Kjærlighet Verbrennt

VII.

The Great Hall was covered in yellow and black banners - the Hufflepuff crest hung above the teacher´s table, where Professor Sprout was beaming with pride. Dumbledore was reading the points for they year´s House Cup, though it was obvious who had won.

"And thanks to the unfathomable courage of Cedric Diggory, Hufflepuff receives this year´s House Cup," he finished. "Bon Appetit!"

Rotis cheered along with everyone else but paused before devouring her baked chicken dinner. Where was Cedric? He had single-handedly won this for them all, and he wasn´t at the Feast.

She nudged the boy next to her, Morris Delaney, and asked his whereabouts.

"Oh Cedric," he said through a mouthful of carrots. "He´s dead."

And he went back to his meal. Down at the end of the table, a round of `hip hip hoorays!´ was going up, all around her was laughter, eating, smiling, joking. No one noticed his absence. No one cared.

She felt a tap on her shoulder and turned around to see Harry Potter standing with his hands in his pockets.

"Uh, Rotis," he said, scuffing the ground with his shoes, not meeting her eyes. "I wanted to tell you something. . . "

And he suddenly looked up and grinned, his eyes taking on an unearthly green glow, hissing at her, "I killed Cedric! I killed Cedric! I did it I did it!" And he lifted his face and cackled, and the entire Great Hall laughed with him as the giant Badger crest crashed to the ground.

Rotis woke with a start, her breath coming in short gasps, the gauzy curtains of the girl´s dormitory fluttering in the breeze. The room was freezing, Rotis realized, her heart still pounding, and she slid out of her four-poster bed to close the window.

In the roomette next to her Gaiter was sleeping soundly, her pink hair taking on the shade of hunter green in the blue moonlight. Rotis heard Paisley snoring softly in the next bed over, and the two girls asleep in the bunk bed were both dreaming peacefully. No one was awake but her, but then, wasn´t that how it always was?

Mildly afraid of falling back to sleep lest the nightmare return or any even more painful memory dream take place, Rotis stood by the window, ignoring the chill as she scanned the horizon. A few owls flew around, their feet heavy with parcels for tomorrow´s post. The lake was serenely calm, the crescent moon mirrored it in, quiet ripples distorting the reflection. If she leaned out far enough, she could glimpse the Quidditch pitch in eerie silence, Hagrid´s tiny hut with dark windows only a ways beyond it. Everything was calm, quiet, just as it should be.

And then she saw it again.

She watched in horror as a golden glow radiated from the exact same spot she had espied at practice today. She recognized the glow, knew it could only be caused by one thing, one spell only one person knew, a boy who had been dead for a year. She watched in motionless fear as it pulsed brightly, calling her, beckoning her out of the window and into the forest.

Snapping awake, Rotis felt all her limbs jolt with electricity, all the remnants of her sleep gone. She rummaged around under her bed, grabbing a cloak and throwing it on, wrapping her scarf crudely around her neck, snatching her broom from where it leaned against the bedpost, and leaping out the window, hovering outside momentarily to make sure all the girls were asleep before zooming towards the light.

The night air was chilly, her sweat from the nightmare freezing as she flew over the grounds. Owls hooted as she passed, but she was only aware of that glow in the forest, that golden, pulsating light. Even when it suddenly went out, she flew on, heedless to the plethora of rules she was breaking, a burning will she hardly recognized as her own fueling her.

She passed over the massive oak tree, its branches empty of the fairy lights she had seen dancing between them. Still, she was positive they had left only moments ago, and she landed roughly in the clearing, dropping her broom and running barefoot to the tree.

A million memories flooded her mind as she pressed a hand to the smooth, familiar bark of the tree. It was warm to the touch, a sure sign that the lights had been there, though the only light now came from the waning moon above, casting shadows on the limbs, sharpening the silhouette. Turning her back on the tree, she squinted into the dark forest, regrets for leaving her wand in the castle dimming her hope. She knew better than to enter the Forbidden Forest even with the assurance that had sent her out here raging inside her, knowing the dangers of its trees were multiplied during the night. She listened, craning her ear toward all the sounds of the wood. Everything was quiet, still.

