Un Uccello Fatale Di Nome Chromaggia
Rating: PG-13/T
Genre: Drama/Romance
Summary: A Fatal Bird Named Chromaggia. Pre-Sorcerer's Stone. He wouldn't have put money on the idea that this woman was a witch.
Author's Note: Uh, about the title: It's a line from the song 'Chromaggia', and I got it from one established translation (As in, the only one I looked at).
Now, I know little to nothing about proper, modern Italian grammar and word ordering. I'm assuming 'uccello' means bird, because the title translates to 'A Fatal Bird Named Chromaggia', which is exactly what I wanted and meant for the title to mean.
So if you know Italian and think there's something off about the word ordering or the spelling, or I have an extra word in there or vice versa, let me know.
OH YEAH, AND ABOUT THE ACTUAL STORY: I don't know. It one day occurred to me, after seeing REPO! for the first time, that Mag needed some serious love.
And then my wandering eyes drifted to the Harry Potter DVD sitting on my desk.
…
Yeah.
Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or Repo! The Genetic Opera. Harry Potter is J.K. Rowling's, and Repo! belongs to Darren Smith and Terrance Zdunich.
...
He wouldn't have put money on the idea that this woman was a witch.
She was too… Muggle-ish. She didn't carry a wand- that he could see- and she seemed easily accustomed to the average life of a muggle, insofar as she could; the woman was a celebrity and ergo did not have the life of most muggles.
Of course, it would be a bit unfair to judge at this point: He'd had yet to see her when she wasn't surrounded by people, all of whom were most likely muggles. Rule number one about being a witch or wizard: Don't ever, ever do magic in front of muggles unless it's a matter of life or death.
She'd caught his eye first when he seen her face on a poster- he was still trying to get used to how they didn't move here. Even he, who rarely paid a kind word to anyone, had to admit that this woman, muggle or otherwise, was an extraordinary beauty. Her eyes were particularly captivating, shining on the cheap paper they were printed on in spite of the lack of magical touches he was used to seeing.
His attention lingered on the picture a little longer than it might have usually. It wasn't like he had anything better to do.
Vacation¸ Dumbledore had said. Get away from the school, Dumbledore had said. Go to America! See the sights! Goodness knows you deserve some rest after this year! The Twin Terrors known as Fred and George Weasley had entered the school that past year, and the staff was still reeling. Being thoroughly disliked by most of the Weasleys, he had suffered the worst of the twins' wrath. And damn them, they were smart: They knew how to cover their tracks.
Pretend to have some fun, and you may end up finding some on accident!
Right.
This was rude, and he silently reprimanded himself a moment later, but he couldn't help but, ever so briefly, wonder if maybe Dumbledore was a closet-alcoholic.
ToNiGhT's GeNeTiC oPeRa!
CoMe SeE tHe OnE aNd OnLy
BLIND MAG!
'Blind Mag?' A stage name, no doubt. Pop culture did little for him, and his brains fried every year at Hogwarts from having to throw himself into a mass of students who obsessed over it.
The woman on the poster drifted to the very back, the very edge of his mind for the next few hours until he saw her again.
This time, in person.
She stood out, that was for sure. She was even more attractive in person, and even from the several yards of distance away he could see her unnatural eyes glittering. Her hair was long, black and wavy. She couldn't have been more than a few years- three at most- younger than him, and he had yet to meet someone younger than him who held such a natural poise as she.
He also had yet to meet somebody younger than him who could throw such an utterly fake smile at a crowd of people and have it still look thoroughly convincing to the average observer.
It seemed that she was being interviewed. A short, sturdy man in an expensive black suit with gray hair pulled back behind his head stood next to her, giving a smile that was a little harder to read. Forced? Not quite 'fake', though.
He stopped and watched, curious.
A reporter bounded up the small set of stairs to where the woman and man were, and he grinned at the pair. "Mister Largo! Miss Mag!" He gave a little bow. "It's a pleasure. I was wondering if I could get a word?"
