Fic dump (Animorphs, BtVS, Harry Potter, Doctor Who)
Fandom: Animorphs
Characters: David/Marco/Rachel
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: Animorphs, David/Marco/Rachel, Easy Virtue
Sort of a continuation of natural_blue_26's D/M/R fic here.
"So whaddya say, Rach?" Somehow they've ended up alone in the barn together again, Marco on a haybale and David perched on edge of the loft where he's been sleeping and Rachel standing there as David won't shut up and Marco carefully doesn't say a word. "Up for a replay? Look, that's the haybale where you--"
"God, David," she says, before he can release the past into the air like a foul cloud. "Do you ever shut up?"
"How 'bout you?" He nudges Marco's shoulder with his toes. "You sure seemed to enjoy yourself last week."
"I prefer one-night stands, thanks," Marco says, expression sour. He shifts out of range of David's boots.
Cassie comes back, then, oblivious to the tension in the air so thick you could cut it with a knife. Then the others, and the meeting starts as usual, except David hops down from the loft and sidles over to Rachel. The conversation drowns out his words to everyone but her: "We'll make an unhonest woman of you yet."
*
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Characters: Buffy, Faith
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: BtVS, Buffy +/ Faith, patching each other up
Totally not inspired by that Supernatural scene from the first Anna episode where Sam and Dean patch themselves up after getting their asses handed to them by Alastair.
"I got it, B." She reached for the needle, but Buffy held it out of her grasp.
"Nuh uh. The faster you get stitched up the faster you can reset my shoulder."
"I've been stitching up my own cuts for years, little sister. I can handle it."
Ignoring her, Buffy peeled the other slayer's bloody shirtsleeve back and set to work, her own left arm held close to her side. She sewed up the wound with neat, even stitches and then swabbed the cut with rubbing alcohol from the bathroom. Faith grimaced at the sting, but looked vaguely impressed.
"Where'd you learn to sew up a person like that, B?"
"Giles. Apparently a requirement for being a stuffy British nerd is knowing how to do stitches. Now me."
She turned to one side, allowing Faith access to her dislocated shoulder.
"Ready, B? On three. One--" She wrenched the shoulder back into place with a pop.
"Augh," Buffy complained, shaking her arm. "That hurts."
"'S why it's called an ouchie, B. Come on, let's get cleaned up."
*
Fandom: Animorphs
Characters: Elfangor, Loren, wee!Ax
Rating: PG
Prompt: Animorphs, Elfangor, quasi-insignificant Earth (or human) things he misses after he's no longer there
First he finds himself missing his bed, soft and warm. His Andalite body doesn't need the comfort, but he has trouble sleeping for months. Everyone else puts it down to unknown trauma, the jumpiness of a returning warrior. (The humans call it PTSD and look at its sufferers with sympathy. The Andalites call it weakness and hide it away.)
Next he misses the house. He hadn't liked it at first, small and enclosed, with no view of the sky. They put in a skylight and painted the walls the color of his father's fur, and some nights they lay beneath the glass ceiling on cushions and blankets and watched the stars, remembering all the things that had happened there. Now, back on the homeworld with its open spaces and minimal shelters, he feels open and exposed. He never thought he'd miss being shut in.
The city, with its bustle and movement and flashing lights. Taste, food that isn't crushed grass, like French fries and Dr. Pepper. Deep, single shadows cast by the bright yellow sun. The television, blaring news and something Loren called scifi, which he liked, inaccuracies and all. The way Loren's hair caught the single sun's light, the way her teeth flashed when she opened her mouth to laugh. Open minds and spoken words, the challenge of moving on only two legs, the strong arms that rolled in their sockets. The white clouds against the blue sky above the misty waterfalls at Yosemite, and the large brown creatures, bulky and strong, that they'd seen there. The way humans labeled everything, with tiny letters and long words, as if a bag of snack food was anything more than that. The slender, too-few fingers that tangled in his hair, the feeling of a mouth on a mouth.
All of these except the last he describes, feeling as though he can never do them justice, to the tiny, slumbering form on the floor of the family scoop.
< You should have seen it, little brother, > he says wistfully, knowing that Aximili likely will never know these things. < The world is a wonder. > The young Andalite is asleep, and won't remember anything said when he wakes, but as Elfangor settles himself down to rest without a bed, Aximili dreams of blue skies.
*
Title: No Place Like Home
Fandom: Harry Potter/Doctor Who
Characters: Ginny, Eleven, brief mentions of Weasley & Co.
Rating: PG
Prompt: the doctor (preferably 11)/anyone; time and space, everything that ever happened or ever will, where do you want to start?
Ginny is seven when a blue box crashes in her yard.
The Burrow is always remarkably crowded during the summer, every square inch seeming to be filled with gangly redheaded boys who grow up and up and up, and always look farther away every time she sees them. She shouldn't feel this lonely in a house with this many people, but her brothers have only just started letting Ron stay and watch their Quidditch games. Fred and George call her names and pull her hair until she leaves, but she never cries.
