1.5k rough beginning to an OC-SI fic, in which a modern OC gets inserted into the HP universe as the older sibling of Severus Snape, into the Snape family as a 11-year-old child. I wrote this about a year ago as a warm-up exercise and, though I don’t intend to ever properly write it, I occasionally revisit this fic idea to write warm-up meta snippets.
+500 words snippet of an OC-SI thinking about the mechanics of HP magic through the Reparo spell.
Never posted to tumblr or AO3 before; fic under the cut.
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hallow things
Chapter One
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There wasn’t much to be said about waking up. It was disorienting to come awake in a small, dark bedroom and see another, empty bed in the room. Her first thought was that she didn’t share her bedroom. Her next thought, much more awake, was that this was not her bedroom. She couldn’t see much of it, even wide-eyed with panic, but the dark shapes of the furniture were all wrong and her place among them was wrong too.
There was a voice calling her to dinner, shadows breaking the line of light under the door, but that was not her brother. The doorknob turned and a child peered inside, their face mostly obscured by the light behind him, and she knew without seeing it that she would not recognize them. Their shape was all wrong.
The shape of everything was all wrong.
“Dad says you have to come down for dinner,” the child said.
They waited expectantly.
She was supposed to answer. She didn’t know how to answer.
“...Alright,” she answered.
The shape of her voice was wrong too.
The child left without closing the door, apparently satisfied.
In the light from the hallway, she looked down at her hands. They were too small. She looked down at the rest of her body and, despite the results following a pattern, she was shocked to find that it wasn’t her body. There are, she would later say to herself in hindsight, surprising things that a person can roll with reasonably, things that a person can adapt to without an extended and dizzying moment of horror and nausea and general disorientation, and finding yourself in a body not your own is not one of them.
Her panic lasted long enough for the child to come back.
“Dad says you have to come down for dinner now,” the child said, annoyed.
She could see the child better now, but she had gotten worse at pinpointing the age of children as she had gotten older. They seemed like they might be between the ages of seven and ten. They were thin. They were barefoot. They had pale skin and chin-length black hair. Their beige blouse and black trousers were too large for them. They were scowling at her.
She didn’t know what to say. It was, she would later say to herself in hindsight, somewhat of a miracle she didn’t open her mouth and scream until she passed out.
“I’m not feeling well,” she said.
It had the benefit of being true. She felt like she was going to throw up.
“Dad says you still need to come down,” the child said sourly.
They didn’t seem like they were going to leave without her this time. She had nothing else to do besides get out of bed, holding onto a bedside table with shaking arms to keep herself from falling over. These are not my blankets, she thought, both uselessly and helplessly. This is not my nightgown. These are not my feet. This is not my body. I am going to be sick.
She was too short. Too small. She was taller than the child by at least a head, but she should have been several heads taller. It didn’t help to know, logically, that she was the one who had shrunk. The room and the furniture still looked like they had been made for giants. Knowing that she was the one dizzy with shock didn’t stop the world from moving around her either.
The child watched her with a confused expression. She couldn’t tell their gender yet, but she thought they might have been a boy. They had the sort of face people said someone had to grow into: long, tired-looking, with a large nose.
They went downstairs together. Slowly.
This is not my house, she thought. The lights were yellow and the wallpaper was ugly. The stairs were narrow and didn’t have a carpet. The steps creaked under her bare feet.
She stopped at the bottom of the stairs, because she didn’t know where to go. The child looked at her confusedly again, but moved past her and into the brightly lit room ahead. She followed them, clinging to the walls to hold herself up. The lights were too bright for her. The ceilings were too high. The tiles under her too small feet were unfamiliar and cold.
“Oh, darling, you don’t look well,” a woman said, a giantess, coming forward to help her sit at a dining table that was too small to comfortably fit four people. She had no choice but to go along with the woman, hating every hand that touched her. “Toby, I told you we should have let her keep sleeping. She’s sick.”
There was a man at the table. He looked like a giant too. He glowered.
“It’s not too damn much to ask that we eat meals as a family,” he said to the woman.
The woman ignored him, hot and fretful hands adjusting clothes and hair, touching freely and frequently. She flinched away from the woman’s touch. She didn’t like being touched without permission by strangers under ordinary circumstances; on bad days, she didn’t like being casually touched without permission by people she liked or even loved.
“I think you should go back to bed,” the woman said worriedly.
“She needs to eat, doesn’t she, Elle?” the man said. “Sit down already.”
The child, who had sat down across from her, watched them and said nothing.
The woman sat and served them all soup: something thick and brown with beef and rice and vegetables. It probably would have been fine if she didn’t feel sick. As it was, it looked disgusting, the smell made her stomach turn, and the idea of actually eating any of it made her feel green. Under the woman’s watchful stare, she dipped her spoon in and brought some broth to her mouth. It made her insides twist, but she didn’t throw it back up.
Not yet.
Instead of eating, she stared at the people at the table.
The man and the woman were clearly parents to the child. The woman had a similarly long face and a large nose. She was also very pale. She had bags under her eyes, which were dark and worried, and her dark brown hair was pulled back into a frizzy braid. The man had short black hair, a beard, and a scowl that seemed permanently fixed. Even though he already seemed like a giant, he was big and broad-shouldered. He had hairy arms and rough hands.
“Eat,” the woman told her, frowning.
She raised the spoon to her mouth again and swallowed.
The food stayed down for about five seconds before she threw up in her bowl.
There was a lot of shouting, exclamations of disgust, but all she could do was hold on to the table through a heavy chill and try not to faint. She wasn’t sure how well she succeeded, because the next thing she knew was that she was in a bathroom having her face cleaned by the woman, and the next thing she knew after that was that she was back in bed. The room was dark and, once the door closed, it was almost quiet, besides the shouting from downstairs.
She stared blearily around the room, looking over the shape of everything, all wrong. Her head was swimming and pounding, stuck in a shape that was all wrong, and she didn’t know whether to throw up again, cry, or faint. One of the shapes in the darkness moved exactly like furniture didn’t, but the shape of it was all wrong for it to be a person, and it vanished when the door creaked open again and light spilled into the room.
The child stepped inside, closed the door, and then sat on the other bed.
“...Go to sleep,” the child said.
She did. It was much better than being conscious.
The dream didn’t end no matter how many times she pinched herself or hid under the blankets hoping to wake up in the right place next time. The only thing to do seemed to be to go through it. She had never been one for realistic dreams; she had always known when she was dreaming before now. Everything was uncomfortably real here.
This is what the bathroom mirror told her: she was in the body of a girl who looked to be about twelve years old. She was tall for a child, very thin, and very gangly. She was white, with black hair and brown eyes so dark they were practically black, with a long face and a large nose. She looked too tired and too drawn to be thought pretty or even cute. She looked like the daughter of the man and woman who lived in this house, moreso the woman than the man, as well as the older sibling to the child who shared her room.
The woman called her Ellie. She hadn’t asked what it was short for, if anything.
Ella? Eleanor? Ellen?
She found out that it was Eileen when she annoyed her “parents” by hesitating at the top of the stairs for too long. Eileen. It wasn’t… it wasn’t a bad name. It just wasn’t her name.
This wasn’t her life.
~
TBC
~
AN: The OC-SI’s original name is unknown, but they’ve been inserted into the role of “Eileen Snape the Second”, after Snape’s mother, Eileen Prince.
~
Snippet
~
Reparo was an interesting spell, Ellie thought. She hadn’t understood, initially, how someone might just wave their wand and put something back together without actually understanding how the object fit together. If making something in the first place required a certain amount of concentration and knowledge of the fiddly details, why wouldn’t repairing an object require the same? But it appeared that Reparo relied partly on the object’s memory of once being whole.
Reparo was a psychometric spell. It was a charm with a significant component of Divination.
The past-present sort of Divination, that was. Not the future sort of Divination.
And, as she had suspected, it appeared that not all reparations were made equal. The spell still required focus to be done well. People with strong psychometric abilities generally cast better Repair Charms, but someone with a strong understanding of ceramics could still potentially do a much better job of repairing a broken plate. A child might end up with a bowl that held together but was still cracked and still leaked, while their parent might manage to fix all leaks and to heal the crack so that it was no longer visible, due to a general better understanding of life and the world and everything therein.
But on the other hand, no matter who had done the repair, the object would still be more fragile than before. Just as a broken object remembered once being whole, a repaired object would remember once being broken. The psychometry went both ways.
All objects that had undergone a magical transformation of some kind were generally more… unstable, according to the literature she was still understanding. It was better to use a charm to build a wooden chair out of ordinary wood, than to transfigure it out of… say… straw. Unless a wizard had a very good, possibly even scientific understanding of the composition and characteristics of both wood and straw, the transfiguration wouldn’t really hold up under duress. And in either case, the transfigured wood still wasn’t so much wood as it was… well, something unstable (and, in her opinion, mildly unnerving) that only currently looked and behaved like wood, liable to break under stress, to transform back under stress, or to sudden begin behaving badly if the transfiguration had gone extremely wrong.
Although an academic scientific understanding of the composition and characteristics of both wood and straw were unnecessary for a stable transfiguration, Ellie understood from the literature, so long as there was a thorough understanding. A craftsman who had been working with wood his whole life would know very well all the qualities wood was supposed to have, plus all the practical chemistry involved in woodworking, and would presumably do a much better job transfiguring something into wood than even an expert on Transfiguration who had never picked up a saw or handled sandpaper in their life.
But still, even if a wizard had worked with wood all their lives, the transfigured wood would still remember not being wood at some point. Psychometrics could dabble with an object’s memory quite a lot, but the field of study apparently produced some incredibly unstable results when dabbling that deeply, because that part of an object’s origin apparently couldn’t be fully erased. Anything that had been magically transformed or altered carried that weakness forever.
Reparo only worked so far.
The fault lines of any break remained, memorized, waiting to break again.
~
TBC
~
AN: Because I like thinking about the mechanics of magic sometimes.
Copy-pasted from notes from the ask which prompted me to post this, giving a more extensive rundown of the OC-SI fic concept:
I had the idea once that a fun HP SI would be someone (modern OC who’d read the series) tasked with collecting the Deathly Hallows by whatever inserted them into the story. Because that would mean needed to get Dumbledore’s wand, one of Voldemort’s horcruxes, and the Potter Invisibility Cloak, none of which would be easy for a random person to get, much less secretly, without tangling with any dangerous canon characters.
One of the interesting entrance points I considered would be an older sibling for Severus Snape, especially if the OC was not a Snape stan. They wouldn’t be inserted into the story as an infant, because that rarely comes off believably, but rather as a 10 or 11-year-old child.
Because they’d be forced to confront the fact that Snape really was just a lonely and angry kid at some point, from an awful home, who got radicalized as a teenager. And if the OC managed to create positive relationship with the young Severus, you have the problem of Severus Snape eventually becoming a powerful Occlumens. So you could have the problem of Severus Snape realizing that the OC-SI, the doting older sibling who has been his lifeline, was mysteriously planted into his family and that his memories were altered to accept them as always having been there.
That would be a delicious confrontation in an already complicated relationship.
I don’t think I’d do a romance between the OC-SI and a canon character, or even another OC. I also don’t think I’d have the OC-SI try to manipulate everything; I think I’d just have them straight-up go to Dumbledore and make a deal for the Deathly Hallows, because they’re too tired and overwhelmed to try and play puppetmaster. (Snape getting in on this long-standing horcrux-hunting relationship between his sibling and Dumbledore would be interesting, especially since he’d probably bring Lily Evans in with him.)
I also think the OC would end up somewhat lonely with few real connections, instead of a social butterfly. It would probably end up exploring the realism and mechanics of the HP world, and what impact the mechanics have on the society. It would also probably be more about the suspense and horror of the overall situation of being put into a fantasy world in the middle of a serious conflict for a mysterious purpose.
AN: Dishonored Fic: whatever our souls are made of
1.3k One Shot, canon divergence at Corvo’s confrontation of Daud. I just finished Dishonored and I’m only just starting The Knife of Dunwall, so I won’t be fleshing this rough outline/ficlet out properly or finishing this until I better know Daud’s side of things, but I wanted to write something in which Corvo and Daud levelled with each other more. Corvo was in a... real bad state during that mission, so I’m interested in exploring his anger/exhaustion.
Never posted to tumblr or AO3 before; fic under the cut.
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Fic on AO3
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“I have one more surprise for you, I ask for my life.
“When I killed your Empress and took her daughter, something broke inside me. Now, I see the design on the back of your hand, the mark of the Outside himself, and I remember all I’ve done.
“The years of waiting for the right moment to step forward from an alley and drive a knife between the ribs of some noble. All the money exchanging hands, from one rich bastard or another. Killing for one of them one year, then being paid to kill him in return the next.
“I remember bending at the shrines, listening as the Outsider whispered that I was going to change things, that I was somehow important.
“It felt good; made me believe I was powerful.
“But what have I accomplished? More than you have, or much less?
“Now, I want nothing but to leave this city. And fade from the memory of those who reside here. I’ve had enough killing.
“So my life is in your hands.
“Make your choice.”
- Daud’s Speech, Dishonored
~
whatever our souls are made of
~
“You give me permission to take your life?” Attano said hoarsely, disgustedly.
“...Acceptance,” Daud offered.
“And what if I don’t kill you?”
“...I’ll leave this city. Fade from memory. Nothing more than an old nightmare.”
Attano was silent for several seconds, then demanded lowly, “Is that the only option? Or Are you offering yourself up for whatever punishment I devise, knowing what I did to those who wielded you?”
Daud stayed silent, looking down.
“Some would say that you trade in lives,” Attano said. “But you don’t. You sell the service of destroying them. You take, but you can’t give back. Your life for hers… your life for hers… do you think that your death is worth her life to me?”
Daud closed his eyes, breathing deeply, a hand clutched to his side.
“I don’t want your death. I don’t want your life. I want her life.”
“...I can’t undo it,” Daud said tiredly. “Don’t ask me to try, either. I won’t. I don’t think anyone will like the result of that.”
The man’s eyes flickered up towards the heart in Attano’s hand, then quickly down again.
Attano did not move.
“...You want to leave this city. All the blood you’ve spilled. Death or banishment, either way you get to escape what you’ve done,” Attano said coldly. “You want out.”
“Yes,” Daud said.
“What then? Will you continue your work? Will a foreign ruler throw your crimes on their soil on Dunwall’s doorstep someday?”
Daud shook his head. “No. No more.”
“Retirement,” Attano named it, disdainfully. “You want peace.”
“...Coldridge, then?” Daud asked, with a low, pained chuckle. “My suffering’s not enough for you unless it’s a long, miserable show. You’re a nasty, vindictive bastard, Attano, but… ah… that’s already been made clear… I should’ve known...”
“No.”
“...No?”
“Coldridge won’t hold a man like you,” Attano said.
And then, surprisingly, he crouched down in front of Daud, so that they were face to face.
Face to mask.
A flash of uncertainty crossed Daud’s face, gone again in a blink.
“Could stick you in a cell and put an Overseer’s music-box outside it,” Attano said coldly. “Play their damn song all night and day.”
Daud didn’t lean back, but he did waver, slightly. Briefly.
“But that wouldn’t hold back your men, would it?” Attano asked. “They seem… loyal. If you’re dead, will they disperse, without seeking revenge?”
Daud stayed still at first, but then he nodded. “Told ‘em to stay out of this.”
“And if you’re banished, will they follow you? Or will one of them step up to be the next Knife of Dunwall?” Attano continued, still so coldly. “A knife is a knife. They can’t all be Marked by the Outsider, but none of them are harmless. None of them have clean hands, do they?”
“...They’ll follow. They were always following me… my decisions… leave them out of this.” Daud, filled with new tension, seemed to be searching for something in the harsh mask in front of him. Finally, he added, gruffly, “Please…”
Attano stayed still. “...Haven’t killed any of them yet.”
Daud snorted, then closed his eyes again and inhaled in relief. “Left them across town with sleep darts sticking out of their asses instead. I know.”
“...I don’t have the place to send you all to Coldridge anymore. I’m not foolish enough to think you’ll all walk inside and throw your swords down, begging the watch to arrest you, either, just because I tell you to. I won’t send you all off together to live on your blood money…”
Daud inclined his head.
“...Not yet.”
Daud opened his eyes and stared piercingly at the man in front of him again.
Attano was sitting down now, tucking the heart away into his coat, reaching for his mask with his left hand. There was a soft click, undoing whatever secured the haunting mask, and Attano slowly pulled his disguise away.
“...You think you’re the only one who’s tired of killing?” Attano demanded, his voice finally unaffected by the robotic muffling.
The man looked like death.
He was intensely pale. His face was gaunt almost like a plague victim. His recent poisoning seemed to have wrecked him, and suddenly the persistent tremor in his hands couldn’t be attributed solely to adrenaline and rage. His hair was wet and filthy, clinging to his face, his jaw was dark with beard growth, and his eyes were bloodshot.
“...You look like shit,” Daud said.
“You have no room to talk,” Attano replied, exhaustedly, without real heat.
It was possible that he didn’t mean that Daud looked equally terrible, but rather that the man had no right to comment on his wretched appearance, not when Daud was partially responsible for the man’s suffering. It was hard to say what had sapped the life of the stoic protector since the last time they’d faced each other, but it might have been fair to say that it had been everything.
Daud had landed several heavy blows on the man during their fight.
“If your life is in my hands, then this is what I ask of you: I need you to be my hands,” Attano said. “You’re good at that, aren’t you?”
Daud didn’t flinch. He just stared.
Attano coughed. “...I don’t know how long I’ll last at this rate.”
“Are you…?”
“Dying? Maybe,” Attano answered, steadily. “I’ve been shot, stabbed, beaten, bitten, poisoned, nearly electrocuted… and that was before all of this started. All in a day’s work. Since… I don’t pretend that I’d be alive right now if not for this Mark.”
He raised his left hand, showing off the Outsider’s Mark.
“...And I don’t pretend to know its price.”
Daud said nothing, not knowing the details of the other man’s deal with the Outsider.
It could be killing him, for either of them knew.
Attano went on, hoarse and grim: “I have no allies in this city. No friends. I could have the plague - I haven’t taken a life yet, but my hands haven’t stayed clean with the shit I’ve been climbing through - I’ve choked weepers and waded through the flood. And I have no way of knowing how long it will take to find Emily and put her on the throne as more than someone’s puppet. I can’t afford to die, but I might anyway.”
Daud snorted. “...And you think I’ll be a good friend to you, Lord Protector?”
“No, but I don’t have anyone else.”
Daud didn’t appear to have anything to say to that.
“...I don’t want you to kill for me,” Attano said firmly. “Too many people have been caught up in the pursuit of power for power’s sake. Emily doesn’t even need more of a mess to rule over. If you’ve had enough killing, but can’t find your way without it, then take your men and go, and never return. But if you want to change things… if you want to accomplish something more than being the knife of a man who brought sickness to this city, then there’s a little girl whose life you ruined to start with, and… then you can go.”
Daud stared some more, then snorted again. “So you choose mercy…”
Attano didn’t deny it.
“Unexpected.”
“I’ve had enough killing,” Attano said. “Enough suffering. Enough pain.”
Then he reached into his coat and withdrew a red vial of Solokov’s Elixir, and held it out to Daud, who was still holding a hand against his bleeding side.
Daud hesitated.
“Make a choice, assassin,” Attano said coldly. “Don’t throw the choice on me now, as though that will make up for what you did on someone else’s orders. I don’t want your death. Fix what you did or leave now for calmer waters. It’s up to you.”
Daud stared at him.
The vial of elixir was trembling, Attano’s hand unable to hold it steady.
Daud reached out and took the vial.
“Deal,” he said.
~
TBC
~
AN: I just finished Dishonored and I’m only just starting The Knife of Dunwall, so I won’t be fleshing this rough outline/ficlet out properly, editing it or polishing it, or finishing this until I better know Daud’s side of things.
1k of rough snippets set in an alternate universe in which wizards have finally gotten computers and e-mail, and the Golden Trio’s generation are young adults who largely went to different schools and now have jobs. The fic’s plot and pairings very wobbly, but rough outlines prefer some sort of murder mystery combined with a secret identity romance and a lot of humor. The story would be told entirely through e-mails between characters.
In these e-mail snippets, Ginny Weasley is late to work at the Quibbler. Also, I’m pretty sure this writing is 5+ years old.
Never posted to tumblr or AO3 before; fic under the cut.
This is an automated message sent to inform you that you were 97 minutes late today, Wednesday, May 2-nd, 2001. This has been your 27-th late this year exceeding 15 minutes. You have 3 more lates before upper management must be notified of your behavior. Upper management has been notified of your Quibbler Frowned-Upon Behavioral Practices 8 times this year.
The Quibbler Smiled-Upon Behavioral Practices Booklet believes that lates are not good behavior for a Quibbler Publishing Employee, reflecting bad work ethics and values, and costs valuable company time and resources. We here at the Quibbler Publishing Human Resources Team know that you can do better!
Lates can be a symptom of a more serious problem. If you find that you have repeating issues or difficulties following Quibbler Smiled-Upon Behavioral Practices, you may have on or more of the following common issues, which include but is not limited to:
Undercover missions for your secret life as an Unspeakable
Home Issues: plumbing; fire; uncooperative ghosts; nargle infestation; etc
Slow descent into madness
Quick descent into madness
Murder
Other Assorted Illegal Activities: arson of a Daily Prophet Employee's property; assault and battery of said Daily Prophet Employee; etc
Dependents to care for: children; senior citizens; pets; etc
Please don't hesitate to reach out to us. We here at Human Resources are here and ready to help with understanding and numerous support groups, Floo-lines, and programs! Don't be afraid to contact your Human Resources Representative Tracey Leanne Davis if you feel that you need assistance or support with issues preventing you from being a Smiled-Upon Quibbler Employee or a happier person. We know no one's perfect, and that's okay! We're here for you, Ginevra Margaret Weasley.
I mean, not that I don't love getting all these automated messages about your Weasley-inherited inability to get anywhere on time, but I actually don't. The more you're late, the more paperwork I have to do, which means the more time I have to spend at my desk by Creevey 2.0. I'm going to hex the floor-organiser person who decided that Human Resources and Tech Support were more or less the same thing. Then Dennis if the bugger doesn't stop humming.
Start showing up on time or I'll do something drastic. I’ll tell the Bossman that, in my Professional Opinion, you and Smith need to share a desk so you can learn to get along. You will cry.
Sb: Michael is looking particularly wrackspurt-infected today
(;O;) (;_;) I missed you before I had to leave to cover the S.P.E.W. meeting. You were really late today. ?＼(゜ロ＼)?Where were you? (／ロ゜)／? Tracey came up to yell for a bit and I had to stop Blaise from stealing your stapler again. ᕙ(-,-)ᕗ (He does not fight fair by the way.)
I thought you made a New Year's resolution to be more on time. ლ(ಠ益ಠლ ???
I know my dad would never fire you, but he's going to keep giving Smith all the good sports assignments if you aren't here to give him another options. ┐('～`；)┌ At this rate, you're going to have to cover the Gobstones National Tournament again (╯°□°）╯. . . o oo ᕙ('Д ' ) and we both know that won't end well because Gobstones and Smith's “smarmy, smug, gloat-y face” give you the most terrible Wrathspurts.
Oh, and did something happen last night between you and Michael? He's been playing Celestina Warbeck's slow and sad version of You Charmed the Heart Right Out of Me ( *u*)~♥ on repeat all morning. I worry for his health, (ーー;), emotional and physical, because Susan looks like she's going to curse him out the window if he resets the record one more time.
Did you two have another fight? ( Д')ᕗ ᕙ('Д )
See you at ✿ Rosa Lee's✿ for lunch later? ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Ginny, where are you? I know you're upset but you're being childish about this, not coming into the office and refusing to answer my Floo-calls last night. Avoiding me isn't going to solve anything, Gin, and I can't believe you'd fall into such stereotypical female stubbornness about this.
AN: MDZS/Untamed Fic: aux pieds de sa statue qui s'anime
5k rough beginning to a Pygmalion and Galatea Fusion AU for teenage Wangxian. I watched some episodes of the Untamed with my sister and, though I don’t intend to watch any more of it until I’ve read the novel, I could not let this plot bunny go. You’re telling me two characters are referred to as the “Jades of Gusu Lan” and I’m not supposed to write a P&G Fusion AU in which LWJ is a jade statue come to life with that???
Canon Setting AU. Pre-Canon. No spoilers for The Untamed or MDZS.
Never posted to tumblr or AO3 before; fic under the cut.
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EDIT: Updated Fic on AO3
~
aux pieds de sa statue qui s'anime
Chapter One
~
Wei Wuxian is a long way from home, absentmindedly thwacking the trees he passes with Suibian, when he catches sight of a talisman scrap underneath some leaves.
“Oh?”
Hungrier for entertainment than he realized, he’s immediately crouched to the ground, rummaging through the leaves. It really is only a scrap of a talisman, Wei Wuxian realizes with interest, as he brings it to his face and then holds it above his head.
“Very clean hand,” Wei Wuxian comments admiringly, to the surrounding trees he was bullying, as he stands again. “Ahhh~! Even my talismans aren’t this beautifully written! What a shame that such scholarly skill was wasted on such an inefficient construction! There’s a flaw here, see? If you know to target this aspect of this type of talisman, then you can make the whole construction crumple before too long! This wouldn’t have lasted very long at all!”
The tree leaves rustle, clearly eagerly paying attention to his lecture.
“Ah, not that it looks like this poor talisman even had a chance to do its job,” Wei Wuxian says, bringing it down again and holding Suibian up beside it. “Look at how the paper’s been so cleanly cut into an uneven half, my diligent students! It must have been sliced into pieces by a very sharp sword!”
The branches bob attentively. A bird even sings his praises in the distance.
Wei Wuxian sniffs. “Perhaps I’ll be merciful with your discipline for the day,” he decides, lowering Suibian and looking around the forest. “It would be careless for righteous cultivators such as ourselves to leave an object of interest uninvestigated, after all!”
He sets off, scanning the forest for more clues, muttering to himself. “Now, this scrap of talisman could have been blown here by the wind from somewhere else. It has clearly become quite weathered! I would say it has been out here for well over a month! I would guess that a cultivation sect has had a night-hunt in the area recently.”
He looks the talisman over again, admiring the calligraphy, and lets out a wistful sigh. “This is high-quality paper and high-quality ink, you know! Much too good for rogue cultivators or poor Yunmeng disciples, who can’t afford such finery for their work or in their studies… Ahhh~! Really! What a shame to waste it on this! No wonder it was cut in half. I can do so much better than this, you know, if anyone would listen to my ideas, but people always want to stick to their ‘tried and true’ cultivation methods. Pah!”
Wei Wuxian scours the area and almost gives up on finding more interesting clues.
“Hmm, you may just be a lost and lonely victim of the winds, after all,” Wei Wuxian is finally commenting to the talisman scrap, disappointed, when he catches sight of an odd long groove in the ground. “Oh?! What’s this?”
The groove is surrounded by a few others, not all equally deep, all equally worn and weathered. Wei Wuxian can visualize feet planting themselves hard, being forcefully moved by a powerful opponent. He can see the sword slashes of failed or misdirected blows. Maybe a sword stabbed into the earth for grounding, before being unceremoniously yanked along? Wei Wuxian brushes away fallen leaves, parts the grass, and moves aside young plants for a better look at the serious fight that definitely happened here.
He follows the path of the fight through the forest eagerly, Suibian in one hand and the talisman scrap in the other. Grinning, Wei Wuxian presses his hand to where a strong force hit a tree, maybe a body.
He leaps up into the leaves to track swaths of broken branches with glee.
He nearly whoops at the sight of another talisman scrap, but manages to squeal quietly instead.
“Something happened here,” he whispers to the tree he’s sitting on. “Very interesting!”
The trail winds on and on, disappearing in places, finally ending at the cliffside of a steep hill. The signs of the vicious fight have wound down from frequent bangs and crashes to… well… whimpers. Some of the last signs Wei Wuxian followed looked like hands clawing in the dirt, fingers digging deep into the earth with surprising strength, like someone was trying desperately not to be dragged along.
As Wei Wuxian bounces up into a tree, looking for where the trail might continue, he spots the mouth of a cave on the side of the small cliff. Hanging from a branch, he narrows his eyes at the person-sized hole, at least seven men’s height above the ground.
“Oh? A hideout? A lair?” Wei Wuxian breathes.
The spiritual and resentful energies that he’s been tracking, clinging to the wounds made in the woods, have been faint. Time has weathered away their traces like the talisman and the grooves. Perhaps oddly so for a fight that was so lastingly violent. Maybe the monster is long gone now.
Or maybe it wasn’t a night-hunt? Maybe it was a fight between cultivators?
Wei Wuxian swings up onto the tree branch, landing lightly, and considers his options here. Ah, surely it couldn’t hurt so much just to take a look in there? He’s capable of handling himself long enough to take a peek at whatever’s inside! Then, if it is a dormant monster, he’ll turn tail and run for the hills, screaming for his life, and take to the sky with Suibian like a good little disciple!
Surely, when he goes to tell the nearest village or sect what he came across, they’ll want to know the details. If Wei Wuxian doesn’t have any good details to tell them, if he doesn’t have any proof of anything interesting, they’ll surely look down their noses at him and go, “Who is this young disciple telling stories? Wei Wuxian of the Yunmeng Jiang Sect? How disgraceful! How shameless! Trying to get everyone all worked up over something that’s probably nothing! Who cares if there’s a mysterious cave in a cliffside at the end of a trail of a fight? He didn’t even actually see anything!”
“Really, it’s only responsible to have a teeny tiny look,” Wei Wuxian murmurs to the talisman scraps in his non-sword hand. “What if your owner is actually injured in there and needs help? Someone has to tell them off for leaving their things scattered around so irresponsibly! ...Mm, it’s been anywhere from days to months, though, so maybe I’ll only find a body.”
Wei Wuxian has just turned fifteen. He’s seen bodies before! He’s been on night-hunts with Uncle Jiang and his senior Yunmeng Jiang cultivators. He’s had to deal with resentful corpses and dig fresh graves for the victims, so whatever’s inside can’t be too gruesome for him.
“Even if people aren’t happy when cultivators bring a body back, it’s better than having no body to bury at all,” Wei Wuxian reasons to himself, quite wisely. “They’ll thank me later for this!”
With everything worked out, Wei Wuxian tucks the talisman scraps into his robe, then jumps forward and lands delicately, silently, on the edge of the cave mouth. He sniffs, breathing in deeply, but there’s no gruesome or beastly smell. He creeps forward on silent feet, keeping his sword and his free hand raised, ready to stab or to cast a spell, whatever he finds inside.
It could just be an unimportant cave! A distraction! The trail might continue somewhere else, but Wei Wuxian knows not to let down his guard until he’s sure.
The cave is narrow at first, wide enough for only one man to pass at a time, and dark at first. Its path takes Wei Wuxian down a zig, then around a zag, and then it opens up into a large cavern, bright and airy, dappled with sunlight and filled with greenery.
“Oh…” Wei Wuxian says, taken aback by its beauty.
The hill is apparently partly hollow, and holes in its crown have let beams of sunlight pour into this cavern. Hanging plants and roots decorate the walls of dirt and stone. He was expecting a miserable, dank pit full of human bones, but this is rather lovely!
The only really strange part of the cavern is the floor… and the gleaming statue at its centre.
Scattered across the stone floor are huge chunks of high-quality white jade. Wei Wuxian walks silently through the cavern, squinting through the beams of sunlight, and walks past what looks like a glistening battlefield of a half-dozen broken statues. He has to place his feet carefully to avoid stepping on a realistic white jade ear… a perfect white jade hand… a white jade thigh in a white jade embroidered robe with wrinkles. He can’t tell what most of the lovely jade fragments used to be, now shattered beyond recognition, but the detail of the shattered faces and cracked robes he can make out is incredible.
Astounding artistry! Utterly unmatched skill!
It’s as though Wei Wuxian has stumbled on the hidden workshop of the world’s greatest, most perfectionist sculptor - an unrivaled artist and brutal critic - prepared to waste a small fortune in jade. Perhaps there’s a secret vein nearby, a hidden river of wealth underneath Wei Wuxian’s own feet, its riches wasted on imperfect statues which failed to meet their master creator’s impossible standards.
Only the statue standing in the centre of the cavern has survived its creator’s wrath.
Wei Wuxian approaches slowly.
It’s too bright in this underground chamber to see clearly from a distance, but once he gets close enough to stand directly before the lone survivor standing in a beam of sunlight, Wei Wuxian breathes in sharply at the sight.
“Oh…”
Oh, any monster or man could creep up behind him now to slit his throat, and an already breathless Wei Wuxian wouldn’t even notice the pain, so long as this was the last thing he’d ever get to see.
He’s beautiful.
The white jade statue is a youth only slightly taller than Wei Wuxian himself, with a long and handsome face fixed in a solemn yet dreamy expression, his eyes half-lidded and his full lips slightly parted, looking so soft. Wei Wuxian could count every single perfect jade eyelash. He could count every single jade hair of those solemn eyebrows.
He could cut himself on that sharp, white jade jaw.
Belatedly, Wei Wuxian notices that the statue isn’t just beautiful, it’s shamelessly appealing.
The youth is dressed in only trousers and an under-robe, revealing broad shoulders and a slight waist, and Wei Wuxian wants nothing more than to feel where the white jade has been carved to look as though cloth wraps around the youth’s surprisingly thick biceps. Or run his fingers along that sharp collarbone revealed by the slightly disheveled collar.
The youth’s long hair is down, detailed down to the strand, a wavy river of jade spreading over his shoulders and down his back, as though all the pins and ornaments have only just been yanked from his hair. As though he’s been caught preparing for a night’s sleep.
One long-fingered hand is outstretched, as though reaching out to touch Wei Wuxian.
It’s so shamelessly inappropriate that Wei Wuxian can feel heat tickling at his face just looking at this creation, like some blushing maiden, even with how knowledgeable he is of… of… the existence of erotic images. Is this the type of sensual, appealing art commissioned by the truly absurdly wealthy? Are statues made with such breathtaking skill for rich people who are too good for mere paintings?
Oh, an entire empire’s wealth could have been spilled away to create this peerless statue, and Wei Wuxian might declare it well worth it. What masterful skill made the perfect image of such a heavenly being and then left it here not to be revered as its beauty deserves?
Wei Wuxian reaches out… then falters… then determinedly brushes his fingers over the veiny, cloudy white jade of the statue’s outstretched hand. It’s slightly larger than his own, perfect down to the fingernails, knuckles, tendons, and bone. The wrinkles of the palm almost look soft, before Wei Wuxian touches, terrified he might snap off a finger if he tries to interlace their hands.
He didn’t know you could do this with jade.
He didn’t know you get this kind of detail with anything.
Wei Wuxian looks around the sunlit cavern away, but he doesn’t see any sculptor’s tools. Could someone have carved these statues with spiritual techniques?
The only sign he sees of another human presence is another pair of footprints around the statues, around and even underneath the debris, some of which look relatively recent. Someone has been coming and going from this cavern. The sculptor, perhaps?
“Or maybe it’s some heartless vandal coming to destroy a late peerless master’s art to sell the chunks of white jade?” Wei Wuxian deduces quietly, with narrowed eyes and a sneer. “How unappreciative! How greedy! Oh, Young Master Statue, is that what happened to all your poor friends? Ahhh~! I’m sorry you had to see that!”
The youth doesn’t answer, of course, being a statue.
Was the brutal fight outside over this fortune in white jade?
Over these great masterworks?
Wei Wuxian’s heart goes out to the poor youth! Perhaps handsome statues don’t always enjoy being shamelessly stared at by a crowd of admiring sisters, who really shouldn’t be staring at such an inappropriately dressed figure, but he must be quite lonely in here now!
“Do you like it here, Young Master Statue?” Wei Wuxian asks, running his hand along the outstretched arm, resisting the heat burning up his face. “Locked away with some greedy vandal or cruel master shattering all your friends and siblings? Is it lonely with no visitors? No crowds to leave flowers at your feet in exchange for a wish? No-one to press kisses to your perfect hand for good luck? Ah, what a shame!”
The youth’s white jade biceps are just as impressive under Wei Wuxian’s hands as they are to look at, and Wei Wuxian’s face may be turning pink at his own shamelessness.
“Ahhh~! Young Master Statue, would you not accept such offers? Should I be keeping my hands to myself? My apologies! My apologies! But has anyone ever told you that you have been made with unmatched skill? Strike out my eyes now, for I will never see a lovelier face! Pilgrims would come from around the world if they knew this little cave held such a heavenly yet calamitous beauty! Allow a humble traveller to admire you properly, so he can tell all the pretty sisters he meets of this hidden wonder of the world, so that they may send you your much-deserved kisses on the wind!”
Wei Wuxian’s fingers only brush the youth’s collarbone, dancing up the long neck, so that he may cup that peerlessly handsome face and hold it like… like… like a lover might. The youth looks so realistic that he might take a breath at any moment.
“Ahhh!” Wei Wuxian dances away again, as though burned, unable to bear it any longer. His poor face certainly feels afire by this point. “Sorry! Sorry! My apologies, Young Master Statue!”
He turns in flustered circles until he feels prepared to face the white jade youth again.
Once he does, he bows deeply, so he doesn’t have to immediately look at such beauty.
“Young Master Statue, this humble disciple has so little to offer you for the offense! He is too poor to offer riches! And what good are mere riches to a man such as yourself? He hasn’t the skill to revive your poor friends and siblings! He is pledged to his family and to his sect, and so cannot pledge himself to be your eternal protector! Tell me, oh Young Master Statue, what this shameless disciple could offer you to make amends?”
He lifts his head - ah, no, the statue is still peerlessly beautiful - and then sinks to his knees to beg for mercy.
“Please, oh, please, Young Master Statue, tell me how to properly show my reverence for your many virtues. I cannot leave you in this lonely place without offering a sign of my appreciation! A memory, at the very least, to keep you company!”
He looks up again, moving closer.
“Do you have a love of poetry, Young Master Statue? This humble disciple would recite rivers of words for you until his lips were dry, if only he thought their beauty could begin to compare to your own! He could write until his fingers bled and yet fail miserably to encompass all that you are! He could sing for you until he had no more voice! Until he was unable to tell another living soul that he had delved down into the earth and stumbled across something unspeakable - a being incomparable!”
“But is the warmth of words enough?” Wei Wuxian asks, standing, until he’s again face-to-face with the handsome youth in white jade. His cheeks are burning again, slightly, at his own shamelessness, but he ignores it. “Perhaps… a kiss? A poor replacement for the supplicants you deserve, Young Master Statue! But… into what else can this humble disciple fit rivers of poetry and song but such an impertinent touch?”
The statue doesn’t blink at Wei Wuxian’s antics, even though any real person would have slapped him for his audacity by now. The youth doesn’t move at all as Wei Wuxian steps closer, running his hand along their outstretched arm again, until his palm lands gently once more on that perfect jaw.
He’s standing almost against the statue’s chest.
“...Ahhh, perhaps your offense is due to impatience? This shameless disciple has teased you so cruelly over your unfortunate loneliness,” Wei Wuxian says, his face aflame.
He closes his eyes and presses his mouth against white jade lips, unable to resist. He has heard that some statues accept kisses in exchange for good fortune, a folk tale he has never been able to understand until he came across this peerless beauty, hidden away all on his lonesome.
Ah, a kiss to a statue hardly counts, anyway!
It doesn’t count at all!
Wei Wuxian will have his fun, pray for good fortune, and then merrily continue on his way, with a silly story to tell of his auspicious and mysterious encounter with the most beautiful man in the world, a secluded immortal of white jade.
Or so he thinks, until he feels the stone soften against his mouth.
Wei Wuxian’s eyes fly open in alarm to see golden eyes staring back at him.
“Mm?!”
Wei Wuxian throws himself backwards, raising Suibian in surprise, and watches in shock as life spreads over the statue of the white jade youth.
Those perfect eyelashes and brows turn black, before the same color spreads down his loose hair like spilled ink.
His under-robe turns into soft cloth.
The fingers of his outstretched hand curl.
Life washes over his skin, down from his face.
Oh, his lips are so pink.
Wei Wuxian’s free hand slaps against his own mouth. He was just-! His lips were just touching those lips! He can still feel the warm, hard jade giving way to sweet softness.
The youth blinks, his head shifts towards Wei Wuxian, and his chest takes in a deep breath like he’s been waiting years to do it.
Wei Wuxian waits to hear him speak.
Then, as the last of the white jade fades away from his toes, the newly living youth breaks out into a violent coughing fit, a fit so forceful that he bends nearly in half in an effort to breathe.
He stumbles.
He tips over.
Wei Wuxian launches himself forward to catch the youth.
He’s heavy. Perhaps not as heavy as solid white jade might be, but solid and muscular and warm from the sunlight. He shudders in Wei Wuxian’s arms, struggling to breathe as his chest seizes, and it takes several seconds longer for him to take in a trembling gasp and breathe normally again. Well, sort of normally, anyway. He’s kind of wheezing.
Wei Wuxian has heard that breathing is kind of hard when you’ve never done it before?
At least that’s what his sister told him, after she’d witnessed another woman give birth. Poor little newborn baby, being asked to breathe for the first time!
The youth’s grip on Wei Wuxian is clumsy, but surprisingly strong, as he struggles to look up at the person holding him. Wei Wuxian does his best to help them shift around without dropping the former statue, who sinks to his knees anyway because he doesn’t seem to have figured out walking or standing on his own yet. Wei Wuxian goes down to the ground with the youth, controlled, because he doesn’t want to fall over too!
It’s all he can do to keep Suibian’s blade away from the newly living statue!
On their knees, the disbalanced youth clings desperately to Wei Wuxian’s shoulders and arms, while Wei Wuxian also does his best to keep them from tipping over face-first into a pile white jade shards.
This makes sense! Everyone knows that it takes babies nearly a year to figure out things like sitting and standing! And nearly two years to figure out walking properly! This youth’s probably not going to get any of those things perfectly right away if he’s never done that before either, Wei Wuxian thinks wildly.
Finally, golden eyes are blinking up at Wei Wuxian again, dazed and maybe confused.
“Ah,” Wei Wuxian says, also dazed and confused. “Nice to meet you?”
The youth blinks at him again - unfairly, he’s even more beautiful for the life in his eyes, for the soft black hair framing his face, and the way his chest moves and his under-robe gapes open as he breathes.
Wei Wuxian does his absolute best not to stare at the youth’s soft, pink, lovely lips, by meeting those striking golden eyes instead. Looking into those searching eyes, seeing the plain confusion there if nowhere else, does absolutely nothing to stop the broiling heat crawling up his face. Wei Wuxian is certain that he’s turning bright pink before this newly living statue’s eyes, just at the mere memory of what he did-!
What did he do? He can’t have brought a statue to life with a kiss, can he?
Without a word, the youth’s golden eyes roll back into his head and slumps forward, before Wei Wuxian can resolve his thousand questions into speech.
Wei Wuxian catches his weight again as the youth faints.
It’s, um, a very awkward pose.
“Too much excitement for someone who was made of white jade only a moment ago?” Wei Wuxian suggests, a little hysterically, after poking the youth’s face, then shoulder, and getting no response. “Ahhh~! Maybe you’re just tired after spending all that time standing around like that! I understand, I understand, standing still like that is unbearable and exhausting! You just want to put your arms down, right? Have a nap?”
The unconscious youth doesn’t answer.
He doesn’t wake up either, as Wei Wuxian puts Suibian aside, awkwardly hefts him over his shoulder and, very slowly, stands up with a former masterwork on his shoulder. Wei Wuxian then slowly steps onto Suibian and looks up for a hole in the cavern ceiling big enough for them both.
Ahhh~! There’s one! How fortunate! Carrying the youth back out of the tunnel would be very uncomfortable! “I would hit your head and then I would hit my head, and it would be very painful all around!” Wei Wuxian confides in his passenger.
Then he focuses and very slowly lifts off the ground, following a beam of sunlight, maneuvering himself so that they fit through the exit in the ceiling. Some plants are forced roughly aside and some dirt tumbles down below, but no one hits their head! Wei Wuxian is willing to call that a victory!
Out under the open sky once more, he directs Suibian gently over the crown of the holey, hollow hill. They go down the slope, towards more solid-looking ground with some nice, soft grass and some old, sturdy trees.
“Falling down into there would not be fun, eh, Young Master Statue? Ahhh~! Is that how the vandal discovered you? Did they fall through one of those holes in the hill and break your friends that way? Sorry! Sorry! I shouldn’t have brought it up!”
Wei Wuxian lowers himself to the ground, then steps off Suibian and kneels again, taking his heavy passenger off his shoulder as gently as possible and putting him down. The youth doesn’t wake up now either, as Wei Wuxian rolls him onto his back.
Wei Wuxian sighs and rolls out his shoulders.
“What the fuck,” he murmurs.
Then he leans back, hands planting behind him, and looks up at the trees around him.
“Hey, what the fuck?!” he says to them, louder. “What the fuck is this?!”
He looks back down at the youth in front of him. The other boy’s chest is rising and falling peaceably, his eyes are closed and his face is without expression, so it looks as though he’s only sleeping. The collar of his under-robe is open enough to see more of an unsurprisingly handsome chest. His loose black hair spills over the grass so… so… Wei Wuxian doesn’t have the words! All the paintings in the world would weep with envy at this sight!
His lips are… still… pink.
They really do look just as soft as they feel…
“AHHH!” Wei Wuxian screams, folding over into a ball of humiliation.
Did he really just kiss a beautiful statue to life?! Did the gods think it would be funny to play a trick like this on him, for daring to be so shameless and disrespectful? Is he a character in a fairy tale now? Is this a blessing or a curse? Was the statue so perfectly made, so flawlessly formed, so near-heavenly was the skill that made it, that it only needed the smallest spark of spiritual energy to bring it to life?
No, that’s absurd! Wei Wuxian didn’t even mean it! He doesn’t… it wasn’t supposed to be a real kiss! He’s been saving his first kiss for a pretty girl - a real girl - who loved him back, not some… some… pretty boy made of white jade!
He was just playing around! Being silly!
Wei Wuxian sits up again and peeks through his fingers. Ahhh, this youth is only more handsome now that he’s been brought to life! How unfair! How embarrassing!
What is he supposed to do now?
“I can’t go back to Lotus Pier like this, can I?! Madam Jin and her rotten peacock son are still visiting! Uncle Jiang is still on business outside Yunmeng! Madam Yu will kill me if I come back from running messages dragging along a stranger, talking about bringing statues to life, all in front of her friend! Even if it’s true! I’ll be whipped within an inch of my life!”
Wei Wuxian brings a hand to his chin and tilts his head to one side. “Ahhh~! What will Shijie and Jiang Cheng say?” he wonders aloud. “Well, my sister will say, ‘A-Xian! I’m so glad you’ve made a friend!’ And then she’ll make soup for us! Because my sister is the best and she’s nice to everyone, even if they don’t deserve it, like her awful betrothed who never talks to her. Young Master Statue, you’re very fortunate to have been brought to life in a world with my sister’s cooking!”
Wei Wuxian tilts his head to the other side. “But Jiang Cheng will say, ‘Wei Wuxian! We took you in and now you think you can take in anyone you like? I don’t believe your story! Stop telling lies and losing face or I’ll break your legs!’ Mmmnnn. But I can make him believe it if I keep talking! And I can’t leave you here or Jiang Cheng will probably go, ‘Wei Wuxian! You brought life into this world and you didn’t take responsibility for it? Do you think the Yunmeng Jiang Sect has such poor hospitality? Do you think we have no honor? Do you think we have such a thin face? Go get your statue right away, you irresponsible brother who I refuse to call my shixiong, so we can feed them properly!’”
Wei Wuxian sighs and flops onto his back. “Madam Yu might say the same thing, after she’s finished whipping me to the bone! Be grateful I don’t scare you with the story of what she did to the last Yunmeng Jiang cultivator who got a girl pregnant outside of marriage! Everyone says that that foolish man was never seen again!”
Wei Wuxian then rolls over to face the youth who used to be a statue, lifting up his head on an elbow to stare at him. “Am I responsible for bringing you into this world? Does that make me your father?! Ahhh~! No! I’m way too young to be anyone’s dad!”
He then sits up to peer down at the… really incredibly beautiful youth.
“I’d say we might be the same age, actually! Do statues have ages? Are you as old as you look? Do you start counting from when you’re made or when you, um, became real? You could be over a hundred for all I know! Or are you not even a day old now? Ahhh, in any case, it’d be too weird for me to be your dad! I should be your senior, though, I think! I have way more life experience than you! Call me Wei-gege, alright?!”
The unconscious youth doesn’t answer, but Wei Wuxian nods anyway, then pauses.
“Oh, what should I call you? Am I supposed to name you now?”
It sort of seems that way, Wei Wuxian thinks, but how is he supposed to come up with a suitable name for such a handsome youth? What single name could encompass all that this miraculous person is? It’s too great a responsibility for a humble disciple who couldn’t even manage to pick a single name for his spiritual sword!
“Ahhh, perhaps I’ll figure that out later, Young Master Statue! You’re old enough to have some say in the matter, aren’t you? I think… for now… the best thing to do is get you to the nearest village! You need clothes, Young Master Statue! And shoes! And we need to do something about that hair of yours! And it’s important for newborns to see a doctor or a midwife, just to make sure that nothing’s wrong, right?”
Wei Wuxian looks down at the unconscious figure before him and feels panic.
“Oh, no!” he cries.
What if the statue wasn’t perfectly formed? What if this youth passed out because there’s something wrong with him? What if he’s dying? What if he’s going to turn back into white jade unless Wei Wuxian gets him to a doctor right away?
“Don’t worry, Young Master Statue, I’ll get you to help!” Wei Wuxian declares, and hefts his new companion over his shoulder again and steps onto Suibian. “I’m responsible for bringing you into this world, so I have to look after you! That also means I’m the only person who’s allowed to take you out of it - or so the aunties like to say, haha!”
Wei Wuxian rises into the air on Suibian, a young man formerly made of white jade over his shoulder, and takes off over the forest, towards the nearest village. He still doesn’t know what in the world happened, but at least he’s got some direction now!
“You’re lucky I brought my spending money with me!” he declares as he flies. “Ah, having a dependent is going to be so expensive! I’m too young to be supporting a child or a wife! Don’t judge your poor Wei-gege for his inability to provide you with fancy robes or anything, okay, Young Master Statue? The money has to go to the doctor! And ah, you’re already making me sound so boring, Young Master Statue, so you better be grateful!”
~
End of Chapter One
TBC
~
AN: One of the tags for this in my notes document is “Amnesia”, so I’m delighted to say that WWX and LWJ will not immediately be working out that LWJ is actually a real person who was cursed.
Also...
Wei Wuxian: “So, I was dicking around in the woods, right?”
Jiang Cheng: “Fine.”
WWX: “And then I come across these signs of a fight-”
JC: “What?”
WWX: “-so I follow the trail to this cave and I go in the cave-”
JC: “Wait, hold up.”
WWX: “-and there’s this gorgeous white jade statue of this super hot guy. Sexiest statue I’ve ever seen in my life. I’m talking, like, ‘I have found my new god’ hot.”
JC: “There’s what?”
WWX: “So, I’m messing around again and I kiss the statue-”
JC: “SHUT THE FUCK UP?!”
WWX: “I know, right? So, I kiss the statue and it comes to life.”
JC: “...”
WWX: “And I gotta take responsibility, right? So, this is, uh, my former-statue friend.”
