Unfinished Fic...
Jan. 4th, 2006 08:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
featherxquillI am procrastinating doing my ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
theatrical_muse entry that I just got a reminder email for. I haven't updated since November. My bad. It's too early in the morning for highly philosophical Martine Desbroubins musing, kthnk.
But I just had this idea. I have a number of things floating in my computer that are in greater or lesser stages of unfinished-ness. Maybe I'd like to finish some (when my current list of bunnies unwritten is completed), but I really don't know which ones.
So please help me.
I have pasted them all here, under cuts for your convenience. Tell me which ones you'd like to see completed.
Rain on lilac leaves. In the dusk
they show me the grave,
a casket of stars underfoot,
his name there, and his language.
(Gillian Clarke – Taid’s Grave)
In the dusk she showed me the tomb. Her hand gripped my shoulder as I knelt before it, lay my hand against the cold marble.
I was ashamed. Minerva had been incredulous when they told her, but I had known the whole time. She had looked into my eyes not three days earlier and asked me if anything was wrong, and my lips had formed the word 'no' without my mind willing it. My body had moved forward against hers, my fingers twined in her hair and my lips pressed against hers, silencing any words of protest that may have formed upon them.
-------
It wakes her in the dead of night.
She rolls over once, blinks in the darkness, lays a hand against her belly, and knows sleep will not come again.
She wonders if the little one will love cheese or hate it, and smiles as she cuts thick slices of it and lays them in a pattern on a slice of bread. Slides it into the grill to watch it melt into a puddle of strangely appealing, yellow goo, and frowns, feeling it twist inside her once again.
Something about this baby feels wrong. There is no word more articulate than that, and no way for her to tell Ted. She doesn’t know if this is a witch’s instinct or a woman’s. She thinks of Bella, with her crazy eyes and her penchant for torturing insects that turned into cats that turned into people, and she hopes that evil isn’t hereditary. This child is magical, she can feel it in her bones, in the way simple spells are sometimes sucked back down the wand when she tries to cast them, like the baby needs the magic more than she does.
She wishes she could explain this feeling of wrongness to Ted’s mother, but she can’t, and she wishes she could talk about it with Narcissa, but none of her family have returned her owls in years.
A quiet sob escapes her throat. Oh, she never knew it would be this hard.
~*~
“I was twins, you know.” Tonks offered candidly, breaking a chunk of chocolate off the block. “But my sister didn’t make it. Identical, we would have been. At least technically. Mum always used to joke about how one of me was most definitely enough.”
Molly took the offered block, took a piece, then winced at how badly it chased the red wine.
-------
…One, too cowardly to return… he will pay. One, who I believe has left me forever… he will be killed, of course…
Igor Karkaroff pulled the hood further up over his head and ordered another firewhiskey. When had he become like this? Tetchy, scared of his own shadow? Oh, who was he kidding? He had always been like this.
The firewhiskey landed on the counted before him, and he tossed the Romanian equivalent of a few knuts at the barman, lifted the shot glass, and scowled into it. There was a hawk eyed man in the far corner eyeing him. It wouldn’t have been too bad – he was quite good looking – except for the fact that Romania was full of vampires. He didn’t fancy having his throat torn out.
On the other hand, it couldn’t be any worse than the fate that would catch up with him, eventually. He tossed the whiskey down his throat.
And then he saw him. Him. Clad in black, as always, swooping through the front door. Oh, sweet Merlin. Not so soon. How could it have happened so soon? There were icicles in his belly, and he suddenly had a burning desire to wet himself. Without a further thought, he whispered the apparition incarnation, and flung himself into the forest that formed a line on one side of the pub.
There were twigs in his mouth. He’d never been very good at apparating. Never been very good at anything. He rolled over, and just lay there in the freezing dirt. He wanted to cry. Would have gladly died, but not like that, not at the hands of that man. Not him.
He’d seen himself in the potions class, as he stood behind Snape’s desk and watched the boy called Longbottom fumbling, not understanding, begging answers from the girl beside him, who seemed to know it all back to front.
-------
Minerva McGonagall sat at her desk, twisting the gold chain of Hermione’s time turner about her fingers. She glanced at the enormous pile of year end exams she had to mark, and half regretted that she had spent the last hour chatting with her best pupil. There was just so much to do.
She glanced down at the device that lay innocently on her desk. The Department of Mysteries monitored all use of time turners, but this one was assigned to Hermione Granger until it was returned, and backward twists of an hour or two were expected, in her case. No one would know if Minerva was to return to an hour before and mark some of her papers, and it would give her such a head start. So much so that she could afford to take the time to return the device to the Ministry today, as she was legally required to do.
She stared at the little object, forces of right-and-proper doing battle in her head with self indulgence and the white lie that she was doing wrong for the right reasons, anyway. It was only an hour. She was just going to go into her chambers with a pile of essays. She wasn’t going to save the world.
