MetaFic

Part of the front-matter for Echoes 31, not beta'd.  Provided for entertainment purposes only, and subject to revision once the beta meta grinder cranks up on the next block of material.   And no, I have not given up writing or Echoes.  Sheesh, I've said that often enough.

Anger : 31 :  Only Human

. . .  The use of key language words coupled to specific gestures are meant to fuse body and mind to convey a root magical meme, or a core idea.  The particular of a language or gesture is only critical in the sense of attaining the proper mindset to depict the meme.   Each magical meme is actually a trigger for an emotional state coupled to a subconscious trigger, the combination of which causes the release of energy used for a given bit of spell-craft.

While the gesture of the spell may at first seem unnecessary, by experimentation it is critical in key parts to function correctly.  Magical energy is essentially given a spin by the emotional framing of its release, and left unstructured would merely be the equivalent of throwing a container of wood sticks onto the floor.  By forcing the release of energy to move in a pre-set motion pattern by the conduit of a wand, humans can trigger certain behaviors.  It refines the thrown sticks analogy from a condition of entropy into a well-defined stream that can be used to build complex structures by forcing the placement of each piece during release.

By contrast, the particular words used in an incantation are irrelevant for a skilled practitioner in the magical arts.  Once the incantation of a language has been learned, triggering the release of magical energy for a given spell, then the opportunity exists to construct the reference meme without the accompanying words.  By careful self-observation and focused application of will, skilled wizards or witches may learn to cast silently, entering the meme state by merely thinking of the words used to classically trigger it.  Truly advanced magic users may be able to silent cast without thinking of the meme-inducing phrases, or even reach a state where they may be saying one thing while casting another.  Such advanced skills can be useful in self-defense situations, though it should be noted that formal dueling rules prohibit this type of misdirection.

The observation that specific words are not required to induce the same meme state in all humans should be apparent, given the extant nature of magic among the many peoples and languages of the world. While some Muggles study the nature of etymology in the hopes of discovering the so-called "root tongue" that all human speech derived from, there are several immediate implications that should pertain to modern magical humans.

First, the nature of human thought is a learned conditioning from childhood.  Some languages lack critical concepts such as individual enumeration -- that is, in some languages, there is a notion of "one" and "more than one", but there is no notion of discrete values such as "five".  When the language in use by a people is incapable of expressing some concepts, the meme constructs among that people are different from the meme concepts among others.  For example, the industrialized European and North American regions all derive from the same core language principles, and Latin-based memes are universal though certainly not mandatory.  For the tonal Asian languages, a different root meme based on geographic isolation factors is at work.  The Chinese, for example, have a Sino-based meme scheme.

When comparing the Latin-based and Sino-based magical meme morphologies, it turns out that approximately eighty percent of spell craft is identical in function if not in form (wand movement and incantation).  The remaining twenty percent comprises those root meme systems that cannot be expressed naturally in a different one of the root languages.  This has profound implications that can be reflected upon through the history of warfare and conquest among magical peoples, as well as personal defense when dueling with foreign opponents.

Second, the basis of communication . . .

            . . . Excerpt from Theory of Magic, Volume III, Section I: A New Approach, edited by R.J.L.

oOo oOo

4-Sep-1992

Dear Diary,

I was caught by D today.  I've been trying to hide, but he still finds me.  He told me that the "deal" was still open, and I should decide soon.  My family doesn't like most of his family, but D can be very nice.  He's always been very nice to me.  He's not very nice to anyone else outside of his house.   I need to find some way to really like him, I guess, but he's so mean to everyone else.  He makes it hard sometimes.  Why can't he treat everyone the way he treats me?

P and her crones caught me after dinner.  She felt the need to tell me again to stay away, that D was to be dealt with by others.  I wish I could tell her the truth, but I just can't.

I had to tell Ron and Hermione that I tripped on the stairs, that my foot got caught in a trick step.  They seemed to believe me, but Madam Pomfrey muttered more than usual when she was healing me.  I'm just glad Ron was able to carry me to the Infirmary, I don't think I could have walked nearly that far.

