#halloreads | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

strawberriestyles · 5 years

Text

Part 1: Kidney

(BANNER MADE BY MY TALENTED SWEETIE PIE @adashofniallandasprinkleoflunacy)

Harry X Reader (AU)

In which you’re persuaded to help a young witch named Harry.

Read previous part here.

Word count: 4k

Author’s note: Originally, everything was kinda supposed to line up and the part that I was going to post on Halloween was actually supposed to be set on Halloween night, but life gets in the way and things don’t work out. :( I’m sort of sad I wasn’t able to get everything done and give it to y’all the way I had envisioned. This is the best I can do, and I hope it’s enough. Please let me know if you enjoy it or if you have any thoughts at all! Happy Halloreading. Xx

The telltale signs of fall have truly begun to reveal themselves. Along every sidewalk, there seems to be chunky knit sweaters and scuffed Chelsea boots, pumpkin-flavored snacks and mulled apple cider. Normally, Harry would roll his eyes at the widespread commonality of it all, but he’s too preoccupied. He’s got his nose buried deep in a page of words that he can’t seem to make out, nothing more than a bunch of gibberish.

If anyone was watching, they might notice that the heavy library door swings open before Harry has even made contact with the handle. They might catch the way his eyes seem to glow as this happens. But no one is watching and no on notices.

The thick heels of Harry’s boots click against the stone floors. He carries himself across the deep lobby, eyes still perusing his sheet of paper, until he reaches the stairs that will lead him to the library’s next level. At the top of them, he swings left, maneuvering between shelves so effortlessly that it’s like he’s in his own home. Books on Latin language are tucked away in a dark corner, one that he’s very familiar with. He spends large portions of his free time here. And he’s never worried about books being checked out, because after all, Latin is a dead language. But Harry is confused when he reaches reflexively for the book he always uses, the one that’s easiest to navigate, and his fingers find nothing but air.

His eyes finally lift away from the paper in his hand. Layers of dust have settled over everything in this section, but in the empty shelf space for his book, there are tracks through the dust from his constant readings. It’s coated the tips of his searching fingers, and he wipes the residue on the side of his jeans, sighing. Frustrated and disoriented, Harry yanks another book from the shelf and retreats from the corner, back into the main walkway. He taps across the room to his usual spot, at a table disconnected from the main reading area, but again he’s surprised.

Your foot is bopping out of beat to the song playing through your earbuds, and a ready pen is caught between your teeth as you skim a few pages of text. You don’t even notice that someone has approached you. You don’t notice the man leaned up against the edge of your table until your music suddenly begins to cut out. You jump when you do notice him.

“Jesus!” Without even removing your earbuds, you can hear your own voice echo off of the stone floors. You clap a hand over your mouth. You’re not supposed to make noises that echo in a library.

Pulling your earbuds out, you take a moment to examine their cords, looking for any damage that might explain their spotty sound. You find nothing. The stranger clears his throat and when you look up he’s staring at you. His eyes are bright, almost glowing in the dim light from a wall sconce.

“Can I help you?” you ask when he still hasn’t spoken.

“Yeah. Are yeh gonna be usin’ tha’ book for much longer?”

You notice his gaze divert to the thick Latin book you’d been studying. Your fingers splay over your page to make sure that you don’t lose your spot.

“Um, yeah. I was gonna be here for a few more hours.”

You can see the man grit his teeth, see him twist to stretch his neck. The wall sconce, your only source of light in this corner, flickers momentarily. It draws your attention.

“You read Latin?” he asks, pulling your gaze back around to him. Maybe you imagine it, but you’re sure you can hear sarcasm, condescension in his voice. “Yes, a bit,” you answer, shifting in your chair. “I’m a language major.”

“Are yeh?” The man seems to consider this, glancing down at his own book. Then he settles his mind and looks back up at you with challenging eyes. “Yeh think yeh could try t’translate this for me?”

He holds out a piece of paper to you. After a brief hesitation—you have an exam coming up later this week—you take the sheet from him. It’s scribbled across with sloppy Latin. You flatten the page out on top of your book.

