Summary. 10 years after the Final Battle. Harry Potter, now an Auror, while investigating a terrible accident at the magic factory, makes discoveries most strange and disturbing… So what's wrong with the seemingly prosperous Wizarding World? Or is it just Harry?
Genre: General/Mystery
Lead characters: Harry Potter (first part), Hermione Granger (second part)
Other characters: Theodore Nott, Ginny Weasley, Ron Weasley, Luna Lovegood, Draco Malfoy, Blaise Zabini, other minor canon characters and some OC.
Pairings: starts canonically as Harry/Ginny, Ron/Hermione. There might be some changes later, but overall, this is not a romance fic.
Disclaimer: all belongs to JKR except this little adventure.
AN: After DH came out, I had a strong feeling that some principal moral conflicts of HP series were not resolved. So, I decided to write this. Don't know if I have the patience to finish this story (for it is long), but I really hope that I will.
The title of the fic was taken from the poem Acceptance by Robert Frost. In the end, this story is about acceptance... in a sense.
Now Let the Night Be Dark
My bonds are cut, my debts are paid, my door has been opened, I go everywhere.
They crouch in their corner and weave their web of pale hours, they count their coins sitting in the dust and call me back.
But my sword is forged, my armour is put on, my horse is eager to run.
I shall win my kingdom.
Rabindranath Tagore. LXXIV, Fruit Gathering
Part I.
Chapter 1. Into the Woods
In the beginning of October, on a quiet and pleasant evening, a young man of about twenty five, dressed in washed-out jeans and a dingy dark-green windbreaker, arrived at the small railway station of Cold Waters.
As the train that had conveyed the young man to his destination departed, he took his travelling bag off his shoulder and opened it up. The Station Custodian, Mr Slopey, watched the young man's actions with his usual laziness, but at the same time not without a bit of curiosity. Meanwhile, the newly arrived seemed to have found the thing he had been looking in the bag; and it appeared to be a bright-coloured pocket-book, in which Mr Slopey immediately recognized the popular edition of a local tourist guide. A tourist, thought Mr Slopey with a slight grimace. He didn't like stupid idle tourists, nor did he even try to pretend otherwise.
'You won't make it in shoes like these,' said he as the young man came nearer.
'Oh, won't I?' The tourist's voice was touchingly naïve. 'But the folks on the train said that the trails here are rather good, and -' he looked at his brochure '- and the guide also says so.'
Mr Slopey found some kind of amusement in the tourist's helplessness. 'You may as well throw it away, that paper of yours. This is not a weekend walk, lad. Never been to mountains before, have you?'
'In fact, I have,' answered the young man softly. He wasn't smiling anymore.
But Mr Slopey chose to pay no attention at that change of the stranger's attitude. 'Where then? Alps, Caucasus? Or even Himalayas, by chance?'
'No. Just Carpathians, Transylvania.' The young man shut his book abruptly and lifted his eyes at the Custodian.
Something in this gaze, though it was not exactly menacing or penetrating, nevertheless made Mr Slopey feel very uneasy, and he restrained himself from future comments.
To say the truth, the young man didn't need them. He continued his way to the end of the platform, to the small rickety gate in the fence. When he was about to open it, the Custodian suddenly recollected:
'Hey! Sir! You've got the wrong way! The village is in the opposite direction!'
But the young man ignored the warning. The gate was broken and could be opened only to a small degree, but he managed to squeeze carefully between it and the rusty fence, and disappeared from the sight, leaving Mr. Slopey to his everyday lonely complaints about the bad weather, solitude, mosquitoes, stupid tourists, and the injustice of life in general.
oxXxo
The tired-of-life Custodian was certainly exaggerating the miserable condition of local wood trails. They were not perfect, of course, but quite passable, and the young man found the way even enjoyable. The bad impression of this place, which had been created in him by the Custodian's rudeness, soon completely vanished, giving place to an unreserved admiration of the cold beauty of the surrounding forest.
Indeed, the gloomy this wood was, it was truly impressive. Gigantic pines, tall and impeccably straight, were alternated with branchy spreading firs, whose dark-green needles seemed almost black in the dim reddish light of the sunset. Several yew trees, which he noticed on the way, looked even frightening in the deepening darkness.
