it's all meaningless now

𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐞𝐥 𝐛𝐮𝐫𝐤𝐞 xvii.slytherin.pureblood. •    • •   as it was meaningless then.   • •    • ❝ is this what you call unholy? a sinner is just a saint with too much money in his pocket. ❞ timeline three.

[nbxrke]

@legvcies

" narcissa! “  nate had his hands cupped, perhaps unnecessarily, around his mouth as he gave a cheerful shout to his friend. he made his way through the crowd to reach where he’d seen her, not really caring if he was jostled along the way; his shout should’ve let people know he was coming through. an easy smile broke over his face when he was closer to the girl.  “ hey. with all this, it really does feel like forever since I’ve seen you. “

[nbxrke]

@mackayari

nate slung an easy arm over the other slytherin’s shoulder, peeking behind ariel when he did as if to make sure he wasn’t being followed. it was hard to tell through the throngs of people where any of them were truly headed.  “ don’t look now, “  he said, leaning close to her ear with an ease he normally wouldn’t have shown.  “ but there’s a girl back there who I swear I don’t remember claiming that I was in love with her in her memories. “

[nbxrke]

@okregulus

when nate happened upon regulus, he had to cups in his hands and eagerly held one out to the other slytherin.  “ someone handed this one to me, I think to hold until they came back, but then they didn’t so it’s now mine to do what I want with it. and I want you to have it. “  nate shrugged, a lopsided smile taking over his face.  “ if only so I don’t have to hold it anymore. really, you’d be doing me a favor by accepting this beverage. “

[nbxrke]

@soothsayerrrr

" sweet, darling cassia, “  nate began, his tone light and teasing as he stepped up next to the girl with a somewhat shit-eating grin on his face.  “ I want to ask how your summer was but that feels a very loaded question this year. “  he took a moment to take a drink, and when he lowered his cup his smile was more subdued, his tone a little more sincere.  “ but I think I’ll ask anyway, and ask also if you’ve got any visions for me. “

[nbxrke]

@fcrtsqalx

" how much slack do you think the professors might cut us this year, just from not quite knowing what each student’s got going on? “  nate was mostly musing just to hear himself talk, not quite sure until he finished who was actually around to hear him. he raised an easy brow at alice when he did notice her, letting the lilt of his words turn more clearly joking.  “ just how much d’you think we could get away with, alice? ballpark estimate? “

[nbxrke]

@cordiallystebbins

nate knocked his shoulder lightly against cordelia’s, jutting his chin out to gesture at the party at large while his hands were occupied holding his drink.  “ do you think it’d be strange if a good third of this party used an entirely different nickname for you? I’ve just been wondering. “  he took a drink, then gestured out with the hand holding it.  “ what if they didn’t know I went by nate? what if they called you cordy? it’d be madness. “

[nbxrke]

hstiajcnes‌:

                           ❛  i  suppose  i  shouldn’t  be  so  surprised  ,  either.  with  every  shitty  situation  ,  there’s  bound  to  be  alcohol  somewhere  in  the  mix.  ❜  she  knew  that  fact  quite  well  ,  from  her  own  personal  experiences.  it  probably  wasn’t  a  good  thing  ,  but  such  was  life.  ❛  huh  ,  never  really  thought  of  it  like  that.  ❜  in  truth  ,  she  was  so  wrapped  up  in  her  own  emotions  ,  &  although  she  was  aware  that  everyone  was  going  through  something  ,  she  had  forgotten  the  extent  of  it.  the  fact  that  they  were  all  stuck  in  this  mess  together  was  a  surprisingly  comforting  fact  for  hestia.  ❛  so  ,  is  this  the  part  where  i  ask  how  your  summer  was  as  a  way  to  subtly  gauge  what  all  you  remember  ?  ❜  

