Chapter Text
Disdain and scorn ride sparkling in her eyes,
Misprising what they look on, and her wit
Values itself so highly that to her
All matter else seems weak: she cannot love,
Nor take no shape nor project of affection,
She is so self-endeared.-- William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing
"I could easily forgive his pride, if he had not mortified mine."
-- Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
!!! WARNING !!!
THIS IS A ROUGH DRAFT THAT IM SHOWING AS PROOF THAT IM DUMB ENOUGH TO DO THIS
IT WILL BE REFINED AT A LATER POINT
THERE ARE MULTIPLE MAJOR INCONSISTENCIES WITH THE CANON PLOT WHICH I WILL NEED TO COMB THROUGH AND FIX
❖ LYRA ❖
The screaming started a little after one in the morning.
Lyra woke to find a tall, dark shape looming over her bed.
For one long, cold moment, she did not know much of it. Then it moved, and a slice of firelight from outside slid along the silver head of a cane. It was only her father, in his traveling cloak. The lamps in the tent were out. Outside, something was burning; she could see it flickering orange on the canvas, and somewhere a ways away, a sound that might have been laughter, mixed in with the unmistakable sound of running.
"Get up," said her father. "Go into the woods, and stay there until I come for you. Keep out of the way."
"What's happening?'
He did not answer, already turning away, and there was something under his arm, pale and smooth, that he held close against his side as he swept out through the flap of the tent. Lyra was very careful not to look at it.
She went into the woods.
Half the campsite seemed to have had the same idea. People came pelting past her in their nightclothes with their wands lit, bellowing names. One elderly wizard went by in a flowery nightshirt and a single sock, clutching a frying pan as though he meant to do something with it. Lyra did not run; why on earth would she? Nobody out there was after her. She walked to the edge of the trees, where the ground rose a little, found a broad trunk to lean against, folded her arms, and watched.
Down in the campsite, a crowd of wizards was tramping slowly between the tents. They were hooded and masked, and they all had their wands pointed up at the sky. High above their heads, turning slowly over and over like washing pegged out in a gale, floated four people, two of them very small. Every time they turned, the crowd below cheered.
Lyra watched it as though it was a fireworks display that was subpar at its best. She did not look closely at the hoods. She did not count them, or notice their individual heights, or how they walked. She looked at the burning tents and the people running and the little figures turning in the air, and she kept her arms folded, her face perfectly still.
There was a crashing in the bracken behind her, and a yelp, and somebody went sprawling over a tree root and swore loudly.
"Ron, watch it--"
It was Potter. Of course it had to be. Potter and Weasley and Granger, out of breath and in their pyjamas, with Weasley scrambling up and out of the leaves with bracken in his hair. They saw her at the same moment she saw them, and all three of them stopped.
"Malfoy," said Potter.
"Potter." Lyra did not unfold her arms. She looked past him at Granger, and smiled slightly. "If I were you, Granger, I'd keep my head down. They're not after people like me."
Weasley lunged. Granger caught his sleeve and hung on.
"Leave it, Ron--"
"Bet your dad's out there, isn't he?" said Weasley, over Granger's shoulder. His face had gone the colour of his hair. "Under one of those masks."
Lyra had an answer for that. It was already in her mouth, cool and ready: Well, if he were, Weasley, I'd hardly tell you, would I? It got as far as her teeth.
She stood against her tree and looked down at the campsite, at the hoods and the fire and shapes in the air, and did not say anything at all. Weasley stared at her. Granger stared at her. And Potter, standing a little apart from the other two with a wand lit in his hand, looked at her face for a long moment in the light of the burning tents, and frowned, as though he had noticed something and did not know what it was.
Then there were footsteps on the path below, and somebody shouting, and the three of them ran.
Lyra stood right where she was.
She was still there a long time afterwards, when somebody in the wood behind her shouted a word she did not catch, and something enormous burst into the sky above the trees: a vast skull picked out in green light, with a snake curling out from between its jaws. It hung there over the whole campsite, glittering. Down below, the hooded wizards scattered like startled pigeons, and the screaming changed for worse.
Lyra looked up at it, and found that her arms had come unfolded, and that she was holding on to the tree.
Her father slipped back into the tent that night, smelling faintly of smoke. He did not say where he had been. Lyra did not ask him. She was a great many things, but she was not stupid.