Something Wicked
In a cabin in the woods, there lived a witch.
How many stories had Teddy devoured as a child that had opened with that concept? More than he was willing to count, that was for sure. From Hansel and Gretel to Baba Yaga, every single tale ended with one clear warning: do not wander off into the woods alone. All of those bedtime stories, all of those warnings begging to be heeded, yet what was Teddy doing?
With every gust of wind, the forest groaned around him as though bemoaning his stupidity. Old trees creaked, and their skeletal fingers reached for him, catching in his hair and his clothes, poking him and scratching at his face. They held him and trapped him and tried to push him away, but the branches were too frail. He broke free easily.
He was a man on a mission, and he would not be deterred.
Boy, the wind hissed as it wound its way through the trees and sent a shiver along his spine. Lost little boy.
All right, so maybe 'man' wasn't quite the word to describe him yet. He was a few years away from being of age, so, technically speaking, he was still a boy. But he wasn't lost. He knew where he was going—vaguely—and he knew that he was on the right track. The forest had told him as much.
He kicked up another pile of dead leaves as he stumbled past, half-blind in the low light. The midday sun could not reach the forest floor despite the lack of foliage, as though something else was preventing the light from entering this part of the woods. Wilted flowers lined the abandoned deer trail that Teddy walked along. The warm summer breeze was little more than a distant memory left behind several miles ago.
The forest had died here.
The smell of rotting leaves hung heavy in the air, and the only sounds to be heard came from the wind rattling through the corpses of trees. The stories would say that someone of great evil lived here and that their mere presence was enough to taint the land for miles around.
Teddy didn't believe that. Nothing could be that evil.
His torch flickered on and off.
Under other circumstances, he might have blamed the presence of strong magic—like how electronics didn't work at Hogwarts—but his watch had also stopped ticking. Magic wasn't known to do that, so there must have been another explanation. Maybe it was because of something Muggle instead, like magnetic fields or the Internet. Perhaps the same thing had caused the forest to die.
There was a perfectly reasonable, non-dark-magic-related explanation for all of this, and the tingling feeling that crept over Teddy's skin would not convince him otherwise. He knew who lived in these woods. He knew what she was capable of and, more importantly, what she would never do. She might have forgotten herself, but he hadn't, and he'd made her a promise years ago to never give up on her.
The wind's howl turned to a low moan as Teddy inched ever further until even the decaying leaves and flowers no longer kept him company. Only the trees remained, empty husks standing sentry over a haunted valley.
That was what had drawn Teddy here: the ghost stories. Tales of evil spirits that stole children from their beds and vanished entire hunting parties. They weren't part of legends or folklore. The accounts were recent, barely dating back seven years, coinciding with when Aunt Hermione had gone missing.
No one else used the word 'missing' when talking about Hermione, not even Uncle Harry. When anyone dared to speak of her, it was in hushed tones with worried glances cast over shoulders. She was 'out finding herself', they would say; she was 'confused and needed time to figure things out'. Teddy knew better than that. Aunt Hermione, who'd read him bedtime stories about witches and explained the fear and prejudice behind them, who'd bought him a new book every time she'd come to visit and smiled when he'd told her that he'd already finished the last one—his favourite aunt wouldn't go off to 'find herself'. She wouldn't have left like that without so much as a goodbye. So she had to be missing, and Teddy was going to find her and bring her home.
Thoughts of kidnappings and coercion entered his mind, and he tripped over a half-buried rock, regaining his balance a split-second before hitting the ground. That was when he saw it—the cabin, the one the stories spoke of; a building that had appeared overnight.
The roof sagged, boards covered the windows, and the porch slanted to one side. It looked as though a thunderstorm would flatten it in a second, but a few more steps disproved the dilapidation. The wooden walls had been made to appear rotten, but the timber was only covered by moss and darkened by time; the structure, although built at an odd angle, was sound enough that the gusts of wind didn't shake it. Someone had gone to great lengths to make this place seem as unwelcoming as possible, which didn't sound like Hermione.
No roads or trails ran to the cabin, so Teddy had to cut his own path through the dead bushes, which were even more intent on breaking his stride than the trees had been. They snagged in his clothes and wound around his feet, seeming to grow out of nowhere, their stems moving of their own accord just to trip him up.
When he finally jumped onto the tilted porch, he turned to throw a glare at the bushes but stopped mid-movement at a noise coming from within the cabin. It sounded like scratching, like nails against wood.
Goosebumps jumped across his arms, but he shook off the dark feeling that swept over his skin like a shadow. An old cabin filled with the sounds of tiny claws? Mice, voles, rats, rabbits, squirrels … The list of potential culprits extended to half of the creatures in this forest. Just because Teddy hadn't seen a trace of another living soul since stepping into the valley didn't mean that they hadn't been there, hiding from view.
