Who: Eddy Norbert and Sabrina Shipton What: The Boy Who Lived, the Loony, and a grand oceanside adventure. Where: Along Brighton beach, Brighton, UK When: Saturday, October 24th 2015, around dusk Warnings: idk fluff?
Eddy didn’t rightly remember what he’d done when he needed to think, before he ended up in Brighton with his last foster family. Not thought, probably, which was likely why he’d ended up changing homes as much as he had. Brighton, though, that had been worth staying for one reason, and that was the beach. Something about standing on the shore and watching the waves helped remind him that the world really was bigger than him, and that whatever he was angry about (and he’d been angry a lot, when he’d first come to Brighton) wasn’t so big that the ocean couldn’t wash it right away, if it cared to. Not that it ever had, but while Eddy was by the water, it always felt like it. That had been before Harry, obviously. Before loads of things, but even with all that, Eddy felt better about things when he went to the beach to think them through. It was bollocks in the summer, with all the tourists about, too busy to hear yourself think at all unless you made it by late enough, or early enough, that not many people were stirring, but so late in the year, and with the sun starting to sink and leaving the air even more nippy, Eddy had the beach almost entirely to himself.
It was a relief, really, because his worries were a bit heavier than usual. Even as cut off from the world of being a reincarnate as he’d chosen to stay, Eddy had eventually heard news of the killings in Florida, the ones that had been set up with the Dark Mark. He and Harry, they knew what that meant. Even if Voldemort himself wasn’t about, there were Death Eaters out there, killing innocent people. There’d been a baby, they’d said. He wondered if that had been meant to mean him, or rather Harry, somehow, if a baby had died because Eddy hadn’t decided to come forward and say that yes, hullo, he was Harry Potter, pleased to meet you all. Eddy wasn’t really the Boy Who Lived, though, was he? He didn’t have the scar, and he didn’t have the connection with Voldemort, or the protection of a mother’s love. His mum was still alive and well, even though every time he tried to talk to her it was so awkward that he eventually started pretending he hadn’t seen her text messages at all. Eddy was nothing special, really. He was just Eddy. What sort of good would he do against Voldemort, even with Harry along? Harry had been incredibly lucky, with all the right people around him to make things happen as they had. If Eddy stepped forward, what was it he’d have? Enough luck that their wands would still be connected, maybe, Fawkes’s feathers, but Voldemort would have thought of that, wouldn’t he?
No matter which way Eddy turned things, there was no good answer, and the ocean didn’t have one for him, either. Not this time. He hadn’t even worked out how to tell his own bloody twin he was a reincarnate, he wasn’t equipped to announce it to the whole world and deal with what was coming, not unless there was some way to guarantee that he wouldn’t just make it worse by pissing all the Death Eaters off enough that they’d go on a rampage. He didn’t know which way to move, and so he just sat, a figure all in black against the sand, shoulders slumping as he let out a heavy sigh. There’d been a prophecy, to tell Harry he was meant to be the one to fight. Voldemort had been the one to choose which boy to mark, but at least there’d been some reason to believe he could do something. If only there were some sort of sign for Eddy, too, he might stop worrying long enough to be a Gryffindor about it and charge on ahead, anyhow.
If there was only one thing that rang true for both Sabrina and Luna (and it definitely wasn’t the only thing, but they weren’t the same person all the time. Just when the lines blurred enough to get confusing.), it was that they both loved to explore. For Sabrina, that came more from the desire to see as much of the world as she could because she hadn’t had the chance to when she was younger. With the sort of suffocating environment she and her brother had grown up in, they’d been very sheltered, their parents had barely let them out of the house long enough to go to school so traveling anywhere had always been out of the question. Once she was out of the house, and especially after she’d become a reincarnate and could make good use of the MTN service, Sabrina went everywhere she could. Especially if it happened to be by an oceanside.
