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[fnniganthomas]

❝ your mind games don’t work on me. ❞ ( from albus, and in a very not at all serious tone )

leander spluttered,  barely refraining from flailing his arms out around the two of them in a flurry of surprise.   he didn’t think albus was seriously accusing him of anything   —   it might’ve been hard for him,  sometimes,  to get a good enough gauge on what other people were saying with their tone and body language,  but he knew albus enough to know he was messing around,  at least a little.   but even knowing that hardly cleared it all up.   “what mind games?”   he asked,  only half - expecting any kind of answer.   “that was a serious question!   I don’t know that I ever really ask questions I’m not serious about!”   leander paused,   and thought about that.   he wondered if rhetorical questions counted,  here;   if he’d just lied without even meaning to.   if they did count,  that was leaving albus an opening to argue that point instead of answering the question actually at hand.   he shook his head,  trying to clear his thoughts.   leander made his arms settle,  tried to roll his shoulders back and look serious.   “also,  this is just,  you know,  me thinking out loud,  but if I did try my hand at mind games,  like,  ever,  I don’t think they’d work on anyone.  you’re not special for being immune.”

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leander: i really think you should just do whatever makes you happy. that's what lucy and i did. we love each other, so we didn't overthink it. i mean, seriously, i cannot emphasize how little we thought about this.

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thirdwars​​​    ━     leander & tonks

“Right, caught in the act, but I think I’ve deserved to flip some of these folks off.” Tonks drops her hand, nods her head at one of the paintings featuring an ancient family member. “Luna’s doing a great job repainting some of these, yeah? I think I could hear some muffled screams beneath a very colourful painting the other day.”

“ oh,  yeah,  no,  of course, “   leander agreed.   he normally wasn’t too keen on flipping off paintings himself,  but far be it from him to stop someone else from doing something.   “ the repainting job is definitely   —   well,  I definitely like it,  you know,  though the one in the second story hallway?   stays quiet and only screams when you pass,  which is,  uh,  startling. “

[fnniganthomas]

cfdiggorys·    ━     leander & z

he recognises it. the awkwardness. the inability to work out how to hold yourself, the displacement in any and every situation. he lives it, every day - from a child who had to make himself invisible, or as visible as possible to protect his mother, to an adult expected to terrify, to occupy space, to strike fear. he never knows what to do with his body. z tries for a laugh that comes out more like a cough, and a smile akin to a grimace.

z’s gaze follows leander’s motion, and can’t help a grin. the sting of a touch up might do him some good. “yeah. yeah, so am i, actually. comes with the whole catholicism thing, i guess.” was that a joke? he’s not sure. he tries not to think of it as he rolls up his sleeve - left side, always the left - the most intricate, the most sprawling designs that will cover his skin to keep him safe from the expectations of the mark. “yeah. it’s mostly just a bit faded - but, y’know, you’re the professional here, so. your call.”

“ is that a catholicism thing? “  leander asked,  the words out of his mouth rabbit - fast before he could think better of them.   he panicked for one white hot second   —   he was almost positive that religion was one of those things he wasn’t supposed to ask people about,  but he also figured there was at least a lead in here,  that it wasn’t just out of nowhere.   he shook his head and breathed out half a laugh.   “ or,  sorry,  if that’s rude.  I’m not catholic,  obviously, “   he wondered if it was obvious.   “  …   so I was just,  uh,  curious.  are signs,  like,  a thing? “ 

leander distracted himself from the questioning line of thought by looking at z’s arm,  and the tightly packed designs curling their way around it.   he pulled on a pair of latex gloves and glanced up at z before reaching for his arm,  using a light touch to turn it,  a little.   he didn’t know that any damage stood out to him,  immediately   —   just some fading,  like z had mentioned,  but nothing major.   “ yeah, “   he agreed,  pulling his hands away,  nodding at z with a small smile.   he wasn’t going to question what brought z here;  a sign from god,  or some more human force.  those weren’t the sort of questions leander asked,  even when he wasn’t watching his mouth.   “ just a little fading,  but if you wanted that patched up I can absolutely do that. “  

[fnniganthomas]

seamus-finnigan-thomas​​    ━     leander & seamus

where: The Finnigan-Thomas Home

who: leander and seamus

It wasn’t as if Seamus was ignorant of the happenings around him. He’d spent enough of his youth denying the realities to continue doing that today. In all reality, he was utterly terrified for his family. Though it was affecting him in more ways than he could count, he couldn’t let it come between him and showing his love for his family.

