4th November 1995 (63:7:5)
— Contact plus 00.02.01:12.30
Beth was having a very odd day. It began with waking up to find an unfamiliar naked woman in her tent.
The couple weeks since Beth's arrival in...whichever country she was in — she was pretty sure they'd started in Vietnam, if only barely, but she thought they were in Laos now? — had mostly been relatively slow. After that first night of fighting, they'd hung around the camp near that village for at least a week, settling in and preparing the way for larger groups of foreign fighters being moved in behind them. It turned out Beth's idea of burning down a section of the forest had been perfectly fine, since they'd needed to clear some of the area to expand the growing base anyway. The construction had proceeded very quickly, using magic to cheat, simple wood shacks popping up one after the next after the next, every couple days another party of soldiers teleported in to occupy them. (The foreign fighters coming in to help were mostly Soviets, with some socialist-leaning Arabs.) Beth had been useless at first, thanks to her medically-mandated recovery time, but she volunteered to help with the construction once Bill signed off on her doing magic again, picking up all the necessary spells within an hour — thankfully, it didn't require much transfiguration (transfiguration was temporary, after all, not really useful to make housing), so she was mostly able to keep up.
By the time the camp had been transformed into a bustling little town, Luke had gotten orders from his superiors. As messy as things were at the moment, and as scattered all over the world as the Army was, they didn't have people available they could send over to fill in the missing slots in their troop on such short notice — in particular, suitable mages were hard to come by. They didn't think it was safe for their troop to act independently, at reduced strength and especially short on mages to fly cover, so they'd been reassigned to work directly with the locals' reconnaissance efforts. A lot of sneaking around, trying to feel out exactly where the aliens were set up, counting the people and equipment they had on hand as well as they could, planning out the best direction to approach from and where the army behind them could most safely set up camp and place artillery for best effect, that sort of thing.
So, very similar to what they'd been doing in the Ituri rainforest, just working side-by-side with local soldiers this time. Mostly Vietnamese and Laotian military, but the higher-ups had intentionally assigned locals to the job — which was the natural thing to do, obviously you'd want your scouts to be familiar with the lay of the land — which meant a lot of them were from the more isolated hill tribes and things, who all had their own languages. Most of them could speak Vietnamese and/or French, but in the week or so since her troop had started working closely with them Beth had already started picking up Lao — completely unrelated to Vietnamese, with a few more different sounds, but with a very similar vibe to the feel of it, probably due to existing next to each other forever — and bits and pieces of various small local languages. It was honestly kind of a mess, she was trying not to spend too much time thinking about it. If only because getting a migraine while trying to sneak through the bloody mountains would be distracting.
One of the big advantages of having a few mages around was that they could pop back to the nearest forward camp at the end of the day, and then pop right back to where they'd finished off the night before come morning. They could have made do camping out in the hills — magic would probably make that a whole lot easier too — but carrying the extra supplies necessary would be more of a pain than just having the mages side-along everyone back and forth a couple at a time. They were following the river, crawling across rural hill country, scouring the area for signs of aliens, marking off anything suspicious on the maps a few of them were carrying (multiple people doing the job, in case something went wrong and the map was lost), before going back to camp at the end of the day, where they didn't have to worry about being murdered in their sleep.
Not to say there hadn't been any fighting, they had ended up in a couple little skirmishes. Their first sign they were getting close to something was when they stumbled across a couple of the lizard-looking blokes — quickly killing them, to make sure they couldn't run back and alert their people — once even a crew of about a dozen brainwashed locals, overseen by a single lizard thing. It looked like they were seeding some kind of vine through the hills, nobody could guess why, they'd taken samples back to camp to be sent off to the labcoats. They went ahead and burned any of the vines they came across going forward, just as a precaution.
They'd eventually spotted a sizeable farming settlement, rather like the one back in the Congo — though this one was somewhat more spread out, some of the shell-huts half-hidden in the trees, maybe twice the number of workers. They spent a day carefully sneaking around, mapping it out as well as they could, Beth even used her invisibility cloak to walk right through the middle of the outpost, so she could get a more accurate count of the fighters. A lot of concealment spells didn't work on the aliens, but Beth's cloak in particular did, they weren't sure why.
(Bill said her cloak was not a normal invisibility cloak, but he didn't have any better of an explanation than she did. It was useful, at least, so she wasn't complaining.)
Today was set to be a slow day — they would be waiting for more soldiers and equipment to be moved up to their forward camp, so they could hit the alien settlement. Once that was taken care of, they'd continue inching their way down the river, until they reach the Mekong somewhere west of here. The long-term plan from there would be to continue crawling their way south — they were certain there was a large landing somewhere near the Mekong Delta, but they wanted to cut off their ability to retreat north before beginning a full-out assault — but they might have to help one of the other groups in the valleys around here first, or the situation might change by then, who knows. Hopefully, the big future battle in the south would finish off the aliens here, but sometimes things went wrong, they'd have to see how it turned out.
So she didn't really need to get up early, since today was practically going to be an off-duty day, but by this point it was routine, she couldn't help it. Beth woke up more or less with the sun, dawn light setting her tent aglow.
Before, Beth had been sharing a tent with Olwen, but of course she was dead now, and nobody had been sent to replace her, so Beth had the tent to herself. She did most nights, anyway — sometimes a local woman or two would end up being put with her, especially their first night at a new forward camp, still early in the process of setting things up. (It turned out, Communists could be pretty serious about the whole equality of the sexes thing, there were plenty of women among the Vietnamese and Soviet soldiers.) The tent was nothing special, Army-issue, plain canvas, enough space for a couple people to lay down, short enough that Beth could only stand upright in the very centre. As bloody hot as it was here, Beth would leave the flaps at either end open overnight — the little bit of wind that got in was enough to stop it from getting too stuffy — only closed them when she was changing clothes or something. The tents were mostly just to stop them from being rained on overnight, it was warm enough here that they weren't needed for anything else. There was netting to keep bugs out, but that stuff didn't really obscure much — super necessary, though, the mosquitos here were murderous...
(Sometimes literally? Malaria and dengue were no fucking joke, several foreign fighters had started getting ill already.)
So Beth was understandably confused to wake up to find someone crouching over her. Still half-awake, she twitched away from the woman, her heart jumping into her throat and her hand scrambling for her wand — before she stopped, frowning. The unknown woman in her tent was maybe thirty, thirty-five, sitting rather oddly, crouched on the balls of her feet so deep her bum was practically touching her heels, arms resting against her sides with her hands on her knees. The thing that got Beth to slow down for a moment, blinking in confusion, was that she looked really weird. Her hair was long and shaggy, curls kinking this way and that as though not properly brushed in some time...and it was a pure, snowy white, with darker flecks here and there — kind of like some people with blonde hair would have bits of brown mixed in with the yellow, but here the light parts were an unnaturally solid white, the dark bits a proper black, a little bit of an ashy grey here and there, it was very odd. Mostly white, though, almost seeming to glow in the strip of early morning sunlight stabbing into the tent. Her eyes, wide and steady on Beth, were a bright inhuman yellow, like a cat or a bird.
Also? She was completely naked — Beth thought that was important to note, because she was a total bloody stranger, and she was just sitting there naked in Beth's tent first thing in the morning, what the fuck?!
"Um..." Frowning up at her, thoughts slow and bumbling — it was far too early, Beth wasn't awake yet — she struggled to figure out what the fuck to say. She was, just, naked women randomly appearing in her tent was not something she knew how to handle, okay. "Hello?"
"Hello," the woman muttered, her voice low and grinding, kind of like the crackle on the ngã tone from northerners.
...And that was it, she didn't say anything else. Just, continued to stare at Beth, perched there naked, was seriously fucking weird. Beth must be starting to wake up, because she was getting annoyed now. She sat up, moving at an angle to keep her head well away from the woman, glaring at her. "Okay, who the hell are you? Mind explaining what you're doing in my tent first thing in the morning?"
"Hedwig. I'm hungry."
Beth's mouth opened to respond, and then immediately closed again, blinking stupidly over at the woman. "...What?"
Her nose pinched, sneering. The expression looked...off, somehow — it almost looked disgusted, but that wasn't the vibe Beth was getting, for some reason. Maybe irritated, or frustrated? "Is wrong here. Too many trees, all too fast. Can't catch nothing. I'm hungry."
...No, Beth wasn't any less confused, really.
A while ago now, way back in...second year? She thought it was second year. Hermione had figured out that Beth didn't really feed Hedwig at all, and had been somewhat worried about her health — snowy owls didn't exist in the wild in Britain, concerned she wouldn't be able to support herself here — so Hermione had gone on a research binge and then ranted to Beth about it. As bloody huge as they were, snowy owls weren't the most agile fliers in the world, but they were very quiet, their wings designed to glide on the air almost silently. On the wide, flat, frozen plains they lived on, they would fly low over the ground, coming up behind things, swooping in and snatching them before they even saw them coming. It worked best when they had snow for camouflage, and the ground needed to be flat, so they had room to glide over the surface like that.
After a bit of thinking about it, Hermione had decided there was probably enough room for Hedwig to catch things in some of the more open patches of land around Britain. It wasn't an ideal environment for snowy owls, no, the lack of snow and the more hilly ground likely made it more difficult, but it must be possible. The fact that Hedwig seemed healthy enough after a year and a half of living with Beth would suggest that she was successfully hunting somehow, so. Hermione suggested Beth keep up a stash of owl treats and give her one every once in a while, just in case she had a rough patch for whatever reason.
Beth had ordered the owl treats, but she hardly used them, honestly — they didn't seem super appetising to her. Instead, she'd usually just grab a sausage or two or a hunk of chicken from the dining table and bring it up with her when she visited Hedwig in the Owlery. She did visit Hedwig regularly, which a lot of the other kids in her year thought was odd, but she just wanted to, okay.
