Chapter Text
Harry Potter was walking around the lake at the far end of Hogwarts’ grounds when he saw her.
He hadn’t been able to sleep, and the walls of the Tower had felt like they were closing in on him, so he’d thrown on his father’s invisibility cloak and escaped into the moonlit school grounds, eventually winding up at the lake. He’d been deep in depressing thoughts as he walked; sunk so deep, in fact, that he’d stopped seeing the water or the star-studded night sky or the sparkling snow that powdered the ground. But a flash of white movement in the nearby Forbidden Forest caught his eye …and there she was. A woman—no, a Lady, gowned in flowing white velvet edged in black fur and white feathers, her hair pulled back from her fair face into a cascade of ebon curls. A snowy owl flew past her to perch upon a gnarled branch, issuing a soft hoot that made her look up.
That was when she saw Harry – something he would only remember to be surprised about later, as he’d still been invisible at the time. But in spite of that, her eyes met his, and she smiled.
It was a real smile, full of sympathy and happiness and the welcome of simple friendship, and it hit Harry in the place where the depressing thoughts were still roiling and calmed them somewhat, making some of the anger he’d been fighting to contain leach away as well. Instinctively, he smiled back, saw that it pleased her…and then she was gone.
Harry thought about the Lady all the way back to his bed, and then slept a peaceful sleep without dreams of any kind. Which meant that the next morning his head was clearer than it had been since the end of the Tri-Wizard tournament—which had been the last time he’d had an uninterrupted night’s sleep—and he was able to decide very quickly that he shouldn’t tell Ron and Hermione about what he’d seen.
Yes, Ron had apologized for the way he’d behaved…but in spite of how much his friend meant to him, Harry knew he couldn’t entirely trust Ron again yet. There was something lurking just below the surface in Ron, a desperate need in him, that Harry now knew could turn his very first and best friend into a green-eyed monster in the flash of an owl’s wings. He wasn’t soon going to be able to forget the way Ron had turned on him at the beginning of last year, or the way Ron had behaved over Viktor Krum’s attentions to Hermione.
Hermione, of course, would run straight to the nearest professor – if not straight to the headmaster – if Harry were to relate what he’d seen in the woods to her. After she’d lectured him thoroughly about breaking rules, of course, and about how he needed to be more careful and why wasn’t he studying instead of wandering about. Harry couldn’t trust her either. She had a blind, absolute faith in the power of adults, in the final rightness of authority. Harry had faith in that power too, of course – faith that it would always turn on him, always be used against him when he least deserved it.
He knew Cedric’s death hadn’t been his fault; the nightmares that replayed the incident in such graphic detail had hammered that point home until he believed it. There hadn’t been anything he could have done to stop the chain of events that had twisted through his fourth year at Hogwarts. But yet the adults who could have stopped it, who should have seen it…they were punishing him for it, taking away one of the few precious freedoms he’d ever been given, watching him, whispering about him. Piled as it all was on top of yet another ‘necessary’ awful summer at home, he simply had no patience left to give anyone, no tolerance for even one more look or comment or not-so well-meaning joke.
He was doing his best to keep to himself, for that reason. He didn’t really want to snap at anyone, especially not at these people who had been somewhat friends of his the year before but who now treated him like a dangerous, unstable freak. He understood, really he did.
Harry just wished that someone would bother to try to understand him.
The next time Harry saw something in the Forest, he was again walking by the lake, but this time it was late afternoon and he was fully visible; the chilly water, he’d found, soothed the achy scarring left by the Blood Quill he was being forced to use to write his lines in detention. Inside Hogwarts he’d been keeping the scar hidden under a makeshift bandage that he’d attached with a sticking charm and transfigured to match his skin’s color and texture – and wouldn’t Flitwick have been proud of the way he’d mastered that variation of the Chameleon Charm, and all on his own, too. Harry would have liked to have shown it to him, would in fact liked to have done without the bother of the bandage at all because it made the scars itch, but he had a feeling that the whole thing was a test and that letting anyone find out what was going on would possibly make the entire situation much, much worse.
