Spells in Silence (Harry Potter)

[Silently Watches]

Huffing and puffing, Hazel shot Morgan a glare as she continued walking up the slope. She had not realized when she put the Peak District on her itinerary that it was going to be so much harder a walk than what she had done before, although considering the name she really should have figured out that there would be hills and mountains. She wanted to and had smacked herself for not thinking about it earlier, but it was too late. She was committed, and she really wanted to see the pond.

This was as good a time as any to take a break, though, and she sank to the dirt and stretched out her aching legs. A minute later Morgan dropped onto her head and settled himself in. I hope you enjoyed that, she told him. She did not begrudge her friend the chance to stretch his wings – she didn't! – but she would be lying if she claimed she were not jealous of his ability to fly over the rough ground. She did not have such an easy time. In fact, she only had two options if she wanted to climb this hill, and both were showing distinct disadvantages.

She rolled her head around and around, doing her best to loosen the tight muscles. It had been long enough that it should be okay to skip walking for a while. A look up at the cloudy sky which had nonetheless been darkening for a while now, and she also knew this would probably be the last time she could safely do this for today. It was hard to tell whether that was a good thing or a bad thing.

Pushing herself back to her feet, she looked up the slope again. Tensing her legs, she made a small hop—

—and landed higher up on the slope. She spent just enough time to pick her next jump—

—before she teleported again—

—and again—

—and again.

Three hills over from where she started, she took a deep breath in and slowly let it out as she did her best to ignore the pounding headache that had settled behind her eyes. The headache was not even the worst part. No, that honor belonged to the strange feeling deeper in her head, as if her brain was taffy that had been stretched and kneaded and twisted the more she jumped. A bit of rest would let that settle, but as the day had gone on and she jumped more and more, she quickly learned that feeling would come on quicker and take longer to leave. When she started, it had taken what she guessed was fifteen or sixteen jumps before she could go no farther; now it was only five jumps before her brain protested the abuse.

Her current strategy probably did not help matters. This 'snap-jumping' she had taken to doing, jumping from one place to the next as soon as she landed, was one way to cover lots of ground in a matter of seconds and try to out-pace the headache and stretched brain feeling, but they were guaranteed to catch up sooner or later.

She shook her head and looked into the distance, her right eye closed so she could look only out of her left. Her eyepatch-monocle was wonderful for looking at things close up, but one trick she had discovered was that when she ignored that lens and only saw things with her left eye that was uncovered, her long-range vision was better than she could ever remember it being. It was thanks to that vision that she could just make out a hill peak a good distance away and quite a bit higher than the one she stood on now.

I think I have enough for one more before I have to stop. Her fingers reached up to pat Morgan's back. Hold on tight.

The next instant her feet landed on a slab of rock, and she nearly fell over as a wave of nausea swept over her. For but a moment she pitted her will against the feeling of sick, but then her will lost. She fell to her knees and hurled, emptying out what little was still in her stomach. This was not the first time today she had been forced to vomit by the now skull-splitting headache, but it would be the last. She could not take more of that.

Hazel rolled over away from the sick and laid on her side with her knees drawn up to her chest. That last jump was a mistake, and she was paying for it now. The headache had hit her with its full force, and her eyes burned with unshed tears behind lids that were squeezed tight. Just moving was enough to make her head throb even harder, no longer being pounded against by a small hammer but now with one the size of a house. It would pass, this she knew. She just needed to wait it out, and the waiting was the hardest part.

Half an hour passed, maybe a full one. Long enough that what little light could pierce through the clouds fell below the horizon, and finally the pain had receded enough that she could try moving. Pushing herself upright again and wiping her mouth, she winced at the ear-piercing sound of Morgan's soft concerned coo. Please don't, she told him. I need a little quiet for a while longer, okay?

With her capacity for jumping clearly used up for the day and unwilling to make her headache any worse again, she continued on foot deeper into the darkness. This pond had better be worth it.

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The moon was low in the sky but the sun still thankfully out of sight when the beam from her torch touched a smooth black stretch of water. Staggering to the edge, Hazel gratefully sat and looked out into the night. She had made it, and before dawn to boot. Now she just had to wait.

This was the only place on her list of places to visit that had a hard time limit, and she knew she had cut it extremely close. If legends were right, this pond, appropriately named the Mermaid Pool, was said to hold an immortal mermaid who would only come out and be seen at sunrise on Easter morning. Those legends also said that if it was an attractive young man staring into the pond, she would grant him immortality like her own, but that was something Hazel did not have to worry about.

As minutes turned into an hour and more, she nibbled on her lip in thought. What's our plan?, she finally asked Morgan. After this it's a week to get to Cockermouth and Elva Hill, but what should we do afterwards? That's the last place I found that sounded like it might have something magical, but…

That was the problem, wasn't it? She had seen some really neat things, places of magic that had been long forgotten by the world, but that was not everything she was looking for. She also had been on the hunt for any signs of modern druids and sorcerers, but so far she had yet to find anything on that score.

Honestly, she was starting to feel a little dejected. More than a little, really. Was this all there was, remnants of a lost world and testaments of what was possible but with no information on how to get there? Were her mum and she really the last of the magicians to walk the world?

It's hard to believe that could be true, she told her friend, even if her words were more for herself. One witch, sorceress, whatever, in the entire world? To be the only one left in Britain is strange enough, but the whole world?

A thought came to her mind, and she frowned as she turned it over and over in her head. Then again, what if everyone else is just like me?

It would actually make quite a bit of sense. Which was more likely, that there was a large group or even an entire society of druids and witches who vanished and lived in the shadows for several hundreds of years if the dates of different pieces of folklore were to be believed? Or that something dreadful happened, and while people like her were still around, maybe even coming back, nobody knew who and where anybody else was, so they all stumbled around in the dark of ignorance?

For all she knew, there could be thousands of people just like her, people to whom strange things happened, and despite being so many they could all be just as alone as she was.

It was definitely possible, but if so, how was she supposed to find these people?

Hazel pondered and pondered, but no answer presented itself. Eventually her thoughts were interrupted when the first light of day crested over one of the many hills and mountains in the distance. Her brain shook off the fog that had settled over her thoughts, and she jumped to her feet. Was she about to see the mermaid? Would it look like the pictures in all the books?

A small breeze stirred the surface of the water. The sun fully rose and sunlight washed over the pond…

…and nothing happened.

Leaning over, she looked into the pool as best she could. Nothing.

Puffing out her cheeks, she eventually sighed. She had the right day, she had made sure of that, but it looked like just like Stonehenge, there was nothing to see here. She shook her head and walked back to her backpack. Might as well get a move on to her next destination.

Something splashed behind her.

Hazel whirled around, her heart pounding in her chest. Out in the middle of the pond something was poking out of the water, something shiny and silver and scaled. It shifted, and a forked tail rose out of the water and plunged right back in. She ran over, her bag forgotten on the ground, and splashed into the pond for a few feet. Eagerly she looked into the water, trying to get a better glimpse of the mermaid.

As far as she could see, the aptly named Mermaid's Pool was empty once again.

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Bright sunlight beat down upon her. Sweat dripped down her brow and her back. Her shirt stuck to her, and she flapped the hem of her jumper to try forcing some air up the back of her shirt to cool herself off.

Finally Hazel could stand it no longer. She dropped her backpack onto the ground and tugged off the jumper, sighing when she was no longer covered up quite so much.

The day after Easter had brought a heat wave to England, and that meant clothing that had been appropriate while the world was cold and grey was now very much overkill. She had already stuffed her puffy coat into the bag, and even that had been a chore considering how much space it took up. She had to sacrifice the amount of food she carried with her at a time, a decision she was already coming to regret, but to add the thick woolen jumper into that limited space as well?

She looked at the jumper in her hands and the stuffed backpack at her feet before shaking her head. No, that just was not going to happen. Settling herself onto the warm grass, she twisted and untwisted the jumper around her hands. What was she going to do?

The simplest answer, of course, was to find someplace to put her belongings when she did not need them. That was what most people did, storing seasonal clothing in boxes or in closets until they were needed once again. There was just one very, very big problem with that: she did not have anywhere in which to store her things. She owned no house that would be safe while she wandered. She could try to hide a box, maybe even several boxes, in a random building and hope nobody noticed them for the months she left them unattended, except she did not trust her luck that far. A related possibility was to spread her things in several places like a squirrel hiding nuts. It would make the piles less noticeable, and those places could be spaced wide apart since her jumps made distance meaningless in the grand scheme of things.

The downside was that while it would lessen the chance of all her things being found at the same time, she would probably go even longer between visits to any particular stash. The longer the time involved, the more chances other people had to find them.

Not to mention, and this reason was purely her, she actually kind of… liked the feeling of having everything she needed right there with her. After spending her whole life in the same place, to be free to wander was amazing. Carrying everything on her back meant she never had to be tied down anywhere.

Keeping everything on her back limited how much she could carry, though. That lead to another option: she could toss away things she no longer needed and grab more when the weather changed again. As she looked down at her ankles that were poking out from the hems of her jeans, she knew she would have to do something like that anyway. She was starting to get taller, which meant she would need new clothes sooner or later anyway.

The downside was that throwing things away and picking out new ones all the time would require her to steal more. She did not like doing that any more than she absolutely had to. She had continued to pick pockets here and there, mostly so she could leave at least some money any time she had to rob a small store rather than a big supermarket, and while she had broken three digits a few times she tried not to take much and still did so only sparingly. She would much rather keep what she had until she absolutely had to get rid of something because it no longer fit.

But if she did not want to hide her things and she did not want to throw them away unnecessarily, what was she to do? She flicked a glare at her overstuffed backpack, which was now serving as Morgan's perch. This would be so much easier if her backpack just had more space inside!

…huh.

She looked at her bag again with more assessing eyes this time. She might be crazy, but she was pretty sure she remembered a few different fantasy stories where the resident wizard had pockets or a bag or even an entire tower that was bigger on the inside than it looked like on the outside. There was even a movie that she could vaguely remember Dudley watching once, something about a family getting a new governess. Dudley had gotten bored with it because there was too much music and no action, but part of the one scene she had been able to watch before Aunt Petunia shooed her out of the room involved the governess pulling a number of ridiculous things out of her big bag.

And now that she was thinking harder about it, had Aunt Petunia really thought that if she watched it she might get ideas? She did not trust her memory of years ago that much, but she was definitely getting ideas now.

First things first. Waving for Morgan to hop off, she opened her backpack and dumped everything onto the ground. Her fingers moved, rubbing the material of the bag between them, and she pushed away the thought that wanted to spring up. Instead she shoved her arm into the main pocket as deep as it could go and grabbed both sides of the opening with her other hand. Push!, she told herself, and she pushed with the hand inside and pulled with the one outside. She pulled with all her strength, confident that even at her strongest she would not be able to rip it in half.

All her pulling got her was sore fingers. The dimensions of the bag's inside refused to change.

Maybe I'm not wanting it hard enough? It was not the only answer in front of her, but it was the simplest to fix. Want, need, had been the answer to more than a few of her early issues with magic. She focused her mind just on what she wanted and ignoring everything else around her, a trick she had picked up as a result of her practice with meditation, and pushed and pulled again. You will get bigger.

Still nothing.

She looked at the bag again and thought for a moment longer. Maybe it being full would help sell her subconscious minds on the fact that it needed to be bigger? The clothes and the cans and last her coat went back in, and once more she pushed with her mind and her hand. She was going to do this!

A minute of fruitless effort later, she sighed and let her hands fall to her side. She was worried this would be the case. Once again she rubbed the side of the backpack in resignation. Her backpack was not made of cotton or wool. It was some plasticky fabric, and as she had learned from fixing her glasses, a druid's magic and plastics did not get along. That was the reason she could not get this to work.

So I just need something not plastic. That'd be easier if I ever saw any of the other kids at school come in with natural-looking backpacks, but I didn't. Not that I can think of anyway. She looked to the side to find Morgan sitting on the ground just watching her. Do you have any ideas?

Morgan tilted his head and twittered at her in obvious confusion. The sounds turned almost scolding, and she had no trouble figuring out what that meant. She supposed she had no one to blame but herself for assuming a wild songbird would know anything about school supplies.

Flopping backwards onto the grass, she turned the problem around and around in her head. Her backpack was plastic. All the backpacks she had ever seen were plastic of some kind. Were there backpacks made of natural cloth somewhere, almost certainly, but she did not know where she would even be able to find such a thing. So that plan was out.

If she could not find one… could she make one instead?

Hazel pushed herself up and looked all over her backpack again, taking in the details that normally she would pay no attention to. The zipper she knew she would not be able to make, so unless she found something that already had one attached she would have to figure out some other way of closing it. Sewing straps on would be tricky too since she had never sewn a thing in her life, but there was no way it could be that hard.

A cloth bag, strips of cloth for straps, some way to close it up. Those were doable! She just had to find them, and thankfully there was a little town just a couple of hours away that she could search. Hopefully she could find the right materials at the local Tesco, because if not she would have to search everywhere else. And while I'm there, I might as well see if there's anything I can use as it is without having to make anything at all, she reminded herself.

The sun was setting when she slipped out of the blue-and-white Tesco building back into near-empty streets, her grey 'ignore me' smoke wrapped around her and a frown on her face. That had been less than useful. There were plenty of bags, even a few backpacks, but they all felt like they were made of either plastic or, in the case of the more expensive handbags, leather. The leather probably would have worked, but the bags themselves were so small that she had trouble imaging fitting some of her belongings through the opening even if there was plenty of space inside. Her coat had been hard enough to get into her backpack as it was.

Not only that, the only option she could find for making a new backpack that fit all her criteria was one of the paper bags people used to carry their purchases out in, and she did not want to chance her bag tearing and dumping out everything she had. Particularly considering all the times she had walked through the rain. She shuddered at the thought. No, not those. Anything but those.

Unnoticeable by anyone who might have paid attention to her, Hazel wandered the streets and looked for any store that might have something she could use. The street lamps came on, the few cars still on the streets became fewer and fewer. She sighed and shook her head. Might as well give it up for tonight—

Morgan fluttered down to her shoulder and pecked her ear.

