"I like the scars because I like the stories. Bravery, stupidity, pain- none of them come free,"
--Jessica Martinez, Virtuosity
She blinked. That same dream, again.
Sirius, laughing one instant and gone the next, his hand outstretched, Lupin's arm around her side. A scream that came from her but wasn’t this-her, the past Harriet struggling in Lupin’s grip.
Bellatrix. Sometimes her mind replaced the bitch with Umbridge, or Voldemort, as the one who pushed Sirius through the veil. Sometimes it was herself, with glowing red eyes.
She sighed and turned over. There, on the other side of the bed, was Lunaris. His long hair was braided, the braid thrown across the pillow like the cover to an especially scandalous novel, his breathing deep.
She traced the scars across his back with her eyes, curling into herself.
She scoured the Black Library- the entirety of it, bullying every portrait up on the walls into giving her something, some book, an ounce of information. Anything at all to tell her what the Veil was, and what happened to Sirius.
She didn't believe it when they told her 'death'. If death were that easy her mother would have banished Voldemort into the Veil before she was born, prophecy be damned. If the requirements for casting an unforgivable were not as strict as they were, then at that crib the eerie green flash that haunted her nightmares would be accompanied by Voldemort disintegrating by her bedside.
Beyond that, a very reputable and honest source… well, he laughed at her when she asked, like the very question was stupid. Right up until he saw her face, and realized she didn't know.
Know what, she asked, politely. Death started cackling again.
Being the Master of Death was… well. Calling her a master was quite inappropriate. Really, she's more like his babysitter, or his chauffeur, or his little sister or something. Something along the lines of 'person I like to annoy'.
Xeno would have been so, so upset to realize that there was never any way to bring Pandora back in the first place. But Harriet had no sympathy for him. Preventing death was possible, but trying to steal a soul under Death's nose? No. Becoming the Master of Death was outside his abilities anyways; he was apparently 'too far outside the Outsiders' lines' according to Death. Whatever that meant; he still refused to explain to her what any of it meant. The asshole.
Just that the Veil didn't lead to death. Just another new adventure, he said with a mad grin, and Harriet beamed him in the face with a Black book for his Dumbledoreisms. She had enough of his hippogriff shit without spawning new traumas out of the old ones.
What time is it? She's too awake for this. Ten? Eleven? She eyed the clock up on the wall. Ten-twenty. Lunaris was usually awake by now.
He probably was, the bean. She turned to run soft hands down his back, curling around his hip to cup his stomach protectively. She placed a kiss on his bare shoulder and pulled the blankets more firmly over the two of them. Harriet always ran cold, and Lunaris was a very soft furnace.
He hummed, tucking himself more firmly into her embrace like a kitten.
"Morning," she croaked, closing her eyes and humming happily. This was what she breathed for.
“Morning,” he croaked back, turning to press a kiss to her forehead. She pulled back so he could stretch, shifting over to wrap her in a warm hug. She pouted into his stupid, scarred chest. Stupid tall people, being tall.
His head rested atop her own and it was the safest and most comfortable feeling she'd ever had in her life. How dare.
She blew a raspberry into his tiddie in sweet, sweet revenge. He giggled and fake-nommed on her forehead in response. She kissed his neck.
"Love you." She told this beautiful, beautiful man.
"Love you," he returned, kissing her nose and giggling more when she fainted dramatically from his ''''heinous attack'''''.
In their space sprawled over the two of them, Holly giggled and Teddy cooed.
“Mama-Papa’re silly,” Teddy diagnosed, shifting between gleeful-blue and mischief-green-pink like a possessed kaleidoscope, wiggling into the space between them and blowing a wet raspberry into her shoulder in revenge. Holly, happy as ever to follow her big brother, followed, sprouting a feather-crown and bobbing happily.
“Betrayal!” Harriet called, blowing raspberries back in revenge.
