Benign Malevolence

It was cold, but that was to be expected since it was January. Cold sunlight sent golden rays through the trees, falling onto the lake in long slants of dusty gold, making the ice sparkle and shimmer poetically. The wind blew through the trees with a rustling sigh of admiration, and for once the Forbidden Forest looked peaceful, serene, mysterious golden shadows benign rather than malevolent.

Of course, the Marauders were completely oblivious to breath-taking scenery as well as atmosphere, so it came to no surprise to Peter to find his friends yelling happily as they raced around the clearing. The forest ended here, bridging smoothly with the frozen surface of the lake, looking deceptively strong, but ice had been broken off by the Marauders, who were contentedly sucking on it. Well, except for Sirius. But Sirius was a very exceptional child.

"You do know that water is probably filthy dirty?" Peter asked wryly as Sirius frantically tried to pull his tongue off a triangle of ice blocking half of his vision.

"Hey Sirius, that's why you get it wet before you lick it," James laughed, holding his own piece of ice in a mittened hand.

"Mmph! Mmmph mme!" Sirius grunted, pulling furiously on the piece of ice.

Remus grinned. "Sorry Padfoot, I didn't quite catch that. Did you say you didn't need help?"

Sirius shook his head vigorously and shot Remus a dirty look. "Mmph mme!"

"I think he wants to do it on his own, what about you, Pete?" James asked, his brown eyes sparkling with mischief as he grinned at Sirius.

Sirius glared furiously and gave a great heave, pulling the piece of ice from his tongue and dropping it, screeching as he grabbed his tongue. The Marauders laughed.

"Oh thanks guys," Sirius said sarcastically, running his tongue over his teeth. James just laughed.

"No problem, Padfoot ol' pal," he said seriously, patting Sirius on the back. Sirius grabbed him and pulled him down to the ground, twisting his arm backwards as James fought to get Sirius off him.

"Now, now, you two, no flirting," Remus said lightly.

"We are not flirting!" came the unanimous shout.

"Oh come on, we're not blind--" Remus began teasingly, but Sirius and James each grabbed a leg, pulling him down.

"Get his arms, Pete, we'll tickle him!" Sirius shouted, grabbing at Remus's legs. Peter looked at Sirius like he was crazy. Sirius, who got this look so often he couldn't tell the difference from it and a regular look, ignored him and sat on Remus's legs to a cry of pain from Remus as James began tickling him.

Any outsider who happened to be near the Forbidden Forest would have thought that someone was dying, so tortured were the shrieks that emerged from that forest, but Remus was not to be so lucky. His face red, kicking and screaming, he finally got James and Sirius off, and they all laughed and rolled over to sit side by side on the ground, Peter dumping down beside Remus. All four stared at the lake, three panting.

"Let's jump out on the ice!" Sirius said brighly, only to get a silmultaneous: "NO!" from the Marauders. He grinned teasingly--nothing disheartened him for long.

"Only if we threw you in first," Remus added. There was a silence and Peter absently threw a rock over the branches of some trees. It skittered across the ice and came to rest about ten feet from the bank. Instant competition ensued.

"Oh, that was pathetic, I know I can get a mile past that rock--"

"Hey Remus, give me that big rock by you, will you?"

"No way, get your own rock!"

"I bet I can crack the ice!"

The surface of the ice was soon littered with rocks, and the highly amusing sight that Snape would give galleons to see, all four Marauders crawling on their hands and knees, looking for rocks, soon ensued. Soon they started to crawl in different directions, so caught up in their individual searches they didn't notice the group drifting apart. Remus crawled back away from the lake, digging back through leaves and throwing sticks aside, looking for decent-sized rocks.

Suddenly, a gust of wind blew leaves from under his fingers and he looked up, amber eyes wary and alert. It was silent, eerily silent, and he could hear his heart thumping. Where were the other Marauders? Trees were all around him, thick pines and oaks that shadowed him in a golden-tinted darkness. The wind boew and the cold came with it; he shivered and pulled his cloak tighter around him. He couldn't see through the trees, and suddenly he felt eyes on him, unseen eyes making his skin crawl.

His eyes flickered back and forth, and suddenly focused on a spot between two trees. A little girl--was it a little girl?--was standing there, the color of the woods around her, so small she couldn't have been five years old. Something was wrong with her, though--her eyes were the wrong shape and color, and she shouldn't fade like that...should she? She looked right into Remus's eyes and suddenly it seemed hard to think at all--her eyes were so odd...

