The green countryside of England was a welcome sight, even in the middle of a storm. Outside the carriage, rain pounded the earth, soaking the ground and turning the dirt lanes into thick mud that sucked at the horses' hooves. Hesper faced the window, her nose pressed up against the glass. It was wonderful to be back.
The horses came to an unexpected stop, and the curtain rod hanging above her head crashed down, giving a sharp crack as it hit her skull. Wincing, she drew away, rubbing her head and blinking in an attempt to keep the tears at bay.
"Mother?" Her mother was sleeping in the seat next to her, her elegant feathered hat shading her eyes. Hesper turned to her father, who was seated across from her. But he was sleeping as well, his deserted pipe resting by his trouser covered leg, a thin wisp of smoke drifting towards the ceiling. Sniffing, she picked the fallen curtain rod up from the floor and replaced it above the window, the cloth blocking the sight of the furious storm outside. Shadows danced on the walls as the single lantern swung from its hook, its flame wavering. A roll of thunder sounded and she flinched, taken by surprise. Again, she pressed her face to the fogged window, her forehead resting against the chilled glass. Why had they stopped?
Her knuckles rapped on the ceiling, calling for the driver. For a moment she waited, listening for the sound of him climbing down from the roof. There was nothing, however— nothing save the rain striking the window and the occasional soft snort from the horses. Curious, she checked her shoes and tugged her coat closer to her body before opening the door with care. The heavy scent of damp earth filled her senses as the door gave a slight squeak in the rain, and she glanced back, making sure her parents were still asleep. Stepping down, her boots sank into the ground, and she made her way to the horses, slowed by the thick mud. All four had their ears pinned back, and as she drew next to their heads they squealed, the sound shattering the air.
"Hush, Argo," she soothed, smoothing her hands down each horse's flank. "Admiral… Baron… Nara… easy loves. It's alright, it's just me. Just Hesper." She moved around them, doing her best to avoid their powerful legs and squinting her eyes against the rain. "Tristan?" She called out the driver's name, unable to see whether he was still seated on top of the coach. Tense and apprehensive, she gripped the upper rail of the carriage and hoisted herself up, hands slipping on the wet iron. Head drawing even with the roof, she strained to heave her body over the top. A brilliant flash of lightning illuminated the sky and through the downpour she saw— body stretched out like he was sleeping— Tristan, his black felt hat beside his head.
"Tristan!" she hissed, anxiety making her voice shake. Hesitant, she reached out with a trembling hand, her gloved fingers closing around his wrist, feeling for a pulse, needing to sense the throb of his circulating blood beneath her touch. There was nothing. She shook his shoulder, shivering in the cold, half mad with terror. "Not dead, not dead, not dead," she muttered to the dark. He couldn't be dead. There was no way, no possible way. His face was serene, peaceful, unmarred. The sign of… the sign of—
The sign of the killing curse; of Avada Kedavra.
A soft moan slipped from her mouth, and her head shook, unable to accept the fact. It was impossible. There had been no wizard present, no witch, no magic. No magic apart from herself. But what of apparition? she reminded herself. Apparation, so that someone bearing a wand could disappear. Yet there had been no flash, no flash of green light that accompanied the Avada Kedavra curse, had there? The curtain had fallen on her head, the flash could have occurred, and she would have missed it. Perhaps… yes, perhaps that was it.
Her addled mind was at war with itself, all of her thoughts confused, unable to process anything. Why magic? Heart attacks caused sudden deaths, and left no mark behind. But Tristan was not old, he was healthy, had been healthy. There was no reason for him to die a normal death. No, his death could only be magical, the result of a dark wizard or witch.
Rising to her shaky feet, Hesper stared out at the surroundings, peering into the shadowed landscape. She reached into her coat pocket and clutched her wand, drawing it out with a resolved slowness, unsure of what she was doing. The only thing to do was to call the murderer out, if they were still out there.
