Chapter Twenty-Eight: The Woods

Luna waited patiently as the group waited until the second week of the new year to go camping, as everyone had wanted to celebrate what remained of the holidays together. They made an odd group; Ron, Harry, Hermione, Dean, Luna, Fleur, Bill, Mr. Ollivander and Griphook the goblin, but they managed to engage in some holiday cheer while ignoring news from the outside world, and Mr. Ollivander had kindly made Luna a new wand made from some Veela hair that Fleur had kept on hand. He took wood from an oak tree on the property, and it was rougher than Ollivander's usual work, but Luna had liked the aura of the wand. It was a little temperamental, but it would work well with magical creatures, she could tell.

Harry had been in intense discussions with Griphook, and while Hermione and Ron thought that was because he was trying to get goblin assistance with Horcruxes, Luna knew that he was discussing things like inheritances and wills. Luna tried not to spend too much time around Harry, because his aura hurt her head; something bright shot through with darkness, mixing like oil and water, with a lot of sadness.

Luna had not been on a camping trip since her mother's death when she was nine. Even though it was not going to be like a camping trip with her parents, there were still some similarities. They were still looking for something magical and difficult to find for normal witches and wizards. They were still going deep into magical woods, and they would still need Luna to help them get through it, even though it was her mother who did most of the guiding when she was a child.

She breathed the scented mist and fresh forest air deep into her lungs; it was late afternoon, and the feeling of the cool mist was refreshing on her skin.

"Is this...the scent of thyme?" Ron asked, confused. Of course Ron would be the one to recognise the scent of the herb; he had been the one doing most of the cooking.

"Oh yes, you know you've found the Puzzlewood when you encounter the Mists of Thyme," Luna said. Ron could be a little slow to accept reality sometimes but he usually caught up in the end.

"Can't believe the books meant thyme and not time...thought it was just old English writing…" she heard Hermione mutter from beside her. She couldn't be sure, but she might have also heard something about awful puns that aren't funny.

It was understandable now why they had not found the Puzzlewood earlier; Hermione kept referring to it as the "Lost Woods", but the woods were not so much lost as a puzzle, and part of the puzzle of getting in was how it had been written about.

"How do we get in?" Hermione asked her, biting her lip nervously.

"I think we just ask nicely," Luna said. Ron laughed for a moment before he realised that she was serious. Luna ignored him, though she worried slightly about the purple flickering lights in his aura. Usually she would try to think of something to help, but they had other things to think about at the moment.

"Can we come in?" she asked the forest, and waited for a response.

Nothing happened for a moment. Then, a white hare hopped out from deep within the forest, and stopped in front of them, glowing softly in the grey-blue light of twilight. It was not a mundane creature, because its mind did not feel like one—it felt magic. Luna allowed herself to briefly touch the animal's mind and bask in its presence—it was curious about them, and animal minds were so much more calming to be around than humans—before she turned to her friends again.

"Oh look, it's my Patronus," she said with a small smile. "Let's follow it and see," she said, enjoying the crunch of the snow beneath her new boots. Hermione had bought them for her as a belated Christmas gift, which had been nice. Boxing Day had been an interesting Muggle tradition, and the auras of the Muggle shop attendants had been so pretty (if agitated).

"Unbelievable," she heard Ron say in a low voice behind her. Luna smiled as she followed the hare.

The mists grew thicker before they began to dissipate, and soon they were in a forest that smelled rich of earth and wood.

"Where to now?" Ron asked.

"You've got that lighter thing, don't you?" Harry asked.

"Er, yeah," said Ron, fumbling in his pockets. He brought out a small silver cigarette lighter, and clicked it once. A small ball of glowing light flew out from the lighter, tinged with traces of Professor Dumbledore's magical aura, and slowly bobbed in front of them. It illuminated their surroundings, exposing the bare winter trees that surrounded them, and began to drift north.

"Looks like that's the way to go," Harry said. No one said anything as they followed the glowing light. There were no trails in the forest, and the light went slowly, at their pace, as they scrambled over fallen trees covered in snow, slipped and skidded over icy roots and rocks, and got stuck in dips in the forest floor.

A unicorn foal approached them when they broke for lunch, and Luna was the first to go up to it and stroke it on the neck. The pure silvery aura and soothing thoughts of the unicorn were like a balm to her soul, like being in the presence of a Patronus. She had been certain that she would not have come to any harm at Malfoy Manor, because she trusted Draco Malfoy to be a good person, knew her friends would rescue her, and knew that Death Eaters did not like having their thoughts read, but staying in the cells watching Mr. Ollivander's deterioration had saddened her. It was difficult to see Draco be so torn, even though his thoughts were the most quiet in that household.

