Chapter One:
Come Back
Mythal's P.O.V
Down the spire of crystal twining through the pale-white branches, Mythal drifted down her citadel, through the peaks and points, along threw the cloudbank, and into the yerd, the path below her feet lit with runes and symbols, bright enough to find one's way safely in the dark but still soft enough to see the stars above.
And to see a lit brazier in the courtyard, which had originally drawn Mythal's eye from her chamber's window, a lone shadow sitting before the flickering flames. Mythal knew who it would be long before she came to their side, gently slipping into a seat at their left on the low wall spanning the fountain at their back.
Falon'Din did not so much glance her way.
Mythal had grown used to that since her son had returned not twenty and one cycles ago. Gone were his smiles, his laughter, his good-natured quips, replaced by something subdued, and reticent, and ascetic.
Burned, as the wood in the fire was burned to ashes Mythal's son had returned as embers, not quite dead but not wholly spirited either.
It concerned her in the beginning.
It concerned her now.
Twenty and one cycles had passed, nothing but a blink of the eye to their nature, a breath, a moment-
And it had done this.
"Was mortality truly that distasteful?"
Mythal did not expect an answer. Falon'Din had given none since his return at this very fountain that night, panicked, the most frightened she had ever seen her son, calling for Harriana'nan-
Hope.
He had been calling for hope, and it had taken both she and Elgar'nan to calm the sobbing man, to hush him under a blanket of soothing magic, to sweet, dreamless slumber to get him out from the frigid waters. When he awoke three moontides later, he would not speak a word to her about his venture. Neither would he talk of it to his father.
Worse still, he would not converse about it with his twin.
A terrible sign, indeed.
So, it was, unexpectedly, rather surprising that night to hear his voice flow along the starlight, tempered further by the gentle crackle of the fire before them.
"Quite the opposite, mother. I…"
He faltered on his words, a momentary stumble that he swiftly put to right, and suddenly, all at once, irrevocably, it all came spilling forth like a great river.
"I had a wife."
A hazy breath, a cruel breath, a slight lurch as if the word hurt, but the pain did not stop him.
"And a child. I had friends and a family and… I didn't remember myself there. I had dreams and wisps and moments of clarity, seconds of knowing just what was happening, but they always left me swiftly and it felt as if I… As if I were dreaming. Or the me here was a dream, the me there was real and… I… I built a home there. I had a wife, and a child, and… Oh, mother, you should have seen her. She had your smile, and I… I lost it all. I went and lost it all. I couldn't protect them, and I-"
Falon'Din's voice broke, shattering on the shores of grief and anguish, and he crumpled.
"I thought I could play mortality, hold it in my hand and feel its light… And all I did was tear myself asunder. Mother… I was such a fool, and I have lost."
Mythal, restful, low, soft as the starlight above their heads, met her son in his grief as any mother would.
"They have perished?"
Falon'Din does not speak it. Mythal doubted he could even if he wished to. His eyes merely clamped shut, and there was a jarring turn of his chin, up and down.
A nod.
"I cannot reach them. I have tried in my dreams, in these waters. I have tried and stretched and pulled myself so thin I feel as if I could shatter and… I sense only emptiness."
Falon'Din turned to face her then, dark eyes wet, face waxen and pale as the moon, a wraith, something colourless and hollow.
"I was a mortal, with a mortal heart and mortal dreams, and I had a len, and I failed them when they needed me most, when darkness came to our door, and they… They…"
Mythal reached over, laid a hand upon her son's quaking shoulder, and squeezed.
She does not refute anything he says. She does not deny him his feelings. She sat, and she listened, and she joined in his sorrow.
"Shush, son. Say not more. I sit with you in your heartache."
And that is what they did all that night, sitting on the edge of a fountain, dying fire at their feet, they sat, and they mourned for a life lost.
James Potter's P.O.V
James Potter was a strange wizard. There was no denying that fact. He was a strange wizard with pointy ears, a troublesome nature, and he lived his life to the fullest from the earliest of his memories, as if he knew from his youngest years that this was all temporary.
And if he had strange dreams of far-flung places, places of magic and crystal towers, and cities that floated in the sky, where people breathed magic and great woods stretched as far as the eye could see, he told no one of his dreams.
No one but the babe below.
Bending down over the cradle at four in the morning, Lily, his precious Lily-pad, sleeping in their bed in the room behind his back, James took over night-duty, grinning down to the wide-awake child babbling away in her blanket.
"Shush now, little-len, you'll wake your mother up, and there will be no bedtime stories for you."
She was a lot like him their child, even from this tender age. Pale, black-haired, rosy-cheeked, she had something of the colour of trouble in her gaze, hidden in her mother's hue of shocking verdant green.
She slipped easily enough into his arms, kicking, excited at the attention.
She was always so happy his Harriana, a name he had picked, not quite remembering where he had heard it before, but feeling it was… Right. Fitting. Apt.
Hope.
He knew it meant hope.
