I am Happy to Publish Another Chapter of The Apprentice of The Red Witch
For anyone who wants to read 6 More Chapters in Advance before everyone else. Search Ba7onz on Patreon and Gain Early Access to Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, and Chapter 8
6 More Chapters Right Now. Search 'Patreon.com/Ba7onz' on Websearch
They drove for over an hour in near-complete silence.
Harry watched the world change through the car window. Little Whinging's suburban sameness gave way to motorway, then to London's sprawl, buildings stacked closer together, streets narrower and dirtier, people everywhere. Then even that fell away, replaced by silence. For a moment, Harry felt like he was driving back in time.
The radio stayed off. The hum of the engine filled the silence between them, and Harry watched streetlights slide across the dashboard in pale orange streaks. His fingers picked at the handles of the carrier bag on his lap.
He lasted about four minutes.
"So," he said, and his voice sounded too loud in the quiet car. "Magic is real."
"Magic is real," Natasha confirmed. She didn't look at him. Her eyes stayed on the road, but the corner of her mouth moved, just barely.
"And my mum was a witch."
"A very good one."
Harry processed that. He turned it over in his head the way you'd turn over a strange coin, checking both sides. His mum. A witch. Not a freak, the way Petunia always said it, spitting the word out like something rotten. A witch.
"And there's a whole world," Harry said slowly. "A magical world. With wizards and witches and...what else? What's in it?"
Natasha glanced at him. "What do you want to know?"
Everything. He wanted to know everything. But his brain was doing that thing again where too many thoughts tried to fit through the same door at once, and they all got stuck.
"Are there" He stopped. Started again. His fingers tightened on the carrier bag, on the lump that was his stolen copy of The Hobbit. "Are there dragons?"
Now Natasha did look at him, just for a second, before her eyes went back to the road. "Dragons," she repeated.
"I read about them," Harry said, and he felt his face go warm. "In books. Tolkien. I know they're not, I mean, I know those aren't real, the ones in the books, Smaug and all that, but if magic is real, then maybe." He was rambling. He made himself stop.
"Yes," Natasha said. "There are dragons."
Harry's chest did something strange. It expanded, like someone had opened a window inside him that had been painted shut for years.
"Real ones," he said. "Actual, living, breathing dragons."
"Fire-breathing, yes. Several breeds. Norwegian Ridgebacks, Hungarian Horntails, Welsh Greens, among others. They're dangerous, beautiful, and deeply stupid in the way that only something that powerful can afford to be." She paused. "You won't be petting one."
"I wasn't going to ask that," Harry said, even though he absolutely had been about to ask that.
"You were."
He couldn't help the grin that cracked across his face. It felt foreign there, like a muscle he hadn't used in a long time. Dragons. There were dragons. Real, actual dragons with fire and wings and everything. Smaug was real — well, not Smaug exactly, but the idea of Smaug, the possibility of Smaug, and that was close enough.
"What else?" he asked, and now the questions were tumbling out, one after the other, because the door in his brain had finally unjammed. "Are there broomsticks? Like, flying ones? And potions, do people make potions? And is there a school? You said there were books about spells — is there a place where you learn them?"
"Yes to all of it," Natasha said. "Broomsticks, potions, a school. The school is called Hogwarts."
"Hogwarts," Harry repeated. "That's a terrible name."
Natasha's mouth twitched again. "It grows on you." She glanced at him sideways, one eyebrow lifting. "All right then, what would you call it?"
Harry didn't even hesitate.
"Silverspire," he said.
Natasha was quiet for a beat.
"Silverspire," she repeated. Harry was sure she was about to laugh at him.
"Yeah." Harry shifted in his seat, suddenly self-conscious. "Like — you know, a tall tower, silver, up on a mountain somewhere. With flags. And maybe eagles circling it." He could see it perfectly in his mind, something halfway between Minas Tirith and Rivendell. "Silverspire Academy. Or just Silverspire. You wouldn't even need the academy part, the name does the work on its own."
"Silverspire. It sounds like an Elven outpost."
"Exactly," Harry said, as if she'd just made his point for him. "That's exactly what a magic school should sound like. Not Hogwarts. Hogwarts sounds like something you'd catch from a toad."
