The Whitley's (Part I)
Holly bundled herself further over Sophia’s still and silent body, blood still smeared thick across her forehead, ashen face concerningly pale in the warm afternoon sun. The gryffindor pressed the scrunched ball of her jacket firmer against the gash, with all the blood she couldn’t see the full extent of the damage, but it was deep and long, jagged at the edges of split skin. She winced in sympathy as Sophia whimpered, turning meekly away from the pain and whining pitifully in her sleep, Holly shushed her and whispered a few low fervent sorry’s under her breath while pressing down on the gash even harder.
Merlin, it wouldn’t stop bleeding.
They would need new clothes, the thought struck her as odd to have at the time but there was little else to think about at present, and besides it was true. Theirs were both now ruined beyond reasonable repair. Ripped, burnt and stained red with the younger girl's blood amongst other muck, their fronts caked in soot and grime. The corner of Holly’s denims that were charred and stiff, even the bottom of her trainers were a bit squishy-- partly melted from the heat-- and whenever she slid a foot anxiously along the cab of the rattling pickup it left a streak of blue-ish white along the metal.
Her hands weren’t bound (small favors) and so when the truck swerved suddenly to avoid the dead she was just able to keep a steady hand on the lip and lean her elbow into Sophia’s shoulder to stop her from rolling away. The driver cursed and then lifted one hand away from the wheel to flick off the scrawny man’s loud complaint.
“Christ, man! Can’t you drive straight? Can’t be bent from lookin’ at’cha but damn if you don’t act like it sometimes, I swear!” The man Holly knew to be Moros slammed one palm angrily against the cab window only to be waved off again.
Next to her the younger of the three, Wade, whose eyes had not moved far from Holly and Sophia’s shivering, lingered on her unconscious friend's pained grimace before looking away briefly to ask, “I thought driving bad was supposed to be about asians?” The older teen sounded dark and bored when he said it, glowering at his rat-faced compatriot with a resigned sort of bristle to the set of his jaw. Moros sneered something in reply and the two set about trading barbs again as the truck lumbered steadily along the road, destination: unknown.
Holly used his temporary distraction to discreetly pull her traveling companion a few inches further towards her and away from the three armed strangers who had all but forced them into their truck and away from the burning building, the walls gently crumbling to furious red flames, smoke like a black signal flare billowing up endlessly into the mid afternoon sky.
When Holly glanced back the way they came, past the bloodied pavement and late summer trees blurring into unidentifiable streaks as the big man (Hank, she would come to learn later) sped recklessly through the abandoned town, she could still feel the heat of it burning.
She clutched Sophia's hand tighter and didn't look away until it had long faded from sight.
It felt like an omen.
(It felt like her fault)
///
The hand in her hair pulling her back was a rough and horribly familiar sensation that started gathering something tingly and foul at the base of her spine. Time started to shudder, hopscotching a few seconds forward at a time, Holly saw flashes of white and tried in vain to scramble away.
Sophia--gasping and tripping with the force of being yanked along with her, sweaty palm ripped from her own as Holly flails in his iron-clad grip, he’s older and stronger (UncleVernonLetGo) her hands are flying to claw and pry at his own--There’s smoke in the air, sugar thick like clouds and sweet --hands around her hair trapping her ( keeping her) she’s in trouble( danger) --feels like the skin is ripping out of her skull- getoffmegetoffmedon’ttouchmegetoff!
Suddenly a large shadow looms over the three of them and a deep disbelieving voice growls out “The hell!”
A shovel-like hand lands briefly on her shoulder (white hot panic still flashing like a half-screwed and stuttering bulb) before shoving her off in another direction. Towards Sophia, thankfully, who wraps bony arms around Holly’s shoulder to steady her while she stumbles and trembles and tries to remember where she is. Her hands fly to her throat, she can barely breathe, each breath is like trying to suck up the ocean through a straw.
The man who steps forward (dark skin, shaved head, lit cigarette in the corner of mouth) is big, not quite Hagrid level but Holly could easily see a case being made for him to be a younger cousin. He stomps past the two girls and his glower startles his younger companion (the one who grabbed her) as he pokes a meaty finger into his sullen pockmarked face.
“I said they’re kids, man. Don’t be so rough.” He didn't speak very loudly, but the deep timber of his voice resonated through the dusty quiet store and both girls could feel its rumble in their chests.
He has put himself between them and the others with his back turned to the two girls and it made Sophia feel safer, Holly could tell with a distant vagueness.
She was still half-foot in a whole other world.
Honestly she was having trouble seeing straight. Or hearing past the high thin whine building like a blaring storm siren between her ears, she half expected it to sound when she opened her mouth to swallow a few frantic gasps of air once her lungs finally untensed enough to allow it in past her chattering teeth.
Between being grabbed by the hair and then manhandled away from said grabber, they ended up backed into a corner near the storage room, there’s a mess of overturned shelves to their right the three men staggered out to their left blocking the only exits Holly can see.
They're trapped.
“You said stop ‘em, so I did.” The young man rubs his nose, sniffing and crossing his arms defensively.
