Chapter Four
Gabbing with Ghouls

Ron and Hermione sat opposite Harry in the kitchen, at one of the tables that once mirrored the four in the wrecked Great Hall above, as he ate a bowl of bland porridge. And sit they could; more tangible than true ghosts, specters summoned by the Stone could interact with the world in simple ways, like sitting or knocking a glass off a table like a vengeful cat. It took concentration, Harry was told, or else they would pass straight through the object.

"Is there really no way I could dissuade you?" said Hermione, almost pleading.

Harry shook his head. "I can't sit around and do nothing, Hermione. I told you before, if there's a chance it'll work, I must take it."

Hermione groaned.

"Did you really think he'd change his mind just cos you asked nicely?" asked an amused Ron.

"Well, I thought it a better plan than you batting your eyes at him."

Ron snorted.

"Very well," she said, "but do finish your brekky first. I don't want to force feed you the most complex magical theory I've ever seen when you've an empty stomach… You get cranky when you skip breakfast."

"Who doesn't?" said Ron.

"You. You become absolutely unbearable when you're hungry."

Ron laughed. "True, true."

"Alright, I'm done," said Harry as he hastily pushed his bowl aside. "Tell me about these rituals already."

"First of all," objected Hermione, "I refuse to call them that. Ritual sounds like we're trying to summon demons or something."

"Then what would you have me call them?"

"Rites or ceremonies even, or if those are too stuffy for you, just call them spells—there are spells involved anyway."

"Alright, fine, tell me about these spells."

Hermione's gaze didn't falter. She maintained a steely, no-nonsense expression. "I won't sugarcoat it for you, Harry—these rites, assuming they aren't the load of rubbish they certainly seem to be, are dangerous—particularly the one about time travel. There are life-threatening consequences to every single step of the rite if you do them even slightly imperfectly or out of order."

Harry ignored her warning and her subtle plea that he give up the fool's endeavor. "I understand, Hermione," he said evenly, doing his utmost to remain patient. "Please continue."

She huffed at his tone. "Next—the ingredients. You've read the recipes, haven't you? Then you know that some of them are rather… unusual."

"They're quite Luna-esque, yes. Your point?"

"They don't exist, Harry! Crumple-horned Snorkacks, Heliopaths—they're imaginary creatures!"

"Going back hundreds of years? That's how old this thing is, isn't it? More like legendary to me," he countered. "And weren't dragons supposed to be imaginary?"

But Hermione wasn't to be defeated so easily. A gleam shone in her eyes as she said, "In that case, where would you begin your search for them? After all, if they aren't imaginary, there must be documented sightings or perhaps corpses found?" She paused for rhetorical effect. "No! Because they don't exist."

Ron looked like he was spectating a world championship Gobstones match, his eyes darting back and forth, not wanting to miss a single play.

Harry wasn't ready to concede defeat in his debate. Though Hermione had brought rather sound logical reasoning, as he expected she would, he had prepared a counter to this very argument. It was a fanciful notion that to Harry made perfect sense.

"They don't exist here," he said.

"Yes, that's what I've been trying to—"

"No. I mean they don't exist here!"

"You mean—?"

"They exist in other worlds! It's so obvious! That's how the Author knows about them!"

"So you're saying the Author performed one of these rites, the one about alternate worlds—"

"The Otherworldly Ordinance."

"I know, I read the thing!" she said irritably. "You're assuming he performed that rite, went to another world, found creatures there that don't exist here, brought them back to this world and used them to develop a spell to travel back in time? Is that what you're suggesting?"

Harry hesitated, his brain following at a three-second delay. "Yes."

Ron laughed. "It sounds so ludicrous it might just be true!"

"Of course it isn't true!"

"Why not?" defended Harry. "He's traveled to other worlds—he even describes his experiences—!"

"Which were very likely fabricated!"

"For what purpose? The Book is more of a personal journal than anything. Why would the Author lie to himself?"

"Don't pretend to understand someone you've never met! This Author could have been anyone, and he was obviously a dark wizard to be experimenting with Inferi!"

"It seems to me like he was more the scholarly type! There's some good in the Book too, not just bad!"

"The Rite of Returning requires you to sacrifice a soul, Harry. A soul!"

"It doesn't say what kind of soul, Hermione! It could be an animal's! And besides, even if it is a person's soul, isn't one soul an acceptable sacrifice to save everyone else's?"

"Lives and souls are different, Harry! Animals have lives, not souls."

"It doesn't matter—I have an idea about that anyway—"

"Your ideas are going to kill you!"

"Don't you—?!"

Ron found the bravery to interrupt. "Hermione, Harry's going to attempt these spells with or without our help. You know that."

"Of course, but—"

"So when these rituals come up empty, there'll be no harm done, and Harry can move on." Ron sent Harry a covert wink.

Harry smiled in gratitude.

"Don't think I don't know what you're doing, Ronald… Very well, I'll humor you. If Snorkacks and Heliopaths do exist on a parallel world, then we'll obviously need to perform the"—she sighed—"Otherworldly Ordinance first in order to collect all the ingredients for the… Rite of Returning." She muttered the final words in such profound derision that Harry and Ron couldn't contain their laughter. Even Hermione cracked a smile in spite of herself.

