Note: Happy Birthday Sam! I've climbed out form underneath the avalanche of University project deadlines, halted beta-reading (sorry Rita!) and shunned the fact that I'm ill with tonsillitis to finish this chapter for you in time! I only hope you think it's worthwhile...even if it didn't turn out the way I told you it would, and even if it is lacking an appearance from "your" Samuel, AND even if it isn't as epic in length as the chapter before it!
I hope everybody else enjoys this chapter too! I'm sorry it has taken me such a long time to update! I can't say things will get any speeder any time soon, but thank you for being patient with me!
I've just noticed how many exclamation marks are in this note...! Here is a less excitable and far more sane sentence for you all:
Remus' mention of Mildred and her mirror in this chapter is a reference to Meet the Muggles, for those of you unfamiliar with the earlier Meet the... stories.
This chapter contains spoilers for the previous stories in this series. Consider yourselves warned!
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor am I making any profit from this piece of writing.
4: Wicked Soul
It was funny thing, Carrie Winters thought vaguely, drowning in ice. The numbness was oddly soothing, the watery world seemed to grow slow, more surreal as the oxygen seeped from her lungs in precious little bubbles from her nose...
It was terrifyingly calm, once the initial panic was over, once resignation began to sink in. The current tossed her from side to side, her head bouncing off the rocks, the blows shooting shockingly sharp pain through her skull, fresh little spasms of panic amongst the cool, steadily crushing current.
And despite herself, Carrie found herself wondering:
What in Merlin's name was Dora going to say, once they had fished her lifeless body out of the water and taken it back to the village?
Probably: Bloody typical!
Carrie could practically hear it, clear as day amongst the chilling aqua.
And then there was Remus: I told you so, didn't I?
Then, quite naturally, Dora again: Don't be such a smug git...
Suddenly a mass of bubbles exploded into life as something plunged into the water behind her, and Carrie very nearly gasped a fresh gulp of water into her lungs as she felt a pair of arms lock around her middle. Before she knew it, she was being wrenched free from the current's freezing grasp, up towards the surface, towards air...
She broke the surface and promptly gasped for breath, coughing and spluttering as her anonymous rescuer hurled her back towards the bank. Overwhelming relief washed over her as she finally flopped down upon solid land, eyes screwed shut and panting. She was vaguely aware of somebody collapsing down beside her, but she was far too exhausted to look round. There she lay for several long minutes, in petrified shock, until the shivering took a hold of her and she finally dragged herself up into a sitting position, turning to look down at her saviour.
He was long limbed, skinny young man with a rather pointy chin and bright, dark eyes that gazed up at the muggle. He appeared to have shed a few layers of clothes in preparation for his icy plunge, bare chest rising and falling rapidly as she stared down at him. Reaching to sweep a hand across the long hair that had become plastered to his head, the young man managed a rather breathless smile as he murmured:
"Hello..."
Carrie gawped at him quite stupidly for a long moment, rather taken aback by this very ordinary greeting, before mumbling:
"Um...hi..."
The young man set about scrambling to his feet, reaching to snatch up a discarded shirt. As he set about pulling it on, Carrie felt compelled to add:
"Thank...thank you, for...for that..."
"You're welcome." he mumbled, pausing in his dressing to peer down at her again, cheeks tinging pink. Carrie wasn't sure if this was from cold or embarrassment at his heroics. His apparent modesty made the muggle grin.
She got carefully to her feet, frowning at her throbbing head and reaching to wipe her damp hands somewhat unsuccessfully on her sodden jeans, before offering him her hand.
"I'm Carrie." she told him, beaming up at him gratefully. "Carrie Winters, I'm...I'm here on holiday...sort of."
He eyed her hand shyly for a moment, before consenting to shaking it.
"Hello Carrie...my name's Kit. Kit Carter."
"Nice to meet you." Carrie said, watching as he went back to buttoning up his shirt. "Lucky, even! If you hadn't of spotted me, I'm sure I would have drowned to death!" she gave a rather embarrassed chuckle, gaze dropping to her soggy shoes as she mumbled: "That's me all over, I'm afraid...accident prone..."
