Disclaimer:
I solemnly swear that the literature and works of the Harry Potter Verse belong to JK Rowling, Bloomberg and Warner Bros. The only thing I own are the one-shot ideas that popped into my head and whatever OCs I would create for them. This is a work of pure fiction made solely for fun, constructive reviews will be welcomed, flames will be ignored. Any references to characters in real-life or fiction are purely coincidental. If I could make money out of my ideas, it would be nice...
Mischief Managed Damn It!
Title: Archer of Hogwarts / Chapter 3 (Working Title)
Posted Date: July 20 2023
Tags: Hufflepuff Harry, Hawkeye Archer type Harry, Harry x Susan, Good/Well Meaning Dumbledore, BWL Neville Longbottom, Canon Snape
Possible Challenges: Harry x Hufflepuff Poly, Bad Alice Longbottom
The first thing Susan Bones woke up to was not the dull pain from her arm, the scent of smoke or the odd heat she was feeling. Rather, it was something furry prodding her cheek that got her to open her eyes slowly and blinked to get rid of the crust around her eyelids. The young girl let out a light groan as she raised an arm to fend off whatever was poking her, before her eyes went wide open as her mind recalled all that had happened. She quickly sat up only to gasp from the sudden shot of pain on her other arm and lowered herself back on the odd bed she was on.
"Ow~" Susan looked at the arm that had an odd bandage made of leaves and sticks, and then lifted the fur blanket that was currently covering her legs to find her previously broken leg looking better with no bone sticking out of it, although there were branches acting as braces for it. After that, she looked around to find herself in some sort of cave with a small fire burning near her, what looked to be a metal pot hung above it. The rocks were thankfully not the jagged rock types, having been smoothened by years of wear and tear, so it offered some reflection from the fire to give the place a slightly warm look despite the lack of amenities. The sound of something swishing drew her attention to what had to be the most adorable fox cub she had laid her eyes on, the tail swaying while it looked at her with its head tilting. If she had the energy, she would have been squealing and hugging the fox.
"Hello there." Susan slowly reached out with her good arm to stroke the fur, something the cub was appreciative of with it coming closer to her while the tail swished in apparent delight. "Don't suppose you could tell me where this is?" The cub looked to her briefly before turning its head to let out a few squeaky barks. Susan looked to where she thought the entrance was and heard footsteps coming over to her, making her use the fur blanket to cover herself to her face despite the musky scent. The only reason she was not trying to hide better was due to the fox cub wagging its tail.
The owner of the footsteps soon appeared, and Susan could not help staring at what appeared to be a walking bush coming in with something at hand with another fox cub following alongside. It was only coming up to the light of the fire that Susan saw that the figure was a small person dressed in some green coat and roughed out pants with small branches and leaves interwoven into the clothing, and a broken hunter's mask that showed one of the eyes. The individual arrived by the fire to drop the item in hand, a sack of something inside, before they kneeled down and reached out to lightly scratch the ears of the fox accompanying her. After that, he turned to the girl who was preparing a fist under her blanket just in case. He reached up to his face to pull off the mask, revealing the face of a boy who was surprisingly the same age as her with long and messy black hair that looked like birds could make a nest out of it, green eyes that shone like gems from the fire, and what appeared to be a scar on his forehead in the shape of a lightning bolt.
Not knowing her thoughts, the boy placed the mask and other equipment down on the floor, taking the time to put them in order. After that, he turned to face her while raising an arm.
"Harold…Walker." The boy motioned with his hand to himself while speaking in a manner like he had not spoken in a long while. The hand then motioned to her, and embarrassingly it took Susan a while to guess that he wanted to know her name.
"Susan Bones." She answered softly. The boy nodded before he looked at the pot that had the lid slightly shaking. He quickly moved to remove the lid to reveal what appeared to be a stew of carrots, potatoes and some sort of meat that gave it a slight gamey scent but still pleasant to the palate, something proven by the loud growling of her stomach. The girl wrapped her good arm around her stomach as she glared at it, but Harold merely scooped out some of the food into a wooden bowl and passed it to her before getting one for himself. She waited for him to eat the food before she dared to take a bite. That one bite was enough to make her lose all manners and consume the contents quickly and noisily enough to make her Aunt want to scold if she found out.
