Harriet Potter pushed her feet to move faster, always faster. The tempo of her frantically beating heart was matched by only one thing, the pounding of her footsteps against the dewy grass. She knew this feeling well. Intimately even. The drive to run, to escape from the inescapable... Herself and that shadowy whole in her being that used to house a part of Voldemort.
She wasn't running from anyone, no masked assailant ready to take her down with a well-aimed spell. She wasn't running because she was bored, she always managed to find something to entertain her mind, be it between the dusky clouds of a good hour long broom flight or theories of new spells she would sometimes mentally run through. No, she was running because she needed to.
The energy that built up inside her, threatening to explode at a moments notice, needed an outlet. A valve needed to be turned to let the poison drain or Harry knew she would do something stupid. So very, very, very stupid.
The war that had ended decades of blood conflict was over for the passed year now. The school had been hurriedly rebuilt, her classmates, some of who she had fought side by side with, were back to smiling faces and teenage gossip. Everything was fucking sunshine, roses and rainbows all around... Unless you were ballsy enough to peek underneath that facade to the real wizarding world hiding underneath it like a child with a blanket, quivering from the bogey man that was peeping out their closet door. Pretenders, the lot of them, including herself. Perhaps, she was the greatest pretender there was, given the circumstances.
Harry was a big enough girl to admit she was envious of them. The ability to switch back into normality mode without a single glitch, not one faltering step. And here she was, at five in the morning, jogging around the school grounds in a sheen of light sweat because running was the better option than to snap at someone and do something that would send her away with a one-way ticket to Azkaban and the rest of her broken soul sucked out. Merlin know's Hermione had been pushing her button's lately.
It was mind boggling how Hermione could find so much interest in Harry's life, pushing her to date Sean Thomas of all people and to take up that Auror position that she had been gifted with, when the bushy haired witch should be focusing on her own path. Maybe then she would stop turning a blind eye to the fact Ron was still sleeping with Lavender while simultaneously dating Hermione. Merlin forbid, for once in her relatively short life, her own life would be hers and hers alone and not splashed about in a tatty newspaper, ordered, or planned out for her. As Harry had said, she was one bad day from using one very, very bad spell.
She needed to feel tired, she needed than bone weary ache to keep her grounded to reality because if she was tired, she was far less likely to send an Avada Kadavra at some unsuspecting soul that would unknowingly say or do the wrong thing in front of her. It was all jokes and games to them, the ones who had fled the country, or stayed out of the war completely until the last second when victory was assured to one side. Bloody cowards.
They could laugh and joke about it, they weren't the ones who had seen the aftermath, the dead bodies littering the floor, some of them ones you put there yourself. They weren't the ones who had been forced into the middle of it by a man everyone classed as a war hero, who died for the 'greater good'. If Harry ever got to heaven, or any type of astral plain of higher existence, unlikely with they way she was now, she would ask Albus if using child soldiers is under the classification of 'for the greater good' too. Or if she, Hermione, Ron, Luna and Neville had just lucked out in the lottery of 'whose life I can fuck up monumentally' he had held in secret. Actually, in retrospect, there were some other people she was willing and wanting to ask the same question, and they didn't have the excuse of being dead to hide behind.
These days her skin felt too tight, as if she had outgrown it but did not have the luxury of shedding like her reptilian friends. Her mind often wondered back to grim things she would try her hardest to push away, to pretend didn't happen, she hadn't done or seen been done. Everyone she knew was settled now, either in their internships, in their dream careers or finishing their last year of school. Harry, as bad as it sounded and as much as she hated herself for it, was missing the war. She missed it so horribly it gnawed at her gut and set her veins on fire.
Don't get her wrong, she didn't want to see the people around her die... Well, not all of them. She didn't want to kill anyone else, she didn't want the endless bloodshed or sleepless nights that came along with war. But she missed it all the same. She missed the thrill. The victory. The threat of defeat and knowing all too well the price you would have to pay if failure was in your future.
She knew what to do in a war, she knew how to act, how to plan, what to say and what to do. In this new peaceful world she found herself in, Harry was irrevocably lost. She felt like a snake in a pen full of bunnies, stuck between hunger, rage and an odd sense of bemusement as she watched the furry critters get on with what they believed was ever so important. Yes, because after all she had lived through, what shade Patil's nails were that day was life ending and must be remedied ASAP... She was losing her mind piece by piece.
The worst was she knew she was the only one who felt this way. And that only further pushed her away from anyone she used to be able to call a friend. Hermione, Ron, Ginny... Harry couldn't face any of them. How could she when she wasn't the girl she used to be? She felt so different, so foreign, that surely they would see through the mask she so diligently wore in the light of day and see the monster lurking underneath?