She hadn’t learned to apparate yet, but taking the MTN was easy, so she had little trouble getting to Brighton. Despite working in Camelot now, she’d still spent little time exploring the UK outside of going to visit Diagon Alley a few times and hanging out at Zane’s house. She hadn’t even spent much time in London, but today she felt the ever increasing need to be on a beach, basking in the sand. It was ironic, considering who her brother’s reincarnate was, though the irony was lost on Sabrina since she’d never read the books or seen the movies. She made a conscious effort not to, now that she knew her brother’s reincarnate was from there, but she and Christian still had one huge thing in common in their adult lives. They both really loved the ocean.
Sabrina had been walking along the beach for close to three hours now. It was beautiful, the sand was white and cool between her toes, no longer warm the closer the sun got to setting. She was just enjoying the fresh, sea air and Luna was ecstatic to be so close to the water. A few times Sabrina rolled up her pant legs and walked into the water up to her ankles, enjoying the feeling of her feet sinking into the wet sand every time another wave rolled in. Her jeans and the bright yellow spaghetti strap she was wearing under her Ravenclaw blue jacket still got a little wet as each wave splashed against her legs but she didn’t mind, laughing every time it happened. Eventually she was close enough to notice the figure in all black sitting in the sand, an odd sight, considering their surroundings, but Sabrina didn’t care so much about odd when she was fairly odd herself. Stopping just a few feet in front of him, she shielded her eyes and peered out at him with a curious smile before she pointed close to his feet. “You should pick up that sea shell before someone else does. It’s lucky.”
It wasn’t unusual to hear an American accent in Brighton. It was a vacation town, after all, and some Americans did realize that there were places in England outside of London. It was a bit late for tourists, really, but Eddy figured there were likely some who hadn’t been able to get away from work in time to hit the real prime season for it. You had to take what you could get, when you weren’t in the sort of position where you could ask for prime vacation time off and get it. Eddy would be glad for vacation time at all, actually. He tended not to last long enough in his jobs to earn it, so his vacations were more his time between jobs, when he couldn’t spend anything, as he had no idea when he’d be getting paid next. Good job he lived right near the beach anyway, wasn’t it? If he didn’t, he’d never get to see it, and he’d be right back to being angry at everything.
He squinted up at the American girl, looking her over. “That one in particular?” Eddy wasn’t certain what made a seashell lucky, or if all seashells were, to her, somehow inherently lucky. Proof again she was a tourist, if she thought the latter. When he’d first moved to Brighton, Eddy had collected as many seashells as he could carry home from his foster family’s beach trips, until there’d been no more room left in his half of the room he was sharing with another foster kid. They’d lost a bit of their shine, over the years, when you saw them every day. He wasn’t certain what would make the one beside him in particular lucky, either. It looked, to him, just like another seashell, like dozens that he’d see over the course of a week in the windows of tourist trap shops, decorations they could go right out and pick up for free.
What swayed him, though, was that she really was quite pretty. He plucked up the shell, looked it over carefully. “What’s so lucky about this one?” It wasn’t exactly calculated. Eddy wasn’t what you’d call smooth, when it came to girls. Some of them seemed charmed by the fact that, on the surface, he looked like a bad boy, but once they got to know him he tended to lose their interest fast once they came to realize that he was really anything but. The opposite of Harry, he’d supposed, who’d only been interesting to most girls when they’d thought of him as the golden Chosen One sort. Still, he was smart enough to realize that if he asked about the shell, she’d at least have a reason to keep chatting with him, perhaps to explain what made it lucky in the first place. From there… likely he’d lose her interest quickly, too, but he could always get lucky.
Some people might think Sabrina odd, and maybe she was a little, but considering who she had for a headmate you couldn’t really blame her slight eccentricities. Even before Luna, though, she had always been friendly, and maybe a little too trusting. After everything that had been happening lately, the murders and the knowledge that Voldemort and quite possibly some of his followers were out there should have made her more cautious. In some ways it had, she’d been spending a lot more time trying to learn new spells in the Magics Department, though the defensive spells were a little more challenging. It wasn’t the first time she and Luna had wished it, but the wistful thought that it would be better if Harry was here had definitely crossed their minds more than once lately. Harry had been really good at teaching everyone in Dumbledore’s Army, and more than that, he was their friend. It felt wrong, somehow, him not being there.
