The circle of the seasons had turned. Winter had lifted its hand and slowly warmth had seeped into the ground. The scent of old pine needles, damp loam and slowly decaying leaves combined to form a deep, rich, fertile smell. Spring crept shyly across the grounds in the tender colour of new grass, the delicate sprinkling of crocuses and the gentle swelling of tree buds.
It seemed that the season held its breath as love slowly took root.
Corrina Corax and Scorpius Malfoy stood at the top of the Astronomy Tower, the fresh breeze bringing the green scent to their nostrils. As the horizon paled behind them, the sky was stained a limpid celadon and the pine trees seemed to glow deep emerald among the barely-budded limbs of the birch, oak and elm.
Corrina sighed, an inward expression on her milk-pale face.
“The first day of spring. I can remember watching the sunrise when I was young. It’s very special.”
Scorpius was curious. Corrina had never said much about her past. She had appeared five years ago, seemingly out of nowhere, and blandly told the entire Slytherin House that she was adopted. Adopted! And no one had ever been able to find out anything about her or her family, but they surely were not wizards.
Scorpius pushed the thought from his mind.
It doesn’t matter what she is. She is smart and strong and talented, even if she doesn’t care about grades. And that’s good enough for me.
He ignored the nagging thought that it might not be good enough for his parents, and turned to gaze at the wash of tremulous light at the edge of the eastern sky.
Corrina watched with wide blank eyes, lost in the restless memories. Memories of a man’s voice raised in anger or alarm, memories of a woman’s sharp hiss as a hand covered her mouth to hush her. Memories of running through warm springtime rain, trampling greenery, rushing over hard stone and then…air. A sensation of falling and of flight. And then nothing, no memories besides those of the twilight Faerie kingdom.
“This is one of the four corners of the year; it’s the day that the world stands in balance between dark and light. The other corners are mid-summer’s eve, Samhain and the Sun’s Return at mid-winter. We used to celebrate them all.”
Her brow furrowed in thought. The words had slid off her tongue, but where had the memories come from? Surely not from the folk of Faerie, who had stolen her as a child and left a changeling in her place. Perhaps they weren’t really memories; perhaps they were from a song or story that a human bard had sung while enchanted in the twilight world she had lived in?
She felt memories stir, like fledglings eager to leave the nest.
“Hmm, sounds like something MacCrimmon would say.” Scorpius shook his head. “I thought you had lost your senses when he joined your music group. I can see the harp and guitar, but I really didn’t think that bagpipes were going to work out.”
“He plays more than the ‘pipes!” Corrina forced a laugh. “He plays the penny flute and tin whistle much more often than the ‘pipes.”
“But I like listening to the pìobaireachd,” she softly added.
“The pio. . . what?”
“Pìobaireachd is the pipe music. The Great Music, the Ceòl Mòr. It’s the laments and commemorations. Like the one Rory played for the Battle of Hogwarts.”
She was sure that the surge of recognition she felt when Rory played meant something. The music was haunting, stirring. It made her feel restless and bold, as if she were about to rush into battle and fight to the last drop of her blood. It helped the struggling memories crack their forgetful shells.
“Oh, right.” Scorpius wasn’t really listening anymore. He had his arms around Corrina’s shoulders and his cheek resting on the top of her head as he stood behind her, watching the world wake. He could smell the fresh clean lavender scent of her hair; feel the warmth of her body through their robes. It seemed to him that nothing more was needed for happiness.
There was a whirl of dark wings and a raven landed on the battlements. With a harsh croak it turned it shining head and fixed Corrina with a piercing stare.
“One of your friends, I suppose?” teased Scorpius. “I hear from Professor Hagrid that you have a way with hippogriffs the likes of which he has never seen. ‘Course, he isn’t too hard to impress, but others seem to think you have a knack.”
“Not so much a friend as a messenger, I think,” Corrina replied, looking closely at the bird. “Ravens are the enemies of owls; Hagrid won’t be pleased if they are coming so close to Hogwarts.”
