AS PRETTY DOES
By Librasmile
Logline: Pretty is as pretty does, even in the wizarding world. And that's all we ever need to know about anybody – isn't it?
Rated: T for language, implied sexual situations and partner betrayal.
Gods, I love the pretty ones.
Not in that way you understand.
No I've always preferred to take the male of the species as a lover.
But gods! I just love the pretty ones.
There she sits, trying not to squirm, trying to hold onto her dignity.
I'm sure it's occurred to her that she might try telling the truth, but I doubt she's considered that there's more dignity in that, in facing her husband's humiliation and wrath than to come begging to me.
And like all of them she thinks it's only the surface that counts. Or at least not much more below it. Perhaps if she were used to thinking a little more deeply, she would have stopped to think why she'd spread her legs for another man after she'd already bagged that oh so pretty husband of hers.
A distinctly unpretty man at that. With an ugly, ugly reputation.
Courtesy of his two masters.
How it must hurt to be cuckolded by such an unhandsome man! But of course he doesn't know. He'll never know. That's the whole reason my current little pretty is here.
We've put the baby down in the crib. It wouldn't do to have him exposed to the vapors and fumes. Not yet anyway. This is a delicate magic. Potent, yes. Irrevocable, yes. But still delicate. It has to be done in the proper manner, in the proper place and at the proper time for it to set. And the baby just would have been in the way.
I'm long past my childbearing years but I keep the necessary tools on hand: cribs, blankets, bottles for these modern young witches who can't be bothered to suckle their own young. Even nappies. I have everything they need to make this as quick and painless as possible.
I laugh every time when it finally dawns on them that this WON'T be painless.
I have no sympathy. Why should I? She and her kind have shoved me and the others like me into the shadows. Dismissing us as backward, as throwbacks. Until they fall headlong into their own mess and come running to us to clean up – or rather cover up – what their wanded magic can't.
But when you play, fate makes sure you pay.
These modern wizards would save themselves generations of trouble if they'd just bow to that one simple rule. But then again, that's why they established their much vaunted wizard enlightenment. To demolish the so-called superstitions, the blessed Old Ways.
Now my kind huddles in caves and hedges, or dank Knockturn Alley hovels like this, watching these cursed wizards claiming dominion over all the magical creatures and slaughtering each other over who gets to rule the lot.
Yet they still need us.
Oh they'll never admit it. And when they come they expect to throw us a few coins, take what they want and be done with us.
No, my pretty, that is not how it works.
But she's one of those infernal muggleborns so she wouldn't know that.
Fear widens her green eyes as I lower the blade. But she doesn't lose her nerve. Her arm remains extended, palm up, bared for the cut. I never hold them. I make it clear it's their choice whether to proceed or not. Quite a few run.
She hisses and flinches as her skin splits open under a rush of blood and magic. I smirk even as I coo soothing words. "There, there now. Good girl. Almost done."
And I want to laugh. We'll never be done.
But she grits her teeth and endures.
I hold her arm over the cauldron, letting the crimson trickle pour in, a dark red like her hair, but with undertones of purple and blue, darker, more sinister. Then I take a smaller jar and hold it against the wound, letting it fill halfway before topping it off with a serving from the cauldron and capping it. That ought to be enough.
Jar set aside, I spread the healing paste over the cut and bind her arm. By tomorrow the wound will be gone, perhaps even by this evening when she'll be setting her husband's dinner on the table.
She drinks the potion without protest. She signs the parchment with only the faintest hesitation. Then she gathers her child into her arms. She stares intently at the slowly wakening boy, minutely examining his hair, his features. I can see his eyes now, blinking sleepily, as I had before he'd fallen asleep. They're his mother's: bright, alive and verdant like a canopy of forest leaves. Idly I wondered if they would change. I noted her wrinkled brow. Perhaps she was wondering the same.
Well she was getting no assurances from me this time. All I could guarantee was that he would look like her husband's get by midnight at the latest. That's what she paid me for, in blood and galleons. And that's all that SHE would get.
Her boy on the other hand…
They think us so ignorant, uninterested in what's going on and unable to understand it even if we knew.
We know.
We know all about the foul dark wizard waging war on his own kind. And about the unregenerate light wizard who leads the resistance against him.
I know she and her husband believe they're foot soldiers in that war instead of the pawns they actually are. So sure, so proud they're fighting for the right. Despite the fact that her foolish husband has no idea his wife has sheltered his enemy's seed in her belly, in their bed for months. That she's presented this bastard boy to his family and friends as the pampered heir presumptive, fruit of his manly loins.
Her head jerks around, startled out of her reverie by my quiet chuckle.
Quickly I smooth my face into the grandmotherly concern they so love. The pretty do so hate to be mocked.