"I know you're out there," she called, steeling her voice. The wind swirled around her, the skirt of her dress twirling around her thin, pale legs. Leaves whipped by, riding the breeze— a tornado of red and orange and yellow swirling so quickly it looked like fire. The leaves whispered against each other, whispered to her. "Show yourself!" Hesper shouted, her voice echoing in the empty countryside. She sounded weak to her own ears, and gripped her wand tighter, her nails carving into the flesh of her palm.
"Lumos!" she cried, and her wand flared, the tip ignited with a soft glow.
Lightning split the sky, white-blue fingers of flame clawing at the earth and air, creating a current of electricity that raced over the land, crackling with an unseen power. The thunder was like a drum, rolling down towards her, reverberating in her ears, filling her mind. Wind tore her hat from her head and her hair whirled around her face, whipping her reddened cheeks. There was another flash of lightning and then she was caught up in a particularly—impossibly—powerful gust of wind. She spun like a top, rising into the air so that she could look down and see the four horses rearing and kicking with their legs. All too soon they looked like toys, and she realized she was among the clouds, still spinning even as electricity crackled in the roiling grey clouds about her. Again, thunder rumbled in her ears and it seemed that the world was erupting, leaving only herself and the surrounding ring of clouds. As the sky blurred before her eyes in a whirl of greys, she saw in a brief flash of lightning a shape in the sea of churning gloom—a skull. For an instant she stared and then a black form flew through the air in a tight spiral, headed straight for her. Mouth open in a scream that was swallowed by the deafening storm, she watched the figure approach.
Hovering before her, the cloaked silhouette appeared as a mere wraith, skeletal and draped in black robes. The head was hooded, but dark eyes peered out at her, alight with some inner flame that seemed to burn Hesper's own eyes as they meet her gaze. The fur at the neck of her coat tickled her throat and she looked down, realizing that the bottom of the jacket was rising, the tie at her waist was untying, and the coat itself was slipping off of her shoulders, the sleeves gliding down her arms and over her hands.
This man (for it was a man, she knew, though only his eyes were visible) wanted her coat. He was watching the fur embellished wrap move away from her body of its own accord with eager eyes, even reaching out with a dragon hide gloved hand.
Coming to her senses, Hesper forced her hands to move and to tug the sleeves back into place and once more tie the belt fast about her waist. Then, lifting her eyes to meet the cloaked stranger's, she grasped her wand, fingering it within her pocket. He was angry now, she sensed, and therefore even more dangerous. She had to be swift, and take him unawares.
"Stupefy!" she shouted, wrenching out her wand and aiming it at him. It was a difficult thing to do while suspended in the air, but the spell shot towards the man nonetheless, a mark of her skill with magic. Whether it was from his swift reflexes or the possibility that her aim had been off, Hesper didn't know, but the man managed to avoid the blast of light, spinning in the air and disappearing with a quiet snarl. One second he was there, and the next he wasn't. Like a ghost.
Scanning the skies, she came to the realization that she had stopped spinning and was instead hanging as if suspended from an invisible hook. She closed her eyes, feeling haggard and unsteady. What was she to do in her current position? she wondered, eyelids fluttering, struggling to open once more. Would she fall or fly? Perhaps she would just remain there—swaying and bobbing on the wind, riding the currents of air like a bird, unable to return to solid ground. The thought filled her with terror and she glanced at the carriage below with a gaze that had begun to turn blurry, glazing over with unshed tears. The instant she looked down, however, the invisible hook holding her up seemed to fail, for without any warning she jerked and then plummeted through the sky, falling through a veil of grey fog. Again, she squeezed her eyes shut in fear and screamed, certain that she was plunging to her death. Where was her broom when she needed it? She was a witch, gifted with magic! Her mind grasped for spells, anything that would keep her from crashing headlong into the ground. She came up empty.