“Christ, Wade…”
She can’t concentrate on what is being said, the three men now arguing amongst themselves, exchanging angry words in thick accents that slur together and slosh in Holly’s ears like shards of concrete in a honey jar. Gesturing towards them with big, sharp motions that make shadows dance and feel like invisible hands slapping openpalmed all over her body, and somehow inspite of her rapidly deteriorating sense of reality Holly gets the gist of it: Big-Guy wants to take them back home, Rat-Guy does not and Young-Guy is still sullen at being told off.
“-can’t abandon them here.”
“Uh, the fuck we can’t?”
Despite their argument none of them look away from the two dirt-showered girls for long, eyes that are visible glint in the low light of the backstore, shiny and focused.
Predators Holly thinks in a daze, fingers scrambling for the other girl's hand to her clear confusion and surprise, “What? what is it?” Sophia whispers, sharp with worry.
(Smoke and sugar. Sweet and thick and cloying and stuck in her nose and throat and eyes-- burning )
“-want them for anyways? Didn’t think you were like that. ”
“Don’t be fucking disgusting.”
Have to get out Holly thinks (or maybe mutters aloud) her eyes darting everywhere, each breath is ragged and wheezing and hard to control. “We gotta go, Sophie.” She whispers back, sounding small and far away to her own ears, barely registering her full body shakes and the blurry vision, biting her tongue bloody to stop herself from flinching away from the young man's eyes that immediately swivel towards them at the sound of their hushed whispers. The other two are still arguing.
“-outta put ‘em out of their misery. Won’t last long alone.”
“Shut your damn mouth, Moros. You’re not touching them.”
Sophia clenches her fingers round the end of her shirt for a moment and tugs, believing her but obviously unsure of what the next play is, nervously shuffling further into Holly’s small shadow and gripping the duck-tape spear (that still hasn’t been taken from her) tight in her other hand. “Go where?!” The young muggle girl asks frantically, lowering her voice until it can barely be heard.
“Dalton wouldn’t want us to leave ‘em.”
“Dalton’s not here, is he?”
Holly should be taking the lead here, she knows it. She just has to get her shit under control--to listen to what they are saying-- to make a break for the front window--to kick out his legs and and sprint out the back--anything else but stand frozen in a past terror, flashes of the concrete floor and big broiling bath of sugar brine, of a charcoal smoker and thick choking laughter. To stop smelling it.
Smoke. Salt. Sugar.
(Stop seeing crazed eyes and feeling hot all over and seeing the boiling clear liquid spalsh over the edges of-)
She bites her tongue again harshly. Stop it stop it stopitstopitstopitstop-
“-like we don’t have enough mouths to feed!”
“We’ve got plenty. And it’s not your call.”
“So it’s yours, big guy? That what you trying to say?”
“More mine than anyone else here. So quit whining like a little bitch and help me get them in the truck.”
A hand wraps around her shoulder. Later, she’ll recognize how gentle it is, how light the touch, coaxing and tentative--meant to be comforting. How he still stands a good four feet away and makes himself smaller (not that it really helps at his size). But at that moment, it’s just a unwanted hand on her body (for the third time too many too soon) and with the frantic buzzing in her chest and fingertips, she’s knows with a sudden crystal clear certainty that she’s gonna erupt like a lit match tossed carelessly into a puddle of kerosine.
Holly’s vision pinpoints, she takes a shuddery breath and sees Red.
Crimson lightning whistles through Holly’s nerves like a bomb dropped from thirty-thousand feet, crackling between clenched teeth as if she’s got braces set with live-wire. Fireworks ignite in her blood and spin around to turn outwards, catching the air with ruby red sparks that hiss and scatter where they hit, rolling up the walls and across the ceiling in bristling pinwheels of flame, quickly going on to engulf the unremarkable feed-store in an utterly atypical, completely merciless, absolutely enraged fire.
///
It should be noted here that magic isn’t exactly alive in a way people would understand. Magic is a force (a certain kind of nature: wily and contrary and free flowing like an unchaperoned beer-tap at a music festival) and the practice of it can be seen as an action made manifest through ( bloodsweattears) intent.
And over time a certain sort of sentience has been known to occur, especially when influenced or otherwise hosted by a reasonably powerful mage, whose “soul” can sometimes leave an identifying marker or the traces of a color, like a fingerprint in the muggle world.
(Though that’s disputed among some experts in the field, as true magesight is a uniquely rare ability that tends to only be had, and therefore solely observed, by those researchers of a less…. reliable sort.)
///
Hollypotter’s magic is Blue. They know they are, they always have been; sky-clear and bright when newly conceived, deep and rich now that their vessel was reaching maturity.
They’ve been changing, you see, and that’s totally super normal! Humans change and stretch and muddle and merge with whatever comes bouncing off the other humans who idle nearby and so too, of course, does the magic tied to their essence. Colors lighten and darken and take up the small traces of any other pigments that linger long enough in their vicinity.
