[neptune & Ooah] Blood In The Rosewater

[Clear Skies]

[dash=darkgrey]

Jovian Rosier
b. November 5th 1928

Born of an old and powerful Pureblood wizarding line, Jovian married young and learned early that keeping your head down and your mouth shut was the easiest way to live a peaceful life.

Years passed, and after the emergence of Blood Supremacists in the British Isles, this second son of a second son is starting to think that his peace of mind may not be worth his bruised conscience, after all.

"In countries where innocent people are dying, the leaders are following their blood rather than their brains."​

[/dash]

Saturday, 1:30 PM

For a moment, only the sound of two men's breathing filled the nicely appointed yet narrow office found in the very depth of one of the lesser Rosier estates in Wales. The outside world had long been forbidden of intruding in any meeting held in that room; that feat showing the expertise of the old wizarding family in wards and secrecy spells. As such, in a safe place where no one could condemn him of any impropriety, one Jovian Rosier could freely let loose the hot wrath that had steadily built inside him in response to the words spoken by his own son. He could rage, perhaps, but he did not.

No, Jovian had always been a temperate wizard, bred for diplomacy and shaped by compromises. An overbearing patriarch he was not, and it slowly came to him over the last few years that his hand-off approach to his family's affairs did more harm than good. Not only was his wife steadily taking over the family affairs in regards to politics and business ventures, shaping them to profit more her brothers than the Rosier family, but now his own heir had decided to associate with those odious blood purists that had made so much noise lately.

Closing dove grey eyes and passing a neatly manicured hand over handsome features that had started to line with stress and self-restraint, the patriarch of the cadet branch of the Rosier family let out a slow, deliberately quiet sigh. As he slowly felt his heartbeats even out and could finally think without his temples hurting, Jovian finally deigned to fix his unruly son with a grave look.

"Fergus, do you have any idea of the troubles your actions have brought me tonight?" His voice, while deep and soft-spoken, held the strain of gritted teeth as the wizard glared at the younger man before him.

Said young man frowned sullenly, his stubborn face reminding his father of his own youth for a moment, before the feeling passed. No, now was not the time to be soft; he's been much too lenient lately.

"Trouble? I'd bet that culling mudblood scum would solve much of our problems, not create them!" With a sneer, Fergus leaned forward in his seat before his father's desk with a hand placed flat against the polished rosewood before him. The two men glared at each other for a moment, before Jovian let some of the scorn he felt at the sentiment stated by his offspring leak into his voice.

"Your foolish behaviour made it to the Daily Prophet's front page, Fergus. The Rosier name will be laughing stock for weeks because of your idiocy!" As his tone grew harsh in his frustrated state, the father felt his magic roil under his skin, ready to lash out at a disrespectful son. He would not allow it, but the matter remained that he would have to deal with this…

As Fergus opened his mouth to respond, whole body tense with self-righteous indignation, Jovian sighed again before stopping what would amount to a tantrum from his newly adult son.

"No, we will not speak of this further tonight. Tomorrow, you will accompany me to present the Rosier family's apology to the pub you disturbed this morning. You will go with me, and you will properly apologize, Fergus! Am I clear?"

Startled by his father sudden forceful behaviour, the young man agreed without words and left, still sullen but cowed; for now.

Left alone with his own thoughts, Jovian sighed once more before turning towards his writing implements; he would at least have to send an owl announcing his intention to the owner of the pub trashed by Fergus, and there were more than a fair share of inquiries and even some howlers awaiting his attentions…

"What a wretched day…" He said, to the empty room as he reached for a bottle of firewhiskey hidden in one of his drawers.

 

[neptune]

They were getting more common and harder to pick out from a crowd. Those militant blood purists were more frightening than any boggart or rogue werewolf during the full moon. They walked and talked like regular people, offered a pleasant smile from behind a counter, or when crossing the street, but given the chance, they wouldn't hesitate to use that word—mudblood. It was dirty, one of the most vile things that Dawn Carlisle had ever heard, and when one of them walked into The White Hart looking for trouble, she hadn't known until it was too late.

"He had an old name," Abbott, the bartender said. After the incident that had gone from uncomfortably political to magically hostile, they had cleared the remaining customers out of the pub and started to clean up.

