Once upon a time, long, long ago at the edge of the Greenhouse Forest there lived two industrious farmers with sons who could not have been more different.
Farmer Crabbe was a hard and unforgiving man who'd worked diligently in his fields and cheated liberally in the dice halls in town but could never seem to earn enough to please his wife. His son, Vincent, was a lad who wasn't too bright but who had an ambitious heart worked day and night to expand their fields.
Farmer Macmillan was new to the area, but he was smart, loyal and hardworking, and between his clever innovations and his tireless laboring he met with more and more success with each season that passed. His son, Ernie, was not interested in farming at all, instead he preferred to read spending the long days in the shade of the forest absorbing bought, borrowed, and pilfered books like a sponge absorbs water.
And sometimes Ernie and Vincent crossed paths under the boughs of Greenhouse Forest.
When this happened even the quick-witted Ernie couldn't produce more than a soft hello. And the taciturn Vincent was reduced to a grunt of acknowledgement and a faint blush.
You see Vincent was of the opinion that Ernie was very pretty, wandering barefoot through the trees with leaves in his hair like some sort of ethereal wood sprite. And Ernie thought that Vincent was very handsome his body tall and strong and his skin darkened to nut brown from his hours spent laboring in the sun.
Days passed and soon enough the two boys found themselves meeting almost every day, sitting quietly together for a moment or two in the bend of the creek where the moss grew soft and thick over the roots of a tree.
In the autumn after the harvest was brought in Vincent grew brave enough to gently pluck a bright red leaf from Ernie's mop of curls, marveling privately at the silk-soft feel of them.
And that Yule, flushed with spiked cider and good cheer Ernie stole a feather light kiss out of the corner of Vincent's mouth and was enfolded in a warm embrace.
And without words the boys decided what they wanted out of their future, and that was most certainly each other.
When the first spring thaw came Farmer Crabbe decided to expand the limits of his farm still further into the Greenhouse Forest and so he spent five days and five nights hacking and pulling at the largest and thickest tree at the edge of his property until where it stood there was nothing but a gaping hole.
Farmer Crabbe went to bed that night feeling quite pleased with the day's work. The additional land granted to his field would make his the largest and the richest farm in the area.
Little did he know that as he slept the wind was carrying news of his actions deep into the forest and to the ears of the Queen.
Vincent thought nothing about his father's determination to bring down the tree, after all every year they cleared more land to work, and this year especially they would need the extra coin if he was to start building a house for himself and Ernie.
At dawn he brought his tools down to the far edge of the forest and began the long hard works of turning the disturbed earth into a plot suitable for planting, thinking all the while of a snug cottage with an apple orchard and a vegetable patch and of books tucked into every nook and cranny and of golden hair splayed out on his pillow.
So entranced by his fantasies was he that he didn't notice the woman who watched him work long into the afternoon. When the light started to dim and grow red he set aside his tools and wandered into the shelter of the forest, his feet picking out his usual route to the creek where he was due to meet Ernie.
Ernie waited and waited until long after night fell. But Vincent never came.
Upset and hurt, Ernie did not return to their spot for three whole days, instead he went into town and charmed Magistrate Bones' daughter into letting him into their library and immersed himself in their books.
On the third day Susan Bones and her good friend Hannah (whose parents ran the inn and the dice halls) burst into his new sanctum and told him that Farmer Crabbe had called for a hunting party to be gathered because the fairies had taken his only son. Mrs. Crabbe had taken to her bed in her grief and it was being said that she was even offering her jewels and treasured bobbles for the most vicious fairy-hunters in the land to be hired.
Ernie, who had read a great deal of fairy lore and had seen the great tree fall understood immediately what must have happened, and he felt his heart stutter in his chest.
He should have known that rough-edged as Vincent was he would never miss their appointed meetings without a very good reason.
Ernie ran home as fast as his feet would carry him, gathering up bread, milk, honey and salt from his house before making his way deep into the forest until he was well and thoroughly lost and the night had turned the woods black as pitch.
Moving by feel he set the bread and milk out upon the ground and sprinkled each with a bit of salt and honey, and sitting back on his haunches and waited.
Unable to resist fairies began to pour out of the bushes, some glowing brightly, tiny with gossamer insects' wings and some in the shape of animals, some were towering swaying plant sprites and some were slick dark shadows.
When all the fairies in attendance had had a taste a crotchety looking badger toddled forward and stood up on her hind legs.
"Well, child?" she rumbled and hissed, "What question have ye? Ask it in all haste for I've neither need nor inclination to linger till the sunrise."
"My love was stolen by the fairies, good lady," Ernie said, offering her a bow, since it never hurt things to be polite, "I wish to speak with the one who took him."
The badger huffed out a long impatient breath and pointed with her claws.
"Stupid child," she grumbled, "Seek ye out the Queen of Greenhouse Forest, Lady Pomona of Summer and Hufflepuff. Follow yon wisps there, and stray not from your path."
Ernie was quick to do as instructed. The will o' the wisps were small and blue and trilled and cooed as he approached flickering like ghostly candles around his ankles as he walked still deeper into the forest.
The wisps led him on a meandering path, but remembering the badgers words Ernie stuck close to them not even straying when phantom voices called for him or he thought he saw the tail end of Vincent's cloak fluttering around the edge of a tree.
After what seemed like hours the wisps finally deposited him at the edge of a clearing where a cottage stood bold as you please in the middle of the woods, glowing with firelight and draped in honeysuckle.
Ernie hesitated at the edge of the clearing, not sure if he was in the right place or what he could do if he was. The general consensus of fairy lore was, after all, that you did not mess with fairy queens.
Before Ernie could decide one way or another the door to the cottage swung open and a plump woman with a round face and halo of corkscrew grey curls.
"Come on then, lad," called the woman, "I have your fella tucked away in here."
Ernie made his way over to the cottage and let the woman usher him inside and there was Vincent looking tired but undamaged. He was hunched over a bowl of something meaty and there was a large pod of some kind settled into his lap. He flashed Ernie a tight smile and wrapped an arm tight around him when Ernie settled next to him on the bench.
The plump woman, shut the door behind her and bustled around fixing Ernie a bowl and then settled in across the table from them.
"Now then Ernie Mac, it was good of you to come rescue your heart, dearie, but Vince here has settled his father's debt with me and will be remaining in my house as my consort until such time as I release him, which will not be until that child there is born."
She gestured to the pod, favouring it with a fond look.
Ernie grimaced at Vincent but his intended just gave him a soft nudge, seeming unconcerned.
"Of course, dear, I have no desire to separate you two. But needs must, contracts are contracts and that is just the way things need to be. So, if you've no objections you too will remain here as my consort. After all, what are the perks of being a Queen if you cannot occasionally abduct two handsome you things to warm your bed and raise your sprouts?"
Ernie shared a glance with Vincent, and the burly young man gave him an eloquent shrug.
"It was that or she'd raze the town to the ground and feed a new forest with the blood of the townspeople."
And with that glorious image to put things in perspective, living with a dumpy little nut of a fairy queen and sharing the alive and well Vincent with her did not seem like such a bad plan.
And so it came to pass that Ernie and Vincent and Pomona of the Greenhouse Forest lived quite happily ever after in a cottage in the forest raising fairy sprouts, and reading books of all shapes and sizes, and eventually being very much in love.
THE END
Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter.
AN: Done for the Candyland Game Challenge on HPFC.
Please review and let me know what you thought ;).