It probably wasn’t the smartest idea for Sabrina to be wandering around today by herself after those threats were made against her and her friends, but she had her wand with her, safely tucked away in the back pocket of her jeans that was hidden by the jacket she was wearing. She wasn’t too worried. It was a beautiful day, and she had wanted to find a place where she could really clear her head, which is why she’d ended up choosing to come here. The beach was always a good place for that. She just wasn’t going to tell Christian she had come here by herself, he probably wouldn’t like that too much. Her younger brother worried enough about her already, and she was worried about what he might do if he thought she was in danger again. But Sabrina didn’t think she was in danger here, or at least, the boy in front of her didn’t look like any kind of threat. He looked a little unhappy, but not dangerous. Naturally, her curiosity was already peaked by the sad looking boy in black, and she smiled wider when he asked her about the shell.
“I’ll show you,” Sabrina offered cheerfully, and without hesitation started making her way toward him, carrying her shoes in one hand and carefully maneuvering her bare feet through the sand to keep from wobbling. She knelt unceremoniously in the sand next to him, like they were already friends, and gently plucked the shell from his hand to point out the center of it. "These conches are lucky. They can offer protection and harmony to the owner." She paused, smiling ruefully. "Unless you're stuck on an island with a bunch of other boys, I guess." Thankfully this wasn't actually Lord of the Flies.
Protection and harmony? “I just thought they sounded like the ocean.” Nothing special - and Eddy didn’t want to admit that he didn’t quite get the reference. He’d never been much of a reader, really, and he didn’t have a friend like Hermione to pin him down and force books on him if he didn’t want to read them. If his mum hadn’t read the first Harry Potter book to him and Etienne and gotten them hooked, he might not even have finished that series… probably so, though. It had been popular enough in school that he’d likely have heard teachers and librarians reading it, as well, enough to catch his interest. There’d been nothing in that about conch shells, though, so he just smiled, politely, and peered at the conch as though there was actually something worthwhile to see there. He did like that you could hear the ocean in them, though. Good enough reason to pick one up, he supposed, for when he didn’t have the time to make it out to the beach.
Nice of her to come over and get down in the sand to show him, though. Eddy couldn’t recall the last time he’d bumped into someone so casually friendly. The bit about protection and harmony was strange, but he wasn’t near enough of an arse to tell her that when she was trying to be nice. “Thanks, I suppose. For making sure I didn’t miss picking it up.” It might have been an American thing, he supposed. Or something peculiar to her family. He’d always thought it would be nice to have a family with little tales like that. He and Tien didn’t speak near enough to have their own private tales. Everyone assumed that having a twin meant having some sort of magical connection, even though they’d lived apart most of their lives. Harry’d thought it too, but the twins he’d known best and been Fred and George. Eddy and Tien didn’t really have that much in common, after the first few years of their lives, except for experiencing foster care, he supposed. They might have been friends, if they’d taken the time to get to know each other as adults, but Eddy somehow doubted they’d discover some deep mystical connection, this late in life.
If they had, maybe he could have been talking things through with Etienne, instead of thinking it through alone on the beach. Well, nearly alone. Alone but for a strange girl whose name he didn’t even know. “Eddy. By the way. ...is my name.” Er. Probably he should have thought that through a bit more before it left his mouth. Right, then, that was the point where she’d likely laugh and go on her way. She was, after all, pretty. Not the sort of girl who spent much time hanging out around dorks who couldn’t even manage an introduction without mangling it horribly. “Pleasure to meet you?” It had, at least, been something of a bright spot on the day. That probably said more about his day than it did about the girl, though.
