"Wake up," Brom said, poking Harry's shoulder.
Moaning, Harry pushed his head further into the pillow.
"Wake up," Brom insisted. "We need to leave now if we can hope to make it to Daret today."
Harry rubbed his eyes blearily. Just lifting his head from the pillow felt like a herculean task. The dreams had continued for the last few nights. If he had woken anyone muttering in his sleep, they had been merciful enough not to speak of it. It made him grateful for his Rider dreams. At least when he had those, he could be sure he wasn't having nightmares.
It frustrated him. Harry had already done this whole song and dance. He should be the experienced one, unfazed by evil. A farmer kid two years younger than him shouldn't be more jaded.
Harry had begun to consider himself a seasoned adventurer after seven years of experience. It turned out that poking his nose around in a school under adult supervision was not the same as a medieval, tyrannical empire.
All the dreams and nightmares meant he'd had no time to himself to work on an increasingly important project.
Dragging his feet, Harry got dressed and packed up the tent. He'd started getting in the habit of conjuring a real sword every morning to carry around. It was only a few pounds, but every ounce counted when he was going to be carrying it for miles on foot.
They departed soon after. Eragon and Saphira went flying. They coasted overhead, Saphira making lazy circles around Brom and Harry on the ground. The early morning sun was low on their left, casting long shadows from his feet. To the left, the Anora ran alongside them.
Harry got out his broomstick and mounted it lazily, resting his chest against the handle and draping his legs over the footrests, practically laying down over it and letting the flight enchantments carry him slowly at Brom's walking pace.
"What's on your mind?" Harry asked Brom.
The man toyed with his amethyst ring. He gazed up at Saphira wheeling gently in the sky. His expression was longing. "Better days, I suppose," Brom murmured. "The past. Old regrets, old triumphs."
"Anything you can share?" Harry wondered.
Brom shook his head. "Maybe one day. When the world is kinder. Or I suppose, if my secrets no longer matter."
Harry hummed. "Isn't that Eragon's quest?"
Brom snorted. "Yes. Eventually. I know people who would rejoice in the streets for the knowledge that a Rider exists not under Galbatorix's thumb. But he is not ready."
"The Varden would push him past his limits?" Harry quoted loosely. "Something you said."
"Aye," Brom grunted. Harry drifted along, letting his limbs go slack and resting his muscles. "Slaying Galbatorix is of paramount importance." He glanced at Harry shrewdly. "You will not mention this to Eragon, but the Varden is likely to point out the many people who die of Galbatorix's continued reign. They would suggest that Eragon taking time to train and prepare was wasteful of the lives the King took while he waited. Some learn better, quicker under pressure, but they never learn well under that much pressure. It would be as much Eragon himself as the Varden who would push him past his limits."
Harry accepted that. It was clear that Dragon Riders were a bigger deal to Alagaesia than he really understood. People were probably raised on tales of their exploits, a shared cultural legend Harry simply hadn't grown up with. He suspected Eragon was in a similar position to how he'd felt after the Department of Mysteries battle, when rumors of the prophecy leaked. People started looking to him to defeat Voldemort, no matter how laughable the idea should have been.
Harry had never gotten the training Brom was giving Eragon. The skills he had at fighting were almost exclusively self-taught, and he'd pieced together what wisdom he had through experience and trial and error.
In a way, it had been frustrating to feel unsupported by Dumbledore. Harry had spent his sixth year knowing he was going to be looking down Voldemort's wand sooner or later. Wasting his time picking through Tom Riddle's history felt pointless and wasteful when he wanted to know how to fight. Real fighting, not slinging those colorful jets of light around. He wanted to know how to cast the spells Voldemort and Dumbledore fought with in the Ministry Atrium, that silvery hex that had stunned four people at once when Fudge had tried to arrest Dumbledore in his office. He wanted to be able to stand on his own two feet and meet Voldemort as an equal, like the prophecy said.
