In for a Pint

It had been a long day. One of Robert's patients had delivered twins in a complicated birth, but, now that things were all said and done, mother and babies were doing well. It was the family's sixth and seventh children, and Robert had had his misgivings about them having any more before these two came along. Now he was sure they should not have any more. It was now just a bit before midnight, and Robert had decided to stop in to the Leaky for a pint. He had ordered the pint and paid for it and the new bartender had drawn him a pint that had about three inches of foam on the top. For a moment, he was tempted to go back and show the nervous lad how to pull a proper pint but he decided against it.

He took his pint and went to a table and settled in to simply enjoy it and the time honored sounds of the chatter that was so common in the Leaky. It did not matter how many decades had come and gone. The Leaky seemed to never change, and sometimes that was a comforting thing.

Selwyn hadn't been able to sleep, so he'd walked. The city was relaxing at night, a maze of neon lights and darkness. Or not so much of a maze if you knew where you were going.

Selwyn hadn't known where he was going, so his footsteps inevitably led him to The Leaky Cauldron. Habit was hard to kill. On the threshold, he hesitated. Drinking wasn't Selwyn's forte, and he'd already eaten. There was nothing interesting in Diagon Alley that the muggle world couldn't beat. But it was late, and this would, perhaps, be a rare opportunity to visit the place without being recognised by a dozen school children and their parents.

Not that any of the shops would be open, he realised as he stepped inside.

There were few patrons in the pub, but it had always seemed to Selwyn that this was the case, except for right before of after school term, when the influx of students celebrating their new freedom, or shopping for the new term's supplies swelled their number. He suspected the landlord gave the smattering of people perpetually in the taproom free board in return for their loyalty.

In any case, there were not so many people here right now that Robert Lupin didn't stick out like a sore thumb. He looked exhausted, but he had looked exhausted most of the times Selwyn had ever seen him. Perhaps it was a permanent state.

Selwyn took his coke from the bar (thank god for this place being at the intersection with the muggle world) and approached Lupin. It wasn't as though he had anything better to do, after all.

Robert was simply enjoying his pint and doing a bit of people watching. It was usually a harmless way to pass a bit of time. He knew several of the people here, and while they made rather cursory greetings, he did not join them. Robert had no objection to some conversation. After all, one did not come to a pub to be solitary, but he preferred not to interrupt. It was a bit emptier than most evenings, but, that truly did not bother him. He noticed Selwyn Thorfinn come in, order a drink, and come and over to the table

"Hello, Professor Thorfinn," Robert said. "You're welcome to join me if you like. I haven't seen you for awhile. How have you been?"

As he spoke, a bit of a ruckus broke out back at the bar. A very brief glance revealed that the father of the twins he just delivered had made his way to the pub with a couple of mates, and he was shouting that he wanted to buy a round for the whole place. Then he said he would buy two rounds, one for each of his new babies--his fourth son and his third daughter.

"Herbert Crandall," Robert looked at Thorfinn. "A few more years and Hogwarts will be overrun with Crandalls--most of them poorly controlled metamorphs who frequently get 'stuck' in some transformation or another. Their oldest boy, Georgie, should be starting this fall, I believe."

Why was Lupin always so civil? Like with most people Selwyn irrationally disliked, he was just waiting for the other man to do something so that he could rationally dislike him. It was so inconvenient.

So he could barely believe his luck when Lupin described Crandall children's situation as thought he thought they were doing it out of mischief.

"It's hardly their fault," he said.

Selwyn frowned a little to show his disapproval as he sat down, though he was secretly delighted with this opportunity to have an argument - or at least a debate - with Robert Lupin himself.

"Being born with it isn't the same as learning transfiguration, you know."

"Are you so certain, Professor?" Robert asked. "There are certain things in which I look at the ends as being more important than the means." Well, that wasn't true, was it? The fact was, Robert generally was far more concerned at the ends than the means. The means were only the mechanisms by which things that were all important, as in the greater good, were obtained and maintained. Dodgy as that meant that sometimes the means became. Respectable or dodgy, means were merely collateral damage, nothing more. And, when it came to transfiguration, Robert's only means of doing it for himself was a either a spell or a potion. That wasn't the case for his granddaughter, who had inherited the metamorph trait from her ne'er-do-well biological father. Now that was one bloke the wizarding world would have been far better without. The only thing Rob Dent had ever done that was decent was contributing a bit of sperm towards Abbey's existence.

"I have not done an extensive study on it, but it seems to me that I've seen those who have a genetic predisposition to have learned their own bodies over time and how have learned, by their own trial and error, if they are allowed to develop naturally--with reasonable supervision, of course--and to not be restricted by unnatural school restrictions, to learn to do some rather skilled and incredible transformational things."

Selwyn wasn't even surprised that Lupin asked if he was sure of himself. People often saw that he was young and pretty, and assumed there was nothing else to him. And people like Lupin, well, they were already sure they knew everything, anyway.

He didn't even register the ends more important than the means comment. Not right then. It would only come back to bother him later on.

"I'm hardly an expert on metamorphs," he shrugged, "but I've heard stories about their abilities showing when they're only a few hours old. That makes me wonder how much control they have over it. Babies that small can't even focus yet, can they?"

Selwyn was hardly an expert on babies, either, but he was sure he'd heard something about focussing being an important developmental milestone.

"And I know the veela transformation is a defence mechanism. You lose your temper badly enough, and you don't have a choice over what you look like."