The bogey man reaching for their ankles, readying to drag them into her world? Because Harry could see herself doing just that, every damn time she saw her reflection, it was there, shadowed in her eyes, lurking in her skin, hiding in her pumping blood and sneering back at her viciously. That damned caged lion inside of her wanted out and it was getting tired of waiting. Wild animals weren't exactly known for their patience.
Harry was dead. This new person who wore her face was an unknown entity. Someone that was dangerous, Harry knew that all too well. To protect them, to protect herself, she did the only thing she could think of. Break away from it all. It was easy to fool the people who didn't fully know her to begin with, a muted smile here, an answered question worded just the way Harry would have said it before the war took place there, dusted with a bit of faked care and gentle gestures. Rabbits, they were all defenseless rabbits and she was sick of trying to protect them, but couldn't stop herself from doing so anyway. Catch 22.
And because of their own insecurities, their own desperate need for things to be the way they were, they lapped it all up. Harry knew the truth, as horribly grotesque as it was. Things would never be the same. They couldn't be. Harry didn't want them to be.
Not when you had gone through what Harry had. She had killed people, death eaters sure, but that did not change the fact she had taken human life for her own survival. She had lied, bare faced and bleeding, she had lied. She had stolen, broken into respectable places and took things that at the time, she wasn't a hundred percent sure needed to be stolen, but she did it anyway. Why? Because when it came down to it, in the throws of war, only two things mattered. You or them. Harry chose herself, and despite it being a full year later, she still felt like she was paying the price for that decision.
As good as she may have tricked her classmates, Mcgonagall and everyone else she unfortunately had to cross paths with, there was one Harry was sure saw straight through her. Luna Lovegood. It was all disconcerting really, the one person who always had their head up in the clouds, thoughts fogged with mythical creatures, was the only one who saw anything clearly. The teachers had gotten it all wrong, Hermione had never been the brightest witch of her age, she just liked to prove a point and show off while doing so in an act, despite her incessant assurance that she knew she belonged, to show the rest of the world she did. Hermione was insecure that way. No, Luna bloody Lovegood was the brightest, and she was sneaky about it too. Now wasn't that just a double fucking edged sword?
It started off innocently enough, simple staring at Harry through and over Hogwarts dinner tables. Even the odd glance in her direction when they had the same class. It was nothing to get worked up over, nothing to even consider in the bigger picture. But it grew. Sometimes Harry would spot Luna following her throughout the twisted hallways of Hogwarts, knowing full well the other woman had a class in the opposite direction she was heading.
Harry finally realized the gravitation of the situation after heading back to her head girls dorm room one night, that's right, she was head girl. It was a pity voting for sure, a thank you for all you've done, an act to make themselves feel better, not her. In the end, the following around could be brushed off easily, Luna might have felt the way she had, a comrade in emotional disturbance so to speak. The blonde could just want someone who felt the way she did around her, to not feel so damned alone as Harry did. However, what could not be brushed under the rug was when she headed back to her dorm that night and spotted Luna in there, taking Harry's shedded curls out from her hairbrush.
Any witch or wizard worth their salt knows the dangers of another magical being holding something containing their DNA. The spells they could cast by simply holding a drop of your blood or a lock of hair was never on the lighter side of the magical spectrum. The implications of such situations were so large that it was ingrained into pureblood society itself.
Why do you think purebloods often wore gloves out and about? Or refused to shake hands, instead choosing to bow their heads to each other in hello, or had longer hair than muggles? Blood could be easily collected from bare palmed handshakes, and haircuts were primarily done by yourself, because of it being too easy for someone to slip a tuft into their pocket once the hair was cut off. Letting a witch or wizard have your DNA was a bad and extremely poor move on your part.
Harry had tried to chase after Luna, the blonde running as soon as she spotted Harry at the doorway, but as smart as Luna was, she was equally elusive and after a good ten minutes chase, Harry had lost sight of the platinum head around a corner and thick crowd.
Two days later, having refused to go to anybody else about her little incident with Luna, Harry had not seen hide nor hair of Luna and she was in desperate need of a long jog to get the bubbling energy out of her. Hence, here she was. It was almost fitting in a way. Poetic. Exactly a year from that very day, Harry had been running through the forest of Dean, snatchers hot on her tail. Harry wanted to laugh. Another full circle.
Turning around the corner, heading towards the southern courtyard, a shimmer of pale yellow caught her gaze from the shadowed archway of the door leading into the castle.
