![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bookishwench“I see you have once again managed to mishandle things spectacularly, Sarah,” said the soft, smug voice at her ear.
She should have known better. Really, she should. She had been pinwheeling through the air, her tailfeathers on fire due to a passing spell that she hadn’t been able to avoid, and she had been certain she was about to die. Now, not even a minute later, she was being carried on Jareth’s back, his broad wings spreading in a lazy glide as the sounds of the battle died away behind them.
“And exactly how would you have evaded that attack if you had been shut up in a cage?” she said, calling his bluff. “You couldn’t have done any better yourself and you know it.”
“Ah, but I never would have permitted myself to be penned up inside of a cage to begin with,” he said, “at least not unless that was precisely where I wanted to be. Were you where you wanted to be, hmm?”
“No. Yes. Sometimes,” she said, shaking her head to clear it. “Can this wait until we’re back on solid ground at least? That battle took a lot out of me.”
“Of course,” he said, suddenly the soul of chivalry itself.
It had all started as a bet. The Fae, who were so long-lived that they suffered from perpetual boredom, spent a lot of their time wagering on the outcomes of random challenges. They might pit two goblins against one another to haunt forests on opposite sides of the globe and see who could frighten away the most humans or challenge one another to steal gold from the lair of a sleeping dragon without waking it. The winners sometimes received lavish prizes of immeasurable wealth, but just as often they won a bent paperclip or an old shoe, which everyone, even the winners, seemed to find hilarious. The point wasn’t the reward. The honor of winning was enough.
Jareth and Sarah had been married for a few years before their first real bet, unless you counted running the labyrinth. He had said she didn’t have the patience to stay in animal form for longer than a year, and with a smile and a nostalgic “that’s your opinion,” the challenge had begun. Jareth had turned Sarah into a white owl, of course, and even in her new bird form, she had given him a look that was half amusement, half exasperation.
For several months, Sarah had found that she enjoyed the freedom that wings gave her. She soared beneath full moons on star-filled nights and slept during the day in one romantic spot or another: the forgotten attics of museums filled with treasures, an old-fashioned windmill that creaked in every breeze, inside the walls of a convent garden that was bursting with spring roses. Every once in a while a second white owl would come to call, and she would ruffle her feathers and give him a superior look as though to say, “See? I told you I could do it. Piece of cake.”
She still wasn’t sure whether being captured and brought to Eeylops Owl Emporium had been her own blunder or something Jareth had designed. She knew she stood out, and she hadn’t been cautious at all in her animal form. The idea that she would be a prize specimen for a collector had never occurred to her until the magically strengthened net had popped over her head and she found herself being Apparated to Diagon Alley.
Later that night, as the cage where she had been shoved swung back and forth on its hook from the force of her angry hooting, her husband had appeared in the middle of the shop. He looked deeply amused.
“Well, Sarah,” he said, grinning, “I assume you want to admit defeat in our little wager and return home now that you’re not having quite so much fun.”
Sarah had given him a disgusted look and then attempted using her wing to give him the finger. He laughed.
“No?”
Sarah had hooted loudly, willing him to open the damn lock so she could fly away, but she had no intention of admitting defeat.
“You really are the most stubborn mortal I’ve ever met,” he said, sounding impressed. “Fine. Stay where you are. I’ll return to see how you’re getting on when I remember. We’ll see how often that is.”
Sarah had given one loud hoot and turned her back on him, not watching him leave. She heard his sniff of disdain, and then the next moment, she was certain she was alone again. Hunkering down on her clawed feet so her feathers covered them to keep off the chill, she hoped she wasn’t being an idiot, but she suspected that might be too mild a word.
Since she was such a striking owl, the very next day a slew of customers were staring into her cage, most of them children. She still didn’t really understand what was going on or why everyone was dressed so strangely. Granted, given her own husband’s eccentric wardrobe, she didn’t have much room to call anyone else’s fashion choices into question. As for herself, she was just looking forward to putting on a comfortable old pair of jeans and a warm sweater after she finally won this stupid bet.
Eventually, one young boy and a man who seemed to be his father entered the store with so much panache that she briefly wondered if they were related to Jareth. Their white-blond hair made them look not quite human. The boy glanced around, then noticed her cage and immediately made a beeline towards it.
“Father,” he drawled excitedly, “this one is spectacular!”
