Evening, Slytherin Common Room


Virgil sat on the floor in front of the fireplace, legs crossed and shoulders hunched over while he took notes from one of his supplementary texts for Divination. The tip of his quill scratched smoothly across parchment, pausing at intervals whenever he glanced back to the book to confirm a fact. His attention was not altogether caught by the subject matter: it was only a review of anomalous  manifestations in palmistry. Thoughts wandered in the background.

"Hey, Lassiter." The prefect called out without looking up from his work, a little crease appearing between his blonde brows. "Do you have your Divination textbook?" On and on went the scratching quill. "I need the illustration on Chiromancy. The one from the Renaissance?"

Finally Virgil turned his eyes away from his notes to observe the fifth year, who he knew would soon be sitting for his Divination OWL. The benefit of younger housemates was having recourse to rudimentary materials without going through one's old belongings. And they weren't terrible company.

"Chapter..." he squinted his eyes, thinking. "...six. And maybe your hand," Virgil added as an afterthought. "For practice."

Jonah was curled awkwardly in an armchair in the common room, a stack of books on the floor next to him and his Charms book open on his lap. He had been scribbling in the margins some potential uses for the charms they'd covered last class when his thoughts were interrupted by the voice of one of his prefects.

"Hey, Lassiter. Do you have your Divination textbook?"

Jonah's head shot up when he heard his name. "Yeah, hold on a sec," he answered, finding the book in question in the pile by his chair. Flipping to chapter six, he unwound himself, crossing to sit on the floor next to the seventh year. He searched for something to say that wouldn't make him sound ridiculous - as little as he usually cared about that sort of thing, Virgil was an upperclassman and a prefect.

"Here, the diagram with each of the sections of the palm marked out?" he checked, handing over the open book and resting his hands on his crossed legs.

He pushed aside his own text as Lassiter joined him on the floor, leaning in with a serious expression as the younger wizard pointed out the desired illustration - it was a tracing of a much older document. Back in a time when palmistry had been expressly forbidden by muggle authorities and enjoyed a sort of black market celebrity by both magical and non-magical communities alike.

Virgil's studious countenance was softened by a smile. He was imagining what it must have been like; slipping up narrow stairwells into windowless rooms, putrid smells of the canal in the summer seeping in. An oppressive heat, and skin against skin.

            "Here, the diagram with each of the sections of the palm marked out?"

"Yes. Hand?" he didn't wait for Jonah to offer it but reached out in a gentle manner to take his dominant hand by the wrist, "Had yours read a lot in lessons yet?" Virgil turned his housemate's hand over so that his palm was faced outwards and resting on the other side of the open book.

He shook his quill lightly and traced over Lassiter's line of heart - followed by the intersecting lines of health, success, and fate. Red ink seeped into the lines. "Hmm. It doesn't look disastrous." Virgil sounded disappointed.

Jonah watched as Carstairs studied the document, wondering what train of thought was bringing a smile to the older boy's face. Jonah personally hadn't decided yet whether Divination was really as useful as his other classes, but clearly Carstairs saw something in it. And then the aforementioned train of thought reached its station as Virgil took Jonah's left hand and laid it next to the diagram.

"Had yours read in a lot of lessons yet?"

Jonah shook his head. "We haven't gotten to spend much time on Chiromancy yet," he explained, "Though I wish we had. It seems more accurate than something like tea leaves." He watched with interest as the lines of his hand were highlighted by the red ink Virgil was using - it reminded him of bloody noses and scraped palms from his childhood. Funny how predicting the future made him think of the past, he thought.

"It doesn't look disastrous."

Jonah scoffed at the air of disappointment in the prefect's voice. "You don't need to sound so put out about it," he joked, then added, "What do you see?"

Virgil made a quiet, fussy sound as his younger housemate declared his opinion on the varying natures of tea leaves and Chiromancy - a reasonable but flawed assumption in his opinion. He released Jonah's wrist and glanced up, blonde eyebrow arched critically and not without a sense of humour.

"We're born with our palms. Tasseography at least takes into account the ever-changing forces of the present," the prefect pointed out before reaching into the pocket of his robes to draw his wand. He aimed it at the illustration in the OWL textbook, muttering a charm.

A smile pulled at his lips while a layer of ink rose from the page and he directed it with his wand to lay gently against the surface of his note parchment. Lassiter's scoff made him laugh, and Virgil met the other boy in the eye as the last wisps of ink settled on to the paper.

            "What do you see?"

"Your heartline is fickle but it breaks up about here-" he reclaimed his quill and pointed the feathery end to Jonah's palm, where the line of heart appeared somewhat untidy, "- and then steady onwards." The quill indicated a more even part of the line. "Something or someone will force you to reconsider your priorities."

