#tropical sludge

[weisskalt]

Scintillating filaments beneath the surface of the mystic machine forest by Rick Burke as Tropical Sludge.

Artist's Statement: "In a world where we are all getting hypnotised by Artificial Intelligence, we need to look at Nature for the answers. Mycelium is an advanced natural system that has evolved over millions of years to thrive in the specific conditions of the Earth. Its complex and intricate network of branching structures allows fungi to communicate, share resources, and form symbiotic relationships with other organisms, pretty mind blowing when you think about it.

Musically I had lots of fun making this track, samples from a summer's bush walk & just jammed live takes of each instrument over each other, all strictly hardware. Was vibing for a 90s Chill Out/IDM/Ambient/Trip Hop vibe, early Boards of Canada, Pete Namlook, Aphex Twin, Plastikman etc, the result is a super spaced out, hypnotic journey & I had heaps of fun making this. Hope everyone can check this out & enjoy."

[raksh-writes]

Gosh, this sudden change in weather has absolutely wrecked me, Im so damn useless I can barely sit straight, not to mention any type of thesis writing or anything similar ;_;

Guess it's time to take a forced break and let my brain slush around my skull like the sludge it has turned into, ughh

[homunculus-argument]

To celebrate my second christmas after cutting out my family, a list of Family Christmas Traditions that I don't miss at all:

The five hour drive to grandma's stuck in a car with two dogs and my sister playing "I don't want to pick the music, why don't any of you pick something for once - no not that one, I don't want that" while I'm crammed in the backseat with 5 bags.

Grandma making a massive scene of how much pain she is in for having done All The Cooking And Cleaning and how her feet hurt from mopping the cupboards and vacuuming the ceiling when nobody asked her to do that.

Grandma making a whole goddamn bathtub of that disgusting syrupy sludge dry fruit soup that nobody wants to eat, and then somebody has to be guilted into being the one to eat it because otherwise Grandma Will Be Sad because she made all this sludge just for us and nobody wants to swallow it.

The TV and at least one radio blaring at all times. Ideally both of the radios are set on different stations and people are yelling over all three of them.

No hiding spots to be alone in silence in the entire house save for the sauna and sitting outside, both of which are uncomfortable and can still be barged into at any second.

The heat and humidity of the house reach tropical rainforest levels, the windows are steamed from the inside and the last fragment of oxygen was used up four hours ago by grandma interrupting everyone to continue talking.

My sister sulking in some corner with a sour face because grandma interrupted her for the 15th time and neither of them is willing to accept that the other one won't compromise on doing whatever the fuck she wants.

My sister sulking at the table because all of the dishes being served for dinner are christmas foods and she hates christmas foods. Yes, all of them.

My sister sulking because other people are trying to enjoy themselves and have pleasant conversation, because she hates the sound of other people enjoying things she doesn't like.

One of the dogs shits or pisses somewhere indoors because they're not as house trained as mom thinks they are.

My mom and sister insisting on starting to argue about some nitpicky detail of something completely pointless that nobody else would care about even if they knew anything about the subject.

Spending the entire night having to consciously resist the urge to have enough wine to put up with this bullshit, because in the next morning anyone who's hung over is tortured on purpose.

[111seedhillroad]

i cant wait for the cycle of the megadrought when the tap no longer runs and the stores stop getting shipments and all the temperate climate trees dry up and die out and the cardboard suburban neighborhoods go up in flames and the people use the last of their gas to beg to be let into the last air-conditioned refuges of the city and they clog the roads and they all have to walk under the merciless sun and the power grid is fried by 126 degrees of punishing heat and then tropical storms flush all the debris of the great sprawl into the concreted watersheds and turn it all into a toxic sludge of charred wood, moldy drywall, human excrement, pavement, broken glass, insulation, petroleum, bodies, tar, gravel, sand, all settling together into a fucked-up soil that eventually becomes less fucked-up and the cattails and tule reeds cover the thoroughfares dammed up by the debris and fish make their way up stream and the egrets and cormorants eat them and the most cockroachesque humans crawl out of earthen basement dwellings to sling rocks at them and eat their flesh and the fishes' flesh and the cattail roots and they get cancers in old age for generations as the air-conditioned people succumb to the mist of diseases that thrive in the crowded halls leaving only the fish eaters and bug eaters and lonely shepherd here and there to roam the earth and carry the memory of what drywall or powergrids or petroleum even meant.

[marislittlestories]

Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter

Mature | Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Spy Draco Malfoy, Draco Malfoy in the Muggle World, Hogwarts Eighth Year

6/10 - one, two, three, four, five - read on ao3

january 1999 - may 1999

1999 starts with snow. It falls, slow and lazy, from a dark, overcast sky and covers the ground outside in a thick layer. It’s not quite cold enough to keep it in pristine condition, so it melts into an icy sludge by mid-morning, but for a few hours before the sun rises, the world is quiet and still and blanketed in glittering white.

“C’mon, c’mon,” Ginny shakes him awake while it’s still dark out, “We’re going to have a snowball fight.”

Draco stares up at her from his makeshift bed, “What time is it?”

“Nevermind that. Get up.”

He can’t refuse her. He hurriedly throws on his warmest clothes, including, of course, his very own iconic Weasley sweater, presented to him by Molly when he arrived at the Burrow a couple days ago. It’s a beautiful burnt-orange that brings out the nearly-invisible flecks of blue in his steel grey eyes. The crooked D is black and a slightly different texture. It’s possibly one of his most prized possessions, right up there with the aviators that Claire gave him over the summer and the copy of Darke Arts & Their Masters that he recklessly nicked from Bellatrix when he was sixteen.

They join the group outside. Hermione, Ron, Charlie, Bill, Fleur, and Percy are all huddled together, teeth chattering in the cold, brisk air. There’s just a hint of sunrise on the horizon, turning the sky brilliant shades of gold and red and pink. The flecks of snow drifting in the air gather on Draco’s shoulders and hair and stick to his lashes.

He crowds as close to Ginny as he can, watching as Harry and George make their way out of the house over to where the rest of them are waiting. George hasn’t been himself, not since the battle, not since Fred. Draco had known this, from what Ginny’s said over the past few months, but it’s different seeing it for himself. It’s different experiencing the force of George’s listlessness firsthand, face blank, strings cut.

In the time that Draco’s been here, just over two days, Harry hasn’t left George’s side for more than a few minutes. They’re always together, sometimes chatting quietly, but more often just sitting in silence. It makes some unnameable emotion surge in Draco’s chest.

It’s not quite jealousy, not quite pride. This is the person I have given everything to, Draco thinks, and he deserves it, he keeps deserving it. It’s a feeling resigned to its own fate, a burgeoning satisfaction made sharp by its hopelessness, made hungry by his bottomless desire. It’s a longing, a knowing, a vision of a future that will never exist, one where he could have that kindness, that unwavering loyalty and care for himself.

He thinks that if he had it, he may never be lonely again.

It’s such a bittersweet, maudlin line of thought that he stops it there. The rest of the world comes back into focus, and he only has to glance in Ginny’s direction to see the look on her face, naked concern and sorrow.

“You okay?”

She shrugs, and glances over at George and Harry talking, heads bowed together.

“I know it’s different for him,” she whispers, “But I’m worried, you know? He smiles and laughs now, which is a hell of a lot better than a few months ago, but… There’s this heaviness, like I can see the grief around him, and it just never leaves, not like it does for the rest of us.”

Draco sees it too, “Yeah. You were like that, during the summer. It won’t be like that forever, it might just take him longer to shake it, that’s all.”

She sighs and leans back into him. He breathes in the scent of her shampoo, something tropical and summery, at odds with the wintry landscape surrounding them, and he’s overwhelmed again, by love and despair and hope, by a million other feelings he couldn’t describe if he was asked to.

The intensity, the way it ebbs and flows, whiting out his physical senses for a moment, it’s all become familiar to him. After so much deliberate numbing, there was bound to be a little pain, a little discomfort when it all came flooding back in. It feels like his shower later in the morning, stepping under the hot water after being out in the snow. It’s a thawing, too sudden to be entirely pleasant.

The next time it happens, he breathes through it. He closes his eyes and he lets everything crash down around him and he catalogs everything he feels, bad things first. It gets easier and easier.

***

Pansy pulls him into an empty compartment on the train, throwing a tight smile over her shoulder at the rest of his friends, catching him off guard. He’s always been the one to turn back, to grab hold, to stay. He’s lost everything he hasn’t sunk his teeth into, and there is no better example of that than Pansy.

He doesn’t know what to do other than stare at her from the other bench. First year, Pansy had shown up to Hogwarts pale and almost disturbingly composed for an eleven year old. Her signature burgundy manicure was just one item on a long list of what set her apart, what made her instantly seem more mature, more sophisticated, more in control.

Her nails are neon pink. She looks anxious, but underneath it she’s well-rested. She even has a bit of a tan.

“Do you remember, in fourth year,” she says in a small, quiet voice, “We were talking about the Durmstrang students? You said it was sad to look at them, so sad that you had to look away.”

Draco does remember, so clearly, like it was yesterday, “Yes.”

“That’s how I felt with you, you know? I couldn’t see you without seeing the sadness, the misery, so I just… closed my eyes. I’m so sorry, Draco, I don’t know how I’m ever going to make it up to you, but I want to try.”

“It’s not your fault,” he replies automatically, “I knew what I was doing. I pushed you away.”

Pansy shakes her head as frustrated tears gather in her eyes, “But I knew it too. I knew something else was happening, even if I didn’t have the details, and I let you do it. I let you go off on your own, and it wasn’t because it was what you wanted, or because I was hurt. It was just because I was a coward. I didn’t want to face it.”

It stops him. Whatever platitude he was going to offer her dies on his tongue, and he just stares at her in shock and pain. His hands have always been empty, reaching. His feet have always been soft and bruised. He’s never thought about why no one has reached back, why no one carried him across the rough earth. He’s never had anything but the deep, abiding feeling that the loneliness that has plagued him for as long as he can remember is somehow his fault.

“I-” he takes in a long, shuddering breath, “If it makes you feel better, I didn’t want to face it either. I didn’t face it, not really.”

She sweeps him up in her arms and he spends the rest of the journey crying without shame or guilt or worry. He cries and he knows that Pansy will hold him, that she will shield him from the world for a couple hours, and when he is done she will not look at him differently.

***

They all sit together in the Great Hall, all of Draco’s people. Except Ella, of course, who is two tables over with her massive, eclectic group of friends. Ginny fusses over his bloodshot eyes and the general air of exhaustion around him.

“We only just got back to school. How have you already had a crisis?”

Draco laughs, “It was good, alright? I made up with Pansy.”

“Oh, thank Merlin.”

“You have no idea how close she was to locking the two of you in a broom cupboard somewhere,” Dean says.

“Hey,” Pansy starts with an air of nonchalance that immediately sets Draco on edge, “Where’s boy wonder?”

Ron frowns, “Harry? Something came up at the Ministry.”

“Whatever you’re doing,” Draco mutters, “Stop it.”

“If we’re going to have a mushy, Hufflepuff friendship, you have to let me scheme. For balance.”

“I absolutely do not!”

“It’s just your love life,” she whispers.

“Oh, if that’s all.”

“It could be worse,” she says, “Would you rather me interfere with your career prospects?”

“Yes!”

“Come on, it’s not so bad. You’ve got an in now. Mutual friends.”

“What exactly do you want me to do? Ask Ron to be my wing man? Have Luna say something vague and disconcerting about the love of his life being right in front of him?”

“Hmm,” Pansy drums a pattern on the table with her fingers, “I’ll have to think on that one.”

Draco peers at her with suspicion and terror, “What does that mean?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

He’s going to, obviously, but he lets it go for now because the feast is starting and Ginny is trying a little too hard to listen in.

***

“This is a great start, Draco,” Professor Islington beams, “Really, really impressive.”

He blinks at her, frowning, “Seriously?”

The report is a mess of disjointed research and half-developed theories. The bulk of it is a sort of annotated bibliography, if an annotated bibliography was meant to be full of expletives and strings of question marks in place of intelligent commentary. He likes to think there’s some of that, too, but it’s dwarfed by the rest, a stream-of-consciousness dumping ground.

“Seriously! I know you probably wanted to have turned in something more polished, but nothing is ever polished when you’re in the middle of it. The ideas you have, though, and your grasp on the historical and theoretical… it’s all excellent. I did take the liberty of consulting with Professor Flitwick on some of the more complex Charm work, and he agrees. If he’s to be believed, you’re some sort of prodigy.”

Draco thinks of the way his hands shake every time he casts a spell, no matter how benign, “I wouldn’t take his word for it.”

“I think you’re onto something with runic enchantments and sentience. You’re not taking Ancient Runes this year, are you?”

He winces, “No, I know I’m rusty.”

She smiles, “Well, this is your project. I’m trusting you to make use of the resources available to you, and that includes asking for help if you need it, alright? I know an excellent professor of Ancient Runes who is currently on sabbatical and would be happy to consult.”

Draco thinks about it, and then he thinks about last term, how he let the project consume him.

“I think I have a better idea.”

He steals Harry’s spot at dinner that night, right by Hermione, “I have two questions for you, one of which I think I know the answer to.”

“What are they?” she asks, already laser-focused on him.

“Have you started on your capstone project? And because you’re Hermione, and you’ve definitely started, how attached are you?”

