fic: harry potter and star trek xi
I dusted off my fic-writing skills and started the new year with a few comment fics:
Title: The Special Ones
Rating/Warnings: PG
Length: 1,032 words
Summary: written for the comment_fic 'everybody switch' prompt Hermione Granger is the Girl Who Lived and Harry Potter is the brainiac.
The Special Ones
Hermione glares at the large book open on the table in front of her and then leans back, crossing her arms and shaking her hair out. Apparently it’s not enough that a girl who hadn’t even known that witches were real until Professor McGonagall showed up at her Aunt’s house and turned into a cat is supposed to be the Girl Who Lived. Now she also has to compete in some stupid school tournament and it’s adding insult to injury that any books that might help are all bloody huge.
She slumps down in her chair, thoroughly frustrated.
“No good?” says Harry leaning forward across the table and glancing at the text upside down. “Oh. Well, if carnivorous plants were an issue…”
“Dragon,” says Hermione.
“Right. Okay, so no good then.”
He closes the book and adds it to their pile of discards on the left before lifting yet another Huge Book Of Doom off the larger pile on the right and placing it in front of her with a helpful smile.
“Dragon,” repeats Hermione. “I have to face a dragon! How the hell am I supposed to do that?”
The smile dribbles off Harry’s face and he pushes the bridge of his glasses up his nose, a familiar gesture of awkwardness.
“You could make it fall asleep, or transfigure it, or… Well, no, spelling something innately magical and that large is a bit beyond fourth year,” he mumbles, meaning it’s not beyond him but almost certainly beyond her. “Um, you could transfigure something else to distract it, or fly around it, or, um…”
“Throw rocks at it?” says Hermione sarcastically. “Which would be more successful than me attempting to fly at least. Me and brooms do not get along, remember, Mr Quidditch Player.”
“Sorry,” he says, ducking his head and fixing his gaze on his own library book. “I’m just trying to help.”
“I know,” says Hermione. “It’s just stupid. All of this and expecting me to do anything about it; it’s all just stupid. I’m not a school champion. I’m not anything special!”
“Really?” Harry peers across at her over the top of his glasses, which reminds her a bit of Dumbledore. “The Philosopher’s Stone and Quirrell. The Chamber of Secrets with Tom Riddle and the basilisk. Facing down Dementors. All the things that you’ve done, you -”
“Had help! Or got lucky!” She tosses her hair again and says cruelly, “Ron gets it. He thinks that I put my name in the goblet for fame and fortune, to make it about me winning for once.”
That’s why Ron isn’t friends with her anymore and Harry just trying to help her is why he isn’t friends with Harry either.
“I think for Ron it’s more about it being about you again,” says Harry quietly. “He thinks you’re brilliant as well you know, not just me, and you are. Bloody brilliant he said.”
“No, you’re the brilliant one,” she says. “You could deal with a dragon, no problem.”
“Nah.” Harry smiles. “I wouldn’t deal with it. I’d summon a broom and work around it.”
“Exactly,” says Hermione. “You can fly and you’re really clever. You’re the one who’s brilliant at Defence Against the Dark Arts. You even come from a long line of brilliant witches and wizards. I’m nobody. I’m just another Muggleborn whose parents got killed by Voldemort.”
“Blood doesn’t matter,” says Harry, his face serious, pushing his book forward out of the way so that he can lean his arms on the table. “You-Know-Who killed my parents too, remember? Do you never think that sometimes I’d like to be The Boy Who Lived? Then maybe my parents dying would mean something because at least I would have stopped You-Know-Who.”
Hermione lowers her eyes and bites at her bottom lip.
“But I’m not,” says Harry. “You are. You’re the Girl Who Lived. You are special and you know why?”
She shakes her head and shifts her arms so that she’s not really crossing her arms any more so much as hugging herself.
Harry leans across the table and bends his head so that he can meet her eyes.
