Participants:
| Scene Title | Siblings and Snitches |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | Between breakfast and her first class, Sio meets Jack on the pitch for a Seeker's Game. |
| Location | Hogwarts Quidditch Pitch |
| Date | October 16, 1995 |
| Watch For | Jack saying things he shouldn't and Siobhan jumping to the wrong conclusions |
| Logger | <name of person(s) who logged the scene> |
Thursday morning - in that blessed free hour before classes begin in earnest for Siobhan - finds the young professor jogging down the path to the Quidditch Pitch, dressed in jeans and a heavy sweater. Her broom in one hand, she skids to a stop just inside the archway, cheeks rosy from both the trip and the warming charm she'd cast over herself before leaving the castle. Down by the entrance to the locker rooms, she spies just the box she's looking for and ambles over to it, toeing it up onto its side to serve as a makeshift chair while she waits.
And, whistling a happy tune, here comes her 'date'. Well, her big brother, anyway. "Howdy, gorgeous. Goin' my way?" He winks at her, and plops down on the ground beside her before hopping right up again. "Well, I just wet my pants," Jack mock-complains merrily. He grabs the broom he's carrying and lays it down on the ground. "Now." He scrunches his face up in thought. "How's that go?" Then, with an exaggerated wink, he looks down at his broom. "Up!" See? He could teach at least that much. He watches the broom float in front of him for a moment, then with another cheesy smile, he hops astride and takes off. "Can't catch me!!"
"Might do, yeah." Siobhan can't resist the sunny smile that splits her face at his quip and his wink. His half-second-sit has her laughing outright, tipping back on the box and letting the sound ring out freely. After the week she's had, she needs this. "What does that make you, two?" Even with the playful tease, she's hopping up as well. The broom is left on the ground and she reaches in to open that box and pull out the tiny golden Snitch. She releases it and watches it zip off across the pitch before calling out a firm "Up!" and leaping astride her broom to whip off after her brother. "Wanna bet on that, Jack?" she calls out, flattening herself against the broom for added speed.
Aha!! Goal achieved! Jack circles around the pitch, chuckling happily. "You let it fly, yeah?" He thought he saw her do so, but wants to make sure. "No. I'm a big boy. I'm almost four." With another silly grin, he scans the sky for the yellow ball. "I heard you were kinda scary, Rosie." He sits back on his broom and holds up a hand, making a wiggling gesture with his fingers. Spooky. "Anybody listen?"
"Of course!" Siobhan knows well how the Seeker's Game is played. Though she hasn't had the chance to play one with Jack in … ages, it's something she'll never forget. "I wonder if your poor secretary would agree with you on that…" Falling into place next to her brother, Sio too makes the round of the playing field. "What, now?" He was there for the Order meeting, so she figures he must mean - "The class?" She attempts to look very innocent. "Maaaaaybe." She almost makes it. "McG just about had a heart attack and Severus looked like he couldn't decide whether he wanted to kill me or join in the fun." She laughs a little at that. She had to learn her dramatics from somewhere, after all. "But I think the kids got a lot out of it. Certainly it's more solid information than they've ever been handed before."
Jack thinks he sees something, so he lays flat on his broom. However, it's just the sparkle of dew hitting the rightmost ring. He swerves to miss it, passing around it with an easy grace before slowing down to come back into the middle of the field. "Wow. Yeah, if you were — unnerving them, I bet it was a bit scary for the wee ones." He flies a loop around her, a wide one, before pacing the field again to look for the Snitch. "I don't know. I sent her to spend most of her time down in the DOM. I wasn't …" He wasn't much good to anybody. Except Roz and Aberforth. And that because he'd buy from them and take the bottles home. "I hope they do listen. It's best to know, I think." Noble through and through.
