Summary: A series of oneshots in the universe of 'The Rebel Snakes', exploring magic in other cultures, the intersection of magic and Muggle worlds, and the dichotomy of magic and faith. Mostly Gold-centric, with frequent appearances by the trio, the Slytherins and various others. Features linguistically brilliant Harry, morally confused Malfoy, flirty Myrtle, social justice Hermione, chessmaster Ron and BAMF Neville.
This chapter is in response to a request from krazyfanfiction1, who wanted Gold's bravery to get its due. Kinda sorta.
Part 9: Set towards the end of year seven. In which a member of the D.A. learns the truth and Gideon Rowle learns a lie. This chapter is probably still T-rated, but there is discussion of both sex and statistics. Consider yourselves warned.
One of the few reasons for gratitude in amongst all the awfulness that the Carrows' rule had brought on, besides the sudden semblance of inter-house-unity, was that Gold didn't have to worry about disappointing anyone. Almost anything could be blamed on the Carrows, one way or another. The subtle war being waged through the halls of the castle hid all manner of sins.
"Given that the potion flares lambda times per day on average, but that flares occur totally at random, we want to determine the likelihood of seeing theta flares in twelve hours. How would you model that?"
No hand shot up; no clever voice launched into an explanation. Granger's departure had left a hole in the classroom.
Vector seemed to feel the empty gap too, and she glanced around the class with a slight frown. He felt her eyes settle on him. "Mr. Gold, how about you?"
You'd want to compare theta to a reference distribution-
Gold's quill fell to the floor. He opened his mouth, stared from Vector to the problem set on the board to his right hand. It was curled in a loose fist. It would not open.
Professor Vector wasn't simply looking at him now, but staring. Gold felt like he was going to throw up. He ducked under his desk and tried to reach for the fallen quill. He knew it was easy but he didn't know the answer. His hand was a useless lump of meat. - Reference distibution modelling events randomly interspered Oh, G-D, it really won't move - no, focus - randomly interspersed in space or time - a Poisson distribution -
He emerged from underneath his desk with the quill clenched in his other hand, crimson-faced, trying not to hyperventilate.
"Mr. Gold?"
"One half lambda to the theta, times e to the negative one half lambda, all over theta factorial," Gold blurted. Barely in time. His hand twitched and relaxed. One by one he willed each finger to move.
Vector smiled at him, but it was an odd smile, tight and uncomfortable.
After class, she beckoned him over. "I've just finished marking last week's essay, and- well, it's not your best work." The look on her face was a pointed question. Is everything alright?
Gold winced internally. Externally, he remained calm-faced. "I know. I'm sorry, Professor, but..." He lowered his voice. "With all the modifications to Hogwarts management I confess it no longer seems right for me to focus primarily on schoolwork."
Lying through his teeth again, like a good little Slytherin. He was fighting the Carrows tooth and nail, just like the Gryffindors-turned-guerrillas and the snakes and everyone else in the D.A. - but he thought he still could have kept up, if not for the headaches. Madam Pomfrey's potions stopped the pain, when he wasn't too stubborn to take them, but they didn't take away the awful pulsing fuzziness that lodged itself between his ears.
Vector nodded, her lips thinning into a grim line. "I can understand that." She'd stayed out of the Carrows' notice, for the most part. She had to. Giving the Death Eaters trouble would only bring down trouble on her Ravenclaws. But sometimes Gold could see the fire in her eyes when they walked by. "To tell you the truth, I think... should things... improve, this year will likely be expunged from all your academic records. If having psychotic criminals for professors doesn't count as extenuating circumstances I don't know what does," she added, sotto voice.
"I certainly hope so."
"I assume you'll be applying to an Arithmancy program once that's all straightened out, though?"
Gold blinked. Merlin, he hadn't thought about any of this. But of course she would assume. There was no question in Vector's voice, not really.
"Your brother Benjamin goes to Salem Institute of Magical Technology, isn't that right? I'll write you a superb letter. Or the Dunsinane School - a little smaller, but no less respected. Albus Dumbledore did his work with Flamel at Dunsinane."
She was paying him a huge compliment, and he knew it. Salem and Dunsinane. Two of the most important magical postsecondary academies in the world. And mentioning Dumbledore's name was bordering on a sacred act. It made him feel ill. "Yeah. Er. I mean I thought I'd try for both," he lied. "I've another brother at Dunsinane, so either way..."
"Impressive family." She laughed. "Where's the third brother?"
"Samson's a healer, doing his residency off Moses-knows-where. He's too footloose for research."
"Well, I'm sure you'll have your pick of both, and I'll finally have an alumnus doing world-class Arithmancy. You've real talent. It would be criminal to waste it."
Words formed on the tip of Gold's tongue, and then died there. Vector seemed not to notice, so he turned from the desk to go.
"Oh, and Gold?"
