Arcturus Black (arcturusfirst) wrote in onewaythreads, @ 2017-10-14 13:14:00 |
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Entry tags: | arcturus black, narcissa black |
Who: Arcturus and Narcissa Black
What: A troubled Arcturus visits Narcissa for tea and talk of muggles
When: After Arcturus' last network post
Where: Narcissa's home
To say that Arcturus Black was feeling unsettled would have been something of an understatement. Living in Preya was always something of a trial, with the strange muggles and their odd machines, but he'd tried to be brave about it. When his father arrived – and it was always a when, in Arcturus' mind, there was no doubt – he wanted to show him that he'd been responsible enough to cope on his own. Today, though, things had gone horribly wrong. He'd asked a question about muggles, one that he hadn't thought there was anything wrong with, and he'd been having what he thought was an ordinary conversation with a mudblood witch, and then she'd started to tell him all manner of terrible lies, and worse still, Mr Summerby had joined in.
It was ridiculous. He didn't know many pureblood wizards who actively hated muggles. Avoided them, yes, and considered them dangerous, but one of the reasons wizarding society was superior to the muggles, and more civilised than them, was that wizards didn't have slaves, or slaughter innocent people in wars. Those were barbaric, muggle atrocities. Wizards could do horrible things, even kill, but the scale of it couldn't be compared. Those were personal grudges, small feuds. The idea of all the wizards in England fighting all the wizards in France just because they were a little different made absolutely no sense. And as for killing mudbloods? Arcturus wasn't about to befriend the lower orders, but didn't his father willingly pay taxes so that they could be educated and taught how to fit in with wizarding society?
Some people hated purebloods, he told himself. Some people just wanted to tear down society and cause chaos, and others were envious, and either way they might not be above noticing that Arcturus was alone here, and deliberately trying to upset him with lies about the future that he couldn't counter. It wasn't any different to the Gryffindors who had tried to tease him and get him into trouble when he'd first started school. Mr Summerby...just had to be mistaken somehow, exaggerating the conflict in which he had lost his brother. Arcturus' trouble was that he couldn't understand how some of the magical people in Preya could be so awful, and some of the muggles good and decent people, not dirty and uncivilised as he'd been told.
He was trying not to let it affect him. After he had finished writing to Narcissa, he took time to calm down, compose himself, and prepare for the afternoon's visit. Wanting to make a good impression, he dressed especially smartly, in his best suit and formal robes. At home, sometimes he found it tiresome, because his best clothes weren't exactly comfortable, but here he made a point of it. The muggles his age in Preya might not have been dressed in rags, but they were decidedly scruffy – most of them didn't even wear shirts with buttons! Arcturus didn't ever want to be mistaken for one of them. When he was ready, he called for a horse-drawn carriage. Flying might have been quicker, but Arcturus hadn't been allowed to ride in carriages at home, and that meant that they were still a novelty to him. His parents had travelled in them regularly, and doing so on his own made him feel quite mature and responsible.
At the end of the journey, he paid the driver with those silly muggle coins, and then cautiously knocked on the door of what he supposed had to be Narcissa's house. The protective wards weren't entirely familiar to him, so he didn't know if they'd been designed to recognise blood-relatives. Better to be careful.