#oblivion-time writes

[orcusnoir]

"You know what I hate?" The Champion asked to no one in particular as he watched over the slow boiling pot of stew.

"Uh... Not having enough spices?" The Captain asked from his seat at the table.

Wild gave a nod. "Not what I was going for, but yes."

"Then what do you hate, Champ?" Wars asked while glancing over to the Vet. Legend was currently trying to stack his fork and knife on top of each other to no avail.

"How do I put this?" Wild tapped his chin in thought.

"As bluntly as you can." Hyrule chimed in.

"Fair enough. Why are certain clothes locked to certain people? It's fucking cloth." Wild complained with a laugh.

At first Wars was going to chide Wild for the language, but... He just couldn't. Wild had a point here.

"FINALLY!" Wind's loud voice startled Wars a bit as the Sailor had been awfully quiet in his seat. "Tetra and I both hate that stupid shit. What do you mean I can't wear heels? I'm trying to feel tall, and Tetra hates heels, and so somebody has to wear them."

"Tell me about it." Wild started. "Zelda let me try on one of her old royal dresses, don't ask how they survived a hundred years, and somebody had issues with that."

The Captain just laughed. Damn those social rules indeed. Wild in a dress wasn't something he was expecting to hear about today, but it was something that he could picture.

And the Champion would rock that dress.

"Heh, I've been thinking those rules were stupid since I knew they existed. So, since I was nine." Time joined the conversation. "I didn't even know what the big deal was back then."

"I'd ask how, but I'm afraid the answer would be too confusing." Twilight said.

"Oh, not at all, I was raised by forest spirits and a giant tree." The Old Man nonchalantly explained. "They didn't have concepts like "male" and "female." So imagine my confusion."

A claim that he made often but never elaborated on. Everyone, besides the Captain and Wind, thought it was a lie or a ruse.

Warriors just laughed, he couldn't help it.

"Oh little Mask and his insisting that he's a tree." Wars felt everyone's eyes turn to him.

Time laughed loudly. "You made that corporals life hell."

"I did not have time for that guy's bullshit. We are in the middle of a fucking war, if the kid says he's a tree then he's a fucking tree." Wars started to lose his composure from all of his laughing.

"What do you mean by "he's a tree"?" Sky asked while scratching his head.

"Again, I was raised by forest spirits." Time explain. "You lot, besides two, think this a lie. It's not."

"Time, your life profoundly confuses me." Sky said. "So they assigned you a tree?"

Time nodded.

"Instead of anything else?"

Another nod.

"Not like a boy tree? Just a tree?"

Another nod. "Two trees, to be exact. But yes."

"Two trees?"

"Maple and oak, to be exact."

Wars just watch the conversation with a grin. Oh, poor Sky. He must be feeling the same confusion that he and the Sailor had during the war.

"I feel so understood." Rulie said with the widest smile imaginable. "I'm just a Fae." He shrugged as the others turned to face him. "Not the legend kind of Fae. I was raised by Fairies."

"Well, now you can be a Fae tree. How lovely." Time stated with a laugh.

"What kinda tree?"

"Hmmm, you and the Captain both have the same one. Pine, and you can have maple too. As a treat."

"A Fae pine and maple tree. Nice."

"Are we just gonna brush over the fact that Wars already has a tree identity?" Legend asked.

"I do too!" Wind but in. "Take a guess, it's so obvious."

"Uh...Palm tree?" Twilight asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Correct!"

"What tree am I then?" Wild asked while seasoning a few cuts of meat.

"Willow." Time and Warriors both spoke at the same time.

"Damn, that was fast."

"You had this conversation before, hadn't you?" Sky asked while keeping his gaze locked to Wars. "So tell us our trees."

"Oh, alright, I'll try to remember all the specifics. It's been a while." Time laughed while tapping his fingers on the table.

"It all reminds me of the Minish. They have leaves instead of trees, though." Four, who had been quietly observing this whole time, finally spoke up.

"Oh, the Kokiri had leaves too. That's a whole other thing."

[whinlatter]

Harry’s thoughts of Ginny in the Forest: a meta

‘Nothing too big, because you wouldn't be able to take it with you... I wanted you to have something to remember me by.' - DH, p. 99 (UK edition)

Here I am, on a rainy Thursday, doing re-reads for some writing and thinking about the parallels between Harry and Ginny's kiss on his birthday, and Harry’s thoughts of Ginny as he goes to his death. 

I’m thinking differently about Ginny’s motivations for the kiss these days. I used to think about her words to Harry that morning, and the act of kissing him, as a promise she’ll wait for when he comes back. Lately, I’m wondering if it’s not something sadder, and more profound. I think what Ginny does on Harry’s seventeenth is the act of a person who is starting to process the fact that the person she loves is likely going to his death — that he might not be coming back. It's a scene of a person bracing for grief and thinking about love after death, and it will set the stage for how Harry meets his own death in the Forest.

So here’s a much-too-long meta to help me think through these ideas - about the kiss, Ginny’s suspicions about Harry’s fate, and what it means that Harry returns to the memory of Ginny at the end of his life. (Stick the kettle on for this one and if you worked this all out long ago before me, just give me an eye roll and forgive me).

I’ve always taken Ginny's words to Harry before their kiss at face value. I thought of it not quite as a fun scene - it’s certainly sad - but sweet, a little sexy, and sort of reckless, even a bit mischievous on Ginny’s part.

It’s the birthday of the boy Ginny loves. They’re not together anymore. She knows he's going away. She wants to give him a birthday present, but she doesn't want to give him something he has to haul around or might lose. She does want to let him know that, despite their separation, her feelings are still the same. She craves a moment with him before he goes. She is still in love with him, she is deeply attracted to him, and part of her still feels a bit possessive. Although she’s not really concerned Harry’s going to crack on with some Veela, she does want him to have a memento of their time together. She wants him to have a happy memory, of physical intimacy and emotional comfort, to keep him going while he's away, to feel less alone.

Most of all, I used to think of the kiss (and whatever Ginny imagined might come after the kiss) as a promise. I still love you. Even though we’re not together and I respect why you have to go, I’m still all in on this. I’ll wait for you for when you come back. I want you to have the memory of this, as proof.

