InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "Somebody STOP ME!"

westhamwizard (westhamwizard) wrote in silverage,
@ 2011-08-12 10:49:00

Entry tags:

!log, dean thomas, lily evans

Who: Dean Thomas + OTA
When: Friday morning in Novemer; Friday morning in August
Where: South East England; Upper West Side
What: Dean's entrance
Rating/status: TBD

The morning dawned grey and cold on the little village of Peasmarsh, East Sussex. Mist curled it's icy fingers around the lampposts which lined the street. Trees and lawns glittered with last night's frost.

Dean walked out of the corner shop, sticking his wand back into his pocket. He had felt bad using a Confundus charm on the shopkeeper, but he was running out of money, both wizard and muggle. Unwrapping his newly purchased Mars bar and sticking it in his mouth, he unfolded his newspaper. Nothing obvious on the front page to say whether You Know Who had attacked any muggles, so Dean turned to the sports section to check the football scores. West Ham was playing well this year, and reading the winning scores was one of the only good things in Dean’s life lately. Satisfied, Dean tossed the paper and the candy wrapper in the nearest bin, then turned on his heel and apparated, meaning to land on a secluded riverbank a few miles west.

Imagine his surprise, then, when he stopped spinning and found himself staring not at a calm and peaceful stream, but instead at the side of a bus displaying an advert for Marlboro Cigarettes. An old woman nearby barked at him for making a racket, but no one else seemed to say anything about him appearing out of thin air. Wherever he was, he reckoned it was much farther North than he'd meant to go, judging from all the snow on the ground. He sat down on the bus stop bench, trying to get his bearings. A man next to him had his head buried in an unfamiliar newspaper (whose pictures weren't moving, giving Dean at least one clue where he might be). The front page story was about the sudden blizzard which had covered the city in snow and ice. Just then, the man noticed Dean and said, "It's awful, isn't it, all this snow in August? Ain't Natural."

Dean, confused, barely knew how to respond. "August? What do you mean August?"

The man closed his paper and tapped the date on the front cover. Dean took it from him to get a closer look. Sure enough, it read "August 12th, 1964 New York City"

"What!?" Dean gasped, his voice rising in pitch. He stood from the bench and took off at a run, not knowing where exactly he was going, fight or flight response kicking in.

The man called after him, "Hey, that's my paper!" but it was no use, Dean was already half a block away and showed no signs of slowing down.

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westhamwizard
2011-08-16 04:26 pm UTC (link)

Something about what Dean said had clearly upset Lily, but he wasn't sure what exactly it was. He hadn't even mentioned some of the worse stuff like Dumbledore or Cedric. Not that Lily would've known Cedric, hell Dean himself barely knew him being two years below him and in a different house and all. Still, she would've known Dumbledore. He'd been Headmaster at Hogwarts for ages, based on what Dean heard at his funeral last term. Dean decided to hold off on any of the more shocking news until Lily made it clear she was ready to hear more.

"So..." he began, wanting to change the subject. "This center of yours, much farther is it?"

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just_lily
2011-08-17 12:33 am UTC (link)

"Not much farther," she said quietly. She appreciated the subject change, and she offered him a little smile as they walked along. "You'll only have a month to get things together," she explained. "Get a job, get your own place, things like that. They're helpful though, lining up work for people who ... well, people like us. Displaced, with no real marketable skills in this time and place." She'd gotten lucky, she knew. She'd caught Don's attention -- for whatever reason -- and that was how she'd wound up at Sterling-Cooper. The work was simple enough and she was more or less holding her own there. Well, when she was there, and she reasoned she likely should have tried to go in today, but ... well, here she was instead.

"It's nice enough, plenty of people there to make friends with and they have a cafeteria for meals, so you at least won't have to spend any money on food. If you have ... ah. If you have any Muggle money, they can convert it at the bank, and there are places around to sell the wizarding money," Lily continued. It was better to talk about things here, the future, instead of wondering about the status of her world.

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westhamwizard
2011-08-17 11:38 am UTC (link)

Dean liked that this Welcome Center sounded so helpful, but the one month deadline worried him. "We're in 1960's America, right? Who's going to hire an underage black kid from London?" Still, he reckoned he was probably better off in the 'marketable skills' department than some of his pureblood counterparts. He imagined Draco Malfoy trying to find a muggle job and snickered a little bit. It would serve him right, ending up unemployed and homeless on the streets of the biggest muggle city around.

The thought occurred to Dean that this might be the perfect opportunity to pursue a career in illustrating or graphic design like he'd dreamed of as a kid. That is to say, in between dreaming of being a famous footballer and finding out he was a wizard. Worst comes to worst, though, he could probably go back to the old summer standby of paper boy. That's something they'd let him do, regardless of his race or age.

When the subject of money came up, Dean frowned. His hands, which were shoved inside his jeans pockets for warmth, closed around the few coins there (5 pounds 80p, plus 9 sickles, if he recalled correctly). "Yeah, not much in the way of cash at the moment... going to need to find a job sooner rather than later."

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just_lily
2011-08-17 01:30 pm UTC (link)

Lily hadn't honestly wanted to address that just yet, but it was likely best he'd caught on. She'd seen how the inequality ran rampant here, and she offered him a sympathetic smile. "They'll help you find something," she insisted softly. "It may not be the best thing in the world at first, but ..." She wanted to say 'it's only until we get home', but the longer she was here, the more she believed that would never happen. "Well, it'll be something, at any rate."

She gestured up ahead where the building was. "Just a few more blocks, and one of the people there will be able to set you right and get you started on everything. Give you some job leads maybe. That's likely what you'll be doing the first few days. Just ... chasing job leads." It was what she'd been doing. What Sirius was doing now. She wondered though what kind of work was out there for him, but ... well. She was certain there was something.

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