AN: LOZ Breath of the Wild Fic: we would be warm, below the storm
2k of pre-slash for crack-treated-seriously pairing Link/Beedle! Their first meeting! Pairing inspired by Beedle’s canonical lines like: “Oooooh! We meet again! We must have been married in our past lives!”
Never posted to tumblr or AO3 before; fic under the cut.
-cut-
~
we would be warm, below the storm
~
Beedle was outside by the cooking fire when the traveller came lurching down the road.
Dueling Peaks Stable was usually peaceful, even late at night, and Beedle was often happy to leave the matter of a watch to the local stable-masters and their stable-hands. Bears, boars, and foxes usually steered clear and were easily scared off. Sometimes, the local Bokoblins came creeping out from the Ash Swamp to steal horses and food, or the Lizalfos came crawling out of Squabble River to do the same, but Tasseren and Rensa were always alert! Always ready!
Except, er, except for tonight, apparently.
Beedle glanced around and startled to see Tasseren had fallen asleep at the front desk! Snoring into the wood like it was a cucco-feather pillow! And Rensa, who was supposed to be patrolling with his bow, had wandered off somewhere! Everyone else was inside - little Darton and Shibo, Domidak and Prissen, Hino, Agus, and Mezer - all snoring away helplessly!
The traveller lurched closer. They weren’t a tall figure, thank goodness! They were quite short, really, and they didn’t have Bokoblin ears or a Lizalfos tail. But Beedle could make out the shape of a large, spiky club in one hand and a spiky wooden shield in the other.
Alarming! Very alarming!
Beedle looked towards his last hope: the Dueling Peaks Stable guard dog.
Asleep! With its cute pink tongue lolling out and its belly to the sky!
Nooooo!
Beedle had weapons of his own - for show, mostly, and for hitting together to make loud noises - but he’d left them inside with his special beetle-backpack!
The only thing he could do now was scream at the top of his lungs and bring everyone else running. Unfortunately, people very much didn’t appreciate it if Beedle screamed at the top of his lungs in the middle of the night - he was very, very loud when he wanted to be, and quite proud of that - if there was not a real threat. It almost always ended in the other stable residents giving him the evil eye until he valiantly trooped off down the road again, no matter how much he grovelled and sobbed in apology for trying to save their sleepy lives!
Beedle eyed the new traveller suspiciously.
They were a Hylian - Beedle could see their pointed ears! A Hylian who looked like they’d tumbled down a mountain and then fished themself out of a river, actually! They were wearing beaten brown boots, worn trousers, and a fraying thick blue tunic, with a bow and quiver slung over their back; on top of the spiky club and shield they were dragging along. Had they gotten all those big weapons off a Bokoblin? It sure looked like they’d been wrestling with one recently!
They had pale skin and a nasty black eye. They were smeared with mud and dirt, maybe a bit of blood. They even had a twig in their chin-length blonde hair, which was cut unevenly, drying unevenly, and coming loose from a tie.
The traveller squelched to a stop in front of Beedle’s fire.
Beedle peered at them.
They didn’t look like a member of the Yiga tribe.
Of course, most wandering members of the Yiga tribe didn’t look like members of the Yiga tribe at first! But in Beedle’s wide, varied, and unfortunate experience, Yiga tended to have a sharp, smug look about them even when they were in disguise! Always like they knew something that you didn’t know! And they only acted pitiful enough to draw you close into a nasty trap! It was all made-up! Overdone! Liars and cheats and bad actors, the lot of them!
This new traveller did look pitiful, but in a sad, dirty, tired way. Very dirty and tired.
They gestured towards the ground in front of Beedle’s cooking fire.
“Ohh!” Beedle said. “Come on down!”
Yiga almost never come near the stables, anyway, Beedle decided, as the traveller sat down with a grateful thump. Yiga attacked before and after settlements, sometimes! But usually in deserted areas where they could get people all alone! They were all cowards! This bedraggled Hylian was obviously just some poor traveller who’d gotten into a lot of trouble on the road - maybe they were a first-timer - and they clearly needed some kindness and hospitality from a fellow, more experienced wanderer!
“Hey, I don’t believe I’ve made your acquaintance!” Beedle said, beaming with welcome towards his junior. “I go all around Hyrule! I know nearly all the other long-time travellers on the roads, especially the merchants - It’s important to know all the competition, eheheh!”
“...Link,” the traveller said quietly.
“The name’s Beedle! But you can call me - actually, let’s just stick with Beedle!”
The traveller stared at him - their eyes were very blue, very piercing - and they nodded. Beedle really wondered if he could get them to call him Senior Beedle or Master Merchant Beedle, but ahh~! He could never keep up with that sort of formality, even if it would be a little funny!
“Have you ever been to Dueling Peaks Stable before?” Beedle asked.
The traveller shook his head.
“Ahh, welcome, then! This is a good one! You’ll want to talk to Tasseren at the front desk there for a bath and a bed, eheh, if you’re willing to go wake him up,” Beedle explained, sharing his hard-earned wisdom, feeling very generous about this whole midnight encounter now.
The traveller nodded again, then signed something.
“Ohh… sorry,” Beedle said, slumping. “I’m not very good at sign language!”
The traveller shrugged off Beedle’s apology and repeated himself aloud. “Can I buy food?”
“Tasseren and Rensa will make a little extra at mealtimes for extra rupees!” Beedle said. “But the cooking pot is free to use for anyone, even if you don’t buy a bed for the night, and anyone’s allowed to sleep by the fire for free too. Bad luck to turn a traveller away, you know, even if their pockets are empty! Hyrule Town may have fallen down, but Hylian hospitality hasn’t lost its home, as my granny used to say! Eheheh!”
The traveller’s face scrunched up, brows furrowing, before they winced. Oh, that black eye really looked very nasty! A good, hearty stew would fix that right up for them.
“Here,” Beedle decided benevolently, ladling some of his special late-night dinner into his bowl, before handing it over to the traveller. “From a kind senior wanderer to his hungry junior! It’s not good to travel or go to sleep on an empty stomach!”
The traveller reached for their hip first.
“Oh, no, no, no!” Beedle pushed the bowl farther onto them. “No charge! No charge! Don’t expect such generosity all the time, mind you; I have a business to run, you know! But I can’t let a potential future customer go hungry. Eheh, maybe you can treat your kind senior to a meal in return sometime! Or two! Eheheh, I’m kidding! No interest! No hidden fees!”
Warily, the traveller accepted Beedle’s food.
“Thank you,” they said. At the same time, they placed their flat hand to their chin, fingers just under their lips, and then moved it forwards and slightly down towards Beedle.
“You’re welcome!” Beedle said happily.
The traveller took the spoon from the bowl and started eating. Beedle’s spare bowl and spoon were in his beetle-backpack, but he was too amazed to stand up and get them. He’d never seen anyone eat so ravenously before! Had this poor junior been starving for days? Had they been raised by Bokoblins? Were they even tasting any of Beedle’s delicious hearty stew?
Oh, wow! Done already? Beedle didn’t know whether to be complimented or insulted!
“Ahh, have all of it! I’m not hungry anyway!” Beedle decided, ladling the rest of his hearty stew into his starving junior’s bowl. He’d eat one of the apples in his backpack, instead; snacking on heavy meals so late at night wasn’t good for him anyway! And he’d sort of lost his appetite watching this wild traveller eat like an animal!
The traveller shook their head, raising their hands in protest, but they still had a hungry gleam to their eye that couldn’t escape Beedle’s sharp observational skills. When Beedle waved the refilled bowl under their nose, a stricken expression crossed their muddy face, but they still didn’t take the bowl back for a second round and only lifted their bruised chin
“Eheh, let’s make a deal,” Beedle said shrewdly.
The traveller considered him warily.
“You finish all my extra stew for me, then you have to take a look at my special wares in the morning! Hmm? I stock many special bugs and must-have items for travellers, and I always charge a fair price, or my name’s not Beedle! I also buy all sorts of things, if you’re in need of rupees! For a fair price, too~!”
The traveller reached again for their hip, but Beedle shoved the bowl onto them instead, and they had to accept the meal or be drenched in stew.
Beedle sat back triumphantly. Truly, he was a generous fellow! And a shrewd businessman hooking his customers in with kindness that cost him nearly nothing! Honestly, he didn’t really expect this junior to buy anything from him in the morning. In the future, maybe! But Beedle couldn’t see any sort of coin purse on their hip right now! No pack with any goods to trade! They only had their Bokoblin weapons and a funny black box-thing, with red, blue, and orange lights, but Beedle decided this was an investment.
The traveller stared down at the gift, then finally looked up and smiled at him.
Ohh~! Beedle thought, stunned. What a lovely smile! What a gentle, humble smile!
His junior in travelling would do very well as a merchant, if they smiled at everyone they met like that! So charming! Even with a black eye! Even with such a soft voice! Even all dirty! There’d be no competing against a face and a smile like that!
“Thank you,” the traveller repeated.
“Ahh, your beautiful smile is payment enough!” Beedle promised them, grinning back.
The traveller stared at him, then slowly flushed, their bright blue eyes skittering away in embarrassment. Even with only the crackling light of the fire, Beedle could see their ears - also lovely, if a little dirty - turning pink! How cute! This poor junior traveller must have been on the road for weeks without simple kindness or good hospitality to be so flustered by only a little of Beedle’s famous mercantile charm!
Beedle heard a loud snort - two loud snorts, one right after the other - and looked around to see that Tasseren at the front desk had woken up and his brother Rensa’s patrol had brought him back next to him. They were both staring at Beedle and the newcomer, rather shamelessly! How rude! Where had they been when Beedle had needed them most?
After slurping up the rest of the stew, the traveller insisted on cleaning Beedle’s bowl, spoon, and the cooking pot, and the fire. Beedle was so tired that he let them, returning to his beetle-backpack with a mighty yawn. Ahh, he was sure to be extra sleepy in the morning after following the late-night whims of his still-unsatisfied stomach! What a bad habit!
Beedle flopped onto his bedroll and fell asleep almost instantly.
~
TBC
~
AN: When will Beedle stop his heinous flirting and stop playing with Link’s heart??? “Whaaa? You came to see me again? That makes Beedle SO HAPPY! But don’t get the wrong idea now — Beedle’s heart belongs to Hyrule.” Stop playing games, Beedle!!!
A plot / framework for a potential Dimension Travel Insert story.
Alright, so, awhile back I was having a conversation with a friend about Dimension Travel fiction, born from a conversation about Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System and Transmigration as it appears in that webnovel. I personally have not read SVSSS, but I didn’t really care about spoilers, so we had a good time talking about a potential thriller/horror fic plot that would take advantage of the video game aspects and the fictional world reality angles.
So while this is heavily inspired by SVSSS, it is not specifically for SVSSS, but rather any fandom in which a Dimension Travel Insert would be fun. It could also be used for an original story, if that’s the way I felt inclined. It is inspired by SVSSS and the Transmigration genre, the Matrix Trilogy (I’ve only seen the first movie), Isekai anime and manga, OC-insert fanfiction (a modern OC is inserted into a fantasy world, also known as self-insert fanfiction), and video games and game mechanics in general.
4k-5k primer. Fic framework under the cut.
-cut-
FURTHER DISCLAIMERS
You may not agree with this interpretation of Transmigration. You don’t have to agree. This is a framework for fanfiction projects for fun.
I will freely admit that I’m more familiar with DT Insert fanfiction than Transmigration and its genre conventions; I’m also under the impression that they’re similar concepts with different executions. And yes, I know that SVSSS itself is a somewhat unconventional take on Transmigration.
I know that lots of explanations for Transmigration exist already. The hows and whys of Dimension Travel depend on what story the creator wants to tell!
I also know that sometimes the hows and whys don’t actually matter to the story; it’s about the characters and their relationships in this situation, rather than how this situation came to happen in the first place. If it makes you happier not to think about the reality-bending aspects of these stories, by all means, don’t.
In fact, I believe that unless it’s actually relevant to the story, the hows and whys can be distracting and maybe it’s better that they go unexplored! It really, really depends on the story and what the author wants to accomplish.
THE USUAL SUSPECTS EXPLANATIONS
This plot came out of asking, “But why is this fictional world a real place?”
And believe me, I’ve seen plenty of explanations for this. Lots of DT Insert Fanfiction that I’ve seen tends to go “the Fictional World is a Real Place and has Always Been a Real Place”. The author who wrote the fictional version in our world was unknowingly having visions. Or the video game creators were working on the ineffable agenda of an Unknowable Higher Power.
I’ve seen this used for Dragon Age, LOTR, and Harry Potter fanfiction. Probably other fandoms too, but they’re not coming immediately to mind.
And it’s a good explanation! Again, sometimes the hows and whys of how the character got there don’t really matter! It’s like how the hows and whys of time travel fanfiction often don’t really matter! The author just wants to write self-indulgent character-centric fix-it! That’s cool!
But this time, I wanted to go the other direction: “The Fictional World is a Dubiously Real Place and has NOT Always Been a Real Place.”
I also wanted to delve into the issue of: “ARE THE PEOPLE REAL?” Because every time I’ve seen anything imply in passing that the people of this world were spontaneously created, I’ve found it somewhat distressing. “How are the characters NOT having a Matrix-style freak-out doubting their ability to perceive reality?” I demand, knowing that the story is not that deep.
Transmigration Systems, when my friend told me about them, fascinated me, especially the Artificial Intelligence take on them. 1) It gives the vibe that these things were created for a Higher Purpose. 2) It puts some limits on the Canon Divergence that stories like OC-insert fanfiction are generally known for. 3) It really opens up the potential video game mechanics.
I’ve seen explanations in which the Transmigration, Isekai, or DT Insert fanfiction is happening for the amusement or agenda of Unknowable Higher Powers. But the amusement angle gets my back up and squicks me a little, because then everything just seems unnecessarily cruel. The agenda angle makes me ask, “Okay, but what’s the agenda?” The characters might be left hanging indefinitely thanks to the whims of Unknowable Higher Powers, which is kind of stressful to me, or even with no reward for their suffering and effort.
The idea that the Dimension Travel might be happening to teach the main character a lesson of some kind also... squicks me a little. Like, yes, I believe a good author can pull anything off. But my gut reaction when my friend started talking me through some of these concepts was, “I don’t know if I’m a fan of the idea of people going through what could be considered psychological torture and having their autonomy compromised, even if they were an asshole.”
I mean, sometimes it works! Sometimes it works for me and I like it! Depends on the story! But sometimes it squicks me too. Sometimes I find it difficult to ignore the horror/thriller aspects of DT to fictional worlds. I mean, there’s so much potential there for some messed-up stuff.
Okay, on to the plot!
THE PLOT / THE BEHIND-THE-SCENES PLOT
The original world of the insert characters is World Zero. This is our world. It is, if not the central reality, then an extremely well-established and stable reality.
World Zero is run by the Main System, an Unknowable Higher Power which keeps reality stable, oversees the reincarnation process, and protects the world and the souls within it from foreign and internal threats. The Main System controls all local World Zero Systems, which help it do its job, and dispatches Support Systems to other worlds within the same network.
The problem (the villain of this story) is a foreign or internal threat. If it’s a foreign threat, it can be something called a World-Dreaming Parasite or a Parasite System. If it’s an internal threat, it can be something called a Rogue System or a Malfunctioning System.
It doesn’t really matter what it’s called and where it came from, tbh.
The problem is that the Parasite System attaches itself to World Zero and siphons souls off from the Main Reincarnation Cycle. The Main System attempts to eliminate all Parasites or Malfunctioning Systems immediately, but sometimes they slip through the cracks, successfully and secretly connect, and start to grow and feed off World Zero.
The Parasite will keep its stolen souls in a False World, also called a Parasite World, an unstable pocket dimension. Reality is... insecure at best here.
The stolen souls reincarnate into the False World and are termed Captured Player Characters. These are called CPCs. All CPCs are real people who have inserted into an unstable reality. This is... not a good situation.
Because Parasites aren’t particularly clever or creative, and have a limited ability to understand and interact with the CPCs, it will use a popular fictitious world from World Zero as its basis for reality. It will actually specifically target souls who have spent a lot of time engaging with this fictitious reality.
In the case of SVSSS, the Parasite will have chosen an infamously terrible webnovel. Parasites are... not smart. Parasites will not take into account whether or not a fictitious world is well-constructed or the story is well-written. If the story and world is completely incapable of holding together - it cannot support a believable reality at all - the structure of the False World will basically implode and the Parasite may start over with a different fictitious world.
Because CPCs (Captured Player Characters) are readers and fans who have already spent a lot of their time and energy engaging with this fictitious reality, before the Parasite realized it into a False World, it’s easier for the Parasite to maintain the world and keep the CPCs Dormant.
Dormant CPCs’ subconscious souls are led to believe that this new reality is only an afterlife dream of sorts, and the CPCs unconsciously help stabilize and build this growing False World while drifting through the motions of their lives and following the Canon Plot. It’s like they’re dreaming, not really awake and not really in full control of their actions. They do not remember their past lives.
Souls help stabilize worlds and have a limited ability to influence reality.
CPCs would be most of the Named Characters in the Canon Plot, as well as unnamed characters who have a role in the story. They do not know that they have reincarnated into a False World (especially in certain cases). CPCs have 4 states: Dormant, Active, Awake, and Broken. (There are actually 5, but we’ll get to the fifth one later.)
Dormant, again, means that they just drift through a dream-like existence, and that the Parasite System and its Local False World Systems can exert some control over them. They have limited responsiveness.
Active CPCs have been “woken up” to a certain degree. They’re fully conscious and autonomous people, who can act and respond like people. Though they may feel compelled to follow the Canon Plot, the Parasite System and its Local False World Systems don’t really have control over them anymore.
Awake CPCs have been “woken up” to a dangerous degree. They are also Active, but have seen through the underpopulated, unrealistic, and unstable state of the False World. They’ve realized that there is something very wrong with reality and have become a danger to the Parasite System.
Broken CPCs are another step past Awake and Active. They may have engaged with a part of the unstable reality and had their “code” broken. They may be fractured physically or mentally in some fashion. They may even be engaging with the Behind-the-Scenes of the False World, attacking all world occupants, the Parasite and its Local False World Systems, and most likely making reality even more unstable.
Think... the Rat Man from the Portal series, who has broken through the walls of the Aperture Science test chambers and is now messing with things behind the walls. Broken CPCs have almost completely broken free of the False World. Now they’re running around in the walls, tearing down wires.
Awake and Broken CPCs also have a chance of remembering their past lives, or at least their most recent past life. Dormant and Active CPCs do not remember any of their past lives.
To keep its False World stable, the Parasite basically just wants to run through the Canon Plot with Dormant CPCs on an endless loop. Story’s over? End of available material? The Parasite just runs the Canon Plot again.
If the False World goes too Off-Plot or the characters become too Out-of-Character, then Dormant CPCs might be accidentally shocked into becoming Active, Awake, or Broken.
As the Canon Plot loops, the Parasite does its best to siphon off more souls to become more CPCs, branching out beyond the Canon Characters. The False World grows larger and... overall more stable. Unfortunately, the Parasite has no systematic approach to the stabilization of the False World and doesn’t really want to spend more resources than it has to.
It does the bare minimum to keep CPCs from running into Dream-Breaking Areas and Dream Boundaries.
Dream Boundaries are the edge of the False World; It’s the point where reality just... unravels. The Parasite has not bothered creating the world beyond this point. CPCs improve reality with their presence, so they can help extend the False World, but they’re in danger of waking or breaking if they run into a point where reality is just... completely unstable.
Dream Boundaries is the term for the farthest edges of the False World, but that doesn’t mean the Parasite has stabilized everything inside the boundaries. Dream-Breaking Areas are smaller boundary pockets inside the larger boundaries. Like, while a main character’s house might be stable and fleshed-out, you could open the door to an unnamed neighbor’s house and there might be little more than a sparking, blinding void inside.
It’s like how in a video game, there are often buildings that are just set-dressing and you can’t go inside. In the False World, if you took an axe to the door of these buildings, there might be nothing inside but a mind-bending space where gravity doesn’t work. This is a Dream-Breaking Point.
The Parasite is not automatically aware of everything that happens inside of the False World, like the Main System is not automatically aware of everything that happens inside World Zero. The Parasite System has its own Local False World Systems to herd CPCs, run its Local Reincarnation System, stabilize reality (barely), run its own NPCs, and so on.
There are Filler Parasite NPCs, Watcher Parasite NPCs, and Enforcer Parasite NPCs. They’re called P-NPCs.
Filler Parasite NPCs are basically just... fake people who fill out the world and don’t really do anything. They’re not people; they’re computer programs. All they want to do is run through their action cycles indefinitely. You can stop them in the middle of their action cycle, but they’re basically just stare at you until you go away. Their heads and eyes will track you when you get close, and they blink and appear to breathe, but you can’t have real conversations with them.
They might have set phrases they might say, if you interrupt them or bump into them, like “Hey!” They might smile and say things like, “Lovely day, isn’t it?” when you walk by. Child-shaped Filler P-NPCs might declare, “Mother sent me out to do the shopping!” But if you follow them around the market, they won’t buy anything; they’ll just walk a set path around the market until it hits the “set time” for them to go home and act asleep.
If you hit them, they might hit you back, but they also might not... do anything. They might just look at you. If you try to kill, depending on how stable reality is, they might be unkillable or they might die (only to possible appear again later, no harm done). They’re very basic video game NPCs.
Watcher Parasite NPCs are a step above Filler P-NPCs. They have more voicelines, you can have limited conversations with them, and they might give out quests, and they might behave more like people, but they’re still not actual people. These are like video game NPCs with a little more work put into them; video game NPCs who might have a little quest line. You could order a drink from a Watcher P-NPCs acting as a shopkeeper and be none-the-wiser that they weren’t a real person.
They’re more dangerous than Filler P-NPCs, in that they may comment on something being noticeably Canon Divergent or Out-Of-Character, and may record it to log it with a local system. They’re designed to look for Awake or Broken CPCs, as well as to keep CPCs away from Dream-Breaking Areas of the False World, but thankfully they’re generally not very good at it.
Enforcer Parasite NPCs are the most dangerous and advanced P-NPCs, designed to eliminate Awake or Broken CPCs (who will be returned to the Local Reincarnation System), as well as threats to the Parasite, its local systems, and the False World. They will enforce the Canon Plot. They are more likely to be close to a point where they can communicate with local systems, alerting the local systems and potentially even the Parasite itself to a threat.
Enforcers can update the programming of Watcher and Filler P-NPCs with a touch, and can create mobs or manhunts if needed to turn against a dangerous CPC (or a Transmigrator).
The Parasite needs to create NPCs to interact with the False World; as reality becomes more stable and more CPC occupants are gained, the Parasite has less ability to just... meddle directly with reality. While P-NPCs are out in the False World, they are not directly connected to the local systems, and so can be intercepted and destroyed before they set off an alarm.
If a CPC playing the role of an important character becomes Awake or Broken, and needs to be eliminated for this loop, they will be replaced by a new Dormant CPC (if the P-NPCs can recover the body) or a Parasite NPC. So, some Named Characters could actually be P-NPCs.
Parasite System Points are basically save points and log points for P-NPCs. They are where P-NPCs get their updates and update local systems. They will usually blend well into the False World, but are often not difficult to determine. These are protected, immovable points, and all P-NPCs and Dormant CPCs will behave oddly around these points.
All Parasite systems and P-NPCs can malfunction or go rogue. They get bad updates or programming that doesn’t make sense. They can be corrupted by Dream-Breaking Areas. It is generally not good at all for anyone when this happens.
If a Parasite and False World has become too large by the time that the Main System and Local World Zero Systems are alerted to the issue, the Parasite can’t be eliminated without potentially harming all the Captured Player Characters trapped into the new reality. In this case, the Main System dispatches a Support System to invade the False World.
It’s the job of the Support System to 1) stabilize reality completely by literally building the world and fixing all dream-breaking points, 2) stabilize reality by fixing plot holes and inconsistent world-building, 3) turn the Dormant CPCs to Active CPCs, to break the Parasite’s hold over them and to have the CPCs unknowingly help stabilize the world, and 4) eliminate all Parasite NPCs and cut off the power of Local False World Systems.
Unfortunately, the Support System has to do this without alerting the Parasite or its local systems. Local False World Systems will dispatch more Enforcer P-NPCs to fix “the infection”. If the Parasite gets too spooked, noticing too many Active, Awake, or Broken CPCs, Transmigrators, Foreign World Zero Systems, it might Abandon the False World.
If the False World is abandoned before it has been sufficiently stabilized, then it will implode or start to break down. In the case of a World Breakdown, the Support System will be forced to save as many CPCs as it can, but some will be inevitably lost or destroyed, so the Canon Plot must be followed until the Support System is ready to hit the Breaking Point.
Breaking Point is the point where the Parasite can be safely destroyed because the False World can now survive on its own. The False World will become a New World Plus, a new stable reality that can be safely attached to World Zero (part of the network) and the Main System properly. It will be a real world full of real people in which the Canon Plot no longer has to be followed, and can happily go into Post-Canon and keep going. No more loops.
The Support System will not begin purposefully activating CPCs until the False World is more stable. For the first few loops of the Support System’s arrival, it will begin patching the Dream-Breaking Areas and creating safer Worldbuilding Barriers, which will keep the CPCs out until more world can be generated.
Think of the boundaries in video games where you just... can’t go any farther, like there’s an invisible wall there. Yeah, it’s suspicious and has a chance of activating or awakening CPCs, but at least they won’t get broken by an unstable patch of reality. In a magical world, they’re more likely to suspect magic than an invisible ongoing battle between two Systems over their world.
As the world becomes more stable, CPCs may activate on their own. They will begin forming explanations for plot holes and creating a more believable culture and logical social systems for their world, living full lives and interacting fully with the world and its mechanics. CPCs will go, “Hang on, why can’t I use X for Y? X would be very helpful for Y!” If making the basic physics of the False World make sense is “larger picture worldbuilding”, then the CPCs help with “detail worldbuilding”. The Support System will use universe-alteration tools to help create a more functional world, with consistent laws.
Yes, the consistent laws might incorporate absurd magical devices, but as long as they’re functional, the Support System will happily help create a Functional Fantasy World full of Ridiculous Nonsense that works on “Because Magic” Laws. (In the case of SVSSS’s absurd erotica plot devices, this means that a culture actually springs up based on these ridiculous things being a part of daily life. People come up with practical ways to deal with them and appropriate rituals and traditions, and so on and so forth. C’est la vie!)
As long as the change is slow, over the course of multiple Canon Plot loops, as the Support System chips away at the Parasite’s power and control, the Parasite won’t notice. As long as the Major Plot Points of the Canon Plot still happen, according to the Local False World Systems, the Parasite won’t panic and Abandon World. As the loops go on, the Support System is actually secretly changing the Local False World Systems’ understanding of the Canon Plot, as the Local False World Systems’ power and control fails.
P-NPCs may also become slightly more realistic as the world becomes more stable, with the Support System and CPCs exerting a new reality. They also have a higher chance of malfunctioning or going rogue.
The Support System has its own Support System Assistants and Support NPCs to fill out the world. The Support System’s systems may take the form of people, creatures, or spirits to move through the False World. Support NPCs basically just take the place of Filler and Watcher P-NPCs, and provide the same function and services, but develop as the False World develops.
All lower/minor systems communicate with the Support System through Support System Points placed throughout the False World. Systems do not update automatically. They can also be updated through contact with other friendly systems and through Support NPCs who are carrying updates. (Yes, Support System systems and S-NPCs can also malfunction or go rogue.)
Worldbuilding Systems are assistant systems that work to patch reality and fill out reality, based on the development of the CPCs and the False World. They may commonly take the form of construction workers (working on Dream-Breaking Areas) or academics/scholars (working on inconsistent world elements), when they’re pretending to be people, but WB Systems can take any form.
Anti-Parasite Systems are assistant systems that are dedicated to destroying Parasite NPCs, interfering with P-NPCs, destroying Parasite System Points, and generally interfering with Local False World Systems. AP Systems will also help enforce the Canon Plot.
Transmigration Systems are... another case.
As another reincarnating soul is siphoned into the False World (targeted for the time they’d already spent engaging with this fictitious reality), the Support System might tag them with a Transmigration System, creating the 5th state for a CPC: a Transmigration System Host, also known as a Transmigrator. (Though, in this plot, all CPCs are technically transmigrators.)
Transmigrators are CPCs who have been enlisted by the Support System to help its cause. The Transmigration System will... generally not tell their host that this world is at risk of imploding and reality is unstable, unless it truly becomes necessary, because a lot of people generally... don’t react well. Transmigrators are generally employed by the Support System late into its process, anyway, when the False World is already relatively close to the Breaking Point.
The Support System does not want CPCs to become Awake or Broken (realize that this is a False World created out of a Fictional World, remember their past lives, et cetera), because it’s... it’s not good for people. It’s upsetting. Most people just don’t react well. Ideally, the Support System does its job and the CPCs never know that this world was recently unstable or ever fictional.
The Support System has to activate CPCs to break the Parasite and Local False World Systems’ (the Parasite’s lower systems) control. Unfortunately Active CPCs often don’t want to follow the Canon Plot.
Active CPCs in character roles especially will be like, “Wait, why am I doing this? This isn’t a reasonable thing to do!” Villain CPCs will be like, “Wait, this plan is really stupid! Why don’t I just kill the hero protagonist on the spot?” Sidekick CPCs will be like, “Wait, this isn’t fulfilling for me! I’m going to ditch the hero protagonist and pursue my own development!” The CPCs have never been more in danger of waking or breaking!
Late-stage loops, in which the Support System is close to winning, is where all the characters can get really uncooperative. Thankfully, the Support System has usually chipped down the Canon Plot to bare minimum Major Plot Points by now, but still! CPCs! Behave yourselves for just one more loop or less so the Support System can save your lives! Don’t follow the white rabbit!
Transmigrators are tasked with keeping the Canon Plot on track. In late-stage loops, they just have to hit the bare minimum Major Plot Points. The Transmigration System they’re hosting will usually hit them with an Out-Of-Character function at first to test whether or not they can be trusted to follow the Canon Plot and make safe, believably developed Canon Divergences.
The priority for the Transmigration System is keeping the Transmigrator from being discovered, keeping to the Canon Plot, and keeping reality stable. It may not be nice about this.
If the Transmigrators can’t do the job, the Transmigration System will bring them back to a Support System Point, replace their character with someone else, and basically just hold on to them until they can be safely returned to the World Zero Main Reincarnation System. All Transmigrators are given the default of returning to their world of origin, especially if they fail to integrate properly and are labelled “incompatible” with this world/reality.
Transmigrators who succeed in reaching Breaking Point are given the option of returning to World Zero (having done the Main System a favor) or of staying in the New World Plus.
When the False World hits Breaking Point, it will probably be noticeable when the Parasite is killed by the Support System. I’m thinking that at the very least there will be a minor earthquake. You could go full-on “the sky turns weird colors, the ground quakes, et cetera” if you wanted.
WHY HAVE THIS FRAMEWORK?
I like video games and it was a fun worldbuilding conversation. There’s not really a deeper reason at the core of it than that.
We thought this setup was cool, because then you could really delve into the horror of which characters are A) CPCs, who are real people also trapped in a False World, B) Parasite NPCs and very dangerous, and C) Support NPCs and systems, who are maybe helpful.
You could also have a lot of fun with Transmigrator quests to fix plot holes and inconsistent worldbuilding, reality glitches, and other video game mechanics. A Parasite System at war with a Support System! The Support System and its offshoot WB and AP systems sneakily trying to incorporate updates to the world and the characters! Because I personally would set up the plot to have the Transmigrator figure out or be told about what’s happening here.
It’s also basically a chance for an author to come up with all their dream universe alterations, and enact worldbuilding and characterization fix-its on their world of choice. We will take the hammer and fix the canon! We will make a functional world and characters if it’s the last thing we do!
You could also have the CPCs being told about all of this, and dealing with the fact that while their world is real, their lives have been at the mercy of a Canon Plot that has now been viciously dismantled. And the CPCs generally noticing that the Transmigrators are sort of weird, actually, while the Transmigrators desperately try to keep the Dormant and Active CPCs from realizing that reality is sort of unstable and currently being fixed! Don’t look too closely! Reality is just... uh... under construction!
In the case of SVSSS, you have the fun of actual people trying to make a functional world and reasonable culture out of a Cracky and Terrible Fantasy Erotic Novel base. Active CPCs may be constantly stopping to think, “Why is my life like this? This is stupid!” Not realizing that if they have a Matrix breakthrough, they may be hunted down, forced into the Local Reincarnation Cycle, and replaced by a Parasite NPC.
Other fun and horrifying things that could happen here:
- A Transmigrator experiments with selling random garbage off the street to a shopkeeper NPC, delighted and horrified to realize that the shopkeeper will buy anything from them. The Transmigrator eventually realizes that, “No, wait, me driving you to bankruptcy by selling you dirt is very sad. Here is all your gold back. I am going to go feel like a terrible person for a while.”
- A Transmigrator trying to order food, not realizing at first that the waitress is a Filler P-NPC who is literally incapable of taking their order or bringing them food. Transmigrator: “This is depressing??? System, tell me whether or not I’m talking to a real person! I want food!”
(The Transmigration System does not always know who is real and who is not. The world is constantly being updated and changed by the Support System and Local False World Systems, so the Transmigration might not have correct information. It needs to check-in to Support System Points and with other systems for updates.)
- An Active CPC who straight-up didn’t realize they were surrounded by Filler P-NPCs, Watcher P-NPCs, and Dormant CPCs because they were either so self-centered or egotistical that they thought it was reasonable for everyone else to act like this. Of course peasants don’t have rich inner lives! Everyone else is just an idiot! I’m the only person in the world who has depths!
(Transmigrator: “Holy shit.”)
- Likewise, a CPC who never realized they were surrounded by Filler P-NPCs, Watcher P-NPCs, and Dormant CPCs because they were just that anti-social.
(Transmigrator: “Okay, but mood, dude.”)
- If the author is a transmigrator, then they have to deal with all the stupid bullshit that they wrote being completely real now. They have to deal with all the people inhabiting their characters going, “But this is stupid, though.”
(Author: “I didn’t know some reality-bending parasite was going to make my fantasy erotica porn-without-plot crack webnovel for money into a real world and force people to live through the shitty lives of my shitty characters! I didn’t think too hard about the worldbuilding! SO SUE ME!”)
- A New Plus World could be combined with another compatible world in the World Zero Network, if you wanted to write a stealth crossover or fusion. This will require the world to pause and go through an enormous World Update. Maybe this helps the overall stability of worlds? Who knows!
- If the fictional story the Parasite has chosen to base its False World on is full of super-intelligent, over-powered characters who are very observant or even have the power to bend reality to their will, then... well... that’s not a good combination for the Parasite or the Support System. That's a problem! The CPCs are basically destined to notice that something is wrong with the world, and the situation can very quickly get out of control. Parasites are not smart.
(Support System vague-ing @ the Parasite: “OF ALL THE WORLDS YOU HAD TO CHOOSE! It just had to be the one where everyone had reality-bending magical powers, huh?! Because that’s just GREAT for a stable reality! THANK YOU FOR MAKING MY JOB THAT MUCH HARDER!”)
Okay, I’m playing up the humor of it, but that’s probably because I would be incapable of writing horror/thriller without a lot of humor too. You could absolutely use this framework to make a very horrifying, very depressing story, if that’s what you wanted to do. Transmigration sounds like it has the potential to be extremely lonely, if you don’t know who around you is real (if anyone around you is real) and who around you is trustworthy.
For the SVSSS fans, in that particular case, I think if could be fun if the Transmigrator main character was replacing a Broken CPC. Then the Broken CPC could still be out there in the False World somewhere, or “in the walls” of the False World, or in the Local Reincarnation System, and could return at any point in the story. You know, for the drama. The Transmigrator replaced someone else, and they know everything and they’re not happy about it!
I have thought about this far too much for something I will probably not write. I had fun, though. I hope everything makes sense!
AN: Avatar: The Last Airbender Fic: fire under the earth
6k beginning to an ATLA Canon Divergence fic, which diverges at the Book 2 episode “The Drill”. Borrows some episode dialogue to better practice ATLA character voices; tentatively from Sokka’s POV; and altogether very much a first draft and mostly set-up so far.
Never posted to tumblr or AO3 before; fic under the cut.
-cut-
~
fire under the earth
Chapter One: The Drill
~
Aang and Toph carried them up Ba Sing Se’s Outer Wall as smoothly as they could, hands slamming into the wall’s earth one after the other to pull them higher and higher. Their elevating platform shook nonstop, but it stayed steady enough. Sokka chanced a look over the edge of their elevating platform, but they were leaving the ground farther and farther behind them very quickly, and Katara yanked him back with a warning look.
They hadn’t seen a structure like this since the Western and Northern Air Temples, which had been a lot of different buildings, different pavilions, and different constructions, nestled in great spirals around the tall peaks. The great fortress of the Northern Water Tribe had sometimes seemed like it had all been carved away from one great glacier, but the ice had at least been raised and brought down again by tools and techniques they were familiar with.
The Outer Wall of Ba Sing Se was amazingly tall, almost frighteningly tall, and it stretched out into the horizon seemingly without end - almost like an artificial mountain range raised out of the desert. One had to ask: where had the earth for it come from? It must have taken an army of earthbenders working for years, decades even, to raise and secure a wall like this. Generations of earthbenders, maybe. Even Toph, who was the most casually powerful earthbender they’d met, besides maybe Aang’s mad friend Bumi, would have needed years upon years to pull off a construction like this, if the radius of Ba Sing Se on their maps was anything close to correct.
Either that or it had been an Avatar, Sokka supposed.
They reached the top of the Outer Wall eventually, dizzied by the height of it, their legs feeling a little like jelly from the platform’s shaking. Ying stumbled stepping off, while carrying baby Hope, but fortunately Than and his sister, Dung, caught her before she could fall. Ying’s stumble distracted them all from looking around the top of the Outer Wall, and they were surrounded by a half-circle of hostile Earth Kingdom soldiers before they knew it.
“Identify yourselves,” the one at the centre demanded. “Civilians aren’t permitted on the wall.”
Aang stepped forward fearlessly. “I’m the Avatar. Take me to whoever’s in charge.”
The Earth Kingdom soldiers didn’t move. Some of them looked surprised, even uncertain, but they didn’t stand down. The soldier who had spoken, the commander, finally said, “Remain where you are. The general has been notified of your presence.”
There was nothing really to do but wait. Aang stood where he was, staff at hand, chin held high, exuding enough patience and dignity for someone twice his age. Very Avatar-like. Sokka eyed the Earth Kingdom soldiers, noticing his sister doing the same, and decided that they could probably take them. Toph, who appeared completely relaxed, if unimpressed with the hold-up, could probably take them all on single-handedly.
Than and Ying’s baby, unfortunately, started to cry. Ying tried desperately to soothe her.
Momo, apparently oblivious to the tension, leaped off Aang’s shoulder and started scratching his ear with his foot. The Earth Kingdom soldiers eyed the flying lemur like they weren’t sure what Momo was or whether or not they should attack him for moving.
There wasn’t much at the top of Ba Sing Se’s wall besides the half-circle of Earth Kingdom soldiers surrounding them, and more along the stretch of wall watching them. There were green roofs at the top of the far towers on either side of them, offering shade to even more Earth Kingdom soldiers, and what looked like stairs down into the towers. From one of these staircases appeared a man, escorted by two Earth Kingdom soldiers, who walked slowly and stiffly towards them.
Despite the wooden cane in one hand, the man wasn’t old, probably twenty-something, thirty at most, and his black hair was tied up neatly. He was short, probably of a height with Sokka or an inch shorter, and he was broad, thick around the middle, with a strong jaw and a wide, pale face. He wore the glasses and green robes of an Earth Kingdom military administrator, rather than the armor of its soldiers, but it looked like his large nose had been broken before.
The half-circle of Earth Kingdom soldiers parted for him.
Aang bowed. “General, I am Avatar Aang. I-”
“-am not the general,” the man said, smiling pleasantly. “I am Secretary Yu, an assistant to General Sung, the Protector of the Western Wall.”
“Secretary Yu,” Aang corrected, coming out of his bow. “I must see the general at once.”
“I will take you to the general - it will be his honor to welcome the young Avatar to Ba Sing Se - but first I must have proof that you are who you say you are,” Secretary Yu said apologetically, still smiling pleasantly. “And not, for example, agents of the Fire Nation.”
“Did you miss the part where we earthbent our way up here?” Sokka demanded, over the baby’s sniffles and Ying’s soft shushing.
“I did not,” Secretary Yu assured him. “However, the Fire Nation has employed earthbenders to act as or to assist their spies before. One can never be too certain of whose loyalties may lie with the Fire Nation. I am afraid that not all individuals are as honorable as those of the Southern Water Tribe, young master…?”
“Sokka,” he replied, narrow-eyed at the flattery. “Well, go on, Aang.”
“...Stand back,” Aang said.
The Earth Kingdom soldiers didn’t move, but Secretary Yu took a polite, stiff step back.
Aang handed Katara his staff, then spun about to create his “air scooter”. He hovered on that little ball of wind for a moment, before dismissing it, and he landed again with a hefty stomp, pulling up a smaller ball of earth that he caught in one fist. Aang dropped the ball of earth and, with a kick of his heel, smoothed over the small break he’d made in the wall.
“Is that enough?” Aang asked, taking his staff back from Katara.
Many of the Earth Kingdom soldiers were openly wide-eyed now. It was the sort of expression they’d come to expect from people who hadn’t seen an airbender before and had fully believed that the Avatar was a century and permanently dead.
“Two elements is quite sufficient,” Secretary Yu agreed, stepping forward again, letting his smile fade into something more solemn. He tucked his cane under one arm, put his hands together, and bowed lowly.
The Earth Kingdom soldiers finally, finally eased up their hostile positions. They all followed Secretary Yu’s example and bowed in unison, but they did so a little differently. It took Sokka a moment to realize that Secretary Yu was bowing the same way Aang did sometimes, which had seemed, until this moment, unique to Aang. Aang looked a little surprised by the gesture.
“On behalf of General Sung, the Protector of the Western Wall, it is an honor to welcome Avatar Aang and his companions to the Outer Wall of the great city of Ba Sing Se,” Secretary Yu said, still bowed. “Please accept our humble apologies and forgive our hostile greeting and suspicion, young Avatar.”
“No apologies are necessary,” Aang replied, as Momo jumped back onto his shoulder. “Please, take us to General Sung. We have urgent news about a Fire Nation attack.”
Secretary Yu straightened, taking his cane out from the crook of his arm, and the Earth Kingdom soldiers did the same around him. “If you would follow me, young Avatar, I will take you and your companions to him at once,” he said, smiling pleasantly again, before looking to the soldier beside him. “Captain Meng, thank you for your diligence, you and your men may return to your preparations.”
The Earth Kingdom soldiers dispersed with a quick salute.
Secretary Yu, still escorted by two Earth Kingdom soldiers of his own, led them back towards the tower he’d come from. Sokka assumed that the relatively young man’s stiff, slightly uneven gait was the result of an old war injury. They’d seen plenty of those all over the world.
As they reached the tower and began to descend the stairs, Than reached out to touch Sokka’s arm. “I don’t think Ying, Dung, and I should be involved in this,” he whispered.
Sokka nodded and relayed the message to Aang.
“Secretary Yu,” Aang called, as they reached a foyer.
The man stopped and turned immediately. “Yes, Avatar Aang?”
“This are our Than, Ying, Dung, and Hope,” Aang introduced, gesturing to each of them in turn. “They’re refugees of the war whose documents were stolen on their way to Ba Sing Se. We escorted them through the Serpent’s Pass. Hope was born on the way here.”
Than stepped forward to speak up for his family. “I’m afraid that we won’t be of any help to you against the Fire Nation,” he said, with an apologetic smile.
Secretary Yu nodded. “I am sorry to hear of your difficulties, Mister Than. Congratulations on the birth of your daughter. If you wish, I can arrange to have you and your family escorted to the nearest immigration center, with a letter of reference to explain your situation.”
Than and all his family members looked incredibly relieved. Except for baby Hope, of course, who was still whimpering in her mother’s arms.
“Thank you. That would be greatly appreciated, Master Yu,” Than said.
“Secretary Yu,” the man corrected gently. “However, I must bring the Avatar to General Sung at once. I shall have someone escort you to one of our waiting rooms and made comfortable until I can make the arrangements. If you will allow it, I can have one of our resident healers brought to see to your family, especially your newborn child.”
Ying nearly sobbed in relief.
“Thank you,” Than repeated again, shakily. “Thank you.”
Secretary Yu turned to one of the soldiers at his side, who listened attentively to the man’s orders, before bowing to the refugee family and asking that they follow him. Than, Ying, and Dung left offering farewells and even more gratefulness to Aang, Katara, Sokka, and Toph for everything that they’d done. Aang bid them farewell warmly, promising that they’d see each other again in Ba Sing Se.
“Thank you, Secretary Yu,” Aang said.
“The war has displaced many good people,” Secretary Yu said, with his pleasant smile. “What good are the walls of Ba Sing Se if not to keep the citizens of the Earth Kingdom safe? This way, if you please, Avatar Aang. The general awaits.”
The general’s office was a wide, bright room inside the tower, which overlooked the fields inside Ba Sing Se’s Outer Wall. Secretary Yu announced them and stepped aside, so that they could approach the large desk and the man who sat there. General Sung was a man in his fifties, dressed in fancy-looking armor and a long cape, with light brown skin, dark hair, a long and thin moustache and beard, and a heavy-lidded look which stretched into his own pleasant smile.
Aang bowed to the general. Sokka wondered if he was going to get tired of all this bowing.
“General Sung, I am Avatar Aang, and there are my companions: Sokka and Katara of the Southern Water Tribe, and Toph-”
“Just Toph.”
“-of the Earth Kingdom. We’ve come to warn you about a coming Fire Nation attack: a massive metal machine approaching your wall, which resembles a drill. As well as to offer our assistance in fending off the attack.”
“It is an honor to welcome you to the Outer Wall, young Avatar” General Sung said, smiling pleasantly through Aang’s speech. “But your help is not needed.”
“Not needed?” Aang repeated.
“Not needed,” General Sung said again, primly, and his pleasant smile turned towards openly condescending. “We are of course already aware of the Fire Nation’s latest approach and have been making preparations for some time. I have the situation under control. Secretary Yu, if you would send for seating and refreshments- ah, thank you, Yu.”
At Secretary Yu’s direction, Earth Kingdom soldiers were bringing in chairs for Avatar Aang and his companions, as well as a table for the preparation of tea. Secretary Yu settled to make tea for them all, as though there wasn’t a Fire Nation technological terror bearing down on them.
“I assure you, young Avatar, that the Fire Nation cannot penetrate this wall,” General Sung continued, standing after they had sat down to look out towards the center of Ba Sing Se. “Many have tried to break through, but none have succeeded.”
“What about the Dragon of the West?” Toph said, unimpressed, already slouching in her chair. “He got in.”
General Sung stiffened. Secretary Yu paused, but only briefly, before continuing his work.
“Er, well, uh, technically, yes,” General Sung admitted. “However, the Dragon of the West was quickly expunged.” He turned around, a finger in the air, as though to show his point.
Toph looked even less unimpressed with him. Sokka felt similarly.
“Nevertheless! That’s why the city is named Ba Sing Se. It is the impenetrable city. They don’t call it Na Sing Se!” General Sung laughed loudly at his own joke, before he explained, “That means ‘penetrable city’.”
“Yeah, thanks for the tour guide schtick,” Toph said.
“What about those Fire Nation spies you mentioned earlier?” Sokka demanded, looking towards Secretary Yu. “You said that the Fire Nation recruits earthbenders to help them break through the wall.”
General Sung’s condescending smile dropped and he looked towards Secretary Yu with a frown. Secretary Yu’s pleasant smile seemed to tighten, but held steady, as he stood with a steaming cup of tea.
“I had to be assured of the Avatar’s identity, general,” Secretary Yu explained.
“Well, if we know about them, then they aren’t very good spies, are they?” General Sung demanded indignantly. “Any Fire Nation spies who might slip through the Outer Walls through their nefarious means, I assure you, are swiftly rooted out by the Protectors of the Inner Wall and the Guardians of the Inner City! Ah, thank you, Secretary Yu.”
“Doesn’t that count as penetration?” Toph asked sweetly, as Secretary Yu picked up a tea tray and slowly came around to offer each of them refreshments.
General Sung sputtered.
“Anyway,” Toph said over him, “we still got the drill problem.”
Secretary Yu, appearing for all the world oblivious, offered Momo a small bunch of grapes in place of a cup of tea. Momo snatched the food out of the man’s hands, chittering eagerly.
“As I said, the situation is well under control,” General Sung insisted, regathering himself. “You have, in fact, arrived at a most auspicious time, young Avatar and companions. You will be fortunate enough to witness another decisive victory of Ba Sing Se’s protectors over the Fire Nation’s useless efforts to break our great wall.”
“And how are you going to do that?” Aang demanded, taking a sip of his tea, before looking at Secretary Yu in surprise. “Oh, wow, this is really good tea.”
Katara, Toph, and Sokka all took their first sip and made appreciative noises.
“Thank you, young Avatar Aang,” Secretary Yu said.
General Sung came back to his desk and sat down again, waving a hand vaguely towards his assistant. “Secretary Yu, if you would describe our process for the young Avatar,” he said, with dignity, before sitting comfortably back.
Secretary Yu bowed. “It would be my pleasure, general.” He walked over to one side of the room, where sat another, smaller desk they hadn’t really noticed, which unlike General Sung’s minimalist desk, was covered in neat but tall stacks of paper. Secretary Yu collected several large scrolls of paper from his desk before returning to the general.
“We have been aware of the Fire Nation’s drill since it began assembly at the nearest Fire Nation base, a temporary foothold captured and guarded by a significant portion of the Fire Nation Navy,” Secretary Yu explained, unrolling a map of the Earth Kingdom. “The Fire Nation manufactured the drill at another location, a more secure fortress, before importing it to our shores, as well as an army of tanks to escort it and protect it from sabotage.”
“Not that that did much for them!” General Sung chuckled, before taking another sip of tea.
Secretary Yu’s pleasant smile didn’t change. “No,” he agreed. To them, he explained, “To make a breach of the wall effective, the drill must either contain a significant number of Fire Nation soldiers or be followed by a significant number of Fire Nation soldiers to take and hold the Western Wall. General Sung’s elite earthbending team has been picking off the Fire Nation’s tanks over the entire course of their journey.”
“The Terra Team!” General Sung added.
“Huh,” Sokka said. “That’s a good group name!” He spread his arms. “The Terra Team! Very catchy!”
General Sung beamed at him. Katara swatted his shoulder without looking.
“We have significantly reduced their numbers since their journey began, a long and arduous trek through Earth Kingdom territory,” Secretary Yu went on, still smiling, tracing a line which seemed to track the drill’s path from a Fire Nation base to the Outer Wall, “and continue to do so as they approach.”
“We’ve more than decimated their numbers!” General Sung said proudly. “Reduced them to less than a tenth of their original numbers!”
“But what about the drill itself?” Katara asked.
“We have a plan for the drill too,” General Sung told her, with another condescending smile. “You’ll see!”
Secretary Yu rolled the map of the Earth Kingdom back up. “General, perhaps we could continue this discussion on the Wall itself? A demonstration of the concept may be in order before the main event.”
“Another excellent idea, Yu!” General Sung agreed, standing.
General Sung took them out of his office, up the stairs of the tower, and out onto the top of the wall again. Secretary Yu handed the scrolls off to an Earth Kingdom soldier, and made no complaint as he stiffly climbed the stairs, slowly falling behind the rest of them. General Sung didn’t seem to notice in his excitement. Katara lingered behind with Secretary Yu.
