Can be read along, but also bases on my story Basilisk-Born - and came to be because I was asked what Sal'd see in the Mirror of Erised.
Author's Note: Written for Pride of Portree Bonus-rounds.
Bonus-round 2: The Unspoken: Elemental Magics!
Team: Pride of Portree
Position: Chaser 2
Prompt: Darkness - Vampire
Additional Prompts:
(dialogue) "We grow accustomed to the dark.",
(gem) sardonyx,
(time of the day) twilight
Word Count: 2,800
Betas: Claude Amelia Song
Disclaimer: I'm too young to be Rowling so there is sadly no way Harry Potter is mine…
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sSsSsSsSs
ERISED
sSs
Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi.
sSs
He was standing in the unlit room, a mirror just a few feet in front of him - a mirror and the boy.
It was twilight and he was out of breath after running to this place as fast as he could.
In his right hand, he was kneading an immutable multicoloured, brownish gemstone.
A sardonyx.
The stone was normally used as a healer's stone, but as long as he kneaded it in his hand, its function as a protector kept him hidden from prying eyes - and hidden was what he needed to be.
He had been drawn here, called here with the strength of an addiction he had never known he had until it hit him in the late evening hours the day before.
Desire.
The boy, just eleven years old and far too innocent for the craving he called forth in the man watching him, sat in front of the mirror, lost to his mirror image.
No, not lost to his image.
For all his gazing, he wasn't Narcissus, lost to anything but himself.
His fate was worse.
He was lost to the world behind the mirror. To the darkness it embodied that just waited for the right time to diminished and then destroy the child's brightly glowing soul.
"We grow accustomed to the dark, Ana," the voice of his father echoed in his mind and he couldn't help but wonder if that was what was currently happening with the child in front of the mirror.
Was the boy growing accustomed to the darkness of the mirror?
Was he surrendering to it?
And he pitied the boy for it, all the while knowing that he himself was lost as well. Lost to the light he saw in the boy - and yet, lost to his own darkness as well.
Desire.
The worst thing in the world was to desire what you'd never be able to have.
However, here he was, called by the boy in front of the mirror, damned to watch him suffer while suffering himself.
"Please," he whispered, his voice forcefully silenced by his own unforgiving spell - a spell to ensure he was safe and safely hidden within a place he shouldn't actually be. "Please, say my name. Call me! Tell me you need me so that I can reach you!"
Oh, how he longed to reach out to the boy!
"We grow accustomed to the dark, Ana." Yet, here was Ana - and he wondered why the darkness inside of him was reaching out towards the burning flames of light of the boy in front of the mirror.
Ana's blood sang in his veins, begging him to come closer, to reach out and burn.
And he knew he would burn, could feel that fact from all the way across the room and only the knowledge that his father would kill him if he did it, stopped him from reaching out to the boy, anyway.
Desire.
He had to resist it. He had to forget it. It would be best if he stepped away and turned his back on it - but that was a notion he couldn't do, no matter how right it was.
Because no matter how right it was, it was also fundamentally wrong.
Leaving, forgetting his desire was abandonment.
If he did that, he would abandon the boy in front of the mirror; he would leave him to himself and the things he saw in the darkness of the mirror image in front of him - and that was something he couldn't do, something his heart told him he shouldn't do if he ever wanted to look into a mirror again.
"We grow accustomed to the dark." - yet, no matter how accustomed you were, fact was that where light was, was darkness and where darkness was, there was light. Abandonment was one step too far into the darkness for the light which was burning deep inside him as well.
So he fought his desire and fought for it at the same time, feeling unsettled and intrigued by the child in front of him in ways he had never felt before.
Because he was darkness and the boy light, so unbelievable light in ways he had never dreamed the boy to ever be.
Where was the tarnish he knew so well? The dark side hidden in the brightness of the child's soul?
Where was the fire in the boy's blood that screamed for him? The venom cursing through the same, poisonous and yet so much like home?
"Please! Say my name! Call me home!"
His blood sang for the boy, calling him to the child with a song he couldn't resist, a desire he couldn't suppress, a flame he couldn't extinguish.
His own blood was part of the boy, and therefore, the boy's blood was his by default.
"Anastasius Sanguini," he had been called since he could remember.
Sanguini - of blood.
Like the boy was of his blood - like Ana was of the boy's blood.
Like the blood coursing through his veins, singing to him, demanding his every attention since the day he had been born.
His world was build of blood - first the blood of his father, then the blood of others, but always blood.
His teeth started to ache.
"Please, call me!" he pleaded. "Call for me and let me home!"
Yet, there was the boy, saying nothing. His eyes on the mirror, pleading and dreaming, yet with no hope for fulfillment for eternity.
Family.
That's what the boy wished for.
A true family to call his own.
A true family that put him first.
A heart's desire so achingly simple and yet so unreasonably complicated as long as he didn't say the words.