"Rotis. . . "

A voice. Her hope tripled and her fear ran colder. It couldn´t be, it was impossible, Cedric was dead. Wasn´t he?

"Rotis. . . "

She spun around, her stomach in knots, her heart leaping out of her chest.

"Cedric?" she called back, her voice feeble, her mind painfully alert, her veins coated in ice. The moon shone down on the tree, shadows moving on its limbs, the wind rattling the leaves of the forest. "Cedric, is that you?"

How could it be him? He was gone, everyone knew that. But how could the tree light up if Cedric and only Cedric knew the spell?

"Cedric?" she called louder, a tear falling down her face. "Cedric, please come out, please," she pleaded, desperation breaking in her voice. "Cedric?"

This wasn´t a miracle, this was a nightmare, worse than anything her own imagination could dream up. Her conscience screamed questions at her, her sense demanded she fly back to the castle now, but her heart required she stay put and find him. The waiting, the knowing he could walk out of those trees at any moment, but being helpless to stop it, was ripping her in half.

"Rotis. . . " came the voice again.

It was him, it was him, it was him.

"I´m coming!" she shouted, and forgetting any warning she had ever heard about werewolves and boggarts and vampire bats that lurked within the trees, she ran into the forest, tears sliding down her face as all the light disappeared.

But the minute the blackness surrounded her, all sounds disappeared. She stumbled blindly, the darkness coating everything like a thick blanket of pure ink. But he was here, she thought feverishly as she sliced her foot open on a thorn in the grass, she had heard him. Her shoulder banged against a tree trunk as she pressed on, ignoring the pain it caused, the ache in her chest twice as strong. She was going to find him, she thought as her foot met with a tree root and she fell to the ground, she would find him if it killed her.

Her tears mingled with the dirty ground and she felt the grime in her teeth, felt the rip in her robes, the blood seeping out of her cut. No voice came, as none had since she´d enter this cursed place, and she didn´t get up, crying freely as all her hopes for the impossible were replaced with the cold dark truth of the forest around her.

Her mourning was cut short as twigs began snapping around her. She froze, trying to silence her heartbeat, a last teardrop joining the dirt.

"It´s a human, Figwit!" a low, growling, and obviously infuriated voice said beside her.

"Calm, calm, Hermes," said another voice soothingly. She heard approaching footsteps as her pulse raced with fear, her overwhelming sadness momentarily diminished.

"Daughter of Eve," said the nicer voice, and she felt a hand touch her shoulder. "Are you well?"

She slowly lifted her gaze off the ground and met the two Aegean blue eyes that were regarding her. She could find no words to answer him as she felt herself being vacuumed into those eyes, all her secrets revealed, all her thoughts heard, and she only watched him back, wondering what fortune Fate had dealt her.

A sudden light came into the blue of his eyes, and they twinkled as though dappled with silver. "You´re the Wood maiden," he said, his voice excited and awed.

"Figwit, we cannot tally here, no matter who she be! The intruder - "

"Patience, Hermes," said Figwit as he helped Rotis to her feet, his blue eyes never leaving hers, even as his companion made an obvious show of his disapproval. Even in the darkness, she could tell something was amiss - the man´s chest was as high as her face, and his dim outline was of an unfamiliar shape.

"Figwit. . . " growled the other, and she heard his hooves stamp the ground, the swish of his tail, realizing with a jolt that she had been found by a pair of centaurs.

"You have come from the tree, yes?" asked Figwit, and she nodded dumbly, in awe of these creatures no student had ever seen. "We will take you back there - Hermes will lead us."

"We haven´t the time, and you are wholly aware of it - "

"She is the maiden of the Xanthus," Figwit said, and immediately Hermes attitude changed.

"She is Rotis?"

