Chapter Text
Harry lifted her head slowly, listening to sounds of birds cawing. It was unusually cold, making her toes stiff and painful from where they poked out of her thin blanket.
It was just before sunrise, her small storage room lighting up with dim blue light. Harry shuddered, pulling her toes into the blanket and she sighed. Her adoptive family wouldn’t be rising for a few hours yet, but there would be trouble if the house wasn’t warmed by the time they got up. Harry had a full day; tending to the animals, fetching water, chopping firewood, gathering in the forest – and that did not yet include cooking the day’s meals, which would take up a good portion of her time. Her family was not a particularly wealthy one, but it ate like kings. It kept Harry busy trying to feed them most of the day.
Pulling her blanket over her head, Harry sighed, trying to summon the energy to get herself out of bed. With an audible groan, she pushed herself up and swung her feet over the side of her cot, hissing when her feet hit the cold stone floor. It was freezing, her breath misting out of her mouth like dragon smoke.
Harry made quick work of getting ready for the day, pulling off her thin night gown and tugging on a heavy woolen jumper over a thin camisole, pulling boys’ pants up her scrawny legs. She struggled with tugging on her worn pair of boots over dirty socks. She would need to do laundry, if the nearly empty pile of clean nickers and socks were anything to go by.
Harry moaned, pushing herself up to her feet. Shaking her hands to increase circulation and stretching after her rough night on the cot, she applied herself immediately to her morning, not letting herself think beyond the next task.
As predicted, the Dursleys were completely miserable from the moment they rose from bed, despite the chores being done in record time and a pleasantly warm house ready to greet them.
Harry made her way out of the house as quickly as possible. Her Aunt Petunia had always been the miserable sort, but she had become especially vicious since Harry tumbled into her teens. Harry knows she’s hardly pretty; she is freckled from long hours outdoors, scrawnier than any of the girls her age, and she’s not yet hit the womanhood stage her peers had – or, if she had, it was hardly noticeable. Either way, Harry’s heard rumours out in town that Petunia is considering selling Harry off to the highest bidder, be it as a bride or slave, if only to be able to be rid of her.
Harry might be fifteen but she has never even so much as given a second thought to marriage or moving homes and whilst the Dursleys are about as nice as a bucking donkey with a toothache, Harry would rather live with the devil she knows. Petunia doesn’t hurt Harry, at least not physically. Harry can outrun Dudley on a moment’s notice, can duck faster than Vernon can swing. Besides, Vernon is gone half the year selling farm equipment for the landowners of their estate, as good serfs do, and Dudley is so often out of the house chasing uninterested skirt that Harry practically has the run of house to herself, if she can avoid Aunt Petunia long enough. She even knows how to persuade her aunt into letting her go on long walks for half a day, if she finishes her chores quickly and competently enough.
Today happens to be one of the rare days that Aunt Petunia took one look at Harry and scoffed, shooing her out of the house in response to an unspoken request to go on a walk. It was nearing midday and Harry hadn’t had a chance to bath in nearly a week; she was smelling particularly ripe. Between tending the animals and single-handedly running the estate, Harry was covered in more ash and dirt (and other things that she would rather not think about) than was considered decent for her gender.
It took nearly an hour to reach the bathing pools, but it was well worth the walk. Sometimes Harry could get away with borrowing a horse, which reduced the travel time to barely twenty minutes, but Vernon was going to town today and was using the old mare. Today it was rather cold, but a brisk pace kept her warm and the exercise allowed Harry to think.
Harry finally reached the edge of the rock pools in a dense forest, a cheerful waterfall filling the pool and thermals beneath warming the water to a pleasant temperature. The area was famous for its divine swimming, but this particular swimming hole was solely Harry’s. It hadn’t been visited in all the time Harry has been coming here and she suspects, from the various rotting wooden signs leading to the rockpools, that this was property of the King. Not that everything wasn’t – there wasn’t a farm as far as she could ride the horse for months that didn’t belong to the King. But she supposed that some things were more off-limits than others. Not that Harry knew definitively; her family hadn’t allowed her the opportunity to learn to read. Harry could get by at the shops by recognizing the symbols for simple things, like bakers or butchers or whatnot, but less rare symbols left her confused.
It was something of a sore spot and Harry decided she wouldn’t dwell on it, turning her mind to pleasanter things. She immediately stripped and opened her satchel, pulling out a threadbare but clean cotton towel and a bar of soap. The soap had been gifted to her by the arborist’s son, a shy, pleasant boy who had grown into his looks over the past years. Harry had taken the gift rather happily, as it was a soft goats’ milk soap bar, scented with a strong perfume she hadn’t smelt before – Neville said it was called jasmine, a rare flower imported from Asia.
Harry immediately set to washing her clothes she wore to the baths. There were thermal vents around that would dry her clothing in mere hours despite the cold weather, if she dared to stay long enough to let them dry thoroughly. After scrubbing, rinsing out and hanging up her clothes, Harry settled into the bath and sighed pleasantly. She rubbed the jasmine soap into her skin to soak through the dirt and pressed soap into her hair, rinsing gently. Once she was scrubbed pink, top to bottom, she laid back against a warm stone to soak. This was her favourite time, when she was away from the Dursleys and could treat herself nicely to the jasmine soap and pretend that she was a water nymph, on no one’s beck and call.
Harry had seen a few nymphs in her time, though only at a distance and with careful trepidation. Nymphs were highly fickle; they could gift you a lock of hair, and then decide to drown you for the punishment of either taking it or refusing the gift – or both. As such, Harry kept a wide berth and often bathed in colder waters if she heard melodic singing through the woods on her way to her private pool.
Harry had been approached by a nymph only once in the baths, when her eyes were closed and she dozed in the warm waters. The nymph was gone by the time Harry woke, but it had left a stunning Nymph Crown, a heady bouquet shaped into a crown with a long sewn-in veil, woven of fine worm silk. It was the nicest thing Harry had ever received and she had immediately hidden it in a hollow tree by the pools; if Petunia had found it, she would have kept it for herself or burnt it, just to spite Harry. Harry sometimes wore it in the baths, the silk and flowers never dying nor damaged by the warm water. Magical gifts were to be treasured and if Harry decided to sell it, she would raise a fair sum. But she couldn’t bear to gift away the headdress, the lovely thing special to her in a way nothing else was.
Harry opened her eyes drowsily, realising that each time she had worn it in the baths that she had not been bothered. Perhaps it made her look like a nymph and frightened off any potential visitors or other nymphs, or perhaps it was simply just a nice headdress and held no powers other than preserving charms. Either way, one did not spurn the gifts of the fae, even if accepting them held equal danger. Reaching out of the bath, Harry rolled a large stone away from a tree, revealing the headdress. She carefully pulled it out, inspecting for any bugs or tears and, once satisfied, carefully lifted it onto her hair, rearranging the long silk veil over her shoulders and into the warm water. Harry smiled to herself as she laid back, feeling a bit foolish by her indulgence but allowing herself the treat.
Harry was roused from her dozing state by the sound of crashing in the distance. Harry sat up quickly, eyes wide as she recognized the sound of horse hooves. It was incredibly rare to ride a horse through this forest, especially at the speed Harry could hear. It was a dense, treacherous forest and required not only extensive riding skill, but a warhorse of great skill to be able to leap over the logs, knolls, and dodge trees.
