[sterling tomes] no sound without silence [jacqueline]

Lionel gently teased apart a few sheets of paper in Sterling Tomes' latest acquisition in the subject of Transfiguration, his current focus for the month in his quest to deepen his understanding of the subjects in which he was less innately gifted before O.W.L. year. He liked Transfiguration because it was a rather exact discipline, but he was less practically gifted, and so his theoretical paper had to be quite superb to recoup the dent he would likely receive from the practical section. He and Jacqueline had been owling one another with supplementary articles germane to the curriculum, and having someone else around, if remotely, to keep him on track and help maintain his focus had been quite helpful, especially since the Ravenclaw witch counted it among her strong suits. The last excerpt he had sent her had been on research to more strictly specify the parameters of Vanishing, including the dimensionality of non-being, which he knew would come up at the beginning of their fifth year. However, he suspected it wasn't half so interesting as this current one, which had for subject the continuity between Vanishing and Conjuring of the same specific object (such as a unique scroll) versus the same generic object that a wizard might use (a cup for tea).

One of the magical objects in the back room that monitored the capacity of the carts placed for the convenience of customers who wished to set down books they'd perused but were not interested in buying dropped heavily, suggesting a rather large stack had just been placed on the cart in the fourth aisle. Lionel sighed and dropped the treatise. Reshelving books was one of his least favorite tasks because it was rather mindless; all he could do was speculate about the interests of the person who had deposited the books, usually not knowing whether the contents of the cart came from one, two, or twelve people and therefore having strict limitations to the conclusions he could draw. Carefully extracting his sleeve--this particular set of robes, bought thirdhand from a flea shop, had been made for a wizard with more bulk or more fat than he and was rather worse than using his brothers' hand-me-downs, but they had no choice after the fire--to avoid knocking over the balance he had created on the back room workstation, he stepped out to retrieve the books. Lionel seethed inwardly as an imperious-looking man in burgundy robes looked down his nose at him; as if someone whose interests appeared to be the 18th-century art of gnome extraction had any real superiority to him.

A gentle chime sounded as someone walked in, and Lionel looked up from his stack to see a slight girl standing in the doorway looking at him. Lionel shifted the stack in surprise to see his friend, nearly losing hold of the top one before he caught it with his chin. The teenager waved awkwardly from underneath the stack with his right hand, keeping his dominant one underneath for stability. "I thought you were at Anansi all summer?" Jacqueline looked more than respectable by Sterling standards, so he wasn't terribly worried about what his father was thinking at the front desk. "Sorry, I have to reshelve these, but I've got something you'll want to see in the back," he said with the slightest smile. "You can come with me, although this section is not the most...illuminating of readings," he said, his eyes flickering to the figure of the man who was still hunched over somewhere in a section of ancient Welsh literature and then to the scroll on top, with bold letters proclaiming "An Examination of Modern 18th-century Gnome-Throwing Technique" as the subject. "Good to see you," he added, with a bigger smile. This would be much easier than the post.

As per usual in Scotland, it was an overcast day; the type that couldn’t quite make up its mind as to whether or not it was going to rain. Quite frankly, Jacqueline was relieved to be able to step outside without needing to slather on sun-shielding potions or a wide-brimmed hat. It wasn’t that she was not enjoying the Academy, of course, but the cool familiarity of the Highlands was a welcome reprieve from the sweltering heat of the Caribbean. All in all, she mused, her summer was going well. The classes and seminars were enthralling and informative (she had compiled a notebook, of course, thoroughly annotated), and despite the rather intense weather Jacqueline found the island rather enchanting. She’d had the opportunity to practice her French with some of the students from Beauxbâtons, hear about the rather dramatic goings-on at Durmstrang last term involving a merger with Koldovstoretz and an apparently batty Headmistress, learn about the various customs and holidays that Mahoutokoro students observed, and discuss the impressive breadth of the Ilvermorny curriculum with some of its students. She had been so busy that time had seemed to truly fly by.

She had come home for the weekend to placate her parents – and this had coincided quite fortuitously with a recent letter she’d had from Lionel, enclosing an excerpt with a few concepts in Transfiguration that would doubtless be drilled into their heads next term. He had sent it along with the thought that it would be wise to have some sort of a head-start on the material, and Jacqueline wholeheartedly agreed. She had tried to study while on the island, in truth, but it was so… distracting, despite the fact that time seemed to move in slow-motion. None of the staff ever seemed to be in a hurry to go anywhere, and the mindset was almost contagious. Jacq found herself decompressing and de-stressing simply by being present; it was inexplicably refreshing. She took advantage of her parents’ request with dual intention: to spend time with them, of course, but also to stop into Sterling Tomes and discuss Lionel’s findings face-to-face. It had been much more difficult than anticipated to accomplish such a feat through letters. In preparation, she had dressed in robes instead of one of the long sundresses that Mam had bought her for the Caribbean – the Sterlings were considerably more traditional than her own family, and if she meant to stay any amount of time in the shop unmolested, it was probably best to dress not-so-Muggle-like under the circumstances.

