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Harel Potter had been chosen as “a great leader” from the moment her parents had named her exactly so, with a true, “Gryffindor” name. But now, fighting through dead vines deep in the parched Shere Woodlands, she knew that she looked anything but that. Only the comforting companionship of the two figures behind her kept her standing tall and moving forward.
Harry was making her way towards a faint murmuring sound that she hoped was not a hallucination. Her throat was dry, and her fingers felt swollen and achy. The bags under her eyes and dirt on her forehead hinted to some necessary recovery time. Despite this, she would not stop until she found what she needed. The dry grass continued to crunch under her boots as she walked, not bothering to look for dangerous wildlife - everything here has been reportedly dead for the last millenia. Eventually, her ankles started to feel damp from the undergrowth, and she looked down to a welcome sight.
There were swishing ferns by her feet - a deep green colour, continuing down the long path ahead, trailing towards a glittering lake. In the centre of the lake was a mossy stone platform with weathered patterns decorating the edges. Beyond the platform was a wall of long ivy, falling from the cliff above.
Harry looked, and her heart pounded.
This location precisely resembled the images on the page she found in the depths of the Potter Family Vault. From a book that had crumbled from years of moisture and wind, lost to time, barring one scattered page that had been preserved by a falling portrait enclosing it from the weather.
Harry carefully took the page out of her travelling cloak’s inner breast pocket. The page was blank, and her heart started to lurch into her stomach, until she realised that she was holding it back-to-front, and turned it over. Yes, the back of the page remained as blank as when she discovered it. But the image on the page was an exact match to the sight ahead. Harry would have thought the sight ahead fake if not for the stronghold wards she felt humming on her skin: in the midst of the barren and dry forest, she was sure it was these wards that kept the sight so unchanged by time.
Harry took a deep breath in. She exhaled slowly from her mouth. And then there was no more time to waste, so she stepped forward.
Her body passed through the shimmering wards. As soon as she passed through, she felt like she’d been lurched miles away as she noticed the dusty air clear and temperature cool.
Her head flicked side to side - her companions were gone. Her feet felt grounded, though, on loamy soil, and so she decided it was her heart that had done the leap.
Her mouth formed a grim line. She and her companions had guessed to this being the case. The ancient wards surrounding the Mallow-Wood were powerful enough to negate the strength of the Resurrection Stone, and from that alone Harry knew that there was space for hope.
With that thought, she started making her way towards the lake.
Her lips turned up in a tired smile.