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Iron Dragons and Firelegs COMPLETE	By : FemmeBono Category: HP Canon Characters paired with Original Characters > Het - Male/Female Views: 2353 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor any of the characters from the books or movies. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
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I apologize most profusely, grovel at your
feet and offer up this new chapter as penance for such a long absence. No doubt
you've noticed all's been quiet on the update front...until now. Honestly, kids
take it all out of you as I'm sure Snape would agree. At any rate, I have a
school year winding down--two weeks left to go--and then an endless summer
yawning before me. Which means I get to finish these stories. Not to mention,
the Muse has been beating me over the head with the inspiration and direction
for at least two of them, so I have outlines at last. Take comfort.
Cht. 4 Wetting Down
In the interest of celebrating Brynn's new
promotion, the team had conspired even in the unusual environs to respect one of
the military's most time-honored traditions...a wetting down, which Severus
surmised was very aptly named. Given the sheer amount of liquor they had
brought back from the Three Broomsticks, the Muggle contingency seemed hell bent
on pickling the poor girl--as well as themselves--before she could so much as
enjoy the extra pounds in her pocket from the considerable pay rise she had been
given with her newly appointed rank. Adding insult to an injurious hangover
surely yawning before them next morning, Hagrid took it upon himself to bring a
gargantuan jug of potcheen...sadly, of his own making and sure to strip the
teeth from their gums. One belt from the tankard he had been supplied with and
the Muggle Hancock had proclaimed soundly that he would be "drunker'n
Cooter Brown with two more swigs." He and Hagrid, already fast friends, had
laughed raucously at this, clapped each other on the back (or the elbow in
Hagrid's case) and proceeded to get unabashedly pissed.

An hour into the event, Brynn herself was
already into the tipsy giggles stage as Minerva gifted her with her very own
bottle of Ogden's, apparently a very traditional present for those involved in
the custom. Most everyone was well into his or her respective cups by eleven and
Severus could already imagine them scarcely an hour more hence. He pictured the
sight of them, passed out on the tables of the Great Hall, staggering back to
their quarters with their stomachs as well as themselves pitching and rolling up
the stairs, or likely, getting lost entirely as the moving portraits and
staircases seemed to conspire against them making their way back. He barely bit
back the smirk that threatened at the thought, and reflected instead on memories
of his father stumbling home well after the pubs had closed, the sour smell of
whiskey, sweat and vomit roiling off of him, watching his mum put the man to bed
as one would a child... With a jerk of his head, as if to flick off the
memories, Severus looked once more around the room. The Muggle Thom seemed to be
getting on quite well with Dumbledore--well enough that Severus wondered idly if
they both played on the same team. More disconcerting was the sight of Dodds and
Thorpe hunched together as conspiratorially as ever the Weasley twins had done;
thankfully a simple look into their minds, albeit past the alcohol haze,
sufficed enough to let him know they were simply spinning stories of their
sexual exploits. Judging from what snippets he had seen, both accounts were
wildly exaggerated. The newer members of the team, having arrived earlier in the
day were spread around in similar groups, all apparently three sheets to the
wind.

Oddly enough, however, one of their number did
not seem intent on reexamining the contents of her stomach in the wee hours of
morning. Captain Lacey, still remarkably clear-eyed despite even the alcoholic haze
of the room, had been nursing the same cup of mead. Severus watched as she rose,
topped off only her second goblet of the evening and cast a weary glance around
as if wishing she were anywhere but there. Before he realized what he had done,
Severus himself had risen from the high table, thereby catching her eye and
making it impossible to sit back down without her wondering what he was about.
She offered a tentative smile, and the one he returned looked more like a
grimace.

"Are you heading out?" she asked with
a wistful note. "I hate to be the first to leave a party, but if you're off
I can make my excuses and feel better for it. Not to mention I'll need somebody
to aim me in the right direction to get back to the tower. I don't think I could
find it with an orienteering team and a set of compasses at this point."

Using his gift for thinking quickly on his
feet, Severus replied, "I actually had thought to bring your friend Brynn a
bottle of the elfmade wine from my chambers. They're located in the dungeon, but
if you wish I could direct you back to your rooms..." The quicker he got
away from the stifling small talk and flammable fumes and back to the dark quiet
of the dungeons the better.