He pocketed his torch and wrapped his fingers around the straps of his backpack, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet as he egged himself on towards that door. It took a strong mental heave to get him moving. With every step, his bladder tightened, and he almost stopped. He could go take a leak, and then come back, avoiding any stress-induced accidents, but a growing part of him knew that if he left now, he wouldn't be coming back. Not ever.
One last step landed him in front of the door. He used his momentum to throw up his fist and knock on the heavy planks of wood. The sound echoed through the empty forest like a clap of thunder. Teddy flinched at the loudness of it.
He waited, frozen in place, for an answer, but none came. Even the scratching had stopped.
With a shuddering breath, he rasped his knuckles against the door once more, but again, he was ignored. Maybe she isn't home, he thought, or perhaps she doesn't live here, and this is nothing more than an abandoned cabin.
That would make sense. Gran always told him not to jump to conclusions, but he could never help himself. Hermione had probably never set foot in these woods, and the ghost stories were just that, tales told to entertain teenagers around bonfires and keep little kids in line.
He should check, though, and make sure that the cabin really was abandoned so that he could start looking for Hermione elsewhere. His hand dropped to where the door handle ought to be. Only it wasn't there. With a frown, Teddy eased back and scanned the entire door, but there wasn't anything that even slightly resembled a handle anywhere, not even a hole that the handle might have fallen out of.
The windows on either side of the door were boarded up from the inside, making it impossible to pry away the planks.
Any trace of fear or trepidation bled away as curiosity overtook him, drowning out that small voice telling him to call it a day and leave before Gran figured out that he wasn't staying over at a friend's house. He spun on his heel, prepared to circle the cabin and find the way in, but the moment his back was turned, a long creak sounded behind him. The hairs on the back of his neck rose as a blast of cold air blew past him, rattling the bushes, which seemed to shrivel and retreat.
With an unsteady exhale, Teddy slowly turned around, his every muscle tensing so hard that it hurt.
The door stood open, but the entryway was dark and empty.
"Hello?" Teddy called. He hated how his voice shook.
Silence was his only answer. He took a step forward, and even the wind held its breath.
He edged into the cabin, stopping inside the doorway to let his eyes adjust to the gloom. There wasn't much to see. The front door opened onto a short hallway with no furniture and nothing adorning the walls. Two archways branched off at the end of the corridor, neither showing any signs of light. It was as cold as the grave inside the house, and Teddy shivered, his teeth chattering.
"Aunt Hermione?" he whispered, refusing to raise his voice in case he disturbed … something. A deep breath had him inhaling a lungful of dust, sending him into a coughing fit that ruined any chance of stealth.
Covering his mouth and nose with one hand, he drew the torch from his pocket with the other and gave a relieved sigh when a beam of light flashed off of those bare wooden walls. He stepped away from the door and into the hallway. The door slammed shut behind him.
He spun and waved the light around, but no one was there.
There were, however, bones nailed to the door.
Teddy stared at them, and then stared some more, his brain spinning.
Deer bones. They had to be.
The hairs on the back of his neck prickled again. Someone was watching him. He slowly looked up, his stomach sinking and his bladder giving way. The beam of light shone over the ceiling and bounced off of dozens of skulls—human skulls—white and gleaming and grinning down at Teddy like macabre Cheshire cats.
A whimper bubbled up from the back of his throat.
Then the light went out.
His sob was cut off before it could leave him, unable to get past the muscles in his throat as they tightened. Air wouldn't stay in his lungs, and he huffed out short panicked breaths. His eyes prickled and stung, and hot tears burned down his cold cheeks.
The scratching started up again like nails on a chalkboard and forced Teddy's frozen limbs back into action. He tried to skitter away from whatever stood in front of him, but it followed him, always staying between him and the front door. With nowhere else to go, Teddy ran and crashed into the opposite wall. He felt around and tipped headfirst through one of the archways. Falling in a heap on the floor, he inhaled more dust, only this time a rank smell mixed with a sickening sweetness clung to every particle.
Teddy gagged and scrambled away, but the scratching had once again stopped. He sat in the dark, listening and waiting, trying not to breathe in that awful smell.
A scrape and a flare, and suddenly light erupted all around, burning Teddy's eyes with its brightness, blinding him as much as the darkness had. He threw his arms over his face and curled in on himself just as a curse hit the back of his head.
Pain. His entire body radiated with it.
His head throbbed with the most splitting headache he had ever experienced, and his mouth felt like it was coated with sandpaper. His muscles ached as though they'd been wound tight and turned to lead, and his brain was a daze of blurred memories and white noise.
Teddy tried to move but only managed to turn his neck enough that when the bile rose, burning its way past his throat, it didn't land on him. The bitter taste it left in his mouth made him feel ill all over again, but there was nothing left in his stomach. He was starving, yet the thought of eating seemed more revolting than any other—almost any other. He still remembered the skulls grinning down at him.
