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SIYE Time:19:24 on 28th March 2024
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Facing Future 2: Underhill
By SSHENRY

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Category: Post-HBP
Characters:Harry/Ginny
Genres: Action/Adventure
Warnings: None
Story is Complete
Rating: PG-13
Reviews: 74
Summary: Voldemort may be gone but evil never dies. ONly Ginny can unravel the tangle of hatred and decit that has brought the Order of the Phoenix to its knees. But she is running out of time, for when one goes Underhill, one's magic doesn't work and nothing is as it seems. NOTE! This story is a direct sequel to Facing Future 1: The Revenge Of The Lime-Green Bowler Hat.
Hitcount: Story Total: 25202; Chapter Total: 4927







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AUTHOR’S NOTE:


I have one thing to say to those of you who went ballistic on me over the last chapter:


GINNY AND AIDEN ARE NOT, I REPEAT, NOT HAVING AN AFFAIR!


Webster’s defines an "affair" (as many of you were referring to it) as "a sexual relationship between two people not married to each other." And unless the word "sex" has suddenly taken on a new definition that I am not aware of, it does not, in any way, apply to this situation. The "incident" between them does, however, seem to have gathered a bit of definition six of the word "affair", which is "an incident that attracts public attention or notoriety."


At the risk of repeating myself, let me just say that Ginny is not ‘cheating’ on Harry. She is not sleeping with Aiden. She cares about Aiden, about his world. When she dried his tears, she was being herself. She did not kiss him first, he kissed her. Heck, she kissed Neville at the end of TOWARDS TOMORROW and nobody got this upset about it.


As for Ginny thinking Aiden is sexy –I’ve been happily married for nearly sixteen years, and I think Brad Pitt (who incidentally is NOT my husband L ) is sexy as hell. I would probably kiss him if I got the chance. My husband knows this. In fact, he likes to tease me about it. But would I sleep with Brad Pitt? No. I have a line I will not cross.


Another point, for those of you who have emailed me with ‘suggestions’ as to what I should do next: the story is written. It is complete. It will be uploaded as quickly as I can prepare the text.


 


 


 


CHAPTER THREE: THE HIDDEN HAND


 


The storm of Aiden’s grief was quickly spent and somehow the hardness of his features as he emerged from his cloud of tears was terrible to see, all planes and angles and a fierce determination; the terrible Sidhe focus lending a cold awesomeness to his already breathtaking beauty.


He’s not human, he heart whispered as she watched Aiden pacing restlessly up and down the length of the meadow. She was reminded forcibly of the stories Mira had told her that last moonlit night they had spent together, what now seemed like a lifetime ago; the stories of Sidhe who had lured unsuspecting mortals into illicit relationships with nothing more than their sheer beauty; stories of Sidhe warriors who had long ago crossed into the mortal world to subdue their Fomhoire brethren; warriors so beautiful and so terrible that it hurt to look at them. Ginny had wondered at the time, what the point of the stories was. Now she knew.


To prepare me for this, thought Ginny, watching Aiden’s progress through the tall grass. Mira’s words seemed to echo in her head;


"They can appear human. They can act human, but they, in truth they are not so much human as the heart of humanity. They live in the ever present now. Without them humanity would turn into a soulless shell, devoid of meaning and purpose, but with them, with them we run the risk of being consumed by our own desperate desires."


He had stopped under a beach tree now, and was looking up into its lacy leaves as if trying to decipher some riddle that had been written there.


"Your heart did not waver," said a quiet, soothing voice from just behind her.


Ginny started, looking around for the owner of the voice, but found the meadow quite empty.


"I – where are you?" Ginny murmured, looking all around. "Who are you?"


"I am one of the Awenyddion," whispered the voice, "but you may call me Gwenyver."


"The white lady?"


"Yes, exactly!" chimed the voice delightedly, and this time Ginny was able to pinpoint the source. Just behind her, at the edge of the meadow, stood a small group of birch trees, the foremost of which was rather larger than the rest with a graceful trunk that gave the illusion (if one squinted) of a woman’s body.


