ii. audio. after dark. both courts.

[vrykolakas]

[If anything, the Brucolac's voice sounds worse than ever, painfully scratchy and distinctly weary. The reception isn't perfect; he's sitting in the garden of the fortress at Redgate, where the lockets work, but the blood granite is still causing some interference.]

What languages do you speak? And what language would you say I'm speaking right now?

Comments

[vrykolakas]

The Brucolac opens his mouth to say something but shuts up when Harry gestures at him to wait. When the egg cracks and the mermaid appears, his mouth crooks up and he leans back to watch it, reflective eyes following the movement and his tongue unrolling out. (In an expression of appreciation, you know). "Pretty." He's startled by that: the pleasing uselessness of it. The thaumaturgy he's familiar with can be beautiful, but it's almost always workmanlike and possessed of purpose, although occasionally its purpose gets away from its caster. "I'll do a taste test. Any magic happening to me, we'll call it off. At the first crack of eggshell."

[thebreakingwave]

As the mermaid vanishes, Harry realizes that perhaps he should not be doing wandless magic in public for something so trivial as to make a pretty, pleasant statement. Oh well, if the Aurors and Wizengamot want to frown on this particular incident, they're welcome to do so and bring him back to Britain.

"That's about the grand total of anything I can manage here, surrounded by all this stone." A great deal of effort, for just a little wisp of an image.

[vrykolakas]

"If I were a better nurse, I'd tell you not to push yourself," the Brucolac drawls, leaning back in his seat and clasping his mug to his chest. That's it, that's the punchline. "What's your plan after this? When are you leaving?"

[thebreakingwave]

"Once I'm a little more steady on my feet, I'll be reporting back to the court. I want to make sure they send supplies here." While Redgate is doing well enough on its own, Harry wants to make sure that they get the support they need. "After that, maybe to Mair, to find a dentist. Maybe some shardbearer has been granted a boon of tooth-repair. Maybe not."

"You? To the beach? The library?"

[vrykolakas]

"Ha. See if you can avoid getting gold replacements, won't you? I've seen too many men mugged for their teeth." He smiles, though he's weirdly still, leaning back with his face to the sky and his eyes closed. "I'll check back in at Caer Scima. Start some research there. Certain things... I want to learn what Shards can do. And I want to get my hands on some astrolonomical charts. Do some star-wrangling. See whether I'm still in the moon's good books. If I ever was." He opens his eyes. "After, fuck knows. I'm not giving up on the beach."

[thebreakingwave]

Harry hums in agreement. He supposes that if you're going to be in favour with one celestial body or the other, the moon is as good as any other. Although, he has a dim recollection of reading a newspaper headline in a muggle paper and realizing that it must be a reference, but he never knew to what. A harsh mistress. He liked that phrase. "Can I ask you something personal? It might be rude, and in turn, you're welcome to ask me anything you like."

[vrykolakas]

The moon is the best celestial body and sort-of deity to have on your side. It's definitely real, for one thing, and it's definitely too far away to hear you cursing at it, which the Brucolac has always considered two positive traits in a higher power, if you must have one.

"Go on."

[thebreakingwave]

"Can you speak Parseltongue? The language of snakes." Harry is curious and there's no hint of judgement or concern in his tone. "I only ask because I got to thinking about languages, and magical ones. For us, that's a trait like having black hair or green eyes. You can't learn it."

[vrykolakas]

"No," the Brucolac says slowly, thoughtfully. "Some vampir claim an affinity with snakes and reptiles. Physiologically, yes, it would make sense, but like often doesn't attract like." He flashes his teeth, unmistakeably serpent-like. "Personally, I never liked them. But then, as we've established, I've never had a conversation with one." He eyes Harry. Black hair. Green eyes. Right. "You?"

[thebreakingwave]

"When I was young. It was removed."

Harry seems pleased and relaxes further (...if possible) at the Brucolac's snake-like teeth. "The first piece of magic I ever really knew was magic, and not just coincidence, was when I went to a zoo and spoke to a great, beautiful boa constrictor."

[vrykolakas]

That tickles him, alongside Harry's reaction to his teeth; it's something he's seen himself do, relax in the presence of people who are officially, visibly outside of human parameters, or outside of normal parameters, whatever they may be. He's not sure that's Potter's motivation exactly, but there's enough of a glimmer of resemblance for him to be pleased. "And what did it have to say?