And today, he was trying to choose to be happy. His son had accepted his invitation to come bake cookies while Dean was out at work. It would be a welcome reprieve from his own work, which seemed constantly drown out by his own catastrophizing.

Seamus had just pulled the flour from the cupboard when he heard the telltale sound of his son apparating in the foyer. With a smile, which felt less forced than usual, he quickly made his own way there. With open arms, he smiles and hugs the young boy, pulling him in close. “Hey, there, darling,” he says softly as he kisses his cheek. He keeps a hand on his shoulder as he smiles, “How’re you holding up?”

leander knew he was a pretty tactile.   he was,  after all,  not without some degree of self - awareness.   words weren’t always so easy for him to find   —   at least,  the right ones weren’t,  not if he was speaking out loud and didn’t have enough time to plan them out in his head.  but touch was easy;  a hand on someone’s shoulder,  a gentle nudge to their side,  tapping his foot against theirs   …   he knew what he was saying with those.  he also knew that not everyone wanted him touching them all the time,  and he did his best to respect that.  

it wasn’t like he didn’t get enough human contact,  or anything so dire.   his job required him to touch people,  and he had plenty of friends he could lean on.   lord knew callum had to deal with him enough in their apartment.   but it was different with his dads.  leander leaned into seamus’ hug eagerly,  gratefully.   “ hey,  dad, “   he said,  giving his dad a small,  genuine smile as he stepped back as much as he could without dislodging seamus’ hand.  “ I’m,  uh.  well,  I’m holding up alright. ”  

he figured it was true enough.  the halloween battle was still more fresh in his memory than he’d have liked it to be   —   he might’ve come out of it relatively unscathed,  but leander couldn’t forget all the people killed and injured.  still;  he didn’t want to talk about any of that here,  not right now.  already being back in his family home felt like a balm over everything.  “ what about you?  hopefully nothing’s going on that cookies can’t fix. ” 

[fnniganthomas]

hugohumungus    ━     leander & hugo

“Do you think, like, dogs think doors are portals to another world? Like,” he pauses in thought, “Most of their life is inside, and they get so excited, maybe they think they’re entering a different realm, yeah?”

“ that’s   …   as good a theory as any,  I guess? “   he looked down at gwen,   who seemed mostly chill with the fact that they’d stopped their walk to talk to hugo.   “ in all honesty,  I never have any idea what she’s thinking,   so if she’s got alternate dimensions in her head I wouldn’t be surprised. “

[fnniganthomas]

leander finnigan-thomas  +  text posts (and a tweet!)

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thirdwars​  ━     leander & dove

where – leander’s place of work. who – @fnniganthomas​

She’s got a goal. Well, Dove has many goals, all of them very important to her, both weighing her down and lifting her up –– but today she has a simple one. She wants a tattoo. She has wanted one for quite some time, in truth, but things always seemed to get in the way. Now, with no job to take up all her time, she has no excuses.

Besides, she wants the distraction. Something completely unrelated to the war.

She enters the tattoo shop with a determination. She wants Leander, no one else: she knows tattoos take some time, and Dove, in all truth, does not feel comfortable being that close to someone she hardly knows for a long period of time. It’s why she’s made an appointment. Dove is in no mood for surprised. “Sorry, am a bit early,” she says, as her eyes fall on her former classmate, current fellow Order member. Friend, maybe. Familiar, at least. She stands, a bit uncomfortable. She knows that he most know what she did, that there sticks metaphorical blood to her being now, and while she doesn’t regret it, she hates it all the same. “I hope that’s okay.”

