Darker than Your Wonderland, Chapters 19-21

Part 6 is here.

19: Enigma

Rose and Scorpius' friendship wasn't the same, after that. She couldn't forget how Aphelocoma had looked at her, like she wondered why Rose was talking to her brother. It made Rose wonder why, in fact, she was talking to Scorpius.

They still spent some time together, but not like they used to. They'd study together, in the Ravenclaw common room but they no longer sat around and read books with each other.

Rose missed him, deeply. She missed sitting with him for hours, neither of them needing to say anything at all. She missed talking about books with him. She missed watching his face, unguarded as he read, especially now that she only saw it guarded, in front of others.

He was so good at keeping his face guarded. His natural expression was the one that made him seem haughty and that served to keep people away, as he preferred. He rarely showed true happiness or pride, not in any obvious ways.

Rose heard people mutter about his family sometimes, particularly Gryffindors, who were still deeply suspicious of the Malfoys. He never showed that he'd heard that, either.

Scorpius Malfoy was an enigma. Rose wished they could go back to the days when she'd been the person he didn't guard against, but she didn't know how.

She didn't even know where to start.

She didn't even try.

20: Clearly-

It was in February that she overheard Aphelocoma talking with her friends. Rose was waiting for Al, sitting in an alcove by the Slytherin common room, when Aphelocoma walked out, surrounded by her friends.

"The Weasley girl?" Aphelocoma was saying in response to a friend's question. "I guess that's all over. Merlin knows why they were ever friends in the first place. She's clearly-"

Aphelocoma's voice faded, as she drew further away from Rose. Hidden in her alcove, Rose was red with fury. She was clearly what? Too poor? Too common?

Fuming, Rose marched off in the other direction, deciding that she'd see Al later when she'd cooled down. She headed for the library, but abruptly turned around when she saw Scorpius and headed off to spend the rest of the day hiding in her dorm.

A week later, Rose had decided that enough was enough. At breakfast, she screwed up her courage and sat next to Scorpius instead of with the other girls from her year. He smiled at her when she did, a genuine smile.

Rose didn't often take the time to reflect on it, but she knew that Scorpius wasn't close to anyone except herself and his sister. There were people he spent time with, but none that he was really close to.

She took a book from her satchel and showed it to him under the table. The Visitor, it was called, by the same author as Beauty.

"Come with me after classes?" she asked. "Let's go read, like we used to."

"Yes," Scorpius said, smiling again, his fleeting, genuine, smile. "Anywhere in particular you wanted to go?"

21: The Shadow

She took him to the room of requirement, a place her mother had told her about. Today, it had a roaring fire, two cosy armchairs, and a plate piled high with little cakes and biscuits.

They talked about Beauty first, the book he'd given her. Looking at the publishing date, Rose knew that Snape must have bought the book shortly after her parents had started at Hogwarts. She wondered if he'd been thinking of Lily; it seemed more feminine than his usual tastes. She wondered if he'd thought himself akin to the lover who was believed long dead, and abandoned, but was found and reclaimed, almost too late.

Scorpius' gift The Visitor, a book about a future world where people had forgotten the present, and misunderstood the meanings of mundane items. Where people thought that muggles living today were magic, and that the simplest match stick was evidence of their great power. Rose found it frightening, how knowledge could be so easily lost between generations and superstition grown in its place and she thought Scorpius would be interested in that idea, too.

They settled down to read companionably by the light of the fire, in peaceful silence except when they wanted to discuss something in one of their books.

For the next three months, they were back to their old friendship. They were happy. The only shadow, as Rose saw it, was that of his parents.

Part 8 is here.

Darker than Your Wonderland, Chapters 16-17

Part 5 is here.

16: Bluffing

Things were almost the same between them after that. She didn't hug him any more – Scorpius didn't do physical affection, she knew, though he had appreciated it that time – but they'd study and read together.

Scorpius had changed since they'd met, Rose realised. He'd been a shy, quiet boy, who'd kept himself to himself. He was still shorter than her, still had a boyish face, but the girls she knew were already becoming envious of their closeness. His shyness and quietness was tempered with a charm that transfigured them into cool and aloof, now he was fourteen.

They didn't share as much as they once had. Now they were both thoroughly entrenched in puberty, they had secrets from one another. Rose developed a crush on another boy in their year, a Gryffindor, Mike Finnegan. He didn't have the glass handsomeness of Scorpius, but he was cute, and had a cheeky sort of charm that made her laugh. She enjoyed watching him, and daydreaming about him, from a distance. She never got up the courage to approach him.

