Sire
By Rey
There are a few facts that Blaise Zabini, budding mage, knows for certain: They are androgynous in the truest sense, Agnes Zabini birthed them, they like water all too much, and they have a living sire, somewhere out there.
Story notes:
1. The format of the story is stream of consciousness, with first-person limited point of view and sometimes fragmented events and thoughts.
2. The story is a pseudo crossover with thor from Marvel Cinematic Universe, but there's no need to be familiar with that fandom, since I only borrow a little bit of their description of the jötnar.
3. There are brief instances of sensitive contents here, including the mention of a sexual assault and attempted rape within the cadence of domestic violence. Please take care when reading.
4. This story deals with explorations of an alien race, including culture, traditions and biology. There may be things that feel odd or wrong to you down the line.
5. The ending is loose for a reason. I may continue based on this premise in various ways, and you may do it as well. Just, if you do it, please tell me and put this story as the inspiration? Thank you.
Started on: 29th July 2019 at 10:31 PM
Finished on: 24th December 2020 at 06:54 AM
O-O-O-O
When I was three, I asked Mama who and where my father is. She told me to wait until I was older, more able to keep a secret and fully aware of why it must stay a secret.
When I was five and started to learn languages and maths, I asked again. She told me to learn Ýmska the most, out of all the languages she had offered me to learn. "It's the language your father speaks, darling," she said. So I learnt dilligently to speak it, to write it, and even to think in it, although I couldn't find any place on earth that speaks this language.
When I was six, Mama married again; or at least that is what I knew, then. Her husband spoke sweetly to her, and to me before her. But then he saw me running naked to welcome her home from a long day away, right from the bathroom, and his attitude to me sweetened, even when there was no Mama to witness it. It culminated in him groping both of my genitals when Mama was in yet another long day out. And it ended in two things: I no longer had a stepfather – that stepfather – permanently, and Mama enrolled me in non-magical self-defence classes, in addition to teaching me so many other things, to boost my self-protection and self-confidence.
That time, also, she told me that my androgyny comes from my father, like my love of playing about in water, and I should be proud of it regardless of what anything anyone does or says about it. She envies me my versatility, she said, and I preened despite the trauma of the unwanted touch.
When I was eight and Mama was satisfied with the progress of my self-defence education, in the physical, magical, verbal and mental ways, she remarried. I asked her, a day before her wedding, if my father had once been married to her. She said no, but she loved them, and, anyway, marriage means rather differently in their culture. So I sought to learn all the cultures from around the world and more, to hopefully be able to understand my absent father better.
And then, one morning during breakfast, her second husband criticised me for learning so much of cultures, of politics, of peoples, of "girl things," which should be anathema for a "boy." He blamed that for why I wore my hair sometimes short, sometimes long, and why I wore breeches and boots sometimes but skirt and "girl shoes" at other times. And there went my second stepfather, into another permanent retirement.
A year later, Mama married an Englishman and moved the both of us to my third stepfather's mansion, thinking that I would enjoy the cultural ambience. No child among his circles would interact with me, though, let alone play with me. They said that I was a "nobody" from a "nobody" family. I had also been birthed by a woman with dubious integrity for having married thrice and born a child out of wedlock.
And then, one night, Mama and I were passing by the parlour when this stepfather was being drunk together with his cohorts. We overheard him laughing with them, saying that he got a double deal in the both of us: a pretty foreigner for a wife, and a prettier – less dusky – child to be married off to the highest bidder later on. He boasted of my power and intelligence, "untainted" by the blood of any "magical creature" that could make those traits unappealing. He offered "early dibs" for me – my powers, my mind, my body – to those friends as an act of "generocity," although he would keep my mother for himself and try to get his own child out of her.
I felt sick. Not even when that man – my first stepfather – had groped my genitals had I felt this sick. It was no wonder, then, that this man – this creature – ended up violently dead a month later, in an "accident" with his own pen of experimental creatures. Mama and I agreed that it was poetic justice.
She told me – really told me – about my father, then: a jötunn out of Norse legends, a severely long-lived being, sometimes a blue-skinned giant and sometimes a white-skinned semi average humanoid, sometimes glowingly red-eyed and sometimes possessing the same dark moss green eyes as mine, who was in quite a few spots in the world history if only one knows where and what to look.
Half of me is a pseudo-immortal magical being who has been participating a lot throughout history.
I still didn't know their name. But the information – the story, as real as could be – was enough for me, at that time. It helped to get rid of my feelings of nausea and uncleanness, too.
I am not fully human, after all, but this is something to be proud of. Maybe, except for Mama, humans are inherently weak and seek to get stronger by belittling and dominating others, I thought. I contented myself with scorning all the full humans privately afterwards. I studied the magical and non-magical histories dilligently, as well, to hopefully spot my father among the dates and names and anecdotes and treatises and all.
