who ? andrew kirke, daisy and evan potter when ? wednesday evening where ? leaky cauldron what ? daisy would like to meet andrew in his capacity as evan’s boyfriend status ? complete
Quite honestly, Evan really didn’t think that Andrew had any reason to worry about meeting Daisy. It wasn’t like there was anything wrong with Andrew, especially not when he made Evan feel quite pleased, not when he let Evan talk about things endlessly and engaged him on a variation of topics. Those were all good things and because Evan liked Andrew, he was sure so would Daisy. Albeit, the first time she had met Jim she hadn’t liked him, but even Evan could admit that Andrew was definitely much nicer than Jim. Evan strongly doubted that Andrew would follow Daisy around or stare at her whilst she slept. He hoped not, at least.
“Best behaviour, Potter,” Evan informed his sister as he put her drink down at the table they had selected. They were here before Andrew, which was probably a good thing. Evan had also specifically picked Leaky rather than Sirius’ pub because he suspected that the last thing Andrew wanted to do was to accidentally meet all of Evan’s family, extended and otherwise. Not that Evan thought any of them would have a problem with Andrew, if anything Evan was pretty sure they’d like Andrew a lot. Probably be surprised by how easy it was to talk to Andrew and wonder why he hung out with Evan of all people.
He pulled his own chair up, picking a spot that was reasonably easy to spot from the door so when Andrew did arrive, Evan could give him a small wave. “Hey,” Evan greeted him with a smile when Andrew did arrive, pulling him in for a quick kiss, before making the introductions. “Andrew, Daisy. Daisy, Andrew,” Evan said with a wave between them. “Andrew does music and Daisy’s soul searching,” Evan added for a good measure because apparently it was polite to give a little bit of information about the people you were introducing to each other?
--
Andrew’s nerves weren’t unbearable. He’d only asked Aisling twice if he looked okay to go and meet Evan’s sister. She’d said yes and he believed her. And Evan had said Daisy would like Andrew, and Andrew believed that too. Or at least, he believed that Evan believed it. Actually believing that anyone’s sister would like him as a not-boyfriend was more difficult. At best, he expected her not to mind him, even if she liked him as a person. At worst, Andrew could think up a lot of reasons she might not be too thrilled with the idea of Andrew in that role.
He did his best to push those fears aside as he stepped into The Leaky Cauldron. Sisters, he was sure, could smell fear. Not that Andrew had a lot of experience with sisters. Ginny was his closest example. Ginny, who was friends with Daisy. That wasn’t enormously reassuring. Andrew had no trouble Ginny would be fiercely outspoken if any of her brothers brought home someone she didn’t think was good for them. That wasn’t helping. He spotted Evan, which did settle his nerves somewhat, and headed over. “Hey,” he said, letting Evan’s kiss bolster his confidence.
He smiled at Daisy as Evan introduced them, holding out a hand to shake hers. It might have been a bit formal, but he’d rather do it than her her think he was rude. “It’s good to meet you properly,” he said. He’d seen her around, at things with Ken or Ginny, but never really talked much. He glanced at the table, spotting three drinks. “This mine? Thanks.” He sat, taking a sip to wet a mouth that was just a little dry. “Soul searching is good,” he added, not sure what else to say in response to Evan’s comment. “I was lucky, I always knew I wanted to do music.”
--
Daisy waved off Evan’s concerns as she sipped her drink. She felt a little bad about ordering it. Evan shouldn’t have to pay for her, but she didn’t have much of an argument considering she was without a job. She almost wished they were at the Hound’s Pint, but she could see why the Leaky would be considered neutral territory. “I could say the same to you, Potter,” Daisy retorted, swirling her glass slowly.
She had to hide a twitch of a smile when Andrew and Evan kissed. She had met the other man in passing a few times, but nothing serious. Their handshake was short and perfunctory, far too formal for her taste. As she took her seat Daisy swung her feet up on the spare chair. “It’s something,” she said neutrally. Her lack of job was a bit of a sore point, but it wasn't enough to make an issue.
Daisy honestly wasn't sure what to say. She was protective of Evan, sure, but she also knew that coming right out and… acting like their father when it came to her boyfriends was exactly the wrong way to go about things. “It’s a good thing to have a passion so young.”
