Here we belong

Fighting to survive

In a world with the darkest powers

I begrudgingly slow down as I exit the highway. The gps shows that I should be at St Andrew's soon. It's 11 pm on a Saturday night in the summer. The library where I'm meeting this woman must be deserted, I muse. The few students around are for sure getting sloshed at the pubs. She made sure they will be no prying eyes. I park and walk through the beautiful campus. I don't need a map to find the place, I can feel her. I walk into the library and follow my instincts to a secluded wing. There, standing in front of a large table, books spread all over it, is a woman that looks my age. Not my real age, of course, but she looks the age I appear to be: no more than twenty-two. She has curly brown hair held up in a messy bun that on her looks quite good. When she looks at me I see that she is indeed beautiful, with almond-shaped eyes and a beautiful mouth. Her fitted white oxford shirt and jeans outline a nice body. I feel an unfamiliar itch, one that I haven't felt in centuries. I occasionally fulfill my needs with casual women, not as frequently as Ron does, but I always keep it anonymous, as attachment is sure to bring only pain. But this woman is an immortal. Could it mean companionship is actually possible to us?

Before I can get lost in that thought she calls on me

"Mr. Potter, I'm glad you came."

I approach and offer my hand

"Please, call me Harry."

"Hermione Granger. Please, come around, I want to show you something."

She doesn't beat around the bush. I stand next to her and look at the books and at her notes on her laptop. It looks like some sort of genealogy, except that the people listed are interconnected in different directions. Some of the lines are solid and some are red and dotted. I enhanced some of the names and a chill runs down my spine. I know many of these names. Albus Dumbledore, Armando Dippet, Theseus Scamander, Charles Weasley, Sirius Black, Severus Snape, Igor Karkaroff, Bartholomew Crouch, Evan Rosier, Walden Mcnair. The last four names were connected to mine with a red dotted line. I look at her, my heart pounding in my chest. She holds my gaze and talks.

"There are no useful legal documents on any of this deaths, but I'm good at solving puzzles. Am I correct, Harry, did you take down these four?"

I hold her gaze but do not answer. She tries something else. She enhances another section of the bizarre genealogy. I see the names Rodolphus Lestrange, Bellatrix Black, Amycus Carrow, and Thorfinn Rowle connected with a red dotted line to the initials HG.

She took them down. All of them. I don't dare to say the words. All I can muster is

"Bellatrix. Another woman? So you are not the only one?"

She laughs

"Indeed, I am not the only one. But I'll concede that there are less immortal women than men. I calculate about 20 percent.

I laugh at that. This girl is a nerd. Girl. Woman. I can't stop the words from coming out of my mouth.

"How old are you?"

She looks down at her laptop and answers

"I was born in 1789 in France, in the middle of the revolution. I was orphaned by it. I guess the first sign of my immortality was that I did not starve. I realized early on that being a girl was not safe, so I passed myself as a boy until my late teens. I served as a footman for an army officer and eventually convinced him to let me spar with him when he practiced. That 's how I got skilled with the blade. I have impersonated men most of my life, but then finally in the 1920s women had more freedom and I let myself regain my real identity. It's been fairly good for the last fifty years, all things considered."

"Pretty young thing," my brain offers. I shake my head. This woman could be an invaluable ally, better not to waste that opportunity for a few shags.

Then I noticed that she has turned to me, her hands hovering over my chest. That is not helping my case. But then I look into her eyes and see a hint of fear.

"You are very powerful. Your list is much longer than what I could put together, isn't it?"

I close my eyes

"I...collected many names back in my beginnings. The Vikings were all over the place and they had many immortals in their ranks. They were vicious and cruel, so me and Ron spent years protecting as many innocents as we could from them. We both accumulated quite a bit of power back then."

"Ron. you mean Ronald Weasley?" she said, looking again at her screen.

"Yes."

"He took down Yaxley a few decades ago, but he has not been very active in the last century. But you have."

I shrug

"They all came to find me, I didn't look them up."

She nodded. I got curious about something

"So, do you really have collected only four names since 1789? You have not felt the pull or being sought by others?"

She turned to face me

"Back in France, I met Severus Snape on a tavern when I was a footman. He sniffed me out immediately and dragged me to a corner to interrogate me. I told him the things I had figured out on my own and explained to him that I didn't want to kill. He snarled, said that was impossible, but explain to me how the pull cuts down when you are on sacred land. I joined a couple of convents after finding out that, then realized it would be more practical to pass as a monk so I could have access to libraries. When things got better for women I worked as a groundskeeper at Stonehenge for a few years," she cut herself before the next words would escape her mind

That's where I met him.

Harry interrupted her thoughts

"So what about the four...names."

She sigh

"They all hunt me down. They felt the pull, then located themselves near me, since I would eventually have to leave the sacred ground. Bellatrix Black actually passed herself as a sick woman to enter the convent where I was, then in the middle of the night opened the gates and let her partner, Lestrange, come in. They dragged me out between the two of them. That night I killed Lestrange, he was a big man but I managed to overpower him. Bellatrix had probably planned to let him kill me and then she would betray and kill him, get the power of both in one strike. But they didn't count on this," she says pulling a small blade from what I thought was a hairpin holding her bun. It was an ornated silver piece, probably not much of a threat in hand to hand combat, but if she could curse it and then deliver a lethal blow, she could overtake anyone. I can see it now: she is fast and smart, she doesn't need physical strength, only needs to find an opening. She continued her story.

"The commotion was too loud and both Bellatrix and I had to flee the scene. I made sure she wouldn't follow me, but she kept looking for me for years. I left the continent and came to the isles but she found me at Stonehenge and followed me one day as I went for groceries. She was very powerful, she almost killed me, but then he showed up and bought me the time I needed to regroup." She trailed off so I asked

"Who?"

She closed her eyes

"Malfoy. Draco Malfoy."