Chapter Fifteen: The Song of the Trees

Harry expelled a breath as the pressure on his lungs lifted, the blackness pressing into his eyes vanishing to be replaced by the clear, starry night of Hogsmeade Valley. Beside him, Daphne Greengrass tripped and almost lost her balance; she would have fallen to the ground if Harry had not distractedly wrapped an arm around her waist, steadying her.

“Thanks-”

“Shhh,” Harry interrupted, holding up his hand. His eyes scanned their surroundings, in search of any sign that might indicate they were being watched. But nothing moved among the low, pointed-roofed shapes of the Hogsmeade houses. A nearby streetlamp threw at their feet a pool of orange light, revealing a good portion of completely empty street. They were alone.

“Come on,” Harry breathed to Daphne. “Follow me.”

He set off along the street and towards the gates of Hogwarts, Daphne trotting behind him. After a few seconds she took his hand, causing him to shiver in awareness as a thousand different sensations assailed his numb senses - and although he cursed himself for that weakness, he did not pull his hand out of hers.

“That's not enjoyable at all,” Daphne whispered as they left the cobbled street and started walking on a road of barely dried mud. “Apparition. It's like being forced into a giant rubber tube.”

“It's supposed to be convenient. Not enjoyable,” Harry pointed out, his mind elsewhere.

“Still. Even the Muggles are more comfortable when they're travelling. I'm almost glad I never passed my Apparition test.”

“You didn't?”

“No, I kept causing some kind of turmoil in the air… A bit like whirlwinds. The examiner labelled me as hopeless after the third try.”

Harry emitted a non-committal noise, hoping to put an end to the conversation; he was thankful when Daphne took the hint and fell silent.

Unfortunately, it did not last long.

“Look, do you have to walk that fast?”

“We don't have time to waste,” Harry replied through gritted teeth. “Keep up.”

“If I had known you were taking me for a marathon, I certainly wouldn't have agreed to follow you-”

“Stop talking as if I had given you a choice, Greengrass,” Harry snapped, throwing a glare at her over his shoulder. “You never had to agree to follow. I'm taking you with me whether you like it or not.”

Daphne hissed like an angry cat, and Harry felt a sudden tug on his arm as she came to an abrupt halt. He impatiently turned to look at her. She had dug her heels into the soft ground, her face set in a stubborn expression, and was struggling to tear her fingers from his strong grip with all the dignity she could muster. Harry raised his eyebrows at her.

“Greengrass,” he said, slow and purposeful. “We. Don't. Have. Time. For this.”

He forcefully pulled on the hand he still gripped and resumed his walk, dragging a cursing Daphne behind him.

“You're acting really superior for a guy who was begging for sex two hours ago!” she furiously shouted at him. Harry experienced small stabs of surprisingly sharp pain where her nails dug into his flesh, as she clawed at his wrist in an attempt to make him let go; but his only reaction was to tug on her arm with renewed strength - which caused her to let out a strangled oath as she almost fell flat on her face in the muddy path. They were almost there. The gates stood at barely a dozen yards ahead of them, flanked by two high columns on top of which stone winged boars gleamed in the moonlight.

“Look who's talking!” Harry replied, without slowing down or turning to look at her. “I don't know which of us was the most desperate, but I certainly did not sneak into your bedroom wearing only a dressing gown.”

“Funny, I never heard you complaining,” Daphne growled.

“Didn't want to embarrass you or anything...”

“Oh right, so you were doing me a favour, huh? That was what the whimpering meant?”

Harry stopped dead in his tracks and whirled about, facing Daphne - she was flushed with rage and effort, but sported a contemptuous expression that did nothing to ease his growing irritation.

“Now look here, Greengrass,” he said through gritted teeth. “I did not whimper.”

She let out a burst of derisive laughter, which ended in a cry of pain as Harry squeezed her hand with all his might.

“Ow! You… You pathetic wimp! You moan like an underfed puppy when I'm screwing you, then you crush my hand afterwards to prove to yourself you still have balls? That's-”

A light cough sounded from behind Harry, interrupting Daphne's outburst and stopping the angry retort on the tip of Harry's tongue.

“Uh… Excuse me, are you going inside, or can I close the gates?”

Harry glanced over his shoulder, peering in the voice's direction, and found himself staring at a quite startled-looking Romilda Vane. The young waitress was wrapped in a too large but extremely warm-looking coat - Harry, who was starting to suffer from the biting cold due to his prolonged contact with Daphne, couldn't help feeling a twinge of envy - and she held the iron gates open, looking as if she had just slipped out of the Hogwarts grounds.

“Oh, hi, Harry. That's nice to see you again!” she said with a light smile; but the cheer in her voice sounded forced, and Harry wondered how much she had heard of their conversation. Probably a lot, he mused. Daphne hadn't been exactly quiet.

“And, er -” Romilda added uncertainly, her gaze flicking to Daphne. “I don't know you…?”

“Hey, Romilda,” Harry quickly said; his voice came out as oddly high-pitched, and he resisted the urge to clear his throat. “Well, this is Daphne Greengrass… Daphne, Romilda Vane.”

“Nice to meet you,” Romilda said, though there was a chill in her tone that suggested she had no pleasure whatsoever in meeting Daphne. The former Slytherin didn't even answer, settling for looking Romilda up and down instead, a slightly disdainful smirk playing on her lips.

“Oh, I didn't know you had a fangirl, Harry,” she drawled. Harry twitched at hearing her say his first name; not only did she seldom use it, but she had pronounced it in a way that had been quite... intimate. So much so, in fact, that it was a little indecent. A little as if she had slid her hands under her shirt and started nibbling on his earlobe in public.

“I'm just a friend,” Romilda said at once. Her face had grown more sombre still, and Harry thought he saw her eyes dart to their linked hands before she looked up into his face again. “I, on the other hand, had no idea he had a girlfriend,” she went on with the same false cheer in her voice.

“I don't, Daphne's just a-” Harry started, only to fall silent again.

What was Daphne to him exactly?

“She's…”

Romilda's eyebrows shot upwards as she looked at him enquiringly, and Harry could almost feel Daphne's mocking stare on the side of his head. The blonde girl shifted so that her body was leaning into his, and her free hand started to play idly with the hem of his shirt.

“... A witness,” Harry finished brusquely. He stepped sideways, putting some distance between Daphne and him, his gaze still locked to Romilda's. The girl's honey-coloured eyes were politely incredulous. “I'm still investigating that werewolf case,” Harry went on. “Greengrass might have seen something that could be important, and I'm taking her to Hogwarts. That's all I can tell you for the moment.”

Daphne snorted slightly at Harry's answer, but Romilda paid her no attention at all.

“I... see,” she said slowly, scepticism audible in her every intonation. “Well then I'll hold the gates open for you... Then I'll go back home, I'm freezing.”

“Great, thanks,” Harry said. “I have a password to let me in, but this'll be quicker, I guess. What were you doing in Hogwarts anyway? Out of pure curiosity?”

Romilda half-shrugged. “McGonagall needed me for something,” she answered evasively. “Well, better hurry up... Get in, then, and good luck with the investigation.”

She held the gates open for them, and Harry hurried forward with a word of thanks. In passing, driven by a sudden impulse, he bent over and hastily planted a kiss on her cheek. The skin of her face was cold but smooth, and her hair had the rich scent of freshly baked bread.

“Thanks again,” he called as he pulled Daphne inside the grounds behind him.

Romilda's suddenly pink face lit up with a smile; she wordlessly raised a gloved hand to wave goodbye to him, then closed the gates behind her and walked away, towards the safety and warmth of Hogsmeade.

“That is so cute!” Daphne cooed as soon as the gates had closed with a dull clanking sound. “Who knows, next time you might succeed in controlling your voice and asking her out. How about taking her to the roundabout? Surely she's the kind who loves-”

“Silencio.”

Their journey ended in a blissful silence. After several minutes of vain struggle against Harry's grip, her mouth opening and closing again in soundless indignation, Daphne resigned herself to the Silencing Charm and let herself be dragged along the road that winded its way around the lake, from the heavy iron gates to the castle perched on a cliff. The ground around them was bared and beaten down by the last few days' relentless rain and wind, and the water trapped in the deep ruts was covered with a thin layer of ice - as were the soaked, muddy banks of the lake. The air was immobile, the cold piercing. In the dead glow of the decreasing moon, the landscape looked as sterile, as desolate as a dead man's skull.

Uncontrollable shivers ran up and down Harry's back, and the cold was stinging his skin like thousands of white-hot needles. He had scarcely felt so uncomfortable in years, but at the same time he experienced an odd pleasure in the sharp bite of the winter air. He had forgotten what the cold felt like. His mouth and throat were dried by the chilly air rushing into his lungs, blood prickled his fingers as he mechanically rubbed them against his thigh in order to restore his circulation, his lips felt chapped and split when he ran his tongue over them - he was acutely aware of every part of his body. It was nothing like the explosion of sensations he had had when sleeping with Daphne: then, the abrupt awakening of his long lost senses had completely overwhelmed him, leaving him no time to savour the feeling. He had just lived it, without thinking or stopping to marvel.

Now, he took the time to savour… And the sensation was intoxicating.

Daphne tugged on Harry's hand, dragging him out of his reverie. Looking back, he suddenly realised she probably did not share his enthusiasm for the effects of the cold on the human body: she, too, was trembling, her face grimacing with discomfort and her free arm wrapped around her waist in a pitiful attempt to keep herself warm. He could hear her teeth chattering.

She looked so piteous that Harry, who vividly remembered the jabs that had only ended with his use of the Silencing Charm, felt his face split into a smirk. She shot back at him a glare that eloquently spoke of his near, painful death, and with a little laugh he raised his wand and performed a basic Heating Charm over them both.

Wonderfully warm air billowed from the tip of his wand and all around them, enveloping them like a thick woolly blanket. Harry smiled in pure happiness, relishing in the simple, primal pleasure of being warm and comfortable. To think he had survived three years deprived of those elementary satisfactions...

