Amortentia Dolorosa

Roddy had been working a long time on this charm -- years, in fact, since it had become clear to him that a better methodology for divining the history of a family was needed. The Dark Lord was really relatively intent on maintaining the blood purity of his Deatheaters. The Emancipation Party was open to anyone who supported the ideals, and one simply had to go down to the Ministry and register as a member, but the Deatheaters were another matter. Certainly, there were some, himself included, who were not wizards through and through -- that cuntbagger Greyback, situationally, if not by blood, at the very least -- but the ranks were kept much cleaner.

Now, wizarding blood did not go back to the very beginning of time, as far as could be told, but it evolved somewhere along the course of human history, so even the purest of Purebloods could only trace back so far, before they'd essentially have to hit a Muggle. But wizards were a long-lived lot, on the whole, and ten generations free of Muggle influence was likely to be more than sufficient (and Auntie's arse if even the Blacks could go back that far, without a breach).

But, he'd nicked a bit of the purest wizard he could think to test. I mean, sure, lifting a hair from the back of the Dark Lord's chair wasn't, perhaps, the brightest of ideas, but he'd managed to get away with it. Mostly. Lucky had given him the oddest look, at the time, but that was Lucky.

Tested on himself, the charm seemed to work, but it was time to test it on another ... mostly-known subject. In time the charm would take less effort to cast -- and certainly much less after Lucky had a good look at it -- but the important thing, he thought, taking the cloth-wrapped hair from his desk drawer, was that it worked. And now, it was time to see Lord Voldemort's history...

He traced peculiar designs with his wand in the air above the hair, sprinkling a mixture of herbs and ground jobberknoll feathers onto the sample. Slowly, he recited the lengthy and convoluted description of what needed to be done -- development was never so simple as the end result, when one pointed a wand, shouted a word, and things happened... for other wizards. But Lucky had written the frame for him, and he'd filled in the details as best he could, stealing pieces from the collection of books on the magic of recording births and deaths and genealogical tables -- he was amazed that what he was doing hadn't been done. It seemed such an obvious thing to do.

But, the coloured smoke began to gather above the hair, building forms and branching out, describing the family of the Dark Lord. But... but... ... No. That couldn't be right. No, no, no, he'd cocked up somewhere.

Merope Gaunt, Marvolo Gaunt... That whole side made perfectly good sense. Even without hte colour markers, he knew the Gaunts had been purebloods. He'd thought the family had died out without heirs, though, which made this all the more bizarre. But, the other side... Tom Riddle, MUGGLE? It didn't make sense at all. No, sirs, not in the very least did it make the faintest whit of sense. He'd been so certain he'd done it right!

"Sev!" He threw open the door and called down the hall. "Give us a minute, yeah? I need your help with a thing!"

"Merlin's balls, Roddy, don't you ever sleep?" Severus came up the hall, lit wand in hand, looking frazzled but not the least bit tired. It was really a case of pot and kettle, he reflected. He'd been up working out a translation of a potion from a Middle English source, in which the measurements were absolute rubbish. Sleep was for other people.

"What have you done this time, and from which parts of your anatomy will I be removing the shrapnel?" He drawled, raising an eyebrow as he came up to Roddy's door.

"Oh, sure, cause you're rightly one to talk of sleeping, are you?" Roddy fluttered his eyes and shook his head somewhat derisively. "Nah, come in, come in. I need to test this-- Not like that. Look."

He crossed to the desk and sprinkled the mixture on his own head, and then began to cast the charm again. His own family history spilled out over his head, more than half in yellow, denoting 'magical creature', as opposed to red for Muggle or green for wizard. He'd also snuck in purple, for squibs, but he wasn't sure he knew anyone with a squib in their line -- not that anyone would admit to it -- and he had no idea if that would work, or if they'd just show up as wizards.

"I'm working on it to make His work a little easier. Or, rather, my work for him. I know your parents, and that's why I want to try this on you. I can't ... It's giving me a really strange reading, on this test subject --" he carefully avoided mentioning who that was "-- and I want to make sure I didn't just bugger the whole deal, somehow."

Severus watched sceptically as Roddy performed the long-winded charm on himself. He blinked with surprise as the family tree unfolded, and with more surprise as he recognised the pattern, and how very little Roddy was human at all. The man swore up and down he was half-wizard, which was technically true, since Roland had gone to Hogwarts, and had done much more as his other son, than this one. But, most of those dots were shades of yellow or greenish yellow, and the last actual pureblooded wizard in Roddy's line of descent...

But, Roddy caught him staring and waved away the details.

"Yeah." He nodded firmly. "Do it. If there's anything to hide, it's been hidden from me, and I'll kick your arse into next week if you go telling it around."

"Oh, you? You, aye?" Roddy scoffed, looking down at Severus. "Couldn't kick my arse if I had both my hands tied in my hair."

