Cinders in the Snow

Snow was falling and gathering on the ground in mounds. It was like icing sugar floating to the earth; a powder curling and drifting through gentle air currents; a dusting of white, swimming and dancing through the air like fairies, or pixies rather, and swirling around in miniature tornadoes whenever a creature in the forest dared to move.

The trees stretched their forlorn fingers up, up, up to the sky; their boughs cradling the icing in their dark and gnarled arms; their rough bark bare to the frigid air as they longed for leaves long fallen to cover them from the frozen weather. Frost and snow crept up roots, crawling and sticking like pretty parasites to lay and drip icicles on unwitting carriers. The forest was crying in the snow, icily searing in the cold, and the woods had a yearning for the new year.

An Aching for spring.

Between the silence and the chill, there was footsteps. There was Harry. He was walking quietly through the forbidden forest, near silent for the crunch and crackle of snow under small feet. Yes, quiet, abnormally so. His hair was a mess of dark tangles and snowflakes that made it spike up in little damp curls and points. Skin stretched across boney features and limbs, pale against the falling white in the forest, tinging a light pink in the ears and the fingers and the nose- crinkling a frown around the sore eyes. The meagre cloak was inappropriate for the weather, hardly passable for a summer item in its threadbare capacity, much less in the depths of winter, and looking almost colourless for all the frost gathered along its stiffening spine. But Harry didn't look cold. Because he was numb.

As he sniffed and waded daintily through the snow, he seemingly took no notice of his sodden feet, gripped by wet earth and frozen clumps. He lips were cracked and stretched into a grimace, a sad frown adorning his frost smeared face. And hidden behind those horrible round frames and split glass resided those eyes.

Down turned and tear filled, they lazily flicked up from where they had been hazily watching one foot step in front of the other. Shaking hands rubbed away salty water and removed the glasses which had since misted with the intense hot crying that had overwhelmed him so thoroughly only moments before. And then there they were, glistening beautifully in an oval face, the brightest green standing out starkly in the chill of the silver forest. They were green, not a grassy green or a neon green, and not a shadowed, heavy green that one might have come to expect to see in a child like Harry, so broken- wretched, maybe. They were just simply, green. Untarnished. That would be the only way one could describe the alluring vibrance in Harry's sorrowful eyes, because they simply could not be described in a mortal tongue.

As a collective, it is a truth that most wizards are wholeheartedly unobservant. If you need reassurance of this fact, it is for certain that Harry James Potter did not have his mothers eyes like everyone loves to say. Lily Evans had had eyes like viridian spring, the colour of pale baby leaves baring out to feed off the sun; the emeralds of new life and hope. Those silly witches were blind, but magic could see. Magic could watch, entranced, as none noticed the difference. 

Is ignorance sin?

And hiding within that thin face were eyes the colour of power and burning emeralds and revenge. Eyes the colour of death, ethereal even then before adulthood- not unlike the killing curse that marked this very child on a hallows night many years ago.

Wizards, therefore, are arrogant and stupid, and don't learn a single thing. Since it has been shown with evidence many a time, that magic influences magic. That magic is constantly twisting and changing, creating the unexpected and the impossible. So when poor Tom who had lost his way, turned and spat death from his wand, Harry was changed. His eyes saw and reflected what he had seen, mimicking the last green spell he had seen in the years after witnessing 2 deaths. Harry was special, and nobody even realised.

So magic watched, the forest watched- in the shadows death watched (as he'd always done). And they listened, because sometimes hearts can scream out for somebody, anybody please- without a movement of the lips. Harry was a shell of a boy, not that he had been fully whole before, but, well, he was lost. In the forest he stood, where he had walked mindlessly for a period of time he could not begin to recall. So, yes, he was lost. The tiny boy was lost in the forest and within himself. Because how does a 15 year old boy fix something that has always been broken. He has always been broken.

He always felt alone: Ron was jealous and easily angered, Hermione was strict and apathetic (rather oblivious too), Professor Dumbledore sent him back to the Dursley's year after year after year ("Oh but you must forgive them Harry... They are your family... Its for the greater good, my boy") and left him to suffer, Sirius and Remus were off who knows where, and his parents... Cedric... They were dead. Deader than a doornail. More dead than Nearly Headless Nick, which i suppose isnt hard when most dead people are deader than ghosts.

Of course Harry felt broken, he had the world on his shoulders and no one to help him hold the weight of it. So then, right there on the snowy floor, his shivering legs buckled and he crumpled in a heap to wheeze and he continued quietly sobbing.

What was the point of staying in the wizarding world if he felt just as trash here as he had done when he was being hit about by the hard hands of his uncle. He wished he could get away, he wished someone would hold him, he wished anyone would just tell him what he needed to hear.

His wishes were heard.

A rustle alerted the boy and his head sprang up with balls of frost clinging to his hair, eyes drying and hand tensing towards a pocketed wand (and his magic raging instinctually). But there stood in front of him was magnificent beast. Great ivory haired skin and strong lean legs, the epitome of grace. More elegant than a horse, it chuffed at Harry cutely, ears flicking and hoofs clacking in the snow. A twisting pale bone protruded from its head. It stared at Harry with dark eyes, unfathomably kind and understanding. A wretched keening sob wrenched itself from his throat, and before him was a fucking unicorn.

