"Roseleeches aren't dangerous, but they are a pain to kill," said Draco as they followed patches of darkening ivy. Sunlight seemed to be siphoned out of the air as they walked, the curtain of trees on either side of this part of the woods took on a blacker colour. Draco's face lit up, "preferring to grow in the dark and looking like ivy, they prefer to grow among their cousins so the further dark and covered in various ivies the higher chances of there being Roseleech. Very distant cousins...for they're not really alike," he said.
He took the lead, lighting his wand a little. The lumos gave just a little more colour to their otherwise fading world. Theo ambled not far behind Draco and Pansy trotted up from behind. She looked like she wasn't enjoying this at all.
"They spring up easily. A new shoot blown on the breeze can root itself in almost any crack or crevice provided it's dark enough and find a grip to grow. Including people and animals. Like a venus fly trap it's one of the plants that can derive some nutrients from animals, and thus it isn't a stranger to springing up in cracks or crevices around people. Some say it almost has a mind of it's own, sensing when a person is walking underneath it and dropping it's spore. Roseleech gets it's nutrients from the blood of animals. It hooks it's sharp thorns into the soft skin of an animal and converts the chemicals near the surface into one that draws up blood quite beautifully. As the Roseleech blooms in all it's beautiful red and crimson glory, the animal slowly dies. It looks like thin red clumps of ivy, but it's distinguishable by it's incredibly complex network of strands. All of them are thin and blow through the wind easily," he finished.
"Good description," said Nott.
"Are you guys like...good at killing them," asked Pansy as she extended her bubblehead charm so it was all over her. Plants cracked under the larger bubble that had grown itself around her.
"Never tried but I think I'll get it on the first go. They have notoriously thick skin but once you stab through they bleed out easily. It's hard for a Roseleech to survive once it's skin has been punctured and all it's innards are over the forest floor," he said, "any sort of slashing or cutting spell does it. Hitting with a knife or your fingernails too. It doesn't exactly take dark magic to kill," he said.
"They were a nuisance to crops in the day. So they were banished to these little passed through areas. That's why we have to travel here to find them," said Nott, "my family has hunted them before. We go hunting and camping several times a year. Father loves decorating the manor with new pelts every time. But it's not a common spoil."
"Very expensive if you want to sell it. Good potion properties," said Draco, "my family hasn't unfortunately. We do go on hunting and camping parties sometimes. Didn't chance to bump into any but I doubt I'll have any trouble. Mother doesn't like camping much but she goes occasionally and lounges with the other women if several friends go together. The men make the clearing all comfortable and stuff. Sometimes it's just my father that takes me, sometimes my father and some of his friends."
Hunting parties and camping were a common pureblood pasttime. They lived near the wilderness and many were nobility of a sort. Hunting parties was always a sport among nobility.
"My mother too," said Nott, "though sometimes she doesn't go either. It's fun when it's just the boys."
"I shall take after them then. I hate this part of pureblood tradition," said Pansy as they steeled themselves against a particularly steep slope jutting down.
"Ow, what's this-" Pansy kneeled down quickly as her foot slipped and she clutched at the ground for support. A blood red plant sprang out at her and jumped on her face.
"Aaah!" she screamed.
Except the plant couldn't land on it for she had the bubblehead charm all over herself. The plant bounced of confused, and it seemed landed into a cloud of other Roseleeches who in their confusement sprang up in the air and fell against the outer of Pansy's extended bubblehead charm. The red ivy tendrils hugged around the giant air bubble in a confused manner, their feelers prodding and poking for more information. Soon Pansy's world was a huge mess of red squirming plants all around her, plastered to the outside but unable to touch her.
"AAAAH-" she screamed, banging on the inside of the bubblehead charm.
The bubble popped and suddenly all plants were on her.
"Oh dear-" said Draco, and then he started muttering a papercut hex, one of the first harmless hexes wizarding children were taught, but aimed properly. It took him several tries but soon there was red dripping down Pansy's velvet travellor's dress underneath.
Theo muttered some hexes of his own and used his hands and fists to pull them of Pansy, crushing them within his grasp and having the bloodlike substance rain down before he let go and threw them high into the air.
"AAh-" Pansy swatted at herself but not with enough force to break their skin, screaming and crying to herself a little. Her wand still in her hand.
"Careful, we want to capture them," said Draco, as he tapped the shrunk trunk by his belt. It zoomed to full size though it was still bigger on the inside than it looked and he pulled out an expensive potion's container with an in-built scale. It was for dry ingredients and indeed when he had finished flattening the blood out of the Roseleech it resembled a wrung out red web that he threw quickly into the container with a barely disguised disgusted glance at it. He didn't particularly like them.