More secluded place could hardly be imagined. The village of Cold Waters, a mile and a half from the station, with its three hundred population was the only remarkable settlement in the neighbourhood. He stopped for a moment and listened. Every forest has its sounds, the signs of its half-hidden everlasting life; but this one was silent; or at least, it seemed so to him. After a minute or two, the young man roused himself, slightly shivering from the cold air, and continued his journey. However, now he was walking very slowly, constantly watching the needle-covered soil under his feet, as if in hope to find a lost jewel. It was questionable whether he was indeed trying to find something, but there could be no doubt that he would not succeed if he were, for it grew darker with every minute. Nevertheless, the nightfall had seemingly no effect on the young man: he went into the forest deeper and deeper and obviously showed no intention of coming back within the next few hours. Such kind of behaviour was undoubtedly suspicious, and did not suited at all to an idle weekend tourist whom the stranger had supposed to be.
Suddenly the tourist noticed something white in the thickening darkness ahead of him, and stopped for a moment, fixing his eyes on the strange spot. It was nothing but a simple tree-stump; the chip was rather fresh. The young man directed his steps towards the stump, moving carefully, not making a sound. Then he performed a rather strange act: he knelt down before the stump, moving his face right up to the moist wood surface, and passed his hand slowly over the top of the stump. After that, he froze, as if trying to perceive something, and stood motionless for about minute or two. It remained unclear if the young man found what he had been going to find; he simply stand up and, having shaken off the dirt from his jeans, continued his walk through the woods.
An exterior observer would obviously find this walk suspicious, at least; and the deepening moonless night had made it look even sinister. The 'tourist' made several more stops, always in order to do something unusual; he would dig in the rotten and mouldy pieces of brushwood, or pick up some dead needles of the fir-trees, or immerse his hands into the dirty puddles of water remained after a recent rain – all of those not losing his serious and somewhat dreamy look.
The end of his journey was no less weird, for it seemed as no end at all. He just stopped all of a sudden, as if having bumped unto an invisible wall, at a spot that was no different from any other one in the forest. And so he just stood there, unmoving, with his gaze seemingly empty, eyes focused somewhere in the darkness before him.
With no rustle from his steps, there would be almost a complete silence – if it were not for small noises of the forest, previously muffled by the human's intrusion. Silence grew, and the sounds became more distinct; they seemed closer now, as if they were slowly surrounding the young man. A person more apprehensive would have obviously started to feel uncomfortable, giving in to irrational fear of the unknown. But the young man remained calm and motionless; probably, the game of his imagination failed to frighten him with the invisible horrors of the woods. Or, maybe, he was so resistant namely because he knew exactly what these horrors were.
For it seemed that the young man was aware of what he was doing, no matter how strange his actions were. He obviously knew what to expect from this forest, from this cold October moist, and from the darkness that surrounded him.
Thus, it had been almost predictable that he was not at all surprised by the sounds of voices, coming to him from somewhere in that darkness.
oxXxo
'Hey, Chris, you sure that we should place all the watches at the same spot? You know, when the distance from the epicentre varies, we could obtain more illustrative diagrams later...'
'If we knew where that blasted epicentre was, sure. But this is not the case.' The reply sounded somewhat angry. 'I doubt that there is an epicentre at all. Or anything else, for that matter. Who put all those stupid marks there? Almost all at wrong places! We spend five days here – and for nothing!'
'Well, I can't agree with you here. Surely we collected some useful data for the folks. And our observations…'
'Observations of what, Frank? Of broken trees? Or this pointless hearing of the air? Damn, all we found is that suspicious, as you called it, stone!'
'But I am sure that this spring has to be somewhere nearby. It is the place. I swear!'
'No need to shout at me. I do believe you,' answered Chris, but without any spirit.
'No you don't! You're just pretending, that's it,' said Frank resentfully. 'Well, never mind. But what about Miranda saw? Wasn't this a proof? Or that man that Dave caught on the radio…'
'Miranda is almost blind without her spectacles. She can see whatever she wants. Besides, no one else was able to see that bridge or something. And as for your friend David, well, I suppose that he just intercepted some lame tourists having fun with their radiophones.'
'There are no tourists, Chris. The weather is bad for sight-seeing.'
'But of course, Frank! Only we were stupid enough to spend our vacation searching of don't-know-what. But who told you that these tourists weren't sitting somewhere in the pub down in the valley and making fun of us?' Chris's voice was full with mockery.
'Enough, Chris! If you don't like what we are doing, why don't you just leave? Why did you come here at all at first place? No one forced you into this, and there won't be any offence taken if you just go. If all that you do is sneering at us…' The speaker paused as if being unable to find words.
'Stop questioning my reasons, Frank! You think you are the honest one, do you? Oh, the last hope of a modern ufology! But wasn't it you who came here just because of Miranda? Everybody knows that, even that dormant David! Not because of the meteorite, the UFO, the spring with blowing water, the time anomaly or whatever you pretend that it is - '
'Leave Miranda out of this, understand? And shut up!' Frank's voice sounded rather menacing and clearly was not promising anything good for Chris.