Logically, Harry understood what Dumbledore had done. Voldemort had been studying how to fight and kill with magic since before his parents were born. Harry hadn't even finished school yet. There was no way Dumbledore could teach him enough to beat Voldemort in a fair fight in the time he had left from the ring's curse.
Dumbledore had had a plan. That much was plain to see. Harry knew that had he chosen to return from King's Cross, he would have defeated Voldemort in short order. The Hallows all owed their allegiance to him. If Voldemort still had his hands on the Elder Wand when Harry returned, it would backfire again, Harry was certain. A wand like that would not kill its master. Not when Harry not only had the better claim through Draco Malfoy, but had arguably defeated Voldemort himself by rejecting death a second time.
And if Harry got his hands on it and Voldemort had his own wand, well, then the Elder Wand would do what it was supposed to, wouldn't it? It was supposed to be unbeatable.
But Harry was still bothered by the way he could not claim any victories of his own. So rarely was it him who crossed the finish line. It was always Dumbledore or Lily or Barty Crouch Jr. pulling the strings, coming to save him.
He had felt like the king on the chessboard, with Dumbledore the queen. Slow, with short reach, yet treated as precious and positioned by Dumbledore to deal the final blow.
He hoped Eragon would feel differently. It was not a great feeling to feel as though his value, the thing which others looked up to him for, was unearned.
Harry drifted a while longer in silence. He rested his cheek on the cushioning charm over the handle and let his eyes unfocus so even at their glacial pace, the grass below seemed to race past.
"What do you do for entertainment?" Harry grumbled. "I have never been so bored."
"The root of most vices is too much time and too much money," Brom said sagely. "Gambling, prostitution, drinking, they are all lures for the bored man. I tell stories, you know."
Harry made an unimpressed hum. "I can hardly expect you to entertain me all the time."
"Were you constantly entertained in Britain?" Brom wondered.
Harry shrugged. "Not constantly, but there's never weeks of nothing but literal uninterrupted walking over a flat grass square."
Brom snorted. "The scenery is dull, I'll grant you. What about your 'summer break?'"
Harry shrugged, sending the broomstick bobbing beneath him. He reached up to tweak it back to level.
"Free from responsibility," Harry corrected. "It just means we can seek out our own entertainment. Go to a park, send letters to friends, visit the library, get a summer job, I suppose."
"And schooling takes up all of your time?" Brom asked.
Harry shook his head. "Lessons are four to eight hours, depending on your schedule. You can chat at meals or after class. There are sports and clubs like Quidditch, sometimes Hogwarts lets the upperclassmen walk down to the village by the castle. Hogsmeade."
"What are you missing from Britain right now?" Brom asked.
"My friends," Harry answered immediately. "And I suppose the newspapers."
"Newspapers?" Brom asked. He dug his walking stick into the tough grass and rummaged through his pack for a snack, jerky and dry bread.
"I am going to buy so much meat next time we can do so," Harry announced.
"It doesn't bother you that animals are being slaughtered so long as you don't have to do it?" Brom snorted.
"Yep," Harry popped the p unashamedly.
"And newspapers?" Brom prodded.
"Oh. Er, well news is important stuff happening-"
"I know what news is, Harry," Brom snapped.
Harry shoved down the flush of embarrassment. "Well newspapers are when a bunch of different reporters go around finding important stuff that's going on and they put all those stories together. Then the newspaper prints off a few thousand copies and mails them to everyone who's subscribed."
Brom hummed. "How much does a subscription cost? Scribes are not cheap, and you would need an army for newspapers, how often?"
"Well the most famous one is called the Daily Prophet," Harry said dryly. "And if you think scribes are the only way to copy the written word, boy have I got a revolutionary idea for you. It's called the printing press."
"Enough people are literate to make such a venture profitable?" Brom wondered.
"Schools," Harry reminded him.
"Ah," Brom murmured. "I would like to visit one day."
"Good luck," Harry grinned. "The way I got here is not likely to be replicable."
"Can I ask how?" Brom wondered.
