Widow's Vengeance Chapter 9 - Nightmares

Chapter 9 - Nightmare

"Are you kids finished with your homework yet?" Matt asked as he opened Clint's door, he found Natasha and Harry lying on their bellies on the floor with their homework in front of them. Meanwhile Clint was lying on his back on his bed with his head hanging off so he was looking at Harry and Natasha with an upside down gaze.

"Nearly done, Daddy." Natasha said as she looked up at him.

"Same." Harry added.

"Clint?" Matt asked.

"Yes?" Clint asked in an innocent voice.

"Have you done your homework yet?" Matt asked in a patient voice.

"Yes, actually." Clint grinned. "I have, I can show you if you like." Clint offered.

"I'll take your word for it," Matt said before he paused and looked at Clint. "actually scratch that, show me later. If you haven't done it then I'm going to sell your bow."

"I'll shoot you with it." Clint mock-threatened.

"Oh yeah? Good luck buying more arrows after then." Matt snorted before he walked off.

"Didn't even close the door." Clint grumbled before he got up and walked over to the door and closed it. "I swear he does that on purpose to annoy me." He added to the others before he walked back over and plopped down on his bed. "So Harry, looking forward to learning how to use a bow and arrow?" Clint grinned at Harry who would soon be joining him in archery classes.

"Yeah," Harry grinned back. "it sounds really exciting."

"It's better than homework at least." Clint smirked.

"Do you go to archery classes?" Harry asked Natasha.

"No, not really." She shook her head without looking away from her homework. "it's not really where my interests lie. I'm fine sticking with ballet and music." She added with a small shrug.

"Suit yourself," Clint said as he leaned back on his bed. "you keep practising that while me and Harry get really good at archery then get world famous when we compete in the Olympics." Clint said, sending a wink at Harry who let out an amused laugh.

"And when you both are world famous then I can play the piano at your celebration party." Natasha said without missing a beat.

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Natasha was sat in the back garden of her house, it was a fairly large garden, it was cut off from the other gardens by a fairly simple brown fence. The grass was a beautiful shade of green and well looked after, a small part of the garden that was opposite the house had been dedicated to growing various types of flowers. One might have expected that to be something Jess was interested in but oddly enough it was Matt who liked gardening the most. Opposite the house and in the right corner of the garden was a green shed with a black roof, it was fairly new, it was built about two years ago.

Halfway up the garden and on the left side was a fairly large tree, Natasha was sat against the tree, she made sure she was blocked from the view of anyone in the house by having the tree in-between her and the house. Though she supposed it wouldn't really matter too much since Matt was taking Clint to archery class along with Harry who was excited to go to his first ever class. And at this point Jess would be taking her TV break before she continued to clean. Still, precautions rarely ever hurt.

Natasha had quickly made sure no neighbours were around, but she kept prepared in case any neighbours did come by. Natasha took a small breath before she let out a small whistle, she paused and waited for a few seconds before she whistled again.

A second later Natasha heard the sound of hooves, followed by a small nickering sound. A few seconds later a creature leaped over the garden fence with ease, as if it had just jumped over a small squeaky toy. It landed in front of her on all four legs, and shook its head before it stood up, proud and straight. Natasha smiled as she looked at the eye-catching beast in front of her.

It was a horse, or at least it looked a lot like how horse would look, apart from a few very noticeable, glaring differences. This horse was as black as night, it had glowing red eyes that were easily capable of scaring even the toughest of men. Its mane went down to the back of its neck, the mane and tail were the same colour as the rest of the horse, though one very hard to miss thing about the mane and tail was the fact that they were producing wispy black smoke that was pouring out at a low but steady speed, the mane and tail looked like they were also made of smoke.

It may have the body of a horse but it stood as if there was nothing on this world that could ever frighten or harm it, it was a muscular and proud looking animal. In case it wasn't yet obvious, this was most definitely not a regular muggle animal. No, this was a magical creature known as a 'Nightmare'. They were very fascinating creatures, they were very strong, even for horses. They could run at ridiculous speed, Natasha wasn't really sure what its limit would be in terms of speed, in fact she was not even sure if it had a limit. Though she did know that it was capable of moving fast enough to run on water.