"What's that?" Dawn asked, waving her wand through the air to lift up all of the barstools. Their worn, cushioned seats were flipped up onto the wooden bar top. It was finally free of glass, but the same couldn't be said for the floor.

Abbott handed her a broom, "Rosier. It's an old name, must go back more than a hundred years."

"Doesn't yours?" she asked, perhaps a little annoyed as she began to sweep up bits of shattered glass. The floor was still wet from spilled alcohol, and although Dawn had worked in the pub for several years, she didn't relish smelling like one. "I don't understand," she went on, pausing to lean against the broom handle as she looked back to Abbott, now behind the bar. He was a tall man, blonde and pale with rosy cheeks and a shark-like smile. "You're a pureblood, but you don't go around making a fuss."

"Ah," Abbott chuckled, perhaps trying to inject some life back into the room, "I was raised right."

Right or wrong, the incident stayed with Dawn for the rest of the day and well into the evening. Even after reopening, she wondered if another pureblood would come in and threaten her again, if a wand would be pointed at her chest as insults were hurled her way all because she dared to practice magic while having ordinary blood. Rosier, the horrid man from that morning, said that he could smell it on her; unworthiness, he'd called it. Rather self-consciously, and although she knew better, Dawn wondered if that was true.


That uneasy, unsafe feeling wasn't entirely gone by the time Dawn arrived at work the next day, but there wasn't much to be done about it. Her mother had always said that in times of crisis, it was best to keep looking forward. It was sound advice from a woman who rarely gave any.

After hanging up her coat in the back, Dawn tied her apron around her waist and got busy behind the bar. Most of the glassware had been broken yesterday afternoon, and she was happy to unpack a few boxes of new pint glasses. They needed washing, but the repetitive nature of the work allowed her mind to relax for a bit. By the time she was done, and all the dishes were dried, it was nearly time for Abbott to show up. He was often late by a half hour, sometimes more, but Dawn wasn't the type to sell out a friend and the pub was seldom busy before the late afternoon.

She was down beneath the bar when the sounds of the door opening caught her attention. At first, she thought it was only Abbott, but the way the footsteps stopped said otherwise. "I'll be with you in a moment!" she called, nearly having everything back in order.

Wiping her hands off, Dawn stood and put on a smile for the man at the bar. He was more distinguished than their regular customers, dressed too well for a dive. Rather suddenly, Dawn realized that she was all alone and if she were to be threatened again, she didn't know how well she would be able to defend herself. She knew the spells, of course, but her mind was hardly in the right place.

"What can I get for you?" she asked anyway, just slightly cautious.



(( hope the post was okay! ))

 

[Clear Skies]

The following late afternoon found father and son standing before the small pub called The White. Clutching the newspaper that had given him so much grief last night, the elder of the two Rosier men glanced at the pub's moving picture on the crinkled paper, glanced at its source and finally laid a heavy glare at his son's sulking figure.

"Stand up straight, Fergus. You brought this upon yourself, remember that." His tone was sharp, and that may be why the youth did not defy him as had been his usual lately.

"Yes, father…" Was the best he could hope for, really and it was with a quick nod of approval that he left his son behind with a last warning:

"I will go smooth things over for you. Do not go anywhere, for I will find you, boy." With what amounted for a threat from the usually docile and considerate man, Jovian set foot in the drinking establishment.

The pub he found was surprisingly clean and tidy, with plenty of light brightening the atmosphere of old wood and battered upholstery. This abundance of light was not a good thing in that case, in the wizard's opinion, for it showed all the traces left of his son's folly in stark focus. Glint of some tiny amount of broken glass on the floor there, a table the still had burn marks there, and even a few stools that just did not fit with the rest.

A scowl briefly lined Jovian's features before he smoothed his expression into a smooth facade once more. The people working here had done an admirable job for such a short amount of time, even with magic, but it stood easily to him that his family did these people a great wrong last morning.

Causing a scene was one thing for one so young, but to be seen slurring and drunken in the morning? In public? Jovian was starting to see that he had done a wrong himself; in his son's education or perhaps even in his very role as a father.

Shaking his head slightly at the thought, Jovian focused in finding someone who would be able to guide him to the owner of the pub. Flitting pale eyes over the whole room, he quickly found a witch busy behind the counter.

'Good, she may help me.'

Approaching the blonde woman with a sedate and dignified pace, Jovian was slightly startled by the voice that hailed him even as he was sure he had been fairly quiet.