To think he would lose them again, if he only did so much as let go of Daphne's hand...

This thought considerably sobered Harry. He had to get to the Forest if he wanted to escape the Ministry - soon they would find out where he had gone to, one way or another, and then they would search Hogsmeade and Hogwarts alike. They had to hurry. There was no time for daydreaming.

Daphne had been staring at him with an odd expression on her face; he felt his cheeks heat up slightly under her gaze and averted his eyes, pulling on her hand again as he resumed their walk. They were almost at the castle.

They left the main road and turned into a patch of short grass, keeping the lake on their left. Ahead of them stretched the shadows of the forest; the naked trees of the edge seemed to be carved out of silver, and somehow, the night looked blacker under their branches. Daphne's steps grew hesitant; and for the first time, anguish constricted Harry's chest.

Ignoring his instincts, which were screaming for him to turn tail and run to the safety of the castle, Harry turned to Daphne and removed the Silencing Charm. She hardly paid him any attention; her eyes were a little wide and stared far behind him, where the Forbidden Forest waited in expectant silence.

“Come on,” he whispered, sounding more confident than he felt. “I've been there countless times. There's no danger.”

She raised her eyebrows at him.

“Trust me,” Harry grimly said. “Compared to what would happen if the Ministry found us, the Forest's pretty safe.”

“The Ministry?” she slowly repeated.

Harry nodded.

“Yes. They'll be after me. After you too, I'm afraid. They found out a couple of things that are disturbing them. Come on, follow me…”

But once again, Daphne resisted, her heels dug into the grass-covered ground.

“How can I be sure you're telling me the truth?” she asked. “You're Ministry yourself, aren't you?”

“My Department isn't on the case, officially. But the Aurors might jump in after what happened tonight-”

“Which is?”

A sudden, unpleasantly vivid image of Hermione's form sprawled on the stone floor of the Archway Room, staring glassy-eyed at the distant ceiling, leapt to the front of Harry's mind. He shook his head slightly, dismissing the thought with an effort of will.

“Long story short, I destroyed some evidence that could be used against both of us,” he answered; his throat was dry and his voice came out as oddly hoarse. He coughed loudly.

“What kind of evidence?”

Harry bit back an exclamation of impatience; his nerves were raw, and he kept glancing towards the remote gates of the grounds, expecting at every second to see the Ministry's enforcements burst in and start chasing them.

“Look, Greengrass,” he said, trying to keep his voice even. “I don't have the time to explain the whole case to you, so I'll just give you a general idea of what's going on, all right? You kept saying you felt different from other wizards, remember? And that you felt we had something in common. I have a pretty good idea of what that something is, and so has the Ministry. And they don't like it. Is that enough of a reason for you?”

Daphne's eyes widened slightly. “You're serious?” she breathed. “You know what's wrong with me?”

“I had a couple of guesses,” Harry replied, almost stumbling on his words in his haste to put an end to the conversation. “Now get a move on.”

He pulled on her hand again, and this time she followed. They half-ran to the edge of the Forest and past the first trees; and Harry noted there was a distinct shift in Daphne's attitude. Her hand was gripping his a little tighter than before, and on two occasions he caught her glancing nervously over her shoulder, just as he had been doing a moment earlier.

For ten minutes they walked quickly and in total silence, focused on the ghostly menace of the Ministry's pursuit; most trees around them were young and sparse, their slim trunks pale in the silver moonlight that filtered through the thin bare branches and drew intricate patterns on the black, leaves-covered ground. Gradually, however, the trees got older, denser, the darkness around them thickening as heavy branches blocked the moonlight. Harry and Daphne stopped looking back, focusing instead on their immediate surroundings. The silence changed. Where it had been tense and filled with a very human apprehension, it grew deeper, more expectant, and oddly alien, as if they were surrounded by otherworldly creatures holding their breath.

Harry was acutely conscious of their presence, their watchfulness - whatever they were - although he could not explain what gave him such certitude; it was as if he perceived it with senses that weren't entirely physical. There was no wind, and no leaves on the trees, but he thought he could hear a faint whispering nevertheless, like the ghostly memory of breezes in long-gone foliage. He wondered if his imagination was playing tricks on him.

“Did you hear that?” Daphne murmured.

He shot a glance at her.

“As a matter of fact, I did,” he slowly said. “I thought I was imagining it.”

“This place feels… familiar,” Daphne said, a thoughtful, almost dreamy expression on her feline features. She let go of his hand and took a few steps forward, inhaling deeply as if to smell the air.

Harry was brutally sobered by the loss of her contact. The hundred little discomforts and aches in his body, which he had stopped paying attention to, the warm sensation provided by the Heating Charm, everything vanished - once again, he felt cut off from the world by an impenetrable armour. He gritted his teeth on the violent, primal need to grab her and retrieve at her touch the ecstasy of feeling again. Maybe it was better that way, he mused. Maybe he would be able to concentrate better.

Even so, when he called her name and resolutely started advancing again, it was incredibly difficult to keep his hand from reaching out to her.

“I think I might have been here before!” Daphne excitedly said, falling back into step with him.

“No, you haven't,” Harry snapped. “You'd remember it.”

“All right, maybe I would. But it feels so familiar… It's a little like going back into my old family house… Even if I've never lived in it, there's still that feeling that I belong there, you see what I mean?”

Harry sighed in annoyance at her constant talking. His temper was rising; losing his sense of touch again was more frustrating than he had imagined it would. It was like being amputated of one limb. He glanced sideways at Daphne, wondering whether he would hold her hand again - just to feel again, nothing else - but she seemed completely oblivious of his attention. She walked next to him, her nose in the air, her face bright with excitation, her steps confident and determined; there was a new air of independence about her.

A surge of pride stopped Harry from taking her hand: he would have looked - and felt - like a lost kid clinging to his mother.

“Let's hurry up, Greengrass,” he said, cutting short another one of her excited tirades. “We're not completely safe yet.”

He quickened his pace, forcing her to practically run in order to keep up with him. So they walked on, deeper and deeper towards the old core of the Forbidden Forest - and as they grew more and more aware of the presence of the Forest all around them, as they caught more plaintive whispers echoing faintly among the huge trunks of venerable trees, Harry forgot about the Ministry, about his condition, about the girl walking along with him. He thought back about that missed occasion, when he had wanted to return to the Forest as a wolf, before turning his back on the mystery of the song of the trees to fight the werewolves in Hogsmeade. Now, maybe at last, he would know…

“Here we are,” Harry said at last.

In front of them rose the barrier of ancient trunks, pressed into each other like a rank of soldiers standing shoulder to shoulder against the enemy, barely visible in the almost impenetrable darkness of the Forest's core. The whispers around them abruptly died, leaving behind a sticky silence, heavy with anticipation. Harry was slightly nauseous. His mounting excitement was mingled, for the first time in hours, with the old, slimy terror he had sometimes felt when touching Daphne or looking from a window of Hogwarts towards the Forest.

Strange he would experience this instinctive fear only now, when he was already at the edge of the Third Kind's territory… Had Daphne's presence protected him? This was the only solution he could think of…

“Yes,” Daphne breathed. “Here we are.” Her eyes were alight with that hunger he had seen there on several occasions. She was not afraid at all, he realised. She was only eager.

They stepped forward in unison, and Harry slid his hands in the crack between two trunks. Daphne's breathing quickened behind him as he pushed on the trees, and he heard her gasp as they easily parted under his hands to reveal the hidden world behind.

Together, they stared at the quiet alley, lined with vigorous trees, which stretched before them. It was going up, apparently climbing a soft-sloped hill to its top. The Forest here was bathed in golden sunlight filtering through a roof of soft green leaves, and the sound of running water filled the air.

“Come on,” Harry whispered. He gently took Daphne's hand again, and they both stepped into the alley. The trees closed behind them with a soft rushing sound.

The core of the Forest was as Harry remembered it; the trees that grew there were quite slender, most of them as thick as a man's body, with a clear and smooth bark and green foliage that defied the winter. They did not seem to have been planted by a human hand: they grew haphazardly, sometimes in groups of three or four, sometimes isolated; only those bordering the alley respected a semblance of order. The light glowing in soft green-gold shades made it hard to believe that it was night outside.

Daphne gripped his hand very tight as they walked.

“What is this place?” she asked in an awed whisper. “You've been here before, haven't you?”

“Yes, during the war… I don't know much about it, except that it's even older than Hogwarts itself. And apparently, it's always been hostile to wizards.”

“Hostile to - what? What lives here? What is hostile?”

Harry shot at her a sideways glance. “I thought you could hear them, too,” he said, a little coolly.

She frowned, struggling to understand his words, and Harry impatiently gestured at their surroundings. The whispers were louder than ever, and this time they could hardly have been mistaken for the sound of the breeze in the leaves. They floated and hung in the air all around them, coiling around branches and lingering near the ground, like wisps of morning mist. Harry had the distinct impression that, should he halt and listen, he would catch words in the distant murmurs.

Daphne's eyes widened as the whispering reached her ears in turn; and it occurred to Harry that his enhanced hearing might have helped him perceive them.

“What are they saying?” his companion breathed, her pale eyes scanning the roof of tender leaves as though she expected to see the speaker perched in a tree's topmost branches.

“I don't know, and I don't think it's wise to stop here and try to understand them,” Harry said curtly. “Hurry up, we're not there yet.”

“But,” Daphne protested, stumbling after him as he pulled her rather roughly by the hand. “But you said they don't like wizards!”

“I did. So?”

“Why would they accept us then?” Daphne's voice cracked, going high-pitched with fear as she reached the end of her sentence.

Harry turned to look over his shoulder at her pale, terrified face.

“The trees won't harm us, Greengrass. We're not wizards,” he said. He had meant to sound reassuring, but to his great surprise, an odd pang of longing twisted his guts as he spoke. He suddenly felt incredibly isolated from the rest of the world, in that unearthly place, alone with the scared and clueless Daphne Greengrass.

