Winlyn: Some of the magic Hazel can do or will be able to do are so alien to the modern wizard mindset that they don't even have laws about it! Like her blessing. Any wizard who knows what blood magic is will know instantly that what she did ISN'T typical blood magic, but it still involved blood, so what is it?

Hazel SHOULDN'T be able to cross borders freely (the E.U. didn't open their orders within the bloc until 1995), but when she can simply teleport past border crossings, it isn't like anybody can stop her.

Zasha the Cat: Whether what Hazel can do is just a different application of normal human magic or a completely different kind of magic from what wizards use is something that nobody, not even Hazel, knows.

DRWPJT: The werewolves do NOT know that she can read minds. Grégoire's comment was due to him reading the expression on her face.

"Will we ever see the results of Hazel's blessings?": We'll just have to see.

Chapter 19
Eastward Bound

The werewolf commune was in the southwestern portion of the Compiègne Forest, which meant in order to get to Germany Hazel and Morgan had a good long path they needed to travel. Studying her maps, it was clear that just getting to the Black Forest – which was only the first stop she had planned – would take her nearly two weeks of walking.

Not for the first time, she was glad she did not have to bother with school any longer. If she had to explore in between classes, she did not think she would ever get anywhere. There was just too much to see and too much to learn in the world.

Her route mostly paralleled a road that should get her at least to the border between France and Germany, but she had no intention of making herself easy to spot. She had not wanted to deal much with well-meaning adults who wanted to 'help' her when she first started out, and that was before she had a bottomless bag full of potion ingredients. More questions would be asked than she really wanted, and considering how important wizards believed keeping non-magical Moldus out of their affairs, she doubted the werewolves would appreciate her spilling the beans to the first person who pulled aside to check on her. It was easier for her just to stay out of sight.

Personally, she was torn on the idea of hiding magic from regular people. She was fuzzy on just what made wizards and druids start hiding in the first place other than what Grégoire had said about wizards being afraid they would be hunted down. Whether that was still the case or not, she did not know. On the other hand, the fact that everything was hidden away made her very concerned about Nés-Moldus who, just like her, were magical in a world without magic. How many kids lived in homes where their strange abilities were feared and despised, just as hers had been when she lived in Number 4? How many people's lives would be improved by having a place to go where they would be accepted for who they were?

The road she was following curved to start tracing the edges of yet another forest, and Hazel's steps moved farther away so she could plunge into the sea of trees. So long as she kept the road to her right side, she would be able to find it when she came out the other side of the woods. She had to go in a roughly southeasterly direction, so even if she lost the road she could just follow her compass. It was not as if she had not double-checked a few times already that she was going in the correct direction—

Something tingled at the edge of her perception, and Hazel stopped in her tracks. What was that? Her head swiveled as she looked all around her. She was curious about what that was, but that did not mean she could not be cautious. Step one was to make absolutely sure that whatever strange feeling she had was not the result of something dangerous and hungry sneaking up on her. Squeezing her left eye shut tight, she focused on just what she could see through her right eye and her monocle. Invisibility would not help anything trying to sneak up on her.

Her worried gaze landed on nothing but the trees around her.

That was… good. It was good. Nothing was trying to eat her, so she was safe. Her caution satisfied, her curiosity came back in full force. The tingle was still there and unchanged from how it felt when she first noticed it. What was it?

Her feet led her deeper into the woods, and the further she walked the stronger the tingle became until suddenly, it was gone. What took its place was a low, deep hum, almost too quiet for her to hear. It was just loud enough for her to follow, though, and moving as stealthily as she could she proceeded onwards. Her eyes and ears were still on the lookout for anything, anything at all, that was out of the ordinary.

Moving around yet another tree, Hazel stopped and stared. The source of the hum was before her, and it was just another maple tree no different than all the others she could see nearby. The hum was louder now, but despite the change in volume she still barely hear it.

Dog whistles are too high-pitched for humans to hear, she reminded herself. Could this be the same, but it's too low for me to hear it?

