A/N: Again, sorry this is late, despite everything I seem to have rather less time for writing than I would like. I hope anyone reading this enjoys it. Much of this chapter owes thanks to 'The Welsh Incident'.

A Stranger

The last few pages of Durnford's reports are incoherent. Durnford refers to people who never existed and seems to struggle with his own memories. The only constants which runs throughout is his obsession with reaching the castle and the sense that something worse than the so called 'Whistlers' was closing in on him and his company. The final pages are covered in illegible scrawl and tangled sketches of faces.

Notes of Sebastian Dale on Michael Durnford's journal from the second expedition.

The boy paused and then pushed open the door, holding it open for a moment behind him before he turned and lifted the latch to shut the door. The aurors, Pilgrim noted, had drawn their wands. Clara had taken a step forward, trying to position herself in front of Luci.

'Sir, I am going to have to ask you to raise your hands. Place them on the door,' Morgan said. The sound of her voice rasped over the tension which filled the room.

Harry moved slowly, gingerly laying his hands against the wood of the door, left hand flat, right hand oddly curled. Pilgrim watched, rolling his own wand between his fingers. He had expected the boy to run, there had been the look of a wild animal in his half-starved features. Even now, as the boy's hands pressed to the wood Pilgrim could make out the tendons on his wrists, pulled taut above the ragged sleeves of a grimy robe. The boy was an unhealthy grey, though whether from ill-health or filth Pilgrim was not certain. The reek of old, dried sweat suggested the latter.

Theo moved forward, gingerly, at a motion from the captain – handing her his wand as he did so. Patting down the boy he drew a dark wand with a decoration of rough holly leaves around the hilt from a pocket. Pilgrim twitched involuntarily as Theo tossed it to Morgan. His hand rose reflexively, before he controlled himself.

'Yes, Mr Pilgrim?' Morgan asked, interpreting the motion as a request to speak.

'Forgive me, Captain, but might I inspect him? Our mutual friend gave me a method to identify Potter,' Pilgrim said. 'It might be possible to ensure he is not a … manifestation of some other intelligence.'

'Potter?' Morgan's eyes flicked to the boy, 'Merlin's beard. Very well. Potter, I warn you, interfere with this and we'll treat you as a hostile: lethal force will be used.'

Theo stepped back, Pilgrim met his eyes for a moment, rifling through the surface of his mind: concern, fear, a memory of a girl in a chamber not dissimilar to this one mixed with melancholy. Pilgrim pulled away, suppressing the shudder of revulsion.

Pilgrim approached Potter carefully, watching for any sign the boy was going to turn on him. He was scrawny and hunched, his dark hair long, land and tangled with signs of a rough trimming here and there.

'Hold one arm behind you,' Pilgrim ordered. The boy moved gradually, as if intent on not startling them. Pilgrim suppressed an unexpected twinge of nerves and reached out one pale finger to the boy's ashen palm. He mantled his movements with his cloak, hiding the details from the aurors as naturally as he could. 'This may sting a little,' he warned. The boy nodded.

His finger brushed the boy's palm and he hissed in pain as the contact seared him. He drew back his hand with a wince, examining the fingertip. It had turned a glossy white as if burnt and scarred. He had, it seemed, been correct. The old magic still recognised the touch of his soul, even from another universe. The blood in his veins seemed to have prevented serious damage though. As he watched, lost in the moment, the white faded leaving only a faint tracery of lines over his fingerprint, like cracks in the glass.

'Well?' Morgan asked behind him.

'One moment, please,' he said, 'Can the boy turn around?'

'Potter, turn, keep your hands raised,' Morgan ordered, 'Remember, our wands are on you. No funny business.'

Pilgrim took a step backwards. Harry turned slowly; his hands raised to the height of his ears. His cheeks and eyes were hollow and painted with deep shadows above a young man's peach-fluff beard. Pilgrim met the blank gaze as it swept across the room and he tested the shallows of the boy's mind. Or at least he intended to.

He stood at the edge of a cast and empty frozen sea. Dark waves hung, frosted with icy tears as they rolled in upon a beach of grey slate. Pilgrim looked about himself. He was alone. Behind him loomed cliffs which looked as if they had stood there from the beginning of the world. Above the black sky was pierced with brilliant pinpricks of white light. He took a step forward.

The spell broke and he found himself standing with the taste of blood on his tongue and a sharp pain in his lip where he had bitten himself.

