trans_9 | Hearth and Home [Open]

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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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Howard curls one hand over the other and rests his chin on them, surveying the board. The king and rook keep telling him to do this 'castling' thing and he has no idea what they're talking about.

In a way what Harry's talking about makes perfect sense, and on the other hand it runs counter to everything Howard's been taught about race - the closest analog he can pull from his world. He still remembers his mother using the white-egg-brown-egg-but-they-still-got-yolk demonstration on him when he was little. Learning in the classroom that segregation was bad and then watching it happen naturally in the school cafeteria.

And how does it mesh with superpowers, the other comparison he can draw? He's not sure. His best friend back home was a mutant rock monster who could lift cars. His best friend here can throw dinosaurs one-handed. And yet he can't deny that there are feelings of resentment, being the weaker one, the one that needs protecting from enemies who inevitably have some sort of superpower. And he remembers how back home, unpowered kids feeling powerless formed lynch mobs to hang the 'freaks' they saw as threats.

"You said you were raised by people who can't stand magic. I thought the Muggles didn't know?" He ignores his king and moves a knight out instead. "Maybe you just needed a common enemy. Like Watchmen or something."

"My mother was a muggleborn--born into a nonmagical family. Family members get to find out about the Wizarding World if they have a loved one that's born a witch or wizard, so my aunt found out about magic when my mother got accepted into school."

Harry, by no means, thought all muggles were the same or thought they'd all be intolerant, nor did he feel that they were inferior, but he did think there was great potential for conflict, and that was on top of conflict that was already happening.

"As for a common enemy, think about how even contacting muggles to fight Voldemort would've gone over. 'Hullo there, muggles, this one evil wizard and his pureblood supremacists want to kill and subjugate you all--mind helping us out with fighting our war against them? By the way, we're a society living in secret underneath your own, and we've all got potential for incredible power like they do.' That's not even getting into the fact that with a war going on, our government was taken over by people that believed in hunting muggles for sport. Neither side was ready for the other, I don't think."

He finally moved his queen, taking one of Howard's knights.

God, Howard's knight puts up a hell of a complaint. Howard reaches down an pinches his fingers over its head to muffle its whining.

"Well, if you're going to spin it that way, of course they'll get all ticked off at you."

He pulls his hand away from the downed knight, who pouts and stomps his fat little base at him.

Howard cringes a bit at the idea of hunting people for sport, suddenly reminded of Drake hunting the toddlers with his pack of animals, Drake peering down the barrel of a sniper rifle at a helpless five year-old, Drake screaming in the basement - and those are memories he'd rather push away as much as possible. He feels compelled to touch the long scar Drake left on his chest, but decides to tamp that urge down and pretend he's just focusing on the game.

"We had people with superpowers back home, but they just sort of happened. There wasn't any secret society or anything. Kids just ended up with them. But we didn't really have any society at all for a while, so I guess it makes sense that the first people to organize were lynch mobs and that bull."

He takes a pawn with his rook.

"It's brilliant to know there's things like lynchmobs on other worlds. It never quite feels right unless I have my faith in humanity challenged on a regular basis," Harry deadpanned.

"At least you got faith in humanity. I'm batting zero on that front." Nothing like zero-sum survivalist scenarios to turn you into a misanthrope. "I never seen anyone turn out to do that whole diamond under pressure thing people talk about."

"I've seen people be completely terrible," Harry said. He'd also done it himself but was far too humble to talk himself up, and didn't see most of what he'd done as heroic--more lucky.

"But I've also seen them do brilliant things for other people. Brave, selfless things."

He was quiet for a moment, and it might have seemed like him just considering his next move if not for the sad look in his eyes.

"That's the only reason I'm even here. Several times over."

Howard rolls his fingers over his other hand and bites his lip. "Lucky you."

If he's being honest, he's seen people do brave and selfless things on the ship. But those still pale compared to what he remembers from home - Stacy is, if anything, much less utterly demoralizing than the FAYZ was. And all Howard can deduce from that is that given a situation exhausting and desperate enough, the world can beat the brave and selfless right out of even the purest people.

"Did they end up dead? The people doing the brave and selfless stuff?"

Harry's silence and the way he wouldn't look up from the board was a good enough answer on its own.

"Sorry," Howard says, staring down. Some of the chess pieces seem to think he's addressing them, including his remaining knight, who takes the opportunity to berate Howard for losing his fallen comrade.

