electric violet she-wolf (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} violet_quill) wrote in ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small} crossover_hp,@ 2007-04-29 10:33:00 |
|
| Entry tags: | 2007 fest, pirates of the caribbean |
a POTC crossover for florahart
Author: penknife
Recipient:
florahartTitle: Parrot
Rating: PG
Crossover Fandom: Pirates of the Caribbean
Pairings or Main Characters: Jack Sparrow (some Jack/OFC and OFC/OMC)
Summary: Jack's always been an odd bird.
The coach pulls up in front of the Leaky Cauldron, inside of which an assortment of children and their parents are milling about, some hurrying over a last round of drinks. It's a fairly large coach, drawn by four horses that Daniel Prewett finds intimidatingly large, but then he's never been much for hunting. A handful of footmen are manhandling trunks up onto the top of the coach, where it's possible that they are disappearing. Daniel watches, not quite able to see where the trunks are going and not quite sure what's going to happen now; it's all like some game of sleight of hand too fast for him to follow.
"Now departing for Hogwarts," someone calls, and the boys begin pressing forward, although there's still only the one coach. Daniel can't see the trick to it, but boy after boy is disappearing through the door. It's magic, of course, he knows that, but somehow this is different from the little charms he's seen his parents do. The girls are hanging back, presumably intending to seek their seats together, although how there can be room for anyone else, he can't imagine.
It's his turn, then, and he brushes his fingers over his pocket to make sure his rat is still nestled there and climbs aboard the coach. He stops just inside the door and looks up. There are flights and flights of stairs, bending back on each other, with rows of seats off each landing, as high as he can see. It must be dizzying on the upper levels.
"Move on, then," the boy behind him says, giving him a bit of a shove, and he begins to climb. Most of the lower seats are full already, or occupied by enormous boys who give him a discouraging look. Daniel straightens his robes, reassuring himself that they're cut fashionably enough if not the heavy figured satin some of the boys are wearing, and climbs until it does make him dizzy to look down. There are seats, now, but now he's perversely determined not to stop short of the very top.
At the end of the last flight of steps, there's a boy sprawled in one seat with his feet propped up, looking curiously down at the tiny people far below. Daniel stands there, wondering if the boy is planning to move. There are footsteps on the stairs behind him, and he doesn't really like the idea of having to push past people on his way down.
The boy looks at him curiously. "You have a rat in your pocket, mate," he points out.
"He's hiding," Daniel says. "I don't think he likes heights." He's not sure why he feels the need to apologize for his rat.
"Oh," the boy says, leaning down to see in a way that seems likely to lead to falling to his death. "Clearly he is not a sea-going rat."
"I don't think so," Daniel says. "He was probably born in London."
"Some are," the boy says. He has wild black hair and very tan skin, and there's something in the cast of his face that makes Daniel think it's unlikely he was born in London. He's wearing cheap robes, and his shoes don't seem to fit right.
Two boys appear behind Daniel at the top of the stairs. "Shove over," the tall blond boy says. He sits down across from the boy who was already there, leaving Daniel and another weedy-looking boy to squeeze into the window seats, and fixes the boy with a dubious gaze. "Who are you, then?"
"Jack Sparrow," the boy says. "This is my parrot." He holds up what looks like an egg. It might be a parrot's egg. It might, for that matter, be a rock.
"Sparrow isn't a wizarding name," the blond boy says. "What were your parents?"
"What were yours, mate?"
"Wizards," the boy says witheringly. "I don't suppose yours are."
"Much more better," the boy says. "My da was a pirate king, you see, and he carried off the queen of the mermaids. Never minded a bit of fishiness." He waggles his fingers suggestively. They don't look webbed to Daniel.
"They only let humans in Hogwarts," the blond boy says, but he looks nervous.
Jack grins. "Are you sure?" He waggles his fingers toward the boy's sleeve, and the boy jumps up and stomps back down the stairs.
Daniel can't help grinning. "You are really human, though, aren't you?"
Jack gives him what he can't help thinking of now as a fishy look. "Are you?"
"I'm pretty sure," Daniel says. "Is that really a parrot's egg?"
"It might be," Jack says. "In the market for one?"
"I've got my rat," Daniel says, holding him up.
Jack shrugs. "No accounting." He grins again, sprawling a different way his seat. He never seems to stay still. "Want to see some magic?"
"All right," Daniel says.
"I need a coin," Jack says. Daniel digs in his purse and fishes out a silver Sickle, handing it over. Jack looks at it curiously, bites it, and then winces as if he's hurt his teeth. He makes a face, and then displays the coin solemnly between his fingers.
