I'll Tell You How the Sun Rose
Pairing: Blaise Zabini x Neville Longbottom
Universe: mythology AU
Rating: M
Summary: Olivie Advent cont'd.
Prompts: Blaise x Neville as a Greek myth. Title from the Emily Dickinson poem of the same name.
His father is mad, or so they say. The more favored members of the Dark Lord's court certainly say it to Neville freely, gleefully taunting. Everyone knows his father's mind is going, or perhaps it is already gone. The worst of it is that Neville himself doesn't know the difference.
He can tell people suspect it of him as well. People with less privilege than the Carrows or the Lestranges do him the kindness, at least, of merely avoiding him in the street, mocking him only once his back is turned. By now Neville's grown up to be inordinately tall, which renders him difficult to miss in a crowd, even for the unprivileged. He doesn't interact with anyone much, and his shoulders have only one shape: hunched protectively, like armor.
"You shouldn't hide," says a voice, and from where he stands in the Hogsmeade market sorting through his options of figs, Neville looks up to find himself blinded. A man with dark skin and sleek features gleams languidly in the sun, and only after Neville shades his eyes can he even tell the difference between the rays themselves and the man's golden robes.
"I'm not hiding," says Neville.
"Sure you aren't," says the man.
"Call me Blaise," he says, which Neville mishears at first.
"Blaze?" he echoes, thinking of their first meeting, the glint of the midday sun.
"Sure," says Blaise. "That works."
At first Neville is convinced that Blaise is a hallucination; a manifestation of his own impending madness, inherited from his father. It becomes clear over time, however, that he could not have hallucinated Blaise, because Blaise is nothing like him. It's not as if Neville could have created some imaginary friend from the depths of his own mind, because Blaise is unapologetically, undeniably mean.
"Why doesn't anyone seem to like you?" is an example of something Blaise asks Neville, without batting an eye to the mockery inhabiting the remark. His tone is both luminous and dry while he inspects his glossy fingernails, the sound like flat champagne.
"People seem, no offense, visibly repulsed," Blaise says.
"Well, my father's mad," says Neville uncomfortably, though he finds it a difficult subject to speak aloud.
Blaise, helpfully, scoffs in the face of Neville's existential torment. "Your father isn't mad," he says. "But nobody ever likes someone who sees things differently. It reminds them of everything they'll never be."
Neville thinks this is patently false, probably. But it's interesting to be rebuked for something other than his genetics.
"Why do you care whether people like me?" he asks.
"I don't," says Blaise. "I don't care about you."
"Then why are you here?"
"I don't know," Blaise says, sounding like he means it. "But I suppose you're quite interesting to watch."
On good days, Neville's father is an inventor, a highly skilled architect. It's the only reason anyone puts up with him, because his madness does occasionally create things of use, or it did once. He used to be more prominent at Hogwarts, but it's possible the Dark Lord has required too much of his brilliant mind. Now, he mostly rambles to himself about darkness.
"What we need is an escape," Frank mutters. By now their chambers in the castle's highest tower are littered with drawings of what looks like birds, though Neville looks closer and sees they are actually keys with wings.
An escape, Neville knows, is exactly what they will never get.
Lately his father has been much worse. As far as Neville can tell, the Dark Lord has asked Frank Longbottom to hide something inside the castle, building a new chamber within that which Frank himself designed. It's like Frank is planting a labyrinth inside his own creation, giving his own life's work a tumor, which is becoming a perennial maze inside his mind.
Some days, Neville suspects he and Frank are both trapped inside it.
"I'm afraid I'm too much like him," says Neville.
"No," says Blaise lazily, "you already know you're like him."
"Then what am I afraid of?"
"Everything," Blaise says. "It's my least favorite thing about you, actually," he adds with a sidelong glance. "All that fear."
"I don't know who I'd be without it," Neville says honestly, and he waits for Blaise to mock him, to berate him, only he doesn't.
"True," Blaise says, as if maybe he wouldn't watch so closely if Neville were someone else.
When Frank babbles on about a monster with no face, Neville spends more time with Blaise. He never knows where Blaise comes from or how he arrives—sometimes it's as if Neville catches a glitter out of his eye and then suddenly Blaise is standing there, or sometimes when light pours into his tower window Neville squints, and the strain to see becomes, inexplicably, Blaise—but the longer Blaise lingers, the more Neville wants him to stay.
Blaise has a fascinating way of seeing the world. He, unlike Neville, looks down on it. Nothing has ever lessened Blaise, never diminished him, and he mocks Neville for wanting silly, petty things like being accepted, or being liked.
"Haven't you ever wanted more?" says Blaise, sounding exasperated with Neville's mediocre longings.
The truth is that Neville has never actually wanted anything. That has never been apparent to him before, but now it is as inescapable as his father's maze. The longer Blaise is there beside him, the closer Blaise gets, the more intensely Neville registers the sensation of wanting. The hunger of it is shiny and new, vibrant and insatiable.
