I am a bad girl for not updating, rah. I'm sorry. Okay, here's the BB gun, and this is my hand. I'll even put a little target on it in red ink if you need it.

Yes, the excerpt within the chapter is from an actual book. I loves you, Nigel Pennick.

Oh, God. Too tired to edit. Too lazy. Blah, blah blah blah. I gave you the BB gun for a reason, you know.

When the dark wood fell before me
And all the paths were overgrown;
When the priests of pride say,
'There is no other way.'
I tilled the sorrows of stone.

Dante's Prayer, Loreena McKennitt

.x.

Severus had found the hands.

Voldemort was neither being poetic, nor cryptic. He was just stating what he saw… and what could be seen, for roughly ten metres ahead of Severus, were the roots of trees reaching up from the ground, twisting into shapes that were unmistakably hands.

There are old tales, where it is said that those who cut down the wrong forest, or threatened the wrong innocent, were devoured - pulled into the gaping trunks of ancient trees, locked there forever, their face frozen within the bark for all to see.

That was what Severus was reminded of as he got out his pocket watch, keeping an eye on the hands, for he need not walk through them else Voldemort would have written that down. Then, keeping his eye on the minute hand, achingly slow in its ascent, turned west.

He wondered faintly what Bellatrix was up to.

.x.

Bella had not known whether or not to stay upon the path at first, but then had decided against it. The path frightened her all of a sudden, as if it were expecting something large and dark and angry to thunder down it and destroy her.

So she took to the woods. It was hard going, but she went nonetheless, avoiding the thorns. She was fairly certain that they wouldn't pierce her thick robes, but she wasn't about to take that chance. She'd heard of plants that had poisonous thorns - mostly from Narcissa, because Narcissa was a clever girl, almost as clever as Severus in many regards.

As she battled her way through a very insistent bush, she thought. Her best bet would be to relocate herself, find out her direction according to the sun, and try to move on from there. She doubted it would work, but she could try. If she managed to make it out of the Forest, she could start over again at the beginning and try to catch up to Severus, so long as he didn't get lost as well.

If he did, well, that would be something to needle him about if they both got out of this alive.

She untangled the skirt of her robes from a few clinging brambles and paused, listening. There was a tinkling sound in the air - or in her head - and it was faint and soft. Voldemort would have called it elf music. Maybe that was what it was.

She picked a twig out of her hair thoughtfully, and flicked it away into the dark. Her hair was coming out of its plait. Not that she cared.

"Alright." she said, to no one in particular. She moved in the direction of the music. She had a feeling there was something behind her, but she realised that something was always behind you in the Forbidden Forest.

Bellatrix forced her way through some more bushes and trees before pausing, catching sight of something lush and green between the gaps in the branches. She blinked and, curious, shifted forward. The elf music trilled in her ears.

She was besides a clearing that sloped downwards, and there was a little pond that gathered like rainwater in a bowl. The grass was thick and a vibrant green, and made her want to remove her boots and walk barefoot. Instead she bent down to touch the blades of grass, feel the moistness and the greenness. There was an impossible sense of calm to the place, as if she had stepped into another world, a different plane; she very well could have, for all she knew.

There was a safeness to this clearing, and Bellatrix knew nothing could harm her if she stayed.

Her eyes were drawn toward the pond. There was a gathering of reeds to one side, and as she walked forward, descending, she saw the sandy little bank and the clear water and the multicoloured pebbles, of a sort she and her sisters would gather on a hot spring day to present to their parents before the sun went down.

There was something beautiful about the water, clean and otherworldly. She wanted to taste it. She knelt at the bank, leaning forward a little, dipping cupped hands into the water and drinking it, unafraid. The water was sweet, and droplets from the gaps in her fingers trickled down and rippled across the pond.

She sat back and looked at the water, waiting as it stilled once more. She could see her reflection, faint and shimmering and silvered by the water.

She had never realised how beautiful she was.

Her hair was soft and silky, her lips moist and full and almost pouting. Her eyes were hooded and dark and her expression that of a queen.