The little ones giggled, and Lunaris scooped them into his arms and spun around to a chorus of cheers. Then he started "attacking" them with kisses, and their wriggling to escape. He set them down to flee, and looked over at her.
"There's chili in the fridge." Harriet offered, "and applesauce in the side-door."
Lunaris nodded and walked out the door. Today was Freja's day, Friday, and that meant weekly chats with Hermione.
Or, check up with everyone, make sure no-one is dead, and coordinate between them day, usually through the mirror-call. Sometimes they’d apparate, but if Hermione wasn’t already here she wouldn’t be coming. It was too dangerous. Even if most of the Death Eaters were dead, insane, crippled, or a mix, Death Eaters are not the only ones on this planet. Guns can be just as dangerous as wands, if an unwary wizard is surprised.
Considering how truly few wizards were left… no, it wasn’t worth the risk. It was lucky enough that enough of the lands across the planet were magical enough at this point to support any magical life, much less anything else.
Magic was dying. At this point it was a race to see who would die first.
"It doesn't take a declaration, or an invasion, to start a war, all it takes is an 'us' and a 'them'. And a spark."
--Ada Palmer, Seven Surrenders
“What do you mean, Dark Magic?” Harriet asked, narrowing her eyes at Hermione’s face in the mirror.
Hermione shrugged expansively, trying to fit her own discomfort into an expression that didn’t seem to catch all of it.
“I know, it sounds stupid. But they’re being serious, Harriet.”
“How are they even alive? I thought the ministry collapsed.” She complained, instead of arguing further.
"It did," Hermione deadpanned with a wince. "You and I both know it's just an excuse."
Most of society had been looking for an excuse for a while, as it happened. The DA was The Best, and as much sacrifice as it took to earn that spot, they were also survivors of the war that decimated entire magical populations. It was easier to blame child soldiers for the wrongs they were forced to commit than maybe admit the massive monoliths of societies could be wrong in the first place. That anyone in power could be wrong.
"And what does Ginny think?"
Hermione got a worryingly dissective glint in her eye, smiling all mad-scientist like. "Ginny invented a new spell." Which was code for 'volatile redhead has Magical Accident' or maybe 'volatile redhead is a Magical Accident', who knows. The answer was probably both.
Harriet leaned down on her elbows and shrugged. "Okay. They're blaming me again. What are they planning to do about it?"
"They want to throw you through the Veil, Harriet." Hermione stated, worried.
Harriet placed a palm over her face as behind her, the embodiment of Death cackled like a hyena on laughing gas.
"Okay, one, the ministry is a pile of rocks right now. The Atrium is a heap of rubble. How are they planning to get me there?" Harriet pointed out dryly, "Secondly, considering… everything, how are they sure the Veil will kill me, anyways?"
"That's what everyone knows the Veil does, Harriet." Hermione reminded her.
"Yeah, but Death's current cackling in my ear says otherwise. He's laughing like the very idea is stupid, Hermione." Harriet pulled a hand over her face like her displeasure could silence the avatar of Death. It didn't, as it never did.
“Has he explained yet?” Hermione asked, brightening like a surgeon with a shiny new knife.
Harriet shook her head and leaned down to grab her boot. It made a lovely noise when it smacked into his face. Incidentally, situations like this were what convinced her friends she wasn’t just hallucinating; magic could do a lot of things, but stop a boot mid-air? She didn’t have the patience to pretend that long and her friends knew that damn well. Her friends learned from the Thestral Thing.
“He refuses to.” She stated shortly. “Says it's ‘not the right time’.”
“Has Lunar…?” Hermione waved around her own face, grimacing slightly. Harriet winced.
“Yeah but it doesn’t-- here, you’re used to translating prophecy poppycock. I’ve got them written down. Can you get them to Ron?” Harriet summoned the journal from Runespace, waving it in the air and banishing it back.
Hermione flicked her wrist and the journal appeared in a crackle of blue-silver. She flipped it open and ran her eyes over it. Harriet waited.
