I'm back! And it hasn't been a year! Funny how far my expectations for myself has degraded. Well, I hope you guys are safe and well wherever you are. Please do take care!
So at this point I should also add that, I've accidentally made Hadria more OP earlier than I had originally planned. I think some of you would already have an idea of how powerful she is, but just in case any of you are still not quite aware, this is a... warning? I also did not intend for Draco to find out. The chapter ran away from me and I decided... not to drag it back.
Otherwise, enjoy, I guess?
Pairings: Potential Hadria (FemHarry) x Tom Riddle, but more platonic than romantic, other pairings undecided. See A/N at the end of the chapter.
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter
Beta-ed by: Miso_sleepy
Chapter Eighteen: Some Rules Are Broken Accidentally
"Dis aliter visum." It seemed otherwise to the gods. — Virgil
The day came, the one that Hadria had been waiting for. The Day of Detention. She had been wondering how much things would stay the same and how much would change. It seemed like their Fated Forbidden Forest Foray was something inevitable.
They were called to stay back after Potions one day, and Professor Snape told them that they would be serving detention at eleven o'clock that night. They were to meet Filch in the entrance hall, and he would bring them over.
"Bring us where?" Draco asked, once they were out of Snape's earshot, for he had all but burned holes in all their backs with his Extra Stern glare as they walked out, evidently still displeased over their misconduct.
"You don't think they'll make us weed the school grounds at night, would they?" Pansy asked, which was a somewhat reasonable guess considering how it was implied that the detention would be held outside. Although there were really very few reasonable detentions of the outdoor variety that would be held in the dark. Actually, Hadria couldn't really think of any.
"Wand-lighting Charms are a thing," Hadria tried. But they all knew that that would require them to weed while holding their wands in their mouths. Then again, since when was any detention easy? It was, after all, called detention for a reason.
That night, they met Filch at the doors of the castle, and he was suspiciously joyful as he led them away into the darkness. Filch and joy were words that should not be put together. Unless it involved student torture.
"Hang you by your wrists from the ceiling for a few days," as he was saying. He said many things, all of which were about punishments that they were really glad had died out. Although Hadria sometimes did wonder if Dumbledore thought a castle full of ghosts and one poltergeist wasn't enough, and hired someone who was for all purposes a real-life bogeyman, just to scare the children.
"We're heading towards the dragon hut," Blaise commented, ignoring Filch. 'Dragon hut' was what they now called Hagrid's hut, because no one was going to forget that event any time soon.
"I don't like this," said Draco uneasily. "I don't like this at all." Hadria thought his sense of self-preservation was probably the strongest of all of them.
Pansy just rolled her eyes. "Draco, we're standing between the son of the Black Widow and the Girl-Who-Lived. What are you afraid of?"
"Well, it's into the forest you're going and I'm much mistaken if you'll all come out in one piece."
They turned to stare at Filch who was grinning nastily at them.
Draco's voice was suddenly pitched higher. "The forest? Aren't there werewolves—" Pansy patted him heavily on the back and he shut up like a pale-faced talking doll that got switched off. But Filch was already on a roll, practically radiating glee.
"That's your problem, isn't it?" said Filch. "Should've thought of them werewolves before you got in trouble, shouldn't you?"
Then Hagrid came striding out to meet them, fully equipped with a crossbow and arrows, and Fang trotting after him.
Now Pansy was concerned.
"He needs a crossbow?" She whispered to Hadria. "We're not going hunting in the forest, are we?"
"Oh," said Blaise. Under other circumstances, Hadria would have associated that sound with flushed cheeks, rapid heartbeats, breathlessness, and shining eyes. Well, looking at Blaise, his eyes were indeed glimmering in the dark.
"I haven't hunted anything in a long time," he said with a wide grin.
"I think he's in the wrong House," Hadria muttered to Pansy. But before she could reply, Hagrid cut in with a gruff, "We're not huntin' anythin' tonight."
Filch had already been dismissed while they had been preoccupied, and he was just a skulking shadow paired with a bobbing light heading back to the castle, leaving them with Hagrid, who, Hadria admitted, looked distinctively fiercer carrying a crossbow at night.
Draco was a white ghost not-so-discreetly edging around Pansy to come closer to Hadria, while Blaise had fallen into uncharacteristic sullen silence.
"Right then," said Hagrid, "Now, listen carefully, 'cause it's dangerous what we're gonna do tonight, an' I don' want no one takin' risks. Follow me over here a moment."
Hadria took one look at Draco and saw that he seemed torn between furiously blurting out something about his father and whimpering like a remarkable impression of Ron Weasley faced with giant spiders.
And as Hagrid led them to the edge of the dark forest, Pansy said, rather matter-of-factly, "Hadria, if we come across anything savoury, it's nothing personal, alright? So, don't hold it against me."
