Due to my (not so) recent bout of "I don't want to do anything save read and maybe watch a bit TV", the muses have left me pretty much alone save on two occasions. The first result, a ficlet, dates back a few months (I just couldn't bring myself to take my beta readers' advice and correct my mistakes), the second was written on Tuesday.

Not surprisingly, the first is still "Harry Potter" -- I'm still not over my Sirius/Snape obsession -- while the second was caused by my most recent fascination, "Horatio Hornblower", in particular the HH/WB dynamic. Enjoy!

Promise
Author: allaire mikháil
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing: none (gen)
Rating: PG
Summary: One day in London, Hermione keeps a promise she made to herself - headgirl or not.
Beta thanks to: Lyle, Mike and Madraykin
1.006 words, gen, Hermione POV.

The download-friendly .html version of this story can be found here. Enjoy!

Promise

Hermione clutched her backpack closer to her chest as a man in a business suit pushed through the throng of people to the exit before the doors of the underground train could close again.

Three more stops. Two. One.

Finally.

She stepped out of the compartment and shouldered her backpack. She was a bit lost in the gaggle of people, many of them tourists or school children, but quickly located the correct exit.

It was already late afternoon, and if she intended to meet her parents at Oxford Circus at 6 p.m., she knew she'd better hurry. Waterlow Park around her was beautiful in this particular light. She paid no attention to the tall trees and well-kept gardens, though; her way led her further along. A bit out of breath she reached the iron gates to Highgate Cemetery at last. She hurried through, paid the entrance fee and walked on briskly.

A stone angel seemed to smile at her, lost in timeless reverie, and filigree stone crosses flanked both sides of the path she hurried along. Karl Marx and Michael Faraday were buried here, and here, a distant part of her brain tried to tell her. Her gaze swept over the gravestones, uninterested. The graveyard was indeed peaceful, and as picturesque as the travel guides had made it out to be, but that was not her concern. Finally she reached the east cemetery and came to a stop, panting a little.

She shouldered out of straps of her backpack and, after making sure no one was around, pulled out 'Hogwarts, a History'. She quickly thumbed to the page she'd marked, reread a couple of paragraphs, then began looking for a certain tomb before slapping her forehead in frustration. She wouldn't be able to find it like this, after all. Which was why she had prepared... there it was. She fished a small, colorful piece of paper out of her purse, unfolded it once and muttered a single word in Latin. She'd had to prepare for the occasion,
not being allowed to use her wand during the holidays, so she'd bound the spell to paper. A pureblood wizard would have written it on a scroll of parchment, Hermione -- fully aware of the inherent irony -- had taken a Muggle post-it note instead.

It was as if shutters had fallen from her eyes. In just an instant, the cemetery stretched and three or four more rows of tombs appeared, all as equally hidden among trees, high grass, and woodland as the Muggle graves. She stepped up to one of the newer ones that had a smiling fay on it, which was beating her wings in slow motion, as tranquil and sombre as her surroundings, an expression of gentle sorrow on her elven features.

She hesitated. The fay tilted her head a fraction and looked at her questioningly.

"It's just magic," she hissed at herself, angry at her sudden indecision, "it's not like hurting a real creature. It's not like she'd feel it."

She got out another piece of paper and said a different Latin word. The fay froze as if petrified. Another piece of paper, another word. Something... tangible seemed to flee the place. Now the stone of the tomb was just that: simple stone, grey-flecked and washed-out from standing almost two decades unprotected in the open. The protective and decorative magic was gone. Good. Wizards hardly ever used the more sensible stones Muggles did, relying too much on sandstone, limestone, and other soft materials that were easy to shape. She smiled in grim satisfaction.

Beyond the wards disguising this part of the graveyard from Muggle eyes, no one would be able to see what she was doing. Still, she looked around like a guilty schoolgirl while unpacking a can of red spray paint and a package of instant-filling cement from her backpack as well as a bottle of water. She felt silly. This was insane and immature. Everyone who knew her would be appalled.

Still, she had promised herself she'd do this. For Harry. For Sirius.