Harry shook his head. He opened his mouth to give some explanation, then found that the gigantic snarl of emotions tied up in that particular secret were too big to fit past his throat, much less smooth out into coherent words.
Brom respected his boundary.
Walking all day meant a lot of time to talk. All day, in fact. After an hour of letting his arms dangle below the broom, all the blood rushing to them forced him to prop them on the handle where resting his head on his knuckles made them uncomfortable, and by then his legs were getting restless, so Harry began shifting his body around over the broomstick, draping himself over it in increasingly unlikely and contorted poses to continue letting the broomstick do all the work of walking for him while staying comfortable.
"You know you're going to be training all the energy you're saving away when we stop for the evening," Brom said idly, as Harry tried to find a position that let him lay on his back over the handle of the broomstick.
"Yes," Harry said sourly.
"Good."
Why hadn't he tried to enchant those carpets he'd bought from the traders? Surely Morgan would have been able to put him on the right track. And Brom wouldn't be able to complain of not knowing how to fly one, either. They'd probably already be in Teirm by now. And now he had no opportunity to summon her without someone noticing.
Lunchtime rolled around. Brom put his fingers to his lips and made a shrill whistle. Grinning, Harry put the tip of his wand to his throat.
"LUNCHTIME," he called up to Saphira and Eragon. The sonorous charm carried his voice for hundreds of empty yards. Brom gave him the stink eye for it.
The dragon and her Rider descended while Harry took out the tent and grabbed them another meal. Cheesy garlic bread, tomato sauce, fruit, and lemon cake. For Saphira, he had quaffle-sized ravioli pieces she snapped up while they ate. Harry conjured a table and chairs to set out among the grassy plains.
"Have you seen anyone else out there?" Brom asked Eragon.
He shook his head. "Nothing at all for an impossible distance. Nothing but the Anora and the bushland around it."
Brom liked that. "Let us know if that changes."
They finished lunch and took to the sky again.
For fifteen minutes, Brom walked in silence alongside Harry.
"How do you travel in Britain?" he finally asked.
"Muggles and wizards do things differently," Harry mused. "For wizards, we can use floo powder to get between linked fireplaces. There's broomsticks and magic carpets, though carpets were banned in Britain."
"And without magic?" Brom wondered.
"Many more options," Harry said. "Cars are the most common. Er, imagine carriages driven by machines inside the cars themselves. No horses. Most houses have garages to keep one or two cars. Trains are a bit like cars except they can only go on tracks built for them, and they take hundreds of passengers at once. They're for longer distances between big cities. They have smaller versions of trains – subways – for getting around big cities easier on foot. They usually run through a bunch of tunnels under the city. Ships are mostly for big, heavy cargo. Some short distances over water use ferries, especially to take cars across lakes or rivers or the Channel before the Chunnel got built. And when people want to travel intercontinentally or very very far, they fly."
"Like you do?" Brom asked, gesturing at the broom. "Muggles do, too?"
"No," Harry laughed. "Muggles probably fly even nicer than wizards. They have planes. Imagine a giant metal dragon with fixed wings, pushed through the air by incredibly powerful fans. The inside is like a big hallway with loads of chairs. The biggest planes can take five hundred people across an ocean at six hundred miles an hour."
Brom whistled lowly.
"Yeah," Harry murmured, suddenly introspective. "Muggles are a lot more awesome than wizards give them credit for."
"People," Brom corrected. "Magic does not make us different, it just gives us a potent tool. Remember that in all the ways that matter, we are the same exact creatures as everyone else."
"People," Harry allowed.
After a while walking in silence, Harry prompted Brom with a question. "Does that make you happy, to know the world can be so much greater, or sad that it's not yet?"
"Yet?" Brom wondered.
"It's all technology," Harry agreed. "Everything feeds into each other. Get better at farming and you need less people to farm to feed everyone. All the extra people can get to work inventing other stuff. Get better at making steel and it becomes cheaper, so the farmers can have more, better tools. Get better at transport and everything speeds up. It's a feedback loop. Alagaesia just needs somebody to start it."