"Okay," she said. "If we're going to do this, we'll need to do it right and start at the beginning."

"I'm all ears, Professor Granger," quipped Harry.

She ignored him and pressed on, speaking very rapidly. "Before we even start considering how to obtain the rarer ingredients, we'll need the proper equipment—silver knives and spoons and ladles and cauldrons—silver everything—and lots of them—and we'll need a proper workspace, someplace with plenty of room for all the things we'll need—the dungeons are dark and filthy, but with a bit of sprucing up, I daresay they'd fit the bill—not like we have many options anyway—and also…"

Slug & Jiggers Apothecary had long since been plundered of its potions. Harry had managed to scavenge from its backroom some basic potion kits, like the kind first-year students attending Hogwarts would purchase. He didn't rightly remember what was in them, but he figured it was better to take them than leave them, so he'd stuffed them in Hermione's beaded bag, which he had clutched in his hand. There wasn't much in the way of cauldrons in the shop, except for the ordinary pewter ones that, again, students would require, and Harry was looking for silver instruments exclusively.

Harry had made himself a shopping list, which was clutched in the same fist as Hermione's bag. On it was copied all the implements, tools, potion-brewing paraphernalia, and standard potion ingredients ordered by Hermione, as well as the required items for a few extra recipes from the Grimoire—Harry wasn't sure if he'd ultimately end up using them, but he wanted to be prepared. Also, he'd listed each of the ingredients in excess, in case he botched something up—which was likely—and needed extra. He didn't want to return to Diagon Alley again if he didn't need to.

Hogsmeade was a much closer alternative—it was within walking distance of Hogwarts—but it had fewer shops and was therefore less likely to possess some of the more unusual items Harry required, like a fire crab shell.

Before moving on from Slug & Jiggers, Harry was able to cross powdered griffin claw, bicorn horn, some butterscotch, and a handful of Diricawl and Jobberknoll feathers off the list, as well as numerous silver implements, like knives, scales, ladles, and the like. His next stop was Potage's Cauldron Shop a few buildings down. It was there he found exactly five small silver cauldrons; he took the lot, stuffing each one into the bag, which groaned louder with each vessel he forced in. A close inspection of a half-hidden cabinet with a cracked glass front saw Harry liberating a lone fire crab shell from its dusty tomb. The shell was a foot and a half wide and nearly as deep; it was studded with grimy rubies, emeralds and sapphires. He tore away the price tag marking it as six hundred ninety-five galleons and stuffed it down the throat of the dying handbag.

He visited a handful of other shops while he was in town. Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes had been entirely cleaned out by looters, as had Wiseacre's Wizarding Equipment and Quality Quidditch Supplies. Flourish and Blotts looked like a warzone, with ripped-out pages covering every inch of its floors, and the corpse of Ollivander's shop was filled with empty wand boxes and splinters. But Harry found a lonely bottle of vermilion ink in a corner of Scribbulus Writing Instruments, which was a happy surprise. He skipped Gringotts; there was nothing for him there. Besides, he already knew what he'd find if he went snooping: many skeletons, only some of them goblin; hungry dragons; and the suffocated corpses of people that had been sucked into vaults not their own as they tried to secure resources not their own.

It was a depressing shopping trip, but Harry resisted the urge to hurry, lest he miss a vital something. And when his little urban excursion came to an end, he Disapparated without a second thought, eager to leave the horrific nostalgia behind.

Harry sipped his Firewhisky in silence, contemplating his next move. There were two ingredients left for him to obtain, two final items left uncrossed on the list, and both were blood.

The Thestral tail hair he'd located, with difficulty, in the Forbidden Forest—hence the Firewhisky. Harry had been forced to do battle with the Thestrals, who had seemed even more skeletal than he remembered; they'd attacked him on sight. He hadn't wanted to kill them, but what choice had he? Yes, it was self-defense, but it needn't have concluded the way it had. If only he'd been cleverer and stolen the hair somehow…

He sipped the whisky again, wincing as it set his esophagus ablaze.

Harry's search of Hogsmeade the day before had been a wasted afternoon, so Harry had traveled to Glasgow in search of art supply stores. As far as he knew, he was the only living human being in the entire city—hence the Firewhisky. He spent the evening picking through the leftovers of a Muggle shopping mall before returning to Hogwarts with his haul: a gallon of Tyrian-purple paint and a box of colored chalk.

This morning, he'd paid the old Lovegood tower a visit. He hadn't been there since he'd used the crumbling structure as a operating post two years ago while investigating Voldemort's lair of the day, a laboratory hidden inside Ottery St. Catchpole's post office. Harry had left a bag of supplies at the tower in case he ever had need of a safehouse. Today, though, he'd needed dirigible plums, which had thrived in the Lovegoods' absence. Harry had stopped to pay his respects at the shallow grave he'd dug for Xenophilius Lovegood, who'd lost the will to live after the death of his daughter—hence the Firewhisky—then picked a few plums and went on his way.

