Fandom: HP
Author: tigersilver
Pairing: H/D
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: A fine example of mock-historical research, this, though I did indeed read over my notes on Sweyn Estridsson for a solid hour and then also the Hundred Years War. Likely it's all screwy anyway, as is the Science. In any event: AU, EWE, and some implied and actual kissage.
Notes: 3,500 words of fic that I should not have been writing! Doomed, me. This is what happens when I stall on something else. And now, for something completely different and also completely nonsensical: 'A History of...Sorts'
HD "A History of…Sorts'
A billion years ago…
A billion years ago, two specks whirled, Light and Dark, in the glorious spheres. Danced, like proto-fireflies on a late summer's eve, and were drawn ever closer, unable to help themselves. Unable to halt elementary physics. No—not unable; not willing.
Twined by hook and crook and opposing chemistry, they were more together than they'd ever been apart. Combined, they were a force to reckon with: elemental. Raw, terrifying…but so completely contained within each other, the threat lay only in the possibility they might rend apart.
Find them, even now, each wrapped solid 'round each other, onionskin seamless; see them, astral bodies sparking green and silver flashes, blinding in their brilliance, synergy in action.
Twenty thousand years ago, in a cavern somewhere in what would be one day the continent known as Europe, there was a proto-painter: an artist, red clay-smeared and smoky-haired, a short, slight man of bronze complexion—or perhaps, just perhaps, he wasn't Homo erectus at all. It matters not to our story, but he—he was the story-teller: the Seer, who told magic tales of the hunt, the kill—the win, all in ochre and dried blood, berry juices and charcoal, writ unto the walls of his clan's cavern home. A peaceable man…until the terrible Strangers descended, bearing slicing flint edges and wolf familiars snapping at their heels. The Seer then saw true death aplenty; witnessed his family's red blood flowing, staining the Strangers' light-hued hair and pallid faces, their knives and clubs and the floors of the caverns. It was he who only saw, who did not know to fight.
Spared, or perhaps merely overlooked when predation's call was slaked, he retreated deeper, and deeper still; told his sad tales of loss in dank, rush-lit silence, till one of the Strangers at last came to him, curious—and terribly, terribly angry. Bearing food and sweet water, but yet always so furious and fierce, for the magic flowed not from his fingers as it did for our friend the Seer. The Stranger's tales—his visions—they stayed snared all inside his shaggy pale head, always uneasy, always troubled.
The Seer was spared, but he was cuffed hard for merely staring, and when the flint-edged knife slipped, it was sharp indeed.
The Seer, half-blind and not knowing what else to do in the face of such blatant despair, took up the Stranger's hand one day in an agony of indecision and guided it through the softened clay; gave him burnt sticks to sketch the lines of the great animals grazing; shared his meagre supply of carefully prepared colours, and together—oh, together— they threw their gathered images—their magic-against the cave walls and, by all the benefice of the spirits, it stuck fast, and it stayed.
When the Stranger's clan finally departed, having exhausted the store of dried meats and grains the Seer's people had kept hidden; having befouled the springs and hunted to extinction all the small creatures and even the large, only the one stayed—the Stranger's Eldest's eldest son, and he the most skilled warrior amongst them. Remained closeted away in a tiny cave barely fit for the habitation of H. erectus and would not be parted from his grubby, hunched, half-starved Seer and the Seer's dubious, smoke-fouled cave of painted stories.
There were neophyte godlings and beneficent spirits now populating the Eldest Son's golden head, studding his thoughts with glory, like the stars above, and only his captive Seer could coax them from his stiff fingers. He'd a gift flowing from his fingertips; no promise of future conquest could sway him.
It was magic; sheer magic. Find them still, the images. The tales of two strangers, two Clans, two Peoples. Find them, and marvel at what their long-dust hands have wrought.
A millennium or more ago, across the fair plains and valleys of what would be one day called York, two young kings fought over blood-soaked territory: rampant Lion pennant versus arrogant Sea Serpent banner. One brunet, with bog-green eyes snapping with annoyance; one Viking blond—an ice-cold, contained Berserker: the feared intruder, come for rapine and pillage; come claiming what was never his. Wielding bronze and hazel wand, leaves still sprouting, the Defender; wielding beaten iron and oak sapling, tried and true as seasoned longboats, the would-be Conqueror.