Harry’s reveal

But the more I’ve thought about it, the more I think about the context of when this kiss happens, after Harry and Ginny's last conversation before his birthday. It's the one a few days before, when Harry and Ginny are laying the table for dinner, and Harry lets slip to Ginny what he, Ron and Hermione will be doing when they leave:

'‘And then what does she think’s going to happen?’ Harry muttered. ‘Someone else might kill off Voldemort while she’s holding us here making vol-au-vents?’ He had spoken without thinking, and saw Ginny’s face whiten.‘So it’s true?’ she said. ‘That’s what you’re trying to do? ‘I - not - I was joking,’ said Harry evasively. (DH, 78-9, UK edition)

This is a desperately sad scene, but it’s also an important moment. Harry, so used to having his guard down with Ginny, realises he’s accidentally confessed something big: that he’s going on the run to try and kill Voldemort himself, with Ron and Hermione’s help. 

Ginny is shaken by this. As a character, she tends to either take things in her stride, or yells first, processes later. But this catches her off guard. Her words suggest there has been speculation about what it is the three of them are going off to do (‘So it’s true?’ suggests that Ginny, and perhaps other members of her family or the Order, have been speculating about this for some time). But both she and Harry realise here that he’s flippantly confirmed something huge that Ginny did not already know for sure. He’s spoken aloud the task is that Dumbledore has left him. 

It is a sign of how close Harry feels to Ginny, how safe he feels in her company, and how difficult he finds managing keeping secrets from her, that he lets this slip. He won’t come as close to telling the truth to anyone else, even people he trusts. The scene before this, in his conversation with Mrs Weasley, he didn’t let on nearly as much (though he admits that he found affirming the importance of secrecy difficult when he looked at Mrs Weasley and saw Ginny’s eyes staring back at him):

‘Well, Dumbledore left me . . . stuff to do,’ mumbled Harry. ‘Ron and Hermione know about it, and they want to come too.’ ‘What sort of ‘stuff’?’  ‘I’m sorry, I can’t—’  ‘Well, frankly I think Arthur and I have a right to know, and I’m sure Mr. and Mrs. Granger would agree!’ said Mrs. Weasley. Harry had been afraid of the “concerned parent” attack. He forced himself to look directly into her eyes, noticing as he did that they were precisely the same shade of brown as Ginny’s. This did not help… ‘Dumbledore didn’t want anyone else to know, Mrs. Weasley (…)  I didn’t misunderstand,’ said Harry flatly. ‘It’s got to be me.’ (DH, 77-8)

Later, he’ll also refuse to give any information to Lupin, for the same reason. 

'‘Can you confide in me what the mission is?’  Harry looked into the prematurely lined face, framed in thick but greying hair, and wished that he could return a different answer.  ‘I can’t, Remus, I’m sorry. If Dumbledore didn’t tell you I don’t think I can.’  ‘I thought you’d say that,’ said Lupin, looking disappointed.’ (DH, 173-4)

But with Ginny, he’s accidentally gone much further. He hasn’t said Horcruxes, but he’s as good as. The trio are setting off to try to kill Voldemort, the most dangerous task imaginable in this war. He tries, in vain, to undo it, but the damage is already done. Ginny knows more now than she did before: that the journey he’s about to go on is one that very likely will claim his life. 

What does Ginny know about Harry’s fate before this moment? 

It's clear from this interaction that Harry has never discussed any of this with Ginny before. In their breakup scene, Harry repeatedly said that he was breaking up with her for her own safety. He said he did not want her to be used as bait, as she already had been previously, and as Sirius was: 'Think how much danger you'll be in if we keep this up...' (HBP, 602). The focus was entirely on the risk to Ginny's life, a risk Harry says he cannot live with.

Ginny’s remarks at Dumbledore’s funeral told us something about how she, at that point, understood the path ahead for Harry. She made her half-joke that Harry was always busy saving the Wizarding World, and says she thinks he 'would never be happy', never fulfilled or satisfied, unless he were 'hunting Voldemort' (HBP, 603). She showed she interpreted his actions as choices being made by someone brave, determined, and personally committed to bringing about the end of Voldemort, not someone destined to. Harry’s motivations and reasons are ones she respects and empathises with. She knows the path ahead is dangerous. She doesn’t yet think of it as lethal. 

Harry didn’t respond to her assessments at the funeral, neither correcting nor confirming them. He didn’t let her know, at that stage, exactly what it is he is going to set off to do. The closest Harry came to revealing the road ahead for him in the break-up scene was this:

'It’s been like… like something out of someone else’s life, these last few weeks with you,' said Harry. 'But I can’t… we can’t… I’ve got things to do alone now.' She did not cry, she simply looked at him.’  (HBP, 602)

This is a pattern throughout their relationship, both as friends and later as romantic partners. Ginny knows a little, but not a lot, about Harry’s path. She thinks of it almost entirely as a decision he has made himself. Conversations about Harry’s destiny - about the Prophecy, about being the Chosen One, and, eventually, about the Horcrux hunt - happen near Ginny, but never with her. She does not seem to believe that Harry is the Chosen One or in any way bound to Voldemort's own fate. At the start of HBP, on the train in Slughorn’s carriage, Ginny states publicly her belief that any speculation about Harry being the Chosen One is nonsense: 

‘We never heard a prophecy,” said Neville, turning geranium pink as he said it. ‘That’s right,’ said Ginny staunchly. ‘Neville and I were both there too, and all this ‘Chosen One’ rubbish is just the Prophet making things up as usual.’ (HBP, 140)

Ultimately, before DH, Ginny has been given very little information. We can assume that she’s decided to respect Harry’s decision to keep any information from her and not to push for it. She has reason to fear he might be in danger, but she doesn’t yet know the full extent of it.

Ginny’s response

The immediate aftermath of Harry’s confession at the Burrow is very telling. 

