He had not seen them.
He had not seen them.
Now their presence hit him like a small eruption, a tidal wave that started with the raising of hands and the potent magic threatening to burst from the tip of their little playthings.
One hand to the wooden surface, palm down, he used the table for support as he turned his head to look at the guards that had somehow gone undetected and his glance was not kind -
yeah, you better be scared, said the little voice in the back of his head, and he sent a dark thought to the assassination of one Jean-Claude Ouellet, once upon a time in the era of the Social Reconstruction Committee. He needed no wand to work his magic, but it was also not his style to attack anyone in the open, and least of all a Minister.
It was a moment of sheer stupidity from the former Ravenclaw, a second of weakness in the agitated state that followed his realisation that his magic had failed him. Following the dizziness, the fact that he, at the given moment, was struggling even to keep himself standing.
And somehow they multiplied, turned into dark shadows.
It was the other's raised hand, the depth of his voice that brough him back.
Yet, he turned his head and the papers gathered between them appeared to melt into the table, and Altair was made aware that he was not all right - resisting the urge to reach out a finger and poke the other man so he'd finally turn into wisps of orange smoke.
“I know who you are. You’re not someone easily forgotten.”He was smart enough to know that this was not necessarily a compliment, but he was sincere in his approach, and could appreciate the frankness. It was this that convinced him that he might not, in fact, have slipped back into the dark pool of terrible visions.
And he sat.
"Thank you," he said quietly, but he needed a moment to close his eyes, to allow for a new silence to settled in.
"It's a complicated matter -," he started, "- but I'll try not to take too much of your afternoon."
When he opened his eyes back up, they looked at Rivera directly.
"I stopped voting when I got myself involved in politics," he explained. "Many years ago, I was part of the political movement of the Order for the Return of All Rights. We were known for being quite radical. We believed that people were able to make the best decisions for themselves, in
all matters."
For him, it had been libertarianism, but
in the anarchist tradition - one potent with idealism and energy and
change.
"I stopped voting because I went into that movement wanting a freer world, for purebloods and muggleborns alike - but what happened was that the leaders turned into megalomaniacs. It was
us that brought on the Blood Status Bill."
The words cut him like shards of glass, but his blood intermixed with theirs, running freely and black with guilt. Since then he had worked relentlessly, dedicated parts of his life to undoing the madness that he was participated in bringing aboard, though without abandoning the original ideology by which he had lived.
"Do you know what
tyrant means, Mr. Rivera? Tyrant is originally a term from ancient Greek society assigned to those that arose to power without the formal approval of a ruling elite, against the staus quo, against the Laws that have been put in place to keep that power."
The demonisation of people like them had been put into their language, into their
Law. That was how resistant the system was to changes from the bottom-up.
They were words that seethed with molten anger, then, abruptly --
"I'm sorry, I'm not here to give you my lecture," he said, diverting his eyes to stare down at the table. It gave the impression of a child suddenly realising that he'd said too much, a strange crack in the character that was Altair.
"I'm just here to express that, given my experience with the Ministry, I am afraid of what Bellestrom might bring, and what you could become once placed inside that same system of politics."
It wasn't really a question.
It didn't even have much to do with Atticus Rivera.
This was Altair having demons, and reaching out for someone to cling to, someone that might have some power to change things. Perhaps even someone in a position to resist corruption.
Break the circle.
(It was
hope he was looking for, at last.)