[ AC: the patronus charm (HP Crossover) ]
Feb. 19th, 2012 12:06 pm![[personal profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tacticianFandom: Assassin's Creed
Characters: Altair Ibn'La-Ahad, Malik Al-Sayf
Rating: G
Warnings: An expansion of the Like Pillars Four (HP Crossover) universe. Takes place sometime during their latter years.
The light bursts out of the wand like an exploding firecracker, all light and show, but it fizzles out in a shower of blue-tinted sparks that never even make it to the ground before they disappear. Altair stays frozen like that, wand arm extended and body bent slightly back, black robes long discarded over the back of a library chair nearby. Dating a Ravenclaw prefect has certain advantages and sometimes those advantages include being able to pull long hours in an otherwise-empty library or the occasional snog, but sometimes it has disadvantages too, including having to pull long hours in an otherwise-empty library and the fact that the self-heating enchantment in the room has the temperature turned just a smidgen too high.
“Impressive,” Malik intones in what is possibly the most unimpressed voice ever. He has his chin cupped in the palm of one hand, his wand clasped in the other, and has been inscribing royal blue numbers in the air all night. He loops another figure-eight into the space over their books just as he announces, “I give that one an eight-point-zero, but you can probably argue for another tenth of a point if you're really convincing. I also take bribes.”
“Stop grading my spells!” Altair snaps, frustrated with his lack of sleep and more importantly, his lack of success. He looks tired, a dark rim slowly worming its way around his eyes, but he is and has always been nothing if not stubborn. He prides himself on success, which is a fickle thing to pride oneself on, considering that the natural prerequisite of doing so is to have said success in the first place. He flicks his wrist and sends a heavy volume flipping up off the table and into Malik's face, muffling his grunt of indignation with page 377 of The Magical Care of Animals Volume Three.
Malik slaps it back down, pinning it to the table by its heavy binding. It squirms there, pages flapping uselessly against his wrist and kicking up dust before it gives up its ill-proposed fight and lays back down, flat and inanimate. “I'm grading your attempts,” he argues, rubbing the reddened tip of his nose with the back of his hand. “I can't grade your spells if you can't cast them properly, now can I?”
“There are at least a thousand books in this library, Malik,” Altair informs him, perfectly serious and gritting his teeth. “And I swear I will throw every single one of them at your head.”
“Oh, that's my most deadly fear,” answers Malik, scraping the back legs of his chair across the tiling as he stands, his free hand on his hip and appearing not at all intimidated by the prospect of being buried under a mountain of books. (Indeed, the threat might have been more effective if that was not how Ravenclaws spent half their adult lives doing anyway.) He cants his head, purposefully baiting the other student. “Do you suppose I can dispel it with a Patronus charm too? You know how to do one of those?”
“Impedimen-”
Malik is expecting it. He drops into a crouch and just as quickly points his wand at Altair from underneath the table as the impediment spell knocks a gust of wind over his head. His papers and books go flying across the room above him as he shouts,“Expelliarmus,” sending Altair’s wand along with them. The little wooden stick whizzes past him like a torpedo and lands cushioned in a bed of scrolls and bound parchment, rolling down until it hits the floor with a little clatter and stopping only when it bumps up against the heel of Malik’s shoes.
Altair flexes his empty fingers. “Prat,” he mutters, stretching out the tendons in his stiff hand.
Malik bends down and scoops up the wand, twirling it in his left hand. It is lighter than his own, carved into a straight, smooth and polished line unlike the winding bough of his. The wood is just a shade lighter and more orange than his dark oak, but he can feel the latent power in its core nonetheless, even if it isn’t him it’s calling out to. There is magic and potential in it, but the issue at hand lays not in the weapon, but in the wielder. Malik looks up as he approaches the other boy and smirks.
“Really, what’s the problem, Altair? It isn’t even the most difficult spell we’ve learned in that class,” he says, dangling the wand in front of the Gryffindor only to pull it away at the last minute.
