WillItWork, Jack Inqu: Okay, I know my reputation, but I PROMISE that this story is a relatively lighthearted one. You don't have to constantly wait for the other shoe to drop. :-(

Cat Beats: The exact mechanism of how the Hogwarts letters are addressed won't matter in the grand scheme of things. Hazel will receive one even if she isn't in Britain at the time they are sent out.

bikoukitsune: You're the only person who's asked what detail specifically I was talking about last chapter. I'm going to warn you now that it's really, REALLY dumb. Lieutenant Lemaire mentioned that he was going to spend the weekend with a woman named Marguerite. If you look back at chapter 11, the Muggle Hazel tried to learn French from was also having an affair… with a woman named Marguerite. Are they the same person? You would think not, that it was just two women with the same name, but the idea that MAYBE it was somehow one person really getting around just tickled me.

This wasn't a detail I thought anybody would remember. It was mostly a joke just for me.

Silent Storm: Most of the time Hazel doesn't have a specific feeling associated with a spell. It's the opposite, actually; I can think of several of her spells that she was only able to create once she had meditated and put herself in an emotionally distant state. Certainly the creation of her ghost hand, her cleaning spell, and her sparkler qualify. She can use emotions to power her spells, but she tries not to do this because she mentioned early on (chapter 3, I think?) that she was worried about what constantly feeling angry would do to her personality.

Now that being said, what her magic really needs at its core is a sense of PURPOSE. Creating a very offensive spell based on a single-minded desire or even NEED to hurt another living thing would be… interesting. The inside of her head would be "There is nothing I want to do more right now than cause you pain and suffering". Not a pretty headspace when she is calm, and especially not if you add the anger or a need for revenge she would naturally feel on top of that purpose. Would creating such a spell permanently warp her like you're asking? Probably not, but the trauma that would follow her USING that spell for the first time would be something to behold.

Chapter 18
The Hunt

Noise from outside Simone's cottage eventually forced Hazel's eyes open. She was not sleeping inside the building tonight, but rather on the roof. As August faded and approached September, the nights had lost the worst of its heat and was now actually on the pleasant side. The sleeve of her jumper made an excellent face mask to keep the light of the sun out of her eyes, and that meant she could continue sleeping even after the sun rose.

Or she could if everybody would keep their arguments down to a dull roar.

The heated conversation did not stop the way she wanted it to do, and with a long, loud sigh she pulled the jumper off from around her head and stuffed it into her satchel. She teleported down to the ground still in her clothes from the day before, Morgan gliding to her shoulder, and stomped over to the knot of adults still talking in loud voices. 'What?' she wrote. No one glanced up from their own discussion, however, and after several seconds of waiting she clapped her hands as loudly as she could.

That thankfully caught their attention, and they all looked over at her and the question she had asked. "She looks like an angry kitten," was Jean Luc's first thought, which did not improve her mood any. "It is nothing, Hazel. You can go back to bed."

'I no sleep if you talk loud like this. What. Happen?'

Silent chuckles swept through the thoughts of the adults, and she shifted her tired glare between each of them in turn before returning her gaze to Jean Luc. "It is nothing so terrible as you may think. Grégorie noticed some strange signs in the forest for the last week or so, and it looks like there is a boar running around. We are just deciding how best to track it down and deal with it."

'Deal with it?'

Grégoire nodded. "Yeah. Boars are pretty good eating, but they can be a right pain in the butt to track down and hunt. They are also destructive wherever they go, eating anything at all that is edible—"

"Because we are not lacking resources for this upcoming winter already," Jean Luc thought to himself.

"—and the last few times one was around, they came to the compound at night and tore stuff up, too." Grégoire sighed. "And on that this is almost certainly a magical boar, and that just makes it more complicated. That's about it, just need to get rid of it."

Hazel's fingers were already moving. 'I can help.' After everything they had done for her in the last few months – taking her in, teaching her how to make magic potions, even throwing her her very first birthday party – there was no way she was going to ignore them when they had trouble of their own. She did not know exactly how she could help, not yet, but surely there was something she could do.