Well, at least he had good taste, she thought.
The man strode over almost too gracefully and peered inside the cage, gazing at her critically.
“Yes,” he said, “quite. Do you want this one as your pet, Draco?”
Draco had stuck his finger into the cage, and Sarah gave it a hard, firm peck.
“Hey!” he yelled, pulling back his hand and staring at the mark she had left. “Look, it’s drawn blood! Never mind, I don’t want an insane bird as a pet anyway!”
The man rolled his eyes, but given his own penchant for theatrics, Sarah thought he was being hypocritical finding his son’s reaction over the top. Besides, she felt a little guilty. She hadn’t really intended to snap at him hard enough to break skin. Sometimes she forgot just how strong her beak was.
“Very well, Draco, I’m sure they have other, less hostile owls available,” he said, and they moved over to another cage with an eagle owl in it.
No loss there, Sarah thought, fluffing up her feathers and peering around at all the other people in the shop. Not ten minutes later, her eyes flew open wide as the biggest man she had ever seen pushed open the door, making the bell tacked above it ring wildly. He was enormous. He was also carrying two dripping ice creams.
“Oo, yeh’re a pretty one, aren’t yeh?” he said, smiling at her and leaning towards her cage.
Sarah preened a little.
“Yep. Harry’s gonna love yeh, I jus’ know it,” he said, unhooking the cage from its spot and carrying her over to the counter.
As Sarah realized she was about to become someone’s pet, she gave a loud screech and flapped her wings ferociously, hoping her rather fickle husband would choose now to show up. She wouldn’t even mind losing the bet at this point. Well, not too much.
“Oh, I like tha’,” Hagrid said, grinning at her even more widely than before. “Yeh’ve got spirit, yeh do! Don’ worry. Yeh’ll be well taken care of, I promise yeh.”
Sarah couldn’t help believing him when she looked into his earnest face, but it didn’t stop her from wanting to get out of there and fly as far away as she could.
About ten minutes later when she saw the little boy who was supposed to be her owner, she changed her mind about escaping.
Hagrid had gone down the street and stopped outside of a shop that sold the weird robes everyone was wearing. As he waved to someone through the window, the ice cream cones now a little worse for wear, she saw a small boy standing next to the same blond who had made her feathers stand on end earlier. This one was very different, though. For one thing, he looked scrawny, as though he were underfed. For another, there was an expression of excitement on his face that seemed to be new for him, as though he was used to being sad or kicked around. As the woman who had been pinning his robes took them off and he ran outside in his usual clothes, Sarah noted every stitch he wore was threadbare and at least three sizes too big. She clicked her beak angrily. Someone was mistreating this child.
“Happy birthday, Harry!” Hagrid called, presenting him with the cage.
As the boy looked at her, his mouth falling open with wonder and then curving into the biggest smile she had ever seen, Sarah realized she had a problem. She didn’t want to break this Harry’s heart, but then again, she didn’t want to live the rest of her life in a cage, either.
Sarah decided not to do anything rash for once. That never ended well; then again, it had also ended with her married to her gorgeous husband and becoming an immortal Fae who lived in a castle in a beautiful world full of magic, so perhaps “never” was a gross overstatement. Still, instead of immediately flying off, she sat patiently, though a little sullenly, in her cage as they rode back on the Tube. She kept careful watch over everything that was happening, and by evening, she had come to three conclusions.
First, Hagrid was basically Ludo as a human, if he was in fact a human.
Second, from everything she had seen, the Dursleys were genuinely terrible human beings.
Third, she wasn’t going anywhere because Harry obviously needed her.
Later that night, a persistent tapping at the window resulted in Jareth waltzing right into the room and standing in front of her.
“Well, Sarah?” he asked. “How about now? Had enough?”
She shook her head.
“Somehow, I thought not,” he sighed. “Sarah, the Underground needs its queen, and I would like to see my wife again sometime before the turn of the next millennium. You can’t seriously be contemplating staying locked up as this human’s pet for years on end?”
Sarah glared at him with her yellow eyes.
“Fine,” he said, throwing up his hands in defeat. “I hereby cancel our wager. You have won, and I fully surrender any claim I have to victory. There, happy?”
Sarah tipped her head to one side, somehow realizing she could speak once again. Jareth unlatched the cage door, and she flew onto his shoulder.