“Potter,” said the latter, no longer trying to control her trembling voice, “one day you'll have to sit down and explain to me what all this is about.”

Harry slowed down a little, enabling her to come level with him, and he loosened his grip a little so that her hand rested limply in his. “I will, as soon as we're safe,” he said in a softer tone. “I promise.”

And all of sudden, the river was before them.

It looked much narrower than in Harry's memory. The water was shallow and crystal-clear, revealing a bed of fine sand that looked soft to the touch. There was no rock to break the smooth surface of the running water; and trees grew directly on the low banks, their roots digging into the sand. The murmurs here were drowned into the merry laughter of the river.

“We have to cross?” Daphne asked, hesitant.

“'Fraid so,” Harry distractedly said. His mind was elsewhere; no matter how innocent and pure the river looked, he remembered, with burning acuity, the cold waters gripping him as he desperately tried to reach the far bank, the pain of the Cruciatus Curses gnawing at his insides. He also remembered the screams of the Death Eaters, squeezed to death by the graceful trees of the bank - those trees among which they now stood.

Two fingers snapped under his nose, jerking him sharply out of his memories.

“Earth to Potter! We had to hurry, remember?” Daphne irritably said. She had already undressed, keeping only her shirt and underwear on; her robes were rolled in a bundle and tucked under one arm.

Harry shook himself and merely got rid of his shoes, which he tied by the laces and hung around his neck; then he led Daphne into the river.

They were chest-deep into the water, and it ran cold and fast. Daphne was gripping his hand so hard he was quite sure she would end up bruising him; she was smaller and slighter than him, and he had to help her walk against the rapid currents. Their progression was slow and difficult. The memories of the last time he had crossed the river were still present to his mind, although he tried to shake them away, and he was rather keen to get out of the water. Furthermore, as they reached the middle of the river, he had the curious and highly unpleasant sensation that the water was biting off chunks of flesh from his calves, thighs and flanks.

“Almost there,” he panted, wrapping an arm around Daphne's waist to help her steady herself. “Quick, I don't like staying in here too long…”

They reached the opposite bank, which was much higher than the one they had just left, and Harry hauled himself up first before gripping both of Daphne's hands to heave her in turn.

“There we go!” he said in one expelled breath, as the shivering and dripping wet Slytherin finally came to stand on the earthy bank next to him. “There shouldn't be-”

Daphne screamed.

She was looking back at the river they had just crossed, and blood had suddenly drawn away from her face, leaving it livid, with eyes open so wide in sheer horror that the white could be seen all around her irises, and her mouth gaping as she let out a horrible, blood-curdling scream.

Harry followed her gaze, his wand already in his hand; but it uselessly fell to the ground with a dull thud as he found what Daphne was looking at.

The slender willow-like trees that stood on the opposite shore had long roots, which plunged into the water and stretched along the soft slope of the bank in intricate nets of gnarly, pale wood - and taken in those nets were three corpses.

They were already in an advanced state of decay, most of the flesh having flaked off their bones, although hair still grew out of the skulls and floated in the water like a grotesque parody of seaweed. Wizards' robes billowed around their skeletal bodies, which were wrapped tightly into the huge roots of the trees - the throats were constricted, the ribcages staved in, the limbs broken by the trees' implacable grip.

Driven by a nauseated fascination, Harry let his gaze linger on a corpse with particularly long, dark thick hair. The right arm was the only limb that wasn't encircled with roots; it floated freely in the residual current near the shore, and the bony fingers still clutched a long wooden wand. The hollow eyes seemed to glare back at Harry as he watched, the currents causing the arm to move and wave the wand in his direction, in a macabre caricature of a duel. His sight dimmed, there was a rushing sound in his eyes; from far away, he thought he could hear a high, clear, cruel laughter.

Daphne suddenly wheeled around and fled, running as fast as she could, still screaming in animal terror. Harry's feet seemed to move of their own volition, hurling him into a mad run after Daphne, away from the laughter and from Bellatrix Lestrange's empty eyes.

How long their flight lasted, he could not tell; it was too much like the last time he had found himself here - running straight in front of him, desperately trying to escape the river where the Death Eaters died in the trees' clutches. He could not think. His ears were full of the dull sound of his feet hitting the earthy ground one after the other, his eyes fixed on the back of Daphne's blonde head. He soon caught up with her, grabbed her around the elbow, and forcibly dragged her faster and faster away from the river. She was stumbling in his wake, her breathing came in wheezing inhalations broken by an occasional whimper of fear, but he wouldn't let her rest.

The narrow, irregular path they were following abruptly opened on a small round clearing - and without warning, Harry's knees gave way under him. He tripped and fell in the rich summer grass covering the ground. He struggled to get up again - but his arms and legs seemed to have turned into jelly, and refused to support his weight. His lungs were on fire; each gulp of air seemed to weaken his body instead of strengthening it. He could feel a heaviness spreading into his limbs, pinning him to the ground.

Like last time.

With a cry of effort, Harry tore himself from the suddenly overwhelming gravity, and managed to get on his hands and knees. He crawled across the clearing, stubbornly refusing to give in to the inviting softness of the grass. Something was at work here that he should have foreseen. Something was poisoning him, trying to keep him still - and he would be damned if he let them win so easily.

Blood was pounding in his ears by the time he had reached the other side of the clearing. In front of him was the largest tree of all, tall and majestic, its golden foliage stretched over his head. Panting with the effort, Harry heaved himself up one last time, trying to get to his feet - but once again he fell back. He was so tired. So weak…

In a surge of pride that looked, even to him, like the last burst of energy of a dying animal, he sat upright in the grass, leaning his back against the trunk of the tallest tree. His sight was dimming, but he could still see Daphne's body, sprawled helplessly in the grass in the middle of the clearing, where he had dropped her. Her eyes were open and staring at him, but they were no longer wide with fear and shock. Her features were now set in a calm, eerie expression of wondering.

“They're talking,” she said, and her voice carried clearly to Harry's ears, even though it had been barely louder than a whisper. “I hear them. They're talking to me. They're talking to us…”

Then her voice was drowned in the melancholic song of the trees, soft and powerful, motherly and poisonous. It filled Harry's mind, vibrated through his entire body, and dulled all of his senses - until nothing was left but the words the trees sang in a lethal lullaby.

***

The song grew louder and louder. It was still sweet, still sad, but it had lost its ghostly quality - the music was issued from a human throat, he was sure of it.

Harry brusquely opened his eyes, and found himself lying face-down on a ground covered in thick, rich grass. He slowly rose to his knees, running a tentative hand over his face to brush off the blades of grass that would have clung to his skin - but to his surprise, he found none. He felt oddly weightless, without substance, as one would feel in a dream. Even as he looked down at his own body, he thought he looked much less real, much less solid than the ground his knees rested upon.

Harry looked up, and knew immediately that whatever he was living could only be a dream. The landscape around him was strikingly familiar, yet he was sure he had never seen anything of the sort. It was a rich, green valley, at the centre of which nestled a calm lake gleaming in the twilight like a giant jewel. Hills rose in soft slopes around the lake, and one of them, higher than the others, towered over the still waters, its side carved into a rough cliff. The green stretches of grass were only broken here and there by low copses of dark-leaved, prickly bushes. Stars were starting to light up in the darkening sky and winked at him in familiar patterns.

It was a peaceful summer evening on Hogwarts valley.

But there was no castle built on top of the tallest hill; the green slopes had not yet been tamed into vast and tidy lawns; and most of all, there was not a single tree in sight in the whole valley - except for skinny firs huddling together at the foot of the great mountains, far away. This was Hogwarts valley as it had been before the Founders, and before the Forbidden Forest.

The singing behind him grew louder. Torn from his contemplation, he scrambled to his feet and scanned his surroundings, searching for the mysterious singer. He found them almost immediately.

It was a woman in her twenties, with long dark hair hanging loosely down her back, which was clad in a simple white tunic. A circle of gold was on her forehead and vanished into her hair. She was barefoot in the grass and stood with her arms outstretched, as if wanting to embrace the whole world, her head thrown back and her eyes half-closed. She sang beautifully, in a tongue unknown to him, clear and lilting.

Harry listened, mesmerized; he wondered for a moment if the song, which oddly reminded him of the trees' murmurs, held some magical power of its own. But he soon realised it was nothing of the sort: the woman was entirely human, and her song was just a beautiful tune sung with a beautiful voice. She finished on a high note, the sound so perfectly crystalline that it was almost unnatural - almost.

“You did not choose the merriest melody, my Queen,” an amused voice said from somewhere on Harry's right.

The singer laughed, dropping her arms to her sides and turning to gaze at the newcomer - a woman her age, wearing the same white tunic. Aside from their clothes, both women were radically different: the second, taller and broader in the shoulder, looked as athletic as the young queen was frail; her features reminded Harry of Greek statues, and it was framed by a luscious mane of golden-blonde hair.

“Rosalyn,” the young queen greeted, extending both hands to the blonde woman. The newcomer took them in her own and respectfully lifted them to her lips.

“I told you to call me by my name when you aren't on duty, my friend,” the queen added.

“Your mother's old courtiers have criticised our closeness many times,” Rosalyn answered with a half smile. “Don't doubt they will mutter a lot about you idling around in the valley with me when you should be planning our next move in the war.”

“The war,” the queen sighed. “I'm so sick of this war, Rosalyn. I'd much rather be here and enjoy the peace of the evening than hear the pleas and complaints of hundreds of people. Why can't the captains plan an attack that would definitely subdue this handful of wizards, instead of expecting me to do all the work?”

“It's not so simple, Cassie. The wizards are putting up a good fight.”

“Nonsense. They are wizards. Any decently gifted Isiame would be able to fight off at least three or four of them.”

“Cassie,” Rosalyn patiently repeated. “Things are not as simple as they were in the past. The wizards' leaders are four powerful magicians, and they are teaching their art to many young people of their kind. They are now mastering quite well what little magic they possess. And don't forget they outnumber us.”

