Heir to the Goblin Throne
By: Skitzo
Chapter One: He never leaves his sight
Disclaimer: I own neither Harry Potter nor the Labyrinth. All work done is purely for fun!
Summary: Toby William's adventure didn't end at the Labyrinth. The Goblin King has spies everywhere Toby. Be careful what you wish for. Labyrinth x HP crossover.
A/N: If you like this, feel free to review.
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When Toby Williams was but not a child of three, he woke up in the middle of the night to hear rattling within his chamber walls.
The shouts escalading from his parent's room combined with the haunting shakes between the floorboards would cause any sane three year old to cry out in fear.
Toby had strange nightmares - where a tall man with mismatched eyes stood in a land of little, roaming, demonic minions – and when he stirred from slumber his heart filled with dread. He felt that there was something sickeningly real about his misadventures in the world of sleep.
Tears trickled down his pale cheeks and a subtle moan escaped his lips as he ran from his dreams. His sister Sarah used to come to his room and tuck him in, telling tales of mazes and the great king. Now she rarely visited him.
Sarah Williams was a senior in high school, graduating in a few more months. Why would she have time for her baby brother?
Toby wasn't ashamed in the very least as he cried out for his sister's warmth. He wasn't ashamed while he quaked, requesting for his mother's bosom or his father's comfort. He didn't seem curious when he thought he heard a melody ring in the air. Toby assumed it was just all in his mind.
However, the consoling rhythm soothed his qualms.
From the shadows peered beady yellow eyes, the chuckling of goblins resounded as they watched their young prince. The king, in his far away kingdom of the Underground, lounged on his enormous chair.
With a smirk, the Goblin King whispered dulcet sorrows to his most trusted guard, "I saw my baby, my baby, crying as a baby could cry."
He danced to a tune of mirth and discord, for his heir's tears would not be forgotten. Revenge was ever so sweet and he could be truly cruel. The guard stood still and silent, praying he would not be the next person to anger the king.
"I saw my baby, crying as a baby could cry." Throughout Goblin City the world trashed and tore, as the king's wrath could only spell doom for the villagers.
But poor Toby, lying frightened and alone, would wish for someone – a friend, a companion, a guardian. He hated loneliness. He never understood that he was never alone.
The Goblin King never left his heir, his Toby.
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When he was seven years old his father lost his job. Sitting on the couch, day after day, he sipped his cheap brandy. Toby could not hate the man, not even as the remote was chucked at his face.
Toby could not hate him, really he could not, when his father packed his bags to go fishing one evening and told the family he'd be back by Monday for a job interview.
He looked so ecstatic, Mr. Williams did.
Just like Sarah's face when she left for college, without ever glancing back at her dysfunctional family. She was their golden child, escaping from their web of deceit.
The fishing trip lasted for a month. His father never came home for the interview.
His mother was beyond herself, screaming and shrilling on the phone. Something inside her broke that day, a dam of emotions burst with one pebble unearthed. She hid from her friends and ignored her family.
Toby could not hate his father. Even though every fiber in his being wanted so much to escape like his sister had. He never felt those eyes, piercing moon-shine eyes, urging him to wish all of his troubles away. He couldn't hear the seductive voice, promising sweet fantasies in his ear at night. He wouldn't feel those pale, shadowy hands comforting him under the visage of mystic.
Toby Williams did nothing but dream of magic and mazes and dancing creatures.
The Goblin King leered from his throne, gazing into his crystal at the child of mortals. "Dance magic, dance," he would sing so softly, lulling his prince to sleep. The Goblin King's mismatched eyes were always watching. He never left his heir.
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When Toby was eight years old strange things began to occur.
Well, strange things had occurred before Toby Williams was eight years old of course. It was truly then when he first realized that it did in fact occur.
A fat boy named Regan (a bully by all means and definition) came up behind him one day. Without looking, Toby shoved the large child and as a result earned a black eye from a trigger-happy fist.
When retelling the account of his tale to his mother, a cracked woman from her husband's departure, she merely scoffed and requested that her son bring down that magazine from the dining room table. Her boredom only exceeded her patience, after all.
With no one to turn to and a bruise grazing his pale features, Toby retreated to his room, jumping on the old mattress that once belonged to his sister, and did what any desperate eight year old would do.
He prayed – no – hewished, he wished that something terrible would happen to Regan. He wished with all his might that the boy could understand just what he felt, the humiliation. Toby wished for Regan to suffer.
The goblins cackled with glee in the dining hall. Surely their king, who had been watching this sad scene with a smile would want retribution.
The bully at school fell the next day while he was pushing another child down the stairs. He was rushed to the hospital, having broken both legs and fractured his rib. Regan cried out to the doctors of the tiny monsters which followed him everywhere, jeering. The poor family was at a loss. Their son was now on medication, so that the images would subside.
They never did.
Toby Williams knew he should pity the boy, but he couldn't help but feel smug. Justice had been served. The bully got what he deserved.
This revelation made the eight year old ponder. He had wished so he was guilty.
But his wishes were just the naughty hopes of a child, were they not?
The Goblin King laughed at the naivety of his heir. Surely the boy should realize by then that the king never left his prince.
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When he was nine years old, shy green-eyes met that of his mad mother. It wasn't the first time he had looked at his mother, God only knows how he could live life if that was the case. No. It was the first time Toby Williams saw his mother for who she was, no illusions attached.
Those scared green-eyes brimmed with fear as his mother smacked him over the head with a frying pan. Over the years of utter loneliness and despair, Karen Williams was merely a shadow of her former self. Paranoia and depression drove her to the brink.
