dark blue, dark blue [open]

[Deleted]

February was going to be an interesting month, Lysander could already tell. And it wasn't necessarily going to be interesting in a good way. Adeline's twin sister had been murdered at the end of January, and Sander...didn't know how to talk to her about it. He knew how he would feel if Lorcan died, but Lorcan wasn't dead, and Abigail was, and it all just seemed horribly unfair. Sander had begun to write a letter to her at least a hundred times...which explained why there were a hundred scraps of parchment in his waste bin. Sander knew that eventually, he was going to send a letter, no matter how poorly written it was, because the worst thing that could happen would be Adeline thinking that he didn't care, and that she was alone. They were friends, and he couldn't have that happening.

All of his other problems seemed pale in comparison to what he was supposed to say to Adeline, but Sander knew that, once everything settled (at least as much as it could settle) he was going to have to address his situation with Susan. How he was going to do that, he didn't have a clue, but Sander didn't regret kissing her. He had needed to know. Knowledge was power, after all. It just so happened that the world was a lot more complicated for the powerful. Pacing up and down the hall, Sander was running two conversations in his head simultaneously - the one he wished to have with Adeline, and the one he wished to have with Susan. Neither was going well.

[cara june bainbridge]

@lysander

Cara was somewhere between a rock and a hard place. She had just recently finished up a rather enlightening assignment for her arithmancy class, in which she knew she was going to ace. There was no doubt about it. The subject hadn’t come to her naturally at first, but with a little work and some polish on her assignments, and it was like she had never struggled in the first place. The finished homework was not the problem though; it was the fact that she had been doing it in the library. Upon completion, everything had been packed up in an instant and out she went, heading back in the direction of the common room. By the time she made it to the fifth floor corridor, she realized that she had forgotten to pick up a book that she had been meaning to read. It wasn’t like she desperately needed it, especially since there was still course work to do before she would have the time to read anything for fun. At the same time though, going back now and getting it would mean she wouldn’t have to waste her time picking it up on another day. While the library was practically her second home at Hogwarts, it was used as a place to study and learn, not to goof off and find a fun book to read. Right now, she had time to kill though, and that meant snagging it now was the most opportune time.

Still debating this, hand on her chin as she wandered the fifth floor, Cara turned a corner to see a rather odd sight. Lysander was ahead of her, walking up and down the hallway like he was having a mental debate of some sort. Ravenclaws were prone to those quite a bit. She was positive that they were the only ones that really tried to use their brains in the first place anyway. After watching her housemate go up and down the hallway a few times, she decided enough was enough. “You’re never going to figure it out if you keep doing that,” Cara called out at her fellow Ravenclaw. It was foolish to keep going over the same tracks again and again. Lysander should have known better.

[Deleted]

Lysander had never understood it when people said that others were wearing a hole in the floor by pacing, but he was beginning to think that he might wear down the flagstones beneath his feet until he dropped into the fourth floor. Either that, or he’d wear through the soles of his shoes. Neither option was preferable, but walking it out didn’t seem to be working for straightening his thoughts. He was about ready to give up, if he was honest, and just start over when it came to relationships. Losing two of his closest friends because he was emotionally inept had never been a scenario that crossed Sander’s mind, but it appeared that that was going to be his fate. A part of the Ravenclaw protested that he ought to at least try to fix things with both of his friends, but that part was overwhelmed by the part of him that was just babbling incoherently about how difficult emotions were to understand. Sander was ripped out of his head when he heard a voice. When Lysander looked up from his pacing feet, Cara Bainbridge was standing there, saying that he was never going to figure it out if he kept pacing. He had already discovered that, but in absence of a better idea, Lysander had continued his previous activity. “What do you suggest I do, then?” He asked. Out of almost anyone else’s mouth, the question probably would have sounded snappish and petulant, but Sander was so twisted inside, and so desperately in need of help, that it just sounded pleading. He needed guidance, and this wasn’t something he had ever discussed with anyone. It had always just been a fact that he liked boys, and everyone had been fine with that, but the subject had never been broached of what would happen if Lysander’s preference ever shifted. So many impossible, emotional scenarios were coming up and Sander didn’t like any of them. He let out a soft sigh. “I did not know when I decided to make friends that it would be this hard.” At least Alice was still simple, though Sander was half-expecting that to explode, too.

cara june bainbridge

[cara june bainbridge]

@lysander

“Anything but pace,” Cara stated bluntly. Such a nasty habit. If she needed to think things through, she wrote them down over and over again, or found a pencil to chew on. Usually that was enough of a diversion to break free from the awful grip of walking back and forth for endless amounts of time. Logically speaking, getting hung up on something for longer than a few minutes meant trying to solve it was most likely going to prove fruitless. At that point, it was almost better to move onto something else and come back later. Cara didn’t know if this was an educational problem that Lysander was having, so there was a possibility that this wasn’t something the Ravenclaw boy could simply walk away from. In her opinion, walking away from problems was easy, as long as she didn’t get herself too attached. That’s why she told others to do things for her instead of vice-versa. Kept her hands clean from getting stuck with projects or activities, or having to be an emotional punching bag for someone else. There were a few exceptions, which could be said about virtually everything, but listening to another person babble on about problems wasn’t exactly her favorite thing in the world.

