(no subject)
Title: Between Here and Now and Forever
Fandom: Harry Potter
Characters: The Founders, various OCs
Rating: PG
Summary: The aftermath of the aftermath of the feast.
Chapter 1
Master Founders Post
Chapter 16
Godric had had rather a rough night, mostly spent in a long and painful session of interrogation in one of Lord Slytherin's suspiciously dungeon-like storage facilities. He'd decided to cooperate, because while he probably could have killed one or two of the Aurae Aurelii before someone had hexed him, he didn't want to hurt Clio. And even if it had been Bogdanovich, he had to admit to himself that he had been too frightened.
Bogdanovich had done the actual interrogating, of course. Godric had screamed, of course, but for a while he'd managed to keep himself from confessing to any number of things -- horrible things, anything, really -- by reminding himself that both lying and suicide were sins. It wasn't working very well, though, so he'd eventually given up on the whole religious angle and bitten his tongue instead.
He'd been rescued, bizarrely, by Lady Aeaeae bursting in and calling it all off, although he had no idea why. The last thing he remembered was Healer Wootton asking if he'd like to be knocked out while they healed the burns. Apparently he'd said yes.
When he came to, he found he was on the floor of the room Lord Slytherin kept his healing potions in. Dizzily, Godric sat up, and saw Rowena lying on a cot, holding a book gingerly. She wasn't actually reading, merely glaring at Lord Slytherin, who was whistling a jaunty tune as he reorganized the contents of one of the far cupboards. Godric suspected she was making a concerted effort not to take the book and bash him over the head with it, which meant she was probably behaving as normal as she ever did, and was therefore going to be all right.
She sighed, shutting the book, and shot a withering look at Godric, as though there was nothing more intensely disgusting to her than his continued existence.
Godric smiled weakly. "Hi."
"Hi," she snarled. "Is that all you have to say?"
Well, fine. He'd been through quite enough lately; the burns had healed but the broken fingers still twinged. "Look, it's not my fault you can't keep your temper," he said, glaring.
"It's not my fault your stupid whore can't keep hers," Rowena said. "And it's not my fault you were stupid enough to fall for that trick, either."
"Look, I know it's a novel concept to you, but there are actually people I've met who don't hate me, because I don't make a concerted effort to be as unpleasant as humanly possible," said Godric, seething.
"Don't make me laugh, Godric, you can't be that naïve," she said, smirking venomously. "Name one person you regularly associate with who doesn't see you as a convenient means to an end."
Godric opened his mouth to say something, but he found he didn't actually have anything to say, so it turned out to have been a bad move. He didn't like the way this conversation was going, anyway, so he changed the subject instead. "What were you doing spying on me?"
She looked horrified. "I was not spying on you. Why would I want to spy on you?"
"Why would Clio want to spy on me?"
"Why would 'Clio' want to fuck you?" she asked, and Godric inwardly wished he could just fold into himself and disappear out of shame. She was probably right about Clio, he thought, but he wasn't going to give Rowena that sort of satisfaction. "I was only looking for somebody," said Rowena.
"Who were you looking for in my common room?"
She glared. "I don't know, I was just wandering and I ended up there, and I was going to see if you were in --"
"What, so you could shout at me, I suppose?"
It was her turn to look ashamed. "Look, just because I'm an angry bitch doesn't mean I --"
"You were, weren't you?" he demanded. "Something happened and you were going to say -- " (and here he waved his hands in a falsetto imitation of Rowena) " -- 'Godric, you're useless and stupid, and I'm going to sit here insulting you because something totally unrelated has happened and I won't admit it but it's actually all my fault!'"
"I do not sound like that!"
"'Oh woe, I have all the money in the world and I have nothing better to do but sit around and whine about how nobody likes meeee!'"
"STOP THAT!"
"'And I know lots of curses, because that'll make up for everybody hating me!'"
"Shut up. Just. Just shut up," she snarled, fumbling around with her left hand for her wand. She knocked it off the bedside table accidentally and it rolled under the cot, and then, quite unexpectedly, she burst into tears.
Making people cry was actually worse on the Scale of Shame than being a monstrosity with a working libido. Godric sat momentarily frozen in horror, wishing her face would uncrumple.
"I try to make sure everyone's having fun and then," she gasped thickly through tears and snot, "and then they're going to kill people and I try to keep everyone alive and I try to do everything at once and I can't do ANYTHING --"
"I didn't mean to --"
"-- and NOBODY SODDING CARES, DO THEY?" she shouted. "NOBODY. Nobody -- my daughter thinks I'm mad and my best friend thinks I'm a traitor and my father --"
"I don't think you're --"
"-- and that bitch wants me dead which isn't so bad, considering, but then you're just an arse, despite all your pretending to be stupid and pretending to be nice --"
"I don't pretend to be stupid," Godric said. "I just am."
"-- and GODS DAMN YOU, STOP WHISTLING!" she shouted at Lord Slytherin, getting shakily to her feet.
"I was wondering when you'd be getting around to me," said Lord Slytherin, apparently unperturbed by her tantrum. "Do you have anything else to say?"
"You're a liar and... and a fraud!" she said, still sniffly.
"Repetitive, but it'll do. I don't know what I've done lately that merits the insult, though." He walked over slowly as if to get a better view of her nervous breakdown.
"You promised me you'd help him," she said, "you promised me, and you promised him too, and you didn't."
"Don't be ridiculous, of course I did," he said. "He got the potion."
"No he didn't. Hatim did. It was obvious."
Salazar frowned. "Which potion did al-Aziz get?" he asked Godric.
"The luck one," said Godric. "It was in Latin. It meant luck twice. Lucky luck."
"Felix Felicis," snapped Rowena, glaring.
"Oh, that," said Lord Slytherin. "No, no. I wouldn't give him that. Makes you overconfident, and knowing your father, that'd make him... well, about level with the rest of the world, actually, he's always been completely paranoid -- I wonder if you get it from him, actually -- but luck's no good against this sort of thing. I gave your father the Wit-Sharpening Potion at the feast, and some of the extra Draught of Peace after you got knocked out last night. And he's also got a Transport Key that can take him to Etxazarra-controlled territory, where she can't get at him. This way he won't panic and he'll know when to use it."
Her shoulders slumped, and her eyes went wide. "Oh," she said. "Oh, good." Then she rushed forward and hugged Lord Slytherin, beginning to cry again.
Godric was just as confused as Lord Slytherin looked. "Er," he said awkwardly. "Do I get a hug too?"
"No. I hate you. Go die," she said, sniffling.
Lord Slytherin tried to push her away as gently as possible. "Considering the measures you took to keep him alive, that would be a terrible waste."
"I was just angry," she said, sounding very small and fragile. "My wrist hurts."
"Healer Wootton said you were supposed to rest," said Lord Slytherin. Godric couldn't tell if he cared, or if he was just saying it to be irritating.
"What does he know about rest? Most of his patients are cows and dogs," she said. Turning to Godric, she added “Yes, except me,” and he squirmed, because he'd been thinking it.
"Well, if you'd rather I knocked you out," said Lord Slytherin, "I have this Draught of Living Death --"
"Fine," she muttered, sitting on the cot.
"...what did you do to get me out?" Godric asked, now feeling even more guilty.
"Nothing important," she said, making a point of opening her book again.
"From what Mistress Hufflepuff and young Stigandrson were saying, she was going to break her other wrist. I believe there was also a rescue attempt, which ended somewhere around the doorway when the force of gravity overwhelmed her."
"I was maddened by the injury," said Rowena, "obviously. It was just a symptom."
"Oh. Well. Thanks. For, er..."
"Being insane?" She glared.
"Not letting me die," he said. "I appreciate not being dead. Mostly. I mean, it hurts more but it's probably worth it."
"Well, good." There was an awkward silence. Godric recalled, vaguely, that the point of the feast had been to secure an invitation to steal somebody's thought-storage research. He was, by this point, absolutely certain that he'd rather just do his own research, because this was just too much damn work and every time something went right it all went crashingly wrong, but he didn't want Lord Slytherin to hear about his mind-control experiments, because he didn't want to sound creepy or anything. "So, er. How were... people?"
Her brow furrowed. "People?"
"I dunno," he said, shrugging.
