He could certainly deal with it if it came to that, but he'd much rather not. Plus, there was something… something nagging at him about her, about this entire little village nestled deep in the forest. It all sounded so vaguely, tantalizingly familiar, but he couldn't quite put his finger on why.
"I thank you for taking the time to see me, as I'm sure you're usually very busy with the matters of your village," Harry continued.
"I was trying to explain to the… person… who escorted me here that I am a little lost, and I was hoping someone could perhaps point me towards the nearest point of civilization, so I may purchase some necessary supplies and then get out of your hair, so to speak."
"I see," Eithné said, her silver eyes studying him intently. "Do you know where you are, dh'oine?" she asked softly.
Harry shook his head. "I'm afraid not, my lady. I woke up only an hour or two ago, lying in the middle of this forest, on the cold, hard ground, with absolutely no idea how I got there." It was, technically, a lie, but he was a pretty good liar when he needed to be, so he wasn't overly concerned about being caught out.
"You are in the forest of Brokilon," she said, her voice still soft, "where I am the ruler." She seemed to say it in an attempt to perhaps jog his memory, to see if the name meant anything to him.
Unfortunately for Harry's composure, it did. Oh, it very much did.
Harry's mind went completely, utterly blank for a moment at the name. Brokilon. It was a name he knew well enough, a name deeply etched into his memory.
How many countless times had he gone over the precious, cherished memories of his time with her?
How many times had he replayed every word, every story she had told him of her past, of her own world?
One particular part of her past, in this case, stood out with sudden, shocking clarity: a time when she had lived in a legendary, ancient forest called Brokilon, and had been raised, for a time, by Dryads.
He ruthlessly squashed the sudden, overwhelming surge of hope that threatened to consume him. He forced himself to remain calm, to not get excited about this new, electrifying bit of information. Not yet. He needed to be sure.
"By any chance…" Harry asked, his voice carefully, almost painfully, monotone, "is this particular forest located just… just North of the kingdom of Cintra?"
"It is," the Dryad Queen confirmed, her silver eyes still fixed on him.
"And… and would you happen to be a Dryad?" Harry asked, his carefully constructed composure starting to crumble, his excitement hitting new, dangerous levels, barely being contained inside him. He barely even registered that she had, in fact, already told him that.
"I am," Eithné said calmly, but he thought he detected what might have been the faintest hint of amusement in her voice now, in the slight upturn of her lips.
"One last question, if you would humor me, my lady?" Harry asked, trying, with every ounce of his considerable willpower, to contain the wild hope that was now roaring through him like a tidal wave.
"Go on," she said, giving him her permission with a graceful inclination of her head.
"Thank you, my lady," Harry said, his voice a little breathless. "Would you… would you perchance happen to know the current year? By… by human reckoning, I mean."
The woman seemed to frown slightly in thought. "Time… time is something that is much harder to judge here in Brokilon, dh'oine," she said thoughtfully. "We have little need to measure its passing in the same way your kind does. But, if I am not mistaken, I believe your people currently say it is the year… 1157."
Harry's face went completely, utterly blank at that. 1157.
'Eleven fifty-seven…' Harry thought, his mind racing, his heart pounding like a war drum in his chest. 'That means… that means she won't even be born for nearly another hundred years! Which means… which means I didn't go too far forward in time! I haven't missed her! I'll… I'll be able to see her again! I'll actually be able to see Ciri again!'
He could no longer contain it. The monumental relief, the sheer, unadulterated joy, was too much. With a sudden, explosive burst of energy, Harry shot upwards into the air, hovering just below the roof of the hut, and let out a deafening, triumphant roar.
"YES!"
….
…
..
.
Year 1183
Harry stood in the dusty, sun-baked square of a small, grimy town called Belhaven, watching one of the most disgusting, stomach-churning scenes he had ever seen unfold before his eyes. And believe him, he'd seen a lot of disgusting things in his time.
Belhaven, he'd quickly gathered, was apparently a town chock-full of racist, ignorant assholes. A large, jeering crowd was currently gathered around a crudely constructed wooden platform.
On that platform, a sweaty, brutish-looking man was in the process of tying a thick, rough-looking noose around the slender neck of a crying, terrified elf woman.
From what Harry had managed to overhear from the gleeful, hateful chatter of the crowd, and from a few quick, discreet uses of Legilimency on some of the more vocal townsfolk, the elf woman had apparently killed a town guard.
A guard who had been, by all accounts, trying to… take advantage of her.
When she'd fought back, the man's equally vile buddies had hopped in, beaten her to within an inch of her life her skin was a mottled mess of bruises, so dark it almost looked like a different skin tone in places and then thrown her into their dingy little prison.
And now, it looked like they were going to publicly, gleefully, kill her for daring to defend herself.
Harry was a man who understood the concept of sacrifice. Intimately. He had seen it, and he had done it, so many times over the long, weary years that he had genuinely lost count.
He still, even now, would sometimes fall asleep and see Neville Longbottom's determined, grime-streaked face, his eyes blazing with defiance as he single-handedly took on wave after relentless wave of Death Eaters after they had stumbled upon one of their hidden safe-houses. Neville had been giving his fellow comrades, including Harry, precious time to escape.
He'd died that night, a true hero, but in that one, single, horrific night, he'd managed to rack up enough confirmed kills to retain a spot in the top ten heaviest hitters of the entire war, despite the bloody conflict continuing for another brutal two years after his death.