local long distance relationship (no. 2) — lalaland

[Roo Hopland]

continued from here

26 october 1963
outside pot & pantry, midday

Hogsmeade wasn’t the same escape for him that it was for everyone else. That fact was delicately creased into the parchment that weighed in his back pocket. His mother had folded the note once, then twice, before affixing it to the outside of a brown paper bag, his own fist creasing—crumpling—it a third and final time.

Love, the cough potion. xx

He didn't need the potion, much like he didn’t need her endless hovering, yet there it had been nonetheless, waiting for him behind the till at her shop. Because of course, in a school with a perfectly capable—no, a downright sodding overqualified Hospital Wing, she still thought he would drop dead of a lingering cough the first chance he got.

The potion, the note, the persistent insistence of her presence, all of it threaded around him like the strings of a puppet. Around his wrists. His throat.

A cough needled out of him, unexpected.

...right.

He would take the potion, but only to quash the pathetic mewling that had plagued him since the turn of the season. Not because he was beholden to his mother in any way whatsoever. He would take the potion, and—don’t forget your scarf’s ready at Leclair—pick up the scarf, and whatever else he could muster the care for in the walk from Pot & Pantry to the periphery of the village.

He made it as far as around the corner.

The hand that held the brown paper bag made impact with something metallic and cold. It dislodged the bag from his grip. The potion, and the rest of his mood, shattered at his feet.

“Watch—”

“Watch where yo—”

“—watch where I’m going?”

Camera strap, yellow hair, owlish green eyes, stupid smile. This situation reminded him of everyone he knew, but none of their faces stared back at him.

“Genuine question. Are you dumb.”

[Sydney Lamont]

This was Sydney Lamont.

She was sunshine in a bottle. A perpetually smiling bundle of joy who could seldom contain her own childish whims and affable nature. A being seemingly meant to spend her life perpetually laughing at the world around her, absent the cruel touch of despair that clouded many of her fellow students.

It had always separated her from her peers, the teenage student body sinking in their own drama, as she would exist in her own plane of existence amidst the unicorns and sunflowers and rainbows.

Such an existence made it impossible for many to take her seriously, even when she felt serious. Even her closest friends, her housemates or even roommates, didn't flock to her to converse about their pains and problems. How could someone like her even relate to their struggles when the universe had made her impervious to its laws?

Except, that was not the whole truth of who Sydney Lamont was. At sixteen, she could only bring up her mask as a defense to what shrouded her heart. There was only so much she could do to hide the flush of her cheeks at any given moment or the feelings of want that permeated her body like sweat after a long run. That even though she was just Sydney Lamont, destined to remain the friendly girl-next-door, there was so much happening beneath the surface waiting for the right chance and circumstance to, in her own way, remind everyone that she was very much like the rest of them; insecure, overthinking, and itchy for the touch of someone she cared for.

That touch, unfortunately, was not the one she expected when rounding the corner of Hogsmeade, her eyes fixated on the settings of her newly purchased camera, as she crashed into the body and pink hair of Roo Hopland.

The bewildered face that looked back at him, flabbergasted, was not Sydney Lamont. Her metamorphmagus ability was one she was truly beginning to master and, upon reflection of herself at a nearby clothing store, the girl had transformed herself into someone else's skin; a somebody that could finally be gawked at and hold the attention for those that might take her voice seriously for a change.

No one fit that description more than Roo, who had always brought with him a heat she could do little to extinguish. Eyes wide caught somewhere between horror and aggravation as the bag he held fell and crashed into pieces on the floor, his voice triggered a switch within her mind that she didn't need to behave as she would have expected herself to. Rather than cry and apologize profusely for getting in his way, his next words had her expression turn abrasive.

"Genuine question. Are you dumb."

"Genuine answer, yeah. Probably. No one's ever said I wasn't." That was partly true. For all her gifts, Sydney was never thought to be the brightest bulb in the bunch. Which was likely adding to her performance.

"Don't think that gives you any excuse for being a jerk, lurch. You almost broke me new camera and its worth more than anything you've got on ye." The words flowed out of her torrentially, channeling the way her system might rebuke someone. Her Irish accent filtering out of her defensively as she allowed herself to express herself without forethought, with a heavy heart, angry eyes, and an embittered soul. A response she'd never felt comfortable enough to share.