"Do you intend to?" Brom asked Harry.
Harry considered. There were a lot of unanswered questions he had about magic, and he liked the magical community he used to live in. But now that that wasn't an option, Harry found his curiosity extended past magic. He also wanted to know what made the industrial revolution tick, how all the inventions and advancements worked together to build the world he knew.
"Maybe," he said finally. "We'll see what the world looks like when Galbatorix is dead."
"So you're on board with the mission now?" Brom asked.
Harry grumbled at the trap he'd laid down and stepped in all by himself. "I don't know," he groused. "I just got finished with another- conflict, when I came here. I'm not eager to jump into another one."
"But…?" Brom led.
Harry sighed. "But I can't ignore what happened at Yazuac."
"Galbatorix may not have been responsible for that," Brom suggested.
"It doesn't matter," Harry waved off. "You say he's similarly evil. I think I'd want to see evidence of that firsthand, but it helps to know what evil looks like. It reminded me why fighting is worth it."
Brom did not press him further.
Eragon reported sighting Daret not long after. Saphira coasted back to earth to drop Eragon off before climbing back to her lofty vantage point thousands of feet above.
When they headed near the village, Harry put his broom away and resumed walking on foot.
"Now that the final stretch is upon us, I feel as though my legs have turned to jelly," Eragon complained. "Though I don't think you will find horses to buy here."
"Oh?" Brom asked.
"Aye," Eragon said grimly. "Saphira says she sees nobody walking about in the village."
That brought the amiable mood crashing back to earth. "She didn't smell anything or spot carrion birds," Eragon suggested.
But Harry could not stop himself from seeing the pile of bodies in Yazuac and imagining the same thing in Daret. He drew his wand. "I'm going to check for people," he warned Brom. He didn't object.
"Hominem revelio."
Harry made the ping more directed this time, aimed at the village at the edge of the horizon. An invisible, intangible wave of magic raced across the grass, speeding through the village. Harry felt it ping something.
"Three people," he reported.
Brom frowned. "No matter what, we can manage three. Does it ping only humans?"
Harry shook his head. "I don't know the exact mechanics, but I've known it to catch house elves, veela, and goblins."
"So it will catch Urgals," Eragon growled.
The implications caught up with Harry. "You think those are the guys left behind?"
"It's as good a guess as any," Brom agreed. "If you must, you may use magic, but if you do, we will have to dispatch them all."
They reached Daret as the sun was going down. Brom ordered them to stick with him, cursing under his breath.
"I did not expect a confrontation so soon. There are many things wooden swords cannot teach, yet which you both must learn. Edge alignment, draw cuts-" he stopped himself. "What's done is done. Tonight, you must follow me closely."
They entered the village.
It looked similar to Yazuac, rustic and with similar building styles. It was a bit more wooded, nestled against the river. And crucially, there was no damage to the village.
It was empty. Nobody was home. But it was not ransacked, and there was no evidence of violence. The houses were empty and dark, but the doors were closed.
"Alohomora," Harry whispered under his breath, tapping one. The deadbolt behind it slid open. Brom padded in after him. The house was undisturbed, yet abandoned.
"They packed," Brom murmured lowly, indicating an empty pantry. "Leave the rest."
They checked one more house before they were comfortable calling the rest of the village similarly abandoned.
"Your spell," Brom whispered. "Does it tell you where they are?"
Harry cast it again, nodding. He pointed with his arm towards each ping. Two were grouped by the far side of the village. The other was much closer. "Close," he whispered.
Brom drew his sword quietly. Harry had his wand out. Eragon, his bow.
Brom stalked ahead first, back to the alleyway, peering around the corner. He beckoned for them to follow. Harry sent out another ping, indicating the adjusted position.
When they rounded the corner, Harry found the direction he'd indicated was pointing at a house across the street. They crept across and snuck up to the door.