What a lovely face she had. She remembered Rodolphus, speaking flatteries into her ear. He had been right when he had said she was the most beautiful girl in the world. How on earth, she thought, admiring her reflection, could she love anyone other than herself?

She forgot about Severus, and Regulus, and everything else. She just looked deep into her own eyes, and her heart was happy.

.x.

Severus followed the direction. After he hit the five minute mark he stopped, and waited for the designated thirty seconds.

Turn right and walk until you see the fairy tree.

As he passed by, Severus was quick to notice the markings carved into the tree trunks; laid down in some sort of archaic pattern that he could follow only slightly. They were cut and hacked into the bark and left as open wounds, deep in the flesh of the trees. The symbols were binding, defensive, warning, and it was to Severus' frustration that he could only partially translate them.

Perhaps they had been there for hundreds of years. Perhaps they were cut by the Dark Lord, or Dumbledore, or the founders of Hogwarts, or maybe someone even greater and darker than all the rest who had disappeared in the shadows of myth a long time ago.

Severus traced his fingertips over the fifteenth symbol he passed, nails digging into the cuts. There was a whisper in the back of the mind as he traced, as if the symbol wanted to call up something dark from his past.

The shadows were deeper, now, and the light thinning. There were places in the world where time ran restfully; but where Severus was now it seemed to want to speed up, as if it were impatient.

Severus distrusted the Forbidden Forest at night, rightfully so. He had his wand out and ready, though he knew that it would take more than a wand to win if he were attacked. Those in the Forest didn't play by rules. They played to win.

He kept moving, following the directions that Bella had written in her untidy, scrawling hand. Her writing could be elegant, of course, but often she wasn't in the mood to use her hand properly, so her graceful cursive morphed into a bunch of messy twirls. Walk until you see the fairy tree. Respectfully remove a small branch from oak, thorn, and ash, and bind together with red silk.

Severus sighed. There were many types of magic, and Voldemort had dabbled in nearly all of them, religious or otherwise. Voldemort had puzzled Severus; Voldemort had paid respects to nearly all the Gods he had ever heard of, from ancient to new, reaping power as he went - and he got away with it. Either Voldemort was blessed, or Severus was correct in believing that gods didn't exist.

It was probably the latter - but with Voldemort, who knew?

The bit with the red silk obviously drew origins from natural magic, which was a smattering and gathering of traditions, blessings, and practices that Voldemort had been quite fond of. "It's a sensible practice, what can I say," he'd said, stringing together nine little bones he had gathered from nine dead toads on a red silk braid. Red was the most powerful colour in natural magic. It signified blood.

Very sensible, indeed.

.x.

She didn't know how long she sat there, gazing into the water. It must have been a long time.

A soft breeze, gravity, a quiet shifting of her muscles… she didn't know what did it, but something budged a single strand of her hair which had drifted out of the braid. It arched downward, maddeningly graceful and slow, to touch the water.

Ripples erupted from its tip.

With a gasp Bellatrix tore herself away from her broken image and crawled away from the bank, laying sprawled across the ground. She buried her face into the lushness of the grass, her breathe bursting in her chest, her stomach sick. The clearing would keep her safe from all things, save herself. And that was one thing she was quite afraid of.

Her stomach heaved, but she refused to retch. She knew she had been beautiful once, but time had altered her into something sharper, darker. The pond… that pond had been something that had dug right into her mind, altered her very perceptions, until she could not help but swoon at her own reflection.

Bellatrix got to her knees and spat the vile taste of sickness out of her mouth. A regular little Narcissus she was, wasn't she.

She wiped her mouth with her sleeve. She wanted water, but didn't dare risk straying near the pond and becoming captured by the reflection again. There was something eerie about reflections. People used to think your reflection was the devil, or your inner self, or something entirely different altogether.

People think silly things sometimes. Like that maybe beauty was the only thing that mattered.

.x.