It hadn't really occurred to her that Vietnam might be a problem. By the time Hedwig had caught up with her in Africa, they'd been in a more plainsy area — like Britain, probably not ideal, but at least it gave Hedwig enough room to wind up to a catch. These thickly-forested, narrow mountain valleys they were moving through here obviously didn't, and Hedwig wouldn't know which direction to go to find somewhere more advantageous.
Also, there wasn't really food to give her either? As off the beaten path as Beth's troop was, working closely with the locals, their food was primarily local stuff — a lot of rice and noodles and vegetables and beans, and very very little in the way of meat. What meat they did get was usually boiled to hell in some kind of soup, or sauteed or fried in a spicy sauce, which probably wouldn't seem very appetising to an owl. And Beth couldn't just give Hedwig noodles and greens, because owls were strictly carnivorous, they needed meat to survive. That probably should have occurred to her, it, just, things were super busy, okay.
All that flicked through Beth's head, but at the same time she was very very confused, making her a little dizzy. "Okay, wait, hold up a second. Are you saying..." She trailed off, the absolute absurdity of the situation making her draw up short, the words just refusing to come. Frozen in the middle of a gesture, she could see her own fingers were twitching. "You mean... Hedwig, my Hedwig."
"Yes." That was it, no more explanation than that, just, yes.
That was— No, Beth didn't believe her. "Prove it."
The woman's head tilted, giving her a sort of flat, unamused look — for some reason, the gesture struck Beth as very bird-like. There was a ticklish flash of magic, the light around her seeming to bend (very much like when Sirius transformed), and in a blink, exactly where the odd woman had been a second ago, was a very familiar snowy owl, staring at her with unblinking yellow eyes. Beth had never seen any other snowy owl, at least not in real life, but she was still positive that she could pick this one out of a hundred of them, that was definitely Hedwig.
Meeting her eyes, Beth felt herself stiffen, her heart thumping and an odd tingle of nerves running down her spine. The eyes. The eyes were the same, not quite exactly in the shape, human and owl skulls being built different, but the colour, the woman had exactly Hedwig's eyes — made very obvious when she switched back, the unfamiliar naked woman again crouching in front of her, the eyes hardly changing at all.
"I..."
Beth had absolutely no fucking clue how she was supposed to deal with this.
"I don't— You've been an animagus this whole time?! What are you—"
"No."
She cut off at the single, flat word, but then Hedwig — and it really must be Hedwig, which was fucking insane, what the fuck was even happening... — but she didn't follow the interruption with anything, just kept staring back at her. "No, what? You are an animagus, aren't you?"
"No, not that. Other thing."
"What, then?"
It might be Beth's imagination, but she thought the strange woman who had apparently been Hedwig this whole time looked a bit frustrated, her brow furrowed and her lips curling a little. She glanced away from Beth for a second, let out a little breath through her nose, before saying, "I can't say. I don't know what you call it, the word. I'm not human, other thing."
...Now that Beth was slowing down from her initial what the fuck what the fuck reaction, and actually paying attention for a second, the woman did sound rather...off. She meant, her voice all hoarse and grinding, and her English obviously wasn't very good — she was following Beth just fine, but her wording was awkward, and sometimes the pronunciation came out not quite right. Beth might otherwise just think it was a strong foreign accent of some kind, someone who hadn't quite practised the language up to fluency, but combined with the sound of her voice, she...
Beth had the feeling she didn't talk very often at all.
Because she spent the vast majority of her time as a bloody owl, obviously.
Her head swirling, Beth rubbed at her cheek, cursing under her breath — it was far too early for this shite.
If she understood what she was being told correctly, Beth's bloody post owl, who could apparently transform into a human whenever the fuck she wanted, was claiming to be some kind of nonhuman magical being. Beth was familiar with, like, elves and goblins and centaurs and merfolk and the like — and also giants, though she'd never met a full-blooded one — but she was aware there were others out there. Supposedly, there were a lot of some people called nymphs in Britain, somewhere, she'd never actually seen one before — the descriptions she'd heard came off like hippie nature types, presumably they just didn't get out much. And there were also veela, of course, and lilin, they were somewhat rare in Europe, much more common in the Near East, and there were other nonhuman beings that might be big in Asia or America but didn't really exist in Europe. There were all kinds of people out there, the world was complicated like that.
So, it wasn't impossible, what she was saying. But it was seriously fucking weird, and Beth wasn't an expert on this stuff, she had no idea...
...Though, it was interesting that Hedwig-as-a-human had white and black hair and yellow eyes. Like, Padfoot had shaggy black fur, very similar to Sirius's long curly hair, and McGonagall-as-a-cat had an inexplicable air of McGonagallness about her — it was hard to explain, exactly, she was still recognisable despite looking nothing alike. But, you know, they'd been born human, and became animagi later, it'd make sense to say their appearance as an animal was somehow influenced by what they looked like.
Humans didn't naturally have yellow eyes, or funny white and black hair. Maybe it was like Pettigrew, how he'd started to look weirdly rat-like after spending over a decade transformed, but that didn't seem quite right somehow...
There was definitely something weird going on here. Something weird besides a random naked woman appearing in her tent first thing in the morning and claiming to be Hedwig, she meant.
Jesus, this was so fucked up...
"Okay, I... I need to go talk to someone about this." Bill, he'd gotten around working for Gringotts, all over the world, and he was a very worldly sort of bloke — if Hedwig turned out to be some weird nonhuman being Beth had never heard of before, Bill would likely know all about them. "Um. If I go find someone quick, will you wait here? I'll be right back. And, um, once that's straightened out, we can...go get breakfast, I guess."
The woman nodded. "I will wait here."
Right. Good. That was...good.
Awkwardly, Beth pulled on her trousers and her uniform jacket — the bloody weird situation was awkward to begin with, but also Hedwig just kept bloody staring at her, she— Oh, fucking hell, Hedwig had definitely been in the room when she was changing, more times than she could—
Hedwig had been in the room while Beth touched herself before. That was very embarrassing in retrospect, and also super creepy — they were probably going to have to have a talk about that, but Beth was not looking forward to it...
Once Beth had all her stuff back in their proper places — including her pistol and all the shite in her belt pouches, none of which she expected to need today anyway — she slipped out of the tent and into the camp. It was still very sloppy at this point, canvas tents in various colours and sizes scattered around, only a few sturdier buildings here and there — mostly local construction, the mages here could do this thing where they shrank a house down, relocated it, and unshrunk it again, which was very neat. The camp was rather scattered and haphazard, tents pitched wherever they could find a relatively flat spot on the craggy mountainside, the brush cleared but trees still standing here and there all through the area. The nearest alien outpost wasn't so far away, they were trying to go unnoticed, at least the tree cover would prevent any aircraft from easily spotting them — some wards and palings to distribute the heat helped, but those were imperfect, the addition of actual physical cover was a safer bet.
Of course, Beth had heard that they were pretty sure the aliens knew they were here by now, supposedly scouts had spotted each other out in the trees somewhere. They just had to hope they could move enough people here before the aliens could pinpoint their exact location and a full-on attack came — and who knew how long that would be, they were basically racing the clock at this point.
It wasn't hard to find Bill, he was exactly where Beth expected him to be — at the morning meeting of the command staff here, looming over Luke's shoulder. The group was somewhat larger than the last time Beth had caught sight of them — from a distance, she obviously wasn't invited to these meetings — representing the people brought in yesterday, Luke and Bill the only attendees in British uniforms, the rest a mix of Vietnamese, Laotian, Soviet, and Syrian. (Or from one of the socialist-leaning Arab countries, anyway, their flags were all similar-looking.) Beth ducked into the shade of the marquee sort of thing — like a big tent, but without solid walls, just for the shade — sidled up to Bill's elbow. A couple people, gathered around a table with various papers and maps scattered around, glanced her way, but quickly ignored her. A couple whispers back and forth, Bill quick told Luke he needed to go check something out, and they were leaving.
On the way back to her tent, Beth tried to explain what was going on — she wasn't sure she was making a lot of sense, just, this was a super odd situation, that was all. But she must be saying something right, because they weren't even halfway back when Bill said, "Wilderfolk."
Beth twitched, glanced at him over her shoulder. "What?"
"That's what they're called, wilderfolk. The simple explanation is that they're animagi in reverse — animals who can take human form at will."
"How does that work? If they're animals they shouldn't be able to..." No wait, this was familiar, actually. She was pretty sure she'd heard of these people before. Sirius had definitely mentioned them, for one — everybody knew there were wolves in the Forbidden Forest, the same ones Malfoy had absurdly called werewolves way back in first year, but Sirius claimed they were actually wilderfolk. He hadn't explained what that meant, exactly, but Beth's impression had been that they were animals with roughly human-level intelligence for magical reasons. Supposedly there were a fair number of them in Britain, but nobody was sure how many, since they mostly lived out in the wild, or just went unnoticed. Like, Sirius had suggested Mrs Norris was wilderfolk too — that was why she could do things like identify rulebreakers for Filch, and was even still alive over a decade after Sirius and her parents' time, wilderfolk had magically-extended lifespans — which was just fucking absurd to think about...
(In retrospect, everyone joking around about "Filch's cat" being petrified was really fucked up.)
Sirius had been less clear about them having the ability to shift into humans, though that did make sense when she thought about it — obviously, Filch knew who Mrs Norris had seen breaking the rules because she verbally told him. Also, now that she thought about it, Sirius had suggested (without explicitly stating) that some of the wilderfolk hiding in plain sight did so as random animals, yes, but some were seemingly human, Beth hadn't quite caught that implication at the time...
"It's somewhat complicated," Bill was saying, "as can happen when you mix up magic and genetics, but wilderfolk are essentially part human. The child of an animagus and their target animal, and at least a portion of their descendents, will be wilderfolk."
"Wait, an animagus and their— You mean...?"