“Well also that you can hear the ocean in them, but everybody knows that,” Sabrina laughed kindly, either not noticing his confusion or simply not minding it. She said things all the time that tended to confuse people, thanks to Luna, so maybe it was just that she was used to it. At any rate, she definitely wasn’t laughing at him, or thought him stupid for not knowing weird facts about conch shells. Not everybody knew weird facts about things, but that was kind of Luna’s specialty. You could say it was starting to rub off on Sabrina a little. Or a lot. “You’re welcome. Not everybody has those things, so it’s more of a nice sentiment than anything, but I like it.”
He seemed surprised that she was talking to him, though Sabrina wasn’t sure why, but it didn’t bother her. She was mildly aware that going up to a random stranger on the beach to discuss the finer points of seashells wasn’t something that just anyone would do, but it was exactly the kind of thing that she would do. Maybe no one had ever done that to him before now. That was a sad thought, a beach seemed like the perfect place to make a new friend. Sabrina just really liked being near the ocean and always wanted to make the most out of it, or what was the point? She did notice that he was pretty cute, despite how sad he’d looked when she first saw him. She had to wonder if maybe his mood had something to do with all the black he was wearing.
“Hi, Eddy. That’s a nice name,” Sabrina smiled warmly, sitting back a little on her heels and tucking a strand of blonde hair behind her ears before extending her hand out to him. A little formal, but she felt a little ridiculous waving when they were this close. A handshake was usually what people did for first meetings anyway. “I’m Sabrina. It’s nice to meet you too.”
"Sabrina. Yours is nice, too." That seemed the proper reply when someone complimented your name. And Sabrina was rather a nice one, Eddy couldn’t recall if he'd ever met a Sabrina before. "Where are you from, then?" Everyone from America sounded the same, or close enough that Eddy couldn’t tell the difference, unless they had an exaggerated cowboy accent like on the telly. Sabrina did not, and he rather thought it unlikely that anyone actually did. Couldn’t believe everything you heard on the telly, at least until it came to reincarnates from a particular source. Then, Eddy supposed, you could believe at least a bit of it, though he certainly wasn't enough like Harry to call it everything.
The same would likely be true of any reincarnate, he figured. Not that he'd really gotten to know any, once his caretaker had pronounced him fit and released him into the wild... so to speak. Sometimes he looked at the people around him, wondered if they might not be reincarnates and just hiding it, too. Only way to find out, unless they did something spectacular and attention grabbing, was to ask, though, and that meant saying what, and who, he was. Not that it was as bad to be open about it, particularly in Brighton he'd bet, but it seemed awfully awkward to bring up, and quite a bit like bragging. Being Harry Potter was brilliant, one of those luck of the draw bits that you were always left wondering how it hadn’t been snapped up before.
He could ask Sabrina, he supposed. Somehow, he doubted she'd be offended by the question. She might not even think it odd, if she went about telling strangers on the beach about seashells. It still seemed the sort of thing you worked up to, though, if you asked at all. Besides, he'd already asked her a question. It was just good manners to let her answer that one before he started in on the next. Eddy would know. He'd gotten his fair share of lectures about manners, growing up. Most of them he'd even deserved.
“Thank you,” Sabrina beamed. It wasn’t her given name (seriously, Charity had to be the absolute worst name to ever give your child), but it was the name she’d chosen, once she was old enough to legally change it, so it always made her happy when other people liked it too. Maybe it was a stupid thing to get so happy about, but the thing was, for whatever reason people never seemed to ask how she got the name ‘Sabrina’. But with a name like ‘Charity’? People always asked, and then she would inevitably have to explain how her parents were actually a couple of religious nuts who emotionally abused their children and terrorized them with the Holy Bible pretty much on a daily basis, so when she grew up, she had wanted as little of a reminder of them as possible. Sabrina hardly ever talked about her parents these days, even to Christian, so one less reason to bring them up was always a huge plus. Plus, she’d always hated the name Charity, and had liked the name she gave herself for a long time.