Harry scrambled out of the pool as the crashing sound neared, stumbling over to her clothes and she pulled her on nearly-dried knickers and camisole. The long veil of her headdress got in the way, making her fumble around it to pull on the thin, white fabrics. For some reason, she was so flustered by the confusion that she simply forgot to take it off, struggling around the useless thing in her frenzied panic. Just as she reached for her trousers, Harry heard the crashing break through the thick copse of trees at the far end of the pools, barely a hundred metres away.
Freezing her movements, Harry’s heart jittered to a standstill, dropping into her stomach as she realised with horror that there was someone looking at her. Slowly turning around with her trousers gripped in her white-knuckled grip, body thankfully covered by the long nymph veil down to her knees, Harry felt every instinct in her petrify at the sight.
Across her sanctuary was a massive pitch-black war steed, decorated with the kind of lavish silver plating she’d heard the blacksmiths moan over (banding, the blacksmiths said) and elaborate, heavy leather straps. But that wasn’t what caught Harry’s attentions. It was the knight in full black armour sitting atop the steed, a knight wearing runed, obsidian-coloured protective alloy that signified his importance, his need to wear full battle gear. The sharp, eerie helm covering his head protruded with wickedly sharp black spikes, the intricate metal guarding his mouth warped and distorted. It was a horrifying visage, a nod to the kingdom’s state creature – the Dementor.
Death Eater, Harry’s mind whispered.
Death Eaters were the King’s knights. They were not just the King’s knights, though. They were his attackers, his personal sword, the men that lead armies into battle with gleeful bloodthirst. Rumours were that half of them had made deals with devils, elongating their lives and protecting them from ill-willed magic. They had led the charge that saw the six kingdoms surrounding their own fall to Voldemort’s feet. They were highly trained, highly lethal, and highly prejudiced; they had been rumoured to kill peasants on sight, if only for the crime of being in their presence.
The horse, impatient by the momentary stillness, whinnied loudly and stomped a massive black hoof. On a normal horse, that stomp would have lost a shoe – on a war horse, it merely trembled the ground beneath.
Like a spell broken, Harry turned tail and bolted, leaping through the thickest part of the forest in an effort to lose the knight. Her heart pounded like a frightened rabbit’s, her mind screaming run run run as she heard the knight take chase, a predator chasing frightened prey, the sound of a horse crashing through the rocky pools pushing her on. Though the knight was on a horse and had significant power over her, Harry knew these forests like the back of her hand and being on foot was an advantage, compared to being on a horse. She also knew that if she managed to get a good eight hundred metres away, she would reach a cliff face with an ancient, tiny crumbling stone path leading down one side of it, an old monk trail; the knight would need to chase on foot, and she doubted he would with all that heavy metal armour weighing down his frame.
Racing through a hedge and tripping as the damned veil caught on some branches (why on earth haven’t I taken this off yet, Harry despaired), Harry scrambled to her feet and continued, ignoring the feeling of blood running in small rivulets down her hands. Harry barely paid attention to the sharp stinging of her lungs, the bruises on her knees, the loud rush of blood pounding through her ears, the tears that sprung to the corner of her eyes on her fall. All she knew was that she was moments away from reaching the cliff edge stairwell and she would survive.
Without a moment’s warning, Harry cried out as an armour-coated forearm slammed around her waist, winding her harshly as the knight hung off the side of his steed and whipped her off her feet, yanking her up to his tall horse like a ragdoll. He had appeared out of nowhere, jerking Harry up onto his steed without a second to gain her bearings. Harry struggled to breathe as she was tossed over the horse roughly in front of the knight, the saddle’s horn digging harshly into her bruised ribs and making her both cry out in pain and gasp for air.
Choking, Harry clung onto the black steed’s mane so she wouldn’t fall off, the knight’s chainmail glove gripping the back of her veil and camisole.
Harry was torn between being absolutely furious and completely mortified; she was wearing basically nothing under the veil, like an imbecile, and she was going to be brutally murdered by a Death Eater in the middle of a forest while wearing a Nymph Crown. This was as embarrassing a death as it could get. As the seconds wore on and Harry blinked tears of pain out of her eyes, she began to become enraged.
“Who the actual fuck do you think you are?” Harry squawked, moaning as the saddle jostled when the horse leapt over a large log and dug further into her lungs.
The knight looked down at her in what Harry could only imagine was surprise and yanked harshly on the steed’s reins. Harry felt the horse slam its feet down in response to the knight’s command and moaned as her most-likely fractured ribs protested the movement.
“You are speaking,” the Knight said, his voice deep, distinguished, and oddly metallic from behind the pointed guard of his helm.
“Yes, that’s what kidnapped people tend to do,” Harry snapped furiously. She was so horrified by the entire situation; she was soaked, barely dressed, and was most likely going to be murdered in the next five minutes. She figured she didn’t have much to lose.
“Nymphs cannot speak,” the Knight replied blankly.
“Yes, well, if we are just going to be stating stupid facts, then I guess it’s my turn. Death Eaters have no fucking manners and you lot should be locked up between wars to protect the general public from your murderous assery,” Harry bit back, faintly aware that she should probably be appalled by her words but the fury igniting in her chest overrode any self-preservation.
A large, chainmail-covered hand wound into Harry’s hair and yanked her head up so that she was looking at the knight’s helmet, crying out as her hair was pulled harshly.
“You are a single woman by herself swimming in nymph infested waters, wearing a traditional nymph veil, and you are calling me an ass?” The knight replied sharply. “What did you expect people to think, that you were a human playing pretend at being a nymph? How is that much better?”
Harry gaped at the knight’s rude reply. “Nymph infested waters? Are you serious? I’ve seen maybe five, six at most, since I started coming here,” she replied, realising distantly that she was actually arguing semantics with a Death Eater but the adrenaline pushed her on, making her argumentative.
“The signs? Everywhere? Saying that this is nymph infested water?” The knight prompted, incredulous. “And that seeing up to six nymphs is usually a sign to stay away? How haven’t you been drowned yet?”
Harry blushed, realising that the signs she couldn’t read were warnings about nymphs, not king’s waters. Oh, well. Feeling defensive and unwilling to admit she was illiterate to a highly specialised military assassin (who was currently gripping her hair and arching her neck up to look at him), Harry decided to not reply to his questions and instead continue down her spiral of combatant anger. “It’s awful to think that you may be kidnapping an innocent woman, but it’s even worse if you thought you were kidnapping a nymph. The fae don’t take kindly to assaults on their kind and the nymph would probably die if pulled out of the forest.”
“Are you actually defending nymphs?” The knight shot back, sounding more and more harassed. “The evil fae creatures that drowns men, women, and children alike for their own entertainment?”
“Like your fucking hands are clean of blood,” Harry shot back.
The knight shifted quickly then, dismounting his horse in the blink of an eye and dragging Harry down with him. Harry squawked as she was manhandled, set onto her numb feet and crowding her against the impossibly large warhorse as he harshly yanked the crowned flower veil off Harry’s head.
Blushing, Harry stared down at her feet as the crown veil was tossed aside and she was exposed, barely clothed and seconds away from being speared by the knight’s sword (and hopefully that was not a euphemism).
