Amaryllis

14

Things go to shit exactly on December 7th. It's a day like every other, a cold Saturday that has flowers of frost blooming on windowpanes and clouds of smoke and steam hovering over London, millions of people chasing the heat of a long-gone summer.

Harry is walking through the frozen forest alone, on his way to the house. It's early, even for him, and all he can think about is lighting a fire in the fireplace, putting the kettle on for tea and frying rashers upon rashers of bacon. One could say that he's lost in his thoughts, really, which is why what happens doesn't even register with him for a good ten seconds.

He doesn't feel the pain, just an odd pull on his jacket. There's a strange dark spot on his left shoe as he stops and looks down, and small beads of red melting the frost on the ground, smudging into the dead foliage underneath. Harry realises what it is, and then realises he can't breathe.

There's a single set of footsteps approaching him, coming in from the left, and he wants to turn and investigate, see who the unfamiliar scent belongs to, but as he tries, the white-hot agony finally explodes behind his eyelids. He looks down—down to an arrow that’s somehow embedded in his side. Removed, he has time to think about the pretty white fletching and the beautiful, slick black material it's made of.

"Well, well, well," a voice says, the worst of film clichés, and he rotates his entire body to meet whoever's shot him head-on.

It's a woman, tall and beautiful, with a face as cold as the morning around them. She's wearing sleek black clothes and a woollen hat, a few strands of blonde hair escaping to tangle around her ears, and lipstick as red as the blood she's drawn.

"Look who we have here," she says, a mocking smile on her face, and lowers her bow. It's a formidable thing, tall and dangerous-looking, and reality starts to sink in with Harry. She shot him. She shot him. She shot him.

"You shot me," he says, voice impassive as the second wave of pain hits, a hit to his knees so strong he has to lean against a tree. He gasps, and tries to remember what he knows about werewolf injuries. He recalls a line he'd read in a book exactly, remove weapon if stuck in the wound, remembers what Liam had told him his very first night of being a werewolf. All of it just comes and goes with the blood that rushes through his brain, and he can't focus on anything. Not on being alone, not on thoughts of running or attacking; of the werewolf lair that's just around the corner, the one that he can't let her know about.

"That I certainly did," she says, raising a perfect eyebrow at his hand that's shot up halfway to his wound and frozen. "I'll be honest, I thought it would take more than one little arrow to put you down." Belatedly, Harry realises that her accent is distinctly American. His first and only bizarre thought is that Louis would laugh at how pretentious she sounds, and Harry would elbow him and remind him of his own accent, and then they'd laugh, and oh. Louis. The boys. The house. That's where he'd been going.

Finally, blessedly, Harry wakes up. The forest comes to him in a flurry of blinding white frost and rusty blood, noises and smells surfacing to paint him a complete picture. Despite the pain every movement causes him, he grips the shaft of the arrow as tightly as he can and yanks.

This time, he does fall to his knees. The head of the arrow doesn't budge an inch, but it hurts everywhere, lighting up nerve endings Harry didn't even know he had. The arrow is lodged right underneath a rib, a professional shot, and Harry is sick to his stomach thinking of this sleek, icy woman and how good she is at shooting people.

"Honey," she laughs, a sound like glass breaking and cutting into skin, and comes closer, boots sinking into the soft forest floor. Harry looks up into her cold, cold eyes. "Come on. Who do you think I am? Unless you're going to cut yourself open with your little baby claws, you're not getting it out."