And be it gash or gold it will not come again in this identical guise. [OPEN]

[heardmermaids.livejournal.com]

Who: Sebastian and YOU? (Also, Podder and Sol.)
What: Part open post, part wizard talk.
Where: The open post can be for anywhere in Hellsing Guild House or Baedal.
When: Newdi
Notes: I've been so slow about posting this open thread. *sob*
Warnings: None, yet.

Always adaptable, Sebastian has found it easy to settle into life in Baedal. There are times when he thinks it's the best of both worlds: he doesn't need to lie about his abilities (or lack thereof) and he's able to do useful, constructive things. Most of his days are filled with rebuilding and repairing the Hellsing Guild Hall and the evenings walking through the city or working through Malfoy's never ending reading list. It's not an ideal existence, but for as long as he's in exile from Britain it's the best he can hope for.

Comments

[cailisairgid]

It's a good space, and Sol's been down here to work on it himself when he's got the time; it's much more familiar to him, comfortable, something he doesn't really think of as work. From the looks of things, he's been at it a while, maybe come down earlier to clear his mind.

"I'm glad you got in touch," he says, breathing smoke out and thinking not for the first time about how he should probably actually quit sometime in the near future. (It never happens, but he genuflects to good sense now and then.)

[heardmermaids.livejournal.com]

"Thank you for, well, even if you're a sounding board for anything at all I appreciate that you're taking the time to listen." Occasionally when Sebastian is being particularly earnest about something, he loses the war weary and aged veteran feel and can come across as shockingly young.

"I don't really know where to go from here though. When I try and explain things to Malfoy he gives me this look that says I was raised by wolves and know just about as much as Velcro."

[cailisairgid]

"I don't think that's your fault," Sol says, crouched by the garden, amicable; even if all he does is listen, which might well be how it works out if their magic is incompatible (he'd prefer 'mage' to 'wizard', the latter being something he could probably never call himself with a straight face - and neither of them most of the time, while he's still officially Just The Lawyer), he's glad to do it. He feels like he can see what Sebastian needs, but it's not entirely up to him whether or not he can provide it, or how. "Why don't we start with how it is for you? How it started, how you've experienced it. Walk me through it."

[heardmermaids.livejournal.com]

Sebastian pauses, taking a bit of time to check over what he wants to say before speaking. "Some of this is a bit out of order, because you'll need more information about how my world works before it makes sense, but the basic story is that my parents died when I was very young, they were wizards and there was a terrible war. After that, I was given to relatives that knew of magic but hated it and told me nothing about it."

"Which didn't stop my talent from cropping up in strange ways: talking to snakes, outrunning bullies, and things like that. I tried to stop, I tried anything to stop and nothing made it go away." His voice is distant, as if he's working to maintain a strong separation between events and his emotions. "One day, when I was ten, letters started to come and when my relatives didn't answer, eventually, the wizarding school sent someone to take me away and it was wonderful. I had a birthday cake."

"After that, six years of practical education. All spells were taught by rote, with latin or latin-like words, specific actions, and that was the norm. All wizards need a wand and very few can cast without one -- I could, still can," he says wryly. He might not be able to cast a variety of spells, but there is power in the one he can wield. "It was brilliant for me. I was always very poor in written work, didn't really read anything until I got older, but the hands-on was good. I didn't do well in memorizing spells or the fussy things, but for charms or defense against the dark arts, I did well. And, Merlin, I could fly to beat the best of them."

"Even in my first year, the war began again and I was fighting. It continued on, with periods of quiet and short, hidden battles for years until I was eighteen and then it was all war. There was a lot of disagreement on our side because it wasn't considered sporting or, ah, appropriate to adapt spells, but I thought it less sporting to die because the traditional counter-curse didn't always work." Sol might notice that it's easier for him to talk about war than his early childhood. "In the final days of the war, we found a way to remove the magic of their leader by tying my talent to his and ripping them both away. So, we did."

[cailisairgid]

A part of Sol recoils on a basic, visceral level from the idea of being without magic - it's more than the idea of limb-loss, akin to having a part of his identity torn out - and he exhales it out without changing his expression, his hands clasped loose between his knees where he's crouching. It isn't something that helps Sebastian any, and he controls it; this is not the place or the time, and it's not the only part of this story that turns his stomach.

(Ambrose's memories are never so very far away, and it is a dying father's rage that echoes hatred of the church to the idea of Sebastian given to such people as he imagines lie behind those words without detail.)

"It isn't gone, though," he says, probing.

[heardmermaids.livejournal.com]

"Not everything. I've one spell left and it's a good one: a patronus. Hermione would say that 'it's a manifestation of a memory or emotion strong enough to mimic an aspect of the caster's psyche and take corporeal form,' or something to that effect." It hurts a bit to cast, like he's tugging at scar tissue, but the fact that he still can is important to him.

"Part of the problem is that no one is really sure why my magic is gone. Yes, we did the spell to bind and trap my magic, but you can't remove it entirely and I know that," he says shifting his weight and rummaging in a pocket for a slightly stale pack of cigarettes. He's a stress smoker and that he was able to get through his history without lighting up before says something. "My opponent in the war, Voldemort, he'd been splitting up his soul and hiding pieces in objects and animals to make him functionally immortal -- you can't kill the man without getting each piece, like Koschei and his heart.

"When he heard about a prophesy, he came to kill me, and while he took my parents he botched the job, destroying his body and stuffing a piece of his soul in me." Unconsciously, he rubs at the scar on his forehead and before lighting his cigarette and taking a drag. "My 'condition', if you want to call it that, could be because of the magical binding, could be because there's a big hole in my soul from hacking him out, could be because after I destroyed every other horcrux and stopped his body again there was only one way to destroy the last piece of him."