Chapter Six:
Gone By Fifty.
Part One
Harriet Uley's P.O.V
Three of North America's biomes converged in Minnesota. Prairie grasslands in the southwestern and western parts of the state intersected with the big woods deciduous forest of the southeast, running up to meet the northern boreal forests. The polar part of the state was large coniferous forests, a vast wilderness of pine and spruce trees mixed with patchy stands of birch and poplar.
Although most of Minnesota's northern forest had been logged, leaving only a few patches of old growth forest now in places such as the Chippewa National Forest and the Superior National Forest, most of what remained was still larger than anything back in Harriet's home country of England.
This was where pine marten, elk, bison, whitetail deer and bobcats thrive, and Minnesota had the largest population of timber wolves outside of Alaska, keeping prey on black bear and moose, migratory waterfowl and geese and ducks, grouse, pheasants and wild turkeys. Through the sky, bald eagles glided, red-tailed hawks sailed, and snowy owls waiting for dusk to settle in tree trunks. The waters too were teeming with life, walleye, bass, muskellunge and northern pike swimming up and down rivers, between brook, brown, and rainbow trout.
Was there anywhere more… American?
There couldn't be, surely, Harriet thought.
The Bread-and-Butter state, the flimsy tourist brochure Harriet had picked up at a gas station, called it. Breath-taking, she would add. And it was through this wild, forest strewn, lake littered state Harriet journeyed through, in the passenger seat of an old wagon, feet kicked up on the dashboard beside a piloting Paul.
The Leech Lake Indian Reservation was in the north-central part of Minnesota the map said, strewn across the counties of Cass, Itasca, Beltrami and Hubbard. The Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe were only one of six federally recognized bands comprising the Minnesota Chippewa tribe, and the voyage, in total, would take twenty-seven hours to drive across.
Twenty-seven.
Harriet could drive across Great Britain, from Land's End to John o'Groats in fifteen hours. That was nearly half the time, and the entire breadth of her country.
It was almost mind boggling how… Big the USA was.
"Are you a hundred percent positive we can make it in one stretch?"
Behind the wheel, Paul scoffed.
"Wolf, remember? We don't get tired easily. One of the upsides of turning fleecy when mildly annoyed is the added stamina."
Stamina for-
Don't go there, you utter degenerate.
Harriet didn't, in fact, go there, and instead pulled her feet down from the dashboard, crossed them, uncrossed them, and slung a leg over again.
Paul smirked from her side.
"Not used to sitting still for long, are you?"
Harriet let her head roll on the headrest, glancing out the window. Green grassland trundled passed the glass, curving up to a craggy mountain range on the far, far horizon.
So bloody big.
And flat.
"I forgot how slow Muggle transportation was."
A sharp, swift glance to the map laid bare on the drink port made Paul shrug.
"Well, we're three quarters of the way already. We'll pull in at nightfall."
Harriet hummed.
"We'll have to hit up a motel. Beat the streets come dawn, see what we can sniff out in the daylight when people are actually up and able to talk."
Paul's finger's drummed on the patchy leather of the wheel.
"Sam gave me a list. Some names he remembered from his father's mother's family. It's short. Joshua didn't pass along much, but we have a few Fiddlers to look into. If no one remembers anyone by those names, or aren't willing to talk, we'll hit the local Tribal Record office. See what we can scrounge in there. If that somehow proves a dud, we can stop by the library-"
Harriet groaned, and Paul chuckled.
"Not a fan?"
Again, Harriet kicked up her feet.
"I thought I got out of library visits when my school was destroyed in the war."
A breath, a moment-
"War?"
Harriet-
Jammed up.
"I-… Uh, it's a long story."
Paul glanced over.
She didn't meet his eye.
"Maybe some other time then, when we aren't running against a Wendigo shaped clock."
That.
Right there.
That, Harriet thought, was what made Paul…
Special?
Unique?
Something.
He didn't push, didn't demand answers, didn't ask her for more than she could give, which, delving into her most traumatic memories was, perhaps, just a little too much right then.
He made it seem… Little.
Not little.
But… Easy.
I'm here with an ear open when you're ready, without ever having to say that, without ever having to make it something bigger than it was, make a grand show of his gesture because, to Paul, it wasn't a grand gesture.
It was just him being… Him.
Effortless.
Harriet wasn't used to… That. She was used to putting her foot in it, saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, having people explode at her and annoyed at her, and passing out Unhinged Uley badges. She wasn't used to… Acceptance.
Even Hermione and Ron had, sometimes, turned their backs when she had been prickly.
No, Harriet Uley wasn't used to this.
But I could be. A little voice added. I could be. And that didn't, maybe, scare her half as much as it should have.
