AU meme, out of schedule

[madam_rosmerta]

HARRY POTTER AU MEME You're a wizard! Or perhaps you're a magical creature or a ghost. More importantly, where do your loyalties lie? Are you the Dark Lord or one of the Death Eaters? Perhaps you teach at Hogwarts or work at the ministry. Are you a member of the Order of Phoenix? Are you a student in Hogwarts? In which house did the Sorting Hat place you? Leave a comment with your character's name and canon and your preferences in the title line. Then put down a few ideas about your character in your top level. Both AU characters and canon characters are welcome. List of prompts: (Choose from these or make up your own.) 1. HOGWARTS Are you a teacher or a student? Which house are you in? What subjects do you teach? Next week might be the most important quidditch match of the year and you're the team captain! Maybe you're the potions professor and someone just blew up their cauldron. 2. AURORS Are you a trainee? The head Auror who has been dueling with dark wizards all your adult life? A dark wizard? Catch you if we can! Or maybe you're an auror breaking curses in a Death Eater safehouse. 3. DIAGON ALLEY A bustling locale filled to the brim with wizarding shops and taverns. Are you a business owner? Perhaps you're a wand maker or a student buying your books for the next year in Hogwarts. Maybe you just want to get a shot of firewhiskey in the Three Broomsticks. 4. MINISTRY OF MAGIC Do you work here? You could be in the Department of Mysteries, handling a new case about vanishing cabinets. Or maybe you work in the misuse of muggle artifacts office, dispelling singing teacups or flying cars. Is it a busy day, a slow week, or just another day in the office? Maybe you're one of the gossips who just heard of the newest bit of juicy gossip. 5. THE OLDEST AND PUREST BLOOD Were you born to a pureblood family? Perhaps you're an heir of great, questionable fortune. Maybe you'd like nothing to do with your family who supports the Dark Lord. What if you fell in love with someone your family doesn't approve of? Or maybe both of your parents are muggle born and this is still all new to you. 6. FLYING There are great many ways to fly: broomsticks, hippogriffs, dragons. Take your pick and soar through the skies! 7. DUELING/SPELL CASTING What's the fun in being a wizard if you can't cast spells? Are you good at something specific? Do you use silent spells a lot? Perhaps you're the best dueler with a wand that's been seen for ages. Or maybe you're just starting out, and a spell just backfired in your face. 8. ST. MUNGO'S HOSPITAL FOR MAGICAL MALADIES AND INJURIES Did your spell go haywire? Did you stick a satsuma up your nostril? It happens. Happily there's a hospital for your needs. Or maybe you work there, healing all those poor and silly wizards who turn up in desperate need of your care. 9. AZKABAN A fortress island in the middle of the Northern sea, full of the most dangerous dark wizards. Are you a resident, or visiting? Watch out for those dementors! 10. POTIONS You brewed the best pick-me-up potion but something went wrong? Maybe you ended up purple in the face. Or you gave a love potion to the wrong person. Maybe you mixed your hangover potion with magical viagra? It happens. But now you have to deal with it. 11. MAGICAL CREATURES Do you work with dragons? Perhaps you have some giant blood in you. Or maybe you were bit by a werewolf and your first full moon is nearing. Maybe you found an injured unicorn. Or your house has become infested with boggarts. 12. WILD CARD Come up your own scenario.

Comments

[daddy_issues]

He'd all but forgotten just how.. touchy Eames can be. They were younger then, but it wasn't much different, Eames was always grabbing his shoulders or ruffling his hair - but it's been years since they've seen one another, and Robert has forgotten what it's like. All the people he's surrounded with, his family and colleagues, his father's closest confidantes - none of them are warm or affectionate people, and he's forgotten how to be physical with people. If he ever knew how to begin with.

So he's still stiff beneath that touch, his back ramrod straight, expression tight and hard as they move across the street, through the doors and into the Three Broomsticks, greeted immediately by a blast of warm air and the thick scent of cooked meat.

"Robert," he says, succinctly. Not Robbie. "And I.. did well, yes."

[casuistic]

Eames doesn't care if he's stiff. He'll come around. Robert is not exactly starved for it, but he kind of has a look of a man who could use a bit of ruffling.

And Eames is going to provide just that and hope it works for his advantage.

He yanks them both inside, hustles Robert to a table and then waves at Madam Rosmerta to bring in a bottle and some glasses.

"I imagined you would. And probably no divination." Who would take divination? Except Eames, who had gotten a kick out of it. He and a bunch of girls, making astrological charts and talking about doom and gloom and occasionally about dark, tall stranger that would appear in their lives.

[daddy_issues]

He feels a little better once they're inside and he's safely in a seat across the table from Eames, where it'd be far more difficult to manhandle him. He's quick to clear his throat and smooth his hands down the front of his crisp robes, waiting patiently for Madam Rosmerta to ferry over the bottle and glasses.

"I took one year of it," he admits, sitting back in his seat with his arms crossed loosely over his chest. "I thought it necessary to round out my curriculum and experience every elective."

Of course, it'd been a terrible waste of time, laughably stupid, but still worth taking, he thinks, if only to experience everything that the school had to offer. To explore every avenue available to him.

[casuistic]

Of course he had. The school provided it, so Robbie would see it fit to explore even that avenue of possibilities. Eames isn't surprised, merely grins as he grabs the bottle and pours them both a shot after shooting a quick, "thank you, luv," to Rosmerta.

"And how did you find it?" he asks while pushing the first glass towards Robert.

He wonders if he can manage to weasel the younger wizard to drink more than his share or if he'll have to actually just charm him off of his feet the old fashioned way. The latter seems a little bit more satisfying to be honest.