“I won’t fall, young Mistress Katara,” Secretary Yu promised her.
Katara flushed slightly.
At the top, General Sung led them across one stretch of wall to the next tower, where servants and soldiers appeared to be setting up a relaxing viewing area in the shade. A few people also in administrator robes were already lingering there. Messengers holding the reigns of ostrich-horses stood off to one side, where the beasts were drinking from a trough. Momo flew ahead to help himself to their drink and poke at the beasts curiously.
“Representatives from the other three Protectors of the Outer Wall,” General Sung explained. “Ready in case something goes wrong! Which it won’t!” He laughed loudly again.
General Sung brought them forward to a long telescope and looked through, positioning it, then gestured for someone to step forward and look. Sokka offered himself up eagerly, peering through the instrument. It was pointed towards one of the Fire Nation tanks at the edge of the Fire Nation formation headed towards the wall, the war machines travelling in a large V like birds, with the drill at the head of the flock.
“...What am I looking for?” Sokka asked.
“Just wait!” General Sung said smugly.
Sokka shrugged and went back to watching. It took about a minute, but before his eyes, he saw the earth open directly in front of and beneath the Fire Nation tank. The Fire Nation tank tumbled helplessly into a massive pit, which, after a moment, closed again as though neither it nor the tank had ever been there.
Sokka startled back from the telescope. “What… happened?”
He saw that Katara and Aang were standing at the edge of the Wall, squinting out towards the drill, also looking very surprised. Toph had her arms crossed, looking unimpressed. Sokka wondered if she could “see” what was happening from this distance, or if the massive drill was making too much “noise” for her to tell.
“The Terra Team!” General Sung announced proudly.
More helpfully, Secretary Yu explained, “Earthbending was first learned from the humble yet powerful badger-moles, who live under the earth and create great tunnel systems, and from them we have taken inspiration. Ba Sing Se has always employed a network of underground defenses. In preparation for the arrival of this drill, we have expanded upon this idea.”
Sokka looked out over what he’d thought was just an empty plain, imagining the network of tunnels and caverns that might exist beneath the surface. With earthbending, the potential for traps was endless. “Ohhhh,” he said admiringly. “Oh, oh, oh!”
“...What happens to the people inside the tanks?” Aang asked.
Secretary Yu did not answer immediately, but finally said, “They are soon retrieved by soldiers and asked to surrender to the Earth Kingdom, and become prisoners of war.”
“What if they have shovels? Or picks?” Sokka asked.
Those tanks were versatile. They’d seen it.
“We have planned our tunnel system to avoid easy escape,” Secretary Yu assured him.
General Sung slapped his assistant on the back. “Secretary Yu and his team worked day and night to assist the Terra Team in foiling the Fire Nation!” he declared. “He even insisted on practicing the strategies beforehand! With our elite earthbending team, the Fire Nation stands no chance of penetrating the Outer Wall!”
“...Again,” Toph said mockingly.
General Sung stiffened again.
Secretary Yu’s pleasant smile actually, very briefly, twisted into something more genuinely amused, like he was trying to repress laughter. His expression straightened out quickly.
“How are you going to do that to the drill?” Sokka asked. “It’s massive… not to mention made for digging through the earth.”
“We believe we have come up with a neutralizing solution,” Secretary Yu said.
General Sung insisted that they settle in to watch as the drill got closer and closer to Ba Sing Se’s Outer Wall. They watched as the Fire Nation tanks flanking the drill got picked off, one by one, until only a handful of them remained. General Sung chortled every time that one of the Fire Nation tanks fell into a surprise pit, but the other administrators, messengers, and some of the soldiers gathered looked increasingly nervous. Aang looked a little anxious as well, having been asked to do nothing in the face of such a massive threat.
Secretary Yu stood off to one side, smiling pleasantly, occasionally speaking with soldiers and messengers who appeared from the stairwell to deliver updates on the “situation in the field”. The administrator delivered some of this information to the general, but not all of it, and the general seemed quite pleased not to be too bothered by the details of the operation.
Toph stood at the edge of the wall, having slammed her hands and feet into the earth, and appeared to be concentrating fiercely. She was clearly following something the rest of them couldn’t see - something happening deep below the earth.
“General, it is happening,” Secretary Yu said finally.
The drill only seemed to be three lengths of itself from the wall now. They could all see the massive, black Fire Nation symbol on the drill’s shell. The wall trembled now, very slightly, with the drill’s movement.
The first thing Sokka noticed was the sound of the earth moving, then the trembling growing stronger, and then there was a great CRACK like thunder. The back end of the drill was sinking, the earth tilting as the ground beneath the drill broke under its weight.
CRACK!
Hidden underground caverns gave way, one by one, slowly pulling the drill backwards and down, pushing its pointed front towards the sky.
CRACK!
They watched the rock break beneath the machine like it was ice.
It was almost like watching a boat sink.
A great cloud of steam escaped the drill, as the machine increased its speed in hopes of escape, but its power and the grip of its tracks weren’t enough to overcome its own great weight. The Fire Nation’s drill kept tipping back. It was sliding back, actually, falling down into the enormous, layered, man-made sinkhole that was opening for it, finding out far too late that it wasn’t moving over solid ground after all.
The few tanks that remained with the drill paused, then, belatedly, began to flee. Only a couple of them got away. Those closest to the drill fell into the sinking earth with the trembling, tipping drill, quickly disappearing beneath the breaking ground.
Sokka admired how the pit had opened beneath the back end of the drill. If the drill had been tipped forward, it might have been able to dig forward, but being tipped backward sent the useful end of the machine pointing towards the sky. The deep pit seemed to be designed in such a way that, as the ground kept breaking, the originally horizontal drill was being turned almost completely vertical, and unlike the tanks, the drill was far too heavy and unwieldy to pull itself forward or out once it was tipped too far back. Though the drill struggled, releasing an incredible amount of steam, even extending itself, it was too late.
When the ground stopped breaking, the drill had been sunk at least three-quarters, maybe more, into the earth. Seven-eighths maybe? It was pointed not perfectly upright, but at an extremely steep angle nevertheless. It was stuck. Turned into a useless lump of metal and a massive monument to the Fire Nation’s failure.
They knew for certain that the drill was done for when it clearly powered down.
“Another victory for Ba Sing Se!” General Sung crowed.
The administrators, messengers, and soldiers who had been gathered to watch cheered or applauded. Even Momo screeched, not one to be left out. Secretary Yu, still speaking with one of the many messengers who had come up the tower to offer updates, just smiled pleasantly at the general, before returning to his discussion. The messenger saluted him, then hurried back down the tower stairs.
“General, the Terra Team reports minimal injuries,” Secretary Yu announced. “The healers are prepared to receive them.”
“I can help with that,” Katara volunteered.
“We would be very grateful for the assistance of a waterbending healer.”
“What are you going to do about all the engineers and soldiers inside the drill?” Sokka demanded.
“We’ll force their retreat if necessary!” General Sung boasted smugly. “We have the advantage of territory and terrain! Our best scouts even broke into the drill several days ago to retrieve a copy of the internal plans. Even if we do nothing but wait, they’ll run out of supplies eventually and be forced to abandon their machine!”
“They’re Fire Nation; they’ll definitely booby-trap as much of that drill as possible before they retreat,” Sokka warned, though he was still giddy at the Fire Nation’s decisive defeat.
“We very recently received word that the Fire Nation’s princess is aboard,” General Sung went on, undaunted by Sokka’s warning. “They’re sure to prioritize her escape!”
“Azula?” Aang said.
“Bet she’s got her backup with her too,” Toph said.
“Secretary Yu, make sure that the Terra Team are in top fighting form to retrieve the captured tanks!” General Sung ordered. “We’ll watch the drill for the princess’ retreat!”
“Yes, general,” Secretary Yu said, bowing. “Young Mistress Katara, if you are willing to offer your assistance to the injured, the healing rooms are this way. Working underground is extremely dangerous even for an elite team of earthbenders and I am certain they will welcome your expertise.”
~
Injured members of the Terra Team were brought up into the tower’s healing room, situated high up in the Outer Wall, from the underground tunnel system Secretary Yu and his team had apparently devised. Secretary Yu introduced Katara to the Western Outer Wall’s Head Healer, a brown woman introduced as Lady Amala, whose eyes lit up at the arrival of a genuine waterbender-healer and ushered Katara quickly through the wide, clean room towards the soldiers who needed the most urgent care.
Aang volunteered to assist in surveying the Fire Nation’s retreat from the drill, citing the advantage of his glider. General Sung insisted that the young Avatar’s assistance was not needed, but Aang persisted, and Secretary Yu accepted on the general’s behalf. Secretary Yu reminded the general that he would need to prepare the appropriate missives for the Earth King, Grand Secretariat Long Feng, the Minister of Infrastructure, the other three Protectors of the Outer Wall, and the four Protectors of the Inner Wall.
“There are many important people who must be immediately informed of General Sung’s decisive victory over the Fire Nation’s princess,” Secretary Yu reminded the general, who quickly perked up again at the opportunity to boast of the achievement. “There is much to be done and there will be many honors to bestow.”
General Sung nodded. “Yes, yes! Of course! Secretary Yu, I can trust you to see that the young Avatar and his companions are well-treated and made comfortable while I-”
“I shall have everything taken care of,” Secretary Yu promised.
Sokka got the impression that it was something the guy said pretty often. General Sung took his assistant at his word immediately and excused himself to order the waiting messengers around, so that the word could spread of his genius strategies and tactics. Strategies and tactics which, Sokka also got the impression, might not wholly belong to the general.
Aang and Momo left to watch the drill for Fire Nation movement, after Secretary Yu had properly introduced them to Captain Meng, the man he said to whom they should make the reporters.
“Secretary Yu!” a soldier called out, after Aang and Momo had flown off, panting as he stopped beside the administrator. “There’s been a cave-in during the attempt to retrieve one of the Fire Nation tanks! We need more earthbenders to prevent further collapse and rescue our own soldiers safely!”
“FINALLY!” Toph shouted, stretching. “Something I can do!”
Secretary Yu and the messenger both looked at her in surprise.
“I’m the greatest earthbender you’ll ever meet,” Toph assured both of them, casually, cracking her knuckles. “And I’m bored. I didn’t get to see or do anything about that drill. I wanna see if this ‘Terra Team’ is half as good as that general says they are, and if this booby-trap cave system of yours would really make the badger-moles proud.”
“She’s teaching the Avatar earthbending,” Sokka added, to build up a little more confidence.
Secretary Yu and the messenger exchanged a look, before Secretary Yu bowed. “We would be honored to accept the assistance of the Avatar’s earthbending master. Lieutenant, if you would escort young Mistress Toph to the Lower Tunnels? Captain Meng may be able to spare some men eager to assist as well.”
The soldier bowed. “Young Mistress, please follow me.”
This left Sokka more or less alone with Secretary Yu. Well, his sister was at the other end of the healing room, waving her glowy hands over a groaning man on a cot. Secretary Yu smiled pleasantly at him, which still didn’t look entirely real. Sokka probably wouldn’t have liked this guy at all if he wasn’t so impressed by how thoroughly the drill had been neutralized.
“You have a copy of the drill’s interior plans?” Sokka asked.
“Ah, yes. When it became clear that the drill’s shell had been specifically constructed to withstand earthbending attacks from the outside, our scouts were instructed to board and secure information about its interior by any means necessary,” Secretary Yu answered. “Is the young master interested in seeing these plans?”
“Does a polar-bear dog like to eat otter-penguins? Yes!”
Sokka lost track of time, admiring the engineering schematics that Secretary Yu’s scouts had secured from the drill, as well as Secretary Yu’s map of the Western Outer Wall’s tunnel system and its many traps. Secretary Yu also had scrolls detailing the plans for the massive underground caverns that had needed to be constructed to trap the drill, which showed off the great pillars that had needed to be collapsed at the precise moment to tip the drill backwards into the massive hidden pit. There were also many other potential plans, all of which were incredibly fascinating, which had been raised, considered, and then cast aside.
Secretary Yu seemed happy enough to explain these to him, though he often had to excuse himself to speak with the latest messenger or to direct soldiers. Finally, a soldier came demanding Secretary Yu’s presence in the Lower Tunnels, and Sokka went with him.
The belly of the towers, of Ba Sing Se’s Western Outer Wall, were dark and oppressive, despite their formidable size. There were dungeons deep beneath the earth of the Wall, where Earth Kingdom soldiers were importing broken, twisted Fire Nation tanks. Some few Fire Nation soldiers had been stripped of their armor and weapons, chained and bound, and were being escorted deeper into the maze-like tunnel system. Two healers carried an Earth Kingdom soldier past them on a stretcher, to an elevator platform operated by an earthbender.
Secretary Yu’s pleasant smile had faded as they had come down the stairs. As soon as it seemed like they had travelled beneath the earth, the man’s smile had vanished entirely, and he looked cold and tense. Which made sense; this was a busy place, full of the reality of war, which looked like it had never seen sunlight and never would.
The soldier brought Secretary Yu to meet a pair of men standing off to one side of what might be called the grand foyer of the Lower Tunnels. The men wore dark green, functional robes trimmed in gold, with the circle and square of the Earth Kingdom on their front, as well as dark green, wide-brimmed, and pointed hats, with a golden point at the top. Their faces were like stone and everyone, even rushing around to save Earth Kingdom soldiers’ lives or imprison Fire Nation soldiers, gave them a wide, wide berth.
“How may I assist the Dai Li today?” Secretary Yu said, bowing respectfully.
“We’ve come for the Fire Nation prisoners,” one of the men said.
“The Fire Nation prisoners have yet to be processed,” Secretary Yu said politely, “and will be passed along to the appropriate holdings afterwards. General Shang at the Eastern Front has expressed keen interest in negotiating for more prisoner of war exchanges.”
“We will speak with General Sung,” the man said.
“The Protector of the Western Wall is occupied at this time,” Secretary Yu said.
Last Sokka had seen, General Sung was busy bragging to anyone who would listen.
“The honored Guardians of the Inner City will be provided a list of the Fire Nation prisoners after they have been duly processed,” Secretary Yu insisted, smiling again, this time very unpleasantly. “There are, after all, an unknown number of Fire Nation prisoners from this conflict, but already far too many for even the two of you to take alone.”
The men exchanged a look.
“We will await General Sung’s list,” one of them said.
They then left through one of the many tunnels and, even in the chaos happening around them, many people seemed to breathe easier after they had gone.
Secretary Yu turned to the nearest soldier, who was waiting for his attention, and demanded to know the progress of the cave-in. He and Sokka were immediately treated to a young man, filthy with dirt, tear tracks clear on his face, waxing poetic about Toph’s earthbending prowess. Apparently, Toph had been stabilizing their now quite fragile tunnel system at lightning speed, and had been unearthing Terra Team soldiers, other Earth Kingdom soldiers, and trapped Fire Nation soldiers and tanks with ease.
“It’s like she can see through the earth,” the young man sobbed in awe.
“She can,” Sokka said. “Well, she’s blind, but yeah.”
Secretary Yu looked at him curiously. “Explain, if you would, young Master Sokka.”
Sokka briefly explained how Toph’s bending worked and how she’d learned it. This didn’t help the poor, overwhelmed Earth Kingdom soldier’s growing hero-worship at all. The other nearby Earth Kingdom soldiers, similarly filthy and exhausted young men and women catching their breath or waiting to speak with Secretary Yu, looked similarly awed.
“She learned from badger-moles?” one of them breathed. “Like the first earthbenders?”
“She’s blind just like a badger-mole. Of course!” another whispered, like she’d just experienced enlightenment. “She can see through the earth! Of course!”
“She saved my life,” a young man sobbed.
Sokka didn’t know what to say. How long had Toph been down here? An hour? Maybe?
“A fascinating young girl,” Secretary Yu decided finally.
Secretary Yu listened to the soldiers’ messengers and then sent them on: to the healers, to their leaders to help stabilize the tunnels around the drill, or to their leaders help retrieve their comrades and more prisoners of war. Chaos momentarily tamed, Secretary Yu then took a captain aside and made them promise to alert him if the Dai Li returned, then he and Sokka boarded the elevating platform alongside the healers and another Earth Kingdom soldier. They were carried by an earthbender back up the tower to the healing rooms, where Katara was still hard at work, and Aang was perched on a window sill.
Secretary Yu was immediately waved over by one of the healers. Sokka went to go join Aang - and Momo, of course - who was looking out towards the drill.
The Fire Nation was retreating from their tipped drill. Small figures were spilling from an opened hatch in the side of the drill into a large crowd, helping each other out of the machine. There were too many of them to attack and capture, probably, with the limited resources and soldiers here in the Western Outer Wall towers. At this distance, Sokka couldn’t spot the Fire Nation princess or her dangerous friends.
“How’s it going?” Sokka asked Aang.
“...So many of them are hurt,” Aang said, not looking away from the drill.
“Well, yeah, that’s what happens when a mountain of metal gets tipped over like a canoe,” Sokka said. Remembering what was happening below them, in the tunnels beneath the Outer Wall, however, made his stomach twist. “They came here to attack Ba Sing Se.”
“...I wish it didn’t have to be like this,” Aang said.
“Yeah,” Sokka sighed, reaching out a hand to put it on his friend’s shoulder. “Me too.”
4k of The Force Awakens opening with a fairy tale aesthetic. Basically, canon compliant Finn and Poe first meeting, just dialing up the fantasy over the sci-fi. I’m doing some fairy-tale-based artistic research and development rn and I’ve had “you know what, FinnPoe’s first meeting is solid fairy tale material” in the back of my mind for awhile, so I decided to let that loose as a warm-up.
Never posted to tumblr or AO3 before; fic under the cut.
-cut-
Canon-Typical Violence warning.
~
the soldier and the firebird
~
Once upon a time there was a young soldier who had never seen the outside world that he could remember. He had served the same masters since he was a young child, and he had spent all his short life standing guard inside their grand walled palaces and training at the base of their high towers. One day, he had been told, he and his fellow soldiers would be taken through the massive gates and beyond the ordered lands, like many loyal soldiers before them, to finally march on the chaotic outside world and bring order in the name of their great leader.
The day came sooner than the young soldier expected. He and his siblings, the fellow soldiers he had stood and trained beside all his short life, were called to don the white armor and masked helmets of their great leader and march. They took up their weapons and in ordered lines, on a strict beat, they followed their captain out the massive gates of the grand walled palace, which the young soldier had not left since the day he had arrived years ago.
They marched through the ordered lands surrounding the grand walled palace in silence. There was very little to see and the cold forest landscape had not changed in the years the young soldier had last seen it. The young soldier could not see much through the slits of his white helmet and he was not permitted to turn his head. All he could do was look ahead to their captain - a giant of a woman who wore heavy armor and a masked helm that shone like polished silver, who rode atop an enormous white warhorse, who did not look back at the soldiers behind her - and march dutifully after her until he was told to stop.
They were not told to stop for a long time, such that the young soldier lost track of the hours and perhaps even the days in the trance of the march. When the silver captain held up her arm to order them to halt, he awoke again. The cold forests of the ordered lands had become a strange and dusty desert of the outside world, pale daylight had become a night as black as pitch, and the young soldier’s feet ached fiercely as he stood like a statue.
He could see nothing of the outside world but pinpricks of light ahead of them in the desert hills, flickering between dark, uneven mounds which resembled residences.
The silver captain and her white warhorse stood still, waiting for something, and soon the young soldier heard hoofbeats coming up from behind them.
A single rider.
The rider passed the lines of soldiers like a wild burst of wind, throwing up sand and dust, and came to a violent stop beside the silver captain. The black horse reared at the sudden command, as though trying desperately to dislodge its black-cloaked rider. The young soldier took a step back from the flailing beast, only to back into the soldier behind him and be ungently returned to position by a shove. The black horse was as big as the silver captain’s white warhorse, but it looked wild; its fierce shaking and stamping could not remove its tight-fisted giant of a rider, however, and the beast fell again to the ground with miserable obedience.
The black-cloaked, black-armored rider stared out at the village ahead and the silver captain turned her head to wait for the black rider’s eventual command.
“Let no one escape,” the black rider said.
At their captain’s command, the young soldier and his fellows dutifully marched on the dark village ahead to capture all its residents. They surrounded the settlement so that none could escape. They had been told, before they had left the walls of the grand palace, that they were here to apprehend a dangerous criminal, a rebel who meant to destroy the order of their great leader at all costs, as well as all the traitors who would dare help an enemy of order.
The young soldier’s legs felt as though they were made of lead. His feet dragged along the sand as though he was walking through a sticky trap, but if it was an enchantment, it seemed to affect him alone. As the soldiers around him marched forward, as they separated to drag the screaming village residents from their poor homes, he fell slowly but surely behind.
Once the villagers had realized the soldiers were upon them, they had taken up their own weapons and were now fighting back. This was surely proof that they were criminals. They were deeply guilty rebels, all of them, for the innocent would not have taken up arms to resist.
The dark of the night had peeled away to make room for the flames that their silver captain had put to the wooden structures and the dust kicked up in the chaos. One of the villagers struck down one of his brothers, the white-armored figure lay crumpled in the sand, and yet the young soldier still could not bring himself to repay the blow. The young soldier’s hands were heavy on his own weapon. His fingers were numb around its handle.
He fell to his knees beside his fallen brother, whom he had known all his life, who reached up with a bloody hand and knocked clumsily against his helmet. The hand then fell limp. There was too much blood for the young soldier to hope that his brother was not dead.
He felt as though he was between dreaming and waking. The fast-moving scene before him was nightmarish in its reality, yet he felt on the edge of coming free from sleep’s claws even so.
Something in him was breaking, if it was not already broken.
The soldiers had put most of the villagers to their knees in the centre of the chaos, while the flames jumped from shed to crate to fence. Some of the rebels were dragged limply, bleeding, left facedown in the sand. Out of the dust clouds and smoke stalked the black-cloaked and black-masked rider, dismounted, carrying a red sword which burned the eyes that dared linger, watching the white-armored soldiers work to bring order to the stirred madness.
The black rider’s head turned over the village, searching, until their attention came to rest on that last house. Two soldiers were beating heavily at the locked door, the silver captain standing nearby with her weapons ready, and it creaked mightily. There were small slits in walls of the residence, rather than wide windows, and in them the young soldier could see a strange light.
This light was brighter than the gentle glow that had flickered in the windows of the other residences. Much brighter. Even though the fire that had been set crackled wildly across the far side of the village, it appeared as the interior of the last house was similarly aflame.
With a great CRACK, the door gave away, and the flames and smoke burst out in a great cloud. The explosion swallowed the soldiers who had been beating at the door and spat out a great creature that had the young soldier stumbling back in fear. It was a long-necked bird the size of a warhorse, with feathers made of red, orange, and yellow fire, with a wingspan that seemed to block out the black sky completely.
The firebird sent the silver captain flying and streamed up into the sky, before it then banked around to descend on the white-armored soldiers with massive, burning claws. In its fell swoop, the firebird snatched up two of the young soldier’s brothers, then released them from a height so that they flew into the burning residences and lay dead or broken from the drop.
Then the creature twisted suddenly in midair, flaring with flashing of white and blue, and swooped down again. It caught only one scrambling soldier in a claw this time, but another in its massive sharp beak, and its wings batted more of the white-armored soldiers aside as the firebird launched itself back into the air.
It felt as though the air itself had been set aflame. The young soldier scrambled desperately back, away from the heat of the living flames.
He then watched as the black rider ran forward and fearlessly threw his red sword at the deadly firebird. In a great feat of strength and precision, the surely magic blade lodged itself in the creature’s wing, near to where the fiery wing met the burning torso.
The firebird screamed and toppled from the sky, releasing the soldier in its beak, but crushing the soldier in its claws. Its other wing beating wildly, the creature barely managed not to fall upon the village below, and it landed heavily in the desert just outside the settlement, throwing up great clouds of sand and bursts of flame.
The black rider did not wait for the firebird to land before giving chase, the silver captain ordering the panicked soldiers to regain control of their screaming captives. The black rider stretched out his hand and his red sword flew through the air to return to him, bringing out another scream from the fallen firebird.
The creature struggled to return to its feet, but the black rider threw his sword again and it cut off the firebird’s other wing, where the massive wing met its torso, and the creature collapsed again with an agonized cry. Blood streamed down its twitching wing and body as the black rider approached, weakening the firebird’s flames.
The young soldier watched helplessly as the black rider recalled his red sword. The third time that he threw it, the blade cut the screaming creature’s other wing from its body, and the firebird twisted in on itself, apparently to die and vanish in a cloud of black smoke and ash.
Its enormous beautiful wings remained, twitching in the sand, the bloody feathers still glowing red and orange and yellow, flashing with edges of white and blue. The black rider didn’t seem to care for these jeweled treasures, however, which would have been the toasted trophy of any general’s hall or the greatest splendor of any king’s throne room, instead marching into the black cloud that had been the firebird’s body for a greater prize.
When the black rider stalked out again from the death-place of his kill, he was dragging the body of a man.
It was not the soldier that the firebird had crushed in its claws. It was a stranger without armor, wearing a peasant’s clothes and a sturdy brown coat that had been stitched with spells and the symbol of rebellion. The man was black-haired and bloody, and his gaze, as the black rider forced him to his unsteady knees in front of the captive villagers, was murderous.
The young soldier had been forced back into line with the others, weapons ready, behind the black rider. He watched as the black rider stood before the bloody, sweaty stranger in silence. He watched as, when the silence grew to be too much, the black rider put his red sword under the chin of the man he had dragged from the ashes of a deadly firebird. As the man’s handsome face turned up, still breathing heavily, something seemed to flicker under his light brown skin.
“Where is the map to the Skywalker?” the black rider said.
“My mother warned me not to speak to strangers on the road,” the man said hoarsely.
The red sword pressed closer, threatening to draw blood, but the man did not look afraid even as he leaned back, trembling with effort.
The black rider pointed back towards the silver captain before flicking his hand towards one of the villagers on their knees, without turning his head. “Bring the old man forward.”
The young soldier watched as the silver captain brought forward an old man with pale, leathery skin and a white beard. Then as the black rider demanded to know which of them had the way to the man he sought. Their order knew the old man, who had named himself Lor San Tekka, had once had this map, for their order’s spies had heard the quiet call which had summoned this strange rebel to this settlement. The black rider’s red sword, still bloody, moved dangerously between the rebel and the old man as he demanded answers from them.
Neither gave him the answers he sought.
“Some men hold so tightly to their curses, unable to confront the transformations of their own making,” the old man, Lor San Tekka said calmly. He then looked up at the black-cloaked, black-masked man and claimed to know his true name.
The red sword flashed through the air and the old man’s head struck the sand, his body following after.
The rebel first flinched away and then threw himself at the black rider in rage, only to be pushed back by a backhanded wave of a black glove, falling to his back with a grunt. The black rider turned away, passing by the silver captain, waiting several steps behind him.
“Search him,” the black rider said. “Take him back to the palace. Bring the wings.”
“Sir,” the silver captain called after him. “The villagers.”
The black rider did not stop. “...Kill them all.”
At the silver captain’s command, the white-armored soldiers slaughtered the villagers. The villagers screamed. Some tried to beg. Some tried to run away in the night. They joined the old man in the sand one by one. None escaped the order.
The young soldier did nothing. He raised his weapon to no one, but this could neither undo nor counter any of the blows made by the soldiers with whom he had been raised. He had not touched anything here, save his own fallen brother, but the fire around him still spread. He stood like a statue. He wished either to wake up from this nightmare or to fall back into the trance which had carried him here, but there was no escape for him. All he could do was stand in the centre of the chaos, painfully awake.
He looked around him and saw the black rider sheathe his sword and mount his nightmarish black horse, which danced restlessly before the black rider brought it back under control. The black rider then looked directly at the young soldier, still in the centre of the chaos.
The young soldier recognized the silver markings on the edges of the black rider’s mask. He recognized the red sword which glowed so hurtfully. He had heard many stories about the black rider, the leader of the Knights of Ren and the treasured apprentice of their order’s great leader, who was a formidable wizard. He was certain that the black rider had never heard of him, a common soldier, who had not left the walls of the grand palace to march before now.
Yet the black rider stared directly at him. The young soldier felt pierced through by a gaze he could not see. They were the only two still things among the fire and death.
And then the black rider turned away and fled across the desert.
It was a long march back to the walled palace. They were soon met by a caravan for the prisoner who had been bound and forced to stumble behind the silver captain’s horse, as well as two large wagons, one for each of the enormous, flame-colored wings of the destroyed firebird, which the soldiers had been tasked with carrying. They had left the bodies of the villagers and the fallen soldiers behind them, burning with the rest of the settlement.
Freed from his burden, without the heat from the feathers which had stayed warm even now, the young soldier fell back into the repetition of the march. Through the thin slits of his helmet, however, he watched the outside world disappear around him.
Much too soon, the high walls of the palace came into view, and the young soldier had no hope of leaving again once he returned. They marched inside and the great gates closed behind them. The silver captain dismounted, directing the prisoner to the dungeons, the firebird’s wings to be cleaned, and the soldiers to report for debriefing.
At the top of the high steps to the palace, the young soldier could see the black rider already waiting for them, still cloaked, still masked. Their leader’s apprentice’s attention seemed to be completely on the prisoner’s caravan, but the young soldier fled his sight regardless.
He tucked himself away, in a lowly corner of the palace, and ripped off his white helmet. It was the first time that he had removed it since they had marched away. His chest heaved as though he had been unable to take in breath until now. He wanted to throw the helmet away from him, but before the urge could overtake him completely, he noticed the red among the black ash and the brown dust. There were three long stripes of dried blood across one eye.
The young soldier reached up to the eye, overcome with the sensation that it too might yet be marked by blood. His armor was dull and filthy, too much so to see his own reflection clearly in his helmet. The march back had been so long, he wasn’t sure the coat of dust and ash on him could ever be removed from his skin now.
It was not a surprise to him when the silver captain found him. It was not a surprise that it had been noticed he had been unable to wield his weapon, unable to fall into line, unable to follow orders when it had finally been demanded of him. It was not a surprise that he was now ordered to report to rooms deep in the palace to which he’d hoped to avoid ever returning, miserable places made of strange lights and discordant sounds, full of sorcerers who specialized in teaching pain, to reaffirm his loyalty to their great leader and their most worthy cause.
A soldier who would not kill could not be a soldier. If he could not fulfill his purpose, after he had been raised to serve, then he was not only a failure, but a traitor to the cause. A soldier who would not kill was a traitor. All traitors were to die a quick and painful death.
It did not seem to occur to the silver captain as she left, after the young soldier had acknowledged the order, that a young man who had woken up would not wish to go back to sleep. It didn’t seem to occur to her that he would now, trapped as he was, fail to obey. The young soldier had nowhere to go, it was true, but he still had something to run from, which meant that the direction didn’t matter, so long as the road took him far, far away.
The young soldier cleaned himself, exchanged his armor, and replaced his helmet. He walked through the palace carefully, with his head held high, and began to formulate a plan. As much as the keepers of this great palace tried to hide it, he was far from the first to consider running, and he knew from the examples that they made that it was difficult to succeed. The walls were high. The gates were thick. The ordered lands all around them were hostile and the scores of hunters who would be sent to kill him like an animal knew the unwelcoming terrain well.
He found himself in the dungeons, having begun following the long and distant screams of a prisoner, and he waited in a dark corner for the screaming to stop. He had no hope of interfering. All he could do was hope that their great leader’s apprentice would not leave only a body behind when he was finished.
He could not rescue the dead.
After what felt like a very long time, the apprentice swept out of the cell, still cloaked and masked in black. The apprentice’s long, furious strides ate up the ground at first, but he paused suddenly, like a beast breathing the air. The young soldier stayed very still in his dark corner, not daring to breathe, and soon the apprentice left whatever scent he had caught be, leaving this part of the palace dungeons empty and agonizingly silent once more. The young soldier approached the cell cautiously, dreading what he might find inside.
The prisoner inside was chained on some sort of rack, breathing heavily, unconscious but clearly alive. There were no visible wounds on the captured rebel, despite the blood in which he’d been covered as they’d brought him here. The young soldier quickly let himself into the cell and, as gently as he dared, he shook the man awake.
“Listen carefully,” the young soldier ordered, when the man’s eyes focused on him. “If you follow me and do as I say, I will help steal back your wings for you.”
The man was shone with sweat and he could not immediately support his own head, but his countenance was striking even so. Even in chains, he frowned up at the young soldier with judgement as piercing as any prince. He did not look like he had once been a wild, fiery, deadly monster that had needed to be cut from the sky.
The young soldier took off his helmet, much to the rebel’s visible surprise.
“If I return to you your wings, could you wear them again? Could you fly again?”
“...I could fly anywhere,” the rebel answered hoarsely.
Seeing as the man was coherent and agreeable, the young soldier quickly began freeing him from his restraints. The rebel yanked his limbs free quickly and gladly, as the young soldier freed them one by one, and even accepted the young soldier’s support to stand from the rack. Even when the man was on his feet again, he needed to lean on the young soldier. Briefly, he even touched the young soldier’s face, as though to assure himself this was real.
“Are you a spy in this wretched place?” the rebel asked him.
“No,” the young soldier answered. He leaned the rebel back against the rack, so that he could pick up his helmet again. He would need to wear it again only once, he told himself, and then he would never have to wear it again.
“Then what is your price?” the rebel demanded.
The young soldier paused, before he could replace his helmet. “None, save that you take me with you. When you fly over the walls and away from this place, carry me with you.”
“Carry you away?”
“I cannot stay here. I will not kill for them.”
The rebel who was also a firebird stared at him, then slowly smiled, wide and open, which transformed his tired face into something dangerous and splendid. Something, the promise of light, seemed to flicker beneath his skin again as he said hoarsely, “Return to me my wings, friend, and I’ll take you anywhere you wish.”
A full-cast-genderbend rewrite/retelling of The Hobbit project. Fem!Everyone, with the goal being indulging in nostalgia, style mimicry, and aesthetic, rather than diverging from the plot or in any way “improving” the story. Not a copy-paste with pronoun changes (although most of this is paraphrased and some of it is directly borrowed), but more like warped mirror image (with some extensions). If you have ever wanted to enjoy a version of the Hobbit where all the characters are women, that is what this is.
That’s it. That’s the entire point of this.
15k first draft covering the events Ch1. The Unexpected Party. I posted 6.5k of this here on this side-blog before (x). The full first draft has never been posted to Tumblr or AO3 before. I intend to create a second, cleaner, slightly more original draft of this and post it to AO3 as a complete fic - if I forge ahead and attempt to rewrite the entire Hobbit (like a fool), it will be as installments in a series.
Fic below the cut.
-cut-
EDIT: On AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23209567
~
Hammers Fell Like Ringing Bells
Part One: The Unexpected Party
~
In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. She had nothing to complain about, truly, for it was a very nice hole. While all hobbit-holes meant comfort, hobbits for miles around The Hill and beyond would have agreed that this particular hobbit-hole was one of the nicest and largest and most comfortable holes in Hobbiton, if not the whole Shire.
The hobbit had it all to herself too.
Everyone could be sure that the hobbit was appreciative of what she had, because she put great effort into making sure the outside of the hobbit-hole matched the inside in its niceness. She had painted her perfectly round door a new shade of emerald green just last week; she regularly polished the yellow brass knob and door-knocker until they shined; and every morning she surveyed the plentiful flowers and wily vegetables of her surrounding garden just to make sure that they were behaving themselves for her gardeners.
The inside of this grand hobbit-hole also required effort to maintain its reputed niceness. Along the round tunnel of the front hall – a very nice front hall, free of smoke stains, with richly panelled walls, and tiled and carpeted floors, and a lovely hanging chandelier – were plenty of pegs for hats and coats, and shawls and bags and baskets, for a great many visitors. The hobbit was quite fond of company and no distinguished entertainer was without a marvellous stage. Her stage was kept nice and orderly so that no one, guest or hostess, could trip over anything unexpected or make sly comments about how standards of living were clearly different when one lived alone.
The tunnels of the hobbit-hole wound on and on through the hill upon which this home was the shining crown – The Hill, many people for many miles round called for, for it was the tallest point in all of Hobbiton – with many round-doored rooms for every purpose and occasion. There were no stairs in this home, for hobbits often didn’t have more than one floor if they could help it, just a long line of cosy bedrooms, tidy bathrooms, dry cellars, plentiful pantries, devoted wardrobes, trim kitchens, long dining-rooms, and more, all for one lucky hobbit. How fortunate she was, so many other hobbits told her, to have so much space for herself.
The hobbit’s favourite rooms, however, were the ones on the left-hand side going in, which had deep-set round windows that looked over her bright gardens, the soft meadows beyond, and the slope of the winding river through the green. The hobbit spent many a pensive day in these offices with her furry feet up, with no company save for a book or the pen in her hand.
This hobbit was a very well-to-do hobbit, as you may have already guessed, such that she could have such a place to herself and spend her time as she pleased, and her name was Baggins. The Bagginses had lived in the neighbourhood of the Hill for time out of mind. They were very proud of this, and of both their respectability (those that were so fortunate) and their predictableness, for adventurousness was not thought something to be rewarded in these parts and their impoverishment of such sour things had made them very respectable. Though often glad to be bothered for their opinions, most Bagginses might have been confusedly ashamed of themselves should they have been able to surprise you with their answer to any question, for venturing into any sort of unexpectedness frightened them.
This is the story of how this Baggins had an unexpected adventure, found herself doing and saying increasingly surprising things, and was rewarded in kind. She lost all the respect that the neighbours had for her as the hobbit who had the hole at the crown of the Hill, but she gained…
Well, we shall see exactly how she was rewarded at the end of all things.
First, my dear, please do let me describe to you what exactly is a hobbit, for they are not widely known and the few left keep to themselves nowadays rather than correct our misconceptions. You must know going forward that they are a little people, both shorter and less broad than the bearded dwarves (though sometimes as wide or even wider around the belly). If you are not familiar with dwarves, either, this means that hobbits are on average perhaps three feet tall and not often hairy around the jaw. They are also sharp-eared and quick-footed, which is all the magic they need to disappear quietly in the brush when they hear the Big People (one of their kinder names for the likes of you and me) crashing about nearby. They are best known for having sunny brown faces and large, leathery bare feet, and thick brown curls on head and toe both.
They are at large an enviously happy and fat folk. In terms of personality: the average hobbit likes to dress in bright, earthy colours, to laugh often and deeply, and to partake in as many good meals in a day as they are able. And so, hobbits are always seeking to gather their friends and family together to enjoy all of their favorite things at once, as often as possible, at the slightest excuse.
This Baggins hobbit – Belladonna Baggins, she was named, though everyone called her Bilbo – was the daughter of the fabulous Belladonna Took and the sweet spitting image of her. Short, brown-skinned, dark-haired, and round about the waist and the face, people often remarked that Bilbo Baggins was as if Belladonna Took had been a respectable and proper lady from the beginning. Not wisely to Bilbo’s freckled face, of course, for this received her sourest frown rather than her deep, fruity laughter.
Belladonna Took had been one of the three remarkable daughters of the Old Took, the late but much-respected leader among the hobbits who lived down and across The Water, which was the small river seen from Bilbo’s lovely windows. It was often said (not among the Tooks and not wisely to the Tooks’ faces) there was a fairy spouse hidden in the branches of their family tree – there had to be, as absurd as the notion seemed, because even more absurd was the notion that there was anything naturally hobbit-like, anything respectable, about adventures.
The Tooks were considered to be as adventurous as the Bagginses were not, and therefore less respectable in Hobbiton, although not all Tooks were adventurers (though they were largely, much to the Bagginses displeasure, much richer, as though they were being rewarded for their disrepectable ventures). Tooks were not overly concerned with predictableness. Though they had the decency to hush up such things as best they could, every once in a while, a peculiar Took or two would vanish for a time and come back months later nigh unrecognizable to the neighbours. The fabulous and late Belladonna had been one such Took.
Marrying Belladonna Took, it was widely agreed, had been the most surprising thing a bland Baggins had done in living memory, and becoming Mrs. Bungo Baggins had been perhaps the most surprising thing any Took had done in living memory as well. Bungo (Bilbo’s father) had built for his wife (partly with her money and entirely with her blessing) this grand hobbit-hole that crowned the Hill, which was widely agreed to be perhaps the nicest and largest and most comfortable hole there ever was, and which was widely agreed to be temptation enough for any hobbit to cease running off into the Blue. This agreement, however, did not stop the Bagginses’ neighbours on the Hill from watching Bungo and his Took wife with wariness until the end of their days.
Then the neighbours’ eyes turned fully to Bilbo Baggins, Belladonna’s only daughter who looked almost exactly like her, but who reassuringly behaved almost exactly like a second edition of her solid and comfortable father. It didn’t seem unreasonable to the hobbits of The Hill to presume that something queer might have made its way into Bilbo Baggins. Nor to expect any reasonable, respectable hobbit, who was truly responsible with all her good fortune, to wish and strive to prove this judgement of queerness wrong.
The neighbours’ eyes stayed on Bilbo Baggins even after she was all grown-up. Even when she was about fifty years old, and had time and time again proven herself to them a distinguished hostess, a respectable neighbour, and more than capable of looking after her business and the grand hobbit-hole that had been built by her father, her nosy neighbours watched her in the way of the steady Shire and harrumphing Hobbiton. She had remained unmarried and childless, they reasoned, which could be considered odd – and also concerning, as these had been the things that had kept her adventurous mother settled down immovably. For all they knew, there was that queerness still in Bilbo Baggins from her Took side, only waiting for a chance to come out.
This chance arrived one morning long ago – when hobbits were plenty and prosperous, the world much greener and slightly quieter, and Bilbo Baggins was (as I have just said) about fifty comfortable years old – when Bilbo was sitting in her front garden bench, by the path that meandered down The Hill. She was not expecting any adventures today. She had a short pipe in her mouth (she had picked the habit up from her mother), her embroidery in her hands, and a furrow to her brow.
She had also had a terrific dream in mind when she had stepped outside, but it appeared to have rudely deserted her the moment she had sat down and no amount of firm handling had brought the vibrant picture back. Bilbo sighed and set her embroidery down on its bag beside her, thinking that she ought to have known better than to try to create something out of fancies instead of proper planning. It brought on nothing but an awful mess. She was just thinking that it was very lucky no one was out to have witnessed her stitch herself into an ugly hole – it wasn’t a crime to waste thread, at least so long as her frivolity wasn’t caught – when a shadow fell over her bench.
Bilbo stopped frustratedly puffing her pipe and looked up in alarm, then up farther still. Hobbit shadows could be very wide indeed, but they were not typically tall, unless pairs of youngsters took it upon themselves to stand on each other’s shoulders in an attempt to break their little fool necks.
It was not, to Bilbo’s mild relief, a pair of young hobbits seeking to show off. It was, however, to Bilbo’s greater alarm, not a hobbit at all. It was an old woman, who was so tall that she would have been even taller than two tall, adult hobbits stacked on top of each other. The old woman was long-faced and silver-haired, with two thick braids hanging down past her belted waist, and she was dressed in a worn slate dress, dark leggings, a thick grey cloak, and immense, dusty black boots. She loomed even taller with her wide-brimmed, pointy-tipped blue hat, and the long, gnarled staff held in one wrinkled, long-fingered hand.
This tall chance’s name was Gandalf and, my dear, if you had heard only a little of what I am privileged to know of her (and I have heard very little of all the long stories there are to hear), you couldn’t have been surprised that adventures were soon to be afoot. Wild stories sprouted in her wake like flowers, wherever she so decidedly went, and grew into even taller and wilder tales after she had gone. She had not been in the area of The Hill or even The Water since her friend, the Old Took, had passed away, so that even those who had heard the stories (like our unsuspecting hobbit on the bench) had been too small at the time to well remember her strange appearance.
“Good morning!” Bilbo said, for she couldn’t forget her good manners, and she was sure enough that she meant it. The air was sweet and the sights were bright, which had tempted her to step outside of her cosy offices and chase fancies with her needle.
The old woman, however, didn’t seem to share this feeling, as she raised her bushy brows and fixed the hobbit in her sharp grey eyes.
“What do you mean?” she mused. “Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not; or that you feel good this morning; or that it is a morning to be good on?”
“…All of them at once, I suppose,” Bilbo answered, after chewing her pipe some, for it had been some time since her well-wishes had been met with such open suspicion. “It is a fine morning to be out of doors is all, and if you have a pipe or needle of your own, you are welcome to sit down and join me in appreciating the day! You may even borrow some from me, if you are without and wish to have a seat regardless!”
“How generous,” Gandalf said, and tilted her head in such a way that there could be no doubt that she was eyeing Bilbo’s embroidery hoop.
Bilbo felt her face flush slightly and she tossed a fold of her skirt over the colourful, misshapen mountains in thread. She puffed her pipe and then blew a smoke ring, a perfect circle that floated quite far into the wind before falling apart, in the hopes of distracting the old woman with her skill (which was considered quite high among hobbits). The old woman, however, didn’t even seem to take notice of Bilbo’s lovely smoke ring beyond some mild amusement.
“I’m afraid that I have no time to sit and share smoke-rings and sewing hoops,” Gandalf then continued. “I am looking for someone to share in an adventure that I am arranging, and I haven’t had much luck in finding anyone appreciative of the idea.”
Bilbo almost squeaked in surprise. “I should think so, in these parts, madam! The folk here hate to be late for their dinner and few things disturb and discomfort one’s day like adventures.” Because it was ingrained in her to be helpful, even when she felt great disbelief, she added very generously, “I would suggest trying across the Water, or perhaps out by the Brandywine or the Sea; perhaps there you would have better luck finding a hobbit for your adventure.”
“Hmm,” Gandalf said, and didn’t so much as thank her.
Bilbo’s cheeks grew even warmer and she fished out her embroidery again, and pretended that there might be something to salvage of her earlier excitement. She felt herself growing hotter in the face still, even a little cross, when the old woman didn’t seem to get the hint. The old woman only leaned on her stick and kept staring expectantly down her long nose at Bilbo.
“I’m afraid that I cannot help you any further, madam, but I do wish you a good morning regardless,” Bilbo said at last to her.
“A phrase you use for every purpose and occasion, it seems, Bilbo Baggins. Madam, you say, though you know my name, because you don’t remember that I belong to it. To think that I have lived to see myself so dismissively good-morninged by Belladonna Took’s daughter, and not even by name!”
“Oh, well, my apologies, my dear madam! I did not mean to-”
“I am Gandalf, which means me, and I expect to be good-morninged as such.”
Here, Bilbo did squeak in surprise, and leaped to her feet. “Gandalf! Gandalf! Good gracious me! Not the wandering witch who gave Old Took, my dear grandmother, the most marvellous magic diamond hairclips that fasten themselves and never came undone until ordered!”
Bilbo’s dear aunts had bickered like magpies over those magic hairclips when their old mother had passed away.
“Perhaps,” Gandalf said.
“Not the old woman who used to tell such wonderful, wild tales at parties?” Bilbo prompted, leaning on her fence now, like she was a little hobbit-girl again. “About dragons and goblins and giants, and the rescue of princesses and farmers’ daughters becoming grand ladies?!”
“Hmm. That does sound like me,” Gandalf agreed.
“Not the witch who used to make such wonderful fireworks for Grandmother’s Midsummer’s Eve parties? Oh, I remember those! Those bright begonias and great daisies and bursting azaleas of fire, lingering among the stars all evening!” Bilbo enthused, before she realized that she was being prosy again, and coughed away her fondness for flowers and fancy. “I beg your pardon; I should not have forgotten.”
“Indeed not, but at least you now remember, which means you are not entirely without hope,” Gandalf said, though she still sounded displeased. “Out of friendship with your old grandmother and dear mother, at least, I should give you what you have asked for.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Exactly, I should give you my pardon,” Gandalf said shrewdly. “But I find myself reluctant, and more inclined to give you something else instead. It will be very amusing for me, very good for you, and profitable too, very likely, if you ever get over it.”
Bilbo peered up at the disgruntled witch in horror, thinking of all sorts of terrible curses that could be laid upon her for her rudeness. “Oh, please don’t! I beg your pardon most sincerely! As an old friend of the family – my dear mother spoke so highly of you – you must know that you are always welcome to come by and visit in any weather! Oh, you must come by so that I can make this terrible rudeness up to you – any time you like – and host for you a fine meal!”
“Must I?” Gandalf said.
The old witch hemmed and hawed, but Bilbo insisted most stridently, and they came away with an agreement that Gandalf would come by for tea tomorrow, for that fine meal that Bilbo had promised to host. Bilbo sighed in relief when she finally shut her front door behind her, thinking that she had just very deftly avoided being turned into a rabbit or some other poor, thumbless, voiceless creature. Such anxiety had left her very hungry, so she went to the pantry, knowing that a cake or two and a drink of something would do her good after her fright, before she put her meeting with an offended witch down on her Engagement Tablet.
In doing so, she missed Gandalf’s disgruntlement turn to quiet cackling, as the old witch carved a queer sign into Bilbo’s beautiful green door. The old witch strode away with a skip in her step just as Bilbo had shoved her second cake into her other cheek, and it finally occurred to the hobbit that this was also the same Gandalf who was responsible for so many otherwise well-behaved lads and lasses going off into the Blue on wild adventures. Anything from climbing trees the size of towers, to visiting the great cities of the elves and humans, to even sailing in ships to far off shores!
Bilbo put a hand on her chest. Goodness! Life used to be very interesting, she thought, before she remembered that such things were not popularly well thought of in these parts and not to be rewarded, and for good reason. She reminded herself that a respectable, responsible hobbit like herself had no time for such sour things. The hobbit had been quite clear about that to the old witch, she was sure.
Good hostesses weren’t ever permitted to forget engagements and Bilbo was determined to earn pardon for the embarrassing reunion of earlier, so she spent all evening and most of the next day in a great fluster. Any good acquaintance could hardly begin without a good meal. She wasn’t familiar with Gandalf’s favourite foods. Would the disgruntled witch transform her for serving the wrong tea or cakes? The old woman seemed reasonable enough, but Bilbo couldn’t help worrying. She paced the long tunnel of her home endlessly, attacking gleaming panels and floors and furniture, and plated the tea trays in over a dozen different arrangements, and changed her dress and her hair twice as many times.
It was either fluster in circles or twitch on the sofa until Gandalf came around, feeling not unlike a kettle on the boil all the while. It shouldn’t have made such a difference to bury her embroidery bag at the back of a wardrobe, but the little hobbit couldn’t rest until all similar fancies (all her distant books and dreamy sketches and prosy pages) had been hidden from the adventure-arranging witch who was coming to tea.
When the doorbell finally rang, Bilbo squeaked, and ran to get this over with.
“I am so sorry to keep you waiting!” she planned to say, but didn’t, because it was not the expected witch on her doorstep at all.
It was a dwarf.
So, instead Bilbo Baggins said, “Eep?”
The dwarf was broad-shouldered and loomed fiercely over Bilbo where they meant to or not in their armour, looking down their twice-broken nose with very bright eyes at the little hobbit. One side of their head was shaven, the rest of their long dark hair and dark beard was braided aside with metal beads, and they possessed sharp blue tattoos on their head and hairy forearms. The dwarf stepped inside, as though invited, and Bilbo could do nothing but step out of the way of their heavy boots and gape as they swept off their dark-green hood and bowed deeply.
“Dwalin at your service,” the dwarf said, in quite a low voice.
Bilbo’s eyes went even wider at the assortment of weapons this revealed. It was only her good manners that had her squeaking back, “Bilbo Baggins at yours! May I take your hood?”