Harry's dinner lay uneaten on the table before him. In his hand he gripped the Stone, though he was currently without visitors.

The blood of a Re'em and that of a unicorn—that's what he still needed to find. The unicorn blood he could wait on, theoretically, since he didn't need it until the final stages of the Rite of Returning, but the Re'em blood…

A Re'em, Hermione had informed him, was a giant, ox-like creature that roamed the Far East and North America, both equally inaccessible to him. The blood of a Re'em gave the imbiber wondrous strength and physical power, but due to the rarity of the creatures, there had never been enough supply to meet the demand, so Re'em blood was rarely ever available on the open market, the remnants of which was all Harry had access to. He could sift through the remains of Diagon Alley and Hogsmeade all he liked, but if it wasn't there, why waste time?

Ships and aircraft didn't come to Britain anymore. And Harry couldn't Apparate more than a few dozen miles at a time, and even if he did skip across the Channel to France, a place he'd never been before, Harry imagined the French Ministry of Magic kept a very close watch on people crossing over. He didn't even know the current state of France to begin with; surely the French hadn't fared as poorly as the British?

But Harry couldn't do nothing. He needed that Re'em blood. Without it, he was stuck. Without it, he wasn't going anywhere, not backward in time nor sideways to an alternate world. He was an astronaut, ready to fly to space but grounded indefinitely.

He drained the last of his whisky and began stabbing at his vegetable medley. God, what he wouldn't give for a piece of meat. He pushed his plate away and gathered up his resolve. He turned the Stone over in his sweaty hand three times…

For a long, tense moment, they stared wordlessly at one another.

"Potter," spat Snape. Ah, a familiar sound, it was. His face was cold and pallid as ever, his eyes just as dark as Harry remembered. "Get on with it."

Harry raised a challenging eyebrow. "Do you have someplace better to be?"

Snape grimaced in his usual brand of distaste. "What do you want, Potter?"

Harry was surprised. Everyone he'd spoken to so far had known, more or less, what he'd wanted of them. "Don't you know?"

"Haven't a clue," snarled Snape, his black eyes meeting Harry's. Briefly Harry wondered whether the dead could perform Legilimency, or whether he could on them.

Before Harry could respond, Snape spoke again, malice dripping from his voice. "Is your ego so inflated that you believe everyone on the other side is watching you, like your life is some kind of Muggle television drama? Do you think that we're all on the edge of our seats, hoping you'll call us down to guest star in your little opera? Have you any tea and biscuits to offer, Potter, while we perform our little scene together?"

"No tea, I'm afraid, but I have got this," said Harry, nonchalant and more than a little buzzed. He slid the bottle of Firewhisky across the table.

Snape glowered at the bottle. Then he seized it and took a few drafts. Harry fully expected the whisky to fall through Snape's ghostly form, but Snape appeared to have consumed it. He withdrew the bottle from his lips, hissing almost imperceptibly at the burn of the alcohol. "You've bought yourself five minutes' time, Potter."

Harry chuckled. "Don't they have Firewhisky where you come from?"

"Four minutes and fifty-three seconds…"

"I need Re'em's blood!" blurted Harry, disposing of any preamble he might've been working on for the past hour.

Snape's only reaction was the quirking of an eyebrow.

"It's an ingredient for a… a spell that'll help me go back in time and kill Voldemort," Harry oversimplified.

"Why should I care? Four minutes and forty seconds."

"Because I'm trying to save you, you bloody moron!"

"Save everyone else, you mean. Saving me would be an unfortunate coincidence, I imagine."

Harry groaned. "The spell is very dangerous. It could kill me!" He was grasping at straws with this, hoping to entice his former potions professor.

Snape's brow furrowed. "From the depths of my soul, Potter, I wholeheartedly detest you. But I don't want you dead. I'm not Voldemort."

"As good as," Harry muttered under his breath. He hadn't truly meant it, but the alcohol buzzing in his stomach and spinning the world round was also making him a touch petty.

Snape sneered. "Four minutes and sixteen seconds."

Harry glared at Snape, and Snape glared at Harry. Time ticked away as they seethed.

Harry was desperate, and the alcohol made him rather bold. "I wonder what my mother might think if you gave her only child the aid he requested when he needed it most? Or what she might think if you did not…"

They were both dead, his mother and Snape. From what Hermione had intimated, there seemed to be some kind of afterlife, some place where departed souls could interact with one another, if they chose. Presumably, if he wanted Snape could visit Harry's mum and have a chat. Or so Harry imagined.

There was an uneasy silence that might've endured an hour. Seconds stretched into minutes. Snape was rigid, a vein jumping in his neck.

Perhaps Harry had gone too far. He began to apologize, stumbling over his words. A difficult thing, apologizing to Snape, but he needed that blood. And the alcohol helped.

"There's a door," said Snape, talking over Harry, "behind a shelf in my private stores."

Harry stared blankly at him. "What?"