"Funny you should mention toads," Natasha said. "Some students bring them as pets."
Harry stared at her. "You're joking."
"I am not."
"Toads. To a school."
"Also cats and owls."
"Does it have a library?"
"The largest magical library in Britain."
Harry leaned back against the leather seat and stared out the windscreen at the road unfurling ahead of them. Dragons. Broomsticks. A school with the worst name he'd ever heard and the biggest library in Britain.
He had about four hundred more questions. They pressed against the inside of his skull like birds in a cage.
"I have more questions," he said.
"I know," Natasha said. "You'll have time."
Finally, the car left the motorway and turned onto a narrow country road lined with hedgerows so tall they blocked the fading sun. The road wound through rolling hills, past stone walls covered in moss, past fields where sheep stood like cotton balls dropped on velvet, and Harry pressed his face against the window and watched all of it like a boy who had never seen the world outside of Surrey, because he hadn't, not really.
The road narrowed further. Gravel crunched under the tyres. And then the hedgerows ended, and Natasha pulled the car to a stop at the edge of the most beautiful greenfield Harry had ever seen.
It stretched in every direction, an enormous, sweeping expanse of grass so deeply green it looked painted, bordered by wildflowers in purples and yellows and whites, rolling gently downhill toward a line of trees whose branches spread wide like open arms. Behind the oaks, a stream caught the last of the golden light, glittering like a dropped necklace. The sky above was enormous out here, streaked with orange and pink.
Harry stared at it. This place was beautiful; it felt like stepping into a painting.
But there was no house.
He looked left. He looked right. He looked at Natasha.
"Where's the house?" he asked.
Natasha turned off the engine and looked at him. And then she did something Harry hadn't seen her do yet, she smiled. A mischievous smile, and her dark green eyes appeared brighter.
She winked at him.
"Watch," she said.
She stepped out of the car, and Harry scrambled out after her. The grass was soft under his shoes, still warm from the day. Natasha walked a few paces into the field, her red hair looked made of fire, her leather jacket dark against all that green, and she pulled her wand from inside her jacket.
She drew the wand through the air, moved it left to right, then a sharp flick upward and spoke aloud.
"Revelio Domum."
The air in front of them rippled like water.
A house appeared.
It faded in, piece by piece, like a photograph developing, first the roofline, dark slate tiles against the pink sky, then the chimneys, two of them, one with a thin curl of smoke already rising. Then the walls, warm honey-coloured stone covered in climbing ivy and pale roses, then the windows, dozens of them. A wraparound porch appeared, with a wooden swing and potted herbs, and a cobblestone path unfurled from the front steps all the way to where Harry was standing, as if the house was reaching out to meet him.
It was enormous. The kind of house he had seen in drawings in books he read...mainly Lord of the Rings.
It was the most beautiful thing Harry had ever seen.
His mouth fell open.
"That," Harry whispered, "was the coolest thing I've ever seen."
Natasha looked at him, and her expression softened. She reached over and rested her hand briefly on his shoulder, and the touch was warm, and Harry couldn't remember the last time someone had touched him without it hurting.
"Welcome to Willowmere Hollow," she said, and her voice was gentler now, like she was telling him a secret. "This is your home now, Harry. For as long as you want it."
Harry looked up at her, this impossibly beautiful woman with her red hair and her dark green eyes and her leather jacket, this aunt he hadn't known existed three hours ago, and he wanted to say something meaningful, something big enough to match what he was feeling, but his throat was tight and his eyes were stinging and all he could manage was a nod.
Natasha squeezed his shoulder once, then let go.
"Come on," she said, tilting her head toward the cobblestone path. "Let's get you inside. I'll show you your room, and then we'll eat. You must be starving."
"I could eat," Harry said, which was a spectacular understatement, since he hadn't been given anything since a slice of toast that morning.
Natasha's mouth twitched. "I bet you could." She started walking toward the house, then glanced back at him. "There's shepherd's pie in the oven. I made it before I came to get you. Didn't know if you'd say yes, but—" She shrugged one shoulder. "I hoped."