With a scream, he wrenched open his eyes, blinking at the brightness as he tried to move again. He couldn't. He was tied to a chair.
"Hush, Rose," a voice rasped behind him. He froze.
The words 'My name isn't Rose' were on the tip of his tongue until he realised that the gentle remark hadn't been for him. A baby was crying.
The rustle of fabric had Teddy turning his head to see a hunched woman limp into view. Her threadbare robes hung ill-fittingly from her body and her grey, tangled hair hid her face. To her chest, she clutched a bundle of blankets within which a baby writhed and screamed.
"Nothing to fear, love," the woman said. "Mummy will make the pain go away."
Teddy watched as she shuffled around. Her gait tilted to one side with every step, and she must have been painfully thin beneath those robes. He'd never seen someone so frail. A surge of humiliation zinged through him at the fact that this woman had managed to get the upper hand over him.
She cheated, he reminded himself, frightening him and hiding in the dark, and then attacking him from behind and tying him up. He could have taken her otherwise, even without a wand.
The scratching sound had him whipping his head around fast enough that he blacked out for a second. When he came to, he found himself looking straight at a cat sharpening its too-long claws on the wooden floor. He knew that cat.
"Crookshanks?" Teddy's voice shook worse than ever, but that was definitely Hermione's cat. Its coat was matted, and it was missing an ear, but everything else, from the bottlebrush tail to the squashed face, was as it had been the last time Teddy had seen the giant Kneazle.
Which could only mean …
The woman cooed and rocked back and forth as the baby in her arms quieted. Her hair fell back, but even then, Teddy struggled to recognise her. Her gaunt face looked so much older than it was supposed to, and between that and her grey hair, she could pass for someone twice her age, maybe more.
"Aunt Hermione?"
Her head snapped up fast enough to make him flinch, but not a hint of recognition passed through her gaze even as it started to form in his. Bags hung heavy under her eyes like dark bruises clashing with her ashen skin. Her cheekbones jutted against her skin as though trying to break through that barrier. What little skin wasn't stretched taut over her bones was creased with wrinkles and marred by scars. But beneath all of that lay dark eyes shining with unrivalled intelligence.
"It's me," he said, the dread lifting from his chest. "Teddy."
She stared, but her blank expression never wavered. The baby gargled, and her gaze shot back to it.
Teddy's heartbeat pounded against his eardrums, and a sharp pain stabbed at his chest, but he ignored it. It had been seven years. No wonder she didn't recognise him. She looked at him and saw only a stranger who'd entered her home uninvited. Her attack had been about self-defence, and the skulls on the ceiling were probably plastic like the ones Muggles used to decorate their houses during Halloween. It was all a ruse to get people to leave her alone.
If Teddy could just explain himself, he could clear up this entire situation.
He pulled at the ropes binding his hands and feet to the chair, and his eyes fell to that wriggling bundle of blankets. Given Hermione's current situation, Teddy couldn't imagine her bearing a child, but it also didn't seem probable that someone would give her their baby to care for. Maybe she'd found it in the woods and adopted it.
He remembered her wanting kids. While rummaging around in Uncle Harry's attic a couple of years ago, he'd found a picture of Hermione with a very round, very pregnant belly. He'd asked Harry about it, and he'd said that Hermione had lost the baby shortly after giving birth and that it was following that event that she'd left.
"You're hungry, I know," said Hermione to the infant, "but Mummy needs a minute to get the spell ready."
She drew her wand and waved it over the baby, drawing patterns Teddy didn't recognise. Whatever the spell was, it must have been draining because Hermione's shoulders sagged further, and she staggered over to where Teddy sat, almost tripping over her feet. One faltering step made the cloth around the baby's head slip.
At the sight of what lay beneath, Teddy screamed.
Bloated skin the sickly bluish-green colour of a recent bruise, deep scars on thin blue lips, and dark irises surrounded by blood-red where the whites of the eyes should be.
It wasn't human—not any more.
Teddy had read vague accounts of necromancy while studying books he'd had no business knowing about. It was among the vilest kinds of magic, so dark and taxing that only the insane attempted it. The books had never gone into detail about the procedure, but Teddy knew enough to realise that magic like that required a special kind of sacrifice. His thoughts turned to the stories of children stolen from their beds and hunters vanishing into thin air. The rows upon rows of skulls lining the hallway's ceiling flashed before his eyes.
Hermione cooed at her daughter and lifted her wand from the girl's forehead to point it at Teddy's. She didn't look at him, never turning her gaze away from her lost child as she cast her spell.
Teddy's world erupted, and he screamed the entire time.
Don't go into the woods alone, the stories said. He should have listened.
A/N: Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed it, and feel free to leave comments and feedback. I always want to improve my writing!