(Lake) Dull Lights

[understanding]

The sun is high. There are ghosts in the woods and pale women beneath the water of the lake, so Oscar chooses the grass. The blades are long and lean, he lies in them with his school bag tossed down across the pebbled beach. His muggle radio struggles along with the school's strange wards, pulling in snatches of nameless orchestral pieces only to lapse in to prolonged and ominous near silences. Oscar is sure he can hear voices in this static, but he ignores their whispered plans, intent on pretending for a short while that he's never once been extraordinary and not one single word from him could make it so. He applies a single green blade of grass to the center of his forehead, just above the eyes where Oscar's read the third opens and closes; he mumbles sleepily. Without his wand, stashed away under a pillow in the dorms, he could be any boy under the sun and in his own life. Oscar stretches out against the warm lawn.

[Prof. Rainer Freundschaft]

"I can never get mine to play, either." Rainer is standing a little ways off when he speaks and, as he nears, there is strange stuttering from the machine before it bursts back in to a full bodied song of perfect clarity. He stands over Oscar and looking out across the lake, which lit like molten metal and beading against the rocks, seems to outshine the sun. "It would seem we both have our luck today."

Rainer, though he had agreed to return here, was still uncertain of Erich's intentions. What did the school's recent political engagements mean to his pure longing for flight, for destruction? There is a wind that sweeps across the water. Perhaps they were to play the golden avengers again, to live as boys in friendship and punish those who deserved to meet them. Even his magic lurches at this thought, swinging the dial on Oscar's radio toward hapless, American blues and Rainer is ashamed.

He looks down at Oscar, whose eyes have opened, and meets his gaze in the swinging grass. Another student Rainer has never met. Were they dangerous to such a boy, to everyone? "I am sorry about your music, my friend," he begins, suddenly nervous that his thoughts had been transmitted against his wishes. To Erich? To this lonely teenager in the grass, especially. To the whole school deep in their books and charms. The same wind reaches them. Shaking his head, "I regret that I don't know your name."

[understanding]

Oscar sits up, pulling his knees to his chest. It's alien music and the man is alien and both their voices seem to reach him from a very far place. For a moment he thinks something echoes at them from over the water and it laps sluggishly beside them as if on the verge of freezing in all this heat. He is sad to have come here, he decides numbly and answers, "My name is Oscar. I'm new."

But Rainer is far from new. He couldn't be more than a year or two older than Oscar himself, he's sure, maybe only Elijah's age and in the seventh year-- but the face is too settled to be young, as if it had played the same expressions for decades. Oscar is repelled by this quality but grasps instantly that there is power behind this strange articulation of the stranger's youth. Though he's unfamiliar with magic, Oscar knows enough about people to want, unceasingly, to flee. There had been many such politicians he had met in passing, beside father, ever genial, who believed only in the law of their own strength. Another wind, carrying a chill from the lake, crosses them and circles the grass and he shudders. However old, this man was held down by no law and peers down at him from an entirely higher dimension. Oscar thinks of the doxy he had caught earlier that day in Herbology and realizes, with a rush of fear, that he was in the hands of a real magician.

"It's nothing. I rather like it." He answers steadily, stealing a glance toward his radio. Was this man with the ministry? One of the rogue wizards who he'd been warned about? "I can't imagine how you got it to tune like that, I've been trying for ages." He looks up at Rainer again, meeting his eyes and examining the handsome features, the even skin. "But what is your name?" Oscar quickly amends his original assessment. His gaze was not trained upon someone from some other dimension at al. This man came from absolute freedom and soon, it seemed, he was going to let everyone know it. Not far from them a mermaid can be seen laughing.

[Elijah Ellerby]

Herbology had ended abruptly, and in too much chaos for Elijah to have accompanied Oscar to lunch, or to spy on him and see which group of people he chose to sit with - something he was suspicious about. In a moment of delirium as Zerrebabel had provoked a new shoot of Mandrake into screaming at the top of its lungs, Oscar had vanished without Elijah even being able to say goodbye.

