Lysander Scamander And His Alternate Dreams
Their lives seem doomed to become legendarily romantic, Lysander Scamander reflects, half-amused. That, or terribly melodramatic. He looks up at the sky, the sun just about to set behind the foothills of ye merry olde Hogsmeade, throwing its glances of sunlight off the curves of the scudding clouds, highlighting the sky with patches of beige and gray, the linings of the clouds a cream-coloured white.
A breeze stirred his hair, flopping strands directly into his eyes and bending the grass. More to the point, Lysander groaned to himself, the dramatic background - or romantic one - simply had to include the striking background of that one stark, stripped oak, its bare branches bleak shadows in the almost melancholy patches of light, whispering and echoing. He scratched his head and flicked his wand, conjuring a small table and a pair of chairs, their grains exactly matching the image in his mind.
Resting one hand on the back of a chair, Lysander smiled vacantly, his thoughts already on what he had dreamed. His hands brushed through his hair and he stilled momentarily, memories of his mother combing his hair and talking about Nargles and Wrackspurts filling him.
The scene changed, and he saw her again, his first friend-of-a-friend that became a real friend, happy and joyful, her face delighted beyond measure. He looked up from his tracing of the grain of the table and looked at the oak again, mapping the path of the branches with his eyes. He itched to draw it, itched to capture the moment like his father could without a camera, but knew that his own meagre skills were nowhere near good enough.
Hogsmeade. Funny how he'd been going to it, semi-regularly, for four years - and irregularly before that. He hadn't noticed this oak before, standing denuded but somehow still proud - austere, the word was, without its crown of leaves. He could have said that he'd seen it before, maybe in his dreams, but then he dreamed of many things and he'd probably dreamed of it before, sometime. Well. He wasn't in Hogsmeade proper, but a field, a meadow of yellowing grass, just outside its boundaries. Maybe he'd never noticed the oak before because he'd never seen it before.
As loyal to his brother as he might have been, sneaking out beyond the boundaries of Hogsmeade had never seemed like a wise idea - what was there to see, anyway? He had Hogwarts - he finally had Friends - Albus Potter, the Potters in general, the Weasleys in general - and of course the popular Weasley-Potter-Hogwarts-at-large entertainment of watching Rose Weasley and Scorpius Malfoy stumble around each other. To be honest, though their family histories practically demanded that one of the Weasleys or Potters would end up falling in love with Scorpius (despite what they thought, he wouldn't have been surprised if it had ended up being a bloke), he hadn't seen Rose and Scorpius coming, right up until they got together. And then...and then, it was a palpable shock.
It didn't help that, as a girl so outright friendly, and to boot his first real, close, friend, he'd had...alright...feelings for her, once. It was mostly his fault that it was a shock, though; he'd drawn away, following Al and Louis to hang out at a different part of the school, away from the library, because the number of slags and skanks of the male and female variety using the library as a private alcove had begun to turn his stomach.
A crack of displaced air had his head turning; he greeted Rose Weasley with a smile. A little vacant-in-the-head, his so-called friends had called him, alongside other whispers of 'creepy', and 'flying as high as a bleeding dragon most of the bloody time' - James Potter, that one, the skank, he'd been one of the people who'd driven him away from the library in the first place - but his gaze undoubtedly had gotten more vacant, because Rose got worried. "'Sander," she said, " 're you in there?"
"Oh. Um, yeah," Lysander said, absent-mindedly brushing his hair back from his eyes. "It's...good to see you."
Rose looked at him for a few silent moments before turning away from him to look at the oak that had so occupied him before. "Nice place you've found here."
"Thanks," he said, before getting a small grip on his rampant emotions - this might be the last time he saw her, for Merlin's sake, but then it might not, either - graduation from Hogwarts tended to polarise relationships. They either became deep friendships or romantic relationships that lasted for the rest of people's lives, or people drifted away from each other altogether.
He hoped selfishly that Rose and he would not become strangers to each other; certainly, he was going to travel like his parents, and she to stay in England, but...
"I'm glad you came," he said, daring another smile. Her return smile was tired, watery, and altogether nothing like the Rose he had met truly in third year, despite their sharing a House together.
He had always kept to himself, but Al's befriending of Louis Weasley (and the ensuing mischief) had brought Rose down on them like a ton of bricks. She'd been random, scattered, a little too chatty about the oddest of things; something like what the Weasley and Potter tales had told about his mother, ironically. But she'd been so happy about everything, so enthusiastic, that every class he'd had seemed brighter, after that. But after she'd hooked up with Scorpius Malfoy - who he also remembered in third year, but only vaguely, nothing like what he meant to Rose today - her smiles became tired; the previous exuberance replaced with a quiet contentment. That contentment was the only thing that had prevented Lysander from hexing Scorpius, honestly, because where'd happy Rose go?
