Chapter 14: The Forbidden Forest
Even at midday, the Forbidden Forest was imposing. Alissa, Al, and Alexa had the good sense to look trepidatious as they approached but the dark line of trees did nothing to faze Elias and Lyla. Which was one the reasons Myles was here and accompanying his fellow first-years into the Forbidden Forest; he didn't know if Alissa would be enough to reign the two fearless Gryffindors in.
He stepped under the canopy of the first forest he'd ever entered. Grand trees, their trunks thicker than he was tall surrounded him. Their thick foliage turned the daylight outside into a perennial dusk. The comfortable breeze disappeared, the damp and earthy air of the forest feeling stale in comparison. Patches of grass and the occasional bush sprouted from the hard-packed and root infested ground. Birds and squirrels flitted through the branches above, the noises of rustling branches and occasional chirps relieving the tension of the otherwise silent forest.
They'd gathered knotgrass by the lake, wormwood outside of the forest, and had nicked all but Wiggentree bark from the unrestricted potion stores. The Herbology textbook Guide to All Things Green, which covered the first three years of the course, had detailed the magical tree:
The Wiggentree is notable for its fabled, if not wholly accurate, reputation for protection against Dark magic, its unique relationship with bowtruckles, and the use of its bark and leaves as ingredients in potions of healing and protection. Under the National Resource Act of 2009, the Wiggentree is classified as a Biggity II. As a result, flauging, stripping, and other acts of harm can lead to up to a 1,000 Galleon fine and/or a month in Azkaban.
Wiggentrees are harmless rowan trees with magical properties of resistance to magic and the potential for unnatural growth. They prefer well-irrigated soil near rivers, ponds, and streams and rarely found outside of magical forests. Herbologist Miranda Goshawk, the first Herbologist to grow a domestic Wiggentree, theorized that wild Wiggentree seeds only germinate in the presence of bowtruckles. Newt Scamander took this theory a step further, proposing that bowtruckles spread and plant Wiggentree seeds.
The most common interaction with Wiggentrees is collecting their bark and/or leaves. This task is more concerned with Zoology than Herbology, however, as the largest challenge is appeasing or tricking the bowtruckles that guard it. The simplest solution is to offer them wood lice but a number of methods exist, including, but not limited to: cooling charms to soothe the bowtruckles, fire illusions to distract them, and using a long but non-magical tool to harvest from a distance.
They didn't learn Cooling Charms until the spring semester and they hadn't brought a long tool to scrape off its bark. So they would need to find wood lice as well as a Wiggentree. Alexa had found an old map of the Forbidden Forest in the library and they were heading for a creek.
So they were searching for both wood lice and a Wiggentree. Myles and Alexa had found an old map of the Forbidden Forest in the library along with a reference to the Point Me spell. They weren't so daring as to take the map (it wasn't an item students were allowed to check out) out of the library, Mister Poray would have their necks if he caught them, but Alexa had a fair hand and she had sketched out a copy on a roll of parchment.
"There should be a creek about a quarter mile ahead," Alexa said, peering at the copied map. "Hopefully we'll find a Wiggentree there."
They spread out in a line as we walked forward. The five of them walked at a slow pace to accommodate the silent but obviously hurting Al, who had refused to be left behind on this "harebrained expedition that I didn't ask for." The somber mood of their surroundings caught on as they ventured further into the eerily dark forest and even Elias and Lyla quieted. Myles noticed an oddly shaped branch above and paused in his step.
"Blimey..." he breathed out slowly, carefully stepping back from the huge snake above him. It was as thick as the branch it was wrapped around, and nearly as long. Myles held his breath as it stirred, hoping it would settle back down.
He hoped in vain. The snake uncoiled from the branch, a peculiar but smooth motion in which it seemed to glide across the branch and into the air as it descended towards Myles.
"Sss-speaker in the woods," the snake hissed as it lowered its head onto and past Myles's shoulder. Myles held his wand in his hand, but thoughts of the Fire-Making charm quickly retreated as he heard the snake speak; he could somehow hear there was no ill-intent.
"You can speak?" Myles asked, eying the impossibly long body of the snake, which stretched from the tree branch to his shoulder.
"You can sss-speak," the snake stated from behind his head, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
"What do you mean?" Myles asked, confused.
"The language," it hissed as it slithered around to face him.
