218Welcome back, boys and girls, to The Philosophy of Fear, in which our best boy faces his terror and remembers what he had forgotten before facing the ghosts of his past.
On with the show
Harry Potter.
Time was an odd construct. Sometimes days felt like hours, and sometimes hours felt like days. It seems to stretch on forever and abruptly end for no real reason. For Harry, in the depths of a terror that wasn't truly his but matched what he feared perfectly, time seemed to have forgotten him. He didn't know how long it's been since he descended into this mire of terror, but he was reasonably sure it had been years.
Harry lay on the stone floor of the dungeon, the biting cold seeping into his body, but he had welcomed it. The numbing cold was at least a marginally better feeling than the searing pain the rest of his body was in. Harry couldn't move, he could hardly take a deep breath, all from the broken bones that littered his body. His blood dripped from his body and cooled on the floor from wounds of slashes, stabs, and ripped-apart flesh from what had to be the biggest insult of all this; his fucking spear.
Harry thought he understood Aífe from the story he was told, from Scáthach and Lugh's own words. But nothing could prepare him from her cruelty, for her prettiness, for her thirst for vengeance upon those she saw who wronged her. She would come every day to check on him to carve a new scar into his body with the point of his spear just to see if he was still alive. When he didn't react, when he laid in his filth, unmoving, she would heal him back to perfect health, give him food that wasn't a trap or something set right out of his reach. After a night of rest, she would wake him the next morning to "train him". Aífe would toss a brittle and half-rotted staff at his feet for him to use as she would use his own Gaé Bulge.
If Harry thought Scáthach was ruthless, her twin sister Aífe was another monster entirely. Harry did not even have time to bend over to pick up the staff of rotted wood before she was on, his serrated and barbed spear racking and ripping open his body with a bloody efficiency. By the time Harry had the staff in hand, his body already had multiple lacerations across it, and each was bleeding heavily. The first few times they fought, Harry hadn't done half bad; in nightmare and terror, he may have, but he could still fight back. What surprised him the most was how similar they fought, poking and tracing openings to find a weak point before trying to stab through it.
It was only because of their identical fighting styles that Harry was able to fight smarter, leaving a false opening to lead her into a trap and landing a hit. It was then that Aífe's pettiness showed its ugly head; she would reach out, snap the wooden staff, and mercilessly beat Harry before dragging him back to his cell. Locking him back up with the reinforced chains only to come back the next day to drag him out for more "training" but only this time she would either stab him or break something for him to fight with a handicap. That was only the training, too; she would starve him, deny him any warmth or comfort; she didn't even treat him like a human but as a thing. He was kept isolated; he was fed just enough to keep him alive, and he drank rainwater from what dripped in from the storms. He was beaten and kept weak, powerless, for Aíle to break him, to shape him, and for a long time, Harry had forgotten where he was.
Harry had tried to escape the hell he found himself locked into more than once. When he tried to fight her in the dungeon that was his room, the chains would come alive, binding his legs and feet, leaving him defenseless as Aífe carved her retribution out of his hide. He had tried to run, only to drop to the ground in pain, the bands of iron set around his limbs and throat glowed with ruins before pain that was on par with the torture curse shot through him. The iron band around his throat constricted, cutting off his ability to breathe and scream. She would stand over watching him squirm and choke as the blood vessels in his eyes popped and he saw blackness. Aífe dragged him back to the cell by his hair after that, berating him and cutting him down with words she wielded like a blade.
"Annoying," Aífe would call him; she hated when he screamed; she saw it as a weakness; he was her son, and she would have no weak son.
Aífe found a lot of things annoying about him, from the way he walked, to how he spoke, how he spoke to her, and how he fought like Scáthach. She had a lot to say about Scáthach, her school, and her students, none of it good, none of it nice.
Harry knew this because Aífe liked to talk a lot, almost like she loved the sound of her voice for some reason.
"Look at you," Aífe says, her voice low and full of disgust as her heel digs into one of Harry's many broken ribs. "A legacy of Tethra, the Formorian that was feared even by Indech, and a legacy of Lugh, the God that killed Balor, the most fearsome of the Formorians. You should be stronger than even that man, but you're nothing but a pathetic useless tool," she tells Harry with a sigh before removing her heel. "Hopefully I can work you into something more usable soon," she mutters before kicking him into the cell wall.
She hated Harry, she hated Scáthach, and she hated Cú Chulainn.
"You can't even hold your weapon right!" Aífe screamed at him before striking at his wrists, breaking one and bruising the other. "How could something so weak and useless come out of me?!" She raged at him before sweeping his legs and dropping him on his back. She was then jamming the butt of Harry's spear right into his liver and began to twist it back and forth. Harry screams and gags in his pain, but it doesn't stop Aífe from continuing her tirade. "It seems that you somehow got my sister's blood in you. She was just as lazy and weak as you are, always shirking her training to help the little bastards of Nott and Branch, always skipping around with the other demigods; imbibing on their silly little fantasies of glory," Aífe spat at Harry with a look of anger.
"Is this what you wish to do? Shame your poor mother!?" Aífe snarked at him as Harry was coughing up blood from a no doubt punctured lung.
"You're- not- my- mot-" was all Harry could get out while wheezing before Aífe foot met his jaw.
"Silence! You incompetent fool of a child," she said with a sneer as she reached down to yank Harry up by his hair. "You are what I say you are, you will do as I tell you to do, and if you do not, then you will suffer for your insolence," she said as she tossed Harry back to the ground. "Let's see how mouthy you are after a sleepless night of pain," she told him before with a flick of her hand, pain radiating out from the iron rings as it felt as his bones slowly began to splinter centimeter by centimeter. She dragged him back to his cell before tossing him back into the cold, damp, darkness and Uncaring of his screams as she walked away from him.
"Perhaps now, you'll learn a little more respect for me than what your father had," Aífe told him, hatred soaking her voice as she spoke of his father. Retreating from the darkness of his cell into the warmth of the tower above.
He lay in the dark, thrashing as he felt his bones being rendered to nothing more than splinters. He cursed, he cursed Aífe, he cursed Scáthach, he cursed Tethra, he cursed Cú Chulainn, but more than anyone else, he cursed himself. His pitiable weakness and helplessness had once more caught him into suffering at someone else's hands. He could do nothing because he could do nothing; he was powerless, powerless to escape, powerless to change his fate, to stop the nightmare that had him frozen and stuck once more inside a dark and cramped space.
In that cold darkness, with only the flashing of lightning of the seemingly perpetual storm that raged outside his cell to give off light, the boy in the leather jacket returned. Crying silently in the corner, bemoaning his fate, their fate that played out in two lifetimes that now seemed to mingle into one great terror.
"We're alone," the boy would sob in the dark of the night. "We're always alone, but they never leave us alone. Why don't they just leave us alone?" The boy complained into the darkness, tears spilling from his eyes.
"Will you just shut up," Harry mutters to himself as the pain twists at his limbs and the stabbing into his lungs when he talks.
"I haven't even said anything yet, how would I shut up?" Another voice asks, amusement as clear as bells in the voice. Harry didn't care, all he wanted was to be left alone, to fall asleep and end this nightmare once and for all. "Hey now, none of that. Time to get up, munchkin; come on, the early hunter catches the bird and all that," the new voice says as Harry feels someone poking his cheek. Harry tried to ignore it, but he couldn't move; he was chained up with his mother right up a flight of stairs. She would know if he tried to escape and stop him before punishing him even worse than she already was. "Ah, like Strider, huh? A heavy sleeper. Well, that just means extreme methods must be used!" the voice supplied cheerfully.
Harry was confused about what the voice was talking about just before something wet and slime slipped into his ear.
"Wet willy!" The voice yells, without a doubt smiling as Harry screams and jolts away from the feeling and rolls out of arm's reach of the voice.