[thebreakingwave]

Harry isn't conscious of his tendency to relax or relate well to the visibly non-human, but if it were pointed out to him, he wouldn't deny it. "She was beautiful and she complained about the weather. Too cold in England. Not enough sun. Damp, but not humid. She wanted to see the rainforest and jungle."

"Which lead to the second piece of magic: I removed the glass from her tank and off she went. I hope she made it." All the way to Brazil. Why not. She never turned up in the news, so maybe some other magic went to work. "Years later, I wondered and I still wonder, are all snakes sentient or is that the real trick of being a parselmouth. Does a wizard lend a cup of self-awareness to animals when we speak to them?"

He gestures as if to waft away the thought. "Sorry, I think I'm, well, thinking about nothing again."

[vrykolakas]

The Brucolac shakes his head: it's fine. "I want to think about nothing," he says firmly. "Fuck knows it's a liberty I haven't had in a while." It's not really a liberty he has here, he has to admit—there are countless things he wants to get straight—but this temporary spell of rest and recovery is an excuse to leave that for later.

A pause, and: "How do you remove a predisposed trait?"

[thebreakingwave]

Harry promised that Brucolac could ask a personal question; he did not promise to answer it truthfully.

"There were a whole string of events, one little thing leading to another, to another, that all resulted in a great, terrible mess. We had a war and it got all tangled up so that it couldn't end unless a series of events happened in the right order." He's not going to talk about a 'prophecy' in those terms, because it's asinine. "Myself and the leader of the other side of the war, a man named Riddle, we got metaphysically entangled and some things got lost when we parted. The price of his death."

[vrykolakas]

The Brucolac peels his lips back from his teeth a little in an expression of wincing sympathy, or perhaps disgust: yuck. "Sounds messy," he grumbles, though from the tone of his voice, it also doesn't sound particularly far-fetched. Metaphysical entanglement. It could happen to you. "You could ask for it back." Thoughtful. Just a suggestion.

[thebreakingwave]

"If there was no one else from my world here, I'd ask in a heartbeat." But how can he explain to Hermione and Ron that he wants to be a parselmouth? "My friends are already worried enough as it is about me being Unseelie and that might be a bit too much."

shh, I'm going to bed

[vrykolakas]

"What?" The Brucolac's eyebrows come together, and he reaches up to press his fingertips to the join, rubbing at the bridge of his nose. "Missed something. There's no connection, is there, between Unseelie and snakes? Beyond the typical symbolism." The way Harry phrases it suggests it's not quite just that.

Re: shh, I'm going to bed

[thebreakingwave]

"I know them and they'd see it as a sign I'd gone astray. They're already half-terrified that I won't 'come to my senses' and defect over to Seelie, or some other half-daft idea." He looks as if he's about to say something else and there's a warm, angry thrum in his voice, but Harry shuts his mouth, a bit too quickly, and winces at the sudden movement.

And yet, he doesn't stay quiet. Rather, he manages to get out the following: "It's not about being good, it's about being visibly good enough."

[vrykolakas]

The Brucolac stares at him a moment, face tense—then exhales sharply, tongue rippling in the air. "Yes," he says. "It would be." He finishes the now slightly lukewarm blood in his mug, and doesn't quite slam it down. "Piss and spit," he declares. "Does it need to be said? There is nothing inherently evil, whatever that means, in the Unseelie code. Don't take me for any proud carrier of Morla's banner, but at least Unseelie have the good grace, the sense of barest fucking nuance, not to claim the moral highground as their sovereign territory."

He hisses, fingers flexing, wrangling himself under control. He can still remember how the dragon's mind felt, bearing down on his, squeezing.

[thebreakingwave]

He listens to the Brucolac speak and dearly wants to believe him, but it's a war between logic and his own insecurities. What if he really is all that bad? What if he can only counteract whatever is inherently wrong in him by defecting and proving his worth and value? For a moment, Harry looks very young and disappointed in either himself or the world around him.

"I was and am a fool. I'd thought that with the war over, with my opposite dead, that the question would be dead too, but it's still here. And with this,--" he says, gesturing to the scarred and bruised half of his face, "It's only going to get worse."

