The Clear Light of Dawn

* * * * *

The slumbering woman groaned quietly and shifted a little so that the bright morning sun would not shine so in her eyes. Another woman crouched by her side, as skinny as a stick, with midnight-black hair. The raven-haired woman gave the sleeper another little shove and stood up.

"Helga, you know you cannot sleep all morning. Last night was the turning of the moon and you did not keep company with me. We do always keep company at the dark moon."

Helga's voice, gravelly with sleep, was barely a series of grunts. "I be sorry, Rowena..."

Rowena, still petulant, crossed her arms and turned to the window. "'Twas awful without you. My monthly sicknesses are getting worse. 'Twould be awful nice if you knew some herbs for the lessening of it..."

The other woman sat straight up in bed. Apparently she had not been as asleep as Rowena had thought. Her gaze was piercing. "I did not keep company with you, Rowena, because I had no reason to."

The black-haired woman sighed and gave Helga's shoulder a little pat. "I'm sure that you know of some herbs you could take that could help you with such matters..."

"Rowena..." Helga paused. Rowena didn't have to know, did she? Well, she'd guess soon enough. Rowena was always too intelligent and cunning to be fooled with silly euphemisms. "This be nothing that herbs can remedy, save for the most potent ones."

Rowena gasped and knelt by her friend. "Helga, what say you? You cannot mean that you...that you be..." Her tongue stumbled on that word, which seemed so awful to her. Could her dearest friend be...no, she couldn't even think that in her head.

"Yes, 'tis true. No, no," and she pushed her friend's hands away, anticipating the inquiries that would come, "I am perfectly well, and I will live, Rowena. 'Tis only a child, after all, not a bloody death sentence."

Rowena sat back on her heels and stared at the floor, strewn with sweet-smelling rushes. "How many months until..."

"By my count, it has been about four months since Midsummer. Am I right?"

"Aye...it happened at Midsummer?"

"Well, what did you think Salazar and I were doing in the Star-Viewing Tower? I do daresay, Rowena, that after what sport you had at Midsummer you should certainly not begrudge me some."

"You must certainly tell Salazar."

"Yes, and after that I do believe I shall go get myself as drunk as a sot down at the inn."

"Don't make fun, Helga, you really must tell him."

Helga rubbed her forehead, as if trying to erase memories from it, and eventually nodded. "Aye, I know it, I know it well. I cannot say it is any's fault but his." She swung herself out of bed and pulled a cloak out of a small chest of drawers to put on over her nightgown.

Rowena stood up and squeezed Helga's shoulder. "'Tisn't the end of the world, dear. And I shall always support you."

* * * * *

"Salazar?" Helga rolled her eyes and knocked again. "Salazar, if you do not open this door I do swear I shall open it for you..."

A childish grunt came from the other side of the door, and it opened very slowly. "Whuhizit wuzsleeping..." A quite unrecognizable Salazar stood before her, his hair mussed, obviously suffering the effects of an unfortunately severe hangover.

Helga shoved her way past him, into his room, the bedding flung all around the floor. She grabbed his arm, pushed him out onto his balcony, and dumped a nearby basin of cold water over his head. "If you find it necessary to drink yourself into a bloody stupor every night then it is quite your own fault, Salazar. Look outside. See yonder clear light? 'Tis morning, so wake yourself up." Under her breath she added, "You damn drunk."

She had, admittedly, assumed the role of mother hen of late, and she didn't particularly care for it. However, without her daily ministrations, Salazar would be drunk all day, every day; Godric would have stomped off to Germania by now in a fit of anger; and Rowena would have simply sighed all day about how awfully complicated her love life was and would never have gotten anything done at all. Helga had all her life been responsible for someone else. When she had been a child she had been the leader of her six siblings, the one that everyone went to for advice on medicines, emergencies, relationship troubles, quite silly petty things. Helga sometimes wished aloud for another kind of life. She would often sit on her hill alone at dusk and whisper to herself all that she wanted. A chateau in Brittany. A cottage in Provence. A fortress in the Orkneys. I do only want to love and be loved, as tomorrow would to be my very last day in this world. Yet she had never seriously loved anyone but Salazar. As a teenager in the mountains of Switzerland, many suitors had come to seek her hand, but she would have none of it. She was always too busy with teaching healing spells to the neighbor wizards and witches, poring over volumes of herbs and flowers, sketching endlessly, and dreaming constantly of her future life when she would meet a man who didn't care about her wealth or her family name or her hereditary castles in Italy or the fortune she would inherit. She had wished sometimes to be a poor girl, poor but free, immaculately free to be her own person and not be restricted by the roles of nurse, teacher, mentor, disciplinarian, leader.