Ginny reached out, placing a hand on the parchment smooth bark and was rewarded by a tinkling laugh.


"Very good!" said the tree, (Gwenyver, Ginny reminded herself).


"What did you mean, Gwenyver, that my heart did not waver?" asked Ginny curiously.


"When the Sidhe kissed you," chimed Gwenyver, waving her branches lazily so that some of the tendrils fluttered down, caressing Ginny’s hair lightly, like a mother’s loving touch. "You let him kiss you, but your heart did not waver. He was there with you the entire time - the other half of your whole."


"Always," whispered Ginny, smiling gently. It didn’t matter that she and Harry were separated by the airbe druad. Harry was a part of her. As soon as she had returned to her own world, he would know everything. He would see, he would know - and he would understand. Her heart had not wavered.


"There are not many who whose hearts would have remained true. They have a way about them, these Sidhe lords, and this one being an ard Tiarna as well as a Sidhe . . ." her voice died away, a sigh on the breeze.


"It is not him alone," Ginny agreed, adjusting her position so that he back was against the white lady’s trunk. It seemed right somehow, sitting like this, a sort of female camaraderie. "There is something in the very air of that place . . ." It was true, too. The very air in Tir-nan-og seemed so crystalline as to be intoxicating.


"So it is," sighed Gwenyver, a smile in her voice. "It is one reason why those who come from your world to his are so often driven mad by the experience."


"Driven mad?"


"They return to their own world, and they can not forget the power of living in the present," explained the tree patiently. "They forget the past. They ignore the future. The rest of their lives are devoted to recreating that perfect moment of now."


"But living in the moment is a powerful tool in sorcery," said Ginny, frowning slightly. "If you can put aside the past and the future and concentrate on the here and now, if you listen to the way things are – there is nothing you can’t do."


"But it takes a will of iron to resist the desire to recreate that perfect moment on a continual basis," Gwenyver pointed out gently.


"Would it be so very bad?" mussed Ginny, "to live always in the present? To not worry about what happened yesterday, or to question what might happen tomorrow?"


"I live now," said Gwenyver, rustling her branches so that they cast dancing shadow patterns on the ground around Ginny, a raw ballet of light and shadow. "I feel the sap in my trunk, the ant crawling along the length of my limb. I can feel the wind in my leaves and the way my roots are drawing nourishment from the earth. This is here. This is now, and it is mine to keep, a perfect moment, always renewing itself. But at the same time can I not also be aware of the years of moments that have gone into making me what I am?"


"What of the hornet that became stuck in my sap? He lies within my skin, several inches down in fact. He has become a part of me. I remember his struggles, and finally his acceptance of his fate. Were I to brush this aside, I would be rejecting everything that has made me what I am today."


"And what of tomorrow," her branches lowered again, stroking Ginny’s hair. "You have yet to become a mother. I, however, I have sprouted many seedlings. Some survived, some did not."


She motioned behind her with a supple branch to the saplings behind her. "My children, those who survive . . . they are also a part of me, and I would be doing myself and them both a disservice were I not to think of the future. My future. Their Future. And in a way, isn’t it all the same future? For without me, they would not have come into existence, but there will come a time when they will go on without me – and yet I shall continue, for they carry me inside of them."


The pair of them had fallen into a companionable sort of silence, Ginny actually beginning to doze off when a voice, gruff with emotion, brought her back to the present with a jolt.


"I – I don’t know what to do!"


Aiden was standing in front of her, hands holding back the willow boughs which had drooped down until it appeared as if Ginny were enclosed in a room of living green.


His face looked haggard, drawn; his shoulders slumped, almost as if he were carrying the weight of the world on them. Which, Ginny thought, a smile touching her lips, wasn’t so very far from the truth.


"And it’s taken you an entire afternoon to figure this out?" Ginny asked good naturedly. She was definitely feeling more like herself. Whether it was being free of Tir-nan-og, or having been away from Aiden for the last few hours she couldn’t say. Perhaps it was the conversation she’d had with Gwenyver, but she felt more focused now, ready to tackle the problem of finding Fudge, Crofton and Percy from a new angle.