His eyes were a nice color of hazel, she noticed, though she tried hard not to stare. Sometimes Sabrina did that without noticing, and it wasn’t always because there was someone she thought was cute, sometimes she got caught staring off into space for no earthly reason at all. She didn’t want to do that in front of him, though, so she made a more considerable effort to stay focused. Shifting her weight slightly, Sabrina slid her legs out from under her where she knelt on her knees and resituated herself cross legged in the sand, not noticing that her wand was now sticking a little further out of her back jeans pocket, and could be noticed. Okay, so maybe she wasn’t the most observant when it came to her own surroundings, but she was working on it. When she wasn’t distracted by the pleasant feeling of her toes sinking into the sand.
“California, originally.” Sabrina paused briefly as she answered his question, because it was awkward trying to explain how she was an american all of a sudden living in the United Kingdom, without mentioning Camelot, and that would also mean giving away her status as a reincarnate entirely. While this Eddy person didn’t immediately seem like the type that might have a negative reaction to that sort of news, Sabrina wasn’t so lost in her own little world that she didn’t have the good sense to be cautious when appropriate. Just because she had a relatively positive outlook on life didn’t mean she was completely oblivious. She probably shouldn’t even mention Glastonbury. Camelot’s location wasn’t public knowledge, but a girl from California moving to Glastonbury, of all places, to take a job? More than a little suspicious, probably. It was better just to lie and say London, if asked for any specifics. “... But I’ve been living in England for the past seven months. For work. What about you? Do you live here?”
There were a thousand other questions Eddy could have asked her, questions about California, about whereabouts she was working because it certainly wasn't Brighton, he thought that even in all the city he'd have heard at least about the American girl working in such and such place. He could have asked her what, precisely, her job was that it had been worth moving so far away from home and likely family, as well. It was polite conversation, of course, but interesting, as well. At least, he imagined it could be. Sabrina had been interesting so far, it didn’t seem a stretch that her reasons for being in the UK, and Brighton in particular, would be interesting as well. Or perhaps Eddy was reading too much into the talk. Easy to do, with someone new. He supposed Sabrina could be anyone, really, and he could have been buying right into some sort of story. Couldn’t hurt though, could it? If she had some sort of boring life, no reason not to let her be whoever she wanted to be, on the beach far from home.
At least, Eddy thought so until he turned to look at her more fully, just to be polite, and saw a rather suspicious length of wood sticking out of her pocket. It might have been anything, but Eddy's instincts... which were really just Harry's instincts, borrowed, told him that it had to be a wand. Nothing else had quite the shape of one, or the look of one. Nothing that you'd carry about in your back pocket, in particular. That meant Sabrina was either the reincarnate of a witch, or pretending to be, for one reason or another. If she was a witch, he supposed it was entirely possible for her to be one of Harry's friends. They were likely around, somewhere or another. He'd know if he ever checked the boards, he reckoned, but it would be a bit suspicious of him to pull his phone out to do so now... and if Sabrina wasn’t one of Harry's friends, he'd really rather keep her thinking he didn’t know what she was, for as long as he could get away with it.
If Sabrina wasn’t one of Harry's friends, she might well be one of his enemies, as awful and hokey as that sounded even in his head. Him, Eddy, with enemies. He barely had the friends and coworkers thing sorted out, the family thing was in no way under control. Nobody ought to be trusting him with something so complicated as enemies. Heart in his throat, he looked away again, casually as though he hadn’t noticed her wand at all. He'd left his own back in his flat, like he always did, even though he still heard Moody barking at him about 'constant vigilance' every time he walked out the door without it. "Yes, I'm a local. Er, not always. I was born in London, but I've lived here longer than I did there." He ought to play it cool. Odds were, even if she were a Death Eater, she had no idea who Eddy was... unless she did. Unless that was why she’d come up to him and began talking about seashells in the first place.