"Happens to the best of us." Kit Carter assured her kindly, stooping to retrieve a worn corded jacket. "Here, you'll catch your death!" As he reached to throw the garment around her shoulders, Carrie felt her cheeks warming, and she was just mumbling thanks when a soft tapping noise caught her attention, and she turned to squint searchingly back into the water towards the source of the sound.
"Oh no!" she cried, dropping into a crouch and pointing at the small, furiously spinning object that was bobbing up and down in the water. "My sneakoscope!"
Kit stepped up beside her, expression despairing as he looked down into the water.
"Oh dear..." the young man murmured as the muggle gingerly reached forward towards the water, only to think better of it.
"It was a present!" Carrie complained, teeth gritted in frustration. "I've only had it a few days! Do you think we could fish it out or...or something?"
"I'm not sure it'll do any good." Kit admitted, deeply apologetic. "Look at it spinning – water must've gotten into it, made it go haywire..."
"Well I'll...I'll get Remus to...to fix it for me..." Carrie mumbled, daring to lean forward a little again, only for Kit to stoop and reach to grab hold of her by the elbow.
"Careful!" he exclaimed as her shoulders slumped in disappointment. "Come on, I'm sure you can get a new one! Besides, we best get you inside, your lips are turning blue! You'll freeze to death if you stay out here any longer!"
Teeth chattering with cold, Carrie reluctantly allowed him to pull her back onto her feet, and the two of them set off through the trees, pace stiff and stumbling.
"That was terribly brave of you," Carrie mumbled with a sniff, gaze upon her soggy shoes, "jumping into the water like that." When Kit merely gave a modest little chuckle, she insisted: "No really, it was!"
"Well I don't suppose I could have just left you to drown, could I?" he mumbled as she adjusted the jacket around her shoulders. "I expect it would have ruined Mr. and Mrs. Lupin's holiday if I had." He glanced across at her with a warm, friendly smile, a stray droplet of water trickling down his forehead and onto the bridge of his nose. For the briefest of seconds Carrie found herself tempted to reach up and brush it off of him.
"You are here with them, aren't you?" he went on as she gave herself a rather appalled little shake at her own thoughts, managing to pass it off as a rather violent shiver. "You must be, they're the only visitors we're expecting...the only ones in years, even. Everybody's been talking about them for weeks you know, the whole village, my uncle says. Everybody knows about them...even people like me..."
Carrie was just about to ask who precisely people like him were, when they finally stumbled out of the trees and he came to an abrupt halt.
"Well," he said, turning to face her. "Here we are then."
"Yes...here we are." Carrie agreed, staring up at him inquiringly. She wasn't entirely sure why they had stopped walking.
"You better hurry inside and find a fire." Kit said as the door to one of the little cottages just up the path opened. "Get yourself dried off."
"Oh..." Carrie glanced sideways back towards Edwin's cottage. Though it was just a short distance from the edge of the woods to the front door, she felt somewhat daunted at the prospect of walking there alone. Her head was pounding and sore, her limbs stiff and frozen, she felt distinctly unsteady...
"I...I don't suppose..." she began to mumble. "You might...well...um..."
"SWEET MERLIN, WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO HER?"
At the shrill voice sounding from a cottage doorway, Carrie spun around to spy a figure hurrying down the ramshackle garden path. The tubby, aged witch with a mass of curly grey hair and flushed pink cheeks paused as she reached the main pathway, eyes wide in horror as she stared at the drenched pair in horror.
"It's...it's nothing like that, Mrs. Garton, honest..." Kit began to protest half-heartedly, only for the witch to shriek:
"WICKED BOY!"
"She fell in the stream, Mrs. Garton!" Kit explained, shuffling his feet nervously. "I...I only pulled her out, it's true..."
"WICKED LITTLE LIAR!" Mrs. Garton cried, reaching to grasp fistfuls of hair in distress, and as Kit hang his head with a flinch at the accusation and doors up and down the road began to open, villagers peering outside to see what the shouting was all about, Carrie was suddenly distracted by the sound of hurried footsteps to their right, and when she spotted the witch and wizard who were hurrying towards her she let out a sudden little sob of relief at the sight of them.