"Ah- that's disgusting! What the fuck is wrong with you!?" Harry yells sharply as his hand flies to his ear, turning to glare at the girl before him. Even crouched down as she was, she seemed much bigger than Harry whether it was by her sheer size or the large smile that was painted on her face; everything about the girl was big. When she stands, it shows off the height difference between them; she has a soft-looking face matched with brutal-looking scars. Three straight lines of red scar tissue ran down the left side of her face, as another stretched from her bottom lip and down her chin and almost to her through. Her hair was short and black, cut into a mullet over bright blue eyes that were the same shade as the sky above her. She wore a pair of worn blue denim jeans and an old pair of army boots with shin guards sticking out of them. A tye-dye tee shirt with all the colors of the rainbow with Make Love not War was printed on the front in bold black letters hidden under a sleeveless silver jacket. Buttons and pins decorate the front of her jacket, and rainbows, smiley faces, kittens, and puppies all stare back at Harry.
The girl's smile never falters and she chuckles low and full of good humor. "Honestly? Probably a lot if I was being truthful. But are you going to get up or what? Because we've got a hunt to get on with," she says as she jerks her hand to the left, her thumb outstretched to show him the way.
"If you haven't noticed, I'm kinda chained to a wall," Harry mutters darkly as he rubs his violated ear.
"Doesn't look like it to me," the smiling hunter says as she looks down at Harry.
"What the hell are you talking about!? Look! On my wrists…" Harry shouts at the girl as he shows her his wrists only to find them bereft of the manacles and chains that bound him. He runs his hands over his bare wrists in confusion before looking back at the girl. "But- I was just-" he says, blinking owlishly.
The girl giggles. "Man, you've got some weird kinky dreams, huh?" She teases him with a rising brow, causing Harry to blush. "Oh, man. You are too cute, I bet Sophie teases you non-stop, huh? Now, are you coming or not?" She says as she offers him a hand, Harry looks at it in utter confusion for a moment before reaching out and taking it. The girl pulls Harry to his feet with surprising ease and strength before slapping his shoulder. "Tag!" She cries as she turns and takes off into the woods that surround them. "You're it!" She yells, laughing all the while.
"Hey!?" Harry yells as he charges after her. She was quick, almost flying through the forest as she ran. She used thicker trees to run up and leap over the underbrush, jumping over downed trees and large rocks. Her coat jingled and shook as she ran, making far too much noise to sneak up on prey and that wasn't even touching upon how much she seemed to be enjoying herself, laughing as Harry chased her. She crashed through the woods without a care in the world as Harry chased after her.
The smiling hunter turns to look behind her, her eyes widening in surprise. "Damn! You are fast, huh?" She tells Harry with an easy grin.
"Who the hell are you!? Where the hell are we!?" Harry shouts at her as he catches up with the smiling hunter.
"Maine? I think?" The girl says though it comes out more like a question. "Never had a good sense of where and directions, left that to the others," she says, answering Harry's second question and completely ignoring his first. The smiling hunter stops abruptly, skidding across the soft dirt and dead leaves, digging a trail into the ground causing Harry to do the same a little ways away from her.
"You didn't answer my first question," Harry points out angrily as the girl walks over to him with the same large grin on her face.
"Well, I hope you'd figure that out by yourself," she says, tilting her head as her smile softens and her hands slip back into her pockets. "But that doesn't matter right now, we've got a hunt, remember?" She asks with a raised brow before nodding her head forward, to right behind Harry.
Harry turns to see a clearing just beyond the forest, dead grass, boulders dotting the land, and uprooted trees standing in contrast to the vibrant and lush forest around them. In the middle of the clearing, in what looked like a campsite, were four large cyclopses and four even large green-scaled snake monsters. While the Cyclopses were wearing scrap mail armor, the snake monsters stood on front legs with wicked-looking hooked claws as fingers, from their mouths, dripped venom that sizzled and bubbled as it hit the ground.
"Lindwurms," the smiling hunter calls the large snake-like creatures, her smile faltering a bit as her eyes travel over them. "Fucking hate those things to be perfectly honest, nasty things like to attack in packs and ambush people from underground," she says with a sigh as she brings her hand up to grasp the foot-long sword handle that was handing on a rig off her back.
She draws the blade in one fluid motion, and to Harry's surprise, the blade is broken. Cleanly snapped in half with other chunks of the blade broken and chipped off, as Harry opened his mouth to say something, the rest of the blade showed itself. Sliding out of the black boxy rug on the older-looking girl's back, the other half of the blade, followed by the rest of the broken-off bits, snaps back to the blade reforming it. It was a massive blade that was almost as tall as the girl herself and looked to be more of a sharp slab of silver than anything else.
The girl turns to Harry with her grin back at full force. "Well? What are we waiting for?" She asks him before charging at the monsters with a war cry. Harry watches in a bit of awe as the girl cocks the sword back, parallel with the Earth before throwing the damn thing. It flies, straight and true, cutting through the air like a buzzsaw before; with a thunderous crack, it meets one of the Lindwurm's heads.
"Come on munchkin! You're gonna miss out on all the fun!" The girl yells with a wild laugh that rings with something that Harry had yearned for all his life. He doesn't think after that, he doesn't consider, and he doesn't care. Harry charges, he was right behind the girl in a matter of seconds, his arm drawn back and a silver spear in hand that he doesn't know how he got it.
But he didn't care.
As one of the Lindwurm's claws came down at the back of the girl as she raised her hand to recall her great sword, Harry let his spear fly. As swift and as deadly as any arrow shot from a bow, his spear finds a home in the eye of the Great Serpent. It leans back, a roar of pain and anger echoing around the clearing, as it tries to shake the spear loose. But it was for not as Harry reaches out and recalls his spear to his hand just as the sword of the smiling hunter jumps to hers. Both of the hunters smile madly as the monsters in the clearing bear down on them.
They fought together, moving in tandem in only a way that two souls who knew one another their whole lives could. Harry was a blur of dancing and skewing death, cutting in between segments of the Lindwurm's scales as he danced faster and faster, cutting a blood sawft through the monsters. The smiling hunter used brute strength and leverage to crush and slash, she was like an unstoppable avalanche of carnage to Harry's whirlwind of death. The smiling hunter would fling the random broken bits of her blade like a shotgun blast the cut and tear through the monsters before wildly carving through them, laughing all the while with Harry.
When the golden dust of the dead monsters settled, the two hunters stood in the middle of their prey, back to back and both with a smile on their faces.
"Gods, I've missed this," the smiling hunter says, her head tilting back as she smiles up toward the never-ending blue sky. "The blood pumping in my veins, the thrill of the fight, the thrill of the Hunt, and the feeling of pride in what I am," she says softly, almost sadly.
Harry pauses before looking down toward the earth. "What are you then?" He asks, not looking back up.
The girl lets out a single laugh. "The same thing as you are, munchkin, a protector," she says, the joy returning to her voice before she lets out a deep sigh. "But I guess this answers a question I've had for a long time: if I had someone like you at this moment, like Sophie or Zoë, could it have turned out differently?" She asks as Harry turns to face her back.
"What do you mean by that?" Harry asks, sounding lost.
"Don't you get it yet, munchkin?" The smiling hunter asks, finally turning back to Harry to look at him. To his horror, her eyes were fully golden-yellow with slitted pupils. "This is where I died, where I gave myself fully to the Hunt to make sure my sisters could make it back to camp; even knowing that I would never see them or camp again," the girl says with a smile just before an arrow finds home in her heart and punches through her spine. A shot so powerful and accurate, that Harry knew it could have only come from one place, from one person.
And as the girl falls backward, the world falls with her, dragging Harry with it all.
Albus Dumbledore, Hogwarts, July 28th, 12:33 AM.