She had made dinner for him. Before she'd even asked. Before she'd known he'd come. She had driven to Privet Drive with shepherd's pie in the oven and hope in her chest, and Harry didn't know what to do with that information, so he clutched his carrier bag and followed her up the cobblestone path toward the red front door.
The house smelled like home. He didn't know how he knew that, because he'd never had one, but he knew it anyway. The hallway was wide, with dark wooden floors and rugs that looked older than the house itself and paintings on the walls that, Harry blinked, were moving. A woman in a gilt frame waved at him. A cat in another painting stretched and yawned.
"Shoes by the door," Natasha said, stepping out of her own. "Kitchen's down the hall and to the left. Bathroom's upstairs, second door on the right. Your room is the one at the end of the corridor; it has a view of the oak trees."
She walked further in, expecting him to follow, and Harry followed, because there was nothing else in the world he wanted to do more than follow this woman deeper into this impossible, magical, shepherd's-pie-smelling house.
"When I'm not here, you stay on the property, no wandering past the tree line until I've taught you the boundaries of the wards. Understood?"
"Yes," Harry said automatically, but he had no idea what a ward was.
"There's food in the pantry and the icebox. If you're hungry, eat. You don't need to ask." She said it like it was obvious. "I usually cook in the mornings and the evenings, but if I'm working on something and lose track of time, you're old enough to make yourself a sandwich or heat up leftovers. There's always something."
Harry nodded, clutching his plastic bag tighter. But his eyes were everywhere, on the moving paintings, on the books stacked on every surface, on the warm golden light, on the curl of steam coming from the kitchen, on all of it, all of it, this whole impossible life that had opened up in front of him like a door he hadn't known was there.
His aunt led him to a door.
"Your room." Natasha pushed open a door.
Natasha opened the door at the end of the upstairs hallway and stepped aside.
"This is yours," she said.
Harry walked in and stopped.
The room was enormous. Not enormous by Dursley standards, where everything was measured against what the neighbours had, but enormous by Harry standards, where everything was measured against a cupboard under the stairs. The ceiling was high, crossed with dark wooden beams, and the walls were painted a soft cream. A large bed sat against the far wall, a proper bed, with a dark wooden frame and thick quilts layered over white sheets and pillows that looked like they had never been punched flat. A wardrobe stood in the corner, made of the same dark wood as the bed frame, with iron handles. There was a desk beneath the window, wide enough to spread out papers and books across, with a comfortable-looking chair tucked beneath it. The window itself was tall, and through it Harry could see the last of the sunset bleeding gold across the meadow and the willows bending low over the stream.
But it was the rest of the room that made Harry's throat close up.
There was a shelf built into the wall beside the bed, and it was full of books. Not just a few, but rows and rows of them, spines of every colour, some with gold lettering, some plain, some so old the titles had faded to ghosts. On the desk, a set of quills and a pot of ink sat beside a stack of fresh parchment. In the corner by the wardrobe, a wooden chest had its lid propped open, and Harry could see what looked like a set of gobstones, a miniature chess set with pieces that shifted slightly on their squares, a brass telescope no bigger than his forearm, and a collection of strange objects he didn't have names for.
There were toys. Books. Space. Air. Light.
Harry looked at Natasha. Then back at the room. Then at Natasha again.
"What's the catch?" he asked.
He hadn't meant to say it out loud. The words had slipped from his mouth, and he was sure his face went red. But it was the only thought his brain could produce, because rooms like this did not belong to boys like him. There was always a cost. There was always a condition printed in small letters somewhere, and if you didn't find it in time, you paid double.
Natasha looked at him. Her green eyes, darker than his own, held on his face, and whatever she saw there made something shift behind her expression.
"There's no catch, Harry," she said. Her voice was warm, warmer than it had been at Privet Drive or in the car. "This room is yours. The books are yours. The things in that chest are yours. You don't have to earn them. You don't have to be good enough to deserve them. They're yours because you live here now, and people who live in a home should have things that belong to them."
Harry's mouth opened, but nothing useful came out.
"The bathroom is across the hall," Natasha continued. "Go take a shower. A proper one. Take as long as you want, the water doesn't run out. There are clean towels on the rack, and I've left some clothes on the chair in there that should fit you better than what you're wearing. When you're done, come downstairs. I'll have dinner ready."