"My private stores, you imbecile! Where I keep my potions and ingredients—I know you know of what I speak, you've stolen plenty from there over the years—"

"I have not!"

"Bicorn horn, boomslang skin, Gillyweed—!"

"The Gillyweed was Dobby the house-elf, not me, and we needed the Polyjuice to interrogate Malfoy—!" Harry clamped his mouth shut.

"So it was you!" cried Snape in vicious triumph. "I knew Granger's turning into a cat was due to a Polyjuice mishap!"

Harry clapped a hand to his forehead as Snape prattled on. "Your storeroom is empty!" he shouted over the late professor's slandering.

"What?!"

"Well, it's almost empty." Harry would've been embarrassed were it not for the booze. "I took most of the stuff in there years ago."

Snape was silent a moment, the rage brewing like a volatile concoction. Then he said, contempt entirely unveiled, "Always stealing from me, aren't you? Just like your father, so arrogant and righteous and—"

Harry dropped the Stone on the table. He wouldn't be dealing with Snape's jealousy today; he felt emotionally drained enough as it was. He reached for the whisky bottle. "He even drained you, didn't he?"

But it hadn't been a complete bust. Snape had said something about a door behind a shelf in his old storeroom. Harry had never seen a door in there, but he was about to take another look. Just as soon as the world became unfuzzy, because it was quite tricky to navigate Hogwarts' dungeons when the world was fuzzy.

Sometime later, in the coldest corner of the dungeons, Harry entered Snape's old Potions classroom. Slughorn had utilized a different classroom during his return to teaching, but Harry would always think of Snape when he thought of potions, his robes billowing, his face sneering, and his arms crossed as he glared at Harry.

Harry hurried over to the adjoining storeroom, lighting his wand as he went. He pushed open the door and stepped inside, scanning the desolate shelves for anything useful he might've overlooked the last time. There were a few stray instruments and vials of mystery fluid but nothing that Harry could easily identify as blood. He began pulling on the shelves, attempting to pry them from the walls. After ten fruitless minutes, he closed the door and examined its back—nothing. Next, he tried pushing on the many stone bricks, hoping to find one that might give way—and one did! With the grinding of stone on stone, the middle of the wall rotated, revealing a room beyond.

Closing his mouth with a snap, Harry ventured in, raising his wand higher to light the way.

The secret room was smaller than the storeroom proper, barely large enough to stand in, with but a single deep, wall-spanning shelf above an equally wide, squat glass cabinet. It was loaded with numerous jars and phials and bottles and pots. Harry recognized some of their contents—a few had even been on his list!—but most he didn't; there were tentacles, spleens, eggs and eggshells, boxes of dried herbs, powdered this and that, and so on. Each one was labelled, thank Merlin, and Harry snatched a ruddy jar with Re'em Blood stamped across its front. The jar was half empty, but it held more than enough blood to suit Harry's needs.

Unfortunately, Snape's secret chamber hadn't yielded any unicorn blood. However, Harry thought he knew someone who could point him in the right direction.

There were seven of them, he'd counted, and a camp of sorts at their center. They'd take it in shifts to patrol the shore, their routes intersecting before meeting back at the camp and starting over again.

Harry lowered his telescope and gazed across the Channel, blue almost as far as he could see. France was twenty-something miles away—he'd forgotten the exact distance—and iconic white cliffs lay below his feet. He could only Apparate to places he'd been to before, and while he'd never been to France, he hoped peeking at it through his old telescope would suffice. He really didn't fancy a swim.

Flying was out of the question as it would leave Harry in plain view. Even if he were to don the invisibility cloak, he could never entirely wrap himself in it while flying, and so would remain partially exposed. Furthermore, his Cleansweep couldn't fly high enough to be confused for a bird; the broom vibrated badly in higher altitudes and was vulnerable to strong winds. And the wind over the Channel was especially turbulent due to the North Atlantic jet stream, temperature shifts, and westerly winds as they negotiated the change between land and water or vice versa, not to mention the higher humidity. Oh, how he missed his Firebolt.

All that besides, Harry was reasonably sure the French ministry had precautions to prevent broom travel—it was more common than Apparition when it came to transportation.

"What do you reckon?" asked Harry, looking over to the ghostly figure beside him and handing over his telescope.

"Apparate right on past them if you can manage it," suggested Tonks as she gazed through the spyglass. "If you can't, run."

The French coastline was too far away for Harry to watch, so he watched Tonks instead. She looked her usual cheery self, though a bit more transparent than he remembered. But her hair was spiky and pink, and that was good enough for him.

"You're sure they won't have Anti-Apparition Charms in place?" he pressed.

She snorted. "Not likely. How do you expect these blokes get to work? The French prefer Apparition over Portkeys. Besides, they won't expect people popping across the Channel, especially these days." Tonks twisted a dial on the spyglass and hummed. "Just time it carefully, their patrols look predetermined… If you can't cast a spell nonverbally, cast it now. It goes without saying the less noise you make the better."

"I guess you're staying here, then," quipped Harry.

