If you don’t do your homework, you don’t get recess, so the
new kid hasn’t had recess since he transferred because he had stood up on his
second day in class and announced that homework was “busywork assigned by
lazy-minded adults to break the spirits of children and make us as dull as
them.”
When Ms. Hudson pulls Joan aside to assign Sherlock as Joan’s
new study buddy, the teacher just sighs. “Do the best you can. You’re the only
student we trust not to be distracted by him.”
Two weeks later, no one’s particular surprised when Johnny
the hall monitor catches Sherlock into the principal’s office. The fact that
Joan was the one picking the lock is a bit more alarming. When the assistant
principal presses her on why, Joan kicks her feet against the chair and raises
her little chin. “We’re investigating alleged wrongdoing,” she says, pronouncing
‘alleged’ the exact way you would if you’d only ever seen the word written
down. Ah-leg-ed.
“What, kids?” says Assistant Principle Gregson wearily. “Someone
stole your gum in class? Teacher took your pencil and never gave it back?”
“The principal is embezzling money from our afterschool
programs and using the funds to pay off her debts with a local drug lord,”
Sherlock replies.
“Oh,” says Assistant Principal Gregson.
Joan leans forward in her chair, and Assistant Principal has
seen her win just about every academic award the county can offer a second
grader, but he’s never seen her look as keen as she does now. “Ah-leg-ed-ly,”
Joan says. “We thought the office maybe would have proof.”
The office does, in fact, have proof, which is the only
reason that neither of them get in trouble. The same can’t be said for the
principal. The same day that the police come into the school to arrest him,
Sherlock for the first time gets to go out for recess. He and Joan had done
their homework together the night before, in a blanket fort in her basement.
Joan wouldn’t let Sherlock tell her about the suspicious death of the neighbor
down his street until he finished his spelling. Ms. Hudson, in an attempt to
encourage Sherlock to do literally any homework, was letting the two of them
pick whichever words they wanted to study.
With a purple pen, Ms. Hudson adds another s to asault,
crosses out the extra r in murrder, and wrote Well done! across the top of his worksheet. Out on the playground,
Joan and Sherlock crouch beneath the jungle gym and listen to a sixth grader
describe the circumstances of his missing backpack.
to Draco’s surprise and displeasure, MacIntyre is at dinner that evening, looking offensively cheerful.
Draco assumed he’d at least get detention, though expulsion was probably too much to hope for. but apparently neither one is in the offing. it only goes to show, he thinks, how outrageously lenient the school is towards the Muggleborn, just like his father always says.
and MacIntyre isn’t really Muggleborn, if he’s telling the truth. he shouldn’t even have ignorance as an excuse.
well, he won’t stand for it. if MacIntyre won’t show the slightest bit of proper wizarding feeling, then he, Draco Malfoy, will have to hold the line for Standards, and Traditions, and so on.
(and with any luck, get MacIntyre into the trouble he deserves, in the process.)
once he’s challenged MacIntyre, though, Draco begins to have second thoughts.
after all, it’s not really becoming of a Malfoy to sneak off to brawl with blood traitors in the middle of the night. and yes, MacIntyre promised to leave his dog behind, though he shouldn’t have been allowed to bring the beast at all– blatant favoritism, again!
but can Draco really trust him to keep his word, when he clearly doesn’t know the first thing about how honorable wizards behave?
honestly, more likely than not MacIntyre will get cold feet and stay in bed, or Weasley will talk him out of it.
Draco wouldn’t even put it past them to tell Professor McGonagall, and get him in trouble instead! for all that Gryffindors talk about bravery, they never show it when it really matters. that’s what Father always says.
two can play at that game, Draco decides. and with any luck, MacIntyre will learn what happens when you throw your lot in with blood traitors and Muggles.
Draco sleeps soundly that night, with a perfectly clear conscience. and why shouldn’t he?
2. Padfoot
Harry, of course, very sternly forbids Padfoot to come along with him and Ron to the wizard’s duel.
