Summary: The entirety of the 6th year Gryffindors, Luna Lovegood, Ginny Weasley and a 6th year Slytherin named Amber find themselves in the Forest of Lost Souls, fighting to survive the winter and the forest, all the while trying to find the way out. All they want is to get out of the supposedly inescapable forest and go home. Add a injured SeverusSnape and an aging Minerva McGonagall to the mix, and you've got choas,fun, and struggles glore. Then again,such things seem rather normal for Hogwarts...
There is a forest in Britain. It is not a big forest, as forests go, but it is yet a forest. Very few know what is in this forest. A good half of the population is unaware of the forest's existence entirely.
You see, this forest was a very special forest. It was a magical forest. As such, only people of the magic world, witches, wizards, vampires and werewolves, knew of the forest's existence. Non magic, oft times called muggles, knew not a thing about it.
Given the ways this particular forest operated, you would think it prudent to actually tell the muggles something. Just because they did not know of it didn't mean they couldn't enter it. The forest wasn't picky about who came and went, and magical talents were not necessary to enter. As it was located on muggle land, it was entirely probable that one could accidentally stumble upon it.
They could very well enter, and that would be a bad thing indeed.
Wizards knew of it and avoided it like the plague. Many oft times found it a convenient way of disposing of their enemies without the hassle of doing it themselves. Because with this forest, the minute you stepped into it, you were lost.
Goodbye, you're doomed. Nice knowing ya.
Rather aptly, this forest was called the Forest of Lost Souls. And as far as magical folk were concerned, it was a death trap. The minute they heard you had gone in, well, they were planning your funeral.
This is why you would think it prudent to warn the muggles. Many innocents went into that forest and none came out. It would be sensible, would it not, to tell the muggles of it and warn them to stay away. A young muggle child would think it an ordinary forest, and wander in. Once they realized the true magical nature of the place, it would be far too late.
Yet the muggles remained clueless, and many missing people were never found because of that forest. Most wizards, at least purebloods, would rejoice. But you would honestly think that many of the wizards, who did not believe in the prejudiced killing of muggles, would like to save many muggle lives. It would be a simple task to do that. Just warn them about that forest.
They never did. And it didn't look like they were ever going to.
The forest was complicated in its simplicity. Magical dampening fields, naturally produced by the abnormally magically saturated forest, kept most wizards cut off from all things magical not within its trees. Therefore, it took forever for them to replenish whatever magic stores they use up. This was the main reason why no one was ever seen again, as far as wizards were concerned. Most died within hours, using up all their magic trying to escape the seemingly inescapable forest. This led to a magical coma that could last anywhere from 5 minutes to forever.
If it didn't kill them first.
The coma was what really caused the problems. Animals did live in that forest, even if they were unknown, and they did eat humans. In their magical comas as it were, the poor wizards lost in the forest were sitting ducks.
They would never even have a chance. Not that they would be able to defend themselves anyway. Even muggleborns quickly learn to depend far too much on magic.
May God have mercy on those poor souls. The muggles that got lost within the Forest of Lost Souls stood even less of chance. They were animal fodder then minute they stepped in.
May God have mercy on them, too.
The forest seemed inescapable because it practically was. If the souls who entered did not kill themselves using magic, they couldn't possibly escape anyway. The forest had tons and tons of magical portals, but only one led in. Therefore, only one led out. But good luck trying to find it while crossing about ten million other portals that will instantly transport you to any number of places in the forest, including right into the middle of a large river.
Wizard and muggle alike would have better luck finding that needle in the haystack everyone seems to know about.
This is why no one who ever went into that forest ever came out alive. They were animal fodder, either because they set themselves up using magic or ran straight into them while looking for the way out. Or they were muggle.
The Forest of Lost Souls has been accurately named. But on all the wrong beliefs.
Magical folk believed it impossible to live and escape that forest. But this was not true. If you knew had to work it, you could easily survive for forever in that forest, you just needed the materials and the knack of knowing portal locations and where they led. Eventually, if you decided to search, you could find and use the exit, because you'd be surviving within the forest as you went.
It was a long time before this was proved. Centuries passed, and many lives lost within the portal filled trees, but it was eventually proved that one could survive and escape the forest that Death seemed to have a personal summer home in. One he visited winter, spring and fall too.
Believe it or not, it was proved by a 50 some year old woman, a man that was once her student and became her colleague, and a handful of teenagers that were at one point their students.
After their adventures in the forest, they couldn't help becoming so much more.
It started first with the teenagers.
You see, up somewhere in Scotland there was a large castle that, for ten months out of the year, became a school for witches and wizards in training. A magic school. It was famous around Magical Britain, and many other magical European countries, and was known as Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
Getting to this school was simple. Every year at September First, students both old and new would gather at Kings Cross train station in London and take the Hogwarts Express, a magical train on the magical platform Nine and Three Quarters. (Yes I know, a fractioned platform number. Don't ask me why, I do not know. Whoever came up with it forever ago probably was in bad need of a padded room. And a nice, comfy straight jacket.)
The thing about the Hogwarts Express, however, is that in order to get to Hogwarts, it had to bypass the Forest of Lost Souls.
This is how the whole thing started. Well, half of it anyway.