Whatever the cause, it had clearly led her here. What was different about this tree, she wondered as she stepped closer. Was it a dryad's tree, the home of a nature spirit? Or was it just magical? She had never heard of a magical tree before, but then again she had never heard of magical animals before she and Grégoire went hunting for the boar. There was still so much of this hidden world of magic that she did not know about that she should not assume anything.

Standing beneath its boughs, she glanced up. Were the branches moving all on their own?! No, that was not it. She blinked a few times and smiled. It was not the branches that were moving, but instead a number of creatures that looked like twigs but ran around on two legs like little people. If it were not for the thrum of the tree pulsing right in front of her, she might have thought it was these twig-creatures that were making the hum.

Was the tree calling to her, and that was why she heard it? Hazel thought for a moment before shaking her head. There was no way the tree could have known she was nearby. More likely this was a tree's version of purring, a not-quite-sound it made because it was content. She did not want to bother it if that were the case.

But. She looked up at the numerous branches, and an idea tickled the inside of her skull. Wizards had wands, as proven by both the werewolves and the standing stones in Shervage Woods. Those stones also depicted a group of magicians who carried staves. Those would be the druids. Druids used staves, something she did not have, and there had to be a reason for it.

She had never needed one of her own, but she also did not know what they did. There must be some benefit since druids like her did not actually need such a thing to cast spells. Making a staff was not a priority, but considering she had a magical tree of all things right in front of her…

Reaching out her hand until it pressed fully against the trunk, she closed her eyes. Hello, she told the tree. My name is Hazel. I was wondering, would it be okay with you if I took one of your branches? I want to make a staff — she sent it a mental picture of herself with a walking stick — but I didn't want to take one of your branches without asking for permission.

The pulsing of the tree did not change beneath her hand, but it also did not reply in any way. Was this a no? A maybe? Was it considering her request, or was it waiting for something? That question almost made her slap herself. Of course. If this was a dryad's tree, it would be the third time she had interacted with a spirit, and even if it were not a spirit but just a magical tree, it still seemed to have more awareness than a typical plant.

Spirits or magical entities were not going to give something up for free. In their shoes, she would not either.

I am willing to discuss a bargain with you. Is there anything you would like me to give you or do for you in exchange for one of your branches?

In the darkness behind her closed eyelids, colors faded into view. This tree in its little clearing, its leaves entirely red instead of the half-green-half-red they were now. Little brown 'V's fluttered out of its branches and landed on the ground, but once they touched they withered and vanished. An emotion passed through her mind, something muted but tinged with… regret? Sadness? Disappointment? Hazel was not sure.

The scene changed. Now she saw the tree as it was already, and another seed pod fell. The pod stayed in view, but everything around it faded and swirled. When the background came back into focus, Hazel saw a field without any nearby trees. The seed pod touched the ground and sank into it. A small twig poked out from the ground where the seed had disappeared, and as she watched that twig grew with impossible speed into another tree that scattered its own seeds. More trees sprouted from the ground until she no longer was looking at an empty field but a young, lush forest.

The vision faded, but she thought she understood the request behind it. I would be happy to take your seed somewhere it can grow and thrive.

Something light pressed on the top of her head, and Hazel opened her eyes and reached up to touch it. What her hand pulled down into view was one of those angled seed pods she had seen. It seemed the tree was not playing around.

She held up the seed pod in view of the tree's trunk and dropped it into her satchel. The next empty space she saw on her trip, she would plant the seed and let it do its thing. Best she could tell, the vision did not involve any more work on her end than that. Looking up at the numerous branches above her, she asked, Is there a branch you think would be best for me to take?

As she watched, a leafless branch maybe ten feet off the ground flexed faintly. It looked almost as if it were being blown by the wind, but all the other branches were still, and she heard no wind. It could only be intentional. Nodding to herself, she jumped—

—and straddled the thick branch the branch she was after had grown off of. Morgan hopped off her shoulder and landed on a different twig, chirping once or twice but otherwise just keeping an eye on what she was doing. She pressed her chest against the large branch and reached down for the smaller one. It bent rather easily in her hands. She pulled and pulled, scooting herself closer to the trunk bit by bit, and after shifting a couple of feet she heard a series of cracks and snaps. One more hard tug, and the branch snapped off.

Hazel grinned to herself and looked up only to see one of the twig-creatures standing in front of her. It really did look like a little man, she could not help but notice, maybe four inches tall with a couple of leaves coming off its head like hair and with relatively big black eyes staring at her. What was not human-looking were the two long, sharp fingers growing from its hands. As she watched, those fingers curled and relaxed. The twig-man was watching her, but it was not acting aggressively or anything. She gave him it a wave and rolled off the large branch—

—so she would reappear on the ground. Much nicer than actually falling that whole distance.

Plopping her butt onto the dirt at the foot of the tree, she leaned back and looked over the branch in her hand. If she had felt bad at first that she was getting a staff in exchange for such a piddling task as taking the seed somewhere else, she no longer did. This branch did not have any leaves or any twigs coming off it, and the end was crooked and almost zigzagged rather than being straight. It clearly was not doing the tree any good, and sadly the more she looked at it the less she thought it would really work as a staff. It was just too twisted.

Or, she considered as she looked the branch up and down, could she do something to fix that? Healing it would not do any good because being bent like this was still natural, and she did not have any spells per se that would make the wood straighten out. That did not mean she had nothing to try.

If this was to be her staff, she needed to show it to her magic and get them to work together. That did not necessarily require a spell.

Hazel leaned against the trunk of the tree and laid the branch across her crossed legs. Closing her eyes, she pushed her magic outwards. Just like the other times she had meditated, she imagined roots reaching out from below her. Now, though, branches lifted themselves from her shoulders and her hair, and from her hands came vines that wound themselves around the staff. She took a deep breath in and let it out, then repeated the process. With each exhale, her magic pulsed through the branches and the roots and the vines; her inhale pulled magic back from the ground and air, but not the branch. She wanted the magic in the branch to stay there. She imagined she could feel the branch almost like a foot that had fallen asleep, and she willed it to stretch out so she could get rid of the pins and needles feeling.

As she breathed in and out and coaxed the branch into behaving, she slowly became aware of a headache building behind her eyes. It was not unbearable, but she could feel it growing stronger and stronger with each pulse of her magic. It was like when she had done her chain-jumping to get to the Mermaid's Pool, though not nearly as strong. Was this what happened when she pushed her magic to its limit? It had never happened when she meditated before, but then again she had also never tried reshaping a tree branch while meditating.

Opening her eyes, Hazel had to wait a moment for her vision to adjust to the sudden darkness. The sun had not completely set, not yet, but its remaining light was easily matched by the nearly full moon that was rising overhead. It had been the middle of the afternoon when she entered these woods; could several hours have really passed already? A shake of her head, and she looked down at the branch before her eyes widened in astonishment.

What lay in her lap was no twisted tree branch. It was a long, straight staff, tapering gently from top to bottom but not coming to a true point. The vast majority of the bark was gone to reveal a yellowish white wood. What little bark was left were more flecks than anything else, all congregated at the end where the broken end of the branch had smoothed over into a rounded head. Quiet chittering came from her sides, and she turned her head to meet the gaze of a twig-man. Just one of many, in fact. Several of them had climbed down the tree to wrap themselves around her arms and shoulders and, from the itchy feeling of her scalp, had even perched on her head. A twitter from a few feet away turned out to be Morgan hopping backwards with his wings spread as a pair of twig-men advanced, their two-fingered hands outstretched as if to pet his feathers.

Thanks for the company, I guess, but I need to get up now, she told them. Matching action with words, she pushed herself to her feet and pressed her left hand against the tree's trunk again. The twig-men took advantage of the impromptu bridge she offered and scuttled down her arm onto the tree, their long fingers giving them excellent purchase between the chunks of bark as they climbed rapidly back to the boughs from whence they came.