Although thinking on it now, her enthusiasm had faded over the last four years; apparently the strain of keeping that smile up every single day had worn on her, taken its troll. (Yes, he meant troll.)
"Here, sit down, sit down," he bustled at her, pulling back her chair with a wave of his wand. She did smile slightly stronger at him this time, and sat down, sinking her head onto her hands almost immediately. She was staring at him, he realised uncomfortably, and he tried not to squirm as he took his own seat.
He'd always liked her hair. Red-gold - mostly red - it'd curled back from her head in slightly wavy lines, and frizzed at times. She'd used to spaz about it when she was pointing out her faults or just complaining in general, and Louis and Al and he would all indulge her with nodding and general agreement until she got pissed off enough with their smug looks to bash them over the head before storming off to find female sympathy. Now, it frizzed dully in the warm, melancholy sunshine, almost as dull as her eyes, a rare hazel lined with vermillion, as well. Her eyes, her entire body posture gestured with stiffness and a little bit of fear.
There'd been so much drama with Scorpius and her over the past year that she was undoubtedly afraid that he'd try to confess his undying love for her or something and complicate the situation further. Well...he might have done that in fifth year, but he wouldn't do so, now.
She kept watching him. It was a physical pain to see her so dull, so quiet, so unlike Rose Weasley, because his memories of her had been so strong, before. A not-entirely unjustified wave of guilt arose in him, about having abandoned her like Al and Louis. "...Well?"
Never mind, she'd cracked first.
"I dreamed about you and Scorpius."
She looked at him, disgust twisting in her expression. Oh, had he mentioned that one of his nicknames, probably the most hurtful out of all of them, was 'pervert'? And, once or twice, she'd said that at him...
"No, not like that," he hastily added, wincing.
"Oh good, I was worried," she smirked at him, mirroring Scorpius' early attempts at a happy smile. "And here I thought you were being a pervert again, asking me about our sex lives."
Lysander winced again. Sometimes, Rose seemed like she could almost read his thoughts.
"And no, I can't read your thoughts."
Whaaat?
"Your own body language screams it well enough. So help me, I studied it." Her smile at him turned a little wry, a little helpless. "Scorpius teased me about it, at least until I--"
"Regardless of what I might have accidentally implied, I don't need to hear about you and Scorpius' sex life!"
She laughed at him. " 'Your', and 'Sander, you're too easy to tease."
"Well, well, I, ah, nevermind."
A pause, and Lysander abruptly found the sky very interesting, although he'd found it interesting before, the wistful gold-vermillion light beginning to settle around them, haloing Rose's face in the sunset's dimming.
"You're not here to talk about nargles infecting my ears, are you."
"Strictly speaking, it's not nargles that infect your ears, it's--"
"--Wrackspurts," they both finished with smiles, and Rose continued the familiar lecture, even as he was content to simply watch her, to drink in the feeble last kickings of a dying static friendship before they had to part. "--and strictly speaking, they don't infect your ears, they use it as a passageway to your brain, which makes them able to make you act like a total and complete fool, so, and I know this makes me sound hypocritical, but get your heads out of Rose's books, you twats!"
"Haha, yeah," Lysander said, rubbing the back of his head. "But do I really say it that often?"
"Yes," Rose said, completing the ritual that any of them did at him when they thought he was being more vacant than usual.
"...So, and I know this makes me sound hypocritical," Lysander said and Rose cracked a grin, "...but you're insecure."
The grin vanished like Fred and James when confronted with consequences of their actions.
"What? No. I'm not insecure with Scorpius! I'm certainly not! We're perfectly fine!"
Lysander watched her sadly until what she'd said sunk in.
"Oh Merlin, I am insecure about Scorpius and I, aren't I?"
He looked away. The Rose Weasley he'd dreamed about, the one he'd mentioned, had been perfectly secure with Scorpius. But then, the circumstances had been completely different. Merlin, had Rose been owed a life-debt by Scorpius who was happily paying it off by loving her, he doubted that she would be as insecure now. But circumstances, circumstances...
The thing about his mother, despite all the tales, was that she had a touch of Divination. That had been a trait through all of the Lovegood family, daughter or son, and he had - modestly, humbly - a trace of it too. His grandfather Xenophillius had raised his mother to believe whole-heartedly in everything she dreamed, because at times what she dreamed did come true. That was where all the Nargles and Wrackspurts and Crumpled-Horn Snorkacks came from, dreams, although he had to admit that the Crumpled-Horn Snorkack was apparently a Lovegood-recurring dream, because he had it, his grandfather apparently had it, and his father did not despite believing his mother completely and totally.
