Birthday fic for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
astarvingwriter
Dec. 6th, 2006 09:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
foudebassanYep, I'm almost 10 months early :D
Warning Several levels under silliness, clichés galore, attempts at caricature.
Rating : PG
Fandoms: a warped, culturally wrong mis-rendition of Harry Potter and X-men (canon based solely on the film Xmen2)
Credits : I don’t want to give too much away, so they’re listed at the end of the fic only. All you need to know is that I don’t own any of it.
Genre: serious stuff. Not. Adventure / Fantasy / Romance, I guess.
Inmates and their mates
Prison cells don’t have doors.
They have bars. One row of bars, facing another row of bars on the other side of the corridor.
And behind the bars, the tiny three-walled rooms where dangerous criminals are kept.
In the fifteen months he has spent there, Lucius had not seen that many of those. The Death Eaters were kept apart from each other, that much he knew; and the prisoners taken to the narrow corridor he was in were the petty thieves and lunatics the Ministry saw fit to imprison for a couple of months, not because they were a danger but because no one knew what else to do with them.
Lucius tried to keep note of when new prisoners arrived; it meant that a boat went to the island, after all, and this was the kind of information any potential escapee had to find out. But he was not privy to all the comings and goings around Azkaban, just of those that affected his corridor; and they were not enough to establish a pattern.
It made him all the more interested when a new inmate did indeed come his way.
Such was the case in this drab September morning.
He – it must be a he, female inmates were kept in another aisle of Azkaban – arrived right before lunch, like the others had.
Unlike the others, he was escorted by no less than six Aurors; and they all had their wands out and ready.
The blond silently popped his chewing-gum as he watched as they launched him into the opposite cell, stood back, and weaved what seemed to be a complicated net of spells all around the place.
But he didn’t get a good idea of who exactly the new inmate was until the guards left.
Even then, he wasn’t all that sure about his companion of misfortune.
He sat down stiffly on the bunk all day, didn’t move, and didn’t make a noise.
He was hard to describe. His features were not discernable in the dim light, and stubble covered his entire lower face; but his tall stature, his straight posture bespoke of iron principles, and long-ingrained stubbornness. Against the grim background of the prison cell, where everyone else fell in a shapeless slouch, he appeared out of place, outlandish, almost alien.
For the first time in his entire stay, Lucius recoiled. Dealing with the filth and daily humiliations had come easily to him, more easily than expected anyway; but for some reason, seeing this powerful, taciturn figure of a man remain proud where he had bent was the final straw.
*
* *
But straws could keep on piling up on a broken-backed camel. And they did. A whole fucking mountain of them.
Granger soon arrived to interview the prisoner.
He knew who she was – a companion of Potter’s, a Mudblood. Her coming to Azkaban could only come from her having pulled more than a few strings, and important ones at that.
For she did come, and often.
The first time, he had been too surprised to react, and had merely ogled her as she tried to talk to the creature.
She would have been too intimidated by the settings to answer anyway.
The second time, he sneered; and she ignored him.
The third time, he tried to blackmail her.
After all, he had much more contact with the creature than she did, being in the opposite cell all day long, and if the information she needed was worth her coming personally to get it, it must be worth his freedom.
“In your dreams, Malfoy. The Ministry would never let you loose, not in a month of Thanksgivings.”
He shrunk back from her. Being insulted by a vulgar Mudblood and being unable to hex back was a new low, even for him, even in the present circumstances.
He hardly listened to her, that time, as she began her customary overtures to the creature. She didn’t mean it any harm, she was there to help, what was his name…
This was even more sickening than a Death Eater meeting.
His inattention might explain why it came as a surprise when she turned to him as addressed him, sharply.
“Helping me co-operate with your inmate won’t get you free. But I can provide… comfort products. Coffee. An extra blanket. Clothes. Shampoo. Think about it.”
When he looked up she was gone already.
That was a good thing, too – he could hardly repress the fury that had seized him. Malfoys were bought with power, and heaps of Galleons, not with a measly blanket! What in Merlin’s name was the girl thinking?
