[She even writes in green ink, it's this ridiculous flourish that Sirius sneered at when he first opened the letter. And then it went on, and even if Edgeworth can't see exactly what's between the neat strokes of the quill, Sirius can. He has been raised to read things just like this, to understand the precise meaning of what is being asked of him. Like it's just another social engagement to endure. All of the best people will be there, a heavy sentence, and your absence will not go unnoted.
And here's Edgeworth, with his stupid plain muggle face, his brows furrowed--Merlin, he looks so stupid, and Sirius actually barks a laugh, his eyes dark and hooded.]
It's none of your business, like I said. It's nothing you'd be invited to.
[He's not struggling right now; he's fallen suddenly still, his gaze leveled on Edgeworth's face.]
Put it down, and let me go. I'm not telling you again. [And here, now, he's finally coming back into himself, so much so that he actually affects a little sneer.] Prefects don't tie people up, you sadist. You wait till this gets out.
[Distract him, and he'll put down that fucking parchment and they can move on from it.]
[And that does distract Edgeworth a moment - he looks up and snaps - ]
You were trying to murder me. I think I was well within my rights.
[Though that does set him on edge with nerves, because Edgeworth started it. This was all his fault. It will be a miracle if he doesn't lose his position, truly; maybe that's why he focuses back in on the parchment, to distract himself from his dread.]
Good to hear you're hypocritical, though. You criticize others for telling tales and then do the same yourself.
[He frowns, eyes flicking over the parchment. Maybe it is just an event, just some idiotic party, but Black had thrashed when he'd touched it - and he feels half-stupid, guessing like this, going off nothing more than a hunch. But the hunch is strong.]
Who are the best people? Tell me, or my last act before getting expelled by your miserable, corrupt father will be ensuring that he, and your mother, and all of your slack-jawed cousins, know every detail of how you were bested by a Muggle-born.
[When Sirius' father finds out--because he will, Orion Black isn't the sort of man that secrets are kept from, and his grim-eyed affection only goes so far, he will not be pleased--when he finds out, there is going to be hell to pay. One thing at a time, though, one thing at a fucking time--]
Anyone but you, mudblood. That's the best people. Anyone but you and your kind.
[There's a haughtiness even in his sneer, in the callous way his eyes sweep over Edgeworth's face.]
God, look at you, trying to reason this out. D'you really think it would end with you being expelled? My father won't let it stop there. Not for you. Or have you forgotten how that sort of loyalty works, Edgeworth--I mean, with your dad not around, and all--the memory sort of fades, I suppose--
He'll have you taken care of, Edgeworth. Trust me.
[His wand is suddenly in his hand again. He's not sure how it got there, not wholly, because there was a moment when the blood was rushing to his head and he couldn't quite see - but he knows he must have grabbed it himself and yanked it out of his pocket and pointed it right at Black's face.
He's breathing hard. His voice shakes when he says - ]
Don't talk about my father.
[The parchment's still in his hand, crumpled again in a fist suddenly clenched.]
[Even tied up, more or less at Edgeworth's mercy, he still laughs, derisively, and when he grins it shows his teeth. Perfect teeth, perfect everything. Nothing has ever been hard for him.]
Why not? Does it make you sad? You should think about him more, Edgeworth. Let him be a lesson for you.
[The parchment, his eyes go to it, quickly, before they jump back to Edgeworth, narrowed.]
Don't get into shit you can't get yourself out of.
[His foot comes back, suddenly, and as though of its own volition slams hard into Black's ribs. It's not even particularly effective; he's got a bad angle, and Black's arms are twisted in a way that shields him, but it's got enough fury and force behind it that it'll leave a mark.
Stupid. More evidence. Another thing the boy can point to. Another thing he can show to get Edgeworth expelled.
He should just take this to Dumbledore. Of course he should. He has his suspicions about this meeting, and Edgeworth, prefect, who doesn't break rules, perfect flawless Muggle-born making his shining life into a rebuff to all the racism of all the Purebloods, would of course just bring this right to the authorities. Do the right thing. The responsible thing. And it would keep him out of trouble if it is just some idiotic Pureblood party where they scoff at you for using the wrong fork, if his instincts are wrong. The right decision is to tell McGonagall and Dumbledore.
But fuck Sirius Black. Fuck his taunts. Fuck him thinking he can talk about Edgeworth's dad. Fuck him thinking he can use that to protect himself.
This will end up with Edgeworth in Azkaban. He knows it. Because this, what he's planning, is far far beyond an expellable offense; this is positively criminal. But his hands are numb with rage, and so he reaches down and he viciously yanks a half-dozen strands of hair from Black's flawless scalp. And, viciously, he shows them to him.]
Go on, Black. Keep talking. I could use a bit more practice with your speech patterns - I wouldn't wish to arouse suspicions at this party.
[The pain hits him, hard. It's so unlike pain he usually incurs: stupid clumsy things, the few times when his natural grace fails him--blows on the quidditch pitch--even blows from his physical fights, those are different. This is just a kick, and he's half curled around himself already but it still fucking hurts; his breath hisses between his teeth, he bites down on his lip, hard, and tastes blood--
Fucking hell. Fucking hell, and his anger twists in him again. If he could tear his way out of these ropes he'd get Edgeworth by the throat all over again and show him what happens, after shit like this--
His second grunt of pain is fair louder, his eyes watering. It follows the kick so quickly that he barely registers it as a second, separate pain, as if the kick somehow led to this tug at his scalp--no, but then he realises, and he puts it together with what Edgeworth is saying--]
No.
[The word tears out of him. He should guard himself, he's the fucking heir to the Black family, not some idiot common kid, never taught to compose his features--but the suggestion tears at something in him, something he's taught himself just as well to ignore.]
You can't. [And, lest that sound like real concern--] You bloody idiot. You can't.
Of course I can. I may be a dull, stupid Mudblood, but even I can brew a polyjuice potion.
[If he stops to think about this, his nerve will fail him. He knows that. So he might be strange and not entirely welcome amongst the Gryffindors, with his focus on rules and adhering to them, with his love of proper procedure, with his refusal to speak loudly in the library - but he's still a Gryffindor, and every once in a while he'll just charge ahead without any regard for what's smart, for what's reasonable.
So he doesn't stop to dwell on what will happen. How if he gets caught, he'll be disgraced - sent, no question, to Azkaban, because one does not simply kidnap the heir to the Black line and come away a free man. (It's possible, too, that they'll murder him then and there - but that is, in his mind, far and away preferable to ending up imprisoned, to the point where he'd nearly shrug off the possibility.) Only if he comes back with proof, real proof, that the Purebloods are cavorting with Voldemort and recruiting from Hogwarts will he have the least prayer of earning forgiveness -
And he will find that proof. He knows that's what this is. He knows it.
(Even if, on some level, this is all just about doing the opposite of what Sirius Black urges him to do, because he wants to prove that Dad's death just motivated him. He's not scared or sad. He's angry.)]
Besides - I'll have you with me to guide me. You can tell me which fork to use, and which spells are most appropriate for torturing Muggles. That's the main entertainment at events such as these, isn't it?
[And that's the crux of the plan. Sirius Black in his pocket - quite literally - telling him how to react, whom he knows, whom he doesn't. It will be a tricky bit of magic - and there's satisfaction in that; Black himself probably couldn't cast these spells.]
[For all his cleverness, the reality of what Edgeworth is proposing is slow to come to Sirius. Polyjuice potion, that's obvious; his scalp still tingles, vaguely. It can't happen. He can see the cold corridor, bone-white tile, and the polite murmur of conversation--and Edgeworth, striding down the center, right through it all, the proverbial hippogriff in the china shop. He'll be caught in a second. Is that a comfort? It would serve him right, serve him fucking right if he were caught and tortured out of his idiot mind--
There would be shame in it, for the Blacks. Sirius, heir to the family, caught by a mudblood? It's unthinkable. It can't happen. And as he susses all this out, Edgeworth says the bit about I'll have you with me, and he stares--and then barks a laugh, incredulous.]
What? [And, sharper:] What? What the hell are you on about-- I'm not telling you a bloody thing!
You don't know what you're getting into, you think you've got this worked out, don't you? That clever brain of yours. You haven't. You think you've got it but you haven't got a thing. And if you think for one second that you're prepared for what you're proposing to do, then you deserve wasn't going to happen to you.
I'm not your prisoner. I'm not your inside man. There's no inside, to be on, and I'll say this once more, see if it gets through your thick skull, mudblood: you let me go, right now. Or when I get free, I will kill you, and you'll deserve that, too.
[And Edgeworth gives a short, harsh, humorless laugh. Maybe it's flattering, in a way, that Black's mind doesn't go to the Imperius curse. That's the tool of Black's people, after all - because Edgeworth has heard tales, already, of so-called blood traitors being forced by laughing Death Eaters to murder the Muggles they love so well. So there's a small measure of pride in the fact that Black doesn't even seem to think Edgeworth capable.
