You learn something everyday

"I find my life is a lot easier the lower I keep my expectations."
― Bill Watterson

The territory that Haven claimed was fairly large when compared to its neighboring countries. Compared to the countries in earth, however, it was comparable to the size of Austria. As someone once put it, the size of a pancreas. That phrase was at least kinder than the one who compared it to the heel of a boot.

But, as Heather did the statistics in her mind, that was only because earth was so much bigger and had a lot more people. Like, a lot. She felt like it bore repeating just to emphasize the point of it.

Currently, Haven was on its way to becoming the size of a liver. Earthwise, that was like, encroaching on the territory of Germany and Slovenia. Just a teeny tiny bit of encroachment, really. For Arda, that was a large expansion. It was really a good thing that the wards were flexible and easily applicable for a larger scale.

On a different note, the small ten-foot, five-inch wall was not. So, as suggested on the impromptu meeting, they built the Bell tower that would ring for their newer residents.

Heather, as Hermione was still not returned from the safehouse project, was the one tasked where to build it. It would have to be a place that maximized its properties. She chose to build it on an intersection of five districts, with the slightly hollow little bowl shape to make it ring outward like a rippling thing.

Draco designed the tower and Luna took over the runic application to keep it standing for another two hundred years.

By the end of it, all three of them sighed and exchanged glances, all sharing the same thought of, It would have gone faster with Hermione around.

The creation of the Bell tower was something of a marvel to everyone because Draco designed it to be taller than the watch towers they created for the purpose of holding archers and the main defense of Haven, which were armed with modified x-bows (that could target large enemies over eighty meters away.). Children would be seen flocking to the base of the tower just to watch the men work. Heather couldn't exactly blame them since the slowly rising tower was beautifully designed.

It would serve as a mess hall and a lounge for soldier's off-duty, which explained its width. On every other floor, there were stone angels carved, which Heather discreetly enchanted into animation for when Haven would be sieged. (She had been told about enchanting the four cardinal statues for the city and had seethed with jealousy that she hadn't had a try for her own statue while Draco smirked, having expected her reaction.) It rose in dark brown and grey colors, sturdy and beautiful at the same time. The runes ran around the tower, carved deep into the wood and glowing the faint blue of protection and resilience.

Heather had to commend the people of Haven when they saw the obvious magic. They merely looked at the sigils and nodded like they had expected it. She supposed that the rumors had something to do with it. Luna had remarked that their magic was something of an open secret in Haven: Something known and acknowledged but never actually said out loud.

That raised some concerns regarding their new citizens but she underestimated her people again. They welcomed the refugees with exuberance, explaining the Charter and expounding on the silent, unsaid rules. The new residents did look a bit culture shocked but a few days spent with the committee assigned to welcome them and suddenly, they were as happy and as rooted down as any native.

There were some that struggled to adjust to the fact that a majority of the leaders of Haven were women, but Draco, the only male leader within in the city with Guiomers absence, merely raised an eyebrow when challenged with that question and directed the ones complaining to the Training courts on the days that coincided with Heather's day-offs and when she was busy pounding the floor with her new trainees. The complaints died down rather quickly, leaving Heather slightly confused as to why that was.

Upon being questioned, Draco looked so innocent that she knew he had something to do with it and she just shook her head and changed the subject.

It was almost like a repeat of the old economic boom that happened at the advent of the creation of the Order, except this was on a bigger scale. And harder. Way, way harder seeing as Hermione wasn't there. Meiran and Deimos had to be pulled in to cover for her absence, which was funny to watch. Both of them tended to avoid each other because they were the exact definition of a wrong chemical combination.

And of course, there was Faramir, whose schedule was shot to kingdom come with the effects of the expansion.

Faramir was, initially, pushed to one department and then pushed to the other department until Meiran finally grabbed him. The poor man received a crash course on leadership and the proper standards for merchant wares after that. He served as a temporary assistant and Draco and Heather didn't complain or try to grab him back because, even if he looked confused and bewildered out of his mind every time they saw him, he also looked challenged and completely pushed to his limits.

