Araquiel: Glad to hear I correctly captured the voice of a 9-year-old. :D I've outlined this story well to the point that she gets her Hogwarts later, and much less thoroughly through late spring 1994. I want to keep plenty of room for random inspiration. I don't have any definite plans for romance because it's still so far off.

Guest 1: Eventually Hazel will have more options along the line of combat, but there are other ways to get to it besides going straight blaster. You'll see what I have in mind. Eventually.

"Will Hazel go to Hogwarts?": She will see Hogwarts at some point or another, I'm sure. ;-)

"Was that the Imperius or just a compulsion?": It was something in-between but in the same general family. It isn't as long or as complete as the Imperius. You could consider it a very strong compulsion which many animals would have to obey, though a human would be able to shake it off unless she put a lot of force behind it. That would require a very particular set of circumstances.

Chapter 5
The Woods

A gap existed in the line that no one sought to close, and it was in this space that Hazel stood, a blue and yellow bird on her shoulder and a bag of trail mix in her hand. With every handful she gave the sunflower seeds to her new friend and saved the raisins and chocolate bits for herself. It was a decent way to fill their stomachs and pass the time as they waited to enter the park before her.

When she had charmed her little bird to join her, she had had no idea just what kind of bird he was nor what he needed to eat. She was no bird-scientist, after all, and it was not as if she had ever made birdwatching a hobby before she left Privet Drive for the road. Thankfully, she did not need to be. A library was conveniently between Stonehenge and her next destination, and not only was that a nice place to wash her clothes and hole up through the storm that came blowing through the day after Christmas, it also gave her a chance to check on the needs of her new friend.

According to all the bird books she could find, she had as her new familiar a European blue tit, and a healthy specimen too if his bright colors were any indicator. She did not actually know for sure if the bird was a boy or a girl – all the books said the genders looked similar unless she used ultraviolet light, which was just so common around her – so in an effort not to name him or her something super silly she had instead decided on the name Morgan.

She took another handful of the trail mix and split it between them, doing her best to ignore the guilt that welled up with each bite. Needless to say this bag of food was one she took rather than bought, but she was not sure what else she could do. After paying for her five lighters, she had a grand total of thirty-eight quid to her name from the money she took from Aunt Petunia. With no way to get more short of finding it or taking it from somebody else, the only options she had to feed herself was to take the food instead. It was not as if she could go out and get a job even if she wanted to be stuck somewhere forever.

The fact that it was a necessity did not make her feel any better about sneaking in and taking things, though.

The people around her started moving again, and it was easy to let the crowd all but carry her to the entrance of Shervage Wood. The library in Greater Whinging had some information on this place, but the library in Nether Stowey had been much more helpful in confirming her information. According to the stories she read, there once had been a massive serpent or dragon called the Gurt Wurm living in this forest and the hills nearby, one that ate sheep and cows in the nearby fields and would do the same to anybody who tried to enter its woods. No one had been brave enough to fight the creature until one old woman tricked a woodsman into going into the forest to chop down some of the trees. While taking a break from his chopping, the fallen log he sat on started moving, and he hacked it in half with three blows from his axe before he could realize that he was sitting on the snake rather than a tree. She would think that the first blow would have been enough to figure out this was a flesh-and-blood creature and not a log, but the story also said he was drinking heavily before he went into the woods, so she supposed that was as good an explanation as any.

And supposedly the creature had laid a mighty egg sometime before its death.

Hazel knew the chances of finding an unhatched dragon egg were slim to none at best, and even if she did find it, she would want to stay far, far away. Regular eggs went rotten after a short time out of the refrigerator, and this all happened several hundred years ago. What she really wanted was to find something, anything, that could serve as proof that dragons really did exist back in the day. They for sure were all gone like the dodos, that much she knew. Giant bloodthirsty fire-breathing flying lizards were one of those things that would be hard for anyone to miss. It was more that if she could prove even to herself that such creatures once lived, it was a sign that smaller, less obvious magical beasts and monsters might still be around.

The line continued forwards, and she slipped through the entrance behind a family of five. All of that family were nicely dressed, new-looking clothes and hiking boots that did not have a speck of dirt on them. Not that it would be hard to miss considering the youngest girl's bright pink mud boots, though as any three-year-old would be she looked eager to get dirty. There was also a prominent bulge in the father's back pocket.

"Damn it, Michelle," the man thought over the chattering thoughts of his kids and wife, all of whom were commenting on the trees and bushes around them. "Why do we have to be out here? I told her if I finished working on the Bruckheimer account early, we could count on another five or even ten thousand pounds added to my bonus. And it'd be a lot more comfortable than being out in the woods in the middle of winter."

