Old Mythologies

I made my song a coat
Covered with embroideries
Out of old mythologies
From heel to throat;
But the fools caught it,
Wore it in the world's eyes
As though they'd wrought it.
- A Coat; William Butler Yeats

Chapter One: The Castle

From that moment on,
I left behind me the void of my steps,
The traces of my unlived life.
Where did all the words go?
- Në "trojet" tona; Flutura Açka

If anyone asked, I told them that I grew up in the castle.

It wasn't the truth, even though it felt that way. My life split when I was nine years old, into two separate lives. Before I came to this stronghold of magic in Alba, hidden in the Northwest Highlands, I was a child among my father's people, fostered by the family of the woman I was named for. Those memories are distant and layered in time and trauma.

When Preslav fell to the armies of the Byzantine emperor in 971, my mother came for me. She was a stranger with my features shifted into a more delicate beauty on her face, tall and imposing in her cloak the colour of the sea. It stood out against the remains of the fires and damage from the siege.

She felt more like a statue than a person, impossibly perfect in every way.

I never lived up to her expectations. I expect that I was too much like my father in that regard. From what I remember, he never spoke of her, and in the time that I lived with my mother, she had never spoken of him. In my mind, they remained separated down to the linguistic level. My father: the Bulgarian tongue with its building blocks taken from the Church's language and modified to every day life. My mother: the shifting realm of the Germanic mixture of Anglo-Saxon flavoured by Latin and Norse and inflections from the Celtic languages. Always changing, always devouring everything they came across in the name of progress.

I didn't know the story of how they met, or how they parted, or even why I came to exist. The distance between them seemed immeasurable and not just in terms of geography. That obstacle was easily enough overcome by careful use of Apparition. I didn't know why I was raised in Bulgaria after my father died when I was still very young, and I didn't know why she didn't come for me then.

I suspected that she wanted to forget about me. I suspected that I was unwanted, and suspected that still when she came to get me after the death of the woman I was named for and her husband. It was in every way she looked at me. She understood magic too well, and it was a detriment to her understanding of people.

I was an only child in the castle that contained hundreds; I was the youngest of five in my foster-family's house in Bulgaria.

When my mother came for me, I was nine years old. I thought it was snowing, an oddity for April. Only later would I realize that the white particles falling from the sky were ash and not snow. She arrived after sunset, her cloak rippling around her as she walked.

She brought me to Alba with her through side-along Apparition. I felt the world drop out from under me for the second time in such a short while as we vanished into the crushing darkness. It was my first time Apparating, and I vomited upon our arrival on foreign soil and subsequently fell to the ground. I doubted that this endeared me to her at all.

I brought my hands together and tried to ignore their shaking. I concentrated on them, pressing my fingers together and forming a bowl. I closed my eyes.

"Voda." I managed to conjure a small amount of water in my cupped hands. It made me feel a little light-headed, especially after the Apparition. I rinsed my mouth out, spat, and then dried my hands and face on my sleeve. My mother watched me impassively, like she was judging me on some sort of scale that I knew nothing about.

"This is one of the few wizard-only enclaves in the Isles," she said, once I had risen to my feet. It was the fourth or fifth sentence that she had ever spoken to me. I followed her into the twilight, heading uphill, away from the small gathering of buildings that might, generously, be called a village.

It had been dark near Preslav, after nightfall, but here the sky was still light, still early. I wasn't sure how much difference in time there was. The sun still set in the west, red splashing across the sky. It reminded me of the fires and for a moment, I felt like it could feel the heat on my face. I shuddered.

From the sun's position, we were heading southeast.

I followed my mother, skirts gathered in my hands, pulling them up above my boots. The ground was rocky and uneven, made even more so by the mud, so wet that it must have rained very recently.

Cut into the ground were wheel tracks, from where carts and carriages had gone by. My mother moved with a grace that befit her image, moving like the ground was as flat as a board. I had to keep from tripping as the sky grew steadily darker.

It wasn't a long walk. We reached a closed gate, the iron bars stretching high up. The fence in which it was set stretched on either side, encompassing a vast amount of ground. By now, the sun had nearly set, and the only light was coming from beyond the gate.

"This is Hogwarts; this is my school. It will be your new home. Right now, we are in our third year of operation. We have just recently reconvened for the new semester."

Her sentences in Bulgarian were short and to the point. They served their purpose without any embellishments for warmth or any other emotion. She used the formal pronouns and phrasing that denoted a user unfamiliar with the intricacies of the language. It wasn't how I was normally used to being dealt with.

On the other side of the gate, there was at least a semblance to a pathway, as if someone had gotten tired of tramping through the mud and cut a walkway through the ground. I let my skirts fall back around my ankles, making my legs marginally warmer. It might have been April, but it was still evening. The wind here felt like it cut right through my stockings. The material my dress was cut from was at least made of a tighter weave.