Cassie sighed and hugged herself, her long dark hair floating around her face in the light evening breeze.

“What would be your advice, Rosa?” she asked. “What should I do?”

“In my opinion, there isn't much left to do,” the blonde servant said. “We should have gone into hiding long ago. As things are, we have already lost this war.”

“You can't be serious!”

“Cassiopeia,” Rosalyn interrupted, suddenly stern. “I wish the situation would be different, but there is no point in deluding ourselves. The wizards, although they were born weaker, are now stronger than we are. It is only a matter of time before they find this place - our last shelter - and try to erase the people of Isiames from the face of the world.”

The dark-haired queen shook her head with calm incredulity. “The wizards, here? That is not possible. I cannot imagine them sullying these grounds with their presence. I didn't know you as such a pessimistic person, Rosa. Nor did I ever think you would be discouraged at the first sign of resistance from those wizards, and give up on fighting so easily.”

“I am lucid, my Queen,” Rosalyn said, her harmonious features set in a grave expression, tinted with sadness. “I never said I would give up on fighting. Should you choose to face the wizards, instead of hiding from them, I would happily fight at your side to my death.”

For the first time, an uneasy expression crossed Cassiopeia's face. Harry thought he saw her shivering as she turned her back on him to stare in the distance, far beyond the mountains shielding the Hogwarts valley from the outside world. Harry used the opportunity to scan the valley more closely - and indeed, soon enough, he had caught sight of an encampment covering one side of a shadowed hill. What looked like colourful, luxurious tents stood erect on the grass, and the tiny shadows of men, women and horses moved to and fro between them. Here was the court of the queen Cassiopeia, looking as if it was taking a vacation in the peaceful valley.

“Let's talk of something else,” the queen brusquely said, claiming back Harry's attention. “I don't like speaking of the war.”

“As you wish, Cassie,” Rosalyn said. “How is your little Clio?”

Cassiopeia relaxed visibly at the change of subject, her shoulders dropping slightly as the tension that had stiffened them evaporated. “My little devil will be four years old next spring,” she said with a fond smile. “When you see her running around among dogs and horses and wrestling with the servants' children, it's hard to believe she will be the queen of Isiames one day.”

“We were hardly older than she is when we started escaping our governess to go wandering into the streets, dressed as little maids,” Rosalyn reminded her with something that looked like forced gaiety.

Cassiopeia threw her head back and laughed. She had casually wrapped her arm around Rosalyn's, and the two women were now descending the hill toward the encampment. In doing so, they drew closer to Harry - and the details of their faces seemed to blur at the same time. The landscape was slowly dissolving into colourful mists around him, and he felt the dream escape him in spite of his efforts to continue it.

“I think you are Clio's role model, Rosa…”

In the mist, Cassiopeia's voice still drifted to him, at times distant, at other times so close he thought he would touch her if he reached out.

“She hardly ever listens to me, her mother…”

And as everything around him blurred into shapeless vapour, the young queen's face came into sharp focus one last time - very close to him, and facing him directly for the first time. Harry let out a shocked scream that made no noise at all in the greyish mist.

Cassiopeia had almond-shaped eyes, of an extraordinarily bright shade of green. They were, unmistakeably, his mother's eyes.

***

The dream changed. Around him the mist cleared again to reveal the same landscape he had just left, now under a dark sky that started to pale at the East. But the colourful tents and slender women in silk tunics had disappeared, to be replaced by hundreds upon hundreds of soldiers in armour, carrying swords and staffs and wands. The chaos was total. Harry turned his head this way and that, but no matter where he looked, all he could see was people screaming, striking and dying, knights pushing their horses in throngs of soldiers on foot, and the lights of spells mingling with the flashing of harsh iron.

Directly in front of him, their backs to him, male and female archers clad in coats of mail knelt on the ground. Rings shone on the fingers of their left hands, which gripped the wood of their long bow, but their right hands were bare and stretched the thin string as far as it would go; held between two fingers were arrows with tails of bright green feathers.

As Harry watched, they all pointed their arrows to the sky and shot, before extending their ring-covered hands towards the advancing enemy and shouting a command in the same lilting language the queen Cassiopeia had been singing. The wind angrily rushed and hissed in response, viciously catching the advancing wizards in the shins and forcing them backwards, under the lethal shower of arrows. There were cries of shock and anguish as the arrows struck down several knights, horses and humbler soldiers.

But more kept coming.

“Archers! Nock!” a female voice shouted behind Harry. He glanced over his shoulder and reflexively ducked as a young man in a coat of mail ran past him, brandishing a heavy spear and holding up a strange-looking amulet in his other hand - and as Harry moved out of his way, he was brought in sight of the woman who had given the order.

Here she was, the dark-haired, green-eyed Cassiopeia, who had so obstinately refused to believe the war could tarnish the grounds of Hogwarts. Mounting a bay horse, wearing white armour, she held in one hand a long and sharp sword and in the other a staff, which looked like the slender, intact trunk of a very young tree.

The archers all reached back to take another long arrow from the quiver tied to their backs, but before their fingers could close on the green-feathered tail, a deep voice shouted from the enemy's ranks, “Incarcerous serpentiae!”

An archer yelped as snakes suddenly burst into existence on the ground in front of her and coiled themselves around her body, binding her. The deep voice yelled again, and again snakes came into being, winding their way around the lithe bodies, seeking bare flesh in the flaws of the coats of mail.

Harry could not detach his eyes from the writhing archers, screaming in fear and rage as they tried to get rid of their live bounds. Several of them managed to keep their sangfroid and, closing their eyes, started muttering under their breath. The snakes wrapped around them suddenly started burning and before long fell to the ground, reduced to ashes. But they were few who didn't fall prey to panic.

Meanwhile, encouraged by the archers' rout, the wizards let out loud battle cries and started moving forward again.

Cassiopeia lifted her staff.

Her powerful chant dominated all the other noises of the battle, and some wizards faltered as it echoed against the distant mountains. Harry saw most of them only had roughly carved wands, from which showers of sparks spurted out at all times; managing a decent spell with such a poor tool seemed like a huge achievement.

The Isiame queen reached a final, oddly sinister high-pitched note, and jabbed her staff at the ranks of advancing wizards. At the same instant, the deep voice Harry had heard hexing the archers sounded again from the middle of the wizarding army.

“Attack!”

The word was unusually harsh and guttural, and Harry realised with a shock that the man had spoken in Parseltongue. A second after that order had been given, dozens of snakes that had been winding their way through the grass to the Isiame ranks, silent and unseen, rose and struck all men and beasts that were within their reach.

Harry barely had the time to glimpse at the Parselmouth - a quite young wizard on a piebald horse, with pinched, monkey-like features and a short black beard, raising a finely-made wand - before Cassiopeia's magic crashed upon the wizarding army.

The lake's waters rose and gathered in a tidal wave as the queen's command; blindly following Cassiopeia's words, the gigantic wave hurled itself at the wizards and broke upon them with a deafening thunder-like sound, knocking out and drowning those it didn't kill instantly. The water rushed forward, irresistibly taking away wrecks of war machines, men and horses, until several wizards gathered their wits and managed to save themselves with a few well-placed spells. The wizarding attack was a failure; their dead piled up on the soaked grass.

However, the Isiames were hardly in better shape. For every wizard they killed, ten more seemed to sprout from the earth. Harry saw many of them sag to the ground, exhausted, to be finished off there with swords, knifes and hammers. Blood streamed on the soft, green slopes of the valley. Its stench infected the air. The queen Cassiopeia was pale as a ghost, her lean features drawn with fatigue; but even in the state she was in, it seemed that no wizard, as of yet, dared challenge her. The magic she wielded was such that a single of her spells was enough to drive off the fiercest attack.

To Harry, the outcome of the battle was clear. Sooner or later, the last powerful Isiames would fall under the repeated assaults, and the young queen would have to face alone the still-formidable strengths of the wizarding army. No doubt she would take many other lives, even then, but in the end she would succumb under the sheer number of her opponents. It was hopeless.

Harry suddenly wished he would wake up and escape from the dream. He was not sure he wanted to witness the end of the Isiames; already the battle was turning into a slaughter. Watching the young Cassiopeia sitting up straight and proud on her saddle and chanting in her crystal-clear voice, and knowing that she would finally fall to the ground and be killed like game in a hunting party… It brought a bitter taste in his mouth - a hollow kind of sadness mingled with disgust.

“Cassie!”

The scream came from a group of Isiames in armour who were ascending the hill on top of which the queen stood, all the while backing up in front of a battalion of wizards without ever breaking the fight. They fought with swords, all magical tools momentarily forgotten, and the heavy blades moved so fast that all Harry could see was the pale light of the dawn reflected on the steel.

“Cassie!” the Isiame called again. She was female, and strands of golden hair escaped from her bloodied helmet. Although her voice was now harsh and frightened, Harry had no trouble recognising her.

“Rosa!” the queen called back. “Step back! I can-”

“No!” Rosalyn shouted. “Stay where you are!”

She cried out and brought her blade down on her opponent with all her might. The wizard's weapon was knocked out of his hand, and without giving him time to recover Rosalyn beheaded him in one fluid gesture. More blood splattered against her coat of mail and helmet, but she hardly flinched. Using her momentum, she drove her sword right through another wizard's flank, easily taking him by surprise while he struggled against another Isiame.

“Archers!” Rosalyn called. The words were barely out of her mouth when five other wizards fell, pierced with poisonous arrows. The rest fled as more arrows showered down on them; the queen's archers were shooting three arrows at a time.

Rosalyn carefully lifted her helmet from her head, freeing her long, thick mane of golden hair, and brought a hand up to a gash in her forehead. Blood was running along her straight nose and she irritably blinked as it dripped into her eyes.

“Don't touch that,” Cassiopeia said, slapping her friend's hand down. “I think I can heal it.”

She brought her horse around so that Rosalyn could lean on the flank of the tall animal and bent down, examining the wound closely. Rosalyn didn't move. Around them, the battle was still going on, and the queen's skills were probably required elsewhere; but it was clear she would not do anything before she had healed her faithful servant first.