As pleasant as it was to be back in Scotland, it felt odd to be back in Hogsmeade in August. She had grown accustomed to the hustle and bustle during their monthly visits throughout term; now, the village seemed nearly deserted by comparison. Only a few people roamed the streets, and several of the shops seemed to have dropped down to more limited hours for the summer. She sincerely hoped that wasn’t the case for Sterling Tomes.

Reaching her destination, the Scottish witch pushed open the door to the shop and stepped inside, greeted by a soft chime. A man at the front desk – Lionel’s father, she thought; she’d met the man in passing once or twice – glanced up habitually, and Jacqueline dipped her head politely in greeting.
“Mr. Sterling? A pleasure to see ye, sir.” Unlike Lionel, Jacq made no attempt to quell the Gàidhlig influence on her English. She was quite familiar with RP – especially from spending as much time as she had with Lionel over the years – and could probably do passably well with it if she really concentrated, but the accent felt just plain odd on her tongue.

Movement in her periphery caused her to turn toward the source, which she found to be none other than the very person she’d come to see. Her blue-gray eyes widened briefly at the precarious stack under her friend’s chin, and her mouth curled slightly in a small smile as she hurried forward to help, taking a few of the books off of the top and tucking them securely under her arm. She nodded in response to his inquiry, one eye on the stack of books he still held, should she need to swoop in and relieve him of more.
“Aye, I am. We’re allowed home on weekends if we’d like, but I hadna been back of yet. I’d an owl from Mam and Da – well, mostly Da, he’s a right softie but willna admit it – askin’ me to fetch back here just the once. And yon owl came a day later… so I thought I’d make the trip a twofer.”

The Scottish witch wrinkled her very pink, significantly more freckled nose at his apology; despite her best efforts, she’d gotten a tad sunburned. No help for it, though, except for a few topical potions that one of the staff members had so kindly offered her upon taking one sympathetic look at her complexion.
“Och, dinna fash,” she chided, waving her free hand dismissively – but then stopped mid-motion at the latter half of the sentence, ears pricked.
“Oh, ye do, now?” Her brow went up, eyes bright with interest.
She followed Lionel’s gaze to the scroll he was eyeing, and barely suppressed a snort of amusement.
“I'm that glad that’s no what ye had in mind. How many ways can ye toss the wee gomerels, anyhow?”

Jacqueline grinned back at her friend, contentedness settling over her like a warm blanket
“Likewise.”
She fell in a pace behind Lionel as they wove their way through the stacks, re-shelving the displaced books. The brunette’s gaze traveled around as they walked, appreciating the layout; she’d been in the shop a handful of times before, but only briefly. Which, now that she actually thought about it, struck her as more than a bit odd considering her and Lionel’s mutual interest in books and that it was his family’s shop. She’d thought to ask how business was going, but bit her tongue; the Sterling boys, being in Slytherin, had lost just about everything in the fires last September, and Jacq wasn’t sure they’d had sufficient time to recoup their losses. It was a sensitive topic, doubtless, and none of her business to pry. It would only embarrass him, she suspected.

“D’ye think maybe there’s a charm that’d send the wee things back to their proper places?” she asked abruptly instead, the thought only just occurring to her. “So ye wouldna need to be walkin’ them back every time, ken.”
Jacqueline nibbled her lower lip thoughtfully. Perhaps a modified Banishing Charm? They’d discussed both Summoning and Banishing Charms just last term; the concept was similar enough, plus she’d been taking the Latin for Magical Practice course at the Academy…
But that could wait for the moment, she decided, seeing that they had only two books left to re-shelf now.

“So… what’s it ye want to show me, then?” Her head tilted slightly, and she flicked her pale blue eyes briefly toward the back room, unable to keep a sliver of excitement from her tone and body language. “Is it to do with yon piece on Vanishing? Parameters and boundaries and the like?”

Lionel shifted the remaining books in his arms. While he was typically quite independent, he was aware that having her help would speed up the task so they could speak more quickly, so he accepted the Ravenclaw's help. "Ah, I wasn't aware. How is the curriculum this year? Anything like Scientific Inquiry?" He hadn't bothered to ask his brother about it. Lionel hoped he wasn't missing out on much, although he did think that his focus here helped him. He'd not been able to progress much in personal studies at Athena last summer. And, judging by her complexion, it was probably rather hot on the island.

He broke out into a short laugh. "No, I wouldn't dream of torturing you with this. Actually, if I remember correctly, there's a 19th-century version of this as well, I did the intake on it three months ago. I've always wondered why people don't just use magic to remove gnomes. I know they're resistant to some charms but there's no barrier to bewitching a tool to do it for you, as far as I'm aware." Lionel would have tried it himself if his practical ability matched his theoretical one.