“Thank you,” the dwarf said agreeably.
Bilbo quickly took up the offered hood and hung it neatly on the nearest peg, and despaired of how this dwarf warrior offered no explanation for their presence in Bilbo’s front hall. Visitors had dropped in unannounced on Bilbo before, to indulge their curiosity and their hunger, but never a stranger and certainly none so strange as the uninvited dwarf closing Bilbo’s round door behind them.
“Are you, perhaps, here to meet with Gandalf?” Bilbo asked, as the idea occurred to her. When the dwarf inclined their head, she added with stiff but decided welcome, “I am just about to take tea; pray come and share some with me.”
The hobbit led the way to the tea trays in the dining-room, feeling very shrewd. This dwarf must have heard that the adventure-arranging witch was coming to this hobbit-hole for tea, or else Gandalf must have decided to take advantage of Bilbo’s offered hospitality told Dwalin to meet her here. The latter option left Bilbo feeling a bit cross; she preferred to believe that she had just found the old witch a proper person for her adventure. By the time it had occurred to Bilbo to compose a list of potential folk for Gandalf – which wouldn’t have been easy, because Bilbo didn’t know many adventurous hobbits, and would have felt like offering someone else up to be terribly uncomfortable besides – it had been too late to do so.
Bilbo had only just finished naming the offered cakes for the dwarf, and done her best not to scarf down three out of nervousness (she had only eaten one, for she had no desire for her first impression to be that of a squirrel!) while the dwarf curiously bit into one that looked terribly dainty in their enormous fingers, when came another, even louder ring of the doorbell.
Bilbo excused herself to answer it, prepared to declare, “So you have got here at last! You will never guess the surprise I have in store for you!” But it was still not Gandalf, so instead Bilbo said, “Ahhh?”
It was another dwarf. This dwarf looked much like a new grandmother, if grandmothers wore armour, had blue tattoos at their temples, carried many weapons, and smiled down their once-broken nose with very bright eyes at grown hobbits. This dwarf’s hair and fluffy beard were snow-white and also braided with metal beads, and they swept off a scarlet hood and bowed deeply, a hand on their breast.
“Balin at your service!” they said.
“Thank you!” Bilbo said, flustered, suddenly very glad that she had overprepared for tea. “Oh, I mean: Bilbo Baggins at yours! Let me take your hood and show you to tea!”
“A little beer would suit me better, if you have any, little lass,” old Balin said, as they stepped inside and shut the door behind them. “But I am partial to some seed-cake, if you have any of that.”
“Oh, lots!” Bilbo assured her new guest, though she thought that they might run out very quickly at this rate.
How many adventuring dwarves had heard that a witch was coming by her hobbit-hole? Her hungry nerves didn’t at all like the idea that she might have to go without if they ran short on cakes, as would be her duty as hostess.
She led Balin to the dining-room, where Dwalin had indeed begun making short work of her offerings. She worried, for a moment, that the two dwarves might not get along, but they embraced each other like brothers and both cried, “Dear sister!”
Neither dwarf cared to notice Bilbo’s faint squeak of surprise. Bilbo didn’t know enough about dwarves to recognize the difference between their men, their women, and those who weren’t either, if dwarves had those folks as well, but she had presumed both Balin and Dwalin were probably male. It was always the men who grew the very rare beard among hobbits. Feeling very embarrassed over her assumptions, Bilbo lifted her skirts and scurried off to fetch the grandmotherly yet fierce Balin her beer and seed-cake.
The doorbell sounded again just as Bilbo plumped them down, ringing twice, and Bilbo left the two dwarves at the table chatting like sisters did. Gandalf for certain this time, Bilbo thought, for everyone knew that the third time was the charm. However, it was again proven that what everyone knew was wrong when Bilbo found two more dwarves on her doorstep.
These two were clearly much younger than Balin and Dwalin, though just as tall and nearly as broad, and they both smiled at her with even brighter eyes. One was very fair, with a blue tattoo by their eye, a handsome crown of braids, and a golden beard with silver beads; while the other was tawny-haired with no visible tattoos, barely a beard at all, and a crown braid that seemed to have come mostly undone. They swept off blue hoods and bowed deeply together.
“Fili-” said the golden one.
“-and Kili-” said the tawny-haired one.
“-at your service!” they finished together, almost musical.
“At yours and your family’s!” answered Bilbo, firmly remembering her good manners this time. At least, until Kili caught her hand and kissed it, which prompted yet another surprised squeak, for Bilbo had rarely been kissed on the hand before and certainly never by an adventuring dwarf.
Kili winked at her and hung up their blue hood beside their companion’s matching one, who was rolling their eyes. “Dwalin and Balin here already, I see!” Kili said. “Let us join the throng, dear sister!”
Throng, thought Bilbo Baggins, with her heart over her chest. There is a throng of dwarves in my home! What will the neighbours say? Surely only the best of things when they find out I sent the wandering witch on her way! Well, Gandalf will certainly not need me for her adventure with these four willing dwarf warriors who have come to meet with her! She will have no need of hobbits!
Bilbo hurried back and forth between the dining-room and the kitchen, serving more drinks and trays to her guests, and stuffing cakes and crackers into her cheeks when they weren’t looking. This snacking became increasingly difficult, when Balin bid “the girls” (Fili and Kili) assist their “little hostess”, as though Bilbo couldn’t do the job by herself! Misses Fili and Kili didn’t take direction well, preferring to speak of mines and gold and trouble with goblins, and the depredations of dragons, and lots of other things which she didn’t understand with Misses Balin and Dwalin in the other room. Bilbo soon gave up on keeping their greedy hands out of her pantries, even though they seemed to be gathering a great waste of food even for a party of six.
Then the doorbell rang again and Bilbo said unnecessarily, “Someone at the door!” She hoped it was the old witch finally come to whisk all these dwarves away, but then the door rang again, and then twice more as though this was some bit of mischief.
“Some four, I should say by the sound,” Miss Fili said, and took a cup out of her hands and then three more down from the cupboard. She winked at Bilbo as well. “We also saw them coming along behind us in the distance.”
“…Four?” Bilbo repeated meekly, to Miss Fili’s back.
Then the bell rang again, louder than ever, and she hurried to answer the door, because sitting down in the middle of the hall with her head in her hands and ignoring everything was generally considered quite rude.
Only, it wasn’t four after all, it was five more dwarves. One by one, they swept off their hood, bowed deeply, and introduced themselves, before marching past a gaping Bilbo to hang up their hoods and join the others in the dining-room.
“Dori at your service,” declared a very broad, very neat, silver-bearded dwarf, with tattoos on their hands that disappeared under their sleeves.
“Nori at your service,” tipped a tall, brown-bearded dwarf with very elaborate braids and more hand and forearm tattoos.
“Ori at your service,” murmured another tall and brown-bearded but very nervous-looking dwarf, too wrapped up in layers to see any ink on their skin.
“Oin at your service,” panted a grey-bearded dwarf, who must have come up after the others, for they had collected a fistful of weeds that Bilbo knew they couldn’t have gotten from her garden.
“Gloin at your service,” finished a copper-bearded dwarf proudly, as they shut the door firmly behind them. This last visitor added their white hood to the two purple, the grey, and the brown now hanging from the pegs, and didn’t seem to mind that Bilbo could only stammer her good manners after them.
Bilbo fetched ale, porter, and coffee for her new company, while they helped themselves to all the cakes, all the food that Misses Fili and Kili had gathered (all the scones, half her cheese-and-meat board, and most of the good mince-pies), and let themselves into Bilbo’s pantries (as they had her home) for more. She wished that she had done more to prepare herself, though she knew that nothing could have prepared her for nine new dwarves for acquaintances. At least she was being kept busy, waiting for the witch who now running quite late for tea!
She had just put the coffee over the hearth when came a loud and insistent knocking! Oh, someone was banging a stick against her paint job! Bilbo rushed away from the throng, prepared to give Gandalf a piece of her mind (the doorbell wasn’t at all hard to miss!), and flung the door open wide before too much damage could be done to her strictly tended home. She squeaked when four more dwarves fell in at her feet, with Gandalf leaning on her staff and cackling behind them.
The old witch had indeed made a great dent on the beautiful door and, in doing so, had gotten rid of the mark she had carved there on yesterday’s good morning.
“Is it now the fashion for hostesses to keep their guests waiting on the mat and then leap out in surprise on them?” she said, before waving her long hand over the pile of dwarves struggling at the hobbit’s hairy feet, pointing at them one by one. “Bilbo Baggins, my good hostess, let me introduce to you Bifur, Bofur, Bombur, and especially Thorin Oakenshield!”
Bifur was a wide and salt-and-pepper-bearded dwarf with tattoos and heavy scarring on the face; while Bofur was a broad and chestnut-bearded dwarf with twisty braids and striking dimples; and Bombur was a ginger-bearded and very fat dwarf with a magnificently braided moustache. Together, once on their feet again, they bowed deeply and declared themselves at Bilbo’s service, before hanging two yellow hoods and a pale green one among the others.
The last dwarf, who had the misfortune of suffering the bottom of the pile, pulled themselves to their feet with only a deep frown and said nothing to her about service. Proud Thorin Oakenshield looked down a long, once-broken nose at the hobbit with very bright but distant eyes. Unlike the others’ very neat styles, save perhaps young Miss Kili, Thorin’s brown and silver-streaked hair was loose and beadless, and their beard was cropped quite short. Yet this dwarf appeared extremely haughty nevertheless in their dark-furred coat and thick silvery armour.
Bilbo apologized so profusely, however, while hanging Thorin’s sky-blue, silver-tasselled hood, that the dwarf finally grunted “pray don’t mention it” and stopped frowning.
“Now we are all here!” Gandalf declared, rubbing her head where she had hit it on the chandelier, as she hung her hat on the fourteenth peg and tossed her braid back over the shoulder. “What a merry gathering you host, Bilbo Baggins, though I cannot yet speak for the fineness of the meal you promised!”
No hobbit could have missed such a blatant hint for food to be put in front of them. Bilbo’s spine went straight at the challenge to her hospitality, and with aplomb she took orders for raspberry jam and apple-tart (Bifur), mince-pies and cheese (Bofur), pork-pie and salad (Bombur), and a little red wine (Gandalf and Thorin). As well as for more cakes, ale, and coffee, and for a few eggs and chicken and pickles from the others still in the dining-room. It didn’t occur to her to wonder how they knew so much about the inside of her larders as she determinedly went about emptying them – and all her cupboards and drawers of enough crockery and cutlery for fifteen – this time very glad for Misses Fili and Kili’s helping hands, and for Misses Balin and Dwalin’s strong arms for moving all the tables, chairs, and trays into place.
Once seated, Gandalf was at the head of the party, with Thorin beside her, and the twelve other dwarves all round. Bilbo sat on a stool near the old witch, not quite at the table, where she was doing her best to pretend that she was no amateur at facilitating adventures and nibbling tiredly on the plate of biscuits in her lap that the dwarves had silently decided were best left to their little hostess. More than one hobbit meal passed them by like this, as the dwarves ate and ate, and talked and talked about things Bilbo still didn’t understand and didn’t wish to understand.
One thing that Bilbo did come to understand was that all of these dwarves were women. There wasn’t just Misses Balin and Dwalin, and Misses Fili and Kili, but also Miss Dori, Miss Nori, Miss Ori, Miss Oin, Miss Gloin, Miss Bifur, Miss Bofur, Miss Bombur, and proud Miss Thorin Oakenshield - and all except Thorin came in groups of sisters. Though no stranger to very capable women and also considered to be a very capable woman herself (and not only by herself, she might add), the hobbit had never met women like these dwarf adventurers at her table. They were all so tall and broad! So fierce and deep-voiced and heavy with metal (which they slowly came to discard in her front hall course by course)!
Another thing that Bilbo came to understand was that Gandalf was apparently well-acquainted with all these dwarves, and Bilbo bit most sullenly into her biscuits over how the witch had decided to take up her offer of a fine meal in this way. Bilbo felt a bit silly feeling shrewd earlier. She would have been able to better tolerate accommodating this business, she thought, if she could credit herself with “finding” all these dwarves for the old witch’s adventure.
When the dwarves at last pushed their chairs back, Bilbo had collected herself enough to collect the many dishes they had left behind. “I suppose you will all stay to supper?” she said, in the tones of someone politely trying to impress upon guests they had overstayed their welcome.
“Of course,” Miss Thorin agreed, giving no hint that she understood Bilbo’s. “And after, as we shan’t get through the business till late, and we must have some music first. Let us clear up for you, Mistress Baggins.”
“Oh, please, don’t trouble! I can manage!” Bilbo insisted.
However, while Miss Thorin didn’t trouble herself (she was too important), she waved her hand and the other twelve dwarves jumped to their feet and began tossing together tall piles of all the assorted dishes. Bilbo soon felt like she was running in helpless circles, squeaking with fright, “Carefully! Carefully! You’ll crack something!” and, “Please use the trays before you chip something!” But that only seemed to spur the dwarves to balance even taller columns of plates and cups, and they began to sing:
.
Chip the glasses and crack the plates!
Blunt the knives and bend the forks!
That's what Bilbo Baggins hates-
Smash the bottles and burn the corks!
.
Cut the cloth and tread on the fat!
Pour the milk on the pantry floor!
Leave the bones on the bedroom mat!
Splash the wine on every door!
.
Dump the crocks in a boiling bowl;
Pound them up with a thumping pole;
And when you've finished, if any are whole,
Send them down the hall to roll!
.
That's what Bilbo Baggins hates!
So, carefully! carefully with the plates!
.
Of course, the dwarves didn’t do any of these dreadful things, for dwarves are quite well-mannered and most appreciative of a fine meal. Though they teased the poor hobbit by throwing her things about and singing their mischievous song, they filled the sink with soap and set up a line, and as they sang, their deft hands cleaned, dried, and put everything away safely in the exact spots from which they had been taken.
At the end of it, Bilbo stood in her kitchen feeling like she had been caught in a tidy whirlwind, while the dwarves all left laughing highly for her parlour. Old, grandmotherly Miss Balin even patted the hobbit’s head as she left.
In the parlour, Miss Thorin and Gandalf (who had not participated in the throwing of the plates) had settled in and were smoking their pipes. Miss Thorin could send her enormous smoke-rings anywhere she pleased, whether it be up the chimney, behind the mantelpiece cloak, under a table, or around the ceiling, and Gandalf’s skill was greater still. Pop! The witch sent a smaller smoke-ring through each of Miss Thorin’s and burst them, before the rings turned green and curled back to hover over her head. In the dim light, this emerald cloud made her appear particularly witchy and worldly.
Some of the other dwarves eagerly joined in this little competition, though their skill wasn’t nearly so great, as they digested their excellent meal. Bilbo lingered in the doorway of her own parlour and watched with awe and embarrassment, thinking of the comparably simple smoke-ring she had shown off to Gandalf yesterday morning.
When they had finished with their pipes, Miss Thorin declared (deciding for all that she was done with smoke-rings), “Now for that music! We cannot begin an adventure without it! We must set the mood! Bring out the instruments!”
“Oh, dear, no more music, please!” Bilbo could have begged of them. However, she was still so accommodating a hostess that she only squeaked very quietly in distress.
Thorin’s order roused Misses Fili and Kili immediately. The young dwarves rushed into the front hall, where so many belongings had slowly been shed over the hours and trusted next to the hoods, and returned with little fiddles which they eagerly began tuning. Misses Dori, Nori, and Ori brought out different flutes from inside the coats they had hung. Miss Bombur produced a drum from the hall, while Misses Bifur and Bofur came back with clarinets that had been hidden among the walking sticks. Lastly, Misses Dwalin and Balin brought in enormous viols for themselves from the porch, and a beautiful golden harp for Miss Thorin. When Miss Thorin brushed her hand against the strings, the sound so sudden and sweet made Bilbo forget to wonder where in the world all these instruments had come from.
In fact, Miss Thorin’s elegant fingers playing a scale made Bilbo lose her thoughts entirely. She didn’t come back to herself until it was suddenly silent, for all the dwarves had finished tuning their instruments.
At a nod from Miss Thorin, fair Misses Fili and Kili stomped a beat and then began a lively music on their fiddles, to shed room of the gloom and any after-meal sleepiness. Gandalf kept puffing on her pipe and only tapped her foot, but all the dwarves clapped along happily, even proud Miss Thorin. The young dwarves’ bright smiles were so infectious and their skill so sharp that Bilbo wasn’t even annoyed when she realized this was yet another rendition of “That’s What Bilbo Baggins Hates”. She applauded as loud as anyone else when the fair sisters finished and bowed with a flourish.
Miss Bombur took up the beat from there on her drum, with her sisters Misses Bifur and Bofur soon accompanying on their clarinets, and the fat dwarf began a cheerful walking song that Bilbo had never heard before, in a beautiful bellow that surely could have been heard all the way down The Hill. The song was long and involved a lot of call and answer, entirely about the locations to which the dwarves were headed. It became nearly as silly as, or perhaps sillier than, the plate-throwing song, as each of the dwarves laughingly gave different and increasingly nonsensical answers.
Misses Dori, Nori, and Ori promptly raised their flutes next. The three dwarf sisters each played what would have made lovely whistling songs on their own, especially on long walks by The Water, but their songs layered together as lovingly as a perfectly folded pastry. The music was wonderfully light and sweet, yet also fiendishly complicated, and a mystery to recreate without the recipe and years of practice.
Misses Oin and Gloin went next, which was when Bilbo realized that neither of them had instruments. No one plucked a single string as Misses Oin and Gloin recited a piece that was between song and poetry; in perfect synchronization, on a loyal beat, they spoke in clever turns of phrase about travel and trade. Bilbo was so caught up in the click of their alliterative rhyming that she barely heard the actual words of their well-spoken story. She had a feeling that something was going over her head that she could not hope to catch, yet she still felt unmoored as she clapped politely.
When the music returned, it had changed, and as the dwarves played on, the music changed further still. Already unmoored, Bilbo felt herself being drawn deeper into their journey. To beg of them to stop and release her would have been terribly rude, Bilbo thought, and they were such skilled musicians that she would be a fool to flee their private performance, wherever they were taking her, even though she was also beginning to feel the interloper in her own home.
Misses Dwalin and Balin played a lower and longer tune, asking for the wisdom and the blessing of their ancestors for the journey ahead - in doing so naming a line of mothers and aunts which ran back to the very first dwarf. Bilbo felt deeply awed to hear all of history laid out like this, name by name and woman by woman. When Misses Dwalin and Balin finished, after asking their ancestors if they would be welcomed with open arms, Bilbo was the only one who clapped. She stopped clapping quickly, uncertain in the face of the seriousness that had surrounded the room, and she sat in embarrassed silence as the dwarves all recited something in a language she did not know.
The sun had now long since set outside and the spring darkness seemed to be peering in at them. At Miss Thorin’s direction, Miss Bofur closed the curtains of the little window which opened out onto the side of The Hill, so that the only light in the room belonged to the flickering fireplace, which cast tall, dancing shadows all around the room.
Bilbo looked to solemn Miss Thorin next, whose long-fingered hands had occasionally brushed the lovely strings of her harp between songs, but Miss Thorin still did not play. Misses Fili and Kili played took their turn again: the young women’s sweet voices raised above their music in the role of little girls asking after the beauty of the world below. Then Misses Bofur, Bifur, and Bombur played: a song in which a miner spoke lovingly of the deepness and the darkness that was to swallow her ahead, with a drumbeat that rolled through the room like thunder. Then Misses Dori, Nori, and Ori played a song which cast the sky above in the most frightening way Bilbo had ever heard the mere weather described - a villain in the story of some poor, lost dwarven woman. Then Misses Oin and Gloin recited another spoken piece, but slowly, in such a way that Bilbo did not know if the sisters’ strange words or their stranger silences made her more uncomfortable. Then the sisters Misses Dwalin and Balin played again, even lower and longer than before, about ancient homes carved into deep places, while grey Miss Bifur beside them tended the fire without feeding it so that it sank deeper and deeper into its grate.
And then, finally, it was Miss Thorin who broke the heavy silence that fell between songs. The fire was so low that the shadows had been lost in the darkness that had filled the room, and Bilbo could barely make out the edges of the severe dwarf woman’s face and lines of her graceful hands against her beautiful harp. Miss Thorin’s voice was deep-throated and lovely, and as she sang, the other dwarf women slowly began to join her.
Here is a fragment of their song, as much as it can be called such without the haunting music which accompanied it that night:
.
Far over the misty mountains cold
To dungeons deep and caverns old
We must away ere break of day,
To seek the pale enchanted gold.
.
The dwarves of yore made mighty spells,
While hammers fell like ringing bells
In places deep, where dark things sleep,
In hollow halls beneath the fells.
.
For ancient king and elvish lord
There many a gleaming golden hoard
They shaped and wrought, and light they caught
To hide in gems on hilt of sword.
.
On silver necklaces they strung
The flowering stars, on crowns they hung
The dragon-fire, in twisted wire
They meshed the light of moon and sun.
.
Far over the misty mountains cold
To dungeons deep and caverns old
We must away ere break of day,
To claim our long-forgotten gold.
.
Goblets they carved there for themselves
And harps of gold; where no man delves
There lay they long, and many a song
Was sung unheard by men or elves.
.
The pines were roaring on the height,
The winds were moaning in the night.
The fire was red, it flaming spread;
The trees like torches blazed with light.
.
The bells were ringing in the dale
And men looked up with faces pale;
Then dragon’s ire more fierce than fire
Laid low their towers and houses frail.
.
The mountains smoked beneath the moon;
The dwarves, they heard the tramp of doom.
They fled their hall to dying fall
Beneath his feet, beneath the moon.
.
Far over the misty mountains grim
To dungeons deep and caverns dim
We must away ere break of day,
In hope, our harps and gold to win!
.
This last song was too much for the little hobbit, who had already had too much feeling moving through her, summoned by their songs. She felt their love of beautiful things made by hands and by cunning and by magic. She felt their fierce and jealous love of deep and dark places they had dug out for themselves from the stone of the earth. She felt the desperate desires of the hearts of dwarves and she did not understand it.
What Bilbo did understand was the old desires that had woken up inside her breast, which had begun stirring from young Misses Fili and Kili’s very first song. She longed to see the great mountains on more than the maps of her books. She longed first to see their soaring peaks distant on the horizon, then up close hear the tall pines in the wind and the roar of their taller waterfalls that cloaked their sides. She wished to feel new smells in her nose and new dirt between her wiggling toes. In place of the tight grip she had on her chair, she imagined herself with a sword in hand, marching off into dark caverns lined with shining jewels and carved smooth by lovely hands-
A final crackle from the fireplace interrupted her thoughts - the death rattle of the flames - and her dreams were consumed in a flash of plundering, fiery teeth. Just like that, she was Miss Belladonna Baggins again, hungry and tired and far too soft for such ridiculous thoughts, a person who kept a quiet home and had never done anything close to worthy of such heartfelt songs in all her silly little life. Bilbo shivered and wrapped her arms around herself, as though to ward off the chill of her wild imagination.
She was Belladonna Baggins, not Belladonna Took, she told herself.
This was not nearly enough, however. Bilbo carefully stood up to fetch a lamp or candles or anything that would give off the littlest bit of light, unbearable to bear a moment longer in this heavy, silent darkness. She was of half a mind to come back and shoo the dwarves off, claiming an early morning tomorrow, and half a mind to crawl back to her bedroom, light every candle she owned, and sit under her blankets like a small child until all the dwarves and their music were gone.
“Where are you going, Mistress Baggins?” said Miss Thorin, in a tone that froze Bilbo’s hairy feet to the floor. Suddenly, the hobbit realized that the music and the singing had stopped. All the dwarves were looking at her, their eyes shining in the dark.
“To fetch a little light,” Bilbo squeaked.
A murmur of amusement came from all around her.
“We prefer the dark,” said Miss Thorin, and her long fingers closed, gentle and inescapable, around Bilbo’s small wrist, which made the hobbit squeak again unintentionally. “Dark for dark business! There are many hours before dawn and much to be said in them.”
“Oh, of course,” Bilbo said weakly.
Miss Thorin guided Bilbo back to her seat, where the little hobbit sat with her hands folded in her lap. Even after Miss Thorin let go, Bilbo could still feel her touch. She peered with wide, uncertain eyes as the dwarf woman stood in the middle of the dark room, which seemed to be pressing down on the little hobbit even heavier than before.
“Are you sure that not even a little-?”
“Hush,” came Gandalf’s voice in a low, witchy warning. “Let Thorin speak.”
This is how Thorin began:
“My good dwarrows, Gandalf, and Mistress Baggins! We are now gathered in the halls of our new friend and fellow conspirator, this most excellent and audacious of halflings, to begin our long expected quest for home. Our highest compliments to the fine and gracious table she sets. May good fortune be with her as may it continue to be with us.”
Here the dwarf woman paused for breath, for agreeable clapping from the other guests (with the dwarves gave readily in exchange for the fine meal), for some polite remark from the host, as was customary with this sort of speech. Unfortunately, the host in question hadn’t the faintest idea that she was expected to say anything here. The darkness of the room was closing in around the little hobbit and she had never before been accused of being a conspirator in her life.
“Audacious,” Bilbo mouthed to herself, horrified.
With a frown, Thorin continued:
“I do not believe I need to say what we stand to gain, nor what we stand to lose, on this long journey which we shall begin ere break of day, which long has needed to be set into motion. Some of us, or perhaps all of us - save of course our friend and counsellor, the wisest of witches, Gandalf - may never return from quest. But we have agreed unanimously that the reward is well worth the risk and, if the rumors we all have heard are true, then we cannot allow our enemies or mere treasure-hunters to steal what is rightfully ours from us once again. My most estimable companions, we are met tonight to discuss our plans, our ways, means, policy, and devices-”
This was Thorin’s style of speaking. She was an important dwarf. When she spoke, it was often to make an important remark or to take the lead on matters of great importance. This matter of great importance was particularly important to Thorin and she felt it necessary to impress the matter with all the importance she could lend it. She also wanted to be clearly understood, however, she unfortunately sometimes overcomplicated a matter in her determination to be clear.
At this point, Bilbo was convinced that there had been a terrible mistake and she really ought not be in the room. So she slid silently to her feet to leave, certain that whatever special dwarf business this was would not need her input in the slightest.
“-for our quest to take back Lonely Mountain, home of our most honored ancestors, from the clutches of the terrible dragon Smaug.” Here, the dwarves all hissed or booed under their breath. “We must be appreciative to the grey witch, Gandalf, for joining us as a guide and for finding the fourteenth member of our company, our esteemed host Mistress Baggins, willing to brave the creature’s fiery breath-”
Thorin’s second attempt at complimenting their host, said sincerely enough for an obligatory gesture, went even worse than the first, though Thorin didn’t notice this anymore than she had the fact that their esteemed host was trying to sneak out again. Bilbo froze when she heard what Miss Thorin had just said - and fear bubbled in her breast like a kettle about to whistle. While Thorin probably would have gone on like this until she ran out of breath, the dwarf was rudely interrupted by the deafening shriek that burst out of Bilbo Baggins, like a dozen shrieking kettles, as the poor hobbit finally understood what she had heard.
Half the dwarves sprang up in alarm, knocking over two little tables, pulling knives off their belts and out of their boots. Gandalf struck her staff on the ground and summoned a bright blue light at the end to better see by. The light filled the room just in time for everyone - all thirteen dwarves and one witch - to see their esteemed hostess topple backwards flat onto the floor, the poor little hobbit having fainted dead away.
There was talk of running for smelling salts or their instruments at first, but at Gandalf’s suggestion, the dwarves took Bilbo and laid her out of the way on the drawing-room sofa instead. They put a warm drink at her elbow and a blanket over her lap, then went back to their dark business, where Gandalf was chewing on her pipe again.
“Excitable little lady,” the witch explained to them. “Gets funny queer fits occasionally, but she’s one of the best, really. As fierce as a dragon in a pinch.”
Dear reader, if you have ever seen a dragon in a pinch - which for your sake I sincerely hope you haven’t - you will realize that the witch’s words were poetical exaggeration applied to any of the round, jolly hobbits of the Shire. Even in the extraordinary case of Old Took’s great-grandmother, Nanny Bullroarer, who was so huge (for a hobbit) that she could ride a horse, and who had charged the ranks of the goblins of Mount Gram in the Battle of the Green Fields. With a single swing of her wooden club, Nanny Bullroarer had knocked Queen Gol-firnbul’s head clean off and sent it sailing a hundred yards through the air - right into a rabbit hole. In this way, the battle was won and the game of Golf invented at the same moment.
The inspirational story of Nanny Bullroarer was unfortunately nothing compared to a dragon in a pinch. This was why her much gentler descendant was, meanwhile, reviving in the drawing-room after a mere mention of one - though poor, woozy Bilbo had never seen a dragon at all, much less one in a pinch.
After a while and a drink, Bilbo was feeling enough herself again to return to the parlor, prepared to explain that there had been a horrible misunderstanding. However, she paused at the distinctly displeased sound of the conversation inside.
“I don’t mean to be rude, but that shriek did not sound very fierce to me,” one of the dwarves was saying - Miss Gloin, with the proud look and the copper beard. “I think it sounded more like fright than excitement, personally! Wouldn’t you agree?”
“One shriek like that in a moment of excitement would be enough to wake the dragon,” grumbled Miss Dwalin, of the partially shaved head and twice-broken nose.
“And all the dragon’s relatives,” young Miss Kili piped up, to some chuckles.
“If it hadn’t been for the sign on the door, I should have been sure that we had been directed to the wrong house,” Miss Thorin Oakenshield herself said, sounding cross, perhaps still upset at her grand speech being ignored twice and then interrupted. “As soon as I clapped eyes on the little creature squeaking and bouncing on the mat, I had my doubts, Gandalf. She looks more like a grocer than a burglar!”
The handle of the parlour door turned and it might as well have been Miss Belladonna Took the Second who entered. Suddenly, Bilbo would have valiantly gone without bed and breakfasts to prove herself fierce. The phrase “little creature squeaking and bouncing” alone almost made her fierce. Many a time after this moment, the Baggins part of her would look back and think, “Bilbo, you were a ninny; you walked right in and put your foot in it,” but in this moment, the Baggins part of her was several steps behind, back in the other room.
“Pardon me if I have overheard some of your conversation just now,” she said, with the greatest dignity she could summon for these dwarves who spoke so importantly. “While I don’t pretend to understand your business, nor all your references to burglars, I think I am right in believing that you have decided I am no good, despite having no proof one way or the other. I will show you. Though, personally, I am quite sure you have come to the wrong house - as soon as I saw your funny faces on the doorstep, I thought so, and especially now since my door is newly painted and hasn’t any sign - you may treat it as the right one. Tell me what you want done and I will try it, if I have to walk from here to the East of East and fight the wild Were-worms in the Last Desert.”
Bilbo took a deep breath and continued, “My great-great-great-grandmother, Nanny Bullroarer Took, who-”
“Yes, yes, but that was last millenium,” Miss Thorin interrupted, looking even more cross than before and not in the least bit embarrassed. “We are not here to discuss whose ancestors did what - at least not at the moment - we were talking about you.”
Bilbo cleared her throat, flustered.
“There is a mark on the door, actually,” one of the dwarves piped up helpfully. It was Miss Ori, with the brown beard and the gangly limbs, who had removed her layers over the meal to reveal similar hand and forearm tattoos to her sisters.
“The usual one in the trade,” agreed Miss Nori, scratching at the elaborate braids of her beard with a tattooed finger, “or used to be. ‘Burglar wants a good job, plenty of Excitement and reasonable Reward’, that’s how it’s usually read.”
“You could say ‘Expert Treasure-hunter instead of Burglar if you like,” suggested Miss Dori of the silver beard, who was sitting between them. “Some of them do.”
“It’s all the same to us,” Miss Balin declared. The white-bearded dwarf fixed the flustered hobbit with sharp eyes and said, “Gandalf told us that there was a woman of the sort in these parts looking for a Job at once, and that she had arranged for a meeting here this Wednesday tea-time-”
Bilbo opened her mouth to say what she thought of that, but Gandalf beat her to it.
“Of course there is a mark on the door!” the witch said. “I put the advertisement up myself, and I placed it quite precisely! Your company may set out as an expedition of thirteen, with all the bad luck you please, or go back to digging coal in the Blue Mountains, if you have already come to the conclusion I have chosen the wrong woman or the wrong house. You tasked me with finding your fourteen and I have found her!”
Gandalf pointed at Bilbo and all the dwarves looked at her as though they had never seen her before. Bilbo realized here that her mouth was still hanging open and she snapped it shut quickly, despite having many not-so-polite questions for the witch.
Gandalf nodded and stuck her pipe back in her mouth. “Let us all agree to stop this silly arguing. It is getting us nowhere. I have decided that Miss Baggins will be joining your company and that ought to be enough for all of you who trusted me with the task. If I say that she is a Burglar, a Burglar she is! ...Or will be when the time comes. There is more in this hobbit than you think, a deal more than she has any idea of herself, and you may - hopefully - all live to thank me yet for it.”
The witch frowned around the room, but no one dared to start up again. “That’s right,” she said. “Now, Bilbo, my good woman, fetch a lamp! I have something to share with you and these old eyes could use a little light.”
After everything the witch had just said about her character and her role in things, Bilbo took the excuse to flee the room gladly, and then begrudgingly came back with a red-shaded lamp, mostly out of fear of what the old witch might do if she didn’t. Under the light, Gandalf spread a piece of parchment out over the parlour table, and murmuring broke out among the dwarves.
“This was made by Thror, your grandmother, Thorin,” Gandalf explained, above the excited whispering. “It is a plan of the Lonely Mountain.”
Miss Thorin frowned as she looked over the map. “We have collected our own maps in preparation for our expeditions, Gandalf, and I remember the Mountain and the lands about it well enough without them. I know where Mirkwood is. I know where the Withered Heath where the great dragons bred is. What is different about this one?”
“There is a dragon marked in red on the Mountain there, Aunt Thorin,” young Miss Fili pointed out with a grin, “but I think it will be easy enough to find her without that, when we arrive there.”
“If you would deign to look at this map for more than a few seconds, you may notice that there is a secret entrance to the Mountain marked on this map,” Gandalf said. “See here? This rune on the West side and the hand pointing to it from the other runes? This is a hidden passage to the Lower Halls.”
“How do we know it has stayed secret?” Miss Thorin demanded.
“Old Smaug has lived there long enough now to sniff out everything there is to know about the mountain,” Miss Bombur agreed, nervously tugging her ginger beard.
“What if a previous expedition’s used it already and given it away?” Miss Gloin added.
“They cannot, though for different reasons as to why the dragon can’t have used it,” Gandalf replied. “The door is much too small for Smaug - ‘five feet high the door and three may walk abreast’ say these runes - and Smaug couldn’t have crept into a hole that size even when she was a young dragon.”
“Certainly not after devouring so many of dwarves of Erebor and men of Dale,” Miss Bofur muttered, also nervously twirling one of her chestnut beard-braids. Miss Bifur, with the salt-and-pepper beard, elbowed her in the ribs for this comment.
“That seems quite large a tunnel to me,” squeaked Bilbo. She was only a little hobbit, you must remember, less than four feet tall, and she had no experience of dwarven halls or dragons.
She had also forgotten to try and sneak silently back out of the room, immediately arrested by her great love of cartography and calligraphy. She had a large map in her hall of the Country Road, where she had painstakingly marked all her favourite walks in red ink. This map of the Lonely Mountain had been made with an especially fine hand, in a particularly dwarfish style, illustrating a place Bilbo had never been, and it was making her feel excited and interested again, against all her good sense.
“I mean,” Bilbo hurriedly corrected herself. “Even if it is much too small for the dragon, how could such a large door be kept secret from everybody else? Surely you’d be able to see it from the outside, wouldn’t you?”
There was some quiet scoffing around the room.
“Not a secret passage made by a dwarf,” Miss Thorin declared.
“There are many ways of keeping secret passages hidden, and dwarves know nearly all of them,” Gandalf explained. “In which way this particular door has been hidden, it is impossible to know without going to see. From what it says here on this map, I suspect this door has been made to look exactly like the side of the Mountain. That is the traditional method among dwarves, I believe - isn’t it?”
“Quite right,” Miss Thorin agreed.
“Now, in answer to the earlier question about earlier expeditions, with this map came a key… a small and curious key. Ah, here it is!” The old witch reached into one of her many pockets and offered Miss Thorin a silver key, with a long barrel and intricate wards. “Keep it safe! Else your expedition won’t be able to use this door either!”
“Indeed, I will,” Miss Thorin promised, and fastened the key upon a fine chain that hung about her neck, before tucking it under her jacket and beard. “Already things begin to look more hopeful. Originally, we had planned on going East, as quietly as carefully as we could, and take the plan up again once we reached the Long Lake.”
“If I know anything about the roads East, I think your plan would have come up again much sooner than that,” Gandalf interrupted.
“We thought we might from there travel up along the River Running,” Miss Thorin went on, pretending she had not heard the witch, “which would take us into the shadow of the Mountain, where lies the ruins of Dale in the valley there. However, none of us liked the idea of walking in through the front.”
“The dragon comes out of the Mountain far less often nowadays,” Miss Balin said. “Some even whisper that Smaug may be dead, but more surely it is known that even in the deepest slumber, a dragon’s senses sleep shallowly. Smaug sleeps with her head turned towards the smashed Front Gates.”
“Many expeditions have ended badly that way,” Miss Gloin informed them knowingly.
“And so would have yours,” Gandalf said, “without a mighty Warrior or even a Hero to face the dragon. I had a passing look for one - however, here, swords are mostly blunt, axes are only for trees, and shields find their use as dish-covers and charming side tables - and warriors are busy fighting one another in distant lands. Good heroes are always scarce on the ground. And frankly, I am not sure why you would want heroics when burglary will suit you much better.”
“Will it now?” Miss Thorin said, unimpressed.
The old witch nodded. “Yes, it will. I thought so immediately when I remembered the existence of this side door. ‘A burglar will do perfectly,’ I thought. And here is our little Bilbo Baggins - our chosen and selected burglar - who will serve excellently in the role. Now, let us get on with it and make some proper plans.”
“Very well then,” Miss Thorin said, “supposing that our newfound expert gives us some ideas or suggestions for how to proceed.” She turned with mock-politeness to Bilbo, and the gazes of the dwarves all followed suit.
Bilbo felt confused and a bit shaky inside, but also strangely determined to go on with things. “First, I should like to know a bit more about things,” she told them. “I mean about the gold and the dragon, and all that, and how it got there, and who it belongs to, and so on and further. Oh, and about this Mountain, of course.”
The dwarves gazes all turned a bit wide-eyed.
“Haven’t you got a map?” Miss Thorin demanded. “Didn’t you hear our song? And haven’t we been talking about all this for hours now?”
“And explained none of it to someone who has been on her feet half the night making sure you have all been well fed,” Bilbo answered curtly, in the same tone she usually reserved for cousins who tried to borrow money off her. “We have only just met and I do not want to make any assumptions here about my guests. If I am going to decide anything, I should like the situation made plain and clear.”
Several of the dwarves nodded approvingly and, encouraged by this, Bilbo did her best to appear wise, prudent, and thoroughly professional. She wanted to live up to Gandalf’s recommendation, though she did not know how a professional burglar conducted themselves or how precisely the witch had recommended her. A general, slightly obstinate business manner seemed like the right direction.
“Also, I should like to know about risks, out-of-pocket expenses, time required and remuneration, and so forth.” By which, Bilbo really meant: “What am I going to get out of this? And am I going to come back alive?”
“Oh, very well,” Miss Thorin said. “Be seated once more, Mistress Baggins, and for your sake, we will plainly and clearly lay out the history of the Lonely Mountain, the Queendom of Erebor, and the terrible dragon Smaug.”
Bilbo nodded in agreement, her heart thrumming like a hummingbird’s wings, and primly took a seat beside Miss Bifur. In the dark of the parlour, illuminated only by the red shade of the lantern Bilbo had brought, Miss Thorin looked quite ominous again, and the room seemed to get blacker still despite the light. She cleared her throat and all the dwarves seemed to lean forward eagerly.
“Long ago, in the time of my grandmother, our family was driven out of the far North and so they returned to this Mountain on the map, which had been discovered by my far ancestor, Thrain the Old. My cunning grandmother, Thror, had a vision of the great wealth that could be drawn and crafted there, and under her direction, the dwarves set their tools to this Mountain. They mined and they tunneled - and they found a great deal of gold and a great many jewels - and so they made greater workshops, in which to craft great masterworks, and huger halls, in which to house the excellent treasures they made. Under Thror’s guidance, they grew immensely rich and famous, and my grandmother was Queen Under the Mountain again.”
“Kings used to send for our smiths,” Miss Gloin agreed. “They rewarded even the least skillful most richly. Parents would beg us to take their children as apprentices, and pay us handsomely, especially in food-supplies.”
Miss Bombur leaned past Miss Bifur to whisper to Bilbo. “Dwarves don’t have much interest in growing or foraging for themselves,” she explained, and Bilbo nodded, though the statement thoroughly baffled her.
“Altogether, those were good days for us,” Miss Dori said wistfully. “The poorest of us had money to spend and to lend, and to make beautiful things just for the fun of it.”
“Not to speak of the most marvellous and magical toys,” Miss Bofur added, with a similar faraway look to her eyes. “The likes of like are not easily found in the world nowadays without the master craftsman and their workshops and their secrets. The toy market of Dale was one of the wonders of the North!”
“Queen Thror and her crafters were treated with great reverence by the mortal men,” Miss Balin explained to Bilbo, “who lived to South, and were gradually spreading up the Running River as far as the valley overshadowed by the Mountain. In this time of plenty, they built the merry town of Dale and held great markets, which brought merchants together, dwarves and men alike, from all four corners of the world.”
Miss Thorin cleared her throat again. “The wealth of Erebor was measured in far more than gold,” she agreed, “though many watched in envy as my grandmother’s halls became full of armour and jewels and carvings and cups. Undoubtedly, these material riches were what brought the dragon to the Mountain. It does not matter to a dragon whose tools pulled gold and jewels from a mountain, nor whose tools shaped it, they will steal away treasure wherever they can find it and jealously guard their plunder for as long as they live.”
“Which is practically forever unless they’re killed,” Miss Bombur whispered to Bilbo.
“They’ll never enjoy a brass ring of it either,” Miss Gloin complained. “They’ll steal from men and elves as well as dwarves. Indeed, they hardly know a good bit of work from bad - and they hardly care, unless they think someone else has more or better plunder than their own hoard.”
“And they can’t make a thing for themselves,” Miss Dori added with a sniff. “Not even to mend a little loose scale of their armor.”
“There were lots of dragons in the North in those days,” Gandalf mused, “and gold was probably getting scare up there, with the dwarves flying south or getting killed, and all the general waste and destruction that dragons make going from bad to worse.”
Miss Balin nodded. “And of them, there was a most specially greedy, strong, and wicked worm called Smaug. One day, she flew up into the air and came south.”
“The first we heard of her coming was a noise like a hurricane,” Miss Thorin said, with a dark expression, “and the pine trees on the Mountain creaking and cracking in the wind. From a good way off, the dwarves who happened to be outside could see the red dragon settle on the mountain in a spout of flame, as though to claim it for her own. I was one of them. It saved my life that day.”
“We were in the market of Dale, the three of us,” Miss Bofur piped up, gesturing to Miss Bifur and Miss Bombur. “We saw the dragon go down the slopes of the Mountain, the woods all going up in fire as she went.”
“My sister and I were returning to the Mountain,” Miss Dori offered. “We fled to the nearest river to escape the flames. The world turned to nothing but steam and smoke.”
“I was in the Great Hall of Dale with my sister,” Miss Gloin said. “We heard the wind, but suspected nothing even though it had been a sunny day, and then it seemed as though every bell in Dale started ringing all at once. You couldn’t hear yourself think. The warriors armed themselves at once, but none could fly back to the Mountain faster than the dragon’s wings.”
“I was with Thorin,” Miss Dwalin said. “My sister was with us also at the time. From a distance, we saw the great gates try to close - even a dragon would have trouble breaking down gates built by dwarves, if they had been closed properly - but the dragon smashed through them.”
“None escaped that way until Smaug moved deeper into the Mountain,” Miss Thorin confirmed. “We have heard from the lucky minority who escaped that the dragon sacked every hall; she peered down every tunnel, every alley, every passage; she tore apart every cellar and mansion and workshop. As is the way of dragons, she killed every unfortunate dwarf she encountered and took every possession with even a thread of gold for herself. All those who went to the Mountain to fight the dragon did not return. After there were no dwarves left alive inside, Smaug turned her greedy eyes on the surviving dwarves and the men of Dale next.”
“Very little could be seen due to the lingering smoke, when the dragon fell on Dale,” Miss Bofur said. “She destroyed most of the warriors there - common enough story with dragons - and Dale burned next. We had to leave everything behind.”
“Smaug took all the treasures of Dale back to the Mountain,” Miss Balin said. “We heard that she used to crawl out of the great gates by night and carry away people to eat, in the early days, and so soon even the ruins of Dale emptied. What goes on there now, we don’t know for certain, but I don’t suppose anyone lives nearer to the Mountain than the far edge of the Long Lake nowadays.”
“The few dwarves that were left - those who had been well outside or had barely escaped the Mountain - sat and wept in hiding, and cursed Smaug,” Miss Thorin said. “My siblings and my father had been smuggled out in the chaos by loyal guards, but everyone had seen my mother and grandmother go even deeper into the Mountain, and we assumed they had been killed by Smaug. It was a great surprise when my mother and grandmother appeared with little more than singed beards. They looked very grim and said very little. When I asked how they had gotten away, they told me to hold my tongue, and said that in the proper time I should know.
“After that, we left the Mountain behind us. The survivors have spread thin across the four corners of the world - some of them did not survive the journey - and we have had to find shelter where we could, begging the generosity of kin and strangers alike, earning our livings as best we could up and down the lands. Great architects, who had designed dozens of mines or aqueducts in their lifetime, were reduced to digging coal from the mines of men. Master smiths who had spent hundreds of years perfecting their specialities were forced to work with any metal they were given. Expert magicians, who had crafted lights that lasted a hundred years and fires which burned even in the dead of winter, were sentenced to odd jobs and selling simple charms. We have not stayed so low, of course, I will allow that we are not so badly off as some, but…”
Miss Thorin trailed off, her hand resting on her neck, where Bilbo could see the golden chain upon which she had strung the silver key. “...Even now, we cannot forget our stolen treasures. We still mean to get some pieces of our Mountain back… and to bring our curses home to Smaug someday, if we are able.”
She looked to Gandalf next, her eyes narrowed. “I have often wondered about my mother’s and my grandmother’s escape from the depths of the Mountain. I have always figured that they must have had a private side-door which only they knew about, which I see must be this one here on the map, apparently made by my grandmother herself. I should like to know how you got a hold of it, Gandalf, and why it did not come down to me, the rightful heir, before now.”
The witch chewed her pipe for several seconds, before she said: “I did not ‘get hold of it’ like some sticky-fingered relation. I was given this map for safe-keeping. Your grandmother, Thror, must have given it to your mother - sometime before she was killed in the mines of Moria by Azog the Goblin-”
“Curse her name, yes,” Miss Thorin said, dismissively. “So, you got the map from my mother, Thrain, before she vanished a hundred years ago last Thursday, on the twenty-first of April. For she has never been seen by anyone since. A hundred years seems quite long enough a time, I think, to deliver a map and a key.”
Bilbo thought so as well, but the witch harrumphed.
“If I have chosen my own time and way of handing this over, you can hardly blame me,” Gandalf insisted, “considering the trouble I went through just to find you! Your mother could not remember her own name when she gave me the paper, and she never told me yours, so on the whole I think I ought to be praised and thanked for managing. It is yours now, just in time for your expedition, and there’s no changing things now.”
“...I don’t understand,” Miss Thorin said.
“Are you saying that you saw our grandmother, Thrain, after everyone thought she had vanished?” Miss Fili said. The blue tattoo by her eye made her wide eyes look even brighter. “How did your paths cross?”
“Your grandmother, young Fili, went away to try her luck with the map after your great-grandmother was killed in the mines of Moria. She had lots of adventures of a most unpleasant sort, I presume, for she never got near the Mountain. How she got there I do not know and I shudder to think, but I found her a prisoner in the dungeons of the Necromancer.”
“Whatever were you doing there?” Miss Kili asked.
“I was finding things out, as usual, and never you mind the details,” the witch replied. “It was a nasty, dangerous business. Even I, Gandalf, only just escaped. I tried to save Thrain, but it was too late, for she was witless and wandering, and had forgotten almost everything except the map and the key. The idea of escape slipped out of her mind every time I tried to give it to her, like sand falls between fingers.”
The witch’s voice turned apologetic at the end and all the dwarves looked sorrowful. Miss Thorin’s face had turned expressionless in the way where one could be sure there was quite a lot going on inside and Bilbo felt quite badly for her. This was an awful way to discover how one’s mother had died.
“We have long ago paid the goblins of Moria,” Thorin said finally. “Perhaps we must given a thought to this Necromancer as well.”
“Thorin Oakenshield, don’t be absurd!” Gandalf snapped. “The Necromancer is an enemy quite beyond the powers of all the dwarves put together, even if they could all be collected again from the four corners of the world. The one thing your mother wished was for her daughter to read the map and use the key. The dragon and the Mountain are more than big enough tasks for you! Leave that business to me!”
“Hear, hear!” Bilbo thought, and also accidentally said aloud.
The dwarves all turned to look at her.
“Hear what?” Miss Oin demanded.
Never before asked to elaborate on this expression, the flustered Bilbo ended up replying, “Hear what I have got to say!”
“...What’s that, then?” Miss Bombur asked.
“Well,” Bilbo cleared her throat nervously. “For starters, I think Gandalf is right that you’ve got rather enough on your plates as it is. Already, you’ve talked and sung through a good part of the night...”
“It’s traditional, when a company is fully assembled,” Miss Balin said.
“There must always be singing before a quest!” Miss Gloin argued.
“You asked for an explanation,” Miss Dori added.
“Anyway,” Bilbo continued desperately, ignoring these interjections, “it’s a long way East and if you don’t figure it all out on the way there, I daresay you will think of something if you sit on the doorstep of your Mountain for long enough. After all, you have this marvelous, secret side door here and the only key for it. If you talk any longer tonight, I think that you shall hardly be able to get up in the morning! How about bed and an early start, and all that? You will need time for a good breakfast before you go.”
“Before we go, I suppose you mean,” Miss Thorin answered. “Aren’t you the burglar? Won’t you be sitting on the doorstep with us? Won’t stepping through the door be your job?”
Here, Bilbo fiercely regretted all early convictions about proving her fierceness.
“I agree, however, about bed and breakfast,” Miss Thorin went on. “We will adjourn for the night and continue this discussion on the road in the mourning. For breakfast, I like eggs with my harm, when starting on a long journey - fried, not poached, and mind that you do not break them.”
Bilbo might have accidentally agreed to showing that she could be good at anything she put her mind to, but she was quite certain she had not agreed to serve breakfast to order. Providing breakfast was implied, in her duty as a hostess, but she didn’t appreciate how all the other dwarves then ordered their own breakfasts without so much as a please, following Miss Thorin’s example. Then they all got up and Bilbo suddenly had to find room for them all to get their good night’s rest.
The hobbit filled up all her spare rooms with dwarves, and then yanked all her spare linens and blankets and pillows out of cupboards, so she could put together cozy beds on chairs and sofas. There were thirteen of them, after all! Bilbo was quite grateful that so many of them were sisters and quite used to sharing, though the dwarves were altogether a bit too tall and broad to easily share furniture built for hobbits.
