Finished Stars colliding Pv

Roland’s mother, Marie-Claire, wrote that she was not at all surprised by his fondness for astronomy. "A dreamy boy like you," the French director wrote in elegant handwriting, "would quite naturally prefer stargazing to boiling soup." Typical of her. You couldn’t expect a woman who lived for the theatre to grasp the exacting, subtle art of Potions. And just as Roland did not surprise his mother with his ever-growing interest in the skies, she, too, did not manage surprise him with her relentless habit of reducing everything to mere aesthetics. That was the Marin matriarch – even when her son was at a magical school, the only thing she seemed to care about was the beauty of the stage design.

In his own quiet way, Roland clung, with a childlike conviction, to the ancient idea that the stars in the sky were signs of fate, at least to a certain extent. But, putting aside weighty subjects like prophecy, fate, and free will, there was a simpler comfort in watching the heavens move. He was acutely aware of how little space he occupied down on earth, and how little he could reach upwards from the ground! Yet the planets, very far away, almost aimlessly, yet within that aimlessness with a tremendous order that had outlasted empires, seemed to wander. Faced with this reality, his mind often felt too large for his own body, yearning for freedom, for a vast infinity.

So, the boy decided to pay another visit to this magnificent hermitage of his, otherwise known as the Astronomy Tower. Since September, the high stone parapets had become a strange sort of sanctuary. Not because he was a complicated soul in desperate need of refuge, no, but because too much peace would not hurt anyone. With nearly an hour left before the midnight class began, the young lion was there, intending to let the majesty of the starry skies settle into the orbit of his own eyes for the time being. The vast expanse above was something with which one could communicate simply by looking - a tremendous, absolute void remained silent as you looked, yet spoke volumes through its silence.

But this time, there was someone else too. Roland approached him with tiny steps, as if afraid of scaring a dove. "Oh, I'm sorry," he began in a theatrical whisper, "I might have thought you were Van Gogh for a moment." A slight smile appeared on his face, "What will you draw? Maybe... just maybe... I can give you some inspiration."

Interacting with @Damien Dragonclaw.

Made by the amazing Prat Pass

"My, my," Roland said, genuinely taken aback, "I'd never imagined myself as the muse to a skilful artist." He blushed, catching the other boy's flush as if reflected in a polished mirror. "Why, thank you! It would be my pleasure," he replied, feeling flattered and slightly shy at the same time. The steady discipline of the painter's craft, without a shred of doubt, was not the Marin boy's forte; nevertheless, he had always admired this particular form of art. And actually, in the secret places of his heart, Roland privately had harboured a longstanding aspiration: to be the subject of a portrait. The young lion was quite familiar with that noble instinct to create art, but within him stirred a prouder longing: to be made into art itself, to embody it. Having his face, his vibe, his posture turned into a painting seemed like the ultimate way to make that happen.

Never before had he stood beneath the measuring gaze of one wielding a brush, and therefore, Roland was decidedly at a loss as to the most appropriate posture to adopt. Desperate not to disappoint the other boy, he shifted, seeking the elusive geometry of a perfect angle. The pale light of the moon, descending gracefully from the high reaches of the Astronomy Tower, poured over Roland's skin, only to cloak half his visage in a silver hue. This tranquil disposition was abruptly abandoned upon his learning of the artist's name. "Damien Dragonclaw?" he gasped, totally impressed, "That's a hell of a name, bud." Attempting to regain his composure, "I am Roland, Roland Domagoj," he added, "well, actually Roland Domagoj Marin. Don't worry, I'm out of names now." He smiled.

He directed a glance toward the drawing Damien had turned in his direction. "Splendid!" he practically shouted. It was a word his dad's theatre characters always used, and Roland was rather fond of its melody. "Well, first things first, I have to categorically refuse to believe I'm that pretty. I'm not that vain," he teased. "What's the word? A veela? I look like one here." He prayed that he had not totally misused the term, being Muggle-born meant he was still figuring out the whole context. "But, seriously, jokes aside, Damien, it's amazing! God help us all if those hands are just as good at waving a wand!" He giggled, assuming a cross-legged position upon the marble floor, and resting his back against the stone of the tower wall. "Do you often come up here to sketch the moon? How very poetic." Propping his elbow on his knee and resting his chin in his hand, "I come up here to look at the stars sometimes," he added, "I don't even know why. Just makes me feel better, reckon."

Interacting with @Damien Dragonclaw.

Made by the amazing Prat Pass

Roland had been called many different things before. "You rascal," his mother would say sometimes, especially if she was annoyed. "Domo, you fox," his father would say if he had said something funny. Uncle Arnaud even called him a rhinoceros once - but, well, nobody ever understood why. (Uncle Arnaud was a strange man.) But pretty? That was not one of the compliments Roland used to hear on a daily basis. He could only manage, therefore, a coyish smile and a broken murmur of thanks. Under normal circumstances, he could barely be regarded as a shy child.