Jacqueline posited another magical solution for their rather mundane problem, and he paused. "There is, actually," he said slowly. Gaheris used it all the time. "There are magical location tags on them, and it's possible to correspond them with a modified Banishing charm. I've not tried because my practical charm skills, or limitations thereof, would likely lead to some kind of citation from Hogwarts if something happened, given the ostensible "no using magic out of school" regulation. I don't particularly fancy the idea of the Accidental Magic Reversal Squad appearing, if you catch my meaning. But now that you mention it, I think it would be more helpful if they had a permanent charm to automatically reshelve after use." He pondered the complexity of the charm for a moment. "Theoretically, the problem would arise when differentiating between a book set down temporarily and one that a customer is finished with. I suppose it would have to be triggered by contact with a cart. And then there's accounting for the fact that inventory changes relatively frequently in here, as opposed to somewhere like the Hogwarts library." The Ravenclaw girl would probably have some ideas, and he was savoring the meat of the discussion.

Getting rid of the last two books, his lips quirked in a smile and he led her back into the back room. "Yes and no? It's on Vanishing as well, but it's rather less technical and more theoretical. It just came in this morning so I haven't gotten all the way through it, but it treats the continuity between Vanishing and Conjuring of objects. You know how some things you conjure are generics, prototypes if you will? Any bowl will do if a container is needed--but then other items can be Vanished, like court documents, and when re-conjured are the exact same documents. So does a wizard conjure the same generic bowl every time or a copy, or are the documents in fact just replicas of the originals rather than the originals themselves?" Lionel was letting himself get carried away in a didactic vein, and he stopped himself. "That's the subject, in any case. What did you think of that one, by the way? Since you're here, and not a letter."

“I didna ken either until Da mentioned it,” she admitted with a grin. “He wanted to come through the Floo to see me safe here – all the way here – but Mam gave him the look she does when she kens he’s got to worrying overmuch. Didna have to say a word; but he saw it and gave it up after a bit.”
Kester MacClelland was not a weak-willed man by any standards; however, his wife happened to be just a bit stronger-willed than he.

Lionel asked about the curriculum then, and Jacq hesitated. Loath as she was to ‘rub in’ the fact that she was not only at the Academy and he wasn’t, but also that the curriculum this year seemed to be better than last, it would be a disservice not to tell him about it.
“Actually, aye,” she began with an apologetic glance in his direction, but continued with genuine interest. “They’ve introduced several courses from Ilvermorny and Mahoutokoro which are excellent. Did ye ken that Ilvermorny has electives called ‘Latin for Magical Practice’ and ‘Shadow Casting’? And Mahoutokoro has ‘Summoning’ and ‘Barrier Work’… the latter I understand right well in theory, but am apparently no verra good at in practice.”
She frowned slightly, remembering how she’d managed to conjure the correct type of barrier in response to each spell thrown at her – but that most of them were not quite strong enough to withstand the force of the spells. The practical aspect of Defense Against the Dark Arts had always been a weak point for her, and this hardly seemed any different.

“Anyway,” she continued, waving her hand dismissively. “I’ve got loads of notes; nearly filled up the wee book I’d brought, mind. We can go through it all once we’ve got a bit more time… I canna be holdin’ ye up all day with it today, of course, much as I’d like.” She grinned.

The Scottish witch flushed as Lionel reminded her – albeit non-condescendingly – that he wasn’t allowed to use wand magic over the summer. She knew it just as well as every single witch and wizard; yet just a month-and-a-half of being permitted to while she was at the Academy had already led her to forget.
“Of course, that’d no be good,” she murmured absently but fortunately Lionel had glossed over it and had already moved on to address the point of her comment. Her dark brow furrowed in contemplation as he verbalized his own thoughts and discussed the barriers, particularly with regard to the frequently-changing inventory. She hadn’t much of an idea of what to say to that, in all honesty.
“Mmph. Ye got me, there,” she conceded with a small smile. Perhaps something novel would come to them at some point during today’s session; it certainly wouldn’t be the first time, and was part of the reason she enjoyed spending time with him as much as she did. They fueled off of each other, constantly postulating and questioning and discussing, oftentimes getting onto tangents that sometimes circled back to the original point and sometimes were completely unrelated.

A tingle of excitement and anticipation zipped up her spine as the last book slid into place and Lionel turned with a smile, beckoning her to the back room. She hazarded a fleeting glance over her shoulder to see if anyone was watching; Jacq knew what most people presumed went on when two teenagers disappeared into a back room together, and the thought made another flush creep up her neck. The fifteen-year-old was not “prudish,” but at the same time she certainly did not want people to assume… certain things about her. And Lionel. Especially not in his family’s shop!
Thanking Merlin and the Caribbean sun that she was pink enough in the face already to blame any additional color on sunburn, she moved quickly after him.