He paused and studied the adorably grotesque wizard. For all that could be said, Sev really was just stupefyingly cute -- especially when he got all wound up and nasty. "Yeah, yeah. Who would I tell, Sev? I like you. And nobody else cares what I have to say, but you, Him, and Lucky. And what's Lucky going to do with it?"

He reached for the jar of herbs and feathers and started to sprinkle it over Severus's greasy hair.

"I ain't talkin' pub fights, Lestrange. I'll leave you in the shape I found you," Severus snarled, as the carefully polished manner of speaking he'd been trying to learn from Lucky slid off. A momentary look of horror flickered across his face as he tried to put it back.

"And what about Him, hmm?" He blew a bit of the dust Roddy was sprinkling on him out of his face.

"Anyone who offers to hide a thing from Him is either lying or the best occlumens in the history of the wizarding world." Roddy glanced at the parchment on his desk. "That man's legilimency is enough to crawl into your very soul. I'll make no promises what He'll find if He goes looking."

He shook his head and started to cast the charm yet again. Eileen Prince, Kathleen Diggory and Norbert Prince -- that side looked about like it ought. Tobias Snape, son of Oswald Snape and Victoria Prentice -- no surprises there, aside from a slightly muddy-tinged bubble about a century past, marked Agrippa Caliphet, on the Muggle side. That was odd... He thought maybe he'd need to re-think the colours a bit, so he could figure out what he was seeing, there. That wouldn't be too hard, though. Maybe a few hours work to find and change all the referents and the scaling.

"Doesn't look broken on you, either. Maybe I've got a hair from the wrong wizard..." He shook his head, mildly curious about the bizarre brownish tinge on that Caliphet bubble, but not particularly concerned about it, since the rest of the tree was believable. "I'll talk to Lucky about it, in the morning. Thanks."

"Yeah, um... yeah. There's nothing..." Severus shook his head. "Nah, there wouldn't be."

He stepped out the door to go back to his translations, but leaned back into the room. "Next time you want me for something, Lestrange, walk down the bloody hall and knock, like a sensible individual, hmm?"

Without waiting for a response, he left.

Roddy knew that purr meant Sev was pissed as hell, and calling him 'Lestrange' was a pretty good sign, as well, but it was still the sexiest thing he'd ever heard out of anyone, and living with his cousins, that was quite a feat. As the door slammed, he made a horribly disgruntled sound and grabbed the ice from the glass of whiskey on his desk and deposited it directly down the front of his trousers.
He went downstairs, skipping breakfast, and headed straight for the floo. He tossed in the powder, and leaned through as the flames flashed green. "Lucky, you here? I think I've wholly buggered this charm... Need a second, well, third, opinion."

"It's bloody morning, Roddy" Lucky yelled, as he headed from his bedroom down in the labs to the fireplace. "C'n you be more specific?" When he reached the vicinity of the fireplace, he grabbed the nearest chair, and flipped it around to drop into it in a near collapse, his chin resting on the top of the back. He wrapped his arms around the back of the chair loosely, and waited for an answer.

"So, the heritage charm, yeah? You made it all look so simple, but it just did the single most goatfucking bizarre thing, last night. I'm assuming I've cocked it all up, because if I haven't? He's a mudblood. Him. As in Him Him." Roddy tugged at his own hair distressedly. "So, as that's not really an option, I cocked it up something bloody awful, I did."

He twisted his hair nervously around his fingers. "Ran it on my own self, and it works fine. Ran it on Severus, and there's ... I have to do that again. Something wrong with the colours, the first time, but it looks right there, too, not that I'm knowing much about the lineages of Muggles, and all that."

"Just --" He sighed. "Just take a look at the blighted thing?"

"Slow down, Roddy," Lucky says, his potions addled brain trying desperately to keep up. "The charmswork. Right. It.... Wait..." A look of increasing shock begins to cross his face as the rest of what Roddy just said hits him.

"Out of the damn fireplace, Roddy. I'm coming through." He pauses for a moment, and looks down. "With shoes, when I find them."

"Feck shoes, Lucky. You don't need shoes. Just --" Roddy threw his hands up and ducked out of the fireplace, picking up the half-finished pints one of the cousins had left on the mantel, last night. A few drinks were bound to help. Not that he'd not had several few drinks already, and that, he told himself, might actually be the problem. He'd just been too shitted to see straight...

Except he'd not yet reached stumbling, never mind blind stumbling.

Nah, he was trashed. Had to have been. Either that or he'd fucked it so badly he'd need a prybar to get it off his cock. Which, he reflected, was an excellent turn of phrase. And that meant he was drunk, but insufficiently so.

