Consequences
Black Island, 31st December 2003
I resurface from dreams – or is it recollection of past events? – on the divan in the hut, instead of on the picnic blanket on the tidal line of the beach.
And Black is looming over me, and scowling fiercely.
With him as huge and muscly as he is, and possessed of features as rugged as he is even without the scowl, he looks so scary right now.
I cringe away, by reflex, and automatically mutter a sorry.
“Not sorry enough not to do it again, I wager,” he growls back.
I look away.
“are you aware that you have punched a big hole in this island’s protection to reach all those links you sang about?”
“You… got what I was singing about?” I return weakly, while curling up as far away from him as possible. “Sorry sorry sorry,” I hastily add on his louder growl, which sounds scarily like a hungry tiger about to pounce. “I didn’t mean to. I meant to just experiment here, not outside.”
“So you did not heed the warnings of your own tutor,” he concludes. “What is the use of having a tutor, then?”
I wince. – Yes, Zabini will be mad at me, reasonably so, and probably won’t teach me any more titbits about the Song… if I tell them, or Black somehow does.
“Don’t tell them, please?” I plead, though I have no hope that he will even listen to it.
And…, “Did you know that you were incapacitated for two days and nearly drowned down there on the beach, if your phoenix companion did not fly through the hole and save you in the nick of time? Did you know that I was also incapacitated, nearly for the same amount of time? And you made me responsible for all the wards around all your properties! They were all exposed and vulnerable for the duration of my incapacitation!”
Yes. He doesn’t even listen to what I said. And for a pretty good reason, apparently. Oh, damn. What did you do, Harry? Why did you stray so far?
But I met my mother and twin! I have a living mother and twin! Alien and unknown as they are….
But is it worth all the trouble? Couldn’t – shouldn’t – I try it on a less warded area, so I wouldn’t have jeopardised this island and Black and all the properties and people in them in the process?
Damn. You are also Lord Black and Lord Potter, Harry, not just Harry and Loki Laufey-childe.
“I’m sor–,” I start, but then clamp my mouth shut again.
Fawkes materialises before me, in a bigger, more blinding ball of fire. – Awh, he’s mad at me, too, no doubt.
Aaand, `Do you have no care for your friends, Harry? You asked me yourself to guard Teal’c. He was in the middle of a pitch battle when your singing distracted him! I had to transport him away before somebody shot at him from the back and hope that nobody saw me doing it! And he thought I was the one singing!`
I slump against the rough wooden wall of the hut, huffing out a long sigh.
“I’m sorry, all right? I shan’t do it again,” I mutter, then hastily amend, “Not without more study, and perhaps not here.” I dearly wish to visit my mother and twin again, after all, and I didn’t have the chance to see my father and other living family members yet, too, during my semi-disastrous first attempt.
`Teal’c will contact you when he is ready,` Fawks snaps in response. `You had better confess it all to him.`
“Mend the hole, Harry,” Black interjects before I can give my acquiescence to the figuratively and literally ruffled phoenix.
I give him a look. “I messed up and you wanted me to do more mess?”
“I want you to straighten up your mess,” he clarifies, glaring back at me with so much anger and disappointment that I look away and down, quite chastened.
“I am not ignorant of what a Potter can do,” he continues in a more level tone after a beat, apparently satisfied with my reaction. “Dorea the Fourth and Andromeda the First were not the only children of the House of Black to have mingled with the House of Potter in a spousal relationship.”
“You want me to patch the hole with some Potter magic,” I conclude, then sigh on his nod. “You know that I barely studied it too, right?”
“From what I observed, it is less wild, less powerful and less destructive than what you called the Song,” he points out simply. “This might be further motivation for you to study it, as well. It is your birthright, after all, even beyond potioneering.”
I shrug. “Potioneering can save people.” It could have saved Teal’c so much suffering, and saved Zabini and I the risk of botching a Working – as the prat named it.
“Warding can protect the people that you saved through mundane means,” he retorts, his temper rising again. “I needed only little boost from my magic to save whom I could save, Harry, but I needed wards and illusions to protect them from further harm. – Nowadays, you can buy potions in shops anonymously, but you cannot buy family protection without revealing its purpose and your family’s identity, thus defeating the protection in the first place.”
“Now I see where the Blacks got the paranoia from,” I rejoin wryly, dodging the bolt of magic that he sends speeding towards me right after. “Right, I’m off to do some patching up. – Please tell Teal’c not to contact me too soon, Fawkes, on order of this bossy one.”
I am aware that I am still in my baseline form only when, after dashing through the drapery that serves as the front door and instinctively touching the bridge of my nose to push my specs back up it, I realise that I have been enjoying clear vision without the aid of my specs.
“Oh,” I mutter dumbly. “Oh. Oh.” I don’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing, to stay in my baseline form for so long, especially since I am a late-blooming metamorph, but I really, really, really hope that it’s not a bad thing.
Merlin, I’ve got enough bad consequences rubbed on my face already!