'Mag' shot a very small, very subtle glance at 'Largo'. It seemed she knew how to conceal such looks. He could see why; he'd been studying her expression carefully, and had just barely caught it, interpreting the gesture as one of- disgustingly enough- subservience.
She's a brain-dead twit whose boss controls everything that leaves her mouth. Judging from the tight dress that was clinging to her thin form, he figured her boss also controlled everything that went into her mouth as well.
"Of course," Mag responded with another smile, revealing pearly white teeth. He scolded himself a bit for being distracted by her figure long enough to miss Largo's response to her silent question.
"Well, Miss Mag- May I call you Mag? Do you prefer Blind Mag?"
"Mag is fine." Her mouth had to be aching by now. He had a mind to time her and see how long that smile could last.
"Mag, Blind Mag, the 'Voice of GeneCo'? You go by a lot of names! That last one in particular is the one pertinent to my question." Something flickered behind her eyes and he knew that she had realized, just as he had, that this was going to be one of those not-so-pleasant Q&A's.
"As the Voice of GeneCo, you are more often than not the one who promote the various organ surgeries provided by the company, correct? Particularly the surgeries involving cornea repair and replacement, right?"
Mag nodded, her expression neutral. "I am."
"Then how do you feel about the statistics that claim that forty people that had that kind of surgery within the last six months have had their eyes violently repossessed by the GeneCo employed Repomen, sixteen of which bled to death before they could reach help?"
Mag was spared from a response by a pair of guards stepping forward and pushing the reporter back towards the crowd. "My deepest apologies, but we really must get to the preparations for the opera tonight." Largo had stepped forward, placing a hand on Mag's shoulder as he spoke.
She flinched when the skin of his hand made contact with her shoulder, bare in the spaghetti-strapped dress.
Her expression was still carefully neutral as the reporter continued to shout out accusations to Largo and Mag.
From his good distance away, he saw that though Mag's expression was neutral, her head was tipped down slightly.
And her eyes were filled with shame.
...
This was stalking.
This was wrong.
This was creepy.
This was probably illegal.
And yet since he'd seen that shame that had flooded into Mag's eyes, he'd been transfixed with her. Maybe she was human, or something close to it. Maybe she wasn't as big of a twit as he'd assumed. Maybe she just had an ironclad hand poised at her throat, ready to squeeze it shut if the wrong words came out at the wrong time.
By simply finding her here and there throughout Sanitarium Island, he found his hypotheses about her to be true enough. With a bit of magic and some careful listening, he heard her speak at length: She was very intelligent, though she seemed to hide it and dumb herself down when she thought it would suit her purpose.
Unfortunately, the imagery of the iron hand around her throat was getting clearer and clearer as well. This man- Rotti Largo- owned GeneCo, the company that basically ruled Sanitarium Island. Mag was contracted to him, and this apparently gave Rotti's three children- Luigi, Pavi and Amber- license to, at least verbally, beat on Mag whenever they felt like it.
The youngest of those three brats couldn't have been older than twenty, the oldest was perhaps twenty-five, and yet they all acted like a bunch of spoiled five year-olds.
Psychotic five year-olds.
One had rage issues, the other liked to cut off peoples' faces, and the one girl's appearance was constantly- and radically- changing (Why not? Daddy owned the company, and she probably had endless access to the resources). When he'd once- and only once, as a result- asked somebody about the Largo girl, there was great deal of grumbling and the mumbling of a word- "Scalpel Slut"?- before the person wandered off.
He hadn't even met them or spoken to them, and he was getting headaches just from listening to them. How had Mag done it all these years?
His impulsiveness was startling, even to himself. He was acting more Gryffindor than Slytherin, and was not happily anticipating meeting Dumbledore at the beginning of August when he returned.
Severus! How was your vacation?
I spent it stalking a soprano who's contracted to the family from hell, in a city stinking of blood and fear. How was yours, Headmaster?
This was insane. This wasn't healthy. He should just go back to the hotel and sleep and try to forget.
But no, he'd tried that before, and it had failed. This Mag woman was turning out to quickly be the most interesting person in this godforsaken place, and he really couldn't think of anything else to do with his time than learn about her.
