16 January 2012
Wednesday @7pm
Some fancy rooftop garden

Drug use, strong language

An Embrill Lantern glowed orange and blessed the immediate area with sandalwood-scented warmth; a welcome boon on an otherwise abandoned rooftop garden on a central London high-rise. None of the winter’s sharp winds touched Waverly Roh-Ballentyne and young blonde wizard with her. Even the drizzly mist dissolved before it could find them.

Her companion this evening was her former Slytherin housemate Virgil Carstairs. Waverly, in an effort to put childish things behind her, had isolated herself from most of her old classmates. Her new people were mostly older, cynical, wealthy, and enough degrees removed from the Ministry of Magic. Waverly fit in insomuch as she didn’t. She knew where she stood, but it wasn’t quite the same as the vulnerability and comfort of a boy she’d grown up beside even if they hadn’t been close.

She snuggled back in the lushly cushioned deck chair and crossed one leg over the other. Smoke slipped out of her hose like a dragon and she grinned.

“Nobody wants billywig stings anymore. It’s all Muse now,” she said closing her eyes.

“You see Earnest much?” she asked casually after Virgil’s older, fancier cousin.

He closed his mouth around the skinny end of the joint and took a drag, leaving behind a dark red lipstick mark. Virgil tugged off his beanie as he started to feel the heat from the lantern working its way through layers. It was a nice evening. Not too cloudy, you could catch a glimpse of the starless sky. This deep in central London you could only see one or two stars - and Venus if you remembered your Astronomy.

"Saw him round Christmas," he replied easily and passed the joint back to Waverly. "Broke up with the witch he picked up after Halloween. Got me a fab book of Japanese creatures."

The Carstairs, though they were numerous and distant, did faithfully gather together at holidays. Virgil curled back into the deck chair and stretched his legs out like a satisfied cat. He was having a slow and leisurely Monday after taking shifts for most of the weekend. Relaxing with Waverly was ideal.

They were Slytherins and it was never a bother to be in the familiar company of other snakes, though most of his current social circle was far from it. He was keen on catching up with Waverly and seeing how the grown up world was treating her. So far, she seemed comfortable enough.

"Never got on with the stings," he remarked, thinking about the billywig phase. "What's so fascinating about Muse, anyway?" Virgil turned his head to look at her - the witch's profile in contrast against the lantern glow. "You think people truly need a deeper escape than this?"

The wizard gestured at the joint as he accepted it again for another toke.

        "...Broke up with the witch he picked up after Halloween...."

"Mmm, too bad.." Waverly nodded with a contented grin, only barely trying not to seem too hankering.

She took her turn with the gillyweed. This strain was just the slightest bit sweet like clove - it was a nice change of pace to have access to a better quality plant.

"Couldn't say, personally," she responded. "But people  like different things. It's supposed to be more of a trip and it's harder to come by. Makes it special, I guess."

She'd brought some, though, with the intent of trying it.  Her connection through Tam was crucial as distribution was apparently tightly controlled. She'd chosen Virgil because he had the type of energy for something like this. Placid, introspective, independent, and had a feline aloofness that made him easy. She'd not have to babysit him. And he wouldn't try to babysit her. If it happened it happened. If it didn't, that was fine, too.

Waverly took down her wand from under her hat and levitated her purse over.

"We can have a go. I've got a bit with me."

Were things really special, if they were hard to come by? He glanced down at his hand while Wave took a drag. They were pale and white, against which his dark red nail polish was stark. Virgil wondered if he was rare, as a magical entity. And what did it matter if he was, anyway? Special skills only meant another variable in an array of problems.

But a deeper trip could be fun.

            "We can have a go. I've got a bit with me."

He glanced at her with a knowing smile, taking a final toke of their joint and stubbing it out in the ground. Trust Waverly to follow up on her comment. So that's why she wanted to hang out today. Muse... he didn't really know anything about it. Yavin wouldn't approve. The thought popped into his head with a sting of guilt and he pushed it down right away. He came out tonight so that he didn't have to think about those things.

"You have a little hookah in there?" Virgil asked, nodding at her purse. "That's how it's done, isn't it?" he paused to bite his lip and make a dramatic show of making up his mind.

It was just one time. He trusted Waverly. "Let's do it."

"Anything once, right?"

Waverly was pleased. She unzipped her purse and pulled out the pieces of an improvised hookah they'd made in their sixth year and started to assemble them.

"I just happen to have ..." A piece dropped onto the ground with a clatter and she giggled. "Don't laugh, we're all in pieces."