Cassiopeia blew softly on the gash, her fingers brushing lightly against the lips of the wound as if she was stitching them back together. She whispered the same word, over and over again, and although Harry drew as close to her as possible, he could not hear what she was saying. Rosalyn's eyes were closed and she had a serene expression, contrasting with the rage and fear that had been so clearly painted on her face minutes previously.

“There,” Cassiopeia said at last. “It's closed, and it is already half-healed. It should not bother you anymore.”

Rosalyn opened her eyes and smiled up at her. “Thank you, Cassie. I will need all my strengths for what is to come.”

“What do you mean? You're not thinking of going back to the battle, I hope?”

But Rosalyn's smile had already faded, and her face was set in a stony determination. “I told you once, my Queen, on this very hill, that should the need arise I would happily fight to my death at your side. I feel the time has now come for me to fulfil this promise.”

“Rosa-”

“Cassie, you need to run,” Rosalyn interrupted. “Take Clio and run. Don't let these wizards get their hands on your child! Don't let them extinguish our kind so completely-”

“Rosa, you-”

“Cassie, please!”

Cassiopeia fell quiet, and Harry could see shock, pain and affection all at once in her expression as she stared into her servant's imploring face, as if her emotions were written on her skin. Finally her bright green eyes closed, and a single tear escaped from under a lid and rolled on her cheek.

“How?” she asked in a murmur. “They're surrounding us.”

“Give me your coat of mail and helmet,” Rosalyn said in a low voice. “I can still use my powers - they will think I am you, so they won't pay you any attention at all, and I'll be able to hold them off while you get away.”

Cassiopeia's gaze trailed away, on her beloved valley stained by the scent of blood and spilled entrails, on her soldiers dying one by one under the wizards' blows, on the handful of servants that remained grouped around her, covered in wounds and grime.

“So be it,” she said.

She dismounted her horse and exchanged her armour with Rosalyn's. It was quickly and neatly done. Cassiopeia only took the time to press her startled servant's hands to her lips before she gripped tightly her sword and staff and walked away, leaving the faithful Rosalyn to her fate.

“Five women go with the queen,” Rosalyn ordered shortly. “We'll need the men here.”

Her orders were promptly obeyed. Men and women around her had the grim faces of those who know they are going to die, but who plan to make the enemy pay dearly for it. And as Cassiopeia fled in the bleak half-light of the dawn, Rosalyn and her army screamed a last challenge and dived back into the battle.

Harry immediately saw the wizard heading for the last Isiame fighters: he was very young, sixteen or seventeen at most, and combined a boyishly handsome face with the strong stature of the man used to rough and prolonged effort. He mounted a black stallion and wore a red and gold tunic over his coat of mail, and had not bothered lowering his helmet in front of his face. With a yell of triumph, he headed directly for Rosalyn's bay horse, his sword held high above his head. He had not drawn his wand, which could be seen tucked safely in his leather belt.

Rosalyn brought Cassiopeia's horse around at the last minute, her sword meeting the boy's with a great chink of steel. It became clear after ten seconds that she was a lot more skilled at sword-fighting on horseback than her young opponent; however, the wizard was blinded by his confidence in his own power, and it was only when he narrowly warded off a blow that could have taken off his head that he started feeling his belt feverishly for his wand.

His face froze in a horrified mask as he failed to retrieve the magical weapon. Rosalyn let out a peal of ruthless laughter, and blocking the boy's sword with her own, she used her other hand to draw a wand from her own belt.

“Would you be looking for this, my young sir knight?” she asked. “You should have put it away when we first crossed swords. How unwise of you.”

“You stole from me!” the boy screamed, outrage and fear mingling in his voice. “You cowardly creature, do you have no honour?”

“Honour has nothing to do with our situation, sir knight,” Rosalyn snarled in answer. With one hand, she easily bent the wand against her saddle until it broke in halves. “I will not use my magical power. And you will not use yours. This is a duel of swords, wizard!”

Her voice had risen to a shout on the last word, and the young wizard let out a defiant scream in echo. For another three seconds, maybe, the air was full of the sound of steel ringing against steel, the swords moving too fast for Harry to make out the moves - then all of sudden, the boy's sword was torn from his grip by a vicious strike. He had no time to recover before Rosalyn's sword dug in his throat.

His eyes widened incredulously, his mouth opening on one last protestation before she drove the wide blade all the way through the neck, breaking vertebras with a nasty crack. Rosalyn pulled on her sword, causing the boy's body to fall down from his horse and to the ground, then lifted the bloodied blade high above her head with a cry of triumph.

Almost immediately, a scream of terrible anguish answered her.

“My son! Geoffrey!”

Startled, Harry wheeled about and scanned the vast army of wizards, but he didn't need to look very far to spot the man who had screamed. He, too, rode a black horse and wore the red and gold tunic. The face Harry glimpsed under the open helmet was partly hidden by a well-groomed brown beard, but the resemblance with the dead youth was still clearly visible. This face looked vaguely familiar to him, but he could not remember where he had seen it before. The idea was ludicrous anyway - the wizard had probably been dead for centuries.

The dead boy's father yelled again, this time expressing such murderous fury that Harry felt the urgent need to hide away from him, even though he knew he could not be physically harmed.

“You will pay for this, creature of Hell!” the red-and-gold knight roared, lifting his own sword high above his head as he pushed his horse through the throng of wizards, caring little for those who were knocked down or trampled on in his haste to get to the blonde Isiame.

And Harry had a sudden flash of recognition - the sword. He knew it. He had wielded it.

Four powerful magicians leading the wizarding army, a Parselmouth looking like a monkey, a red and gold tunic… and of course, this is happening here, at Hogwarts - how could I be so stupid? This is the Founders' battle. This is when they conquered Hogwarts.

He now recognised the knight forcing his way through the crowd of soldiers; he was Godric Gryffindor, whose statue was in a corner of his old common room. And the sword he held was the very same Harry had used to kill the Basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets, almost ten years ago.

Distracted by Gryffindor's sudden appearance, Harry had lost track of the battle, and he found himself searching the valley for signs of Isiames while keeping an eye on the Hogwarts Founder. He could recognise Rosalyn from a good distance - she was back on the hill she had defended for so long, swinging her sword left and right and leaving a trail of blood in her path. Through her staff, she directed some of her wind-magic at her opponents. Harry could tell she was weakening; her magic was nowhere near what the queen's had been, and her blows were less precise, more brutal. Nevertheless, she looked so fearsome in her bloodstained coat of mail, shouting orders to the survivors of the Isiame army and yelling with pure bloodlust every time she struck, that Harry was not surprised to see wizards fleeing before her.

“Godric! Don't!” called a deep voice.

“She killed Geoffrey, Salazar. She killed him! I will kill her!”

“Geoffrey's death is a terrible blow for all four of us, Godric,” the first wizard snapped. Harry now recognised the voice: it was the Parselmouth he had caught sight of earlier in the midst of the battle. He saw the slim, monkey-like little man catching up to Gryffindor's black stallion, mounted on the same placid piebald horse.

How did he survive that tidal wave?

“We are all grieved,” Salazar Slytherin insisted. “But if you attack her so recklessly, you will die too, without having avenged your son. She is the queen of their kind, Godric! You won't be able to kill her!”

“Then what do you suggest?” Gryffindor snarled, half-turning in his saddle to face the other wizard. “Quickly, now, before she massacre half of our people.”

“We should pool our skills,” Slytherin said. “Give me your sword.”

Gryffindor only hesitated for a second before he handed his sword to the Parselmouth. Slytherin seized it and took the time to examine the carvings into the hilt and blade; Harry watched, fascinated, as he slowly raised his wand over the sword and started chanting softly, at times slipping into Parseltongue. Magic gathered at the tip of his wand, raw power of such intensity than Harry perceived it even in his dream, and felt the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.

“And as the wise says,” a pensive woman's voice stated, “two heads are better than one - but four heads are much better than two.”

Two white horses were approaching them, both mounted by witches. Harry had been expecting their arrival and did not even wonder about their identities; the grave-looking woman in the blue tunic was obviously Rowena Ravenclaw, while her slightly rounder companion could only be Helga Hufflepuff.

Harry was standing in the presence of the four Founders of Hogwarts.

Oblivious of the battle still raging all around them, Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff added their own enchantments to the sword, until the steel was quivering with the magic it had accumulated. When they were finished, Slytherin delicately took the sword right under the hilt and presented it to Godric Gryffindor.

“May you be successful, Godric,” he said, his usually dry tone failing at masking the emotion behind his words.

Gryffindor seized his sword and touched the knob of the hilt with the tip of his own wand.

“And thus I call you the Bane of Cassiopeia,” he growled. The sword shone with a red glow, for one brief moment, before going back to its normal aspect - every inch of its blade and hilt now weighed down by the enchantments of the four most powerful witches and wizards in History.

Gryffindor tucked his wand back into his belt and gripped his sword firmly in his right hand, using the left to steer the stallion towards the Isiames' hill.

He was upon her in a surprisingly short amount of time. Rosalyn's sword crossed his, and almost immediately Harry saw her flinch, as if in pain. Gryffindor's sword buzzed with raw power, and it soon appeared that the spells were digging into Rosalyn's weakened defences with derisory easiness. In spite of everything, she was putting up a good fight, using her considerable skills at sword-fighting to ward off the murderous blows.

Rosalyn's horse helplessly whinnied as its mistress forced it again into a brusque swerve, and its knees buckled. Its slender and sinewy legs were trembling under its weight, and it noisily blew air from its nostrils, head hung in exhaustion, foam dripping from its wide lips. It did not take long to Rosalyn to notice the danger and react: in the blink of an eye she dismounted her staggering horse, landing neatly on her feet, her sword planted in the grass beside her.

“Come on, wizard,” she shouted as she picked up her weapon again. “Are you afraid of being level with me? Get down that horse!”