The Headmaster of Hogwarts stood at his desk, his arms raised above his head and his hands clasping the handle of a legendary sword. His face was set into a pain-filled grimace as his teeth clenched to try to fight off the pain burning from his right hand and down his arm. He swings the blade of Gryffindor in a downward arc, not needing to consider his actions, for the very same sword worked on the tiara before.
The fae-forged blade bites deeply into the gold band of the ring; it offers little resistance to the venom-enhanced silver as the blade splits the ring.
-AhhhhhharrGahhhhahaahahahhhh!-
An unholy inhuman scream fills his office as a thick black smog quickly follows it. Albus coughs as he drops the sword from the reverberation that ran up his blackened hand, so bad was the pain that he almost cursed. He takes a few steps back from the smog, waving his good hand in front of his face, trying to clear the rancid-smelling air. He finally allows his wand to fall into his hand before flicking his wand at the windows to open them to clear out his office from the foul-smelling black smog.
As the smog clears, Albus approaches his desk once more. As his eyes land on the remains of the broken and destroyed ring, he lets out a sigh of relief.
It had worked twice, three if one were to count the Dairy.
"The ring, the diadem, the snake, and the dairy. But just how many more did you make, Tom?" Albus thinks to himself with a frown; oh, he had theories and conjecture, of course. But the only one who truly knew for sure was Tom with the possibility of Horace. Albus lets out another sigh as he shakes his head, his eyes drifting down to what was now causing his inevitable death from the withering curse crawling up his arm.
A small polished stone of onyx.
It was an unremarkable little thing of cut stone. If one didn't have the context or understanding of what it truly was, it would be nothing more than a pretty bobble to be set into a ring. But Albus was well aware of the secrets and power that the tiny stone held; after stowing his wand- another of the set of three, he picked up the small stone. It was…light in his hand, as he was convinced it would be much heavier than it looked, and in a way, it was. Twisting the stone between his forefinger and his thumb in the candlelight, he could make out the etching set lightly in the stone. A single line set in a circle, that was set in a triangle, the emblem of the House of Peverell.
The Resurrection Stone.
Such a small thing that held such an extraordinary power. One of the three items that he and his old love had once thought to search the world for is to claim their power for themselves. Albus shakes his head to rid the thoughts of a younger and foolish boy drunk on his power, skill, and love for another. But he still doesn't put the stone down, the thoughts of old ghosts burning in his mind and of calling them forth.
Two old students and comrades; to apologize for all the suffering their child had gone through with his own decisions.
A little girl begs for her forgiveness for the role he played in her death.
A mother and father; to admit that he wasn't there for those who should have been the most important to him when they needed him the most.
A wizard from ages past; to pull secrets of the darkest magic from him, to try and figure out how to save a single life.
And so many more regrets in his long and storied life, with tears gathering in his eyes, he turns the stone on in his hand.
Once…
Twice…
"I wouldn't do that if I were you," a voice says from behind Albus, causing the old man to jump and swiftly turn around to the guest who was now sitting in his office. She was young with pale skin and flaming red hair; freckles splashed across her face right under her black eyes. She wore a loose white blouse with tight leather pants and boots covered in dried graveyard ash and mud.
"I beg your pardon, miss?" Albus asks as he forces his body to relax.
"That stone. I wouldn't turn it for the third time if you know what's good for you, it's only for the desperate or the dumb," the woman tells him with a sad smile as she places her hands into her lap.
"You know what it is?" Albus asks and watches as the woman nods her head. "Then you know what good we can do with it?" He asks, lifting his hand to show the woman the stone.
"Nothing good can come from that stone, Headmaster. It's a fool's dream," the woman tells him, her voice never changing from its mournful tone.
"It seems you have me at a disadvantage, miss," Albus says as he turns fully to the woman and folds his hands behind his back, hiding the stone from her eyesight. "You know who I am, but you've yet to introduce yourself," he explains and the woman smirks at his words.
"Mum said you were a bit prideful; good to see it, honestly. But you're right, I haven't done that," the woman says as she pushes herself up from the high back chair she was sitting in. "You can call me Brigid, one of my few names," she introduces herself with a sad smile.
"Ah, I see," Albus says quietly, his shoulders relaxing a bit at the goddess' words. "But if I may be so bold and ask what you are doing here, Lady Brigid?" He asks in a respectful tone.
A frown flashes across Brigid's face before she runs her hands through her short red hair and sighs. "I wasn't on the island when they were created by those three idiots, but I was close enough to feel it. That great shadow passing over the land as it was brought forth with death and sacrifice," she admits as she walks over to the desk and looks down at the remnants of the ring that once held the stone. "By the time I got back onto the isles, Persephone had already claimed the souls of two of the brothers but had left their favors to drift throughout the world, things that shouldn't be here. I tried to track them down, the wand popping up here and there, leaving a trail of bodies as it wrote its history in blood. The stone all but vanished once the Gaunt family got their hands on it, and the cloak? I doubt even my mum could find the bloody thing if she tried," she explains as she turns to Albus with a frown on her face.
"The Gaunt family didn't know what they had, and only thought it was a bobble of stolen loot from the Circle of Starlight and Winter. So they set it in Sal's old ring to replace the emerald they sold off a generation before. Since ignorance is bliss, they never used the damn thing until Tom Riddle decided to shove a bit of his bloody soul into the ring, and not only did it glow like a bonfire to me, I couldn't touch it; till now, that is," Brigid tells the headmaster before raising her hand for Albus to hand over something. Albus looks toward her hand before bringing forth his own that held the stone. He looks down at it once more, twisting it back and forth but never turning it over for a third time.
"Tempting, isn't it?" Brigid asks, a look of understanding crossing her face.
"The darkest things normally are," Albus agrees with his frown. "I could do so much good with this one tiny and unremarkable stone," he says under his breath.
"No, headmaster. You couldn't," Brigid tells him patiently.
"I could call back Herpo the Foul, I could find out how to-" A flash of pain crosses Albus' face. "-I could find a way to save one good child from a fate he shouldn't have to shoulder," he whispers to himself, wisely not saying the name of the child out loud in a castle no longer his.
"No, Albus, you can't," Brigid says, stepping forward and covering the stone with her hand, a note of understanding- of true understanding in her voice. Albus looks up in shock to the black eyes of the goddess before him. "The stone doesn't work like that, and even if it did, you would never get the answers you need- just the ones you want," she explains.
"Then you already know?" Albus says, disbelief and bone-deep sorrow in his voice. All Brigid does is nod her head once in the face of his acquisition. "Then why do you not help?" He asks softly, his anger stirring.
"Because I can't, headmaster. My hands are tied," Brigid tells him sadly.
"Then tell me, tell me how to remove it from the vessel without destroying what contains it," he pleads.
"You can't kill it without killing the host," she tells him.
"Then can it be moved, from one vessel to another? To take the burden off of him and place it upon myself?" he asks, desperation in his voice.
"I'm sorry Albus, but he has to carry it to the end," she informs him.
"Then what use are you!?" He shouts, finally giving in to his anger. "What use are any of you if you can't save the life of one child!?" He thundered in the face of a goddess, one who watched him with sad eyes.
"That's what faith is, Albus. To believe in something will help when the time is right, not when someone demands it," Brigid tells him with a small smile. "I know you're not a man of faith, Albus Dumbledore, not in the gods at least. But have some faith in your old student, have faith in the boy you've been watching over, and know, when you are no longer here to do that, I will be," Brigid tells him with a small smile as Albus closes his eyes, blocking out his rage to deal with it later before he finally lets go of the stone.
Brigid takes the stone from Albus' hand, her smile never wavering. "Thank you, headmaster," she says quietly as she slips the stone away.
"Do you want the-" Albus begins to ask, but the Goddess cuts him off.