A chainmail gloved finger slipped under Harry’s chin and she closed her eyes as her face was lifted skyward, for the knight’s inspection. It had been easier to be brave under the veil, when the adrenaline rushed through her veins and her temper won over. Instead of in this awkward silence as the knight inspected her face to make sure that she was, indeed, a human and not a cursed nymph capable of spoken word.
Slowly, with nerves steeled, Harry opened her eyes and stared past her eyelashes at the frightening visage of the Death Eater’s metal mask. The mask seemed familiar, reminding her of a time that she couldn’t recall – back when she was very young, and her village was ransacked by Death Eaters as her old country’s kingdom fell to Voldemort. Shuddering at the thought, and the cold that she had been too wound up to feel, Harry narrowed her eyes at her captor and jutted her jaw out, daring him to attack her.
“You are a very strange little girl,” the Knight said, tone carefully blank. “And you are very bare.”
Harry quickly crossed her arms over her chest, refusing to look down and feel horrified. “Well, I have you to thank for that last one,” Harry bit out, jaw flexing as she realised she was very, very cold. “And the first part is hardly your concern.”
“Don’t you know who I am?” The knight shot back, head tilting as he examined her. Harry wished she could see through the metal slits in his mask, wondering how it showed only a dark, fathomless darkness where his eyes should be.
“A Death Eater, yes, I understand how this works. You let me go or you kill me, whichever strikes your fancy, either way it needs to happen quickly,” Harry stammered out, feeling her extremities beginning to go numb from the cold. “I’m fairly sure my lips are blue.”
“A Death Eater,” the knight repeated, clipped tones incredulous, as if his honour were insulted.
“Oh, for the gods’ sake,” Harry snapped irritably. “I don’t know your fucking names, I’m sure there’s swaths of damsels in distress out there who would be able to recognise you by your fucking horse alone, but right now I don’t care, make your choice, knight. Murder the peasant or not?”
“The border lands really do not care about our kingdom, do they?” The knight replied instead of rising to the bait, tone haughty and judgemental.
Harry felt herself grow confused at his words, almost as if she had missed a step. “The border lands did not want to be part of the kingdom and that hasn’t changed in the ten years since you conquered,” Harry answered, perhaps a little too bluntly for her own good, wondering if anyone had ever spoken to this asshole knight this way before. The sun was lowering in the sky and the temperature was dropping rapidly; soon the forest would begin to crystallise with frost. “We are part of the kingdom, I’m not delusional, but only because we were rubbish at fighting back. But just because you own us doesn’t mean we have to love you. You lot are kind of massive dicks.”
“The mouth on you,” the Knight snapped, the hand still under her chin pressing harder against her flesh, a metal thumb coming up to press against her cold lips. “You are trembling,” the knight stated dully. The large war steed behind her, largely forgotten at this point, whinnied and made Harry jump.
“It’s really, really cold, and I’m wearing less clothes than a whore,” Harry replied in annoyance, trying to wilfully ignore the death machine behind her and the obsidian knight with the pointy swords in front of her. “I think at this point I may just have to amputate my toes; I don’t think they’re salvageable.”
“What is your name?” The knight questioned instead of addressing Harry’s concerns, making her more annoyed.
“If I tell you, will you make a decision?” Harry shot back.
“To kill you or let you wander back to whatever shit hole farm you escaped from?” The knight answered just as quickly.
Harry gaped, affronted. “First off, it’s a fucking lovely farm, thank you very much. And secondly – ” Harry gasped as the knight grabbed her and spun her around, thoughts racing a mile a second as she realised he was gripping her sides, oh fuck, and
Promptly lifted her up like she weighed nothing more than a sack of potatoes and threw her back up onto his horse’s saddle. Gasping for breath as her ribs were jostled once more, Harry scrambled to sit up in the seat and barely positioned herself as the knight hoisted himself up behind her. Trembling from the cold and the chilly metal pressing into her back, Harry gripped the black horn of the saddle, refusing to look behind her. Black metal arms reached around her and gripped the stallion’s reins, the horse shifting as it prepared to move on command.
“What now?” Harry asked in despair.
“I’ll take you back to your fucking lovely farm,” the knight mocked, voice somehow cultured even through the swear, “And get on with my mission. Which way?”
“Mission? Was it your mission to steal a nymph?” Harry asked, appalled, craning her neck to look behind her at the terrifying vision of black.
The knight glanced down at her, the spikes on his helmet gleaming sharply in the dimming light, and enunciated slowly as if she were a small, stupid child, “Which. Way?”
“That way,” Harry huffed, turning back around to face ahead and pointing east. She decided on settling uncomfortably into the leather saddle with as much dignity she could muster. “No need to be so rude about it.”
The knight took off in the direction advised and Harry spared a moment to glance back at her now ruined nymph headdress, a spike of sadness filling her as it was abandoned on the forest floor.
“You should not accept gifts from the fae,” the knight informed her blankly, somehow sounding unaffected even as the horse leapt over large logs and Harry held on for dear life.
“The fae aren’t so bad,” Harry replied when she trusted her voice to not shake.
“You clearly haven’t met the fae,” the knight retorted rudely.
“I actually have, thank you,” Harry snarked, gripping the saddle horn tightly between numb fingers, “And they’re a fair fucking bit nicer than you.”
“You’ve met the fae?” The knight asked sharply.
Harry nearly cursed herself aloud. It was considered dangerous to meet the fae; even a chance encounter could stain a person’s reputation. It was worse than running into a priest or priestess – or, gods forbid, an oracle. Those encounters tended to change a person.
“Not when I was awake,” Harry replied shortly. “I was gifted the veil without punishment.”
“Then you are lucky,” the knight growled.
Clearly, this knight had issues with magical creatures. It wasn’t surprising of a member of the kingdom’s guard; Voldemort’s original lands were fraught with dark creatures and the border lands they eventually conquered were as well. The conquered creatures, unlike the beats in their own country, had not taken kindly to having their allies torn down and had replied with viciousness.
“Yes,” Harry answered, unwilling to speak further on the topic. She actually thought the fae were pretty decent, if left to their own devices, and so far had been a fright more friendly to her than most humans, but she would not be currying any favours by admitting to such a thought.
Eventually, the knight turned onto the small road home at Harry’s quiet gestures and galloped at an even faster, rougher speed.
It was a long, miserable ride home, the sun setting despite the young hour. It was going to be winter very soon and Harry had a lot of work to attend to, work she hardly felt like doing with all the events of the afternoon. Harry was exhausted, cold, and now just realising how her family would react to a Death Eater dropping off their houseslave in only her knickers.
“You’re going to have to give me something to wear,” Harry informed the knight as the turned up the tree-lined path to her family’s estate.
“What makes you think I’d give you anything? I’ve been more than accommodating,” the knight retorted coldly.
“I’d hardly call kidnapping ‘accommodating’,” Harry muttered to herself. Louder, over the roar of the horse’s gallop, she replied, “So that my family doesn’t think my honour has been ruined by a member of the king’s guard and drop me off at the nearest whorehouse come morning.”
Despite the metal armour digging into her back, Harry could somehow feel the knight stiffen. “Your family would not sell a daughter to a whorehouse, no matter the condition she’s returned. The border lands prefer daughters to sons, unlike the inner kingdom.”