'I think it is Mr Potter,' Pilgrim found himself saying, 'at least physically. We'll need more tests in a controlled environment to be certain. Forgive me, I find myself taxed beyond endurance … I will sit.'

The aurors relaxed slightly as Pilgrim crept over to a corner and lowered himself to the ground. His limbs ached as if he had been running for hours and he shivered with a chill he had not felt in the room before, pulling his cloak tightly around his shoulders. The boy seemed a little confused, shaken even, but if he had shared Pilgrim's experience, he hid it better.

The aurors did not return the boy's wand, but after a few minutes of further diagnostic spells they offered him food. He took it warily, as if expecting it to vanish or be withdrawn and bit into it gingerly. He only ate a little before storing the remainder in some pocket of his robe.

'You're real then?' He asked, and despite their examination and prodding he seemed unsure about it. 'We haven't seen tricks like you before.'

'We're real. We've come to get you and everyone else here out,' Luci said. She had been designated spokesman by Morgan, who Pilgrim thought had probably recognised that her own brusque tone was probably not the right approach for a traumatized child.

'Why now?' Harry asked after a momentary pause.

'We're the third expedition, did you ever see any of the others?' Luci asked gently.

Harry shook his head. 'Only three? In all these years?'

Luci's eyes flicked to Morgan who dipped her head in permission to continue. 'Years, Harry? You don't mind if I call you Harry, do you?'

He shrugged. 'We think so, but …' he waved his hand towards the window and the constant night beyond. 'It is hard to tell when that never changes. The clocks fell out with each other. They aren't to be trusted. We did our best to count.'

'It hasn't been long outside. Perhaps you could tell us what happened,' Luci suggested.

'Not here. You've been luck, but we're outstaying out welcome. Can't you feel it?' He asked, looking round at each of them.

There was a silence as, Pilgrim supposed, the auror's thoughts turned inwards. For himself he was examining the boy. It was hard to tell with the dust and grime and hunger lying heavily on him, but years certainly looked possible. The patchy peach fuzz of a young man's beard clung to his cheeks in places and there were the cuts of an unsure hand when it came to shaving. Glancing down at the boy's hands it was clear why that was. He had not noticed, too fixed on the left hand, which the boy had offered, but the right was a mess with twisted fingers. They had been healed poorly and fused to one another in places. When set against the door it had been fairly unnoticeable, but now curled in the boy's lap the damage was painful to see.

'You need to follow us,' Harry said, and although he looked so young there was a weight of sympathy for them in the tone. 'Perhaps you can help us get out but say out here and they'll pick you off. The safe hours are almost gone. We saw you leave one of your company below, he'll be coming for you by now.'

'Were you the watchers on the wall last night?' Morgan put in.

He shook his head but offered no further information.

'Help me up on your shoulders,' Luci told Theo, 'I want to try looking out of the window.'

Pilgrim half turned to point out that the window was too high, but it seemed now that he had been wrong. The thought brought no comfort to him. He watched as Theo squatted down for Luci to hop onto his shoulders and then with an effort rose, gradually turning red in the face. Clara and Morgan watched Harry; they gripped their wands tightly, their knuckles turning white on the wood.

'Can you see the courtyard, Lu?' Clara asked.

'Give me a moment. I think so. Merlin curse it, I can't see them,' Luci said, struggling to balance as Theo braced himself against the wall.

'As in they've gone?' Morgan said as she stood up and began packing up their impromptu campsite.

'I don't know, the cloister roof would cover them, I think. You can let me down now Theo,' she said. He grunted and slowly began to lower himself.

'You'd never have been allowed to see. They're teasing you, making it fun,' Harry said tonelessly.

'Well, Mr Potter, if I were to follow you, where would you lead us?' Morgan asked. Pilgrim paid no heed to the remainder of the conversation, as soon as she had said that the decision had been made. It was not as if they truly had much of a choice: either they followed into the unknown, but to the object of their search, or they refused and sat until they were found or ran out of supplies. All the rest would be details.

Instead Pilgrim sat remembering what he could of these days. There were differences, of course, and a thousand years could dull the sharpest memory, but there had to be some piece of information that could help. This had been the year Dumbledore would have died, that much was obvious from the curse on his arm. Pilgrim's lips twitched in amusement at the thought that he had snipped that thread before it could come to fruition. A thousand years ago though he must have had some other intent other than outliving the old man. How though would he have entered the castle? The secret passages were watched and would no longer work now in any case. The students were the obvious choice, so weak, so easily moulded, Dumbledore would not have been able to make himself turn on one of them. They could not have opened the floo, though, and that was broken now in any case. He was pulled from his thoughts as Theo waved a hand in front of his eyes.