“We need to talk,” she whispered quietly in his ear.
“Very well,” he said, giving her a curious look. “Talk.”
“Not here,” she said, pointing with her wing towards the window.
Jareth sighed dramatically, but his form shimmered and suddenly a second owl joined Sarah (who had barely managed not to plummet to the floor due to the abrupt transformation that found her perching on nothing). They soared silently outside and alighted in a tree the next block over. Jareth looked at her expectantly.
“I think I might need to stay here for a while,” Sarah said, glancing back towards the room where the boy lay sleeping. “This kid is… he’s got a rough life.”
“Oh, it’s not fair, is it?” Jareth said, rolling his eyes. “Life isn’t fair.”
“That’s just the way it is, yeah, yeah, I’ve heard it before,” she said. “But he’s eleven years old, his parents are dead, and the family he lives with is horrible. I mean, really horrible.”
“Shall I release a few goblins into the house and remove them from this realm?” Jareth asked, completely serious.
“That won’t work,” Sarah said. “Who knows who he’d wind up with next? Jareth, he was talking to me the whole way home on the Tube after Hagrid fell asleep. He has literally no friends, he’s been bullied by his cousin since before he could walk, and now he’s off to this weird boarding school where he doesn’t know anyone.”
“I should think a boarding school might be preferable to his current living conditions,” Jareth said, cleaning an errant pinion.
“Probably, but he’s only a little kid, and he wants his new pet owl to keep him company,” Sarah said.
“And you feel, what, some sort of moral responsibility to protect him for the next several years?” Jareth said, giving her an amused smirk, which was rather hard to do with a beak, but he managed it perfectly.
“Well, yeah,” Sarah said. “I think I’m going to be free to move around while I’m there most of the time, so you and I wouldn’t even really be separated.”
“Oh, we wouldn’t?” Jareth said in a tone that said he thought the exact opposite.
“Look, it might not work, but I feel like I have to give it a shot. If it gets to be too much, I can just learn to pick the lock and fly off,” Sarah said.
Jareth looked at her, then chuckled softly, shaking his feathered head.
“Amuse yourself as you see fit, my love,” he said. “You always did have a soft spot for imperiled youngsters. But I shall expect to see you often. I cannot do without my queen.”
“Flatterer,” she said, winking one yellow eye at him and then quietly taking flight back to the boy’s room and hopping into the cage as if nothing had happened.
Six years passed rapidly. Admittedly, Sarah could occasionally become more than a little irritated with Harry and his friends since they did tend to get themselves into ridiculous scrapes, but she was immensely fond of him. As for Jareth, he took to visiting the Forbidden Forest and became a permanent resident there during the school year, allowing them to meet regularly. He was actually quite pleased at the opportunity to establish stronger relationships with the centaurs and Acromantulas, among others, and he explored the possibility of expanding his field of influence to include gnomes or possibly house-elves. He even had more than a few interesting conversations with Dumbledore, who had seen through Sarah’s disguise immediately and was familiar with the history of the Goblin King even though they had never previously met. He seemed happy to think Harry had another set of protective eyes watching over him. By the end of that first year, Jareth and Albus had a standing appointment to play chess on the third Monday of every month. Sarah often watched along with Fawkes, especially since it turned out Jareth occasionally lost.
As the years passed, Jareth grew more and more concerned about the dangers that abounded in the wizarding world, and when Dumbledore was killed, he raised a perfectly sculpted eyebrow in blatant shock. The Goblin King attended the headmaster’s funeral, possibly the only place he could be out in public dressed as usual and not be the least bit conspicuous. No one else even noticed Queen Galadriel, Schmendrick the Magician, and Baba Yaga were in attendance; were they all blind? Even after dealing with the uncomfortable and unaccustomed emotion of loss, Jareth found he had other worries, particularly a sneaking suspicion that this school would be immeasurably more dangerous without Dumbledore’s protection. In spite of his pleas, Sarah absolutely refused to leave Harry, her stubborn streak growing a mile wide. Jareth understood, but he began shadowing her much more closely.
When a hoard of Death Eaters attempted killing the boy during a rescue mission on Privet Drive and “Hedwig” got caught in the crossfire, the Goblin King was in attendance. He had no intention of any group of rowdy ne’er-do-wells damaging Sarah, even if their masks did have a certain panache. Jareth had caught her in midair and carried her off, far from the battle. However, the boy believed his beloved owl was dead, which released Sarah from her obligation to watch over him.
