#an au for the weekend
A Harry Potter/ASOIAF AU
2014. The horrors of the second war against Voldemort lie almost forgotten. The wizarding world has grown complacent in its peace. Very little has changed, though those who fought in the war swore they would change the world when they had won. The post-war reforms that once aimed to redistribute power to prevent the abuse of power by Ministers of Magic have only served to weaken the Ministry, while creating a powerful bureaucracy with a mind of its own. In the vacuum caused by the downfall of the Malfoy family, the purebloods squabble for power and influence while Andromeda Tonks struggles to keep the Ministerial position out of the grabbing hands of the unscrupulous and the unworthy, of those who would seek to run Britain to the ground for their own profit.
But the worst is still yet to come.
Over the channel in France, Draco Malfoy has married Astoria Greengrass, the youngest of the Greengrass family heirs. Sick of the long years of his exile, Draco persuades his father-in-law Mars Greengrass to find a way to bring him back into England so he can reclaim the Malfoy family lands and assets - and rebuild the Malfoy empire from scratch. With his father-in-law’s connections - a network spread right through Europe, the Greengrass family’s own, theirs at the slightest wave of the hand - backing him, there is little that Draco Malfoy will stop at to take back what is his.
Back in England, rumours have reached the ears of wizards across the land of, rumours that tell of a new kind of sorcery. A dark magic lurking deep in the heart of the Forbidden Forest, so dark that those who cross it have been found on the boundaries of the forest, magic-less, turned to muggles.
In the far reaches of the West, where sea meets sky, an old magic awakes. For long centuries the Naiads have slept, following the events of the Great Wars of Fire in which wizarding armies burnt forests and slaughtered the Dryads, seizing lands from them and wells and ponds from the Naiads. Now, the Naiads prepare to take back their wells, to take back their ponds, to break the bridges that have bound them and sunk them into their deep sleep. They will rule as they once did; as they deserve.
Teddy Lupin has seen their troops and heard their vows, but it is so hard to fight a war, to remember that this is war when he sees the anger that burns in Victoire Weasley’s eyes as she tells him the story of her mother’s people. There is injustice, grave injustice, but war is coming and his duty lies with his grandmother and the people who have raised him from childhood.
(Or does it? He doesn’t know. There is very little he knows if Victoire is to be believed.)
And there are those funny tales Lysander tells everyone, of how he has talked to the trees and heard their anger, how he has walked in darkness in the skin of a wolf without being one, how he has flown through the skies though he has no wings. Projection magic, Luna Lovegood says softly, while everyone tries to hide their worry. It is not normal.
Meanwhile, beyond the walls of Hogwarts, the last safe place before the magical Wild, in the darkness of the Forbidden Forests, a long-forgotten enemy rallies. Centaurs, the last of the Free Elves and the Freed House Elves, rally and wait. Something is stirring, an ancient people once driven to near extinction by the Great Wars of Fire. An old prophecy concerning the rising of the Great Birnam Wood troubles the dreams of seers across the land. In the heart of the Forbidden Forest, the Dryads rise from their homes, gathering in the dark, waiting for the moment when they may sweep out of the forests and burn the wizarding world to the ground.
On the 11th of August 2014, Gringotts shuts its doors to the wizarding world for the first time.
War is coming. But will the wizarding world, be able to withstand it?
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HP NOIR AU: Luna Lovegood
On the outskirts of the city, just slightly beyond the grasp of the neon lights, overgrown malls, and broken highways, there is an old white house with a little picket fence. “The girl who lives there is a witch,” the locals say, and stay away from the house, despite its welcoming gardens and never closed doors. “The girl there can see into your past.”
The guests from the city, survivors of many lives, predictably laugh at such old-age fears. “What kind of a gift is that?” they say with a scoff. “If she could see into my future, now that would be something to discuss.” But the villagers only shake their heads in reply, until someone starts explaining, patiently, quietly, as if to a child. “She sees the ghosts. Some are dragged on chains behind those who cruelly refused to let them find the serenity of death. Others, they are wandering side by side with those who did not notice they were gone. And then there is the third kind, the most desired, yet almost unnoticeable; far ahead, they are paving the way for those who could not move on. Luna sees them all. She does not speak with them; ghosts do not talk; she says they’ve said enough. They do not listen; they’ve heard enough. And they never, ever leave; they have nowhere else to go.”
Then a silence falls over the dining table, and the guests shift uncomfortably in their chairs, stealing glances into the windows, trying to catch Luna’s reflection on the frozen glass. Someone shivers, and someone else throws wood into the fireplace, to keep away the sudden cold.
The next day the guests from the city too avoid the old white house with a little picket fence, just to be safe, and shamefully lower their eyes passing Luna in the street, hoping she would not look at them, hoping she would not see. They leave abruptly in the middle of the night, never to come back, and, like thunder after lightning, their ghosts follow.
Untouched by the city’s esurient hands, the town stays still.