Altair scowls as his fist closes around air and promptly decides that he is not about to come away empty-handed regardless of Malik’s teasing; he leans forward and grabs the loose end of Malik’s tie and pulls him back into reach. “There’s no problem,” he protests, yanking the other boy forward, eyes on his stolen wand, though he doesn’t try to retrieve it. His eyes flicker up to meet Malik’s challenging gaze. “It’s just not cooperating.”
“Oh, it’s not cooperating,” Malik echoes, clearly amused. “What’s your process?”
Altair gives him the flattest of flat looks that ever graced the flatness of the two-dimensional plane. “I point my wand and say, ‘Expecto Patronum.’”
Malik huffs and pokes him the middle of the gut with his own wand. “You know what I mean!”
Still recovering, Altair drops the tie in favor of rubbing a hand against his offended middle. Under the guise of doubling over, during which Malik leans back to avoid an untimely collision of foreheads, he makes another attempt at his wand, but Malik has had enough practice reading the glints in his eye when he is about to reach for something on the Quidditch field to be fooled quite that easily. Malik both steps back and jerks a knee up to force Altair back, tucking the stolen wand behind his back.
“Malik,” Altair growls warningly.
“We’re going to figure this out,” Malik answers firmly. “I am not going to stay down here with you the entire night and I am not going to allow you in the library without proper supervision, so we’re going to get you to cast this spell and then we are going to go to bed and maybe catch an hour or two before tomorrow morning’s practice.” He lets that sink in enough until the slightest hint of shame makes Altair turn his face away before stepping back in. More gently, he asks, “What’s the memory, Altair?”
Altair shrugs listlessly, instinctively swaying into Malik’s space. His eyes are glued firmly to a bookcase to their left - nothing particularly interesting, Malik knows, since only Herbology Documentaries are in that direction. A Patronus memory, he also knows, can be private, though, considering it has to be dear enough to the heart to summon enough joy to power a spell, and those things that Altair holds dear, he guards like an overgrown Whomping Willow.
“I’ve been cycling through a few,” he mutters finally. “None of them are working.”
“Do you not remember them well? Are they hazy?” Malik hazards.
“That’s not it. I remember them just fine. It’s just not enough.” Altair waves a frustrated hand at the air. “You saw it. It comes out. It just disappears before it can even take form. I don’t even know what animal it is. But it works, it just doesn’t last. I’m not doing anything wrong,” he says defensively, hackles rising like a threatened animal, and no, that’s not right, not for here, not for them. This isn’t a fight and there isn’t anything remotely threatening about standing with Malik in an empty, albeit stuffy, library.
Malik pockets his own wand and reaches out, sliding a warm hand against the exposed skin above Altair’s shirt collar. “Stop that,” he barks shortly, which is perhaps not the most tactful or sympathetic way of going about things, but it seems to freeze Altair’s ire in its tracks. “Let’s just walk through it and find out what’s missing. You don’t have to share your memory, just run it over in your head by yourself, if you’d like. Close your eyes and think of the happiest one out of all the ones you chose.”
Altair closes his eyes.
There is flying, there is laughter, there is the drumming of his beating heart, the rush of blood as the cold air whips into the tips of his fingers and the curve of his cheeks, the rush of blood as it floods his face when he leans in toward a familiar face during a moment stolen from the busy day, an electric touch that sends a spark up his arm, his first taste of Butterbeer, his first kiss, the weight of a young Desmond, sitting on his shoulders, the tug of cloth when Ezio grabs a fistful of the back of his shirt, their smiles, eyes golden bright, the musty smell of the hat, choosing him for the bravest House of all.