Separates him from them. He needs that.]
You're not telling me anything willingly, perhaps. But I saw you skipping out of that lesson on Occlumency; you ought to have stayed, I think.
[It's his last moment to back out. He's not afraid of Black's threats of death: after all, the boy tried to strangle him already, and it's far enough from the attempt that Edgeworth can arrogantly brush it aside as negligible. No: he's afraid of trouble, afraid of Dumbledore's disapproval...But every threat, every contemptuous aristocratic warning, just spurs Edgeworth on to further stubborn defiance.
The spell is easy enough: the first of two that will make this possible. It's a bit of transfiguration, far from simple - quite advanced, really - because changing teacups to water-glasses is quite a different matter from changing a man's form. But Edgeworth has learned from heavy, dusty books some tricks to make the spell go a bit more smoothly, take a bit more strongly. When someone is changing a person to an animal, one does not try to dictate the animal-form the other person takes: to do so will mean that one will have to struggle constantly to maintain the spell. Instead, just let them take what form is natural. That will let the spell hold firmly and well.
Edgeworth assumes that Black will take the form of a snake, or a beetle, or a rat - something low, diseased, and scuttling. So when he presses his wand to Black's chest and mutters the spell to change him to animal, he expects him to become small enough to fit into his pocket.]
[Still sneering, but there's a desperation to it as well. He's fairly well convinced of the truth of that statement, but if he is wrong, somehow-- Christ, he doesn't want Edgeworth messing about in his head. And he wouldn't do it, would he. He's a bloody Gryffindor, in the end--noble bunch of bastards, too proud to use tactics others might use without thought.
And then Edgeworth gets out his wand, and that assumption quickly dies--panic sets in, piercing, sharp, and he tries to writhe away as Edgeworth shoves his wand against his chest--
Not a rat. Not a beetle, or a snake--and not small. He doesn't even have time to react, or make a noise--it's a deep, twisting feeling, being shoved through a laundry wringer and run back through again, a few times--
It's a dog. A dog, massive, black, all fur and mad rolling eyes and desperate growling, his lip curled up, showing his teeth. It's a dog's panic that he feels too, adding to his own, a hard confused feeling, like everything is at war in him, emotions fighting for dominance. Be free, that's what he thinks most of all, get free get free get free--
He'd been prepared to cast a charm that would protect his hands from the viper's venomous strike, or conjure a little cup to catch that dung-beetle. That was the only possibility he'd framed in his mind. The irritatingly long hairs for the polyjuice potion are shoved into his pocket. He has a free hand now, and his wand is out, but he doesn't have a spell in mind, anything to counter a dog's bite, to contain an animal that huge -
And so he acts purely on instinct. It's a frightened animal now - not Sirius Black, Pureblood, who probably knows who killed his dad, who laughs at the way his dad died. It's not the Slytherin, it's not the rich bastard who swaggers around the halls bragging about his Quiddich victories. It's just a creature, like any in the class he loves so well out in the warm sunshine, and so -
He leans forward. One hand comes out to scratch the back of the dog's neck with rough affection. And Edgeworth's wand comes up, and he casts a rough and hasty version of the spell he'd intended to cast later.
It's a spell he developed studying legilimency and pensieves and spells used to soothe wild beasts, something that he'd intended to be a tool in determining who was working for them and who was an ally in truth. It's supposed to be something that skims off the top levels of thoughts and emotions in a constant feed, coming to the mind of the caster. No more than that. There's not supposed to be any two-way linkage, no mutual information given. A good tool for a spy, therefore, like he was going to use it at that party, so that he could know exactly who everyone was and what Black's relationship was to them.
But he needs calm now, far beyond his need for secrecy. So he casts the spell hastily, presses his wand to his temple and then the dog's, and without knowing if it was successful, whether there's even a link, he just sends along that potential connection a feeling of calm, and safety, and contentment.]
[The transformation from wizard-to-dog isn't as smooth as an animagus transformation surely is--where you know it's coming, you can prepare yourself, you can brace for the impact of DOG--a load of hair and smells and emotions coloured in broader strokes than any you know. It's terrifying, being twisted in all of that; Sirius hates to admit fear, but here it's all he knows, like he could get lost in that undertow, and there is nothing to hold on to. There isn't so much Sirius as there is dog, angry and snarling, and then--
The weight of the hand is one that he wants to fight off, but the dog likes it, but hates it, and his hatred feeds that, and God, this must be what it's like to go mad, to feel out of your head. The dog's growls turn to snarls, confused, wanting calm but unable to grasp it--and then there's something else, too, like a weight on the top of his head--no, worse, like a weight in his head, like a hand been dropped there as well, and then--
It's a flash--on the left eye, it's Regulus, his thin stupid face, smirking at Sirius, rolling up his shirtsleeve, a dark room--the parlor, at Grimmauld Place, and there's the distant murmur of conversation, from some other room, it is night and all the candles in the silver chandeliers are lit and Sirius' dress robes hang heavy on his arm--and it twists, and it goes, like it's been pulled out of a drawer, and something else rushes in to fill it in, stripping away some of that desperate fear, some of his Regulus (hate-love-disdain) emotion, flaking it off, and it leaves behind something else, something pressed against his other eye, clumsier emotion, anger hidden beneath necessity, instinct, concentration, precision--and Dad, beneath that, a wound, and the dog whimpers, loud--]
[This wasn't how it was supposed to go. This spell, like all of Miles' spells, was to have been clean, quick, and precise, like the finely woven white ropes still wrapped around the great hound, like the precise parabola of Black's wand. It was to have been a simple clean transference of calm, a skimming of Black's thoughts, and then a breaking away as Miles plotted his next step.
But perhaps from the haste, perhaps from the untested nature of this spell, it's not that.
It's not that at all.
Instead it's Sirius standing with fucking Regulus, the little - No, not Miles' thoughts - It's Dad - Mom - It's Father and Mother, cool and restrained and aristocratic, standing at the window and sneering at the sight of a Muggle family walking along their street, their street - Dad and Mom - a dog catching the scent of a rabbit -
It's Dad and Mom, as he remembers them alive, standing in a strange and cold and dark house, but still Dad and Mom. Mom's hair's done up, and her face is round; she's healthy, happy, vivacious; it's before her illness. Dad's happy, too, smiling in approval, and he says We're so proud of you, you know - so proud - And that's not a memory; that's just what he sits sometimes and imagines. It's just what he imagines.
Father - Sirius's father - that's not Dad - cold and dead on the floor, where Miles had found him - that first Christmas home from Hogwarts, when he'd waited all night at the train station for Dad to come and pick him up. Two in the morning. Freezing in the house. He'd known it was magic. And the only people he'd known to call were the police, but they'd told them, time and again, that they had to keep the secret of magic. He'd sat frozen with the body until...Until someone came; he still can't remember who, how long it was...But the face is wrong; that's Sirius's father, not his. Not his.
Miles is aware of having reached in and gripped the dog, hugging the beast tightly to comfort it, to comfort himself. He's panting, and his face is wet with tears, but the warm doggish weight, the smell, comforts him, and the rapid, confused images fade into something slower, more manageable...
Melancholy. Terror. Terror of an ancient sort - not fear, not true fear, but the terror of a life lived risking being a disappointment. The terror of a child raised under conditional love. It's terror centered on Regulus, Father and Mother, and it's strangely familiar to Miles. Because that's the fear of living under expectations, having to fight to mold yourself into something satisfactory. Something you're not. It's that which he focuses on, because it's that which isn't fragmented between them; it's that which is shared, where he won't feel as though he's being torn apart by Sirius' mind.]
[He can't work against any of this. Powerless, fucking powerless, stuck here as he is, and Edgeworth's arms are around him--around the dog, but he is the dog, it's all so fucking knotted up--his arms, and the damp from his tears, he's crying, but Sirius can't think of that with revulsion or triumph or anything--
Because there's that fear, that loneliness, and he feels it echoed back from Edgeworth as well, a deeper pull.
If he were anything but what he is, completely--they would write him off. And God, he can't stand that, and he can't stand what it reduces him to, all at once--the dog's whimper becomes a growl, goes to a whimper again, his father--Edgeworth's father, but his, his face, so like Sirius' own that he hates that about himself, too--pale, ashen, dead, there should be some triumph in that, maybe, but there's nothing but sadness, and he knows that it's Edgeworth's, bleeding in to him--but it isn't, entirely, it's also his own, pathetic, miserable that he is, he would come home and find his father dead and still feel raw over it, even though his father is barely more than a weight on his arm, a cold hand at the back of his neck, his rings pinching at the skin.
