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Harry was running at top speed through prickly bushes and thick smoke. He couldn't breathe and could feel blood trickling down where he'd hit thorns and nettles. If he'd stopped to think about it, he probably couldn't recall any time in his life when he'd been more uncomfortable. But he didn't stop to think - all that mattered was Julien.
The heat was getting worse and worse. Flaming branches were dropping around left and right, and Harry had to keep blasting them out of his way with his wand. Snape was someplace behind him, occasionally shouting things like, "Bear left here!" or "Watch! Over your head!" He'd cast some kind of wind charm to blow some of the smoke away, so that it would be easier to see where they were going. Still, they were having no luck.
No sign of Julien...not that they would have been able to see him, anyway, through the heavy black smog. Not that they would have been able to hear him, either, over the crash of trees and crackle of flames.
All of a sudden Snape rushed forward and grabbed Harry's arm. "There is no point in going further," he shouted above the noise.
"What do you mean? I'm not leaving til we find Julien!" Harry answered determinednly.
Snape spun him around so that they were facing one another. He looked hard into Harry's eyes and said firmly, "Potter, if your son is any further in, any closer to the heart of the fire than this, he is dead already. You can feel the heat...you can see the forest falling down... we're two capable adult wizards and we are having serious trouble. What chance that a child could survive it alone? None."
Tearing himself from Snape's grasp, Harry backed up a few feet. "And what chance that a child could survive the curse of the Dark Lord?" he shot back, willing his voice not to tremble. "None, either, but it happened. I'm not giving up. Come on." He started to leave, blinking tears from his eyes.
Snape's eyes were tearing too - smarting from the heat. "No, Potter!" he shrieked, yanking Harry backwards. At that moment, a large flaming log dropped from the sky, to land exactly where he'd been standing a second ago. "You see?" Snape asked, coughing up ash.
"But I can't leave him!" Harry shouted, then forced himself to calm down. "Are you telling me that you think it's impossible for him to be alive if he's further in than this?"
"I don't think, Potter. I know," Snape said bluntly.
"Well, I don't. And since you're obviously unwilling to come with me, I'll go it alone. Which way?" Shaking his head, Snape pointed silently, and Harry marched off.
Within minutes, Harry began almost regretting his decision. He was running blind, hitting things that were both solid and flaming - he suspected that he'd broken his nose, and his hair had definately caught on fire twice already. He whipped out his wand, half-afraid that it would catch on fire too, to help him out.
A bubble-head charm did the trick nicely. Now, his eyes stopped smarting so that he could see. The air inside the charm was a comfortable temperature, so that his lungs were no longer filled with unhealthy, scorching smoke. He raced through the burning trees, and soon found something useful.
Sparks. Red, purple, and green sparks were shooting from someplace nearby. He knew instantly that it had to be Julien, and he rushed forward to help.
To Harry's horror, he saw that the sparks were issuing from underneath a giant tree which had fallen down in flames. Was Julien stuck under there? He couldn't survive long pinned beneath a burning tree trunk, that was sure...
Harry pointed his wand at the tree, shaking only slightly, and called "Windgardium Leviosa!" Nothing happened. The tree was just too heavy to move.
Well, I can at least put the fire out, he told himself, and fired a spray of water at it, which did no good at all - it was so hot that the water all turned to steam before it even got close to the flames. Harry froze for a few seconds, fighting down a wave of panic. There has to be something I can do… OK, OK, no problem. The only problem is that the thing is too big to deal with…
"Reducto!" he shrieked. The tree shattered, sending smoldering chunks of wood everywhere. Waist-high obstacles, most of them flaming, littered the area where he wanted to go. He waited and watched for a moment, but Julien didn't crawl out from under them…was he still trapped? The sparks were getting fewer and weaker each second, so Harry finally decided to just go in.
He ran headlong into the smoke and fire, spraying jets of water at the flames that got too close to him. He waded through burning bushes and fallen branches, fighting his way to the place where little bursts of magic kept occasionally sputtering out. Finally he was there. He shoved a piece of wood bodily out of the way to get at what was underneath...
And it was a wand. Only a wand. Julien's wand, certainly, but without Julien.
Harry picked it up, shocked, as it still spewed stray magic all over the place. He looked around, trying to understand what this meant. Was Julien still alive? Now what? After standing still for a moment or two thinking, Harry heard a sound over his head, and looked up to see a burning pine branch dropping from the sky straight right at him.
