ataraxionlogs | and let me tell you that i'm dreaming (OPEN)

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and let me tell you that i'm dreaming (OPEN)

CHARACTERS: Lily Potter AND YOU!!!
LOCATION: A mystery. (Miscellaneous!! Halls, elevators, media library, kitchen, take your pick.)
WARNINGS: TBA??
SUMMARY: A June catch-all post.
NOTES: Please feel free to start threads with whatever! I wish to rp all of the things and Lily is criminally approachable, so if you want to have someone bump into her or leave an opening for her to say hi, I'm down for whatever.

Lily doesn't leave her room often. It's ostensibly to rest and make sense of things, but she simply doesn't think to go anywhere. She lays in bed and tries to sleep, thinks better of it, and spends hour upon hour going through network archives instead. Being busy keeps her mind from drifting back home to where everything went wrong.

'Not often' is not 'never,' all the same - she has to leave to get things to eat and drink, do washing up, and eventually media library holds enough of a pull that she heads out to investigate it and returns to her room with too many things loaded into a data pad to be able to go over in days, though she's determined enough to try.

(One day she considers trying to relax by swimming but rethinks it at the last moment, does an about-face near the rec area and heading back toward her room.)

She doesn't linger long enough in the kitchens to make entire meals but she does snack while she makes up her tea before disappearing once more into the halls again.

She wanders them enough to get a general idea of the layout enough, and not just on her own floor. She doesn't stray far despite the elevators making things easier, but she likes to have a mental map at least. She's approachable enough even in her upset, quiet and maybe a little morose but who isn't, some days?

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"There's lots of other people here on the ship. All sorts. Humans, non-humans, muggles, everyone, and it's fine that we're open about using magic. Some people don't really like it, they think it's cheating, I suppose, but no one will really get mad at you for it." Harry also thinks that it helps that Lily is a woman. She might be talked down to a little, but odds are no one will call her a little girl and tell her to rethink her choices.

He looks as if he's about to say something, but catches himself just before speaking. It's taken time, but he's slowly developed a filter.

"It's strange to think of not needing to be as careful about it."

She nods then - she's visibly relaxed from the start of the conversation, and what Harry's saying is promising. She'd gleaned that general idea from what she'd seen previously, but the confirmation is... nice.

"I can't blame them for thinking it's cheating I suppose, if they don't understand how it works." She would be far more annoyed and reactive if someone said it to her face, still raw from a war that never should have happened in the first place, and yet.

She can handle being talked down to either way, but when she sees that peculiar look on Harry's face, she leans forward just a little. "What is it?" Filter or no, she's perceptive enough.

"I halfway wish that I'd never mentioned magic and just deadpanned that it's all 'science'." If no one can understand or explain it, then their science just isn't good enough. Come to think of it, why can't magic be science? (That's one for Hermione to puzzle out.)

"And it's nothing. Sometimes I think a bit faster than I ought to speak and lose track of what I was going to say." It's not entirely true, but this isn't the time or place to go into what he'd wanted to talk about. That can wait for another time. After all, they have the time now, don't they? "I'm getting better at this though. If there's one thing this place is good for, it's making sure you've got all the time in the world to work on pet projects. Actually, I, ah, if you're interested, I'd like you ideas on a charm that I've been trying to set."

Lily smiles a little knowingly to what Harry says and it's not as private a look as it could have been. "There are plenty of people that would gladly pretend, given a claim like that." She knows plenty of them.

His explanation doesn't give her pause so much as she simply acknowledges it with a nod, but then she ... doesn't perk up, but she does smile wider, interested. She enjoys charms, and she enjoys pet projects even more; with nothing but time in hiding, pet projects tend to occupy one enough to dispel some tension. "Really? Of course I'm interested. What sort of charm are you working on?"

"It's a ring for a friend. They're not wizards, so the charm needs to be self-sustaining. As it stands now, I can charge it for them every so often, but if I'm not around, I don't want it to suddenly quit. What is does is act a bit like Hot and Cold - you know, the game? One party has a ring, the other a coin, and they can 'ping' each other and try to narrow down a direction."

As Harry speaks, it's obvious he's put some thought into this already and what first looks like vague gestures with his hands quickly solidifies into sketches of charm pathways that hang in the air between them.

"Hm," is all Lily says for a moment, and when Harry brings up what essentially amount to charm blueprints she leans forward to look over them. "It should be possible to keep it self-sustaining..." She thinks of something, suddenly, and looks over at him.

"Have you noticed any issues with being here affecting magic at all?"

(She couldn't cast a patronus at all earlier, but that was her sorrow - maybe there are other factors as well in play, though.)

"As far as I can tell most of what we can do is the same. Apparating is a bit tricky though because parts of this ship move about, like the corridors at Hogwarts, but not as kindly." Harry has absolutely no desire to find himself in a nest of manticores, please and thank you. "But others that've been here, that would've had incredible power in their homeworlds, they lost a lot of their skill."

There's a bit of delicate phrasing at work there, but he's not hiding anything.

That makes her frown minutely - she feels like there's a difference for her - in power or ease, but not skill - but now it's ever more likely to be attributed to her mental state. It makes sense, with magic being tied to well-being.

She pushes it aside, compartmentalizes again, doesn't quite ask about these would-be-powerful people. "It could still be that affecting how long the magic lasts, I think." She seems to be working through things in her head, looking over the charm work as he eyes flick over it.

"That makes sense. I've been trying to keep a log of what's changed and changing - this ship, it'll do things to your emotions, sometimes your memories - but I don't have any real answers yet. Snape is working on it." He'd shared everything he had with the man and all he can do now is continue keeping a record and hoping for the best. Or getting off the ship. He could try that, too.

