The Slytherin common room was always very crowded these days because from six o'clock onward, everyone had nowhere else to go. Lyla went to get the Invisibility Cloak out of her trunk right after dinner and spent the evening sitting on it, waiting for the common room to clear. A few sixth years roped her and Draco to a few games of Exploding Snap, and Astoria watched them like a cat from a particularly puffy armchair.

Lyla didn't try and win any of the games, trying to finish the games quickly, but even so, it was well past midnight when the last Slytherins headed towards their beds. Draco watched as Astoria toddled off before seizing the cloak and throwing it over themselves, before sliding into the dungeon passage just outside the common room. It was a difficult journey through the castle, dodging all the teachers, ghosts, and prefects. At last, they reached the entrance hall, slid back the lock on the oak front doors, squeezed between them, trying to stop any creaking, and stepped out into the moonlit grounds.

"Course," said Draco abruptly as they strode across the black grass, "we might get to the forest and find there's nothing to follow. Those spiders might not have been going there at all. I know you said it looked like they were moving in that sort of general direction, but..."

"Let's go and see," prompted Lyla.

They reached Hagrid's hut, sad and sorry-looking with its blank windows. When Lyla pushed the door open, Fang went mad with joy at the sight of them. Worried he might wake everyone at the castle with his deep, booming barks, they hastily fed him treacle fudge from a tin on the mantelpiece, which glued his teeth together.

Lyla left the Invisibility Cloak on Hagrid's table. There would be no need for it in the pitch dark forest.

"Come on, Fang, we're going for a walk," said Draco, patting his leg, and Fang bounded happily out of the house behind them, dashed to the edge of the forest, and lifted his leg against a large sycamore tree.

Lyla took out her wand, murmured, "Lumos!" and a tiny light appeared at the end of it, just enough to let them watch the path for signs of spiders.

"Good thinking," said Draco, lighting his own wand tip.

Lyla tapped the boy on the shoulder and pointed to the grass. Two solitary spiders were hurrying away from the wand light into the shade of the trees.

"Let's follow them before we lose them," whispered Lyla.

So, with Fang scampering around their heels, sniffing tree roots and leaves, the two entered the forest. By the glow of Draco's wand, they followed the steady trickle of spiders moving along the path. They walked behind them for about twenty minutes, not speaking, listening hard for noises other than breaking twigs and rustling leaves. Then, when the trees had become thicker than ever, so that the stars overhead were no longer visible, and Lyla's wand shone alone in the sea of dark, they saw their spider guides leaving the path.

Draco paused, trying to see where the spiders were going, but everything outside his little sphere of light was pitch-black.

"This is mad," he muttered, looking in the direction in which they had come. "We've never been this deep before…"

Lyla swallowed hard. She could vividly remember Hagrid advising her not to leave the forest path the last time she'd been in here. But Hagrid was miles away now, probably sitting in a cell in Azkaban, and he had also said to follow the spiders.

Something wet touched Lyla's hand and she jumped backward, crushing Draco's foot. But it was only Fang's nose.

"S-sorry," she gasped, feeling her heart jackhammer against her ribs. "What do-do you reckon?" she asked Draco, whose eyes she could just make out, reflecting the light from his wand.

"We've come this far," he offered after a moment's pause. "It would be a waste if we turned back now…"

So they followed the darting shadows of the spiders into the trees. They couldn't move very quickly now; there were tree roots and stumps in the way, barely visible in the near blackness. Lyla could feel Fang's hot breath on her hand. More than once, they had to stop, so that Draco could crouch down and find the spiders in the wand light. They walked for what seemed like at least half an hour, their robes snagging on low-slung branches and brambles. After a while, the two noticed that the ground seemed to be sloping downward, though the trees were as thick as ever.

Then Fang suddenly let loose a great, echoing bark, making both his companions jump out of their skins.

"What is it, boy?" asked Draco loudly, looking around into the pitch-dark.

"There's… something moving over there," Lyla breathed. "Listen... sounds like something big..."

They listened. Some distance to their right, something big was snapping branches as it carved a path through the trees.

"Just what could that–"

"Shhhh!"

The darkness seemed to be pressing on their eyeballs as they stood, terrified, waiting. There was a strange rumbling noise and then silence.

"W-what do you think it's doing…?" whispered Draco.

"Do you think it's gone?" Lyla whispered back.

"I—"

Then, to their right, came a sudden blaze of light, so bright in the darkness that both of them flung up their hands to shield their eyes. Fang yelped and tried to run, but got lodged in a tangle of thorns and yelped even louder.

"Draco!" shouted Lyla, her voice breaking with relief "Draco, it's our car!"

"You're what?" he asked in confusion and fear.

"Come on! Look!"

Draco blundered after Lyla toward the light, stumbling and tripping, and a moment later they had emerged into a clearing. Mr. Weasley's car was standing, empty, in the middle of a circle of thick trees under a roof of dense branches, its headlights ablaze. As Lyla walked, open-mouthed, toward it, it moved slowly toward her, exactly like a large, turquoise dog greeting its owner.

"It's been here all the time!" she said delightedly, walking around the car. "Look at it. The forest must have turned it wild..."

The sides of the car were scratched and smeared with mud. Apparently, it had taken to trundling around the forest on its own. Fang didn't seem at all keen on it; he kept close to Lyla, who could feel him quivering.

"It's alright, Fang," Lyla soothed, "it's our friend, nothing to worry about, see?"

Draco squinted around on the floodlit ground for signs of more spiders, but they had all scuttled away from the glare of the headlights.

"Ugh, I think we've lost the trail," he said. "Come on, let's go and find them."

Lyla couldn't speak, and she didn't trust herself to move. There was a loud clicking noise and suddenly gasped when something long and hairy seized Draco around the middle and lifted him off the ground so that he was hanging facedown.

"What the–"

Lyla tried to lift her wand, but heard more clicking and felt her feet be swept from the forest floor. Fang whimpering and howling— next moment, he too was being swept away into the dark trees.

Head hanging, Lyla saw that what had held her was marching on six immensely long, hairy legs, the front two clutching him tightly below a pair of shining black pincers.

"Dr-Draco?" she called, trying to keep the fear from her voice. "Draco?!"

"Over here!" his voice sounded somewhere to her right, and he sounded terrified.

The creatures were moving into the very heart of the forest now. Lyla could hear Fang fighting to free himself from a third monster, whining loudly, but she couldn't have yelled even if she had wanted to; her lungs no longer appeared to be working properly. She never knew how long she was in the creature's clutches; only knew that the darkness suddenly lifted enough for her to see that the leaf-strewn ground was now swarming with spiders. Craning her neck sideways, she realized that they had reached the ridge of a vast hollow, a hollow that had been cleared of trees so that the stars shone brightly onto the worst scene he had ever laid eyes on.

Spiders. Not the tiny spiders like those surging over the leaves below. Spiders the size of cart horses, eight-eyed, eight-legged, black, hairy, gigantic. The massive specimen that was carrying Lyla made its way down the steep slope toward a misty, domed web in the very center of the hollow, while its fellows closed in all around it, clicking their pincers excitedly at the sight of its load.

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