“Don’t presume to know our customs,” Harry snapped, hardly about to admit she was a slave to a knight who already thought her a basic peasant, “The only time I see any of your countrymen out here, it’s to tell us to make more food for the capital and tell us what we’re doing wrong. You don’t know anything about us.”
The knight did not respond to Harry, but she doubted it was from lack of opinion. Everything about this knight screamed highly educated, proud, and self-assured. It almost worried her when he didn’t reply, as she wasn’t sure if she had said something she shouldn’t have.
“That’s not to say that we need more of your men,” Harry added quickly. “We hardly need more oversight.” She could hear the knight huff behind her, the metal of his suit digging into her back.
Just then, the horse galloped around an expanse of trees and into sight of the homestead. Harry had never been embarrassed of her family’s home before; it was clean, comfortable, and the thatched roof didn’t leak in the winter. Harry tended the ivy growing up the sides of the house, the leaves red, yellow, and brown from the late autumn season glowing like fire, and she carefully maintained the window trimmings. There was no need or reason to be ashamed; she actually kept it quite nice.
But seeing it from the knight’s perspective – it was different. From her perched position on the edge of the horse’s saddle, she could see the war horse’s decorative barding, strong alloy metal plates covered with a fine patina of silver and covered in intricately carved runes to ward off dark creatures. The plating alone was worth more than her own household made in a lifetime. It was disquieting for Harry to realise the knight saw her home and must think, ‘I knew it was a shit hole.’
As the horse lurched to a stop, Harry was relieved to see none of the candles had been lit in the home and the carriage was gone; her family must still be out in the town gathering supplies before heading home. The knight dismounted with ease and Harry warily looked down, the height of the horse making her cautious of hurting herself whilst getting off. This horse easily had a good five, six hands on her mare.
If she could see his eyes, Harry would guess the knight was rolling them, as he made an annoyed noise and reached up. Harry wasn’t fast enough to avoid his strong grip and she was yanked off the tall steed, clinging to his sharp metal suit.
“Seems a little impractical to be wearing a full war ensemble all the time,” Harry muttered, rubbing her hands together and shuffling her feet to try and get feeling back into them, stepping away from the knight once her feet had enough circulation to allow the movement.
“I don’t,” the knight replied. “Only when hunting dark creatures.”
“Or under-dressed, unarmed farm hands?” Harry prompted, looking up at the tall knight with a pointedly raised eyebrow.
“As I said, dark creatures,” the knight replied. Harry rolled her eyes and turned towards the house, but was stopped by the knight saying, “Wait.”
Harry flinched as the knight unexpectedly reached toward her shoulder, jaw moving away from the hand passing by her face. The knight didn’t acknowledge the flinch, instead reaching into the war horse’s saddle bag and pulling out an unseen item. Harry kept her eyes trained on the knight’s blank metal helmet. He pulled the item over her shoulder and Harry’s eyes widened in surprise as a large, impossibly soft fur coat poured like satin into her hands.
“What is – ” Harry started to ask, before being cut off.
“So that you aren’t whored out come morning,” the knight stated dryly, as if amused by the thought. “Keep it, I toss them out after each trip anyway.”
“You toss these out?” Harry asked, aghast, as she pulled the large fur coat over her shoulders and sighed in bliss as the warmth enclosed around her slight frame, eyes closing happily. “You really are a rich, soddy wanker.”
A sound of shifting metal drew Harry’s attentions and she peered through her eyelashes, inhaling sharply as the knight took off his helmet. Underneath was quite possibly the most attractive person that Harry had ever seen in her entire life. Pale skin that was weathered a little from riding, a tousle of thick black hair, aristocratic nose and high cheekbones, a rough five o’clock shadow outlining a strong jaw – and grey eyes that flashed red in the dying light of the sun. Harry blinked up at the knight in surprise, realising that she had expected a scarred, miserable old bastard behind that mask, not a young man appearing to be in his early to mid-twenties. He was hardly older than a boy.
“What are you – ” Harry began, tone blistering and defensive, before being cut off once again by –
Soft, chapped lips pressed against Harry’s own in a surprisingly soft, innocent kiss and she stood rooted to the spot, eyes wide as she took in the sight of a fucking Death Eater pressing his stupidly attractive face to hers. She blushed, realising she hadn’t cleaned her teeth that day, though she was usually very good about chewing mint leaves and brushing her teeth with a special small brush, and of course the day she forgets –
Before Harry’s mental tirade could take over, the knight back away, eyes glittering in the violent glow of the sunset.
“Why would you do that?” Harry blurted as soon as he pulled back.
“It is a tradition to give the damsel in distress a parting kiss,” the Knight replied, shrugging. “Though that rather felt like the innocent kiss one gives a small child before they’re sent to bed. How old are you anyway?”
Harry flushed, annoyed. That was her first kiss and of course it had to be done by an extremely rude man who basically called the kiss a sexless, innocent peck that he felt he ought to do out of some bizarre obligatory Knight tradition.
“You are such a twat,” Harry muttered, burying her face in the deep collar of the fur coat.
“Does that count as your honour being ruined?” The stupidly attractive knight pressed impishly, the corner of his mouth quirking upward in an insufferably smug smirk as he saw Harry blush.
“Sure, if you were a younger brother saying goodbye to me as I departed for a life at a covenant,” Harry replied, pursing her lips in a very Petunia-like manner. “I’d hardly call you a womaniser.” Harry is not sure why she is baiting him, but something about him seems so fucking smug that she can’t help herself.
The knight merely smirked in response, shrugging in a way that looked too uncomfortable in his black armour to warrant the attempt. “I do try,” he answered, his demeanour so charming Harry’s brain struggled to catch up with what they were even talking about. “Besides, it seemed like a kiss from a knight would be the most exciting thing your little peasant life could ever achieve so I thought it wouldn’t hurt to gift you with a parting goodbye.”
Stung, Harry narrowed her eyes at him, stepping back until she nearly pressed against the war horse. “Very well,” Harry replied primly, “Thank you so much for kidnapping me, accusing me of being fae, bruising my ribs, and the long and miserable ride home in an autumn sunset whilst wet. You’re a fucking charmer, feel free to drop by the next time you decide to terrorise our native creatures.”
The knight seemed hardly offended, which annoyed Harry to no ends, and he instead replied with, “You never told me your name, little peasant girl.”
“Names have power in the outer lands,” Harry responded sharply. “And I have no interest in learning yours. Names require exchange.”
“You won’t exchange a name for a kiss? That’s hardly fair for a fae,” the Knight answered half-teasingly, though his eyes narrowed at the mention of her land’s lore. The inner kingdom did not much appreciate the legends of the outer lands.
“Fine, for a kiss,” Harry snapped, feeling oddly caught out, “Harry.”
“That’s a boy’s name,” the Knight replied judgementally.
“I am a boy,” Harry shot back, a blatant lie spoken only to be insolent.
“I could believe it,” the Knight answered too quickly for Harry’s tastes, making her blush as he eyed her.
“Bite me,” Harry snarled, pulling the fur coat tighter around her scrawny body.