Her steps faltered immediately as she skidded across the grass a little from her abrupt stop. Standing just at the crevis of the elaborate stone arch was the very woman who had been pushing Harry to her limits over the last few days.
Reaching to her jean clad leg, Harry pulled out her wand from its holster strapped tightly to her thigh. Her thin T-shirt didn't bar the cold Scottish winds from grazing against her skin, but Harry refused to wrap up tightly. Not only was jogging an outlet for her itchy need to do something, anything, it was also preparation in case shit did hit the fan. For it always did and It would be unlikely that you would need to run for your life when you were in appropriate clothing.
Luna knew she was there, the big sparkling pale eyes were staring straight at her, and Harry wouldn't have been surprised if she found out Luna knew about her jogs, the paths Harry would take and had waited for her in this very spot. But Harry was done with whatever game the blonde was playing, enough was enough, and with a tightening of her lips, Harry darted for her.
Luna was obviously anticipating her reaction and was gone in a flash down the shadowed, partially reconstructed corridor. Despite Luna making this into another game of cat and mouse, Harry refused to let this one go. And so the two ran, twisting around corners, dashing past statues, skidding down broken tiled flooring. As they ran further into the castle, the corridors got more and more destroyed, the bowels of Hogwarts having not been re-built yet, as no one really went down too far anyway so time was granted for its construction, unlike the classrooms and hallways.
Harry had managed to just make it around another corner of the labyrinth of Hogwarts underbelly when she saw Luna's hair flip and slip into a slither of an open doorway. Not wasting another second, knowing how fast the blonde could be when she wanted to move, Harry gave chase, barreling through the same door Luna had gone through, sending it flying into the wall outside with the force of her entrance, the bang echoing through the silence as it bounced back from the brick and closed ominously behind her with a thunk and clunk as a lock slid into place.
What she saw was something she wasn't expecting, though she should have expected it after the life she had. The room, only lit by a round hole in the domed ceiling, pilfered sunlight into the damp and dank room. The rest came to Harry in bits and pieces, like a puzzle, until it all fell into place in one bewildering picturesque question.
The mirror of Erised, large, shiny and still miraculously, despite the war that had taken place, in one piece stood right in the center, underneath the hole in the ceiling, making it look like it glowed from the shadows that lurked around the rest of the round room. In front of the mirror stood a little pillar, no higher than Harry's hip, with a flat square top, a bowl perched on the open space. The wooden bowl was not the cause of worry that flared up in Harry like a meerkat, but what was inside the bowl, highlighted by the sun shining down upon it, the liquid glistening a brilliant red that would be an envy of Godric Gryffindor himself. Blood. Luna stood by the bowl, by the mirror, housed and glowing in the same bright light of the sun, hand resting on the bowl as if she had been patiently waiting for Harry to arrive all this time.
Only as Harry edged in, step by cautious step, half expecting a booby trap to spring up, did she notice the writing on the floor, or better yet, the runes scribbled on hastily with white chalk. Fuck, she had never been the best at Arithmancy, and even on a good day with no ticking time bomb standing in front of her, it would take Harry a long while to translate what was written... Everywhere over the floor, some even creeping up the walls like twisting vines. So, she would bide her time then, at least until she got a gist of what the hell was going on. Harry's voice was light, even jovial as she spoke, once again, as always, hiding what she truly felt. She even managed to bring an easy dimpled grin to her face to walk hand in hand with her voice.
"What are you doing Luna? This doesn't exactly look like the homework they've set us, does it now?"
Luna chuckled, the sound no different then a wind chime singing in a small breeze, her long locks glinting as they danced around her as she gently shook her head, her eyes unnervingly never leaving Harry despite the movement. However, Harry did see the hand holding the bowl tighten further, a fraction, an action someone less observant would miss. But if Harry was but one thing, observant it was, and she didn't miss the twitch of Luna's body moving towards it and the mirror, closer. Almost protectively.
"Hey, Harry. No... No this isn't homework. But you already know that. You already know this is all wrong... Everything is all wrong. This isn't how it should be. But, I get it now, Godric, Rowena, Helena, Salazar... You weren't meant for here, I wasn't meant for here. Don't look at me like that, you don't need to worry, I'm going to fix it."
Harry swallowed as she eyed the blonde up and down wearily, trying to think on her feet, trying fruitlessly to find a way to defuse this situation. The only time Harry had ever heard the term fix it and her held together, it meant death. She was not going to die here, in this hidden room, by Luna of all people, after everything she had done to live. She had died once for the wizarding world, twice if you counted the time she was one, it could go get fucked if it thought she would pull a repeat for its sake.