It was too late to run off now though. While the common room was right around the corner, Lysander was still in front of her in the hallway. And he was starting to ramble on about how making friends was apparently hard. Or he hadn’t known it was going to be hard. Whichever. Didn’t really matter to her. “Then don’t. Problem solved, right?” Cara knew that was the easy solution; the fastest way to run away without actually solving the problem. The back door. Clearly Lysander wouldn’t be in this pacing mode if it wasn’t a serious issue. That much was obvious. “So what happened that makes this seem impossible? We both have built in best friends from birth, so who cares about anyone else?” Maybe that was only true for her, seeing as she didn’t know Sander’s relationship with his brother. She didn’t really hang around the other Scamander boy all too often.

[Deleted]

Cara said that he could do anything but pace, and Lysander stopped in his tracks, not wanting to annoy the only person who seemed to be willing to help him. Sander glanced at Cara when she said that his problem would be solved by not making friends in the first place. That was… true. And it was logical. But Lysander had spent the better part of his Hogwarts years keeping people at arm’s length, skating by on his relationship with animals, but he hadn’t realized until it had happened that he craved human contact, and relationships with other people. He should have known that, being his mother’s son, but for all of his intelligence, the Ravenclaw was exceptionally stupid when it came to emotions. Cara asked what had happened to make everything seem impossible, and Sander sighed. “One of my friends also had a twin. And her twin died. And I don’t know how to talk to her.” Cara had to understand how emotionally charged the situation was, right? Sander began fiddling with the strap of the eyepatch that was over his empty eye socket, wanting something to do with his hands. The other Ravenclaw made a comment about how they both had their own built-in best friends, and Sander looked away from her. “Lorcan isn’t like your sister.” He said with a long, drawn-out sigh. Cara was lucky – she and her sister had been placed in the same house as each other in Hogwarts, and even if they were different people, they still made sense together. Or played at making sense together – Sander hadn’t dug too deeply into the relationship between the Bainbridge twins, mostly because he was worried about what he would find, and how that would reflect on his own relationship with his brother. “Being in Gryffindor has changed him.” Lysander explained. Lorcan wasn’t the same boy he had been when they were children. The Ravenclaw wasn’t sure whether it was the influence of his house that had changed Lorcan or just the natural progression of growing older, but Sander didn’t like it. He liked even less that he was being reminded of his failings as a brother and a partner-in-crime by letting Lorcan wander so far off of the beaten path.

cara june bainbridge

[cara june bainbridge]

@lysander

Cara tried to hide the smirk that played across her face as Lysander finally stopped pacing. As she had already been apt to point out, it wouldn’t solve anything in the long run, and only became an annoyance for anyone that happened to pass by him. Getting her way even in the smallest of things always rewarded her with a sense of victory. This time it was dashed away when Sander finally explained his reason for pacing. His friend had a twin that died. She didn’t know what that was like, obviously because her own twin was alive and well, but she knew the emotional and personal connections that came with having one. Even though they were vastly different from each other in terms of personality, they still understood each other better than the rest of their siblings did. And she knew that without hers, it would be like missing half of herself, in a way. But this wasn’t a scenario where hers, or Sander’s, twin was dead; this was him trying to understand how his friend felt about it. “I don’t think ignoring elephant in the room will do you any good,” she started, “but being who you always were around her will probably help.” That sounded like it would work. Again, her feelings on what she would be like if her twin died were probably vastly different from Lysander’s or even his friend’s. She had no idea what the circumstances were that led to it, and those would probably have a role of their own in it as well.

“You’re right, he isn’t,” Cara chimed nonchalantly about Lorcan. Her sister was awesome, that was why. Cara was still the better half, there was no debate when it came to that, but that didn’t detract from the things her twin did in her own time. “But I still stand by what I said. You know each other better than anyone else will.” Except then Lysander had to go and say the thing about how ‘being in Gryffindor changed Lorcan’. That was annoying. She believed in the idea that the separate houses allowed students to discover their true talents and personality, which was the whole point of being sorted in the first place. “Or is it you that changed? Or haven’t, for that matter,” she questioned, fully aware that the comment could spark some kind of lash back. It was an honest question. “Maybe Lorcan simply found his calling in Gryffindor,” she shrugged. It was possible that his interests and pursuit of happiness had previously been overshadowed by Lysander’s willingness to push the standardized Ravenclaw agenda of research and intellect. She most certainly tried to stay out of her sister’s way when it came to things like that, and they were in the same house. Then again, maybe they just had a better relationship to begin with. Everyone was different after all.