‘They stared at each other, and there was something more than shock in Ginny’s expression. Suddenly Harry became aware that this was the first time that he had been alone with her since their stolen hours in secluded corners of the Hogwarts grounds. He was sure she was remembering them too.’ - DH (79)

It’s important that, immediately after this confession, Harry’s mind immediately takes him to private time spent alone with Ginny at the end of HBP. His certainty that Ginny, too, is reminiscing about them is typical of their wordless displays of understanding. They both reach for memories. And the memories of the last time he was alone with her, when they were still together, suddenly trigger an intense emotional and sexual tension. They are soon interrupted, and the dinner afterwards is extremely awkward. Harry wishes he were further away from Ginny, and tries, with great difficulty, to avoid touching her at the dinner table. The energy between them is intense and charged, anticipatory and frustrated. There are lots of ‘unsaid things’ that have just passed between them, and both are aware of it (DH, 79).

There are important themes being introduced here. Whenever Harry thinks about memories of his time with Ginny in DH, he does so consistently in two clear ways. To him, those times were private, intensely intimate moments which carried huge personal significance. It is strongly implied those were moments of sexual intimacy between the two of them, and where they shared an emotional closeness neither has found with any other character. But those moments with Ginny are also something Harry feels he was wrong to take. His relationship with her was something that, in retrospect, he embarked upon against his better judgement. He now feels it was something he was not entitled to, on account of his own burdens and obligations. Those were ‘stolen hours’ that were ‘something out of someone else’s life’. If we look to the wedding scene, we can see this most clearly:

‘‘Yes, my tiara sets off the whole thing nicely,’ said Auntie Muriel in a rather carrying whisper. ‘But I must say, Ginevra’s dress is far too low cut.’  Ginny glanced around, grinning, winked at Harry, then quickly faced the front again. Harry’s mind wandered a long way from the marquee, back to afternoons spent alone with Ginny in lonely parts of the school grounds. They seemed so long ago; they had always seemed too good to be true, as though he had been stealing shining hours from a normal person’s life, a person without a lightning-shaped scar on his forehead…’ (DH, 121) 

There are certain tropes at play here, that will that recur again and again in Harry’s thoughts of Ginny until the point of his death: the memory of time alone, the feeling of shared emotional and physical intimacy, to an intense degree; the sense of their time together being something stolen, both in the sense of it being snatched from within darker times, but also being forbidden, given with Harry’s fate when it comes to Voldemort. That Harry recalls these moments at a moment as two other characters make lifelong vows of marriage to each other is not insignificant: all is set up to maximise the sense of tragedy.

Ginny processing Harry’s fate

Ginny is not naive. Harry’s confession seems to change something about how she thinks about what he’s about to do. She may once have dismissed the prophecy of Harry as the Chosen One as nonsense. But she now has reason to suspect that might not quite be true.

She may well re-trace what she does know. After all, she was at the Department of Mysteries two summers prior, where she learnt that Voldemort, at least, thinks there is a prophecy of significance that involves Harry directly. She knows Harry has been having one-on-one lessons with Dumbledore: she even gave him one of the invitations (HBP, 228). She also knows that Harry and Dumbledore left school for a secret mission alone on the night the Astronomy Tower was attacked and Dumbledore was killed. She observed how Harry saw Dumbledore’s death as a catalyst to prepare for a path that required him to step back from her. Above all, we also know that Ginny is a character who understands Tom Riddle intimately. She is one of the people who comes closest to understanding the stakes of your life being bound, in some way, to Voldemort.

It is also significant that Ginny is a character canonically intrigued, and touched, by death, and by powerful Dark magic. The diary, and her own near-death experience, is the most obvious example. But in the Department of Mysteries during OotP, we are told she is also one of the characters most drawn to the veil, despite having far less direct experience of loss and grief than Harry, Luna, or even Neville:

‘[Harry] took several paces back from the dais and wrenched his eyes from the veil. ‘Let’s go,’ he said. ‘That’s what I’ve been trying to — well, come on, then!’ said Hermione, and she led the way back around the dais. On the other side, Ginny and Neville were staring, apparently entranced, at the veil too. Without speaking, Hermione took hold of Ginny’s arm, Ron Neville’s, and they marched them firmly back to the lowest stone bench and clambered all the way back up to the door.’ (OotP, 775)

I don’t mean to suggest Ginny knew what was coming for Harry, that she foresaw him having to go to his death. She knows nothing of Horcruxes, she doesn’t know the contents of the Prophecy, and she certainly doesn’t know Harry himself is a Horcrux. Harry, of course, doesn’t yet know the certainty of him going to his own death, at this point in the text. But given the information she alone has been handed, inadvertently, by Harry, she has plenty of reason to begin to suspect the path Harry is on is one that might end in death, moreso for him than for an anyone else in this war.

Ginny doesn’t appear much in the following pages, other than in her role helping to prepare the house for the wedding. Over the next few days, she has lots of time to consider Harry’s words. We know she’s also sharing a bedroom with Hermione, who is actively preparing for their imminent departure, and watching the three of them try to sneak off together to make plans. This is time for Ginny to start to digest the information Harry has unwittingly divulged. She can now begin to think about how she ought to respond to the prospect of him leaving for a mission that will, likely, cost him his life.

The kiss itself

We can see Ginny has planned this interaction with Harry in her bedroom. The false casualness of how the scene opens - ‘Harry, can you come in here a moment?’ - and the actions of the bedroom’s other occupant, Hermione, suggests some level of premeditation and collaboration. For the first time, Ginny brings him into her bedroom, with the door closed. The setting is obviously intimate and suggestive.

Harry describes Ginny as seeming nervous, but purposeful, like she is readying herself for something - she ‘[takes] a deep breath’. She is looking at him ‘steadily’. Harry is nervous, too: he cannot bring himself to look at her, finding it almost painful, like ‘gazing into a brilliant light’ (DH, 98). Her trademark blazing look is in full force. She doesn’t entertain his attempts at small talk: she is serious about what she’s about to do.

‘‘I couldn’t think what to get you,’ she said.  ‘You didn’t have to get me anything.’ She disregarded this too.’ (DH, 98-9)

Ginny opens by revealing how difficult it has been for her to work out what she could give him, under the circumstances. She is, in her own way, acknowledging how hard she is finding processing what it is he has to do now. She has been struggling with the prospect of Harry’s departure, and the possibility, even the likelihood, of his death. But she has decided she wants to make that path easier for him. Despite his reassurance, she insists she wanted to give him something. 