Having found, if not shoes, his knee high boots, Lucky slipped through the floo, landing in something of a sprawled heap on the Lestrange's hearth. He lay there for a minute or so, trying to get his bearings. Taking a few slow, deep breaths, he finally raised his head to look at Roddy.

"Now, slowly, tell me what happened, Roddy," he said, still making no attempt to rise from the floor.

"Blood and bones, Lucky..." Roddy set the now-empty glass back on the mantel and leaned over his friend. "You look like kneazle shite."

He giggled a bit. "So, I nicked a strand of hair. And maybe that's the whole of it -- might be it's the wrong wizard entirely, yeah? But, I did it just as you said. I filled in the blanks with the shite I snagged from those books I had out with the record books and the updating tapestries... I don't think anyone's done any of this shite in a good hundred and fifty -- all the houses needed it done had it done when it was new and posh. It's just feckin' odd no one's done this, yet...

"But, I did it all precisely as it lays, and it's giving me this completely rubbish result!" He squinted at Lucky for a long moment. "You want for me to just carry you up the stairs? Might be a smidge easier, it might..."

Lucky took another deep breath, the nausea from the floo trip receding. "You need a bigger test pool, that's all," he said, before slowly moving into a sitting position.

He looked over at Roddy, bits of blond hair hanging in his face. "Nah. I'm good now that things have stopped spinning." He paused for a moment, a look of contemplation on his face. "As long as your stairs don't move. I don't recall them moving, but I have to check, before I try that."

"Well, I've not fallen down them yet, so I'm thinking they don't move. Not right this minute anyway." Roddy grinned, offering a hand to Lucky. "I've not the faintest ... that's a lie, it is, I've about a dozen ideas about what might've gone wrong, but you know your family, and I think you'll know the work once you see it..."

He shrugged and leaned back a bit, looking improbably like he was sitting on the corner of some invisible piece of furniture. "Do we go, then?"

Lucky took the offered hand, and pulled himself to his feet, wobbling slightly before coming to a halt. "I can look at how you've done which bit, and make sure everything makes sense." With that statement, he moved towards the stairs, one hand on the wall.

"Just. No talking on the stairs," he said, and put one foot on the first stair, leaning up against the wall for balance. His hand was now wrapped tightly on the stair rail as he worked his way up the steps slowly, still leaning into the wall.

Roddy bit his fist to keep from laughing, as he followed Lucky up the stairs. Stepping into his room, he picked up his wand and the jar from his desk, and started casting the charm on himself, yet again.

"Second draft," he said, as the bubbles began to form above his head. "I changed the colours so they'd mix better. Blue for wizards, red for Muggles, and yellow for ... other things."

He carefully knelt on the floor to make it easier for Lucky to see the tree. "It's only showing direct descent. Simpler is faster and smaller."

Lucky moved to sit on the bed, so he could focus more of his attention on the spell, and less of it on staying upright. "Looks good so far," he muttered,"if still a bit inelegant."

"Pass me that," he said, gesturing broadly at the jar. "Need to make sure that all the elements are right." He was a bit....startled by some of the ways Roddy's tree was linked, but neglected to mention it. "And it looks right, by your knowledge, else?"

"Best of my doing, it is. I've no feckin' idea what might be shitting it up, by the page, but if it's not the charm..." Roddy handed Lucky the jar. "Rightly should have got Sev to do that part for me, so maybe that's all it is."

He waved his hand, brushing away the bubbles, and stood back up. "I'd be happy to stay on my knees, but I think you need the blood in your brain."

"Hadn't planned on using it for a few hours yet, so you get what you get," he said, before dissolving into a fit of giggles.

"Sorry, " he said, before taking a pinch from the jar, and looking at it closely, crumbling it between his fingers. "No, that bit's right enough," he said, closing the jar again. "Here," he said, pulling out a strand of his own hair. "Let's try mine, and see what you get." He passed the jar over to Roddy again.

"Hadn't planned on using either of those things, from the sound of it," Roddy muttered with a smirk.

He took the hair and laid it on the desk, sprinkling it with a bit of the powder and casting the charm on it. Abraxas Malfoy, and a good many other purebloods up that side... Nothing too dreadfully interesting, considering the way his own family tree corkscrewed more often than it branched. Aurelia Morreaud, and ... he squinted. That bubble was yellow. Bright lemony feckin' yellow.

"The mother of your mother's mother... Veela, by chance?" He took a shot in the dark, there. Veela was a pretty likely choice as far as these things went. I mean, she wasn't exactly likely to be a bloody centaur, and the idea that she could be ... Nah. Lucky didn't look like... Nah. There was no feckin' way. Granny would have said a thing about that, for sure.

Lucky sat there quietly for a moment. "Merlin's blooming purple petticoats, I should say not," he swore in startlement.