One was captured; one was captivated. Tables turned turtle; the Wheel of Fortuna reversed abruptly. One was held for ransome; the other could not find it within himself to accept a king's fortune in jewels in return for the disappearance of so-welcomed warmth in his bed at night. With vigour, the Defender took up arms once more, and this time with able company. King's fortune was forfeit; erstwhile conquerors summarily repelled by their own commander and longboats were vanished—and banished forthwith-into the misty seas.
Not parted, then, they. Never parted, until death found them. Find them now in rough-carved effigy, laying in sweet repose, forgotten in side chapel or perhaps remembered only in tales or crossroads stele, cairns of black-and-grey pebbles rising to the sky. One True King, and his Peerless White Knight.
A good man journeyed, a Pilgrim seeking Light in Dark places, but a few hundreds of years after that, for it was the age of Crusades. By happenchance he stumbled weary across a land of bounty and a silver-clad prince of pleasure, golden-tressed and bejeweled. Plain man; simple tastes, the Pilgrim, all at once confronted and bewildered by a feast of senses. Prince of wealth and highest ranking, his scoffing host, and jaded, too, his pampered palate soured, but all agog, all the same, to sip at pure springs and taste sweet, untainted waters. To wake with lips gasping after the grail of simplicity, to sleep, slaked at the fountains of Light in the fecund darkness.
"Stay, Pilgrim," the fair Prince pleaded at the end of their small idyll, and wouldn't release his erstwhile boarder for all the treasure stored in his well-defensed keep.
"Stay, love," he murmured in the quiet gloaming, and dawn light came creeping softly upon the bower of gilt wood and carven ivory panels, gold-embroidered hangings and the lingering scent of burnt ambergris when the stricken Pilgrim at last relented to the Prince's overweening will. "I've the relics of Saints and a spring blessed by the Virgin herself," the Prince offered humbly, scraping knee to paver stones and bowing his pale head low.
"Keep me company, my friend, for I weary of mine auld familiar," he begged, kissing the Pilgrim's workaday ink-stained fingertips. "I'll bestow all my wealth to your chosen Lord gladly," he promised fervently, "would you but cease your travels and rest you here."
The Pilgrim hesitated still; he'd thought he'd far to go before he found the fabled walls of Jerusalem. But here, right before his nose, was a singular opportunity to atone his sins. A green and pleasant land, unpierced as yet by the arrows of war.
"Keep me, then," he replied, "but be sure to allow me a quiet space for my work; a goodly, Godly task, I swear, managed to best of my poor ability, for I am but a poor Illuminator, and desire only a chance to glorify the words of my Sovereign with my small arts. Keep me, my Lord, if you will it, and gladly, but allow me this boon."
Find them: the Great Books, with the arcs of gold-leaf alphabets gleaming, with the wreathing inked vines and Saint's lives inscribed in miniature, with a Prince's fortune spent gladly on every parchment page as payment for earthly Paradise. Feel the living magic leaping to the eye, from Pilgrim's sure hand to crumble-edged scroll and then away again, rising up, tall and pure: a Divine Spark that illuminates through the Dark Ages. Page through them with care and awe, for the likes of honest Pilgrims are rare birds in captivity.
Five hundred years ago, or perhaps even more recently, and there were Lords still at odds in Wiltshire and, in particular, the vicinity of Devizes, over control of fields and villages, taxes and the method of power used to levy them. Cold walls bound the imposing Manor of the Malfoys, come over with William; a sprawling village kept the straggly boundaries of the Potters, newly risen in the landed gentry. Roundheads and Royalists once, till that die was finally cast forever and set aside.
"Plebes," sneered the Malfoys, haughty and arrogant, and "Pompous boors!" ranted Potter scions, rabid-eyed with fervor and full of grand schemes, and n'er the twain did meet without acrimony. Except—or perhaps until-the doughty halls of academe claimed a pair of spares, whence one young Potter ventured, sponsored by his better-dowered cousins, and one fine sprig of the Malfoy fleur-de-lys did fall, cast amidst the dusty scholars to find his way: third sons, both, and nothing much else useful to do with them except commit them to scholardom.
