Disclaimer: Don't own a single piece of the HP universe. Sadly.
How It All Began
When Kathryn Ann Bell was little, she often dreamed of war. The Great War, WW2, the time when the Third Reich threatened the world, whatever other names it was known by, Katie dreamed of it. This was an odd preoccupation for a young girl, but of course, to know Katie Bell between the ages of 2 and 8 was to know her stern grandfather and her French grandmother. These two were mostly responsible for Katie in her childhood years, and once upon a time they had been heroes.
Katie's favorite bedtime stories weren't fairytales. She felt no particular attachment to Cinderella, Snow White or Sleeping Beauty, except perhaps a faint pity and a general sense of dislike that these characters had so little character themselves, that they did little more than wait for their prince to rescue them. She had no idea how old she was when she first decided that she'd be as little like those useless ninnies as possible, but it shaped her whole childhood.
She much preferred the stories from her grandparents youth; her Grandpa had joined the RAF at 15, far too young, mind you, and utterly useless the first few months. But Roland Bell had a quick mind, a fantastic sense of muscle memory and he flew against the Germans a few short months after joining. He was crew for a the first ten missions, but his tenacity and reflexes had him in a cockpit flying actual planes within a year and a half. That it could have been lack of other substitutes was never mentioned.
Earned or no, Roland's youth afforded him benefits older pilots simply didn't have- his vision was clearer, his reaction time faster, his sense of mortality virtually nil. It wasn't long before the combination of luck and recklessness that was his calling card had him flying deep into enemy territory unescorted, doing recon and stirring up trouble.
Little Katie Bell sat on her Grandfathers lap, enraptured by his descriptions of the speed he attained and the views he saw, the sense of odd peace that was interspersed with terror. His voice rumbled a deep bass, soothing her and rendering the parts that should have frightened her nothing more than a bedtime story.
Her Mémère, Grandmother, and her Grandfather had met in France after he had crashed in a forest. He had grown careless and cocky- two traits her Grandfather warned her most severely were not appropriate in soldiers. Take a lesson from his example, he always reminded her, smiling grimly as he tapped the fearsome scar that raked down the side of his face.
Mémère had the merest connection to the Resistance at the time she'd found the man who would become her husband; she left food in a dry culvert that had for centuries been a pagan shrine of sorts. Women would leave gifts in exchange for fertility, for strength to carry their babies to term, for the sort strength a woman would need to survive in tough times.
It was a badly kept secret that the most daring girls of their region would appropriate any of those gifts for the Resistance, whatever they might be, for the fight against the Germans. Katie would imagine the furtive trips to drop off food and supplies her Grandmother had taken into the ancient forest and felt the stirring in her blood. Given the choice, Katie thought she would have done that, and more.
Walking back from leaving a skimpy sack of dried and withered carrots, Mémère had heard the telltale sounds of an aerial battle, and the distinctive boom of a plane being shot down.
Mémère took cover for a long time, only coming out when the agonized screams of an airman stuck in the trees had drawn her forth. She couldn't speak English, but she knew that the words the lone figure stuck in some sort of cloth and rope contraption- a parachute- weren't German. She, like all girls of their Region, could climb trees easily, and before she had a chance to question her actions, she'd climbed the tree the man had tangled in.
It had been a few years since Marguerite Villiere had actually had any practical experience climbing a tree, but she managed quite well after kicking off her shoes. It took the sacrifice of her new blouse and her parts of her modesty, but she had torn a strip of fabric from the bottom to secure her knife to dangle from her wrist. Unfortunately she hadn't counted on gravity when she sawed through the ropes that tangled the man to the tall chestnut trees.
He had crashed to the forest floor with a scream followed by a thump and quiet.
Grandfather and Mémère both laughed when they came to this part of the story, but even Katie knew it must have been a frightening experience for both.
Mémère was a country girl, and dropped quickly to the forest floor, making the decision that eventually led to Katie. She bandaged what wounds she could and fashioned a frame out of tree branches which she used to pull the wounded man, slowly, very, very slowly out of the forest. It left thick ruts in the ground, and looking back, she could see a clear path that led straight to her and her self-appointed charge. Marguerite was sure she had never been so tired, but neither could she lead their enemies to her family.
After checking that the mystery man still breathed and that he had a pulse, she made her way back to the area she had found him as quickly as she could. Using sticks, leaves and handfuls of brambles that scraped her hands, she did her best to obscure the path they had created on the way out. Satisfied that her efforts would suffice for the time being, she rested next to the still unconscious man who had dropped from the sky.