              "  I  happen  to  find  this  turnout  oddly  touching.  it’s  a  nice  reminder  that  sometimes,  things  just  don’t  change.  “   he grinned,  a  wry  lift  to  his  eyebrows  ramping  up  the  pause  before  he  tilted  his  head  in  concession.   “  some  things  being  how  it’s  always  a  great  idea  to  use  alcohol  as  a  means  of  moving  on. “  nate’s  grin  turned  sharp  and  teasing,  and  he  leaned  in  towards  hestia.   “  I’d  be  happy  to  talk  about  my  summer. “   nate  stood  up  straight  and  looked  off  in  the  middle  distance  over  her  shoulder,  as  if  trying  to  see  into  the  past  hidden  behind  her  hair.   “  spent  it  back  in  louisiana,  like  I  do  every  summer.  I’d  only  been  back  for  a  few  days  when all  this  happened.  honestly,  I  don’t  see  a  big  difference;  cut  out  everyone  else  changing  and  it’s  practically  normal.  “   he  cut  his  gaze  back  at  her,  a  smaller  smile  quirked  into  the  place  his  easy  grin vacated.   “  do  my  memories  match  with  yours,  hestia?  I’d  hate  to  not’ve  put  my  best  foot  forward  if  this  is  the  first  time  we’re  meeting. “  

[nbxrke]

hstiajcnes‌:

                         the  first  day  back  in  the  castle  was  always  going  to  be  difficult  ,  &  hestia  was  fully  aware  of  this  fact.  although  she  had  never  imagined  anything  like  THIS.  there  was  an  awkward  tension  that  had  filled  the  air  during  the  welcome  feast  ,  that  hestia  was  glad  to  leave  &  make  way  for  the  party.  it  was  still  an  awkward  feeling  ,  being  around  so  many  of  her  peers  that  she  had  known  for  so  long  ,  yet  felt  so  unfamiliar  with.  at  least  there  was  alcohol.  

                        with  a  firewhiskey  in  her  hand  ,  she  found  herself  a  spot  where  it  was  less  crowded  to  make  herself  somewhat  comfortable.  ❛  i’m  surprised  to  see  a  turn  out  like  this.  seems  like  everybody  made  it  out  tonight  ,  despite  everything.  i  guess  that’s  nice.  ❜  

         “  I’m  not  that  surprised,  “  nate  mused.  he  cast  a  gaze  around  the  party;  the  clusters  of  people  scattered  around,  the  people  on  their  own  who  seemed  just  as  determined  as  those  in  groups  to  have  a  good  time,  and  then  finally  hestia herself.  he  gave  her  a  small  sideways  grin,  and  shook  his  head.  “ I  think  if  I  was  having  a  really hard  time  with  things,  I’d  want  to  be  down  here  more  than  I’d  want  to  be  alone  in  my  room. “  he shrugged  and  took  a  sip  from  his  drink.  

             “  here  it’s  kind  of  hard  to  pretend  everything’s  normal,  but  at  least  you’ve  got  proof  that  everyone  else’s  goin’  through  it.  “

[nbxrke]

💕  for a moodboard on my muse’s view on romantic and/or sexual relationships

          “   nate would deny it if it ever came up in conversation ( it’s a weakness ), but he fully, wholeheartedly believes in true love & the power of love.   he blames the fact that his parents got married not to arrange an alliance, but because they fell hard and fast.   as little as nate cares for his father, he at least instilled in nate the belief that love was possible and real.    “

[nbxrke]

👗 for a moodboard about my muse’s fashion style

                “   all of these images were sustainably sourced from the late seventies   “

[nbxrke]

there’s a little more info about what nate’s other timelines are up to under the cut!

TIMELINE ONE : 

without the shadow of war hanging over the burke family, nate’s father was a little more lenient with his son. the extent of the leniency was that when nate spent summers in louisiana with his mother’s family, he wasn’t expected to owl a rundown of what happened to his father every other week, and was allowed to owl those family members throughout the rest of the year. 

but it’s fine  ---  nate had no trouble finding ways to have fun around his father’s expectations. so he’d have to take over the shop one day, fine. but without any real trouble on the wizarding world’s horizons, that one day wasn’t in danger of cramping nate’s style any time soon. between hogwarts and louisiana, nate wasn’t home with his father that much, and was able to find friends from different backgrounds than his. it was easy to forget sometimes that he was a burke; that there were things that would always be expected of him. he still clung to the dream of one day breaking free from the burke legacy and becoming a metal charmer. 

TIMELINE TWO :  

nate still had his time in louisiana with his mother’s family: her metal charmer father and wealthy muggleborn mother, his cousins, aunts and uncles and the rest of the eccentric, extended, american family. but those freeing summers came to a halt when he was fifteen and the looming war stopped right at the burke’s doorstep. nate was never asked to fight, not outright. his father has always held contempt for nate but he never wanted his only child and only son out on the dangerous front-lines. instead, homer burke pulled his son into the underground borgin & burke’s ruled  ---  nate learned how to procure objects that could become weapons, objects that could become tools, anything and everything that could help in the war efforts. 

nate kept his metal charming a tightly-held secret, and so he was never asked to turn his art into something dark. but the work crushed him, especially since nate had always had half-blood friends and those from different backgrounds than him. he tried to pass along useful information to those it could serve, but since his father’s side won, nate was never sure if his hundred small betrayals ever helped anyone. 