We passed a person moving the other way, and my mother spoke to him. I caught what could have been a name. Godric? She gestured to me and I caught my name. I looked up and saw the face of an older man, the orange in his beard still visible in the dying light. He smiled at me.

"Helena, say hello." My mother's voice was softer now. Maybe it was something that only came out in the presence of people who weren't me.

I looked at her, and then back at him.

"Hello," he said.

I shaped the new word carefully, trying out the feel of the new, Anglo-Saxon sound. "Hello?" It was more of a question.

My mother smiled, satisfied. She exchanged a few more words with the red-haired man before he carried on in the direction that we had come and we resumed our journey.

When we reached the front doors, they opened with a single touch from my mother, swinging inward without any effort. My feet sounded loud on the floor, echoing throughout the entrance chamber.

I could hear the sound of voices from close by. We didn't go toward the noise, toward the scent of food. My mother led me through the castle, up several flights of stairs. Some of them moved from one wall to the other and we had to wait for them to complete their journey. I looked downward somewhere after the fifth staircase, and winced. That sort of fall would guarantee that at least something would break.

"What - " I paused and licked my lips. My mouth was dry. I tried again: "what was that, on the ground floor?"

"The Great Hall. Meals are usually taken there." My mother didn't turn around to answer me. Once the staircase we were on was against the landing, she hurried upward still. I grabbed onto the railing of the landing before stepping onto it, making sure that I was anchored to something if the staircase decided to move out from under me without a moment's notice. They seemed to obey my mother, moving in the direction that she was heading. I didn't think that they would do the same for me.

I counted four different flights of stairs between the ground floor and the one that we stepped off onto, finally heading through an archway. I glanced over my shoulder. There were a few portraits hanging on the walls in that grand stairway. Some of them watched me with curious eyes. I was probably the youngest person they had ever seen inside these walls.

I followed my mother to a portrait of a woman dressed simply in a Greek chiton. Her chin was lifted, proud, and she had a full mouth and chin. An owl perched on a short column nearby, and she wore a warrior's helmet. She had her hand extended outward, palm facing out, as if she were warding something up.

"Pallas Athene," my mother said.

I peered at the portrait. The woman within was still. I couldn't catch even a flicker of movement.

"Is there something wrong with it?"

"No." My mother reached her own hand forward and pressed it against the painting's.

It swung backward in its frame, opening onto a room. My mother stepped through and I followed her, scrambling over the doorway that started near my knees, and looking back at the portrait. The woman, Pallas Athene, looked strong and proud. I could see, even with the short time I had spent with her, why my mother would have a painting like that.

She pulled off her cloak and set it on a hook near the doorway. She shook out her hair and pulled a wand from within her robes. She waved it at the fireplace and instantly the flames sprung up, bright and merry. A few candles also lit themselves.

I flinched back from the flames. I might have been cold, but the fires in the city were barely hours away. They were still in my immediate memory.

I looked everywhere but the fireplace.

In the new light, I could see that my mother's hair was lighter than my own; a dark red, closer to brown than to black. She paused by the table, and skimmed over a few pages.

"Merry!" My mother called out.

With a loud crack that nearly made me jump out of my boots, a stopanin appeared.

"Tell him what you would like to eat," my mother said, waving one hand at the stopanin. He gave a small bow, his giant ears flopping about. His beard scraped the floor when he bent over.

I eyed the small, bearded creature. He looked like other stopaninye I had seen before: small, coloured a strange grey hue, and with large eyes and ears. There couldn't be too much difference between them.

"If you will excuse me, I have business to attend to," my mother said. She was gone, out the portrait door, before I could say anything. I clutched at the collar of my cloak. With the fire going, it was beginning to become uncomfortable.

I looked helplessly at the stopanin. He looked back at me with large eyes, eager to serve.

"Householder?" I asked, hesitantly.

Stopanin's eyebrows rose up and wrinkled together in confusion.

"You only speak English, don't you?" I asked, doubtful of its linguistic proficiency in Bulgarian.

Stopanin said something, voice rising up at the end. A question.

We stared at each other.

"Bulgarian? Russian?" I could handle a few phrases in German if I needed to, but they were mostly swear words that my foster-brothers had taught me when they were home on break from Scholomance.

Stopanin vanished with a loud crack. I jumped at the sound.

Now alone in my mother's room, I looked around. A curtain behind me divided the room. I pulled it aside a bit, and found there a bed, a wardrobe, and several more shelves full of books and a door. There were books everywhere in this room. I had never seen so many in one place. The sheer amount of money that they represented astounded me. I looked at the ones nearest me. Some of them had writing on the spines, words tattooed into the leather in the rounded letters of the insular script of the Isles. I tilted my head to the side and ran my index finger down the spine of the nearest book. I couldn't read the letters. This, of all things, was what really drove home my new situation.

