Full Summary: When Falon'Din chose to steal a taste of mortality he went missing for twenty-one years only to return as a shadow of the former Evanuris. Fen'Harel, beginning his Nuvenin'Shiral, a voyage all Elvhen of Arlathan take to seek their Bonded, sees an impish girl in the flames of fortune. The one thing they have in common? Harriana Potter. Fem!Harry/Solas. Set in the time of Elvhenan. Evanuris centric. Elvhen culture explored. Father!Falon'Din. Good/Morally!Grey Evanuris. Deeply AU.
Prologue:
To Sip At Mortality
Falon'Din's P.O.V
Falon'Din gazed down at the grievously wounded deer in the underbrush. Amid the foliage and thorns and scrub, the fawn colour of its pelt invited the eye to rest in the wonder of its sleek beauty.
Its breaths were irregular, sharp biting things that quaked in its ribcage. Its eyes were wide and alert, frightened perhaps, Falon'Din thought, as its hooves twitched between the twigs as if it wished to bolt.
It could not.
The pain was too much.
The suffering too great.
Falon'Din watched, and Falon'Din knew, perhaps for the first time, pity.
No creature, no matter how great or small, should know such anguish. Particularly to endure alone. Bending down, he scooped the injured animal into his arms, unmindful of his silken robes, and, with sure and steady steps, carried her to rest beyond the Veil, his staff lighting their path through the dark, black night.
Dirthamen, his twin, could not follow. Only Falon'Din had learnt the intricacies of the Veil, the weaving paths to take and not take, the corners to bow and the corners to avert.
He laid the deer upon a hill, and he stood, and he watched and he-
He wondered.
Mortality was such a strange concept to an Evanuris, the idea that there was a definitive end to a life. That, one day, breath could stop, and thought could cease, and spirit could leave the confines of flesh and blood and bone.
The Evanuris did not understand death, not fully, and not truly, even if Falon'Din had spent a majority of his adult life observing it taking place, a thousand and more one last breaths shared together in the air, leading those who fell beyond the Veil, always outside looking in.
What would it be like? He pondered.
To not be the guide but to be the guided?
To sleep the deepest sleep of all?
With one last shudder, the deer stopped moving all together, and Falon'Din watched as the light left, glistening and gleaming, floating away into the ether of the beyond, whole and hearty and far away from the suffering she had experienced.
What does mortality feel like?
That night as Falon'Din journeyed back to his mother's temple in the heart of Arlathan to rest, as he met his brother at the great golden gates, Falon'Din came to a startling revelation.
I want to have a try at dying.
Euphemia Potter's P.O.V
Euphemia, affectionately nicknamed Effie by her dear husband Fleamont, held up the potion, heart in throat, stomach in feet, and a quiver to her fingers.
Please. Blue or pink. Blue or pink. It matters not. I will take yellow. Orange. Brown, whatever that could mean. Just not clear. Please, just not clear.
The potion whirled in the vile, swirling and-
Settled to a startling clear solution.
Her hand lowered slowly, bitterly, the tremble gone and replaced by a sad sort of apathy.
She wasn't pregnant.
Again.
Fleamont, who had come home early from work at the Ministry to be there for the test, tried to smile over the kitchen table.
Tried.
It did not reach his eye.
"Maybe next time, aye, love?"
Maybe next time… How many next times had there been now? Seven? Eighteen?
Too many.
She and Fleamont had been trying for a child for over two decades now. Twenty whole years and… Well, she wasn't getting any younger.
The Healers of Saint Mungo's had told her she had this last year before her womb would shed for the last time.
The window was closing in on her.
The saddest part? Effie thought the worst component of this mess was she should be happy with what she had. A loving husband, a wonderful home, a job as a private potions tutor she enjoyed immensely.
She had it all.
Apart from a child.
That… That she didn't have, and for once, just once in this Witches life, this was not a problem she could wave her wand at and fix.
Fleamont journeyed around the table, grasped her shoulder, and squeezed.
"Next time."
He repeated, and Effie nodded, smiling, ignoring how both their grins were wet and limp.
"Definitely next time."
Dirthamen's P.O.V
"It is merely temporary."
Falon'Din tried to reason placatingly, as Dirthamen stood in his twins private study, before his grand desk littered with parchment and scrolls and the errant artefact. In the middle of the mess stood an innocuous bottle.