She reached out and put her hand on his shoulder.
"Take your time," she said. "Explore. Touch things. Open drawers. This is your space."
Then she left, and Harry stood alone in the middle of a room that was apparently his.
He didn't move for a long time.
He looked at the bed. He looked at the books. He looked at the chess set, where a tiny knight on a white square turned its horse and seemed to nod at him. He looked at the window and the golden meadow beyond it and the thin ribbon of smoke from the chimney curling past the glass.
He was dreaming. He had to be dreaming. He had fallen asleep on the front steps of Privet Drive with a scrub brush in his hand, and any moment now Aunt Petunia's voice would cut through the warm haze, and he would wake up on his knees with soap in his eyes.
But then Harry thought about it, and he realized that if he were dreaming, he wouldn't be standing in a bedroom in the countryside. If he were dreaming, he would be on the flying motorcycle, the one from the recurring dream he'd had since he was small, soaring over rooftops with the wind tearing at his hair and the ground falling away beneath him. Or he would be in the Shire, walking a dirt road between green hills, because Harry had read The Hobbit so many times that Middle-earth felt more like home than Privet Drive ever had. His dreams were familiar. And this room, with its quilted bed and its moving chess pieces and its shelves of books he'd never seen, did not fit any pattern his sleeping mind had ever produced.
Which meant he was awake.
Harry sat on the bed. The mattress sank beneath him, soft and deep, and the quilts smelled like lavender. He pressed his palm flat against the fabric and felt the solid reality of it under his fingers.
He stood and went to the bookshelf.
He ran his finger along the spines, reading titles. Foundational Magic: Theory and Practice. A History of Enchantments. The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 1. Magical Theory by Adalbert Waffling. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi. Every single book on the shelf was about magic. Not a single novel, not a single storybook, not a single ordinary thing. This was a library built for a young wizard who was about to learn what he was.
Harry pulled one out, a heavy volume with a green cover and silver writing that read Curses and Counter-Curses by Professor Vindictus Viridian. He opened it to a random page and saw a diagram of a wand movement, an arcing slash accompanied by dense paragraphs of explanation. His fingers itched. He wanted to sit down and read every page, to devour it the way he'd devoured The Hobbit, to disappear into it and not come back until he understood.
But he put the book back on the shelf.
He had questions first. Questions about his parents, about the magical world, about Natasha herself and why she'd come for him and what she expected from him. The books would still be here after dinner. The questions had been burning in his chest since Privet Drive, and if he opened a book now, he would lose himself in it and the questions would have to wait another night, and he was tired of waiting.
He wondered if Natasha would actually answer them. Maybe she'd keep parcelling out the truth in small pieces, the way adults always did, deciding for him what he was ready to hear.
Harry looked at the door. Took a breath.
Then he went across the hall and took a shower.
The water was hot and it stayed hot and nobody knocked on the door to tell him his two minutes were up.
When Harry came downstairs, clean and wearing clothes that actually fit him for the first time in his memory, a pair of dark trousers and a soft jumper that Natasha must have bought for him, the kitchen table was set for two.
The kitchen smelled extraordinary. Roast chicken, potatoes with herbs, something with garlic and butter, and of course, Shepeard's Pie.
Steam rose from the dishes on the table, and the fire in the main room crackled behind them, filling the house with warmth. Natasha was pouring water into two glasses, and she looked up when Harry appeared in the archway.
"Better?" she asked, glancing at the clothes.
"Yeah," Harry said. "Thank you."
"Sit down. Eat."
Harry sat. He ate. And this time, he didn't eat too fast, because something about the house, the fire, the warmth, the smell of the food, told the panicking animal in his stomach that this meal was not going to be snatched away.
Natasha ate across from him, and between bites she began to talk.
"The boundary line around the property extends about half a mile in every direction," she said. "Inside that boundary, you're safe. Nothing can find you, nothing can reach you. Outside of it, we're visible, so if you go past the willows or past the stone wall on the north side, you let me know first."
Harry nodded.