The dog twists, trying to be free, trying to get closer. Emotions are little more than rudimentary, it's in Sirius that everything is so fucking tangled, and it's just going on, that feeling, the heavy weight of expectation--and tradition, too, weighing almost heavier than anything else--like looking down a pit and being unable to see the bottom. The duplicity of emotion makes it worse, or does it make it better--is it better to be alone while alone, or alone with someone whose loneliness so doubles your own--and all the fucking dog can do is whimper, his ears back, his tail curled between his legs--]
[Miles is aware of himself enough now to be aware of everything that he's sharing. The depth of emotion, raw and jagged, is more than enough weaponry for Sirius to strip his flesh from his bones once all this is over. But once all this is over - it's so stupid a phrase to even think, because there probably won't even be a Miles Edgeworth to mock once it's finished. This is a desperate, stupid suicide mission, some idiotic bravery that will get him killed just on the off-chance that he can stop it. On the off-chance that he can maybe find the wizard who killed Dad, or stop the wizard who'll kill the next kid's dad.
(Revenge, nobility, though - those are only part of it, aren't they? Because so much of it is just the desperate hope that maybe if he could just put a stop to it, he wouldn't be so alone here. Because Miles isn't easy to love, and even those who could see past that are too scared, because you don't make friends with Muggle-borns nowadays. Not if you're smart. And in these times, even Gryffindors have gotten smart.)
And still -
And still that's another strange and unexpected...Sirius himself has no great love for all of them. The Slytherins. How strange, and stupid...He'd always seemed their king. But he doesn't love them, and he's so weighed down with everything in his family that there's not even them for him, and...
And Miles, stupid Miles, can only react by scratching at the dog's ears and murmuring reassurances. He hates Sirius Black. Hates him. Hates him so much. The things he said were - They were - But it's such a strange and sad thing, to be that child (that child with so much energy, who ran and laughed and played and put tadpoles in teacups until that was ground out of him, slowly and surely, who felt warmth only when he echoed back the lines told him, whose guilt and terror and regret have left echoes in his mind). Hatred can't withstand - has never withstood - the force of compassion in Miles' mind.
And so, tentatively, afraid of mockery or rejection, Miles opens up a memory of him, and his dad, just sitting quietly at the table on a Saturday morning, drinking tea. Dad occasionally reading a bit from a case file, asking Miles' opinion (Miles, nine years old, so proud of being asked). Nothing but warmth. Even the grief of Dad's death not tainting that remembrance. He doesn't know why he does it, whether it's to calm the dog down or whether it's to share with this strange cold sad boy that kind moment. But he does it, lays that treasured moment bare.]
[Really, it ought to feel creepy. Really, he ought to feel as if he's peeled away the window shade and peered in to get a glimpse of something he's not meant to know about. Who the fuck complains about a life of everything, with the world at your fingertips, tucked into your pockets?
But the curtains are always drawn, and everyone is always in the next room. Dinner at half past five, two place settings. The table sets itself when you stand up again, two place settings, more forks and spoons, gleaming in the candlelight.
The dog's eyes slip half-shut, and his paws stop their scrabbling--and Sirius, for the moment, just-- lives, in this memory that isn't his. He's too tired to reject it, and the warmth of it--sunlight, Saturday sunlight, and the mugs of tea--it's too good.
One last whimper, and then the dog licks at his nose, calming, finally--ears still against its head, but no longer writhing in fear and panic. Finally still, borrowing this moment that isn't his and couldn't be.]
[And Miles' hand soothes and encourages, smoothing over the dog's shoulder like he's not a Pureblood in disguise, like he's just a simple sweet animal in need of comfort. Like Miles is still the boy of six years ago who'd cry at the sight of hurt creatures, trying hard to find some way to make things better.
(Evidently he is still that boy. He himself didn't even know it, and he doesn't know whether to feel disgust or relief.)
There should be hatred right now. If Miles were going to show Sirius anything, it should be forcing into his mind the horror and the fear of being a Muggle-born in the world that the Purebloods are making. He should be trying to shred Sirius into tiny pieces with everything the always-pure Blacks have done to people like Miles. He should be taking this as an opportunity to further his agenda.
But instead he finds himself drawn into Sirius' own private grief. And he finds himself thinking that he ought to agree with that fleeting thought of Sirius' - what right indeed has he to be sad, when he has wealth, when he has people who admire him, when he hurts others without fearing the consequences, when he has a family? A mother and father and brother? And Miles is alone in the world; Miles has no one and nothing...
But Miles also has those crystallized memories of complete, uncomplicated love. Sirius doesn't. And even a memory of Mom and Dad, he thinks, is so much greater than the living chill of Mother and Father and Regulus - Regulus, who should be a friend but who's just competition.
He ought to hate him. A good Auror is supposed to hate Dark wizards, isn't he? He's supposed to hunt them down wherever they are? And Sirius might not be a Dark wizard, but he could be, so easily. There should be loathing, contempt, and maybe there was five minutes ago - five hours ago - Miles doesn't even know how long they've been like this. But now all Miles wants is for things to be...better for Sirius.
How stupid. He deserves mockery and contempt with stupidity like this.]
[What flows back--with the love, uncomplicated, warm, as warm as the sunlight in that memory, and the smile on Dad's face (Dad, even that speaks volumes), and the pleasure from making him smile, not the twisted complicated pride that comes from pleasing Father--what flows back with the wash of that is--
There's not a word for it. Sympathy, maybe, but it's deeper than that. And it isn't pity, that ugly, clumsy thing. And it isn't even commiseration, it's something else, something more complicated. It's Edgeworth--no, Miles; Sirius has never thought of him having a first name, it's easier if people are surnames, if you can judge and weigh them by the heft of their names, haves and have nots, pure and dirty. It's Miles, who is alone, whose memories of his father are happy, even though there's a keen pain that lurks just in the background, a weight waiting to fall--it's Miles, whose hand is a broad warm weight on the dog's back, rubbing gently--who, after everything Sirius has said, all the torments heaped on his head--after all of it, still feels that compassion.
It's impossible. It's stupid, it's an instinct that will get him killed, and it's nothing that Sirius should admire or even take advantage of. But it's so hard not to, to be so close to the warmth and to not take a little comfort from it. It's so hard, and he's tired, right now, and even in his head he feels that give, like he's had his arms braced against something but now lets them drop. Fine, yes. He surrenders, for now, but it's not half as reluctant as that, it's touched with-- appreciation. With appreciation and gratefulness and so much more, so much that he could never say or express or even think, not really, not usually.
Later, this will be horrible. Later, he will look back at this and not know what to do but for now-- for now, the dog's tail thumps against the ground, dully, weakly.]
[What will this be, later? What will this become? It was easy to just hate Black, Black of the dynasty of Blacks. It was easy to look at him and daydream about uncovering his true family tree and showing it was full of Muggles and Squibs, or daydream about finding a sudden hidden aptitude for Quiddich and bashing his brutal face in with a Bludger, or daydream about the time when Miles would stand triumphant over him in the Wizengamot...It was simple, and straightforward. Throughout the formulation of this whole plan there was plenty of thought given to the perils to him, Miles - the humiliation, the destruction of his future...But he never thought of Sirius.
Maybe even after all of this, if they weren't linked together, Miles would still scoff at the thought that the humiliation of Sirius Black before his family would be of consequence. But now, here, he's still tapped into the boy's deep anxiety, his feverish (doggish) need to please (and perhaps the form isn't such a surprise, because Sirius Black is nothing like a beetle or a snake or a rat after all), and so the thought of being unveiled and revealing Sirius' defeat does cause him distress.
But why? Why is there that anxiety within Sirius? There aren't words right now, nothing so clear and articulated. Instead, all Miles sends to Sirius is just a sense of...questioning. He thinks of Regulus, Mother and Father, and the way they bring more suffering than joy. He thinks of those complicated feelings, thinks of that deep loyalty, and asks without words: Why?]
[He's reluctant to be at all pulled from the warm safety of Edgeworth's memories and vague comfort. (No: Miles, he corrects himself, quickly; he knows him too well, now, doesn't know what to make of that, either.) Whatever this is, whatever is going on, what's passing between them is far better on Sirius' end than on Edgeworth's. There's sadness, but there's so much more, these pure little memories, and it's so easy, so good, to just wrap himself in them and take them for himself, for now, while he can. To be forced to answer that why, he'll have to sink back into himself, and the dog whines again, licks at his nose--
But it's Sirius that balks. The dog expresses it, but it's Sirius that is thinking it, because a dog isn't so reluctant or complex as that. And it's the doggish instinct that makes him answer, that need to please. It's too complicated to try to think as he might usually, to answer with words--impressions, instead, vague memories, and he pulls them out, lays them out the way a dog would lay a newspaper on the floor, gently:
The heavy velvet drapes drawn over tall windows, shutting out the light, the muggles walking past. A thin strip of daylight, from between, striping the floor, and the dust that dances in air so thick and old it feels like you're in a museum. On the wall, all around you, the family tree--your name, repeated, not just your own, but a name that goes so far back that taking it on is like putting on a uniform, with all the expectations of rank and purpose.
