i got a lot that's on my mind

[primuslune]

It's bitterly cold out lately -- enough that Remus is happy to have a good, thick scarf and coat, and a warming charm up his sleeve. Though the weather isn't very hospitable, it hasn't sent Darrow creaking to a halt. The city still runs almost as usual, though it does mean taking some risks that Remus would rather not.

Hermione does most of her potion-making in the Lamplight, because the majority of the supplies needed for doing so are kept locked up there, rather than in their home. They aren't always easy to come by. Remus has a heavy canvas bag full of some that he'd scrounged up and found elsewhere to drop off before going home at last and out of the weather. Normally, he'd make a delivery like this at night to avoid suspicion, but it's nothing doing with the cold getting even worse after the sun sinks.

As he slips past the spells that keep the Lamplight hidden from Muggle eyes, he sets the bag down as he moves to unlock the door with his wand. It overbalances, sending itself toppling down the short set of stairs at the door, to dump the contents down them. A minor setback, except Remus realizes that some of the ingredients have fallen outside the protective spells, in plain sight on the street.

Scrambling after them, he moves as fast as stiff, cold fingers will let him to gather them all up Wolfsbane, and deer antlers, and all manner of little toadstools.

Comments

[spirit_of_vitriol]

"I prefer to call it a passion," she counters, sweetly. "It's more accurate. And poetic--a passion for poison."

Flavia still feels an immense amount of pride, saying the words; they recall for her the moment of discovery, Harriet's old chemistry book falling from the library shelf, opening to reveal illustrations of disembodied hands working a strange alchemy of fire and liquid and laboratory glassware.

"I'm interested in a career in the sciences, yes," she affirms.

[primuslune]

"A passion for poison," Remus repeats, reminded, somehow, of Severus. Despite the contentions over his having left Hogwarts as a professor, and the long history of other contentions, the thought of Severus is still a somewhat warm one. He thinks he likes her, at least a little, this girl. Although he only knows the very first thing about her.

She likes poisons.

"It's a curious thing to hear from a girl your age, if you don't mind my saying," he says, clearly not minding whether she 'minds' or not. "Most have other interests. Well, other passions. I can't say that my own run in the same direction. I've never been a great maker of concoctions of any sort Not just because my interests lie elsewhere. Those things take an attention to detail which a sort of personality like my own genuinely lacks."

[spirit_of_vitriol]

"It takes all sorts to make a world," Flavia says, unthinkingly echoing one of Mrs. Mullet's favorite aphorisms. It's trite though no less true, especially in a place such as Darrow, where one could quite conceivably encounter spacemen, ghosts, and titled aristocracy all within the space of an hour or a city block.

"What sorts of interests do girls my age have where you're from, then?" she asks, genuinely curious.