[Deleted]

Cara said that ignoring the elephant in the room wouldn’t do him any good, and Lysander nodded. But then she also said that he needed to be the same way he always was around Addie. That made no sense to him! There was no possible way he could behave the same way when he knew that her sister was dead, especially if he had to acknowledge the fact. The two things seemed so fundamentally opposite, but Sander knew if he tried to express that to Cara, she would probably just continue to lecture him. It wasn’t that he didn’t want her opinion on the matter – it was just that, no matter what she said, he wasn’t going to understand how to deal with this. It was one of his fatal flaws, his incapability of understanding emotions, and he was ruining relationships left and right because of them. Sander took a slow, deep breath, trying to calm himself down so he didn’t end up having an emotional breakdown about his faults. There would be something ironic about having an explosion of emotions because he didn’t understand the very things exploding from him.

Talking about Lorcan was easier. Even if Sander still didn’t understand everything fully, he had nearly seven years to think about the subject obsessively, which meant he could at least simulate understanding. When Cara said that Lysander still understood Lorcan better than anyone else, the Ravenclaw just blinked. That wasn’t true. He could pretend to understand, but actual understanding was far, far beyond his reach, because of his lack of emotional experience, and especially his lack of emotional experience in the areas that Lorcan required. The other Ravenclaw retorted that maybe it wasn’t Lorcan who had done the changing, but Sander… Or that maybe change wasn’t the problem, but a lack thereof. The thought made Sander feel like he was being punched in the gut. Ravenclaws valued knowledge and creativity, and the idea that someone could be both knowledgeable and static was not one that Sander wanted to entertain. One of the most beautiful things about knowledge was that it caused people to change their perspectives and grow. There was no way that he was the same as he had been when he had started school! …Right? When Cara said something about Lorcan finding his calling, the Ravenclaw finally had a retort other than abject confusion. “No one’s calling should be to be a jerk.” Lysander muttered. That was about the only thing that he was sure of.

cara june bainbridge

[cara june bainbridge]

@lysander

Lysander nodded and Cara was positive that she had gotten through to him. Obviously she had. She knew what she was talking about even if she had never experienced any of that kind of stuff before. It wasn’t difficult to imagine being in the same position with her twin, and Cara was finding it hard that Lysander couldn’t figure that out on his own since he was one as well. Then again, there seemed to be some kind of deeper dilemma between him and Lorcan, so there was that as well. This kid was starting to look more like a mess than she had initially thought him to be. Apparently taking care of animals all the time and avoiding other humans did that. Not that she was one to judge, seeing as she was relatively prone to burying herself in books in the deepest pockets of the library. There was a certain level of solace that came with being on her own and away from her family for a few short moments, and she was sure Lysander reached that as well when he was on his own. Not everyone required a metric ton of human interaction to be happy all the time.

Lorcan seemed to be a hotter topic for Lysander though. Cara watched as the other Ravenclaw processed her statements. Hopefully she hadn’t put him into a catch-22 trying to debunk all of her different ideas on why he didn’t get along with his brother. She didn’t really know, nor did she care. In the end, they were still his problems and his life that he needed to figure out on his own. She could only provide questions to get him thinking about all of it. Lysander said something about Lorcan being a jerk, and Cara laughed. “Wonder what he thinks of you. Talk it out sometime. You’d be surprised what comes out once all the barriers go down,” Cara shrugged. “Or you could keep it the same as it is and always wonder.”

[Deleted]

Lysander let out a short, huffing breath through his nostrils when Cara wondered aloud what Lorcan thought of him, and suggested that he talk things out with Lorcan before. “Do you think I’ve never tried that before?” He asked, dangerously close to snapping. He had tried to talk to his brother before, a hundred times, but every time he did Lorcan avoided the questions and made up an excuse for why he had to go. Lysander had even tried it when they were in America and there were few things that he could use to avoid talking, but his twin had somehow managed to evade him for the entire summer. It wasn’t that Lysander didn’t care what Lorcan thought – it was that his brother didn’t seem to want to share. Sander had tried a variety of different tactics, too, so it wasn’t even like Cara could say that he was coming on too strong or have some other critique of his life. She had started out being helpful, but now it was like she was just picking his life apart, and making more problems for him than he had had to begin with. Nothing had even been solved! “If it’s all the same to you, I think I’m going to return to thinking in solitude.” Sander said, relieved that the entrance to the common room wasn’t far off and he’d be able to slip away from Cara without much pestering. “Thank you for your help.” With that, he took off towards the common room entrance quickly, before Cara could call him back and give him more well-meaning, but head-splitting, advice.

cara june bainbridge
(le end)