He threw up his arm to protect his face, but the needles still punctured his bubble-head charm. All of a sudden he couldn't see. He tried to disentangle himself from the branch, had to grab it with his hand to throw it off him. This, of course, was extremely painful - he could feel the flames licking at his left hand, and felt a searing heat that seemed to penetrate all the way down to his bones. Even when he managed to toss the burning branch away, the pain persisted. It was a bad burn, he knew.
Since he couldn't see through the smoke any more, Harry's awareness of his other senses was heightened. He sensed the roar of the fire around him, his own yell of pain, and the smell of the smoke more than he ever had before. Then there was a new smell. Not just smoke, but a sick, nauseating stench that Harry recognized as flesh burning. He reached over to touch his injured hand and felt that it was raw and oozing.
He shuddered in disgust, wondering exactly how badly he was hurt and whether he would be able to stop himself from vomiting as a result of the overpowering smell of burnt human. Gross, he thought.
Then Harry laughed aloud. That awful smell was unmistakable - he would certainly have noticed if it had been present before. And it hadn't, so that meant that Julien wasn't here, wasn't creamated under the pines. Yet.
He felt weak from relief, but forced himself to move. He ran back the way he came, still clutching his son's wand in his hand and trying to figure out what it meant.
So Julien had been here before...but he'd left again. He'd been on his way back for the camera, maybe, and had changed his mind and gone elsewhere, then? But where? Even allowing time for finding the camera, Julien should have made it out of the woods by now, and he hadn't. Therefore, he hadn't sought safety - he had gone someplace else entirely. If it were me, and I were about to risk my life for the camera, it would have to be something really important to make me change my mind, he thought. Not just a little fire in the way. What would Julien consider more valuable than both his life and the evidence? He didn't come up with anything, except the obvious - saving someone else.
Instantly Harry knew he'd struck gold. Yes, Gabrielle and Sophie were safe, but there was a person whose life needed saving! The kids had mentioned that they'd found a Death Eater in the woods and knocked him out... he'd still be there. I wouldn't leave him there, and neither would Julien, Harry realized.
Unfortunately, he hadn't the slightest idea where the Death Eater was. Snape might know, though, so he stopped running and Apparated immediately to where they'd parted ways.
"Did you find him, Potter?" Snape asked quickly, the minute Harry burst into sight.
"No, but I found his wand and I think I know where he went!" Harry answered excitedly. "I just remembered, Julien told me before that they fought with a Death Eater in the woods, and left him unconscious somewhere. And I think that Julien would have gone back to try to save him." He added quietly, with a bit of sarcasm, "You know, he has that thing they call conscience, which prevents some people from letting others die when they can help it."
Snape stiffened but otherwise ignored the last comment. "That's ridiculous, Potter. Making it out of the woods alone is difficult enough, but dragging another person? It's suicide."
"It's what I would do," Harry retorted firmly. Snape just stared.
"Well, it doesn't look quite so dangerous in that direction," he conceded finally, "so it's possible that he's still alive over there. I am not opposed to risking my life - only to throwing it away - so if you really think that's where he went, we shall go after him. I saw the Death Eater earlier myself, and I'm not sure of the exact location, but I can show you the general-"
"Let's go!" Harry interrupted, already in the process of running off.
The body of the Dark Circle member was gone from the place Snape had last seen it. He was jubilant. "The boy's not here, either! That means he's probably well on the way out of the woods with the body."
Disappointment at not finding Julien was making Harry pessimistic, and he answered morosely, "No. The man could have woken up on his own and left."
"Not after I hexed him to make sure he wouldn't regain consciousness and become yet another monkey wrench," countered Snape. "Let us hope that Julien is long gone from this place," he continued through his coughs, "because everything is catching fire here at a very rapid pace...even your robes, Potter."
Harry looked down at his robes and sure enough, the hems were aflame again. With a noisy exclamation, he magicked out the fire, then turned to Snape. "I'm sick of being on fire! How come you're not burning too?"
With his usual smirk, Snape answered, "I always wear flame-retardant robes. A necessity when one is cooped up all day in a dungeon filled with explosive materials and inept students."
They set off again, more hopeful this time, following a trail that looked like something very large and heavy had been dragged through the leaves. All of a sudden, Harry spotted something through the smoke. It was a large figure, all in black, sprawled on the ground. "Look! There he is!"
He turned back and beckoned for the professor to hurry up. Snape stumbled over something and almost fell. "Well. So we have a happy ending after all," he said wryly.
Harry was looking all around. "No, we don't," he said, "because Julien's not here."