“Because every time you’ve gone up against him, against anything, it’s been to protect somebody else. Your parents were right to protect you, because you’re just like them. You’re always standing up for other people, even House Elves.”
That last bit forces a smile out of her.
“Your parents protected you as well.”
“I know,” he says, “and I keep trying to do my best at everything, to make them proud, you know? I want them protecting me to be worth it. Ron thinks that someone would put their name in the Goblet for fame and fortune because that’s what he wants,” Harry continues. “I thought that being the Boy Who Lived would be about making me surviving being worth something. You, though, you never make anything about yourself, whatever Ron says.”
“That’s because I’m nothing special,” says Hermione.
“No, that’s why you’re special.” Harry pushes his glasses up his nose again. “It’s why you’re frustrated about this tournament too, by the way, because it’s just a game. You’ve never complained about having to do anything dangerous when it meant helping someone, but facing a dragon just for some competition?”
“Right, it’s stupid,” says Hermione and she sighs.
“Right. For you standing up for people and looking after them is serious business and pretty much everything else isn’t.” Harry beams at her. “You’re brilliant, you are.”
“Oh, leave me alone,” she says, her cheeks burning with embarrassment.
“Nope,” says Harry cheerfully. “Not until we’ve solved this dragon problem. If you’re going to go around helping everyone else, someone has to help you.”
Hermione can’t think of a proper reply for that, so she just shakes her head at him, sits up properly in her chair, and turns to the first page of A History Of Dragons Volume XII: Death By Dragon.
“I should probably point out,” says Harry as he pulls his own book back towards himself, “that you should consider studying to be serious business as well. I’m just saying.”
“Dragon,” says Hermione and, for now, that’s the end of that.
Title: All The Gluing Back
Rating/Warnings: PG
Length: 826 words
Summary: written for the comment_fic prompt Pike/McCoy, waking up together is great
All The Gluing Back
Leonard’s brain stutters into consciousness. As a doctor he’s used to having to wake up instantly, but also to fall asleep instantly when there’s really no time for it but a few hours have to be had. It means that if he wakes up abruptly when there are no cues that suggests he actually needs to be awake then he starts falling back asleep again. (It’s been useful when he’s had roommates that disturbed him at stupid o’clock in the morning.)
Now though something feels wrong and it keeps pulling him out of sleep. Eventually his brain reluctantly allows him to open his eyes, but there’s nothing to see. It’s pitch black.
He presumes he’d only be able to see a ceiling anyway, since he’s lying on his back.
Leonard thinks about this for a moment before realising that he can’t be in his own bed then, because he never has the lights completely off. (Said disturbing roommates became even more disturbing when they tripped over things in the dark and after a while keeping a low light on became a habit.)
There’s a fragment of unintelligible mumbling and a warm sigh that he feels on his left cheek, moving his hair to tickle his ear. He thinks about those things too for a moment and then relaxes as the familiar weight of a heavy arm settles over his chest.
“Too dark t’be morning,” Chris says, even closer to his cheek than before.
Leonard wonders if that’s a cue to leave; the same cue his own brain has been picking up on maybe. He’s never fallen asleep in Chris’ bed before. He’s never stayed the night.
The arm across his chest moves upwards until the hand attached to it is tucked under Leonard’s right armpit and Leonard realises that not only has Chris let him fall asleep here, but now he’s snuggling.
He’ll never admit out loud to missing anything about his marriage except being able to live with his daughter, but sometimes not having someone he can just touch, without reason or obligation…
Tentatively he lifts his right arm and tucks it underneath Chris’, his fingers just brushing Chris’ body; two arms snug across his chest now.
Chris presses closer, the whole length of him warm against Leonard’s side, and he kisses the shell of Leonard’s ear. It’s not a ‘let’s have sex’ kiss or a ‘that was nice, now get lost’ kiss. It’s more of a sleepy ‘I want to kiss this ear, just because, and I can’ kiss.
