Damn why am I still awake. It's 5:30 in the morning. My life doesn't suck. It's not even insomnia. It's like, a messed up sleep schedule. Oh college :(
Kaleidoscope
She'd seen many things throughout the years.
The Trifecta weighed heavily in her mind.
They were all still alive and shadows of their former selves. A researcher, a salesman and a granny. But once upon a time, she flew against Germany on the first ever Shooting Stars in the name of all that was good, all that was Great.
The Greatest Generation.
And now she sat alone in St. Mungo's unwilling to speak to anyone. The Healers said that she was unstable, unresponsive to their treatments. As if something as weak as a cheering charm from a fresh Hogwarts graduate could possibly help her fight the Black.
In her mind, she saw the cracks in the Black, but she was quite incapable of moving beyond her current state, unable to take a dive into the sheer pain once more.
But one day, when the clouds gathered again, when Voldemort rose again, she would push through the Black as though she was plunging into boiling water and pick up the dust-caked wand on the dresser.
And for nothing else, no matter how many times her son cried over her unmoving body. There were stakes, and only the world was a counterweight to more pain than anyone show ever experience.
A Song of Dust
Daphne's bravery won out as her incredulous voice broke the terribly disbelieving silence of the train compartment. "I'm sorry, would you please repeat that?"
Harry frowned, his eyes locked onto Daphne's, as confused as she was. "I wanted to know what a Death Eater was."
At these words, Harry knew that he had failed a set of expectations that the group seemed to have for him.
Neville shrugged, threw his hands into the air and placed them back onto the seat with a wet smack. Daphne took a deep breath, then sighed. Draco looked absolutely furious, mirrored by the two boys flanking him. The girl he still didn't know the name of continued to stare in disbelief.
"There's no way you're Harry Potter," Draco finally decided. "Or you're having one on us," he amended, his tone changing to suspicious rather quickly.
"Don't be stupid," Daphne said, though she too seemed to be having trouble with this turn of events that Harry still didn't understand.
The other girl finally exploded. "But they've written books!" she cried, "books about how you fought dragons, befriended unicorns, defeated the most evil of Dark Lords to exist..."
Harry quirked his eyebrow. "Are you certain that you aren't confusing me with someone named Albus Dumbledore?"
Neville sniggered. "No, I think it's pretty clear that while Harry here defeated Voldemort, somehow, he hasn't really been doing all those things from children's stories." He smiled, looking somewhat disappointed, but relieved. "Though it would have been cool," he added as an afterthought, lost in a fantasy of slaying dragons and dark wizards.
"Then what were you doing all this time?" the girl demanded of Harry.
"What were you doing?" Harry shot back.
"Well, I was just a normal muggle before this entire mess began. Then I became a mudblood," she snapped.
"I don't even know what that means," Harry shouted. "Can someone tell me what the hell is going on?" His voice dropped to an annoyed hiss, "I got a letter. I learned some things about the world that I didn't know before. Now I'm on the train where people are throwing goop at each other and setting each other on fire."
"Well, don't look at me-"
"No, really, don't look at her. She's not worth your-"
"Shut up, Malfoy," both Daphne and Neville chorused.
Daphne stood up and pointed her wand at Draco's chest. "This is what's going to happen. You are going to back the hell away and let the people who aren't absolute buffoons explain," she threw a quick glance at Harry, saw that he seemed to be not enjoying himself, "what's going on."
Draco took a step forward and closed in on Daphne, their noses very nearly touching. "Do not presume to command a Malfoy," he seethed, his cheeks splotched red and the wand very nearly poking a hole in his robe.
"Do not presume that you're all high and mighty because you can talk like daddy," Daphne said, pushing him off of her with a quick jab, from upon which her wand emitted a bang and threw him into the wall next to Goyle.
In a flash, Harry shut the door and locked it with an apologetic glance to the girl outside and took a seat.
Daphne giggled, but Neville looked uncharacteristically solemn.
"Well, you've made a choice, I guess. I think it's the right one." Neville furrowed his brow. "He's not going to let that slide. And I don't think that girl will be too happy with you the next time you see her either."
"A choice?"
"Yeah. My dad reckons that people choose how they ultimately end up on the train. It's not set in stone," Neville amended quickly to the disbelieving stare, "but the people you sit with, their families, their beliefs, you either shared them already, or you'll pick up some of it. But what the hell do I know."
Harry shrugged.
"No, really. I didn't even know that toad oil was flammable."
The Shortest Distance Between Two Points
The auditorium was a beautiful affair of the melt, an idea that came together in strands of age and wisdom and unity that defined the Association since its founding. It was in here that the quorum of five hundred convicted Havelock Sweeting of being too powerful for a unicorn breeder and shunted him into the position of a General. It was in here that Livius of the Burning Light, Livius No-Name, the Light Mage slaughtered eighty three Church Elders who had thought they were coming into enemy territory like Spanish Conquistadors fighting pagan Incas. It was here that Nicholas Flamel himself fell to his knees before Albus Dumbledore and kissed his robes, reversing the forever-sacred ritual of master and apprentice and shocking the world into realizing that the man was the Philosopher's equal.
