- Indicates thought.
- indicates telepathy/word emphasis/italics.
Alright people. I didn't want to, but you've forced me into it. It's not a speech, but it's lengthy, all the same. Here we go.
To Stratagemini- I feel bad for you. I really do. It is sad, that anyone in this world should think that religion is the source of all evil. It is not. True religion, true faith, is the source of what little is right in this world. True Christians will not harm others. Save to defend ourselves, our country, or our beliefs, we are forbidden from slaying others. We are here to heal, not to harm. As a Jew, you have probably been subjected to far more criticism and hatred than any one person should bear. I'm not extending pity- I, myself, hate pity more than anything else- merely my sympathies. Please, remember that you are the chosen of God. That, and that alone, is why others target you for their idiot hatred. You are not alone.
Remember that.
And remember also, I was not "proselytizing" in the last chapter, merely stating my beliefs. If you view that as offensive, sorry, but it's my beliefs, and I'm sticking to them.
To Drizzt 203-Saw- I feel bad for you, too, but in an entirely different way. I feel bad because you have fallen into darkness. I urge you to read the Bible. Read it not as just a book, but try to see it as truth. We all need the light of Jesus Christ in our lives.
Odd, that what I was accused of last chapter, I do in this one.
Still, I've no problem with it. As a Christian, it's one of my main jobs to try and guide others to the better path. I can't force you to it; no one can or should. I can merely try to point you in the general direction. Where you go from there is your road to walk, not mine. It's why we have free will; to choose between God and the Devil. Between Truth and Lies.
Your choice.
To the Catholic Reviewer (I beleive it's Redskin)- God bless you, friend. I feel sorry for the Church, being pushed through such hard times, but you'll come out the better for it. Now that the controversy has broken wide open, it can be ended. It was a festering wound, but with the scab pulled off, it can now be disinfected and removed. I'm not a Catholic, but I proudly stand by them as a Christian brother.
To several reviewers- There is a difference between stating I'm a male so that everyone doesn't say "Hey Lady!" in reviews, and trying to make an equal America. In Equality, gender doesn't count; when you're just talking, it does, for identification purposes.
To My Sadly Messed Up Reviewer- The name you're hunting for is King. Martin Luther King Jr., to be exact. A good man, possibly a great one. And after reading your review (shakes head and laughs)... well... it's not the people with funny names trying to kill America. It's the terrorists. But don't worry about sounding like a racial profilist; truth is, the Islamic fundamentalists come from the Middle East, as a general rule. There are exceptions (Lindh springs immediately to mind), but not enough to disprove the rule.
To King of the Nazgul- Finally! Someone mentioned the game that inspired a million references! Even the chapter name was inspired by Chrono Cross! And no one got it but you! ARRGH!
My Best Read-Between-The-Lines Reviewer- I'm sorry I forgot your name, but you and you alone have figured it out! The Tide really will win in the end! I keep referring to it, but no one but you has gotten it yet! Kudos, my friend!
I've jabbered more than enough. It's now...
"SHOWTIME!"
Chapter 23 To Each Dog a Day
Squall Cape, Ministry Naval Base, shores of England, July 18th, 3:00 a.m.
Comm. Edgar Figaro, an old sailor whose blond hair lay in an eternal pigtail on the back of his neck, waited anxiously for the ships. Where were they?
" Commodore"
Edgar turned. Behind him, waving his hand wildly in the air, one of his scanner men was waiting anxiously behind his screen. The rolling seat he was sitting in (one of the few inventions of Muggles that had made it big in the Wizarding world) tilted and wobbled violently as the over-enthusiastic private tried to get his commander's attention.
" We got movement"
Commodore Edgar Figaro walked over to the private. They were in the command deck of the M.N.F. Giant's Maw, and outside the portholes of the deck to his right the bleak black ocean rolled on and on. The Ministry Naval Base called Squall Cape lay to his left (North, he reminded himself as he absently glanced at an onboard compass in the control deck to his right), a small and modest little port that was barely equipped to handle the three thousand troops (plus the men on the escort ships) that would be arriving soon. The port had been told to expect them by 2 o' clock, maybe later if complications arrived. When it got to be 2:30, the men were worried; now they were positively scared. Edgar had heard some of the men whispering of the Black Tide, wondering if they were somehow behind this. Edgar had grabbed the crewman who'd been doing the wondering and thrown him into a nearby wall, cussing him out all the while. Fear like that could disrupt the entire damn ship. The unlucky crewman was now resigned to his fate of peeling potatoes. For a month. If he'd backtalked, Edgar would have made it two.
