arrival - catchall

[skygazing]

WHO: Remus Lupin & OTA
WHAT: arrival and shenanigans
WHEN: 9/11-9/13
WHERE: Eglaf Govt Housing, around town
WARNINGS: occasional werewolf talk? too much love of books and chocolate?



apartment 103;

When Remus wakes, he can't quite tell what time it is. The sun filters in through the windows and he can't help but feel something akin to apparition or travel sickness. He's used to waking up on the English countryside, either tucked into some woods or using a barren, old cottage for cover. To find he wakes up in the beginnings of evening, in a warm bed, in a room with four walls? It's disorienting.

Even more so when he remembers that it's Sirius Black who's housing him until he's well enough to return to his own flat, that this is anywhere but home, and that he has dozens and dozens of questions. But he feels a little more human now than he did upon arrival, and he'll have to apologize to Sirius and his flatmates alike for tracking dirt and blood on the way in. He crawls from the bed and starts out into the sitting room. He remembers a coffee pot from earlier, and decides to try his hand at working the obviously more modern muggle machine.

He feels a bit rude, really, making a coffee with someone else's supplies, but he needs something to cut through the fog. He'd much prefer tea, really, but anything warm and comforting just now will do. He struggles with the over-sized, baggy jumper that Sirius gave him earlier (that apparently belongs to someone named Klaus?), the sleeves loose and falling over his scarred fingers as he spoons out grounds into a filter. "Oh these bothersome sleeves..."


around Eglaf, weekend;

Remus isn't a man to stay idle too long, particularly in unknown places. For all his reservations and careful mentality, he's already taken to the sidewalks of Eglaf. Word on the streets is the Fall Festival has started, and although Remus is quite curious, he's taking advantage of the fact that mainstream shops are a little quieter while the locals occupy themselves with the festivities.

He makes his way to a local, used book shop where one might find him perusing the shelves or getting lost in something obscure he's plucked from the shelves. If not that, then one might spot him tucked away in a corner of Soul Full Cup with an old, dog-eared copy of H. G. Wells's The Time Machine, while enjoying a warm cuppa.

Otherwise, you might find him en route or horribly lost between point A and point B, though he doesn't seem to mind that he's lost.


network - video;

[ The video all but fumbles on, operated by someone who is clearly unused to the technology, though he seems to grasp the overall concept as the picture focuses in on his face after a few quick seconds. In fact, it's almost as if the camera itself happens to hover in place, Remus looking quietly pleased. (He looks utterly exhausted, too, but that's his general state of being these days). ]

I think this thing's on. Terribly sorry, I'm afraid we don't have devices like this back home. I don't believe the Muggles have discovered this technology yet, but I'm keen to learn more.

[ And it's honest; the more he can learn about his surroundings the better. He can't help that, despite everything, he's still in the mindset leftover from magical, political unrest. ]

I understand some of you have been here for some time, and I hope to pick everyone's brains in time. I thought I might as well start local before I begin to try and tackle the mess that is federal politics. [ He grins, nothing short of cheeky. ]

Comments

[pantomath]

Hermione laughs with him, nodding. "I suppose we both do, then," she agrees. There is no love lost between Hermione and that particular subject, that's for sure. It's probably rude, but she can't bring herself to care that much. Divination is no good for anyone who doesn't actually have an Inner Eye and Hermione does not.

She pales just slightly when she hears his name and wills her smile not to falter. How common, after all, can Remus possibly be as a name? And with Sirius Black here? Wouldn't that just be her luck? Hitting it off well enough with a handsome bloke at a book store, of all places, only to find out he's just another person she'll have to tiptoe her words around to keep from potentially breaking time. You shouldn't be hitting it off with any blokes anywhere, anyway, she points out to herself with disapproval.

"Remus, oh...that's unique, yeah? I bet you never had to worry about there being more than one Remus in class when you were in school," she offers with a small smile. Please let it be a coincidence... "What makes you a dissenter, anyway? Bad experience or just always sort of felt like it was rubbish?" she wonders.

