(no subject)

[quigonejinn]

Charles Xavier: rowan, eleven and a quarter inches, dragon heartstring.

Raven Darkholme: elm, six and three tenth inches, unicorn hair.

Erik Lensherr: a silver coin, somewhat smaller than a Sickle, somewhat changeable in shape.

I want to write this 'verse, but am horrifyingly stuck on how to work that insane movie timeline that jumps 18 years in a single bound of Erik Lensherr staring at a hotel wall. Too many things! Too much block! But if you leave me a prompt, I'll try to write you a little ficlet about what you want to hear.

Comments

[th_esaurus]

a) Erik's first impressions of the little shack above the Three Broomsticks.
b) Playing Wizard Chess in the corner by the fire, a little drunk, while Raven is cleaning up.
c) Charles and Dumbledore at tea.
d) Erik and Raven and wandless magic.
e) Raven and Charles and Hogsmeade in winter.
f) Summer holidays on the Xavier estate, aged approximately fifteen, wasting time until school starts again.
g) Erik and Charles and the Room of Requirement.
h) Erik and Charles watching Raven in her league's semi-finals.
i) ANYTHING WITH KISSING.

a)

[quigonejinn]

Not even a shack, technically. A single room at the end of the hallway, and the bartender -- doesn't really look human, dwarf, or goblin -- sort of jerks his thumb up the stairs. There is no door knocker, no brass door plate. Erik knocks, and a voice says, "Door is already open."

Somebody is lying on the couch, ankle hooked over the arm.

"Charles is in the garden," the somebody says and closes the book and sits up, dusting herself off. Erik thinks it must be a trick of the light, but the dress seems to shift and sprout a print of tiny red poppies in front of him. White sleeveless dress. Blonde hair. Charles's eyebrows, and eyes that are not visible in the shadows from the garden sunlight coming in strong and golden from their left.

[quigonejinn]

Charles brought his everyday set down and the brandy, too. They played most of the night in a spot by the fire, slow and easy. The pieces seemed to have caught it, too, as one of the pawns fell asleep towards the end of the evening and had to be poked awake by one of the knights. Charles won the first, and had just taken the bait set by Erik in the second game and was yawning immensely.

"Tired?" Erik says.

"You're tired?" one of the rooks says, and Erik flicks it with his fingernail to make it quiet.

"You're more drunk than I am," Charles starts to say, but is caught by another massive, enormous, all-engulfing yawn. "I can drink you under the table without even trying."

It's snowing outside. The bell in the church starts to ring for midnight, and with a sigh, Erik slowly pushes his chair back and stands up. He is, in fact, a little hesitant on his feet. His face is flushed, then reaches over, a little unsteadily, and touching the top of Charles's head.

"I'm awake," Charles says. His eyes aren't quite open. "Where are you going?"

Erik considers for a moment, then touches Charles on the shoulder.

"Let's get you upstairs," he says, and goes to help Raven with the last of the tidying. Put the chairs against the wall. Sweep out the corners.
Raven climbs up on a stool and counts the night's take behind the counter and notes it down in the account book and locks it into the drawer. If Erik rolls up his sleeves to work, the only eyes that see the numbers are yellow.

They sling Charles between them and go up the stairs.

"Nox," Raven says, touching the lighting plate on the wall at the top of the stairs. Charles sighs and leans his head against her shoulder; Erik rolls his left sleeve down again.

[destronomics]

Erik and obliviate. And when/why he does/doesn't use it.

[quigonejinn]

Does:

Girl in a shop. Erik steps in to buy a sandwich for dinner; they will wrap it up in wax paper, and he can take it with him to the empty office that he is working. When he steps in, she is waiting for There is a bag in her hands with bread, some sausages. It takes a moment before she recognizes him, another before he recognizes her. They both look older. He is wearing a suit; she has a school uniform, a long braid down her back, and is now a teenager.

They are both better fed.

Her eyes go very wide, and her mouth goes even wider.

Erik has his hand in his pocket, and he thinks about saying to her: The man who pointed you out to Schmidt lives four blocks away and works two blocks away. You may have seen him. You may have passed him in the street. He lives comfortably and has a wife.

Erik considers saying: I am going to kill him. Would you like to help?

He doesn't, though. He takes his hand out of his pocket; the girl relaxes, and he turns to the counter, orders a sandwich, pays for it, and goes.

The girl has to be reminded of her aunt's order.

[quigonejinn]

Does not:

Man in a shop. Erik steps in to buy a newspaper on Monday, buys a packet of cakes on Tuesday. For eight days, he does not come by, but on a Thursday, when back in town, he is standing at the counter and counting the change out of his hand onto the counter for coffee and a newspaper and gum. The shop is small and dusty; the coffee is lukewarm. The newspaper is actually a weekly publication, and is wilted from the heat of summer. Erik takes his time in counting out the change. Discovers a few foreign coins in the mix. He has a big handful of change, though, and is nicely dressed in a gray suit and black tie. Business is slow; it's the middle of the afternoon, so the shopkeeper yawns and listens to the radio.

"Were you here last week?" the shopkeeper says.

"Maybe," Erik says, keeping his eyes on the coins. "I come this way once in a while."

"Business?"