‘‘I didn’t know what would be useful. Nothing too big, because you wouldn’t be able to take it with you.” He chanced a glance at her. She was not tearful...' (99)

These lines are so significant. The first two lines in particular are deeply profound. They read very differently to how I first thought of them, if seen in this light. I didn’t know what would be useful, she says, because she doesn't know what she can say that will be useful. What could possibly make this easier, to help Harry think about the enormity of his situation, or to help guide him on a path requiring him to accept his own likely death? 

She doesn’t want what she gives to him now to be too heavy, too sad, or too serious, because she knows Harry will not be able to deal with it (‘nothing too big’). Anything too declaratory, too sentimental, or too enormous, would be impossible for him to leave with. In the last part of the sentence, her words are deliberately vague: because you wouldn’t be able to take it with you. 

I think this is the most poignant part, and it suggests the part of Ginny's mind that believes in, and is curious about, what happens beyond, after death: the voices on the other side of the veil. I think there is some part of her that thinks Harry might be going somewhere she can’t reach him - what Dumbledore will later call going on. Ginny does not openly speculate about where Harry will be taking whatever she gives him. That it could be to his own grave, or beyond, is left unspoken. He looks at her, finally, after these words, because he seems to understand, on some level, what she is trying to say to him.

‘She took a step closer to him. ‘So then I thought, I’d like you to have something to remember me by, you know, if you meet some veela when you’re off doing whatever you’re doing.’’ (DH, 99)

Ginny has decided: the thing she will give him is a memory, one that he can take with him when they part. Something to remember me by. She wants the memory of her, of them, to be useful, to serve him in some way, and to be something that he might be able to take on with him after death. She tries to soften what she’s trying to convey, with the joke about the veela. But both seem to understand what she is really saying: that she isn’t really asking for his loyalty or fidelity. She doesn’t say she’s giving him ‘something to remember me by’ for when he comes back and they can be together again. Her words are very final. The joke is supposed to make it easier for him to hear what she is saying: she’s telling him, quietly, how to think about her when he leaves, whatever leaving might mean.

Harry, for his part, continues the joke. (‘I think dating opportunities are going to be pretty thin on the ground, to be honest.’) She plays along, sort of, in a very sad way (‘there’s the silver lining I’ve been looking for’). But both seem to know that there is no real silver lining to this. 

And then there’s the kiss itself: 

‘There’s the silver lining I’ve been looking for,’ she whispered, and then she was kissing him as she had never kissed him before, and Harry was kissing her back, and it was blissful oblivion, better than Firewhisky; she was the only real thing in the world, Ginny, the feel of her, one hand at her back and one in her long, sweet-smelling hair —’ (DH, 99)

It all comes to a head here. Harry recognises that this kiss feels exceptional, unlike any other they’ve ever shared - that Ginny has never put so much into a kiss before. It is ‘blissful oblivion’, this moment of extraordinary intensity, where she kisses him and allows him, for a moment, to think only about her and them together. It’s heady and sexual (‘the feel of her’). It’s a gift for Harry  to be able to forget everything and let this moment be a vacuum, to focus only on her. The crescendo effect of the short causes and run-on sentences allows the moment to build and build, a crescendo effect that anticipates something to come. 

Of course, their moment gets interrupted, again. Unlike when Ron interrupted her with Dean, Ginny doesn't rage at him this time: she is subdued, a response that is far more appropriate for her processing the fact that she may have just had her final kiss with the boy she loves. Harry suspects she has started to cry, something he notes is out of character. Ginny had imbued a lot of meaning into this interaction: this is a portrait of a character whose heart is breaking.

When Harry and Ron are discussing the kiss outside on the lawn, after the initial shock of being yelled at by Ron for going anywhere near Ginny, Harry has his own, shattering realisation of what all of this means for himself and Ginny:

‘Yeah, but you go snogging her now and she’s just going to get her hopes up again—’ ‘She’s not an idiot, she knows it can’t happen, she’s not expecting us to— to end up married, or—’  As he said it, a vivid picture formed in Harry’s mind of Ginny in a white dress, marrying a tall, faceless, and unpleasant stranger. In one spiralling moment it seemed to hit him: Her future was free and unencumbered, whereas his . . . he could see nothing but Voldemort ahead.’ (DH, 100)

Thinking aloud, Harry says it would be idiotic for he or Ginny to imagine they could be together, either now, or at any point in the future. He expects her to find someone else; he cannot even begin to imagine a future for himself after the task set out for him. He does not say his inevitable death - he has not yet embraced that reality - but he remains caught in the certainty of an existential battle with Voldemort that he knows he may well not survive.

Later that day, Harry will receive the snitch from Dumbledore’s will. Though he doesn’t know it yet, he now holds the resurrection stone, the item that will open at the close in the forest. It is a birthday that starts and ends with hints about what little time he has left: the stage is set for an arc that, now, has to end in his own death.

Foreshadowing Ginny and the Forest

Moments foreshadowing the significance of the forest are all over Deathly Hallows. Sometimes, they mirror the moment of his own death; often, they are related to Ginny. When they leave the Ministry, with Ron splinched, clutching the Horcrux locket, they arrive in a forest. For a moment Harry’s heart ‘leaped’ at the thought that they were back in Hogwarts’ grounds, the site of so much of his earlier happiness with Ginny (DH, 221). When the trio hear that Ginny, Neville and Luna tried to steal the sword of Gryffindor, it is the Forbidden Forest they are sent to by Snape as punishment (248-9). Harry does not fear the Forest, and is consoled by the thought of Ginny serving detention there rather than anywhere else.

In the Forest of Dean, the scene where Ron returns begins with Harry thinking of Ginny. He sits at the mouth of the tent, wanting to look for Ginny on the Marauders’ Map, until he remembers it’s Christmastime and she is at the Burrow (297). Later, in a moment that mirrors his later walk to his death, he follows his mother - Snape’s patronus, the doe - into the woods, in order to recover and destroy the Horcrux, inching Harry’s own life closer to its close:

Though the darkness had swallowed her whole, [the doe’s] burnished image was still imprinted on his retinas; it obscured his vision, brightening when he lowered his eyelids, disorienting him. Now fear came: Her presence had meant safety. “Lumos!” he whispered, and the wand-tip ignited. The imprint of the doe faded away with every blink of his eyes as he stood there, listening to the sounds of the forest, to distant crackles of twigs…  He held the wand higher. Nobody ran out at him, no flash of green light burst from behind a tree. Why, then, had she led him to this spot?’ (DH, 299)

Foreshadowing Harry's end in the Forest means also foreshadowing Ginny's own appearance at the moment of his death.