And it was here that Astrid felt the well-stained mahogany stage, cut aeons ago from lands that didn't exist anymore, whisper to her the heroic deeds of the men and women that came before her, the arcane magic that they used. If not Revelation, then understanding was what she received from it, the analysis of the good Earth, of forces lined up to protect her, forces lined up to defend both the order and the chaos.
It always helped Astrid to take a good look at her surroundings, to find this understanding, even as time slowed for her. She saw in sharp clarity the clomp-clomp-stomp of General Barthomeloi's boots as they waged war against the respect accorded to her.
The austere mahogany of the stage pulled in the sound of her boots, muting them and transmuting her actions into her intentions.
Astrid analyzed Lorelei, a spirit of the wind, a spirit of offensiveness pushing forth, a spirit that directed the very flow of the wind from her circuits.
Lorelei took a step.
Astrid reached out, an impossibly thin line of magic leaving her fingertips, alarming the other woman. But nothing seemed to happen, so she took yet another step and faced Astrid on the stage. The line branched into a million strands in long-form fractals that touched everyone in the room in an ultimate blend of the order and chaos, in nomen naturalis, the name of nature.
Professor Dumbledore's eyes widened fractionally as he felt the lines measure his breathing, his deep, calming inhales and the short puffing exhales of an old man. He was the master of intricacies, the only one in the room who could perceive the events that were unfolding, though Astrid was sure some of the greater mages could undo it by sheer force of will rather than through a knowledge of exactly what they were undoing.
A line is the shortest distance between two…
The Philosopher certainly felt something brush over him, felt the change in the air, possibly due to his too many years of studying the ambience and reproduction of magic in the noble art of alchemy. Even, even breaths, not quite human, but of someone who had learned to breath all over again.
The points of her intent traversed the fractal to find the mages in the room. Zelretch and his harsh pulls, a certain sort of hedonism in finding everything pleasurable about the uncaring world. The shallow breaths of Lord Edelfelt, whose appearance was kept not by good health but by magic. There was nothing magical about a breath, save for those who were barely human any longer.
She nearly paused as she felt an entity in the room that simply did not breath, or if it did, it was for show, for the beauty of rising breasts and the caricature of humanity. An ancestor? No, no, nothing like that. A puppet of some sort.
To Lorelei now, the excitement of battle upon her chest like the striking hammer of lame gods of old.
Everyone in the room felt the strength of Lorelei's magic building as she took her first step on stage, the singing wind ringing against their sensibilities.
And it was that moment in which Astrid chose to disappear.
Lorelei paused, her spell upon her lips like a sort of song she had sung too many times to remember what the lyrics meant, and immediately moved out of the way of the blade of was it grass, green and true and beautiful, that flew through the air at a speed that lit it on fire from the friction.
A strange impulse, garnered from hundreds of battles with entities with unknown powers, prompted her to slice the very air before her with the strength of the wind, and she watched as the strands held in place by magic fell away, shimmering and iridescent like taut spiderwebbing.
A strange lilting melody began to play, one that Lorelei just understood.
"You will find that I am quite different prey than a Vampire, General."
Lorelei snarled, cutting the very air again. More strands fell away. She aimed a huge slicing crescent of the element at the area where Astrid had been standing. It pushed through the strands and cut some of them, but the majority held. When it finally reached the point where Astrid had been, it passed right through and the strands slowed her magic until it left the slightest of gouges against the far wall.
A melody began to play again, a frantic frenzy of notes in a rhythm that Lorelei could have sworn she had heard before. She took several quick glances about the room even as she cut away at more strands that were swarming over her.
Was Dumbledore golf clapping? Lorelei bit down a pained laugh at the absurdity until she realized that he was clapping along to the rhythm. Her eyes flickered from one person another.
The Philosopher was drumming into his leg. Zelretch's supposedly impatient taps of the foot were, too, to the rhythm. Blue was rocking back and forth. Either she had been slipped a strong hallucinogen or she had severely underestimated the Green.
"Do you see?"
Dumbledore certainly didn't want her to win, to splatter his pupil along the wall in a spray of red as she was fond of doing. He was the only active participant in the rhythm. She pulled her senses together to create a rudimentary sort of telescopic mage sight. Yes, the old man was emitting the most magic.
But even as she realized that he was emitting the most, even she was fueling whatever this spell was, alchemy or illusion.
She thought of ways in which the greats would have defeated the woman before her. Anyone of the Merlinic line could burn their way through it by sheer force. The Kaleidoscope could possibly find a world in which this rhythm was different, and discover the true nature of it, dismantling it. The Philosopher could find the Truth of a world that had endured and survived beyond the death of even this rhythm…
As her mind cycled through the ways that men and women greater than her could deal with the problem before her, she realized that she didn't quite have the wherewithal to defeat Astrid Greengrass.
She ground her teeth, she was a Barthomeloi, a General who had destroyed many, many vampires who could easily kill this pathetic woman…
And then the Philosopher was on stage.
"I do believe that this is enough. The experience has been quite disorienting even among the best of us," he decided.
Immediately, the strands drew themselves back, clumped together, and the figure of Astrid Greengrass was visible once more beside him.
Astrid said nothing, but that was far louder to Lorelei than any sort of gloating could have been.