As if someone was going to burst in, Minerva glanced about herself before twisting the chain about her wrist, three times. She lifted the tiny device into her fingers and stared at it again, for a time. Her nerves were as taut as wire; she felt more like a naughty school girl than she had in decades. She was tempted to turn it back two hours, but decided against it.
Someone knocked on the door. Minerva gasped, and the thing tumbled from her fingers. As the chain snapped taut, she watched the little hourglass barrel forward, a blur of golden light as it spun, and spun, and spun.
****
Code Delphi. Start here.
I have not recorded a journal for many, many years; not since I was trapped in the Otherland network with no solid hope of ever getting out again. It seems this is a habit, speaking words into the ether when I feel things are changing, when I feel I am a part of something very much larger than myself. I’m not sure what is happening now is momentous, but it is certainly a large event in my life. Things have changed immensely in the last three days.
The first inkling I got that something was different was when the system erupted like a supernova, spewing forth a torrent of flaming shrapnel, code that flung in all directions. An explosion every bit as bright as the one that had blinded me all those years ago. Then, like before, the entire world went black.
I am ashamed to admit that my first reaction was panic so hot that I tore out every tube connected to my body before I regained control of myself. The warmth of the terror was still in my cheeks long after I had stilled my movements, long after I had brought myself under some sort of control. The system had crashed. Crashed spectacularly, but crashed none the less. Nothing to suffer heart failure over.
Until I realised that I was not the only one in the room.
But there must be order. There are many things I must explain. It has been many, many years. Paul is gone. We had thirty beautiful years together, and in my typical fashion, I only realised after he was gone how very much I loved him. It was sickness that took him – cancer – such a terrible, terrible irony, after all he went through. After all we went through together. There was no question of his mind continuing online, he did not want it. I understood. I am not sure I would want it myself, but the knowledge did not make my despair any less.
We had lived our years together in a villa in Paris, but following his death I crawled back into my hole in the mountain to wallow out my sorrow in solitude, as I have always done, like an ostrich with its head in the sand.
There was only one thing left for me. When I had regained my sight, I lost the strange and unique view of online environments. While trapped in the Otherland network, I had been a witch, a visionary. Surely there was some merit in exploring those abilities further, in understanding the how and why of such sight, of exploring what I could and could not do online with such an outlook. But I could not do it while I could see.
I enquired. There were ways to do it, painless injections. Others in this time and society have far stranger requests. But it would be permanent.
It was like deciding to become a vampire, without the promise of eternal life. I watched my final sunrise with the finality and stillness of a woman awaiting a death sentence; then was plunged into darkness once again.
I have buried myself back beneath the mountain protected by the best security system money can buy. And so, to have someone else in the room with me was impossible. Any person that had managed to find the entrance to my underground home would have set off the security long, long before they reached the inner. I was, thus, terrified. I was more blind at that moment than I had been in many, many years. I had none of the security of the net, none of the ability to process code and feel it in its patterns as sight. I was simply shrouded in darkness, and as helpless as a puppy.
As I speak, I fear that I will wake her from her slumber. But no, I get ahead of myself. Order, Martine.
I will confess that for a moment I believed my companion to be the monster Dread, the murderer who had hunted us so mercilessly all those years ago. Certainly, only someone with his abilities could have bypassed my security systems. But that was impossible. Impossible.
As panicked as I was, I could not help but notice that the breathing of this other individual was as panicky as my own, and, before she spoke, I realised that I was not as blind as I had previously thought. My years of sight make it easier to describe. It was as though she were made of code, but at the same time something inherently different. There was an outline of something like gold thread, glowing within her. It gave her shape and form to my senses. There was something even brighter dangling from her hand on what seemed to be a chain. I was struck by the wrongness of it, but also by how natural it seemed.
“W…where is everything? Hogwarts… the French Ministry should be here…”
Damn, I can hear her murmuring in response to my voice. She is waking. I must go.
Code Delphi. End here.
****
Oh Merlin, oh Merlin, oh Merlin.
Everything was alien. Minerva found herself simply staring, staring at the woman in the strange bed who was thrashing, pulling tubes out of herself. The time turner still dangled limply from her hand.
Everything was gone. When she had recovered from the horrible sensation of being flung – Merlin, how did Hermione stand it?! – she had found herself somewhere... barren. Not only was she not in her office, there was no building to speak of. Only dirt beneath her feet, and, as she slowly turned, great heaps of stone that might once have been a castle. At the foot of the hill the lake stretched, as black and forbidding as ever, completely oblivious to the destruction that had gone on around it. She found huge, hideous breaths catching in her lungs, and her vision blurred with tears.
She had apparated to London, to a British Ministry that wasn’t there, and then, sick to her very stomach, had flung herself into France, into the bowels of a mountain that had once held the French Ministry of Magic.