A pause, to tickle the hand with a vague sweep over other lines. "Otherwise, ambivalent. Success line splits into two. Could mean anything." Virgil shrugged. "Do you have double ambitions?" he asked, and narrowed his gaze with a calculating little look - suddenly curious. "Or ulterior motives?"

Jonah noticed the small sound of displeasure from his housemate, but he saw the amusement in his eye as he spoke. He hadn't thought of it that way, but he still wasn't convinced.

"On the other hand - pun not intended - our palms are inextricably and uniquely ours, where tea leaves could get the same general arrangement from anyone," he countered, resisting the urge to speak with his hands so Virgil could continue examining his hand.

He smiled to himself as Carstairs laughed, his hand twitching as the feathery end of his quill swept over his palm. "That tickles," he commented, a little unnerved as Virgil met his eye.

"Something or someone will force you to reconsider your priorities." Jonah thought of his upcoming OWLs and how he had no real idea what he wanted to do with his life, but said nothing aloud until directly confronted with a question.

"I'm a Slytherin," he answered, "Of course I have ulterior motives. It's practically in the job description." Jonah paused for a moment. "I guess I don't know exactly what my ambitions are. Until this year I sort of thought I'd be a student forever." He surprised himself with his honesty - he hadn't intended to say so much. Something about the seventh-year just made it impossible for him to hide, as if the older boy would know anyway and attempting to lie would be useless.

Virgil snorted at the defence of Chiromancy, drawing his knees up and fixing the other wizard with a dry smile. "If you're reading tea leaves as general shapes for everyone, you're doing it wrong."

Naturally, Lassiter had a point - but tea leaves were easier to read in conjunction with someone's particular circumstances, and other forms of Divination. It was much more flexible than - for example - someone who had long surpassed the length of an abruptly brief line of life.

But Jonah's quip about their housemates and ulterior motives was enough to make Virgil forget the subject, in favour of a concurring smirk. Fair enough a point to be made about this house of snakes.

"You'll have to think about it more seriously after your OWLs," he said after a pause, "I was the same, so I only pursued the subjects I liked for NEWTs. If we're lucky, that indicates a vocation after seventh year."

Virgil reached forward to shut the Divination textbook, and then glanced at his notes. "Perhaps the lines mean you will have more than one career aim. Do you have any footsteps to follow? You're a muggleborn aren't you?"

No magical theatres or potion shoppes to run when he finished, both blessing and curse.

Jonah tilted his head to one side in thought. "I suppose that's fair," he conceded, "You know more about it than I do."

He supposed the circumstantial nature of Tasseography offered some benefits, but he couldn't help feeling like palmistry was more... personal, or something. He shrugged, prepared to defer to his housemate's better-informed opinion.

He smiled internally at Virgil's smirk, pleased to have said something right, and nodded at his statement. "You're right... I'll probably continue with most of the core classes, but otherwise I'm not sure." He didn't add that he was considering dropping Divination - though not boring like History of Magic nor particularly difficult, he had a hard time convincing himself that anything he was learning could be of any practical use to him.

Jonah shook his head at Virgil's question. "My father's a professor and my mother works at a bank. No family business to take over," he added with a laugh. After a moment of thought, he continued, "Maybe the lines mean I'll have aims in the muggle world and the Wizarding world?"

            "Maybe the lines mean I'll have aims in the muggle world and the Wizarding world?"

This wasn't the first time Virgil had been forced to think about the parallel events of muggle and wizarding life - it was something that Schlagenweit also discussed. Jonah seemed more grounded than Sasha; less like he lived in a wealthy and academic bubble. More like the kind of boy who could melt into a less affluent social strata in the city.

It endeared the younger housemate to him.

"You may have something there. It's a possibility but I wouldn't worry too much about it." Virgil shrugged and leaned back to rest on his palms while he narrowed his gaze at Lassiter. "You hang about London in the summer, don't you?" he was curious, himself an old hand at the great city. "You frequent wizarding spots a lot, or do you go full muggle?"

Taking Virgil's relaxation as indication that their palmistry session was over, Jonah drew his knees up to his chest and wrapped his arms around his legs. He tilted his head to one side, listening to his housemate and thinking about his life moving forward in a more muggle-y direction.

It was something he hadn't thought about since he was 11. As soon as he'd learned about the wizarding world, he'd left any nonmagical aspirations behind in favor of immersing himself in wizardry. He hadn't previously considered the possibility of his future taking a turn back toward the world of his parents and childhood.

He nodded in response to Virgil's question, wrinkling his nose in distaste at the phrase 'full muggle'. "My folks are in Southwark, so I hang about there and just London generally. Don't have many muggle friends, sometimes I'll go to a cinema or something but I like wizarding London better." He paused. "Do you spend much time in the city?"

