Örlög

His lungs burned as he gasped for every breath. His feet carrying him forward in a near mechanical motion. His whole body felt completely numb from the beating it was forced to endure; adrenaline perhaps was the only thing that kept him moving, running, away from his pursuers.

He veered to his left into the closure of woods. 

The path was unfamiliar and rather out of place in the monotonous town. But Harry didn’t have half the mind to pay it any attention. 

He wouldn’t have even needed to stray so far if Dudley and his friends hadn’t insisted on ‘Harry Hunting’. He knew he would get punished even if he escaped from Dudley and his gang. 

Uncle Vernon has a meeting today and he always gets easily angered in those days. Not like the Dudleys need any special reason to punish him. 

But he was so hungry and tired, and he didn’t want to be locked inside the cupboard again.

Harry ran and ran till a blur of green crowded his senses. His feet bucked underneath him as he fell unconscious. Unaware of a figure quietly approaching him. 

—————————————————

Harry groaned as he came into wakefulness. It felt like his head had been submerged into water for hours while being played like a basketball simultaneously.

Then he froze abruptly, noticing another presence.

He kept still, face still buried in the dirt, yet he couldn’t help but flick his gaze up.

It wasn’t Dudley and his gang. He almost breathed a sigh of relief. Almost.

It was a young boy, a stranger. His blurry vision obscured his features, but he was sure that he had never seen him before.

He was holding something pointed down towards him. It was a… a… stick? He could be wrong, what with his blurry vision and all. 

“I know that you are awake.” The boy stated, with the stick still pointed towards him. “Identify yourself and state your intentions.”

It looks like he might have fainted in his backyard. The boy didn’t beat him or run away screaming, so…

“I… I… I’m Harry. I’m sorry I didn’t mean to intrude.” He said feeling guilty, his words ending barely above a whisper.

“Stand up.” The boy said.

Harry hurried to upright himself, his feet slipping from beneath him once before he was able to stand, pushing his askew glasses into place. He fidgeted with the frayed hems of his jumper. Harry kept his gaze down, though he couldn’t resist peeking through his fringes after the boy kept silent for a few minutes. 

“How did you enter?” The boy finally questioned.

“I… uhh… accidentally entered?”

The boy looked at him impassively.

Harry couldn’t help but fidget even more under his gaze. The boy kept on looking at Harry like he was a weird specimen and was having trouble figuring him out.

The boy moved forward, jabbing him from the side with the stick, “speak properly”. It was a weird stick, a little knobby where the boy held it. 

“I am! I was running and and entered here,” Harry trailed off, “I swear it was an accident, I truly didn’t mean to enter your place. I’m sorry,” he finished and stared down at his scruffy shoes where they were attempting to dig into the ground.  

He did feel like digging into the ground and just disappearing, especially in front of this boy wearing some kind of fancy dress.

“You mean to say,” the boy said, suspiciously calmly, “that you just ran, and entered here.” A slightly incredulous tone entered his voice when he stated the part. “Dear Freyja,”

He also said something after that, but it was spoken too softly for Harry to be able to hear.

The boy sighed deeply and then turned to him and said, “alright, follow me.” After which the boy turned and started walking.

Harry was shell-shocked for a moment, until he came to his senses and moved briskly  to follow after him.

After a while, a quaint cottage came into his view. He turned to face the boy who was steadily walking to sit on a bench in front of the cottage. 

Harry moved to sit beside him and asked “Do you live alone in this cottage?”

“Torp.”

“Huh?”

“It’s a torp, and it's called ‘hjarta skógarins’.” He said looking at the cottage… the torp. It was strangely beautiful, with odd angles and faded red paint which seemed orange. Circular tiles lined the rooftop. 

“Hata sogarins?” Harry questioned.

“Hjarta skógarins, it means the heart of the forest. It was my mother’s, now it’s mine.” He turned to face, “the fact that you are here means that she too wanted you to find this place.”

“Huh?” Harry drawled out, very confused.

“This place is magical, you wouldn’t have found it, if it didn’t want you to find it.”

“Magic doesn’t exist,” Harry stated quickly, saying the same rhetoric his uncle had said so many times. “And you're talking like this place is alive.”

“Hann telur sér ómagiskr maðr, huh,” he murmured softly. He pulled his right hand up, the stick clutched in his fingers and said, “lumos.” Harry gasped as he saw a small light orb flickering from the end of the stick. 

“Magic is alive, lifuðr, it’s the air, in the water, in the forest and leaves, and in you and me. Magic is a tool, a gift, a blessing, and a heralder. For you to be able to come here, you must have been able to see and conduct magic. Only in that case would magic have led you here, seeing something in you that must belong here, somehow.”

Harry jerked in surprise, a bit bewildered and… lost. All his life being told that magic doesn’t exist, being a freak and suddenly…

“What do you mean that I must belong here?” A strange yearning entered his voice, it might be the voice of the child that had seen Dudley with his parents being showered with love and affection while he was locked up like a dirty little secret. An anomaly. A freak.

Harry couldn’t understand what the expression in the boy’s face meant, just like he was unaware of the kind of expression that must be visible in his face. 

“Theodore. You can call me Theo.” The boy, Theo, said looking at him with a lazy smile. “And it simply means that you belong here.”

“I’m Harry.”

“Nice to meet you, Harry.”

“Nice to meet you too, Theo.”

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