That thought did get her to slow down and look down at her arm. She was not sure if her aunt would know that she had gone missing yet. Susan was supposed to stay indoors or with someone she trusted if outside of the manor, but Susan wanted to get some air and sunshine for a short while and walked out without letting Hannah's mum know. That brief moment was enough for someone to rush through the gardens and slap a portkey on her, her last sight of Hannah screaming was terrifying to her. Then there was the pain she had to suffer from the men who kept cursing her until she fell unconscious and then she woke up here.
"Were you the one that saved me?" The boy paused in his eating to look at her, swallowing his food before answering.
"Heard screaming, so we went to check." Harold motioned to the fox cubs who were eating their portions. "We saw the men hurting you, and speaking of leaving you behind for wolves to attack. We did not like that." He then pointed to a rucksack. "They had weird items and sticks on them. I took them off of them in case you have something stolen from them." Susan opened her mouth before closing at that statement. Harold unknowingly helped to save some evidence, so at least her Aunt Amelia could find something to pinpoint who were the ones that attacked her. Based on what she heard, the perpetrators were likely those from the "outstanding citizens" that Aunt Amelia kept complaining about when she was stressed and had a cup to drink.
"You need to eat and rest." Harold motioned for her to do so. "Tomorrow we need to move out of this cave, too close to the area we were attacked. Keep hearing weird sounds like wolves, but wolves should not be this far out at this time of the year." Susan dropped her bowl at that bit, prompting a raised eyebrow from Harold.
"Werewolves." Susan shook at that.
"What did you say?" Harold blinked.
"Werewolves, one of them said there were werewolves coming to collect them and me." Susan shook harder at that, prompting one of the fox cubs to go to her with a concerned bark before jumping onto her lap and nuzzling into her. The girl got startled briefly before she raised her hand to stroke the fur, notably relaxing with the action and the cub cooing at her. The other cub wanted the attention as well and soon joined her, the duo able to keep her mind off the issue and her fear for the moment.
"So there are actual werewolves in the world?" Harold hated to interrupt but he had to be certain that he was not hearing things or the girl was messed up from whatever the attackers did.
"Yes, there are." Susan took a deep breath before continuing. "If what you said just now was true, they are in the area and we need to leave soon." Harold nodded at that before pointing to her bowl.
"Eat and sleep, you need it. I will keep guard." Susan was not feeling the mood to eat but the fox cubs kept nudging her and her bowl, prompting to pick it up to continue eating while occasionally feeding them as well. It did not take long for her to be full from the meal and to be sleeping shortly after with the cubs cuddling into her, their fur tickling but in a soothing manner that got her to light doze off.
She would think more in the morning.
~ooOOoo~
Harold looked down at his tenant dozing away, his mind wandering at all that had happened over the past day.
He had brought Susan to a random location after they made their escape, and found a cave by the cliff that was thankfully empty at the time. It was an ideal location for its high vantage point, shelter from the hard winds and more importantly, well away from the fire and possible climbers that would come after them. Harold had taken the time to check the cave and then to heal and dressed whatever wounds he could find on the girl, and then he made sure she was resting before he went out of the shelter to watch the forest burn like hell had opened the gates to let loose the demons within, not helped by the flames actually forming shapes of what looked to be lions, snakes and an actual dragon moving around to consume the trees. Harold had to assure himself and his fox companions a few times that they were safe from the flames as he would swear that the flame beasts had looked in his direction and roared as though they knew he was there and were irritated that they could not get to him.
After a while, he saw the flames were getting smothered by something that was pushing them into a corner. On a hunch, Harold popped his way to the closest suppression and watched a group of people trying to contain the flames with their sticks. He noted they had different coloured robes and had no masks, and they were shouting to each other to contain the flames and to find someone that he guessed would be the girl. They certainly sounded worried for her, so the boy noted their general appearances before returning to his hiding place. When the morning came, Harold took the chance to inspect the damage done to the area.
Harold was not so proud as to deny the fact that he actually emptied his stomach at the feeling that was assaulting all of his senses the moment he landed at the edge of the burnt forest. Apart from the scents of burnt wood and evidently burnt corpses, there was a sense of "wrongness" that permeated the air as though the flames were cursed and soaked itself into the ground. He could not feel anything from the trees or the earth, just death. All of that was assaulting his senses and making him want to scream, he had to get out of there quickly to regain some composure. Even his companions were agitated from the area and kept close to him until he returned to the cave, only then did they relax enough to go into an uneasy slumber.