It’s all very routine and to be expected. (But maybe just not this fast? Over three shades in under a decade has gotta be a record somewhere, doesn’t it? )
And like, okay, Blue knows they are not exactly alone (which, sidebar: is not supposed to happen) but they can’t exactly see or find the Other Ones in order to prove it, even to themselves.
But they know they are there . Know like they know the heat of a starfire, or the stifling dark of a space too small.
Blue just knows it.
The Others feel older and denser than them, like sleeping giants hidden and swaddled in the shadows around their vessel's soul where they just don't quite fit, pre-filled blank space that they spend long weeks wriggling around the edges of in vain. Something powerful and intangible is already settled there, utterly unwilling to be dislodged and for all the bright burning stars in the sky they are unable to do much more than poke at that “empty” space irritably and scowl.
Also, Blue thinks they've both been leaking, just a little bit at a time, for years.
Tinting their edges, seeping into the already fertile soil like veins of garnet and black rot, flaking off and sinking deeper into them until utterly indistinguishable. And then when they dig it up and try to separate it all out, to sift, shake, twist whatever is only their own away it just makes it worse. They can do nothing but take it in and observe the creeping changes.
(They've learned to accept it. Their vessel has not even noticed.)
So now (after ten years in the troubled dark and then those fun times with the troll/madman/snake) Blue was more Dark than Sky. More Navy. Indigo. Azure.
They were twisty and shifty and playful. Sometimes when they spun themselves up real good ( like with the two-faced turban or dive bombing with their vessel on a broom miles and miles in the air) they could turn and catch hints of violet in the messy blue storm, slashes of scarlett in the swirling cobalt clouds.
(Sometimes, something far darker than that, lurking patiently beneath layers and layers of blistering blood-red flames)
///
Idle observations from the vague time after Her seperation:
The lwretched thing, screaming and battering in its cage: suppressed. Ignorable.
A sleepy shift that snaps a brand new lock in the dead of a painful night to the surprised sounds of tearful wonder.
Muffled snores melt screaming (two) flesh (one) like candle wax dripping off blackened bone.
A horrible hiss in the dark threatens to awaken Her but the soulful cry of something trusted and pure (firefriendPhoenix) settles the dream.
She huffs, sneezes at the sweet smoke in a nose-not-her-own and a wild-eyed one falls back--surprised.
A muffled cry and flash of inarticulable terror is like the deafening clamor of bells: an alarm finally sounded.
(pureterror Help! dangerfear Don’t! letgoPanic!stopit---- Mum !)
She blinks what-would-be-eyes open and Blue shivers with nervous anticipation as one of the Other Ones finally, properly, stirs.
///
Red wakes up slowly over the years and then all at once.
///
The house the truck pulls up to was not exactly a house. But it was also not a prison, which Holly had idly imagined it being on the hour drive over (dark and stormy and maybe on an island in the middle a churning black sea) unwilling to give the benefit of any doubt to the people responsible for her current predicament.
(If they’d just let them go, left them alone, then nothing would have happened and Sophia wouldn't be-)
Guilt and shame bubble hot and thick and horrible in her throat and she has to swallow back tears that threaten to spill over. What is with her today? She’s felt tattered and emotional since the store, which makes sense, but she’s usually able to pull it back together faster than this after a life-threatening encounter.
Plus, she now knows her life was never truly in danger.
The three men ( her captors, a part of her still grumbles) were not interested in hurting her or Sophia. And they were far less threatening in the light. Hank (soft-eyed, gentle-voiced), Wade (scruffy and awkward) and Moros (snide and suspicious of her) had given her a wide careful berth since her justifiable overreaction, and in her fog she wondered what they thought of the fire. She heard Hank mumbling something about being stupid enough to toss his cigarette and leaking propane tanks (which they were sort of near--she guessed? She didn’t remember) but she doubted that story would hold up to much scrutiny. She would worry about it later but for right now she was barely clinging on to the edge of sanity by her bloody (literally) fingertips and so didn’t say anything, just sat in a daze with Sophia's lifeless hand clasped limply in her own.
The men, turns out, were a part of a military unit that was left without orders or direction after their base was overrun in the first days of the panic. Hank (the guy who had inadvertently triggered her little episode) had explained to her on the way over how in the beginging they’d all taken a vote on the road and decided to head for the home of their unit leader to try and ride it out there; as it was only a few hours away, had the space for them all, a backup generator or two, and also the guy's remaining family. His mother, sister and step brother, Wade: the nineteen year old who had grabbed her by the hair in an overzealous attempt to obey orders (and was now sitting soot covered and sulky in the cab of the truck with her). He kept shooting her and Sophia fervent glances from beneath his limp, greasy hair, what little expression she could see on his face she read as guilt.
Apparently, they usually had a ‘Do Not Engage’ policy with other survivors, but weren’t sure if it covered kids (“I’m almost thirteen! ”) and Hank said it was likely not to be well received among their peers if it had been heard they had just abandoned two of them out there to fend for themselves.
“Deborah wouldn’t like it either,” Wade had mumbled in agreement, while Moros snorted and immediately made a snide comment about the teen being a momma’s boy “of a sort” not that she really understood what that meant.