Though they were mostly famous for their ability to enter a person's dreams, and would often cause them to have actual nightmares, thus earning them their name.

"You took your time." Natasha said with a smirk. The nightmare grunted before leaning his head down and rubbing his snout against Natasha's head. "I missed you too, boy. Are you okay?" She asked as she gently petted it. "You're looking very tired." She added in a concerned voice. The nightmare let out a very human like sigh before it lay down on the floor and was now staring into her green eyes with its own scarlet orbs. It didn't say or do anything but Natasha could see the unasked question in those intelligent eyes.

"Yes, Harry is doing good." She said with a small sigh. The nightmare let out a pleased noise before he once again looked at her with questioning eyes. "No, you can't see him just yet." She said in a soft voice, though she almost instantly regretted it. A subtle change in the nightmare's posture let Natasha know that it was not very happy at the moment, a more clear indication of its mood was the increase of smoke coming out from its mane and tail along with the fact that its eyes started glowing. The nightmare let out a grunt as it stood up, it moved closer and looked down at her like she was a bug that he was thinking about squashing under his hoof.

Natasha softly gulped, nightmares were very rarely ever seen and those who did see one would do their best to avoid it and get as far away as possible and there was a reason why. Nightmares were not simple animals that could be trained with food and repeatedly using positive or negative reinforcement. They were stubborn as all hell when they wanted to be, wizards and witches have died in the past due to failed attempts to tame nightmares. They had either been physically killed by the nightmare's impressively strong body or they had been traumatised so much by their bad dreams that they suffered from lack of sleep and in some cases even had heart failure's thanks to how bad those dreams could be.

Nightmares were not easily tamed at all, most considered it a fool's errand to even try. They also had mood swings that made them be easily able to go from as tame as a regular horse to as violent as any animal you could imagine. As she was being stared down by this impressive beast she remembered that though this particular nightmare was tamed, it was not her who had tamed it. She was not his master, the only reason it let her anywhere near him was her relationship to his master, the one person in the world that it would truly obey. The Norse gods themselves could come down and demand its compliance and it would likely attack them unless it was in a good enough mood to ignore them. Sadly for her his master was the one that she was trying to keep away from him.

At this point Natasha was very tempted to do something, however she wasn't stupid enough to try and strike at it, knowing that this creature could easily take bullets and still keep fighting. She knew she'd never be able to out run it, it would catch her easily.

"Hey, hey," She quickly said. "listen to me please, Knight." She all but begged. Knight the nightmare, let out a soft snort and Natasha decided to quickly continue before he changed his mind. "I know you want to see Harry, I do. I want to let you see Harry, I know that you'll make him very happy. He'll think you're amazing." She said in a honest voice, the Knight raised his head and puffed his chest out slightly but kept his eyes on her. Taking this as a good sign she decided to continue before the magical horse's mood could change again. "But Harry doesn't know about magic yet!" She quickly added. "He knows that horses with red eyes and smoke coming from them are not normal. I want to ease him into magic, then let him meet you. Do you understand?" She asked hopefully.

Knight stared at her for several long and tense moments, he lowered his head again and stared into Natasha's eyes. No words were said but Natasha knew the horse well enough by this point to have a rough idea about what he was trying to communicate to her, Knight was losing what limited amount of patience he had from what she could tell. That didn't exactly please Natasha but if she was being honest to herself then she would admit that the nightmare had indeed shown impressive control for one with a temperament like its own. It had very reluctantly kept its distance from Harry because of Natasha but right now he seemed to have reached his limit.

"Okay," Natasha deeply sighed. "tomorrow, I'll let you meet him tomorrow." Knight stared at her, as if he was checking to see if she was lying, after several seconds he let out a rather pleased noise. "Yeah, just wait for me to call you, but that's not exactly why I called you here. I need your help," She said, Knight tilted his head to the side. "you remember Dumbledore?" She asked, she got her answer when Knight angrily stomped his hoof into the ground. "Great, he'll be coming by sooner or later when he learns that Harry is here and I'm worried he might try and take Harry away. I've got a few plans for when he comes but they're taking longer than I expected." She admitted. "Dumbledore might come around here sooner or later, if he does then I need you to distract him, maybe even injure him if you want, all I need you to do is just get him away from here as long as you can without killing him or getting yourself caught. Can you do that?" She asked in a hopeful voice. Knight nodded and let out a grunt before he turned and leaped over the fence, Natasha got up and rushed over to the fence, she climbed up it just enough to let her see over it, as she predicted Knight was gone.