Now it was mid-afternoon and the sun was so heavy on Elijah's brow that he could feel his skin slowly burning, preparing to blister and peel as he slumbered in the stifling heat later on this evening. It was always around five o'clock that he would collapse in his dorm, exhausted from his countless trips with the time turner. He was abusing it, using it to seek thrills, daring himself to be seen twice in the same place. Sometimes he would closed his eyes and turn the dial back an unplanned length of time, the fear of ending up days in the past a dark pleasure.

One day he would wake up at thirty, and look forty. He still wouldn't stop of course.

Right now he stood high above the lake, just off a beaten track that lay between the school and the lake in the stoney Scottish wilderness, herbs bunched at his feet and the whomping willow groaning anciently behind him. He was staring down at Oscar, a small but pristine figure dress in blue, what looked like his shoes next to him. Elijah wondered who his mysterious new friend was talking to. He looked about the same age as Elijah, although the way he stood gave him away. So Oscar wasn't so solitary after all.

Stepping back into the shade of the whomping willow, Elijah sat down and observed, a bead of sweat stinging his eye.

[Prof. Rainer Freundschaft]

Rainer is sure Erich is rolling his eyes somewhere. He is scaring the boy, and himself, wanting only to hide or crawl through the grass on his knees to beg for forgiveness. What does anyone know of mercy these days, though? He was lying down when Erich's ghost had materialized beside him, whispered sulkily, Thom is in the hands of god and there's nothing no-man can do for him. Let's lay this place lower than the earth they'll bury him in. His mouth was a glow and they slept, seeking small places beneath the earth with their dreams.

There are three birds overhead. Rainer is being watched by someone.

"It's alright," he begins, trying to be soft, parental, something he's had difficulty with all his life. "I didn't mean to... switch your station off like that. What you had on was very nice." Mindlessly, the radio responds to his apology and switches itself back again. Violin chord. Oscar shivers almost imperceptibly and he regrets it immediately. "My name is Rainer Freundschaft. I used to teach here, actually," he tries to explain. Rainer feels desperation creeping in on him, the soft notes of music drifting out over the water. He puts his face in his own hands, breathes through his fingers and waits for Oscar to say something. There is a long awkward silence in which Rainer realizes that Erich, visible, is sitting beside that mermaid, balancing on the jutting peak of the rock and whispering underwater nothings in to her sensitive little ears. She tosses her hair about her and Rainer is miserable beside a miserable Oscar.


He turns to face Rainer again, "But who is your friend out there?" and asks with the voice of someone calmer.

[understanding]

Oscar's eyes narrow to small slits, color like crushed glass. A man is watching them, balancing off a rock the shape of an upturned boat, the bow. His feet are unnaturally planted there and maybe not even feet at all, he can't tell. The mermaid gives her high, drilling shriek that seems to unhinge the air and even the radio for a moment, despite Rainer's unconscious augmentations. The man has trained his eyes on Oscar and the second he realizes it, his questions disperse in to one pure moment of panic. Inexplicably, he sees himself naked and crawling with lights, spells each speaking their own names and their own will unto the world---

feforaet for the heat of a fever; gyrus to bind and constrict, to pull under; Vis solvere, who releases animals and suppressed powers; wassergeist und gott anordnet that makes men to water for ghosts who become godlike, to be sung in the voice of love

---but the feeling passes just as suddenly, and the voices leave his bones. Up until this point, Oscar has had some vague intentions of talking his way out politely, not letting on, but he rises quickly. Looking toward Rainer in one silly moment of hesitation, he grits his teeth and turns to run. He doesn't think twice about leaving his shoes where they lie upturned in the grass, his radio music tugging on its own batteries, his books sputtering with the wind in their mouths. Oscar bolts. He's been afraid and he's been foolish and now he runs hard like getting enough space between him and whatever it was he saw would mean anything. This is not the same world, he knows, but he doesn't stop until he feels like his lungs might collapse if he won't. The sky is open above Oscar who breathes wide and slow.

[Elijah Ellerby]

Elijah had finished rubbing the dirt from his eyes, and as though someone had fired a pistol Oscar was already in flight like a bird from long grass, moving startly quick by instinct, not looking back to see what he was escaping from. Elijah had no business in interrupting, but to leave his shoes and possessions at the stranger’s feet without the man so much as flinching, and to on rough earth and sharp as though they weren’t even there - perhaps it was time to interfere. ‘Oscar! Oscar!’ Elijah shouted in strained anger as his voice was whipped away on the wind. ‘Oscar, come back!’

