Well, I've got a blade too.
"Teiresias"
Gryffindors will save the world first and themselves second; Slytherins will save themselves first, and then let the world fend for itself.
1.
"When the wolves come," the man says, "when the wolves come (and they most certainly will), take this gun, these bullets, and your children and wait in the basement until it is quiet. And take this, too," he says, pressing a small pendant into the woman's hand. "Keep it close to you. Good luck."
She nods, a tight, nervous smile hiding her teeth.
2.
In a small apartment in Dublin, a young boy sits up in bed, blankets around his neck, and stares at the man who's just walked out of his closet.
Who are you? the boy asks silently.
Teiresias. The stranger's mind is rough and unfocused, jumbled, not-all-quite-there. It tastes like oranges, the boy thinks. Tangerines.
The man with the fuzzy-tangerine scrapyard mind leans over and tips up his chin with a finger, think-speaks You'll need this. and slips a tiny scroll into his pyjama-shirt pocket.
For what?
You'll figure it out. I'll be checking up on you, the man speak-thinks.
When? the boy asks.
He pulls a large gold pocketwatch from his coat pocket and holds it out. Then.
The boy blinks against the green light emanating from the watch, and looks up to ask why?, but the man has already gone.
3.
He bribes the Dementors and walks easily down the halls of Azkaban, slowing in front of Cell 358. "Good morning," he says through the small high window. "I'm in the papers now, see?" He shoves a folded newspaper through the bars; it hits the ground inside with a dry flutter.
"Not that any of them have any fucking clue, obviously."
There's no answer.
"Well, fuck you, then," and he strides off.
4.
Dressed nattily in a wool suit, Italian leather shoes, and an Invisibility cloak, he slips a knife into the ribs of a woman who would have gone on to marry a half-blood, preventing him from meeting (and eventually marrying) the leader of a potentially important political sect.
Now, she crumples down to the ground.
He wraps the knife in a handkerchief and tucks it into his briefcase, stopping to arrange the woman's arms over her chest before whispering a cleaning spell. The blood and dirt (and fingerprints, invisibly) separate from her skin and hover, then dissipate.
5.
In a small apartment in Dublin, a look of comprehension slides slowly onto the pockmarked face of a seventeen-year-old boy.
You really did come back, he speak-thinks.
"I really did," the man says out loud, and shoots him twice.
6.
He stares down at the tea leaves in his mug, clumped together in the shape of a gallows. Different, at least, from the sword that appeared the last time.
7.
"I've started to make some progress," he says, and takes a long drag on his cigarette. The haggard blonde man sitting on the bench across from him grimaces at the smoke.
"And you're leaving quite a trail, aren't you," the man on the cell bench says.
"So what if I am?" Teiresias asks.
"There is a risk of going too far, you know that."
"I'll go just as far as I need to go, and no further." Teiresias smiles thinly, offers him a cigarette.
8.
He's decided to be more subtle: he traces the lines of causualty on parchment, giant sheets of parchment that he lays out on the dining-room floor. Births, deaths, handshakes, letters, marriages, insults, chance meetings - everything he can find, written down and tied together. The house-elves are exhausted, but he's wide awake, standing with one foot on John Entington b. Feb 17, 1893 and another on Peter Verl jailed Aug 2, 1902, wand in hand. The map beneath him glows; his death-date sits four feet ahead, shivering in red-orange.
9.
Teiresias gives a small volume of psalms to a man in 1965, and graciously turns down his offer of tea. In the same year, but in a different town, he teaches a young girl to swim, holding her wrists and ankles as she splashes awkwardly in the cold river.
The map changes. He watches, with some interest, as Ronald Weasley b. Mar 1, 1980 fades from its surface.
10.
He slips out of time into where he started from, feet sliding up from the ground. There is chainlink fence, and guards with long firearms, and under him is pavement.
"Sir, you're not supposed to be here," one of them says. "This is a restricted area."
He allows himself to be led out.
"I could've sworn..."
"Yes sir?"
"I could've sworn there was a prison here."
"Sir?"
He presses a hand to his mouth, inhales slowly. The air around him is flat and still. "Nevermind," he says softly. "I - nevermind."
11.
His key does not fit into the lock of his aparment, Alohomora does not work. Keeping calm on his doorstep, keys and wand shoved back into his pocket, he nods at nothing in particular and hurries off to the nearest cafe. He orders tea, smiling up at the pretty blonde waitress, spilling sugar on the table and dragging a fingernail through it in neat diagonal lines.
Teabag ripped open, water back into the pot: the leaves form - what? He spins the cup around, tilts it, squints. A cat, maybe. Or -
In a hotel room, he spills the contents of his pockets out onto the bed: keys, wand, cigarettes, matches, money, a foil candy wrapper, some pebbles from Brighton, 1875. He throws out the wrapper and pebbles, tosses the keys and money on the bedside table, lights a cigarette.
He picks up the wand and taps it against the tip of his nose, then points it up at the ceiling. "Lumos."
Nothing.
He straightens up, tries it louder: "Lumos, you fucking cunt."
Nothing.
12.
He tries everything, and nothing works. The wand still sits in his pocket. Waiting, maybe. He's almost willing to take all this in his stride because he is alive. Wasn't that the idea, after all? Survival. Survival of the fucking fittest. He doesn't bother to hide his sneer in his whiskey.
"What's your name?" asks the girl he's been flirting with. Her legs slide down the bar stool into the shadows, long and pale; he's interested.
"Draco Malfoy," he says, because there's no sense lying now, not when the world's up and gone.
"Odd name."
"I had an odd father," he says, and they share a smile.
He buys her another drink. It's hot in here, airless; he buys them both another drink, squeezes her hand, darts outside into the just-rained dark of the street. It's airless out here too, or maybe it's just him. He pulls at his collar, breathes in as deep as he can - maybe it's just the weather.
Then there's a hand on his shoulder spinning him roughly around, a cruel grin and hey rich boy.
Hey fairy; Draco shakes his hair out of his face and digs through his pockets, breathing hard against the pressure on his chest. Wand, keys, matches, money thrust into the hands of the hulking grinning thing leaning over him murmuring hey pretty.
The wand and the matches hit the wet ground, the keys and gold coins are shaken in his face, jingling, shining red-orange in the light filtering out from the pub. He hears, over his heartbeat, the click of a gun safety and the rotten-wood snap of his wand breaking under a boot.