Hazel bit her lip and fell behind the family several yards before looking around to see if anyone was watching and dropping the grey mist that had kept anyone from seeing her. Anyone around probably would have been surprised when a girl suddenly appeared from thin air, but thankfully for her there was nobody watching. It looked and sounded like this was a family that was not hurting for cash. They would not notice a few pounds getting 'lost'.

Right?

Letting the distance stretch farther, she curled the fingers of her right hand closed, starting with her pinky and ending with her thumb. Opening her hand again manifested her magical hand, hovering right over the man's pocket. She took a big, quiet breath in and let it out, then both her hands dipped down and squeezed as if trying to pinch something between her fingers. When her magic hand moved up again, it held a nice leather wallet in its grasp.

The father, still preoccupied with his internal griping and ignoring the natural beauty around them, just kept walking. Completely oblivious.

The ghost hand and the wallet streaked towards her, and she wrapped her real hands around it so the family would not see it even if they turned around. Only when it looked like she was safe did she open it. Any hopes of taking just a small amount of money were immediately dashed: the smallest note in the main compartment was a tenner, and she saw several more twenties and even a fifty peeking out.

The bite turned into a nibble as she looked back and forth between the wallet and the family. It was tempting, there was no mistake about that. Very tempting. If he carried this much cash on him, he might not even notice if one of the score notes went missing.

Hazel shook her head. No. He might sound like a jerk, but she would not take that much money from him and his family. Another little pocket was on the inside, and a quick check with her finger found that it contained coins. That was more palatable. Pulling one coin out, she pocketed it without looking at it and sent her ghost hand over to slip the wallet back in his pocket when his wife distracted him with looking at a curiously twisted tree.

Her crime committed, she breathed out more smoke and slipped unseen off the trail between the trees. Answers to her questions were not waiting for her on the common paths, and if she were honest with herself she wanted more distance between her and the people she just robbed. Only once she could no longer see and could barely hear anyone else in the park did she pull the coin out of her pocket to look at it. What had she grabbed? A ten pence? A fifty?

Opening her hand, she stared in surprise at the two-pound coin gleaming in her palm.

Okay. That's more money than I expect—

Her thought was cut off as her feet slipped off a wet rock, and before she could catch herself she went tumbling down the hill on which she stood. Stones and fallen branches slapped at her. Something jabbed her in the side with a sharp snap. Her hair was snagged and tugged, and she finally rolled to a stop as something crunched beneath her.

She spat a few strands of hair out of her mouth and opened her eyes. Vague blurs greeted her, and she blinked her eyes several times to try to clear them before a sense of dread overtook her. The hand not holding the coin rose to touch her face and found skin and eyelids, not the smooth plastic of her glasses.

Hazel now had a good guess as to what that last crunch was, and she rolled over off her back and felt around the dirt and muck. Sure enough, after about a minute of searching her fingers felt something that was anything but natural. One half of her glasses was in her hand, the bridge cleanly snapped, and she rubbed the dirt off the lens with the tail of her shirt before putting it over her right eye so she could see something. The left half was in even worse shape when she finally spotted it, the leg twisted to the point she knew she would be unable to wear it.

A flash of panic and worry ran shivering down her spine at the thought of being all but blind. One half of her glasses was not going to be enough to see what she was doing, and there was no way her money would be enough to buy a new pair. Nor could she just steal some. It had been a while since Aunt Petunia had taken her to get this pair, but she remembered that every pair of glasses needed their own prescription. Taking one at random would be just as bad as wearing none at all.

Cradling the halves of her glasses in her hands, she pulled at her magic to do something. To make a new pair or un-break these. That would be even better, and with the panic she knew was still coursing strong through her, she pulled at it. Fix them. Fix them. Fix them, fix them, fix them fix them fix them fix them fixthemfixthemfixthem!

A shattering sound came from nowhere, and threads of crackling lightning erupted from her hands and danced along the outline of the frame. This bright green lightning was the only thing she could see clearly, and that more than anything else was the hint she needed to figure out what it was.

This was not real. Like her key or her hand or her smoke, it was just something in her head that she saw when her magic was doing something.

The frame of her glasses twisted in her hands, and when the lightning died out she moved them closer to her face and slipped them on. The left lens was covered in filth, so she still could not see anything out of it, but other than that they seemed fine to her.

A furious tweeting came from nearby, and she looked up to find Morgan sitting on a nearby bush, his feathers puffed up and his little brown eyes glaring at her. He did not look injured or hurt at all, but evidently he had not appreciated the wild ride down the hill.

I'm sorry, she told him with just a bit of an edge to her 'voice'. I didn't mean to fall off the hill, you know. It just happened.

