Fear - (Part 1 of 2, The Orchard)
Voldemort has shown himself and muggle-borns, like Ivy Taggart, are on the run. She and two others take shelter in an old apple orchard, but they are not alone. This is a 2-part encounter featuring a particular favorite from my "Peek Goes to Hogwarts" novel.
As always - I own no rights to the Potter world save the books on a shelf.
"Benjamin, say something," called Ivy but her voice was raised no more than a whisper. "Benjamin?"
Benjamin lay a short distance away, unmoving and unblinking. His eyes stared up at Ivy and Dexter, his mouth was opened as if ready to speak. His face was left in a grimace of pain, frozen as if the last moments of his agony followed him to the grave.
"Benjamin, please…," whispered Dexter. "Don't be dead. Please don't be dead."
Two muggle-borns and a "maybe" had taken shelter in an old overgrown and abandoned apple orchard. An old shed, where tools and supplies had been stored and where workers gathered out from under the hot sun, kept them from the worst of the seeping cold and driving rain. A hand pump a short distance from the door was rusted and tangled in wet clinging weeds, but with no small effort, drew up water. The promise of apples, even if they were brown and shriveled and laying on the ground, drew them in like nifflers to all things shiny. It was a trap for those on the run from the ministry and the snatchers and the bounty hunters. Muggle-borns, known as "mud-bloods" and "blood-stains" by those claiming better, always found their way to places such as this one. And always, there were dark wizards laying in wait.
In the same minutes the rain stopped, the trap was sprung.
"Dexter!" called Ivy in a deep, raspy, voice. "Eat me!" Floating before her was an apple, one of which she had spared from a mass apple boiling. She had animated it with Benjamin's wand, using a clever parlor spell meant for entertaining children. The apple was shriveled with an old craggy surface which made it ideal to work into facial features. A little moss for hair, and it looked like one of the shrunken heads Ivy had seen hanging in the front windscreen of the night bus.
Dexter snickered.
"Ivy, must you?" breathed Benjamin as he shook his head in mild exasperation. He let loose with a great sigh. "We're not children."
Ivy spun the apple around to face Benjamin. "Benjamin!" she called in the same deep voice. "Blow it out your port-side pucker-hole."
Dexter guffawed.
Benjamin fought back a smile. It won out and curled up the corners of his mouth.
Ivy smiled and flicked the wand causing the apple to sail through the air towards a metal trough in the center of the small shed. The trough was elevated, like a barnyard Pensieve on wrought-iron stilts. A smallish fire, kindled beneath, had set the water within, aboil. A dozen or so apples swelled to bursting with the urging of practical magic. Ivy aimed for the trough, with her face-featured apple, but it missed the water by more than three feet.
Ivy sighed and shook her head.
Benjamin laughed and held out his hand. "Gimme that back," he said, referring to the wand. "You're going to hurt someone."
Ivy placed it in his hand. "That wand doesn't like me, Ben. It's a dead fish. Seriously, I've seen more play from a hickory chair leg."
"A hickory chair leg?" repeated Benjamin with a laughing scoff.
"Sure," said Ivy, "with a paver-brick heartstring for a core."
"...And you've seen one of these paver-brick core, chair leg of hickory, wands, have you? Something to compare with?"
"Well, no," said Ivy as she gave a surrendering grin. "But if I had, it would have had more play in it than that dead-fish, pith-ash, garden-stake, you call a wand."
Benjamin smiled. "Careful, it'll hear you and you'll hurt its feelings. Then, where would we be?"
Dexter laughed. "We'd be no-where. Just like we are now."
"Wait, what?" said Ivy, rounding on the young man and standing up tall. "This, my brilliant little cockerel, is a palace, and fit for two fine princes...well, one fine prince and one somewhat less so." She thumbed towards Benjamin. "And of course, a palace for…someone...who's not a prince but might be a...". She gave a mock-threatening nod to Benjamin. "Hint. Ben. Female."
"Oh," replied Benjamin, "right, a princess, of course." Benjamin gave a sweeping bow. "Your majesty."
"It's 'Your Highness', you booby. I'm a princess, not a queen." Ivy gave a laughing smile and returned a deep curtsy with extended hands and pinched fingers as if holding out the pleats of a long dress.
"Of course," said Benjamin with a laugh. "Your Highness".
Ivy, Dexter, and Benjamin had been on the run since before the fall of Scrimgeour, the Minister for Magic, in early August. Pius Thickness had been installed as Voldemort's new puppet minister but the round-ups had already begun. Bands of wizards had taken it upon themselves to identify muggle-borns in anticipation of Voldemort's rise to power. Ivy had been detained where she lived in Loughborough, south of Nottingham. Her wand had been taken and she was ordered to remain with her parents. Instead, she packed a small suitcase with traveling clothes and essentials and on the evening of her twenty-second birthday, had cake with her parents, and boarded a bus heading southwest.