Harry’s ‘death’ in the Forest 

In the final battle, Ginny is the last person Harry sees before he begins his walk into the Forest. He takes the words she says to the child on the ground as her final act of comfort. Harry hears them as if they are being spoken to him: 

‘He was feet away from her when he realised it was Ginny.  He stopped in his tracks. She was crouching over a girl who was whispering for her mother.  ‘It’s all right,’ Ginny was saying. ‘It’s okay. We’re going to get you inside.’  ‘But I want to go home,’ whispered the girl. ‘I don’t want to fight anymore!’ ‘I know,’ said Ginny, and her voice broke. ‘It’s going to be all right.’  Ripples of cold undulated over Harry’s skin. He wanted to shout out to the night, he wanted Ginny to know that he was there, he wanted her to know where he was going. He wanted to be stopped, to be dragged back, to be sent back home (...) Ginny was kneeling beside the injured girl now, holding her hand. With a huge effort Harry forced himself on. He thought he saw Ginny look around as he passed, and wondered whether she had seen someone walking nearby, but he did not speak, and he did not look back.’ (DH, 558-9)

Harry believes that this is his final moment with Ginny before he goes to die. A part of him wants her to know that it’s happening: he is leaving, at last. But he can't call to her, because he worries she will try and stop him, and he might let her. Instead, he walks on, and doesn’t look back. After watching Ginny comfort the girl crying for her mother, Harry then goes on to the Forest, and summons his own mother, his own family, to walk with him to his death.  

‘His body and mind felt oddly disconnected now, his limbs working without conscious instruction, as if he were passenger, not driver, in the body he was about to leave. The dead who walked beside him through the forest were much more real to him now that the living back at the castle: Ron, Hermione, Ginny, and all the others were the ones who felt like ghosts as he stumbled and slipped toward the end of his life, toward Voldemort. . . .' (DH, 561-2)

Harry is already preparing to go on from this world: his living loved ones are the ones he now feels furthest from. He stands now with the dead he has summoned, who recognise him and seem to have memories of him. He doesn't fear the dead: he is going to join them.

It’s the death scene itself that I think has subtle, but important parallels with the kiss scene much earlier. In both imagery and in writing style, the scene recalls that earlier moment, where Harry found himself on the edge of another kind of oblivion. There is this mounting, febrile sense of anticipation. There is a tension that is almost sexual, a dynamic injected into the scene through descriptions of Bellatrix’s body language and behaviour towards Voldemort:

‘Bellatrix, who had leapt to her feet, was looking eagerly from Voldemort to Harry, her breast heaving. The only things that moved were the flames and the snake, coiling and uncoiling in the glittering cage behind Voldemort’s head.’  (DH, 564)

The ugly parallel of Bellatrix and Voldemort is not supposed to show the pair as the mirror image of Harry and Ginny. Rather, it is a theme that recurs throughout the series to demonstrate the gulf between Harry, with his immense capacity for love, and Voldemort, with none. Bellatrix and Ginny are memorably paralleled twice in the series: once, at the Department of Mysteries, where Bellatrix moves to ‘torture the little girl’, and Harry steps in to prevent her (OotP, 783), and again in the final battle: 

'Bellatrix was still fighting too, fifty yards away from Voldemort, and like her master she dueled three at once: Hermione, Ginny, and Luna, all battling their hardest, but Bellatrix was equal to them, and Harry’s attention was diverted as a Killing Curse shot so close to Ginny that she missed death by an inch—  He changed course, running at Bellatrix rather than Voldemort, but before he had gone a few steps he was knocked sideways…’ (DH, 589)

As Harry waits for the killing curse, we see the most direct parallel with Ginny's final kiss to him:

‘None of the Death Eaters moved. They were waiting: everything was waiting. Hagrid was struggling, and Bellatrix was panting, and Harry thought inexplicably of Ginny, and her blazing look, and the feel of her lips on his — ’ (DH, 564)

There's such an intense physicality and breathlessness to the whole scene, and an enduring pseudo-sexual tension, with Bellatrix audibly panting. Even the sentence structure even invokes the kissing scene: the run-on build up of clauses, the repetition of the present participle to actively hold the reader in one present moment, building and building and ending on a dash, the promise of something more.

At the end of his life, Harry returns to the memory Ginny gave him. She meant for it to be useful, if he was to go to his death. And at the close of his life he chooses to use it, as he prepares to leave her behind in this world and depart for the next. Just as the Resurrection Stone helped accept death, so too does the memory of Ginny. He feels the memory of her, the sensation of physical touch and of being kissed, the look she gives him that he knows as one of love and great courage. As he is killed, he remembers her last gift to him, the certainty of her love for him impressed upon him.

--

There's a line in OotP that I think is such an underrated line that sums up who Ginny is as a character. Harry is trying to get to Umbridge's fire to speak to Sirius when he thinks the latter is being tortured at the Ministry; Hermione suggests using Ginny and Luna as a distraction, despite Harry's objections:

'Though clearly struggling to understand what was going on, Ginny said immediately, ‘Yeah, we’ll do it,'... (OotP, 736)

This is who Ginny is. It's especially who she is to Harry, during the war. She doesn't fully know what's actually being asked of Harry (and, by extension, what is being asked of her, as the person who loves him, and who has most to lose if he is to die). But even when kept in the dark, she is enormously selfless, and her biggest act of bravery is extremely quiet. She keeps the secret Harry accidentally bestows on her, and she realises, in some sense, before he does, what it will likely mean for his life. She chooses to let him go on, knowing that he is loved, to make the path that he is on a little bit easier, even when she has realised that it will take him away from her for good.

[yansurnummu]

TES fest day 8: free day

The first fic I ever finished and posted was The Blood of the Coven in 2016, which followed Anthelion through the Dark Brotherhood quest line in Oblivion.