With the lightest of touches, Brom nudged the door. The hinges made the tiniest squeak at the motion. Brom's brows drew together in frustration. In the very quietest voice possible, Brom subvocalized a handful of unfamiliar words. Listening a moment, he became convinced the person inside had not been alerted. He pushed inside. Harry followed after him, his wand already trained in the right direction.
Inside the house was the sort of monster that lived in wizarding children's books. Seven feet tall with grey skin and curling ram's horns, the Urgal had bulging muscles and rough leather clothes like the leather had not been dead for long.
Brom took another step when by pure misfortune, the Urgal turned around. He saw the three of them, Brom's sword, and Eragon's bow in an instant. Yellow eyes narrowed. He opened his mouth-
"Silencio," Harry jabbed. The Urgal's shout was rendered silent. Brom struck in that moment of confusion, swinging for the beast's wrist. The Urgal was caught off guard, but not enough to lose the fight in an instant. He parried the strike with his own sword. Harry recognized the ease of motion in the move and knew the Urgal was skilled.
"Petrific-"
"Brisingr," Eragon snarled, releasing his arrow.
Blue fire wreathed the projectile for the quarter second it took to cross the room and bury itself in the Urgal's forehead. The Urgal's skull exploded in blue flames, sending his horns flying in either direction.
Brom cursed and dropped away from the arrow the moment Eragon fired it.
"Fool boy!" Brom exclaimed.
Eragon's chest was heaving, a rictus of hate on his face. Harry loathed the creature at his feet, too, but he wouldn't have gone for the kill instantly. Nor had Brom evidently, swinging at the Urgal's wrist instead of his neck. To disarm, literally.
"You almost hit me," Brom snarled. "Be careful. I had him handled."
"Let's find the other two," was all Eragon said.
"To do the same?" Brom demanded.
"Yes," Eragon said starkly.
A part of Harry wanted to join Eragon, but the kid was suggesting premeditated murder.
"You will stay here," Brom growled. "I shall deal with them since you cannot comport yourself responsibly in mortal combat."
Harry followed Brom, leaving a fuming Eragon behind. Another ping gave them a heading. They crossed between the houses like wraiths in the night. It was as natural to Harry as breathing. Sneaking had become second nature even before he ever received the invisibility cloak from Dumbledore. He tried not to think on how similar Uvek and this Urgal looked. And he hoped that the Urgal Eragon had just killed was a true believer in their atrocities, and not a Draco Malfoy, dragged along by his family and participating only halfheartedly in the evil they dealt.
They approached behind the last two Urgals. Harry indicated he would take the one on the left. Brom nodded. Harry shot a petrification curse at his target, who went down with his limbs locked. Brom put his sword through the back of the other with a gruesome snikt Harry knew he would hear in his nightmares. The second Urgal gurgled as it died. Brom ripped his sword out and cleaned it with a chewed out word, glaring down at the last one.
For a moment, Brom went as stiff as the petrified Urgal. Harry saw the Urgal's yellow eyes turn hateful and strained. Harry immediately understood what Brom was doing. An instant later, Brom relaxed.
"What did you find?" Harry asked, abandoning stealth.
Brom pinched his brow. "Maybe some trouble. Maybe not. They don't know enough for me to be sure."
Harry knew what would happen an instant before it did. Brom didn't even telegraph the stroke. Harry just saw it in his eyes, the hard look he gave the frozen Urgal an instant before he lopped his head off. It still shocked him.
"Shit!" Harry jumped back. "You didn't-" he stopped himself. "I could've obliviated him."
"What is that?" Brom asked, cleaning his blade once more.
"Forgetting charm," Harry said shortly. "Wipes memories."
"Is it perfect?" Brom asked. Wordlessly, Harry shook his head. Voldemort had been able to break Bertha Jorkins's obliviation with torture.
"Then we cannot risk it. He saw our faces, yours especially."
Harry wanted to argue against cold blooded murder.
But he just had to remember the pile of bodies and the words died in his throat.
They fetched Eragon, who was looking down at the bow held loosely in his hands, shock etched into his expression.
