un: man's greatest treasure (video)

[reparo]

[She switches on the video function of her device knowingly this time, as she climbs the stairs to a relatively quiet deck. It's daylight, and the moment she steps foot outside, she flinches; not that she believes in divination, but those fucking fortune fish were right.]

Ugh. Sun. [She squints and shields her eyes with one hand.]

Hello - I hear there are people who've newly joined our journey due east. I'd say welcome, but the circumstances of us meeting for the first time will never be better. Take it from experience. [The way she scrunches her nose here has little to do with the sun glinting in her eyes and more with the experience of circumstances.]

Anyway. My name's Hermione Granger, I come from a world where the planet I inhabit is called Earth, and the country I come from is called England. [A pause.] I am also a witch. It's not a thing we broadcast in my world, what with the rules about secrecy and not wanting non-magical users to know witches exist, but I figure when in Rome...

[ANYWAY 2.0] Tell me about yourselves. [She goes to turn the video off in wait, but it still catches the last mutter:] Bloody hell, I need a hat.

[ooc; NOTE ON TIMING: backdate this to before the plot rolls start, please.]

Comments

[reparo]

[See now, before her long trek along the displaced headed east, Hermione would've tried to speculate; maybe a werewolf? But nothing is fixed by speculation, not even her sense of curiosity.

Besides, he has specified: planet Vulcan. So, on a scale of 1 to 10, this hits 'alien' levels.]

That could be said for a lot of the wizarding folk, to be honest - and I don't just mean humans. [A pause, and curiouser again:] You mentioned Vulcan - is there any marked difference between Vulcan and Earth beyond physionomy? I mean, for example here, is the air breathable to you or...?

[intermingled]

Though my biological makeup is different from that of a human, we are able to breath the same air. My status as a hybrid of the two species is an anomaly and one that my fully-Vulcan peers have never shied away from pointing out to me.

[ In other words, he was bullied a lot. ]

Are there many non-human witches and wizards or are they a minority among you?

[reparo]

[Oh, no. He's not a werewolf, he's...relatable.]

Yes. Unfortunately, not many, but that's because the wizarding world is rife with prejudice.

There are families of blood purist wizards and witches who think that if they can trace their bloodlines back to Merlin, they truly are better at everything. There's a lot of prejudice against people of mixed heritage - a non-magical parent and a magical parent - and those who were born in a completely non-magical family, who discovered they were able to perform magic in their childhood.

They call them - [Softer,] Us - muggleborn. [And uglier things, too, a word that still remains as a scar on her arm, a word she fights every day to not look at or think of.]

There are wizards who are also werewolves, there are Centaurs, Veela... So, yes.

[intermingled]

Fascinating. It must have been an adjustment to step into a new world so young. I did not live among humans until I left my home as an adult and even with my mother's teaching and my own interest in Terran literature, I experienced what I believe humans refer to as "culture shock" when I first relocated to Earth.

On Vulcan, there are extremists who believe my father betrayed our people by marrying my mother and to them, my very existence is... political to them as it seems yours may be to some of these families.

[ Spock knows what it is to not fit in. He knows what it is to be fully accepted by neither side of himself. ]

I have heard of werewolves and centaurs in fiction, but I am not familiar with the concept of Veela.

[reparo]

[There is a silence, as she takes that informaiton in with a sad little smile.] I've met families like that who faced a similar kind of abuse. Well... [Home feels at the same time so close and so far away to her, here, and yet she can't help but want to plan for the future.] I want to destroy those preconceptions. One day.

[She shakes her head, and clears her throat quickly.] Anyway, Veela are magical creatures - they mostly are found in Eastern Europe, around Bulgaria. Is that still a country in the - no, nevermind, don't tell me. Time.

They are take the shape of a beautiful woman, and share some...hypnotic qualities with mermaids, if you want to put it some way. But, then again, there are cases of Veela and humans having children together, and those usually are unnaturally beautiful. [Clearing her throat again, because she doesn't want to disrespect Fleur here.] I'm probably misrepresenting them with whatever limited understanding I have.

[intermingled]

Fascinating. I do not believe I have come across creatures such as that. I wonder if there is a telepathic component to their attractiveness and if there might be such similar beings in my own universe.

[ It's almost more to himself than to her that he mulls on that. He genuinely enjoys learning and experiencing new species, even at the cost of the danger he finds himself facing more and more regularly in his time in Starfleet. ]

As for your goals, they are certainly lofty but admirable. Combatting prejudice can be a difficult task. At times, it may seem unsurmountable, but it can only improve a society to fight against it.

[reparo]

[She lets out a little laugh at that, a bitter but amused one.]

Lofty but admirable - that'll be how I'm described in the books. [She's definitely aiming for the admirable bit. Loftiness just comes easily.]

But I'm afraid I haven't studied Veelas enough to be able to offer more answers about their nature without generalising or dehumanising.

[intermingled]

[ Spock's face isn't particularly expressive, but there is a sort of pleased almost-smile at her answer. He's far too used to being stripped down to his biology. Starfleet had been the first place where he has felt a reprieve from that. ]

The world you come from sounds diverse and interesting. I would be curious to see it were that travel to become possible.

[reparo]

Do you travel through just space? Or also time?

[intermingled]

Space. Time travel is considered mostly theoretical where I am from.

[ Though the words are not technically a lie, he leaves out the fact that he knows it is much more than theoretical. ]

[reparo]

That leaves travelling to my world under a question mark. The only people I've spoken to that are familiar with space travel are from two centuries and a half further ahead than me.