Bill gave her a kind of wry smile, a little shrug. "There are reasons polite society prefer to pretend wilderfolk don't exist."
...Right. Well, that was fucking gross...but she guessed that wasn't really the fault of the wilderfolk themselves, was it? Still, no wonder mages didn't mention them, as silly as they could be about blood purity or whatever...
When they got back, Hedwig was an owl again, perched on top of Beth's tent. As they approached, Bill said, "Come inside for a second, we need to talk." By the time Beth ducked into the tent after him, Hedwig had already swept in through the other side, backflapping for a second — and then there was another swirl of light, and the white-black-haired, yellow-eyed naked woman was crouching in Beth's tent again. Sitting down in front of her, his legs crossed, Bill said, "Hello, there. My name is Bill."
The unfamiliar woman who had apparently been Hedwig this whole time flatly stared at him, inhuman eyes unblinking. "I know."
"Yes, I imagine you do," Bill drawled, sounding rather amused. "Do you have another name you would prefer?" Oh shite, Beth hadn't even thought of that...
"No. I was called other things, is Hedwig now."
"Very well." Turning to look at Beth, he said, "That's not unusual — wilderfolk tend to have less attachment to human cultural ephemera, such as names. I got to know a wilderfolk woman during my stay in Egypt, and she went by multiple names in multiple languages, depending on who she was speaking to, and didn't seem partial to any of them. They're just like that sometimes."
...Beth was pretty sure got to know was supposed to be a euphemism. Given how much most mages seemingly didn't like wilderfolk, she had to wonder what Mrs Weasley would think of that — she felt very certain Bill had never told her.
It was hard to tell, she obviously wasn't used to human facial expressions, but Beth thought Hedwig was curious, her head tilting a little and her eyes slightly narrowing. "You know us?" Another of her kind, Beth was pretty sure she meant.
"Yeah, a few. The one I knew best was a kite — another bird of prey, similar to yourself in some ways, though rather smaller. Hang on, she..." Bill drew his wand, after a second of concentration cast an illusion with a flick. To their left was a vaguely Arab-looking woman — though with unnatural white and grey-silver hair, only partially hidden with some kind of shawl, her eyes a vibrant red — sitting on the floor with her feet extended out in front of her, crossed at the ankle, leaned reclining back on her hands, face tilted into a toothy smirk. To their right was a bird, sitting in mid-air as though on an invisible perch, round head with a pointy little beak (looking more like a hawk, maybe), feathers a bright white on most of the body, the wings a darker greyish-silver deepening to black toward the edges — not a small bird, exactly, but snowy owls were bloody huge, so it was maybe a third to a half of Hedwig's size.
"I see these," Hedwig said, pointing at the bird. "Before we come here."
"Yes, they're native to the same region of Africa we were in before we were moved here, it wouldn't surprise me if you saw a few around." The illusions dissipating, Bill replaced his wand — and then hesitated for a moment, his fingers tapping at his knees. "I have a couple of questions, they might be...uncomfortable. If I remember the story correctly, Hagrid bought you for Beth from Eeylops. Is that right?"
Hedwig just nodded — which, now that Beth was considering the implications of Hagrid buying a person for her as birthday present, Hedwig just calmly nodding about it was so fucked up...
"How did you come to be there? I imagine you weren't born there — you look too old, thirty? forty?"
"I don't know. It was colder, there were mountains. East, over the sea."
"Daneland? Finnland?"
Hedwig just shrugged, clearly had no idea. Honestly, Beth guessed the borders of magical countries were probably completely meaningless to a bloody bird. "We were being raised to... As post owls? Only some were like me, I don't know why."
"That can happen — owls are a common animagus form, due to their importance in magical culture, it's believed a fraction of post owls are wilderfolk. Likely not a large proportion, though, it's not really a surprise only a few there were like you. Did they know?"
She hesitated for a second, head tilting and her eyes tipping up to the canvas overhead. "I think not? I don't know. I know they thought I'm smart, but I don't think they knew why. I was never...as this, then," gesturing to herself.
"I see." Bill seemed somewhat sceptical, but he didn't voice whatever he was thinking, just moved on. "How did you leave there?"
"We were sold, to a shop. I was sold, to someone, I left, came to a shop again, was sold again, and left again, and again and again. Is this important?"
"Why do you keep leaving and going back to shops?"
"Some people are cruel, or don't need me, so I grow bored."
"I'm sure you could get by on your own — why do you keep returning to shops to be sold again?"
Frowning a little, Hedwig said, "I want to. People are..." She hesitated another moment, eyes flicking away from Bill for a blink. "Humans are more interesting. True owls are boring."
Bill shrugged. "Fair enough."
Beth was extremely sceptical for a second, but when she thought about it there was...maybe a point there? She meant, if Hedwig had human-level intelligence, going out to live with normal owls probably would be super boring. Of course, that didn't mean she had to stay a bloody post owl, she could just, you know, be a person. But, this wasn't a spectator sport, if she had a question she could just ask. "Why don't you... I mean, if humans are interesting, why do you just stay an owl the whole time?" Beth wouldn't be cool with just being some arsehole's pet, so, that seemed like a reasonable question to her...
Apparently Hedwig didn't think so, giving her an odd look. "I am an owl."
"Well, sure, but I meant, um..."
She really had no idea what she was getting at, but thankfully Bill came to the rescue. "That's just the way most wilderfolk are, Beth — they're normally more comfortable with their animal shape than their human one. And their psychology is often more in line with their animal heritage, which can make functioning socially in human society...fraught. Not to mention, their legal situation can be complicated — wilderfolk don't have any legal rights in Britain. They're not even truly considered people."
"Wait, really?"
Bill nodded, an expression on his face Beth could only describe as grim. "In magical Britain, wilderfolk are— The legal term is aliens, though in a different sense than is common these days. They're essentially considered magical creatures — that is, animals — but ones which, by their nature, are a special danger to the Statute of Secrecy. Any alien found within Britain's orders is remanded to the custody of a human mage, who is responsible for all their physical needs, yes, but also keeping them away from muggles."
...Well, that's fucking stupid. "So, you're saying that, legally, Hedwig is in my custody? Like a child would be? That's ridiculous, just look at her, she's gotta be three times my age!"
"You're human; she's not. And it isn't like a child, 'custody' was maybe a poor word choice. The legal term is corporal indenture — most Britons will deny it, but I would argue indenture is slavery, plain and simple." Because of fucking course it was, Beth couldn't even say she was surprised. "As an owl, Hedwig is free to go wherever she wishes, whenever she wishes. As wilderfolk, she would be bound to the custody of whoever the Ministry charged with her supervision, and her freedom of movement would be severely curtailed. Even if she wished to live openly as wilderfolk, there would be immediate, serious consequences, I'm not surprised she stayed hidden for so long."
For a long moment, Beth just stared at Bill, her eyes occasionally flicking to Hedwig, speechless. Trying to process the— She didn't... "You know, I fucking hate this country sometimes."
Bill and Hedwig both laughed at her, because of course they did. Hedwig's laughter sounded odd, sharp and huffing, but Beth guessed she probably didn't do it very often...
After that, there was a bit of talk about what to do, what Hedwig's options were from here — sometimes restating things to make sure Hedwig understood, since some of this was super complicated. Magical British law was abysmal where wilderfolk were concerned (and kind of just in general, honestly), but some other countries were better about it. Not to mention, she had more options than she might have had a couple months ago just in general, thanks to the Statute of Secrecy being well and truly shattered. She could leave for some other magical country, or defect to a muggle country, or just show up at some refugee relief thing literally anywhere. Muggle governments didn't specify species the way mages did — they'd thought they were the only beings on Earth, after all, so there was no need to specify things only applied to humans — so she could pretty easily backdoor herself into proper full legal rights and everything with a muggle government, which was a neat trick.
Hedwig had other options, but she didn't want to take any of them — she wanted to stay with Beth. That would be doable, theoretically — now that it was known she was wilderfolk, that actually changed her previous status as Beth's familiar very little, because magical Britain was fucked up — though that might take some explaining for their muggle friends. After all, modern muggles had opinions about slavery, which was technically what this was...
"Wait up a second," Beth jumped in, "why would you... You want to stay with me? Why?" She'd understood it when it was, just, the magical world was horrible sometimes and she didn't have anywhere else to go, but...
By this point, it was very obvious that Hedwig didn't really do facial expressions the same way as everyone else — which did make sense, she had a bird face most of the time, didn't have the practice. So Beth had absolutely no idea how to interpret the flat look Hedwig gave her, almost Snape-ishly unamused, and... "You're alone."
...Beth had no idea how the hell she was supposed to interpret that either. "What?"
"There is Sirius now, but he is not..." Hedwig trailed off, frowning, clearly failing to think of the word she wanted.
"Responsible?" Bill suggested. Beth glanced his way, saw there was a funny look on his face. Watching Hedwig with a smile, but not really a happy smile, exactly, Beth didn't know what that was...
Giving him a sharp nod, Hedwig said, "Yes, this. I will stay, until you are done growing, at least. Maybe I will go then."
...
Okay, Beth hadn't thought this oh hey, turns out your owl has been a person this whole time, and Hagrid bought her as a birthday gift for you, have fun! thing could get any more fucking weird, but apparently Beth had underestimated the universe's capacity to fuck with her. She, just, she was done, she had nothing at this point, she had absolutely no fucking clue what she was supposed to do with that.
(It was easier to focus on her confusion and irritation than this strange woman who'd been Hedwig this whole time apparently taking it upon herself to look after the ratty little orphan girl — Beth knew she'd looked very pathetic at barely eleven, but... Well, it did kind of make sense in retrospect, Hedwig occasionally nagging her to write to her friends over the summer, since she'd moved in with Sirius she'd even found a way to remind her to eat or get to bed when she was distracted with something, because Sirius could be shite at that sort of thing himself sometimes, and she was—)
(Yeah, not thinking about that at the moment and focussing on how fucking weird this was instead was a good idea — because if she let herself think about it too much she'd probably end up breaking down crying in the middle of a bloody army camp, and that sounded awkward and embarrassing.)