She grinned and handed the telescope back. "Cheeky git. Whatever you do, don't end up in the water or you'll be a sitting duck."

She hadn't suggested anything Harry hadn't already considered himself, but he appreciated her company all the same. A clandestine international mission had felt like the perfect excuse to give the former Auror a call.

"Thanks for the help. I figured stealth would be my best bet, and I thought to myself, who better to seek counsel from than the legendary Nymphadora Tonks?"

"Don't call me Nymphadora—I won't be caught dead with that name."

Harry rolled his eyes at her dark humor. "How's Remus?"

"Fine. A bit hurt you haven't called to talk to him yet."

This would have ruffled Harry's proverbial feathers had he not brushed it off. "There are so many people to talk to, Tonks, and I've been busy."

"They know."

It was a simple sentence but heavy with meaning. Harry reflected on the pronoun.

"Thank you, Tonks… What about my godson? And Andromeda? How're they doing? Last I heard, they were in Ontario, but I haven't gotten an owl in years."

Tonks waggled her hand. "Pretty well, considering. He'll be starting school at Ilvermorny soon… He's getting so big…" Her lip trembled as her hair began fading to brown.

Harry wanted to take her hand or hug her or comfort her in some way, but he couldn't bring himself to actually reach out and touch her. Perhaps it was because he'd been alone for so long that he'd forgotten how to interact with people; of course, he'd never been much of a touchy-feely person even back then. Even so, he wanted to give her something, some hope or peace of mind, just something to hold onto.

"I'm going to fix everything, Tonks."

She nodded wordlessly, a tear leaving a shiny trail down her translucent face like a ghostly snail. She reached out to Harry and embraced him, and he embraced her in return, drawing what support he could. Even after all these years, she was still taller than him, and Harry was, not for the first time, struck with the thought of what she looked like beneath all the transformations of her metamorphic abilities.

"Good luck, Harry," she murmured into his hair. "We love you."

Choked up, Harry couldn't quite bring himself to repeat the words. He and Tonks had been friends, but they'd never been terribly close; she'd certainly never said that before. More and more people were lately. Harry wished he had the courage to say it back.

He eventually managed an indistinct "You too, Tonks," into her shirt before pulling away.

She dried her eyes on her sleeve and gave a great sniff. "Don't trip on anything."

Harry laughed once. "I won't if you won't."

"We're doomed!" She winked at him before vanishing into thin air.

Harry procured an instant camera from Hermione's bag and took a picture of the clifftop. On the wall of the Hufflepuff dormitory, he'd hung a map of Great Britain and Ireland and stuck colored pins into place. Each pin held a picture he'd taken with the camera, and he'd use the pictures as an aid in Apparating around the isles. He'd gotten quite adept at Apparition over the years. He hadn't splinched himself at least. Not terribly anyway.

Stuffing both the camera and the new picture back into the bag, Harry rolled his shoulders, stretched his arms as one might in preparation for a race, and anticipated the next hurdle.

He charmed his trainers to be silent and cast a Disillusionment Charm over himself—he wouldn't risk splinching the Cloak—and felt the familiar sensation of an egg cracked on his head and trickling spine-shiveringly down his body.

It took no small amount of concentration to appear and disappear silently during Apparition, and he wanted to make it across as noiselessly as possible. Taking one final look through the telescope, he visualized the other side of the Channel, turned on the spot, vanished with nary a sound—and appeared halfway up a tree smack dab between two of the lookouts.

Harry sucked in a fearful breath, sure he'd be spotted any moment. But one moment turned into two, and after a minute, he began to relax. The lookouts crossed paths beneath him and wandered in opposite directions. No alarm had been raised, so when the lookouts were at a comfortable distance, he began his descent, careful and quiet as a mouse, except for the curses muttered under his breath. It was just as he began creeping away from the tree that Hermione's beaded bag gave a great belch and vomited a collection of dark, leather-bound volumes onto the ground.

A voice some distance to Harry's left shouted foreign words, and another to his right responded. Et Harry ne parle pas beaucoup le français, so he began to panic.

"Merde," Harry muttered, and he began stuffing the books back into the bag, which groaned like a losing contestant at an eating competition, the voices growing louder all the while. He scooped the last book—Magical Draughts and Potions by Arsenius Jigger—into his arm and sprinted in the direction opposite England.

French words called after him, and Harry might've translated a few, like "Stop!" and "Freeze!" before they mingled with incantations. Bolts of magic shot past him, erupting the earth at his feet and sending stony shrapnel in every direction. Something grazed his cheek, though he knew not whether it was spell or stone. Only his camouflage saved him; his blurry, chameleon disguise presented just enough uncertainty to throw off their accuracy and keep him on his feet.

"Stupefy!" cried Harry, firing blind over his shoulder and missing. He changed tack and began casting the Shield Charm repeatedly. He mustn't be caught, else his adventure would end before it truly began. He had to get away.

He managed another hundred yards before it became clear that his pursuers were gaining on him. They were highly trained French Aurors with the physical fitness to boot, a fitness Harry lacked. And how many of their number had heard the shouts and followed suit? And how many more had been called since the start of the pursuit? This chase would become a fight sooner or later.