Siobhan watches Jack's mad dash for the dew, laughing softly to herself when he has to swerve to miss crashing. When he comes to the middle, she makes a loop around him, brown eyes combing the sky for the tiny fleck of gold. "Well, yeah, but they need to be afraid of Voldemort and the Death Eaters." She may use 'the Dark Lord' in deference to Snape's wishes when he's present, but without any such hinderance, Siobhan uses what comes naturally. She spots the Snitch down against the brown-tinged green of the pitch and dives for it. Only barely does she pull out of the dive in time to avoid becoming a blonde stain on the field and by the time she does so, her arms ache and the Snitch is nowhere to be found. "Although," she calls out as she swings back up to hover near her brother. "If I had known McGonagall would leave me to run that meeting just for the Morsmordre, I never would have cast the damn thing." Okay, so that might not be true, but a little good-natured grumbling is what games with siblings are for, right?
"You cast the Morsmordre in class?" Jack says, stopping short on his broom, eyes still scanning the horizon for the pesky little bugger. When she pulls off a Wronski, he calls out a "nice one," then he follows her, pacing her for a while to see if it stayed nearby. It didn't seem to, so he moves along an opposite course, preferring to divide into zones for the time being. "I bet that was a shock." He'd heard general stuff, but not specifics. "Yeah, she doesn't pull her punches." He spots something, and he speeds up to try to catch it, only to have it juke the other way, straight toward her. "You did a really good job, Rosie. I wouldn't have done half as well." It's not intended to be flattery, but an honest truth. "I'd probably have hexed them."
"Yep!" Siobhan pops the 'p' in that word and grins, rolling with the broom to duck under her brother and come out on his other side, pulling up above him. "I bet you none of them will forget just exactly what it looks like, either." The way they might have if she'd just passed around a drawing. When he ends up herding the Snitch in her direction, she rolls again - this time to the right - and reaches out a hand to grab it, only to feel the persnickety little thing brush her fingertips as if to tease. Muttering a stream of curses that sound suspiciously Moody-like, she swerves back around to make a few lazy loops around Jack. "There's a part of me that kind of wishes I hadn't warned Sirius the night before." A level of frustration shows through both voice and expression. "I know Severus technically started it, but that's the Silencer I got Moody with. If he hadn't been ready for something… " She trails off, the frustration melting into a wicked grin, even as she cranes her neck around to look for that pesky ball of gold. "It would have felt really nice to see him Silenced just then." Even though he did kinda make up for it afterwards with the meade.
"Oh, I'm sure they'll all remember." Jack says, closing in on where the Snitch had been. It's not there now, of course, but it's a starting point. "I wonder how many of the wee ones had to use a cleaning charm. I would've if someone would've shown me a Dark Mark in the sky. You like teaching, Rosie?" He may have asked her this before during their times together, but he'll ask again. He slopes his broom to fly upward, circling up near the limit of where the little ball will go.
Siobhan chokes, swerving across Jack's path close enough to cut him off in a bit of friendly punishment. "It wasn't in the sky, Jack. It was in class. And no, I didn't see anyone using one." Although by the end of the lesson she was definitely not in a state of mind to be checking. "Unlike you, they've managed toilet training." A light jab, but with Jack, that's okay. When he goes high, she goes low, sweeping back and forth across the field until she concludes that it can't be down here and - by elimination - must be somewhere up there with him. She urges her broom upwards. "I love it, Jack." And she's in earnest, here. "I'm just not sure how good I'll be when I run out of practical things to teach them." It's a real worry, one that causes her face to pinch inwards. "I'm not like Pete, you know? Never could get my head around all that … big word big picture stuff."
"The sky, the ceiling, the bloody wall… I'd still have pissed me damn pants, mo cridhe." He snickers, slipping a little into Gaelic as he teases her. "Oi!" He shakes his head and manages to see the sparkle of fluttering gold. He lays forward again, pressing his chest against the broom to try to catch the little thing before it flutters away. He reaches out and grabs, touching it, but missing the grab by centimeters. "I'm glad you like it. I think I'm better at just doing than the actual teaching about it. I'd get frustrated at the ones a little slower to understand. "The theory?" He grins, swooping to cut across her path, far enough away not to cause any course change. "I get some of the theory. Once I see it in practice, I remember it. If I can't see it in practice, I just try to remember where I found it for when I have to look it up again."