Ron hung back from the unicorn with a hunched posture. He looked unhappy, and Luna supposed that after what had happened to them he wouldn't want any more things setting him aside from Harry and Hermione, but virginity was a social construct and unicorns only cared about the purity of a person's aura, which was related to their souls.

Luna led the unicorn over to Ron, who tried to back up and flinched when she guided the foal's head to nuzzle his hand.

"See?" she said. "Nothing to be afraid of."

Ron's eyes were glued to where his hand made contact with the unicorn's mane.

"I just—"

"It's OK, but I think the foal is hungry now," Luna said. She looked around, and finally spied a patch of grass peeking through the snow.

"Thank you for coming to see us," she said to the foal as she led it to eat. From the distance, she could see the unicorn's mother keeping a cautious eye over everything.

She noticed Hermione slowly moving closer to the foal to watch it eat. Hermione's eyes were red as she observed the foal.

"It's nice, isn't it?" Luna asked.

Hermione nodded, briefly looking at Luna, and she caught a sensation of being cleansed. Yes, it was like that.


After the unicorn had appeared, the forest had grown colder, and meaner. They ran into more plants with thorns, roots seemed to trip them up more, and the very air itself seemed colder even though the weather and forest cover had not changed.

Hermione shivered. They had stopped halfway through the first day because they were exhausted from hiking through the woods, and it had been difficult to sleep through the various animal calls through the night as well as the sounds of three other people sleeping in the same cramped tent, not to mention the barely suppressed nightmares she had of her time at Malfoy Manor. But she didn't want to think about that.

The night of their first whole day in the forest, she'd hid herself a little ways out from the camp and called out for Severus on her compact. She had not heard from him since Boxing Day, and an increasing sense of unease urged her to speak to him.

Her breath fogged up the mirror by her weak wand-light, and finally he appeared.

She stifled a gasp.

He looked horrible. His hair was limp, his eyes were sunk in dark circles and his skin looked sallow. She had not been able to have a conversation with him at Shell Cottage at all, and she had missed him, and worried about him, despite her best efforts not to.

He said nothing for a moment, just taking in the sight of her face, which concerned her more than anything biting he could have said.

"We found the woods," she said, briefly biting her lip. "Luna helped us find it."

Severus let out a long breath of air and dragged a hand down his face. "That's...good news. Are your injuries all doing better?" he asked, face uncharacteristically open with concern.

"They're good." Truth was the cold made her joints a little stiff and painful, and made the last of her tremors worse, but Severus looked like he couldn't handle any more bad news. "Are you all right? You don't look very well right now."

Severus didn't speak, but finally broke his intense gaze with a slight smirk. "Are you saying I don't look good? I didn't take you to be such a cruel young woman."

His words shocked her. "I—" What was going on?

"Tell me about the forest," he prompted next, and before she could help herself she was spilling the details of their entire day. She stopped herself before she could go on too much about her theories on the magical properties of the woods. "I need to go now, but—please take care of yourself. Goodnight Severus," she said, still flustered and off-kilter. For the first time in their conversations, Hermione found herself ending their conversation, shivering as she snapped her compact shut.

It was only halfway back to her tent that she realised that he had deliberately put her off balance to deflect from her questions, because the idea that he would care what she thought he looked like at all was laughable.

That night, sleep came to her with great difficulty due to the cold, even though she had huddled up her sleeping bag against Luna's. When she did sleep she was back in Malfoy Manor again, somehow unable to look away from the glittering chandelier as she braced herself to be carved into, again and again, the knife would reach her arm in slow motion before pain exploded, and then she would wake, sleep, dream of the knife, and the cycle would repeat itself again.

Hermione tried not to think about her dreams even though she knew it would only hurt her in the long term. She found herself holding onto her mirror compact and running her thumb over the blue enamelled irises on the cover as they hiked.

"I'm hungry," Ron complained, for the second time since they'd had breakfast. It had only been two hours since they had last eaten.

"So am I," a cultured voice said. A tall gaunt man shrouded in black walked into view from a thicket behind him, and everyone tensed. They all saw his fangs.

"We don't have any blood for you, but would you like to have a nice cup of tea? We were about to sit down for some tea and biscuits," Luna said, when none of them moved or said anything.

The vampire looked her over, and held her gaze for several moments.