He realised he had been kicking the wall when his foot went numb. He hopped to the bunk and crumbled down, face down, the manly stubble scratching the rough bedlinen.
If only, oh, if only… the litany went far back, and stretched to the present day like a wide, endless desert. If only he hadn’t joined the Dark Lord. If only he hadn’t been caught. If only he had inspired enough loyalty to his family and fellow Death Eaters for them to come here and rescue him. If only he could escape. If only the filthy Mudblood could go away. The prison routine had been almost bearable before she arrived. If only…
The sound of steel on steel interrupted his reverie.
“You look down, old chap. Care for a cup of tea?”
Lucius stood up abruptly. It was the… creature in the other cell.
“Not that I have one to offer, though. This establishment seems to ignore the finer artefacts of civilisation.”
“I didn’t know you could talk” Lucius sneered back.
His inmate arched an eyebrow.
“Indeed?”
“You… you didn’t say a word until now!”
Silence met his accusation.
“Who are you?”
Did the man remain impervious, or did the beginning of a frown impress itself on the finely chiselled brow? The obscurity made it impossible for Lucius to tell.
“How very… foreign… of you to be so direct. Must come from tea deprivation, I daresay.”
“I’ll have you know this is my country, I can’t be a foreigner!”
“And your prison, where you arbitrarily detain innocents. I happen to have noticed.”
This time, the sneer was unmistakable.
With, perhaps, just a hint of resentment.
And was that contempt?
Lucius could think of nothing to answer, and so he turned back to his bunk, and ignored the stranger. The foreigner. The alien.
*
* *
It was more than he could resist not to tell Hermione about it when she arrived the next day, just as the first sunrays reached the long crack on the wall’s paint. Punctual as always, the Mudblood was.
She put her half-full paper coffee cup on the floor and started talking to the creature, as usual, in this strange voice she only used with him – reminiscent of a mother’s cooing over a baby, or perhaps a nurse talking to a patient in a coma. The stranger must find it just as insulting, for he remained within his stony silence.
“He talks, you know. Rambles on about how we don’t have tea over here. He’s no Brit.”
Hermione’s interest sparkled.
“Why won’t you speak to me, then?”
The man smirked.
“We haven’t been properly introduced, you know.”
The witch and the wizard gazed at each other in dismay. This wasn’t the way mute captives were supposed to react when they spoke at long last.
“I’m Hermione – call me Mione.”
She extended her hand through the bars; the stranger took it, and the strangest thing happened. Lucius could swear he saw the glint of metal shine on the man’s very hand; and Hermione abruptly withdrew hers.
“Stop that!”
The stranger looked apologetic.
“I’m afraid that’s quite impossible. They’re part of me, see.”
They both stared in mute fascination. The… claws… retracted themselves ever-so-slowly, leaving the strong hands as they first were.
“Don’t you… control these things? It freaks me out!” Lucius blurted. The captive only lifted an eyebrow in response and looked quizzically at his fellow inmate.
“My name is Wolverine, I am pleased to meet you too.” His answer was aimed at Hermione, but Lucius did not take his eyes off the freak.
“About these… hands,” Hermione went on, “they are the reason you are here, you know.”
“Without a trial.” The response was brief and cutting.
“Temporarily! And because of overwhelming political and international circumstances!”
The Mudblood was appalled, and Lucius took perverse enjoyment in it.
“It’s quite un-British to question our methods like that. We’ll never put an end to Voldemort’s terrorism if we listen to defeatist legalism!”
“And I happen to…” Wolverine was cut by the sound of a large explosion in the immediate vicinity. The walls creaked, the floor trembled, and the noise became almost unbearable. After a long, agonising moment, the ceiling rumbled and crumbled, and a red-haired woman appeared out of nowhere.
“Right on time for tea, dear!” Wolverine appeared to be delighted. “Would it be too much to presume of you to ask whether you thought of the crumpets?”
The woman glanced at her watch.
“I’m afraid I have left everything on the plane… if you would care to follow me?”