To his question, Hermione looks reflexively down at the cup and blushes because she hadn't needed to do that to know what he'd been talking about. "Oh right, erm...it's a few blocks down. It's called Soul Full Cup," she tells him, looking over her shoulder reflexively like she's looking back in the direction from which she'd come.

"Actually," she starts thoughtfully, "they've a back room with beanbag chairs and reading lamps since it's a bit darker back there. They have board games and the like, as well, but it's usually pretty quiet back there during the day," she finishes.

Hermione sometimes reads there when there's no one else back there and has found it to be especially convenient because then she can just get up and order another cuppa when she runs out. Plus, they have snacks. "I definitely recommend it sometime, if not today," she says. "Erm, reading in the back room, that is."

[skygazing]

"A bit of both, if I'm honest. Too many death knells, too many lectures on the end of the world and what have you. Ah, it was... offered at my college, you see. Elective."

Remus knows that he doesn't have to hide his magic here, that he can speak openly about his world, but something so blatant a mention as Hogwarts? It still feels a little wrong, like the Ministry itself would hunt him down for his transgressions.

"But ah, my mum and dad enjoyed the classics. Well, my mum far more than my father. He was more interested in the supernatural. Though there were stranger, more archaic names than mine, if you'd believe it. Regulus. Severus. Lucius. I suppose they're all a bit stuffy next to names like Alice or James."

He shrugs, sheepish, but the smile doesn't leave his face. "I'll have to try it. Nothing quite like settling down with tea and a book. Which, ah. You should let me know how that is. I'd be keen to see if its as rubbish a subject here as it was back home."

[pantomath]

Hermione nods, humming a sound of understanding. "Yeah, same, only at my school before uni," she says and almost adds third year before recalling that third year at Hogwarts is Year 8 in muggle schools. Just to be safe, she leaves the year off. "But also an elective. I took it for less than a semester before dropping it. It was complete rubbish."

Remus circles back to his name again, though, and with every contrasting name he offers, Hermione feels herself deflating more and more. RAB. Professor Snape. Malfoy. Neville's poor mum. Harry's dad, she lists off in her head and her smile finally does fade before she can stop it. In an effort to push forward, she gives an uncertain sort of smile as she looks down at the book tucked under her arm. "Oh yeah...yeah, sure. I will," she agrees. He's Displaced, she realizes, noting the bracelet on his wrist that matches her own.

It's going to bother her, the building coincidences and she has to check; verify that it isn't actually coincidental even though every part of her already feels deeply that it isn't. She has to know. "Or Arthur or Molly... If I said Order of the Phoenix...what would you say that meant to you? If anything?" Even if he says nothing, she's gauging his face for a reaction. It'll be all that she really needs, she reckons.

[skygazing]

Remus glances up from the text to see her face falling and he can't help but wonder if he's misstepped. Perhaps she knows someone by those names? Had he found some unknown way to be offensive? It's a new place with new rules and he's expected some foibles, but he's not sure where the transgression lies in this situation.

Yet it takes no time at all for his heart to skip a beat. His expression changes, the smile less warm, his eyes less inviting. Polite, of course, but guarded ever so slightly. (It might have been more subtle on a man a little older than him, a man with the same face but tired, with more burdens to bear).

"Well, it sounds quite old fashioned, for one," he huffs a little and reaches to push his hair back out of his face, as it's gone shaggy in his months with Greyback's people. He has to remind himself this place isn't like home. He can't help the fluid deflection, the careful redirection. The Order was a secret, sacred thing.

Or it was, once upon a time.

"Hermione, wasn't it?"

He's never met a Hermione before and the likelihood of she being a friend of the other's? Possible, but the operation itself had been so fraught with paranoia and suspicion... well. It doesn't add up.

[pantomath]

When something guarded settles into his expression and the warmth she only just now realizes she's recognized the whole time as Professor Lupin's falls away, her face flushes a little in the same way it had when she realized how attractive Sirius had been in his prime. It feels wrong to notice that sort of thing about dead men twice her age, even if they're not dead yet and only have a couple of years on her now.