"I'm rubbish at Occlumency," Lily laments, then: "or, well, I suppose I just never got enough practice at it. I can do a bit, but..." She shakes her head, then - an alternative to shrugging. Once you've gone into hiding, it seems less important a thing to practice rather than, say, physically defensive spells.

"Has Severus found anything?" There's something carefully neutral about her voice now - she doesn't seem unsettled at all, more like she's still carefully treading something she doesn't know how to feel about. Do you speak with him often, she doesn't say. "It's hard to describe what I think it feels like." Shackles maybe, or a stone around one's neck.

Neither feels quite right.

"I don't know and if he did, I don't know that he'd tell me." There's a twist to his voice that sounds almost like a hum of anger, but Harry does what he can to keep it hidden for now.

"We don't get along too well. We never have." There's an understatement. "But I'm making an effort to at least be useful here."

Her mouth twists a little, at that - it's still carefully neutral despite this and she doesn't comment on it. She wouldn't expect that they would get along, all things considered, and she isn't surprised - what is surprising that it's the only real visible reaction Harry's had to anything that she can see.

She wonders, briefly, if she's worrying too much about it. "I don't feel right bothering him now," she says, quiet, and she wants to ask Harry more but the subject feels volatile - "you've worked with him outside of the ship then as well?"

His older self, of course - and it's dancing around the subject, but it'll give her some of the information she desperately needs to know and is afraid to ask.

"Not with him, not really." It's splitting hairs, but Harry feels that while they were both working towards the same goal they weren't really working together. "He taught Potions are Hogwarts and, um, at one point in the war, Dumbledore had him give me specialized tutoring."

He looks as if he's about to say more, but then catches himself: "Do you mind if I mention things that haven't yet happened for you?"

Lily accepts this quickly - a small, broken part of her crows triumph knowing it, or as close to that emotion as any piece of her can feel, knowing Severus was trusted by Dumbledore with Harry like that - it's still not confirmation point blank but it's something that she's smart enough to infer and file away.

There's a pause, then - she'd been afraid to ask anything, but since he offered... "I don't mind. I know there isn't changing anything for me," she's murmuring by now, and the sorrow isn't misplaced, "but I'd still like to know what went on after I died."

"I know I'd want to know, but are you sure? Really and truly sure that you want to hear this?" He's not sure if he ought to be relieved that she's asking or concerned how she'll take the news. "I don't mind telling you, but it's not going to be a ...it's not happy. The war ends and is finally over, but it's hard won."

There is a silence in Lily for a moment, as she tries to word herself better than her initial response. "I've had a share in the unhappiness of war," she settles on, finally, "and now I'd like to know that it ended and how." She's resolute, and her back is straight. "Remus told me a little, but not much."

Harry fidgets, then almost paces, but soon enough gets himself under control and decides that he needs to sit down for this. Gesturing to make sure Lily doesn't mind, Harry pulls up a chair before launching into it.

"I don't know how much Remus told you, because out of everyone here, I'm the only one that's made it to the end. Voldemort dies, eventually. I'd been fighting against him for about seven years when we finally found and cut off his spells that were keeping him alive." He's delicately stepping around the issue of horcruxes but hoping that it's enough to distract her from how many years he'd been at war.

I'm the only one that's made it to the end.

That means then that Sirius, Remus, Severus - she frowns deeply now, staring at Harry. Her mind wanders briefly to the young woman she'd met at the lockers but - maybe Harry didn't know she was there. She's so young. (Not much younger than you, Lily.)

"The magic keeping him alive." This, slightly sharper, though not directed at him. "What was it?"

And then, because she isn't that easily distracted, whether fortunately or unfortunately, "Seven years?"

"He'd put pieces of his soul into things so that if you destroyed his body, his spirit could return." It's a very roundabout way of describing a horcrux, but he is certain that if Snape finds out that he's explained any of it, he'll never hear the end of it.

"About that, yes. The first time we fought I was in my first year."

There's nothing in her memory for that description to connect to, luckily for Harry, but even alone it's enough to raise her hackles slightly. "Of course he would," she says quietly, but she's careful to keep any bitterness out of her voice because she asked to know.

Her husband is dead.

"Your first year." She's leaning to peer directly at him, eyes searching his face for... she's not sure what. "I never wanted that for you." She never wanted any of the war to touch her child, and now he's telling her it took his childhood.

"I can't imagine anyone did. It's not really something people want, it's just how it is. What needed to be done," he says with a bit of a shrug. It's terrible and he'd fight tooth and nail to stop it from happening to any other child, but he's not too troubled about it being his lot in life.

"And it's alright, I came out okay in the end." Sort of. Mostly.

That isn't the whole point behind what she said, but she lets it go for now. The war is over for good, and he came out okay in the end, and that's important to her.

She leans forward but doesn't try to touch Harry again, chewing on her lip thoughtfully. "I'm glad to hear you say that," is all she can think of to say, "and I'm glad to know that the war finally ends."

There's a part of her that almost feels annoyed that it seems everyone is treating her like a fainting figure made of cracked glass but that's not Harry's fault - it's understandable, she thinks, that they'd do it.

"So, well, that's where we're at. The war's over, my job is done, and I was an Auror when this place took me. It's not ideal, but it's not all that bad. Not really." When being kidnapped by a ship that will likely end up killing or driving them all mad isn't 'bad', it's fair to suggest that Harry might have a skewed perspective.

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and let me tell you that i'm dreaming (OPEN)

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