Thicker than Water (Marauders Era)

12 August, 1978 - Complicated

The summer passed rather uneventfully for Lavinia, which she supposed she should be grateful for. Things seemed so much easier now. There weren't people watching and judging her every move. There weren't promises she had to keep and the very walls didn't remind her of bad nights.

But she was also getting bored. And boredom, in Lavinia's mind, was a terribly dangerous thing. So she did everything she could to fight it off.

She quickly fell into a bit of a routine. She woke up late and spent most of the day either reading books or sometimes wandering down to the ocean to soak in the calm there or look for shells or the smooth glass that sometimes washed up on the sand. Every once in a while, she went into the muggle town nearby with her little bit of pocket money and browsed the thrift shops and second hand stores to find new books because books were her best weapon against the dragging on of the summer afternoons.

Going into town was always a bit of a chaotic time for Lavinia though, and she only did it when she was certain she was having a decent day. It was like traveling to a foreign country. If you were in the right mood, it was fascinating to be surrounded by a culture you'd never been a part of before. Lavinia's interactions with muggles had always been limited to the short walk out of Kings Cross Station towards whatever safe place she could find to disapparate. And here was a whole town of muggles, mixed with wizards who had perfected the art of blending in.

On good days, she wandered for hours, loving the little bits of muggle culture that she'd never seen before. She could see why Sirius was fascinated by muggle artefacts because they were simply ingenious. They had to find ways to live without magic and to do so, they invented things Lavinia had never even heard of before. Some of them were redundant given her penchant for charms. Like toasters, which she knew she'd never need. But others were fascinating, like televisions and phones and she rather thought that they would have been nice to have except that muggle technology had a bad habit of becoming sentient when mixed with magic. Sirius's turntable was already showing signs.

On bad days, going to town was still like traveling to a foreign country only the part of such a journey where you found yourself lost and separated from your companions and you didn't speak the language of the place you were in. It was terrifying and she felt out of place and vulnerable and usually headed home as soon as she noticed the anxiety creeping in. It was safer to just bite it in the bud and she knew no one was going to judge her for it. Both her housemates rather encouraged the strategy actually.

Sometimes, she went into town with Remus or Sirius or both. When she was with Remus, it was almost always practical. They went to the grocery store and the bookstore on main street and then wandered home the long way, chatting and enjoying the view. With Sirius, it was always a several hour long trip during which nothing much was accomplished as he stared through the windows of muggle shops or chatted for long periods with the muggle mechanic who had, by this point, decided that Sirius was just one "those punk youths".

This amused Lavinia to no end because as time went by, the muggle mechanic's answers got more and more resigned and it was painfully clear that he thought Sirius was rather ignorant and dealt with it for the sake of passing on the craft he loved. It was clear also that Sirius was fascinated by the subject and that the mechanic, regardless of how simple he thought the questions were, indulged him in large part because of that enthusiasm.

Today, like so many days, Lavinia found herself wandering the shop, looking but never touching as Sirius discussed some strange feature of motor bikes that she didn't have the faintest clue about with the mechanic who for once seemed to actually be enjoying himself.

Lavinia was bored. She often was when they were here, but she never said anything about it because she knew Sirius loved these little outings and he always lit up over them and would talk about whatever nonsense he had learned on their walk home. She liked seeing him so passionate about a subject, even if it was something she knew nothing about.