"English?" Myles tried to say, but it left his lips as "Human tongue?"
"No hatchling," the snake shook its head. "The language of Sss-salazar's children."
"The Slytherin Founder?" Myles asked, thinking about it like he would a riddle. "Oh! Snake language?"
"Sss-salazar's own," the snake acquiesced. "Are you hunting, hatchling? Like the other?"
"The other?" Myles paid attention to the sound of his voice as he spoke this time, and was surprised at the twisting hiss that came from his mouth.
"The old hatchling. It hunts the small things but doesn't eat. It returns its prey dead, tasting of gray." Myles would've much rather solved a riddle from the Ravenclaw entrance; he could make no sense of the snake's cryptic wording. An "old hatchling"? "Taste of gray"?
"I'm not hunting," Myles said slowly, an idea popping into his head. "But I'm looking for something. Do you know where a - Myles found that Salazar's language had no word for "Wiggentree" and subsequently no word for "Bowtruckle" - a tree guarded by small things made of tree is?"
The snake hissed in disfavor, clearly she (Myles could somehow feel it was a she) disliked Bowtruckles. "The tree with cursed leaves lives near the warm bed."
No wonder they didn't talk about speaking to snakes in class, Myles thought, it was bloody useless. He was thinking of how to ask for clearer directions when he heard a shriek in the distance. He was on his feet before he could even process the noise and he was running only a moment later.
"Good hunting," the snake hissed at his back.
Myles must have been talking to the snake for longer than he'd realized because the cry had been far away. He nearly twisted his ankle a dozen times on his run, keeping to his feet as a result of luck more than anything else. He was beginning to wonder if he was still running in the right direction when he heard a bout of laughter up and ahead.
"Get it off me!" Myles heard Alissa shout as he burst into the small clearing that held the other five first years. The laughter, unsurprisingly, was coming from Lyla and Elias, who doubled down on the hilarity as they saw a panting Myles sprint into the clearing.
"Calm down," Alexa placated Alissa with amused exasperation. "He's harmless, he just thinks you're warm."
"What happened?" Myles pushed out in between deep breaths.
"A snake -" Lyla began before breaking back down into laughter, presumably as Myles sprinting over thin
"A snake went up my robes!" Alissa exclaimed, her voice high pitched and tense.
"It's a hearthsnake, Alissa. It's bite can't even break your skin." Alexa explained to little effect.
"A snake?" Myles asked. Maybe talking to snakes could be useful after all.
"Yes!" Alissa snapped. "Crawling on my skin!"
"Hello?" Myles copied the way he'd talked to the huge snake just moments ago.
"Sss-speaker?" Came a small voice as far as could be from the regal and confident tone of the only other snake he'd met.
"Yesss, could you come out of there?"
"Here warm." The snake replied simply.
"It won't lassst, I'll find you another warm place."
"Hmmm…" The snake hissed, considering his offer at first but losing himself in the the warmth around him.
"Come on," Myles pried with an urgent tone, and the snake acquiesced with a groan. The small earth-red snake slithered down Alissa's body and onto her foot, where Myles picked him up. He stood up, only now noticing that the laughter had stopped and his year-mates were staring at him.
"What?"
"You didn't tell us you were a Parselmouth!" Elias exclaimed.
"A Parselmouth?" Myles asked, catching the hearthsnake as it tried to dive into his sleeve.
"You can talk to snakes!" The other wizard-born first-years we're staring at Myles in shock, but Lyla was simply excited.
"Is that rare?" Alexa asked. Clearly she hadn't heard the term either.
"The last known Parselmouth was," Alissa paused and glanced at each of them in an unintentionally dramatic fashion. "You-Know-Who."
The awkward silence that followed was broken when Al spoke up. "Parseltongue isn't evil and Myles isn't Dark. Just keep it between us or the whole school will be talking about."
Each of the first-years nodded in an agreement of varied emotions: worry from Alissa, excitement from Elias and Lyla, and apathetic curiosity from Alexa.
"Thanks for the help, anyways," Alissa said, pointedly glaring at Elias and Lyla, who suddenly found the forest floor immensely interesting.
"Let's get moving, and we should stick together this time. It looks like we almost lost Myles there." Al said, starting them forward as they remembered the reason they were in the forest to begin with.