She picked herself up and wiped the dirty lens as best she could. A little stream or something would not go amiss, somewhere she could wash her glasses and get them really clean, but she could see. That would do for now. Looking up at the smear she left when she fell down the hill, her eyes landed on a sapling that was bent and broken at the base, its few remaining leaves pressed against the ground as if a girl had rolled over it in an uncontrolled fall.

I'm sorry, she told the baby tree with much more sincerity than she had used addressing her familiar. A closer look showed that the tree was not completely broken, but only a few strips of wood held the bulk of it connected to its roots. She picked the sapling up and set it upright, but despite looking better she knew the moment she let go it would tip over again. There was no way it was going to live, not destroyed like this.

Sucking on her lip for a moment, Hazel tried unsuccessfully to let her eyes unfocus for a moment to glance at her glasses. She had no idea how much her glasses looked like they used to, but they seemed to be fixed. Could she use that same magic to try fixing the tree? Glasses were not alive like a tree was, but plastic and wood were not that different.

It was worth a try if nothing else, she decided, and she braced the top part of the sapling against her shoulder while she wrapped her hands around the pieces of the tree above and below the break. She knew she could do this now, and with that confidence pushing her forward it took just a little focus to bring the lightning back. It sparked and spat around the break, and she watched as the splinters of wood realigned themselves and reformed into a solid stem. On the outside of where the break had been visible there was now a puckered line of lighter brown, almost like a scar on the surface of the bark.

She pulled her hands away from the newly repaired sapling and glanced between the tree and her hands. She would have assumed that healing an entire try would be more work, more focus, more something than fixing a pair of plastic glasses. If anything, it felt… easier.

Something niggled at the back of her mind. From what she read about the druids when she was researching Stonehenge, they were Celtic sorcerers but also seemed to have a connection to nature. Was that the explanation? Did her powers work better on this tree because she and her mother were descendants of druids?

It was not the strangest assumption she had ever made about her powers. She knew that game book or whatever was not real, just make-believe, but she could not help but remember that even that had a nature wizard. This was something that needed more investigation.

What do you think?, she asked Morgan, who was still sitting in the bush. I'd say I'm about as off the beaten path as I can possibly be.

She was not expecting any kind of response from the bird – she was just thinking, after all, not talking – so it was a surprise when he gave her a snippet of song and fluttered off the branch back to her shoulder. That sounded very much like an agreement to her.

Okay, then. Onwards to maybe find a dead dragon!

Hazel had no way of knowing how much time she spent wandering among the ancient trees after setting off from the path, but if she had to guess she would say she spent two or three hours darting around and overall just enjoying herself before she found something decidedly… odd.

In the middle of the trees stood a random clearing, perfectly circular and easily visible, as if the sun were peering through the canopy and shining a sunbeam onto grass that should not still be so green in the middle of winter. Except, she noticed when she looked up, there was no break in the branches and no sunlight streaming through the thick layer of clouds in the sky. Within that circular clearing stood another circle, but this one was made up of six stone pillars. Pillars that looked suspiciously like some of those she had seen at Stonehenge.

Pushing her way through the random bushes, she stepped onto the springy soft grass of the clearing and took a long look at the pillars. On the outsides were sections that she supposed was writing at some point, but most of the letters had been worn away by time, and what few sections were left were words she did not understand. Maybe they were even a different language; she had no way to know. Whatever these pillars had to say, it was lost forever, and she doubted she would be able to fix this as easily as she had her glasses and the tree.

The inside of the pillars were a different story. Or, more literally, the same story.

Stepping inside the ring, Hazel blinked in surprise at the carvings still visible. They were worn, just as the outside had been, but these carvings were not fragile letters. They looked like scenes out of a picture book. One pillar showed nothing but a snake-like head with curling horns, its mouth open as flames shot out over the gap between the pillars and reappeared on the one to the right, now consuming a house. Moving to the left, the next pillar showed a serpentine body with a pair of wings rising up, but below the body were people with bows and swords. Knights, fighting this monster?

She continued walking in an anticlockwise direction. The pillar past the knights showed more men, these armed not with weapons but with thin rods they held over their heads. Magicians, she thought with excitement. That made so much more sense than some random woodsman killing this beast. It was a giant effort between lots of people, both magicians and not. The stone after that held the tail of the snake, and this time there were not just men but women as well, staves in their hands and not wearing much in the way of clothes if the round breasts on display were anything to go by. The last pillar showed one man, again in robes, holding an oblong shape and handing it to a childlike figure with long ears and a long nose.

She really, really wished those carvings had not been worn away now. Why were there two different groups of – she assumed – magic users? Did they use magic differently? Why were there only women in the last group with the staves? Was one of them a group of druids, and if so, which one was it and what was the other group? Why was the truth about the killing of the Gurt Wurm hidden from everyone? Was that shape on the last pillar the egg she read about? Was it being handed to an elf or a dwarf or something? Why?

She had so many questions and naught in the way of answers.

After a moment, she realized that was wrong. She did have one answer, and it was the answer to the most important question she had. Was there at one point a group of magic users, taught and trained and working their craft outside of folk tales and storybooks? Clearly the answer was a resounding yes.

The magic of this place was still intact, and that made it better than Stonehenge to try her hand yet again at meditation. If nothing else, it felt like a more comfortable place to spend the night than the well-trod ground at the more famous circle.

She held a finger out for Morgan to climb onto, and then she gave him a light toss into the air. You might want to make yourself comfortable. Either I'll find something, or it'll be a long night.

Only then did she take her backpack off and set it outside the stones, then sat herself in the exact center of the circle. She closed her eyes and took several breaths in and out to put herself into the proper state of mind.

It was time to see if this place had any secrets to tell her.

The following morning, Hazel and Morgan left the stone circle and headed southwest.

Despite hours and hours trying to meditate in what was so clearly a place that magical people had touched, she had nothing to show for it. No hidden knowledge, no responding brush of magic, not even a new question that needed answers. Nothing.

She was starting to question whether her initial assumption about the value of meditation was on point or just very wrong. That doubt plagued her through the three days of travel required to reach her next destination, this time yet another forest that had a reputation of magic. Unlike Shervage Wood, Wistman's Wood's supposed history was much darker and bloodier. It was rumored to be a site of druidic magic and sacrifice, a forest covered in moss and inhabited by unnaturally venomous adders and demonic dogs and restless spirits. Numerous people who had visited the site and written of their experiences all suggested the same thing: this was a place of terrible, frightening power.

It was the second little forest on her list, and she could only hope it would yield as much or more knowledge than Shervage Wood had.

No one else seemed to be interested in touring this wood, not like the line she had needed to navigate a few days prior. Passing by a large stone with old writing carved into it, she slipped into the shade provided by the stumpy oak trees covered by moss and vines. Shervage Wood was more beautiful, but this? This was far more mysterious.

Morgan let out a curious snippet of song when she stopped and closed her eyes for several seconds before moving on again. I don't know what I'm looking for, she admitted. Maybe I'm wasting my time. Maybe I'm just doing this wrong. I don't know. I'm going to try doing this one more time and try it a few different ways, and if nothing still happens, we'll give it up as a bad job. But first I want to make sure I'm in as magic-y a place as I can find. Best chance of something happening.

Every thirty or forty feet she stopped and waited with her eyes closed as she hoped for something to give her a hint of what direction she needed to go. She clambered over rocks, slipped on patches of moss, ducked beneath low tree branches. For an hour she moved through the woods, the only strange feeling she got the one of being watched. Try as she might, she could not find where the source of that feeling was coming from.

Pushing through a thin wall of branches, Hazel stopped in her tracks and blinked at the sight before her.

In the middle of the forest in front of her burbled a little stream running a crooked course between the outcroppings of rock, and above it the canopy broke up more than anywhere else in the forest to send more than just dappled light onto the water. Closing her eyes once again, she waited. And waited.

Was there maybe a little hint of a strange feeling in her mind? She could not honestly say if she really felt different or if it was all in her imagination.

A huff, and she slipped her backpack off and sat down on a nearby rock that was not completely encased in thick moss. Even if it was all in her imagination, she was tired of wandering around. Last chance, Hazel. Make it count, she told herself. Doing her best to ignore Morgan shuffling around on her shoulder, she closed her eyes and focused.

With all the practice she had gotten over the last few weeks, it did not take her long to push away her worries and her doubts and find that floaty feeling of calm. That was no different than it had been since she started doing this in Greater Whinging. It certainly did not get her any closer to what she wanted.

Time to try something new then. When she was meditating, it was by its nature a passive act. She was not doing anything, just reaching for a sense of balance. Maybe she needed to be more active with it. How would anything know it needed to talk to her if she did not tell it she was there?

She could imagine what she looked like sitting on the rock: a dirt-stained girl in stolen clothes, big plastic glasses and roughly cut hair. Now she imagined something else, a wave of white light bursting off her as if a bubble of magic was lifting off her skin. The bubble popped, sending the magic in all directions with a silent pop.

She waited, and waited, and waited. No answering call. No whispers in her mind. Nothing. After several minutes, she imagined the bubble again, and again it popped. Still nothing. The next time, she held the bubble in place. Was the pop not the key, but the bubble itself, and she kept it around for too short a time to get any response?

Several minutes passed before she quit imagining the bubble. This was doing no good.

Another idea she had on the trek from one wood to another had been trying to breath in any nearby magic, but while that was a decent idea, she had no idea how she was supposed to find the magic in the first place to try breathing it in. Plus that should have worked while she was meditating in the middle of that stone circle, and nothing had happened.

Mum and I might be born druids, she reminded herself. She could heal plants. Her mum had made flowers move and turned a teacup into a mouse, a living thing. Could she just be doing it wrong? To get in touch with the magic of this place, of nature, did she need to be like nature?

Her body was already sitting straight like a tree trunk, and now she gave herself roots. Crooked and twisted roots shot down from her imagined self into the rock and earth. Trees needed roots to suck up water and vitamins and other stuff from the ground. She would use her own roots to try sucking up a little teeny bit of magic.

The sound of the wind blowing through the trees and the faint splashes of the brook against the rocks changed. It was not sudden, not extreme, but slowly the noises grew louder. The feeling of the trees surrounding her pressed tighter against her. It was as if the whole forest was closing up around her, squeezing her in the middle. But not cruelly, not as if it was trying to hurt her. More as if the forest had suddenly come alive and was trying to wrap her up and keep her with it and never let her go.

It was no secret whispered into her ear, but it was a feeling of acceptance and belonging. Or maybe it was all in her head.

Twittering in her ear threatened to distract her from this feeling, but the more she tried to shut it out the louder it got. A mental fog broke open as she realized it was Morgan she was hearing, and it was not his normal song but something more along the lines of a shriek. What had gotten into him?

A splash, louder than the normal water sounds, came from right in front of her.

Hazel opened her eyes, not sure what she was expecting to see. Whatever it was, it was not what she found. Standing in the middle of the stream was a large dog or wolf-like creature, its coat a solid black from nose to tail. The fur was ruffled and spiky, and it looked almost like it was smoldering, for here and there little wisps of dark smoke were rising. Its eyes were enormous, taking up most of its cheeks, and unlike the brown of blue of a normal dog they were a bright red that seemed to glow in contrast to its dark fur and pulsed slowly, growing dimmer and brighter by turn. As if the color and glow were not enough, it did not have round pupils like a dog or slits like a cat. The pupils were thick rectangles sitting on their sides, almost like a goat.

The dog-creature opened its mouth to let its pink tongue hang out and show off its long, yellowed fangs.

Oh. Right. Wistman's Wood was said to be inhabited by creatures called hellhounds.

Her immediate reaction to coming nose-to-snout with this beast was to ready herself to jump through space, but it was not coming any closer. It was not growling. It was just staring at her, as if it did not know what to do with the girl who had wandered into its domain.

The lack of attacking was not reassuring at all to Morgan, who had quit his warning calls and was now huddled up like a ball of puff at the junction of her shoulder and neck.

The hellhound tilted its head, and she tilted her own to match. Was it hungry, maybe? What did it even eat? Probably meat, and lots of it, but even then it still had not lashed out.

An idea came to her, and even knowing it was stupid she still did not have any better plans. Never taking her eyes off the hellhound's, she unzipped her backpack and pulled out the mostly empty bag of trail mix. A little shake told her just how little was left, but nevertheless she poured the last of the nuts and chocolates and raisins into her left hand and stretched it out towards the smoking wolf.

The hellhound took its eyes off her and looked down at her palm, then back at her face, and back at her palm. Its paws splashed in the water when it came closer, its head now nearly close enough for her to reach out and pet. Not that she would because the size of its mouth and teeth meant it would not have any trouble biting off an unwanted hand. The wet black nose approached the trail mix and took several deep sniffs.

A moment later it snorted, and the hot, sour breath it let out was foul enough Hazel could not keep herself from gagging.

Something wet smeared itself over her hand, and she looked down to find the food gone and replaced by a coat of thick, sticky spit, trails of it stretched out between her fingers. Her face scrunched up in disgust. The hellhound, on the other hand, just turned around and bounded off, splashing through the stream before it vanished into shadows that looked much too small to hide such a big creature.

That went well, she told herself and the songbird still pressed into her neck. Gross, but hey, we didn't get eaten. That's something to be happy about.

Let's get out of here before that changes.

In case you were wondering, all the sites Hazel will be visiting for the next several chapters are real places in England. Admittedly, some creative license may be taken here and there to make it a little more interesting to read about, but that's just how fantasy fiction rolls sometimes.

Silently Watches out.