The inside of the house is stifling, even with all the windows open, so she wanders around the yard and kicks up dust with her heels. There's a sudden breeze and she turns towards it, enjoying the relief from the heat, when a noise starts up, an odd noise that she doesn't recognize. It sounds a bit like one of the Muggle cars Dad brings home sometimes, only different.
That's when the blue box nearly lands on top of her, teetering indecisively on its edge for a few moments before toppling over onto its side. Ginny looks towards the house, but Mum must have missed the noise, or dismissed it as the twins exercising their "accidental" magic again.
The door of the box opens and a man stumbles out in a cloud of smoke. "Whew," he says to no one in particular. "Sudden gravitational shifts, there's a workout for you." His eyes land on Ginny and he smiles, but it takes him a moment, as if he's uncertain exactly how. "Hullo. Sorry, new face, new muscles. I have to relearn how to smile, how rubbish is that! Have you got any apples?"
-
When she writes to Tom, she pictures him with floppy hair and a raggedy shirt, standing in her yard with a blue box at his back. She tells him everything.
-
It's three weeks after the Battle when she sees the box (and the man) again.
She sits on the porch, a hand over her eyes to block out the sunset that turns the yard gold. She doesn't think she could have stayed inside one more moment without screaming. The house feels far more crowded than it ever did before, even though there's only four people living there at the moment: her, and Mum and Dad, and George. The empty space where another body should be seems to fill the whole house, most of the time.
A cold wind blows through the yard that makes her shiver, and then a noise that makes her lift the hand from her eyes. And there he is, the man still in his raggedy shirt and tie, the man that Mum and Percy always said she made up and the twins used to tease her about and Ron wanted to meet until he was ten and decided he didn't care about silly kids' stuff like that anymore.
He recognizes her, somehow, though it's been almost a decade since he last saw her. He comes over and touches the fading pink scar on her cheek, the only (physical) reminder of battle left, and she knows he knows what she's been through.
"Can you bring him back?" she says, because she hadn't thought about the man in years, not until there was a redheaded boy under a white sheet on the floor of the Great Hall, and now here he is.
"I'm sorry," he says, and she wonders what he's apologizing for: for being late, or the battle, or her brother.
"You never said," she says, moving to safer topics, "are you a wizard or a Muggle?"
He winks. "Neither. Do you still want to come along?"
She opens her mouth, then closes it. She looks at the door about to come off its hinges, at the well-worn heap of mismatched wellies near the door, and the gnomes that have been allowed to congregate in the garden for months now. She thinks about how it's hard to breathe inside the house, how Mum breaks down crying at the smallest things and Dad's stopped fiddling with Muggle devices and George's sentences sometimes trail off like he's waiting for someone to finish them. She thinks how good it might feel to leave it all behind.
She thinks, for one long moment, and then says, "No."
He looks surprised. Before he can say anything, she cuts in, "I have to help. There's so much to do. We have to rebuild."
He nods. "You've grown up." He says it like he didn't expect it, even though he should have after being gone so long.
She shrugs. "I had to."
"I know." He looks at her. "I could have you back in five minutes."
"Like you came back in five minutes?" She smiles wryly.
He laughs. "I suppose I deserved that." He stops laughing and looks at her with ancient eyes. "It does all get better, you know. Trust me."
She doesn't ask how he knows. "I do."
"Then I've done my job." He walks back to his box, but she stops him with a word: "Doctor."
He turns back towards her, eyebrows raised. She's only ever called him Raggedy Man. Suddenly, she finds herself at a loss for words.
"Come back in a few years," she blurts finally. "Maybe by then . . . I still want to see the universe."
His face cracks out in a huge grin of boyish delight, and she thinks it's no wonder he was disappointed that she'd grown. "Miss Weasley, I think you have yourself a deal." He steps into his box and is gone.
-
She's never told Harry about the Doctor. She was twelve before she was able to talk to him properly, and by then it all seemed like a childish game. The second time she keeps the secret because what he needs, now, isn't to try to believe just one more impossible thing on top of it all. (Magic, Voldemort, immortality, heroism. He's had enough, she thinks.)
-
Victoire is six months old and won't stop crying.
Ginny takes her into the frigid evening air, smiling at the grateful look from Fleur. She bounces the infant gently, the old porch creaking under her feet, and stares absently out across the darkened, snowy yard.
The whole family is packed into the Burrow for the holidays. Mum and Dad, of course; and Ginny and Harry; and Ron and Hermione; George and Angelina; Percy and Audrey, her belly swollen at five months; Charlie on leave from Romania and Bill and Fleur with Victoire, who hasn't stopped wailing since arriving at the Burrow this afternoon. Andromeda Tonks and little Teddy are arriving tomorrow, stitched seamlessly into the family over the last few years, and Ginny's had to temporarily displace the ghoul from the attic just to have enough space to put them all. She can't remember the last time the house was this crowded, but she can't say she minds.
