I'm on a roll (in terms of writing this), despite being in my college dorm and partying it up. lolololol. This is really funny to me. I thought I'd quit fanfiction after getting here but it keeps calling my name xD
Penned while bumping Adderall. Not so fun stuff. Watch for the grammar please?
Note: (October 4th, 2012): www. fanfiction dot net/ forum /A-Split-in-Time-and-Space/119550/ - forum to discuss things! Yay!
Kaleidoscope
"You're telling me that the last legacy of my two best friends in this world… is gone."
Albus Dumbledore looked Remus Lupin square in the eye and nodded. There was steel in this man now, the man who had seen, and had finally remembered that he had seen the horrors of Time itself falling to its knees, had finally remembered that once upon a time, he was struck by the lightning of Good, of Justice, of everything that was right in the world.
Lupin had lied. James Potter was not his best friend - Sirius Black was. Lily was not a friend as much as the only person he truly answered to. They were going to change the world, all those years ago, a group of boys and girls standing around someone who had seen the horror too and stood for them when they were weak.
There were two kinds of people who had known Lily Evans. There were acquaintances, like her husband James, her mentor Filius Flitwick and Headmaster Dumbledore, who knew of all her machinations but chose to nurture her talent rather than destroy it. The old man had hung doom over her had she ever hurt any of his pupils, but in the end, she was the only one anyway. She had learned how to weave word and do deeds that would make a lesser human sick, to do it for greater things, For the Greater Good.
Lupin's thoughts spun.
A beautiful woman, with a flowing red mane, a shapely face that most referred to as beautiful and bottle green eyes that could see into your soul - that was Lily Evans. Every little motion you made, every twitch of the lip, or widening pore was read with perfect clarity, and , at a moment's notice, could be used against you. She had learned how to see into souls from the knees of Albus Dumbledore, his successor, the only one with enough talent and youth to change the world.
And ultimately, he, Severus, Narcissa, Sirius they had all joined her. They were sick, sick of the way the world turned. And some nights, he thought he was the only one who was still sick. Severus lived for his potions, Narcissa for her son, Sirius… Sirius was a murderer.
She had chosen James Potter to bear her child, for something that he really didn't understand or know. She would never had hurt him, he maintained…
"Remus. Now is not the time for idle daydreams."
"What would you have me do?"
Dumbledore's eyes had never left his, but they had widened in intensity and pinned him into the comfortable couch that sat in sharp contrast to the simple wooden piece that the old man had probably conjured without a second thought and had sat in for fifty years.
"Find. Harry. Potter."
Remus could only nod.
Watch the World Turn
It had been two long weeks of scrounging for food and practicing magic on an empty stomach. He had this energy, this energy beneath his feet that he couldn't explain, that got him through each day of taking scraps from trash bins and throwing broken pencils like darts.
Harry had spoken to snakes, intent on milking them for information, but they weren't very helpful about giving him pointers on how to do magic. He had, however, learned that there was a man named Salazar, who lived quite a while in the past, and he was undoubtedly descended from the man if he could speak the Tongue and possessed the Eyes.
They called it the Kaleidoscope and they mocked him for having such a bastardized, weak type of it.
But they told him that it could be powerful, one day. It took more magic than he had, and something about unspeakably heinous acts.
But he also learned that there were other wizards and that not all magic was good. He was cautioned.
He learned that they could make things float and fly, that they could disappear and reappear elsewhere, that they could turn a snake into an inanimate object, read minds, kill people with two dreaded words…
He learned that there was one man who kept them all safe, in the stronghold of their greatest enemy. He was the Bumblebee, who floated lazily in times of peace and stung to kill in times of war.
He was determined to find them, to find other wizards, to find the Bumblebee, to learn about Salazar. He was determined to find the greatest enemy of the wizards and understand why.
He was Harry Potter and he was going to be a powerful wizard.
Teenage Queen with a Loaded Gun
She was precocious, she knew it. She was pretty, especially after her parents had fixed her buckteeth and she conditioned her hair.
She was Hermione Granger and she would be the most insufferable know-it-all at Hogwarts. And everyone would love her for it, just like everyone loved her at school.
"Quiz me, mom!"
"Very well, Hermione," Mrs. Granger sighed and opened to a random page of A Thousand and One Magical Herbs.
After several minutes of getting every question right, Hermione grew impatient and plopped down next to her mother. "Do you know that the Headmaster of my school is Albus Dumbledore?" she whispered conspiratorially.
Mrs. Granger gave an indulgent smile. "You might have mentioned it once or twice."
"And I'm going to be in the same year as Harry Potter! Harry Potter!" Hermione frowned at the confused look on Mrs. Granger's face. "He's supposed to have enough power to take on any dark wizard and win. He's going to be light years ahead of us because he's been killing dragons since he was seven! He's going to teach us a lot of very powerful magic because he's kind and generous! He's a true Gryffindor and we're going to be best friends," she promised earnestly.