"Look there," said Hagrid in the background. "See that stuff shinin' on the ground? Silvery stuff? That's unicorn blood. There's a unicorn in there that's been hurt badly by summat."
"… What?" Hadria turned away from Hagrid to stare at Pansy.
"This is the second time in a week. I found one dead last Wednesday. We're gonna try an' find the poor thing. We might have ter put it out of its misery."
"And what if whatever had hurt the unicorn finds us first?" said Draco, brows furrowed.
"Then Hadria would have two people using her as a meat shield," Blaise piped up, evidently fast recovered from his momentary bout of sulking.
"Hadria will not be used as a meat shield", said Hagrid loudly. "There's nothin' that lives in the forest that'll hurt yeh if yer with me or Fang. An' keep ter the path. Right, now, we're gonna split into two parties an' follow the trail in diff'rent directions. There's blood all over the place."
Draco, predictably, chose Fang. Knowing full well what Fang was like, as well as what they were going to encounter in the forest, Hadria had no effort to spare for talking, for she was already trying her best to keep a poker face. But something must have leaked because Blaise kept staring at her with increasingly narrowed eyes.
"All right, but I warn yeh, he's a coward," said Hagrid. And Hadria burst out into choked sniggers.
Almost automatically, Draco decisively added, "Then I'm taking Hadria too."
So, they were split: Hagrid, Blaise and Pansy in one team, and Draco, Hadria and Fang in the other team. Pansy looked incredibly affronted, like she couldn't believe someone else had stolen her Shield.
They set off after Hagrid finished giving out instructions, and Hadria thought it all felt really familiar. Once upon a time, she had walked through this forest in First year with one Draco Malfoy and a dog named Fang. Though that was after he scared a Neville Longbottom and she was switched out of the team she had previously been in.
This time, there was no Hermione or Neville. It was just her and Draco walking through a dark and gloomy forest which is supposedly Forbidden, with a single lamp and a dog that was of less help than it should be.
There were trails of silver glittering along the path, which they followed in silence. It was the kind of silence that made you hold your breath, the kind where any noise you make sound louder than it is. Like in libraries, except worse.
"So, what if we encounter a werewolf?" Draco whispered after a while.
"You should read more books, Draco," was Hadria's reply, and got an elbow in her ribs in return.
She would have retaliated by stomping on his foot, but she suddenly caught a glimpse of movement from the corner of her eyes. She shushed him immediately and they squinted out into the darkness. Moonlight shone through the sparse gaps in the trees, but it wasn't of much help, and the light from the lamp did not shine very far. Hadria was tempted to light her wand and flood the place with light but that would be unwise and frankly, quite an extreme response to a possible shadow in the dark.
"H—" And then there was a hand covering his mouth.
A few seconds later, she lowered her hand. "Did you see anything?"
"I thought… There might have been something?" He wasn't certain either.
Hadria narrowed her eyes. Was it a centaur, or a spider, or Quirrelmort?
"Let's just keep going," she said, and continued to trudge forward. Draco was quick on her heels.
The splatters of silvery blood got thicker as the forest got denser, and very soon, they could hardly make out a path. By then, Draco was so close, he was practically clinging on to her robes. As the one in front, she was also the one with the lamp, which she raised up above their heads.
The light from the lamp wasn't very much, but it was enough for them to see silvery liquid dripping from the trunks of the trees ahead. The splatters were large and seemed to indicate a fierce struggle.
They edged forward, bit by bit, until they came to a clearing surrounded by thick undergrowth and dense branches. Hadria would have continued right on into the clearing if it weren't for the extremely tight and persistently tugging grip on her arm.
"Hadria," Draco whispered.
She sighed. "Yes?"
"T-There's… Something…" He pointed a shaking finger at the shadowy finger hunched over the pale broken body of a beautiful unicorn. "It's… D-Drinking…"
And then he was once again muffled by her hand before his voice got too high-pitched. It should be said that there was something more natural about covering someone's mouth with your hand than Silencing them with a charm. But she did tap a finger against the lamp she was holding, and its light was quietly extinguished, plunging them into darkness, left illuminated only by filtered moonlight.
She backed away slowly, guiding Draco with her. Fang had long bolted. And there was a crack (and many more afterwards) up ahead as the dog crashed through the bushes and undergrowth heedless of what branches he was breaking as he ran.
So much for leaving discreetly.
They turned back, almost instinctively, and saw the dark hooded figure with its head lifted and facing them. Then, slowly, like a snake, it rose from the ground.
"RUN!" Draco yelled, pulling Hadria along as he panicked, causing her to almost trip over a tree root.
"Wait—" They stumbled over a low bush—Hadria swore there was now a small tear in her robes—and nearly tripped over another tree root.
"Don't be a Gryffindor, Potter!"