(Did he deserve that, after all he’d done? It hadn’t been brave at all. It hadn’t been loyal or intelligent or even cunning enough for Slytherin. And who knew? Even old men bled such a vibrant red, sticky and thick, sliding between the blades of grass like a many-headed snake, seeping into the cracks between the dungeon floor’s stones as the residual nerves of a dead rat made its limbs twitch, scratching at the ground, the air filled with silent spider screams and-)
“What..stop that,” cuts in Malik’s voice, like a harsh edge that stops Altair’s reminiscing short.. It isn’t until Altair opens his eyes that he realizes that Malik has slipped his wand back between his lax fingers and that the steady blue glow amassing at its tip is now dying out like an old ember. Malik scowls as it dims out, demanding, “What was that? You were doing well until you-” but whatever he sees when he looks at Altair’s face makes him trail off into a contemplative pause.
“What?” asks Altair, voice oddly hoarse.
The hand on Altair’s neck smooths up until it is cradled around his jaw. Though the gesture is clearly meant to be comforting, it’s Malik’s face that is scrawled with a frown, brow knit and eyes haunted at the edges. “No,” he says, voice deep and low even if there’s no need to whisper in their privacy. He raises his left hand to mirror his right, pads of his thumbs pressing in just slightly under Altair’s ears. “The trick of the Patronus charm,” he recites, the exact words of their instructor but so, so different in context. “Is to think of a happy memory.”
“I did,” Altair protests, staring at the golden brown pinpricks of light the floating candles shine into the darkest part of their eyes. “I was.”
“Were you?” Malik raises a brow.
“I did,” Altair responds mulishly and reluctantly, feeling a little like he was admitting to something he didn’t quite agree to.
“I think of Kadar,” Malik says suddenly, neither flinching from Altair’s inquisitive look nor shying away from the step he takes to put them that much closer. “I think about the first game we win after he recovered, when he rammed a Bludger right into your broom and I caught the Snitch. He laughed so hard he fell off his broom.” Malik leans in conspiratorially despite the slow storm brewing on Altair’s face and adds, slyly, “The look on your face was hilarious.”
Altair shoves at his shoulder, but not enough to push him away. “Dirty cheaters, the lot of you,” he hisses, but he snorts and lets the memory steal a small smile from him in addition.
“Focus on things like that,” Malik tells him. “And only on things like that.”
This time, Altair says, “I will.”
“Good,” says Malik, appeased. “Then one more, to help it along,” and he pulls himself forward until he can slot his mouth over Altair’s, their noses bumping into each other for a moment before one or the other or both angles their chin just so, like they have many times before. Altair’s hands settle on Malik’s sides and Malik’s fingers slide back until they’re buried in Altair’s hair up to the knuckle. The room is too warm and they’re both too tired to let it escalate anywhere past that but it’s enough and just right.
Then Malik spins him around, right hand closing around Altair’s, tightening his grip around his wand and pulling it up into position, his left steady and splayed on the small of Altair’s back. “You know the words?” he asks against the shell of Altair’s ear.
“By heart,” Altair quips, feeling as though the very bones in his ribcage are expanding, creaking under the pressure of his heart. He sucks in a breath and thinks of Desmond, sleeping with his head under his pillow up in Gryffindor tower, of Ezio, who is probably sleeping in someone else’s bed in another tower, of Kadar, who is sleeping whole, and of Malik, who isn’t sleeping at all, but is pressed against his back with his chin grazing Altair’s shoulder.
It churns and boils in his gut, pushing up past his lungs and fanning out at his shoulders. It shoots down the length of his arm, curling around his bicep into the crook of his elbow, and collects at his wrist. His fingers tingle to their very ends with it, light dancing just under his eyes, making the hair at his nape stick up at end. “Oh,” breathes Altair, just as it crashes out from his hand to his wand to the warm library air like a bolt of lightning, a gust of wind, heralding and carrying the wings of everything Altair can think of that is bright and good and happy.
“Yeah,” Malik agrees.
“Expecto Patronum!” he shouts.
Characters: Altair Ibn'La-Ahad, Malik Al-Sayf
Rating: G
Warnings: An expansion of the Like Pillars Four (HP Crossover) universe. Takes place sometime during their latter years.
