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Published:
2024-08-09
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Pure Phantoms in Enchanting Light

Summary:

A story of love, death, redemption and resurrectionism.

This fic bears a striking, high-speed resemblance to Pride and Prejudice, if Mr Darcy were the disembodied brain of a war criminal floating in a tank, and Elizabeth Bennett had fewer siblings and gave fewer fucks.

Notes:

(See the end of the work for notes.)

Work Text:

All her life, Cho had tried to deny her attraction to dangerous things. As a child, she climbed onto roofs and played by train tracks and deep water when she thought she could get away with it. After all, her accidental magic was always there to catch her or knock her out of the way.

Later, she tried to channel it into socially acceptable thrills like roller coasters, duelling, and Quidditch. It worked for a while. She read a lot of Val McDermid and considered a career in Muggle forensic psychology, but then the war happened.

Afterwards, most of her friends became Healers or Aurors, with the exception of Marietta, who went off the rails and became a Curse-Breaker for hire, trampling ruthlessly through the ancient civilisations she used to love so much and motivated only by the largest offer of galleons. Cho couldn’t entirely blame her; she had a lot of anger to work through.

It wasn’t until Cho had spent a good few years progressing through the Department of Mysteries and got herself promoted to the Brain Room that she realised this was where she was meant to be all along.

Day after day, she dealt with the disembodied brains of four wizards who had donated their organs to the department upon their death. There was a serial killer from the 1890s who was frankly dangerous to be around, two wizards who seriously overestimated their lifetime contributions to society, and Sperry, the former Unspeakable who used to head the Brain Room and whose dying wish was that he never leave.

Cho found them fascinating.

Was it compounded by the realisation that, if she slipped up, any one of them could wrap its tentacles around her and drown her in the tank, or possess her and sear her own mind blank?

Undoubtedly.

She was on duty when Antonin Dolohov’s highly anticipated brain arrived, following an outbreak of Black Cat Flu at Azkaban as the winter set in. He was one of the lifetime inmates who’d agreed to donate it for research, unlike the oldest inhabitant of the tank. He had not been asked before they reanimated his brain, back in the bad old days. No wonder he was still psychopathic, more than one hundred years later.

Senior Unspeakable Amaechi asked her to assist him in excising the brain and fusing the cursed Muggle film rolls to the medulla, which was flattering. After a few days, Dolohov acclimatised himself to the tank fluid and the magic, and began to consider talking.

A tentacle rose from the tank, undulating, and turned its tip in Cho's direction. For a moment, it reminded her of the black and white War of the Worlds film she’d been traumatised by as a child, thanks to her Muggleborn mother and her weird cinematic taste.

This seemed like the perfect moment to recall his reputation and extensive record; page after page of convictions for murder and torture. She couldn’t deny the short, sharp burst of adrenalin that shot through her.

However, instead of vaporising her, a polite question transferred directly into her head.

In Mandarin.

Not that she understood any of it.

She stared at the brain, stunned.

“I don’t-” she managed.

The images on the film rolls flickered.

“Good afternoon,” he said, this time in quite good Cantonese. “May I ask your name?”

He had the slight accent of a non-native speaker, just like he would have done had he spoken with a physical voice. But he was civil, which was more than she could say for most of the other brains in the department, Sperry included. And he’d made the effort to try a language she didn’t often hear in the bowels of the Ministry.

“Unspeakable Chang,” she said finally.

Amaechi seemed mildly alarmed to hear Dolohov using a language no one else could understand, but was good enough to trust Cho to handle it.

“Pleased to meet you, Unspeakable Chang,” Dolohov  said. “Newspapers were very few and far between at Azkaban. I am keen to be updated on current events, if you would be so kind.”

So she did, switching to English for Amaechi’s peace of mind as he ran diagnostic spells beside her.

Cho didn’t mince her words when she explained how the Ministry had evolved after winning the war. His questions about politics and the current state of Wizarding society were incisive, and he was wise enough not to spout any toxic Pureblood nonsense.