She's so wrapped up in her thoughts that she hardly notices the noise, masked in the creaking of the gate, and only looks up when Victoire stops crying suddenly. And there it is, and out he comes, a Santa hat on his head.
He narrows his eyes at the silent baby in her arms. "Yours? I haven't been that long, have I?"
She laughs. "No, my brother's."
"That's a relief. So, Miss Weasley, are you ready to traverse the stars?"
She grins. "I should probably return Victoire to her mother first." As if in answer, the child coos.
The Doctor chuckles. "She wants you to know she prefers Vicky. Easier to pronounce."
"You understand babies? Why am I not surprised?"
"Oh, you should be, Ginevra," he warns happily. "I'm full of surprises."
She steps back into the warm house and places the miraculously silent Victoire carefully into Bill's arms. She squeezes Harry's shoulder and leans down to murmur, "I'll be back in a bit."
He looks at her in surprise. "Where are you going?"
"Just out for a walk," she assures him, and doesn't feel guilty for the lie. She takes a handful of biscuits from the plate and her coat from the hall, but pauses by the door to take in the smell of cinnamon and the sounds of laughter from the living room. She smiles and steps out onto the porch again. The Doctor is waiting by his box.
He grins at her. "Time and Space. Everything that ever happened, or ever will." He throws open the door, with rather more theatrics than is necessary, and asks, "Where do you want to start?"
*
Fandom: Harry Potter
Characters: Albus Severus, the Sorting Hat
Rating: PG
Prompt: albus severus, the sorting hat, he's not as cunning as his sister or as brave as his brother; he's not really sure who he is.
An audible hush falls over the hall as his name is called. Blushing furiously, he ducks his head and darts across to the stool. The hat falls over his eyes, and he's relieved that he doesn't have to look at everyone anymore.
He's heard the hat talks to you sometimes, talks about what it sees in your head. He thinks about that, what it would be like to see into someone's head, see everything, and shudders the idea away immediately.
He thinks about his family, about Dad almost going to Slytherin and Aunt Hermione almost going to Ravenclaw. He can't see him but he knows James is at the Gryffindor table, can almost feel the stare prickling at the back of his neck. Next year when she sits here, he knows Lily is going to be a Ravenclaw. Hugo has his sights set on Hufflepuff. From under the ragged brim, Albus catches a glimpse of Rose's shocking pink trainers shifting beneath the hem of her robes as she stands in line; she'll be in Gryffindor, if only to make Uncle Ron happy.
Maybe Gryffindor wouldn't be so bad, Albus considers. He already knows Professor Longbottom, who's Head of House, and he and Rose could take their classes together. But he remembers the hat's song, and he doesn't feel very brave.
It's nice inside the hat. It's dark and quiet, and though he knows the whole hall is still staring at him, he doesn't feel nearly so exposed.
"No, you can't keep me on," a voice chuckles into his ear. Albus jumps and nearly falls off the stool. "Though it might make the year a spectacularly less lonely experience." Righting himself, Albus eyes Professor Longbottom's feet suspiciously, wondering if the voice is perhaps a trick.
"You know," says the hat (or not), "most people already have some idea of where they're going when they put me on. Even those who don't know about the Houses get the gist of them on the train. But not you."
I don't know where you could put me, thinks Albus, feeling rather stupid. I'm not brave, or intelligent, or hardworking, or cunning.
"Ah, but that's where you're wrong," says the hat. "You are, in fact, all of those things, in equal measure. Do you know, I don't think I've had a sorting this difficult since Merlin himself. I decided on Slytherin in the end, of course, but oh, the Ravenclaw he'd have made."
Eleven is too early, Albus insists. I don't know who I am yet.
The hat says nothing.
. . . Oh. Is that the point? To tell me who I am?
Albus thinks if the hat could smile, it would have. "Very good, Albus, but not full marks, I'm afraid. I don't tell you who you are; there's no charm in the world that can make a hat do that. I merely give you a push in the right direction. I am still only a hat, after all."
So where do I go? Albus asks, suddenly aware of the whispers that have broken out up and down the hall. He wonders how long he's been sitting under the hat.
"I wonder," the hat says thoughtfully. "The place you're worried to go will teach you the most, I think."
Wait, I--
"So I think I've got it now: SLYTHERIN!"
*
Fandom: Harry Potter(/Supernatural)
Characters: Harry, Ron, Hermione, Ginny, Neville, Luna
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: trio + ginny, luna, neville, apocafic! a pandemic sweeps through both magical and muggle populations
"Harry Potter."
The voice is garbled, broken with static, and, unmistakeably, Neville's.
Hermione pulls her nose from her translation of The Tales of Beedle the Bard like a shot. "What was that?"
"Potterwatch, I think." Ron prods the radio with his wand, urging it to go back. Harry and Hermione gather 'round, children at storytime.
"Harry, Ron, Hermione." The reception isn't much clearer, and three heads lean in close to hear. "I don't know if you're listening, but this was the only way we could think to contact you. There's been a, a thing. You have to come back. I know you're doing something important but you have to come back. Forget Vol-- forget all that. We'll meet you this Friday night, eight o'clock."
