Chapter Text
When the trees swallow whole. Their branches claw like skeletal hands. As it got ever darker.
You run.
She ran.
She ran until her throat burned and her knees threatened to give into the dirt and moss. The hem of her school skirt was streaked with brambles, and her shoes were caked with grit.
Behind her, the yells echoed faintly from the trees as the castle of Hogwarts was getting further away. Two boys, older, stronger, and crueler. It had started as what they and their friends would love to call a ‘joke’. The boys and girls always had something to say, always had to laugh at her, always had to call her mudblood or rotspawn or just freak. Tonight they came in a pack. Three boys and a girl, the head of the pack was a crude boy, freckled and gingerly. It took a turn and there seemed to be no beating around the bush for what they wanted this time. Tonight, Calin had grabbed her arm. And then her hip. Breathing something foul and wanting into her ear.
She hadn’t screamed. She never did. Screaming was a waste of the oxygen when everyone fought so hard to get the last breath in, especially in the old corridors of Hogwarts, after dinner when all were tucked away in their rooms by the fireplace and denial. It felt like a million hands were gripping and clawing at her skin as the boy touched her, a million filth-laid hands on her. The way the boy grinned as he knew she was out of line and out of her mind. And the way her eyes widened as a wand had been lifted with hasty hands and cast Sectumsempra with a touch of Crucio. Before it was unforgivable.
The boy had collapsed to the floor convulsing, his screams filling the hallways like ice splitting in glass, as blood ran through the marble floor's lines.
It had all fallen apart after that. The girl with the boys had tackled the figure next to her who cast the spell, slamming them into the cold stone floor. Teachers had rushed in after the blood-curdling screams echoed through the castle. Spells had exploded in the air. She didn't know how she and the other had gotten away, only that the two other boys were hunting her down and the figure next to her had run the other direction.
She ran deeper into the forest now, deeper than she ever had before. Branches scratched her arms. Her hair, long, dark and red and always falling into her eyes, whipped her cheeks. Her pale blue eyes were wide, terrified, wild. An animalistic panic had taken root in her chest that grew with every heartbeat and every step she took further away from it all.
She had no wand. She’d dropped it, or it was knocked away. She couldn’t remember.
The woods grew darker, damper. Somewhere behind her, the shouting got quieter until it stopped. She didn’t care. She didn’t want to go back.
And soon there were no more roots to trip over. Just moss and stone, smooth as wet velvet. And she stopped running
She stood alone, arms on her legs as they were bent, catching her breath with her eyes squeezed closed. The air was cold, and it didn’t help as it was growing darker by the second, as well as the realization she had no idea where she was and what to do.
She opened her eyes and the first thing she laid her eyes on was the tree.
It stood alone, separated from the other spindly pine trees. This one stood hollow, massive and dead. It was black as if carved from charcoal, gnarled branches bent low like old limbs in mourning. In the middle of the tree trunk was a small hollowed hole, as if something had burrowed through it. Inside nestled in a cradle of tangled roots, was an apple.
It was red. Too red. The kind of red found in fresh bruises and memories. Fresh, ripe, untouched. As if waiting for her to take a large, crunching bite from it.
She didn’t know why she stepped closer. She knew she’d never take a bite. She had read the fairytales as a child. But maybe it was curiosity, maybe it would tell her something, or the cold that pressed against her ribs as the apple looked warm and inviting, maybe it was the hole she had inside of her and taking the apple could fill that, or maybe it was just fate.
Cruel and fanged and laughing.
She reached out with fingers that trembled.
The moment she touched it, the tree began to shift. The bark cracked and wept, it sounded as if someone was ripping damp bark in halves. She jolted back as the branches shriveled in on themselves. Little spindled, blackened vines spread from the apple’s place, crawling outward like disease eating the apple and the rest of the tree, until it all crumbled into fine, dark ash and mold.
Then came the bats.
A thousand, maybe more. Black wings, sharp orange eyes. They poured out from the tree’s remains in a screaming frenzy, clouding the dim-blue sky in a storm of wings. She ducked, hands over her head, gasping and clutching her ears as the bats screeched and called out.
One of them was left on the ground where the ash was before, wing twitching.
She took a step closer, wondering if it had perished in flight. And then its wing twitched. She stared at it, her knees sinking into the ash. She reached out slowly, murmuring nonsense, comfort almost on impulse. I’m sorry.
Its wings snapped open. Its eyes locked onto hers. Jaw unhinged and incisors pointed.
The pain was sharp and hot and brief and cold. It sank its tiny fangs into the curve of her pale neck, drawing blood like a cruel lover’s mark. She tried to pull away, but her limbs were already turning to water.
The bat let go and vanished into the swarm.
She slumped to the ground.
The world tilted sideways.
The trees stopped moving to look and stare.
But the night moved on as so will she.