He stared for a moment. "That ought've worked," he muttered. "And Grandmere always said something about her mother being from Brocéliande." He rubbed at his face with his hands. "Maybe I can check on that when I'm sober. Or at least soberer," he said, laying back with his legs still dangling off the edge of the bed.

"Bro--" Roddy's wand slipped from his fingers and bounced off the wood floor, rolling under the desk. "This is the part where you tell me you're taking the piss, yeah?"

He rubbed his face for a few moments, but when he looked back at Lucky, it still hadn't recovered, shifting liquidly through shades of horror and confusion and disbelief. "Brocéliande. You can't-- That's -- Merlin's cavity-ridden left testicle..."

"Roddy, dear Roddy, I am absolutely too smashed to take the piss," Lucky said, still supine.

"Now here's the part where you explain to me why information dredged up from my childhood memories has you swearing and sputtering," he said, one arm rising to point at Roddy.

"Ah, for the love of all that's good and right..." Roddy stopped and threw himself onto the bed, next to Lucky.

"You know how in most things," he started, voice getting cleaner as the words got farther from his usual half-thought banter, "there's a binary opposition going on? Light and dark, good and evil, wizards and muggles, although that last one is less binary than you'd imagine... Well, there's our family, yeah? And you've got a liking for our folk, well enough. But, there's the other side, too. And there's a rumour of a place like this in Brocéliande. Not so much the farm and all, but the crossing over. But, it's not us. It's them. Goatfucking Muggle-loving cunts, all of them -- er, present company excepted, of course. And not to say we haven't a fondness for some bits of -- ah, straight to fuck and out again. They turned on us. They're a non-ignorable piece of why we wizards are in the position we're in with the protection of Muggle artefacts and all that rubbish. They took the other side from what our family took, and they helped the Muggles beat us and burn us to cover their own arses."

He took a breath, finally. "At least that's as Granny and Auntie tell it. I'm sure a good bit of that is spin, but it's as I've heard it all my life. Not that Brocéliande is the only place for them, or that they, there, had a hand in any of it, themselves, but there's a history between your family and mine that goes back a few hundred years. Thank Merlin you're more wizard than I am, or we might have a problem."

Shaking his head, he laughed. "I'm not nearly drunk enough for this, I'm surely not."

"I'm sure that made sense to you, Roddy," he said slowly. "Let me try to wrap my poor, slow brain around it." Lucky sighed.

"You're saying, that the fact that great-grandmere was from somewhere in Brocéliande, explains why she's bright fecking yellow on your geneaology, yes?" he asked rhetorically. "And that at least some of the erm.. individuals in that region have issues with your people?"

Lucky sat blot upright. "I'm going to kill your brother," he said firmly. "It's all his fault." He collapsed back onto the bed again. "Or at least, when I'm not this fucked up I will."

"If you're going to kill Babs, I get to photo the whole thing, yeah? Start to finish?" Roddy grinned for a few seconds, before the confusion set in.

"Wait, not that I've the least against you killing my brother, but how is this his fault? He's older than me, yeah, but he's not nearly so old as that, he's not."

"If your daft arse brother had just been willing to come to breakfast, while we were on business in that neck of the woods, I'd likely know more than I do now," he said with feeling. "But no, he couldn't be arsed. Grandmere had even invited him, told Oncle Julien to have me bring my friend with me, but your blighted sot of a brother couldn't be arsed."

Lucky shuddered. "I can't see Grandmere not telling me at least something, if I'd shown up with Babs," he said. "Even if it was just to tell me to come back later, to talk with her, she'd have said something," he said with a sigh.

"My dafted brother can't be arsed to do much as isn't immediately in his interests. And if he'd the faintest what he was stepping into, I can't say it mightn't have been his best not to do so. But, if I didn't know? Nay, he's just being his usual lazy idjit self." Roddy rolled his head to the side, and noticed the room had started to list to the left. "'m thinkin' I mightn't be thinkin' much more, here. What day's it? Friday, innit? Don't think I'll be sitting up for an hour or three... or six..."

Lucky laughed. "Grandmere wouldn't have done anything to him, not if he was with me," he said. "It wouldn't have been polite."

He sighed softly. "C'n I just pass out here?" he asked, still not moving. "S'what I was doing when you called."

Roddy snored loudly -- a thing he'd never admit to, and one that rarely occurred, except that he was mildly allergic to an ingredient in the enabling powder. With a gasp he sat bolt upright and glanced around dazedly.

"'Zwa-huh?" he mumbled. "Nnng. Sleeping now. Talking later."

He dropped back onto the bed, and was out again in moments.
Brigid opened the door of Roddy's room, meaning to ask if he'd meant to come down for lunch, but instead found him asleep on the bed beside Lucius. With a faint giggle, she crept off to get the camera, because what ever would she show to her son's future wife, if there were no embarrassing pictures in the house?