She was digging her own grave, and she knew it, Harry realised. Even without counting the enchanted sword, on foot and exhausted as she was, she didn't stand a chance against a wizard in the prime of life - much less Godric Gryffindor.

It happened fast. The swords rang against one another, then, with little effort, Gryffindor sent Rosalyn's weapon flying into the air. It landed on the muddy shore of the lake, where the sludge soon swallowed it whole.

At the same moment, bright lightning flashed three times beyond the mountains surrounding the valley. Gryffindor started, his attention briefly diverted from his defeated opponent.

Rosalyn threw her head back and laughed. “Did you see those flashes, wizard?” she shot at Gryffindor. “It was our queen, Cassiopeia, sending you a last message. You failed!”

Still laughing in relief and triumph, the Isiame tore her helmet from her head and the rising sun caught at once in her golden hair. “Now, you may kill the Isiame queen's maid, if you feel able to,” Rosalyn jeered, a fierce joy illuminating her Greek-like features. “But know that my queen is forever out of your reach-”

The rest of her sentence was lost in a gasp of pain, as Gryffindor plunged his sword into her belly.

Rosalyn stared down at the blade protruding from her coat of mail, which had been effortlessly ripped open by the Founders' spells. She sank to her knees, silently piling up on the ground like a neglected heap of used laundry, and her hands rose to curl on the hilt of the sword. Gryffindor immediately let go of the sword, as if afraid of getting burnt at her contact.

Rosalyn's head remained bent on the Founders' weapon for a long time before she raised her eyes again to gaze up at her silent victor. And then, as her eyes started sliding out of focus, as she apparently stopped seeing Gryffindor, the valley, and the dead piling up on the grass, she started singing.

It was only a thin, pitiful little voice, which soon would be stifled by the blood rising up from her shredded entrails; but Harry recognised the melody at once: it was Cassiopeia's song. You did not choose the merriest melody, my Queen…

Gryffindor stood frozen in front of the dying Isiame, apparently unable to avert his eyes from her kneeling form, and unwilling to put an end to her suffering by ripping the sword out of her body and finishing her off. Rosalyn sang, and her weak voice seemed to ring across the entire valley, accompanying the surviving Isiames in their last fight.

For the battle had not ended with Gryffindor and Rosalyn's duel; here and there, some grouped, some isolated, Isiames were still desperately struggling. But the fight was quickly turning into a massacre. Following the three other Founders' encouragements and example, wizards made a point in not letting a single Isiame escape alive. The row of Cassiopeia's archers had died where they had fought, kneeling shoulder to shoulder in a tight line, facing the enemy. In a depression created by several explosive spells, blood was gathering and streaming slowly away on the hillside, like a morbid river. And still, Rosalyn sang in the rising sun.

***

The vision faded again around Harry. When his surroundings came back into focus around him, he was shocked to see the valley almost exactly as it had been in his first dream, stretching this time under a sky masked by grey clouds heavy with rain. Patches of burnt grounds and small craters did attest that a battle had occurred there, but the grass had grown back, thick and green, the lake was smooth and serene again, and there was still no castle built on the tallest hill.

On the other hand, trees now encircled him.

They were thin and young, and covered the hill on which Rosalyn had died; in fact, the tree closest to him - a white-barked tree with golden foliage - grew precisely on the spot where the young Isiame had fallen. Other trees grew in bouquets, some stood alone. In a narrow crevasse, a muddy stream sluggishly made its way towards the distant lake; and beyond the stream, he could see more trees sprouting haphazardly from the ground, until his eyes met a row of trees growing so close to each other there wasn't any space between their trunks. There ended the first hints of what would one day become the Forbidden Forest.

“…such a crazy idea. We could build it anywhere in the world! Why here?”

“Godric, this is where we stood united and defeated the Third Kind! Where else would we find such symbolism of our harmony? Besides - look around you. The valley is beautiful. There is plenty of space to build the school we all dream of. The mountains shield us from prying eyes. This valley is a gift to the Wizard Kind!”

The voices were distant but at the same time surprisingly loud, as if sounding from the extremity of a long tunnel which amplified them. Harry tried to hurry out of the forest, heading for where the voiced came from, and found himself gliding dreamily across the ground instead at surprising speed - soon he had passed the row of trees and caught sight of Godric Gryffindor and Salazar Slytherin, walking slowly across the hills and immersed in deep conversation.

“I don't like it,” Gryffindor said. “These grounds reek of their presence still. Their hatred is still palpable. Is it really where you want to raise young people of our kin?”

“Don't you see,” Slytherin said with a tone of infinite patience, “that having generations upon generations of young magical folk grow up here, learning our art, is precisely the best way to secure these lands? Make them ours, by destroying the Third Kind's lingering influence. This is our chance, Godric. Our chance to - what? What is it?”

Gryffindor had gone very white as he stared right through Harry at the young trees cresting the hill.

“Those trees,” he said, his voice toneless. “They weren't there three months ago.”

“So?”

“And the way they're growing…”

“What about it?” Slytherin asked, failing to contain his impatience.

“Don't you see? That row of trees - it's precisely where their archers were killed, all in a row… And behind those, that tree standing alone, that's where Rowena killed an aging man… And can you see that pale tree with golden leaves, in the distance?”

Slytherin peered at the forest, his creasing forehead giving away the first sign of worry in his haughty stance. “I think so,” he slowly said. “You're thinking of that blonde girl you killed with the sword?”

Gryffindor nodded. “She was right there,” he insisted, his voice hoarse. “The tree grew on the earth that was soaked with her blood. Just like for the archers.”

The two men stood side by side in silence for several long minutes, staring thoughtfully at the Forest. Gryffindor, who was thinner and paler than last time Harry had seen him, couldn't seem to be able to avert his gaze from Rosalyn's tree; his eyes were dark and haunted, none of the old fierce vitality remaining into them. Slytherin was absentmindedly playing with a leather bracelet on his right wrist, lips pinched and brow furrowed.

“It could be,” Slytherin murmured, “that a trace of them still remains in those trees… Let's see…”

He drew back his richly embroidered robes, revealing the black leather belt from which hung a wide-bladed sword and a wand. He pulled out the wand in such a quick gesture that Harry almost missed it, and jabbed it at the young trees with a harsh incantation that sounded totally foreign to the young Auror's ears.

A column of blue fire, as thick as a man's body, erupted from Slytherin's wand and crashed into the tight row of trees, inundating them with blue flames; Harry saw the grass lie flat on the ground and turn brown under the blast of the spell, and the faraway mountains were illuminated with a pale blue glow. But when the flames dissipated, not a single scorch mark marred the pale bark of the trees. Not a single one of their leaves was singed.

Then, before Harry and the two founders' eyes, the trees that were hit with the blue fire grew several feet taller. Their trunks thickened until their barks touched. Their foliage turned dark green and as spiky as holly leaves. The bark visibly darkened as if it was aging at top speed. The roots grew thicker, more gnarly, and buried themselves more firmly into the ground.

Then the rustling of leaves and creaking of wood faded into silence. Gryffindor's expression had not changed at all, but Slytherin now looked distinctly uneasy. He lowered his wand, nervously bringing his left hand to his right and twirling his bracelet in his fingers.

“They are still alive,” he rasped.

“Them, or a ghost of their spirit,” Gryffindor said in the same toneless voice. “Who knows?”

A strong wind rustled the leaves of the magically aged trees, which now stood in an impenetrable-looking barrier - already very similar to what they would look like more than a thousand years later.

“We have to warn Rowena and Helga,” Slytherin said brusquely. “Do something to isolate the threat before we start building our school.”

Gryffindor gave a brief, sinister bark of laughter. “So you still want to have the school built here? After seeing evidence of their presence, of their power?”

Slytherin stared at his friend, his pale face set in a hard, cold mask; there was disappointment on his razor-sharp features.

“I never knew you as such a coward, Godric,” he stated coolly.

“You certainly do not know me so well if you're trying this old trick on me, Salazar,” Gryffindor retorted. “This is not about courage; I would risk my life for you, for Rowena and Helga, or for our cause, without a second thought. You know it. This is about risking the lives of young children by bringing them in such close contact with the remains of the Third Kind's old wrath. And this is about disturbing the graves of people who were, in spite of everything, worthy opponents.”

Gryffindor detached his eyes from Slytherin and stared in the distance, through the barrier of the archers' trees, towards the point where Harry knew Rosalyn's gold-capped tree stood.

“They have fought bravely,” he said, grave and solemn. “Their blood impregnated the earth, and the mountains still echo with their screams. Those trees stand where they have fallen. This land is theirs. Let them rest in peace, Salazar. I don't want to disturb their souls, no matter how much wrong they did to me and my kin.”

“You are a sentimentalist fool, did anyone ever tell you that?” Slytherin replied, but there was affection in his voice. “Let's get back to the camp. We have to tell Rowena and Helga about this anyway; and I do hope I can convince you. This project, Godric, is the accomplishment of my whole life.”

“I know that,” Gryffindor said. “Believe me, old friend, I know it.”

Slytherin had a thin, slightly bitter smile. Seizing Gryffindor's arm, he gently pulled him around and forced him to tear his gaze away from the Forest. Both men turned their backs on Harry and started walking down the hill and away from the trees, talking in low voices. Harry made to follow them, when the grey clouds suddenly crept down the sky, rolled down the mountains and filled the valley like water pouring into a bowl. Thick grey fog surrounded him, drowning completely the sight of the hills, the mountains and the trees.

***

“I'm leaving!”

Some of the mist cleared again, but most of it remained, wrapped around the indistinct shapes of the tree trunks and branches, and trailing on the ground like ghostly scraps of frayed cloth. The trees around him looked taller and gloomier, and the eerie green light Harry knew was dimmed by the mist that lay upon the Forest.

Male voices rang again, harsh and resentful. Once more they sounded far away but were magnified several times - in such a way that they echoed ominously all around Harry, the sound assailing him from all directions at the same time.

