DISCLAIMER: I do not own Harry Potter, Godric Gryffindor, or Rowena Ravenclaw, am in no way affiliated with JK Rowling or her publisher, and I am not trying to infringe upon their copyright. I don't own Heath Ledger or Who Wants to Be a Millionaire either.
DEDICATED TO: Mars, who gave me the idea for this fic, and all of you out there who emailed me telling me how much you hated the ending of Phoenix Ascending :O).
AUTHOR'S NOTE/WARNING. This is a one-part fluffy sequel to Phoenix Ascending, and contains spoilers for that fic. Though if you haven't read PA, you should still be able to understand this. The basic premise of Phoenix is that Harry actually is Godric Gryffindor. Through a long and involved plot involving King Arthur, wandering Desert Nomads from the Roman Empire, and a deranged Lucius Malfoy, Harry ends up trapped in 1000 AD, forced to assume the role of Godric Gryffindor. This is a short, harmless piece of fluff that takes place 5 years after the end of Phoenix and is the result of the angst-drenched monster that is now known as Russian Roulette 2, which will probably be out within a week or so. After 45 pages of Lucius the sadistic bullfighter and scheming KGB agents, I had to write something relatively happy with the depth of a baby's wading pool :O). This, fair knight, is the result:
THE JOUST:
A Tale of Medieval Mayhem
Welcome to Scotland, 1000 AD! Please keep your arms and hands and lances inside the fic as there will be sword fights, jousts, damsels in distress, and knights with dark secrets, all of which may be hazardous to your health in one way or another; so please do check with your friendly neighborhood physician before embarking on this story that takes you back into the time that made your grandpa's "good old days" look as black as sin. In Medieval Scotland was a virtuous world that we modern miscreants can only dream about, because back then, men were real men, women were real women, and the tiny black bugs in your armpits were real tiny black bugs that lived in your armpits! All of these unwilling citizens of the yet-to-be-great Empire Britannia were scholars of the art of the joust. And yes, fair knave, the joust 'tis an art form of the first degree.
The joust always began with much bowin' and curtysin' and by your leaves, for in the age of chivalry, nothing 'twas spoken in plain English. After that came the flowery challenges: "Thou hast grievously affronted my honor by breathing, false knight," or something equally euphemistic. Most of these challenges were cooked up between the two knights jousting. More of ten than not, there was not a real offense to settle, the armored gits just wanted an excuse, however flimsy, to knock each other on the head with really really big lances. The lance is a thick heavy pole about twice as tall as the knight himself. You don't need to be Sigmond Freud to catch the symbolism of this weapon, kids.
If diamonds are a girl's best friend, then a lance is a knight's closest compadre. There are thousands of documented cases of knights actually sleeping with their lances. It drove their mothers crazy, (Think of the increased chance of little Lancelot putting his eyes out!) but boys will be boys and when they get it into their head to infuriate the womenfolk, not rain nor snow nor a hailstorm of nagging is going to stop them.
The joust wasn't as glamorous in those days as it is now. The knights weren't quite as drop-dead gorgeous as Heath Ledger (maybe taking one bath a year had something to do with it), which cut down quite a lot on the marketing appeal, even in a medieval market where "sexy" was synonymous with "not pock-marked". Not that jousts weren't popular, quite the contrary actually, but you have to consider the time. There wasn't much else to do in Medieval England except sit at home and catch the plague. Those were the days before Regis Philbin, though a good many modern knaves would agree that the black death is much preferable to "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire".
Yet again, I digress and we haven't even gotten to our joust.
Now the scene is set, 1000 AD, in the Merrie Old Scotland that was so back in the day it makes the Queen Mother look like a spring chicken, which, fair knight, isn't an easy task.
It was a lovely spring day, the kind you just want to trap within your hand and hold forever. The sun was shining, the birds were twittering and two knights were getting ready to whack each other over the head with really, really big sticks.
How idyllic.
"Hail!" said one of the knights, cantering up on a very exhausted looking pony who I quite sympathize with. In fact, if you feel like analyzing this little ball of fluff, heaven knows why, please make the pony the protagonist. She really deserves it. The poor dear had to support her own weight, plus the knight, plus his armor (which weighed twice as much as he did), plus his gear, plus… well, you get the idea.
"How do you do?" the other knight called out politely. Strictly, the other knight wasn't a knight as all since he, or rather she, was a girl, but since she was decked out in armor, carrying a lance and straddling a very disillusioned and cynical horse, she was about as close to a knight as you could get. Women had been trying to break the glass ceiling for centuries.
"Erm… I'm good," the real-honest-to-goodness-knight called back, his voice somewhat muffled one account of the huge iron helm he had pulled over his face. "Rather hot, but I'm not complaining."
"Oh, lovely, lovely," the other knight-who-technically-wasn't-a-knight-at-all replied. "I saw the cutest little bunny a while ago."
"Ah, bunnies! Cute aren't they?"
"Yes, very cute."
"Only until they're ugly."
There was a rather uncomfortable pause. "So what are you doing out here?" The girl knight said amiably.
The other knight tried to shrug, but it only caused his armor to let out an ungodly shriek and his poor horse to whinny in misery so he desisted. "I'm on a quest."