'Or you do what? Cut me with your lightsaber? - Ouch!' Chris shrank back with a cry of astonishment. But it was not Frank who caused such a loud response (though he was pretty close to), but something totally unexpected for both of them.
Just before them, in a spot from Chris's pocket flashlight, a stranger stood – a young man in old jeans and a windbreaker, bedraggled with forest dirt. For a moment it seemed that there was something weird and even frightening about that figure, appeared as if out of nowhere, but then the feeling was gone, and neither Chris nor Frank could possibly explain what it was.
The stranger looked at them, blinking weak-sightedly, and then smiled.
'Hi,' he said confusedly. 'Sorry, but it seems that I kind of got lost here in the woods. Could you… um… help me please?'
oxXxo
Ten minutes later their unexpected night guest was sitting at the campfire, watching slackly as a sheaf of the sparks was rising into the moonless sky. The late dinner, consisting of baked potatoes and of gigantic pot of muddy tea, seemed to bring him to his senses.
'Well, do you feel better now?' The girl named Miranda decided to break the silence.
'Oh, certainly, thank you very much,' he replied cordially. 'You nearly saved my life! Who could imagine that it is still possible to get lost in the woods just near the station!'
'You were going to Cold Waters, right?' asked the thin-haired guy to his left; the young man already knew that the guy's name was Chris.
'Well, not exactly.' He dropped his eyes. 'I - I was going to see the…' And he silenced as if in total confusion.
'To see what? The UFO?' asked Chris bluntly.
'Yes,' the young man gave a short laugh. 'That's even more stupid, right?'
They exchanged their looks. Suddenly, the bald lad in a baseball cap – Frank, he recalled – laughed.
'You won't believe, but we came here for exactly the same reason!'
'Which, as you rightfully mentioned, is very stupid indeed,' Chris mumbled.
'Oh, I'm sorry.' The young man looked very disappointed. 'I did not mean to be rude.'
'Don't worry, you weren't,' said Chris. 'What's wrong in telling the truth?'
Frank just shrugged his shoulders at that rather pathetic exclamation, while Miranda, a slender girl who was sitting on the other side of the fire, gave their guest an apologetic look. It seemed that they had accustomed to Chris's less than companionable attitude.
'Well, anyway,' said Miranda. 'There is no UFO there, and I'd say that there's never been one. I guess that you were fooled with those local rumours.'
'Hmm, they even have these rumours printed in county newspaper,' Frank added. 'You are here because of this, aren't you, Harold?'
'Name's Harry,' corrected the young man with a smile. 'And – yes, I think I am, or at least partially. You see, I was visiting my friends in the neighbourhood, and they told me about this place - about the lights, UFOs and the staff. You know, not that I'm a fan of it – but well, it was just interesting. What if there was indeed something?..'
'So, you just decided to investigate.' Frank knowingly nodded. 'And then lost your way.'
'Why, I found you three instead,' smiled Harry. 'Not bad at all.'
'There are four of us indeed,' said Chris. 'Dave is in the tent, tinkering up with the transmitter.'
'Has he found his mysterious interlocutors, Miranda?' asked Frank.
'No,' the girl replied shortly, and then turned to Harry, explaining: 'Yesterday he caught a snatch of a rather weird talk.'
'A weird talk?' repeated Harry curiously.
'Don't know exactly what it was about; only Dave heard it. But he said it was two men arguing about some explosion or something.'
Harry's face definitely expressed his interest, which was enough for Frank to continue:
'It was by chance, you know. Certainly they were not radio amateurs; they talked just as the usual people do. Dave thought at first that they were some terrorists,' Frank said with frightening buoyancy, 'but then it turned that they weren't. It seemed that they were in danger, and very afraid. Dave said that it was as if they knew that something bad should happen to them.'
'They were afraid? Of what?' asked Harry quickly.
'I don't know, but this all was rather weird. Somewhat disturbing, you know. Dave could not just think it all up; he's not the man, you see. It was clear for us that there might be some people who possibly needed help. But no matter how hard we tried, we wee unable to hear them again. And another odd thing is that that according to the signal, they had to be within a mile from here, and we know for sure that there are no people nearby.'
'We could not be absolutely sure, Frank,' Chris interrupted.
'How could we have missed them? We turned every stone within two miles at least! We would have certainly found them… unless they were hiding on a purpose,' added Frank mysteriously.
'Or perhaps they were just passing by, like Harry,' Chris sniffed, and Frank immediately turned to him:
'I know what you think, Chris. But even you can't deny that it's all very strange. It was not the usual talk of the tourists or geologists; neither was it some prank of radio hams.'