Severus opened the door, face still turned down to the book he held in one hand. "Roddy, I can't read this. I'm terribly certain that word isn't--"

He looked up and blinked at the two figures sprawled sideways on the bed. "Oh, piss!"

Throwing an arm up to cover his eyes, he backed into the corner of the doorframe, stepped on the hem of his robe, and sat down hard.

Roddy rolled out of bed into a crouch, pulling the longknife from under the mattress, before his eyes finished focusing. As the figure on the floor ceased to be blurry, he stood up, rubbing his eye with his empty hand.

"Shite... What time is it?" he muttered, tossing the knife onto his desk. "And what are you doing on the floor?"

Yawning, he stretched gracefully and watched his kneazle slink up to sniff at Sev.

Lucius was quite suddenly awake, one hand wrapped firmly around his wand. Between the loss of warmth that was Roddy sleeping next to him, and the noise, he was scanning the room through lidded eyes before moving. Once he had ascertained his location, and who was around him, he relaxed slightly, and opened his eyes.

"Mmph. Morning, Severus," he said in a slightly grumpy fashion before throwing off the blanket, revealing that he was, in fact, clothed down to unlaced boots. He looked over at Roddy, a slightly puzzled look on his face. "Why am I here, Roddy? And why do I recall the desire to kill Babs?"

Severus looked much relieved to discover that they were both dressed. He'd hated to think of what he might've been walking in on.

"It's about half-past three. I just meant to ask you about this word-- Didn't think you'd be sleeping... I mean... It's ..." He gave up and shut up, petting the kneazle instead. "Hey, Katoey. You're a sensible creature, aren't you?"

Roddy threw himself into his desk chair, draping himself artfully, if immodestly, on impact. "You're here because I called you, Lucky. Cocked up that charm something awful. And while I will always approve of you having an inclination to end my brother, I've no feckin' idea why you've got it now. Sure it's something to do with a thing I passed out and forgot. Nothing of any consequence, I suppose, I usually want to kill him."

He squinted at the mostly empty bottle of whiskey on the desk and poured the rest of it into the glass holding a corner of parchment down.

"Give me the book, Sev. I'll have a look at the word." He picked up his drink in one hand and held the other out expectantly. Nothing like another drink on top of half a hangover and not enough sleep...

"Mmmmph," he said articulately. "Right. Do not take that potion again, at that dosage, when there's a possibility you'll decide you want my help with something." His mouth was dry and tasted slightly foul. This along with the beginning of a headache had him convinced that moving was, still, not the best of notions.

Lucky rubbed at his face with one hand, trying to massage the pain away. "Give me a few minutes to wake up, and I'll look at it again. I'm sure whatever is off is a simple fix."

Severus stood carefully, checking for bruises. He picked up the kneazle over one arm, and stepped farther into the room, handing the book to Roddy. "The line just above 'no thyng cum yn nor owte'. What the buggering damn is the third word in that line?"

He leaned down to get a better look at Lucius, looking less than sympathetic. "And what the fuck did you drink? Do I need to get you a bezoar or just some hangover cure?"

So, perhaps he was a little less than polite about it all. He had been up for nearly three days, and he had little, if any, intention of sleeping just yet. He'd almost got this thing worked out. Just another few hours...

Roddy took another swig of whiskey and held the glass out to Lucky, as he stared into the book. "Have a drink, Lucky. You'll either feel better, or you'll puke your guts up and then feel better."

Turning the book a bit, he squinted at the antique smudges. "'Cofyns'." He skimmed the rest of that sentence, quickly. "It's telling you to make little bowls out of the jarvey's milk and the shaved holly, and then seal them, so nothing will get in or out."

He glanced at the rest of the page. "Remind me why you're doing your own translations?"

Lucius stretched slowly, and then sat up, taking the glass from Roddy and pouring a healthy amount of it down his throat. Passing it back, he spoke. "If I didn't throw up from flooing over here like that, I'm not going to now."

He favored Sev with a rather disdainful look. "Tranquillità del Sonno. And no, I don't need anything for it, I don't think. I just underestimated the effects at that dosage, on someone unaccustomed to it. And, I got woken the fuck up by this shite here," he said gesturing to Roddy. "I wouldn't advise you to take that particular one either, Sev. You already spew at the drop of a hat, and it wouldn't help with that."

"Yeah, I'm sure I'd throw up if I woke up next to him..." Severus smirked at Lucky and took the book back. "But if you took a sleeping draught, what the fuck -- You know what? Forget it. I don't want to know."

"I'm doing my own translations, Rodolphus, because a certain brilliant linguist is too busy buggering up the history of any number of pureblood lines." He poked Roddy in the forehead with the corner of the book. "I'm not that bad at it. Besides, you had that deranged look you only get when you're about to turn into a raving queen if anyone interrupts you."