Ron tries to shush him, “We’re at dinner, mate, that’s an off-limits topic until we leave the Hall!”

Draco raises his eyebrows.

“Don’t get me started,” Hermione glares down at her plate.

“Is that a yes, and it’s not going well, or a no, I don’t know what to do and I’m freaking out about it?”

“The second, if you can believe it.”

Draco pumps his fist, “Sick. Listen, I have a proposition for you. My project is turning out to require pretty extensive Ancient Runes expertise, and I dropped that-”

“After fourth year, I know,” Hermione narrows her eyes at him, “This is the thing that essentially turned you into a phantom last year?”

“Well, yes, but-”

“I’m in,” she says firmly.

Ron groans, “I wish you’d never become friends.”

“I can keep an eye on him,” she says, “Make sure he doesn’t actually disappear into the ether.”

“Wow, thank you so much for the vote of confidence,” Draco mutters.

Dean, Luna, and Ginny sit down across from them. Pansy takes the seat next to Ginny. Out of their usual group, Harry arrives last, and after a second’s hesitation, he sits next to Draco, even though there’s enough space next to Ron for him. Sure, it would have meant that he was facing a random sixth year, but he could have done it.

Draco is hyper-aware of the sliver of bench between them, just a couple inches.

“No one has confidence in your ability to take care of yourself,” Ron says, prompting laughter from everyone else.

“I’m still alive, aren’t I? Anyways, I’ve gotten better! Haven’t I?”

Dean answers his imploring look with a shrug, “Sure, but when you’re at rock bottom, you can only really go up.”

***

On a Sunday morning in February, he plays his first full game of Quidditch in years. It’s the last phase of try-outs for the school team, all of the candidates that passed the initial rounds of skills tests playing together in a rotating cast. Draco plays with three different combinations of players; Ginny is in all of them, on his team for two and against him for one. She is a ruthless Chaser, and he wants, desperately, to play for her.

“Thank you,” she says breathlessly, pulling him into a hug on the pitch, “I know you weren’t the most enthusiastic-”

“I had fun. I’m glad I did it.”

She beams at him. They both make the team, starting line. Ella manages to slide in as a Seeker sub, and she nearly tackles him when they get the news.

“I did it, I did it!”

Draco hugs her close, “You did. I’m so proud of you, El.”

“Thank you,” she says quietly, almost shyly.

It’s such an unfamiliar tone that it takes Draco a few seconds to respond, “For what?”

“For training with me. I couldn’t have done it without you, you know.”

Draco smiles dopily at her, “Aw. You don’t need to thank me. What are big brothers for?”

She scoffs, “You forgot the annoying.”

“Sorry, what are annoying big brothers for?”

The endless slog of training, conditioning, practice once again punctuates his week, sets a rhythm to his life that he hadn’t realized was important. He feels better, more real, for it. He goes to bed every night with aching muscles, and yet he somehow has more energy than ever. That ravenous hunger that used to consume him, the need to win, never returns but there is something relieving about pushing his body to its limit.

Sometimes, he’ll feel it becoming something else, a convenient way to punish the weakest parts of himself. He’s better at catching these things before they happen now, and he pulls himself back from the edge every time. He takes an extra rest day. He piles his plate full at every meal. He even takes Dreamless Sleep when he has to, and he doesn’t feel guilty or out of control.

“Has it always been this simple?” he asks, mostly to himself, as they’re coming back from Quidditch practice one evening.

Ginny glances at him, “What?”

“I don’t know, existing?”

Ella rolls her eyes, shoving at his shoulder, “Why does everything have to be some great big tragedy with you? Sometimes things are easy.”

Except that hasn’t happened to him, not ever. Everything has been a constant battle, a fight to the death, a sacrifice and a trial by fire. Ella ruffles his hair and jogs to catch up to the rest of the team. He lingers on the path behind them, Ginny at his side, looking down at the soft moss beneath his feet.

It doesn’t hurt to love Ella or Marcie or his friends, not anymore, and if he took his shoes off right now, the earth would welcome him and cushion his step. Another piece, falling into place.

They walk on towards the castle.

***

The Gryffindor common room is nearly empty by the time he starts to pack his things up. He’d been working on the project with Hermione, but Ron had dragged her away from it nearly an hour ago and they’ve both gone up to bed. There are a few students that Draco doesn’t know scattered in various armchairs, but right around the fire, it’s just him and Harry.

Harry’s bent over a stack of parchment, a colorful array of plastic tubes lined up on the floor beside him. They’re some sort of Muggle writing utensil, and Harry seems to always have them when he’s studying. He’s pretty sure that Harry isn’t studying right now, mostly because he usually doesn’t look so upset when he studies anymore.

“What are you working on?”

Harry looks up at him from his place on the rug, green eyes tired and slightly unfocused, “Oh, it’s just Wizengamot shit. I fucking hate politics.”

Harry goes back to swiping color over the printed text. Draco thinks about slinging his bag over his shoulder and going to get some sleep, but he can’t quite make himself do it. The two of them are very similar, in some ways, and Draco knows what it looks like when someone is working themselves into a hole. He knows how hard it is to claw your way out of it, too.

“I could help,” Draco offers, cursing himself in his head.

He doesn’t need another puzzle to solve, but it’s Harry. It’s Harry, and he looks like he hasn’t slept well in weeks, and Draco knows he hasn’t been to any meals today. It’s Harry and Draco will never be able to look at him struggling with indifference.

Harry frowns, “What happened to fuck the world?”

“There’s a big difference between reading over a bit of legal code and recounting the worst years of my life for an audience. In detail.”

Harry ducks his head, ears turning red hot.

Draco sighs, “What I mean is, this is something I can do. If you want.”

He reaches out, palm facing upwards, and waits. Harry hesitates but eventually does hand the folder over to him.

“What is it?”

“As far I can tell,” Harry says wearily, “Garbage.”

Draco scans the text, noting the color-coded annotations in Harry’s atrocious handwriting. It’s impressive, despite being barely legible, and he’s right, too. A lot of the language is vague, superfluous. He’d have to consult existing law to be sure, but it doesn’t seem to do much of anything.

“And you said Robards is the one doing it?”

“Well, he’s not writing the bills, but he is letting them through and I can’t imagine this is anything but a coordinated effort.”

Draco nods, recalling the dinner with Hestia, months ago now. Robards may be an asshole, but he’s not an idiot. If he’s letting this gibberish through, and not actually coherent legislation, there’s got to be a reason outside of pure pettiness. Surely he doesn’t believe it would actually pass under close inspection.

“No, it has to be…” Draco thumbs between the last two pages again, “When are you going to the Ministry next?”

“Tomorrow. I have a free period in the afternoon, and I’m just going to skip my last class.”

Draco winces. He has a meeting with Professor Islington that evening, and a full slate of classes besides, but he’s been willing to die for this boy. Ditching is nothing.

“Yeah, alright. I’m coming with you.”

Harry bites his lip, “Are you sure? I don’t want to make you do something you’re not comfortable with…”

“Relax,” Draco smiles, “I’m the one who offered. I think I can get some information for you, and it won’t cost me anything but a little time. No big deal.”

Neither of them really believe that, but Harry doesn’t call his bluff. Draco tags along on his pre-approved Floo trip to the Ministry lobby, where he splits off from Harry and takes a lift up to the DMLE. Oliver Travers is sitting at his desk, tucked into a corner with a few other cubicles, scribbling something on a legal pad.

Draco raps his knuckles on the yellowed wooden divider, “Hey, Oliver.”

“Dray,” Oliver greets, face alight with something long-familiar to Draco, “To what do I owe this pleasure?”

He winces, “I need something.”

“Ah. So not my dazzling conversation?”

“I’m sorry I haven’t stopped by earlier, I went away for a while, after everything,” Draco says, apologetic, “And I’m sorry that the first time I’ve seen you in almost a year is to ask for a favor.”

Oliver waves a hand in the air, dismissive, “Oh, don’t worry about that. You know I’m always happy to help, and I know you’re good for it. You always are. I’m assuming you need information.”

“Yes. It’s about the Wizengamot.”

Oliver glances around at the sparsely populated room, “I can give you something, but I can’t do it here.”

“I understand. Up for a field trip?”

Oliver follows him back down to the offices that line the corridors off of the Wizengamot chambers, and he’s clearly surprised when they pass Hestia’s and take another turn. Draco doesn’t bother knocking, he simply strolls into Harry’s office. Under Oliver’s watchful, heated gaze, it’s much easier to settle back into the smooth confidence that he’d worn like armor, back when he’d frequented the Ministry during the war.

“Oliver, Harry,” Draco gestures lazily, “Harry, Oliver.”

Oliver tilts his head, “Potter.”

“Travers.”

“Right,” Draco says slowly, “So you two have met.”

Neither of them seem to be eager to elaborate, so Draco shakes his head and drops it. This is above his pay grade, not that he’s getting anything out of this at all, besides a headache.

“Anyways, I looked over some of the legislation that Robards let out of committee last week, and if he doesn’t have ulterior motives, I have serious questions about his competence. And reading comprehension.”

Oliver laughs, “I’ve missed you, Dray.”

“Dray?” Harry mouths, expression dripping with judgment.

Draco rolls his eyes, “Any insights?”

He looks at Harry, gaze narrowed, “I don’t think I have to say this, but just in case, you didn’t hear any of this from me. I don’t know what’s going on, but I have my suspicions.”

“And are these suspicions supported by any observations, or…?”

“Robards has been meeting with a lot of Wizengamot members, but it’s an… eclectic bunch, to say the least. Not natural allies.”

“He can’t be courting votes,” Harry says, “He wouldn’t risk it.”

Robards’s position in the Wizengamot is powerful, but precarious. He acts as a gatekeeper, deciding which bills to put to vote and which to let die in committee. He is not an elected member, and he is strictly forbidden from engaging in political maneuvering, so if he is trying to influence voting he could be removed from his post and be in danger of losing his job as head of the DMLE as well.

“No, definitely not,” Oliver confirms, “The people he’s meeting with… the legislation he’s letting through… it doesn’t really add up, not to that. He’s not talking to anyone persuadable. I think he’s probably being very careful about that.”

“So what do you think he’s doing? I assume you’re not going to actually give us names.”

Oliver shrugs, “I’d give them to you, if I didn’t know you’d just tell him as soon as I left.”

Draco grins, unapologetic.

“I’ve heard some other chatter- I can’t repeat it exactly- but it makes me think certain factions within the Wizengamot are trying to test you,” he nods at Harry, “There have been some whispers, I guess, that you’re just a figurehead, that there are a group of people behind you, in the shadows, and you simply take the votes they tell you to.”

Draco gets so angry that he actually starts to shake, “Are you serious?”

“I mean,” Harry shrugs, “That’s not the most incorrect thing someone has ever said about me.”

Draco snorts, “Oh, yeah, because that’s a high bar to clear. Fourth year alone-”

“I’m just saying, that is essentially what’s happening. Hestia and Hermione are a lot better at this than I am, and I do rely on their judgment most of the time.”

“Don’t pull that shit with me,” Draco says, still incensed, “I’m not some decrepit politician whose brain has been rotted by twenty years in the Wizengamot. You did not stumble into this.”

Harry blinks at him, shocked into silence for a moment. He recovers quickly, opening his mouth, presumably to argue his point.

“No. I’ve seen your fucking annotation system.”

“That’s the thing, though,” Harry gets animated, and a thrill runs down Draco’s spine, “I basically copied that from Hermione, too. I didn’t do any of this myself, not really.”

Draco is alive, on fire, “Care to translate that for me?”

Harry simply stares at him, confusion and discomfort battling across his face.

“I think you’re forgetting that I have firsthand knowledge about Hermione’s note taking,” Draco says, “She hates writing on a text, even when it’s a copy, and she has to write down every thought she has or she can’t make them line up properly. She takes a truly insane amount of notes, but she doesn’t annotate shit. And yeah, they’re color coded, but based on a completely different set of criteria than yours. So, if I had to take a guess, I’d say that at some point, maybe when you got into politics last summer, you asked her for help with a legal text, and she taught you her system, which you then adapted.”

Harry doesn’t exactly confirm that Draco is right, but he does stop arguing.

“So,” Draco turns back to Oliver, who is clearly holding back a laugh, “What exactly is the objective here?”

“You know, that’s one of my favorite things about you. You take everyone completely seriously, and you make them take themselves seriously too.”

Draco sighs, “Focus, please.”

“They’re trying to trip him up with nonsensical legislation,” Oliver says, “They’re going to grill him in session, if I had to guess.”

“The only real solution, then, is to read through it all with fine toothed comb,” Draco groans.

“Yeah.”

Draco rolls his shoulders, “Ugh, to work we go then. Thank you, Oliver, I owe you one.”

Oliver stands and walks towards the door, pausing with his hand on the doorknob and turning back to Draco with a smile, small but no less dazzling for it.

“I think I’ve decided what you owe me, actually,” Oliver says, “A date.”

Draco tilts his head, smiling up at Oliver in exasperation, “I-”

Oliver holds his hands up, “You can say no, but it’s just one night. Give me a chance to convince you I’m perfect for you?”

They stare at each other. Oliver is earnest, sincere, and he understands Draco, all of the ugliness and dark, gritty truth. He’s seen the world Draco exists in, he’s been a part of it, lived it too. He knows what it’s like to plant your feet in the shadows.

