At Crossroads
Wiccachic2000's prompt: Harry Potter, Haiti: Voodoo Lwa/Loa/L'wha (There are things you believe in. What then of things believing in you? We are not as alone on Earth as we think.)
Legba clicked his teeth in a gap toothed grin.
"Well done little one." He tipped his straw hat to Harry (who shivered and stared and made no motion to acknowledge him, not seeing him - yet). Legba, unbothered, reached into the body of Tom Riddle, the soul there was a scarred mess of shattered slivers.
"And you?" Legba looks down at the soul in his hand and shook his head, "you're a mess is what you are." Yet Legba remembered that there had been such promise in him, once. Ah well, sometimes you had to press hard to make sure what you had was diamond and not glass.
"You let me loose, my soul, and my body – the first time!" It was a quivering protect, while not of innocence, of blame. Legba, true enough, had had his hand in this.
"Did I?" Legba asked, looking about as if he expected an answer quickly.
"You did." Out of shadow the answer came, though no lips moved, Ghede spoke and Legba let the seven split soul pass to him.
"I'll not thank you for this." Smoke or shadow swirled between the two of them, disgruntled and disgusted.
"No, I don't think you would. He won't either, but this is a making. And he fixed my mistake: he'll be worthy – of that I know!" Legba rubbed his hands together, eager to be on with his job. Ghede laughed, his small dark body shaking (for rarely did Legba admit his mistakes). Legba rolled his eyes, but Ghede sighed and watched then.
There was a long silence, as they watched Harry shake and sob, for he had taken a life, and was but a child.
"Him…?" Legba nodded, quite pleased that Ghede had so spoken, so agreed.
"Him…." And it was a promise, a plan. For the loa have children, none know how, but –sometimes – the loa were housed in mortal flesh once before they became what they are now.
"Good," Ghede decides with a firm nod, (though he sneers to look at Tom Riddle's soul) "you choose well, for none should be glad to kill – and I do not like the taking of little ones, time or no time." In this Legba agreed with his reasoning, Ghede was the first man to die so saw all as his children, taking them from Legba at the crossroads so they would not be frightened.
Legba nods, his eyes upon his making that he shapes painstakingly, and when he glances again to Ghede he is gone.
Legba but waits for Harry to ask what he must, in what in his life comes next – now that he's fulfilled the prophesy. He'll not know what else waits, and Legba can't wait to say, but first he must be asked.
"I've done it." Harry says softly to empty air, and then softly like a breeze, "what do I do now?"