"She means until you leave the nest, so to speak," Bill explained, as though that was the part Beth was confused about. "Wilderfolk can have rather different ideas of adulthood, that often don't map onto the human experience one-to-one."
Beth frowned at Bill — well, that was a fucking stupid thing to say. She just said, "Um...?" gesturing vaguely around them with both hands. Army camp, middle of the mountains of Indochina, yeah, she'd say she'd thoroughly 'left the nest' at this point. 'The nest' was on the opposite end of the bloody planet from here...
Bill's lips twitched. "Figuratively. For some, starting a family of your own is the line."
...
Turning to Hedwig, Beth drawled, "You know, if that's what you're waiting for, I'm pretty sure I'm a lesbian, so you're going to be waiting a long fucking time." She didn't think she'd ever actually admitted that out loud before but, well, alien invasion, there were much more important things to worry about these days than her sexuality. Bill hardly even reacted, so.
Hedwig gave an odd, stiff shrug — apparently she wasn't concerned about that.
And, despite how fucking weird this whole conversation was, that seemed like pretty much the end of it. Hedwig had been told her options, and she wanted to stay, so, Bill guessed that meant it was time for breakfast. He'd go and explain the situation to Luke, and they'd definitely have to talk to someone in charge about it — probably separately, though it should hopefully be clear that nothing too skeevy was going on with them, since Hedwig was significantly older than her and Beth had had no idea she wasn't a normal post owl until literally just now — and people might be super uncomfortable with the situation, but, well, muggles expected magic shite to be weird at this point, they'd probably just brush it off without too much thought. More important things to worry about, you know. Which was fucking absurd to Beth, she still wasn't over this, it was extremely weird that Hedwig had been a person this whole time...
(And had apparently been trying to look after the pathetic orphan girl, just because, but Beth was still trying not to think about that too hard.)
Hardly without Beth even realising what was happening, Bill had conjured some clothes for Hedwig — copying the SCF uniform style, but without any of the tat on it — and they were leaving the tent. Beth automatically started toward the kitchen tents, Hedwig walking along a step to her left. She seemed obviously uncomfortable, her posture stiff and awkward, occasionally rolling her shoulders and picking at her sleeves or tugging the hem of her shirt. She'd made a very unpleasant face at being told she couldn't just go to breakfast completely naked — Beth would guess she didn't wear human clothing very often...or at all ever. Beth tried to keep walking, and not stare at her, just...
This was fucking weird right? This still seemed fucking weird.
She had absolutely no idea what the fuck she was supposed to say to Hedwig, so she, just, awkwardly remained silent, picking her way through the camp — thoroughly woken up at this point, people wandering around or hanging around chatting or working on one thing or another, noisy with chatter in several languages and the purr of engines and the clanking of metal against metal and the occasionally crackle or snap of magic somewhere. At least, Beth felt awkward, if Hedwig noticed how seriously uncomfortable this was she wasn't showing it at all. She didn't seem to notice the funny looks she was getting now and then from people they passed — the camp was big enough now that people wouldn't expect to know everyone they saw, but Hedwig's hair really did look very odd by normal human standards — which she guessed was very Hedwig-like behaviour, when Beth thought about it, she hardly ever seemed to give a damn...unless someone was being rude in her presence, of course...
(Beth loved the shite out of that bird, but her having been a person the whole time was seriously fucking weird, she didn't know what she was supposed to do with this.)
Now that they had a pretty stable set-up here, staying in one place and building up people to hit the alien settlement nearby, they were able to manage somewhat better conditions, like actually having halfway-decent food. Though, she guessed magic helped — they were never more than a couple apparation-hops away from somewhere with real food, so they didn't have to live entirely off of army rations. While her troop had been spending every day scouting up along the river, they'd gotten by eating whatever they got — mostly a mix of Vietnamese and Syrian army rations, occasionally fresh local food when they passed by a village or the camp got a supply drop by portkey — but they got a steady drip of supplies here, and didn't have to worry about packing everything up and moving it every day, so they'd gradually built up a more complex kitchen/cafeteria set-up, expanding as more and more people showed up, staffed by a mix of official military people (from various countries) and random locals displaced by the fighting following the army out of a lack of anything better to do.
There were a few of those big marquee tents, like the one the commanders met under, kitchen areas organised around either electronic or magical camp gear or even open fires, the stuff they were making a funny mix representing all the groups they had gathered here. No English food — as far as Beth knew, her troop were literally the only Brits here — but there was a variety of Vietnamese or Laotian stuff — there were regional variations in what people usually ate, but they seemed to completely ignore the border — as well as Arab stuff, pieced together with supplies from home or locally-grown produce cooked Arab-ly — it was generally pretty good, if rather spicey for Beth's very English palate (the spices were mostly dried anyway, so they were more easily transportable) — as well as the eastern European stuff the Soviets had brought with them. The white people in the camp who weren't Beth's team were all Soviets — mostly from the west of the Union, European Russia and Ukraine and Belarus and places like that — but just because they were also white people didn't mean the stuff that they ate was much like English food at all, they had their own, sometimes very different shite. They didn't make a point of requiring people to only get stuff from their people, since keeping everything separate would be more work than it was worth (and would also screw over Beth's troop), hungry people were free to take whatever they wanted (within reason, obviously), so meals at this camp tended to be very eclectic, people eating a mix of whatever had been made available that seemed appetising at the time.
Unfortunately, a really common thing to have around was porridge — which made sense, since she guessed it was relatively easy to just portkey the dried shite around and heat it up with water or whatever else you had on hand (here, often coconut milk) when you wanted it. The problem with that was that Beth hated porridge. Every time she ate the stuff, no matter where she was, she would feel the sun on her shoulders and gritty dirt on her hands and bleach faintly burning in her nose. There were long summers when she was growing up when plain, bland porridge was one of the very few things she ate — after hours doing her chores, working in the flower beds under the sun, she'd be given a meagre bowl of tasteless porridge, and then shoved into the cupboard for the rest of the evening. Even if it was better stuff, with add-ins and flavoured with whatever, the feel of it in her mouth sent some part of her back there every time. Sometimes there were no other options, especially when they were in the middle of nowhere, she would eat it if she had no other choice, but she hated it.
But now that they had a nicer food set-up, there were actually other options. The Soviets had porridge too, but now that there was a proper kitchen around they often made bliný, which were a kind of pancake — thin like crêpes, but a bit chewer and with more substance to them, Beth assumed they were made with a different grain. Sometimes with quark cheese when they could get it (which was only intermittently, didn't ship as well), sometimes with sausage, and they were increasingly getting creative with local stuff, using fruit or vegetables that grew here to make fillings, raw or stewed or fried, or the pickled varieties of stuff the locals ate sometimes (which Beth personally found extremely unpleasant). The Arabs also did porridge (because of course), but sometimes it was instead a vaguely similar dish that was done with beans instead of grain, which was much better just for texture, not-being-reminded-of-the-Dursleys reasons — the spices could sometimes be a bit much though. The locals often just had noodles for breakfast — which sure seemed like a midday or evening meal to Beth, but whatever — but sticky rice and crumbly flavourful bread — which she was told was actually made of rice, because of course it was, that's just what they had here — were also common, more frequently with fresh fruits and vegetables and stuff (since they were actually close to where local food was grown, obviously), only some of which were familiar to Beth, and often with a lot of herbs and spices and shite, the steam made her eyes water sometimes.
Apparently black pepper grew here naturally, this was where it came from in the first place — Beth had seen the vines growing semi-wild up in the hills, hadn't recognised them until Sam had asked her to ask their guides if the fruits were edible. (Only semi-wild, because the locals had let them 'escape' on purpose, came up into the hills to harvest them every year.) They used so much of the stuff here, not to mention the garlic and the turmeric and the ginger, and they grew hot peppers transplanted from Mexico, the American plants perfectly happy in the humid tropical environment, there was this paste they put in fucking everything, so fucking spicy, ugh...
(She was getting accustomed to the local food, but it was very much a work in progress.)
Of course, today she didn't have only her own tastes to consider — she had to think of what Hedwig would be able to eat too. She was familiar with what owl-shaped Hedwig liked to eat, but they didn't exactly have a lot of meat available here. Maybe the Soviets would have sausages today, but that was really it. Swallowing down her awkwardness with the Hedwig is a person now situation, Beth shuffled a little closer, pitched her voice to carry over the noise of the chatter of the dozens and dozens of people getting breakfast at the moment. "Um, I don't know what... There's not really gonna be any meat or anything, can you eat human food like this? That was the point of being human-shaped now, right?"
Hedwig gave her another unreadable look. "Yes."
"Um. Do you have an opinion on what to get? I think the spicy shite might be a bad idea, but other than that..."
By the way her nose scrunched up a little at the mention of spicy shite, her eyes flicking toward the Vietnamese section of the kitchen, Beth was probably right about that. "I don't know. I never eat like this."
...Right. Beth guessed they'd just have to figure it out, then.
After a moment of thought, she headed toward the Soviet side of the kitchens. The cooks could only make so much stuff at a time, and they had a big camp going, Beth wasn't the only one standing around waiting her turn — she wasn't entirely surprised when they greeted her by name, good mornings and how the fuck you doin's going around. The Communist and more socialist-leaning army groups she'd come across did tend to include women, a larger or smaller fraction depending on which country you were looking at, but they were generally, you know, adults, and not fifteen-year-old girls. She was aware talk about her had gone around by now, but that talk also normally included taking down two fire-squids and shielding that whole village their first night here, and the rumour of her just waltzing like a badass through the alien settlement completely undetected was starting to make the rounds, so she mostly didn't mind. In fact, she was asked about the latter, she spent most of the wait explaining about her invisibility cloak — yeah, other mages had invisibility cloaks, but hers was exceptionally good for some reason, no, she didn't know why...