Hermione nods. "Sorry, I don't mean to upset you or make you nervous, only I was starting to think I knew you and I just...needed to confirm it. I'm from your future. It was 1998 back home for me," she says, lowering her voice. "I don't want to say too much, but..." her voice trails off briefly.

Serves you right for letting your eye stray from Ron when he hasn't done anything wrong, Hermione Jean Granger, she scolds herself.

"I didn't recognize you before, being so young, but then you started listing off all of those names and your dislike for Divination when most people here probably wouldn't know what it is at all and then Sirius being here and so young, I should've just assumed, but..." she babbles awkwardly before stopping herself, her face going a little pink. "Anyway, I'm sorry. It's just...you're Remus Lupin, right? I went to school with Harry Potter. He's one of my best friends. It's nice to meet you. ...erm, again, I suppose. At this age," she finishes a bit lamely, blushing harder and wrinkling her nose at herself.

And you were my Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, third year, she thinks but holds back from saying for now. Sirius knows it because she'd slipped up and called him Professor Lupin in conversation, but she doesn't have to do it again to Professor Lupin himself. She can do better than that, surely.

[skygazing]

"Wary, or curiously concerned, not upset or nervous," he corrects gently, even as she dives into her explanation. The future, Harry, Sirius. He has dozens of questions, a thousand queries about the portals, about how this place has managed to drag two people from the same world at vastly different timelines.

(A small part of him thinks of a Time Turner almost immediately, and he can't help but wonder if the idea is utilized in a similar fashion here).

"1998?" He rubs idly at the back of his neck, his expression warming a touch, his smile a little more genuine, but guarded all the same. "Goodness, I'm well on my way to an old man where you're from. But... Harry. You said Harry?"

He can't fathom a boy, fully grown, fortunate to have the girl across from him as his friend. Would he look like James? Oh, most certainly, with that wild hair and mischievous grin, though he suspects he'd have Lily's heart at the end of it all. Or he'd hope. Merlin, he hopes.

"I... well." He lets out a breath, feeling a bit of shell shock. He's exhausted from his arrival, from leaving the mission behind. "It's heartening to know that you find Divination as utterly useless as I believe it to be. That alone is an excellent way to judge character."

[pantomath]

It takes a very conscious effort not to react when Remus suggests he's on his way to being an old man where she's from because to react would be to suggest to him far too soon that he never gets a chance to actually become an old man. She'd had to do the same with Sirius and she still chooses her words very carefully when they talk so that she doesn't let on. Now she'll just have to do it when talking to two of them, she supposes. How hard can that be?

A small smile creeps onto her lips and Hermione nods. "Harry, yeah," he confirms. "We've been through a lot together over the years, Harry and I." Her voice is soft and her expression almost apologetic. It at least distracts her from his looks or the fact that she'd been secretly pleased that a man who looked like him was paying her any attention, especially a man who drank tea and liked books even a fraction as much as she does. Certainly, she'll think on it later a bit miserably; her rotten luck and karma, she supposes, combining to remind her that she shouldn't be thinking about anything other than trying to get back home or healing her psychological wounds so that when she does get back home, she and Ron can mend the parts of their relationship that have broken enough for her to actually notice other men for the first time in years.

"I used to think so, too," she agrees with a smile that falls just a little short. She's thinking, she realizes, of Parvati Patil and Lavender Brown's reverence for Professor Trelawney and the "art" of Divination and how silly she'd always thought they were, but then how her view on the latter had shifted when she'd seen her mauled and dying on the floor of a place that was supposed to be safe for young witches and wizards. "I imagine that it's useful to some, if they believe it enough or if they actually do have an Inner Eye, but for most of us, it's nonsense," she agrees.

Hermione pauses and looks over at the bookseller behind the front desk briefly before looking back at Remus. "Erm, I'm going to buy this book but then if you like, I could show you Soul Full Cup?" she offers. Hermione tries not to sound hopeful at the prospect, if only because the hope comes from the opportunity to get to know him as a peer — the same as Sirius — and she knows it could sound like something very different, which is a bit humiliating, really, isn't it? Just thinking that makes her blush again which, she supposes, probably doesn't help her case very much.