"The place we stayed at the World Cup," Ginny cuts in, her voice crackling with static. Relief floods through Harry from head to toe, and he meets Ron's eyes to see the same mirrored there. "You know the place."
"Be there, okay?" Neville's voice returns to the radio. "If you're not, we'll -- assume you're not coming." There's something hinted at there besides the obvious, and Harry doesn't think he's the only one to feel the sudden chill in the tent. Hermione waves her wand, and the flame in the lantern flares.
"Hermione," comes Luna's voice, dreamy and unexpected. "Dabberblimps." On this cryptic note, the signal cuts out, leaving a stream of white noise. After a moment, the message starts over again: "Harry Potter." They listen to it loop twice more without speaking, indulging themselves with the reassurance of familiar voices that aren't their own, before Hermione reaches over and turns off the set.
They look at each other, the three of them, huddled together over a silent radio in a tent in the middle of nowhere.
"Dabberblimps?" Ron says finally.
"A code," Hermione says, with a little chuckle that's more relief than mirth. "It means it's really them, not Polyjuice or an Imperious Curse."
"Should we go?" Harry frowns, uncertain.
"I don't see why not." Ron shrugs.
"What day of the week is it?" Hermione wonders. None of them know.
-
Neville's wand is a familiar weight in his hand. He can hear Ginny and Luna breathing behind him, their warmth a comforting presence against his back as they form a triangle, facing outwards. An open field isn't the best meeting point, strategically, but it was the only place they could think of that might be deserted.
"What time is it?" he asks, his voice hushed more out of habit than anything, for what must be the tenth time that night.
"Eight oh nine," Ginny says flatly. "We should wait a little longer."
"Yeah," Neville agrees, readily. Ginny isn't the only one not yet willing to admit that the others might not have lasted out there on their own.
"There's no need," Luna says. Neville turns in time to see her wave at the three silhouettes that have appeared some distance away. It's too dark to see their faces, but he thinks they're holding hands.
"Thank God," he says, seeing the flare of a lit wand held aloft. (The infected have no magic, torn out of them in the wild storm of rage.) "Thank God."
Hermione leads the way, her wand casting a narrow strip of light in front of them. All three look dirty and tired, but Neville doesn't think he looks much better.
"Dirigible plums," Hermione tells Luna. Another code word. Luna smiles.
-
They're all settled inside the tent Hermione had hidden in her bag. It's cramped, but still plenty big enough for six. Ron and Ginny sit side-by-side on the floor, red hair casting matching glows back at the lantern. Harry is perched awkwardly on one of the beds, and Luna is curled up on a chair, admiring the charms on the little beaded bag. Neville has the other chair, and Hermione stands.
"A virus?" She folds her arms, then unfolds them, then folds them again. "We've been staying away from the towns. What happened?"
"No one knows." Neville stares at the flickering lantern, remembering red and gold banners curl and turn black. "I think, I don't know, Terry said he heard it came from abroad. We didn't have much news. A couple of people started going crazy, attacking . . . We thought they'd just finally had enough, but then a Slytherin tackled one of the Carrows."
"It spread." Ginny picks up the story. "They started sending them to St. Mungo's, because Pomfrey couldn't control them all, but then the Healers stopped taking them. They were coming in from everywhere, and there were too many. And then it just." She waves vaguely with one hand. "McGonagall locked us in the dorms. One of the third years had picked it up somewhere. She started setting the common room on fire, but not with her wand. She was standing by the fireplace; she just sort of, reached in and grabbed the embers." She shivers. Neville fights back one of his own, remembering the smell of burning flesh as the girl's hands turned red and then black. People had been packed into the common room like sardines, and the fire spread . . .
"Only a few of us got out, in the end," Luna says. Her voice has suddenly lost its absentmindedness, and the change is startling. Her words seem cold and sharp in contrast. "Terry, Anthony, Seamus, Lavender, Ernie."
"And us." Ginny rubs her arm. "We Apparated to London, but it was already there."
"They move in packs." Neville scowls at the memory. "I don't know why they don't tear each other apart, but they move in these sort of, mobs, and they come after you and they." He closes his eyes. "That's where we lost the others."
"It's passed through the blood." Luna says this in such a matter-of-fact way that she might be talking about Crumple-Horned Snorkacks. "We think it's all over the world by now."
Ron grabs Ginny's shoulder suddenly, his face white against the brown of his freckles. "Do you know -- Mum and Dad, the others--"
"I don't know."
Ron covers his face with one hand.
"We went to the Burrow. There was no sign-- Maybe they got away. Maybe Bill and Fleur--"
"Yeah." Ron's voice is muffled. "Yeah, maybe."
"But there's got to be more survivors out there," Hermione says plainly. "Maybe if we can find them, we can--" What? What then?
"We can survive," Harry says quietly. "That's all any of us were doing anyway."