He had taken the time to care for Susan while considering his options. Clearly the girl was taken away from wherever she came from, so he would have to help her get out of the forest and hopefully get her to her guardians. The only question mark was where she came from. If these people had the same abilities as he did, he would need to be careful with the approach. There was that one individual handling the fires that looked a little scary with the scars and that weird eye that kept moving about. That one seemed more likely to shoot first and ask questions later.
He would think more in the morning.
~ooOOoo~
Morning came shortly after with Harold waking up slightly before the sunrise as his habit. He went to prepare breakfast for himself, his companions and Susan before checking his equipment for the possible hike. He would still need to return to his home to get extra items along with the local maps to orient them to her final destination, but Harold wanted to make sure that she was still safe.
It took a while for the girl to wake up, but once she did, Susan quickly got up to help before they had their breakfast. Much of it was the stew from the previous night, but there were hunter buns from the nearest store handling forest camping or hiking. After finishing up and cleaning up the spot, Harold took the girl and his companions back to his hideout to get the extra items. Susan for one looked interested at how well kept the place was and that he had his own personal garden and fishing pond. It was just as well that they arrived back at his hideout as the weather suddenly changed for the worse and they had to hunker down for the moment. This gave Harold time to check on her wounds and to prepare for the trip to get her home.
Not to mention a chance for Susan to ask some questions.
"You are a muggleborn?" The girl asked while lightly scratching the fox cubs on her laps.
"What is that?" Harold paused in his preparations.
"A magical child born from two muggles." Susan explained as she tapped the nose of one of the cubs.
"I don't know what muggles are, sorry," he said. For the first time Harold was wondering if he should have found a way to get into one of the local schools around, because he was missing something important based on her questions. That, or there may be a group of people that were learning stuff outside of what he would normally have learned if he grew up with them instead of the Dursleys.
"Hmm." Susan hummed for a while. "Were your parents magical like us?"
He shrugged while continuing with the packing. "Don't know. They died when I was a baby. My… relatives definitely didn't have magic, though," he told her. "My earliest memories of them were them calling me a freak, so I think they may have known that I was different. Maybe they knew that my parents had these powers too, I don't know. I was dumped in the forest before I got taken in by a man who worked around this part of the woods before he passed away."
She was quiet for a few minutes while he finished up on the packing. A soft bark drew Harold's attention back to them and noted Susan was still having the odd shaking, so he eventually asked if she knew why.
"I think it was from the Cruciatus Curse," she told him while looking about with the look of one expecting the boogeyman to show up.
"I don't know what that is." Harold was really thinking he needed books for this conversation.
"It's one of three spells labelled Unforgivable by our laws," she said. "this one is the Torture Curse." He frowned at the naming and implication. "This cannot be cured easily, but somehow you were able to get most of it gone." Susan added with a bit of awe and confusion noted in her words.
"I asked the earth to heal you." Harold scratched his head trying to explain his thought patterns to her. "I also used the different berries and herbs to boost your strength for the second part of the healing." Susan blinked as she tried to process that explanation.
"That is still a lot better than what is done normally. I would have to endure a few days in bed just to ease my body to stop shaking." Susan clenched her hands while wincing lightly from the shot of pain. Harold moved to place a hand on her shoulder and the other on the grassy ground, taking a breath before doing what he normally does for healing. This time though, Susan was able to see the glow come out from the ground to cover his body before it spread to her, not to mention feeling a lot better and having the shaking lessen to the equivalent of an itch that was irritating but can be ignored for later.
"Better?" Harold withdrew his hand and let out a sigh.
"Very much." Susan tried to stretch her arms and twisted about. Outside of stiff muscles, she was certainly feeling a lot better than before. "That is good."
"Good to know." Harold sat down a little harder on the ground than he needed. "I will need to rest before we go."
"Sorry." Susan looked guilty at making him use his abilities.
"No need. It is just that hard to heal another person." Harold replied as he took a few breaths. "We might as well eat something before we move on. I will need the energy." Susan nodded and they partaked on a simple meal of smoked meat and vegetables from his garden, although the girl took more of the salad as she could not handle the meat flavour. After that, Harold went to grab some maps he had of the area to ask Susan.
One problem came out from this: Susan had no idea how to read maps or the names she came from.
After some time trying to get some useful details, Harold managed to narrow it down to a few spots by the edge of the forest to test their luck. They had to wait for the next morning though as the storm did not let up for a few hours, and then there was the howling that had Susan huddled to the back of the cave in fear. To ease her mind, Harold went to tighten the outer entrance of the perimeter before adding bear pee to the area to give the impression of a bear marking the territory. He went back to his cave and reinforced the existing cover with some of the bigger rocks he could move on his own. They just made the fire smaller to keep it under control to avoid any sudden flare ups that could give away their position, then Harold took the night watch while the girl slept uneasily due to the howling that appeared to be getting closer.
