a preview of my new story
(The first scene/prologue, which is pretty much just 1700 words of me setting the stage and nothing else. Oh, and I might end up changing the story title, I’m not sure yet.)
For @stranger-thoughts. Happy birthday! Hope you like.
An AU mostly based on Robin McKinley’s Sunshine. Eventual Harrymort.
It was a dumb thing to do, taking a walk in the Forbidden Forest on Halloween Night, but it wasn’t that dumb.
Even so, Harry never would have expected that he’d run across – let alone find himself befriending – a Dark Lord.
If Hermione knew where he was going, she’d have tried to stop him. It was one of the reasons Harry hadn’t told her – told anyone – his plans, because he wanted to be alone tonight, and that wouldn’t happen if Hermione had the chance to lecture him on why it was a Bad Idea to enter the Forbidden Forest on Halloween. (In between holding Ron back from joining him, because Ron would do that sort of thing, and then Hermione would feel bound to stop them both.)
So Harry didn’t mention it, just excused himself early from the feast, claiming a headache, and that he thought he’d go back to the Tower to lie down. Hermione looked up from her ubiquitous “light reading” to flash him a quick smile, while Ginny, his girlfriend of half a year, pecked him on the cheek. They both knew as well as Harry did that he didn’t really have a headache, but they wouldn’t press. Ron, mouth full with his fourth pumpkin pasty, waved at Harry as he left the Great Hall.
Once in the corridor, Harry headed, not in the direction of Gryffindor Tower, but to the entrance hall, where he pushed open the double doors and walked out into the crisp air.
He’d seen, through the Great Hall’s enchanted ceiling, that it would be a cloudless night, and that the moon – waxing, not quite full – was bright enough that he shouldn’t need a Lumos unless he ventured into the deepest, darkest parts of the Forest. Which was good, because sometimes a wandlight bobbing in the trees brought undesirable attention, and on Halloween Night in particular, it was really best not to do things that might draw attention.
(Not that the Forest was any safer on any other day of the year, but all sensible witches and wizards tended to steer clear of Wild spots, especially on days of power. And the Forbidden Forest, for all that it was right next to Hogwarts castle – itself supposedly the safest place in all of Britain, but Harry had his doubts about that –
Well. The Forbidden Forest was particularly Wild, and Halloween a particularly powerful Night.)
But Harry wasn’t a stranger to either, to the Forest or to Halloween, and so long as he kept to the path, the Darker creatures should leave him be. The paths were warded each week by Hagrid, who had enough Giant blood in him that pretty much everything, Dark or otherwise, left him alone. So in theory, even on Halloween, the worst he might come across would be some particularly bold hinkypunks, or maybe a stray Acromantula.
Harry, though, had learned how to deal with hinkypunks in his third year of Defense, and he’d faced Acromantulas before too. Harry had also snuck a few pieces of raw meat from the table, in case he ran into something that might require … bribing.
But all in all, Harry figured he’d be plenty safe. He had his wand out, his eyes and ears were alert for any sign of trouble, and if worse came to worst, his trusty invisibility cloak was in his pocket.
The Forest was quiet, though, only the rustle of leaves to betray Harry’s steps and the susurrus that fills any forest, even at night. The moon bathed the trees in pale blue light, and much of the forest floor was cast in deepest shadow. Harry walked on, neither rushing nor dawdling, till he could no longer glimpse the lights of the castle, and then further still.
It was his seventh year at Hogwarts, and today – Halloween – marked seven years to the day since his parents had last been seen. James and Lily Potter were well-liked, popular even, at least among magical folk. It was an open secret that even the shifters were fond of them, and shifters were notorious for their mistrust of anyone who wasn’t also a shifter.
The Potters’ disappearance had set off an uproar in the Wizarding World the likes of which hadn’t been seen since Grindlewald’s War, or so Sirius said. No one knew, even now, what might have caused one of the Ministry’s best Aurors and an internationally acclaimed Ward Mistress to just – vanish like that. Despite the best efforts of both the Ministry and the Order of the Phoenix, they never found any real leads, and so eventually the search was called off. Even Harry, who for years would turn to look hopefully (desperately) at any Auror or Order member he saw, only to receive a gloomy shake of the head – even Harry had resigned himself to the knowledge that his parents were gone for good.