"Now you see it," he says, and then shakes his wand at the coin and opens his hand wide. He shows his open palm to Daniel. The coin is gone.
"That's not real magic, is it?" Daniel asks.
"You don't know how I did it, do you?"
"Well, no ..."
"Then it is," Jack says, looking satisfied. There's a pause.
"Can I have my coin back now?" Daniel asks.
"Sorry, mate," Jack says. "It could be anywhere." He shrugs, not looking particularly apologetic.
Later, when a witch comes round with a tray of sweets for sale, Daniel can't help noticing that Jack buys mince pasties and a writhing knot of licorice with a single silver Sickle, but he's too absorbed in a story about how Jack once wrestled an octopus to really care.
*****
"I'm Jack Sparrow," a dirty-looking boy says to Eustasia. She gives him a skeptical look.
"Sparrow isn't a wizarding name," she says.
"People do keep harping on that," Jack says. "Ah, chicken." He piles pieces of chicken into a teetering pyramid on his plate, using a stick of celery to prop up the structure for support. Eustasia feels her skepticism deepen.
"Are you sure you're supposed to be in Slytherin?"
"The hat never lies," Jack says. He smiles at her as if sharing a secret. "All right if you're a hat, I suppose."
"I'm not a hat," Eustasia says. She feels that somehow this conversation has gotten away from her. Her sister never said anything about strange boys accusing you of being hats.
Jack waves his hands. "I meant the general you. People." He attacks the chicken with a fairly disgusting degree of pleasure, and wipes his hands on his knees.
"Where are you from?"
"India," Jack says. "Or thereabouts. Really more near Jamaica. By way of Madrid. By way of Bristol."
"Those places aren't anywhere near each other," Eustasia says.
Jack points a chicken leg at her. "Seen them on a map, haven't you? Not but this far apart?" He gestures with parallel chicken legs.
"That's a map," Eustasia says. "In real life the world is ... is huge, and round. Gregorius the Grave proved that centuries ago."
"You been all the way around it, then?"
"I don't need to," Eustasia says. "I've read books."
"How do you know the books don't lie?"
"Books don't lie."
"Like hats."
"Books are not like hats," Eustasia says.
"What do you think of my hat?"
"I don't think it fits you properly."
Jack shrugs. "It probably fitted the lad who bought it better."
"You stole your hat?" Against her will, Eustasia is finding herself fascinated. This is much more entertaining than listening to Claudius Goyle on her other side, who is giving a blow-by-blow account of an entire three-day Quidditch match he attended over the summer.
"Of course not," Jack says, and grins. "I'm not much like a hat myself. Chicken?" He offers her a chicken leg.
"I prefer mine a little less ... half-eaten," she says, taking a wing from the platter in front of them.
"Suit yourself," Jack says, and reaches for the sausages.
*****
Professor Apollonia Trimble despairs of Jack Sparrow. He's clearly talented, but he seems to exert himself only in the cause of wreaking havoc. If the walls of the dungeons are covered in murals recounting scandalous stories from Hogwarts history, there are live fish swimming through the stacks in the library, and the first-year Slytherins are reporting that the mermaids say to give Jack Sparrow all their spending money, she's not surprised.
However, if she asks for the simplest thing in class, whether it be twelve inches of parchment or a demonstration of turning a sow's ear into a silk purse, she's also not surprised at the results. Her latest essay from Sparrow is a rambling account of a highly unlikely episode involving a man who turned everything he touched into cheese, and the object resting on her desk does indeed appear to be silk, but in a perfectly obscene shape.
All she asks is that he settle down, get along, make some effort to follow the rules. She doesn't know why that always makes him look at her with hot dark eyes as if he's fighting the urge to run. As if he's a wild bird she's trying to shut into a cage.
She's tried speaking to his Head of House, but Medusa just shrugs and tells her Sparrow will get over his high spirits in time. She's not sure that it's high spirits so much as a basic flaw in his character. She suspects Medusa has fallen prey herself to Sparrow's charm to some degree. So many seem to.
"Sparrow, another week's detention," she says wearily as he's leaving class, and sees his momentary scowl before he smiles cheerfully and gives her an uncaring bow. She resists the urge to say that if he doesn't want to be in trouble, he could stop breaking the rules. It doesn't seem to get through to him at all.
*****
When Jack Sparrow and Eustasia Malfoy are both missing from their beds after midnight, Medusa Black isn't particularly surprised. She is also not particularly pleased, as Malfoy's father has made it clear that he is not in favor of any such match. Still, Sparrow has exerted a fatal fascination over the girl since fifth year, as he has over significant portions of the female population of Hogwarts.