"No, thank you, but that was kind of you. I wish you good hunting," he said with a smile, baring his fangs, and then began to walk through the other side of the clearing that they were in.

"Good hunting to you too!" Luna called after him.

Hermione found that her hands were shaking, and that she had her wand tightly gripped in her hand. There were four of them, but vampires could move extremely fast and were inhumanly strong, if they were old enough to be able to withstand the morning sun. One ancient vampire against four haphazardly trained wizards? The odds had not been in their favour.

"Well." Harry sat down on a rock.

"So what was this about tea and biscuits?" Ron asked, which led Hermione to let out a hysterical giggle. They broke for a short break, and then continued onward, following the bobbing glow that never stopped moving.

They encountered no more magical creatures or beings that day, or the next. Night seemed to grow colder, which in turn made everyone in the group more irritable.

Another day passed, another night of awful sleep, and another off-kilter conversation with Severus, which made Hermione suspect more that he was deliberately keeping her off-kilter so she could forget to question him.

That night, she dug his cloak out from her beaded bag and slept with it under her sleeping bag, relishing in the warmth of the cloak and the familiar herbal and cedar scent. Under the protection of his cloak, she didn't dream. She felt guilty for being warm while her friends suffered, but one night of good sleep had afforded her the clarity of mind to make a smokeless fire in the tent, used by ancient druids for scrying, so that they could be warmed through the night during their next night.

The day after that they found abandoned Acromantula webs which Luna collected for later use. They didn't stop walking that day until sundown, and made sure that they had crossed several streams and warded their campsite against all beings after that.

That night, Harry collapsed as he experienced another vision of Voldemort. Hermione suspected that he had been experiencing visions for longer than he claimed, but she didn't want to push the topic.

Harry had felt unholy glee from Voldemort because he had found the existence of a special wand in Dumbledore's tomb—an unbeatable wand. Unbeatable wands sounded like something out of a fairy tale, so none of the rest of her friends were worried, but Hermione thought they should be alarmed about this fact, as they were literally walking through woods out of a fairytale. Still, they were far away from Death Eaters and Voldemort and were stuck in an enchanted forest.

Conversation with Severus that night neared normal, with no more borderline flirtatious comments from him. Whatever had bothered him had obviously resolved itself behind the smooth mask of his Occlumency. When she told him about the Unbeatable wand, he quieted, deep in thought, then told her that he'd look into it and closed the conversation before she could ask him what was bothering him to begin with. Infuriating man.

There were another two days of mostly empty forest, then another frustrating conversation with Severus when she found out that time didn't pass the same way inside and outside the forest. Two weeks had passed for Severus whereas it had only been one for them.

The inadvertent time-travel alarmed her—they didn't have time they could afford to lose.

And then came the bear.

It was probably the fish that drew it in. They were making tuna salad sandwiches while they still had bread, when out of the forest came a hulking brown mass.

Hermione was alarmed, as bears had gone extinct in Britain for centuries now, and they really weren't equipped to deal with possibly magical bears.

"B-bear!" Ron had shouted, which had the animal raising its head to survey the surroundings. Then Ron shot a deep violet spell at it. The bear roared as a wound opened on its chest, and charged at Ron.

Multiple flashes of blinding light shot across the clearing. Hermione blinked to clear her vision, and found that Luna had levitated Ron out of the way of the bear, which was bleeding heavily from a deep slash across its chest, and was ramming itself against the stone wall that Hermione had conjured.

Immediately she conjured three more walls to enclose the bear, and toppled to the ground, drained.

"You shouldn't have hurt it," Luna said quietly. Ron groaned quietly as Luna set him down, and then Hermione saw that blood was seeping out the side of his jacket.

"I'm sorry. I just reacted and a Slashing charm was the first thing that came to mind," Ron said, face drained of blood.

Hermione closed her eyes, and prayed for patience. "We need to get out of here. My walls won't hold forever."

"Just a moment," Luna said, and then to Hermione's surprise she stripped Ron of his jacket and jumper, cleaned his wound with a Tergeo and then bound him with part of the length of Acromantula silk.

"Here," she said, handing the rest to Hermione. "The silk makes for good bandages. Ron can heal later."

"How are we going to leave?" Ron asked, shivering as he pulled his clothes back on.

"Brooms," Harry said with a determined expression, while Hermione groaned. His face softened when he looked at her.

"I can fly you," he said. Hermione nodded.

Ron looked pale.

"Do you think you could handle a broom?" Harry asked Ron.

