Fic: Geometry
Title: Geometry
Summary: Duty, magic, and love can indeed intersect to form madness, if united in a state of chaos. Or circles and triangles.
Warnings: Implication of possible future violence. Religion. Het going on elsewhere. Un-beta’d. Pretentious. Weird.
Rating: R (for themes, nothing scary/kinky/ew)
Word Count: 1,500
Disclaimer: I don’t own these characters and make no money from this: if you recognize it, JK Rowling thought it up and owns it.
It should have been noisy, by rights. The Briarley bloodline had died out-on whose side the last heir had been fighting Harry did not know-and this was the end.
They had come to deal with shuddering wards which had been causing billowing waves of wild magic which had been deconstructing the nearest Muggle village.
They had found that no books, no spells, no expertise could stop it.
As the would-be Aurors watched, Briarley Manor went black, the stones vanishing into a dark mist that seemed, for an instant, to be spreading out impossibly fast... but which proved to be mostly stationary, as the land around the Manor was suddenly drug into the darkness.
Muggle fields followed the magical earth, like water closing in after a ship, but the Muggle land was untouched.
A quick search found a smooth black ball in what had once been the center of the Briarley holdings. It was too heavy to lift, and as they watched, it slowly sank into the Muggle loam and was lost to sight.
*
Chaos did not have a neat end-point. Voldemort had unleashed it, and mere victory could not contain it.
Briarley Manor went quietly. Too many old houses, realizing there were no living heirs to control their innate magic, did not.
Harry had been there when a knob of seemingly abandoned stones-ancestral home of the Diogenes family, long since fallen into destitution, the last heir crushed beneath rubble in Diagon Alley-brought down a passenger jet the way he could bring down a mosquito.
He had stood in the midst of the carnage, the blood and the fire and the bodies which resembled nothing so much as dolls, mercilessly destroyed by cruel children.
*
Harry had attended too many funerals, as the wounded succumbed to their injuries, as bodies were pulled from the wreckage and slowly identified.
He had also attended too many weddings driven by a sort of madness. It wasn’t even a need to have someone to cling to in the dark, or to hear children’s laughter.
They were almost gone.
It was a whisper over tea when the women, or the men, had left the room. It was graffiti on rubble, as if it was too cruel to write such words on the walls which remained standing. It was the ever-present force, driving them all to exist in the face of all of this.
They were almost gone.
It wasn’t only the purebloods-the worst were the Muggle-borns, those who had been so entranced with this new world they’d stumbled into, who had seen the glory that was magic at war.
The same magic that had grown more potent and unpredictable. It was as if the great houses were somehow moorings, holding magic itself steady for century upon century, and now that they were buckling without heirs to maintain them, the magic was beginning to roll wildly in unknown waves, threatening everything.
To be a wizard was to stand at the edge of a sea cliff, facing the storm.
It exhilarated and terrified-Harry knew the seduction of magic, and of that edge, but he was used to edges and storms and could refuse seduction.
But the others born in the Muggle world... they were wizarding folk, and they would not go back. They would spit in the wind and dance on the edge of the world, swathing themselves in broken magic in defiance.
So they married-it was important to indulge the rituals, as if by saying the words in public they could compel not merely humans but the universe itself to respect their existence and what they imagined was their power.
*
Harry was tired.
The drumbeat of the Circle followed him. The Circle had at first been a small group of what respected elders they had left, people who would take it turn and turn about to officiate at the weddings and funerals. But their advice had been sought, naturally enough, and heeded by people who would walk into hell if only they had some clear order.
Their ranks had swollen and a philosophy had emerged. Harry would have called it a religion, if he’d dared, but Hermione would have tutted.
Hermione was a First Philosopher in the Circle, and Ron a WatchWarden. He saw to it that everyone in their village attended Circle, or had a very good excuse for the absence. Hermione cared for those who did not attend, retelling this week’s sermon to those bedridden with injuries or Firewhiskey.
Harry attended Circle. It was simpler.
*
“It wasn’t like this, before,” Draco drawled, voice just slightly breaking.
“I know,” Harry said. He did know-Draco had told him.
Harry lounged in a delicate chair, still slightly charred from Voldemort’s stay in the Manor. He stared at Draco’s bare feet.
They were long feet, with extraordinarily long, thin toes. They were paler even than Draco’s face.
That Draco walked barefoot over stones that had witnessed such evil, and over ancient, thick rugs on which evil had been served tea, was surely an indication of something, though Harry was hard-pressed to say what.
They felt it alike, the pressure. They had a duty to their kind, to wed, to reproduce, to be as wizardly as they could be. Even Muggle-borns who’d never owned a set of dress-robes in their lives went around in outfits that would have made Dumbledore wince with second-hand embarrassment.
So Draco Malfoy, stalking his ancestral home barefoot, in a suit indistinguishable from those of wealthy Muggle dilettantes, was enough to make Harry feel like he should think.
Why was he here-in his denims, and his worn trainers, and a shirt that would have slipped off over his shoulders if he didn’t button the collar and take care? Why was he here with Draco? Why was he here in Malfoy Manor?
