AN: So, here's the deal, ladies and gents. I need feedback from people. This is what reviews are. I need feedback and help. I know that my writing can improve greatly, but so far I've gotten two reviews that aren't from people I know in the world outside my computer. Please, for the love of writing, review and let me know what you like, don't like, think I suck at, want to see more of… This is partially an experiment to see what all people would like to see done in a full story and another part to see if I can't get off my ass this month and do NaNoWriMo.
I'm also doing requests. As seen, I've done an Infernal!Harry story (which has a lot of potential in it, if you ask me) and a continuation of the Lunar!Harry. Harry is not the only person I'm willing to write into an exaltation, but he was the main character in canon, thusly he's the one with the most obvious opportunities to Exalt. If you have an idea that you'd like to see written then give me the details you want. Pick a character (within reason,) Pick an Exaltation (Solar, Lunar, Sidereal, Infernal, etc.) and pick a year (as long as it makes sense, I guess?) and so long as you're not too specific about other details I'll do it. (I don't do Femme/slash. Either of them. Don't ask.)
Please, if all you have is a request, PM me. If you have something to say, feel free to include the request with a review, but otherwise, PLEASE REVIEW! :P
And now that I'm don ranting… Actual Word Count of the chapter (so as to not be a douche about it) : 904
Why was it spiders? Of all things, why spiders? Aragog, the Acromantula Hagrid had raised in his youth, had just told Harry and Ron that he would not deny his children fresh meat when it just waltzed into their home…
If there was one thing at that moment that drove Harry, it was the thought of not ending up as spider food. Following that was "survive to the end of puberty" and in any normal world, normal being a relative word, the flying Ford Anglia that he and Ron had crashed into the Whomping Willow at the beginning of term would have come to their rescue, helping them escape form the massive spiders and their hungry eyes and clicking mandibles.
But for one reason or another, the care was not there, leaving Harry and Ron to fend off the giant spiders on their own. Thank you Hagrid.
"Arania Exumai!" Harry cast the spell used to exterminate spiders he had learned from the journal of Tom Riddle earlier in the year, banishing several spiders, but hardly killing them or putting too much of a dent in their advance. The stress of the year was really beginning to catch up with Harry at this point, much the way one's life tends to flash before their eyes in moments where they think they're going to die.
Haryr was not pleased with his life, for the most part. He was so tired of it and normally he would be able to grin and bear it, but this year had been the worst. The whole school, save for a few people who were either loyal to him or thought so little of him that nothing could have made him be a threat in their eyes, thought that he was the one releasing the creature in the Chamber of Secrets and killing Muggleborn.
Two years and so far Harry had almost been killed at least four major times. Form older students who don't clue their younger compatriots as to which staircases like to move and when, which stair only exists every other Tuesday and Thursday between the hours of four in the afternoon and five in the morning which had lead to people tumbling down long flights of stairs, the amount of magic being flung about in hallways in "harmless jest," homicidal (or incompetent) Defense Against the Dark Arts instructors, a Potions Instructor who seems more interested in creating a hostile learning environment for three-quarters of the school than actually teaching them anything and now this crap. A giant spider deciding that even though he's trying to help the very person who gave it a home in the Forbidden Forest, took care of it when it was younger, and released it when the heat got turned up a bit on the situation rather than allowing it to be captured and probably killed was about to let him and his friend be eaten.
The anger was enough to break men of greater stature than Harry could, at the moment, dare hope to reach. When one really bad day stretched out into an entire bad month, let alone a bad year, one really has to have something to keep a hold of to keep them grounded. Harry had no anchor of sufficient strength.
And thens omething gave him that strength. He felt the woods around him The whole of the Forbidden Forest was an open book to him. The trees felt angry, but like all things with such long lifespans their anger was one that would seethe and simmer for ages befor eacting. Now they had Harry's anger to act with as well, granting them the impetus to act.
Harry continued fighting as hard as he could, notciing very little other than his own struggle to beat back the oncoming swarm of arachnids. His newfound awareness of the forest around him only provided him with a panoramic view of how many spiders really were in the trees. But then, with Harry's continued anger and his expenditure of his energy trying to stay alive and protect Ron form his angle, the forest itself joined the fight. Like the Whomping Willow they began to bash at anything and everything within reach. New trees grew at an unreal pace, wrapping around the limbs of the giant spiders and even growing through them.
Harry himself began to glow with a green light, which granted an eerie feel to the whole scene… well, more eerie than seeing a swarm of spiders descend upon a couple of children no older than 13.
In the end, one massive tree rose above the rest of the forest, casting a shadow on a larg portion of it with the length of the branches. Harry continued to glow in that same green light, Affecting Ron by making him alternatingly nauseous and healthier than he'd ever felt. Where harry walked the tree sprouted new branches, for the tree had grown underneath their feet before bursting out of the ground, taking them up above the forest canopy.
"Hey, Harry?"
"Yes Ron?"
"Not that I don't appreciate the save form the marching spiders of death and all, but how are we going to get down from here?"
Harry could only blink as he realized that even given this majestic new power he felt, connecting him to the forest and the cycle of life itself, he didn't know how to get down without injuring himself.
"Balls."
