xliv. an uninvited guest
Harriet looked down into the cauldron of foul smelling glop and wrinkled her nose.
"Er…." Sitting back on her haunches, she flipped through the open Potions book and fussed with her rolled sleeves. "I don't…I don't think I did this right."
A low, disinterested hiss emanating from beneath the bed answered her.
"Oh, wait, it's supposed to smell like that?" Harriet traced a line in the text and squinted. "Urgh. It says it's supposed to be 'golden in hue,' but mine's more like spring grass…wait it's darkening now…I guess it's not done?" Harriet peaked over the cauldron's rim again, frowning. Sure enough, the green steadily leached from the thick liquid and became mustard yellow. "Snape stupid summer assignments are just as hard as the rubbish he gives us in class."
The Girding Potion released a noxious smelling puff and Harriet recoiled, reaching for her mittens to lift the little cauldron onto the cooling rack, hoping yellow was a close enough color for Snape's discerning criticism. She sat in the middle of her tent's floor surrounded by open potion ingredients and a few wayward snack wrappers, a roll of parchment and a quill set to the side where she'd been writing her homework while the potion heated in its various stages. Livi had long since grown bored of watching Harriet and had retreated to his favorite hiding spot, though Kevin remained in her old shirt's breast pocket. Sometimes the golem-snake repeated what Harriet said, and she decided that made him a much better listener than Livi at the moment.
A cool breeze ruffled the magical tent's wall, making the seemingly solid interior ripple. The lantern sputtered and, after discarding her mittens, Harriet groaned, got to her feet, and wandered over to it. She tapped the lantern's brass base. "I think Muggles had the right thinking with electricity."
"What isss…electricccity?"
"It's like…lightning in wires, in the walls, and it makes lights come on."
Livi poked his nose out from beneath the bed's wobbly frame. "Thisss…sssoundss foolissh."
"Well, Muggles understand it well enough. I can't explain it like they could." The lantern sputtered a final time and went out. Harriet stumbled about in the dark until she found the Self-Lighting candles that she needed only to touch for the wicks to flicker into life. "In Hogwarts: A History, it talks about how magic and electricity and—and certain radio waves don't mix? I can't remember what it said exactly…but magic's like a second conduit or something, and it makes stuff inert or unstable. I can't help but be jealous of my Aunt Petunia just being able to flick a bloody switch sometimes. For adults it's not so bad I guess, because they can use spells. I hate being underage."
"Sss…." The serpent contemplated Harriet as she poked about her trunk in search of an oil globe she could insert into the bottom of the Charmed lantern. Dr. Filibuster's Fireworks on Carkitt Market had an Ever-burning Oil variant that would have solved Harriet's problem, but they wouldn't sell it to her, because—as a minor—she couldn't put the fire out if she spilled the oil by accident. Harriet knew they were simply being logical, though she still wished for light-bulbs sometimes.
"Magic…isss not meant to be…easssy."
Livi retreated beneath the bed again, and Harriet puzzled over what he'd said. Magic is not meant to be easy. It certainly wasn't what Harriet would call easy, not now, at least. When she'd first discovered her heritage, she'd been under the mistaken impression that one could cast spells by flicking around their wand and mumbling funny words—and then she took one look at the diagrams inside her Transfiguration textbook and that theory imploded in her face.
Magic was difficult, and finicky, and wondrous and—at times—terrifying. Hermione once mentioned to Harriet that everything in nature had a balance, and perhaps the balance for witches and wizards who could turn desks into elephants or fly on broomsticks was forsaking things not made from magic or their own hands. Perhaps if you could flick a wand and create light from nothing, you didn't deserve light-bulbs.
Harriet, lost in thought, watched the candles burn and didn't hear when the crickets went quiet.
A sudden chime echoed from beneath the bed. Harriet started.
"Livi?"
The chime came again—and suddenly the Charmed flap over the tent's entrance was carelessly torn aside, and Harriet found herself staring down the lit side of a brandished wand.
A wizard stood in her tent, dressed in navy robes that, given the relatively plain cut and the insignia stitched onto the front pocket, must've been a uniform of some kind. The wide brim of his hat hid his eyes from Harriet, but she could still see his grim, self-satisfied smile, the black hair on his upper lip, and the nostrils left bloodless as they flared in anger.
"Finally—there you are, you little shit," he said in a biting Northern accent. "Been all over Hell's half acre looking for your stupid arse."
"Looking for—?" Harriet could do little more than gawk at the man—the intruder—who'd stomped into her tent in the middle of bloody nowhere and now held her at wand-point.
"Looking for you, bloody half-blood hiding in the fucking woods. No one said anything about that—."
"I don't know who you are!"
"I'm not here to answer your questions!" He took a breath and seemed to gather himself, the irritation festering behind a composed mask as he soothed his mussed hair. His wand never wavered. "Come along, Miss Potter, I've been sent to…collect you."