“He should write music,” Hermione commented abscently, eyebrows raising, and then narrowing sharply.
“He does,” Harriet commented after a few moments, eyeing Hermione as she began to sink into her head. “He hates it, though,”
Which, well. Harriet understands. It’s scary enough seeing him drift off into Seeing, much less experience it. Harriet’s boyfriend has a mind of tempered steel and she’s so proud of him for it. When she has bad days she shifts into that weird lightning-nundu and hunts something massive, like other nundu, full-grown bears, or wrestles with a dragon; when he has bad days he experiences other lives. He talks to planets, he drifts through timelines like a six-dimensional ghost. Whatever Pandora did, it shattered some deeply important part of him, and every once in a while the wound cracks and bleeds.
Harriet has not asked. Harriet does not plan on asking. Lunaris was deeply broken before the Death Eaters captured him, and she loves him. Asking would hurt them, so she won’t.
Turning the scattered fragments of cohesive thought into rhyming sections helps him afterwards, though. And even if they’re not useful for now, some of those prophecies are dead useful just for everyday life.
Hermione closed her eyes, marked her spot with a finger, shut the journal, and ran a hand through her hair.
“Cry in the night, herald the dawn, of Ages past and times long gone;
Cross across the mortal veil, bridge the schism where betrayer failed;
Myths and legends hold cores of truth, for mortal be the immortal too;
Intricate trinicate cast first shot, where heart-breaker and oath-maker wrought twisted rot;
Wicked secrets in betrayal veiled, evil's long lies wrought heroes failed;
Sun-kissed vanish beneath soul-mother’s cracks, starlight and starmight blind twisted ash;
Elder Elder-blessed grip starshine brigade, Aegis reforged with cursed rekindled, remade;
Cross’t river of souls, kintsugi to blight, raise love-worn hands;
Night’s Darkness shall defend Star’s light.”
Hermione recited, and Harriet flinched.
“Ron is really better at this than me,” Hermione admitted after a few moments of trying to think of something to say, “But you might be right?”
“I’m right?” Harriet blurted out, stunned. Death, behind them, was silent and probably sulking, the baby.
“It says to cross the veil- though it calls it the ‘mortal veil’,” Hermione points out dryly.
“So I’m right,” Harriet grinned triumphantly, while behind them Death wheezed.
“It’s more like Death is right--” Hermione started, but Death was creeping into her peripheral vision and that usually meant he wanted something.
"What?" Harriet asked, when all Death did was study her features and flex his mouth like a fish.
“I will tell you everything,” He swore right there, eerie avada green eyes staring into her own. “As soon as it’s safe.”
“You’re in danger?” Harriet blurted out, because the idea of Death being straightforward-- no, he couldn’t. Except he was.
Death, the embodiment of entropy and the end of life, nodded and pulled his hood up like a frightened toddler. Harriet would know; she has two of them.
Harriet flopped over her desk dramatically and groaned into her hands because great, another complication. As if everything wasn’t hard enough.
"Death says he's in danger," Harriet reported. "And that we'll be safe on the other side of the veil," which was more implied, but after so many years Harriet trusted Death and her instincts.
Hermione pressed a palm against her face.
“Hermione I’m going to need to pack everything,” She whimpered, curling more into herself.
“Harriet, I’m going to need to pack everything,” Hermione returned, drinking from her misery like the blackest coffee. Harriet winced.
Unlike the twins, Ginny was an absolutely amazing, organized, detailed packer. She was just also a nit-picking disaster. Hermione had a label-maker; Ginny color-coded her outfits months in advance. She liked buying shoes for every holiday, and was a complete fashionista. She was also, somehow, both a hoarder and a pack-rat. She could cast expandable charms wandlessly, and her pantry was both rune-expanded and colorcoded. Organizing it when not-Ginny was an exercise in frustration and explosives.