And if Harry had learned anything at all over the past four years, it had been to trust his instincts.
He was just wrapping the bandage back on when a flash of color and movement against the dark trunks of the Forest made him look up. There was a Lady there, but not the same one. This one wore a black gown embroidered at its edges with a narrow frost of silver, and her raven-black hair was pulled up and back in a simple, elegant knot that reminded him of Hermione’s hair at the Yule Ball – except Hermione had not had a long lock hanging down beside her face that was silvery-white. A raven was perched on the Lady’s shoulder, the bird’s glossy ebon feathers blending into her hair.
The Lady turned her head and looked at him, and she smiled in a knowing way. She held up her right hand, in a pantomime of sorts rather than greeting, and nodded approval. Harry held his damaged hand to his chest and nodded back his thanks with wide eyes, at which point the Lady continued on her way and disappeared among the trees.
Harry walked back around the lake to a rock he liked to sit on, finished reapplying his concealing bandage, and then just looked out across the water and wondered and thought. He felt better than he had in weeks; this Dark Lady’s silent gesture of approval had warmed the coldness inside of him that having no one to share his situation with had caused. However it was that this Lady in the woods had known, she thought he was doing the right thing – and something told him that if she hadn’t, she’d have communicated that to him. He sat there a little while longer, and then set off back to the stony bulk of Hogwarts with a lighter step than he’d come out with. He wasn’t alone any more. He could do this.
Two weeks later, all hell broke loose. Professor McGonagall had gone into the detention room to speak with Professor Umbridge and had spotted the Blood Quill. Harry had had the misfortune to appear for his scheduled detention just then, and the whole mess had ended up in Dumbledore’s office with McGonagall practically spitting in anger, Umbridge smiling her slightly evil placid smile, and Harry just sitting there patiently and trying not to roll his eyes when he was asked – quite loudly – the expected inane questions. Yes, he’d known Blood Quills were illegal. No, he hadn’t told anyone what was going on – and no, he hadn’t been planning on telling anyone, either. Yes, he had used a charm to conceal the scarring so no one would see it. No, not because he was ashamed (that one was from Umbridge), but because he’d known it was a test.
His last answer had reduced the room to dead silence. Dumbledore cocked a concerned bushy eyebrow at him. “A test, Mr. Potter? Please explain that statement.”
Harry shrugged and looked the old wizard straight in the eye. “I knew it was expected that I would complain to someone, most likely yourself, Headmaster, or that I would tell Ron or Hermione and one of them would kick up a fuss. And I didn’t see the need to go along with those expectations when the only possible result could be to cause more trouble for the school and to further brand me as an unstable psychopath.”
McGonagall gasped, but Dumbledore nodded. “I’m afraid I have to concur with your assessment of the situation, yes,” the old wizard said. “I knew some plan was being set in motion, but I had no idea those involved would go to such deplorable, unethical, and even illegal lengths to take control of Hogwarts.” Out of the corner of his eye, Harry saw Umbridge turn absolutely gray. Dumbledore didn’t even look at her. “Please remove the charm you are using, if you would.”
Harry at once unwound the bandage, and handed it to his Head of House when she reached for it. McGonagall examined it, used her wand to cast a Reveal spell over it and then essayed a small, pained smile at him. “Nice use of the Chameleon Charm, Mr. Potter; Professor Flitwick would be pleased that you absorbed his lessons so well.”
Umbridge found her voice. “An illicit use! Students are not supposed to use concealment charms…”
“Oh please, Professor,” Dumbledore interrupted her, rolling his eyes. “If we went around punishing everyone in Hogwarts who’s ever used that spell to cover up an outbreak of spots, three-quarters of the students and fully half of the staff would be doing detentions with Mr. Filch each day.” He held out his hand to McGonagall, and she dutifully handed over Harry’s charmed bandage to him. Dumbledore nodded over it, then handed it back. “Yes, well done on the spell, Mr. Potter,” he approved. “Although you might consider using a waterproof sticking charm on it, to keep it from being inadvertently washed off. Now please hold out your hand.”
