Raven's Cry

Raven's Cry

Few Slytherins know that the raven is an omen of death.
Fools! What do they know of the Dark?

You don't go seeking the shadows when your lullabies were shipwrecked sailors screaming on the stormwinds.
You don't go looking for adventure when you've always been a dragon's breath away from fiery death.
And you sure as hell don't feel loyalty to anyone after hearing how the Muggle lairds cleared their people from the land.

No, they were never going to have any problem Sorting me.

~~~

For as long as I can remember, I've had two loves - books, and dragons.

Ah, those dragons! Their cries filled my days and their flight filled my dreams. No-one can befriend a dragon, but that doesn't stop you dreaming of it when you see them soaring over the cliffs in the morning sun, or hear the creak of their wings as their huge black shadows loom through the mist. Sometimes, when they watch you with their great luminous purple eyes, you can almost imagine they see something more than...prey. No, it didn't take me long to learn to fly, through a broomstick seemed a clumsy vehicle compared to those powerfully graceful wings.

How I miss them when I'm at school!
I think only Hagrid really understands.

You might think that growing up with dragons would be a good preparation for life at Hogwarts, but it wasn't. I had more in common with my Muggle friends from the Island than with those town-bred witches with their society gossip and their vaults of gold. And that claustrophobic train journey at the start of term...most of the others feel they're leaving the bustling South for the wilds of the North, I know. But for me - well, even with the water to cross I could have flown myself from home to the School faster than that crowded 'Express' comes from London.

But I wouldn't want you to think that life at Hogwarts is all bad, not at all. The other students like to laugh and say that even for a witch I'm fey, but there are a few others here who share my love of the wind and the sky and the hills, and it didn't take me long to befriend the selkies in the loch. Then there's the library, that temple to knowledge whose sacred texts I devour as hungrily as my classmates gobble their Hogwarts' dinners.

The lessons, on the other hand...well, what Island lass reared to run wild over heather-clad hills wants to sit in a classroom when the sun shines bright on the glen outside? I never cared much for O.W.Ls and N.E.W.Ts. What I wanted were WINGS.

And if Professor McGonagall keeps her word, I'll get them.
I want to learn to really fly.

I can't wait to watch my father's face when he sees - he loves flying as much as I do. And his feeling for the dragons more than makes up for that pitiful stipend he gets from the Ministry.

Yes, it's easy for them to ignore us and our hereditary task of watching over the dragons; too easy for them to think we've no need for gold because the love of the job is in our blood. But I'd like to see one of those bloated bureaucrats try to eke out a living up there on the margins of the wizarding world. Old Uncle Newt was the only one of them who ever bothered to visit.

Not that we're cut off. You can even find us in the Floo Directory, at Taigh na nathair-sgiathach dubh - but we don't get many visitors coming that way.

So we don't hold ourselves much apart from the Muggles up there; there's few enough folk of either sort on the Island for that nonsense. We keep up a small croft for appearances sake and if they think we're a bit strange, well, we're no stranger than many of them. On the outlying isles there's never been that much of a divide between the Magic and the Muggle - we have the power and they have the Sight, and we all live out our lives between the mists of sea and myth and the bone-white clarity of soil and work.

Perhaps that was why they came for us.
Or maybe it really was something to do with the dragons.

It was a fine Spring day, I remember that, the pink flowers that cling to the rocks just starting to show their defiant wee faces to the wind. My father was away to London, and I took myself off to the beach to dance on the fine white sand with the crashing waves.

I'll never look at the blue sky so innocently again.

You can't Apparate on the Island - believe me, you wouldn't want to when the dragons are breeding. So it was over the sea they came, three black figures on broomsticks buffeted about by the wind. I thought they were dragons at first, and I'd been trained since birth on what to do about that. But they were coming faster than I could run for home, and the wind tore my warning shout from me before the words were half out of my mouth. So I made for a cave in the cliffs. It was only when I'd reached it that I realised that the threat was far more malevolent than any beast.

I'm no Gryffindor. I knew I wouldn't have stood a chance against them; I knew the best thing to do was to watch every little detail that could help the Aurors to catch the bastards later. But oh, how I longed to strike them down there and then!
Five years of the finest magical education Hogwarts could offer and there was nothing, nothing I could do.

I could hear the screams from there, Ma and the bairn.

And I could hear them, too, the voices if not the words. Two were Sassenach, with their long vowels and clipped consonants sounding for all the world like the Muggle laird, as if they owned the place and us with it. And another accent, which I had never heard before but would never forget again.

Then the dragon came.

Like I said, no-one befriends a dragon. No-one. But there are ways to manage them.
We know - we've been doing it for centuries. Those three hadn't.

Their panic was a pleasure to watch.

One of them even tried to fight her.
Fool.
She was magnificent - beautiful and strong. Nothing was going to get in her way.

But they got away...just.
At least one of them was aflame as they sped past.

I scrambled down from the cliff, running for home.
When I saw the wee broken body of the bairn, I thought my heart would break.
When I saw the terrible blankness of Ma's gaze, it did.

And then the term began and I had to come back to school, to this brightly coloured world where some are still untouched enough to fear detentions and exams. Where others speak in whispers that are meant to be overheard, about power to be gained and the thrill of serving the Dark Lord.

Fools.
As if death were a game.

Let them take their infernal oath.

And I shall track them, in raven form
Bringing Light to the Dark on silent wings of death.