"Well, you're right, of course, that babies cannot focus, not early on, anyway. You're also completely correct that metamorphs who display episodes of some transfiguration early on do not appear to have control over it. Sometimes it seems to me to be pretty random, and then it takes the same form as a lot of other children's emerging magic traits where it is accidental magic that seems to cause transfigurations, uncontrollably at first by shows of strong emotion, either positive or negative. Your point with veelas is well taken. It sounds like there is some similarity, to a limited extent, with metamorphs' emotional drive. Self defense, adrenalin--whether fear or anger--is as strong a part of emotion as any other, and equally as valid. I've read about veelas, but I have not been in position to actually need to work with an angry veela. I should like to know more about veelas as a whole. We seem to be rather shy in the literature about them, as compared to other beings."

He wasn't sure he wanted to talk about his own experiences in helping to raise a metamorph from her very first breath of life. It had not been the plan for him to deliver his first born grandchild. That had happened by emergency circumstances. He had been the first one to touch her, the first one to coax her tiny form into its first breath of air, and he had seen the odd transfiguration that had happened the instant that Rob Dent had picked her up. The moment Rob had touched Abbey, something happened that Robert had never been able to rationally explain. Abbey had assumed the same form as Rob's own Labrador Animagus form and had transformed into a tiny Labrador pup in Rob's hands. As was Rob's typical milksop-like personality, he had fainted dead away, and had found himself unable to face parenthood and had not only spontaneously left the hospital when he woke, but he had walked out on his newborn daughter but also out of his marriage with his wife who was, in that moment, in intensive care, barely alive. Khaat had needed much help to recover, and Robert and Kate had been deeply involved with their grandchildren ever since that first spark of necessity. It had not anything that they ever regretted, even though, at first it had not been a lifestyle any of them had intended or wanted but when it happened, it felt like it mended a lot of deep wounds in the family that went back to Lyall's own wounds. The family had bonded in ways that Robert had simply presumed Fenrir Greyback had stolen from them forever.

That was because The Ministry liked to say veela were oh, so dangerous - and they were - but your average person couldn't concieve that someone they were attracted to might kill them.  It was like imagining a butterfly might bite.

Still, despite an overall belief that understanding was key to resolving interspecies tensions, Selwyn wasn't really eager to allieviate Lupin's curiosity. It could get him in real trouble with actual veela, but more importantly, Selwyn didn't trust Lupin at all.

He took a sip from his drink to give himself time to think.

"I shouldn't think there's much more literature about centaurs," he said, hoping his tone made it plain what he thought of the kind of literature Lupin was referring to.

"Besides, all you've really done is admitted you're willing to blame a group of children for a trait beyond their control. That's prejudice, Mister Lupin.  No better than the people who killed your brother."

"Well, I am prejudiced, certainly, but not towards the children," Robert said calmly, taking a sip from his drink. "My prejudice is towards parents who refuse to be accountable and responsible for their children and who refuse to attempt to provide for them some sort of reasonable guidance, instruction and support. It is not enough to procreate as a hobby and then dash off to one's own devices and leave the children behind. And, so you know, I have no prejudice against werewolves. Rather, I do not have any sympathy for those who murder, and I have a special lack of empathy for those with enough criminality to kill for the sheer joy of it. The man who killed my brother is a monster, and it is not his curse that makes him so. The monster that lies within him is of his own doing. Perhaps you should check yourself, Thorfinn. You seem to have your own prejudices. What is it? The ministry? Or is it more specific?"

Well, that had been a passive way of phrasing it. The dislike Robert had of deadbeat parents was not something he was ashamed of. He had sympathy for extenuating circumstances but he had developed a iciness of heart for those sorts of assholes. His own response to the deadbeat that had infiltrated his own family and nearly killed his daughter was, when he discovered Rob's illegal potions empire, was that he went personally and obliterated the lab, and, while she was so critically ill, had used his position as Khaat's next of kin to file on her behalf for divorce and a one time alimony payment for her and parental support for Abbey, and he had fought to take every single asset Rob Dent had ever had, even knut, sickle, and galleon. Rob had completely disappeared. Robert had prevailed in the courts, though, and it had made Khaat amongst one of the wealthiest women in wizarding London, and much as they did try to not publicize that he was well aware that people had at least some understanding that she and Brian were well off. Brian had come into the marriage with his own wealth, though, so it certainly had not been hers. Together, they would never want for anything. The last Robert had heard of Rob, he was the boy toy of one of the extremely wealthy wizarding women somewhere in France and was enjoying being kept. How poetic.

"I dislike elitists," Selwyn replied easily. "The wizarding world knows me as that part veela boy. People with children at Hogwarts know me as the headmaster, and probably as someone who was very lucky to get where I did. But in the muggle world, I'm the heir to a lairdship, I know the families who're struggling, because I grew up with them. And it's my job to make their lives easier."

He was speaking earnestly now. Selwyn rarely talked about The Glen, except to assert its beauty. He certainly didn't talk about what his family did. People were more interested in the veela. Wizarding manors didn't have tenants, so far as Selwyn could tell. They were all rolling green parkland maintained by house elves.

He took another sip, and kind of wished he could drink beer. He had a feeling Lupin would take him more seriously if his choice of indulgence wasn't fizz.

"You don't have that, and you don't think that far. Parents care about their children. Even at Hogwarts, the parents sending me owls because they don't like me giving their precious baby a detention, are doing it because they care about their children. So you need to ask, why is someone dashing off to their own devices, as you put it?" Selwyn asked.

"You are an upper class wizard with literally the most prestigious job in the Wizarding World. You want for nothing. Not everyone does. Not everyone has the luxury of being at home with their children however many hours you think is optimal."

"That's why I dislike you, and why I hate The Ministry," he said. "All your laws are for people like you. You don't think you need to look out for the people who really need help, because you don't even see them. You just think they're being bloody minded. And people like me aren't even people."