| Details for Plans of Succession |
| Summary: | Log takes place directly after the two depart from the Three Broomsticks Pub. Silas discusses' Medusa's indication of his possibility of taking the throne, and both of their misgivings about it. Warning: Tooth Decay possible near the end. |
| Date: | 14 December, 1938 |
| Location: | Central High Street, Hogsmeade |
| Related: | Music and Succession |
| Characters |
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This is the main street and venue for Hogsmeade Village, the central portion of High Street. The street is always occupied by someone either out for a walk, loitering, or tidying up the outside of their business. OPEN signs hang in windows, shutters and drapes are open wide so display windows can be peered into to view some of the shop's wares. Bustling with life the forest surrounding the village is as active with wildlife as the village is with civilization, however quaint and country it might be. All of the buildings along High Street are very acute when it comes to their roofs. Each roof outfitted with one or more extremely tall brick chimneys that sometimes are twice the height as the actual building.
Jenny seems actually…relieved to be outside the sudden crush of the Three Broomsticks. She can breath easier, even as she slips her gloves on and see's to it that her jacket's on straight. Even the lapels are tugged into position. Once she's sure she's straight, she lingers, adjusting her bag on her arm and then, resettles the opposing arm through Sy's.
"You said something in there," the girl muses. The girl who's drinking had been limited to a glass and mixed at that rather than straight. First drink all week. "You said 'our', when you were talking about Malfoy and using me. Are you working with her towards something, Sy?"
"You mean when I spoke of you being the best to reach Esther?" Silas responds as he begins to walk down the street. He, too, seems to let some of the tension go. It's clear to him that his desire to avoid politics on a grander scale is a good thing, if he can't even handle the pub.
"Not really… it's more in that my goals, and my loyalty to certain alliances, coincided at least for a time with hers. And even though she passes it off as a discarding of a pawn," he had used that phrase before, although there's vitriol behind it now, "I think she worries about the girl as well. That, and she reflects on our House as a whole… and there is some importance to that."
He then coughs, "Although Medusa did lay a bit of a bludger on me today. Apparently, she is looking at the possibility of my taking the proverbial 'throne' next year."
Yes, Jenny nods when his question is given. That. Though she relaxes when he explains, even going so far as to grin hearing his tone. "She called me Jenny today. That happened because you were there. It wouldn't have otherwise. I'm not stupid." The girl replies, before reaching up to tuck her hair in behind her ear.
"Nor should you be. There is no throne anymore than she's a queen. She's a manipulator, with some friends in key positions, some children she takes efforts to make afraid of her and a few guard dogs on leashes. But when you let them go…," Jenny trailed off, apparently circling back around to the topic of Esther. "Someone else is bound to pick them up. And that's generally where it bites you, because wounded animals have long memories."
The smile Silas gives off is warm, and he leans into Jenny slightly as they walk staving off some of the growing cold with closeness, "But what if," he offers, continuing on the line of the throne, "things changed. Even she has said things need to change. And It pre-dates her… it isn't something she cooked up on her own. It pre-dates all of us. But what if the throne stopped producing pawns, and setting so-called knights against bishops and all that rot."
He looks at her, stoic and thoughtful, "What if the throne finally proved that it was no longer needed? If the person on it spent his time building people up rather than breaking them down and setting people into blacks and whites… and instead filled the board all with the same color? If I don't take it… someone else will… and I could at least prevent someone else from having that proverbial power."
He then shakes his head, "Medusa empowered Esther. As much as she likes to forget that… the girl was a bit mad from the start, but Medusa gave her teeth… and then was shocked when she used them on an ally rather than an enemy."
"I don't think it's a matter of the throne producing pawns and playing this against the other, I think it's a matter of the person on it, seeing things not…actually, this is politics. I don't much want to talk politics. I'll start on a long winded spiel. Much as there is a truth to some having more power than others. To be crushed is character building. It reshapes things, sometimes, it can make them stronger."
And despite Jenny saying she didn't want to talk politics, there she went. "Take Esther for instance, she broke. Beautifully but…perhaps she needed to be broken? Because I was there to start helping her pick up the pieces. She's more enchanted than I let on in front of Malfoy. In truth, the girl sees me as her friend, one with whom there are no secrets to be hidden from. Where honesty rules.
"Would you set them as separate from the other houses? Or would you make pieces of them all?"