"I think I could if I had something to keep me focused," Ron groaned.

"It's not a great idea but I've got an Invigoration Draught somewhere…" Hermione said, trying to remember what she had read about adrenaline, blood loss, and Invigoration Draughts. Her usual clear-mindedness during stressful situations was beginning to break down, but she was reasonably certain that Ron would not come to any harm from the draught. Finally she summoned the draught from her purse and handed it over to Ron who downed it in one gulp.

"All right. Let's get out of this bloody clearing," he said. Hermione silently handed out the brooms to Harry, Ron, and Luna, and seated herself in front of Harry.

Ron clicked the Deluminator again when they rose to the sky, then they followed it across hours of forest, staying close to the treeline so they could see what was on the forest floor. Hermione was certain that whatever dwelling Merlin had would be within the forest, as that was how the stories told it.

There was forest as far as the eye could see, as well as breaks in the trees which revealed mountains and valleys. The glowing light led them straight to a cliff face, on top of which sat a cottage built of wood with a curved roof, the first human dwelling they had found in the entire forest.

"There's a barrier here," Harry said grimly. They had flown into something hard and invisible, and nearly unseated themselves.

"Unbelievable," Ron commented, as they slowly descended to the clearing at the bottom of the cliff.

"I think it's quite believable actually," Luna said, and Hermione felt a small urge to smile despite this new obstruction in their search for the book.

She was relieved when they agreed to try to access the cottage the next day, and walked a little ways away from the camp and cast a Muffliato as she sat on a log that she covered with her jacket. She cast a Warming Charm and brought her mirror compact out, brushing the cool enamel irises as she opened it.

She took several moments to collect herself, shivering in her London-grade winter clothes. Finding Merlin's fabled home only to find it impenetrably warded on top of an impossible rock face had nearly caused her to snap. She knew they would find a way—they always did—and Luna helped, truly, but she could feel the heavy burden of responsibility for the group weighing down on her.

During her conversation with Severus that night, she didn't speak much of their trip through the woods, or what they were going to do the next day. Severus was in an unusually chatty mood, offering scathing critiques of inept Death Eaters and Gryffindors without any sense of self-preservation (which felt like quite a pointed comment to Hermione even though he had been talking about Hogwarts students). It was the most loquacious that he had been since she had left him on Boxing Day, which is why Hermione felt that it was safe to ask him again.

"You look like something's been eating away at you," she said softly.

Severus swallowed, and looked away from her eyes. "There was a raid. Children died," he said.

"Oh." Hermione felt her eyes prickle. "I'm so sorry. I...I hate this war. I hate what it does to people." The next sentence came out in a whisper, "I wish we could run away."

"I do too," he admitted. "Do you like poetry?" he asked, in a complete subject change.

Hermione scrunched her brows. "Yes?"

"I like German poetry." He cleared his throat. "Was wirst du tun, Gott, wenn ich sterbe? Ich bin dein Krug (wenn ich zerscherbe?)" he recited slowly, the syllables soft on his tongue as he recited the poem.

Hermione was still confused. "That was beautiful. What does it mean?"

"It's the beginning of a Rilke. In English, it is 'what will you do, God, when I die?

I am your jug (what if I smash?).'"

"Ah." Immediately she thought of Dumbledore, pulling at strings even from the beyond, sending his soldiers into a fight with no care for their personal wellness. Every word that Severus said had sounded beautiful, and she wasn't partial to German or poetry but she liked it when it came from his voice. The meaning behind the words pierced her heart.

"I'm sorry," she said.

"I'm more sorry for what you have been through," Severus said gruffly. "It's getting late. You should rest–you should be resting your injuries, not speaking to me from the cold hard ground." Her mirror shrouded in black fog before she found herself staring back at her own reflection.

That night, she dreamed she was being carved up by Bellatrix again, but before the blade could reach her arm a flash of black would shroud everything, and she would receive a short reprieve before finding herself bound by the witch and being approached with the knife all over again.

In the morning, it was Ron who found the sun bleached rickety ladder up the side of the cliff face, and it turned out that while they could not use magic to transport themselves past the wards protecting the cottage they could manually move themselves up the stairs.

There had been a brief but heated debate about splitting up or going all together, but in the end Harry's fierce "you all said we were in this together" had resolved the issue.

It had taken Harry promising that he would be the first to climb up, and Ron assuring Hermione that he would follow and catch her if she fell before Hermione was convinced that it would not be a suicide mission to climb up the ladder. Ron had climbed up and down and shaken the ladder to convince them that it was safe, and a revealing charm had shown that the ladder was magically reinforced, but Hermione trusted the ladder as much as she trusted broomsticks.