The light bursts out of the wand like an exploding firecracker, all light and show, but it fizzles out in a shower of blue-tinted sparks that never even make it to the ground before they disappear. Altair stays frozen like that, wand arm extended and body bent slightly back, black robes long discarded over the back of a library chair nearby. Dating a Ravenclaw prefect has certain advantages and sometimes those advantages include being able to pull long hours in an otherwise-empty library or the occasional snog, but sometimes it has disadvantages too, including having to pull long hours in an otherwise-empty library and the fact that the self-heating enchantment in the room has the temperature turned just a smidgen too high.
“Impressive,” Malik intones in what is possibly the most unimpressed voice ever. He has his chin cupped in the palm of one hand, his wand clasped in the other, and has been inscribing royal blue numbers in the air all night. He loops another figure-eight into the space over their books just as he announces, “I give that one an eight-point-zero, but you can probably argue for another tenth of a point if you're really convincing. I also take bribes.”
“Stop grading my spells!” Altair snaps, frustrated with his lack of sleep and more importantly, his lack of success. He looks tired, a dark rim slowly worming its way around his eyes, but he is and has always been nothing if not stubborn. He prides himself on success, which is a fickle thing to pride oneself on, considering that the natural prerequisite of doing so is to have said success in the first place. He flicks his wrist and sends a heavy volume flipping up off the table and into Malik's face, muffling his grunt of indignation with page 377 of The Magical Care of Animals Volume Three.
Malik slaps it back down, pinning it to the table by its heavy binding. It squirms there, pages flapping uselessly against his wrist and kicking up dust before it gives up its ill-proposed fight and lays back down, flat and inanimate. “I'm grading your attempts,” he argues, rubbing the reddened tip of his nose with the back of his hand. “I can't grade your spells if you can't cast them properly, now can I?”
“There are at least a thousand books in this library, Malik,” Altair informs him, perfectly serious and gritting his teeth. “And I swear I will throw every single one of them at your head.”
“Oh, that's my most deadly fear,” answers Malik, scraping the back legs of his chair across the tiling as he stands, his free hand on his hip and appearing not at all intimidated by the prospect of being buried under a mountain of books. (Indeed, the threat might have been more effective if that was not how Ravenclaws spent half their adult lives doing anyway.) He cants his head, purposefully baiting the other student. “Do you suppose I can dispel it with a Patronus charm too? You know how to do one of those?”
“Impedimen-”
Malik is expecting it. He drops into a crouch and just as quickly points his wand at Altair from underneath the table as the impediment spell knocks a gust of wind over his head. His papers and books go flying across the room above him as he shouts,“Expelliarmus,” sending Altair’s wand along with them. The little wooden stick whizzes past him like a torpedo and lands cushioned in a bed of scrolls and bound parchment, rolling down until it hits the floor with a little clatter and stopping only when it bumps up against the heel of Malik’s shoes.
Altair flexes his empty fingers. “Prat,” he mutters, stretching out the tendons in his stiff hand.
Malik bends down and scoops up the wand, twirling it in his left hand. It is lighter than his own, carved into a straight, smooth and polished line unlike the winding bough of his. The wood is just a shade lighter and more orange than his dark oak, but he can feel the latent power in its core nonetheless, even if it isn’t him it’s calling out to. There is magic and potential in it, but the issue at hand lays not in the weapon, but in the wielder. Malik looks up as he approaches the other boy and smirks.
“Really, what’s the problem, Altair? It isn’t even the most difficult spell we’ve learned in that class,” he says, dangling the wand in front of the Gryffindor only to pull it away at the last minute.
Altair scowls as his fist closes around air and promptly decides that he is not about to come away empty-handed regardless of Malik’s teasing; he leans forward and grabs the loose end of Malik’s tie and pulls him back into reach. “There’s no problem,” he protests, yanking the other boy forward, eyes on his stolen wand, though he doesn’t try to retrieve it. His eyes flicker up to meet Malik’s challenging gaze. “It’s just not cooperating.”