Likewise, she never got up the courage to talk to Scorpius about their kiss, or about the hug. He metered out physical affection so carefully that she thought they must be important. At times, she was convinced that he was in love with her, and was only waiting for the right moment. She stacked up the evidence in her mind, and knew there could be no doubt.

At other times, she stacked the evidence again, and found quite a different total. She knew they were just friends; he'd rejected her kiss, hadn't he? He'd never touched her of his own volition, had he?

Sometimes, she thought about kissing him again, seeing what would happen. She thought he might go along with it, not because he fancied her, but simply because he trusted her. She didn't want to do that to him. She loved being friends with him, and although she daydreamed about lying in his arms to read, or kissing him again, she wasn't quite ready for any of it to really happen. The whole issue was so confusing, so contradictory, that she didn't want to share it with anyone, especially not him. She wanted to get it sorted in her head, get it all straight, then act on it, not spread her confusion to him.

It never occurred to her that he would be confused too, that he would suffer such conflicting feelings. Everyone else seemed to have things together; they seemed to know what they wanted, to know what they were doing, and why. It wasn't until she was much, much older that she realised that everyone was just as confused as she was, at fourteen. Everyone was bluffing.

17: Think

They shared a carriage again on the way back to King's Cross at the end of their third year. Rose was re-reading the book he'd given her at Christmas; Beauty, it was called. She liked the idea that beauty bred true; that things would turn out okay in the end.

As the train drew into the station, she saw Draco Malfoy waiting on the platform. She drew back, so she couldn't be seen from the windows, and told Scorpius to go on ahead, that she'd write him something on the Seposita Stilus parchment later.

Rose left the train a few minutes after Scorpius did, which gave him and his father time to find one another. She smiled at him, briefly, as she passed, and saw Draco appraising her with a cool stare. Her cheeks flushed, but she held her head high, as her parent's stories, overheard since she was a child, came flooding back.

He can think what he likes, she thought, furiously. Skip and I will always be friends. And if he ever calls me a mudblood to my face, I'll –

18: Slytherin

That year, their fourth, was the year that Aphelocoma Malfoy started at Hogwarts.

Rose and Scorpius had sent messages to each other all through the summer, but had been able to see each other very few times. For much of the summer, Scorpius had accompanied his sister in buying her school equipment.

He'd asked for the privilege, he told Rose, wanting the responsibility of caring for his sibling. Rose didn't quite understand why it meant so much to him - she'd never willingly volunteer to take care of Hugo - but she was pleased for him.

Scorpius and Alephocoma walked onto the train together. Rose was already in their usual carriage, curled up with a book. Scorpius nodded to her as he passed, his hands on his little sister's shoulders. She smiled at him, but stopped quickly when she saw Aphelocoma's expression. The younger girl looked disdainful, confused as to why Rose was smiling at her brother.

Rose watched them walked past, further into the train. That was the first year in which she and Scorpius hadn't sat together.

Aphelocoma was sorted into Slytherin, and Rose wasn't at all surprised.

Part 7 is here.

In Which We Discuss Beauty

Another repost. Again, I've improved greatly as a writer, and, since this is one of my favourite books, I will probably return to it at some point.

Tying together various fairy tales from through the ages in a way that is completely realistic and believable, 'Beauty' is a work of art.

Sheri S. Tepper has an odd gift of making the fantastic completely logical and believable. Beauty is a human girl, a normal girl, despite being a fairytale character. Nothing in the book seems far fetched or unbelievable, despite the nature of its inspiration.

The book is a good length (at 476 pages in the Gollancz Fantasy Masterworks edition), but nothing is stretched out more than it should be. Nor is it overly shortened. The pace is perfect.

As in all of her books, Sheri S. Tepper puts her characters in certain situations that give a lot of things for the reader to think about. Beauty travels to hell at one point; the people there are those who enjoyed horror and pain, and used it for amusement. The people in heaven are those who built beautiful things and tried to make the world better in their own way. That's an interesting definition of good and evil. Since this is set in our own world, the vision of the future that is given is fascinating and scarily plausible.

Yet despite the depth and complexities of the plot, the book is not at all difficult to read. It's the sort of book you'll finish reading, reflect on it for a moment, then turn back to the beginning and start again. All in all, fascinating.

In Which We Discuss Fantasy

I love Gollancz SF and Fantasy Masterworks series.

For those unfamiliar with them, the SF and Fantasy Masterworks series are great fantasy and sci-fi novels, reprinted by Gollancz in covers that look really, really pretty on a shelf together. Each one has a number - I think they initially released one every month or so, although they seem to have stopped at just over sixty for both - and comes in pretty colours which complement each other.