Two or three hundred odd years on, the Regency was an age of peace, however tenuous, and the Malfoys and the Potters had no outright quarrels left between them, only a deep-seated animosity, born of eons of scrapping for right of place in the echelons of Wizarding society.
Too, it was a gentler age: an age of serious scholarship, and the institution of Hogwarts was in its heyday. Even the Muggles were occupied with exploring the world about them. But that was of little concern to proper Wizards.
"Odious Malfoy," the Potter cub did often mutter, nonetheless. "Barberous Pothead," was heard often in the aristocratic accents of the Malfoy child. Till both erred grievously, though for once separately, and offended horribly the greasy-haired Lecturer in Ancient Runes and Potions, a sour-faced man with sourer disposition, and he, in a fit of fine temper, assigned them together an onerous task as penance.
"Scour these flasks and vials," quoth he, "by morning, by hand; all seven hundred and seventy-seven count of them, and leave not a single mote of Potion behind thee, or I shall recommend my Fellow in Alchemy that he scold your idle, mischievous arses with the assignment of the collection of spagyric ingredients in the Forest!" he ranted, feel much ill-used by their continual griping and endless rough play. "You'll not again be touching my precious texts with those scrabbling grubby paws of yours, Potter! And you, little Lord Fauntleroy—your excellent classwork is not sufficient to allow you leave of my additional assignments! I shall not uphold this irresponsible behaviour from either of you! Never doubt it, my fine young masters."
He slammed the iron-bound door leading out of the stillroom quite soundly on his way out, Lecturer's black robes billowing behind him.
"Malfoy," the Potter boy remarked, wearying as the Witching Hour crept past dolefully. "We'll do better to use what we've learnt in Muggle Studies. The old sot means it to be with water and soap, you realize. Your lard arse only grows plumper the longer you sit upon it ands do nothing useful."
"Fie away, Pothead! And pray tell, why ever should I?" demanded the spoilt young Lordling, for doing a House Elf's task was so far beneath him as to be impossible to comprehend. "I've no requirement to comply with this outrage; I shall instantly send word to my Lord my Father for special dispensation. Suffer, Potter, all in your lonesome. Take your punishment like the scurvy cur you are. I shall not be joining you in servitude."
"You are a fool, aren't you?" the canny Potter boy muttered, and rolled his blazing changeable eyes, as young lads were wont to do when confronted by huge examples of utter wrongheadedness. "He'll only harry you harder if you kick up a fuss, you arse. Cut off your nose to spite your ugly face, you would—but I'd prefer aome sleep tonight, even if you don't."
"Oh, will he?" sneered Malfoy. He edged closer, ostensibly to examine the deft movements the Pothead was making with his hands. First the Pothead's pecular brown-green-grey eyes narrowed at him dismissively and now his hands were flapping about in a very rude manner! Malfoy fumed to himself, but still his unwilling interest was fairly caught. And...was that not an odd brush the scummy little bastard was waving about in place of his proper wand? Long and thin, with bristles all up and down, it looked more like an instrument of medaeval torture than an item for the cleaning of glassware. But young Malfoy had never visited either the kitchens or the laundry before and the necessary art of washing was a quite peculiar sight. "I think not, Pothead."
"Indeed," countered Potter, scowling, well into his next fifty vials. His pace was practiced and rapid, and Malfoy faintly envied him his competency. "My esteemed Father has counseled me to steer well clear of the fellow."
"There are near a thousand of 'em, Pothead," ventured Malfoy reluctantly, flexing his well-kept gentleman's hands and feeling a twinge in his thin wrists already. "It's simply not possible."
"It is," the baronet's cub replied staunchly. "I've done it for me Mum at home, when she's brewing. Though we've only five hundred or so, but if we each do half—"
"Pothead, have I not just told you I've no interest in this foolery? My father will surely put the matter straight—"
"They're old schoolfellows, Malfoy, you arsehole. And your father's very much our Rune's Lecturer's junior, and the self-same House, so…" He arrowed up a dark brow at his fellow detention-doer and waiting patiently for his daft companion to gather his thoughts and piece the obvious implications together. "Even you know what that means, do you not?" he added, when it seemed Malfoy wasn't parsing quickly enough.