I was the one who suggested a fourth husband to keep Mama's company as we tour the world, after that disaster with the third. Mama denied feeling lonely, but I knew better, and I didn't wish to feel such vibe coming out of her. I was never going to matchmake her with a full human, so a Veela-born man it was: witty, smart and genuinely good with Mama and me.
Sadly, he did not last long. I did not really know what happened, what went on behind Mama's bedroom door that night. But the next morning, she calmly informed me that we should go on with our tour after breakfast, and we needn't wait for her husband of one night. I asked her why, and all that she said was, "He wanted to have a child with me, immediately. I said no."
It was only a year afterward, shortly before I went to Hogwarts, when my fifth stepfather tried to rape me, did I realise what must have happened with Mama and the Veela man. It was also when I asked – no, pleaded – that Mama bring my father back into our lives. We needed them, to keep Mama company and treat her as she should be treated when I was away at school, and also to give her purpose aside from me and more money and more knowledge and more influence and more power. Besides, I did not want them to be just roúnayekka, my sire, but also abyekka, my carer, nurturer, protector – although it's already too late to be my nurser. Mama didn't – doesn't, still – have any family member who could fill the latter role for me, anyway, as is tradition in my father's culture, as I found in the huge blue tome Mama gave me when I was eight, and I longed for it.
She told me my father's name, in answer.
Týo Týé-childe.
I bought a raven, then, from a breed called Wodasen which is said to be able to traverse all the possible worlds and magical realms that are out there; the descendents of Odin's own ravens, according to legends.
My peers predicted that I was going to "end up" in the House of Ravenclaw at Hogwarts, upon seeing my Vóluna.
I gave them a bland smile and a politely neutral look, even when I "ended up" in Slytherin and some of them looked astonishedly impressed.
That night, in the total safety and privacy of my warded bed in the "genderless dorm" in Slytherin House, I wrote a brief, cautious – cautiously hopeful – letter, addressed to "Týo Týé-childe," and sent it with Vóluna.
The morning after, I woke up languidly after what felt like the best night of my life, cradled in the arms of a stranger, although still within the total privacy – if not safety – of my dormitory four-poster bed. But before I could fight free, or fight the stranger, or both, they murmured a string of Ýmska words into my exposed ear, slowly and sincerely and solemnly, sounding like the words of a sacred ritual.
They greeted me. They wanted to know me. They claimed me as a child they had sired. They called me by my name.
My heart ached sweetly on those words, especially when they spoke my name.
But the Veela-born man had spoken those nice words sincerely to me, too, and Mama's first husband had spoken empty sweet praises to me to lower my guard around him….
I squirmed free, however reluctantly, and seated myself across from them. – My sire. Who could be more in my life, but….
"How did you know I was here? Did you track down the letter? How can I know that you are you? How did you know my full name? I didn't put it down on the letter. I didn't use any bit of magic on it, either, so there should be no magical signature attached to it. Did you talk to my mother before coming here? How did you find her? What did you do to her to get her to tell you my name? Are you going to take me away? Or are you going to take us away?"
And my sire, Týo Týé-childe, seated cross-legged against the head of my bed in their smaller, humanoid form, smiled under the illumination of the soft, ambient light that they must have summoned beforehand. It was a sweet smile, genuine, but also fierce, as if they were proud of my many, many questions and palpable caution.
"I visited your mother before I came here, yes," they replied calmly, in my native tongue, sounding as if they had been using it all their life. "She told me that you have been enrolled here, and your House is Slytherin. She also told me that you inherited much from the seed I gave her, despite my absence. As for your name, Agnes told me the moment you were named, half an hour after you were born."
And then, sorrow and regret entered their voice, and I instinctively braced myself for the huge disappointment, although it turned out to be a futile endeavour.
"I am sorry, kip. The pact I made with my spouses as we joined together would not allow me to be more present in your life, let alone to bring you and your amma in. The family must meet and discuss about this before I can tell you more, and we have long been scattered in many places and realms after the last war. It will take quite some time simply to gather them."
They wanted to know me. – It was a huge lie, after all, as predicted, I thought, and my heart hurt on that realisation. They could not be more present in my life, so how would they be able to know me more?
They offered to keep contact with me and Mama through correspondence with Vóluna.
I accepted. But it was a hollow acceptance.
And they knew. But they did nothing.
They couldn't do anything.
My beloved raven has brought me and Mama many things since then. Letters, mostly; written on various kinds of surface: non-magical paper of various thickness and make and condition and style, vellum pieces of various thickness and length and condition and source, thin stone tablets of various origins but always written on Ýmska with what looks and feels like non-magical children's crayons, and, once, even an alien, data-storing and data-processing tablet made of some technology which is still beyond Earth's means, magical or otherwise. Gifts are rarer, but come they have, sometimes wrapped by various things and in various conditions and sometimes not at all wrapped: odd rocks and leaves and soil and snow and ice ever fresh in little glass jars, a hardwood medallion of protection hung from a necklace of braided hair, an interactive language and mathematics primer for children of the jötnar (the milaðen, in their own language), a picture of my sire in their two forms cast with magic on a sheet of bendy but unbreakable metal, a hardwood little box with a series of spells on it for unbreakability, space extension, preservation and locking based on my blood, and a few others.