"No- no, that one you can keep your hands on, for now at least," Brigid tells him softly as she steps back from him. "After all, if you weren't using it properly then it would have killed you by now. Besides, it needs to be you holding it; if it isn't, then it's- my plan won't work," she says as Albus looks up at her, confused.
Brigid just smiles. "Have some faith, Albus Dumbledore. Everything will be just as it should be in the end," she tells him before turning on her heel and vanishing into the night.
Harry Potter.
Harry opened his eyes to a dirty, dingy, hotel room. One of the ones that were found off the side of speedways that were cheap and shady, it looked lived in for a few weeks with trash and dirty clothes piled up on the floor. He was lying on a lumpy mattress and looking over at another bed occupied by the smiling hunter.
"My mom met my dad at some biker rally," she tells him as soon as she sees his eyes open. "Never met the old man, not once. He doesn't care much for daughters only sons, the complete cock that he is. My mom was addict, hooked on something new every other week as she dragged me around with her from crack house to shitty motels," she tells him with a frown, the first real one he had seen on her face. "When my powers started to manifest, she used me to rob her dealers and peddlers to the point no one would do business with her anymore. When I could no longer do that, she decided to sell me to some pimp from Las Vegas," she says as she turns over to look at the ceiling, one hand sliding under the pillows.
She was no longer wearing the clothes she had on in the forest, but a ratty and dirty set of pajamas that seemed a size or two too small for her. Before Harry could open his mouth to say anything, the door to the motel room opens and a man walks in.
"He, of course, wanted to try out the new product before buying it from my mom," the smiling hunter says in a blank and dead tone as the man shrugs off his shirt and walks over to her. Harry panics and tries to push himself up, to help the girl, to do something- anything! But finds himself stuck fast to the bed. "She drugged me with something, everything felt so…fuzzy, and I was so scared," her voice cracked in fear as the man sat on the edge of her bed and began to lean over her as Harry furiously tried to push himself up to tear the man limb from limb.
"But, by then, I had had enough," she whispers before the hand tucked under her pillow lashes out as fast as a cobra. A pocket knife plunged into the neck of the man, Harry could hear him begin choking on his own blood as his panic started to set in before the shock of what had just happened. With a great heave, the smiling hunter throws the man from her, right into the wall across the room, the knife she had used to stab him ripping its way out. Blood cascaded across her and the room, she lay there for a moment before standing up, wobbling as she did.
She walks over to the dying man and starts to search his pockets, pulling out a large wad of American money as the door to the room flies open. Who could only be the girl's mother walks in, shock on her face as she takes in the scene.
"I'd never killed before this," the girl says as she turns to her mother. "Not mortals, anyway. Hurt them? Sure, but never killed," she says as she stumbles over to her mother, holding out the cash for her to take. But her mother just looks at her with resentment before she starts hitting and screaming at her, calling her names, calling her useless and stupid, and how she should have just done what she was told. "I always listened to my mom; she was the one person who always seemed to look out for me. I never really got what I wanted, but I never went without what I needed because of her. But it was at this point, In a haze, that I realized something," she says as the money scattered about the hotel room. "It was never about love, it was about control. She was controlling me and using me all while pretending to love me, she had made me powerless to stop her. So, I took that power back," she says before a war cry rocked the room as the smiling hunter was no longer smiling, she raised the knife still in her hand and stabbed her own mother.
Then she stabbed her again…
And again…
And again…
Over and over as she screamed and cried as her mother choked on her own blood, dying to the daughter that she had pushed too hard.
The smiling hunter, no longer smiling and caked with blood, walks back over to the other bed and sits down. She blinks once or twice before letting out a long and heavy sigh.
"I ran after killing her," the smiling hunter says, turning to look at the body of her mother. "From the motel room, from Vegas, out to the desert just to get away from this and everything she put me through. I ran for miles and miles until my legs gave out, and I couldn't breathe," she turns back to Harry, her smile returning slowly to her face. "That's when I met her, covered in blood and dirt, praying over and over again for my dad to save me, for anyone to save me and she came," she says with tears in her eyes and a smile lighting up her face.
"Lady Artemis," the smiling hunter says with devout reverence. "She took me to her temple on Olympus, where I was washed, fed, and allowed to rest after what I had suffered," she says before lifting a bloody hand to whip away her tears. "She was still there when I woke up, she had never left my bedside. We talked about what happened, how I had technically broken Olympian law by spilling mortal blood and my crime of matricide, and how she didn't care about any of that," she tells Harry with a shake of her head.
"She offered me a place in her hunt and laughed when I told her I'd never shot a bow a day in my life," the smiling hunter says with a laugh of her own at the ridiculousness of Artemis laughing. "She told me she had enough archers, that she needed protectors, more people for the front ranks to defend the archers in the back. She told me that she knew I would be perfect for the role," the smiling hunter says with a fond sigh.
"Right then, right in her temple, did I take my oath and become a hunter for her. I joined the vanguard led by Zoë and became the wall between the hunters and the monsters that we were killing. I was with the Hunt for six years, and they were, without a doubt, the best years of my life. I had found a family and devoted myself solely to the role of defending them," she says as she stands up from the bed, the world around them shifting once more to Connla's cell, Harry lying on the ground and once more chained to the wall.
"I met a lot of our sisters over those six years; the one I will never forget was Cecilia," she says with a smile firmly back on her face. "She had asked me when I was drunk at one of the Yule celebrations at camp how I could keep smiling even after everything I had faced in my life," she says with a laugh, throwing her head back as if she found the whole thing amusing. "I told her something that made her eyes light up with some profound understanding of the universe when I was piss drunk! How's that for the blessing of Dionysus, huh?" she says as she continues to laugh at the whole thing, her clothes melting back to her hunters' gear.
"And she passed those words along to you, didn't she?" The smiling hunter says as she crouches down to smile in Harry's face. Confusion colored his face at first, not understanding what the smiling hunter was getting at until he did. The words of the smallest hunter said with fire in her eyes and a will that would make mountains bow to her.
The hunter's smile softens as she nods her head. "That's what I thought, they made for one hell of a set of last words, huh?" She asks Harry with soft eyes.
"But words don't mean much unless we give them meaning," she says, her attention drawn away from Harry as the familiar footsteps of Aífe echo around the cell. "What I'm trying to say is this; people like me and you get dealt shitty hands from the get-go; the best we can do is play it with a smile on our faces to bluff our way to the end of the game. To take solace in things that mean something to us, so if my drunken ramble passed on to you will help, fine let it help," she says as she stands up, slipping her hands into her pockets. "The only reason why we were thrown into the fire in the first place was that people had power over us because we gave them that power. So my question for you is this!?" She calls out with a bigger grin.
"Are you going to just lay there, in the cold, dark cell, chained to a wall by someone else!?" the smiling hunter asks as she looks up and across the cell to the scowling and angry face of Aífe. "Or are you going to take that power back! And show this spiteful bitch that only the hottest flames-" the smiling hunter all but yells.
"-forge the greatest swords," Harry mutters to himself as he begins to push himself back up.
He had forgotten. In the rush of his life, in between freeing gods, dark lords, his destiny that he hated, and ancient monsters, he had forgotten. He had forgotten why he had picked up the spear in the first place, he had forgotten why he trained himself to the bone, he had forgotten the words that he found his strength in.
He had forgotten the words in the dark despair of losing two people he loved to a monster he was supposed to hunt.
He trained himself to the bone to protect the ones he cared for from that very same darkness.
He picked up his spear because he didn't want to be weak any longer.
And he wasn't.
Harry turns to Aífe, his face set in stone and angry at himself for forgetting and at her for keeping him here.
"You ungrateful little bastard, how dare you look at me like that. I am your-" Aífe tried to say, raising his spear against him, but Harry had had enough.
