Reality twists 10/39
Aug. 24th, 2011 10:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
herumtreiberChapter: The Quidditch game
Author:
Genre: Post DH, romance, adventure, time travel
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or related characters. Nor do I make any money from the writing of these stories.
Rating: R
Warnings: Hermione bashing
Epilogue compliant? No
Chapter length: ~1,991 words
Summary: Harry/Draco/Daphne. Draco in Azkaban, plus time-travel. Explores the idea of powerful magic pitted against a nuclear bomb and the implications for the world. Noncon - evil Hermione and Ron – Atlantis may appear later on, and another meaning of the Prophecy. How a Time Turner can win a game. Very ecological use of the Fidelius charm; Dementors abound, but...
Table of contents
Third twist
A week later, things had settled into some kind of routine at the school. The next day would be the first Quidditch match of the year, Slytherin-Gryffindor. There were some changes in the Gryffindor team, most notably the absence of their Keeper Weasley. As expected, Harry Potter was made captain.
The Slytherin team appeared superficially the same, but it had an interesting addition in Seeker and Captain Draco Malfoy. He had taken the opportunity to train them, though he kept their sessions interesting and light. He didn't want them sullen and overworked, but refreshed and improvising.
Draco finished the letter he was writing and gave it to his Eagle owl, Barnabas, to carry to the Minister. After the Government had caved in to his demands, he wrote informing them that he was considering renewing the fund payments, if the Wizengamot issued plenary pardons for him and his parents, and furthermore considered them for other former Death Eaters who showed desire to be reintegrated to society.
After demurring for a while, the Minister agreed to this new demand, and Draco was ready to fulfill his part of the bargain.
oOoOo
One thing that worried him about the Fidelius charm is that the Secret-Keeper could be tricked into revealing the information. It had nearly happened to him while he was under Granger's influence. A stream of thought seemingly wanted, insisted to know how he had formulated the letter indicating where Malfoy Manor was. Only his inborn Slytherin stubbornness and sense of secrecy kept him from thinking about this piece of information.
It was worrying. He and Daphne and Neville had prepared charms designed to protect his mind, and had put the charms in his Malfoy signet ring. If the chipmunk tried to enter and control his mind again, she'd be utterly surprised.
But the damage had been already done. The tapestry of his thoughts, emotions and desires was shamelessly trampled, moved and broken in places, just so the little Gryffindor could manipulate him so effectively. He'd read in her mind, when she tried the same spells on Harry, she took great care to protect the integrity of his mind. She took months to get results, and always obeyed the flow of his feelings.
With Draco she couldn't care less, she struck where she would.
Draco imagined his mind with very discordant threads sticking around. And like always when faced with a conundrum, Draco was alone. The only Legilimens who he trusted and could help him was dead. His mother could not help him this time, neither could his friends and Daphne.
He even began to doubt if they were there at all. What if the Dementor's Kiss functioned like always and his soul was sucked? What if this was all a projection of his soul, wrenched from his body, with no ties to reality? What if he was in St. Mungo's, in the Janus Thickey ward, confined to bed and living in a make-believe world? What if the Legilimens maxima spell backfired and caused him to have multiple personalities, and one of these was the officious Chipmunk?
What is reality that he should be mindful of it? Especially when he doubted its very existence.
He realized then that reality was not only the outside world and its weather and people, its coldness or hotness, its hardness or softness. It was also the inner life, and its connections with the environment. When one of them hurt, so was his reality threatened.
Once before he had stood at such crossroads, considering the abyss, choosing the "dark" path to avoid more hurt. The Dementor had saved him. It seemed his time was running out again.
The whole concept of going back in time, the Charm, it was too farfetched. Surely he was imagining things?
Draco despaired, and as had become a ubiquitous gesture, he took out the old photograph and watched it in wonder. He saw the love in his family, the protectiveness of Daphne, the innocence of Scorpius, the affection in him, and he felt greatly renewed and refreshed. There was something to fight for, something to look forward to! The photograph evoked feelings in him, so deep and binding that they must be true. Deep inside his heart he knew that he would always mourn the loss of his precious child. Deep inside his magic, the Revenge Oath kept demanding fulfillment. The Oath could not be tricked. It knew that a great wrong had been made by those individuals, therefore confirming the story. There was the implication of a whole world peeking in, independent of his thoughts. Maybe later he would have a breakdown, but for now, he was ready to march, to go on.
It was not a complete proof of anything. Maybe there was no such confirmation whatsoever.
Yet he knew he had to rid the world of Potter's Protection Charm. If he survived or not was really a moot point, considering. Afterwards, the world would take care of itself, and that was enough for him.
oOoOo
Finally it was the day of the Quidditch game. Harry bristled at the thought of his missing Keeper and best friend, Ron Weasley, doing time in Azkaban. He had received disquieting reports. Apparently Ron had become the slut of Azkaban, and any guard who wanted could have him. He was still irascible, but it seems he'd developed a great hunger for sex.