TIMELINE THREE :      his actual timeline

nate’s father never pulled a full stop to his time spent in america, but he was always wary of the affect they had on nate. because as much as homer burke loved aurelia beauvais, genuinely and completely, her family was a lot. they had somewhat radical ideologies for an old pureblood family, enjoyed practicing and mastering obscure forms of magic. it was hard for him to accept that they had influence over his son; hell, nate’s wand was made by one of his wandmaking american uncles. what could be more influential than that? 

homer never told nate he couldn’t go to louisiana, because he knew his wife would find ways to let her son be with his family there. but he monitored nate as much as he could, there and at hogwarts. though there was very little love between the father and son, they owled often; nate kept the contents of his letters short and vague and focused on schoolwork or things he was learning. his father kept the contents of his letters long, detailing the work the shop required. the whole practice served as a reminder of what nate’s future had in store. it was grating; it was stifling. but nate knew he could ignore it if he just threw himself headfirst into other pursuits  ---  so he did. he ignored a lot. 

[nbxrke]

have you been re-introduced to NATHANIEL BURKE? last we heard, the PUREBLOOD was most familiar with TIMELINE THREE. I don’t recall if they were always a SLYTHERIN, but I’ve heard the SEVENTH YEAR is still CLEVER, RAKISH, ENGAGING and HEDONISTIC, RESIGNED, INAUTHENTIC, so that’s familiar. at least HE remembers her way around the castle. ( froy gutierrez; zoe, 20, cst )

nate has a stats page and a playlist and a pinterest, but pretty much everything else about him is under the cut!  i’m very down for plots with my boy so just hmu if you want to!!

nathaniel’s life had always been carefully planned. he could trace roots of his future all the way back to before his parents first meeting, see hints of the planning in generations before any of them. that’s the way things worked for him, though, the way they’d always existed in the world he knew. life was an inescapable thing. he was son of their heir to borgin & burkes and the prettiest daughter of an old pureblood line in america’s south. he was Nathaniel Aristotle Beauvais Burke  ---  his name had always been a mouthful, too much, but the long string of syllables was never negotiable. it meant something. 

he needed the two surnames; one to declare him important in his mother’s america, the other to give him credibility in his father’s britain. the first name was his father’s choice, and his middle name his mother’s. he was always meant to be a mix, the PERFECT child, their biggest stroke of luck. no one could say his parents weren’t lucky people, just like no one would ever call nate himself unlucky. life worked like that. happy or unhappy or downright miserable, luck was something black and white. 

looking at homer burke and aurelia beauvais on paper, it was hard to believe they’d chosen each other in a sweeping romance, not a betrothal turned business transaction. maybe that’s where the luck began: they happened upon each other when they were young and beautiful and both a touch too vicious, and the end result was a son and heir for both dynasties on the very first go. no need for more children; just champagne toasts all around, patting each other on the back in congratulations on how much the world loved them. 

nate’s parents were never the parenting type, anyway. had their first child been a girl, they’d have had another, of course. but they were the PERFECT couple, and so they got nathaniel and the rest of their lives to live the way they always had  ---  reckless in the way of the wealthy and beloved, freedom within a thousand confines. now, they turned a disapproving eye on nate’s antics, but he knows the hypocrisy exists only because he doesn’t care enough to hide his bad habits like they did. he sees no use in sweeping the truth under a rug, and when he has a say in the matter, he’d rather be seen honestly.

nathaniel was always intended to be both a beauvais and a burke. his mother wouldn’t let her family go so easily, and his father adored her enough to allow the influence. she’d charmed his whole family, in fact, despite the technical mar of her blood-status: what money and influence were good enough to fix in america, england was willing to hide. to anyone that mattered, she was a pureblood, muggleborn mother or not. to anyone that cared, nate was too. 

he didn’t care himself, but no one ever asked. they only told him to tell no one  …  as if he ever would. a rowdy childhood and alcohol-hazed adolescence didn’t mean he’d go spilling family secrets right and left. people expected the worst of him. or rather, they expected nothing at all, and so that’s what he gave them. 