When Harry was fifteen, and could no longer convincingly lie to himself about the possibility of James and Lily’s return, the Daily Prophet made the mistake of running a “commemorative” article that, among other things, detailed the most persistent of the rumours surrounding the five-year-old case.
Most of the tales claimed that the Potters had been attacked by some type of Dark creature – which was ridiculous, Sirius fumed as he hurled a silver goblet at the wall, didn’t they know what even the greenest trainee Aurors were capable of? And that wasn’t even the worst of them. The insinuation that Lily, who had been commissioned to reinforce the wards of Hogwarts itself, could possibly have botched an experimental charm or two caused Remus’s eyes to flash in suppressed rage.
Peter had squeaked and dropped the paper upon reading the last line. It had been printed in ink so light as to give the impression that the writer – one Rita Skeeter – was whispering, breathing her poisonous words into readers’ ears: perhaps, just perhaps, the Potters had actually withdrawn from society in order to become Dark Lords?
It didn’t stop Peter from joining his friends in storming the Prophet’s office to demand reparations. (The editor caved instantly. Sirius, Remus, and Peter returned within the hour, their anger barely tempered by the Prophet’s blatant cowardice, and from then on, the three of them proceeded to thoroughly insult Skeeter and the Prophet every chance they got.)
Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, Peter Pettigrew: James’ three best friends, Harry’s godfather and honorary uncles, who in the absence of his parents had taken the ten-year-old Harry in. The four of them, James and Sirius and Remus and Peter, had been closer than brothers since the first of their Hogwarts years. Between the three remaining Marauders, they’d done their best to make sure Harry wouldn’t dwell on the loss of James and Lily. Some of his fondest memories were set during winter and summer breaks from Hogwarts.
But each year on Halloween Night, Harry set aside a few hours for himself in remembrance of his parents. This was the first time, though, that he was spending his Halloween in the Forbidden Forest. Normally he’d wander the castle, looking for old, dusty rooms or secret passages, but after six years at Hogwarts, he felt that he knew the place fairly well. The Forest, though …
Harry paused at a small pond he knew wasn’t too far from the clearing where he and Luna Lovegood once fed the thestrals. Luna had explained that this area was popular with the larger, more peaceful animals, and that she hoped to one day witness the dancing of the mooncalves.
Harry saw no mooncalves tonight, however, nor any other creature, and so he merely settled upon a large stone outcropping, arms clasped around his knees as he looked out over the water and into the Forest.
The Forbidden Forest was called Forbidden because it was the Wild spot that formed when Salazar Slytherin broke away from the Hogwarts Founders. And although all Wild areas drew Dark creatures and other odd things to them like nifflers to jewellery, the Forest was the largest and strangest Wild area of all.
The story went that the Forbidden Forest, which a thousand years ago was a normal forest like any other, gained its current imposing aura the instant Slytherin renounced the other Founders. And while most millennia-old tales would have long since been twisted by legend and myth, Slytherin had turned his back on Hogwarts to become a Dark Lord – and one of the main perks of being a Dark Lord was immortality, or as good as.
No one really saw Lord Slytherin much after that night, or even knew whereabouts he might be, but somehow, the tales of the Split and the subsequent Rise of the Forest never changed much between tellings (or if it did, the one who told it wrong swiftly disappeared – which, in Harry’s opinion, was as much proof as anyone needed that the Dark Lord Slytherin still lived).
There were other stories as well. Of people entering the Forest, only to vanish for days or weeks or months – or even forever. Of those who gained (or lost) body parts, human or otherwise, between one step and another. Of the bloke who, after tumbling out of the Forest, was found to have no memory of anything anymore, didn’t even know who he was. Of the whispers of the dead, which could be heard in the treetops when the wind blew hard enough.
But it was also said that a herd of unicorns lived in the depths of the Forest. That there were magical plants that grew nowhere else in the world, and that the strongest trees for wand-wood could be found here. Rumours like these drew many particularly daring (or foolish) witches and wizards to risk their lives and sanity in the Forbidden Forest.
And once the paths were built and warded, a century or so ago, Hogwarts students could also find it within themselves to brave the Forest, for Creature or Herbology classes or even the occasional dare. Harry himself had been in here several times, although he’d never come alone before. While the path made a trip safer, it still wasn’t a good idea to wander around on a whim.
So, perhaps Harry had brought it upon himself. But the arrival of the house-elf still took him completely by surprise.