“W…where is everything?” There were words after that, but she didn’t know what she was saying. All she could hear was the terrible desperation in her voice. All she could do was stare at the woman who was somehow staring at back at her without appearing to see her at all.
“Who are you? What are you doing here? How did you get in?” The questions were fired at her like bullets, with something like coldness and something like fear. Why would this woman be scared? She hadn’t just lost everything she knew.
Minerva was shaking. “Merlin, how do I get back?! I don’t want to be here!” She let the chain of the time turner unravel from around her wrist, then lifted the thing into her sight. How many times had it turned? How could she ever possibly know? How could she ever hope to go back? How could she leave before she knew what had happened to the wizarding world?
The woman had climbed off the bed, and now was coming toward her. Minerva was still staring at the time turner when she felt hands upon her shoulders. “Who are you? What are you?” The voice had softened now, and Minerva’s hands fell limply by her side as the other woman lifted one of her own to touch Minerva’s cheek. It was a tender gesture, in its own way, but it was clearly not intended to be affectionate. “Are you code?”
Code? What was she talking about? “I don’t…”
The woman’s right hand dropped by her side, but the other still remained firmly upon Minerva’s shoulder, as though to prove she were real. “I sense, you have… I am blind, but I see you.”
That didn’t make Minerva any less confused. “I don’t understand.”
“You have something… within you… like electricity… like code… something… Oh God, I can’t explain it.”
Something…? No. It can’t be. She couldn’t. Why would she be able to see the magic? Minerva shook her head.
“The thing in your hand. It is bright like the sun.”
Minerva lifted the time turner again. “Oh. Oh, Merlin.” The blind woman cocked her head to one side in puzzlement, probably at what was, to her, a strange epithet. Minerva took a large breath, and let it out again. She was going to sound like some old bat from a muggle mental home. “I am a witch.”
The other woman let out a strange, bitter sort of laugh. “Funny, I once called myself one of those.”
****
Code Delphi. Start here.
She has gone somewhere now. Trying to find out how to get the device to take her back, though I’m not sure she wants to leave yet. Not sure I want her to leave yet. I warned her about doing that disappearing act near my system again – told her I’d strangle her. After watching me painstakingly resurrecting it a day ago, she didn’t seem to have any doubt that I meant what I said, so she walked. I did not think she had a sense of humour, that first day, but it is emerging slowly. That first day… where was I in my last entry?
I had to touch her. I had to be sure she was real. I’m not sure what I believed her to be, at first. I had never seen anything like this before. Perhaps I thought her some physical manifestation of code. I have seen many things in this lifetime that I wouldn’t have believed possible.
It is difficult to remember and explain the utter oddity of hearing someone claim to be a witch. But then there had been nothing but oddity. She was in my home. Impossible. I could see something in her like code. Impossible. She was a witch. Impossible, or the only explanation so far. The entire situation was surreal. I was at a loss for how to react. Of all the strange VR situations I had been in, of all the times my life had been in danger from hideous code beasts, this woman in my home claiming to be a witch was the strangest.
So I did something completely ridiculous. I asked her if she wanted a cup of tea.
-------
1
It was like a breeze through the castle, the gentle rush of air that the portraits generated as they flitted through each others frames. A Valentines Day game of Chinese Whispers.
“The Assistant Librarian has given a valentines message for the Potions Master!”
“…Did you hear, a valentines message for Snape, from Madam Pince?!”
“…Merlin’s underwear! I was just told that a Valentine arrived for the Head of Slytherin from the library!”
“That Hermione Granger, spends all her time in the library! Speaking of the library, guess what I just heard…”
“Hermione Granger sent a valentines message to our head of Slythrin, Severus Snape!”
“I hear a Slytherin sent a valentine to Professor Snape! I bet it was that Parkinson girl, trying to improve her connections again! That one is always hanging around Draco Malfoy.”
“Pssst… you’ll never believe this! Professor Snape received a valentine from Draco Malfoy!”
Lucretia LeStrange sighed once again, pushing the tube into the dwarf’s hand. Did little people automatically have small minds?
“I said I want it to be public, but discreet. If you sing in front of him, he’ll curse you. And me, when he finds out who it was. The potions master is a very private person, but I don’t want it to be SO discreet that no one knows he got one. Everyone needs to be flattered.”
She smiled again, with a twinkle in her eyes, hoping that THIS time the little… thing would understand. Still, he stared at her with furrowed brows, and she wanted to belt her head against the wall of books to her right.
“It is not the instructions I am having trouble with, Mistress. I just want to make perfectly clear. By the Potions Master, you are referring to Professor Snape?”
“Yes.”
“Professor Severus Snape?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure? You’re not just… playing with me, are you?”
Those dark orbs of hers would have pinned the dwarf to wall, were she not exercising every single ounce of her self control. She had been refraining from such shock tactics before, but she snarled at him then, and such a movement of her lips betrayed the pointed canines that were hidden inside her mouth.
