Better Than Bedfellows
Abby Ebon
O.o.O.o.O.o.O
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, the copyrights that is – the books I'd be lying to say I do not own those.
O.o.O.o.O.o.O
Scrub At Corners
O.o.O.o.O.o.O
It's funny, that word "theos", to the goblins it explains everything – for Harry it raises questions he's taken for granted as answered into everything he thinks and feels. At the sight of Ollivander, the source of those questions – his reason why – he feels eased, like those bumbling questions without answers raised hackles that needed petted down and soothed.
Harry sighs when Ollivander looks to him without looking for him.
"Are you coming along then?" Harry asks of him, and Ollivander eyed the entrance to the tunnels, without even a goblin near to point them out, and silently shakes his head. His instincts are just that good, that he knows where Harry is in a room without looking, that he knows the way into the earth without a goblin to point the way. Out of his shop, never able to return, it makes the little oddities Ollivander can't hide stand out in underline, he isn't trying to hide – so it's good the goblins knew without a word, and here Ollivander doesn't have to hide.
"There is work to be done, if you'll remember the goblins and their wands." It strikes him then what Ollivander is doing, yellow measuring tape flicking about the goblins like a stray bird caught indoors. They tolerate it so stoically that no wizards or witches are noticing anything odd, and Harry for their sake doesn't smile.
"I've not forgotten, but we can't use the ordinary woods and cores, they require something…fae." While the goblins were of a branch of fae nature, they were not precisely on good standing with the main family kin of the courts of fae: in fact, they had chosen to become outcaste, if Harry read and remembered what he'd guessed and been told in subtle hints.
That did not mean the goblins had no way to Underhill.
That way led undoubtedly, downward.
Ollivander nodded absently the acceptance of this, and waved a hand as if dismissing him. It was truly a gesture of dear parting, and Harry looked away least he betray himself with some daunting expression.
Instead he looked to Sirius and Remus, and smiled charmingly.
"Well, well, may I trust you both with the keeping of Ollivander? Do not let harm come to him, nor let him go off alone. He's the keystone to this endeavor." Harry did not have to look to Ollivander to feel his stare on his back, or the rolling of silver grey eyes. He kept his tone light but firm, and ignored the disbelieving looks that Remus and Sirius threw each other.
"Hold it! you're going down there, alone?" Sirius rarely sputtered when he meant to snarl, and Harry took a twisted delight in the way Sirius' eyes flicked over the gathered goblins quietly eyeing him, as if pleading help - and the wizards and witches who hadn't a clue to what was going on here. To make this truly historic, Harry well knew he needed the full favor and backing of the court of fae – both of them, at that, with the goblins he had a way through the doors, but he must stand on his own before them.
No presiding godfather for a guardian, or powerful and protective wizard lovers at his beck and call. Such ties could be felt by the fae, and they would not respect Harry for bringing it before them.
"I go with the friend of fae, nothing would dare a goblin's wrath beneath in the vaults. Bill will better redeem value and face going with us." Griphook raises his sharp chin in protest, seeming to be offended at Sirius not noting the protection his presence brought Harry, goblin friend of fae. Harry alone had claimed that title and tie, and now he must prove and support that claim in meeting the court of fae face to face. He would not put his friends – family – lovers, in danger by dragging them down with him. It was better this way, and Griphook approved of it, wanted to prove his worth and redeem the way Bill had acted in the eyes of their goblin friend.
Bill frowned down at Griphook, and Harry was loath to bring him – no great friend of his here and now– into this all unknowing. It simply doesn't sit well with Harry, that friend or not, Bill Weasley doesn't know what he's getting into.
"I am no greater danger with them then you, Sirius." Harry urges softly, a truth that Harry isn't referring to the Griphook and Bill, but a truth about the court of fae that isn't lie. They will think he means them to respect his escorts, so as not to insult the goblins.
It is better they don't know the goblins would sooner cut off a finger then take insult by a wand-maker that names himself a friend of the goblins, a friend of fae. The protection of Gringott's heir and a wily curse breaker are the least of resources that Harry could claim from the goblins: he could have the backing of an army and the dozen high clan heads of goblin to surround him.
