Act One: La Belle Sorcière Sans Merci

You’re Mine, You’re Mine, You’ll Always Be Mine[1]

He knows it’s a dream. If he were dead, he wouldn’t be dressed in his grandfather’s frilly dressrobes, and there wouldn’t be a wooden toy-sword in his hand.

How disappointing.

He’s standing at the shores of the lake. The rushes and grasses bow withered, brown and brittle to the wind. He shivers. And turns his back on Hogwarts.

As he walks, his thoughts drift, vague as Highland mists, away from the dreary landscape that surrounds him, to a distant summer’s day. To his best, and worst, memory …

Lily. The corners of his mouth quirk — a bitter smile. Of course. Who else. It was always Lily …

He’d finally given in and agreed to her hare-brained scheme. As if he’d ever had a chance to withstand her gentle — and sometimes not so gentle — persuasions. They had agreed to let it begin in plain view. He snorts. As if they hadn’t enjoyed teasing and tormenting him before. As part of a plan, they were only spurred on to greater heights of cruel creativity.

… and he was even more powerless than before. The cause, however worthy, cold comfort.

But of course there was Lily.

In his dream, he snorts again, a painful, choked sound, strangely muffled to his ears. He realises that the hills around him echo with silence. No bird sings. Not even the wind sighs.

He doesn’t turn around to see how far he’s come.

They hadn’t told him what they’d planned, insisting it be easier for him, that his reaction would be more natural.

He remembers the glorious sunshine, the scent of flowers in that summer meadow. The sizzling sensations swirling inside of him — pride at the certain knowledge of having passed the OWL paper with flying colours, trepidation at whatever they had planned for him, and …

He couldn’t even begin to describe his feelings over Lily’s promise …

Instead, he concentrates on how he glimpsed her, down at the lake with her friends, keeping a calculated distance. At that time, it was a well-known, and — among Gryffindors as well as Slytherins — much resented fact that they are friends.

Her long, red hair, blazing in the sunlight. Her slender, naked feet, lightly splashing sparkling water. The wild look in her eyes when their gazes lock for a split second.

How that one moment made his heart leap —

The sign.

That bloody snitch.

He refuses to remember the humiliation — his helpless, futile rage. However, he cannot forget the rat’s eyes, glittering with glee. Was Pettigrew hatching his very own megalomaniac machinations even then?

He straightens his shoulders. Keeps walking, eyes trained on the summit of that cold hill before him. The path he treads is steep and narrow. But he feels as if he’s walking in the air. If he’s breathless now, it’s not due to the precipitous incline.

They’d met below the willow, silvered in the moonlight. Reckless Lily led him off. To the fringes of the Forbidden ForeSt To a copse, her sheltered bower.

She brought a blanket, and sweets from Honeydukes. She wore his perfume and nothing but her skin under the school robes.

He was her first, but even through those tears of that initial soreness, her eyes were wild with desire. How strange her voice sounded, sultry, as she moaned and whispered: ‘You’re mine, you’re mine, you’ll always be mine.’

Suddenly he’s back on the hillside of his dream. Alone. Mist is creeping up the slopes around him. He can see faces in the haze, the pale faces of dead people. Wind sighs whispered words.

‘You’re hers, you’re hers, you’ll always be hers.’

“La Belle Dame Sans Merci” by Henry Maynell Rheam (1859-1920)

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[1] All textual allusions to Keats’ LBDSM are on purpose.