Salazar seemed to have mastered himself, and Helga led him to a vacant chair and pushed him down in it. She herself flopped down on the bedding. He looked at her expectantly, as if anticipating something. Yet Helga found herself uncharacteristically anxious about her upcoming confession. She couldn't be sure of his reaction, yet it had to be told...

"Salazar, it has been four moons since Midsummer."

"I am quite aware of that."

"I do realize that this may be startling. By the coming of spring you shall be a father. A father of two, a boy and a girl, if I am not much mistaken."

He said nothing, only swept his eyes down to her stomach, which was only just beginning to give a hint of the new life within. His face was stone, a complete mask, and Helga could not be sure of his emotions. He blinked a few times, and then spoke. "I shall support the children, of course. Claim responsibility, you know. Acknowledge who..." he faltered, "who had the fathering of them."

Helga bit her lip and tried to force her face into a conciliatory smile. It was easy, like slipping on a mask for a ball. "I of course am very grateful to you for that."

"Use not those stilted phrases with me, Helga. I know that you do not mean a single word of what you did just say."

That plastered smile was still on her face. She couldn't wipe it off. She had used it so many times that it was a part of her skin now. But her words were stinging, flung at him like poisoned barbs. "Where I come from, Salazar, and I daresay where you come from too, the words you did say to me on Midsummer Night would have been reason enough for dire punishment. I know very well that you cannot love as mere mortals like I do, for you, Salazar, are so much obviously better than the rest of us that you cannot be bothered with simple emotions. Love is far beneath you."

Her smile was boring holes into him. That smile was eerie, even in the beautiful late morning light. He had always thought of her as a serene, beautiful creature, like the unchanging sun that ever shines benevolent rays upon the earth, and never dares to change. He realized that he had not even thought of her as a woman, or as a human, merely as a principled good little girl that broke up arguments and dispensed comfort and wisdom by the barrel. This Helga frightened him. This Helga with eyes that shone with a woman's pain, a woman's passion, and a woman's knowledge, this Helga he could not dismiss. Often he had asked himself, since that night of Midsummer, what it was that he had meant to say when he had muttered in frustration, But Helga, it has always been...What had it been? Had it been that he had loved, still did love, Rowena, and that Helga was only a substitute? No, that was the easy solution, not the right one. He knew the reason, and he had to speak it, for it was burning into his mind, this awful truth, this realization that threw his whole life into chaos. It had to be said, the truth had to be told, for it was the truth for Godric as well.

"You do think me incapable of love. Perchance that be true, but there is one thing that you know not, Helga, and in this you must believe me. Do you remember Helga, at Midsummer, when I said that it had always been..." He faltered again as he had at Midsummer. The words were almost too shattering to say.

"It has always been what?"

"You." He spat the word out as if it were a burning firecracker.

"Me?"

"For Godric too, Helga. It...it has always been you, but we cannot see it, because we be both too blind."

"You be not sightless enough that you ignore Rowena."

"Oh, God! Must I say everything to make you see? I know you think it the opposite, but Rowena...Mistake me not. Rowena is an amazing woman, and we all love her well."

"Aye, that do I know."

He fairly exploded then, wanting to expel all the pressurized contents of his mind. "We never did love Rowena! For God's sake it is the truth. She is worthy of love but never received it from us, and...and..." He was shaking now. "It was she who brought about whatever intimacies we may have had with her."

Helga stared at him.

"If you believe me not, ask Godric! He shall tell you the plain truth, just as I have told you, that he and me are united in more than spiritual brotherhood, we are united in our love for you!"

* * * * *

"Be it true, Godric?"

Godric Gryffindor rubbed his temples with such force that he seemed to be able to crack his very skull. He was still young, in his twenties, but lines of worry creased his tanned face. He was the exact opposite of Salazar in looks, with amber eyes and tousled brown hair that he rarely bothered to comb. Where Salazar was pale and composed he was as fresh as a clear mountain stream, always active, and except for now, always with a smile on his face. "Yes. Yes, it be true, all of it."

"All that Salazar did tell me?"

"Yes."

"Why kept you it from me?"

"We could not have it destroy our brotherhood."

"To hell with your brotherhood! You realize not how this shall hurt Rowena!"

"And what of you?"

"I?"

"Have we not hurt you? Do you not feel it?"

She fell silent for a moment. "Of course I do, Godric, but I have always felt it and therefore feel it not so keenly as would Rowena."

"Still, it be the truth."

"Know you my condition, Godric?"

He nodded slowly. "It is beginning to show."

"Twins, Salazar's."

"Aye."