That he does not earns him better standing among them, their earnest belief in him a drink for a dying man, a feeling that makes him reckless and willing.
He sees the way Remus eyed Bill anew, that that claim offered little reassurance in it's weight, with Bill's reaction to Sirius freshly imprinted upon a wolf's mind and senses. Better that neither former teacher nor godfather know to where exactly Harry is going alone, best they think it's only the vaults.
That open distrust that disdain from Remus ducks Bill's head in shame. Harry almost expects the full grown curse breaker to shuffle his feet like an earnest child gone awry. That he does not only reassures Harry on the part of his self control, not maturity.
"The sooner I do this, the sooner we'll all have the fun of going to the Ministry of Magic and declaring Sirius Black a innocent, goblins armed with wands at our back! Think fondly of that while I do a bit of a tour?" Harry pleads, and with the memory of other less innocent but no less earnest pleas they had granted spilling from his lips, perhaps it encourages them to go along with Harry's mad plan.
Whatever the workings of it, reluctantly Sirius spills his reserve with a shrug; it's for Remus to say yes or nay. Amber eyes glint with the promise of death if his trust is misplaced, as Remus locks eyes with Griphook and gives a reluctant nod.
As that is surely the least of Harry's worries if this fails, he gives a cheery grin and two hugs gained before a wave of his hand for Ollivander sends him on his way. With the door closed shut tight behind him, Harry turns to Bill.
"I do not care if you do not like me, or the company I keep, wizard. I do not pretend with you now to go on a tour of the worthy and wealthy goblin vaults. To send a willing man armed against an enemy he knows nothing of is a dreadful thing to me, as I have seen many such men die where it might be prevented. So I warn you now, we go to the court of fae, this goblin and I. If you go with us, take heed that I will do what I may to bring you out again alive and keep your mind and body as you went in. If you turn aside now, it is not as a coward within the court of fae, but I will have your binding vow that you will not speak of where I go to those that love me." Harry met Bill's eyes throughout his pretty speech, so the wizard – his friend in heart – would know Harry for the truth of his words.
Bill swallowed it down, looking aside while Griphook pretended not to hear, sitting at the front of a cart on railed that went down and down out of sight in the dark. There were no lights along the tracks, as wizards and witches with wealth below might prefer.
"Damn you to Morgan Le Fay's hell, I'll go." Bill cursed, bitter at being questioned in loyalty.
Harry chuckled, and looked over his shoulder to say, as he claimed into the cart.
"That is precisely to where we are going." Harry didn't think Bill believed him, stomping into the cart in Harry's wake. He'd learn better soon enough, and with a glance to Harry, Griphook set the cart in motion, down it went, with dark so thick it swallowed sound and sight.
Harry closed his eyes and breathed it in; this was as close to death as one such as he would come. Down and down, into the deep and falling faster, Harry only opened his eyes when the cart halted with a protesting squeal. Griphook had gotten out and knocked now on a door of wood inlayed with gems that gave off shimming light.
Bill looked to Harry, and his hesitation was clear on his face. Harry gave him a grin, meant to be a reassurance, but clearly anything but.
"Seelie Court, take heed the knock of goblin kin!" Griphook called at the door, Harry and Bill standing at either side of him. The door leveled up and away, as if it had never dared to bar their way. Harry took a breath, and held it, to see the heaven of a fae court gathered in a sprawl before his eyes.
The walls were not out of earthen dirt or stone dust, but proud standing trees lining the room and halls, as if pillars, arching up and reaching to twine in a roof of green. All was open air, and the floor was a carpet of spring flowers and green grass. At the heart of it sat an old women enthroned, there was dignity in her and nobility that came from birth and a long life. She wore her age boldly, and it suited her, with cotton white hair and pale eyes and skin smooth and white. She was not human, after all. She was a mother.
At her right side was her daughter who sat in the grass as if a mere girl, not a woman grown with a girl child blinking up at Harry as if he were some cloud's shadow unexpectedly to cross the path of her sky.