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HP NOIR AU: The murder of Albus Dumbledore
There are three men in a room and two of them will die.
This is not a philosophical debate, not the premise of a logic puzzle; there is no way out of this. One way or another, the three men always end up in the same room, and the consequence is inevitable. All one can do is decide who leaves.
One man leaves the room and he is born in it; this is the second part, the part they always forget to tell, but it is important. You can’t get to the punchline without it.
The punchline is, of course, that he can never leave. He, the last man standing, makes the room in his soul for the ghosts in the shape of the place he was born in, and he feeds them with his blood until they are hungry no more.
But the ghosts are always hungry. See, this story is now filled with contradictions. No one can tell it right.
It was never a good story, anyway; quite meaningless, in the grand scheme of things.
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Sweets to die for: an HP/Charlie & the Chocolate Factory AU
The Candyman
Ten years ago, the war ended, Voldemort disappeared and everyone rejoiced. Shops which had been shut during the last few weeks of the war slowly began opening. People flocked back to their homes on Diagon Alley. Slowly, slowlymagical Britain climbed back on to its feet. Two weeks after the war ended, a new store opened on Diagon Alley. Two months later Honeydukes was out of business and no one could get enough of Riddle’s Devilish Delights.
Oh there were some who cautioned against it, because surely a man who claimed his candies were to die for was a dangerous one. It wasn’t natural, the way the children clamoured for his sweets, eating and eating until they were sick and then, when they were done being sick, shrilly demanding Mr Riddle’s sweets. It wasn’t natural either, the way Mr Riddle hid himself from everyone and only had an old house elf do the selling in his store. A man who hid was a man who had secretsand secrets never did anybody any good.
So when the elusive Mr Riddle announced that on the 5th of August 1991 he would let five lucky children, with oneguardian, into the place where all the magic happened provided they find the golden tickets he’d hidden away in his infamous chocolate bars, magical Britain wasted no time emptying their pockets for all the chocolate they could buy.
And no one remembered the words printed just below Riddle’s Devilish Delights.
The Glutton
Gregory Goyle was the first to find a golden ticket. Unsurprising. The boy worked his way through twenty chocolate bars a day without falling sick. Unsurprising too, that he nearly drowned in Mr Riddle’s chocolate river.
Well, at least they didn’t mince him into candy bars.
The Snob
Pansy Parkinson found one through sheer willpower. She was that kind of girl – the kind who grows up to be called ‘a force of nature’ and other unpleasant things. At eleven, she, very simply, was a snob: arrogant and precocious and determined to get her own way.
Oh boy did she get her own way. She swelled up so big, she filled the whole room, which was about right. They had to cart her out and squeeze all the juices out of her – and some of her pride too.
At least she had her head screwed on the right way round when she got out.
The Spoilt Brat
Draco Malfoy was mortified that he was the thirdto find the ticket and not the first, despite the army of house elves tirelessly unwrapping chocolate bars all day and all night in their wine cellar. He was the goldenboy, after all. Magical Britain’s most precious son. Well, purebloodmagical Britain’s most precious son at any rate.
Not that he ever let them forget it. Not when nearly all his sentences began with the phrase “My father will…” and Lucius Malfoy almost always did. Little Draco alwaysgot his way and well, if he didn’t, then his father would hear about it.
Just like he did with the golden ticket. Just like he did with the goose which laid the golden egg.
Draco Malfoy, the golden boy, was weighed and found impure. A bad egg through and through. Down little Draco went, to the place where all the garbage found its way, and down Lucius Malfoy went, in pursuit of his precious son and the hope of all of pureblood magical Britain.
In the end, they came out all the better for having that near brush with death in the fiery incinerators of Mr Riddle’s chocolate workshop.
The Skeptic
Zacharias Smith loathed chocolates in the same way he loathed not knowing things. He was a strong believer in the art of rational thought, so while everyone else ate themselves sick (or employed house elves to do their work for them), Zacharias Smith sat down and methodically calculated creation dates, expiry dates and all kinds of different probabilities and scored a golden ticket with one careful purchase. He meant business. Mr Riddle had a secret and he, Zacharias Smith, was going to discover it and tell the whole bloody wizarding world just what a sham Mr Riddle was.
Odd, for a wizard to have so little faith in all the myriad possibilities of magic. Magic was the stuff of dreams. If you could think it you could do it and Mr Riddle did.
Well, at least he learnt his lesson before he had all his imagination stamped out of him.
(Being atomized, shrunk and sent through the air into a muggle television set tends to have that effect on people.)
The Boy Who Lived
Mr Riddle turns to the last child with a smile. His chocolate bar had been a birthday present. Dear old Hagrid. Pure coincidence, of course, that golden ticket. The fates have such a strange way of playing with the lives of men, after all. Tom Marvolo Riddle knows that.
Oh he knows it all too well.
Mr Riddle’s voice is cold and unpleasant and snakelike and Hagrid is nowhere in sight.
Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, now come to die.
Insp. by propertyofregulus
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