Hermione and Lucius watched, bemused, as the metal bars melted under the woman’s stare and Wolverine stepped outside.
“I shall have to bid you farewell, my friends. If you thought of using our powers to win you war, I’m afraid you’re in the wrong fantasy series, not to mention the wrong side of the pond. And now – tally ho!”
And with these words, he and his companion vanished into the gaping hole in the ceiling.
Hermione and Lucius blinked, looked around, and blinked again.
“I should have know this guy wasn’t normal…”
“I must be going crazy…”
Lucius glanced appreciatively at Hermione. He might be a bit confused, but this was one of these now or never opportunities.
“So you people are trying to find new methods against Voldy, aren’t you?’
“We are…”
“I know ways you don’t. And no, those books weren’t hidden in the Manor nor in the Malfoy vault… and if you want me to tell you where…”
The negotiations between the Auror and the prisoner lasted several days, and were conducted with the utmost secrecy; all the wizarding world was to know was that Lucius Malfoy was released the day after Hermione Granger annihilated the last Horcrux.
That the two of them chose to elect a stately mansion in the United States as their common residence after that remains a matter of widespread speculation; that Jean and Wolverine soon became their neighbo(u)rs, on the other hand, is a well-kept secret.
The End.
A/N The characters obviously belong to JKR and to Marvel comics, no money is made, no harm is intended.
The idea of a crossover is by Astarvingwriter herself; it’s Xmen because I didn’t know any of the other fandoms she mentioned well enough to write in them.
The idea of having the British characters speak and act like Americans, and vice-versa, is by Barriequark. I’m not sure I managed to pull it off, though, I can hardly tell British English from American at the best of times. I have it from good authority that the caricatures could be better, but I honestly don’t know how to make it better. I could probably wait another couple of months for inspiration, but people in general and my friends in particular have the nasty habit of bringing up a birthday every single year, which somehow curtails procrastination.
Anyway: HAPPY BIRTHDAYastarvingwriter!!!
Warning Several levels under silliness, clichés galore, attempts at caricature.
Rating : PG
Fandoms: a warped, culturally wrong mis-rendition of Harry Potter and X-men (canon based solely on the film Xmen2)
Credits : I don’t want to give too much away, so they’re listed at the end of the fic only. All you need to know is that I don’t own any of it.
Genre: serious stuff. Not. Adventure / Fantasy / Romance, I guess.
Prison cells don’t have doors.
They have bars. One row of bars, facing another row of bars on the other side of the corridor.
And behind the bars, the tiny three-walled rooms where dangerous criminals are kept.
In the fifteen months he has spent there, Lucius had not seen that many of those. The Death Eaters were kept apart from each other, that much he knew; and the prisoners taken to the narrow corridor he was in were the petty thieves and lunatics the Ministry saw fit to imprison for a couple of months, not because they were a danger but because no one knew what else to do with them.
Lucius tried to keep note of when new prisoners arrived; it meant that a boat went to the island, after all, and this was the kind of information any potential escapee had to find out. But he was not privy to all the comings and goings around Azkaban, just of those that affected his corridor; and they were not enough to establish a pattern.
It made him all the more interested when a new inmate did indeed come his way.
Such was the case in this drab September morning.
He – it must be a he, female inmates were kept in another aisle of Azkaban – arrived right before lunch, like the others had.
Unlike the others, he was escorted by no less than six Aurors; and they all had their wands out and ready.
The blond silently popped his chewing-gum as he watched as they launched him into the opposite cell, stood back, and weaved what seemed to be a complicated net of spells all around the place.
But he didn’t get a good idea of who exactly the new inmate was until the guards left.
Even then, he wasn’t all that sure about his companion of misfortune.
He sat down stiffly on the bunk all day, didn’t move, and didn’t make a noise.
He was hard to describe. His features were not discernable in the dim light, and stubble covered his entire lower face; but his tall stature, his straight posture bespoke of iron principles, and long-ingrained stubbornness. Against the grim background of the prison cell, where everyone else fell in a shapeless slouch, he appeared out of place, outlandish, almost alien.