The other half is quite the history lesson. Listen closely and you shall hear…no, not the tale of the midnight ride of Paul Revere. However, you will learn how the orphaned wizard Tom Marvolo Riddle became the Dark Lord Voldemort, whom everyone is so afraid of they won't even speak his name. (Which is stupid, by the way. He will not come if you say his name, only house elf names are summons, and Voldemort may be a demon, but his far from being a house elf.)
Tom was never happily treated at the orphanage where he grew up. As such, when he got his Hogwarts letter at 11, as all magical children in the UK do, he wasn't exactly the nicest or warmest of persons. Once at school he was sorted into his House. There are four Houses at Hogwarts, each acting a surrogate family for its members, named after the school's four founders. They are Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff and Slytherin.
Tom was sorted into Slytherin. Which, by the way, has a reputation as being rather seedy. (The wizards call it Dark.)
During his seven years there, Tom learned that he was the last heir and blood descent from Salazar Slytherin himself, the Founder. He honed his special family ability, the snake tongue, Parseltongue, and killed a muggleborn girl with the help of the basilisk left behind in a secret chamber under the school by his ancestor.
Then he graduated, and began delving into the Dark Arts. The bad magic.
Many years later, Tom Marvolo Riddle has disappeared, and in his place stood the Dark Lord Voldemort. His followers believed as he did, that muggles and muggleborns were filth and needed to be cleaned. The whole world needed to be purged of their "tainted" presence. They were called Death Eaters.
In retrospect, it is a shame Voldemort and his Death Eaters did not use the forest. No doubt it would've been proved escapable long ago.
In the terror and chaos he and his followers created, an opposition was created. Albus Dumbledore, an aging man who had defeated the last Dark Lord, been Tom's Transfiguration teacher and was current Headmaster of Hogwarts, gathered his own followers and created the Order of the Phoenix. Soon, everybody was joining sides.
This war raged for years before finally coming to an end. It was a very surprising end too. Voldemort went after Dumbledore's top people. The powerful pureblood James Potter and his muggleborn wife Lily Potter nee Evans.
With the help of Peter Pettigrew, who became the only soul to know of the Potters' location when they and their infant son Harry went into hiding under a powerful charm, hiding their location literally inside Peter, Voldemort attacked the house on Halloween.
He met little resistance, as neither James nor Lily were quite that powerful enough to stop him, only hinder him. He killed them both. Then he attempted to murder Harry, who he had good reason to believe was prophesied to be able to kill him.
His plan backfired. He shot the fatal Killing curse at baby Harry, but all Harry got was a lightening shaped scar on his forehead. Voldemort, however, received the miraculously rebounded curse and his body was destroyed, his soul fleeing while screaming in utter agony.
Long story short, Harry became the wizarding world's hero, the Boy-Who-Lived, and was sent to live with his muggle relatives. Voldemort spent the next 13 years attempting to come back but was defeated by Harry each time. Finally, when Harry was 14, he regained his body, and the next year, his revival was made public knowledge, after a full year of being denied of having come back.
Then the second war started in full. The summer following his public recognition things had gotten bad enough that the Hogwarts Express was heavily guarded, students checked as they passed and locked into compartments based mainly on class, with the door and window of each compartment warded so that nobody could get in.
The idiots didn't seem to realize that there was no way out, either.
Still, classes mingled. Harry's class was joined by a couple of girls from the year below them. No one noticed the young girl of the same class, but of different House (the students were arranged by year and House. Harry and fellows were Gryffindor, and the only one to stand out was one of the younger girls, who was in Ravenclaw.) also settling in.
It had only been a matter of minutes before the reformed Death Eaters attacked the train. Harry's compartment was at threat, and although the Death Eater couldn't through the wards, he was trying, and everyone knew he would eventually succeed.
They attempted to break the window, but everything seemed to fail against the wards. This was when they took notice of their silent companion, as the girl cursed and quickly seemed to look the window over. Everyone watched frantically, never minding her identity at the moment (They all hated her), as the girl quickly closed her eyes and made some fighting-style moves at a particular spot on the window.
It crumbled without any fight whatsoever.
At Harry's urging, they all went through the now broken window, Harry and the girl going last and shooting a few curses over their shoulders as the Death Eaters now entering their compartment as they ran.
In their terror, none of them noticed that they had run straight into the Forest of Lost Souls.
By the time they did, it was too late. And out of all of them, once they realized where they were, thanks to their savior from the train, only she remained calm and unconcerned.
She knew more then they thought. And she knew they would make it out alive. She herself would see to it, even if it killed her.
Thanks to her, they all did. And this here is their story.
Harry Potter and his friends did some truly amazing things over time, but this had to be the most amazing of them all.
Not only did they come back from the dead, they escaped, and escaped ALIVE, from the Forest of Lost Souls.
Interested? Want to hear the juicy details? Well then, turn the page. Click the mouse. However you are reading this, regardless of whether your muggle or wizard, werewolf or demon, if you want to read more, please continue onward.
I can assure you, as I write this now, that you won't regret it. There is plenty to satisfy your tastes. Adventure, most assuredly. Humor, its there.
More importantly, this is the tale of true survival, and the true blue bonds formed because of it.
The Forest of Lost Souls is aptly and appropriately named.
Not anymore.
There. Six whole pages of pure prologue. What do ya think? Please review and let me know!
Werewolf of Suburbia