I almost broke down and told him the truth on the way back to our tower, but as soon as I opened my mouth, I saw D watching me from a nearby spot.  I don't understand how Slytherins always know when I'm someplace alone in the castle.  He may be nice to me, but he scares me all the same. He's always there, somewhere, and I can't escape him.  I was hoping this year would be better, but already it doesn't look good.  Like last year, I think I wish I'd never come to this place.

Ron told me a new joke he learned, though, and made me smile.  I'm glad he's always there for me, at least as much as I can let him be.  I would do anything for my brothers.

But I want to be free.

-GMW

oOo oOo

Fri, 22 Sep 1995

“Remus?”

“He’s not here, Ginny,” Tonks called out.  “He asked me to come instead.”

“Oh.  Is he all right?” 

Tonks smiled inwardly, pleased that Ginny was reinforcing the initial impression she had made.  Tonks had thought immediately that Ginny was both a lively character with a firm grip on reality as well as a compassionate soul.  “He’s fine, really,” she offered with a wave at the seat next to her.

Ginny sat down easily enough, but it was also apparent from her facial expression that she was confused to see Tonks there.  “So you’re going to work on my Occlumency?”

“Nah,” Tonks said with a wave.  “I can do it, but I can’t teach it or test it.  I’ve got some problems with control that Remus hasn’t quite worked out.”

Ginny’s eyebrows raised slightly at that, but she gave a half-smile anyway.  “So what are we going to do then?  Tonks, right?”

“Yeah, I’m Tonks.  Thanks for remembering.  You and I – we’re going to talk,” Tonks said, giving her own smile in return.  Scrunching up her face in effort, her nose popped into a pig’s snout.  “And maybe giggle a bit!”

Ginny’s shock passed quickly into a soft laugh, which Tonks was happy to hear.  From what Remus told her, Ginny was a mess mentally from everything suddenly falling on her.  The young woman sitting across from her seemed stronger somehow than she expected.   Or perhaps she was just putting on a good front for the stranger in the room.

Relaxing her nose back to its normal shape, Tonks decided to skip the warm up and just kick the elephant on the table.  “Remus said he told you some scary stuff the other day.  He thought you might want to talk about it.”

Ginny stopped laughing almost immediately, and her eyes dropped to the table between them.  After a moment of silence, Ginny just shrugged a bit.  “He told me the truth, didn’t he?”

Tonks sighed, understanding the façade was over with.  “Yeah, ducks, he told you the truth.  After the first time he was, well, dispatched to clean-up duty . . . I’m told he didn’t sleep well for a long time.  But he also talked with Dumbledore, and essentially volunteered to go out there every time so others wouldn’t have to.”

“What?” Ginny’s eyes were locked onto Tonks, and the surprise was evident.  “Why would he?”

“Well,” Tonks said slowly, trying to articulate the nature of her beastly boyfriend, “think of it like this.  He saw something that he knew he would never get out of his head.  Since he was stuck with it, why would he let his friends – the people he cares about – suffer the same needlessly?  He did it so they didn’t have to, so they could sleep at night and not relive the horror he was constantly seeing.”

“Oh.”  Ginny fell silent again, and Tonks watched her eyes wander around the room a bit before they came back to the here and now.  “Did the others know?”

“I doubt it,” Tonks said with a shrug.  “He’s like that.  Doesn’t want the credit, he just wants it done as well as it can be.”

Ginny remained silent for a while, long enough that Tonks had time to fetch the tea set from the kitchen and put a cup in front of the girl.  She continued to sit there, waiting for Ginny to move the conversation forward.  Tonks really did hate waiting, but she had been forced to learn the depth of it before she successfully caught Remus.  She still hated it, but she could put up with it when she knew it was probably worth the end result.

“So I gather that I need to stick to pure-blood boyfriends?”

Tonks shrugged briefly.  “That’s up to you.  I thought you were here to learn to defend yourself, though, and part of that’s so you can do what you want, not what someone else wants.”

“Was it really that bad?  In the last war?”

“Ginny . . .”  Tonks shook her head briefly, not wanting to think about the material she had covered during her Auror training.  “I don’t think Remus even scratched the surface of what happened.  You got a very watered down version of what was going on.”