Leonard smiles in the dark, not because he has any kind of problem with the other two types of kiss, but because that third kind is new and he didn’t know he wanted that as well until just now.
“I’m sure that was something to do with Engineering fixing the Enterprise and not something else breaking,” says Nurse Chapel in a voice that manages to be reassuring whilst having an edge of or else.
It jolts him into full consciousness and he becomes aware of various thuds, clatters, and soft curses around the room.
“I can’t get the lights back on,” says another voice, familiar and somewhere to the right. “Or the emergency lights.”
Chris’ breaths come slightly faster against Leonard’s cheek. Leonard sits up, slowly as the movement makes him nauseous and his head throb, grabbing hold of the hand that was under his armpit and squeezing gently.
Enterprise. Sneaking Jim on board. Explosions. Vulcan. Hobgoblin. Goddamn time travelling Romulans. More explosions.
“Everyone stop moving!” he orders and the medical bay falls quiet.
Leonard closes his eyes against the dark and envisions where everything should be, where everything was before, and hopes that he’s right.
“Chapel, you sound nearest the door. Check that the first row of bio beds are upright and still have their occupants. Parker, was that you crashing around by the opposite wall?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Right, check the bio beds along there. The pair of you check each row until you meet in the middle or reach the opposite wall. Everyone else move to the nearest wall for now, if you can. Crawl, but be careful where you put your hands. Call out if you’re awake, on the floor, and can’t move.”
“Crawl?” Chris mutters.
“Not as far to fall if whatever happens happens again and means no one gets stood on.”
Chris tugs his hand away and says, even quieter, “I can’t.”
“I know.” Leonard feels around and reclaims Chris’ hand. “I’ll stay here with you.”
“Bad form, not following your own orders,” says Chris and Leonard could swear that he hears him smirking. He knows what Chris sounds like when he’s smirking, damn it, he doesn’t need to see.
“My first time waking up next to you,” he replies. “I’m prolonging the experience.”
He could swear that Chris says, “I was rather enjoying it myself,” but thinking about that, let alone doing anything about it, will have to wait.
Title: The Special Ones
Rating/Warnings: PG
Length: 1,032 words
Summary: written for the comment_fic 'everybody switch' prompt Hermione Granger is the Girl Who Lived and Harry Potter is the brainiac.
The Special Ones
Hermione glares at the large book open on the table in front of her and then leans back, crossing her arms and shaking her hair out. Apparently it’s not enough that a girl who hadn’t even known that witches were real until Professor McGonagall showed up at her Aunt’s house and turned into a cat is supposed to be the Girl Who Lived. Now she also has to compete in some stupid school tournament and it’s adding insult to injury that any books that might help are all bloody huge.
She slumps down in her chair, thoroughly frustrated.
“No good?” says Harry leaning forward across the table and glancing at the text upside down. “Oh. Well, if carnivorous plants were an issue…”
“Dragon,” says Hermione.
“Right. Okay, so no good then.”
He closes the book and adds it to their pile of discards on the left before lifting yet another Huge Book Of Doom off the larger pile on the right and placing it in front of her with a helpful smile.
“Dragon,” repeats Hermione. “I have to face a dragon! How the hell am I supposed to do that?”
The smile dribbles off Harry’s face and he pushes the bridge of his glasses up his nose, a familiar gesture of awkwardness.
“You could make it fall asleep, or transfigure it, or… Well, no, spelling something innately magical and that large is a bit beyond fourth year,” he mumbles, meaning it’s not beyond him but almost certainly beyond her. “Um, you could transfigure something else to distract it, or fly around it, or, um…”
“Throw rocks at it?” says Hermione sarcastically. “Which would be more successful than me attempting to fly at least. Me and brooms do not get along, remember, Mr Quidditch Player.”
“Sorry,” he says, ducking his head and fixing his gaze on his own library book. “I’m just trying to help.”
“I know,” says Hermione. “It’s just stupid. All of this and expecting me to do anything about it; it’s all just stupid. I’m not a school champion. I’m not anything special!”
