No, this is not a Hogwarts AU. Yes, I'm disappointed too.
For TLC Ship Weeks
Week two, day four: Lucky
~:~
Felix Felicis
Prompt: Lucky
To be honest, he buys the bottle on a whim, and it's mostly because it looks pretty. Liquid Luck, the label informs him, and the witch with the telescope eyes smiles at him slyly. He shrugs, hands her three hundred sixty four univs and a swallow's feather, and pockets the bottle along with a ridiculously bulky instructions pamphlet.
He doesn't drink it immediately. No, he places it carefully on his cluttered desk and forgets all about it for exactly three months.
.
He's rifling through his pockets for gum while working the Rampion into a tricky descent back to Earth when he finds the instructions booklet instead. Thorne whistles. The ship tilts. Sirens blare. Darla monotones a warning. He screams a little, drops the pamphlet and forgets about it for another three months.
.
Finally, six months, eleven days after having bought his luck, Carswell Thorne drinks it without reading the instructions.
It tastes a little like tea, a little like honey. There's a bitter sting in the beginning, followed by a sour tang, but in the end it's just misty sweetness. Twelve seconds in, the dizziness hits him. He keels over, stars dancing over his eyes, pinpricks on his spine. He starts regretting all kinds of past decisions that led to this moment when it all stops with a thunderclap at the base of his skull.
A soft wind chime ringing remains a lonely echo in the background. White noise. And there's still just a dash of stars on the corner of his vision. He sees something yellow and red flutter away in the periphery, and then it's gone, and everything is black.
He passes out.
.
Felix Felicis: liquid luck for losers.
(*) Dosage: Two drops every twelve hours.
(*) It is recommended that the potion be diluted with water or any non-alcoholic beverage (except lemonade).
(*) Store in a cool, dry place, and do not, by any means, lick the bottle.
(*) Do not shake the bottle, spill its contents, or smear it on oneself or others.
(*) Do not sing back to the luck, if it sings to you.
(*) Do not speak to the luck.
(*) Do not get the luck drunk.
(*) Do not ingest in case of nut allergy.
(*) Side effects may include: flatulence, hypersensitivity, fainting spells, falling in love, hallucinations, inability to sneeze, death, unhappiness, anger, ability to dance the sattriya, forgetfulness, claustrophobia, unreasonable intense love for cats, bees, birds, mice, rabbits, dogs, and all things furry.
(*) In case of overdose, cross your fingers and hope you die.
.
He wakes up with no headache, no dizziness, no nausea. In fact, his vision seems sharper, his senses more alert, and there's a really nice song playing in his head. Or maybe from the next room?
He isn't even lying on the floor, and he's sure that's where he'd passed out. But he's on his bed, fully clothed and feeling like he's on a cloud. Stars. The luck must be taking effect already. He did drink a whole bottle.
He gets up, steps out to the corridor, and towards the control room. Even the hum of his ship is more pleasant today—a soft, steady buzz instead of the hiccupping noise it had been making all week ever since a wood nymph painted a rude rune on the side hatch.
"Good morning, Darla," he says because he feels amazing. It's four in the evening.
"Good morning, Captain," Darla says in her usual monotone.
Thorne nearly trips. He had been trying to get Darla to call him "Captain" ever since he'd…acquired the Rampion. But noooo, her records indicated that Carswell Thorne was a Cadet, and Cadet was all she ever called him.
"Pleasant day?" she asks him.
He just stands there, breathing in and out, in and out, until it all settles on him. Best three hundred sixty four univs he ever spent! Oh, and a swallow's feather
"The best," he tells his ship.
The song in his head pauses for a second. He thinks he hears an excited squeal, and maybe a clap. He sees yellow in the corner of his eyes. Like a mess of hair. But when he turns there's nothing there but a wooden crate of what he thinks is crystal balls of divination he stole from a very gullible merchant a few months ago.
The song resumes and everything is okay.
.
His luck that day, and the day after that, and the day after that, and the day after that, is amazing.
His take offs are perfect, his landings are phenomenal. He's even able to do a loop de loop without soiling himself. He finds not one, not two, but three museums set on minimal security because of temporary budget cuts. He finds an auction house disabled entirely of all electronic security for a whole twenty minutes because of a grid-wide power cut. It doesn't rain once when he's out, doesn't so much as get cloudy. He finds a semi-precious stone just lying on the side of road, finds a full stick of gum in his pockets. He finds his favourite pair of underwear that he thought he'd lost.
He finds a cat outside someone's apartment and brings it home with him.
Most importantly, Darla still continues to address him as Captain.
It's the perfect week.
And all the while there's that song playing in his head. He loves it. Sometimes he sings along because he knows all the words by heart now. He also keeps catching the hint of blond hair rustling past in his periphery. He hasn't caught a face yet, but he thinks it's a girl. Or maybe a Wookie.
Whoever it is, seems to always be around when something particularly good happens. So, whoever it is, Thorne decides that he already likes them.
.
His perfect week turns into the perfect month.
Then it's two months. Then, three. Then, four.
He names his cat Boots.
He wonders if he might get sick of having perfect days, but he doesn't. It's comforting actually. As is that song. It's still around, playing over and over and over, and when it's silent, he finds himself humming it.
He keeps catching little glimpses of the blonde girl. He tries to follow her several times, tries to talk to her. But she's never around for any longer than five seconds, and he never even gets to see her face.
He keeps trying though. And he keeps hearing her song. And he keeps having perfect, lucky days.
.
He's haggling with a three eyed, green scaled hobgoblin (six thousand univs for the crate of crystal divination balls) when he sees his lucky "Wookie".
Turns out it's actually a girl. And she's too short to be a Wookie. But aces, the hair!
