Disclaimer: Hogwarts and denizens belong to JK Rowling and Warner people. I'm not making any money from this. Just having a little fun.

ooOOoo

Chapter 87

Somewhere a bird started singing then fell silent. Harry thought it might be a thrush but it didn't sing long enough for him to identify it and he wasn't an ornithologist. If it shot out of a clock and went 'cuckoo!' at regular intervals then he was confident it was a cuckoo, and might even hazard a guess that it was a Swiss subspecies. No other echoed it. Perhaps all sensible birds were still in their nests, waiting to see if the sun or the rain would win the battle for the day. The sky cupped the world and held it close, smothering it with a syrupy red tint; the clouds were so low they had devoured the hilltops and were louring in a menacing way at the valleys. The bird sang again, bravely lifting its voice. But in all the world, there was only the song of one bird. Soon that, too, died, and there was only the press of clouds and hedges.

Harry felt his isolation for a moment, but then told himself not to be melodramatic. Draco was winging his way towards the southern tree, Hedwig was on her way to warn Hogsmeade, and he was on a horse.

Trotting was less comfortable than cantering by far, but when weighing up speed for effort it was the most ground-effective way for Simon to cover the distance. They'd need Simon's real talent for speed sooner or later. His legs were probably going to be sore from the galloping he'd already done on the tarmac. Cantering would only make any micro-injuries worse. Harry gritted his teeth and tried to relax into the saddle. If he stretched his heels down it helped a lot. Luna had compared riding to a tree – your centre was the ground, and you pictured yourself growing roots down into the soil to anchor you while the rest of you from the naval up was the trunk and branches reaching proudly into the sky. It was pretty weird, yes, but it did the trick. Just like Luna. Neville would probably do well with the analogy, but it was unlikely he'd ever get onto Simon's back without some sort of heavy-duty sedative for everyone concerned, especially Simon and Neville.

Simon's stride was long and elastic. The silver shoes on his silenced hooves flashed in the dim dawn struggling to break through. The occasional glimpses he caught of Simon's front hooves when they entered his line of sight just ahead of the horse's shoulders were brilliant meteorites to sight enhanced by unicorn blood. Harry wished he'd thought to mask them with black paint or something before they'd left. Oh well. If wishes were horses… The thought popped into his mind and a second later he remembered it was Luna who'd said it.

Luna said some pretty clever stuff. She'd also expected the unicorns, and the unicorns had sent Harry through the barrier.

This cheered him up even more. It made him feel less alone.

Come to think of it, there were probably lots of Death Eaters out there who'd love to keep him company, providing they had him tied up like a Christmas present for their lord and master.

This… did not cheer him up.

He kept the hood of his cloak up to cover his face. The clouds sucked out most of the light from the world and it was unlikely Death Eaters had been given any help by unicorns, but it paid to be cautious.

There were occasional noises and once more they disturbed a rabbit. Something in a field beyond a particularly thick hedge went 'toc-toc-toc.' That could have been a bird or a wizarding animal. Or possibly a sheep. Harry didn't know half as much about them as he'd thought pre-Draco's mini-lecture.

Hopefully it wasn't an alpaca.

What the hell was an alpaca, anyway?

Despite the black surfacing of the road they were following that was decidedly Muggle, Harry was sure they must be on the way to some of the more out-of-the way wizarding homes, he decided; the signs had the occasional wizard-sign on them, such as a little owl to signify a postal drop-off point was nearby, and one lane he assumed led up to a bed-and-breakfast had a little broomstick painted on a sign by the turnoff. The absence of letterboxes might have pointed to this land being farmed by witches and wizards, but Harry didn't know enough about Muggles to be say if they had rural delivery this far out or not. Maybe they –

"Stop it."

Simon tossed his head. This was the first time his rider had spoken since leaving Draco.

Harry patted Simon's shoulder. "Sorry. First I was distracted from the job in hand. Then I started talking to myself." He considered his situation. "And now I'm talking to a horse. I think that's a step up, to be honest."

Simon flicked one ear backwards at the craziness of his rider, sighed, and kept trotting steadily on.