The apparatus went between their two chairs, the cobalt blue glass of the bottle catching the light from the Embrill. In the commonroom, they'd just used the contraption for bad gillyweed and blowing smoke rings, so the set up was different for Muse. It came like mercury in little vials. Shortly, the coals were lit and the Muse was swirling in the bottle.

As she uncoiled the hose with the macrame sheath, she was happy Virgil wasn't someone she had to ask, 'are you sure.' New experiences all carried risk, so what there was to be sure of or not was being able to cope with failure. Not even Divination could show you what waited around any given corner.

Everything all set, the hooka all hooked up, Waverly sat cross-legged on the chaise. She offered Virgil a little shrug and then inhaled a steady breath. Not too fast, not too light. The smoke tasted like petrichor. She exhaled and tuned into her body.

Nothing. She handed it over to Virgil. Maybe it just took awhile like some things did. She figured she'd go slow and easy first time to get the rhythm.

"So Earnest. I heard he was down at that vampire coven in Camden."

He laughe when Waverly stumbled in her assembly of the hookah, and winked cheekily as she told him not to laugh. They were in pieces. They were already high on gillyweed! Now they were also going to be high on something else, something new. This was a wonderfully awful idea. All the trademarks of disaster.

But Virgil had been on bad trips before and he figured he was prepared for whatever. His eyes followed Wav's movements as she took the first drag. She handed the pipe over, anti-climatic.

           "So Earnest. I heard he was down at that vampire coven in Camden."

A frown crossed his face and he drew breath from the hookah without thinking. How'd she hear about Earnest[1] in Camden? God, Solomon would fucking flip if he caught word of that drifting around town. Not a good look for the son of the Head of two.

"Yeah, apparently he takes his liquor in hard-to-reach places." Virgil shrugged, pushing down the memory of being shoved against the pub table, hot breath against his face. "Whatever it takes for a quiet moment, right?"

He took another drag of the strange tasting smoke before handing it back to Waverly. There wasn't anything yet, just the gillyweed... and a strange tingling at the periphery of his mind. Something tickling his thoughts, demanding attention. Virgil rubbed the back of his neck and nestled into the deck chair.

"I think I'm getting something," he mumbled, an image fading into clarity over the sight of the London sky above them. 

The stale fragrance of spilled beer and ale was in the air, somehow. Exactly what you'd expect a pub to smell like in the summer."How are you feeling Wav?"

1.	4th December - It's the Freakiest Show

If Virgil was concerned or curious about his cousin among the immortal, or at all surprised by her question, he didn't show it. He didn't even seem interested. Maybe later. For now, Virgil made forward progress into a new kind of quiet moment of their own. Waverly watched him take a turn or two, watched him settle in and open himself to it.

She took back the pipe and held it loosely in her lap. The hookah between them flickered with the gentle spark of the lit coal. Waverly closed her eyes. Virgil spoke.

"How are you feeling, Wav?"

"Someone's at the door," Waverly said with a calm certainty. She looked towards the sound of the knocking but saw only the city beyond the tall glass wall. Virgil asked her again.

"How are you feeling, Wav?"

Waverly looked back at him and felt a laugh coming up.

"V, you're high," she said.  "You already asked me that."

"How are you feeling, Wav?"

"There's someone at the door," she repeated and stood up from the chaise. There was a door, now, and it was slightly ajar. Waverly pushed it open and looked out. Life and color moved by, the muted sound of a parade of music of firecrackers. It was a street festival under the sun.  She smiled and took a breath of the fresh warm air, ready to step out onto the hot cement stoop.

"What are you fooling, Wav?"

Virgil's mellow voice cut through again, curious still, but changed. Waverly turned back from the door. In the next blink she was back in her chaise like she hadn't moved, the pipe in her fingers, looking at Virgil. She took a deep breath, a gentle smile on her face.

"I think I'm getting something. What about you?"

He was in a pub. It looked similar to Hooker's but only in part - the smell of it (stale beer, old chips, sweat) was not of his experience. Nor was the dim lighting, the shadowy figures in booths. Virgil felt like he was dreaming here on the rooftop, his senses only vaguely aware of Waverly talking. With his eyes closed it really did seem like he was in this other place.

A frown stole over his countenance as he felt himself move forward through the dark surroundings; for it was night in this reverie too, and the dark polished wood of the bar counter was only weakly thrown into relief by flickering candles. There was a man at the counter. Tall, tan, a strange amalgam of shifting features and strong eyebrows. In the real world, he squirmed, trying to will himself away from the man.

What was this? The bloke didn't look like Hooker, though there was a sharpness to his smile and a slack in his jaw. The way he leaned forward to leer. Virgil thought: I've never seen this man in my life.