Not so innocuous, if what Falon'Din had, finally, told him was true.
"Temporary? You speak of spinning mortality like it is a brazier to be lit and extinguished as you please. This is a fools folly, Falon. I did not think you so reckless."
Plucking the escribed bottle up from the table, the bottle Falon had been spending a century turning over, studying, spelling, note by note constructing, the younger twin twisted it this way and that in his grip.
"You worry far too much Dirtha. I swear, all my study has ensured it is transitory. I take this potion, and I will experience the life of a mortal. Nothing more, nothing less. I shall return once it is said and done. It is brilliant, do you not think? A whole century… And I have finally done it. Bottled up mortality. Brilliant."
Dirthamen scoffed heartily.
"Brilliant? No, Falon. I think it is madness you are struck by. Put that monstrosity down, destroy it, I care not, but we are going to mother, and she will reach you where I am clearly not."
Immediately, Falon'Din pulled the bottle closer, thumb brushing over the cork on top.
"I thought you would be happy for me. You know how long this has tormented me? Centuries. I-… I must know, Dirtha. I must know how the mortals live, if but just once. How am I to guide them in death if I know not what came before?"
Dirthamen, generally patient, lost what little grip on it he had left.
"You play with things you know nothing of! You always have! You do not need to know mortality, you need a good hit up the back of your head to knock your senses into line!"
Reaching for the bottle, Falon'Din reacted.
Badly.
Hooking his thumb under the cork, he flicked, popped the wooden stopper free and-
Downed the potion.
Dirthamen could not stop him in time, partially astonished his twin would go so far at all.
"What have you done?"
Falon'Din smiled brightly, toothily.
"I'll be back."
"Falon'Din-"
The bottle crashed to the floor, shattering, as, abruptly, Falon'Din appeared to be wrenched backwards, into the air, into nothing, and-
Disappeared in a shock of bright green light.
"Falon? Falon!"
Dirthamen was left alone in the study, standing in the remnants of a shattered bottle, calling for his brother.
Euphemia Potter's P.O.V
That night Euphemia Potter dreamt of a strange land. Visceral, it was a twisted, frightening place of dark rock with shots of raw, glowing veins, red and blue and yellow, and night hung over the sky, heavy and black and menacing. Gravity didn't seem to work here properly, where rocks floated and water sank, and steps felt heavy and impossibly light at the same time.
It was a void, Effie thought.
The gap of between places, where dreams lingered and hopes came to die.
On the horizon was a shadowy metropolis, twisted with blackened spires, and no matter how far Effie walked, skipped, ran, she never came any closer to the black city.
She did not like this dream.
She did not like it one but.
Until she saw the light.
A little thing, it hovered by a bend, humming, bright in the night, and warm in its green hue.
Effie didn't know what made her walk over to it, but she did, nor did she know what exactly urged her to reach out and touch it, hold it in her palm, bright it close, but, anew, she did.
Lonely.
The little light felt lonely and-
A flash of green and a flood of warmth in her stomach, down heavy in her groin, settling in her womb-
Effie Potter awoke in her bed, next to her slumbering husband, at three in the morning, breathless, sweaty, and with her heart pounding between her fragile ribs.
In the dead of the night, the witching hour her grandmother used to call it, Effie reached underneath the covers, palm settling over the small arch of her stomach.
It still felt warm.
Her grandmother used to tell her, too, that their dreams could tell them things their bodies already knew.
She smiled in the night.
Really?
Could it be?
That evening, Effie Potter took the potion for testing pregnancy one last time, standing next to her husband, as excited as she once had been when all this began.
The potion swirled blue.
A boy.
She was pregnant with a boy-
Merlin!
Effie and Fleamont, in their excitement, did not remember they had not had sex for a month, particularly when they went for a check-up with the Healers at Saint Mungo's and it was confirmed Effie was two-weeks pregnant.
Two weeks.
The Potter's did not worry about the maths.
Perhaps they were afraid to.
But, here it was, a child.
Their child.
The moment tasted sweeter than anything Effie had ever sipped at before.
When James Potter was born black of hair, pale skinned but rosy cheeked, healthy and hearty and with two very, very pointed ears, that too was taken little notice of by the new parents, if curiously cocked a brow at by people who met the child.
They loved their boy deeply right from the get-go, and James loved them too.
Even if his first word had been some gibberishly crooned Arlathan.
Woo or Boo?