Howard doesn't say anything for a moment, before taking a deep breath and quietly saying, "it's your turn, by the way."

Harry cleared his throat and finally moved, unknowingly opening himself up to losing his queen.

When he spoke, it was with that same ease that he spoke with earlier about the war with, but this time it was an old hurt, one that had healed over as best as it could, and Howard could likely hear that in his voice. He was genuinely at peace with this part of his past, enough to talk about it somewhat casually.

"There's been a few people--" Like Sirius. "--but when the Dark Lord came for me when I was very young, my mum and dad stood up to him rather than let him kill me. My mum was even given the choice to give me up and walk away."

Harry's eyes flashed with a strange sort of defiance, as if the thought of what his mother and his father had done had lit some sort of fire in him that burned away some of the war-time cynicism that threatened to swallow him up.

"She didn't."

His expression wrinkled up into a ponderous one. "Even through the worst of it, even dealing with the most wretched people imaginable, I still know people like my parents existed. It's difficult to lose faith in people entirely when my life started out that way--when I got to live only because of what they'd done for me."

And that wasn't even to speak of all the people he knew like Ron and Hermione and Ginny and the Weasleys, and Luna and Neville and everyone else from his world that was decent and good.

Edited 2011-10-16 09:26 (UTC)

Howard wraps his arms around himself, not even realizing how he's making himself smaller through his body language. He has a bitchy jealous comment at the tip of his tongue, but while he wouldn't have stopped himself from telling someone a year ago that they're lucky their parents died rather than left them, he has the good sense now to keep silent.

Besides, it must hurt knowing that there are people who loved you that much who you'll never see again. You may not even remember them.

He takes Harry's queen, but feels no rush of satisfaction having taking such a powerful piece. "My parents abandoned me. So I guess I wouldn't know how that feels."

Or they didn't, and they were taken involuntarily. But Howard prefers anger and dejection to grief. At least you can target someone with anger. And all evidence points towards the adults leaving, rather than just vanishing.

"Sorry," Harry said, immediately sounding guilty. His eyes darted back to the board.

"I don't blame you then," Harry said. "For not having faith in people."

Adjusting how he sat awkwardly, he said, "It's a thin line, I think. And it depends on what you've seen. And to be perfectly honest, just because I know people who are decent, I'm not exactly certain the people here won't be horrible somehow."

Only time would tell.

"I am, by the way," he added, with a grim little smile turning up at the corner of his mouth, "terribly sorry that I've helped this conversation take such a turn for the depressing. I've been a bit on the grim side lately."

Howard's eyes narrow a little. Harry's response is still calling Howard wrong, essentially saying Howard thinks the way he does because it's a symptom of some past experience, rather than because it's actually how the world works. But at least it's couched in Harry admitting such a cynical worldview is, given the circumstances, reasonable.

"Some of them are. I'm not saying there aren't good people out here, there are, but there's a fair share of people who'll screw you over, too." He matches Harry's grim smile with a sardonic grin. "No big, man. We'd have got there anyway. Depressing and pessimistic is how I roll half the time."

"Do you know who?" Harry asked, awkwardly adjusting how he sat again, as if something felt objectively wrong about asking the question. "Who not to trust, I mean. I talked to someone else about it, about who's decent, who not to trust. But they can't have known everyone."

Yes, he was digging, and he had a look in his eyes that was an equal mix curiosity and caution. It was his move, and he was hesitating, holding his hand over his pieces without moving anything.

"For instance, the ones who saved us--The Daligig. They sound dodgy."

"Yeah, I can let you in the loop, but that's begging the question that you trust what I tell you, which, gotta be honest, you probably shouldn't." No point in hiding that Howard has a little bit of a reputation, even if it just that he steals things and isn't exceptionally trustworthy.

He doesn't mind Harry digging, though. It's a good sign. It means Harry isn't stupid. Howard lowers his voice a little, even though he knows Stacy can probably still hear them.

"The Daligig are super dodgy. I think you must've woke up a little after they paid us a visit, but they shattered someone's limbs unnecessarily. Can't tell you who, since they're a patient, but yeah. Nothing says 'you're our allies' like making an example of someone." He chews on his knuckles. "And on the note of examples, the programming they put into the ship tortures people in public if they get enough 'violations', which are anything from attacking someone to nicking things from the Medical Bay. The programmers managed to get rid of it, but I hear the Daligig were way cranky when they found out we prevented the ship from torturing us."

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Hearth and Home [Open]

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