            "Do you spend much time in the city?"

Virgil cocked his head to the side, thoughtfully, amused. He loved muggle London - possibly for the same reason that Jonah enjoyed wizarding London: its deviance from the norm. Muggles were full of odd quirks to watch... odd minds to read...

"I do. My family lives in a muggle bit of town, Maida Vale, so I am accustomed. And the theatre and all that[1]." The older boy leaned forward and folded his arms across his flat stomach, fixing Lassiter with a curious look.

How straight-laced was his younger housemate? It would be rare if he was at all, considering his peers. "You should come see a play this summer." Virgil watched him with a quiet smile, "Bit of the bard first, bit of gillyweed later? Or the other way around?"

1.	Virgil's father owns and performs at a well-known magical playhouse, Stardust Theatre

Jonah watched Virgil think, wondering for not the first time just what was going through the older boy's head. Jonah was good at reading people, for the most part, but Carstairs managed to elude him, never responding quite the way he expected. The boy was a puzzle.

He snickered a little at the name of Virgil's home - Maida Vale, made of ale - but nodded at the mention of the theatre. He knew Virgil's father was involved with theatre and had heard of Stardust, though he'd never visited it himself. He chewed the inside of his cheek, for some reason feeling nervous under his housemate's gaze. It was as if he were being evaluated, somehow.

"You should come see a play this summer."

"Maybe I will," he answered carefully, a little surprised by the offer. "Gillyweed later, I think. Easier to focus that way." He was generally rather rulebound when at school, but mostly because it was easier than misbehaving, rather than out of a regard for the rules themselves. "What all is showing this summer?"

A maybe was better than outright scoffing. Lassiter knew caution, and was clever enough not to dress it up as arrogance. Virgil's smile grew a little wider - more out of amusement than anything malicious, having momentarily gleaned the younger boy's thoughts on the subject of being evaluated. Some of those worries could be eased and improved by a gillyweed brownie. Perhaps.

"Peter Pan," Virgil answered as he glanced down to examine his nails. "It's only showing for two weeks, as part of my father's youth troupe. I'm playing Peter - Zamperia is going to be Wendy."

Indeed, a most unusual and less delicate version of Wendy than was usually portrayed. His eyes flicked back up to scrutinise Jonah's expression. "Or you could see one of Edgar's proper plays. Shakespeare? Midsummer Night's Dream?"

Virgil was always of the opinion that the man had been either wizard or squib.

"Don't feel obliged," he shrugged and stretched his arms out behind him before laying down against the carpeted floor. "But there are worst places to contemplate one's future than a dark theatre."

Jonah drew his knees up to his chest, thinking. He probably would go see a play - he really had no summer plans, so why not? He liked theatre well enough. Part of him wondered if his housemate was having him on, though; he knew that smile, it having appeared on his own face plenty of times.

"Peter Pan."

Jonah nodded. "I'll come see you, then, since you're starring." And then it hit him that he probably wouldn't see much of the older boy after that - Carstairs wouldn't be coming back to Hogwarts in the fall. That made up his mind. He wasn't especially close with Virgil, but he would miss his housemate all the same.

He gave a bemused smile. "What, is Peter Pan not a 'proper' play? Because it's the youth troupe or because it was a book first?" Not that he minded Shakespeare, of course; the language wasn't easy to parse but Jonah appreciated the word games Shakespeare played.

Jonah's smile changed from amusement to wry self-depreciation. "I suppose there's a lot of that in my future, oh master diviner?" He wondered if Virgil was speaking from experience on the topic, but refrained from asking.

          "What, is Peter Pan not a 'proper' play? Because it's the youth troupe or because it was a book first?"

"Youth troupe," Virgil replied as he shifted on the floor, moving unfolding his legs and stretching like a cat against the carpet. It felt good - especially with the warmth from the fireplace. "Not as fantastic as what Edgar does." There was a hint of respect and admiration in his voice.

He thought his father was a brilliant performer; it seemed almost impossible to live up to that singular personality.

But Jonah's new nickname for him distracted Virgil from that thought, and he smiled sleepily to himself instead. "Master Diviner!" the prefect repeated - half yawning - before laughing, eyes on the heigh stone ceilings of their common room.

"Perhaps. For all my love of Divination, I imagine that the future happens when you're too busy to think about it." Virgil paused, rolling his head to the side to catch a glimpse of Lassiter's face. "But that doesn't stop us from contemplating, does it?"

Smiling again, he made a dismissing gesture and began to sit up to collect his books and things. "You don't have anything to worry about. Another two years here." Virgil glanced around the room, peaceful. "I'm going to miss it."