She filled in the three pompous lines of engraved words immortalizing the tomb's occupant, evened the surface with the spatula she'd brought so that the letters would be almost illegible once the cement dried, and looked around in alarm when the light of the slowly setting sun fell on her efforts. She had to hurry; the cemetery closed at 5 p.m.

With fumbling hands, she took up the can of spray paint and shook it. Carefully measuring the stone in front of her with her eyes, she sprayed her own account of the occupant's heroic deeds onto the grey stone.

Beautiful.

She stepped back to admire the sight and couldn't help but grin broadly.

"Hermione, you are a true artist," she giggled with a touch of hysteria. Squashing the feelings of guilt, she scrambled to pack up the tools of her trade and erased all signs of her presence.

Ten steps to the West, and she felt the tingle of the wards as she arrived once again on the other side of the spells set up to protect the Wizarding World's dead from the view of passers by. Now the graveyard seemed to end a couple of inches from where she was standing.

She ran to the exit, her heart beating wildly in excitement. She'd done it. Now she'd only have to hurry to meet her parents before they started to worry that their studious daughter had become lost in the stacks at the British Library.

***

The ticket seller sent a glare at the brown-haired girl hurrying past without a care for the proper behaviour befitting the holy grounds she'd just left, then gestured her colleague to lock the iron gate. Time to close up for the day.

No one saw the stone monument, now bearing, in red capitals, beneath the flourished engraving of "Peter Lambert Pettigrew" and the dates of his birth and death, the succinct words:

BETRAYER OF HIS BEST FRIENDS.  TRAITOR TO THE DARK LORD.

---

"Harry Potter" ficlet by allaire mikháil, 1.006 words, gen, Hermione POV, rated PG.

In my opinion, Hermione has hidden depths no one even suspects. That together with my displeasure with recent developments (see OotP) in Rowling's storyline must have inspired this story. I still don't know exactly where it all came from, but it demanded to be written.

A number of superb beta readers from [Beta_Unlimited] have helped me put this into shape, but the final revisions were nonetheless made by me and are therefore solely my fault. ;-) A heartfelt "Thank you!" goes to Lyle, Mike and Madraykin. I also owe a debt of gratitude to http://highgate-cemetery.org/ and http://tube.tfl.gov.uk/ for information about the most likely cemetery Pettigrew would be buried in, and how to reach it via London underground.

---

Down with this Ship - #1: Cold to the Bone
Author: allaire mikháil
Fandom: Horatio Hornblower
Pairing: Horatio Hornblower / William Bush
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Hardening your heart happens by degrees.
Beta thanks to: khaleesian
1.070 words, Hornblower POV, set during "Loyalty".

The download-friendly .html version of this story can be found here. Enjoy!

Cold to the Bone

Sometimes Hornblower wonders. He looks at Bush's mouth and asks himself what it would feel like to kiss him -- or be kissed by him. Has Bush ever kissed anyone? He pictures affectionate smacks to the cheeks of tall, giggling young women -- Bush's sisters. Or a small boy lifted up by one of these sisters to kiss their mother goodnight. But he cannot see Bush kissing a woman on the lips, cannot even imagine his face lost in passion although not for lack of trying.

Bush complements him perfectly, he often thinks. On darker days he asks himself whether they are not too similar. Both of them put duty above everything else and infuse each action with a serenity that, while it calms Hornblower's heart, also makes a small part of his soul cry out in pain. He misses Archie. He misses laughter and light-hearted teasing, he misses someone who draws him out with ease. Bush is always there, always constant, but he doesn't have the same effortless access to Hornblower's feelings. And now, denied release, they build up inexorably behind the barriers of his mind and take a form that scares him.

Like the kissing, his latest obsession. Like William's mouth. Or the man's voice. He is used to hearing humor and affection in the low, even tones. But lately, hearing Bush give a command at the top of his lungs does strange things to his pulse hammering in his temples. He feels cold, and faint, and has taken to twisting his fingers behind his back with a viciousness that no longer shows the lamentable insecurity he felt during his first command, the Marie Gallante, but rather constitutes a desperate attempt to preserve his self-control.

He wants to reach out in a way for which Majesty's Navy has imposed the most grievous punishment imaginable: hanging. He already bears responsibility for Clayton's death. For Archie's sacrifice. He will not endanger the only friend he has left.