(Along with absorbing as much of the local languages whenever possible, she'd also fleshed out her Arabic and picked up Russian — that's just what happened naturally when there were so many people speaking those languages around, omniglot thing. Russian had been quicker than Arabic, since the novgorodske she'd already spoken was very closely related, she could follow the rapid slangy conversation without any problem at all now.)
Oh, they had tvorog today! A pot of porridge was being refilled (blech), and there was a platter of bliný being set out, but the fillings and shite included a bowl of quark cheese — excellent, she'd been thinking generally carnivorous Hedwig would do better with some dairy at least. Beth made a face at the soldiers loading up their bliný or porridge with the pickled local stuff, getting laughs and teasing in return, when their turn came up just getting a couple bliný with some of the tvorog for herself and Hedwig. She'd started out just making suggestions, but Hedwig was so incredibly awkward with the utensils that Beth quickly took over for her — trying to ignore the funny looks they were getting, feeling the heat on her cheeks.
She circled around the Arab section of the kitchen and— Ah, they did have fūl midammis today, excellent. They'd definitely used some local spices, simmered the beans with coconut milk by the look of it, but it didn't smell too overly spicy, should be fine. While scooping up a bit of the stuff for herself and Hedwig, she was again asked about sneaking into the alien village, yep, that was true, invisibility cloak, ha ha, yes, she was very tiny, never heard that joke before. She then detoured to the Vietnamese section for tea. The lighter, translucent, almost flowery-smelling tea the locals drank wasn't her favourite, but the army coffee the Soviets had was harsh and practically undrinkable without sugar (and they often didn't have plain white sugar) — and they didn't have real cream either, but the flavours of the tea worked much better with this stuff that was, like, sort of sweetened condensed milk, but made with coconut instead. Honestly, she'd had no idea they could do so many things with coconuts, she'd only been familiar with the dry shavings before...
The tea didn't smell good to Hedwig, she wanted to go back to get some of the Soviet coffee instead. Well, fuck, Beth thought that shite was awful, but whatever, she guessed.
(Beth would later decide introducing Hedwig to coffee had been a bad idea — she'd never had caffeine before, it made her...odd.)
She didn't see any of her troop around, which wasn't a big shock. Since they didn't have any obligations today, she expected most of them had been drinking with the Soviets like idiots again — they might not even be up yet, and even if they were she was unlikely to spot them in the crowded kitchen tents, dozens and dozens of people all around. And she couldn't just spot the white people, since there were so many Slavic Soviets here now. Oh well, she just picked a spot at a relatively empty table — conjured, she suspected — silently congratulating herself for getting Hedwig to put her things down before sitting when she nearly fell awkwardly clambering over the bench. Definitely not used to being human-shaped, but Beth guessed she could see how that would be an adjustment...
Hedwig squeezed one of the lime slices (another thing that grew natively here, so they could get somewhat consistently) that came with the fūl over her coffee — ugh, that was gross. Well, yes, Beth had done the same thing with her tea, but tea was different than coffee, okay...
Beth and Hedwig were only sitting alone for a couple minutes before they were joined by a group of Arabs. Well, not Arabs, they were from Iraq but they were actually Kurdish — Beth had never heard of the Kurds before meeting a couple back in Africa, but they definitely weren't Arabs, their language vaguely reminding Beth of the Patils' Marāṭhī. (So, very distantly related to European languages, but not related to Arabic at all.) Or, it was actually a very mixed group sitting around Beth and Hedwig, Iraqis and Syrians, Arabs and Kurds and even a Turk, just the one Beth was most familiar with was Aştî, who was Kurdish. Ever since arriving in Indochina, Aştî had made a point of checking in with Beth now and then, because she was nosey like that, but she was generally nice and super casual about it, so it wasn't really a big deal.
Thankfully, they mostly wanted to talk about her walk through the alien settlement and the plans for the battle going on, which was a much less embarrassing topic than random strangers deciding to make sure the fifteen-year-old girl was doing okay. They did ask what the deal with Hedwig was — not helped along when Beth had to show Hedwig how to use a spoon, physically taking her hand to wrap her fingers around the handle correctly — but Beth didn't feel like talking about that just now, so she just said Hedwig only spoke English and moved on.
(Beth's Arabic still wasn't perfect, but she could follow a conversation just fine by this point. Though Aştî and her friends occasionally lapsing into Kurdish didn't help...)
By the time Beth's food was gone, nursing the remainder of her tea, their group broke up — the Iraqis were supposed to report soon (they weren't sure what for yet), and the Syrians were on construction duty today. Goodbyes went around in a mix of Arabic and Kurdish — Beth had only picked up a tiny amount of Kurdish by this point, but enough to tell that's what they were saying — and then they were gone, leaving Beth and Hedwig alone.
It only took a few seconds for Beth to begin feeling unspeakably awkward again. She really had no idea how to deal with Hedwig being human now, it was too bloody weird — also, they should probably have a talk about boundaries, now that she knew Hedwig was a person, but she really wasn't looking forward to that. Hedwig had literally been in the room while Beth touched herself before, how the fuck was she supposed to bring that up...
After a few moments, Beth uncomfortably shifting in her seat, she said, "I don't really have anything on today — I should probably check in with Luke later, but. I was just going to get another cup of tea and drop by the post office."
Hedwig nodded. "I will change back, I think. I don't like being human."
"Yeah, it's really fucking awkward to me too."
"I know." While Beth was still trying to figure out what the feeling was on that flat statement, or if there even was one at all, Hedwig pointed deeper into the kitchen/cafeteria area, in the general direction of the Vietnamese section. "Are they supposed to be here? They watch."
"What? Who?"
"Those two, there."
It took a moment for Beth to figure out who Hedwig was talking about, the cafeteria crowded enough that it was hard to tell the exact angle she should be looking. There were a pair of men standing between the Arab and Vietnamese kitchens — tall and square-shouldered and stern-faced, wearing slightly ratty-looking Soviet uniforms. Must have seen battle at some point, but hadn't they all. They didn't seem to be going for either kitchen, just, standing there, steady eyes slowly sliding over the crowd around them. Now that Hedwig had pointed them out, they did look a little out of place, though she couldn't quite put her finger on how...
"You're right," she finally admitted, "there is something about... I don't know, maybe they're looking for someone?"
"They're hunting."
Beth blinked, turned to stare at Hedwig. "What?"
"Watch," she said, nodding at the pair again.
She didn't know what she was supposed to be seeing. They were kind of sticking out, but they could just be looking for someone, she didn't think it was too—
Their uniforms didn't match.
She meant, they were wearing Soviet uniforms, but they looked...not like locals, but. Indians, maybe? A little darker than the Patils, but probably still from that general area of the world, yeah. Now, that wasn't entirely out of the question, it was definitely possible that there were Indians living in the USSR — and there were some, like, central Asian states in the Union...though they didn't look much like Indians at all. Sort of, vaguely, but not really close enough to confuse the two. They would have to live somewhere in the USSR, because India had their own landing to worry about, they weren't sending their people anywhere else.
Except, that didn't make any sense either — the Soviets were sending help to multiple fronts, and obviously any Indian citizens they had would have been sent to India, just to help make things go more smootherly. (She assumed that was why they'd sent mostly central Asians, predominantly Muslim, to work with the Arab forces approaching the landing in the Congo from the northeast.) Beth hadn't met literally everyone the Soviets had sent, but everyone she remembered seeing in Soviet uniform here in Indochina were all white people, so far.
And they did look rather out of place, standing in the middle of the cafeteria and scanning the tables. Beth didn't know what Hedwig meant by hunting, but it was odd. And the more she watched, the more they were giving her a bad feeling.
Beth adjusted her wand holster, making sure she could draw her wand quickly...and after a second's pause reached under the table to unlatch the flap covering her thigh holster. (Firearms generally didn't like getting wet, and they were in a tropical bloody forest.) "Stay here," she muttered, before getting to her feet and circling around their table. They were probably just being paranoid, but if it turned out there was something amiss going on, she didn't want Hedwig along. Beth might still have no fucking clue how to handle Hedwig being a person now, but she definitely still didn't want her to get hurt — if something did happen, Hedwig had no means to defend herself.
(Honestly, she should probably get Hedwig a wand at some point, just in case. Could wilderfolk even use wands? She should ask.)
As she started across the cafeteria toward the suspicious pair — at an easy, casual pace, taking a somewhat indirect path toward them, trying not to draw attention to herself — the men started to move, drifting a little closer to the Vietnamese kitchen, and deeper into the cafeteria area, the tables thick with locals and Arabs and the more adventurous Soviets. (Most of them preferred their own stuff, but Beth noticed a trickle had started to favour Arab or local food instead, white faces increasingly popping up at their tables.) The pair were occasionally greeted by someone, the two just wordlessly nodding back, continuing on their slow, directionless way deeper into the cafeteria. Beth noticed some of the Soviets were watching them, frowning — apparently Hedwig wasn't the only one to notice something was off with the pair.
They slowed near the Vietnamese kitchen area, not quite approaching the counter — a line of people were there waiting their turn for noodles, Beth spotted Al-Shamali with a Laotian officer (couldn't think of his name, only knew him by sight). Feeling inexplicably on edge, the hairs at the back of her neck standing up, Beth came up behind them, one of the two spotting her, turning to stare blankly and steadily. Jesus, these bastards were tall, bulky and broad-shouldered. Coming to a stop a couple feet away, Beth cleared her throat, did her best to brush off her unease. "You blokes looking for someone?"
The one facing her sneered just a little, and said—
Beth froze, her entire body suddenly thrumming with tension.
