Hi all, I wanted to take a moment to thank everyone who has been reading thus far. I really appreciate the reviews and feedback and hope you continue to enjoy the story! Still lots more to come.


16 – Boggarts Cave (Part I)

The cave was cooler than the Forbidden Forest. It felt like one of the last days of fall before winter arrived, when all of the leaves were on the ground and the sky turned gray, hinting at the possibility of snowfall.

Snape and Lily walked for almost a half hour, and still there wasn't any light at the end of the tunnel. When Lily shivered for the second time, he put his arm around her, a little slowly at first, but she leaned in without hesitation. It wasn't like walking hand-in-hand through a beautiful park, but Snape still felt butterflies in his stomach. He started to shake a little himself, and he wondered if Lily thought it was from the coldness or from his nerves. There was nothing like being with her—whether it was in a dark cave or seeing a beautiful rainbow over a waterfall, it didn't matter. Frank Sinatra's voice suddenly popped into his head singing, "I've got you under my skin. I've got you deep in the heart of me…" There, in Boggarts Cave, Snape was falling more deeply in love.

"Sev, look at that."

Sinatra's voice abruptly stopped. Snape looked at the rock walls, shocked to see an enormous mural. "Who could have done that?"

"This isn't mentioned anywhere in The Unchartered Forbidden Forest."

The mural showed what appeared to be peasants, hundreds of them walking towards something. The men wore long, khaki tunics with brown, leather belts, and some carried a tool that Snape had never seen—a shovel with sharp, serrated edges that looked like it could be used as part axe or part scoop. The women were dressed in sleeveless tunics and gowns of different colors, most holding buckets or leather carrying sacks.

"It's weird. They almost seem to be walking with us." Lily pulled away from him and moved closer to the wall to examine the detail. "None of them are smiling. They almost seemed to be filled with dread."

The cave had been like a narrow hallway for most of their journey, but now it opened up into a much larger room, and it became clear where the peasants were headed. They were moving to a patch of land full of trees, hundreds of men already swinging the shovel-axes. "Are they tilling the soil?" He looked closer and noticed that they were breaking up long, gnarled tree roots that extended like octopus tentacles over the ground. Some men were swinging, and others were scooping the roots into the buckets and sacks carried by the women.

"What are they scooping up?" asked Lily.

Snape wasn't certain, but he could guess. The objects looked like loaves of bread, except they were an iridescent blue, practically glowing on the cave's walls; from all the books he read, this could only be one thing. "Doppelganger root."

"Look!" Lily hadn't heard him and she ran off to another part of the mural ahead. The peasants were bringing some of the buckets to a group of men sitting in thrones on an altar. The men were dressed in white robes with pointy, gold-colored hats. All kinds of jewelry adorned their necks and arms, but it wasn't the attire that interested Snape—it was the events happening on the side of the altar.

"Are they druids?" asked Lily.

"I'm not sure." This time, he charged off to look beyond the altar. A few of the druids, if they could be called that, were hovering over a cauldron. Next to the cauldron, one of the druids was waving, what appeared to be, a wand at an ox. This ox was drawn in full-color, but immediately next to it was a clone of the same ox, except that the colors were lighter, more lucid. It was almost as if this ox were a…. "It's a doppelganger. They knew how to do it," said Snape in disbelief. "They knew how to clone things with the doppelganger root before us." The world around him disappeared again, and he narrowed in on the picture, looking for any vestiges of the Dark Tourist, but there didn't appear to be any.

He turned back to the ox in full-color. It was hauling a cart loaded with the buckets and sacks of doppelganger root towards a town? A castle? Some far off land? There was no telling if and how many others could have been using the doppelganger. "This is amazing. They had tons of it. And they're… muggles? Muggles knew how to do this before us? Lily, you have to see—"

Before he had a chance to think about this further, he heard Lily scream. He could hear her breathing, but she was nowhere to be seen. He charged back in the direction opposite of the peasants, retracing his and Lily's original steps, and finally he saw her, back pressed against the wall, but she was still meters away.

In front of her, was a giant troll. The first boggart had found them.

"SEV!"

Snape ran and shouted "Riddikulus!" but nothing happened to the troll. He could only see the fear in Lily's eyes, and he'd lost all concentration making his charm powerless. He cursed himself and tried saying it again, but still the troll didn't shape-shift.

It took a step closer to her. This time Lily didn't scream. She closed her eyes and a calm washed over her. When she opened them again, she said, "Riddikulus." The troll was clumsily swinging its arm in her direction and—


"I've Got You Under my Skin" can be heard at YouTube if you search on the song title with Frank Sinatra behind it. I can't find my favorite version of the song, but the one with 1.9 million views is close.