At the sight of the pale, distinctly blue-tinged muggle drenched from head to toe and trembling like a leaf, Dora Lupin's pace faltered somewhat and she failed to suppress a loud exclamation of:
"Merlin's balls!"
As he too took a double take at the sight before him, her husband admitted:
"Couldn't have put it better myself..."
And with that, the two of them sprung into action. Within the blink of an eye they had both shrugged off their cloaks and before Carrie could do much else beside sob somewhat shamefully at her predicament, they had practically apparated to her side, Dora had flung both the cloaks and a firm arm about her shoulders, and Remus had reached into his pocket to extract his wand.
Carrie promptly collapsed with a shudder against Dora's shoulder, face contorting woefully as she garbled:
"I...I...I'm so sorry, I just...the steam...it was so sudden and..."
"You're alright, Carrie love." Dora insisted, rubbing a reassuring hand vigorously across the muggle's shoulders in a somewhat vain attempt to warm her. The witch glanced sideways, apparently spotting Kit for the first time despite the persistent shouting from Mrs. Garton, and greeted: "Well would you look at you, Kit Carter! D'you like to take a paddle too?"
Kit let out a nervous little chuckle, only for a familiar voice to shout:
"I'd keep 'er well away from the likes of that one if I were you!"
As Carrie, Dora and Remus turned to spot Edwin stood by his front door, arms folded firmly across his chest, Kit took a visible step backwards. There was a distinctly awkward pause, before Dora cleared her throat purposefully and, despite Edwin's glowering, asked Kit:
"You dragged Carrie out of the water, did you?"
"Yes Mrs. Lupin." Kit mumbled, face ashen from Edwin's hostile eyes upon him.
"Then you're a fine young man, Kit Carter. Don't let anybody tell you otherwise, d'you hear?"
"Yes Mrs. Lupin." Kit murmured obediently, gaze fixated on his feet. It seemed to Carrie that his trembling was from more than just the cold, and he gave a startled jump when Remus stepped up in front of him.
"Hands out, Kit." the werewolf instructed, wand raised, and Carrie blinked a little in surprise a moment later when, with a sharp flick of Remus' wand, bright blue flames burst into life in the palms of Kit's hands. Carrie could feel the warmth from the flickering fire, and yet Kit's hands appeared entirely unaffected by the apparent heat.
"Thank you, Mr. Lupin." Kit murmured, daring a grateful glance up at the werewolf, and upon seeing an increasingly large crowd of villagers gathering outside of their front doors to stare at him, the young man turned abruptly on his heel and dashed back into the trees.
"Goodness, whatever happened to those knee-high little boys who used to run around the village and get themselves into trouble?" Dora wondered as Remus conjured a fresh burst of sapphire fire, which Carrie allowed him somewhat gingerly to pour into her hands. "Honestly, little Kit Carter and Sammy Rhodes...look at them now!"
"Look at them now indeed." Remus muttered somewhat darkly, gazing into the wood with a deep frown, and Dora sighed heavily and murmured:
"What an ugly business..." The Auror gave herself a little shake, grip upon Carrie's shoulder tightening. "Come along then, Carrie love! Quickly now, you're a right state..."
Carrie found herself dried off, plied with an odd mixture of cocoa and foul tasting potion, before being tucked firmly up in bed with an extra later of furs and a hot water bottle. As Dora and Neve fussed and muttered over the bumps and bruises upon her head, the muggle found herself feeling overwhelmingly sleepy, and despite the countless questions and confusion about the "ugly business" and confrontations back outside, she quickly fell into a deep and wonderfully warm slumber. By the time she finally stirred from her sleep, the sun was setting in great streams of pink and orange between the trees outside her bedroom window, and the muggle rose carefully from her bed, hugging a blanket about her shoulders as she wandered towards the door that had been left ajar. Feeling somewhat shy after the day's escapades, she paused to squint out into the main room, where she spied Remus and Dora lounging upon the sofa, the witch's legs dangling over the edge of one arm and her head resting against the werewolf's shoulder. Edwin and his family were nowhere to be seen. Teddy was lying sprawled upon a rug by the fire, toying with the half-empty bottle of wine that his parents were midway through drinking.