“Oh, it’s not cooperating,” Malik echoes, clearly amused. “What’s your process?”
Altair gives him the flattest of flat looks that ever graced the flatness of the two-dimensional plane. “I point my wand and say, ‘Expecto Patronum.’”
Malik huffs and pokes him the middle of the gut with his own wand. “You know what I mean!”
Still recovering, Altair drops the tie in favor of rubbing a hand against his offended middle. Under the guise of doubling over, during which Malik leans back to avoid an untimely collision of foreheads, he makes another attempt at his wand, but Malik has had enough practice reading the glints in his eye when he is about to reach for something on the Quidditch field to be fooled quite that easily. Malik both steps back and jerks a knee up to force Altair back, tucking the stolen wand behind his back.
“Malik,” Altair growls warningly.
“We’re going to figure this out,” Malik answers firmly. “I am not going to stay down here with you the entire night and I am not going to allow you in the library without proper supervision, so we’re going to get you to cast this spell and then we are going to go to bed and maybe catch an hour or two before tomorrow morning’s practice.” He lets that sink in enough until the slightest hint of shame makes Altair turn his face away before stepping back in. More gently, he asks, “What’s the memory, Altair?”
Altair shrugs listlessly, instinctively swaying into Malik’s space. His eyes are glued firmly to a bookcase to their left - nothing particularly interesting, Malik knows, since only Herbology Documentaries are in that direction. A Patronus memory, he also knows, can be private, though, considering it has to be dear enough to the heart to summon enough joy to power a spell, and those things that Altair holds dear, he guards like an overgrown Whomping Willow.
“I’ve been cycling through a few,” he mutters finally. “None of them are working.”
“Do you not remember them well? Are they hazy?” Malik hazards.
“That’s not it. I remember them just fine. It’s just not enough.” Altair waves a frustrated hand at the air. “You saw it. It comes out. It just disappears before it can even take form. I don’t even know what animal it is. But it works, it just doesn’t last. I’m not doing anything wrong,” he says defensively, hackles rising like a threatened animal, and no, that’s not right, not for here, not for them. This isn’t a fight and there isn’t anything remotely threatening about standing with Malik in an empty, albeit stuffy, library.
Malik pockets his own wand and reaches out, sliding a warm hand against the exposed skin above Altair’s shirt collar. “Stop that,” he barks shortly, which is perhaps not the most tactful or sympathetic way of going about things, but it seems to freeze Altair’s ire in its tracks. “Let’s just walk through it and find out what’s missing. You don’t have to share your memory, just run it over in your head by yourself, if you’d like. Close your eyes and think of the happiest one out of all the ones you chose.”
Altair closes his eyes.
There is flying, there is laughter, there is the drumming of his beating heart, the rush of blood as the cold air whips into the tips of his fingers and the curve of his cheeks, the rush of blood as it floods his face when he leans in toward a familiar face during a moment stolen from the busy day, an electric touch that sends a spark up his arm, his first taste of Butterbeer, his first kiss, the weight of a young Desmond, sitting on his shoulders, the tug of cloth when Ezio grabs a fistful of the back of his shirt, their smiles, eyes golden bright, the musty smell of the hat, choosing him for the bravest House of all.
(Did he deserve that, after all he’d done? It hadn’t been brave at all. It hadn’t been loyal or intelligent or even cunning enough for Slytherin. And who knew? Even old men bled such a vibrant red, sticky and thick, sliding between the blades of grass like a many-headed snake, seeping into the cracks between the dungeon floor’s stones as the residual nerves of a dead rat made its limbs twitch, scratching at the ground, the air filled with silent spider screams and-)
“What..stop that,” cuts in Malik’s voice, like a harsh edge that stops Altair’s reminiscing short.. It isn’t until Altair opens his eyes that he realizes that Malik has slipped his wand back between his lax fingers and that the steady blue glow amassing at its tip is now dying out like an old ember. Malik scowls as it dims out, demanding, “What was that? You were doing well until you-” but whatever he sees when he looks at Altair’s face makes him trail off into a contemplative pause.