“Wait you’re coming with me?” Harriet asked.
“Harriet.” Hermione is apparently deeply tired if she’s been this dry for so long. “The last time we left you alone you found the one Death Eater still semi-sane in the next three countries and deboned him, apparently by accident. And then a famous mass-murderer on purpose. “
“So next time I find an asshole I should just leave it all to you then?” Harriet joked, shifting slightly in her chair.
“Sharing is caring,” Hermione returned dryly, and hung up on her. Rude. Fair, but still rude.
It’s been about six years since the end of the war, almost seven, and magical society as a whole was still coping. Tom Riddle managed to do something only Grindelwald really did before him; make such a massive and smelly stink that he brought the whole world up against him. Or, rather, he managed to fuck things up so badly everywhere he went that some places were still struggling to cope. The entirety of Britain, for instance. The government system- or whatever passes for it these days- is entirely destroyed, with a solid chunk of London falling into the Ministry after some masked fuckwit decided to wiggle his dick about.
Harriet, bluntly, washed her hands of the whole mess. Her people- the DA- died to kill that overconfident scaley snake-fucker and the rest of the world is just sprinkles on the cake, really. Is it her responsibility to care about how the curses he made still make St. Mungos and the surrounding area completely uninhabitable? No, her care was with her people, and their survival. Too many people wanted to take potshots at the people who took down Tom, and not enough of them were grateful that the war was over. So many of her people died and they think any of them are going to be left behind or forgotten? Absolutely not.
Going through the veil would probably be a good thing, actually. The other side of the veil didn’t have Native curses, or at least whatever Ron caught when he flirted with that one woman. It also probably didn’t have the constant and overwhelming weight of her failures, which was absolutely divine. Or potshot-hucking fuckers who don’t understand war veteran reflexes means their skin is inside-out. Or atomized. Or maybe their spleen and their mouth changed places. Ginny has gotten it down to cactus-izing peoples’ noses when she’s startled, but everyone else is still set to ‘lethal’ when dumbasses huck stink bombs.
Which, well. Harriet lost her ability to care about other people as anything more than a vague, monolithic entity when she bit Tom Riddle’s face off as a massive lightning-nundu. Over George and Mrs. Weasley’s dead bodies. Something in her just snapped.
My people you can't harm my people how dare you kinslayer betrayal oath-breaker of the line of false kings--!
Yeah. Today is looking to be a Day. She wonders, idly, if Lunaris would mind her ignoring human responsibilities and just catte-ing for the whole day. Well, he wouldn't mind, but she'd feel guilty later. It was an Abuse Thing (™).
But napping with the kids later was fine, and if she dragged the biggest, meatiest deer home and skinned it in the tent they could have venison, which will be hilarious considering the last time they had venison Teddy thought it was poop. Teasing her adorable little toddlers is what makes life worth living. Helping them pack would be… well, as much as she’d love to drag everything into the expandable tent and keep it in her pocket, she can’t. Expandable spaces don’t react well in the same space, and she’s forgotten what things are expanded spaces more than enough times to be wary of any unchecked bags. The tents themselves were rune spaces, expanded in a weirdly stable way that allowed expansion charms to work, which Harriet didn’t care enough to know about. Yes, she could make one in her sleep, but it’s a ritualized system old enough that she doesn’t have to know the individual parts for the whole of it to function, unlike a lot of other, more recent magics.
Especially with Gringotts the way it is. The goblins have well and truly removed themselves from any hint of human magic, taking with them every branch along the way. If it weren’t for Lunaris’s foresight… Well, it’s not like Harriet needs gold, but the entirety of the Potters’ fortune wasn’t in the gold; it was the artifacts. The books. The history.
She’s getting sidetracked. Packing for the trip. Straightening the tent to something presentable. Also, explaining what’s happening to Holly and Teddy, because they’re not stupid.
Oh, and the rest of her people. Hermione’s coming, and so’s Ron. Not inviting the rest would be stupid, as well as rude.
