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There was an eerie stillness in the woods as Harry made his way through them, careful not to trip, keeping his eyes peeled for the monsters Mama said were lurking in there. The sunlight forced itself out of tiny gaps in the trees, illuminating the forest enough for Harry to see his way through, giving the whole forest a slightly ethereal look as Harry looked around it in wonderment. His Mama and Papa had told him not to go to the woods alone, but he was five now, wasn't he? He could go alone if he wanted to.
Something about the forest had called to him ever since he had been two, him always going to the edge of the forest by himself until his parents or big brother caught him. Each of those moments, he wondered why his Mama and Papa had such odd looks on their faces, or why his brother treated him as if he would break afterward. For now, he followed the strange sensation that let him know he was going the right way, a soft tug that was comfortable and slightly hungry, though he didn't know how or why.
He yelped as his foot got snagged in a tree root, toppling over and trying not to cry as he felt his palm getting cut by the jagged end of a tree branch, the scarlet that was blooming on his cut more noticeable than the pain. He laid on the ground for a moment, trying to untangle his feet from the roots before giving up and hoping Mama would come looking for him.
It was laying there, trying not to feel sorry for himself and trying not to cry, that he realized he could hear the sound of footsteps. Soft, quieter than he had ever heard anyone's footsteps to be, even quieter than his Uncle Peter's, whose he still remembered even though he hadn't seen him in two years.
"Mama? Papa?" he called out tentatively, hating how much he sounded like a child. He was in the forest, he couldn't be called a child anymore—
"What do we have here?" A mocking, childish voice called out. Though the voice didn't sound as if it was mocking him, not really, the sharp edges smoothed with a gentleness that didn't seem to belong to a child.
Harry could see the silhouette of someone making their way towards where he was lying, impossibly tangled up in tree roots, and unable to make his way out. Harry held his breath, surprised when the insistent tugging he always felt seemed to lessen when this someone was near, so calm and safe. As the figure made their way closer, Harry could see the way the darkening sunlight seemed to wrap around their form, revealing a pale-skinned boy with the prettiest gray eyes Harry had ever seen. And his skin was pale, even paler than Uncle Sirius's looked when he had been "holed up in his workshop for too long" as Uncle Remus said affectionately. He looked as if he was one or two years older than Harry, but something about his eyes made him seem much older than Harry guessed.
He reminded Harry of the stories of the fey that his Mama and Papa told him, fey who could be cruel and kind, so much like humans yet so little like them. But the fey had only ever shown up in the village on special occasions like when the new princess was born, and it didn't make sense that—
The boy finally stopped in front of him and pressed a hand against the roots, and Harry watched, fascinated, as they immediately retracted, leaving his legs free. Harry stood up, fascinated, and finally managed a quiet, awed thank you.
"You're welcome, Harry Potter," the fey said, with a quiet intensity, eyes boring into Harry's like he could see into his soul, holding his gaze for an impossibly long time.
Harry looked away first, and the boy chuckled quietly, and that laugh was like the honey Mama fed him once after Papa had gone to another kingdom with his big brother, saying "It'll be our secret, okay?" Papa had found out eventually, but instead of being angry, he had only laughed and kissed Mama on the cheek.
Before Harry could open his mouth to ask how the fey knew his name—or the fey’s name for that matter, the boy—and it was boy, even though Harry could feel the magic rolling from him in waves, even though he didn't know how—lifted up his injured arm and pressed a quick, feather-light kiss to his knuckle that warmed him up from the inside, though he didn’t understand why. "Your parents are waiting, I think," he said, stepping away. Harry opened his mouth to tell him to not leave, but he was already making his way through the woods, his black, regal clothes somehow blending in with the trees. "All in due time, Harry," were his parting words before he disappeared as if he wasn't there at all.
When Harry stumbled his way out of the woods, his feet somehow dragging him back in the direction of home, he wasn't surprised to find Mama waiting near the edge of the woods for him, her arms waiting to catch him up in a hug.
When he got back into the house—Papa and his brother out again—what he was most surprised was seeing his hand—
Because, when he lifted up his arm to show Mama the tiny cut on his palm, there was nothing there at all.
As if he had never met the fey at all.
Harry didn’t see the mysterious boy much, after that. When he had told Mama about his encounter, she had closed her eyes and sighed, an expression so sad and resigned in her eyes that Harry had been afraid.
“Mama?” he asked, tugging at her hand. "What's wrong?"
Mama smiled at him, and Harry didn't notice the way it cracked around the edges, then. "Nothing, honey," she said quietly, and Harry didn't notice how it plainly sounded like a lie, either. He realized it much later.