His mother no longer saw the scrawny child living in her house as her son.
Toby could not hate his mother nor could he hate his father (though he was close to doing so for the mess the man created). He could not curse her wretched body as she slammed his hand on the stove. He could not damn her to hell as she pulled his golden locks.
Toby could not and would not utter those words aloud. Those haunted words that seem to play magic all about him. Toby wasn't as stupid as he once was to ignore the hard truth. Everything he ever desired became.
I wish, I wish … and the words would fail him.
The Goblin King ground his teeth in frustration, glaring into the crystal that showed him the world. "Such a stubborn boy, so much like his sister."
Creatures littering his dining hall all shuddered and bowed to their great lord. "But sire?" spoke a rather impish goblin, new and uncertain of the ways in the kingdom, "Can we not just simply bend the rules this once? It is our prince which we –,"
The king silenced the sniveling rat by crushing it beneath his boot.
"We do nothing. A wish, a simple wish, and this boy could have the world," the creature of the fae uttered, dreamily stroking a strand of his wild mane. "Perhaps he is not as foolish as he was before, making silly little wishes."
Mismatched eyes gazed towards the silhouette of his heir, perched unceremoniously on the throne. The child Toby trembled under his mother's harsh words and neglect.
The Goblin King grimaced. The woman would pay most definitely for her sin to his heir. She should have seen the mark, his mark, on her son. The woman then would have known that the king could never leave his prince.
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When Toby turned ten years old, he fell madly in love.
His heart spurned and fluttered at the delicate features of Miss Elena Douglas, a kind classmate and neighbor whom often shied away from his affection. Her fiery locks draped chocolate orbs and her laughter could melt the cold.
Toby wished for comfort, for happiness, for luck. Although tempted so often, the boy never wished for love because he knew that he need not waste such a wish.
A beacon of hope for normality and joy arose from the being of Elena. All of his doubts and fears - his abusive mother, his disappearing father, his neglectful sibling – all faded with the presence of her warmth.
As he kissed her lips softly, Toby tasted heaven.
Deep in the Underground, the Goblin King seethed at this disgusting display. How could such a silly, mortal girl captivate his only heir so? His prince needn't waste his time with weaklings.
The king scoffed at the mortal's pathetic fondness, "All the magic in the world and yet you desire her happiness? She is not worthy to even tie your shoelaces my little prince."
Alas a wicked, wicked deed fashioned in the impish fae king's mind. "Anything you desire, my Toby," with a taunt smile, he pressed his ear against the cold stone – his gateway to the Aboveground. "Her happiness, her desires, they will all come true."
Elena dreamed of stardom that night. She dreamed of lights and cameras and the love of all those watching. Elena no longer lived in a run-down apartment with her parents. She didn't have siblings that manipulated her every decision. None of them were as great as she. Elena dreamed of stardom that night and the Goblin King laughed in delight.
She left her crush, her town, and her old life to start anew. Agents called, money raked in, and her movies sold. At ten years old, Elena Douglas was a household name.
No one told Toby that his love became a star, so out of reach from mere mortals. He trudged home away from school to hear the devastating news and later arrived to the crashing crescendo that was his mother.
Toby locked himself in his room and cried.
At ten years old, Toby's heart was broken.
He then did a most foolish thing and wished his pain away.
From the anguish of his heir in his throne room, the Goblin King felt a nervous pull. Perhaps he had doubted his righteous deed. "But let us make you into a star, little Elena! There, twinkling in the sky like so many other dreamers!"
Elena Douglas disappeared the next evening. They say on the day of her disappearance a new star was born.
Toby did not feel guilt. He did not feel any emotions at all. The Goblin King encouraged this novel transformation. Best if his heir did not entangle himself in the affairs of mortals, for his reign in their realm will be short. In this moment of weakness, Toby sensed mismatched eyes examining an heir from a far away kingdom.
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When Toby turned eleven years old, all hell broke loose.
Toby Williams, at his new home in Liverpool, England, received an unusual letter from a common barn owl.
He had been accepted to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
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The Goblin King tore across his ballroom, livid at the impudence of those Aboveground. The kingdom quavered as they experienced their lord's wrath, however the Goblin King neither noticed nor cared about the state of his nation due to the initial indignity of the mortal kind.
"They dare do this? They dare meddle with our kind?" the fae lord exclaimed, seizing an innocuous goblin and chucking him across the hall. "Don't they know anything? Our magic is not the same. Our cores are not similar. Why would the wizards believe that my heir would hold such tainting, thieving powers?"
Mismatched eyes flashed, before tugging on the jaded prayer beads which he wore around his neck. A pulse of magic, still faint but evidently present.
"Griphook!" the king summoned, and with resounding boom the hall was filled with a blinding flash.
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Later that evening, Toby Williams hid the ridiculous letter from his mother by burying it beneath the willow. He couldn't have his mother finding such an atrocity. Whether or not he believed or even desired for the contents of the note to be true left an unnerving sensation paralyzing his body.
If the contents did indeed merit some value of truth … no, he shouldn't wish it – he couldn't wish it.
But still at the crux of the matter, Toby desperately desired to be someone special. A world of magic, though foreign and frightful, would open his eyes to wonders he couldn't even possibly dream of – no.
"Everything I could ever desire is here with me, at home." The child muttered softly, trudging his lithe body beneath the covers of his mattress. "Why can't I even believe in myself?"
Toby Williams, at eleven years old, received a promising letter – unknowingly provoking a war between the witch-folk and the goblin-kind.
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