Padfoot, of course, ignores this.
he hangs back in the shadow of the doorway until Ron and Harry have left the common room, and emerges to find Hermione Granger in the throes of indecision.
she glares at him. “you could have at least tried to stop them,” she says.
stopping Harry when his mind’s really set on something is only slightly easier than stopping James, and rather more difficult than stopping the Hogwarts Express under full steam.
this isn’t something one can easily convey as a dog, though.
so when Granger makes an indignant noise and goes after Ron and Harry, Padfoot just follows.
they pick up another kid on their way to the trophy room, but that’s all right. Padfoot got into significantly worse trouble at Hogwarts than this without anyone getting hurt, and a couple of firsties flinging jinxes at each other won’t be the end of the world.
hell, if they all get detention together they might get along better at the end of it.
and that’s assuming the Malfoy kid even shows up. from what Padfoot remembers of his father, that’s not too likely. not exactly a battlefield general, was the elder Malfoy. much more the sort to lead from the rear. first in line for praise, last in line for blame.
the trophy room’s empty when they arrive.
the kids cool their heels for a little while. Padfoot tries to get at the itch behind his ear, but can’t quite manage it. he trots out from behind his hiding spot amongst the trophy cases, and flops down next to Harry.
“I told you to stay behind,” Harry says, but his heart’s not in it. Padfoot can tell.
Ron, who is a good lad, scoots closer to Harry so he can scratch Padfoot’s ears.
and then they hear Filch in the next room.
the kids all jump like they’ve been set upon by boggarts, poor things. Padfoot can only vaguely remember a time when something like this was actually worth being scared of.
he barks, softly as he can, to get Harry’s attention.
“can you draw him off, Pads?” Harry asks him, and he barks again.
“that dog of yours is a lifesaver,” he hears Longbottom say on his way out.
I’m really not, he thinks to himself, but he’s got enough years and enough distance that it’s more wry than anguished.
but I intend to be, if it comes to it.
it doesn’t, of course. not this time. he leads Filch and Mrs. Norris on a merry chase. once he’s shaken them, he settles down for a nap in one of the secret tunnels. in the morning, he rejoins Harry for breakfast in the Great Hall, eyes bright and tail wagging.
he’s just in time for Harry’s new broom to arrive.
this, Padfoot decides, settling under the table within bacon-tossing range of Seamus Finnegan, is what Hogwarts ought to be. not what it was in his last years here, with the war looming over them all. not a fortress, or a cauldron of alliances and recruitment. but this: nothing worse than mischief, once in a while, with plenty of time to stockpile good memories in between.
Seamus tosses him half a sausage. lovely, thinks Padfoot, and snaps it neatly out of the air.
“I don’t know where to start,” said Sirius. He was staring at the table, at the much-folded scrap of ragged newspaper he had set there. It was half the Prophet’s front page, from a month ago, announcing the disappearance of the Boy Who Lived.
“I still have a few friends in the Aurors,” Remus said. Sirius looked a little better, after a meal, a haircut, clean clothes, and about two hours sitting in the bath while Remus fretted in the next room.
He was still damn near skeletal, and his eyes, when they weren’t fixed on something Remus couldn’t see, were haunted. He hardly spoke, and answered questions in single words when he could.
“No Aurors,” said Sirius. He waved at the paper on the table. “They don’t know anything, or this wouldn’t have run.”
“Still,” said Remus. “If I get a chance, and I can bring it up, I will.”
1.) The dwarves spar as they journey, in the mornings or evenings, or sometimes when they break for the midday meal. Sometimes they divide into teams, sometimes it’s a massive free-for-all, and not even the brothers and family units among them will help one another. Sometimes one dwarf stands on a rock and the goal is to knock him down and take his place and defend it alone, other times they simply pile into each other and all may use the terrain however they please. Sometimes they all attack Thorin at once, and he holds them off with sword and axe, or sword and the oaken branch that gave him his name, or the sword alone, or barefisted, wrestling and biting and kicking. Sometimes they have one-on-one spars, or two-on-one or small groups against other small groups. No one seems to hold back at all. The company goes around with bruises, groaning as they ride the next day with wrenched muscles, ruefully let each other help staunch a bleeding wound.