Harry smiled back, and this time her face did something different, her smile wavering and face scrunching up, quickly rubbing at her eyes. She quickly gathered herself in front of Harry's curious eyes and smiled more convincingly this time, picking Harry up from her lap and lifting him up into the air. Harry giggled, glad to see his Mama was happier, now.
"You want to get some honey, baby?" she asked, her voice impossibly gentle. Harry nodded quickly, not noticing the queer look in her eyes.
He noticed it all much later.
Harry didn't really meet the fey after that, although he always felt a presence near him whenever he ventured out into the forest— just let him go, James, Mama had said, resigned. Nothing's going to happen to him. Not after that, anyway— eerily silent yet comforting, all the same. He only caught sight of the boy at odd moments when he was least expecting it: when the light hit the trees just so; when he glanced from the corner of his eyes when he felt a twig break; when he whipped around and caught the boy by surprise.
He was always dressed the same way, except he, like Harry, seemed to be growing, but he was always, always taller than him, which Harry complained to his Mama—and Papa, when Harry saw him—more than once about.
Mama just wiped her eyes on her sleeve and smiled at him indulgently, smoothing back his hair, her hand tapping the lightning bolt-shaped scar on his forehead, something sad and unreadable in her gaze every time.
Harry asked his parents about the scar when he was seven, his brother out on business again. Harry knew there was something going on between his parents and brother—but he'd never been as close with his brother as he was with his parents, or how he had seen his friends interact with their brothers. He remembered how his brother had gotten colder and colder as the years went by; laughing one moment, his laughter petering off as soon as he glanced at the scar on his forehead.
When he was playing with his friends, the scar didn't matter. But wherever he looked, he saw how his friends' parents looked at his scar and whispered a litany of poor babie s, and what that man had done, I can’t think.
“Mama? Papa?” he asked now, making them look up from where they were talking with each other—their expressions unusually relaxed—and smile at him. Harry, himself, was lying on the floor, trying to make sense of the book his Mama had given him when he had insis-insist— said he didn't need her help with big books anymore.
"What is it, Harry?" Papa asked, smiling indulgently at Harry's inquisitive expression, probably thinking Harry had a question about what was in the book he was reading. Harry smiled back, knowing that if anyone knew the answer to his question, it would be his father.
"Why do I have a scar on my forehead?" Harry said, lifting the fringe from his forehead to make his point. His parents' expressions instantly changed, getting more cautious and worried; as if they didn't know what to say.
"It's just," Harry said, biting his lip. "Whenever I play with anyone, all they can talk about is my scar—especially my friends' Mamas and Papas too, and I just want to know—"
Harry's rambling was cut off when his Mama picked him up from the floor; like she hadn't done since he was five and had said he was big and didn't want to be carried. "It's okay, baby," Mama breathed, sounding like she was barely holding back her patience—but Harry knew that anger wasn't aimed at him, not really.
He didn't notice the way his Mama and Papa exchanged a look over his head, a quiet communication of should we tell him? And an affirmative, yes, it's time.
"So, Harry," his Papa finally said, when they were all seated; Mama and Papa on chairs, Harry firmly seated on Mama's lap despite his half-hearted protests. "Do you ever wonder why we never talk about Uncle Peter anymore?"
Harry had memories of Uncle Peter, but they were all vague—images of a reedy, short man who had always indulged in what Harry was doing. But none of them were recent— when he tried to think who exactly Uncle Peter was to him, he came up with nothing. This made Harry shake his head at his Papa's question; he hadn't really wondered where Uncle Peter had gone, not really. He hadn't missed him that much, anyway.
His Papa took a deep breath and smiled, his expression the same painful gaze that Mama gave Harry when she thought he wasn't looking. "So… let me tell you about Uncle Peter. Though he wasn't really that great of an uncle, really."
A conversation:
A calculated, intelligent glance of a fey, their eyes shifting back and forth between the baby in the man's hand and his eyes. The man shifted, suddenly nervous. "Every little thing," the fey intoned, looking as if they were enjoying the man's sudden nervousness like all fey did, relishing the taste of fear in the air. "Requires a sacrifice."
The man flinched away with the baby in his hands as the fey reached out, wrenching the baby from their hands just in time. The fey laughed, slowly. "I wasn't going to let her come to any harm," they muttered. "Though I suppose it's for the best." Then, suddenly, the fey looked larger than they had been before, their presence almost seeming to encompass the entirety of the forest they both were in. Suddenly, Peter could see how this fey had been dubbed the most dangerous, the deadliest of them all, with their gold-rimmed eyes and power that ripped through you and reduced you to your bare necessities, if at that. There had been whispers, that if anyone could find a cure to the king's daughter, it would be that fey—this fey, who everyone was scared to approach, who had no name yet made their presence known.