Before Blaise, Neville wanted only to be invisible, and now that Blaise exists, he wants only to be seen. Which is why Neville is the one to take the step that startles Blaise, forcing him against the tower's cold stone walls.
"You think I like this?" Neville forces through his teeth. "You think I enjoy being nothing?"
Blaise's lips curl up derisively.
"No," he says. "I know for a fact that you don't."
Neville swallows, because he was bold for a moment, but now he can feel the way Blaise's warmth is scorching him; punishment for going too far. Their proximity is uncalculated now, and therefore dangerous. Neville knows if he brushes Blaise's mouth, if he even grazes it, the tips of his fingers will burn.
"Why are you here?" Neville asks again, hardly able to speak it aloud, and Blaise reaches up to trace the shape of Neville's throat, smoothing over the motion of his swallow.
"Imagine," Blaise murmurs, "being so distant from everything that nothing matters. Imagine being so caged, so interminably alone, you feel nothing at all."
"I don't have to imagine it," Neville says, lousy with truth; rotten with it, spoiled to the rind.
Blaise's breath is warm along the side of his neck, edging towards his jaw.
"I know you don't," he says, and Neville shivers with heat.
Scalding, blistering. Neville radiates with this, whatever it is. Sensation overflows in his veins, tiny incisions in his abdomen peeling open, ripe from every echo of Blaise's touch. He blooms and bursts, begets himself, forgets himself. It unfurls from his toes and takes shape in his lungs. He sobs in silence, in euphoria. Ecstasy is anguish melting from his chest.
In the wake of golden sheets and bleeding whimpers, Neville thinks of darkness. It fills the castle from every corner, and even the light in Neville's tower is insufficient, paltry, small. He thinks of his own smallness and suffers in shame, feeling the expansion of himself like an ache, excruciating. All he is now is waiting. The absence of Blaise's warmth measures itself in tiny cuts along his arms and legs, so that whenever the Highland winds blow, Neville shrinks from the chill. He climbs the steps to the tower he shares with his father and wants to scream at him WAKE UP, only it's madness. Neville knows this is his madness, just like Frank's is Frank's.
When Blaise is gone everything is the same. The Carrows, the Lestranges, the Dark Lord, everything his colorless and shadowed. Everything is cruelty and taunts, darkness and threats and manic laughter. Neville is useless, of course, always has been, only this time when they use their wands on him for sport, it doesn't hurt. It used to be pebbles of discomfort, bouncing pointlessly off his back, but now he is a man burning alive, so he swallows it up, incendiary. He becomes the pain, and it becomes him.
Blaise glitters into his room in a shower of gold while Neville lies curled atop his blankets. He feels Blaise crawl into the bed, curling himself around Neville, and then Neville can feel his scalding warmth again, sharp around the angle of his hips.
"You could be free," Blaise says.
It's the cruelest thing that Blaise has ever told him.
Neville returns home to find Frank muttering to himself again, only this time his father's thoughts feel more fragmented than usual. Frank's mind is trapped in its own labyrinth again, paralysis incarnate. Frank relives the same nightmares, cyclical and perpetual and stifling, and whether they are real or dreamt, Neville wakes one day to discover that Frank is unable to rise from the floor.
"An escape," Frank says, teeth chattering. "Neville… Neville, run."
Neville no longer believes that his father can ever escape.
"Run, Neville," Frank says again, and inside his mind, Neville can see his father is no longer screaming. He was once—there used to be other things in there, genius and brightness and cleverness, like lightning—but it's gone now, and Neville knows the feeling. Frank has been cauterized by his work, burned to numbness by the conscience he tried so long to fight.
Neville plucks one of his father's drawings from the floor, carefully, so as not to disturb the fragile pages. The room is littered with them, overflowing, and they are all variations on the same thing: winged keys.
An escape, Frank says, and Neville understands now that the darkness is a curse, it is madness undiscovered, and when Frank says to run, he means something else. From inside the maze of his thoughts, he is giving Neville the key to save his life. Unlock the door and push it open.
When Frank says run, Neville knows he means fly.
Neville stands at the top of the castle tower, a bit of stone breaking loose beneath his feet. It crumbles to the ground, and above his head is darkness, a pitch of open sky. It will glow rosy soon with waking, when this castle full of monsters will all stir their malevolent heads.
He closes his eyes and thinks he'll burn for this.
Then he steps over the ledge, letting himself fall—
And fall—
and fall
and fall
and
fall
and
when
he
should
land
he
doesn't.
"Are you ready now?" Blaise's voice says in his ear, and it envelopes Neville like the whole of the sun, a sigh unfurling like a pair of tufted wings to gather him in its embrace.
Not afraid anymore. Not afraid.
Dauntless, gleaming. Blazing and adored.
"Yes," Neville says. "I'm ready."
a/n: A bit of Helios x Icarus for your Wednesday.