I'd give an arm and a leg (Felix)

[Deleted]

All just to get her back...

Ilija had promised to take his brother to Madagaskar with him. The two had finally managed to talk some things over and Ilija had found it was probably easier and best for both of them if he showed his brother where he used to live. If he showed Felix around where so much of his life had taken place. The two had come to understand they both had missed each other, and missed out on the help they could have gotten from each other. At least they were finally working through things. It made quite a significant difference. After arriving and meeting with Ilija's oldest friend that had offered to let them stay for free in his house, Ilija had first taken Felix to the local bar, where they were seated now. It was lucky, in a way, that his friend knew perfectly well of his inability to sleep in a bed, so Felix had taken the guest room and Ilija had gotten his own perfect spot on the sofa. He'd never been quite as grateful. He held a piece of parchment and a quill that he put on the table not long after they'd sat down and ordered some drinks.

Ilija looked at Felix for a moment. "Okay, I'm not fully sure what you think is best. I figured we could either take today to get settled in, or start the story if you wish." He offered with a bit of a smile. "Regardless of that, I figured we could go to the graves of Floyd and Hannah tomorrow, get some flowers. I want to briefly visit the couple that bought the house I used to live in after dinner, but you don't have to come along to that if you don't want to. They're good friends of mine." Well, in this village pretty much everybody was friends with everybody and Ilija had already noticed that his reappearance had gotten quite a bit of attention. He'd have a lot of catching up to do while he was over. "I have a bit of a mind map in head in terms of the memories to go through though." He said as he drew a bit of a timeline. "Pretty much just some of the events that led up to the last letter and then the most significant ones after that. I'll leave the actual accident out of the mix and if you still want to see it at the very end you can, but I don't think it's wise. It's... well it's not something you want to see happening." He said, as he had no better way to put it.

"So, what do you think?" He asked Felix then, putting down the quill on the parchment as their drinks arrived. He was leaving his brother in charge, but clearly knew exactly what he needed to share in order to get the pictures across.

felix valentin fortescue

[felix valentin fortescue]

At Ilija's proposition that they go to Madagascar together so that he could visit Floyd's and Hannah's graves, Felix hadn't known what to think at first. He was still trying to process the fact that their father was really dead—never mind that he had only learned about Hannah's death from Ilija well after the fact and had struggled with his brother's failure to bring it up sooner. They were trying to move on with their lives, and it didn't help that everything felt like it was falling apart at the seams. For all of the time they had had to prepare for the loss of their father, it did still feel strange to Felix, whose reaction had been one of numbness more than anything else. He had had time to think about it and to understand that he would have to step up as the "man of the house", in a way. With Hannah's death, meanwhile, it remained more raw because he hadn't known, and it had been dropped on him so suddenly.

The near-destruction of Hogwarts even more recently was what had pushed him to accept Ilija's offer more definitively, since Felix didn't know if he would ever get another opportunity to go to Madagascar to see the final resting places of the woman who had effectively been his sister-in-law and his nephew. He had no idea how he would be received in a small village in Madagascar, apart from the obvious that he knew he wasn't about to out himself as being transgender in a foreign country where he didn't really know the people or the culture.

It was definitely strange to be in Madagascar, Felix felt, even if Ilija's friend had been extremely hospitable towards them. He hadn't been anywhere like it, and he was acutely aware of his being out of place as they sat at the local bar with the parchment and quill that Ilija had pulled out. It was at that point that Ilija relayed his thoughts on their itinerary to him, saying that they could start by settling in or with the story of how Hannah had died. Felix didn't know if he preferred to have that told to him before or after he had had some alcohol.

Ilija kept talking, and Felix did his best to listen to what his brother was saying. He didn't really know how he felt about socializing so much, and it was strange for him to see how at home Ilija seemed to be now that he was back in Madagascar. He also added that he had some idea of the memories that he wanted to share with him, and Felix nodded slightly. He knew that it would be weird to dive into his brother's brain, but he considered himself lucky that he wasn't a Legilimens. (It might have been useful back when Ilija had come home so infrequently, though…)

"So, what do you think?"

Felix nodded in thanks as his rum arrived, set down upon the table before him, right as he was about to give Ilija a response. "Yeah, erm… I don't mind going to dinner with you and your friends, but er…" He wasn't as certain about the memories, and he took a sip of the rum and tried not to choke when he realized how strong it was. "Whatever memories you'd like to show me, I mean…" They'd watched their father die, after all, and Felix felt that everything sounded rather tame in comparison to what the students at Hogwarts had just had to witness. "I can handle it."