'Alright there, mate? The Cap says it is time to go,' Theo said.

Pilgrim blinked and nodded. He stood shaking the stiffness from his limbs. 'Of course. Just lost in memories.'

'I get it. This place conjures up a lot of them, even like this,' Theo said. For an awful moment Pilgrim expected the other man to clap him on the back, but thankfully he was mistaken and the rusty haired auror turned away, rolling his shoulders and taking a few warm-up breaths.

Harry moved towards the door they had not yet opened. 'Rule one, always move forward, never move back,' he said as he pulled it open and slipped out into the corridor beyond.

Leaving their sanctuary took more courage than Pilgrim had expected. He had long since steeled himself to such things, but he could feel the drop in the morale of the aurors, like walking from the shelter of porch into winter rain. They were in the belly of the labyrinth once more. With Harry as their guide though they did at least have a direction. He moved with surety and confidence as if he were simply taking a stroll through the castle as it had once been. At times he seemed to stop and wait as if listening or watching for signs that Pilgrim, at least, could not see. He took paths they might not have considered, scrambling over rumble, squeezing through cracks and taking turns that seemed until further inspection to be no more than shadows on the walls.

After some time, they came to a parapet over a short flight of stairs. At the bottom of the stairs ran a walkway. On one side ran the smooth stone of the castle wall, on the other delicate columns supported a slanted roof of wooden shingles. Beyond the columns the view faded into a haze which was not quite a fog. Instead it was a space where the air seemed to simply blur as if someone had split water over a painting. Soft blushes of vermillion and purple shot through with gold and copper light slowly swum backwards and forwards. Pilgrim squinted, there was something out there, just at the edge of sight, beginning to resolve itself.

'Don't look at it for too long, keep your eyes on the castle,' Harry warned.

Pilgrim pulled his eyes away from the colours. He blinked. His left eye felt sore and tired. Reaching up he wiped it, disturbed to notice a faint smear of blood on his palm.

'How much further?' Theo asked. The young man's voice was ragged, his spirits all too evidently fraying.

'Not much further now. There is only one more great trial left,' Harry reassured the auror. 'Beyond these columns there is a bridge. We must cross it. There isn't another way. Keep your eyes ahead. Don't look to the left or to the right until we are across. If we're lucky we'll all reach the other side.'

'What do you mean "if we're lucky?" What's there? Can we take another way?' Clara asked.

Harry shrugged. 'Not with this many of us.'

'What is there?' Morgan pressed. 'We're not going to just walk into a trap, Mr Potter.'

Harry gave a mirthless smile. 'You really don't have a choice, Captain. I could have led you into a dozen different places from which you'd never have escaped. The other ways are safe for one or two. More than that and we'll gather too much attention. This way … well at least there's a chance that it won't take a toll.' He turned and let himself drop over the edge of the parapet. By the time Pilgrim glanced over the edge he was already making his way down the steps.

They made their choice and followed him. Morgan first, then Luci and Clara. Theo waved Pilgrim forward and took up the rear. It was quiet. The only sound was that of their boots, and the boy's bare feet, on the flagstones. No sense of fear or joy or foreign emotion invaded Pilgrim's mind. Perhaps, he thought, whatever was here chose a single victim, maybe it was asleep or had some other reason for not attacking the seven of them.

He stumbled in his step for a moment and recounted. One, Theo (behind); two, Pilgrim himself; three, Clara; four Luci; five, Morgan; six Harry. So why had he thought seven? The walkway was coming to an end and beyond the seventh figure's shoulder he could make out steps running down the side of the castle to a narrow bridge of rain-slicked wood. He blinked. It was just beyond the boy's shoulder. There was no seventh.

Somewhere, far below the ramparts they walked beside, something howled. It was not a howl of pain or anger, hunger, or desire. It was a howl of pure and unadulterated loneliness. It might have been human, almost. There was no sign from any of the others that they had heard it. Each head was turned squarely to the fore: black, brown, grey, brown, blonde. Black, grey, brown, blonde. His eyes ached with fatigue and he could feel the dull ache of scar tissue around the spear wound. So many little wounds over the years. Even healed and invisible they still left their mark. Returning to castle had left its own wounds: it had once been home, the only true home he had ever known, yet now they were strangers to one another. In another millennium would he even remember it?

