And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't believe in magic will never find it. - Roald Dahl
There was a secret garden in Hogwarts.
The only entrance was tucked away in the dungeons—a tapestry of flowers and a whispered 'hortus' that hid a set of spiral stairs. Those narrow stone steps ascended to the center of an outdoor haven, not much larger than a classroom but feeling ever more expansive in the open air. Ornate black iron gates taller than the hand could reach isolated the garden from the outer scenery, which changed from day to day but was always some vacant part of the castle grounds … though no one has ever found or even seen the garden from the outside.
The garden differed depending on the visitor. The flora was always a mix of the visitor's favorites, in a suitable biome. A large willow overhanging a pond full of pickerels and waterlilies. A meadow with wildflowers dusting the waist-high wild grass. A vineyard with rows full of sweet scarlet strawberries. A clearing in a copse of cypresses.
Alternatively, the secret garden would replicate a plot dear to the visitor. The Weasley twins discovered a patch of the Burrow where they performed many of their burgeoning experiments, scorch marks included. Severus Snape, when particularly inebriated, would seek solace at a set of swings in a park long demolished. Dumbledore found his childhood backyard and never returned.
Harry Potter found a Zen garden. He'd only ever seen a picture of one once in a magazine that Aunt Petunia had thrown out in disgust for the 'foreign fad,' but the swept stones and lonesome boulders had stuck in his subconscious. He didn't dislike nature, far from it. The grounds—excluding the Forbidden Forest—was one of his many favorite places in Hogwarts. But here in the garden was for something different. The desolation was far more comforting than any greenery.
The only life besides him in his secret garden was a small pot of red lilies, set just by the stairwell in the center of a ripple of river stones.
He'd first found the garden not long after McGonagall determined the Firebolt was safe to ride and returned it. The trio's infighting had already been stressful enough before, but now with Ron and Hermione squabbling over Scabbers Harry had taken to exploring with the Marauder's Map to find some peace. A tiny drawing of a tree in the dungeons, a few corridors away from the Slytherin dorms, had drawn his attention, and poking around further revealed the entrance. He hadn't thought much of the garden when he'd first walked up those steps a few weeks ago, but he found himself returning again and again, at least once a week.
Every time, the patterns around the garden changed. Some stones moved across the garden, the lines drawn around them trailing new shapes. Others were changed, like the monolithic boulder that had been carved into a phoenix, then an egg (or was that just another rock?), before disappearing altogether.
But there remained one constant inconstant. Around the stairwell, the lines continually shifted, new lines drawn with the gentle rasp of displaced gravel as if by an invisible hand, then wiped away before the next appeared.
At first, Harry thought nothing of it, like the rest of the garden. Then, while relaxing and enjoying the soft scritching sounds, he'd realized that those were runes. And they weren't random, either—there was an order. A pattern to the way some runes appeared, and which one followed next.
So now, whenever Harry felt overwhelmed, he snuck away to the garden to take a breather. And with Ron and Hermione constantly arguing, the nauseous mix of anxiety and excitement for the Quidditch match against Ravenclaw, trying to help Hagrid with Buckbeak's upcoming trial, every moving shadow reminding him of Grims and Dementors, and the looming presence of Sirius Black, his traitorous godfather … there was a lot on his mind.
And in that space, he'd sit in the gravel and the negativity drained away into the brisk air. Then he'd take out a journal and record what he saw in this precious respite. The first few pages were filled with messy sketches of the runes but gradually gave way to some of his smudged handwriting, and even a few half-hearted drawings of the garden or the grounds thrown in.
Harry was considering going to the library to decipher some of the runes soon. He didn't feel like asking Hermione. She could probably explain them to him, there was too much going on with her right now. He'd forgiven her for reporting the Firebolt, but she couldn't even admit that Crookshanks might have eaten Scabbers. At times she seemed even more stressed than he was—her bushy hair looked almost flat as she hurried around with baggy eyes. And that wasn't even mentioning her persistent vanishing act.
He also had the feeling that she would pressure him into switching from Divination to Ancient Runes. And while he would never because he liked having an easy class with Ron, regardless of how batty Trelawney was, he also didn't want to make his interest academic. And as magical as Hogwarts was, school was still school, and this was something solely his. Something removed from the stressful world, just like the garden.
Tonight Harry wasn't able to sleep. So, journal and map in hand and hidden by his father's cloak, he'd snuck through the dungeons and emerged into the cool night air. The swept gravel almost looked like water, bathed by the moonlight. Sitting in the stones, he felt as if time had frozen around him, the ripples of the pool petrified into place.
And for a while, he sat. He listened to and recorded the light etchings of runes. He breathed in the pleasant night breeze of the crisp Scottish air. And he watched the full moon above, tracing its path and the dance of the constellations around it.
Then he noticed the snowfall, mounds piling up at the edges of the garden. Water seeped from below, and the outer half of the gravel garden slipped away before the water froze into a clear crystal blue. And finally, a laurel tree sprouted before his eyes, wood creaking and groaning as it drooped slightly over the frozen pond that now encircled the Zen garden.
Soft footfalls echoed up from the stairwell beside him, and Harry opened the Marauder's Map to see a single name approaching him: Daphne Greengrass.