“What’s this for?” you ask. “A class?”

“No, ‘m not a student.”

You frown, but this is all the information he gives you. He watches you expectantly until you turn your attention to his page of text and begin to piece together words. Then you glance back up at him, unamused.

“Wha’?”

“Is this a joke?”

“No, ‘s not. Wha’ does it say?”

You slip the paper toward him across your table. “It’s nonsense. Something about boiling the kidney of a raccoon.”

The stranger’s face lights up, and you don’t think you’ve ever been so confused and uncomfortable. “Yeh’re pretty good with your Latin, aren’ yeh?”

“I like to think so.”

“I’m Harry.”

You lick your lips and hesitate when he holds out a hand decorated with old-looking rings. But he raises an eyebrow after a moment, so you shake his hand, nearly flinching at how cold the metal of his jewelry is against your skin.

“Y/N,” you introduce.

“Well, Y/N, d’yeh think yeh could do some more translations for me? I have a whole book at home tha’s takin’ me forever t’get through, and yeh would speed the entire process up a lot.”

Your face contorts as you finally set your earbuds down. “Is that supposed to be a pick-up line? Because it’s the strangest one I’ve ever heard.”

“If yeh’d like it t’be a pick-up line, sure.” Harry grins, and it seems genuine and charming. “But if tha’s not enough, I’ll pay yeh for translatin’.” By now he’s set his book down and his hands lay flat on the table. He’s a lot closer. You notice that he doesn’t smell like most men your age, like cologne and sweat. Instead, he smells of earth and spices. It’s a comfortable scent.

“Before I agree to anything,” you begin, leaning back in your chair and crossing your arms, “what is this book? And why are you reading it?”

Harry grins again and his eyes almost sparkle. “‘S a spellbook and ‘m workin’ on an important spell.”

Despite yourself, you crack a smile. “So, you’re either crazy or you don’t wanna tell me,” you observe. “How much are you paying?”

“How much would I need?” Harry asks. He straightens back up and runs his fingers slowly through his hair.

“Well,” you answer, closing up your book. You don’t feel completely unprepared for your exam, and your grades won’t suffer much even if you are. “I guess we can figure that out once I know how much I’m translating.”

***

“You live here?”

Harry glances up at the house as you slam the car door shut. He shrugs. “Yeah. Rent’s cheap.”

“Probably because people were murdered here,” you mutter under your breath. You’d been surprised when Harry had led you to a car from the library and not directly to his place. You’d been slightly cautious as he took the road out of the town and turned into a dirt drive. But now that you’re here, you find yourself feeling apprehensive. It’s not that the little house is scary. It could certainly use a paint job and some trimming of the ivy that has wrapped its way up the corners, but in fact, it’s quite charming. It’s more the seclusion of it from town, and the strange air that seems to hover around it, thick and perfumed. Trees, beginning to bare their branches, form a tight circle around the building. A short gust of wind blows a group of leaves past your feet.

“Y/N,” Harry calls from the front door, which he has unlocked, and where he’s standing in the frame. “Yeh comin’ in?”

Stuffing your hands into the pockets of your jacket, you trek across the lawn to where Harry is holding the door open for you. He lets you pass by him and then follows you inside. It’s dark. The windows that you can see appear to be coated with a layer of grime. Some thick, dark residue that you’re sure would stick to your skin.

Harry leads you deeper into the house until you’re standing at the edge of a living room. You can’t see much, but then Harry approaches the wall beside you and reaches up. His forefinger and thumb press together over the wick of an unlit candle held in a candelabra. When he pulls his hand away, a flame has sparked. He repeats the process twice more with the other candles on the candelabra, and you can feel your body begin to turn icy from your feet, up through your legs.

“How did you do that?” you ask, licking your lips habitually.

“Magic,” Harry answers, turning to smile at you. There’s a twitch of amusement at the corner of his lips that somehow dulls your anxiety. Despite yourself, you let out a short chuckle.