"Oh, you are?" The second knight sounded delighted, though it was impossible to tell for sure since her face was hidden behind her iron helm. "A quest for what?"
"I dunno," the first knight said dully. "It sounded good though, eh?"
"You sure had me fooled," the girl knight replied. "Look, can we quit gabbing and just have at it? My voice is echoing around the inside of my helmet and its giving me a splitting headache."
"I suppose now is as good a time as any," the first knight said, shouldering his lance with great difficulty. "So what's the excuse this time?"
"Er…" the second knight had obviously not thought quite that far.
"I could have made an indelible stain on your immaculate honor!" the first knight piped up eagerly.
"But we used that one last Thursday," the second knight whined.
"Then…" the first knight sounded deep in thought. "I could have…"
"How about you…" the second knight trailed off. "Dammit all! I can't think in this ruddy helmet!"
"I got it!" the first knight waved his hands wildly, falling off his poor old horse in the process. "Ah, bullocks!"
Between the two warriors it took a good part of fifteen minutes to hoist knight number one back into the saddle, mainly due to the 350-odd pounds of metal he insisted upon wearing. His poor horse, which had gone wild with delight when her master had vacated the saddle, seemed more dejected than ever now that she was under the yoke once more. So it was a good deal of time before the knight could share his excuse for the fight. "I really have it this time, Rowena!" he grinned. His enthusiasm had not been dimmed in the least by toppling off his horse headfirst. "I committed a grievous offense against you honor by denying you a common courtesy! What about that? Hmm?" he sounded rather smug.
"Oh Godric," Rowena whistled. "That's a good one… don't you think we ought to save it?"
"The day isn't getting any younger," Godric replied as a happy little songbird winged its way past.
So the two knights urged their most reluctant mounts into a half-hearted canter until they were at opposite sides of the forest meadow, a ridiculously long distance apart for a conversation, but it would sure look good in panorama wide-screen format.
"Fair knight!" Rowena bellowed, her voice echoing across the deserted meadow. "I preithee, tellest me who thou art that so stumblist upon my private counsel?"
"What's that you say?" Godric yelled back. They were so far away he had trouble hearing her, though she was screaming at the top of her lungs.
Rowena repeated herself, to which Godric replied. "I am not going to tell thou."
"Thou whilst not share thy name with thee? Ungrateful cur!" Rowena said. "Thou dost not deserve to hold thy sword of knighthood, false warrior!"
"Then you must pry it from my dead hands, ungrateful wench!" Godric bellowed, really beginning to enjoy himself.
"Er… Godric?" Rowena said, tilting her armored head to the side. "Sorry to spoil the fun, but the correct form is then thou must pry it from my dead fingers, not then you."
"Oh sorry, Rowena," he called back. "Alright, what you said--" and without another discernable English word, he let loose a huge battle cry and spurred his trusty mount forward.
Let me reiterate. The joust wasn't quite as glamorous in those days as its souped up to be in our time. You just have to look at it from the horse's point of view. For starters, there you are, lugging around a big guy and his inflated ego. Then pile on top of that 30 stone of armor plus the fact that all you really want to be doing is frolicking around in some field doing horse-y things like chewing cud, not being subservient to the testosterone-driven male fantasy of violence. Once can't blame you if you aren't all to eager.
Therefore, Godric and Rowena's mounts began to plod along at about .2 leagues per hour, which even at medieval standards was pretty bleeding slow. Rowena got bored and began counting the blades of grass while Godric started watching cloud castles. In fact, they were both so caught up in there own little worlds that they would have eventually collided if it wasn't for the fact that Godric's horse dropped dead.
"Damn!" he yelled when he found that he was lying face down in the grass for the second time that day.
"Oh bugger," Rowena said when she saw what had happened. Godric's curses had been enough to wake her from her reverie. "What do we do now?"
Her horse answered that question for her. When it saw the fate that had befallen its most unfortunate fellow, it gave a great bellow of fear, threw off its rider, and high tailed it in the other direction.
Now it was Rowena's turn to curse. When she was through, she heaved a great sigh. "Now what do we do? My sword's on the bloody horse so was can't fight any more."
"I still have my sword," Godric said smugly, forgetting about his own mare's sudden death. "And technically we're still jousting since neither if us has surrendered or died yet, so I can still lop off your head." To illustrate his point, he got to his feet, heaving the great broadsword above his head.
"That's not very chivalrous of you," Rowena said sulkily.
"Bullocks to chivalry," Godric snorted. He sounded a bit like a three-year old. "I want to fight!" And he did so. Since Rowena was unarmed and quiet off her guard, it was only a matter of seconds before he had her pinned below him. "Surrender or I shall lop off your head!" he said, quite impressed with his own impressiveness.
"Lop off thy head," Rowena sulked from under his knee. "And no. I don't surrender to cheats."
"I'm not cheating!"
"I'm unarmed!"
"The joust wasn't finished!"
"My horse ran off!"
"Mine died!"
Rowena didn't have a reply to this one, but she wasn't about to give up so she decided to reiterate her opening point. "Cheat."
"I am not."
"Are too."