"Mum, Dad!" The boy said or mumbled sometimes. "Mum, Dad - can I stay here? With you?"
"No," he wanted to answer. "You can't. I need you. I still need you and not just for what you will become, but for what you are as well!"
It wasn't a lie, instead, it was the truth in a way he would have never dared to say aloud if he could have been heard.
"I need you, so please, don't make me watch how you fall apart."
But the child in front of the mirror was burning with the protection of his mother and as a creature of darkness the man couldn't touch the pureness of the spell a long as he was locked out by the magic that twisted it into something it shouldn't have been.
His hands itched with the desire to reach out, with the desire to touch, to embrace and never let go again.
His teeth ached with the desire to bite and suck and taste the familiar taste of home.
He wanted closeness but the misused, mangled and twisted protection surrounding the boy kept them apart like water and fire were kept apart by their nature.
It wasn't fair - but then, when had life ever been fair to him or his father ever before?
"Please! Just say a word! Say one word to me and set me free! I need one word! One word alone and I will be able to reach out for you, so that I can save you!"
One word - and yet, he knew for a bitter fact that one word was one word too many he could demand.
However, without acknowledgment, no matter what he did, the man wouldn't be able to get the child's attention - no matter his invisibility or the lack of it...
He didn't know how many hours, how many days he stood there, watching the boy suffer while unable to do anything, but no matter how many days it had been, in the end it was the headmaster of the school who showed up to talk the boy out of returning to the darkness that the mirror hid in its depths.
"So - back again, Harry?"
Harry.
The name was said so casually as if it was the old man's right to use it just because he had once been the headmaster of the child's parents as well. Or maybe, the old man saw it as his privilege just because he had once decided that it was his right to decide on the boy's guardians.
He wanted to snarl at the man, reach out and maybe rip his throat out with his bare hands... or maybe his teeth, he hadn't decided, yet… but the boy in the room stopped him.
Even from where he stood, he could feel the power of the spell surrounding the boy, protecting him in its own, twisted way.
Blood magic.
It was blood magic that kept him from Harry and he wasn't willing to test how twisted it had gotten since Harry's mother had performed it. If it had been twisted beyond recognition, who could say that it wouldn't reach out and try to destroy him when he tried to rip out the Headmaster's throat? After all, little Harry trusted the Headmaster without rhyme or reason - so who knew how the blood magic would react if the Headmaster was threatened in the child's presence...
"I - I didn't see you, sir."
"Strange how short-sighted being invisible can make you." The Headmaster said smiling.
He bared his teeth, sneering at the older looking man.
How true.
How short-sighted being invisible could make one!
He wondered how short-sighted the Headmaster had become. In his eyes, the Headmaster had always had a tendency to be something akin to invisible, after all.
"We grow accustomed to the dark." Ana wondered if the Headmaster had done so as well and if it was the darkness that had ensured that the old man was blind to the boy's suffering in his machinations.
He wouldn't be surprised if he found out that the Headmaster wasn't even able to see his own nose anymore when it came to seeing what was there and what wasn't.
"If you'd really care about your students, you wouldn't sit by when a wraith entered the school… or when I did," the man thought embittered.
However, here was the Headmaster - not three feet from him and yet blind enough to have no idea that he was there at all.
Instead he was so concentrated on his plans and the boy in front of him and how his plans corralled the child into helplessness and intrigue that he forgot to consider the world and destiny - that he forgot to consider the man behind him, watching him and the child.
"So... you, like hundreds before you, have discovered the delights of the Mirror of Erised," the headmaster said.
Delights.
There were no delights of the Mirror.
The mirror was darkness, hidden behind a reflective surface.
Worse.
The Mirror was the first step in the Headmaster's plan to ensure the boy's compliance.
"I'm not letting you!" The man snarled.
He let go of the sardonyx in his hand and jumped.
He let go of his hiding, of stealth and his silent watching.
He jumped at the headmaster, ready to change history, ready to kill the man and safe a child no matter how extreme his actions were in comparison.
His teeth were elongated - fangs instead of teeth.
His face was contorted into a grimace.
His hands were stretched out, ready to throttle the Headmaster before he could start his manipulation of the child in front of him.
This was it.
He would stop it.
Once and for all!
He was mid-jump, ready to destroy the headmaster, ready to kill the man and safe the child - and then he was snatched out of mid-air by a hand on his neck.
Before the headmaster or the child even saw him, he was snatched by the hand and pulled into something that felt like magic - like very familiar magic.
A rune sequence.
Runic magic.
Runic magic of hiding and silencing.
His father's magic.
"Ana," his father said exasperated the moment he had pulled the man back into hiding. "What are you doing here?"
Ana turned to the other man, looking a bit guiltily into emerald green eyes.
"His blood called me, Pater," he said, looking away when he couldn't meet the green stare anymore. "I… I needed to come. He… he's a child. We can't-"
"We can't step in, Ana," his father said, closing his eyes.