"You could say you're sorry, yeah? For not watching where you're going." She asked, going so far as to poke him with her pointer finger right in the chest. Unsurprisingly, her finger didn't make any sort of indentation, and she stared at it as if it had betrayed her.

[Roo Hopland]

Roo didn’t give girls any quarter. Never had, even as a child. For it, he had earned a reputation—thin-skinned, unchivalrous, brute—entirely at odds with the yellow house emblazoned on his robes. To him, girls, and others who made the same assumptions about him, were simply too stupid to see his personality for what it was: the truth.

Roo had long since realized that girls like her, girls with sharp teeth and quicker wands, didn’t need him to play lapdog the way other boys did. They weren’t looking for simpering apologies or some grand display of regret. No, they liked having someone they could punch, kick, and swear at without anyone calling them hysterical for it. Someone they could fight with instead of against.

And Roo? Roo could take a hit.

He was queuing up a reply without listening. Something dismissive. Something about how, despite not getting a word in, she had just proven herself as thick as he had suspected. Focused as he was on ending this odd interlude on his terms, on giving her no quarter, he nearly missed when she agreed. Agreed and defended her stupidity.

No snap-back, like Elspeth; no quiet fury, like Tawnie; no breath wasted on claiming she wasn’t dumb, like Charlotte. Unlike them, this blonde allowed the truth to settle between them like an uninvited guest. For once, Roo had nothing to say.

He let the small details—the ones he had ignored in his quest to flatten her ego—flow over him.

New camera strap, for it still bore the creases of how it lay in its original box. Blonde hair, not tawdry yellow, framed almond-shaped, not owlish, green eyes. She wasn't smiling at him anymore, but he was certain whatever hex with building beneath her tongue would give him more nighttime fodder than the bland smile from before.

Her nail glanced off his pectoral, and his instincts were a beat behind, shifting, tightening, the muscle underneath, as if his body already knew what his brain did not.

"Eyes up here, love." He hissed the word. Any lingering dismissiveness was fleeing him by the minute, however. "But fine. I'll give it to you: I'm sorry. Is that what you wanted to hear?"

It was not, every boy knew.

"Your turn."

Roo’s unabashed gaze dragged from her face, dipped to her chest (camera, he would deny), then, reluctantly, to the ground. He jerked his chin at his bag.

[Sydney Lamont]

At his command, undoubtable, both parts of her were forced to look up into those dumb hazel eyes as she lacked the will to do otherwise at the gruff sound of his voice. A sensation she had found impossible to shake since her first year, when he had turned to her in the Great Hall during dinner one evening and asked her to share the last powdered donut on the table.

Staring into that bright swirl, she almost blinked her own into the same shade on reflex. They were the color she'd chosen to keep, the one she saw in her reflection daily, as if changing that feature would make Roo notice her differently if he ever took the time to simply look.

"But fine. I'll give it to you: I'm sorry. Is that what you wanted to hear?"

She scoffed, "You could have been a bit nicer 'bout it."

He was looking now, much to her surprise, and Syd felt a cold chill reverberate down her spine as if a cat had slowly clawed its way off her body. She took a step back to acknowledge what he was asking her to apologize for, looking down at the darkening bag, half brown and half soggy brown, as the spilled contents of what had shattered were starting to make their way out.

"Oh, that." 

The only comfort she could offer in the moment was a shrug because there was nothing that she could do to fix it. And, considering she'd just spent all of her money on an expensive camera, there was no way she could afford to repay him for breaking whatever he was carrying. Hopefully, an apology would be enough to let bygones be bygones but, in her heart of hearts, Syd both hoped and doubted that it would settle things.

"I'm sorry," she murmured after taking a sharp inhale. The expression she offered him as she cut herself off betrayed much of the sentiment: that she was only sorry he had crashed into her and broken his crap.

"It was obviously an accident." And then, as she crossed her arms defensively, burying her feet into the ground, she made a point to draw a line on what she was willing to do as an apology.

"I'm not about to pay you for it or anything like that, considering we're both at fault. Aren't you some sort of wizard? Can't you cast a spell and make it as good as new?" Because she figured that Roo would recognize her wand if she took it out, Syd, or whoever the persona she was breathing to live was, would now be a squib.

"Not that I should know of any of your sort staying this side of the lake when Hogwarts is in season."

[Roo Hopland]

“Oh, that.”