Siobhan sticks her tongue out at Jack for the affectionate endearment in the language their father had made sure they all learned as children - mostly by using it with them - whipping around when she sees him go flat against his broom. Coming at him at an angle, she watches the little golden ball as it taunts him much the way it had done her just before. A minute adjustment in angle and she reaches out her arm in a swipe, feeling her fist curl around the miniature menace and holding it aloft with a shout of triumph. She angles her broom back sharply, pulling a 'backflip' in midair before holding the fist clenching the Snitch out to her brother. "Again?" She hauls on the front end of the stick and comes to a stop, hair flying around her face in the wind and her cheeks quite reddened by the same. "Whereas I can't understand it unless I'm being shown how and then doing it myself. Hell, even lectures go over my head a lot unless they have a demonstration attached." And there's a little dog-eared paperback Muggle dictionary well-hidden in her rooms to back up that statement. "Though it probably doesn't help that I'd rather read Austen or Poe than 'Moste Potente Potions' any day."
"Oh, good catch!" Jack slows to a stop near her, and nods. "My turn to release?" He holds out his hand and waits for it to be dropped there. "Well, that book is so heavy it could rival Mum's borscht." He shakes his head. "Not exactly light reading." He shrugs. "I like going over the books with the basic curse-breaking stuff in it, because it helps refresh my memory and make new connections with things I've seen since I read it the last time. Need to do that again, actually." Seeing as it's been awhile.
Siobhan nudges her broom and like an obedient steed it complies willingly. "Here," she offers, dropping the little monster into his waiting palm. "Rene's dad raises these." Not Snitches, of course. "Snidgets, I mean. The little blonde boy who helped us get my stuff down to the dungeons? I guess they have a whole preserve somewhere up north. Hippogriffs, pegasi, Snidgets, the lot." She does another lazy loop. "I guess his mum even raises messenger owls. That'd be a cool place to see." Another lazy loop. "Cool man, his Da. Asked Rene to pass along a request for some information and he wrote me back straight away." Murdoc crashing into the staff table at breakfast this morning had been amazing. Had totally made Sio's day just that much better. "He knows more about Thestrals than anyone else I've ever met."
"That's brilliant." Jack listens to her talk about the winged animals. "I'd like to see that sometime. It sounds like a menagerie." He flies a little way out from the center, then tosses the ball into the air. "Thestrals are … interesting. Bit creepy, though." He begins to pace around the pitch again in easy, languid laps.
A little more sure of herself once it seems that Jack isn't about to take the Big Brother Approach and get all … weird about why she can see the beasts. "Creepy? Naw, I think they're gorgeous…" But then Cianan's assessment that she'd fit in with the 'goth' crowd pops up in her head and she wrinkles her nose. "Ugh, I really hope Tyler's wrong. Don't much fancy dressing all in black. I mean, I guess it works for some people, sure." Not this Slytherin, though. Brown eyes track the glittering ball until it disappears into the painfully-bright clouds. "I met the herd they keep here. They're actually really friendly." She flies a lazy circuit around the pitch. "One of the mares has got herself a little colt. Adorable. All legs and nothing else to 'im."
"Tyler? Tyler who?" Jack pauses in his circuit to gaze over at his sister. "Some bloke in your classes?" He leans back on his broom for a few seconds, mostly just showing off. His sister's words completely confuse him. "All in black? Somebody die?" He leans forward again, accelerating around the circle. "Whatever stirs your cauldron, Rosie-luv." He shudders. "I don't mind them, but they're not my favorite creature." He prefers fuzzy things. Like Puffleskins. "I'll stick with 'It', thanks."