Scrabbling to his feet and racing off down the decline in pursuit, Elijah didn’t attempt to check on Oscar’s things or the man. He would know by now that Elijah had been watching, and it would’ve failed him too much to try and give him a disapproving glare, for he was far too disconcerted. Elijah had never been very good at confrontation and to try and bully anyone with brawn he didn’t have was foolish. The man hadn’t looked as though he wanted to rob Oscar of his beaten little wireless anyway. What had even been said to make Oscar bolt?

Grabbing onto the branch of a rowan as he jumped down a rocky slope, he only caught the back of Oscar fleetingly before he was gone again. ‘He’s not following you! Oscar!’ Elijah shouted again, his worry festering.

Skidding to a halt in the dead and dusty Memorial Garden, two crumbling old fountains diseased with pretty weeds built in the centre, Elijah stopped to gasp painfully, his murmuring heart effete. Oscar, so agile and alert, reminded Elijah of a hare - how was he so ellusive? With a flummoxed grimace, the Gryffindor slummed down on the edge of the fountain, thoroughly defeated. ‘Oscar!’

[understanding]

Then he fell and it seemed that Oscar was falling for a very long time before hitting the ground, scraping the side of his face against the rain polished side of an armless statue. Groaning and checking his jaw for loose teeth, none, he rolled over to stare up at the kindly, stone face of some long druidic healer. Oscar lay there and let himself catch his breath, his fear and adrenaline running low in his exhaustion. Certain someone had followed him, even if it hadn't been that man, the boy pulled himself up in to a sitting position with a large rock in his hand. Spotting Elijah not far from him, Oscar crawled over awkwardly before pulling himself to his feet. Standing over Elijah, he remembered the rock and tossed it away harmlessly, embarrassed again. "Did you see him too? You're not hurt... are you?" he asks, knees shaking and still breathless. Oscar drops to the floor and rests his head on the crumbing ledge, less and less afraid. Together, they're as silent as the statues that watch them.

[Elijah Ellerby]

A rock hit and rock some place away and Elijah tensed, forgetting his exertion and searching for the source, startled to find Oscar standing right next to him. The sun was dazzling behind the Ravenclaw’s head, and Elijah raised his hand to his eyes, examining him. His face was damp and pale, patted with wet dirt from the cobblestones, and Elijah looked toward where Oscar had appeared from, seeing he’d been pressed against the ground behind an intrusion of brittle purple heather. The wind blustered and he smelt it.

Oscar wilted to the ground with one cheek against the rough stone of the dried-up fountain, silent and breathing slower and slower until Elijah could no longer hear him, too drained and exhausted to deal with anymore trepidation. His legs were sprawled out next to him rather than under him, and Elijah stared at the bare, slender feet, muddy and embedded with tiny stones, blades of short grass plastered to his soles. They looked wild. ‘Hurt?’ He raised his head and stared around as if the injury were on the side of the landscape, and he came to watch the beaten and rocky path which they had bolted along. Still no one else followed them - or, rightly, Oscar. ‘I’m not hurt, no… are you? What happened to your shoes?’ A rough mountain wind barged into Elijah’s back, throwing his hair over his face, and he slid down off his seat to join Oscar on the floor, their shoulders pressed together.

[understanding]

Couldn't Oscar sleep for years? The side of his face throbs painfully and he's bewildered to find himself here in this deserted place, foreign plants crowded around them. He's leaning on Elijah without thinking it and hadnft there been a man in the water? This is not the world Oscar believed in for himself. For a time, he listens without speaking and as tense as iron. The ground beneath them is as hard as rock and though stock still, Oscar can feel the blood tracing its way through the both of them. They could be the only two on earth and not a ghost in sight. Elijah is warm.

"No," he replies unsteadily, "I'm not hurt, not really. But. I don't know." Without a way to really answer him, Oscar starts over. "I hid my magic from my parents for seven years." He clears his throat and looks Elijah straight in the face, "But I don't know where I left my shoes." One little laugh like a pulse between them.