Yes, that. The potion he had spent two weeks promising his exhausting mother he would pick up. The potion she was solely responsible for destroying despite her unsubtle attempts to shift the blame to the both of them (to him, really). He could see it by the look on her face: the stupid bird had dug her heels in and would not be budging. It was the thought of his wasted effort—never mind the numbness that was seeping through the toes of his right shoe—that kept the ember of his temper lit.

“Can’t you cast a spell and make it as good as new?”

“On a potion?”

He said it with derision, as he did most things, but frankly, he didn’t have a bloody clue whether he could Reparo his mother’s potions. They tended to be delicate, the ingredients evaporating in open air within seconds. Though he couldn’t have tried even if he wanted to; he didn’t have his wand on him.

“Not that I should know of any of your sort staying this side of the lake when Hogwarts is in season.”

Oh.

She wasn’t wearing robes, he finally realized. Though neither was he. He had never seen her face before. That was the more pressing fact.

A beat. A blink.

“You’re not at Hogwarts.”

And this time, Roo looked at her—really looked at her. From her hair, to the curve of her jaw, to the arms she had crossed against herself. For a lad who wandered in and out of Hogsmeade year round, having an unknown blonde—an unknown, fit blonde—scurry out from the undergrowth was akin to stumbling on a new, undiscovered species of owl.

It was his to claim.

“Next time lead with that,” he muttered, as, without further fanfare, he bent to scoop the bag. “You can’t fix a potion once it's been spilt. Most normal people would offer to replace it, but it’s fine.”

The mangled corpse of his manners hung to life in that moment. It urged him, with its dying breath, not to say what he wanted to say, which was, you a Squib? That felt too obvious. So, instead, he angled the dripping bag away from his trousers, and asked, “You from Hogsmeade?”

[Sydney Lamont]

“On a potion?”

To be fair, even if she wasn't intentionally trying to portray someone completely ignorant to the mysteries of magic, Sydney had been genuine in her intimation that there must have been a magical fix-all spell that could have repaired his potion. Her embarrassment was immediate, even if the reasons for it must have been lost to Roo.

Another reminder that this was dangerous ground she was treading. The Hufflepuff girl wasn't good at lies. She was doing her best to channel her sister's ability to banter, but she knew that it would only get her so far. She was bound to slip up, to acknowledge something she shouldn't, and Roo was too smart and too innately suspicious to let such a thing go if he sank his teeth into it.

The flip side of this coin was how far she wanted to take it. That proved to be a more complicated ask.

“You’re not at Hogwarts.”

They weren't, she wanted to correct. Sydney looked around in either direction, then back at him as if the answer to that statement should be obvious. Their gazes met and the girl found it intimidating to match. He looked her over and she looked away, not wanting to give up the game, hoping that he wouldn't call her on her bullshit even if there was no possible way he could have known what she was. No one knew, except Spencer and Mr. Clint. And the Ministry, she supposed. Fidgeting uncomfortably as she shifted her weight from foot to foot anxiously, Syd let out a resounding sigh when he finally broke the silence.

“Next time lead with that–"

"Next time when, exactly?" She asked again plainly, as if the question didn't make much sense to her. The next time she would meet him again for the first time? At that, however, she let her smile grow wide and sly. She wasn't used to being the one teasing him.

“You from Hogsmeade?”

She arched an eyebrow. It was her turn to push his buttons the way he did everyone else's.

"That's not what you wanted to ask," Syd who wasn't Syd answered for him. She shook her head, seemingly disappointed, as her thumb ran against the roll of her camera, cranking it back to allow for a new picture to be taken.

"You wanted to ask if I'm a squib. Figured it'd be easier to ease into that then ask me directly? Charming. And naturally, I am, or else I'd be up there in that school too." Then, without warning, she brought up her camera and flashed a bright picture of him. She snickered, taking a step back to allow herself to keep his hand out of reach if he tried to snatch it off her neck.

"Is pink hair the fashion now? I don't think there are a lot of people that can actually pull that off without looking like, well..." And she threw her hands up, allowing the insult to sink in.

"But," she answered before he got defensive, "You do pull it off well. What made you do that, because even us non-magical folk know that isn't natural." An answer to a question she'd been wondering for a while now, ever since she bounced into him with it changed, mirroring her own decision to do so.

[Roo Hopland]

Apparently, Victor had him well trained.

