Trigger: The story contains the following
Mentions of self-harm and suicide
Character death(s)
Alcoholism
Mentioned Public Executions
Heavy political/philosophical topics.
Words: 1139
Prompts Dance of Dragons, Death, Marcus/Blaise
Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter. That belongs to Rowling.
Marcus sat at the front counter of the Three Broomsticks as he nursed the fire whiskey in front of him. As of late, he had started to drink more than normal. it wasn't exactly uncommon for people like him as of late. It had been six months since the Second Great Wizarding War and six months since the death of Voldemort, yet the wounds still felt fresh. Marcus couldn't help but think of the dead. He couldn't help but think of the classmates he had lost along the way. Crabbe, Goyle, heck he even had a soft spot for the likes of Lavender Brown given the fact that she was a pureblood.
Nobody knew what they were getting into. Many of his peers had become Death Eaters for the simple fact that their parents had. It was all based on the idea of keeping the natural order of things alive. It was about reminding the rest of the wizarding world of the truth of blood supremacy. Yet even now Marcus found himself questioning that truth.
Where exactly did that truth hold? Most of his friends were either dead or imprisoned and now the breaking of the pureblood lines was all but inevitable. That was assuming they were ever real, to begin with. After the war, he had begun to dig deeper and deeper into his family tree, and then he saw them. The blacked out, those who had been disowned from the family tree. The closer he seemed to get to the present day the more certain branches were cut out. He tried to deny it. He tried to come up with alternative explanations, but he could not deny it any longer. Everything he thought he knew was a lie. So he did what every man did when facing an existential crisis, what every man did when they were utterly broken.
He drank. At first, his trips to the Three Broomsticks were a monthly routine. Then monthly became weekly. Now they were almost daily. His drink of choice was always the same, an extra stout Butterbeer with extra scotch. Every time he became drunk, he'd rant about how the past accomplishments of his family were all based on lies and every time the patrons would laugh. It wasn't uncommon to hear someone shout:
"Oy, look at the Flint boy! He seems utterly broken!"
The patrons were not wrong. Marcus was indeed an utterly broken man.
One day changed all that, however. Marcus was on a particularly nasty binge. It was so bad even the innkeeper, Rosmerta, felt like she had to intervene.
"I think you've had enough there, love. You're looking awfully ill."
Marcus' eyes stared right through her. His expression was grim. His eyes were bloodshot, his cheeks were sunken, and the corner of his mouth was curled in a snarl like a cornered animal.
"I'm done when I decide I'm done."
Marcus dropped a few more coins.
"Another pint!" he growled in frustration as much towards himself as much as anything. Rosmerta gave a heavy sigh, but took the money and obliged.
For the next few minutes, Marcus just let his mind wander aimlessly, just sort of spacing out, wanting to forget everything. Part of it was due to the excess liquor now coursing through his system, part of it was due to his desperate need to escape. When there was a sudden loud thump next to him, he jumped.
"Butterbeer," said a man tossing some sickles. Rosmerta gave a nod and filled a glass for him. Flint looked up at the man in question. He was a tall, black man with high cheekbones and long, slanting eyes, Flint couldn't help but give a half smirk. He recognized those long, slanting eyes anywhere.
"Well, well, well," Blaise. It looks like someone is doing well for themselves."
Blaise couldn't help but look Flint up and down and give a smirk of his own. "Can't exactly say the same thing about you. Rumor has it you've become a bit of a local drunk."
Marcus couldn't help but let out a soft chuckle. "Well, that's what happens when everything you knew just sort of falls apart. At least you always have something with a drink."
Blaise nodded. "So I take it, you looked into your family tree? What did you find?"
Marcus let out another sigh as he took another swig of his drink. "Black spots and pruned branches…lots and lots of black spots and pruned branches."
The young man took a deep breath as he stared at the reflection of the silver tankard. "What were we even fighting for, Blaise?"
"Speak for yourself there, Flint," Blaise said with a bit of a bite in his voice. "My parents didn't fight in the first war, and I went straight to the dungeons when the fighting in Hogwarts broke out. Based on how everything went down I'm going to say I made the right call. Did you hear Macnair was sent to Azkaban? He got lucky. I heard Greyback and several of the old high-ranking death eaters were hanged. Many of them were patriarchs of pureblood families."
Marcus couldn't help but nod. "It's over. It's the end of an era. The Pureblood has become all but spent. In a handful of generations, it will all be dead. We fought a war to prevent it and all it did was seal our fates."
Blaise couldn't help but chuckle. "It's the Dance of Dragons."
"Excuse me, the what?" Flint wasn't quite sure he had heard that right with the alcohol muddling his mind.
Blaise leaned back slightly. "The Dance of Dragons was a parable ballad that my mom used to sing to me when I was little. In a distant land, a king and his half-sister fought in a civil war over claimants of a throne. Both had the ability to control dragons. It was what made them special. Fiercely, the two sides fought so hard for their birthright until both siblings died and the armies were brought to mutual exhaustion. In the end, neither of them got the throne, and the dragons were driven to extinction. Seems rather fitting given the situation does it not?"
Marcus thought about it for a moment, and he couldn't help but grin. "Well, it's not exactly a perfect one-to-one metaphor but I could certainly see the similarities…We are the dragons it seems."
Blaise chuckled. "If it's any condolence, true purebloods went extinct a long time ago. At this point, this is just burning the body and giving it a funeral pyre."
Marcus nodded. "Well in that case...how about a drink to the Dance of Dragons, the death of pureblood supremacy, and to the death of friends and times gone by?"
for the first time in forever, Blaise smiled and raised his glass. "I'll drink to that."