Daphne stiffens momentarily as Marianne hugs her, "Thank you for looking after my mum last night."
From the other side of the dorm Susan says, "How are both you and Harry so calm?"
Marianne looks over, before rushing over to Susan and pulling her into a hug as she sits down next to her, "It's because I'm no longer a stranger to blood and violence. Do you know what happened to me at Halloween?"
Susan shakes her head, "Sort of, but not the details."
A haunted look fills Marianne's eyes as she goes over the event again, this time including watching what happened after she was rescued and her mother put herself between her father and herself.
"I was only awake in that chair for a few minutes before Morgana saved me. My mother… My mother, she endured days of it. I've done some reading at the library, and my mother is lucky to still be alive despite that. Most of the historical victims died from blood loss or infection after they were removed from the chair.
"I've also progressed to sharpened weapons in my practice with Prioveafea, so I often take blows that draw blood. It's a brilliant teacher, even if I sometimes have to refrain from using magic for a day or so afterwards."
Harry walks around to the front of Daphne and opens his arms to see if she wants a hug as well, when she accepts the offer he just holds her, "I've told you all before, about how I first saw people die in the spring court. What I didn't tell you is that's also when I killed my first person. It was a young goblin who happened to find…" Harry's voice breaks briefly, "Find our hiding place. I was terrified, and I pulled my sword out and held it out in front of me. That's when he sneered at me and said I'd make a fine prize with the wings he was going to get there. I don't really remember what happened, but my sword ended up in his stomach. Films don't do it justice, as people don't just die from those wounds. When I pulled my sword out, the smell was vile and… and he just sort of collapsed. Not like he couldn't move, but more that the pain was overwhelming. It took me… It took me three more swings to give him a clean death. That's when I left our hidey hole, and saw mum fighting to protect everyone else. That's when I knew that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a protector."
Marianne looks at Harry, tears in her eyes, "Is that when you found the domain?"
"Close to that point, yes."
Daphne sighs and looks up at him, "How did you handle stuff like that, and then needing to live in the mundane world?"
Harry smiles, "You grow up fast, and you really appreciate the things the mundane world has to offer. It's why I work so hard at everything."
"Tell me about it," Daphne grumbles, "you and Mari are both monsters. I have no idea when you find time to relax."
Harry laughs, as does Marianne, "Marianne, do you want to catch this one?"
"Sure. Turn what you're doing into a game. Practicing potions? Grab some carrots, or whatever, and see how quickly you can cut them evenly. Or take some food dye from the house and watch the patterns it makes when you stir it into cold water. Harry does the same thing with transfiguration too, I've watched him lay out a box of matches in rows and see if he can change all of them by running his wand over each row backwards and forwards. He even made me a needle with a tiny rose in the eye. Same with feathers to combs, and pencils to letter openers. I'm sure that if I could use a wand, we'd be racing. Charms, I duel him with wand motions…"
Momentarily distracted from the events of last night, Susan and Daphne both engage in discussing how Harry managed to do so much and have fun too.
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"Amelia, welcome to my home. I'm sure we can find a nice piece of meat to season that salt with."
Amelia smiles in relief as Morgana opens the door, walking in she takes a look around, "Um, where would you like me to put this?"
Morgana gestures, "The kitchen is through here. Now do you want to get the formalities out the way first, or tell me about your concerns?"
"Would you mind if I told you about our agreement first?"
"Go ahead, do you know your way around a kitchen?"
Amelia pulls a funny expression, "Uh, no. I was always lucky enough to have a house elf who was happy enough to do that."
Morgana nods, "I've yet to meet a house elf, oh well, never mind, you can keep me company while I prepare some food."
Nearly an hour later, and having eaten freshly cooked beef burgers, seasoned with Amelia's salt, Morgana sits back thoughtfully.
"Do you remember the date and time that you made this bargain?"
Amelia looks down at her hands, "I remember the date, but not the time. I was so wrung out when I got to Susan that I couldn't have considered it."
Morgana nods, "Most people don't consider just how important that part of the year and a day is. Magical curses, geas, and agreements have a sort of harmonic resonance to them, and a skilled practitioner can feel when those points arrive and the magic is at it's weakest. For whatever reason, this works out to a year and a day. My husband is perhaps the pre-eminent scholar of magic amongst our people, and he taught me to feel that coming.
"Well done on adding the stipulation about your state of mind, and ability to make a decision requiring consideration. In future, you should probably consider wording it so that you have to confirm you want to continue rather than saying you want to stop the agreement. As you can always make a new agreement if it fails, but you can't get out of agreement if you miss the opportunity."
"I didn't think of that."