By the time everyone was safely stowed away and Bilbo wobbled back towards her own little bed, she was feeling very tired and not particularly pleased with herself. She did not think she would be going on any journey in the morning. She was quite sure that she would not be getting up very early to cook everyone a special breakfast either. Any Tookishness that had bobbed to the surface in her was settling back down again; she was not really anything like her mother, she told herself, and she would make her sorriest excuses about this fact to these strange dwarves in the morning.
Since it was quite late and dark now, and Bilbo was very tired, she did not see the dwarf in front of her until they ran into each other. For Bilbo, it was much like walking into a wall and she nearly toppled backwards. Thankfully, the dwarf shot out a hand - for dwarves see quite well in the dark - and caught her arm. They steadied her, making sure she was back on her hairy toes, before letting go again.
Bilbo had to squint to make out who it was, because hobbits did not see nearly as well in the dark as dwarves. “Oh, Miss Thorin!” she finally squeaked in a hushed voice, thoroughly embarrassed, her face felt like it was burning and her wrist felt hot where Thorin’s long fingers had wrapped around it. “Thank you! I am so very sorry I did not see you there. Is something wrong? Can I help you?”
“No, I simply went to collect the map that had been left in the parlour,” Miss Thorin said.
“Oh,” Bilbo said. “Of course.”
When the hobbit would back on this moment, she would think of all the things she could have said to the dwarf. She could have expressed her condolences about the loss of Thorin’s childhood home and all the dwarves who had been killed by the dragon Smaug. She could have expressed her sympathy at the tragic deaths of Thorin’s mother and grandmother. She could have expressed her confusion over what exactly this quest was supposed to accomplish and why it was worth the very real risk.
Instead, Bilbo said: “Well, I shan’t keep you from getting your good night’s sleep! Please let me know if you need anything else.” Even though Bilbo sincerely hoped none of the dwarves bothered her for anything.
“Of course,” Miss Thorin agreed. “Sleep well, Mistress Baggins.”
Bilbo intended to sleep well, she honestly did, imagining quite vindictively what it would be like to sleep so well that she would sleep straight through breakfast and perhaps even the dwarves leaving. Even though this would mark her as quite a poor hostess and she would be mortified if this happened. However, as she lay in bed, she could hear Thorin still humming to herself in the bedroom next to her own. (It was the best bedroom in her home, once belonging to Bilbo’s dear parents.)
.
“Far over the misty mountains cold
To dungeons deep and caverns old
We must away, ere break of day,
To find our long-forgotten gold.”
.
Bilbo Baggins went to sleep with that song in her ears - with every song the dwarves had sung playing over and over again in her head - and it gave her strange and miserable dreams. She woke up several times and remembered very little of what had pushed her out of sleep. It was long after the break of day when Bilbo finally woke up properly and even then, from the moment she pulled herself from her pillow, she found her head was still aching with the remnants of Thorin’s song.
~
End of Part One
~
AN: Writing Notes
- I added the “Miss Dwarf” bc I felt it was easier to forget the dwarves were women too (there’s plenty of Fem!Bilbo fic out there), since I’m not changing any of the names or the story, and it added an impersonal distance of sorts that can come down later in the story as characters become closer.
- I changed some of the appearances in the fic, but not for any real reason besides “I felt like it”. I didn’t change the names because I’m sure there’s a correct way to do that in JRRT’s eyes and I don’t care enough to figure it out. (Though, yes, I am aware that some of the dwarves’ names apparently have feminine endings already.)
- I added more music because I figured that seeing a company off on a quest with music could be a dwarfish tradition. Also because there’s a lot of focus on Thorin in the original text and I wanted to make it clear that this company contains a lot of people who have their own stories/personalities. (Also I have questions about what they did with their instruments afterwards, which I intend to answer in the next installment if I am able.)
- Showcasing more of the dwarves is also why I took Thorin’s monologues in the latter half of the chapter and tried to divide them between the Company, with a preference towards the older dwarves who were there when Smaug attacked the Mountain and would have the authority to speak on behalf of their family. Thorin talks SO MUCH in the book.
- If you go read the first chapter of The Hobbit after this, you will see exactly how much this fic would not pass a review for originality, but that’s not the point of this. The point of this is “because I felt like it”.
- I intend to create a second, cleaner, slightly more original draft of this and post it to AO3 as a complete fic. If I forge ahead and attempt to rewrite the entire Hobbit (like the fool that I am), it will be as instalments in a series, by the chapters of the book, which are thankfully quite episodic.
EDIT: On AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23209567
10k of a Pre-Canon Canon-Divergence RAB-Lives AU, in which Regulus Black survived the Inferi Cave and lives on Privet Drive for yet undisclosed reasons. Harry Potter notices something strange about the man who lives Number Eight and investigates. Based on an ask earlier this week (link).
I may clean this up (rewrite it and edit it properly) and post it to AO3 as a “probably will not continue” one shot, but I mostly just wanted to stretch my HP muscles again. I’ve been so busy with work lately. I’ve missed these two.
Never posted to tumblr or to AO3 before; fic under the cut.
-cut-
~
Edit: I have now posted a longer, cleaner, more updated version of this fic to AO3. You can find it here (x).
~
who discovered your secret
~
On the street named Privet Drive, a man lived alone at Number Eight, supposedly. It was apparently difficult to tell. No one besides a boy named Harry Potter, who lived with his aunt’s family at Number Four, seemed to pay him any real attention. No one else on Privet Drive seemed to be able to pay him any attention. Which was very strange in Harry’s eyes for many reasons, one of which was because the man was the strangest person on Privet Drive by far, and the residents of Privet Drive didn’t like strange appearances or strange behavior, and usually weren’t shy about sticking their noses in and saying so.
Harry would know. He was strange too, and the residents of Privet Drive talked about him with hard looks and pinched frowns, with little care as to whether he was in earshot or not. Harry was a small, brown-skinned boy with knobby knees and large circular glasses, with a funny lightning-bolt scar on his forehead, and on this street of identical houses with their exactly neat lawns and perfectly manicured bushes, no one else looked like him. The pale man who lived at Number Eight, who kept his house perfectly unremarkable, looked even stranger, but no one talked about him.
For example, Harry Potter had unruly black hair, which seemed to grow back even wilder every time his Aunt Petunia tried to shear it off. The man at Number Eight had even longer hair, black and just past his chin, which rightly should have garnered derisive remarks about “hippies and hoodlums” from his aunt’s husband, Vernon Dursley, but Uncle Vernon didn’t seem to notice the man existed and didn’t spare a single grumble.
Harry also wore the hand-me-down clothes of his spoiled cousin Dudley, who was the same age but a plump and burly boy, so the clothes hung off Harry’s skinny limbs. The clothes were often frayed and faded, and gained many holes from Harry’s many chores, and the residents of Privet Drive thought he looked quite disrepectable. On the other hand, the man at Number Eight dressed all in black, in long and heavy and dusty coats, and no one said a word about it.
When it came to strange behaviors, Harry got cuffed upside the head for any number of things: for staring too long at anyone and then for not meeting someone’s eyes for long enough, for hanging around indoors and then for loitering in the street suspiciously, and for running across the road and stepping on people’s lawns and almost every slightly wrong thing he did. He even got blamed for things he didn’t do! Dudley and his little gang of equally awful young boys had accidentally broken windows, dented cars, trampled rose bushes, stolen garden ornaments, and painted rude things on fences, and Harry got blamed for most of it.
Harry got punished for being a delinquent even when he was sure that Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon really knew that it had been their perfect little angel Duddikins who’d done it. He even got punished when impossible things happened that couldn’t possibly have been his fault. No one ever seemed to care about Harry’s truth. It was agonizingly unfair.
Meanwhile, the man at Number Eight almost never left his house and he never spoke to anyone when he did. The black curtains in all the windows of Number Eight stayed closed at all hours of the day. No one set out the trash or the milk bottles. No mail was ever delivered. No cars ever sat in the driveway. And there were never, ever any visitors. Harry would have never even known that anyone lived there, except sometimes, very rarely, when taking out the trash or bringing in the garden hose at night, Harry would see the man leaving the house on foot, usually carrying a case like he was off on important business.
Once, he’d seen the man standing at the end of the street, dripping wet, illuminated by the lamplight, looking in the direction of Number Four. The man had stared back at Harry for one long minute, before he’d limped inside Number Eight and slammed the door.
Harry hadn’t begun looking for the man, not really, until the summer he turned eight, when he was suddenly introduced to perhaps the strangest part of all: Number Eight itself. It was then that he began to wonder who exactly lived there - and why no one else seemed able to pay any attention to the house or the strange man who lived there.
This was the summer that his cousin Dudley and his little gang put a proper name and dogged enthusiasm to one of Dudley’s favorite hobbies: Harry Hunting. It was a very simple game. It involved chasing Harry, hooting and hollering, until Harry either got away or got shoved face-first into a mud puddle. Or was repeatedly hit in the face with his own hand or thrown into a pond or pushed around in circles until he toppled over. Dudley and his gang of friends weren’t very creative, though they put their mean little minds to trying to be with earnest frequency.
They thought it was a lark of a way to spend a summer. Harry personally thought differently, but, of course, his opinion wasn’t taken into account.
One day, a game of Harry Hunting was happening on Privet Drive itself, where there weren’t really any convenient trees to climb or bushes to wiggle through. Harry was so focused on getting away that he didn’t look where he was going. He tripped over a curb and fell onto a lawn, and his second thought (the first thought being “oh no”) was that he was probably going to get in trouble for trampling on someone’s perfectly manicured grass.
Harry scrambled around and backwards, a little uselessly, as the shadows of Dudley’s gang leaned over him. This was the part where the awful boys tried to have a real imagination for a time. All Harry could do was wait for them to get bored and give up.
It was to his surprise that no one pounced on him or leaped forward to get the first good kick in. Dudley and his friends stood at the edge of the lawn, several steps away, shuffling their feet, frowning at him, or squinting at the house behind him. Assuming that an adult had appeared and was about to shriek at them to get off the grass, Harry looked over his shoulder.
No one was there. The curtains were drawn. A bold number 8 hung beside the closed door. The perfectly unremarkable house seemed to loom over all of them all on its own.
No one had ever told Harry to stay away from Number Eight - and people had told him to stay away from their homes before - and he realized here that he wasn’t even sure who lived here. The Man with the Funny Sneer lived at Number Two. The Loud Woman with the Bright Make-Up lived at Number Five. And the Mean Old Couple with the Yappy Dogs lived at Number Ten. Harry had lived near to Number Eight for roughly seven years now and he had no idea who was inside. Not a clue.
He looked back at Dudley.
Dudley was scowling at him with a pinched expression, like he was going through great effort to think through something, and he wasn’t moving. His friends were all looking at him in various states of confusion. Even if Dudley wasn’t the fastest and often wasn’t the first to catch Harry if it came down to a chase, he was the leader, and his little gang followed him when they played this and every other stupid game. Dudley had stopped, so the game had stopped too.
Dudley lifted his foot.
Harry scooted farther back automatically.
Dudley’s foot fell back, in the same place, and his face twisted up even tighter. His fists were clenched. His gaze was unfocused, moving down from Harry’s face to his shoes, and then to the grass. He couldn’t seem to bring himself to take a step forward.
“...Dudley?” said one of his friends. “What’re we doing?”
“Are we waiting for something?” asked another.
Harry stayed very still. Everyone here was confused, but none more so than him.
“...Let’s go do something else!” Dudley declared finally, his face still all screwed up, and he turned his back on Harry with a huff. “I’m bored of this. Let’s go back to the park!”
“Yeah, alright.”
“Bet we can break that swing today!”
Dudley’s first two friends followed him eagerly, with relieved expressions, as though they’d already forgotten about Harry. But the last member of his little gang lingered behind. It was a squirrely little boy named Piers, who had the greatest claim to an imagination of the group and had taken to using it meanly like a duck to water. He always liked to get one last kick in if he could. Piers leaned forward like he meant to get that kick, but a strange, almost panicked expression overtook him and he spun around immediately.
“Mum?” he said confusedly.
“Whassat, Piers?”
“Did you hear my mum calling, Dud?”
“What? Already?” Dudley looked about the street. “But her car’s not here!”
Piers scratched his head. “I could’ve sworn I heard her!”
“I didn’t hear anything!”
“Nope!”
With one last look at Harry, Piers loped nervously after the others as they wandered in the direction of the park. Even though Dudley and his friends had always found Harry Hunting pretty endlessly entertaining before. All of them now keeping an uncertain lookout for adults who might tell them off, even though the street was empty.
Harry stood up and looked back at Number Eight. He had never paid it any attention before. The next morning, he paid it some attention again, and noticed that the marks he’d left on the lawn when he’d tripped had somehow vanished overnight. The grass had apparently grown back and been trimmed overnight.
So, he spent the next year giving the house a great deal of attention.
When Harry Potter was standing on the driveway of Number Eight, no one bothered him, even when they tried. Games of Harry Hunting always ended early when Harry could throw himself on the lawn. Attempts at scolding for staring or loitering always ended in the adult in question suddenly remembering that they’d left the kettle on or were expecting a telephone call, or any number of urgent little reminders. Even Aunt Petunia would suddenly remember leaving a roast in the oven or open bleach in the bathroom, leaving Harry amazed and bemused behind her, though he was always punished later for not following her back to Number Four.
When Harry Potter sat on the doorstep of Number Eight, no one even looked at him.
“Hey, Dud! Where’s your cousin?” Piers said one day, a month after that first failed game of Harry Hunting, as the whole gang trooped by Number Eight. “Thought I saw him around!”
“I dunno, probably hiding somewhere,” Dudley said carelessly, before showing off the ball he’d taken from another kid at school. He’d been, apparently, somehow unable to see Harry sitting on the doorstep of Number Eight with a stolen book, completely in the open, less than a couple dozen feet away.
It was strange and wonderful and practically magic.
Harry probably would’ve tried to live on the doorstep of Number Eight if it was possible.
At the same time he was discovering the wonders of Number Eight, he began paying attention to the rarely sighted man who apparently lived there. He began keeping track of the man’s strange appearance and strange behaviors. It made him a little nervous about camping out on the doorstep of Number Eight, playing with twigs or stones from the gardens, wasting the afternoons when he was shoved outside without chores in impossible safety. The man was a strange, frightening figure and he probably didn’t want Harry on his doorstep.
But Harry had only ever seen the man in passing, turning the street corner at twilight or coming home at midnight, once or twice a month at most, even when he was looking for him, and as the months went by, Harry worried less.
~
Summer ended and school started, and Harry’s magical hiding spot on Number Eight waited for him to come back to Privet Drive every day. He wished there was something like it at school too. When the weather got too cold to be hanging around outdoors for any real length of time, Harry thought he might die with the pain of missing that uncomfortable doorstep.
He couldn’t understand why Number Eight hid the people who stayed there, he couldn’t understand why no one said anything about the strange man and his strange house, and he couldn’t help but wonder after the answers. So, one day after midwinter, he mustered up the courage to ask his aunt a question about Number Eight. Petunia and Vernon Dursley didn’t like questions, or at least they didn’t like Harry asking questions, because they didn’t like their nephew, but Harry’s curiosity had become too much to bear.
“Aunt Petunia,” he said carefully, after supper, when everyone was more likely to be in a good mood. “What’s the name of the man who lives at Number Eight?”
“Hmm?”
“What’s the name of the man who lives at Number Eight?”
Aunt Petunia looked up from her magazine, expression pinched like she was about to demand what he’d done, but then her brow furrowed deeply. She turned on Uncle Vernon beside her on the sofa, who was watching telly with Dudley, and poked him.
“Vernon, who lives at Number Eight?”
Uncle Vernon didn’t look away from the telly. “Mm? What was that, Pet?”
“Number Eight? Who lives there?”
“Mmmm. That, uh, Miller couple, wasn’t it, Pet?”
“No, they moved out at least six years ago, maybe seven. Lucinda Miller hasn’t been to the neighborhood gardening association for ages. Good riddance,” Aunt Petunia scoffed. “Who moved into Number Eight after them?”
“Some, mmm, old chap, wasn’t it?”
Aunt Petunia’s face screwed up just like Dudley’s had, all those months ago. “No,” she insisted. “No, he’s quite young. Too young to be in this neighborhood unmarried. This is a family neighborhood… after all… Vernon, do you-”
“I’m afraid I don’t know, Pet,” Uncle Vernon said, frustrated. “You’d know better than I would. I’m trying to watch this program!”
Aunt Petunia settled back with her magazine, lips pursed in thought. She didn’t turn around to look back at Harry and Harry crept backwards out of the room, unwilling to repeat the question. One of Aunt Petunia’s favorite pastimes was spying on all their neighbors. If she didn’t already know who’d lived at Number Eight when he’d been there for nearly as long as Harry had been at Number Four, then Harry didn’t think she’d ever find out. The man at Number Eight clearly didn’t want to meet any of his neighbors.
With a house like Number Eight, clearly he didn’t have to meet his neighbors.
Harry thought he’d rather like to have a house like that someday.
Over the next week, he spotted Aunt Petunia looking in the direction of Number Eight with a frown, but as the weeks went by, Harry’s aunt seemed to forget to find out more about the man who lived there. After a month, she wasn’t looking at the house at all, like she’d forgotten there was anything strange about it. It was like the house didn’t exist, except no one actually so much as suggested Number Eight wasn’t actually there.
Everyone agreed that the house was there. Everyone agreed that a man lived there alone, probably, although they couldn’t really remember much about him. They’d seen him before, so he wasn’t a figment of the imagination, but it was apparently difficult to tell.
~
Summer came around again and school ended, and Harry was going to turn nine years old in about a month. With the weather nice again, he had the intention of spending as much time on the doorstep of Number Eight as he could, where he wouldn’t bother anyone and wouldn’t be bothered. Maybe he’d bring over more of the books Dudley never read and the toys Dudley didn’t play with anymore. So long as he did his chores and he came when they shouted for him, the Dursleys seemed to enjoy it when Harry made himself disappear and they could pretend that he didn’t exist. Harry quite enjoyed it too.
He wasn’t expecting, one morning in early July, for the man who lived at Number Eight to come home in the middle of the day. Harry was playing with some old tin soldiers at the time. He was overcome with the sensation of being watched and then he looked up to see the strange man standing in the driveway of Number Eight, staring at him.
The man wasn’t an old chap. He didn’t have any wrinkles. He had a pale face, a straight nose, and grey eyes. His chin-length hair was half tied back, he wore a long dark coat and dusty black boots and black gloves, even though it was quite warm out, and he was carrying a brown leather bag. He also looked very surprised.
Harry was frozen. He had no idea what to do. He had never seen the man up close before and very rarely during the day, and the man had never caught him passing time on Number Eight’s doorstep.
They stared at each other for much too long.
“...Sorry,” Harry said finally, hastily gathering up his tin soldiers. Once he’d picked up all his toys, he stood up and skirted around the man, stepping off his property.
The man watched him all the while.
“Sorry,” Harry said again.
The man looked confused, but then he nodded, and went up to the door, glancing back at Harry. He produced a key from the pocket of his coat, glanced at Harry again, unlocked the door, glanced back at Harry for a third time, and then went inside, closing the door carefully behind him. Harry didn’t hear it lock. As he wandered, confused and upset in the direction of Number Four, he was overcome again with the sensation of being watched.
But when he looked back, the black curtains of Number Eight hadn’t moved.
~
Harry had spent a year watching Number Eight and the man who lived there. Now it seemed like they were watching him. He didn’t see the man who lived there at all, not at any time of day, but he couldn’t help the feeling that someone was staring at him almost every time he was in view of Number Eight. After a miserable couple of weeks of being scolded and shoved and so very disliked, Harry warily went back to the doorstep of Number Eight, carrying the stubborn hope that he was simply imagining things.
The man hadn’t told Harry to leave his magic house alone. It was possible that Harry was just being silly and that he wouldn’t see the strange man for another whole year. Harry cautiously spent time on the doorstep of Number Eight every single day for a week, a little longer each day, and the man didn’t come outside to tell him to get lost.
Harry was just settling in again when, on his ninth birthday, the front door of Number Eight finally opened again. Harry was sitting on the doormat at the time, reading a book about space that Dudley hadn’t wanted since it didn’t involve aliens or blasters. He startled and looked up fearfully, and found that the man was looking down at him oddly.
“...Sorry,” Harry said again, and scrambled to leave.
“Why are you on my doorstep?”
Harry paused uncertainly. He hadn’t so much as suggested to anyone that Number Eight was magic; he’d begun fearing that bringing it to anyone’s attention would break the spell that let him spend time without Privet Drive paying attention to him. He had no idea how to explain to this man, who sounded quite a bit posher than Harry had expected, that his house was magic. Did the man know? Did the man not know?
“No one bothers me when I’m here,” Harry said finally.
Because that, at least, was true. It didn’t make him sound mad either.
“...Oh,” the man said.
He didn’t say anything else. He just stared at Harry.
“I can leave,” Harry said, turning to run away.
“No, it’s… fine.”
Harry turned back around, looking up at the man hopefully. He definitely didn’t want to lose his magical hiding spot. Being given permission to stay was something he had never dared to dream possible. It was, as far as he was concerned, a wonderful birthday present.
“Just don’t… tell anyone about me,” the man said.
“Alright,” Harry agreed easily.
“Don’t tell anyone.”
“Alright,” Harry agreed, just as easily, even quicker than before. Then he paused, “What… what if I’ve already told someone about you?”
The man looked horrified. “Who?”
“My aunt.”
“What did you tell her?” he barked.
“I asked her what your name was,” Harry said, feeling hot with stupidity.
“...Pardon?”
“I asked her who lived here?”
Harry was ready for the man to blow up at him, but suddenly he just looked… more confused than anything else. He looked that way a lot, Harry thought.
“You… did you tell her anything else?”
“No.”
“You didn’t tell her what I am?”
Harry didn’t understand this question. “What… you are?”
The man didn’t reply. He just kept looking at Harry like he was the strangest thing on Privet Drive, which was kind of funny coming from a man who lived in a magic house that stopped people from paying attention to him.
“I pointed out you exist?” Harry said. “Is that what you mean?”
“...No,” the man said, and crouched down in front of Harry. His expression was intense and his pale grey stare made it worse; he looked kind of dangerous now. “Tell me exactly what you told your aunt about me. Tell me the exact words.”
Harry tried his best to remember, but it had been months ago. “‘Aunt Petunia, what’s the name of the man who lives at Number Eight?’” he offered.
There were several seconds of silence.
“That’s it?” the man said.
“Yeah.”
“You didn’t talk to anyone else?”
“I sorta… asked some other people if they knew who lived here?”
“...And?”
“They didn’t know either?”
“...Good,” the man said. “They’re not supposed to know.”
Harry wanted to ask if he was supposed to know. But he knew he probably wasn’t.
“How long have you been sitting on my doorstep?”
“Only sometimes.”
“Since when?”
“...Since last summer?”
The man’s eyes widened, before he looked thoughtful. “Because… you figured out something was keeping the Muggles from bothering you here?”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“...Muggles?” The man frowned. “Are they-? I don’t know what new word they’re trying to use now. No-maj? Mundane? Whatever you call people who don’t have magic. Muggles.”
Now it was Harry’s turn for his eyes to go wide.
The man’s brow furrowed. “...Is one of those considered rude now?”
“You’re magic?”
“Pardon?”
Of course! Number Eight really was magic and so was this strange man who lived here! Of course it was! The Dursleys had always said that there was no such thing like magic or anything like magic, but Harry didn’t have much faith in the Dursley’s opinions. Not before and certainly not after he’d spent a year sitting unnoticeable on the doorstep of Number Eight.
The man closed his eyes and sighed. “You didn’t know.”
No, of course Harry hadn’t known! He stared at the strange man in wonder.
The man opened his eyes again and looked him over uncertainly. “How did you think you were getting through when the Muggles weren’t?” He stood up again and decided, “You can stay on my doorstep so long as you don’t tell anyone, especially not your aunt or any wizards you know, that I’m here for now.”
“I don’t know any wizards,” Harry promised.
“...Good.”
“Are there lots of wizards out there?”
“Pardon?” The man looked confused by the question.
“Can… can you learn magic?” Harry tried.
The man stared at him in disbelieving silence again. Harry tried not to deflate on the spot, though he’d known as soon as he said it that it was probably a very stupid question. The man looked past him, up and down Privet Drive, like he was worried they were being watched, but there wasn’t anyone else on the street at the moment.
“What has your aunt told you about magic?” the man asked slowly.
Harry blinked. “That it’s… not real?”
“...Really?”
The man sounded so disbelieving, which confirmed more than anything else that he’d never met the Dursleys, who hated anything out of the ordinary and also anything like an imagination. Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon had told him many times that there was no such thing as magic. When something strange happened around Harry, like appearing suddenly on a school roof or an ugly shirt suddenly shrinking, it was referred to as his “funny business”.
Not “like magic”. It was always anything but magic.
“Yeah. I’m not even allowed to say the magic word,” Harry confessed embarrassedly. “‘Magic,’ I mean. Not ‘please’.”
The man looked distressed now, like Harry had said something wrong. The man looked up and down Privet Drive again, which was still empty, then he looked over his shoulder, back into his house. When he looked back at Harry, he seemed to have come to a decision, and he opened his front door wider.
“Come inside,” he said quickly.
Harry knew that he wasn’t supposed to go into the homes of strangers. He knew that you were probably especially not supposed to go into the strange magical home of strange magical people. But he’d spent a year now imagining again and again what strange things might be inside Number Eight on Privet Drive. And he really wanted to learn more about magic.
So he went inside anyway.
The shape of Number Eight from the outside was identical to the shape of Number Four from the outside - all the houses on Privet Drive were identical, because that was how the residents liked it. The insides that Harry had seen had also looked much the same, but Number Eight was different. It was different in ways that Harry couldn’t have known to imagine. It was quite bright inside, with walls painted richly in warm yellow or pleasant blue, ceilings that were somehow taller, and rooms that were somehow wider. The windows were somehow bigger than they ought to have been too and the curtains weren’t black on this side, instead they were rather white and sheer and they let in plenty of daylight.
There was a broad table in the living room, surrounded by tall bookshelves, covered in neat stacks of paper and strange-looking knick-knacks. There was an odd-looking microscope made of bronze and a golden set of scales and a crystal ball swirling with silver clouds, and many more curious objects lined up alongside the thick books, which were stacked almost absentmindedly in any which way. Harry wanted to look at everything, but the man gestured for him to follow to the kitchen at the back of the house, and Harry disappointedly went.
Only to discover that the man had cauldrons in his kitchen. He’d somehow moved the living room fireplace to the dining room and made it four times the size, and three black cauldrons were bubbling away over a fire. More strangely-shaped pots and pans hung from the ceiling, along with strange-looking plants that twitched oddly, and there was a bounty of odd jars and funny bottles on the shelves, holding ingredients which looked bright and gross and very, very interesting. The actual kitchen part was still there, looking almost ordinary, but the stack of thick books on the counter said things like 1001 Recipes To Brew Before You Die and Moste Potente Potions and Mrs. Boil and Mrs. Bubble’s Cookbook for Trouble.
Harry mouthed the words to himself as he read them, feeling dazed and delighted. Magic was real. Magic was really real. Every strange dream and odd happening and faint hope he’d ever had was true. He’d asked if magic could be learned and the man had invited him inside to see his magical house. This was the best birthday he’d ever had by far.
“Don’t touch anything,” the man said.
Harry immediately pulled his hand back from where he’d been reaching for a large glass jar neatly labelled “frog eyeballs”. He’d only wanted to tilt the jar slightly to see if there really were frog eyeballs inside.
The man was setting up a little table between the kitchen and the cauldrons, searching out the second dining chair from another room. “Please sit,” he said, so Harry did.
Sitting at the little table, Harry watched the man hastily assemble a tea set from the kitchen cupboards as though he’d never done it before. After the tea set was put in front of him, the man hung a kettle over the fireplace, in between the cauldrons. And then the man knelt beside the fireplace, stripped off his black gloves, rolled up his sleeves, and stuck a hand into the fire.
Harry gasped as the man turned over a log with his bare hand. As the man added a few more logs to the fire from a stack, using only one hand, Harry noticed that the man’s left arm was actually made of metal, like some sort of robot.
The man noticed Harry’s gaping when he straightened, and he looked at his mechanical left arm like he’d never seen it before. “I had an accident several years ago,” he muttered, rolling his sleeves back down, though he didn’t put the gloves back on.
“...What happened?” Harry asked.
“I’d rather not talk about it,” the man said shortly, as he finally sat down.
“Sorry,” Harry said, his face burning.
“It’s fine. Now, please, what do you know about magic?”
“...That it’s real?”
“That’s true. What else?”
Harry kept miserably silent, his face still hot with embarrassment, but his silence wasn’t out of choice. He didn’t know anything else about magic. Not really.
“Your Muggle relatives haven’t told you anything?” the man said, sounding strangled.
“No?”
Harry couldn’t see what the Dursleys of all people would know about magic.
“What do you know about your parents?”
Harry blinked, unable to see what his dead parents had to do with any of this or why the strange man was asking after them. “What do you know about my parents?” he demanded of the man.
“I know that your father was a wizard named James Potter, the only son of Fleamont and Euphemia Potter,” the man answered. “I know that your mother was a witch named Lily Evans, the second daughter of the Muggles Robert and Rosemary Evans. Now I need to know what your aunt has told you about what happened to your parents.”
“They… they were what?”
“Has your aunt told you how your parents died?”
“A car crash?”
“Pardon?”
“My parents died in a car crash,” Harry said helplessly. “They were magic? My parents were a wizard and a witch? Like you?”
The man sat back in his chair, looking almost as stunned as Harry felt.
“Did… did you know them?” Harry asked.
“I… yes.”
It felt like Harry was having every feeling in the world at once. He looked at the strange man across the table in wonder and felt like he was going to throw up. He had so many questions and none of them had any words.
There were no pictures of Harry’s parents in Number Four. He had no idea what they looked like and, if not for some derisive comments from Uncle Vernon’s awful sister Marge, he might have never even learned their names. He hadn’t even known any of his grandparents’ names until just now. Aunt Petunia only had one picture of her parents in the house, as far as Harry knew, and she kept it in the master bedroom, where Harry wasn’t allowed to go for any reason. According to Aunt Petunia, it was due to reckless drivers like Harry’s parents that Dudley only had one set of grandparents, and that was that.
“My parents were magic like you?” Harry repeated.
His head felt like it was going to break open, trying to figure out a new kind of maths. If Harry’s dad had been magic… and if Harry’s mum had been magic too… then…
“Am I magic?” Harry whispered.
Was that why he was the only one who could pay attention to Number Eight? Was that why he was the only one who could step onto its lawn without suddenly remembering a need to water the plants or feed the cat? Was that why he had strange dreams and strange thoughts and sometimes strange things happened to him that he just couldn’t explain?
The man cleared his throat. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, you’re a wizard.”
“I can learn magic?”
“Yes.”
Harry definitely wasn’t going to forget this birthday.
“Wow,” he said.
“...Quite,” the man agreed. Then he said, “Your parents didn’t die in a car crash.”
Harry stared at him. “What?”
“I’m afraid that your aunt has been lying to you about many important things.”
Out of the whirl of new maths happening inside his head, an unpleasant realization was spat to the front of his thoughts. “Aunt Petunia knew?” he said. “She knows about magic?”
“I was under the impression she did,” the man answered. “She might not, but it seems unlikely. It’s not illegal for Muggleborn witches and wizards to tell their immediate family members about magic. And she occasionally leaves you in the care of Arabella Figg.”
It took Harry’s mind to do the new maths from that sentence.
“...Mrs. Figg is a witch?”
That would explain all the cats, Harry thought faintly.
“No,” the man said. Then he said, “Yes.” Then he said, “She’s in between being a witch and a Muggle. She’s a Squib. I don’t know what the politer word for it is, if there is a more acceptable term. She was born to magical parents and has more resistance to spells than Muggles, but she can’t do magic herself.”
“Oh,” Harry said. “...Is that what I am?”
The man looked surprised by the question. “...I doubt it,” he said finally.
Harry didn’t know whether to sag with relief or throw up already. He was having a lot of feelings right now and he didn’t know what to do with any of them. All he could do was sit in his chair and hold on to the table and stare at the strange man across from him.
“...I shouldn’t be the one telling you any of this,” the man said, more to himself than to Harry, like he couldn’t believe this was happening to him. “You should have been told this already for your own safety. You should have known at least enough to have stayed far away from the likes of me.”
“Why?” Harry asked uncertainly.
“I’m... I’m… let me start from the beginning.”
“...Alright.”
The man cleared his throat, determinedly met Harry’s eyes, and said, “Magic is real, but witches and wizards keep themselves secret from Muggles - that is, people without magic - because it’s agreed to be safer that way. There are Muggles who hate people with magic, because they’re scared of magic. And there are some witches and wizards who hate people who don’t have magic, because they think they’re better than other people. Do you understand?”
“I think so,” Harry said. Though, if the Dursleys knew magic was real and hated it, it was probably because they just hated strange things, not because they were scared of it.
“Your father was a wizard, born to magical parents. Your mother was a witch, but she was born to Muggle parents, which happens sometimes. Just as, sometimes, magical parents have Squibs for children.”
“Like Mrs. Figg?”
“Yes, like Arabella Figg,” the man agreed. “When she was eleven, your mother was invited to attend a magical school called Hogwarts, where she could learn about magic, and there she met your father. When you’re eleven, you are almost certainly going to receive an invitation to Hogwarts as well.”
“So I can learn magic too?”
“Yes.”
Eleven seemed an eternity away to Harry. He couldn’t wait that long.
“Could I go now?” he asked.
The man raised his eyebrows and then… he smiled at Harry. It was a small smile, the corners of his mouth barely turning up, but it changed his grim face greatly while it lasted. Unfortunately, it didn’t last for very long.
“No, I’m afraid not,” the man said.
“Why not?”
“No one gets to go early,” the man said. “I wanted to go early too.”
“You went to magic school?”
“Hogwarts. Yes.”
“What’s it like?” Harry asked wondrously.
“It’s… interesting,” the man said slowly. “I think that you’ll like it there. However, there is something very important you must know before you go. Have you heard about a man called ‘You-Know-Who’ or the ‘Dark Lord’? Has anyone warned you about him?”
“No,” Harry said, confused.
The man sighed. “Do you recall how I told you that there are some witches and wizards who hate people who don’t have magic?”
“Yeah.”
“There are some witches and wizards who think that magical people should rule over people who don’t have magic. There was one man, eight years ago, a very powerful wizard, who wanted to take over the country. He called himself… he called himself... “ The man’s face twisted. “I can’t say the name. Many times the Dark Lord put a spell on the name, to hunt down anyone who dared to say it.”
The man got up and came back with a piece of paper, where he wrote down two names in large block letters. He pointed at the first name, which said: VOLDEMORT.
“Vol-”
“Don’t say it,” the man hissed.
“Sorry,” Harry said quickly.
“It’s not safe to say it.”
“Sorry.”
“Call him ‘You-Know-Who’,” the man insisted fiercely. “Some people called him ‘He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named’. No one ever knew whether his name was Taboo or not. His real name, which he didn’t want anyone to know, was this…”
He pointed at the second name on the paper, which said: TOM RIDDLE.
“...Is it dangerous to say that one too?” Harry asked.
“Possibly,” the man said tersely. “Don’t risk it. Just call him ‘You-Know-Who’. The Dark Lord didn’t want anyone to know about his past. His father was a Muggle, also named Tom Riddle, and the Dark Lord hated all Muggles and Muggleborns - Muggleborns being witches and wizards born to Muggle parents - like your mother.”
Harry’s insides suddenly felt heavy.
“The Dark Lord had many followers,” the man explained quietly. “Eight years ago, there was a war among witches and wizards, kept secret from the Muggles, between the Dark Lord’s followers and the people who believed he was wrong. Your parents, James Potter and Lily Evans, knew that the Dark Lord and what he wanted was wrong. They fought him and his followers, until they had to go into hiding, because they were going to have a baby and they wanted to keep you safe from him.”
“What? Why did-?”
“He was evil,” the man said. “The Dark Lord was an evil man who wanted power, and he hated anyone who tried to stop him from doing what he wanted.”
Harry had a question he didn’t want to ask. If his parents hadn’t died in a car crash like the Dursleys had told him, then…
“What happened to them?”
“On Halloween of 1981 - that is: when you were one year old - the Dark Lord found your parents’ hiding place. He murdered your parents with magic. Then he tried to kill you too, but something strange happened that night, and the Unforgivable Curse didn’t work. The Dark Lord vanished and everyone assumed he had died, and you lived.” The man raised his left hand and pressed a metal finger to his own forehead. “You were left with only a scar.”
Harry’s hand went to his own forehead, to the funny lightning-bolt scar that had been the almost part of his appearance he’d liked. He’d always thought he’d gotten it in the car accident that had killed his parents. He’d never guessed that it had been the result of magic.
“That night made you famous,” the man went on quietly. “Witches and wizards across the country call you ‘The Boy-Who-Lived’ and give you credit for defeating the Dark Lord. After the Dark Lord vanished, his followers scattered and the war ended. You’re a hero to them.”
“But I was just a baby!”
“Yes,” the man agreed. “No one knows what really happened that night. It could have been one of your parents who came up with new and powerful magic, but most witches and wizards think it was something about you.”
“Is… is that why people have come up to me before?”
The man stiffened. “Pardon?”
“Strange people have come up to me before and thanked me, in a shop or on the street,” Harry explained confusedly. “They want to shake my hand or hug me. One man bowed to me. Is it because they think I defeated You-Know-Who?”
“...Most likely,” the man said.
There was an odd note in the man’s voice, which made Harry look at him warily.
“Harry,” the man began awkwardly, “unfortunately, not every witch and wizard thinks you’re a hero. Some people were very unhappy when the Dark Lord vanished. Fortunately, these witches and wizards aren’t the sort of people to frequent Muggle shops or walk down the street among Muggles, but if they do, if they recognize you from your lightning-bolt scar, if they notice that you’re unprotected, they will not hesitate to hurt you or steal you away.”
Harry froze in fear, looking at the man with wide eyes.
“It’s also very likely that the Dark Lord isn’t dead,” the man went on. “He’s gone for now, but he may return someday, and he’ll want to take revenge on everyone who got in his way the first time. The likes of you and me are going to be very high on his list.”
“What… what did you do?” Harry asked breathlessly.
The man was silent at first, before he finally said, “I tried to kill him.”
“Oh,” Harry said.
The man stood up then, took the kettle off the fireplace, and served them both tea. Harry stared at the teacup, feeling sick, and the man stood awkwardly by his bubbling cauldrons.
“You may be too young to hear these things,” the man said slowly, “and I am undoubtedly not the right person to tell them to you, but I don’t think it’s safe for you not to know at least some of this. Privet Drive is a very safe place for you, however, at least from magic, so much so that I got complacent. I forgot that you would be able to see past the spells I use to hide this house from the Muggles.”
“What… what am I supposed to do if I meet an evil wizard?”
“...Stay with the Muggles,” the man said. “Don’t follow another wizard anywhere. Draw attention to yourself by screaming and struggling if they try to force you to go anywhere or do anything. And if you end up doing accidental magic, it will alert the Ministry of Magic and they’ll most likely come to help you.”
Harry still felt sick. He didn’t know what the Ministry of Magic was.
The man turned around, paused, and then knelt beside Harry again. “I’ll give you something to protect yourself in case that happens,” he promised quickly. “It’s very likely that you won’t ever have to use it. The Dark Lord’s followers don’t come to Muggle areas and they’ve spent the past eight years thinking the Dark Lord is dead. I’ll figure something out for you to use before I leave.”
“Before you leave?” Harry repeated. “Where are you going?”
“I’ve… I’ve gotten complacent here, apparently.”
Harry didn’t know what that meant. It must have shown on his face.
“I made enemies of all the Dark Lord’s followers when I tried to kill him,” the man explained, getting to his feet and pacing back and forth. “I’ve been in hiding ever since. However, in recent years, ever since I followed you here to Privet Drive and never left - for I had nowhere else to go and here was as good as anywhere else - I’ve clearly been less careful than I should have been. Someone besides you may have noticed something strange. Mrs. Figg, for example, may suspect that a wizard lives here. It may be for the best that I move - that I start over somewhere more isolated.”
“Oh,” Harry said.
He didn’t know what else to say.
“Please… drink the tea…” the man said awkwardly. “I hope it will make you feel better. I’m sorry that I had to be the one to tell you these things. I thought you would know. You truly have my sincerest apologies. It should have been your aunt.”
Thinking that Aunt Petunia probably would have never told him any of this if she could help it, if she even knew about any of it, Harry obediently drank his tea. It tasted better than he thought it would and the warmth of it spread through him rapidly, through his bones and across his skin, like he was drinking a puddle of sunlight. It was probably magical tea, he guessed. He hoped it didn’t have any frog eyeballs in it.
“I’m sorry,” the man said again.
“Thanks?” Harry said, although that didn’t feel like the right answer.
Were you supposed to thank someone who’d just told you your parents had actually been murdered? It had happened eight years ago, but somehow it felt like it had just happened.
“I’ll find a way for you to contact me as well, if you should ever need anything,” the man decided. “However, you must promise me that you won’t tell anyone about me. There are people who are still… very angry with me. It’s better for my work if no one knows I’m alive.”
“Alright,” Harry agreed. “What… what is your work?”
Harry had often wondered what should of business would have someone sneaking out at night and on foot. He’d guessed that it might be something secret, if the man made sure no one else saw him. He’d guessed that it might be something strange in the way that Number Eight was strange - something magic - if no one else could remember him. Now it looked like he’d been quite right on both counts, though the details were beyond him.
“...I’m attempting to make sure that the Dark Lord stays as dead as people think he is,” the man said finally. “When my work is done, he’ll never be able to return.”
“And… people would try to stop you, if they knew?”
“Most likely, yes.”
“Even Mrs. Figg?” Harry said disbelievingly.
The man snorted, then slapped a hand (his normal hand) over his face. He seemed surprised at himself for making the noise. “Excuse me,” he said. “No, I don’t believe Arabella Figg would try to stop me. My concern there is that she might tell the wrong person about me, or someone who might tell the wrong people about me. Perhaps by accident. The fewer people who know a secret, the easier it is to keep it.”
“I won’t tell anyone,” Harry promised.
He didn’t want the magical doorstep of Number Eight to go away. He didn’t want this man to go anywhere either, even though he was strange and said frightening things, because he was the only one who had ever answered any of Harry’s questions. Aunt Petunia had lied to him about his parents. Mrs. Figg had never told him the truth. If this strange man left, Harry would be the only strange person on Privet Drive - he would be the strangest person on Privet Drive - and that mattered to him for a reason he couldn’t name.
“Do you have to go right away?” Harry asked.
“...No,” the man admitted. “I’ve taken greater care to avoid Arabella Figg and her absurd number of Kneazles than anyone else in this neighborhood. Moving, however, would be a sensible precaution. I rightly should have relocated years ago.”
That gave Harry just a little more time to put words to all the questions bubbling away inside him. Still, even if the man vanished overnight, at least he now had his eleventh birthday as a marker. Even if this strange man left Privet Drive, Harry now knew he would one day get an invitation to a school for witches and wizards, and he’d get to learn magic. It was a little frightening, with the knowledge that there were evil witches and wizards out there, but the man had said he thought Harry would enjoy it there.
“If I do leave, I’ll see to it that you have a way to protect yourself beforehand,” the man promised again. “Though you must promise never to misuse it or tell anyone who gave it to you.”
Harry nodded hastily.
The man leaned back where he stood, apparently at once satisfied and still worried. “Do you have any further questions?” he asked. “I don’t recommend asking your Muggle relatives anything, if they’ve been keeping such secrets from you. They aren’t likely to know much.”
Harry had a hundred questions - a thousand questions - but he could only ask one at a time. Out of the mess of formless curiosity, one question seemed to bubble up, fully formed.
“What’s your name?”
The man blinked. “Oh,” he said. “Um. I haven’t introduced myself, have I? I’m afraid that I… it might be safer not to tell you. If you don’t know it, then you can hardly share it, after all. I believe my name was Taboo for a time, although that didn’t work very well… given... “ He trailed off, then decided, “I’ll tell you, but allow me to write it down for you, and you must keep it a secret.”
He sat down again, flipped over the sheet of paper where he’d written the names of the man who had murdered Harry’s parents, and wrote a third name. Then he turned the paper around for Harry to read. It said:
REGULUS ARCTURUS BLACK.
Harry mouthed it to himself as he read it. It was a very strange name. Then again, he thought, looking up at the man it belonged to, this was a very strange man.
“...You may call me ‘Reg’, if you like,” the man offered uncertainly. “I’m not particularly partial to ‘Reggie’, but that would also… it would do, if necessary.”
“Alright,” Harry said. “Um, I’m… you know my name.”
The man smiled again, in his small, worried way. “I do,” he said. “May I call you ‘Harry’? I did so before - my apologies for the presumption earlier - but I can also call you ‘Mister Potter’ if you prefer.”
“Um, no. Just ‘Harry’ is fine.”
“Just ‘Harry’ then,” the man named Reg agreed.
They sat there in silence for a while, as Harry sipped his tea and tried desperately to put some real questions together. The man then seemed to notice he’d poured himself a cup of tea as well, and dutifully put himself to work drinking it. It seemed to Harry like they were both trying not to stare at the other.
“What do you learn at magic school?” Harry asked finally.
That seemed like a safe sort of question.
“At Hogwarts? Nearly everything… if you apply yourself properly. As a first-year, your classes should be Transfiguration, Charms, Potions, Herbology, History of Magic, and Defense Against the Dark Arts,” the man named Reg answered. “Unless they’ve changed the curriculums since I left, which is honestly long overdue in my opinion, but Hogwarts is over a thousand years old and seems to go to great effort to resist change.”
Defense Against the Dark Arts sounded like a very good idea to Harry right now. It sounded like he’d need that one. He hoped it was what it sounded like.
“Where is it?” Harry asked. “Hogwarts?”
“The school is an enormous castle hidden in the mountains in Scotland. They’ll have you take a special train from King’s Cross Station in London to a station in Hogsmeade, which is a magical village nearly as old as the castle,” the man answered. “Then they’ll have you take boats across the Great Lake - the upper-years take the carriages around to get there first.”
“How’d’you hide a magic castle?” Harry wondered.
“Much the same way I’ve hidden my house. There are spells that make the castle itself look like ruins from a distance. If any Muggles get close to Hogwarts land - which is quite large, including the Forbidden Forest and much of the land surrounding Hogsmeade - they find themselves being turned away. They’ll turn in circles on the spot if they persist.”
“Is it a boarding school?” Harry asked. It sounded like it would be difficult to go back and forth from Scotland every day, and the mere idea of living away from the Dursleys for most of the year filled him with delighted anticipation.
“Yes, it is,” the man named Reg answered. “The Hogwarts Express always leaves on September 1st. Term ends for the summer holidays in late June. If you choose not to return home for Christmas or Easter, you’ll spend nearly ten months of the year there.”
Harry could hardly wait. Unfortunately, he remembered here that boarding schools were usually expensive. Aunt Petunia had cited the expense of boarding schools whenever she was confronted with the mere idea someone might force her dear Duddikins to attend one.
“I don’t have any money to pay for magic boarding school,” Harry said, panicked. And there was no way the Dursleys were going to pay for him to go to a school for magic.
“Your parents will have left you the money for Hogwarts,” the man named Reg assured him. “The Potters were quite well-off. Your paternal grandfather, Fleamont Potter, had a very successful company that made potions before he sold it off. You’ll have a family vault full of gold waiting for you with Gringotts Bank, which is located underneath London.”
Harry’s first thought was wordless amazement. Harry’s second thought was that the Dursleys could never know. They always complained about how much he cost them to keep. If they knew he had a vault full of gold anywhere, they’d empty it immediately.
His third thought was that it was very cool that his grandfather made magical potions. He looked at the cauldrons bubbling away over the fireplace. He wanted to learn how to do that.
“Did my dad make potions too?” he asked.
“Not for a living. Your parents were both busy fighting and then hiding from the Dark Lord. I don’t know what careers they might have pursued if they lived,” the man named Reg answered. Then he hastened to assure Harry: “I’ve spent my life the same way ever since I left school. It’s difficult to have an ordinary job when you’re hiding from the Dark Lord.”
“Oh,” Harry said.
He supposed that his Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia probably wouldn’t consider “fighting an evil wizard” a real job. Not that Harry really cared about the opinions of his aunt and uncle, who’d apparently been lying to him for his entire life, and were probably lying again when they called his father a “good-for-nothing layabout”.
“...What were my parents like?” Harry asked. “You knew them, right?”
“I… I did. Not well, unfortunately.”
“What does that mean?”
“We weren’t friends in school. I knew of them and I saw them around often, but we weren’t friends,” Reg explained. “Your parents were… James Potter and Lily Evans were the Head Boy and Head Girl of their year. They were a powerful and skilled wizard and witch, brilliantly talented students, much admired by their teachers, and… each quite fierce in their convictions. They thought it was important to stand up for what they believed in, for goodness and against evil, even at great risk to their own safety. They could have been considered ideal Gryffindors in that way.”
“Gryffindors?”
“Ah, excuse me. Gryffindor is one of the four houses of Hogwarts. Every student, in their first year, is Sorted into either Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff, or Slytherin house - the houses are named for the founders. Your parents were both in Gryffindor house, which is… celebrated for its courage and chivalry.”
Harry liked the idea that his parents had been brave and good. He liked the idea that Lily and James Potter had been brilliant and powerful and well-liked. But the spectre of the evil wizard who’d killed them was hard to ignore now that he knew about him.
“They weren’t drunks, right?” Harry asked.
It didn’t sound like they were.
The man, Reg, frowned at him. “I… pardon?”
“My aunt and uncle said-”
“I think it can be safely assumed at this point that everything your aunt and uncle tell you isn’t true,” Reg snapped, before he rubbed a hand (his normal hand) over his face. “My apologies. No, your parents weren’t drunks. I had… I had no idea that the situation with your relatives was this dire. Do you…” He lowered his hand and looked at Harry warily. “Do you like your aunt and uncle? Are they good to you?”
Harry shifted in his seat. “Well, they say they are…”
Vernon and Petunia Dursley said they were better to him than he deserved.
“What do you say?” Reg demanded.
“Um, no,” Harry admitted. “I don’t like them very much. They don’t like me very much either. They don’t like anything that isn’t… normal.”
The man across from him closed his eyes, breathing deeply.
Harry felt like he’d said the wrong thing.
“My apologies,” Reg said suddenly, his eyes snapping open. “I understand. I had… a difficult relationship with my own family before I left home. I haven’t been paying as much attention to your Muggle family as I clearly should have. You may assume from this moment onwards that everything your Muggles relatives have told you or will tell you about your parents and about magic is completely untrue.”
“Alright,” Harry said, having already decided to do this.
It felt very nice to have someone say that he was right and the Dursleys were awful, for once, instead of the other way around. He’d always known it, of course, but it was different to have someone else confirm it. That it was a real wizard who agreed with him was even better.
“Is there anything else I can answer for you?” Reg asked, getting to his feet rather suddenly. “Or is that all for now?”
Everything, I’d like to know everything, please, Harry wanted to say, but it looked like Reg was going to ask him to leave Number Eight now. He hastily got to his feet as well and said instead, “I can do the dishes for you!”