"No," Harry snapped at her, cutting her off from whatever she was going to say. "You are not my mother. You weren't even a mother to your son, just a spiteful cunt who couldn't get over her jealousy about her sister," he tells her before raising his hand as he could feel the beaming smile coming from the hunter at his back. "Now give me back, my fucking spear!" Harry roars before a pulse of magic saturates the room, cracking stone and wrapping metal, as his spear is ripped from Aífe's grasp and flies to his open hand.
In flashes of crimson and silver, his Gaé Bolg lashes out; shattering the chains that bound him. The iron circlets that bit into his skin fall away, clattering to the floor as Harry is freed from them, to never be held by them again.
Harry levels his spear at Aífe's throat. Her eyes widen in fear and panic as she begins to back away from Harry. "I get it, okay? What Sétanta did to you was wrong; it will always be wrong! But it gave you no right to do what you did to Connla!" Harry shouts angrily at her as he steps forward, the point of his spear at her throat.
"You have no idea what that man made me do, the shame of carrying his spawn, the disgust I felt every time I had to look at it- at you!" Aífe spits at him, her face twisting into a look of contempt and rage at Harry, or at Sétanta, or at her son, he couldn't tell.
"Then you should have sent him away!" Harry yells at her, just as angry. "You should have accepted Scáthach's offer and sent Connla with her! That way you would never have to see him again. Why didn't you send him away if you hated him so much?" he asks, his own voice cracking on the question, one he never got an answer to.
"And what? Give my sister something else that was rightfully mine? Like the godhood she stole from-" Aífe begins to rant but Harry had heard enough slander against his teacher from the spiteful woman to last both his and Connla's lifetimes.
"SHE NEVER WANTED GODHOOD!" Harry roars, the cell shaking with his rage, stopping Aífe cold. "She never wanted it. All she ever wanted was her sister, her school, and her students to be safe, and if you weren't such an old, spiteful, vain, selfish, vindictive cunt, you would already know that," he hisses at her through clenched teeth before looking away and taking a deep breath. He lets it out in a deep sigh before dropping his spear from her throat. Aífe looks at him in surprise for a moment, as if she was confused by his actions.
"I told myself a long time ago that I would never be like- like people like you," Harry tells Aífe as he turns away from her and begins to walk toward the stairs. "You're nothing but a spiteful and hateful woman, and you deserve to rot in the cold, lonely hell you created for yourself," he tells her as he walks away.
"That's it? After everything! After everything you suffered at my hands, after everything I did to Connla!? You- you just walk away!?" Aífe screams at him, her voice echoing down the halls of the cell that was as much of a prison to her as it was to her son.
"This is how I take my power back," Harry says in a solemn tone, and mostly to himself. "By not letting the people like you make me into something I don't want to be, by showing you that I'm better than the hatred you thrust upon me," he says, stopping at the stairs and looking back at Aífe looking at him in disbelief. "To show you I'm better than the sum of the demons that cast me into the flames and left me to burn," he tells her before, at long last, he turns away from the terror of his past and walks up the stairs.
Getting to the top of the stairs with the old door sitting closed, Harry smiles at the sight before reaching out to grasp the handle.
"You know," the smiling hunter says from behind him, Harry stops to look back at her. They were now standing in the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom with the hunter leaning against Scáthach's desk. "I honestly thought you'd be much more stabby type when it came to taking your power back," she says, a grin on her face, one Harry can't help but return.
Harry lets out a huff. "It wouldn't have proved anything, it would just show that I'm like her. Taking my anger out on anything in stabbing range, I want to be better than them, and acting like them wouldn't do that," He admits as he turns fully to the smiling hunter.
"I guess that makes sense in a way," she says, her smile becoming softer as she speaks. "I didn't die with a lot of big regrets, a lot of tiny ones, sure. But not a lot of big ones," she says as she pushes off the desk and walks over to Harry. "I guess a new one is that I never got to meet you, little brother," she says with her grin growing bigger.
Harry smiles softly back. "I'm sorry I couldn't have met you either, big sister," he admits as the girl chuckles as she looks down at her feet and slips her hands into her jacket pockets.
"Don't worry about it," she says with a shake of her head. "Don't worry about the maybe's, what if's, or could be's, the only thing you should worry about is what's in front of you and where you're going. Just take it one step at a time, and the rest -will come naturally- will get stabbed along the way, I guess," she tells him with a smile and a shrug as she looks back up to Harry.
"Yeah," Harry says softly before turning away from the smiling hunter. "I guess this is goodbye," he tells her.
"It is, little brother. Hopefully, next time we meet, we can share a drink," Harry hears from the smiling hunter as he opens the door in front of him.
"Maybe, see you on the other side-" he turns back, only to find an empty room. Smiling to himself he shakes his head at the girl's disappearing act. "-big sister," Harry says before stepping through the door. As he is shutting the door behind him, Harry finds himself on a familiar second-story landing, one he knew no longer existed. But still, his smile doesn't fade as he closes the door to the room of broken and unwanted things behind him. He lifts his hands, his spear vanishing in the act, disappearing into red and silver motes of color. He let out a deep breath he didn't know he was holding; he felt…
Heavier.
He felt more real as if the haze of a world was washed away, as he was finally in the here and the now, like he was no longer afraid. Like he could finally take a step without it feeling like he was walking backwards in his life.
Like he was no longer chained.
Harry pushes off the door and makes his way to the stairs that lead downstairs. He stops at them, considering taking them two at a time; after a moment, he takes them one at a time, slowly and softly, before leaping over the squeaking stair and landing in the welcoming hall.
"-been too long, and I'm glad to be back," a voice sang from the sitting room, low and with a terrible beauty. "Yes, I'm let loose from the noose that's kept me hanging around. I've been looking at the sky 'cause it's been gettin' me high, forget the hearse 'cause I'll never die! I've got-" He walks into the sitting room to find Melinoë laying on Vernon's favorite chair upside down with her head almost touching the floor as her head nods in rhythm to a song only she can hear with her eyes closed. "-nine lives! Cat's eyes! Abusin' every one of them and running wild!" She sang just as she slowly opened them to see Harry standing in front of her with his smile.
"'cause I'm back. Yes, I'm back. Well, I'm back in black," Harry says looking down at Melinoë's black eyes as his emeralds sparkle with amusement. "That was one of Sirius' favorite songs, but I've got to say you sing much better than he did, with a much prettier voice," he says with a grin as he watches Melinoë's cheeks flush red. Melinoë blinks at him, her mouth opening and closing a few times before she looks away from him.
"Geeze, what a way to make a girl feel special," she mutters with a blush before pulling herself up and sitting in the recliner in a normal fashion. She brushes the white locks of her hair behind her ear before looking back at Harry. "I see you made it out alive, did you find the keys to your chains?" She asks in a soft tone.
"Yeah," Harry says, nodding his head, bringing his hand up to run it through his hair. "Had a bit of help, but yeah. I think I did," he says smiling down at her.
"Ah, that's why Eir was hovering around somewhere," Melinoë says with an easy grin. "Cheater," she accuses Harry, who scoffs at it in good nature.
"I'm a hunter. If I ain't cheating, I'm not trying," he shoots back, causing Melinoë to throw her head back and laugh.
"Nice one," Melinoë says as she stands up from the chair, her smile fading a bit. "Are you ready? You're in the home stretch now," she says with an encouraging tone.
Harry just sighs, bringing his hands up to rub his eyes. "What the hell is next?" He asks, dropping his hands to watch Melinoë starting to walk into the breezeway of the home.
"The last one, ghosts. Your ghosts to be specific," she says, not turning to look at him, not even when he starts to follow her. "Unlike the last two, I think you'll both enjoy and hate this one," Melinoë admits as she walks by the cupboard under the stairs, her hand running over the door. Harry shivers as if she had run her cold hand down his spine which turns his thoughts to something else entirely for a moment.