“Where are your beautiful speeches, Salazar?” snarled another voice. “Where is your enthusiasm for this school? Where are your lectures on unity and brotherhood?”

“This was my school!” the first voice shouted. “I had to convince you all to build it here! This was the achievement of a life of dreams and hard work! And you want to turn it into a refuge for all the weaklings in possession of a single bit of magic - for the sons of those who hunt down and kill our race! Those filthy traitors, who will turn against us at the first opportunity, sell us to their real masters, and stain our blood by taking our daughters as they please!”

“They are magical, Salazar,” said a quiet, deep female voice. “Just like any of our own children. They deserve knowledge, if they seek it.”

“Salazar, listen-” interrupted another female voice, higher than the first one.

“Listen? Listen?” A harsh bout of laughter reached Harry's ears. “Do you really expect me to stay here and watch the school I created fall into the hands of those wizard-hunters? I don't think so! I love it more than all three of you. I saw its birth. I shall not see its downfall!”

“Leave, then!” Gryffindor's voice shouted in rage. “You want to toss these children away, when they have been rejected by their friends and families for their talents already? Then you are no longer worthy of leading this school. Leave! We have no use for you!”

“Godric!” the second woman yelled. “How can you-”

But Slytherin's laughter cut through her words again. “Sweet Helga, always flinching away from conflict,” he spat. “Don't waste your breath. You can't shut this fool up; he lets his gut talk instead of his head. He forgets he was afraid of those we destroyed, afraid enough to hesitate to build anything on their conquered lands!”

“The Third Kind belongs to the past, but I do not make the mistake of thinking they are all extinct, as you do,” Gryffindor growled in answer. “I won't relax my watch. I will train as many wizards as I can, give them all the training they deserve, no matter what their origins are. I will fill the world with skilled wizards, should our deadliest enemy rise again and try to conquer what they have once lost.”

“And they call you brave!” Slytherin screamed in derision. Harry heard the slam of a riding crop and a short whinnying, then the sound of hooves hitting the earthy ground, taking Salazar Slytherin away.

In the ensuing quiet, Gryffindor spat a loud oath and departed, his boots thumping dully on the ground.

“Well, the Third Kind does seem to have achieved something,” Hufflepuff's voice said.

“What is that, Helga?” Ravenclaw asked in a murmur.

“Dividing us.”

Laughter bubbled and rose all around Harry, gleeful, fierce laughter, coming from the very ground his feet rested upon and shaking the trees circling him. A shiver ran along his spine, and more than ever he wished he would wake up, as the spirits of the massacred Isiame army laughed at the disunited Founders.

***

When the mist around him thickened once more, wiping colours and shapes from his vision, he dearly hoped his wish would be granted at last. The song of the trees, he realised, was no more than the telling of the Forest's history, and he felt that all significant events had already been shown to him. It finally explained, at least, why the Founders had built Hogwarts right next to a Forest so hateful of wizards; it also clarified the exact nature of the trees. It appeared that Hermione, Ron and him had been wrong to think they were actual creatures - but Harry had never heard of human spirits of this nature, still powerful enough to be able to live, move, kill and reminisce long after the bodies were dead. Then again, the Third Kind - or Isiames, since such was their name - defied all laws of conventional magic.

It was interesting, certainly - and seeing the Founders themselves had filled him with an excitement he hadn't felt in a long time - but it was trying. Everything was so vivid, so passionate, so hateful and melancholic at the same time, that he felt a sort of strain, as if witnessing all those events required a great effort from him.

He wondered what had become of the fugitive queen. He also wondered how her eyes could be exactly like his mother's - this shade of green was so rare that he was reluctant to think of a coincidence.

Could he be an Isiame through his mother? Had she been a distant descendant of Cassiopeia's?

His reverie was interrupted as the mist cleared yet again around him. However he was disappointed again: it became quickly obvious that the trees would not let him come back to his own time yet.

This time, he was perched on one of the archers' trees, sitting astride a huge branch. On his right, Rosalyn's hill was covered with the spirit-trees of her army, forming the core of the Forbidden Forest; on his left, the rest of the Forest spread, all normal trees growing in an air contaminated by the hatred seeping from the hill. The trees there were much younger than in his time, and quite sparser; low bushes ran all over the ground their roots didn't cover. The sun managed to pierce the thinner foliage, throwing patches of pale light on the black humus. On the whole, the Forest looked much tamer than Harry remembered it from his schooldays.

The sound of hooves far on his left caught his attention. A mounted horse was moving in the distance among the normal trees, slowly drawing closer to the barrier of archer-trees, following the exact same path Harry had taken himself several times. Harry waited a few seconds, squinting in his attempt to make out the features of the yet indistinct rider; a sort of hood threw a shadow upon his face.

It wasn't until the horse halted in front of the barrier that the man tossed his hood back, exposing himself to the daylight. At once, Harry frowned and instinctively bent forward, peering closely at the rider's face. The man had sharp, intelligent features, his tanned skin illuminated by pale blue eyes; long chestnut hair fell in two curtains on each side of his face. It was familiar, but only vaguely, as if he was seeing someone for the second time but at a different age, or before an illness had altered his aspect.

The unknown man dismounted the horse and took a few cautious steps toward the trees. His large brown cloak, made of some rough, thick material, was flapping slightly around his tall and angular frame, revealing sometimes the ordinary black robes he wore underneath. A long sword hung from his leather belt and beat upon his skinny legs as he walked.

He walked up to the archer-trees and very slowly brought a hand up to touch one of them. Harry held his breath, and so did the stranger, as his fingers brushed against the bark - but nothing happened.

The man exhaled a relieved breath and the hint of a triumphant smile flashed on his lips. However, it was with just as much caution that he slid his hands between two trunks and delicately pushed them apart, as if asking for the permission to enter rather than forcing his way in.

To Harry's bewilderment, the trees silently parted before the wizard, who let out a cry of jubilant surprise. As soon as he had sprung forward and into the core of the Forest, however, Harry knew something was horribly wrong. The trees were still and watchful, and Harry could almost taste their malicious glee at seeing the wizard jump straight into their trap; and he involuntarily shouted a word of warning.

The very first tree after the barrier got the intruder. Long flexible branches twisted their way around his waist, the roots sprang from the earth to trap his feet into place. The man screamed again, out of shock and fear this time, and drew his sword from his belt. In the back of his mind, Harry wondered for a second why he didn't use the wand that hung, too, from the leather belt, before he realised the Founders had probably warned anyone from using magic against the spirit-trees.

The great sword flashed once, twice, in the green light bathing Rosalyn's hill, and both times a branch fell to the ground, red sap running from the wounds onto the tender bark. A third branch coiled itself around the man's wrist and snapped it cleanly with a dull crack. The wizard yelled again; his sword flew from his hand and hit one archer's tree, leaving a deep gash into the bark from which more sap ran down the trunk. The sword rebounded at an angle and tumbled through the still-open gap in the barrier, out of the spirit-trees' domain.

The wizard was now screaming continuously in anguish and pain. He had been brought down to the ground, and the tree was wrapping more roots and branches all around him, mercilessly crushing bone and flesh. And as the man's pale blue eyes started bulging out of their sockets, wide with terror, as his hair, matted with earth, flew everywhere while he desperately shook his head in an effort to free himself, Harry sucked in a sharp breath in astonished recognition. The man was the Chevalier de Pallas, unfortunate Headmaster of Hogwarts, whose blackened and forgotten portrait hung in the highest corner of Professor McGonagall's office.

Shocked and sickened, Harry averted his eyes from the dying Pallas, whose screams had turned into feeble moans drowned in the excited whispering of the trees. From his perch, he looked away at the Forest extending outside the Isiames' domain. Pallas' horse had fled long ago. His sword, by some miracle - probably magic - had gone and planted itself up to the hilt into a moss-covered rock, which stood, low and mostly flat, between two stout bushes at the foot of an archer-tree.

Harry had only just the time to take in the details of the hilt of the sword, the only part of it still protruding from the rock, before his vision was lost again in a swirl of colours.

***

His feet hit the ground with a soft splash, and he found that, had he been real, he would have been covered in muck up to the knees. He had been transported to the muddy bank of the lake, at the eastern edge of the Forest - in fact, he quickly realised, he was precisely at the foot of Rosalyn's hill; only a thick hedge of tangled brambles and wild trees separated the lake from the core of the Forest. Cresting the highest hill of the valley, right across from him, Hogwarts castle shone in the fresh and humid light of a fine spring morning.

And striding along the opposite bank of the lake and towards the faraway gates of Hogwarts, his huge silhouette unmistakable despite the distance, was Hagrid.

Harry's heart leapt in his chest. He couldn't be back, not just yet - it was winter in his time, and this was clearly April or May. From what he could see, the war had not yet happened - so the present time was either during his own schooldays, or right before…

A branch cracked behind him and he jumped in shock, whirling round with his hand on his wand out of pure reflex; the sight that greeted him made his mouth drop.

A girl, around fifteen or sixteen, was getting off the muddy ground with a groan, having apparently just slid down the tall bank. She was dressed in her black school robes - or at least, robes that used to be black, for now they were covered in mud and dirt; one sleeve was torn and hung from her elbow and the hem of the robes was frayed. A Prefect badge glittered dully on her chest. She heaved an annoyed sigh and, taking out her wand, easily cleaned herself up with a single non-verbal spell.

“Where d'you think she is?” called a young, male voice from the ordinary trees of the Forest, far behind the girl. She started and hastily backed off to lean against the side of the hill.

“We probably scared her off… Come on, let's go back, she can't have gone so far…” answered another voice, deeper than the first.

They were barely audible, and Harry doubted the girl had been able to make out the words - although, if he were to guess from the way her lip curled in distaste, she knew perfectly well who was talking. She shook her head and, as the voices faded away, carefully bent over to remove her shoes and socks. She took them in one hand and stepped into the shallow water of the lake with a little sigh of pleasure.