Fortunately Lionel was still answering her question and she latched onto his description, once again frowning unconsciously in thought as she followed along.
“Verra profound,” she commented with a grin, before her expression turned contemplative again. “I’d think when ye Conjure summat, it maybe depends on what ye visualize when ye do it? If ye dinna have summat specific in mind, I’d say it’s more like to be a generic… whereas if ye think of summat specific as ye say the spell, it’s more like to be a copy or a replica.”

Belatedly realizing that he’d asked about the excerpt he’d owled her, she paused a moment, recalling – and then her freckled features lit up as she remembered what she’d brought along to supplement this particular discussion.
“Oh! Speaking of it, here’s the reading we’d needed to do for one of the Barrier Work lessons.” Delving into the pocket of her robes, she produced a copy of the published abstract and handed it over to him.
“I didna have time to synthesize it with the bit ye sent,” she began apologetically, “but I think maybe there’s bits that could help explain. That aside, though, I'm inclined to think a Vanished object either goes to another dimension – a bit like splinching, aye? – or gets broken down to its smallest bits and becomes… part of the dimension from which it was Vanished. Perhaps like an accelerated decomposition. It just gets changed to… summat else.”


All credit to the brilliant @Meridian for the abstract write-up! <333

Lionel listened to her list of the courses they were studying then shrugged equanimously. They weren't as up his alley as last year's had been, but that was because Lionel's skill wasn't very strong in casting. "What does shadow casting entail?" He asked with interest, though. "I've never heard of that branch of magic. Practical uses?" Barrier work sounded like something he would be happy to never need in practice, and Latin he felt he could learn on his own. There was a Latin section in the back of the shop. "And what exactly is being summoned?" Those two at least seemed more interesting theoretically.

Lionel nodded at the mention of notes. "That might be easier than summarizing in any case," he declared. "I could probably ask Kay of course, but I don't think he would be forthcoming in quite the detail I hope you and Peter will bring back," he said, quirking his lips. Especially not to Sir Lionel, in any case.

"Let me know if you have any ideas," he said, comfortable with passing to the next topic and completely unaware of any qualms she might have. Lionel didn't always use his eyes when it came to interacting with other people. Observing people was a pastime of his, as it was of other friends such as Marin, but when actually speaking to someone, he sometimes defaulted to his ears, especially with people he was comfortable around. He trusted his mind's eye to serve him well enough, freeing his visual attention for other things.

"Profound and a fascinating physical question all at once," he asserted. "We can have a look through its pages together and suss out the argument therein." Turning back to her as she indicated something that he needed to look at, he took the piece of parchment with interest. Scanning the abstract, which clarified what was meant by Barrier Work even though he hadn't specifically asked about it earlier, he made a noncommital noise of interest. "I didn't realize it would be so physical," he said, furrowing his brow. His interests were more macroscopic than microscopic when it came to physics, as he tended to prefer astronomy, but he was drawn to the concreteness implied by the mathematics of it all. It was a reason he liked arithmancy, after all.

"Occlumency and Legilimency classified under sensory?" he said, a hint of skepticism in his voice. "I'm surprised that mental magic isn't a class of its own, with memory magic. Although senses are processed by the brain, I suppose." Lionel's grasp of biology was one of his weaker scientific points, but he had been thinking of living beings in Care of Magical Creatures. Lionel was quite comfortable with veering off onto a tangent away from the topic he had initially brought up.

"That is what they say about Vanished objects going into nonbeing. But how do the particles store the information about what they used to be when they are conjured again? Is that inherent in the wizard's vision of the conjured object? It's just that certain conjurings tend to be more vague than others." He looked up at Jacqueline again and made a rueful expression. "At least, I think I tend to be rather precise in my mental depictions, but it doesn't seem to be the only thing required in the practical sense." Concentrating, he pulled out his wand. "Accio quill!," he said quietly, as if to illustrate. The summoning charm was studied in fourth year, but even with a familiar object, the nearby one quivered and flopped awkwardly onto the floor. Jerking his head in its direction as he picked it up, he said "Hence my concerns about this year's exams. At least with this one I know nothing will blow up when I cast it and I don't have to worry about being cited for violating the magic out of school grounds."

“From what I gather, ye can control yer own shadow and also summon one even in broad daylight. Ye can control them like ye could with any other state of matter, even though they dinna exist on a physical plane. They can snuff light and move physical objects by ‘moving’ the shadows of the objects. As for practical use…” The Scottish witch shrugged slightly. “Dinna ken, really. Perhaps if ye needed to be discreet… like no wanting to leave a trace on an object ye touch? Just seemed interesting in theory.”
Brushing a loose piece of hair behind her ear, she thought of how best to address his second question. The background behind Summoning was very foreign to her, and she hoped she’d be able to articulate the nuances appropriately – and that she wouldn’t provide incorrect information.