nathaniel’s mother looked at him and saw so much WASTED potential. nate wondered when he came to realize this  ---  but soon after, he reached an even more important realization: that the when of it didn’t matter. nothing did, really, because seeing all he could be in the lines of his face didn’t stop his mother from loving him. his mother loving him didn’t stop his father from hating him. his father hating him didn’t stop the his grandfather from considering him heir to the shop. oh, there was something so sweet in the nihilism. nothing mattered; why hadn’t anyone said something years ago? 

so he had this, his knowledge that nothing he did meant anything to his world, and he had his hatred of the father that hated him. he had what his granddad had given him, when he was twelve and spending his first summer in america with a wand: a way to be something entirely OTHER than a burke. 

the shop and the sanctity of blood made the burkes in the wizarding world nate knew from school and growing up. but he’d spent summers, always, in the louisiana estate his mother grew up in, and that world was built on metal-charming. not a job people were jumping on, nowadays, given its difficulty and a million peculiarities, the way the work only called to certain hands. nate possessed those hands, and a hungry need to do something with them, to be anything other than what his father, and his father’s father, needed of him. his granddad, of course, understood: he considered it a universal desire to carve a life out for yourself from the mountain of shoulds you’d been handed. 

his mother knew. but it was the one true secret she kept from her husband, who she did genuinely love after all this time. the story was always that homer loved his wife’s family ( never mind that that was a lie, he hated her father, could sense, somehow, that he’d been the cause of his son’s corruption ) but thought america had turned nathaniel too rough. given him the dreams of being a cursebreaker that nate created when his father found the books on runes and advanced charms. it didn’t matter. let his father hate his aspirations, so long as they’re aspirations assumed and not the ones held close in nate’s heart. let him despise nate so long as he never KNOWS him. and who does know him? nate has two talents, the way he sees it; his metal-charming and his intangibility. he’s always been good at being whatever the world asks of him, because it’s easy, this unbecoming. 

sometimes, though, the world wants him to be a viper. that’s harder, he’d admit; the cruelties of his father’s society, of his birthright name, they don’t come easy to nate. he can’t adopt hypocrisy with ease. but he can pretend that his youth was the only thing to blame. his granddad drilled the idea of superiority of mind and of skill into his head, so despite not caring about blood supremacy he’s still an arrogant little shit who’s resigned himself to being an asshole, because no one’s ever TOLD him he could be anything else 

if asked, nate would admit that he’s always thought his bad habits would make him self destruct, one day. his father has told him a thousand times to stop, but could it only be out of worry of the family image? the boozing and the partying, the drugs and sex and flying while intoxicated, the sneaking around after hours and climbing over rooftops  ---  it’s fun, but fleeting, and nate knows that. he wishes he could live in the moment but he’s too cerebral. it pisses off his father and sometimes makes him forget who he is, but it’s not enough. nathaniel’s a melancholy person, and suspects that nothing’s ever going to be enough for him.

nate cares little for anything, knowing that little cares about him  ---  but his fierce need to be a person separate from being a burke is enough to drive him. he’ll booze and smoke and party, wreck reputations and end up being weekend gossip. that’s NOW. his future may be rooted in the past but nate hopes he’s strong enough to rip it out into new soil. 

as sorry as nate has always been with the cards he’s been dealt and the restrictions they place on him, he’s grateful he’s the nate of this world and not one of the other ones, where his father would either have too much time to focus on him or too much reason to. 

from what he learned from the recent madness, there are much worse worlds than even the one he hates. and he does  ---  hate it, that is. chafe under it and long for another, simpler life. but the problem is that he’s not convinced, in the slightest, that the other timelines now wandering around were ever any simpler. he’s unsure any life he could live would be simple, no matter how much he longs for it. here and now, at least, he still has the ability to stall until he can figure out a way to be who he wants when hogwarts is done. here and now, at least, he knows who he is. 

[newgirlystuff-deactivated202402]

why are you still drinking? it’s 10am. 

[quantumchild-deactivated2016120]

You are always talking about gods. What of them? Do you think I’m afraid of your gods? Of those glowing monsters? Let me tell you what I’m afraid of—you will never know what I have always been thinking of you—I will never be gentle towards another person again.

Salma Deera (via writingwillows)

[bourtange]

[anamorphosis-and-isolate]

Donna Tartt from The Secret History

[septemberequinox]

self care is just going the hell to bed