"I don't see why!" the youngest Lupin was complaining, frowning deeply and tapping his fingers absent-mindedly against the glass bottle. "It's been hours!"
"She might very well have died, Ted." Remus reminded him flatly, causing Teddy to visibly flinch. "Leave her to sleep the whole day away if she needs to."
Dora took a generous gulp of wine from her glass, before scowling up at the ceiling and exclaiming:
"Bloody typical!"
"I told you so, didn't I?" her husband said, wincing a little when she shifted so abruptly to look round at him that she very nearly sloshed wine into his lap.
"Don't be such a smug git!" the Auror snapped, and when Remus sniggered at her she scrambled up into a sitting position so that she could more easily slap him rebukingly upon the arm. "It's not bloody funny!" she insisted, and the werewolf's expression grew gravely serious and he murmured:
"Of course it's not, darling. There's absolutely nothing funny about it."
Carrie was about to feel quite relieved at Dora's defence when the witch entirely ruined everything by collapsing back against Remus' shoulder in a poor attempt to stifle a sudden bout of giggling.
"You two are utterly wicked." Teddy informed his parents, setting the bottle down so that he could fold his arms firmly across his chest. "I don't see what's so funny about Carrie almost dying!"
"You're not a whole lot better, you know." Dora told him indigently. "Look at how you and Dad laugh at me when I fall down the stairs! I could break bones...!"
"You have broken bones."
"Exactly! What's funny about that? Nothing!"
Teddy opened his mouth to protest, only to promptly close it again.
"There are a whole lot of things in life that aren't funny, Teddy." Remus murmured, gazing into the crackling fire before them. "But we have to laugh at some of them. If we didn't we'd spend half out lives crying instead." He glanced sideways just in time to see Dora draining her glass, prompting him to add: "And then of course alcohol has a habit of fuelling your mother's amusement of the macabre."
"Shut up, Remus." Dora instructed briskly as she reached to set her glass down upon the small coffee table. "Besides, I think you'll find that you're the one who suggested wine before dinner."
Remus reached to wrap an arm around her shoulders, pulling her closer to him as he announced cheerily:
"We're on holiday!"
"Mm...yes we are!" Dora agreed, leaning to press a kiss to his cheek. "Good job, Sweetheart."
"Let's just hope dinner isn't awkward at all after earlier." Remus mused, twirling a stray strand of stray pink hair around his finger, and before Dora could mumble a response Teddy had sat up, gaze upon the pair curious.
"Why would it be awkward?" he asked, and his mother scowled at his curiosity. "Because of Carrie?"
"No, not Carrie..." Dora muttered, tone suddenly dark.
"Or because of Kit Carter?" Teddy went on, only for Remus to tell him:
"We don't mention Kit Carter, Ted. Not whilst we're guests in this house."
"Why not?" Teddy asked, more curious than ever, and when his parents merely exchanged a glance, he told them: "Samuel says we should keep clear of Kit Carter. He says he's got a...a wicked soul..."
"Well he would do, wouldn't he?" Dora muttered disapprovingly. "Utter bollocks if you ask me..."
"Nobody is asking you." Remus interrupted, and his wife sounded vaguely offended when she asked:
"You don't believe what they say about him, do you?"
"I don't know." Remus murmured, frowning deeply. "It seems...unlikely, I suppose. But what do we know? We've not been here since before it happened..."
"Since before what happened?" Teddy asked, utterly bemused, and Remus sighed heavily, reaching to rub a hand across his eyes.
"There's an old legend about this village," Dora said, voice dropping to little more than a whisper, "goes back centuries, the villagers all used to believe it was true."
"What legend?" Teddy whispered, leaning forward eagerly, and the witch told him:
"They used to say there was some sort of monster...an evil soul, they used to call it, that roamed around the woods."
"Cool..." Teddy muttered, only for Remus to mutter:
"It is isn't it? Just like Mildred and her mirror..."
