MC4A and Hogwarts
Fill 2
Prompt: 2C (Rainbow)
Representations: Helga Hufflepuff; Salazar Slytherin; Female hunter; Injured Salazar; Wandering healer Helga
Bonus Challenges: Ladylike - provider, hunter; Not a Lamp; Persistance Still; White Dress; Odd Feathers; Wabi Sabi; Thimble
Stacked With: Hogwarts; Spring Bingo; Shipping War; FPC; SS; TTT; Short Jog; Yellow Ribbon; Yellow Ribbon Redux
Word count: 1,437
Beta: HecateA
Warning: Non-consensual body modification, mentions of slavery
A young girl stared at the water spray in front of her in wonder. It wasn't the water itself that made her stare, nor the cliff it was falling from. No, what made her stare were the colours shimmering in the water. The reds, blues, greens, purples, and yellows that made up what she knew had to be a rainbow. She had been dragged here by her mother so many times to see this exact phenomenon, and at last now she had. Somewhere, she had a soulmate.
"Well, Helga?" her mother asked with a sigh, not expecting the answer to be any different.
Helga hesitated. Did she want to reveal that she could see the rainbow? Did she want a soulmate that her parents would then force her to find and stay with? What if she didn't like them? Silently, she shook her head and her mother patted her on the back comfortingly.
"Not to worry, child. You'll see it eventually."
As she was guided away from the falls, Helga glanced back at the still shimmering rainbow shown by the water. She could see it. But did she want to?
The pattern continued for several years. Every time, Helga saw the rainbow and said she didn't. Sometimes she thought about saying she could but she never did. She wasn't sure how she felt about it. And if everyone thought she didn't have a soulmate, perhaps they would get to know her before trying to claim her as their own.
Helga had no desire for that to happen to her. Even if someone thought she was their soulmate, she could reply that she saw no rainbow. It wasn't a perfect defence, but at least it was one. Eventually, when Helga reached twelve, her mother stopped taking her to the falls. It was declared to the village as a whole that Helga had no soulmate. She was officially soulmate-less.
It didn't worry Helga. She worked in the garden behind her parent's house and created tinctures and potions from the plants she grew. She experimented with different combinations—creating healing potions and poisons alike. She was poor, sweet, Helga. She was the darling of the village and the tragic story of what happened to a girl who didn't have a soulmate.
As the rest of the girls her age found their soulmates and started families, Helga remained at home; working away and creating new potions, salves, and poisons. When the whispers and pity grew too much, Helga left the village and started journeying the country. She picked plants from the roadside and continued creating potions. She helped out in the places she stayed who needed it.
She became well known in the areas she wandered. She was merely Helga to them. Not the poor, soulmate-less girl. She was the woman who walked into their village and asked for a meal and a bed in return for any help they might need. She learned many skills on her travels. Her hunting improved drastically and a hunter taught her how to make snares and lay them in the optimum position to catch something.
Another hunter taught her tracking and how to craft a sling. After that, she started picking up smooth stones from the roadside along with the plants she already gathered. Not all of them were for her potions; some of them went into her meals when she was in between villages or if the village she was in had little to spare.
It was when she came across one of her snares with the animal already taken that her life changed. It had happened sometimes; a hungry wanderer would stumble upon one of her traps and take the meat there. She didn't begrudge them too much and there was nothing she could do to stop them. They were always long gone by the time she checked her snares.
This time was different, however. The man was still hunched over on the ground, examining the rabbit that had been caught. Helga cleared her throat and he whirled around, revealing a side of his face to be horribly scarred before he quickly hid it from sight by brushing his long hair over it.
Helga ignored the disfigurement and instead said, "You do realise that rabbit belongs to whoever placed the snare that caught it, do you not?"
The man's eyes flashed with surprise before the emotion was quickly hidden. "I do not see them anywhere around here," he replied, gesturing around him.
"Well I do," Helga huffed in irritation. "That would be me, in case you're wondering."
He looked her up and down and Helga knew what he was seeing. A woman wearing a long skirt with clean skin and her hair braided back with various herbs wound through it. Not the usual visage of a hunter.
"I apologise."
"So you should," Helga retorted. "You can keep the rabbit though, I do not need it desperately."
He stood up with swift movements and asked with a steely tone, "Do you think I am incapable of providing for myself? That I cannot catch my own rabbits merely because my face is not as pure as yours?"
Helga blinked. "It has nothing to do with your face. You were the one taking from a trap that does not belong to you. If you do not wish for the rabbit, give it to me and go find your own. It matters little."
"Do you…" he trailed off as he glanced down at the dead rabbit he still held. "Do you wish to share it?"
She studied him for a moment before answering. Yes, he was a thief but she was used to those appearing occasionally. Yes, he was disfigured, but her acceptance of that seemed to have thrown him for a loop and so she knew he had met few people like her. Yes, he had assumed she couldn't possibly be the owner of the snare he had stolen from, but he had easily accepted it when she had set him straight.
"Alright," she agreed. "On the condition that you tell me your name. I am Helga."
"Salazar," the man said after a slight pause. "My name is Salazar."
"Well then, Salazar, let's share a rabbit, shall we?"
Salazar nodded and followed her to the clearing in the woods she had claimed as her own while she was in the area. As they worked on the meal, Helga gently teased out information from Salazar about the burnt left side of his face. She wanted to see if she could heal it—with his permission, of course. That was how she learned other villages weren't so accepting of a child who couldn't see rainbows.
He explained how being soulmate-less in his village was looked on with scorn. The males were burned and thrown out, the females branded and sold off to the highest bidder. Many parents begged their children to say they saw the rainbow, even if they didn't. Salazar had evidently not given in to the pressure surrounding him to say he saw the shimmering colours.
As a result, he had had his face burnt with careful application of a fire spell and been cast out of his home. Helga wondered if she would have told the truth if the other option was branding and slavery. Probably not, she decided. A brand she could work around and she was wily and powerful enough to be able to escape anyone that thought they could own her.
"And why are you out here by yourself, hunting for your own food?" Salazar asked.
Helga shrugged and told the lie she had come to believe as truth. "No rainbow, and the desire to help more people than those in my village."
"Fancy a companion as you help others?"
"Are you offering?"
"Yes," he answered simply. "You are the first in a long while that has not flinched from my face. You desire to help people and you have no soulmate to force you to stop wandering. Plus, you make very good snares."
Helga laughed. "If only I could make them thief proof!"
Salazar's eyes twinkled, "I may have a way you could do that."
"Well, if that's the case, how could I say no? You are welcome to travel with me for however long you wish, Salazar."
Salazar grinned and took the offered bowl of finished rabbit stew. "I thank you," he said. As he looked at the woman over the crackling fireplace with her hazel eyes sparkling in the dancing light and brown hair intertwined with useful plants; he silently wished that the rainbows he saw were linked to her.