Harry wondered if he'd have felt the same way. It had to be Eragon's first time killing someone. If Harry wanted to be pedantic, he'd already had his first. Despite Dumbledore's assurances, Harry had known what he was doing when he grabbed Quirrel's face. It hurt him and made him stop, so he did it until Quirrel really stopped. And again, Harry had understood that stabbing the diary with a basilisk fang would destroy it. Maybe he'd been too young to really understand how final death was, but Harry could not claim to be innocent like Eragon might've.
Even killing monsters could hurt. Harry knew Eragon would be trying to hold the image of the pile of bodies in his mind, to prove that he was justified in his actions. He also knew the image would keep sliding away, replaced by the person he'd killed.
He'd done the same with Pettigrew. He'd tried to remember the photos in Hagrid's album to summon up the hate needed to let Sirius and Remus kill that fucking rat, but he could not. When Pettigrew went on to resurrect Voldemort, Harry had been convinced his mercy had been a weakness. He still wasn't sure of his decision, even after Pettigrew saved everyone from Malfoy Manor.
It wouldn't have been easier to let Pettigrew die, Harry was convinced. The guilt would weigh on his conscience as much as Wormtail's escape had. And murder was even harder than doing nothing. Dumbledore always said that good people chose to do 'what was right, not what was easy.' Harry didn't know what it meant when the right choice was the easier one. Did that make it less right?
He wrenched himself back to the present. "Let's get out of here," Harry suggested. They headed to the edge of the village. Saphira landed in a swoop of shadowy wings. Eragon climbed up to her saddle and took off without another word, leaving Harry alone with Brom once more.
"We still cannot cross the Great Plains without horses," Brom scowled. "I do not want to have to backtrack to Therinsford, but there are no better options. We can scavenge Daret and hope to get lucky."
Harry reached into his backpack. "Or…" He trailed off, drawing out his broomstick.
"We can't fly this far doubling up-" Brom started.
Harry pulled out a second broomstick.
"I've been working on it whenever I have the time," Harry said.
Brom gave a heavy sigh. "Well I suppose I cannot avoid this without being ridiculous."
He figured the broomstick out rather quickly. They coasted out to the edge of Daret, then flew a bit beyond, gliding over the grassy fringes of the Great Plains. Harry kept an eye on Brom, though his attention was proven unnecessary soon after. Brom learned the way it read the shifting of his weight. Brooms were made to be intuitive, after all.
Once Brom announced he was comfortable with the broomstick, They set down about half a mile from Daret. Harry was struck by the desire to have a proper bonfire. Tonight of all nights, he wanted something grounding and familiar. Rather than bluebell flames in a glass jar, Harry conjured firewood and set it ablaze with incendio. He made stumps for Brom and himself to sit at.
Brom sat, glancing about himself at the rustic furnishings, and drew out his pipe. He snagged a light off the campfire and lit his weed. Once the logs were crackling and the warmth had begun to sink into their bones, Brom took a few deep drags of his pipe, exhaling the smoke with a weary sigh.
Wordlessly, Brom offered Harry the pipe.
Against his better judgement, Harry accepted it and inhaled the marijuana smoke.
"You took that better than I expected," Brom said, voice rough, but sympathetic.
Harry tilted his head. "Yeah?"
"For a while there, you insisted on ignoring any and all danger I warned you of. You didn't want to believe terrible things could happen. But in my experience, people such as those react very strongly to killing." Brom brought out food from his pack. It was stale and tough, but it was in front of him and he did not feel like pitching the tent.
"Suppose it's easier when they don't look like you," Harry offered. It was a slimy answer. That was how racism was born, how blood purity flourished. Separating people by immutable traits, making collective judgements, deriving value from something superficial.
But in this case, it was true. Harry would have been much more horrified if the person Brom dispatched had been a scared looking human.
"But you understood the necessity of it." Brom released another noxious cloud into the air. He passed the pipe back to Harry, who took another drag. He began to feel the effects of the smoking. It made it easier for him to talk about it.