“Did you really come here to tell me this?”

“Remus thinks this was his idea, of course, for that sole purpose.”  Tonks watched Ginny carefully, and went back to nursing her cup of tea.  She wanted the reward, of course, but the whole taking-it-slow approach was never going to be popular with her.

“All right, then.  Why did you get Remus to send you here?”

“To warn you about Harry.”   It had taken a few months for Tonks to learn to appreciate the myriad forms of silence that could be introduced by Harry into any conversation, whether he was there or was simply the subject of the moment.  The boy had an absolute talent for scaring the pants off of other people, or else delivering a pun so bad no one was willing to risk giving him more ammunition.  He had once described it to her as a feeling of a rolling wave, and how big the silence was depended on how much energy was behind the wave.  She thought it was pretty corny, really, but the nature of silence was definitely fluid – that much she agreed with.

“How so?” Ginny eventually asked.

“Do you love your dad, Ginny?”  That question got her a few owlish blinks.

“Yes, of course.”

“You know he had a life before you came along, right?”  It was a tack she had discussed with David, of all people, to get the message across in a way that would be understood.  That man was a positive genius at handling kids, and she hoped she could learn to be half as good as he was when she convinced Remus to start a family.  Of course, getting him to marry her was the first hurdle in that path.  She was still thinking she was going to have to do the proposing.

“Yes, Tonks, I know my parents had lives before I came along, even before they got married.”

“Did you know your dad did a few things that were downright cruel and arguably evil at one point?”

“What?!”  Ginny was staring at her with the owl-eyes again, confusion and concern mixing freely.  “What are you talking about?”

“War changes people, ducks,” Tonks told her, putting her cup down.  “You love your dad for who he is – kind, compassionate, considerate.  He’s a great guy.  But he was part of the last war against Voldemort, and he did things while fighting that were not nice at all.”

Ginny said nothing for a long time, but her eyes stayed on Tonks.  It was evident that she was trying to understand why Tonks was bringing her dad into the conversation like this, but Tonks could wait.  “I guess I can understand that,” she said.

“Knowing that, but not the specifics, do you love him any less?  If you knew the specifics, would it matter?”

Ginny shook her head briefly.  “I’d like to think it doesn’t matter, but . . . well, if he tortured kids or drank blood or something, I’d probably have a hard time with it.  But I’d still love him.”

Tonks gave her a half-smile, knowing that was as far as Ginny was prepared to go with the vague idea.  “For the record, no, he didn’t do anything like that.  But everyone comes with a past, before we knew them.  Some people have a good past, like if you met your brother Bill for the first time right now.  He’s an all right bloke, and doesn’t have much in the way of skeletons in the closet, you know?”

“Yeah, I can see that,” Ginny quietly stated.

“I love Harry, you probably guessed that.  To me, he’s the little brother I always wanted.”  Tonks blew out a slow breath before getting to the real heart of the matter.  “But Harry has a past that’s frankly terrifying.  He’s done things that give me nightmares, and I’ve only heard about them second-hand.   He’s had things done to him that make me bawl like a baby if I think about them.  He’s like a mix of your dad and Remus and Mad-Eye Moody – he does what needs to be done, but he’s willing to cross those really scary lines to get them done.  I don’t love him any less for it, but I try to be sure he doesn’t cross those lines anymore.  We all do.”

It took Ginny a long time to respond, but that was all right with Tonks.  She was almost done, and then the waiting would be over.

“Why are you telling me this?”  Ginny’s voice was barely above a whisper.

“It’s clear as day, ducks, you’re not just friendly with our Harry.  I don’t think he’s figured himself out yet after this summer, let alone you, but I want you to understand what you’re walking into.  Nothing about Harry is going to be easy or casual if he does notice you.  You need to be certain you want to try.”

Ginny could have been frozen as far as Tonks was concerned, given the complete lack of reaction.  But that in and of itself was just a further confirmation of sorts.

“Now that we’re clear on that, Ginny, I’m here as long as you want me to be.  What would you like to talk about?”