Apparently, he liked being stressed to learn. Go figure.

"We might as well make a country out of this," Draco muttered to both of them one night. He looked tired and there were new stress lines on his face. In a fit of vanity, he had complained about it even as Luna remarked that it added character to his face. "We certainly fit the requirements," he said.

And how strange was it that they knew the requirements for making a country? After all, that remark wasn't said only once by Draco and after some curiosity, she researched it in their ever-growing library.

What came back both bothered and amused her.

Population of more than five thousand? Check. That was even rising to seven thousand with the new citizens that arrived and it was still rising.

A fully operational military system? Check. No need to even ask that.

A functioning medical department? Check. There was no need to even think about it, really. Luna was all over it like fur on a cat.

A continuous development towards improvement? Check. They had an R&D department of all things.

Literacy rate of more than fifty percent? Check. They were hitting towards ninety percent with Hermione's intervention but who was counting?

Having your own language? Check. Well, it was taken from Rome, but it wasn't likely that anybody would complain, seeing the lack of Romans around.

History of more than thirty years? Check. They were on thirty-five, last Heather counted and Felicia's hobby on her day-offs consisted of writing down the history of Haven.

They really would be more respected by the other countries if their history hit at least a hundred but who was counting? Haven was given its name for more reasons that just safety. It was Luna's dream of a medical institution, the personification of Draco's wish for progress, Hermione's utopia for perfect standards of literacy and Heather's ideal of a city free of prejudice.

"A country," Luna agreed. "With the capital city of Haven. That's just brilliant." Her tired gray eyes shone with giddiness.

Heather interrupted both of them before their planning could run away with them. Sheesh, even practical Draco was acting like a demented bat. "We'll make preparations," she said. "But I'm not doing this without Hermione. And we'll have to mark our territory with outposts. And then there would be letters to write and – "

Luna started laughing. "You're sounding hysterical! Breathe, feather!"

Buggering purebloods and buggering Luna. She wasn't the one to tell Rohan of it's new neighbor, even if they had a fairly large field and a long range of mountains that separated them. The idea of setting the boundaries with King Theoden over a cup of tea made her shiver in apprehension.

And no one was sympathetic to her plight. At. All.

"Hermione," Heather sighed. "Come home!"

Hermione scowled at the map of the North that was dotted with red.

Guiomer, after calming down of his baby-high, started panicking because while he really wanted to go home and check on his wife, he understood why his mother tacked him to create the safehouses. They were Really Important. It deserved the capitals since his weaker precognition shivered every time he finished one of the safehouses. Every time that happened, it meant the future changed and he knew it was for the better. (He didn't bother to check after the first time it happened and he gave himself a migraine in using his gift.)

So he wanted to finish the project faster (because he estimated this one would take a long time and he didn't want to go home just to watch the birthday process. He wanted to watch his sweet Cailyn swell and grow big with his child too.) and then realized that Hermione was there and both of them could half the time by doing different safehouses at the same time.

Hence the scowling at the poor and innocent map.

Because one of the things Guiomer forgot was that while he could survive in the middle of nowhere with just a knife and the clothes on his back, Hermione had to make do with a wand. Also, she had very little experience by way of maps.

One more cursory look at the map only irritated Hermione further since all she understood were squiggles and smudges. When she was travelling around Arda, there were actually reliable people to ask and a horse to guide her. Hermione never underestimated horses since they were rather intelligent and sensitive when it came to the miasma she searched for back then.

With a vile oath that would have shocked anybody that knew her well – since Hermione cursing was a very bad omen – she dropped the map and yelled, "Kreacher!"

There was no crack of apparition, only the fuzzy buzzing of elvish invisibility dropping - which meant that the bloody elf had been watching her puzzle at the Merlin-blessed map for thirty minutes.

