runaway_cub (runaway_cub) wrote in snark_n_bark, @ 2008-02-10 18:51:00 |
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Entry tags: | complete, faelan, neville |
Faelan Needs a Pep Talk
Characters: Faelan, Neville
Summary: Faelan's thoughts run away, and Neville brings them back.
Faelan remained convinced that one of the first charms he needed to learn was a warming one. Spring wasn’t terribly far off, but it wasn’t yet warm enough outside to lounge on the lawn like he liked to do during breaks at the nursery. Knowing this, Neville had cast a spell right into the ground, making the frozen earth soften and the air heat enough that Faelan could lie on the grass without shivering. Faelan thought it was nice of him, and that it would be cool to know how to do that himself.
Today he lay on his back in the middle of the grass, choosing to forgo the shelter of his usual tree in favor of letting the sun shine on his face. The work they were doing wasn’t particularly taxing, but he was exhausted nonetheless. He’d been awakened the night before by strange, recurring dreams – images of a faceless presence, the soundless memory of a familiar voice, and a feeling. He couldn’t place it, couldn’t describe it with words, and this was what had kept him tossing and turning into the wee hours. It was at the same time unsettling and comfortable, satisfying and frightening, like thoughts of a place one didn’t want to return to but which felt like home nonetheless. Dozing again just past sunset, he woke at Edward’s insistent hooting to what felt like a fleeting, shadow-like touch on his cheek. But then it was gone, and he was left feeling like nothing more than a tired fool.
Thus he had dragged himself through the day, mind still entrenched in the shades of a sleep-world that normally would have disappeared like morning fog at daybreak. He had seen nothing, had touched nothing, but for some reason could not stop thinking about his old friend. Aylward had not been his father, but he still remembered him with a longing that could take his breath away.
He wanted to see Padma.
He sat up, hugging his knees, and sighed. It was not like him to feel this desire, to have this need for another human, but every time it came close to panicking him, he reminded himself that he was a new person. It was okay to need people, to want them, and he made himself think of Sirius, who made it okay for him to be this way. It made him feel weak, but then he could think of other people he knew who needed others – Sirius, Harry, Gaius, Neville, Luna – and he didn’t think any of them were weak at all, so it must be okay to feel this way.
Then there was the fact that Padma made it so easy. She was so gorgeous and when she looked at him like she thought he was too, it was like stepping out of himself and into someone else’s life. He liked it there and she wanted him to keep coming back and he wanted to keep coming back. She had this way of touching him – not even when they were kissing, but just when she felt like it – and it made him feel special and normal.
He knew he was in trouble.
The full moon was coming and he hadn’t told her he was a werewolf. He hadn’t told her he didn’t know how to do magic, hadn’t told her he’d been accused of murder. He didn’t know much about girls, but he had a feeling this would be pretty important information for her to have. After all the lecturing he’d gotten from Harry about keeping secrets, it made him feel like he was lying every time she looked up at him and smiled with her big, trusting eyes.
Idly, Faelan rolled his wand in his fingers. He knew better than to twirl it around or wave it, knowing he could cause damage or harm. He'd been surprised when Gaius said he thought it was safe for Faelan to start keeping it with him. He needed to get used to the feel of his own magic, Gaius had said. And he needed all the practice time he could get.
Spotting a dead leaf on the ground a few feet away, Faelan pointed his wand and tried to concentrate.
"Wingardium Leviosa."
Nothing happened. He tried again. "Wingardium Leviosa!" Again, nothing. The thing didn't even flutter in the breeze.
Annoyed, Faelan flopped on his back and flung his arm over his eyes.
"Practicing?" Neville asked as he joined Faelan on the grass. He had been trying to concentrate on the accounts in his office, Draco's prolonged travel abroad having placed the responsibility for such things more firmly on his shoulders, but seeing Faelan stretched out on the grass had been too tempting. He laid back beside the young man, soaking in both the warming charm and the sun. "How have the lessons with Gaius been going?"
