All things Hogwarts belong to Rowlings. I thank her for her creations. I am playing with her characters and am grateful for the opportunity to do so. I am making no profit.
2780ish words
April 16, 2007.
This took a long time for me to get back to. After my first chapter, there were a spate of entering-a-book stories. That was a surprisingly hard thing for me to get around. I still don't know why it mattered to me, but my gut cared. LOL. As if, in the greater course of anything, this matters. So on with the fanfiction, an homage to literacy - something that the HP series supports so effectively:
Blaise and Draco winged the ball at each other as hard as they could. It was that sort of day. The sort of day you didn't want to talk, there really was nothing to be said, but it felt really good to wing the ball as hard as possible.
No, the ball did not develop wings. But each toss included a certain magical umph, combined with their throws, that made it emotionally and physically satisfying. Pound the ball, catch the ball flying at you, without getting hurt. Pound out the ball again. This went on for hours. Draco never asked the obvious question. Blaise never gave an answer. It wasn't that the grass itself was listening, though it was. It wasn't that neither was good with the one thing that had to be admitted, though they were both bad at admitting weakness. It wasn't that they both would rather dream of being two boys throwing a ball back and forth rather than being two men, both of whom had a serious problem, one of them who had a serious problem which was coming up on the calendar. As Shakespeare would have said, Presently. They were not quoting Shakespeare. They were whipping a ball at each other.
It got dark. They made their game glow. They got tired. They kept going. One slipped and fell in his throw. "I win," said the other right before he got beaned by the ball.
"I have no ideas," said Draco.
"I have plenty of ideas," said Blaise.
"I mean good ideas," said Draco.
"Well, you didn't specify," finished his friend.
The grass dutifully reported the entire conversation to Lucinillda Lichtner. While she trusted her son, Blaise, utterly, she still found it wise to collect reasons for that trust. He was, after all, her son.
The men went inside and went to the library and did nothing. They collected a pile of books and did nothing. They turned pages, and did nothing. They didn't take notes. To Blaise's upcoming problem, there did seem to be only two, albeit bad, choices. The Lady or the Fire.
"We could implant a conscience," muttered Draco.
"She doesn't care. I don't know that a conscience can overcome someone who has learned to survive without."
"We could paint ourselves blue and dance naked in the rain," continued Draco.
"I'm so worn out, for a second there I was trying to think what that would achieve."
The men didn't look at each other, and continued to do nothing.
And then Hermione bustled over. "Hi," she said with some shy interest. "What are you researching?"
"Nothing," were the answers.
"You're surrounded by books, and researching nothing?" she asked.
"What are you doing, Hermione?" asked Blaise.
The directness surprised her. She fluffed an answer and began to go when Draco kicked out a chair. Hermione and Blaise looked at him with some surprise.
"No," said Blaise.
"I have an idea," said Draco, slowly and looking him in the eye.
"No," said Blaise again.
"Not that idea."
Hermione sat down.
The two men just stared at each other, and Draco began to smile. It never touched Blaise's eyes.
"Hermione," he asked.
"Yes?"
"Are you still pissed with Blaise for sticking you in the book?"
Hermione paused. The nonest answer might be an invitation. "I didn't like it."
"Are you pissed?"
"Not particularly."
"And where are you on the rights of muggles?"
"What?"
"Just to be clear here."
"Muggles are people and have rights to live lives free of being pushed around in unfair ways."
"And magic is unfair."
"Sometimes."
"When Blaise stuck you in the book?"
"That had ... context."
Blaise inserted, "Point, Malfoy?"
Malfoy did a few quiet passes with his wand: no one would hear them now.
"Let's say there was person, call them Dorian Gray, who discovered how to remain perfect and clean, while pursuing their own corruption."
"Let's say," replied Hermione.
"Then what would you say," asked Blaise.
"Destroy the portrait. I read that book."
"Let's say Dorian Gray didn't use a portrait. But did use a--"
"Kitten," said Blaise, cutting in. "Used a kitten."
Malfoy gave him an insane look. Blaise shrugged it off.
"And could animate the kitten to do really bad things under the right circumstances. Do the dirtiest of deeds, so to speak."
"Right circumstances?" asked Hermione.
"Moon, stars, winds, conjunction, seasons, tides, solar wind, next Saturday," muttered the guys.
"What can the kitten do outside the geas?" asked Hermione.
"Lie," replied Blaise.
"Resist," replied Draco.
"How successfully?" she asked.
"If there is an ambiguity in the instruction, it can be exploited to say the deed was done, but do it in the other way. This is not easy. A compulsion needs to be resisted," replied Blaise.
"So why are you asking me?"
Blaise suddenly smiled sweetly and turned to Draco, "yes, why are we asking her?"
Draco looked Hermione dead in the eye, "Because you are the wrench in the gears."