I give her instructions on how to care for the boy, reminding her to feed him the potion as soon as she gets home. Once the clock strikes 12 tonight, she'll be safe. And unless she's seized by an urge to confess, no one will have any basis to turn her and her boy out.
I could have been kind. I could have told her that the spell she thought she was getting wasn't the one she got. It never is. They think they're getting a permanent blood glamour to hide the evidence of their…slippage under the guise of their husband's features. And yes the motherward spell does that.
But if the wizards had actually cherished their heritage instead of repudiating it they wouldn't be so ignorant of what it really does. They wouldn't think they could just walk in here with a pocketful of galleons and erase their sins.
Oh no.
If they understood their history they wouldn't be fooled. The muggleborns wouldn't be taken in by their lies – lies the wizards don't even realize they're telling. But lies nonetheless.
Their two wizard chiefs know, the dark one and the light one.
But do you think they would tell their followers?
Of course not.
They let them stumble around with lies in their heads, and veils over their eyes, hiding the truth. The ones who come close to the truth, who suss out even a sliver of it, they're punished, tormented. You can smell it on that child, inherited from the one who sired him: Passion and torment. The pain of an unpretty man.
Suddenly my chest hurts. Not a warning stab but a hollow ache. I sigh, suddenly bereft of patience and steer the latest pretty towards the floo. It'll drop her safely back into Sutt Hill Alley at the home of the midwife who had given her my name. Anyone who spots her will just assume she was taking the baby for a check up and go back about their day.
Simple.
Especially since most of the midwives belong to us. What few who don't at least pay us their respects. What information we don't get from them we can read in nature's signs around us. Oracular portents are much easier to grasp when one follows the Old Ways. Which is why I was surprised when she came to me. Ordinarily, I'd have expected a modern young witch, who'd delivered her child at St. Mungo's, to scorn anything to do with the likes of me.
Especially THIS witch.
Co-star of the prophecy.
But no matter.
I saw it for the blessing that it was.
Her fall will be our triumph, our foothold back.
The boy – future bane of the Dark Lord, future pawn of the Light Lord, and now calamity to them both – belongs to us now. Irrevocably. As surely as the muggles believe their baptisms are. By the blood of his muggleborn mother and in the name of her erstwhile lover's magical mother, the boy is ours. The motherward spell has made it so. And of her own free will she's written his name on the wards. It cannot be undone. Neither dark magic nor death can break it – or him until he comes of age. Nor light magic either. Certainly not a light magic that disdains the ancient Mother that birthed it.
I steer the pretty towards the door, urgent to be rid of her.
I suspect – oh why should I be kind? – I know that you could put a pearl in the hand of a pretty like her and all she'd see is congealed oyster spit. White pearl, black pearl, it wouldn't matter. She'd squeal in revulsion and drop it like a stone. She might look back to see whether it was still intact. She might pause to check whether it retained its luster. But, distracted by glittering gold, she'd never pick it up again.
I stare for long moments at the crumbling fireplace for a moment as speckles of floo powder float gently to grate.
She could have flushed it from her womb. It's easily done and nowhere near as hard as it is for muggle women. No one would have ever known. Neither her husband nor her unpretty lover. Nor the embattled wizards circling the child's future like hungry wolves.
Perhaps…
Then I shake myself as if throwing off a chill.
No, no. There is no perhaps, I reason. Perhaps there would be if she had let the child alone, let his features bare his mother's failings to the world with the courage the members of that wretched school's lion house are supposed to have.
No, instead she comes running to me, hoping to safeguard her marriage and secure her half-blood son's place in the wizard world.
I wonder what will happen when the Potter estate repudiates him?
I feel a grin forming.
Oh he'll get the money. Money is a dead thing, easily charmed and better off left to the goblins. And no one will challenge the name.
But the land. Ahhh. That's a different thing altogether.
Land is alive and it knows the blood that belongs to it.
Not a drop of which he has.
I straighten up chuckling, gathering up my galleons and preparing for the next client.
Gods, I love the pretty ones!
Author's End Note: So what'd ya think? Outraged yet? Lol
I know I'm supposed to be working on Chapter 3 of Confessions of a Cornwall Grad – and I am. But this story has been rattling around in my head for a while. I always thought there HAD to be much more to the power of the wards than a sacrifice that ANY mother would have made. And then one day it took form and decided to be born. I think of it as a loose companion piece to Answers to Nothing.
For those of you who are patiently waiting for more Cornwall, please hang in there. I have a solid – and might I say, blistering – beginning but I need to build in more layers so that it has the richness of the previous chapters and sadly, that takes time. Thank you for your continued patience. I'm doing my best to make it worth the wait.