“It’s a wee thing called a shikigami: no a ghost, but a spirit of sorts, and the type of spirits are different in different places. So the types of kami on Spider Island would no be the same as what ye’d find here. Their power is connected to yer spiritual force— I’m still no quite sure what that is,” she broke off with a glance in his direction, expecting a follow-up question on that from him because she’d been wondering the same thing. “But it’s from onmyōdō” – she stumbled a bit over the Japanese pronunciation of the belief system – “and the interesting bit is that they’re autonomous. So ye can ask them to do yer bidding, but they dinna have to listen to ye if they dinna want to. I read that they can… possess folk and manipulate their mind.” A shiver of unease rippled down her arms at that, raising gooseflesh. “And if ye mistreat them or dinna take care, they can turn on ye.”
Jacqueline paused for breath then, hoping her explanation hadn’t been too muddled. They still had a few more sessions left, so she’d have a better understanding by then.

She was quiet for a moment as he read the abstract, curious to hear his thoughts.
“I ken it was written for Barrier Work, but I thought the concepts might be applicable to what ye’d asked about – or at least a jumping-off point.” She tapped the second sentence of the ‘Actuation’ paragraph: it wasn’t particularly illuminating for the discussion, but the wording had caught her eye.
“Aye, yer right, I canna imagine one’s vision would be the only consideration. We ken that focus is paramount, thanks to McGonagall only saying it a half-hundred times: but what if this ‘activation sequence’ is different from focus and from one’s ‘vision,’ and the way that one provides the sequence plays a role in what is Conjured? Though that still doesna explain how the particles store the information once the particles go into non-being…” she conceded grudgingly.
Jacq shrugged her shoulders helplessly. Why couldn’t she think today?
“We could have a keek at the authors’ other works and see if they propose a mechanism on the molecular level that might fit? And check the sources cited in the bit ye found today, too.” Thus reminded, she cast a cursory glance around the various shelves, hoping to glimpse the document in question.

The Scottish witch observed Lionel’s demonstration with mild interest. She knew full well by now that traditional spellcasting was not his particular forte, despite his thoroughly excellent understanding of nearly every principal magical topic. It was exceedingly perplexing.
“Och, dinna fash. Ye canna be good at everything, now, Lionel Sterling. Leave some for the rest of us poor sots, if ye please,” she teased playfully. Then a thought occurred to her and she voiced it somewhat hesitantly, reluctant to probe a subject of some sensitivity, but did so thoughtfully all the same.
“Have ye ever tried a spell when ye were particularly angry or upset? And if ye have, did ye notice a difference? I was only thinking of bairns and how the early signs of magic in them are usually tied to strong emotion. Perhaps that innate emotion is stronger in some folk than others?”


Helena I am so sorry this took so long AND it's still awful. >> My intellectual brain is not working very well ugh.

"Ah, useful Dark magic," Lionel said wryly, referring to not leaving a trace on objects. It had become a rather pejorative word in the last few years. Lionel recognized that it was for good reason, but he had qualms about the denotation. The delineation between Light and Dark seemed arbitrary at a certain point; it took no great imagination to classify the proverbial creation of Horcruxes as Dark, but what about a dueling jinx? hex? curse? "It seems like...an analogue," he considered. "Levitation and movement and light control are possible with traditional magic, but having an alternative in the arsenal which another wizard wouldn't necessarily know how to counter could be useful." He paused. "Wrong of me to assume that combat is the necessary application, I acknowledge." Or was it? Who could blame a Hogwarts student of their age, who had lived through multiple conflicts, for naturally making the connection to war?

"Spiritual force," he said, slightly flatly. Magic necessitated a certain belief in a soul--hence the effects of Horcruxes and unicorn blood, and the presence of ghosts, who had not moved on--but Lionel had always struggled somewhat with the notion that there was something of him that existed independently of the flesh and blood he commanded. For all his pride, perhaps the youngest Sterling lacked enough belief in himself to embrace it. He swallowed and relied on the obvious thing. "It must be linked to the notion of the soul we use when talking about the First Fundamental Law of Magic. They sound...dangerous," he said, seriously and honestly. Lionel valued control enough that he had once or twice considered study of Occlumency in the future. "Is strength of...spirit meant to grant greater control or does it just grant more power to them?"