"Supposedly it used to snatch children out of the woods surrounding the village." Dora went on, ignoring Teddy's shudder.
"Virgin maids, if I recall correctly." Remus mused, and Dora gave a rather sleepy nod and agreed:
"That's right, virgin maids to possess...very Medieval! That's where the tradition of sending their daughters to Hogwarts came from. Boys get educated at home and taught about the wildlife, and girls go away to Hogwarts to keep them safe from possession by the monster."
"What about the summer holidays?" Teddy wondered with a frown, to which his mother shrugged and muttered:
"Pot luck." Shifting closer against Remus' side the witch added: "But that's just a legend, obviously...or that's what everybody used to think."
"But now they think it's real?"
"Very much so." Remus sighed, gaze back upon the fire. "It's been like that ever since what happened to Sable."
"Poor girl..." Dora whispered despairingly, reaching to hug Remus' arm to her. "Lovely, she was. Bright as a button."
"Edwin and Neve had a second child, a daughter named Sable." Remus explained, eyes darting towards the front door as if worried he might be overheard. "She was just a little younger than Samuel and the two of them were inseparable. When she was eleven, so Edwin told me, Sable begged and pleaded with her parents not to send her away to Hogwarts. She wanted to stay at home and be home schooled with her brother. Edwin and Neve decided to break with tradition, because by then it was tradition rather than a precaution, and Sable declined her place at Hogwarts and stayed in the village. Then, one day when Sable was sixteen or so, she told her father she was going out into the woods to fetch wood for the fire...and she didn't come back."
"They found her after a few hours..." Dora recalled reluctantly. "Lying by the stream, stone dead. It was a terrible sight, she was very nearly naked and covered in bruises. The Ministry concluded she'd likely been strangled to death."
"They say Sable had been acting oddly for quite some time before she went missing that day, that she'd been quite vacant, distant from the rest of the family."
"Like she'd been bewitched."
"And so the villagers concluded the evil soul in the woods was responsible."
"But Edwin thought it had something to do with Sable's boyfriend, Kit Carter. He thought she'd been acting strangely ever since the two of them had gotten together..."
"And that's how the village came to shun poor Kit. The two accusations got twisted and blurred as time went on, until Edwin had the whole village convinced! They think Kit is the monster. They think he's got a wicked soul."
"But there's no evidence that Kit did anything wrong. Edwin wrote to the Ministry repeatedly asking them to go other the case files again, but they've stopped writing back."
"Still, the villagers don't care what the Ministry has to say." Remus concluded, sighing heavily. "There's not a word that can convince them that Kit's harmless. Especially not Edwin, he's gotten himself entirely convinced."
"Poor man..." Dora murmured, shaking her head, and her gaze upon Teddy grew suddenly piercing as she told him: "It's a tragic and terrible thing, Ted, and the family have never quite gotten over it! Whatever you do, don't mention a word about it, alright?"
"Of course not..." Teddy mumbled, and Carrie shuffled back from the door, turning to gaze around the bedroom.
Sable's bedroom...
Goodness, the muggle thought, hugging the blanket more tightly around her shoulders. She wasn't entirely sure what to make of Remus and Dora's little story, what to think about Kit Carter and the villagers who had turned against him...
He certainly hadn't seemed like the sort of boy who would do something as horrible and ghastly as committing murder! How Edwin and the others could assume such a thing was quite beyond her...
But then Carrie remembered Remus' recalling of Mildred Marchbrook and her mirror, and she reminded herself that not everything or indeed everybody was quite what they first seem.
Carrie gave a little shudder, only to comfort herself at the thought of Dora's assessment of the situation:
Utter bollocks if you ask me!
And Dora and Remus were precisely the people that Carrie would ask. Their judgements of people and situations were golden as far as the muggle was concerned. They were very good at spotting what was trouble and what was nonsense.
Back when Carrie had been at secondary school it had taken Remus all of a second to conclude that the legend surrounding the Mirror of Mildred Marchbrook was complete and utter rubbish, and later it had taken him just a few minutes longer to glance at Carrie's letters and realise that Mildred was in fact trouble of the highest order.