--
Evan raised a quizzical eyebrow at Daisy’s words. “Is it?” He asked more for the sake of disagreeing that much else. Except, Evan did also somewhat disagree not just on the principle. He felt that deciding on a career path young might very easily bring complications later on. This was one of the reasons why Evan never cared to comment on what Daisy’s jobs were, even though he was always under the impression that his sister sold herself short. Quite frankly, it was probably better for her to go off soul searching than it was for her to get stuck in a job she couldn’t just abandon, Evan thought. He would, of course, support her no matter what she chose to do.
Taking a sip of his drink, Evan looked at both Andrew and Daisy. He felt like he had to at least start the conversation, make this easy and fun. Except that Evan was not the sort of person who could make anything easy or fun, so instead, he shrugged. “Have you heard of a theory called ‘uncanny valley’?” Evan asked, going to the explanation before either Andrew or Daisy really had a chance to respond. “It comes for a robotics thing. So this man created a robot, right? And it looked like a robot and people well all ‘oh but it’s a robot’,” Evan said demonstratively putting on a sad face to show how the people might have said it. “So then, the man made it look more human like and everyone loved it!” He explained with a nod. “But then, then the man made it even more human like and suddenly everyone hated it because it just looked too human,” Evan said before taking another sip of his drink. “The ‘boo robot’ to ‘boo human’ is called the ‘valley of the uncanny’, or the dip in comfort levels when someone views something manmade and realises it looks humanoid,” Evan concluded with a nod.
“Isn’t that interesting?” He asked not particularly bothered whether either Andrew or Daisy would think it interesting.
--
If it had just been the two of them, Andrew might have been able to respond to Evan’s ‘fun fact’ with appropriate levels of interest. A third person definitely changed the dynamic, in ways they hadn’t really had to deal with before now. Maybe they should have gone out for a drink with someone more neutral first. Of course, it was too late to do anything about it now. “How human did it look, in the last stage?” Andrew asked, feeling like he was excluding Daisy but also unwilling to just ignore Evan. That wouldn’t give a good impression at all. “If it looked totally human, and no one could tell that it was a robot, would they be fine with it until someone told them?”
He smiled at Daisy. Presumably, she must be used to this? Andrew had only known Evan a little over a month and he was getting used to it. Daisy had had known Evan his whole life, she must have experience with Evan just dropping facts into the conversation for discussion. “Or is that the robot looks almost like a real human but not quite? Does it still move like a robot? I can see how that would be weird”
--
“Well it makes sense, really,” Daisy mused. “If it doesn’t look human at all one generally doesn’t know how to relate to it. Where do you look when you talk or interact with it? Having something to focus on is helpful. But if it too closely resembles a human then you get visions of dystopian futures where Asimov’s laws of robotics have been thrown out the window.” She raised an eyebrow in her brother’s direction and finished the last of her drink. Hmm. That had gone down faster than it should have. She could get another drink, but Andrew very well might think her a lush of some sort.
“Muggle technology can be great and all, but I don’t understand their fascination with robots and things like that. As soon as objects begin to gain some sort of sentience it’s never going to end well.” There were plenty of magical instances of such occurrences happening. Someone should really inform the muggles about the dangers, but that could very well break the Statute of Secrecy. But if it were for the greater good than what was the harm? Right, not having something to do with her hands was going to drive her batty. Daisy stood. “My turn for the next round. Anyone want anything?”
--
“‘Almost’, I think, is the operative word there,” Evan informed Andrew with a small nod. “That’s where it becomes uncanny, because it’s close enough but not quite,” Evan explained but before he could say much more, he got distracted by Daisy’s point. “I don’t think it’s the prospect of a dystopian future that makes the template uncanny, Daisy,” Evan told her with a small frown. He got her point, though, obviously a disregard for Asimov’s laws would lead the robotics into disarray which would be problematics. However, Evan was rather sure that Daisy was looking at it from a too complex of a position.
At Daisy’s words that she didn’t understand the fascination, Evan sighed dramatically. “Robots are awesome, what are you talking about,” he said but it was hardly a question. “Also, don’t you feel that the sort of magical world we live in already has a load of sentient objects? Like when you spell dishes to wash themselves, don’t they gain sentience?” Evan asked because he was pretty sure they did but he would still be very interested in hearing Daisy’s reasoning for why that might not be so. Evan liked arguing with Daisy a lot. She might try not to sound as clever as he knew she was, but Evan liked to think that he could challenge her enough to bring her intelligence out more.