Ow! She rubbed her earlobe and turned her head to glare at him as best she could. What was that for?!

The blue tit jumped off her shoulder and flew over to a bench. Turning to look back at her, he sang a victorious burst of song. Still unclear just what he was doing, she started walking towards him only for him to jump off the bench and keep flying away from her until he settled himself up high on a lamppost. He sang again, the sound almost taunting.

What in the world has gotten into him?

She followed after her friend for several minutes, sometimes jumping right next to him to get back at him for leading her on this wild goose chase, but eventually he flew in a few circles up in the air before gliding back to his customary spot on her shoulder. Her eyes stared at the building before them and went back to him. A pet store. You decided to be a pain in the you-know-what just to take me to a pet store?! Morgan sang again, and she shook her head. You get fed enough, you greedy boy. Do you really need that much more bird seed—

Wait. Wait just a minute. Morgan's song was turning decidedly smug, but she was not looking at him. Her eyes were back on the store in disbelief.

She had never had a pet, nor had Dudley, but she had seen advertisements on the telly. Pet food oftentimes came in bags.

If Morgan was right… She did not know how she would feel if his idea worked out, mostly because being outsmarted by a bird would sting her pride like nothing else. Steeling herself, she pulled her torch out of a side pocket of the backpack and shined it through a window into the darkened store. A tug on the door proved the store to be locked up for the night—

—but a quick jump and she was inside nonetheless.

Walking through the aisles, she stopped in her tracks when her eyes found something she could use. Most of the bags she had seen so far were plastic, but now her torchbeam landed on a pile of bags that did not look like the others. Her hand reached out, and sure enough these were not slick and shiny. There were made of a rough cloth, burlap if she had to guess although she knew she did not know all the kinds of cloths in the world.

Okay, she finally told Morgan, you were right. I didn't know they sold some kinds of dog food in burlap bags, but that will work. He gave the world a high-pitched cheer, but she ignored his celebrations to focus instead on picking up the bag. Twenty-five kilos was not exactly light, particularly for her. Nope, she decided after a minute's struggle. She was not going to try carrying that away. She would have to start working with it here.

Which would be a lot easier if she could figure out how to tear it open.

Pulling off her backpack, she set it on the ground and pointed at both her backpack and the bag of dog food with her eyes firmly on Morgan. Stay here and guard these, she told him. I'll be back.

She could not tear the bag open, but she could cut it. The Tesco had a few backpacks even though it was swinging into spring, and in that same section of the store were various other school-type supplies. That included pads of paper, boxes of pens and pencils, and several different sizes of scissors and shears. The last would be the best thing with which to cut through the thick fabric bag. Picturing what the aisle looked like during the day, she jumped into the air.

Her trainers squeaked on the wet linoleum tiles of the store, nearly sending her to the ground. Why was the floor wet?!

"Bloody hell!"

Her head whipped around to find a man standing a few feet away, a bucket by his feet and a mop in his hands. He stared at her with wide eyes, as surprised by her arrival as she was by his presence in the first place. She turned her head enough to see where the shears were hanging and quickly grabbed one.

"How did you even— Hey, put that back!"

Another jump returned her to the pet store, and she ripped the plastic wrapping off the shears and gave them a couple of experimental snips. These should work out just fine. Grabbing the corner of the top dog food bag, she started cutting, brushing strands of hair out of her face when they brushed against her forehead. The seam on the bottom came free, and kibble spilled all over onto the ground.

Morgan twittered in delight when she picked the half-empty bag up to get the rest out, and she waved the hand still holding the shears at the pile of dry food. Eat all you want. You definitely earned it. With him otherwise occupied, she carried the bag a few feet away and dropped it on the ground. All she had to do now was figure out how to turn it into a backpack.

Green eyes looked at the bag, at how it fell, and she sucked on her bottom lip as another idea came to her. Maybe she did not have to turn into a backpack, exactly. The way it had folded over on itself, it actually looked a lot like a satchel. She had seen some of the students in the upper years wear them, and while she had never thought about wearing one herself, it would be easier to make than a proper backpack.

Folding the bag in half more evenly, she nodded at it and started cutting along both sides, going from the opening she had made to the fold, repeating the process on the other side, and then lifting one of the flaps she had made so she could cut along the front. The square of burlap left in her hands she tossed behind her. Lifting and lowering the flap still attached, she nodded again. That did not look half bad.

It was still covered in kibble bits, though, but that was a problem she could fix. Ripples of blue light washed over the bag, causing all the pieces of dog food to disappear from sight. The same ripples covered the shears for a moment before they too were clean. Snapping them open and closed again thoughtfully, she reached up and pulled some of the strands of hair down until they were nearly at her nose.

Her hair was getting long, and it had been months since Aunt Petunia had cut her hair. She had always hated how short her aunt left it, how it made her look almost like a boy, but now it was getting long enough to be annoying. It was also far too short for her to do anything useful with it like putting it in pigtails or a ponytail the way other girls at school did. It might be better to go ahead and cut it again. Not as short as Aunt Petunia used to do, not that short by any means, but short enough that it would not flop around in her face like it was.

Something to think about after she was done with her current project.

With the bag cut into shape, she just needed a way to wear it, and she had just the idea.

An hour later, she was done. A long piece of rope taken from the same hardware store in Upper Milton where she grabbed the nail that hung around her neck was attached to both sides of the bag thanks to a lot of thread stolen from an arts and crafts store in the same town, the thread admittedly clumsily sewn through the bag itself and around the rope. Glue helped keep it all together, and she had also glued a piece of cloth around the top of the loop of rope to keep it from rubbing her neck raw.

Most everything she had used, the bag and the rope and the thread and the cloth, were natural. The glue itself she was a little unsure about, but that was a risk she just had to take.

Moment of truth, she told Morgan, who had absolutely gorged himself on dog food and was now sitting on the ground like a big puffball of multicolored feathers. Her attention moved back to the bag, and she curled and uncurled her fingers. Sliding her right arm into the bag, she imagined as forcefully as she could the bag getting bigger and bigger and bigger inside, until…

The edge of the bag reached her shoulder, her arm within still straight and reaching past the bottom of the bag.

She pulled her hand back out and looked at it, then she laughed as hard as she could. It was probably a good thing she was both mute and alone, for if she could make a sound she suspected her laugh would be more of a cackle. It worked! It worked!

Her backpack went into the bag, then her puffy coat, then all the cans and the can opener and the extra batteries and her wad of money. The outside looked just the same as it had before she put everything inside, so she pulled the front and back apart to look into the bag. There was still a hand-span of space between the top can and the edge of the bag, and she suspected that if she kept forcing things into it, she would just find more space.

Let's grab a bag to put some more of that kibble in, she told her friend. It would be a waste to leave it all behind when you did such a good job finding this place. Then we'll sleep here tonight and start moving again at first light.

And in the morning, we can also find more food for me since I can carry a lot more now.

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Just one more chapter of exploring England before it's time for Hazel to move on and start meeting some actual other characters. I know it has taken a while to get to this point, but some of the things she needed to see and do and learn just wouldn't have been possible were she getting guidance and advice from other people.

Silently Watches out.

 

[Silently Watches]

Her belly flat against the grass, Hazel switched her gaze repeatedly from the red sun hanging low on the horizon to the circle formed on the ground by a ring of standing stones. She was still a hundred meters or so away from the stones, and between the distance and laying on the ground and being covered by her ignore-me smoke, she was reasonably confident that she could not be seen. Unseen was how she wanted to be until after nightfall.

She knew she was probably being paranoid, but this was Elva Hill! A place where fairies were said to gather. There was no way she was drawing attention to herself until she knew there were not going to be creatures like the red cap that wanted to eat her guts and grind her bones for bread. At least on the flip side, she was so small that if giants truly existed they should not see her unless she really wanted.

The sun sank out of sight, and soon shadow covered the world. Still Hazel waited, but despite her patience nothing was happening. It was quiet as a grave all around.

Maybe I'm worried about nothing, she wondered. Morgan had no answer for her, and she glanced over to find him sitting on her satchel, puffed up and letting out a cute little birdy snore. Despite herself she found a smile on her face, so shaking her head she returned her attention to the stone circle.

An hour passed. Two. Nothing happened.

Now I feel dumb. Pushing herself up from the ground, she used her magic hand to lift Morgan onto her shoulder and pick up her bag. Her friend woke up just enough to sidle closer to the warmth of her neck, and she started walking towards the stones. Maybe that was the problem? She had not exactly had a lot of luck with stone circles, as Stonehenge clearly attested. Even the stones in Shervage Wood, though connected to magic in the story they told, were made by regular humans…

…What was glowing in the center of that circle?

Hazel took a quick step back, suddenly worried that she might not have been patient enough.

The light instantly winked out again.

A step forward, the glowing something or other returned to the circle. A step back, it was gone. She repeated the movements a few more times before she had to accept that whatever this thing was, it was only appearing when she got within a certain distance. Her legs tense and ready to jump her out to anywhere else, she slowly walked closer and closer.

She halfway expected that the shorter the distance, the brighter it would become. What happened instead was that the colored blur became crisper and more detailed. She stopped at the edge of the stone circle and stared.

Hanging in the air was a… She had no words to describe it. A crack? Yes, a crack or a squiggle, glowing a faintly off-yellow and spinning slowly as it floated there. While it was turning, the individual lines that created it shifted or lengthened or shortened, changing the design from moment to moment but not the overall shape. She had never seen anything like this, nor had she even heard or read of it. What in the world was it?

And why had no one ever mentioned this thing existing before? This was not like the stone circle in Shervage Wood, which was out in the middle of the woods where people were unlikely to go. Elva Hill was a well-known landmark with regular visitors. Surely someone had seen it before her!

Closing her left eye, she examined it more thoroughly. Her lens made it easier for her to see things close up, so maybe if she only looked at this thing with that eye, she might find an additional clue. Sadly all it did was make the edges of the crack a bit more crisp, not as fuzzy.

Opening both eyes made the crack go blurry for a second, and a suspicion bloomed in her mind. Could it be that simple? Unsure just what she was hoping for, she closed her right eye this time.

The crack vanished.

Her right eye opened up again, and when the anomalous rip in the world itself returned her hand lifted up to the frame strapped to her head and more specifically to the faintly purple lens set within it. The lens she received by trading the lens from her old glasses with… something. A spirit or fairy or something else entirely.

That thought caught up with the rest of her mind, and she took several hasty steps away from the circle. She could only see this with a magical lens, which meant it was very magical. Maybe she was wrong, and she hoped she was, but she feared that this answered a question she could have happily gone her entire life without getting answered.

Beneath Glastonbury Tor, a magician from long ago had sealed the road to the Greenwild. Clearly he did not get around to closing the doors to all the other Otherworlds.

Hazel's hand rose to hover protectively over Morgan's sleeping body, and with a jump she vanished from Cockermouth and reappeared in the pet store where she made her bag. Whatever monstrous fae slept near Elva Hill, it could continue napping. She wanted nothing to do with it.

Heart slowing down now that she was a week's walk away, she sat down on a small table off to the side of the glass doors. That's the last place on my list, she realized after a few minutes. All the potentially magical sites in England she found scouring the books in the library in Greater Whinging, she had visited. Four months spent on the road, and she was no closer to finding another magical person.

…What was she going to do now?

I don't have anything else to do. Sure, I could go back to Tintagel and swim through the cold water, but that was something I wanted to wait to do until the summer, and even if I did that, I still wouldn't have anything after. I had hoped to find something that pointed me to other druids, even just the tiniest hint, but there was nothing. Even if I'm right and there are other people like me who have powers but don't have a dedicated meeting place, I still wouldn't be able to find them. I don't know how many there are in England, let alone anywhere else.

There has to be something! Somebody had to have written something down. Museums and stuff have books from hundreds of years ago, and people stopped believing in magic not that long ago. There just… there can't be nothing left.

She sighed and let her head fall against the wall behind her. Maybe I'm just not looking in the right places? I don't know where else I would look, but I haven't found anything, so it's possible. Likely, even.

Running through her memories of the various fairy tales and folklore stories she had read over the months, she tried to think of where else she could search. Wales and Scotland had similar stories to England, but if she found nothing here, what were the chances she would get lucky there? Ireland she had already ruled out, both because she did not want to run into the fae that infested the island and because she did not want to run into the IRA. That was the British Isles covered, which meant she would need to look farther afield.

The Continent, then.

France isn't too far away. I could catch a ferry from… I think it's Dover? Her face scrunched up. I think so, anyway. Some fairy tales come from France, after all, and it's next to Germany. The Brothers Grimm definitely had a lot of witches and magical beasties in their stories. I don't know any French, which will be a problem, but maybe I could pick up a dictionary or something?

…Not to mention, it would be a lot warmer than here.

She pulled off her satchel, waking up Morgan in the process, and started pulling things out. That was the one downside of this magical bag: she could stuff whatever she wanted into it, but to get to anything specific she had to take out everything that was on top of it. Finally she found a wad of paper, and removing the elastic bands she unfolded her various maps of England.

France was close to Dover, she confirmed after a quick look, so that would be the first place to check. Was there anywhere she had been that was nearby, somewhere she could jump to and shorten just how far she had to walk?

A laugh escaped her when she looked at all the circles she had drawn depicting the sites she wanted to visit. The closest potential magical site was Stonehenge, which meant the place she should go to start her walk was actually Greater Whinging of all places! She shook her head and started packing everything back up into her bag. This was also a good time to check on Stonehenge again now that she knew her lens could reveal the gates to Otherworlds. She had to know if something like that had been there the first time she visited. A jump—

—landed her in the ancient stone circle. She looked around. No crack or ripple, no spirits, just the stones themselves. There really was nothing magical here—

—so she reappeared outside the library in Greater Whinging. Hitching her bag on her shoulder, she breathed out her ignore-me smoke and started walking eastward. She barely got fifteen feet before a car backfired loudly in the alley on the other side of the library, making her jump in sudden surprise. She turned around to give the unseen car a glare at scaring her.