Besides, Draco’s never been on a date.

“You get two hours,” he concedes, “Next weekend.”

Oliver’s grin widens into something triumphant and heated, “I’ll make a reservation.”

He leaves then, and Draco checks the time. He could make it back to Hogwarts for his meeting with Professor Islington, if he left in the next few minutes.

“I have to get back to the castle,” he says, “How many do you have left to read through?”

Harry answers reluctantly, “Eight.”

“Give me one you’ve already done, and five that you haven’t.”

“I can’t ask you to-”

“You didn’t,” Draco replies firmly, leaving no room for debate, “I said I would help, and I’m going to.”

He takes the folders from Harry’s outstretched hand. It’s not the first time Draco has wanted to take a piece of Harry’s perpetual burden, and it’s not the first time he’s reached out to grab it, but it is the first time Harry has given it to him, willingly, knowingly. It’s important in a way Draco can’t articulate.

Before he can make a move to leave, Harry clears his throat.

“It was during the war,” Harry ducks his head, looking down at the file open in front of him.

“What?”

“For a while last year, it was just me and Hermione, and we had to do a lot of research for,” he pauses, “Anyways. I’m not really good at this shit, you know, but I wanted to help. That’s when I started taking notes like this.”

Draco can’t fight the smile blooming across his face, but he doesn’t have to let Harry see it. He turns towards the door.

“I’ll see you back at Hogwarts,” he says, and closes the door softly behind him.

***

Pansy shows up in his dorm to drag him to dinner that night. Professor Islington had probably picked up on how distracted he was, because she cut their meeting short, after talking through the seemingly contradictory accounts of the Room’s relationship to Gamp’s Law. Draco wishes he could test his theories in real time, but if he could, he’d never have started on this project in the first place.

“I thought you weren’t going to do politics,” Pansy says, eyeing the folders spread across Draco’s bed.

Pansy knows better than to think that this change of heart is motivated by friendship. Draco is not that selfless.

“Shut up,” he mutters, “You know why I’m doing this. We really don’t need to talk about it.”

Pansy folds her arms, “Draco, we’re going to talk about it. I’m not going to lecture you, you know that, but… are you sure this is a good idea? That you want to do it?”

“I want to help.”

“And you promise this isn’t a power grab?” she grins.

He laughs helplessly, “Promise. Maybe it’s not very Slytherin of me, but world domination has lost its appeal. Besides, you’d probably be a better overlord anyways.”

“You’d be terrible. So inefficient.”

After dinner, she follows him back to his room and sits with him on his worn-in cotton duvet, handing him one of the fizzy Japanese drinks she always seems to have on hand, the ones with the glass marble inside. He breaks the seal of it with a pop.

“You don’t have to help, you know,” he says.

She picks up a folder, “Yeah, yeah. Explain Harry’s serial killer code to me.”

Harry goes to the next session of the Wizengamot armed with a stack of legal code, all annotated using his meticulous system. Draco hadn’t outsourced the reading beyond Pansy. He doesn’t know why Harry didn’t ask Hermione for help, and that wasn’t something he wanted to push back on.

When Harry shows up to breakfast the next morning, the storm raging in his eyes and in the tightness around his mouth have both vanished. He looks, for the first time in weeks, well rested.

He smiles warmly, incandescently, at Draco, “Thank you.”

Draco tries to remember that smile, when he has to go through the mortifying process of telling Pansy he has a date.

“I’m sorry, when did this happen?” she asks, delighted, “Was he really that grateful for your help?”

He frowns, “What?”

“Y’know, with whatever bullshit the ghouls in the Wizengamot were pulling?”

It takes him a second to understand what she’s saying, and then he giggles nervously, “No, no, Pans. The date isn’t with Harry. And if it was, I’d be extremely offended that you thought it was payback for a favor.”

“Oh, excuse me, sorry I assumed that you’d be going on a date with the only person you’ve been interested in since you were fourteen. What are you doing going on dates with random blokes? How do you get yourself into these situations?”

Draco winces, “As payback for a favor?”

Pansy is shrieking with laughter as she jumps onto his bed, kneeing him in the ribs in the process.

“Oh, fuck, ow, Pansy!”

She helps him select an acceptable date outfit, one of the few nice sweaters he has left and a pair of jeans without holes in them, and he ties his hair up while she yells at him to leave it down.

“It’s so pretty now, why would you even grow it out if you were just going to put up all the time?”

He tightens his ponytail, “I didn’t really mean to grow it out, it just happened.”

“Well, you’re certainly not allowed to cut it now!”

“It’s my hair,” Draco says.

Pansy stares blankly at him, “I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”

“It’s not like I was planning on cutting it,” he mutters, “But I could, if I wanted to.”

“Uh huh.”

The date itself isn’t so bad. Oliver had made reservations at the Indian place in Hogsmeade, and he was perfectly polite. Charming, even. The conversation flows effortlessly, and Draco finds himself laughing more and more as the night progresses. They blow right through the mandated two hours and spend the rest of the evening wandering around the shops, not really buying anything. It’s really just an excuse to keep talking.

And then Oliver walks him part of the way back to the castle, all the way to the gate that is charmed to only let students and faculty pass through, and Draco remembers that it’s a date.

Oliver steps into Draco’s space, brushing a hand over the lapel of his peacoat, “So, how’d I do?”

“On?”

“Convincing you that we’re literal soulmates?”

Draco laughs breathily, “I’m sure you’re very persuasive, but…”

“Mh. Are you saying you need more information? Another date, perhaps?”

Oliver’s smile is soft, inviting. He wants Draco, and he knows what wanting Draco means, and he’s everything that a thirteen year old Draco imagined.

There is just one, glaring problem. Draco doesn’t want him.

“I don’t think another date is going to change anything,” Draco whispers, taking a small step backwards, “I had a great time, and you’ve been wonderful, I just…”

Oliver nods, ducking his head, “Right.”

He puts more distance between them, and Draco wants to broach it, wants to comfort someone that he’s come to see as a friend, but he knows that it would be counterproductive.

“I’m sorry.”

“Is this the part where you say it’s complicated?”

Draco can’t help but laugh, “It’s the part where I say it’s actually very simple. I’m in love with someone who doesn’t particularly care about me.”

“Ah. That is a situation I’m deeply familiar with,” Oliver says with a miserable twist of his mouth.

“I-”

“Oh, don’t worry, it’s become something of a pattern for me. You are not the first, and you certainly won’t be the last person to tell me that they like me, just not as much as I like them.”

“Would it be awful of me to ask that we still be friends?”

Oliver shakes his head, as if dispelling the rain cloud above it, “No. I suspect we’ll be great friends, once I’ve found someone else to fixate on.”

“Let me know how that goes.”

“I promise, you will hear all about it. As long as I can hear about whatever tragic little story you’ve written for yourself.”

It’s not an inaccurate description. They part as friends, and Draco completes the trek across the grounds and into the castle, a little after curfew but not enough for him to be genuinely worried about getting caught. He slips into the common room with no incident and sleeps easily.

***

Ginny shoves her way into place beside him at breakfast, “What’s this I hear about you going on a date?”

“Would you let me eat before you launch the interrogation?”

“Late night?” she smirks.

“I was barely even late for curfew.”

“It was longer than two hours, then,” Harry chimes in.

Draco glares at him, which he silently congratulates himself on, “Fuck off.”

“What?”

“I agreed to two hours.”

“And Harry knows this because…”

“He was there.”

“Oliver Travers,” Harry offers, “Personally, he seems a little sleazy. I suppose there’s no accounting for taste.”

Draco considers homicide, briefly, and then thinks about all the work he’s put in keeping Harry alive. It would be such a waste to kill him now.

“The guy at the DMLE?” Ron asks, leaning across the table.

“Yeah.”

“He’s not the worst looking person you could go on a date with,” Ron says, considering, “I know he didn’t go to Hogwarts, but still, very Slytherin. I can see it.”

Draco appreciates the support, however pointless it is.

“It doesn’t matter,” he groans, “There won’t be a second one.”

Ron nods like he knows something, “Bad kisser.”

“No, what the hell,” Draco buries his head in his arms, hoping that he’ll wake up in his bed and all of this will be a bizarre, terrible dream.

“If he’s a good kisser, why aren’t you going on another date with him?”

Draco elects to ignore the rush of speculation that spawns from that comment, and goes back to eating his breakfast. He’ll wait until it dies down, and then he’ll set the record straight.

There is an inevitable lull, and Draco clears his throat, “Okay, here’s what happened. Oliver helped me out with something, I agreed to go on a date with him in exchange. I knew it wasn’t going to go anywhere, and it didn’t. We had dinner and talked for a while, and then I turned him down when he asked about a second date.”

“Because he’s not the person you’re in love with,” Ginny says, like this is a fact everyone is aware of.

The entire group goes silent. Draco gapes at her.

“What? Claire literally announced it at my birthday party. This is not news.”

“Is that true? Are you in love with someone? Like, right now? Actively?” Dean asks.

Pansy bursts into wild peals of laughter, head thrown back and everything.

“I hate all of you,” Draco spits, and takes a croissant with him as he abandons the rest of his food and storms out of the Great Hall.

No one tries to come after him.

***

Ginny manages to catch him with his guard down after Quidditch practice later in the week, “Hey, can we talk?”

“I don’t know, do you want to tell another one of my darkest secrets to a captive audience?”

“Is it a secret if someone literally already told everyone in the audience?”

“Claire made one off-hand comment that no one but you seemed to take as indication of anything!”

“How was I supposed to know the rest of our friends are dumb?”

Draco snorts, “I’m not really mad, you know. I just don’t really want to talk about it.”

“Yeah, I know.”

Ginny fidgets, plays with the tips of her fingers and doesn’t speak. Draco certainly won’t be the one to break the silence.

“I just… I get it, okay?”

Draco looks at her, really looks at her, and he sees it. All the scattered puzzle pieces come together, the hints of it he saw on her birthday, everything he’s seen since…

“It’s both of them, right?”

He couldn’t imagine Ginny loving Dean or Luna in isolation, not seriously, not now.

Ginny nods.

“Well,” Draco says, considering, “I don’t want to rain on your misery parade, but we know Dean is at the very least attracted to you. Or he was at one point. And Luna is… she’s Luna. I think-”

He can’t finish the thought, because he knows how painful it is to dream, to imagine.

***

Occasionally, Hermione will indulge Draco’s sentimentality and they’ll work on their project at his old spot, across from the entrance to the Room. It’s a small comfort, to feel the gentle ebb of its magic, though it won’t appear. It means that it’s not gone, and even if they don’t manage to fix it themselves, their research may serve as the foundation for someone else to do it.

It will serve the students of Hogwarts again, eventually. Some other lonely child will stumble across it and it will become a refuge for them, just as it was for Draco.

“You call it the Room of Hidden Things?” Hermione asks absently.

“I know some people make the distinction between the static version of the Room and the Room in general, but I like the name. I think it works, given that it is hidden most of the time. Besides, that’s what I was introduced to it as.”

Hermione looks up, her focus intense and sharp, a blade pressing but not breaking the skin, “So someone showed it to you?”

“Not exactly. I found it on my own, but Dumbledore knew I was using it, and he called it the Room of Hidden Things.”

“Hm,” her face screws up into something annoyed, “I was under the impression that he didn’t know about the Room.”

“Why?”

“He never acknowledged it to any of us, even when it could have been useful.”

“Well, he always was supremely unhelpful.”

Hermione snorts, “That’s an understatement. I mean, do you know how much shit could have been avoided if he just told us point-blank that you and Snape were on our side? Or if he tried to actually prepare any of us for what he knew he was going to ask us to do?”

“I think it was probably a little different for me,” Draco says, “At least I knew what was happening most of the time, even if he refused to help.”

“Honestly the most frustrating part was not knowing what was going on with you.”

Draco laughs, incredulous, “What? Why?”

“Harry wouldn’t fucking shut up about it. He would oscillate wildly between thinking you had never done anything wrong in your life and being convinced that you were the next Dark Lord. This was like, a day to day kind of thing.”

“What the hell?”

“Yeah. I think it really freaked him out when you just suddenly stopped giving a shit about anything. In fifth year? Your grades dropped and you stopped antagonizing him and you sort of just floated through the halls, not really looking at anything. At first, he really thought you were in danger and we needed to help you, but… you know what fifth year was like. Dumbledore basically shut him out completely, and then Sirius died, and Harry stopped caring for a while too.”

“But-” Draco cuts himself off. He shouldn’t want to hear more, not when it will inevitably become fodder for anxiety and nightmares later, but he can’t help himself, “Was there something I did? That flipped the switch?”

Hermione, for all her intelligence, takes it at face value. Simple curiosity.

“No. He just got… angrier, I guess, more combative. He started going back and forth a lot, on everything. His moods changed so quickly. And then, one day, it stopped. He settled a little, and he started saying you were being coerced. That’s basically how it stayed until the war was over and we found out that you were a spy the whole time.”

Draco is relatively sure what day it was that changed things. He doesn’t want to think about it. He directs the conversation back to the project, back to the Room and the magic that binds it together.

“Maybe we’re overthinking this,” Draco says, “We can’t test the boundaries of the Room because we can’t get inside, but we can do some diagnostic spells from the outside.”

“If it’s still there.”

“It is,” Draco frowns, “Can’t you feel it?”

“Feel what?”