"In a manner of speaking." Erik counts out the last of the change, and his eyes go to one of the packs of the cigarettes on the back wall, as if he is considering buying one of them.

The man follows his eyes back. "Cigarettes? You want a pack?"

"No, I better save my change," Erik says, and puts the change back into his pocket. He pushes the coins towards the shopkeeper

The man rings the purchase up, and when he closes up the change drawer, he says, "Have we met before?"

"Maybe," Erik says and pockets the gum. He picks up the newspaper and the coffee. "When I was here last week, there was a young man running the counter. He said you weren't doing so well. Your son?"

"No, not even a nephew," the man says. "I lost my family. During the war and before."

There is a long moment where Erik stands with his back to the window, coffee cup in hand. The sunlight is pouring in through the window; dust motes drift through it, and Erik counts to five to make sure the man's eyes have adjusted to the sunlight.

"A brother and his wife and son." Erik says. "Which camp were you?"

The man is surprised, is about to reply, but Erik is out the door before either of them can say anything further. Once around the block, Erik throws away the coffee and the newspaper, then walks to the train station and stands for a long time without buying a ticket, looking at the metal trussing on the ceiling and trying to say the word family without pain.

[kickthebeat]

all I can think of when I try to think of this 'verse is, well, the Youth come to Hogwarts in the fall of thirty-nine. it is so, so hard for me to not just ... mash it all together, even though that'd be too early for any of these characters? I DON'T KNOW. MADNESS.


anyway. Raven playing Quidditch for Hufflepuff! bring it to me.

[quigonejinn]

I hate you for mentioning this. Thinking about it.

[quigonejinn]

Raven can make clothes from her skin, but she wears clothes. Easier to hide a slip that way, and wizarding robes are sufficiently voluminous that it can be tricky, finding enough mass on her body to make the folds and lining and robes. Raven hasn't mastered the trick yet of shifting her mass around to do it.

So she wears shirt and robes and skirt and tie, and Quidditch is no different. Before her first match on the starting line, she puts on the shirt and pants and padding and boots and more padding and robe and goggles and gloves. They are in the tunnel leading out to the pitch, and Raven can hear the stands above. Her heart feels oddly large, and she checks to make sure that in her excitement, she hasn't accidentally done anything to it.

"Ace eyes," the other Beater whispers to her, nudging her with his broom, and Raven, with a start, realizes that her eyes have gone yellow from the excitement and distraction of trying to figure out if her heart has gotten too big.

She recovers:

"Do you like them? My brother charmed them for me, but made me promise not to say."

The Seeker turns around, checks Raven out, and gives them both a thumbs-up, because the captain has just stepped onto the field, and the roar that goes up, the sound the world makes --

Quidditch is different.

[furius]

When Erik was living in Ireland he was sent to Hogwarts....Charles is a Pureblood, of course.

I'm kind of in love with this verse/the mention of it but I've no idea what I want to hear. Anything?

[quigonejinn]

AUGH. I HAD NOT CONSIDERED ERIK ACTUALLY AT HOGWARTS.

(Is Charles pureblooded? The answer is yes. Pureblooded enough to be a Rosier on his mother's side, and a Black on his father's mother's side. At one of the Black family Yule parties, drink in hand. There are garlands of evergreens and tidbits on silver trays. He looks up and spots six year old Narcissa Black in the railings on the second floor, watching. Andromeda is on her right, sound asleep. Bellatrix is old enough to circulate among the guests, and the expression on Narcissa's face is such a mix of yearning and desire and fear that Charles smiles at her and reaches into his pocket.

A spell of concealment settles around Narcissa and Andromeda -- basic, simple, barely deceiving even a Squib, but it falls around Narcissa's shoulders in a shower of tiny, warm stars only the two of them, Narcissa and Charles, can see. The stars show the delight on Narcissa's face.

When she arrives at Hogwarts some years later, Narcissa is still carrying the warmth of Charles's smile in return, plus one of the stars, captured in one of the specimen boxes used by her father.

Raven had been a half-breed orphan Metamorphagus, slipping past the gargoyles at the back fo the house by taking the form of Charles's mother. Charles can trace his ancestors back, on his father's side, to refugees from Atlantis, landing upon the shores of Spain.)

(In my head, the story sort of works out that Charles walks into the Auror office with his sister, an unregistered Metamorphagus who can mimic inorganic matter if she wants. Same story with Charles keeping Erik from drowning in the pursuit of Schmidt/Shaw, but the lure that gets Erik back with Charles is, instead, of the WE ARE MUTANTS TOGETHER thing, the promise of Hogwarts's immense research library. Dumbledore, who is an old family friend, needs a Defense Against Dark Arts professor. Erik needs to figure out how to kill Shaw. Charles teaches Transfigurations. Raven waits tables in Hogsmeade. Charles and Erik recruit for a dueling club.)

[ferricent]

Raven waits tables in Hogsmeade. Charles and Erik recruit for a dueling club.

I would read ten years worth of fic in this 'verse. Every quidditch match. Every boggart. Charles, sitting up in his bed in the infirmary ward late at night, kept awake by the coughing of a second year fighting off a bubble-throat hex, trying and trying to count his toes without looking at them.

Also:

Charles can trace his ancestors back, on his father's side, to refugees from Atlantis, landing upon the shores of Spain.

#coolest #sentence #ever