Book Three: The Heir and The Champions

A Very Harry Christmas (Part Two)

A woman who was named Ana Wayward

It was honestly more entertaining than it had any right to be, she started to sing and barely made it into her set, having her strings wrap around that annoying dove's heartstrings to yank them away from the boy before he had turned to look at her on stage. She smiled at him as she sang and the band picked up the tempo, they looked into each other's eyes before the boy quickly dragged the girl off the dance floor and dragged her through the crowd. Anand wanted to chuckle at his reaction but was far too busy singing for the crowd of teenagers dancing the night away without a care in the world, if they only knew what was to come, then they wouldn't be dancing at all.

She tracks the boy with her eyes through the crowd, dropping the confused girl off at a table with a word of sorrow and a promise to be right back before rushing to the Lieutenant who was busy glaring down some poor boy who thought he was charming enough to get a dance out of her. As soon as the boy got to the lieutenant, he whispered into her ear, and the nameless nymph's head snapped to her, Anand smiled at her before waving from the stage. They moved through the crowd to find the old man who had just stepped off the dance floor with the slightly out-of-breath Transfiguration Professor before speaking with them both, what the boy and the lieutenant didn't know was the Professor knew her name and turned to look at her, same as the old man with narrowed eyes.

The lieutenant wanted to stop her now, but the Headmaster didn't want to stop the festivity with a fight. He was willing to let her finish her songs before approaching her because as he correctly assumed, she wasn't here to start any trouble. She invited herself, sure, but she had no malevolent motives this night. So Anand continues to sing and the children continue to dance to the music, and she smiles watching them all enjoy themselves. She couldn't help it, she was The Mother, after all, she was a protector and nurturer of children after all, it was how she was created.

But soon her set comes to an end to the thunderous applause of the crowd, she takes a bow and turns to thank the enchanted mortal for "Inviting her" just as Macha had ordered him to do. She steps off the stage and could practically feel the bloodlust from the lieutenant following her as she and the boy tracks her through the crowd, Anand stops once to take a glass of champagne from the floating trays that drift through the hall before stepping outside into the gardens. She sweeps through the mostly empty garden back to the far corner and waits, they wouldn't be overheard here, so she leans against the parapets of Dún Scaith that overlook the grounds of the school, and waits, and she didn't have to wait long as she sips her drink she hears the crunching of snow under the boy's shoes as he approaches her.

"Hello again, Harry Potter," Anand says as the footsteps stop not too far behind her, she turns with a smile to see him not five feet away from her, his hands in the pockets of his jacket, as he glared at her. Anand sees the Headmaster making his way toward them, the Deathstick already in his hand, the Lieutenant was making her way through the small maze set in the garden to try and blindside her. But of the three of them, it was the boy and the Headmaster that worried her the most, they both wielded weapons of The End and compared to a blade of the moon, well, Anand knew which she didn't want to face.

"What are you doing here, Anand?" Harry asks, his eyes never leaving the woman.

"Oh? Where did you learn that name from?" Anand asks, genuinely surprised, "Was it, Macha? She's never learned how to keep things to herself," the tattooed woman says with a roll of her eyes.

"Half right, she said your name, but Amaranthus Black described you in a journal he wrote and I remember you from the dinner I and Dora stopped in," Harry says as Anand takes another sip of her drink, "Were you checking in on me then too?" he asks, a little heat to his voice.