Grégoire and Jean Luc looked at each other, almost as if they were having a silent conversation. Jean Luc's mind was filled with doubt, but Grégoire? "Having another pair of eyes would not hurt," he finally said. "If nothing else, she could climb a tree faster than I could to take a look from on high."

"Somehow I doubt she would lower herself to simple climbing when she can teleport," Jean Luc thought with a small shake of his head. "If she wants to go and you want to take her with you, I will not say no. Not like either of you would listen anyway. You said you found most of the signs to the northeast?"

"I did. It is where I thought I would start the search."

"Okay then. Marcel and I will take the south and west, respectively. There are a few spells we can use to make sure the boar has not moved into those areas. I do not know they would be as useful for finding where it is, but if you cannot find it today we can search together tomorrow."

Hazel nodded and asked Grégoire, 'Five minutes?' That should be more than enough time for her to change her clothes and use her cleaning spell to get her sweat and stink from the night before off her body. Honestly, she would probably be ready to go in just one minute.

"Sounds good. I will meet you at the shed."

Slipping inside Simone's cabin, sure enough it took her nearly no time at all to clean herself and her clothes and walk back outside. 'The shed' referred to the same little building where they had dragged the bodies of the dead deer the werewolves had killed the first day she was here, the same one that held Grégoire's hunting supplies and all the awful-smelling tanning potions he had used to start turning the hide into leather. He was standing outside waiting for her, a quiver full of arrows slung over his shoulder and a large wooden crossbow held in his callused hands. "Glad you did not need the full five minutes, although once you are a teenager I am sure that you will. Let's go."

The woods of Compiègne were not small, and even searching a third of them would take time, so it did not surprise her that Grégoire was so insistent on starting immediately. What did surprise her, though, was how seriously everyone was taking it, and somehow the idea that a boar was wandering around eating roots and stuff did not explain it all either. Something he had said had her wondering, and after several minutes of walking deeper and deeper into the forest she asked, 'It magic? How?'

Grégoire snorted when he looked up from the ground to read her message. "You did not think humans were the only species that sometimes has magic pop up where it was not before, did you? A few different animals can have that happen and develop strange traits and abilities. Pigs for sure. I've heard rumors of magical monkeys. I once trapped a crow that, considering it managed to escape from a cage I locked inside a wooden chest without having to open either of them, I'm damn sure was magical. There are some other animals that can have magic, too, I bet.

"What matters today is that magical pigs and boars are nasty business. They become almost like trolls or giants in a way. They can grow real big, and they are faster and stronger and tougher than they should be even at that size. Eat more, too, which is why they are such a pest."

Né-Moldus animals? Seriously? She shook her head. 'I never see magic animals.'

"You wouldn't have, not with you being a Née-Moldus yourself. The government does not want knowledge of magic getting out to the Moldus, and super-strong pigs or teleporting crows would tip the Moldus off that something strange was happening. They track magic happening all over the country, and that means keeping an eye and an ear out for any signs of magical animals popping up. If they find one, generally they will kill it and make the Moldus think some wild animal or something got it."

Not for the first time, Hazel wished she could just write out what she wanted to say in English and be understood. She had picked up enough French to be able to have basic conversations, but right now her questions were all more complicated than that. Number one was why it was so important to keep magic a secret. Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia would have hated magic being out and about around them, but they hated anyone and anything that did not perfectly match their idea of 'normal' even when magic was not involved, so that would have happened regardless. Considering how many people liked movies about space aliens or wizards or superheroes, anybody who did have magic would probably become instant celebrities.

What she eventually had to settle for was, 'Why the secret that important?'

"We've always been told that if Moldus found us, they would hate us and kill us. That has never made much sense to me since Né-Moldus were raised in that world and don't want all other wizards dead, but that is the thinking of the people who make these decisions. What we have been told their thinking is, anyway. What would actually happen, I do not know. Maybe it would be terrible, maybe it would be fine. Nobody knows, and nobody wants to find out in case the Moldus really would want us all dead.