They were crossing the bridge and he had not realised it. It was darker here, against all reason. The night crowded close about them, but only as much as it ever would on a cloudy winter night. Their breath misted in the air like dragons' smoke. Harry walked forward slowly, brandishing his twisted hand. Their footsteps were silent now. Pilgrim did not look down, although he could feel the gaps between the boards of the bridge under his feet, and at the edge of hearing he could hear the creak of old and rotting planks.

He had expected hallucinations, torments, temptations, the usual panoply that any psychically powerful beast threw at the prey. He expected the bridge to bend away, vanish or change as they crossed. He expected pitch darkness, the slithering of horrors. There was nothing of the sort. The bridge stretched for about two-hundred yards and then came to an end. It ended on a quiet candle-lit corridor. Harry stopped and turned to watch the others finish the crossing.

Pilgrim stepped gratefully onto solid stone. He focused for a moment, examining the way for an instant for illusions, but all was solid and real. He stepped off the bridge, turning to apologise to Theo, but there was no-one there.

'Well then, Mr Potter, let's get this over with,' Morgan said. 'I for one could do with a good night's rest.'

'Sure.'

Pilgrim coughed, 'I assume that Theodore will not be joining us?'

Morgan looked at him. She seemed faintly bemused, 'Theodore, Mr Pilgrim?'

Behind her Harry simply shook his head. 'Keep up,' he said and turned away.

The hallway was in some way vaguely familiar. A long tapestry of trolls frozen in motion, with the magic's waning, and a battered wizard who seemed to be pulling at sheets of choreography. Harry gestured them to one side and then began to pace backwards and forwards. Too tired to question him they watched in silence. A door blossomed from the wood and Harry gave the first real smile Pilgrim had yet seen from him.

'Welcome to the Room of Requirement, the last safe place in Hogwarts,' he said.

That brought the itch of memory forwards again, but he was too tired to examine it for now. Instead he brushed the thought aside and followed into the room. As they passed through the door it sealed behind them, merging back into the wall. It was with boredom that Pilgrim threw up a shield which caught the pathetic rain of spells which fell upon them from behind walls of rough-hewn stone which seemed to have risen from the floor.

Harry threw up his hands, trying to shout over the hiss and crackle of spells. After a few more seconds of spell fire Pilgrim felt confident enough that he knew where the casters were that he let the shield drop. Luci and Clara had put up their own shields whilst Morgan held her want to Harry's throat. The aurors looked at each other with exasperation as the school-children's curses splashed against their shields. They covered one another efficiently, deflecting anything unusually unpleasant.

Pilgrim yawned, beginning to disassemble the spells almost as soon as they left their casters' wands. He swept them out of the air contemptuously. He advanced, hovering a few centimetres over the floor, rising higher until he was over the barricades. A few neatly placed spells and a handful of wands were in his hands and a growing pile of defenders were neatly stacked to one side, bound in grey ropes.

'Anyone left hiding around the place should come out now. I am tired, I am bored and as you might deduce from the fact that your friends are merely unconscious, I have no particular wish to see any of you dead. Boy, tell your little chums to come out of the woodwork so that we can all please get somewhere tonight,' Pilgrim ordered.

The aurors, with Harry between them, advanced through the barricades. There was silence for a few moments and then a wand was tossed out from a pile of brik-a-brak which lay in a heap to one side of the room. Beyond the barricade it expanded outwards in to a vast, cathedral like space filled with mountains of items. There were mounds of books the size of small hills, layered with cheap and expensive jewellery, intermingled at random. Stuffed creatures prowled distant tumuli of rotting clothing, past rivers of broken and ancient weapons.

Out from behind a crag of broken desks and splintered stools limped a wizard Pilgrim assumed must have been Harry's age.

It took almost twenty minutes to reassure both the aurors and the children that neither side was a threat to the other. The children were pitiable, scarred, mutilated, and barely sane. There were twelve of them in total, though Pilgrim gathered that his company was the result of slow attrition, rather than the initial complement. He did not bother to listen to their names: they hardly seemed important.

