Foes and Friends in the Forest
Chapter Ten
As it turned out, it had been totally unnecessary for Angelina to distract the house elves. Not only had the decoy not worked (besides sending FuFu into a fit of hysterics over Angelina’s health), but once Emma was caught trying to nick the baking sheets and the two girls had explained their purpose, the house elves not only gave them the baking sheets, but also plied them with food.
Thus, several minutes later, Angelina and Emma were happily on their way with two baking sheets and a thermos of hot cocoa. Emma had explained that, in the absence of sleds, baking sheets would substitute perfectly. Angelina, who had never gone sledding in her life, decided to trust Emma’s expertise on the matter.
“How’d you know where the kitchen was?” Angelina questioned as they made their way back to the Entrance Hall.
“Pettigrew,” Emma said, her eyes sparkling with glee. “The little rodent can’t go a full twelve hours between dinner and breakfast without food. Lily told me he’s always sneaking out in the middle of the night.”
Angelina still felt a slight sting of jealousy whenever Emma mentioned her Gryffindor friend, but she bit her tongue to refrain from voicing any criticisms of the girl, reminding herself that Emma was a Mudblood too. Besides, she’d watched Evans in Charms and the girl wasn’t half bad. She hadn’t quite memorized the textbooks like Angelina had, but she’d outshone many of Angelina’s fellow Ravenclaws, even those who had also memorized the textbook.
Evans was also brilliant at Potions. So even though her father had always said Muggles were daft and Mudbloods dim-witted, Angelina couldn't help but feel a grudging respect for such a talented witch. After all, Purebloods were known and respected for their talent, accomplishments, and intelligence, so clearly it was these qualities that really mattered anyway. And Lily Evans was certainly no idiot; in fact, she was rather intelligent.
Angelina pulled herself away from her musings on the Mudblood Gryffindor and back to Emma’s account of how she found the kitchens.
“And,” Emma continued, clearly having just given a vast amount of information about her espionage episode, most of which Angelina had missed while thinking about Lily Evans, “he led me right to the kitchens. Of course I couldn’t go in, or he would have seen me. Otherwise I would have known how friendly the house elves are. I should have figured; that dim-wit wouldn’t be able to nick food to save his life.”
“Well done!” Angelina complimented. “We’ll have to go on more explorations together “ I’ve heard there’s a secret passage that leads out of Hogwarts! Wouldn’t that be brilliant?”
Emma’s eyes gleamed with curiosity. “I wonder where it could be.”
“I don’t know, but we’ve got to figure it out before Black and Potter do,” Angelina said while pulling up her hood and getting ready to face the outdoors by casting a warming charm on her boots.
“Why are you so obsessed with beating Black?” Emma questioned, tugging her scarf tightly around her neck and mouth.
“He’s a prat,” came the muffled reply from Angelina.
Emma felt the answer was a little more complicated than that, but she let the subject drop for now since they had just exited the warmth of the castle and were now standing in the freezing winds of the blizzard.
“Are you still sure you want to go sledding? We could wait for the storm to die down,” Angelina yelled over a gust of wind. She received her answer only when Emma thrust one baking sheet at her and hopped on her own.
Soon the two girls were hurtling across the grounds. Angelina found that she was enjoying herself despite the cold. She laughed as her sheet slid faster and she went flying past Emma. Racing on, she saw the completely even patch of snow out to her left that showed where the lake lay underneath a blanket of snow. She positioned her body so that the sled would head more to the right and avoid the lake, as she didn’t want to find herself slipping across thin ice. And she definitely didn’t want to pay the giant squid a visit.
“I bet I can beat you!” Emma yelled, coming up next to Angelina as the two girls hopped off of their sleds to climb the next hill.
“To where?” Angelina challenged.
“Edge of the forest. No magic allowed.”
“See you there!” Angelina called over her shoulder as she sprinted off.
Angelina was winning as she neared the forest. Her cheeks were burning with the cold and her lungs stung as she pelted up the next slope with Emma (who had led most of the race) close on her heels. Somewhere along the way her scarf had fallen off, but she was not about to slow down to look for it. A little ways away she could see the forest looming, dark and forbidden. Angelina smiled in triumph as she threw herself down on the sled and flew along the hill. Her eyes scanned the horizon in anticipation of reaching the finish. However, mid-hill Angelina threw herself to a stop, tumbling off her sled. Emma, who had been hot on her heels, collided with Angelina’s baking sheet and slipped off her sled too.
“What“” Emma started to cry before Angelina cast a Silencing Charm on her friend, dragging her down behind a small mound of snow.
Emma looked confused and startled as Angelina touched a finger to her lips to indicate that Emma should be silent. When Emma nodded her head in assent, Angelina released the Silencing Charm and pointed downwards to the darkly cloaked figure just entering the forest.
“Slughorn,” Emma whispered in confusion.
Angelina nodded, her eyes fixed on the waddling figure.
“What do you think he’s doing?” Emma questioned again, her voice barely audible above the gusts of wind.
“I don’t know,” Angelina mused quietly.
“Do you think he’s getting some potions ingredients?”
“In the middle of a blizzard?”
“No. I suppose not.”
“Let’s follow him,” Angelina suggested.
“What? Into the forest? It’s forbidden.”
But Angelina wasn’t listening; she was already sliding down the hill after the quickly disappearing professor.
Luckily, the snow kept Slughorn’s footprints visible, and the two Ravenclaw girls were able to track him from a good distance. They continued through the forest, and the trees grew thicker and taller as they went, making it darker.
“Lena,” Emma whispered, her voice sounding loud in the unnatural silence, “let’s go back. You look cold.”
It was true. Now that they had stopped running, Angelina really missed her scarf. In fact, she was so cold her teeth were chattering uncontrollably.
“I’m fine,” Angelina lied, her teeth chattering even more. She frowned at the ground. It was getting hard to track the footprints; they were almost covered with snow in the places where the snow had managed to fall through the trees or were absent where the snow was not on the ground.
Emma was about to say she was lying when a noise from behind them made the girls jump.
“What was that?” Emma squeaked.
“I don’t know,” Angelina admitted, her voice shaking even more as she drew out her wand.
“Let’s go back,” Emma urged as the two girls edged quietly back in the direction they had come.
Again the noise sounded, now from their right. Whatever it was, it was definitely moving toward them.
“I heard there are vampires in here,” Emma moaned.
“Let’s hope that’s the worst of it,” Angelina said, wishing her teeth would stop chattering so loudly as she held out her wand in the direction of the noise. Her hand was shaking.
The noise was now constant and coming at them with increasing speed.
The two girls, clutching at each other, had stopped moving. They were now shaking from more than just cold.
Suddenly, three dark shapes burst from a bush. There were shouts of “stupefy!”.
The voices were not just Angelina and Emma’s. Angelina recognized them, and in a flash of red she saw the face of Sirius Black.
“Black?” she called, almost in disbelief.
“Angelina?”
“Lestrange?” came the voice of Potter.
“Potter.”
“Lumos,” Emma whispered from beside her.
The tip of Emma’s wand lit up, and there stood Black, Potter, and Pettigrew.
“What are you three doing here?” Angelina demanded.
“We could ask you the very same thing,” replied Black.
“We asked first,” Emma told him.
“Alright,” Potter said. “We were looking for you.”
“No you weren’t.”
“Really? Well what were you two doing?”
“Looking for unicorns,” Angelina lied.
“Looking for unicorns in the middle of a blizzard?” Black repeated skeptically.
“Ye-ye-ye-s-s-s-s,” Angelina chattered.
“You’re freezing,” Black stated. “Where’s your bloody hat? Have you lost your mind? It’s freezing out here, Angelina,” he reprimanded.
“Thanks, Black,” Angelina snapped. “I hadn’t noticed.”
“Come on, you girls need to get warmed up.”
“Pettigrew doesn’t look that great either,” Angelina retorted.
“Yeah, I think we all better go back, Sirius,” Potter recommended.
Black looked like he wanted to stay, but after glancing around said, “Alright; Peter does look frozen.”
“Oh, good I thought we were going to continue looking for Remus all day,” Peter said happily as the group trudged back in the direction of Hogwarts. “Ow, what did you step on my foot for James?”
“You were looking for Remus?” Emma said quickly.
“Uh, yeah. Playing hide-and-go seek. You know,” Black supplied.
“And you’re just going to leave him out here?”
“Well . . . he must have gone back to the castle because he was sick. He’s probably in the hospital wing.”
“He was playing hide and seek in the blizzard when he was sick?” Emma said skeptically.
“No stranger than looking for a unicorn.”
He had a point there, so Emma shut up. Angelina was too cold to really care what the boys had been up to, though she suspected it was probably to prepare for some prank or something. Now that she was no longer on a mission to discover what Professor Slughorn was up to, the trek through the forest seemed longer. Her toes felt frozen.
“Come on,” Black said to Potter, veering off slightly to the right. “Let’s stop by Hagrid’s to warm up before we head up to the castle. Maybe he can lend Angelina a hat.”
Angelina didn’t even bother denying that she needed a hat. She was so cold by now that she didn’t care what “Hagrid’s” was as long as it warm. Emma, however, did.
“What’s ‘Hagrid’s’? I didn’t think there were any stores on the Hogwarts grounds.”
“It’s not a store. He’s the Gamekeeper,” Potter explained.
“We just can’t let him see that we’re coming out of the forest or he’ll give us a lecture,” Black warned.
“I wonder if he’ll have anything to eat?” Pettigrew voiced.
It turned out Hagrid did have something to eat, but only if your teeth were boulders. His rock cakes were harder than most rocks, but the clotted cream was good and so was the hot tea. Once Angelina was sufficiently warm, she took advantage of Hagrid’s knowledge of the Forbidden Forest to ask him a few questions.
“Hagrid, what would someone want in the Forbidden Forest?”
“All sorts o’ stuff really,” Hagrid answered. “Depends what kind o’ person he is.”
“What’s in there that someone would risk going there when there’s a blizzard?” Angelina pressed. The Gryffindor boys’ attentions were on Cupcake, an ironically named brute of a dog, whom Potter tried to teach to play dead.
“Well, I’d only be guessin’, but I reckon it would be summat secretive. Summat he wouldn’ want anyone ter see him get. Tha’s why he’d go out when no one’s about,” Hagrid mused as he poured Emma some more tea. Then he looked up sharply. “Yeh didn’ see someone going out there this morning, did yeh? It’d be deathly out there fer more than an hour, an’ a lot of people get lost if they don’ know the place well.”
“Oh, no,” Angelina quickly lied. “I was just curious about what kind of beasts are out there.”
That was all the invitation Hagrid needed to launch into a long discussion on the beasts of the Forbidden Forests. It was only when Emma said that they’d better get back to the castle to study that Hagrid let them go with an invitation to come back whenever they wished.
“Poor Hagrid,” Emma sighed as she and Angelina entered the Ravenclaw common room. “He seems so lonely down there all by himself. I wonder what happened that made him decide to be a Gamekeeper. He can’t be very old, and he’s not a squib like Filch. I wonder . . .” Emma trailed off in thought and Angelina went upstairs to retrieve her books on invisibility. The two of them spent a pleasant evening in the warmth of the Ravenclaw common room pouring over books.
Angelina’s determination to learn to become invisible renewed with the morning’s episode. She had not forgotten about Slughorn, and was determined to figure out what a comfort-seeking person like him had been doing trudging into the Forbidden Forest in the middle of a blizzard.