" yeah,  of course that’s okay, “   leander said,  an easy - going half smile firmly set on is face.  he moved out from behind the front desk,  double - checking that dove being early didn’t throw a wrench in his schedule  ( though he knew,  full well,  that it didn’t.  he triple checked anyway. )  before he did.  

he didn’t think dove would really appreciate a hug from him just now,  not in the middle of the shop with his coworkers and other patrons milling around.  but he wanted to give her one in greeting,  anyway.  he thought maybe she could use it;  he thought,  at least,  that it wouldn’t hurt.  instead he started to stick his hand out for a handshake and wondered if hugging her wouldn’t have been less weird.  he lowered his hand,  almost sheepishly,  and nodded his head back towards his curtained - off work station.  “ we can head back to my station   —   uh,  everything’s sterilized and good to go,  I just need to set pigments out and stuff.  maybe go over what you want again one last time?  see if you wanna make adjustments,  that kind of thing. “  

he started walking backwards,  then course corrected and turned to walk normally,  so he wouldn’t trip in front of dove.  he turned his head and smiled at her,  a little lopsided.  “ how’re you doing?  those shoes look nice,  are they new? “  and   —   they did,  really,  but he cared a lot more about the answer to his first question.

[fnniganthomas]

leander on instagram. 

[fnniganthomas]

himydw​:

You have all of one ask to completely shatter my character. Make it count.

amadeus,  cecily,  leander,  &  victoria

[fnniganthomas]

@lucypls    ━     leander & lucy

what leander really wanted to do,  if he was being honest with himself,  was throw himself down on lucy’s hospital bed and stay there until someone kicked him out.  he didn’t think it was   ━    you know,  advisable.  leander walked into her room at st. mungo’s and very sternly told himself,  no,  that’s not what’s happening today,  and knew he wouldn’t actually toss himself onto her bed.  he didn’t want to hurt lucy,  and,  also,  he knew that there would probably be very functional chairs he could toss himself down on instead.  it was all good,  except for the ways it,  you know,  wasn’t.  but it was fine,  really.

he just didn’t feel like having to look around and see the inescapable proof that they were in a hospital.  he tried to place himself in lucy’s shoes and only felt even more like forgetting where they were.  he wanted to burrow his face under some pillows and not come out for a few days,  thank you very much;  all the better if the pillows smelled like comforting honeysuckle.  but   ━   he could sit on a chair.  nudge the bed with his knee,  and ask,  “ how long do you think until you can break out of this place? “   

mostly joking,  a little serious.  he cocked his head at lucy,  gave her half a smile.  “ have you,  uh   …   have you seen molly,  or anyone yet?  d’you need,  like.  a coffee or something? “   

[fnniganthomas]

cfdiggorys​    ━     leander & z

there’s a smell of cleanliness to the air, something fresh mingling with something sterile. z breathes it in, and pretends for a moment that it’s cleaning him from the inside out, washing him free of his past and his present and his future. his eyes close for a moment, and when they open, there’s a tattooed mass of body in front of him, inked in a way that rivals his own arms and torso. he all but stumbles to avoid careening into leander, immediately deeply embarrassed by the way he knows he must look like a deer caught in headlights. “fuck,” he says quietly, righting himself. he draws himself upwards, as best he can with his height, and nods at the man. “well, if i didn’t know any better, i’d say god was telling me i need to ask you to touch up my dragon piece.” ( @fnniganthomas​ )

most of leander knew,  by now,  that when people were falling they didn’t always need someone else to right them.  reaching out,  when it wasn’t something they’d want    ━   well,  maybe it wasn’t as bad as not reaching out when someone needed you to,  but leander was still wary.  he saw z,  and his gut instinct told him to step forward and reach his arms out,  prepared to steady him;  and before they could do anything more than hover clumsily in the air,  z righted himself.  leander took a half step back and let his arms fall to his sides,  a smile making its way over his face.  he regretted instantly that there was probably no way to cover his  awkward,  halted  movements,  how he’d seemed a split second behind real life.  but it was fine;  he thought,  he probably won’t call attention to it.   