Hadria wanted to tell him that the way they were fleeing wasn't very efficient or smart, but then she supposed that might be too much to ask from an eleven-year-old boy who was still holding onto her as he ran, when a different Draco Malfoy would have left her behind.
But he really was panicking too much. Perhaps it would have been better if it were just one person running haphazardly through the forest, but two people linked together just made things messier.
So, she gripped the arm he was using to hold onto her, and pulled him hard, slamming them both behind a thick tree trunk. This time, she Silenced him, then pulled the Cloak out of her pocket and flipped it over the both of them.
They stayed there like this for a few minutes, the only sound they could hear was their own harsh breathing and the soft rustling of leaves. Then there came the sound of heavy hooves as something large galloped past them, and when the hoofbeats faded, they couldn't hear the sound of rustling leaves anymore either.
Hadria lifted the charm on Draco, who immediately blurted out, "What was that?"
"The centaur or the hooded figure?"
Draco stared at her. "Centaur?"
Hadria stared back. "You know, torso of a human—"
"I know what a centaur is! But how did you know that was a centaur?"
"Well, because those hoofbeats were heavy. Heavier than those of unicorns and Thestrals."
A blank uncomprehending look was her only reply, but she wasn't about to try and explain how she was able to differentiate them so easily.
"You know what a Thes—"
"Yes!"
"Alright then. If you have no other questions, shall we check out the unicorn?" Hadria asked as she relit the lamp. Draco huffed at her, giving up for now, and shot green sparks into the sky with his wand.
"Since you seem to have forgotten the oa—Hagrid's instructions in the face of your unhealthy curiosity," he said when she looked at him.
"Right." As if either of them remembered the instructions to send red sparks when they encountered Quirrelmort.
Then they headed over to the now-empty clearing. The unicorn was still lying there, gleaming white body marred by a garish wound in its neck where silver blood spilled out from.
"It's such a pity," Hadria lamented as she knelt beside the unicorn and used a hand to cover the wound, as if she could restore it to health by hiding the torn flesh. The unicorn itself was already dead and warmth was rapidly leaving its stiffening body.
Dissatisfied, she waved her silver-stained hand and Conjured blossoms upon blossoms of white daffodils. Behind her, there was a sharp intake of breath from Draco.
The truth was that wandless magic was both easy and difficult for her. There were times when it seemed to come to her as effortlessly as breathing, and at other times, it was like having constipation. Most of the time, the trick, she realised, was to do it... naturally. The less she had to think about it, the more subconscious will and belief she had in it, the easier it was.
Like now.
"Hadria?" But of course, the child behind her couldn't seem to read the mood.
She looked up from the daffodil she had been examining—it looked like a normal flower at a glance, but upon closer scrutinization, one could see faint silvery intricate markings on its petals. Was her subconscious will so meticulous?
"Hadria," Draco repeated, more urgently, expression so tangled it was unreadable. "The unicorn—"
Hadria sighed, "Yes?"
"... It's breathing."
What.
What?
Hadria turned back around, and stared at the unicorn covered in daffodils. The unicorn was, indeed, breathing. She even saw its pale eyelids flutter.
"It wasn't breathing before, was it?" said Draco, a slightly tremble in his voice.
"Uh," said Hadria eloquently. "It was. You must have been mistaken. It has always been breathing."
Draco stared at her, opened his mouth again, and—
"Hadria!"
Hagrid, Pansy and Blaise came bursting into the clearing with Fang close behind them. The both of them looked at the group, stared at the now-breathing unicorn, then at each other, then back at the group.
"Yeh found it!" Hagrid exclaimed, huffing as he jogged towards them.
"It's still alive," said Draco. To Hadria's surprise, his expression was now smooth, satisfied, and almost proud. Like the white peacocks at his family's manor. "We came just in time. There was something else here, but it left the moment we arrived."
"Well, unfortunately, I doubt it'll be alive for much longer," said Hagrid, kneeling beside the unicorn. "What's all these flowers?"
"Oh," said Hadria, unwilling to say that they had been funeral flowers. But she couldn't say she used them to cover the wound of a still living creature because the more sensible thing would have been some attempt to wrap up the wound and stem the blood flow.
But it appeared that Hagrid was distracted and wasn't that concerned about the reason for the daffodils. He brushed the flowers away, and examined the wound. When his hand brushed against the side of the unicorn, it suddenly twitched and open its eyes. And there was a faint tug that indicated that someone was once again gripping her robes.
Hagrid made a sound of surprise as the unicorn blinked dazedly at him.
"Hey, it's not that badly hurt?" said Pansy, bending over to peer over Hagrid's broad shoulders.
The wound was still there, but it was only the size of a bite—the kind of neat punctured bite that might occur if a human had snake fangs, rather than the vicious mess they had seen earlier. The grip on her robe got tighter.