"I would have you two forget this, that you loved me, and focus your attentions on someone more accessible. It would...it would make you, and us, better companions and friends. 'Twill not do for you and Salazar to have a rivalry."

"That be impossible."

"Then I shall make it possible." She bit her lip, hard enough to draw blood, for an idea had just dawned on her, a very good idea that might cure Salazar and Godric of this foolishness. "I am going away, Godric."

"Away? Speak clear, Helga, and tell me your meaning."

"I be going on a journey to a magical land that I have heard talk of, far in the south of Britannia."

"You cannot mean that..."

"I be going to Avalon, Godric. I do think that it be only there that I shall find peace for my mind and my heart." She knew they would welcome her there. They practiced a different magic, a magic that she did not truly know or understand, but they always welcomed others who were willing to lend a hand in the work and share love and knowledge. She had never been there in her life, yet she had heard tales of its apple-lined boulevards, the marble buildings, and the stone circles that would raise power that could shatter a man.

"But you must return..."

"I will. But doubt not that I shall be evermore changed."

"The children?"

"I have cousins fostered on Avalon. I shall give the children to them to raise." It was a lie, she had no cousins or relations on Avalon, but she knew well that her children would be brought up there in peace and humility.

His voice hardened with rising anger. "You will deny Salazar even one sight of his children? That is cruelty!"

"Speak not to me of cruelty!" She was almost screaming, her face suddenly twisted into a grimace. "I shall do what I will with my children. I will hold them, I will bear them, I will go through great travail for them, and so they will be mine. I will not have my children, my blood and my flesh, in this castle! See what a scourge we have on us already, because of me! No, Godric, no, my children shall be raised in a place of peace, where they may know magic for magic's sake and learn love, not jealousy, from their teachers!"

"But he is their father! You cannot deny it or deny them a father!"

"Oh, Godric, be very sure that if Salazar wants to see the children, that he will find them. I am simply putting them where they will learn love and kindness and charity, three things that seem lacking from here! They shall have fathers and mothers aplenty in Avalon, where in Hogwarts they would have bickering, squabbling children who nip at each other's heels over trifles!"

* * * * *

Helga dispiritedly tossed a few dresses into her bag. Blue, crimson, forest green, black, cream, and silver flew by like colored comets into the sack. After them followed her healer's kit of magical herbs and flowers and the leather-bound journal she had kept for years, magically expanding it to hold thousands of pages. A quill, and a few bottles of brightly stained inks, and she shut the sack. Her wand she slipped into one of the many secret pockets she had sewn into the travelling dress she was wearing, and heaved the bag over her shoulder. It was time now to go. She took a folded piece of parchment from her pocket and left it on her bed. Rowena would find it, and then she would know...

My dearest,

I am sure that if you know not now, then this shall inform you that I am gone. I would have you know the truth. I went to Avalon. When my children are born I shall leave them there and mayhap return here. I am sore disillusioned with life, love, with everything. I am so tired of giving my life and energy for others. Oh think me not selfish, Rowena. I must learn to love and live properly before I can face this life again. I must learn to love myself.

Farewell

She had signed it S.O.Y.S., their secret cipher that they signed every letter of theirs to each other with, from the pettiest note to the lengthiest missive. It meant "sister of you soul" and Helga knew that the worst part of her journey would be to be parted from her dearest Rowena. Yet she could not tarry.

The Hogwarts stables were pitch black in the moonless night. It was not an auspicious evening to begin, this darkmoon, but she could not stay in this castle any longer. Even in the darkness, she recognized the scent of her favorite mare, Elspeth, white as freshfallen snow. Yet she passed Elspeth by, tossing a few lumps of sugar into her trough to satisfy her jealousy, and saddled instead Salazar's war-stallion, which was as black as the night outside, with eyes strangely bright. The stallion was nearly hers anyway. It was she who fed it and groomed it every day while Salazar sat in his depressing dungeons and played with dangerous chemicals. She slipped off her skirts and shivered in the darkness as she pulled on her riding breeches. The stallion knew her scent and was comfortable with her, for he sensed in her the same need for freedom out under the wide moors.

Yet why, she asked herself, am I riding if I may simply Apparate? No, the question wasn't as simple as that. When she had been a child, learning to ride had been one of the greatest joys in her life, and she still thought that there was no better way to travel then on the back of a horse, free as the wind. She took the straps of her satchel and put it on like a backpack. Food and bedding she could Transfigure from rocks or leaves or branches, and money she had. It was time to go.

Helga swung herself onto the stallion and gave him a nudge with her knee. The horse trotted out into the garden, where the road wound away from Hogwarts, to the south, to Avalon, where perhaps she could find peace.

The horse began to gallop over the moors.

The road goes ever on and on.