Lionel nodded slowly. "I see what you're saying. Perhaps it's not the particles themselves--perhaps it's the...trace of the magic that lingers and remembers. Affecting the fabric of the universe. You know how some places just...seem magical? Seem like they've seen magic? Or how Priori Incantatem works. Magic doesn't just have the effects we see, I think," he said, growing almost animated at the end. Lionel kept a tight check on himself most of the time, but it wasn't as though he was passionless. Lionel had strong impulses, he just chose not to show them. Or acknowledge them, at times. "Maybe Conjuring unravels the threads that were left by the Vanishing and uses them to recreate the object," he said, the pieces of his formulation of the situation falling into place in his mind like bricks of a tower, resolving themselves. "Or maybe it is atomic. The information capacity of the energy of orbitals must be huge." Something about the former seemed more elegant to him--his mind's eye projected silver threads onto the infinite grid of space-time.

Lionel followed her glance, and shook his head. "We'll have to wait until we get back to school, I don't think we have any of his works here. We were actually cleared out of most of our inventory in this field seven weeks ago, and not a lot has come in since then."

"Would that I could be," he said seriously. Scholarly ambition burned within the Slytherin boy. The compliment underneath--the acknowledgement--had not gone unnoticed, though, and he caught her eye, lips curving upwards. With anyone else, he wouldn't be so open about any area of weakness, but with a friend like her, he added casually, "No one is laboring under the illusions that I'm good at this, though," he said, indicating the fallen quill as he set it back on the counter. Looking at her, he turned over her suggestion in his mind. "I...never thought of that. Emotion has always been a liability for me," he said quietly. Reaching behind him, he located the edge of the counter with his palms and pushed himself up onto it, long legs dangling off the edge. "What was your first sign of magic?" he asked curiously.

ooc: lolol and the abstract is gone so i kind of winged it; she doesn't have to respond that thoroughly to the earlier stuff, hopefully the latter parts can move it more away from this super nerdy discussion lol

“That it would seem,” she acknowledged, barely suppressing another shudder at the thought. Who knew what the wrong sort of people could do with that kind of power? Jacq shook her head at his negation of his assumption, a frown creasing her pinker-than-usual complexion.
“Och, no, yer no wrong – at least I dinna think so. I’d the same thought,” she admitted. The Battle of Hogwarts had taken place at the end of their First Year; with the state of warfare through their late childhood and early schooling, it had effectively set the stage for much of their way of thinking. Jacq knew it was true of herself – and Lionel’s statement all but confirmed she was not alone.

The Scottish witch watched her friend as he mused over the concept of shikigami, and she couldn’t hide the smallest of smiles. Knowing Lionel as well as she did, she was completely unsurprised by his apparent skepticism. She bobbed her head in agreement with his thoughts on the First Fundamental Law of Magic.
“Reminded me, too, of blood or runic magic – in a way. How ye can bind magic to a particular place and make it almost such that the magic becomes an inherent property of the place.”
The goosebumps were back as he echoed her inner concerns regarding the potentially catastrophic consequences this sort of magic could have. “I’d be interested to talk to them – might be they’d tell me more about how their sort of magic works. But I couldna imagine binding one of the wee beasties to me, for certain.”

Returning to the topic of Conjuring and Vanishing, Jaqueline was once again unsurprised at Lionel’s proclivity for processing abstract concepts with almost alarming rapidity.
“Aye, just so,” she replied, relieved that he’d not only grasped her meaning but also phrased it more eloquently than she’d been able to articulate. She could always count on him for that. “My gut says it’s summat to do with the atomic level… but I like yer first suggestion fine. Like a jigsaw.” She grinned. There was something mentally aesthetically pleasing about the idea of magic literally weaving (and unweaving) elements of objects together.

He smiled – at least, as close to a fully-fledged smile as it would get coming from Lionel – at her then, and she returned the gesture genuinely.
‘Emotion has always been a liability for me.’
The Ravenclaw felt a sharp pang of sympathy in her chest at that. That was the interesting thing about Lionel: he was perhaps the most extreme representative she knew of the classic reason-emotion sliding scale. If she was being completely honest, early in their friendship she had found his lack of emotional expression just the tiniest bit unsettling. With time and patience and understanding, though, she had certainly come to appreciate how and why he was the way that he was. She didn’t know all of the details, of course, – in fact, she was reasonably sure even Peter wouldn’t know everything – but she was certain they had reached a level of mutual understanding such that they would always be unconditional friends.

Jacqueline pursed her lips thoughtfully as she considered his follow-up question. How interesting, that they’d been close friends for over four years and had discussed all manner of things in that time – and neither knew what the other’s first sign of magic had been. It seemed like such a basic piece of information that would have been exchanged early on; but their friendship was a rather unique one, she thought.

“I’m sure there were minor things that I thought a bit odd early on and just didna think aught of – but we kent for sure I was a witch when I was six. Cami was one-and-a-half, ken, and verra fond of putting aught she could get her hands on in her gob. We had to keep every bawbee smaller than about yea high” – here she indicated a span of about two inches with her thumb and forefinger – “away from the wee numpty, so Ian and I were extra canny and always cleaned up our toys… until we missed one.”