Mrs. Granger chuckled lightly and wondered if Hermione had been reading too many fantasy novels.
"And everyone's going to be my friend because I'm going to study with them and then we're going to have sleepovers and everyone's going to send me mail because they miss me and I'm going to be really happy!"
Privately, Mrs. Granger hoped that Hermione grew out of this phase. Against her better judgment, she had performed a surgery on Hermione because she was being laughed at in school and her quiet bookworm had come out of the cocoon as a social butterfly. Hermione had yet to learn that the world wasn't just about making friends who said nice things to you and learning in school.
Mrs. Granger frowned. She had known girls like Hermione when she was younger. They were friends with everyone, they were good at school and they had boys chasing after them from the tender age of thirteen. Invariably, they were successful, but one day, they discovered that the world was a lonely place. All of their friends drifted off and their success became a statistic.
She shook herself from morbid thoughts and smiled again.
"Now, tell me about Belladonna, Hermione."
"Belladonna is known as Nightshade, Death's Herb, Dwale and Witch's Berry. The official name is Atropa, and it is part of our standard potionsmaking kit. Horace Slughorn believes that it's useful in far more than just our everyday Sleeping potions because of its arithmantic properties and he's dedicated a portion of his professional research during his time at Hogwarts to studying it. The studies are kept in archives at the Department of Mysteries, but they're low clearance, so a Hogwarts graduate would have access to them provided they got a pass."
Mrs. Granger nodded absentmindedly. There was once a time when she was this excited about dentistry. She put the book down.
"Hermione, I need to talk to you."
"Silly mom, you're already-" Hermione looked up and saw the serious expression on her mother's face.
"Hermione…"
They sat in silence for several minutes as Mrs. Granger collected her thoughts. Hermione looked at the plaques and medals that hung all over the walls, half of which belonged to her mother and half to her father.
"Hermione. You are going to be leaving us until Christmas."
She nodded. This was obvious, but there was something about her mom's tone that made her pause and hold still.
"This is the school, according to all the books you bought, for the most talented of magicians-"
"Wizards and witches."
"Yes, wizards and witches in your generation. I read the literature. Magic is far more common in families that have had them for generations. I wouldn't be surprised if it latched itself onto some gene or another. They've been hidden from our world for five hundred years and before that, we hear stories about witch hunts which might have even been true."
Hermione nodded along, thinking carefully.
Mrs. Granger took a deep breath. "Their culture is bound to be quite different from ours. They can fix their problems with a wave of their wand, they can get places by grabbing you by the arm and disappearing-"
"Disapparating", Hermione corrected, though she wish she didn't.
"Yes. Disapparating. This means that the problems they have will also be… larger in magnitude. I wouldn't be surprised if you could do wonderful things with Magic, but even as we plebians," Hermione smiled at this, "do strange and wonderful things with science, we have done terrible things. Magic is something that is an unknown to me and even with all your reading, it is unknown to you. We are, at the core, immigrants to a culture that we don't understand. They might not like us much, there might be some trials for you that would end in embarrassment for a foreigner to this country that will end in you getting hurt."
Hermione opened her mouth to protest but her mother waved her hand.
"Be very careful who you make friends with. Don't let people see you as an oddity or use you. You're a smart girl and I'm sure that's not because of magic. I am, after all, quite smart too." They exchanged giggles. "Make friends who you know have good hearts and stick with them. It doesn't matter if not everyone likes you."
Hermione didn't speak after that and Mrs. Granger went back to quizzing her on plants and fungi that neither of them had ever seen.
Let Me Fly, I Need a Release
"I am very disappointed in you, Draco."
Had his father said it, he would have been very, very upset. He might have even teared up.
But his mother had said it. He did tear up.
"Mum."
"What possessed you… to cast a Killing Curse at a Greengrass in the ancestral manor of a family not aligned with ours?" Lucius Malfoy growled. "Now your mother is upset," he added as an afterthought, though everyone in the room knew that the fact of Narcissa's disappointment was what really made the man angry.
"Father," Draco said stiffly.
Lucius, a mirror image of his son in thirty years, poured a glass of firewhiskey for himself and downed it in a gulp.
Draco almost groaned. Now he was going to get it.
"You… are a disgrace," Lucius spat, slamming his silver cane into a chair and splintering the heirloom. The emerald eyes on the snake which sat at the head of the cane glinted by light of the fireplace in the sitting room.
"Easy, Lucius." His father calmed slightly and gently grasped Narcissa's hand.
"Your wand, Draco."
"Father?"
"You… are to use a practice wand until school begins. You will not leave the grounds of the manor. You have proven yourself to be entirely incapable of the responsibility of possessing a wand." Lucius finished with a shout.
Draco looked as if he were to protest, but he handed his wand to his father, nodded shortly and left the sitting room.
Narcissa looked to Lucius. "You wouldn't have taken the wand had he refused."