“You think he’ll be okay?” Sarah said as her form shimmered and she took on her human appearance again when they reached a quiet little park on the outskirts of Little Whinging.
“I don’t know,” Jareth said, leaning against a tree trunk languidly. “He’s fairly clever for a mortal. And that girl he’s friends with is fairly clever for any living thing. Add in the other boy’s loyalty, and I think he stands a fighting chance.”
“I don’t know. I have a bad feeling about it. Maybe I should go back,” Sarah said uncertainly.
“My dear, you have been tapped out of this story,” Jareth said. “The Fates seem to have decided things, and who are we to argue.”
“Maybe you’re right,” Sarah said, but she didn’t sound convinced.
Almost a year later, as the Battle of Hogwarts finally ended, not many noticed that two white owls were looking down from one of the towers. Half of the castle was reduced to rubble. Few students seemed to realize that a small army of goblins had fought covertly on their side. The one exception was a blonde girl Sarah recognized as Harry’s friend Luna Lovegood, who had waved at the pair of them as though they were old friends. Granted, she also waved jauntily to a shrub at one point, so whether she knew anything about their real identities was unclear.
“At least it’s over,” Sarah said, looking around at the mess and realizing she had instinctively taken on human form again, still sitting on the tower’s steeply pitched roof.
“Yes. To be honest, I really wasn’t expecting to find myself quite so invested in the outcome,” Jareth replied, also looking, well, as much like a human as he ever did. He surveyed the wreckage with a sniff. “Appalling, really.”
“The battle?”
“No, that I’ve gone soft,” Jareth sighed. “I suppose it’s only to be expected if I’m keeping company with the likes of you.”
“A dramatic improvement if ever there was one,” Sarah said, trying to ignore the dizzying height.
“Perhaps,” Jareth said, then smiled. “Can we finally go home now? I never did give you your reward for winning our wager.”
“What might that be? And don’t say a peach!”
He laughed, shaking his head. “I assure you, no. I was thinking of something far more enjoyable. Shall we go?”
Sarah smiled, putting her hand in his and allowing him to whisk her away. The world slowly faded as they disappeared back to the Underground.
She should have known better. Really, she should. She had been pinwheeling through the air, her tailfeathers on fire due to a passing spell that she hadn’t been able to avoid, and she had been certain she was about to die. Now, not even a minute later, she was being carried on Jareth’s back, his broad wings spreading in a lazy glide as the sounds of the battle died away behind them.
“And exactly how would you have evaded that attack if you had been shut up in a cage?” she said, calling his bluff. “You couldn’t have done any better yourself and you know it.”
“Ah, but I never would have permitted myself to be penned up inside of a cage to begin with,” he said, “at least not unless that was precisely where I wanted to be. Were you where you wanted to be, hmm?”
“No. Yes. Sometimes,” she said, shaking her head to clear it. “Can this wait until we’re back on solid ground at least? That battle took a lot out of me.”
“Of course,” he said, suddenly the soul of chivalry itself.
It had all started as a bet. The Fae, who were so long-lived that they suffered from perpetual boredom, spent a lot of their time wagering on the outcomes of random challenges. They might pit two goblins against one another to haunt forests on opposite sides of the globe and see who could frighten away the most humans or challenge one another to steal gold from the lair of a sleeping dragon without waking it. The winners sometimes received lavish prizes of immeasurable wealth, but just as often they won a bent paperclip or an old shoe, which everyone, even the winners, seemed to find hilarious. The point wasn’t the reward. The honor of winning was enough.
Jareth and Sarah had been married for a few years before their first real bet, unless you counted running the labyrinth. He had said she didn’t have the patience to stay in animal form for longer than a year, and with a smile and a nostalgic “that’s your opinion,” the challenge had begun. Jareth had turned Sarah into a white owl, of course, and even in her new bird form, she had given him a look that was half amusement, half exasperation.
For several months, Sarah had found that she enjoyed the freedom that wings gave her. She soared beneath full moons on star-filled nights and slept during the day in one romantic spot or another: the forgotten attics of museums filled with treasures, an old-fashioned windmill that creaked in every breeze, inside the walls of a convent garden that was bursting with spring roses. Every once in a while a second white owl would come to call, and she would ruffle her feathers and give him a superior look as though to say, “See? I told you I could do it. Piece of cake.”