Morgana raises a finger, "No, you didn't know better. There is never any shame in ignorance. However, while ignorance is often bliss, what you don't know can hurt you. What I want you to do is head to a mundane shopping centre and buy yourself a day planner as well as a device called a PDA, which stands for Personal Digital Assistant. Note down the date you made the agreement on the day planner, and learn how to use the PDA."
"But what about it failing due to the high levels of magic?"
"You're already starting to push your magic into the mist, you can protect the device using the same technique. Find me a month before the anniversary of the agreement and I will teach you to sense the ebbs and flows of that sort of thing. Even if you can't make the decision, if you can feel it you can probably break it. At least you didn't use your freely given blood to seal the agreement, as that would have left it almost impossible to break outside the conditions inside your agreement."
Amelia frowns, "I still don't really understand that. We use blood on many of our agreements."
Morgana looks up and sends a prayer to Danu, "Freely given blood can be used by anyone to do almost anything to you. The only thing more dangerous to you than freely given blood, is a freely given part of your domain, or an artifact you've made that's the same. While any virgin blood can be used to trace you, identify you, and a multitude of other things. Only freely given blood can do things to you. With the right rituals or runes, you could be turned into a willing servant or slave of someone if they had enough of your blood." Morgana's eyes widen with a sudden thought, "Do you have your Gringotts key?"
"Er, yes?"
"Could I borrow it for a moment?"
Amelia pulls the key out of her pouch, "Um…" As soon as it's visible, the key zips out of her hand and Morgana looks at it intently.
"Hey, I didn't say you…" Amelia stands up and does a handstand against the wall, "Hey what's goin… mmumph!"
"Oh Donn, what have they done…" Amelia collapses as Morgana pulls her magic from the key.
Indignantly, Amelia stands up, her wand appearing in her hand, "What was that!"
A flex of magic has Amelia putting the wand away, "This is a blood artifact. Parents used to make them for their children so that they could find them if they got lost. The goblins have put some work into preventing non-goblins from using them, but essentially this is the same thing that bits of my domain are if I give them out freely. Do not lose this, and as soon as you can have your keys destroyed and remade with blood they've had to take."
Amelia stares at the key as the blood drains from her face, "Just about everyone has one of these."
Morgana places the key in Amelia's unresisting hand, "Don't worry, they're probably just for insurance. I've flicked through your history books, and it very much seems like they've had the short end of the stick for centuries. I'd need to hear their own histories and read first hand accounts. However, I've seen the same patterns in mundane histories. Usually with slave rebellions or subjugated populations."
"I… We… That is… … You're probably right, there is a lot of anti-creature sentiment in magical Britain, especially amongst the landed families. Goddess, how did we not notice?"
Morgana takes Amelia's hand, "While I can't give you an answer to your question, I can theorise based on mundane history. The answer is, because that's what you're used to. You don't have a strong tradition of philosophers, and you don't have an organisation like the Quakers, both of which were instrumental in giving slaves a voice in Europe. That then led to slavery being abolished in the UK and then around Europe. It's one of the things I like about the modern era, slavery is no longer a necessity as a punishment more severe than a beating and less severe than death."
"How do you know so much about history?"
"I'm an archaeologist, there's a large amount of overlap between that and being a historian. The mundane have also written extensively about propaganda and its effect on the population."
The two continue to chat into the evening, with Amelia heading home through the mist slightly after she'd normally have retired for the night.
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Morgana steps out into a muddy field, her skin immediately soaked through by the light rain covering the scene. Looking around she can see a group of 20 soldiers wearing blue UN helmets, crowded behind a concrete wall. Off to one side their armoured vehicle is on fire, and has turned over from some sort of blast. On the other side is a tank and another armoured vehicle slowly moving towards them. The lull in the gunfire caused by her sudden appearance suddenly ends as she takes a bullet in the shoulder.
Hissing in pain, she sweeps her uninjured arm in the direction of the tank and on coming troops. An explosion of dirt fountains up, knocking the troops prone and overturning the tank. Taking the opportunity to find cover, Morgana slips through the mist and ducks behind the concrete wall.
"Which one of you prayed to me?"
A soldier in his 20's looks surprised, and with a Cornish accent exclaims, "You're The Morrigan?"
"Well, yes. Next time, please include what sort of battle you want help with. Now what do you want from me, as it's clear you don't just want my blessing."
A French soldier calls over, "We need to repel this attack, there are Serbian refugees behind that building, and the Croatians won't hesitate to slaughter them if they get past us."
Morgana nods and leaps over the wall screaming a warcry while charging towards the Croatian forces. The magic in her voice, and around her means that the hail of gunfire lands harmlessly in the ground around her. As she gets close enough to see their eyes, the attackers all turn and run, the pressure of her magic finally breaking their moral.
