Tuesday, September 24th, 1894 — Themis' Office, After dinner

It had been a long day but a rewarding one. It was the only way she liked to celebrate a birthday. Justin had outdone himself this year with flowers, letters, and a small package, all arriving at breakfast. So much for her son not embarrassing her this year. It had turned into a revenge game of sorts. She swore she never sent more than a letter and a few of his favorite treats from home, but Justin swore his mother spoiled him in front of friends. If only she was sorry.

Enduring plenty of jabs about her new age, she took them with grace; Themis was happy to end the day. The sun was setting to the west, and she was forgoing her papers. She settled in with tea and a book. It would be the perfect way to end the night until she heard a knock on her office door. Frowning, she hadn't made any appointments with students this evening; Themis went to the door.

"Samuel? Please, come in. Is everything alright?" She was eager to continue their experiments, but she would be surprised if this were his purpose, considering the impromptu nature of the visit.

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Lou made magic!

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"Quite," Samuel Griffith answered and entered the room. He looked around with idle curiosity and then turned towards Themis. He had not seen her in a while, besides glances across the dinner table and brief greetings when they passed each other in the hallways. So today he had climbed the ever-winding stairs to her tower for a reason. Now he stood before the astronomy professor with a manner about his eyes that was slightly guarded, but nonetheless bright. He smiled. He was glad to see her. In his hands he held something that was wrapped in a soft piece of buckskin leather.

"It has come to my attention by eavesdropping on a conversation between Professor Valenduris and Professor Foxwood that today is your birthday. I do not suppose it was your plan to inform me about this, but I have hastened my efforts to finish this for today, nonetheless."
He held out the leather package to her with both hands. There was something mildly teasing about his tone. It was just like Themis to keep quiet about such an event to avoid being bothered by a line of polite congratulants. Samuel had decided that he would bother her regardless.
"Be very careful when opening it, please."
Wrapped in the leather was a knife. The steel blade was exceptionally sharp and of a somewhat odd shape, very thin and with a slight curve, but elegant. The blade was part of a twinned pair; the other still resided in Professor Griffith's office, unfinished. He had fashioned a handle from chestnut wood for hers and given it a dark stain. It would fit well into her hand. He had done this in the old-fashioned way with a carving knife and just some touches of magic to join it securely with the blade core, because he thought that wood often lost its characteristic feel and grain when shaped by transmutation.

"I do not know if it is improper to gift a knife to a lady; however, you played your part in its creation. I just finished it, for you to keep," he said.
"Ah, and I congratulate you on your birthday. Well done," he added with a lopsided grin.

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   Themis Lyra

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She admitted him to her office and watched him take in her space. It was only fair, considering how much time she spent in his office. She let him take in the soft leathers and warm woods that made up her office, the red and gold of Gryffindor seen in decorations throughout. Parchment star maps decorated the walls in tidy order, a brass telescope stood near the window, and the opposite wall was lined with floor-to-ceiling bookcases. Her desk was filled with books and notes, but arranged in a precise, rigid pattern.

She groaned when he revealed his sources, and she made a good show of exasperation with the two other wizards. “Valenduris will be difficult, but Foxwood I can make regret his life decisions.” She said with a smirk. Her surprise was genuine when he offered her the package. “I hope you know this was not necessary,” she scolded gently before turning her eyes to the leather.

The package lay open in her hands, and Themis was frozen, her eyes suddenly cloudy. “I have done nothing to earn such a gift.” She meant it, even as the thought brought a hint of envy to her voice. She wanted to have earned the knife in her hand. Her fingers brushed the handle, reverently taking the blade in hand. “Chestnut wood,” she grinned in delighted recognition, “like my wand.”

She gathered her wits and forced her tears to remain in her eyes. Taking a deep breath, steadying her voice, she couldn’t hide her surprise. “Samuel, this is beautiful. The craftmanship, the balance of the blade. This is perfect. Here, please follow me.” Themis turned to her adjoining rooms, knowing where this gift would live.