“I don’t know, there’s like a hum? A frequency? A tone? Like a television that’s turned on but not playing anything.”

Hermione blinks, “Okay, we’re going to move past the fact that you’re familiar enough with TVs to use that comparison, because the implications of what you’re saying are… Draco, is it a feeling or a sound?”

“Feeling, but they’re not that different, you know? It’s all vibration.”

“Yeah, yeah, got it. Have you felt it before?”

Draco narrows his eyes at her, “Um, is that a trick question?”

“It’s really, really not. Does all magic have a vibration to it?”

“Yes?”

“Holy shit,” Hermione breathes, “That’s not, Draco, that’s not something everyone can feel, not even most people. It’s very rare to be able to sense magic that way, intuitively.”

“Alright?”

“I have to… I need to think about this,” Hermione mutters, already stuffing loose sheets of parchment into her book bag, “I’ll see you at dinner.”

***

The last of the snow melts away and dead things start to grow again. Draco’s life becomes full to bursting, some of it good and some of it bad, but none of it empty. He and Harry orbit around the same people, and they never quite touch. It’s manageable. In a quiet corner of his mind, there is something that wants more. It’s like a living thing, insatiable, and Draco keeps it on a leash. He restrains himself the same way that Harry does. He restrains himself in a way that is visible.

Dean sometimes still sends him concerned glances over dinner. Luna leaves little glass bottles full of things that Draco doesn’t recognize in his pockets. When questioned, she says they’re talismans for happiness or luck or on one occasion, a healthy sex life.

In some ways, he feels the least lonely he’s ever been. He feels less like a bruised flower petal, just waiting to be crushed beneath someone’s boot. He’ll be sitting at dinner, surrounded by his friends, and his mind won’t turn to war or death or venom at all.

In other ways, the chasm widens every day. The sadness that has been his constant companion his entire life might be slipping away, but it still feels like a loss, like a thing he needs to grieve. He’ll catch a glimpse of Harry, still too tentative, reserved, and it’ll pull him right out of whatever conversation he’s in. He feels like he’s in some alternate reality, a world apart from the rest of their friends, none of whom seem to notice how quiet Harry has gone.

He wonders if this is normal, to the rest of them, and it’s just the absence of hostility that Draco is seeing. Maybe this is how Harry has always been, when he doesn’t hate you.

But then Draco remembers that laugh, the rest of fourth year, Harry fighting and, on occasion, fighting back. He remembers the first in a collection of things he loved about Harry, the one he kept close to his chest, clutched in shaking hands; the obvious fear in Harry’s eyes, the way it didn’t change him at all.

They’re all walking back from another Hogsmeade trip, in the middle of March, and Draco keeps peeking over at Harry, too concerned to be careful.

“Hey,” Ginny says, bumping into his purposefully, “What’s been up with you lately?”

Draco shrugs. He’s still distracted, trying to figure out if Harry is tired or upset at something specific, something solvable, something Draco could fix for him.

“Is it because of the thing?”

“The thing?” he repeats, amused.

“The big embarrassing thing we happen to have in common?”

Draco loops their arms together and tugs her properly into his side. He supposes it is. As always, he’s let himself get swept up in the tide of Harry’s need and he’s forgotten that fighting the current is something he can do, should do. Logically, he knows it’s not entirely healthy to be so consumed by another person, especially one who will never reciprocate, but he doesn’t really know how to do anything else. He’s trying, and failing more often than not.

“Yeah, I guess.”

“I know you said that you didn’t want to talk about it, but I’m here if you ever change your mind, you know that, right?”

“Of course,” Draco says emphatically, “Gin, you’re the best friend I think I’ve ever had. It’s not because I don’t think you’ll listen.”

She brightens, “Can I tell Pansy you said that?”

“Fuck, no, she’d actually murder me in my sleep. But, I don’t know, Pansy’s my oldest friend and there was a time when we were more similar, it’s just… you and me, we’re the same person. It was kind of scary how well I knew you without knowing you at all.”

“It was the same for me,” Ginny chokes out past building tears.

“Please don’t cry, then I’ll start crying.”

“Okay, okay,” she takes a few deep breaths, “Just to be clear, this isn’t me asking you to talk about it, but why don’t you want to?”

“It’s quite tragic. Doomed. I think I just don’t want it to take up so much space in my life anymore.”

Ginny tries, successfully, to trip him. He doesn’t fall, but he does stumble over his own feet, cursing.

“Fuck, you know I got clumsy, that’s not fair.”

Ginny doesn’t laugh at him, which is the first sign that she’s a little annoyed.

“Gin?”

“You’re being stupid, aren’t you?” she hisses, “Self-sabotaging.”

“Genuinely, no. I’m actually trying to do the opposite. Promise. I’m not just saying that it’s doomed because I don’t want to be happy. It’s… really, really not going to work out for me, seriously, and I let it be my whole world for a long time anyways. I’m trying to move on from something that’s hurt me, a lot, or at least get rid of the most painful parts.”

Ginny doesn’t look entirely satisfied with his response, but she doesn’t push for more, and the rest of their friends go along pretending that they didn’t hear any of the conversation.

***

Hermione drags him back to the seventh floor more and more frequently so she can pester him with questions about how the Room feels. They do some diagnostic spells, but with little luck. Hermione tells him, cagily, that she has reason to believe the Room is Unplottable, which seems like overkill to Draco, as Hogwarts itself is Unplottable. There’s a reason why students get hopelessly lost within it, and it’s not just the sheer size or the staircases. It is impossible to map the inner workings of the castle. In any case, the complex tangle of shielding and cloaking enchantments that go into making it Unplottable and invisible also make it impervious to most examination they’ve tried.

They can’t even confirm Draco’s pet theory, that the magic of the Room is anchored with runic enchantments engraved deep in the stone, the entire reason that he now has a research partner in Hermione.

He doesn’t need it, not quite in the same way he did when he first took on the project, but it’s still a place he felt safe, another thing he loved that has been ravaged by war. Maybe he can’t fix his relationship with his mother, or bleed the darkness from the Manor, or make Harry’s grief and guilt and pain disappear, but he knows this is something that can be repaired. He wants to be the one to do it.

***

The weather continues to get warmer, and Quidditch starts to take up more and more of his time. They’re the underdogs of the season, brand new to the league and fresh out of a war, but they fight through April and May, and they win more than they lose. As they approach the end of term, they’re ranked fourth, with a real shot at the final match.

Draco is proud of himself, but he’s prouder of Ella, whose mind is outpacing her body- for now. She may not be as fast on a broom as Draco quite yet, but she spends hours pouring over plays with Ginny and she’s better than anyone at corralling the players, bringing different styles and personalities together into one cohesive whole. She’s going to make an excellent Seeker, and an even better Captain one day.

The last match before graduation is grueling. It’s the only game they’ve played at home the entire season, and Castelobruxo gets an astronomical lead very quickly. They spend most of the game catching up, and Draco spends it distracting the other Seeker and waiting for the lead to narrow enough that catching the Snitch would actually win them the game.

They win by ten points, in the end. He hits the ground with a little too much momentum and practically rolls off his broom, snitch in hand.

Ginny tackles him into a sweaty hug, “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

Draco laughs, “You were brilliant, Gin.”

“I think this is the happiest I’ve been in a long time.”

He catches sight of Luna and Dean behind them, hand in hand, wearing matching grins. He takes hold of Ginny’s shoulders, turns her around, and shoves her into their arms.

People are flooding the pitch, forcing Draco to fight through the crowd to get to Ella. She’s standing on the sidelines, smiling wide and beautiful. She does her best to deprive him of his hearing.

“You were so good! I can’t believe we made it to the finals!”

He tries to get some distance between his ear and her mouth, “Just think, next year that’ll be you.”

That seems to incapacitate her. She clings tightly to his hand as they start to look for Marcie. He isn’t afraid of losing her in the crowd. For a moment, he isn’t afraid of anything. The three of them, him and Ella and Marcie, collide and begin to jump around excitedly in a tangle of limbs. They’re laughing. Ella is crying a little.

He doesn’t know how to describe it. There’s a part of him that is deeply, deeply sad. He thinks maybe there always will be. It’s distant, though. There is so much more happiness in this moment, in most moments now, and it overwhelms the sadness. It drowns it out.

He heads off to shower and change, and then he meets them back at the path to Hogsmeade. Harry is there when he returns, chatting with Ella about how he thinks the match went. Marcie is standing beside them, looking bored. Her face lights up when she sees Draco.

“I have so much to tell you,” she’s smiling, but she says it very seriously.

He gestures for her to go ahead, and the four of them begin to make the trek to Hogsmeade. She regales him with the latest drama from her school. Lauren and the boy she likes- no, not Rowan’s ex-boyfriend, that was over weeks ago- went to the movies and he held her hand in the popcorn bucket.

Draco wrinkles his nose, “Wasn’t it greasy? That doesn’t seem very pleasant.”

“She said it was the best thing that has ever happened to her.”

He shrugs. Who is he to judge?

“And Becca got into a fight, like a real one, with punching and everything.”

“Becca? Sweet, sensitive Becca?”

Marcie nods furiously, “It was so cool. Not that hitting someone is cool, but it was a boy so.”

“Oh, that’s fine then.”

Andromeda and Teddy are waiting for them outside the restaurant, because Teddy is exercising his full lung capacity by shrieking very loudly. She hands him off to Draco as soon as they approach. He doesn’t mind a little crying.

He just bounces Teddy lightly on his hip, cooing in his ear, “It’s alright. It’s okay. You’re fine, aren’t you? Just a little upset. That’s okay.”

“You don’t mind, do you?” Andromeda asks, after she’s already passed him a burping towel and his teething beads.

Draco smiles at her, “Of course not. You can go in, if you want. If he doesn’t calm down in ten or fifteen minutes, we can take turns or something.”

She sighs in relief and kisses him on the cheek, “Thank you. My energy is not what it used to be. Are you sure you don’t mind?”

“I’m sure.”

Draco walks the length of the little alleyway beside the restaurant and talks softly to Teddy. He’s calmer after a few minutes, but everytime Draco stops walking or bouncing him, he starts crying again, so Marcie comes to grab his order and they get his food to-go. Harry offers to switch off with him, but Draco politely refuses.

“It’s alright,” he says, “I’m happy to take this shift.”

Harry doesn’t protest, but he does linger outside the restaurant for a moment too long, looking back at Draco with something that isn’t quite a smile.

Draco spends the evening outside with Teddy in the balmy night air, looking up at the stars and telling Teddy everything he can remember about Remus Lupin. He thinks about the summer with Marcie and the fall with Ella, how desperately he wanted to erase all of the bad things they’d seen, how futile the wanting is. There are some things that love just cannot fix.

But he can do this. He can listen to Marcie’s gossip and read the books she tells him about in her letters, he can do core workouts with Ella that border on insane and let her make fun of him, he can give them a family. He’s done his part to make the world a little kinder, a little more inhabitable for Ella and Marcie. He’s made sure that Teddy will not have to see the same horrors they did, the ones Draco did.

He just has to care. The rest of it, he doesn’t have to do alone.

***

Ginny flings herself onto the pitch next to him, panting.

“Fuck, that was the worst two hours of my life,” Draco gasps, “You’re actually sadistic, oh my God.”

“Baby.”

She’s been ramping up their practices in preparation for the final match of the season, which they’ll play against Durmstrang just after the end of term. If he’s honest, Draco doesn’t completely understand the fervor. It’s not like they really have a shot at winning, however miraculous their season has been so far.

“Stretch, shower, eat,” Ginny chants under her breath like a mantra, “Stretch, shower, eat.”

Still, it’s several minutes before they move at all. Draco goes through the motions of stretching his worn muscles, starting at the neck and working his way down his body, until he’s warm and malleable, until he feels as if he could be pulled apart like taffy. The hot shower almost puts him to sleep, and dinner afterwards actually does. He and Ginny doze off, ridiculously early, on the rug in the Gryffindor common room.

Draco has no dreams.

Ron wakes him a couple of hours later with an apologetic smile, “Things are about to get loud in here, if you want to go sleep in your dorm.”

He peers around the room, which is obviously being set up for an improvised party of some kind. A couple sixth years are pushing all of the furniture against the walls, and Neville is levitating a case of Firewhisky down the stairs and into the common room.

He blinks the sleep from his eyes, and finds that he’s no longer tired. Or, rather, that he’s reached a level of exhaustion that’s tipped over into restlessness. He could go back the dungeons, but chances are, he’ll have a hard time falling back asleep.

“No, I’m awake.”

“Do you want to stay then? It’s someone’s birthday, I think. Not too sure who.”

“Is that alright? If I stay?”

Ron is unimpressed, “Obviously. No one cares who’s here.”

It’s true, really. No one questions his presence, and once Ginny wakes up, he doesn’t feel out of place at all. She slings an arm around his shoulders, and they pass the next few hours getting steadily drunk and talking about absolutely nothing. He drinks away the ache in his muscles, and Ginny drinks away the thin veneer of sadness that she usually carries around.

“We’re never going to be together like this again, are we?” Ginny whispers in the dark, “After term ends.”

She’s already had offers from half of the professional teams in the United Kingdom, and though she hasn’t signed a contract yet, Draco knows she’s set on the Hollyhead Harpies. She’s just waiting on the final details, including what date she’ll have to report to training.

“No.”

“Sometimes I wish we could live in last summer forever, even though it was shit.”