"Alright Luna, you've lost me. How about you come with me and explain it all over a tankard of butterbeer and a bite of lunch? My treat."
As Harry spoke, still in that easy air as before, as if, as she believed, her life was being threatened, she slid closer and closer with each passing syllable. Letting her eyes wander around, never staying in one place too long, she secretly took in the bowl, definitely blood, Luna, delirium hinting at her eyes, but when had it not, and the mirror of Erised... Holy shit. Harry had expected to be greeted with the same thing she had all those years ago, the wraith-like shadows of her mother and father, crooning and petting her like she was loved. However, that was not what she was graced with this time, and the two couldn't be so jarringly different. Her whole body froze mid-step. Locked. Paralyzed.
It was her for sure, no mistaking those eyes and scar, but at the same time, it was a her she wasn't or ever would be. Her red hair was braided away from her face, but allowed free roam down her back in a cascade of curls. Her clothes looked old, leather, battered and bloodied... Like the dripping ax strapped to her hip. It was the eyes however that got Harry. Here, when she looked at her reflection, all she saw was anger, pain and death. Those ones, those strange ones in the mirror, still in the same hue as her own, shone back life in all its firey attributes. Life, peace and love.
Of course, the mammoth of a man standing behind her in the mirror was also as eye-catching as he was breath stalling. Black hair, braided close to his scalp, sides shaven, a faux-hawk style, silver beads woven in, glinting, iridescent. He was broad and tall, as bloody as her mirror counterpart, only grinning a grin that put Sirius Black's to shame. Real shame.
His eyes, much like hers, glowed in vivid multicolour, as unsettling and bright, but only this time in a magnificent blue instead of her Avada green as Ron had nicknamed it after a rather fierce glare on her part to him. The man in the mirror... No, man didn't fit him right. The warrior in the mirror crept closer to her counterpart, grazing her back with his front, and slid and arm around her waist. Mirror Harry only smiled brighter. Luna's voice, hot in her ear, was the only thing capable of snapping Harry out of her trance.
"You see it too don't you? Although... I suppose your's is slightly different."
Harry forced herself to swirl around and adamantly place her back to the mirror, a trick to stop herself from looking back into it and getting lost. She was done with games. Glaring at Luna as she scoffed, she crossed the difference between them and rounded on the blonde.
"What? That I apparently have a thing for mammoth, blood splattered guys? Yes, real insightful Luna. Now, if you're going to try and kill me, get on with it, maybe you'll succeed where Voldemort failed. But I promise you, you're only going to have one try at it."
Luna gave Harry her trademark dreamy grin, one that spoke of the blonde being in a mindful place that not many, if any, could reach. The movement of Luna's hand caught Harry's gaze and she idly noticed Luna was holding the blood bowl... And had pulled out two locks of ribbon tied hair. Blonde, obviously Luna's by the shade, and one blazing red and curly... Harry's hair from the hairbrush Luna had scavenged from.
Harry was about to jerk forward, to snatch the hair and bowl away from her, when Luna jerked herself in retaliation, almost dropping the hair into the bowl and making Harry's plan mute. Harry wasn't dumb, whatever Luna had planned balanced on those locks of hair falling into the bowl, and that was what Harry was trying to stop. So, with much regret and agitation, Harry stood still and stared as Luna's wispy voice floated out.
"You'll see in the end. We can't be happy here, we never can and never will be. We don't belong, Harry, not like everyone else. This isn't our home. You're going to hate me in the beginning, but you'll see in time. This is how it has to be, how it's already been, how it should have been all along. This is our path."
Harry's breath caught in her throat as her own eyes locked onto Luna's and she saw the blown pupils and eery glow to the mellow and pale blue hue. For once, despite the mistrust Trelawny had instilled in Harry from the get go, Harry really, truly, honestly believed she was seeing a real seer. A real seer who had just let go of the locks of hair while Harry had been distracted by her eyes.
The reaction was instantaneous. The bowl fizzled, bubbled and blew out black smoke, swirling and twirling as it seemed to have a mind of its own and zoomed towards the mirror, hitting it squarely and disappearing into the glass. The chalk markings on the rocky floor flared to life in brilliant gold and silver, flashing, pulsing with life. The mirror cracked, splintering right down the middle, the sound almost deafening as the mirror of Erised exploded, only for the glass to stop halfway from being blown across the room, and subsequently at them, to be sucked back in, only this time creating what looked like a swirling vortex of glittering mirror dust and shards. Then the wind came.