"I always knew it was an option," Harry sighed. "It just used to be that nothing was so dangerous or so secret that I had to kill to keep it quiet." Horcruxes came to mind. "At least," Harry amended, "No secrets that ever leaked."
"You kept less secrets, or the secrets you had were of less importance?"
Harry waved his hand dismissively. "Both. There were a couple of really big ones, and a bunch of smaller ones. If someone found out a smaller one, we could work around that. And nobody learned any of the big ones until it was too late. In 2020, there are no tyrannical kings or evil enforcers. At least, not in Britain."
"There was a group of witches and wizards. The elites of wizarding society, mostly. Their ideology was stupid and self-destructive, but some were fanatical enough to kill for it. They called themselves Death Eaters. And I want to say they never did anything as bad as Yazuac. I could be wrong – they tore down a bridge while a bunch of people were still on it, and they unleashed dementors on the muggle world – but nothing was ever on such a scale and with such deliberate, malicious cruelty as Yazuac." Harry was lost in thought. "It was more apathetic. They viewed muggles as animals. I bet it was gleeful cruelty, relishing in their freedom, stuff like that."
The muggleborn camps, did they count? They probably were as bad as Yazuac, but he'd never actually seen the endpoint, the grim conclusion to it. A couple of escaped runners while they were camping in the Forest of Dean, one trial they snuck into to get the horcrux off Umbridge – they had never actually witnessed the horrifying, gruesome end of a muggleborn at the rotted lips of a dementor. It was hard to say.
But Harry could not argue the scale of it all. Now that he could take a step back and observe from afar, he could recognize that even muggle Britain probably would consider the whole 'wizarding war' as gang violence or something. Two smallish factions fighting.
"I guess-" he hesitated. "I guess Death Eaters were pretty evil. There just weren't all that many. To us, they were the greatest villains out there, the existential threat which every decent person ought to contribute to defeating. For many, the only way they could live normal lives is if they were defeated."
"What happened to them?" Brom wondered.
Shame curdled in Harry's gut. "I-" words stuck in his throat. Left, ran, fled, died. Chickened out. Betrayed. Failed to see things through.
"I'm not sure," Harry forced out. He scrunched his eyes, dragging his sleeve over his face. How did this all work? Did time keep moving while he was away? If Dumbledore was right and he could go back in time to do it all over, did anything matter at all? Harry accepted the pipe and breathed in.
"I ended up here right as things were coming to a climax," Harry said thickly. "But if I'm right, my departure gave them a gigantic advantage. I'm pretty sure we won."
Brom was sympathetic. "Maybe I don't know all the details, but you strike me as a good person."
Harry snorted. "Based off of what?" He could look back on his own behavior now and cringe at how naive he must have seemed. For a war veteran, he'd probably looked like- like a normal person.
"I've got a decent sense for people," Brom chuckled. "Grander gestures are easy to fake. It's the little things that tell me."
Harry rolled his watery eyes. "I must have looked like such a fool."
Brom bobbed his head back and forth. "Hardly the greatest one. Everybody has blind spots."
Harry rubbed his forehead. "I thought this place would be different, y'know? Everything was falling apart back home, I came here, and I must've thought that anywhere else had to be better. I must've been so determined to start fresh, I just ignored all evidence to the contrary. All the grim realities of Alagaesia I knew, you told me. If you were wrong, then everywhere could be like Carvahall. Charming, simple. Safe."
Brom sighed. "If you'd come here a century earlier, it probably was. Maybe eventually, it will be again."
I should not feel this way. Why do I feel so guilty when the Urgals were unquestionably evil?
Saphira's wingbeats were languid, filled with the evening breeze.
Is it the old one's chastisement?
No, Eragon thought back. Brom telling him off had stung, but nowhere near as much as the aching, gnawing guilt that was carving a pit in his chest. He just wanted to avoid my spell.
Are you sure it's not more than that? Saphira tilted her head in front of him.