His family still took annual trips to find it, because that many people with Divination talents dreaming about it had to have some basis in fact...right?
Rose was still rambling on, discussing with herself animatedly about what the newly discovered insecurity had affected in her relationship with Scorpius. Lysander let her talk, immersed in his own thoughts. His grandfather had believed in everything, to the point of denying that the world was not as he had believed. His dreams, wide and varied as they might have been, was part of this world, too, and he started the Quibbler to 'show to the world' what the 'real world was like'.
I make no excuse for my grandfather - I don't think he was wrong - but he could have been more right. Oh Merlin, I sound like a prat.
His mother, Luna Lovegood, had started out like his grandfather, but then the war intervened, and she couldn't block out the world anymore. So she still believed her dreams, but the 'real world' of her father's was taken over by this real world, characterised by the struggle against Lord Death-From-Running, so she had become more practical than his grandfather.
But me? I...do believe in my dreams, but I know that dreams are real somewhere else, though not here. Not here...
"Rose?" Lysander's voice cut through the burgeoning darkness, the trails of thready evening beginning to creep through the pensive sunbeams.
"Y-yes?" she said, startled out of her growing rant.
"Do you want to hear about you and Scorpius, in that other world?"
Her mouth opened and closed for a second, and Lysander suddenly thought, This is going to be a memory I carry with me for a long time, and memorised how she looked like and the field and sky around them, autumnal and fading to gilt-edged darkness, to add to his other truly content memories, the ones he could count on one hand type of memories.
Rose closed her mouth. Took a deep, long breath. "Yes," she said firmly, her eyes closed.
"In that other world," Lysander began, noting with amusement how Rose slipped into her 'listening' pose, noting how he would miss it himself.
"In that other world, you and I and Louis and Al were thieves. Thieves of the best kind, because we could steal anything. We were all part of two-simian teams--"
Rose blinked. "What?"
"Two-simian teams? One human, one monkey? That ring any bells?"
She glared at him, but let him continue.
"--But not on a team with each other. We were wildly successful." He grinned suddenly, lost in the influx of memories from his dream self, of highly successful heists and thefts. "Then once, we needed a decoy, and Base swapped you for my simian partner, David, so that our pursuers would follow both simians, suited as they were for evasion. We got to know each other, then, because before then we'd only known each other through reputation and not much else."
That reminded him of how they'd known each other, before Louis and Al. Through reputation in the classes, and maybe a few family tales, but not much else.
Rose was, uncharacteristically, still silent, watching him, listening to him.
"We got really close, then, because we were an oddly effective team...and eventually Base smarted up and paired Louis and Al together as well and had them work with us, and our success rate went through the roof. Helped that our simian partners fell in love with each other, but anyway--"
He could tell that he was losing her. Her interest had waned, because the table was jiggling a bit, her habit of jiggling her leg making itself known.
"Anyway, Scorpius!"
Her interest returned.
"Scorpius was a, a Teck-ni-tion at our base," Lysander tried to imitate what his dream self had mused, "and he was pretty quiet. You had a longtime, and I mean long-time, crush on him. You fancied the pants off him, in fact. He didn't know what to do about you. Thieves, in that world, were pretty highly prestigious, though his parents didn't think too well of thieves and yours was a family business."
Her face had begun to close off from what he could see in the mellowing evening and Lysander hurried his story, knowing how close it paralleled Rose's troubles with Scorpius in the first place.
"There was a mansion," Lysander began to babble, trying to keep ahead of her expression, "In the middle of winter, when the snow packed hard in the rafters. You'd gone in there after a particularly famous vase, but what surprised you was that after the door unlocked, you found Scorpius' unconscious body inside, his face completely stunned. So you tried to wake him up, couldn't, and finally acted on that crush. You dragged his sorry unconscious ass home. Apparently the first thing he said when he woke up was, "Go out with me?""
Rose was smiling now, very watery. Water-rily.
"And you're probably wondering how I know it like this, but your dream-self told mine everything, then inquired about what I was doing currently. Oh, and Rose?"
Lysander waited until she looked up from where a head-propping hand had turned into a tracer for figuring out how the grain of the wood table curved.
"You were beyond joyful that he'd asked. I've never seen you that happy, since third year. It was gorgeous to see. And I heard from the rumors around base that you two were sickeningly cute together, quote unquote. Oh, and you never did get that vase."