Silas' smile is as honest as it is wise. "I told you were strong, you know. Someone I was proud to have at my side." He shrugs, "In the end, the need for there to be pieces would go away. Build them up, sure… but I see no need to crush someone. They'll do that to themselves. Esther may have had you to catch her… but that she broke at all isn't what I would something a person would need. Not in such a way that they nearly destroy themselves."
"I guess I just wonder… if I pursue this… would you support me? And I don't mean that in the, we're friends, we're close, so of course we support each other way. I mean, would you stand beside me if I did so? Knowing who and what I am?"
"Yes, they do it themselves but sometimes…when you see someone balancing in a place that's neither really good or bad, but as the potential to be either way…sometimes you push. Sometimes you have too. The way you pushed me, for instance. And I think…if I hadn't needed you just as desperately as I needed to be away from you, there'd have been no one to pick up the pieces. But you did. Because you did, those pieces bare your resonance. You're too smart not to know that people are like animals. That kindness breeds loyalty, much as salvation does."
She fell quiet then however, as his question came and her lips pursed, brow wrinkling faintly in thought with it. And that thoughtful look remains. "That's just the thing, Sy. You sat down with Malfoy and spoke of a game. Speak of collecting pieces yet. I don't really know who you are or what you are, because you don't let me in. Don't talk about those things. If I'd not been there today, I likely still would not have known. So, you ask if I would stand with you, and the answer is yes. I would. But I don't believe I know you. Not who you are at core, not what. Because why would a boy who wants to run a business for familiars need to sit on the throne?"
Silas thinks on that for a while, silent as they walk now. "It's not the throne, so much as the influence. The ability to shake it by taking on its foundations. To eliminate the need for it bu changing its very structure. It's quite… tempting."
At the rest, he actually frowns, "I spoke to her in the language she understands. It's all a game to her, and so I shifted to something she'll recognize and appreciate. Yes, it's a mask, but it allows me to speak truly enough… and…" the frown deepens, "I don't try to hide from you. Indeed I've tried my best to show you my core… but sure, there will always be layers upon layers. People like Medusa would never understand a soft Silas, that's all."
"Then take it," she supplies, giving his arm a squeeze. "If you want it. Take it. See what you can make of it or in the end, what it makes of you." It was given with a casual shrug and a lopsided smile. "And just hope it doesn't make of you something like…that, because I like you far too much just as you are." And not another insufferable prat that needed a lesson.
Though when he frowned, when he actually used the word soft, Jenny stopped. Stopped both of them really, in part because she shifted from his side to move and stand in front of him. "You are not soft. At all. So don't think that." Her head dipped forward then, in an attempt to brush her cheek in against his own in a little gesture of affection. "I think…maybe I've just gotten used to this..well, to the you that I know, who fights his masks. In there, I guess it just came as something of a shock."
When Jenny stands in front of him, Silas nods, bringing them to a stop, Silas can't help then but to seek out her hands with his own. "I would count on you to call me out, then. To break me, if I ever let anything of the sort happen to me. Because we have a promise together that means I'll survive it. And I would walk away then, were I the only thing that changed." He smiles again, tilting his head to the side.
"Medusa has no one to keep her head straight. Douglas is… well, he's too much part of her game to ever stop her. I would have you." He then laughs, "And all I'd have to remember is that were I ever to get too large of a head, you's simply dip Mephy in the bath and then throw him at me. I would be set straight immediately."
He then pulls her hands up, if he can, setting them against his chest, together, "And by soft, I mean the opposite of hard. Cold. Frozen. I am soft, when I let myself be… and it's not something I am ashamed of. Definitely not with you."
It made her feel better that he said it, that she didn't have to, that there was no reason for it to be implied. So her fingers lace freely through his own, even as she steps closer; her bag jostling down to bump against their joined hands on the left and the outside of their calves. "I would." It's a quiet promise, for all that her nose brushes in against his own in a brief gesture. "To help you remember. I'd never walk away from you."
Yet she lingers though, echoing his smile; even his laughter when Meph becomes a reference; an image that she can all too easily picture in her head. "That…might be too harsh a punishment, even for you," comes murmured as she tips her head to watch his hands; to let him guide hers, until they're splayed against the front of his chest.
"You should never be ashamed, Sy," the girl murmurs and her smile when she looks at him is full of such warmth and affection that it's impossible to misplace. "Ever. Because you're amazing. And you help make me better too and I…," Friends. Lines.
A kiss. - Soft as it was sweet and chaste somehow too; right where the last one had landed, to the very corner of his lips.
"You should take it." The crown, she means. Surely, certainly. That's what they'd been talking about.