Much to her surprise he woke her near dawn the next day, gabbling incomprehensively at her in what she assumed was English. He pointed in the direction of a German base, and actually tried to walk that way before his legs failed him. Through hand gestures and miming, she finally managed to convince the young man to allow her to drag him through the fields that lay fallow and waiting for her people to return to their customary industriousness.
Planes flew over head now and then, as they made that slow, slow trek back to the farm house that had been in her family for generations. She dived for cover, dragging the burden of the enticing stranger with her, getting scratched to shreds by raspberry and blackberry bushes and whatever else they could use for cover.
It was dark by the time they crept into the courtyard of her farm. Her mother had been horrified, but her father, who had set aside those provisions she dutifully delivered to the Lady of the Forest, had taken the presence of the stranger in stride. Marguerite never told little Katie how her mother, Katie's Great-Grandmother, had campaigned to sell the stranger to the Nazis, nor exactly how many times she had been certain that they were caught. The terror.
Thus, when the War with the Death-eaters had once again caught flame, and the danger to Hogwarts become clear, of course Katie hadn't hesitated. She'd joined Dumbledore's Army, she'd done what she could to resist the Regime that emerged to take power over the Wizarding World. It was in her blood to resist. Her muggle blood.
She had never remembered the instance it all changed for her. She imagined it more than once, Madam Rosmerta in the grip of a powerful Imperious handing over a cursed necklace; taking it, not knowing that danger was so very near. Ironic, that a glove should fail her. That the one item of clothing she never went without anymore, would have brought about her downfall.
A small tear in her glove, an annoyance she had ignored as she did what she could to stop the forces that sought to exterminate her way of life.
Katie considered herself lucky that she didn't remember the exact circumstances that had led to her downfall. There was nothing in her memory past the point of her walking to Hogsmeade.
She spent months in the hospital, locked in, unable to communicate beyond the occasional blink, wasting away, seeing her dreams of quidditch and flying against enemies in combat like her Grandfather had done die a slow death.
Mémère and Grandfather, stubborn to the last, visited her shamelessly, often and openly. They had no magic, but they refused to leave her alone. She had begged them to. Had waved the blackened claw her left hand had become to try to scare them. They never wavered, though Mémère had given her a pair of opera length silk gloves.
They were murdered two weeks before the last battle at Hogwarts.
Katie had long since been released by that point, she was back at school, and she was trying to pretend that nothing had ever happened. Death-eater attacks had increased in frequency, the lists of casualties always containing someone who mattered, but Katie had never imagined... They had nothing to do with the war, save that they had raised her, a Half-blood with abilities they couldn't hope to understand, but accepted nonetheless.
Her heart broke when she got the news. Grandfather and Mémère slaughtered in their homes, left like so much rubbish. And for who, for what?
Even after the necklace her resistance to Voldemort and his ilk had been sort of a duty and sort of a lark- as if she was having her own war adventures like her Grandparents. But, after that, their passing, it was intensely personal.
Katie would die before she let Voldemort win, because fuck him.
Mémère wouldn't have approved of the language, and Katie had never really become one of those people who used profanity. But it also reminded her of her Grandfather, who would slip sometimes and say things like, "We sent those Gerry fucks running for the hills, we did," after which he would scan the room guiltily to make sure Mémère hadn't heard. Katie would giggle and he'd ruffle her hair and remind her not to use those words, and never, ever around Mémère.
It became her mantra. She could imagine her Grandfather saying something like we sent those black-cloaked fucks scrurrying like rats, we did. So she started thinking in those terms, black-cloaked fucks, fuck them, we'll send them straight to hell. Fuck Voldemort. Fuck them all until they died horrible, awful deaths.
When the final battle finally arrived to the school, she found herself unable temper her reaction. Katie Bell had been raised by what was essentially a military family, and she had learned the lessons of historical battles while she was practically still in diapers.
She rallied what she came to think of her troops against the black-cloakedfucks that streamed through her school. How dare they? Her grandparents stories guided her, led her to ambush, to pin the enemy against a wall so she could land a final killing blow. She felt no remorse as bodies fell to the rain of violence that dripped from her wand.
When it was over, she realized most of her troops, those mere children she had convinced to fight rather than cower in toilet stalls, were dead or gravely wounded.
When it was over, Katie retreated to her Grandparents house. It had been cleaned and the damage repaired, like nothing bad had ever happened. She hated it.