Oh, how far he'd fallen.
Still, there was only so much one could learn by watching and listening. If he wanted to know more about her, he'd have to speak with her, and that would be next to impossible for more than one reason.
First of all, she was always with somebody. Guards, assistants, one of those lunatic Largo kids- always someone in the way.
Second of all, how exactly would he approach her? He was far from the type to walk up and randomly introduce himself to a woman who'd never met him or even heard of him before.
However, it seemed that luck was favoring him one particular night.
What he didn't know was that there was one place that Mag was allowed some privacy, outside of her apartment (And he wasn't stupid or desperate enough to try and talk to her there- Wait a minute, since when did desperation play into this? This wasn't some stupid muggle made-for-TV movie about fatal passion, dammit!). One place where he might be able to speak to her, at least briefly.
The cemetery was deserted except for the various officers that patrolled it, looking for grave robbers. Something about 'zydrate' and 'consulting GenTerns' to see if it was 'right' for you, and grave robbers getting shot on sight? The point was, given that the guards were all muggles, it was a simple matter to slip away from them and take some pleasure in one of the few places on Sanitarium Island that hadn't quite descended into the pit of corruption.
And that was where, ironically enough, he finally met her.
It would figure that it would be on accident.
He had been idly examining the headstones, trying to push away any eager memories involving late night meetings in heavy cloaks and masks in various graveyards back in Britain. He'd heard a noise behind him, saw a beam of light flicker, and swiftly moved to avoid being detected (though he was uncertain how close the GeneCop was to him). As he'd strode between two mausoleums, he'd come to the clear path again when-
"Oof!"
Either he'd been moving faster than he thought, or Mag had been running, because when they collided with one another it sent them both tumbling to the ground. He'd quickly pulled himself off, only recognizing her once he'd straightened up and offered a hand to her.
"I'm sorry," She said, accepting the help. "I didn't see you."
"And I didn't see you." He'd gone from two weeks of being no less than fifteen feet away from her at all times to suddenly being close enough to touch her, and he felt completely unfazed. With any luck, this troublesome mini-obsession would be over with thanks to this minor encounter.
She studied his face for a moment, and for the first time her saw her eyes up close and personal. They weren't her true eyes- based on what he'd learned from the digging he'd done, she had been born blind, and had received her new, working eyes at age nineteen- The same year she'd signed on with GeneCo.
They were a bright, silvery blue with small, dark lines running through the irises. Quite pretty, though he wouldn't express such a sentiment out loud even if threatened with the Cruciatus curse.
She was still staring at him.
The unfortunate thing about his personality (A minor issue that had been turned into a full-blown complex courtesy of James-Bloody-Potter and Sirius-Bloody-Black) was that, when embarrassed or nervous, he tended to say cold, mean and sometimes out-right rude things to cover for his sense of insecurity.
In a nutshell, he turned into an ass.
"A little late to be mourning your dead." Rather than looking indignant and brushing him off, Mag stared coolly right back at him.
"I could say the same for you." He raised an eyebrow at this.
"Touché."
It was then that they both realized that he still had her hand in his, from when he'd helped her up. They both let go at the same time and did not show any outward signs of embarrassment or awkwardness towards one another.
"Who are you?" She inquired. He paused, wondering if he should answer. He couldn't see any harm in it.
"Severus Snape. I take it 'Blind Mag' is a stage name?" Her lip curled up into a surprisingly attractive cross between a smirk and a grimace.
"You've heard of me."
"It would be difficult to not hear of you. Your face is plastered on every wall in this city." She took a deep breath and let out a huff of a laugh.
"True. My real name is Magdalene Dafoe."
He thought about that for a moment, and then tried valiantly to beat back memories of another woman he'd known who had a flower for a name.
"Hey there!"
A beam of light was suddenly jumping back and forth, from his face to hers, and they squinted against the light.