"I should think they were people," said Lord Slytherin, who was refilling a jar with something slimy. "They generally are."
"Well, one of them broke my wrist, apparently, although I don't remember it at all," she said.
"I didn't mean her," said Godric, "would you stop harping on that?"
She rolled her eyes, and looked about to say something angry, but she seemed to suddenly remember something delightful. "Leo was here!" she said.
"That's Mistress Hufflepuff's brother, right?" Lord Slytherin asked.
"Yeah, and he's horrible," said Godric, grumpily. "And I don't see why I have to put up with whining about Clio if she's going to go all --"
"I do not go all anything about Leo," said Rowena. "He is dead to me."
"He looked quite lively last night. Seemed in quite a hurry to leave until he saw his favorite duelist," said Lord Slytherin.
“Well. He’s dead to me unless he is hilarious to me.” She smirked.
"Wait, wait, I thought you were all goopy about him," said Godric.
"Yeah, when I was twelve," she said.
"Try fifteen," he said.
"Try piss off," she said pleasantly. "I got over it. He's an arse."
"I told you!" he said. "Did you torment him?" Godric asked, leaning forward eagerly. "Tell me you did!"
"I may have proposed to him," she said smugly. "He fled in terror."
"Can you blame him for being scared? I'd have reacted the same way," he said.
"Yes, well, we've already established that you have very poor taste in women," said Rowena, not seeming in the least offended. "Also you're a coward."
"Well, anyway," said Godric, not wishing to have to defend Clio any more, "I wasn't talking about Leo."
"Well, who were you talking about, then?" she asked.
"You know. People."
"Oh yes, of course I know, because I can read... minds." Her face dropped as, presumably, she realized what he was talking about, but the sentence rolled on like a cart of bricks.
"Well, I thought it ought to be obvious," he said.
"Well, it wasn't," she snapped. Godric was beginning to get a headache.
"I think I'll leave you two to discuss people," said Lord Slytherin. "While it sounds fascinating, I have to go see about the missing Aurae." And, infuriatingly, he left.
Godric looked at Rowena. "Do you think he knows?"
"Of course he knows," she said, glaring. "He always knows everything. It's horrible." Rowena generally gestured a lot when she talked, and he wondered how much of her anger was at him and how much of it was at the terrible pain she must be in every time she tried to speak normally. "That was fucking stupid of you."
"Well, I'm sorry, I just thought maybe you would be able to work it out on your own, since you claim to be so much cleverer than me," said Godric.
"Maybe you hadn't noticed, Godric, but I was a little distracted, what with the psychotic Aura and the plot to kill my father!"
"...the what?" Godric stared.
"Do I have to repeat --"
"Yes," he said. "You do. What plot to kill your father?"
She sighed. "There's a plot to kill my father."
"Well, that can be solved easily," said Godric. "Whoever's doing it, I can scare him off."
"That would be my mother," she said, "and we know how that's worked out lately."
"Wait, so if your mother's trying to kill him... then why isn't he dead yet?"
"It's more complicated than that," she said. "Mum came to power in sort of an iffy, deathy way. I mean. Very Classical. It should be a play. My grandfather’s throat was slit, which isn’t all that suspect considering everybody hated him, but then Lord Slytherin -- Balthazar Slytherin, who was our Lord Slytherin's father -- died, and he was the Chief before her."
Godric frowned. "But if he was the Chief, he probably had a lot of enemies too. Couldn't somebody else have --"
"Well, apparently Lord Salazar and my mum had been betrothed, but he ran off with this servant girl or something and so he was off being -- this is how Mum tells it, so there's a sad lack of scandalous details -- he was off being irresponsible. So the Council voted her in because the late lamented Chief of the Council, in his sudden illness, had asked her to keep his faithless, useless son from taking power." This last bit was accompanied by much eye-rolling on Rowena's part.
"Oh. Well. That does make her look pretty bad," said Godric. "Especially if she's all vague about things."
"Exactly," said Rowena, attempting to gesture enthusiastically with her wounded hand. She winced, and put her hand back down almost immediately. "It's got to be lies. Anyway, since then she's tended to have people who she's sick of arrested for something like treason, and since nobody can imagine my dad plotting against her, that wouldn't go over very well."
"But she's the Chief. She can do anything she wants," said Godric.
"Not if the rest of the Council decide she's mad," Rowena said. "I don't know, I don't really like the way the Council's set up, because it's this dreadfully unstable remnant of the Roman Republic, and we all know how that turned out -- and then it was dragged kicking and screaming through the Empire -- but at least it means she can't do anything without a semi-plausible reason behind it."
"...how did the Roman Republic turn out?" Godric asked. He wasn't fond of history -- the moment you turned your back on it, there was more of it -- but Rowena talked about history as though it was a brilliantly funny story she'd heard.
"Stabby death!" said Rowena cheerfully. "They all do. If you start letting people think they're in charge and then they find out they're not, it all ends in knives."
"It does?" Godric asked. He was glad he knew he wasn't in charge, then. Not that he was normal.
"Generally. Well, or poison," she said, warming to her topic. "I mean, if you're too clever for them, then all of a sudden they're all 'Here, drink this!' and you say 'What is it?' and they say 'Hemlock! Yummy!' and you say 'Why do I have to --' and they say 'YOU ASK TOO MANY QUESTIONS,' and then you die. This is why I tell people what to do -- it's my duty to keep everything from ending in knives and hemlock. It's noblesse oblige."
"But doesn't it end in knives and hemlock when your mum's in charge?" he asked.
"You see?" she asked. "They should have just stuck with Lord Salazar -- he didn't off his father."
"But he ran off with a servant girl," said Godric, who was trying hard to keep track of what she was saying.
Rowena frowned. "...maybe the servant girl was a plant," she said.
"Then wouldn't Jasper be all green and leafy?"
She sighed. "Not that kind of plant."
"Well, how should I know what hemlock looks like?" Godric asked.
"Look, I don't think we're going to get very far in this conversation because you honestly have no idea what you're talking about," said Rowena, "so let's discuss the unwitting invitation Helga and I got from Ari Stigandirson to go steal things from them instead."
"Really? Why didn't you tell me earlier?" Godric asked.
"Stabby death's more interesting," said Rowena. "But yeah, after I threw up --"
"Are you ill? Did you take hemlock?"
"I got sick from the knock on the head. Healer Wootton says since your head's on top of your body it's got to stay properly aligned or you can't balance right, so you throw up until you can. After I threw up he offered it --"
"Hemlock?" Godric asked.
"An invitation," said Rowena. "Do try to keep up. But anyway, I think after he went rushing to get Healer Wootton for me, Helga sort of forgave him for being an arse, which he really is," she said. "But he's not a bad person."
"So do I get to go along?" Godric asked.
"Oh, he very specifically invited you as well," said Rowena, seeming quite amused by this (though Godric could not see why) "but you were at the tender mercies of Bogdanovich and I said I couldn't properly answer for you. And I was throwing up."
"Right," said Godric. "Um. How are we going to get to the --"
"Well, that's all settled," said Lord Slytherin, walking in cheerfully. "Did you know al-Aziz and Bergfalk were going to elope?"
Rowena snorted. "Did anyone not know? Except for that bitch --"
"Would you quit calling her by undeserved epithet?" snapped Godric.
"-- the esteemed Aurelia Sheffield, whose Patronus is, unrelatedly, a large hairy dog," said Rowena. "She doesn't pay nearly enough attention to her staff if she couldn't see that coming."
"At any rate, they apparently wanted to see you but they're getting a thorough shouting-at by the esteemed Aurelia Sheffield, whose Patronus et cetera and all that," said Lord Slytherin, "so if they survive they may be by later. But right now we have more important things to discuss. Have you two discussed the, ah, delicate situation with --"
"My father? Yes," said Rowena.
"Good," said Lord Slytherin. "Then you know there are --"
"Wait, wait," said Godric. "What does this have to do with me?" he asked.
"Good point," said Rowena. "I refuse to stake anybody's life on Godric, much less my father's."
"Well, you seemed to think he handled the Muggle army well enough," said Lord Slytherin.
"She did?" Godric asked.
"I did?" Rowena demanded.