Reg looked confused. “Pardon?”
If Harry made himself helpful, maybe he could stay for a little longer.
“I can do the dishes,” he repeated, reaching for the tea set.
Reg reached out with his metal hand and kept Harry from picking up the tray. “That’s not necessary,” he said. “I can do them myself. Do you have any other questions?”
“...Do I have to go now?”
Understanding dawned on Reg’s face. “I… I’m not making you leave quite yet,” he said. “I simply stood up to check one of my cauldrons. You may… you will have to return to your aunt and uncle’s house eventually, otherwise someone will come to investigate, but… seeing that you likely intended to spend your afternoon on my doorstep… you may as well stay a while longer and ask your questions.”
“Oh,” Harry said. “Thank you.”
“You’re… quite welcome. Please don’t touch anything without my permission, however. I have… Some items in my house are quite unsafe, you see. I wasn’t expecting... Children shouldn’t be touching them.”
“Alright,” Harry agreed. He could be content with just looking.
“Please, Harry, sit back down.”
Harry sat and watched the man, Reg, check each one of the cauldrons bubbling above the fireplace. Ref stirred one of the bubbling potions with a ladle, covered the second with a black cauldron lid, and then left the last one alone. He then walked past Harry, into the kitchen, and washed his mismatched hands.
“Today’s my birthday,” Harry announced.
He wasn’t sure why.
Red paused, then turned off the kitchen taps. “Happy birthday,” he said, sounding like he meant it. “How old are you today?”
“Nine,” Harry answered.
“Congratulations,” Reg said. “Did you… have any plans?”
“No. The Dursleys don’t do anything for my birthday,” Harry explained.
“That’s… unfortunate.”
Harry shrugged, even though Reg was right. It was very unfair.
“Would you…” Reg began, then trailed off.
“Yes?” Harry said.
“Would you like a cake?” Reg asked awkwardly, picking up one of the books on his counter, flipping it open. “That is what people do, I believe. It… it seems a shame to celebrate a birthday without one. I’m not particularly practiced at such things, but it can’t be too difficult to follow a simple recipe. You wouldn’t be able to take it with you, I’m afraid, else someone would ask where you got it from, but if you’d like… magic will see us through it and it seems quite rude to leave you with such miserable news without-”
“Yeah!” Harry interrupted, though he didn’t know if he’d be able to keep a cake down. He wanted to see more magic, though, more than anything, so he’d choke it down if it killed him. “Sorry, I mean, yes, I’d like one. You don’t have to. It’s fine.”
“No, I don’t mind, I… I didn’t have any plans for today. I don’t… I’m figuring out some things for work at the moment, so I don’t have anywhere to be, and it seems… I’d relish the opportunity, honestly.” The man laughed, but hoarsely, as though it wasn’t something he did very often. “I don’t often have company these days, so really you’d be doing me a favor.”
“Oh, alright,” Harry said, though he didn’t really know what that meant. “Thanks.”
“It’s no trouble,” Reg insisted. “Do you have any preferences?”
“Um, not really.”
“...Why don’t you come here and pick something?”
Harry stood up and came over slowly. “Anything’s fine.”
“I don’t have a preference, I’m afraid, so it will be up to you.”
“Alright,” Harry said, and turned the first page.
“If it seems too difficult, I’ll let you know, but magic tends to make up for many difficulties,” Reg assured him, hanging several steps back, while also leaning over Harry’s shoulder. “I’ll manage somehow.”
“I can help. I can cook things.”
“...That would be very nice, thank you, Harry. And please remember, if you have any further questions, just ask. If I can’t answer, I’ll let you know.”
Harry eyed the way the man’s metal fingers tapped on the kitchen countertop and simply nodded his head. Cautiously, he picked something out of the book and Reg, the strange man from Number Eight, who was apparently a wizard, agreed that this was an excellent choice of cake. Or so he assumed, he said, claiming that he hadn’t had much opportunity for cake lately. Harry nodded again, not particularly understanding what “much opportunity for cake” meant either, though maybe it just meant that it was hard to pop out to the shop or throw parties when you were hiding from an evil wizard and all his followers.
This was going to be Harry’s strangest birthday, by far, and also probably his best birthday, by far. He wasn’t quite sure whether or not this was all a strange dream yet. Magic cake and stories about wizards certainly seemed like something out of one of his dreams. He supposed it would all depend on whether or not Reg was still here tomorrow.
He hoped Reg would still be here tomorrow.
He still had so many questions.
~
TBC?
~
AN: Original ask that prompted this fic is here (link).
- You’ve seen suicidal teenage dumbass Regulus from FDitH. You’ve seen “somehow got my life together” everyone’s favorite teacher Regulus from “In the Name of the Brave”. Now, get ready for horcrux-hunting recluse Regulus from this fic, who hasn’t had a normal conversation with another human being in nearly ten years.
- Regulus: “Your parents were actually murdered by an evil wizard, so it is vitally important that you remain on guard at all times and trust no one and expect to probably die when you go to magic school.”
Also Regulus: “...Do you want birthday cake?”
- Basically, what happened is that Regulus survived the Inferi Cave BUT this dumbass left a note telling Voldemort who stole his horcrux. Regulus has been on the run ever since. It’s not paranoia if everyone really wants you dead.
- The main question that seems to arise from this AU is: How does Regulus react when he finds out Harry is a horcrux? Answer: Regulus is emotionally devastated, of course. Because what happens next from here is that they make cake and Regulus doesn’t move away, and Harry ends up with a paranoid, horcrux-hunting recluse for a god-uncle living across the street.
- Is Regulus a good role model here? No. Does Harry really care about that? Also no. Is Regulus going to send Harry to Hogwarts with borderline-illegal protective tools and a way to check all his food for poison? Yes. (Regulus: “If I don’t get three letters every week, I’m going to assume you’re dead and I WILL panic and do something drastic.”)
- I’m probably not going to continue this, because I have other stuff to work on (LOTS of other stuff to work on) and this feels like I’m writing myself into a dead end here. If I did continue this AU, I’d have to rewrite this and find an actual direction. But for now...! I had fun.
- Edit: I have now posted a longer, cleaner, more updated version of this fic to AO3. You can find it here (x).
3k continuation of the COS AU in which Harry and Remus become pen pals after Hagrid gives Harry the photo album at the end of Book 1. I dug the letters out from my notebook and transcribed them. They’re currently missing a lot of the “bridges” between the letters. First part of the fic (1.4k) is here:
The letters between Harry and Remus are below. Never posted to tumblr or to AO3 before; fic under the cut.
-cut-
~
Wolf at the Mailbox (cont.)
~
Harry didn’t know if he’d experienced greater relief than finding out that his friends hadn’t decided they hated him, but that instead all his letters had been stolen by a mad house elf named Dobby. It was not a relief to have those letters and all his things immediately confiscated by the Dursleys as soon as they’d finally discovered he wasn’t allowed to perform magic during the summer holidays, but at least Harry knew he hadn’t been totally abandoned.
Harry didn’t get to see the letters again until after he’d been rescued by Ron and the Weasley twins, whisked away to the magical Burrow in the family’s flying Ford Anglia. The letters, tied up with a dirty piece of string, had been shoved into his trunk after Dobby had dropped them.
In this package were birthday cards and long letters and worried notes, stacked in the order they had been stolen, and at the very bottom of this pile was a letter from Hagrid that Harry had given up on ever receiving. It was the list of Harry’s parents’ friends. Harry had no idea what to do with this list anymore. He wasn’t sure that he had the confidence or the determination anymore to write total strangers and ask them silly questions about his parents.
“Just write to one of ‘em,” Ron suggested, when Harry had shared his indecision, after a rich dinner and before Mrs. Weasley would come upstairs to make sure they were in bed. “See how that goes. If it goes fine and they’re not awful, then you can write all the others too.”
“Which one?” Harry asked.
“I dunno. Which one does Hagrid suggest?”
Harry looked at the list again, in which Hagrid also worried over Harry writing strangers. Some of the names looked like they had nearly been scratched out. One name in particular, however, had been circled twice and underlined three times with a heavy hand.
“Remus Lupin,” Harry decided finally. “Hagrid says that he was one of my dad’s mates from school. He gave Hagrid most of the photographs in my album, I think.”
“Well, write to him then,” Ron said, as though it was really that easy.
~
Dear Mr. Lupin,
My name is Harry Potter. My friend Hagrid wrote you earlier this year asking for photographs of my parents Lily and James Potter. Thank you for sharing them. I have never had any photographs of my parents before now.
Sorry to bother you, but Hagrid told me that you were friends with my dad at school. I was wondering if you could tell me more about him and my mum. I don’t have any stories about them from when they were school. If you have any stories to share, I would like to hear them. I asked my owl to wait for a letter, if you have one for her.
Sincerely,
Harry
~
[Harry sends the letter off with Hedwig and, despite enjoying his time with the Weasleys at the Burrow, can’t help but watch and wait for a response from Mr. Lupin.]
[When Hedwig returns with a letter, Harry is both ecstatic and nervous.]
There were a few drops of ink near the top of the page, but the rest of Mr. Lupin’s writing was even and neat. The letter was quite long. It covered both sides of the paper. Harry sat down on Ron’s bed and eagerly began to read.
~
Dear Harry,
It is lovely to hear from you. We’ve met before, but you were so very small that I’m not surprised that you don’t remember me. I’m glad that you enjoyed the photographs. It is a very kind thing that your friend Hagrid did. I would have shared them far sooner if I had known that you didn’t have your own copies and am sorry to have unintentionally kept them from you.
It could never be a bother to hear from you, Harry. I would be glad to tell you more about your parents, for it was my privilege to be their friend both at school and afterwards. You are always welcome to write me if you have any questions about them.
I move frequently for work, but I will try to let you know my current address. If I find any more keepsakes, I will send them along. By all rights, they belong to you.
I met James Potter in my first year at Hogwarts, when were both Sorted into Gryffindor. We shared a dormitory for our seven years there. James was a generous and well-loved boy, a proud Quidditch fan, a brilliant if distractible student, and a ready friend.
His parents, Fleamont and Euphemia Potter (I do not know if anyone has spoken to you about them), were the most wonderful parents any child could ever ask for. They had him quite late in their lives and had wanted him dearly. They did not hesitate to treat any friends James dragged over the doorstep as unexpected yet welcome sons of their own. If James could have asked one more thing of them, it would have been more time, for they fell ill one after the other soon after James turned seventeen. James was heartbroken, as was everyone who had ever had the privilege of knowing such fine people.
James had often lamented the fact that his elderly parents could not always indulge his endless energy. I clearly remember James expressing his excitement over your birth, Harry, despite and because of how young he was. James had always wanted to be a father young enough to play with his children and chase them around. He said so often as a boy.
It was a great surprise to me that a boy as brilliant and brave as James wanted to be my friend, when it seemed as though he already had everything a boy could ever want. I do not have enough paper to list all the lengths James was willing to go through for his friends. He gave his help and friendship unconditionally and had a terrible habit of becoming suddenly, briefly deaf when faced with any protests. He had an endless capacity for mischief. I had never laughed until I cried until I became friends with James Potter.
Your mother, Lily, was in our year, in Gryffindor as well. Though we were friendly and I liked her quite a lot, for most of our time at Hogwarts, we were not friends. I laughed quite a lot when James began to fall in love with her, for his earliest efforts at getting her attention are perhaps better left forgotten. Love takes time. Lily Evans was every bit as brilliant as James and, though she was possessed of a determined and infinite kindness, she had a rather sharp tongue and little patience for your father’s immaturity. Thankfully, James grew up (as did we all), and we all learned to value courage and kindness best.
Though Muggleborn, your mother took to magic as though she had always known it was waiting for her. She had a knack for asking questions that cut to the heart of a matter. She was well-loved by all of her teachers. Her favorite subjects, as far I as I could tell, were Charms and Potions. (James was a fair hand at Potions - his father and mother wouldn’t have allowed otherwise - but he best loved Transfiguration, Ancient Runes, and, of course, Quidditch.) I’m sure your aunt has told you much about their childhood already.
James and Lily were the Head Boy and Head Girl of our year. They married shortly after graduating from Hogwarts. Their wedding was very beautiful. What I remember best of it was that none of us could seem to stop smiling.
They both loved you very much. I am sure they would be very proud of you.
Please let me know if there is anything more I can tell you.
Sincerely,
Remus Lupin
P.S. You have a beautiful owl. What’s her name?
~
Harry clung to the letter from Remus Lupin as though he might fall away without it. He wiped the wetness on his face away with the sleeve. Hagrid had been right: Lily and James Potter had loved. According to Remus Lupin, they had been very well-loved.
And they had loved him.
~
Harry wanted to ask more of Mr. Lupin. The man had welcomed his questions and invited him to ask more. But Harry did not know what to ask. It was very bothersome to have a great need for answers, but not to know the questions for them. He simply wanted to know everything - everything he was allowed to know - but he could hardly write that.
He showed the letter to Ron, who was very good at figuring this sort of thing out and getting to the point of things. He wasn’t sure at first whether to show Ron, still smarting over the letters he had never gotten, even knowing it hadn’t been Ron’s fault, but he needed help.
“Ask him what your dad’s favorite Quidditch team was,” Ron suggested finally, shrugging awkwardly. “I don’t know, Harry. This seems a bit personal. What’ve you always wanted to know about your mum and dad?”
“I don’t know,” Harry said, frustrated.
His frustration was more with himself than Ron or Mr. Lupin.
Quidditch was a nice, safe thing to ask about. Harry liked Quidditch. More than that, it was one of the few things Harry and his father had in common besides their looks. Harry certainly hadn’t been able to grow up as a wizard with wizard parents who loved him more than anything. Harry had been stuck with the Dursleys.
Fleamont and Euphemia Potter. Harry had committed those unfamiliar names to memory, not really having considered before that he had wizard grandparents to miss.
Aunt Petunia didn’t talk about her own parents. Not in the same way that she didn’t talk about her sister, but in the way that they had passed away unexpectedly before Dudley had been born. Aunt Petunia could have popped out of thin air for all she seemed to care about her late parents. Dudley had only seemed to care that this meant one less set of grandparents to get Christmas and birthday money from, and never cared to look at the small photograph of Mr. and Mrs. Evans on the mantlepiece, which Harry wasn’t allowed to touch.
Harry wasn’t about to contradict Mr. Lupin’s assumption that Harry knew everything about his mother’s side of the family already. All he really knew is that they weren’t wizards. Aunt Petunia probably would have not talked about her parents differently if they had been wizards.
Ron’s suggestion, he decided, was a good one. After folding Mr. Lupin’s letter carefully away in the album containing his parents’ photographs, he set to writing a second letter to Mr. Lupin. Hedwig, he reasoned, could probably use the exercise.
~
Dear Mr. Lupin,
Thank you for writing me back and telling me about my parents. My owl’s name is Hedwig. Hagrid bought her for me as a special birthday present when he took me to buy my Hogwarts supplies. He said that every wizard needed an owl.
I wasn’t told anything about my dad’s parents. I didn’t even know their names. Thank you for telling me about them too. My Muggle family doesn’t like to talk about magic.
I would really like it if you could tell me more about my parents. What was my dad’s favorite team? What position did he play? I became the Gryffindor Seeker last year and Professor McGonagall only said that he played Quidditch too. Did my mum like Quidditch too?
I am at my friend’s house for the summer before I go back to Hogwarts for my second year. What do you do that has you move around so much?
Sincerely,
Harry
~
Dear Harry,
I am foremost engaged as a tutor and as someone who helps people with magical creatures who have made themselves at home in houses where they are not welcome, both of which often mean visiting many villages and taking up temporary residence while engaged in the current job. Though your parents made an excellent case for it, I never married and I have no children to keep me in one place. I enjoy the travelling and the meeting of new people.
Your father’s favorite Quidditch team was the Wimbourne Wasps. He had an eye-searing shirt with yellow and black stripes to remind everyone of this fact in case they had somehow managed to get the colors out of their eyeballs. He played Chaser on the Gryffindor team, though he would play other positions when someone managed to organize casual games on the rare days when the weather was nice. He was always terribly disappointed when none of his friends (myself included) seemed inclined to trust their lives to “an unstable collection of twigs determined to do battle with gravity”.
Your mother, like many Muggleborns, wasn’t much of a fan of the sport. She seemed to enjoy the matches and she even occasionally (when cajolled by your father in particular) participated in the friendly games when someone would lend her a broomstick, loudly disclaiming any promises of skill or talent. I suspect, however, that she wouldn’t have been desolated had all games been cancelled. For James’ sake, her earliest opinions softened to calling it “a bit silly”, and I believe she happily attended professional matches with James and some of the friends James had made through his parents.
Fleamont and Euphemia both enjoyed the sport. James’ father was fond of joking that “Quidditch would do until someone invented Cricket on Broomsticks”. Your grandfather faithfully took James to at least one match every summer until he fell ill.
I am sorry to hear that your Muggle family doesn’t enjoy talking about magic. It is understandable, however, given your family’s terrible losses. I cannot remember if I told you that I was deeply sorry for your loss, Harry, but I am. I should have realized that your Muggle family would not know much about your paternal grandparents. I am a poor stand-in for any member of the Potter family, but in their absence, I would be glad to tell you what I can about them.
Fleamont Potter was a brilliant potioneer. His most famous invention was the Sleek-Eazy hair potion which you see in stores today, which he liked to joke was inspired by his son’s particularly gravity-defiant hair, despite the fact (as James liked to point out) the potion’s existence preceding James by a number of years. He was a well-liked and well-respected wizard with no shortage of friends, wisdom, or confidence. James looked up to him for everything. One of the first things I learned James Potter to be truly afraid of, despite all his bravery, was disappointing his father.
Euphemia Potter was a healer at St. Mungo’s Hospital, where she had a long and distinguished career before her retirement. I believe it was through the hospital that Fleamont and Euphemia first met, though I never managed to hear the full story myself. She was succeeded by a great many students. It was always very strange to accompany James Potter to St. Mungo’s (not that this happened with great frequency), because everyone there seemed to recognize him and know all about his most recent mischief.
I believe it is through his mother that James first became interested in Transfiguration. Even as an eleven-year-old, he had very strong opinions on the subject, especially on “wizards who waved their wand without knowing what bones they were pointing at”, which I believe may have come from listening to his mother talk about her day.
James’ parents both adored your mother. They readily accepted her in the Potter family as a daughter they had always desperately wanted. Lily adored them in return.
It has occurred to me that if you have not been told much about James’ family, you might not know that you were named for James’ grandfather. Fleamont’s father’s name was Henry Potter. James and Lily argued in joking circles whether or not to name you Fleamont, after James’ parents passed away, but it was generally agreed that they could not do such a thing to their poor child. (I believe that Fleamont’s friends generally referred to him as “Monty”.)
If you had been a girl, however, I believe they may have intended to name you after James’ mother. Mrs. Potter tried repeatedly to get us to call her “Euphemia” or “Effie”, but I’m afraid they were always “Mr. and Mrs. Potter” or “James’ dad and James’ mum” to me.
I hope you have a wonderful second year at Hogwarts, Harry.
1.5k rough fic of a Peggy Sue time travel fic for Olivia Caliban. I wrote this after watching Season 2. I think I wanted to write a time travel fic that wasn’t really a fix-it? In which Olivia spontaneously decided to do something that could be considered morally wrong, for the sake of the Baudelaire and Quagmire children, and had to grapple with that action.
It was a murder most unexpected. Unexpected not, perhaps, in that the victim was murdered, but who they were murdered by. I have researched this matter extensively and by all outside accounts, there is no logical explanation for why Olivia Caliban, a school librarian at Prufrock Preparatory School, suddenly woke up one morning and decided to kill Count Olaf, a man who was objectively villainous but whom she had never met before the deathly act.
Never posted to tumblr or AO3 before; fic under the cut.
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Do Not Interfere
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It was a murder most unexpected. Unexpected not, perhaps, in that the victim was murdered, but who they were murdered by. I have researched this matter extensively and by all outside accounts, there is no logical explanation for why Olivia Caliban, a school librarian at Prufrock Preparatory School, suddenly woke up one morning and decided to kill Count Olaf, a man who was objectively villainous but whom she had never met before the deathly act.
~
Olivia Caliban woke up with the urge to kill a man she had never met.
She wasn’t the sort of person to experience the urge to kill anyone, especially someone she hadn’t met, so it was extremely odd that she felt it now. Especially since she had met the man, but only if one counted a future she could remember like it was the past, and especially-especially because the last thing that she remembered of this future was being eaten by starving lions in a pit in a carnival in the middle of the Hinterlands.
But there the urge was, bright and burning, like a roaring flame in her chest.
Olivia looked at her hands, then patted at her chest, distinctly unpierced by teeth and claws and pain.
“What a strange dream,” Olivia said.
She did not yet know if she was talking about this future in which she was a member of the Volunteer Fire Department and had died trying to save the Baudelaire orphans, as the memories weren’t settling quite rightly against a body that had not experienced them, or about suddenly being in her bed in her apartment at Prufrock Preparatory School as though none of it had ever happened.
It seemed as though at least one of these things ought to be a strange dream.
Olivia waited, in her bed in her apartment at Prufrock Preparatory School, in a nightgown covered in daisies, her hair in a braid, and with her hands folded atop the quilt over her legs. She watched the sunlight peek through her window and crawl over her bed, illuminating the blurred world. Her glasses were on her bedside table, untouched. She didn’t know what she was waiting for.
The urge to kill a man she had never met didn’t go away. Nor did the memories of the future. The terrified, unjust fury crackled and smoldered, as she felt her own heart under her hand and listened to it beat in her ears. They settled, like the dryness of smoke clinging to the lungs.
They settled, exactly like strange dreams didn’t.
Even the scheduled blaring of Olivia’s alarm clock didn’t scare them off. Names and faces and truly despicable evil acts stayed with her, even as she reflexively pulled her legs out of the blankets and into her cold slippers. The memories made getting up in the morning, which was already a terribly difficult and deeply unpleasant act, somehow infinitely worse.
Olivia Caliban went to her bathroom and stared into the mirror, then she had to shuffle out again to retrieve her glasses, but then she put them on and went to go stare into the mirror again. She looked exactly as she had every morning at Prufrock Preparatory School. Here was a woman who had never in her life imagined one day wearing a fortune teller’s disguise or being swept off into the adventures of a secret organization in the taxi of a handsome and extremely well-read man.
She might not have imagined it before, but now it seemed she had at least dreamed it. But the more the memories settled, the less they felt like nothing more than a strange dream. The more Olivia could remember the bone-chilling fear, the heart-breaking grief, and the rake of claws.
“This makes no sense,” Olivia told her reflection firmly.
But her hands were shaking as she turned on the tap to wash her face.
~
Olivia Caliban followed the dull routine of the librarian of Prufrock Preparatory School. She got dressed, she made herself breakfast, she ate breakfast, did not throw it up, and she went off to tend to her library. There was very little, in the mind of Olivia Caliban, school librarian and volunteer, that could not be fixed or at least soothed by a well-tended and well-loved library.
The sight of her dark, well-tended, and well-loved library left her literally weak in the knees. As soon as she closed the door behind her, she had to lean on the nearest shelf for support.
“Oh,” Olivia said, with great relief.
There was no feeling quite like returning to where she had come from, unchanged despite all the changes she had chosen to undergo. Coming back, she was suddenly discovering, was not at all the same as never leaving, though it seemed now that she had never actually left the school. To see the warmness of the shelves and the neatness of the books again… to smell that papery smell again, to breathe it in and be filled with the quiet peace of a library, it was…
“Oh,” Olivia said, like a sob, and clapped a hand over her mouth.
The world was so quiet here.
There was no one watching – there were no cruel and despicable villains about to mock her – as she cried in her library. In this tiny, secluded, safe space she had cut out for herself in an otherwise awful and unfriendly world, she could lean over the warm shelf and cry freely.
This was not the first time that Olivia Caliban had cried in a library – it was rather far from the first time that Olivia Caliban, age 4 at the time, had cried in a library, and only slightly less far from the first time that Olivia Caliban, grown woman, had cried in a library – and it would hopefully not be the last time.
It need not be said the importance of being able to cry freely, whether in public or in secret, complete with soppy tears and the snottiest of sniffles and loud, heaving sobbing. No freedom was complete without the ability to cry when there was so much in life to cry over. Whether in joy, like over the existence of kittens that were small enough to fit in a human hand, for example, or in mourning, like over a dearly beloved relative who had vanished under mysterious circumstances.
Or, perhaps, in shock and overwhelming sadness, at suddenly finding oneself somehow alive after a series of unfortunate events that, despite all efforts to bring justice and goodness into the lives of the Baudelaire orphans, had culminated in one’s death at the hands of a despicable villain and his pit of starving lions. Especially when one couldn’t even know if it had all been in vain.
There was something to be said for fact over feelings. For example, a despicable, murderous villain who felt that he deserved the fortunes of orphaned children would not, in fact, actually deserve said fortunes – and even if he somehow did, would not deserve to have these fortunes over the aforementioned children set to inherit them. For other examples of facts over feelings, there were the exemplary and inarguable cases like global warming, vaccines, and the spherical nature of the planet Earth.
But there was also something to be said for feelings as facts. There were some points in life – those outside of scientific fields of study, for example – where one had little else to trust but their own self and their feelings.
Suddenly bursting into hideous tears in a library was not proof that the Volunteer Fire Department and a dashingly educated man named Jacques Snicket existed, nor or that there was a terrible man named Count Olaf after the Baudelaire fortune at all costs, nor that Olivia Caliban had died and somehow now lived again with memories of this unfortunate future, but it was certainly a sign that there was something very, very wrong.
Emotions did not usually, as a rule, appear from nowhere. To dismiss terrible, tear-inducing feelings as nothing just because they were initially attached to something that seemed absurd was a very dangerous thing. It was one of the more common reasons many people frequently ended up crying in libraries, just after having read a tragic novel or having read a very good novel with a terrible cliffhanger and then learning that it would be at least several years before the sequel came out.
Strange feelings were, at the very least, cause for further research. Few things in life were not cause for further research, really, but strange feelings were especially one of them.
And fortunately, a description for so few things lately according to these strange feelings, Olivia Caliban, school librarian, currently curled up and weeping uncontrollably on the floor of her dark, quiet library, was very good at research.
~
The library was the perfect place to do research, especially at Prufrock Preparatory School, where it was only open to students for ten minutes every day. Olivia had never thought she would see the day where she would be grateful not to have to share her library. Before the mysterious series of unfortunate events now lurking in her head, sharing her library was all it felt she had ever wanted.
Now, there were also the grieving thoughts of sharing her library with a specific someone to consider. Olivia’s grip tightened on one of the books she was pulling from the shelves and she resolved, for a time, not to think about rakishly literate and noble taxi drivers.
1.3k rough beginning of a fic in which the Strawhats have a knife-throwing competition for fun. Zoro POV. I have... no idea why I started writing this. The scene came to me, so I used it for a warm-up exercise.
Never posted to tumblr or AO3 before; fic under the cut.
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Knife Throwing Competition
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This time, Usopp comes back to the Going Merry with a set of throwing knives. Every now and again, every other port or so, their resident sniper and proud coward gets some new idea into his head and has to try it out – some hair-brained scheme or artificer’s project, he’s always fiddling with or crafting something – and this time he’s decided that he’s going to be a world-famous knife-thrower.
Usopp waxes poetic about how feared he’ll be to an excited Luffy and an awed Chopper.
Meanwhile, Zoro inspects the knives that have been left on the kitchen table. They’re a well-balanced set, if a little neglected. There’s still a SALE sticker on one of them, which explains how Usopp got this latest brilliant idea of his.
When Usopp wheedles, Zoro helps him clean and sharpen his new knives. He shows Usopp how to care for them properly while he’s at it, since Usopp is always blunting or nicking the spare knives they have lying around the ship for his projects. Usopp is gratifyingly and dutifully attentive. Zoro would like to think that he just commands that kind of respect around here, but inwardly he knows it’s probably partly because of what happened when Usopp and Luffy tried to use one of Sanji’s kitchen knives for anything.
The shitty cook has a block of all sorts of knives in the kitchen – really, really nice knives too, incredibly sharp, and he cares for them like they’re his fucking children. No one is allowed to touch those knives, not even Nami or Robin. One of the women could probably get their hands on one if they fluttered their eyelashes extra hard, but the shitty cook might sob first.
Anyway, at one point, Usopp and Luffy needed a knife for one of their dumbass schemes (there have been so fucking many, Zoro can’t remember which one). Zoro had already beaten it into their thick skulls that he’d kill them if they touched his swords, due to previous incidents, but the shitty cook hadn’t yet warned them off the nice knives he’d brought with him from the Baratie. So, under the impression that they could just help themselves, Usopp and Luffy took one of Sanji’s special knives and of course used it inappropriately. They nicked it.
When Sanji found out, he didn’t yell, his face just sort of went blank. He took a long drag of his cigarette while Usopp and Luffy squirmed. Then finished his cigarette, while they squirmed. Then he picked up a butcher’s knife, turned on the boys, and very calmly said, “Alright, so who’s losing a hand for this?”
Then there was this entire fucking stage production in which Sanji was calmly but firmly going to chop off one of Usopp’s hands. The shitty cook even manhandled their struggling sniper, hogtied him, and got Usopp’s arm on a chopping board and everything. Usopp was screaming because he didn’t want to lose a hand, Luffy was screeching because “Whoa, that’s too much, Sanji!” without actually stopping him, and Chopper was shrieking about amputation and blood loss and all sorts of medical-sounding things.
There were so many tears, it’s a fucking miracle the ship didn’t sink.
Zoro would never tell the shitty cook this, but the whole thing was so fucking funny. Like, Usopp’s face twisted into the strangest, snottiest shapes. Luffy was going bonkers. Zoro had to hug Chopper while he shrieked, which wasn’t great, but Robin whispered that Sanji was only teasing and the little reindeer quickly quieted with a hiccupping oh. So, Zoro got to properly enjoy the shitty cook’s very casual, very creature, very graphic threats about making Usopp and Luffy soup if either of them so much as breathed on his kitchen knives in the future, much less mistreated them ever again.
Usopp didn’t lose a hand in the end, but he sure as fuck didn’t forget that incident.
Once the knives have been cared for, they set up a target on Merry’s deck so Zoro can show Usopp how to throw them properly. The last thing anyone needs (but especially not little Chopper) around here is to lose an eye. This attracts the attention of everyone on the ship.
Knife-throwing is the excitement of the day, apparently. The sea is a wide and surprisingly boring place at times, and while everyone has their own hobbies, any new activity will always attract some interest. Usopp isn’t keen on everyone watching him fuck up his first attempts at knife-throwing, but Zoro tells him to tell everyone to shove off on his own (Zoro isn’t his damn bouncer) or to suck it up and deal. Usopp quivers at the idea of confrontation, so they get company.
“Are… are you sure that’s safe, Zoro?” Chopper says.
“No,” Zoro answers.
They’re knives. They’re not supposed to be safe.
But then he looks down at Chopper’s fidgeting and instead adds, “It’s fine. I know what I’m doing. Go get your medical kit and supervise if you want.” Because it’ll make the kid feel better, though he’ll probably think knife-throwing is super cool once they get going.
“You knowing what you’re doing, marimo? That’s new.”
Zoro rolls his eyes and doesn’t look at the shitty cook leaning in the doorway, who lifts a leg to let Chopper scurry inside to fetch his things. Usopp announced his most recent purchase at lunch, so they’ve got time before the cook chains himself to his stove again for dinner.
“Been simmering on that one for a while? Fuck off, curly brow.”
“How fresh,” Sanji drawls. “Ahhh, why serve up a real roast to a man with no taste?”
Zoro snorts and rejoins Usopp.
He doesn’t know why their resident coward was so anxious about an audience – except for how Usopp is unavoidably anxious about everything, much against his will – because their sniper is actually a pretty decent knife-thrower. Usopp’s got by miles the best sense of distance and the keenest eye of anyone on the ship. He’s fucking killer at darts – they get banned from nearly every watering hole that makes the mistake of offering it. All it takes is Zoro demonstrating how to throw a few times, correcting Usopp’s first attempts, and then Usopp is at least hitting the crate they’ve stuck their target to every time.
“Why the surprise?” Zoro asks him, as he eyes the knives dubiously.
“I dunno,” Usopp says. “I guess not really used to being good at stuff without a little more work?”
“Would it help if I told you that you’re still shit at this?” Zoro says dryly, though he’s observed that Usopp has no real fondness for blades in general. “You’re a range fighter with a good arm already – you work at those – of course you’ve got a knack for this.”
“I don’t think our enemies are going to wait five minutes for you to aim,” Nami teases, from where she and Robin are lounging behind them and also watching.
“You wanna do better?” Zoro challenges.
And Nami sets her drink aside, stands up, and says, “Maybe I do.”
Which is how they get their first participator.
Nami is a pretty good knife-thrower – she’s had more practice at it than Usopp, but Zoro doubts she practices it all that often or recently. She likes whacking people over the head and crushing shins with her staff too much. Usopp, Luffy, Robin, and Chopper are all dutifully or wildly impressed and clap for her. Sanji, of course, fawns over Nami like she just invented the damn art right now. She accepts their applause with a smug flourish.
“Perhaps we should add some knifework to our morning spars, Miss Navigator,” Robin suggests, smiling, once she’s set her hands back into her lap. “I must wonder what other skills you may be hiding from us.”
Nami winks at her. “Maaaybe. You’re up, Miss Historian.”
And that’s how they get their second participator.
Robin is scary competent at pretty much everything and knife-throwing isn’t any damn different.
This is not an actual fic. This is a full rough outline for a fic I am planning on writing (draft number one), if people have ever been curious what my fic outlines look like. I often don’t write detailed outlines, because I don’t always follow them. I prefer to follow the natural flow of the fic. So, in my rough outlines, I sometimes just drop in POTENTIAL directions, plot points, and background events, and then decide whether they’re actually good characterization and conversation when I get there. I don’t know if things feel right until I get there.
Minor spoilers for FDitH due to shared worldbuilding. I namedrop a lot of OCs here for worldbuilding purposes, to make the HP world feel larger. FULL SPOILERS for this future fic. This is straight-up the whole fic plan.
5.5k words of planning.
This is a Pre-Canon AU in which Sirius Black takes the Boy-Who-Lived and runs for it. Sirius and Harry go into hiding while the Wizarding World reacts to the disappearance of Voldemort. Sirius is found by Minerva McGonagall, who helps him, and they end up becoming something like a family.
Never posted to tumblr or AO3 before; fic outline under the cut.
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It’s Raining, Cats and Dogs
OUTLINE
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Note: Have the weather be representative of Sirius’ state of grief?
Dougal MacGregor - a Muggle man Minerva nearly married
Elphinstone Urquart - Minerva’s boss at the Department of Magical Law Enforcement and husband? (I think I’ll have him pass away near the beginning of the war.)
POTTER COTTAGE - THE BEGINNING
Sirius decides to check on Peter.
Sirius finds Peter’s apartment/flat empty.
Sirius decides to visit Godric’s Hollow.
Sirius finds the Potter Cottage on fire.
Sirius finds Peter standing over the body of Death Eater Pyrites(?).
Pyrites was an early “right-hand man” character for Voldemort, menacing and terribly loyal, cut from book canon.
Sirius confronts Peter, caring for none of Peter’s many excuses, and they duel viciously.
Sirius hears Harry’s wail and realizes Harry is alive.
Sirius is forced to choose between saving Harry and fighting Peter.
Sirius chooses Harry and Peter escapes as a rat.
Sirius rescues Harry from the burning house and puts out Potter Cottage.
Sirius sobs over James and Lily’s bodies.
Sirius is found by Bathilda Bagshot.
BATHILDA BAGSHOT’S HOUSE - THE SHELTER FROM THE RAIN
Sirius and Harry (plus motorcycle) hide at Bathilda’s.
Bathilda seems to have mistaken Sirius for James(?), even though they don’t look much alike, or maybe Dorea Black or Dorea’s son (Doradus? Argo? Navis? Canopus?). Sirius is too heartbroken to correct her.
Bathilda helps Sirius tend to Harry.
He feels like he nearly let Harry die to kill Peter.
He feels like it’s all his fault. James and Lily are dead, and it’s his fault.
Sirius is so angry that he can barely breathe with it, but he needs to be gentle for Harry.
Sirius hears people coming to visit Potter Cottage and hides from them. (The Fidelius Charm only referred to Lily and James Potter, and Peter just broke his oath in the most heinous of ways, so the spell is dying if not shattered.)
Rubeus Hagrid arrives to try and collect Harry, but can’t find him.
A group of Death Eaters come, obviously also in on the “secret” of Potter Cottage, when their Dark Lord doesn’t return.
Mulciber Junior, the Lestranges, and the Yaxleys
A group of Aurors comes to catch the Death Eaters (who escape) and spread the word that You-Know-Who is dead. Scrimgeour comes to interview Bathilda.
Moody, Scrimgeour, and Robards.
Sirius panics over where to take Harry.
Sirius can’t take Harry to his own apartment, because Peter has been there. He can’t take Harry to Remus or Lyall’s places, because Peter has been there too. Sirius can’t go to Andromeda, because he promised himself he wouldn’t bring any of his mess down on her. Sirius can’t go home because his mother might kill him, even if Regulus is dead now. Sirius also can’t go home because Regulus is dead and Kreacher might kill him.
Harry’s forehead is bleeding. But Sirius can’t take Harry to Saint Mungo’s, because he knows it’s not safe. It’s recently said that “people only go to Saint Mungo’s to die”. Caradoc Dearborn worked there, supposedly investigating something, and vanished under mysterious circumstances. He can’t take Harry to Hogwarts because Peter knows how to break into Hogwarts and could have told countless Death Eaters.
The next morning, Sirius sees the Daily Prophet and listens to the Wireless.
People either think Voldemort has kidnapped Harry Potter or that Voldemort is dead and someone else has kidnapped Harry Potter. (Maybe Bathilda told someone who asked that Lord Voldemort went into that house and then never came out?) The fact that there’s no Dark Mark over the house is damning.
He learns that Evan Rosier is dead.
The Ministry is searching for the missing Boy-Who-Lived.
Radio show host Gary Barnabus Lowes-Cuffe celebrates the death of You-Know-Who at the hands of Harry Potter.
Someone actually comes to visit Bathilda, her great-great-nephew Berthold Bagshot, the son of Gellert Grindelwald’s cousin. Bathilda mistakes him for Gellert.
That night, they’re visited by an investigating Minerva McGonagall, who has just spent all day watching the Dursleys and is now looking for the missing Boy-Who-Lived.
Minerva confronts Sirius over what happened.
Sirius tells her everything. Including that Voldemort is missing or dead.
Minerva asks Sirius how he expects to look after Harry.
Sirius confronts Minerva about all the Death Eaters still out there.
Sirius promises Minerva that he’ll give Harry up as soon as he knows that all the Death Eaters, including Peter, have been caught. Minerva doesn’t accept this deal, but accepts that this may be the best offer she can currently get out of Sirius without forcibly trying to take Harry from him.
Minerva offers to let Sirius stay with her brother, but Sirius vehemently refuses.
Berthold Bagshot asks them all to leave his great-great-aunt’s house.
Berthold takes Bathilda into hiding, since she lives in the area and other people might decide to view her as a potential witness.
Berthold impresses that most important thing Sirius can currently do is look after Harry. You can’t let your family leave your sight or else you’ll never see them again.
Berthold Bagshot also makes a comment about Lily and James Potter not being the first Potters to die in that house in Godric’s Hollow, but leaves without elaborating.
UNCLE ALPHARD’S HOUSE - THE STOPPING PLACE
Sirius takes Harry to his Uncle Alphard’s house, which he never sold. Sirius can’t go back to his own apartment, but he can scavenge his uncle’s things.
Sirius realizes that he can’t stay here, however, because he made a point of showing off his uncle’s place to all his friends, proud to have the support of a fellow bloodtraitor.
Sirius looks after Harry, who doesn’t understand what happened to his parents.
Over the course of three days, Harry’s frustration and unhappiness reaches a breaking point and Sirius can’t do anything about it. Harry sobs himself to sleep.
Wizarding Wireless host Taylor Davis, whose boss (Gary Barnabus Lowes-Cuffe) was recently murdered in retaliation for celebrating the apparent death of Lord Voldemort, takes up the mantle. Because everyone else is too afraid to do it, but “I was in Gryffindor. The guy who did that - fuck you, Mister Gisbert Champers - is on his way to Azkaban now. I’m not going to let them shut us up.”
Sirius learns from the Wireless that Ivo Caromsley is also dead.
Minerva finds them again.
INTERACTION 1:
Hester Meadowes, “best-selling author” and Dorcas Meadowes’ mother, writes a sob-story letter to the editor making her daughter’s death about herself.
Minerva is surprised to find that Sirius is actually fully capable of looking after Harry. Sirius learned a little with James and Sirius insists that it’s not that hard. Minerva counters that it can be hard when it’s a never-ending work.
Sirius is surprised to find that Minerva is actually good with young children. Minerva gifts Harry with a stuffed unicorn toy which used to belong to her nephew, which actually used to belong to Minerva herself before that.
Minerva tells Sirius a little about her childhood (looking after her brothers) and about her niece and nephew, both of whom attended Hogwarts under the surname MacGrieve, and are about three years younger than Sirius.
Minerva comments that she can’t fathom anyone the age of her niece and nephew looking after a child. Sirius says that he though Lily and James were too young too. Minerva wipes away a tear at how young the Potters were.
Minerva says that Sirius is also a little young for parenthood. Sirius insists that he can handle it. He’s not giving up Harry until Peter and all Death Eaters are caught.
INTERACTION 2:
Sirius learns that there are some “disturbing whispers” coming out of Saint Mungo’s.
Sirius asks what Berthold meant about the other Potters who died in Potter Cottage, and Minerva tells him about Charlus and Dorea and their son. Their death appeared to be at the hands of a creature and everyone thought Grindelwald had something to do with it, but there was never any proof. Harry is unfortunately the only Potter left.
The only blood family Harry has in all the world are Petunia and Dudley.
INTERACTION 3:
Despite Sirius keeping up with the news through the Wizarding Wireless, Minerva comes in person to inform him of the movements and progress of the Order and the MInistry.
She tells him that Augustus Rookwood was uncovered by the Unspeakables, with the help of Frank Longbottom. Sirius asks her what the hell Frank Longbottom is doing out of hiding already, and she says the Longbottoms want to contribute to the celebrations and to making the world safe for other people to come out of hiding. Young Neville has been left in the care of his grandmother.
Unfortunately, there was also an attack by Fenrir Greyback and his gang, which killed Tertia Warrington (wife of Gaius Warrington) and injured her sister Junia Shepherd, possibly in retaliation for Lord Voldemort’s presumed death. Greyback was last seen fleeing into the night with his followers.
Sirius dares to ask after Remus. Minerva responds that Remus is devastated by James and Lily’s death, furious at Peter’s betrayal, and desperate to find Sirius, Harry, and Peter. Minerva asks if Sirius would consider speaking to him, because she believes that Remus is trustworthy. Sirius responds that he thought the same about Peter.
Something on the news spooks Sirius and he moves again.
THE POTTER HOUSE - THE GRIEVING PLACE
Inspired by their discussion about the Potters, Sirius returns to Harry’s grandparents’ place. James never sold his parents’ house, but he and Lily couldn’t bear to live there and couldn’t safely hide there. It appears undamaged.
To Sirius’ knowledge, Peter never visited the Potter house. He recalls Peter once remarking on never having been able to visit James’ parents house, possibly directly before or directly after James’ parents passed away to their illnesses.
Sirius suffers even greater grief at the reminder that he lost his entire surrogate family. All the Potters are now dead. Their happy home has been completely emptied. This is undercut by Sirius’ realization that Harry never even met his grandparents.
After a few days, Minerva finds him again.
INTERACTION 1:
Minerva says that she believes Albus Dumbledore suspects that Minerva knows something about Harry is, but he has pointedly not asked her yet. She repeats that he has, however, stated that he believes Harry will be safer with his blood family, if what he suspects about Lily’s sacrifice is true.
Sirius demands if Minerva really thinks that the Dursleys would make good care-givers. Minerva protests that what she saw might have been one bad day for them, but then admits that she’s visited them twice more and she can’t fathom letting them look after any child. They don’t seem to have any good days.
Sirius, based on his own experience not knowing what happened to Regulus, presses Minerva to tell Petunia what happened to her sister. He believes that Petunia’s reaction to Lily’s death and Harry’s survival will be the truest indication of her character.
INTERACTION 2:
Sirius learns that Allelos Mulciber Junior has been caught by Moody and Holm.
After a few days, Minerva comes back furious at Petunia’s reaction to the news. Petunia had been initially upset, but then rather defensive, since she still blames Lily slightly for the death of their parents. Minerva had pressed Petunia to show concern for Harry, but Petunia answered that she believes Harry will be better off “with his own sort”.
Minerva admits that growing up among Muggles was difficult for her personally and that, given the choice, she would have much preferred growing up in a magical village. In this moment of strong emotion, Minerva expresses slightly disbelief over why they let any Muggle raise a magical child.
Internally, Sirius sort of agrees with this statement, but he can’t help but play the opposing advocate. He says that growing up among people who were isolationist and very proud of being magical was awful. But Sirius says that may just be because his family was made up of terrible people (and kids who couldn’t get away).
Sirius says that James complained about his own parents sometimes, but that Sirius rarely understood these complaints. Sirius then breaks down over the fact that James was so excited to be a dad. James was so excited to be young enough to actually do things with his son. He was looking forward to, when the war was over, giving Harry siblings, because James hated being an only child.
Minerva comforts Sirius and says that James clearly could ask for no better brother. Sirius directs his anger at himself, because if he’d been a better brother, he’d never have let his actual brother become a Death Eater and never have picked Peter Pettigrew to be a Secret Keeper. Sirius fully believes that he ultimately got both his brothers killed.
Minerva talks about her own experiences with grief, helping Sirius begin to grieve. She makes a tearful speech about Lily and James Potter, and Sirius sobs through it.
Minerva briefly talks about how part of the problem of being a teacher means failing children. She’s tired, overworked, and she doesn’t know how to help everyone, and some people don’t want help, they want to hurt her. Children are fully capable of harming adults. She talks about how some Hogwarts teachers are scared of their students.
Minerva talks about how she’s sick of a system with little to no accountability. They fail people repeatedly and it is never anyone in particular’s “fault”. Promising to “do better next time” also does nothing to help the people who have already been failed and perhaps need the most help. So, to live with this, Minerva and many of her fellow teachers find it occasionally easier to blame the students for being dangerous or for “not helping themselves”. But Minerva admits that they cannot demand why a student “didn’t speak up” when they didn’t make it safe for students to speak up.
INTERACTION 3:
Sirius hears news of Death Eater Leopold Dardey committing suicide rather than go to Azkaban for his crimes. He recognizes Dardey as one of Regulus’ school “friends”.
Sirius is clearly worn down by staying in the Potter house. One of the neighbors saw a glimpse of him and recognized him, and then came up and knocked on the door. They clearly weren’t malicious, but Sirius is also terrified that he’ll be found by someone undesirable anyway because you can’t trust anyone.
The day after, a Ministry representative, Undersecretary Cornelius Fudge, is on the radio asking Sirius Black to please come forward and speak to the Ministry. Cornelius Fudge implies that Sirius Black may know the whereabouts of Harry Potter.
Sirius packs hurriedly, crying at having to leave the Potter house again. He doesn’t know where to go next, but he refuses to stay where Peter could find them. Harry doesn’t know what’s going on, but Sirius is stressed and it stresses him out too.
Minerva arrives in the middle of Sirius’ panic.
Once Sirius explains his decision, Minerva helps him pack and offers him a place to stay. Sirius again refuses to go to her brother’s farm. Minerva says that she’s asked a good friend, Madam Beery, who lives in Hogsmeade, if she can put someone up.
Sirius is leery, but Minerva asks him outright if he trusts her. Sirius says that he does, but he doesn’t trust her not to tell someone where he is anyway. Sirius goes on a rant about the nature of secrets. He says that everyone always has one other person they trust completely and tell everything to, so well-meaning people confide in their loved ones in a chain, and then a secret gets out. The only way to keep a secret is not to tell anyone. Sirius made the mistake of confiding in someone that he was gay (or at least into men) and they “didn’t realize it was something they couldn’t tell people”.
He also panicked a little when James married Lily and James started telling Lily more or less everything, like Sirius’ secrets were Lily’s to know. Sirius liked Lily well enough, but he was still jealous over James having a “new best friend”.
Minerva promises that she will keep Sirius secret and safe to her grave if she must. No one, not even Albus Dumbledore, will learn from her where he is.
Sirius reluctantly follows Minerva to Hogsmeade.
MADAM HENRIETTA BEERY’S HOUSE - TO ACCEPT HELP
Madam Henrietta “Henny” Beery is a kind, middle-aged woman who runs the farms associated with Hogwarts. (Sirius lowkey notices that Minerva, whom Henny calls “Minnie”, actually seems to flirt with Henny Beery.) Henny helped hide Muggleborns during the war and swears that Sirius and Harry will be safe in her home.
The house maybe actually used to be Minerva’s cottage with her husband? (Ugh, I don’t mind the fact that she was married and widowed, but the fact that it was apparently her much older ex-boss is creeping me out. Maybe I’ll scratch it so that they were just friends, but he kept proposing to her.) Anyway, Minerva either sold it to Henny Beery or rents it out to her.
INTERACTION 1:
Sirius (in disguise) goes to The Three Broomsticks and the Hog’s Head for news basically every night, after the first time seems to go well. An Auror named Wendy Weatherby even drops by and asks him if he’s seen anyone “suspicious”.
After a couple weeks, Minerva (who has been visiting him regularly) sees him while dropping by the pub with Pomona Sprout, and asks him how he is.
Sirius is angry and frustrated at how Peter hasn’t been found yet.
Sirius learns that Ernest Travers was turned in by a “concerned citizen”, who was in actuality his own girlfriend once she learned he’d been part of the party who’d murdered the McKinnons. Sirius thinks something that implies Marlene McKinnon and her family had been murdered separately.
He learns that Avery has been brought in for questioning.
INTERACTION 2:
Rita Skeeter writes a nasty column supposing that Sirius is responsible for the deaths of the Potters and was, in fact, the one who betrayed them to You-Know-Who.
Sirius learns that Cicero Vrayago, another Death Eater, has fled the country.
Sirius visits the Shrieking Shack and vents some of his anger at Peter’s betrayal.
Minerva comes to find him.
Minerva and Sirius talk about being an Animagus. Minerva admits that she had some idea that James was attempting to become an Animagus and that she suspected he’d succeeding, but she didn’t know Sirius and Peter had succeeded as well. Minerva says that he should register after this is all over, because the war is a perfect excuse to keep skills like that quiet.
Minerva says that she’s trying to convince her niece and nephew to register, but that her brother Robbie still hasn’t registered and he’s a terrible example to them.
Sirius and Minerva talk about their relationship at school. Sirius had been leery of any sort of maternal figure, especially one so concerned with “image”, but he’d realized over the course of school (mostly through her treatment of James and Remus) that Minerva actually cared about her charges. Sirius wasn’t interested in becoming closer to Minerva, whom he suspected disapproved of him, but he respected her enormous. Much more than he’d meant to.
Minerva admits that she did distrust Sirius at first, worried about what sort of upbringing he’d been given and what sort of influence he’d be on the other children. He’d been loud and often mean and hadn’t seemed to care about the consequences of any action. But Minerva had realized how difficult his home life had been and told herself to give him a break, especially after he ran away to live with the Potters.