The subtle sound of her thumb winding the film was like a bell, and instinctively, he let a soft furrow pull his eyebrows downward in an idle imitation of his usual scowl. Just in time for the click of the camera’s shutter.

She was mouthy—and a Squib, confirmed—and now she had a picture of him. More fodder for that night, to think of all the ways she might use it.

“Woke up one morning and thought, ‘You know what they’ll love? Pink.’”

He was lying. It was a leftover Transfiguration from Magical Defense two days prior, but he didn’t feel like wasting his breath on a Squib. The words wouldn’t mean anything to her anyway. Not when he could sense that why he had pink hair mattered less than the fact that he had pink hair at all.

“You don’t have to be so proper about it, you know.”

He let the words stretch into the space she had vacated, an invisible tether curling itself around the wrist that held her camera—tugging.

“You can just say it—you think I’m fit.”

[Sydney Lamont]

“Woke up one morning and thought, ‘You know what they’ll love? Pink.’”

Syd rolled her eyes, a slight shake of her head as her lips dipped into a fragile frown. It was not the answer she wanted to hear. Then again, why would she expect Roo to tell, for all he knew, some strange girl that he was inspired by one of his housemates. That said housemate captivated him so much that he figured he'd try it to.

It was a silly thing to hope for and even sillier to be disappointed when his answer fell very much into what she should expect from him.

Her fingers fumbled about her camera, blue eyes falling to it for the moment to make sure it was in the right condition and that the angle for her photo had been optimal. She might want to take another, just to be safe. However, Roo cut her off before she could even bring it up.

“You don’t have to be so proper about it, you know.”

"Proper about what?" came the obvious response, paired with a scoff because this girl would be the type who would scoff at the idea of sounding proper. She wasn't Syd, who wore scarfs she knitted herself and thick sweaters and designer slacks. This girl was overly washed jeans and ill-fitting t-shirts and possibly a leather jacket, if she could manage to get one without causing a fuss.

“You can just say it—you think I’m fit.”

Her eyes became saucers as she looked up at him. Her lips spread thin, and her cheeks felt shallow rather than the round things that always squeezed too much of her face when she smiled. Syd was caught off guard by how forward he'd been, how commanding he sounded, and how much she liked it.

"I think you know I think you are," was her answer, and it was one that allowed her lips to rise softly, satisfied, as her eyes danced.

"Most girls will want to beat around the bush until there isn't any green left on it. I'm sure it can get exhausting. Not being told how chiseled that jawline is," and, she acted before thinking, propelled by a longing, as her finger extended to trace said line from chin to ear.

[Roo Hopland]

The whites of her eyes became very visible, and the invisible tether that tied them together in that moment solidified around her wrist, satisfied.

He knew he was fit, always had. It was as natural to him as knowing his last name or the color of his hair (current pink notwithstanding). If he thought about it, he supposed he’d known as early as eleven: his favorite pastime had been yanking the long braids that dangled in front of his desk, and when the girls turned and acknowledged him with sharp words and ready scowls, but didn’t move out of the way, that was when he’d known.

Then he’d grown older, and those same girls had put it quite plainly.

“I think you know I think you are.”

But this bird was even more straightforward with it. And he liked that. A lot. It was different from the others, whose attention he still needed to reach out and tug for himself.

“Most girls will want to beat around the bush until there isn’t any green left on it. I’m sure it can get exhausting. Not being told how chiseled that jawline is.”

He was nodding emphatically. Well, emphatically for him: a curt nod, eyes trained on her lips with an alertness that would’ve made him scoff if he were looking at a friend do the same. Her finger came up, and he took a single step forward at her beck. She traced an upward line on his skin.

He didn’t think she’d let him kiss her this quickly. He wondered how angry she’d be if he tried anyway.

A beat later, and she proved him right. Though her finger lingered near his ear, her attention had begun to flit away, over his shoulder. Thoughtless. She was dismissing him.

Right.

Whatever.

He watched her go. Before she rounded out of sight, she looked back at him, her hand trailing over the edge of a building. Doe-eyed, then gone.

Later That Same Day
hufflepuff fifth year boys’ dorm room, nightfall

The photograph gleamed where it rested on his night table, its glossy film catching the light from the copper lamp above it.

It was him, from earlier: pink hair, scowl, the shadow of a slanted, stone roof behind him.

He flipped it over.

Find me.