The boy sat across the fire they had cobbled together from the mountains of broken desks. To his left sat a wizard with wild red hair who was missing a leg and part of his jaw, and who only spoke in rasping whispers; on his other side a witch with one eye who constantly took sticks of charcoal from the fire – no matter how they blistered her fingers – and drew compulsively on scraps of parchment which she stuffed into her robes with rapid jerky motions. The others were no better off, barring one witch with lank ginger hair who seemed unfazed, a Hufflepuff badge was pinned to her robe. It took Pilgrim several minutes to become sure that she had not blinked once.

One wizard, tall and lanky with the stringy growth of youth mixed with his starvation did not dig into the supplies brought by the aurors. Instead he stayed at the edge of the firelight gnawing on an old bone and occasionally his fingers, until the others gently teased his bleeding fingers away from his mouth.

'I suppose we might as well tell you what happened,' the boy said eventually over the flames as they burnt low. 'Before you finally came.'

There was a murmuring around the fire from the others. At first Pilgrim had been a little surprised that the untried boy should have weathered it better. Yet the more he watched the more convinced he became that there was something missing about him. The others leant towards him as if drawn in, but to Pilgrim it was as if they were children standing on the edge of a deep, deep well and staring hungrily into its depths.

The story itself was told in dribs and drabs, snatches of words. The boy told it plainly, skimming certain parts when they seemed to provoke agitation in his companions. His voice was empty as he related the events with some parts told by those witches or wizards who could still speak.

As they told their story the fire curled and flowed around the words showing in shadows and dancing sparks their trials.

It began with a storm on a November afternoon. The mountainous clouds had rolled in a crackling front, mirroring the Scottish mountains below. Fringed in greens and purples and shot through with bursts of lightning they swept over the Forbidden Forest. Raindrops fell hard against the windows, until the ancient panes were ringing.

Two of the elder students, who had been in the greenhouses had been in the greenhouses. A silvery hawk had appeared, materialising through the panes of glass. Only a strangled cry for help escaped its beak and then it dissolved into a quickly thinning mist. Professor Sprout had ended the class early as through the gloom and pouring rain they began to hear an unnatural screaming arising from the forest near the gates. She chivvied them back to the castle, ordering them to the common rooms whilst she sent patroni rushing away through the castle. They had made their way to the common rooms where the younger students were already stepping into fresh green flames, but before they had been able to themselves, their fires had leapt upwards in purple leaping shapes devouring the seventh years who had been jostling for the next place.

Others took up the story for them. Across the castle teachers, ghosts, and statues ad rushed to the defence of the school. The Hufflepuffs had been almost surrounded by wailing House Elves too terrified to speak, though a few had held their courage sufficiently to vanish from the castle carrying students with them.

Most of the students left by then had been seventh years and a handful of sixth years. Outside the castle walls they could hear the crash of thunder. The Ravenclaws and Gryffindors, high in their towers, had watched as a small figure advanced towards the school. Around it, above it, and behind it, flowed trails of iridescent dust and where it passed the dull shades of late autumn were stripped away to be replaced with fresher colours. The world twisted like smoke under the veils of shivering rain.

'There was a smell that came with it,' Harry said. 'Like gone-off milk.'

'Or honey in the summer,' another boy put in.

'It was everywhere, people panicked. We ran out of the common rooms. The doors to the castle were straining against something. Then they crumpled like paper in the rain,' the witch with the Hufflepuff badge said softly.

'What was it? Did you see? What came with the storm? Dragons, giants, demons?' Morgan asked.

'Nothing at all like that.'

'What was it then?'

'All manner of strange things. Things I had never seen, heard or read about,' said the witch with one eye. She brushed the hair from her face, leaving a long streak of charcoal over her cheek and stared into the fire.

'Describe one of them, any of them!' Morgan pressed.

The witch shook her head, 'I can't.' she let her head drop for a moment and then she was scribbling over the parchment once more. Her robe bulged and rustled with the scraps of torn vellum as she moved.

'Apart from Hermione and Jacob none of us, who are left, saw them or what came into the castle. We heard from a few of the seventh years who had decided to try and help the teachers, and who managed to escape for a little while, that McGonagall did her best to hold the gates. The castle wouldn't let us get down to them though, or perhaps it wouldn't let them get up to us. After a while though, the screaming stopped,' Harry said and then he fell silent. 'We're sorry. Can someone else …'

The others took up the story again piecing it together in bits and pieces from their experiences. After the first assault there had been a great quiet which fell over the castle. Even the ghosts were gone. The students left crept through the corridors and halls, overwhelmed by a sense of foreboding and fear. Whoever had come to the castle had left. Behind them they left chaos, fear, and isolation. The seventh years and sixth years gathered, and at first, they discarded the old house divisions. There were almost fifty of them in total.