The fey, if they took notice of Peter's shocked gasp, didn't mention it. "Though asking you to give her in return would be… counterproductive, wouldn't it?" Peter didn't know what to do except to nod nervously, gulping when the fey took ahold of his chin, almost gently, and gave him one long look. "She can be healed… but I would need your arm in return." Peter wrenched his face away in surprise, somehow not surprised when the fey merely smiled in amusement.
"I thought so." And Peter got a distinct feeling that he had been played but didn't know how, or why. "I need Harry Potter."
"Peter, instead of sacrificing his arm," his Papa continued, his voice heavy with sadness. "Gave you as a consort to the fey's son, Tom."
"But why would they need him to sacrifice his arm?" Harry couldn't help but ask, confused. In all the tales he had heard, the fey did not ask for trivial things—and an arm was a trivial thing, with how there were people who were willing to offer so much more than their life to the fair folk, as his Mama had told him, more than once. This time, he noticed the way his Mama and Papa exchanged a glance, his Papas lips quirking up slightly in a joke Harry didn't understand.
"They didn't want him to," Mama said, her voice as dry as the desert. "It was a gamble—to see if he could sacrifice his most valuable possession, or give away another person's life to save himself. It was a manipulation—and it worked." Her voice sounded bitter. Papa extended his hand and clasped hers in his much bigger ones, giving her an understanding, reassuring smile that he returned. Harry nodded, trying his best to wrap his mind around the Fair Folk and their odd ways.
Another thing:
"Tom?" Harry rolled the words around in his tongue, placing the pieces together to the boy he had seen in the woods, how he seemed ethereal and unapproachable, how he was the consort of this fey, who was still a boy around his own age. Who had been the fey who hadn't left his side, who he felt lurking around the edges of the woods, watching. Always watching. "Isn't that a very… ordinary name?"
His Papa's mouth twitched into a smile, leaning down and kissing the top of Harry's head despite his protests. "Cheeky," he said fondly. "Don't talk like that about your future husband, will you?" Despite his words, there was something heavy present at the moment, as if both Mama and Papa were regretting something, which Harry couldn't stomach.
He reached out and grabbed his Papa's free hand, holding it as tightly as his small fingers were capable of doing. Papa looked at him in surprise, smiling at the stubborn look on his face. He gets that from you, Papa would say later to his Mama.
"It's not your fault, Mama and Papa," Harry insisted, his voice small but sure in the stillness. Mama and Papa smiled, both looking surprised at his vehemence. "But why would they want me? I'm just… Harry." He proclaimed, with all the gravity a seven-year-old could muster.
This time, it was his Mama's turn to smoothen his hair and press a kiss to his forehead, right above the place where the scar was. "I'm a witch, Harry," Mama said, something others would have said with pride coming out choked and regretful. "And not one of the weak ones or an imposter. A child of mine would be very valuable to the fey."
"It's okay, Mama," Harry said. "It was Uncle Peter's fault. No one else's." He suddenly felt incredibly sleepy, his eyes drooping in the face of the evening light. Her Mama huffed out a laugh and stood up, Harry still cradled like a baby in her hands.
"Let's get you to bed, Harry."
"Good idea," Harry murmured back sleepily.
Harry didn't think much of the conversation he had with his parents, at first. Even the prospect of marriage, though he knew he was set to be married when he was eighteen— not before and not after, the fey had said—seemed distant to him, something for others to worry about while he played with his friends and pretended the conversation had never happened.
But he was reminded of that conversation every time he glanced from the corner of his eyes and saw an ever-faithful shadow following him, intent on attracting Harry's attention whether he liked it or not. Harry didn't mind; somehow, he felt safe when he was around Tom, someone who he knew he could count on no matter what, someone whose first interaction with him had been when he was five and learning to explore for the first time.
You can come out, you know, Harry had thought, more than once, never with enough bravery to say it out loud. Somehow, he knew Tom knew this too, that this was some game of his, to keep on observing Harry until he finally broke and told him to meet Harry face to face like they hadn't done since he was five. Harry didn't know when he had become aware of that, except he knew it was somewhere between when he had heard of what had happened between his Uncle Peter and the fey when he was seven and the constant walks he had gone on around the forest for years afterward. No one else came with him into the forest, too scared to go, even with him, who the fey literally couldn't harm or charm or deceive.
Harry didn't say it aloud until he turned thirteen, feeling on top of the world like only a newly minted teenager could feel; as if everything he had ever feared was behind him. He made his way boldly towards the forest in the morning, his parents having long given up on stopping him from going into the forest when he wanted to, his brother having officially decided to leave the village— in search of better opportunities, he had said, but Harry could guess, from his furtive eyes, that he was going away from this village, and his family, in particular, filled with a magic he couldn't understand.