The knight only laughed instead, a quiet huff of sardonic amusement, as if the mere thought of her insult were so preposterous it immediately invoked amusement. Harry bristled; the asshole should be so lucky to even scale on her list of people she would willingly touch.
“Well, have a good evening, black knight,” Harry said, refusing to show her offence. She curtsied, a little wobbly (which annoyingly ruined the effect), and turned around. “Please don’t stab me in the back as I’m walking away,” she asked dryly, stepping firmly toward the house. “And if you feel the impulse, just remember that the fae like me and killing me would only make your mission harder.”
The warning was in partial jest, but she hoped the knight was superstitious enough to feel nervous by her semi-threat.
A loud clattering noise made Harry jump and she whipped around just in time to see the knight mount his horse and take off down the dirt path. Watching him gallop away, eerie death helmet pulled on before he could turn down the little bend down the path, Harry wondered to herself how the actual hell she had managed to meet a Death Eater and live.
Brushing off her thoughts and pulling the fur coat in close, Harry turned back to her family’s house and went inside, putting her mind to more important things, like actually getting properly dressed and finishing her chores. Somehow, though, her mind kept wandering back to black knight and his demon steed, wondering why he had spared her.
Harry woke in the morning with a particularly vicious headache, surrounded by the plush fur coat that she had buried into in the coldest hour of the night. Moaning, she sat up and touched her forehead – and jolted in surprise as she realised her forehead was bleeding. It was hardly sunrise yet, the dim blue wash of the morning barely lighting her storage cupboard-cum-room, and she blinked in horror. Harry scrambled out of bed, too worried to feel the bitter chill of the stone against her toes, and scampered to kitchen. Pulling out a metal bowl, Harry raised the dish to the nearest window and inspected her warped reflection.
In the odd curved angle of the bowl, Harry pushed aside her messy fringe and inspected the old lightening scar on her forehead. It had nearly faded to obscurity over the years, covered with her thick hair and a thin layer of dust from the farm. The knight probably hadn’t even noticed it the night before, for it was so hidden on a daily basis from pressing her own hair down. However, it was clear as day now – swollen, red and bleeding, it pulsed with her heartbeat and made her skin crawl uncomfortably.
Worried, Harry touched the scar and hissed, pulling her hand back quickly. It was painfully uncomfortable and had never acted like this before; she wondered if she had agitated the mark by running through the brush whilst trying to escape the knight.
Miserably, Harry found a small jar of honey and dipped her finger in the amber liquid. Pressing a small amount to her forehead, Harry sighed deeply. It worked only sometimes, but she found that the native honey from her small bee farm, tended with years of care, reduced the pain and swelling in her cuts. Harry carefully tied her fringe back with a string in her hair, keeping her newly clean hair away from the sticky mess.
Petunia was a frightfully horrid mess that morning; she took one look at Harry’s swollen forehead and flew into a rage, cursing Harry up one side and down another. It took Harry’s constant placating (no I didn’t meet anyone yesterday, no I’m not lying, I’m sorry, please, I just tripped and fell, please Aunt Petunia, I promise) before the miserable shrew would leave Harry alone for five minutes. It hardly helped that Harry felt quite miserable upon recalling how much a fool she had made herself to a Death Eater, wondering if she had brought an unintentional plague on her small village.
Voldemort’s countrymen were hardly known for their kindness and they often retaliated to impudence with murder. Somehow, Harry felt like the black knight she’d met the night before was hardly any different.
Eventually Aunt Petunia left Harry alone for long enough to finish her daily chores and it was only during kneading a particularly large loaf of dough and day dreaming about nonsense that it eventually sunk in that she had been kissed by a member of the knight’s guard and turned the shade of fire. Somehow, thinking back on the moment, it had felt more like a kiss of death than passion and the ashy tingling feeling from the night before burst on her lips, making her wonder if she had been cursed.
Time wore on, the seasons waning and waxing, and Harry eventually forgot about her chance encounter with the King’s guard, drowned in her struggles with her family and the farm and everything about her countryside. A brutal drought raged through the lands, making the peasants miserably uncomfortable as more and more of the King’s men raided their village, looking for grain, horses, girls – anything of perceived value they could get their hands on.
It became so brutal that eventually even Petunia, with her pinched horse face, had seen enough harassment to stay at home, sending out Harry under the guise of boy’s clothes to the village to gather supplies, even though the young woman had turned nineteen and struggled to pass by as a boy these days. The villagers muttered angrily as time went on and the drought refused to let up, for nearly four years of rainless skies and soil so fruitless it was worth less than the salted lands of Carthage. The villagers muttered that it hadn’t been this horrid since times before the Old King and Old Queen had been fated to one another by the fae, when the Old Queen refused the Old King’s hand in marriage and the lands punished the two for their obstinate pride.
It showed the countryside was becoming wild, untamed, to be speaking of the Old Ones. Harry hadn’t heard much of them, as addressing the Old Ones often caused the King’s men to burn villages in revenge. But the mutterings and rumours were unstoppable and they spread faster than pollen on the wind. Harry heard most of the rumours by sneaking through into the village to gather supplies, avoiding the king’s drunk soldiers raiding her small village. Back when Voldemort took over the kingdom, nearly fifteen years ago now, the people had been mutinous; they had loved the Old Ones. But there was a rumour the Old Ones had a daughter, one who had been shuffled out of the castle before it was raided by Voldemort’s forces, and the people thought one day she would ascend to the throne to topple Voldemort’s forces. It was an old faerie tale, a perceived prophecy by an unknown oracle that Harry had heard, spoken only in whispers around a campfire. But now the people lost even hope in the legendary prophecy.
The lands grew barren, the mines of minerals dried up, and the people starved in their own homes. In the absence of hope, people grew vicious.
The people were talking of revolution – and Harry knew it was only time before Voldemort’s men came to remind them who their masters really were.
By the side of an accursed, gnarled old tree, Harry glanced around a field lit only by a half-moon, cautiously making sure she was unwitnessed. Once assured that no one hid in the shadows of the surrounding trees, she pressed on a particularly gruesome looking gnarl and a small doorway popped out from the base of the tree, the entry no wider than to fit a large dog. Wiggling into the dark passageway and into the underground below, Harry sighed in relief as she pushed the doorway closed so it was once more hidden from the outside world.
“Harry?” A soft spoken voice whispered in the distance.
Harry grinned at the voice of her friend, Hermione. “I’m here,” she whispered back.
Hermione lit a small oil lamp, the glowing light sharp in the gloomy earthen tunnel. Harry grinned at Hermione, who rolled her eyes. “You are inappropriately excited for someone committing treason,” Hermione criticised, though it was hardly scornful; Harry would call that tone affectionate, on Hermione.
“Says the woman always ready for an adventure,” Harry replied, amused. Hermione waved her on down the hallway and Harry fell into an easy stride next to her best friend.
“Do you know who will be joining us?” Hermione asked worriedly, the brunette clearly more nervous than previously let on.
“Only that Ron and the twins will be there,” Harry answered softly, navigating their way through the labyrinthine tunnels. They were old miner tunnels used to move treasures between villages and later taken advantage of to relocate political refugees during the invasions; it was a near miracle that Voldemort’s soldiers hadn’t found this part of the underground network yet.
