Harry’s sword slips from her hand, landing with a dull thud on the forest floor.
The lush springtime green all around her fades the further into the woods she peers. Its grassy fields and ever-blooms wither slowly to a burnt brown, deep ash, and pitch black as the dying trees get denser and denser. She has come a long way, and she is so so tired. This gloom doesn’t deter her.
The sounds of bird calls and rustling leaves fade with each step she takes. Her hands make slow work of her armour, though it’s hardly protecting with all the damage it’s taken. Each piece she discards erupts a warm satisfaction in her chest. It lends enough energy to help push her deeper—even when the trees feel like hands reaching, tangling in her hair, nipping at her skin, ripping her clothes, it’s a momentum that keeps her going and going until—
It’s so dark she can hardly see.
Harry’s breathing is loud, or maybe here is too silent. This weird space in between, not quite life and not quite death. She reaches her hand out to guide her way and is met with a force that pulls her in.
She thinks she screams, but wherever that sound goes, it’s nowhere near her now.
“What are you doing here?” Harry’s eyes adjust to the sudden light—not quite bright, but brighter. The water in the distance seems to give off its own glow. “Mortal, pay attention.”
Harry’s eyes shift to the old crone clutching her arm. Her hunched back and hooded robe seem almost bizarrely accurate to the situation like a fairytale come to life. The crone snaps twice in front of Harry’s face, making her flinch.
“What do you have to say for yourself, child?” Silver hair hangs over her face like a curtain, but her voice isn’t muffled. It’s clear, a little raspy. “Why are you here? It is not yet your time.”
Not her time? Harry disagrees. She places her hand gently on the crone’s, trying to ease her grip—it just makes her pull her bony hand back with a disgruntled huff. Harry watches as she rubs that same hand on the other sleeve of her robe. “Does it matter?” Harry asks.
The old crone’s head tilts up. Harry’s not sure if her eyes can see past her hair, but it feels like she can. It feels like she’s staring straight into Harry’s soul. The silence lingers a beat too long, yet Harry continues, “Your job is to take me across the river, is it not?” She waits for an answer again. It does not come. “I give you a coin, and you take me… or so I’ve been told. I brought one.”
Harry wonders if it had travelled with her to wherever this place is—it’s a passing worry as her fingers graze the large gold coin in her pocket. A galleon is rare to come by, but she has worked long and hard to save one for this moment. Admittedly, she never imagined it happening quite like this. She often wondered if it would take place on the battlefield, honourable, of course, but hardly a guarantee. Once they had found her body, would it be too late? Would anyone claim her? Bury her properly? Would anyone spare her a coin for the fare?
Harry breaks away from her thoughts when the old woman steals the coin from the palm of her hand. Her bony fingers carefully pinch it and hold it up to the black, starless sky. She seems to inspect it, turning it this way and that, even parts her hair to bite it.
Harry feels oddly nervous throughout it all, anxious as though all the stories have gotten everything wrong. The crone will turn to her and say that she needs two coins to pass, or that galleons are the wrong coin entirely, or the gold isn’t pure enough, or—
“Come,” she rasps. Her body almost appears to float with how her robes cascade around her, floating like the boat awaiting their arrival by the small dock before them, a solitary lantern hanging off its bow. Harry blinks. She is confident that wasn’t there before.
The old crone asks no more questions. Hardly pays Harry any attention at all—her rowing impossibly smooth and silent given her age—humming to herself an old song that almost feels familiar, comforting. Harry’s eyes follow the waves of the river, still until their oars disturb the water’s rest. Something shimmers beneath the surface, something fast-moving and following them with ease, something that makes Harry want to reach out and—
“They will take you, and you will not cross.” The old woman’s voice doesn’t startle Harry this time, though it is no less worrisome as she sounds rather pleased when she says it. Like Harry getting taken away and left unable to cross is something she hopes for or finds amusing enough, at least. It’s a wonder why she warns Harry at all, but Harry takes her words to heart, folds her hands in her lap, and stops staring at the river.
When they finally stop, it feels like days have passed, like months. Harry steps onto the dock and isn’t entirely convinced she hasn’t just been made a fool of; nothing looks different. It’s still black sand, sky, and sea stretching out around them.
Harry sighs, her breath spirals out in a cloud of white. “Would you happen to know where I go from,” she starts as she turns back to look at the woman, only to find her and the boat gone.
“Of course,” Harry can’t help but say aloud. The mist from the ferry ride clings to her skin like a second shroud, cool and damp. And now she’s been left to fend for herself, an intruder where the living has no place.
Maybe this will be enough, she wonders to herself. Not quite dead, not quite alive. Trapped in an eternal limbo. It doesn’t feel much different from her life before, and that leaves a bitter taste in her mouth.
Suddenly, Harry’s whole body tenses. “Might I be of assistance?” A smooth and low voice murmurs from behind her. Across her arms, Harry’s skin erupts in gooseflesh. It’s even colder somehow, darker too. Slowly, she turns around again. Harry can feel herself shaking, but it’s not from the chill—energy flows through her veins. It’s a sensation she knows to be familiar, the kind that only courses on the battlefield as she readies for an attack.