Entering her rooms, he would see the touch of a woman that had five years to make a home away from home. She moved to the fireplace, where her wand rested in a brass stand. It took little effort for her to magically duplicate the stand, where she gently rested his most thoughtful gift. Having mastered her emotions on the short move to her sitting room, she crossed back to him and caught his hands without hesitation. She gave his hands a squeeze, earnest thanks overriding reserve. “I thank you for the congratulations and for the most stunning gift. I must also remind you to stop being so kind to me. I will forget that you are a terrifying, dangerous alchemist.”

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   Samuel Griffith

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Samuel took a glance at the maps on the wall while passing them. The constellations and planets were arranged on these most often in complex circular patterns, he noted, something he had so far not given much thought but did now. There was an order to these rooms that mirrored what he saw on the parchments. He took in her self-admonishment in silence. Objecting to them would not uproot them from the place they grew from, in her soul.

"Whatever you think of what you have done, there is something of note about the knifeblade. It has achieved transmutational permanence. Hence, it remains in the state it was changed towards with great enduring. I do not think that you will ever need to sharpen it — at least if you do not wield it against something of considerable magical power. That trait only appears after crossing a certain threshold of power and precision — not to be taken for granted."

He stood next to the chairs beside her fireplace and watched her rest the knife on its new stand. There was a slight smile on his lips; he could not conceal that it pleased him that Themis appreciated this gift. He had undertaken some effort and some thought to make it so.
She turned around to him and took his hands, and he held hers and returned the slight increase in pressure he felt there. He held himself very upright and did not glance downward to look at them and consider their contrasting attributes; he already knew them. His were scarred in many different ways and rather strong, with elongated lines to the fingers that were however not delicate, and hers were very elegant and like they had nothing to do with ordinary life at all.

"I will forget that you are a terrifying, dangerous alchemist," she said. "Now you flatter me," he replied, pretending to be very serious.

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   Themis Lyra

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She turned to consider his work – their work – with a keener eye. She catalogued his words next to her own reactions, considered their source. She trusted Samuel, had learned that nearly two months ago when he first welcomed her into his world and art. He had offered her something of great value and she didn’t take his gift, or his levels of trust, lightly.

Looking at her knife, the product of their experiment heated something in her chest she lacked words for. If she was to think herself a partner in this, it was essential she offer as much as she received. Transparency was the best way she could think of now. “I do not doubt the results before me, nor do I take it for granted. I find it difficult to think it was my magic that did any of the work.”

Themis didn’t think herself weak or lacking in magic, but she was raised to view it as a crutch. Magic makes you lazy was Uncle Horace’s constant refrain in her youth. The problem was, Themis had also found the opposite to be true. She was a fast learner and picked up spells easily. But Themis still had to try. Somethings had come to her easily, others took time, but all had required effort. The mornings after their experiments reminded Themis that she was putting in backbreaking effort into their transmutations, but it still wasn’t what she expected. “I don’t say this brag or to belittle the danger we were both in, but it felt natural, all of it. Not easy, but intuitive. I do not find transfiguration intuitive; but somehow my magic understands permanent transmutation?”

She considered how to best explain herself and looked at the matching chestnut artifacts now on her mantel. They were both tools; both weapons; and both meant for her. She smiled, having a theory to her own mystery. “Perhaps it’s old magic, like when we are paired with our wands. No one needed to tell me my wand, I felt it. I knew how to communicate with it. It was natural.”

Themis released his hands and regretted the separation. Perhaps it was their experiments together (or the cheating of death together), but his physical proximity felt safe. It had bothered her the night she last left his tower. Arriving in her room she felt frozen, isolated, and vulnerable on arrival. It made her want to walk back into the fireplace and back to Samuel, back to safety. She dismissed the whole confusion as a trick of the wine they enjoyed.

She managed to retain a straight face for an admirable amount of time before grinning at his stone cold expression. “I have a feeling that face works on the sixth years, but I know better.” She couldn’t keep her attention from the blade and found herself back in front of the fireplace, a finger tracing the spine of the blade. As her finger caressed along the handle, the perfect chestnut handle fit to her palm, she couldn’t keep the pride and wonder from her eyes. “We created this. We willed this.” How could she say that magic made for idleness?