"Hey," Faelan said, turning his head sideways and peeking out from under his arm to see Neville there. "Trying to practice is more like. Lessons have been okay, I guess. It's cool learning this stuff, but it's not really going to do much good if it only works when Gaius is looking." He thought about the look of pride in Sirius' eyes when he had shown him the spell Gaius had taught him for turning Edward's feather from white to pink. Now what would he think, seeing Faelan fail to even make a leaf flutter on a breezy day? "Gaius says it will take time. Rather hard to be patient about being pants at something I could do yesterday, though."
Neville gave Faelan a sympathetic smile. "It's hard waiting for these things to come," Neville agreed. "And annoying when people keep telling you 'all in good time' but, well, it will come eventually. Seriously, you've only just got started, and if I eventually managed to get it, I'm sure a smart guy like you will. And you won't need dropping out of any windows to do it either."
He chuckled slightly at his self-deprecating joke. Strange to think that all that time ago he and his family had really feared that he was a squib. While he was no great mage, he was at least confident in his own particular areas of magic. He might still fear Apparating, but he knew what he was doing with his Charms and Herbology, and he was content with that.
Raising an eyebrow, Faelan dropped his arm to the side, squinting up at Neville. "You had to drop out of a window to be able to perform magic?" Knowing what he did about Neville, he wasn't really that shocked that the bloke would go to such extremes to prove to himself his own mettle, but he was surprised that it had been necessary. "That's weird, because I think you're a great wizard."
Moving from his reclined position to sit cross-legged, Neville grinned down at Faelan. "Thank you for the compliment, but the truth is my family thought I was a squib until I was eight. Great-Uncle Algie tried everything to try and force the magic out of me. One day he accidentally dropped me out of an upstairs window and I bounced. I wasn't such a great student at school either. I broke my arm in my first flying lesson and blew up most of my potions." He shuddered at memories of the dungeons, which still continued to haunt him whenever he made the delivery to Alchemy & Ecstasy.
"It was only really as I got more involved in the war and what Harry was doing that I got stronger. I suppose it was a bit like the window incident - I had to get stronger to survive. But yeah, I guess it was only when I was fifteen, getting on for sixteen, that I really started to get a handle on my magic, and even then, part of mastering it was acknowledging my limitations and realising that I would never be as clever as Hermione or as powerful as Harry. So, I understand if you're feeling impatient - having to wait for your own magic to come when everybody else seems to know it all can really suck. It's good that you've got a teacher like Gaius, though," he added, a wistful smile gracing his lips. "I think he's probably the same kind of teacher that Remus was, and Remus was the first person who really made me believe in myself as a wizard."
Hearing how difficult it had been for Neville to get as skilled as he was did make Faelan feel better -- he just hoped it wouldn't take years like it had for Neville. "Well, if you had to go through all that, I guess there's hope then, right?" Sitting up again, he crossed his legs beside Neville and pointed his wand again.
"Wingardium Leviosa!"
Nothing.
"Shite. No hope for today, apparently." Faelan muttered, tossing his wand into the grass. "Hopefully I don't need any war." Giving Neville a wry smirk, he commented, "Maybe I can get Harry to push me out of a window. I'm sure he's wanted to a time or two."
Laughing at Faelan's comment, Neville withdrew his own wand from his jeans and examined it. "Magic's a funny thing," he observed. "It's changeable and personal. Take me and Luna, for example. We're both in the prime of our lives, good at what we know, and so tired with looking after Nimue and Gawain that even our magic mucks up. I tried to charm the bath to keep hot the other night, when I had to see to the twins crying, and when I got back to the bathroom ice cubes were floating in it. So, it's temperamental."
He stopped turning his wand over in his hands, and shook his head slightly. "And then, in the midst of Luna and I cracking up, Gawain goes and performs a bloody miracle." He gave Faelan an exasperated look, still barely able to process that Gawain had already done something as complicated as he had. "Somehow my son has figured out how to fit a square peg into a round hole, and he's not even a year old." Shaking his head again, he let out a huff. "I guess that doesn't really help you at all, but I guess if you end up being somewhere between my slowness and Gawain's precociousness, you'll be all right."