"Miss Hermione needs help with the map?" the house-elf asked. It was only because he didn't sound condescending or amused that Hermione's temper kept. He sounded genuinely concerned.

Oh, bugger it. He was here anyway and nobody else was around.

"Not only that, Kreacher," Hermione sighed. "I need tea, cookies and your help with the map. In exactly that order."

The house-elf beamed like she had just given him an underground sewer to clean overnight and then he vanished with a crack.

The wards informed the wizards of the general intentions of the people that crossed it. With the expansion, it wasn't exactly quiet for their senses, what with people arriving every day and crossing it, looking for Heather or any of the others. Those that remained learned to ignore the constant pinging to their senses and only really noticed it if there was a hint of desperation in their thoughts. (Which actually helped with a group of injured refugees that had a run in with a rabid bear.) With that development, a group of orphans were stationed by the walls to fetch the person needed for each pertinent group.

It was with a groan that Heather received the news that someone was looking for her especially.

"Foreign clothes, my lady," the orphan added helpfully.

Heather resisted the urge to roll herself down the stairs of her office because it would at least give her the excuse of a concussion and some broken bones for resting.

When she reached the gates, she wanted to curse the orphan. Foreign clothes indeed!

That was an elf. Unlike the ones in Rivendell, who were dressed in shimmering silks and looked like starlight when they moved, this one was dressed in muted greens, browns and greys. He would blend perfectly with a forest.

"Yes?" she asked the cold looking elf. Hell, even Elladan and Elrohir looked less like icebergs. She was probably influenced by the fact that the twins were always in the garb of rangers and looked slightly rugged and less like statues of angels than the one in front of her.

"You are the Queen of this country?" he asked. "I am Fallidor. The prince of the Northern wood and his travelling companions will pass here within a day. I am tasked to find an adequate inn. Does your country have anything sufficient?"

Once Heather could pick her jaw from the floor, she didn't have the heart to correct him that no, she wasn't a Queen and that they weren't an established country yet.

Heather pinched the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes briefly in a futile effort to stave off her rising headache. "You can try the Rising Eagle," she said. "That is our best one so far."

She clucked to a wandering orphan to direct her to wherever Meiran had dragged Faramir and used that spare time to ask for information regarding the Northern Woods. Since Meiran was tacked in with merchants, she was very well informed when it came to gossip outside Haven.

Faramir's face would have been funny if Heather could look at it properly. As such, both of them were listening to Meirans explanation with identical expressions of intensity. It was probably the one topic that Meiran outclassed them all.

"Mirkwood," Meiran explained patiently as she did her paperwork at the same time. "Is the name recently given to the Northern woods when travelers passed the woods and never came out again. Everybody said that it has something to do with a Necromancer in the Southern part of the woods. Of course, Gandalf was asked to do something about it and he said that something was holding the darkness at bay so it wasn't as bad as it could be."

Idly, Heather remembered the days when Hermione wandered the darkest places of Arda. The Northern woods, or Mirkwood, must have been one of those places. She coughed to draw her attention out of that.

"Right," Meiran continued. "They are highly territorial and as secretive as the elves in Lothlorien. As big on the wilderness as you are, my lady so I don't know why they are here. They could probably camp in a cave or sleep in the trees and be happy."

Heather thanked Meiran as she walked away, her mind thrumming with theories and postulates. She had to take it up with the stuffy purebloods in their group since something probably escaped her.

Luna, of course, only nodded. "That's probably because they have somewhere important to get to," she said. "Meiran might say that they are as good at surviving the wilderness as you, but dirt and grass stains and tree sap are really hard on clothes, especially when you want to be dignified," she said.

Heather, who had clothes she saved just for trekking the wilderness that looked so stained that it was practically designed with it, never counted that. She laughed and looked to Draco, who probably had a different theory.

He didn't disappoint when he raised his eyebrows and said, "Ah, they probably have someone with them that needs medical attention or a guest that isn't too used to travelling for weeks and weeks without civilization in sight."