Medusa finds herself thinking of snakes and birds, or perhaps it should be snakes and other snakes; she dismisses the entire metaphor as tired. She is tired herself, and it's tempting to just go back to her warm bed, but a nagging feeling of responsibility combined with her desire to avoid being shouted at by Tiberius Malfoy drives her to climb what seems like the excessive number of steps to the top of the Astronomy Tower.
Instead of the scene she expected (which is not to say imagined, because she likes to think she has more control over her imagination than that), what she sees is Eustasia Malfoy sitting in the lap of Daniel Prewett, her arms around his neck and her robes astray, both of them reeking of smoke and strong spirits. Sparrow is sitting with his back to the tower, a bottle in one hand and a pipe in the other, smoke curling up toward the sky. He is apparently telling them a story about cats.
"What is going on here?" Medusa asks, a good all-purpose sort of teacherly question. Daniel and Eustasia cling to each other in a way that makes it seem clear to her who the courting couple here are. She scowls down at Sparrow, who she's sure has encouraged this.
He shrugs. "They wanted to see the stars."
She is tempted to ask him whether he wasn't courting Eustasia himself, but there's something in his face that doesn't invite her to. If he's lost what he wanted, he's still gained some measure of influence here, as matchmaker or enabler or whatever it is that he is. That's a good Slytherin way of taking your losses.
Medusa stands there in the chill night air, bracing herself for a long night of taking points and assigning punishments and writing to parents. Sparrow is looking up at the stars. He smiles at them as if they share a secret. He certainly doesn't share his secrets with anyone else.
*****
Daniel can't sleep, and he's not surprised by the tap at his window. He gets up quietly and opens the window, shaking his head and putting a finger to his lips. The other boys are asleep. Jack motions for him to come out, then, and with his usual moment of I'm going to die panic, Daniel climbs out the window of Gryffindor Tower and clambers up to the small overhang of roof where it's possible for two people to perch, if they don't mind the view of a sickening drop. Daniel tries not to look down.
"I'm off, mate," Jack says.
Daniel doesn't say that Jack ought to be gone already, having been expelled three days before. Jack comes and goes like a cat, and there's no sending him anywhere any more than there's any making him stay.
"Why did you do it?" Jack has had a talent for mayhem since the start, but Daniel thinks even he should have known that stealing the Sword of Gryffindor and attempting to pawn it in Hogsmeade would not go well.
Jack shrugs. "To see if I could?" He grins. "Everybody gets caught once. The trick is to not get caught all the other times."
Daniel wonders if his own purse in his trunk is still full of silver, or if he'll be scraping for pocket money for the rest of the year. He doesn't demand to know. There are some things you don't begrudge a friend, especially one who hasn't begrudged him Eustasia. He'd hoped Jack might come and see them married; they're planning to elope as soon as they leave Hogwarts, leaving the coach at the first convenient stop and taking themselves off to see the world. He thinks Jack means to start seeing the world right away.
"You could have just run," he says. "If you couldn't stand being here anymore."
Jack shrugs, and for once there's a bit of bitterness there. "And leave such a good opportunity as being a wizard? Would have been set up for life, mate."
Daniel wants to say that he can't see a difference between running away and getting yourself expelled on purpose, but there are a lot of things he's learned you don't say to Jack if you want to stay his friend. They include anything that reeks of sentiment, so Daniel doesn't say that he doesn't know where he'll find another friend who tells stories about mermaids and ancient cities rising out of the sea.
"Still, they wouldn't have broken your wand," Daniel points out.
Jack grins and tosses his hair, and now Daniel can see he's got the long tip of his wand tied into his hair like some exotic ornament. There are other things glittering in his hair, beads and coins and who knows what else. He looks odd and strange and somehow more himself than ever before.
"A pity, that," he says. "But you never know when even broken things might be of use." He's still for a moment, and then goes into wild motion again, rummaging in the purse tied to his belt. "Here," he says, and presses something into Daniel's hand. "I don't know as I'll be able to look after it properly for a while."
Daniel looks down at what might be an egg resting in his hand. "Your parrot?"
Jack smiles sideways. "It's bound to hatch eventually. Wait and see." Then he drops down from the rooftop to the ledge below and begins making his way down the tower, climbing like he's born to it, stopping occasionally not to rest, Daniel thinks, but to look at the way the clouds skate across the moon.
The egg hasn't hatched yet, but Daniel can't bring himself to throw it away. He tells himself you never know.