[skygazing]

"Have you, then?"

Although he appears calm, he can't help but run through questions in his mind: how is Harry? What happened? Have they discovered the truth about that fateful night? Is Sirius a free man? For all his wonderings, Remus doesn't exactly think about his own future. But to know Harry grew up, went to school with a girl he presumes is a witch in his class, and could be doing bigger, brighter things with a future that none of them really had?

Harry had been so small when Remus left for his mission that he has difficulty imagining a world where that bright-eyed boy lives on without the absolute light of his parents at his side. He lets out a huff of a laugh, belying the eerie sense of grief that settles deep into the pit of his stomach.

"I suppose I'm being unfair. There's something to be learned in every craft," he says sagely, though there's a telling mischievous twinkle in his eye at the thought. But she's moving to the till where the bookseller waits for them. "Oh. Yes, that would be lovely. Better to go there before I stand here reading all day. I've lost track of the time."

He heads toward the till, books tucked securely under one arm. It's true, though. When he sees the clock on the wall he's all but embarrassed to realize he's spent the better part of an hour picking through the shelves and reading dust jackets, cracking spines to flip through the first few pages. Something about the dust in old books stops time, like there's some mischievous pixie waiting round each shelf to cast its spell.

"I think a cuppa is exactly what I need, now that I'm appropriately envious of yours. If you don't mind a second trip?"

[pantomath]

"Yeah, he was in my year and we started together and were both sorted into Gryffindor. He and our friend Ron saved me from a troll that got loose in the castle first year and we've been best friends ever since," she says with a warmth in her tone and dancing in her eyes.

She's willing to let the discussion on Divination fall away because it seems silly to keep pushing it forward. She settles with a little knowing smirk and a nod. "Sure, no problem," she replies as she moves toward the bookseller with her desired purchase. "I do that all the time, if it makes you feel any better," she adds over her shoulder.

After making her purchase, Hermione steps to the side to let Remus make his. "I never mind a second trip to Soul Full. It's actually a really lovely shop," she tells him. Once he's finished making his purchase, as well, Hermione waits for him to look like he's ready to leave before making her way to the door and pulling it open for them both.

This place is testing her, she knows it. First Sirius and now Professor Lupin — both uncomfortably good looking, thank you very much — what's next? Tom Riddle from his school years? That very thought makes her stomach turn a little and she's glad to push the thought away as they head out into the street again. "They have good coffee and snacks there, too, but I'm obviously partial to tea. Oh, except on especially hot days, then I'm more apt to try an Italian soda; they have loads of flavours."

[skygazing]

Remus can't help the smile that spreads across his lips when she mentions he'd been sorted into Gryffindor. Of course he had, brave little thing, with all the fire of his parents burning somewhere deep in his chest. Or so Remus hopes. But every implication seems to point in that direction.

"A troll in the castle?" He laughs brightly at the thought. "Oh I can only imagine the fuss that caused."

He makes his purchases shortly after Hermione and follows her out of the little shop, falling into step beside her. "It sounds like a lovely spot," he admits, the idea of tea and snacks and Italian soda? This place might not be so bad, after all. "I have to admit," he says finally after enjoying a moment of quiet, "I have so many questions to ask you. Though don't worry, I'm not altogether interested in my future. Or, well. Knowing it. That takes all the adventure out of it, doesn't it?"

And keeps all the looming fears about his future at bay. He'd rather guess at what it looks like than know and dread it. She knows him, that much is evident, but she seems to react positively to him, which gives him some mild hope that his future might not be as bleak as he imagines. He hopes, anyway.

[pantomath]

Hermione almost thinks that they're going to make it to Soul Full Cup for a tea-shaped distraction away from the fact that she knows a lot of things and he probably has loads of questions, but she can still see the awning of the storefront a block away in the distance when he mentions. Reflexively, her muscles tense a little as she walks. It was the right thing to tell Sirius and now Remus that she knows who they are, so even though it makes things more difficult, she feels like she did the right thing. That doesn't make it less uncomfortable when the comment comes.