The freckled brunette suppressed an involuntary shudder at the memory. It had been nearly ten years and Camille was completely fine, but the memory of the scene still gave the middle MacClelland child goosebumps.

“I was minding her while Mam made us lunch. We were playing dolls, then Cami went over to the couch to have a bit of a slobber on it,” – Jacq couldn’t hid a grin at that, as Camille had liked to chew on one of the tasseled throw-blankets while she’d been teething – “so I didna think anything of it. Next I know, she’s making an awful sort of noise, like she couldna breathe. All I know is I ran over to pick Cami up and carry her to the kitchen, calling for Mam, when one of Ian’s wee Auror figurines shot out her gob across the room – full across the room, mind – just as Mam came barging in. I hadna got close enough to Cami to touch her; she couldna breathe, let alone cough, and Mam was just in time to see it.” The Scottish witch lifted a shoulder slightly in a partial shrug. There had been a brief degree of speculation as to whether the magic had come from Jacqueline or from Camille herself, but given the timing of events it had ultimately been attributed to Jacq.

A brief silence fell before Jacq lifted her gaze and found Lionel’s face. He had bared some of his weakness to her; she had no hesitation in returning the sentiment, if only to provide an indirect sense of support without the taint of pity. It wasn’t quite on the same level, she knew, but perhaps it would still help.
“There’ve only been three times I’ve been that bone-deep afraid.” She held up three fingers in illustration and ticked them off one by one as she named each event. “Right before the Battle, this past January… and then. Had nightmares about it for near on a month – and when I woke up in the middle of the night, I’d peek in on her while she slept to make sure she was still breathing.”
She bit her lip, unsure if she’d gone too far and made things uncomfortable for him; but it was done, in any case.

Equally curious, Jacq turned the question back on him. Had he always been this emotionally reserved? And if so: what could possibly have gotten Lionel Llyr Sterling so riled up as to have lost control of anything? She couldn’t think of a single thing.

“What about for ye? How’d ye ken for sure ye were a wizard?”

Lionel couldn't help but turn all these ideas over in his head. There were so many more types of magic in the world, huge swaths of which were left entirely untouched by the Hogwarts curriculum. How anyone believed that seven years of schooling was enough to teach all wizards sufficient knowledge of the power that ran in their veins was almost alarming. "Why do you think we don't study any of these branches of magic?" he asked, looking down at his hands as he turned them over, and then up again at her. Was it deliberate ignorance? A depth-over-breadth philosophy? The British Wizarding World felt so isolated--he'd rarely encountered foreign wizards--so the question of underpreparation never seemed to arise, but his mind's eye saw a vast landscape of darkness lit in only a few areas where they stood.

The fifteen-year-old considered the response smile that Jacqueline had given him, considered this moment of friendship. Jacqueline knew him better than anyone other than Peter, and maybe Clementine, although he did his best not to think too much about the Gryffindor girl lately. And with Peter, slightly more of the understanding went unspoken. Jacqueline could read between the lines of his inscrutability which fenced out others as effectively as he had designed it to, isolating him in his own world to his desire and perhaps his detriment. He trusted her. He was lucky to have anyone to trust, he thought distantly.

Lionel stuck his hands underneath his thighs, his long back curving over slightly as he listened to her story, occasionally watching the way her grey-blue eyes reflected the structure of her speech. The way she described her siblings had always seemed foreign to him. Lionel had never really done anything with his brothers; they were just around when they were. To have her first sign of magic be an act of protection was not a new facet, but a poignant one nonetheless. Her eyes met his and, surprisingly, she continued to speak. Lionel lifted his head and shoulders a little, shifting his hands out from under his legs.

His mind projected his images of the same events around him. Mark and Kay's searching glances, and the passage to Hogsmeade. The elongation of time, Lionel's personal, tight castle of his closest friends and the few things he could control built in a corner on a foundation they all knew was unsound. Lionel didn't know if he'd been afraid at any of those times, though uncertainty and fear went hand in hand for the rising fifth year. Perhaps it was selfishness; during the Battle he'd known he'd be safe, no matter the outcome. His blood was pure. So was Peter's, and hers, and he didn't yet care as much for the others. Or perhaps it was a lack of the proper care of his life. As much as Lionel wanted his life to be in his own hands, death had always seemed less a ghastly spectre than the inevitable reality it was. Death was not the worst thing in the world, he must have believed as Hogwarts turned on its inhabitants. Not as bad as ignorance, as failure, as his destiny charging forward and leaving him behind. What would be worse would be to live after that.

Lionel nodded slowly as she finished, unsure of what he had to contribute. He couldn't relate, even if he should. "Glad she's fine," he said, praying the awkwardness of his comment wouldn't suffuse the room. Jacqueline understood him, he thought she'd know. "Protection is a good motivation."