They began by waiting. Expecting someone to arrive. Around them the castle began to change. They had not noticed it at first. Then when alone they started to find themselves walking down halls that they did not recognise. There were rooms which tried to tempt them to enter. Queer music and laughter came from places where there was no one. People who wandered alone no longer returned. A week after the attack they sent out a group to try and reach Hogsmeade. Only the wizard with the red hair who was missing part of his jaw had managed to return.

'After that Sam and Harry largely took charge,' a Hufflepuff witch with scraggly blonde hair said. As she spoke fissures of broken skin ran across her face, weeping blood before they sealed moments later.

'Sam?' Luci asked, she seemed to have kept closer notes on the names of the survivors than Pilgrim and was looking around questioningly at the circle.

There was just a shake of the head from Harry. 'We weren't much good as leaders. It wasn't long before there was an argument. We broke and our group came here. We saw them occasionally for a while, but we had bigger problems. We hadn't thought through the problems of food. The castle might as well have been under siege. There are some … surprising areas of Hogwarts, and there were more and more by then. I think they might have been trying to lure us out. We were barely scrapping by. It wasn't long till we thought of eating the owls. They've, though owls aren't quite as good as chickens for farming. You get used to the meat after a while.'

'Survival has occupied us for years. Every day they lay new traps for us. The castle does what it can to warn us, but there were more of us once. They even sent ones who look liked us to trick us. Some were just taken,' the blonde Hufflepuff said quietly.

'We found the other group's camp a few weeks ago,' a wizard cut in. A curving, pale scar twisted over dark skin and moved as if alive as he spoke. 'But it was empty. Everyone was gone. They hadn't taken anything with them.'

Pilgrim waited until half-way through his watch to pretend to have fallen asleep. The aurors and the students had come to an agreement that one from each group should take the watches simultaneously. Pilgrim had acquiesced. Now though, one hand curled surreptitiously around his wand he wove and illusion from the shadows and the embers of the fire over himself, leaving an image of himself falling asleep beside the fire as he cast a spell of disillusionment upon himself and stood up silently, stepping to one side to observe. He hesitated between wands, though eventually he chose the ebony wand for the time being over the other wand which still lay deep within his robes.

Fifteen minutes later he began to feel that he had been unduly paranoid. The student, the red-headed Hufflepuff, who had still not shown any sign of closing her eyes or of sleeping watched silently, occasionally prodding the fire back into life. Still, it was perhaps worthwhile to explore. Leaving a beacon for himself embedded into the fire he began to pick his way amongst the mountains of rubbish. He tried to pick the road of least opposition. The tracks the students had made weaved backwards and forwards past mounds of rotting papers, broken gifts, and even a tall and ornate cabinet.

He was considering turning around when it found it. There was a space, around the size of a large room, completely cleared of all items. Under the light of his wand he could make out crude paintings on the stones, birds, beasts and plants, he thought at first. However, the more he looked the more he realised that they were not wholly one thing or another. They bled into each other, as did the materials used to make them. There was a smell in the clearing too, like mud under a hot sun, or rotting fruit. It made him gag and want to turn away as he looked down on a drawing of a crawling, feathered ant with the face of a child which swarmed over a rabbit which sat poised amongst poisonous drooping vines, human fingers gripping long a plume of feathered flowers.

There was a noise in the shadows, and he froze, looking about him. There was a feel of breath on the back of his neck and he spun round. The witch with one eye stood behind him, motionless, watching, seeing through the illusion he had put upon himself it seemed. He looked at his arm, it was still utterly invisible, even to him.

She took a step forward and he was forced to move backwards. Her eyes moved away from him and she knelt, pulling out the reams of parchment she had stuffed into her robe as she began to work upon the drawings with ferocious intensity, her face filled with a nigh religious fervour. He wondered whether she had in fact seen him. They said that the mad saw where the sane did not. A few minutes later he walked away, re-joining the camp in time for the next watch. He realised as he was trying to force himself to sleep that when he had sat down again the witch had already been sleeping in her bedroll beside the fire, between the boy and the red headed wizard.