Chapter Text
The sky was a deep clear blue which Harry had only ever seen in a particularly well-imbued calming draught. Sometimes, when the world seemed to make the least amount of sense, she would run for ages under that blue, blue sky, trying desperately to imbibe some of that calm.
It was a sky which she’d only ever had the pleasure of seeing in Virginia, on crisp autumn mornings in the early hours before the sun rose. As the sky began to lighten with the promise of sun, she took a deep breath of the brackish air along her morning run, and glanced over the water of the Lafayette River. The portion of the river Harry usually ran was really more of a creek, with slow-moving water, and not entirely safe to swim in, despite the protests of the locals. Still, the majority of AIM’s student populace had taken a dip or kayaked along the surface during their free days off campus. If she continued up the river long enough, she’d stumble across the main marina, where tourists began wandering as early as 6 am in a desperate attempt to spend the day on a riverboat before it got too cold and the season officially ended.
While Norfolk was no Virginia Beach, it was still a popular destination for people to spend their summer, a slightly cheaper option for a summer home than beachside, and not too far from the real beach besides. When the AIM kids first filtered in for the school year, many of them dressed as though attending Norfolk Academy for cover, the town was always filled to the brim. As the seasons shifted and the weather turned colder, Norfolk would empty, until it was just locals and students still around.
Running, Harry had discovered, was one of the few forms of physical activity which permitted a person to think. It also took her far enough from AIM for her walkman to work.
So, with Garbage pounding in her ears, Harry ran along the river until she hit the rocky outcrop which signified she’d made her way 3 miles from campus. There she stopped and settled against the rocks, breathing deeply and attempting to return her heart rate to normal. Remus wanted her to run 5 kilometers each morning, but she’d accidentally set up a much longer run early in her running career. She had asked a few locals for directions in relation to the Academy grounds, and before she knew it she was running 6 miles due to their simple conversion error. At one point Remus had asked her how her independent workouts were going, and she’d somewhat sheepishly owned up to her mistake. He’d responded by adding additional sprint workouts for fast-twitch muscle groups and telling her there was no point cutting down on distance when she’d already worked her way up. Harry’d come to dread her 2 km sprints more than her long-distance runs.
When she judged her heart rate to have dropped sufficiently, Harry pulled out a letter from the pocket of her joggers. She noted, with some embarrassment, that it was horrifically creased from her habit of unfolding and refolding the parchment along increasingly creative lines as she contemplated the message within.
Dear Miss Potter—
Always Miss, never heir or heiress. Never acknowledging her claim to the Potter bloodline—that would be ridiculous. How could anyone like her deserve a place in Britain–or at least one which she would actually consider respectable. Being a broodmare hardly appealed, and she merely felt lucky that such legislation had been avoided through the prejudices of Riddle’s own party.
But no, this was a matter of diplomacy. For some reason beyond her comprehension, Riddle wanted her . Desperately. Clearly, for whatever reason, he’d decided his farcical tournament required her participation to succeed. It made her disinclined in a truly massive way. Even if she’d been tempted by the initial proposal as announced by Archie via mirror a week and a half prior (which she hadn’t, not really anyway. It was so clearly a blood purity scheme, that even if she were tempted she’d never participate ), Riddle’s apparent interest in her solidified that it was not the type of affair she should be involved with in any way, shape, or form.
He’d threatened her family overtly this time, as opposed to veiled threats like in his previous letter. If it weren’t for the fact that Archie was doing so marvelously well for himself, she might be more concerned. Betrothed or not, Archie was one of the only things that kept her returning to England each summer, as opposed to changing her citizenship and settling in America once and for all.
She glanced back at the parchment in her hand. And pulled out a considerably newer letter, along with her mirror from the other pocket. Archie should be eating lunch right around now.
He picked up almost immediately. “Hey.” He looked at her with such concern that for a moment Harry felt bad for contacting him. Her eyes were almost immediately drawn to the glaringly yellow house scarf he had wound around his neck.
“It’s barely October.”
“I’m aware. Even if you’re in a different timezone, we happen to share months.”
“Clearly not seasons then.”
Archie finally seemed to catch her meaning, and he rolled his eyes as he unwound the scarf from his neck. Harry found herself unable to resist a smile as he got partially tangled in the process.
“I had potions just now. It’s cold in the dungeons Har. Us mere mortals need to adjust.” He flashed a soft smile to match her own, before refocusing. “What’s up?”
She fought the urge to pretend nothing was wrong. That particular habit tended to have Archie spam call her for the rest of the day, to the detriment of not only his academic performance, but her own. Fussing with her glasses a moment, she shrugged uncomfortably.
“I wrote Mum and Dad like you suggested.”
Archie’s eyes lit up. “Truly? I was worried you would ignore my advice.”
“Yes, well, I almost wish I had. They finally wrote me back, but they weren’t the only ones who did.”
“Did Riddle write again?” The venom in the name always took her by surprise. It seemed wrong that her usually cheerful cousin could carry such anger in his voice.
She hurried to reassure him. “No, not since the last. In fact, I’m not quite sure if he’s received my reply yet. No, Mum and Dad talked to Headmaster Dumbledore about this.”
“Dumbles? Really? Did they get any advice from him?”
Harry hesitated. “He actually wrote me directly.”
Archie’s eyes widened with a quiet sort of awe. He’d spoken to Dumbledore plenty in his time at Hogwarts, Harry knew, for anything from creative pranks to his specialized program with Madam Pomfrey. But even he knew there was something notable about Lord Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwarts and Supreme Mugwump, reaching out directly to a non-student halfway across the world. It was at times like this that Harry wished Archie had better control over his facial expressions, as she could have almost continued in denial of such an event’s import had her cousin reacted with any less surprise.
“ What did he say? ”
“He told me—” and in truth, that was the most astonishing part, wasn’t it? Not that he’d written, not that he had valuable advice. No, it was the advice itself, something which Harry never anticipated being his answer, which left her so perplexed…which caused her to call Archie in the middle of her run, usually an uninterrupted ritual for her.
“Har?”
She came back to herself suddenly, realizing she’d been silent too long. She breathed in the sweetness of the summer morning, listened to the water that ran by her feet. Somewhere along the way, this climate had become more familiar to her than that of Godric’s Hollow. Somewhere along the way America, and specifically Virginia, had become home.
“He told me I should accept.”