Ivy was on the run for forty minutes, when at a stop east of Birmingham, three non-muggles boarded. The two wizards and one witch were obvious stand-outs because of their mismatched attire. Muggles were fully capable of dressing in unusual clothes either by choice or lack of reasonable fashion sense. Stripes, plaids, mustard yellow, and plum purple, should never, ever appear on the same body at the same time, yet the first of the threesome aboard, was dressed just so. Fashion was the quickest way to know when you were among wizards and witches. The second quickest way was their discomfort in the muggle world and their excessive fidgeting - muggle-borns knew how to ride a bus comfortably while most non-muggle wizards and witches sat as if their bottoms were on fire.
Each time the bus made a stop, seats emptied and filled, and each time the three snatchers (Ivy did not know the name given to them, at the time) moved closer and closer to her. Ivy was heading to Bristol but she fled on foot at a stop near Worcester. The snatchers gave chase but she lost them in a patch of thick woods to the east. She also lost the few belongings she had taken with her, having left the small suitcase on the bus seat next to where she had sat.
Ivy hid in the woods for three days and was near mad with hunger when Dexter and Benjamin came out from hiding.
Dexter was a sixth-year Hufflepuff with brown hair and brown eyes. He was tall and lean with a slight hunch at his shoulders. He had a camouflage military jacket, jeans, and military boots. He had a knife in a sheath on his hip. He was the adopted son of James and Mia Hurst, and when he could not provide proof of blood-lineage, he was dragged from their home, beaten, and left near-dead in another part of the country. He posted several letters back to his parents but did not return home for fear of another attack.
Benjamin, like Ivy, was muggle-born. He was Ivy's age with brown curly hair and a stubbled chin. He was shorter than Dexter but taller than Ivy. He was stout and strong and carried himself with an unruffled and confident air. He had never hidden his non-magic bloodline and fought numerous scrapes over it, but when his father's shop was burned down and his muggle sister had been taken but later released, he took to the highways, hoping to draw the wizarding world away from his family.
Benjamin had a wallet full of pound notes for muggle food and essentials, and for keeping his eighties-vintage Renault LeCar fueled. His wand covered most of the other needfuls including breaking into vacant homes for shelter and setting up concealment charms. He met Dexter outside a Dunkin Donuts. Dexter had not eaten in days and wolfed down the donuts Benjamin offered him.
Benjamin and Dexter took Ivy into their small band. They traveled across the south of England until the money was gone. They tried to sell off the LeCar before it ran out of petrol, but in the end, they left it in a parking lot in Reading. They walked the rail lines towards Bristol, which was Ivy's original plan. They were cold, wet, and hungry when they came upon the overgrown orchard. They spied the old storage shed through the trees and deepening rain and sought to take shelter before night settled in. Benjamin set concealment charms around the shed but he and the others were not the first to arrive there, and his best work served no other purpose but to provide a false sense of security.
Ivy and Benjamin stood in the flickering light of the smallish fire, staring long into each other's eyes. Benjamin's smile slipped away as his pulse quickened and his breath shallowed. Ivy's smile broadened. Another young man was falling for her. She loved to smile. She loved to tease and laugh loudly. She was comfortable among people even in the first meeting. Benjamin was not the first boy to mistake her hearty nature for fondness, but this time, Ivy was quite certain she was falling for him too.
Apples and boiling water. An old damp shed and a flickering fire. A young woman and a young man found each other in the harrow of fear and flight. The rain drummed on the roof above them but in that moment, like the holding of one's breath, it ceased.
"Ben…" said Ivy with a light tenderness.
Just then, a nearby bird lit out suddenly followed by the sound of light footfalls in the sodden turf. The moment was lost. Ivy, Benjamin, and Dexter were no longer alone.
Benjamin treaded softly to the door and eased it open. He expected muggles of the non-magic sort to have stumbled across them, and a mild redirecting spell would send them on their way. His concealments were far from perfect and he had done this many times before. Instead, he fell to the floor writhing in pain and clutching at his chest.
End - Part 1 of 2
Thank you for reading!
Leaving Comments made easy - Cut and paste the following as best fits!
- This FanFic was awesome - keep them coming!
- Give up your day job. You, sir, are ready for the big-time!
- Ivy for Minister! Who's with me?
- Brick Pavers don't have heartstrings. If you must mess with established canon, kindly click over to the Twilight fanfic.
- Americans don't use the word "Booby" as an insult - just saying.
- I detect a troubled soul desperately seeking approval. Have you considered therapy?
- I love Harry Potter! Where is he?
- This Fanfic was a dead fish - like Benjamin's wand.
- Roses are red and violets are blue - I don't write fanfic and neither should you.
- Roses are blue and violets are red - My words don't rhyme and neither does this.