I would never see my father's books again. I would probably never see another scrap of writing in the letters of St. Cyril unless it was by my own hand. I withdrew my fingers from the book and felt very alone.

I slowly undid the ties of my cloak and pulled it off. I placed it on the hook next to my mother's, having to stand on tip toe to do so. Everything in here was sized for an adult, not a nine year old girl. I pulled off my boots, and set them underneath my cloak, lining the heels up so that they were flat against the wall.

There was another sudden crack, and then Stopanin was back. Now, he had a friend. This one looked younger, and didn't have a beard. As far as I could tell, it looked female.

"Stopaninya?"

She made an attempt at a curtsey. It was a hard task to accomplish while garbed in the same sort of chiton as Pallas Athene.

"Miss would like some food?" she asked. Her accent was a bit off, but it was probably the best that I would get out of anyone here, save my mother and myself.

"Yes," I said, grateful. Stopanin smiled and disappeared with another crack. Clearly, he felt that his work was done.

"Do you have gyuvetch?" It was a reasonable request, stew made from vegetables and meat.

Stopaninya rattled off, in one breath: "Iri knows that the kitchens has potatoes and carrots and eggplants and dried mushrooms and onions and - "

"That's good," I said, letting out a long breath. My shoulders sagged, released a bit from the tension that had my entire body strung tighter than a fiddle. "I - I would like some. Please."

"Right away, miss." Stopaninya - Iri - curtseyed again, and vanished with a crack. At least this time, I didn't jump at it.

I wrapped my arms around myself and crossed to the window. The darkness outside ensured that my face was reflected back at me. I looked small and pale in the glass.

There were chairs grouped around the table, some of them lopsided. They looked like people had just left them there. On the door side of the curtain, there was a long bench, both ends raised with cushions resting there. There was a thinner cushion stretched across the wooden middle, and they were all in shades of blue. It had a twin set at a perpendicular angle to it that was shorter. The first bench was furthest from the fireplace without entering what was obviously my mother's bedchamber. Eating in there would just cause an infestation of insects or bring up all the rats.

I sat down on the bench. Either the cushion was softer than I thought, or there was a charm placed on it. I glanced toward the candle held by a wall bracket nearest me. My mother had used a wand to light it. I rubbed my hands together.

That was a big difference. I had conjured water by myself, without channeling magic through an object. I didn't know if that was acceptable here. I didn't know how everything would work here. David had told me, on his first return from Scholomance, that channeling magic through a wand was easier. Instead of having to concentrate so hard, there were movements and specific inflections that made a wizard's will become reality.

Iri returned with a steaming bowl of gyuvetch, a spoon, and a goblet full of milk. She set them on the small table next to the bench and curtseyed again before vanishing.

I ate slowly, eyeing the back of the portrait door. From here I could see canvas. Was that really the only thing keeping someone out of the room? I knew that there were protection charms, hearth magic that could keep a dwelling safe.

I just wasn't sure if this room, this place that appeared to be both where my mother worked and slept, in a place that was used by so many would have been able to be protected under house magic laws. Then again, I didn't know how many stopaninye the castle had. Maybe enough of them combined could raise enough power.

My mother returned some time after I had finished eating and Iri had cleared away the dishes. I think there were a dozen words exchanged between us, and I ended up stretched out on the bench with a conjured pillow and blanket, where my toes could barely brush the end if I stretched out my legs. I wore a borrowed nightgown.

I stayed awake long after my mother fell asleep, eyes open and taking in the room from this new level. I still didn't know what the time was here in relation to Preslav, but I should have been tired no matter what it was. I listened to her breathing, smooth and steady, beyond the curtain, and stared at the fireplace.

I curled my fingers in the blankets, pulling over my head and around my face like a head wrap, and held them there with my fingers curled tightly around the fabric.

The slowly dying embers were the last thing that I saw before I fell asleep.

Author's Notes:
(also known as a whole whopping bit of information that will be dumped at the end)

Historical Background: In the tenth century, there was no Scotland or England or what-have you. There was the Kingdom of Alba in the northern part of the British Isles. Linguistically, this makes things really annoying because a lot of the words we have today didn't exist in Ye Olde Englishe/Anglo-Saxon. As well, Albania itself didn't exist as a separate entity; it was part of the Bulgarian empire. And, well, we all know how our beloved JK is when it comes to some historical facts. In which there are ways that no such things could have existed at the time.

Magic Systems: Well, Ollivander's may have been around since 300-something BCE, but when you've got a crockpot of different cultures and languages like you did in the tenth century, you would have had different magic systems. Hence, wandless v. wand magic.

Linguistically: Stopanin/stopaninye/stopaninya = the Bulgarian term for house elf(ves), in the same manner as the Russian domovoi/domovoye/domovoya. And I'm not even going to go into how Latin would have been the lingua franca for teaching, despite the bastard Latinate spells that we know as part of the universe.