"I'll be with you in a moment!" Sharp ears, that one. That was for certain.

Perhaps it was why her next question, filled with wariness from what he supposed was the result of his son's actions, briefly let him at a lost to what to say.

"No…" He finally said after a few tense seconds, "I came here to offer my family formal apologies for what happened yesterday morning… if you would accept my son's presence in order to right his wrongs, that is." There, he was not sure if he would be thrown on his ears for that, but if so Jovian would have to find a more subtle way to restore his family's honour.

But… was she even in charge here? Too late to ask, he supposed.

All Jovian Rosier could do was wait...

 

[neptune]

Each second that passed felt like a lifetime, and the tension was almost impossible to ignore. Inwardly, Dawn was sure that it was all in her mind; she was still shaken from the day before, easily rattled and scared of her own shadow. The man in front of her was nicely dressed, and in a way, he had kind eyes that she wanted to trust. Dawn didn't want one rotten apple, one misguided young man, to change her view of the world. She wanted to believe that there was good in everyone and that sensible people still did, and always would, outnumber those who sought to elevate their blood above basic human decency.

When the unnamed man spoke, however, the Dawn was jolted back to reality. On instinct, she reached for the wand in the pocket of her apron—Beechwood, Unicorn hair—and hoped that she wouldn't have to use it. There were plenty of times when she found Abbott to be a royal pain in the behind, but not having him there filled her with unease. He'd mentioned the day before that Rosier's were an old family, probably with lots of money and Dawn was sure they had friends in the Ministry as well.

With her mind reeling, possibly about to spin entirely out of control, Dawn shook her head. She laughed, the sound breathy and only half as nervous as she felt. "I don't own the place, Mister Rosier," Dawn answered after finally finding her voice after being shocked by his offer. She let go of the hold on her wand and picked up one of the pints instead. The glass was perfectly clear, clean of finger prints, but if she didn't fidget, Dawn thought she might die.

"It's not my call, really, though if I had my way, I'd say no," Dawn added. "Your boy had no right to come in here and do what he did. There was glass all over, everyone was scared." The White Hart had lost its fair share of business due to the incident, and unlike the Rosier family, she and Abbott weren't exactly flush with galleons.

Eyeing Rosier, Dawn thought to fill the glass with beer before she polished a hole through it. "He called me a mudblood," she mentioned, the word rolled too casually off of her tongue, but there was no way to stop it. "Are you going to call me one too?" She set the beer down on the bar, wordlessly inviting Rosier to have a seat. "My boss'll be here soon if you want to wait."




(( so sorry for the delay! I'm not usually this shitty about posting! ))

 

[Clear Skies]

An uneasy weight settled upon Rosier's heart as he took a dignified seat on the edge of the bar. Taking hold of the glass offered to him with a frown creasing his brow, the pureblood patriarch could not bring himself to look into the young woman's eyes without flinching at what he saw there - he thus ended up peering pensively into the golden depth found in his grasp.

No, he did not utter that word in speech nor thought but… he did so because he found the term vulgar and lowborn, not because he particularly cared about those with muggle ancestry. True, he believed great wizards and witches could come from any background, yet he did silently think of those of magicless ancestry as disadvantaged in their lives. Muggleborns were oddities, newcomers to a world that could thrive and grow without their input.

And so, a part of Jovian Rosier thought that the arrival of new blood, as good as it was for the strengthening of the old bloodlines, was often not worth the trouble of breaking muggle habits from those who so valued them. Those who strayed from the wizarding world to dally with those barbaric muggles were putting their culture and the safety of their people in danger, after all - that was why so many bloodlines cursed and exiled those who married muggles, blood supremacy notwithstanding.

Yes, unfortunately for muggleborns, there was not only blood that separated them from the old families. Cast aside for those who already knew the intricacies of their world, those poor souls were largely left to themselves because no one was yet desperate enough to truly take in and teach an unknown child the ways of the British wizards. And so, muggleborns and most halfbloods were left to rot and drift away from the proper ways.

It was true; Jovian did not begrudge the woman of her blood, but he did feel uneasy of her difference.

A sigh passed the wizard's lips, and a moment passed in tense silence. After what felt like an eternity, Rosier put his thin lips to the glass in his hand and took a tentative sip of the brew he had nursed mindlessly for nearly ten minutes now.