"I'm not a queen! I'm not!" Roddy shrilled, leaping to his feet and glaring down at Sev. "You take that b--"

He paused and looked down at Sev. He glanced across the room at Lucky. "... ... Shut. Up."

"And it's his fault I woke you." Jabbing a finger at Sev, he dropped back into the chair and reached for the now-empty bottle of whiskey.

"Feck," he sighed, kicking his chair back to open the window. "Sullivan! Sully! What have you got that's worth drinking? I'm out of whiskey, and we'll not be getting more for another week!"

Down in the yard, Sullivan looked up from where he'd just knocked Finnegan on his arse. "What I've got for drinking isn't nearly for the likes of a fine and delicate creature such as yourself, princess."

"For the love of fuck, you shite-mouthed goatfucker, I'm not drunk. I don't care what it is, as long as it's going to make the distance between here and drunk a whole lot shorter," he barked.

Finnegan stopped mid-swing and looked up to the window. He and Sullivan looked at each other a long moment, before Sully finally responded. "It gets easier, boyo. You're young, yet. Don't let it get to you. Throw me the bottle and we'll get you a drink. Just don't be expecting to wake up bright and dandy, after."

"I don't give two shits how I wake up, as long as I'm still drunk, when I do." He dropped the empty bottle into Sullivan's waiting hands.

"Don't rightly see as that's going to be a problem..." Sully muttered, clapping Finnegan on the back as he walked off toward the house across the field.

Lucky had a suddenly ice cold expression on his face, hiding the internal sniggering. He looked at Sev, before speaking. "It's not quite a sleeping draught, or not just. Damn Italian, and it's imprecise translation. I was testing the tranquilising properties, for any number of reasons."

"I'm not even asking about fault, here," he said, before leaning his own head out the window. "Hey Sully?" he shouted, hoping to catch the man before he got too far.

He turned to Roddy,"Y'know, I could always fetch us something else for some kind of fucked up?" he offered. "But we might want to figure out what was going on with that spell of yours first."

Severus looked between them for a moment and turned toward Lucky, shielding his mouth with one hand as he cocked the other thumb at Roddy. "He's a queen," he mouthed.

"Roddy, how are you out of whiskey? That doesn't even make sense..." He stepped closer and squinted up into Roddy's eyes. "How much have you been drinking?"

Sullivan flipped a hand at Lucky, in a way that clearly meant, 'whatever it is, later's soon enough. He was too far out to properly hear, and getting farther by the moment.

Roddy levelled his eyes at Sev and poked the kid in the forehead. "Not enough, obviously, as I'm still too sober fer this shite."

He turned his attention back to Lucky. "It's feckin' broken. Says the oul' man's a half-blood and you're a veela or sommat. He looks fine." He pointed to Sev. "I look fine."

Grabbing the jar from his desk, he sprinkled some more powder on Sev. "Stand still, yeah?" he remarked, glibly, starting the long and complicated incantation and accompanying gestures.

Lucky blanched. "That'd be what dragged my arse over here, I'd think," he said, rubbing at his face for a moment. "And for the last time, for the record, there is no Veela blood in the family." Lucky sighed, lost in thought.

"Where did you say that anomalous reading on mine was again, Roddy?" he asked, running his geneaology through his own head. The fingers of one hand had moved to tap idly at his leg, as he watched the proceedings.

Severus stood very still and looked terribly awkward. This was not at all what was supposed to have come of that... Clearly his approach needed work. Or Roddy's faculties did. And, on the whole, the latter was a much more believable answer. He grimaced and struggled to avoid a sneeze.

Roddy finished up and pointed to the tree unfolding over Sev's head. "There, see? His family's not all buggered up!"

Blowing a strand of hair out of his face, he stared at the corner of the ceiling, a while, trying to remember where the odd bubble had been in Lucky's tree. "Can't recall. I'll do it again, if you want. Hell, I'll pull mine up again, too. I'm sure mine was right," he complained, copying the tree over Sev's head onto a sheet of scrap, on his desk. "Have a look at this and tell me if it's right -- NO! Don't move, yet. Let me finish copying it down, yeah?"

"Hmmm," Lucky said, thinking. "I can think of a place or two in the geneaology where I don't know quite as much as I perhaps ought to," he said. "And if your anomaly is in one of the places where I'm less certain of all the details, it might just be something no one knew, or mentioned."


He watched as Roddy copied down Sev's details. "His geneaology may be as expected, but I'll not be calling his father not 'all buggered up,' " Lucky muttered quietly.

"Can we... just... never put my father and buggered in the same sentence ever again? Ever? Please?" The horror etched into Severus's features was plain and probably quite comical. It wasn't that he didn't know exactly what was actually meant, it was just that he'd spent enough time around Roddy to have started to pick up the worst possible undertones in things, at the most inappropriate times. Sadly, he wasn't usually quick enough to catch those things before he said them.