"Cianan Tyler," Siobhan answers almost automatically. "Fourth year Ravenclaw, yeah." When he doesn't get the 'all-in-black equals goth' connotation, Siobhan has to bite her lip on the urge to facepalm. She keeps forgetting that her brothers don't have the same kind of experience in the Muggle world that she does. The reasons for her experience, though, bring her mood down a fair bit. "Goths are Muggles who only ever dress in black and have an unhealthy obsession with death and blood and pain and stuff. They listen to a lot of metal." Hopefully that'll clear things up a bit. Having won the first out of their matches, Sio isn't so edgy on this one - preferring to keep pace with her brother and talk, though she keeps her eyes peeled. "Nothing 'stirs my cauldron', alright?" she snaps a bit harsher than she probably should have. Still, ever since her split with Alistaire, stuff like that has been … a touchy subject. Banking sharply away, she kicks the speed up a notch or two and zips to the other end of the field - presumably to look for the Snitch.
Jack fully stops again, holding up his hands in a defensive posture, locking his legs around the broom to maintain balance. "I'm sorry, Rosie. It was a turn of phrase." He understands she came away from her experience a different person, and worries about that. "Oh, those." He's seen a few here and there. "Yeah, met a bloke once who had more eyeliner than Tiana." That's Professor Moldavia to her, probably. In deference to her sharply stated wishes, he stops the story there. "Tyler. You know Mum's name was Tyler." Of course she does. "Where's he from?" As one of the elder sons, Jack got exposure to the family tree. He doesn't remember a Cianan, though.
Siobhan hears the apology - and, deep down inside, knows she's not being entirely fair - but there's a kind of raw pain in her chest that rips and claws at her whenever her mind strays down that pathway. A few loops of the Pitch see her once more in control and though it's a tight one, she does offer Jack a smile. "Lots of Tylers in Ireland, though. 'Sides, he's from Kildare." And since that's not Eden, Siobhan considers the matter closed. "Tiana?" There's a moment of confusion that twists her face before the name clicks and she swerves her broom in closer to her brother's, eager to get a fresher perspective on things. "Moldavia?" Obviously, being a professor herself, she doesn't see the need to add the honorific when dealing with her brother. "You know her pretty well, then?" A mildly loaded question. There's a slight paling of her face, accompanied by a thick swallow, but Siobhan doesn't back down.
"I know her … okay. Not extremely well." In Jack-speak, there is a delineation. "She offered me a job, though. I thought about taking it." He shrugs, and starts his circuitous path again. "I like cursebreaking much better." Oh, look! There's the Snitch! He gets close to it, reaches for it, and loses the grip on his broom. His forward momentum causes his broom to angle downward, narrowly missing the damn ball. "Damn!" He curses roundly, then grabs the broom again, stabilizing himself before flying up and after the Snitch — which has, of course, moved on.
There's a moment when Siobhan is torn between chasing after the Snitch whirling in her direction after her brother's oh-so-graceful fail!dive or in chasing after Jack for clarification. "A job?" She chooses Jack. "Most everyone thought she was some crazy Russian werewolf hunter after the way she went after Greyback in Hogsmeade." Although knowing what she knows now, that doesn't seem quite as likely. Even as something like an Auror, she couldn't offer Jack a job unless she was head of a department and she'd know if that was the case - snooping, sneaky snake that she is. Her mind reels around the mystery of it, almost to the point of making her dizzy. "Jack," she begins slowly, turning a sharp eye on him and sliding into her Don't Jerk Me Around voice. "Just what job did she offer you?"
"Rosie…" Jack wobbles on the broom again, this time with annoyance and … frustration. Right. He isn't sure how to explain this to his baby sister. "She's a professional woman." The tone in his voice, a mix between embarrassment and the worried tone all Noble men take when telling their mum or baby sister something that might make them explode. "She's a … prostitute. Wanted me to … work with her for some clients." He pushes his broom foward, spotting the Snitch wayyy over there on the other side of the pitch. Or that's his story and he's sticking to it. "I saw her out and around a couple times."