Not bad.

"I believe I am not the villain you want me to be, but perhaps your dislike of my person may not be completely unfounded." He said at last, still not meeting Dawn's eyes.

Taking a proper gulp of the alcohol before him before setting it down, the man steeled himself before finally facing the witch behind the bar.

"I will make amends properly. When will your employer arrive?" He just hoped Fergus would stay put until then...

 

[neptune]

Having grown up with next to nothing, Dawn had endured her fair share of taunts and jabs over the years. Before the other children at Hogwarts thought to mock her second-hand robes, there were the boys and girls back at primary school who made fun of her for everything from the toys she didn't have, to the poor excuse that her mother called a haircut. She had been told over and over that hardship built character, that kids would always find something about someone to make fun of, and as she grew, Dawn let most of those taunts roll off her back. Still, there was something about the word mudblood—thrown in anyone's direction—that made her blood boil.

Although Dawn wasn't vindictive by nature, she took a certain amount of pride in shaming the older man. There was a part of her that was surprised to see him sit, thinking that he would have collected himself, and his spawn, in a huff and disapparated right outside of the pub. She didn't want to give him any credit for staying, and she knew, almost for certain, that Abbott wasn't going to read the Rosier's the riot act for what the younger one had done. In many ways, Dawn saw no point in the man's presence, even if his son stopped terrorizing others, there would always be another one to pick up where he left off.

For the next ten minutes, Dawn meandered around the pub and tried to ignore the man at the bar as she prepared for the day. It wasn't until he spoke to her, which surprised her again, did she stop what she was doing. She noticed that he wouldn't look at her as he accused her of only seeing what she wanted to, and the only served to deepen the chip on her shoulder. Next to being afraid in her place of work, the last thing that Dawn wanted to feel was small.

"I don't know," she answered, trying her best to keep a polite tone, "Abbott strolls in when he pleases."

Coming back around the bar, Dawn refilled Rosier's glass. "I don't think you're a villain," she said, unable to stop herself from having a say, "but ideas like that lead to nothing but trouble."

It hadn't been all that long since the muggles had had their war. The paper had chronicled just how evil regular people could be when they bought into a toxic thought. Dawn liked to think the wizarding world was better, that such violence would never touch her life, but maybe she was wrong; it already had.

 

[Clear Skies]

This whole encounter was full of tense silences, and the Rosier was sorry for it. Of course, it would be falsehood for Jovian to claim to have expected otherwise; he may have hoped for better conditions but, with the way things were and his son having entered into a conflict with the people of this establishment, the wizard was not naive enough to be surprised of the rather cold welcome. As such, with his glass finished without a word, the man was about to bid his farewell and reach out later on with a proper owl - he was ready to cede defeat for the day.

Standing up primly and gathering his robes to his sides, the gentleman turned towards his companion:

"I will leave and let you be, but I would like to offer my assistance for any monetary or juridical matters concerning my son's idiocy. I do feel ashamed of his actions and my inability to prevent them, please know that. I bid you a good day and-"

As fate would have it, his farewell was cut short with shouting outside. Dread mixed with a sort of resigned embarrassment filled Jovian as he had a good idea of who he would find at the center of the racket when he would investigate outside. With an heavy heart and some faint irritation burning some of the alcohol in his veins, the patriarch set out to quickly prevent anything untowards from happening - again.

A hiss escaping his lips, Jovian barged outside to the expected scene of Fergus shouting at an older man, the two already having attracted a crowd of curious unlooked with the sheer volume of their shouting match.

A scowl making his ways in the grooves of his face, Rosier Senior closed his eyes for a moment in order to calm his thoughts. A moment too long sadly, for his son took that time to open his big mouth again.

"I'll be where I please, blood traitor! Who cares about that mudblood whore of yours, or for your sorry excuse for a bar for that matter?"

"Big words for some puffed-up, ill bred little monkey, wouldn'T you say?"

"Why you toadsucker!"

Having heard enough, Jovian silently cast the sonorus spell to his throat and, with his sternest voice, intoned:

"Fergus Ernest Rosier."

Startled, the son turned wide eyes to the father as the full name intoned resonated through the narrow streets in a sub street of Diagon Alley.

'Perhaps, it is indeed time that I teach that boy a lesson.' Jovian thought, countenance grim yet resolute.