With a gentle nod, he took the page the child offered him. Placing it in the large inner pocket of his robes, "I'll keep this forever, thanks! Actually, it's better that it's black and white. Maybe I'll post it on Instagram when I get back home. You know, I won't need to add any filters," he said with a warm smile. A small giggle escaped his lips as he wondered if Damien was familiar with the Muggle world. Admittedly, Roland often forgot that not everyone here was like him, and some had spent their entire lives within the bubble of the Wizarding World.

"Ah, you're an intern?" he asked curiously. "Dude, astronomy is really cool, but I wouldn't want to take on any extra workload for any classes. Respect!" Roland, upon hearing Damien's question, gazed at the stars. "Yes, they're very beautiful," he said with a slightly pensive look. "Perhaps they really do have some influence on our destiny," he said, tilting his head slightly to the side, "but I don't think so."

Roland noticed the blue stripes on the other boy's robe. "Ah, you're a Ravenclaw," he said with a slight grin, "I'm a lion myself, and we're lucky. The others' Common Rooms are in the dungeons. In seven years, they'll all be covered in damp, I fear."

Interacting with @Damien Dragonclaw.

Made by the amazing Prat Pass

Roland possessed that particular kind of forgetfulness typical of those straddling two worlds. He kept forgetting that kids raised in pure-blood families were completely oblivious to much of the Muggle technology. Humans, after all, possessed a remarkable talent that, once entirely consumed by the reality of one world, they were prone to remain deaf to any other universe. "Well, uh," the Gryffindor boy mumbled, tongue-tied in the gap between there and here, trying to explain Instagram to someone who had not even seen a smartphone, most probably. "It's like an album, just... not a real, I mean, physical one. Actually, it doesn't matter much." A half-smile fluttered up, quick and eager.

Having heard the young eagle's assessment of the astronomy internship, Roland remained cheerfully unconvinced. Granted, the architectural structure of the tower had its own Apollonian allure, but Roland wanted his stargazing on his own terms a little longer. There was plenty of time ahead for him to discover that a Hogwarts intern was not quite the tragic creature as a teacher's pet in a Muggle comprehensive.

A soft chuckle escaped him at Damien's joke regarding lions and eagles. It stood to reason, within the unforgiving Darwinian calculus, that badgers and snakes would come up short in the survival department. "Like it?" Roland asked, wearing a mock-proud face, fake-smug. "If I were a proper Brit like the rest of the pack," he added, "I'd go just by 'Art'." Following a sassy rotation of the eyes, the levity vanished, yielding to gravity. "One might say my cradle was the very boards of a theatre. Everyone I know is an artist or a true admirer of art." He met Damien's eyes dead-on. "Guess it makes sense I'd find artists here, too." The half-smile again, crooked. "As for me... well, thank you, but I'm not exactly putting on award-winning performances yet. I can make the piano tinkle a bit. And I used to act out monologues for my ma back in Dover. But that's all."

"What about your family?" Roland asked to keep the ball rolling. "Are you coasting on good genetics like me, or did you actually have to work hard for your talent?"

Interacting with @Damien Dragonclaw.

Made by the amazing Prat Pass

Roland doubted that Damien truly grasped the nature of Instagram more than the vaguest notion of the horrors that constituted it. And that was perfectly fine. Muggles didn't understand it either; half of its older users were in a constant struggle against its never-ending updates. Roland himself was from the Muggle world, and he still didn't comprehend the way the fax machine, that screeching relic of his parents' generation, operated. After spending some time at Hogwarts, he was even somehow convinced that these machines were invented by a potent wizard. He probably dropped one in London by a lucky accident. By what natural law, he wondered, could the script of a single hand cross miles of space to magically re-appear unless tiny men were running it through the telephone wires? Wires don't make sense, magic does.

Roland listened to Damien with a measured yet amused interest. There was a harmless, quiet grace to the eagle. "I'd like to hear you play the piano," Roland said, his voice cutting through the silence of the tower. "I'm not great at it. I enjoy being an amateur, less pressure." A look of wild bewilderment then crossed his face. "Oh? Curiously enough, my ma is also something of a costume designer. But her subjects are like... well, kings, jesters, and vicars..." She drew these wild sketches for weird Shakespeare adaptations back in Dover. If she lived in London, Roland often mused, they would probably have caused a massive scene. The thought elicited a slight shrug. "I guess we're all carrying around pieces of our parents, hm?" He looked up at the sky. "But we try to forge our own paths as well. Assuming it's possible."

Was it? The young lion had no clue. Whatsoever. The whole "free will versus determinism" and "nature versus nurture" debate was way above his pay grade. Then he heard footsteps. The masses were arriving for the class. Reaching out, he placed a gentle hand upon Damien's shoulder. "Hey," he said politely, "Seems the first-years are arriving. Very nice to meet you. And I duly noted that you're an Astronomy intern. I'm definitely planning on stealing some of your expertise." He shot Damien a slight wink.

Banner by / interacting with @Damien Dragonclaw