Hermione frowned. That generally didn't work out well for the wrench.
"A muggle who is not a muggle. A witch who is not a witch. A woman who is not a girl. A girl who is not a woman. I'm sure we could pack in a few others as well," said Draco.
"Hey!" said Hermione.
"This could really work," said Blaise with amazement.
Then they told her the plan.
Hermione was not happy.
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On Saturday, Blaise felt himself summoned. He stood before his mother, her creation, built to store her corruptions, to do what she dared not, to become the guilty party. He had been a clever idea on her part so many years ago.
"My son," she said.
"Mother," he replied.
They'd been hoping she'd go for the over dramatic (that always made the ambiguities easier to exploit). She sat in a golden throne of slithering metal in which faces appeared and disappeared at her feet and on her arm rests, the faces of her defeated foes. Her husbands, her friends, her collaborators, her antagonists, her competition: she kept them beneath her at all times. It had come time to move on from another husband: this one was too clever and had begun trying to move on from her. She smiled at her son, her weapon, all her evil gone out from her and standing in a separate body. Her own.
He was glad she was in the over dramatic mood, sitting in the crazy chair, wearing a black gown that acted like a star field and not like a gown, and her eyes had the look she got when she had lost touch with reality.
"Son of my flesh, evil of me, myself stand before me," she intoned.
He didn't point out she'd already summoned him.
"I am Aphrodite and at my command the world shall cry in love, in pain, in fear, in hopelessness," she went on. "Son, bring to Aphrodite the heart of her husband of now. His time has come, let the cycle revolve. Bring the heart that shall be a heart no more and lay it at my feet; I am the mother who is no mother, a mortal who is instead nature incarnate, the self who is your better self, the strength which is your strength, and I command you."
"Don't ask me this," he said, as he had always done.
She pounded the floor with her staff and a rage of blackness took Blaise to the island where his intended victim lived. Blaise lay there, a rage blossoming in his mind, and his limbs burning with the ability to kill. His mother's ability.
Blaise grasped the forest floor, felt a tree step on him, and was taken by this other darkness he could not fight.
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"Why don't you turn her in?" asked Hermione.
"Help me turn him over," said Draco.
"Because he has something to protect," said the ent, flipping his stepson with a root.
"You?" she asked. "You're his dead stepfather!" she said. "But didn't he kill you?"
"He ripped out my heart," allowed the tree. "But as I was becoming a tree, I didn't have much use for it."
"He ripped out your heart?"
"She sent him out with me, with directions to return with my heart in a box."
"It was a nice box," put in Draco.
"Cost alot, too," said the Ent.
"He ripped out your heart?" said Hermione again.
"He was a kid. He could only struggle so much," said the Ent.
"Do you mind being an Ent?" she asked.
The tree smiled. Waved its leaves. And then laughed. "It's an imperfect world, and given the context, I'm happy," he said.
"He's coming around," said Draco.
"Get out of the way so I can root him down again," said Simmons.
Hermione checked that the big rock next to her in the woods was actually a big rock in the woods, and she sat down on it to think.
Blaise had thrashed like a dog while his step father held him down initially, but then Draco chanted something. Blaise settled. Simmons took off his roots, and Blaise sat up, his eyes still too black, the whites eaten over, but the flesh and muscles around them under his control again.
"Be right back," he said. "Charm her soon," he said jerking in Hermione's direction.
"What were the exact words?" asked Draco, scribbling them down as Blaise said them: my feet, mother/no mother, a mortal/nature incarnate, self/better self, strength/your strength.
Blaise left, Malfoy figured out the exact spell, Hermione sat thinking, and Simmons waved in a breeze.
"So he lays the heart at my feet," said Hermione nervously.
"He lays the heart of that man at your feet," said the tree. "It's an ambiguous statement."
"It doesn't sound that ambiguous," said Hermione.
"You never met Lichtner, I take it," said the ent.
"Would this work better if Hermione's feet were bare?" asked Draco, rhetorically.
Hermione took off her shoes and socks.
"I don't know how I clock in as a mother," she said. "Or as his self."
"The self, I've got in the spell. The mother, I'm playing up that you mother people."
"How do I become Zambini's self?" she asked.
"Self/better self: you have alot of his qualities and you don't have the pressure to kill which his mother places on him. Thus, self/better self."
Draco cast the spell, and Hermione went insane. The craze of the mother leaked through the connections and Hermione was unaccustomed to the rage. Simmons held her down while she foamed and fought. She had never before felt the pure wild desire for control like this before. Her regular desire to control her own destiny paled in comparison to this desire to control life itself.
She was red in the face, struggling against the roots; her wand was in Draco's hand and her teeth were clenched.
"Remember why you are doing this," said the tree.
Hermione took deep breaths which were more like the inhale before one lashes out, punching and flailing. Draco chanted for calm again. Simmons let her go, and with difficulty Hermione sat up and waited.
