Better Than Bedfellows
Abby Ebon
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Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, better try next year?
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Air Dry
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Harry shakes in Ollivander's grip, like a leaf clinging to a limb and fearing the wind, fearing the fall. All around him is sky as far as the eye can see, he doesn't dare look downward. What his attention below might call out of the depths of earth, out of the realm of the dead and the immortal.
"Easy, easy." Ollivander sooths and Harry wonders why he should be easy at all. He fears, but he doesn't know the source, if it is humanity fleeing in the face of fae, if it is the nature of a wind-born theos free from earth, or the fae in him fearing being away from Underhill.
"Does it get easier?" Harry quips back, and Ollivander's laugh rumbles though his skin and bone.
"Easy isn't for the likes of us, we'd get bored." Ollivander says that word as if it's a real danger, like a death blow. Like a threat.
"Why did you never tell me?" Harry asks, turning the questions over in his mind and figuring this for the best way and time to ask. With the nature of theos being soothed around them, Ollivander knows his meaning.
"I am not he, and he is not as you now know me. You have shared your memories of us, and from what I know of myself I think it was in part for protection, you needed it among the fae, and I gave it freely. He– I – had lost much with war, parted from mortals and forced to flee to Underhill, there would have been the need for something of theos to remind me of my nature: to keep one such as me sane, to have a bond beside me." Ollivander spoke calmly of it, of protection offered, of protection gained. Harry laughed, dry and half a choking cough. He was near to insanity, near to tears; such was the nature of his body that he was torn by his own magic, his nature, his potential in power.
"That I know - that isn't my question at all." Ollivander knew that, but it was easier to start with what was known then to go into the unknown unheeding.
"I know." Ollivander spoke softly, if he felt sorrow or amusement, Harry was not touched by it at all.
"You came into my wand shop and knew my name, my mother's name, the nature of theos – how was I to guess you did not know what that meant? If it seemed plain to me, then it must have been so for your Ollivander, I can only guess." Harry glanced to Ollivander, and his silver eyes, his thin and wiry frame seemed like some wind spirit, that would flee upon a breeze.
"There was a bond already between Voldemort –and me, from the day I was supposed to die, and lived. The boy who lived." Harry spat those final words, like some cursed thing clinging to him.
"When you died." Harry begins, takes a breath, swallows, and tries again.
"When my Ollivander died." Harry feels Ollivander nod at this, and does not know what to think, approval for working toward saying a fact without cringing and clinging to Ollivander as if the wind and wild might tear him away, or natural agreement?
"When you died, when my Ollivander died – I stopped living as mortals do – but Tom Riddle, already dead once, soul splintered asunder, he took your immortality from me, though our bond!" It was this Harry had realized beneath Underhill, that Voldemort of his time and proper place was a god – a theos, was likely now King of Winter, with the host of Unseelie casting the long shadow over a world at war between Light and Dark, muggle and magic.
Harry's outrage was a thing thick in the air, something that could be sipped or swallowed down to spill over all.
"That is how the facts stand, and as our bond was meant to do it protected you, sent you here, as the bond between you and Tom was meant, it took from you – life, immortality. Now, my question to you, Harry – is what are you going to do about that? Here and now, or there and then?" Ollivander asked, softly as a whisper, as if he did not already know the answer – as if he feared it.
"First," Harry says with a soft rasp, not knowing if his words will be a list or a question set for Ollivander's approval, "first, Goblin's will have wands. Second, Tom Riddle's Diary I must trust myself to have done away with. I will take the Horcrux beneath us. Helga Hufflepuff's Cup is in Bellatrix Lestrange's vault, then Salazar Slytherin's Locket in Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place. Dumbledore will have Marvolo Gaunt's Ring, and within Hogwart's heart, Room of Requirement sits Rowena Ravenclaw's Diadem."
"Will you cross Dumbledore? The Order of the Phoenix?" Ollivander asks this as if he does not mind, but Harry knows otherwise.
"Why should I? Three members of the Order stand below us, our goals are the same – and I better like the look of things with them beside me – or standing behind them." Harry leers, and Ollivander laughs softly. It is good to hear, and it makes all that Harry suggests seem a possibility rather then any difficulty.
Oh, but Harry is no fool, he knows it will be.
"What of your younger self?" Ollivander asks - as if to remind him of that, of a thing that Harry can not forget - would not forget, if he could: he cherishes that, loves this. This the second chance, his chance to see things right, as they should be. As, he vows silently, they will be.
The question Ollivander is really asking is: then what?
"We will have to share. Elder ought to set the example, after all." Harry is teasing, musing, but he is as serious as he is not. He thinks of Sirius, of Remus, of Ollivander – all here, all alive and well: all of them – not his.
Truth is, Harry has no answers: he has the most deadly disease of all: hope.
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"What happened down there?" Is the first thing Sirius demands of Bill. He's seen what Bill did, what Remus did, that Harry had fled from the cart and Griphook, the vaults, Underhill, as if something hunted him. He had gone to Ollivander, and Bill had seen them stolen by the wind, flown up and away. As if distance might dull the memory.
They've seen that, but they've seen so much less.
"I- I can't say." The words tumble out of his lips, and Bill realizes them for truth. He can't say he hasn't the words: his tongue feels tied in a knot, a trap.