Figwit nodded. Hermes looked closely at Rotis, and even with the cloak of night she felt exposed under the watch of his onyx gaze. He turned silently and walked ahead, his hooves clopping softly on the forest floor, Figwit and Rotis falling in line behind him.

"How do you know me?" she asked, her voice still shaky, only dimly aware of the pain in her cut foot and bruised shoulder.

"He has spoken much of you," said Figwit mysteriously.

She suddenly remembered why she had come out here. "Cedric?" she asked hopefully, the ache in her chest rearing up again.

"The Xanthus."

"Cedric Diggory," she went on, ignoring the centaur´s response. "He´s tall and has gray eyes - he was just here - "

"There have been no humans here for moons and moons," Figwit replied. "Even he doesn´t tread these paths."

"But I saw him," she insisted, ignorant to the danger of upsetting a centaur. "No, I heard him, he was here, the tree - "

"You are delirious, Daughter Rotis," he said, capering beside her. "Only we forest creatures dwell within the wood."

"But I know I he was here," she said sadly, her voice quieting. "I heard him calling."

"There are many voices in the timbers," said Figwit as they entered the clearing, the moonlight strikingly bright in comparison with the wood. "Many deceitful, and many beautiful, and often the same one."

Rotis gaped at the centaur´s regal stature fully visible in the pale moonlight. Golden curls adorned his head, and beneath his inhumanly blue eyes he was clean shaven, the corners of his mouth turned up in a wry smile. Hermes next to him was just as noble, only with much darker features and a full beard, two nubby horns peeking out from his thick black hair. Both centaurs faced her, staring unblinkingly into her darting eyes, and she felt she would crumble from all the attention - though she was used to students looking at her, she had never been under this intense a watch.

"Go now, Rotis Wood, and fly back to your castle. Speak of us to no one," said Hermes, his voice grave, his black eyes emotionless. "Enter this forest no more."

Figwit strode towards her, his flaxen horse body shining even in the dimness, and she felt utterly overwhelmed, as though she had never roused from her dream and this was still part of her reverie. With a gentle hand he reached down and pushed her hair out her face, staring straight into her soul with his azure eyes.

"You have the eyes of a centaur," he said, and then, bending in till he was beside her ear, he whispered. "He is waiting for you."

Then both of them were gone, the only proof they had ever existed lying in the already cluttered confines of her mind, and in the tranquil peace she suddenly felt overtake her.

_____________________

Dicken opened his eyes to find himself against a tree in a densely wooded forest late at night. Silvery shadows and pools of eerie blue and phosphorescent green light were pooled between huge roots that crisscrossed the floor, and the stars were unusually visible between the branches overhead. An owl hooted nearby while crickets chirruped in the grass, and soon there would be the sound of hooves as the centaurs approached.

Dicken had had this dream before, along with the dream where he was on a hilltop surrounded by standing stones and the sky was red, and the dream where he was sitting in a campsite with strangers he knew were his friends, and worst, the dream where his house was being attacked by fierce warriors with vermilion hair and eyes he couldn´t escape, and try as he could to fight back, he couldn´t move.

He never told anyone about the dreams; sometimes talk of them would show up during breakfast, and while his friends struggled to remember just why they were having a cup of tea with the giant squid in the lake, he kept his mouth shut, knowing he could retell his own reveries as though he was reading them from a book.

Dicken stood to greet the two centaurs that he had become so familiar with - Hermes with the wiry black hair and Figwit with eyes like a pair of deep-sea jewels. They bowed, as they always did, till they were bent nearly double, and when they were straightened Dicken noticed the anxiety on Figwit´s usually peaceful face.

"Bless the Fates that you have come tonight," he said. "We are in dire need."

Dicken drew his eyebrows together. This wasn´t what usually happened in his dream . . .

"What´s wrong?" he asked.

"The stars are aligning in unwelcome patterns," said Figwit while Hermes, who was less apt to ramble as his kind were known for, said plainly, "A unicorn. She is hurt, from trying to stall the intruder."

"Intruder?"