As Harry rounds into a hallway beside the candles, you take the time to observe your surroundings with the fresh light. It’s rather bare furniture-wise. A single couch is placed in the center of the room. A wooden chair has been tucked away into the far corner, carved with ornate designs that you can’t make out from where you stand. Next to the chair are two windows which barely let any sunlight in. But along nearly every wall stand tall shelves stacked with books and knickknacks. Things that sparkle in the flickering candlelight, things that seem to glow all on their own, things that look to be spinning.

You shriek and jump back against a wall as something rubs up against your ankles. When you look down, green eyes are glowing up at you. It’s a cat.

Harry pokes his head out from the hall that he disappeared down. He chuckles at your defensive body language.

“Tha’s Nicks,” he informs you.

“Is he nice?” you ask softly. The cat sits before you, flicking its tail rhythmically as it watches you. A strange humming reverberates from its throat, and you know that’s not a purr.

“She is nice, as long as yeh don’ offend her. And it looks like yeh might’ve already done tha’, so.” Harry walks around Nicks, who keeps her eyes trained on you as he reaches for your hand. You give it to him, carefully avoiding the cat as Harry pulls you toward the hall. Nicks's head twists around as you leave.

"She gets kinda jealous when I give someone else attention," Harry explains. He drops your hand at the doorway to another room and moves across the floor.

Glancing around, you find that you appear to be in a kitchen, though a small one. There's a short row of counters and dark cabinets to your left. A sink is situated in the center of them. In the middle of the room, taking up a majority of the floor space, is a thick wooden table that looks home-built. On top of it lays a handful of herbs and an unlabeled bottle of something that you can smell from where you stand. Choking on the scent, you take a step backward until you hit the wall. Something digs into your back and when you turn around, it's a light switch. But there is another candelabra hanging on the wall to your right. It holds flames which light up the area of the room that sunlight from the windowed door on the far wall doesn't reach. You look to Harry, who is digging through what appears to be a pantry at the other end of the kitchen.

"Do you not have electricity?" you ask. You take a step forward to observe the bottled material on the table.

"I do," Harry answers. He steps back from the pantry, and what he brings with him isn't food. It's a bouquet of purple wildflowers. You frown as he sets the flowers on the corner of the table and returns to the pantry. "I prefer candlelight. Feels more natural, yeh know?"

"What are you doing?" You round the table to stand behind Harry. "I thought I was supposed to translate a book for you."

He must answer you, but you don't hear his words. You've stumbled back away from the pantry door and Harry. The things that you see on the shelves inside are enough to make your blood run cold. There are the high-stacked piles of herbs and flowers, like the ones that Harry's already placed on the table. But then there are tiny skulls that you think must be the heads of helpless animals. On the shelf at face-level, there's a giant jar of something so red and thick that you can't think of anything it could be other than pure blood. And on the top shelf, tucked to the far right there's a smaller jar full of spheres suspended in a clear liquid. Eyeballs.

The breath leaves your lungs as you hit the edge of the table and it impedes your retreat. You gasp as Harry twists around to look at you, another jar of something in his hand. He's frowning, but he still looks calm. You feel anything but.

"Y/N, before yeh start—"

You shriek as Harry takes a wide step toward you, hurrying back to the other end of the room, where the long table can keep you separated. Harry looks slightly annoyed, but not angry. You stand poised on your toes, ready to run.

"I already told yeh what I was—"

"There is a jar of eyeballs in your kitchen pantry, Harry,” you snap as he takes a step toward you again. The candle flames flicker, almost extinguished as though a breeze has whipped through the room, but you don’t feel any movement in the air.

“Yes, there is,” he agrees. “I need ‘em for spells sometimes. But ‘s not like they’re human eyes, Y/N.”

“What does that matter?” you shout. “You’re crazy!”

Harry rolls his eyes and begins walking toward you. In a fit of panic, you knock the mysterious bottle onto the ground and rush around the length of the table until you can reach the door at the other end of the room. You yank it open, tripping over the threshold as you escape into the outdoors.