Privately, Neville can't help but agree.
Characters: David/Marco/Rachel
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: Animorphs, David/Marco/Rachel, Easy Virtue
Sort of a continuation of natural_blue_26's D/M/R fic here.
"So whaddya say, Rach?" Somehow they've ended up alone in the barn together again, Marco on a haybale and David perched on edge of the loft where he's been sleeping and Rachel standing there as David won't shut up and Marco carefully doesn't say a word. "Up for a replay? Look, that's the haybale where you--"
"God, David," she says, before he can release the past into the air like a foul cloud. "Do you ever shut up?"
"How 'bout you?" He nudges Marco's shoulder with his toes. "You sure seemed to enjoy yourself last week."
"I prefer one-night stands, thanks," Marco says, expression sour. He shifts out of range of David's boots.
Cassie comes back, then, oblivious to the tension in the air so thick you could cut it with a knife. Then the others, and the meeting starts as usual, except David hops down from the loft and sidles over to Rachel. The conversation drowns out his words to everyone but her: "We'll make an unhonest woman of you yet."
*
Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Characters: Buffy, Faith
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: BtVS, Buffy +/ Faith, patching each other up
Totally not inspired by that Supernatural scene from the first Anna episode where Sam and Dean patch themselves up after getting their asses handed to them by Alastair.
"I got it, B." She reached for the needle, but Buffy held it out of her grasp.
"Nuh uh. The faster you get stitched up the faster you can reset my shoulder."
"I've been stitching up my own cuts for years, little sister. I can handle it."
Ignoring her, Buffy peeled the other slayer's bloody shirtsleeve back and set to work, her own left arm held close to her side. She sewed up the wound with neat, even stitches and then swabbed the cut with rubbing alcohol from the bathroom. Faith grimaced at the sting, but looked vaguely impressed.
"Where'd you learn to sew up a person like that, B?"
"Giles. Apparently a requirement for being a stuffy British nerd is knowing how to do stitches. Now me."
She turned to one side, allowing Faith access to her dislocated shoulder.
"Ready, B? On three. One--" She wrenched the shoulder back into place with a pop.
"Augh," Buffy complained, shaking her arm. "That hurts."
"'S why it's called an ouchie, B. Come on, let's get cleaned up."
*
Fandom: Animorphs
Characters: Elfangor, Loren, wee!Ax
Rating: PG
Prompt: Animorphs, Elfangor, quasi-insignificant Earth (or human) things he misses after he's no longer there
First he finds himself missing his bed, soft and warm. His Andalite body doesn't need the comfort, but he has trouble sleeping for months. Everyone else puts it down to unknown trauma, the jumpiness of a returning warrior. (The humans call it PTSD and look at its sufferers with sympathy. The Andalites call it weakness and hide it away.)
Next he misses the house. He hadn't liked it at first, small and enclosed, with no view of the sky. They put in a skylight and painted the walls the color of his father's fur, and some nights they lay beneath the glass ceiling on cushions and blankets and watched the stars, remembering all the things that had happened there. Now, back on the homeworld with its open spaces and minimal shelters, he feels open and exposed. He never thought he'd miss being shut in.
The city, with its bustle and movement and flashing lights. Taste, food that isn't crushed grass, like French fries and Dr. Pepper. Deep, single shadows cast by the bright yellow sun. The television, blaring news and something Loren called scifi, which he liked, inaccuracies and all. The way Loren's hair caught the single sun's light, the way her teeth flashed when she opened her mouth to laugh. Open minds and spoken words, the challenge of moving on only two legs, the strong arms that rolled in their sockets. The white clouds against the blue sky above the misty waterfalls at Yosemite, and the large brown creatures, bulky and strong, that they'd seen there. The way humans labeled everything, with tiny letters and long words, as if a bag of snack food was anything more than that. The slender, too-few fingers that tangled in his hair, the feeling of a mouth on a mouth.
All of these except the last he describes, feeling as though he can never do them justice, to the tiny, slumbering form on the floor of the family scoop.
< You should have seen it, little brother, > he says wistfully, knowing that Aximili likely will never know these things. < The world is a wonder. > The young Andalite is asleep, and won't remember anything said when he wakes, but as Elfangor settles himself down to rest without a bed, Aximili dreams of blue skies.
*
Title: No Place Like Home
Fandom: Harry Potter/Doctor Who
Characters: Ginny, Eleven, brief mentions of Weasley & Co.
Rating: PG
Prompt: the doctor (preferably 11)/anyone; time and space, everything that ever happened or ever will, where do you want to start?
Ginny is seven when a blue box crashes in her yard.
The Burrow is always remarkably crowded during the summer, every square inch seeming to be filled with gangly redheaded boys who grow up and up and up, and always look farther away every time she sees them. She shouldn't feel this lonely in a house with this many people, but her brothers have only just started letting Ron stay and watch their Quidditch games. Fred and George call her names and pull her hair until she leaves, but she never cries.