It was only because she was looking that way that she saw two men stepping out from the alley.

Hazel blinked a couple of times and stared. She had to be dreaming because the alternative was that two grown men were standing in front of the Little Whinging library wearing bathrobes and bright blue capes. Maybe they were homeless, and that was why they were wearing such things? A longer glance, and she shook her head. The robes did not look worn out or patched up, and the capes looked identical. These were not things they had picked up from a charity bin and wore because they had nothing else.

She had thought it a few times before, and she would think it again: grown-ups were weird.

"Think our perp's around here still?" the shorter of the men asked, looking around at the empty streets. "I'm getting tired of the wild goose chase. Though I can't see why she'd come here of all places. Nothing worth seeing."

Despite herself, Hazel nodded her head in agreement with the oddball man. Greater Whinging might be bigger than Little Whinging, but from her experience in the town, there was nothing 'great' about it.

The tall man grunted. "Probably not. Mudblood bitch has been Apparating all over the country for the last couple of months. The boss wanted us to bring her to the Ministry, but the Muggle-lovers higher up would probably let her go with a slap on the hand and a pat on the head. Be better to Obliviate her entirely and be done with it."

A shiver ran down her spine at the sound of that word and the viciousness with which the man thought it. Admittedly, she did not know what it was, but the sound of it was much too close to 'oblivion' and 'obliterate' for her peace of mind. She knew what those words meant.

Spinning on one heel, she walked briskly away and left the bathrobe-wearers to their conversation about 'Mudblood' and 'Apparating', whatever those were. She did take a moment to spare a quick wish that whoever these guys were after would stay safe, however. She would not want to be hunted by men this dangerous. But at the end of the day, there was nothing she could do about it, and she had her own tasks. She wanted to get to Dover as soon as possible.

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A loud horn screeched as the ferry came to a stop at the dock, and Hazel was one of the first ones hopping off the boat. Dodging around a few people, none of whom could see through her smoke, she walked away from the coast and into the city of Calais. She was in an entirely different country, lost among people who spoke a different language…

And aside from minor differences in the buildings, she could be excused for thinking she never left jolly old England. She might not be able to make heads or tails of the words they spoke or the signs hanging over the roads, but their thoughts still came thorugh loud and clear. All these people had the same worries and petty concerns as the random passerbys of Bristol or Greater Whinging.

She stepped off of the main roads and into a little alleyway, then with one jump—

—she sat on top of a building on the other side of the street. Morgan hopped off her shoulder onto the peaked roof, glancing around in surprise. She did not normally take him up to the kinds of places where he could fly on his own.

Never thought you'd see another country, did you?, she asked him. Then again, I suppose from your perspective all countries are just the same. The only difference is whether there are a bunch of people around or not.

Feel free to go exploring if you want. She waved for him to take off. I'll just be sitting here. I have a couple of things I want to try, then we'll look for someplace to stay for a while.

Closing her eyes, she let the idle thoughts of the city wash over her. She had learned not a word of French in Little Whinging, and while she had made some efforts to rectify that in the last few days, she had hopes that she had figured out an easier way. If she listened to a bunch of people with her mind-reading for a while, would it be possible for her just to… absorb the local language? She had never tried anything like this, but she had never had reason to do so, either.

The thoughts of hundreds of people filled her head, the words losing all meaning and turning into an awful mishmash of nonsense. She was able to subject herself to only ten minutes of this before she shook her head and did whatever the telepathic equivalent of plugging up her own ears was.

That was not going to work.

Maybe it was just too many people all at once? Hazel rolled over onto her belly and closed her right eye so she could see better out of her left. One man stood out for being almost the same size around as Uncle Vernon and yelling at someone through a large brick of a mobile phone. She grimaced; she could easily remember her uncle being inordinately proud of his first mobile phone until one morning when he could not hear anything out of it except squealing. He had blamed her for it failing even though she knew she had rarely so much as looked at it, let alone tried to sabotage it. The way he was shouting, he was cut from much the same cloth.

She did not think learning French from somebody would take away their own knowledge of the language, but if it did… she might feel a little less guilty knowing she was muting Uncle Vernon's duplicate?

Blocking out the thoughts of everyone else as best as she could, she focused on him. "How could Marguerite be this stupid?" she heard as his thoughts came to her. "The appointment was written right there on the calendar! I swear, if she wasn't so hot bent over my desk I would fire her right now…"

A shudder ran through her at the brief glimpses of the mental images waiting for her just below the surface of his thoughts. This was why she did not try to focus on other people's thoughts like this, sometimes pictures slipped over along with words.

Grown-ups were gross.

More importantly, once again she could tell no difference between his thoughts and the thoughts of British people except for a light accent on the words. That was nice on the one hand; she would not have to worry about not being able to understand the people here. On the other, the easy way of learning French was right out.

Hazel sighed and patted the bag slung across her body. She had prepared for this, and that was why there was an English-to-French dictionary stowed away in her satchel thanks to the library in Bristol. She had no illusions of learning French in a week or two, but so long as she could understand what people said and pantomimed well enough, she should be able to get her meaning across while she learned some of the words.

Morgan had not left his previous spot and instead was just staring at her, so she pushed herself back up. Don't want to leave me alone, do you, she asked her friend. His only response was to hop onto her waiting palm, and she gently deposited him back on her shoulder. Okay then. We can spend a day or two just looking at the sights, then we'll research where we can go that maybe has more answers for us than England did.

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For the second time in the span of just a few days, Hazel heard a horn blast as she rode a vehicle. This was no ferry, though; it was a train. Specifically it was a train that ran on the route between Calais and a town called Compiègne. She knew nothing about the town itself, but what she had discovered from looking over maps of the country was that it was just outside a good-sized forest of the same name.

The forest was not as large as the Avesnois National Park near the border of Belgium, but what the maps seemed to show was that there were a number of towns scattered throughout the Park. Compiègne Forest did not have such a large human presence, which made it more attractive in her eyes. She had no idea if something like French druids had existed in the past or if that was a purely British tradition, but if they existed, a forest like this that had remained unsettled would be perfect for them. As such it was here that she would start her search.

Not to mention, Compiègne was a large enough town to get what she needed to survive, and if they did not have something, Paris was only a couple of days' walk.

The train was passing the edge of the forest now, so with a risky hop she teleported from her hiding spot at the juncture between a pair of train cars to the tree line. She gave the train a wave, even though she knew the conductor could not see her and likely would not have appreciated her stealing a ride if he could, and started walking deeper into the massive oaks. There was little chance she could make it all the way to the center of the forest, but her hope was to find a landmark as deep within as she could and teleport back first thing in the morning. It was a big forest, but with enough time she could search the entire thing.

On the plus side, she did not go to school anymore, which meant she had all the time in the world!

The sun had already been on its way down when she hopped onto the train, and soon enough the last rays of daylight were gone. Still she continued wandering, the darkness of the closely growing trees driven back only by her electric torch and what little light coming from the full moon overhead could break through the leaves. Branches creaked all around, and no matter how hard she ignored it she could not get rid of the feeling that she was being watched.

Another creak from behind her, and Hazel stopped to take a deep breath and chide herself. She had walked through plenty of little groves and patches of trees in the dark over the last few months, and besides being larger and foreign this forest was no different. She could leave now, returning to either the abandoned building in the outskirts of Calais she had used for the last couple of days or even somewhere in Britain and coming back when it was daylight again, but all the trees looked so much alike that she would have to jump back to the edge of the forest and start her search from square one. She had spent probably two hours walking around in here already, and that was progress she did not want to lose—

A loud howl came from her right, and her torch beam whipped over in that direction. Okay, wolves were not something I dealt with in England, she admitted to herself. Maybe heading back for the night and starting over first thing in the morning isn't the worst plan I've ever had.

The cracking of sticks came from the same direction as the howl and shifted from her side to in front of her. She kept the beam of light focused on the source of the sound, so she was able to see what finally stepped out from between the trees. The light landed squarely on it, and the splotch of brightness quivered and danced as her hand started shaking.

This was no wolf. It was something out of a nightmare.

The creature walked on all fours, but not like an animal. Its legs were too long and too thin, almost skeletal, and its back was twisted and hunched in order to keep its front paws on the ground. A couple of times its paws lifted off the ground entirely, almost as if it were trying to walk on two legs like a person. Ribs visibly poked out from its side and flexed with its heavy panting. Its skin was a sickly grey, and its hair was thin and sparse except where it had concentrated on the upper back, reaching up its neck to its head and the long ears on top. That head swung to look at her, the one part of the body that was at all similar to the wolf it sounded like, and it opened its mouth to let a pink tongue hang out among sharp yellowed teeth.

She swallowed thickly. Maybe it was like the hellhound in Wistman's Wood, scary-looking but not really dangerous? Maybe? Nice doggy, she told it, her empty hand rising in a warding gesture.

The monster stared at her for a moment longer, then it opened its mouth wide and roared.

And then it started running right at her.

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The reasoning Hazel went to France probably seems a little weak, but while the original plan made more sense, it was also needlessly dark. Morgan needs to LIVE, dammit!

 

[Silently Watches]

The monster stared at her for a moment longer, then it opened its mouth wide and roared.

And then it started running right at her.

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Despite the danger and the long teeth coming towards her, Hazel's mind did not focus on this twisted creature. Instead a memory came to mind, a memory of another monster that had tried to kill her. It might have had a knife instead of long claws and been shorter than her rather than gigantic, but the red cap was no less dangerous to her than this monster was.

Maybe, she thought as she swung the beam from her torch away from her attacker, she could use the same strategy to keep herself safe.

By the time the monster was halfway to her, she was no longer there. Instead she sat in the crook of a tree where the trunk split into two thick branches. Morgan twittered at the sudden pressure and translocation, but she shushed him with a gentle pat. She had not left the forest; she had not even left the sight of the creature. She was now simply ten feet or so above above the ground. If it could jump this high, her torch had already found a branch on another tree that was twice as high as the two she sat upon.

And if it could climb, she was a short hop from Calais or anywhere she had been in England.

The monster skidded to a halt when it realized its quarry was suddenly missing, and it whirled around. Then it did so again and again, and she could almost imagine the confusion it was obviously feeling. Not once did it look up, still convinced that she was down below where she had been before. She was also getting… something from it. Not thoughts, not like a person, but not the vague emotions she felt like she was able to pick up in Morgan's song and behavior either. It was more like when a person was feeling an emotion so strongly she could almost feel a shadow of it as well.

This thing, whatever it was, was angry. Madder than she had ever felt from Uncle Vernon, even.

Another howl came from deeper in the woods, and with a snap and a snarl the creature took off running on all fours towards the sound. The obvious explanation for what she was dealing with hit her, and she slapped herself on the forehead for being so dumb. Was this a werewolf?! She looked up at the moon, and sure enough, it was full.

I'll admit, I wasn't expecting to find actual, real life werewolves when we came to France, she told Morgan. I suppose I shouldn't be so surprised, though. I mean, we already know that fairies and dragons are real, so why not werewolves? And it sounded like it isn't alone.

The real question in front of her was what the next step would be. This forest sounded like there were multiple werewolves within it, the exact number impossible to tell from where she sat. Wandering around on the ground did not sound like the smartest or safest strategy for staying uneaten, but this werewolf had not once looked at her despite her torch still shining bright. If she stayed up in the trees like she was, she should be safe. She could not guarantee it, but it seemed like it was likely.

Her other option was to come back after dawn. Werewolves had not been one of the subjects she had researched, but from what little she knew about them they only changed under the full moon. In the light of day, they should be normal people. She hoped so, anyway, but she would have to keep an eye out in case they could change at will or something.

It wouldn't be too risky for me to stay up here, would it, she asked her friend. I mean, worst case scenario we jump back to Calais for the night if they do start chasing us. There shouldn't be that much danger in just looking.

Decision made, she teleported from her current tree to the one she had been eyeing as her next step when running. That vantage point allowed her to find another tree that looked like it could bear her weight and was in the direction in which the werewolf had run, and she jumped to that one before finding a fourth tree. The recurrent howls of the wolves served as her guide, and she moved again and again, thirty or forty feet at a time, just following the sounds. She had to stop a couple of times to let the headache that was threatening to form settle down, but eventually her relatively straight line of travel let her catch up.

Hazel stopped and stared at what she saw below her. In the middle of the woods stood a clearing, but it was not empty. What had to be a dozen or more little huts or shacks were scattered throughout the space, some pushed against the edge of the tree line while others were placed proudly near the cluster of fire pits that marked the center. None of the buildings were tiny, not really, but from what she could see even the largest could probably be squeezed into the living room of Number 4 with only a little difficulty. More interesting to her were not the buildings, but the creatures who milled around between them and around the still-smoldering fires.

Werewolves. Lots of werewolves.

She pressed herself more tightly against the tree to make sure she would not risk falling out and watched with wide eyes. It was hard to tell just how many of them there were down there, partly because they all looked more or less the same and partly because they kept moving around and snarling and clawing at one another. It did not look like an all-out brawl, not as far as she could tell. The closest comparison she had was one time when she saw a couple of dogs fighting, which involved a few bites before one of them backed off and ran away.

What was happening in front of her looked… kind of like that. The biggest difference was that none of them were running away so much as backing off and picking a fight with a different werewolf. Sometimes one would run off, normally followed by several others, but after just a few minutes most or all of them would find their way back. Surprisingly none of them were lashing out at the shacks, but then again buildings did not usually fight back, so maybe that had something to do with it.

She looked up at the sky again. The moon was not quite to its highest point, which likely meant it was not midnight yet and there was still plenty of time for the werewolves to frolic. Despite her sitting here watching them, none of them had yet to notice her. Was it because she was still hidden amongst the branches a couple of trees back from the actual tree line? She did not know, and no matter her curiosity this was something she was not all that eager to test.