Once she had rid herself of all her hanger-ons, she returned her attention to her new staff. It was clear to her now that it was upright that her staff was as long as she was tall, but for all that it did not feel unwieldy. It just felt sturdy.

She tapped the butt of the staff against the ground. Do you do anything special, she asked the staff. To her absolute lack of surprise, it did not respond in any way.

Morgan flew back to his typical spot on her shoulder, and she shrugged. I have a staff now. I still don't know why druids used them, but it's mine. Maybe I'll figure out what makes them special later.

Anyway. Onward! She pointed the top of her staff in the direction she had been traveling before she made this little detour. We still have a whole other country to get to, and we are wasting moonlight.

Hazel slipped beneath another fallen tree and looked down at the small valley the tree had hidden. All around her stood tall trees of all kinds, their canopies blocking out nearly all sunlight from above. It made her walk an easy one as there was little to no underbrush, but it also gave the woods a foreboding, eerie feeling, as if there might well be something dangerous and lethal always just out of sight.

It was, she supposed, an appropriate feeling for the Black Forest to evoke.

This had been the first place she wanted to stop in Germany for a few different reasons. First, the Black Forest featured prominently in several of the Brothers' Grimm fairy tales. From what she had found in her research, the Brothers had not made up these stories so much as collected them from all over Germany. These were folk tales, and as she had proven when she stumbled onto the standing stones of Shervage Wood and the road to the Greenwild and the Mermaid's Pool and the rift at Elva Hill, the old Celtic folk tales were more right than most people gave them credit for nowadays. The same might just be the case for the German variants.

Second, so many of her self-discoveries and new ideas had come while surrounded by nature, not necessarily in cities of men. That only made sense considering the connection between her magic and the natural world. If she wanted a place to meditate, an ancient forest would be the best place to do so, although after being here she was starting to have her doubts about how good of an idea that would be. If there was magic here, it was not the kindly sort.

Third, she had learned her lesson from the last time she entered a new country. After leaving the forest where she made her staff and finding somewhere with recognizable landmarks, she had jumped back to the library in Bristol and borrowed an introductory book on the German language and its grammar as well as a dictionary. Much to her displeasure, it looked like she was going to have to deal with different endings on words just the same as the French did, although German did not seem to be quite as complicated as French in that regard. Flipping through those books had been what she spent every night of the last two weeks and change doing. It slowed her travel down some, but she would rather take an extra couple of days getting here than show up early with no idea how to write the language. Exploring the woods gave her a few more days to get the language down than heading straight to a town would do.

She glanced up at the tree canopies again. It was getting late, which meant it was probably close to time for her to return to her campsite. Not that her camp was really worth the name since all it contained was an extinguished fire pit. Thanks to the lessons Grégoire had given her over the last couple of months about how to survive in the wild woods, she now knew how to keep a fire going through the night and how to stay warm when she nestled herself in the branches of trees to sleep. Trees were not as comfortable to sleep on as the cot she had used in Simone's cottage, but it was no worse than any of the places she had slept within when she was wandering around England.

Regardless, she would need to make her way back. Just jumping back was an option, but that meant she could not explore more of the woods. If she walked back, she could cover more ground, and it was not as if getting lost was currently a problem. Hazel looked over at the staff she held in her right hand. She had not really noticed it on the way over here, but in the last several days as she explored the Black Forest she had realized that whenever she wanted to return to camp, her feet always seemed to know how to get there even when her head was sure she was completely lost.

She took a step and slid down the slope of the hill on which she stood into the valley below. It ran basically perpendicular to the route she had taken, so it would make sense for her to walk along it for another hour or so before turning back and searching another area of the forest back towards her camp. If she were lucky, she might even run into some berry bushes or some squirrels or something. Hunting was not her favorite thing to do, nor was the actual butchering of the animals she killed, but the more fresh game she ate the less she needed the canned food in her satchel, which meant the longer she could go before she had to sneak into a store and take more.

Hazel pulled her torch out of her bag and flipped it on. She wanted to be able to see any prints in the ground, which would tell her if there were anything to—

What was that?

Kneeling down, she reached out one hand and prodded a larger print than she had expected. It had sharper edges than many of the animal prints Grégoire had shown her, and it was much more regular. Semicircular in shape, it looked almost like… Hazel walked around to the other side of the print and nodded. It did not look like a boot print; it was a boot print. And it was pointing further down the valley.

Now that she knew what she was looking for, she could see other prints further off that were also pointed in that direction. She did not know how old the prints were, but they were here in the middle of the forest with no other signs that anybody lived nearby. Where were they headed?

She started walking, her eyes all but glued to the ground to make sure she did not lose the trail she was following. Five minutes passed, then ten and fifteen. The sun completely vanished from sight, night overtaking the forest, and with only her torch to light the way she continued onwards.

After an hour, she reached the tracks' destination. Here in the middle of the woods stood a small wooden cabin. A dim light shone from the windows, not the yellow or white of typical lights but a pale blue, and the closer Hazel crept the clearer she could hear voices coming from within. People lived here, that was for sure, but were they wizards or regular people? That she did not know.

She stepped up to the door and raised her hand to knock when she stopped. The last time she went into a possibly magical building where she did not know what was inside, she had been attacked by hungry spirits and could not jump out to safety. There was no telling whether that same magic might be here. There were no enchanted chains in sight, but that did not necessarily mean anything. She needed to be sure she could escape if everything went south on her.

A small jump, and she reappeared ten feet away from the house just as she had wanted. She nodded to herself, now secure in the fact that she could get herself to safety, and returned to the door. Lifting her staff this time, she rapped three times on the door.

The voices stopped for several seconds, and then a woman called out, "Komm herein."

That sounded mostly like what Hazel thought was German for 'come in', so with a mental shrug she opened the door and stepped inside. The cabin was not all that large, and from what she could see most of the building was taken up by the large room she had entered. A long table with three chairs stood in the middle of the room, already set for dinner. The back portion of this living space was clearly being used as a kitchen based on the strings of herb bundles that dangled from the ceiling along with a number of dead rabbits. There was no television or radio in sight, but the side of the room furthest from the door had several low bookshelves with a few books and decks of cards and what looked like different game boards stacked on top. The entire room was lit by several glass lanterns and lamps and even a couple of Mason jars that all held flickering blue flames within. It was very clearly a magical home.

The inhabitants were no less strange. Three women, one clearly middle-aged and one who looked to be in her twenties sitting in the chairs at the table, while the last who appeared to be only a little younger than the first had risen from her own chair and taken a step towards the door. What made them odd was that even in the blue light from the lanterns their skin was a pale green, and while they all had long noses the two older women's were heavily warted. Not wanting to be rude, Hazel lifted her finger and in sparks wrote, 'Hallo'.

A snort came from the oldest woman. "Dumb little girl to wander in here. She looks so juicy and tender."

The woman who had risen from the table smiled at her with crooked, pointed teeth. She spoke in German, but her thoughts were, just like the werewolves', easily understood. "Hello, little wand-waver. You are far from home, are you not?"

'Yes.' Hazel pulled out her dictionary and flipped through the pages for a moment to find the word she wanted. 'Exploring the forest. Then I found your house.' She tilted her head. 'You are not human.'

"Then you must be alone. No, we are not."

Green skin, covered in warts, living in a cabin in the forest, and – if the other woman's thoughts were any indication – ate children? She was pretty sure she knew what she was dealing with now. 'Hags?'

The woman, the hag, chuckled and started walking closer. "Very good. If you know what we are, you also know this is not a place for curious little boys and girls. You look like you would make a nice snack."

The other hags stood up from the table, their intent clear. Hazel could feel fear bubbling in her chest, but strangely it was not as strong as it had been when she faced the ghosts beneath de Rais's tower. Was it because she knew escape was just a jump away? Because she had something to protect herself with now? Suiting action to thought, she let go of her staff for a moment so she could bend her left hand back and forth and close her fingers over the starry dart that appeared.