He turned to look as Roddy finished writing down the tree. "I don't know mum's side so well, you know. Or that prick's, now that it's on the table. Actually, I have no idea if this is right at all, past my parents."

Roddy squinted at the sheet for a long moment. "Well, that matches up, for the most part, with the official history of the Prince family, with just the one exception up here..." He tapped a name that didn't show up in the official records. "But, that's probably the last one to do as your mother did. I'm sure they don't talk about her anymore, either."

With a shrug, he shook his head. "The other side, I'd not know from a hole in my head. It's a rare Muggle family keeps accurate records."

He stepped over to Lucius with the jar. "Do you want me to go find that spot again while we're both still cursedly sober?"

"Might as well, after all, if we intend to see whatever's off with this. And beside, I'm curious now," he said with a smirk.

"And I've a good idea what mine ought to look like, for at least a few generations, without resorting to books." One hand idly tapped out a fast rhythm on his leg as he waited for Roddy to do whatever was needful.

Severus leaned against the wall beside the desk, taking the scrap with him, to study it. There was more he didn't know about his own family than he liked to consider, but when one's parents were both completely mad (and he did think his father was mad -- no sane man drank until he forgot where he lived, and then came home and blamed his wife and son for his own forgetfulness) it was a little difficult to get any straight answers.

He thought this might be among the nicest things he'd ever gotten, not that it was of any practical use. Half his family were Muggles, and the other half had disowned his mother for marrying one. He didn't suspect the side he might actually have a desire to communicate with would have any desire to see him at all, which was kind of a shame, since, according to the paper in his hands, he looked like he might be the last heir -- but he wasn't quite sure how Roddy's algorithm worked.

He shook his head sadly, still reading the names. Another pureblood family destroyed by Muggles. It wasn't that there weren't Muggles who were very good at Muggle things, and he liked some of those Muggle things very much -- David Bowie being a prime example -- but he just didn't think they had any business buggering up his world, with their thoughtlessness.

Roddy sprinkled Lucky with the powder and after a few minutes gesticulating, brought up the tree he'd been so befuddled by, the night before. And there it was again. That was unquestionably a magical creature. He grabbed another scrap of paper from the desk and started sketching out the tree.

"Mother of your mother's mother," he said, scribbling furiously. "And something about killing my brother, I think, but fuck me twice and call me Kathleen, if I can remember what connects the two. Your mum's family's French, yeah?"

"Mmm," he said for a moment, lost in thought. "Yes. That's the side that still lives in France." Lucky tapped his fingers against his leg as he pondered the new information.

"I don't know that it's inaccurate, though," he said pensively. "Don't know a whole lot about her, though. Grandmere told me once, when I was younger, something about her mother being from....Brocéliande, as I recall it. Does that explain anything?" Lucky asked.

"Oh, and as for Babs, I think I was going to kill him for dodging breakfast. Because if he'd come with me to breakfast, when were on business in France, I likely would have a better understanding of this."

Roddy's eyes lit up with malice, in a way that few folk ever saw. "Blood tr--" he started to shout, and stopped himself, gritting his teeth. "My blood, not yours."

He stared at Lucius in disgust for a long moment, and wiped his tongue off on the back of his wrist. "Fucking swallowing ..." He wasn't taking this well at all.

"The family of those as live in Brocéliande betrayed the family of my family so badly I was nearly never born. And back another dozen generations, that'd make us cousins of some sort. How did you not know?" he demanded. "Auntie's bones... I'm not drunk enough for this."

He slumped back into the desk chair. "You didn't know. I didn't know. You haven't poisoned me in my sleep yet... It's the cousins you've got to worry about, you know. Don't tell them. Merlin only knows what they'd decide to do..."

Severus raised an eyebrow, the rest of him perfectly still. "Just another reason to add to my list. I object to family, on principle. It excuses and encourages the most bloody absurd behaviour."

Lucius' posture changed before he spoke so much as a word. Where he had been relaxed, almost careless in his manner, now his body was held in a much more formal fashion. His grey eyes were glacial now, and his face smooth and showing nothing.

"Poisoned you in your sleep?" he asked. He turned so that he could see the expression on Roddy's face. "If that's what you think of me, then perhaps I should go." He spoke calmly, no bit of emotion betrayed in his tone.

"After all, a gentleman doesn't impose where he is no longer welcomed." At this he rose, and headed towards the doorway.

"Severus," he said in parting, with a polite inclination of his head.

((This has already been discussed with the other players.))

"Impedimenta!" Severus's wand dropped into his hand as he brought his arm out to point at Lucius. The hex slowed Lucky significantly, and the look of confusion took a good long time to creep across his face -- long enough that Severus had time to grab him and turn, throwing the whole of his body-weight into it, as he heaved Lucius into Roddy's lap.