Harry is no fool. She does not seek out the Underworld without expectations, without some sense of the dangers that may await her. She dropped her sword because she knew she was ready to face them.
She expects death to greet her.
Instead, a woman does.
She emerges from the mist like it makes her, like it brings her into being, creates her into life. She steps forward unhurriedly, her robes dark—but not like mourning, not like the crone’s—deeper, like the sky before a storm, rich and endless. Her eyes gleam like fire, burning and wanting. They seem to light up her face, highlighting the way her hair curls and frames her sculpted features so smooth, like made of pure marble.
Harry is speechless for a moment. Maybe it is the adrenaline, the extreme sense of danger that wraps around her throat and threatens to snuff her out, but she knows it’s very much more than that. “Um,” she starts and stops, not getting very far.
“Are you looking for something? Someone, maybe?” she asks politely, respectfully distant. Harry’s not sure why, then, it feels so profoundly off-putting. Her eyes never leave Harry’s for even a second, never blink, and Harry thinks that could very well partly be why.
It’s delayed, but Harry nods. “Yes, my lady. I seek the Underworld. Though I’m not quite - well, I haven’t yet - I mean, are you..?” Dead, Harry doesn’t quite manage. It seems rude to pry, to ask. But what else could one be down here if not dead?
“You are not dead,” the lady gestures over Harry’s form. Her tone is faintly amused, and she tilts her head slightly as she says it. Harry is enraptured with the way she moves like fire dances.
“I know,” Harry says. It comes out quickly, too quickly. But Harry can’t imagine she is the rule rather than the exception.
“And yet, you are here.”
“Yes, well,” Harry exhales, shoulders drooping. “I thought it would be harder, honestly.” The woman raises her brow, and Harry nods. Yes, she really did think it would be harder. So far it had only taken a coin and one boat ride; maybe the coin was the hardest part of it all, but had she had one from the start? All of her sufferings would have ended much sooner, she imagines. It all seems rather painfully simple.
“Have you come here for that as well?” Harry asks. She hadn’t known it would be so common. Is that relieving?
Her eyes squint at Harry ever so slightly—Harry feels distinctly laughed at. “Have I, what, little maiden? Come here willingly to die?”
She asks it like Harry says something ridiculous. It stings. A soft hum passes through the air. It stirs the mist and the cold around them and brings with it a slight warmth. Harry is starkly reminded of a dragon’s breath. “Oh, but that would be too simple, wouldn’t it? Find the forbidden forest, cross the threshold between spring’s careless revival and winter’s last exhale, pay the fare, and cross the river. You are not dead yet, after all.” The woman studies her, gaze sweeping over Harry like a blade through silk.
She smiles, “You fought to stay alive for so long. And now you wish to simply… stop?”
“I,” Harry grits her teeth. This woman is toying with her; she just knows it. Breaking all of Harry’s life down to something so short—Harry never fought to stay alive; she fought for her friends, her family. What the hell else is left for her now? “I don’t belong up there.”
“Ah,” the lady says it like a sarcastic revelation, mockingly placating Harry. It just rubs the sand in deeper. She takes a step closer, not quite touching Harry, but her presence curls around her like the warmth from an unseen fire. “And you think you belong here?”
Harry inhales but hesitates. She must, yes? If not there and not here, then where? Where else is left?
The lady leans in slightly, “A living soul in the land of the dead? Such an inconvenience.”
“I won’t be for long,” Harry says, quiet but firm. “I just need time.” Time takes everyone eventually, this she knows. Often too soon. For Harry, not soon enough.
She pauses—her gaze flickers, something shifts in the set of her expression, something unreadable. “Do you not fear Lord Voldemort finding you?”
Harry shakes her head. She has never feared death. She will welcome Lord Voldemort to her soul if that is what must be given for something like peace, like rest.
The lady seems pleased with Harry’s answer. Her grin turns sharper and meaner when she asks, “Are you lonely, little maiden?”
Harry’s stomach twists. The question strikes somewhere deep, somewhere sore and hollow. Of course she is lonely. Do people try to die when they aren’t? Isn’t loneliness what kills someone before they’ve drawn their last breath? Slowly, agonisingly slowly, until they just can’t take it anymore. Until they reach for anything to numb the pain, until they throw themselves into vices or wars, battles to fight away the hurt? To fill the void?
She should laugh it off. She should say something sharp back, something detached, something—
Instead, she swallows it all down and asks, “Aren’t you?”
Something in the woman’s face stills, and she hesitates for the first time since she appears.
Harry isn’t sure why she asks it—why, beneath the weight of death and silence, she suddenly feels as though the answer matters. But she does. It does.
When the woman finally speaks, her voice is quieter. “No.”
The mist curls tighter around them for a moment, and the river suddenly seems alive and whispering behind their backs. Harry catches her eyes flicker to something just beyond her shoulder. What is she seeing? Whatever it is, Harry’s convinced she shouldn’t turn around; a chill runs down her spine at the thought.
Then, before Harry’s disappointment can sink in, the lady extends her hand. “Stay,” she says simply.
Harry looks at it. She has been wandering the world lost for so long. This is the first time in years that someone has asked her to stay. It’s the first time in years that she doesn’t have to fight to stay.
Harry takes her hand.