Note:
I don't know if this is worth continuing, so if you want to see more, please leave a review.
April 22 Edit: Changed Lyra's name to Anna. Sorry.
Chapter One
Beyond Space and Time
"But even if You-Know-Who drops dead right now, we'll still be under the threat of expulsion from Umbridge!" Seamus was moving his hands emphatically, in a way to show how deadly serious and frustrated he was. "She's the worst threat right now!"
The entirety of the D.A. had already finished, had either succeeded or simply given up in casting their Patronuses. Some had already left, but most had stayed. They were either standing or sitting, on the ground or on a chair, but they were all listening to the conversation. It was getting a little heated.
Dean shook his head. "But if Umbridge was to drop dead right now, then we'd still have Voldemort. Either way, we've got trouble."
"If Umbridge was to drop dead right now, Merlin don't forbid it, then we'd still have Fudge to deal with," Seamus said.
"The whole Ministry, really," Colin Creevey chimed in.
"No," Hermione said, "I'm fairly certain the majority of the Ministry is uncertain as to which side they should take. That said, I have to say I'd rather have Voldemort drop dead now than Umbridge."
"Yeah, well," said Ron, "Voldemort is on a quest to kill every muggle-born there is, isn't he? Of course you'd prefer him dead first."
Hermione didn't seem to be sure whether or not Ron was backing her up or not.
Seamus scrunched up his face and sneered at Ron. "Haven't you paid attention to how Umbridge treats Firenze? Or Hagrid? You think she isn't a blood bigot as well?"
"Yeah, but mate," George said, "she isn't exactly trying to kill them, is she?"
"That you know," Seamus pointed out. "She might want to, for all you know. He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named has a bit of a target on his head, doesn't he? Umbridge doesn't. He's powerful, but he's got limits. Not that Umbridge doesn't, but she's got authority, and that's just it. She works in the Ministry. He-Who-Must — ah, blast it — Voldemort can't just show up at the Ministry and whisper sweet things in Fudge's ears, make the Daily Prophet say all those horrible things about Dumbledore and Anna, can he?"
"He could if he took over," Dean said. "He could simply Imperius Fudge to do those things anyway."
Seamus rolled his eyes with a dramatic swing of his head. "Yes, but that's not the situation now, is it?"
"It could be," someone said.
Seamus's eyes nearly bulged out of his head with his irritation. "Yes, yes, it could be. Anything could be. The point is, that as far as we know, Fudge and Umbridge are at the top of their little scheme and no one is pulling the strings. Because I think we can all agree that if You-Know-Who was, that it'd be a whole lot worse. Agreed?"
There was a general murmuring of agreements.
"Right," Seamus said. "So tell me who's really more dangerous at this moment. Voldemort, who is in hiding and can only do so much, or Umbridge, who has the ear of Fudge and can sway half of the damn public? Who, at this very moment, is more likely to cause harm to Anna? Voldemort, who might be only in hiding for a long-term gain, but is nonetheless in hiding and isn't going to be knocking on Hogsmeade's doors anytime soon — or, is it going to be those impressionable morons who live in Hogsmeade, believe everything the Daily Prophet says, and are more than willing to jump into that nasty mob mentality?"
Anna bit back a smirk and leaned over to Hermione, who was sitting on the same couch as her.
"Is it just me or is this becoming somewhat dramatic?" she whispered. "Impressionable morons, nasty mob mentality." Anna snorted. "They're sounding like philosophers, bless them."
Clearly disapproving of her mockery, Hermione pursed her lips. "And what do you think, Anna?"
"Me?" Anna made a dismissive noise. "Evil's evil, Hermione. They can both go to hell."
"Yes," Hermione said, "but which do you think is worse?"
"It doesn't matter which is worse."
"Doesn't it?"
"No." Anna turned sideways on the couch and rested her head on Hermione's lap, closing her eyes. "They're both terrible to a degree where it no longer matters which one is worse. There's no point in debating about it. Not when both evils are this... well, evil."
Anna noticed that the others were no longer debating, and assumed they had begun to pack up their things and were ready to leave.
