Facts
An abandoned house, Unknown
25th september 2003
My friends, our foundling and our ambushers turn to have been waiting downstairs, within the shelter built from debris that I had carefully piled up in what feels like ages ago, when the both of us – or rather, the griever, carrying me in a very, very snug and cuddly embrace – eventually vacate the second story of the abandoned old house. The mother, who must have been mistaken about my identity, although my little heart absurdly hopes otherwise, is… well, vastly more composed, if compared to… her?… sobbing, shaking, blubbering, clingy self from a pretty recent time; and I, tucked in… her… jacket-clad arms in an unbelievably comfier position than it felt with my previous captor, have also – marginally – recovered from the shock of hearing the wordless song and meeting the cocoon here of all places.
A new shock has been waiting downstairs, though, apparently. Because, when my new captor steps into the makeshift camp, fenced in by a high, sturdy dividing wall of various-sized chunks moulded together not by my own doing, our four assailants, three of whom are still holding my friends and foundling captive, immediately shift from their seated position into a nealing one and bow low towards my current captor. With their heads tilted aside to expose the columns of their throats, and with their fingers linked together at the smalls of their backs. Completely vulnerable.
It looks suspiciously like obeisance to a barbaric chiftain, or a monarch in an alien culture.
It feels uncomfortably like the Death Eaters when in the presence of Voldemort.
Is this grieving mother this place’s version of Voldemort, then? But her grief was – is, still – so real! And she’s been genuinely cuddly to me, the sod mistaken as her long-lost child. Comparing this person with Voldemort feels almost blasphemous, seen this way.
I frown and struggle – read: squirm until the cocooning arms give in somewhat – to haul myself up into a seated position, with one hand fisted into the front of the mum’s jacket for added lift and balance, while she is talking in low tones in a language I don’t recognise – giving orders, probably – to her four possible subordinates. Next, given no resistance from her or my previous captor – who is positioned pretty near and still empty-handed, probably ready to catch me – and also given the fact that it is easier to go up than to go down, with her arms positioned exactly to prevent the latter, I take the most likely unpredicted route by climbing her front like a monkey. It’s… strange, that, for a mother (or any female past puberty, actually), she is flat-chested like a man; but that only makes it easier for me to climb up to her shoulder, then perch there, contemplating the eight to ten feet of distance it seems to be to the floor.
Unfortunately, she chooses to seat herself inside the circle of her subordinate before I can execute my plan to jump down, run upstairs to fetch our belongings, put them all into my ever-present mokeskin pouch, run back down to incapacitate these five probable natives non-permanently (I’m not going to hurt the cocoon – whoever she is in actuality to me!), then flee the land altogether with my friends and also the poor little one we found here. And even more unfortunately, my previous captor is now seated on the only opening I made to this little camp when I erected the debris fence round it, which has been added to and sured up into an encircling wall by – most likely – one of the natives.
Seated on the shoulder of this semi-stranger, with my dangling legs tucked snugly in the curl of her left arm, my frown grows fiercer.
Contradictorily, Luna and Neville, seated right opposite me, look amused at me, although there’s also a hint of apprehension in Neville’s eyes.
Neville’s captor speaks, then, addressing mine, in the same defferential tone the other giants have been aiming towards this one. A hum of agreement later, they rattles off things like Neville was wont to do when recounting about one of the more serious parts of his career to me, which I always imagined he’d sound when reporting to Head Auror Robards. The only thing I recognise from the whole report is “Scotland.”
The mum addresses Neville, then, while the fingers of her opposite arm start absently fidgeting with my now-uncovered toes – and sometimes, feet, “Are you older than the one beside you, young one?” Her voice is higher pitched than my previous captor’s is, but it’s just as bland – if still rather hoarse from all the sobbing from earlier – as theirs was, making it hard to judge whether she might be hostile to us. Or at least to my friends, if apparently not to me, with how she’s still treating my feet like toys. (It tickles! Although, strangely, now I realise, none of my body parts feels on the verge of being frostbitten anymore. Huh.)
Neville nods, then hastily offers a “Yes, sir” to the inquiry, probably after an unseen nudge from his captor.
“If you would like to address me based on a specific gender, do not address me as a male,” is her response, and I don’t need to see her face – which is rather hard, with me seated technically beside her, and with how her thick, long, black gentle waves are obscuring my view – to notice the displeased frown in it, replacing the grief, plus a smidgen of pride that makes me both curious and a little bit bothered.
On his hasty “Yes, Ma’am” correction, she hums in approval, prompting me to give the side of her head a glare for being petty to my friend… which she apparently notices, because she tugs semi-gently at my left foot now, but otherwise doesn’t comment on it or bid me to desist.
“Are you the mate of the one beside you?” she asks him next, to which he replies with the same answer, hesitantly, with face cherry-red and lots of glances towards an unperturbed Luna.
And now, “What kind of relationship do you have with my child?”
`Child?!!`
I scowl at her. I’m not hers!