They checked the map again and continued north, picking up a few wood lice along the way. Lyla proved to be particularly good at finding them. She tried to turn it into a competition of who could find the most but even Elias wasn't interested enough to join her. There was nothing but more trees ahead of them for long enough that they began to doubt the map and if they had correctly followed it. But just as Alexa pulled the map back out they heard the trickle of water ahead.
The stream they came to wasn't much to look at, but it wasn't the stream that they were looking for. Across the stream was an inconspicuous and, amongst the giants of the Forbidden Forest, small rowan tree that matched the depiction from the Herbology textbook.
"Score," Elias grinned. "Now let's bribe some bowtruckles and grab what we need."
They crossed the stream, except for Alissa, who didn't want to get her robes dirty, and approached the Wiggentree. It was hard to see the bowtruckles, which looked as much like a twig and leaves as a living creature possibly could, but they became apparent as they neared arms reach. Or some of them did, the others remained as if invisible through camouflage until they began moving.
"So we just give them the lice and rip off some bark?" Al asked, inspecting the bowtruckles. "They don't look very dangerous."
"There are a number of reports of the ripping off intruders' faces," Alexa responded, though she too was looking at the lice doubtfully. "But as long as we give them lice we'll be fine."
Lyla got to it, giggling at the sensation of her handful of lice squirming around. Myles and Elias helped her distribute the wood lice to the bowtruckles and Alexa and Al stepped forward and cautiously took hold of pieces of bark that looked like they might give easily. Once the wood lice had been distributed, Alexa and Al ripped off the bark and cautiously backed off.
It was anti-climatic. They gazed warily at the bowtruckles but they made no move to chase them. When a large crash sounded from somewhere out the field of vision that the trees afforded, all of the jumped from the tension. The five of them on the same side of the stream unconsciously moved to stand closer together and Alissa, from across the stream, wrung her hands nervously.
"What was that?" Alissa asked, the fear clear in her voice.
"A werewolf?" Elias grinned, but Myles could tell the size of the crash had made him uncomfortable as well.
"It's daytime, idiot," an annoyed Alissa replied.
"A centaur, maybe?" Alexa guessed.
"It sounded larger than a centaur," Al commented doubtfully.
"Let's check it out!" Lyla, the only one unperturbed by the noise, exclaimed. Myles, unsurprised by Lyla's lack of a self-preservation instinct, grabbed the back of her robes before she could run off.
"Let's get back," Myles said, warily watching the trees in the direction of the crash.
He started walking back towards Alissa and the Hogwarts castle, pulling Lyla along to be safe. He paused at a blade of grass scraping his leg, noting the warmth
"What are you doing?" Alexa asked from behind him, eager to keep moving.
"One second," Myles responded. He crouched and put the hand that the hearthsnake was wrapped around in the grass.
"Will this do?" He asked, feeling the warmth of the grass on his hand and comparing the coloration of the red grass with the hearthsnake and finding them well-matched.
"Yesss, Sss-speaker," the snake hissed as he slithered off his hand and into the grass.
Myles stood up snake-free and hopped over the stream. The six of them made their way out of the forest, not quite fast enough to be running but certainly faster than a walk. When they finally stepped out of the canopy's shadow, it was a relief to see the sky, a relief that only lasted until Alexa let out an alarmed shriek. Myles and Alissa jumped at the sound, only for their shock to turn into annoyance; Elias had snuck up behind Alexa and scared her. He'd either used one of his Dad's prank products or whispered a spell, because there was a shadow of darkness hanging in the air around Alexa. Elias and Lyla found it hilarious, but Myles, Alissa, and Al thought it was much less amusing.
"Quit it," Al said, scowling slightly. "It's not funny."
"Sorry," Elias said, but his grin didn't show any sign of it.
"Where are you planning to make the potion?" Myles asked Alexa, who was by far the best first-year in Potions class.
"The abandoned classroom we met in yesterday?"
Al shook his head. "The hallway by it is too crowded, if the potion has any fumes or a smell it'll be noticed. We'd be better off in the dungeons."
"The dungeons?" Elias perked up. Myles didn't know why, it wasn't like Elias didn't go into the dungeons twice a week for Potions class.
Al ignored his cousin. "Meet up after lunch? We'd better hurry if we want to eat."
"That works," Alexa smiled.