Chapter Text
There is a classic story, a story about love. Not everyone knows the entire thing, but it has been known far and wide as the greatest love story known to humankind.
But this is not just a story about love. It is about adventure, about sword fights, about strongwomen and torture and happy endings.
Long ago, in a land not too far away, there lived a beautiful woman named Narcissa. She lived on a small farm in the countryside of a land called Slytherin. The days were relaxed, Narcissa’s favorite pastimes being riding her horse and tormenting the farm girl who worked there. Her name was Lily, but Narcissa never called her that.
Nothing gave Narcissa more joy than ordering Lily around.
“Farm girl, go polish my horse’s saddle.”
“Farm girl, fetch me a bucket of water.”
“Farm girl, get that jug for me.”
However, every time a request was made, Lily simply responded with “As you wish.”
That was all she ever said. One day, Narcissa found herself adding a “Please” to the end of her requests. And soon after came the realization that when Lily said “As you wish,” what she meant was, “I love you.” Narcissa was amazed to discover that night that she truly loved her back.
They kissed in the moonlight, a most passionate kiss that dissolved into–
Oh, why continue there?
For then came the tragedy. Lily desperately wanted to be able to provide Narcissa with everything she had ever wanted. Although Narcissa claimed that she would never want more than Lily herself and their love, Lily packed her bags to travel across the sea. She wanted to find a job, earn them money, perhaps find them a more comfortable place to live together for the rest of their lives.
It was a very emotional time for Narcissa. The final hour before Lily’s departure came far too soon.
The women embraced outside the entrance to their farm, Narcissa’s face buried in Lily’s shoulder.
“I fear I’ll never see you again.” Lily sighed, stroking Narcissa’s dark hair softly.
“Of course you will.”
Narcissa looked up at her, her eyes full of tears. “But what if something happens to you?”
Lily smiled softly. “Hear this now. I will always come for you.”
“But how can you be sure?”
Lily wiped the tears from Narcissa’s face and kissed her eyes. “This is true love. You think it happens every day?”
Lily did not reach her destination. Her ship was attacked by the Dread Pirate Minerva, who never left captives alive. When Narcissa got the news that Lily was murdered, she shut herself inside her house for weeks, sobbing into pillows before finally staring out the window blankly. She swore to herself one thing. “I will never love again.”
Five years later, the courtyard of Slytherin was filled with laughter, music, and celebration; for their prince, the beautiful Prince Lucius, was to be married. Although Lucius was handsome, he was unfortunately quite cruel, and single-minded. Being a prince, he had the lay of the land to choose his bride, and he chose for beauty only.
Being the most beautiful woman in the land, Narcissa could not refuse the prince’s request. She walked out into the crowd, resplendent in a dark green velvet gown and tiara. The prince’s speech about her being a former commoner, how the wedding was only a month away, and other wondrous exclamations fell on deaf ears to her. Narcissa may have been beautiful, but her heart felt cold. For although she was marrying this man, she did not love him, and did not believe she ever could.
Later that day, she left the tiara in her bedroom and went for a ride. Her horse was one of the only things that ever made her happy anymore, and even in her heavy velvet gown, she felt freed by the ride. As she rode towards the edge of the forest, she was forced to stop by three people standing in front of the path. She tugged the reins on her horse, furrowing her eyebrows in confusion.
One of the men stepped forward, a pale young man with dark ringlets and light blue-grey eyes. “Good afternoon, Your Highness. We are but poor circus performers who have been separated from our troupe. Would there happen to be a village nearby?”
Narcissa shook her head, not noticing the woman in the group slowly moving closer. “No, there isn’t. There’s no one for miles.”
“Then there will be no one to hear you scream.”
Moving faster than Narcissa could track, the woman reached up and pushed her fingers onto pressure points on Narcissa’s neck. The princess let out a sharp scream before falling unconscious into the woman’s arms. The woman caught her expertly, clearly much stronger than she looked.
The kidnappers moved to the docks, where a ship lay waiting.
“Dorcas, go ahead and rip the shield off of this Gryffindor robe. When we send the princess’s horse back with this message, the Slytherin royalty will know that the Gryffindors kidnapped her..” Regulus, the leader of the group with the dark ringlets, stepped off of the ship and attached the seal to the horse’s saddle, patting its flank so it would run back towards the castle.
Dorcas, the strongwoman with dark skin and hair tied up in braids, hesitated. “Can I ask you to remind me why we want them to think that the Gryffindors stole the princess?”
Regulus rolled his eyes. “We want to start a war, that’s what we’re being paid to do. Now come on, Evan, move those ropes or whatever and let’s get going. We don’t want to get caught.”
Evan, a smaller man with blonde curly hair and an elegant sword strapped to his side, pulled on a few of the rigging ropes and started sailing the ship away from the harbor.
“And, of course, when the Slytherins find the dead body of the prince’s love, the war will be inevitable.”
Dorcas’s head snapped up. “You never said anything about killing anyone.”
Regulus crossed his arms. “You were hired for your strength, not your thinking skills.”
“I just don’t think it’s right, killing an innocent girl.”