Before Heather could add anything else, both of them immediately started placing bets on it.

It was so typical of both of them that Heather was tempted to use her gift to see who would win just to see it over with. Instead, she just rolled her eyes heaven wards and made an exaggerated gesture for patience. Cailyn, who had volunteered to cook dinner because she was due for a check with the family OB-GYN, giggled.

Precognition was a good thing when it warned you of sibling arguments.

Before she could even place on her gloves, the gift kicked in and told her that Luna and Draco would be arguing and it would be another massive headache for her so she switched tactics and started strapping on her multitudes of daggers and her two knives. She was going to do a border patrol with the recently placed outposts that dotted the borders of the slowly establishing country. Anything to escape her two siblings that were probably going to argue just to release their stress and tension. Both of them were weird that way.

An orphan was sent to warn the captains to saddle a horse of her while she hastily gobbled down the remains of last night's dinner that was under a stasis charm.

Draco and Luna would complain and poor Meiran would bear the brunt of it in her absence. Heather didn't care since she only had a couple of hours left before she had to deal with another foreign dignitary. An elfish, foreign dignitary at that.

Everything, annoyingly, went to hell in the middle of the patrol.

Heather had, of course, been a smidge bit suspicious since this was her and nothing normal ever happened to her before. The patrol had been going a tad bit too easy in her mind. Draco called it her damned Potter Luck. Heather just called it her curse.

It started with a warning shout from the scouts and then the neighing of the poor horses that scented the blood. There was the stench of orc and steel and everything that usually followed thereafter.

"Take the left point," she snapped to the four archers they had. "You lot," she pointed to the three swordsmen. "With me. The rest of you pick out those that are too far away for the archers and are edging to run away."

It was a standard tactic she taught to minimize casualties and to give the archers the freedom to rain hell on the far side of the warriors. The only thing she told those that chose to pick up the bow was to never miss and never hesitate.

Everything was fast and nearly insane. Heather tossed around her daggers, imbedding them into skulls and knocking them down. Her knives danced and parried and she found herself wishing, however fleetingly, that she could have a sword to at least decapitate someone with because it would just feel so satisfying after receiving a few lucky hits from the mindless ingrates.

That became a real, solid wish when she glanced around and saw that everyone was finishing up – and were those civilians at the sides? – And that the last opponent was a mountain troll. Somebody was holding him down with rope and aiming arrows at his face.

Brilliant but it was only making the troll angrier since he was the older kind, the one with skin as thick as rock. The mountain troll in the girl's bathroom was toddler-sized compared to the monstrosity that this one was.

"Can you keep distracting him?" she asked the blonde man.

A quick nod and Heather ran around it, careful of the trolls flailing arms, and whipped out a pair of her last daggers, using it like a mountain climber would use an ice pick to climb a snowy mountain. His skin really was exceptionally hard since she needed to reinforce her blades with magic to keep it working. When she got to the top, she took a breath and shouted, "Reducto!"

Diffindo would have been good but she wasn't sure if it was enough to cut the trolls thick skin so she went with the Reducto option. That spell, however useful, needed close range since her wandless magic wasn't that good for that spell. Hence, the dagger climbing on troll back. Her poor blades would probably have to be thrown away in the face of all that abuse.

The Impervious charm saved her face and her hair from being splattered with troll brain matter. It didn't save her clothes from the gooey, squelching substance, sadly. She jumped down as the troll finally fell due to the absence of its head.

"You fight well," the man said. All of the patrol had gathered to watch the take down and Heather finally, finally noticed that he wasn't one of her men, or even a man. He was another elf.

He smiled at her and only constant exposure to Draco rendered Heather not quite so affected by that sweet and gentle smile.

"I am Legolas of the Northern woods," he continued.

Heathers brain struggled to stand up and run around in panic. This was the stuffy elvish dignitary she was waiting for?

Merlin's arse.