INTERACTION 3:
Sirius learns that Death Eater Altilo Purst (by eavesdropping on Daedalus Diggle and Filius Flitwick, during a meeting between part-goblin individuals in the Three Broomsticks) was murdered by an unknown individual, presumably out of revenge. He was found dead just off of Diagon Alley.
The Hoggaries, known for claiming that they are the true owners of the land that Hogwarts is built on, have quieted down for once and dropped their lawsuit against the school. They’ve lost the support to oust Albus Dumbledore as Headmaster.
Sirius drops by Honeydukes and is recognized by the owners.
The Flumes mention that Remus has been by and looks broken-hearted. Sirius determines that Remus probably isn’t also a spy and because he misses his friends more than nearly anything, determines to meet with Remus.
LYALL LUPIN’S HOUSE - TO FORGIVE HIS FRIEND
Walden MacNair turns himself in.
Barty Crouch Senior wants Sirius brought in for questioning.
Sirius leaves Harry at Henny Beery’s house, being looked after by Henny and Minerva. This will be the first time that Sirius has been separated a considerable distance from Harry, so the goodbyes take forever and Sirius is horribly nervous. Henny and Minerva promise to contact Sirius through the mirror if anything goes wrong.
Sirius doesn’t know where Remus is currently living, so he goes to Remus’ father’s house. Lyall Lupin opens the door cautiously. Lyall and Sirius aren’t well-acquainted. Sirius tells Lyall his story and asks him to relay the story to Remus when they next see each other. Lyall tells Sirius that he doesn’t see his son that often, but that he’ll be sure to tell Remus that Sirius and Harry are alright.
Sirius leaves feeling a little heartened and also badly for Peter’s poor mother.
While paying more attention to dodging Horace Slughorn and Barnabus Cuffe, Sirius is mistaken for his brother by Malvolia Feasance in Hogsmeade, though she doesn’t say Regulus’ name. They part awkwardly.
Sirius is greeted warmly by Henny, Minerva, and Harry. Sirius thinks for a moment that this is very like a family, but then he remembers that he promised Minerva that he’d give up Harry as soon as the Death Eaters were caught. Sirius remembers how Petunia hates Harry and also hates magic, and thinks that they’ll probably never be allowed to see each other, and then thinks about what James’ dad said after James’ mum died - about how he didn’t know how to live without his best friend.
Sirius learns that Antonin Dolohov has been caught by Moody and Holm.
ISMMASTER MANOR - GRIEVING
Gringotts Bank expresses interest in Harry Potter’s whereabouts, stating that someone at the Ministry (Absolon Betrand) has been making inquiries about what happens to the Potter Vault if Harry Potter is truly dead and not simply missing. This simple greed has caused some minor uproar among the general public.
Sirius visits his father’s grave.
Sirius visits Regulus’ empty grave.
Sirius dodges Michael and Elena Palmsee on the way back to Henny Beery’s house.
Sirius learns that Death Eaters Harman Wilkes and Rodger Ladoucer have been caught by the Aurors. It’s generally agreed now that Barty Crouch Senior is going to be the next Minister for Magic after Millicent Bagnold retires.
Barty Crouch issues an official warrant for Sirius’ arrest, saying that Sirius has had more than enough time to turn himself in for questioning. Rita Skeeter approves, as does Barnabus Cuffe, editor of the Daily Prophet. Albus Dumbledore objects, saying that Crouch’s brand of justice is hasty and dangerous. The remaining Black family is unavailable for questioning.
THE HOG’S HEAD - THE LESTRANGE ATTACK
Sirius (still in disguise) goes drinking at the Hog’s Head. It’s relatively empty. He ends up confessing some of his woes to Aberforth, who tells him to stop being an idiot. Aberforth tells him that blood family isn’t everything (and Sirius responds that he definitely knows that) and that children need to be loved more than anything. Aberforth tells Sirius that he’s being stupid risking himself like this.
A junior auror, a young Kingsley Shacklebolt, comes into the pub with a message for Aberforth from Alastor Moody. Kingsley seems to find Sirius suspicious, but Aberforth tells him to “let it go, son”.
On his way back to Henny Beery’s house, Sirius hears a commotion in the Three Broomsticks and sees everyone gathered around the Wireless. Taylor Davis is telling them that the Lestranges and Barty Crouch Junior have been arrested by the Aurors for the kidnapping and torture of Frank and Alice Longbottom.
Later, Sirius learns from Minerva that the Longbottoms will recover. She took his warning about his family to heart and relayed it to the rest of the Order. She was actually involved in taking the Lestranges down.
Along with: Moody, Holm, the Palmsees, Weatherby, Gumboil, Scrimgeour, Shacklebolt, and Robards.
Someone vandalizes the Three Broomsticks for celebrating the Lestranges being caught, but altogether most supporters of Lord Voldemort are going into hiding.
Macario Lestrange, Rodolphus and Rabastan’s father, is outraged. Cygnus Black, Druella Rosier-Black, Narcissa Malfoy-Black, and Euphemia Rowle rally to protect Bellatrix, perhaps at the expense of the Lestrange brothers.
TED AND ANDROMEDA TONKS’ HOUSE - TO REUNITE WITH FAMILY
The Malfoys, Crabbes, and Goyles are claiming they were under the Imperius.
Cunobelinus Tark and Marcus Busby have left the country.
Benedetta Zabini has moved back into the country.
Taylor Davis: “Christ, this is news? Oh, wait this is that… right. Right, this is the… Well, watch out bachelors of Britain! Benedetta Zabini is back, newly widowed, and possibly on the lookout for husband number four.”
Barty Crouch Senior’s reputation is in shreds and the upcoming trials are basically being treated like the circus. Ted Tonks expresses pity for poor Ananke Crouch.
Sirius tentatively reaches out to his remaining family. Now that the war is mostly over and his surrogate family is mostly dead, Sirius is hopeful that he and Andromeda may actually be able to see each other. Andromeda had wanted to keep out of the war as much as possible and Sirius hadn’t wanted to bring danger to her doorstep, but he’s hopeful now that she’ll be keen to get to know each other again.
Little Nymphadora Tonks adores baby Harry.
Andromeda still expresses anxieties about their remaining family. She fully believes that the Blacks will have one or both of them killed if they flaunt their rebellion (even if their most eager enforcer, Bellatrix, has just been caught). Andromeda would be happy just having Ted and Nymphadora.
Andromeda also disapproves of Sirius essentially kidnapping Harry. Sirius says that he promised to give Harry up as soon as it is safe. However, Sirius then goes on to insist that he is the best guardian for Harry, because Harry’s maternal aunt is a horrible person who hates magic. Sirius has all the money and time and ability to care for Harry. Sirius loves him more than anything in the world and would never do anything to harm him (now that he’s already made that mistake when he tried to kill Peter on Halloween).
Ted recognizes that Sirius doesn’t have anyone left. Ted insists that Sirius and Harry come visit them regularly. Nymphadora is very excited by this idea. Ted speaks to his wife in private and Andromeda relents.
Andromeda and Sirius share frustration over the fact that Narcissa’s husband is likely going to escape unscathed, now that Crouch’s legitimacy is in shreds after his son was outed as a Death Eater. They also share amusement over the fact that Narcissa tried to throw Rodolphus and Rabastan under the bus as the instigators, and Bellatrix was just dragged into the mess by her husband. Yeah, right.
The Malfoys, Crabbes, and Goyle are claiming the Imperius Curse.
Sirius returns to Henny and Minerva with this news, and they’re both happy for him. Minerva admits that, inspired by Sirius, she’s reached out to her brothers and had a long and “serious” discussion with them.
Muriel Prewett has written a letter calling half the Death Eaters “immigrants anyway” and calling for the Ministry to just throw the lot of them into Azkaban.
MALCOLM MCGONAGALL AND IAIN MACGRIEVE’S HOUSE - THE END
Corban and Raban Yaxley are pleading a combination of duress and Imperius. The only truly prominent threat left is Peter Pettigrew. Sirius almost wishes that Peter won’t ever be caught if it means he doesn’t have to give up Harry.
The firm of Feasance and Wobbler has claimed to have the “Potter Will” only to have been shut down hard by Fleamont “Monty” Potter’s old manager and business partner, Wigand “Wiggy” Parcener.
Snape escapes Azkaban, vouched for by Albus Dumbledore, which Sirius finds absurd and ridiculous. Even if he turned spy for Lily, Sirius considers it “a little late”.
Sirius and Minerva go to meet her family over the winter holidays. Minerva’s brothers are extremely welcoming (Robert Jr. is thinking about asking his on-again-off-again partner to marry him now that the war is over and jokingly asks Sirius to be best man) and Sirius is a little overwhelmed.
Over the holidays (after Christmas), they receive the news that Peter Pettigrew has been caught. Remus Lupin caught him. Peter tried to claim that Sirius was the traitor, which some people have been listening to, and then also outed Sirius as an illegal Animagus and Remus as a werewolf. Peter totally tried to throw them under the bus.
Remus Lupin comes to visit just before New Year.
Sirius falls into his arms and they embrace like brothers.
Sirius expresses regret that Remus has been outed. Remus says that it’s fine. Sirius asks him to stop with his “harmless” act and tell him what he really thinks. Remus says that he’s so fucking pissed off that he could kill Peter. Sirius laughs.
Remus is invited to stay for New Year’s.
On New Year’s, Albus Dumbledore comes to visit.
Minerva stands up to Dumbledore and says that Sirius is the only suitable guardian for Harry. Petunia Dursley is a horrible person and Sirius loves Harry more than anything. Dumbledore agrees, but says that the Ministry may disagree. Minerva, who has been a little too much into the whiskey, says that Ministry will agree if they know what’s good for them. Which sets her brothers (especially Robbie) off laughing.
EPILOGUE
Alaric Pawky and Baldomero Nister have been sent to Azkaban.
A murderer named Orlando Droat has already killed himself inside Azkaban.
Sirius has to present himself to the Ministry to testify against Peter, to argue that he had good reason for essentially kidnapping Harry Potter, and to prove himself a suitable guardian for Harry. Sirius comes through it successfully, but still feels like he’s going to throw up.
Remus comforts him. Sirius expresses anger at the woman who suggested that Sirius was an irresponsible guardian for allowing a known werewolf near Harry. Remus expresses sarcastic sympathy for Sirius’ anger.
Remus looked a little perplexed when they reunited after all the hearings, having just been talking to an unknown woman. Sirius asks him what that was about. Remus says she’s with an equal rights for non-human beings organization and wants him to do some publicity for them, like some interviews in magazines and on the Wireless. Remus says that they’re very excited by the idea of a “well-spoken werewolf who attended Hogwarts in secret and without incident”. Remus is a little ticked off by the “well-spoken” thing and reminds Sirius that he’s still pissed off about the incident with Snape.
Sirius apologizes again. Remus acknowledges the apology but still doesn’t accept it. Sirius presses (a repeated point) that it’d really be no loss if Snape died (mentioning how Snape had escaped Azkaban thanks to Dumbledore), and Remus says that if he’s going to be a tool for murder, he’d like to choose that, thanks.
They collect Harry from Henny and Minerva. Minerva expresses pride at Sirius’ success and even goes so far as to hug him, much to Sirius and Remus’ utter shock.
Sirius (with Harry) is going back to Henny’s place (he pays rent, though it was hell to get Henny to accept it) with Henny and Minerva. Sirius is still looking to get his own place, but he hasn’t found anything yet.
Sirius mentions that he hasn’t spoken to his family at all and doesn’t intend to do so.
Sirius invites Remus to celebrate with them.
Remus says that he would, but he promised to visit his dad. Sirius invites Lyall along too, saying “the more, the merrier”. Remus agrees to ask Lyall, though Lyall is still a very private man and is upset by how everyone now knows Remus is a werewolf. Remus says that some “ingenious reporter” caught on to the fact that Lyall once pissed off Fenrir Greyback and has suggested it’s Lyall’s fault that Remus is a werewolf, which is a statement Lyall agrees with. Remus shrugs and promises to ask.
Sirius asks Remus to drop by anyway, after visiting his father.
Remus calls Sirius persistent and agrees.
Sirius apologizes for ever believing Remus could be the traitor. Remus says that they all fell apart after James went into hiding and that no one could trust anyone. Remus jokes that he’s somewhat flattered Sirius presumed him much more dangerous than Peter, since he knows it had nothing to do with his being a werewolf. Remus apologizes for thinking that Sirius would have ever gone back to his family, but Sirius understands that as a pureblood he could have switched sides anytime he liked, since he was fighting for his friends rather than for himself.
They forgive each other.
They linger over their goodbye, hugging again, and then part ways “for now”.
AN: MCU fic: you are the princess to my dragon (REWRITE)
I have been... VERY SLOWLY... rewriting my fic YatPtmD, which is an AU in which Darcy Lewis is secretly a dragon. The premise is very silly and self-indulgent, and I have been using the fic to randomly worldbuild to my heart’s content and love the Thor cast very much. For reference, here is the first rough 25k of the rewrite (chapters 1-5):
And here are the next two chapters (6 and 7), 13k words, which includes Jane & Thor bonding, and Sif & the Warrior Three finding Thor on Earth again:
Never posted to tumblr or AO3 before; fic under the cut.
-cut-
~
Chapter Six: Someday Her Prince Will Come
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“So, how did Erik get you out of SHIELD’s custody?” Jane asks.
“He told them that I was a fellow astrophysicist named Donald Blake, who had turned to drink after ‘our’ research was stolen and sought mindless vengeance upon the thieves,” Thor answers, sprawled tiredly across the back seat, where Erik has already passed out despite it only being five minutes back to the lab.
“And they believed that?” Darcy says, knowing how easy that would be to check.
“I do not know how much of this story was believed,” Thor admits. “We have been followed by at least two of their agents since leaving the crater. They were watching us in that bar.”
“What?!” Jane says.
“Holy shit!”
“They first questioned me under the assumption that I was a mercenary who would make faithless war for nothing more than the highest price,” Thor continues, with a sort of listless acceptance. “It is highly likely they released me only in the hope that I would eventually lead them to my momentary masters. It may be best that, after I have delivered Erik to his bed, we part ways for your safety-.”
“Oh, no,” Jane interrupts firmly, turning to face him. “No one in this car except me is deciding what gets done for my safety. You still owe me answers. I delivered you to that crater, man, you have to answer my questions. You gave your word.”
In the car mirror, Darcy can see Thor smile at Jane.
“So I did,” he says, “and so I shall.”
The conversation stops then, because they’ve reached the lab again. Darcy pulls up to a stop next to the trailers and Jane hops out to help Thor out of back. Thor hefts Erik up again with enviable strength, Jane leads him to Erik’s temporary bed in her trailer, and Darcy peers in to make sure they’re arranging him into the recovery position.
Her text alert goes off after that, though, so she excuses herself.
Bingbingbingbing Bananaphone: Hello.
Darcy turns her phone off and sneaks away find her sibling lurking in the shadows around the lab.
“Hey, so, fair warning: we’re apparently being stalked by SHIELD agents right now,” Darcy whispers, before enveloping him in as long a hug as she can get away with and stealing his phone out of his pocket. “They have almost definitely tapped our phones, so I’m turning yours off too, but you couldn’t text me even a smiley face earlier to at least let me know that you weren’t dead? Thanks for looking after Jane.”
“Your human needed no looking after,” Bingley says stiffly.
Darcy pats him on the back once, returns his phone, and lets go. “She’s great, right?”
Bingley makes a noncommittal noise. “I lingered to observe the Asgardian. I considered perhaps repaying our debts, before the Men in Black released him unexpectedly.”
“Yeah, they’re still following him.”
“I am aware. They are not the only ones.”
“What?”
Bingley takes Darcy by the hand and leads her to the edge of the lab’s shadows, then points towards the top of a nearby telephone pole. It’s hard to see against the night sky at first, but there’s a large black bird sitting there, surveying its surroundings. Darcy doesn’t know the native birds of New Mexico, but her gut reaction is that that is not one of them. That thing is huge.
“Is that a crow?”
“How would I know?” Bingley demands of her. “I am not an expert on birds.”
“It’s like the size of a person. I didn’t know they got that big.”
“I have kept a wary distance, but it has a magic to it that makes me doubt that it is an ordinary creature. It has been following the Asgardian since I first noticed it.”
“Oh my god, that’s probably not good.”
“No,” Bingley agrees grimly. “Has he said anything of why he is here?”
“Dude, I’ve barely talked to him since he came back,” Darcy says, leading them back deeper into the shadows. “Oh, wait, he said something about it not being up to him who gets to be the god of thunder? Is it true that he got into a fight with a bunch of SHIELD guys?”
“Yes, however, he did not display the strength I would have expected.”
“Maybe he was holding back? I mean, humans are super duper breakable, Bing.”
“Maybe,” Bingley agrees reluctantly. “I have not seen Asgardians in a long time. However, there is a powerful magic on him. I have not been able to get close enough to understand the nature of it, but the scent enough marks it as powerful spellwork. The Asgardian artifact that he failed to reclaim is a weapon that tastes-”
“Oh, no, you did lick it.”
“I did not! I tasted the air around it,” Bingley hisses. “Its magic burns with the same scent of the spell that clings to him, but in far greater force. It is extremely powerful. The humans have thankfully been unable to move it from where it fell.”
“Was it a hammer with a short handle?”
“...Yes, how did you know?”
“Erik brought home a book of Norse myths. Cool. I can check off ‘Myeu-myeu’ as a real thing.”
“A human book?”
“Where would he get a nonhuman book? Yes, from the local library and everything.”
“I would like to see it.”
“No, it’s Erik’s, not mine, and I’m sick of paying off your fines? I’m not working right now and Culver is literally eating our savings. Also, I’m pretty sure everything in there is also on the internet.” Darcy sighs, “Bing, you were the one who found out what they were called in the first place, what do you actually know about the Asgardians?”
Bingley visibly bites back his retort and thinks it over. “Frustratingly little,” he says finally. “It is too difficult to separate legend from what is true. Memory from what happened. Their rare visits to this world are even more rarely recorded. The most potentially reliable accounts all repeat that the Asgardians are far more powerful and long-lived than humans, and that they are the protectors and distant rulers of this world.”
“And we already knew that.”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t think they’d ever come back,” Darcy admits quietly.
Bingley doesn’t answer for several seconds, before he says, “Neither did I.”
Well, Darcy has nothing to say to that. She takes a seat against the wall, with Bingley standing silently next to her, until they hear the sounds of two people headed up to the lab roof. It’s Jane and Thor. Darcy… doesn’t know how to feel about that. The roof has always pretty firmly been “Jane’s space unless invited”. It looks like Thor has been invited.
After the set-up of chairs and a crackling fire, Jane and Thor’s voices float down from above, only loud enough to be heard if you’re a dragon desperately listening.
“I come up here sometimes when I can’t sleep, or when I’m trying to reconcile particle data, or when Darcy’s driving me crazy. I come up here a lot, actually, now that I think about it,” Jane says, with nervous humor. “It feels like I’ve left all my problems behind me. Or maybe it’s just because I’m short and I like being tall for once.”
Thor laughs. “I often seek out high places when I cannot settle myself,” he agrees. “Storms in high places pass through without harm; and it does me good to see all the lives laid out below me, to remember all the people who depend upon the continued peace of their world.”
“Well… I think Puente Antiguo will keep on going just fine.”
“Indeed. I must apologize to you, Dr. Jane Foster, f-”
“It’s Jane. Just… just Jane. And it’s fine. I’m really just glad you’re alright.”
“You’ve been very kind to me, and I’ve been far less grateful to you than you deserve.”
“Well, I did hit you with my car. Twice.”
“Yes, well, I was duly repaid in clothes and sustenance,” Thor counters amusedly. “Here, I managed to reclaim this for you as they released me. It is not adequate apology for failing to retrieve your research as I promised, but it is all I have to offer.”
Jane gasps. “Are you kidding? This is- this is great- this is… it’s not everything, but I don’t have to start from scratch anymore!”
Darcy hears the sound of pages being turned. It takes her a second to puzzle out that Thor managed to retrieve Jane’s journal, the one she brandished in front of the Man in Black and had stolen from her, which is full of notes and observations, and occasionally data tables and doodles. Jane sometimes starts writing her papers in there. It’s definitely not nothing.
“...What’s wrong?” Thor asks above.
“It’s just… we’re being watched, right? Let’s say that I gather all my evidence again, let’s say that I discover things that would completely change the way we think about the universe and our place in it, they might just swoop in and take everything from me all over again, and no one will ever get to know. SHIELD… whatever they are… they’re going to do everything in their power to make sure that my life’s work never sees the light of day! It’s one more obstacle I didn’t need!”
Jane sounds so frustrated.
“Perhaps,” Thor says quietly, “but that the battle will be uphill is no reason to abandon a worthy cause. Dr. Jane Foster… ‘just Jane’... I should have told you this when you questioned me as you took me to the crater: you are right. You are right about the bridges. You are right that they can be and have been used to travel between worlds.”
Jane is quiet, though Darcy strains to hear her answer. In the back of Darcy’s head, where sits the tether that is now distinctly marked Jane, there’s a swelling of feeling.
“You told me that you have been tracking atmospheric disturbances, which led you to meeting the Bifrost as it delivered me here to Midgard,” Thor presses gently. “Tell me, Jane: how were you able to predict the point of contact?”
“...There was a pattern,” Jane answers finally, accompanied by the sound of pages quickly turning. “Some of them were irregular - outliers, usually much weaker - but the most powerful disturbances occurred at regular, predictable intervals with a relatively low margin of error. Sometimes they’d be maybe an hour early or a few hours late, but it seemed like… repetitive movement. A reaction to something I couldn’t see yet.”
“...I am unfamiliar with this dating system, but this is the number of days between events? Yes, I believe the days are roughly the same in length, so… counting the suspended movements for the coronation and the attack...” Thor mutters something under his breath, and then bursts out laughing, loud in the night.
“What? What is it?” Jane demands.
“Dr. Jane Foster of Midgard, you have tracked the movement of my people across the Nine Realms from across the stars,” Thor says, sounding absolutely delighted about it. “These minor atmospheric disturbances, those within this pattern you have devised, are caused by the Bifrost Bridge being used to transport soldiers and citizens, trade and supplies, between Asgard and the other realms. They are scheduled, though there are often the usual inherent delays.”
“...I’m sorry, what?”
“The force of the Bifrost echoes through the branches of Yggdrasil.”
Below in the shadows, Bingley takes an awkward seat next to Darcy, who is trying to process the fact that she’s apparently been helping track Asgardians without knowing it. It’s not an easy thing to process. Except for the part where Jane didn’t like not knowing stuff and Darcy didn’t like Jane not being happy, Darcy was kind of totally cool thinking that weird little auroras happened in the deserts of New Mexico for no flipping reason.
“...Who are you?” Jane says finally. “Who are you really?”
“I am Thor, son of Odin All-Father, of the Aesir of Asgard. I am aware that there are stories on your world that make such a claim seem delusional, but I have… nothing more than my word of honor at the moment to defend myself.”
“You’re forgetting the part where I saw you fall out of the sky in a beam of light that burned strange markings into the ground,” Jane says, almost teasing. “I’ll take your word for it. Now, if you don’t mind finally answering my questions, what exactly is this ‘Bifrost’? And what do you mean ‘the branches of Yggdrasil’? If you could start from the beginning and assume I don’t know what ‘Asgard’ is, that would be great.”
Thor laughs. “Do you have a drawing utensil and a blank page?”
“Yes, right here.”
“Thank you. Well… Jane... my father explained it to me like this: your world and mine are each one of Nine Realms, which are joined by the branches of Yggdrasil, the worlds-tree, a network of paths which has been grown through the cosmos. The roots and branches of Yggdrasil are most often invisible to us, but occasionally through them we are given glimpses of movement elsewhere in the Nine Realms. It seems that one of the larger branches of Yggdrasil on Midgard is situated here in this Puente Antiguo.”
“Why here? Why New Mexico?”
“As our worlds move through the cosmos, so do the ever-shifting branches of Yggdrasil which link them together. You have noted that these atmospheric disturbances have over time crossed this settlement, yes, and still continue to move farther west, yes? The branches of the worlds-tree Yggdrasil are unfixed; they care nothing for mortal borders as they wind their way around the worlds of the Nine Realms. Some branches reach out beyond to even stranger and more distant worlds in the cosmos, the nearest of which Asgard also watches and occasionally keeps the peace within, alongside our neighbours, but the roots of Yggdrasil only find the wells which nourish them in these Nine Realms.”
“Midgard, Asgard, Alfheim, Nornheim-?” Jane begins.
“Ah, no. Nornheim is situated near to Asgard and considered a part of the same realm. These are the Nine Realms: with Muspelheim at the highest point and Niflheim at the lowest within Yggdrasil.”
“The land of fire and the dark world?”
“Svartalfheim, which rests near to Niflheim, is more often given that title, but Niflheim is indeed a dark world. It is a place of mists and misery, where none dare dwell. Muspelheim, where rests the hall of the demon Surtr and flames that have birthed many beasts, is indeed the land of fire. How do you know this?”
“Erik brought a book of old legends home from the library.”
“To prove me mad, I expect.”
“Well, yes,” Jane admits, which makes Thor chuckle again, “but I’m not in the habit of ignoring a rainbow bridge I witnessed with my own eyes just because someone else says it’s impossible. ‘The universe is a pretty big place. If it’s just us, it seems like an awful waste of space.’”
Jane is punning at a prince of Asgard.
And Thor is laughing.
“I didn’t read much of it and I’m sure the book didn’t get it all right,” Jane presses, once Thor has stopped laughing. “Keep going. What are the other six realms? Is Svartalfheim a part of Niflheim? You can assume that I’m familiar with Earth.”
“I should hope so. No, Svartalfheim is its own realm, once home to the dark elves, now extinct, who were fearsome enemies of Asgard long before my time. Asgard rests nearer to Muspelheim, though to say that any of these realms rest ‘near’ to one another does a disservice to vast distances between even those closest to one another.”
“Of course.”
“Yes, so between Asgard and Midgard rests Alfheim, home of the light elves, a sister people to the dark elves, who have remained loyal allies to Asgard. As well as Vanaheim, home to the Vanir, the sister people of the Aesir, once our greatest rivals and now our greatest allies.”
“You’ve been there?”
“Many times. Both are beautiful places, which rival even Asgard in their natural splendor. Few sights compare to the fields of Vanaheim at the height of summer; one sees such golden wealth and knows that the feasting which celebrates the joining of our peoples will be great that year.”
“Does this feasting involve throwing empty cups on the floor to ask for a refill?”
“Aha, well, yes. It is a time-honored tradition.” Thor clears his throat. “Then there is Nidavellir, the home of the dwarves, as well as home to the most skilled craftspeople in the Nine Realms. The greatest treasures of Asgard were crafted by the great dwarf Eitri and those who work in his solar forge. My hammer, Mjolnir… the hammer with which I was tasked to be a protector of Asgard... it was a masterwork of the Nine Realms.”
“...And the ninth realm?”
“Jotunheim, the land of ice, home to the frost giants.”
“...Is it… not a nice place?”
“It is… I have not seen much of their world.”
“Yeah?”
“A thousand years ago, there was a great uprising, and the frost giants invaded Midgard to claim it as their own. My father, Odin, defeated them and drove them back to Jotunheim, to their city of Utgard, and held their ruler Laufey under an uneasy truce for the past thousand years. They are… widely held to be the greatest and most dangerous enemies of Asgard.”
“Oh, that… doesn’t sound like a nice place, then,” Jane says uncertainly.
“It is not hospitable for the Aesir,” Thor says, and clears his throat again. “Asgard has made a great many enemies over the millennia. We, the Aesir, are the protectors of the Nine Realms which are joined by the roots and branches of Yggdrasil the worlds-tree. It is our sworn duty to maintain peace between them and on many of their neighboring worlds. This is only accomplished through the Bifrost, a dimensional energy which can be harnessed to travel near instantaneously throughout the cosmos, which is done so on Asgard by the Bifrost Bridge, an immense masterwork construction of… let’s us say of both magic and science.”
“Which uses the branches of the worlds-tree as pathways through space?”
“As far as the branches allow,” Thor agrees. “It is more efficient to use the network of Yggdrasil; it is faster and requires less energy. Though sometimes one must break off from the branches or travel beyond them, and in doing so create new potential minor branches of Yggdrasil. However, these thin tethers often fade away like an unused trail as the cosmos shifts ever onwards.”
Thor trails off and there’s silence for awhile above.
“Wow,” Jane says finally. “Just… wow.”
“It is much to take in,” Thor agrees quietly. “When I was a boy, I could not comprehend the magnitude of the wonder that is Yggdrasil and the Nine Realms. I have long taken for granted the power and convenience of the Bifrost Bridge.”
“Well, I suppose it’s all a matter of perspective?” Jane offers, with disbelieving laughter. “I am… so envious of you right now, I can’t… I don’t know what to say. I don’t not believe you, but…. You’ve been to other planets? You’re actually telling me that you’re from another world and that you’ve been to other planets right now.”
“Many other planets, yes.”
“How many?”
Thor laughs. “I do not know! I have not kept count.”
“Could you count?”
“Perhaps, but it would likely not be an accurate accounting. I have had some adventures - some - in which I did not know where I was or how I came to be there,” Thor says, clearing his throat awkwardly. “Nor how many places were visited in between.”
“...Are you telling me you’ve gone on interstellar pub crawls?”
“Well… not all of them started that way.”
Jane bursts out laughing.
“It is rude to refuse the hospitality of one’s hosts,” Thor insists.
“You have… access to the wonders of the universe… you’ve probably met people from dozens of planets… and you go decide to go out drinking?!”
“Some adventures,” Thor stresses again, but he sounds on the verge of laughing again too. “Not all of my wayward wanderings have begun with a drink, though all good journeys should end with one. I will admit that I… have not been as grateful for the privileges granted to me as I should have been. There is always something… and the opportunities to appreciate the landscape of the universe are always there until they are gone.”
Jane pauses, before she offers, “It seems so strange to me that anyone could ever see such extraordinary things as ordinary. Then again, I’ve spent half my life staring at the sky, without seeing even a thousandth of what the world I live on has to offer.”
“...You are kind to find sympathy,” Thor tells her.
“Why are you here now? You didn’t really seem… well… when we first met, you really didn’t seem like you’d meant to be here.”
“Ah, no.”
“It… didn’t really seem like a pub crawl gone wrong either.”
“No,” Thor agrees again, before taking a deep breath. “I have been… cast out of Asgard.”
Beneath the roof, Darcy stiffens, because that doesn’t sound good. She looks at Bingley, who despite having a tenuous relationship with human facial expressions, is obviously surprised. Thor seems like an alright sort of guy, despite and because of his fisticuffs with the Feds. What could Thor have done to get thrown of Asgard? Isn’t he royalty? Are Asgardians the sort of people who regularly toss out members of the royal family?
“I’m sorry,” Jane says.
“Thank you, but my banishment was of my own doing. I...”
Thor trails off. Jane, uncharacteristically, doesn’t speak up to ask him anything. Darcy can’t see Jane and can’t tell who the feeling of desperate, wanting waiting belongs to between them.
“Only days ago,” Thor begins softly. “I was to be crowned the new King of Asgard. The Nine Realms were to be mine to guard and their peace to be mine to preserve, as my father before him and his father before him and his father before us all.”
“Sounds like a lot of responsibility.”
“It is. But the moment of my long-desired triumph was interrupted by a party of frost giants infiltrating the vault which contains the greatest treasures of Asgard, attempting to steal the Casket of Ancient Winters, a great weapon which my father took from Jotunheim to ensure that there would never be another war.”
Beside Darcy, Bingley also goes very still.
“They failed to reclaim the weapon for Jotunheim. They paid for their trespass with their lives. My father thought to leave this be, but I could not content myself with this. The frost giants had slipped past the watch of Heimdall and the Einherjar, a watchman and guard who should have been infallible, such that had they not been blinded by their greed, they could have struck against our defenses or against my family.
“To strike against Asgard on such a day could only have been to mock our power; it was a statement on the part of Jotunheim that they did not intend to respect my rule. Between the threat to my people and my wounded pride, I could not bear it. I disobeyed my father and journeyed to Jotunheim with my brother and my companions, to demand answers from their king Laufey and put on a show of force that would remind the war-seeking frost giants for the next thousand years of the strength of Asgard and its peacekeepers.”
“I take it that didn’t go well,” Jane says quietly.
“No, if the attempted theft had not been of his own direction, Laufey offered no apologies and no reparations for what his people had done,” Thor laughs, in the bitter way that’s never really a laugh. “He threatened my life, mocked my power, and claimed that there were traitors in the House of Odin itself. And I… I did not listen to my brother’s pleas to leave. I struck one of Laufey’s men and began my show of force, but… my companions were no match for the waves of giants who appeared from the ruins.”
“...Are they alright?” Jane asks warily.
“They live, thankfully, though not thanks to my doing,” Thor says grimly. “My father intervened to save our lives and preserve the peace, but though he could steal us away to Asgard, Laufey would not relinquish the spear I had thrown. For breaking the peace of the Nine Realms, for risking my life and the lives of my companions, my father… he took from me my power… he took from me my title… and he cast me out.”
Thor trails off and they all sit in silence for a bit.
Darcy has no idea what her sibling is thinking right now, stone-faced and still, but she wouldn’t be surprised if Bingley’s head is just a gurgling and unknowable well of dread right right, because that’s roughly where she’s at right now. Oh, she thought “frost giants stealing back this important weapon” was bad, but “the Asgardians and the frost giants are at war again” is so much worse.
We’re all going to die, Darcy thinks, firstly.
Then she remembers that she’s not roughly the size of a large dog anymore, which means that she gets to do the stepping-on this time around, unless frost giants have only been getting bigger to keep the proportions. Also, Bingley can spit far more than sparks now. They can roast their own frost giants now, no need for Asgardian witches.
Then Darcy remembers that Earth has come a long way since the last alien invasion she personally witnessed. Even if they didn’t have an actual superhero flying around now and getting his own convention blown up, humanity would probably do pretty alright for themselves, what with things like double-barrelled shotguns and an unstoppable “eaten leaden death, demons” attitude. Another alien invasion might not be the end of the world, at least until some idiot ups the scale of weaponry from the “Doom” franchise to “doomsday”.
Oh, no, she just rounded back to “we’re all going to die” again. Bad Darcy.
“The ordinary usage of the Bifrost Bridge had been rescheduled due to the ceremony and cancelled after the attack which interrupted it; if I had not been cast out, you would not have seen anything that night,” Thor continues softly. “I count myself fortunate that you were there to meet me and that I have met you.
“Earlier, I sought your help to reclaim my power through reclaiming my hammer, Mjolnir, which can only be lifted by the worthy. But if my father meant for my banishment to be reversed in time, I have yet to devise the trick or task to it, and now… now it is too late.”
“Why is it too late?” Jane asks him, gently.
“While SHIELD held me prisoner, my brother appeared to inform me that my father is dead - for the All-Father was old and greatly weary of war, and what I had done was too much for his waning strength - and that he has assumed the throne of Asgard in my place. Peace has been brokered with Jotunheim, upon the condition that I remain in banishment.”
“Oh…”
“I would accept exile in exchange for the safety of my people without hesitation,” Thor says firmly. “But Laufey has long stewed in his hatred and I must wonder if this has all been a trap of his making. I have… an embarrassingly long history of not seeing trickery until too late.
“My brother is now king. He is a powerful magician and a cunning warrior, but he has never had any interest in waging war… and though wildly clever, he is not without his own moments of arrogance… and deeply concerned by appearances. I worry what he may have gotten himself into when I am unable to watch his back. While he has our mother to guide him… they will both be in mourning… and while Loki’s temper runs deeper and colder than mine, he is not above rage and vengeance.
“If the frost giants did not respect the rule and power of Odin All-Father himself, nor mine after him, then they will not respect that of my brother. Now that I and the All-Father are gone, they will try for the Casket of Ancient Winters again. Through whatever wicked magic or secret passage or vile traitor they have hidden away, they will lay siege to Asgard. And I must sit here and pray that Heimdall, my companions, and the Einherjar are enough to protect my family in my place. I trust them all with my life, but if they have failed once...”
Silence falls again, before Thor says quietly, “I apologize. None of this is what you asked after.”
“...Well, actually, I did ask after this,” Jane corrects him, “when I asked you why you were here. That’s… more than I was expecting, but…” She huffs a disbelieving laugh. “...that’s been all of this? This is way more than I ever dreamed of, honestly.” More solemnly, Jane says, “I’m so sorry for your loss. May your father’s memory be a blessing to you.”
“...Thank you.”
“Is there anything I can do to help you mourn him?”
“I… I do not know,” Thor admits. “The loss does not yet feel real. Even… even only days ago, when I was to become the new King of Asgard, I expected my father’s wisdom and knowledge to guide me for a long time yet to come. When… when I was a boy…”
“When you were a boy...?”
“I would listen raptly to my father’s tales of his time as king - all his wanderings as a warrior and wise man - and make grand proclamations of the great deeds I would do as king one day! And my father would often reply-” Thor’s voice shifts to mimic someone older. “-‘Am I such a poor father? To have a son so eager to see me to my grave so that he may be king?’ I would of course hastily assure him that I would never wish for such a thing, and my father would laugh and tell me that it was his fondest hope to see me become King of Asgard someday, when I was truly ready to protect the future of Asgard and the peace of the Nine Realms.
“And now… I have failed him. My brother told me that I had broken his heart and it begins to dawn on me that I shall never be able to beg his forgiveness.”
“How would you mourn him on Asgard?”
Thor describes a funeral in which they would his father’s body on a ship, in full armor, with his weapons and treasures. They would launch the ship into the sea and an archer would shoot a flaming arrow to set it alight, and Odin All-Father would rise as ashes into the stars and be sent on to the afterlife as one of the most worthy dead. He describes feasts where all of Odin All-Father’s deeds would be sung about and retold, so that all could remember his long and prosperous life, and the remembering of such a life would go on for so long that the feasting and mourning would surely last for months on end. Until all had said their farewells to the great man who had ruled and protected the Nine Realms for millennia.
“I know that I could do so here, but… it would not be the same,” Thor says softly. “I do not yet know how to celebrate my father’s life when I have failed him so greatly. I do not yet know how to celebrate him without the company of my family and my friends, and without my people.”
“You don’t have to know right now,” Jane tells him.
“I don’t feel as though I know anything anymore,” Thor admits.
“Well… that’s weird to hear from a guy who just told me pretty much everything I know about this thing called a ‘worlds-tree’ and these eight other planets connected to ours through it,” Jane tells him, somewhere between gentle and wry. “If he doesn’t end up on the run from SHIELD, I’d like to hear a lot more about them.”
“If I am not forced to run, I would like that too.”
“Is… Is there no way back? No way to check on your home?”
“The Bifrost Bridge is now closed to me. Heimdall - though he has long been a loyal friend and one of my wisest mentors - cannot answer me without committing treason. To travel along the branches of Yggdrasil to him instead now would require a power I do not have. There are secret passages between realms that could see me home - deep and dark places in-between all other places - but… I have never needed to be familiar with them, and in my weakened state, they might well be the death of me.”
Jane doesn’t speak for several seconds, then says, “I could help you get home.”
“...How?” Thor asks.
Uh, yeah, that’s what Darcy wants to know too.
“Well, I don’t have a way to get you home now, but… I bet we could figure it out. Between what you know about the universe and what I know about the universe, I don’t think it’s impossible,” Jane offers. “There have been some amazing advances in technology in the past ten years alone, you know, and there have to be other people - other physicists - who aren’t afraid of SHIELD. There are other people who’ll do anything for the chance to get out there.”
“Erik did not seem so enthusiastic.”
“Well, no,” Jane agrees. “But there are other people and now that I have proof - now that I have you - I could probably convince them to listen. We could try to get you home again. It might take years, but… we can try.”
Jane sounds so determined. She’s got nothing but a journal of scribbles and a powerless prince of Asgard, with the Men in Black stalking their every move, and she sounds like she’s really going to manage to get herself into space somehow. Darcy is having visions of Jane building and/or stealing her own rocket. Jane has no idea who Darcy is yet or what dragons could do for her research, and she’s still going to try to find out what makes magic tick.
Darcy doesn’t know whether to be worried or impressed. Both? Both is good.
“...Thank you for the offer,” Thor says slowly. “It is touching, especially knowing the risk that you and your fellows would be taking on my behalf. Though you would say that the great task is not without greater reward… you are a very kind and brave woman, Dr. Jane Foster. I will think on your offer.”
“Well, the offer stands for however long it has to,” Jane answers. “If there are other planets without our reach, then I’m going to find them. I’m going to get out there.” She pauses, then tells Thor with almost casual quietness, “My dad would have done nearly anything to go to another world, you know. He passed away years ago.”
“...I’m sorry for your loss,” Thor says. “May his memory be a blessing to you.”
“...Thank you. He was an astrophysicist too; he and Erik were colleagues and friends; they taught at the same university when I was young. They bounced ideas off each other sometimes, but my dad mostly did computer simulations of galaxies.”
“Computer simulations?” Thor repeats.
“Um… he would run simulations on a computing machine, by telling the machine that the simulated celestial bodies had these certain properties and were subject to these laws of physics, to see if the simulations behaved the same way as we’d observed the real things? Uh, does that make sense?”
“Ah, yes. I am unfamiliar with these machines, but simulations of such events are a useful tool on Asgard as well. Though more notably by the Norns of Nornheim.”
“Oh, good! Well... my dad used to show me his work, these simulations of galaxies that predicted millions of years in minutes, and I’d say that it wasn’t fair that I wouldn’t get to see any of it. And he’d say things like, ‘A single lifetime, even though entirely devoted to the sky, would not be enough for the investigation of so vast a subject.’ And he’d talk about only diligent research through long successive ages would be what eventually brings to light everything up there that lies hidden. And he’d tell me that someday his descendants - me included - will be amazed that he didn’t know things that are by then obvious to everyone.
“And I’d just look at him and complain again that it wasn’t fair. Then he’d tell me, ‘Tough luck! If you wanted all the answers of the universe just handed to you, you shouldn’t have asked a physicist! The only thing I know for certain is that I don’t really know how anything works!’”
Thor chuckles softly. “He sounds like a very wise man, your father.”
“Aha, yeah.” Jane sighs and continues, “He told me, when I decided to go into astronomy, that I couldn’t let the unfairness of how little time I had to observe the universe stop me. My parents told me that I would get discouraged when the money ran out, when people looked down on me for who I am, and when I couldn’t find anything I was looking for in the dark, and when I’d accidentally make the stupidest mistakes. I don’t think my dad knew SHIELD would show up and steal all my research, but I don’t think he would have been all that surprised either.
“My parents told me I couldn’t let any of that stop me from picking myself up again. From asking questions and seeking answers, even when I didn’t know the real questions yet. Just because it seemed unlikely I’d get to visit space in my lifetime, wasn’t any reason not to try, because even if I didn’t, then the next person in line would be that much closer.
“My dad would point at our short history in space and all the fiction people had written describing incredible, impossible adventures on other planets… and what I think he was trying to say… or, at least, what I learned from him and my mom is... ‘Life and space are like seas… they’re not safe. We build ships for them, even knowing they might sink, because we hope what we might find on the other side is worth the risk.’
“I can’t…. I can’t forgive you for what you say you did to earn this banishment, because it’s not my place, and honestly I don’t entirely understand the gravity of what happened. All I can say is that I’m sorry for your loss and that you have help here… even with SHIELD… even with frost giants and whatever else is out there. While I don’t know what Erik said to you… he doesn’t speak for me. I’ve only got one life; I decide how to spend it. Whether it’s just sticking around Puente Antiguo for breakfast or helping me go to another planet, you’re welcome to stay with us for as long as it takes to figure out what’s next for you.”
“I… thank you,” Thor says, eventually.
“I know Earth hasn’t put its best foot forward, especially since I hit you with my car first thing twice, and I’m maybe a weird person to say this after talking so much about wanting to be anywhere but here,” Jane tells him softly, “but… it’s pretty great place to be. And there’s always space for one more.”
“I will remember that,” Thor promises. “Thank you, Jane.”
Silence falls between them, no sound up above but the crackling of the fire.
After a few minutes of quiet, Jane asks Thor about the difference between the branches of the worlds-tree and the roots of the worlds-tree, if he wouldn’t mind explaining it. Thor says that he would be glad to do so and begins explaining the different parts of Yggdrasil, which is apparently more of a figurative tree, with all the same care as before.
Darcy listens to the softening conversation, between her best friend and this guy from another world, and… well, it’s not like Jane’s gone anyway. Jane? Ping. Jane? Ping. Jane is being very wonderfully Jane pretty much right overhead, but… Darcy feels so far away, sitting in the shadows with her still, silent sibling. Jane? Ping.
Jane is taking all of this so well. Should Darcy be worried or impressed?
Or jealous?
Because… well… that could’ve been her up there with Jane, talking about space and alien worlds, if she’d gotten herself together faster. Darcy didn’t know any of this would happen. Darcy honestly couldn’t actually have told Jane even half that about the Asgardians or the Nine Realms or Yggdrasil the worlds-tree. Darcy was born on this planet, has never left this planet, and has never even tried to leave this planet. Darcy’s one advantage over this dude is that she’s magical and non-humanoid enough to prove a point for certain. Still, it’s depressingly like helplessly watching an opportunity just get up and walk away without looking back.
Too little, too late.
Thor’s voice gets softer and the stretches of silence between Jane’s yawning questions gets longer, until it sounds like Jane has fallen asleep. Darcy has no idea what time it is, since some brilliant idiot decided to turn off all the phones, but it’s feeling pretty late all around. She listens to Thor tend to the fire and tries not to think about the cold that could be creeping in around them at this very moment.
War isn’t coming to Earth just yet.
After a while, Thor begins speaking again, even more softly than before. Darcy regrets making the words out almost immediately, because oh, it’s a prayer. She honestly shouldn’t have heard any of this, but definitely not this bit.
“...Odin, I bid you take your place in the halls of Valhalla, where the brave shall live forever. Nor shall we mourn but rejoice for those that have died a glorious death...”
~
Chapter Seven: His People Need Him
~
By the time the sun comes up again and people are up again too, Darcy still hasn’t slept. It’s cool, though, because it’s not like the first time she’s pulled an all-nighter, even though she thinks sometimes that dragons might actually need more sleep than the average human. It’s not like she has any idea what a healthy sleep schedule looks like for her species though, so not sleeping well for two nights in a row could totally be a-okey-dokey for all she knows.
At least she’s not super hungover like Erik.
Erik is sitting across from her at the dining table, his head in his hands, and Darcy nudges his glass of water a little closer to him again. She’s never been out drinking with an Asgardian, much less tried out-drinking an Asgardian, but she still could have guessed that it’s a super bad idea for any normal person. Thor is six-and-a-half feet of pure muscle. Even if he wasn’t basically a Norse god, how the heck did Erik think that was going to end?
Thor doesn’t seem to be feeling their night of drinking at all, though he has plenty more scrapes and bruises along his arms and jaw, super visible now that he’s all clean and standing in broad daylight again. Darcy’s seen a few winces, so she knows he’s at least feeling his injuries a little. The lack of sleep doesn’t seem to be bothering him yet, though it’s still early in the day. Darcy thinks Thor and Jane might have already split a pot of coffee while waiting for Erik to roll out of bed and for Darcy to “wake up”. The smell of coffee’s been in the air for a while now.
Jane and Thor had stumbled down from the roof not too long after sunrise; Thor borrowed their shower to get rid of the mud from his fisticuffs with the Feds and Jane found him some new (still too tight) clothes. Then they went out grocery shopping. Right now, they’re cooking breakfast together just behind Darcy. They’re being kind of unfairly adorable.
They keep smiling at each other.
Yeah, just… all of Darcy’s plans for coming out to Jane now are just… oof.
They need work.
Darcy nudges Erik into sitting up, so Thor can set plates down in front of them. Darcy smiles up at him - way up, why the heck is he so tall - and says, “Thank you.”
“Thanks,” Erik mutters.
“You are welcome,” Thor assures them both.
He goes back to Jane, who’s finishing up with their plates and the coffee machine. Darcy looks at her plate - pancakes and fruit, because Jane’s a vegetarian - and feels vaguely hysterical that she was just served breakfast by banished Asgardian royalty. That’s a thing now. If there’s a niche guide to dealing with a homeless demigod just landing on your doorstep when you yourself are a fantastic creature trying to lay low, she really needs a copy. On that train of thought? “What to Expect When You’re the Best Friend in a Sci-Fi/Fantasy Romance” sounds like a book Darcy would totally actually read.
Thor and Jane come over with their plates and coffee. Darcy accepts her mug so gratefully. It doesn’t do all that much for her, but she loves the smell of it. This particular coffee means the beginning of a brave new day with Jane and coffee is in general such a good noisy smell. It’s almost like: Coffee? Ping. Coffee? Ping. Coffee? Ping.
It’s not actually like that, but a restless dragon trying to do way better with boundaries right now can pretend.
“So, uh, you two spent the night on the roof, huh?” Darcy asks, when several minutes pass without anyone saying anything. She’s already bad with silence, but right now it’s unbearable.
“We talked,” Jane agrees vaguely. Definitely a bit warningly.
“Cool,” Darcy says, because she knows that and doesn’t want to get into how she knows that, and innuendos right now would be in super poor taste if she could even come up with something to say while waggling her eyebrows right now. “Did either you see, like, that massive black bird that was flying around the lab last night?”
The table stares at her.
“What?” Jane says.
“The SHIELD agents are currently on the rooftop of a building across the street,” Thor says finally. “What do you mean by ‘black bird’?”
“I mean a literal bird that is black, dude. It was sitting on top of a telephone pole last night and it was weird big. Wingspan bigger than mine, maybe?” Darcy holds out her arms to demonstrate, even though her real wingspan is much, much bigger. “I searched it up last night and apparently New Mexico can get crows, ravens, and magpies, and all sorts of things? I didn’t know any of them got that big, but the list I pulled up proves I know n-”
“Could it have been a raven?” Thor interrupts.
“Yeah, that’s what I’m saying, dude.”
Thor turns to look out the window, like he’s gonna see it fly into the glass or something. Everyone at the table copies him. There’s no sign of the bird though. Darcy hasn’t seen it since Bingley avoided it while leaving again, which is… kind of worrying.
She gets out her phone.
Me: hey btw havnt seen bird again could it b w u?
No immediate answer, unfortunately. Bingley left Puente Antiguo shortly before sunrise to go get his things from wherever he’d left them in the next town over, after Darcy had assured him that she could handle another morning without him. He’d been… oddly quiet after all those revelations. Darcy hadn’t known how to begin to have a talk with him about… well, everything Thor had said… so she’d told him to go eat some breakfast, get his stuff, and meet her again at the internet cafe later, so they can talk coming clean in the age of Men in Black creeping on everyone and a banished prince of Asgard moving in with Darcy’s best friend.
It’s gonna be… a talk.
“Thor?” Jane prompts, finally, after they’ve all failed at bird-spotting.
“My father kept ravens, the oldest of which are rather large creatures; they would act as his ears and eyes, bringing to him knowledge from throughout the Nine Realms. My brother may have taken charge of Huginn, Muninn, and their offspring now that he is King of Asgard. Or perhaps the flock is now in my mother’s service. Or… well…” Thor settles back into his seat, sips his coffee, and shrugs thoughtfully. “Perhaps it is just an ordinary Earth bird, rather than an emissary from Asgard.”