"But that is enough philosophy talk for now." He raised his hand for silence and knelt down on the ground. "Come take a look at this."

She crouched down next to him. What he had found was a set of tracks in the dirt, two long indentations set side by side. Hooves, not paws. Hazel looked at him in confusion. They were looking for a gigantic pig, so why was he so excited about finding deer tracks?

"This is a boar track. Your look said everything, even without you saying a word," he added when he looked over at her with a smile and a raised eyebrow. "It looks a lot like a deer's, but you see how the points of the hoof are spread out? A deer hoof has the points both straight forward. Then there are these little indents." His fingers touched two divots behind and slightly to the side of the main hoofmark. "Pigs have dew claws just like deer do, but they're too far to the side. Deer tracks are all on a line, pigs' are pulled more to the sides." Touching his fingers to the bottoms of the tracks, his smile faded. "Clear imprint, so it was made when the ground was wet. The bottom is dry now. Probably a day old or more. We need to keep moving. Knowing where it used to be does not tell us where it is now."

For all that the nights were starting to cool off, the days were not. The higher the sun rose, though, the more confident Grégoire became. "Boars do not like the heat any more than you and I do," he said when she finally asked what had him in such a good mood. "The last few times we had a boar in the forest, they went to one of the nearby rivers around noontime. Cool off in the water, wallow in the mud, have a good time, then go back to digging and eating when the temperature drops again. There are a few streams this way."

She would not mind a dip in a stream herself, honestly, but she trudged along after the older man. Maybe once this chore was taken care of. It took them another twenty minutes or so to stumble upon one of the streams he had mentioned, but not matter how she stretched her neck to look up and down the stream, she saw no massive pig or any other creature.

"Not this one," he agreed. "Or not here, anyway. There's a little watering hole upriver if I remember right, but if the boar is not there we will have to keep looking."

Hazel blew out her breath in a puff. There had to be a better way of tracking this thing down than wandering around blindly! She was a druid, for crying out loud! Magic dealing with nature was supposed to be her area of expertise.

There was no reason she should not experiment, that was certain. This time she was the one who knelt, and her arms stretched out until she could dig most of her fingers into the mud that had formed along the stream's edge. She closed her eyes and breathed deep and slow. Reaching out with her magic, just like she did when she meditated, she let her very essence claw into the earth and the water and the air. I need help, she called out into the silence that seemed to fall over her. The river was muted, her breathing was almost nonexistent. She thought she could vaguely feel Grégoire's eyes staring at her, but none of the words he might be speaking could make it to her ears. We are looking for the boar that has entered these woods. Can anyone hear me? Can you show us where it has gone?

The silence dragged on, but after many long seconds she heard something. A fluttering like wings, but nothing like the sound of Morgan's flight. She opened her eyes to discover that something truly was coming her way. It looked almost like a butterfly, but one larger than she had ever seen. Its wings were also not colorful splashes of color like a regular butterfly's, either. Instead it had wings patterned and colored like the leaves these trees would undoubtedly bear once autumn was here in full force. The spirit – for it was clearly no natural creature – flew until it was only a couple of feet in front of her and hovered there patiently.

Will you help me, she asked. It did not reply by word or emotion or movement, and she cast her mind back to the only other time she had a peaceful interaction with a spirit. The entity that gave her the lavender lens she wore over her right eye now had taken her broken lens in exchange. She still did not understand why it would want a broken glasses lens, but it had. Taking a leap of faith, she told the butterfly spirit in front of her, I'm willing to make a trade.

That seemed to be the sign the spirit wanted. It fluttered from its place before her and landed on her left arm, its spiny legs digging strangely but not really uncomfortably into the skin. Its head dipped towards her shoulder, and she winced as something sharp pinched into the flesh. The sting lasted only an instant; two or three instants after that, the spirit took off again and flapped away. The only sign that it had ever been there in the first place was the small bead of blood that welled up from the spot it had bitten and started rolling down her arm.

"What the hell?!" Grégoire demanded. She looked up to find his eyes affixed firmly to the trail of blood on her arm. "Why would she hurt herself? How did she hurt herself?! Her hands were buried in the dirt."

Hazel raised her hand to explain what had just happened, but as soon as one hand came free from the mud and muck she felt what she could only describe as a tugging sensation in her head. It was as if someone had threaded some string up her nose and glued it to the back of her skull, and now they were pulling on the string to make her go somewhere. I did ask the spirits to show me where the boar was, she reminded herself. Her hand was still up in the air, so with a shrug she wrote, 'I know where boar be.'

"She… What?"

The tug drew her away from the river and deeper into the woods, and she let her feet follow the pull. Grégoire stared at her with confusion swirling through his mind before he eventually started following as well. It did not take long before Hazel pulled herself partway up a tree that had fallen at an angle and stared at what she found. That is a big pig.

The boar did not notice them, its snout shoveling dirt out of the way as it dug for roots or worms or whatever else it was after. It had to be six feet long at the least, and thick black hair coursed down its shoulders and back. It looked up, and while it was chewing its prize the two thick tucks reaching up from its jaw were on prominent display.

"About two meters long," Grégoire said when he in turn looked over the tree. Pulling back the string of his crossbow, he loaded one of the thick bolts. "He's a big boy. I still do not know how you found him in the first place, but you did. Somehow. We need to shoot him in the side. That will give the best chance of injuring something important. If the first shot does not put him down, he'll be after us, and I do not like our chances of outrunning him."

They needed to keep him still? Hazel's fingers tapped on her thigh. She strongly doubted she would be able to create a brand new construct in such a short amount of time. If she wanted to help out here, it would have to be something she already had. Unfortunately, nothing was coming to mind. That was something else she should have worked on, especially since it would have been very useful if she ever ran into something like the ghosts in de Rais's castle again—

Wait.

She thought back to that misadventure. The ghosts had all come after her, and in fact they had not just chased her but managed to grab her. Except then they let her go. It was not because they wanted to, not when they started chasing after her again as soon as she started running away, but something had made them go away. Something she did made them go away.

All I did was tell them to go away, though. Could that really be enough? She had told them to go away… and she had been scared. It would not be the first time that fear had powered her magic. In fact, the more she thought about it, the more she wondered if she might have accidentally done the same thing with Morgan the first time they met. Her hand rose to pet her friend, who twittered comfortingly to her. She was not constantly keeping him under any kind of mind control, but when she wanted one of the birds she saw around Stonehenge to come to her, she had been frustrated and angry. And lo and behold, one had flown down to her just as she had demanded of them.

Could she use the same thing here to deal with the boar? She still had no construct, so emotion would have to work instead to fuel her spell. Hazel closed her eyes and thought. Jean Luc had said he was worried about this boar eating all their food, food they already did not have much of. If they did not have food this winter, they could starve. This family of werewolves, this group of people who had accepted her when no one – no one – had ever done so before, could starve and look just like she had when she looked at her own reflection in that kind man's deli months ago.

She pictured Jean Luc, Amorette, Grégoire, Simone, all with sunken eyes and cheeks while their arms and legs were little more than twigs. It did not take long to imagine these people, her friends, laying listlessly and lifelessly in their beds, too tired and weak to get up to get something, anything to eat. Too weak to survive. The only people she had in the whole wide world, gone.

And it would be ALL. This creature's. FAULT.

"…'Azel? What is wrong?"

Her eyes opened, all of her attention and her anger firmly focused on the boar. Her left hand reached out towards it, her fingers curling like claws. She was not going to be the person to kill it, but she would do her part to protect her people, and that meant it was not going to run away. Go. To. Sleep.

The boar stumbled, almost as if something had pushed it in the side. It shook its head and grunted a few times, but each one was softer than the last. Eventually it could not withstand her psychic assault any longer. Curling its legs beneath it, it laid down on the dirt and closed its eyes. Within seconds, the sound of its breathing had changed.

And a second after that, the crossbow fired a bolt into its side.

Sharp pain flashed between her eyes, forcing her to wince and blink a few times. When she could see again, she looked up to find that the boar was not dead, and it was no longer asleep. It was awake, in pain, and angry.

"Shite shite shite," Grégoire thought, pulling back on the string of the crossbow as fast as he could. Another bolt was already in his hand, just waiting for the bow to be ready.

The boar climbed to its feet, and Hazel knew they were out of time. She had one other thing that might work to keep it from charging them the way it looked like it was about to. Flexing her wrist once, she gripped her magical dart between two fingers and flung her arm out. The dart flew, sparks trailing it along its path, and it sank into the flesh of the boar just behind its front legs. Blood poured out the hole she made, but the beast was still alive. It wheeled around and, seeing them, let out a bellow and charged.

Another dart appeared in her hand and was thrown, this one carving a furrow in the flesh of its forehead. It still ran, its legs carrying it forward faster than she would have guessed they could.

The crossbow twanged again, and the bolt flew true. By the time she saw it hit, the bolt had already sunk most of its length into the animal's neck. This finally did something to the boar, and it staggered forwards for another six feet before crashing heavily into the ground and skidding to a stop.

"Oh, thank goodness," Grégoire said in a voice of pure relief. "I was worried that would not be enough. I do not know what she was doing, but I saw blood fly for a second. Did she have some way to hurt it? I guess that was her plan B, because that was… impressive, what you did. Putting it to sleep, I mean. I did not know you could do that."

'I not know either.'

"That does not exactly fill me with confidence. Well, it worked. This guy will not cause us any more trouble." Looping the strap of the crossbow over his shoulder, Grégoire walked out from behind the tree and looked down at the dead boar. "Now we just need to figure out how we will get him back to the compound."

August rolled into September, and the weather started turning colder faster than Hazel or anyone else in the commune expected. Jackets and jumpers were pulled out of boxes, and Grégoire spent most of his days out in the woods filling bag after bag with acorns that he said would be ground up into flour for breads and porridge. Jean Luc and Elise spent more time together, him working out finances again and her making runs to different shopping districts all over the country to gather nonperishable groceries. Despite it only just now turning to autumn, it was clear that everyone was already gearing up for the winter.

And that meant it was time for her to move on.

She rapped three times on Jean Luc's door and stepped inside. 'I think it is time for me to leave,' she told him, writing out her words in English rather than French. This was something she did not want to be misunderstood, and that meant not using a language she was still not entirely proficient in.

"Leave?" he asked in confusion. His question made Elise look up from where she was flipping through a newspaper for coupons. "Leave where? Where would you go?"

'I never planned to stay in France forever. I did not expect to stay as long as I did,' she admitted. 'I'm headed to Germany for a bit. There are some things I want to check out there.'

France had, sadly, not given her much in terms of ancient magical sites to investigate. German folklore, on the other hand, was absolutely full of tales of magical monsters and witches. Hopefully she would have more luck looking for things further east.

'Besides,' she continued, 'I know you are worried about having enough food and supplies for everybody this winter. I leave, and that is one less mouth to feed. I can take care of myself in the winter. I have done it before.'

"Jean Luc, what is she saying?" Elise asked. "All I can see is that it is written in English, and I never learned that language."

Jean Luc's expression bordered on heartbroken as he turned to look at Elise. "She plans to leave us."

'Not forever! Just for the winter. I will come back in the spring, I promise.'

"A promise to come back does not change that you are talking about heading out into the cold on your own. We can take care of ourselves and you as well."

'But that would just make things harder when they don't have to be. I really, really appreciate that you are worried about me,' she told him, 'but you do not have to be. I will be fine.'

"Maybe you will," he admitted, "but that does not mean we cannot help. None of us could live with ourselves if something happened to you because you left trying to protect us. Elise, do you think you could grab one of the copper pots and put together a pouch of basic ingredients? Elise and Amorette have told me on several occasions that you have an interest in potions," he explained, "and the least we could do is give you the tools to make them while you are out on your own."

'You do not have to do that,' she protested. There were several potions she had learned to make, although if she were honest most of them she would not need to make thanks to her own abilities. Burn creams and pain relievers would be more useful were she not able to heal her own injuries, and likewise with the magical superglue that could only be dissolved with another specific potion. She could fix anything that was broken, although now that she thought about it, it could be useful to stick things together that had not originally been one thing.

She had never been in a position where she had needed that ability, but she could not say that she would never need it.

"We do not have to do it, no. That does not mean we will not."

It took a few minutes, but Elise came back with one of the big copper cooking pots they made their potions in and a bag Hazel could already tell was filled with all sorts of ingredients. Reluctantly she took the presents, more gifts from people that had little enough of their own to start with, and carefully stuffed both of them into her satchel. 'Merci,' she wrote, showing it to both Elise and Jean Luc.

"It is the least we can do," Jean Luc told her. "I am serious about us being able to take care of you. If you run into trouble or simply cannot live out there on your own, you are always welcome to come back. I know you have your ways of getting places quickly."

Hazel gave her thanks to them again and slipped away before they could try to argue against her leaving any more than they already had. From the sad glare Elise shot at Jean Luc while she was doing that, it was an argument that would continue even without her.

There has to be something we can do for them, she told Morgan as she walked quickly away from the compound. They have been so kind to us, never asking for a single thing in return. They welcomed us even though they have practically nothing to spare. Can you think of anything?

Her friend cheeped mournfully, and she sighed. She did not feel right just leaving. What could she do to help them out? Even a short run of good luck for them would be better than nothing!

Thinking of good luck made her mind wander back to the deli in Tavistock she had visited months ago. Before she left, she had tried to leave a blessing for him. Could she do the same here? There was no single building she could touch like she had then, but maybe there were other options.

It did not take her long to gather four acorns, and then using the point of her shears she poked a hole in the tip of her left pinky finger. It was not a deep cut, but it was enough for her to rub some blood over the acorns. A burst of green lighting sealed the cut up. The next thing she pulled out of her bag was the compass she had stolen months ago, and she did her best to judge where due south was from the center of the commune.

One finger she wiggled into the dirt, just enough to make a small pit in which she dropped one of the bloodied acorns. Blood had been important for closing the gate to the Greenwild beneath Glastonbury Tor, and that weird butterfly spirit had taken some blood in exchange for its help. She had no idea if adding her blood to this blessing would do anything at all, but it was possible that it might add some extra oomph. That possibility was good enough for her.

Not a single cruel soul lives within this compound, she told the woods around her and the earth beneath her as she covered the hole with the acorn. They are kind, and they give with no thought of reward or whether they would be better off keeping what they have to themselves. I am not a werewolf, and yet they accepted me as one of their own almost immediately. Yet despite their kindness, they are hated and feared for something they have no control over. Her mind went back to the attitudes of the Republican Guards who had harassed them, but she shoved that away. She did not want indignation, no matter how righteous, interfering with this. All I ask is that these people – these kind, loving people – be protected from those who would wish them harm undeserved. Keep them safe, and let their generosity be returned threefold.

Her blessing given, she checked her compass and jumped to the opposite end of the compound. She recited the same blessing as best as she could remember it, and buried another acorn. Then she did the same to the west, and then to the east.

She may not be able to touch the compound as a whole, but she could surround it and the people who lived within with her prayer for protection.

Morgan chirped, and she brushed her hands off and nodded. Yeah, you're right. We've done what we can. I hope it's enough.

But the sun is still moving forwards, and it is time for us to hit the road again.

Before anyone asks or blindly tries to criticize, yes, wild pigs and boars are still present in France. The idea of boar hunting isn't something that ended in the Renaissance. From what I could find, about 15,000 were killed in 1990 alone.

Silently Watches out.