They ended up conversing for hours, and she was surprised when the end of the workday arrived.

They picked up again the next morning as though they’d known each other forever and it became their habit to debate for hours over any topic she cared to indulge him in, to the extent that Sperry and the other brains failed to hold any interest for her.

Late one night, long after the Ministry had stopped paying her overtime for her evenings in the building, Antonin admitted that he was glad the Wizarding World had found peace.

“These last few years, I have had plenty of time to reassess my ideals,” he said, his film unrolled and floating on the surface of the gently rippling fluid. “Had we won, we would not have granted mercy to those who opposed us, and the conflict would never have ended. I am trying to find value in the new system which saw fit to spare me.”

“Is that why you donated your brain?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said. “I was not ready to die, and I still had many concepts to wrap my head around, if you will forgive the terrible pun. But my time spent conversing with you has really made me want to learn the worth of these new values.”

She glowed a little inside.

“I don’t necessarily expect you to believe me,” he went on. “But I think I would like you to.”

Cho wanted to believe him too.

She came into work on the morning of her birthday to an unusual request.

“May I touch a film roll to your temple?” Antonin asked.

“What?”

“I promise it won’t hurt you,” he said. “The film rolls can do much more than burn images into or out of your mind. I only wish to give you a gift, and there is only really one thing a disembodied brain can do for someone’s birthday.”

Cho was prepared to trust him by now. After all, he could have lashed out with a tentacle at any point over the last few months if he wanted to injure her. And she was hugely curious.

She exhaled slowly. “Okay,” she said, stepping up to the tank.

The tentacle wove slowly towards her. When it made contact with her skin, it was much warmer than she’d expected.

Then the Brain Room disappeared.

Antonin began speaking in Russian. Cho didn’t understand a word, but she recognised it as poetry from the cadence of the syllables.

A soft, luminous scene bloomed in her mind, like an Impressionist painting of a tree-ringed meadow. Bees hummed over wildflowers in the liquid light of sunset as birds sang and leaves rustled. It was as warm, buzzing and lilting as the sound of his voice.

“I didn’t know you could do that!” she exclaimed, after the poem ended and the meadow faded back into the clinical tiles and glass of the Brain Room.

Antonin’s brain twitched slightly as he withdrew the tentacle, causing the liquid around it to shrug.

“Well, it seemed a little forward to put images into your head before now, without your permission,” he said, sounding amused.

“I... suppose you’re right,” she said, blushing. “But I’m glad you did today. What is the poem called?”

He laughed.

“The puzzle is part of the gift,” he said.

He told her the title in Russian, patiently repeating it until she’d picked up the pronunciation.

That night, she dashed off to look it up, always a Ravenclaw at heart.

One trip to the library later, she discovered it was a love poem by Pushkin, and it was beautiful in translation too. She memorised it, read more, and started learning Russian in her spare time.

Poetry became a gift they could exchange. All Antonin had was speech of a sort, and memory. She’d never been wild about it before, but she found herself reading far and wide to find authors that he’d appreciate: Li Bai, Lorca, Al-Mutanabbi, and Tennyson, among others. He introduced her to Akhmatova and Baudelaire, and graced her with a featherlight film roll to the temple and a visual representation of each poem.

Then, one day, it all came crashing down.

Arsenyeva, the department Mediwitch, had been refusing to enter the Brain Room since Antonin was admitted. He was her maternal cousin, and had attacked her family during the first Wizarding war.

Her numerous formal complaints had finally gained traction, combined with the fact the fact that she’d been insisting on treating the frequent injuries which happened there in a room that did not contain his brain.

Antonin was the reason her father was dead, her mother was crippled, and she only had one working eye. It wasn’t unreasonable that she couldn’t stand to be around even a part of him. Cho had read all about it in his file.

She liked Arsenyeva. Had it been anyone other than Antonin, she would have sympathised.

Because he had changed. Months of talking to him every day and exchanging love poetry had convinced her of that.