Harry bolted to the side, shooting a spell sideways, and turned to face his opponents, one male, one female. They were robed, with gleaming badges on their chests signifying their employment by the French Ministry of Magic, and not far behind them, Harry could see another three closing in.

Blocking a Disarming Charm, Harry threw Magical Draughts and Potions lefthandedly at the man, and in his moment of distraction, Harry stunned him. That was one down, but the woman was a superior dueler than Harry, and he couldn't manage to get a spell past her defenses, and her comrades were fast approaching—sixty feet—fifty feet—forty—

Harry gritted his teeth; he hated what he was about to do.

"Imperio!"

The Unforgivable Curse penetrated the woman's shield. Her limbs went slack for the barest of moments before jerking about like a puppet fighting its strings.

Harry uttered a swift command: "Keep your friends busy."

The Auror clumsily spun on the spot, almost falling over in her defiance of the curse, and began firing jinxes at her compatriots.

Wasting not a second more, Harry stuffed his hand into the bag and retrieved his Cleansweep; there was no harm in flying now that they'd already seen him. He threw himself onto it and kicked off, the ground falling away beneath him as he zoomed into the sky and across the French landscape, leaving the Aurors to battle it out amongst themselves.

Harry spent the next nine hours avoiding Muggle highways and towns as he worked his way southeast, following the vague directions he had been given. Of course Hagrid had known where to find the nearest unicorns outside of Britain. Because Hagrid.

The Black Forest was every bit as idyllic and haunting as Harry had imagined. And at midnight, with very little moonlight piercing the canopy above him, it was downright frightening. The forest was alive with nocturnal beasts, and more than once Harry swore he saw, in the light of his wand, a terribly pale human face betwixt the branches, but they were gone when Harry looked again. He would've been scared witless if it hadn't been for the large, ghostly form of Hagrid trundling silently along beside him.

"—never got the chance to visit, meself," Hagrid was saying, rather loudly and making it difficult for Harry to hear anything in the forest, "'course I've always wanted ter—the creatures, see, they're ev'rywhere! Yeh can find a whole assortmen' o' beasties in here, from Erklin's to unicorns, like I told yeh, and vampires!"

Harry glanced around once more, searching for more pale faces but saw none. He ignored the shiver that tickled his spine, and followed along after Hagrid, who was supposed to be looking for evidence of unicorns.

A biting chill crept into Harry's bones as they wandered, a chill that had been gnawing with increasing hunger since they had begun their search. Harry knew nothing of the weather patterns here, so he couldn't be certain whether it was the altitude or climate or something else entirely that caused the drastic drop in temperature. His breath rose in a white cloud that floated into the branches, and his boots crunched a thin sheet of frost on the forest floor with each step. He pointed his wand back at himself and murmured the incantation for the Hot-Air Charm; it was like standing under a silent electric hand drier, though the light from his wand was so bright that he traded valuable visibility for warmth.

Harry was administering his fourth such charm when Hagrid abruptly halted. "What's that movin' over there?" said the gentle half-giant.

Harry reoriented his wand to reveal a break in the trees. They crept nearer and spied a wide glade sparkling with snowflakes, and at its center a narrow, very old snowcapped castle, or rather a tower. The frosty glade and its tower were as picturesque as a snow globe scene, ready to be shaken.

Harry wondered who might have lived here.

The only blight upon the otherwise beautiful frozen scene was the tower's door. The entranceway was as tall as Hogwarts' great doors, but the doorway itself had been ripped from the wall, leaving a great, jagged hole in the front of the building, like a screaming maw.

"Gulpin' gargoyles!" exclaimed Hagrid, but he wasn't talking about the scenery.

Out from the castle's screaming face and slitted eye-like windows swooped a swarm of Dementors. Others came gliding around the castle and across the glade, all of them beelining for Harry like beggars at a fete.

"Harry, run!" shouted Hagrid, who leapt in front to shield him.

"It's alright, Hagrid," said Harry, quite calm despite his anxious grip on his wand. "They can't hurt me while you're here."

Indeed, as they neared, the Dementors deflected around them like raindrops racing across a windscreen, gliding past the two and into the depths of the forest.

Harry released a secret breath. Mustering up happy memories had been a difficult thing for him for a number of years now; sometimes he'd manage a Patronus, sometimes he wouldn't. But he had remembered the way those summoned by the Stone buoyed his spirit in defense of the demons, and he was more grateful than ever of Hagrid's presence.

"Let's get outta here, Harry, I don' think we'll be findin' any unicorns hereabouts."

Harry didn't argue.

They backtracked for several minutes before Hagrid found an intersecting trail and led on. Harry lost track of the time as they traveled. His watch, stuck at six twenty-four, had long since stopped working. His feet were freezing, which helped to stave off the ache from his uncomfortable boots, his fingertips were numb, and he was sick of blinding himself whenever he attempted the Hot-Air Charm. Hagrid didn't seem uncomfortable in the slightest; Hermione had said they didn't feel physical discomfort anymore. Harry again felt that was rather lucky of them.