The wind has picked up, lifting flurries of dry leaves into the air and making the tree branches above you moan. Your thoughts churn quickly until you throw yourself around the corner of the house, pressing yourself up against the exterior wall. Heart thumping wildly in your chest, you hear the kitchen door swing open and then slam back into place. You take a chance and peek around the corner to see Harry strolling out into the woods. You wait until he’s disappeared between the trees and then you take off in the other direction, toward the front of the house and the long, winding, dirt driveway that will lead you back to the main road.

The air has cooled since you’ve been here. The sun has begun to fall with the late afternoon. You’re glad that you didn’t shed your jacket inside as you trek along the path.

You don’t know how long you walk for. It took a good few minutes to drive from the main road to the house, and it will take much longer to return on foot. But then you see a building in the distance, old with peeling white paint and ivy growing up the walls—Harry’s house.

“How did I...”

“Ah, good.”

You jump as Harry pushes himself away from a tree to your left. His hands are tucked into the pockets of his jeans. He keeps his distance this time, hoping not to scare you off.

“That doesn’t make sense. I was walking in the other direction.”

Harry nods, flashing you a sympathetic half-smile. "Not really. Yeh just followed the path."

This does nothing to clear it up for you, but you don't respond.

"Yeh must be gettin' cold. D'yeh wanna come back inside?" Harry asks. He tilts his head and waits patiently for your response, eyes calculating. Then he smiles again. "I'll keep the eyeballs hidden."

You frown at his attempt to joke, but you nod. There's no point in staying outside when it will only continue to get darker and colder, and Harry's the one with a car.

He leads you back to the front door of the house and into the living room. "Why don' yeh sit down?" Harry suggests. He watches you settle onto the couch, though you don't look to be anywhere near comfortable. Your veins, which were humming with adrenaline, have dulled to a sort of acceptance. "Do yeh believe me now?" Harry asks, leaned up against a set of shelves, keeping his distance, and you nod. Maybe it's shock, or curiosity, or something else, but your fear seems to have dissipated.

"Tha's good." Harry grins at you in approval and then stands up straight. He reaches up onto the second shelf behind him and pulls down a thick leather book. Its spine is cracked and worn. There are characters on the front cover, but you can't see them clearly enough before Harry presses the book to his chest. He catches you watching him. "I'll be right back," he says. "Need t'copy some things for yeh t'translate."

“Can’t I just read right from the book?" you ask. "Your handwriting is not that neat.”

“No, yeh can’." Harry ignores your comment about his writing and heads toward the hall into the kitchen. "Yeh’re a mortal," he adds as he turns the corner. "It’ll burn the eyes right outta your skull.”

You don't move for a few moments. Your mind is too focused on the picture Harry's words have conjured up. In your palms, you hold your own eyes, alive and slimy. Your sight is aimed at your face, the features slightly familiar, but where your eyes should actually sit there are just empty craters pooling with blood that drips down your cheeks like tears.

You shiver and try to recover from the disturbing image before you glance around the room, this time paying closer attention to the details. The chair in the corner isn't covered in decorative woodwork, it's carved with Latin letters and even more ancient symbols and runes. On the shelves closest to you, you see books similar to the one you had been reading earlier at the library, only older and perhaps less detailed. And there's a large hunk of glass. A crystal ball, you realize. You're in the home of a witch.

Harry returns to the room carrying a big ceramic mug. You sit back again so it doesn't look like you were snooping, but he's not fooled.

"Very subtle," he commends with a short chuckle. "Drink this."

Your eyes widen as Harry holds the mug out to you. You look up at him, perplexed. "Why the fuck would I do that?" you ask. “What's it gonna do, make me grow a curly pink tail? Shrink me into a beetle?"

"'S tea."

"Oh." You can feel your skin tingle with embarrassment.

"T’calm yeh down," Harry explains. He smiles again when you take the mug from him. You note that he smiles a lot. "Yeh have this crazy agita’ed aura around yeh. ‘S makin’ me uncomfortable."

"I'm making you uncomfortable?" Steam unfurls from the tea up into your face and it smells herbal. "What's in this?"

"Rosemary, chamomile, cinnamon, a couple other things." Harry nods encouragingly. "Try it."