Chris was about to say something, but then just waved his hand and sighed.
For several minutes, the group sat in complete silence. Harry watched as the fire burned out, feeling an irresistible desire to fall sleep, and mused about those strange people, who chose to spend their free time on such an obscure hobby as looking for UFOs. They even had the special gear for that: he noticed some cumbersome devices in one of the tents. Damn, that complex state-of-the-art apparatus could make even the silliest beliefs sound very respectable. At least he hoped that it was useful to his new acquaintances: in fact, Harry rather liked them despite all their weirdness.
'Hey, Harry, you are almost asleep!' said Frank genially.
'Well, it's past midnight already,' he answered with a deliberate yawn, checking his old watch.
'Come on, I'll fetch you the sleeping-bag.' Stretching himself, Frank rose from his seat.
Harry followed. He was to sleep in the tent of Dave's. The latter appeared to be a sullen dark guy who barely looked at him and just nodded curtly, not taking off his earphones. Half of the space was occupied by the big and noisy transmitter; and Dave was hanging over it, perfectly still, his eyes focused somewhere in the distance, his fingers on the tuning handle moving slightly. He was probably still trying to find those lost men he had heard – a hopeless task, to Harry's opinion. But he left his thoughts to himself, quickly got into the sleeping bag and turned to the opposite wall, as far as possible from the crackling transmitter.
He was almost asleep when he heard the voices, coming from behind the tent's wall. It seemed that another tent was standing very close to this one. Harry became all ears; his sleep vanished at once.
oxXxo
'You were quarrelling again?' inquired Miranda.
'A bit,' answered Chris unwillingly.
She did not reply anything.
'It's a waste of time, you know. I'm leaving tomorrow,' he said after a pause.
'Yes, I agree. I think we all have to go.' Miranda's voice was strangely emotionless.
'Because of me?' he asked with a sudden worry.
'No, of course not. We just won't find anything here. As you've said.'
'You know, I really do believe you. That you saw that bridge and the highway,' he said, a hint of guilt in his voice.
'But it's not the proof you'd like,' the reply was sad and sincere. 'Just nothing, as all of it. And I don't believe that we possibly could find any evidence which is more than nothing. None of us ever did.'
'Yes, it is hard and discouraging, I know,' said Chris, and Harry was surprised how soft and gently his tone was. 'And this is the main reason why ufology is still not a science it should be. We are too fast to jump to the conclusions, while having no verifiable facts. We are tempted by the unusual, fooled by our constant expectation of wonder. And the eagerness of the people like Frank makes the things even worse. With such an attitude, we will never be taken seriously.'
She sighed and said nothing. Harry thought that such an answer would end the conversation; but then, she spoke again:
'You know, from all of us, maybe you are the only one who really believes in what we are doing. Now I see it so clearly. You are not playing, like Frank; and not pretending that it's a mere aesthetical experience, as I do... I think we shouldn't have called you at all; it would be at least honest.'
There was a soft rustle, and then came Chris's somewhat reserved answer:
'Well, if that is what you think - maybe we could stay for a couple of days after all. I still have this one little idea how we can locate this anomaly. A rather stupid one, but – hey, who knows. Don't tell Frank yet, no need to encourage him; but it just might work.'
'If you say so,' answered Miranda absentmindedly. 'Maybe the stupid idea is just what we need in such a strange place.
'And it is a very strange place,' she continued, as if a dream. 'We hear what there is not. We see what there is not. Even the time here is not the time we used to live in… It flows not as it supposed to. It's not just our watches, Chris. Remember, yesterday there was such a strange fog – all white, like milk, and I thought that thousands ages passed over us, and then it disappeared without a trace…Of course, this was just an illusion, but for a moment I thought that I saw –'
'What?'
'Nevermind… But the spring that Frank found last year – the water in the flask did blow up, I saw it myself… And then those talks on the radio… They were real…'
'Uhm-mm. I do believe, I've said already.'
'Oh, and Chris. Could it be that this Harry is one of them?' Miranda was clearly falling asleep, and her words became harder and harder to understand. 'What if they sent him to spy on us?'
'Whom - that poor guy? This is ridiculous.' The answer was half-laugh, half-yawn. 'He's just a plain boring tourist. He certainly has nothing to do with it… Good night, Miranda.'
'Good night, Chris.'
...In the tent next to theirs, "a plain boring tourist" Harry Potter smiled to himself. He had learnt everything he needed for today.
Thank you very much for reading. This was the beginning - what do you think?
Next Chapter: We will learn why the woods were so strange, and what Harry was doing there.