“If you question me one more time, I will have you for my next meal! Just DO it!”
The little man shrunk back from the vampiress in fright, clutching the tube to his chest in horror. “Yes, Mistress! It will be done as you ask!”
She sighed pointedly. “Thankyou.”
He retreated slowly toward the door as though he expected her to jump on him, walking backwards and keeping his eyes upon her all the way. When he felt the reassuring wood of the door frame against his boot, his courage returned, and a small grin flickered onto his face.
“Just for the record, Mistress, Dwarves taste horrible!” And, having gained the last word as such creatures must, he darted from the door.
Lucretia lifted a hand to her temples and sighed, then spun around at the light snickering from behind her, with dagger eyes. The Head of Slytherin that hung upon the wall in her office was a cantankerous old bastard, but she had loved him in her time as a student.
“Shutup, you. And don’t you go gossiping about me to the others.”
***
“I hate this wretched day.” Severus Snape muttered to himself as he pushed his way through the throng of students clogging the entrance hall, and swept up the aisle of the Great Hall, doing his best to not look at any of the garish decorations Lockhart had graffiti’d the walls with.
Instead, he fixed his eyes firmly on the teachers’ table, but even there things looked amiss. He noted, with a bitter sort of amusement, that Lockhart was not on Hall duty this particular lunchtime. How convenient. He created mayhem and then retreated to his office to peer at himself in the mirror for the duration of the lunchtime break.
The Headmaster was chuckling at something that Minerva McGonagall had leaned over to whisper in his ear, one hand rested upon his forearm. If anything, this only made him more annoyed. Even the two most geriatric members of the staff had managed to find a Valentine. What was next? Madam Pomfrey strolling in, arm in arm with Hagrid? He suppressed a shudder. Was he the ONLY one who was in a foul mood?
He stalked to his usual seat at the table, but before he could be seated, Dumbledore caught his eye. There was a big enough twinkle of amusement there that Severus wanted to do a very animal thing like perhaps punching him in the face.
“Lovely afternoon, isn’t it, Severus?” The beard did not half hide the grin on his face, nor did Minerva’s cough disguise the giggle in response or the tears of laughter in her eyes.
“Splendid.” He replied, without enthusiasm, before pulling his chair out and taking his seat.
And almost falling off it.
In the middle of his place setting lay a single black rose. Twined around it was a silver thread, and attached a note, and a tiny wrapped present, no bigger than a knuckle. For a moment he simply stared at it, too shocked to speak, to move, to even breathe. Then he registered the bubbling laughter of Minerva McGonagall, once again. This time she did not even bother to disguise it as a cough.
He turned on them, all stone and ire. “Did you see who put this here? Is this some kind of joke?”
Minerva seemed sedated by his harsh words, and she cleared her throat and composed herself. A small smile still twitched at the edges of her lips. “No, Severus, it’s not a joke. It appears you have a secret admirer.”
It was Dumbledore chuckling this time. “Forgive us, Severus. It’s just we know how fond you are of displays of affection.”
He grunted in reply, and turned back to stare once more at the apparition. He didn’t really think it a display of affection, at least not a garish one the likes of which had been erupting in classrooms and corridors all morning. It was actually rather tasteful. Whoever had sent it obviously knew him better than he thought anyone in this school did. He refused to smile about it in public, but he actually rather liked it.
He returned to the dungeons following lunch with the rose in his hand. He did not flaunt it, nor try to hide it. It was difficult not to look pleased with himself, but he managed. The curious little attachment and the note were in the pocket of his frock coat.
He stared at it again for a long time once it was propped on his desk in an empty wine bottle. An interesting little piece of herbology, it was, what looked like a normal rose, with pitch black petals. Many times he stroked the delicate flesh at its head, and allowed himself a smile.
The note was infuriatingly absent of a signature. No name, not even anything that could be called a style, a certain choice of words that would give him a clue as to the sender. The handwriting could have been any number of people writing with a quill.
“Be my Valentine, Severus.”
It was so incredibly frustrating. Why would she (Merlin, he hoped it was a she) send him this if she did not want him to know her identity. Perhaps the small package would give him a better idea. He tore the paper from around it in an instant.
A ring. For a moment the connotations of that worried him, before he lifted it to get a good look. It was well made, but not expensive. Pewter, or some such polished metal. A simple, chunky, masculine design, the front of it was stamped with an image of a twisting serpent. He smiled. How very Slytherin. He was not usually one for jewellery, but on this occasion he could be persuaded. He slid it onto the middle finger of his left hand.
theatrical_muse entry that I just got a reminder email for. I haven't updated since November. My bad. It's too early in the morning for highly philosophical Martine Desbroubins musing, kthnk.But I just had this idea. I have a number of things floating in my computer that are in greater or lesser stages of unfinished-ness. Maybe I'd like to finish some (when my current list of bunnies unwritten is completed), but I really don't know which ones.