Katie would have stayed there, content to wallow in guilt and memories and choices she made that she couldn't undo. Except people kept interfering; George Weasley, Alicia Spinnet, Oliver Wood. She tried out for quidditch teams, but she just wasn't good enough. She could have played, had been offered positions in both major and minor teams, but it was sentiment that would have afforded her the opportunity, not skill. Katie couldn't stand that.
In the end, she left England with no fanfare. She slipped out in the postwar confusion, a little ashamed that she was leaving her friends in the lurch, but knowing she couldn't help them in her current state.
Katie spent years wading through the muggle world, eventually going to school and finding herself doing well enough that she kept going. She ended up as a proper doctor, after what seemed like a lifetime of backbreaking work and sacrifice, though how she managed the process remained something of a mystery. Perhaps it had been a tribute to Mémère, or maybe those still children. She never looked to closely at it, she didn't have time to. There were shifts in hospitals that lasted days, and calculations for medications she knew were inefficient and practically useless compared to the magic she could wield. But she never did pick up her wand.
Her Mum, absent for most of childhood, till it became convenient enough for Katie to rejoin her parents at age 8, became ill and the increasing demands that Katie come home wore her down. She bought a little flat in London, refusing to be bullied into moving in with her parents. They would have her company as often as they'd like until her Mum got better, but she needed to be able to go home, after, and home had to be someplace not in their immediate vicinity. She told herself it wasn't spite.
The visits to the hospital were hard, St Mungo's had changed, but not enough and she will always be reminded of her time there. It had been distinctly unpleasant, to say the least.
Still out of duty, loyalty and obligation, Katie held her Mum's hand as the healers did their best to make her better, leaving for a coffee when her mother inevitably passed out from the potions for a few hours. And that was how she came to be in the badly lit cafeteria at St. Mungo's on an early Tuesday afternoon, a time most adults would have been working or doing something productive. Instead, she was in this awful place buying truly wretched coffee, and contemplating if the reward of something sweet in the form of a stale scone outweighed the risk that it would probably be terrible.
Sometimes the baked goods here were tolerable, nearly good, and sometimes they just weren't worth it.
"Katie Bell?"
She turned, annoyed at being recognized, just wanting peace to buy her hot beverage containing caffeine, and contemplate the merits of eating a likely disgusting scone. She recognizes the uniform, Falmouth Falcons, before she looks up and into the face of the man who had spoken. Katie feels a niggle of recognition, something about the dark hair and green eyes is familiar, the obviously huge body under the blue and white of his quidditch kit reminds her of...
"Marcus Flint?"
Disbelief and annoyance bled through her voice, and the big man seemed vastly amused by this, if the smile stretching across his face is anything to go by. He grabbed a pumpkin tart from the case behind her, his whole body coming far too close to her, and she resisted the twin urges to shove past him and knee him in the groin.
"So, what are you doing here, anyway, Bell? I heard you were in the Colonies or somewhere equally inferior."
He moves them along, towards the register, glancing at sandwiches and trays of food that should have been thrown out hours ago, by the look of it. She abandoned the scone, too tense for even the thought of food at the appearance of this old school chum. She doesn't owe him an answer; she has never liked him, and he was never nice to her. But her mouth moves anyway.
"Well, Mum got sick. You?"
Her voice sounds wrong; too bright, her register too high. The smile is forced, plastered on like cheap paint that will bubble out from the wall with the first whiff of moisture.
He looks at her oddly, as if he's seen something unexpected and isn't quite sure how to sort it out.
"You OK, there, Bell?"
Is that concern in his voice?
She notices her hands shaking as she holds the money out to the lady at the till, but Marcus just pushes her arm down and gestures that he'll pay for hers and his. The lady adds his cup of whatever and the tart to the total and Marcus hands over the money.
Katie stood there as if she wasn't sure what to do, and is resentful when he guides her to a faraway table in a dim corner by her elbow. Why had she let him? She's not sure of anything anymore, just that her hands are shaking and she can't make it stop. Breathing becomes an issue. Everything is really an issue; light is too bright, the world too big. The paradox she's faced with is that there is too much to take and too little in reserve to face it.
Katie vibrates and though coffee would be really great right now, she knows two things: that she'd just end up wearing it instead of ingesting it and that it would only be coffee if the qualifications for a real cup of coffee lowered to include diluted tar.
Clinically, distantly, she tallies the symptoms in her head, searching through her hard-won library of knowledge, and she knows.
"Panic attack," she whispers, mostly to herself, ignoring whatever it was the hulk sitting across from her had been saying.