For the first time in his entire stay, Lucius recoiled. Dealing with the filth and daily humiliations had come easily to him, more easily than expected anyway; but for some reason, seeing this powerful, taciturn figure of a man remain proud where he had bent was the final straw.
* *
But straws could keep on piling up on a broken-backed camel. And they did. A whole fucking mountain of them.
Granger soon arrived to interview the prisoner.
He knew who she was – a companion of Potter’s, a Mudblood. Her coming to Azkaban could only come from her having pulled more than a few strings, and important ones at that.
For she did come, and often.
The first time, he had been too surprised to react, and had merely ogled her as she tried to talk to the creature.
She would have been too intimidated by the settings to answer anyway.
The second time, he sneered; and she ignored him.
The third time, he tried to blackmail her.
After all, he had much more contact with the creature than she did, being in the opposite cell all day long, and if the information she needed was worth her coming personally to get it, it must be worth his freedom.
“In your dreams, Malfoy. The Ministry would never let you loose, not in a month of Thanksgivings.”
He shrunk back from her. Being insulted by a vulgar Mudblood and being unable to hex back was a new low, even for him, even in the present circumstances.
He hardly listened to her, that time, as she began her customary overtures to the creature. She didn’t mean it any harm, she was there to help, what was his name…
This was even more sickening than a Death Eater meeting.
His inattention might explain why it came as a surprise when she turned to him as addressed him, sharply.
“Helping me co-operate with your inmate won’t get you free. But I can provide… comfort products. Coffee. An extra blanket. Clothes. Shampoo. Think about it.”
When he looked up she was gone already.
That was a good thing, too – he could hardly repress the fury that had seized him. Malfoys were bought with power, and heaps of Galleons, not with a measly blanket! What in Merlin’s name was the girl thinking?
He realised he had been kicking the wall when his foot went numb. He hopped to the bunk and crumbled down, face down, the manly stubble scratching the rough bedlinen.
If only, oh, if only… the litany went far back, and stretched to the present day like a wide, endless desert. If only he hadn’t joined the Dark Lord. If only he hadn’t been caught. If only he had inspired enough loyalty to his family and fellow Death Eaters for them to come here and rescue him. If only he could escape. If only the filthy Mudblood could go away. The prison routine had been almost bearable before she arrived. If only…
The sound of steel on steel interrupted his reverie.
“You look down, old chap. Care for a cup of tea?”
Lucius stood up abruptly. It was the… creature in the other cell.
“Not that I have one to offer, though. This establishment seems to ignore the finer artefacts of civilisation.”
“I didn’t know you could talk” Lucius sneered back.
His inmate arched an eyebrow.
“Indeed?”
“You… you didn’t say a word until now!”
Silence met his accusation.
“Who are you?”
Did the man remain impervious, or did the beginning of a frown impress itself on the finely chiselled brow? The obscurity made it impossible for Lucius to tell.
“How very… foreign… of you to be so direct. Must come from tea deprivation, I daresay.”
“I’ll have you know this is my country, I can’t be a foreigner!”
“And your prison, where you arbitrarily detain innocents. I happen to have noticed.”
This time, the sneer was unmistakable.
With, perhaps, just a hint of resentment.
And was that contempt?
Lucius could think of nothing to answer, and so he turned back to his bunk, and ignored the stranger. The foreigner. The alien.
* *
It was more than he could resist not to tell Hermione about it when she arrived the next day, just as the first sunrays reached the long crack on the wall’s paint. Punctual as always, the Mudblood was.
She put her half-full paper coffee cup on the floor and started talking to the creature, as usual, in this strange voice she only used with him – reminiscent of a mother’s cooing over a baby, or perhaps a nurse talking to a patient in a coma. The stranger must find it just as insulting, for he remained within his stony silence.
“He talks, you know. Rambles on about how we don’t have tea over here. He’s no Brit.”
Hermione’s interest sparkled.
“Why won’t you speak to me, then?”
The man smirked.
“We haven’t been properly introduced, you know.”