"The meadow is yours to explore. The stream is shallow enough to wade in, but it gets deeper past the willow line, so be careful until I know you can swim." She paused. "Can you swim?"
"No."
"I'll teach you." She said without hesitation. "There's a clearing behind the house where we'll train. Flat ground, open sky, far enough from the house that if something goes wrong, we don't set the roof on fire."
Harry almost smiled.
Then Natasha said, "I also have broomsticks. If you ever want to go flying."
Harry's face lit up like someone had struck a match behind his eyes. Flying. On a broomstick. Like in the stories, like the witches in picture books, except real, except actually real, and he could do it, she was telling him he could actually do it.
"Really?" His voice cracked slightly. "I can fly?"
Natasha's face did that thing again, a full smile appeared on her face, and Harry...well, she was always beautiful, but now, she was breathtaking. "Your father was an excellent flier. One of the best at his school. It might run in the family."
Harry stared at her, his fork forgotten in his hand, his mind already somewhere above the meadow with the wind in his face.
"We'll start slow," Natasha added. "Low to the ground. But yes. You can fly."
Harry looked down at his plate to hide whatever his face was doing, because he was fairly certain that if he kept looking at her, he might do something humiliating, like cry.
Natasha let him have the moment. She took a sip of water and then said, "There's something else. The Bones family lives not far from here. Susan Bones. She's about your age. Her aunt Amelia runs the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, which is something like a police chief in the non-magical world, except with more authority. They're good people. Trustworthy. There's a chance you'll meet them."
Harry looked up. "Another kid? A magical kid?"
"Yes."
He had never met another child who was like him. The thought was strange and thrilling and terrifying all at once.
Natasha watched him process it, then returned to her food. They ate in comfortable quiet for a few minutes, the fire popping, the last light outside fading from gold to deep blue through the kitchen window.
Then Harry set his fork down.
"I want to know about my parents," he said.
Natasha didn't look surprised. She set down her own fork and folded her hands on the table, and her eyes met his, and she didn't say that's a conversation for another time.
"All right," she said.
Harry felt something unclench in his chest.
"Your parents were both part of the magical world, as you already know," Natasha began. "Your mother, Lily, was Muggle-born, which means she was born to non-magical parents. Our parents. She received her Hogwarts letter when she was eleven and entered the wizarding world, and she was extraordinary from the start. Your father, James, came from an old wizarding family. The Potters had been magical for generations. They met at school, hated each other at first, and then didn't."
Harry leaned forward. "You said they didn't die in a car crash."
"No. They didn't." Natasha's voice was strange; he wasn't sure why, but for a brief moment, there was pain in her face, but it disappeared like flipping a switch. "They died protecting you."
"From who?"
Natasha was quiet for a moment, but Harry was choosing her words carefully, not because she was thinking of a lie to tell him.
"There was a dark wizard," she said. "His name was Voldemort."
Voldemort...
"In the magical world, Harry, there are good witches and wizards. People who use their power to protect, to heal, to build. But there are also those who choose the other path. People who use magic to dominate, to destroy, to cause suffering. Voldemort was the worst of them. The worst in living memory, and possibly the worst there has ever been."
Harry's hands were flat on the table, and suddenly he remembered a dream. A flash of green.
"He was gathering power," Natasha continued. "Followers. An army of witches and wizards who believed in what he stood for, which was the supremacy of pure-blood wizards over everyone else, over Muggle-borns, over non-magical people, over anyone he considered lesser. He terrorized the magical world for years, and he seemed unstoppable. People were afraid to say his name. Most people still won't. They call him You-Know-Who, or He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, as if the word itself could summon him."
"But you say his name," Harry said.
"Yes." Natasha's eyes were hard. "Fear of a name only increases fear of the thing itself. Your mother believed that too."
Harry swallowed. "What happened? To my parents?"
"One night, Voldemort came to your house. Your family was in hiding, but he found you. Your parents, they tried to protect you, but Voldemort was too powerful."
Harry's vision had gone blurry, and he realized his eyes were wet, and he didn't wipe them because his hands wouldn't move.
"And then he turned his wand on you," Natasha said quietly. "And that's when everything changed."
Harry stared at her. "What do you mean?"