"Yeah, thank Merlin, I think it could be saved. Doesn't seem ter 'ave lost much blood," said Hagrid wondrously. He glanced at Hadria and Draco, beaming. "Thank you, Hadria, Draco."
"You're welcome," Draco said faintly, and Hadria echoed after him. Blaise raised an eyebrow at them, evidently noticing the oddity. Pansy, too, looked up in surprise.
Hadria's lips twitched in sheepishness as she brushed the dirt off her robes and got up from the ground. But she must have stood up too suddenly, for she suddenly felt the world tilt and—
.
.
.
Hadria woke up to a warmly-lit ceiling and the sight of a star-filled night sky glittering through a huge expanse of windows. It turned out that this time around, her first stay at the Hospital Wing ended up being earlier than before.
"Finally awake?"
Hadria turned to see Scáth standing beside the bed, his head sticking in through the curtains.
"What time is it?" She asked.
"It's half-past midnight," the Grim huffed and leapt onto the bed, more dark mist and shadow than anything with solid weight. "You haven't been out for long."
"Then, what happened?"
"A Transaction is what," said Scáth, wrinkling his snout at her. "You won't be refunded, even though it was accidental. Not like there's anything to refund."
She continued to stare blankly at him. "Transaction? Refund?"
Oddly mortal-dog-like, Scáth turned a few rounds on top of her before he settled down on her stomach, folding his front paws in front of him.
"Yes. A life for a life. You would have died, of course, if you had been anyone else. But the thing about payments is that a payment that is of higher value than the cost would require change to be given." Here, Scáth paused to snort. "And if it happens that what is paid has an infinite value, then the change would also be infinite. In other words, you can continue living your life as per normal, and nothing has changed, except that there's now an extra unicorn that didn't quite make it to the Afterlife."
Hadria turned this new incredibly ridiculous information over in her head. "Then… Why did I end up in the Hospital Wing?"
"Oh, if you're asking about the reason the humans put you in here, it's because you fainted for no apparent nor detectable reason, and Poppy decided to keep you here for a night, just in case. If you're asking for the reason you fainted, then that's just a side-effect of the Transaction. You fainted because your payment went through, and you woke shortly after you received back your change. "
Suddenly, Hadria wanted to ask if her heart had stopped while they had been 'processing her payment', but it was unlikely it did, since it would have caused a much greater commotion than just a simple stay in the Hospital Wing. For one, it was quite likely that she would now be back at home with Gellert by her side. This was assuming they didn't just declare her dead and start preparing for a funeral which would no doubt cause an even greater commotion.
"What about Draco?" She recalled that he had witnessed everything and was now highly suspicious of her. Her only consolation was that it seemed he was determined to keep it a secret for now, considering his remarkable transformation into a perfect Slytherin just for the sake of covering up what happened.
Scáth chuckled with some schadenfreude. "Ah, well, that's your problem to deal with."
Great. Hadria groaned. Just great.
And that's it for now! Chapter progress can be found on my profile as usual.
I am still on tumblr (nevertickleasleepinghydra), so you can find me there when I'm dead here. Feel free to PM, leave comments, or Ask me anything at anytime, regardless if it's over here at ffnet or there on tumblr.
Oh, and I'm currently thinking of maybe posting up some of my incomplete fic ideas, some of them are quite self-indulgent... Would you guys be interested?
I'm also thinking of maybe having a sort of prompt thing on tumblr (or discord, or whichever platform is more convenient for everyone), where you send me asks/suggestions and for those I'm inspired by, I'd reply with a very short writing (or longer, depending on inspiration), because I'm already quite behind on this fic, and I don't think I'll be doing anymore 'hundredth review celebratory' side fics anytime soon... aside from the ones I have already accepted.
So, let me know what you think! Would you like something like that? And if you do, which platform do you think would be more convenient?
I already have a failed NaNoWriMo sort-of-side-fic posted up, titled Anadiplosis. Some of you might have already noticed and read it. You can check it out if you're interested.
And on another note, which is more readable for you guys? Normal, italics or bold? Or a mix?
ABOUT GELLERT-PAIRINGS: (Based on reviewers' input... Actually guys, should I just make a poll? Would that be a lot better?)
Current popular choices: (male) Sirius Black, Nobody (i.e. no romance for Gellert please!)
Runner-ups: (female) Lady Zabini, Amelia Bones, (male) Severus Snape
Other suggestions:
(female) Poppy Pomfrey, Tonks (?), Rosmerta, Ollivander's daughter/apprentice
(male) Remus Lupin, Mad-Eye Moody
Not considering: Bellatrix (because of Neville), Luna (she's younger than Hadria)
Definitely not considering: Hadria (If you want to see a Hadria/Gellert fic, wait for it. Wait a very long time for it, because I don't have the time right now but some day, it might happen. Who knows?)