And he couldn't have been more right.
As for Dora, no manner of hearsay or gossip could dissuade her from making her own judgements about people; and quite frankly if she could have the paranoid tendencies of Mad-Eye Moody bellowed repeatedly in her ear on a daily basis for half a decade or more, and still think somebody trustworthy, Carrie couldn't help but feel that the person in question was likely to be exactly that.
As for Edwin and the other villagers, Carrie couldn't help but feel that they were by no means bad people either. Grief was an awful, awful thing, the muggle recalled, and it had a habit of making people behave irrationally, unreasonably. Grief had driven Carrie herself to say the most terrible things in the past, she recalled, and she wouldn't judge others for behaving in a similar fashion.
She felt a little uneasy, stood in the dead girl's bedroom, and so she wandered out to join the trio in the sitting room, feeling quite relieved at their casual greetings and lack of comment upon her earlier antics. Indeed, Remus and Dora seemed much too preoccupied with squabbling over the latter's attempts to steal the remainder of the former's glass of wine. As Carrie dropped down upon the rug at Teddy's side and the youngest Lupin reached to wrap an arm around her waist, pulling her closer to him, the squabbling abruptly shifted from minor fidgeting to something bordering on small scale warfare, as Dora abandoned her feeble tugging upon her husband's sleeve and resorted to lunging sideways at him, hand making a mad snatch towards the wine glass as she let out a small shriek of laughter. Remus managed to hold the glass just out of her reach and she only succeeded in collapsing in a sniggering heap in his lap.
"It's good wine...!" the werewolf teased, about to take a victorious sip of the precious liquid, only to provoke a fresh attack from the witch who managed to seize hold of him somewhat brutally by the wrist...
Carrie flinched in anticipation and sure enough within seconds the glass slipped from Remus' grasp, splashing crimson wine up into the air before hitting the floor with a crash. The couple instantly froze, she still grasping hold of him by the wrist, and as wine trickled down her chin, accumulating in a vibrant stein upon the front of her blouse, Dora paused to lick the liquid from her lips before exclaiming:
"Oh shit! Look what you've done now..."
"What I've done? What I'VE done..."
As the bickering began anew, amid Dora's struggling to simultaneously mop the wine from herself and retrieve her wand, which Remus promptly prised from her pocket and threw over the back of the sofa, Teddy observed his parents' childish antics with a look of deep exasperation and, reaching to take hold of his girlfriend by the hand, suggested:
"We should probably leave them to, it before it becomes any more violent and Dad breaks a hip...or worse, before it goes the other way..."
Carrie allowed him to help her to her feet, and the two of them made a beeline for the bedroom door. Teddy reached to push the door shut behind them, muffling his mother mid-cry of: I can't believe you just did that!, before turning to face Carrie, leaning back against the door.
"Mental..." the wizard concluded, shaking his head, and Carrie sniggered, glancing self-consciously down at her shoes as she admitted:
"I like it...I mean it's nice..." Shifting her feet she added: "That I've not ruined their day or...or something..."
Teddy took a small step forward, reaching to take her hands in his.
"Oh I shouldn't worry about ruining Mum and Dad's anything, Sweetheart." he assured her, smiling reassuringly. "They've had far too much practice, they take anything crazy or dangerous you manage to conjure up in their stride. You don't scare or traumatise them. Not even if you try to die of hypothermia."
As he leant to press a kiss to her forehead, Carrie found herself smiling in embarrassment.
"What about you?" she wondered, drawing his hands forward until he could settle them upon her hips. "Are you an unshakable rock too?"
Teddy puffed his cheeks in exasperation, burying his face in her hair.
"Merlin, no!" the metamorphmagus groaned, crushing the muggle against his chest in a suddenly vice-like hold. "You've scared me half to death today...again! I swear, my precious little danger magnet, one of these days you're going to be the death of me!"
And as she threw her arms tightly around him, face blooming pink in embarrassment at this new nickname, Carrie Winters had absolutely no idea that, despite her boyfriend's melodramatic exclamation, she was indeed going to find that one day soon she might be the death of someone...