It would be the next day that they would risk going out of his hideout to find a general spot to find her Aunt. Harold took a moment to inspect his perimeter before bringing Susan along. Immediately he knew that his area was getting investigated; a few feet away from the outer perimeter, some of the trees and rocks had claw markings seemingly etched deep into them like they were chiselled into them, and then there was the mangled corpse of a deer close by that had Susan hurling chunks of their breakfast. Harold was also a little disturbed with the milky eyes that showed the terror it had to endure from whatever had attacked it.
Their arrival at the next spot was a little rocky given Susan's condition, but the fox cubs were able to distract her enough for Harold to move her along the path that he used to take to get to a well known part of the woods open to the general public. It was a gamble since they did not know whether the people searching for Susan would be around, but Harold was banking on his knowledge of the forest that this was a good spot to start with. And after 15 minutes of walking, they got the answer in the form of someone shouting in the distance.
"I think someone's calling out for you." Harold spoke to Susan who strained her ears, but she was not as adept as him being a "city kid" as his previous guardian would say. She opened her mouth wide, probably to yell, but Harold quickly stopped that by covering her mouth and moving her to a bush.
"Wait!" he urged. "We don't know who they are yet. Let's just hide here for now – I think they're coming this way." Nodding, she leaned back against a nearby tree, rubbing her leg with a slight wince.
"Sore?" he asked in a whisper.
She nodded again while breathing lightly. He put an arm around her and she leaned into him gratefully. They stayed like that as the voices approached. Eventually, she stood up and pulled on his hand excitedly.
"That's Auntie Amelia! She's alright!"
Harold directed a smile at her, glad that things seemed to work out. The voices seemed anxious, upset, but not angry (he was intimately familiar with angry shouting, as that was the principal mode of communication from the Dursleys). Steadying Susan, he got up so they could walk toward her Aunt. He gave her a nod in response to her questioning look, and she immediately shouted, "Auntie! Over here!"
The voices took on an excited tone. "Susan!" he heard faintly along with the rustling of bushes and branches.
"I'm alright!" cried Susan. Together, she and Harold moved as fast they could toward the searchers, slower than Harold would want as Susan was tiring with her leg apparently bothering her more than she let on so he had offered his shoulder to help her limp forward while using the spear to steady the both of them. It took several more minutes of yelling back and forth before they broke past some bushes to find the woman with more wizards wearing robes and carrying wands.
When Susan had said she lived with her aunt, Harold had admittedly pictured a robe-wearing Aunt Petunia that would look rather ugly in his mind. So he was pleasantly surprised to see the woman in person to be considerably different. For one, she was older than his once relatives, maybe ten or twenty years older given her mostly grey hair that was tied in a bun and her face lined with wrinkles, with an addition of a small cut bleeding on her left cheek. She was dressed in red robes that were burnt or torn in multiple places and he could smell the smoke off of them. But she seemed genuinely relieved to see Susan as soon as she laid eyes on her, and her smile that came out made her look a little younger and certainly much more pleasant than his 'Aunt Petunia' ever had.
Once they got close enough, Susan wanted to run over to her Aunt, but apparently they had just now noticed Harold as all of the other wizards pointed their sticks at him warily. Harold would have put his hands up, but one was currently supporting Susan and the other was tightly gripping his spear to keep them both upright. The fox cubs instead moved forward while lightly growling at them, their fur standing on end.
"Wait! It's okay!" Susan said placatingly. She seemed to trust these wizards, so Harold decided they were probably alright. "This is Harold Walker. He rescued me from the bad men."
All but one of them lowered their wands slightly. The one who didn't drew Harold's attention, and he had to hold in a gasp of surprise. He recognized the man from the previous night, but in the daylight, his scars on his face and hands were more prominent, and unless he was mistaken, Harold could see the tip of what may be an actual peg-leg beneath the burnt ends of the robes. His nose was missing a chunk of itself like it was cut off or blown off, and his left eye was the one acting weird and now was spinning independently in its own socket.
Likely the infamous Mad-Eye that Susan had spoken of after he described to her the people he had encountered. The scarred man looked as though he was expecting an attack at any moment and willing to give some back. Harold could not fault his action for it was fairly obvious this old man had seen more than his fair share of fights. He looked like a man who knew how to survive, and Harold had the gut feeling that this was a man he could respect.