“What?” asks Altair, voice oddly hoarse.
The hand on Altair’s neck smooths up until it is cradled around his jaw. Though the gesture is clearly meant to be comforting, it’s Malik’s face that is scrawled with a frown, brow knit and eyes haunted at the edges. “No,” he says, voice deep and low even if there’s no need to whisper in their privacy. He raises his left hand to mirror his right, pads of his thumbs pressing in just slightly under Altair’s ears. “The trick of the Patronus charm,” he recites, the exact words of their instructor but so, so different in context. “Is to think of a happy memory.”
“I did,” Altair protests, staring at the golden brown pinpricks of light the floating candles shine into the darkest part of their eyes. “I was.”
“Were you?” Malik raises a brow.
“I did,” Altair responds mulishly and reluctantly, feeling a little like he was admitting to something he didn’t quite agree to.
“I think of Kadar,” Malik says suddenly, neither flinching from Altair’s inquisitive look nor shying away from the step he takes to put them that much closer. “I think about the first game we win after he recovered, when he rammed a Bludger right into your broom and I caught the Snitch. He laughed so hard he fell off his broom.” Malik leans in conspiratorially despite the slow storm brewing on Altair’s face and adds, slyly, “The look on your face was hilarious.”
Altair shoves at his shoulder, but not enough to push him away. “Dirty cheaters, the lot of you,” he hisses, but he snorts and lets the memory steal a small smile from him in addition.
“Focus on things like that,” Malik tells him. “And only on things like that.”
This time, Altair says, “I will.”
“Good,” says Malik, appeased. “Then one more, to help it along,” and he pulls himself forward until he can slot his mouth over Altair’s, their noses bumping into each other for a moment before one or the other or both angles their chin just so, like they have many times before. Altair’s hands settle on Malik’s sides and Malik’s fingers slide back until they’re buried in Altair’s hair up to the knuckle. The room is too warm and they’re both too tired to let it escalate anywhere past that but it’s enough and just right.
Then Malik spins him around, right hand closing around Altair’s, tightening his grip around his wand and pulling it up into position, his left steady and splayed on the small of Altair’s back. “You know the words?” he asks against the shell of Altair’s ear.
“By heart,” Altair quips, feeling as though the very bones in his ribcage are expanding, creaking under the pressure of his heart. He sucks in a breath and thinks of Desmond, sleeping with his head under his pillow up in Gryffindor tower, of Ezio, who is probably sleeping in someone else’s bed in another tower, of Kadar, who is sleeping whole, and of Malik, who isn’t sleeping at all, but is pressed against his back with his chin grazing Altair’s shoulder.
It churns and boils in his gut, pushing up past his lungs and fanning out at his shoulders. It shoots down the length of his arm, curling around his bicep into the crook of his elbow, and collects at his wrist. His fingers tingle to their very ends with it, light dancing just under his eyes, making the hair at his nape stick up at end. “Oh,” breathes Altair, just as it crashes out from his hand to his wand to the warm library air like a bolt of lightning, a gust of wind, heralding and carrying the wings of everything Altair can think of that is bright and good and happy.
“Yeah,” Malik agrees.
“Expecto Patronum!” he shouts.
no subject
Date: 2012-02-20 03:14 am (UTC)god how do you write them so darling????? Malik judging Altair's attempts, getting the book flipped into his face and then helping Altair with the spell and then all the things that make altair happy--aahhhhhhhh ;A;
LOVELY DUMB KIDS.
no subject
Date: 2012-02-20 10:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-20 06:45 am (UTC)"Though the gesture is clearly meant to be comforting, it’s Malik’s face that is scrawled with a frown, brow knit and eyes haunted at the edges." I think I like this bit the best, it shows how much Malik cares, that effects him when Altair's hurt.
no subject
Date: 2012-02-20 10:08 pm (UTC)