It was then that the headmaster and the child left the room.
Ana frowned.
"We could have stepped in. We could have changed it!" he exclaimed heatedly.
"You would have burned before you reached them. The twist on the blood protection of the child would have killed you before you could have reached him."
"I wasn't aiming for little you, Pater!" Ana protested immediately, pouting. "I was aiming for the manipulative grandfather a few feet from little you!"
His father sighed.
"Don't call the boy 'little you'," he said and pinched his nose. "And don't call the current Headmaster of Hogwarts 'grandfather' when you're more than ten times his age."
Ana frowned.
"I'm not yet ten times his age, am I?" He countered. "I was born somewhen in the 840th - so I can't be ten times his age!"
"You're aware it's 1991," his father pointed out. "And the headmaster was born about a century earlier - which means he's definitely ten times younger than you."
Ana groaned.
"Did you have to point that out like that, Pater?" he asked a bit unhappy.
His father shrugged.
"It's the truth," he countered.
"So is the fact that the boy is 'little you' - yet you don't want to hear it," Ana replied smugly.
His father sighed.
"He is and yet he isn't," he answered tiredly. "The protection around him wouldn't recognise me as him - no matter the fact that I was born him. There's darkness in me that has never touched him. I'm not him and he's not me."
"We grow accustomed to the dark," Ana repeated, his face turning towards the Mirror of Erised. "Like you did - a long time ago."
"A long time ago and a long time coming," his father agreed, his face also turning towards the mirror. "I was too light once - and now I'm not. I'm not light anymore."
For a moment, he hesitated, then he removed the rune spell around them with a single absentminded rune drawn in thin air before he stepped forward and in front of the mirror.
"I'm not light anymore," Ana's father repeated. "Yet, I'm not sure I can regret the darkness living inside me. I was light once, but I've lost the innocence that came with that light and when I did that, I lost the light as well."
Ana watched his father take a deep breath and then lift his head to look at the mirror.
Without hesitating, Ana followed his father and stepped forward and next to him as well.
When Ana's eyes found the reflective surface of the mirror, he wasn't surprised by what he saw.
Surrounding him and his father were people long lost to time.
Lily and James Potter.
Fleamont Charlus and Dorea Euphemia Potter.
Ralston and Móna Potter.
And a lot of other people, Ana either recognised or not.
"Family," he said, knowing quite well from the fact that his father was still next to him on the reflective surface of the mirror that the other man was seeing the same as him.
"Family," his father who had once listened to the name Harry James Potter, agreed. "It's always family."
Ana smiled.
"I guess that means you're not that different to the boy, are you?" he pointed out.
His father returned the smile sadly.
"Just a bit darker," he agreed. "And a lot more world-weary after living in the past for so long."
"Just a bit more my father," Ana corrected and showed his fangs.
"Find your food somewhere else, my little vampire," his father replied amused. "You're far too old to feed from my veins."
Ana pouted.
"But Pater!" he whined. "I'm only ten times older than your old Headmaster! Basically, I'm still nearly a toddler!"
His father snorted and then slung his arm around his shoulders.
"Let's leave, Ana," he said amused. "Before we're thrown out because we don't have an official invite."
"As if the man who once listened to the name Salazar Slytherin needs an invite into Hogwarts," Ana countered before he looked longingly at the ceiling. "Just so you know: I will use the first possibility to get an official invite to Hogwarts - and then, if I get the chance, I will sharpen my fangs on the current Headmaster!"
"Ana…"
And with that, father and son left Hogwarts, leaving behind the past for the future that was yet to come.
"You know, if I get the chance and find an idiot I will tell him a bunch of lies about vampires so that he can write a book."
"Ana…"
"And I'll tell him my name is Sanguini. Just Sanguini, because between you and me - Ana isn't quite the right name for a big, bad vampire-"
"Ana-"
"And when he has written his book, then I will ensure that he comes here so that I can meet little you officially!"
"I'm definitely making sure that doesn't happen since it hasn't."
"I'm going to change the past, then."
"Only over my dead body, Anastasius Sanguini!"
"But you can't die, Pater…"
"Just one more reason why you won't ever succeed."
And like that, father and son walked out, debating fixed pasts and fluent futures.
"I'll even go so far and tell my author that I love pasties."
"You hate them."
"All the more reason to tell the opposite, don't you think so, too, Pater?"
"Ana…"
sSs
I show not your face but your heart's desire.
sSs
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Well, not quite Basilisk-Born... but still Basilisk-Born? :sweatdrops: I'm not sure how I ended with the scene, but I'm pretty sure I can fault ishaalimtiaz17 and the question they asked about what Sal'd see in the Mirror of Erised... (sorry for faulting you here, ishaalimtiaz17) :D
Nevertheless, I hope you liked it!
Ebenbild