As you take a small sip of your tea, taking care not to burn yourself, Harry slips his mysterious book back into its place on the shelves. Then he clasps his hands together at his front, his rings clinking together as he watches you.

"What?"

"Nothin'. Come into the kitchen."

You stand, hands wrapping around the warmth of your mug of tea, and follow him back into the hall. The chair closest to the kitchen's entrance is pulled out from the table and a sheet of paper lays before it. Harry motions for you to sit and leans up against the counter. Just as you take your seat, he turns to the stove and a pot that sits on a burner. He removes the lid and stirs its contents slowly with a wooden spoon before replacing the lid crookedly. Without a word, he skirts around you to leave the kitchen. You lower your eyes to the Latin scribbles before you.

It's then, when Harry's left you and the palpable weight of his presence is gone, that you notice the scent of spices. You haven't so much as skimmed Harry's paper before your gaze is drawn to the stove. A cooling kettle sits off to one side of the grates, on the other side is the pot that is positioned over a blue flame. Steam rises from the cracked lid and you're sure that this is the where the smell is coming from. You cross the floor before you realize what you're doing. Then a black shape is whipping through the room, between your legs, nearly knocking you off your feet. You stagger to keep your balance and let out a hiccuped gasp.

"Don' seem t'be gettin' on very well with her."

Attempting to catch your breath, you turn to find Harry in the doorway again. He takes a step into the room and reaches out to pet Nicks, who after tripping you has found her way onto the table. She purrs at the touch of his fingers. You watch, unsettled, as she stands and creeps along beneath his hands, arching her back, until she's facing you, her beady eyes calculating.

“Are you cooking something?” you ask in an attempt to switch subjects, reaching for the lid of the pot.

“Yeh don’ wanna look in there," Harry warns. His voice has a sharp edge about it that makes you pause.

“Why not?”

“‘S that raccoon kidney yeh told me about.” Harry chuckles as you draw your hand away from the pot quickly enough to tweak a muscle in your shoulder. "Maybe yeh'd be best not t'keep snoopin' through m'stuff."

"I'm not snooping," you protest, but the reality of your behavior makes you keep your mouth shut when he shoots you a pointed stare.

You get the hint and slowly return to your seat, attempting to divert your attention to translating. It's hard to focus.

“So, where’s your broomstick?” you ask after a few moments.

“Wha’ the fuck do I look like t’you?” Harry lets out a breath of disbelief from beside the stove. He's removed the lid again and is stirring in what look to be flower petals.

"I thought you were a... magician, or something."

Harry rolls his eyes, but his lips twitch. "Can call me wha' yeh want. I prefer 'witch'. Has more of a ring to it. But don' get distracted, now."

You remember why you're here. Taking another gulp of your tea, which has cooled just enough to be comfortable, you get back to Latin. But it's hard when you're so preoccupied, when there's a real-life witch standing in front of you, and you barely have any information about him. Harry can see the questions coming before you even look up.

“Do you, like, transform into a bat or something, then?”

“Tha’s vampires, for fuck’s sake.” Harry lifts his hands frustratedly to his hair, but he laughs.

"Do you know a vampire?" you ask, intrigued.

Harry shakes his head, closing up the pot and shutting away whatever solution is cooking inside of it. "Vampires aren' real. Just a creature made up for mortals' entertainment." He sighs and turns to settle into the chair to your left, giving up. "I take it yeh're not gonna get t'the Latin, then."

"I just have a lot to ask you." You slide the page away from you, across the table, and turn your body toward him. He's settled in, his hands tucked behind his head, his eyes resting shut.

"Fine," Harry says, taking a deep breath to prepare himself for the onslaught of questions he's about to receive. "I'll answer your questions." His lips curve upward after a short pause. "But 'm not payin' yeh for today."

Part 2: Hellfire

#harry styles #harry styles one shot #harry styles writing #harry styles fanfiction #harry styles fan fiction #harry styles fanfic #harry styles fan fic #harry styles fic #harry styles imagine #witch!harry #blood moon

122 notes · View notes