As the Commodore reached the scanner, the private said, " Sir, it's showing one ship, moving slowly. Looks hurt, sir. And the size and shape... it has to be a transport, sir." The crewman looked up at Edgar with ever widening eyes. " You don't think it's... ours, do you, sir"
" Of course not," Edgar replied, but felt a twinge of fear in his heart all the same. One ship.
" Set a course for it," Edgar said. " We have to investigate this"
" Aye aye, sir," the crewman said, casting a few simple spells to transmit the orders to the crew. Soon enough, the entire ship was turning about and heading south. As they traveled south, towards the mystery that lay south of them, a deathly silence took over the control room. It was quiet, and it stayed that way. No one wanted to be the first to speak and break the spell, break the strange assurance the silence seemed to give that this was just an errant merchant vessel or (please God please) a black marketeer, looking to make a midnight run.
Anything but a lone survivor of the transport.
When the ship was finally in viewing range, the crow's nest lookouts all cried out the same thing.
" It's one of ours! It's one of ours"
Comm. Figaro let out a sigh and put his hand to his forehead. So. It was true.
" Do you know who?" he asked a crewmate. The crewmate quickly transferred the question via magic to the crow's nest.
" Looks like the Pinta!" their magically amplified voices returned.
As the Giant's Maw pulled up beside the transport, the tattered remnants of men aboard let out a ragged cheer and waved at them from the deck. Comm. Figaro walked out onto his own deck, and ordered a bridge summoned up to connect the two ships. When the magical bridge came into being, he began to step across, but a soaked and bedraggled man cut him off first. He ran up to the commodore and tripped on his own feet. Laying on the ground, he said only this:
" We have quite the story to tell you"
Then Capt. Norris Wind passed out.
Transcript of Message from Commodore Edgar Figaro to Susannah Bones, Minister of Magic
The following was recovered from official Wizengamot records, dating back to the time of the War of the Long Twilight. It was encrypted, using codes that have henceforth been broken. Though it has been translated into English, some of the original coding remains. It is believed to be the first official notice the Wizengamot received of the battle in the Channel.
DISPATCH FOUR-FOUR-NINE-THREE CODE LEVEL TEN DATE: 7/18/XX
SENDER: PIGTAIL RECEIVER: BIG SHOW
RE: OPERATION BACKWATER
STATUS: ALL SHIPS SAVE PINTA DESTROYED. SURVIVORS HALF INSANE. SEEM CONFUSED & FRIGHTENED. MENTION GREAT "MONSTERS", PROBABLY KRAKEN AND SEA SERPENTS. MENTION "GHOST VESSEL" THAT FLOATED IN THE SKY... REPORTS WAITING ON IDENTITY OF MYSTERY VESSEL, PERHAPS UNKNOWN AIRSHIP, MAYBE BUILT BY B/T?
CAPTAIN OF SEA LION STILL ALIVE, CLAIMS SHIP WAS TAKEN BY THE "GHOST VESSEL" AND DRAGGED OFF BY HUGE CHAINS... PERSONALLY BELIEVE HE'S LOST HIS MIND. HAVE SCHEDULED MEMORY TREATMENTS FOR HIM... TRYING TO FIND OUT WHAT HE REALLY SAW. WILL BE COMPLETED IN A WEEK.
SURVIVORS STATE THAT AFTER THE SUPPOSED "GHOST SHIP" LEFT, THE MONSTERS SEEMED TO DRIFT OFF AND HALT THEIR ATTACKS. NINA WAS TOO DAMAGED TO MAKE IT HOME, BUT PINTA SURVIVED THE TRIP. ALL DESTROYERS P/BATTLESHIP HAD BEEN SUNKEN BEFOREHAND.
NO NEW INFORMATION AT THIS TIME. WILL ALERT YOU AS SOON AS ANYTHING TURNS UP.
OVER AND OUT.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Wizard Town of Hope Bright, countryside of England, July 19th. Noon.
Sirius Black looked up into the bright sunlit sky. Clouds drifted lazily, as they always had, ignoring the lives and deaths and fates of all those who lived below them. Drifted by ignorant of the torment wracking one man's heart.