I set a goal at the beginning to do at least one of these prompts, and somehow I actually managed to do them all! I had lots of fun and it was great to see everyone else's amazing art and writing as well :)

[literaryspinster]

Marie is not going to be able to...

Solve everyone's problems with ease

Win every fight

Immediately kill or depower Cate

Get everything right the first time

And I'm going to need y'all to not be weird about it.

[thresholdbb]

Do we think Seven can feel all of her face and body?

The Borg know when things happen in the collective and can arguably feel them, but when an individual is severed from the Borg, that expansive collective consciousness is violently narrowed down to a pinpoint. We know Seven has pretty good proprioception because she agrees that her shoulder hurts when the EMH finds that her biradial clamp is off by 0.3 microns. Because of this, she arguably has a very good understanding of how things in her body feel. That said, she doesn't really complain about physical pains, and we really only see her struggle when things are emotionally difficult.

Since she had been in the collective since she was 6, she wouldn't necessarily know that certain sensations are not normal. If there were any issues that happened as a result of her assimilation, she wouldn't necessarily know they are unusual after she was severed because that's what she has always known.

So back to my original question: can she feel all of her face? Looking at the placement of her facial implants, they are both on the trigeminal nerve. The cheekbone implant is right around the root of the nerve, and the eyebrow piece sits right over another branch. Trigeminal neuralgia is crazy painful, but she could have trigeminal neuropathy and think it's completely normal because she doesn't have a typical baseline to compare it to. I imagine the Borg implants must interrupt some nerve functioning to ensure that the drones move as they are supposed to, and the nano probes would repair any damage that would affect their functioning. But the Borg would consider physical discomfort irrelevant, so relatively minor issues like neuralgia, pins and needles, or any other unusual sensations would not be considered an issue.

[ehlnofay]

I Walked Into The River

The Tree of Shades, fed by a spring deep in the Shivering Isles' underground, will not surrender its secrets to one who has not earned them. The erstwhile Hero of Kvatch and Sheogorath's current grudging Champion has little left to prove and even less to lose.

I wrote this piece for the summerfest prompt "mirror" and am posting the full thing for the free day! it's my take on the doppelganger bit of that one quest in the shivering isles, which always struck me as having a lot of unrealised potential (especially in conjunction with running themes of duality the questline already has). I've had this idea for a long time now and this event finally got me to actually write it out, which was a lot of fun! if you're inclined to check it out, please do - it would give me much joy :)

[ulanxxxs]

Lucien Lachance x Antoinetta Marie［ Fanfic ］

The Elixir of Death

This story is set in 3E 428, five years before the Oblivion Crisis, on the night before Antoinetta’s first contract. (For the background and prologue of this story, please see this post.)

I’m deeply moved to have finally turned something so dear to me into a story after holding onto it for so long 💖

Before you read, please note:

CW: Violence, Murder, Abuse, Imprisonment, Suicide

- I’m still learning English, so there may be some awkward expressions.

- I have a preference for dark themes, so this and future works may contain violent content.

Please read with that in mind🥺🙏✨

-----------------------------------------------

A month had passed since Antoinetta Marie was welcomed into the Sanctuary. She had begun her new life as a novice assassin. Her dedication to training brimmed with vitality, and her blue eyes shone with hope.

On this day, a small party was being held in the Cheydinhal Sanctuary. It was a modest dinner gathering to celebrate Antoinetta’s birthday, but the family members were in high spirits, congratulating her on her new life and enjoying each other’s company in lively conversation. Even more special, her first contract awaited her the next day.

The candlelight gently illuminated the dining table, making the smiles of her brothers and sisters shine. Antoinetta had not received such blessings since her early childhood. The scene before her eyes brought back memories of days once filled with unconditional love. However, those recollections were fleeting, gradually dissolving into nothingness.

Yet, in this special gathering, the presence of someone Antoinetta dearly respected was missing. The one who had saved her life when she was on the brink of death, her life-saving benefactor who gave her a miraculous opportunity for a new lease on life. The one she wished to express her deepest gratitude to before her first contract, the one she had quietly fallen for.

The absence of Lucien Lachance, the Speaker who governed this Sanctuary, cast a shadow over her joy.

The silence of the midnight hour spread throughout the underground space. Antoinetta lay on the bed in her room, staring blankly at the light. Watching the flickering flame somewhat eased her tension about her first assignment, and her eyelids grew heavier. She wanted to extinguish the light before falling asleep, but she surrendered to the comforting blur of drowsiness.

Antoinetta was anxious. The fear of failing her mission and being killed was undoubtedly terrifying, but unknown fears were merely products of the imagination. However, it was the pounding heart, the stiffening body, the halting of all thoughts that were caused by the familiar fears.

She would rather choose death than be taken back to the Imperial Prison. That was Antoinetta’s fervent wish. The harrowing memories of her past continued to gnaw at her heart, casting a single dark shadow over her otherwise hopeful new life.

Antoinetta did not precisely remember how many people she had killed up to that point. Killing had been a means of survival on the harsh streets, but it was fear that drove her to murder. The countless abuses she suffered in prison had pushed a young girl to commit ruthless serial murders.

“I could do it again,” Antoinetta thought as her consciousness began to fade.

To overcome fear, one must kill—each time she plunged the rusty knife, each time she struck with a sack filled with stones, each time she sank her teeth into and tore at the filthy flesh, the voiceless whispers of Sithis echoed in her ears.

“You are guided because you followed that revelation,” said Death’s emissary who saved her. The hand the man extended to her was cold, yet somehow warm, and Antoinetta never forgot the thought that this might be what death felt like.

“My savior... ”

Whether it was a dream or reality, she murmured these words and then noticed unfamiliar footsteps coming from the hallway. Half of her consciousness had already drifted into sleep, but she could tell that the sound was gradually approaching her. It couldn’t be, she thought, opening her eyes. This was no dream.

Antoinetta’s heart began to beat a little faster. A small hope that had begun to sprout was desperately suppressed by the fear of disappointment. Despite her internal struggle, the footsteps came closer and finally stopped in front of her room. A sharp knock echoed through the room.

