Borealis, Tonks & Narcissa, G
Title: Borealis
Author: hibernater
Fandom: Harry Potter
Rating: G
Warnings: Character death
Prompt: #3 Having levelled my palace, don't erect a hovel and complacently admire your own charity in giving me that for a home - Emily Bronte
Summary: Victory in war is never what it was meant to be, and the dawn is no guarantee of a new day. Much love to starrysilver for the wonderful beta. All remaining errors are my own.
Borealis
Human minds are fickle, cocksure things. They make assumptions, they categorise, and they fill in the blanks complacently from memory. A Polyjuiced witch's skin does what Tonks's skin could do naturally: hypnotise minds into believing an untruth. Potter had had his loyalists, bound to him by honour and inclination, and by love for him; Lord Voldemort had had his army powered by fear and greed, and something that had once been devotion. In the end, it was always going to be about betrayal.
"Why did you do it?"
"Andromeda once told me that who we are is our choice to make, and the price is our own to pay."
"One choice does not make you who you are. It simply makes you a traitor."
"Careful. A traitor is someone who has betrayed you. I am not betraying you, after all."
"Whatever. Apparate to the east gate. Someone will be waiting for you."
She had been used to performing one's duty unquestioningly, unthanked. That her captors bothered to be kind surprised her, until she remembered that she had family on this side of the war as well, if she only cared to acknowledge them. If only she cared to masquerade as one of them.
Neither Narcissa nor Nymphadora had ever seen the other till they found themselves allies in war, and yet on opposite sides of a barred prison gate. They say that superstition is as imperative an element of old blood as salt. Guest right, blood entitlement, woman's privilege, magical terms of agreement, life debt- no Black could feign imperviousness to the implications of what was due a witch.
"You are well? You have been cared for?"
"Please do not pretend to care. Insincerity is most unbecoming a Black."
"Lucky, then, isn't it, that I am not one?"
"Yes, for the Blacks. You have always been strikingly unoriginal."
"Most of us are, as ourselves. Their rules are not mine, I do not care for a lifeless legacy."
She came again, some two weeks after the first visit. Perhaps she thought to ease her conscience. Perhaps it was simply morbid curiosity. Her steps were unsure on the smooth stone, her very breaths hesitant of disturbing the cold sea air. The dementor that led her in came too close, but then any distance from a dementor was too close, in Azkaban. She'd often wondered why they bothered with robes; no cloak could mask their intent.
It seemed that neither figurative prisons nor literal ones suited the skin of Black women- the only thing they had in common apart from the long lost name. There were mottled purple circles around Tonks's eyes, and Narcissa looked like there was paper stretched over her bones.
"Why am I still here? Why am I a prisoner? It was my owl that won you this war, my owl that . . . You had my family hostage. Have they been freed?"
"They were not hostages-"
"Are they free?"
" . . . No. You are all to be . . . monitored till the last of the trouble is dealt with. Till then you are still . . . dubitable."
Her prisoner laughed, a low, bitter sound redolent of a seductive insanity. "Are you afraid of me?"
They kept their word, in a manner of speaking, and sent her home. Lightning had split open the apple tree, and there was a new graveyard in the garden. Only two of the graves were marked. The walls of her home were crumbling under the weight of so much broken magic, or so the pseudo-official they had sent with her said. The dead were the dead, it was no use risking herself (and him) to mourn what they had brought upon themselves, by getting involved. Something shivered inside her, her vision dimmed, then cleared, bright and brittle. She walked out, and let the shell collapse upon itself.
The next time Narcissa and Tonks met, another empire had scattered, or nearly so. The Resistance raged across England, cheered on by the same populace that had welcomed the previous Minister after Harry and Voldemort died, leaving chaos behind them. The dying government could do no more or less than sentence suspected anarchists to the Kiss. They dragged out the ones they said were hiding amidst respectable folk by night, to hide the unpleasantness of it all.
"You ought to be careful. They do not trust you, and you are too vocal in your dissention of the government."
"There is a peculiar grace to being invisible in plain sight."
"That kind of invisibility . . . it seemed a great gift to me as well, once. But . . . it is a dubious one, at best."
"You have a great many ignorant opinions, don't you? What do you know of always, always being visible?"
"Invisibility does not save you from that. These magical disguises of ours . . . it isn't that humans can't see through them, you know. It's that they won't."
"Fascinating. But who said my disguise was magical?"
"I know this: it will betray you."
She knows treachery is war's greatest tool, the final card played by those with nothing to lose, but she was not stealthy in coming. Her idea of subterfuge had been to apparate quickly, and hang such consequences as those that followed, unbeknownst to her. Why is she surprised to find that she can betray someone unknowingly? Or that her own treachery is not damned, but hers is, who did not betray them, after all?
They fed the dementors at dawn, as though delicate shades on the canvas would bleed some colour away from the picture of something this close to cannibalism. They offered those involved in the capture an Order of Merlin, third class.
"The apprehension of every rebel strengthens the foundation of our societal structure. We are building a new civilisation over the scorched relics of the old."
"Having levelled my palace," she said, "don't erect a hovel and complacently admire your own charity in giving me that for a home."
"Funny. Isn't that what she said to you, once?"
