Harry stares down at the bustling city from the top of the hillside she had just ascended. Green pennants flutter from the tops of the watchtowers placed on the city walls, as well as from all the turrets of the huge stone castle in the centre of the city. Forest crowds it from all sides.
Camelot.
This is the place she will hopefully spend the years of her apprenticeship in.
If she only manages to avoid getting thrown out for pretending to be her male cousin and learning to be a healer, a profession reserved for men, or burned at the stake for being a witch.
Easy-peasy. No one but Master Snape will even notice her presence.
~*~
Her plan to avoid attention hits its first snag in the form of some knights intent on bullying a servant.
One of them, his most prominent descriptor being very blond, laughs as he throws knives at the target the servant is still carrying.
Trying to channel Archie, she pulls out her most affable smile with a hint of steel in her eyes and goes to interfere.
“Friends, how about you stop torturing people for your amusement?”
“Do I know you?,” the blond one, asks. For a moment, the blood freezes in her veins, but then he continues: “I think not. You should not be calling me friend.”
He is wearing his nose so high, she can count the hairs in it. It rankles her.
“My mistake, I should have been calling you a prat.”
He steps closer to her, his grey eyes meeting her green. “And I should be calling you a traitor. That is no way to talk to your prince.”
Crap.
~*~
She avoids jail by the benefit of being (pretending to be) a nobleman, but that does not make her appeal to crown prince Draco any more. Good riddance, hopefully it will keep him away from her.
~*~
Her apprenticeship is going as well as can be expected. Master Snape had only accepted her as a favour to her mother, but had not been shy with his predictions that no son of Sirius Black, her uncle with whom he shared a nebulous but unpleasant past acquaintance, could ever be a Healer with any meaningful merit.
She endears herself to him, slowly but surely, every time she demonstrates her hard won knowledge. But she does not judge it to be time to reveal that Healing was not the art she wants to learn from him. Her fingers itch to brew again, but she needs to practise patience and be satisfied with the non-magical healing salves she is allowed to mix.
~*~
Harry.
Harry!
HARRY!
She sits up in bed, her ears ringing. Or maybe that is her brain.
She has a bad feeling.
Her bad feeling leads her deep into the bowels of the castle, where she ends up facing a dragon in a gigantic cavern.
Finally, they whisper in her mind. There is something I have to tell you.
Her bad feeling intensifies.
“Do you really have to? Think about it.”
Undeterred, the dragon continues: A prophecy was made about the Once and Future King and the most powerful Mage of them all, who together will bring about a united Albion and an age of peace and posterity in these lands.
She is getting a headache. “Please tell me, Lucius is not the Once and Future King. Once is really enough.”
No. A chuckle reverberates in her skull. Draco is.
She stares up at them uncomprehendingly. “The blond one?”
It is hard to tell on the unfamiliar face with all the ridges and scales, but she is fairly sure she reads incredulity in it. Yes. Lucius' son.
“Are you certain? Are the votes not maybe still being counted?”
Destiny takes no votes.
“That is the problem, possibly”, she mumbles. The dragon either doesn't hear her or she is being summarily ignored.
He talks on about destiny and fate and coins. Harry loses the plot after a while, wondering how to fit saving a disdainful royal asshat into her already packed schedule.
There is no real point worrying about it. If it is destiny or fate or dragon balderdash, these things will work themselves out.
~*~
She almost begins to believe in destiny, if only because Draco really proves in need of a saviour, or at least a healer on standby.
When she comes to bring Lady Pandora her medicine, Draco is in the room. He goes to lean on a pillar, misses and nearly brains himself.
During a small banquet, Harry is just about to lick a trickle of apple juice off her thumb when a loud curse rings out from the High Table. Draco had somehow managed to spill soup in his lap.
Then, while observing the knights' training, in case first aid is needed, he gets hurt no less than four times, never by one of the fellow knights. Instead, he falls off his horse, drops his sword on his foot (hilt ahead), nearly gets run over by a horse and, perhaps most puzzlingly, trips over nothing and lands on his face.
Harry had, during this last incidence, been stretching after sitting for too long and not seen the actual stumble. The faces of the other knights told her that it must have been dramatic.
After ascertaining that he had not knocked out his one remaining brain cell, she was sent from the square by the red-faced, angry crown prince.
How him being clumsy could be her fault, she could not see.
~*~
While Master Snape and her are working side by side, replenishing their storage of healing tinctures and such, she asks, idly: “You have known Prince Draco for a while now, right?”
“Since his birth, if you consider that 'a while'.”
She grins. “It will do. Can you explain to me how he is still alive? It is a wonder he has not impaled himself on his sword yet.”
Master Snape is silent for a moment.
“Prince Draco is usually a very capable man of great valour and elegance.”
At this, she lays down her knife and turns around. “What happened to him, then?”
His gaze stays on the feverfew he is slicing, as he hums. “What indeed.”
~*~
The castle and its inhabitants are in a flurry of excitement, for Bard Jordan is expected to stay in Camelot. He is known throughout the land, and nobility and servants alike look forward to the festivities in his honour.
Harry and Snape are mostly annoyed.
“How likely is it, that we will be treating bottle ache tomorrow?”
“Very.”
“Wonderful. How are we going to find raw eels?”
~*~
Jordan turns out not be a fun sport to have around, when he sings everyone but Harry to sleep. For nefarious reasons, she has to assume.
Out of ideas, Harry grabs a chair and, helped by some magic, hurls it at the assailant, trying to disrupt his spell. It works and then things are happening fast:
Jordan pulls a knife from under his robes and sets out to throw.
One of the guards realises what's happening and lifts his halbard.
The knife leaves Jordan's hand on its deadly trajectory.
Jordan is lanced through.
Harry tackles Draco out of the way.
The knife embeds itself in the wood of his chair.
~*~
For just another moment, there is silence. Then the crowd explodes into noise.
King Lucius is clutching his son to his chest, announcing:
“You have saved my son! This calls for a reward!”
In the pause after those words, Harry begins to calculate. Could she ask for the laws forbidding women to become healers to be lifted? Or was it a fool's errand? Could she hide her reasons for the favour until it was granted? If it was granted?
“If only you were a girl, your noble birth would make you an ideal candidate for a position in the royal household. It really is time Draco marries.”
Scratch that, not the time to reveal herself to be a female of technically noble birth.
Draco squeaks.
“You shall join his family in another way: As brother in arms!”
At that, Draco finally manages to free himself from where he was half pressed into Lucius' armpit.
“What?!,” he shouts.
“That really is not necessary”, assures Harry, seeing all her time swimming away.
Master Snape has his head in his hands. If anyone were to ask, he is so overcome at seeing his crown prince narrowly escape death and not at all upset at having his apprentice stolen from under his nose.
“Remove the traitor's body, we shall celebrate!”
~*~