Harry did, if a little reluctantly – no one at Hogwarts besides himself and Umbridge had ever seen the scars. Dumbledore looked, frowned, then picked up his wand and sent a spell into the scar that didn’t quite make Harry yelp. The words he’d been using the Blood Quill to write rose out of the scar and into the air, hovering for a moment before dissipating like smoke, and the old wizard nodded. “I see. Professor Umbridge, that is inappropriate. You will change the lines to reflect the transgression, which I believe was being disruptive during class – and they will be written with a normal quill and ink, on regular parchment. I will be confiscating any and all Blood Quills in your possession this same hour and they will be destroyed. I will also be notifying the Ministry that they were found in your possession and that you have been reprimanded for bringing implements of an illegal nature into Hogwarts.” He returned his attention to Harry. “You may replace the bandage, Mr. Potter. Your detention for today is cancelled, please return to your tower. You will continue to serve the rest of your detention as ordered for its duration – and you will endeavor to contain your outbursts in class, disrespect for a teacher is never acceptable. Is that understood?”
“Yes sir. Thank you, sir.” Harry quickly reapplied his bandage and then left the room and headed back to Gryffindor Tower. He could tell by the expression on McGonagall’s face that she’d been shocked the detention had been left to stand, but he himself hadn’t been surprised at all; if Dumbledore had cancelled it, he’d have been playing right into Umbridge’s – and therefore the Minstry’s - hands.
It only briefly occurred to Harry that night, as he worked over the charms on his bandage behind the curtains of his bed, that Dumbledore had probably known about the Blood Quills all along. He didn’t resent it much, though. Harry had suspected from the beginning that Dumbledore had been testing him as well…and had most likely expected, perhaps even wanted, him to fail.
He thanked the Dark Lady in the Forest for the fact that he hadn’t. He didn’t know who or what she was – and he didn’t dare try to research it for fear that someone would find out – but that one tiny little gesture of support had helped him immeasurably.
Of course, Professor Umbridge had it in for Harry even more than before after the loss of her Blood Quills. Defense class quickly became worse than Potions ever had been, and Harry lost points for Gryffindor almost daily no matter what he did or didn’t do. This, of course, didn’t serve to further endear him to his fellow Gryffindors, and the gap between he and his housemates grew wider and wider. Ron and Hermione had tried to discuss the situation with him, but when Harry wouldn’t talk to them about it they got angry and started keeping their distance as well. Harry was bitterly disappointed in the both of them for not figuring out that if he could have talked it over with them he most certainly would have – he was well aware that he was still being tested, still being watched. But at the same time, he was somewhat relieved that his friends had pulled back, knowing that the unpleasant distance between them meant they were less likely to be caught up in the game that was being played.
Weeks went by, and Christmas began to loom on the horizon. Harry became depressingly aware that he was the only Gryffindor who would be remaining at the school over the holidays, and his state of mind was not improved in the least when he found out that Umbridge would also be staying at Hogwarts. He resolved that he would spend as much time out of the castle as the weather would possibly allow, and as little time in the corridors or the Great Hall as he could possibly manage. He didn’t know if professors were allowed to take points during the holidays, but he had a feeling Umbridge might do it anyway – and he knew that as long as she was only doing it to him, no one would interfere.
By the time the thestral-drawn coaches left for Hogsmeade and the Hogwarts Express, Harry honestly didn’t know how much more he could take. No one had said goodbye to him. No one had wished him a Merry Christmas. He’d seen Umbridge watching him with that skin-crawling smile on her face when he’d gone down to the Great Hall for breakfast, meaning he hadn’t been able to eat very much, and then she’d caught him outside of Gryffindor Tower afterwards and informed him that he would be serving detention through the holiday due to his ‘complete lack of respect and responsibility regarding his duties both as a student and as a citizen of Wizarding Britain.’ Harry had spotted McGonagall out of the corner of his eye and knew she’d heard that last declaration, but it had still been all he could do not to groan when he’d politely asked Professor Umbridge when she would like for him to attend his detentions and been informed that he would be having them for the four hours between breakfast and lunch for each day until school resumed, and that he’d best not be late.