Your father, his grey eyes just like yours. Grey hair only at his temples, a dusting, barely anything more, and when he turns to look at you, you tense, you get this feeling, deep in your gut, he might smile or he might show you nothing at all, but God, you hope for a smile, you hope for approval. Your mother is in the corner, her wand pressed to the tapestry on the wall. The air is thick, the air smells of burning, she is singeing your cousin's name off of the tapestry, stripping her out of your lives--because it is your lives, collectively, because for better or for worse you are a unit, a family, regal pride and tradition, and that must be upheld.
Your brother beside you, smirking. His face is pale. You can see a thin blue vein at his temple. He was ill, when he was a baby; you used to pinch his toes and make him cry, but it backfired; Mother would come and take him into her arms and you would sit at the bottom of the stair and watch her pacing back and forth with him, tender in a way you can't remember. He is hers; you are Father's, and when Father crosses to you now, you straighten up, correcting your posture, it's pathetic, it's like a dog, but you want something from him you feel you will never get. And you never, never want to be that name, burnt from the tree; you never want to be outside, looking at the drapes against the window, listening to laughter you will never join. Because being here is better than nothing, and nothing is all you would have if you stepped away. It's not about money, it's not about privilege. It's about a scrap of something you're so hungry for you can't define it.
Your father starts to walk past you. You do not let your shoulders drop in disappointment. You stand, watching your mother at work. Her earrings are sapphire. You can see the curve of her mouth as she twists her wand, and the smell of burning is stronger. She isn't smiling, she's only working. And your father drops his hand on your shoulder, just once, the heavy silver rings knocking against the bone, and you feel such a sudden prickle of pride it's nearly dizzying. It's all you have, and you hold on to it, you clutch it to you, hard.]
[Dad was a lawyer, and for so many years Miles had thought he would be one too. Then had come that man from the Ministry, and Dad's curious frown, and the slow rub of his hand against the back of his neck, and then his question to Miles what Miles would like to do - asking him, really asking him for his decision, like he was an adult and was owed an adult's consideration. Miles won't be a lawyer now, because there's a strain of furious righteous hateful need that would leave him unsatisfied defending the wrongfully accused. But he still has a lawyer's practiced instincts, after years studying the composition of arguments, and so instead of accepting Sirius' explanation he presents his counterargument.
And yet maybe it's a weak one, because it comes down to this: what's right, and what's wrong. It's headlines in the Muggle newspapers about mysterious deaths and disappearances. It's the pain of children without parents and parents without children. It's abstract, in a way, thoroughly considered but impersonal, logical - something to convince a jury, not a sad and lonely boy who needs his family.
Because of what use is guilt when it comes up against a need to belong? What purpose does compassion serve when compassion leaves you lonely? Miles himself, he lives a life cold and sad and apart because of his decisions, but also because he already lost...everything. Who would make the choice to walk that path when they have other options?
There will come a time when Miles will die. And he'll die at the hands of Purebloods; he knows that. If it happens now, on this mission he's set for himself (mission, is how he thinks of it, like he's a proper Auror and not some stupid scared kid), or if it happens in three years, that doesn't matter. So he has to do this, has to go forward, but the cost...
It's so stupid, but he sends an inquiry to Sirius again, a wordless question whether there's any way to do this that won't...destroy Sirius. That will let him hold onto those rare few moments when he sees Father's smile. Because for Miles, a legacy is not something on a tapestry, no finely embroidered name; a legacy is the change you make in the world. But for Sirius, that thread is weighty, real, and so in this moment, that thread is a blood-red chain that binds Miles to the Black line as well. And so, in that moment, his desire to get around the cruel possibility of a Sirius Black III making the air heavy with wooly smoke is real, intense, and potent.]
[Father's smile isn't as bright as the smile in Miles' memory. Orion Black would look unnatural, with a smile like that; his face isn't made for it, it would line up wrong, fitting a mask over the lower part of his face. Even when Sirius tries to blur the two memories together he can't make them fit, and he feels the tugging of that weariness again, just stop, just stop resisting this and trying to make something out of nothing. If he gives him that rare smile then he can take something of Miles' as well, he can keep some bit of that brightness and bury it, deep, where legilimency can't find it, where maybe even he will, eventually, forget about it, as the lines in his face start to look more like his father's, as he gets that same grey at his temples, as his fingers take on those same rings, when his father eventually dies, when he is the head of the household and everyone bows to him. It's not a power he wants but it's one he will have, and bear it, as if his father is still there to look over his shoulder--because he will be, sort of, because he will always be in the portraits and on the walls and even in the fucking mirror, when Sirius looks at himself.
But if he has that memory that isn't his, it will be something, better than the nothing, than the caustic little lift of Father's mouth and the disproportionate feeling it lifts in Sirius' chest. Merlin, he is pathetic, and so he relaxes that defense, he gives that smile to Miles as well. Someday maybe they will look at one another from across a battlefield. Someday maybe he will see Miles, chained to a wall, dead on the floor, in court--either it will be him in the cage or Miles, it doesn't matter. They'll see one another in the corridors at school, and this is always going to be between them, shared in them, and that is wrong, he should take it back, all of it, he should kill him for daring to do any of this--
But if he does, he will lose that warmth, he will lose something that isn't even his. So the dog whimpers again, quieter, and shuts its eyes. Yes. There. They will both belong--Sirius to something so much larger and older, Miles to nothing but himself--and go on with these borrowed scraps. Whatever that will eventually mean, he doesn't know.]
[And it's sad, but Miles sees the memory of that unpleasant and bitter smile, and for a moment he shares in that swooping uplift as well. There's a coldness in Father's smile that isn't there in Dad's, but Dad's smile is also fuzzy, indistinct. While there's never been any loss of love or pain in those years since Dad died, the distinctness of his face has sort of receded into memory. Miles can't imagine his eyes any longer, or the shape of his nose, or the exact sound of his voice: he's just a warm smile, and glasses, and a formal head of slicked-back hair, and a suit. Father is still keen in Sirius' memory, and here's the hardest thing: there's a possibility of approval in the future. There's an imprisoning, limiting sort of hope. Miles can never win approval again, can never see a new smile, and so for a moment he takes and revels in the sudden illusion that maybe if he works hard, he can earn a bit more love from someone long since cold and dead.
Hope is an evil thing, isn't it? That's what weighs Sirius down. That's what chains him. The hope that Father will give a nod of approval, murmur a warm word. Will validate him. And for a moment, Miles is tied up in it as well, and is ready to rampage and kill just to win that sense, that he belongs.
Then he pulls back from it, disentangles himself from that cold comfort, because that's not him. Because there is no place where he does belong. No family, no friends, no united cause. Because, yes, he belongs to himself - to no one else. But that means he has no chains to weigh him down, no blooded weight, and that makes him potent. He has no hope: he is not therefore restrained.
So he pulls back from Mom and Dad, from Father and Mother and Regulus, from the warm sunny kitchen with two empty mugs and a stack of case files and a singed old tapestry and wands and Sirius and Miles: he makes himself nothing more than his intentions, a creature without emotions or sentiment. And he asks, now with words - no feelings:
That's a name Sirius doesn't think with any relish. It doesn't even conjure up Voldemort's face, at first--no, it's Bellatrix that he thinks of, paler even than Regulus, dark eyes and mouth curved into a bitter little smile. Christmas, that was the last time he saw his cousin and her husband. He didn't speak to her, and she held her silverware like weapons, and grinned at strange times in the dinner conversation, her eyes on her husband, glittering with some inner light.
He had only seen the Dark Lord (that's what they call him; Sirius nearly laughed the first time he heard it) from a distance--except once, once he'd been close, close enough to see the strange flat nose, the glittering eyes that reminded him of Bellatrix's, and he'd wanted to close his eyes just to avoid that light, but instead he'd looked back, submitted to that searching gaze that had fallen on him from across the hall--a long, white hall at Malfoy manor, there were albino peacocks on the lawn and Sirius drank too much wine and vomited on a rosebush and didn't tell anyone, felt sicker than ever before, they were talking about--
He closes that thought off. Voldemort. That's what he was asked. Voldemort, and he returns again to the heavy parchment, the green ink. All the best people. Yes, he will be there. Yes. That's what this is, this is a welcome, come home, pureblood, accept what you are going to be. Father keeps himself distant, but all of the kids are in a fervor and Sirius has to join them, can't keep himself at arm's length. He doesn't want to. But he will. He has to. He tries to keep that thought to himself as well, idiotic reluctance.
And he doesn't give a damn about Miles--no, that's a lie, he has to give a damn about him now, after all he's seen of him. But he cannot let himself feel that--so why does he think, next, do not go, if he doesn't care then Miles should go, be Edgeworth, be the yappy dog and get himself killed. He will be killed. White marble sprinkled red.]
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oh you caught me that's what all my stuff was about also shut up o//u//o u2
Date: 2013-09-05 02:59 am (UTC)And here's Edgeworth, with his stupid plain muggle face, his brows furrowed--Merlin, he looks so stupid, and Sirius actually barks a laugh, his eyes dark and hooded.]