That set him off. How could he be hallucinating something foreign to his mindscape? He could taste it now, a grittiness in the air, a wisp of someone else divorced from their mind. This wasn't him. This was someone else. It'd been ages since he felt anyone in his head. Virgil tried to pull himself out of the hallucination but the Muse was heavy, it was a high that kept dragging him down.

"No no no no no no..." he muttered, tensing, throwing his hands up at the man, "No! Go away! I don't want this!" The wizard kicked and wriggled back, screaming when he felt the hands over his wrists. It hurt. "Waverly!" Virgil yelled as he suddenly remembered where he was in reality.

He wasn't in this pub, it wasn't real! "Waverly!" he called again, shaking his head violently, trying to snap out of it.

Waverly didn't actually register Virgil in the chair beside her for longer than it took her to speak.  Her eyelids fell heavily closed and her next breath was filled with citrus and barbecue and the sounds of London and her friend fell away, muted to almost nothing by music played in a crowded street. Somewhere, someone was playing with little fireworks.

Her head swam in deep relaxation and serene curiosity. She felt no haste or worry. Her movement out the door and through the street was effortless and her path was as much guided by her own feet as the flow of a happy community. There were children, there was food and drink, and everything was light. A cat in a high window looked content in the sunshine.

It wasn't anything like she'd expected. Vivid, that made sense. But it was the specificity. Unlike a dream, every mote was filled in - nothing was assumed. It felt like a real place and the people around her felt alive and individual. It was all-consuming, like she'd always been there and forever would be. It would be so easy to forget...

Back on the rooftop, Waverly was sat still her chin on her chest and a smile on the corner of her lips. Muse contained her completely in her own mind and did a great deal to filter out Virgil's cries. Perhaps it was the earliness in her trip, or the intensity or proximity of his voice, but a piece of it reached her. Her brows tensed, confused. What she was hearing didn't fit. Who was that? Who was Waverly?

Her eyes fluttered open heavily and her head lolled up. The sight of Virgil in distress registered somewhat and she felt worried for him. "Hey ... shhh," she muttered and patted out for him.

"Hey ..."

But the Muse wanted her back, and she wanted to go. Each blink became longer and the night sky was becoming daylight-blue again.

If Waverly reacted to his cries, he did not hear it. All he felt was a pat on his arm while he tried to pull himself out of the memory of an ominous looking pub and the leering man who had grabbed his wrists. Only, he thought as he pulled away uselessly, they weren't his wrists really. Someone laughed. A woman. The laugh was coming from him so he knew two things:

(a) this memory belonged to a woman and (b) this memory wasn't inherently negative.

That calmed him some, especially the second realisation because it meant that the tone and the fear, that was coming from him. He forced his breathing to slow down, the man in the hallucination grinning and letting go. As he came into focus the details of his appearance struck Virgil as supranatural somehow. He wastoo detailed. All of it was, shadowy figures resolving into specific faces.

This truly  was somebody else's memory, and in his calmer state he could even feel her emotions tickling his own. A flirtatiousness and warmth for the man in the pub, who was now leading her around the counter into a backroom. Oh.

Virgil shook his head in real life again, reluctant to experience anyone's private memory or to trigger one from Hooker's, and he tried to reach out. His hand grazed another - Waverly's. He clasped her, telling himself not to let go, not to forget the hallucination wasn't real. If his fear could corrupt this memory then he could manipulate it, if he could just pull himself out of the nauseating high.

"I can do this I can do this..." he kept muttering, which was weird because he couldn't hear himself, it was like being deaf and blind to the reality around him.

He squeezed Wav's hand. In his head, the hallucination was wavering like a mirage, its walls changing colours and the stranger blinking in and out of existence.

Virgil had never tried to pull apart a memory or thought - he knew he was fully capable of it, but when you're so aware of other people's fragility you rarely practice a destructive act. Now it didn't matter, though. This memory was divorced from its owner and he could lash out as much as he wanted.

"Waverly," he whined, wishing he wasn't so fucking alone in this, hand squeezing tighter as he fought the urge to throw up.

Even as poor Virgil was holding tighter to Waverly, the muscle tone in her arm released as she let the warmth and joy take over again. It was so easy to forget her friendship, forget she existed and bask in this beautiful trip. It was a masterpiece.

Her chin lowered to her chest again and London and the rooftop and her companion were gone. She felt herself laughing. A fountain in a plaza put a mist in the air. She and others stepped aside for a bleating herd of sheep, and oh, there were lambs silky soft and bright and curious.