The point is that besides Moros, who was just a jerk, they didn’t seem like bad guys. Not yet at least, and when the ceiling had crumbled to unnatural flames and a blackened beam swung down through the red haze and smoke to knock Sophia out cold, they heard her cries through the and came to help a frantic Holly pull her from beneath the smoldering roof. Even the raging fire seemed to pause long enough for their efforts to succeed, and for the ragtag group of ashy strangers to crawl through the broken front window (the flames billowing out from beneath the jagged teeth of broken glass like some demented smiling furnace) and collapse coughing on the pavement outside.
After watching her quietly crying over Sophia when she wouldn’t wake up, even Moros looked uncomfortable and nodded jerkily at Hank's assurances that they were going to have someone look her over when they arrived back home. After a little more coazing Hank had lifted the limp girl gently and deposited her in the back of the truck on an old folded out blanket he found under his seat, all under Holly’s nervous observation.
(Because really, what other options did she have besides dragging Sophia’s bleeding unconscious body through the rotter filled streets on her back?)
So she could not leave, for multiple reasons, but also she wasn’t a prisoner not yet at least and the building they pulled up to was emphatically not a prison, it just wasn’t a house either.
It was a mansion.
///
“Oh, my stars…” The woman breathed, all polite southern astonishment, a gentle hand pressed to her chest and smile beaming under the wide brim of her sunhat. She was knelt primly in the grass, a basket half full of fresh folded laundry at her feet, a nearly empty clothesline fluttering gently in the breeze at her back. She was wearing a yellow sundress, pristine and expensive looking and new like she’d just walked out from one of those fancy department stores.
Holly blinked, momentarily taken aback. She was beautiful and very out of place even amongst her well-tended garden oasis, untouched and serene even in the apocalypse, an utterly bizarre sight made even odder by the lines of barbed wire just visible in the background.
The place they had pulled up to sat on the end of a long winding driveway through a pair of heavy wrought-iron gates and eventually ended in a circle that looped around a gently tickling fountain. Holly had almost thought it was a joke at first.
The place itself was straight out of one of those shiny top shelf catalogs at the store that Aunt Petunia would not have even allowed Holly to touch --let alone read---let alone, let alone be caught anywhere near. Three stories of dark red bricks, white columns and tall windows framed by black shutters. The darkwood door had panes of swirling colored glass and a gleaming golden doorknob. It looked like a place meant for the president to live.
A five foot brick wall lined the property, red maple and black oak trees dotted along the walk shielded it from view of the street. Hank and the rest of their team had run barbed wire along the top of the entire thing and a couple crudely crafted lookout platforms had been erected conveniently in the shade and sported moderately-alert silhouettes in foldable lawn chairs, rifles slung over shoulders or across their laps.
After pulling in, gravel kicking up under tires screeching to a stop, Hank and Moros had quickly disappeared inside with Sophia carried between them, a sudden flock of people (all dressed in various stages of their uniform, some without the right shirt, others in jeans or sneakers or only one sock) chasing after them, a flurry of activity and questions being volleyed at the two men while one woman worried over Sophia’s face with practiced hands, ordering everyone around with such stern volume that they all were quick to obey.
None of them even noticed Holly, still climbing down shakily from the back of the pickup, except for Wade who quickly stopped and directed her back around the far side of the house when she tried to follow them inside.
“But-Soph-”
“Doc’ll take care of her. And Deborah will wanna meet you anyways, get you set up.”
Any other time, she probably would have fought that, but her head was still cloudy with guilt and shame and no small amount of magic-weary exhaustion; also, if she was being totally honest, a part of her didn't want to see Sophia right away.
The hot protective surge in her blood had quieted, something soft and cool settling over her bones made her distantly believe she could trust them with this, for now at least. She knew they'd be able take care of her friend better than Holly would currently be able to with her body this tired, limbs achy with exhaustion.
Her muscles shivered like waterlogged rags wrung out too tightly, all loose and wobbly. The feeling was oddly reminiscent of the end of Holly’s first year when she woke up in the hospital wing. Back then for the first hours after the most she’d had to do after was stretch a bit to reach the Fizzing-Whizbees on her side table (and even then Madam Pomfrey had all but charmed her butt to stick to the mattress for the next three days because of it).
Right now it was all she could do to keep herself standing upright and stop from stumbling over loose rocks as she clumsily followed after the older teenager along the little pathway of cut stones that led around the back of the house and into the richest muggle garden Holly had ever seen.
The entire space had been transformed into an oasis plucked from the pages of a muggle fantasy book, the rough red brick giving way to dark green hedges spotted with small white flowers that wrapped protectively around the back half of the property. To the left sat a pool shaded from the heat by a whispering willow nestled in the back corner, its fibrous mint-green branches swaying tantalizingly above the sparking water.
Everything else was flowers.
Neat interlocking patches of all kinds; camillas, hydrangas, azaelas, magnolias. It was well cultivated and obviously cared for, no placement of any one plant felt jarring or out of sync with the other surrounding it, melding seamlessly into an ocean of bright colors.