16 November 1963
pop n’ palmers, noon

Roo stepped into place behind her, and the fabric of his shirt brushed her shoulder as he hinged forward at the waist, silent and much too close. She—now they—were perusing the records.

“Let me guess.”

He thought about her blonde hair, her camera.

“Folk.”

[Sydney Lamont]

She actually, and factually, didn't know what she was up to.

It had been easy to act off the cuff, improvise the front she'd often dreamed of replicating from those closest to her. She'd won him offer with her forwardness, her daring, her lack of inhibition in speaking her truth about how she'd always seemed to feel, especially once her eyes began to linger on the bodies of boys. That short exchange hadn't been easy to navigate, but it had worked.

This was entirely different. Syd had her doubts as to whether she should even consider this. She was still too naive to understand the ramifications, the latter stages that would present themselves as a problem. For her, it felt like a game of sorts. Could she pretend to be the sort of girl Roo Hopland would be attracted to, would dare to lift off the veil of supremacy he always wore. Or, maybe, could she pierce through those walls he'd seemingly had erected since birth.

“Let me guess.”

She hummed, not bothering to look back up at him, as her fingers flicked through the titles organized alphabetically. This store wasn't much of a store. (Not yet anyway, in 1964.) It was a single storeroom adjacent to a larger, staged area. There were only a few dozen options as far as records went, all stored in bins made for something else entirely. Milk, maybe. The small, plastic crates of navy and brown and grey that could fold about four glass liters of milk but instead held about ten records each.

“Folk.”

Syd didn't know what folk was.

She paused her sliding hand, looked over at him, and smiled. Maybe she'd found something. Maybe not. The collection felt far more like someone's personal hoard than an actual store, but she wasn't about to doubt the music taste of a woman playing music from town to town in America, nor her brother who stood at the front of the cashier's desk who had gotten her all of her comic books.

"Have you heard of this?" She picked up the album with the nice smiling man standing behind what a setting sky. She only chose it because it looked worn, as in one that had been listened to quite frequently, and because she liked the look of the person on it.

"Buddy Holly. Take a listen."

She way she phrased it was mixed; it sounded like a name, but she left herself some room to spin in case it was a funny band title. Picking up the record, she held it out for him and waited to see if he approved.

[Roo Hopland]

She ignored his guess, but not his presence. That, she acknowledged with a low, wordless hum.

Find me.

Three weeks he had tossed and turned over her bloody find me. Three weeks, four Hogsmeade shops, two wrong blondes, and through it all, the slow, dawning horror that he was doing the one thing he said he would never do—running himself ragged over a girl whose name he didn’t even know.

She had dangled out of reach for weeks, on a promise of some sweet, nameless end, and now that he had found her, now that he had her in his grasp, she wanted to be coy about it. Roo, of course, was forced to do the second thing he said he would never do, the only thing he could do—he played along.

“Probably not,” he said, to Buddy Holly and whether he had heard of him.

He took the vinyl. Turned it around. While he scanned the worn backdrop for a tracklist, he stepped away from her, propping an elbow on a plastic crate two down from the one she rifled through.

“You Are My One Desire. Girl On My Mind. Love Me.” He glanced at her, laughter glinting in his gaze. “What, this a bit of you?”

[Sydney Lamont]

She shrugged, pouting, as if his ignorance was both an afront but not one worth getting too upset over. It took a diligent turn of her face away from him, shading her sliding frown, staring away in absence she hoped he felt as clearly as her touch.

“You Are My One Desire. Girl On My Mind. Love Me.”

At least the song titles were pretty. Sydney could breathe a little easier in knowing she would have chosen something that would fit who she was trying to portray, a girl worth those things. Worth the chase. She stretched her shoulders back, her neck exposed to the dim lighting and his touch, revealing a small tattoo she'd magically made appear. A teal star outlined at the base of her neck. Something to aim for.

“What, this a bit of you?”

That brought him back into focus. She couldn't help holding back a laugh, nor the spread of scarlet like butter smeared over crispy toast. Sydney, or Sloane, tiptoed back towards him. She extended her hand slowly, fingers brushing against one another, until her thumb fell on one end of his forearm while her pointer and middle pressed against the other.

"I know where we can listen to it," she whispered, her voice a trail of breadcrumbs she hoped he'd follow.

"Privately," Sloane added, turning back and dragging him towards the listening room, or Groove Room as it had been christened.