"Vas?"
"I am sorry about Granger." Vector's tone softened. "I would have liked nothing better than to see the two of you together."
Gold let out a breath, in spite of himself, and smiled a lopsided smile. "Never took you for such a romantic, Professor."
"Romantic? Minerva and I had a bet on." She arched an eyebrow at him. "You lost me twenty galleons."
He had to snort. "Granger and I came to the mutual agreement that it was for the best. As for the twenty galleons, don't blame that on me - It's your own fault for betting on the dark horse with the longest odds. You don't have to be an Arithmancer to know that's just stupid. A pair of eyes would suffice."
Vector brushed the comment away like a distracting fly. "There were practically lightning bolts flying across the room when you two debated a point. I followed my instinct."
"Very few successful relationships have been built upon the merits of intellectual debate, Professor."
"Mine is."
"A, You're a Ravenclaw, and B, with all due respect, I've seen your wife. It's built on more than that."
"Touché." Vector's smile was wicked. "Nevertheless, you cannot tell me Miss Granger cared nothing for you."
"I think the tension had to boil over before we could be friends. But eventually we were."
"Were?" Vector gave him a sharp look. "Gold, if this is your way of telling me something has happened to Granger I will be very, very angry."
He wouldn't have blamed her. The hopes that rode on the Golden Trio were never spoken of aloud, but they were even stronger, for all that. Saying 'were' had been unintentional - but she'd gone off to save the world and he did not think he would see her return. "No, no, nothing like that. Just that she hasn't been here all year."
"It's strange, isn't it? Not having her around to try to impress us both at every turn, and succeed? Makes the class feel... empty." Vector surveyed him with deep-set grey eyes, calculating all the parameters of her intuition. "You'd best not lose touch with her. A friend who's intellectually matched to you is a once-in-a-lifetime gift."
Suddenly Gold was painfully aware that he had to do something.
"Do you know where Gold is?"
"No idea," said Didon, with a shrug, aware of the fact that the question had been primarily addressed at her. Which was annoying. Normally, yes, she was his biggest supporter, but he'd snapped at her for no bloody reason the last time they spoke, and Gold rarely apologized for anything. Git. He's not the boss of me.
"Should we just start?" asked Neville, looking apologetic beneath the bruising of a black eye.
Didon glanced around the room one last time, as if she could have missed him. "May as well. He's been weird lately. He's probably just up in his dormitory sulking."
"I can go and try to fetch him if you give me the password," offered Susannah Clearwater.
"Could you?" Neville looked relieved. "I need him to demonstrate the nonverbals, I still can't get those."
"The password's tradition," offered Didon.
Dear Hermione,
By the time you read this I will be dead. Please don't hate me for not telling you -
Granger -
Dear Granger,
By the time you read this I will be dead. My decision not to tell you in person was regrettable, but necessary. I want you to know that -
The floor was littered with papers. Susannah picked her way through them, trying not to look, but curiosity guided her eyes without her permission.
Gold, in the middle of it all, sat cross-legged on his bed with his hands in his hair, too focused on the parchment in front of him to notice Susannah's approach. She could already tell she'd stumbled in on a moment she was not meant to see - the wisest thing now was to back away and make like she'd never come here in the first place.
The inevitable scrunch of a balled-up piece of parchment under her foot made Gold's head jerk upward. Susannah winced.
"Get out," he growled. He looked very different without his usual perfectly-groomed, bored composure. The intensity of his gaze was almost burning. She'd never been afraid of him before now.
"Sorry," said Susannah, steeling herself. "Only there's a D.A. meeting on -"
"I said get out."
"-And they asked me to check on you-"
"I don't want their concern!" She saw him reach for the water-glass on his nightstand - ducked behind the bed hangings to shield herself, on instinct - but she did not see the glass shatter against the wall behind where she had stood, though she did hear it shatter.
He'd attacked her, or tried to. If she had any sense, she would get out now. But suddenly everything was silent, and the caring Hufflepuff in her would not listen to sense. There had to be a reason for it. Susannah ducked back around the bed curtains.
The glass had shattered all over the bed. Gold's right hand was bleeding, studded with fragments of broken glass. His teeth were gritted, his round face scrunched inwards as if he was using every ounce of strength not to cry out, or break into tears.
Susannah had the sense to know without being told that it wasn't his hand. "...David?" she asked, staring at him with wide eyes.
Gold shattered like the glass. His shoulders hunched inward. His head dropped like a stone. "I. I-I don't-"
He looked more frightened than she had ever seen him. Susannah cleared away the glass with her wand and sat down next to him.
"I don't know if that was me." Gold swallowed, drew a sharp breath. "That's, that's a lie, of course I know, I - look at me. I'm coming apart. I'm so sorry. It's all going so fast."