And kneeling at the center of it was the singularly most stunning woman Holly had ever encountered.
For a moment, everything about her seemed hazy at the edges, like she’d stepped straight from the fog-dense land of dreams. She smiled gently, bright amongst the scattered linens and Holly could hear the birds singing.
The woman (Wade’s Stepmother, Holly assumed) stood to greet the two soot-covered juveniles shuffling into her little oasis, stopping first to drop a kiss on her step-sons' reddening cheek in welcome before quicking swiveling her attention to Holly, who stiffened under it like a baby rabbit caught suddenly in the beams of an oncoming car.
“Who is this little darling?” Holly wondered if she was on fire again, Wade rubbed the back of his neck.
“Just a girl we found needing help. Thought I’d bring her back here--you know, for safety and all.” He shrugged and put his hand in his pockets before adding as an afterthought, “Her friends inside, got banged up pretty good. Docs seeing her now.”
“Oh, dear. Well don’t worry too much, I’m sure that Alyssa will set her right in no time, faster than an ambulance these days no doubt. Now, let me get a look at you, sugar.”
Holly blinked, a bit dazed as a manicured hand gently seized her chin and propped it up until she met her eyes. Flowers, the shaken half-blood thought in passing, flustered in the face of another face so close to her own and so chock full of colors at that, vibrant like the flowers blooming just over her shoulder. Blue eyes sparkling and red lips pulled into a warm and welcoming smile, small but sincere and perfectly painted on like those old fashioned porcelain dolls, or maybe Draco Malfoy’s mother. It felt like something had clobbered her over the head and she wondered idly if her concussion was just setting in.
“Now, just where did you come from, dear?”
“Florida,” Holly answered without thinking, flushing and stammering to clarify, “Or no- Surrey--I mean England. Came for holiday but you know, got stuck--sort of--I-I guess--”
The woman tutted, shaking her head and Holly was momentarily distracted by the golden strands caught in the beams of the setting sun, the scent of fresh laundry lingering in her nose.
“And your parents let you travel alone? I know those… Europeans have always been more hands off approach to parenting but honestly, who in their right mind thinks it's appropriate for two young ladies to travel unaccompanied these days?”
“Well, uh, my parents are--they didn’t-” but the woman was not listening, sushing Holly and running a tender hand absentmindedly over her cheek before turning her attention back to her stepson, which was good because Holly felt like she had swallowed her tongue and was unable to respond anyway.
For a surreal moment she was back on the burrow’s front lawn, awkward and bumbling in the care of an older maternal figure, and utterly baffled with the attention being shown to her.
“Wade, honey, make up a guest room for her and be sure to use the good sheets, they’re in the third landing closet, good boy you remember--” Wade tripped over the potted rodedengas and cursed but she was already moving as she spoke, gently steering Holly by her shoulders up the backstairs and inside through the kitchen, where the young red-faced witch would spend the next hour or so trying not to fall off a high bar stool, blearily helping shuck the peels off a large bowl of corn.
What was happening? Holly looked down at the impossible fresh vegetables clutched in her hands, Sophia’s blood still crusted under her nails.
It took about five minutes for Holly to register that fact, and another two to muster the will to clamber down from the stool and stumble over to the deep copper sink by the window to scrub them clean, stunned all over again when the water worked. After that she brought back the few she had already handled to give them a good wash as well. Deborah seemed to take no notice and stayed humming happily at the stove, stirring a pot white-gravy and checking periodically on several breaded steaks browning in the old-fashioned woodfire stove.
Holly made sure to sniff the air cautiously as she passed them by, noting the mouthwatering smell of butter and spice, but otherwise familiar scent of beef. She’d cooked a lot over the years, she felt comfortable in its recognition. No reason to worry about the source.
Wade joined them a few minutes later and pulled up a stool across from her. Obediently dunking the next set of thin steaks in a mixture of buttermilk, egg, fresh garlic and hot sauce when his stepmother set them out before him. Then coating them in a layer of flour, breadcrumbs and ground herbs, laying them flat on a cooking tray at the end of the marble countertop for Deborah to fry up when the current batch was done.
The smell was so alluring and decadent, it gave everything an edge of surreality, like a dream. Holly alternated between pinching the meat of her thigh to stay awake and bumbling objects whenever she drifted back into a fog.
The kitchen was tiled with warm brown stone and it felt soft in the glow of the setting sun, the wood burning orange and cheerful in the stove across from Holly. She blinked blearily around the space, gaping at the scene and willing the gears in her brain to turn faster, instead of clunking along one notch at a time.
She just kept wondering where the food came from.
She was getting clumsier the more the minutes ticked by. Once, after his stepmother had swooped down to deposit two long glasses of iced tea (how?) and Holly almost knocked it over when she reached for it, she and Wade shared a brief commiserating glance.
He must’ve been as tired as she was.
///
Some time later, Holly wasn’t sure exactly how much, but at least long enough for the bowl in front of her to empty-- all the corn and a bowl of cut and peeled potatoes now simmering gently in a big pot, Hank and Moros reemerged, this time accompanied by a short muscular woman with thin eyebrows and a grim countenance.