"And why not?" Hermione asked.
"Because, Hermione — at this point, where you have all these details, levels of severity, where you feel the need to decide which is worse, which is more evil, which is more of a threat, then it comes to the point where both are so terrible that it doesn'tmatter anymore, where it's evil regardless of the degree, when either one — greater, lesser, middling — is to such a magnitude that they should all be dealt with." She gave a little considering tilt of her head. "And preferably swiftly."
"Now who's the philosophical one?" Hermione teased.
Not hearing the door opening for people to leave, Anna opened her eyes and turned her head. There, all of them looking to her and listening, was everybody. She rolled her eyes.
"Enough of this," she said, not bothering to move off Hermione's lap. "Voldemort, Umbridge, Fudge, whoever — they all need to be dealt with. Would dealing with one over the other first prove to be beneficial? Maybe. But you clearly can't decide on the matter, so therefore, you're just wasting time and making it more likely that neither will be dealt with."
"We finished with the Patronuses for today," Seamus muttered.
"And yet, while I do appreciate your earlier words, Seamus, you still haven't actually produced one."
Seamus grimaced. Dean smirked with satisfaction.
"And you, Dean," Anna continued, "you call that a Shield Charm? Seamus's erection when he glances at my backside could break through that."
Seamus turned nearly purple, and Dean gave a sad little laugh.
"So," Anna began again after everybody stopped snickering, "let's wrap this up and —"
The door of the Room of Requirement opened slightly, but everybody heard it. Not wasting time to even close it, Dobby rushed over to Anna, two of his eight hats falling off in his sprint.
"Anna Potter, ma'am, she be saying — she be saying we is not to warn you, ma'am," the elf said shakily. "But — but…"
"She?" Anna said sharply, sitting up. "Umbridge? What's she done? Dobby?"
The elf tugged on his ears, as distressed as he was when he tried telling her about Lucius Malfoy's plan on opening the Chamber of Secrets. "Anna Potter, ma'am…"
"Is she coming?" Anna's heart gave a hard little push at the thought of it. "Dobby, answer me, is Umbridge coming? Someone close that door!"
Dobby tried to kick himself and ended up falling to the floor in his attempt.
"Close the door?" someone said.
"Shouldn't we be leaving?!" another spoke.
When nobody moved to close it, Anna growled impatiently, pulled out her wand, and gave it a sharp swing at the door. It shut with force. A second later, there was a thud from the other side. Someone had been running to enter at the last second. She was right to not have sent everybody out; they would have been quickly caught.
Anna stood and stared at everybody, her mind whirling but coming up with nothing.
"Anna?" Cho said, visibly shaken. "What do we do?"
She couldn't think of what todo. Was there any hope of them all getting out of this? She looked around the ground below her, but could not find Dobby. He had apparently left, the little bastard.
She needed a way to get everybody out. It would be disaster if Umbridge was to find a way through that door, and at that precise thought, there was an even heavier thud on the other side of it. An explosion of some kind. She had to decide now, she absolutely needed to get herself and everybody else far, far away from here, where Umbridge could never —
The ground lurched, the room shifted, and she thought for one moment she was having another panic attack, but it couldn't be, not this quickly — she had one just yesterday, and they were usually only once a week…
But it wasn't just her.
Everybody else also fell when the ground disappeared, and though she was too caught up in her own nausea to notice everybody else's, somewhere deep within her whirling — literally whirling — mind, she was sure everybody else was also feeling as though they had disappeared from existence, become a part of a void — and a horrifying thought hit her. What if she had just asked the Room to Vanish them all?
::
There was a cool breath of air. She felt it breeze through her black hair and she inhaled. It was fresh air. Though air within Hogwarts wasn't thick or unpleasant by any means, it certainly wasn't like this. She wasn't sure if the air outside of Hogwarts was this clean.
Knowing all this was the result of some massive problem she had likely created, and not wanting to deal with it quite yet, she remained face down in the grass. But her moment of peace was ruined. Not by the groan that she had wanted to let loose, but by the voices in the distance.