It goes on and on and on, like she's never cut in all her life—tied and braided and piled up like a Jubjub bird's nest. There's a bright red ribbon winding through it in complicated ties, ending in a neat bow by her waist. She looks absolutely ridiculous, and ridiculously adorable.
She skips up from behind him, a bounce in her step, pink in her cheeks, and whispers something to the hobgoblin who seems to have not noticed her at all. His expression turns from disgruntled annoyance to resignation. He sighs and forces a smile at Thorne.
"Fine, fine. Six thousand univs," the hobgoblin says. The girl grins, all bright white teeth and crinkles in the corner of her big blue eyes that look like they could swallow her face, that is, if her hair doesn't get there first. She does a small, excited bounce and claps her hands together.
"Hi," Thorne blurts.
The hobgoblin narrows his eyes. The girl freezes. She turns slowly, and her large, large eyes go larger still. Her face turns pale first, for about two seconds, then it turns the same shade as her ribbon. She looks at the hobgoblin, who still doesn't seem to have noticed her, then looks back up at Thorne, turns to look behind her, then back again at him.
She squeaks and covers her mouth.
Thorne grins.
The hobgoblin frowns.
"Nice hair," he tells her.
She jumps back, and with a little, startled poof, disappears altogether.
Thorne sighs.
The hobgoblin smiles bashfully.
"Thanks," he says.
.
He doesn't see the girl again. And his luck also seems to be fading just a touch.
It could be that the potions wearing off, or it could be that he startled the girl into abandoning him altogether. He's pretty convinced that it was she bringing him the luck. How exactly, he's not quite sure. He's not very good at understanding magic. Or technology. Or apparently magical potion girls.
His ship starts making that unhealthy hiccupping noise again.
He wakes up one morning with a hangnail. He loses his favourite underwear. And for the first time in five months, it rains the moment he steps out of his ship.
It's awful. But what can he do? How is he supposed to bring back someone who may or may not live in this plane of existence. Where does she go when she isn't bringing him luck? Back to her bottle? Unlikely. To the witch with the telescope eyes? Maybe. To hair conventions? Entirely possible.
He scrambles to find the instructions booklet he dropped a lifetime ago. He reads it from cover to cover, everything from the footnotes, to the little acknowledgements section at the back and decides that it is completely useless.
He runs out of gum the next day.
.
When Darla calls him "Cadet" a week later, he decides that this is quite enough, thank you. He thinks about going back to the witch for another bottle first. But having read the instructions three times over, he's reminded of all the warnings about overdose and reconsiders.
There's only one more possible thing to do. And it's incredibly silly.
Sitting on floor with his back leaning against his bed, he fiddles with the empty liquid luck bottle for almost an hour before his butt starts to hurt and he finally speaks up to the thin air.
"I'm sorry," he tells the girl who isn't probably even here. "Uh…Miss Felicis?"
There's no answer. Surprise, surprise. Boots walks in and makes herself comfortable on his lap. He scratches her behind her ears and she starts to purr.
"Are you there?"
He decides to just keep talking. Her song has also disappeared and he's come to realise he finds it hard to sleep without it.
"I just wanted to thank you for the luck…thing you do. And the song. Is that you singing? Because wow. You're good. Have you considered going professional? You should. I'd go to your concerts. So would Darla. Probably."
Silence.
He's never felt this foolish before, and he's been known to do some incredibly foolish things.
He's about to walk away and pretend this never happened (it's not like Boots is going to tell on him) when he catches a flash of yellow outside his door.
"Hello," he shouts, a little afraid that she might have already dashed off.
He hears a delicate squeak. Then, a moment later, a deep breath.
"Hi," she mumbles.
Oh, it was definitely her singing in his head, he knows immediately.
"What's your name?" He tries to get up and walk over to her, but the second he moves, she scrambles further away behind the wall. He stops and sits back down. She moves a little closer.
"Cress," she tells him.
"Like watercress?" he asks, incredulously before he realises that might be rude.
"No," she says. "Like Crescent Moon."
"Oh." A pause. "That's pretty."
She peeks shyly at him, her face almost hidden behind a curtain of honey, and he realises that she's pretty.
"And you're Captain Carswell Thorne," she sounds really proud to know this. And he's just over the moon to hear her call him Captain without being prompted to.
Boots wakes up. She jumps away from him and saunters up to Cress. He's afraid that the cat might scare her away but instead Cress makes the loudest, happiest shriek and gathers Boots up in her arms. It's the nicest sound he's heard ever since she stopped singing.
"Are you mad at me?" he asks suddenly because it's been eating at him for a while.
She pauses babbling nonsense at the cat to look at him. "No," she says with a confused tilt of her head. "Why?"
"Uh, it's just, my luck's not been all that great recently," he explains. "And I thought that maybe you were angry at me or something?"
"No!" she looks absolutely horrified. Or perhaps insulted. "I wouldn't do that."
"Oh. Okay."
"Our contract has run out," she tells him.
"We have a contract?"
She nods. "The potion is supposed to last for six months."
Right. Of course.
"Sorry," he says.
She fiddles nervously with her hair.
"Well," he stands up, slowly this time so not as to frighten her away. She's like a bird, or a doe—easily startled. "Thanks for all the luck."
She turns bright red again as he takes her hand, giving it a firm shake. "Best six months of my life."
"You're welcome," she squeaks.
He grins.
Then, on a whim, just like the one that made him buy that bottle of liquid luck, he leans down an gives her a quick peck on the cheek.
He hears a sharp intake of breath, a flutter of eyelashes against his cheek. There's a poof and he blinks and she's gone.
Boots lands on her feet, and beside her is a red, red ribbon.
.
The next day he finds the witch with the telescope eyes and buys another bottle of liquid luck.
He doesn't bother to read the instructions this time either.
I almost didn't finish this on time. Almost.