All at once, Holly remembered the existence of Sophia. She jumped up so hard she banged her knee roughly into the bottom of the counter, teetering sideways and barely keeping her balance long enough to duck under Wade’s concerned outstretched arm and run right up to the tall man. She barely stopped herself from clinging to his hand as if he were Hagrid, instead skidding to a top (swaying, black dots dancing across her vision) and then swinging her arms anxiously in front of her while she blurted out.
“How is she? Is she fine?” Her red-rimmed eyes bounced frantically between all three stoic faces, “She’s okay right?”
When the response was not immediately forthcoming, Holly felt equal parts determination and despair surge through her, sucked in a deep breath through her nose (determined not to cry or have another magical outburst) and made to shove her way past.
How could she have left her alone with strangers for this long? They could have done anything to her she needed to be there to help her she-
“Whoa whoa whoa , pump the brakes, kid. She’s resting upstairs but you look about ready to drop. Don’t make more work for me before I get something to eat, alright?”
“But I-”
The woman gave her a weary grin, she had dark bags under both gray eyes, “She took a pretty hard hit, not gonna lie, but I’ve done all I can until she wakes uo and I can get a read on her condition. And that won’t be for hours, likely. You should eat, get some rest.”
Holly bit her lip, the warm glow of the charming family kitchen beckoning at her back.
“I’m not hungry. Where is she?”
///
Sophia was pale. Bloodless and lifeless and far too still. Holly sat at her bedside and stared at her forehead hard. Both the wound that now marred it and the strands of coarse cornstalk hair kept her just barely from floating back up and away, lost again to her fear.
Lying there just then, she looked far too much like the diary cursed Ginny Weasley for Holly’s fragile and fractured mental state. She could feel the shattered pieces, big shards-- thick like the glass in zoo enclosures--slotted together and held there with cellotape. Each waiver of concentration, each time the blonde hair flickered red just for a second after Holly blinked her tired eyes back open-- it sent a gust of wind that clinked the pieces together like the world's most delicate windchime.
Holly gritted her teeth and white knuckled her fists on her legs and stared harder at the bandages.
She’d have a scar there now. It would be big, the gash certainly was. Much bigger than Hollys--it was almost running into her right eye. The bandage itself covered nearly half her face.
Her fists tightened and she felt warm water gathering in her eyes.
This is my fault.
She squeezed them shut tight at the thought. She could still see the waves of vengeful flames sprouting out from the skin around her wrists and curling around her outstretched palms. Sophia’s widening terrified eyes surrounded on all sides by red haze and smoke.
She had never, never done anything like that before. Even with Quirrell, he screamed and burned and turned to ash under her touch but she felt nothing but confusion as it happened.
This time she had felt it, the red bubbling in her blood like molten lava just under her skin, the way it erupted when it broke free and hit the dusty air. It was nothing like casting incendio with her wand, that funny tingle in her fingertips was a far cry from the shiver-inducing heat that this had brought. That terrifying fire had come from somewhere inside her.
It was still in her. She could still feel it even sitting there at Sophia’s bedside.
It was like a spark had been lit, burnt out for now but still having left smolders behind in its wake. Holly was terrified of accidentally igniting them again. She found herself anxiously taking note of each and every flammable thing in the small guest-room-turned-medical-bay and inching her chair away from the ones closest to her. Her biggest concern was probably the bed, but still she couldn't bring herself out of arm's reach.
Sophia was too vulnerable in this place. Since retreating up the stairs and taking up vigil she’d felt her familiar walls of suspicious paranoia begin to rebuild themselves.
She’d counted at least ten men and women in the initial confusion, and at least four guards on the walls. In addition to Deborah and her other son and daughter, that she had chatted about incessantly to Holly’s vague recollection. So 17 at least? Might as well be twenty, and there very well might be more.
That was much more than Holly felt comfortable handling in any state, let alone this weak while protecting an unconscious person at the same time. She knew she couldn’t do it again without the fire, but she had no intentions of trying to bring it up again. It had felt wild, too powerful and horrible to unleash around anyone living who didn’t deserve it.
Even if Sophia hadn’t been hurt, she’d almost burned the three men alive, and after an afternoon of semi-awkward travel, she was not sure they’d have deserved it if she did. She remembered the way Quirrell screamed, the charred skin flaking like a snake's honeycomb shedding, red glowing molten seeping through the cracked and blackened flesh, and she didn’t know if anybody ever could.
She would lock the fire inside her chest and keep it smothered for air (at least until she had space to let it breathe, because yeah she was terrified but also undeniably curious).
They’d need another way out of here.
A knock at the door interrupted her half-hearted consideration of the window (again, second story) and Holly turned her head to see Hank toe the door open with his boot, a stacked plate and tall cup of water clutched in his hands.
Holly stiffened a little despite her better judgment. While not black nor beetle-like, his eyes were still dark and kind as the groundskeepers were, and the way he shouldered into the room, almost knocking a box of gauze from the dresser when he bumped into it, made her want to grin fondly. She didn’t.