It's none of your business, like I said. It's nothing you'd be invited to.
[He's not struggling right now; he's fallen suddenly still, his gaze leveled on Edgeworth's face.]
Put it down, and let me go. I'm not telling you again. [And here, now, he's finally coming back into himself, so much so that he actually affects a little sneer.] Prefects don't tie people up, you sadist. You wait till this gets out.
[Distract him, and he'll put down that fucking parchment and they can move on from it.]
all those short stories: HP au
Date: 2013-09-05 03:13 am (UTC)You were trying to murder me. I think I was well within my rights.
[Though that does set him on edge with nerves, because Edgeworth started it. This was all his fault. It will be a miracle if he doesn't lose his position, truly; maybe that's why he focuses back in on the parchment, to distract himself from his dread.]
Good to hear you're hypocritical, though. You criticize others for telling tales and then do the same yourself.
[He frowns, eyes flicking over the parchment. Maybe it is just an event, just some idiotic party, but Black had thrashed when he'd touched it - and he feels half-stupid, guessing like this, going off nothing more than a hunch. But the hunch is strong.]
Who are the best people? Tell me, or my last act before getting expelled by your miserable, corrupt father will be ensuring that he, and your mother, and all of your slack-jawed cousins, know every detail of how you were bested by a Muggle-born.
"retold fairy tales" my ass
Date: 2013-09-05 11:29 am (UTC)Anyone but you, mudblood. That's the best people. Anyone but you and your kind.
[There's a haughtiness even in his sneer, in the callous way his eyes sweep over Edgeworth's face.]
God, look at you, trying to reason this out. D'you really think it would end with you being expelled? My father won't let it stop there. Not for you. Or have you forgotten how that sort of loyalty works, Edgeworth--I mean, with your dad not around, and all--the memory sort of fades, I suppose--
He'll have you taken care of, Edgeworth. Trust me.
What even is that who even does that
Date: 2013-09-05 11:35 am (UTC)He's breathing hard. His voice shakes when he says - ]
Don't talk about my father.
[The parchment's still in his hand, crumpled again in a fist suddenly clenched.]
nerds!
Date: 2013-09-05 01:59 pm (UTC)Why not? Does it make you sad? You should think about him more, Edgeworth. Let him be a lesson for you.
[The parchment, his eyes go to it, quickly, before they jump back to Edgeworth, narrowed.]
Don't get into shit you can't get yourself out of.
And YOU'RE NOT A NERD.
Date: 2013-09-05 02:10 pm (UTC)Stupid. More evidence. Another thing the boy can point to. Another thing he can show to get Edgeworth expelled.
He should just take this to Dumbledore. Of course he should. He has his suspicions about this meeting, and Edgeworth, prefect, who doesn't break rules, perfect flawless Muggle-born making his shining life into a rebuff to all the racism of all the Purebloods, would of course just bring this right to the authorities. Do the right thing. The responsible thing. And it would keep him out of trouble if it is just some idiotic Pureblood party where they scoff at you for using the wrong fork, if his instincts are wrong. The right decision is to tell McGonagall and Dumbledore.
But fuck Sirius Black. Fuck his taunts. Fuck him thinking he can talk about Edgeworth's dad. Fuck him thinking he can use that to protect himself.
This will end up with Edgeworth in Azkaban. He knows it. Because this, what he's planning, is far far beyond an expellable offense; this is positively criminal. But his hands are numb with rage, and so he reaches down and he viciously yanks a half-dozen strands of hair from Black's flawless scalp. And, viciously, he shows them to him.]
Go on, Black. Keep talking. I could use a bit more practice with your speech patterns - I wouldn't wish to arouse suspicions at this party.
maybe a little bit of a nerd i am rping
Date: 2013-09-06 06:49 am (UTC)Fucking hell. Fucking hell, and his anger twists in him again. If he could tear his way out of these ropes he'd get Edgeworth by the throat all over again and show him what happens, after shit like this--
His second grunt of pain is fair louder, his eyes watering. It follows the kick so quickly that he barely registers it as a second, separate pain, as if the kick somehow led to this tug at his scalp--no, but then he realises, and he puts it together with what Edgeworth is saying--]
No.
[The word tears out of him. He should guard himself, he's the fucking heir to the Black family, not some idiot common kid, never taught to compose his features--but the suggestion tears at something in him, something he's taught himself just as well to ignore.]
You can't. [And, lest that sound like real concern--] You bloody idiot. You can't.
NO. THAT IS COOL. THAT IS BADASS, BRO.
Date: 2013-09-06 11:11 am (UTC)[If he stops to think about this, his nerve will fail him. He knows that. So he might be strange and not entirely welcome amongst the Gryffindors, with his focus on rules and adhering to them, with his love of proper procedure, with his refusal to speak loudly in the library - but he's still a Gryffindor, and every once in a while he'll just charge ahead without any regard for what's smart, for what's reasonable.
So he doesn't stop to dwell on what will happen. How if he gets caught, he'll be disgraced - sent, no question, to Azkaban, because one does not simply kidnap the heir to the Black line and come away a free man. (It's possible, too, that they'll murder him then and there - but that is, in his mind, far and away preferable to ending up imprisoned, to the point where he'd nearly shrug off the possibility.) Only if he comes back with proof, real proof, that the Purebloods are cavorting with Voldemort and recruiting from Hogwarts will he have the least prayer of earning forgiveness -
And he will find that proof. He knows that's what this is. He knows it.
(Even if, on some level, this is all just about doing the opposite of what Sirius Black urges him to do, because he wants to prove that Dad's death just motivated him. He's not scared or sad. He's angry.)]
Besides - I'll have you with me to guide me. You can tell me which fork to use, and which spells are most appropriate for torturing Muggles. That's the main entertainment at events such as these, isn't it?
[And that's the crux of the plan. Sirius Black in his pocket - quite literally - telling him how to react, whom he knows, whom he doesn't. It will be a tricky bit of magic - and there's satisfaction in that; Black himself probably couldn't cast these spells.]
i'll take your word for it o queen of non nerds
Date: 2013-09-06 01:24 pm (UTC)There would be shame in it, for the Blacks. Sirius, heir to the family, caught by a mudblood? It's unthinkable. It can't happen. And as he susses all this out, Edgeworth says the bit about I'll have you with me, and he stares--and then barks a laugh, incredulous.]
What? [And, sharper:] What? What the hell are you on about-- I'm not telling you a bloody thing!
You don't know what you're getting into, you think you've got this worked out, don't you? That clever brain of yours. You haven't. You think you've got it but you haven't got a thing. And if you think for one second that you're prepared for what you're proposing to do, then you deserve wasn't going to happen to you.
I'm not your prisoner. I'm not your inside man. There's no inside, to be on, and I'll say this once more, see if it gets through your thick skull, mudblood: you let me go, right now. Or when I get free, I will kill you, and you'll deserve that, too.
Thanks I can tell you thanks in three dead languages now
Date: 2013-09-06 02:37 pm (UTC)Separates him from them. He needs that.]
You're not telling me anything willingly, perhaps. But I saw you skipping out of that lesson on Occlumency; you ought to have stayed, I think.
[It's his last moment to back out. He's not afraid of Black's threats of death: after all, the boy tried to strangle him already, and it's far enough from the attempt that Edgeworth can arrogantly brush it aside as negligible. No: he's afraid of trouble, afraid of Dumbledore's disapproval...But every threat, every contemptuous aristocratic warning, just spurs Edgeworth on to further stubborn defiance.
The spell is easy enough: the first of two that will make this possible. It's a bit of transfiguration, far from simple - quite advanced, really - because changing teacups to water-glasses is quite a different matter from changing a man's form. But Edgeworth has learned from heavy, dusty books some tricks to make the spell go a bit more smoothly, take a bit more strongly. When someone is changing a person to an animal, one does not try to dictate the animal-form the other person takes: to do so will mean that one will have to struggle constantly to maintain the spell. Instead, just let them take what form is natural. That will let the spell hold firmly and well.
Edgeworth assumes that Black will take the form of a snake, or a beetle, or a rat - something low, diseased, and scuttling. So when he presses his wand to Black's chest and mutters the spell to change him to animal, he expects him to become small enough to fit into his pocket.]
clearly a requirement for COOL
Date: 2013-09-06 04:12 pm (UTC)[Still sneering, but there's a desperation to it as well. He's fairly well convinced of the truth of that statement, but if he is wrong, somehow-- Christ, he doesn't want Edgeworth messing about in his head. And he wouldn't do it, would he. He's a bloody Gryffindor, in the end--noble bunch of bastards, too proud to use tactics others might use without thought.