“ well,  I’m always one for listening to signs, “  leander said,  returning z’s nod,  and moving an arm again  ( leander wondered if it was too late to figure out how normal people moved their arms when they spoke,  or thought of speaking,  even )  to gesture back towards his curtained off work-station.  “ why don’t we,  uh,  take a look at it?  figure out how much touching up it needs,  you know.  see what we can get done today.  “

[fnniganthomas]

[fnniganthomas]

                  ❝ in my mind I am eloquent; I can climb intricate scaffolds of                      words. but when I open my mouth, everything collapses. ❞

{ cis man, he/him } ❝ icarus is forever deemed the boy who flew too close to the sun and got burned. to me, he is just a boy too enthralled by beauty to care whether or not it could hurt him. ❞ huh, who’s TAYLOR ZAKHAR PEREZ? no, you’re mistaken, that’s actually LEANDER FINNIGAN-THOMAS. he is a 23 year old HALF-BLOOD wizard who is a TATTOO ARTIST. he is known for being RETICENT, SELF-CONSCIOUS, STUBBORN, INARTICULATE, and PERSUADABLE but also TRUSTING, SYMPATHETIC, EARNEST, PERCEPTIVE, and QUICK-THINKING, so that must be why he always reminds me of the song EPITAPH BY HIPPO CAMPUS and THE SMELL OF HOMEMADE BROWNIES BAKING; TECHNICOLOR PAINT STAINS ON EVERYTHING YOU OWN; A SKY GONE GREEN WITH PROMISED RAIN; WORN FLANNELS YOU’RE HAPPY TO LET OTHERS BORROW; A LUMP IN YOUR THROAT FROM THE WORDS YOU SWALLOW. i hear he is aligned with THE ORDER OF THE PHOENIX, so be sure to keep an eye on him. { zoe, 22, cst, she/her }  [ leander is adopted. ]

ADDITIONAL MATERIALS:   leander’s playlist, stats page, & pinterest board    CHARACTER PARALLELS:   jason mendoza (the good place), chidi anagonye (the good place), ty lee (atla), finn (star wars), troy barnes (community), brittany pierce (glee), ponyboy curtis (the outsiders), aang (atla) 

one.

there was no real doubt in anyone’s mind that leander was his fathers’ son. even the two of them had no trouble seeing bits of the other in him. 

dean could be heard calling leander seamus’ son when he ran into the side table holding lit candles and set several wooden picture frames ablaze. seamus returned the favor and referred to leander as dean’s son when he walked into leander’s room and saw he’d upended several jars of paint on the floor. to this day, none of them could really say if he’d upended the jars on purpose or not.

leander liked to think it was on purpose, even as he proclaimed his innocence every time the family told the story over laughter-filled dinners. proclaiming his innocence was just part of the way that story got told and he couldn’t go breaking tradition. really, he liked the way the rainbow of colors was still burrowed into the grooves of the wood and the slats between floorboards, even after countless attempts at cleaning the last of it. a part of him wondered if that hadn’t been an early sign of magic; he knew that that paint washed easily out of his hair and off his closes, but it stuck stubbornly to the floor right where he liked it. 

the colors on the floor nearly matched the technicolor quilt that lay on top of his bed year-round. he liked when things matched like that, almost by accident; like the world liked when things looked pretty as much as he did. he kinda hoped that was one of his first bits of magic; it felt fitting. he said as much to his gran once and had his hair ruffled for his trouble.

two.

when he was a child, he was always elbow deep in some messy thing. it wasn’t that he had a knack for causing trouble  —  he just had such a hard time saying no to trouble when it came calling. he had a hard time saying no to anything that came calling.

that was probably why trouble was always calling him. it knew he was an easy mark.

he made friends easily as a child, when things were easier and no one seemed to mind or care that he had such a hard time finding the words for things. leander was too polite to voice the blame out loud, but he was convinced that his friends growing up were at least half behind all the messes he got into.

the other kids around him might’ve been better at causing messes, but leander made up for it by being a mess. he was always having a crisis as a kid  —  his stuffed dragons were just ravaging the block city, dad, but what about the finger puppet people formerly houses in that block tower? do they even sell dinosaur insurance?? why didn’t I think of the implications here …

he and his sister played knights a lot, with toy swords and helmets modeled after the suits of armor in hogwarts  (dean asked seamus if that wasn’t a little much, when they bought them; they were a few years out from school, after all, they didn’t care that the helmets were accurate  — )   and leander always wondered about the ramifications of two knights fighting each other. shouldn’t they be friends, he thought? she always took his ensuing rambling full of hypothetical knight-schisms as opportunity to knock him flat backwards.

