Lynx Without Context - Printable Version

Lynx Without Context - Printable Version

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Lynx Without Context - Antigone Lestrange - May 18, 2018

May 20th, 1888 — Oakshire Hall, Kent

Despite having found a mirror and spent a good long while inspecting herself Tig still didn't know what she was. She was some sort of cat, that much was obvious, but she was much too large for a house cat and far too small for a lion. Her tail was very short and her ears were curiously tufted in a way that reminded her a little of a kneazle. Her fur was light in color with spots that were only a few shades darker, but she definitely wasn't a leopard. Whatever the hell she was though, she liked it. It was no tiger but it wasn't so far off and best of all, she wasn't some dirty old farm animal.

She'd actually done it, whatever it was she'd successfully become an animagus!

Thoroughly pleased with herself, she gave up on fathoming her species in favor of hunting down Tiberius so she could boast of her accomplishment. It was fairly easy to guess at where he was but her keen sense of smell confirmed it before her eyes had a chance to. She then had to take a moment to be appalled at how familiar she apparently was with his scent. Otherwise undaunted, she skulked along the corridor of his study and to her absolute delight, found the door either being opened or closed - she didn't hesitate long enough to decide - and seized the opportunity of bolting through the gap and into his study. Without wasting a second, she pounced onto his desk and sat there preening.
""

RE: Lynx Without Context - Tiberius Lestrange - May 18, 2018

There was a book of ancient Turkish war magic on his desk, in the original Old Turkic, and that was what he'd decided to devote this otherwise lazy Sunday afternoon to. Translating it into anything he could comprehend was laborious, as there wasn't (at least as far as he could find) a translation book which took the extinct language into English, and even if there was, it would hardly have helped in some cases where the Latin spell root really needed to be understood in context in order to function. It was the sort of puzzle that he enjoyed spending time on, because no one else had performed these charms (at least in England) for decades or possibly longer, but it was also a riddle whose usefulness remained a mystery until it was solved. He thought the ritual he was decoding at present was some sort of torture spell that focused on the victim's eyes, but he could have had it all wrong and it would be difficult to say until the translation was complete.

A servant had knocked on the door to offer him tea, and Tiberius had unlocked it with a wave of his wand without bothering to rise. It wasn't as though any of the household staff would be able to read Old Turkic, so this was one of the pursuits he undertook in his study which was relatively safe from outside speculation. The servant left the tea tray on the corner of the desk without a word and departed; they were trained well enough to know when they were not wanted. The animals which occupied the house, it seemed, were not, because one of the cats ran into the room just as the door was closing behind the servant and alighted on his desk.

The cats belonged to Antigone (and, honestly, Tiberius wasn't even sure whether there were still two of them or whether their numbers had been increasing or decreasing while he paid attention elsewhere) and he would hardly have bothered looking up if this one hadn't placed itself directly in his way. The sudden movement startled him, and he reached out instinctively to smack the thing off the desk before it could step into the wet ink on his parchment and ruin hours of work translating. He thought the cat looked strange (had Antigone been transfiguring her pets, or was this one he hadn't seen before?) but didn't have time to get a close look, because his sudden movement had also upended the bottle of ink, and sent the cat careening towards the just-arrived tray of hot tea.

"Damn cat," he hissed as the porcelain on the tray clattered to the floor, sending tea and ink everywhere.

RE: Lynx Without Context - Antigone Lestrange - May 18, 2018

A sudden crashing noise was the first Tig noticed of the tea tray which was now upset all over the floor. That'd teach him to try swatting her out of the way. She tried to laugh but the sound that came out sounded nothing like the sound she expected and she quickly fell quiet again. He was clearly irritated and in want of her absence so obviously she wasn't going anywhere.

Instead she yowled at him and poised ready to hop off his desk. She uncoiled herself as an idea occurred to her. Delicately, she took the piece of parchment she assumed he'd been scrawling on moments before and promptly dived off the desk. She was surprisingly trying very hard to keep the parchment as pristine as possible; if it was something very important she didn't want him to be so angry that he couldn't be appropriately in awe of her success.

With the parchment tucked daintily between her teeth, she ran across the room and leaped onto the couch where she stood and stared at him tauntingly.

RE: Lynx Without Context - Tiberius Lestrange - May 18, 2018

Tiberius did not have the time or the patience to deal with this intrusion a moment longer. Scowling at the mess on both his desk and the floor, he reached for his wand. It would have been a fairly simple matter to clean both spills magically before they had a chance to soak in, but his attention was diverted when the damn cat inserted itself into the middle of his way once again and stole the parchment he'd been laboring over. Unamused, Tiberius swore and shot a stunning spell in the creature's direction. He didn't particularly care about killing a cat, but Antigone might resent his disposing of one of her pets — particularly since this one looked exotic and was probably therefore quite expensive. He wasn't aware that the allowance he gave her was enough for such trivial expenditures, but he certainly wasn't going to let his money be used on some sort of fancy-breed feline twice because he'd murdered the first one.