Hermione didn't remember much about the climb up, except that her heart was in her throat the entire time. She kept her eyes focused on only the next rung that came up, too afraid to look anywhere else, and it felt like it stretched on forever.

The ladder led straight to a door to the cottage, also made of the same weathered wood as the rest of the structure, which was mercifully unlocked and unwarded.

Her first thought about Merlin's fabled hideout in the Lost Woods was that it was...entirely ordinary and underwhelming. There was a plain cot covered in white sheets, a cauldron in a corner, a fireplace with a pot hanging over it, a shelf of books, a small table, a chair, and a fur rug. The only signs of magic were the complete absence of dust and the small fire in the fireplace; it looked as if the owner of the cottage had just left, but Merlin had been dead for centuries now.

"D'you think someone's living here now?" Ron asked into the stillness.

Hermione's heart fell.

"Let's look for the book and get out of here," she said. The shadows from the fireplace jumped when she said this, and a slithering sensation went down her spine.

They didn't have to look long, as Blodlyf was the third book on the shelf.

The moment Hermione touched the book, the fire in the grate grew and a large bird of flames burst from the fireplace.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," the bird said.

"Please, we just need to borrow the the book for a little while, it's very important—"

At the word "borrow" the entire cottage burst into flames around them. Someone was shouting something but Hermione couldn't make the sound out, then she felt a tight grip on her shoulder and the sharp tug of Apparition.

It's not going to work, it's not going to work, Hermione thought in a panic, but then she found herself landing in a pile of tangled limbs with someone against soft ground, and realised that Luna had grabbed her out of the cottage when she spat out a mouthful of dirty blonde hair.

She scrambled to get up and only to topple over slightly when her hand made contact with the ground, which turned out to be sand. A groan to her right alerted her that Ron and Harry had made it out as well.

A jolt of adrenaline surged through her body when she realised that she was no longer holding on to the grimoire, but then she saw it resting a foot away from her.

"I can't believe that worked," Hermione said, as she gave up on standing and collapsed down against the sand. Luna gently untangled herself.

"A lot of times old wards would keep people out, but didn't keep them there to make it easier for houseguests," Ron said from where he was also lying down in the sand.

"Oh," Hermione said in a daze. She knew that.

"Always the tone of surprise," Ron said, but he didn't sound too bitter about it.

"Whose idea was it to come to Shell Cottage?" Hermione asked, surprised that they had all ended up together.

"I shouted 'Apparate!' and I guess we all thought of the same place," Ron said. Hermione didn't know what to say to that, but was glad they had not all gone separate ways.

"There are strong wards on that book," Luna said, pointing at the Blodlyf.

"...there are," Hermione said, not sure why she was surprised by this fact. Nothing in the cottage had seemed warded, but of course the book would be. She exchanged a glance between Harry and Ron.

"We should...get back," she started, tone apologetic. "Do you mind staying here for a while, Luna?" She didn't want to part from Luna, but Harry had insisted that the Horcrux matter stayed entirely between them, even though it was likely that Luna already knew. She felt a twinge of guilt when she thought about Severus, but ignored it. Harry had become increasingly irrational about Dumbledore when they heard about Rita Skeeter's new book, The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore, and he had somehow convinced himself that Dumbledore had known that Snape was untrustworthy all along, but had lied about that, and yet clung more than ever to the idea of following Dumbledore's mission.

"I think I'll go back to Hogwarts actually," Luna said, looking as calm and unoffended as ever. "I'm sure I'll be seeing you soon."

"How do you always know things?" Ron blurted out. "Are you a Seer?"

"Oh no, I'm not a Seer. I see a lot of things, but not the future. But it's nice of you to think so. And thank you all for that exciting camping trip. You should get some rest before doing something that exciting again." They were all standing now, and Luna moved in to give a warm group hug.

"You better go before Bill comes out and offers to help you with the wards," she said quietly to Hermione. Startled, Hermione forgot to thank her before she was grabbing Ron and Harry's hands and Apparating them home.


AN: Hi all! Thank you all for the patience and support-I had bad writer's block and had been stuck on writing chapter 34 for something like six months, and I wrote at least three versions before I finally settled on one that felt right. There are only three more chapters after that, so fingers crossed I can finish this fic soon. Can't wait to hear what you all think of this chapter. :)