“Ron is bringing Lavender,” Hermione stated tonelessly, though Harry flinched at the words.
“Ron is an idiot,” Harry replied quickly, tossing an amused glance at her friend out of the corner of her eye.
Hermione didn’t reply, but looked vaguely pleased by Harry’s response.
“Ron said he might be able to get Dumbledore to attend,” Harry whispered, almost too quietly to be heard over their muted footsteps.
Hermione inhaled sharply, turning wide eyes to Harry.
“It’s a capital offence to conspire with a mage,” Hermione hissed, looking fraught.
“And conspiracy for treason isn’t?” Harry shot back, feeling a little defensive. Harry had only met Dumbledore a handful of times, but he was hardly dangerous.
“Of course, Harry,” Hermione sighed, carefully avoiding a root growing out of the tunnel floor, “But this is an extra level of conspiracy. If we’re caught together without Dumbledore, we’re just stupid kids having a late night party. If we’re caught with Dumbledore…” Hermione didn’t bother finishing her statement.
Harry knew perfectly well what it meant. Death by the knight’s guard or worse – one’s soul being consumed by a Dementor. There was no excuse for consorting with a mage, especially one of the only ones in the land vocally critical of Voldemort, even if he was pushed out to the border lands.
“It’s the only way,” Harry answered, feeling a little numb in her response. Everything had changed in the last few years. Babies went missing in the night, rumoured to be stolen by the fae and replaced a night later with a physically identical child, ones who stared at its parents with alien disinterest. Girls were kidnapped by soldiers in the light of day, never to be seen again by their families. Entire farms burnt to the ground, whether by drunk highwaymen looking for danger or by an out-of-control fire lit by the farm’s own hearth. The drownings in Harry’s favourite forest ponds had increased over the years, the nymphs angry and vengeful beyond explanation. Even Harry kept out of the forest these days, worried she would be the next floating body to be found by some unsuspecting passer-by.
Something, anything, had to change.
“I know,” Hermione sighed, a large exhale forced from her lips. Hermione was the most logical person Harry knew; if even Hermione knew it was time to take drastic measures, then Harry felt safe in her decision.
Coming to the end of a long tunnel, Harry looked up at the wooden board in the ceiling covering the portal to the pub above.
“Give me a lift, then?” Harry asked, grinning at her friend.
Hermione rolled her eyes again and laced her fingers, squatting to give Harry a leg up. Between the two of them, Harry was lifted high enough to knock solidly in the agreed-upon pattern. A moment later, the wooden board moved and Harry blinked at the blinding light shining through into the tunnel.
“About time,” Ron chuckled, reaching down and pulling Harry up by her forearm. Rolling to the side, Harry made way for Hermione to be pulled up through the floorboards.
Hermione primly rose to her feet and dusted herself off, giving Lavender a graciously polite nod and smiling at Ron with passive, indulgent kindness.
“Bloody scary when she gives me that look,” Ron whispered to Harry, grinning as Hermione frowned, obviously having heard them.
Harry chuckled at her other best mate, punching him in the arm. He may be a clueless wanker, but he had been around enough for Harry to know that the boy meant well. Besides, Hermione may have a crush on the redheaded boy, but Harry also knows that Hermione needs someone to challenge her, intellectually. Hermione would probably chew up and spit out Ron before a year of dating eclipsed; Lavender, despite her surface level vanity, was actually quite a decent girl and was perfect for Ron (though Harry would never admit such a thing to Hermione’s face).
“Let’s get on with it, then,” Lavender stated, ignoring George and Fred behind her making faces at the younger woman.
Harry nodded, following Lavender into the next room. Upon seeing the wizened old Dumbledore sitting by the fire, Harry grinned and walked up to his side.
“Mage Dumbledore,” Harry greeted warmly. “Thank you for coming.”
Dumbledore’s shocking blue eyes twinkled at Harry over half-moon glasses, the man genial and calm but somehow pulsing with charismatic power. “Harry, my dear. You’ve grown so much since I last saw you; somehow you’ve grown even more charming than before, if that is possible.”
Harry smiled at the old mage, his words spoken in a manner one would address a favourite granddaughter. It was true; over the years she had finally developed into something of a woman (and embarrassed to need Hermione to explain more than half of the things happening to her, for Aunt Petunia was precisely no help at all) and it made her pleased to think Dumbledore was proud of her. It was very rare for Harry to receive compliments and Dumbledore’s unassuming and unthreatening manner eased her nerves.
“Come on, then,” Ginny called as she entered the room, laughing in warm companionship. “If you’re going to compliment one of the girls, you must compliment us all, old man.”
Dumbledore chuckled, turning to the rest of the room’s inhabitants. “I must say, it has been a very long time since I have seen such a young, attractive group. I must say that the last time that comes to mind is the Old One’s wedding.”
Lavender blushed prettily at the thought of being compared to the Old Ones, who were known for their fae-like beauty, whilst Hermione, Harry, and Ginny laughed in amusement.
“Ever the charmer, this one,” Ginny stated conspiratorially, winking at Harry. “One has to wonder how he’s not been taken.”
“Alas, that is the wonder of the ages,” Dumbledore replied, clapping his hands together. “But there is time for pleasantries later, my dears.”
Ron nodded quickly, clearly out of his depth in the face of floral, charming language and ready to get on with the planning.
“Luna is out this evening with her father; they’re getting ready for a Samhain ritual and she couldn’t make it,” Neville said at last, appearing to melt from the shadows.
Harry cast a warm smile to Neville, who she had not noticed before as Dumbledore commanded so much of the room’s attentions, but knew he was expected to be at the meeting.
“Ah yes, Samhain,” Dumbledore addressed. “I’m afraid we will have to be especially vigilant; the spirits are disturbed, more so than last year, and will require more sacrifice than usual to sate the spirit world’s influence.”
Harry shivered, an ill chill crossing over her flesh and raising goosebumps. Each Samhain had caused some ruckus or another in her life, whether it be catastrophic break downs of equipment in the farmstead, or fires in the fields, or some other strange drama that often captured her attentions. Four years ago, in the early evening of Samhain, she had been kissed by a black knight, who stole her first and only kiss before disappearing to obscurity.
Every year, for days leading up to Samhain and for a few nights after, Harry lit candles and carefully placed the illuminative flame in protective hallowed squashes along the porch to the farmstead (despite Petunia’s disgust of the old ways), to light the spirit’s path down the road. This faithful acknowledgement of tradition seemed to ease the strain the chaos caused on her life. But, for some reason, the cool winds blew especially hard on the nape of Harry’s neck this year, even when there wasn’t a breeze to be measured, and she felt the change of the seasons more harshly than the years before.
“We could sacrifice a wild boar,” Ginny offered, looking ready for the challenge.
“The spirits want to touch our world, not have more added to theirs,” Hermione countered, looking annoyed at the thought of another farm animal needlessly lost.
“It’s not uncommon to pay privilege to the spirits through sacrificial death,” Ginny snapped, annoyed.
“It certainly isn’t,” Dumbledore cut in, before the two girls could really get a row going. “But I don’t think a boar will suffice this year.”
A deathly silence fell over the group as they stared at Dumbledore in surprise.
“What are you proposing?” Hermione asked, paler than before.