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   Samuel Griffith

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"It is old magic. Ancient even," said Samuel and let her go. He watched her return to the knife and trace its form. The absence of anvil and hammers in its creation made for a different sheen to the metal and a different quality of the blade. It was very thin. It looked foreign and fascinating and deadly. The knife was not particularly large or hefty, not a sword. Perhaps it could be a dagger or a tool wielded in a kitchen to slice very choice cuts of meat.

"With spell-bound magic we endeavour to rearrange the surface of reality according to the fancy of our imagination. Everything becomes possible for a short time. A bird becomes a teacup. The teacup shatters and we reverse it and put it back together. And beneath all that, is still the bird."
He smiled, but it was a smile that suggested that there was something distasteful about the process he had described. Coming up behind her to the fireplace, he continued: "Transmutation uses magic in its purest, energetic form. We apply it to matter until it changes states, the same way ice turns to water under the influence of heat. We invent a law of nature. It is not the same. And not everything is possible. But what is, endures."
He glanced at her profile and then retreated from her proximity and instead walked up to the celestial maps that lined the wall.
"Perhaps that kind of magic comes more naturally to you; it lends itself to a systematic mind. Conceptualizing the laws that govern movement and changes of position and relation is something you do in your work all the time, is it not? How old were you when you took an interest in Astronomy?"

Samuel approached the window now and looked out over the castle grounds. This tower was much higher than his own. It was the highest point of the entire castle and thus of the surrounding landscape. He could barely make out the window that belonged to his office from here. For a moment he thought it amusing that their perspective was so different. From his window, the tower could not be missed.

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Not the first time since renewing their acquaintance, Themis was frustrated that she never knew this existed when she was still a girl selecting classes. When Themis was a student, it took one look at the haggard, yet still pompous old wizard teaching the class to know it wasn’t for her. She’d still done her due diligence, met with the professor, decided him a blustering fool, and happily didn’t take alchemy in school. Her opinions on the former professor hadn’t changed, but Themis now regretted missing out on the subject.

“Transfiguration feels too artificial,” Themis concluded without malice. There was a time and place for such things, but it lacked the truth that intrigued her. His description of alchemy made her grin, it sounded more like muggle chemistry, but somehow harnessing the illusive energy that danced between all things. Transfiguration seemed limited by the matter it worked with, something becomes something else, but alchemy danced beyond the bounds of the material. Their experiments had been about magic in a form purer than she had ever felt it. Her magic existed like the wind, both physical and amorphous, it reminded her of light, of heat or cold. She could feel them all, even if she couldn’t hold them in her hand.

She could visualize the same duality, matter and energy, in the strange pull of gravity she felt from his presence. She felt him behind her as well as she could hear him; the heat and weight of another solid creature that could bend the laws of nature. She felt his change in his position before she turned to watch him go. The image of him against her wall was a strange one, tall, dark Samuel against an expanse of pale parchment and delicate ink. The contrast didn’t make him less welcome in her space, if anything she appreciated the balance he brought to her heady maps and figures. He was grounded in a way her discipline couldn’t be. He was solid and real, the manifestation of earth and the elements given spirit. What were the stars to him? She would always be removed from what she studied, knew in her heart that she would never fly among stars, but she had seen Samuel’s work. His material were the bonds of Creation, of life and substance and light. He didn’t look on what he worshiped, he bent it to his will. The idea that she could be welcomed into such an equation was humbling.

Pulled from her reverie to a farther past, she considered. “I’ve loved Astronomy my whole life. It seems inevitable.” She remembered nurses and her uncle retelling tales of her fussy infanthood and how the days with her were maddening, but the sight of the moon would calm her. “My uncle was an astronomer. If I wanted to spend time with Uncle Horace, I was to do it with my nose in a book and quietly. As I was incapable of quietly doing anything, my uncle spent a great deal of time explaining his work to me. That lasted all of a few days before he took over nearly half of my subjects from my governess and doubled the time I spent on mathematics.” She gave a small grin remembering, “After I took the liberty of adding my own constellations to one of his star charts, he felt it no longer necessary to continue my artist education. It was easy to forgo watercolors for distant planets and logic puzzles.”