“Someone’s going to get killed,” Bilbo had said with certainty after a week of watching this, but Gandalf only smiled.
He gained some perspective when, during an unarmed melee, Balin neatly sidestepped a punch from Dori that smashed the tree behind him to splinters. Because he’s seen dwarves take blows from Dori before, and they always leave bruises that last for days– but never more than that.
Fili wasn’t sparring that day– he was still recovering from the near-drowning– and thus was sharpening his swords next to Bilbo and keeping one eye on the proceedings, yelling out the occasional encouragement or taunt.
“What’re you gawping at there, Mister Baggins?”
“Ori’s never managed to raise a single bruise on any of you,” he said slowly. “What would happen if he struck me?”
“Don’t worry, Gandalf warned us all not to. You Shirelings are a soft little folk, hm? ‘–but they’ll surprise you, Master Dwarf,’ you know how he is.”
“Soft is what you call not having a harder skull than a tree, is it?”
“Couldn’t’ve been a very hard wood,” Fili snorted. “Half-dead, too. Dori’s pulling his punches. He has to, he’s stronger than Dwalin even.” He glanced over at Bilbo, who was still wide-eyed. “You said you’d read a good deal about elves. That you’d studied them. How would you describe ’em?”
“Describe elves? Well… fair, tall. Wise, immortal beings, the Firstborn of the Peoples of Middle-Earth–”
“Well, whether any of that’s true,” interrupted Fili with a bit of a grimace, “we were made by Mahal, not Illuvatar. And Mahal considered it rather more important than being tall, aye, or fair in the eyes of some, that dwarves be tough.”
Of all the things to be proud of, Bilbo thought. But then he supposed they had to be proud of something, if they knew they were not made to be fair or wise or tall or immortal– or given a land like the Shire, with the gifts and the knowledge to till it.
2.) Occasionally they stay at inns, in villages of Men that are apparently friendlier than others. Bilbo has no idea what kind of unseen sign marks them apart, but the dwarves recognize something about them as they pass and Gloin takes out his ledger and abacus and talks to Thorin and Balin and Dwalin in low tones before Thorin announces whether they will enter. Bifur and Bofur bring whatever toys they will have made since the last one, and sometimes a nicely inked scroll by Balin or Ori. Dori might contribute a knitted scarf or hat or mittens or foot-mittens (at which name Fili and Kili fall about laughing and even Gandalf’s mustache wobbles suspiciously). Thorin ties back his hair and disappears into the local forge for the evening. Nori just… disappears.
They share rooms, because there are fifteen of them, and no matter who he rooms with Bilbo has never seen a single dwarf sleep in a bed. The beds are right there, comfortable and inviting, and yet every single member of the company he has seen sleep— which is everyone except Gandalf— strips the sheets and blankets off their bed and carry them into a corner of the room to pile on the floor like a nest.
“Why do you do that?”
“Bad enough we’re on the second floor,” Gloin grumbled. "Sleep raised up off it? No thank you, laddie. We’re far enough away from stone as it is.”
3.) The metal pins go right through their ears! Holes! In their ears! That they punched with needles and let scar around bits of metal that were still in there! And he thought they looked far too regular for birthmarks but they’re self-inflicted, stabbed repeatedly with needles (again!) and stained with dyes that surely cannot be anything other than poisonous, to mark so permanently; what exactly is so wrong with the bodies they were born with?
4.) Bilbo is perfectly familiar with the practice of breaking apart chicken bones to get at the marrow inside. Healthy stuff, that, though you must be careful not to swallow bone splinters. At home, if they had no guests in front of whom good manners must be practiced, his mother would bite down on them rather than bothering to get out the claw crackers. His father would laugh and call her a barbarian.
But the dwarves crack open the bones of sheep with their teeth, crunch down on the leg bones of deer after the meat has been stripped from it. There’s “Mahal made us to be tough” and then there’s having the jaw strength of a pack of wolves, and apparently the table manners to match. It nearly puts him off his dinner.