"Look, I wouldn't stake my own life on me," said Godric, "so this strikes me as a terrible idea. Whatever it is. Sorry. I mean, I volunteered to be scary for it but Rowena's mum isn't frightened by me. Oh, and also! I just got tortured by her guards all night," he added. "It wasn't much fun."
"I was just thinking," said Lord Slytherin, apparently ignoring them, "that we could discuss the situation and our options."
"It would be nice to know exactly why she's planning to kill him," said Rowena, sarcastically. "Because I have this feeling that it might help."
Lord Slytherin rubbed his eyes. "I think, and your father agrees, that she intends to marry Fudge."
Rowena wrinkled her nose. "That is her sort of thinking. Why is it always murder and weddings with her?"
"They must make her sentimental," said Lord Slytherin. "And I suppose everybody needs a hobby."
"Well, it'd definitely explain Fudge's -- er." Godric wasn't sure Lord Slytherin was supposed to know about that.
"Fudge's what?" Lord Slytherin asked.
"His behavior when we went to extort him," said Rowena cheerfully.
"Oh, is that all?" Lord Slytherin asked. "What did you tell him?"
"Just that ‘the deal is off,’" said Rowena. "We didn’t know what deal, but I knew it had to be something awful. He looked very relieved."
Lord Slytherin laughed. "I would imagine so."
"...did she try the same thing with you?" Godric asked, curiously.
"Godric!" Rowena sounded horrified. "Gods, you're ruder than Helena and I put together."
"...no," said Lord Slytherin, looking amused. "Our parents arranged that mess. It might've worked out, if... if we'd been two completely different people, I suppose. At any rate, she obviously intends Fudge to be the newest addition to the Wizards' Council after the Glendowers are kicked off, since she apparently can't control the real transfigurator. That is why you come in, Master Gryffindor. If we can discredit Fudge, and make you an appealing Council member, they will vote you on instead."
"...me," said Godric. He was fairly certain they were just joking with him. He didn't know what he was going to say if they weren't.
There was an awful silence. Lord Slytherin looked calmly expectant. Rowena was cringing. Godric kept looking between the two of them in the hopes that perhaps one of them would change.
Finally, Lord Slytherin said, "Or we could just kill him. Then he really couldn’t be on the Council."
"What?" Rowena demanded. "You can't just go and kill him! That's ...that's. Wrong."
"Well, you're the ones who extorted him," said Lord Slytherin.
"That's different. The money belongs to our Runt," she said. "...I mean, er. Godric."
"Listen, you can't put me on the Council," said Godric. "That is a, a, a ridiculous, scary idea. Because, er. Because the Council. The Wizards' Council? It's -- it's the thing that rules the whole...." He trailed off, gesturing roundly. "The, the, the thing of Europe."
"Continent," said Rowena.
"It does!" said Godric. "Yes. And, er, some of the Holy Land and I don't know, lots of ...stuff. That, you know, has people living there. I don't do... ruling people. I just sort of sit around and do things that aren't ruling people. Like with, with books and things. Sometimes things blow up, which I think makes me unfit for government."
"Not necessarily true!" said Lord Slytherin pleasantly. "Explosions are a sign of creativity. Or improper storage of saltpeter."
"But look, you're not listening," said Godric, who didn't care about saltpeter. "I mean, I think she -- Lady Aeaeae -- she suggested that I do that -- you know, for her -- because she's evil, you know? You're not evil. So I can't! Besides, I'm not a person like that, you know, with importance. Or anything." He took a deep breath, and tried to force all of his thoughts into an actual sentence with all the words in the right order. "I can't be on the Council!" There. That would have to be good enough.
"Well, it's not as though you have to own land," said Lord Slytherin, "although I think that's mostly because nobody ever imagined they'd have to worry about a commoner getting onto the Council until the Etxazarras and the Solomons showed up. And your inexperience makes you a good candidate, because you'll appear naïve and easy to push around."
"...that makes no sense," said Godric. "None of this makes any sense. You do realize? None of it."
"Quit babbling, Godric," Rowena snapped, "I want to see where he's going with this."
"The sooner you're on the council, the sooner Ophelia realizes Fudge is useless to her, and that her husband’s death would be wasteful," said Lord Slytherin.
"And the sooner you have one more person who'll vote for you when you make your bid for Council Chief," said Rowena, now glowering.
"That is an incidental benefit, yes," said Lord Slytherin.
"But I'm big and scary and common. And Muggleborn besides," said Godric.
"Then you'll just have to work twice as hard to impress them without being threatening," said Lord Slytherin. "Or, as I said, we could just kill Fudge. After all, we can't let Gualterus Avitus suffer for your shortcomings. Tallcomings. Whatever you like. It's up to you!" There was a knock at the door, and Lord Slytherin smiled, as though they hadn't been talking about mad things. "We'll discuss this some other time -- you appear to have visitors."
Helena threw open the door, and hugged Rowena, who put her arms gingerly around her daughter. "Are you all right? Nobody will tell me anything."
Rowena sighed. "Later, Helena."
"They said Professor Gryffindor tried to kill --"
"He didn't," said Rowena. And Clio, who stood in the doorway, uncertain. Rowena looked at her, a startled expression on her face.
Godric cleared his throat. "Er. Hi."
Clio took a deep breath. "I am so so sorry you had to go through --"
"Oh, it was no problem," said Godric, trying not to wince.
"...really?" said Clio, all disbelief.
No, he thought. Not really. "Oh no, it was fine," he said. "I mean. Things happen. You know how it is." He laughed nervously. He couldn't quite look her in the eye.
"I thought I did," she said, sounding uncertain. "Well, you're all right, that's all that matters --"
"No, it's not." Helena glowered in all her thirteen-year-old conviction. She stood by her mother's bed, standing straight and very still, in the way that small people do when they want to conceal their trembling and look strong.
"Helena!" Rowena snapped.
"Did you do this?" Helena demanded of Clio. "Did you break my mother's wrist?"
Rowena winced. "Who said anything about --"
"I heard things," said Helena. "When people are keeping something from me I know enough to ask around."
"Helena," said Rowena warningly, "I think you should --"
"Are you afraid of her?" Helena demanded. "What can she possibly do to you? Or me? Grandmother can make her stop breathing at a word. And maybe she should."
"Your daughter is as paranoid as you are mad," said Clio. "How charming."
"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," said Helena. "My mother is the sole heir to the Chief of the Council, and if you --"
"Helena, that's enough," snapped Rowena, getting unsteadily to her feet.
"What? I'm sick of --"
"I don't need to be protected by my own daughter," said Rowena. "And like you said, she can't do anything to me." She paused. "It would, therefore, be ridiculous to suggest that she has."
Helena glared. "So you just happened to break your wrist --"
"There was an accident. A misunderstanding. If you’re so very interested in the workings of the human wrist, Helena, I shall give you something to do. Five diagrams of wrist movements for higher-grade transportation spells, explaining all points of inflection thoroughly, due tomorrow," said Rowena.
Helena glared. "This is absurd!"
"Ten diagrams. I'm making it fifty if you say one more word."
Her shoulders shook with anger, but she walked out silently.
"She's thirteen," said Rowena, by way of explanation.
"When I was thirteen, I had already been freelancing in London for a year," said Clio.
"Your precocious viciousness isn't something to be proud of," said Rowena. "Leave me alone. While you're at it, leave Godric alone, too. We've both suffered enough."
Disgusted, Clio turned to Lord Slytherin. "Is she this insolent to you?" she demanded.
He shrugged elaborately. "I consider it one of her unique charms. I prefer critics to flunkies, don't you?"
"I prefer --" she started, but then she glanced at Godric's wounds and swallowed her words. "Lady Aeaeae's party is leaving," she said instead. "Will you be seeing them off?"
"I suppose it would be the polite thing to do," said Lord Slytherin. "Shall I make your apologies, Lady Ravenclaw?"
Rowena winced. "Just... make something up that verges on polite?"
He laughed. "I will do my best to be convincing." He followed Clio out of the room.
"And not pompous!" Rowena called after him. "He's got this habit of being pompous," she told Godric. "I'm not pompous." She looked at Godric, as if for confirmation.
"What?" he asked.
"I'm not pompous," she repeated.
He just rolled his eyes. "Of course you're not," he said, not bothering to sound like he meant it. "How am I going to get out of this Council thing?"
