Sînge

CHAPTER 3

A Displaced Awakening

The boy opened his eyes, squinting in the bright sunlight and wondering where he was. He had a fleeting vision of a dark shadow vanishing into the trees before his eyes fluttered shut, and he was asleep again.

He awoke with the sun warming his face, mosquitoes whining in his ear, and a dried leaf stuck up his nose. Sleeping on the ground was terribly uncomfortable. He seemed to have sleep-rolled himself into a ball. He exhaled through his left nostril to remove the leaf and sat up to examine his surroundings. He was lying on warm grass underneath a pile of leaves, not in between the two tree roots where he had been the night before.

His memory was a bit blurry.

He remembered stuffing himself into the vanishing cupboard on the first floor, wanting to test his theory that Vanishing was harmless to the vanish-ee. He recalled a lot of wind, a pressure on his eardrums, and a feeling, though painless, of being squashed by a giant hand into a grain of sand. He had regained consciousness in the midst of a dark, unknown forest. Deciding from the weather and types of trees that he must at least be somewhere in Northern Europe, he had resolved to wait until morning to decide what to do. Now, it seemed as if all his planning had been needless, as someone, or something, had returned him to Hogwarts. Either that, or vanishing caused hallucinations of shadow-creatures running about in trees.

Yawning and rubbing his eyes and aching back, he made his way sleepily up to the castle, through the portrait of the Fat Lady and pushed open the door of his dormitory, hoping to get a couple minutes of sleep before classes started.

A strange, yet not unfamiliar, sight met his eyes. His fellow fifth years Zachary James and Elliot Sheiling were sitting on one of the red four poster beds, watching a third boy, who was kneeling on the ground, fists raised to the heavens, a look of fury and anguish transforming his visage.

"The raging rocks!" he roared in anguish to the stone ceiling.

"The shivering shocks!" he threw himself upon a bedpost and held on as if clinging to life itself.

"Shall break the locks!" he collapsed onto the fluffy red carpet and strained at the twine binding his wrists together, finally breaking it, panting with the effort. Suddenly, upon seeing the boy standing in the doorway, he launched himself forwards and grabbed the hem of his robes.

"Albus! You're alive!"

"Get up, Iggy," yawned Albus Dumbledore by way of greeting. "A Midsummer Night's Dream again?" he asked, indicating his friend's brown sack-like shirt and trousers. Ignatius Weasley's lifelong ambition was to be on stage, acting. Every so often, he would treat (or force, depending on the moods of) the others to watch his interpretations of selections from plays, some of which he wrote himself. At the present, he was working through a Shakespeare phase.

"But, seriously," Iggy said in his normal voice and usual state of emotion, "I thought you were a goner. I checked all the places the other things vanished to, even the upstairs toilet. Disgusting place, I could barely see straight with the smell! Maybe the cupboard does something different to humans...where did you wind up, anyways?"

"Oh, somewhere in a forest," said Albus, not wanting to go into too much detail because Zachary and Elliot were eyeing him dubiously.

"Well, let's go down to breakfast, then," said Iggy briskly, shooing the other two off the bed and out the door. He and Albus followed at a more leisurely pace.

"What was that about a forest?" Iggy asked with interest.

"It's rather strange," answered Albus, "because I ended up in the middle of a dark forest, but when I woke up in the morning, I was just outside Hogwarts! And there was something dark running into the trees."

"Maybe some dark creature carried you out into the open to eat you, but then got frightened away when it saw your face," joked Iggy.

"At least it could still run away," said Albus. "If it had captured you, the poor thing might have died of fright!" The boys laughed as they passed a group of Slytherins in a corridor.

"Been frolicking in the foliage again, Albus?" commented a Slytherin girl in a mocking voice, eyeing his leafy appearance.

"Never without you, darling," answered Iggy with a wink. The girl looked at both boys with distaste, then turned back to her friends. Ignoring her, the boys discussed the details of Albus's Vanishing all the way down to the Great Hall and through breakfast.

Their first lesson, Charms, was about transferring a certain object instantly from one place to another. They were practicing with bedroom slippers, which were all jumbled in a covered box in the corner of the classroom. The spell was commonly referred to as Snapping.

The Charms teacher, Professor Kostenka, who was also head of Gryffindor house, had told them that this was a much more difficult charm to master than Summoning.

"Summoning," he had said, while Snapping a sparkling red high-heeled slipper onto his desk, "requires a degree of concentration, but Snapping an object needs even more so, as it is a form of Apparating. You will need to master it flawlessly to even think about obtaining your apparation license later."

Professor Kostenka then put the class to work trying to Snap slippers to themselves, but most were having limited success.

"Appareo tail," said Iggy loudly, waving his wand in a tight spiral as they had been shown. A fuzzy white rabbit ear appeared on his desk, with a bit of stuffing poking out of the bottom. Iggy frowned at it.

"Appareo tail," he repeated, spiraling his wand with a vengeance. The rest of the rabbit slipper's head appeared, fixed onto the lone ear, along with its cotton ball tail. Iggy tapped his red slipper on the stone floor in mock annoyance, and Albus laughed.

"Not the most attractive rabbit I've seen."

The rabbit's tail was attached firmly over its left eye, like a fluffy overgrown eyebrow.

"It's a lot harder to do it in pieces," said Iggy defensively. The two of them had already mastered the skill of Snapping objects during the time last year when they were supposed to be studying for their O.W.L's. They were now experimenting to see if they could Snap things up in pieces, or splinch them, and get them to stick back together again.

