#this took me like three hours to compile and write image descriptions for so please reblog

[this-is-a-podcast-fanblog]

hozier, "francesca" from unreal unearth / tears of the kingdom dir. hidemaro fujibayashi / anaïs mitchell, "road to hell (reprise)" from hadestown / the last of us part ii, dir. neil druckmann, anthony newman, kurt margenau / better call saul s6e13, dir. peter gould / ethel cain, "famous last words (an ode to eaters) / good omens s2e6 dir. douglas mackinnon writ. neil gaiman / william finn and james lapine, "what would i do" from falsettos / the hunger games catching fire dir. frances lawrence / "on another panel about climate, they ask me to sell the future and all i've got is a love poem" by ayisha siddiqa / "roemo and juliet" by henri pierre picou / sza, "awkward" from ctrl

"doing it again" - art about regret, repetition, and circular stories

[elspethsunschampion]

Fact or Fiction: Chapter Sixteen

Rated M for abuse, sexual content, and discussion of rape/non-con.  Canon-typical violence.

Summary: It’s Ral Zarek’s sixth year at Hogwarts. And everything would be fine if Jace wasn’t totally occupied with his new girlfriend, to the point where it’s honestly kind of weird, and Ral’s starting to be concerned. Now if only everyone would stop telling Ral he’s just jealous and LISTEN to him…after all, he’s NOT just jealous, right? (Sequel to Send to Sleep.)

Ships: Jace Beleren/Ral Zarek, Harry Potter/Draco Malfoy, Luna Lovegood/Hermione Granger, Nissa Revane/Chandra Nalaar, Elspeth Tirel/Teysa Karlov

A/N: Many, many thanks to @paperclipminimizer for beta-ing and checking my timeline, as well as answering all my questions about Harry Potter. Thanks also to Juri, @dragons-suck, and everyone on Sketchydoodles’ Vorthos server for listening to me rant about this thing as it took shape.

Also available on AO3 and FFnet.

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen: Dream Cache

          As he gave the Potions classroom a final once-over, Draco nodded in satisfaction. The sixth-years had all completed their last lesson, and considering that two of them had been in comas for several weeks of term, one had been recently petrified, one tortured by the Cruciatus Curse, and his star pupil had been barely scraping passing marks because he’d been understandably distracted by Amortentia, that was nothing short of miraculous. Not to mention the fact that, for the first time in his life, Draco actually felt hopeful about his personal life.

           Harry was really trying. Draco had reluctantly agreed to start dating him at least partially because he’d been certain Harry would give up the idea after a day or two. When he hadn’t—when he’d kept on insistently asking Draco to come down to Hogsmeade with him, or popping his head into Draco’s office for a quick word or a quick kiss or a quick snog, or just sending him stupid little romantic notes via owl—Draco had gotten used to it faster than he would have believed possible. He’d even managed to reciprocate, himself, on a few occasions, although he wasn’t really good at romantic. But the look on Potter’s—on Harry’s face had been worth it. As had the sex. The sex had definitely been worth it.

           There was a quiet knock on the door. “Come in,” Draco called, as he flicked his wand to dispose of a particularly nasty-looking stain that was determinedly eating through the woodwork of Mr. Zarek’s desk. Ral had never quite lost his habit of experimenting with different combinations of things on the side, although he had at least stopped instantly doing things that his textbooks explicitly warned against.

           The door opened, and Jace poked his head round. “D’you have some time?” he asked. His voice was low, and his gaze directed somewhere in the vicinity of his feet.

           “Yes, I think so.” Draco checked the time. Classes were over for the day, and he was supposed to meet Harry, but not for a few hours. “What is it, Jace?”

           “I—I’ve been trying to get my independent study to work, and I think the theory’s sound, but I’m doing something wrong, and I don’t know what it is.”

           Leaning back against the desk in front, Draco raised an eyebrow at him. “I thought you were told you didn’t have to finish the project you’d planned for this semester? Taking an extension due to illness is fine.”