"Why do you say that?" Harry asks after shaking his head to get rid of the thoughts for now. Melinoë stops at the swinging door into the kitchen; she turns to look at him; her smile is dark and playful as her eyes travel up his body with a look akin to want in her eyes. Her smile quickly morphs when they get to his face, one of softness and understanding before, without a word, she pushes open the door and enters the kitchen.
Harry watches as the kitchen door swings open and closes, showing Melinoë in flashes. Once, twice, before, on the third time in swings open, she was gone.
Harry frowns as he walks forward, pausing only once outside the cupboard door before putting his hand on the now-still door to the kitchen. He could feel someone inside it and knew who it was without even entering the kitchen. Harry closes his eyes and grits his teeth, beating back his anger and the growling of the Hunt that reverberates throughout the house he hates before he pushes open the door and enters the kitchen.
She was sitting at the kitchen table, just like they always did in his life, sitting prim and proper with her hands folded in her lap. But unlike all the other times, Harry doesn't look down or away from the woman.
"Hello," Harry says softly, causing the woman to look up at him. "Aunt Petunia," he says, greeting the dead woman like he always did in life.
The Granger house, July 30th, 5:35 pm.
"Thank you," the abnormally large man says politely as he takes the ale offered to him by her father with a smile. Hermione had some idea who the man was, Daniel Gaunt, Lord of the most ancient and most noble house of Slytherin but she knew him much better by who he was, The Dagda. The Great God of the Celtic people, Harry had long ago told her of who he was and just why he was posing as a Lord of the Wizengamot. But what she didn't know was why he was there.
Hermione watches as the man downs half the bottle of Guinness in one gulp before putting the bottle on the table. He had shown up unexpectedly not too long ago, asking if he could talk to her about something he dubbed important. But she was at a loss as to what he wanted, her parents had let the man in before offering him a seat and a drink. The man had taken one look at the kitchen chair before asking if he could conjure something a bit sturdier to accommodate a man of his size, which her parents let him.
Her mother brings over the teapot and a few cups for her and Hermione as her father and The Dagda have an ale. The larger man gets comfortable before their talks, smiling at her and nodding his head before clearing his throat and speaking as Hermione fixes herself a cuppa.
"I heard you got a bit hurt before summer began, are you feeling up for our chat?" he inquires politely.
"Oh- yes, sir. A bit of accidental casting on my part, nothing that Madam Pomfrey couldn't fix up in a jiffy," Hermione says with a forced smile, sending the god a silent plea to play along with her eyes.
"Gave us a bit of a fright when the deputy headmistress showed up before the train was even on the way back to tell us about the accident," Mrs Granger says, her eyes turning to her daughter with a scolding look. "hopefully, this will be a lesson about taking it easy after stressful tests at that school of yours," she reprimands her daughter as Hermione looks away with a bashful look on her face.
"I'll have to listen to Ron next time when he says we should relax instead of studying all the time," Hermione admits as she tucks a lock of her hair behind her ear and takes a sip of her tea. Both of her parents gave each other a look that spoke of their disbelief in that statement.
"Well, it's actually because of that stressful test. That is why I'm here," Daniel says before placing his ale down and reaching into his jacket pocket on his muggle-looking suit. He pulls out a simple slip of parchment before handing it out to Hermione. "I may have sweet-talked one of the Department of Magical Education employees into giving me your test scores a bit early," he says with an easy grin and a wink. Hermione gives the man a bit of a disapproving glare but takes the offered slip and opens it to read.
"Perfect scores across the board, with only one other student beating you in one subject," Daniel says with a large grin that could be seen through his thick beard. Hermione's smile as she read her scores was one of pride and understanding, one she shared with her parents as they cheered for her.
"Well, looks like this is a cause for celebration," Mr Granger says as he jumps up from his seat and walks back into the kitchen Hermione's mother puts her hand on her daughter's shoulder and squeezes it.
"I see pride in your eyes, Hermione Granger, as you should have. Only five other students have gotten perfect scores on their OWLs in the past one hundred years," Daniel informs her before reaching back into his coat. "Now, for the actual reason for me stopping by. I wanted to do this in person, just how I am," he says as he pulls out a single purple envelope before setting it on the table and sliding it over to Hermione, who was now looking at it with wide unbelieving eyes.
"Now, I'll be the first to tell you that you weren't my first pick for a- an apprentice, but I was talked out of my first pick by my wife before a professor at your school told me about you," Lord Gaunt admits as he picks up his ale and downs the rest of it. "So I did a little digging, asking your other professors at school, looking at your transcripts; that sort of thing. And I will be the first to admit if I went with my first pick, It would have been a mistake," he admits freely as Hermione's father comes back into the room with a bottle of wine.
"So, Hermione Granger," The Dagda says, causing Hermione to look up from the letter she had torn open to read, it was enchanted by the Great God himself to explain his real reason for being here to Hermione alone. Anyone else reading it would merely see a letter of apprenticeship under him like her mother reading over her shoulder. "How would you like to learn some real magic?" The Dagda, the Great God, and the god of magic asks with a grin.
Harry Potter.
Harry didn't know what to say, he didn't know what to do with his Aunt looking at him. Gone were the hateful eyes and the scowling face, replaced by something more morose almost…mournful. It made Harry feel awkward and uncomfortable in the face of it, so he did the only thing he could think to do.
He made tea.
He walked by Aunt Petunia to the cupboards behind her and above the stove. Pulling down the kettle, filling it with water before putting it on the hob. As he goes to pull out the tea, he pauses as he sees a familiar tin of tea that he was given recently. He pulls it down, loading up the teapot, and setting it aside as he moves toward the icebox to pull out the cream to go with the sugar and honey. It was awkward waiting for the water to boil and for the tea to seep, the time passed in silence, neither of the two speaking, but both lost in their own thoughts.
But as the egg timer that Harry had set goes off, he knew it was time to pull the thorn out.
He sets the table with all the fixings before placing an empty mug in front of Petunia, she looks up to him surprise but otherwise doesn't say anything as Harry sits down and pours them both a cuppa. It takes a moment more for both of them to fix it to their liking, Petunia's with extra cream and Harry's with a little bit of honey. They take their first sips in that awkward silence between them, and Harry was the first to speak.
"Are you- are you really her?" He asks, looking up from his tea to his Aunt. Petunia raises a brow before letting out a light scoff.
"I see that being away from us has done absolutely nothing for your manners, boy," she says in a reprimanding tone and a slight glare on her face.
Harry huffs out a bit of a laugh. Once, what feels like long ago, that very tone would cause his heart to leap into her throat out of fear. But now he found it more amusing than anything.
"Yeah, it's either you're a very convincing copy or you're the real deal," Harry says before taking a sip of his tea. Petunia doesn't make a comment on that, merely looking over to the spot Vernon once sat at.
"I'm surprised it's not Vernon here," she admits with a tiny disappointed frown.
"I'm not," he says, looking at the same spot as Petunia looks at him with a questioning look. "I…understand where his hatred came from, in a way. He had to have known about what magic could do from you, it was something outside of his control and feared it," Harry explains with a shrug before turning back to his Aunt. "And when humans fear something, they tend to lash out at it, to control it in some way. I'm sure when my magic didn't lash out at him he thought that it couldn't be as scary as you told it was if it didn't defend me," he says with a disappointed sigh before taking another sip of his tea.
Petunia is quiet for a moment, taking a sip of her tea. "I'm not apologizing," she says in a whisper.
"I don't expect you to," Harry admits, looking down into his tea.
"Then why am I here, boy?" She asks, a bit of heat to her exasperated tone. Harry doesn't answer for a long moment, he takes a deep breath before looking up at the woman who did nothing but make his life a living hell. Vernon may have done the most of the brutalizing of his person but this was the woman who did nothing to stop it.