"Appareo stuffing!" said Albus, without bothering to clear his thoughts and focus on his assigned floral slipper. To his surprise, his desk was suddenly covered in a mountain of white stuffing, and everyone was laughing at him. He glanced sheepishly around at everyone's deflated bedroom slippers, embarrassed.

"Come now, Mr. Dumbledore, concentrate!" said Professor Kostenka, although his gray eyes were twinkling. "Imagine the consequences if you weren't concentrating on Snapping one of your own particular pairs of underwear to yourself in the morning! This spell normally has a radius of about a hundred meters, you know!" The class ended with Professor Kostenka running back and forth between students who still needed help Snapping their slippers, and Albus and Iggy, who were now trying to Snap hats, shoes, and wands from the other students and hide them in desks. They had refrained from Snapping underwear after Professor Kostenka threatened to stuff them in the slipper box for other people to practice on.

That night after finishing their homework, Albus and Iggy were eating a roast chicken (nicked from the kitchen) in the middle of the common room, for lack of something better to do.

"Did you hear about this?" asked Albus, looking up from the most recent edition of the Daily Prophet. "The Ministry has proposed a bill to get rid of any dragons living close to a wizard or Muggle settlement. What dingbats."

"I can't think why they're allowed to just go out and kill innocent creatures," said Iggy, frowning around a mouthful of drumstick. "I thought they had special reserves for dragons."

"Well, I guess they're getting tired of doing Memory charms every time one of them flies over a Muggle farmhouse. But that's not what I meant, I don't really care much about the dragons, but it's just a waste of time, isn't it?" said Albus, now starting on a wing. "Don't worry, one of those dragon-lovers groups will protest, and it won't be carried through anyway." He smiled reassuringly, but Iggy still looked concerned.

"It's not funny," he said. "I know they're not particularly useful, but it's the principle of the thing. They just do what they were born to do, and even if we have a problem with it, it doesn't mean-"

"No need to get all worked up," Albus shrugged. "We'll never have to go dragon hunting, so there's nothing on our consciences. And I still haven't been able to figure out what it was that brought me out of the forest, assuming that I ended up in the Forbidden Forest, of course."

"Maybe it was a student?" suggested Iggy. Albus had been quite sure that the creature was at least human sized. "Maybe it's Maybelline? You know, Maybelline Smith, from Ravenclaw. I heard she's been given a week of detentions for being caught out of bed last night."

Albus shook his head.

"How could she have found me in the middle of the forest, or got to where I was? I doubt she can Apparate, even if she is the third best student in the year."

Albus and Iggy currently held positions one and two.

"Though," he continued, "I have to admit she's quite bright, for a Muggle-born."

"What does that have to do with anything?" Iggy asked sharply. "I hope you're not going to start with all that again."

Albus kept his mouth shut. He knew he had only said that out of habit. After being away from home for only one month, he had not yet completely gotten back into his school-self. He knew Iggy had a problem about him making those distinctions, so he tried to avoid it.

He didn't really consider it important, but...well, Muggle-borns were different, weren't they? There was just no way around that. The point was that Iggy always blew the whole thing out of proportion, but he still knew better than to set him off on one of his rants again.

Iggy squinted at him suspiciously for a second, as if daring him to argue, then went on.

"It must have been something that lives in the forest, then. But you said it was human-sized, so that only leaves centaurs, facing forwards of course, and the vampires."

"I'm quite sure it wasn't clip-clopping as it ran,"Albus said, chewing on a wing tip as he tried to remember. "But then it must have been a..."

The two boys exchanged a panicked look, then Iggy jumped up with a horrified expression and ran over to examine Albus's neck closely, using the light from his wand. Several third year girls by the fire ceased their endless chatter, startled at this sudden action.

"No marks," said Iggy with considerable relief. "Do you turn into a vampire if one bites you? Are the marks noticeable?"

"I don't know. I read that there's been no evidence to prove it, but it also said that not much is known about vampires. They're supposed to be quite dangerous..."

"Well," said Iggy, propping his feet up and grabbing the Pope's nose, "if you do start hankering after my blood, let me know, will you? Since you're not growing fangs as we speak, we've got to assume it was a student."

Albus nodded, but he still felt a little doubtful.

"I think I'm going out to the Forest tonight to see if I can find anything. Coming?"

"Don't worry about it," said Iggy. "I'm telling you, it was Maybelline. You're wasting you're time. Plus, I've got Quidditch practice tomorrow morning. Why don't you just check during the day? Tomorrow's Saturday."

"We're not allowed in the forest, remember? It'll be easy for someone to spot me in the daylight. See you later, and leave me a thigh at least," replied Albus, finishing off his wing, levitating the thigh in question to the ceiling for safekeeping, and heading for the stairs.

Instead of climbing up to the dormitory, however, he walked around to the shadowed part under the spiral stairs. He then glanced around for any unwanted spectators, and tapped a large flagstone with his wand, saying, "Reducio." A wide hole appeared in the floor as the stone shrunk away, and he lowered himself into it, thanking his high metabolism that he could still fit through. He stepped down a few rungs on the ladder, then whispered, "Lumos," and re-enlarged the stone to cover the hole. He and Iggy had discovered this passageway to the outside of the castle when they had been practicing the Reductor curse and he had accidentally blown apart the bush covering the outside entrance.

He descended the ladder and emerged a short while later near the greenhouses. The sun had set about two hours ago, but he still glanced up occasionally at the windows to see if anyone was watching as he made his way stealthily to the edge of the Forbidden Forest. Staying within sight of the edge of the trees, he walked towards the approximate place he thought he had woken up, noticing as he walked under it the unusual purple leaves of a tall tree.

Without warning, a few seconds after he reached his waking place, a sweet, tingling note parted the air, and he fell over, fast asleep.