…Am I?…
She’s the cocoon, isn’t she? So does it mean…?
Neville stares open-mouthed at my current captor for a long, long moment, then, “Your child, Ma’am?”
And, as the answer, the interrogator tugs at both of my legs, making me slide back into her arms and let out a… yell. (No, truly, it’s a yell! Not… anything else.)
“Harry?” Neville doesn’t know whether to laugh or to squawk in astonishment.
I glare threateningly at him. But a large part of me is distracted by the huge, soft hand rubbing the back of my neck back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, while cuddling me close and humming… something… deep in her chest.
And, also, admitedly, by the sign that… she… is actually a male, or at least half male, as rather evidenced by the soft bulge accidentally squished under the side of my thigh, which… she?… hastily if discreetly rectifies by adjusting the sprawling heap of my body into a comfier position.
“Harry’s my friend,” Neville clarifies once he seems to have gotten his voice under control. “We’re classmates since we’re eleven.” Then he hesitates, before bravely going on, “From what I know, his parents died Quite a long time ago, though, and he wasn’t like this, before the ward upstairs that he accidentally triggered changed him.”
“Ward?!” The mum’s voice is sharp and quick as a whip, now. “What ward?”
“Maybe the little one will be safe from harm as long as… umm, he?… is with me,” I pipe up, contributing into the… conversation… without being asked, even as, half hidden from view by the tree-trunk-huge arms wrapped round me, I shamelessly use the chance to snuggle deeper into the mum’s embrace, relishing in her scent, sounds, and physical as well as magical presence. Male or female or both, self-titling herself my mother or not, alien or not, another Voldemort or a gang’s leader or a monarch or just a… hybrid girl?… with a tiny cult, she is undeniably the cocoon, and I’ve have subconsciously longed for her – as well as my cocoon-mate – all my life, just as she has apparently longed – madly – for me (us?), and we don’t have much time if we – I mean, my friends and I – want to return home before the Black elves squawk and Andy unleashes a search party, so I’m going to use all the chance I get to bask in the real representation of my home.
“We are neither male nor female in truth, Loí,” the mum murmurs in reply to my conjecture, while carding three fingers across the top of my head. I hum noncommittally… maybe also in some contentment, I admit… as her low-toned comment reverberates nicely in her chest, adding to the rhythmic breaths and heartbeats, and also to the gentle, tactile affection she is lavishing my head with.
And then the words truly register in my mind and, “Oh,” I mumble. “Why do you position yourself as female, then?” – This has answered my brief confusion of her gender, regardless, and it’s also a nice distraction from any weighty topics.
“Amma, Loí, Amma,” she chastises gently but firmly. “And Loí knows….” Her breathing hitches, and I can feel how her emotions roil violently, somehow, before she continues with a rather audible effort, “Our culture, it is based on continuity, and females have a large role in that. Physically, we are born female first, also, before the male part grows in later years. We do not need a male-specific being for us to be able to birth a child, at that. Besides, would Loí like to be smelly and bumbling like most males are? Or strutting quite undeservingly like a handful of them do?”
I look at Neville, and Neville looks at me. His face is cherry-red again, awkward to boot; and, judging from how hot my face feels and how much I’m trying not to display any expression on it, I am faring no better.
And the mum – my mum?! – notices, with how she huffs out a breath caught between a growl and a laugh and cuffs my temple softly, even as she cuddles me tighter, burying my face in her jacket, in her scent, in her presence.
And then, she veers her attention away to Luna.
For hours long, it feels.
Talking about many, many things, from the existence of crumple-horn snorkaks to the feasibility of building a house over an iced-over crevasse, and from the intricacies of “human magic” – or the lack of it – to my foibles at school and outside of it.
While totally ignoring Neville and playing with my limbs and head and whole body as though I were a beloved porcelain doll she’s more than fond of but afraid to break.
She talks with Luna, talks to Neville, and talks about me.
Go figure. My self-titled mother is a sexist, a speciesist and an ageist.
But I’ve never been cuddled for this long and adored this much, and even now she’s letting me play with her – long, strong, neatly cared for – fingers, turning them here and there and putting them into various configurations, just as she has done to mine a few moments ago minus the contortions; not to mention letting me treat one of her arms as a pillow I can hug and curl myself round, and play with some stray hair of hers that falls down her chest, and root about in the many pockets of her jacket, and confiscate the little treasures – a few US dollar notes and coins, a huge bluish coin made up of some glass or crystal with unfamiliar runes etched on its face round its circumference, a faux-leather pocket notebook tied with a plastic curly cord to a sturdy, neon-green, twist-to-use ballpoint pen with magic emanating from both, a palm-sized, worn, old teddy bear, and many, many more – that I find there, and….
Well, it feels too nice to vacate my current spot, or to speak, or to bother about my so-called mother’s not-so-good side, or to cease playing the little-child card I’ve been dealt by my reemerging “Potter luck,” or to….
Oh, damn. I’m doomed.