Erik stares at Thor disbelievingly. Oh, right, Erik missed the talking last night. Oh, right, Darcy was supposed to have missed the talking last night too. Darcy looks at Jane and tries to say with her face: “Hey, Jane, so is he still doing this whole Norse god thing? Is that real or should I be worried about you?”
Like a liar.
“I’ll explain later,” Jane says to Darcy. To Thor, she says teasingly, “Well, let’s not dismiss the possibility that there’s a magical space bird flying around until we have more evidence.”
“I would not be averse to trying to catch it,” Thor muses.
Darcy is suddenly picturing all of them loaded into their stripped science van, carrying big butterfly nets, driving madly through the desert trying to catch a magical space bird. It should totally not be as easy to picture as it is. Oh, man, that sounds like something Jane would absolutely be down for doing.
Well, no, Jane would come up with a way better plan than big nets, but she’d be making Darcy drive either way.
“And… what’s your opinion of your family spying on you here?” Jane asks Thor.
“Undecided, but the ravens have also been known to serve as messengers. I would appreciate the opportunity to send a message to my mother… and to my companions… and to Heimdall, whom I am sure also watches over us now,” Thor says. Then, consideringly, he says to Jane, “You remind me of him sometimes: Heimdall, he who watches over the Nine Realms and guards the Bifrost Bridge. I believe he would like you.”
“I’d like to meet him,” Jane agrees. “I’ve, ah, never been bird-catching though.”
“It will not be easy. Asgardian ravens are wily creatures.”
Darcy is having a sudden vision and shares it with the class. “Dude, you sound like you’re going to go wrestle a giant bird and shake it down for wisdom like a classic fairy tale. Are you going to go wrestle a giant… uh… magic space bird?”
“If I must,” Thor says readily.
“Okay,” Darcy says. “Cool. I’m not, uh, really doing much today, I guess.”
Erik is staring at his coffee like he’ll be able to see whatever is in there that is making him hear this wild conversation. Man, he must be like… so lost right now. Just… the most lost.
“I do have to call my brother sometime later though.”
Jane looks concerned. “Is he alright? You said yesterday that he was having some kind of ‘meltdown’ over something?”
“That’s kind of over? I think he’s currently deciding whether or not to have a related but different meltdown now, but it’s kind of hard to tell with him,” Darcy says, also trying to decide whether or not to have a meltdown over the Asgardians being at war with the frost giants again.
“Well, if you need to go handle that…”
Darcy taps the phone beside her plate. “Nah, I’m texting him on and off. I got it.”
“Jane,” Erik says finally, seriously, ominously. “Can I have a word?”
Jane looks at him wearing an expression that says, pretty obviously, that she is still not cool with Erik sneaking out to bust Thor out of S.H.I.E.L.D. and then going out drinking with him, especially all without her. Eric has an expression that he is still not cool with Jane letting the giant dude with delusions of grandeur, who tried to fight the Men in Black with his bare hands, stay with them and plan bird-wrestling expeditions. Darcy’s expression probably says that she’s not getting into this. Her money is on firmly Jane, but this could get ugly.
Jane? Ping.
“Sure, let’s have a word. If you two will excuse us?”
“Of course,” Thor says readily.
Jane and Erik step outside with their coffees. Darcy and Thor are left at the dining table with their breakfasts for company. Also that book of Norse mythology Erik got from the library, hastily cleared off and set to the side. Darcy kind of wishes she has any idea how to talk to this guy when she’s not supposed to know, like, pretty much everything she knows.
“Jane, why are you still humoring this man-?”
“Whoa, no, stop right there. We had evidence that he was inside that storm! What’s the harm hearing him out exactly?”
“What’s the harm? Jane, you took him to that crater so he could fight SHIELD!”
“Yeah, but I didn’t get caught. You went off and lied to them!”
“So, you have a brother?” Thor says conversationally.
“Yep, twin brother. Light of my life and pain in my ass,” Darcy agrees, wishing that Erik and Jane had gone just a little farther for their argument. If Thor can hear it too, he’s not letting on; he’s just keeping on eating breakfast.
“-I got him out of SHIELD custody like you wanted, Jane-”
“That doesn’t change the fact that SHIELD knows you lied to them! How could you go out there to face them after you told me how dangerous it was? Alone?!”
“Do, uh, you have siblings… up there in space?”
“A younger brother by the name of Loki. I would describe him in the same way.”
Darcy glances at the mythology book nearby. “Yeah, that’s little brothers for you. Hey, I know that Earth stuff aren’t super great sources here, but this is Loki as in ‘God of Mischief and Lies and whatever’, right?”
“God of Mischief, yes,” Thor corrects, more amusedly than anything else. “He is a remarkable master of magic. I have never heard him introduce himself as the ‘God of Lies and Whatever’, though he does have a great talent for untruths and illusions.”
“Oh, cool, mi-” Darcy begins, before slamming the heckin’ brakes on casually saying mine too. “- my brother loves magic tricks. Pull the rabbit out of the hat and all that.”
“-what exactly is the difference, Erik, that makes it okay for you to go but not me?”
“Jane… look, you’re…”
“What? An adult who is younger than you? A woman? Tell me the difference between us that makes it safer for you to go confront SHIELD on my behalf, because I don’t see it!”
“I know it’s your work, Jane, but after what you did, I was worried-”
“It’s not about this being my work, Erik! I’m not jealous over a confrontation with those people!”
“Forgive me if I have trouble believing that-”
“What makes you think I wouldn’t be worried about you too?! Last night, Darcy asked me if I’d be able to tell through your texts if you’d been kidnapped and SHIELD had stolen your phone! At least I didn’t know how serious this was when I did my stupid thing! You knew! I didn’t even go near them! You lied to their faces! I had no idea what had happened to you! And then you went out drinking!”
“...What would you have done, Jane? How would you have done it?”
“I… I don’t know. We can’t know now. I just want you to know that you can’t tell me off and then turn around to do basically the same stupid thing, Erik. If you feel… if you feel that it’s your responsibility to look out for me, then it goes both ways. I need to have a say in this! You can’t keep me out of things anymore!”
This is where Darcy realizes, belatedly, that she’s been sort of staring blankly at the table. Oh, man, with that nonplussed expression Thor can totally hear this too. Oh, man, he can probably totally tell she’s hearing at least some of this too. Her only hope right now is that Thor has no real idea of how good normal human hearing is. That’s a pretty real possibility here, right?
“So, uh, I thought Loki was Odin’s brother or something,” Darcy says desperately.
Then this is where she realizes that she’s trying to talk about Thor’s dead dad, who she’s totally not supposed to know is dead. Also about the brother who took his throne. And in general about the family Thor might never seen again due to his banishment. Gotta add some more emotional bruises to those physical ones apparently. Crap.
“No, Loki is a son of Odin,” Thor says, easily enough. Then corrects: “And Frigga.”
“Cool.”
Darcy and Thor both focus on eating their breakfast after that and trying or not trying to eavesdrop on the awkwardness. Thankfully, Jane and Erik wrap it up pretty quickly after that. Erik seems to get Jane’s concern, but he’s also kind of too hungover to have the extended discussion of what’s obviously a way older argument.
“I still don’t believe him,” Erik mutters to Jane, as they head back inside.
“I’m not asking you to do anything but keep an open mind and believe in me,” Jane murmurs back.
“One man falling out of the sky telling strange stories isn’t enough evidence for-”
BANG. BANG. BANG.
Darcy is too busy eavesdropping not to be surprised at something knocking on their windows like they’re trying to bash them in. Thor is on his feet after the first crash, ready for anything. Darcy is scrambling up by the end of the banging, ready to freak the hell out at anything.
Thor freezes. “How-?”
There are four people outside the lab, dressed like they’re gonna be the toast of the nearest Renaissance Faire, complete with weapons that don’t look like they would pass the Props Safety Check table at a convention. The biggest and broadest of them, a ginger bear of a man with an impressively braided beard, waves an enormous axe and yells, “FOUND YOU!”
Behind Darcy, either Jane or Erik drops a coffee mug.
“MY FRIENDS!” Thor shouts delightedly, throwing himself forward to let them inside.
It was Erik who dropped the mostly empty mug. Jane pushes her mentor into the nearest chair before he falls over from shock, then quickly cleans up the shards so that no one steps on them; Darcy hurries over with a towel.
They all watch Thor reunite laughingly with his friends. As soon as Thor locates and opens the door for their party - three dudes and one woman - they rush inside and the ginger man just off the set of Lord of the Rings sweeps Thor up in a hug that looks almost bone-breaking. The hug might actually be bone-breaking, if the loud crack followed by Thor making an actual sound of pain is proof of anything. They might need to call an ambulance.
“Odin’s beard, Volstagg! I think you’re hurting him!” says another man, alarmed. His short blonde hair and beard are neatly trimmed and he looks almost lean next to Thor and the ginger man, more Shakespearean Lording Number #3 than Weta Workshop’s Tolkien, but he doesn’t hesitate to physically get between them. He pulls Volstagg the Ginger Viking away.
Thor wheezes when he’s released, like he’d be doubled-over if he wasn’t caught and heavily supported by the last man, a short but solid, dark-haired, clear-shaven fellow who looks East Asian and helped pull them apart. He also looks concerned, holding Thor up effortlessly.
They all look concerned.
“Thor?” says the last of Thor’s friends, a tall woman with black hair and a sharp, pale face.
“I am fine, but… not as formidable as I was when last we met,” Thor assures them, then embraces the dark-haired fellow supporting him, who pats him gently on the back. “My thanks, Hogun.” When he pulls away, he says, “My friends, it is so good to see you.”
“You’re… hurt,” the blond man says, stunned.
Thor glances at the bruises and scrapes along his arms. “Ah... yes.”
“You’re mortal,” the dark-haired man, Hogun, says.
“As near as the All-Father’s magic could make it, yes, I believe so. I know not how long this may last or if the enchantment will end at all,” Thor agrees ashamedly, then steps forward to briefly embrace this blond man next, who very cautiously wraps his arms around Thor and doesn’t dare squeeze. “Fandral, I am glad to see you in good health once more. Are you well? I cannot apologize enough for where I would have led you in my folly.”
“I am well,” the blond man, Fandral, says softly.
“Where I would have led all of you,” Thor asserts, looking last to the woman.
She steps forward and embraces him as well, holding him like he’s something irreplaceably fragile instead of a muscle-bound man at least half a foot taller than her. “It was wrong of the All-Father to cast you out and take your powers from you,” she says, when she pulls away again, “after all you have done for Asgard’s protection.”
“My journey to Jotunheim was born more of pride than of peacekeeping, I cannot say that I was using my powers for the good of Asgard,” Thor answers solemnly. “My friends, what are you doing here? My brother and mother will need the support of our strongest and most loyal warriors when the enemies of the Nine Realms hear of the All-Father’s death and my banishment. Laufey and his cunning kin will be seeking to test the strength of Asgard despite whatever new treaty he has claimed he will honor.”
All of the other Asgardians stare at Thor like he’s said something totally unbelievable.
“What is it?” Thor asks.
“The All-Father is not dead,” says the woman slowly.
“...What?”
“There is no new treaty with the Frost Giants,” says the dark-haired man, Hogun. “Laufey turned away the All-Father’s first messenger, then your father fell into the Sleep.” The capital letter on that last word is audible, but Darcy has no idea what it means.
“Loki serves as King of Asgard while your mother tends to the All-Father,” says the woman. “Your brother has forbidden use of the Bifrost Bridge until he deems it safe, angering many of the elves, dwarves, and other representatives of the Nine Realms who came to see you be crowned the King of Asgard. He has refused the counsel of Tyr and of the Norns and of the All-Father’s other advisors! He refused to reverse your banishment when I petitioned him, claiming that his first act as king cannot be to undo the final act of the last.”
“Thor,” says the ginger man, Volstagg, suspiciously. “Who told you the All-Father was dead?”
Thor looks unmoored, looking between his friends. “...Loki. He appeared to inform me that my father had died of heartbreak and that he had become king, but could not reverse my banishment because it had been made a condition of a new treaty with Jotunheim. My father is… Sif, my father lives?”
The woman, Sif, lays a hand on Thor’s upper arm. “Yes, he only Sleeps.”
Darcy stands beside Jane, watching the relief go through Thor, wondering how to react to all of this drama. Does this mean the Asgard-Jotunheim war is actually happening? Does this mean Thor isn’t going to live with them after all? Also, how long is it before SHIELD breaks down their doors and arrests everyone here, because there’s no way the Men in Black missed four Asgardians strolling down the streets of Puente Antiguo.
Oh, man, she needs to text her sibling. Bingley really is going to have a meltdown. She just needs to figure out how to communicate what the heck is happening while working under the assumption that S.H.I.E.L.D. has totally tapped her phone and will see everything.
“We came to bring your home again,” says Sif. “Loki admitted that it was he who told the guard to tell the All-Father where we’d gone.”
“Heimdall does not listen to Loki’s orders,” Thor answers, almost reflexively. “Ah, you meant the Einherjar. Whichever guard did their duty to the All-father, in speaking to them, Loki likely saved all our lives.” He quickly holds up a hand and continues, “It is clear that my brother has some twisting plot in the works and seeks through his lies to keep me out of the way, however-”
“Laufey said there were traitors in the House of Odin,” interrupts Hogun.
Thor stares at him, then between all of them again, lowering his hand. Finally, he says, “You… you believe that it was Loki who allowed the Jotuns into the vault?”
Hogun nods.
“Thor, he has always been jealous of you,” Sif argues, before Thor can defend his brother. “After your banishment, after he admitted to telling the guard of our journey, he called you too arrogant and reckless to rule, and implied that Asgard needed a different king!”
“Is he wrong? After what I did?” Thor demands. “I thought I was ready for the war the Jotuns were provoking, responding like a ready king to a war they had begun, but in truth I was seeking out battle. Perhaps Loki did arrange for my foolhardiness to be caught out… and perhaps he even planted the seeds of our journey to Jotunheim... but he could not know I would be cast out. Whatever dangerous plot he weaves alone against Laufey now, Loki is loyal to Asgard and to the All-Father.”
“Perhaps he didn’t mean to get you banished, but would you really put it beyond him to attempt to delay you taking the throne by any means?” Fandral asks, crossing his arms. “I don’t want to believe it either, but-”
“He has not always been subtle with his desire to be king,” Hogun says firmly.
“Well, no, but…” Thor trails off.
He’s speechless and his friends all give him pitying looks.
“...Perhaps we should have taken this to the queen after all,” Volstagg says to Sif.
“She tends to the All-Father,” Sif replies shortly.
“Yes, I know, but…” Volstagg gestures vaguely towards Thor, then makes an apologetic expression… or maybe a guilty one. “You are near-mortal now, Thor. To be in the middle of Loki and Laufey’s plots, no matter what they each seek to achieve, could be dangerous for you. Many representatives of the realms are restless within Asgard’s walls and not all are noble. And I have… I have hugged my children with greater strength.”
“It will be dangerous,” Hogun agrees.
Fandral sighs heavily. “When is it ever not dangerous?”
Thor is thinking it over. He glances at Jane, which finally makes all the Asgardians consider the fact that they have witnesses. It is… super intense to be under their scrutiny. None of them go for their weapons or anything, but they’re clearly not feeling friendly, which totally makes sense in they’re in the middle of wild political intrigue and on the edge of war on Asgard right now. Expressions range from curious to suspicious.
Thor pushes forward to stand between the two groups. “My friends, I would like to introduce you to the Midgardians who have been so kind as to host me since my banishment.”
Oh, he’s just going to skip over the getting hit by the car, the hospital wing, the getting hit by the car again, and ending up in the custody of a shadowy government agency. That’s probably a good choice? It’s a less compelling ugly meet-cute without those details, but Thor’s protective friends probably won’t take it well to hear that Darcy tased him, so she’s good with this.
“This is Dr. Jane Foster, a Midgardian researcher who studies the physics of the cosmos,” Thor introduces. “She has been following the activity of the Bifrost Bridge through observance of a nearby branch of Yggdrasil, despite not knowing of Asgard, and through her predictions she met me when and where the Bifrost delivered me. This is her mentor, Dr. Erik Selvig, who also studies the physics of the cosmos, and this is her apprentice, Darcy Lewis. I am honored to call them my newest friends.”
Darcy supposes that “intern” might not translate well to an Asgardian. Do they have interns on Asgard? Then she wonders, Wait, why do Asgardians speak English at all? Is this a magic thing? It’s probably a magic thing. Man, I want a Universal Translator.
Jane waves. “Hello, it’s… an honor to meet you all.”
“Jane, these are my loyal friends and long-suffering companions, perhaps best known as ‘Lady Sif and the Warriors Three’. The large fellow with the magnificent beard is Volstagg, beside him is Fandral, and beside him is Hogun. The last is, of course, the infamous Lady Sif.”
Sif steps forward and bows to Jane. She is super pretty, but Darcy takes the opportunity to check her out in more ways than one. Here’s her chance for an up-close look at an Asgardian who’s not been stripped of godly essence or whatever.
It’s subtle, but… there’s an eye-catching light to the Asgardians, Darcy thinks. A sort of impossible fairy-tale brightness. Realer than real. The Lady Sif’s skin glows almost silver with some unknown vitality, her hair is darker than dark and her teal eyes are brighter than bright, and even her clothes and armor seem to carry an otherworldly vibrance. She smells like magic too, not as strong as Thor with his curse, but she makes Darcy’s nose itch.
Volstagg, Fandral, and Hogun are all similarly striking and more-than-human magical-y. They all stand tall and they take up so much space in the room. They’ve got presence. They look like people who figured out how to use Photoshop to buff themselves up in real life. It’s incredible.
“Thank you, Dr. Jane Foster, for not leaving our prince to wander lost and helpless in the desert,” Sif says sincerely, with a quick smirk towards Thor.
“I am not helpless,” Thor protests, but not strongly.
“Oh, it’s been no trouble,” Jane says politely, lying super blatantly.
Erik coughs. Darcy can’t swallow her snort in time, which makes the blond man, Fandral, grin delightedly at her and dark-haired Hogun raise his eyebrows. Volstagg guffaws quietly, because clearly Thor’s friends know him better than that. Lady Sif’s smirk widens and Thor only shrugs.
“It’s been enlightening, at least,” Jane corrects, smiling a little too. She then looks at Thor and asks delicately, “Are you… going to return to Asgard now? It sounds like there’s a lot going on.”
Thor takes a deep breath, clearly thinking about it some more. “I have no power on Asgard now,” he says finally. “The All-Father stripped from me my powers and my title, but he could never strip from me the fact that Loki is my brother. I could not reclaim Mjolnir, but I hopefully I will not need it to speak sense into him over whatever dangerous plot he is weaving.”
“Thor…” Volstagg begins uncertainly.
“He may not listen to reason,” Hogun warns.
“Loki’s reasoning is often unusual, but he will have the good of Asgard at the heart of this plot. I need only speak with him. I will not fight him. My friends, I have great faith in your ability to protect me from whatever dangerous machinations are at work.”
“Oh, no pressure there,” Fandral drawls. “You’ve always had such a silver tongue.”
“We can gather allies on our way. Queen Frigga, Lord Tyr, and the representatives of the Nine Realms currently unable to leave Asgard,” Sif suggests.
“Oh, we’re having a coup while we’re at it? Wonderful!”
“That will not be necessary, I am sure,” Thor intervenes. “We will speak to him.”
“How are you going to get to Asgard? I thought you said that the Bifrost wouldn’t open for you because of your banishment,” Jane asks him, before she looks at the others. “How did any of you get here if his brother shut down the ‘Bifrost Bridge’?”
“A good question,” Thor says, looking at his friends.
“Heimdall sent for us while we spoke of searching for you,” Volstagg explains.
“Yes,” Fandral agrees. “As soon as he confirmed we were willing to commit treason on your behalf, since using the bridge was forbidden and all, he sent us off here. You know you’ve always been his favorite like that.”
“He is my friend. That I visit him for his wisdom and he does not throw a prince of Asgard from the Observatory does not make me his ‘favorite’,” Thor protests, like this is an old argument. Then he pauses and says, “You travelled here by Bifrost?”
“We did,” Sif says.
“And you expect to return home by Bifrost?”
“...Yes?”
“Use of the Bifrost is noticeable. Someone will have seen or heard you travelling here.”
“I believe Heimdall will have made it look as though he did not help us,” Sif says slowly. “I am sure that he will bring us home again when we call.”
“Heimdall does not lie,” Thor says, with new, nervous energy, “save by omission. Loki has a nose for trickery and little liking for our watchman, which is mutual. If I am to return with you to confront my brother, we must hurry before Heimdall must tell too many mistruths for our sakes and Loki discovers he has interfered with this twisting plot.”
“Surely Loki wouldn’t replace Heimdall when we’re on the edge of war with Jotunheim,” Fandral says.
“That would be madness,” Volstagg agrees.
“With all else that has been done, would you care to wager on that?” Hogun asks them.
Thor and Sif are already headed for the doors. Jane is after them in a heartbeat and Darcy is on their heels. Everyone else follows them out of the lab, spilling out onto the sunny street. Darcy thought they’d have to jog to keep up with long Asgardian legs, but Thor and Sif have stopped and are looking westwards instead, where something is clearly brewing with unnatural speed out there in the distant sky.
“Is that…?” Jane says.
Sif reaches for something at her belt and snaps open something that looks like a golden spyglass. She’s in the process of raising it to her eye when a beam of light - not lightning, an enormous rainbow-white, similarly blinding beam of light - strikes the earth from out of the sky. There’s no actual tremor, but Darcy could swear that she feels it spear the ground, before it vanishes just as quickly as it came. Sif trains her spyglass on the spot where the Bifrost - that had to be the infamous Bifrost Bridge - struck.
“Was someone else coming?” Darcy asks.
Sif stiffens. “It’s the Destroyer.”
Thor’s disbelief is pretty on-the-ball too. “What? No, it can’t be.” He reaches for Sif’s spyglass, which she readily hands over, and he raises it to his own eye. His dismay when he catches sight of whatever awful thing just landed on Planet Earth is pretty clear. “It can’t be.”
“What’s ‘the Destroyer’?” Jane asks Sif.
“The weapon which guards the All-Father’s vault,” Sif answers.
“The agents of SHIELD are attempting to communicate with it,” Thor says.
“Yeah, how’s that-?” Darcy cuts herself off when she gets the answer mid-question: a hefty boom and a tiny but just barely visible pillar of black smoke. “Okay.”
“It comes towards us,” Thor says tightly, lowering the spyglass and offering it back to Sif. “It appears that someone was wiser to your coming here than you believed. Jane, you and your companions must leave. The Destroyer is named for the only thing it is capable of doing. It has but one purpose. I do not know why it has been sent here, but-”
“It’s not here to make friends,” Jane finishes. “What are we going to do?”
“Thor, you cannot mean to fight with us,” Volstagg says, behind them. He looks horrified.
“You are… very breakable right now,” Fandral agrees. “No offense.”
“None taken. My friends, I do not mean to fight. I would only get in your way. But I can still assist in the evacuation of this town and I cannot join the evacuation until it has been determined for whom the Destroyer has been sent. Unless this all is some mischief, I… it appears that I truly do not know my brother as well I thought.”
“None of us did,” Sif says grimly.
“He is my brother, I should have seen this,” Thor counters firmly. “But I cannot help what I should have done and now is not the time for that. Jane, how best might Puente Antiguo be evacuated? How can we convince these people to leave?”
1.4k words of a rough beginning for a COS AU, in which Harry becomes pen-pals with Remus Lupin. (Some jerk dropped the prompt into my inbox and it was too good to ignore.) I need to restart this, however, because I took the PS movie scene in which Hagrid gifts Harry the photo album. In the book, Hagrid gifts Harry the photo album while he’s in the hospital wing.
I actually have restarted this fic and I have more of it. Unfortunately, I wrote it in one of my school notes during lecture and I have yet to transcribe it. So, unfortunately, this beginning doesn’t have the actual letters between Harry and Remus, but I can go dig those up tonight if requested.
Never posted to tumblr or to AO3 before; fic under the cut.
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~
Wolf at the Mailbox
~
At the end of the year, on the platform home again, Hagrid gave Harry one last present, which was somehow even more precious than all the presents Hagrid had given him before. Hagrid had brought his first birthday cake. Hagrid had bought him Hedwig as his very first birthday present. Hagrid had also brought him his Hogwarts letter, which had changed his life so much for the better that Harry would always be grateful to him for bringing it.
But the album of photographs that Hagrid had just given him was an unspeakably wonderful gift. The Mirror of Erised had offered Harry scenes that could never be with a family that was long gone. But these photographs were of scenes that had really happened, Harry thought as his fingers hovered over Lily and James Potter on their wedding day, even if Harry would never get to be a part of these either.
Harry looked up at Hagrid, who was beaming anxiously at him, and thanked him so profusely that his voice cracked under the weight of everything inside him trying to get out. It was very embarrassing. Harry quickly cleared his throat and tried again.
“Thank you, Hagrid. This is… this is amazing.”
“Ah, no trouble, no trouble, Harry!” Hagrid assured him, beaming fully. “It’s the least ye deserve, really. Thought of this just before Christmas, actually, when I was wondering what to get you. But it took longer to pull together than I thought it would. Sorry it took so long!”
“No, that’s fine. This is fine. This is perfect.”
“‘S’just that people move around a lot in ten years, y’know? And I was never that close to any of ‘em to begin with. Hard to find ‘em. Hard to write ‘em. Had to get some help to word everything alright - McGonagall and Flitwick helped there. And o’ course a lotta folks are- well, they aren’t...”
“Aren’t what?” Harry prompted, when Hagrid’s self-conscious babbling trailed off into an unhappy expression.
Hagrid answered lowly. “Well, times weren’t so good ten years ago, Harry, what with You-Know-Who and all his followers about…”
“Voldemort,” Harry said knowingly.
Hagrid still looked uncomfortable at the name, but he nodded. He didn’t say what had become of these folks, leaving Harry to assume that Voldemort had killed many of his parents friends too, which was the worst thing he could imagine the worst person he knew doing. Though now, having met Voldemort, he could also imagine that the cruel face on the back of the head might have done so in strange, horrifying, magical ways. “Great and terrible” ways - to borrow the words of Mr. Ollivander nearly a year ago now.
“But I had luck in the end, Harry!” Hagrid declared. “And it was more than worth it. Lotta people loved Lily an’ Jim Potter, you remember that, alright, Harry? They were good people.”
“I will,” Harry promised.
He looked down at the album again, where a young man with unruly black hair and square glasses and a young woman with dark red hair and bright green eyes were beaming at each other. As though even they couldn’t believe how happy they were. Harry felt an uncomfortable thud through his chest, his heart squeezing until it was unbearable.
Harry looked up at Hagrid again. “Could you tell me more about them?”
Hagrid blinked at him.
“Please?” Harry said, daringly, desperately. “I don’t know anything about what they were really like. Not really. All the Dursleys told me were lies.”
“Well, uh, I dunno, Harry.”
“Why not?”
“I didn’t know yer parents all that well, really. Only ever saw and spoke to ‘em in passing, really. Good people! The best sort of people. I liked ‘em lots. Those kids developed this kindness in ‘em that burned, and they chose to do as mucha s they could with it while they could. You could practically tell it just by lookin’ at ‘em.”
Harry hung on to every word gladly, but Hagrid looked at him anxiously again. Harry could almost see Hagrid clamp down again. Hagrid looked at him like he had locked his mouth and thrown away the key, though he was sorry about it.
“Any more than that, I just couldn’t tell you, Harry.”
“Who could? Harry sighed, more to himself than Hagrid. Why was it that no one was able to talk about Lily and James Potter for long? He closed the album in his hands and a thought occurred. “Hagrid, who did you get these photographs from?”
“People who used to know yer parents o’ course. But, Harry, I dunno if it’s a good idea fer you to be writing to these people or anything like that,” Hagrid said worriedly, apparently having caught something in Harry’s face that he didn’t like.
Harry schooled his expression back to something he hoped looked less worrying. “Why not? They’re my parents’ friends, aren’t they?”
Lily and James Potter must have had their Rons and Hermiones.
“Well, yeah, but some of ‘em are… some of ‘em aren’t really around anymore, Harry, and the rest of near to strangers. They are strangers. People change a lot in ten years, y’know, Harry. Well, suppose y’don’t know, really, being only eleven. But you’ll find after you get some decades under yer belt that people can get close to unrecognizable after ten years.Sometimes they’re good changes! But… sometimes they’re not.”
“But they gave you these photographs, didn’t they? And I don’t want to get to know them.iI only want to ask them more about my parents.”
Hagrid looked torn.
“Please, Hagrid? I really like the photographs! They mean the world to me! You don’t have to ask those people for stories or anything, I just wanted…”
I just wanted to know if I could ever have more than just looking at him, Harry didn’t say. Maybe he was asking for too much. A year ago, before he’d even known magic was real, he would have said that a whole album full of photographs of his parents would have been enough for the rest of his life. He would have said that he would never need anything else.
Hagrid heaved a great sign. “I’ll go get you that list if you really like, Harry. Maybe you’ll have better luck than I did getting through to some of these people. But you’ve gotta be careful, alright? Don’t tell ‘em too much about yerself. People can get sorta funny when ye’r famous. Don’t want the details of your life ending up in the latest issue of the Daily Prophet because they couldn’t keep their mouth shut around a reporter.”
.Harry eagerly promised to be careful when writing these people who had used to know his parents. Hagrid urged him to consider asking Professor McGonagall or Professor Flitwick for stories about his parents, but the prospect was so intimidating that Harry hedged around agreeing to doing so.
“Harry, you’re going to miss the train!” Ron shouted out the window of the train, which was already billowing steam over the platform in clouds. Ron was gesturing wildly, but Harry was arrested instead by the fact that the wheels were beginning to turn.
Hagrid physically picked up Harry in one hand and plopped him on the train in a couple enormous steps. Hermione, who had been leaning out the door, caught Harry before he could fall out again. While Harry tried to undizzy himself, Hermione immediately assured him that she and Ron had already gotten all his things on the train, before Harry could panic about having accidentally left Hedwig on the platform or anything like that.
They stayed in the doorway of the train, waving to Hagid until the giant man was nothing more than a small speck on the Hogsmeade platform falling away behind them. Harry held on tightly to the album in his arms, while Hermione held tightly onto him, at least Ron came to drag them both into the compartment they’d managed to snatch for themselves.
Harry didn’t know if the Dursleys would let him write letters and send them off in an owl’s talons, but with the gift of the photographs of his parents, Harry was determined to try. If he couldn’t know his parents, maybe he could at least know enough around them to know the space his parents would have filled had they lived. Someone out there had to be willing to answer Harry’s questions about his parents. Someone out there had to have something to share.
My parents were loved, Harry thought wondrously, as he proudly opened the album to show it off to his friends. Lily and James Potter were loved.
~
TBC
AN: I’m probably actually going to steal the title “holding a handful of flames” from one of my abandoned fics. But “Wolf at the Mailbox” is a title that immediately identifies this fic when I’m scrolling through my docs folder.
EDIT: Here’s the continuation! I dug up the letters between Harry and Remus that I’d written in a notebook and transcribed them.
4k very rough draft of a sci-fi space opera AU for Howl’s Moving Castle.
This was just me testing out writing style, character roles, and introduction of plot points. I desperately need to restart this fic to include the relationship tension, character arcs, and background politics I’ve since outlined for this fic, and the general characterization needs work. I think this fic will need a prologue too, setting up Sophie’s Starfleet career instead of dropping her straight into the story as a captain. This fic doesn’t feel like a proper fusion & HMC AU yet.
Anyway, too busy for book re-reads and fic re-works now.
Never posted to tumblr or to AO3 before; fic under the cut.
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~
Save Us From Ourselves
Chapter One: The Stroke of Midnight
~
Sophie stared down her opponent with narrowed eyes, and then she said, “You are the most wonderful creation in the universe... and you will behave like it. You will be beautifully efficient and beautifully constant, because I have cleaned and debugged everything, so frankly you have no decent reason to complain or to exist any way other than perfectly.”
“I don’t think the ship understands passive-aggressiveness, captain,” offered her assistant.
Sophie held out her hand. “Em-Scanner, please, ensign.”
The tool was in her hand in three seconds, which was a respectable amount of time, and Sophie quickly turned the scanner on the misbehaving energy converters. If Sophie had anything to say about it, her crew would run like her ship and her ship would run like her crew - which was to say: a reasonable increment short of perfectly. Unlike the methods of certain other captains whom she was far, far too professional to name in the manner in which she wished, Sophie believed in a hands-on approach to both.
“This is a starship, ensign,” Sophie said wisely. “Like most pieces of extremely advanced technology, passive-aggressiveness is a language it speaks fluently and frequently.”
“Does the Midnight understand passive-aggressiveness fluently, though, captain?”
“It will by the time I’m through with it.”
Her dubiously willing assistant, the ensign who had filed the initial note of concern and hadn’t been able to stop her from waltzing into engineering and taking minor house-cleaning matters into her own hands, watched her work through the problem.
“Now, are you going to do what you should do if I do this… No, apparently not, even though everything here seems perfectly aligned. There are no obvious breaks in the sealing… and the scanner says there’s no micro-breaks...”
“Er, sorry, what are you doing right now exactly, captain?” her assistant asked uncertainly, which made Sophie approve of him even more.
Sophie gestured him forward. “A well-made starship is like a well-made hat,” she told him to begin her explanation, which garnered her a politely befuddled expression at first. “Perfectly measured. Sturdy and neatly stitched together. Light enough to travel. No excess. Efficiently wired and unlikely to catch fire.”
“Ohhh. Like Fashion Week in Kingsbury,” her assistant said, with the understanding wince of someone who had seen at least one humorous video compilation.
“Exactly like Fashion Week in Kingsbury, ensign.”
The problem with the energy-converters was diligently traced to one of the seals in the “pipeline”. It was the perfect size and had been installed flawlessly, but the material itself had been poorly made. Sophie’s hat metaphor was looking better and better. Any decent hatter or tailor knew that any accessory, whether couture or cour-tech, required the proper materials if clients wanted to avoid being the next viral laughing-stock of the Ingarian Allied Systems.
Sophie and her assistant, who by the end of things was hanging on to her every word in a very flattering manner, fixed the issue in short order. Sophie then left the ensign to finish tidying up the tools and the workplace. He still looked years too young to be in space, she thought, but he was bright and eager to learn more, whether or not he’d heard of her preceding reputation.
Maybe I should call Lettie or Martha, Sophie thought next, before she could stop herself.
Then she stopped herself.
Sophie put that uninvited thought back wherever it had come from and in three quick strides went to the nearest workstation to begin recording an order. “Name, ensign?”
“What? Oh, Peter Regis, captain!”
Sophie nodded, then set her shoulders and began without further ado: “Per Ensign Regis’ earlier note of the malfunctioning energy-converters, Engineering must undertake a full inspection of all recent supplies and installations A.S.A.P., with a focus on the material make-up of seals. Proper documentation of this endeavor, while always necessary, will be especially important in the case that an investigation must be launched by the F.I.A.S. against the supplier. Thank you. Captain Hatter out.
She signed off, attached the ensign’s last report, and automatically ascribed a level of importance, leaving the computer to near-instantaneously transcribe her order, add a timestamp, and attach her identification. The message was sent out with the familiar, daunting swiftness as thousands of others in her career.
“...That’s a lot of work, captain,” said the ensign.
“Someone has to do it.”
“I know! I know that. I’m just glad you’re not making me tell Chief the bad news.”
“Doing so gets easier with practice. We need to make sure that this was an outlier. Starfleet may have to alert other ships if entire supplies from that site of production may be faulty. If you hadn’t caught this, ensign, the build-up over time may have caused minor damage to the Midnight’s engines. Good work.”
The ensign glowed with embarrassment and pride, and saluted her awkwardly. “Thank you, captain- ow.” Unfortunately, he was still holding a panel covering as he did this, so there was the logical result when he brought his hand to his head.
His face glowing all the more fiercely, the ensign swiftly replaced the panel covering. However, as soon as the panel clicked back into place, Sophie’s inward amusement was interrupted by an alarm. It wasn’t an overly loud alarm, nor a particularly long one, but it wasn’t any easier to ignore than the workstation beside Sophie suddenly lighting up yellow.
“Oh no,” said the ensign, horrified.
“That wasn’t you. Computer, call the bridge!”
“Calling Bridge.”
“We’re on Yellow Alert,” Sophie explained shortly to the ensign, who still looked terrified that he had immediately managed to end his Starfleet career. “Out this far that means there’s a potential exterior threat to the ship.”
“Is it the Witch of the Waste?!”
Sophie knocked twice on the side of the workstation. Then the call to the bridge connected and she wasted no time in demanding answers to far less silly questions. Space was a big place. It was possible to go for many missions without seeing other starships outside of a port or a planet. Besides, if it had been the Witch of the Waste out there, the I.A.S.S. Midnight would currently be on Red Alert.
“Commander! Why are we on Yellow Alert?”
On the workstation screen, Sophie could see her first officer sitting in the captain’s chair. L’tea Gloriosa was a striking young woman with a proud posture, but in this moment her hands were clawing into the armrests and her eyes looked a little wild.
Sophie could also see officers Bessie Dasher, Abdullah, Bettsy Haber on the bridge around Commander Gloriosa. She was better acquainted with them than her first officer, had even attended the Academy with Bessie Dasher and Bettsy Haber, and she could better read their expressions. They all looked uncertain, but not genuinely nervous. They weren’t afraid of whatever was out there. At least not yet.
“During our scanning of the Waste, we have happened across a starship potentially matching the description of a criminal vessel,” Gloriosa answered crisply. “I have taken the initiative to corner the vessel. I now intend to initiate contact and take these traitors into custody.”
“Permission denied until further notice,” Sophie snapped. “I’m on my way.”
Gloriosa didn’t look pleased by the order, but Sophie was the captain and the captain had the final say. Sophie didn’t know if she was pleased by Gloriosa’s initiative. It was close enough to shift-change for Sophie to reasonably justify returning to the bridge before her shift, even without the Yellow Alert and the criminal vessel lurking in the Waste.
“Of course, captain,” Gloriosa said.
“Who’s the owner connected to this ‘potential criminal vessel’, commander?”
Gloriosa paused. Rather than answer herself, she looked over her shoulder to Bessie Dasher, who was sitting primly at the Communications Officer’s station. “Lieutenant?”
Bessie looked at Sophie rather than the first officer and the tone of her report held some excitement to it, perhaps just a shade beyond inappropriate. “The cornered ship is suspected to belong to a pirate known as ‘Howl Pendragon’, captain. He’s a Starfleet deserter. Also, captain, you have a black smudge on your face again. Your left side. No, a little higher, captain. Just under the corner of your eye there.”
Sophie rubbed the side of her face with annoyance.. “I’ll be there shortly. Computer, end call.”
When she turned around, her Engineering ensign-turned-assistant looked like he thought someone was about to order him to put on a space suit and take on some random criminal personally. Sophie had no such intentions. For one thing, it would be highly ineffective.
“Continue as usual until further notice, ensign.”
“Yes, captain!”
Sophie left Engineering in deep thought and a brisk stride, pausing automatically at the decontamination station to remove the stains that always ended up on her face. Howl Pendragon, she thought mulishly, that sounds like a stage name. It was far from the strangest name she’d heard in her years of service, however. It also held a ring of notoriety to it, perhaps a touch of infamy, though Sophie couldn’t immediately name where she’d heard it before.
By the time she stepped on the elevator to the bridge, Sophie still couldn’t recall any specific crimes, which annoyed her further. The I.A.S.S. Midnight was a new ship with a young crew. Every new incident was a test. Howl Pendragon had better not test her too far.
“Captain on bridge!” Bessie Dasher called, as soon as the elevator doors opened.
L’tea Gloriosa rose from the captain’s chair immediately and Sophie nodded in greeting before taking her seat. Gloriosa didn’t seem to notice the gesture. Sophie let yet another missed connection with her first officer be and turned her attention on the main screen.
“Is this the ship?” Sophie asked.
“Yes,” Gloriosa answered.
“It’s called The Heartless, captain,” Bessie added, with dramatic emphasis.
The Heartless was a... visually odd starship. It appeared as though it had been created when three different vessels had smashed together, rather than a traditional construction from a sensible design. The Heartless had lumps. Some of the lumps looked as though they had faces. Perhaps it was supposed to resemble a misshapen heart? Well, altogether, the Heartless was about a third of the size of the I.A.S.S. Midnight and it didn’t look as though it should have held together. Out of pure concern for its functionality, Sophie would have frankly called the vessel “unattractive”.
“Give me the rundown on ‘Howl Pendragon’,” Sophie ordered.
Again, L’tea Gloriosa looked towards Bessie Dasher. Sophie wished her first officer would speak for herself, but Gloriosa was a woman of few words and still looked somewhat displeased by the situation, whereas Bessie was practically on the edge of her seat to share whatever information was on her screen.
“Pendragon is an ex-Starfleet officer and scientist who deserted seven years ago,” Bessie reported. “He’s since become a suspect in dozens of unsolved disappearances. He’s wanted for dozens of counts of suspected homicide, human and humanoid trafficking, terrorism, threats and blackmail, assault, theft, theft of a starship and motor vehicles, illegal trading, and obstruction and contempt of the F.I.A.S.”
At the helm, Junior Lieutenant Abdullah let out a low, impressed whistle.
“Lieutenant,” Sophie snapped.
“Sorry, captain.”
“Is it true that he eats people’s hearts?” Junior Lieutenant Bettsy Haber asked from the Navigator’s Station. “I heard that he’s also one of those serial killer space cannibals.”
Based on what she’d heard, Sophie was beginning to think that, since the Academy, Bessie and Bettsy had gotten into the habit of watching too many true crime documentaries and/or soap operas when they were off-duty.
“Lieutenant.”
“Sorry, captain.”
Sophie studied Pendragon’s starship, The Heartless, which appeared to be dark and drifting. Sophie had seen some upon being cornered try to pretend that the vessel was abandoned, as though no one was home, in the hopes of being left alone by the F.I.A.S.
“Commander, did your initiative extend to disabling the criminal vessel?”
“No, captain. The vessel was in this state when we arrived,” Gloriosa answered. “His shields are raised. I recommend firing on the vessel immediately to ensure that it is disabled. Howl Pendragon cannot be allowed to escape again.”
“He does have much to answer for, but have we confirmed this is Pendragon?”
“...No, captain.”
“We can’t fire on a vessel just because it might belong to a traitor to the Empire and has its shields raised upon being cornered, commander. You said it ‘potentially’ matched the description of Pendragon’s vessel? Lieutenant Abdullah, be prepared to subdue the vessel if it takes hostile action.”
“Yes, captain.”
“Lieutenant Dasher, hail the unknown vessel.”
“Right away, captain.”
Sophie waited, staring out at the darkened starship. She was beginning to remember Pendragon now, she thought; it was one of those names she had heard frequently over her years of service. If a criminal was clever and adept at avoiding their ship being easily identified, they could go quite a long way without being caught, but Pendragon’s crimes were unusually severe and his ship was unusually hideous.
“Lieutenant Dasher?”
“Our hails aren’t being answered, captain.”
“Keep trying,” Sophie said, and opened Pendragon’s file on the screen of her armchair.
His ship, the Heartless, was of course unregistered and marked as “experimental and highly dangerous”. Reports of its outward appearance were inconsistent, even those including visual captures, though this ship did hold some resemblance in its makeshift nature. Despite his long list of violent crimes, Pendragon was said to favor flight above a fight.
So he’s a villain and a coward, Sophie thought, unsurprised.
“Captain, still no answer,” Bessie Dasher said.
“Send this transmission: ‘Unknown vessel, this is Captain Hatter of the I.A.S.S. Midnight of the Federation of Ingarian Allied Systems. You are in Ingarian space and are being detained for inspection until you provide valid identification.”
“Sent, captain. What now?”
Sophie stood and said, “Conduct hails at regular intervals until they answer.”
“We’re going to wait him out?” Lieutenant Abdullah groaned.
“I must object,” Gloriosa snapped.
Sophie first officer was taller than her by nearly a foot when they were both standing. When Gloriosa glared down at her, with those gleaming amber eyes and sharp features, she was quite intimidating. But Sophie was no longer a newly graduated officer nor an obliging second-in-command, and she wasn’t in a mood to be intimidated.
“I suggest forcing the faithless traitor out of his ship immediately, before anyone comes to interfere with our taking of him,” Gloriosa said. “He must face justice for his disloyalty.”
“We’re out in the Wastes, who’s going to interfere?” Bettsy Haber asked. “The Witch?”
Lieutenant Abdullah knocked twice on the side of his station.
“Howl Pendragon was a former partner of Lilium Angorian,” Gloriosa snapped.
“He what?” Bessie Dasher said, looking delighted.
“Howl Pendragon will face the consequences of his actions,” Sophie interrupted, looking her first officer in the eye unblinkingly. “If he was an associate of the traitor currently known as the Witch of the Wastes, that is all the more reason to treat him as dangerous. Lieutenant Dasher, contact Starfleet with our situation and ask them for orders. Highest priority.”
“Yes, captain!”
“I must object,” Gloriosa repeated.
“I hear your objection. However, we are primarily a research vessel. We are neither specially equipped nor trained to detain particularly dangerous criminals. I admire your enthusiasm, commander, however, Pendragon’s file asks that we ‘report immediately and observe’ rather than ‘approach and apprehend’. We will await further orders, am I understood?”
“...Yes, captain.”
“Good. Lieutenant Dasher, schedule regular hails for the next shift. No further action is to be taken unless the unknown vessel takes action or we receive orders from Starfleet. Now, until it is officially the next shift, I will be in the mess hall taking my pre-shift meal. Commander, the bridge is yours until I return to relieve you.”
“Yes, captain.”
With that, Sophie left the bridge. She would need to eat quickly, but clearly she needed to keep up her energy. Since Gloriosa had approached the vessel, hailing it had been the reasonable course of action, and Sophie would have to hope this wouldn’t turn violent.
In the mess hall, Sophie served herself quickly and looked for the nearest empty table. She had her own quarters and a yeoman assigned to serve her private meals if desired, but Sophie refused to be the sort of captain who thoughtlessly indulged in all the luxuries the position could offer. She would not separate herself from the work of running her ship.
Sophie recognized Ensign Charmain Baker, a ship archivist, sitting at a table with another young woman. Sophie and Ensign Baker had met several times before. Baker could neither be called social nor pleasant, but Sophie had thus far enjoyed her presence nevertheless. When Baker questioned orders, it was always for the purpose of clarification.
“May I sit here?” Sophie asked the two young women.
Ensign Baker looked up, squinted, then adjusted her glasses. “Oh, of course, captain.”
“Thank you, ensign. Hello, I don’t believe we’ve been personally introduced. Captain Sophie Hatter,” Sophie said, holding her hand across the table.
The other young woman was as willowy and fair as Ensign Baker was plump and dark. Her uniform revealed her to be a science officer and her expression betrayed her anxiety. Sophie had received this reaction from the younger crew members frequently, even when she had been the first officer on her previous ship.
“Junior Lieutenant Jane Farrier, captain,” the young woman said.
“A pleasure to meet you.”
“And you, captain.”
“I would make conversation with you, Lieutenant Farrier, and you, Ensign Baker, but I’m afraid that I have to be back on the bridge shortly.”
“Of course,” Farrier said.
Baker just nodded, looking down at her plate again, and Sophie saw Baker’s hand move from her plate to underneath the table. There was a quiet yet distinct slurping sound. Sophie leaned back and then looked underneath the table, where an alien creature was chewing happily.
“Hello, Waif,” Sophie said.
The alien creature called Waif was about the size and shape of a terrier dog and its tail wagged like one in greeting upon seeing Sophie. It wasn’t quite a dog, though, and Sophie had neither checked exactly what Waif was nor how it had come into Ensign Baker’s keeping. All she knew was that Waif had been cleared, against all expectations, by Security, Medical, and Science, and that certain bigwigs who officially represented the Norlander System would take offense if something happened to the creature.
Sophie righted herself and went back to her meal. Ensign Baker continued slipping Waif food off her plate. Lieutenant Farrier picked at her food, either too anxious to eat in front of the captain or working up her nerve to ask something.
“Is it true that we’ve cornered Howl Pendragon?” Farrier asked finally.
Sophie didn’t bother to pretend to be surprised at how quickly information went around a starship, only annoyed. “We have cornered an unknown vessel that may potentially belong to the criminal known as Howl Pendragon, yes.”
“Most sieges end in someone being starved or bombed out,” Baker said abruptly.
Farrier looked distressed at this prospect.
“This isn’t a siege,” Sophie said.
Baker shrugged.
“Lieutenant Farrier, if you have never experienced conflict aboard a Starfleet vessel before, the ship’s counselor is always available,” Sophie said gently, awkwardly, when Farrier’s distress only seemed to increase at Baker’s indifference.
“What do you think the Admiralty and the Emperor will do to him?” Farrier asked.
“Do you mean Starfleet and the Federation?” Baker said.
“The Ingarian Emperor is not personally involved in the Federation’s criminal justice system,” Sophie said calmly. At least, he wasn’t supposed to be, but any officer who wasn’t willfully blind knew reality with the Ingarian Imperial Family was a different story. “The Federation’s courts will likely seek to investigate the full scope of Pendragon’s crimes and see that justice is appropriately served.”
“But what crimes has Howl committed?” Farrier demanded.
Sophie refrained from sighing or listing the rather long list in Pendragon’s file.
Instead, she said, “Lots.”
Farrier stared at her. Baker scrunched up her brow.
“That will be what the Federation will seek to ascertain,” Sophie amended, decorating her response in the appropriate language. “At the least, Pendragon is a deserter and will be court-martialled accordingly. Lieutenant, have you encountered Pendragon before?”
“No! I’ve just heard a lot about him,” Farrier insisted quickly. “I was… curious.”
Sophie nodded understandingly and made a mental note to peruse Lieutenant Farrier’s file in greater depth. Right after she fully scoured the official file belonging to Howl Pendragon and, once again, the one belonging to her first officer.
She dismissed herself without a word from Sophie, leaving her half-eaten food behind. Sophie watched the young woman leave thoughtfully and made a mental note to, after reading Farrier’s file, perhaps send a message to the ship’s counselor.
“She’s been really happy until now,” Baker volunteered.
“Has she?” Sophie said.
Baker nodded and Waif climbed out from underneath the table to sit beside her. Baker slid her tray over, giving her meal over completely to the alien creature, and Waif noisily dug in.
“Manners,” Baker said sharply.
Waif began to eat more neatly and Baker nodded approvingly.
“She’s been talking to someone named ‘Catterack’, but there isn’t anyone named ‘Catterack’ on the ship. I checked. I think ‘Catterack’ must be her ‘person at home’,” Baker said. “Do you think something happened to her ‘person at home’?”
“That could be the reason for her upset,” Sophie said noncommittally.
Sophie finished her meal quickly and bid farewell to Ensign Charmain Baker and Waif, who each made their own respective farewells. She arrived on the bridge just in time for shift-change, followed by the rest of the bridge crew’s next shift, and formally dismissed Commander Gloriosa and the previous shift. Bessie Dasher and Bettsy Haber had their heads pressed together as they left. Lieutenant Abdullah was openingly yawning.
The Heartless, if it was indeed Pendragon’s ship, was continuing its appearance of having been abandoned. The repeated hails from the Midnight had received no answer.
Sophie removed the workpad attached to her chair and began flipping through Pendragon’s files in greater detail. She frowned upon the discovery that a great many of Pendragon’s crimes had even the basic details redacted or classified - the who, the what, the where. Was that due to Pendragon himself? Or did Pendragon’s victims share some sensitive quality?