In a high-pitched voice, Antoinetta responded and jumped out of bed. Holding her racing heart, she hurried to the door, took a deep breath, and slowly opened it.

“Speaker—you’ve returned!”

He had likely returned to the Sanctuary and headed straight for her room. Lucien was still wearing his black robe, the hood not yet removed. Antoinetta tried to discern his expression hidden in the shadows, but as soon as she caught sight of his prominent nose and the area around it, she was overcome with embarrassment and hastily let her gaze wander downward.

As if to escape, she shifted her eyes to his hands and noticed a sleek red fabric. His black leather-gloved hands held it, and it had a slight thickness, indicating something was wrapped inside. While she stood frozen in surprise, Lucien slowly extended the bundle towards her with both hands.

“This vial has been filled with a most deadly poison. If ingested, it will likely cause death, probably instantly.”

He moved his hand closer, encouraging her to open the bundle. With a tense expression, Antoinetta reached out towards the bundle and gently pulled at the edge of the fabric. Revealed from the luxuriously glossy silk was a golden pendant. At the end of the softly shining chain, there was a small vial.

“If you seek salvation and drink this poison... death.”

As Antoinetta raised her face at these words, Lucien nodded gently. She carefully took the vial in her hand and stared intently at the liquid inside. It was clear and colorless, but it shimmered like a jewel. A strange liquid indeed. Without being told it was poison, no one would ever suspect it.

“Thank you very much. With this, I can...”

To overcome fear, one must kill—Sithis has no words, but her unconscious mind chose this. The leader of the Sanctuary knew that death would be an elixir more powerful than a hundred consolations or encouragements. That method would give her strength.

Antoinetta clasped the vial with both hands, bowing her head and closing her eyes as if in prayer. The story of the lonely girl who decided to kill her aunt, after what seemed like an eternity of darkness, was finally moving into a new chapter. Her intertwined emotions coalesced into a single tear, which fell down her cheek.

“I heard tomorrow is your first contract. Try not to get yourself killed... I wish you luck.”

Through her tear-filled eyes, Antoinetta saw Lucien’s smiling face. The faint light from the room flickered in his eyes. She remembered that this same gaze had enveloped her on the night he saved her from her fading life. Her eyes did not waver as they remained fixed on him, but time did not stand still.

Lucien gave a slight nod, then quietly turned and left the room.

His absence accentuated the silence within. It felt as though a spell had been broken, and Antoinetta stood there in a daze in front of the door.

Unspoken emotions swirled within her chest. It would likely be several weeks before she could see him again. She desperately wanted to see him one more time, to imprint his image on her memory, so Antoinetta impulsively dashed out of her room.

The lanterns mounted on the walls faintly illuminated the hallway. Looking ahead into the dim light, she caught sight of the black-robed figure.

She wanted to call out, “Speaker,” but no further words came. Antoinetta wordlessly watched his receding back.

The outline of his black robe gradually blurred, blending into the deeper shadows. Soon, his figure became a mere shadow and vanished into the darkness.

[pitconfirm]

5 different times today I’ve sat down and gone okay time to get some good writing done! and then not done that at all actually

[inkoherentwriting]

WIP WEDNES-MAY!!!

Tagged back by @hannah-heartstrings ! (low pressure) Tagging @hannah-heartstrings back-back ( >:D ) , @thequeenofthewinter, @sylvienerevarine , @gwilin-stay-winnin , @dirty-bosmer , @azures-grace , @druidx , @avantegarda , @archangelsammy , and YOU dear tumblr-er!!

I don't want to share more match fit (even though I'm excited for it!) so I'll share more fluff. going into that silly dancing fic i half percolated last year

under the cut we go! no content warnings just unabashed post main game fluff between two idiots!!!

Guilbert laughed. "I know you think your brother is good at everything, but I don't--"

He stopped dancing and thus, so did Miraina. Guilbert then blinked, facing a peculiar sensation of his current thoughts stopping mid-sentence.

It wasn't something that happened to him often.

"You don't what?"

She looked at him not unlike a shadow of the frightful bandit that he had once feared her as. Looking back into her intense gaze, Guilbert blinked slowly again. She remained staring. Guilbert kept wondering what to do with the peculiar sensation. It was not unpleasant by any means but it grew stranger the longer he lingered on it. Finally though, he said--

"I don't want to dance with your brother anyway."

He watched but did not quite register as her face warmed to a red palette of color. "Y-yeah.... of course not..." Miraina stammered. "My brother ain't the hero of Cyrodiil. Champion. Whatever. Don't care about that."

"You should." Guilbert's voice softened. "You went from ransacking people's homes to saving all of Tamriel. Really, you could dance with anyone you wanted."

Miraina looked shy and tense. Guilbert felt strange again.

"And yet... you wanted to dance with me. That's why I will go to this party with you. You remembered me."

"I never forgot you." Miraina's voice, just as soft, felt like stones hitting Guilbert in the chest as she spoke.

[hannie-dul-set]

hello good fucking morning.

[hannah-heartstrings]

One of my tesfest fics is complete! :D

Now three more to finish but I'm not going to worry about those right now. Right now I'm just glad to have one done.

It's been given its final name now, but here was its working title XD:

[thescrapwitch]

there's something special about finally writing - and finishing - a scene you've been daydreaming about for over a year.

[strigital]

so a new yearly adventure 'bout to drop and half of the players are already simping for ithelia while another half is grieving her boring design. me? i'm more interested in the fact that zenimax gave us a lore-friendly way to make our own dardric prince ocs and uuuh lemme just grab a sketchbook real quick and cook up an opposite to mepahala and probably/possibly her twin whose sphere are energies of the afterlife, death and being the shepherd of the undead and the restless dead 👀 and maybe a babygirl of a dardric prince who is the opposite of hircine and oversees the wild beauty of natural world, shapeshifers, sentient trees and talking animals, and mysteries of wild magic and secrets of the untouched wilderness, who has the bottom half of a deer whereas hircine has a head of an elk🦌 ooh! maybe even some opposite to namira whose domain is beauty, poetry and all that is aesthetically pleasing and dreamy and nice who may look like one of those fairies with butterfly wings all over them 🧚‍♀️

anyways, feck the lore, i'm here to 100% milk herma mora's ability to just "conveniently hide" entire dardric princes outside of reality thus making any and all stupid little dardric blorbo ocs we make "technically lore-friendly"

[llitchilitchi]

Any thoughts on sharing the oblivion au fic? 👉👈

ohhh sure! I have a lengthy document detailing the plotpoints and several scenes written out fully (some of which I won't share because I don't like how they turned out and would have rewritten them if I was still into it). I have no idea how much of it will make sense without context of the lore of the game, but here's a snippet I wrote about Dream's first Oblivion gate.