The inside of the house is stifling, even with all the windows open, so she wanders around the yard and kicks up dust with her heels. There's a sudden breeze and she turns towards it, enjoying the relief from the heat, when a noise starts up, an odd noise that she doesn't recognize. It sounds a bit like one of the Muggle cars Dad brings home sometimes, only different.
That's when the blue box nearly lands on top of her, teetering indecisively on its edge for a few moments before toppling over onto its side. Ginny looks towards the house, but Mum must have missed the noise, or dismissed it as the twins exercising their "accidental" magic again.
The door of the box opens and a man stumbles out in a cloud of smoke. "Whew," he says to no one in particular. "Sudden gravitational shifts, there's a workout for you." His eyes land on Ginny and he smiles, but it takes him a moment, as if he's uncertain exactly how. "Hullo. Sorry, new face, new muscles. I have to relearn how to smile, how rubbish is that! Have you got any apples?"
-
When she writes to Tom, she pictures him with floppy hair and a raggedy shirt, standing in her yard with a blue box at his back. She tells him everything.
-
It's three weeks after the Battle when she sees the box (and the man) again.
She sits on the porch, a hand over her eyes to block out the sunset that turns the yard gold. She doesn't think she could have stayed inside one more moment without screaming. The house feels far more crowded than it ever did before, even though there's only four people living there at the moment: her, and Mum and Dad, and George. The empty space where another body should be seems to fill the whole house, most of the time.
A cold wind blows through the yard that makes her shiver, and then a noise that makes her lift the hand from her eyes. And there he is, the man still in his raggedy shirt and tie, the man that Mum and Percy always said she made up and the twins used to tease her about and Ron wanted to meet until he was ten and decided he didn't care about silly kids' stuff like that anymore.
He recognizes her, somehow, though it's been almost a decade since he last saw her. He comes over and touches the fading pink scar on her cheek, the only (physical) reminder of battle left, and she knows he knows what she's been through.
"Can you bring him back?" she says, because she hadn't thought about the man in years, not until there was a redheaded boy under a white sheet on the floor of the Great Hall, and now here he is.
"I'm sorry," he says, and she wonders what he's apologizing for: for being late, or the battle, or her brother.
"You never said," she says, moving to safer topics, "are you a wizard or a Muggle?"
He winks. "Neither. Do you still want to come along?"
She opens her mouth, then closes it. She looks at the door about to come off its hinges, at the well-worn heap of mismatched wellies near the door, and the gnomes that have been allowed to congregate in the garden for months now. She thinks about how it's hard to breathe inside the house, how Mum breaks down crying at the smallest things and Dad's stopped fiddling with Muggle devices and George's sentences sometimes trail off like he's waiting for someone to finish them. She thinks how good it might feel to leave it all behind.
She thinks, for one long moment, and then says, "No."
He looks surprised. Before he can say anything, she cuts in, "I have to help. There's so much to do. We have to rebuild."
He nods. "You've grown up." He says it like he didn't expect it, even though he should have after being gone so long.
She shrugs. "I had to."
"I know." He looks at her. "I could have you back in five minutes."
"Like you came back in five minutes?" She smiles wryly.
He laughs. "I suppose I deserved that." He stops laughing and looks at her with ancient eyes. "It does all get better, you know. Trust me."
She doesn't ask how he knows. "I do."
"Then I've done my job." He walks back to his box, but she stops him with a word: "Doctor."
He turns back towards her, eyebrows raised. She's only ever called him Raggedy Man. Suddenly, she finds herself at a loss for words.
"Come back in a few years," she blurts finally. "Maybe by then . . . I still want to see the universe."
His face cracks out in a huge grin of boyish delight, and she thinks it's no wonder he was disappointed that she'd grown. "Miss Weasley, I think you have yourself a deal." He steps into his box and is gone.
-
She's never told Harry about the Doctor. She was twelve before she was able to talk to him properly, and by then it all seemed like a childish game. The second time she keeps the secret because what he needs, now, isn't to try to believe just one more impossible thing on top of it all. (Magic, Voldemort, immortality, heroism. He's had enough, she thinks.)
-
Victoire is six months old and won't stop crying.
Ginny takes her into the frigid evening air, smiling at the grateful look from Fleur. She bounces the infant gently, the old porch creaking under her feet, and stares absently out across the darkened, snowy yard.
The whole family is packed into the Burrow for the holidays. Mum and Dad, of course; and Ginny and Harry; and Ron and Hermione; George and Angelina; Percy and Audrey, her belly swollen at five months; Charlie on leave from Romania and Bill and Fleur with Victoire, who hasn't stopped wailing since arriving at the Burrow this afternoon. Andromeda Tonks and little Teddy are arriving tomorrow, stitched seamlessly into the family over the last few years, and Ginny's had to temporarily displace the ghoul from the attic just to have enough space to put them all. She can't remember the last time the house was this crowded, but she can't say she minds.