Because he wanted to be, was the only answer he had. There were others he could give to Ron and Hermione, if they discovered his secret visits. He was trying to bring Malfoy to the Circle-wasn’t the greatest commandment to love your enemy as yourself? Wasn’t joining a Circle the greatest act of love?
“That Greengrass girl was here yesterday, in my garden,” Draco announced a trifle too loudly. The walls rang with his voice.
“It’s our duty,” Harry began, but let the words falter. It wasn’t their duty-duty to whom? To what? What about their duty to themselves, to try to be happy? There was more to life than magic, than early marriages to near-strangers. All the girls he knew were already married, and the many who kept sending him letters he did not want to know. He didn’t want a girl, anyway. He hadn’t fought Voldemort to live a life of quiet desperation and forced laughter.
Draco calmly picked up a vase and threw it at the wall. It shattered. An elf would be by to fix it shortly, as Harry knew from experience.
“I’ve had it with duty,” Draco said in an eerily calm tone. “All my life, from my parents, from-from everyone-and now some pack of self-righteous twits dare dictate my ‘duty’? It wasn’t like this before! There’s no joy to this! That’s what magic is supposed to be! And family-Merlin, I want to inscribe a triangle on their circle, and let the edges cut them to bits!”
Harry wanted to nestle among them, gaining contacts and information, then rise up against them, tearing the circle into tiny shreds of broken fools.
The intensity of the quietly controlled rage in Harry gave him pause sometimes. It wasn’t, as Hermione would say, ‘healthy’. It indicated that he’d need one-to-one counseling with a First Philosopher, or perhaps someone even higher in the Circle.
It was why Harry tried not to think. Not thinking was why Harry was here.
In Voldemort’s last home.
With a man who knew more than anyone should about serving a Dark Lord. And potions. And who was quite likely to have some understanding of the relation between the old manor houses and the magic.
In a house full of magical weapons, and a library that clanged with chains, and a dungeon that could be put to use, not that Harry would... but it could...
Though it wouldn’t come to that.
It wouldn’t.
Draco’s wrist flashed as he reached for another vase-from his high color he was ready for a joyous night of shattering glass.
Harry caught the pallid white skin which overlay those sharp bones and dangerous muscle. Right arm. Wand arm. This was the hand that would have cast the Killing Curse on me.
A single tug brought Draco eagerly back to Harry’s embrace.
*
In the dark, when Draco was finally sated, Harry caught himself idly tracing triangles on that soft, pale skin.
Summary: Duty, magic, and love can indeed intersect to form madness, if united in a state of chaos. Or circles and triangles.
Warnings: Implication of possible future violence. Religion. Het going on elsewhere. Un-beta’d. Pretentious. Weird.
Rating: R (for themes, nothing scary/kinky/ew)
Word Count: 1,500
Disclaimer: I don’t own these characters and make no money from this: if you recognize it, JK Rowling thought it up and owns it.
It should have been noisy, by rights. The Briarley bloodline had died out-on whose side the last heir had been fighting Harry did not know-and this was the end.
They had come to deal with shuddering wards which had been causing billowing waves of wild magic which had been deconstructing the nearest Muggle village.
They had found that no books, no spells, no expertise could stop it.
As the would-be Aurors watched, Briarley Manor went black, the stones vanishing into a dark mist that seemed, for an instant, to be spreading out impossibly fast... but which proved to be mostly stationary, as the land around the Manor was suddenly drug into the darkness.
Muggle fields followed the magical earth, like water closing in after a ship, but the Muggle land was untouched.
A quick search found a smooth black ball in what had once been the center of the Briarley holdings. It was too heavy to lift, and as they watched, it slowly sank into the Muggle loam and was lost to sight.
*
Chaos did not have a neat end-point. Voldemort had unleashed it, and mere victory could not contain it.
Briarley Manor went quietly. Too many old houses, realizing there were no living heirs to control their innate magic, did not.
Harry had been there when a knob of seemingly abandoned stones-ancestral home of the Diogenes family, long since fallen into destitution, the last heir crushed beneath rubble in Diagon Alley-brought down a passenger jet the way he could bring down a mosquito.
He had stood in the midst of the carnage, the blood and the fire and the bodies which resembled nothing so much as dolls, mercilessly destroyed by cruel children.
*
Harry had attended too many funerals, as the wounded succumbed to their injuries, as bodies were pulled from the wreckage and slowly identified.
He had also attended too many weddings driven by a sort of madness. It wasn’t even a need to have someone to cling to in the dark, or to hear children’s laughter.
They were almost gone.
It was a whisper over tea when the women, or the men, had left the room. It was graffiti on rubble, as if it was too cruel to write such words on the walls which remained standing. It was the ever-present force, driving them all to exist in the face of all of this.
They were almost gone.
It wasn’t only the purebloods-the worst were the Muggle-borns, those who had been so entranced with this new world they’d stumbled into, who had seen the glory that was magic at war.