And then Edgeworth gets out his wand, and that assumption quickly dies--panic sets in, piercing, sharp, and he tries to writhe away as Edgeworth shoves his wand against his chest--
Not a rat. Not a beetle, or a snake--and not small. He doesn't even have time to react, or make a noise--it's a deep, twisting feeling, being shoved through a laundry wringer and run back through again, a few times--
It's a dog. A dog, massive, black, all fur and mad rolling eyes and desperate growling, his lip curled up, showing his teeth. It's a dog's panic that he feels too, adding to his own, a hard confused feeling, like everything is at war in him, emotions fighting for dominance. Be free, that's what he thinks most of all, get free get free get free--
I'll teach you
Date: 2013-09-06 04:55 pm (UTC)Not what he anticipated. Not remotely.
He'd been prepared to cast a charm that would protect his hands from the viper's venomous strike, or conjure a little cup to catch that dung-beetle. That was the only possibility he'd framed in his mind. The irritatingly long hairs for the polyjuice potion are shoved into his pocket. He has a free hand now, and his wand is out, but he doesn't have a spell in mind, anything to counter a dog's bite, to contain an animal that huge -
And so he acts purely on instinct. It's a frightened animal now - not Sirius Black, Pureblood, who probably knows who killed his dad, who laughs at the way his dad died. It's not the Slytherin, it's not the rich bastard who swaggers around the halls bragging about his Quiddich victories. It's just a creature, like any in the class he loves so well out in the warm sunshine, and so -
He leans forward. One hand comes out to scratch the back of the dog's neck with rough affection. And Edgeworth's wand comes up, and he casts a rough and hasty version of the spell he'd intended to cast later.
It's a spell he developed studying legilimency and pensieves and spells used to soothe wild beasts, something that he'd intended to be a tool in determining who was working for them and who was an ally in truth. It's supposed to be something that skims off the top levels of thoughts and emotions in a constant feed, coming to the mind of the caster. No more than that. There's not supposed to be any two-way linkage, no mutual information given. A good tool for a spy, therefore, like he was going to use it at that party, so that he could know exactly who everyone was and what Black's relationship was to them.
But he needs calm now, far beyond his need for secrecy. So he casts the spell hastily, presses his wand to his temple and then the dog's, and without knowing if it was successful, whether there's even a link, he just sends along that potential connection a feeling of calm, and safety, and contentment.]
o-oh arigato cool sempai
Date: 2013-09-06 10:32 pm (UTC)The weight of the hand is one that he wants to fight off, but the dog likes it, but hates it, and his hatred feeds that, and God, this must be what it's like to go mad, to feel out of your head. The dog's growls turn to snarls, confused, wanting calm but unable to grasp it--and then there's something else, too, like a weight on the top of his head--no, worse, like a weight in his head, like a hand been dropped there as well, and then--
It's a flash--on the left eye, it's Regulus, his thin stupid face, smirking at Sirius, rolling up his shirtsleeve, a dark room--the parlor, at Grimmauld Place, and there's the distant murmur of conversation, from some other room, it is night and all the candles in the silver chandeliers are lit and Sirius' dress robes hang heavy on his arm--and it twists, and it goes, like it's been pulled out of a drawer, and something else rushes in to fill it in, stripping away some of that desperate fear, some of his Regulus (hate-love-disdain) emotion, flaking it off, and it leaves behind something else, something pressed against his other eye, clumsier emotion, anger hidden beneath necessity, instinct, concentration, precision--and Dad, beneath that, a wound, and the dog whimpers, loud--]
do itashimashite
Date: 2013-09-06 11:54 pm (UTC)But perhaps from the haste, perhaps from the untested nature of this spell, it's not that.
It's not that at all.
Instead it's Sirius standing with fucking Regulus, the little - No, not Miles' thoughts - It's Dad - Mom - It's Father and Mother, cool and restrained and aristocratic, standing at the window and sneering at the sight of a Muggle family walking along their street, their street - Dad and Mom - a dog catching the scent of a rabbit -
It's Dad and Mom, as he remembers them alive, standing in a strange and cold and dark house, but still Dad and Mom. Mom's hair's done up, and her face is round; she's healthy, happy, vivacious; it's before her illness. Dad's happy, too, smiling in approval, and he says We're so proud of you, you know - so proud - And that's not a memory; that's just what he sits sometimes and imagines. It's just what he imagines.
Father - Sirius's father - that's not Dad - cold and dead on the floor, where Miles had found him - that first Christmas home from Hogwarts, when he'd waited all night at the train station for Dad to come and pick him up. Two in the morning. Freezing in the house. He'd known it was magic. And the only people he'd known to call were the police, but they'd told them, time and again, that they had to keep the secret of magic. He'd sat frozen with the body until...Until someone came; he still can't remember who, how long it was...But the face is wrong; that's Sirius's father, not his. Not his.
Miles is aware of having reached in and gripped the dog, hugging the beast tightly to comfort it, to comfort himself. He's panting, and his face is wet with tears, but the warm doggish weight, the smell, comforts him, and the rapid, confused images fade into something slower, more manageable...
Melancholy. Terror. Terror of an ancient sort - not fear, not true fear, but the terror of a life lived risking being a disappointment. The terror of a child raised under conditional love. It's terror centered on Regulus, Father and Mother, and it's strangely familiar to Miles. Because that's the fear of living under expectations, having to fight to mold yourself into something satisfactory. Something you're not. It's that which he focuses on, because it's that which isn't fragmented between them; it's that which is shared, where he won't feel as though he's being torn apart by Sirius' mind.]
i can't continue with these subject lines your tag was too fucking good
Date: 2013-09-07 02:00 am (UTC)Because there's that fear, that loneliness, and he feels it echoed back from Edgeworth as well, a deeper pull.
If he were anything but what he is, completely--they would write him off. And God, he can't stand that, and he can't stand what it reduces him to, all at once--the dog's whimper becomes a growl, goes to a whimper again, his father--Edgeworth's father, but his, his face, so like Sirius' own that he hates that about himself, too--pale, ashen, dead, there should be some triumph in that, maybe, but there's nothing but sadness, and he knows that it's Edgeworth's, bleeding in to him--but it isn't, entirely, it's also his own, pathetic, miserable that he is, he would come home and find his father dead and still feel raw over it, even though his father is barely more than a weight on his arm, a cold hand at the back of his neck, his rings pinching at the skin.
The dog twists, trying to be free, trying to get closer. Emotions are little more than rudimentary, it's in Sirius that everything is so fucking tangled, and it's just going on, that feeling, the heavy weight of expectation--and tradition, too, weighing almost heavier than anything else--like looking down a pit and being unable to see the bottom. The duplicity of emotion makes it worse, or does it make it better--is it better to be alone while alone, or alone with someone whose loneliness so doubles your own--and all the fucking dog can do is whimper, his ears back, his tail curled between his legs--]
No oh my god YOUR TAGS I'm not ashamed to admit they're giving me so many feelings
Date: 2013-09-07 02:25 am (UTC)(Revenge, nobility, though - those are only part of it, aren't they? Because so much of it is just the desperate hope that maybe if he could just put a stop to it, he wouldn't be so alone here. Because Miles isn't easy to love, and even those who could see past that are too scared, because you don't make friends with Muggle-borns nowadays. Not if you're smart. And in these times, even Gryffindors have gotten smart.)
And still -
And still that's another strange and unexpected...Sirius himself has no great love for all of them. The Slytherins. How strange, and stupid...He'd always seemed their king. But he doesn't love them, and he's so weighed down with everything in his family that there's not even them for him, and...
And Miles, stupid Miles, can only react by scratching at the dog's ears and murmuring reassurances. He hates Sirius Black. Hates him. Hates him so much. The things he said were - They were - But it's such a strange and sad thing, to be that child (that child with so much energy, who ran and laughed and played and put tadpoles in teacups until that was ground out of him, slowly and surely, who felt warmth only when he echoed back the lines told him, whose guilt and terror and regret have left echoes in his mind). Hatred can't withstand - has never withstood - the force of compassion in Miles' mind.
And so, tentatively, afraid of mockery or rejection, Miles opens up a memory of him, and his dad, just sitting quietly at the table on a Saturday morning, drinking tea. Dad occasionally reading a bit from a case file, asking Miles' opinion (Miles, nine years old, so proud of being asked). Nothing but warmth. Even the grief of Dad's death not tainting that remembrance. He doesn't know why he does it, whether it's to calm the dog down or whether it's to share with this strange cold sad boy that kind moment. But he does it, lays that treasured moment bare.]
shut up! just shut up and let's write together and cry oh my god
Date: 2013-09-07 04:16 am (UTC)But the curtains are always drawn, and everyone is always in the next room. Dinner at half past five, two place settings. The table sets itself when you stand up again, two place settings, more forks and spoons, gleaming in the candlelight.
The dog's eyes slip half-shut, and his paws stop their scrabbling--and Sirius, for the moment, just-- lives, in this memory that isn't his. He's too tired to reject it, and the warmth of it--sunlight, Saturday sunlight, and the mugs of tea--it's too good.