“Really?” Harry peers across at her over the top of his glasses, which reminds her a bit of Dumbledore. “The Philosopher’s Stone and Quirrell. The Chamber of Secrets with Tom Riddle and the basilisk. Facing down Dementors. All the things that you’ve done, you -”
“Had help! Or got lucky!” She tosses her hair again and says cruelly, “Ron gets it. He thinks that I put my name in the goblet for fame and fortune, to make it about me winning for once.”
That’s why Ron isn’t friends with her anymore and Harry just trying to help her is why he isn’t friends with Harry either.
“I think for Ron it’s more about it being about you again,” says Harry quietly. “He thinks you’re brilliant as well you know, not just me, and you are. Bloody brilliant he said.”
“No, you’re the brilliant one,” she says. “You could deal with a dragon, no problem.”
“Nah.” Harry smiles. “I wouldn’t deal with it. I’d summon a broom and work around it.”
“Exactly,” says Hermione. “You can fly and you’re really clever. You’re the one who’s brilliant at Defence Against the Dark Arts. You even come from a long line of brilliant witches and wizards. I’m nobody. I’m just another Muggleborn whose parents got killed by Voldemort.”
“Blood doesn’t matter,” says Harry, his face serious, pushing his book forward out of the way so that he can lean his arms on the table. “You-Know-Who killed my parents too, remember? Do you never think that sometimes I’d like to be The Boy Who Lived? Then maybe my parents dying would mean something because at least I would have stopped You-Know-Who.”
Hermione lowers her eyes and bites at her bottom lip.
“But I’m not,” says Harry. “You are. You’re the Girl Who Lived. You are special and you know why?”
She shakes her head and shifts her arms so that she’s not really crossing her arms any more so much as hugging herself.
Harry leans across the table and bends his head so that he can meet her eyes.
“Because every time you’ve gone up against him, against anything, it’s been to protect somebody else. Your parents were right to protect you, because you’re just like them. You’re always standing up for other people, even House Elves.”
That last bit forces a smile out of her.
“Your parents protected you as well.”
“I know,” he says, “and I keep trying to do my best at everything, to make them proud, you know? I want them protecting me to be worth it. Ron thinks that someone would put their name in the Goblet for fame and fortune because that’s what he wants,” Harry continues. “I thought that being the Boy Who Lived would be about making me surviving being worth something. You, though, you never make anything about yourself, whatever Ron says.”
“That’s because I’m nothing special,” says Hermione.
“No, that’s why you’re special.” Harry pushes his glasses up his nose again. “It’s why you’re frustrated about this tournament too, by the way, because it’s just a game. You’ve never complained about having to do anything dangerous when it meant helping someone, but facing a dragon just for some competition?”
“Right, it’s stupid,” says Hermione and she sighs.
“Right. For you standing up for people and looking after them is serious business and pretty much everything else isn’t.” Harry beams at her. “You’re brilliant, you are.”
“Oh, leave me alone,” she says, her cheeks burning with embarrassment.
“Nope,” says Harry cheerfully. “Not until we’ve solved this dragon problem. If you’re going to go around helping everyone else, someone has to help you.”
Hermione can’t think of a proper reply for that, so she just shakes her head at him, sits up properly in her chair, and turns to the first page of A History Of Dragons Volume XII: Death By Dragon.
“I should probably point out,” says Harry as he pulls his own book back towards himself, “that you should consider studying to be serious business as well. I’m just saying.”
“Dragon,” says Hermione and, for now, that’s the end of that.
Title: All The Gluing Back
Rating/Warnings: PG
Length: 826 words
Summary: written for the comment_fic prompt Pike/McCoy, waking up together is great
All The Gluing Back
Leonard’s brain stutters into consciousness. As a doctor he’s used to having to wake up instantly, but also to fall asleep instantly when there’s really no time for it but a few hours have to be had. It means that if he wakes up abruptly when there are no cues that suggests he actually needs to be awake then he starts falling back asleep again. (It’s been useful when he’s had roommates that disturbed him at stupid o’clock in the morning.)