Sensing the ensuing silence, and not one to ever do well in quiet, as she was never one to keep still for long, Harriet picked up Paul's dropped thread.
Easy.
Too easy.
"Do you think we'll run into any Wendigo's around here?"
Paul took a left off the highway, hitting tighter thoroughfares.
"I hope not, but I don't think we should go into this without watching our six's just in case."
Harriet turned away from the window, and grinned at Paul's sleek profile, the dark glimmer of his eye trained on the long, winding road ahead.
"I'll watch yours if you watch mine?"
Paul smiled at her, toothy, bright, easy.
"Wouldn't have it any other way."
Harriet Uley's P.O.V
The motel on the edges of the Leech Lake Reservation they pulled up to in the twilight hours of the night was the kind of motel that was like a kraft dinner. It did the job, hit the spot, the room was clean, and the bedding was fresh, and for a freeway motel that was pretty good, yet it was still absolutely a microwave meal of a place.
Just barely constituting as enough, and polished only on the surface.
Shouldering through the door, stomach still churning from those dubious hotdogs they had picked up from the local 7-elevan, and crammed down twelve of each, Harriet eyed the dark room lit by the switch she flung.
One bed.
Just one bed.
Not even King or Queen.
Double.
It was going to be a long night to a longer day.
It would be fine. She and Ron had shared beds before, lots of times, countless times.
This time would be no different.
"You don't have fleas or mange, do you?"
Paul slipped through the door Harriet left opened, kicking it shut behind him, footsteps thudding on the tacky carpet floor, circumventing the dubious stain by the dresser, and dropped the duffle bag holding their clothes and belongings at the foot of it. He went down with the bag, flopping onto the bunk with a mighty thud that threatened to break the bed-slates beneath his massive frame, chuckling into the pillow.
"Rude. I swear I've been de-wormed too if it makes you feel better."
Tossing the room key beside the ol' TV on the dresser, something right out of the fifties with its askew antenna, Harriet made her way over to the bed, and patted at Paul's boot. Even with his head pushed against the headboard, neck bent awkwardly to the right, Paul's legs dangled off the end from shin to toe.
Poor bastard was going to have to sleep in the foetal position.
Groaning, Paul moved his legs, lifting them barely high enough for Harriet to slip in and under, and instead of scooting over to the other side of the paisley sheets, the free side, she instead snatched at his hovering foot, loosening the boots.
Paul barely had enough time to mutter a what are you-, before Harriet had the boot off, magic in hand, and was spelling a cool wash of magic over the limb. Paul's answering groan was like that of a big cats, a rumbling purr that shook you down to the bone.
"That feels nice."
His feet fell down into the nook of her lap, and Harriet began unlacing the other boot with deft fingers.
"Muscle relaxing and healing spell. I used to use it after Quidditch all the time. Helps unlock stiff joints after pushing too hard. Thought it might make your legs feel better after all that driving in a cramped cab. You looked like one of those clowns riding a toy bike. You should have let me finish the last pitch into town."
There was nothing strange here, Harriet told herself. Nothing out of the norm at all. Ron had done this for her plenty of times after a Gryffindor match, and she had done the same for him too, when he took too many beatings as a beater.
Friends helped each other out this way all the time.
There had been nothing strange then, and there was nothing strange about it now.
Paul's reply had no bite, only that deep bone-bouncing-burr, and as Harriet glanced up, she spotted his eyes drifting closed.
"You don't have an American licence-… You don't have a licence at all, and the last thing we needed was for you to be arrested if we got pulled over for speeding. And we both know you would have sped."
Harriet scowled in the low-light room.
"Of course it would seem like speeding to you. You move at a snails pace. Who taught you to drive? Betty White?"
Paul bumped her thigh with his heel.
"I won't hear anything bad about Betty. She's a damned national treasure, and will outlive us all."
Harriet, in retaliation, flicked his ankle.
"Oh, I see, you like them mommy-milkers-"
"Jesus H Christ Uley... Please don't ever put that image in my head again."
Harriet laughed loudly.
Freely.
Easily.
The easiest she had laughed in… Months, a year?
A long time.
And maybe, just maybe, this wasn't like all the other times with Ron, wasn't like with other friends and other people, and-
Maybe she didn't need to over think every little thing.
It was… Easy with Paul, and maybe she should just let it be easy.
Tapping Paul's foot one last time so he would lift it, Harriet slipped from the bed.
"Don't go and hog the entire bed. I'm going for a shower."
A cold shower.
Paul hummed in reply, and Harriet snatched the duffle bag on her way out.
