mentally, he puts it down as one of those things he’s known, some way, about danny much longer but some of which’s realities hasn’t dawned upon him until that moment. eyes move from the dark creature to the other boy, estimating if atlas–the cautious, walls-up, hide-from-most-displays-of-affection atlas—yet realises how much he’s just told about himself. “ yeah, it’s a protection thing. for most people, i think, they just think it’s magic. not like that’d be the weirdest thing they see when they come here. ” he’s talking a bit too much, even if convincingly paced, and he knows it’s mostly to buy time.
“ most people that don’t include you, me since the THIRD YEAR, or anyone else that’s seen someone die. ” suddenly, dylan’s not sure if he’s ever told that part to danny—the part where he actually saw his dad die first thing after the end of the school year—but maybe it doesn’t matter if he hasn’t: this is as good of a time to bring that up as any.
hogwarts au sentences. let’s put those harry potter aus into good use. contains 40+ dialogue starters relating to hogwarts — some mention different houses and the occasional canon event, but a lot can be used by anybody. feel free to switch around pronouns, diction, and the like to make them more suitable for your muse’s mouth.
“ can you cast a patronus? ”
“ i saw muggle textbooks when i was visiting family for the holidays, and honestly? sure, i could maybe die falling off the stairs if i had a sleepwalking habit, but at least i’m not doing algebra right now. ”
“ do you think a dog animagi could have puppies? ”
“ how did you explain to your friends why you were switching schools? ”
“ sorry, all the other carriages are full, i’m sitting here whether you want it or not. ”
“ i wonder if there are people who can speak parseltongue but with like… bunnies. ”
“ i’m tired, and i want to go to bed, and i’ve been sitting here, trying to figure it out for like an hour, save me: what has a head but no body, but does have a tail? ”
“ what do threstals look like? ”
“ do you ever wash your cauldron? ”
“ trying to sneak into the forbidden section three times in a row is either the most badass or the most nerdy thing you’ve ever done. ”
“ if i go to hospital wing, i have to explain how i got it. i need to solve this with a spell. ”
“ no, i just never realised other people see the carriages being pulled by thin air. ”
“ when did you get the dark mark? ”
“ SOMEBODY CATCH MY TOAD! ”
“ mudblood. ”
“ who was the guy your boggart turned into? ”
“ where did you learn that? ”
“ sorry, but you couldn’t pay me to put my name in that thing. ”
“ do you still have that leaf in your mouth? ”
“ you’re the most injury-prone [quidditch position] i’ve ever met. ”
“ congratulations, head [boy/girl/pupil]. ”
“ imagine being a straight couple right now. ”
“ i’m going to have to fight my parents. ”
“ sorry, is this your owl/toad/cat? [they’re] beautiul. ”
“ do you think you could sneak to the astronomy tower with me tonight? ”
“ i actually haven’t asked anyone for the yule ball with me. ”
a moment ( or ten ) too long is spent reading the news of the day on his laptop when the smell of fish stock starting to burn fills the kitchen. a few swear words slip out as the clock and the consistency of the broth confirm what the smell implied—it’s too thick to be used. dylan is just in the process of pouring it out as he hears another set of feet travel to the room—jack or atlas, by the pace of it—but dylan doesn’t stop running water into the pot. “ i got SIDETRACKED and forgot to watch the temperature–… ” it’s less news and more an acknowledgement of the other’s presence until he has finished the preliminary rinsing and he can turn around to face—jack.
one thing’s for damn sure, he’s not starting that process again. he’ll experiment when the safe house is less populated and he more focused on the task at hand. “ i’m gonna make nicoise—you want me to make enough for two? ” salad, he’s pretty sure, he can manage to make right now.
“When I first joined the Horsemen, I honestly didn’t think I fit in.” It wasn’t something so easily admitted out loud. Lula was generally optimistic to a fault, but insecurities and doubts were a part of being human and she had quite a few. “I’d wondered if maybe there had been a mistake in recruiting me. I wasn’t as good as the others, I wasn’t even in the same league.”
Nervous fingers tapped against a jean clad leg and Lula shifted a little. It was a little easier, she supposed, to bring up these thoughts with Dylan. He had, after all, become the sort of father figure she’d needed when she didn’t really have one. God knows her own father hadn’t been the best in the world. Dylan was understanding in a way that most people weren’t and it was something she both admired and respected.
“I don’t think that as much as I used to, but there are some days those thoughts come back and I could really use some of your good advice..” Or some encouragement, whichever.
in spite of the instinctive flinch, the frown drawing upon his face hearing her, dylan refused to freeze still upon lula’s words: rather, very slowly and deliberately looking up from the papers and pictures ahead of him, collecting them together and placing the whole file aside, never breaking eye contact. he understood her cause for doubt of her fitting in ( to say the same thought had not once crossed his mind before bringing her along would be a lie ), had known its possibility to be there, only perhaps hoped her confidence ran just deep enough for those feelings to never surface to where she could feel them.