           Jace shuffled. “I—I know. And I probably won’t do the write-up until next semester. But, um, I really want to finish this.” He sighed in defeat. “It’s for Ral.”

           “Ah, I see.”

           “Can you at least look at my notes?”

           “Of course. I’ll come up to the tower if you like.”

           “Would you? Th-Thanks.”

           Jace’s workstation, which, in contrast to Ral’s, was usually quite organized, was covered in ingredients, laid out in haphazard bunches. His notebook and an instant camera were near the edge of the table, covered in a fine powder Draco thought was probably silver dust. There was a stack of blurry photos peeking out from underneath the notebook—that had been something that had come out of Hermione’s experiments with Mr. Zarek. The camera was actually a Polaroid of Muggle make, but the batteries had been replaced with a magical power source. Although the resulting photos didn’t move, they developed immediately, and several of the students had started using them to keep track of magical experiments they were performing. One of the complaints that Jace’s year especially kept bringing up—especially Ral and Jace—was that it was stupid to try to recreate a potion from a verbal description when you could take a picture of what it was supposed to look like. Draco had started looking into redoing their textbook with a set of example pictures, but he hadn’t had the time to compile it yet.

           Jace flung himself into the stool in front of the workstation with a sigh. Taking out his wand, he prodded at the Potion growing cold on the side of the desk. It was a dull blue, and there was a single white poppy floating on the surface. “Yeah, this didn’t work.”

           “Tell me what you were trying to do.”

           Gnawing at his thumb, Jace seemed to consider this. “I…I could show you,” he whispered. “I just…I just need to know what the steps are supposed to look like and—and how you usually extract memories for a pensieve. I don’t. Know how to do that myself. And, um, I’m—I’m not feeling good. Mirko went back to the Forbidden Forest today, and I—I—thought I’d be fine. I should be fine. I just.” He shut his eyes. “When it didn’t work and didn’t work and didn’t work—” He cut himself off, wrapping his arms around his chest. “Sorry,” he whispered.

           “Would you like a hug?” Draco asked gently.

           Jace’s shoulders went up and down. “Don’t think it’ll help.”

           “All right.”

           “But—but—if you could take this and do it w-with me…” Jace’s hands hovered at the hasp of his cloak.

           Jace had already spent an hour or two curled quietly in the back of Draco’s head, his body resting on a nearby bench or couch, his mind dormant. He’d also spent some time with Hermione and Ranna, who had been on and off campus every few days since making a full recovery. Draco didn’t know if Jace had also been sharing minds with the sixth years, but he suspected he had been. At the very least, Jace had taken to trotting down the hall to Ral’s bedroom again at all hours of the night, which was—comforting. Right. Draco had passed him several times when he was, well, going to Harry’s room.

           “Do you want me to?” He didn’t think Jace would say no, but he wanted to make sure Jace knew he always had a choice.

           Jace nodded. “Yeah. Please.” He undid the cloak and took it off, folding it carefully over the stool. “Only—can I do something a little different? I—I really want to help make it.”

           “Yes, you can.”

           Raising his wand, Jace pointed it carefully at Draco. “Legilimens.”

           It was hard not to flinch at the feeling of Jace touching his mind. Draco had never been as good at occlumency as Harry, but he’d been good enough, and he’d had more than enough people fucking about in his head for one lifetime. Taking a deep breath, Draco reminded himself that this was Jace, and then carefully walled off the memories that Jace shouldn’t have access to, either due to the possibility of traumatizing him, or due to the level of inappropriateness. Jace was skilled enough that he probably could get through most of Draco’s walls if he tried, but Draco trusted that he wasn’t going to.

           A little more fumbling, and then there was a sudden sense of recollection as Jace pushed a thought into his mind.

           Draco raised his own wand. “Legilimens.”