She posed the question to him, as he knew she would, and he clasped his hands in his lap. "I don't think there was ever a question I was a wizard," he said wryly. Jacqueline should know. Lionel's was the type of older family where Squibs were quietly ejected and never heard of again. He briefly entertained the idea of just how humiliating it would have been to be the youngest and a Squib. Glancing up at her, he smoothed his hands on his robes. "If you ask my brothers, they'll tell you that my first sign of magic was when I dropped a sheet on the pair of them when I was five to shut them up because they were saying something mean and I was hurt and angry, and that I didn't let them out of it until Vivien yelled at us for disturbing her because she was trying to study for seventh year." Lionel didn't recall any fanfare about it; everyone had more or less taken it in stride.

Studying the patterns of her freckles, Lionel smiled thinly. "I've never actually told anyone this." He and Peter hadn't seen a point in discussing the subject, either, although he would have told him if it had come up, probably. "Actually, I was four, and they had become enamored with this particular spot on the island and spent all their time there. Everyone else was at school." He paused. "I was lonely, essentially. Summoned a history book off the shelf. I could barely read, but it was something to occupy me." He gestured to the quill again. "Ironic that Summoning only works for me thirty percent of the time now." Picking it up and brushing the edge of the feather with his thumb, he added softly, "Maybe I just don't want it badly enough."

Another gauge dropped, chiming softly. "I should probably go check on that," he said, although he didn't actually move.

The dark-haired Slytherin was quiet as she talked; and when she met his eyes every now and again, she could feel him thinking, considering what she had to offer, undoubtedly weighing his own experiences and perceptions against them. Vaguely, she wondered if she’d gotten too personal. As they’d just touched on moments prior, emotions were more or less uncharted waters for him. His family was not the affectionate sort, and the more she talked the more acutely aware she became of this. Jacqueline was willing to bet his family shared some semblance of loyalty – many Pureblooded families did, for the self-described reason – but from her limited interactions with his siblings and from being friends with him for the better part of the past four years, she knew their experiences were quite different.

His response was not quite one that Meredith or Éilís would have offered, but it was no less genuine. She smiled.
“Aye, me too.”

The Ravenclaw’s smile evolved into a soft laugh as he answered her; she did know, of course.
“Ye ken full well what I meant, Lionel Sterling,” she chided, with a playful wrinkle of her nose. But when he chose to elaborate, she dropped the jesting and leaned back against the desk, offering her full attention as he had done for her.

“If you ask my brothers, they'll tell you that my first sign of magic was when I dropped a sheet on the pair of them when I was five to shut them up” – she brought her hand to her mouth to stifle a giggle – “because they were saying something mean and I was hurt and angry, and that I didn't let them out of it until Vivien yelled at us for disturbing her because she was trying to study for seventh year.”
Jacqueline bit her lip and lowered her hand slowly, amusement suddenly evaporated. Certainly, Ian had gotten annoyed with his sisters from time to time (and they with him), but she was hard-pressed to recall a time either party had been deliberately mean or hurtful to the other. They would often call each other names, of course, as siblings would; but nothing truly malevolent. She hoped Mark and Kay hadn’t intended to be hurtful; but as she knew them only superficially, she couldn’t say for certain, and the fact remained that they had upset Lionel, whatever their intentions.
What struck her perhaps the most was the fact that Lionel’s sister hadn’t told off Mark and Kay; as the eldest of six, she didn’t defended her youngest sibling from the older ones’ teasing. It was an odd concept for the newly-minted Prefect.

But now Lionel was studying her, and she reflexively mirrored the smile he offered.
“I’ve never actually told anyone this.”
She felt an odd swooping sensation in the pit of her stomach. Anyone – that meant not even Peter knew. To an outsider, it certainly didn’t seem like a secret for the ages; but knowing her friend, she would treat it like one.
The brunette winked at her friend.
“Dinna fash, I’ll no tell a soul.”

His amendment weighed even heavier on her heart, and she chewed her lip to keep from saying something she might regret. Jacqueline Ainsley MacClelland was generally not one to judge: despite this, she was beginning to form her own less-than-favorable opinions of Lionel’s older siblings.

She felt compelled to touch his arm in some demonstration of solidarity, but let her fingertips brush the quill he held instead. Jacqueline caught his gaze and gave him a small half-smile, a playful glint returning to her blue-gray eyes.
“I’d agree. Ye’ve the ken of it fine – but that’s only the half of it. And wanting means ye’ll need to root out that wicked wee thing called emotion from wherever ye’ve gone and hidden it.”

A soft chime broke the momentary silence.
“I should probably go check on that.”

“Probably,” she replied amiably, sliding him a sidelong glance. “But, also probably, the wee things willna get up and wander off in the next few minutes, hm? Unless ye canny Sterlings have conducted mad charms experiments and the like on the poor unsuspecting books…”

Helena and I have decided to drop the thread at this point – thanks!