What do you think? Stick around for a couple of hours to watch some more, then jump back to town to get some sleep? This place is definitely unique enough I should be able to get back without any trouble. Morgan had no answer for her, and she looked out the corner of her eye to find him fluffed up and sound asleep on her shoulder. She shook her head with a smile. You are no help at all.

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Hazel's eyelids itched, and she rubbed them for a bit before blinking them open. The sun was just coming up, the first beams of dawn hitting her face and explaining why she was waking up now. She yawned and tried to stretch her arms, but as she moved she felt herself start leaning to the side and then fall backwards. She came free from whatever had been supporting her, and despite her arms desperately wheeling about for a second there was nothing around her but empty air.

Then something very strong hit her very hard in the back.

She lay on the ground just trying to catch her breath as Morgan scolded her overhead and memories came back to her no longer sleeping brain. She had been in a tree, presumably the one whose branches were stretched out above her. She had been in a tree because she was watching a pack of werewolves, and she had fallen asleep. And she had been in that tree all that time because she really did not want to get eaten!

Adrenaline surged through her veins. She rolled off her back to her feet, her legs curled up beneath her and just waiting to jump through space to somewhere – anywhere – safer than here. One growl, one flash of fang, and she would be gone.

Raising her head to look over a bush, she stared at the sight before her. It was obvious that werewolves could not remain transformed in the light of day. Grey skin was lightening into pink and tan, and the overlong limbs were receding into more normal proportions. The sparse hair on their necks and upper backs shifted and slid into place on the tops of their heads and changed back to human colors. Throughout the clearing were groaning moans and creaking bones as distorted anatomy shifted back into place.

After a couple of minutes it was over, and the clearing was filled with a bunch of naked people. Thankfully for her peace of mind none of the naked adults started doing anything gross, just started walking towards the different cottages with a few but not all hiding their private parts from view. They came back out a short time later in ones and twos, now dressed but not in normal clothes. Most of them were wearing either long shirts over trousers or colorful but not fluffy bathrobes.

Bathrobes that looked a lot like the ones the men she saw in front of the Greater Whinging library were wearing, now that she thought about it.

Hazel was more than just a little bit curious, and she started walking towards the little settlement now that more people were walking out of their huts. Interestingly, almost all of them were walking in the same direction away from the village, at a right angle to the path she was using to approach them. Where were they headed?

Her foot landed on a twig, and it snapped beneath her weight. The sound caught the attention of one of the men who was dressed in a homespun tunic. Their eyes met, and she sighed and raised one hand to wave towards him. It was not as if she planned on staying invisible, not when she had so many questions to ask.

"A child? What is a little kid doing this deep in the forest this early in the morning?" His face suddenly paled, the blood rushing out even from the top of his bald head. He started talking in French, which she understood not a word of, but thankfully his thoughts continued to flow unhindered and intelligibly. "H-Hello, little one. Please don't be bitten, please don't be bitten. What are you doing out here? She doesn't look like we mauled her, so she should be okay, but…"

Reaching into her satchel at her side, she pulled out a notebook and a pen. "Bonjour," she wrote, one of the very few words in French she knew before coming here. She thought for a moment about what to say next, but finally she decided that honesty was probably the best choice. She just hoped he could understand English because she did not yet know enough words to hold a real conversation with anybody. "I was wandering around looking for signs of magic when I found this place."

The man blinked at her writing and then looked more closely at her. "English? What is an English girl doing out here of all places? Now I am glad my mother insisted I spend my time learning other languages. But what does she mean, 'signs of magic'? That would mean… Is she a Née-Moldus? How would an English Née-Moldus even get here?"

This time it was her turn to blink. 'Nemoldoose'? What in the world did that mean?

"Hello," he said again, though this time in English with a thick accent. "You have better… What is the word? …fortune if you go to Paris. Where was— no, that is not it – is your… families?"

She was already scribbling something else down, and before he could continue muddling through she held up her note. "I can understand you when you speak French. I just can't write it yet. What's in Paris?"

"Oh, thank the Circles. I was not looking forward to having to talk to her in a foreign language. At least with writing I can take my time translating. Paris is where most of the wizards are," he continued, though his mouth was again babbling in French. "Where the main business areas are, and the shops, and the government. I am surprised you made it out here without stopping there first."

Most of the wizards? Business areas? Government?! All Hazel could do was stare at him for several long moments. When she thought she would find living mages, she was expecting maybe a few families living near each other on land passed down for generations, training themselves and experimenting away from prying eyes. That was the easiest explanation for why stories of magic died out hundreds of years ago. If this man was to be believed, and she could see no reason why he would lie to her, then there were not a few select families of sorcerers.

There was an entire society that had somehow escaped notice, possibly for centuries. Somehow in the course of four months, she had completely missed them in England. Were they only in London, a city where she had never gone? Was it her those two men in the capes and robes had been looking for?

Why, if her parents lived in this separate society, was she kicked out when they died?

"Dear me, where are my manners? My name is Jean Luc, by the way," he continued, offering his hand to her. She numbly put her own in his to be shaken with a soft pat at the end. "What might yours be?"

"Hazel," she eventually wrote.

"A pleasure to meet you. Why is she writing everything down?" he then asked himself before his eyes cut back to her book and then to her mouth. "Unless she cannot speak, perhaps? It would be strange for that to be the case, but I cannot think of any other obvious reason why. It is not as if it is a fear of interacting with strangers, or she would not have walked up to us. Are you alright, little one?"

His question shook her from her thoughts, though calling them that might be overly generous. Numb stupefaction would be more accurate. Right. Information first, be shocked at how wrong I was later. She gave him a nod and started writing again. A few times she crossed a word or a line off, but eventually she turned it around to show him. "I had not heard anything about a magical culture in Paris. Or anywhere for that matter. Do you think there is something like it in England? Why do all of you live out here instead of there? Do werewolves like living in nature better? Where did everybody go just now?"

A hundred more questions had bubbled up as she was writing these down, but she held back. Maybe if she could speak it would be easier to ask about everything she wanted to know, but whenever she had tried doing so in writing before, the person she was asking had gotten a glazed look in their eyes and quickly made their escape. Smaller chunks were better.

"That is a lot of writing. I do not know anything about English wizards," he told her, "except that they exist. If you wanted to go looking, I would start looking in London, but I know nothing more than that." She nodded along; that made sense, she supposed. He licked his lips nervously. "How does she already know we are werewolves? And why is she so calm about it?! I thought even Moldus knew about us and would want to run away. You are right. We are werewolves. We do not live in Paris because, well, we are not exactly welcomed there. Wizards are afraid of us, not without good reason. That they leave us alone here is miraculous on its own. My friends have left to go to work. Sadly the same jobs that will take us would be quick to fire us should anyone show up late, and being in pain after a full moon is not considered a valid excuse to take the day off."

Jobs, ugh. When she grew up, she promised herself she was not going to have a job. She was going to just learn everything she could about magic. It sounded like a much more interesting life. All she had to do was figure out how to live without stealing food all the time.

Still, she could not help but wonder what kind of jobs a werewolf would have. Did they do something that needed a lot of physical strength? She had always thought werewolves were supposed to be super strong and had great senses. Or maybe they used those senses to be investigators and detectives? That would be kind of wicked, actually.

Jean Luc shook his head when he saw her questions written down. "If only that was the case. We take what jobs we can find, what jobs they will let us take. Menial work. Gisèle probably has the best job of any of us, and she had to go to the non-magical world even to find it. At least her boss does not exploit her overmuch because she does not have any of the documents Moldus carry around."

That last bit did not make much sense to her, so she ignored it in favor of the part in the middle. "Why can't you get good jobs?"

"We do not have wands or formal education. Most of us, anyway, and the government is perfectly happy keeping us unread and stupid. It is not enough that we are cursed already, they need to make things harder."

She scowled at his last thought. That sounded too much like the attitude Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia had towards her. If it were not for the law telling them they had to send her to school, they probably would have kept her in her cupboard forever except to do chores. "Then why not make wands? Or learn to do magic without them?" That should not be too much of a burden. In just a few months, she had learned to do so much; surely they could learn to do anything they needed over the course of years.

The laugh Jean Luc let out was faintly mocking and very bitter. "I wish it were that simple, little Hazel. To see the world as a child again. If it were that easy, it would not be such an obstacle. Magic is impossible without a wand, and the way of wandlore and wandmaking is a rare and complex skill."

Hazel's lips curled into a frown. Magic was impossible without a wand? That did not sound right. Not right at all. She was living proof that wands were not necessary, as was her mother. Aunt Petunia's memories of her mum and all the magic her mum had done made that fact clear.

Then again, the stones of Shervage showed two different groups of magic users. One of them had wands. Those must have been the wizards he is talking about. But the others… She wrote another question. "Do wizards use staves too, or just wands?"

"Staves? You mean like a walking stick or something? No. Not that I've ever heard of, anyway."

She nodded, already back deep in thought. Wizards used wands, not staves. So who were the men and women on the Shervage stones who held a staff in their hands? Those must be the druids. Wizards needed wands to do any magic. She and her mother did not, so they could not be wizards. Therefore they had to be druids. It was just logical.

Maybe Mum wasn't part of the wizard's society at all. That would explain why she left me with her sister when she and Dad died. She didn't have any magic friends to give me to. Maybe there was no one else who could take me, and she thought Aunt Petunia would still be a better choice than sending me to an orphanage even with all their fights. Considering the things Uncle Vernon said and thought about them, that isn't terribly surprising.

"I have my own question," Jean Luc said, pulling her away from her conclusions. "Where are your parents? I'm sure they're worried that you've gone and wandered off. How long has she been missing, I wonder? They have to be just absolutely beside themselves with fear."

"I don't have any family. They're all gone." Which was close enough to the truth. "I'm a wanderer."

"Oh." He looked at her with rising sympathy. "I… should really take her to Paris. They can make sure she gets back home to England. Or at least find her a foster family here. The Republican Guards already have their eyes on us, though, and if she is seen in the company of a couple of werewolves, they will assume we are trying to kidnap her. Werewolves are guilty until proven innocent. I cannot just drop her off and leave her there either. What to do?"

Her pen was already writing, and she soon held up her notebook. "If you're thinking about dropping me off somewhere, I'll just slip away and go back to wandering. I go where I want. But if you're scared about me being HERE, I can move on. Thank you for all the information."

"No, that would be even worse," he said with a shake of his head. "You can stick around here for a while. That will give me more time to figure out what to do with her. If she goes off on her own, she might wander into something that is even less friendly like a vampire or a hag or just the kind of people who would prey on a little girl on her own. I'm sure we can find something to do to keep you from getting bored."

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Supposedly the French term for Muggle is "non-magique", which feels incredibly phoned in like somebody didn't want to spend more than 5 seconds thinking about it. Instead the werewolves and other French wizards will use the term "Moldu", which is the word used in the French translation of the books, and will call Muggleborns "Desmoldus" meaning "from Muggles" because I couldn't find a good source for what word was actually used. So a reviewer over on FFN said the French translation for Muggleborns is "Nées-Moldus", which seems to be accurate. I have to assume the singular is "Né-Moldus", which may also not be right. It isn't like I ever tried to learn French.

 

[Silently Watches]

Jean Luc turned his head from one side to the other, and Hazel had to hold back a smile when she heard his next thought. "This would have been much easier if everybody had not already run off. What am I going to do to keep her occupied? Who is still here… Ah ha! Grégorie! Mind helping me out for a minute? He knows a little English, which is better than most. Hopefully it will be enough to muddle through since she can't talk back to us in a sensible language."

She frowned. She was by no means fluent, but she knew some French! A little bit, anyway. …She had tried to learn a few of the common words and phrases that were in the back of her dictionary. It was not great, she knew that, but she had thought it would be enough to cover the basics while she looked in her book to find the words she wanted.

She also thought there would be more people who could read English, she admitted guiltily to herself. She expected she might need to do charades to get her point across from time to time, but she had not thought it would be a frequent problem.

Of course, neither had she expected to run into a pack of werewolves who knew all about a magical society within a week.

There were only a few people this Grégorie chap could be, but she was still surprised when it turned out to be a scruffy-looking older man with brown hair turned almost entirely grey and a slight limp in his left leg. "Where is the fire, Jean Luc— A girl? What in the world is she doing in the middle of this forest right after a full moon? Making a new friend, are you?"

Jean Luc sighed and ran one hand over his bald head. "Something like that. This is Hazel. Seems she is a Née-Moldus who managed to stumble on us in the middle of the night. She was not bitten!" he said when Grégorie's eyes immediately jumped to her, horror peering out of them. "Not that it was not the first thought on my mind as well. Since she is already here, I was hoping you could take her with you and show her around. She says she understands French, but she is illiterate and can only write in English. I know it sounds crazy, do not give me that look. I will fill you in on the details later tonight," he added at the flat expression Grégorie shot him.

"The woods are no place for a little girl. Nor are we. And what are you going to be doing while we are wandering the woods?"

"I still need to finish the budget for next month, and now account for another mouth to feed. It is boring enough for me to do. Forcing somebody to watch me do it could only be worse. I also need to take some time to decide what options I have for the long term. If she really has no one like she says, I might not have any other choice but to take her to Paris so they can stick her with some family or another."

A small smile flickered over her face. Jean Luc, as deep in this thoughts as he was, could not see it, but Grégorie wore a small frown of confusion. "What could she find funny about accounting?" he wondered quietly.

It was not the the budget she found funny though. It was the assumption that she would go along with any plan that involved 'sticking' her anywhere she did not want to go. She could teleport! A hundred kilometers or more were nothing to her, and that meant she would never be caged again, especially not with people who did not care about her. Not like the Dursleys had done to her for years and years and years.

She was free to wander to her heart's content.

Grégorie sighed quietly and waved for her to follow along with her. "This is a terrible idea. I guess you should come along with me. If you plan to stay here for a time, I might as well show you our little sliver of paradise. I wish that were true."

Walking in his wake, she held her notebook under one arm and pulled her French dictionary from her satchel. A tiny weight dropped onto her shoulder, and she spared a look at Morgan before returning her attention to the path Grégorie walked and the words on the page. She took a minute to find all the words she wanted, but soon she had a simple sentence written out in French this time. Her steps quickened, and she tapped his elbow to get his attention and show him her message.