"You'd better explain," said Susannah, calmly, as gently as she dared for fear of getting bitten. Gold responded to kindness the way other people responded to savagery.
"Have I pretended well enough? Can you guess?"
She shook her head.
"I'm dying."
The finality of it seemed to have calmed him. It had the opposite effect on her. Susannah felt like her stomach had dropped out of the bottom of her feet. "What- how? How can you be-"
Gold tapped his forehead, leaving a bloody smear. "Carcinoma," he mumbled, thickly, "I used to have it all through my stomach and now it's in my head."
"But aren't there magical treatments, I mean-"
"Against the Emperor of Maladies?" He gave a bitter little laugh. "Spoken like a true Muggleborn, Clearwater. Hah. No. What can be done when the body itself turns against you? It is the ultimate in self-destruction." He stared with a kind of a detached interest at his bloody hand. "Who threw that glass at you? That's an impossible question. It was me and it wasn't. I'm losing ground."
Susannah didn't know what to say. What she said was, "Give it here, you need the glass out."
Gold held out his hand. Susannah used a plucking spell to take each piece out, making him wince every time.
"How... long do you have?"
"Months. Maybe a year. I don't know."
"Why didn't you say anything?" She paused from picking out the glass pieces to look him in the face, or try to. The magnitude of it left too many questions, too many implications. Did the others know? No, she decided, they couldn't possibly. The snakes leaned on Gold like he was a pillar. The Gryffindors bantered and sniped. There was no trace of grief in their scrappy camaraderie. "The D.A. need to know, David."
"No. I'll curse you if you tell them."
He sounded so petulant that for a moment she wasn't sure he was serious, despite everything. "But this matters, I mean-"
"No. I won't have their pity," Gold spat, refusing to meet her gaze. "I won't be reduced to a victim. Alright?"
Susannah removed her hands from his. She felt a bit like she'd been bitten. The silence crushed her. "David-" she murmured after a moment, "Letting people close to you is not the same thing as inviting their pity."
He said nothing, staring fixedly at his hand.
"Maybe even the opposite," said Susannah. "They don't realize what you're dealing with. If they did-"
"No."
"What are you afraid of?" It was a plea, not a challenge.
"Losing them. One way or another." He exhaled, and all the harshness and anger seemed to leave his voice. "I made my peace with it. A year or two ago I was ready. Could have gone at any moment without regret. Only now... The D.A. ..." His eyes finally met hers. "I've had caretakers and I've had followers. I'm not really used to having friends."
It occurred to her then that she had never heard anyone call him by his first name.
"So either I lose their respect, the way I've already lost yours, or I die knowing I've tasted something perfect and never really gotten to experience it. I don't want... I don't want anything to lose. Or anyone else to mourn me. I don't want to be scared to die."
"But you already are."
The look he gave her was helpless, imploring. Of course I am, it said, but let me pretend.
Susannah didn't press the point. Instead, she took his hand again, and cleared the last of the glass. "There. What healing spells should I use?"
"Cathari and papaloi."
She followed his instructions, cleaning and sealing the many small cuts.
"You won't tell anyone then."
"Wouldn't be my right," said Susannah. "I just... think you should."
"I can't."
Susannah looked him in the eye. This time he held her gaze. After a moment of silence, she nodded. "I'll make up an excuse for the others."
"Thank you."
"Gold... I still respect you."
He said nothing, so she got to her feet.
On the other side of the dormitory door she nearly ran right into Draco Malfoy. He didn't have his wand out, but he sneered at her. "What are you doing here? Get out, you filthy Mudblood, go back where you belong."
Susannah had no patience for Malfoy or his insults. She felt like she'd been punched in the gut by Gold's news; she needed to take something for herself. She gave him her best demure smile, batting her eyelashes. "Well, you know. It's not often I can get David on his own. A girl has needs..."
Malfoy's expression could not have been more horrified. She swatted him on the chest. "Oh, don't worry, we didn't use your bed or anything. Tah, Malfoy."
She left him stunned and stock-still, and walked away with a brief feeling of triumph.
Gold barely had time to clear away all the half-written letters when he heard Malfoy's approach. Malfoy caught him in the act of vanishing the last of them - but, strangely, he didn't seem to notice the suspiciousness of it. He was too busy staring at Gold like he'd grown a second head.
"What is it, Malfoy?" asked Gold, too weary to bother with aggression. He still felt raw. His hand hurt.
"Clearwater?"
"What about her?"
"You're shagging her!"
"I'm what now?"
Malfoy pointed at the dormitory door with a mixture of anger and helplessness. "She just told me!"
Gold thought fast. The look on Malfoy's face was too good to ignore, even in his current mood. If Clearwater herself had told him so... She was up to something. But until he knew what, he saw no harm in playing along.
He shrugged. "So what if I am?"
"She's-" Malfoy looked too apoplectic with rage to summon up words, so Gold filled in.