“I agree with Dorcas,” Evan added, tying a rope expertly. “It doesn’t–”
“Oh, shut it, both of you. Unless you want to go back to where I found you both, drunk and so poor you couldn’t buy more brandy if you wanted to.” Regulus moved to the steering wheel, focusing on the horizon.
Evan sighed, leaning against the mast. “Yeah, whatever, fine.
The ship sailed off into the distance, away from the coast of Slytherin and towards a destination even more dangerous than the last…
But as the sun fell over the ocean, the princess was starting to pout in her corner of the ship, looking at the small crew in disdain.
Evan glanced back towards where the ship had been, something he had started doing the last half hour every few minutes.
Regulus relaxed on the side of the deck. “We’ll reach the cliffs by dawn.” As he looked over at Evan, his eyes narrowed. “Why are you doing that?”
“Making sure we’re not being followed.”
“Believe me, that would be inconceivable,” Regulus replied. He appreciated that word quite a bit, so content in his own knowledge of the world that anything he believed was impossible, he thought everyone else should.
And yet Evan continued to glance over his shoulder, behind them. Regulus was starting to get tired of it very quickly, finally standing.
“Stop it, we can relax. It’s almost over.”
Evan bit his lip slightly. “You’re sure no one could be following us?”
Regulus rolled his eyes. “As I told you hours ago, it would be absolutely, totally, and in all other ways, inconceivable. No one in Slytherin knows what we’ve done and no one in Gryffindor could have gotten here so fast.” He paused, his eyes narrowing. “Out of curiosity, why do you ask?”
“No reason. It’s just that I happened to look behind us, and something’s there.”
Regulus climbed up to the top of the deck with Evan, Dorcas beating him there. She squinted into the darkness. “I don’t see any–” And then the moon broke through the clouds and they could all see it quite clearly. A small ship with a black sail, going much faster than any of them would have thought possible, and quite clearly gaining on them.
“It’s… probably just a fisherman.”
“In the dead of night?” Evan asked.
“...In grindylow-infested waters?” Dorcas added, glancing over at Regulus.
Regulus was about to reply when all of a sudden they heard a splash. The princess had dived out of the boat and was frantically trying to swim away.
Regulus turned to Dorcas and Evan immediately. “Go on, one of you get in after her! We can’t lose our bait!”
Evan paled. “I… can’t swim.”
Dorcas shrugged. “Only learned to dog-paddle.”
Regulus groaned, watching the princess swim away. “Veer the ship left, we can still catch her. She’s wearing that heavy dress.”
Narcissa swam frantically, trying to find some sort of land in the distance to go towards. All of a sudden, she felt something brush her ankle. She hoped against hope that it was only her gown moving with the water, but she stopped for a moment. Regulus’s voice bounced against the waves as he spoke.
“Can you sense them, Highness? Those are grindylows. If you don’t believe me, just wait. The waters always move faster when they’re about to feed.” The waters were swishing around Narcissa quicker now, the waves splashing her face and soaking her hair.
“Come back now, and I promise, no harm will come to you.” Regulus grinned in the darkness of the ship, making Narcissa hesitate a moment. “I can assure you, you’ll get no such offer from a grindylow.”
Narcissa started swimming again, trying to stay quiet. She didn’t know for certain, but she hoped that the grindylows wouldn’t sense her.
“Last call, Princess. Call out your position or die.”
Narcissa froze at the feeling of long fingers on her ankle, wrapping around, tugging, starting to pull her down. She gasped, a sound that echoed in the silent night, eyes wide as she prepared to drown, but–
Dorcas’s arms dove down and grabbed Narcissa under the arms, pulling her up onto the ship. The grindylow growled at her and Dorcas simply punched it hard in the face, peeling its long fingers off of Narcissa’s ankle and dropping the creature back into the water.
Narcissa was breathing hard, frantic as Dorcas set her down on the deck. She was about to ask the princess if she was okay, but Regulus was already there, wrapping rope around Narcissa’s wrists.
Narcissa was quiet as Regulus started tying her hands together. “I suppose you think you’re brave, don’t you?”
Narcissa’s eyes did not waver from Regulus’s face. “Only compared to some.”
Evan interrupted their staredown by sucking in a sharp breath, looking behind them as the sun started to rise over the horizon. “He’s cut our lead in half.”
Regulus followed his glance to find the ship seeming to fly over the ocean. He stared for a moment before his lips spread in an awful grin.
“He’s too late. See?” He pointed ahead of them at the view rising in front of the ship. “The Cliffs of Insanity!”
So called because you would supposedly have to be insane to try to climb them, the Cliffs of Insanity led over the grasslands on the unclaimed land between Slytherin and Gryffindor. Because it was unclaimed, neither kingdom could have laws there, and it had been the site of many a shoot-down or duel. The Cliffs themselves were two sheer sheets of rock, rising completely vertically above the edge of the ocean with only a spare few shelves of rock over the side of it.
And yet, they did in fact plan to climb them.
Regulus tied the ship to the dock at the edge of the Cliffs, Dorcas tugging on a rope that was attached to the Cliffs. Narcissa looked up at the Cliffs wide-eyed, terrified.