[daddy_issues]

Now that they're seated comfortably, off the busy street, Robert is beginning to feel.. marginally more comfortable. Even without the weight of his father's death hanging over him like a cloud, Robert's not terribly good at loosening up, even on the best of days. From his earliest memories in life, he can always recall being busy - encouraged to read and study even before Hogwarts, to stick to his father's side like glue, learning the family trade. Networking. It never stopped, never ended, his life has always been one long whirlwind of activity.

Only at Hogwarts had he found any sort of reprieve. On his own there, without his father breathing down his neck, or his advisors and servants constantly harrying him, Robert had been able to breathe, for once. He'd kept himself busy anyway, because it's what he'd been taught, because he never really knew what to do with himself when it came to free time, but he'd had a sort of liberty in the school that he hadn't known before.

Of course, all that disappeared again the moment he finished his seventh year, and it was nose to the grindstone all over again. But right now, for the moment, he's able to let at least some of it go.

"It was ridiculous," he says, succinctly, palming the shotglass and dragging the pad of his thumb thoughtfully along the rim. "Not to say that there aren't those with true prophetic talent. But it's not something you can be taught. Smoke and mirrors, was all that class was." After only a moment more of contemplation, he tips back the shotglass and drinks.

[casuistic]

"I figured you would say that," Eames admits with a warm smile spreading over his full lips. He tilts his glass in a slow sip, studying Robert over the lip of it.

He's loosening up a little from the looks of it. Eames is not surprised to see it. He always was eager to give in if someone would bother to insist in Hogwarts too. Not many did, which is probably unfortunate, but at the same time, it speaks for the human nature, which isn't flattering most of the time.

"Smoke and mirrors is a useful talent, though." Robert wouldn't think so. He'd be eager to prove himself where others might fake it. It is rather commendable, isn't it? Though very stressful.

"Perhaps not in your chosen career."

[daddy_issues]

He's not wrong. For all Robert might seem cold and distant as a glacier, he's far more warm beneath than any might assume. For all he's tried to be, he's not as much like his father as he'd like for people to believe. He just doesn't have the same cutting edge, the ferocity and dog-eat-dog aggressive nature that Maurice had - and he's tried, certainly. He can't count how many times he'd rowed fiercely with his father, his father who thought him too soft, too gentle, too weak to pick up where he was leaving off. His father who left him behind with handfuls of inheritance and responsibility that he doesn't know how to manage.

Nevertheless, Eames had seemed to learn early on that it doesn't take too much prying for that cold facade to begin cracking, but most people haven't bothered to try. Which is just as well, really. His lifestyle doesn't leave much room for friends.

"No, not at all," he says succinctly, lips pursed as he sets the glass down on the table again, the firewhiskey already burning a hot trail down his throat. Robert's not one to drink himself silly, but the occasional shot or tumbler of whiskey or brandy is expected of him often enough, and he doesn't mind the way it makes him a little looser, a little calmer.

Robert's blue eyes flicker up from the table to Eames' face again, hooded and penetrating. "What have you been doing with yourself?"

[casuistic]

Eames raises his brows at the declaration. He won't push, not yet. He's creating an image and that requires him to show interest but not be aggressive about it. He acknowledges the fact that Robert sounds a little displeased but doesn't push to get more information out of him. Lull him into a false sense of security. In a way.

Instead, he gives a sharp grin and downs his glass of whiskey with one go.

"I've been, ah," he starts, quickly, then coughs as he firewhiskey burns its way down his throat. "Doing a little bit of this and that, right? To be honest my options have been a little limited." In a way of speaking they have been. No respectable wizards would like to enlist his services.

He takes another sip of his whiskey, this one more careful than the one before. "But the good thing, I suppose, is that I'm mostly wanted for my talents and my skills and not what my papers say, or what others would like to see me doing."

[daddy_issues]

Eames' explanation isn't terribly surprising. Robert, of course, knows that he left school, that he's dabbled in experimental things, that he's not necessarily the most straight-laced wizard. It's never particularly bothered Robert, even if he does't necessarily approve, but he's sure that's only a remnant of his quiet fondness for the only boy in the world who's ever bothered to show real interest in him. Were that not the case, he'd probably look down his nose at Eames like he would any other criminal or degenerate.

"So you've been keeping busy," he says, just to fill the silence, his thumb tracing the chips in his shotglass. "Have you been back in Britain since school? Where did you end up?"

[casuistic]

Of course he would. Wizarding community works as much on contempt as the muggle one. And those who challenge the usual order of things have been regarded with furious dislike in both throughout times.

Eames doesn't necessarily agree with these sentiments. Of course he doesn't. He finds the mere idea offensive.

"Oh, no." He gives a short bark of laughter while he fills their glasses again. "I don't bother staying in one location for a long period of time. I've been to continent Europe, the States, Africa, briefly in Asia. It's been an interesting stretch to say the least. At first I just went backpacking. To see the world. Did a bit of odd jobs here and there. Muggle jobs, too. And when I got bored, I moved along."

[daddy_issues]

Robert's eyes flick downward when Eames refills their glasses; he doesn't exactly have a lot of time on his hands. His father's death has left a load of responsibility on his shoulders, and he has about a hundred things to see to, things he needs to do and get done and no chance to slow down lest he drop all the balls he's currently juggling.

"It sounds very exciting," he says slowly. Robert has done plenty of traveling, though none of it really for fun, mostly for father's work, not for the plethora of colorful reasons that Eames has given. He's got the impression that much of that work hasn't been honest, or even legal, but he doesn't seem to mind. Or at least he's got nothing to say about it at the moment.