A fairy tree is not one tree; it is three that have grown together in such close proximity that they have grown into each other, twisting and moulding into a weird shape. Ash, oak, and thorn were the components of a fairy tree, and their unusual appearance supposedly attracted earth sprites and other unnatural creatures, and the land about a fairy tree tended to take on a curious and special character.

Frankly, it disturbed the hell out of Severus, who looked up at the one Voldemort had directed him to with a little twist to his mouth.

He took out his knife, gripped the blade between his teeth and began to climb the tree - or trees, rather. He carefully settled himself upon an oak limb and, removing the knife from his mouth, sliced off a twig from the living tree, murmuring his thanks. He could see, with a little jolt of surprise in his stomach, that the wood was scarred in certain places, which meant that years ago, someone else had been doing what he was doing now.

Voldemort had to have been one of them.

Shuddering, Severus stuck the oak into his pocket and moved on to the thorn. He wasn't sure what type of thorn tree it was, since the light was rather dim, but that didn't matter. He cut the ceremonial way, from the bottom and then up, severing with one stroke. Once he had then gathered the ash he carefully made his way to the ground, not wanting to drop the wood - it would lose its power once he did.

He gathered the small branches together and took out the silk thread, binding it all together into a neat bundle. Ash was protection from harmful creatures and spirits; oak would ward off lightning; thorn would direct magical power, and was also protective. It was protection in triplicate; a powerful talisman from harm. Severus doubted it would work, but that was just a natural reaction from him.

Hold it in front of you and circle the tree nine times.

Go east.

Severus had gone beyond feeling foolish when it came to ritual, so without hesitation he held the bundle before him and walked, circling the tree nine times, a magical number. Then he turned east.

As he passed a bent old apple tree, he noticed more symbols hacked into the bark.

.x.

The Crane (Megalornis grus) has been a significant power-bird for many thousands of years. Images of cranes appear on Celtic and Roman altars, and its movements are the origin of the human ceremonial crane-dance in labyrinths. The Crane is a symbol of watchfulness. It guards entrances to the Otherworld, both the world of non-human spirits and the world of the dead. Similar attributes are given to Herons and Storks (order Ciconiformes), also long-legged stalkers. Celtic magicians carried a magic bag made from the skin of a Crane. In it were their magical power-objects, used in divination. For this reason, traditional Celtic mysteries are sometimes called The Crane-Bag of Secrets

Excerpt from Way of Natural Magic, Chapter 4: Magical Animals & Birds, by Nigel Pennick.

.x.

Bellatrix had been lying in the grass, having decided that walking - and moving in general - was unnecessary. But then a piece of her hair tickled the corner of her eye, and she was forced to irritably rub at it with her fist.

She could swear that the pond giggled behind her. She grit her teeth as she struggled to her feet, and began to wipe her face to clear away the dried sweat. Disgusting. But human bodies were, and always have been, disgusting; Bellatrix knew that long before the fellow girls in her year at Hogwarts had, who expected men to be clean and polished and shaven and perfect, and who all wanted to be as fake as the moving photos of wizard celebrities on the front of glamorous magazines.

Bodies were made of bone and mucus and tissue and saliva and blood. Bella knew this as a young girl because she was the sort of girl who looked at the world with nothing in front of her eyes. Bella knew this even more so as a young woman, having taken apart enough bodies to know the human anatomy quite well.

If you cut someone, they bled. A lot of them had split ends in their hair. They had intestines and lungs and sweated when they were hot. It was disgusting, but somehow it comforted Bellatrix, especially when she was locked away from reality during both her imprisonment and her recovery, since it was just more proof that things were real and she wasn't totally insane.

She dug the toe of her boot into the moist black earth, terrorizing the roots of the grass. She might as well move along, then. The sun blared brightly into her little clearing, and when she looked up there were no clouds to hinder the perfect blue of the sky.

It disturbed her, somewhat.

She turned about in full circle, observing her shadow. She would have to move south if she wanted to reach the edge of the forest. It was afternoon, so that meant the shadows were all pointing… northeast?

She set her teeth and trekked back into the forest, leaving the calmness of the clearing behind.