"Why?" Harry simply asks, looking at his Aunt with sad eyes.
Petunia sighs. "Why what? You'll have to be a bit more specific, boy," she says back, her lips thinning as her anger at him rose.
"Why any of it? Why all of it?" Harry asks, his voice rising in tone as he spoke, asking the question that had plagued him for so long. "Why did you keep me if you hated me so much? Why didn't you drop me off at a group home or give me up for adoption? Anything other than keeping me? Why put me through it all?" He demands, glaring at his Aunt as he feels the tears gathering in the corners of his eyes.
Petunia's face falls from her angry look, to one that Harry had never seen on her face, a look of remorse.
"I was," she admits after a moment, placing her mug down and turning to look out of the kitchen window set above the sink, out into the starless sky beyond. Harry looks at her in surprise at her words. "I had the car keys in hand, Dudley in his stroller and the extra car seat to load you both up to go to the group home to drop you off," she says as Harry leans back in his seat to listen to his Aunt.
"So, why?" Harry demands one more time.
Petunia turns to him, her own tears in her eyes. "Because you open your eyes," she admits it like a sin, pausing to wipe away her own tears. "You had slept soundly all that morning, through me feeding Dudley, rereading the letter over and over again, Vernon waking up and me explaining everything to him before seeing him off to work. You didn't make a peep, but then I picked you up from that damnable basket and you woke up and looked at me, and all I could see was Lily's eyes," she says before looking down at her tea, her voice harrowed from admitting it, like it was her greatest sin.
And to Harry, it was.
"But- but you hated my mum," Harry says, disbelief coloring his tone.
"I did," Petunia tells him, her voice solid as steel when saying it. "But she was still my little sister, she was the only family I had left and I loved her. And you- you killed her," Petunia spits at him, in her first real showing of her old anger at him, her voice breaking.
"I- Voldemort was the one that killed her," Harry says, blinking in disbelief.
"That old man explained it all in his letter, how she- she sacrificed herself to save you," Petunia says before letting out a ragged sigh as she turns away from Harry. "I hated you, I still hate you. But I couldn't- I couldn't-" she says, sobbing at the end of her words.
But she didn't need to finish what she was going to say, for Harry knew what she was going to say. "She couldn't let go of Lily," she wanted to keep some same piece of the sister she loved and hated in equal measure with her. And to see those eyes set in the face of who she saw as her sister's true killer drove her hatred of him deeper and deeper every day she saw him. Harry doesn't speak as he leans back in his chair, finally understanding the why of it all, of his childhood. Harry gives his Aunt a few moments to collect herself, neither speaking nor sipping his tea, merely looking at the woman before him.
"I didn't kill my mum, Aunt Petunia. No matter what you think," Harry tells her as he leans forward. "Mum died to save me from a mad man and bought my side of the world peace for over a decade. A decade I suffered because of you, because you couldn't let go of her. She died a hero to me and some many others," he tells her, his voice devoid of emotion.
"I don't care about those other people," Petunia spits evenly.
"I know that better than everyone else, Aunt Petunia," Harry admits with a sad smile, before taking a deep breath once more, for he knew, either way, his next question was going to hurt. But he wouldn't run away from it, he was done running from it. "Did you ever regret what you did to me?" He asks, looking down and away from his Aunt. Petunia was silent for a long moment, as if she was gathering her thoughts before answering.
"No- and yes," she says softly before Harry looks at her. "I believed everything that we did to you, everything that happened to you, was justice done for my sister; I believed that for a long time," she says, swallowing the lump in her throat before speaking again. "But then, one morning when you were nine or ten, I opened the cupboard door to let you out for your morning chores and you looked at me and…" she says, trailing off. She didn't need to go any further, Harry remembers the day she was talking about all too well.
It was the morning after he had lost all hope of escaping the Dursleys, when he accepted that he would never be anything then what they told him he would be. Aunt Petunia had opened the cupboard door and just looked at him, just looked. He stared back waiting for her orders and wanting nothing more than to crawl back in his cupboard. Now, after all these years, he could finally recognize the heartbreak on her face, of the realization of everything she had done to him. She had shut the door without another word to him and left him there for the day, only opening it to let him eat his merger scraps and use the bathroom before looking him inside again. Harry pushes his cuppa away, tears burning in his eyes as he stood up and walked over to the kitchen door.
He pauses as he puts his hand on it. "I'm not sorry you died," he admits, softly.
"I didn't expect you to be," Aunt Petunia says back, just as softly.
"I am sorry that you died the way you did," Harry says, turning back to his Aunt, who was looking at him in surprise. "And I am sorry about Dudley, he was innocent in it all," he admitted to himself most of all, Aunt Petunia says nothing, merely sniffing at it. "I know my mum would've wanted you in pain nor for Dudley to die," he says before Petunia scoffs.
"Do you want to know why I hated Lily so much?" Petunia asks, and as Harry doesn't speak she continues on. "When she turned seventeen she cut all contact with us and never returned home, not even a year later our parents died. In a car crash caused by a drunk driver, she never even showed up for their funeral," she tells Harry, shaking her head at the memory.
Harry looks away from his Aunt, closing his eyes one last time. "Goodbye, Aunt Petunia," he says as he pushes the kitchen door open.
"Harry," she says softly, causing Harry to freeze. "Next time you meet the man who killed me and Lily, make sure he dies screaming," Petunia tells him in the same tone of voice she used to order him around.
He says nothing as he leaves the kitchen, letting the door swing close behind him. Harry takes three more steps, the feeling of someone in the kitchen fading from his mind, before he tilts and leans against the wall on the other side of the cupboard and he lets out a single hollow sounding laugh.
"Killer indeed, Anand," he whispers to himself as he brings his hand up to his face to rub his eyes.
"Only when It counts," Melinoë chimes in as she is leaning against the banister, looking at him with a soft smile.
"Are we done?" Harry asks, pleading to be done with it all. He felt drained and raw, like he wanted to do nothing but sleep for a week to revitalize himself.
Melinoë's smile turns sad. "You know the answer to that already," she tells Harry, and he did, he could feel it in his bones. "One last ghost to go," she tells him softly.
"Please- not- not this one," Harry begs as he slides down the wall, facing the cupboard.
"You have to Harry," Melinoë says, stepping forward before sitting down next to Harry. "To stop this, to complete this, you have to face the ghost you've run away from the most and the hardest one for someone like you to face," she tells him, encouraging him gently.
Harry lets out a ragged sigh before getting to his knees and unlocking the cupboard door.
"The ghost of who you once were," Melinoë says softly as the door to the cupboard swings open to reveal the last thing Harry ever wanted to see again; himself, hopeless, broken, and weak. The boy in the cupboard looked just as Harry remembered him, a far too skinny child wrapped in a far too big jacket with hollow eyes looking out into the darkness of his cupboard.
Harry doesn't say anything, he couldn't, and the boy in the cupboard doesn't move and he wouldn't unless told too.
But he does speak. "We're always alone, so why can't they just leave us alone," the boy mutters to himself in a dead and hollow voice that matches his eyes perfectly. Harry just continues to look at the broken and hopeless boy in front of him, he feels Melinoë shove him forward a bit, shocking him out of his trance.
"Because they hated us," he answers the boy as he stands, moving forward into the cupboard to sit on his old cot with the boy.
"But we didn't do nothing, s'not fair," the boy mutters again, neither flinching nor moving as Harry sits down with him. He hesitates, but soon finds himself running his hands through the boy's hair like Artemis had done for him.
"Our life has been anything but fair," Harry says, comforting his younger self in a place he hated more than anything. "But it got better," he admits to himself.
"How?" the boy asks, sadness ringing in his voice.