It brings her back to herself, though it's hardly comforting that it is not her body failing her, but her mind.
"Are you alright? Do you need me to get someone? Bell?"
Yes, that is, in fact, concern in his voice, Katie decides. It was nearly... her vocabulary fails her momentarily. Sweet, she finally settles on. Who would have thought? Foul-mouthed Marcus "Bloody" Flint sweet.
She feels the corners of her mouth curl up involuntarily, and shakes her head, slowly. "No. God, no."
Marcus looks around, focuses back on her, "What's wrong, Katie?"
She blinks to clear her eyes, "Oh, just. Everything, really."
Katie laughs, but it's mirthless, hopeless, "I left a lucrative career I worked myself to the bone for, one that I still owe an an enormous debt on, I sold my house at a loss, I bought a flat I hate in a city I've never liked, my Mum is dying and I don't know what to do anymore."
Her breath hitches and it takes her a moment to place that the soft tapping sound that had started up was her tears falling against the table.
If she has ever been so mortified in her life, she couldn't remember it. She put her head against the table and wraps her arms around it, sobbing noiselessly. Too many things all at once, and she has just broken. She doesn't know how long it takes her to contain the eruption of feelings, but she comes back to herself, heaving for breath and held gently against a near stranger. OK, she found a moment more mortifying than the one a few minutes ago. Great.
She disentangled herself, moving away from Flint, who let her go without protest.
"Let's go," he said, to Katie's complete surprise. And relief, if she was honest.
"Where?" she asked. The prospect of escape sweet, if unlikely.
He thought for a moment, his head cocked as he considered possibilities.
"I would have said my place, but I know you'd take that the wrong way. The Leaky Cauldron? You can get easily to muggle-London from there, and I won't even insist on seeing you home. Besides, the walk might do you good," he said, as he handed over a handkerchief.
Marcus looks away as she wipes up, gives her time to straighten herself without further mention of the display she had just put on. Oh, god, she wished the ground would just open up and take her away.
She has responsibilities, weights she has to shoulder and can't escape.
"No. Thank you, Flint. That's very kind, and you have been, too. Kind, I mean. But I have to get back to my mother and see her home after her treatments."
Marcus nodded, his eyebrows drawn tight as he searched her face.
She keeps it as neutral is she can, though she can only guess at what she looks like. A mess, to be sure.
"Alright then. It was g-, er. I'll see you around, Bell."
It's still strange to be back in England. Some days she's sure she hates it, and other days it's not so bad. She's found work at a GP's office in her new neighborhood. She likes it better than working in another hospital, though she sometimes misses the rush she got from surgery. She adapts, and the depression she had diagnosed herself with subsides somewhat with therapy that embarrasses her, though she knows it shouldn't, and pills she isn't so sure she should be taking. It seems to be enough for her to enjoy the odd day or two.
Walking her new dog, Katie was pleased that she hadn't just dropped the thing off to the pound when she'd found her shivering next to a rubbish bin, even though she carried a bag of enormous dog shits. There seemed to be a distinct shortage of receptacles she could discard the crappy burden in, and she was just about to give up and walk home clutching the foulness when she spotted one.
She looked down to smile at Gwynog the Mutt, and when the dog wags her tail in response, something melts inside Katie. She jogs over to the rubbish bin, her attention split in too many different directions, and she runs right into someone. They each grab the other, trying not to fall, and when Katie dares to look up, she was shocked to find Marcus Flint, a grin slowly spreading across his face.
"Breaking my nose twice wasn't enough, Katie?"
"Was breaking my clavicle, bruising my coccyx and giving me three black eyes enough for you, Flint?"
"You just wanted an excuse to say cock in my presence. Admit it, Katie," and perhaps she had.
"Hardly. You're a pig, Flint."
"A funny one at least," he snorted, before he said in an exaggerated baby voice, "And who is this pretty lady here?"
His fingers moved lovingly over her dog's skull, as he continued to murmur nonsense and sweet nothings at Gwynog.
The traitor repaid Katie's kindness by falling in love with what for all intents and purposes her mortal enemy.
"You realize I truly hate you right now?"
If she believed Marcus Flint was capable of humor, she might have described the noise he made as a chuckle.
"Come on, you look as if you could use a drink," he grabbed her hand and pulled her over to a cafe where the staff seemed to know, and even more odd, like him.
He arranged a bowl of water for Gwynog and a pint of shandy for her. Yes, she had spent almost her whole time in Hogwarts hating the boy this man became, but perhaps he was different.
Katie couldn't help the smile she gave him.