She still wasn’t sure whether being captured and brought to Eeylops Owl Emporium had been her own blunder or something Jareth had designed. She knew she stood out, and she hadn’t been cautious at all in her animal form. The idea that she would be a prize specimen for a collector had never occurred to her until the magically strengthened net had popped over her head and she found herself being Apparated to Diagon Alley.
Later that night, as the cage where she had been shoved swung back and forth on its hook from the force of her angry hooting, her husband had appeared in the middle of the shop. He looked deeply amused.
“Well, Sarah,” he said, grinning, “I assume you want to admit defeat in our little wager and return home now that you’re not having quite so much fun.”
Sarah had given him a disgusted look and then attempted using her wing to give him the finger. He laughed.
“No?”
Sarah had hooted loudly, willing him to open the damn lock so she could fly away, but she had no intention of admitting defeat.
“You really are the most stubborn mortal I’ve ever met,” he said, sounding impressed. “Fine. Stay where you are. I’ll return to see how you’re getting on when I remember. We’ll see how often that is.”
Sarah had given one loud hoot and turned her back on him, not watching him leave. She heard his sniff of disdain, and then the next moment, she was certain she was alone again. Hunkering down on her clawed feet so her feathers covered them to keep off the chill, she hoped she wasn’t being an idiot, but she suspected that might be too mild a word.
Since she was such a striking owl, the very next day a slew of customers were staring into her cage, most of them children. She still didn’t really understand what was going on or why everyone was dressed so strangely. Granted, given her own husband’s eccentric wardrobe, she didn’t have much room to call anyone else’s fashion choices into question. As for herself, she was just looking forward to putting on a comfortable old pair of jeans and a warm sweater after she finally won this stupid bet.
Eventually, one young boy and a man who seemed to be his father entered the store with so much panache that she briefly wondered if they were related to Jareth. Their white-blond hair made them look not quite human. The boy glanced around, then noticed her cage and immediately made a beeline towards it.
“Father,” he drawled excitedly, “this one is spectacular!”
Well, at least he had good taste, she thought.
The man strode over almost too gracefully and peered inside the cage, gazing at her critically.
“Yes,” he said, “quite. Do you want this one as your pet, Draco?”
Draco had stuck his finger into the cage, and Sarah gave it a hard, firm peck.
“Hey!” he yelled, pulling back his hand and staring at the mark she had left. “Look, it’s drawn blood! Never mind, I don’t want an insane bird as a pet anyway!”
The man rolled his eyes, but given his own penchant for theatrics, Sarah thought he was being hypocritical finding his son’s reaction over the top. Besides, she felt a little guilty. She hadn’t really intended to snap at him hard enough to break skin. Sometimes she forgot just how strong her beak was.
“Very well, Draco, I’m sure they have other, less hostile owls available,” he said, and they moved over to another cage with an eagle owl in it.
No loss there, Sarah thought, fluffing up her feathers and peering around at all the other people in the shop. Not ten minutes later, her eyes flew open wide as the biggest man she had ever seen pushed open the door, making the bell tacked above it ring wildly. He was enormous. He was also carrying two dripping ice creams.
“Oo, yeh’re a pretty one, aren’t yeh?” he said, smiling at her and leaning towards her cage.
Sarah preened a little.
“Yep. Harry’s gonna love yeh, I jus’ know it,” he said, unhooking the cage from its spot and carrying her over to the counter.
As Sarah realized she was about to become someone’s pet, she gave a loud screech and flapped her wings ferociously, hoping her rather fickle husband would choose now to show up. She wouldn’t even mind losing the bet at this point. Well, not too much.
“Oh, I like tha’,” Hagrid said, grinning at her even more widely than before. “Yeh’ve got spirit, yeh do! Don’ worry. Yeh’ll be well taken care of, I promise yeh.”
Sarah couldn’t help believing him when she looked into his earnest face, but it didn’t stop her from wanting to get out of there and fly as far away as she could.
About ten minutes later when she saw the little boy who was supposed to be her owner, she changed her mind about escaping.
