trans_9 | Hearth and Home [Open]

The world had ended. Worlds, plural, had ended, and there was a war on, a war to save all of existence. It was a war Harry'd been recruited for, apparently, just when he'd finished fighting the last one.

It was quite a bit to take in, and Harry Potter wasn't exactly taking it well. It certainly helped that some of the people he knew were awake and had been saved by the talking ship, but he would have felt much better if all the people he cared about were, so he was sure they'd even been saved.

Still, in the end, there was another war to fight. Another one. He was "Chosen" twice over. How could someone have such rotten luck? How could he lose parents, be raised by people like the Dursleys, be a marked man, spend all that time fighting, and then lose his whole world? A world was not the sort of thing you lost, in general. It wasn't as if you could go out for the day, have a hole in your pocket and have the world fall out. A world was an awfully large thing to lose.

The only thing that had offset the despair shock he was currently going through was the fact that Harry Potter had found a magic room on the ship. First day there, no map and he'd found it--how was that for luck? It was clearly some sort of Room of Requirement--all you had to do was walk outside, think very hard about what you wanted on the inside, and there it was, just like that. Unlike the Room of Requirement at Hogwarts, it got around the limitations on magic that existed back home for Harry and even did food.

This remarkable room could even duplicate other places perfectly. This was how Harry found himself in the Gryffindor Common Room, eating chocolate frogs, and playing wizard's chess against the board itself. The opposing pieces were floundering without a player to call the shots, and because of it, it wasn't really fun at all.

Then again, he wasn't sure if he was even allowed to have fun.

Ever again.

After all, Harry though, shouldn't he be grieving? For all the people lost? It was difficult, though, to wrap his head around the numbers, around a loss of that magnitude, and part of him didn't even want to try. As a result, he spent his day holed away in the past, pretending Ron and Hermione would come bounding in through the entrance to the Common Room any minute, and trying his best to quell that tiny voice in the back of his head that told him that what he was doing wasn't healthy at all.

Chess, anyone?

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"Oh no, s'alright," Harry was quick to reassure her. "I've been brooding, stuffing my face full of chocolate, and playing chess with myself. It's been sort of a trifecta of being miserable. Sometimes interruptions are a good thing."

Bright green eyes regarded the woman, and they looked very tired and perhaps a little older than they had any right to look. They'd looked like that before he'd woken up here but the end of the world hadn't helped matters any.

"D'you play? It's no good playing against the pieces 'cause I keep winning. It just doesn't feel right unless I'm being beaten soundly at it."

"I'm a bit rusty, but I remember the basics," Elisa answered, taking his warm response as an invitation to step inside. Although he was younger than most of the people she'd seen on the ship, he looked wearier. He definitely needed to be distracted from whatever thoughts had led him to the sensoriums.

"My sister always won when we played at home," she added, "My brother and I would lose our patience because you can only move one piece at a time and real soldiers don't work like that."

They would never survive on their own. Just like police officers. Just like Stacy's crew.

Edited 2011-10-14 21:16 (UTC)

"They really don't, do they," he said and there was this odd tone in his voice like what she'd said had reminded him of something both happy and unhappy.

He set up the board.

"White or black?" he asked.

"Not if they want to be able remember what they're fighting for."

It was that knowledge, as much as the allies that fought alongside them, that helped people to keep going when all hope seemed lost. It even helped them to be victorious against seemingly impossible odds.

"Black," she said, pulling over one of the many empty chairs in the room. She'd let him go first. "And I'm Elisa."

"Harry Potter."

Harry held out his hand over the board to shake hers.

Having made herself comfortable in her seat, and careful not to knock over any of the pieces, Elisa shook the hand that he offered.

"Have you been on the ship for long?" she asked, "You've definitely got the hang of the sensoriums."

Elisa was still getting used to the way that things worked here. Stacy made the technology that Xanatos had perfected - the most advanced technology from her time - look primitive.

Edited 2011-10-14 23:21 (UTC)

"Oh, it was easy enough. There's a room just like it at my school. Only I suppose this is technology, isn't it? Rather than magic."

How blithely he tossed the m-word out there was mostly a result of not being able to be blithe about it the rest of the time. It wasn't as if the m-word was well-tolerated at the Dursleys.

"I think there's a point were you can't tell the difference."

Elisa didn't react to the mention of magic with skepticism, which would have been her default reaction a few years ago. She didn't even react with fear or alarm. Instead, she took the word - and the admission that came with it - in her stride. She considered herself to be a good judge of character - more often than not, a detective had to rely on their gut - and, whatever else he was, Harry wasn't dangerous.

"You mean you went to a school that taught you magic?" she asked, with genuine curiosity, "You didn't have to teach yourself?"

"Hogwarts," Harry said with a nod. "I'm a wizard."

He paused. "What are you? I reckon on this ship, everyone's got to be something if we're fighting a war."

"Wow," she said, genuinely impressed. It was difficult to imagine a whole school full of wizards. The teachers must have their work cut out for them. "What sort of things did you study?"

Making potions? Casting spells? The people who practiced magic in her world seemed to do everything out of books. And not just text books.

"Me? I'm a detective in the New York City police department. Not quite the same."

"Transfiguration, charms, defense against the dark arts, astronomy..." Harry said, going through some of his subjects.

He immediately perked up when Elisa said she was a detective, however, interested.

"We have people like detectives. There's Wizarding government and law enforcement. I want--wanted--to be an Auror, a dark wizard hunter."

It was such an impressive curriculum that Elisa was genuinely (and pleasantly) surprised by Harry's enthusiasm. That wasn't the sort of reaction she'd expected when she'd told him what she did for a living.

"Want," she corrected, "It won't be easy, but we're going to get home one day."

She hadn't been on the ship long enough to lose the confidence in her voice. She believed that because the alternative was too horrible to consider.

"It's a difficult job, but it's a good one, whether you're catching gang lords or dark wizards."

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