"…Oh," Malfoy frowned suddenly. "Well, why didn't you say so earlier, you scab-ugly gnome? Zounds! That's not a picture I wish to see painted!" The blond boy was instantly all action, bustling up to the other's elbow and shoving him aside from the cauldron of steamy water he'd Summoned earlier. "Shove over and show me how, then, would you? I've not got all the night to laze about here, Potter!"
"What?" his archenemy demanded. "You've never washed up before? Not once?"
"No, of course not, pig-boy," the Malfoy youth frowned. "As if I'd dirty my hands with other people's used dishes! I've only ever cleaned myself, I'll have you know, and that in a proper bath."
The Potter boy couldn't help himself; he was curious. He leant nearer and took in a huge whiff, the scent whistling up his nose.
"Hmm," he mumbled meditatively, "you smell of limes, Malfoy."
"Huh!" Mafloy huffed. He, too, bent his head and gingerly sniffed at the Pothead's unruly mophead. "And you of the stable, Potter," he snapped back. "Just as I've always said. Common as dung!"
"S'pretty," Potter said, even more quietly, and all at once red-faced and in a sudden hurry, he took such a great interest in his washing, he nearly broke the hundred-and-fifty-first vial. "The scent of citrus, I meant. Not you."
"…Is it?" The Malfoy boy's question was light and airy when it eventually came; he was also occupied with glancing elsewhere and he took great care not to look Potter's way when he snatched up the drying cloth and fiddled with it. "I've always appreciated the smell of fine blooded horseflesh, really," he remarked, casually. "Very…earthy. Powerful."
"Umm-hmm," Potter agreed, blandly, his eyes firmly downcast. He caught up yet another vial for washing and this time Malfoy took it from him after it was rinsed and dried it without a single protest. The tips of their fingers happened to brush together, but that was acceptable. Not a word was said about it.
A small silence fell, but neither youth felt as though they needed to interrupt it. After a solid two terms of exchanging insults and wallowing in the bad blood neither of them had spilt originally, this little puddle of quietude was quite restful…even soothing. Excepting, of course, the trademark odours each had noticed.
The boys noted other things, too; attributes that they'd been blinded to previously, too angry with each other's existence to ever see. Potter marvelled silently over the lint-white, almost snowflake purity of the Malfoy boy's hair and the height he carried off so elegantly. Malfoy admired the curve of cheekbone into stubborn jaw and the curling, messy black silk that bobbled against skin with every movement of Potter's long-fingered hands.
"Malfoy?" The name was tentative, and not at all tinged with the usual dislike; not a challenge at all, this time 'round. "Why, exactly, are we always placed at odds?"
"I…don't know, really," Malfoy replied. He blushed, faintly. "No one's ever bothered to tell me."
Potter sidled a step closer, but he didn't look up from the washing cauldron. He did, however, happen to notice the pinkening of his companion's cheeks.
"Er, d'you want to stop, then?" he burst out, after another long moment dragged by, full of soapy sloshing. "I mean—they'll never know if we don't, will they?"
Malfoy's elbow bumped Potter's again and then their shoulders brushed together. The cloth whispered over glass. "That's true," he allowed, taking his time about it. "If we don't tell them."
"We could even-" Potter began in a rush, nearly fumbling a vial. "Oh, never mind. You'll laugh at me for even suggesting it, I'm sure."
"What?" Malfoy's arm was now seriously intruding on the motions of Potter-washing. Their hipbones were practically in tandem. "Spit it out, Pothead!"
"Be civil," Potter muttered. "Or p'rhaps—"
He stopped speaking again abruptly and his halt was greeted with yet another little silence, quite awkward this time, till the dark-haired boy ended it by exclaiming loudly: "There! That's two hundred already! Pretty fair for no wandwork allowed, right, Malfoy?"