The raven bated its wings and hopped away as Corrina approached it and then, seemingly losing its nerve, flew off. A single dark feather fluttered down. With the swiftness of a practiced Quidditch player, Scorpius snatched it.
“Don’t…” Corrina put her fingertips to her lips to stop the exclamation. But there didn’t seem to be anything uncanny about the feather, or the raven for that matter. Scorpius gave her a quizzical look and then examined the iridescent sheen of the ebony quill.
“Look, it almost matches your hair.”
He traced a line down her cheek with the feather tip, black feather merging with raven dark hair. Then he kissed the tip of her upturned nose and laughed at the mock outrage in her fog-pale eyes.
“What an ornament for me, a feather! Oh, but I have something for you.” Corrina ducked her head, overtaken with sudden shyness. She peeped through her lashes at the curtain of Scorpius’s white-blond hair.
“What is it?”
He smiled, feeling his heart swell at the sight of her pale cheeks flushed with colour, the tremulous smile on her lips. It was touching to see her so suddenly awkward; she was normally composed, almost regal in her bearing.
A narrow ribbon the blue-green of a robin’s egg was in her hand. She reached up and twisted a lock of his fine silver-gilt hair around her finger.
“There is a legend that the knights of old would wear their ladies’ favours knotted in their hair. It will remind you of me always “ even when you are in Auror training. Will you wear it; will you take my favour with you?”
Scorpius had never seen her so discomposed, breathless.
“Yes, of course.”
Swiftly, she pulled out her rowan wand, and with a graceful motion and a murmured “Amor Vinculum” she sent the ribbon twisting and turning into two intertwining knots woven in the lock of hair.
His fingers stoked the silken cord and tucked it behind his ear.
“I have something for you too,” he said. He pulled a small box out of his robes, and cupping it in his hand held it out to her.
“Open it.”
Hands shaking, Corrina lifted the lid and looked. It was a thing of beauty, a tiny, exquisitely-carved emerald bird. Each feather was delicately outlined, the colour deepening to almost black at the centre of the stone. It hung on a slender chain as soft as the silk ribbon in the love knot.
“Oh,” she breathed, “it almost lives.”
“Here, let me put it on you.”
She swept her dark hair up, exposing a vulnerable neck. The delicate clasp closed and the tiny bird nestled in the hollow of her collarbone. Scorpius looked at her shining face. The precious thing had been in his mother’s family for years out of mind, and was his to gift.
“It’s like you, you know. A delicate little raven.”
She froze for a moment. It was strange that he would think of her that way, here, in the mortal lands far from Faerie. The raven was her sigil; it was the name that she was known by in the twilight realm.
With a flurry of awkward wings the raven returned. Corrina took a step backwards and felt Scorpius behind her, solid and reassuring. The raven looked at the two with a sardonic eye, cocking its head back and forth. With a croak it dropped a stone at their feet, reproached them loudly and once again flew away.
“That was . . . unusual behavior, wasn’t it?” Scorpius asked uncertainly.
Corrina turned over the stone she had picked up. It was dull and dark in the tentative light, but in its depths she could see limpid light. An emerald? She closed her hand on it, wondering if the raven had been a messenger after all, and what his gift might mean.
“What is it?” Mutely, she showed him. It had a tiny hole in it, just big enough for a chain to pass through.
“Here, I think you should keep it,” she said. “As a luck piece.”
The stone warmed in his hand and she could feel the tiny raven at her throat warm in response. As the sun shook itself free of the horizon and leapt into the first day of spring, they paused, communicating without words what they had never managed to say aloud: that their love was deep-rooted and abiding, that it would withstand the tests of time to come.
They watched hand-clasped as light slowly spread over the grounds, casting long shadows before it, dispelling the chill that had preceded it. In the Forbidden Forest, a chorus of birds had begun to greet the new day and far below them students stirred. Spring had come to Hogwarts.