RE: Lynx Without Context - Antigone Lestrange - May 18, 2018

To her annoyance he had drawn his wand. Whatever spell he was intending to use on her would almost certainly ruin everything. She dropped the parchment and jumped off the couch as fast as she could, hissing as the spell barely grazed past her. Tig ran and pounced at him. He couldn't hex her so easily from close range. As she came in for a landing, she was unaware that her claws were not retracted. Her front paws hooked over his shoulders while her hindlegs tried to situate themselves on the edge of his chair so she wouldn't slip off. Not convinced he'd stay his wand despite the awkward angle she'd likely present for it, she looked him right in the face and willed him to suspect she wasn't a normal animal.

RE: Lynx Without Context - Tiberius Lestrange - May 18, 2018

The idea that this cursed creature might be more than merely a creature had not occurred to him, and given that he thought Antigone had given up on the study to become an Animagus more than a year ago, it likely never would. He certainly wasn't going to sit around speculating on anything when this damn cat had just thrown its claws into his shoulder, tearing at the fabric of his suit and leaving painful scratches as it tried to climb atop him. The wretched thing was attacking, and he no longer cared whether he did any serious damage to it. After having his work upended and now having physical harm befall him at the hands of this beast, he was seeing red, and his only thought was that he wanted to kill it with fire. Literally, as it turned out; the first spell he came up with was one which created a self-contained flame at the tip of his wand, which he thrust at the cat's face with a shout that he hoped would startle it away.

RE: Lynx Without Context - Antigone Lestrange - May 18, 2018

Tig yelped and hissed as he stuck fire in her damn face! Instinct and common sense told her to back off but stubbornness won out and she instead buried her face in the crook of his neck to protect it. She suddenly realized she was growling which probably made her sound the kind of threatening that would make him keep trying to set her on fire. With difficulty she managed to stop herself from growling, coincidentally retracting her claws at the same time.

RE: Lynx Without Context - Tiberius Lestrange - May 18, 2018

The fire hadn't startled the thing away (did it even have a self-preservation instinct?) but it had gotten the claws out of his skin, which enabled him to shake the creature off quite violently. Not wanting to present himself an easy target again, he jumped to his feet, letting the chair fall behind him, and brandished his wand in the cat's direction.

RE: Lynx Without Context - Antigone Lestrange - May 18, 2018

She made a gruff noise of displeasure as she sprawled on the floor and saw that he was pointing his wand at her. Tig had had enough. For a moment before she did, she thought she wasn't going to turn back. "Could you maybe not point your wand at my face?" she spat angrily. There wasn't much dignity in being sprawled on the floor but she felt no inclination to get up just yet. "Oh and before I drop dead, I'm now technically breaking the law because I'm an unregistered animagus." Her anger began to subside as she awaited his reaction. "Surprise."

RE: Lynx Without Context - Tiberius Lestrange - May 26, 2018

Tiberius had not been expecting that. For half a second, he could only stare at his wife as she sprawled on the ground, occupying the space where the strange, over-large cat had just been and trying to make sense of what had just happened. Of course, it was obvious, once he thought about it. She'd come right out and told him she was going to try and become an Animagus, years ago, which was what had spurred his own interest in the subject (or at least kept it clinging pathetically to life instead of residing among his forgotten and abandoned projects). He thought she'd long since abandoned it, though, since she never seemed to have the patience or diligence to put her mind towards anything. It would not, in a hundred years, have occurred to him that he would be standing in his study being faced with the reality that his wife had become an Animagus — and that she'd done so before him.

"Get out," he growled after a moment. "I don't have time for your antics."

RE: Lynx Without Context - Antigone Lestrange - May 26, 2018

As far as she could tell she thought he was surprised. As fleeting as the hesitation had been, she'd been watching him for such a reaction, even if she had hoped it would be more pronounced. It was enough to make his somewhat hostile response inconsequential to her where it might have otherwise infuriated her.

Tig grinned maliciously as she helped herself to her feet. "Don't act as though you're not impressed," she taunted, taking a few steps towards him so that she was bordering on an invasion of his personal space. "Or are you sulking because I did it before you?" She hadn't treated the entire thing as a race to then not rub it in that she'd bested him. As she stood there gloating it occurred to her that she would have been thoroughly disappointed if he'd praised and complimented her rather than grown irritable. "How sharp are my claws?" Obviously, it was rhetorical. As the smug remark left her lips she brazenly reached out to touch where she'd damaged his clothing in an effort to rile him.