[vrykolakas]

"You're no fool for expecting to be taken as good enough," the Brucolac snaps, then catches his tone and tries to modulate it a little, to avoid sounding like he's haranguing Harry instead of the circumstances they're in. "It will get worse," he agrees, tone forcefully subdued. "But you know fine well—" He drums his fingers on the table, breaks off. No one likes being told what they know fine well. He wets his lips and searches for the words.

"Inherent good, inherent evil, they're stories told to make ourselves feel safer. More stable." His tongue flickers almost nervously in the air, brow crumpling as he reaches for what he's trying to say. His words come slowly. "I am a vampir. I have killed to eat. It's not my preference, but it has, in the past, been my only option, such was the strength of the story told about my inherent wickedness. And when I killed to eat, it was used as further evidence of my fundamentally evil nature, and I was pressed down further, became more desperate and more trapped in the role of permanent predator, which is a prison I only escaped by good luck." His fingers flex. "I've lived for over three hundred years: bargained with mad weaving gods, hunted mafadets with the birdmen of the Cymek plains, seen a leviathan murdered for cruel and pointless reasons. And nothing frightens me, Harry, so much as those who are assured of their own place atop an iron hierarchy of righteousness, and who never think to question their actions."

He breathes out uselessly. "Good godspit. I don't know if I've ever met a moral man. But if I were to imagine one, he would question himself."

[thebreakingwave]

Harry is quiet for some time. He's not used to thinking before speaking and it takes effort to work through his thoughts and emotions. He's not sure why, but it feels important to understand this and say the right thing. Maybe it's a result of the pain killers and having so recently faced death, but he would swear that he's on the cusp of something important. If only he could just get a true sense of what lies in front of him.

"I had hoped it was better elsewhere. On other worlds." As an Auror, Harry has training on how to hunt and fight vampires and most of it was all couched in terms which made it either sound like they were ravening beasts who needed to be put down or that it was for their own good. Too many vampires fall prey to unscrupulous potionmakers in need of parts. "If we kill, a piece of our soul breaks and it makes us -- no, it makes us more able to do evil. I don't know about other peoples, but that's what I've been told and I've seen as a wizard. Even if it's self-defence. That your own death is better than killing another. No exceptions."

"But, then I got to thinking, that's a pretty fine line. In the skirmish at Mair, one of my friends said she didn't really fight, she just stunned people. Knocked them out. And that wasn't actually the same as harming them." But it is and he knows it. "I don't know what to do. I don't know you well, but I can't accept that wanting to live, to be able to find a home, to just exist, to eat, and be unbothered is wrong."

[vrykolakas]

The Brucolac shakes his head minutely at better elsewhere, with a kind of melancholy. "If you figure that one out," he says, "please, tell me. I think the idea was, is, that it's not wrong to want it. Everyone should want it. But some people don't get to have it unless they step out of line, and if they do, then they have effectively stolen it."

He waves a hand, shifting, a mite uncomfortable. "This gravitates too much towards the state of things at home," he says. "They're not so relevant here. But the question is the same. Who makes that fine line, and who does it benefit?"

[thebreakingwave]

And it is here that Harry's inexperience comes to the forefront. He's never really given much thought to who 'makes' the world that way. It's not that there weren't inviduals, like Riddle or Umbridge, were to blame for injustice, but there's more to it. The end of the war was supposed to fix things and bring about another age of peace, prosperity, and to return to how things were meant to be.

He knew there were deeper problems in wizarding society. You don't just build an army and stage a civil war without some measure of malcontent, but ...

The fountain in front of the Ministry was a lie, but...

But who benefits? If it's not something he's ever had to think about, then Harry is fairly sure the answer is that he benefits and he has. With the end of the war, he's done well for himself, but he's working for and supporting the Ministry. If he'd been home, he would've been tasked to hunt people like the Brucolac and, in a best case scenario, urge them to leave Britain.

"I never really thought about it that way." He feels he ought to at least own up to his ignorance. "There's always been a war, a clear enemy, and I guess, it's been about making sure they don't make the decisions to benefit them."

[vrykolakas]

"You're young," the Brucolac says, with a look of apology; he doesn't mean to be dismissive, but he's stating a fact. "Many people never think about it, and war, war is—" He gestures at Harry—I don't have to tell you—and leans back, scrubbing a hand through his hair, throwing a wash of curls back over his shoulder. "I'm picking holes I can't fill, but it's better than falling down them and even not realising until the crunch comes."