“The lands are bare, the skies are dry, the rivers run only dust and ash,” Dumbledore replied thoughtfully. “This has only happened once in my lifetime, a time you were born in but would hardly recall.”
Neville shifted uncomfortably. “Are you speaking of the Old Ones?” He asked, nervous.
“Indeed,” Dumbledore confirmed. “The Old Queen refused the hand of the Old King and the gods were angry the fated couple denied the decision to unite them. The Old Queen denied the Old King’s hand and the land fell into terrible plague and famine. It was only through her decision to sacrifice herself to the gods and the Old King rescuing her in the legend’s tale that the lands were restored to peace.”
Harry found herself rolling her eyes before she could supress the annoyed action. It was a very old faerie tale, this one. That the Old Queen bared herself up for the spirit world’s consumption to save her lands and, driven by the whispering of the spirits, she was saved by the Old King (who was the Prince at the time) when he crashed the ritual and kidnapped her. It was romantic and sappy and completely useless; an old legend that was dramatised in the years since Old Ones died.
“You don’t think it is true?” Dumbledore addressed Harry, somehow having seen her scorn even though he hadn’t been facing her during her annoyed expression.
Blushing, Harry steeled her nerves and jutted her chin. “It seems silly to believe in such nonsense,” she answered. “There is no Princess to save us now, no Prince to rescue her from her own sacrifice and lead the lands to prosper.”
“But a sacrifice is necessary,” Ginny muttered, looking down. “Our mother has been in tears for days. The landowner will kick us off the property soon, even though we’ve been there for generations. He says it’s our poor management that has seen our grain farm die out. We can hardly afford to feed ourselves, let alone sell grain in the markets. The fields were ravaged by pests before we could harvest; the silos are completely empty and it’s the end of the harvest season.”
Harry blinked in surprise, suddenly realising that the twins had been uncharacteristically quiet. They frowned at one another, looking away from the group.
It seemed implausible – impossible. The Weasley lands were the most fertile there were, running through old volcanic lands and speared by a natural spring running through. If the Weasleys weren’t able to harvest grain – the village was going to die, simply put. In fact, the entire border lands were going to die, if the Weasley lands were indicative of the condition of the countryside.
“If we don’t have food for the winter, the kingdom will let us starve,” Hermione stated blankly, looking haunted.
The entire group knew what this meant. Nearly five years ago, in a faraway annexed land that was part of the kingdom but on the fringes, a village had started to struggle and was reportedly unable to support its own people. Harry’s little corner of the kingdom had helped where it could, but soon the thick winters of the northern territory had blocked off the passageways with snow and Harry’s people couldn’t send aid any longer. Voldemort had reportedly laughed the peoples’ attempts to request assistance and, after a ferocious winter, the soldiers went to check on the villages and found the people had killed and eaten one another. The land was so cursed by the evilness and desperation and starvation of the people that the soldiers sent in dementors to consume what little survivors were left and then burnt it down to the grown. It was now a barren wasteland, useless to all and hollow of souls.
“I’ll do it,” Harry said suddenly and then there was uproar.
“Are you serious – ” Ron raged as Hermione cut off with, “You cannot even think for a moment that we’d consider – ” Ginny snapped, “Stop with the martyrdom, you ass, that’s hardly what I was saying before – ”
“I’m not joking,” Harry shouted over the chaos, glaring down the appalled faces of her friends. Dumbledore, somehow, looked unaffected, as if he had expected Harry to offer herself up for an ancient ritual sacrifice. Surprisingly, she felt herself stung by this realisation. “I’m an orphan,” Harry stated firmly. “I have no family – or, at least, a family that cares. I have no future, Petunia is looking at selling me to the blacksmith and we all know how that will go, the brute has already gone through two wives. Just – please,” Harry begged, voice turning rough, “Let me do this for you.”
“There’s no way,” Hermione stated firmly, grabbing Harry’s hands and looking sternly into her eyes.
“I’ll die anyway if I don’t do this, we all will,” Harry replied around the sudden lump in her throat. “And the sacrifice has to be willing. We couldn’t ask this of anyone else, Hermione. It would spoil the ritual, having someone do it who doesn’t want to; it’s tantamount to coercion, to even ask. But I do. I know you might think I’m martyring myself,” Harry glanced at an ashen-faced Ginny, “But I don’t care. Please.”
“We’ll find another way,” Hermione replied, eyebrows drawing together. Harry could see from the look on her face that she was already thinking of different ways to solve the matter.
“If you do, I will happily listen,” Harry answered. “But I don’t think there is, seriously. This is a traditional as old as our people and it has never failed.”
“Fuck this,” Lavender stated suddenly, her eyes alight with fury. “I cannot even believe we’re standing around, talking about murdering Harry. I am going home, this was a shit idea, don’t bother contacting me unless you think of something better.”
Lavender left the room in a huff and Harry blinked after her, surprised by her sudden outburst. Harry and Lavender had never really gotten along, but they had never disliked one another. She was surprised by Lavender’s defence.
Looking torn, Ron gazed after Lavender.
“Go on after her, Ronnikens,” Fred stated, his normally chipper tone dulled. “You know you want to.”
Ron frowned at his brother before throwing an apologetic expression at Harry and raced out of the room.
“That twat,” Ginny stated bluntly.
“I think we’ve spoken on this enough for tonight,” Dumbledore said at last, breathing through a deep sigh. “Go home, sleep on it, and we should convene again in a few night’s time. Harry, my dear, stay behind, will you?”
The groups said their goodbyes and Harry stayed behind as asked, at last in the dark room by Dumbledore’s side, the crackling fire spitting small sparks from its hearth as if reaching out to touch Dumbledore’s presence.
“You knew,” Harry said, looking down through her eyelashes at her feet. “That I would offer myself as sacrifice.”
“I did,” Dumbledore answered, sounding sad but accepting. “It is in your blood, to give yourself up for your people.”
Harry looked up in surprise. “Did you know my parents?” She breathed, wondering why he had never spoken of this before.
Dumbledore smiled sadly at Harry, halfmoon glasses reflecting the light and partially hiding his gaze. “I did. They were wonderful people, Harry. They would be so proud to see you today.”
“What were they like? What did they do? Who were they?” Harry asked in quick succession. This was the first time anyone had spoken of her parents, not including the rude, seemingly baseless accusations of Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon, who seemed to know basically nothing of Harry’s parents other than some spiteful insults.
“They were very much in love, but too proud to admit it,” Dumbledore sighed, looking as if he were surrendering to a memory. “Your mother was so passionate, Harry. She loved you very dearly. Your father too. He was strong in a way that your mother adored. And she bore that scar, too, though it was in the shape of circle rather than a lightning bolt,” Dumbledore added, pointing to Harry’s fringe.
Blushing, Harry smoothed her hair over her forehead. Since that fateful All Saints Day when she had woken up with a swollen, bleeding forehead, the scar had never fully healed. It didn’t bleed anymore, but it did occasionally ache and it was red like an angry welt. Harry could hide it mostly behind her hair; it was embarrassing and Petunia had always impressed upon her to never show it to anyone, lest the village think she was diseased.
“It’s not possible to have hereditary scars, I didn’t think,” Harry replied at last, pushing past her embarrassment.