It felt like hope.
Somehow.
For her, for him, for their little family.
Perhaps for the whole world.
His little bundle of hope.
James bounced the child on his hip, walking to the window, stars and moon specks of light in the black night, and, as he did every night, he spoke.
"Far over the golden sea lies a palace of gilt and enchantment, where people never age. One day I'll show it to you, yes? Me and you, little-len. They have cities of sorrow, and clouds made from the breath of giant toads, and sometimes streets walked up, and rivers ran down, and-"
"You're not filling her head with that nonsense again, are you love?"
The voice was sleepy, haggard, but loving and soft and coming from the doorway. James glanced to his wife and grinned toothily.
Yeah.
This was the life.
"It's not nonsense."
He glanced down to his curly haired child, his little bundle of hope, his little-len, his little child, and winked.
"It's magic."
Fen'Harel's P.O.V
Fen'Harel sat before the hearth fire, cross legged and prostrate, dour in his face, auburn hair braided away from his sharp features, the flames splashing his skin in flashes of gold and black, and black and gold, and around again in the breeze drifting in through the open window.
"Are you ready?"
Mythal asked from the entrance to his rooms in the dead of night.
Fen'Harel nodded, but he did not speak.
Now was the time of Nuvenin'Shiral.
His journey of want and desire, of need and craving, a time in every Elvhen's life cycle when they journeyed to the great fire at the bottom of the Soul Tree, a fire that had burned since the beginning of their race, at the heart of their greatest city of Arlathan, and offered the flames something dear of their own.
In return, the flames, if seen as… Chosen, fortunate, might show the Elvhen their intended.
The path of the roots their own soul was weaving towards.
Their Bonded.
It was a joyous time. A sombre time. Perhaps both a time to laugh and cry and feel all there was between.
Fen'Harel felt none of this.
Only a sort of reluctant annoyance.
It was rare to have a Bonded, of course. Extremely so. Only the very few ever saw a face in the flames. Fewer still found their Bonded from the glimpse. Elvhenan was large, and dangers lurked in shadows and…
It was uncommon.
It was unusual, and it typically only happened to the very most formidable of their species. Those with enough magical force that one body was not enough, that two had to be created for the Soul to be split across.
Mythal, his teacher in the arts of magic, was one such Elvhen who had been potent enough, who had travelled across Elvhenan to find her Elgar'nan in a war-torn encampment fighting the Forgotten Ones.
It was extraordinarily rare, and it was improbable that it would happen to him, and yet, as every Elvhen did, Fen'Harel would go through the rite, if only so he would be left alone to continue his research.
Nevertheless, if he were going to preform the ritual, he would, as he did with everything, do it right. Which meant he had spent an agonizing seven moontides deciding what he would gift the flames.
Flowers seemed disingenuous.
His parchments containing his incantations for spells, work he had spent centuries agonizing over, perfecting, honing, seemed… Arrogant.
He had little else of wealth or gold or fine velvets, never one to take comfort in material culture as some of his brethren did.
He only had one thing, truly, that mattered.
Himself.
Standing from the hearth, Fen'Harel lifted the wolf pelt from his lap, and held it over his arms.
It was time to go.
James Potter's P.O.V
James looked back at his wife for the last time from the doorway.
She looked scared, his Lily-pad, and he would always remember that. That look of terror. Not for him. Not for herself.
For their little-len.
She was scared, and he was scared, and there was a madman making his way up their garden path on Halloween night.
"I'll hold him off."
Lily staid back, their last defence should James… should he-…
James didn't think it. He couldn't afford to.
He didn't want to die.
That was the sad truth.
Right then, right there, James Potter didn't want to die, and he was sure, ever so fucking sure, that the tinge of copper, sour in his mouth, tasted like irony.
Why did it taste like irony?
Tom Riddle met him on the stairs, a monstrous thing corrupted to something lesser.
James fought. He truly did. He fought with everything he had, every drop of blood and every dip of sweat, and ever tear, but Tom Riddle was fast, and this land was… Fractured? Barred? It felt… Wrong. Not as easy as his dreams. He was slow, and he was weak and he was-
Mortal.
James Potter was mortal, and he didn't want to die, and he did. On the stairs, in a flash of putrid green, James Potter died trying to protect his wife and child.
Falon'Din awakened in a fountain, in cold, still, silent waters, gasping for breath in Arlathan.
He remembered everything. His name, his stories that weren't truly fairy tales, he remembered Lily and Mythal, and Elgar'nan and Fleamont, Hogwarts and Elvhenan, and Falon'Din wept into the waters, a broken man.
Mortality.
He knew what it tasted like now.
Regret.
Regret and loss.
Fen'Harel P.O.V
Fen'Harel strode forward, before the great burning fire, and with a steady hand he threw the pelt into the lapping flames at his feet, the Evanuris and other Elvhen taking the rite that night at the rear of him. The wolf pelt burned and sizzled in the glow, spitting on animal fat and hairs, smoking in greys and black as it disintegrated into the fire, and the smoke was absorbed into the Soul Tree beyond.