Malfoy sucked his lower lip in between his teeth, worrying it, as his companion had noticed him doing in the various Lectures they shared. It seemed to him to indicate that the other boy was contemplating a topic deeply, with all his concentration. Malfoy even laid down the cloth, carefully settling the vial he'd just finished drying on the nearby rack.
"Very," he remarked, slowly, his tone once again terribly light, as if he didn't mind one way or t'other as to what might be said next. "Admirable. But, Pothead…perhaps you don't realise this, but I'm very fond of the stables. I often spend my free time there, when I'm at home. Have done since last Candlemas holiday, actually."
"Really?" The reply was a bit breathless, even though the work of washing had ceased altogether. "Have you, then? Any particular reason for that, Malfoy?"
"I do. In fact, it's rather my sanctuary, the stables," Malfoy admitted seriously, eyes on the still waters of the steaming cauldron. Carefully, slowly, he placed the hand that had held the chamois upon his companion's arm, tugging at him gently. The shorter boy obediently spun to face him, wordless. "My favourite place, in all the world. Potter," the blond boy added meaningfully, and finally raised his chin proudly to its usual elevation.
Potter was staring at him, fascinated.
"I'm often to be found in the greenhouses, when I'm at home," Potter offered, and his hazel gaze met Malfoy's light blue one willingly and thereto clung, fixed and intense. "The scent is intoxicating…there."
He raised a soapy hand slow as treacle and placed it flat against his companion's breastbone, but the gesture wasn't warding. His fellow detentioner matched the arm movement almost exactly, but his fingers curved convulsively round the edges of the dark-haired boy's damp robes instead. Malfoy and Potter drew a little closer together in the warm light of the turned-down lamps.
"The scent, Potter, is heady enough, right here," Malfoy murmured, and it took but the slightest inclination of the heriditory Malfoy Chin to bring the skin of their respective lips in contact.
Exceptionally slight contact: a feather-duster brush, that kiss, and so light as to be almost imperceptible.
"I think, upon further consideration, Pothead," Malfoy whispered, at the lingering end of it, "It behooves me to know two items."
"And what might they be, Malfoy?" young Potter wished to know. He was grinning saucily, just a bit.
"Firstly, had you any thoughts concerning the two of us progressing beyond merely 'civil', Potter?" Malfoy grinned back, and snuck in another swipe of lips. A little more pressure this time, from both parties. And dampness, which was not at all soapy. "Such a mincing, namby-pampy state of being, that. I'd wager we could do much better."
"Mmm," Potter closed his eyes, a beatific expression on his tanned face. "Yessss. That I have, Malfoy."
"And then, as you have—and I have, strangely enough—what might your first name be, Pothead? I simply cannot continue to address by your surname if we're to be more than merely…civil."
History reports that third sons notoriously fetch up as scholars. Thus was the fate of that Malfoy (Potions) and that Potter (Ancient Runes, also very strangely) and they both made their home at Hogwarts, professionally and personally. And collaborated, years upon years later, on an historically-based text exploring the depths of their academic interests (copiously footnoted and cross-referenced) that was a classroom staple for well-nigh one hundred and twenty years after, till it was ultimately surpassed by the far better-known and more expansive A History of Hogwarts.
See them there, two fine gentleman of academe, buried amidst the other professors long past, two marble markers laid out alongside the other. Two quiet graves, all grown over with wildflowers and ivy and not at all haunted, for their souls, at least, were at rest. For the nonce.
Thirty years ago, or thereabouts, there were two baby boys born into a world already stormy. One Light, one Dark, and their fates were set and sealed before ever they met. The Malfoys had grown haughtier and the Potters had at last fallen back to the common dust whence they came, and the stage was set for the antics of a madman.
Like many a madman, he managed despite himself to reset the clock of History, and there was a great danger to all, for Dark and Light were all at once rent and denied.
And suffered, and suffered, endlessly, and everyone else with them, till synergy reasserted itself at last.
Thank the old gods, then, for elemental chemistry; for Physicks and Alchemy and all the old Rudimentary Arts. Even the veriest Fool knows one cannot separate what is meant to be together.
Finite.