But never Týo Týé-childe themself; never again, until now, almost two years later.
Headmaster Dumbledore has just made an announcement that Hogwarts is going to be closed for the foreseeable future. Why? Because Ginevra Weasley – a so-called "pureblood" – has been taken into the "Chamber of Secrets," and nobody knows how to access the mythical chamber; not even to retrieve her bones, I privately think.
Well, if even a "pureblood" is not spared by "Slytherin's monster as the rumours guaranteed," even though she is a "blood traitor"….
She is still a first-year, at that. Eleven years old.
It shakes everyone.
Tonight, not even the Slytherin common room is spared from all the tense, gloomy atmosphere, with those thoughts circling round. Our first-years are even gathered in the middle of our crowd, for once, in a show of in-house unity and protection.
Seated in my usual corner, far away from the flames and within sight of all possible points of egress, I cuddle Vóluna closer than I am wont to in other times.
Sire could help… maybe… and they did tell me to call them if I felt that my life would be in danger….
But will they help? Will they come?
Well, I will never know if I never try, do I? So, after a last look at the common room and the preoccupied students bunched up in it, I slip amidst the shadows to my dorm, with Vóluna still cradled in my arms.
Then I write in Ýmska:
Sire,
Greetings from Blaise. Blaise hopes Sire is well and thriving.
Blaise misses Sire's presence more than ever today. Something very bad has happened at school: A child has been kidnapped and left for dead by what people call "the Slytherin monster." The school is going to be closed for the foreseeable future. However, not even the teachers are sure that the monster – most likely a snake, as befitting rumours of Salazar Slytherin's gift of talking to snakes – will not strike at us before everyone are evacuated.
If Sire could give Blaise any advice about dealing with dangerous snakes, Blaise would greatly welcome it. Blaise would appreciate Sire's protection even more. Otherwise, Blaise would hope that the monster will not strike until we are all safe, away from the school, and that it will not hunt us down even so.
If the worst happens, please know that Blaise loves Sire.
Vóluna flashes out with the letter, soon after, and I do as I promised in my writing: packing up for travel – a speedy and most likely chaotic travel.
I am aware that I am not alone only after I have stuffed my shrunken trunk into my mokeskin-pouch pendant, unfortunately. And it is only because the intruder so politely makes a small noise by the door.
I whirl round. And there, indeed by the door, stands the intruder: a person.
My sire.
Garbed in robes of green and silver, instead of the mundane Earth-style T-shirt and shorts that they wore last year, when we met for the first time.
I gape.
"Blaise?" they prod, and only then I am stirred from my stupour.
"Sire?" I stutter.
They open their arms invitingly, and I step into the embrace dutifully. The welcome becomes real, though, as their presence bathes me, like when I once played in a warm-watered, unchlorinised swimming pool.
"Sire," I repeat, much more fervently, certainly heartfelt, as their arms tighten round me: one across the back of my neck and the other across my back.
And then, something totally inane crosses the fore of my mind, and my mouth blurts it out before I can stop it: "Why is Sire in Slytherin robes?"
They laugh sadly to that, and cradle me closer. And then, in the wake of the mirthless sound, they murmur just for my ears, "Salazar is one among Sire's many names, kip. But apparently all facts of Sire since then have been twisted out of proportion and truth. So Sire came here, for Blaise and for this school that Sire built alongside a few friends, to right a wrong regarding the 'monster' that people seem to claim as belonging to Sire."
I gape, again. Embarrassment fights with astonishment which turns into incredulity and pride that fight with rising anger, and all of them are churning me up inside.
Týo Týé-childe… Salazar Slytherin? And not the breeder and keeper and master of the monster that took Ginevra Weasley?
Beyond the clangour and clamour stuffing up my mind, though, an old question lies as it has always been, kept away and protected even from my conscious awareness – my usual conscious awareness, that is, while this moment is anything but usual. And while my equilibrium is still all but tipped over into hysteria, the question wriggles out of the shadows, and my mouth works against me yet again.
"Which name is Sire fond of the most?"
I slump into their embrace when, firmly and unhesitatingly, spoken mind-to-mind and thus unable to lie in any way, they say, `Amma, Abý, Blaise' Sire, and Að, in no particular order.`
Týo Týé-childe is Salazar Slytherin, but Týo Týé-childe is also my sire, and they prefer the latter.
O-O-O-O
Glossary:
abý: carer, nurser (not necessarily sire)
að: child (as kin, not in age)
amma: mum
kip: child (in age, not as kin)
roúnaí: sire (literally: giver of seed; oftentime seen as offensive)
End note: If you were interested, another – much bigger – one-shot of mine, titled Freedom, uses this fic as part of its backstory.