So please help me.
I have pasted them all here, under cuts for your convenience. Tell me which ones you'd like to see completed.
Rain on lilac leaves. In the dusk
they show me the grave,
a casket of stars underfoot,
his name there, and his language.
(Gillian Clarke – Taid’s Grave)
In the dusk she showed me the tomb. Her hand gripped my shoulder as I knelt before it, lay my hand against the cold marble.
I was ashamed. Minerva had been incredulous when they told her, but I had known the whole time. She had looked into my eyes not three days earlier and asked me if anything was wrong, and my lips had formed the word 'no' without my mind willing it. My body had moved forward against hers, my fingers twined in her hair and my lips pressed against hers, silencing any words of protest that may have formed upon them.
-------
It wakes her in the dead of night.
She rolls over once, blinks in the darkness, lays a hand against her belly, and knows sleep will not come again.
She wonders if the little one will love cheese or hate it, and smiles as she cuts thick slices of it and lays them in a pattern on a slice of bread. Slides it into the grill to watch it melt into a puddle of strangely appealing, yellow goo, and frowns, feeling it twist inside her once again.
Something about this baby feels wrong. There is no word more articulate than that, and no way for her to tell Ted. She doesn’t know if this is a witch’s instinct or a woman’s. She thinks of Bella, with her crazy eyes and her penchant for torturing insects that turned into cats that turned into people, and she hopes that evil isn’t hereditary. This child is magical, she can feel it in her bones, in the way simple spells are sometimes sucked back down the wand when she tries to cast them, like the baby needs the magic more than she does.
She wishes she could explain this feeling of wrongness to Ted’s mother, but she can’t, and she wishes she could talk about it with Narcissa, but none of her family have returned her owls in years.
A quiet sob escapes her throat. Oh, she never knew it would be this hard.
~*~
“I was twins, you know.” Tonks offered candidly, breaking a chunk of chocolate off the block. “But my sister didn’t make it. Identical, we would have been. At least technically. Mum always used to joke about how one of me was most definitely enough.”
Molly took the offered block, took a piece, then winced at how badly it chased the red wine.
-------
…One, too cowardly to return… he will pay. One, who I believe has left me forever… he will be killed, of course…
Igor Karkaroff pulled the hood further up over his head and ordered another firewhiskey. When had he become like this? Tetchy, scared of his own shadow? Oh, who was he kidding? He had always been like this.
The firewhiskey landed on the counted before him, and he tossed the Romanian equivalent of a few knuts at the barman, lifted the shot glass, and scowled into it. There was a hawk eyed man in the far corner eyeing him. It wouldn’t have been too bad – he was quite good looking – except for the fact that Romania was full of vampires. He didn’t fancy having his throat torn out.
On the other hand, it couldn’t be any worse than the fate that would catch up with him, eventually. He tossed the whiskey down his throat.
And then he saw him. Him. Clad in black, as always, swooping through the front door. Oh, sweet Merlin. Not so soon. How could it have happened so soon? There were icicles in his belly, and he suddenly had a burning desire to wet himself. Without a further thought, he whispered the apparition incarnation, and flung himself into the forest that formed a line on one side of the pub.
There were twigs in his mouth. He’d never been very good at apparating. Never been very good at anything. He rolled over, and just lay there in the freezing dirt. He wanted to cry. Would have gladly died, but not like that, not at the hands of that man. Not him.
He’d seen himself in the potions class, as he stood behind Snape’s desk and watched the boy called Longbottom fumbling, not understanding, begging answers from the girl beside him, who seemed to know it all back to front.
-------
Minerva McGonagall sat at her desk, twisting the gold chain of Hermione’s time turner about her fingers. She glanced at the enormous pile of year end exams she had to mark, and half regretted that she had spent the last hour chatting with her best pupil. There was just so much to do.
She glanced down at the device that lay innocently on her desk. The Department of Mysteries monitored all use of time turners, but this one was assigned to Hermione Granger until it was returned, and backward twists of an hour or two were expected, in her case. No one would know if Minerva was to return to an hour before and mark some of her papers, and it would give her such a head start. So much so that she could afford to take the time to return the device to the Ministry today, as she was legally required to do.
She stared at the little object, forces of right-and-proper doing battle in her head with self indulgence and the white lie that she was doing wrong for the right reasons, anyway. It was only an hour. She was just going to go into her chambers with a pile of essays. She wasn’t going to save the world.
As if someone was going to burst in, Minerva glanced about herself before twisting the chain about her wrist, three times. She lifted the tiny device into her fingers and stared at it again, for a time. Her nerves were as taut as wire; she felt more like a naughty school girl than she had in decades. She was tempted to turn it back two hours, but decided against it.