"You're not," she snapped. "If he thinks it's the only way --"
"He can't think it's the only way," he said. "Why doesn't he just --"
"Just what?"
"I don't know, benevolently kidnap your father! Or something. That's what I'd do," said Godric.
She began to laugh.
"What?" he asked.
"You would not kidnap anyone, Godric," she said, still trying not to laugh. "I mean, what would you do? 'Oh, sorry about this, I know it's inconvenient, but I just, you know, I'm kidnapping you. You might've noticed. But don't worry! I won't hurt you! It's benevolent! Oh and try not to undo my knots by accident, I know they're not very good but I do my best. Maybe you could do them better if you want?'"
Godric charitably chose to ignore her terrible approximation of his accent, which wandered drunkenly between Salisbury and Edinburgh. "Well, I meant if I were Lord Slytherin --"
"Which is why you aren't Lord Slytherin," she said.
"Exactly," he said. "I'm me. How'm I supposed to get onto the Council?" Hopefully Rowena would come up with something else. He was no good at politics.
"You do have the advantage over Fudge," she said.
He stared at her. She didn't look mad, but obviously she was. "How?"
"Well, there's the part where you can actually transfigure things," she said, rolling her eyes.
"Yeah, but --"
"Anyway," she said, "Lord Slytherin will have some way of --"
"But you don't even like him!" he said. This was not going well at all. If he couldn't convince Rowena that he was incompetent, he couldn't convince anyone. Probably she knew he was incompetent, and just wanted to see his life ruined.
"He's better than nothing," she said glumly. "That's what I thought when we put the school here and, well. He wants to save my father." She glared. "Which is certainly better than everyone else. You just don't care, and Mum's outright hostile."
"And now you're comparing me to your mother," said Godric, rubbing his eyes. "This has been a completely awful night."
"We both survived," she said flatly. "It could have been worse." With that, she took her book, lay back on her cot, and read, apparently intending to ignore him for the rest of the morning.
"You're not helping," Godric muttered. He was not going to be on the Council. There had to be a way out of it.
* * *
Helena sat sulking in the library, looking at spells. "She sent me away!"
"It was probably for your own good," said Julian.
"But she sent me away," she repeated. She had tried to help. Every time she tried to help it all went wrong. Either it was her fault -- which it wasn't -- or it was Mum's fault.
"Look, here's an easy one," said Julian, "Cestrosphendonus." He pushed a book at her.
"Yeah, I want to throw rocks right about now," she said, grumpily. Her mother was so stubborn. She wouldn't let anybody do anything for her. Helena wondered how she had managed to be raised by a woman like that and still be sensible. "Like a child! She sent me away!"
"We heard," said Devlin. "Why are we helping her?"
"Because," said Julian.
"I hate it when she gets all mopey and overdramatic," said Devlin.
"I spent all night listening at keyholes for her, and she sent me away," said Helena, ignoring them. This was not entirely true, of course, but she felt like it was true.
"Well, maybe she likes her rest," said Devlin. "I mean, you are sort of loud."
"That's not my problem." She glowered. It wasn't as if they were being very helpful either.
"Can we focus here?" said Julian. "You've only got one done. Let's at least try Cestrophendonus."
"Not really even one," said Devlin, examining her diagram for Mobilinovacula. "I mean, unless 'TO STAB FACES' is a good reason for a spell gesture inflecty thingy."
"Don't look at my things, Devlin," she said, grabbing the parchment back. Useless nosy peasant.
"Also, contrary to popular belief, faces don't make very good stabbing targets," Devlin said. "I mean, legs, maybe, or --"
Alioth Nigellus interrupted them as he walked into the library. "Stomachs," he said. "Stomachs are good. And throats." He stood behind Devlin and Julian, looking at Helena's embarrassingly incomplete list. "Not much osseal protection there." He looked very gloomy, she thought. He had a lot of nerve looking gloomy while her mum was bedridden.
"What do you want?" asked Julian, turning around in his seat to glare at him.
"Nothing," said Nigellus, shrugging. "Just trying to help."
"Well, don't. None of us likes you and you're useless," said Helena.
"More useless than these two?" Nigellus asked.
He had a point. Still. "Well, I don't really care about osseal protection. I'm not going to actually stab people. I mean. It isn't likely to help."
"Oh," said Nigellus, sounding disappointed. "Well. I didn't mean to offend," he said awkwardly. He shrugged and left them, possibly to brood on his own time. Helena thought he needed practice at it anyway.
"Maybe he didn't, but he's so good at it," Julian said, once he was out of earshot.
She giggled. Julian's expression was so full of loathing. "You shouldn't be so hard on him. He's just trying to play to his strengths."
For some reason, Julian brightened. "Maybe, but today's not the Feast of Let's Be Nice to Nigellus. Maybe tomorrow. Anyway, I think this book's got some promise…"
"If you two are all face-stabbed out, I'm going to go do research for that Transfiguration thing," said Devlin.
"What, you didn't do that already?" Julian asked. "I thought everybody was doing the alchemical dilemma."
"Yeah, but that's too easy," said Devlin. "I was thinking Animagi."
"Are you mad?" Helena asked. "Mum says none of the books agree on those, and she would know. She's read everything."
Devlin shrugged. "Maybe I'll make stuff up. Anyway, there's got to be something I can find that two people agree on. Even if it's wrong in the end."
* * *
Rowena had suggested to Godric that they walk to the village to thank Healer Wootton for his help, which had mostly been an excuse to get out of the castle and away from Lord Salazar to talk privately. She had to admit, though, the smell of rain was a nice change from the rotting organic smell of Lord Salazar's healing room.
"Do you think it's going to start raining again?" Godric asked, looking up at the overcast sky.
"Probably," said Rowena. "Just don't say things like 'it couldn't get any worse.'"
"Don't worry. It can always get worse," Godric said with false cheer. He sighed, and started in on whinging again. "How am I going to get onto the Council? Or get out of it?"
"Maybe we can buy them off," said Rowena, who was not interested in discussing it any further. "But look, about the thought-storage thing --"
"Oh yes, you did mention Stigandrson invited us for a visit, didn't you?" Godric asked eagerly. "It sounds exciting. I've never been so far away. I mean, I've hardly been out of England --"
"You are out of England," she pointed out.
"Yeah, but I live here now, so it doesn't count," said Godric. "And you're Scottish, so it's not that exotic."
"I'm Greek," she said, offended.
"You sound Scottish," he said. "Anyway --"
"Well, my father sort of is, and I was born here, and grew up here but I'm --"
"See? Scottish."
"I am the descendant of Odysseus, King of Ithaca and Circe of Aeaea," she informed him. "Supposedly."
"Really?" Godric asked. "Why aren't you Princess of Ithaca or something, then?"
"Blame the Romans. And the Muggles. Especially the Roman Muggles," said Rowena. "Anyway, we haven't any proof of that -- I mean, I had this ancestor who tried to lead a slave revolt when he got sent to Britain by Emperor Hadrian, and that's just what he claimed. We're definitely descended from him, but he was mad, so who knows about Circe and all that?"
"Is this the Dark Transfigurator Circe," Godric asked, "or was there a lighter, fluffier Circe?"
"The Dark one," said Rowena, "but I think the Dark part's just good propaganda to scare people into behaving. I mean, she doesn't seem to have been much more than a socially-maladapted recluse, as far as I've read."
"Or maybe she just really liked pigs," said Godric.
Rowena stopped in her tracks. "Eurgh."
"What?" Godric asked.
She looked at him skeptically. He was obviously playing at being stupid again. "Well, what did you mean?"
"Pigs are clever!" said Godric, with worrying enthusiasm. "I taught one to do tricks once. Then a nobleman visited Fudge and they had it for supper. But, er. It's not impossible."
"Maybe all transfigurators are socially-maladapted recluses," Rowena wondered aloud.
"Maybe!" said Godric, in a tone that suggested he thought anything was possible in theory, as long as nobody was asking him to do anything about it. "...wait, you just --"
"Oh, look at that, we're at Healer Wootton's already!" said Rowena cheerfully.
"I hate everyone," he muttered.
She laughed. "You would, wouldn't you?"
"Well, I did already. You just reminded me," he said resignedly. He pushed the door open with his less-bandaged hand, and ducked in.
