When It Rains, It Pours
The Yarny Farm, 28th May 2004
Two days.
It took two days simply to introduce the invaders to the skittish, agoraphobic inhabitants of the Sussex Smial – as they have been calling it, after the extensive underground communal home depicted in a classic Muggle novel. And today, after a further one day of persuasion and cautious, detailed survey by the adults of the inhabitants, the whole lot at last decide to move – non-permanently – to the Yarny Farm – the sheep farm House Potter maintains in New Zealand, which is an expansive land full of lush downs and, somehow, tunnels that act as shortcuts underneath the downs.
“What do we do to repay you?” Parvati asks softly as she stands beside me, gazing out from atop one of the downs to a thickly bundled Dennis who is strolling below, carrying his equally thickly bundled seven-year-old little sister Emma, trying to reintroduce her to the open air after growing up in the tunnels of the Smial.
“Live,” I reply just as softly.
My heart clenches as, carried by a stray wintry breeze, I hear the little girl’s plead to her brother to please, please, please return to the tunnels, after just five minutes out in the outside, and I doubt it’s because of the chillier air out here in the open, as I myself helped put lots of warming charms and runes on her winter gear before the siblings set out.
“Heal,” I amend myself after that little snippet, after the pair of siblings have hurried away back to the nearby hole leading to the tunnel running under this down. My voice wavers, but I can’t care less about it. Why would I care about my dignity when I’ve just witnessed one of the atrocities left by the war, still on-going?
I flinch when Parvati’s gloved hand grasps mine, but she refuses to let it go.
She hugs me, in fact, in the next second, and whispers in my ear in a similarly quivering voice, “You, too: Live, heal.”
And then she, too, takes off running down the slope towards the tunnel, although we’ve just arrived up here, about to survey the landscape for longer habitation.
Well, apparently, it’s not only the children who are still agoraphobic.
But, come to think of it again, there’s too little shade to be had here, indeed, in my own opinion. There’s mostly just a carpet of dead grass everywhere, spanning nearly from horizon to horizon. The Island has more shade. The Sanctuary has more shade. The Lodge has more shade. Hell, the Black Farm in Russia still has more shade than this, though it’s mostly grazing lands for cold-weather animals, and the Pottery Vines vineyard in France as well.
But none of them have tunnels, and these people want tunnels.
Maybe if I could get Neville to plant a pine forest here and encourage the trees to grow quickly? Maybe in the summer? Maybe the house-elves want to help?
But Neville’s still… somewhere else… right?
But what about the others? Can they help?
Which “others,” though? George? Bill? Sai’yo? One of the Jaffa? Hermione?
Damn it! I can’t think! This open space, it’s just… too much, especially when I’m totally alone like this.
It doesn’t help that my mirror and my phone are vibrating, now, nearly at the same time.
Jogging down in hope that the hopefully former inhabitants of the Sussex Smial would let me join them for a while, I fish out the mirror first, hoping it’s from Neville and I can tempt him to come here to help with some landscaping.
Hermione’s face is the one displayed on it, though, with her bedroom at Grimmauld as the background.
And Arga’s inhuman gaze is borrowing that familiar face, apparently.
It doesn’t get more familiar to me, or less freaky, with repetition, although by now my relationship with her is much better than it was at first.
“Need me for something?” I ask, sighing, as I seat myself on a conjured and slightly warmed cushion just inside the entrance to the tunnel so recently used by Dennis, Emma and Parvati.
Arga raises an eyebrow, but thankfully doesn’t comment on my not-so-polite response to her call. “I wanted to know when we could see if any of the ships we are left with are spaceworthy or not,” she says instead. “Fawkes has just been by with the latest trunk, and we have sent along another one with him. If we could see what we could do with the planet we were to relocate to, we could enact the plan I and my comrades drew at that time, instead of letting all of them live in your island or your other properties. Or have you come up with a use for them? Have you thought more about purchasing disused lands and making them habitable?”
Deflating further, I draw my knees to my chest and bury my face in-between them. “Use!” I squawk, then, my voice coming out muffled by my winter gear. “They are people, not tools!”
Arga’s exasperated reply comes from the cushion to my left, where I’ve just rested the mirror, face up. “They are people, Harry, but they are also warriors or warrior-centric. They are not used to being idle, and they are used to their leader telling them what to do. Their leader is you, and so you must utilise their abilities; sincerely and for their benefit, if you would like to treat them well.”
I unbury my face with a huff and mumble, “I’ll think of something,” before closing the connection.
It quickly goes live again.
But this time, it’s Daniel’s face that’s shown on the square surface, with the background of a tent’s opening.
And he looks guilty, and sheepish, and, noticing that expression, my heart plummets before he even opens his mouth.