Someone knocked on the door. Minerva gasped, and the thing tumbled from her fingers. As the chain snapped taut, she watched the little hourglass barrel forward, a blur of golden light as it spun, and spun, and spun.
****
Code Delphi. Start here.
I have not recorded a journal for many, many years; not since I was trapped in the Otherland network with no solid hope of ever getting out again. It seems this is a habit, speaking words into the ether when I feel things are changing, when I feel I am a part of something very much larger than myself. I’m not sure what is happening now is momentous, but it is certainly a large event in my life. Things have changed immensely in the last three days.
The first inkling I got that something was different was when the system erupted like a supernova, spewing forth a torrent of flaming shrapnel, code that flung in all directions. An explosion every bit as bright as the one that had blinded me all those years ago. Then, like before, the entire world went black.
I am ashamed to admit that my first reaction was panic so hot that I tore out every tube connected to my body before I regained control of myself. The warmth of the terror was still in my cheeks long after I had stilled my movements, long after I had brought myself under some sort of control. The system had crashed. Crashed spectacularly, but crashed none the less. Nothing to suffer heart failure over.
Until I realised that I was not the only one in the room.
But there must be order. There are many things I must explain. It has been many, many years. Paul is gone. We had thirty beautiful years together, and in my typical fashion, I only realised after he was gone how very much I loved him. It was sickness that took him – cancer – such a terrible, terrible irony, after all he went through. After all we went through together. There was no question of his mind continuing online, he did not want it. I understood. I am not sure I would want it myself, but the knowledge did not make my despair any less.
We had lived our years together in a villa in Paris, but following his death I crawled back into my hole in the mountain to wallow out my sorrow in solitude, as I have always done, like an ostrich with its head in the sand.
There was only one thing left for me. When I had regained my sight, I lost the strange and unique view of online environments. While trapped in the Otherland network, I had been a witch, a visionary. Surely there was some merit in exploring those abilities further, in understanding the how and why of such sight, of exploring what I could and could not do online with such an outlook. But I could not do it while I could see.
I enquired. There were ways to do it, painless injections. Others in this time and society have far stranger requests. But it would be permanent.
It was like deciding to become a vampire, without the promise of eternal life. I watched my final sunrise with the finality and stillness of a woman awaiting a death sentence; then was plunged into darkness once again.
I have buried myself back beneath the mountain protected by the best security system money can buy. And so, to have someone else in the room with me was impossible. Any person that had managed to find the entrance to my underground home would have set off the security long, long before they reached the inner. I was, thus, terrified. I was more blind at that moment than I had been in many, many years. I had none of the security of the net, none of the ability to process code and feel it in its patterns as sight. I was simply shrouded in darkness, and as helpless as a puppy.
As I speak, I fear that I will wake her from her slumber. But no, I get ahead of myself. Order, Martine.
I will confess that for a moment I believed my companion to be the monster Dread, the murderer who had hunted us so mercilessly all those years ago. Certainly, only someone with his abilities could have bypassed my security systems. But that was impossible. Impossible.
As panicked as I was, I could not help but notice that the breathing of this other individual was as panicky as my own, and, before she spoke, I realised that I was not as blind as I had previously thought. My years of sight make it easier to describe. It was as though she were made of code, but at the same time something inherently different. There was an outline of something like gold thread, glowing within her. It gave her shape and form to my senses. There was something even brighter dangling from her hand on what seemed to be a chain. I was struck by the wrongness of it, but also by how natural it seemed.
“W…where is everything? Hogwarts… the French Ministry should be here…”
Damn, I can hear her murmuring in response to my voice. She is waking. I must go.
Code Delphi. End here.
****
Oh Merlin, oh Merlin, oh Merlin.
Everything was alien. Minerva found herself simply staring, staring at the woman in the strange bed who was thrashing, pulling tubes out of herself. The time turner still dangled limply from her hand.
Everything was gone. When she had recovered from the horrible sensation of being flung – Merlin, how did Hermione stand it?! – she had found herself somewhere... barren. Not only was she not in her office, there was no building to speak of. Only dirt beneath her feet, and, as she slowly turned, great heaps of stone that might once have been a castle. At the foot of the hill the lake stretched, as black and forbidding as ever, completely oblivious to the destruction that had gone on around it. She found huge, hideous breaths catching in her lungs, and her vision blurred with tears.
She had apparated to London, to a British Ministry that wasn’t there, and then, sick to her very stomach, had flung herself into France, into the bowels of a mountain that had once held the French Ministry of Magic.
“W…where is everything?” There were words after that, but she didn’t know what she was saying. All she could hear was the terrible desperation in her voice. All she could do was stare at the woman who was somehow staring at back at her without appearing to see her at all.
“Who are you? What are you doing here? How did you get in?” The questions were fired at her like bullets, with something like coldness and something like fear. Why would this woman be scared? She hadn’t just lost everything she knew.