She sat there quietly for a moment after Lysander finished, looking at him. He brushed back the hair from his eyes again where it'd flopped down, and took a breath.
"So you see, Rose, even in that other world, that other reality, you and Scorpius got together. You two were immensely happy together. You two were sickeningly cute together...like now. So don't be insecure, Rose, trust in yourself. I bet that...there are thousands and thousands of realities where you two get together and stay happily together."
"And thousands of realities where we don't?" Rose picked up on it immediately.
"Yes, well," Lysander shifted uncomfortably. "In that universe, you and I got together...so stranger things have happened."
"Oh, so now you're saying that Scorpius and I are a strange thing? Lysander Borealis Scamander!"
"That's not even my name! And that's not what I meant!...oh wait, you're joking, aren't you?"
"Yup," she said, eyes glimmering in mischief. "I am, Lysander Twinkly-Aura Scamander."
Lysander groaned and collapsed on the table, any hope of remaining serene and mysterious evaporating. "I'm never going to live that incident down, am I."
"Nope," Rose added. "I'll even add it to my owl when he finds you with our letters in whatever bloody country you're in in the next two years."
Lysander's head rose sharply, and Rose patted him on the arm. "If you think me, Louis and Al're going to abandon you just because we've left Hogwarts -- well, you, me, and Al have -- you've got another think coming."
"Oh the thinks you can think," Lysander half sing-songed, amusing himself by watching her face blank in perplexity. His mother had read him the collected works of Muggle childhood rhymes, because they were just as real as wizarding ones. Just as real, and just as alternate.
"Well..." Rose said, rising from her chair and smiling at him, "Scorpius's waiting. 'Sander?"
Lysander got up from his chair, too, and got surprised by two marginally muscular arms wrapping around his waist.
"I'm going to miss you," Rose Weasley said fiercely, and kissed him on the cheek. She Disapparated a moment later, and Lysander looked at the oak again, its branches resembling fingers in the red, red sunset. Red-gold, like Gryffindor, Louis' and Al's House, red-gold like Rose Weasley's hair.
He Vanished his table and chairs and stood watching the sunset and the clouds scudding by overhead, budding into bigger, darker puffs.
'Puffs, like Scorpius Malfoy almost had been. Hah.
The evening fell upon him, and a pop signified the igniting ball of fire designed to lead him back to Hogsmeade, should he lose his way.
"Scorpius Hyperion Malfoy," Lysander had said, marching up to Scorpius where he still looked frazzled from where James, Al, and Louis had separately threatened him over his intentions to Rose.
Lysander concealed his amusement over the Slytherin's betrayed look, before Scorpius settled back for a fourth threatening. "Relax, I'm not here to threaten you about Rose. I've seen you together, after all, and I've dreamed about you two getting together so much, it's almost a staple of my sleeping year. Happy, angsty, dramatic, whatever, I've seen it. I'm happy for you." He smiled at Scorpius, who chose to come out of his shocked state to grin a little back.
"That said, if you hurt her in any way, I will personally break your leg, grind your leg bones up to make filling for my homemade pies, and force you to eat it." He said it with a brilliant smile, and Scorpius' grin rigidified as quickly as if he'd been struck with a body bind curse.
And then Rose wondered why Scorpius had refused the pie at dinner that night.
Just the latest dream of a year, Lysander thought.
But that one was different. Because after she asked about what I was doing at the moment, I smiled. Then I kissed her, very gently, goodbye.
He looked up at the dark sky, and cast a warming charm at the insidious chill. The linings of the clouds were cyan now, the sky itself indigo. Against the lightnining backdrop - Lysander rolled his eyes, a habit he'd picked up from Al and Rose both - the already forming memory of speaking to Rose before was becoming melodramatic in his mind, becoming nostalgic, lazily tinted with the sepia of a flaking photograph. He welcomed the process - after all, that would be more easy to show to any other self that would visit him in their dreams. Dreams, unlike life after all, were meant to be dramatic. Legendarily Romantic. Terribly Melodramatic.
He only hoped that if some other self were to come in and take this memory, that they could hook up their world's Rose and Scorpius - because honestly, their tension in every single world he'd dreamed was ridiculous. And the burst of contentment that had come from being around them for everyone, really - that...every world needed a bit of that, even in the most peaceful of times.
He focused, again, on his surroundings, noting with a faint quirk of his lips that the fireball cast a flickering glow on the stark branches of the bare oak beyond him.
Lysander Rudolph Scamander quenched the flaming globe before Disapparating to his flat in London, the oak's fingers weaving a gentle farewell in the wind.