She's so wrapped up in her thoughts that she hardly notices the noise, masked in the creaking of the gate, and only looks up when Victoire stops crying suddenly. And there it is, and out he comes, a Santa hat on his head.
He narrows his eyes at the silent baby in her arms. "Yours? I haven't been that long, have I?"
She laughs. "No, my brother's."
"That's a relief. So, Miss Weasley, are you ready to traverse the stars?"
She grins. "I should probably return Victoire to her mother first." As if in answer, the child coos.
The Doctor chuckles. "She wants you to know she prefers Vicky. Easier to pronounce."
"You understand babies? Why am I not surprised?"
"Oh, you should be, Ginevra," he warns happily. "I'm full of surprises."
She steps back into the warm house and places the miraculously silent Victoire carefully into Bill's arms. She squeezes Harry's shoulder and leans down to murmur, "I'll be back in a bit."
He looks at her in surprise. "Where are you going?"
"Just out for a walk," she assures him, and doesn't feel guilty for the lie. She takes a handful of biscuits from the plate and her coat from the hall, but pauses by the door to take in the smell of cinnamon and the sounds of laughter from the living room. She smiles and steps out onto the porch again. The Doctor is waiting by his box.
He grins at her. "Time and Space. Everything that ever happened, or ever will." He throws open the door, with rather more theatrics than is necessary, and asks, "Where do you want to start?"
*
Fandom: Harry Potter
Characters: Albus Severus, the Sorting Hat
Rating: PG
Prompt: albus severus, the sorting hat, he's not as cunning as his sister or as brave as his brother; he's not really sure who he is.
An audible hush falls over the hall as his name is called. Blushing furiously, he ducks his head and darts across to the stool. The hat falls over his eyes, and he's relieved that he doesn't have to look at everyone anymore.
He's heard the hat talks to you sometimes, talks about what it sees in your head. He thinks about that, what it would be like to see into someone's head, see everything, and shudders the idea away immediately.
He thinks about his family, about Dad almost going to Slytherin and Aunt Hermione almost going to Ravenclaw. He can't see him but he knows James is at the Gryffindor table, can almost feel the stare prickling at the back of his neck. Next year when she sits here, he knows Lily is going to be a Ravenclaw. Hugo has his sights set on Hufflepuff. From under the ragged brim, Albus catches a glimpse of Rose's shocking pink trainers shifting beneath the hem of her robes as she stands in line; she'll be in Gryffindor, if only to make Uncle Ron happy.
Maybe Gryffindor wouldn't be so bad, Albus considers. He already knows Professor Longbottom, who's Head of House, and he and Rose could take their classes together. But he remembers the hat's song, and he doesn't feel very brave.
It's nice inside the hat. It's dark and quiet, and though he knows the whole hall is still staring at him, he doesn't feel nearly so exposed.
"No, you can't keep me on," a voice chuckles into his ear. Albus jumps and nearly falls off the stool. "Though it might make the year a spectacularly less lonely experience." Righting himself, Albus eyes Professor Longbottom's feet suspiciously, wondering if the voice is perhaps a trick.
"You know," says the hat (or not), "most people already have some idea of where they're going when they put me on. Even those who don't know about the Houses get the gist of them on the train. But not you."
I don't know where you could put me, thinks Albus, feeling rather stupid. I'm not brave, or intelligent, or hardworking, or cunning.
"Ah, but that's where you're wrong," says the hat. "You are, in fact, all of those things, in equal measure. Do you know, I don't think I've had a sorting this difficult since Merlin himself. I decided on Slytherin in the end, of course, but oh, the Ravenclaw he'd have made."
Eleven is too early, Albus insists. I don't know who I am yet.
The hat says nothing.
. . . Oh. Is that the point? To tell me who I am?
Albus thinks if the hat could smile, it would have. "Very good, Albus, but not full marks, I'm afraid. I don't tell you who you are; there's no charm in the world that can make a hat do that. I merely give you a push in the right direction. I am still only a hat, after all."
So where do I go? Albus asks, suddenly aware of the whispers that have broken out up and down the hall. He wonders how long he's been sitting under the hat.
"I wonder," the hat says thoughtfully. "The place you're worried to go will teach you the most, I think."
Wait, I--
"So I think I've got it now: SLYTHERIN!"
*
Fandom: Harry Potter(/Supernatural)
Characters: Harry, Ron, Hermione, Ginny, Neville, Luna
Rating: PG-13
Prompt: trio + ginny, luna, neville, apocafic! a pandemic sweeps through both magical and muggle populations
"Harry Potter."
The voice is garbled, broken with static, and, unmistakeably, Neville's.
Hermione pulls her nose from her translation of The Tales of Beedle the Bard like a shot. "What was that?"
"Potterwatch, I think." Ron prods the radio with his wand, urging it to go back. Harry and Hermione gather 'round, children at storytime.
"Harry, Ron, Hermione." The reception isn't much clearer, and three heads lean in close to hear. "I don't know if you're listening, but this was the only way we could think to contact you. There's been a, a thing. You have to come back. I know you're doing something important but you have to come back. Forget Vol-- forget all that. We'll meet you this Friday night, eight o'clock."
