Her Saviour
Just a Penniless Writer
Standard Disclaimer Applies
Author's Plea: Fluff, and then more fluff, and then a crossover. I should be slapped. I felt playful but not plotful. Sarah isn't nearly as… settled as I'd like. Enjoy if you can (and it'll be difficult).
When Harry entered the Forbidden Forest that afternoon in search of something he wanted to show his students the next day, he never imagined the visit would change his life. Afterwards, he would be hard pressed to explain exactly how everything came to be, but that was mostly because it was almost too embarrassing to remember.
"Help! Somebody help me, please! Hoggle?!"
The voice had to belong to a girl but the person Harry came upon was a girl no longer. He could only guess her to be the same age as Tonks, but wasn't entirely skilled at guessing age as it was. Only one thing was certain: the woman was obviously frightened, possibly of something Evil, and he did have a certain skill at defeating Evil.
"Hello? What... what do you need? What is it?"
She responded immediately, and he was near suffocated by a warm mass of late-twenty-something female.
"Don't let him take me," she whimpered.
"Wh... Who? Who wants to take you?"
"The King!"
"King? What King?"
"The Goblin King! He wants to marry me!" Her complete desperation seemed at odds with her words. It was all he could do not to gape.
"What?"
"Please! You must help me!"
"Um..."
"He's going to find me, I know it! Please!"
"uh--"
"Please!"
"What do you want me to do?!"
"I don't know! Something! Hide me, kill me, just save me!"
And while Harry was also very skilled at saving people, he wasn't exactly sure how to keep the woman from marriage to a potentially non-existent Goblin King. Of the options presented to him, hiding had the best chance of success and yet irked him in a way that not-quite-so-brave things often did. As it was, the only real solution he could stomach was one that perhaps wasn't as well thought out as it could have been.
"Marry me!"
"What?!"
"If you marry me, you can't marry him. Once he leaves, we can get divorced, and you'll be free!"
"But... I don't know you!"
"What other choice do you have?"
Harry still was generally clueless as to emotional women, but in this instance it would have been near impossible to miss the startled look in her eyes at his frustrated comment.
"Listen, I don't know you, and I really don't know how to help you," he began in what he thought was a calming voice. The woman seemed suitably entranced. "But I do know that if this King can find you here in the Forbidden Forest, and if he scares you this much, then I can either defeat him or marry you. Now, is this King Evil?"
"Not Evil per say..."
"Then no defeating. You have to keep running or marry me," he finished with logic he thought even Hermione could be proud of.
The woman merely looked at him with wide eyes before nearly attacking him again. Though Harry had much improved in regards to snogging since Cho, especially considering the lessons from Ginny, he simply was not prepared for the emotion this unknown woman put forth. Still, it was only natural that he respond in kind. When she pulled back, he was certainly dishevelled and disappointed.
"Okay, I'll marry you. Quickly. Now would be good."
"I know just the place."
And with a strange new bounce in his step, Harry led the woman back to Hogwarts where Professor Flitwick, certified by the Ministry to officiate, was almost too happy to marry them without explanation. Shortly afterwards, Harry was astounded to find that there really was a Goblin King, and though there was no defeating Evil, there was a lot of righteous shouting in front of an impressionable audience and that was close enough.
Altogether, when Harry looked into the sparkling eyes of his would-be Queen several decades later, he knew that a "saving people thing" wasn't all that bad after all.