That wasn't a language she knew, but it did sound familiar — similar to Marāṭhī, but not quite the same, different enough she didn't follow it. Hindi, presumably, they were closely related. But it shouldn't matter whether she actually spoke the language very well at all, because omniglots were huge fucking cheaters...or at least Beth was, she'd gotten the feeling from other omniglots that she had a somewhat easier time of it than most, for whatever reason. Even if she didn't understand the words at all, she'd still get the general feeling of what was being said — not enough to perfectly understand it, of course, but it was enough to get a vague impression of the intent, enough to point and grunt their way through a simple conversation if she really had to. And it didn't stop with languages she was already fluent in, either, though she normally wasn't fully conscious of it, her mind reflexively grasping for bits of slang or other useful information, at the edge of her awareness. It felt natural to her, she never noticed, only brought to her attention when it didn't happen — like when Snape or Dumbledore blocked her off with occlumency, for example.
This time, she got nothing. Not even the hard wall of mind magic either, just a blank, cold, empty void, like suddenly finding herself standing on the edge of a cliff.
"SCABS!" she shouted, her wand popping into her hand with a flick of her—
In a blink, the bloke facing her stepped forward and kicked, the blow catching her in the stomach — she didn't feel the pain at all, at first, just the pressure, folding her over and driving the air from her longs, she crashed hard onto her back, a hard sharp ache lancing through her middle—
The men had yanked open their uniform jackets, standing back to back, their hands over their heads. They weren't wearing shirts, showing bare skin, but there was something wrong with it, bulging out and moving, like there was something shifting around just underneath, dozens of them, little hard lumps pulling up and crawling over each other, and they shouted in unison, deep and loud and harsh, "Dūɦa roïku pratte!"
Beth didn't get anything from the tall, ugly aliens, for whatever reason, but the lizards were somewhat more readable — but they didn't exactly talk much, so she'd still only picked up tiny snippets of the language. But she knew this, it was a battle cry or something, she'd heard it enough that she knew what it meant.
Death to our enemies.
"Kristallini akropoli!"
The glittery silver shield went up the instant before the world vanished in fire.
Beth was deafened by a cacophony of clanging and banging and booming, gusts of wind and roars of fire, screaming and yelling coming from all directions — she could hardly see, beyond the curve of her shield charm only smoke and flames, her vision blurring and smearing grey at the intense pull on her magic, searing heat down her arm, wrenching a groan from her throat. She could feel the shield struck with dozens of heavy impacts all across the surface, its pull on her magic wrenching to keep up, interference crawling like static up her arm, a memory of Sirius talking to her about shield charms that could handle gunfire whispering in her ears — there weren't very many, magical shields generally weren't designed with those kinds of forces in mind — and then there was a second wave, another chorus of crashing and roaring and hissing ringing in her head and chest, and she felt her shield shatter, the interference from the impacts disrupting it and tearing it apart, Beth hissed through her teeth at the backlash sizzling up her arm and into her chest, a deep whistling buzz as something passed by over her—
Bugs. The bugs the aliens used for grenades, that's what those were. The pair must have strapped dozens and dozens of them to themselves, hidden somehow under a human disguise. Beth hadn't realised they could look like people, when the fuck...
Her head was still spinning from the backlash of the failing shield charm, dizzy and nauseous, but she forced herself to concentrate, squinting to get her eyes to focus — the canvas of the tent overhead was on fire, greedy yellow-orange flames rapidly crawling over the surface, smoke churning in the air. There was a lot of shouting going on, in pain or calling for help, but Beth couldn't make sense of any of it, too many languages going on and too disoriented from the backlash to keep them straight. Groaning, she pushed herself up on her elbows.
It wasn't a suicide bombing, both of the aliens were still alive — they'd been standing back to back, their hands up, the bugs must have been on their fronts and sides. Their false human skin had burst open, a great bloody hole rent open from shoulder to waist, revealing grey tattooed skin beneath, still fixed to them everywhere else, the pair not having paused to fully remove their disguise. (The bombing hadn't killed them, but she guessed they didn't intend to get out alive anyway, pausing to properly strip off their disguise meant they could do less damage before they were put down.) They both had weapons, not the funny snake spear-whip things the scab soldiers normally used but the curved short-swords seen in the hands of the dinos and workers and the like, as Beth watched moving to butcher the injured. And there were dead and injured around, gashes and holes punched into bodies, or scorched from the fire, she could hear moaning and shouting, but she didn't have time to think about that, she brought up her wand, aiming for the nearer one, only a couple steps away—
Before she could get a curse out he skipped across the couple steps separating them and lashed out with a kick. The hard impact against her arm wrenched her sideways, her hand going limp letting her wand tumble away — the pain hit a heartbeat later, intense, taking her breath away, blinding white hot agony stabbing up her arm into her elbow, making her head pound and her stomach churn, for fuck's sake, not again...
The foot came down on her hip, hard, the alien's weight pressing down as he leaned over her, she groaned through her teeth, glaring back up at him. Sneering, he growled, "Rrūshk mo plzhālitc junɦo-zhat si, al-dzhēdaj." The exact meaning was beyond her, but she got that he was saying something like go to hell, bitch. His hand raised, prepared to bring his sword swinging down toward her.
But Beth had already drawn her side-arm.
Her hand shaking a little from the pain and the backlash, bang-bang-bang! the heavy jerking of the pistol in her hand almost a physical impact, the sound from so close deafening. All but flailing, shooting with one hand — and her left hand, at that — her aim was pretty shite, but at this distance it didn't have to be very good. The first shot tore through the alien's hip, sending him lurching, the second missed completely — but the third struck him right in the head, under the jaw and up through the palate and into the skull, the back of his head bursting out in a splatter of gore. The alien immediately went limp, collapsing out of Beth's view down and to her right, the weight against her hip lifting away.
Dropping her finger well away from the trigger, Beth's hand — faintly numb and tingly from the force of the pistol going off, wrist aching a little from the kick-back — fell limply to her side. She let out a deep, shaky sigh, and for a moment just laid there, staring up at the flaming tent, her injured arm burning and stinging and her whole body all but shivering with adrenaline. That had been too fucking close.
She guessed she owed Luke an apology — she had ended up using this bloody thing.
(In retrospect, she'd realise there'd been a moment for a cool one-liner in there, but she'd been too dazed and in pain to think of it at the time.)
For the next several minutes the scene was absolute chaos. She had heard other gunshots, someone else must have downed the other one, some mages turned up and quickly put out all the fires. The tents were a fucking disaster, equipment and people torn apart by the force of the rain of bug-grenades, the blood turning the dirt thick and muddy underfoot. As healers and medics started crawling through the injured, Beth had managed to sit up by that point, fuck, people with awful weeping blackened burns covering big sections of their body, slashed open by passing bugs, some of them with holes punched right through them, blood and scorched flesh everywhere, the smell was terrible, mixing with the smoke into something that made her eyes water and her stomach lurch, she—
A healer got to her, quickly determined she wasn't badly injured — though her wrist was broken again, because of fucking course it was. (This was the third time she'd broken her wrist in this fucking war, bloody thing.) He quick immobilised it with a charm and a conjured splint, they'd fix it properly once they were done stabilising the more serious cases. After all, Beth's wrist wasn't going to get any worse, but the time a healer spent on her might well save the life of someone else. Beth was firmly ordered to get the fuck out of here so she'd be out of the way while they dealt with the really bad ones — she didn't need telling twice (it smelled fucking awful in here, and it was really hard to avoid staring at the unnervingly mangled bodies), but she didn't see where her wand went, did anyone find a wand over here somewhere? A Soviet medic held out a wand she found, yeah, that was hers, thanks. It was a little hard getting the damn thing back into its holster, the splint kind of in the way (fiddling around making her wrist twinge), but she managed it, and then quickly got herself the fuck out of the way, stumbling away on shaky knees.
She didn't make it very far out of the ruined kitchen tents. A crowd had begun to gather, the lanes between the scattered tents and sheds and shacks that made up the camp choked with people, some running around in one direction or another and others just standing around arguing. Pushing through the crowd would probably just result in Beth further injuring her wrist, so she plopped down onto the dirt instead, leaning against a simple wood-sided shack, hastily constructed with magic. (This was food storage, she was pretty sure.) She was only alone for a couple seconds before Hedwig turned up, silently crouched down next to her — oh good, Hedwig looked perfectly fine, she hadn't gotten caught up in it, then...
Over the next minutes, her troop gradually gathered around her, having been summoned by the commotion and quickly spotting her sitting here. Before too long all of them were here, short only Bill and Luke (who were presumably busy elsewhere) — by this point the adrenaline was wearing off, leaving Beth feeling tired and sore and shivery, her wrist aching something awful, a heavy piercing throb echoing each beat of her heart. She didn't feel like telling the story of what happened over and over and over, so after the first couple times she just left it to Sam to catch up everyone else.
Without really noticing it was happening, she ended up leaning her head against Hedwig's shoulder, her arm warm and firm around her back. She belatedly realised Hedwig had probably sat on Beth's right side to prevent anyone else from coming up and jostling her injured arm, the splint resting still against Hedwig's knee...
Exactly who the hell Hedwig was came up almost immediately, but the muggle blokes took it much more easily than Beth was — it was fucking weird, of course, but all magic was still kind of weird to them, they brushed it off pretty quickly. Kind of jealous of that, honestly, she was sitting here snuggled up with the woman and she still wasn't used to it, it was uncomfortable. She probably wouldn't be cool with this if she weren't so very unsettled at the moment...
News slowly trickled out to them over the next...however long, Beth didn't know, impossible to say. There were definitely a bunch of people dead, but it'd probably be days before they had a final casualty count. Among the dead was Major Al-Shamali, the Syrian officer who'd come with them from Africa. Over the next couple days, it'd quickly become very clear that if the aliens had been intending to intimidate them with their little sneak attack, they'd drastically miscalculated — Al-Shamali had been quite popular with his men, and the Syrians were infuriated with losing him by such a dirty trick, they'd soon be extremely motivated to attack the settlement and kill everyone there.