She bit her lip and hunched her shoulder up to her ears as he stepped cautiously up the the end of the bed, stopping for a short moment to stare balefully at Sophia, tracking his eyes over the tight bandages wrapped around her head and upper arms (she’d also gotten a few bad burns, in all the chaos so had Holly, which she’d had explained to her with some gentle chastising about not speaking up when Dr. Bailey had escorted her up to Sophia’s room after her insistence).
He sighed deeply at the sight of the injured little girl in the bed, and Holly averted her eyes back to her lap, releasing her lip to chew on the inside of her cheek instead.
My fault.
“Thought you might be hungry.” Holly didn’t look up, though she kept her eyes on his shoes in the periphery of her vision, keeping track of his place in the room.
Her stomach chose that moment to grumble audibly and Hank chuckled lightly while Holly flushed and looked up to scowl at him.
His dark brown eyes were warm and amused but he made no further comment but a little smug smile as he placed the plate on the bedspread near Sophia’s knees, well-within her reach now while he took a couple steps away and moved to take a seat on the opposite side of the bed. Holly watched his movements like a hawk, eyes darting between him and the plate several times--face warring between hunger, wariness, intrigue and suspicion, all while Hank made a big show of making himself comfortable. Folding his hands into his lap and stretching his long legs out underneath Sophia’s bed, even cracking his neck while he observed her indecision patiently.
After a few more silent seconds passed and his relaxed posture didn’t shift she felt her something along her shoulder uncoil, and she cautiously reached for the plate of food, careful to keep her eyes on him at all times.
He just watched her settle the plate into her lap, face gentle and a little amused when after sniffing it deeply she wasted no time in diving right in. She hadn’t had a really decent meal since boarding the train leaving Hogwarts at the end of term, she had missed good mashed potatoes.
She did consider that they might drug her, but that was only after the first bite and she was a goner already. As she tore through her dinner, she considered that whenever she did eventually fall asleep she would be dead to the world anyway, and they wouldn't need to drug her for that, so it was probably fine.
She’d enjoy this.
Hank was content to let her eat with enthusiasm for a bit, but apparently not for long, as he soon started talking to her. Rambling really, about his platoon (troop 47) led by lieutenant Dalton Whitley, youngest lieutenant in their company at age 29, he led them through two different tours overseas, and then through a collapsing army base ovewhelmed with walkers and friendly fire in the initial waves of outbreak, and then over two hundred miles of apocalyptic unrest to reach this safehouse.
“His step-da’ was a big name,old money. Bit paranoid about the state of the world--politics and all that. Wanted to be sure he could defend his family against any kind of unwelcome intervention, you gather?” Holly didn’t but she nodded.
Apparently Lt. Whitley's dad had been a bit of a prepper. Outfitted his property with its own electrical, plumping and water grid. Two back up generators in the basement and enough ammunition to defend against a small army.
Given the current state of the world, Holly thought this line of thinking was incredibly clever. She was somewhat disheartened to hear he had died in the beginning, she would have liked to meet him, that kind of man sounded like he knew a thing or two.
Hank talked at length about the farmlands to the east that they were able to raid on the regular for fresh vegetables still growling unattended in the fields, bringing back what they could scavenge to have Deborah replant.
They’d even found a small herd of cows--weak but still alive-- trapped in their pens at a dairy farm. Bringing the strongest two, as well as a small flock of chickens, back with them to the property, and slaughtering the rest to be kept in several industrial sized freezers still hooked up and running in Lt. Whitleys’ Dad’s genius basement. Apparently a couple of the boys were trying their luck at making jerky with whatever didn't fit--to poor results so far.
All of this Holly found equal parts reassuring and distracting and she alternated between watching his movements and shoveling the food away with careful precision.
As her plate cleared and she slowed down (her stomach had started to churn and gurgle in that threatening way it did when she finally got enough to eat after a long stint without and overdid it, unpleasant to be sure but something she knew by now to power through--who knew when she’d have access to food again?) Hank started to talk about how he joined the army in the first place. Growing up in Mississippi, getting into trouble with neighborhood kids before his dad and brother straightened him out. He talked a lot about his family then, his three brothers, four sisters--nieces and nephews and cousins. He had a big family, a close one and they lived all over. Some of them could be sort of … odd.
Holly froze with the corn cob clenched in her hands, teeth sunk deep into kernels--eyes suddenly darting up to his ‘disinterested’ expression.
“-and I’m telling ya, things always went sideways when they came round. Things disappearing… or showing up again in weird places. Stuff turning different colors. Once, my sister swore up and down that one of them other girls burnt the hair right off her favorite doll.”
Holly’s teeth clenched together hard and she forgot she was mid bite--a large chunk of corn sucked down her throat with her frightened inhale. Quickly turning into a wheezing coughing fit that lasted several minutes and had Hank getting up from his seat, rounding the bed to thump gently on her back once she nodded her consent to the action.
Her eyes watered and she rubbed her chest, still racked with small coughs while her lungs cleared. Hank continued.