he was a needy kid  —  he always had questions at his lips, a thousand things he wanted to say. it took him forever to find the way to say them, though; leander hated feeling any negative thing, but he was used to frustration turned inward. it was his least favorite feeling, and one he was all too accustomed to. even now, leander was never quite sure what to do with his words. his mind was an easy enough place for him to navigate, and he loved being there for others when they needed someone to listen.

but whenever he tried talking himself wires got crossed and nothing came out how he wanted it to.

three.

he’d always been more quiet than he’d have liked to be, because he did actually have a lot to say. by the time he was nearly hogwarts-aged, he’d mostly forced himself to get over his hang-ups around his family. they poked good-natured fun at him, but he knew they’d always give him as much time as he needed to phrase a sentence or find a word. he could be assured that some of the other kids he’d grown up around would know that he just took a while to say what he really meant, too.

it was the thought of the castle, so full of strangers and professors he didn’t know, that scared him. getting sorted into ravenclaw scared him even more. he knew he didn’t always sound smart, and it worried him that others would listen to him and decide that he wasn’t, actually, smart enough to be a ravenclaw. he knew that he was smart, that he had things of value to offer to conversations. he was just so bad at getting them out the way he wanted to.

he stayed quiet for a while, even knowing he didn’t actually want to be quiet.

whenever he tried to articulate that point to other people though, it tended not to go as well as it did in his head  —  only proving his point. one of the prefects his first year rolled her eyes, said, ‘if you want to be less quiet, just say more, leander.’ but it wasn’t that easy, for him. he had a lot to say but had trouble finding the words for all those things. he could usually carry polite conversation just fine; fool people into thinking he knew what he was doing. but anything more than that required his total focus, and still was rarely quite right.

he bit down on half-formed questions because he thought it was better to not know some things if it meant he didn’t have to see people grow annoyed at his fumbling words. then that made him feel even more like he was some sort of fraud-ravenclaw  —  what ravenclaw thought they were better off not knowing things?

just like he forced himself to get over his worries to talk to his family and old friends, he forced himself to accept that words were never going to be his specialty. then he forced himself to be fine with that. he worked hard to focus on the things he was good at, that didn’t require him to talk too much  —  he always felt at home in the air on his broom, or with a sketchbook in his lap, or in the kitchen whipping up something that’d make other people happy. those things weren’t nothing. 

four. 

leander was smart, actually; he excelled in herbology and charms and worked hard enough everywhere else to not be singled out during class. he never caused as many explosions as his dad did from simple transfiguration. and he was great with people, for all that he got so in his head sometimes that he felt clumsy with even his dearest friends. but being smart never stopped anyone from being a fool. 

when leander looked back on his childhood, it was as if all of his roiling anxieties melted away. it was like looking in on a world encased in the sun  —  he imagined his memories as some sort of weird, reverse snow globe, where everything shimmered at the edges and only got brighter as you shook it up. 

hindsight made even mundane or negative memories seem golden, to leander. his biggest fault was that he always liked to think things were kinder than they actually were.

leander trusted people to be better than they were  and was bad at saying what he meant, which was, at times an awful combination for him. he trusted the world to treat him better than it did. 

if someone ever tries to convince him that, no, really, that harsh person from a historically bigoted family is not a good person, his stubbornness really came out and saw leander dig his feet in. he never wanted to believe that people had to be truly black or white  —  he was stubbornly convinced that there was good in every person, even when he was told he shouldn’t try so hard to look for it.

leander knew what was it like to feel you stood on the fringes of everybody else’s lives; no amount of forcing himself to be comfortable with the way he was ever took that anxiety away. he tried his hardest to be accommodating and friendly and understanding to everyone he came into contact with, even the people who maybe didn’t deserve his kindness. especially them, sometimes. he didn’t want anyone feeling like he was someone to be wary around. leander was steadfast in his beliefs and knew he wouldn’t change them, but all the same  —  that shouldn’t be a reason for someone to look at him and expect anything less than he gave everyone else.

four.

home never stopped being the most comforting place for leander. not even once he was older, a little more settled, and no longer had such stress over belonging in ravenclaw tower. not even once he had plenty of friends, a spot on the quidditch roster, a place in the castle. he adored not feeling so lost at school the older he got, but it couldn’t compete with home. 