"He tried to kill you, Harry. The same curse he used on your parents. But it didn't work. Something happened that night, something no one fully understands. The curse rebounded. It struck Voldemort instead."
"I stopped him?" Harry's voice was barely a whisper. "I was a baby. How could I have stopped him?"
"No one knows for certain. There are theories, but nothing proven. What is known is this: Voldemort's power broke that night. His body was destroyed, or so it appeared. You survived with nothing but a scar."
Natasha reached across the table and, very gently, brushed the hair away from Harry's forehead. Her fingertips were cool against his skin. She traced the shape of the scar, the jagged lightning bolt that Harry had carried his entire life, the mark he'd never been able to explain and the Dursleys had never been willing to discuss.
"Have you ever wondered where this came from?" she asked.
Harry touched his forehead where her fingers had been. The scar. The lightning bolt. He'd asked Aunt Petunia about it once, years ago, and she'd told him he'd got it in the car crash that killed his parents. Another lie stacked on top of all the other lies.
"That's where the curse hit you," Natasha said. "And that's where it failed."
Harry couldn't speak. His hand was still on his forehead, his fingers pressed against the scar.
"They say he's dead," Natasha continued. "Most of the magical world believes Voldemort was destroyed that night. Celebrations went on for days. People toasted your name in the streets."
"My name?"
"You're famous, Harry. In the wizarding world, everyone knows who you are. They call you the Boy Who Lived."
Harry stared at her. The Boy Who Lived. He had spent his entire life being no one, being nothing, being the boy in the cupboard, the freak, the unwanted nephew, the scrawny kid in Dudley's cast-offs who didn't matter to anyone. And somewhere, in a world he hadn't known existed until today, people knew his name. People raised their glasses to him. People told stories about a night he couldn't remember.
"I don't feel famous," Harry said.
"No," Natasha agreed. "You wouldn't. But you should know, because when you enter the magical world properly, people will recognize you. They'll stare. They'll want to shake your hand. Some of them will treat you like a hero, and some of them will treat you like a symbol, and very few of them will treat you like a boy, which is what you actually are."
Harry absorbed this in silence.
"You said most people think he's dead," he said slowly. "What do you think?"
Natasha studied him for a long moment, as if deciding whether to soften the truth or give it to him straight. She chose straight.
"I think he's alive," she said. "Weakened. Broken. Too feeble to act, too diminished to threaten anyone in his current state. But alive. A wizard as powerful as Voldemort doesn't simply cease to exist because one curse went wrong, I'm sure he had failsaves if something went wrong. He's out there somewhere, and he's waiting."
The fire cracked in the main room. Outside, the last light had faded completely, and the meadow beyond the window was dark.
"Waiting for what?" Harry asked.
"For a chance to come back."
The silence that followed was heavy, but Harry did not look away from her, and Natasha did not look away from him.
"That," Natasha said, "is why I'm going to train you. Not just to pass school exams or impress your teachers. To survive. Because if I'm right, and he does come back, he will come for you. And when that day arrives, you will not be the helpless baby in the crib. You will be ready."
Harry looked at his plate, at the remains of his dinner, at the warm kitchen and the books on the shelves and the firelight playing on the stone walls. few hours ago, he had been scrubbing steps on his hands and knees at Number Four Privet Drive, dreaming about motorcycles and Middle-earth because those were the only escapes his imagination could offer.
Now he was sitting in a hidden house in the countryside, with a full stomach and clean clothes and a room full of books about magic, being told that a dark wizard had murdered his parents and that he, Harry, had somehow survived, and that the whole magical world knew his name, and that the dark wizard might not be dead after all.
It was, by a considerable margin, the strangest day of his life.
"Okay," Harry said.
Natasha raised an eyebrow.
"Okay," he said again, steadier. "Teach me everything."
"I will, but first finish your dinner, and tomorrow. I will show you how to fly with a broomstick." She winked at him, and Harry smiled.
That night, after he ate to his heart's content, Harry Potter closed his eyes in his new bed, and for the first time in his life. He felt at home.
6 More Chapters Right Now. Search 'Patreon.com/Ba7onz' on Websearch