"Am not!"
"Are too!"
"Am not!"
"Am not!"
"Are too!" Godric clapped a hand over his mouth as the lying words flew out of it. As his hand was covered in plate mail, a good number of his teeth flew out of his mouth too, but this was nothing to Godric in lieu of the fact that Rowena had won their verbal joust, as she always did, and was now rolling about in mirth under the heel of his boot. "Silence maid!" he bellowed, his pride bruised. "Surrender of I shall lop off thy head!"
"Oh shut it," Rowena snickered. "I won, Godric."
"I have the sword," he said, waving it about for emphasis. "Now surrender."
"No, sorry."
"Then I shall have to lop off you head."
"You wouldn't," Rowena said, going pale under her helmet.
"I'm afraid so," Godric did sound sorry. "The rules say a joust isn't over until a man surrenders or is killed."
Rowena sighed. "So this is it, eh Godric?"
"I'm afraid so," he replied heavily, heaving the great sword above his head.
CRASH! Rowena grabbed his arm, pulling him down beside her. With the other hand, she caught his great broadsword, tossing it across the meadow so that it landed far beyond the corpse of the horse scaring off more than a few little bunnies. "Hah," she said simply.
"I'm give up," he growled, undoing the lacings to his helmet.
"Good," she smirked, pulling off her own helmet and shaking her long hair free. "I wasn't about to let you win again."
Godric gave a sideways smirk. "You're insufferable, you do know that?"
"I know everything," she smiled, running a hand through her hair.
"Oh really?" he raised an eyebrow.
"Really."
"I used to have a friend that knew everything," he said quietly.
They lapsed into silence after that, the kind of silence between good friends where a great deal is said without words at all. The gentle titter of songbirds was the only sound in the entire meadow. In spite of her inbred politeness, or lack thereof, Rowena found herself staring idly at Godric. Under his mop of messy black hair, his vivid green eyes seemed very, very far away. She still remembered the day when they had first met; almost five years ago come July. Godric had seemed very far away on that morning too, his eyes wandering to places where no one else could see, beyond the line of trees, and further than the western horizon.
"A Knut for your thoughts," Rowena was the first to break the silence.
"I'm just thinking," was his enlightening reply.
"About England?" She asked. Over the years, Rowena had begun to suspect that Godric wasn't really from England as he claimed, but somewhere entirely different. She supposed that even the English, as barbaric as they were, knew how to ride horses and smith metal, though Godric has been ignorant of both trades when he had first come to live with the Ravenclaws. But Rowena had never outright challenged Godric with here suspicions and "England" had been a code word for her, a secret name for wherever Godric was really from.
His reply was a long time in coming. "Yes," he finally sighed. "About England."
"Tell me about England," she ventured. Godric usually went red and hurriedly changed the topic of conversation when she broached the taboo subject of "England", so Rowena wasn't really expecting a straight answer. She was doubly surprised when one came.
"It's very far away… my England," he said softly. "It's not like your England at all," Rowena inhaled sharply. She had been right all along! "I lived in Surrey," he continued. "It's near London."
"Londoninium you mean," Rowena corrected out of habit.
"No. In my England it was called London," he replied, before lapsing into a pensive silence once more.
"How did you get this?" Rowena asked, reaching up and pointing to the scar smack dab in the middle of his forehead crowning his face like a bolt of lightening.
He pushed his bangs out of the way so she could get a better look. "It's a curse scar. A dark wizard killed my parents and tried to kill me…" he paused, biting his lip, "it didn't work."
"So what happened then?" she asked eagerly.
"I got sent to live with my relatives," Godric said. "They locked me in a cupboard."
"With broomsticks?"
He nodded. "And spiders."
"So how did you come from that cupboard to be here, right now, with me?" she asked affectionately, rolling over in the grass to be closer to him.
"That," he said, with the barest wisp of a smile. "Is a very long story."
She grinned back. "It's a very big meadow."
"Let's save it for another time," he said, shaking his head. "But I promise on knight's honor that I will tell you."
"Your honor isn't worth much," she sniffed. "Cheat."
He knew she was teasing and therefore smiled back. "Are you looking for another joust, fair maiden?"
"Maybe…" she looked at him sideways, smirking. "You know what they say about men with big lances--" And then she was cut off by his lips as he kissed her, plate armor and all. The sight of his laugher and the sound of her smile drifted up, past the dead horse and over the cute little bunnies, into the deep blue sky and beyond.
----
quick plug for Russian Roulette II (which will probably be out within the week):
"Go away," she repeated, heart beating like a caged bird's wings as she leapt from the bed and away from his probing fingers, his expectant lips, his hungry gaze. "You've had what you wanted. Just… just go."
She remained wrapped in her burial shroud of a sheet as he wordlessly got to his feet, eyes focused on the ground as he reached for his jeans, crumpled and forgotten on the floor like a sex-crime victim lies discarded by the roadside, her cries inaudible to closed ears.
Inside, she was screaming.
Outside, she quietly watched as he pulled on his ragged green T-shirt, the only swath of color in the entire room. He never once looked up, never once met her gaze, which was wavering between him and the open window.
Her favorite song had been Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown).