Author's note: I'm not so sure if Mallory would really know who Tolkien and Lewis are since I recently read "California Girls!" and she didn't know who Alfred Hitchcock was or what asthma is. What an idiot. But the Pikes had a hamster named Frodo, so surely she knows about LotR and Tolkien…

Dear Jessi,

I wish you were here! This place is so magical, there's no better way to describe it. I feel like I've stepped into a world created by J . R. R. Tolkien or C. S. Lewis. Your parents are so stale for not letting you come on this trip. I've also met some pretty fascinating people here as well. TTYL!

Yours till the onion peels,

Mallory

In case you didn't know, J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis are both wonderful fantasy writers. J.R.R. Tolkien wrote the Lord of the Rings series and C.S. Lewis wrote The Chronicles of Narnia. My friends think I'm obsessed with both of those series, especially LotR.

After drawing my bunny face under the two Ls in my name, I put Jessi's letter in my pocket and followed the rest of the fourth year Hufflepuff students to Herbology where they had had class with their fellow fourth year Ravenclaw students.

That's right, I, Mallory Pike, age eleven, who technically should have been grouped with the first years, was put with the fourth years. They were even older than Kristy, Mary Anne, Dawn, Claudia, and Stacey! Needless to say, I felt very grown up.

During the class, the teacher, Professor Sprout, kept talking about some kind of magical healing plant, but I wasn't really paying attention. I was mostly looking around at the other students and I nearly gasped when I came across a girl wearing Ravenclaw robes. There was something rather ethereal about her. She had long, stringy blonde hair and huge misty, gray eyes and seemed to be lost in her own little world. If she had pointy ears, shinier hair, and was a little bit taller, she could have been a dead ringer for Galadriel. Perhaps she was an elf! Like I had told Jessi in my letter, this was quite a magical place. This girl was only fourteen years old, so maybe elves didn't come eternally beautiful until they reached a certain age, like two thousand. I was so excited to talk to her. She was blonde, so maybe she was part of the same tribe as Legolas!

Once the class ended, I gathered up my courage and marched up to the girl as she was leaving the greenhouse. "Excuse me, are you from Mirkwood?"

I seemed to have startle the girl out of her daydream, because she jumped a bit, then turned to look at me, blinking slowly. "Mirkwood?" she repeated. "No, I'm afraid I am not aware of such a place."

"Oh," I replied, trying not to sound disappointed. Then I nearly laughed out loud. How could I have been so stupid. Of course, she wasn't from Mirkwood. It was a fictional place, made up by Professor Tolkien.

"You don't happen to know anyone named Legolas?" I couldn't resist asking.

The girl shook her head again. "Perhaps you have me confused with someone else. My name is Luna Lovegood."

"Mallory Pike," I introduced myself. "My school is visiting here. I've never been to a place like here before."

Luna widened her eyes. "Were you able to see the threstals?"

Threstals? What were those? "Uh, no," I replied uncertainly.

"Luna, hey, Luna!" we heard a voice say. We turned around and saw a girl with red hair, (straight and not frizzy, I noticed with a twinge of jealousy) running over and waving to Luna. "I wanted to tell you that Harry is having a D.A. meeting tonight at seven. It was sort of last minute, so I hope you can make it."

Luna nodded. "Of course, I'll be there. Thank you, Ginny."

The girl named Ginny looked at me. "You must be one of the visiting Muggles."

I frowned. I was being called "Muggle" an awful lot. Oh, well, at least I wasn't being called a "Mud-blood" like Dawn. That sounded worse. "I'm Mallory Pike."

"Ginny Weasley," Ginny said.

"What's the D.A.?" I asked.

"Oh, uh, I can't exactly disclose that information," Ginny said, a slight blush passing over her face. "It's a bit of a secret society…sorry."

I nodded. I fully understood. Whenever Jessi and I don't want other kids at school to know what we're talking about, we speak in Pig Latin. It's our own special language that only we understand. (Well, and my siblings know it too since I taught it to them).

I glanced to my right at the huge forest that surrounded the school. "Do you have a horse trail here?" I asked.

Luna and Ginny glanced at each other in surprise.

"Er, no," Ginny said. "And we're not supposed to go into the Forbidden Forest. I'm surprised Dumbledore forgot to mention it to all you visiting students."

The Forbidden Forest! F.F. Just like Fanghorn Forest. Coincidence? I think not? And was it a coincidence that Dumbledore looked exactly like Gandalf?

"What's in Fang-I mean the Forbidden Forest?" I asked.

"Oh, loads of creatures," Luna replied. "Threstals, trolls, centaurs, and I still believe that there are Crumple-Horned Snorkacks hiding somewhere out there."

"Are there Ents too?" I asked excitedly.

Ginny frowned. "Ents?"

"Yeah! You know, talking trees!" I glanced nervously toward the forest, hoping that any Ents that may live there didn't hear me. "Well, they don't like to be called talking trees, but they look like talking and walking trees."

"Ummm…." Ginny said.

"And….they…..talk…..like……this." I deepened my voice and paused for five seconds between each word.

Ginny continued to look confused, but Luna exclaimed, "You know, I could have sworn I've heard the trees whispering to each other from my room when it's really still outside, Maybe we do have Ents in the forest!"

"Does the name Treebeard ring a bell?" I asked.

"I'm pretty sure Hagrid would have told us if there were talking trees," Ginny said. But before I can ask her who Hagrid is, she took Luna's elbow and steered her away from me.

"Bye!" I shouted. I looked back at the Forest Forbidden. I was determined to go in there and see for myself if the Ents lived there!