“When I was seven, I woke up from a dream to find my bedroom celing had become the night sky. It was the first magic I remember.” She remembered the night well, her excitement at waking up to planets she could see and reach for. “Some part of me has always been called to the stars.” She joined him at the window, looking out at the first stars appearing in the sky. "When I was sorted, my favorite part of being in Gryffindor was being in the tower. I would spend nights sitting at my window sill charting the stars. I didn't know I would return to do so again."

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Lou made magic!

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He listened and looked at the stars in the parchment and then at the sky outside of the high, tall window. "You had a calling right from the beginning of your life and a person to foster it. Was he around you a lot in your childhood, your uncle?"

It was not that Alchemy had called him in his boyhood; it had been the siren song of power. Learning the subject was merely the avenue towards grasping for it. All he ever needed as a child and for as early as he could remember was to be free of suppression. When he had seen a transmutation in the office of the former Professor of Alchemy, who had told him in the same moment he would not teach it in his class, Samuel had known this was it. 16 years old and full of scorn about the world, he had seen the way to forge his environment to his desires and to leave his mark. Nothing more noble about it. Falling in love with it came later.

"My parents were not so forthcoming about my academic passions. They had different plans for me. It required nothing less than fleeing the country to feel free to pursue them."

He thought about this and thought about what he knew of her magic and how curious it was that it reflected her connection to the stars. "It seems like your magic is aligned with your interests. It is heady and abstract, like not of the earth. Its qualities are befitting for someone bound to the stars, are they not? But why is that so? I wonder if it is because of your life and your studies, or the other way around."

Themis approached and he turned slightly towards her when she joined him at the window. He regarded her profile with great attention.

"There were a few who came to me and sought my mentorship in Alchemy, over the years. Of the prideful young men that stood across a transmutation circle with me, none had a system of magic that surprised me. They were all different, sure. But theirs ran on sources of radiating heat. Some moved about in mighty, unpredictable waves that threatened the stability of the circle. Some were more consistent. I did not always like to interact with their magic, in truth, and they disliked mine all the same. Oppressive, was a word one used," he said thoughtfully.

"None of them whatsoever would have called on it to aid them in a task. You truly surprised me, in more than one way."
He smiled, feeling too fond of her for his liking.
"We shall continue soon, if you feel ready. In a few days."

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   Themis Lyra

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“Uncle Horace raised me.” She said. Themis could only smile at the thought of her uncle and guardian. Horace Sommerville was a complex man, but he loved the stars, and he loved his niece. Themis never doubted those facts. Not wanting to dwell, but wishing to explain, she added, “My parents both died when I was three. My father was muggleborn, and my mother was disowned when she sullied the Sommerville blood.” She couldn’t help but sneer at the audacity of purists and their nonsense. “Uncle Horace was the only one that thought a halfblood toddler worth raising. He was also an astronomer.” Themis considered the years spent with her uncle, an entire life framed around someone else’s passion for the cosmos. She had been fortunate and never forgot that. Perhaps, it’s what gave her a heart for the less fortunate.

“I can’t imagine what growing up would have been like if I didn’t love the stars. My uncle both punished and rewarded me with mathematical problems and star charts. It was everything I knew. He was a good, complicated man. He would be less than pleased with our experiments. He had a very fraught relationship with his magic.” Uncle Horace was little more than a squib when it came to magical potency, his Hogwarts career difficult and long. “He cautioned that magic makes one lazy. I understand his perspective, but I cannot say I agree anymore.” Themis was unsure if she ever had agreed.

She relaxed as they stood together at the window, the past a strange ghost for them both. She had imagined her life with parents, the traditional upbringing. She also knew it didn’t mean she would have been happier. Would Nelson and Delphina Lyra have been stellar parents? Would she have ended up in a mediocre marriage anyway? Would she have a path to academia? She had many questions without a way to answer them. But she considered her son, her place as a mother. “I am sorry they did not support your talents. It would have been a waste for you to become a generic man about town.” Her face made very clear what she thought about such a fate. “Why would you want anything but happiness for your child?” She thought about, fretted over, and dreamed big for her son every day. He was her heart in ways she couldn’t describe in words, an extension of her soul and the best parts of her. What more was there than his health and happiness?

