brent.
“I am afraid I am not familiar with any poetic work that begins with ‘Hey, baby, all alone?’ So you will have to excuse my lack of comprehension. I had believed that you were reading Machiavelli and I do not recall him exploring such a concept. I instead remember his commentary of effective truth being more important than the abstract ideal.” And Brent knew this to be true: any power that blood supremacists grabbed onto limited them. Power was in constant flux and negotiation. Power was pervasive. Power produced reality, and the realities of the Sacred Twenty Eight were constraining, the lines drawn and the door sealed, barring entrance to any of those that they considered unworthy. Blood supremacy existed only in the abstract. Their bloodlines would not remain pure forever, the ideal an impossible one. The Sacred Twenty Eight was already fragmented. Soon, they would lead to their own destruction. The last war should have taught them that. The Blacks and the Gaunts were instinct Sacred Twenty Eight families, branches that were cut from the stem by their own greedy hands.
“I am not patronizing you. On the contrary, I did just mention that I had assumed such a position was beneath you, did I not?” Brent meets Evadne’s tightly clipped words with his own that were edged smoothly. “I know that you Ravenclaws are quite fond of your riddles, rightfully so, but what sights in particular are you referring to? We have, each of us, seen a great deal.” Brent was a purveyor of truth and when presented with truth, he did not deny it. He saw none being presented. “You speak of alliances - - is it fair to conclude that your purpose here relates to them?”
“No, mon coeur --- poetic resonance of the dead,” she corrects, dark eyes flashing amusedly. Evadne had forgotten him, admittedly; his nuances and contradictory lack of dimension, the blunt edge of his humour. Oh, what a dull blade his mind made, for so much as he knew. She pitied him. What was a diamond mind without wit? Wasted. “Come now, I thought you knew better than to take a thing at face value, darling. Where is your savage brilliance when I need it?” At once, she loosens her hold on the book --- slipping, easing from her grasp until it is plummeting towards the ground. Would he suffer the same? A glorious, incandescent star --- untouchable, golden seraph, a god in his own right, made to fall. All in the interest of decency? Morality? She laughs, a silken note elicited at the vacuous manner with which he regarded her, the argument belying his pacifism.
“A muggle’s opinion is nothing to me, amour. But one must keep up appearances, mustn’t they?” Indeed, her position demanded contradiction from her, but he should’ve known better than to consider her surface value --- dawn wearing revolution, valiance with all its red cloaks and white knights. She was made of just the opposite; cataclysm, prudence. Machiavelli lay in the dust behind them, but still he resided at the forefront of their conversation --- a soft accusation of disloyalty, dark-tainted executioner hand-in-hand with her heretic. “It’s nothing to do with riddles, Brent. Your loyalties, mine --- where do they lie?” She pats his arm reassuringly, as though she will be obliging; as though she will be merciful, clement. She will not. Two wars lost may have taught their great families resignation, but never her. Evadne will bleed and make bleed for betrayal --- of the cause, of blood. She would remember. She would live.
She would conquer.