"Childhood dotted with bodies,
Let them go, let them
be ghosts.
"No," I said,
"make them stay, make them stone""
--Gregory Orr, Legend of the Marble
Harriet adjusted her kids on her lap, Lunaris eyed the mirrors above the mantle, the fake fireplace alight in rainbow colors.
“Armistice, Arise,” She commanded like a queen, and Lunaris shifted.
The mirrors lit left to right, her people sharing a cheered grin and a bright light behind their eyes. E
Ron, braids running down his thick bronze hair, gave the mirrors a cheery, toothy grin, the short scar over his lip stretching with the motion. Bill’s dragon-tooth earring swung with the motion, highlighting the thick runic bands decorating both ears, his lips, his nose.
Hermione gave a sharp smile, Ginny hanging off her back behind her. Ginny’s sharp, wire-thin scars arched up her face like lightning, and she spun her wand like someone who knew they didn't need it to cause chaos. Hermione’s hair ran down her face in thick braids, highlighting the yellow highlights in her eyes and the canid teeth marks dug into the hollow of her jaw.
Blaise Zabini held up a single eyebrow, his sharp cheekbones pale and smooth. The deep blue in his eyes, with his pale skin and black, silky hair almost seemed metallic in the light of his forge, the blades arranged behind him carved with runes. Daphne Greengrass sat beside him, her ice-blue eyes sharp and thin. Frost was forming at her feet, the only crack in her mask that revealed her displeasure.
Neville smiled, a calm, happy thing, as behind him a thick, old branch cracked down on some fresh bones. His hair was long as his robes as the old and bloody whomping willow happily drew its unwelcome prey into its massive maw.
Hannah smiled from her seat at the hearth. She looked calm and motherly, almost, except for the two massive hellhounds at her feet. Mischief and Mayhem were alert and ready, the two magical direwolf mixes absolutely massive and thick with werewolf-fighting scars.
Susan, on the other hand, looked damn well like her entire line was possessing her at the moment. Righteous fury laced off of her in waves of lightning, her hair standing on end. She gripped her wand like someone who forgot it existed and wanted to vaporize everything in a mile’s radius.
Draco. The platinum blonde hair was shuffled neatly into an undercut, and the long, slim curse-scar that ran down his face and across his chest flexed with his movements. The white coat and coffee cup are only to underline the deep purple bruises under his eyes and the hollows of his cheeks. The modern black spinning chair under him almost made his sun-starved skin glow.
“Harriet’s being thrown into the Veil,” Hermione stated without any tact whatsoever.
“What.” Susan snarled. She wasn’t the only one.
“The Attrium’s still absolutely collapsed, but Death wants me on the other side for some reason, and it’s safe enough to travel,” Harriet interjected. “Also, Ron, prophecy, translate? It’s in the book.”
Ron drew the journal from runespace with a swish of ocean blue.
“They wouldn’t stop until she was through, and the rest of us with her.” Lunaris asserted calmly. “Besides, this way is better,” His attention drifted, and Harriet didn’t press him.
Blaise did. “What do you mean?”
“Willing sacrifice is powerful,” Lunaris smiled dreamily. “Nine for completion; Thrice-thrice for defense.” He hummed.
Harriet eyed him. “Not five for new beginnings?” And four for death; the irony might spare them.
Lunaris shook his head. “Unbalanced. Seven for raw power, two for duality? No.”
He didn’t elaborate further. Harriet grimaced. Duality, the way runes were both their definition and their opposite? Understandable. Numerology was not her strongest suit, but she trusted Lunaris. If he said that anything other than thrice-thrice would unbalance them, he meant it.
Ron recited the prophecy hanging over their heads aloud for the rest of them and studied it.