"Incarcerous!" The ropes were around Roddy and Lucky, before Roddy had time to recover from the sudden impact.

"Ceratum!" he shouted, fury finally leaking through. "Bloody stupid lovers' quarrels or some other idiot shite of no bloody consequence at all. It's hundreds of years past. Grow up and at least act my age!"

He left them bound and coated in wax, slamming the door on his way out.

"Auntie's knickers-- Severus! Severus! Is this ... This is wax! There is wax in my hair! Awww, feck! Get it off me!" Roddy howled, nearly knocking over the chair they were bound into, in his struggles to free himself to get the wax off.

After a minute or two, it occurred to him that there were worse people to be tied to, although few worse situations to be tied in. Wax, for Merlin's sake. He sighed and nuzzled Lucky's ear, wondering if he could at least manage a good grope, if they were to be stuck together for the next hour or two.

"Lucius," he muttered, "you know I love you. It's just a shock and all. Suddenly hearing a man half my own brother's related to the ones I've been taught to distrust from the time I could talk? It's not the kind of news a man gets every day. But, you've been little else but good to me, and I'm knowing it, so why would I be expecting else, now?"

More than a bit irritated, and actually moving towards enraged, Lucky found himself suddenly in Roddy's lap. First Roddy, then Sev, he thought to himself. It's on my own again, as it always has been.

"Stop struggling," he said, suddenly concerned that Roddy might overturn the chair. When the chair stilled, he froze as Roddy's nuzzling caught his attention.

Lucky took a couple of deep breaths, trying to settle his mind, and understand Roddy's behaviour. The now pounding headache he had wasn't helping matters, either.

"And it's not a shock to me?" he asked, his voice edged in emotion. "I think it was mentioned, once, in passing, after my mother's death.," he said, not sure if he wanted to try to pull away from Roddy, or get closer. "As far as I knew, everyone in my bloodline was wizard-born," he muttered quietly. "Before I've even really had a chance to start thinking about things otherwise, you're talking of poisoning."

"Oh, aye. And if you've not done it yet, why would you start now? No practical sense lies that way, even if I did need to remind myself of it." Roddy nuzzled some more behind Lucky's ear. "And all said, there's little to be done for this, from where we are, so it's either thinking and sulking or making goodly sure we gross out that little prick when he comes back to let us up. Wax, even. I'll kick his arse up between his shoulders, I will."

Lucky was stunned by Roddy's way of thinking about things. "I'm too bloody sober for this shite," he said. "And my head feels like there's a bludger in it." That said, he finally relaxed against Roddy, having realised that he'd misread Roddy's reaction somehow.

"Fuck me," Roddy commented, offhand, before realising that was the most physically improbable thing he could've chosen. "I'm still sober. And if I'm not sober, I'm not nearly drunk, and that's closer than I want to be. And with you sitting on my cock like that, I'm really needing another drink. Or some morphine. There's no need for your bones to be intersecting my boner like that, there's not."

He winced and squirmed, attempting to dislodge the pointier parts of Lucky's arse from his bits, to no avail. "Up between his shoulders, I'm telling you."

"Isn't Sully supposed to be bringing us something largely undrinkable? I'm fair sure he'll be back soon. Not like he's going to be the one to let us up. More like he'll just take pictures... Feck."

"Mmmm, Morphine," he said. "That'd put a stop to this damned headache right quick," he said. "Not to mention its other benefits."

"Pictures? Feck. Although, Sully's likely to be bribable, yeah?" he asked. "Because I don't mind paying to be let out of this mess, or that failing, paying to be less sober. And yes, I do mean both of us," he said.

"Sobriety is overrated," Roddy agreed, nibbling at Lucky's neck, idly, just to keep his mind off the wax and the stabbing pains in his junk. "He's like to be leaving us the drink and getting the camera, before he'll do aught else. Once the pictures are out of the way, it shouldn't be too hard getting him to do something useful, especially if so doing involves him getting something more drinkable than the shite he's been drinking."

"S'what I was trying to get his attention for in the first place," Lucky grumbled. "After all, if he was going to fetch whisky, I couldv'e given him funds for the good stuff."

"Mmm." Lucky had noticed that parts of his own anatomy were starting to react to Roddy's nibbling at his neck. "You can keep doing that," he said to Roddy, squirming in reaction.

"It's Sullivan, for Auntie's sake. The only thing shorter than his dick is his attention span," Roddy grumbled, squirming to work his arm around in front of Lucky, which might make for just enough space for Lucky's arse to stop being in quite such an uncomfortable position.

"But, you want me to be doing more of this?" he asked, nuzzling behind Lucky's ear and nibbling his neck. "You sure of that? You were looking to be off and gone, by now," he teased, keeping up more of the same.