The same magic that had grown more potent and unpredictable. It was as if the great houses were somehow moorings, holding magic itself steady for century upon century, and now that they were buckling without heirs to maintain them, the magic was beginning to roll wildly in unknown waves, threatening everything.
To be a wizard was to stand at the edge of a sea cliff, facing the storm.
It exhilarated and terrified-Harry knew the seduction of magic, and of that edge, but he was used to edges and storms and could refuse seduction.
But the others born in the Muggle world... they were wizarding folk, and they would not go back. They would spit in the wind and dance on the edge of the world, swathing themselves in broken magic in defiance.
So they married-it was important to indulge the rituals, as if by saying the words in public they could compel not merely humans but the universe itself to respect their existence and what they imagined was their power.
*
Harry was tired.
The drumbeat of the Circle followed him. The Circle had at first been a small group of what respected elders they had left, people who would take it turn and turn about to officiate at the weddings and funerals. But their advice had been sought, naturally enough, and heeded by people who would walk into hell if only they had some clear order.
Their ranks had swollen and a philosophy had emerged. Harry would have called it a religion, if he’d dared, but Hermione would have tutted.
Hermione was a First Philosopher in the Circle, and Ron a WatchWarden. He saw to it that everyone in their village attended Circle, or had a very good excuse for the absence. Hermione cared for those who did not attend, retelling this week’s sermon to those bedridden with injuries or Firewhiskey.
Harry attended Circle. It was simpler.
*
“It wasn’t like this, before,” Draco drawled, voice just slightly breaking.
“I know,” Harry said. He did know-Draco had told him.
Harry lounged in a delicate chair, still slightly charred from Voldemort’s stay in the Manor. He stared at Draco’s bare feet.
They were long feet, with extraordinarily long, thin toes. They were paler even than Draco’s face.
That Draco walked barefoot over stones that had witnessed such evil, and over ancient, thick rugs on which evil had been served tea, was surely an indication of something, though Harry was hard-pressed to say what.
They felt it alike, the pressure. They had a duty to their kind, to wed, to reproduce, to be as wizardly as they could be. Even Muggle-borns who’d never owned a set of dress-robes in their lives went around in outfits that would have made Dumbledore wince with second-hand embarrassment.
So Draco Malfoy, stalking his ancestral home barefoot, in a suit indistinguishable from those of wealthy Muggle dilettantes, was enough to make Harry feel like he should think.
Why was he here-in his denims, and his worn trainers, and a shirt that would have slipped off over his shoulders if he didn’t button the collar and take care? Why was he here with Draco? Why was he here in Malfoy Manor?
Because he wanted to be, was the only answer he had. There were others he could give to Ron and Hermione, if they discovered his secret visits. He was trying to bring Malfoy to the Circle-wasn’t the greatest commandment to love your enemy as yourself? Wasn’t joining a Circle the greatest act of love?
“That Greengrass girl was here yesterday, in my garden,” Draco announced a trifle too loudly. The walls rang with his voice.
“It’s our duty,” Harry began, but let the words falter. It wasn’t their duty-duty to whom? To what? What about their duty to themselves, to try to be happy? There was more to life than magic, than early marriages to near-strangers. All the girls he knew were already married, and the many who kept sending him letters he did not want to know. He didn’t want a girl, anyway. He hadn’t fought Voldemort to live a life of quiet desperation and forced laughter.
Draco calmly picked up a vase and threw it at the wall. It shattered. An elf would be by to fix it shortly, as Harry knew from experience.
“I’ve had it with duty,” Draco said in an eerily calm tone. “All my life, from my parents, from-from everyone-and now some pack of self-righteous twits dare dictate my ‘duty’? It wasn’t like this before! There’s no joy to this! That’s what magic is supposed to be! And family-Merlin, I want to inscribe a triangle on their circle, and let the edges cut them to bits!”
Harry wanted to nestle among them, gaining contacts and information, then rise up against them, tearing the circle into tiny shreds of broken fools.
The intensity of the quietly controlled rage in Harry gave him pause sometimes. It wasn’t, as Hermione would say, ‘healthy’. It indicated that he’d need one-to-one counseling with a First Philosopher, or perhaps someone even higher in the Circle.
It was why Harry tried not to think. Not thinking was why Harry was here.
In Voldemort’s last home.
With a man who knew more than anyone should about serving a Dark Lord. And potions. And who was quite likely to have some understanding of the relation between the old manor houses and the magic.
In a house full of magical weapons, and a library that clanged with chains, and a dungeon that could be put to use, not that Harry would... but it could...
Though it wouldn’t come to that.
It wouldn’t.
Draco’s wrist flashed as he reached for another vase-from his high color he was ready for a joyous night of shattering glass.
Harry caught the pallid white skin which overlay those sharp bones and dangerous muscle. Right arm. Wand arm. This was the hand that would have cast the Killing Curse on me.
A single tug brought Draco eagerly back to Harry’s embrace.
*
In the dark, when Draco was finally sated, Harry caught himself idly tracing triangles on that soft, pale skin.