“Same again?” Evan asked when Daisy stood up to get more drinks. Once she had walked to the bar, Evan turned to smile at Andrew. “See? It’s going fine!” He told him even though they had so far only spoken about the existential rights and theories of robots.
--
Andrew had no idea what Asimov’s laws of robotics were, and despite Evan’s assurances that he didn’t want to leave Andrew out of conversations Andrew didn’t ask. He was following at least part of the conversation, which was better than nothing. “Do you think they do?” he asked, in response to Evan’s point about plates. “Do they actually know when they’re clean, or do they just keep washing for a certain length of time?” Andrew had never stopped to consider it before, or watched the plates washing themselves to see if it was always a minute (or whatever) per plate. That was part of the point, that you could cast the spell and then get on with other things without having to stand over the sink. Magical theory was one of those things Hogwarts should really think about teaching, because Andrew at least had no idea how half of it worked.
After shaking his head to indicate that he was fine with his drink, still largely untouched, he smiled at Evan. “You think so?” It certainly wasn’t going badly, for which Andrew was grateful. “What are Asimov’s laws of robotics?”
--
Evan shrugged a bit at Andrew’s questions about whether dishes were actually sentient when one spelled them to self-clean. He wasn’t actually too sure they were. “Perhaps it works more on an awareness of cleanliness than time?” Evan offered, because he, too, had never timed how long the dishes took to get clean, but usually it seemed that they took however long was necessary.
“I do think,” Evan said honestly. He had no reason to suspect the opposite. When Andrew asked what the Asimov’s laws were, Evan reached out under the table to squeeze Andrew’s hand. He liked that Andrew asked and he wanted to show as much. “Isaac Asimov’s a science-fiction writer who wrote a book called I, Robot. In it, he listed three laws of robotics that are still highly used in as much science-fiction as they are in robotics,” Evan explained. “First is that a robot may not injure a human being, second is that a robot must obey orders given and third is that robot must protect its own existence. The second cannot contradict with the first and the third cannot contradict with either of the first two," Evan said.
“Daisy’s point’s too advanced, though,” Evan added once he had explained. “Because we’re not talking about an uprising, just about visual clues,” he explained. Truthfully, Daisy definitely had a point, but Evan still thought that her argument had been too intricate. Hoping that his explanation helped, Evan leaned closer to press a kiss against Andrew’s cheek as he waited for Daisy to return with their drinks.
--
Daisy waited at the bar for the round of drinks, keeping a critical eye as the person behind the bar remixed her drink. Just because this was a popular pub straddling the muggle and magical world didn't mean sloppiness could abound. “Much better,” she reported as she took a testing sip. She paid and made her way back to the table, hoping that they were done talking about robots.
Then again, she wasn't sure what else they could talk about instead. Evan certainly wouldn't want to talk about quidditch and she didn't know how Andrew felt about the sport. Celebrity type gossip was out as that hit a little too close to home. And she absolutely refused to talk about the weather. Maybe she and Evan could talk about their upcoming birthday, though that was decidedly unfair to Andrew, despite giving him a mighty big hint about what to do come the second of April.
“Your replacement.” Daisy slid her brother’s drink in front of him as she retook her previous position. She really needed to polish these boots; they were all scuffed. “Are we still talking about robotics or have we moved on?”
--
Andrew mulled over the point even as he smiled at Evan’s physical displays of affection. “They could be related, maybe,” he suggested. “If a machine looks like a toaster or a car, we trust that it’s only going to do what we tell it to. If it looks like a human we think it might be intelligent like a human and we think it might have its own motives, try to hurt us. The more it looks human, the less we trust it?” He shrugged, not sure any of what he’d said was really true or relevant, but he didn’t feel like Evan was going to judge him if it wasn’t.
He pulled his hand from Evan’s as Daisy returned, a little self-conscious. “We detoured to plates for a while,” he said. “But now Evan’s explaining the laws of robotics. I don’t read much science-fiction.” Or, indeed, any science-fiction at all that Andrew could recall. Actually, he wasn’t a big fiction reader in general. “Unless watching E.T. when I was six counts, but I don’t think there were any robots in that.” Honestly it had been so long that there could have been and Andrew probably wouldn’t remember.