There's a moment where Siobhan's world just stops turning. The expression on her face goes blank with shock. Dumbledore hired a werewolf hooker to teach Potions to children?!? Her jaw works soundlessly for a moment as her brain slowly catches up with the rest of reality. "Is he completely mental?" The broom - without any force of will or movement to guide it - slows to a stop, hovering over the ground. She lets it. Slowly, ever so slowly, pieces slot together in her head, the metaphorical lightbulb goes off and this time - just this once - Siobhan lets herself give in to the urge and facepalms. "I bet he found out after - " But she cuts herself off, there, letting her smug expression just bask on her face. She doesn't realize that she's managed to jump to the wrong conclusion. The pieces all fit and so she is pleased. One more mystery solved. Wait a minute. "Jaaaaaack. You tag-teamed with a hooker?" And she's zipping right off after him, interested and horrified in pretty much equal measure but prodded by her trademark insatiable curiosity.
"No, Rosie. I thought about it, though. Not for long. I like Torchwood." Jack grins, making a small pun. He has a feeling that if it became known he was working with a 'lady of the evening', he'd not be comfortable in either place, home or office. He does see the snitch now, executing a flip-turn thing that has him going breakneck at ninety degrees from his former path. He flies over to where it floats, taunting them cheerfully in the breeze. He reaches out and catches it, holding it up. "Got 'im. You've got class in a bit, aye?" He looks up at the sky as if it had the time there. Some people can tell the time of day by the placement of the sun, but Jack isn't really one of them. Her little sentence, especially accompanied by a facepalm, gets a tilted head in query. "Who what what?" Eloquent, yes.
Siobhan snickers, knowing that while Jack would always be welcome at home, such a job would make their mum have no end of fits. "I can just see the look on Da's face if you came home with that news." The flip-turn and the breakneck catch has her gripping the broomstick between her thighs tightly for balance and cheering him on with much whooping and clapping of hands. "Nice!" she calls, beaming at him as she flies to meet him. "Yeah, the littlest ones." She rolls her eyes. She completely ignores his final question, moving right along. Little sisters' privilege. "They're eager and all, but some of the little French ones … I dunno, Jack. I just don't get 'em." She drops into a landing, almost ending up on her face. "Yeah, okay. Gotta practice that one." Because it's been a while since she's done this. "Oh! We've got a date for dinner at Sirius' place this Saturday. I already told Mum we'd have to miss her dinner." She grins conspiratorily over at Jack. "You want to come to Diagon with me too or just meet up there?" She's got some things to get.
"Careful, Rosie!" Jack calls out to her as she lands weirdly. Big brother privilege, especially when said little sister has been 'dead.' He winces at the thought of what his father's face would look like. He lands softly, holding the Snitch out for the box. "Yeah. I cleared out a woman's office once. French lady. Could understand what she was saying alright, but I didn't understand her." Which was unnerving for him. He usually has a good sense of people, much like his sister. "Sirius?" What? "Sure, that'd be fine. The old dog needs to have some company now and again." He grins cheekily at her. "What do you need to do in Diagon? I can help you out." Decision made, he secures the Snitch and grabs his broom. "Want help putting that back?" He gestures to the box of balls.
"Naw, don't need to, the - " And right on time, the Hufflepuff Quidditch team strides out onto the pitch. The captain raises one hand and offers Siobhan a mildly over-friendly greeting, which she returns. The rest of the team, however, holds back, giving her strange looks. For some reason, this makes her grin. Sweeping down to pick up her broom, she threads her other arm through Jack's and steers them back towards the arch. "Need to go visit Morty, for one." A few engagements on her social calendar require dresses after all. "Have a few books I need to pick up, some oil for Q - I think she's starting to moult - and a couple things down in Knockturn." There's a little thrill at the thought of being able to go say hello to the shopkeepers she's known since she was a child. It's not just friends and family who'd been missed during her absence.
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