Here's my entry for the Nature of Magic challenge, run by meira16 on The Dark Lord's Most Faithful Forum.
Nature of Magic
JKR is fairly vague on how magic actually works in the Harry Potter universe. We know there are some rules to it, eg Hermione mentions that food cannot be transfigured, and she says that is one of five major exceptions in that category. We also know that new spells and potions (Wolfsbane, Sectumsempra) can be created, but we don't know how. We also know that there are different types of magic - elf magic is fundamentally different to human magic, as elves can Apparate in Hogwarts.
The challenge is to write a fic that discusses at some point something relating to the nature of magic - what it is, how it evolved, how it actually works, what Dark magic is - anything like that.
I realize this topic is a bit harder to translate into narrative than most topic. Note that the fic need not centre around the nature of magic, it can just mention it, but it must be something specific.
Word count: less than 2000 words, greater than 300.
"We are pure. We are the purest, and the most powerful. We are heirs of the great Salazar. Nothing can resist us."
Everything. Everything in sharp lines and colourless shapes, everything out of reach.
Everything, and she is nothing.
The window's edge is cold under Merope's numb fingers. She grips it hard, willing her knuckles to turn white, willing the wood to shatter and break. It is too solid for her. Coldness is creeping through, seeping into her already frozen limbs, into her bones. Into the core of her, until she is nothing but ice. A statue of ice, helpless, motionless. An empty shell, breakable. Ready to shatter and leave nothing but pieces and dust behind. She must have some life in her still, though, doesn't she? Surely she must…
Merope doesn't touch her swollen, heavy stomach. She doesn't dare. It doesn't truly belong to her, in her. It was born of the kiss of filth on her undeservingly pure form, it flickered to life at the pit of her, quiet and resilient, and now it has a life of its own. A life she must bring to the light of day, before she carries on, and… drifts away, finally…
If she could feed herself on it, though. If it could make her real. If it could bring the spark back, the pale, shifting spark of life within her…
To Merope, magic has always been that, a spark – flighty and flickering, roaring and devouring, devilishly alive. She's seen the flames dancing in the hearth, wildly gleeful in their trance of thoughtless heat (Morfin's cruel laughter as he whirled his wand around and around, and she ducked out of the way, tears and blisters on her cheeks). But Merope has never been aflame. She's never been possessed, powerful, real. Merope was grey powder and cool, dull stone. She tried – she tried, she tried – and the spark lived for a while. It crackled and bit at her fingers, it threw erratic curses, and its feeble heat kept the infamy at arm's length, somehow (not a Squib. Not a Squib). It rose arrogantly, heightened by the elusive brushing of love, its brief, taunting caress like leaves on her skin, feeding the tiny fire before flying in fine powder, burnt out, away. And then all that was left was the ashes and the darkened, smoking stone. The heat is gone. The memories, even, are trickling out.
He left her. It left her. Everything. What did she expect, really?
The void is there. It never left. It never will. Merope leans forward wearily, feeling it closing in on her, pressing down on her, weighting, tangible. The weight of the world around her and she is nothing, she has no one, she can only reach out and watch it all slip away, fade away under her pale, pathetically outstretched hand. The spark, the spark of the blood in her veins, it should flow in her blood. It should be awake and buzzing, whispering. Witch. But only vacuity is pulsing in her temples, gliding lazily in blue and green patterns upon colourless skin. Weight, the weight of her empty body with no energy to support it and stand straight. The weight of a child in her womb whom, she is convinced, she will never see grow up. Weight, weight on her shell-like body. Weight.
Her legs give out. She stumbles away and falls, on her back, on the tiny bed – the single bed, in the shabby hotel room. She lies there motionless, her hands spread out, limp, on either side of her waist. And she thinks of her child, born here in Muggle London, alone. No. When the time comes, surely she'll find it in her to move, to find someone who'll take care of her son. Pain is good, she dimly recalls, against the emptiness – pain helps to reawaken the spark. (Her father's face, disbelieving and furious, a livid weal on his cheek as she cowered on the floor, wordless, clueless.) Pain will be her friend in the end. And her child will live. She squeezes her eyes shut and thinks about him. It will be a boy, and she will name him Tom. His father's face, and her ancient blood, yes. He will have the strength she never had. Perhaps she was born just to bring him to the world. Perhaps she was meant to lead this life, to end up this way, perhaps the power was in her all along, she just wasn't meant to use it, only to bequeath it. A vessel. A mother. A womb.
Merope Gaunt smiles, thin lips arching slowly, painfully.
In silence and emptiness and the low, thudding beating of her heart, she finds herself, somehow, complete.