"Mother of Summer, Queen of Seelie, and Lady of Spring, I am a friend of the fae." Harry went to his knees before them, before their door, not daring to speak or intrude on this family further. Bill looked down at him prone on the floor with wide eyes, but didn't dare move, or look up at the three, instead he froze and Harry did not blame him for it.
"Are you really?" Asked the little girl sweetly, sitting cuddled and cherished in her mother's lap. Her question demanded an answer; one Harry willingly gave, daring looking up fondly at her with a smile.
"Aye, Auxesia." Harry felt the heavy eyes of the Queen of Seelie turn up to regard him anew, blinking slowly as if waking. Harry stayed very still caught in that gaze that could bless or damn him in truth. Harry realized his danger, keenly, he should have waited for a introduction from Griphook, but he had spoken as if he knew them – as well as he knew them in his own time and place. That mistake could cost him.
Auxesia, Lady of Spring, giggled charmingly. Harry did not mistake that soft sound for the danger of his death passing, but it's coming - like the approaching storm.
"You know my daughter, you know us." The Queen of Seelie spoke, at her words, the garden, the heart of the Seelie, went silent and still. It was disturbing, that a place that looked like it should have bird song and singing maidens was a grove tucked into Underhill. Harry did not doubt that unseen eyes were focused upon him, he was mad to want this so dearly – the attention of the court of fae.
"How…?" The Mother of Summer demanded, squinting down at Harry as if she might still answer her own question by memory and sight alone.
"Suffer my memory, my word for no offence meant." One did not ask the Seelie, one did not question them, nor dare thank them.
"Where then will we find you?" In what time, the Mother of Summer meant. Harry licked his lips, gaze on the grass at her feet.
"Now, as then, Damia – I come as a fugitive of war, its heart, its end. Your dearest friend…." Damia, Mother of Summer, stood to walk to where Harry knelt prone at her door.
"No friend of mine shall suffer the growing dark or cold. None of my great family has suffered to taste the dirt for my favor, rise up and take my hand, little theos." Damia petted his hair, and cradled his jaw when Harry looked up at her, his living green eyes bled silver, and Damia smiled, her own silver eyes shined, and the dark of the doorway drew away, leaving Harry on his hands and knees in the grass, with Griphook and Bill still standing silently at his side.
Harry dared to offer his hand to her, and she took it firmly and brought him to his feet with her grip alone.
"Your memory, if it pleases?" Damia asked with a gentle smile that hid steel.
Harry nodded, and brought his finger to his head, from the hair there he brought forth a silver thread that he offered to Damia who took it in her free hand – their hands still joined in a grip that it was not in Harry to break – and brought the hair to her own lips, with a dart of her quick tongue, Damia swallowed his thread of memory.
"Ah, I see. Hegemone." Her grown daughter with a crown of gold over her brow, looked the Mother of Summer with a crown of silver, and Damia pointedly bowed her head to Harry.
"We name this one James Elder. We name him fosterling of the court of fae. We name him favored of Damia." Boldly the grandmother brought Harry's hand to her lips to kiss. Hegemone tilted her head in acknowledgement of this fact.
"We name you Jimmy, who makes us giggle. We name you friend of fae, so there is no lie in your claims. We name you as acknowledged, for grandmother makes no mistakes in family." Auxesia chirped, springing from her mother's lap to encircle Harry's legs in a hug. From the tangle of her wheat blond hair, blue eyes blossomed. Harry could not help but kiss her cheek.
"We name the theos born of the bond of Ollivander, son of Chione. We name you equal. We name you brother." Hegemone, Queen of Seelie, as her mother and daughter had before her, spoke. Thrice said by these three it could not be denied in the past, in present, and the future –that his place was here.
Hegemone head tilted to his, but neither now named equals would bluntly bow before each other. To do so would be an insult. Harry choked back on his feelings, least they spill from his lips unheeded, he could no more thank them now then he could before.
"What you seek here, you have found. A witness..?" Damia turned her eyes to Griphook and Bill.
"I witness." Griphook agreed, bowing his head before the silver eyed and snow haired grandmother.
"Aye." Bill drawled in agreement, eyes to the grassy ground.
"Aye!" It was a murmur that became a roar upon voices of the wind. From the shadows of trees, shy shapes edged closer to the lit glade.
