its ears. “Hello there,” he said, having picked up his mum’s habit of talking to cats like they understood him. “Is my mum here?” The cat just continued to stand there and purr for a few moments, and then trotted off in the direction of the kitchen. Jareth followed, and as he got closer, he could hear the radio playing softly and the sounds of someone moving around. Not wanting to startle her, he called out again, “Mum?”
No such luck with not startling her, because Sarah Dorny jumped and almost knocked over the mixing bowl she had sitting on the counter next to her. From his place in the doorway, Jareth gave her a sheepish smile and a small wave. Normally he would have crossed the room to go give her a hug, but the last time he had done that, she had shied away from him. His mum was staring at him, but maybe slightly less like she was seeing a ghost, the way she had the first few times he had seen her. “Hi,” he said, acting as if it were perfectly normal for him to be there, because really, it was, now. “How are you?” he asked, if only to get something out of her other than the semi-stunned silence that was currently filling the room.
His mum seemed to shake herself, smiling at him, if a little watery, before turning back to her mixing bowl. “Oh, I’m well,” she said, going back to stirring her mixture. “Your father is at his office, grading papers and getting ready for a concert next month,” she told him, and Jareth took at seat at the island to watch and listen to her, much the same as he had many times before. The same cat who had led him in jumped up onto the counter in front of him, and he started petting it in an absentminded way. “They’re going to give him tenure at the beginning of next year,” she added, and Jareth grinned at that. His father had been a professor of music at one of the local colleges since Jareth had been a teenager - well, he was still a teenager, but that was beside the point - and it was good to hear that things were going well for him. “And I found out yesterday that Mr. Fozzybottom has been hiding a litter of kittens from me, there’s five of them in the attic, seven weeks old ready,” Sarah continued, sounding scandalized by the thought - not of the kittens themselves, he was certain, but the fact that she hadn’t known about them.
“I think that’s Mr. Fozzybottom’s way of saying you don’t need any more cats, Mum,” Jareth said while trying to contain a chuckle. He’d been pretty sure since fifth year that Mr. Fozzybottom was not an ordinary cat. He had shown up randomly right before Jareth had left for Hogwarts, and effectively moved in with them of his own accord. That in and of itself wasn’t out of the ordinary - his mother seemed to collect cats the way other women collected snowglobes. But Mr. Fozzybottom had always been smarter and larger than all the others, and after he had stolen an entire pie off the table at Christmas, Jareth had done some reading and had come to the relatively certain conclusion that he was at least half Kneazle. “Where is he, anyway?” Jareth asked, because usually he came sprinting whenever he came to visit, which was reassuring and comforting and familiar.
His mother turned to look at him as she said, “Oh, I’m sure he’s - Miss Cordelia, you know better than to be on the counter!” The cat Jareth had been petting leapt down at the scolding, and he watched her saunter off as if it had been her idea in the first place to move. “Now, what was I saying? Oh, yes, he’s probably up in the attic, the little rascal. Those kittens are going to have to go somewhere eventually, they can’t stay in the attic forever.”
“Why don’t I see if I can help find them some owners? Heck, I could take a couple home with me today,” Jareth offered. He had been surrounded by cats at home his entire life - something his reading had told him was not uncommon for Squibs, which he could certainly attest to - and now that he was on his own, it was a little strange not to have any furry companions. Even at Hogwarts he had always had one of the cats with him, and it would be nice to have company in his flat.
He realized that his offer had been met with silence, and he looked up to find his mother staring at him with an expression he couldn’t quite read. “Mum?” he asked, because sometimes when she did this she was lost in her own thoughts or memories and needed prompting to continue talking to him.
Sarah shook herself out of her thoughts and gave him a soft smile, saying, “Of course, Jare. Call it an early birthday present.” Jareth couldn’t help smiling at that, both the answer and the comment about his birthday - there was a part of him that had thought… well, he didn’t think that she would have forgotten, but he hadn’t known what to expect. There was no reason to think that it was a day that had been celebrated when he was dead, and even he wasn’t entirely certain about how he felt about tomorrow.
So Jareth had put the kittens - and Mr. Fozzybottom, who had jumped in and refused to get out, even when Jareth had asked, “You want to go to the vet?” - into a carrier and trooped all six of them down to the Magical Menagerie in Diagon Alley. All the kittens were perfectly healthy, and had all been coo-ed over by the veterinarian, given all their shots, and then been sent back on their way. He had managed to get them all corralled into the living room and spent a good hour playing with them all before heading up to his childhood bedroom.
Somehow it didn’t seem strange to him that it looked exactly as he had left it the last time he had been in this room, the morning of that September 1st that he had snuck out to get to his seventh year at Hogwarts without his mother trying to stop him. Jareth crossed over to his bookshelf, scanning the titles he had collected before grabbing his boxed set of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series to take home with him. When he turned around, Jareth found that two of the kittens - one orange and white and the other gray and white, both with gray-blue eyes and extremely fluffy fur - had followed him, and were now investigating his room. He couldn’t help chuckling as they chased each other round for a few moments before they both wound around his legs, meowing for attention. Setting the books down to pet them both simultaneously, Jareth came to the conclusion that these were the two that were coming home with him. Decision made, he scooped up the books and tucked them under one arm in order to carry both kittens back downstairs with him.
“Mum, I’m gonna take these two with me,” he said as he walked into the kitchen, watching the kittens he was holding bat at each other playfully. Glancing up to make sure she had heard him, Jareth found his mother standing almost directly in front of him, holding out a single cupcake with a candle stuck in the top.
“Make a wish,” she instructed, looking determined but with a sad smile on her face. With a small chuckle, he blew out the candle - he was already alive again, he had no idea what on earth he would wish for when that had happened, but it didn’t hurt anything to do as she asked, especially since it made his mum smile genuinely when he did. “They’re going to need names,” she commented, nodding at the kittens he was still holding.
“Luke and Leia,” he responded immediately, because he had wanted to name cats after Star Wars characters for years, and his mum had never let him. Sarah seemed to remember that as well, since he laughed at his answer before turning back to the kitchen.
“Well, put the Skywalker twins down for a minute and help me pack up the rest of these cupcakes for you to take home with you as well.”