"He's a bloody nightmare." She shook her head as she dropped down before she paused, mouth slightly open at the Clint-like joke that had just escaped from her mouth. She returned to the house and spent her free time playing on the piano until Harry came home, at which point she listened to his animated recap of his lessons with a smile.

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"Hey Harry," Natasha said the next morning as she tugged on Harry's shirt after breakfast, "can I talk to you upstairs?" She whispered.

"Um...okay." Harry nodded, making sure he had whispered his response. He followed Natasha upstairs into her room, once they were inside they both sat down on her bed.

Natasha's room was different from Clint's room, in fact there were large differences in Harry's eyes. One example would be how Natasha's room was not always more tidier than Clint's room, that wasn't to say that Natasha's room was dirty at all, but it did seem like Clint's room was usually more tidy than Natasha's. Of course there were moments were Natasha's room seemed spotless and so clean to the point that not even Aunt Petunia could complain about the state of it but at other times Harry would see piece of her clothes lying around. Everything just seemed very relaxed, like it was Natasha's safe zone in the house where she could do whatever she wanted.

When you entered the room you would find a window staring at you along with the side of a bed that had been positioned against the windowed wall, on the left side of the room was a desk which had a computer plus pens, pencils and other school equipment along with a few notebooks. Much like Clint's room there was also a picture of Natasha, Clint and both of their parents. On the left side of the desk was a cupboard where her clothes were kept - unless they were being hanged on the hooks that were on her door - and on the right side of the desk was a drawer with a lamp placed on it.

Clint's bed had blue covers that wouldn't look out of place for a boy's bed, Natasha's bed wasn't pink or purple like Harry had expected it to be. As a matter of fact Natasha didn't seem too fond of those two colours, she didn't seem to have anything against them but she didn't appear to like them like a lot of girls were supposed to. Her bed covers were a very light black colour and had a few red and white flowers of varying sizes all over it.

On the right side of the room were several boxes that were labelled to show what they were meant to hold, something which was made clear with one box being labelled 'toys'. Above them was a book shelf that was filled with books.

"Sit down." Natasha said as she sat on the bed. "So...I want to tell you something, but can you promise not to tell anyone?"

"What is it?" Harry asked with a frown as he sat next to her.

"Promise first." Natasha replied.

"Fine," Harry nodded, figuring it must be important if Natasha wanted him to keep it a secret. "I promise I won't tell anyone."

"Great," Natasha beamed. "well...first of all I have a...'friend'...I want you to meet tomorrow."

"A friend?" Harry asked.

"A special one," Natasha said as her lips briefly mixed into something that looked like a combination of a smirk and a frown. "but there's something else I want to show you know." Natasha said before she aimed her hand at her desk and concentrated, Harry was about to speak after a few seconds of nothing happening but stopped when he saw a pen rise into the air.

"W...what?" Harry blinked as the pen dropped.

"Surprise!" Natasha said with a grin.

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A.N: Hi guys, hope you liked the chapter. By the way if you haven't voted on the poll yet then feel free to do so. 

As for Knight the nightmare, the nightmare horse is apparently real though I don't believe it's exactly the same as how I described, for example I don't know how fast they run. I only know of one other story that has a nightmare in it, that would be 'West of Here' by MK-one. 

I did actually spend like half an hour (probably more than that) researching them. All my research tells me is that it enters dreams, sits on people when they sleep and may or may not suck from a woman's tits when they sleep. Yes, you read that last part right. I might have misread something or the internet is just messing with me, probably the second one.

The nightmare is basically like those horses from the Rise of the Guardian's film, except this one isn't made out of sand. 

Also there will be more Dumbledore in the next chapter, hope you guys will enjoy it.

Thanks for reading, feel free to leave a review.