"Go away," she said softly.

Remus blinked, and he was alone. He turned around, still on his knees, looking for the girl, but there was nothing but trees around him. The bare branches above his head crisscrossed in eerie, distorted shapes with gaping dark eyes and wide laughing mouths. Maybe there had been no little girl, maybe it was just his imagination, imagined the voice. He stood up slowly, the rustling of the leaves loud in the silence, and started to back up out of the clearing. Distorted, twisted eyes watched him from trees, silent but disapproving. His feet caught at a root, pulling him to the ground, and he screamed instinctively.

Sirius stopped suddenly as he heart a scream, still on his knees. He had gone down along the shore of the lake, not even noticing he was alone. His ears strained for the sound, to hear it it was repeated, but he heard nothing again. Had he imagined it? As he listened, he became too conscious of the silence. It was too quiet. He stood up, muscles tense and senses alert, looking for the other Marauders, but there were only trees around him. He turned around, looking back from where he came, but wind blew through the empty clearing, dust swirling in the sunlight to the leafy floor. He felt eyes on his back, watching him the deceptive sunlight, and stepped back against a tree.

Wind blew through the trees to his right, and Sirius stiffened, his eyes darting to the spot. A boy stood between two trees--something about him was not right. His eyes were wrong, somehow; too wide, too pointy around the edges, too long, the wrong color, that deep red. Sirius couldn't take his eyes away from the boy's.

"Go away," he whispered.

Sirius stumbled back against the tree, sidestepping and falling on a branch, which cracked with a loud snap and fell to the ground, Sirius with it. The boy was gone.

Peter heard a crack ring through the woods and looked up, startled. He was alone in the clearing, and he felt a shiver of fear run down his spine; the air seemed colder. "Guys?" he asked, and his voice was soft, barely a whisper. Leaves rustled under him as he stood up uncertainly, his beady eyes darting around the clearing. Wind whispered softly in the trees, their rustling cruel and malevolent.

Peter's eyes darted and stopped suddenly. A girl sat on a fallen tree near him, and something was wrong with her--her body melted into the background around her, her eyes too long and pointy, a shade of vivid red that didn't occur in nature, not unless there was death. It was the only color in her face, the only color in her body. "Go away," she said softly.

Peter took a step forward, focusing on her red eyes. "Why?" he asked, and his voice was hoarse, scratchy, grating in the silence, where her's had seemed to flow into the silence and ring with it. The girl merely gazed at him.

"This is not a place for you," she whispered, and her voice was made of hundreds of different voices, a hundred set of red eyes watching him. Her figure faded until it was nothing, but the eyes grew in intensity. "Go away!" the voices hissed, and the cry was inhuman, shrill, keening, grating as the ice grated against one another. Peter stumbled, falling forward with a shriek, throwing the rock in his hand out onto the ice where it struck with a loud crack. Ice shattered as icy water bobbed over the surface.

James looked up as he heard something crack. He knelt at the edge of the water, holding a slab of ice. The rock crashed through the ice, sending a network of cracks running through to the edge, where James backed up, dropping his ice. Freezing water lapped onto the rock where he had been sitting a moment before, leaving a sheen of ice as it lapped in and out. James watched it, fascinated, and his eyes traveled out to the cracks of ice, following their zigzagging pattern through the stillness to the hole the rock had cracked.

A boy stood on the ice, a boy whose figure faded into the background, whose eyes focused on James's and captivated him. Something seemed wrong in James's mind, but it was so hard to think--the eyes were not right, the color, the shape, the pupil too dialated...he couldn't tear his eyes away.

"Go away," the boy said softly, sternly.

James's foot slipped on the icy rock and he slid half-into the icy water, shouting and screaming for help as his leg cried out with every nerve freezing to the bone. Leaves rustled as Sirius, Remus, and Peter ran towards his voice, clinging to it like it was their last lifeline. Sirius got to James first, and both their faces were deathly white as he grabbed James's arm, hauling him out of the water. Remus and Peter were a heartbeat behind, all three pulling up onto the bank.

"Let's go," Peter said with startling authority, and they all four broke into a run towards the safety of the castle and the grounds, their fear outweighing their desire to explore. They made as much noise as they could in the eerily silent woods, shouting and yelling and kicking up leaves as they went to stop the silence and the red eyes. They were safe together.

Red eyes watched them go.