"The place we stayed at the World Cup," Ginny cuts in, her voice crackling with static. Relief floods through Harry from head to toe, and he meets Ron's eyes to see the same mirrored there. "You know the place."
"Be there, okay?" Neville's voice returns to the radio. "If you're not, we'll -- assume you're not coming." There's something hinted at there besides the obvious, and Harry doesn't think he's the only one to feel the sudden chill in the tent. Hermione waves her wand, and the flame in the lantern flares.
"Hermione," comes Luna's voice, dreamy and unexpected. "Dabberblimps." On this cryptic note, the signal cuts out, leaving a stream of white noise. After a moment, the message starts over again: "Harry Potter." They listen to it loop twice more without speaking, indulging themselves with the reassurance of familiar voices that aren't their own, before Hermione reaches over and turns off the set.
They look at each other, the three of them, huddled together over a silent radio in a tent in the middle of nowhere.
"Dabberblimps?" Ron says finally.
"A code," Hermione says, with a little chuckle that's more relief than mirth. "It means it's really them, not Polyjuice or an Imperious Curse."
"Should we go?" Harry frowns, uncertain.
"I don't see why not." Ron shrugs.
"What day of the week is it?" Hermione wonders. None of them know.
-
Neville's wand is a familiar weight in his hand. He can hear Ginny and Luna breathing behind him, their warmth a comforting presence against his back as they form a triangle, facing outwards. An open field isn't the best meeting point, strategically, but it was the only place they could think of that might be deserted.
"What time is it?" he asks, his voice hushed more out of habit than anything, for what must be the tenth time that night.
"Eight oh nine," Ginny says flatly. "We should wait a little longer."
"Yeah," Neville agrees, readily. Ginny isn't the only one not yet willing to admit that the others might not have lasted out there on their own.
"There's no need," Luna says. Neville turns in time to see her wave at the three silhouettes that have appeared some distance away. It's too dark to see their faces, but he thinks they're holding hands.
"Thank God," he says, seeing the flare of a lit wand held aloft. (The infected have no magic, torn out of them in the wild storm of rage.) "Thank God."
Hermione leads the way, her wand casting a narrow strip of light in front of them. All three look dirty and tired, but Neville doesn't think he looks much better.
"Dirigible plums," Hermione tells Luna. Another code word. Luna smiles.
-
They're all settled inside the tent Hermione had hidden in her bag. It's cramped, but still plenty big enough for six. Ron and Ginny sit side-by-side on the floor, red hair casting matching glows back at the lantern. Harry is perched awkwardly on one of the beds, and Luna is curled up on a chair, admiring the charms on the little beaded bag. Neville has the other chair, and Hermione stands.
"A virus?" She folds her arms, then unfolds them, then folds them again. "We've been staying away from the towns. What happened?"
"No one knows." Neville stares at the flickering lantern, remembering red and gold banners curl and turn black. "I think, I don't know, Terry said he heard it came from abroad. We didn't have much news. A couple of people started going crazy, attacking . . . We thought they'd just finally had enough, but then a Slytherin tackled one of the Carrows."
"It spread." Ginny picks up the story. "They started sending them to St. Mungo's, because Pomfrey couldn't control them all, but then the Healers stopped taking them. They were coming in from everywhere, and there were too many. And then it just." She waves vaguely with one hand. "McGonagall locked us in the dorms. One of the third years had picked it up somewhere. She started setting the common room on fire, but not with her wand. She was standing by the fireplace; she just sort of, reached in and grabbed the embers." She shivers. Neville fights back one of his own, remembering the smell of burning flesh as the girl's hands turned red and then black. People had been packed into the common room like sardines, and the fire spread . . .
"Only a few of us got out, in the end," Luna says. Her voice has suddenly lost its absentmindedness, and the change is startling. Her words seem cold and sharp in contrast. "Terry, Anthony, Seamus, Lavender, Ernie."
"And us." Ginny rubs her arm. "We Apparated to London, but it was already there."
"They move in packs." Neville scowls at the memory. "I don't know why they don't tear each other apart, but they move in these sort of, mobs, and they come after you and they." He closes his eyes. "That's where we lost the others."
"It's passed through the blood." Luna says this in such a matter-of-fact way that she might be talking about Crumple-Horned Snorkacks. "We think it's all over the world by now."
Ron grabs Ginny's shoulder suddenly, his face white against the brown of his freckles. "Do you know -- Mum and Dad, the others--"
"I don't know."
Ron covers his face with one hand.
"We went to the Burrow. There was no sign-- Maybe they got away. Maybe Bill and Fleur--"
"Yeah." Ron's voice is muffled. "Yeah, maybe."
"But there's got to be more survivors out there," Hermione says plainly. "Maybe if we can find them, we can--" What? What then?
"We can survive," Harry says quietly. "That's all any of us were doing anyway."
Privately, Neville can't help but agree.