One last whimper, and then the dog licks at his nose, calming, finally--ears still against its head, but no longer writhing in fear and panic. Finally still, borrowing this moment that isn't his and couldn't be.]
Weeps softly on your perfect shoulder augh god
Date: 2013-09-07 01:00 pm (UTC)(Evidently he is still that boy. He himself didn't even know it, and he doesn't know whether to feel disgust or relief.)
There should be hatred right now. If Miles were going to show Sirius anything, it should be forcing into his mind the horror and the fear of being a Muggle-born in the world that the Purebloods are making. He should be trying to shred Sirius into tiny pieces with everything the always-pure Blacks have done to people like Miles. He should be taking this as an opportunity to further his agenda.
But instead he finds himself drawn into Sirius' own private grief. And he finds himself thinking that he ought to agree with that fleeting thought of Sirius' - what right indeed has he to be sad, when he has wealth, when he has people who admire him, when he hurts others without fearing the consequences, when he has a family? A mother and father and brother? And Miles is alone in the world; Miles has no one and nothing...
But Miles also has those crystallized memories of complete, uncomplicated love. Sirius doesn't. And even a memory of Mom and Dad, he thinks, is so much greater than the living chill of Mother and Father and Regulus - Regulus, who should be a friend but who's just competition.
He ought to hate him. A good Auror is supposed to hate Dark wizards, isn't he? He's supposed to hunt them down wherever they are? And Sirius might not be a Dark wizard, but he could be, so easily. There should be loathing, contempt, and maybe there was five minutes ago - five hours ago - Miles doesn't even know how long they've been like this. But now all Miles wants is for things to be...better for Sirius.
How stupid. He deserves mockery and contempt with stupidity like this.]
licks away your perfect tears
Date: 2013-09-07 03:26 pm (UTC)There's not a word for it. Sympathy, maybe, but it's deeper than that. And it isn't pity, that ugly, clumsy thing. And it isn't even commiseration, it's something else, something more complicated. It's Edgeworth--no, Miles; Sirius has never thought of him having a first name, it's easier if people are surnames, if you can judge and weigh them by the heft of their names, haves and have nots, pure and dirty. It's Miles, who is alone, whose memories of his father are happy, even though there's a keen pain that lurks just in the background, a weight waiting to fall--it's Miles, whose hand is a broad warm weight on the dog's back, rubbing gently--who, after everything Sirius has said, all the torments heaped on his head--after all of it, still feels that compassion.
It's impossible. It's stupid, it's an instinct that will get him killed, and it's nothing that Sirius should admire or even take advantage of. But it's so hard not to, to be so close to the warmth and to not take a little comfort from it. It's so hard, and he's tired, right now, and even in his head he feels that give, like he's had his arms braced against something but now lets them drop. Fine, yes. He surrenders, for now, but it's not half as reluctant as that, it's touched with-- appreciation. With appreciation and gratefulness and so much more, so much that he could never say or express or even think, not really, not usually.
Later, this will be horrible. Later, he will look back at this and not know what to do but for now-- for now, the dog's tail thumps against the ground, dully, weakly.]
Be glad I wasn't crying poison tears for once
Date: 2013-09-07 04:14 pm (UTC)Maybe even after all of this, if they weren't linked together, Miles would still scoff at the thought that the humiliation of Sirius Black before his family would be of consequence. But now, here, he's still tapped into the boy's deep anxiety, his feverish (doggish) need to please (and perhaps the form isn't such a surprise, because Sirius Black is nothing like a beetle or a snake or a rat after all), and so the thought of being unveiled and revealing Sirius' defeat does cause him distress.
But why? Why is there that anxiety within Sirius? There aren't words right now, nothing so clear and articulated. Instead, all Miles sends to Sirius is just a sense of...questioning. He thinks of Regulus, Mother and Father, and the way they bring more suffering than joy. He thinks of those complicated feelings, thinks of that deep loyalty, and asks without words: Why?]
i built up an immunity to that LONG ago
Date: 2013-09-07 04:55 pm (UTC)But it's Sirius that balks. The dog expresses it, but it's Sirius that is thinking it, because a dog isn't so reluctant or complex as that. And it's the doggish instinct that makes him answer, that need to please. It's too complicated to try to think as he might usually, to answer with words--impressions, instead, vague memories, and he pulls them out, lays them out the way a dog would lay a newspaper on the floor, gently:
The heavy velvet drapes drawn over tall windows, shutting out the light, the muggles walking past. A thin strip of daylight, from between, striping the floor, and the dust that dances in air so thick and old it feels like you're in a museum. On the wall, all around you, the family tree--your name, repeated, not just your own, but a name that goes so far back that taking it on is like putting on a uniform, with all the expectations of rank and purpose.
Your father, his grey eyes just like yours. Grey hair only at his temples, a dusting, barely anything more, and when he turns to look at you, you tense, you get this feeling, deep in your gut, he might smile or he might show you nothing at all, but God, you hope for a smile, you hope for approval. Your mother is in the corner, her wand pressed to the tapestry on the wall. The air is thick, the air smells of burning, she is singeing your cousin's name off of the tapestry, stripping her out of your lives--because it is your lives, collectively, because for better or for worse you are a unit, a family, regal pride and tradition, and that must be upheld.
Your brother beside you, smirking. His face is pale. You can see a thin blue vein at his temple. He was ill, when he was a baby; you used to pinch his toes and make him cry, but it backfired; Mother would come and take him into her arms and you would sit at the bottom of the stair and watch her pacing back and forth with him, tender in a way you can't remember. He is hers; you are Father's, and when Father crosses to you now, you straighten up, correcting your posture, it's pathetic, it's like a dog, but you want something from him you feel you will never get. And you never, never want to be that name, burnt from the tree; you never want to be outside, looking at the drapes against the window, listening to laughter you will never join. Because being here is better than nothing, and nothing is all you would have if you stepped away. It's not about money, it's not about privilege. It's about a scrap of something you're so hungry for you can't define it.
Your father starts to walk past you. You do not let your shoulders drop in disappointment. You stand, watching your mother at work. Her earrings are sapphire. You can see the curve of her mouth as she twists her wand, and the smell of burning is stronger. She isn't smiling, she's only working. And your father drops his hand on your shoulder, just once, the heavy silver rings knocking against the bone, and you feel such a sudden prickle of pride it's nearly dizzying. It's all you have, and you hold on to it, you clutch it to you, hard.]
Damn you Dread Pirate Roberts
Date: 2013-09-07 05:17 pm (UTC)And yet maybe it's a weak one, because it comes down to this: what's right, and what's wrong. It's headlines in the Muggle newspapers about mysterious deaths and disappearances. It's the pain of children without parents and parents without children. It's abstract, in a way, thoroughly considered but impersonal, logical - something to convince a jury, not a sad and lonely boy who needs his family.
Because of what use is guilt when it comes up against a need to belong? What purpose does compassion serve when compassion leaves you lonely? Miles himself, he lives a life cold and sad and apart because of his decisions, but also because he already lost...everything. Who would make the choice to walk that path when they have other options?
There will come a time when Miles will die. And he'll die at the hands of Purebloods; he knows that. If it happens now, on this mission he's set for himself (mission, is how he thinks of it, like he's a proper Auror and not some stupid scared kid), or if it happens in three years, that doesn't matter. So he has to do this, has to go forward, but the cost...
It's so stupid, but he sends an inquiry to Sirius again, a wordless question whether there's any way to do this that won't...destroy Sirius. That will let him hold onto those rare few moments when he sees Father's smile. Because for Miles, a legacy is not something on a tapestry, no finely embroidered name; a legacy is the change you make in the world. But for Sirius, that thread is weighty, real, and so in this moment, that thread is a blood-red chain that binds Miles to the Black line as well. And so, in that moment, his desire to get around the cruel possibility of a Sirius Black III making the air heavy with wooly smoke is real, intense, and potent.]
as.... you.... wish........
Date: 2013-09-07 06:39 pm (UTC)But if he has that memory that isn't his, it will be something, better than the nothing, than the caustic little lift of Father's mouth and the disproportionate feeling it lifts in Sirius' chest. Merlin, he is pathetic, and so he relaxes that defense, he gives that smile to Miles as well. Someday maybe they will look at one another from across a battlefield. Someday maybe he will see Miles, chained to a wall, dead on the floor, in court--either it will be him in the cage or Miles, it doesn't matter. They'll see one another in the corridors at school, and this is always going to be between them, shared in them, and that is wrong, he should take it back, all of it, he should kill him for daring to do any of this--
But if he does, he will lose that warmth, he will lose something that isn't even his. So the dog whimpers again, quieter, and shuts its eyes. Yes. There. They will both belong--Sirius to something so much larger and older, Miles to nothing but himself--and go on with these borrowed scraps. Whatever that will eventually mean, he doesn't know.]
