#beatrice chang

part i. the dreaming cynic/part ii. the cynical dreamer

    Her idea. His money. End goal: an electricity-to-magic converter.
     The idea—amazing. Revolutionary.
     Actually collaborating together—terrible, bloody awful nightmare.
     No one outside of Scorpius and Bea’s friends understood what they were doing, although their reputations preceded their partnership. Bea Chang was Weird. She looked weird, smelled weird, talked weird (“for the last time, physics not psychics”)—because of her explosion-prone inventing, but the fact remained. Scorpius Malfoy was arguably weirder with his rainbow tartan blazers and blathering on economics, but his eccentricities were explained away by money—that is, he had so much money, he obviously had no idea how to exist around poorer folk, which was everyone except his paramour Anjali.
     Behind the scenes, the two were just trying to get the converter to work. And not kill each other. Scorpius was an over-managing financier, who huffed whenever anything went wrong and poked everything like he owned it. Bea was the classic prodigy: unyielding, indelicate, and kept unsustainable habits. On paper, their partnership was a terrible idea and in action, it was worse. Bea endured it. She would grit her teeth into powder to get what she wanted, because there was no other way. People like Scorpius—they didn’t have to do anything, ever. He dropped galleons like he breathed them, and galleons in enough quantity was as good as a wish-granting djinn. Could he blame her for being snippy?
     Her dreams were bigger than his. All he wanted was a shiny new toy for his family’s company, while she saw the plight of the Muggleborns, the half-bloods, the split families across Britain. She knew firsthand how swiftly the knife flew down these invisible boundaries when the Ministry threatened to Obliviate her Muggle dad for trying to use magical studies in his science research. She couldn’t blame Dad for leaving, as much as she wanted him to feel like she did. She missed him, mostly.
     How much better could her magical world be when it enveloped children into reliance, made reconciling their old lives impossible, and made family too fearful to question it?

[ficlets by hpedit-the next gen capersverse]