Draco smiles, “Me too.”

But he knows that Ginny’s right. It’ll never be like that again, not really. He still has no idea what he’s going to do after Hogwarts, but he has this inescapable feeling that going back to Crawley Down would be like trying to fall back asleep and continue a dream that’s already over.

“I’m going to miss you,” Ginny sighs into his shoulder.

Eventually, he has to make the mad dash to the dungeons without getting caught. Curfew has become increasingly relaxed, but he’d still get in a lot of trouble for wandering around the castle in the middle of the night while obviously intoxicated. The riskiest stretch is the stairs. There’s nowhere to hide when you’re stuck on a moving staircase.

It’s on the stairs that he runs into Harry, who is presumably going up to the common room. Harry peers at him in the low light, takes a sniff, and recoils a bit.

“Draco,” he says, scandalized, “Are you drunk?”

“No,” Draco answers honestly. He’s a little tipsy, but definitely not drunk.

Harry sighs, “Why don’t I believe you?”

“Probably because I smell awful. That’s not my fault, though. Ginny spilled her firewhisky on me.”

Draco leans back against the railing of the stairs and waits for it to stop moving. It’s making him a little queasy. He’s always gotten motion sickness easily, unless he’s on a broom. He threw up on the train to Hogwarts his first year.

The stairs click into place, and Draco starts to descend. Harry follows him.

“Are you going to go back to following me around everywhere?”

He’s thinking about what Hermione said, about Harry changing his mind every day, and he’s wondering if Harry is still unsure. Not about whether or not Draco is a Death Eater, just… Hermione hadn’t understood him until recently. Maybe Harry doesn’t really know what to make of him either.

Harry reaches out to catch his elbow, “No. I’m just making sure you get back to your common room alright.”

“Oh. That’s very nice of you. You’re one of the nicest people I’ve ever met, you know.”

“I don’t know about that,” Harry says softly.

“You are. Even though you’re sad right now.”

Harry shifts to take more of Draco’s weight. The line of his body is warm and solid against Draco’s side, “I’m not sad.”

“It won’t last forever, promise. I thought I’d never be happy again but I am. It happens all the time.”

Harry doesn’t really respond, and the conversation is seemingly over. Draco can’t imagine ever getting sick of this. He knows it doesn’t mean anything- Harry is selfless, good, in a way that Draco is not- but it’s still nice. It feels like eating a warm dinner, sinking into a hot bath. His limbs are heavy, in a good way, and he knows that Harry has him. He’s not going to fall.

Harry doesn’t keep his word about taking Draco to the common room. Instead, he takes Draco all the way to his dorm and deposits him on his bed. Draco remembers the lightning bolt carved into the frame too late, but Harry doesn’t notice it. He’s too focused on taking Draco’s shoes off and Conjuring a glass. He casts an Augmenti, makes Draco drink it, then casts it again.

“That’s for the morning, alright?”

Draco nods. He doesn’t think he could speak, even if he knew what to say.

“Goodnight, Draco.”

***

Draco sits by the lake, staring out at the endless expanse of water. It’s not really endless, and he knows it, but his vision is no longer good enough to see the other side so he imagines that the rest of the world doesn’t exist.

Only him, and the rocky beach, and the water.

Distantly, he can hear footsteps behind him. Harry’s distinctive scent, sandalwood and cloves and vanilla, washes over him as Harry lowers himself to the ground beside Draco.

“I think I owe you an apology,” he says, and the words are so startling, so incomprehensible, that Draco jerks violently.

His heart is already racing, mind telling him this is a trap, “Pardon?”

Harry sighs and drifts back, laying down and looking up at the sky, “I didn’t know.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Potter.”

“I haven’t brought it up, because Hermione said you might not want an apology and I felt like I owed you that much, but Draco…” he sits up again. Draco won’t look at him, but he can sense Harry’s restless movement, “I can’t keep not talking about it.”

“Hermione was right.”

He’s going to be sick. He doesn’t want Harry to say sorry. He can’t actually think of anything worse. It’s one thing to know that he didn’t deserve the treatment, it’s another to have someone actually say it. To have Harry say it.

“For sixth year, at least-”

“Does it matter?”

He looks at Draco with a strange expression, somewhere between confused and frustrated, “Of course it does. I almost killed you.”

Draco shrugs, “Like you said, you didn’t know I wasn’t really a Death Eater.”

“Even if you weren’t just acting on Dumbledore’s orders, and you really were a Death Eater, I’d still regret doing it. And what I meant was, I didn’t know what the spell did, when I used it.”

“I’m not upset about it,” Draco says, “If that’s any consolation.”

“It’s not.”

There’s a long silence, and then Harry manages to find something worse to say.

“I saw them. The scars I left. Last night, when I took you back to your dorm, your shirt rode up. I saw them.”

“Please. You don’t need to do this.”

“Look at me?”

Draco does, because he can’t say no to Harry. Harry’s eyes are so, so green. Right now, they’re sad and tired and a little desperate. He has the sudden thought that maybe Harry needs to do this, the same way Draco needed to sweat out the pain of last summer.

“I’m sorry,” Harry says, and then waits for a while before he says anything else, “I wouldn’t have used it if I knew what it did. I already had serious doubts about how much you wanted to be doing what I thought you were doing, and when I found out that you had been on our side all along… it made perfect sense to me. I know that you were never the person I thought you were in the first place, and you certainly weren’t then.”

He takes a breath and breaks eye contact. Draco can feel hot tears building behind his eyes and he tries to hold them off, but he can’t.

“I know that crucio wouldn’t have hit. I know you didn’t mean it.”

Draco cries. He cries for a long time, and when he’s done, Harry is still there, still sitting beside him on the lake shore. He feels raw in the worst way. He doesn’t understand why Harry couldn’t have just left him alone, and for the very first time, he thinks he hates him. He hates Harry Potter.

So he tells him, “I hate you.”

“Would it be easier, if you did?” Harry asks, voice soft.

Draco laughs, and it’s wet and grating, but it’s genuine, “No, I don’t think it would. Couldn’t you have just listened to Hermione?”

“Eh, I think we’re at the point where there’s not much left we can do to hurt each other.”

If only that were true. Draco peeks over at Harry, and he’s surprised to find that Harry is looking at him too, with warmth and understanding and kindness. There’s always been something contradictory about Harry’s eyes, a steadiness at odds with how wild his body and his magic are. It feels dangerous, like a beast on a chain. His wand is out, just resting in his loose grip. Draco realizes, with a start, that it’s his. It’s the wand that Draco got at Ollivander’s when he was eleven, the wand that he handed to Harry during the final battle, the wand that killed Voldemort.

He shivers.

“I don’t know why I haven’t given it to you,” Harry says, rolling the wand between his hands, “It’s been eating at me, a little.”

And then he stills, face conflicted, and slowly extends it towards Draco.

Draco shakes his head, horrified, “I don’t want it.”

“But-”

“No.”

Harry laughs, but it’s an awful, painful thing, “I don’t understand.”

Draco can’t explain himself. He likes that the last thing he did with it, with the wand that had seen so much death and darkness, was hand it over. He likes that no matter what else happens, no matter where life takes them, there will always be a part of Draco there in the knobby wood, forever waiting to be called upon, ready to serve.

Though it’s not enough, not enough to quell the insistent demand for more, not enough to slake his thirst, it’s a small comfort.

“I don’t understand why I-” Harry pulls the words from inside himself, and it doesn’t sound easy, “I think it would have killed me, maybe, to give it back. I can’t… I haven’t used another wand, even though I feel guilty every time I pick it up, thinking of you without your wand. Mine broke, while we were on the run, and it was like losing a part of myself, and I knew I was making you feel that way, but I just couldn’t let it go.”

Draco lowers his head until it’s almost between his knees, “I gave it to you. You should keep it. I’m not sure if it would even respond to me now, and I had to get a new one before last term anyways.”

He could obsess over what it means. He could spend every waking moment thinking about Harry reaching for the wand when he needs something, about it becoming a part of him.

But he sees the waves coming, and he lets them crash over him, and then he lets them wash back out to sea. The unpredictable torrents of emotion haven’t stopped, but they don’t bowl him over anymore. He knows how to keep his footing. He knows how to keep himself from drowning.

There will always be a line that connects them, that tugs at Draco’s heart, but he’s stronger than the pull of it.

[karume-selfshipper]

Zora May: Role Swapping

Despite Selatoh's everything being deep-seated in her position as Sidon's (slightly) younger twin sister, I thought I'd attempt some Role Swapping with Sidon, Ledo, and Tottika (Sage Selatoh + Queen Selatoh, Architect/Artist Selatoh, and Guard/Soilder Selatoh).

But first, some (establishing) Zora monarchy headcanons:

Zora monarchies put a lot of emphasis on female Zora and first born succession. Typically heirs to the throne are female unless a male Zora is born/choosen to take the throne.

As well as where a (royal/noble) Zora couple resides is typically where the female Zora feels most at home. Though some rare cases exist (e.g. Sidon and Yona)

When it comes to other races (Rito, Goron, Gerudo, Hylian, etc) the non Zora partner is typically expected to reside in the domain as *most* of the homelands are a little too hostile for Zora to reside in.

Mipha courting Link was completely allowed (not just because King Dorephan said so) because Link was royal/noble adjacent (holding a prestigious title within the Hylian army)

Zora nobles/royals that don't fall to the heir spot are given much more of a free hand in who they choose as a partner

That said, the main part of Selatoh Exists AU (what I tend to call OC inclusion) King Dorephan took into account how much pressure Selatoh would be under from her own people and chose to crown Sidon instead.

Queen Selatoh + Sage Selatoh (Sidon/Seltaoh) A.K.A. the AU where King Dorephan put the rules over his daughter's mental/emotional wellbeing. (He knows how much pressure this all is especially when Selatoh looks like Mipha)

Selatoh is so much more introverted, reserved, and distant because she doesn't want to put anything on anyone (but especially Sidon) despite others constantly offering to help

Yona and Sidon have discussed at length their situation and Yona choose to relocate to Hyrule despite coming from a more tropical domain

During the torrential rains (BotW) Selatoh would often go out scouting as far as she could for a Hylian, one time tiring herself out and washing up near Luralin Village

Sidon was the one who helped Link get close to Vah Ruta because Selatoh was recovering from helping Link get close to the Lynel

Post Vah Ruta, Ionis (Zora prince from a deep-sea domain) arrived in Zora's Domain. Selatoh and Ionis met during the 100 years post-initial Calamity and were betrothed due to their redisent natures

Ionis is barely able to survive outside of the water, unless it rains heavily or late at night. The rest of the time he stays in Selatoh's private chambers (not comfortable in the communal pools) or under the Domain in as much shade as he can be

During the Domain cleaning/constructing Mipha's Court, Ionis and Selatoh attempted to get close with one another but Selatoh had to step up and prove herself as a leader. (Though she still allowed Sidon to egg her into leaping off Shatterback Mountain)

Neither Selatoh or Ionis were comfortable with a lavendar marriage.

Despite their reluctance to share a pool (bed) they did so anyway because there was no other options. That's how Ionis discovered that Selatoh drifts in her sleep (specifically drifts toward other Zora/living things) in a deep-seated, subconscious desire to be held and/or comforted by others

After getting over the initial shock of how sudden the act was, Ionis finds it very cute (especially when Selatoh wakes up and apologizes for drifting into him)

Ionis (and Octupi/Squid Zora in general I guess) tends to curl his headfins (tentacles) around his partner's/loved one's head fin(s), something Selatoh had to get used to... especially when she would go to Ionis for quiet comfort during her highest stress periods

After maybe the third or fourth time Selatoh went to Ionis for comfort, she was used to/okay with Ionis' displays of affection/attempts to comfort

After the Upheaval, the sludge raining down, and her Father going missing, Selatoh couldn’t help but feel as if everything was crashing around her fins

That's when Ionis really started lurking under the Domain in daylight hours, to help keep an eye on Selatoh and be close enough that she wouldn't have to go marching through the upper chambers and peel so far away from her responsibility just for a couple seconds of comfort (he knows she feels absolutely awful and selfish for even thinking about doing so and at least being just under the Domain she's still very close to everyone else)

At one point, Yona gets (somewhat) rightfully aggressive with Selatoh over how hard Sidon is working to purify the Domain's water supply. To which Selatoh very coldly reminds Yona that she has no actual power within the Domain because of who is in charge. Reminding her that Sidon has been volunteering his time and effort to aid the Domain however he can, as she should be doing. Before softening and agreeing that Sidon is doing too much and that she (Selatoh) wishes he wouldn't be so hard-headed about helping as much as he does.

Link is standing right there and both Zora know it, Sidon is in the background and heard everything (they did NOT know this)

However, with the situation mostly smoothed over, Sidon left things alone until he and Yona were alone (that same night) and told her (Yona) why he was doing this and being so stubborn. (Fear about losing their Father, worry over Selatoh growing distant with him, and a little PTSD from the Calamity).

Sidon also asks that Yona doesn't get aggressive with Selatoh again, it hurts his heart to see his beloved fighting with his sister.

Selatoh walks with Sidon, Yona, and Link to Mipha's Court, Yona making an attempt to apologize for the day before. Selatoh appreciates and accepts the apology but tells Yona not to worry about it (happ Sidon) right before the Muztorock Jr. Drops out of the sky.

