MILENA (EPISODE 1)

Avertissement (à mes lecteurs non anglophones) : Je suis navrée, vraiment, mais cette histoire m'est venue en anglais. Ce n'est de toute façon qu'une petite fan-fiction à ma façon, née d'un rêve et de quelques livres, pas seulement Harry Potter.
Disclaimer (to my English-speakers readers) : Sorry about the laughable mistakes I probably did. It came in English. It happens to me sometimes. I may dream that, in a distant future, I'll be able to write properly in this language.


Long quests usually begin with the shortest sentences. Sometimes even with a single word. That is because quests have to deal with untold things, secrets hidden behind words and names. Many quests begin with no more than a name.
In our present case, it began with a very short sentence muttered by the late Professor Dumbledore in a dream, or a delirium, or at King’s Cross Station : "Milena was right after all."
And now Harry was searching for this woman he had never heard about, who might have been right about a question he ignored.
He was not only motivated by an obsessive curiosity about Albus Dumbledore’s past, whatever his friends were pretending. No, he felt that quest was an utmost necessity, his only chance to prove he had really talked with Dumbledore, not only imagined it.
At end, after weeks and months, tedious files’ reading and disturbing meetings with too-old-wizards, after a long trip through rain, wind and snow, and no less than three magic visas hanging from his broom, he was standing in a distant city, looking at the door of the woman called Milena, and trying to reason himself. Because — he thought — she was probably a too-old-witch herself, and her conversation would be as frustrating as his previous chats with Dumbledore’s old acquaintances. Because the late Professor had a strange way of thinking, and Milena could possibly be right about some candy’s recipe or some chamber music’s score. Because Harry was in the way to become wise, and knew that people are disappointingly less fascinating than their names.
But it was growing dark, and he just had a hard journey, and he felt slightly uneasy in the cold, shadowy street. So he climbed up the stairs and knocked. Both stairs and door were Charmed, he could feel it, something not unlike Legilimancy, unless his heart, and not his mind, was scanned. That was unusual, and disturbing, but not aggressive. The shiver of a familiar ghost, or the touch of a Pensieve. He realised how little he knew about foreign magic. He should have come with a guide, Viktor Krum would have come, had he asked for. He hadn’t, and it was now very late. The door opened.
A young girl, fair-haired like Fleur, was looking at him with curiosity. She spoke, and Harry activated the Translatongue Charm he had borrowed from Hermione.
“… never saw you before”, he understood, except that he was listening to the harmonious mature tones of the Translatongue, and not to a child voice.
“Er, he began, I’m a foreigner…” The same voice began to speak through his lips in a strange melodious language. He tried to stay focused. “From Britain. I came to talk with Milena Horakova.” He should have sent a letter, he should have asked a recommendation from the Department of International Cooperation… Harry wondered if the Translatongue would vocalize these thoughts, too. Hermione had warned him about that, it happened sometimes and was told to have caused some diplomatic crisis between wizards. “Could she possibly see me ?” he asked, almost desperately. Perhaps even hoped that she wouldn't. Such things happen, when you’re close of the end.
The girl stared at him for a while, with dreamy blue eyes not unlike Luna’s. She was too young to practice some high magic upon him, but he was feeling uneasy anyway.
Then she smiled, and the Translatongue covered her voice with a brief “Of course !”