There was a shudder in the tree's ethereal glow, a waver in the magic, a ripple as it spread and feasted on the smoke.
Fen'Harel stared into the fire, waiting, seeing only the amber-pale, red dance of the flames.
In another life, that would have been all he had seen.
Fire.
Burning fire.
Not this life.
Something shimmered in the flames, hazy, misty, and then-
A face.
A bloodied, beaten, heartbreakingly beautiful face stared right back at him. There was something coquettish in the slant of her green eye, something impish hiding in her almost outlandish black curls, and she was scarred Fen'Harel could see, a strange bolt down her face, across a cattish eye, and though her features were sharp, sharper yet underneath the soot and blood staining her pale skin, there was something glacial and graceful in the lines of her flesh, something sleek that went bone deep.
She was beautiful, and she was-
Deadly.
And she looked like Falon'Din.
That was when the other face appeared, beside the girl, grotesque, ugly, corrupted beyond measure, glaring hatred and bile and Fen'Harel acted, for once in his long life, without thought.
He put his hand into the fire, reaching for the girl.
He barely registered the burn, he scarcely noted that he had drifted close enough to the fire to reach, but he did notice when Mythal appeared at his side, snatching at his hand, and pulling the limb free from the flames.
His hand sizzled in the open air.
"Halt! What madness has seized you to-"
That was when the fire exploded, and they barely jumped back in time to miss the flames stretching for the skin.
Harriana Potter's P.O.V
Harriana, affectionally dubbed Harry by her friends, the few she had left, did not know who grabbed who first. Whether Voldemort had snatched at her torn shirt in their struggle for the upper-hand, or she had tried wrestling his arms away from her wand, but when the sickening lurch came, and threw her through-
Well, what felt like a kaleidoscope backwards while threading her through a bloody needle head, Harry had been holding him, or he had been holding her, and, together, they fell.
Or flew.
It was hard to say which one really.
One moment she had been in Hogwarts, at the courtyard, barely moments after reviving, trying desperately to end this terrible, dreadful war, and the next, she and Voldemort were spinning through what felt like space and time and-
Fire?
Fire, and landing on something soft.
Soft and damp, and… Grass?
Yes, grass.
A thud, and they were spit out on grass, underneath a… glowing tree?
"What the fuc-"
Voldemort, obviously, either had not noticed their change in venue, or he did not care very much, as he heaved, foul hands suddenly around her neck, squeezing.
It barely caused a tickle in her throat.
He was getting desperate, slipping, if he was willing to try the muggle method.
Harry heaved up, headbutting, clawing, found a soft spot in his side, mushy as most of the none pointy-eared folk were, unlike herself, and slammed a elbow home.
Tom rolled off, huffing for breath, and Harry lumbered up, eyes wide, spotting-
A stick.
A large stick.
A large stick with a funny ball on the end, weaved with a ribbon-
A strip of red and gold velvet and… And held in someone's hands.
She didn't pay attention to the person, her vision was spotty, tunnelling, wavering.
Tired.
She was so bloody tired, and she could hear Tom already getting up, the tell-tale swish of a wand through air, and she snatched the big stick.
Spinning, she brought it above her head, orb end high above, and-
Thwack.
The blow sent Tom down on his knees before a fire, a fire she had never seen before, blood dropped to the grass in a splatter of red on green, and Harry rose the stick again, and down it went.
Once.
Twice.
Thrice.
She thought of Remus.
Of Tonks.
Of Moody, and Fred, and Hedwig, and Sirius, and she just kept swinging. She lost count by the end.
She did not know it had been her roaring and not the sound of her blood thrumming through her ears until the staff dropped from her hands, rolling across the grass, end bloody with bits of flesh on the knobbed wood, arms burning under the strain.
She staggered back from the bloody pool where a head once had been.
She'd done it.
She'd finally done it.
Tom was dead.
Gone.
"Come back from that, you bastard."
Harriana struggled to catch her breath, her lungs feeling as if they were filled with fire and ice, and she was tired, so bloody tired, but she looked up, back, searching for Hermione, for Ron, for a familiar face to ground herself in the moment that they had truly done it.
The war was over.
Strangers stared back from somewhere stranger, of crystal and wood, and glowing embers and-
Not Hogwarts.
Definitely not Hogwarts.
Harry stared back, and blinked, and bolted.
Yay or Nay?
Elvhen Translations:
Len: Child
A.N: Quick update, as I wanted to get to the juicy-juicy stuff. I.E, Harry running around like a headless chicken trying to figure out what has gone on and where the hell she is lol. Next chapters will be a lot more in depth, as these first two are really just snippets catching everyone up so we can get the ball moving. Either way, hope you all liked it!
As always, if you can, don't forget to drop a review. I love hearing from you guys, and the muses could always do with something to nibble on between updates, and I will hopefully see you all soon!