Instead of deterring her, his preamble only
raised more questions. At the mention of his chambers' locale, Lacey's eyebrows
shot up. "This castle even has a dungeon? Seriously? That's fierce! Could
you give me the dollar tour? I mean--not now, obviously...but," her face
flushed a bit, "geez, it's just so amazing being here. And elves,
making wine, I mean my God. That's just so cool. Sorry, I know I sound like the
proverbial kid in the candy store, but I just can't get over it. I'm sure you're
used to all this, but it's really rocking my world."

Profoundly amazed at the outright awe in her
voice, Severus shifted his stance a bit. He was used to any number of reactions
about his world, from the mute rage his father had felt at being duped out of
his normalcy by a woman who did not announce her 'abnormality' until she had
already become his wife, to bitter jealousy from the likes of Petunia Evans.
Undone by the childlike wonder in a woman who was surely into her thirties if
she was a day, he could not help but want to preen a bit and showcase more of
his world before her eyes.

With that thought in mind, he answered,
"perfectly understandable. In my case, I was raised with a foot in both
worlds as it were. Having seen the stark contrast, I can understand and
appreciate what it must be like to come from one so abruptly into another."

"If you like you can accompany me to my
quarters and I will retrieve the bottle for Lieutenant Brynn, before I point you
on your way."

"Seriously?" she said, looking as if
Christmas had come early. "If you're anywhere near as tired as I am you've
got to be dying to get to bed. I'll try not to intrude--at least not for too
long."

***

She kept true to her word, following behind him
down the stairs and barely gasping at the torches which lit themselves ahead as
they walked, circling ever lower until the damp told her that surely the shadowy
recesses of the dungeons stretched under the lake. Lacey was amused to realize
that she was following as a subordinate, two steps back and one to the right. In
this world, it seemed fair since she was definitely out of her league. It
surprised her that this taciturn man of stiff nods and ramrod bearing had even
deigned to invite her into his inner sanctum. She smiled at the thought of some
of the silly childhood games she had played as a "Muggle" kid,
pretending at magic even as he must have been discovering that he had honest to
God powers like none she had ever seen. Thinking on it, Lacey fought back the
urge to laugh at this severe Severus playing "light as a feather,
stiff as a board." Surely he was the latter, but definitely didn't look the
former, what with those broad shoulders and a good six feet of height at least.
Chiding herself as she felt the telltale pull in her belly, Lacey admitted that
it had been too long and British accents were too tempting, but this was neither
the time nor the place. She had a job to do and the last thing she needed was a
complication in the form of an enigmatic Man in Black. With admirable timing, he
jolted her from her thoughts as he stopped abruptly in front of a heavy oak door
banded with iron and a simple looking ringed latch.

He merely tapped it once, causing it to swing
open into a walnut paneled room that looked like anything but a dungeon. There
were shelves of books lining the walls, a roaring fire in a huge fireplace of
green marble over which hung a massive painting of a man who sat with narrowed
eyes as he stroked a pointy beard. Lacey, who had brought her goblet of mead
down with her, took a much needed pull when the man launched himself out of the
chair and left the frame, seemingly in a huff.

Severus barely spared him a glance,
"you'll have to forgive Phineas. He does not think very highly of Muggles;
it seems your presence offends him."

"Mm. Really congenial guy. Is he--was he
like your Voldemort? 'Let them all burn'?"

"No, rather, it was to let them muck along
on their side of the fence and we keep to ours. No sullying the
bloodlines."

"Sullying..." at that Lacey plopped
down unceremoniously on a leather settee and placed her goblet on the table
flanking it. Severus made no apologies, simply watched her intently as he folded
himself into a wing backed chair opposite her and leaned back comfortably.

"There are many in our world who believe
as he did, by no means to the extent of the Dark Lord, but simply that never the
twain should meet. As you are aware there are statutes in place specifically to
keep our world secret from yours. There are certain prejudices on either side,
truly, look at your medieval witch hunts for example. They hardly ever got a
'guilty' party, in a matter of speaking, and if they did, to what end? A simple
charm or spell, even better an outright Disapparition and the maniacal
inquisitors were left empty-handed and even more afraid than before. That's all
it's borne out of in the end, fear."