“Only very rarely,” Dumbledore answered evasively. “It was a special mark in my day, not very known by the common folk of the Old Country but easily identified in certain circles.”
Harry felt exasperated with Dumbledore’s useless answers. “So my parents were famous?” She asked, feeling it an innocent enough question for Dumbledore to answer without his usual side-stepping tactics.
“You could say,” Dumbledore answered, shrugging. “They were very well known about, but very few people actually knew them, one could say. I promised them I would tuck you away from the war, protect you from the world, when Voldemort’s fleets were at our doors.”
Sighing, Harry realised that the old mage wasn’t going to give her anything helpful to go on, to her endless frustration. Only the spirits could come up with such a laughably annoying person to answer her deepest questions about her past.
“I will say, though,” Dumbledore stated suddenly as Harry made to move, “That you must follow your instincts, Harry. Listen to what the spirits tell you to do. Do not falter in your step, or we will all be doomed.”
Blinking at Dumbledore’s oddly prophetic tones, Harry nodded quickly and left before Dumbledore could confuse her any further.
Samhain rushed upon Harry before she had time to reconsider her position. Unfortunately for Hermione, despite her extremely vehement protests that she would not allow Harry to sacrifice herself, was not able to find a solution to the growing troubles of their people other than Harry’s proposed solution. Harry avoided speaking to her friends, if only to shy away from their guilty, sad eyes.
At last, Samhain was upon them. Harry set out the yearly hollowed squashes and carefully lowered her candles into them. She had used all her savings to purchase as many candles as she could, nearly a thousand of the little things, and she set out more than usual the garden path along until the family’s estate lit up with glowing warmth. Harry carefully placed small tealights in the trees throughout the estate, to guide the spirits along their weary path. When she died tonight, she wanted a clear guide on her way to the spirit world.
Harry left the house in a solemn state, following Dumbledore’s instructions that she would know what to do, to follow her instincts if she really were a willing sacrifice. She had dressed in the now heavily worn fur coat the knight had given her over a white lace ritual dress. It was gifted to her tenderly by a solemn Dumbledore on their last meeting, a traditional nymph-made dress he had somehow acquired for the Samhain ritual.
Harry walked towards the nymph forest, barefooted but hardly feeling the cold despite the lateness of the season. As she followed the path toward the forest and using the candle-lit guides of the neighbouring properties to guide her, Harry felt a soft peace fall over her. The long walk turned into a trance, her eyes alight with the reflection of thousands of tealights despite there being only little candles in pumpkins guiding her way, set out by the few pagan neighbours in their farmlands. Her step grew solid as the spirits placed her feet securely in the loose soil, her breath sure as they warmed her lungs.
Harry arrived at the edge of the forest and realised she had not remembered the long journey, her only recollection an effortless walk and feeling warmed by the fur coat. Her nerves were so numbed that she did not jump in shock at the sight of nymphs merging from the heavily shadowed woods, melting into sight as if borne from the trees themselves. One approached her, a pair of large stag antlers in her hands, and she pressed the heavy headdress into Harry’s hair, soft fingers curling under Harry’s chin before a kiss pressed against her sluggishly bleeding lightning bolt scar. Eyes alight and expression entranced, Harry let the nymph lace her cool fingers within her own and was led into the depths of the forest.
It was as if time skipped a beat again, for Harry was suddenly in a dark clearing, lit only by a half-moon, and the guide nymph stepped back and melted into the shadows. Harry was alone and she approached a heavy stone alter, the ancient granite carved with runes and overgrown with moss from disuse. She felt herself climb onto the alter, laying down and sighing with relief as her journey came to an end.
A figure emerged from the edge of the clearing and Harry, for the first time, she felt a swell of fear surge up her throat. This was not right, she was meant to lay here until the spirits took her home. Harry’s instincts flared up, warning her danger. Just as she moved to sit up, Harry cried out in pain and collapsed hard against the stone alter, body arching violently as the creature reached out and induced such pain in the very marrow of her bones, so painful that she was sure she had been set on fire. Harry gripped the sides of the alter, her body bowing, eyes rolling into the back of her head as her mouth screamed silently.
Suddenly, the pain was gone and Harry whimpered, collapsing once more and inhaling a trembling, terrified breath. She turned hesitantly toward the figure by her side, too exhausted from the agony to even try to run, and cringed away from the sight.
A floating, black cloaked figure hovered by the side of the alter, a monster borne of deep misery and despair. It was not a dementor but rather something more insidious; a demon, a beast.
The creature approached, reaching out with rotting hands and Harry inhaled sharply, rolling to the side of the alter and falling off, hitting the mossy dais below with a painful oomph.
Scrambling to her feet, Harry felt a sudden animalistic drive to run burst through her veins. She was the Sacrifice and she was going to stolen from the Ritual by a monster; she couldn’t let it happen, no matter what. Exploding into motion, Harry lurched into a run that was impossibly fast for her human legs, and yet she breezed through the forest like a startled doe. The heavy antlers on her crown weighed nothing more than air, the slippery forest floor beneath her feet as sure as a beaten path, her candle-lit eyes seeing like daylight in a forest nearly pitch black.
Harry could feel it behind her, the monster taking chase. It was evil, horrid, it wanted to eat her alive and go after her village next. It was going to destroy everything and everyone she ever loved. Harry ran not for her life, but for village’s life.
Time passed by once more without notice, the moon shifting in the sky as it sunk to the ground, her time to finish the ritual slipping by her too quickly. Harry panted harshly as she kept running, impossibly never reaching the end of the forest, knowing she should have reached it hours ago and yet running through endless thickets.
A rumbling in the distance bothered Harry, but she was too tired and worn and frantic to pay it real attention. The creature was practically nipping her heels, racing after her, she was hardly tiring but the milliseconds she was slowing was enough for it to catch up.
Harry cried out in pain as she was, strangely feeling like déjà vu, swept off the forest floor as a horse stampeded by. Harry was pressed into a warm frame, her back bracketed by strong arms and braced by a firm chest, her fur coat encased around her once more and the rabbit beat of her heart racing like a caged animal.
“It’s right behind me, it’ll catch me, let go,” Harry cried as she struggled wildly, bucking against the cantering gallop of the large black horse she sat astride, without saddle and caged by strong forearms gripping the steed’s mane. “Please, you don’t understand, it will catch me,” Harry pleaded, unable to turn around in the strength of the rider’s arms.
“It’s alright, I’ve got you,” a voice whispered in her ear and Harry inhaled sharply, her panic suddenly dulling. The world faded around her as her vision tunnelled, her instincts flaring in response and she sunk against the chest of the man pressed behind her, sighing in relief. She was suddenly inexplicably placated, trusting the unseen man behind her to protect her.
“Don’t go to sleep,” the man whispered once more in her ear, the horse’s pace impossibly fast, whipping through the forest with demonic speed. “If you do, the spirits will take you.”
Harry hummed in reply, sinking further into the man’s chest and tilting her head back on his shoulder, too tired to listen, her antler crown somehow not slipping off nor getting in the way. She let the unseen rescuer take her away from this hellish place, the monster in the background slipping away, her mind growing foggy and dazed.
“Wake up,” the man commanded, harshly, but Harry was fast asleep by the time the war steed burst through the forest’s edge.