Four hours, each and every day, for the entire holiday. Harry didn’t sleep well that night. He did manage to arrive early for breakfast, however, and to be several minutes early for his detention as well. He wrote his assigned lines – all about being responsible – in silence, thinking that if she’d had a sense of humor she’d have seen the irony in that, since he’d been given the responsibility for keeping the Ministry from taking over Hogwarts more than a month ago and so far had done a bang-up job of it. The only student at school that anything had changed for was him, and that was the whole point, wasn’t it? Surely the well-being of every other student in the school was worth a little discomfort on his part.
Of course, when Filch had come up behind him while he was still trying to choke down some lunch and loudly insisted that he stop eating and ‘come get on’ with the work that needed to be done, Harry hadn’t been so sure about that anymore. And when he’d been informed that he’d be working every day after his detention was served until dinnertime, he’d almost cried.
He hadn’t, though; Harry had learned at a very young age that tears only brought more punishment. So he’d dutifully followed Filch to his first task, and had been relieved when it turned out to be the sort of thing he’d often done for his aunt and uncle at home. Filch’s insistence that he do the job without magic had been met with a carefully hidden smile; Harry had never done cleaning-type chores with magic, so this was not going to be the punishment the man thought it would be. He inquired about the location of more supplies if he ran out, and then got right to work. By dinnertime the job was done, and Filch had no complaints – he had no compliments either, but Harry hadn’t expected any from him and so wasn’t disappointed by the lack. He already knew he’d done a good job, and the satisfaction in that saw him through supper and a few hours of holiday homework before he fell into bed and slipped almost immediately into an exhausted sleep.
His days fell into a pattern, one that was long familiar to him from his life with the Dursleys, and if the next three weeks didn’t fly by, at least they didn’t drag. Christmas Day had passed mostly unremarked, as had Boxing Day, but that too was familiar and Harry didn’t let it bother him overmuch – if he’d felt a momentary pang on those two nights, remembering other, happier holidays spent in Gryffindor Tower, it was only momentary and he didn’t dwell on it. New Year’s was over and done with before Harry knew it, and all too soon the holidays were over and Umbridge was telling him that his regular evening detentions would resume the next day.
Harry lay on his bed late that night after finishing up his homework and doing some magical repairs and resizing on his uniform, wondering if there was something wrong with him because he was actually dreading the return of all the other students. The constant round of punishment and hard work was familiar and comfortingly numbing, but the constant battle to avoid showing how much it hurt to be disliked by his friends and all but hated by the House he loved had been starting to wear on him even before the holidays had begun. And he knew that listening to his dorm-mates talk about how much fun they’d had over the holidays was going to be torture – Ron especially, he knew, would rub it in. And yet Harry also knew that he couldn’t let himself react, not even the least little bit. Not only because it would give Ron too much satisfaction…but because he was still being tested, and if he failed then everyone else would suffer for it.
He finally fell asleep long after the moon had set, and dreamed of the Lady in White and the Dark Lady standing side by side, smiling at him from the shadows of the Forest.
After school resumed, Harry did his best – truly he did. He didn’t speak to anyone unless he had to – not that most people spoke to him anyway. He studied hard each night, avoiding the noise and distraction of the Gryffindor common room by working in his dorm, so that if he were asked any questions in class the following day he would have a better chance of answering them correctly and thereby avoiding lost points. He was scrupulously punctual, unfailingly polite, and never spoke in class unless a professor asked him a question. He still lost some points in Umbridge’s class every week in spite of all of that, but he wasn’t losing them on a daily basis any more so he supposed that had to count for something. His marks were good, better than ever, in fact, and the endless hours of line-writing had dramatically improved his handwriting to the point that even Snape didn’t complain about it anymore. And if he never appeared in the common room or the Great Hall on weekends, he always had his homework done on Monday so nobody seemed to notice or care.