Theo muttered more charms as a few Roseleeches attempted to fling themselves away, or desperately tried to plug up their role by rerooting deep into the ground. If it could patch up the hole and make it airtight it could survive.
Theo pulled them out of the ground, slashed at them and fully wrung them out before throwing the liveless clumps into the container.
"Wonder if there's enough. 12 kgs is quite a lot," said Draco as he and Theo got down to full work.
They were mostly leaping up all over the place now, attempting to latch onto Theo and Draco's exposed skin at times but the boys pulled them of with an agile grace, all three of them had chanced to love flying and had a useful grace to them. Pansy was still swatting at herself and she did succeed in fully killing several and flinging them to the container with a whimper.
When this wave was over Draco and Theo chased the rapidly evading Roseleeches from the clearing, succeeding and throwing or levitating them back into the container at times. Pansy simply whimpered, though when she recovered her graces she killed of a few remaining ones around and threw them in the container with a shiver.
Draco and Theo came back shortly.
"We need to move before they move," said Draco, levitating the container.
"Oh alright-" said Pansy.
They actually spent the next few hours incredibly busy, clearing out as much as possible but not fully having 12 kgs just from this patch. They returned to camp in complete darkness, passing through the original woods they'd walked through before; seeing the shimmering red paths among the grass, shrubs and rocks.
"I hate this," said Pansy, "I'm a pureblood but I don't like the camping. I just want to be among luxury again..."
"It's not you fault," Draco tried to assure her, "it's definitely on the more boyish side of things and I think you'd like some other aspects of this grand adventure more."
"Please let there be people and politics...please let there be people and politics..." muttered Pansy.
"I'm just worried we were supposed to collect all 12 kgs..." said Theo as they neared the camp.
There were a few lights up and he could see Hermione and Luna cooking their evening meal. They couldn't smell it but it looked delicious.
"Astoria darling, show me your wandwork..." said Tom.
Astoria as he predicted, had tried a few spells since she got her wand and was a little familiar with them. He taught her all the teeth cleaning, laundry, toiletry, enchantments one might need to survive in the wild such as that, and took good care of her the entire time. He also taught Daphne and Blaise some more enchantments once he'd finished focusing on Astoria. The three enjoyed it immensely.
Tom then introduced them to some summoning spells of fruits and animals before leaving to gather the Gillyweed. He told them to make a competition of it and see who could summon the most.
By the end of the day they had quite a pile of items to contribute and when they arrived back at camp, where Hermione and Luna undid the enchantments to allow each one of them to enter, their eyes grew wide at the new plants and animals that were added to the 'to roast' pile in front of the roaring campfire. It was the only thing that illuminated their faces in the darkness.
"We'll have a feast tonight," said Tom, "we have a few extras."
"I'll put up some lanterns," muttered Nott, "we don't want the fire to be the only thing that lights up this place. How poor."
With that he reached into his suitcase, a metal grey thing that could be shrunk and enlarged, and withdrew a series of three lanterns. He added a bit of the fire from the campfire near the middle to each lantern, the glassy enclosure caught the flames and enlarged them, emboldening them to a fire that was even bigger than they once were from the campfire, and it seemed kept them going by enchanted means as Nott hung them of critical branches on trees around them so the clearing was even more brightly lit up. Draco reached into his trunk, a white thing with black metal rims, and bought out a set of three lanterns that did the same job but were gold and copper in colour instead of Nott's clear glass and black, and did the same thing. Now the clearing was lit up like a cozy room with no roof that they all shared. The trees all around them and their lower branches were all illuminated, as was most other things and it felt more like home.
Hermione wondered if this was how Draco and Theo camped most of the time, she could imagine it being quite cozy if they did. She had no doubt the lanterns were probably very expensive though.
"Thank you," beamed Astoria and soon the rest of them were joining in with their thanks. They had changed the clearing considerably afterall.
Tom tended to the cooking, roasting them all at once and also adding the seasoning to some of them from the fruits he had gathered. Sweet juices dripped all over them, the enchanting smell of woodsmoke, latent sugars from the plants and herbs echoed all around, and then he passed some sticks of meat and fruit all around - enough for everyone to have a bit of excess, it truly felt festive and celebratory.
A few murmurs of thanks went around.
"I got the Gillyweed," said Tom, as he took something out of his pocket and enlarged it with a tap of his wand. Large compressed cubes of dried out gillyweed zoomed to fill the space.
"In here," said Draco, taking out a large plastic container that was currently empty with a lock on it. He turned a small keychain that had seven keys of varying size and colour to them into the keyhole, and after choosing a particular one, when he unlocked it an empty compartment sprang up. It seemed Draco and Theo believed their items superior to everyone else so they were quick to offer them up as the tools of choice, not wanting to deal with Luna's items or whatever they imagined Hermione had bought along with them. Tom dumped it all in.