Both Sidon and Selatoh help Link fight the sludge creature, and despite Selatoh not being the best with water manipulation, she's able to create several water versions of Zora Spears and Silverscale Spears (with one Lightscale Trident directly in front) as an offensive sheild around Link

After making the vow to Link, as a Sage, Selatoh's Armor (her Sage ability) produces the same ring of Spears and Lightscale Trident around Link. These fire off in all directions at waist height.

As the Domain itself purifies, King Dorephan returns, and Selatoh is crowned Queen, she finally gets a chance to relax.

The night she is crowned Queen, Ionis congratulates her, praising her strength and lowkey hyping her up as a good ruler while she's just trying to apologize for pushing him to the side and not being able to have the conversations she promised.

Ionis reminds her that there's plenty of time and he isn't going anywhere. Selatoh lets the realization of everything Ionis has been doing to make things easier for her and hugs him tightly while laughing/giggling.

They wind up teasing each other, being affectionate, and acting like a pair of love-sick children until they fall asleep.

.

Architech/Artist Selatoh (Ledo/Selatoh)

The distant artist/architect with the deeply moving artist pieces that feel like there's life held within (even if its just a pillar)

Trained under both Seggin and Dento so can also fix up weapons if need be

Instead of crimson and muted navy, she's a darker green with very faint markings. Instead of a Hammerhead shark, she's a bass/trout looking Zora

Prince Ledo takes note of her work and is among the first to recommend her for projects

Her scars are from a lack of resources to fix up the Domain. She had gone off to a known massive source of Luminous Stones that was infested with Lizalfos.

Ledo had followed her, without her knowledge, and jumped in to save her.

Afterward he didn't say anything, just made sure the two of them got to the Domain safely, then secretly took a small platoon to clear out the cave and quietly dropped all the ore on her work station.

Selatoh had a sneaking suspicion that Prince Ledo was the one who retrieved the ore and used the leftovers to carve him a tiny Luminous Stone heart and quietly left it where only Ledo would be able to find it.

The two of them slowly get closer over the course of BotW and TotK just by Selatoh being nearby, having a unique perspective on things, and the way her artwork makes him feel

.

Guard/Soilder Selatoh (Tottika/Selatoh)

A much sterner, fierce, protective Selatoh who manages to rise through the ranks to second in command to Bazz

She looks more like a piranha, darker navy blue with thin green-yellow markings, small, sharp teeth, and small ear flaps (side head fins?)

As second in command, she's usually near Prince Sidon and Tottika. Same as Bazz, though the obviously quiet one that rarely talks.

Not that Sidon or Tottika don't try, Selatoh just keeps her distance and gives short, simple, yet ultimately polite answers.

And yet Selatoh is the first to jump between either prince and any dangerous situation

Tottika is the reason that Selatoh has her scars. When she jumped between him and a Lizalfos that snuck up on them

While Tottika wanted to apologize for the incident, Selatoh dismissed it as part of her job

However, when sludge was raining from the sky, Selatoh shoved him out of the way. Something Tottika goes out of his way to apologize and take care of Selatoh in order to make up for her getting hurt on his behalf.

Again gestures that Selatoh attempts to wave down, saying she was just doing her job and he doesn't need to worry about her, gestures that she appreciated greatly; but actions that Tottika wouldn't stop for anything

He eventually got Selatoh to open up out of sheer determination. Finding that she is constantly worried that she isn't as good as others tell her, that she won't be able to help in a key moment, that she will fail and somehow ruin things for the entire Domain

After listening to her over the course of three months, Tottika fell hard, finding her attempts to shoulder as much as she does and shove her emotions down to be both extremely noble and tragic

[thewaywardbirdsnest]

Forgetting Something?

It was one of those mornings where Zoro’s brain felt like sludge, moving through his routine in a haze of mechanical movements because he was far too sleepy for anything more than bare minimum effort. The timing of his alarm could not have been worse - he had been dreaming deeply (of what? He had no clue) and the abrasive beeping had dragged him out of it. He was definitely going to need to stop for coffee on his way to class.

As he opened the front door to leave, a familiar voice caught his attention: “Hey, moss-for-brains, you forgetting something?”

Zoro turned around to find Sanji peeking out from the kitchen with a smug smirk on his face. Ah, right, how could he forget to kiss his boyfriend goodbye? With a soft, sleepy smile, he doubled back. He reached up to cup Sanji’s cheek and leaned in to peck him on the lips.

Sanji’s cheeks went pink, mouth agape and eyes wide.

“I… uhm… I m-meant these,” he stammered, holding up Zoro’s keys.

Why did he look so embarrassed?

The gears in Zoro’s head started to come unstuck and clicked once, twice, three times.

Oh, shit.

So, that’s what he had been dreaming about.

In the waking world, Sanji was not, in fact, his boyfriend. He was his pain-in-the-ass roommate who, yes, Zoro had a massive crush on but, no, did not reciprocate it (well, at least as far as Zoro could tell). Zoro felt heat creep up his face and his mouth go dry. When he replayed this scene later in his head, he imagined he must have looked like some sort of tropical fish, bright red and mouth opening and closing uselessly as he floundered for words.

“Uh… I… I’msorrythanksbye!”

He plucked the keys out of Sanji’s hand and hightailed it out the door.

He couldn’t concentrate on anything in class that day. All three lectures went in one ear and out the other. He didn’t know if he was upset or relieved that Sanji didn’t text or call. Was he going to have to move out? Christ, could he even afford that right now?

Unfortunately, the will of the universe seemed to be conspiring against him because he has a paper due tomorrow and his laptop was in his room. He’ll just have to cross his fingers and hope Sanji had gone out or is in his room. As he approaches the landing of their floor, Zoro smells baked goods. Oh, this is not good. Sanji was stress-baking.

When he enters their apartment, he spies a couple cooling racks set up on their coffee table. Sanji has already covered every surface in the kitchen - counters, the table, the collapsible baker’s rack he had bought for these occasions. This was bad.

He would have to pass the kitchen in order to get to his room. Maybe if he was quick enough, Sanji wouldn’t even notice him.

Okay, 3… 2…

And then Sanji steps out of the kitchen.

Well, so much for that plan.

“Oh, uh… hey,” Sanji says, not meeting Zoro’s eye.

“Hi,” Zoro replies. He’s suddenly not sure what to do with his hands, for some reason. He settles on shoving them in his pockets.

There’s an awkward silence before Sanji blurts out: “I made the matcha cookies you like!”

Zoro’s face flushes and he shifts his weight from foot to foot. “Oh! Uhm… thanks!”

Silence again.

“I’m gonna…” Zoro awkwardly points over Sanji’s shoulder towards their rooms. “I have a paper to write.”

“Oh! Yeah, sorry.”

Sanji shuffles out of his way, back into the kitchen.

This is awful.

Zoro stalks down the hall to his room. He tries to focus on his paper, but mostly he just stares blankly at his laptop screen, trying to think of what he should do about this mess. Luffy would probably let him sleep on his couch for as long as he wanted to, right?

He’s dragged out of his head when there’s a knock on his door. Well, there’s only one person that could be. He steels himself and gets up to answer it.

Sanji’s apron is covered in flour. He’s got a smudge of chocolate on his cheek (Zoro tries really hard not to think about how cute that is). By Sanji’s own standards he’s a bit of a mess right now.

“I want a do-over,” he demands.

What?

“A… do-over?” Zoro echoes.

“Yeah,” Sanji insists. “I want a better kiss than that pathetic little peck from this morning.”

Zoro’s head is swimming. He can’t mean that, can he?

“So?” Sanji goads him, leaning in to the idea so he doesn’t lose his nerve. “Earth to mosshead!”

Zoro shakes himself out of his stupor. As hard as this is to believe, he is not going to miss out on this. Nervously, he steps forward and lifts one hand to caress Sanji’s jaw while the other comes to rest on Sanji’s hip.

The kiss that Sanji will come to tell everyone was their “real first kiss ‘cause that first one was bullshit” is soft, a little tentative, warm, and tastes like sugar and spices from all the baked goods Sanji had been sampling that day. When they part, Zoro gives Sanji a lopsided grin and asks, “Better, curly?”

“Yeah,” Sanji replies, a little breathless.

“Sanji, I—“

“You’ve got a paper to write, yeah?” Sanji interrupts him. “You should finish it. I’ll clean up, get dinner started. And then we can, uh… we can talk. About this. Okay?”

“Okay,” Zoro agrees. Sanji leans in for one more kiss before turning to head back to the kitchen.

Zoro has never written a paper so fast in his entire academic career.

[callsignbaphomet]

Last night C and I went to this small event where local bands play and artists can setup pop ups to sell their merch.

We've been going since the second one, the sessions as they call them, started this year and they're pretty fun. They're actually organized by the same lady that runs the Odin's Court shop where we go to buy band shirts and concert tickets. She's very involved in the local metal scene and she wanted to get bands together to play for people and every session the events get bigger and bigger. Last night's featured sludge metal bands. I ain't into that sub-genre but as backgrounds sounds it's neat.

It's actually pretty cool that Thora, the owner of the store and event organizer, actually recognizes C and me. We asked about some tickets for a show on mid-December but they haven't gone on sale yet which is kinda weird but hey we have a whole month till the show.

And Soen is coming on February of next year, we're definitely going to that one!

Anyway, as usual C likes to spoil so we went from pop up to pop up and said to pick whatever I wanted. We always stop at Thora's first where he got a C 'cause Thora started making shirts for the events and C really wanted it. He also wanted stickers so he went sticker hunting.

Here's what he got me. He always tells me to grab whatever I want but I don't like to abuse.

Slayer shirt because! Most of my closet is full of band shirts lol.

Tiny crochet froggies! I couldn't decide on which color to pick so C told me to grab both. Honestly, they were priced way too low for crochet products.

Okay, this keychain is all sorts of adorable! This was from a pop up owned by a local furry! They even had part of their fursuit, the head. A skelly canine and the mouth even moved when they spoke. They didn't put it on 'cause the humidity was fucking nuts. Their fursonas are so fucking cute and best of all all of them are canines.

There is no one braver than fursuiters that live in the tropics. Seriously. White dads, don't let anyone talk shit, you're actually right, the humidity WILL get you.

Anyway, we talked for a bit and C got me that super cute keychain, he got himself a crow skull keychain and a really cute sticker. The art was so fucking cute and the artist was a sweetheart. I fucking love furries, I adore them! Wanted to stay and chat more but C spotted some stuff he wanted to look at so we went on our way. Not pictured were the cookie and brownie we bought and ate. Fine, it probably made my blood sugar go into the stratosphere but it was so worth it!

That's what we were up to last night. Really love the crowds that gather. It's a lot of fun plus it's a pet friendly event plus safe for us LGBTQ+, some of the people in the goth scene also flock to these events and even coordinate with this section of the metal scene. Through their Instagrams we've discovered some neat places to visit which are very geared towards queer people so we wanna check out some places and events.

[clatterbane]

Redneck Brewing #20: Tropical Jubilee Wine

Hard to believe that I am up to small "artisanal" batch #20 by now, honestly. And only two of those have needed to go straight down the sink so far.

But, today's folly is another extra-simple storebought juice approach, following directly in the footsteps of the Sea Dyke which I just bottled up a little while ago!

We got another grocery delivery this evening, which included this carton of what is evidently a 50th anniversary special edition tropical blend. A tropical taste celebration, according to the label! (How does this vary from their usual tropical version? I haven't tried either one yet.)

Ingredients:

I am a little concerned about the orange juice content there, btw, after seeing enough people report less than appealing results from commercial orange juice. But, we'll see.

At any rate, it seemed like a reasonable idea to just leave it out of the fridge, and get it going pretty much straight away in the Sea Dyke bottle. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

That will be the second time that I have reused that same yeast colony, which will actually be a first here. I'm cutting back some on added yeast nutrients for this batch, under the idea that there are most likely enough of their fallen comrades left in the sludge to keep our friendly cannibalistic microbes reasonably happy already. Just keeping this simple with some added sugar, and a smidge of extra nutrition for insurance.

[weisskalt]

Some of our releases from Tropical Sludge, Ap Ducal and Mosaic Runes are featured on Grey Clay Radio, curated by musician and sound designer Thébru Čelet / Disorganism. Link below to check out their radio, news, affiliates and cool sonic obscurities.