"Anna?!" one of them said. "Anna! Where did she go?"
Anna propped herself up on her elbows and sighed. With her wand still in her hand, she gave it a little twirl upward. Gold sparks erupted from the tip and flew up, fairly high, only stopping due to the treetops barring them passage to the sky.
And with that, she realized that it was fairly dark in this forest.
"Anna?"
Not as though it was night, but as though it was sunny and the treetops simply weren't fond of sharing the sunlight.
"Anna, is that you?"
"What the hell happened? Are we in the Forbidden Forest?"
"What if that's not her?"
Anna made her way toward the voices.
As someone very familiar with the Forbidden Forest, though, she could safely say that this was most definitely not it. Regardless of the vibe the name gave, the Forbidden Forest didn't necessarily feel forbidden. It certainly didn't feel evil, Anna thought as she took in more of her surroundings.
It was a forest, but the trees were rather spread out. They were thick, each of them, thick as a bus, perhaps, and there was about twenty to thirty feet of space between each one. But it wasn't that which caught Anna's attention, nor the roots that went up and down from the dirt like one of those classic paintings of sea serpents in waters, nor was it the eerie mist that settled all around her, trapped by the ground and the nearly impenetrable treetops.
It was the unnatural feeling of dread that unnerved her.
After passing by a few trees, she saw them, all together next to a tree, some leaning or sitting on one of its roots sprouting from the ground. Many of them looked frightened. Hermione saw her first.
"Anna!" She had twigs in her bushy hair. "Thank goodness. What happened? Where are we? Why weren't you with us? We all appeared here fairly close together, we thought that maybe you had stayed behind —"
"Hermione, enough," Anna said, reaching the group. "I'm fine. We're fine."
She said this mostly for the likes of the Creevey brothers, both of whom looked terrified.
"But where are we?" Hermione took a look around, as though the answer would be engraved into one of the trees. "This isn't the Forbidden Forest, is it?"
"Nah," said Fred.
"If it was," said George, "we'd know, trust us."
"Yeah," said Ron, "we'd know too. We've been in there enough."
Anna dropped to her knees, placed her wand on the ground, and pushed her fingers into the dirt. It felt different from the Forbidden Forest as well. The Forbidden Forest's dirt pulsed with a certain kind of magic, not clean but not dirty, something like tap water, and this was not it. This dirt felt like poisoned water.
"Are you communicating with the forest?"
Anna looked up at Luna. "What? Of course not."
"Oh." Luna looked genuinely disappointed. "I thought you were."
Anna shook her head with dismissal and looked toward Hermione.
"Hermione," she said, "do you know of any spell that'll tell us where we are?" Hermione shook her head. "Then Fred, George." The twins raised their eyebrows, looking ready to do whatever she asked. "Could you — actually, you two and Angelina and Alicia. You two girls can Apparate as well, yes?"
They both nodded.
"Excellent," Anna said. "Can one of you — or all four of you — or just one, any one of you — Apparate to Hogsmeade or something?"
Fred frowned. "We could try. But if we're really far away, and we try to Apparate that far…"
George made a grim noise of agreement. "We'll splinch ourselves, no doubt about it."
"Damn it." Anna stood and looked around. "Nothing for it then. I asked the Room for a solution, it gave us this. Whether or not I buggered things up remains to be seen..."
"What now?" someone asked.
Smith opened his mouth, but a quick flick of Anna's eyes toward him shut him up before he made his snide remark.
"Well," she said, "first, we need to know if this is everyone."
"It is," Hermione said. "I counted." She began pointing to everyone. "All four Weasleys, you, me, Luna, the Creeveys, our three Chasers, Dean, Seamus, Lee Jordan, the Patils, Lav and Nev, Cho, Hannah and Susan, Smith, and Greengrass and Davis."
"Saving us for the last, Granger?" Daphne Greengrass said, with halfhearted disdain.
"Where's Edgecombe?" Anna asked, looking through them all.
"Hmm," said Seamus, sneering. "How convenient."