'I can leave if you do not want me here.'

"What does that mean…? No, it is nothing like that," he said after a moment. "It is… You know what we are, no?" She nodded. "And you want to stay anyway? We are not safe for little girls to be around. Nobody, really. You would be better off with other people who are not so dangerous. Although maybe she should stay, if only so we can teach her how verbs work. How could she understand what we are saying if she does not know that, I wonder."

She blinked in confusion at that last thought and quickly shook her head. That was… not unimportant, necessarily, but certainly not the most important thing this instant. Some more searching, and she carefully copied the words from dictionary to notepad. 'You do not scare me.'

Fragments of thought whirled through his head for a couple of seconds, then he shook his head. "We should." He started walking away again.

Another tap, and he looked at the pad again. 'Where do we go?' was the best way she could figure out what she wanted to ask, and she cast a glare at the book in her hands. How a dictionary of all things, especially one as thick as three fingers, could not have the words 'are' or 'going' in it, she hadn't a clue.

Still, he seemed to parse out what she was asking. "Whenever we are transformed into monsters, there is a strong chance that we happened to kill something, some innocent creature. I tend to walk through the woods and check to see if that is the case. We tend to kill one or two deer a month, sometimes something bigger. When I find them, I bring the bodies back to butcher. Ha! Squeamish, are you?" he added when he saw her grimace. "It is not pretty, but better to cook the meat and tan the hide than to leave it all to rot. Keeps the smell down, too."

'The whole forest belong to the pack?'

"I hate that word. We do not call ourselves a 'pack'," he told her with just a trace of heat in his voice. "We are people, not animals. We are a commune, a family. Not a pack." Before she could finish the French word for 'sorry', he was already waving her off. "I know you did not know that. The wizards we have to deal with do not appear to know it either, no matter that we have told them a thousand times before. I am just telling you that for the future.

"But to answer your question, no. This is a large forest, and most of it belongs to the Moldus. We live on a portion of it that my family had enchanted so Moldus cannot see it."

Now she had to ask about the word that seemed to keep coming up again and again. 'Moldus?'

"Moldus are people who do not have magic. That describes most of the people you have met, I expect," he said with a small, knowing smile. "Jean Luc said you were a Née-Moldus. That means you have magic, you are a wizard, but instead of being born to other wizards like we were you were born to parents without magic."

Hazel frowned and thought about it. She was not, not with her mother being a druid too, but Aunt Petunia's behavior did not make any sense if her own mother was magical as well. Maybe her mum was one of these Née-Moldus people? 'More or less,' she finally replied. 'You say your family own this land?'

"I do, now. I was bitten as a child like too many of us were, and my father wanted to give me the best life I could have. It was not as if I could ever go to school being like this. He and one of his old school friends, one of the only ones who did not desert him because he refused to throw me out, taught me all about hunting and tracking and everything else I would need to know to live on my own. He also had someone put a spell on the edges of the land so I could not leave on the full moon when I changed. I invited some of the other werewolves I knew to come live here as well since that spell means we can not hurt anyone. That is how our commune got started. When he died, he left the land to me. And I know he gave me more so we would not have to live on nothing, but we will never see a single coin with Violette's husband being such a greedy bastard."

Grégorie stomped away faster, his thoughts turning ever more grumbling, and she hurried to keep up. Only once the furious thoughts directed at whoever this Violette – a sister, maybe? – and her husband were had calmed did she rush forwards a little to walk beside him so she could show him her notepad without constantly tapping him. 'You do not go to school? Why? Where do you learn magic if not school? Teach yourself?'

A hand came down to pat her gently on the head, and he gave her a sad smile. "I think I see why Jean Luc wants to keep you, now. When was the last time we had somebody so innocent around here? Werewolves are not allowed to go to any school in France. There is too much of a risk of us biting another child and giving them this curse. There also are not enough of us to warrant a school all our own, assuming the government would let us have one even if there were more of us. That also means that most of us do not know any magic. Jean Luc reads a lot and taught himself some spells, and Marcel, who you have not met yet, attended a magic school until he and a friend of his were bitten. They were expelled. Elise used to have a wand, but it was broken years ago. The rest of us do not really know anything about magic. A few potions are as close to magic as we get."

Potions?! Hazel stared at him in shock and a little rising dismay. They could make magic potions? Those appeared in all sorts of stories and folktales. What did he mean, that was not magic?!

Shaking her head at the surprising attitude, she asked the question that had come to mind before he distracted her. 'Why Elise not buy another?'

He grimaced. "Wands are expensive. They are meant to last a wizard his whole life. We do not have a lot of money to throw around, and definitely not enough to buy a wand for everybody. Not like a wand would do any of us much good without knowing how to use it. Why did Marcel not pay more attention to his lessons when he went to Beauxbatons? The rest of us have to live without."

Hazel's heart felt like it was breaking as she listened to the resignation in his voice, and she could not help but think how lucky she was to be born a druid instead of a wizard. The idea of not being able to do any magic without a wand was bad enough, but then to be unable to get one? To have this amazing gift dangled in front of her face her entire life but never being able to reach out and grab it? That was terrible.

She sucked in her bottom lip as she thought furiously. She was not proud of it, but she had become adept at stealing. It was easy when she could make everybody ignore her and when she could pick pockets with a hand that was not really there. She had benefited from it immensely. Maybe… maybe it was time those skills were used to benefit people besides herself. Her pen scribbled on the pad, and she turned it around.

'Where do you find a wand store?'

"Eager, are you?" he said with a laugh. "You are not old enough to get a wand. You have to be eleven or turning eleven and getting ready to go to school. It will be a few years yet. I hope by then we have someone who can take you in so you get to use that curious brain of yours. I am sorry if that is a disappointment."

'Okay. But for the future, where?'

"Persistent little girl, aren't you?" He shrugged. "Place Cachée would be the place to go. That is where all the magical shops are in Paris. I am sure somebody can show you the way when you are older, or maybe Lucien can take her there one day just to show her around. If she was raised by Moldus, I am sure it would be a sight to see."

Place Cachée. Place Cachée. She focused on the foreign words, trying to burn them into her mind. She could head out tonight to Paris and start looking around for such a place. Or, she realized, maybe some of those bad jobs Jean Luc said these people had were located in this same location.

It was worth a try.

"Come along," he told her with a wave, his indulgent smile revealing that he had no idea of her intentions. "We are wasting daylight, and we have not even started looking. The deer we killed last night are not going to drag themselves to us."

xxxxxxxxxxxxx​

For the second day in a row, Hazel awoke to the sun shining in her face. This time, however, it was intentional, and she rubbed the sleep from her eyes and pushed herself upright. Her movements were careful because this time she remembered that she was lying on a precarious perch. Not a tree limb today, but instead the gently sloped roof atop one of the cottages in Jean Luc and Grégorie's commune.

She needed to wake up before anyone else to be sure that her plan would succeed.

The previous evening, the werewolves who worked had all returned to this little village and had been surprised by the mute girl hanging around in their midst. It meant a night full of introductions, the majority of which Hazel was not sure she would be able to remember. There were too many names, too many questions posed, too many little facts given to her, for her possibly to keep straight.

And yet for all that it was overwhelming, for all that several of them were scared to have her around, not a single one had turned her away. Their near-immediate acceptance had only strengthened her resolved, and while she might not be able to remember all their names and where they were from, she could keep track of their numbers.

Fourteen. Aside from Jean Luc and Marcel, there were fourteen werewolves here who had been denied their magic. She could fix that.

Sounds began coming from the various small houses as the sun fully breached the horizon. She waited and waited, and just like the day before, a handful of men and women started a tired slog northwards. Breathing out her ignore-me smoke to be on the safe side – although with how worn down they all looked, she might be able to follow without its help and still remain unseen – she and Morgan slid off the roof to the ground and slipped into the trees.

The walk served to wake the adults up, and she made sure to stay behind and to their left as they trudged along a path through the trees. The dirt beneath them was packed down hard from the constant passage of feet walking the same route day after day, month after month. She danced through the tree line, dodging small shrubs lurking in the shade of the larger trees and knotty roots that broke through the ground. After fifteen minutes of walking, they reached a small gravel road that cut into the forest, coming from she knew not where and returning to the same destination. One of the women at the front of the group reached into a small purse hanging from her wrist and pulled out something small and slightly shiny.

It looked like a coin.

She raised the coin above her head, and Hazel watched with burning curiosity. What was it for? Would it create a portal to their destination? Turn into a giant eagle? Just instantly teleport them all elsewhere?

On the other side of the group from her, the road started to stretch. It was as if the bend in the road she could see in the distance was moving farther and farther away, and as it did a shape started to form, one formed of grey shadows and empty. The shape gained substance, and Hazel could only stare as a carriage drawn by eight horses sped its way towards the group before slowing down to a stop in front of them.

The werewolves started climbing into the enormous carriage, but Hazel's eyes were fixed on the horses. Mostly because they were not horses, or not living ones anyway. Instead of skin and fur, they had plates of a bluish metal that flexed and shifted in a rhythmic pattern almost as though they were breathing in truth. In the gaps between the plates she could see innumerable gears spinning and ticking in an intricate dance. As those gears moved, the horses shifted and pawed at the ground in a strange synchrony.

They were undoubtedly not as warm and cuddly as living ponies would be, but there was still an elegance to them that was fascinating to watch in action.

The two clockwork horses in front reared up in unison, as they came down the two behind them started rising as well in the exact same manner. The action rippled through the team, and the carriage started rolling forwards. Her eyes grew wide as she realized she had missed her chance to sneak into the carriage, which left her with few options. Before the carriage could move too far, she jumped—

—onto its roof and pressed herself flat. I really hope this doesn't puff into smoke or something and leave me here, she told Morgan.

The horses and the carriage behind them picked up speed, and soon enough everything twisted and warped. Lying on her belly as she was, she thankfully did not fall through and land on the ground. Instead she was able to watch with amazement as the world around her smeared and swirled just like a painting she had to do in class one day after Dudley dumped a cup of water on it. She was hit with a blast of vertigo as everything seemed to tilt and then fold onto itself. Before the nausea could get too bad, all the tilting and swirling and smearing reversed itself, and the world snapped back into place.

She was no longer in a forest. Instead the carriage was stopped in a large cobbled square with streets running outwards at right angles to each other in all four directions. At the corners of the square between the streets stood large bronze braziers, and while she watched one flared up with bright green flames only to disgorge a man in a dark grey robe carrying a briefcase. She looked around, and sure enough just about everybody in sight was likewise wearing robes or else tunics over either trousers or long skirts. There were a few exceptions, mostly a few teenagers she could see here and there wearing normal clothes, but very few indeed.

People started climbing out of the carriage and walking towards one of the four streets. And more people, and more people, far more than this carriage could have possibly held even if everyone was sitting in somebody else's lap. Was it like her satchel, she wondered as her hand moved to pat the bag in question, lots bigger on the inside than on the outside? That certainly would explain what she was seeing, and there were maybe a couple of stories she had read where the wizard's home was bigger on the inside than it looked on the outside.

Another brazier flared, and with a quick hop she was beside the green fire and behind the woman who stepped down out of the pan onto the stone floor. A long blow to wrap herself in her smoke again, and she started walking down one of the streets at random and looking around her in amazement. Over there was a store with a tall stack of cauldrons flanking both sides of the door. Next to her was a store with jars of animal parts floating in oddly colored liquids and barrels. Farther up the street was a building whose sign changed colors every second or two next to a building where the mannequins in the window turned and posed for the passersby to see the robes they wore in the best possible light. In the sky above her flew flocks of owls, all of them entering and leaving different shops before flapping away, and at the sight of them Morgan squeaked and pressed tightly against her neck for safety.

What did wizards do with their time, she thought as she started listening to the surrounding crowd. Did most of them work, and if so, what jobs did they have? Did they push the boundaries of what was possible? Were there magical creatures like dragons or demons running around that they spent all day wrangling, and they had gotten so good at it that that was the reason nobody who was not magic knew about them? Or maybe, now that she was thinking about all the things she had seen in the last few months, were they out exploring new realms and alternate realities like those where the fae dwelled?

Several boys ran over to a window, one of them waving to a few others. "Look, look! Tinnamack just released a new broom! It's supposed to be faster than anything coming out of Britain nowadays!"

"Two sous per bat spleen?" an older woman yelled from inside a store, her voice coming through clearly despite the closed door. "That is highway robbery!"

"Did you see the new poster of Mathieu la Noir in Musique Magique? He makes me want to drink him dry," a teenage girl said to several of her friends before all of them burst out giggling.

"Sulliman needs to learn to wait," one man said to a harried-looking and pimply teenage clerk. "I can only brew so much at a time, and he isn't my only customer!"

Hazel's eyes bounced back and forth over everything around her, but the longer she walked, the more her smile faded until it was a small, thoughtful frown. This place, these wizards, were… not what she expected.

They had magic. They sequestered themselves from normal people. They had shiny cauldrons and strange smells wafting about. And yet despite all that, if she closed her eyes, she could all too easily imagine herself back in Bristol during the two weeks she spent in that city. The words these wizards used might be different, but what they were saying was exactly the same.

Morgan twittered at her in confusion and concern, and she shook her head. I'm fine, just got my hopes up for no reason. I thought these wizards would be like the ones from the books I read, where they spent all day doing research or guiding hobbits and boy heroes or tricking dragons out of their gold. They aren't. They're just regular people like everybody else.

Let's keep moving. There is all this magic stuff everywhere. It can't be that hard to find a wand store where we can do some 'shopping'.

As the sun rose in the sky, the air grew warmer and warmer. The stones of the street became hot to the touch. Finally Hazel could take it no longer and slid down one wall to the ground, sweat dripping down her face and the sleeves of the thinnest shirt she owned pulled up as far as they could go.