Harry settled back again and reminded himself to keep his eyes and ears open for attack.

Oh, and his toes up. That really helped with balance when you were on a horse. Even if turning your toes up was kind of a bad metaphor when it came to staying alive.

At least Simon hadn't kicked any buckets lately.

He'd long since lost sight of the fence Simon had jumped. It was a bit of a worry, actually – it made a handy landmark, although he was worried he would have to jump Simon over it again.

They came to a fork. A small brown bird investigating the verge in a series of short, darting runs paused, cocking its head to the side as it eyed up the tall horse and rider as they stopped. When Simon snorted – just a snort to clear his nostrils rather than any specific sign of imminent threat – the bird sang a rather noisy (if melodic) warning and flew off along into the fields. Harry didn't watch its progress. He was more interested in checking the stone: just as he'd thought, it indicated the left turn, the one which seemed to be leading up the hill. Simon was on a loose rein but when Harry urged him back into a trot, and shifted his right foot back a little and pressed the left against the girth, the horse turned left. Harry breathed easy for the first time since coming through the barrier: Simon was listening to him, really listening, and anticipating his needs. Simon wasn't a scared horse anymore, he was a horse on the job.

Hopefully he remembered that his job included acting as Harry's bodyguard when monsters appeared.

"Good boy, Simon." Harry leaned forward as the incline steepened. "Hey… wait a tick."

The little gold speck in the stone had shifted to the left.

Okay. So how did he follow the yellow speck road? There was a hedge between him and the way he was supposed to be going. Maybe the lane would turn in that direction, but it didn't seem to want to do so, at least not on this side of the hill. In fact it was turning to go east again. Less than helpful when your direction was somewhere in the west. Harry stood up in the stirrups and peered over the hedge into the distance doubtfully. He fancied he could see the edge of the Forest, but there was a lot of pasture between him and it. The Forest had curved around the side of a hill at this point, puddling in the valley and climbing the steep slopes of the valleys to the north until the ground became just flat enough to stick sheep to it. Or cows – Harry was pretty sure he could make out some cattle. Or cattle shapes. Cattle shapes with long horns. They looked a bit scary, even by the standards of someone who'd survived classes taught by Hagrid.

The cows (or bulls, but Harry didn't think he could deal with bullfighting on top of Voldemort and Death Eaters) seemed to be watching him and Simon. That wasn't promising: shouldn't he be almost invisible in the dim light? Simon didn't seem too interested in them. Maybe cows had better eyesight than horses, even horses with unicorn blood help.

Just so long as they had better night-vision than Death Eaters or anyone else without unicorn-enhanced sight. Harry gathered up the reins as Simon pranced around a hedgehog which had stayed up way past its bedtime snuffling its way through the verge in search of the worms the early birds had missed (not that Harry had actually seen that many early birds). The prickly little animal made noises far too fearsome for something of its size, and if Harry hadn't already been familiar with them he'd have been worried that this one was possessed. Simon's ears flicked disdainfully. He wasn't a hedgehog fan. Maybe they kept him awake at night.

There was a flicker of green and yellow. A rather pretty bird was hopping about through the hedge to his left. Harry was a little disappointed when it flew away and joined several of its fellows – finally, a bird he recognised from primary school. Although it was mainly because Dudley and his friends had had sniggering fits every time the teacher had told them about where you could find great tits in Britain.

The little flock zoomed back down over the hedge and into the field beyond. They seemed to flit through a lower point or a hole in the hedge.

Fine if you were a bird. Not so fine for a more cumbersome wizard and his even more cumbersome horse. How could they get through the hedge? Could he hack a hole?

Harry took a moment longer to study the hedgerow. It had a few pale flowers which seemed to be relics from spring – hawthorn, it could be. The leaves looked about right, although Harry thought the mayblossom should have finished blossoming now June was on the way out. Otherwise what was the point of the name?

The thing about hawthorn, he remembered learning in Herbology, was the fact that it was brilliant at anchoring boundary spells. That was why it was so popular in magical farming communities when it came to keeping your stock in and your neighbours' stock out. And if you tried climbing through it onto private property, into a paddock with valuable animals, to give a totally random example, it had thorns that could give you an extremely pointed argument for staying on the public side of the hedge.

What they needed was –

"Whoa, Simon," Harry whispered. But Simon, having felt his rider shift back ever so slightly in the saddle, had already done so, and was looking in the same direction as Harry.

Brilliant. A gate. Just what the Healer ordered. It must have been what the birds had flown over.

Forget following the spiders… Ron would never recover if Harry told him about following the tits.

He dismounted. Luna had showed him how to open and close a gate on horseback. Providing they didn't do it too often in a session Simon would permit them to practise whatever they liked, even when it involved a great deal of turns on the hindquarters and walking sideways as well as shoving at things with his chest when it got too heavy for Luna to push shut with one hand – Harry was sure this was not a recommended method in the upper equine classes, but it got the job done. However, this gate wasn't a nice big gate well-balanced on oiled hinges. It was small and held together with baling twine and magic (Harry felt the oiliness under his fingers when he touched the wood). Rustic was a word that could have been used, but only by someone being very polite.

Poxy piece of crap was what Harry thought furiously as he sucked splinters out of his finger. It had opened without too much fuss, opening wide enough to allow Harry to lead Simon into the paddock where the horse had seized the opportunity of testing his death-glare on a new species. (The cows were unmoved, which suggested they were either Dark magic, too far away to be worried, or very stupid. Whatever their motivation, Simon was threatening a sulk at not being taken seriously.)

Closing the gate was a whole different story. He'd spent an unwanted extra minute simply getting the stupid thing back onto one hinge. It was a sore temptation to leave it hanging open, but Harry wasn't quite city-slicker enough to forget the cardinal rule of the country: leave gates as you find them. The trouble was that the gate had ideas of its own, and playing fair wasn't among them.

Harry kicked it.

Simon pricked up his ears, marginally impressed, possibly by the gate's ability to annoy Harry.

To hell with conventions of inbred morons, Harry fumed silently. He was Harry Potter. He was out to save the world. He was the Boy Who Lived, for Merlin's sake. He wasn't someone who should kowtow to the petty rules of –

Wait a minute…

He wasn't thinking with his right mind. That anger seemingly bubbling up from nowhere did in fact have a source.

Voldemort.

Harry felt the hairs up the back of his neck begin to prickle. Occlumency, occlumency.. Snape told me to clear my mind of all emotion…

How do you do it when you're scared?

There came a voice:

Harry Potter… Haaaarrryyyy….

His name trickled silently from his hindbrain down his spine to where it coiled in his guts like an icy snake. And it wasn't him who'd thought it.

I will find you… Haarryyy… sssssooooooooonnnnn…

He could feel Voldemort's attention turning, fixing, focusing, finding him –

Harry put his hand on Simon's neck. He leaned his head against the horse for a moment and breathed in. Simon smelt of horse-sweat, but it wasn't unpleasant. It was natural. It was normal. It steadied. The fear began to drain away. The horse turned its head and nuzzled Harry's shoulder to see if Harry was alright and Harry smiled and put his hand on Simon's nose and forced himself to be completely in this one moment, the moment where there was himself and a horse and the rumbling sky and somewhere a blackbird's song and it was good and wholesome and beyond the petty cares of magic.

Voldemort's influence ebbed.

Harry straightened.

"Good boy, Simon. No, sorry, I don't have any peppermints," he added, smiling, as Simon checked his pockets. "Now, if you'll excuse me a moment, I'm going to put this gate back as it should be. Because I can. Because it's the right bloody thing to do, and while I realise how pompous that sounds I'm pretty sure you won't give me a hard time about it. Even if you could understand the words, I know you've got a lot of respect for boundaries and the rules and stuff like that. Funny how you and Hermione never really clicked."

Apart from the right thing, et cetera, Hagrid would have been disappointed in him if the cattle had got out onto the road and been hit by a lorry. Harry couldn't deal with Hagrid thinking Harry was irresponsible like that.

It took another minute or two and gained another splinter, but Harry kept his temper and got the gate shut. Robert Python had said frustration was the beginning of a trainer's personal journey, so Harry forced himself to treat it as just another lesson, a lesson in keeping his temper. It would have been brilliant for Occlumency, although it was highly doubtful Snape would have assigned rickety gates as a meditation method. Then again, he might have, the sadistic old bastard, Harry thought almost fondly, thinking of Severus and the time they'd tested out location spells up on Squirrel Hill.

But he didn't want to think of Severus. Or Snape. He had things to do, a mind to keep calm and blank and impervious to Dark Lords, and here and now his company was a stallion named Simon – no ghosts allowed, thank you. He pulled Simon around and looked across the field, wondering if he should go along the obvious track or if it would be better to ride down the hill…

His finger really stung now. He shook his hand as he took another step down the track. Why not ride back and meet Draco? He was finished here. If he didn't know what way to go, he was certainly finished. He knew that Hogwarts was back down the road – Simon would have him back by breakfast if he left now.

Breakfast sounded good. There might be sausages. Buttered toast. Orange juice, now that he was growing out of pumpkin juice. Harry turned to open the gate again. Yeah, time to leave. Take Simon and –

"Ow…"

The pain from the splinter brought him back to his senses for a moment. Leave before he'd finished?

The moment passed. Well, why not leave? The urge to get out of this stupid paddock and go back to civilisation was overwhelming. He pressed his hand against his eyes. Leave now… The urge flowed up out of the ground and tried to turn his feet around.

Out of the ground…

Harry flung the reins over Simon's head and scrambled back onto the horse. Simon bobbed his head up and down and shifted his hooves, surprised at Harry's sudden burst of energy.

"Wow," Harry breathed. His head had cleared as soon as his feet were off the ground. He gathered up the reins, feeling the contact of Simon's mouth at the other end, Simon ready and listening and direct of purpose no matter what bewitchment his rider was submitted to. "That was… that was a nice Baffling Charm, Voldie, but no cigar. Or whatever it is you smoke."

Was that what Muggles felt when they got too close to Hogwarts?

Harry shivered, glad he'd been born a wizard.

Now all he had to do was get past a phalanx of cattle…

…Which could very well have been spelled by Voldemort to attack him and gore him to a bloody death with their big pointy horns. They'd all coalesced by some unspoken cow-command until they stood halfway down the track, all staring wide-eyed at Harry and the horse as if the pair were Celestina Warbeck with the Wyrd Sisters as backup.

Freaky animals.

The wind swept towards him and over the hedge, to his right flowing down over the hillside, speckling his glasses with a brief shower that passed along with the wind, grass bending, flickering the edges of the flattened rosettes of young thistles; in a hollow boggy with cloven hoofprints surrounding the dark surface of a water trough gleaming like the lake in miniature, the wind fluttered and lifted the broad leaves of dock. Harry frowned. Dock was useful as an astringent and was added to many healing potions, but there was something odd about its presence here. Harry just couldn't quite put his finger on it.

Well, in the meantime he'd stay away from it.

He checked the stone again.

Yes. It said he had to go along the track past the cows. Of course. Harry sat back in the saddle and considered his options.

He could ride Simon above or below, perhaps, but the hill was rather steep and the cows were on the only part that looked easily covered by a horse with delicate legs. No matter how prepared Simon had been to scramble over rocks and attack Snuffles, Harry always remembered that time he'd watched Simon in the pen all those weeks ago, considering whether he could Stun the horse before it attacked Draco.

He'd thought then how delicate the horse's legs looked when compared to the mass they carried. Luna had given him several lectures over the subsequent weeks which only reinforced this initial impression.

This was cow territory. Their legs were short. They could probably clamber around this hillside with an agility Harry couldn't manage on foot, let alone Simon, who was built for the race track.

But then again, their legs were short. If push came to shove and shove came to take to your heels and run for your life, Harry knew where his money lay. Simon could outrun pretty much any Muggle farm animal on four legs, even most magical creatures. And he could probably jump the gate. Harry had never heard of cows being able to jump.€

He rode Simon at a walk towards the cattle, not making eye contact (was it evil magic or the unicorn blood, because the cows' eyes glowed green like Simon's), playing it cool in the best Horse Mutterer traditions, trying to hide the fact that he had do idea if they would charge or not. Harry wasn't quite prepared to play matador on top of everything else. Come to think of it, did matadors actually ride horses?#

It was moderately unsettling the way the cattle parted and surrounded Simon, true, reminiscent of the unicorn herd. But the unicorns had been a supportive part of Harry's world and these cows were not. They were probably magical, to hear Draco tell of the farm country in the area, and the way they stared at the horse and rider from under the orange thatches of hair from which the long spreading horns grew made Harry's skin crawl. It wasn't anything overtly evil, not in the 'we are possessed beasts in the thrall of Lord Voldemort', it was simply… curiosity.

(Plus the flashes of green from the backs of their eyes. Like Simon's eyes… like Simon's eyes… just like Simon's eyes… Harry kept telling himself over and over, reminding himself that just because things looked a little weird didn't mean they were sinister… the trouble was that himself wasn't believing much of what Harry was saying at the moment)

They didn't charge, but they did follow, trailing in Simon's wake like some sort of large, odorous cloak.

Glonk. Blong. Donk. Dong. Glonk. Clonk.

One cow had a bell around its neck. Any Death Eater within range could come looking for the source.

Then again, maybe the cows would act as some form of concealment. Harry was pleased by that idea until he realised that the cows were fairly short as cows went, and a tall black horse with a cowled rider leading a procession of cows along the side of a hill was on the eye-catching side of scenic.

He urged Simon into a trot.

The cows sped up, fanning out behind him.

Glonk, blong, donk, dong, clonk.

"Piss off," Harry snarled over his shoulder. "Go on, bugger off, you lot!"

Simon swished his tail. His reproachful snort said that all the cows being towed in his wake were an affront to the considerable dignity of a stallion of his stature.

Harry grinned despite the circumstances. If Simon could pass judgement on lesser beings, he was definitely back to his old self.

The little gold speck said that the tree was in front of him. Somewhere. Harry readied his wand in case of Dementors, but he suspected that if any were out tonight, they weren't in the immediate area. The air was warm and it didn't have so much as a hint of that mouth-drying cold from the bitter marrow of winter he felt around Dementors.

It didn't mean Death Eaters were off having a cup of tea and a bun, of course. Harry was counting on Simon and the unicorn blood to fill him in on Death Eater presence.

Simon slowed. He stopped. Harry, who'd been busy scanning the far distance of valley and Forest for anchor trees and threats, realised he'd nearly missed something alarmingly obvious.

Oh, right.

The small issue of a cliff in front of him.

How the hell could I have missed a sodding great cliff?

Simon had seen it. The cows, too: they stopped behind Simon. That was lucky – for an alarming half-second Harry had been sure he and his horse would be washed over the cliff by a bovine tsunami. But the cows were aware of the cliff. The fan of cows (fan club, Harry thought with a demi-smile tugging up one corner of his mouth) folded in on itself as the cattle skirted the edge. They weren't getting any closer than Simon already was.

Simon snorted and pawed at the ground.

Harry realised they were overlooking a ravine rather than a sheer cliff. The track they were on continued along the side, nice and broad for a horse and its rider. There was some heather just in front of them, but from there on in it was all lush grass, green and welcoming. Harry nudged Simon with his heels. "Come on, Simon. There's a clear path. It's got pretty little daisies on it, too."

Simon didn't want to go along the path, no matter how green its grass, how sparkly the daisies, or how invitingly wide it was. He swung his head away to the right, trying to turn. But Harry needed to go straight ahead. When he tugged on the left rein, Simon stopped again and bobbed his head up and down.

Harry gave Simon a stronger kick. Simon backed up a step. Feeling a little annoyed that Simon would choose this moment to become disobedient, Harry gave the horse a good solid boot in the ribs.

Simon jerked his head up and down unhappily and pawed at the ground. Sparks flew from the silver shoes.

The path…

… rippling silver and scarlet in unicorn-sight, the path curled up on itself like a dog's tongue in a yawn and flopped back down again.

The path was fake. A spell. A glamour on the air itself. Magic thumping strong enough to fool human eyes enhanced with unicorn blood pulsed as it resettled itself after the shock of Simon's shoes hitting it.

Harry felt like he'd swallowed an ice cube.

I just tried to ride Simon over a cliff.

Voldemort hadn't posted sentries here – he'd worked his own magic. Harry recognised the sense of humour. Voldemort was the kind of person who would crack a lipless grin at someone slipping on a banana skin, yes, but only if it was an evil banana skin and the someone was, for preference, a Mudblood. Or a Gryffindor. (A Gryffindor Mudblood skidding on an evil banana skin might rate a dry chuckle.)

He patted Simon's shoulder shakily. "Good boy, Simon."

After another moment, he patted Simon's shoulder again. "Really sorry about kicking you like that," he muttered. "That wasn't very nice of me. Extra apple when we get home, okay, mate?"

The kick in his sides seemed to have been forgotten. Now that his rider wasn't telling him to walk out over thin air Simon was too busy pulling faces at the cows to notice.

Harry peered at the path. It was back to its old image of a green-grassed track. Even the unicorn-sight didn't reveal it. But now that he knew it was there, Harry could see the tell-tale signs of a glamour: it didn't quite mesh into the hillside it lay along, and the grass with its daisies was too uniform to be real. Interesting how Simon's silver shoes had fizzled it. But then the shoes were imbued with psychological charms to enhance the horse's ideas of what reality was – it was how Simon had brought them through the barrier, that augmented strength of belief. Simon had seen the glamour for what it was. A trap in the form of a fairly powerful illusion…

Oh yes, this was Voldemort's style, Harry thought bitterly. It was too similar to the trap he'd set for Harry last year, trying to convince him James Potter was alive and trapped in the Department of Mysteries. It was a trap, but it didn't mean the bait wasn't real.

Harry couldn't afford to get angry. Anger was an opening for Voldemort. He breathed deep and took out his pebble.

According to the stone the tree was right ahead. When he held the stone in his open hand it seemed to get heavier. He lowered his hand.

Yes.

The stone was pointing down. By moving it around and feeling the changing weight and seeing the golden spark inside it ebb and gleam, Harry could get a decent idea of where the tree was. Providing the stone was accurate, of course.

Hmm.

He took out his wand and called up a small spinner spell. Nothing fancy – first year prank stuff – but it should do the trick.

He waved his wand and sent the spell floating out over the gully. Left. Right. And why was that area way over there bare…? It made his eyes water.

Harry sent the spinner spell towards it.

The spell hit something that crackled into fierce life. It lasted only a second, but that second was long enough for Harry to be confident that there was a tree. More than that, the brief magical outburst had had the spreading pillowy look of a mature oak. Simon snorted and backed up a step, bumping into and kicking out at a cow which skittered off in a sprightly way not hitherto suggested by its stocky body.

Harry gathered up the reins and closed his calves on Simon's ribs just enough to let the horse know Harry wasn't alarmed and only wanted Simon to stay in place.

Simon obeyed.

Harry gave him an absent-minded pat. His mind was on the task ahead.

The tree. Brilliant.

And he'd probably just allowed Voldemort to pinpoint his location.

Not so good.

The tree was too far away to hit with a dart. He could levitate a dart… drop it… and it might just drop harmlessly through the leaves or fall point-last. No. This needed to be done properly.

Keeping a wary eye on the cows, Harry dismounted, carefully testing the ground to see if there would be that compulsion to leave like he'd felt back by the gate. That spell must have been localised, though, because he felt nothing beyond nervousness as the cows stared at him like he was an alien stepping out of a UFO.

The cows backed off. Apparently Harry was scarier than Simon.

One cow was sniffing at Simon's hocks. He stamped a back leg but the cow didn't seem to take this as a threat. Harry had felt the earlier kick as the horse hunched up its hindquarters, but there hadn't been any serious connection with the cow. Simon was just wanting some space; he wasn't at the violent outburst stage yet.

"Sorry, Simon," Harry said. "But I'm going to have to leave you here for a bit. At least they'll keep you warm now that the wind's picking up. Plus you'll have company. Horses are meant to like cows. I read that in the book."