The shower didn't take long, a quick wash with the three-in-one, a slip into some joggers and a t-shirt, a messy fight with a comb and her curls, and her bare feet were padding back into the small motel room.
Paul was fast asleep, snoring softly.
Despite herself, or perhaps because of it, Harriet smiled softly and came to a slow halt at the foot.
Three of his limbs were off the bed, dangling, knuckles brushing the carpet.
Catching herself, and thinking it was particularly creepy to be standing at the end of someone's bed watching them sleep, Harriet made the short distance to the boxed window of the room, grasping at the tattered curtains, readying to draw them closed-
The streetlamp across the way painted yellow hues on mossy brick and asphalt. A lone light opposite the flickering fluorescent of the Motel sign.
A man stood beside it, half in the light, half in the dark of the night, pale, blonde, tall, and-
Harriet blinked and the man was gone.
She dropped the curtains, grabbed her wand, flung up a hasty ward, and stared out the window.
Minnesota stared back.
A screech of a snowy owl in the distance.
The ruffle of wind in poplar branches.
The door wasn't kicked in.
No one knocked.
Not so much as a pebble thrown.
No man was there, just an empty car park.
The lamplight. It was just the lamplight, Harriet told herself.
She didn't believe it for a second, however. She had been through too much, seen too much, knew precisely what lived in this world, to think that a trick of the light was always a trick of the light.
Sometimes there really were monsters under the bed.
But the man was gone.
What would she say to Paul if she woke him up?
I saw a blonde loitering rather peacefully and freaked?
A blonde who could have very well been heading into his own motel room? Or into his car?
She hadn't got a good look at his face, only the slight wave of his hair, couldn't say exactly where he had been looking or-
Harriet's wand lowered to her hip, and she, quickly, shut the window curtains, edging towards the bed.
In the end, she didn't wake Paul up. Neither did her wand ever leave her grip, even as she fell asleep, the wards stayed up and strong, and if Paul noticed it in the morning, when they both woke tangled up, decidedly not keeping to their own sides of the bed, well, that wasn't mentioned either.
VERY IMPORTANT: I had to cut this chapter a little short here because my guys, SHIT HITS THE FAN in the next part, and I wanted a cute little down time chapter before then. See those capital letters? You know we mean serious business when capital letters come into play lol.
And here's the thing, there's big, BIG, plot points hitting the road next part of this chapter. Things that will forever be a part of this fic. A few, actually. Joshua's fate comes into play, the Fiddler's are expanded on, more Wendigo lore comes hurtling into fruition, we have death tunnels and, trust me, one of the most scariest things I have ever written so far takes place (But I'm a bit of a wimp lol so take that as you will). HOWEVER (see the capital letters?) there is one point I am having trouble with.
I obviously don't want to give to much away, but I need your lovely opinions. I won't say how or exactly when, but some of the Cullen's drop by, and most importantly, our boy Jasper makes a Howdy-Mam. Here's the issue: I, apparently, cannot write anything where Jasper and Harriet don't get on like a house on fire. Evidently that's just not in me. Neither can I, seemingly, write anything where there is not an undercurrent of flirting going on between the two. I have tried to do so for the last two months, and I have come up short each and every time. I hold my hands up. I have a problem lmao. Nevertheless, It got me thinking, what if I just added him into the pairing? Like, fuck it, cowboy Casanova can come along for a ride too.
BUT I obviously didn't want to throw that large of a curve ball at you kind readers. You've all been so bloody lovely with this fic, and I didn't want to upset/disappoint you guys without running something as big as this by you. You all clicked on a Harriet/Paul fic, not a Jasper/Harriet/Paul fic, and to do you dirty like that would be just rude.
So, there you have it. I need to know your opinion on the matter before I publish next chapter. should I add Jasper, or just leave him out of it as far as I can? Either write what's coming up naturally for me, which is Japser/Fem!Harry/Paul, or stick to the Paul/Fem!Harry? If the latter is what you guys want, then please be aware that Jasper and Harriet are still going to be partners in crime, because apparently I can't write anything else lmao. If you guys want the former, then boy, do I have a roller-coaster ride for you.
Either way, please, please, please let me know. Leave it in a review as simple as Harriet/Paul or Japser/Harriet/Paul, send a PM, login into guest if you want to stay anonymous, give me in depth reasoning or just two words, anything, it's just with everything going down next half of this chapter, I really do need to know before I publish it, because I've written two versions of it lmao.
As always, THANK YOU ALL. Every single one of you. Reviewers, favouriters, Followers. You've all been so lovely and kind, and have really let me post without worry of backlash or negativity, and it does mean a lot. A lot more than I can type up. You guys give me inspiration, and I truly thank you all for it. Hopefully, I will see you all soon!