Today is the worst, she complained to Morgan, who unlike her appeared to have no issues with the heat. She suspected it was because nobody would look at him oddly for flying around with no clothes on. With how hot it was getting, she was sorely tempted to do the same and hope her ignore-me smoke kept people from noticing that she was naked.

Pulling a plastic water bottle out of her satchel, she took several gulps and grimaced at how warm it too had gotten. Not that it had been truly cold when she last filled the bottle. That was the downside of filling a bottle from a sink rather than giving in to temptation and stealing refrigerated bottles of water from stores. This way, she only had to steal once.

She snorted. At the rate she was going, she expected she would not be doing any thieving at all. She had wandered around what had to be the entire shopping district, ducking in and out of nearly every story, but despite hours of effort she had not been able to find one single store that had wands on display. That was the sole reason she had come here, to find the wand store and bring some back for the werewolves, but she could not find it! It was incredibly frustrating.

About the only thing as frustrating as that was the one store she could not figure out the purpose of. It had been on the end of one of the streets, but its sign was blurry in a way that did not clear up no matter how she looked at it or how much she blinked, and the door and windows were completely blackened out. When she tried to go inside, the door was sealed shut, and despite several tries her skeleton key spell could not to unlock it. She had been seriously tempted just to break one of the windows and walk in, especially since she still harbored a suspicion that this was the wand store she was looking for, but she had no confidence in her smoke's ability to hide her if she did that. Nor, honestly, did she think she could get in, make sure it sold wands, stuff fourteen wands into her bag, and jump out before somebody caught her and cast a spell on her.

She was too young to go to jail.

Even the visit to a magical bookstore had been a bust! Out of all the books stacked floor to ceiling, there was not a single one she could find that was in English. That a bookstore in France would only sell books in French was not a complete surprise, of course it wasn't, but that did not mean she was happy about it. Trying to translate even one book with just her dictionary would take forever, and while she could ask one of the werewolves to read it out loud for her, or even just read it to themselves so she could overhear their thoughts, adults always said that stealing was wrong. She doubted they would want to be involved in her reading her way through the bookstore, especially if they could not benefit from the books because they did not have wands with which to cast any spells of their own.

This bites, she thought with a sigh. But maybe it isn't as bad as it could be. Grégorie said I would be going to magic school when I turn eleven, so while it's over a year away, that's a year where I can learn whatever I want. I've come a long way just in the last six months, and now I have something more than my own guesses. I could learn how to make potions from the group and just putter around seeing what is here to be seen. It isn't like I have a deadline when I have to have learned such-and-such. I can do whatever I like.

All else fails, I have a year to get really good at reading French so I can read these books on my own if I get bored. A frown crossed her face. Or just in general. For all I know, if I stay here I'll have to apply to that French school Marcel went to, which means I really need to learn how to read and write.

She nodded firmly at that thought. It was not as if she planned to stop learning, after all. She would just keep learning what she could. From the way Jean Luc and Grégorie had talked about what she had to look forward to as a Née-Moldus, she could guess that she was not expected to know much of anything before starting school. Whatever she learned in the meantime was a plus, not her catching up.

Taking another few sips of water, she poured a small amount into her cupped palm and held it up so Morgan could drink as well. So we don't have anything to do here anymore. I guess we should head back to the forest, shouldn't we? At least it won't be as hot over there.

Morgan looked up from the water and tilted his head. With a chirp, he hopped from her arm to her sweaty hair and screeched before flying away. She climbed to her feet and started following, and then she caught sight of the store he was flying towards and sighed.

Blast it all, it's like the pet store all over again.

xxxxxxxxxxxxx​

Hazel's feet landed in the soft dirt of the forest, and she stretched with a resigned smile on her face. Yes, dear, you were right, she told Morgan, who was perched securely on what little cloth now covered her shoulder. I'm not listening to you about everything though, so don't let it go to your feathered head.

The flap covering the doorway of one of the cottages flew open, and Jean Luc stepped out only for his eyes to immediately fall on her. "There you are! We have been looking all over for you all morning! For all we knew, you had been eaten or kidnapped or something. You scared Grégorie and me half to death—" He blinked when he saw her new outfit. "She for sure was not wearing anything like that yesterday. Where did you go?"

She needed to search in her satchel for her notepad as it had slipped down deeper into her pile of stuff, but soon enough she pulled it out. 'I caught a ride to Paris. Wanted to see what it was like, and I needed more summery clothes. What do you think?' She accentuated the question with a brief twirl.

When Morgan took off from her disgusting sweaty hair, he had immediately flown towards the nearest clothing store. A store that happened to be stocked with light clothing appropriate for a French summer. Her jeans and her long-sleeved shirts went back into her bag, as did a couple of pairs of white linen trousers, two skirts, and several tunic-like tops that had extremely short or no sleeves at all. She had wanted to leave it at that, but Morgan refused to leave the store until she took the light blue sundress with a yellow ribbon around the waist that he had remained stubbornly perched upon, which she was currently wearing much to his delight.

"What has my life become that a little girl is asking me for fashion advice?" Jean Luc covered his face with one hand and dragged it down. "It looks fine. Wait," he continued, his hand dropping to show a confused expression, "how did you get back here?"

'Jumped.'

"That tells me nothing. What do you mean, 'jumped'?"

She teleported five feet to the side then back to where she had been standing, and she pointed at her previous answer.

"You can teleport." She nodded happily, but he just kept staring at her. "She is a little kid. How in the world can she teleport already? That is not a skill she should be capable of until she is practically an adult!" He took a deep breath. "That's – terrifying – nice, Hazel. Do not do that too much. It can be bad for you. How she can do that without leaving bits and pieces of herself all over the country, I do not know and do not want to know. I just hope she quits. I do not know any spells to put her back together if she makes a mistake. And since you are back, you can help us with making dinner.

"Meanwhile, I need a drink."

xxxxxxxxxxxxx​

Hazel really needs to get a book on French soon so I can quit writing sentences that are so grammatically incorrect. It makes proofreading just painful. (For anyone who doesn't get it, she only has a dictionary so doesn't know how to conjugate French verbs. All the verbs she is writing are in their base infinitive, "to blank" form. Maybe it just made more sense in my head. *blush*)

How expensive are wands? Canon is nonsensical or at least inconsistent because on the one hand we have Harry buying his wand for 7 galleons and Rowling saying that a galleon is worth 5 pounds, so it's only 35 pounds each; on the other hand, that was too much for the Weasleys to buy Ron his own wand until they won a sweepstakes despite that being literally the most important possession a wizard has. Not to mention that with how rarely people should need to replace their wands, I highly doubt Ollivander could make a living off his business because he would be looking at an income no more than £2.100 (roughly $4,200) PER YEAR. Even if we assume there are other schools whose students also get their wands from Ollivander, it is unlikely that there are another couple of thousand students lining up to buy a wand.

I normally handwave how much a galleon is worth and make it more valuable to explain the strange pricing found in canon, but while I was planning this chapter another potential explanation came to mind. Considering Harry was chosen by a wand that was the brother to Voldemort's and is made of holly, the wood that per Pottermore is inclined towards people "engaged in dangerous quests", Ollivander may have given him the wand at a significant discount as his version of "It's dangerous to go alone. Take this". The 7 galleon cost would therefore be specific to Harry when in truth he normally charges much more.

 

[Silently Watches]

Hazel slept in for a short time the following day, opening her eyes only after the sun had fully risen and all the adults who worked for a living were already gone. She rose from the cot she had been loaned by Simone, one of the younger women of the commune. Talking with Simone the previous night, she had learned that apparently another woman had lived in this cottage with her, but something had happened and that woman left the commune to join another group of werewolves. It left her with extra space and a spare bed, which Hazel appreciated.

Stretching for several seconds, she blinked blearily before her plans for today pushed their way into the front of her brain and a wide smile broke out on her face. That was right, they were going to teach her how to make magic potions! She jumped out of bed and hastily pulled some of her new clothes out of her satchel and changed. Waves of blue magic cleaned the shirt and soft cotton pajama pants she had worn to sleep in, then they were stuffed into the bag. Pulling the curtain over the doorway aside, she stepped outside and breathed in the cool air of the morning.

Few werewolves in the commune ate breakfast, and after the big dinner she had partaken in the night before, she could understand why. She therefore made her way out of the cottage and around one of the dead and cold fire pits, nearly skipping as she did, on her way to a ring of tables and fires and big copper pots off to one side of the clearing. This, she had been told, was where the three younger werewolves had their classes, and today she was going to join them. Not all lessons were like the one today; some were instead about reading and maths, and those lessons she planned on skipping. But lessons about magic she was definitely going to be present for.

She waved to the other people who were already gathered there. Of the now-four kids here, she was actually not the youngest. The oldest was a fifteen-year-old boy with dark hair and eyes and deeply tanned skin named Claude. Next came twelve-year-old Chantal, all blonde and pale skin to set herself apart from Claude. Serge was the last of the three and younger even than her at seven. Standing next to the ring of tables and impromptu cauldrons were two women, one who looked middle-aged with prematurely greying hair and the other younger with a bright smile. Elise and Amorette, or at least she thought that was the younger woman's name.

"Good morning, 'Azel!" Amorette said.

Unlike Jean Luc or Grégorie, Hazel had noticed that most of the werewolves here had trouble with the first part of her name. It was something about how French worked that Jean Luc had tried to explain but just made her more confused. She had instead decided just to accept that they were going to call her 'Azel' for the entirety of her time here and roll with it. She pulled out two notebooks, the first with lines on the pages meant for actually taking notes and the other without lines which she used for communication. Writing on the latter for a minute with a few checks of her dictionary, she finally held it up for the adults to see. 'Good morning. When do we start?'

"Eager, are you?" asked Elise. Hazel gave her a nod, to which the woman laughed. "Good. I am glad one of the young ones is interested. Amorette will work with you and Serge today. Chantal, I'll be teaching you myself and keeping you from staring at Claude the whole time. How he has not noticed your crush, I will never understand. Claude…" She sighed and shook her head. "I honestly do not know why you keep turning the tanning solution to sludge, but work on it again, and please get it right this time. We still have some left, but it will only last another month or two."

Hazel had to work to keep her scowl to herself. The first day she was here, when she had gone walking and talking with Grégorie, they found two dead deer and brought them back to butcher. That part had been gross enough, but it paled in comparison to the smell that came out of a jar of nasty yellow-brown paste he had pulled off a shelf. Even after he had finished coating the hides in and they walked away from his tannery shack, the smell still lingered in her nose for hours.

She could understand how useful it was to have a potion that turned animal skins into leather, but did it have to be so foul?!

"Okay, you two," Amorette said as she motioned for Hazel and Serge to sit at one of the tables. "Both of you are young still, too young to be brewing on your own, so we are going to work together to make a simple potion to get rid of sunburns and blisters and things, okay?"

"Don't wanna," Serge said with a pout, his arms crossed over his chest. "You are not my mommy. I do not have to do anything you tell me to do."

Amorette's smile turned stiff. Jean Luc had tried to tell Hazel only part of Serge's story the night before, but his thoughts revealed far more. Serge was new to being a werewolf, having been bitten just a few months ago. His parents immediately took him to Paris, not for help but in essence to dump him into the government's arms and run off. The government in turn brought him here to the commune so Jean Luc could take care of him. Serge had not accepted that and made it clear in both thought and spoken word that he firmly believed his parents would come back for him, despite everybody in the commune trying to explain to him that this was his home now.

Before Amorette could say anything, Hazel was writing. 'I want to learn.'

"At least somebody is adjusting. Okay, 'Azel. Serge, you can watch and join in when you feel ready, alright? Not like most seven-year-olds are learning to make potions anyway. First, let us talk about the ingredients we have. Burn Balm does not have any animal parts in it, just plants, and the first one…"

Amorette spent several minutes talking about all the herbs and plants on the table between them, then she showed Hazel how to carefully cut the leaves and stems and roots and explained what she meant when she said one had to be diced and another minced. It did not take long before almost the entirety of one lined page was covered in notes, and then it was time to start the real brewing process.

"Azel, I want you to start stirring the pot, and then I will add the ingredients in the order we talked about. Some potions need to be stirred in one direction or another, but for this one it does not matter."

Hearing that, she could not help but frown. Sure, she got to chop the ingredients up, and stirring was important, but there had to be more she could do than just stir. She could stir with just one hand, right? That would let her use her other hand to scoop up the stuff that was within arm's reach.

Or…

She looked down at her left hand and curled her fingers into a fist one by one, starting with her pinky and ending with her thumb. When she opened all her fingers together, a transparent copy of her hand formed in the air in front of her. A sweeping gesture, and her ghost hand wrapped around the long-handled spoon in the cauldron. She moved her real hand in a circle in front of her, and the spoon started turning in a nice wide circle to match. There! Now she could leave the cauldron, though she would still only have her right hand to work with. Her left would have to keep moving if she wanted the spoon to stir.

"I thought I asked you… to… How are you doing that?"

Tilting her head, she looked back and forth at her fleshy hand and her ghost hand. She had always used one of her hands to guide her magic, but as she kept moving her hand around and around and around in the same circle, she had to wonder. Could she maybe keep the ghost hand moving without her real hand doing anything? Especially something this simple and repetitive. It was just a circle.

Her eyes fluttered closed as she focused all her attention on how the motions of her hand felt. How the skin slid back and forth. How the bones in her wrist shifted against one another. How the muscles of her forearm pulled tight and relaxed. All the sensations repeated themselves again and again. She kept those feelings at the front of her mind and brought her hand to a stop.

When she opened her eyes, her ghost hand and the spoon were still moving.

A wide smile broke out, and she turned to Amorette and stuck both her thumbs up. Her excitement and enthusiasm faded when she saw the woman staring at her in shock. As was Elise. As were Chantal and Claude. She looked to the side to see that Serge was not, but that might have had more to do with the fact that he had turned around to sit with his back to the rest of them.

'What?', she wrote.

"Where… Who taught you how to do that?" Elise finally asked in a shaky voice. "That… should be impossible."

