Chapter 3
“Oh,” Dream murmurs, staring down at the open compass in his hands, Hob leans forward to try and see what the compass shows, but he already knows that’s a lost cause. His mother had shown him and his sisters the compass once, when they’d visited the bank in his childhood. She’d taught them all how to use it. The compass only showed a direction to the wielder, for everyone else, the point would simply spin continuously. And, of course, only the wielder would be given a glimpse of their heart’s true desire.
“Oh?”
“Hmm,” Dream answers, still staring at the compass. “Well, that’s not going to be useful to us at all.”
“Oh?” Hob repeats, raising an eyebrow. Dream hums again then quietly flips the compass closed. “Do I want to know what your heart’s desire is, if it isn’t finding your tools?”
“Well, it does explain some things to me,” Dream says slowly, running his fingers over the markings on the casing of the compass. “So, I thank you for letting me use this, but it won’t help finding my tools,” he says, side-stepping Hob’s question entirely. Typical.
“Well, guess I’ll put it back in the vault when I go to ask the goblins if they know anything about your tools,” Hob says with a frown.
“Why?” Dream asks, as he sets the compass down on the floor beside him.
“Why what?”
“You said that freeing me was the price of getting Harry,” Dream says, his gaze flicking to the child still sleeping in Hob’s arms, then back up to Hob’s face. “I am free. You did not have to bring me here, you did not have to allow your elves to tend to Jessamy or to fuss about me, but you have. Now, you seek to recover my tools. Why, Hob? The goblins didn’t pay you for that?”
“You’re right, they aren’t. We had already agreed that their involvement ended with your freedom and the exchange of information for Harry,” Hob says, before he clears his throat. “Tink?”
“Little Master Hobsie be calling Tink?” she asks, appearing beside him with a pop.
“Please take Harry,” he says, holding the boy out towards her. Tink smiles and happily scoops up the baby. She settles him in her arms, then steps to the side and disappears. Hob looks at the spot she was standing in for a long time before he sighs and looks to Dream. “I am living my life as I choose,” he says, knowing it doesn’t explain anything at all. He waves his hand; a burst of wandless magic and the Heart’s Compass shoots up off the floor and lands in his hand.
He runs his thumb over the markings on the casing, feeling a spark of an echo of Dream’s magic calling to his own, and suddenly he understands what the compass must have shown Dream. Suddenly, he understands what his magic has been telling him for centuries, and why he’s always hated parting from Dream. Why 1889 had left him mourning a love he’d never even been permitted to have.
He sighs and tucks the compass away in his dimensional bracelet, to keep it safe until he can return to the bank.
“You are angry with me, for good reason. Why have you chosen to continue to help me?” Dream asks, Hob can’t blame him for wanting to know.
“I made my choice in that basement,” Hob says, shaking his head. “I don’t like leaving jobs unfinished,” he says, and he wishes that was all it was, but he knows it’s not. It doesn’t matter how angry he is at Dream, he thinks he’ll always help him, even when he doesn’t need it. Even when he doesn’t deserve it, especially then. It hadn’t been planned that way, but the basement had ended up being a test, and he’d failed. Spectacularly.
Of course he’d failed. How could he have ever done anything else? Perhaps if it hadn’t been Dream in the glass, some other friend who had betrayed him, perhaps he’d have been able to leave them there. Or turn his back once they were free. Or- just or. But it wasn’t anyone else. It was Dream.
“Just business?” Dream asks, a frown forming on his face before it’s washed away in a second, replaced with a politician’s blank mask. It’s not a shock to see it on Dream’s face, given the man is a king. Though, Hob supposes that’d be rightly called a ‘courtly mask’, instead. The evolution of language.
“Isn’t everything?” Hob asks with a scoff. Before he waves his hand dismissively, shaking his head. “Don’t worry about it. If I wanted something from you, I’d already have asked for it,” Hob says, even though he knows he should have asked for recompense already. If Dream of the Endless hadn’t turned out to be his Stranger, he wouldhave already negotiated some contract between them. But Dream was his Stranger and so Hob was going to let him crash in one of his many spare rooms while he tracked down his tools of office free of charge, because he’s an idiot with a giant heart.
But then, what else is new?
And really, it’s not even like this is his fault. His however-many-generations-removed Creator did this. Desire of the Endless. They did this. He has no idea if they planned this all along, if even before his parents had even met, Desire of the Endless had quietly been Plotting. Probably, if the rumours of the discord between Dream of the Endless and his sibling had any truth to them at all. So, he’s going to blame them for this, for all of this. It’s their fault.
It's his fault, too. He hadn’t paid a single bit of attention to what his magic had been trying to tell him that night in 1389, so long ago. He was half Veela, not full, and it was widely known that male half Veela carried even less Veela magic than female half-Veela.
It hadn’t been that way at the beginning, his mother had told him. Back then, Desire’s power had been rich in all of them. But, over time, Desire left them to their own devices and belief began to impact them as much as it does anything in magic. Seduction was the realm of women, so, over time, the male Veela became less and less powerful, until even full-blooded male Veela could no longer access their allure or the Veela transformation. But the full-blooded male Veela kept one thing their half-blood counterparts often now lacked.
An innate recognition of their one true mate.
Hob’s mother and his sisters had all told him how it felt to encounter their one true mate. None of them had described the breathless and heady feeling Hob had experienced in the White Horse Tavern in 1389 when he had looked up from his friends to find his Stranger standing there, judging him, mocking him for his wish to never die. No, his sisters and his mother had all described an immense knowing, an all-encompassing sense of ‘finally-there-you-are’, but Hob hadn’t felt that. The world had seemed to shift around him, his life altering in ways he couldn’t explain and for a reason he couldn’t pinpoint, but he hadn’t realized what it was.
Why would he? That wasn't supposed to be a gift still inherent to the male half Veela. So, he hadn’t recognized it. And he hadn’t recognized it every single century that followed. And he didn’t recognize it in the basement. And he didn’t recognize it pushing through the Gadling wards. And he didn’t recognize it… not until days had passed with Dream of the Endless sheltered in his ward matrix. Not until he’d taken back the Compass... and felt that brush of Dream's magic against his own...
“Tink,” he calls suddenly, startling Dream. “I’m going to apparate out of this room if you don’t unlock the door this instant!” Hob says, tilting his head to the side to listen. It would hurt, trying to push through Tink’s magic sealing the room, but this is his house. He is the Lord of the Manor, he comes and he goes at his pleasure, no one else’s.
“Tink mission be success anyway!” Tink’s voice says just before there’s a click as the door unlocks. “Tink do it again if you behave like little children!!” his elf warns before the telltale pop sounds as she disappears.
“Anyone would think we weren’t grown adults,” Hob says to Dream as he climbs to his feet. “I’ll look for your tools, just… don’t expect miracles,” Hob tells Dream, before he walks away, ignoring Dream calling his name.
He’s had enough revelations for one day, thank you very, very much.