[spiderh0rse]

freeman's mind notes part 4 e16-20

e16

a vip (self declared)

thinks they should let the aliens eat explosives

the tentacle in the rocket silo is the scariest thing he's ever seen

incorrect Nietzsche quote (deeper sleep fans rise up)

drummers = monsters

thinks Nietzsche could have been in a band once

whistling FOUR. Five????

hang glider fan

rnd would get a big bonus at some point if the military state becomes the reality

finds the zombies worse than online degrees

whistling FIVE. likes Mario.

whistling SIX also Mario, different song

"future wife" duuuude I don't think youre getting a wife

the sewers are not buries treasure location

his ideal mansion will involve visitors being shot as soon as they knock

star wars reference Again

woodshop in high school almost ended in his expulsion

would eat the aliens

e17

has considered spitting on giant machines twice now

wind knocked out of him by the fan to ceiling impact

wasn't expecting to fly today

respects deaths in rocket testing

sad when oxygen isn't oxycodone

likes pushing buttons

wants to level a lawsuit against black mesa

wants to vacation somewhere tropical

wants to ride a sea turtle to menace cruise ships

would name his sea turtle a "nice gender-neutral name" like Flippy or Whiskers

doesn't consider most reptiles dangerous

has always wanted a robot army. the robot coolness strikes again

not good at parkour

grappling hook mentioned Again. he wants one! or a harpoon!

compares himself to a monkey and hates on earth gravity in the same breath

purportedly Not an adrenaline junkie

shaking after crossing the Blast Pit grating jumps.

vaguely implies he's going crazy

I'M BACK IN THE GODDAMN BUILDING AGAIN

SNOT MONSTER moans are what he'll be thinking about tonight

ordering a grappling hook once he's out

e18

would jump extreme heights into water for big splash

fairy-agnostic

He's sun wukong? A monkey god?

simian skills o7

half life mention title drop woooo

"nyyyyeeeeeewww" :D

whistle count SEVEN

admits that stuff here (falling mostly) is scary

"life sucks sober" YOU HAD. TWO SHOTS OF VODKA ON AN EMPTY STOMACH THIS MORNING. admittedly not a ton i retract my objection he's probably got a high tolerance

sometimes goes down the wrong corridor

cuts off a thought to yell "WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE :D"

wants a giant metal spider fortress

the dial....

stresses to a dial that he has a DOCTOR'S DEGREE

e19

compares black mesa to a giant beast

would LOVE a massive tomb. pyramid for him please

"it's me" sick FNAF refe

WHAT ARE THESE NOISES OUT OF YOUR MOUTH.

pain is a constant yes

doesn't consider himself afraid of heights

actually yeah tentacle sounds (loud metal noises) being unpleasant is a consistent trait here. Loud noises bad. (This, beeping of eye scanners, gunshot in the vent)

reel to reel computers..... PUNCH CARDS

BURN BABY BURN

e20

first title card leadup! techno hell room

bad smelllllllll

has made hella strong pillow forts with plaster of paris. pissed his mother off doing so

worn condition grenades are probably not as safe as you hope

he sounds so excited at the idea of going somewhere possibly not terrible

admits if a giant monster that the rocket didn't kill looked all angry at him he'd curl up and cry

bad smell TWO

References his cannonball drop statement from earlier

cons: starving to death alone, pros: could be fun. He does it. Sir. I know he's not okay by now but DUDE PLEASE. STOP WILLINGLY CURLING UP TO DIE

"YEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"

shit lung capacity. I've swam further without breathing in more time and been okay. Lllllll

concerned at the green sludge river

cancer mentioned third time

mmmmm radiation,,,,,

liked Austria

turnwheel Used

used to pass people in tube slides as a kid. Would sometimes get wedged in

"nyeeeew"

knees starting to hold up a bit better

[cloudcountry]

im bored so give me a mushroom to draw and maybe some facts on it

THAT IS SUCH A CREEPY PICTURE HELP ME

you should draw the octopus stinkhorn 👁️

its also called devil's fingers (not to be confused with dead man's fingers!!) because of it's red color and apparently its STINKS (no surprise here.)

its also apparently edible? and non toxic? and it grows very well in the tropics!! it kinda does what the rafflesia does when its ready to reproduce, and by that i mean it covers itself in a brown sludge that smells like rotting meat to trick flies into spreading its spores.

yikes.

[chuchuanart]

What fillings did you use for the cupcakes? They look really good :D

ahh, i realize i put it on the fr thread, but not on my tumblr post!! T wT my apologies, these are the fillings i made:

ice - peppermint marshmallow powdered snow shadow - sticky blackberry sludge wind - breezy key lime whipped cream water - tropical coconut lemon lime "seafoam" nature - smooth, floral matcha buttercream light - delicate honeyed cream cheese lightning - energizing coffee dark chocolate ganache fire - warm cinnamon white chocolate ganache arcane - magical sugar crystals!! plague - strawberry/raspberry wyrmwound soup earth - crunchy chocolate peanut butter

[caltropspress]

FEEDBACK LOOP #14: Voodoo Macbeth: Armand Hammer's "Windbreaker"

…Each new morn / New widows howl, new orphans cry, new sorrows / Strike heaven on the face…

—Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Macbeth (1623)

They use me wrong, so I sing this song to this day.

—Nas, “I Gave You Power” (1996)

1.

Once upon a time, woods “had a gun once.” “Windbreaker” is woods’ adaptation of Shakespeare’s tragedie Macbeth. Stories retold and resold—twice the first time, like Saul Williams once said. Not until you’ve listened to Rakim on a rocky mountaintop have you heard hip-hop. And not until you’ve staged Shakespeare in a sludge-slicked 150th Street Harlem sewer have you heard hip-hop either. A young Orson Welles directed what became known as Voodoo Macbeth on behalf of the WPA’s Federal Theatre Project in 1936. Featuring a full African-American cast, the play took place in a quasi-Haitian setting complete with tropical-cum-skeletal stage design—palm fronds and bone altars. We live in Storyville where the population density reaches hypersensitive levels and the murder police can’t keep up with the homicides. (Meanwhile, the Second Witch busies herself with “Killing swine” [1.3.2] in Macbeth.) We’ve been here before, before. Slick Rick’s “Children’s Story” (1988) told us to bite our tongues, that this ain’t funny so don’t you dare laugh, it’s just another case about the wrong path. He warned, in a playful and pajamaed manner: “Straight and narrow or your soul gets cast.”

2.

“Windbreaker” is a [re]mixture in the witches/bitches brew of Nas’s “I Gave You Power” (1996), too. The power, you could guess, is a wily one capable of possession. “Possession” in a legal sense—nine-tenths of the law and so forth; possession of a firearm [see: S. Carter, B. Sigel, Shyne, et al.]—but also the possession the gun holds over its owner. Those finding themselves possessed by the gun—a weapon which “made you buckwild,” in Nas’s terms—should brace for berserk behavior modifications. We can splice together epileptic seizures and Santería and call it spirit possession just the same. The possession is pervasive—everywhere. The ubiquity of guns in the collective imagination takes up serious real estate—we’re talkin’ eminent domain land grabs—and Nas’s psyche is no exception:

I was around a lot of guns then. Guns were in my sleep, in my car, in my home. Guns were on my person, guns were on my friends. That’s how much they were around. There was so much around me that I rapped about it. It’s crazy to think about that today, but it was my reality. It was in my head 24/7.

“Windbreaker” functions as an exorcism of that exact sentiment.

3.  RECKLESS WHAT

Blow wind! Come wrack!

—Shakespeare, Macbeth (5.5.58)

The wind forebodes. woods gets handed the gun “late night, right on the porch,” and it must be windbreaker weather. woods’ jacket rustles in the gusts. “I’ll give thee a wind” (1.3.12), the Second Witch says to the First, and the “wind” she refers to is what the witches bestow upon each other to exact revenge. woods, though, breaks their wind (true to the song’s title and his heroic epithet, likely). He’s not susceptible to their marshy shufflings, their murky hells. He “speak[s] things strange” (1.2.52-53), as Lennox says of the worthy Thane of Ross.

But the winds are everywhere (like guns)—they be blowin’ like Maceo Parker in a buhloone mindstate. They blow the horrid deed in every eye and “tears shall drown the wind” (1.7.24-25). Word to the RZA and Wendy Rene: after the laughter comes the tearz. But the winds swirl and cyclone and gyre skyward. woods, “like a naked newborn babe,” survives by “Striding the blast” (1.7.21-22) as a cherubim might, riding the breeze. He’s Kong learning to stop worrying and love da bomb. He straddles and hoots and hollers from the hydrogen missile. A hard acid reign’s a-gonna fall [RIP to Gajah].

Of Macbeth’s poor murderers, the second says: “I am one… / Whom the vile blows and buffets of the world / Hath so incensed that I am reckless what / I do to spite the world” (3.1.121-124). Shakespeare knows the sway of poverty over moral decisions, like the Apothecary in Romeo and Juliet whose “poverty, but not [his] will consents” to selling illegal, poisonous drugs to Romeo. woods gets beat back by the gale-force winds, but he bests those “buffets of the world.” Everything’s for sale except for the Beaufort scale.

4.  YO-HO-HO

The gun, in the case of “Windbreaker,” is equivalent to Robert Louis Stevenson’s Black Spot. That is to say, the song isn’t so much a billy woods metanarrative as a twice-told tale of Billy Bones in Treasure Island (1883). Passed from pirate to pirate, the Black Spot is a black-sided death sentencing, a Last Judgment on a scrap of paper. Biblical bad luck. A Book of Revelation back-page pressed into a fist. Maritime connotations aside, the Black Spot signals that it’s marring time, so make yourself scarce or knuckle up.

woods claims to have only had the gun “for about a month,” and he was none too keen on keeping it. The gun, we assume, had traveled many travails and trials, tribulations too; that it had “been in the hands of mad thugs,” as Nas puts it. Mad meaning “many” but also “crazed” and “deranged.” Mad like diaries maintained by gravediggaz. Pick, sickle, and shovel-wielding men. The gun, the “brandished steel, / Which smoked with bloody execution” (1.2.19-20) is bequeathed to woods as it was to so many others. Less a gift than a curse. “Sick of the blood,” Nas-as-gun raps, “Sick of wrath of the next man’s grudge.” This gun—like any gun, perhaps—is one that harbors a self-consciousness. Maybe it is the guns that kill people, personified with malevolence [male violence].

Unlike countless others, woods doesn’t choose to use the gun to cement his masculinity. As Macbeth tells his wife, woods is already man enough, and “who dares do more is none” (1.7.52)—a negation of that manhood. Overkill, let’s call it. Mac daddies and MAC-10s: Nas is like the phallocentric Asian, half-man, half-guns blazing. “The barrel’s my dick,” he explains, “Uncircumcised, pull my skin back and cock me.” Macbeth, meanwhile, questions his hallucinating senses, “Is this a dagger which I see before me, / The handle toward my hand?” (2.2.44-45). The blade is bloody, possibly with menses, yet he still grapples for control: “Come, let me clutch / thee” (2.2.45-46). In doing so, he’s giving mics menstrual cycles. “The game is so irresistible to touch,” LL Cool J once said of the mic phallus, “You should see me when fiendin’ for microphones that I can clutch.” 

In a letter to his wife, Macbeth writes that he “stood rapt in wonder” (1.5.6), explaining what he witnessed held him in thrall. On the porch, billy woods is likewise “rapt withal” (1.3.60). Banquo knows “instruments of darkness tell us truths” (1.3.136). But woods is “too full o’ th’ milk of human kindness” (1.5.17) to use the gun; he doesn’t have “slaughterous thoughts” (5.5.16). And even if he does, his ignorance and mystification prevent him from reaching for the strap.

5.

A dagger of the mind, a false creation…

—Macbeth (2.2.50) 

The story told in “Windbreaker” raises questions of realities and false narratives, actual fears and imagined ones, authenticity and authorship—in short, the friction that exists between fiction and figment. woods mixes up the simulacra of hyperreality like the guy Quelle Chris knew on “PSA Drugfest 2003” that “mix[ed] up a spliff like witches with newt eye.” We’re pulled in by woods’ first-person point-of-view (“I had a gun once,” followed by a proliferation of Is) but put off by his reluctance to divulge the details. He bleep censors the name of who he “got it from.” By doing so, he protects the innocent, the guilty, and every gradation of conscience in between. The unidentified person who gives him the gun could be a peer, an elder, a mentor, a bad influence, or some combination thereof. Regardless, the nameless and faceless figure—a mysterious character, if we choose to lean into the fictitious realm—“showed [woods] how to load it” in the “same place [he] showed [woods] how to roll a blunt,” linking two illicit activities, both requiring punctilious attention to detail. Of gats and ganja; of heat and hemp. 

woods demonstrates the blurry border between fact and fiction in the scene details. The gun is handed off clandestinely under the cover of “late night,” yet the location (“right on the porch”) is indiscreet. This doubling (call it down-low and out-front) plays out anadiplotically when woods says, “[They] was speaking soft, / Soft pack of ’ports.” The sibilance of “speaking soft” suggests secrecy (if worse come to worse keep this on the hush, Lil’ Cease might say), but the point-blank alliteration of “pack of ’ports” sounds like when your guns go pow-pow (word to Big L). Furthermore, the soft pack of stoges—though its connotation implies silence—has a plastic wrapping that crinkles like a windbreaker, attracting unwanted attention.

6.

The gun given to woods is far from perfect, in fact, the weapon is “scratched and marred where the numbers was filed.” Like the bleep censors, the redaction of the serial number safeguards against snitching. But, as the pattern of the one-verse song shows, that which is criminal is liminal. Those defaced numbers, well, “you could still see ’em.” One thinks of Macbeth’s dagger cloaked in hemoglobin: “...on thy blade and dudgeon, gouts of blood” (2.1.58). One remembers Nas’s encounter with “a wrecked-up TEC with numbers on his chest that say: / 5-2-O-9-3-8-5 and zero.” The TEC yearns to confess, “hoping one day police would place where he came from, / A name or some sort of person to claim him.” But with his “serial defaced,” the TEC shares the same fate as Lady Macbeth: beyond saving. Just as doctors can’t “raze out the written troubles of [Lady Macbeth’s] brain” (5.3.52), so too can’t you resurface a scratched-off serial number. 