'Nobody. I teach myself.' They kept staring at her, so she continued, 'I teach myself all my magic. Not hard.'

"You taught yourself? You are eight years old. How could you have taught yourself any of this?!"

'Not 8. Almost 10.'

Amorette perked up when she read Hazel's response. "Almost ten? I wonder when her birthday is."

"Not the point!" Elise brought her hands up to her face and shook her head. "What am I supposed to do about this? Just keep working on your potion with Amorette because that is something makes sense. That is normal. Nine-year-old girls who can cast spells effortlessly without a wand are not.

"I need to ask Jean Luc about this. Maybe he had read something that will explain something about how this is happening."

xxxxxxxxxxxxx​

The ground beneath Hazel swept past with frightening speed as the train chugged its way west. Unlike her last train ride, she was not riding on the tongue between two cars. Instead she sat on top of the last car with her eyes closed, just enjoying the wind rushing past her. Navigating the train station in Paris had been an exercise in frustration, but catching a train for a couple of hours sure beat walking for a week and a half.

After spending time in the commune, she had returned to Bristol for a couple of days to do some research. Part of that was looking for a textbook on French, from which she discovered that she was in fact doing French verbs all wrong. Why they needed to make their language so complicated she did not understand, but that sadly was just the way it was. Now she had to memorize tables of endings to tack onto the words.

…Surely it would not be too confusing for her to keep using the base form and let other people figure out what she was trying to say. Right?

The other topic she wanted to do research on was more in the vein of history. Perhaps it was because she was looking in a British library, but she had much more trouble finding any mention of locations in France that held the kind of folklore significance or magical history that she had found so readily for the isles of her birth. With that search at a dead end, she instead started looking into what few figures from French history she knew about.

When she asked Jean Luc, he could not tell her much about Joan of Arc other than that he did not believe she was a witch, and the books she read agreed with that. One of her compatriots, however, was a very different story. Gilles de Rais was an officer in the French army, and after France was liberated from the English he retired to his estate to experiment with diabolism, trying to summon literal demons for reasons that even after a lot of reading she could not figure out. He was eventually arrested for murdering more than a hundred kids to serve as the sacrifices in his rituals, and after his trial he was put to death.

She did not care so much about his execution, but his experiments opened up all sorts of questions. Where was he trying to summon things from, for instance. Was there really a place called Hell with demons and dead people, or was he trying to create a portal to an Otherworld like the one she saw at Elva Hill? Did making such a tear really require death and sacrifices? Her research on druids a few months back had mentioned that they might have practiced human sacrifices, and the sealed gate to the Greenwild beneath Glastonbury Tor talked about closing it with 'salt and blood and iron'. Maybe that had been a fancy way of saying the person who did that did sacrifice somebody?

She did not know, but she could not help wanting to find out. Further digging revealed that de Rais's castle was located in a small town named Machecoul. That coincidentally was also where this train was headed.

The train started to slow as it turned a corner, and with a small jump Hazel and Morgan were off the car and standing in grass several dozen yards from the train tracks. Her plan was simple. From what she read, de Rais had never succeeded in his summonings, or at least never felt like he had succeeded, so the chances of running into a monster should be low. She was not going to take any chances though. If she so much as saw something scary, she was getting out of there right quick.

Buildings were visible in the near distance, and she started walking that direction. As she did, another thought niggled at her, one she had done her best to ignore. She had not necessarily told anyone in the commune that she was planning on leaving or when she would come back. She told herself it was because she did not need to. Like she had told Jean Luc when she first met him, she was a wanderer. She had places to explore.

But part of her could not forget the shock Elise and Amorette looked at her with. It was not hate, not the way Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia routinely looked at her, but there was still an element of fear. She just did not know why! Yes, she understood that wizards needed wands to do magic – although the werewolves seemed to do just fine with potions, so she did not understand why that was an exception – but all she was doing was moving something. It was literally the third magic spell she had taught herself to do.

That should not be a reason for them to be afraid. She had not done anything scary or special.

Hazel sniffed and rubbed her nose, doing her best not to think about what that meant for the future. Was this fear something she would have to deal with forever? Unless she found other druids, if she only ever dealt with wizards, would they always look at her as if her kind of magic was unnatural? She had set out from Privet Drive to learn about magic and find more people like her, but despite finding an entire society of magic-users it almost felt like she was more alone now than ever.

Machecoul was a small town, more a village than anything else, and it did not take long for her feet to carry her to a set of towers standing above a pile of crumbling ruins and brickwork. A few other people were wandering around them as well, taking photographs and being tourists just like she was. The more she watched, though, the more something very odd stood out. People were taking pictures of one of the towers and the surrounding walls, but everybody was ignoring the other tower. Not a single person even looked at it.

The other tower which had multiple chains wrapped around it.

She stepped into the ruins proper and walked over to the ignored tower. From the corner of her eye she could see a few people look at her, but as soon as she crossed some invisible threshold they immediately looked away.

They aren't ignoring me or it, she realized. They legitimately can't see us.

Now that she was closer, she could get a better look at the chains. That took away any possibility that this was not magical. The chains were made from a dark metal with veins of gold running through each link. Nails, thick as one of her fingers but rusted, were punched through the stone walls at regular intervals to hold the chains to the tower. Hanging from the links set between the nails were small golden rectangles, and when she crouched down to examine one she could see that strange shapes and symbols had been carved into the plate all the way through to the other side.

Well, well, well. de Rais must have succeeded at something, or there would be no reason for the wizards to hide it like this. She stood up straight. The only question is what.

She reached up to touch the stone walls only for Morgan to squawk and take off from her shoulder. He flew away from the tower and landed on the lip of a window set into the chunk of wall perhaps thirty feet away from her. What has gotten into you, she demanded with one hand propped on her hip. It's just a building. You've been in plenty of them before.

Morgan sang to her, his song full of terror, and she sighed. Fine. Stay out here. Don't run off. I'll be back in a couple of minutes.

There was only door in or out of the tower, and Hazel squeezed herself through the lengths of chain that crossed the entrance way. To her left, a set of stairs curled upwards to the second story she had been able to see from the outside, but while the castle had once been taller that was as high as it went now. To her right, more stairs but going downwards into the earth.

There was only one real option. To the right she turned, following the stairs as they descended into a basement. Reaching into her satchel, she pulled out her torch and clicked it on before her steps resumed. The room she stood in now was tall – or deep, rather – with sconces on the walls for torches or candles to be fitted into. A desk stood on the floor pushed up against the wall, old wax frozen forever as it dripped off the edges. From higher up on the stairs she had been able to see smudges on the floor, but once she reached the landing they were harder to make out from the dark stone. This was not even the lowest level, for a few feet away the stairs began again and descended ever farther.

She stepped lightly as she crossed the floor, staying well away rom the places where she remembered seeing the smudged stains. She did not see any evidence of a demon or a monster lurking around, and stepping on the smudges probably would not draw one out. Still better safe than sorry.

The desk, now that she was next to it, looked in far worse shape than it had when she stood on the stairs. It also was less a desk and more just a table with a thick top. There were no drawers or anything to store pens or ink or books, and she could only assume de Rais and his assistants had brought books and things down to the basement and took them back upstairs when they were done. Even down here, however, the desk could not withstand the ravages of centuries. There were several places that the wood had started to rot, and as her light played over the front she could see how what was not rotting had nonetheless twisted and warped. She was scared to touch it or even to breathe too hard on it. It looked like it could fall apart at any moment.

Retracing her steps, she made her way back to the stairs and peered down. So far she had found nothing of note, certainly nothing worth chaining the building itself up. There had to be some reason for it, though, and it was nothing up here.

The stones of the stairs leading to the second basement felt less even than those above, as if the pressure of the dirt pushing against the walls was making the steps buckle. The deeper she went, the more obvious it became until the last few steps leading to the lowest floor had a difference of easily half an inch or more. The floor itself was hard beneath her feet, but the stone that made it up was buried under a thick layer of dirt and grime. The light of her torch swept across the room and froze in place when it landed on two boys standing in the middle of the room.

They were relatively short, only half a head taller than her if she had to guess, and both wore brightly colored trousers – one blue, one yellow – beneath white long-sleeved shirts that reached halfway to their knees. One was blond, the other brunette, both were barefoot, and they were facing away from her staring at the opposite wall. Even with the light at their backs and clearly shining past them, they did not turn to face her.

Swallowing thickly, Hazel was not sure whether to thank or curse her inability to speak. They were not reacting to the light, but would they react to spoken words? Most likely. Almost certainly. Whether that would be for good or ill, though, that was the question.

She took a small step forwards. Then another. And a third. Despite her approach, the two boys still did not move.

Something crunched beneath her shoes, and she aimed the light down to see what it was. Her eyes landed on bones, lots and lots of tiny bones that looked like they must have come from mice or some other critter of similar size. Her heart started beating faster as she realized where she was not shining the light, and her torch darted back up.

The boys were still, and she let out a quiet sigh only for them to choose that moment to start turning around. Their movements were an eerie synchrony, spinning at the same speed but in opposite directions so their backs were to each other before they faced her fully. The strange shirts they wore were covered with reddish brown stains, long-dried blood that had poured out of numerous holes stabbed into their chests. One, now that she was seeing them fully, was even missing a hand, the stump of his arm roughly hacked away with shards of bone and strings of muscle dangling from the torn flesh.

They cocked their heads in unison, their blank doll's eyes staring at her. "Warm?" they asked in lilting voices.

That question sent a bolt of fear shivering down her spine. She waved the hand not holding the torch in a warding gesture. Nope. Not warm. Not warm at all. Cold as ice, I am.

Twin grins appeared on their faces. Not happy grins, nor sad ones. Grins that made her just that much more frightened. "Warm," they repeated. Their hands rose, fingers curling and uncurling as though they were trying to grab something just in front of them, and they started walking towards her.

Oh no. That isn't happening. Picturing the outside of the tower, Hazel jumped—

—and her feet landed right back on the grimy floor in the tower. The hand holding the torch started trembling, but she took a quick breath and steeled her will. This was going to work. It had to! She jumped again, but once again she did not go anywhere.

"Warm," the boys said. Behind them, to the sides, even from below, bodies slipped through the walls as if solid stone was nothing but mist and shadow to them. Where once there were just two, now there were two dozen or more, all of them with hands outstretched and eyes locked on her. A few were girls, scattered here and there, but the vast majority of them were boys.

"Warm," the new figures said.

Hazel stumbled backwards, her feet crunching more bones beneath her weight. If she could not teleport away, that only left one other option.

As if sensing her intentions, the grins on the dead children turned into scowls. "Warm. Warm. Warm." Their eyes sank into their heads, leaving empty sockets behind, and their bottom jaws dropped to midway down their chests to display mouths full of half-foot-long needle-like teeth. The wailing scream that came from them turned her blood to ice. "WaaAaRRrMm!"

She turned tail and ran.

Up ten stairs she fled before she stumbled to a stop. Ahead of her, more of these horrific ghosts slid out of the walls and climbed out from beneath the stairs, their mouths already distorted and their missing eyes nonetheless locked on her. Looking behind, the rest of the ghosts were pushing their way up the staircase. She pressed her back to the wall as they continued their pursuit, left with nowhere else to go.

"WaRm. WarM. WARM."

Hands grabbed her wrists and her arms and her shoulders and her legs and her ankles and around her neck. She opened her mouth in a silent scream. This was not right! No! I don't want to die here! Leave me alone! Go away!

The dozen hands holding her suddenly let her free, and her eyes shot open even though she could not remember squeezing them shut. Her head whipped back and forth. All around her, the walking dead had turned around and were descending the stairs or slipping back into the walls. They were leaving.

Why?

Stupid question, Hazel, she all but yelled at herself. She did not have time to ask why they had changed their minds about eating her. All she had time for was to get out of this place. As soon as the stairs above her were clear, she started running towards the sanctuary offered at the top of the staircase.

The sound of her footsteps was enough to break whatever spell she had somehow laid over the ghosts, and behind and below her the wailing resumed.

Something caught her left foot, and she fell forwards and landed heavily on the hard stone steps. The impact knocked the breath out of her. Gasping, she looked with fearful eyes at her foot and the hand and head that had slipped out of the wall to grab it. The ghost opened its mouth wider than before, a lightless void all she could see deep within its throat. Her other foot kicked out and hit it in the nose, and it shrieked more in shock than in pain. It was still enough for it to let go of her, and this time she did not waste time wondering. She scrambled up the remaining stairs on all fours like an animal until she reached the landing to the first basement. Despite the temptation to look behind to see if they were still following her, she kept her eyes forward and her feet pounding the stone as she kept running up and up and up.

The daylight streaming in through the open doorway was the most beautiful thing Hazel had ever seen, and she dived onto the stone floor and rolled underneath the lowest chain until she lay fully on the grass and dirt outside. From her position on her back, she could turn her head and peer back into the tower. Four twisted human heads were raised above the surface of the floor, and they stared at her in rage and hate and hunger before sinking back down out of sight.

Her head fell fully onto the ground, her breath the quick panting of relief. Fluttering wings next to her caught her attention. Her hand reached up to stroke Morgan's breast feathers. Clearly you're the brains of this operation. I should not have gone down there.

Morgan shot her a glare and pecked her finger harder than he normally did.

Yes, yes, I learned my lesson. Stay away from places associated with human sacrifice and demon summoning. She pushed herself to her feet and looked around. What I'm more worried about right now is that something's wrong with my jumping and I don't know what. I couldn't get out of there. Morgan cocked his head at her, and she pointedly looked at the grass five feet away from her. A jump upwards to give him a demonstration—

—and she landed on the other side of the doorway, exactly where she had been looking.

…Huh.

She looked down at her feet, lifting her shoes to check the bottoms of them. Had she just been stuck in the ground at the lowest basement? That did not make any sense. She had jumped into and out of soft ground multiple times before now. Two more jumps, both short distances before returning to where she first stood, confirmed that her teleportation was intact again.