Aren't you supposed to be on my side?
I am, little one. Eragon felt a surge of unconditional love flow from Saphira. But you are not always on your side, and then it is my job to be on your side even when you do not know it.
So was I wrong?
Maybe careless, with Brom so near, Saphira allowed.
To kill the Urgal, I mean.
She snorted softly, audible over the breeze wafting past his ears.
Dragons do not gnash their teeth and agonize over their foes' demise. I shed no tears eating my last meal, as did you the last time you killed a deer.
He wasn't an animal, Eragon insisted. Animals don't make clothes and speak a language.
He behaved like one, Saphira dismissed airily. The cruelty of killing for senseless enjoyment is evil. He deserved to die, by your hand or another's. Brom simply seemed angry you were so quick to take such permanent action, I suppose. For humans, you are yet young.
The irony was not lost on Eragon that Saphira had not yet had even her first birthday.
He chewed me out on my 'comportment,' not my decision, Eragon admitted. Maybe you're right.
Saphira wiggled in satisfaction. Of course I am.
Some time later, a presence touched Eragon's mind. It was not Saphira's. Eragon armored himself against the intrusion panickedly, trying to remember how Brom had said to keep intruders out while simultaneously attempting to keep the very secret of Brom's existence from the intruder.
Valiant effort, an unamused presence managed to breach through. But unnecessary. Please land. We need to plot our next moves. Eragon recognized the cadence of Brom's speech in the presence's thoughts. A bit resentfully, Eragon relayed the message to Saphira and they began to descend.
Harry and Brom were standing around a fire almost half a mile from the edge of town. Eragon got off and shook the saddle sores from his legs. He was still full of pent up energy from the earlier fight. Flying with Saphira had soothed some of it, but Eragon had not walked all day and was still relatively fresh.
"Eragon, Saphira, hullo," Harry greeted. It was a strange word Eragon had not heard before, yet he had come to understand as a greeting. Harry was always using unfamiliar turns of phrase. Eragon had gotten rather practiced at piecing together their meaning from the rest of what Harry said.
"We're thinking we'll head for Teirm tomorrow," Brom said, puffing his pipe. He was lounging on a stump by the fire – a real fire – and smoking like a chimney.
"I thought you said we absolutely had to have horses," Eragon frowned.
"It's not in the cards," Brom said. "The next option would be backtracking to Therinsford, where you may encounter your cousin and be forced to answer uncomfortable questions. Let alone the time we'd waste heading towards a village in the middle of absolutely nowhere, you can see why I am not enthused by the idea."
"So, what?" Eragon asked. "Walk the whole way?"
Brom gestured to a dark silhouette propped against his stump, a form Eragon had thought was his walking stick. He narrowed his eyes. "Is that-"
"We'll fly," Brom said, picking up his broomstick.
AN: This, as you may guess, will have rather major knock-on effects down the line. I added an author's note clarifying in the first chapter, but I'll reiterate here; I moved up canon HP by 12 years. The only date you have to keep in mind is that Harry departed from Earth in 2020, before COVID. I toyed with the idea of Harry bringing along and accidentally unleashing a plague on Alagaesia, but that felt unnecessarily complicated. Maybe in a future fic ;)
A lot of this chapter deals with Harry's past, which feels like a contentious issue for some readers. I'm trying my best to interpret canon as honestly as I can, while not bashing anyone. Plenty of fanfic readers have very harsh interpretations of Dumbledore. Harry obviously feels betrayed by him, but for a variety of reasons, it wasn't just leading Harry to his death. And if I wrote it that way, I would be indirectly bashing Dumbledore, since Harry is going to have to work through this eventually when he meets Dumbledore again in the next fic. I'll admit, I prefer to see Dumbledore as benevolently as possible, so maybe my bias is showing through, but if you're here for an angst fest where Harry blames everything that went wrong in his life on Dumbledore, you're in the wrong place. I love Dumbledore and he's way too interesting to waste twirling his mustache and doing stupid evil shit.