It was soon that Blaise returned. He put a small golden box before the feet of Hermione, called her Aphrodite, called her his mother, his self, his better self, and all the other terms. He opened the box and except for Blaise they all looked in. The heart of Mr Lichtner was apparently a small golden bird with a single red feather.
Hermione resisted the desire to kill, she was watched closely by Mr. Simmons and Draco to make sure she could keep her sanity. Hermione used all her will to grind out the words. "I accept your gift. I am your self, your strength, your mother, nature itself. But you are not my self, you are not my strength, you are not my son, and I do not recognize you anymore. You are not me any more."
It should have worked. Look it up in any grimmore you can find. It should have worked. For years to come, when, a hundred years hence, the various diaries of the various people involved tell of this amazing moment, it baffled the theorists. In theory this should have worked. In practice, it did not. Practice is sometimes a pain.
"Plan B," muttered Draco. Blaise's eyes were still black. There was the danger that Lucinillda had heard them and would now come. This was their best shot at getting free before fighting her. It came with the danger of failing. Lucinillda incoming. Mr. Lichtner incoming. Mr. Simmons and Hermione unprotected. Hermione wailing. The clouds began to grow hot and the damp began to crackle.
"I am your self, your strength, your mother, nature itself. But you are not my self, you are not my strength, you are not my son, and I do not recognize you anymore. You are not me any more," intoned Mr. Simmons.
Lightning crashed and the woods were still. "No," cried Blaise, throwing himself on the tree while Draco extricated Hermione from the spell. The air was otherwise clear.
"What happened?" she asked, but then they were somewhere else. All four were in a garden, Blaise still aching. "We can't leave him here," said Blaise about Mr. Simmons.
"He's not safe out there," said Draco. "And he can't protect himself anymore."
"He's stuck as a tree," said Blaise.
"What happened?" asked Hermione again.
Draco answered: it did no good her saying the release spell. Something didn't ring right, coming from her. But the release did work coming from Mr Simmons.
"He was an Ent because he could recognize people," said Blaise with a cold distant voice.
"And your mother now?" asked Hermione.
"She can't come here," said Blaise.
"You'll stay here?" she asked.
"We go back," said Draco.
"Let her come for me," said Blaise.
"Now it's a fair fight," said Draco.
"If we got his heart back," said Blaise. The tiny golden bird with a red feather flew up into the tree and sat on a branch and began to sing.
"If he had been unwilling, this would not have worked," said Draco.
"If we got his heart back, would he be human," said Blaise.
"I don't think so," said Hermione thoughtfully.
"He still deserves his own heart," said Blaise.
"He took his heart back when he choose to use it," said Draco.
"I'm not leaving it with mother," said Blaise.
"You're being literal."
"She has a small golden statue of him that she has walk around and act as her servant. Inside that statue is his heart. The statue is not allowed to look unhappy."
"We'll get the heart back," said Draco.
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In the end, it wasn't as hard as one might expect. The only reason Blaise had not physically shown the corruption of his mother on his own face was because he struggled against being corrupt himself. He could be her vessel, and he could be himself, and it worked out that he was both at the same time. Until he was no longer her vessel.
It was apparent to all who saw her from that point on how frighteningly evil Lucinillda was. It beamed like light from her features, the warning that this woman cared for no one, would use anyone, enjoyed control, enjoyed power, enjoyed forcing people into boxes, enjoyed closing those boxes, and did it very well. Overnight, Lucinillda became the most terrifying woman on the earth. Aphrodite had become a crone, and not just any crone, but every vice amplified into an archetype, and she glowed with it. No longer two faced, Lucinillda had one face, and no one dared look at it. It burned like impossibilities and things best not thought of. She was no longer nature - she was now hunger which ate nature. The wolf who ate the sun scared all of life: Lucinillda had troubles maintaining power when all around her fled in fear.
Lichtner called the authorities who looked into his suspicions that his wife was trying to kill him. Proven or not, something was wrong, and Lucinillda was restrained pending a hearing. Blaise recovered his father's golden statue, and brought it to the garden.
"Don't you want to take the heart out and let it rest?" asked Hermione.
"He's not ready yet," said the statue.
"Are you ok with that?" asked Blaise.
The statue smiled, sat beneath the tree, and dozed.
"He didn't answer," said Hermione.
"But he's acting like he acts when he's ok," said Draco.
"And what about the bird?" asked Hermione.
"Someone else's story," said Blaise. He held out the port key and they went back to Hogwarts.
"Did you hear the one about the father and son?" asked the golden statue.
The tree dropped leaves on him. The statue leaned against the tree and rested. The golden bird with one red feather sang.
The End
Copyright 2007. The story is mine though the characters belong to J. K. Rowlings.
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