“I loved my cousins, they were some of my favorites. But like I said, they were weird. Things always went funny when they came around. Eventually our parents sat us down and explained why, told us how we had to keep it a secret if we wanted to keep all our family safe, see--” and here he knelt down suddenly beside her chair, grasping her two small hands in his large ones and looking intently into her eyes.
“-see, people around here are strong in all kinds of ways, but especially what they believe. You rock up too far against what someone thinks they know is right, they are bound to strike back. Especially now-a-days. Things like-... people might not take too kindly to stuff like that. Are you understanding me kid?” His eyes were serious and intense, his hands squeezed hers tightly. “ You gotta be more careful.”
Holly could do nothing but nod shakily, and eventually Hank saw whatever he needed to in her fearful gaze because he released her hands and stood, his gentle smile now a little strained now too. He blew out a breath and rubbed a hand over his bald head, taking a pack of marlboro lights out of his front shirt pocket to stick one between his lips.
“Pretty sure Moros bought this ,” He muttered, words muffled around the cigarette, shaking the white packet back and forth for her to see, “-for now, anyways, and that kid wouldn't know his ass from his elbow if his brother wasn't there to point it out for him, so you’re in the clear for that whole mess back there. But if things keep going funny, someones bound to notice. And it’ll get messy, there's no doubt about that. So keep a tight lid, you hear?” He grabbed the doorknob and then seemed to consider something.
“And maybe keep your distance from the Mrs if you can, that lady’s lost as last year's easter egg.”
With that, he turned and shuffled back out of the room, leaving Holly spellbound and exposed beside her comatose friend.
Because who wouldn't have trouble falling asleep after that?
///
Their vessel finally succumbed to her exhaustion after Blue finally lost their patience and snapped what little remaining energy they had in their clearing storm to soothe the burns along her lower legs, soothing the sharp ache keeping her awake and also teetering her finally off the edge into full magical exhaustion.
She’d be comatose for the better part of the next day but Blue was running out of options. The mortal witch needed to recover and Blue needed desperately to have a little space to direct their thoughts to the brand new big predicament they had all found themselves in.
Red was awake. Well, sort of. Up but not really aware, groggy and sluggish even as the sun slipped from the sky and the stars shone brighter for their presence here to witness something this unprecedented.
Blue was practically quivering around the atoms and particles of essence now oozing freely out from its dark hiding place.
Another witch's magic has been ripped out and crammed into their vessels right alongside them. When did this happen? Blue could not remember for the life of them. But Red didn’t feel like a stranger, like something foreign or incompatible. just like an unwilling participant. A tag-a-long friend who never intended to come for the journey and was a little reluctant to get in on the action.
Blue had worried it would be something far more malevolent. But that dark bad uneasy feeling they had felt from the others was not at all present here in Red.
Red seemed warm, if a little explosive. Fun, if a bit cranky. But above all totally dedicated to Hollypotter’s protection and continued existence--which Blue could feel radiating off of Red, and made them wiggle happily in the air around the sleeping child.
They just had some minor concerns. Red seemed a bit too focused on that, and not caring what other mortals were caught in the crossfire. Blue understood the snakeman, but the bright one could not be extinguished. Blue knew she would be needed. Hollypotter and Blue spent too long in the dark, and they were best there now. But it was easy to get lost, and Blue was reluctant to let their pigment fade and darken more than they already had, especially with the wrathful red haze now caught up in the aura around the young witch.
The ones-with-the-light had always helped in the past, the sight of big hair and freckled cheeks made their vessels energy sing, charging the space around Blue with bright dazzling sparkles, electric and zinging in the air. Hollypotter took in too much of the dark, and needed the ones-with-the-light for Blue to shine bright enough to protect them both.
This new one was feeble and flickering, but Blue knew it could grow stronger. Hollypotter would help her too.
But they needed her safe and breathing for that. Red had been stupid and shortsighted earlier. Blue would have to teach her the proper way of things.
///
Red just wanted a few more cycles of the moon to wake up and for the little black and blue blob to stop chittering and whizzing in the space around her.
She just wanted another second to get her bearings.
With great impatience, she spread out a little farther, sweeping over the unconscious unimportant child with distant care, reluctantly heeding the blob's warnings of gentle treatment.
///
Sophia Peletier dreamed of hard rocks and mountainous snowy places, of falling from their peaks to hit the ground hard with each tumble downwards. It went on forever.
She was falling and hitting and breaking, endlessly.
She felt rattled and all out of place, her head ached.
The Red came like a sudden miracle winding through the wind and clouds and frost like an impossible christmas ribbon--hovering above her like a lifeline waiting to be grasped. She did, desperately, and with both hands. It wiggled under her palms and snaked up her arms to wind under them and across her chest. Easing each break, bruise and cut it touched--eventually coming to wrap tightly around the crown of her shattered skull.
Swaying in the air, thousands of feet above sharp peaks, caught in a spiderweb of red silk, alive like veins pulsing softly with life and blood, Sophia dreamt now of hammocks and the sea. She would continue to do so for the fourteen days it would take her to awaken--Red like a haze of soft sunset light across her eyes the entire time.
It smelled like flowers.