Soon, Hotspur will be back in Portsmouth. He feels nothing for Maria, save gratitude and a hint of pity he tries not to consciously acknowledge. Her face is round and pleasant, her rich hair curls even more than his own, and he knows she adores him. Still, he cannot imagine kissing her mouth, and he remembers only too well that her voice does not send shivers down his spine. And to lay with her? He doesn't even know what that would entail. Mariette died before they could do more than share a few chaste kisses, and Miss Cobham treated him as he imagines Bush's sisters treat their brother.

Bush. And again, his thoughts are drawn back to his First Lieutenant. He still wants to touch him, and restraining himself during their evening discussions over maps and sea charts, sextants and books is the hardest thing he's ever done. Many an evening has ended with his hands clenched so hard it is painful; he often sees the imprints of his fingernails in the flesh of his palms, mute testimony to his iron will. That. Shall. Not. Fail. Him. It cannot. He won't allow it to.

He wishes himself back in Renown. Shamefully not always because of Archie's ghost laughing at him, with him, in his memories, but rather because of certain nights. Nights he and Bush were on and off watch at the same time while Archie was on a different schedule. Nights when circumstances demanded they share the same berth. He remembers being annoyed back then to have to accommodate the snoring bulk of a man he did not trust while his best friend slept only a few feet away. But Bush was always warm and never woke him with nightmares. Back then, he felt disloyal and resentful. Today, he only wishes he could remember all the different sensations of the breath, skin and heartbeat so close to his. A guilty pleasure, but it might keep him afloat whereas now he has nothing. That brain Admiral Pellew values so much remembers every detail of the shoreline of Santo Domingo, every word of the Tribunal, but has erased the imprint of Bush's body, so close, so longed for as unimportant. And now it is too late.

He cannot be the one to shatter the last link that keeps him close to the people around him. He cannot be the one to even hint at the fact that he wishes Bush could teach him how to touch someone he cares about. And Bush, his conscientious First Lieutenant, will never breach the wall etiquette and duty erected between a captain and his officers.

Not that he believes Bush could ever love him. That anyone save his mother and Archie -- and maybe Clayton -- ever loved him. Maria does not feel love for him, the him he is inside this cold and lonely skin. She doesn't know him. She never will. His brain might be sought after by Captains and even Admirals, but this heart he cannot show beyond the walls he erected around it... this heart will never know fulfillment. He does not deserve to.

Better to never reach out to William... to Bush in that manner. After all, he destroys those who love him, and he cannot bear to see his last friend fall.

In his nightmares, he still does.

He resolves to stop caring so he won't dream about it anymore. In time, he might even succeed.

Bush comes on deck and wordlessly joins him at the rail. Hornblower discovers that his hands relax without neither a cramp nor the stinging in his palms that he has grown accustomed to. He sees Bush's lips turn up in a slight smile and knows he's on the verge of speaking in the same calm, affectionate tone he always employs in moments like these, when the sea is calm and the ship races across it like a thoroughbred, her sails and cables singing in the wind. For once not officers, but friends in a profession they were born for.

He does not give him the chance to speak, instead simply says: "You have the deck, Mr Bush. I'll be in my cabin. Good day, sir."

He is cold as he steps away, but without the crippling pain he expected to feel as he throws Bush's friendship back in his face. Well, coldness numbs a man's wounds. Even wounds close to the heart.

---

"Horatio Hornblower" fic by allaire mikháil, 1.070 words, Hornblower/Bush UST, Hornblower POV, rated PG-13, set during "Loyalty".

I wish I had never started reading C. S. Forester's books, had never met the Hornblower we, as television viewers, can only find hints of in the movies. He's so damned insecure, restless and yes, lonely. He also lacks the heart Archie's presence gave him in the movies. So far I've only partly succeeded in avoiding all spoilers as to Bush's future in the books. I don't like what I've already heard. I adore the character, and I want him to live. Plus I want Hornblower to loose that damned reserve of his that keeps him so apart from others. Ergo -- slash them. Anyone?

The best Hornblower slash stories I've ever read have been written by khaleesian who amazingly agreed to beta this. Thank you so much!