5.) In full darkness, the dwarves’ eyes widen and gleam like cats’. In that first instant when they come into light again, if Bilbo looks quick enough, their eyes are black nearly edge-to-edge. He strongly dislikes the way it makes him feel like a prey animal among predators.
1.) SERIOUSLY HOW DOES HE WALK EVERYWHERE WITH BARE FEET. SHARP ROCKS. TWIGS. THORNS. SNOW. WHAT IN THE NAME OF MAHAL. GANDALF EXPLAIN YOUR BURGLAR.
I’m turning the clock back a little on dogfather with this one. This is set about three years before Padfoot follows Harry home, and is meant to be more traditionally story-shaped. It’s provisionally titled “the black dog.”
I’m not sure if I’m going to post any more of it before it’s done, but I have the beginning and I also have no chill so here it is so far:
all right. so. this is a Harry Potter AU, in rambly and abbreviated form.
this is a version of events where, on the morning of November 1st, 1981, the police are called to a house in Surrey.
when they arrive, a large man with a red face and a moustache is waiting for them, brandishing a baby.
to be more accurate: he is brandishing a basket. the basket contains a baby.
he tells the police that his wife found the basket on their doorstep that morning. “Gave her the shock of her life,” he says, with a chuckle that does not seem the least bit sincere.
the police officers have a lot of questions about this, but the man does not have any useful answers. his wife, he tells them, is not in any shape to be interviewed. “she’s been poorly,” he says, “and we’ve got a baby of our own to worry about, keeping us up at all hours.”
the baby in the basket seems to be about a year old. he is cheerful, seems healthy aside from a cut on his forehead, with a crooked sticking plaster on it. he has startlingly green eyes.
there is no identifying information in the basket, except for a torn scrap of paper with ‘his name is Harry’ on it in a delicate hand.
there it nothing else to be done, it seems. the officers take baby Harry, and leave.
one of them comes back a few days later for a follow-up interview with the woman who found the baby. she seems a little fragile, and her own baby, in the next room, keeps up a constant shrieking tantrum the whole time the officer is there. “I’m sorry,” the woman says, with a brittle smile. “this has all been a bit much. I recently lost my sister, you see.”
Bail Organa and the 20 years he spent with R2-D2 and C3-P0 living in his house.
Featuring chapters such as “Why does this astromech know 42 assassination protocols. He is an astromech. He shouldn’t know that.”
And “C3-P0 why do you know this obscure ancient dialect of huttese, who thought that was useful? Ah, Anakin Skywalker did. That…that makes sense but do you think you could learn this Aleraanian mountain language for me? Thanks!”
And “I will pay you twenty credits to break that astromech’s rocket boosters and make it look like an accident so my nine year old daughter stops RIDING HIM LIKE HE’S A SPEEDER OH GOD SHE’S GOING TO DIE!!!”
And the stunning conclusion of “Padme my darling friend why did you PROGRAM YOUR DROIDS THIS WAY??? HOW WAS THIS USEFUL TO YOU?? THE ASTROMECH HAS A SHIV, PADME. WHO TAUGHT HIM THAT? Oh, Darth Vader did, probably…Padme why did you have such terrifying taste in men…”
Warnings: Dudes. Do not read this if you love Jedi Apprentice Qui-Gon. It’s not explicitly mean, not like Catch the Lightening, but it’s not nice.
– – – – – – – – – – – –
The Force is subtle. The Force is calm. The Force is the quiet background hum of a Jedi’s life.
So when the Force practically screams LEFT at a young knight who’s never had a particularly strong connection to premonition before, he listens, turning left instead of right.
That’s the long way around, looping around the harbor district, and he almost second guesses himself and turns around – time is of the essence, dripping through his fingers like water as he races to stop the attack on the Prime Minister. But he is a Jedi. The Force is his life, and he can’t ignore that shout, grating against his senses, demanding to be heard.
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