@ilija

[Deleted]

In a way, everything the students at Hogwarts had to go through recently was rather confronting to Ilija and he most certainly wanted to make sure that he contacted Renfri about it at some point. Considering the accident she'd had it was bound to have been a highly traumatising experience for her. His own memories of what happened with Hannah were similar in a sense. He'd seen her consumed by flames to disappear into nothingness. His own leg had utterly disintegrated and there was nothing left to save beyond the stump they'd attached the prosthetic to. Maybe he could see about creating a support group for the students that wanted to talk about their trauma? It actually wasn't a really bad idea. Maybe he'd enlist the help of an actual therapist with a trauma specialisation, but he figured it might be good for them to have somebody to talk to that at least understood what they were going through to an extent.

Felix considered it carefully, which Ilija appreciated, although he wasn't quite sure about the rum his brother had ordered. Despite this town being rather small their hospital (which was also rather small) was one of the very best in the entire wizarding world. The town reflected that, as everybody there tended to have the mindset of a healer or the trauma of a patient that had learned them to value life to a whole new extent. Had Ilija known them to be against transgenders, he might not have brought his brother here at all. All the locals at least were quite open minded and while he most certainly wasn't going to out Felix, he knew that nobody would bother him about it, except perhaps to ask every minute little detail about his treatment plan in order to improve their own or tell him about some of the things they'd investigated. This was a strange place to live, but to Ilija it would never stop being home. There would always be a part of him that wanted to move back here and feel that sense of support that a big city like London lacked so utterly. The people here made him feel whole, rather than broken.

Ilija broke out the pensieve he'd rented from the hospital and took a deep breath. "One minute." He said, as he plucked the first memory out of his mind and tossed it in. "I'm just going to tell the barman what's up so he'll keep the table free. He might set up some curtains or something, although this certainly wouldn't be the first time this place is used for memory dives." He himself had done it with friends a few times. He actually remembered that he'd once done a memory dive with a group into the party of a memory, just to have a party without having to clean up the mess. It was one of the weirdest experiences of his life. With that he got up and walked over to the barman, the pensieve swirling around as the memory stood prepared, in a way.

Ilija had a brief and friendly conversation with the man, since just about everybody here was a friend of his. He came back after, a slight smile on his face as he shook his head. "He'll keep things clear. There's a group coming in tonight doing a memory dive party and he invited me to join. Told him I didn't have the time." He said with a slight chuckle. He still found it a very weird way to party. He waved it off slightly as he sat down and motioned towards the pensieve. "Whenever you're ready." He said, ready to touch the surface of the liquid as soon as his brother was ready for it too.

felix valentin fortescue

[felix valentin fortescue]

Summer 2026

Ilija pulled out a Pensieve and instructed Felix to wait. He did and nodded his head, but his mind immediately went back to the conversation he and Vasilia had had with Ilija where he'd found out that Hannah hadn't just up and left without a trace; she was dead. Felix watched as Ilija retrieved the memory, plucking the fibers of it from his memory and allowed it to fall into the basin. "I'm just going to tell the barman what's up so he'll keep the table free. He might set up some curtains or something, although this certainly wouldn't be the first time this place is used for memory dives," Ilija added.

"Alright," Felix said, looking around. He had never experienced anything like that… going to a bar specifically to dive into different memories? That sort of thing never would have happened back in London. Most people didn't use Pensieves, even though they were useful on occasion. Back home, pubs were meant for ordering rounds of drinks, maybe catching up on news or something… He'd never seen a group of people just drinking around a Pensieve, but that sounded like it must have been a common enough occurrence in Madagascar.

Ilija got up, although he wasn't gone for very long. Felix could see that he was conversing with the man who was tending bar, though he couldn't hear what they were saying. In any case, Ilija returned, seeming positive still. "He'll keep things clear. There's a group coming in tonight doing a memory dive party," he explained, "and he invited me to join. Told him I didn't have the time."

As Ilija chuckled, Felix found himself laughing a little along with him. "Yeah," he agreed with his brother, "that's…" It was different, at least from his perspective as a pale ginger kid from England who'd never attended a "memory dive party". He could only imagine what such a thing might entail, especially with the liquor's being as strong as it was.

Turning the subject of their conversation back to the Pensieve that they were using, Ilija instructed him to go whenever he was ready. Felix looked down at the silvery wisp in the Pensieve and then up at Ilija. He knew that this wasn't going to be a party for them, exactly, and he could feel his heart skipping a beat. He counted backwards in his head from three and then entered Ilija's memory.

@ilija