Not that the same couldn't be said for the rest of the camp, honestly, the Syrians were hardly unique in that attitude. They'd had plenty enough reasons to want the aliens all dead already, but posing as humans somehow and blowing up the cafeteria in the middle of breakfast had been crossing a line. By the next day, after the news had spread around, everyone wanted blood — that settlement was completely fucked.
They were just starting to get a sense of how bad it was looking in there — dozens of people were dead, at least, including a fair number of local volunteers who'd been working the kitchens — when someone turned up looking for Beth. That she'd been at ground zero had gotten around, the officers wanted to talk to her. Right, okay, then. As weak and shaky as she was feeling, it was a little hard to get up to her feet (not made easier by still not being able to use her right arm), she ended up needing help from Hedwig and Sam. The rest of her troop stayed where they were, but Hedwig stuck with her. Which was a little awkward, but whatever, fine.
That Hedwig had invited herself turned out all right anyway, since the officers rather wanted to know how she'd identified them in the first place. Unfortunately for them, she didn't have a good answer — their body language, the way they'd been lingering and looking around, they'd just seemed off to her, like they didn't belong. They were less than satisfied with that, but they moved on easily enough.
(Beth wasn't present for this conversation, but apparently a few days later Hedwig would be tapped by the officers to keep an eye out for suspicious persons in the camp. They would start being more careful about keeping track of who was leaving and entering — before they hadn't really bothered, just let locals come up to help if they felt like it — but they didn't know what the aliens were capable of, might as well have Hedwig keep a look out anyway. Which wasn't a bad idea, because she'd end up identifying infiltrators a few times over the course of the campaign, alerting people so the aliens could be quietly surrounded before being taken down with little fuss. Beth was pretty sure that was how Hedwig had ended up technically enlisted, with a salary and everything, complete with back-doored British citizenship, thanks to some pencil-pusher at some point somewhere fiddling about with paperwork in response to a note someone must have made about it, but they wouldn't figure out about that until much later.)
During the meeting with the officers, she was told that her warning and the shield had probably saved the lives of...well, some people, they didn't know exactly at this point. Some had reacted quickly enough to dive to the ground, the bugs flying clear over them, and her shield had held up well enough that an entire cone stretching out behind her had been practically untouched. The attack had been bad, but it could have been a lot worse — there was a bit of praise at her quick-thinking and shite, honestly Beth barely reacted, still a little dazed from the incident and distracted by her injured wrist. Nobody seemed to care that she wasn't acting properly flattered or whatever the fuck at the moment, at least.
The officers didn't have much better of an explanation for what the fuck just happened than Beth did. Best they could figure, the aliens must have some kind of...skin-suit, that let them look like humans — they thought it was another of their weird engineered creatures, and not literally skin they'd flayed off of some poor bastard in India, but at this point they weren't really sure. It was a little curious that the aliens had pretended to be Indians, even speaking what Beth was pretty sure was Hindi. It was possible that the aliens didn't understand them well enough to properly reflect racial differences — though they had gotten convincing Soviet uniforms, probably pulled off of soldiers killed or captured in a previous skirmish — but they couldn't depend on the aliens continuing to fuck that up forever, they wouldn't be putting it on the list of things to watch out for, just in case. It was just interesting that the aliens seemed to know as little about them as they knew about the aliens.
Which wasn't really a surprise, when Beth thought about it — they had seemed blindsided by magic, and even a few muggle tricks too. (Especially nuclear weapons, how quickly they'd backed off after the Americans managed to nail a couple of their big ships was pretty suggestive, and also oddly funny.) If the aliens had gathered intelligence before planning their attack, it sure seemed like they hadn't done a very good job. One theory Beth had heard floating around was that they'd only observed Earth from very very far out, perhaps hundreds of light-years, so they'd drastically underestimated their level of technological development. They were having serious difficulty dealing with magical and even muggle opposition, but turn time back a hundred years and conquering the whole planet with the forces they'd brought probably wouldn't have posed them any problem at all. The mages would have been a pain, yes, but with much less advanced (and less numerous) muggles to help pull their weight...
Beth suspected they were familiar with the concept of magic — the more times she heard it, the more convinced she became that dzhēdaj was an insult specific to mages — but that they hadn't been prepared for the number of mages they'd be facing, or how useful magic could be in a fight. Perhaps, they had had mages in the past, but they were superstitious about it and wiped them all out or something, so their magic had never become nearly as developed as it was here? Or perhaps there were more of these aliens out there somewhere, attacking other worlds, and they'd encountered magic elsewhere, also possible. If they were unfamiliar with magic, but they'd stumbled across less thoroughly-developed magical traditions somewhere else, that would also explain it...
At this point, there was a theory going around that there must be other inhabited planets besides Earth out there, and they weren't the only ones being attacked. The aliens had attempted to communicate with them on various occasions, using languages other than their own — unfortunately for them, those were equally unfamiliar to literally everyone who'd been shown a recording, completely unidentifiable. Their suspicion was that these languages were spoken by other people out there, somewhere, but there was really no way to confirm it at this point. There was no way to make contact with any potential allies in bloody outer space — most muggle scientists had been under the impression that faster-than-light travel and communications were impossible up until the instant the aliens showed up — so for all intents and purposes they might as well not exist. It was interesting to think about, though.
And it would make sense if these aliens were aware of other people out there, and assumed the people here were somehow related — for complicated military strategy and logistics reasons Beth didn't really follow, the higher-ups suspected the fleet attacking them was only a small detachment of a much larger force. As far as they could tell, whatever other resources the aliens might have out there hadn't been mustered to back them up here — either it would take time for them to put something together, they were too strained with too many ongoing engagements to send back up, or the commander here was simply too embarrassed by getting his arse kicked failing to crush the primitive, planet-bound civilisation here that he was delaying telling his superiors about it — so for the time being it was only an interesting question to ponder and not immediately relevant.
As far the attack today, there were rumours going around that the aliens could disguise themselves as humans, but only rumours. They actually had no idea whether anyone had managed to confirm it yet — if someone had, word hadn't gotten to them here. They'd been told that their communications problem had been solved, they'd be getting sent new equipment as soon as possible — the same magic radio Hermione had helped invent, Beth assumed — but as of now it still took time for information to spread to everyone who needed to know it, letters carried around with portkeys and apparation. The mages had been told to preserve the alien bodies and ship them off to the labcoats. Hopefully someone would be able to come up with answers, because this shite was fucking unacceptable.
Of course, they would want to plan a response to the attack as soon as possible — in fact, while Beth was still in the meeting with the officers she started hearing mortar and rocket fire in the distance, emplacements up in the hills bombarding the settlement in retaliation. They wanted to know if she could sneak down to the settlement under her invisibility cloak and plant mines. Well, sure, she guessed? There was only so much room under the cloak, though, they'd have to test if an expanded bag would fuck up the explosives. They didn't think so, but putting a concealing charm on them would interfere with triggering them remotely. Just use a mechanical trigger, then, on a timer — the Soviets had some low-tech shite like that laying around (in case an EMP burst from a tactical nuke fucked with their electronics, which was an absurd precaution to take but whatever), and so did the Vietnamese, so that wouldn't be too difficult to put together.
They should probably get Sam to do it, though, she didn't know shite about setting mines. Um, yes, Sam would be able to use the invisibility cloak, but only if she specifically allowed him to — Lavender had tried to steal it once and Hermione borrowed it without asking first, and it hadn't worked properly for either of them, but if she let Hermione borrow it it worked just fine. If they wanted to borrow her invisibility cloak for something, of course she'd cooperate, just, it would only work correctly if she personally handed it to the person who'd be using it. Don't ask her why, magic is fucking weird sometimes, that's just how it works.
By that point, the officers weren't really paying any attention to her anymore, talking among themselves about stuff, and her wrist was starting to really fucking hurt — she hadn't been given any pain killers, of course, and it was getting all swollen and shite, painful enough it was starting to make her nauseous — so she asked if she could be excused to go find the healers. The kitchen tents were still a mess when she got back, but somewhat more orderly, in the process of being turned into a field hospital. Since they had mages on hand, they'd even conjured up white tents to section areas off, people bustling around in a somewhat more orderly fashion. Of course, now that there were tents and shite up she had absolutely no idea where she was supposed to go.
The first medic she bumped into told her to stay here, before vanishing into one of the tents. A couple minutes later, he came up with two tiny little potion vials and a big ibuprofen tablet — the serious pain relief potions were all reserved for the more badly injured, apparently, which was fair enough. The potions were relatively slow-acting, the man prodded through her splint at her arm for a moment (Beth gritting her teeth against the harsh flares of pain), right, everything was all aligned correctly, keep the splint on overnight and check back in with a healer tomorrow morning before taking it off. The man pulled a roll of bandages out of a pack, wrapped around the splint for a bit to make sure everything stayed in place, there, just leave it like that, she'd be fine. The medic then went off back to whatever he'd been doing when she showed up — it looked like he was off on a supply run — leaving Beth alone again.
Well, not alone — Hedwig was still silently looming over her shoulder, presumably out of a lack of anything better to do. It was a little weird she was still human-shaped, Beth would figure she would have switched back at the first opportunity...
...
Right, so. Beth didn't have anything better to do either — except get her invisibility cloak to whoever they were going to tap to lay the mines, she guessed, but they'd find her for that later — so she was just going to go ahead and check the post office, then.