He couldn't believe it. Hagrid had told Harry once that unicorns were rarely seen at Hogwarts (or at least by the faculty, unworthy as they are) and Harry knew they were sacred innocent beasts. They'd learnt all about them in care of magical creatures, but never before had he see a real living life unicorn because the last time didn't count. The poor beast was dead and silver blood was drunk out of a hole in its bloody side and a hooded figure was sweeping forwards and it was Voldem--

His hands were suddenly in his hair and the flood gates were yanked all the way open, he was gasping for air at this beautiful creature's feet with tears rolling down his face in abandon. They were boiling and wet as they dripped to the ground and melted the snow beneath him. He was melting into a puddle of sorrow and fear in front of a unicorn and he couldn't give a damn about it since he had no control of his breathing. His vision was fuzzy and he thought the ground might be shaking but it was probably the hypoventilation, Merlin he was such a freak, useless!

It felt like there was flames licking up his sides and he could have sworn the wind was beginning to whip and howl like wolves on a full moon (like Lupin, didn't his skin tear just like paper as his bones ripped through his sides and cracked into that mangled form , and then he was a wolf and he was running straight at them and--) as he squeezed his eyes shut. His nails were digging into the snow-melted muddy earth while Harry was just trying to hold on. He flinched under the assault of a wailing sound and swallowed with a wince, his throat aching as he realised the sound of despair, like harpy cries, came from his own mouth. Then there was warm breath on his neck and the unicorns head was resting on his shoulder as he heaved in gasps of heated air. All of a sudden a voice was ringing through his ears.

'BE CALM'

And he was, like magic. His heart was beating in his ears and he could clearly hear it slowing down. Thump thump, thump thump, thump thump. That strong and steady voice reverberating around his mind was a soothing weight to dampen his emotions. He opened his wet lashes and looked up, staring straight into the unicorn's warm brown eyes. There was comfort there, and an emotion he could not recognise beaming out at him from the equestrian.

Nobody had ever looked at him like this.

Hands twitching, he leapt forwards to wrap weak, malnourished arms around this kind creature. Harry felt like he was soaring, completely overwhelmed by the aura of the unicorn which he had unknowingly thrown himself into. He felt accepted and cared for and he never been as close to another living breathing being before as he was now and he was overjoyed. 

Tears and fears forgotten, Harry just stayed there exactly as he was, in the snow, in the forest, in the bubble of warmth that had grown from everywhere and nowhere. He could smell the frost and the twang of horse, and coarse hairs were ticking his nose when he buried his face in its mane. Their two heart beats were thudding slowly, in rhythm as they vibrated through his bones, a full body shiver shaking him loose of tension.

Not a thought on his mind was on his friends, or who might be looking for him. At this very moment, the professors had no idea he wasn't in the castle, Hermione was oblivious and absorbed in midnight studying and Ron had gone to bed hours ago without even checking Harry's bed to see if he was there. So maybe it was better this way. And as Harry stood feeling the heavy weight of unconditional innocent love for the very first time since his parents fated death, the cracks between him and his old life ripped tragically into a gaping chasm. 

Harry's heart clenched and flickered in his chest, a pressure rising off him he had never noticed before. Like a hand gripping his body had finally let him go, and he was sighing, sagging onto the unicorn with the taste of ice on his lips. Delicate fingers were grasping for purchase but he was fatigued and the chill was beginning to set in again. That whipping flame of adrenaline in his gut was finally subsiding and the sugary air began to lay on the unicorns flanks and powder Harry's hair once more.

It was like he had been drained of energy, and with a smile on his face, his eyes fluttered shut heavily, his limbs like weighty lead tugging him down to the ground by the knotted, frozen roots of a wise old tree. The unicorn snorted and gracefully dropped to lay beside Harry, curling around him in a semblance of protection, to protect the innocent.

Harry was only a foal.

Eyes blinked from undergrowth and thorny branches and dens in the forest. They whispered and chattered, the trees crooning a sweet lullaby into the frigid air of the night. Now that the child had slipped into dreams, they were no longer afraid and the forest understood, and they accepted like the unicorn before them had done.

Centaurs gasped and sung to the skies, watching the planets of prophecy turn and spin andchange. The spiders crept and twisted webs into kaleidoscope patterns, an eye or two always on the pair as they were buried deeper into the ever falling snow. Thestrals yipped and leapt into the night sky to watch out for their light cousin and to spy for death around the corners.

And there he was indeed. Death, arm in arm with Life, Magic sitting by their feet, watching for the first time to see if there would finally be a universe in which poor Harry Potter could be happy. They hoped and watched quietly, waiting for a chance to intervene or help. So they would wait, for however long they needed to. Death would peer through thestral eyes, and Life would spy in Herbology greenhouses amidst leafs or branches and Magic follow Harry wherever he may go, a hand on his shoulder and any gift of power he might need in their arsenal. 

Lord Time sat back, his fingers steepled and his voice gratingly urging them to leave the boy, for now. There was work to be done, and time waits for no one.