Harry, though, felt like he was going insane. It was as though life had become a giant whirlpool that was inexorably sucking him down, drowning him, and no matter how hard he fought there wasn’t a thing he could do about it. The people who should have helped him wouldn’t, and the people who might once have wanted to simply didn’t care enough to notice that he needed them. He spent whatever spare moments he could contrive to slip away sitting on his rock by the lake, looking out over the water to the Forest. Not hoping, because hope was something he’d never cultivated, but wondering. Who they were, where they were now, whether or not they would come back, and if he would see them again if they did. The memory of their smiles seemed to be one of the only sparks of warmth he had in a world that had turned hostile and cold all around him.
The other warm spark was Hagrid, who occasionally turned up at the lake while Harry was there, ostensibly to check on the giant squid. Harry had to be careful in his conversations with the half-giant so as not to say anything that could cause problems if Hagrid repeated it somewhere, but usually just asking his friend about his menagerie of animals was enough to keep the conversation in a relaxingly one-sided state anyway. And it was finally Hagrid who solved the mystery of the Ladies in the Forest for him, once again by repeating something he wasn’t supposed to be telling anyone. “The Fair Folk’s been about, you know,” he’d confided in his booming whisper. “I’d seen a few in the Forest right around the time school was startin’, tol’ the Headmaster about it too. They don’ normally show themselves ‘round these parts, it’s some unusual.”
Harry had immediately asked, “Why is it unusual?”
Hagrid had shrugged his massive shoulders. “No tellin’ – maybe they jus’ don’ like it here, so close to Hogwarts an’ all. Wizards an’ the Fae, they never have got along too well. Think there may have been a war or somethin’.” His dark eyes had narrowed a bit. “You ain’t seen ‘em, have you?”
“I wouldn’t know if I had,” Harry had answered honestly. “I don’t know what a Fae looks like. Are they like the Goblins, or the House Elves? Are they dangerous?”
“They can be some dangerous, or so I’m told,” the half-giant had snorted, suspicion falsely laid to rest. “I s’pose it depends on who you are; I ain’t never had no problems with ‘em m’self. They’re powerful pretty folk to look at, if you chance to see one. Not that you should go seekin’ ‘em out to see one,” he hurriedly added. “Don’t go doin’ that, Headmaster would have my hide, he would. He weren’t none too pleased to hear they were in the Forest, but there’s not much he can do about it. They’re friendly with the centaurs, so they’re more welcome there than we are.” He sighed heavily. “Probl’y best to jus’ forget I said anything, alright, Harry? I jus’ got out o’ trouble, don’t need to be gettin’ back in.”
“I know what you mean. I won’t say anything to anyone,” Harry had assured him, and was rewarded with a one-armed yet still nearly crushing hug before Hagrid trundled back to his hut. But Harry had stayed on his rock looking out into the Forest until it was nearly dark. Wondering. And he’d been wondering ever since.
Unfortunately, wonder and a few warm sparks weren’t going to be enough to hold him together for too much longer, and he knew it.
The day too much longer became simply too much, it was snowing – not a pelting, icy storm, but a constant feathery fall from a soft, solid ceiling of low-hanging clouds. Harry sank down on the ground on one side of his rock, hurting inside and out. He wasn’t wearing his winter robes, having left the school’s warmth in something of a hurry, but in spite of his shivering he didn’t really notice the cold.
It had all started when Cho Chang had approached him as he made his way across the common room from the boys’ lav. He made to go around her; she moved with him, blocking his way. He looked a question at her and she hesitated, then whispered, “I want to…I want to know what happened the night Cedric died.”
Harry actually felt himself turn pale. “I…I can’t.”
Tears started in her eyes. “You won’t?”
“I can’t!”