Chapter 18
Fandom: Harry Potter
Characters: The Founders, various OCs
Rating: PG
Summary: The aftermath of the aftermath of the feast.
Chapter 1
Master Founders Post
Chapter 16
Godric had had rather a rough night, mostly spent in a long and painful session of interrogation in one of Lord Slytherin's suspiciously dungeon-like storage facilities. He'd decided to cooperate, because while he probably could have killed one or two of the Aurae Aurelii before someone had hexed him, he didn't want to hurt Clio. And even if it had been Bogdanovich, he had to admit to himself that he had been too frightened.
Bogdanovich had done the actual interrogating, of course. Godric had screamed, of course, but for a while he'd managed to keep himself from confessing to any number of things -- horrible things, anything, really -- by reminding himself that both lying and suicide were sins. It wasn't working very well, though, so he'd eventually given up on the whole religious angle and bitten his tongue instead.
He'd been rescued, bizarrely, by Lady Aeaeae bursting in and calling it all off, although he had no idea why. The last thing he remembered was Healer Wootton asking if he'd like to be knocked out while they healed the burns. Apparently he'd said yes.
When he came to, he found he was on the floor of the room Lord Slytherin kept his healing potions in. Dizzily, Godric sat up, and saw Rowena lying on a cot, holding a book gingerly. She wasn't actually reading, merely glaring at Lord Slytherin, who was whistling a jaunty tune as he reorganized the contents of one of the far cupboards. Godric suspected she was making a concerted effort not to take the book and bash him over the head with it, which meant she was probably behaving as normal as she ever did, and was therefore going to be all right.
She sighed, shutting the book, and shot a withering look at Godric, as though there was nothing more intensely disgusting to her than his continued existence.
Godric smiled weakly. "Hi."
"Hi," she snarled. "Is that all you have to say?"
Well, fine. He'd been through quite enough lately; the burns had healed but the broken fingers still twinged. "Look, it's not my fault you can't keep your temper," he said, glaring.
"It's not my fault your stupid whore can't keep hers," Rowena said. "And it's not my fault you were stupid enough to fall for that trick, either."
"Look, I know it's a novel concept to you, but there are actually people I've met who don't hate me, because I don't make a concerted effort to be as unpleasant as humanly possible," said Godric, seething.
"Don't make me laugh, Godric, you can't be that naïve," she said, smirking venomously. "Name one person you regularly associate with who doesn't see you as a convenient means to an end."
Godric opened his mouth to say something, but he found he didn't actually have anything to say, so it turned out to have been a bad move. He didn't like the way this conversation was going, anyway, so he changed the subject instead. "What were you doing spying on me?"
She looked horrified. "I was not spying on you. Why would I want to spy on you?"
"Why would Clio want to spy on me?"
"Why would 'Clio' want to fuck you?" she asked, and Godric inwardly wished he could just fold into himself and disappear out of shame. She was probably right about Clio, he thought, but he wasn't going to give Rowena that sort of satisfaction. "I was only looking for somebody," said Rowena.
"Who were you looking for in my common room?"
She glared. "I don't know, I was just wandering and I ended up there, and I was going to see if you were in --"
"What, so you could shout at me, I suppose?"
It was her turn to look ashamed. "Look, just because I'm an angry bitch doesn't mean I --"
"You were, weren't you?" he demanded. "Something happened and you were going to say -- " (and here he waved his hands in a falsetto imitation of Rowena) " -- 'Godric, you're useless and stupid, and I'm going to sit here insulting you because something totally unrelated has happened and I won't admit it but it's actually all my fault!'"
"I do not sound like that!"
"'Oh woe, I have all the money in the world and I have nothing better to do but sit around and whine about how nobody likes meeee!'"
"STOP THAT!"
"'And I know lots of curses, because that'll make up for everybody hating me!'"
"Shut up. Just. Just shut up," she snarled, fumbling around with her left hand for her wand. She knocked it off the bedside table accidentally and it rolled under the cot, and then, quite unexpectedly, she burst into tears.
Making people cry was actually worse on the Scale of Shame than being a monstrosity with a working libido. Godric sat momentarily frozen in horror, wishing her face would uncrumple.
"I try to make sure everyone's having fun and then," she gasped thickly through tears and snot, "and then they're going to kill people and I try to keep everyone alive and I try to do everything at once and I can't do ANYTHING --"
"I didn't mean to --"
"-- and NOBODY SODDING CARES, DO THEY?" she shouted. "NOBODY. Nobody -- my daughter thinks I'm mad and my best friend thinks I'm a traitor and my father --"
"I don't think you're --"
"-- and that bitch wants me dead which isn't so bad, considering, but then you're just an arse, despite all your pretending to be stupid and pretending to be nice --"
"I don't pretend to be stupid," Godric said. "I just am."
"-- and GODS DAMN YOU, STOP WHISTLING!" she shouted at Lord Slytherin, getting shakily to her feet.
"I was wondering when you'd be getting around to me," said Lord Slytherin, apparently unperturbed by her tantrum. "Do you have anything else to say?"
"You're a liar and... and a fraud!" she said, still sniffly.
"Repetitive, but it'll do. I don't know what I've done lately that merits the insult, though." He walked over slowly as if to get a better view of her nervous breakdown.
"You promised me you'd help him," she said, "you promised me, and you promised him too, and you didn't."
"Don't be ridiculous, of course I did," he said. "He got the potion."
"No he didn't. Hatim did. It was obvious."
Salazar frowned. "Which potion did al-Aziz get?" he asked Godric.
"The luck one," said Godric. "It was in Latin. It meant luck twice. Lucky luck."
"Felix Felicis," snapped Rowena, glaring.
"Oh, that," said Lord Slytherin. "No, no. I wouldn't give him that. Makes you overconfident, and knowing your father, that'd make him... well, about level with the rest of the world, actually, he's always been completely paranoid -- I wonder if you get it from him, actually -- but luck's no good against this sort of thing. I gave your father the Wit-Sharpening Potion at the feast, and some of the extra Draught of Peace after you got knocked out last night. And he's also got a Transport Key that can take him to Etxazarra-controlled territory, where she can't get at him. This way he won't panic and he'll know when to use it."
Her shoulders slumped, and her eyes went wide. "Oh," she said. "Oh, good." Then she rushed forward and hugged Lord Slytherin, beginning to cry again.
Godric was just as confused as Lord Slytherin looked. "Er," he said awkwardly. "Do I get a hug too?"
"No. I hate you. Go die," she said, sniffling.
Lord Slytherin tried to push her away as gently as possible. "Considering the measures you took to keep him alive, that would be a terrible waste."
"I was just angry," she said, sounding very small and fragile. "My wrist hurts."
"Healer Wootton said you were supposed to rest," said Lord Slytherin. Godric couldn't tell if he cared, or if he was just saying it to be irritating.
"What does he know about rest? Most of his patients are cows and dogs," she said. Turning to Godric, she added “Yes, except me,” and he squirmed, because he'd been thinking it.
"Well, if you'd rather I knocked you out," said Lord Slytherin, "I have this Draught of Living Death --"
"Fine," she muttered, sitting on the cot.
"...what did you do to get me out?" Godric asked, now feeling even more guilty.
"Nothing important," she said, making a point of opening her book again.
"From what Mistress Hufflepuff and young Stigandrson were saying, she was going to break her other wrist. I believe there was also a rescue attempt, which ended somewhere around the doorway when the force of gravity overwhelmed her."
"I was maddened by the injury," said Rowena, "obviously. It was just a symptom."
"Oh. Well. Thanks. For, er..."
"Being insane?" She glared.
"Not letting me die," he said. "I appreciate not being dead. Mostly. I mean, it hurts more but it's probably worth it."
"Well, good." There was an awkward silence. Godric recalled, vaguely, that the point of the feast had been to secure an invitation to steal somebody's thought-storage research. He was, by this point, absolutely certain that he'd rather just do his own research, because this was just too much damn work and every time something went right it all went crashingly wrong, but he didn't want Lord Slytherin to hear about his mind-control experiments, because he didn't want to sound creepy or anything. "So, er. How were... people?"
Her brow furrowed. "People?"
"I dunno," he said, shrugging.
"I should think they were people," said Lord Slytherin, who was refilling a jar with something slimy. "They generally are."