"And what of witches and wizards
then?" Lacey asked, balling her fists in her lap and perching herself on
the edge of her seat. "All prejudices are born of fear, so why fear us? We
have less power and no knowledge of you people for the most part. Why--"

"Because prejudices, especially because
they are born of fear, are irrational. The fear in that case is not of outright
annihilation but of extermination by dilution. That our powers would be weakened
by proliferation. That, in a word, the more we intermingle and intermarry with
Muggles, the weaker the magic becomes until it disappears completely."

"Ridiculous."

"But very real in the minds of witches and
wizards alike--especially the older families. Purebloods," he said, rising
to a cabinet near the fireplace and retrieving another bottle and a glass. He
gestured with the bottle after pouring for himself; Lacey simply raised her
goblet for him to fill. "'Pureblood' is actually a relative term," he
continued. "Truly no family can claim absolute purity from non-magical
ancestry. Most do not go back more than four generations before they find some
Muggle relations."

"I don't suppose I can say much,"
Lacey said sighing as she took a heady sip of blood red wine, savoring it on her
tongue. "There's the same BS in our world too. Religious factions who don't
like each other, political rivalries, warring ideologies, class systems..."

Severus gestured vaguely with his glass.
"All competing to see who can be the biggest bully in the yard."

"Sometimes," she allowed,
"though a lot of the time it's coming to the defense of the little guy. And
a lot of people would argue over killing in the name of war or defense, saying
that we are just a bigger bully, for doing what we do, but that's not a
fair comparison. Bullies are just that--people who are mean just for the sake of
doing it. We're more like the teacher snatching the ball out of the bully's
hand, handing it back to the little kid. If we were bigger bullies, so to speak,
we'd snatch the ball from the tough guy and start bouncing it off both their
heads. Though I will admit, sometimes that is a serious temptation."

Severus' mouth quirked in response at that, but
Lacey plowed on. "Bullies have a sadistic pattern that makes them enjoy
doing what they do. But you know as well as I, that for people like us--and we
are alike you and I--there is no enjoyment in what we are forced to do. Except
that it makes the world a better place, maybe not for us, but for other people.
No, you and I have to deal with the aftermath of what we've done. The broken
relationships, the nightmares, the reality. Trying to compromise the fact that
we live in a world where there is such carnage and hate right alongside little
girls playing hopscotch. And going straight from one to the other gives you a
twisted form of vertigo."

She glanced up from her now empty glass to see
Severus watching her, his black eyes reflecting the firelight. "You know
what I'm talking about don't you? Are there specialists here who deal with that
type of thing? PTSD?"

"What's this?"

"Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. The
almost unspoken of bane of military vets."

"Post Traumatic Stress...I had no idea
there was a name."

"Huh," she barked out a hollow laugh.
"If you can suffer from it, it has a name. It's just cold sweats from
nightmares where you see your buddies die over and over again and even have
episodes in the daytime while alienating your family was too long a name for
it."

Another sardonic twitch at the corner of his
mouth told her he knew exactly what she meant.

"No, they don't really deal with that
here. But then, no one has really been placed in the unique position I'm
in," he said, raising his glass as if in a toast. "Dumbledore
acts as sounding board on occasion, yet there again he's never truly been in my
position. Not as I suspect you have." At that he fixed Lacey with a
measuring gaze and she felt the sudden urge to squirm like a new recruit at her
first inspection.

"Yeah, Severus we're cut out of the same
mold, you and me," Lacey said, settling back onto the settee under his
careful scrutiny. It was a while later after the conversation had returned to
safer waters, that she finally nodded off curled up in the sitting room
comfortably warmed by the smoldering fire and oblivious to Severus' watchful
gaze. He wondered briefly what demons she fought in her dreams as he rose to
take down the almost forgotten bottle of wine. It would have to wait until
tomorrow, he thought, suddenly weary. And with one last glance at the sleeping
woman, Severus stepped into his bedroom and pulled one of the blankets off an
antique four-poster with emerald hangings. Draping it over Lacey's form, he
turned trudging silently from the room.
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Iron Dragons and Firelegs *COMPLETE*

Iron Dragons and Firelegs COMPLETE