...He really ought to have been more specific when he had asked about signs, oughtn't he?
"Wow, that's amazing," Sabrina smiled, looking genuinely impressed. Maybe it wasn't the most impressive revelation, but that was Sabrina for you. She was always able to find the glass half full side of things, and Luna had been helping her see the magic in everything ever since they'd been put together. By magic itself, presumably. The way reincarnation was designed, it didn't seem likely that the foundation of it was built on much else, aside from magic. A magic that she'd be interested in studying some day, if that was ever possible. Sabrina may not be the reincarnate of Hermione Granger, but she was still a Ravenclaw at her very core.
It might have just been because she was over sensitive to it on account of Luna, and the fact that people always looked at her weird, but he really did seem a little off when he looked at her. Even more so when he looked away before he answered, when most people would probably choose to look at someone when they answered a question. Had she said something to upset him? She hadn’t thought so, but she didn’t know him, so anything was possible. Maybe he didn’t like questions about where he lived, that could be understandable. Everyone was different, and Sabrina more than anyone understood just how important it was to accept other people's differences. “To live so near to the ocean, I mean. I did too, but this is lovely. Very different from the beach I grew up with. I’m also quite liking London, so far. But I miss living by the ocean.”
Technically, Camelot was fairly near a body of water, but the lake of Avalon wasn’t exactly an ocean. It had its own brand of mysteries that Sabrina enjoyed exploring from its shore, but there were no waves, nothing chaotic about the calm, almost serene ripples of Camelot's lake. It also didn't smell like the sea, and if there was one thing Sabrina loved it was the smell of salt water and ocean air. There was nothing else like it. Luna agreed, of course. She remembered Bill and Fleur's house by the sea well. "We didn't have a Ferris Wheel. I like that about your beach."
‘Amazing’ wasn’t something Eddy would call it, but it wasn’t like he’d told Sabrina the whole long story, now, was it? Eddy did like to avoid that whole ‘foster kid’ bit so long as he was able, because that led to the questions about how he’d gotten there in the first place, and about his mum. His mates knew, of course. His best mate had nearly all the details, after enough nights spent with a bottle of liquor, but Eddy still didn’t bring it up casually. To Sabrina, newly met on the beach and possibly even a Death Eater, Eddy thought he’d avoid the whole matter. “Yeah. Amazing.” Living near the ocean was, at least, no matter what had brought him there in the first place. He figured she’d think something normal, like his parents moving there when he was a kid.
“Me and my mates’ll make day trips to London, sometimes. Planning one for Halloween, actually.” More of a night trip, and they hadn’t quite figured out the sleeping arrangements, but since Etienne had invited them along he’d thought they’d likely all rent a room for the night together. “London’s nice enough.” If you couldn’t find it in London, you likely didn’t need it; even the entrances to the magical world, if they were there. Eddy hadn’t checked, yet, hadn’t wanted to know, yay or nay. Sabrina likely knew, he thought. She still hadn’t seemed to realize her wand was in view, so he supposed he could ask her and it make sense. He didn’t, of course. Gryffindor or not, he wasn’t a teenager. He was capable of a bit of forethought, and caution. Not much, mind you, but enough that he still wasn’t quite ready to let her know that she’d slipped up, if she was trying to keep it hidden for some reason more nefarious than other people not liking reincarnates.
He looked around, when she mentioned the ferris wheel. “You know, I see it so often that I forget it’s there, most of the time.” Eddy hadn’t been on it since right after it’d opened, he’d say. It had never been the big draw, though the view of the ocean from the top of it was absolutely splendid. “It’s been there four years, today.” He was sure it had been crowded, earlier in the day, with everyone enjoying the anniversary (such as it was). The crowds seemed to have died down, since, though he imagined there was always going to be a line. “Brighton Pier’s nice, too, if you’re looking to do the tourist thing.” He hoped she was there for nothing less innocent than that.