Lucius nodded. "He has too much courage amongst those he believes he is superior to. He needs to learn how to stand in the face of adversity. It is my hope that he would respond with some semblance of manhood."
Narcissa raised a delicate eyebrow at her husband and he sat in shamed silence.
"I wasn't going to let him kill you."
Narcissa's face twisted into a scowl. "Voldemort could not have killed me. Not easily. It would not have been worth the effort. We could have gone to Dumbledore."
"And traded one master who believed what we did for one who didn't?"
At this, Narcissa bit her tongue, but Lucius wasn't done.
"I would do anything for my family, Narcissa. Anything. I would lie, cheat, steal, drag my name through the mud, if it meant that I could save you and Draco from being hurt."
"You let that man into our home. You cursed me from behind."
"There was nothing I could do!"
Narcissa stared into her husband's eyes. "What really happened that night?"
Lucius turned away. "Why now, Narcissa?"
"Our son, he is ready to head off into the world, to do things that will make our family proud. The Malfoys, we are built on love and lies. It is time for the lies to stop."
"There's something more."
"Yes, there is. But that's a story for another day. In the space of this year, we will truly become a family, just as we wanted when you courted me."
Lucius chuckled out of some sort of relief, some sort of lifted weight from his shoulder as he suddenly launched himself into a story.
"I'd never forget the words he said to me. 'Tell me, how does it feel to grovel before that mongrel, begging for the life of a woman you don't know better than as a quick study in shagging?'. That was my father, Abraxas Malfoy."
Narcissa frowned, but didn't interrupt.
"I told him that I loved you, that Tom would come for you. He was still Tom, then. My father, for the first time in my life, had spoke more than single syllables to me. Why do you think I coddle Draco?"
Narcissa nodded, but the frown didn't leave her face.
"'Do you know how our family got its name?' he asked me. I didn't. I had only read about the greatest exploits of our ancestors. I didn't know our dark history, why we are hated and feared by the commonfolk and treated warily by the strong. 'Malfoy, French for bad faith. One of my less illustrious ancestors had left King William the Second on the ground after firing an arrow into his neck. Not only did he betray his liege lord, whom he had pledged his life, his lady and his firstborn to, he didn't even do a good job of killing him.' My world had crashed down upon me. My father knew."
Narcissa's expression became alarmed.
"He knew I had poisoned him. I tried to lie." Lucius steepled his fingers. "He told me that it was unbecoming of a pureblood scion. And then, he told me his life story."
She stared at him expectantly.
"I told him that if Tom could have his life, you would never be harmed. That was the first time Tom had ever lied to me, and in my youthful arrogance, I couldn't accept that it was my father who had easily discovered it. His voice, do you remember it?"
Narcissa thought back to the gravelly tones, the sheer power and magic that the old man didn't use purposefully - he had eclipsed so very many in power that his voice could bring a Wizengamot chamber to their knees had he chosen. He was the scariest man she had ever met and she had looked the Lord Voldemort in the eye. So when Lucius spoke, she heard the the voice of Abraxas Malfoy again.
"'Myself, and my compatriots. We… we were the greatest generation. Before the lies, before the deceit, and, perhaps, after them too. After Albus and his grand theory of the Greater Good. We fought Gellert Grindelwald, the greatest Dark Wizard to ever live.' But that wasn't the important bit. It was my reaction to what he had said afterwards."
Narcissa stared.
"I still haven't learned the lesson he had tried to impart. My hatred for muggles and the mudbloods still runs deep. It runs through both lines, with my mother. I still feel irrationally that they pollute our culture, they take our women, they make our lives hell, despite what happened. And I told my father that."
Narcissa's lip twitched upwards in displeasure.
"'Enough, Lucius. I am teaching you my last lesson today'. And he did. He told me to forget the newest incarnation of the Dark Lord and that the Dark Lord did not know true power. My father confessed to me that he never possessed the ability to cast a single unforgivable, yet he was the most powerful duelist bar Dumbledore that I had known. He begged me to leave the services of my Lord. But then… he told me that you weren't worth my humanity."
Narcissa nodded quietly. "I wasn't worth it, Lucius. I wasn't."
Lucius was caught between despair and a scowl. "You don't understand, Narcissa. You were, you are… everything to me. My father never loved anything but justice. He wouldn't know. He cast a spell that day, to invoke a brotherhood he had formed with Edgar Bones and Everett Weasley. They summoned Dumbledore by way of phoenix song, pinned me to the wall while mortally poisoned and they rode to meet the Dark Lord."
"The Darkest Night," Narcissa cried out, finally understanding.
"Yes. That was the Darkest Night, when Tom became Voldemort and was burned to a crisp at the end of my father's wand at the cost of the lives of three men who had stood against the iron fist of Gellert Grindelwald. It was fought over a single woman. And I have no regrets."
"As to Draco?"
They did not speak.