Then Draco turned another key in the lock and when he opened it a chamber of reddened Roseleech looked out onto the clearing. "We only got 3 kilos," said Draco. He sounded nervous for perhaps the first time that Hermione had heard him sound so.
"I'll go with you two tomorrow," said Blaise, who seemed to doubt Pansy had been much help with the Roseleech right of the bat, "we can gather the rest then."
"That would be great," said Tom.
They had an early night that night.
On the Friday and Saturday they finished gathering all the ingredients they would need for the potion. Draco, Nott and Blaise seemed to be overjoyed doing it together and were one of the most efficient 'gathering parties' as they dubbed themselves. Tom gathered a handful of the more dangerous ingredients by himself and got the girls to split up among themselves to gather some ingredients as well. He usually got them to split up in groups of 2 and 3 because he wanted more efficiency so he wanted them working on multiple ingredients all at once. Astoria and Daphne were usually together so Hermione was either with Luna, or with Luna and Pansy.
On the Friday morning when Hermione, Luna and Pansy had been tasked with gathering enough plants and animals to build a small stockpile for the next week which could be stored in Nott's equipment, it was one of the first times Hermione found herself in the company of Pansy and it was...not half as bad as she expected to say the least.
"I think I'm coming with you..." said Pansy, trotting a little to catch up. Luna slowed her pace and the three of them found themselves soon walking amicably side by side until they reached a thicker clump of trees where there seemed to be a higher chance of summoning the right animals and plants. They could only keep it for a week in the storage items Nott bought as there wasn't enough room to hold more than a week's worth, and Tom didn't know too many charms to store food for long periods of time. He had only known how to live on the run which meant he was finding food and water every few days, not stockpiling for several months worth, so that was the limit of his knowledge. Hermione had the impression he had only ever been on the run and that was his experience, not intended to settle somewhere of the grid for a long period of time and build up stores or something. That wasn't something he had quite done, but no matter, this was more than enough for what they were doing right now.
"I'm glad. Gathering Roseleech is awful," she said.
"Oh dear, what was so bad about it?" asked Luna.
"They popped my bubblehead charm," said Pansy.
"Can they do that?" wondered Hermione.
"They have sharp thorns," admitted Pansy.
"Another one of their uses. If you need a plant with sharp thorns but was unable to find another," said Luna.
Pansy snorted, "you'll sooner find any other plant with sharp thorns than a Roseleech. They're one of the hardest to find..."
"That's true," admitted Hermione.
They had a surprisingly nice conversation about potions and the properties of ingredients and by the time Hermione realised she was actually enjoying her time with them it was time to return for lunch (there was no stockpile of food at camp so they needed to bring back what they caught - a portion of it would be for their next meal). Pansy...wasn't actually that bad. Not all the time anyway, thought Hermione as she chewed her food over lunch.
On Saturday evening Tom instructed Hermione to side-appariate Astoria and then Luna to outside the yew forests that they had been to previously. Hermione was successful at it, though fairly tired afterwards, and Tom appariated the rest.
They fell asleep quickly after that and spent the Sunday brewing the potion. They had all the ingredients they needed, it was just a matter of time to finish brewing it all. Everyone it seemed had bought a cauldron with them and so the air was thick with pumes of smoke from their work. Tom didn't have a cauldron but he brewed in Astoria's and everyone was copying what he did. He went around to each of their potions to say the principal enchantments at moments however. It was still a difficult potion.
By Sunday afternoon they were winding down for an early meal and sleep and Tom had suggested a new name for them.
"The Greys," he said, "for our mark is grey."
Everyone stared down at the grey mark on their arms carefully.
"I like it," said Astoria.
"It has a nice ring to it, yeah..." said Pansy.
"It's simple and sophisticated sounding," admitted Hermione.
Blaise snorted, "it's short to say," was all he said.
"There's no other name like it in the wizarding world actually, so we'd be unique," said Theo.
"It's not a bad colour, grey," appreciated Daphne, turning her arm about a little under the sun.
"I like it too," said Draco.
"The Greys then," said Tom in a lofty manner.
Author's Note: I didn't get any reviews for the last chapter but I actually still felt happier posting it. Anyways, this is Saturday's post and the next chapter will be up next Saturday.
I included some more characters because I wanted Voldemort to change magical Britain in a way, and I felt the scale of this story called for more characters. I always planned on writing other characters in it and I hope I wrote them well and they appear like different characters each with their own personality and sense in this story.
I also made them have a grey mark and called themselves The Greys instead of something similar to the deatheaters because I didn't want it to be exactly the same as the original, changing a few things up seemed better to me.
As always, please review if you enjoyed this chapter and want to read more, it makes my day.