"We have permission to be here." Mag called with a weight of authority to her voice. The GeneCop hesitated, one hand still poised on the butt of the gun on his belt. He glanced between the pair for a moment- He knew of Mag, and knew that she wasn't the type to associate herself with illicit characters in graveyards.
"You have until one. That's when we totally shut down."
"Very well then." Mag responded. She didn't move, making it very clear that she wouldn't be pushed into leaving before she was good and ready. With one final, weak glance, the GeneCop turned back down to where he'd come from.
"I could be a grave robber for all you know." Mag smiled the first sincere smile he'd seen from her.
"You're too clean. And you don't seem to be jacked up on zydrate, so you fit neither of the general stereotypes on the average grave robber." His nose wrinkled.
"Zydrate?"
"A liquid painkiller extracted from corpses. Highly addictive." She motioned to the graves around them. "Rotti Largo doesn't want anyone producing Zydrate but him- why miss out on that money- so he worked in a law that says grave robbers can be shot on sight, without arrest or trial." She sniffed. "Of course, the basis of the law is the idea that the desecration of a dead body is just ghastly."
He raised an eyebrow at her. "And where does he get his?" Mag smirked.
"I haven't a clue." She glanced over his shoulder and he turned to follow her vision. Just the light from a flashlight glinting off a tomb. "You're not from around here, are you? You have to be pretty far from Sanitarium Island to not know about Zydrate. Where are you from?"
"Britain. I'm here on holiday." Mag blinked.
"Holiday?" She inquired. "If I may… Why on Sanitarium Island?"
"I've been asking myself that same question from the moment I came here." Mag chuckled at that. She turned and he followed, and they slowly started to walk down the path that, he assumed, would lead them out of the graveyard. "Are you British?" He'd gleaned as much from hearing her speak- she definitely had the accent. Mag nodded.
"My parents and I moved here when I was a child. There was some-" She stopped, hesitated, and then continued, "-unpleasant activity going on around us, and my parents wanted me away from it."
"Unpleasant activity." He repeated. Mag took a deep breath, and for a moment she looked nervous, as though she had said something she should not have.
"Fighting… Murders… That sort of thing." She blinked at him. "We lived in a bad part of town." Her vagueness and the way she avoided his eyes did not escape him.
It was interesting how she'd immediately taken up conversation with a man she'd met no less than five minutes ago in the middle of a graveyard. Most people would have walked off as soon as possible. He'd kept up the conversation once it started, but he hadn't been friendly, really, and that could have been excuse enough to end the exchange and leave. But she hadn't.
"What do you do?" She inquired.
"I'm a professor at a boarding school in Scotland."
"Really? What's the school called?" For a moment, he debated on his answer. If he said 'Hogwarts', without adding on the rest of the school's title, she might leave it at that and never mention it again. She had no way of knowing what type of school it was. But say she tried to read up on it later? She wouldn't find anything, and she might end up thinking him a liar.
In the end, a nagging little voice in his head compelled him to honesty.
"Hogwarts."
Mag stopped. Then she turned to look directly at him, staring again.
"It's a strange name," He said flatly. "I know. I didn't-"
"You teach at Hogwarts?" She whispered. Her eyes, to his surprise, reflected an understanding he hadn't expected. "Then that would mean that you're a…" She trailed off, giving him a meaningful look. He took a deep breath, meeting her gaze unflinchingly.
"Yes. And since you know about the school at all, you must also be…?" Mag nodded very slowly.
"I haven't used…" She lowered her voice, "…magic in years, but I'm still very much a witch."
He wouldn't have put money on the idea that this woman was a witch at first glance. Her sense of style was the only tangible evidence, and even then the people on this island had unusual tastes as far as muggle civilization went.
For once, honesty had worked out spectacularly for him.
...
To say that he felt some relief in finding another member of the magical community would be an understatement, especially considering the muggles he'd been surrounded by for the past two weeks.
However, when Mag said she hadn't used magic in years- She'd meant years.
"My parents were muggles, and through the Ministry they hired someone to tutor me in magic even though I couldn't see. As long as I knew the words and the motions, I was fine. They were careful to stay out of the way when I was working, though."