To include bleeped names and scratched-off serial numbers is to engage in a sort of scriptorium subterfuge. Historically, we’ve seen this in novels, as John Barth explained in “Lost in the Funhouse” (1967): “Initials, blanks, or both were often substituted for proper names in nineteenth-century fiction to enhance the illusion of reality. It is as if the author felt it necessary to delete the names for reasons of tact or legal liability. Interestingly, as with other aspects of realism, it is an illusion that is being enhanced, by purely artificial means.”

Uncertainty abounds. woods can’t even accurately identify the weapon he’s handed: “.38, .22—I’m not even sure.” It could just as well be Nas’s Desert Eagle, a “semi-auto with lead.” These redactions, this unknowingness, inevitably leads to confusion. One must forgo epistemic approaches and settle for feels. Nas’s aforementioned Desert Eagle, as an example, measures at “seven inches” and weighs “four pounds.”

7.

Emotional liftin’—please use the proper form: / Bend at the knee.

—“spongebob” (2019)

But little and heavy as a dead child. The game is the game, but the gravity of the situation increases with woods’ somber simile. That uzi, or .38, or .22— weighs a ton. But it’s the emotional weight that’s so exhausting. “Windbreaker” opens with a bevy of words with short-u sounds—words with heft, words that carry bend-at-the-knee weight: gun | once | month | blunt. A significant weight, like Biggie’s ubiquitous uh adlibs. woods throws haymakers, heaves shots. By all accounts, he’s acting “wild truculent” (as Breeze Brewin once said on “Weight” by the Indelible MC’s). woods holds the gun with “Macbeth hands,” a phrase he drops on Armand Hammer’s “Duppy.” Macbeth speaks of “dread exploits” (4.1.164), and woods works in dread[ed] talk (s/o to Velma Pollard), that Iyaric, a protest language and flexi lexicon, to ward off the weight of what violence he might have the capacity to engage in.

You show loyalty; they learn loyalty. But Macbeth disregards the value of his commander Banquo even after leading Duncan’s army alongside him. He keeps the plot to murder Banquo “from the common eye” for “sundry weighty reasons” (3.1.141-142), most of which are purely practical. The Thane of Cawdor doesn’t consider the guilty conscience he’ll have to carry. He doesn’t contemplate “that perilous stuff / Which weighs upon the heart” (5.3.54-55). woods does.

On “Heavy Water” (emphasis on the heavy—we’re talking some brine pool shit), woods told us “the play-within-the-play was G. Dep as Macbeth,” and thus hands us a key. G. Dep, who confessed to killing an innocent man seventeen years after the fact, couldn’t function under the weight of what he’d done. “I didn’t feel free and clear,” he said from prison where he’s serving 15-to-life. “Everyday I was faced with this memory, with this heinous act, that didn’t really have to happen….I had to do what I had to do to get that burden off my chest.” That burden off his chest. “Burden” from the Old English byrðen, meaning “load, weight” but also “a child.” (But little and heavy as a dead child.)

G. Dep endeavored to lift the weight off his chest, but woods prefers to hide the weight in a chest. woods secretes the gun—and his shame at even accepting it—in various places, all of which prove porous. He “had it hid under bed”—those deadweight d’s burying any misdeed deeply—but he “couldn’t sleep” like some Princess and the Piece. He’s a sensitive soul, feeling it penetrate his back leaving him black and blue all over his body. Mattress upon mattress upon mattress, and he still felt its presence. No quitter, woods seeks other unseen spots—ahem, hiding places—like “in the shed, somewhere Moms couldn’t reach.” I was made to kill, Nas rapped, and “that’s why they keep [the gun] concealed.” Nas tried to squeeze “under car seats” and sneak into clubs. By verse three of “I Gave You Power,” he’s “still stuck in the shelf with all the things that an outlaw hides.” As we see, any attempts at avoidance are mostly ineffective.

8.  THE WEÏRD TURN PRO

woods is unsettled. Who can make sense of machine gun etiquette? The man feels damned. “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t,” he raps, noticing “both shoulders had demons.” Can’t brush ’em off. As Macbeth says, “Cannot be ill, cannot be good” (1.3.144). Out, damned spot, out, I say! One. Two. (5.1.37). But the spot is blown, and Lady Macbeth can’t do a damn thing about it. She can try to sound like Biz Markie as much as she wants (“...a one-two, a one-two…”); she can make like Special Ed and fetch the Cascade, but there’s no getting those red stains off her hands.

“I was scared,” woods tells us, “’cause [redacted] heard [redacted] was tryna rob me.” But even self-defense shuffles closer to self-destruction. “I was more scared,” he explains, “when I took the gun, to be honest.” He fears both the threat on his person and the weapon intended to ward off any such maneuvers. He feels stuck: “By then, too late to say I didn’t want it.” We can assume his “dome was aching” like the man in Nas’s song who reaches for the gun, finally. woods “walked home in the darkness,” in his frantic thoughts. Somewhere along his route he was detained by “three witches on the marshes.” 

Rewind back to the beginning of the song. “And I know it better than before,” Fielded sings, “they want me to notice—even out the score.” Fielded becomes all three Weïrd Sisters in one: she turns to they. For weïrd read “fateful.” Depending on which Shakespeare folio you’re flipping through, the word is also spelled weyward and weyard. They all come from the Scottish form of wyrd, though—the Old English word for fate. The Weïrd Sisters, or witches, are tied up in some real Hussein Fatal/Fatal Hussein business. I’m pretty sure that I won’t be ready when they come through that door, Fielded sings with “the syllable of dolor” (4.3.9), evoking the lurking evil, the looming dread, that woods experiences. Fielded—whose stage-name is near-synonymous with the marshes and heaths on which the witches appear—sings of seething vengeance (“even out the score”) and simmering nervousness (“I got somebody coming for me in the night”).

Fielded, in their role as the Weïrd Sisters, is warmer to woods than Macbeth’s encounter with the witches. Fielded warns him, it sounds like, not to cross them. In an evasive move, woods goes metaphorical. He feels like a ��dinosaur in the tar pit.” He marks sharks as “all cartilage.” (The witches include “maw and gulf / Of the ravaged salt-sea shark” [4.1.24-25] in their cauldron ingredients, by the way.) Sharks for woods; scorpions for Shakes. “O, full of scorpions is my mind” (3.2.41), Macbeth moans. woods feels his “blood cold as the water is,” while Macbeth looks to the “multitudinous seas incarnadine” (2.2.80), meaning the ocean turns blood-red. The arrival of Banquo’s ghost at dinner is likened to the approach of “the rugged Russian bear, / The armed rhinoceros, or th’ Hyrcan tiger (3.4.122-123). Bears, rhinos, sharks, scorpions, and tigers…oh my!

9.  SLUMB’RY AGITATION

A heavy summons lies like lead upon me, / And yet I would not sleep…

—Banquo, Macbeth (2.1.8-9)

“Fair is foul, and foul is fair” (1.1.12-13), the witches say in unison. woods hovers through the fog and filthy air thinking, Fuck a fair one—I get mine the fast way, like Biggie on the “Flava in Ya Ear” remix from ’94. On “Halloween Fell on a Weekend,” woods was talkin’ witchy: “Fair is foul, / Awkward smile.” Nas, for the record, noted how the intrusive gun thoughts were “making every ghetto foul.”

But what’s really foul and utterly unfair—a flagrant foul, a Flagrant 2—is the sleep troubles. “I slept with no dreams,” woods raps. But his dreamless sleep is more of an insomnia. “Methought I heard a voice cry, ‘Sleep no more!” Macbeth says, turning over in the sheets to speak to himself in the third-person, “‘Macbeth does murder sleep’” (2.2.47-48). woods looks a ghost now, a somnolent wanderer: “Asleep on my feet, / Awake when niggas sleep.” The repetition of sleep at the start of one clause and at the end of the next signals the circularity of the story being told. 

We can’t help but summon Nas’s “cousin of death.” And Macduff refers to “downy sleep” as “death’s counterfeit” (2.3.88). woods is restless, “tempest-tossed” (1.3.26), enduring the night where “wicked dreams abuse / The curtained sleep (2.1.62-63). “Headlights splashed the curtains,” woods raps, and instead of sheep he’s “counting every car passin’ in the street.” He may as well be midnight marauding like Lady Macbeth with a taper. When the Doctor notes that Lady Macbeth’s “eyes are open,” the Gentlewoman clarifies that “their sense are shut” (5.1.26-27). Nas, Queensbridge-bred, opens his penthouse lids to “see some cold nights and bloody days.” If only Lady Macbeth had been as alert as Nasir Jones or billy woods.

10.  BLACK MACBETH WILL SEEM AS PURE AS SNOW

The gun, which was described as “little and heavy as a dead child” (G. Dep’s debut was called Child of the Ghetto, as fate would have it), returns to haunt us at the end of “Windbreaker.” The baby image, in Shakespeare’s terms, becomes “doubly redoubled” (1.2.42). When the hurly-burly’s done, it’s the kids who suffer. A generational pain that folds back in on itself. An inheritance of the horrific. Look around: dead babies are everywhere.

Ross speaks of Macduff’s murdered household where he discovered “babes / Savagely slaughtered” (4.3.240-241). Nas delivers a choral ode about how he, as gun, “might have took your first child.” Slick Rick rapped of “a little boy who was misled.” That boy found himself in a woods-like dilemma, calculating the consequences: I’ll do years if I pull this trigger. If not a corporeal death, a death of the spirit. 

The Weïrd Sisters promise Banquo that he’ll father kings—bank on it, they say. And so Macbeth fears Banquo’s children will be the future kings of Scotland, usurping his throne. Macbeth decides: Banquo’s gotta go. Not only his brethren-in-arms, but Banquo’s son Fleance, too. Fleance “must embrace the fate / Of that dark hour” (3.1.156-157), Macbeth determines, all in order to assure his place on the throne. When Macbeth ambushes Banquo in Act 3, Scene 3, Banquo implores his son to “fly, fly, fly” (3.3.25)—he tells him to supa fly, to supa dupa fly. To be fresh, wild, and bold, too—like the Cold Crush would advise.

woods, as Banquo, is drawn into a terminal life, a posthumous life, when he is given the gun. That hand-off arranges his end. “Banquo when I think of my kids,” he raps. “Banquo when I kiss my son in his crib.” This is the Fleance farewell. But woods is unwilling to go the way of Banquo. He doesn’t only want to save his son—he wants to save himself. “Stunningly,” Nas says, “tears fall down the eyes of these so-called tough guys.” woods rebuffs the “heavy as a dead child” gun. The only weight he wishes to feel is his son asleep in his arms.

11.  THE WOOD[S] OF BIRNAM

It felt wrong knowing niggas is waiting in Hell for him.

—Nas, “I Gave You Power”

“Here’s a knocking indeed!” remarks the Porter in Act 3, Scene 1. He considers the vocation of “porter of hell gate” and mocks the incessant knocking: “Knock, knock, knock! Who’s there, i’ / th’ name of Beelzebub?” (3.1.1-4). Careful what you ask for and be wary of the knocks you answer to. woods can knock the hustle. He’s none-too-anxious to join the mobb of “murd’ring ministers” (1.5.55) we hear about in the Scottish play or Track 4 on It Was Written. Still woods, eventually, commits to composing a kind of murda muzik—equally bloodletting and bloodshedding in its emotional registers and range. “[T]he blood-boltered Banquo smiles” (4.1.138) knowing he’s secured futures for his kids. He rests easy. It’s presupposed that the gun gives power, but on “Windbreaker” we learn that the weapon deprives us of power, leaving us with nothing to pass on but the curse.

Images:

Photograph of the Nat Karson design used to create the backdrop for the Federal Theatre Project production of Macbeth at the Lafayette Theatre, Harlem, 1936 (detail) | Opening of the Federal Theater Project production of Macbeth at the Lafayette Theatre, Harlem (1936) | Winslow Homer, Hurricane, Bahamas (1898) | Andy Warhol, Gun, black, white, and red on pink (c. 1981-82) | Ravi Zupa, Mightier Than Guns sculpture series, disassembled typewriter, stapler, and scrap metal (c. 2016) | G. Dep, Child of the Ghetto album cover, 2001 (detail) | “Macbeth visits the Weird Sisters (Three Witches) on the blasted heath,” title page by John Gilbert for an edition of Shakespeare’s works (1858–60) | Canada Lee as Banquo in the Federal Theatre Project production of Macbeth at the Lafayette Theatre, Harlem (1936) | Photograph of the Nat Karson design used to create the backdrop for the Federal Theatre Project production of Macbeth at the Lafayette Theatre, Harlem, 1936 (detail)

[musicandotherdelights]

Daily Listening, Day #1,147 - February 20th, 2023

Album: God's Country (The Flenser, 2022)

Artist: Chat Pile

Genre: Noise Rock, Sludge Metal

Track Listing: 

"Slaughterhouse"

"Why"

"Pamela"

"Wicked Puppet Dance"

"Anywhere"

"Tropical Beaches, Inc."

"The Mask"

"I Don't Care If I Burn"

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Favorite Song: "Anywhere"

[mewwile]

As much as I despise the humid heat and conservative atmosphere

I must admit the nature really goes off... Ive seen so many turtles and lizards and even a frog and dragonflies and cool sub tropical trees...

If not for the blazing heat turning me into sludge I would be out there every day looking at the multitude of delightful critters.

Look at this man. I was walking in the woods and this man is just out there! Living his life!!!! Goddamn!!!!!!

if god is real then explain the state of georgia