And Hermione, after finding her at the doors of Gryffindor tower, naked and bleeding, he was incensed and wanted to know who'd done that to her. Hermione wouldn't say, she affirmed she couldn't remember. She had a vacant stare sometimes, as if she was desperately trying to remember something. Asked about the past month, she would stumble to answer. Yet she still kept to her research, skulking around the castle like a studious ghost.
Harry was a little unsure himself. He'd lost Ron, Hermione looked like a Missing in Action, and Ginny evaded him constantly, now seemingly aided by Neville. It was a strange Gryffindor territory he inhabited now.
A day after finding Hermione, Neville had given him a silver ring. He claimed it was a friendship ring belonging to the Longbottoms. Harry was pressed to reject it, but a small part of him thought that it would not hurt. Strangely, the ring seemed to calm him down. He could no longer hear the piece of himself that came up with the wildest schemes.
The Quidditch teams made their leisure way to the pitch. Madame Hooch ordered them to shake hands. Draco approached Harry and shook his hand. He sensed the twitch in the energy fields signifying that the Charm kept eternal guard over Harry and would not allow him to lose, after all, this was the same Potter that in a previous year had fallen to the ground from his broom - and still managed to catch the Snitch in his mouth! The Charm guarded him indeed jealously. However Draco controlled something the Charm did not, and that would prove to be strategically important.
Draco flew to his teammates and harangued them in an easygoing way, "You know what to do, Slyths! Play fair!"
Everyone laughed, and Goyle answered, "And of course, if we cheat, do it so no one can prove it!"
Draco laughed and replied, "Exactly. You have grown so much! I remember when you were supple as new snakes, and now you have the features of the Basilisks. Go on and dine on roasted lions!"
Everyone flew to their position. The Slytherin team had an advantage of endurance, because they had not been subject to the grueling training sessions the Gryffindors had thanks to their obsessed captain Potter.
The game soon developed a flow of its own, where the Slytherin players had not much trouble scoring past the Keeper. Occasionally a Bludger would pass by Harry or Draco as they flew high over the pitch, looking for the Golden Snitch.
When he was sure that they were comfortably in the lead, Draco moved his wand surreptitiously and called up the two Bludgers he'd had enchanted earlier. They would fly near to Harry. They wouldn't attack, thereby avoiding the immediate response of the Charm, but they would fly dangerously near to Potter. The Charm would be forced to react.
It happened as Draco imagined. The Bludgers went to Potter, and it looked for a moment as if they were intent on colliding with him. However their paths soon veered off, and they were directed to Draco. Draco pretended to be offended and disgruntled, he easily evaded them, and in the moment or two of general confusion, he felt the Golden Snitch near by.
He eagerly grabbed it. Out of the corner of his eyes, he could see a glint of golden, flying about 120 feet in front of him. He pointed at it with his wand, murmured Evanesco! and the golden light died.
The announcer sputtered and coughed, he stuttered, "I can't be-believe it! The upset of a century. Draco Malfoy catches the Snitch and wins the game for Slytherin! Final score 430 to 50. That damned git won!" McGonagall forcefully thwacked the announcer's head and bade him to correct his bias or he would announce no more. Seamus Finnigan fumed but continued in a nearly professional way, if his barbed and poisonous comments about Slytherins could be considered professional.
Draco was carried on the shoulders of his teammates around the pitch. He laughed and asked them to drop him.
He went to the Slytherin changing rooms. He opened his locker and took out his time-turner. He set it back 100 minutes. He used a glamour to change to a nondescript individual.
He went to the pitch and took out the Golden Snitch. He put a homing spell on it, along with notice-me-not charms which would expire when he was near, then he let the other Snitch go.
He saw the teams arrive, Potter and him shaking hands, and he couldn't help but think that it looked so right, if only for a moment. He understood then why so many people chose to Observe historical events. It brought a complete immediacy, the feeling of being right there, a part of history, of your hero, even if he never knew you were there.
If only he had this possibility with his son, he'd take it and be with Scorpius every moment, even if he could not touch him or talk to him. But Scorpius was in the future, not the past. He was part of the future he had sworn to destroy.
Next he saw his speech to the Slytherins, how smug he looked, how sure of himself. He knew that was only a mask, a mask worn out of duty and necessity.
He would not break, because if he did, the world would suffer greatly. He would try to keep on doing the impossible.
He used the time-turner and returned to his time, he cancelled the glamour and prepared for a night of celebration.
Draco went to his room. He'd requested and pressured McGonagall to place Granger in a different space, citing irreconcilable differences. He was not about to be subjected to more of her aggravating glares, neither did he trust her to keep her paws off him and to herself.
The common room looked inviting, but Draco remembered it had looked the same when his mind was being raped, and felt gnawing unease. He hurried to his bedroom.
In the bed, the elves had put the new articles of clothing he'd bought: Underwear made of dragonhide. The material was resistant to a lot of magic, spells and curses. He needed that if he expected to survive his confrontation with Potter.
For it to succeed, to convince the Charm that its escape clause was met, he'd have to speak sooth, and he couldn't use active magic, therefore his reliance on articles of clothing, which also looked to be highly uncomfortable.
Wednesday, 24 August 2011
Date: 2011-08-24 08:40 pm (UTC)#42
Date: 2011-08-28 03:44 pm (UTC)