A thin cloud cleared the sky at that moment, fraying away like undone knitting, and allowed a sunbeam to fall on the girl's head. Her dark red hair gleamed golden, falling thick on her shoulders on either side of a pale face in which shone two brilliant green eyes.

Harry, who had recognised her the moment he had caught sight of her, happily lost himself in the contemplation of his fifteen-years-old mother.

Lily Evans suddenly slipped and fell in the water with a little scream of shock and a great splash. After a few seconds' struggle, she managed to sit up in the mud with the water going up to her chest, coughing, spitting and - to Harry's confusion - swearing profusely. She laid a hand in the mud and leant on it as she scrambled to her knees, her shoes and socks still held precariously in her other hand.

Then she froze.

“What the hell is-” she muttered, sounding utterly puzzled. Still kneeling in the dirty water, she blindly tossed her shoes to the shore and started groping in the mud with both hands, where she had obviously felt something. One minute later, Harry's heart skipped a beat as she pulled out of the water a huge gleaming sword, with a startlingly brilliant emerald set in its golden hilt.

Rosalyn's sword.

A completely soaked Lily held the sword horizontally in her outstretched palms, astonishment and wonderment mingling in her expression. The sun shone on the hard-edged steel, untouched by rust, and put all around the small Gryffindor girl a strange, golden-green halo.

All of sudden, to Harry's stupefaction, he was lifted from the ground as if by a huge invisible hand, and carried away from the kneeling form of his mother. He tried to fight the power pulling him away, willed himself to be back at her side - he could still see her, a petite dark shape in the muddy water - then the trees of the Forbidden Forest rushed forward and engulfed him, and he lost sight of her.

He landed rather harshly on the ground, just outside the row of archer-trees; a fact that did nothing to improve his bad mood at being tossed about all across Hogwarts like a helpless puppet. He felt he had seen enough of those trees for the rest of his life. However, predictably, when he tried walking away from them, he found his feet glued to the ground.

“…wonder who they were after,” said a voice.

Harry tiredly turned around, resigned to hear yet another conversation stored in the trees' memory. The speaker was a tall, broad-shouldered, dark-haired boy, wearing his Hogwarts robes with the sleeves rolled up past his elbows. He was talking to one of his fellow student, another dark-haired boy - although this one was slightly shorter and much leaner than the first. A pair of rectangular glasses gleamed on his nose.

After meeting his mother, coming face to face with Sirius Black and James Potter was not so much of a shock as it should have been. What surprised him, however, were the grim expressions they sported. Upon seeing them so far into the Forest with their wands in their hands, Harry had expected them to be up to one of those pranks that had made the Marauders' reputation. But Sirius' dark frown and James' expression of barely contained fury were quick in dismissing this logical assumption.

“I don't know, but it'd better not be first-years again,” James spat. “I'm fine with a bit of firsty-ragging, but what they did to that Collins kid last week was just sick.”

“Yeah, Evans went berserk,” Sirius recollected, a grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. “I swear, if Slughorn hadn't stopped her, she would've sent Mulciber on the moon with his head stuck high up his arse. Literally.”

James emitted a non-committal grunt, but his forehead had creased at the mention of Lily's name.

“You don't think they were after her, don't you?” he asked. “Today, I mean.”

Sirius reached up and scratched the back of his head in thought, looking uneasy. “I don't know…” he slowly said.

“I saw her getting into the Forest,” James insisted. “Didn't pay it much attention, I thought she was taking a shortcut to the lake or something… But then Mulciber, Macnair and Rosier went in the Forest as well…”

“Prongs, I really don't know. She's a big girl, she can handle herself-”

“There were three of them, Padfoot.”

“You know what she's capable of,” Sirius pointed out. “She would send any of them waltzing into the lake with both hands tied behind her back.”

“Look-”

“Listen,” Sirius loudly said, successfully shutting James up. “We just got our point across quite well with those three Slytherin cretins, if I am to judge from the fact they're now going back to the castle with their pants on their heads. They won't mess around with anyone as long as we keep a close watch on them. Evans can't have gone this far into the Forest - we're the only ones who ever have. The best way to make sure she's all right is to get back to the dormitory pronto and check the Map. Okay?”

James shifted his weight from one leg to the other, clearly torn between following Sirius' advice and continuing his search of Lily.

“Look,” Sirius said again, and his voice had lost much of his firmness, even taking a pleading note Harry had never heard there before. “Let's get away from here, now, please. I don't like it here. It makes me feel uncomfortable.”

James nodded and shivered visibly as he looked round for the first time at the row of archer-trees. “Yeah, me too…”

“Okay,” Sirius brightly settled. “Let's go.”

And turning his back on James, he transformed into a big black dog and ran away without a backward glance. Harry was taken aback: he had expected him to at least wait for his father. The proximity of the Isiames' domain had probably affected him more deeply than what he had let show.

James, too, looked now thoroughly uncomfortable. He rubbed his arm vigorously with his left hand, as if he was cold, and tightened his grip on his wand. Yet instead of transforming straight away into a stag, he drew cautiously closer to the row of trees, all the while throwing nervous glances over his shoulder.

“Evans?” he called. “You there?”

A nearly imperceptible shiver ran along the trees, so light that Harry doubted most people would have caught it - but from the way James froze on the spot, he had.

There was a sound from behind the trees, like the echo of a human voice; to Harry's trained ear, it was nothing more than a variant of the trees' murmurs, but James looked suddenly hopeful.

“Evans? Was that you?” he called, louder.

The murmur answered him in the same way. Emboldened, although still hesitant, James covered in two steps the distance still separating him from the archer-trees, and leaning his hand on a trunk, he tried to peer through the narrow gap between two trees.

“How did you get there?” he asked, but this time he sounded more as if he was talking to himself than addressing her. Harry was relieved to see that there was doubt again on his face. He withdrew the hand that had been touching the trunk, looking uncomfortable once more.

James started walking slowly along the barrier, carefully avoiding treading the roots or scrapping his shoes on them; and occasionally he would stop and try to look through the barrier onto the Isiames' domain, and call Lily's name.

James' foot suddenly hit something and he fell forward with a screamed oath. Catching himself on all four, he looked up and rolled away with a cry of fright as a branch lashed out at him, hitting the ground precisely where he had been a second before.

“What the bloody hell is that?” James burst out, his voice going oddly high-pitched. “A row of Whomping Willows?”

He scrambled to his feet, his robes nearly as filthy as Lily's had been, his face scraped and blackened with dirt, and brought his wand up with a trembling hand. The terror was raw on his features.

But nothing was moving in the row of archer-trees. They were completely still once more, and Harry, who once again found himself able to feel their mood with a strange acuteness, sensed they were disappointed enough to give up the idea of trapping the now distrustful young wizard.

James scanned the trees suspiciously up and down, right and left, the fear fading slowly on his face to give way to an intense curiosity, even though it was clear from his wary stance that he wouldn't try to get past the barrier again. His gaze came to rest on an object on the ground, precisely where he had tripped.

“What the hell is-” he murmured.

Keeping his wand pointed at the tree, he edged closer, with careful, infinitely patient steps. When he had gone as far as he dared to, he reached out with his left hand, one eye still watching the trees closely, closed his fingers upon the object which was without doubt responsible for his fall - and pulled.

Pallas' sword came out of the rock, as effortlessly and smoothly as if it had been buried into fresh butter. It was less broad than Rosalyn's, but longer, and just as sharp, the steel equally unstained by time. On the hilt gleamed carved pentacles, the lines straight, the angles perfect.

James hurriedly stepped back, out of reach of the trees' branches, and brought the sword up to rest horizontally on his upturned hands. His face mirrored exactly Lily's wonderment and awe. As Harry and James both stared down at the sword, a ray of light found a hole in the thick foliage and fell directly upon the teenage wizard, causing the blade to glimmer harshly and wrapping its bearer in a soft white glow.

When all colours and shapes dissolved into a grey fog once more, Harry was still wondering what the hell all that was about.

***

Harry knew what the next dream would be as soon as he reached the ground. The jovial shouts, the cackling laughter, the running footsteps were still fresh in his memory. He saw his seventeen-years-old self, running and groaning at every step, trying to escape the Death Eaters chasing him across the Forest. He saw himself reach the archer-trees and pass through, saw the Death Eaters follow up to the river where they died in atrocious agony, saw himself stumble to the clearing where Rosalyn's tree stood and collapse there, his face finally relaxing as he sank into a deep coma.

Harry saw himself after several days, awfully pale and skinny, gauchely rolling down the hill to land in the soft mud of the lake, before standing up again to make his obstinate way back to Hogwarts. He saw, weeks later, two boys chasing one another on the very same muddy bank - Tom Riddle's handsome face contorting with rage as he was forced to hand-fight a seventeen-years-old Harry, who was pale and feverish, but propelled by rage and the certainty of having nothing to lose. That was what it had felt like, at the time.

The boys fought clumsily, using fists, feet, nails and teeth, trying to get each other's head underwater and throwing handfuls of mud into their opponent's eyes. Harry noted with some satisfaction that he was doing much of the attacking; Riddle, having never fought someone without magic, lacked the imagination that came from years of planning to give Dudley a taste of his own medicine. Unfortunately he was in far better shape than Harry, and smart enough to try and imitate Harry's fighting techniques.

Then, as Harry knew they would, the trees started singing. The war song, of which he had heard only bits during the great battle, had the same effect that the one he imagined rapid drums in the desert would have on Europeans. The trees' whispering voices rose to cadenced shouts. Even in the dream, Harry felt his heart vibrate in his chest to the savage rhythms. He was not at all surprised to see both him and Riddle sink to the ground with their arms over their heads, shuddering uncontrollably.

When the song ended, the younger Harry unsteadily got to his feet. Tom Riddle did not get up at all.

It was then that, for the last time, mist rose from the lake and wrapped itself around Harry, tearing him away from the past, while the song of the trees came to a murmured and melodious conclusion.

 

*****

AN: If you're confused by the last memory, check out the story thread on DLP at http://forums.darklordpotter.net/showthread.php?p=162516#post162516