Sirius lowered his gaze and walked on. Hope Bright was a fairly big Wizarding town, not a city like Diagon Alley or Hogsmeade, but pretty big regardless. It was also a town that had a long history of Enchanters and Illusionists. Henceforth, when Sirius walked about in a magically created face that disguised his true identity, the people thought nothing of it and went on their way. Half the people here had enchanted faces, to enhance their looks and beauty. It was a popular pastime here. A Mudblood Wizard had once jokingly suggested that Hope Bright was the Wizarding equivalent of a town of plastic surgeons. He was pretty close, too.
As Sirius walked down the streets, heading to a rather respectable inn he'd inquired at, his mind twisted and turned. He was like a raging, boiling cauldron of hot water, just waiting for enough heat to push it over the edge and cascade down the sides of it's container, drowning everything in it's path. Sirius thought about that, and chuckled. Great. Now he was comparing himself to cookware. Next he really would go insane.
He shook his head sadly as he walked down the street, his brief levity completely forgotten, and as people passed him they seemed to cringe and dodge almost involuntarily. None of them would say just why they avoided this man; it may just have been something about his aura. Of great pain and unspeakable loss.
Those who have suffered a great life change usually find that the mass of humanity is no more than ants to them. To those who have seen both the higher things and the lower things, the acts and concerns of mere humanity seem unimportant and weak. As they were to Sirius, who had suffered so in Azkaban. He'd tried to explain to Harry, but there was so much you couldn't say... the long nights when he considered ripping his own paw off so that the gushing bloodflow would kill him and end his torment... the screaming of so many prisoners as Dementor after Dementor gave them special treats, little kisses that left the receiver dead to all things... the sheer unspeakable aura of the place. It was not a place you could describe.
But there was also that one event, that beautiful and single event that had happened five years after he'd arrived, an event so great and grand that the memory of it was enough to keep him fighting for years to come. To eventually free himself. More than his dog form, more than the fact he was innocent, the great happenings of a cold day in December in his fifth year at Azkaban had helped him carry on.
But that day was not for remembrance now. Later, yes... but not right now. He had to think.
Why? Why had Harry turned dark? What had happened? Why?
Sirius thought about everything he knew about Harry (which, admittedly, wasn't much). He had struck Sirius as a somewhat confused, lost boy, who was naturally cheery and chummy but was also just as naturally a pessimist and cynical about the world. When they'd caught Pettigrew as Ron's rat Scabbers (and even now, Sirius felt the old rage for Pettigrew boil up in him, like that oft-spoke of cauldron, bubbling over it's constraints to consume everything), it had been Harry who was least surprised of the three children. Ron had been dumbfounded, Hermione even more so (alongside her great brainpower, she had unfortunately inherited an innate tendency towards arrogance and belief in her own superiority, something Sirius had picked up even though it was their first real meeting), and Harry had been surprised too... but somewhere, deep in his heart, the confusion had ended and the thinking began. Sirius wondered why Harry had saved Pettigrew. Misguided honor? Some skewed sense of right and wrong (which in reality dictated Pettigrew's sudden and imminent death)? Or something deeper? Something... calculating? Something that may have wanted Pettigrew to suffer far more than he could have if Sirius and Remus had simply killed him? What was it, that had made him suffer Pettigrew to live?
In the other conversations, carried out by letter and fire, that the two had held, Sirius had sensed something in Harry: a half-hidden feeling, like the undertow of a river that seemed to be the weakest part of the rushing water, an undertow that you only realized was the strongest part when it pulled you under and wouldn't let you back up. This feeling was rage. Rage against the world. Part of it was hate (and who couldn't hate, brought up by the Dursleys, parents murdered, regarded as freak by Muggles and hero by Wizards, who could not hate?) and part of it was a deep, abiding sadness (sadness for loss, both his own and all the world's), but the main thing was rage. Rage against everything. Harry had become the exact opposite of the pitiful, whining crying geeks that filled the world, that moaned and cried about the state of things but never did anything about it- he had become a rager, a hater, someone who would seek a high position and from there deal out retribution to all the world. Of course, at the time of the talks, Sirius hadn't sensed all this, but it came out easily enough when he thought about it now (hindsight really did have a clarity so perfect it was agonizing). Maybe that was the source of Harry's madness. Of the Jester.
