Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/115943.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Graphic_Depictions_Of_Violence, Major_Character_Death, Rape/Non-Con,
      Underage
  Category:
      Other
  Fandom:
      Harry_Potter_-_Rowling
  Stats:
      Published: 2010-09-13 Words: 2044
****** Four Things That Never Happened to Susan Bones ******
by jenna_thorn
"Bones, Susan!"
"Hufflepuff!," shouted the hat again, and Susan scuttled off to sit next to
Hannah.
-- Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
Muggle
"Oh, do sit still, Susan."
"It itches!"
"It's wool. You'll get used to it."
"I still don't see why I can't just wear my clothes."
"Because then it wouldn't be a school uniform, now would it?"
"Mary Janes, mom?"
"Black patent shoes and before you ask, no, you may not wear your sandals."
"This school is going to be awful."
"St. Margaret's is a lovely school. You know your aunt went there. Do write
her. Every school has its history and secrets. She'll tell you all about them."
"They make me wear wool, pleats, and plaid, mum. Awful."
"Oh shush. At least there's not a hat involved."
---:::---
Slayer
Susan pulled Peter to his feet, bracing herself to keep from sliding in the
dusty ash that surrounded them both.
"Well, I would say that displays your abilities to an acceptable degree."
"You know you sound like Lovejoy when you do that."
"Why are your parents allowing you to watch Lovejoy?"
Susan rolled her eyes. "I'm eleven. I'm old enough to watch the telly."
"You're eleven, therefore you aren't old enough to watch Lovejoy." With both of
them standing, he towered over her, a lanky Welshman and a diminutive girl-
child, absently chewing on the end of one braid. "Well, that was somewhat more
stimulating than I had anticipated, but it went well."
"Peter, I'm sneezing vampire dust and there are human corpses in every room of
this house." She tilted her head down to glare at him while rolling her eyes, a
special skill reserved for pre-teen girls and aging drag queens.
"It was a successful first trial of your new abilities to enhance the classroom
theory you've received."
"Yeah, the Slayer said…"
"Susan, you are a Slayer."
"Yeah but she's the Slayer." He pressed his lips together and she continued,
"anyway, she said that depending on classroom theory would get us killed."
"Nonetheless, now is the time for information gathering, for it is by research
and planning that we may protect ourselves and ..." He followed her line of
sight. "Think, Susan. What have we learned?"
She swung the stake loosely. "That the two of us can go up against a small
group of no more than five vampires without a leader, discover a nest of at
least fifteen, and take them down without injury ..." She slid her eyes at him
with a rueful smile, "well, without permanent injury. That I'm going to buy a
whole bunch of tennis shoes and probably cut my hair very very short. That
they've been in this house for ..." She glanced around, scanning the scattered
detritus and said, "at least a week."
"And the humans?" Peter prompted.
"They were armed, unusual. The stake in her hands matches the three in the
front room, so it was probably a table of some sort, which means they knew, and
still fought. And none of them have turned, so …wait… they were drained…but not
turned." She toed the woman's corpse over to show the child's body beneath. "So
they must have done damage. Enough damage to anger the remaining vamps."
"Very good for a start. We'll be able to tell more once we are…" He trailed
off. Susan's eyes were tightly closed and her lower lip was drawn in, held
against her teeth.
"Susan?…I … I am sorry, you know. That you were called so young, that you were
called at all…" The final part, an apology for not having a real Watcher to
guide her, for being a secondary researcher who by luck and mistiming had
survived the massacre, went unspoken.
Susan sighed, then opened her eyes, but didn't meet his worried stare.
"S'okay." She rolled her neck and he winced at the crackle "How many people can
say they battle evil and Algebra at the same time?"
---:::---
Voldemort Triumphant (homage to And Just Plain Wrong by Amanuensis1)
They always wear masks, but it's not like they hide anything else. I've never
bothered to speculate, never joined in assigning labels or names. I don't care
who they are when they aren't here. I don't need names to know how to act with
each of them. I learned early to make my mouth more valuable than a source of
screams, my fingers slick without using blood. I suppose that made me the first
to submit but eventually the others did. Or they have to be forced
periodically, be re-broken again and again. Or they die like the Granger girl
did, bleeding out to laughter. One flawed escape plan too many. And that night
I practiced a trick with my tongue that got me a pat instead of a crack against
my cheek and I was allowed to move so that the blood on the floor didn't touch
me.
It's not hard to remember the ones who come back every time. The masks don't
hide weight or height or skin tone or a sneer or a tremor. And it's easy enough
to learn who wants me to look up with tears and who wants me to like it and who
wants me to not look up at all. This is a new Charms class, a new kind of
Transfiguration and I'm good at it, as I never was, and that keeps me safe,
with the ones who are always here and therefore must be the inner circle if I
ever thought of such things which I do not. And the others, the ever rotating
stream of others who find this seraglio of students so enticing, this parody of
Hogwart's. They come to slap the Boy Who Lived, to ram fingers or a wand or a
penis up him, to hear him cry out. They don't notice me.