Hagrid had gone down the street and stopped outside of a shop that sold the weird robes everyone was wearing. As he waved to someone through the window, the ice cream cones now a little worse for wear, she saw a small boy standing next to the same blond who had made her feathers stand on end earlier. This one was very different, though. For one thing, he looked scrawny, as though he were underfed. For another, there was an expression of excitement on his face that seemed to be new for him, as though he was used to being sad or kicked around. As the woman who had been pinning his robes took them off and he ran outside in his usual clothes, Sarah noted every stitch he wore was threadbare and at least three sizes too big. She clicked her beak angrily. Someone was mistreating this child.
“Happy birthday, Harry!” Hagrid called, presenting him with the cage.
As the boy looked at her, his mouth falling open with wonder and then curving into the biggest smile she had ever seen, Sarah realized she had a problem. She didn’t want to break this Harry’s heart, but then again, she didn’t want to live the rest of her life in a cage, either.
Sarah decided not to do anything rash for once. That never ended well; then again, it had also ended with her married to her gorgeous husband and becoming an immortal Fae who lived in a castle in a beautiful world full of magic, so perhaps “never” was a gross overstatement. Still, instead of immediately flying off, she sat patiently, though a little sullenly, in her cage as they rode back on the Tube. She kept careful watch over everything that was happening, and by evening, she had come to three conclusions.
First, Hagrid was basically Ludo as a human, if he was in fact a human.
Second, from everything she had seen, the Dursleys were genuinely terrible human beings.
Third, she wasn’t going anywhere because Harry obviously needed her.
Later that night, a persistent tapping at the window resulted in Jareth waltzing right into the room and standing in front of her.
“Well, Sarah?” he asked. “How about now? Had enough?”
She shook her head.
“Somehow, I thought not,” he sighed. “Sarah, the Underground needs its queen, and I would like to see my wife again sometime before the turn of the next millennium. You can’t seriously be contemplating staying locked up as this human’s pet for years on end?”
Sarah glared at him with her yellow eyes.
“Fine,” he said, throwing up his hands in defeat. “I hereby cancel our wager. You have won, and I fully surrender any claim I have to victory. There, happy?”
Sarah tipped her head to one side, somehow realizing she could speak once again. Jareth unlatched the cage door, and she flew onto his shoulder.
“We need to talk,” she whispered quietly in his ear.
“Very well,” he said, giving her a curious look. “Talk.”
“Not here,” she said, pointing with her wing towards the window.
Jareth sighed dramatically, but his form shimmered and suddenly a second owl joined Sarah (who had barely managed not to plummet to the floor due to the abrupt transformation that found her perching on nothing). They soared silently outside and alighted in a tree the next block over. Jareth looked at her expectantly.
“I think I might need to stay here for a while,” Sarah said, glancing back towards the room where the boy lay sleeping. “This kid is… he’s got a rough life.”
“Oh, it’s not fair, is it?” Jareth said, rolling his eyes. “Life isn’t fair.”
“That’s just the way it is, yeah, yeah, I’ve heard it before,” she said. “But he’s eleven years old, his parents are dead, and the family he lives with is horrible. I mean, really horrible.”
“Shall I release a few goblins into the house and remove them from this realm?” Jareth asked, completely serious.
“That won’t work,” Sarah said. “Who knows who he’d wind up with next? Jareth, he was talking to me the whole way home on the Tube after Hagrid fell asleep. He has literally no friends, he’s been bullied by his cousin since before he could walk, and now he’s off to this weird boarding school where he doesn’t know anyone.”
“I should think a boarding school might be preferable to his current living conditions,” Jareth said, cleaning an errant pinion.
“Probably, but he’s only a little kid, and he wants his new pet owl to keep him company,” Sarah said.
“And you feel, what, some sort of moral responsibility to protect him for the next several years?” Jareth said, giving her an amused smirk, which was rather hard to do with a beak, but he managed it perfectly.
“Well, yeah,” Sarah said. “I think I’m going to be free to move around while I’m there most of the time, so you and I wouldn’t even really be separated.”
“Oh, we wouldn’t?” Jareth said in a tone that said he thought the exact opposite.
“Look, it might not work, but I feel like I have to give it a shot. If it gets to be too much, I can just learn to pick the lock and fly off,” Sarah said.
Jareth looked at her, then chuckled softly, shaking his feathered head.
“Amuse yourself as you see fit, my love,” he said. “You always did have a soft spot for imperiled youngsters. But I shall expect to see you often. I cannot do without my queen.”