“So,” Ron started, eyeing the prophecy in his hands like a live spider. “New beginnings, bringing forth the light, referencing something in the past- probably a Tradition- brought back into modern life, crossing the veil, referencing the creation of the veil maybe?” He paused and frowned. “Something… I can’t translate this line- mortal be the immortal too- without more context. It seems to be referencing some kind of immortal- maybe a Greater Being? A High Dragon?- that we haven't met yet, but that’s too easy. Instincts point to something about Death. Fourth line doesn’t make any sense right now.”
“A secret previous to us forced whatever heroes were already there to fail, probably be corrupted somehow, a reference to two different groups of people- starlight and sunlight- with the starlight defending sunlight. The rest- I need context.” Ron grimaced.
That was the thing about prophecies. While some of them could be understood before they came to pass, and while they were supposedly supposed to be warnings of the future to come, they really only became decryptable when the horrible tragedy passes. Which was a problem, but at least they know other people already live wherever the other side of the Veil leads. Which means the other side of the veil isn’t someplace uninhabitable, like the void of space or the Russian magical district or something.
“Death can explain further,” Harriet threw the immortal under the bus without regrets, “But apparently not now. He’s in danger here.”
Daphne blinked slowly. “Death. Is in danger here?”
Harriet nodded, and behind her little family, Death made a face at her. Harriet, the absolute picture of beauty, grace, and maturity, pulled down an eyelid and stuck her tongue out at him in the mirror. Immortal ancestor or not, Death was a massive flailing infant.
“He’ll explain once we cross?” Hannah asked, dusting off her long skirts to sit up.
“Absolutely,” Harriet volunteered. “And we are crossing.” In the mirror, Neville was using his wand to help clean the whomping willow, moving the blood to the massive plant-baby's mouth. Susan was in Hannah’s mirror, flopped over the carpet and being licked by dogs, tickling the surrounding area with dry-lightning.
Harriet knew that among her friends, her idea of ‘home’ as ‘the place you sleep’ was not rare. All of them lived out of expanded wizards’ tents, handmade and hand-mended and constantly on the move. Hogwarts was a ruin. The ministry was rubble. Diagon Alley was ash. Packing as though they were again being tracked was not a massive problem, and even being tossed through the veil wasn’t really an issue.
Still, something in her curled into itself. How could she ask this of her friends? How could she inconvenience them?
“Alright, we’re going,” Ron confirmed, sighing and rubbing his shoulders. “You’re all lucky this Star-grass soother is done, and that the Felix Felicius exploded three days ago.”
“Forget your potions, what about the whomping willow?” Susan asked, migrating from the floor to Hannah’s lap. Harriet winced.
“Exploded? Ronald--” Draco spoke from the side.
If you told Harriet first year that Draco Malfoy would have switched sides and saved her friends’ lives multiple times, she would have cursed you on principle. Now, she wondered blankly how she ever lived without his dry wit stinking all over the place. Mrs. Weasley, Harriet had thought, was a mother hen. Draco was a mother dragon.
“--Safety procedures!” His face was inches from the mirror. “Tell me you kept your Dagworth-Granger ward up.”
Ron rolled his eyes and scratched at his lip. “The Fume-ward is always up.”
“Runes wouldn’t help,” Harriet told Susan, shifting, “A cutting, maybe?”
Susan frowned, and, yeah. Harriet knew cuttings were like clones of bigger trees, but Neville not only turned into a massive badass, but a huge crybaby. He would cry about not being able to feed his ‘whomper’ or whatever he decided to name it today. Last week it was ‘bacon-shredder’.
Harriet was just fond of ‘Whomping willow’. It was better than ‘bone-knapper’. Harriet personally had committed many a war crime, but naming a Whomping Willow ‘Waffles’ is a Hagrid-level war crime. Along with naming a three-headed wizard-eater ‘Fluffy’. Hagrid, to be frank, was on an entirely new level of wizard bullshittery.