“ there’s not much ADVICE i can give you. ” lula was anything but an obvious choice, but she had been whom dylan had needed—lula was someone who would refuse to blend in with the other horsemen, someone whom the boys could not pretend wasn’t present, someone memorable, that dylan had always been sure about. the fact that she was a talented magician was a secondary thing—but no less noteworthy. listing off her strengths to himself was easy. making her see them… that could be a whole another thing. “ i’m usually not in the business of second-guessing who i want to be here. ” even henley’s choice, he would defend to the death, despite everything. “ you know what’s triggering those thoughts? ”
❛ I swear I’m here in an unofficial way. ❜ she was sincere, but she would have understood if he remained suspicious of her true intentions. After all, she always gave to everyone in the FBI the impression of being a WORKAHOLIC, perennially in search of the next big exclusive. But that day she was off duty. ❛ So, The Horsemen—- bad story, uh?❜
the pretence frustration is easy enough to coax out—in part because he got enough questions about it on the day to day that he could easily mix that into the reaction—and dylan rubs the bridge of his nose with a bit more drama than entirely necessary. “ yeah, THANKS. ” hand falls, lands on his hip. “ it had been almost thirty minutes without anyone mentioning it. ”
ooc. hi i made a thing and i wanna make some examples in case i end up sharing it so reply to this with a link to an icon of which you want a dash icon version and your queer(!) muse’s sexuality or gender identity and i’ll make u a thing.
Hello, my name is Aurora, I’m 21 years old and Finnish. EET time zone, naturally not a native speaker — if my replies make no sense, please let me know, it’s either because of me being tired or fucking up grammar. Please tag choking, somnophilia, eating disorders, suicide and bluespace, including screenshots of the dash: essentially, if the sides of the picture are the same colour as the dash, tag it.
selectivity
I am open to ocs and crossovers. This blog is mutuals only: threads, plotting and im are only for people who I have followed back. However, non-mutuals can send me asks and memes and reply to opens. I do tend to form mains and practice exclusivity, especially shipping exclusivity: the list can be found here. Note that I fully admit to being a lazy ass about checking my followers: I am currently using an extension that hides my follower count, so it is up to my own memory to remember to check the list: thus, it can take up to anything from a week to a month to check out a blog — more, if it’s a muse from something I haven’t seen yet.
pre-established relationships
If you have a non-romantic relationship idea (friends, colleagues, even family) between our muses, chances are I’ll be up for that, but do please run it through me first. This is twice as important for Horsemen ocs. The Horsemen and the dynamic between them form a large part of Dylan’s life, so I am more hesitant than most about writing with them because I need to understand why Dylan would have chosen them. I hope you can understand this.
shipping
Shipping-wise, Dylan is free game, but only if it happens with chemistry. This is even more highlighted by the fact that I play Dylan as demisexual, meaning that he doesn’t feel sexual attraction to anyone until he has a strong relationship with them, platonic or romantic.
Statistics
FULL NAME: Dylan Caspian Shrike
ALIAS: Dylan Rhodes (active from 1990 to 2015)
AGE: 44
BIRTH DATE: December 21, 1971
GENDER: Cis male
ROMANTIC ORIENTATION: Panromantic
SEXUAL ORIENTATION: Demisexual
RELIGION: Atheist
SPOKEN LANGUAGES: English (native), Mandarin, Cantonese, French, Italian, some Greek
CURRENT HOUSING: Apartment connecting to The Eye’s headquarters in London
OCCUPATION: The “fifth” Horseman, leader of The Eye’s western base. Worked as a mole in the FBI until being exposed publicly at the end of 2015
relationships
PARENTS: Lionel Shrike (deceased in March 6, 1984), Henriette Shrike (deceased in October 20, 1988)
SIBLINGS: None
SIGNIFICANT OTHER: Currently, none
CHILDREN: Unable to have
physical traits
EYE COLOUR: Brown
HAIR COLOUR: Dark brown, greying
HEIGHT: 5'7½
BODY TYPE: Short, square, somewhere between builtfat and chubbyfat.
personality
INTELLIGENCE: Book-smarts: studied engineering in college, degree in Criminology, mathematical brain. Strategist by nature.
DISPOSITION: Intelligent and calculating. Extroverted, but prefers a small social circle. Needs to feel in control, tends to take a leadership position very easily, as well as responsibility over others. Strong moral compass and need to see justice served.
Biography
Dylan Caspian Shrike was the first and only child born to Henriette Wilson, a former actress, and Lionel Shrike, a famous magician and a member of The Eye. The family lived in an apartment New York they owned, greatly relying on Lionel’s profession to supply for them. Partly to this, Lionel was largely absent at home, always performing, practicing, or travelling to China to buy equipment for his tricks. Dylan always knew his father first as a magician, and only then as a father.
This not-ideal but functioning life came to a stop when Thaddeus Bradley revealed how all of Lionel’s magic tricks were done in the pilot of his show, leaving the family unsure how Lionel’s career would handle such a blow. In an attempt to regain spotlight, Lionel insisted on doing a trick Thaddeus had called impossible: to break out from being handcuffed in a safe in the middle of a river. Dylan watched his father go down in the safe but the metal the safe was made of warped, making the escape impossible and causing Lionel to drown. Because his body nor the safe was ever found, his life insurance claim was denied, and the family was left without a penny.
Dylan always blamed the death of his father above all on Thaddeus Bradley, and after his mother had to give him up for adoption at the age of 12, Dylan started to plan for revenge. He spent most of his teenage years in a group home and two foster families, copying his father’s tricks and practicing some of his own, never specialising in anything in particular, finding himself more interested in the behind-the-scenes work that went into the larger tricks.
He started to study engineering in college, but The Eye gave him another task: take a new identity — that of Dylan Rhodes — and move to study Criminology in order to become a mole in the FBI. This alias gave him a possibility to start working on his plan to bring those responsible for his father’s death and the hardships that followed: a group of magicians that would bring the art back to a global spotlight whilst using their abilities to deceive for a greater cause. Gathering resources, perfecting his plan, and making it possible to do without known help from The Eye — as is required from applicants — was a long process, but he finally got it to motion in February 2013.
