This was written for the Ancient Runes: The Rune of Peace and Harmony lesson, Task: write about a light in the darkness. Prompts used: Bowtruckle (creature), protection (word).
Word count: 1049
a love to set the world alight
Benjy doesn't think he could make it through this war without Mary by his side.
Mary and her smiles that looks like sunshine breaking through the clouds after heavy rain, Mary and her laughter than sounds like the bells his mother used to hang everywhere in the house on Christmas, so that the house never sounded silent, Mary and her lips that taste like lightning and fire, like freedom and all the things he wants but cannot have.
It's almost funny, but she's always been that to him. Always, since one of their very first Care of Magical Creatures classes, where the Bowtruckle he had been studying had bit his fingers and ran off to hide in her hair.
Benjy had always been rubbish at Care, but Mary… Mary had been the best in their year.
They hadn't ever really talked before, he a Slytherin and she a Gryffindor – they didn't really move in the same circles – but he had been struck by the easy way she had reached for the creature that had made him bleed and coaxed it out of her hair gently.
It hadn't wanted to return to him, but Mary had smiled at it and said something too low for Benjy to hear, and finally the creature had complied grudgingly, leaving Benjy to think that he too, would have done anything for that smile.
That is kind of a recurring theme for him, to be honest.
So when Mary had come to him, mere days after their graduations, with darker shadows in her eyes than he'd ever seen there, and told him that she wanted to fight, and that she knew a way to do it, he had taken her hand in his, nodded, and told her to lead the way.
He's never agreed with the Dark Lord's views anyway – sure, their culture is important and should be preserved, but shouldn't it just make educating Muggleborns on their traditions all the more important?
Still, he doesn't believe he could have done this without Mary, without her easy bravery to show him the way, to lead him through those dark times. The Order Professor Dumbledore gathered is nice, in a way, but Benjy is one of the only Slytherins there, and in the current climate that means he's never faced with the kind of unconditional acceptance Mary gets by just being herself.
It isn't fair or right, he thinks, that the choice a Hat made when you were eleven should define so much of your life, but at the same time, if it keeps those people he's grown to like safe – if it keeps Mary safe – then it's more than worth the little discomfort he experiences.
That doesn't make the war any less dirty or terrible, doesn't make it any easier to look at the faces of the people he's sharing this fight with, people who sometimes laugh at his terrible jokes and who always, always make sure that there's enough alcohol for the aftermath of their missions, but it helps, a little, to think of this war as a fight to keep Mary safe.
Mary, who could never let such an injustice pass her by without doing nothing, who would run headfirst into danger if it meant saving an innocent soul.
Mary, who has done so too many times already. Mary, who never thinks she needs his protection and who never looks over her shoulder because she knows he's watching her back, who scares Benjy so much with her fearless bravado he sometimes thinks he should just take her and run, hide somewhere far away and most of all safe, even though he knows she would never go.
It's kind of a joke between them, this safe haven. It's the plan they've made for when the war ends.
Whenever the fighting gets to be too much, or the blood on their hands runs too red, sticks too much to their skin, they sit together around a bottle of gin and add more details to it.
Their first taste of alcohol had been gin too. Back in their fifth year, he had stolen a bottle from his father's stash, an ugly thing so old the label had half fallen of already. When they had opened it, it had smelled more like gasoline than something people would want to drink, but Mary had simply wriggled her nose and taken a swig.
She had choked on it but had somehow managed to swallow, handing Benjy the bottle as her eyes teared up and she tried to breathe. He had taken a swig from that bottle too, trying not to think of the way her lips had touched the glass first before the fire in his throat put a violent end to that train of thought.
The gin they drink nowadays is cheaper and younger but no less terrible, but Mary seems to like it. Benjy still can't stand the taste, not unless it's on Mary's lips. It's tradition though, and that counts for something.
When the war is over, they whisper, their hands intertwined underneath the table like they're still two kids hiding in the Library, we'll get a house by the sea.
Benjy will be an inventor or a teacher, because the only thing he likes more than creating is enlightening others. The Hat had hesitated for a long time between Slytherin and Ravenclaw, but in the end it had asked, "What do you want to be?" and Benjy had said, "I want to make something no one else has before,", his dreams vague but still great.
The Hat had screamed Slytherin then, muttering that this was a fine ambition.
Mary will fight on the right side of the law only for once, because she's confessed once, in the dead of the night, that she didn't like having to act in the shadows.
They'll have three, no one – no, two kids. Two children, who will never know war and hopefully won't ever have to find out what kind of monster man can be the way their parents have.
It's their secret, this dream they share, but it keeps him going – keeps them going, really.
No, Benjy doesn't think he could make it through this war without Mary by his side.