"We- we met people, people who cared about us," Harry says, choking a bit on his own words. "We met two of the best friends we could ever ask for, a big sister who loved us and saved us from the Dursleys. We met the man who gave us our jacket, a man who wanted nothing more than to protect us and he did, even if it cost him and our big sister everything to do so. We've met so many people who care for us, who helped us, and we got away from the ones who hurt us," Harry tells the boy as he continues to run his hands through his hair, tears finally falling. "We've loved and lost, we fought and failed, we've killed and protected, we became a student to a Witch-Queen, a champion to a crow of war, and a son to the huntress of monsters. We get to live outside of this cupboard, outside of both its protection and its punishment. We get to- get to-" a deep ragged breath almost chokes his throat closed, but still he forces the words from his lips. "We get so close to running wild and free, with nothing really stopping us anymore," he admits to the boy, to himself.
"What's stopping us?"
"A monster and a prophecy,"
"...Will we ever get there? To run? To be free? To be happy?"
"We will. We've never really given up that hope for that promised tomorrow, and we never will,"
"Do you promise?"
"Yeah, always,"
"We don't break promises, right? We aren't like them?"
"No, we don't. And we will never be like them," Harry swears as he leans back against the cupboard wall, smiling the same small hopeful smile that the boy was wearing on his own face.
"Good, and don't forget next time," the boy says softly, before ever slowly, he closes hope filled eyes and vanishes with a smile. Harry stays leaning back against the wall of the cupboard, looking up at his old friends of dust bunnies and spiders with a small smile of his own as he feels the ghost vanish, waiting on that promised tomorrow.
"Never again, buddy," Harry whispers into the dark before slowly standing from the cupboard he thought he left behind. He turns, one hand on the door, to face Melinoë leaning against the banister once more.
She smiles at him, soft and proud. "Are you okay?" She asks, her black eyes gleaming in the shadows of an empty house that held nothing more in it.
"No," Harry says as he laughs mirthlessly. "No, I don't think I am," he admits and Melinoë's smile widens.
"Good, if you were, we'd have to do this all over again. But you'll get better," she tells him, her tone filled with hope, before pushing herself off the wall and walking over to him, her hands behind her back.
"Oh? And how am I going to do that?" Harry asks, smiling himself as Melinoë's infectious smile grew in her face.
"Well, I always found a bit of arson helped my bad moods," She says before pulling out a can of petrol from behind her back and giving the can a shake, slushing the liquid inside. "What do you say? Ready to burn this bitch to the ground?" She asks him with a grin, and Harry couldn't help it as he begins to laugh madly.
They might have had a bit too much fun soaking everything in petrol. From the upstairs bedrooms to the downstairs kitchen, from the back to the front doors, every bed, chair, and piece of wood they could reach; until the house stank to high heaven of the flammable liquid. Melinoë had poured a solid stream of petrol down the walkway that led to the front door, skipping and humming a tune under her breath as she did. She sat the petrol can down next to her before turning to Harry with the biggest smile on her face.
"Well, what are you waiting for?" She asked him, her hands on her hips as she cocked them. "Lite this bitch up!" She cried out and Harry summoned his Gaé Bolg before striking the stone walkway, sending spiraling sparks into the air and igniting the petrol. Harry watched as the fire raced up the walkway and into the open front door and- boom. The windows were immediately blown out, the house buckled but remained standing as it was quickly engulfed in flame.
Harry and Melinoë stood in the snow, under the full moon and starless sky, just beyond the haunting woods that only one predator called home, watching Number Four Privet Drive burn to the ground. Harry watched as the fire consumed everything, from the roof, the walls, to the fireplace. It consumed every memory and every feeling, it consumed his ghosts and his terror, and in that terrible flame, he saw it consume him. Purifying and burning away everything that he was, freeing him to be who he chose to be, freed at last from those great and terrible memories.
He watched for a long time, until long after the flames burned everything but the cupboard away.
"Some things stay with us, define us, scarred so deep that we can never truly be rid of them," Melinoë explains as her head was leaning on his shoulder, her hand entangled in his. "But while you can never truly be rid of it, you can build upon it and become a better you," she tells him, but the cupboard was the furthest from his mind, he didn't mind it any more. Harry's thoughts were on a girl he had met two summers ago and the story etched upon her skin and he couldn't help but to wonder if how he felt was how she felt the night she burned her own old home down.
This freeing feeling of a final escape in flames.
The feeling of being forged anew.
"I don't know what to do next," Harry admits in a questioning voice, his face pitching at his own question.
"Well, if it's all the same to you I think it's about time-" Melinoë leans in, pressing her lips to his ears. "-for you to wake up-"
Harry Potter, Melinoë's cave, July 24th 10:59 AM.
Harry Potter opens his eyes to the faint light of Christmas lights hanging overhead, mounted to the top of the ceiling of a cave. To his groggy confusion he was looking at himself and wondering how that was possible before he noticed some of the lights wrapped around a large flat surface hanging from the ceiling.
"Oh," he thinks to himself. "It's a mirror," he thinks with a frown.
"Good morning sleeping beauty, did you have any pleasant dreams?" the voice of Melinoë echoes throughout the cave turning Harry's attention to her. She was laying halfway on his chest, her arms folded over his sternum with her chin resting just behind it. She was looking up at with gleaming mischief filled black eyes, the corners of her smile just barely visible past her arms.
Harry looks down at her with a sleepy smile. "No, nothing but nightmares," he tells her.
"The best kinds of dreams, they remind you that you're alive, you know," she whispers to him as she pushes herself up so Harry could see her smile.
"Because life is nothing but pain," Harry mutters before Melinoë finishes the saying for him.
"And death, nothing but a blissful sleep," she says with a grin, tilting her head and letting out a sigh of contentment. "I haven't been this full in a while," she admits with a grin.
"What does it feel like?" Harry asks curiously, as he moves his arm to wrap around her waist.
"Hmm, I guess it's like when you mortals stuff yourselves on Christmas dinner," Melinoë says after thinking for a few moments before her smile turns playful. "Now I'm going to have to find some way to work off all these pounds I've built up over this scrumptious meal I just had," she says as she wiggles her eyebrows at him.
Harry frowns. "You're a goddess, you can't get fat if you don't want to. What are you talking about?" Harry says, lost and confused at what Melinoë was saying.
The princess of ghosts sighs, dropping her head to his chest. "You're a sledgehammer kind of guy, aren't you?" She asks seemingly out of nowhere.
"Er- sledgehammer?" Harry asks, tilting his head up to look down at her, now sound as lost as he felt with what the weird goddess was talking about.
Melinoë picks her head back up and looks at Harry deadpanned. "I have to be as blunt as a sledgehammer to get a message across to you, don't I?" She asks him.
Harry opens his mouth to rebuke the statement but stops and considers a few things. He frowns as he nods his head. "Yup, definitely a sledgehammer type of guy," he says with a nod of his head, causing Melinoë to giggle.
"That's fine, kinda fun actually," She says as she pushes herself up before, to Harry's surprise, she straddles his waist. She looks down at him with dark eyes full of want before grabbing the hem of her shirt and pulling it over her head, revealing her bare breasts to Harry with a wicked smirk. "You lucky I like blunt guys like you," she says as she leans down and captures Harry's lips in a kiss.
And Harry kisses his nightmare back.
Chapter done!
*The author stands at the current peak of the mountain, a flock of sheep behind him.*
Do I even have to say anything? This chapter was fucking amazing, I cried like four times writing it. Also, ignore the sheep, we're gonna need them in the next few chapters.
And so the last love interest is revealed as Melinoë, the Princess of Ghosts!
And yes! The author had a type, why do you ask?
Anyway, we are five chapters away from the end of part one with the last big thing(it's not traumatizing I promise) that is Harry heading into the House of Night to meet not only his biggest fan but the night itself!
But first, we need to do his birthday first.
Kingsaxcul, out!