Sirius shook his head. Regardless, he had a train to catch. He was heading north, to Durmstrang, on a smuggler's boat, and to get to the isolated beach it was launching from he required the aid of a train. A Muggle train, but that was okay. Better, maybe.
After all, if he took the Knight Bus, he'd probably have to kill most of the passengers and take the driver hostage just to get where he wanted to go. And then he'd have to kill anyone else left so he could protect the identity of his smuggler. And that would mean so many bodies to bury.
Smirking at his own traitorously sarcastic thoughts, Sirius walked on through the town, heading to London for his train. Where, in a few day's time, a great tragedy would occur...
Emissary Tower, formerly Headmaster's Tower of Beauxbatons School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, somewhere in France. Same time.
Fleur looked out the window, human in form now, wearing a gray outfit she'd chosen just for these occasions. He was coming. The person she'd thought of as a little boy years ago (and his actions, after all, had seemed to be a boy's, including the staring and ogling she had grown used to and learned to hate) and now thought of as her boss. Harry Potter. The Jester King.
The man that she was so afraid of. That she so hated, for making her feel so confused. That she so desperately wanted to believe.
The door behind her creaked open slightly, and then, as if realizing that opening a room unanounced was a drastic breach in conduct, the guest closed it slightly and knocked lightly, politely. Fluer lowered her head.
" Come in," she said, her thoughts still dire. The visitor walked in, and as always, the force of his personality struck her. Even when you weren't looking at him, Harry had a way about him of commanding attention. She turned around.
He was dressed in rather simple clothing; in fact, all she could see of what he was wearing was an enormous black cape that covered his shoulders and body. None of him except his face was clearly visible, and that was partially hid by a sweeping head of hair. It hadn't been cut in a while, so it had grown quite long. The overall effect, however, wasn't of shagginess or sloppiness; rather, it was one of mystery, as the long bangs served to partially cast his face into shadow. The scar that now reached the tip of his nose winked out of that shadow like a red eye gleamed at night. Harry's head was held up straight, but somehow seemed to be lowered in thought, as hers had been a few seconds ago.
" Fluer," he said, nodding to her. The scar winked at her again. She nodded back.
" Sir," she responded.
He walked over to the window beside her, and looked down over the fields of Lunas. Fleur turned around and joined him. From this high up, one could almost see for forever... or so it seemed. Below them, audible even from this height, the cursing and laughing of giants at play floated up, distance transforming it from a noise like diesel trucks smashing into each other and into something more like the sound of genial conversation. The giants were having the times of their lives, regarding the huge grasslands surrounding Beauxbatons as playing grounds for titanic games of wrestling and American football. A young Marauder named Pierre (a former student of Beauxbatons) had been to America once, and instantly fallen in love with the American version of football. When the Tide had come to Beauxbatons, he'd taught the game to his newfound army friends, and soon entire groups of Marauders were playing football with each other. When the Rogues had arrived, the giants had watched them play with particular eagerness, and when they'd learned the rules, they fell in love with the game. Giants and football went together like meat and potatoes, and now an enormous playing field had been marked off on the grasslands with magical lines that never faded or disappeared. A good thing too, since the giants tended to be very rough in their games of football. The thudding sound of great bodies hitting the ground had become an everyday thing to the people of Lunas. Just as the sound of the machinery at the Boneyards, the whirring and scraping noises of earthwork, had become just another background noise to them. Like the people living near Niagara Falls, the people of Lunas were actually rather uncomfortable without a great deal of noise going on in the world around them. In later years, Lunas would be jokingly called the "Rumbling City" for the constant noise that flowed out of it.