Harry let his breath go, easy and free, and closed his eyes to hear and feel the warmth of air around him. It felt like home there could be no denying his place was here ever after, and no one could deny him his rights or his name. He didn't realizing he was smiling until he looked to Bill and Bill smiled back, full of the same warmth.
Hegemone, from her grassy seat, gestured Harry to her side. Harry went unhurried, and settled on the grass beside her, there in the dirt Harry blinked to see the family of fae from which Hegemone had traced it back to the theos.
What made fae was the blood of theos, but to be theos was to be more. For one, theos had boundaries among each other, descending from the earth and sky made certain of it. There was the nature in parentage, and in personality –and of that power of an individual.
Ollivander, born of Poseidon, king of the sea and Chione, goddess of snow – daughter of Boreas great northern winter wind, out of Eos the dawn and Astraios of the stars, son of ruling Crius and Eurybia, mistress of the sea: while Eos was daughter of Hyperion of light, Theia of sight, the three – Hyperion, Theia, and Crius, children of great Gaea of the earth itself and Ouranus, boundary of the sky. Ollivander was in his nature – in the nature of his theos family – bidden above earth.
At the same time, Ollivander was Unseelie, as all children of cold and ruthless Boreas favored.
It was from the brother of Boreas, west wind Zephyrus of spring to which the Seelie descended, when Chloris, goddess of flowers and spring in her own right, became mother of Karpos and Carpo.
Carpo with King Ericthonius, the triple son of Hephaestus and Athena though raised up by Gaea, Carpo was mother of Damia, Harry traced that family line that Hegemone had drawn into the dirt. His eyes met hers, for if Damia was Mother of Summer, then Ollivander surely was Father of Winter.
Harry laughed then, a twisted sound that choked him.
Ollivander had never told him, and for what reason would his Ollivander had? What chance? All the fae of Underhill, Seelie and Unseelie, had welcomed Ollivander with open arms, and embraced Harry just as unquestioningly – as family. Now Harry knew why.
Caught between theos and not, Harry was closer tied to the fae, and in his own right – the broken tie with Ollivander would turn him into a theos…unless he took another path - unless he claimed a throne as King of Unseelie, and tied himself instead to Underhill. The Unseelie were deadlier by far, unpredictable and fickle, lawless - giving all fae a worse name, for Ollivander, Father of Winter, was theos, a god – and there was no fae King to claim the Unseelie, to rule them.
Harry could be that King of Unseelie, an inheritance from his Ollivander.
"To be fae or to be theos, to what end." Hegemone met his eyes, and nodded her head, solemn and sure that the meaning of her words had sunk in.
"It is your path, it is your choice." Auxesia scrubbed the family line away in the dirt with her foot, and tugged Harry upward. Numbly, he followed the little Lady of Spring, past the door and into the cart of goblin making, she waved goodbye as he went away and up, out of sight, but Harry couldn't find it in himself to respond in kind. He felt Bill's worried eyes, and saw Griphook's white knuckles, and couldn't think of a word to say, to reassure, nor a motion to make to respond.
He felt lost, and all he knew, all he was sure of, was that Ollivander - his Ollivander - had had a great deal to tell him, and had died too soon. It was meant that when a theos died, as his Ollivander had, the bond would make Harry into theos - but it hadn't, and what Harry he had lost, the Dark Lord Voldemort had gained. For none could deny the marked bond between Voldemort and Harry, when it was as plainly upon his brow as lightning dancing in silver and gold light. Yet, Harry was still bonded to a theos - to his Lord Voldemort, and not human for it.
Far from it, as far as the theos had fallen and faded, the fae had risen.
Perhaps it was meant to be, that Harry has come to this time, this place, where he may claim the Unseelie of Underhill, a fae throne, to be King.
Harry takes a shaky breath as he sets eyes on Ollivander, again, and maybe it is Harry's pale face or shaken wide eyes, but Ollivander knows - can just tell - and enforces him, enfolds him in limbs and wind, and Harry finds the view of Diagon Alley soothes and settles him.
O.o.O.o.O.o.O