Shit I need to rewatch that movie
Date: 2013-09-07 06:54 pm (UTC)Hope is an evil thing, isn't it? That's what weighs Sirius down. That's what chains him. The hope that Father will give a nod of approval, murmur a warm word. Will validate him. And for a moment, Miles is tied up in it as well, and is ready to rampage and kill just to win that sense, that he belongs.
Then he pulls back from it, disentangles himself from that cold comfort, because that's not him. Because there is no place where he does belong. No family, no friends, no united cause. Because, yes, he belongs to himself - to no one else. But that means he has no chains to weigh him down, no blooded weight, and that makes him potent. He has no hope: he is not therefore restrained.
So he pulls back from Mom and Dad, from Father and Mother and Regulus, from the warm sunny kitchen with two empty mugs and a stack of case files and a singed old tapestry and wands and Sirius and Miles: he makes himself nothing more than his intentions, a creature without emotions or sentiment. And he asks, now with words - no feelings:
Will Voldemort be there?]
get a tv bbc america is like always playing it for some reason
Date: 2013-09-07 09:19 pm (UTC)That's a name Sirius doesn't think with any relish. It doesn't even conjure up Voldemort's face, at first--no, it's Bellatrix that he thinks of, paler even than Regulus, dark eyes and mouth curved into a bitter little smile. Christmas, that was the last time he saw his cousin and her husband. He didn't speak to her, and she held her silverware like weapons, and grinned at strange times in the dinner conversation, her eyes on her husband, glittering with some inner light.
He had only seen the Dark Lord (that's what they call him; Sirius nearly laughed the first time he heard it) from a distance--except once, once he'd been close, close enough to see the strange flat nose, the glittering eyes that reminded him of Bellatrix's, and he'd wanted to close his eyes just to avoid that light, but instead he'd looked back, submitted to that searching gaze that had fallen on him from across the hall--a long, white hall at Malfoy manor, there were albino peacocks on the lawn and Sirius drank too much wine and vomited on a rosebush and didn't tell anyone, felt sicker than ever before, they were talking about--
He closes that thought off. Voldemort. That's what he was asked. Voldemort, and he returns again to the heavy parchment, the green ink. All the best people. Yes, he will be there. Yes. That's what this is, this is a welcome, come home, pureblood, accept what you are going to be. Father keeps himself distant, but all of the kids are in a fervor and Sirius has to join them, can't keep himself at arm's length. He doesn't want to. But he will. He has to. He tries to keep that thought to himself as well, idiotic reluctance.
And he doesn't give a damn about Miles--no, that's a lie, he has to give a damn about him now, after all he's seen of him. But he cannot let himself feel that--so why does he think, next, do not go, if he doesn't care then Miles should go, be Edgeworth, be the yappy dog and get himself killed. He will be killed. White marble sprinkled red.]
urrghhhh but tv is so expeeensiiiveeee
From:come and watch mine
From:Don't have to ask me twice
From:asks u twice
From:this thread better have a moment where someone fires a gun into the air and goes ahhhhh
From:yes and firing one and/or two guns whilst jumping through the air
From:And also lots of drinking
From:well yeah that was kind of a given i thought........
From:And homoeroticism
From:always homoeroticism
From:And no girls
From:oh my god president of the women hater's club right here
From:People say that about you
From:like all the time it's super annoying to be so well known
From:You're basically the L. Lohan of misogyny
From:txt it
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From:Christmas #2
From:almost better than real Christmas!
From:Calm down
From:you're right what about Christmas in July
From:I'll grant that also is 'to ash [a cigarette]' really a verb I never knew that
From:um yes it is what else would you say
From:I dunno I guess I never thought about the process of cigarettes
From:i play a lot of smokers what can i say
From:And your smokers always seem to get my non-smokers smoking
From:be glad i don't smoke anymore or else you would be a smoker irl too
From:That's somewhat unlikely
From:that's what Edgeworth said and now he has a cigarette in his pocket
From:Yes but he hasn't smoked it yet
From:an unsmoked cigarette is like Chekhov's gun ok
From:Chekhov's Unhealthy Habit
From:Chekhov's American Spirits
From:Chekhov's Metaphor on AMC's Mad Men
From:Chekhov as Don Draper
From:You take that back don't say that about my precious Chekhov
From:um i'm sorry are you implying my beloved Don has a name that can be used as an INSULT
From:HE IS A HORRIBLE HUMAN BEING though very handsome
From:HE IS VERY HORRIBLE but also a sympathetic character and yeah hot hot hot
From:He starts out sympathetic I will agree to this but then he is just SO AWFUL to Peggy
From:YES HE IS but i still think he's a good character even if he's an asshole ok!
From:I think he's a pitiable character I will grant that
From:ok good and i like him. grant me that too.
From:I'm making so many concessions to your tastes today
From:deal with it!
From:Only because you are fwend
From:good fwend for dealing with it
From:Yes yes I am
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From:http://31.media.tumblr.com/2ec90982808ad72b6c7771291339339f/tumblr_mo6zlrjByg1s7d8wjo2_r1_250.gif
From:oh my god perfect
From:That's basically the two of them in a nutshell, GOB and Tony Wonder
From:that's our Hogwarts AU. rival magicians who fall in love. that's it. that's the AU.
From:I'm guessing Sirius is GOB since he's got daddy issues and is jealous of his younger brother
From:obviously!! and ben stiller was already my edgeworth pb.... plus gay
From:With the W-shaped goatee and everything
From:W for WONDER.... and also WON ALL HIS CASES
From:Oh my god I love you
From:I know.
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From:ask Harry "SECRET WEAPON" Potter about Dumbledore and keeping kids safe yo
From:Also all the kids who've been exposed to life-threatening magic at Hogwarts
From:that's just life at Hogwarts okay
From:Life and death at Hogwarts
From:you sign a waiver before the start of term
From:That's where all the magical lawyers find their employment
From:well yeah god knows they aren't defending accused criminals!
From:Harry Potter and the Kangaroo Court
From:dementors don't work on kangaroos tho
From:How do you know maybe they're emotionally complex
From:i suspect them to be soulless actually
From:What! How can you say that!
From:consider the birth of a kangaroo and how they start life and tell me they aren't potential demons
From:NO THEY ARE CUTE
From:CREEPY and cute
From:Everything in Australia is just so weird
From:and ready to kill us!
From:Bunyips everywhere!
From:fucking min min lights!!
From:whoa I'd never heard of those before, so cool
From:right?? swamp lights/fairy lights/whatever you want to call them are my fav phenomenon
From:And Flying Dutchmen!
From:ghosts in general really
From:Oh I wouldn't go that far
From:don't be scared
From:BUT GHOSTS ARE SCARY.
From:AND AWESOME!! I'll protect you don't worry
From:HOW CAN YOU PROTECT FROM GHOSTS.
From:salt!
From:salt!
From:you make a circle of salt or a line of salt and a spirit can't cross. true story.
From:Well then given my diet ghosts won't be able to cross my bloodstream
From:exactly. see? you're safe 24/7
From:God bless you, salty soups I'm eating all the time
From:also soup is delicious, so, bonus
From:I know I am making some tonight
From:what kind make me jealous talk soupy 2 me
From:Tortilla! aka the second easiest soup ever.
From:also delicious mmmmmmmmmman okay send me some
From:The package might be damp fair warning
From:i'll suck the soup off of the paper i'm not fancy
From:That's dedication I respect that
From:thank you i am resourceful it's how i've survived camping
From:That and tinned beans
From:meal of champions. any meal.
From:I actually went out and bought beans, true story
From:did you really! to help you survive?
From:Yeah definitely not just because they're delicious
From:though admittedly they are fucking delicious ugh
From:MAN THEY'RE THE BEST second-best source of protein there is
From:first being bacon right
From:I was going to go with cheese
From:it's a tie for me tbh, bacon and cheese
From:Oh man the two of them together are A+ awesome too
From:jesus god yes. + some apple.....
From:No stop hurting me right now
From:bacon cheese apple macaroni.... bacon cheese apple grilled cheese......
From:NOOO STOPPP
From:okay but only because i'm really only torturing myself too
From:Man you know I think sometime this week I might make bacon + apple mac and cheese
From:and invite me over?
From:You are always welcome without exception
From:yeah okay cool!
From:I'll make cookies too
From:what kind
From:Rosemary?
From:wha
From:Rosemary haven't you had that
From:no!!!
From:Yes! Rosemary + shortbread = ideal tea cookies.
From:make these for me they sound weird
From:No that's the best thing they sound weird but when you taste them they're just nice
From:well you better get to baking i guess
From:You better get on a bus
From:girl please i'll drive
From:Oh right that's a thing people can do
From:actually remind me to talk to you about that for early 2014 for real
From:YES private plurk me whenever and we can talk details though you are always welcome without warning
From:DONE AND DONE and done without warning watch out
From:Good come to my doorstep and I shall prepare you a place, or just break in that's ok too
From:yes good i'll be in your closet
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