He wasn't surprised when he felt himself being almost pulled towards a place at the thick of the forest, a place where every sense of his seemed to be heightened, every breath he took yielding fresh, clean air, the gurgling of the lake nearby making him want to close his eyes and take a deep breath, happy to be alive at this moment. The trees seemed to be becoming darker and darker the more he stood still, just looking at everything around him, finally relaxing as he saw the barely-there figure of Tom at the back of his eyelids.
Then, finally:
"You can come out, you know," he said, his voice coming out as an exhale, almost reverent. Deep, rich laughter was the only thing he heard for the first few minutes afterward, Tom's laughter warming him up inside in quite a different way than it had done when he was five. Tom laughed once again as if he had heard Harry's thoughts, before finally stepping out of the trees, making Harry wheel around to take a good look at him for the first time in nearly a decade.
Every time Harry had sneaked a look at Tom, he had always only seen him for a second, before he smiled that slow, cunning smile of his, and disappeared. This time, it was different; he was real, tangible, and Harry didn't hesitate to examine his face inch by inch, cataloging the handsome face and upturned, wiry corner of his mouth, looking at him more hungrily than he had looked at anyone else before. Harry went up to Tom and embraced the—what seemed to be—fifteen-year-old, clinging on tightly even as he tensed under the touch, then returned it.
"This isn't really how I imagined how it would go when we finally met each other, you know," Tom said into Harry's hair, his voice betraying his fondness despite how resigned his words sounded.
Harry was too thrilled with his excitement at finally taking a good look at Tom to ask exactly how he had imagined them meeting. Probably something ridiculous, if Harry could take a guess. "I don't hear you complaining," he muttered into Tom's shirt, still clutching him tightly, smiling when Tom merely huffed out his laughter.
"Oh, Harry," he said, his voice tender. "If I didn't like you, you wouldn't be here at all."
And Harry got the feeling that Tom didn't mean it in the geographical "wouldn't be there at all" way. He couldn't really bring himself to mind.
A memory:
Harry and Tom, standing over a lake, clutching each other as if their lives depended on it—or at least Harry was, his face buried in Tom's chest, breathing him in. Harry had always been comforted by Tom's scent; a scent that had followed him through his childhood, a scent that had made him think he wouldn't mind marrying Tom someday. That reminded him he was marrying Tom someday.
It was the anniversary of when Harry had been given to the fey—the day when everything had gone sideways. Or exactly the right way, if one were to ask Tom.
It was a day like any other at the village of Hogsmead, and Harry could hear the distant sound of the villagers talking with each other, muted by the thick undergrowth of forest that surrounded them, the lake they were beside only contributing to highlight the silence of the entire scene; not even a pebble landing with a plop in the lake every once in a while, or the chattering of squirrels, disturbing their reticence.
But this day was different, somehow filled with more meaning than they could articulate, even to themselves. Or maybe that was just Harry.
Finally, a muffled voice: "You know it's only a few days until we get married, right?"
And there it was.
Then, an answering voice, as smooth as velvet: "How could I forget, Harry?"
"Asshole," Harry's voice became clearer as he shrugged himself out of Tom's grip, looking as if it physically pained him to do so. His eyes were wet around the edges, making Tom take one good, keen look at him and wipe the tears from his eyes softly. Tenderly. Harry shuddered, closing his eyes and opening them again at Tom's piercing look.
"Pre-wedding jitters, I guess," Harry managed, summoning up a weak smile. Tom wasn't fooled in the slightest, but let Harry collect himself, leading him to an overturned tree and making him sit down. Harry sat down heavily, gazing down at the lake as if it held all the answers in the world. Darkness was falling around them rapidly, but neither of them made a sound or motion to leave, Harry, looking at the lake with a thoughtful look on his face, Tom, looking at Harry with a considerate look on his face.
Finally, Harry turned towards Tom, the thoughtful look still on his face, his abrupt turn still taking Tom by surprise, even after all these years. Tom knew Harry thought he had been indulging Harry when he was a child—but Harry, even though Tom couldn't figure out how, had always managed to catch him by surprise. Tom waited as Harry gathered his thoughts, finally looking as if he had come to a decision. "It's hard to imagine that my brother wouldn't be there, is all."
"I could bring him here for you," Tom instantly said, making Harry laugh—a soft, unwilling exhalation of breath as if the laughter had taken him by surprise. Tom hadn't meant it as a joke—and Harry knew Tom hadn't meant it a joke, so he merely looked at him for a second—green eyes that still took Tom's breath away to this very day—and smiled, his expression tender. And Tom would do anything to keep that look on his face—he would raize kingdoms to keep that look on Harry's face, as long as that meant he could have Harry all for himself, as long as Harry was his and his alone.
"I know," Harry said. "And I love you for that."
"And I, you," Tom said back, a hundred years of waiting for the love of his life concentrated into three little words.