--
What Andrew said actually made a lot of sense and Evan would have agreed with the point had it not been for Daisy’s return and the fact that Andrew pulled his hand back from Evan. It made him frown slightly, before he reached for the drink Daisy had brought back for him. “Thanks,” he offered. When Andrew told Daisy that they had briefly derailed to discuss plates, Evan nodded, they had. He was also pretty sure there had been a time in his life already when sentient plates had been discussed with Daisy. Quite possibly whilst high. It sounded like one of those things you discussed with great interest whilst high.
At the mention of E.T., Evan frowned slightly. “Did we ever watch that?” Evan asked Daisy curiously. He didn’t actually watch that many films without Daisy. Obviously there had been the few trips to the cinema either with friends or on dates but mostly, Evan liked watching things with Daisy. Hanging out with his sister was pretty fun in general, Evan thought.
--
Daisy pursed her lips, considering if E.T. was one of the films they had watched or not. “It sounds familiar, but I don’t think so?” Honestly, that wasn’t her type of film either. She liked action and when things blew up. Preferably with some sort of quippy dialogue to go with it. That being said, films were an appropriate topic of conversation and was likely to be broad enough for all three of them to participate in equally. “Maybe you and Evan can watch it sometime and Evan will let me know if it’s any good or not.”
She really wasn’t sure what to say after that. She knew Evan wanted the two of them to like one another, to get along, and really Daisy wanted that too. However she couldn’t discount that she currently felt awkward and out of place, watching her twin and Andrew interact. Andrew was good for him, she decided, at least for now. It was obvious that he didn’t seem bothered by how smart Evan was or that her brother could pull the most random of information out of nowhere. So maybe she should just chalk her awkward feelings about the situation up to the fact that she was still sorting out being jobless and not knowing in what direction to go.
That at least sounded better than the suggestion that she might be jealous.
--
“Or we could all watch it,” Andrew suggested, taking a sip of his drink. “I don’t know where, because there’s no way a TV would work in Panquake House and I’m guessing your place isn’t much better.” The only muggle place he visited regularly was Lerwick which… he winced at even the idea of taking Evan to Lerwick. That was never going to happen. His mum didn’t even want to meet his female friends, let alone his not-quite-boyfriend. “We could-” He stopped himself, he’d been about to say something related to one of his ideas for Evan’s birthday gift. Better to keep that to himself for now. He shrugged. “Okay, I don’t know what we could do.” He nudged Evan’s shoulder slightly with his own. Evan would probably think of something, he was the more inventive of the two of them.
“So what films have you two watched, then?” he added. “I’m an unwilling expert in period dramas.” He watched a lot of films with his mum when he went home, because it was easier than talking and she didn’t have much patience for anything modest.
--
Evan couldn’t help but snort when Andrew decided he had no idea where they could watch TV. Personally, Evan felt that the lack of television (and electricity access) was one of the major failings of the magical world. TV and films were pretty great, but he did relate to the struggle of finding somewhere to watch them. “We could do a film night at my uni,” he said thoughtfully. It was easy enough to book rooms in the non-magical campuses of Cambridge and Evan had actually attended film screenings there before. It would be an easy-fix solution, he reckoned, and would also allow them to make an evening out of it. Evan did also appreciate the way Andrew included Daisy in the proposal. He really did want them to get on, even if Evan wouldn’t have been terribly upset over Daisy not liking Andrew. There wasn’t any reason for her not to, though, at least as far as Evan could tell.
“I like horror films,” Evan replied to Andrew’s question. Since the age of about fourteen, fifteen, Evan had watched a lot of horror films. “Daisy will watch the shit ones with me,” he added with a grin at his sister. There had been many-a-film involving ludicrous things that they had watched, often whilst eating popcorn and criticising everything. Evan really liked those film nights. The conversation did also make him realise that it had been too long (so at least two weeks) since he had properly hung out with just Daisy. In many respects, that was probably also to do with how much time Evan was spending with Andrew. “You and I are going to do things,” he told his sister determinedly, before taking a sip of his drink.