Unfortunately, the Ministry decided that Arsenyeva was more valuable to them than the brain of one war criminal. Cho understood, objectively.

Subjectively, though, that was a different matter. Antonin wasn’t ready to die, and she wasn’t ready to let him go.

She put in a convincing argument for needing a few more weeks to collect final data before his brain was destroyed, but she had to come up a real solution.

Late one evening, Cho was rereading Amaechi’s notes on transferring a brain to the tank. And, it occurred to her, there was no reason why the process couldn’t be reversed. The same spells would fuse the brainstem back onto an available spinal cord, should she be able to source one recently alleviated of its brain.

As she pondered the matter, Marcus Flint entered the room, his cleaning trolley clattering behind him.

“Chang!” he called with a greasy grin, drawing out the vowel in a way that made her vaguely uncomfortable.

She gave him a tight smile, never quite able to forget all the times he’d fouled her on the Quidditch pitch, or been chased away from the girls’ changing room doorway.

He bustled around the room, directing a broom to sweep and a flying pink feathery ball to dust. Not for the first time, Cho wondered if there was a Bludger inside it, because it began to clean the miniature orrery on Antikythera’s desk far too aggressively, knocking the beautiful, brassy planets out of alignment. Antikythera was going to be furious in the morning.

Flint kept up a stream of idle chatter that made it impossible to concentrate, so she put the notes down with a huff.

He had his back to her, idly scratching the base of his close-cropped skull, when she began to wonder.

Thanks to his tendency to just talk at her whenever he came in to clean, she knew far more about him than she’d ever intended to. He didn’t have much family or (she suspected) many friends out of Azkaban these days. Hardly anyone would miss him.

As available spinal cords went, encased in a body in (she hoped) reasonable health, he wasn’t a bad choice.

She’d have to pull off some hefty Transfiguration on his face and body, because there was no way she was running off into the sunset with someone who looked like Marcus Flint for the rest of her life. Fortunately, she’d always been quite good at Transfiguration.

They would keep the film rolls attached, she decided. Not only was she unsure what would happen if they tried to remove them from Antonin, but she’d grown quite fond of their ability to project images directly into her head.

Yes, this could work.

Finally, she had a solid plan.

Nine nights later, the night watchman waved Marcus Flint out at the end of his shift, without wondering why he was swathed in a long coat, hat and scarf all of a sudden.

The following morning, Cho met with a committee of Wizengamot members and Unspeakables, including a stony-faced Arsenyeva. They proceeded to the Brain Room.

Amaechi gave her a sympathetic pat on the shoulder before stepping away, trusting (as always) her insistence on being the one to see the job done.

The brain babbled frantically in Russian, thrashing his tentacles as she levelled her wand at the tank.

A ringing silence followed her Avada Kedavra.

The film rolls fizzed and spat, then turned blank.

Slowly, the brain sank to the bottom of the tank, dragging the films with it. It bumped gently once, before coming to a halt. The tentacles joined it in a limp tangle.

It released a tiny cluster of bubbles and then the fluid grew still.

Amaechi gave his condolences and approved her week’s leave, effective immediately. When they wondered why she hadn’t returned, they would find her flat cleared and her letter of resignation on the otherwise empty table.

And she and Antonin would be long gone.

Like pure phantoms in enchanting light.

Notes:

My Assigned Genres:
Dark, Romance

My Assigned Tropes:
No, thank you.

My Assigned Characters:
Antonin Dolohov, Cho Chang, Ginny Weasley, Severus Snape, Marcus Flint

I'd have liked to go for prompt bingo, but I couldn't quite fit Ginny or Snape into the word count (especially as Snape was a little bit canononically dead at the time this fic was set)

Romance is not normally my bag, but the dark aspect of it made it a bit more doable!

The poem Antonin recites is 'I Still Recall the Wondrous Moment' by Alexandr Pushkin. I read it in translation here:
5 poems that every Russian knows by heart
And listened to it in Russian here:
A.S. PUSHKIN - " I remember a wonderful MOMENT" Russian classic