The artificial, unnatural wind was howling, boisterous, pushing, pulling and dragging Harry towards the mirror... Or what used to be the mirror. Harry scrambled for purchase in shock, but slipped and was dragged towards the mirror, only in the last possible second managing to grab a hold of the pillar in front of the portal and hang on for dear life. Luna's laugh broke out over the wind, tinkling and joyful.
"Just let go, Harry!"
Then, as crazy as all this had been, Harry watched with wide eyes as Luna simply held her arms out, as if expecting a hug, and got pulled into the mirror, vanishing into the star like mass of dancing glitter. Harry tried to hold on, but the longer she did, the stronger it felt like the wind was getting until her feet were literally lifted off the floor, her boot-clad toes inches away from entering the same vortex Luna had disappeared into. Harry had only enough time to shout out a series of curse's that would make even Fred and George blush, before she lost her battle, her fingers slipped in their grip, and she too was sent careening into the portal.
The sensation was indescribable, it was over in a nano-second, but felt like a lifetime, it was hot, it was cold, it was up, it was down, it was all and it was nothing. Then, in a flash, she was corporeal again... And falling.
It was only about six foot, but when she landed on something, bumpy, warm, sticky, hot and hard, the breath housed in her lungs escaped in a rushed whoosh, her sternum spasming in protest. Whatever she had landed on was rectangular, had something already on it, as she slipped off and fell even further to the unforgiving floor, the sticky hotness gluing to her clothes, face and front as her eyes finally adjusted and she could see again. It had felt like apparation, being splinched all over, then pieced back together stitch by agonizing stitch.
Her hand automatically went to her thigh holster, whipping out her wand as her other palm dug into harsh twigs and stones, pushing herself up into kneeling position. Only as she looked down at her wand, to make sure it was in one piece, did she notice what the red, sticky warm mess was. Blood... and a lot of it.
Harry's head shot up, looking at the table she had landed on, eyes widening as she saw a man strapped down upon it, throat slit as blood poured out and into a hole underneath, some weird priest of some kind staring at her with equally wide eyes, this time accompanied by a slack jaw, bloody dagger in one hand... And a fucking bowl of blood in the other. Where-ever she is, whenever by the way these men looked and were dressed, human sacrifice seemed to be the 'in' thing. Oh, dear Merlin, she was going to kill Luna... Luna!
Scrambling up onto her feet, wand tightly gripped just in case the muggle priest tried anything, Harry looked around her, trying hopelessly to find a flash of light blonde hair. But as she swiveled to look behind her, Harry stalled completely. One man would have been easy to obliviate, the other was dead and would not be able to speak of what he saw... But the crowd behind her, all watching, were very much alive and staring bewilderedly at her, obviously having seen her little less then incognito entrance. How the hell was she going to get out of this one? She wasn't going to kill Luna... She was going to skin her! She had just outed the whole Merlin damned wizarding kind, all because blondey thought she knew best. Luna better hope she never found her.
One man in the crowd said something loudly, a word she didn't recognize but obviously held some punch by the reaction of the mass of people watching her as if she was some fallen angel. It sounded like Velcro, or Velcrory... Maybe Valkyr, but none of it mattered as his hand fell onto the ax strapped to his hip by a leather cord and Harry acted on instinct. After all, in for a penny, in for Azkaban.
So, with not much regret, or thought really on her behalf, though who could blame her after the day she had, Harry lifted her wand and hit the man with a hard with a forceful Stupefy, wincing slightly as she realized her actions and watched as the man went sailing backwards into the crowd, taking a few down with him as he fell limply to the floor.
The crowd, all in weird leather clothing, some topless, even the women, seemed to squeeze in tighter together, strength in numbers and all that. Harry was just about to apparate out of there, try and find a way back to Hogwarts, hopefully this mishap not having reached the ministry yet, when one lone man, ncredibly tall, thin, with black... War paint dusted around his eyes, ending in points that sliced down his cheeks, stepped out of the crowd, strolling towards her as if the muggle man, for he was muggle, they all were, she could feel no magic emanating from anything within quite a big radius, hadn't just seen her send a man down with a flick of her wrist and a 'twig', hands held up in the universal sign of surrender that did not match the wide, toothy grin housed on his face. It reaked of insanity. A grin she had seen before. It looked strangely like the same grin from the man in the mirror of Erised, just slightly less vicious and more unhinged.
Harry's wand and hand flopped to her side as she looked heavenwards, praying for this to all be over, or a lightening bolt to send her out of her misery, three words escaping her mouth in a mirthless laugh.
"Bloody fucking hell."