Oddly enough, the problem of giant aggression had been taken care of by Pierre when he introduced football- if two giants disagreed, the law of Lunas stated that they could take it to the field. The two giants would round up eleven friends each, and then the game would start. The victor would be declared the winner of the argument. There had been some grumblings at first, but because football was so much like fighting that the end result seemed to be the same (minus a bunch of dead giant bodies lying around, of course), the giants readily agreed to the new rules. Unfortunately, Fleur was worried that she'd have to start building a new stadium, just to keep up with all the arguments the giants were having. Everybody had a score to settle, it seemed. The football field was booked for a week. At the moment, a game was about to end, and it looked like the team decked out in blue was going to lose to a group with green ribbons. Since wearing actual team color shirts would have been impractical (not to mention expensive), Fleur had designed long flowing ribbons that were easy to replace and still identified the team. Those giants who had formed "professional" teams proudly wore their ribbons at all times, the great strands flying out ludicrously from their hair. Pierre, who had been put in charge of football by default, wore a single black ribbon in his hair, and could usually be seen flying about on a broomstick over the football games. He didn't ref the games himself, though; much safer to leave that to someone else. A ref might get accidentally knocked off their broomstick by an errant hand or fist, and Pierre himself had almost gotten killed by a (relatively) small giant who'd flown out of the game after a particularly hard sack and nearly landed atop him. Ever since then, Pierre tried to fly as far above them as he possibly could. He watched the games with keen interest, devising new rules and strategies particularly designed to make the game even more enticing to giants. He was a barely visible spot above the field to Fleur's vision.
" It's strangely beautiful, isn't it?" Harry said, his voice low, almost a whisper. His face, lowered as it was, seemed to be covered by his hanging hair, and it struck Fleur as sad and solemn, somehow. She looked at him, dark face in profile.
" What?" she said, not confused by what he had said, but the way he looked.
" This." He raised his left hand out of the great cloak on him, revealing an arm dressed in a black suit sleeve. He moved his hand slowly in the air, indicating all of Lunas with one expansive wave, then just as slowly retreated his hand back into the cape. His cape's hem shushed against the floor as it parted briefly, then resettled.
" It is a pretty view," Fleur said, not understanding what Harry was getting at.
" Not just that," Harry said, and for the first time Fleur saw that Harry was sad. The laughing demon, the Jester King, was now solemn and silent, a figure of thoughtful, quiet repose. It struck Fleur as one of the oddest things she'd ever seen in her life, but the new mood did not seem as if it was foreign to Harry- rather, it seemed just as natural as his insane laughter to him. Maybe more.
" What do you mean?" she asked him, head cocking to the side as she tried to study him, to puzzle him out.
" It's... all this," he said, shaking his head slightly, a bare twitch from left to right and back again. " Look out there. Giants, playing out in the open. In any other place on this earth, they would be killed... tortured... murdered..." Harry shook his head again and sighed. " And why? For what reason? Just for existing? Just for being?" He sighed again. " For such a pathetic and foolish reason"
" Harry? Sir?" Fleur said.
Harry turned to face her. His bangs hid his face from her, seeming to wrap it in darkness, but his voice came out to her, from that shadowy place beneath his hair, and in that voice she heard nothing but the unmistakable ring of truth.
" You don't trust me. I know that. I understand it and more so... respect it, that you would not be stupid enough to give your trust blindly. I'm not here to ease all your fears about me. I couldn't do that if given all the time in the world, and my words alone would never alleviate your mistrust in it's entirety- might, indeed, deepen it, make you fear me more, fear I was planning some treachery. But that's alright. I just want to make you understand this one thing"
" What?" Fleur said.
" I want to make you understand," Harry said, " that I want to make this the world of the Forbidden. We've all been downtrodden our whole lives. Each and every one of us, in their own way, has suffered. We're the underdogs, Fleur. Beaten on, kicked around, ordered about, used and when there is nothing left of us, after they've taken and taken and taken, we're thrown away like old bottles. We're Forbidden. Forbidden from life. Forbidden from happiness. Forbidden from freedom"
He turned and looked out the window, and Fleur continued staring at him, hearing all the essence of her life and her mission at Lunas summed up in a few simple words, in phrases that echoed in her heart and mind.
" I want to make us the monsters they think we are," Harry said fiercely, almost cursing the words into the air. " I want to give the Forbidden it's time in the sun. We have suffered too much, too long. Denied everything because of birth..." Here his voice broke for a second, and Fleur saw inside him, saw to that part of him that he showed no one willingly, the part that always screamed at the injustice of the world, " And now I want to change that. I want to make the hunted the hunter, the master the slave. I want to break this world and make it bleed beneath my feet. And I want to help every one of us who have cried out in the night and heard no one answer but the wind. I want us to touch the sky"
He turned to Fleur and said one more thing, a saying which stuck in her head all her life from that point on:
" Every dog has his day. Now it's our turn."
-R and R please!