She continued to be carried through the festival, beneath garlands of brightly colored pennants, past knots of eager musicians strumming old songs that she knew by heart. She ate beef, charred and spiced, she drank something sweet and light. She danced, she napped in the shade.

Still something tugged at her to come back but she batted it away. Stop, she uttered, but her voice came from neither of her mouths. This was hers, hers alone. Who would try and take it away?

It felt like he was ripping apart someone's skin. That was the closest similarity Virgil could draw to the sensation of trying to shred a memory that invaded his mind, the tearing of the matter out of which thoughts were made. Dreams. He was exerting his will on it  and even though this wasn't hard for him to do, he was still stupidly high.

And the act was violent. Virgil could never be an Obliviator. It was, in his eyes, a blunt tool when you can feel the seams.

The night sky stretched away above him, thin clouds swept across the dark by an invisible hand. He simply laid on the deck chair with his heart racing a mile a minute - underneath the cardigan, his shirt clung to him. Sweat. Virgil could feel a rising in his chest and, panicking, he stumbled out of the chair and threw himself at the closest potted plant.

Tomatoes, fusili, bits of rocket. He vomited his late dinner, gagging forcefully into the pot. Fuck! He heaved again and threw up less and less solid matter. His stomach clenched tightly and angrily. Minutes passed, though he couldn't say for sure how long as he sat there on his knees. Everything was faint and floaty and he could taste the pilfered memory. He hated it, hated himself for it being inside him now, unwelcome and fetid.

"Fuck fuck fuck," the wizard finally muttered, pulling himself up and dragging his feet towards Waverly. "Fucking stupid," he scolded himself before kneeling at his friend's side.

Virgil took her hand into his own without thinking and closed his eyes. He was going to have to do it again, shred the memory in Waverly's head. Couldn't just let her sit in it. Whose memories were they, anyway? At what price were they given or taken? If at all a price? Holding back another bout of nausea, he reached into Waverly's mind.

Suddenly the tiled street below Waverly's feet began to shake, and in the plaza, the fountain split into fractal pieces. Waverly blinked, trying to correct her vision. She ran her hand through hair that wasn't hers and started looking around in a way she hadn't before. For a moment she doubted what she'd seen because no one else around her seemed to notice. She watched in confusion as a market stall selling barrels of spices seemed to recede and recede and recede. A building flickered and melted.

Her heart started racing. Her vision, her trip! Something was wrong! The shade from the awning darkened and grew exponentially around her, swallowing up everything. The air was pulled from her lungs and she reached out for a table and chair that were no longer there, and she was falling.

She emerged on the rooftop with a gasp, her back arched and her head thrown back in a gasp. Her head swam and she clutched at her chest. Virgil was kneeling by her, tears streaming down his face. He was the picture of horror.

"What did you do!" she moaned at him, shocked and angry. He was holding her hand. She looked down at it, then back at him. "What did you do?" she demanded more softly.

"I was ... " Her face fell. She wanted to go back. The city was stark and cold and wet around them.

He was exhausted by now, empty of food in his stomach and of spirit in body. Virgil hadn't trusted himself to manifest in Waverly's mind while they were both high - it could get unpredictable. When she startled out of her hallucination he finally sat back on his heels, slumping like a ragdoll. He noticed that his face was wet, and used the sleeve of his cardigan to wipe the tears.

             "What did you do!"

The wizard flinched at her volume but his expression softened when she repeated the question in a gentler tone. Her 'hallucination' had been less ambiguous than his: a pleasant one, something you could really bask in. Not that he'd have enjoyed.

"Sorry. I'm so sorry," he shook his head with a tremble and peered up at her. "You can't t-take that stuff Wav. You can't. It's not a hallucination," his manner was pleading, unguardedly delicate. "That's someone's memory in there. An actual memory, do you understand what I mean?"

Virgil was speaking quickly now, gaining vehemence as he heard in his own voice the horrible thing he'd discovered. "I don't know how and I'm n-not sure I want to know how but that was someone else, it belongs to someone else. It's not of you, Wav."

Waverly took another deep breath and rubbed her face and neck. It felt like being woken up with a bucket of cold water. Even as Virgil explained, Waverly was trying to remember her vision - it was fading away in snatches so quickly, dissolving just as her fingers found purchase. What remained was the happy feeling she dreaded she'd never feel again.

She didn't have room to feel compassion for Virgil who could be as soft as he could be sharp. He'd taken something from her and she barely cared why.

Looking forlornly at the hooka, she focused on him telling her you can't.

"Isn't that the point?" She pressed at her temples.

"It's the freaking point, V."

She groaned loudly into her hands and laid back on the chair. The memory was almost gone. All that was left was the mysterious smell of fresh air and citrus.