What I really like about the series is that it's encouraged me to read books that I might not have picked up otherwise. My logic is that I like most of the books in the series, so there's a pretty good chance that I'll like the rest of them.

I picked up my first, Hope Mirrlees' Lud-in-the-Mist in a charity shop a few years back. I got Sheri Tepper's Beauty in Waterstones, mostly because I'm a big fan of Tepper, ever since I found a copy of Jinian Footseer in another charity shop years ago. Those are both in the Fantasy series, numbers 11 and 14 respectively. I decided then to try to get the rest, since I enjoyed both of those.

Then I picked up another Tepper, Grass, in the SF series, and decided to collect those. I usually think of myself as more of a sci-fi than a fantasy fan, but I seem to have much more of those.

I'm going to list down the novels in two tables, in another post, so I can keep track of what I've got, and which ones I need.

Initially, I began this post to talk about Jack Williamson's Darker than you Think. I love the title - whenever I read it, I imagine David Bowie in Labyrinth. You know that line where he says "it's further than you think"? Well, exactly the same tone.

Random trivia; my middle name is Jareth.

Anyway, the book's got a pretty interesting take on werewolves and vampires, and other mythical creatures. It's a little hard to explain, but the explanation is essentially mathematical, and links to probability and telepathy. It's fascinating. But far too short.

Anyway, off to make tables.

In Which We Discuss Beguilement

There's a kind of magic-user in the Witcher novels. Sorceresses.

All sorceresses are beautiful. Fact. It goes with the territory. But, no attractive young girl is ever trained as a sorceress. It's a discipline reserved for those daughters who cannot be used for allegiances, the ones no one will want to marry. This apparent contradiction is easily resolved - the girls become beautiful as they become better sorceresses, and use magic to improve their appearance.

There's one character in the Witcher who is utterly beautiful, when Geralt, the titular character knows her. But he realises what she once was - a hunchback.

That entirely changed my view of her, and it's interesting to think of why. It doesn't change who she is. It doesn't make her any less beautiful now. But still, it changed the character for me.

Now, within the world of the True Game series by Sheri Tepper, there are a variety of Talents. These talents take various forms, such as mind-reading, healing, necromancy, and beguilement, among others. These Talents are genetic, among Gamesmen caste.

Anyway, those with beguilement - also known as 'follow-me', since that's what it convinces others to do - tend to come into the Talent early. The Talent can also convince others that the user is utterly stunning - it's essentially a mix of leadership, seduction and charisma. Since they get it early, they tend to rely on it, and nothing else. So those with beguilement are selfish, and, if not actually stupid, at least somewhat unresourceful.

Anyway, there are two characters in particular that I'm thinking of. Prince Mandor ('prince/princess/queen/king/ruler' is an honorific given to those who only have the talent of beguilement) and Witch/Priestess Dazzle (Witches/Priestess have the talents of beguilement, power-storage and firestarting, all in slightly lesser amounts than those who have just one of those).

Both Mandor and Dazzle were generally seen as utterly stunning. But both were hideous.

Oh, they were naturally beautiful, once. But Dazzle, well she, her mother, and her half-brother and half-sister were caught in the middle of something when she was young. Her half-sister was a healer, and begged for power to save Dazzle's mother. But Dazzle refused, hiding in the corner and weaving beguilement around herself, convincing herself that she was safe. Even when part of the roof fell and sliced off half her face, she still convinced herself she was safe and unhurt. Her half-sister (Silkhands) begged her for some of the power she'd stored (remember, priestess/witches can store power - normally it can be drawn from heat, but all the nearby heat had been taken for the fight which had caused the damage). Dazzle refused, convinced that Silkhands wanted the power for her mother, rather than to heal Dazzle's own face. She didn't even realise how repulsive she was, because she never stopped beguiling. And nor did anyone else (except for Silkhands, and a few other main characters).

Mandor knew immediately what had happened to him, although, again, he was able to hide it from others. He suffered a similar accident, with similar effects. In his case, there was no healer nearby, and knowing that he'd lost his beauty - whether the world could see it or not - just about killed him. Especially when one who'd once admired him was able to see through the beguilement, and know what he really looked like.

Later in the True Game books, some Shapeshifting characters (shapeshifting is a talent too) discuss how the shape one is in affects the personality. It's true. How people look, and how this is accepted by society does change them. Even if you can't see it. Even if it's in the past.

Or perhaps I am rather shallow. In fairness, both Mandor and Dazzle were very unpleasant people.