The only reason the womping, wizard-eating tree willow is not currently named ‘Waffles’ is that one of Neville’s other wizard-eating bonsai got loose and made a hybrid he immediately began babying into submission. He forgot about it, but Harriet personally could not forget.
“Are any of the Jubbuko’s blooming?” Harriet asked. Jubokko, oJapanese Vampire Vines except trees. They’re ancient, endangered, and Neville babies the little bonsai shrubs like they’re newborn babies. Newborn babies that can, will, and do strangle full-grown men, bears, and feral, adult werewolves. And eat them.
Susan nodded, which was as clear a sign as any that they needed to move at the moment. Jubokko only bloom after feeding.
Harriet grimaced, “What if, hypothetically, we used an age potion on the Whomping Willow?” Shrinking solution and the shrinking charm would not work- trees are absolutely functional in several parts and can even regrow themselves, but Jubokko heart-petals are a substitute for a few ingredients in the aging potion that would work.
The shrinking charm and potion don't function with magical plants- something about it makes them work more like sectioning charms, separating them into replantable pieces.
"That might work," Susan allowed, rolling it around in her head. “It won’t last long, though,”
“A day and a half at best.” Harriet agreed, “Will it be enough?”
Susan grit her teeth. “Yes,”
“Ron.” Harriet interrupted the mother-henning and pinned Ron with a sharp look. “Where are you right now?”
Draco flexed his jaw and glanced away.
Ron blinked. “Hogwarts,” He admitted, and Harriet was not going to touch that.
“Neville, Susan, and Hannah are all in the Forbidden forest. Get packed and get over there. You’ll be going with Ginny and Hermione.” Ron shot her a deeply betrayed look, and Harriet grimaced. His ex and his sister, who was dating said ex. But they knew each-other and could watch each-others’ backs. “Draco, you’re with Blaise and Daphne.”
That was a similar case of awkwardness, but her options were truly limited. Four for Death, or Five for new beginnings, means her group had to be Teddy, Holly, Lunaris, and herself. And Death.
Teddy, Holly, and Lunaris would be going together. All three groups would go before she did.
“Once I pass,” Death had told her, avada green eyes locked to her own. “The way will close.”
“You and I must go last. It is the only way to cross; together.”
Two for duality. Four groups for Death.
Fuck, Harriet hoped this would work.
“Lunaris, Teddy and Holly will be going together, I-” She interrupted Hermione, “will be walking with Death. Which will close the door behind us.” So no one else walks through, she didn’t say. She didn’t need to.
Every mirror went silent. Wording is very important in magic.
…
Hermione scoffed. “It’s absolutely awful that we can’t study the Veil now, you know.”
Ginny cackled. Draco sighed, but tilted his head in agreement. Blaise raised an eyebrow.
“You know you can just ask Death when we get on the other side,” He waved casually, still eyeing her.
The meeting swiftly devolved into a familiar catfight, drawing memories of campfire-fish and poor choices. Merlin, but they had been such stupid teenagers.
Harriet eyed Ron and Draco. To be honest, they were still stupid. All of them. Even her. This plan was a last ditch effort pressed against an active, infected, bleeding wound and she was almost certain it would fail. Almost.
Running from their problems like this couldn’t be healthy, but Harriet was beyond the point of caring. At this point her options were to stay and die slowly as the magic was drained right out of them, or to leave and hope.
The wardstones across the entire planet were draining. Thestrals, unicorns, dragons and centaurs have started to vanish. House elves are gone. If there is an unplottable place on the planet, it’s one that has been unplottable since the ward-spell was created.
Dementors, bogarts, even the acromantula have vanished. And Harriet, personally, feels that the Forbidden Forest is creepier without the massive things, empty and probably cursed. Wizards across the planet have started to die- first the eldest, then the newly-born, then the hybrids, the mixes, the muggleborns.
Harriet is not going to be the last survivor of a magicless planet. She's not. Not now, while she has a choice- a chance in hell- otherwise.
She won't outlive her friends.