-fin-
Author: hibernater
Fandom: Harry Potter
Rating: G
Warnings: Character death
Prompt: #3 Having levelled my palace, don't erect a hovel and complacently admire your own charity in giving me that for a home - Emily Bronte
Summary: Victory in war is never what it was meant to be, and the dawn is no guarantee of a new day. Much love to starrysilver for the wonderful beta. All remaining errors are my own.
Borealis
Human minds are fickle, cocksure things. They make assumptions, they categorise, and they fill in the blanks complacently from memory. A Polyjuiced witch's skin does what Tonks's skin could do naturally: hypnotise minds into believing an untruth. Potter had had his loyalists, bound to him by honour and inclination, and by love for him; Lord Voldemort had had his army powered by fear and greed, and something that had once been devotion. In the end, it was always going to be about betrayal.
"Why did you do it?"
"Andromeda once told me that who we are is our choice to make, and the price is our own to pay."
"One choice does not make you who you are. It simply makes you a traitor."
"Careful. A traitor is someone who has betrayed you. I am not betraying you, after all."
"Whatever. Apparate to the east gate. Someone will be waiting for you."
She had been used to performing one's duty unquestioningly, unthanked. That her captors bothered to be kind surprised her, until she remembered that she had family on this side of the war as well, if she only cared to acknowledge them. If only she cared to masquerade as one of them.
Neither Narcissa nor Nymphadora had ever seen the other till they found themselves allies in war, and yet on opposite sides of a barred prison gate. They say that superstition is as imperative an element of old blood as salt. Guest right, blood entitlement, woman's privilege, magical terms of agreement, life debt- no Black could feign imperviousness to the implications of what was due a witch.
"You are well? You have been cared for?"
"Please do not pretend to care. Insincerity is most unbecoming a Black."
"Lucky, then, isn't it, that I am not one?"
"Yes, for the Blacks. You have always been strikingly unoriginal."
"Most of us are, as ourselves. Their rules are not mine, I do not care for a lifeless legacy."
She came again, some two weeks after the first visit. Perhaps she thought to ease her conscience. Perhaps it was simply morbid curiosity. Her steps were unsure on the smooth stone, her very breaths hesitant of disturbing the cold sea air. The dementor that led her in came too close, but then any distance from a dementor was too close, in Azkaban. She'd often wondered why they bothered with robes; no cloak could mask their intent.
It seemed that neither figurative prisons nor literal ones suited the skin of Black women- the only thing they had in common apart from the long lost name. There were mottled purple circles around Tonks's eyes, and Narcissa looked like there was paper stretched over her bones.
"Why am I still here? Why am I a prisoner? It was my owl that won you this war, my owl that . . . You had my family hostage. Have they been freed?"
"They were not hostages-"
"Are they free?"
" . . . No. You are all to be . . . monitored till the last of the trouble is dealt with. Till then you are still . . . dubitable."
Her prisoner laughed, a low, bitter sound redolent of a seductive insanity. "Are you afraid of me?"
They kept their word, in a manner of speaking, and sent her home. Lightning had split open the apple tree, and there was a new graveyard in the garden. Only two of the graves were marked. The walls of her home were crumbling under the weight of so much broken magic, or so the pseudo-official they had sent with her said. The dead were the dead, it was no use risking herself (and him) to mourn what they had brought upon themselves, by getting involved. Something shivered inside her, her vision dimmed, then cleared, bright and brittle. She walked out, and let the shell collapse upon itself.
The next time Narcissa and Tonks met, another empire had scattered, or nearly so. The Resistance raged across England, cheered on by the same populace that had welcomed the previous Minister after Harry and Voldemort died, leaving chaos behind them. The dying government could do no more or less than sentence suspected anarchists to the Kiss. They dragged out the ones they said were hiding amidst respectable folk by night, to hide the unpleasantness of it all.
"You ought to be careful. They do not trust you, and you are too vocal in your dissention of the government."
"There is a peculiar grace to being invisible in plain sight."
"That kind of invisibility . . . it seemed a great gift to me as well, once. But . . . it is a dubious one, at best."
"You have a great many ignorant opinions, don't you? What do you know of always, always being visible?"
"Invisibility does not save you from that. These magical disguises of ours . . . it isn't that humans can't see through them, you know. It's that they won't."
"Fascinating. But who said my disguise was magical?"
"I know this: it will betray you."
She knows treachery is war's greatest tool, the final card played by those with nothing to lose, but she was not stealthy in coming. Her idea of subterfuge had been to apparate quickly, and hang such consequences as those that followed, unbeknownst to her. Why is she surprised to find that she can betray someone unknowingly? Or that her own treachery is not damned, but hers is, who did not betray them, after all?
They fed the dementors at dawn, as though delicate shades on the canvas would bleed some colour away from the picture of something this close to cannibalism. They offered those involved in the capture an Order of Merlin, third class.
"The apprehension of every rebel strengthens the foundation of our societal structure. We are building a new civilisation over the scorched relics of the old."
"Having levelled my palace," she said, "don't erect a hovel and complacently admire your own charity in giving me that for a home."
"Funny. Isn't that what she said to you, once?"
-fin-