He was distracted from his examination of the scarred man by Susan's Aunt, who was likewise examining him warily.
"Are you alright, Susan?" asked her Aunt. "What happened?"
Susan took a breath before starting to explain. "I went out of the house for a while to get some air, and then someone rushed forward from the bushes to place a portkey on me that brought me to this forest and to…" Susan shivered a little before continuing. "They held me back and then hit me with a curse to break my leg - it's better now." Susan quickly reassured her Aunt who looked murderous for a moment while showing her leg that was still wrapped with the leaves and branches. "They were hitting me with other curses, and they were talking about waiting for someone called Boris to bring in werewolves from someone called Greyback?" That got the adults to pale rather spectacularly at that claim. Harold had the feeling that whoever this Greyback was, it was someone he did not want to mess with. "Then they were talking about taking me away or even leaving me behind if you found me and…" she broke off at this point and just rushed to Amelia to hold her tight. Sensing that she didn't want to relieve the story any further, Harold took over the story-telling.
"I was hunting in the general area when I heard screaming. I went toward it and found those men hurting her with the same sticks that you are using. They didn't want to leave, so I attacked them. They're all dead now," he said quietly, his hand gripping the spear tightly. Amelia and the other men looked at each other in alarm. "Who killed them?" asked one wizard.
"I did," Harold said, not seeing any other choice but to tell the truth. "Well, with help from my companions and a tree but I guess mostly it was me."
They looked sceptical at the claim, which probably wasn't surprising if he thought about it. He was only eight years old, and had just said he killed a bunch of adults. Not the most believable story he'd ever heard, either.
One of them looked like he was going to say something, but Susan spoke up in his defence.
"It's true. They're definitely dead. And one of them had… all of them had…" Her voice lowered and she looked around furtively, as though expecting one of them to burst through the trees at any moment. "They had the Dark Mark, Auntie!"
The group didn't look very surprised, but there were some angry frowns. Not their first encounter with that Mark, Harold thought. Probably a well-known group of criminals. At that point, Mad-Eye turned to Harold after checking on Susan.
"You used your magic to fix up Susan, then? I doubt the Death Eaters would bother to fix up the broken leg she mentioned," Mad-Eye said. He seemed honestly curious, and didn't seem to be doubting Harold's version of the story yet, which made him inexplicably relieved.
"It was a nasty break – went right through the skin, and her joints were almost twisted. I asked the earth to help put the bone back together, but she'll need to keep off of it for a couple of days. I fixed the rest of her injuries as best I could and used whatever medicine I had on hand, but she should probably see a doctor just in case. One of them, Grego, did something to Susan that made her scream and made her body shake a lot. Much of the healing was done to stop her shaking, but it was really exhausting asking the earth to heal her." Harold felt a little bad that he could not do anything less than his best.
Her Aunt looked back to Susan in concern. The younger girl gulped and tightened her grip around her waist. "It was… the Cruciatus, Auntie," Susan whispered.
Her Aunt – and several of the Aurors – gasped. The motion drew Harold's attention to one of the Aurors further back from the main group. He had reacted like the others, but something seemed… off about him. His reaction was delayed, as though he was only pretending. Harold resolved to keep an eye on him, but now Mad-Eye was speaking.
"Well this has been a lovely reunion, but we've had enough standing around. There may be more of the bastards running about. And no offence lad, you look about ready to fall over, so I doubt he'll be gettin' any more trees to help us out this time."
"What happened to your parents, Harold?" Amelia asked while Susan reached out to Harold, an action that he reciprocated with a hand.
"They died when I was a baby," he answered. "I used to live with my Aunt and Uncle, but they didn't want me so they left me in the woods. Now I live by myself." That got Amelia, Mad-Eye and a few others frowning at that. Harold pushed on to avoid the issue. "As I said, I was hunting when I found one of the areas looking like something big had gone through it, and then I teleported about to check before hitting that weird barrier that made me want to vomit and leave. It took a while to find some weird stone with markings to get rid of it before moving on. That was when I heard Susan screaming. Then I just ran to the location and…" he waved a hand around, not feeling up to explaining the whole situation again.