Simon glowered across the gully, which seemed to be the edge of the Forest. Some horses had higher standards than others. He flicked his tail and put his ears back menacingly. As it was to warn the overly-friendly cow to back off, it made a pleasant change from his glares at Harry.

Harry took a moment to get his bearings, hanging onto one stirrup as he leaned as far over the side of the cliff as possible. There was a fairly clear delineation in the form of a little creek that trickled down along the bottom of the stony slope between tame farmland and that brooding stand of ancient magic that was one of the few relics of Forested Britain. The Forest strong and proper thickened quickly as it rose on the far side of the gully, blanketing the hills softly from this distance. There, so far away it looked like a mist rising from the hodge-podge patchwork of trees, was the barrier, blending into the sky as it rose into the clouds. Somewhere beyond it would be Hogwarts. Harry fancied he glimpsed turrets, but was probably only imagining them.

That was odd. The barrier rippled: a great wave of pewter through the silver, running up from the south to the north, following the barrier as it curled around the hills and disappeared. It certainly wasn't imagination: even Simon and the cows pricked up their ears as the wave raced along the barrier, even though it was several miles away. Perhaps they felt or heard something. Harry rubbed the back of his neck until the prickling died away. Simon shook his head until his mane flopped either side of his crest, and there was a bongle-blong-glong as the cow with the bell shook herself all over like a dog.

Did that mean Draco or Ron had been successful?

Cheered by the thought (and amused at himself for being little bit jealous that he hadn't beaten the others to the tree), Harry looped the reins around Simon's neck so the horse wouldn't trip on them if it put its head down, then tied the leadrope to a handy bit of heather. The trail had been fake, but the heather was real. It marked the edge of the slope, where the track proper stopped and the pasture dropped off into rocky scar. It was strange it hadn't been fenced off to stop animals from running over the cliff, but Harry noticed a small cairn half-buried in the heather by Simon's right forefoot. It was only really obvious because otherwise the trail he'd ridden Simon down ended at nothing, and was only properly visible if he squinted at it. Its top two stones were blue with red paint and Harry frowned at them. Yes – that was a definite rune carved into them. He recognised one of the basics he'd learned from Divinations: Fehu – the sign for cattle; that made sense. He paused before identifying the rune on the second blue stone as an Othalan derivative – the siting of the dots around the lines made it into a signature, he'd been told by Hermione right before she quit Divinations in disgust at Trelawney's mysticism. Othalan was about personal property. It probably reinforced the barrier around the farmer's land and stopped the cows from falling down into the ravine. Shouldn't there be a third rune to even out the balance?

There it was. It had rolled halfway down the cairn and was now almost swallowed by the heather. There was a small scorch-mark on the stone. Someone had hexed it from its place.

Harry wasn't sure what the third rune was. He couldn't think of any that looked like that – certainly not from the same runic family as the other two.

It took him a moment to realise that the third rune was upside-down. Algiz should signify protection. Reversed, it meant hidden dangers.

He doubted it had fallen that way by chance. For a moment he thought he could smell the old cloying scent of the Divinations classroom and hear the clack-clatter of bangles on bony wrists.

Harry shivered then told himself to stop taking Trelawney so seriously. Wizards had done this, probably purposefully putting it upside down; not some mysterious Hand of Fate.

He gave Simon a farewell pat on the shoulder. Simon was, as always, solid and real. This was a horse who didn't have any patience with self-deluding dingbats high on their own incense. Not that Simon had ever met Trelawney, but Harry was sure he would put on one of his extra-strength lip-curls if he did.

"I'll be back in two shakes of a – well, probably not a lamb's tail… You might want to keep an eye on yours. That cow's chewing it."

Harry started to clamber down the rocks before Simon noticed what the cow was up to.

Winning the war one battle at a time…

He was a good way down when his foot slipped.

ooOOoo

A/N: Yes, an actual cliffie. Couldn't resist.

€Sorry, Harry, but cows can jump. Sometimes very, very, very well.

#Er… let's not tell Harry that he's thinking about picadores or rejoneadores. He might do some research on them and find out what bad things have happened and can still happen to horsies in bullfighting.

ooOOoo