It came out in a fierce whisper, but it still stopped conversations around them and drew Seamus Finnegan to Cho’s side. “What’s going on?” he wanted to know.
Cho sniffed. “I asked him to tell me what…what happened the night Cedric died. And he won’t!”
“I said I can’t!” Harry insisted one more time, seeing anger cross not only Seamus’ face but several others nearby. “I’m not…I just can’t say anything, all right? I can’t talk about any of it. Now please just let me…”
“Not so fast.” A strong hand caught his arm in a painful grip, keeping him from going anywhere. Alicia Spinnet, his former Quiddich teammate. “I think you’ve slunk around the Tower avoiding everyone long enough, Potter; it’s time to spill your guts. We Gryffindors don’t harbor cowards in our midst…or murderers, either.”
Harry turned to her with wide, shocked eyes. “I didn’t kill Cedric!”
“Then who did?” Seamus demanded. “Quit saying you can’t, you worthless sack of shit, and just tell us who did it!”
Harry opened his mouth…and then closed it again, shaking his head. Cho wailed, Seamus cursed…and Alicia's grip on Harry’s arm turned bruising just before it threw him rather violently to the floor. One kick connected, he rolled away from another, and managed to scramble out of the confused, yelling melee the Common Room had suddenly become without getting hit more than two or three times along the way. He plunged through the portrait hole, nearly collided with his Head of House, then darted past her heading for the closest exit without acknowledging her call to stop. And once he’d ended up at the lake, there in the snow and the falling darkness…Harry Potter had wrapped his arms around his knees and started to cry.
It took the music several long moments to pierce his mental turmoil. High and clear like a silver flute, each note seeming to hover just on the edge of being a voice singing of snow and moonlight, the sound of it lifted his head off his knees and he saw the blurred shape of a Lady in white moving through the Forest. Harry staggered to his feet, blinking, squinting; his glasses had been lost during the scuffle at the Tower…but he could see her, and he stumbled past the rocks and through the snow toward her as though his life depended on it.
At the edge of the Forest, he stopped. He could see her quite clearly now, even without his glasses. This Lady looked younger than the other two had been and was gowned in purest white, her long raven tresses curling and tumbling in loose abandon over her shoulders and scattered with snowy flowers. In one slender hand she held a bridle made of sapphires and silver by which she led a proudly-stepping unicorn through the trees, and a fluff-feathered white owl was perched upon the unicorn’s back. The Lady saw Harry, smiled at him, and then changed her course to approach the spot where he was standing; she stopped just on the other side of the invisible barrier that marked the end of Hogwarts’ grounds and the beginning of the Forbidden Forest. Now that she was so close, he could see the sadness in her smile, and the glimmer of a tear on her cheek as she looked at him. “I would say well met,” she said in a voice very like the music he’d heard only moments ago, “but it is all too clear to my eyes that you are not at all well, though I am doubly glad to have met you this night for that reason if no other. Tell me who has hurt you, child.”
Harry’s breath was still hiccupping in his chest. “M-my f-friends.” He felt the tears start again, even though he tried to hold them back. “I…I c-couldn’t t-tell them.”
She nodded in understanding. “Tell me, then. Who was it that killed she who marked you with her love?”
He sniffed. “V-voldemort.”
She nodded again. “And the one who killed the unicorns in this forest?”
“Vol-voldemort.”
The Lady nodded once more. “And the one who killed he who honorably shared the victory you both strove for?”
“Voldemort.” It was like a weight fell off as the word left his mouth. Harry’s spine straightened, and he repeated in a clearer, stronger voice, “Voldemort killed Cedric.”
Her smile came back, and she held out her free hand to him. “There is a place of honor for you with us, Harold James Potter, and we will deal with the murderer Voldemort together when it is time. Will you come with me? Will you join the Winter Court?”
Harry didn’t know what the Winter Court was, but he didn’t care. He felt the magical barrier tingle across the scarred skin on the back of his hand as he reached through it, and then the Lady’s hand met his and he stepped into the Forest without looking back.