It plummets further – to somewhere below me, it feels, no longer in my body – when he confesses that he told the Jaffa about Earth’s countries and armed forces, also about the private security force that an individual or a company can have, with all the privileges and limitations therein.
I can already guess what he’s going to say next, before he says it.
The confirmation only makes me sag low on the cushion, uncaring that my back is scraping on the cold, rough surface of the tunnel’s wall as it drags down.
The Jaffa want to form a private security force and accompany me everywhere.
While they do not know that the Residents were already prepared to do so long before they were woken up.
And I am yet to let both parties meet for the first time.
And, given this development, the meeting will likely be… tense, to say the least!
“Daniel!” I whinge, annunciating his name with all the displeasure I can muster at present, which is much. “If this ends up giving me more chores, I’ll lock you in in Neville’s greenhouse for a day and a night!”
He winces and cringes, and that’s before I describe the plants grown in the aforementioned greenhouse, in painstaking detail, with relish, with the knowledge that the Jaffa – or at least a few of them – must also be eavesdropping.
I am in a slightly better mood, therefore, when I close the connection, this time.
But, yet again, before I can pick up the call that’s been vibrating my phone since Arga first contacted me, somebody else calls me on the mirror.
It’s Zabini.
And, with the background showing not where they are, they ask most politely where “the contingent” can meet me to start doing the duties assigned to the said contingent by my mother.
“I want to meet my mother first,” I snap curtly, before closing the connection just as abruptly, feeling inexplicably hurt and hollow instead of vindictive or… other things.
I should have been joyful that the mother I never expected to have – or to be alive in the first place – would send people to care for me. I should have felt awefully guilty and bratty or even apologetic for rejecting this gesture so summarily. But… I just… can’t.
I just listen numbly, then, when the phone caller, who turns out to be Tony all this while, hysterically babbles about the “bizarre nightmare” he’s just had, in which he’s huge and blue and a mum and lives in a world of ice and snow and got a spouse and has just sired a pair of twins and is pregnant with another pair.
“Did your mojo do that?” he demands in the end, and I can only shake my head mutely to it.
“What’s wrong with you, anyway?” he demands, next, apparently noticing my… expression? Reaction? Well, that, whatever that is.
I shake my head again. No, I’m not ready yet to tell anybody about anything, right now. It’s still… too much, even for me.
Damn it. I need yet another holiday, already.
So, I ask back, “Is there something fun in where you asked me to join?”
Tony looks… relieved, somehow. Probably because now he needn’t focus on the dream he had. “Fun, if you like dinosaurs,” he grins, though rather wanly. “It’s to be a one-of-a-kind park, with dinosaurs in it. Even if you don’t like dinosaurs, though, I bet you’ll still like it. You’re such a weird kid.”
I flinch. “Yes, I’m a freak,” I say, flatly.
He raises an eyebrow. “You think I’m not?” he drawls, unimpressed. “S’not always a bad thing, anyway. Least if you make it so.”
“If I make it so?” I echo, blankly.
The prat huffs, impatiently. “I’m not a counselor!” he whinges. “Tell Sais or someone else you really trust and brainstorm about that. Speaking of that though, did Sais get a phone yet? What’s his number? We need to talk shop ASAP!”
I grit my teeth. Tony’s mood is improving by leaps and bounds, it seems, but mine is the opposite.
Before he can shove my mood deeper down, unintentionally or not, I quickly farewell him, close the call and rise to my feet, vanishing the cushion in the meantime.
I’m aware of the spectators only when a small voice timidly pipes up, “Where are you going, Mister Harry?”
It’s Emma, clinging to Dennis’ trouser-leg, while her brother, the Patil twins and a few other children are mutely watching me.
I give the adults an irritated look and the children a wan smile. “I need to go to work for a while,” I address the little girl, then. “Be good? We can bake some chocolate cake together when I’m back, if you’re good, all right?”
Her beaming smile is a balm to my mood, it feels. But, as I’ve just said, though it’s partly an excuse to skedaddle elsewhere, there are lots of things that I need to do as soon as possible, before I can hope to rest, let alone have another holiday like the impromptu one I dragged Sai’yo into a fortnight ago. These people and the Jaffa need to be integrated with the Residents, the refugees from the spaceship and the new Jaffa need to be settled with the rest, they all need to be integrated to the greater mundane and magical communities, we all must protect ourselves from persecution from either communities, the Island needs to be really looked into if it’s indeed to be our main base, I need to shut Tony up one way or another, I also need to really look into my not-human heritage and get to my previous self’s twin – what a concept, still, that! – at least through the way I did before, and I really need to confront Teal’c about what he and Fawkes really mean with sending me all these well-armed and well-provicioned Jaffa.
Yes, lots to do, and I’ll have to do them most preferably before Daniel presents in that symposium in two more days, because I’ve got a feeling that things will be even more hectic after that.
Damn it.