The witch and the wizard gazed at each other in dismay. This wasn’t the way mute captives were supposed to react when they spoke at long last.
“I’m Hermione – call me Mione.”
She extended her hand through the bars; the stranger took it, and the strangest thing happened. Lucius could swear he saw the glint of metal shine on the man’s very hand; and Hermione abruptly withdrew hers.
“Stop that!”
The stranger looked apologetic.
“I’m afraid that’s quite impossible. They’re part of me, see.”
They both stared in mute fascination. The… claws… retracted themselves ever-so-slowly, leaving the strong hands as they first were.
“Don’t you… control these things? It freaks me out!” Lucius blurted. The captive only lifted an eyebrow in response and looked quizzically at his fellow inmate.
“My name is Wolverine, I am pleased to meet you too.” His answer was aimed at Hermione, but Lucius did not take his eyes off the freak.
“About these… hands,” Hermione went on, “they are the reason you are here, you know.”
“Without a trial.” The response was brief and cutting.
“Temporarily! And because of overwhelming political and international circumstances!”
The Mudblood was appalled, and Lucius took perverse enjoyment in it.
“It’s quite un-British to question our methods like that. We’ll never put an end to Voldemort’s terrorism if we listen to defeatist legalism!”
“And I happen to…” Wolverine was cut by the sound of a large explosion in the immediate vicinity. The walls creaked, the floor trembled, and the noise became almost unbearable. After a long, agonising moment, the ceiling rumbled and crumbled, and a red-haired woman appeared out of nowhere.
“Right on time for tea, dear!” Wolverine appeared to be delighted. “Would it be too much to presume of you to ask whether you thought of the crumpets?”
The woman glanced at her watch.
“I’m afraid I have left everything on the plane… if you would care to follow me?”
Hermione and Lucius watched, bemused, as the metal bars melted under the woman’s stare and Wolverine stepped outside.
“I shall have to bid you farewell, my friends. If you thought of using our powers to win you war, I’m afraid you’re in the wrong fantasy series, not to mention the wrong side of the pond. And now – tally ho!”
And with these words, he and his companion vanished into the gaping hole in the ceiling.
Hermione and Lucius blinked, looked around, and blinked again.
“I should have know this guy wasn’t normal…”
“I must be going crazy…”
Lucius glanced appreciatively at Hermione. He might be a bit confused, but this was one of these now or never opportunities.
“So you people are trying to find new methods against Voldy, aren’t you?’
“We are…”
“I know ways you don’t. And no, those books weren’t hidden in the Manor nor in the Malfoy vault… and if you want me to tell you where…”
The negotiations between the Auror and the prisoner lasted several days, and were conducted with the utmost secrecy; all the wizarding world was to know was that Lucius Malfoy was released the day after Hermione Granger annihilated the last Horcrux.
That the two of them chose to elect a stately mansion in the United States as their common residence after that remains a matter of widespread speculation; that Jean and Wolverine soon became their neighbo(u)rs, on the other hand, is a well-kept secret.
The End.
A/N The characters obviously belong to JKR and to Marvel comics, no money is made, no harm is intended.
The idea of a crossover is by Astarvingwriter herself; it’s Xmen because I didn’t know any of the other fandoms she mentioned well enough to write in them.
The idea of having the British characters speak and act like Americans, and vice-versa, is by Barriequark. I’m not sure I managed to pull it off, though, I can hardly tell British English from American at the best of times. I have it from good authority that the caricatures could be better, but I honestly don’t know how to make it better. I could probably wait another couple of months for inspiration, but people in general and my friends in particular have the nasty habit of bringing up a birthday every single year, which somehow curtails procrastination.
Anyway: HAPPY BIRTHDAY
astarvingwriter!!!
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-12-07 10:37 pm (UTC)And I've had a year's rest. Definitely time to either disentangle one of the two novels currently stalled at 35,000 and 10,000, respectively, or to start something new and actually finish it, this time. It's amazing how the bar just gets higher - I've proved to myself that I can finish a novel, next I need to prove that I am capable of repeating this feat...
Catherine