"She said she had things to do," Cho said defensively.
"Like snitch on us?" Seamus shot back.
Bang!
Everybody jumped.
Anna lowered her wand, glowering at Seamus and Cho. "Enough, you two. We're in the middle of bloody nowhere, this isn't the place. We should keep quiet."
"And we'll do that by sounding like explosions?" Smith said, his lip curling.
"If I bring anything's attention upon us," Anna growled, "then we'll use you as bait first, Smith."
"First?" whimpered Dennis Creevey.
Anna sighed deeply, enough to visibly lift her chest, and closed her eyes while the others kept talking.
Something was seriously wrong. She was rifling through her memory to think of any other magical forest in England — this place was magical — but could not think of any. Had she ignored too much in school, or were there truly no other magical forests in the country? If so, if her guess was correct, then it was entirely possible that they had been transported to another country.
"Can't Anna send one of those Patronus messengers?"
The Black Forest in Germany, perhaps? It wasn't necessarily magical in the same sense that the Forbidden Forest was, but it did have magical creatures in it. Vampires, bowtruckles, erklings, and the like. She couldn't remember what other things lay in the Black Forest, but if this was it, she wasn't particularly worried. She doubted it would be as dangerous as the Forbidden Forest.
"...Transfigure something into an owl and send it with a letter?"
"No, no, our owls are magical and you can't create magic like that. It's one of Gamp's Laws of Elemental Transfiguration!"
"What about Anna?"
"What? Stop putting her on a pedestal, she can't defy the laws of magic!"
She heard something just then. A branch, a tree, something wooden, creaking and groaning in a way that was not natural, as though someone, or something, was bending it deliberately.
And then there were crows.
A whole murder of them, big and black, cawing, appearing from seemingly nowhere other than simply above. The screams from the less brave of the D.A. echoed as the crows swooped down and flew right into their group.
Anna swiped her wand at them — "Immobulus!" — and every one of them stopped in mid-flight and fell to the ground. The D.A. stared at their immobilized forms, a few of them still shaking, many turning their heads swiftly left and right.
"What was that?" Ron asked, flabbergasted.
Hermione stepped closer to Anna, her wand pointing at the crows. "Why did they attack like that? Crows don't do that."
Anna felt uneasy as she looked around and the rest began talking again. Hermione was right. Crows didn't do that. Maybe on their own, if one got too close to their young, but not as a whole group, suddenly, out of nowhere, for no particular reason. She suddenly wished she hadn't put off learning permanent protective enchantments.
She waved her wand in an uneven circle, letting loose her Patronus, a silvery doe. Everybody stopped talking at the sight of it, but she, Anna, spoke:
"Professor Dumbledore," she began, "I... well, I need help. We need help. You see, I was in the —" She cut herself off. Informing Dumbledore of what had happened, including the fine details, it could all be very bad.
"Anna?"
She looked to Hermione. "If Umbridge is with Dumbledore now, I can't send this Patronus." She gave a swing of her wand and the Patronus vanished. "No, Professor Dumbledore won't do." She recast the Patronus and began again. "Sirius, listen, put down the dumplings and pay attention. You know that dueling club thing I started? Yeah, well, Umbridge found out about it, but that room I used? The Room of Requirement? I asked it to hide us... and, well, it sent all of us into some forest. Not the Forbidden Forest." She hesitated, unsure if she should say in front of the others that she was fairly certain they were no longer in the country. "Send a Patronus back, preferably telling me how the hell to figure out where I am."
Satisfied, she let the doe run off. Only it stopped some twenty feet away, turning its head left and right, apparently confused as to where to go. Anna frowned. What was it doing? It had never had this problem before. These Patronuses needed one to know where the person was, so did this mean Sirius wasn't at Grimmauld Place at the moment?
They all stood there, watching her Patronus repeat its head turning, and doing absolutely nothing else. A full minute passed. Murmuring began when the second minute came by. Anna, feeling ever more uneasy, approached her doe.