"Well, one of them broke my wrist, apparently, although I don't remember it at all," she said.
"I didn't mean her," said Godric, "would you stop harping on that?"
She rolled her eyes, and looked about to say something angry, but she seemed to suddenly remember something delightful. "Leo was here!" she said.
"That's Mistress Hufflepuff's brother, right?" Lord Slytherin asked.
"Yeah, and he's horrible," said Godric, grumpily. "And I don't see why I have to put up with whining about Clio if she's going to go all --"
"I do not go all anything about Leo," said Rowena. "He is dead to me."
"He looked quite lively last night. Seemed in quite a hurry to leave until he saw his favorite duelist," said Lord Slytherin.
“Well. He’s dead to me unless he is hilarious to me.” She smirked.
"Wait, wait, I thought you were all goopy about him," said Godric.
"Yeah, when I was twelve," she said.
"Try fifteen," he said.
"Try piss off," she said pleasantly. "I got over it. He's an arse."
"I told you!" he said. "Did you torment him?" Godric asked, leaning forward eagerly. "Tell me you did!"
"I may have proposed to him," she said smugly. "He fled in terror."
"Can you blame him for being scared? I'd have reacted the same way," he said.
"Yes, well, we've already established that you have very poor taste in women," said Rowena, not seeming in the least offended. "Also you're a coward."
"Well, anyway," said Godric, not wishing to have to defend Clio any more, "I wasn't talking about Leo."
"Well, who were you talking about, then?" she asked.
"You know. People."
"Oh yes, of course I know, because I can read... minds." Her face dropped as, presumably, she realized what he was talking about, but the sentence rolled on like a cart of bricks.
"Well, I thought it ought to be obvious," he said.
"Well, it wasn't," she snapped. Godric was beginning to get a headache.
"I think I'll leave you two to discuss people," said Lord Slytherin. "While it sounds fascinating, I have to go see about the missing Aurae." And, infuriatingly, he left.
Godric looked at Rowena. "Do you think he knows?"
"Of course he knows," she said, glaring. "He always knows everything. It's horrible." Rowena generally gestured a lot when she talked, and he wondered how much of her anger was at him and how much of it was at the terrible pain she must be in every time she tried to speak normally. "That was fucking stupid of you."
"Well, I'm sorry, I just thought maybe you would be able to work it out on your own, since you claim to be so much cleverer than me," said Godric.
"Maybe you hadn't noticed, Godric, but I was a little distracted, what with the psychotic Aura and the plot to kill my father!"
"...the what?" Godric stared.
"Do I have to repeat --"
"Yes," he said. "You do. What plot to kill your father?"
She sighed. "There's a plot to kill my father."
"Well, that can be solved easily," said Godric. "Whoever's doing it, I can scare him off."
"That would be my mother," she said, "and we know how that's worked out lately."
"Wait, so if your mother's trying to kill him... then why isn't he dead yet?"
"It's more complicated than that," she said. "Mum came to power in sort of an iffy, deathy way. I mean. Very Classical. It should be a play. My grandfather’s throat was slit, which isn’t all that suspect considering everybody hated him, but then Lord Slytherin -- Balthazar Slytherin, who was our Lord Slytherin's father -- died, and he was the Chief before her."
Godric frowned. "But if he was the Chief, he probably had a lot of enemies too. Couldn't somebody else have --"
"Well, apparently Lord Salazar and my mum had been betrothed, but he ran off with this servant girl or something and so he was off being -- this is how Mum tells it, so there's a sad lack of scandalous details -- he was off being irresponsible. So the Council voted her in because the late lamented Chief of the Council, in his sudden illness, had asked her to keep his faithless, useless son from taking power." This last bit was accompanied by much eye-rolling on Rowena's part.
"Oh. Well. That does make her look pretty bad," said Godric. "Especially if she's all vague about things."
"Exactly," said Rowena, attempting to gesture enthusiastically with her wounded hand. She winced, and put her hand back down almost immediately. "It's got to be lies. Anyway, since then she's tended to have people who she's sick of arrested for something like treason, and since nobody can imagine my dad plotting against her, that wouldn't go over very well."
"But she's the Chief. She can do anything she wants," said Godric.
"Not if the rest of the Council decide she's mad," Rowena said. "I don't know, I don't really like the way the Council's set up, because it's this dreadfully unstable remnant of the Roman Republic, and we all know how that turned out -- and then it was dragged kicking and screaming through the Empire -- but at least it means she can't do anything without a semi-plausible reason behind it."
"...how did the Roman Republic turn out?" Godric asked. He wasn't fond of history -- the moment you turned your back on it, there was more of it -- but Rowena talked about history as though it was a brilliantly funny story she'd heard.
"Stabby death!" said Rowena cheerfully. "They all do. If you start letting people think they're in charge and then they find out they're not, it all ends in knives."
"It does?" Godric asked. He was glad he knew he wasn't in charge, then. Not that he was normal.
"Generally. Well, or poison," she said, warming to her topic. "I mean, if you're too clever for them, then all of a sudden they're all 'Here, drink this!' and you say 'What is it?' and they say 'Hemlock! Yummy!' and you say 'Why do I have to --' and they say 'YOU ASK TOO MANY QUESTIONS,' and then you die. This is why I tell people what to do -- it's my duty to keep everything from ending in knives and hemlock. It's noblesse oblige."
"But doesn't it end in knives and hemlock when your mum's in charge?" he asked.
"You see?" she asked. "They should have just stuck with Lord Salazar -- he didn't off his father."
"But he ran off with a servant girl," said Godric, who was trying hard to keep track of what she was saying.
Rowena frowned. "...maybe the servant girl was a plant," she said.
"Then wouldn't Jasper be all green and leafy?"
She sighed. "Not that kind of plant."
"Well, how should I know what hemlock looks like?" Godric asked.
"Look, I don't think we're going to get very far in this conversation because you honestly have no idea what you're talking about," said Rowena, "so let's discuss the unwitting invitation Helga and I got from Ari Stigandirson to go steal things from them instead."
"Really? Why didn't you tell me earlier?" Godric asked.
"Stabby death's more interesting," said Rowena. "But yeah, after I threw up --"
"Are you ill? Did you take hemlock?"
"I got sick from the knock on the head. Healer Wootton says since your head's on top of your body it's got to stay properly aligned or you can't balance right, so you throw up until you can. After I threw up he offered it --"
"Hemlock?" Godric asked.
"An invitation," said Rowena. "Do try to keep up. But anyway, I think after he went rushing to get Healer Wootton for me, Helga sort of forgave him for being an arse, which he really is," she said. "But he's not a bad person."
"So do I get to go along?" Godric asked.
"Oh, he very specifically invited you as well," said Rowena, seeming quite amused by this (though Godric could not see why) "but you were at the tender mercies of Bogdanovich and I said I couldn't properly answer for you. And I was throwing up."
"Right," said Godric. "Um. How are we going to get to the --"
"Well, that's all settled," said Lord Slytherin, walking in cheerfully. "Did you know al-Aziz and Bergfalk were going to elope?"
Rowena snorted. "Did anyone not know? Except for that bitch --"
"Would you quit calling her by undeserved epithet?" snapped Godric.
"-- the esteemed Aurelia Sheffield, whose Patronus is, unrelatedly, a large hairy dog," said Rowena. "She doesn't pay nearly enough attention to her staff if she couldn't see that coming."
"At any rate, they apparently wanted to see you but they're getting a thorough shouting-at by the esteemed Aurelia Sheffield, whose Patronus et cetera and all that," said Lord Slytherin, "so if they survive they may be by later. But right now we have more important things to discuss. Have you two discussed the, ah, delicate situation with --"
"My father? Yes," said Rowena.
"Good," said Lord Slytherin. "Then you know there are --"
"Wait, wait," said Godric. "What does this have to do with me?" he asked.
"Good point," said Rowena. "I refuse to stake anybody's life on Godric, much less my father's."
"Well, you seemed to think he handled the Muggle army well enough," said Lord Slytherin.
"She did?" Godric asked.
"I did?" Rowena demanded.