Regulus turned to Evan and Dorcas. “We’re safe now. Only Dorcas is strong enough to go up our way. He’ll have to sail around for hours until he finds a harbor.”
Dorcas settled into a harness attached to the rope, Regulus and Evan getting the princess into a position over Dorcas’s head. Having had plenty of experience as a strongwoman, Dorcas could lift up to a thousand pounds at a time. Evan and Regulus had tested this theory themselves and Dorcas had managed to bring a bag of rocks about the same weight as the princess with them before they kidnapped her, to ensure that this plan would work.
It indeed would. Dorcas made sure that everyone was steady before starting to climb up the cliff, hand over hand, her muscles straining at times before she settled back into the rhythm of it.
And yet the small black-sailed ship continued to sail towards the Cliffs, landing next to the first on the small dock.
Dorcas was about a third of the way up when Evan tapped Regulus’s shoulder nervously. “Um… Reg? We… have a problem.”
Regulus followed Evan’s eyes to find a person wearing all black walking up to the cliffs, leaping from the boat up onto the rope and… climbing it?
“Inconceivable!” Regulus gasped automatically, watching the figure climbing impossibly fast, starting to gain on them slowly but surely.
Dorcas was trying her best, but by the time they were two-thirds of the way up, she was gasping for breath.
“Go faster!” Regulus yelled, watching the figure in black obsessively.
“I’m sorry… Reg… I’m trying…”
They had maybe a hundred feet to go now, and Regulus was getting both impatient and anxious. And when this happened, he got mean. He growled in Dorcas’s ear, “I thought you were supposed to be some wonder. The strongest person in the world, let alone the strongest woman. And yet they gain.”
“Well– they’re only carrying themselves, and I’m carrying myself and three people–”
“I can’t accept excuses, not with our line of work. I’ll just have to find myself a new strong person.”
Dorcas frowned, trying not to get upset or distracted. “Don’t say that, Reg, I know we’re friends.”
By now, the figure was within a hundred feet of them, and it was clear that it was not only a woman, but she was also masked and hooded, with only the bottom part of her face and her eyes visible.
Evan rubbed Dorcas’s shoulder gently, glaring at Regulus. “Come on, Cas, you can do this. We’re so close.”
Finally, they managed to get to the top, Dorcas pulling them up and sitting on a rock to breathe heavily. Regulus frantically pulled a knife from his boot, starting to saw at the rope that ran over the edge. “Fuck, come on, come on …”
Narcissa sat on the rock with Dorcas, her hands still tied as she watched Regulus work with disdain. She wasn’t about to feel bad for the strongwoman, but it was still offensive to her to see how Regulus treated his friends.
The rope finally snapped, rolling off the edge of the cliff. There was a moment of silence as Regulus and Evan stared at each other, hurrying over to the edge to look over.
But of course, they stood in shock. The woman in black was still holding on, suspended hundreds of feet above the ocean, her hands buried in the holds of the cliff.
Evan tilted his head. “She has very good arms.”
Regulus stared at the figure wide-eyed. “She didn’t fall? That’s inconcei–”
Evan whirled on Regulus, still upset about the way he had treated Dorcas. “Stop using that word. It doesn’t mean what you think it means. And clearly, it is conceivable.”
Regulus didn’t even have a comeback, and it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. The new interest on Evan’s mind was from the tumble of a rock over the cliff, and he glanced over to find…
The woman in black was climbing .
Dorcas moved to stare over the edge with them in shock. She had never met someone who was strong enough to climb that much other than herself.
“...Well, whoever she is, she has obviously seen us with the Princess and is therefore a threat.” Regulus turned to Dorcas, arms crossed. Dorcas raised her eyebrows at him and he sighed, rolling his eyes. “I’m sorry I insulted you.”
“Good enough. For now.”
Regulus continued, “I need you to carry her.” He nodded toward Narcissa, who had been slowly trying to sneak away from the group. Dorcas lifted her with ease, holding her in a bridal carry. She was several inches taller than the princess anyway, let alone stronger.
Regulus turned to Evan. “Meanwhile, you’re going to stay here. We’ll be heading straight for the edge of Gryffindor. Catch up when she’s dead.”
Evan nodded.
“If she falls, fine. If not, use the sword.” Regulus turned back to Dorcas, but Evan interrupted him.
“I’m going to duel her left-handed.”
Regulus groaned, turning to him again. “You know what a hurry we’re in.”
“It’s the only way I get any satisfaction.” Evan shrugged. “If I use my right, it’s over too quickly.”
Dorcas rolled her eyes. She had made plenty of jokes about this in the past, but now wasn’t exactly the time. Regulus was still pissed and she just wanted to get this over with. It wasn’t as if she enjoyed this job, but at least she could get paid once the princess was dead and they could go back to sailing around to find treasure. They were all better friends when their lives were less on the line.
Regulus turned abruptly, heading over the rocks towards the grasslands. “Fine, have it your way. Don’t die.”
Dorcas added, “Be careful. People in masks can’t be trusted.” She followed Regulus with the princess frowning quietly in her arms. Evan stared back down the cliff, ready for a fight.