For the first few weeks she'd been out here, the different militaries around had all kept their own internal postal systems going, working in parallel. Which, that was a thing militaries normally had, for morale reasons, you know. Beth had been told that letters and shite were actually getting around quicker than people were used to, since now they were exploiting portkeys and apparation and shite to move things around — and with the addition of space-expanding enchantments, it really wasn't difficult to cram a dozen letters in a box and have someone pop away with it. It hadn't taken so long, though, for someone somewhere to decide that keeping their separate systems going was just impractical. Especially with how they had different units scattered all over the place across the world, often moved around on short notice, it was just more effort than it was really worth for every military operational in a location to have their separate shite going when they could streamline it, send everything in and out through one channel. Also better for security and efficiency reasons, when she thought about it, that probably helped.
So, when Beth had started out, all of her letters had gone through the BFPO, but now they went through the streamlined, universal system they'd gradually slapped together over the last couple months. It made little difference to her, the only change on her end was that the format of her 'address' was somewhat different after the switchover, no big deal.
The post office was run out of a little three-walled shack, magicked into shape by someone at some point. On the insides of the walls were a bunch of different cubbies, sorted by which military you were with and different units and shite, which Beth mostly didn't have to bother keeping track of, since her troop were the only British people here. (Her box was marked with her service number, though of course she'd memorised that by now.) There were people who filled the boxes and shite, but they didn't stick around to hand people their stuff, they all just walked up and grabbed it themselves. Thanks to the commotion with the hit on the kitchens and the intermittent bombardment of the alien settlement she still heard going on in the distance, the post office was pretty empty, Beth just walked right up to her box — she did have a few letters, not a surprise, been a few days since she'd checked. She grabbed the lot and walked off, flipping through them as she went.
Got a letter from Sirius, as usual — he'd been writing her at least once a week, making sure they were both still alive and all that. He was still in Africa, which was going reasonably well, last she'd checked. (Though the alien occupation was very rough on the locals, Beth suspected entire ethnic groups were going to be wiped out before it was over.) Another from Hermione, as usual, which was noticeably thicker than Sirius's, also as usual. Not that Beth minded the babbling, Hermione going off on current events back home and her nerdy shite was a decent distraction if nothing else. She had another letter from Parvati and Lavender, which was unusual — they didn't get along great, to put it mildly, but they'd heard somehow that Beth had joined the SCF and apparently gave enough of a damn to keep in touch. (Beth appreciated it way more than she would have expected, honestly, the girls' letters silly and gossipy but normal, it was strangely sweet.) And the last one in the bunch was from—
Beth froze, staring down at the front of the envelope.
—Mr Weasley? What...?
...She suddenly had a very bad feeling about this. Beth quickly found an out of the way spot to plonk down onto the ground, squirrelled away somewhere among the Soviet tents. She tore open the BFPO-branded envelope — there'd been notices in newspapers and shite back home about how mages could write to loved ones overseas, there was some way they could owl order envelopes — pulled out the sheet of parchment.
Elizabeth—
I do hope this letter finds you well. We don't get much in the way of news back home, and what we do hear of the progress of the war mostly concerns the fighting in Africa — Hermione tells us you were moved to Indochina. She does tell us stories now and then, when she comes by. We don't see much of Hermione either, she spends so much time working on her project, which is very fascinating, but you know how Hermione can be. Covering that village was very brave of you, if perhaps unwise, though I'm sure you realise that by now.
Molly insists you must come home for Christmas if you can manage it. I have told her that likely won't be possible, but you know Molly.
I didn't know how to start this letter. I don't want to be too much trouble, I know you must be very busy there, but it didn't feel appropriate to jump right into bad news. I debated whether to tell you at all — I wouldn't wish to endanger you by providing what might be a distraction in a very dangerous situation. But leaving it until the fighting is over and you return home seemed even more cruel than not mentioning it at all.
I don't know if you're aware, but the twins joined a volunteer relief group helping with the refugees in Africa. They had tried to join the SCF with you and Sirius, but Molly put her foot down — of course, those two couldn't just sit here and do nothing, they found a group who would take them and were gone before Molly could say a word about it. Very proud of them, of course, all the work down there that needs doing, so many people killed or forced from their homes, starving and ill. As much trouble as they can be at times, they're such good boys at heart.
The camp they were working at was hit. I'm sorry to tell you this, Beth, through a letter from halfway around the world, but Fred and George are both gone. Trying to help evacuate the refugees, it seems. They were caught up in one of those fire bombs, I'm told it would have been so quick they probably didn't even see it coming. No drawn out suffering, they were simply helping to evacuate the camp one second, and the next they were just gone. There isn't even anything left to bury.
We'll be holding a vigil on the second. November, that is. I understand if you can't make it — you are very far away, and I have no idea how long it will take this letter to reach you. And if I'm being honest, I think my brave, selfless boys would have preferred you stay where you are, to continue doing what you can to protect the people there. Please don't trouble yourself if you can't be here, I understand.
That's all I had to say, I suppose. Good luck out there, Beth. We'll see you when this is all over.
—Arthur
For long moments, Beth could only stare at the letter, blank and cold and uncomprehending, the words dancing behind her eyes.
The Second. Today was the Fifth.
She'd already missed it. Before she could even be told what happened, she'd already missed Fred and George's—
Fred and George were dead, and she'd missed it.
Beth didn't cry, exactly. She kind of expected she would cry? She'd known plenty of people who'd died in this war by now, and she didn't always cry about it, but nobody she'd really known that well before the invasion started had died yet — though she had spent a lot of time with her team, so she wasn't sure how much the distinction mattered at this point. And, there might have been people she knew before who'd died at some point, but if they had they weren't close enough for Beth to have even heard about it yet. She was reasonably close with the twins, like, there was the quidditch team and everything, Wood was such a fucking insane slavedriver about it, but she wouldn't say they were that close because, like, it was hard to have a moment with the twins because they were never serious about anything ever, but it was still—
She would have expected she would cry, but she didn't, really. She, just, sat there, between the tents, staring blankly down at Mr Weasley's letter in her hands. She was definitely feeling something, but she couldn't say what it was, a big heavy black frigid something pressing down on her, squeezing around her ribs, she could hardly even breathe, she could see the letter was moving, her hands shaking, but—
It was hard to believe the twins were, just, gone. Too big, the thought, she couldn't...
She wasn't really paying attention, twitched a little at the arm going around her shoulders, gently tugging her a little to the side — Hedwig, that was weirdly human-shaped Hedwig, right. She let herself be pulled in to lean against the bloody odd woman, without really thinking about it, her breath sharp and harsh, she— It was still hard to breathe, the thought too heavy, cold and hard...
"What is it?" Instead of trying to talk, Beth lifted the letter up toward her. "I can't read. Not well."
...Oh. Well, obviously, Beth should have guessed that — it wasn't like Hedwig would have ever gone to school or something, after all. Post owls didn't need to be able to read the address to get the letter to where it needed to go, it was a magic thing...and apparently post owl magic worked for Hedwig, despite her being a person...but Beth guessed she was also an owl, so...
(This surprise, Hedwig is a person! thing hadn't stopped being extremely fucking weird yet.)
"You know the twins? Ron's older brothers."
"Yes. I carry orders for them sometimes."
"Really? I didn't know that..." Not that it was Beth's business, of course — she'd actually told Hermione before that she didn't need to ask for Beth's permission before sending letters to her parents with Hedwig, she probably wasn't happy cooped up in the owlery all the time anyway — especially now that she knew Hedwig was a person, but she would have thought the twins would have mentioned it at some point...
"They bribe me with food. They're nice."
...Oh, well. Okay. "They're dead. They were volunteering at a refugee camp, and it was hit, and... They're dead."
For a moment Hedwig was silent, still, just, holding Beth — which she couldn't imagine was pleasant, she felt all rigid and cold and, probably felt all stiff and boney and jagged, you know. "I'm sorry. I did like them."
"Yeah." Beth didn't really have anything else to say, just— She hurt, a hard cold burning in her chest, her limbs seeming to ache for no apparent reason...though her broken wrist did still hurt, obviously, she didn't mean like that. She still wasn't crying though, not sure what was up with that...
After sitting in silence for a couple minutes — Beth guessed there really wasn't anything else to say, it sucked and that was that — she felt her hair shifting. Little bits at a time, lifted this way or that, fiddling with this or that, straightening shite out along the part...
Hedwig was picking at her hair with her other hand.
She always did that, seemingly just because — except she'd usually use her beak, but of course she didn't actually have one of those just now. (And it'd be weird for human-shaped Hedwig to play with Beth's hair with her teeth.) Whenever they were sitting together, the big bloody bird sitting on Beth's shoulder while she read or just stared out the owlery window or whatever, there she'd go picking at her hair. Didn't know what the deal with that was, she'd kind of just assumed it was an affectionate thing? Beth's hair was always a fucking mess, and at first it kind of put her in mind of, back at Little Whinging, mums idly straightening kids' hair, you know...
It was a little odd with Hedwig being person-shaped now, those being actual fingers plucking at her hair, without the more sharp edge of a beak. But it was still familiar, she'd done this so many times...
"You're playing with my hair again," Beth muttered. She still wasn't crying, but her voice came out thick and croaky anyway, didn't know what was up with that.
Hedwig's fingers paused for a second. "Yes. I can stop."
"It's okay." She tried to relax against the woman, but it was hard, still feeling all stiff and cold and painful and she didn't know, exactly, the heavy whatever the fuck it was still crushing down on her. Hedwig was warm, and the fingers playing with her hair was oddly nice, but it was still weird that she wasn't crying...
She'd already had a long fucking day and it couldn't be much later than ten in the morning yet. If they decided to hit the aliens today she'd be out of it, thanks to the broken wrist, but she'd still need to hand off her invisibility cloak to someone to set the mines. Until then she didn't have anywhere to be, just tried to relax, breathing against the crushing cold weight pressing in still unreasonably difficult, trying to focus on the feeling of Hedwig's fingers playing with her hair, her arm warm and firm around her.
(It was still seriously fucking strange that Hedwig was a person now, that she'd been a person this whole time — but even with all that, Beth still loved this bloody bird.)