At least, she thinks with some relief, he's specified that he doesn't want to know about his own future. A couple of little passing, unimportant tidbits here and there, of course, won't hurt. But there are some things that she knows which would be devastating to them to learn, so she's been careful to tap dance around these sorts of things with Sirius. Now, she'll also have to do it with Remus. At least they're from generally the same time and she won't have to learn a brand new dance for Remus, in that regard.

"I'm sure you do," she says slowly, giving him a small, sheepish sort of smile with her sidelong glance. "I can probably answer some things. I have to be more careful with others, though, yeah?" she replies. It's not a declaration that he's not allowed to ask so much as a warning that she reserves the right not to answer.

Hermione stops at the corner and waits until it's safe to cross before moving again. "And there's also a point to keep in mind which Sirius and I discussed a couple of weeks ago if I remember my time correctly, and that's that we could be and very likely are from different versions of our home where lots of things are the same but there are little divergences that make them different. So I can't actually promise any accuracy, depending on the questions."

thank you inbox for not giving me this notif

[skygazing]

Remus checks both ways before he crosses alongside her, pleased to see Soul Full Cup isn't far at all from the little book shop. That's a dangerous revelation, all things considered, but he's lucky money isn't exactly something he has in abundance.

"Oh, of course. I don't intend to ask anything that could compromise the future, either," because he knows how delicate time can be, and as much as he'd love to know how everything shakes out, something about knowing the future feels dishonest. Especially if he takes that information with him back home.

"But I think I'd rather think on it," he admits, almost sheepish. It can't be comfortable for her to talk about it, no different than it had been for he and Sirius to talk about home, though the circumstances were vastly different. It's eerie, though, to meet someone he's never met but who knows so much about him. "And I feel I should apologize after the fact for anything ridiculous Sirius must have asked. I have no doubt he has."

There's fondness in his voice, despite the little dig, a warmth in his expression. There are dozens of things they need to talk about still, too. "I know you already have a cuppa, but maybe I could treat you to one of the sweets instead?"

ugh worst. no worries.

[pantomath]

It's reassuring to know that he's already thinking about the limitations on what he can ask and what she can answer. It means, hopefully, that he'll have the foresight not to put her into an uncomfortable position of having to shut down a line of questioning because the answers could be dangerous to the timeline.

The thought he's already started to put into this conversation before it's even actually started makes Hermione feel reassured in a way that would be a better fit for him as her professor, but it makes her smile a little anyway. In spite of herself, Hermione finds herself laughing a little at the preemptive apology on Sirius's behalf.

"No, no, it's all right," she says fondly. "Honestly. No need to apologize." Her face warms and she blushes again when he offers to buy her something, suggesting he'd like for her to stick around at the mo as opposed to coming back to the conversation another time. Treating her to something, while hardly a date, still feels more intimate than bumping into one another in a book store and her face warms even more at that thought because it's no good for loads of reasons. "I'd like that," she still finds herself saying because, truthfully, she would. Like Sirius, she'd like to get to know him as he is now. What better way than to join him for a cuppa and a little snack?

[skygazing]

"Oh, no, I always have to apologize for Sirius Black, I'm afraid. He moves through the world with a confident lack of shame and it is my duty to make sure he hasn't traumatized anyone."

Remus smiles when she finally agrees. Perhaps she knows much more about him, perhaps she's from a different world or a different time. There are dozens of reasons why he should quietly duck away into the cafe by himself and ruminate over his meeting her and everything her existence implies. But equally, chatting in the book store had been pleasant. If anything, it's nice to know there's someone magical here who is both sensible and clever, and he's interested to pick her brain a little more.

So he reaches for the door of Soul Full Cup and opens it for her, a warm smile on his face. "Excellent. I think a cuppa and pastry is exactly what I need. And I have to admit it's a bit selfish on my part. Speaking to someone from home will be a welcome change of pace, even if that home isn't quite the same place. But, please, after you."

The smell of tea and coffee and bakery items is dangerous, and Remus knows he could very easily spend far, far too much time settling in with a good book in a place like this.