Attempting to curl herself into a protective ball, Hesper slipped her hand into her coat pocket. If she was going to die, she wanted to know that she had her wand with her when it happened. She was twenty yards from the ground, now ten. Her heart was racing, her hands sweating. This was her last moment of life, perhaps her last breath, or her final heartbeat. What had she accomplished in life? Nothing, nothing at all. She had only ever lived. And now, now she would die, pass from life and go on into the—
Her coat flared around her without warning, flapping and entangling with her legs even as if inflated. Five yards remained, three, two—
She slammed into the ground. the coat impossibly softening her landing, inflated like a balloon. Then the world dimmed, as if a curtain was being drawn over her eyes, and everything grew dark.
Death was peaceful. The comforting smell of rain was filling her senses and her nose was being tickled by something soft, something that smelled like her mother's rose-scented perfume. Hesper sighed, the small flurry of breath causing the rose perfumed something to quiver and tickle her nose again. Stretching her fingers and straightening her legs, she rolled over onto her back, wincing when something prodded into her spine. Pain in the afterlife? The ground shuddered near her head and she heard a slight squeak before her shoulder was being touched with cool fingers.
"Hesper?"
She knew that voice, she knew it…
Her mind succumbed to a tranquil moment of blissful peace, drifting into a dream once more. She was at Beauxbatons; she was flying on her beloved Silver Arrow, hovering just above the dew covered ground so that her toes were dragging in the lush grass below… Someone was grasping her arm and attempting to pull her off of her broom, up, up… But she didn't want to get up, she wanted to keep flying, to just drift along without a care in the beautiful, lovely world.
"Hesper!"
It was familiar, that voice, yet she couldn't quite place it. Her thoughts were slow, unable to wrap themselves around anything. Sleep. If only she could sleep forever. Her head turned to the side. But she could. She was dead, after all.
Wasn't she?
Her nose was being tickled and she fought the urge to sneeze. It was impossible though, and her eyes snapped open as she did so, looking up into the worried, tear filled eyes of her mother. Traveling from her mother's face to the hat on her mother's head and on to the feathers that decorated the fine specimen of millinery, Hesper's eyes widened. Her mother couldn't be dead, too, could she?
"M-Mum?"
The feather before her face was trembling with a frightening intensity, as were the hands that reached up to stroke her face. As was her mother's entire body, she realized.
"Oh God," the familiar voice was whispering. "You scared us, Hesper. You scared us so much. I thought you were—" Her voice choked, and the gloved fingers tightened on Hesper's face. "I thought you were dead, darling."
Just managing to lift herself into a sitting position, Hesper stared at the broken rocks and green hills that were shrouded with low hanging clouds. England. Good old England. Not the afterlife, or wherever one went when they died. The coat had deflated, and she found herself wondering whether it had been her imagination—the balloon like form that the jacket had taken on as she fell. She shook her head. Coats didn't inflate. They simply couldn't. Her father was running towards her now, his black coat flapping behind him, clutching his hat to his balding head, and so she left her confused thoughts alone. Then she was being cradled in his arms and kissed on the forehead while he settled her into the carriage seat across from her still trembling mother. Covering Tristan's body with a spare coat taken from his luggage and then taking the dead driver's place, her father settled himself atop the carriage, his weight rocking the coach as he shifted and grasped the reins. Hesper faced the window again, her nose pressed up against the glass, eager to start moving and get away from the place. Before the team of horses could move so much as a yard down the path, however, there was a sudden sharp tapping on the window, evoking a startled gasp of surprise from her mother. Finding herself face to face with an owl, Hesper opened the door to let it flutter in and drop a letter onto her lap and then turn about and leave just as quickly as it had arrived.
Tearing the heavy envelope open and pulling out a folded piece of parchment, Hesper read the letter's thin writing with eager eyes. Her letter from Hogwarts had arrived, seeing as she was no longer living in France but was now back in England for the first time since her seventh birthday. The famed school of magic had already enrolled her as one of its seventh year students, she read with excitement, and term would begin the first of September after taking the Hogwarts Express. Well pleased, she leaned her back into the comfortable leather seat behind her just as the wheels of the carriage began to move sluggishly through the heavy mud.
Everything was fine, she reassured herself. She would be attending Hogwarts and she was back in her beloved England after eleven years of living in France.
Everything was fine, apart from the fact that she should have been dead.