"What? Fit?"
"Yes!"
Another shrug. They seemed to drive Malfoy even crazier than verbal replies. Gold flicked his wand, summoning a chocolate frog from his desk drawer. Chocolate, in his experience, healed all wounds.
"How?" Malfoy sputtered. "Granger first, now Clearwater?"
He tore open the packaging with his teeth. "Myrtle's been telling stories."
"Yes she bloody well has!" If Malfoy had been trying to disguise the trace of jealousy mixed in with his horror and bewilderment, he was doing a terrible job. He looked over at Gold, saw the chocolate frog, and made a face of renewed disbelief. "See? See? How can girls possibly like you this much? You're always eating!"
Gold arched an eyebrow at him and waited for the other shoe to drop.
"That's disgusting."
"You won't get far with that attitude."
Malfoy collapsed onto his bed. "Oh, now are you going to tell me there's some ancient Muggle philosophy text about this, too? The - the meta-ethics of pleasing women?"
"Oh, well if you wanted that you should have just asked," said Gold, dusting chocolate crumbs off his fingers. "It's not meta-ethics, but it's certainly creative." He shifted to his bookcase, and, after a moment of picking through the spines, pulled out a book and tossed it to Malfoy.
"You've given me the Torah," said Malfoy.
"Mm-hm. Look up the Song of Songs."
"You're full of it, Gold."
"No, seriously. I don't need my English copy, you can keep it. Read it. It's wild."
Malfoy scowled at the book, and flipped to the Song of Songs. A few lines in, his eyes started to get very wide. "...Ointment?"
Gold cackled. Between the chocolate and this conversation, he felt much better. "Good, isn't it?"
The next time he saw Clearwater, at a D.A. meeting, there was a distinct awkwardness between them. Finally he took her aside to a corner, lowering his voice to a whisper. "Clearwater, did you tell Malfoy we shagged?"
She blinked at him. "That's not a problem, is it?"
"You're fourteen."
"I'm fifteen, and precocious."
"But we didn't."
She rolled her eyes. "Of course not. But Malfoy told Rowle, like I knew he would, and it drove him mad. He hates you."
"...You're a little evil," said Gold.
She shrugged. "Slytherins don't have the monopoly on it."
"It's a bit presumptuous. All that talk of respecting me, and then you use me in your revenge plot?"
"I didn't honestly think you'd mind. I thought it'd add to your reputation."
"That's just the problem." Gold found himself laughing. It felt good, actually. It had been too long. "Malfoy thinks I'm some kind of sex god."
"You should have seen the look on his face," said Clearwater, breaking into a laugh herself. "I'm sorry, I just honestly couldn't resist."
"It's fine. Bit surprised you're not worried about your reputation, though."
"I said I was precocious. Half the reason Rowle wanted me to begin with is he's one of the few I'd say no to. I probably would have shagged you if you'd asked."
Gold found himself making a face that probably wasn't too different from Malfoy's.
"Well, I'm not going to refuse a dying man, am I?!"
"Shut up shut up!" Laughter was making him short for breath. "You're terrible!"
"You could pretend I was Granger."
"And who'd you pretend I was?"
"Your brother Avi."
"I'll pass."
"thought you'd say that. Here lies Gold, virgin forever, too proud to accept a friendly offer of no-strings-attached sex."
"You're actually the devil. You belong in Slytherin."
She elbowed him in the ribs. "You're suddenly very red in the face, oh dear, I'm not responsible for that, am I?"
"Leave me alone to my eternal shame. Though if you want to revenge yourself on Rowle, you know, there's a lot farther you could go..."
"You sound like a man with ideas."
"I might be."
They rejoined the others still giggling. Beyond all the weird questions and looks and the fact that Gideon Rowle now had it in for him more than ever before, Gold found he was grateful to her. She certainly didn't seem to think he was made of glass just because he was dying. Quite the opposite.
Tee hee. Sorry for mood whiplash, but I needed some levity STAT. This chapter was tonally inspired by the Only1noah Cover of "The Once And Future Carpenter" by The Avett Brothers. You can find it on youtube and it is perfect and sad. Some of the themes that song introduces lyrically have been wound through this story since day one.
Incidentally, Gold was suffering from transient ataxia at the beginning, the Poisson formula is real, and the two fictitious post-secondary magic schools I created are obvious parallels: Harvard & MIT with Salem and Oxford with Dunsinane. Salem probably also has a high school level something-or-other, I think Rowling's said so.
The Song of Songs, also called the Song of Solomon, is also real, and super-kinky. Early Christianity had to claim it was a giant metaphor for Christ's marriage to the Church so as not to get embarrassed and uncomfortable.
That letter Gold was attempting to write will re-appear later on.
Up next: Some kind of exploration of the brothers Gold. I'm still taking suggestions, so please review and make your requests!