Heat curls around his fingers as he reaches for the Sigil Stone. It’s scalding, the heat blowing in his face as he closes his hands around the orb, and something shifts.

The pedestal seems to erupt with white light as the Sigil Stone falls into his hands, taken out of the magic field and the heat grows unbearable. The tower shakes and the whole realm seems to groan as the link between Mundus and Oblivion tears.

And with the tearing comes a collapse.

The chains suspending the pedestal tear like thread, the heavy metal links falling into the blinding heat as the floor chars and falls apart like burnt paper. Dream hears the angry cry of a dremora lord as it tries to reach the Sigil Keep but he never sees him enter. For a moment he wonders if there even is an entrance through which he may enter, and his throat closes at the thought. There is no time to leave the tower. No time to reach the gate and return, if the gate still even stands after he ripped the Sigil Stone that tethers it. He’s going to die here.

He closes his eyes, his knees growing weak as the world around him shakes apart. At least the gate is closed, he thinks, and Alexander can free the city now, and maybe tell George that he is needed elsewhere.

The heat swallows him whole.

…

Dream blinks his eyes open as he feels cold raindrops land on his lids. The Sigil Stone is still clutched in his hands, pulsating and warm in his palms as the chill of the rain sets into his bones. He’s back in Cyrodiil. The air reeks of sulphur and blood and the land he stands on his hard and charred but it is soil, real and solid and stable. He nearly collapses with relief, but the shouts of the guard bring him back and he turns away from the remnants of the gate.

“You closed the gate!” Alexander - the Blade - nearly collides with him as he grabs him by the shoulders, giving him something to lean on. Dream gives a nod in confirmation. “I knew you could do it – this is our chance to launch a counterattack.”

“I think I need a moment,” Dream mutters. The world is still coming back to him and he shivers in the cold rain.

“Right, right,” Alexander says. “Sit down, have a drink. I’ll send my troops ahead. Will you join us? You clearly have more fightin’ experience than most of these men.”

“I doubt that.” Parlour tricks. That’s what he would call his fighting skills. But they seem efficient enough, against scamps and clannfears.

“Dream.” The name snaps him back to the present. “Most of these people are volunteers. Farmers and tavern bouncers. Any able hand that can wield a weapon will be of use when there are civilians stuck inside. Will you help us?”

[dirty-bosmer]

WIP Wednesday

Tagged by @thequeenofthewinter. You are a such a gem srsly 💎 I've been so busy these days that it feels I only getting writing done when I'm tagged and (not) pressured to. But it works! These are very motivating 🥰

Tagging: @atypicalacademic @snowberry-crostata @kookaburra1701 @sylvienerevarine @gilgamish @dumpsterhipster @expended-sleeper @thana-topsy @skyrim-forever @nuwanders @zomboidatomic @nine-blessed-hero and whoever else feels so inclined to share :)

From The Illusionist Part II Chapter 78 — Penance (lol it's almost over I swear):

Nim didn’t know how long she waited at the shrine after all her disciples had disappeared. The gate remained open in a scream, a yawn, a sigh, the warm breath of the Isles brushing at her back. She waited there as the winter thawed. She waited as the spring ripened. All around the shrine, the air grew rich with the smell of peat, more sour than the Blackwoods’ musk, and as tendrils of her realm sprawled out from the luminous haze of the portal's maw, she waited for it to swallow her whole. 

But it didn’t, couldn’t, not even when she threw herself into its arms. There was something still tethering her to Nirn, and she knew only when she severed it could she set herself free. Already so much of the memories she clung to were fading. The faces, voices, the touch of another’s skin on her own, and surely one day soon this land would retract its spurs. She’d shake its grip, so she sat there as the seasons bled together in one miry stretch of timelessness, waiting on nothing and no one but the ghosts of her old life to disappear.

Nim drank water from the river and ate the alien fruits her own vines gave her, and she spent a few days thinking of Raminus while willing herself not to think of Raminus, because ever since Elianna and the others had passed through, she’d become less of a person, less of a god. More of a mouth. The teeth inside gnawed inexorably, and though she gorged herself on alocasia, she couldn’t stave off this hunger forever. The longer she remained in this world, the thinner her will became, and soon its gnashing would be so far beyond control. What would happen then? Who would she consume? Was she meant to feed it or temper it? Was that why she was still here, to become so empty of herself, so desperate she’d chew off her last limb to leave? What if she didn’t want to, and suddenly Nim dreaded the shape of her absence, forgetting who she once was, what she’d done, all the lives she could have led.

And then... and then he was there. Nirn hadn’t fallen away from her, and the winter was still winter. She could see it on his chapped lips and the pallor of his sunless skin. He smelled briny, of the shallows, his eyes sunken and crusted in salt. 

Lucien had appeared before her after a moment or perhaps many. Nim hadn’t been counting. They didn’t move the same way for her anyway, why bother. He approached from the forest edge trepidly, the fear in his eyes still unfamiliar, and he looked as if he’d traveled a week straight without sleep— edgeless, tumbled and smoothed, something vomited out from the darkest pit of the wilderness.  Nim straightened against her tree trunk, didn’t move.

Lucien's hand hovered beside his sheathed knife. He didn't grip it. “Again?” Nim said, a brow raised.

“Again.” 

“Come back with more weapons this time?”

He shook his head. “Only me, my hands.”

“Is that what you see yourself as, a weapon?”

“It's what I am. What I always have been. My Mother made me sharp. Sithis has—”

“Sithis has done nothing for you. It was me. Don’t you see it? It was me this whole damn time.”

[coldshrugs]

when your group is listening to gale lecture about the newest confusing magic thing, but your girlfriend is not at all paying attention 🥰