DELETED SCENES:

How to deal with an axe-wielding orc
(with only a butter knife, a chair and whipped cream)

The civilian blinked at the situation presented. Around her, all the other citizens were thinking about using the rubber band to triple the force behind a throw of a rotten egg, smash the trolls nose with an egg beater and, while the troll was still recovering, run like a mad monkey.

Meanwhile, the civilian was wondering about the whipped cream that was mentioned and what to do about that buggering axe because she did not want to have her head decapitated, even in a mock scenario. She was rather fond of her head, thanks. At the same time, she mulled over the whipped cream because she knew that it was very thick and she remembered an incident when it accidentally got into her eyes and it had hurt like the nine hells.

She found her hand going up. Lady Enid pointed at her with a fond smile. "Yes, my dear? What would you do?" she was asked.

The civilian laid it out thoughtfully. "There are a lot of options, my lady. The axe is rather a problem, but I would assume that the adrenaline of the situation would allow me enough strength to block the trolls axe with the wooden chair and disarm him in a moment of struggle and insane panic," she said.

At the back, someone snickered. The civilian ignored him. She was logically trying to assimilate the situation in her mind and she didn't need arseholes to distract her.

"Once the axe is taken away," she continued slowly. "I would find the means to distract him. The rotten egg would be a very good option, but it is farther away from my position. So I would have to grab the nearest thing and that is the whipped cream."

Someone else laughed outright and that incited a wave of amused snorts and chuckles.

Her cheeks burned and she bit her cheek to stave off the burn of embarrassment. It helped that beside Lady Enid, Lady Gryffon was smiling and giving her a discreet thumbs up.

"So what would you do with the whipped cream?" Lady Cailyn asked with sincere curiosity.

Courage returned. "I would blind him and the loss of sight and the pain of the whipped cream will disorient and distract him from me. There are three sharp objects stated in the scenario. There is the corkscrew, the butter knife and the fork. However, I do not have enough strength, or aiming capacity to use the rubber band to plunge the corkscrew into the jugular of the orc, nor will the forks tines withstand the pressure of stabbing it. So the butter knife will do and I can use it to slice the orcs neck, or slice open the tendons of his legs to prevent him from walking. And then I can run away."

The laughter had been dying down as she explained further and there was only complete silence when she finished.

Lady Gryffon broke it by clapping. "Well done," she said in that tone of voice that told everybody that she was very happy and on the verge of laughing. "It factored in the positions of all the objects in the scenario. You even guessed the use of the rubber band!"

Lady Enid had been scribbling in a piece of parchment and her eyes were shining with mirth as she finished. "Yes," she said. "I have calculated it and it is possible."

Everybody congratulated the civilian after they got over her shock. The civilian was only thanking her lucky stars for having tried squirting herself in the eye with whipped cream once while cooking. She would have discounted it too.

Sorry for the lateness of it. Gosh, I am apologizing a lot.

Questions: (Mostly asked by the unLucker)

Does city have wooden palisade/stone wall/castle like ramparts(is yes are there towers with or without trebuchet/catapult/ballista?

I think I mentioned it in this chapter, but I'll just reiterate it again in case someone asks. Yes, there are walls but they are lower than how most cities would prefer it, with high towers for perfect viewing. This has something to do with Haven's view on freedom. They would rather not constrict their people with high walls and instead, allow them a place to view the entire world (e.g. the towers.)

They have a modified x-bow with a targeting system and a ballista that fires ten rounds in under a minute.

You mentioned in sooner chapters water source nearby. Is there river near city or going through it(is yes is there river trade) ?

There is actually an aqueduct that does that. It is inlaid with runes to keep it fresh and to prevent an epidemic. There is no water trade yet, but it's only a matter of time, I think.

That's all, I think. Still so sleepy. Midterms finished and I lack another eight hours of freaking sleep.

Please R&R guys. (I'm aiming for a thousand reviews. A girl can dream. *sigh*)

~Hallen