She considered his experience with his magical partners and his own description of his magic. She frowned, “Oppressive is too negative a word.” She needed a more accurate description of what she’d experienced with him. “You’re warm, almost scalding to the touch, but it wasn’t painful. It’s weighty, powerful, and fast-moving. I didn’t find a need to resist it, but I suspect trying to would be a fool’s errand. It felt like,” She stopped, considering. “I don’t know how to describe it; I just knew I was meant to reach for it.”

It would be a lie to say she didn’t take his praise to heart. His compliment earned a smile she tried to suppress, modesty making a brief appearance. “I look forward to our next adventure. I felt powerful, untouchable even. It’s intoxicating.”

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   Samuel Griffith

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He had not known that Themis had lost her parents so early. In school, they were not close enough for him to know such things; perhaps she had not told many people at all. The name Sommerville rang a faint bell. Of the sort that was in his head because of the old books and ancient paintings in the house of the Griffiths, hailing from a time gone when they were pure. Although to be frank, they had never been of the upper echelon. They had been clerks and lawyers and bureaucrats; perhaps there had been a portrait painter and a musician of some note. The family was firmly rooted in subservience to real power. The Sommervilles might have been closer to the center of purist circles.

Samuel looked at Themis with empathy. This man, Horace, must have been the whole world of the girl she once was. There had been no one else. He thought he understood her a bit better now.
"If it makes one lazy, that is for a lack of ambition. Although I see the way he came to that conclusion. It certainly moves the goalposts on what in life is challenging," he said and thought about his muggle mother.

"My parents do want me to be happy, in a way." His mother at least wanted for him what she thought he needed to be happy. His father wanted for him to be a man like he was, just more successful. And it was one of Samuel's great fears and a considerable source of self-loathing that this was indeed what he had become.

"They also needed me to be the draft horse to pull the family along to a better tomorrow, and that from a very young age. So there was a conflict of interest," he said with a slight frown. He did not like to talk about all that was not as it should be, in the world he grew up in. It was difficult. But standing next to her, he felt once again strangely compelled to be honest. "My father set me up with the office of the minister of magic through some connection. I was situated to climb and they knew well that I would, as soon as they could redirect me from my academic obsessions. I tried to do both for a while and landed myself in St. Mungo's at nineteen. I was experimenting with transmutations on my own. It was foolish." His voice contained a hint of amusement. "I felt I had to leave and learn Alchemy the proper way, or I would have been pulled back into the life they envisioned for me and never get the chance. I suppose I could have been less drastic about it."
Blowing himself up with an especially ambitious transmutation had been quite dramatic, he had to admit it. But it had done the trick, in that it had forced the confrontation. He had not done it intentionally of course. Although he did sometimes wonder about that young man he had been and how little he had understood himself.

Her description of his magic surprised him. If this was really how she felt about it, he might need not worry so much about subjecting her to it. Turning to Themis, he said: "Then let us waste no time. What do you think of Friday? Perhaps we shall get drunker on power, this time, than on wine."
He looked at her and smiled without regret. He had enjoyed that part of the evening too. "Although I object to no form of intoxication."

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   Themis Lyra

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She smiled at assessment of her uncle’s philosophy. She’d reached a similar conclusion, but had never lacked ambition, even if it wasn’t something she upheld as a personal virtue, it was simply who she was. Her uncle had been a man without her connection to magic, without the ability to hear and feel it as she did. It made sense, in hindsight, why her uncle would think it suspect.

She withheld further judgement as he spoke, his life was his to evaluate; not hers. She wondered at the willful, proud boy she remembered before he became the man before her. She wondered if he got that silent power from his father or mother, who taught him to be a force of nature that could bend nature itself. She wondered at his journey from youth to being forced to conform to a mold he should never have been forced to fit. Considering her words, knowing she did not have the standing to make her case, she still ventured, “I think it would have killed you, the politics and monotony. You weathered enough small minds when we were in school. I think a life of it would be torturous.”

She let the comment rest wherever it would land and smiled when turned to her, his mischief plain on his face. She matched it, her good humor and gratitude for his gift clear in her eyes. “I do enjoy the taste of power. The wine is only a house elf away.” She winked. That could be their little secret.

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