           It took them a moment to reorient, as they carefully tested the connection to make certain that it could be undone at any time without damaging either one of the constituents. They didn’t want a repeat of the incident with Teysa. Once they were as sure as they could be—yes Jace I’m fine I promise—they focused on the potion. It took them a moment to remember the idea, running Draco’s finger down Jace’s notes, but then, there it was. They sized it up, considering, and decided with relief that the theory was sound.

           Jace’s frustration boiled to the surface along with the images of hours spent trying to get the base potion to mix correctly, and it wasn’t surprising he’d had so much trouble. Correct theory or not, a potion like this would have been more suited to a uni student than a boy still at Hogwarts. But they used Jace’s hands anyway, despite the increased difficulty in translating the muscle memory, just slowing a little to accommodate as they began to chop up a stack of mauve carnation petals.

           The work was difficult, more difficult than most potions Draco made these days, since he was hampered by unfamiliar hands and cluttered thoughts, but it was exhilarating at the same time. There were a number of innovative ideas scrawled in the margins of Jace’s little notebook. The potion itself was a modification of the original Bottled Dreams potion to be able to hold memories like a pensieve—instead of catching a dream while you were having it, this was intended to turn a memory into a dream for someone else.

           This time, when it was heated, the potion exuded a fine silvery vapor that curled above the liquid, caught the white poppy, and lifted it into the air for a few seconds, while the whole thing changed from milky grey to sky blue. They let out a sudden, relieved breath. It had worked, which meant it was ready for the last step. The memory-turned-dream.

           Jace’s hands were trembling, and they took a moment to steady them, because this was the most difficult part. Draco knew how to extract his own memories for a pensieve, but he didn’t know how to braid them together the way Jace did, and they would have to draw on both skills in order for this to work properly. And it would have to be Jace’s hand, Jace’s wand, as Jace braided and Draco extracted.

           There was a heartbeat of indecision, of fragmentation, as Jace tried to curl back in on himself, but a mental word of encouragement—You can do this, Jace, better than anyone—pushed them forward. They lifted the wand to Jace’s temple, and Jace did something Draco didn’t understand even though it was happening right in front of his mind, binding the silver cords of memory together as if they were threads on a spindle—not threads, scenes, like cutting out a bit of one photo and gluing it to another one, like the memories in Ral’s head of playing with the moviemaker on his mum’s laptop, making a character disappear just by snipping three seconds of the scene out of the middle—but he understood how to pull the resulting strand out from Jace’s head, how to pull and pull and pull until it twisted around the wand, and how to push it from the wand into the potion, stirring and stirring with a steady hand. The steam evaporated and the potion darkened.

           Draco shivered as Jace withdrew, and he lowered his wand. There was a strange moment of vertigo as he realized he was alone in his head again, and for a brief second, nothing seemed to work the way he remembered. Then the feeling passed, and the two of them were standing together and looking down at the potion they’d made.

           “Excellent work, Jace.” Draco reached out with a hand, then remembered Jace hadn’t wanted a hug, and paused. The boy didn’t seem to have noticed; he was looking down at the potion was a peculiar look on his face. After a moment, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

           “Fuck,” he said, finally. “I did it. I really did it.”

           “You really did.” Draco chose to ignore the obscenity, thinking wryly that after six years of Mr. Zarek, many of the teachers were becoming what the headmistress considered appallingly lax on the subject of profanity. “You had some exceptional insights, and next semester, I hope you’ll write up a careful description of your thought process and the process of making the potion.”

           “I didn’t think I could,” Jace murmured. “Thank you. This is great.”

           “This was entirely you. Your theory, your hands. I just helped out a bit with the experience.”

           When Jace looked up at him, he was smiling broadly, and Draco was struck with the thought that he didn’t think he’d seen Jace smile like that since last year.

           “I'm going to give it to Ral tonight."

           Draco felt his lips twitch upwards in a smile as he thought about Harry waiting for him. “Good luck.” Judging from the way Ral looked at Jace, Jace shouldn’t need it, but it seemed like the thing to say.