"Teleporting, eh?" Mad-Eye said with what sounded like approval in his tone. "Apparating at your age, and wandless magic to boot. You'd probably make a better Auror than half the force we've got now, and that's without a wand at all! I've half a mind to retire now and make you my replacement!" His mutilated face contorted into a position that Harold thought must be a smile. It was truly terrifying and he was glad that it was in the daytime.
"Does the peg leg come with that position?" Harold wondered. A round of laughter greeted this thought, and too late he realised that, accustomed as he was to being alone, he had actually spoken aloud. Amongst the laughter, his eye again was drawn to the wizard who had reacted slowly last time. Again, his reaction seemed delayed, forced somehow like he was not in the mood to laugh.
Harold's attention was then drawn to his fox companions who were now growling in the same direction as the man, their fur standing on end and their placements in front of the children to keep guard. That got his own hackles up and Harold moved to offer Susan the spear so that she could move closer to her aunt while he went to grab his bow.
That action and the foxes caught the eye of Mad-eye, making him turn toward the man as well. Perhaps sensing that he had been caught, or just not wanting to risk the element of surprise while he still had some on his side, the man snapped his wand toward Susan's Aunt with her attention on her niece.
"Avada Kedavra!" he yelled. A beam of bright green light rushed toward her, a sickly, horribly empty feeling reaching all the way across the clearing and chilling Harold down to his bones. Thankfully Harold was close enough to the ground to slam his hand to the ground and willed it to move both Susan and Amelia out of the way, his fox cubs following suit. It was barely done on time for the green beam of light to pass by Amelia. With another push, the earth rumbled to get the attacker away from the others.
That did little to deter the attacker as he twirled his wand and fired off another beam of light without shouting anything this time round, going straight for Susan. Harold gritted his teeth and pushed his intent into the earth, and in response, a thick wall of earth and stone protruded out of the ground in time to intercept the purple beam, whatever vegetation rotting and spreading from the point of contact. By the time it crumbled, Amelia had gotten Susan far enough to keep her safe and brandished her wand out with clear intent to go after whoever tried to hurt her.
That finally got the attacker's attention on him, and the man did not look happy.
"Damn you, boy!" He snarled before firing off another green beam that forced Harold to duck for cover, losing his spear in the process as it impacted it hard enough to break and splinter the entire shaft. Harold bit his lips to stop the scream while releasing his hold on the ruined spear, the pain letting him know that some of the splinters had pierced through the skin of his hand. Harold still moved to get away from the man who was thankfully distracted by Mad-Eye's deadly accurate spells, and then reached for his bow and arrow. He managed to notch one and fired it off at the attacker who had to dodge at the last minute but not entirely with the tip making a cut in the leg.
The attacker snarled and fired off several beams of light at him, forcing Harold to move away while Mad-Eye, Amelia and a few others tried to save Harold. The attacker managed to do something similar as Harold to call forth an earth wall to block the majority of their attacks before swiping his wand at an angle to release a wave of magic that somehow managed to cut Harold by his left side and his right arm, causing him to stumble in pain to keep upright. His attempt to fire off another arrow got hindered by them and his arrow ended up hitting the man in the leg. The attacker glared at him while pointing the wand with a green light at the tip when he let out a yell and his shot went up into the air. Harold looked down to see one of his foxes taking a vicious bite of the man's ankle and hanging on with a snarl.
"GET OFF!" With a yell, the man did something with his wand to make the fox release its hold on his ankle and fly off a few feet before landing hard, letting out a pained yelp before laying still. Harold saw red at that point and quickly notched an arrow to fire at the man, who retaliated with another swipe of the wand to cut that in mid-air before firing off another spell that Harold could not see but could sense it enough to force himself backwards enough to have his mask come off from whatever it was and break away. Harold used the momentum to take his knife out to throw at the attacker and rolled back into a kneeling position with an arrow notched just as the attacker dodged the knife and took aim at the boy. The man was going to say another spell but paused to look at his face in surprise.
"Potter?!"
It was only thanks to the fight and flight mindset he was in that Harold maintained his expression and the only indication of the surprise from hearing his old name was releasing the bow prematurely that fired off the arrow straight at the man's head, his shocked expression stuck on his face as he dropped to the ground like a puppet with strings removed. Harold however was forced to use the bow as a makeshift cane to keep himself on his knees, the cut on his side burning and the blood soaking his clothes. He turned at the call from Susan to find the girl racing to him, while the adults were coming up from behind only to stumble to a halt at his face. The last thing he saw before blanking out was the concerned expression of Susan and Amelia mouthing one word.
'Potter?'
Damn it.