As the last Croatian soldier leaves, Morgana allows her swords to return to the mist before digging the bullet out with her dagger as she walks back to the UN troops. She sighs as the male soldiers look her up and down appreciatively, while the lone woman looks outraged.
"Your request has been completed, I expect you to provide the correct offerings later."
The British soldier looks at her with a chagrined expression, "I have no idea what offerings they are."
Morgana rubs her temples, "Who ever taught you that prayer should have taught you those."
Finally the female soldier loses her patience, "Have you no sense of modesty?"
Morgana pins her with a stare, "I am an ancient Celtic Goddess, summoned by an act of prayer, and you are worried about my modesty." Turning back to the soldier that prayed to her, she asks, "Well?"
"Nobody taught me that prayer goddess, I did a tour with the Royal Regiment of Scotland in the Gulf War. One of them kept using that prayer. Nothing else was working Goddess, so I thought I'd try that."
"Damn, I stopped teaching that in 85 when I joined the re-enactment scene. Right fine, I don't suppose Hogwarts means anything to you." The soldier freezes for a moment before shaking his head, "I see, you were born there. Fine, well it's quite simple. Trap a local animal, a rabbit, deer, hog, chicken, doesn't matter as long as it's edible. As you kill it, make this prayer, 'Morrigan, tha sinn a' toirt taing airson do thaic anns a' bhlàr an-diugh'. Got that?"
One of the other soldiers makes the sign of the cross and Morgana growls, "Your god can't help you because he doesn't exist. The Romans made a religion without a god because their own gods were objecting to what they were doing. Call to your god as much as you want, and you won't get a reply. Call to me or mine and, well, I'm here."
The female soldier scoffs, "I don't believe you, there's no such thing as gods."
Morgana finally loses it and grabs the woman before disappearing into the mist. Walking out into her domain a few moments later, she throws the soldier to the ground, "Pick a rock, any rock."
The soldier brings her rifle to bear before Morgana rips it our of her grasp magically, "Pick, a, rock."
"What the hell?"
"Wrong pantheon, I'm Celtic not Norse, now pick a rock."
"Where the hell are we!"
"My domain, now pick a rock." Morgana's glamour starts to slip and the woman begins to feel uncomfortable because of it, so she scrabbles for a rock and throws it at Morgana, who catches it and draws out most of her essence, like she did millennia ago with the symbols she's been giving out.
"Good, this will do. Draw your knife and cut your finger to bleed on this rock."
"Fuck you!"
Morgana crouches down next to the soldier, "I'm not that sort of goddess. Back in the day I'd have strung you up and left crows to feed on your liver while it grows back day after day. But you don't know better, so now I am going to give you definitive proof of the fact I exist. You are going to bleed on this rock, and then it will be your rock. You'll never be able to lose it, and you can use it to talk to me whenever you want. I will also be able to talk to you, and find you anywhere in the world. Oh, and don't worry about destroying it, while you're alive you this stone will be indestructible. Now, do you want to use your own knife, or mine?"
The soldier reaches down for her boot knife and draws it. After attempting to stab Morgana, and having the knife handed back, she reluctantly pricks her finger with the knife and smears it on the stone.
"There you go, that wasn't so hard, was it. Now for a side trip to Glasgow, and I'll get you back to your people."
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When they return to the area that the soldiers were defending, the other soldiers have spread out amongst the refugees to see if any of them need medical assistance. While the female soldier clutches her copy of The Herald, her eyes wild and panicky, Morgana swiftly moves through the women and children there providing what little relief she can.
Spotting a bombed out convenience store that has a mostly intact roof, she works to convert it into a long house, complete with fire pit and smoke holes. As soon as that's done, she pulls a couple of boar from her domain and swiftly slaughters and dresses them, before leaving them on spits over the fire in the new long house. That done she hands one of her symbols to the soldier that prayed to her before she disappears back into the mist to her home.
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The next morning, after she's come down from the adrenaline rush from being shot, and her shoulder has healed. Morgana feels guilty for forcing the soldier into taking the rock, so she sends her a message.
"Sorry about yesterday, I was more than a little angry at being shot. I realise that you were just scared and lashing out because of it. I'm afraid that you're stuck with the stone though. If you want to message me, just hold it and concentrate on what you want to say. It might help if you imagine you're talking to me."
A few minutes later a message comes back, "What the Fuck, that wasn't just a dream?"
"I'm afraid not, you can call me Morgana when we're talking like this."
"Mihaela, but how?"
"I'm a goddess in the classical sense, not the version that Christianity spread around. My people lived in what is now Ireland before humans ever arrived there. Though I'm only a little over 2,000 years old."
"I can't deal with this right now."
"I'm not going anywhere, so when you want to talk, I'll be here."