"Look, I wouldn't stake my own life on me," said Godric, "so this strikes me as a terrible idea. Whatever it is. Sorry. I mean, I volunteered to be scary for it but Rowena's mum isn't frightened by me. Oh, and also! I just got tortured by her guards all night," he added. "It wasn't much fun."
"I was just thinking," said Lord Slytherin, apparently ignoring them, "that we could discuss the situation and our options."
"It would be nice to know exactly why she's planning to kill him," said Rowena, sarcastically. "Because I have this feeling that it might help."
Lord Slytherin rubbed his eyes. "I think, and your father agrees, that she intends to marry Fudge."
Rowena wrinkled her nose. "That is her sort of thinking. Why is it always murder and weddings with her?"
"They must make her sentimental," said Lord Slytherin. "And I suppose everybody needs a hobby."
"Well, it'd definitely explain Fudge's -- er." Godric wasn't sure Lord Slytherin was supposed to know about that.
"Fudge's what?" Lord Slytherin asked.
"His behavior when we went to extort him," said Rowena cheerfully.
"Oh, is that all?" Lord Slytherin asked. "What did you tell him?"
"Just that ‘the deal is off,’" said Rowena. "We didn’t know what deal, but I knew it had to be something awful. He looked very relieved."
Lord Slytherin laughed. "I would imagine so."
"...did she try the same thing with you?" Godric asked, curiously.
"Godric!" Rowena sounded horrified. "Gods, you're ruder than Helena and I put together."
"...no," said Lord Slytherin, looking amused. "Our parents arranged that mess. It might've worked out, if... if we'd been two completely different people, I suppose. At any rate, she obviously intends Fudge to be the newest addition to the Wizards' Council after the Glendowers are kicked off, since she apparently can't control the real transfigurator. That is why you come in, Master Gryffindor. If we can discredit Fudge, and make you an appealing Council member, they will vote you on instead."
"...me," said Godric. He was fairly certain they were just joking with him. He didn't know what he was going to say if they weren't.
There was an awful silence. Lord Slytherin looked calmly expectant. Rowena was cringing. Godric kept looking between the two of them in the hopes that perhaps one of them would change.
Finally, Lord Slytherin said, "Or we could just kill him. Then he really couldn’t be on the Council."
"What?" Rowena demanded. "You can't just go and kill him! That's ...that's. Wrong."
"Well, you're the ones who extorted him," said Lord Slytherin.
"That's different. The money belongs to our Runt," she said. "...I mean, er. Godric."
"Listen, you can't put me on the Council," said Godric. "That is a, a, a ridiculous, scary idea. Because, er. Because the Council. The Wizards' Council? It's -- it's the thing that rules the whole...." He trailed off, gesturing roundly. "The, the, the thing of Europe."
"Continent," said Rowena.
"It does!" said Godric. "Yes. And, er, some of the Holy Land and I don't know, lots of ...stuff. That, you know, has people living there. I don't do... ruling people. I just sort of sit around and do things that aren't ruling people. Like with, with books and things. Sometimes things blow up, which I think makes me unfit for government."
"Not necessarily true!" said Lord Slytherin pleasantly. "Explosions are a sign of creativity. Or improper storage of saltpeter."
"But look, you're not listening," said Godric, who didn't care about saltpeter. "I mean, I think she -- Lady Aeaeae -- she suggested that I do that -- you know, for her -- because she's evil, you know? You're not evil. So I can't! Besides, I'm not a person like that, you know, with importance. Or anything." He took a deep breath, and tried to force all of his thoughts into an actual sentence with all the words in the right order. "I can't be on the Council!" There. That would have to be good enough.
"Well, it's not as though you have to own land," said Lord Slytherin, "although I think that's mostly because nobody ever imagined they'd have to worry about a commoner getting onto the Council until the Etxazarras and the Solomons showed up. And your inexperience makes you a good candidate, because you'll appear naïve and easy to push around."
"...that makes no sense," said Godric. "None of this makes any sense. You do realize? None of it."
"Quit babbling, Godric," Rowena snapped, "I want to see where he's going with this."
"The sooner you're on the council, the sooner Ophelia realizes Fudge is useless to her, and that her husband’s death would be wasteful," said Lord Slytherin.
"And the sooner you have one more person who'll vote for you when you make your bid for Council Chief," said Rowena, now glowering.
"That is an incidental benefit, yes," said Lord Slytherin.
"But I'm big and scary and common. And Muggleborn besides," said Godric.
"Then you'll just have to work twice as hard to impress them without being threatening," said Lord Slytherin. "Or, as I said, we could just kill Fudge. After all, we can't let Gualterus Avitus suffer for your shortcomings. Tallcomings. Whatever you like. It's up to you!" There was a knock at the door, and Lord Slytherin smiled, as though they hadn't been talking about mad things. "We'll discuss this some other time -- you appear to have visitors."
Helena threw open the door, and hugged Rowena, who put her arms gingerly around her daughter. "Are you all right? Nobody will tell me anything."
Rowena sighed. "Later, Helena."
"They said Professor Gryffindor tried to kill --"
"He didn't," said Rowena. And Clio, who stood in the doorway, uncertain. Rowena looked at her, a startled expression on her face.
Godric cleared his throat. "Er. Hi."
Clio took a deep breath. "I am so so sorry you had to go through --"
"Oh, it was no problem," said Godric, trying not to wince.
"...really?" said Clio, all disbelief.
No, he thought. Not really. "Oh no, it was fine," he said. "I mean. Things happen. You know how it is." He laughed nervously. He couldn't quite look her in the eye.
"I thought I did," she said, sounding uncertain. "Well, you're all right, that's all that matters --"
"No, it's not." Helena glowered in all her thirteen-year-old conviction. She stood by her mother's bed, standing straight and very still, in the way that small people do when they want to conceal their trembling and look strong.
"Helena!" Rowena snapped.
"Did you do this?" Helena demanded of Clio. "Did you break my mother's wrist?"
Rowena winced. "Who said anything about --"
"I heard things," said Helena. "When people are keeping something from me I know enough to ask around."
"Helena," said Rowena warningly, "I think you should --"
"Are you afraid of her?" Helena demanded. "What can she possibly do to you? Or me? Grandmother can make her stop breathing at a word. And maybe she should."
"Your daughter is as paranoid as you are mad," said Clio. "How charming."
"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," said Helena. "My mother is the sole heir to the Chief of the Council, and if you --"
"Helena, that's enough," snapped Rowena, getting unsteadily to her feet.
"What? I'm sick of --"
"I don't need to be protected by my own daughter," said Rowena. "And like you said, she can't do anything to me." She paused. "It would, therefore, be ridiculous to suggest that she has."
Helena glared. "So you just happened to break your wrist --"
"There was an accident. A misunderstanding. If you’re so very interested in the workings of the human wrist, Helena, I shall give you something to do. Five diagrams of wrist movements for higher-grade transportation spells, explaining all points of inflection thoroughly, due tomorrow," said Rowena.
Helena glared. "This is absurd!"
"Ten diagrams. I'm making it fifty if you say one more word."
Her shoulders shook with anger, but she walked out silently.
"She's thirteen," said Rowena, by way of explanation.
"When I was thirteen, I had already been freelancing in London for a year," said Clio.
"Your precocious viciousness isn't something to be proud of," said Rowena. "Leave me alone. While you're at it, leave Godric alone, too. We've both suffered enough."
Disgusted, Clio turned to Lord Slytherin. "Is she this insolent to you?" she demanded.
He shrugged elaborately. "I consider it one of her unique charms. I prefer critics to flunkies, don't you?"
"I prefer --" she started, but then she glanced at Godric's wounds and swallowed her words. "Lady Aeaeae's party is leaving," she said instead. "Will you be seeing them off?"
"I suppose it would be the polite thing to do," said Lord Slytherin. "Shall I make your apologies, Lady Ravenclaw?"
Rowena winced. "Just... make something up that verges on polite?"
He laughed. "I will do my best to be convincing." He followed Clio out of the room.
"And not pompous!" Rowena called after him. "He's got this habit of being pompous," she told Godric. "I'm not pompous." She looked at Godric, as if for confirmation.
"What?" he asked.
"I'm not pompous," she repeated.
He just rolled his eyes. "Of course you're not," he said, not bothering to sound like he meant it. "How am I going to get out of this Council thing?"