Hermes nodded gravely. "Hurry. He is still on the loose - "

"Why can´t you help her?" Dicken asked. Usually, the centaurs just spoke of ancient prophecies and astronomical changes while Dicken waited patiently to wake up. This particular dream had actually become a little boring, though he would never tell the centaurs that.

"We are but hybrids," said Figwit. "She needs the touch of one who is whole. Now come," he said, and galloped off through the forest. Dicken ran behind, feeling the centaurs´ urgency, figuring it best to go along. As he ran, he became aware of a need radiating from somewhere ahead of them, and an instinctual drive to help suddenly reared up in him, and he ran faster, the neediness growing stronger with every step he took. Stranger than the sense of it was Dicken´s recognition of the feeling - he´d found himself in lucky situations where his help had been needed more than once. Back home on the farm, when he´d been but a wee lad, he was constantly was finding baby birds who´d fallen out of their nests, or arriving just as the cow was about to give birth to her spring calf. The worst case of it had happened at school once, but it was something he didn´t like remembering, let alone comparing to a dream he was having.

The centaurs suddenly halted, and Dicken drew in a breath as he saw what was before him.

A unicorn stood with her silver horn wedged between a fork in a tree - Dicken was unsure whether the intruder or the centaurs had done it, while her inky eyes rolled in frenzy as she saw the two half-horses approach, and she made as though to bolt. But then her eye rested on Dicken, and she stopped her futile bucking, her moon-white flanks stopped heaving, and she seemed almost glad to see him.

"Figwit, look!" said Hermes, and the two centaurs turned to see a glow emanating from somewhere between the thick trunks. Both had looks of barely stifled panic on their faces, and Hermes bolted off towards it.

"We must go, and at once. She will be safe under your care," said Figwit, glancing nervously at the unicorn. He reached out and laid a hand on Dicken´s shoulder. "Beware the Gemini - they have come of age, and they are only waiting." And he ran off to join Hermes.

Always the warning about the Gemini. None of his dreams ended without it, and Dicken still had no idea as to what it meant, but these thoughts were abandoned as he turned back to the unicorn.

Her horn being stuck was not the last of her worries - her sides were raked with cuts and scratches, drops of liquid silver blood dribbling out from a few, painting the iridescent fur. She pawed the ground impatiently, and Dicken, scanning the forest to see if he was alone, wishing the centaurs hadn´t left, timidly approached.

He couldn´t fathom how he was supposed to help a wounded unicorn when even centaurs, who seemed in absolute control and impossible to disturb, were at a loss. He´d been around plenty of horses at the farm back home, but horses didn´t bleed silver blood, and the two were hardly comparable.

She blinked at him, and he waited, thinking, afraid to touch the creature, let alone mend her. But he had to, he knew that. It didn´t feel dreamish anymore as he quieted his thoughts, waiting for the knowledge of what to do to appear, then reaching out to one of the long, bleeding cuts and pressing his palm against it.

The unicorn shivered as Dicken felt a sudden surge of warmth flood out from his chest to his arm to his hand and the mercury blood that had been seeping down her side suddenly flowed backwards, back into the gash and the gash itself sealed up as though it had never been there.

He stepped back, his breath coming hard, looking from where the cut had been to his hand, the lines on his palm etched with silver blood. This couldn´t be right. He couldn´t have just cured a unicorn wound with his bare hand.

The unicorn stared at him wordlessly, no answer coming from her onyx eye. Her hoof stamped the ground again, and this time Dicken felt as though someone else was with him, inside him doing all this as he pressed both hands against a wound, and then another, and another, till his palms were wet with sweat and silver, and the unicorn´s side was faultlessly white and glowing again.

When he stepped back, she simply slipped her horn out from the tree and neighed, a sound that was somehow familiar to Dicken, like chimes in the wind. Dicken waited, feeling entirely out of place now that she was no longer injured, and she shook her head, her mane like tinsel, before bounding out of sight, leaving him alone in the forest, waiting to wake up.