I'm the first on my knees, but I've never been hit with anything but an open
fist. I'm the first on my knees, but I've never had anything but flesh up my
ass. I'm the first on my knees but when they do chain me, my wrists are wrapped
in scarves. That's why I'm first on my knees.
The Boy Who Lived, lives still. And he is displayed among his peers, ribbons
'round our necks signifying houses, yes even the green and silver, for
Hogwart's has always had four houses and not everyone who now wears a mask once
wore the green and silver badge. Harry lives still and fights still with his
ever present companion, chained together, only now sometimes literally, black
and red hair tossed together as they are shoved into one another's arms by
pounding from behind.
Every night the same and you'd think they'd tire but it's been weeks of nights
and the others still whisper of rescue, of escape and Potter urges defiance and
Blaise weeps as he is chosen by the same man and I use my eyes and my mouth and
my fingers with skills I never thought I'd learn to keep from joining him.
Hannah cried and I tried to tell her not to. I tried to teach her to learn, to
lick and tug and swallow and stroke because those earn you pats and strokes and
sometimes a mouthful of wine. But resisting gets you bruises and loose teeth,
and running away gets you glassy eyes in a pool of red while your classmates
writhe around you and your best friends weep soundlessly as blood runs down
their legs to mingle with yours.
But Hannah wept so they give her reason to do so, choking on her own tears and
snot and a rigid cock shoved in time with her gasping sobs. And I smile so they
give me reason to, pillows and laps and bites from silver forks and fingers
tugging, but not pulling, my hair. And Hannah doesn't talk to me anymore.
The Boy Who Lived, still lives. But so do I.
---:::---
Dumbledore Triumphant
"Hey, Dennis."
"'Lo, Susan. Watch your step. I've already got that corner," he called over his
shoulder and she nodded, drifting to the edge of the meadow, away from the
barren soil. He dipped a gloved hand into the barrel that floated before him,
scattering a fine white dust where the dirt showed any sign of growth. He'd
been at it for a while; there were whitish patches from the lake to the
Quidditch pitch - everywhere blood had been spilled, everywhere someone had
died. Five years weren't enough to wash the blood from the soil, or the sounds
and smells from her memory.
He stood for a moment, still, and rolled his neck. Seeing her silent regard, he
waved then called, raising his voice to be heard, "Fewer redcaps this year. We
could probably let it go next year, then come back after that to make sure."
She didn't bother to respond. He'd be back, as would she. Later today a few of
the others would. Not many. The students and faculty and allied forces, the
army that had seemed so powerful cheering in the Great Hall, then so meager
here, facing the serpent in the sky; those people no longer returned. Some had
gone away, leaving England, leaving home, to flee to the wilds of Australia, or
Greece or the Americas, burying the past in Egyptian sand or Ukrainian snow or
Peruvian mud. Some had stayed -- raising babies, filling the halls of the new
Ministry Academy.
She was here, with the other ghosts. Like Dennis. The rest were dead, interred
with English prayer in English soil, leaving their blood here at Hogwart's to
sprout redcaps. Or to be denied even that under a layer of salt and sage.
She drifted away, to leave Dennis to his own grief and to have a moment alone
with her own. Not everyone had gone, moved on with their lives, or their
deaths. Today there would be speeches and moments of silence and
retrospectives, but that was at the marble and gilded Ministry, surrounded by
the statues of wide eyed, painfully earnest students. Not here, not with the
ruined castle -- truly ruined, no longer an illusion -- looming behind her.
She pulled the bottle from her bag. The lake glimmered to her right. The greasy
sheen of the water's surface was nondescript enough, but the dried foam at the
shores, like the crust at the edge of an infected wound, that told the tale. In
another five years, maybe ten, the soil here would be allowed to produce again.
Another thirty and they could start to clean the lake. Maybe another hundred
and they'd look into building again.
She twisted the cap of the bottle off viciously. Would she see it? Would she
give off mourning the dead, her friends, her youth. Would she lose herself in
the world or in some bumbling man's arms and bed. Would she stay hollow? How
long would it take for the rain to wash her hands clean?
She took a swig, the butterbeer oily sweet, catching in her throat. It should
be rich but was instead unctuous. Dennis shouldn't be the only living son.
Voldemort should never have returned. She tipped the bottle up, letting the
butterbeer spill onto the despoiled earth, alternately soaking in and splashing
frothy mud against her shoes.
She held the empty bottle, neck down, at arm's length, watching the last drops
and the curls of popped bubbles slide to the lip. The first year, she'd left
the empty bottle, in some childish attempt at a symbol, but couldn't find it on
her return. The bottle had been scavenged by forest denizens, no doubt. So the
second year, she'd broken it against the edge of the pitch. But even the shards
disappeared amid the debris. The third year she'd taken it with her to set it
on her kitchen counter, a statue for one, an altar bereft of prayer, for months
until in a fit of realism, perhaps cynicism, she threw it in the recycling bin,
unnoticed and unseen, indistinguishable from other bottles. Nothing special,
nothing useful, nothing real. Last year she'd hurled it into the lake. It
dissolved before it could sink.
Still holding this year's bottle at arm's length, she let it go, apparating
before it hit the ground.
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