"Hagrid," Harry said after a while, his teeth chattering, "I remember from my lessons that fully mature unicorns don't really care for men."

"Summat like that, yeah."

"So how do you propose I get close enough to one to hex it?"

Hagrid chortled. "Good luck with that, Harry, they're wicked fast. Yer best bet would be ter find a foal—real trustin', see? They don' mind men so much." He frowned—a difficult expression to make out past his great beard. "Mind, I don' like the idea o' stealin' one's blood, no matter how good yer intentions…"

"I know, Hagrid. If there were any other way… I'll just stun one, take an ounce of blood, then revive him. It'll be quick, the unicorn won't feel any pain. It'll be like going to sleep."

"Yeh'd jus' better hope yeh don' come across a herd o' 'em—they'll gore yeh soon as look at yeh if they see one o' their foals hurtin'. An' whatever yeh do—don' drink the blood!"

"I remember, Hagrid. Trust me, I remember." Harry could still remember Firenze's warning all those years ago—over half his lifetime ago now. Still, Harry couldn't help but wonder… "Hagrid, just hurting a unicorn won't, you know, curse me, will it?"

"Dunno. Like I told yeh in first year—I never knew one ter be hurt before." Harry saw Hagrid look in his direction. He patted Harry on the back; even semi-corporeal, Hagrid could still send Harry stumbling. "Don' you worry abou' a thing, Harry. What yer doin' ain't evil or bad, jus' necessary."

Harry wondered if he dared ask his latest question. Just thinking about it made his face warm. After almost twenty minutes, he found his courage. "Hagrid… would it help with the unicorns if I was a… a maiden?"

Hagrid looked sideways at him. "Yeh mean a woman?"

"No…"

Harry daren't even look at Hagrid, but he thought he could practically feel the gravitational force of Hagrid's eyebrows furrowing in confusion.

"Oh!" said Hagrid, coughing a bit. "Er, I'm not sure. Likely ter be the same either way, I expect."

Harry didn't reply.

They trudged on for some time, long enough for the sky to begin brightening above them, just visible through branches of leaves and needles. When the sky had turned pink, Hagrid had bent down to check the trail, and Harry had bumped into him.

"Huh?" said Harry, waking from his daydream of a hot, steamy shower with the all-female Hollyhead Harpies Quidditch team as they cooperatively relieved him of his virginity.

"I said there's some strands o' unicorn hair! Look, jus' there! An' these tracks are fresh!"

Harry knelt and examined the bit of underbrush Hagrid had indicated; there were, indeed, a few strands of long, silvery hair—the kind one might find at the tail end of a unicorn.

Hagrid chuckled.

Harry blinked; he hadn't realized he'd spoken aloud. "Er, anyway, which way, Hagrid?"

"Jus' through here. We're gettin' close now…"

They soon arrived at the edge of another glade, this one much smaller than the last and blessedly devoid of Dementors. Though the sky was lightening, the glade was still engulfed by the forest's shadow, giving the scene a sleepy sort of feel. At one end, a classically babbling brook wound its way between trees, and drinking from its waters was a lone, almost blindingly white unicorn, with a single mighty horn.

Hagrid pointed obviously at the unicorn, as if Harry had yet to spot it. Harry extinguished the light of his wand with a whisper and aimed it at the legendary creature, perhaps forty feet away. He might be able to stun it from his hiding place, but could he afford to miss?

Harry tried a nonverbal Silencing Charm on his trainers for the sake of stealth, but he wasn't confident in fooling a unicorn. Beside him, Hagrid was pantomiming something that Harry didn't understand. Harry tried to indicate that Hagrid could speak actual words, but the message wasn't getting through; Hagrid could have released a barbaric war cry and charged the unicorn down, the beast wouldn't have heard nor seen him.

Harry crept two steps out from the wall of the glade, his footfalls quiet—he raised his wand—crack!—and snapped a twig.

Harry froze, wishing he'd had the foresight to use his Cloak—Oh, that's what Hagrid had meant!

The unicorn turned to regard him, its mighty horn tracing an arc, but otherwise didn't react.

The incantation died on Harry's lips. For whatever reason, he got the impression this unicorn wasn't feeling particularly threatened. He lowered his wand halfway, and took another step forward.

The unicorn snorted and turned away. Harry thought it meant to run, so he raised his wand to stun it—but the unicorn immediately dropped its knees and folded its legs beneath it. It watched him.

Harry wasn't quite sure what to do. He thought back to his Care of Magical Creatures class but was at a loss. He was pretty sure they were rather proud creatures that wouldn't be caught lying down, and yet…

Daring to turn his back on his quarry, Harry turned to Hagrid, who was supernaturally still with befuddlement. Hagrid shrugged his massive shoulders and gestured for Harry to go on. So Harry approached, slowly, carefully.

The unicorn glanced away, almost like it was indifferent to the whole scenario. Harry fancied it was a mare.