“Flatterer,” she said, winking one yellow eye at him and then quietly taking flight back to the boy’s room and hopping into the cage as if nothing had happened.
Six years passed rapidly. Admittedly, Sarah could occasionally become more than a little irritated with Harry and his friends since they did tend to get themselves into ridiculous scrapes, but she was immensely fond of him. As for Jareth, he took to visiting the Forbidden Forest and became a permanent resident there during the school year, allowing them to meet regularly. He was actually quite pleased at the opportunity to establish stronger relationships with the centaurs and Acromantulas, among others, and he explored the possibility of expanding his field of influence to include gnomes or possibly house-elves. He even had more than a few interesting conversations with Dumbledore, who had seen through Sarah’s disguise immediately and was familiar with the history of the Goblin King even though they had never previously met. He seemed happy to think Harry had another set of protective eyes watching over him. By the end of that first year, Jareth and Albus had a standing appointment to play chess on the third Monday of every month. Sarah often watched along with Fawkes, especially since it turned out Jareth occasionally lost.
As the years passed, Jareth grew more and more concerned about the dangers that abounded in the wizarding world, and when Dumbledore was killed, he raised a perfectly sculpted eyebrow in blatant shock. The Goblin King attended the headmaster’s funeral, possibly the only place he could be out in public dressed as usual and not be the least bit conspicuous. No one else even noticed Queen Galadriel, Schmendrick the Magician, and Baba Yaga were in attendance; were they all blind? Even after dealing with the uncomfortable and unaccustomed emotion of loss, Jareth found he had other worries, particularly a sneaking suspicion that this school would be immeasurably more dangerous without Dumbledore’s protection. In spite of his pleas, Sarah absolutely refused to leave Harry, her stubborn streak growing a mile wide. Jareth understood, but he began shadowing her much more closely.
When a hoard of Death Eaters attempted killing the boy during a rescue mission on Privet Drive and “Hedwig” got caught in the crossfire, the Goblin King was in attendance. He had no intention of any group of rowdy ne’er-do-wells damaging Sarah, even if their masks did have a certain panache. Jareth had caught her in midair and carried her off, far from the battle. However, the boy believed his beloved owl was dead, which released Sarah from her obligation to watch over him.
“You think he’ll be okay?” Sarah said as her form shimmered and she took on her human appearance again when they reached a quiet little park on the outskirts of Little Whinging.
“I don’t know,” Jareth said, leaning against a tree trunk languidly. “He’s fairly clever for a mortal. And that girl he’s friends with is fairly clever for any living thing. Add in the other boy’s loyalty, and I think he stands a fighting chance.”
“I don’t know. I have a bad feeling about it. Maybe I should go back,” Sarah said uncertainly.
“My dear, you have been tapped out of this story,” Jareth said. “The Fates seem to have decided things, and who are we to argue.”
“Maybe you’re right,” Sarah said, but she didn’t sound convinced.
Almost a year later, as the Battle of Hogwarts finally ended, not many noticed that two white owls were looking down from one of the towers. Half of the castle was reduced to rubble. Few students seemed to realize that a small army of goblins had fought covertly on their side. The one exception was a blonde girl Sarah recognized as Harry’s friend Luna Lovegood, who had waved at the pair of them as though they were old friends. Granted, she also waved jauntily to a shrub at one point, so whether she knew anything about their real identities was unclear.
“At least it’s over,” Sarah said, looking around at the mess and realizing she had instinctively taken on human form again, still sitting on the tower’s steeply pitched roof.
“Yes. To be honest, I really wasn’t expecting to find myself quite so invested in the outcome,” Jareth replied, also looking, well, as much like a human as he ever did. He surveyed the wreckage with a sniff. “Appalling, really.”
“The battle?”
“No, that I’ve gone soft,” Jareth sighed. “I suppose it’s only to be expected if I’m keeping company with the likes of you.”
“A dramatic improvement if ever there was one,” Sarah said, trying to ignore the dizzying height.
“Perhaps,” Jareth said, then smiled. “Can we finally go home now? I never did give you your reward for winning our wager.”
“What might that be? And don’t say a peach!”
He laughed, shaking his head. “I assure you, no. I was thinking of something far more enjoyable. Shall we go?”
Sarah smiled, putting her hand in his and allowing him to whisk her away. The world slowly faded as they disappeared back to the Underground.