the golden gleam of his memories made everything feel well-worn and well-loved in his head, but home was the biggest victim, and the most deserving of such treatment. leander was stubbornly adamant that there was no better place in the world than the finnigan-thomas’ home in kenmare. holidays at home with his family, extended and sprawling and filled with family friends as much as blood relatives, were leander’s favorite thing. 

he loved his dads so much  —  even as he couldn’t help but wonder, privately, if they wouldn’t have preferred a son who wasn’t such a fuck up sometimes. he’d certainly caused several dinner parties to grind to a halt with a poorly-phrased question directed at the aunt he forgot he wasn’t supposed to sit next to, after the incident over christmas dinner when he was ten. 

leander wondered if his dads wouldn’t want a son who was better at words, because leander always thought there were ways for him to be better. he wondered, privately, because he couldn’t help but worry. but the logical part of his brain knew that there wasn’t a need to worry over them. they loved him, he knew, and didn’t even need his memory to gloss everything over for that to be true.  

five. 

there was always a level of creativity in the house growing up, and leander took to it like a fish to water. he never really let up on his fascination with color and the physicality of paint clinging to his skin and the paintbrush and whatever canvas was in front of him. the permanently-painted floorboards in his room weren’t the only casualty in the house, but that was alright. no one ever gave leander too much grief over tracking paint everywhere.

it was easier for him to take a pencil to page than to find the words, sometimes, and he was so happy his family understood that about him, and let it grow. 

leander couldn’t keep track of how many drawings his dads pinned up to the fridge when he was a kid, or how excited dean had been to lead leander around museums growing up. he cherished every minute seamus spent nodding along as leander rambled about some era in art history seamus knew nothing about. it didn’t matter that leander grew into being comfortable at hogwarts, and around strangers, and people who weren’t so understanding with his fumbled words; it was work, with all of them, even as the work got easier on him. 

nothing about being near his family and feeling that love felt like work. 

leander, even grown out a childhood-self that worried over the ethics of stuffed dragons knocking over block towers, couldn’t help but be dragged down the whirlpool of hypothetical thoughts. he wondered if there was some alternate-universe leander who wasn’t as lucky as he was, who didn’t have his dads and his sister and his friends. maybe there was a leander who had those things but still lived in a world that was altogether harsher than his was. he thanked the universe as often as he remembered to that he was who he was, and that he was where he was. 

leander was bowled over by stress and anxiety and worries more often than he existed in a state of honest chill, but he was still so happy to have the life he did. he didn’t always feel like he deserved it, but he was glad it was his. 

six. 

when leander was sixteen, he dicked around enough on the internet to teach himself how to give magical tattoos and muggle tattoos both. he really thought that it shouldn’t have been so easy to order all the necessary equipment and have it delivered to his house; he really, really thought that the owl that came bearing his enchanted ink should’ve asked for, like, ID or something. it felt like getting away with something, how easy it was. 

leander was well-versed in courting trouble at this point and knew he shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. he just thought it was important to note that he worried at it being so easy for people without training to get all that stuff. 

he practiced on himself and his sister, with a little needling and an iron-clad pinkie swear that they’d keep the tattoos a secret from their dads. in hindsight, it was a very stupid decision on leander’s part to start practicing in the summer, when they went to the beach often enough that the two finnigan-thomas kids had to order some fancy witch-owned brand of waterproof concealer to cover the evidence. their dads didn’t notice the tattoos until they came home that winter break and forgot to start hiding them again, though, so leander would take the win. 

he offered tattoos to people at school, and really hoped that some of them also forgot to hide them when they went home for winter hols. it felt only fitting that his not-thought-out plan brought some other people a bit of trouble. he’d call it payback for all that time in their childhoods when he’d been the one getting dragged into problems, but the thought of payback as a concept made leander a little sad, so, whatever. 

seven. 

it felt only fitting that he looked into doing tattoos as a professional once he was out of hogwarts. dean certainly insinuated, when leander mused over the option, that it would make the shock he’d given his dads over the tattoos worth it. leander kind of agreed; he didn’t think the tattoos weren’t worth it, already, but there could be layers to worth. on principle, he loved the idea of practice. he liked to think that everything in life was practice for something to come  —  that nothing happened to you that couldn’t have a use later down the line. 