Minerva was shaking. “Merlin, how do I get back?! I don’t want to be here!” She let the chain of the time turner unravel from around her wrist, then lifted the thing into her sight. How many times had it turned? How could she ever possibly know? How could she ever hope to go back? How could she leave before she knew what had happened to the wizarding world?
The woman had climbed off the bed, and now was coming toward her. Minerva was still staring at the time turner when she felt hands upon her shoulders. “Who are you? What are you?” The voice had softened now, and Minerva’s hands fell limply by her side as the other woman lifted one of her own to touch Minerva’s cheek. It was a tender gesture, in its own way, but it was clearly not intended to be affectionate. “Are you code?”
Code? What was she talking about? “I don’t…”
The woman’s right hand dropped by her side, but the other still remained firmly upon Minerva’s shoulder, as though to prove she were real. “I sense, you have… I am blind, but I see you.”
That didn’t make Minerva any less confused. “I don’t understand.”
“You have something… within you… like electricity… like code… something… Oh God, I can’t explain it.”
Something…? No. It can’t be. She couldn’t. Why would she be able to see the magic? Minerva shook her head.
“The thing in your hand. It is bright like the sun.”
Minerva lifted the time turner again. “Oh. Oh, Merlin.” The blind woman cocked her head to one side in puzzlement, probably at what was, to her, a strange epithet. Minerva took a large breath, and let it out again. She was going to sound like some old bat from a muggle mental home. “I am a witch.”
The other woman let out a strange, bitter sort of laugh. “Funny, I once called myself one of those.”
****
Code Delphi. Start here.
She has gone somewhere now. Trying to find out how to get the device to take her back, though I’m not sure she wants to leave yet. Not sure I want her to leave yet. I warned her about doing that disappearing act near my system again – told her I’d strangle her. After watching me painstakingly resurrecting it a day ago, she didn’t seem to have any doubt that I meant what I said, so she walked. I did not think she had a sense of humour, that first day, but it is emerging slowly. That first day… where was I in my last entry?
I had to touch her. I had to be sure she was real. I’m not sure what I believed her to be, at first. I had never seen anything like this before. Perhaps I thought her some physical manifestation of code. I have seen many things in this lifetime that I wouldn’t have believed possible.
It is difficult to remember and explain the utter oddity of hearing someone claim to be a witch. But then there had been nothing but oddity. She was in my home. Impossible. I could see something in her like code. Impossible. She was a witch. Impossible, or the only explanation so far. The entire situation was surreal. I was at a loss for how to react. Of all the strange VR situations I had been in, of all the times my life had been in danger from hideous code beasts, this woman in my home claiming to be a witch was the strangest.
So I did something completely ridiculous. I asked her if she wanted a cup of tea.
-------
1
It was like a breeze through the castle, the gentle rush of air that the portraits generated as they flitted through each others frames. A Valentines Day game of Chinese Whispers.
“The Assistant Librarian has given a valentines message for the Potions Master!”
“…Did you hear, a valentines message for Snape, from Madam Pince?!”
“…Merlin’s underwear! I was just told that a Valentine arrived for the Head of Slytherin from the library!”
“That Hermione Granger, spends all her time in the library! Speaking of the library, guess what I just heard…”
“Hermione Granger sent a valentines message to our head of Slythrin, Severus Snape!”
“I hear a Slytherin sent a valentine to Professor Snape! I bet it was that Parkinson girl, trying to improve her connections again! That one is always hanging around Draco Malfoy.”
“Pssst… you’ll never believe this! Professor Snape received a valentine from Draco Malfoy!”
Lucretia LeStrange sighed once again, pushing the tube into the dwarf’s hand. Did little people automatically have small minds?
“I said I want it to be public, but discreet. If you sing in front of him, he’ll curse you. And me, when he finds out who it was. The potions master is a very private person, but I don’t want it to be SO discreet that no one knows he got one. Everyone needs to be flattered.”
She smiled again, with a twinkle in her eyes, hoping that THIS time the little… thing would understand. Still, he stared at her with furrowed brows, and she wanted to belt her head against the wall of books to her right.
“It is not the instructions I am having trouble with, Mistress. I just want to make perfectly clear. By the Potions Master, you are referring to Professor Snape?”
“Yes.”
“Professor Severus Snape?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure? You’re not just… playing with me, are you?”
Those dark orbs of hers would have pinned the dwarf to wall, were she not exercising every single ounce of her self control. She had been refraining from such shock tactics before, but she snarled at him then, and such a movement of her lips betrayed the pointed canines that were hidden inside her mouth.
“If you question me one more time, I will have you for my next meal! Just DO it!”
The little man shrunk back from the vampiress in fright, clutching the tube to his chest in horror. “Yes, Mistress! It will be done as you ask!”
She sighed pointedly. “Thankyou.”