"It's Underhill we were welcomed in, back to the fae, and Elder is no mere friend of fae, he is family, he is…a power, a potential." Griphook says simply, with a shrug.
"He is no fae." Remus says, and with his nose, he ought to know. Bill thinks that too, would agree, if he hadn't seen what he had. If he hadn't heard those fae speak of things he heard but feels he shouldn't have. If he understands half of it, Jim Elder – that fae friend, that goblin friend, would be a powerful foe.
"He might be. He is caught between fae and theos. Now he knows, now he must be one or the other." Griphook agrees in his own way, and disagrees. Just like that, as if it is so simple, he walks off toward the stairs. He'll go to Harry, and Bill feels as if he must follow.
He ought to, but Sirius is in his face, his hands on Bill's shoulders, his sea storm blue eyes search Bill's demandingly.
"You know what theos is, what it means?" Bill has never believed in ignorance, has tried all his life to overcome his own ego born of being a pure blood wizard. Here is Sirius Black, who is pure blood and dangerously rich – if he weren't wanted for killing. If not for that fact, that he's supposed to be a murderer, Sirius would live a pampered life, a life of wizards and witches worshiping the ground he walks on. Of never knowing – never minding or caring – what else that is magical and strange and not human is out there.
There are magical creatures, immortal beings, which think of themselves as greater then any mere wizard or witch. They were born out of primitive, ancient nature. Their blood is golden flowing, a force of magic: the source of magic, of life. The fae are among them – lesser, but still of that blood, but the fae fall gladly to their faces in the wake of a slumbering theos.
Theos, which fell, which hid, which were abandoned by wizards and witches alike, and the reason muggles are less then they, was they worshiped the theos into mud and earth. That is why children with a muggle parent are called mud blood: out of resentment for what magic is lost to wizard and witch and the world.
Into a sleep, where the great natures of their primordial blood overcome their minds, their individuality: they were unified. In that unity of blood, they forget in sleep, a sleep like death.
"Gods." Bill says, because he believes it. He's seen it.
Sirius lets him go: goes in turn silent and still, shocked into it. Even pure blood wizards and witches (especially them) know that ancient meaning – that hints, that lingers, what it meant: the longing, the want of power, to serve power.
Pure bloods are called such because they have a tie to the theos, to the fae.
Once, there was more to magic, there was a reason for chanting and dances and complicated spell casting, and wands: that magic was power, was force that drew from the ancient theos. Now history blurs it, says that simple is better, small words and motions.
Don't make too much of magic, you might wake the theos, the sleepers.
It's a dizzying and heady rush of want and fear, Bill thinks – that that might be what is happening might be true.
So Bill climbs, and feels as if he's leaving the weight of the world behind. He wonders if the theos feel something of the same, if it might hint to the reason Harry was so pale and sick looking, fighting the call for silence and stillness and sleep of his theos nature.
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"Gods." Remus echoes faintly, softly, in the wake of Bill's words. Wizards and witches alike don't use that word; don't speak of the names of theos. Its better forgotten, better unlooked for, like the theos themselves.
But now, unlooked for, they've fallen into bed with a theos. Or someone very like becoming one, Bill claim rings in his ears – and there is no reason to doubt Bill.
"Harry." Sirius argues softly, urges that into mind and perspective. How can both be true, both be right?
School friends grown up together trade glances, they remember Jimmy Elder's touch and flesh, have –in fact -tasted it. They remember that power, that draw. The urge to take and possess, and give and protect: it was powerful, and maybe now Sirius thinks, not really natural.
Or, more then natural, of nature: of magic.
Remus moves and Sirius moves with him, they follow Bill up the stairway, and when they reach the height of it, they hear Harry Potter, not theirs, but a stranger out of time and place that calls himself after James (which is as much his name as their Harry, Sirius's godson, Remus's student) to Jimmy – and Elder, which must be true enough.
"Wands I promised the goblins in word for deed, and wands Ollivander and I will make now for you." There he is sitting on the floor, with Ollivander at his back.
In his hand, between his fingers, he rolls stones. They are green and red and beat, as if a heart is within them. He buries them in a bowl of dirt, like seeds. He sits and waits, and is rewarded – from the bowl of dirt springs up a tree from bloodstones. It is Ollivander that sets out a hand expectantly, and the tree with its red bark and green leaves bows, and gives over a limb to break.
"Bloodstone red wood, martyr's stone at its core: six inches." Ollivander pronounces, not without pride - and Griphook takes what is offered him, what was grown and given freely by a tree born of stone seed. He looks at the wand in his hand with awe.
"Of course, with goblins, the wood would be grown from the core stone: there will be differences, variations – but this is a start." Sirius has never thought before of what goes into wand making, but it seems both simple and terribly unique magic. Remus has eyes only for that tree; of his thoughts Sirius can't glean any from his face.
"In return, anything." Griphook breaths his eyes on them filled with reverence, it feels wrong – and awful - and he means it as right.
"In Bellatrix Lestrange's vault is Helga Hufflepuff's Cup. I mean only to borrow it; I'll make no thief of you - though there will not much to return of an empty vessel." Harry – or Elder, who might be who Harry becomes, asks.
Griphook bows low, wand at his side, and it's a silent agreement.