it had a nice symmetry to it, a circular-ness. it was the sort of lofty thought he’d have an absolute monster of a time voicing out loud, but he felt it, and sometimes that was enough for leander. it was like the paint worn into his floorboards that matched the quilt on his bed; unintentional but fitting anyway. 

leander wondered if maybe he shouldn’t look into going to muggle university to study art, or at least take an apprenticeship under a wizarding artist so he could learn how to paint portraits and landscapes that could move and all. there was still a career in that, people looking to have themselves or their relatives or their homes immortalized in oils even as moving photographs were so much easier these days. 

he was  —  definitely, he was interested in learning that sort of thing. it just felt like too big a goal to have for his life right after school was over. he hadn’t been suspended in a state of constant stress during his time at hogwarts, or anything, but h still felt a strong sort of relief when it was over. 

there were things he’d miss; how easy it was, having so many of his friends all living in the same place, all doing the same things and living such parallel lives. he’d miss quidditch practice now that he knew he’d never make it as a professional  —  and never want to, besides. he’d miss the community of it all, even as he recalled how hard it had been for him to settle into it. he knew that it would only take a year or two, maybe less than that, for him to start romanticizing his time there like nothing had ever hurt in the castle’s walls. 

but the sigh of relief, that was bigger than anything he missed, and it made him sure he wanted to take a step back from school and any formal training or education. he already knew enough about tattooing now that he felt assured it wouldn’t feel so much like starting over to make a job of it.

eight. 

leander was always far better at thinking on his feet than most people would guess from knowing him. it sometimes surprised leander himself, even  —  he knew he had a propensity towards worry, and it seemed like maybe he shouldn’t actually be good in an emergency. maybe it was just that he had an overactive fight or flight instinct that he’d long trained over the years to fight through whatever it could. he might not be the person people in his life wanted around when they were going through a crisis, but he knew how to handle himself in all manner of unexpected situations. leander liked to think he rarely made things worse. 

does he make good choices whilst thinking on his feet? not all the time. but then, who could be relied on to make the perfect decision during every high stress situation they found themselves tossed into? leander made choices, and knew better than to stand idle; leander was of the belief that second guessing things had no value, even as he couldn’t help himself sometimes. he tried his best to face every consequence of every action head on. 

he dug his feet in over stupid, foolish decisions often enough. it was fitting that sometimes when he dug his feet in, it was for a purpose. the best way out is through, and all that  —  maybe he’d get that adage tattooed on him someday, too. 

sometimes it still felt like things happened to him, like he was a less active participant in his life than others were in theirs. he’d always pick fight over flight but not every situation asked that choice of him. it was less because he had a genuine go-with-the-flow personality, and more that he had such a hard time saying no.  

nine. 

when the world around him started turning itself upside down with awfulness and inside out with tragedy, leander knew it wouldn’t do him any good to freeze now. he joined up with the order because he knew there really wasn’t any other option he could take and still look at himself in the mirror. he wasn’t an auror or a healer or anyone that he thought had, like, much of value to offer the cause. but he was asked, and he said yes, because leander always, always said yes when trouble came calling for him. it was instinctive at this point.

leander liked to think he didn’t hate a lot of things. his heart was too open, to full of potential love, for him to like feeling anything harsher than annoyance, frustration. he forced bursts of hurt to come and go in a count of ten, because dwelling on the negative made him feel hollowed out. 

but he stopped laying in bed at night so often, thanking his lucky stars that he was leander in this world over any others; he started, instead, wondering if any generation in this world of theirs would get to be untouched by even the threat of war. he wondered if it was too naive to wish this darkness would fade as quickly as it did when his dads were kids. 

he turned things over in his memory now that some of the worst had come to pass; normally he let everything be painted in shades of gold, but he wondered if that wasn’t part of the problem. maybe too many people had worked too hard to push prison breaks and strange disappearances to the side  —  maybe too many people had had wanted to remember things only as happy and bright. it was such an ingrained part of himself now that leander knew he’d never be able to stop thinking things were better than they were. 

maybe it would be the end of him one day. but at least he’d be himself, at the end. 

[fnniganthomas]

moodt

[fnniganthomas]

Look, I want to love this world as though it’s the last chance I’m ever going to get to be alive and know it.

Mary Oliver, from “October”, Devotions (via weltenwellen)