"You're not," she snapped. "If he thinks it's the only way --"
"He can't think it's the only way," he said. "Why doesn't he just --"
"Just what?"
"I don't know, benevolently kidnap your father! Or something. That's what I'd do," said Godric.
She began to laugh.
"What?" he asked.
"You would not kidnap anyone, Godric," she said, still trying not to laugh. "I mean, what would you do? 'Oh, sorry about this, I know it's inconvenient, but I just, you know, I'm kidnapping you. You might've noticed. But don't worry! I won't hurt you! It's benevolent! Oh and try not to undo my knots by accident, I know they're not very good but I do my best. Maybe you could do them better if you want?'"
Godric charitably chose to ignore her terrible approximation of his accent, which wandered drunkenly between Salisbury and Edinburgh. "Well, I meant if I were Lord Slytherin --"
"Which is why you aren't Lord Slytherin," she said.
"Exactly," he said. "I'm me. How'm I supposed to get onto the Council?" Hopefully Rowena would come up with something else. He was no good at politics.
"You do have the advantage over Fudge," she said.
He stared at her. She didn't look mad, but obviously she was. "How?"
"Well, there's the part where you can actually transfigure things," she said, rolling her eyes.
"Yeah, but --"
"Anyway," she said, "Lord Slytherin will have some way of --"
"But you don't even like him!" he said. This was not going well at all. If he couldn't convince Rowena that he was incompetent, he couldn't convince anyone. Probably she knew he was incompetent, and just wanted to see his life ruined.
"He's better than nothing," she said glumly. "That's what I thought when we put the school here and, well. He wants to save my father." She glared. "Which is certainly better than everyone else. You just don't care, and Mum's outright hostile."
"And now you're comparing me to your mother," said Godric, rubbing his eyes. "This has been a completely awful night."
"We both survived," she said flatly. "It could have been worse." With that, she took her book, lay back on her cot, and read, apparently intending to ignore him for the rest of the morning.
"You're not helping," Godric muttered. He was not going to be on the Council. There had to be a way out of it.
* * *
Helena sat sulking in the library, looking at spells. "She sent me away!"
"It was probably for your own good," said Julian.
"But she sent me away," she repeated. She had tried to help. Every time she tried to help it all went wrong. Either it was her fault -- which it wasn't -- or it was Mum's fault.
"Look, here's an easy one," said Julian, "Cestrosphendonus." He pushed a book at her.
"Yeah, I want to throw rocks right about now," she said, grumpily. Her mother was so stubborn. She wouldn't let anybody do anything for her. Helena wondered how she had managed to be raised by a woman like that and still be sensible. "Like a child! She sent me away!"
"We heard," said Devlin. "Why are we helping her?"
"Because," said Julian.
"I hate it when she gets all mopey and overdramatic," said Devlin.
"I spent all night listening at keyholes for her, and she sent me away," said Helena, ignoring them. This was not entirely true, of course, but she felt like it was true.
"Well, maybe she likes her rest," said Devlin. "I mean, you are sort of loud."
"That's not my problem." She glowered. It wasn't as if they were being very helpful either.
"Can we focus here?" said Julian. "You've only got one done. Let's at least try Cestrophendonus."
"Not really even one," said Devlin, examining her diagram for Mobilinovacula. "I mean, unless 'TO STAB FACES' is a good reason for a spell gesture inflecty thingy."
"Don't look at my things, Devlin," she said, grabbing the parchment back. Useless nosy peasant.
"Also, contrary to popular belief, faces don't make very good stabbing targets," Devlin said. "I mean, legs, maybe, or --"
Alioth Nigellus interrupted them as he walked into the library. "Stomachs," he said. "Stomachs are good. And throats." He stood behind Devlin and Julian, looking at Helena's embarrassingly incomplete list. "Not much osseal protection there." He looked very gloomy, she thought. He had a lot of nerve looking gloomy while her mum was bedridden.
"What do you want?" asked Julian, turning around in his seat to glare at him.
"Nothing," said Nigellus, shrugging. "Just trying to help."
"Well, don't. None of us likes you and you're useless," said Helena.
"More useless than these two?" Nigellus asked.
He had a point. Still. "Well, I don't really care about osseal protection. I'm not going to actually stab people. I mean. It isn't likely to help."
"Oh," said Nigellus, sounding disappointed. "Well. I didn't mean to offend," he said awkwardly. He shrugged and left them, possibly to brood on his own time. Helena thought he needed practice at it anyway.
"Maybe he didn't, but he's so good at it," Julian said, once he was out of earshot.
She giggled. Julian's expression was so full of loathing. "You shouldn't be so hard on him. He's just trying to play to his strengths."
For some reason, Julian brightened. "Maybe, but today's not the Feast of Let's Be Nice to Nigellus. Maybe tomorrow. Anyway, I think this book's got some promise…"
"If you two are all face-stabbed out, I'm going to go do research for that Transfiguration thing," said Devlin.
"What, you didn't do that already?" Julian asked. "I thought everybody was doing the alchemical dilemma."
"Yeah, but that's too easy," said Devlin. "I was thinking Animagi."
"Are you mad?" Helena asked. "Mum says none of the books agree on those, and she would know. She's read everything."
Devlin shrugged. "Maybe I'll make stuff up. Anyway, there's got to be something I can find that two people agree on. Even if it's wrong in the end."
* * *
Rowena had suggested to Godric that they walk to the village to thank Healer Wootton for his help, which had mostly been an excuse to get out of the castle and away from Lord Salazar to talk privately. She had to admit, though, the smell of rain was a nice change from the rotting organic smell of Lord Salazar's healing room.
"Do you think it's going to start raining again?" Godric asked, looking up at the overcast sky.
"Probably," said Rowena. "Just don't say things like 'it couldn't get any worse.'"
"Don't worry. It can always get worse," Godric said with false cheer. He sighed, and started in on whinging again. "How am I going to get onto the Council? Or get out of it?"
"Maybe we can buy them off," said Rowena, who was not interested in discussing it any further. "But look, about the thought-storage thing --"
"Oh yes, you did mention Stigandrson invited us for a visit, didn't you?" Godric asked eagerly. "It sounds exciting. I've never been so far away. I mean, I've hardly been out of England --"
"You are out of England," she pointed out.
"Yeah, but I live here now, so it doesn't count," said Godric. "And you're Scottish, so it's not that exotic."
"I'm Greek," she said, offended.
"You sound Scottish," he said. "Anyway --"
"Well, my father sort of is, and I was born here, and grew up here but I'm --"
"See? Scottish."
"I am the descendant of Odysseus, King of Ithaca and Circe of Aeaea," she informed him. "Supposedly."
"Really?" Godric asked. "Why aren't you Princess of Ithaca or something, then?"
"Blame the Romans. And the Muggles. Especially the Roman Muggles," said Rowena. "Anyway, we haven't any proof of that -- I mean, I had this ancestor who tried to lead a slave revolt when he got sent to Britain by Emperor Hadrian, and that's just what he claimed. We're definitely descended from him, but he was mad, so who knows about Circe and all that?"
"Is this the Dark Transfigurator Circe," Godric asked, "or was there a lighter, fluffier Circe?"
"The Dark one," said Rowena, "but I think the Dark part's just good propaganda to scare people into behaving. I mean, she doesn't seem to have been much more than a socially-maladapted recluse, as far as I've read."
"Or maybe she just really liked pigs," said Godric.
Rowena stopped in her tracks. "Eurgh."
"What?" Godric asked.
She looked at him skeptically. He was obviously playing at being stupid again. "Well, what did you mean?"
"Pigs are clever!" said Godric, with worrying enthusiasm. "I taught one to do tricks once. Then a nobleman visited Fudge and they had it for supper. But, er. It's not impossible."
"Maybe all transfigurators are socially-maladapted recluses," Rowena wondered aloud.
"Maybe!" said Godric, in a tone that suggested he thought anything was possible in theory, as long as nobody was asking him to do anything about it. "...wait, you just --"
"Oh, look at that, we're at Healer Wootton's already!" said Rowena cheerfully.
"I hate everyone," he muttered.
She laughed. "You would, wouldn't you?"
"Well, I did already. You just reminded me," he said resignedly. He pushed the door open with his less-bandaged hand, and ducked in.
Chapter 18