It was almost robotic, the swiveling of its head. It was as though it was stuck on a loop and when she tried to command it to move, it would not do so. And when she summoned another Patronus and repeated the message, it did the exact same thing. Stood there, looking back and forth, eerily.
A tingle shot up Anna's spine.
This was bad.
If Sirius wasn't at Grimmauld Place, the Patronus would go there to check itself and then come back to her. This wasn't the case; it wasn't even bothering to go check. It was as though it couldn't go check.
Then she heard it again. A branch, a tree, something wooden, creaking and groaning in a way that was not natural, as though someone, or something, was bending it deliberately. And in the distance, just barely visible through the mist, something stood.
She froze, but the others, still whispering and muttering, were apparently oblivious.
The thing — for she knew not what else to call it — was tall. At least nine feet. It looked like some kind of forest scarecrow, with a deer skull for a head and limbs like branches.
And the way it moved — it was so unnatural it sent shivers down her spine. It walked near the tree closest to it, keeping its sinister face staring in her direction.
Anna had the terrible feeling that it was gazing straight into her soul, and that she was being judged.
When it disappeared behind the tree, it did not come back out. Hermione noticed Anna's petrified state.
"Anna?"
"We need to go," Anna whispered.
"Yes, but where? What direction do — Anna, what is it? What did you see?"
At Hermione's words, the rest of the group quieted. But Anna didn't answer her. She pointed her wand at a nearby tree, gave it a twist, and said, "Show me where the nearest safe location is."
The tree began groaning, deeply, as though in pain. Anna twisted her wand further, inducing more apparent agony, before the tree gave in and a branch shifted to point to her left.
"How did you do that?" Hermione asked instantly after Anna put her arm down. "What spell was that?"
"I was burning it from the inside."
"But how did you know? Where did you learn that?"
"Just now." She turned back to the group. "Listen — listen, I said — we're being watched — stalked — possibly hunted." Hermione grasped her left arm tight, so Anna used her wand to point in the direction the tree had. "I'll lead the way, but you're all to follow, got it? Stay close. Those who can perform the Shield Charm stick to the outside, those who can't on the inside."
There were a lot of mutters and questions, but they did as she asked, and Anna took the lead. Her wand remained out and ready, the Shield Charm on the tip of her mind.
As they walked, the forest around them creaked and groaned, something noticed by the whole company. It was becoming livelier. The transition reminded Anna of herself in the morning, lethargic at first, but eventually up enough to annoy Hermione and jinx annoying little first years. It was the next step that worried her though:
She usually went and ate afterward.
Anna quickened her pace. "Nope, nope, nope."
"Anna?" Hermione said from next to her.
"I think this forest's going to eat us." Despite the tension, Hermione snorted with laughter. Anna, however, was not amused. "It's not funny!"
"Sorry," Hermione said, "you just said it with such seriousness that I couldn't help myself."
Eventually they came across not exactly what Anna had been hoping for, but something good enough. A cave. It would at least provide safety in the form of walls and only one entrance for anything malicious to enter through. Or so she hoped. It was the forest that led her here, but the same forest she wished to protect them from.
She hurried them all inside anyway. "Go on, in, in — Creevy, quit trembling and — oh, for the love of — George, carry him inside, will you? Hermione, go throw some bluebell flames around, light the place up — and can you make them a warm color? Blue won't boost anyone's spirits."
Once they were all ushered in, Anna took one last look outside. Her heart nearly jumped into her throat. That thing, unnatural in its shape and movement, was standing some few trees away, still as a statue, staring.
Anna almost lifted her wand to try and attack it, but she had no idea if simple fire would affect it. And even if it did, was it worth the risk of a counterattack? No, she decided, it wasn't. She'd set up a guard for when they slept — it would probably just be her — and would leave it at that.
"Anna?" came a voice from within the cave.
"Yeah," she answered, not taking her eyes off the creature. "I'm coming."
She entered the cave, which was lit with floating orange flames and already had Transfigured cushions and beds and whatnot lying around. Grabbing a chair, Anna settled down by the entrance, her wand in her hand, her mind whirling, and prepared for a long night.