The chime came again and though the man ignored it, Harriet realized the sound came from her snake. Livi had made the same sound in the loo at Hogwarts before the troll came stampeding through.
"I'm—I'm not going anywhere with you!" Harriet knew she could be a bit naive and foolish at times, but she absolutely refused to leave with a strange wizard who came barging into her sanctuary in the dead of night. That was just common sense.
What wasn't common sense was forgetting to strap her wand to her wrist that morning. She'd grown careless gallivanting on her own, as the leather brace grew uncomfortable and sticky in the hot summer sun while Harriet wandered—and she couldn't use the blasted thing while out of school, so she hadn't seen the harm in leaving both the wand and the brace on the rumpled bed.
She saw the harm now.
"You'll be going where I tell you, Potter. My Lord's not keen on waiting long—."
Harriet's eyes flicked toward her wand and she knew he saw the motion, because his mouth opened to incant a spell and his own wand rose.
"Now, now…don't be difficult, kid…."
She dove to the side just as a burst of red light came zooming at her, and though Harriet managed to dodge, the spell grazed her arm and she landed on the floor, gasping. It felt as if she'd been slugged in the stomach and kicked in the head, simultaneously breathless and dazed and more than a little confused with her glasses askew and one arm limp against her side.
The man approached, a new hex ready—and Set lurched from beneath Harriet, a single column of black darting out to strike the candles and douse the tent in darkness.
"What the fuck—?!"
A single hiss was all the warning the wizard received before Livi bolted from beneath the bed and Harriet felt warm scales rippling against her cheek as the wizard shrieked. He only got out one terrified cry and a half-formed spell that splattered on the canvas wall before his body fell, a heavy thud sounding in the sticky dark.
Harriet's strangled breaths broke the renewed silence.
"Li—Livius?" The spell's fuzzy remnants finally dissipated and allowed Harriet to sit up, though she very much dreaded what she'd find. Her hand trembled as it slid along the serpent's body until—.
Until she found a foot. An unmoving foot attached to an unmoving leg.
"Oh God—Merlin, sweet Salazar Slytherin's saintly left bollock—!"
The serpent's coils shifted, and Harriet smelled copper, Livi's tongue flicking against her cheek. "Misstresss."
Harriet staggered under his weight as she leapt upright and dashed to the candles, setting them alight one by one. The light only served to illuminate what she already knew; the wizard laid flat on his back like a dead beetle, black tongue lolling out of his open mouth, blood smudged about his upper thigh where The Horned Serpent had only needed to bite once.
Livi killed him like the troll.
Sick crawled up Harriet's throat and she vomited on the floor.
"Misstresss?"
Wiping her mouth, Harriet reached out to touch Livi's head, her fingers shaking so hard they skipped over his horns and along his scales. "I'm—I'm okay—."
The wizard just stared at the ceiling.
Dead. Dead, he's dead—.
Harriet's familiar had killed a man, a man intent on kidnapping her, but a person nonetheless. He hadn't said who he was or what he wanted, only that he was going to take Harriet with him whether she wanted him to or not. Livi had been protecting her—but would the Ministry see it like that? She knew their policemen were called Aurors because her dad had been one, so Harriet wondered if they'd send Aurors after her. They'd kick her out of Hogwarts. They'd take her to jail. They'd kill Livi.
Her heart raced in her chest.
Who was he? Why—where did he want to take me? She thought about Quirrell and the red spell he'd slung at her in the dungeons, the Mirror of Erised and the unrivaled horror of facing her own mortality as Voldemort shrieked for her death.
"I will let you share in that eternal life, Harriet…. You and your family could live forever…."
Shaking, Harriet straightened her glasses and tried to control her breathing. She couldn't look away from the wizard.
What if he wasn't alone? What if there's more?
As soon as the terrible thought occurred to Harriet, she moved and dashed around her bed to snatch up her wand and brace.
I have to get away, I can't stay here, I can't—.
Harriet kicked open the top of her trunk and snatched the Invisibility Cloak off the top of the jumbled interior. She was fortunate the purse she kept her exchanged Muggle money in fell out too, or Harriet would've sprinted off into the dark without a pound or a Knut on her person. Her fear thundered in her head until it seemed to echo, drowning every other thought out, a repetitive beat of go, go, go thumping her thick skull.
"Livi, we need to leave—!"
She hefted one coil around her shoulders and the snake managed the rest, sensing the urgency in his witch's tone. Kevin stirred in her pocket and Harriet poked him further down as she strapped her wand into place and threw the Invisibility Cloak over her head.
What if there's more, what if—what if he meant to take me to Voldemort—!
Harriet allowed herself one last look at the dead man before clutching Livi to her chest and running into the waiting night.
A/N: Which magical place would you be most interested in seeing in a future installment? Giant's Rest near The Storr? Or the Night Market near Elva Hill? I might include both at some point in the series, but I am curious!