He retreated slowly toward the door as though he expected her to jump on him, walking backwards and keeping his eyes upon her all the way. When he felt the reassuring wood of the door frame against his boot, his courage returned, and a small grin flickered onto his face.
“Just for the record, Mistress, Dwarves taste horrible!” And, having gained the last word as such creatures must, he darted from the door.
Lucretia lifted a hand to her temples and sighed, then spun around at the light snickering from behind her, with dagger eyes. The Head of Slytherin that hung upon the wall in her office was a cantankerous old bastard, but she had loved him in her time as a student.
“Shutup, you. And don’t you go gossiping about me to the others.”
***
“I hate this wretched day.” Severus Snape muttered to himself as he pushed his way through the throng of students clogging the entrance hall, and swept up the aisle of the Great Hall, doing his best to not look at any of the garish decorations Lockhart had graffiti’d the walls with.
Instead, he fixed his eyes firmly on the teachers’ table, but even there things looked amiss. He noted, with a bitter sort of amusement, that Lockhart was not on Hall duty this particular lunchtime. How convenient. He created mayhem and then retreated to his office to peer at himself in the mirror for the duration of the lunchtime break.
The Headmaster was chuckling at something that Minerva McGonagall had leaned over to whisper in his ear, one hand rested upon his forearm. If anything, this only made him more annoyed. Even the two most geriatric members of the staff had managed to find a Valentine. What was next? Madam Pomfrey strolling in, arm in arm with Hagrid? He suppressed a shudder. Was he the ONLY one who was in a foul mood?
He stalked to his usual seat at the table, but before he could be seated, Dumbledore caught his eye. There was a big enough twinkle of amusement there that Severus wanted to do a very animal thing like perhaps punching him in the face.
“Lovely afternoon, isn’t it, Severus?” The beard did not half hide the grin on his face, nor did Minerva’s cough disguise the giggle in response or the tears of laughter in her eyes.
“Splendid.” He replied, without enthusiasm, before pulling his chair out and taking his seat.
And almost falling off it.
In the middle of his place setting lay a single black rose. Twined around it was a silver thread, and attached a note, and a tiny wrapped present, no bigger than a knuckle. For a moment he simply stared at it, too shocked to speak, to move, to even breathe. Then he registered the bubbling laughter of Minerva McGonagall, once again. This time she did not even bother to disguise it as a cough.
He turned on them, all stone and ire. “Did you see who put this here? Is this some kind of joke?”
Minerva seemed sedated by his harsh words, and she cleared her throat and composed herself. A small smile still twitched at the edges of her lips. “No, Severus, it’s not a joke. It appears you have a secret admirer.”
It was Dumbledore chuckling this time. “Forgive us, Severus. It’s just we know how fond you are of displays of affection.”
He grunted in reply, and turned back to stare once more at the apparition. He didn’t really think it a display of affection, at least not a garish one the likes of which had been erupting in classrooms and corridors all morning. It was actually rather tasteful. Whoever had sent it obviously knew him better than he thought anyone in this school did. He refused to smile about it in public, but he actually rather liked it.
He returned to the dungeons following lunch with the rose in his hand. He did not flaunt it, nor try to hide it. It was difficult not to look pleased with himself, but he managed. The curious little attachment and the note were in the pocket of his frock coat.
He stared at it again for a long time once it was propped on his desk in an empty wine bottle. An interesting little piece of herbology, it was, what looked like a normal rose, with pitch black petals. Many times he stroked the delicate flesh at its head, and allowed himself a smile.
The note was infuriatingly absent of a signature. No name, not even anything that could be called a style, a certain choice of words that would give him a clue as to the sender. The handwriting could have been any number of people writing with a quill.
“Be my Valentine, Severus.”
It was so incredibly frustrating. Why would she (Merlin, he hoped it was a she) send him this if she did not want him to know her identity. Perhaps the small package would give him a better idea. He tore the paper from around it in an instant.
A ring. For a moment the connotations of that worried him, before he lifted it to get a good look. It was well made, but not expensive. Pewter, or some such polished metal. A simple, chunky, masculine design, the front of it was stamped with an image of a twisting serpent. He smiled. How very Slytherin. He was not usually one for jewellery, but on this occasion he could be persuaded. He slid it onto the middle finger of his left hand.
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Date: 2006-01-04 01:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-05 05:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-05 10:08 am (UTC)I have been having adventures, love, but small ones during the day *smile* I've been frolicking ariound all the places I can get into for free - Museum, art gallery - and today I think I'll go to Harrods and take my chances on the tube to find the tower of London. I want to see Madam Tussaud's and The London Dungeon (do I get a potions master as a souvenier if I go there?) but I think I'd rather wait and do those things when I have someone to appreciate them with.
I find online a rather comforting place at the moment, though, because it's somewhere that I know people and have friends even if I don't know anyone in RL. This first few days running around a foreign city by myself is both liberatin and odd (but I'm sure you know about that feeling) :).