RE: Lynx Without Context - Tiberius Lestrange - May 26, 2018

She certainly was riling him, but he didn't want to show it more than he had to, as difficult as that was. He could have exploded at her in anger, but that would only have lead to him sooner or later admitting that he was angry because she was right — because she had done it first, and in that respect she had bested him, and he couldn't abide it. The only other way this interaction could play out would be in violence, and he was quite aware that even if he hurt her he wouldn't be able to take away the fact that she'd done it.

His wand was still drawn, and he used his other hand to roughly knock hers away when she reached for his shoulder. "Get out," he demanded, tone low and dangerous, "Before I turn you inside out."

RE: Lynx Without Context - Antigone Lestrange - May 27, 2018

Rather than deterred by his threatening tone, Tig was spurred on. "Are you trying to be uncouth again or do you mean that literally?" She was trying to - probably ill-advisedly - aggravate him even more for the purpose of her own amusement. What she wouldn't admit to herself was that the more intimidating he tried to be, the more of a rush it gave her, and of late that had been evolving into something else entirely.

RE: Lynx Without Context - Tiberius Lestrange - May 27, 2018

As if he could possibly have been thinking about sex at a moment like this, when he was still reeling from the revelation that his wife had been carrying on transfiguration studies in secret for a year or more. The idea hadn't even occurred to him, and even if it had, it would only have been as a way to reassert his dominance in this relationship after being so thoroughly caught off guard by her triumph in this respect. Was it even possible to inflict enough pain or humiliation to cow her now, with her eyes gleaming victoriously and her chin held high? He didn't even want to try, not really — he just wanted her gone, which of course would be the last thing on her mind. She'd come to seek him out, after all; she intended to lord this over him and bask in her success as long as possible, and he wasn't sure what he could actually do about it. He was so off balance at the moment that he didn't even feel master of his own study, let alone his house, and felt that if he commanded her out of the room she would do little but laugh in his face.

He ought to conjure up a cage out in the courtyard and lock her up in it, like a bloody zoo animal, he thought bitterly. If she wanted to flaunt the fact that she could now turn in to some sort of glorified house cat, he could treat her like the animal she apparently wanted to be. Perhaps he could have the servants stop feeding her and force her to go hunt mice around the grounds. Not that he seriously believed anything he could do to her at the moment would effectively deflate her spirits — not when she could become an animal at will, and he couldn't, and they both knew it.

That was not a problem that he was going to be able to fix standing here in the study with her an arm's length away from the tip of his wand, however; for the moment, he needed to focus on how to get her to leave. "If you don't—" he started, but stopped short. He'd already threatened her, to very little effect; continuing to do so would hardly work any better than the first time, and would just make it painfully obvious that he had no intention of actually following through on any of it. He needed to try something else, but he didn't know what else was left to try. She wouldn't just walk out if he asked her nicely.

"Damn you," he mumbled, feeling increasingly trapped although she was making no move towards him. This was his study, the one place in the world where he could be unreserved and unguarded, but she'd invaded it and now it felt as though the walls were closing in. "Damn you to hell. I — Imperio," he sputtered at last. He needed to regain control of the situation, before it spun any farther out of control.

RE: Lynx Without Context - Antigone Lestrange - May 27, 2018

Tig was in the midst of summoning up a cackle of mirth when he ceased his sputtering and actually did something. She knew what he'd done as soon as she heard the incantation but there was no time for further contemplation before she was succumbing to the curse.

Her eyes glazed over and the corners of her mouth slackened leaving her looking innocuous and rather vapid. For something so highly illegal it felt very pleasant. So pleasant, in fact, that she couldn't even be outraged that he'd just robbed her of her free will.

RE: Lynx Without Context - Tiberius Lestrange - May 27, 2018

Tiberius had cast the spell often enough to recognize the symptoms of it taking hold, and visibly relaxed, though he kept his wand arm raised for just a moment longer. It took a moment to feel as though he could breath again, and the claustrophobic feeling that the walls were closing in around him dissipated. This wasn't the end of the world, he told himself. She may have bested him, but he still held the power in their relationship. He could have killed her here and now, instead of casting the Imperius Curse. He could force her to do whatever he pleased.

He couldn't erase the fact that she was an animagus, now. But he could get her the hell out of his study to give him time to think about what to do about it, and he could buy himself a little more time before he had to confront her again. He lowered his wand.

"Don't speak to me," he said, tone clear and commanding. He was in control once more. "Of this, or anything else. Don't speak of this to anyone. Don't show anyone." The last thing he needed was to have the whole world knowing that she had bested him in any pursuit, no matter what it was. He considered his wife for a moment, trying to think of whether there was anything else he wanted from her, but could think of nothing.

"Get out," he said after a moment, a bit of bitter malice sneaking into his tone once again.