They were now surrounded by solid walls of fire on three sides. The only trail that looked remotely safe was the one that led out of the woods - the exact place Julien hadn't gone. Snape stood, silent and impassive, crossing his arms over his chest as Harry began to understand.
"He's not here," murmured Harry softly, "and he hasn't made it to safety. That means.... that means..." he could not bring himself to finish the sentence. He stared into the fire, watched the flames leaping up at the black sky, and clenched his fists. "He must have gone back in for the evidence after all. No!" he said aloud, firmly, apparently trying to banish the thought from his mind. Then: "No...NO...NOOOOOOO!" he roared, face upturned and demonic-looking in the firelight.
Snape held himself absolutely still, watching his former student explode with frustrated anger, then melt into grief. Typical sequence of events. He'll scream, then cry, then feel numb to everything and suggest that we get out of here because the smoke makes his eyes hurt, he thought calmly.
Harry was sobbing now, head in his hands. He clenched his fists and then, as though he didn't realize he had handfuls of hair, jerked so hard he ripped it out. Finally he pulled himself together a little and raised his head, eyes still squeezed closed. "So this is it, Professor? He's gone? That can't be it..."
Snape watched a drop of blood trickle down Harry's cheek, coloring his tears... then sighed, feeling a little let down. He would certainly have expected to experienced a lot of pleasure watching Harry Potter suffer....but the young man's grief was much less enjoyable than Snape had anticipated. I'd better stop his crying so we can get out of here, he thought. It's getting a little too fiery for comfort.
He finally broke the silence, just whispering, "Potter...?"
When Harry opened his eyes and saw that his weeping had brought a strange smile to Snape's lips, he was, for the moment, too bewildered to be enraged. "You...you're...you're laughing at me?" he demanded in a breathless whisper. He wanted to curse him, but he felt too drained to do anything of the sort.
"Oh, very well, Potter, have it your way," Snape spat in his usual ill-humor, annoyed at having been cheated out of his perverse amusement. "I am laughing at you, though not for quite the reason you're imagining." He paused. "Will you stop that crying! There's no need to start grieving yet."
Harry stared at him, not wanting to misunderstand. "What do you mean?"
"I mean," explained Snape, "that you, with your habit of jumping to conclusions, assumed that your son was dead simply because you did not see him here. Now, I'll remind you that he's wearing an Invisibility Cloak, so whether or not you see him is, at the moment, a moot point." He watched as comprehension dawned on Harry's face. "I happened to trip over something a moment ago - something that felt very much to me like an unconscious child lying under an Invisibility Cloak... shall I show you?" he asked innocently, unable to suppress a smirk.
In an instant, Harry's hands were around his throat. "I'll kill you! You mean he's all right? He's alive?" He let go. "Show me! Now!"
Snape strode the few paces to where he'd fallen before. He reached down, felt around a bit, and yanked off the Invisibility Cloak with a flourish. "There we go," he said calmly. "He seems to have inhaled a bit of smoke, but I think-" he stopped when Harry shoved him aside, rushing forward to embrace his son.
Julien's eyes finally opened. He stared at the sky and then at the grass around him, which was surprisingly not burning at all. "Where am I?" he asked thickly.
"He's come round!" somebody exclaimed close by. It was his father. Soon, both he and his mother were hugging him and talking at the same time in teary voices.
He tried to disentangle himself and sit up. "What happened to your hand, Dad? And how'd I get out of the woods? What about the Dark Circle guy - did he get out, too?"
Harry pushed him back down. "Don't try to get up yet. Yes, we got him out too - Snape and I found you both before the fire got to you. You carried him far enough to save his life, Julien.... I'm so proud of you."
Julien sighed. "Dad, I left your new video camera - I'm sorry. I couldn't carry everything, so I had to leave it behind."
Simultaneously, Harry and Gabrielle insisted that they didn't care. "It doesn't matter, not in the slightest bit. The only thing that matters is that you're safe," they both said.
Snape looked extremely irritated, and Julien grinned. "Oh, come on, guys - you don't have to be so noble and all. I'm not the only thing that matters." He squirmed out of his parents' embrace and managed to sit up straight, then reached into his pocket. "This matters a little, don't you think?"
To the utter astonishment of everybody present, he pulled a small rectangular object from his robes. A video tape.
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So that's the end of the story...sort of. I had two possible epilogues in mind, and I couldn't decide between them, so I'm including them both. Tell me which is better.
Thanks for reading.
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