Crouching beside the old girl, Harry lifted his hand as if to pet her. When no objection came, Harry stroked her snow-white flank. He took a minute to simply give the creature some affection, something he was sure she rarely received. So solitary, the life of a unicorn, except during breeding season, of course. Perhaps this was what she'd intended when she'd lain down?

The sun had risen a bit, shooting rays of light into the far end of the glade. Harry and the mare remained crouched in shadow, but the shade shrunk with each passing moment.

"Alright, girl," said Harry, "don't be cross at me, but I do need just a bit of your blood."

The unicorn snorted again.

"I'll take that as consent then, shall I?… Alright, I'll just put you to sleep just a moment—"

The mare whinnied as Harry raised his wand, and shook her head.

Harry thought he knew what to do. Putting down the wand, he retrieved a knife and phial from Hermione's bag and hesitantly raised the blade. The unicorn regarded the knife for a long moment, then turned her head away like a needle-phobic patient before an injection, and Harry saw his chance. Light as he could, he pricked the creature's neck, and a silvery-blue orb of blood swelled around the point of the blade.

"Harry!" shouted Hagrid.

Harry twisted round—and a snarling something rocketed into him, sending him to the ground and cracking his glasses. The mare whinnied in alarm. Hagrid thundered into the glade, bellowing wildly to no one but Harry.

His glasses cracked and half of one lens missing, Harry frantically scrabbled for his wand whilst a battle raged behind him. His fingers found wood, and he looked up to find the unicorn flat on her side, a deathly pale figure clinging to her flank, fangs bared, and lapping at the pinprick of blood. Harry wasn't sure what spell to cast.

Hagrid brought a pair of massive fists down upon the attacker's back and managed to pry the creature off. With a great heave, he tore the assailant from the unicorn and flung them across the glade, a ribbon of silver-blue blood casting a momentary trail through the air. The creature rolled across the ground, quickly climbed to its feet and glared at Harry in confusion, and Harry glared right back at a familiar, pale, fanged face—a vampire.

"Stupefy!"

The vampire dodged—but not quick enough—the spell sent it tumbling, stunned and silent, backward into the morning sunlight—and all was quiet.

"Harry," called Hagrid again, somber this time.

Hurrying over to Hagrid and the unicorn, Harry stopped dead as he beheld the scene: Hagrid knelt beside the magnificent beast, his hands flat against her neck as he tried to staunch the flowing blood, which was escaping his not-fully-there fingers. The mare was breathing hard, her eyes wandering aimlessly.

"Struck a vein, the devil," said Hagrid, tears evident in his voice. "Do sommat, Harry!"

Harry struggled for words. He knelt beside the mare, trained his wand on the wound, and tried a few incantations. "Episkey!… Reparifors!… Ferula!" A series of bandages shot from his wand and wrapped around the unicorn's sinewy neck, a bright splotch rapidly staining the cloth.

Harry met Hagrid's watery gaze and shrugged helplessly. Harry's heart broke at the forlorn expression Hagrid wore. Gritting his teeth, Harry tore at the bandages until they came free and trained his wand once more on the wound. "Sorry, girl, but this is going to hurt… Incendio!"

The unicorn screeched as flames burst from the hawthorn wand. It lasted but a moment, but Harry couldn't help but feel like a right bastard for it. He replaced the bandages and apologized once more. Perhaps it was just Harry, but he thought the poor beast might understand him somehow. Unicorns couldn't speak nor understand human language, he knew, but perhaps in some way…

"Will she be alrigh', Harry?" asked Hagrid as he mopped his eyes.

"I'm not sure, Hagrid, I'm no healer. I think so. I hope so…"

Hagrid cleared his throat, then gave a mighty sniff. "Well, go on, then. Collect yer blood, otherwise we've come fer nothin'."

Harry glanced about for the phial. "Accio phial!" Catching it expertly, Harry held it to the tiny wound he'd made earlier and gradually, agonizingly slowly, filled it with about an ounce and a half of unicorn blood. He stoppered it, then placed it gently in—not the bag—his pocket. He feared the bag might belch it out over the French or German countryside and he'd never find it again.

He turned to Hagrid expectantly.

"Can' we jus' stay with her, Harry? Jus' until she walks, ter be sure?"

"Of course we will, Hagrid." Harry reached up and patted him on the shoulder. "Of course we will."

Author's Note

Finally we dispense with the preamble and arrive at the main genre: Adventure. The plot is fully underway now. I've had this story in the back of head for almost a full decade now (some of these early chapters had their first drafts written between 2016-2019), so it's exciting to see it be free and live on the internet. I write more consistently these days, so don't worry about me writing a chapter a year or anything! I do have multiple projects in the works that require my attention, but I'm committed to seeing this story through! The fan fiction community has long been an important part of my life.

I hope everyone's enjoying the ride so far. Don't forget to favorite and follow! It doesn't just keep you updated on new chapters but helps the story's visibility. If you know someone who might be into this fic, share it with them! If you want your voice heard, leave a review! I'll do my best to respond to them all as I receive them. Happy reading!:)