"Yeah," Faelan agreed, though he was frowning. If magic could mess up that way even for experienced wizards, and be so unpredictable, how could it ever be trusted? He'd already made things happen out of the blue a few times, like stopping Sirius' fall by the creek and cushioning his own from the roof, and while it had been for the best those times, what if he accidentally blew something
up sometime? He really wanted to do magic, but it sure seemed like life was less complicated without it.
Except, then he or Sirius could be dead, so maybe not.
"Does it ever get easier?" he asked Neville, turning to look at him. "I don't mean the magic, you've said it does. But...you know, being magic?" He shook his head. He wasn't making any sense. Maybe it wasn't being magic that felt so complicated, but just...being. Being a person. An adult. A real one.
"Being magic? I suppose I found it terrifying at first. I mean, when I first got to Hogwarts everything used to go wrong..." Neville trailed off and studied Faelan's expression. He got the feeling that this wasn't just about the magic lessons. He suddenly realised just how far they had come as friends as well as co-workers for them to even be having this conversation. Faelan had opened up to so many people in such a short space of time. Was he feeling wrong footed on an emotional level as well as a magical one?
"Yeah," he told Faelan in a quiet, serious voice. "It does get easier." Neville thought of how much he had grown and opened up himself in the past couple of years - mostly thanks to Luna's loving influence. "It never gets as easy as you'd like it to be, but the more people you have to lean on..."
He paused, flushing a little at the embarrassing thought that he may have completely misread Faelan. Then he decided that he might as well come out with it, whether Faelan thought he was having a funny five minutes or not. "You've got a lot of friends, Faelan. I hope you know that. Sirius, Harry and Gaius are probably the closest of those friends to you - Sirius more than anyone - but, well, I consider you a part of my family, too." He stopped awkwardly, rubbing the back of his neck. "It gets easier because you realise just how much you've got," he concluded, looking steadily down at the ground, rather than at Faelan, who was probably gaping at him.
Faelan stared at Neville, frowning with surprise at the declaration, even as a warm feeling stopped his heart from beating for a second. He looked down at the ground too, rubbing absently at a spot of dirt on his shoe. "Thanks," he answered quietly. And then, surprised that he meant it, added, "I know what I've got. I do. And I appreciate it at lot." Too much. He hoped the man understood that which Faelan couldn't say out loud - that he liked being told he was part of a family, and that he wanted Neville to be part of his family too. "But...you know, haven't you ever worried that you're just...trying too hard to have things that were never meant to belong to you?" Picking out a blade of grass, he rubbed it back and forth in the grooves of his shoe. "Do you ever feel like your past is just waiting to catch up and arrange things back to right again?" Lifting his head, he looked into Neville's eyes. "How do you ever know you're capable of outrunning it?" Thinking of how old he was to be starting magic, and of all the truths that stood between him and Padma, he thought, How late is too late?
Neville hesitated for a moment, and then chanced laying his hand on Faelan's shoulder. He knew those feelings all too well. Along with immense pride and love and the tiny pang of jealousy he had felt when Gawain had displayed his small but remarkable magic to him, Neville had also felt a sudden sweaty panic that this wasn't really his, that Gawain couldn't possibly be his son, that Luna and he couldn't possibly be that happy and in love and not have some horrible consequence come crashing down upon them. Luna had even got her mother back! It couldn't be theirs, could it? One day Luna would wake up and realise what a hopeless case he was - forgetting where he left things, eating too much all the time - and she would leave him and find somebody smarter and better looking to raise his two intelligent, beautiful children.
"I think I know how that feels," he told Faelan weakly. "I wish I could say something clever that would reassure you, but I've never been that smart. All I know is that when the fear gets too much, I have Luna's smile to rely on. Godric knows what would happen if I ever lost that. I sometimes think that it would destroy me... But, deep down, I know that if I lost Luna, I would still have the twins, my Gran, Harry, Ron, Hermione... you. It's scary having so much, because there's always that horrible chance that it might be taken away, but even then, having it taken away doesn't mean that it becomes unreal. You still had it. You still have those memories, and maybe that makes it easier to find something like it again."
Letting out a heavy breath, Neville tried a reassuring smile. "Sorry. Something happened recently that's kinda got me worried. One of those 'we have it now but what happens if it's taken away' kind of things. I guess I just dumped on you. Not really sporting of me." He rubbed at his face, and tried not to let his thoughts return once again to wondering why Pandora had come back from the dead, and what the fall out would be if that return wasn't permanent.