"Look, Aiden, I have an idea, I think that if we cross back over I can-"


"You heard the council," said Aiden, cutting across her, his voice as hard as the set of his jaw. "They won’t let you back in."


"And you said that I’m probably the only one who can find them."


"It doesn’t much matter, does it?" Aiden snapped. "If the council won’t let you back in, I don’t see what good it does-"


"Who said anything about the council letting me in?" said Ginny, interrupting in turn.


Aiden stared at her, looking dumbstruck. "I – it tradition to abide by the council’s decisions."


"You also told me that it was tradition to offer hospitality to one who had crossed on her own," Ginny pointed out. "And the council certainly didn’t appear to have a problem breaking that tradition now, did they?"


"You wouldn’t understand," began Aiden stubbornly.


"Try me!" challenged Ginny. "Look, we can’t do anything about those three if we can’t find them, let me at least try!"


"If I may . . ." the soothing tones of Gwenyver’s voice broke into the vocal melee causing both Aiden and Ginny to look up.


"My lady!" said Aiden, recovering quickly and letting go of the willow’s branches immediately. "I didn’t realize it was you! Please, I apologize for the intrusion."


"You are searching for three?" asked Gwenyver, a touch of anxiousness in her voice now. "The three who bring with them the unceasing shadows? The ones who bring the dying of the leaves?"


"Yes," said Ginny before Aiden could respond. "They are from my world, wanted by my government for crimes committed in the mortal world."


"And now they are here," put in Aiden, his hands balled into fists. "They have brought their evil to Tir-nan-og. They seek to control us even as they control events in their own world. I can not track them though, they evade my every attempt, so when Ginevra volunteered to come . . ." his voice died off, shaking slightly at the end.


"And you took her, I presume, to the council," said Gwenyver quietly.


"They refuse to see the danger," said Aiden quickly. "They refuse to believe that Tir-nan-og could be in danger from mere mortals."


"Only because it has never happened before," Ginny pointed out.


"Yes, but still, it was as if the subject had become forbidden to them, they wouldn’t even listen!" insisted Aiden.


"Give me a moment," said Gwenyver, her branches rustling gently. "I believe that I can help you, but give me silence, I must speak with my sisters."


It was a full ten minutes before Gwenyver shook her leaves, as if waking herself up from a nap.


"I have spoken with my sisters in the Fid-nenith, the sacred grove, and they all agree. The council has been put under a bricht."


"A spell?" said Aiden incredulously. "But that is impossible! Mortal’s magic does not work here, and it has never been recorded that a Sidhe has ever succumbed to a mortal’s spell whether in this world or any other."


"I did not say that it was a mortal who had cast a spell," said Gwenyver, her tone giving the distinct impression of a raised eyebrow.


"Then who- what Sidhe would even attempt to cast a spell on the council!" protested Aiden hotly. "It would take an ard tiarna of the highest order -"


His voice broke off abruptly, his face going deathly pale.


"Aiden, what is it? Do you know who Gwenyver is talking about?"


"There is only one Sidhe powerful enough to have hoodwinked the entire council," said Aiden through clenched teeth. He looked shocked and sick as he placed a hand on Gwenyver’s trunk for support. "Do you know where she is?" he asked the tree, his voice barely audible above her renewed rustling. "If you know tell me!"


"Aislinn is in the sacred grove of the ard tiarna. According to my sisters, the three casters of shadows are with her."


"She dares bring those abominations to the sacred grove?" growled Aiden, the color coming back to his cheeks in a rush.


"Who’s Aislinn?" asked Ginny curiously, looking from Gwenyver to Aiden and back again.


"Aislinn is the head of the ard tiarna," said Gwenyver quietly, lying a placating branch on Aiden’s shoulder. "She is a wise and powerful Drywness and a clever cailleach phiseogach."


"And she also happens to be my sister," said Aiden flatly.


"Are you ready Ginevra?" he said, holding out a hand to Ginny. "Allotment or no allotment, it is time to end this. Shall we do it together then?"


Ginny took his hand and felt her stomach clench as reality folded around her. She was going back to Tir-nan-og.


 



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