The hag she had been talking to shifted her gaze over to her hand when it moved but seemed to relax when nothing visible happened. In that moment of distraction, Hazel wrote, 'I prefer to talk.'

"Yes, most do. You would do better running." The hag took another step and suddenly stopped. Her nostrils flared as she took several long, deep breaths. "What is that smell?"

Now that was just mean! She might not ready access to a shower or a bathtub, but she used her cleaning spell on herself every day without fail. She knew she did not stink! 'I wash myself.'

"Mother, what is wrong?" asked the youngest of the hags.

The mother hag shook her head and stared at Hazel with luminous yellow eyes. "What are you? You smell like hag magic."

That pronouncement caught the others' attention, and the youngest hag hurried to her mother's side and also took several sniffs. "You are right, Mother. I smell some wand-waver magic on her, but little. It is almost hidden."

"She is too young to carry a wand, Hedwig."

"That is not what I mean." Hedwig leaned closer to Hazel's staff and smelled before shaking her head and slipping out of sight behind Hazel's back. A few sniffs came from right next to her ear. "Here. Her earrings are all the wand-waver I smell. The staff and… this bag are what smell like us." The hag's face popped back into view only to frown. Grabbing Hazel's head in hands far stronger than they first appeared, Hedwig leaned closer to her face to smell some more. "What in the world? Mother, her eyepatch. It… Tell me what you think."

Her head was turned to face the mother hag, and she sighed. The worry that she was going to be eaten had been supplanted by utter confusion, at least for the moment, but while she was fine not being treated as dinner she would also appreciate not being manhandled like this.

The mother took several more deep inhalations from around her monocle. "You are right. It smells like the scoured clearing. What dealings do you have with spirits, girl?"

'My name is Hazel, not girl,' she told them with a scowl. 'And I talk to whoever I want. Now what do you mean that I smell like hag magic?'

"Exactly that. These were made by hags, not humans." The older hag's expression turned dark. "No hag would just give her Makings to a wand-waver, though. Who did you steal them from?"

'I did not steal them! I made them on my own.'

Hedwig's eyes shot to her mother. "She knows the Making?"

"That is not possible. Wand-wavers cannot do such a thing, but… if that is the case, how does she have these things on her? She should not have been able to overpower one of us without one of her people's wands, and no hag would give up such treasures without a fight. If she did not steal them, how else could she have obtained them?" The mother hag's face softened, though she still wore a frown. "You claim to have made these yourself?"

Hazel nodded.

"Very well. In the morning, we will test that. You may stay here for the night, and if you run, we will know you for a liar and hunt you down."

She doesn't sound like she'll take no for an answer, does she?, Hazel asked Morgan. Her friend just kept looking around without any display of fear, but then again, he was not the one they wanted to eat. She had no idea how good their sense of smell was, and the mental picture of them chasing after her on all fours like bloodhounds was more disturbing than it was amusing. 'You promise I am safe tonight?'

"Yes. You will not be disturbed," the hag said with a long look at the oldest of the trio. "Not tonight. We will see what tomorrow brings. If your words are false, I will take great pleasure in sucking the marrow from your bones. If you are telling the truth… I do not know what that will mean."

Dismissing the dart between her fingers, Hazel drummed her fingertips against her staff. On the face of it, this seemed extremely foolish. The hags had admitted they wanted to eat her. But if they were truthful about leaving her alone? She had no clue what they meant about her staff and her bag smelling like hag magic, but it sounded like they knew more about them than she did. Maybe they had answers to other questions she had?

And if all else failed, there was no reason she could not just jump to safety, secure in the knowledge that the Grimm stories held at least some truth.

'Very well. I look forward to tomorrow.'

Funny thing, from my reading the German word "Hexe" can mean both hag and witch. I would assume that witches in Harry Potter's Germany would call themselves something else, probably something more closely related to the word for wizard.

My notes are all sorted now. Germany will take the same number of chapters as France, and then we're back to jolly old England.

Silently Watches out.