Now though something feels wrong and it keeps pulling him out of sleep. Eventually his brain reluctantly allows him to open his eyes, but there’s nothing to see. It’s pitch black.
He presumes he’d only be able to see a ceiling anyway, since he’s lying on his back.
Leonard thinks about this for a moment before realising that he can’t be in his own bed then, because he never has the lights completely off. (Said disturbing roommates became even more disturbing when they tripped over things in the dark and after a while keeping a low light on became a habit.)
There’s a fragment of unintelligible mumbling and a warm sigh that he feels on his left cheek, moving his hair to tickle his ear. He thinks about those things too for a moment and then relaxes as the familiar weight of a heavy arm settles over his chest.
“Too dark t’be morning,” Chris says, even closer to his cheek than before.
Leonard wonders if that’s a cue to leave; the same cue his own brain has been picking up on maybe. He’s never fallen asleep in Chris’ bed before. He’s never stayed the night.
The arm across his chest moves upwards until the hand attached to it is tucked under Leonard’s right armpit and Leonard realises that not only has Chris let him fall asleep here, but now he’s snuggling.
He’ll never admit out loud to missing anything about his marriage except being able to live with his daughter, but sometimes not having someone he can just touch, without reason or obligation…
Tentatively he lifts his right arm and tucks it underneath Chris’, his fingers just brushing Chris’ body; two arms snug across his chest now.
Chris presses closer, the whole length of him warm against Leonard’s side, and he kisses the shell of Leonard’s ear. It’s not a ‘let’s have sex’ kiss or a ‘that was nice, now get lost’ kiss. It’s more of a sleepy ‘I want to kiss this ear, just because, and I can’ kiss.
Leonard smiles in the dark, not because he has any kind of problem with the other two types of kiss, but because that third kind is new and he didn’t know he wanted that as well until just now.
“I’m sure that was something to do with Engineering fixing the Enterprise and not something else breaking,” says Nurse Chapel in a voice that manages to be reassuring whilst having an edge of or else.
It jolts him into full consciousness and he becomes aware of various thuds, clatters, and soft curses around the room.
“I can’t get the lights back on,” says another voice, familiar and somewhere to the right. “Or the emergency lights.”
Chris’ breaths come slightly faster against Leonard’s cheek. Leonard sits up, slowly as the movement makes him nauseous and his head throb, grabbing hold of the hand that was under his armpit and squeezing gently.
Enterprise. Sneaking Jim on board. Explosions. Vulcan. Hobgoblin. Goddamn time travelling Romulans. More explosions.
“Everyone stop moving!” he orders and the medical bay falls quiet.
Leonard closes his eyes against the dark and envisions where everything should be, where everything was before, and hopes that he’s right.
“Chapel, you sound nearest the door. Check that the first row of bio beds are upright and still have their occupants. Parker, was that you crashing around by the opposite wall?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Right, check the bio beds along there. The pair of you check each row until you meet in the middle or reach the opposite wall. Everyone else move to the nearest wall for now, if you can. Crawl, but be careful where you put your hands. Call out if you’re awake, on the floor, and can’t move.”
“Crawl?” Chris mutters.
“Not as far to fall if whatever happens happens again and means no one gets stood on.”
Chris tugs his hand away and says, even quieter, “I can’t.”
“I know.” Leonard feels around and reclaims Chris’ hand. “I’ll stay here with you.”
“Bad form, not following your own orders,” says Chris and Leonard could swear that he hears him smirking. He knows what Chris sounds like when he’s smirking, damn it, he doesn’t need to see.
“My first time waking up next to you,” he replies. “I’m prolonging the experience.”
He could swear that Chris says, “I was rather enjoying it myself,” but thinking about that, let alone doing anything about it, will have to wait.