"Just in case you missed and ended up levitating them?"
"Exactly."
Rotti Largo knew Mag was a witch, though she knew that he was not a wizard. He'd caught her using magic shortly before she'd gotten her sight from him, and he'd promised not to tell anyone.
"And while he was there, did I mind hearing a proposal that might make life easier for me?" Mag quipped as she strode across the floor. They were in her apartment, and Mag was cracking open a bottle of wine that looked like it hadn't been touched since she'd bought or received it; the glass was caked in a thin layer of dust.
He couldn't help but note something he'd been wondering about from the moment he'd realized that she was a witch.
"Do you have a wand?" Mag stiffened. She had been on the verge of pouring the wine into the glasses only to have her arm freeze in midair. She was silent for a moment.
"I did." She glanced at him, and the stare she received in turn told her that he was going to ask anyway, so she might as well tell. "Rotti has it. Part of the contract, somewhere within the fine print." Mag took in a deep breath, and a tinge of red appeared in her cheeks. She remembered the bottle that was still in her hand and hastily went about pouring it out. "I swear, the way he quotes the specifics of the contract to me sometimes makes me think that there's fine print within the fine print." She set the bottle down and brought the glasses over, handing him one.
"Exactly how binding is this contract of yours?" He nodded in thanks as she sat down next to him on the sofa.
"Binding enough to choke." Mag paused, adjusting the grip on her glass. "I'm contracted for life."
"Contracted to do what?"
"Sing. Promote GeneCo's services. Basically whatever Rotti wants me to do."
"If the contract is so suffocating, why did you sign it?" Mag smiled without humor. Her eyes shone with misery.
"I was blind when I did it. My best friend was dating Rotti, and she vouched for him." He had been about to make a remark to the effect of 'Some friend she was', but held back when he saw something- pain?- dart through the melancholy pools of Mag's eyes.
"She must regret that now." She smiled wanly at him.
"She died." Thank Merlin he hadn't remarked about the woman's bad call. There was a slightly awkward silence between them. He broke it before it could progress into a full-blown awkward silence.
"What happens if you break the contract?" Mag paused tapping her glass with her forefinger, searching for the right words.
"It's not an easy contract to break. Not for me, anyway. The only way I could would be if I retired, or otherwise refused to promote GeneCo anymore." Her eyes flickered. "Were I to break it, my eyes would be subject to repossession."
His eyes narrowed fractionally. "Repossession." He reiterated. Mag grimaced.
"A Repoman would come and cut them out of my head."
Silence.
Not awkward, but shocked. He'd heard of 'repossessions', but had never quite gotten the concept.
"You're telling me," He said slowly, softly, "That in this country, legalized murderers can go around cutting out the organs of those who've not paid for them."
"Oh no, not murderers. Assassins. That's what Rotti calls them. He says it sounds more dignified. I'm sure it sounds very dignified to someone whose liver's being ripped out." She downed the rest of the wine in her nearly-full glass in one shot, and a theory on why she didn't seem to be such a big drinker rose to mind. Clearly this was something she'd given thought to. Clearly this was something she hated.
Also clear was the fact that she was tied up so tightly by Rotti that there was little she could do about it.
What had been that statistic the reporter had mentioned? Forty had gotten the same surgery as Mag and had their eyes repossessed, with seventeen bleeding to death where they'd lain?
He couldn't stop his mind from suddenly conjuring up a picture of Mag, just as she was now, only with her eyes gouged out of her head.
He shivered.
Then something occurred to him that should have earlier.
"Would you be in violation of your contract by inviting me in?" Mag gave that some thought, then stood up and walked back over to the counter to refill her glass.
"I don't know. But I've no desire to find out."
...
I'm actually working on three different continuities as far as this pairing goes: There's this one, that falls in with the Repo! storyline, one where Mag just goes to Hogwarts and becomes a teacher, and then I'm working on a- I'm thinking- trilogy of long one-shots where Mag is actually part of the Harry Potter storyline (i.e. went to Hogwarts and pursued a witch-ly life).