Neville's words about still having things that were lost drove his memory immediately to Aylward, and the strange feeling he'd had the night before that Aylward was there -- in his dreams, or in his room, or maybe just in his crazy head. The old man had been the closest thing to a father he'd known since childhood, and he couldn't help but think that Neville was right; if it hadn't been for the tiny beacon of normalcy and comfort that Aylward's affection had given him, he might never know how to care about people today, and when he thought about that, and how lonely his life would be without the people now in it, he realized that was a frightening thought indeed.
"No, I'm sorry," he said, absently tying the blade of grass into a knot. "I don't really know what my deal is. Just thinking too much, I guess." Just have to have faith. None of these people turned on me because of my secrets, so I shouldn't expect less from Padma. And Gaius said I have magic, I just need to learn to control it, and he really thinks I can, and he's not stupid. Have to believe in myself, he said.
"So, this thing that happened sounds kind of serious." He didn't want to pry, so he left it there so Neville could explain if he wanted to, or not. He was being kind of a selfish jerk dwelling on his own stuff all the time. He was starting to learn that everyone had rubbish to deal with.
"Maybe," Neville said. "Maybe not. I might just be thinking too much, as well. Luna's mother turned up the other day. She died when Luna was a girl, and well, I suppose the first worry was how the hell she managed to come back. She's not the first witch thought dead to suddenly appear again, but it's weird, right? When I first clapped eyes on her I was concerned that she might not be who she said she was, but Luna's dad seems to think she is, as does Luna, and I like her - she feels how I guess I think Luna's mum should. But while my fear about that has gone away, now I'm worried about whether she's back for good or not. If Pandora was taken from Luna a second time..." He left the rest of his fear unspoken in case it made his concerns truth. "It's been a weird couple of weeks."
"Wow," Faelan answered, at a momentary loss for words. "Uh, I'd say that sounds pretty serious. That's not...that's just not normal, mate. I mean, I know Sirius came back from being all dead-like, but that really wasn't normal either. It doesn't just happen for no reason, right? Are you sure she was really dead? Maybe she was just away with amnesia or something. What does she have to say about it?"
Neville huffed. "Haven't asked. Seemed rude. I don't think she remembers anything between her dying and now, anyway. The worst thing is that it's been making me dream about my own parents. One time I even thought that I saw them standing in the doorway of the living room. But only for a moment - I know they won't be coming back." Neville chose not to tell Faelan that he had fancied the twins had seen his parents, too. It sounded crazy, and Neville didn't want to dwell on the impossible, even if it seemed to be happening all around him.
"There's not much I can do," he said. "Just keep a watch on how things develop. I told you," he added, trying to lighten the mood again. "Magic's temperamental. Never know what it's going to do next. But, as I said before, if I learnt to control parts of it, I know you'll be able to." He patted Faelan's knee, and then heaved himself to his feet. "Come on, break's over, you can come help me sort out the invoices that need sending out. Oh, and do you know where I put the contract from Pellings'?"
Faelan watched Neville rise but made no move to follow. Instead, he felt a shiver that he was sure had nothing to do with the fact that the warming charm was wearing off. Neville thought he'd seen his dead parents at the same time Faelan was having weird dreams about his dead mentor? He'd been convinced that he was only dreaming, or alternately, that he was having some crazy hallucinogenic effect from the Wolfsbane. Now he wondered if maybe they were breathing some strange plant-fume. Or, had Neville invented some miraculous magical plant species that could bring people back from the dead? Trying not to feel the somersault in his stomach at the idea, he did wonder what else could explain the sudden return of Luna's long-gone mother. After all, Neville had just said that one never knew what magic would do next.
"Um...yeah," Faelan said, Neville's words finally cutting through. "I saw it stuck under a bucket of Lucinda Leaf-Bunker's Weeds-B-Gone in Greenhouse Two. I stuck it in their file." Mind swimming, he tried to push stray thoughts out of his head as he rose to his feet and brushed dirt off his pants. It was time to work. "Come on, I'll show you."