Her eyes fell upon the chains and the metal plates hanging from them, and she frowned. Maybe it was not a problem with her jumping. Maybe the problem had nothing to do with her in the first place. Maybe it had everything to do with whatever spells were worked into the bindings.

Those chains aren't just to keep normal people from noticing the tower, she told Morgan. They look like they also keep those ghosts inside. It isn't impossible that they intentionally wanted to keep anyone – or anything – from teleporting out, especially if they were worried the spirits might be able to do just that. Whatever they meant to do, it seems to be working just fine.

She scooped her friend up and put him back on her shoulder. Do you think there are other places like this in the world?

He twittered at her, and she nodded. He had a point. Even if there were, after this? She really should not go looking for them.

xxxxxxxxxxxxx​

Happy Halloween, everybody.

 

[Silently Watches]

The sun had set and stars had taken its place hours ago, but still Hazel sat on the roof of Simone's cottage and looked up to the sky as though it might hold answers for her. As the initial terror of her encounter that afternoon with a bunch of hungry ghosts slowed to a simmer, other concerns had raised their heads. This was the first time she had been trapped in a dangerous situation since she escaped Privet Drive, but it was not the first dangerous situation she had ever been in.

The red cap. Running into transformed werewolves. The magical police back at the library in Greater Whinging, in a manner of speaking. Even the very existence of open doorways to Otherworlds. Magic made scary things real. If she was really going to spend her time around folklore come to life, she needed to be able to do more than run away.

She needed to be able to defend herself.

The idea itself was just one of the problems facing her. Back when she had to go to school, Dudley and his cronies had always been the aggressors. They always got away with it, and she had only made the mistake of lashing back one single time. The punishment she received when she returned to her aunt and uncle had been enough to teach her that fighting back was never the way to go. She was much better served by running away and hiding. It was why she had fallen back on her jumping as her first means of dealing with danger, she realized now, and why the idea of using magic to hit back had never crossed her mind until jumping just was not an option. Overcoming that mindset would be a challenge all its own.

She lifted her hand and turned it over, holding the empty air as though she would a cup. How was she supposed to do that, even? She had tried to start fire to keep herself warm the night she left Greater Whinging, technically the very start of her grand journey. Tried and failed. Somehow, she doubted conjuring a fireball would be any easier. What other ways did she have to fight off something intent on attacking her? Her mind spun fanciful ideas one after another, ranging from streams of fire and ice to beams of bright green light to snapping her fingers and blowing up whatever would hunt her. The longer she thought, the more impossible dreams came to her, but eventually she breathed out and let her hand drop.

Some of her ideas would be great... if they were possible. They just weren't. On a lark, she decided she might as well try out something basic. Closing her eyes, she shoved her worries away to the back of her mind where they could bother her later and focused on the memory of heat in her hand from holding the head of her torch or stretching her hand out towards a fire. Of how the heat reaching into her palm danced on the edges but never overtook the cold of the back of that hand. The smell of wood smoke, the crackling of the flames.

She imagined how it would look, a thin layer of fire licking upwards from her cupped palm, and Hazel breathed out low and long before opening her eyes.

Her hand was still empty.

With a snort she let her arm fall back to the thatched roof. So much for that idea. There had to be something she could do. For a long minute she considered the pros and cons of returning to the shopping center in Paris and stealing some books from the bookstore. Surely wizards had to have some way to defend themselves! It would take her hours and hours to translate all the titles of the books to find the few she needed, and longer still to read the book itself, but would it take her less time to figure out how to do this on her own?

Oh, wait. Yes it would, because she had no wand to cast their spells. At most she would have more ideas to use, except she already had plenty of ideas all on her own. She let out a softly growling sigh and covered her eyes with one arm. So much for that plan.

Rather than jumping down and returning to her cot, she stayed where she was. Her sleep was, unsurprisingly, fitful and restless. The rising of the rest of the commune woke her, and she gave them tired waves as they made her way to their various jobs. It would be a couple of hours probably until Elise and the other would start the lessons, and there was no guarantee that it would be potions again today. If it were not, if it were grammar or maths or something, she had even more of the day with which to do she knew not what. More time to not figure this out, she thought with a small scowl.

Another rustle and this time it was Jean Luc who came out. His presence inside the camp was normal; the slim stick in his hand, however, was decidedly not. She tilted her head and watched him for a moment, then she rolled over—

—and stood up from the ground. Morgan squawked faintly and took off from the top of the cottage where he slept while she was busy thinking, but she was already walking over closer to Jean Luc and pulling out her unlined notebook. 'What you do?' she wrote.

"Laundry day," he replied, jabbing his wand towards the baskets of dirty clothes that she had vaguely noticed a few people bringing out of their respective cottages before leaving the compound. "Years ago we realized it is easier for those of us with wands, all two of us, to wash all the clothes with magic than for everyone to wash their own. Magic does make mundane tasks like this much easier." Waving his wand in a complicated swirl at one of the baskets, he said in a deeper and slower voice than he normally used, "Locularici."

One of the shirts lifted out of the basket and deposited itself on the line stretched between two trees. He moved his wand in a totally different pattern and this time said, "Mudafini," and this time the colors of the shirt brightened and the dirt ground into the elbows vanished. Repeating the first spell's incantation, he moved the shirt into a wooden chest behind him.

Spreading his arms, he shrugged. "And it's that simple. Marcel and I try to clean an entire basket of clothes at the same time, then we clean out the basket itself and put the clothes back in it. Move on to the next, and that will be the morning gone."

'Can I help?' she wrote. This looked near identical to what she had been doing to her own clothes for the last several months.

"I don't know if you would be able to... Oh. Right." He rubbed his chin. "This is the same girl who can teleport years before she should. You can give it a try if you wish. Do you need anything... special to learn how to do it?" he asked with a frown.

Hazel shook her head. This? This would be easy. Clenching her fingers one at a time and relaxing them all, she reached out with her ghost hand and pulled out a pair of trousers. Rather than bother with hanging them, she just floated them over to herself and grabbed part of the fabric. With but a thought waves of a blue glow spread over the trousers like ripples over still water. Dirt and grime fell away, and in no more time than Jean Luc's own spell, they were as clean as they had been before being worn. A whirl over her head tossed them into the same chest, and she looked over her shoulder to give him a knowing expression.

"Yes, that will do," he said after a moment. "If nothing else, it should make the job faster with three of us splitting the work instead of two. There's another box behind my cabin that Marcel normally uses. Feel free to use that until he finally wakes up and joins us."

A few minutes later, Marcel did exactly that and stared in disbelief at seeing her float the clothes over to her and then into the box once cleaned. It was not a competition, she knew, but she still noticed and took a little pride in the fact that she was moving faster through her clothes than Jean Luc was. Most of that was because whereas she could keep the clothes floating in front of her to clean them, he had to hang them up on the line. Before Marcel could walk away, she pulled out her notebook where she had written a question for him. 'Can wizards only cast one spell at a time?'

"Uh..." He blinked and shook his head. "Why would she even ask that? Yes? I think some people – a very very small number – when they get really good at a couple of spells, can cast them and hold them while casting another spell. They're in the minority, though, and Madam Croyanz said that was a sign of an incredibly strong wizard." His eyes strayed to the chest of clothes behind her. "Which... Huh."

With only two boxes between the three of them, Marcel joined her and started working on the same basket of clothes. They worked in silence for several minutes before a question crossed Hazel's mind. Hadn't Grégoire said that Marcel went to the French magic school for a while? Scribbling her question down quickly, she clapped twice and held up the notebook when Marcel looked her way. 'What spells do wizards use to protect themselves?'

"Protect themselves?" he asked with eyes full of rising fear. "...From what? Is she talking about us? Does she think she's in danger here?"

Her own gaze was long and sad. Jean Luc, Grégoire, Marcel. All of them were afraid that she was afraid. Was the fear of werewolves really that widespread that they always worried her own distrust was buried just beneath the surface?

In truth, the world would be better if everyone could hear thoughts just as she could. At least then it would get rid of misconceptions.

Still, she shook her head. 'Dangerous spirits and fairies. Like red caps and trolls and things. Or,' she added after some further thought, 'from other wizards.'

Marcel blew out a small sigh of relief. "She isn't talking about us. Thank goodness. Beauxbatons had a dueling class, but it was restricted to students fifteen years old or older. I wasn't old enough to join when I was expelled... when I left." He cleared his throat. "We started learning how to defend ourselves from dark creatures in our second year, and before that a lot of us learned spells from the older students that we could use to play pranks on each other. Silly little stuff like turning people's hair odd colors or putting them into dresses. I think some of the older years liked turning people's ears in cacti or giving their enemies duck bills, but that wasn't something I ever learned how to do."

She wrinkled her nose at that comment. Pranks had never been her thing at school; in her experience, 'prank' was an excuse for Dudley to ruin her day. Maybe it would be better if it were something easily fixed with magic, or if it was from somebody she liked? She did not know, nor did she think turning the ghosts' ears into cacti would keep them from trying to eat her. 'How much real fight magic you know?'

He coughed. "Not much. We didn't have a very good teacher for our Defensive Magic class. There might have been more in our third year, but I didn't exactly get to see for myself... Anyway."

She nodded and directed her attention back to the clothes for a brief moment before yet another question hit her fingers. It was not as if she was having any great success with her own efforts to create a fighting spell, so maybe she should not dismiss their advice too quickly. 'What books you use?'

"How should I know; that was years ago! I don't remember," he told her in a tight voice. "I'd have to look at my old school things, and I really don't want to do that right now. I have a question for you, though." She gave him a slow nod, and he continued, "Do you have a way to talk faster than writing them down on a piece of paper?"

This time her response was a sad shake of her head. It was not as if she did not want to talk! This was just as fast as she could go. No one had ever criticized it for being too slow before, but she supposed this was also the first time she had so many people who were willing to listen to what she had to say.

"Would you like to learn one?"

Hazel had not noticed her head drooping, but she certainly felt it pop back up to stare at him. He had a faster way of communicating?!

Marcel pulled out his wand with a flourish. "Let's see if she can figure this out. Sure, she can move and clean things, but that could all be done with accidental magic. Maybe that's all this is, half-accidental. I doubt she can actually learn to do something new. If nothing else, it should keep her too busy to ask a million questions for a couple of days or however long it takes her to get tired of trying. The incantation is Feucriptur, without a wand motion. And the way you use it is..." He made a loop-de-loop in the air, and a stream of reddish fire followed the tip of the wand. The wand lowered, but the fire stayed in place for a few seconds before fading away. "You still have to write, maybe should have made that clearer, but you won't need to keep track of a pad or a pen. Should save you some time, no?"

Bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet, Hazel gave him a wide smile and a clap of her hands. Sure, he did not think she could do this, and maybe not without reason. She had never knowingly turned a wizard spell into a spell that she could do. On the other hand, this would save her some time here and there. Maybe not all that much individually, but considering all her communication had to be done through writing, even a few seconds each time she wanted to talk to somebody would add up over the course of an entire day. Plus, it would be all sorts of wicked to write words in fire in the air.

"That should give you something to do this afternoon," he told her with a smile. "And hopefully give me some peace. She's the only person who asks me about Beauxbatons, and I'll be happy when I don't have to think about it anymore."

xxxxxxxxxxxxx​

The laundry did indeed take the rest of the morning, but by the time they sat down to eat lunch all the compound's clothes were freshly cleaned and returned to their respective cabins. That left Hazel with nothing else she had to do today. She could do whatever she wanted.

It was time to get started on that spell.

She and Morgan made their way away from the compound into the trees of the forest proper. How are we going to do this, she asked her truest and featheriest friend. It seems like all the same problems we had with a fireball, just made even harder. If she could not form a simple clump of fire in her palm, how was she going to write with it?

Morgan had little to offer, understandable considering he was no more an expert in magic than she was, so she slid down the trunk of one of the trees and leaned her head against the bark. Should we break it down into steps instead? Maybe we'll find a workaround that way. Step one would be making magic fire. We'll come back to that one. Step two would be directing it to my fingertip or a stick or something, and step three would be writing with it. Hazel tapped her fingers on one knee in an irregular rhythm, and a thought made its way to the front of her mind. It would be strange, but maybe... What do you think would happen if I skipped step one and went with just the rest? Do you think I'd make a stream of smoke or something else entirely?

That was reason enough to give it a try, honestly. She wanted to see what would happen. Concentrating her effort on her finger, she tried to swipe it through the air and make a stream of smoke. Nothing complicated, just a line. She wanted this to work, and she pushed her hope of not being reliant on a notebook into the movement.

Nothing.

Maybe... Maybe she needed to poke a hole in the air? She lifted her hand again to do just that, then she shook her head. What would she even be poking a hole into? That sounded like a dead end, and even if it were not it was still a recipe for trouble she did not want.

She shook her head and scattered the possibilities and maybes that wanted to fill her skull. This was not working. Perhaps it was time to go back to the basics. Her successes had all been achieved when she created a mental tool to work with, and just because she was adapting a wizard spell did not mean the same rules would not apply. She had to quit jumping at shadows and think her way through this.

She had a hand to move things. A key to unlock doors. Smoke to hide her. Lightning to fix things. Ripples to clean her clothes. The only thing she did not have a physical tool of some kind for was her jumping, and even that needed her to physically jump. So she needed an appropriate tool for the job. Her issue, then, was that one was not coming to mind.

Her fingers kept on tapping and tapping and tapping, and after several minutes Hazel forced them to stop. Her brain was spinning in circles, going nowhere, and she could feel herself getting more frustrated. She needed to stop, take a break, and let her mind find peace so she could think straight. Closing her eyes, she sat up straight and relaxed her muscles as imaginary roots stretched down deep into the earth. She breathed deep, in and out. This was what meditation was supposed to do, and while she had been using it more to get a handle on her magic, right now it was the primary benefit she was after.

Ideas pinged around and around in her head for a time after she closed her head, but each time one bounced away there were fewer to take its place. One by one they fell away until eventually she was drifting in placid nothingness. Hazel could feel the weight of her own expectations lifting up off of her shoulders, a weight she had not realized she placed there.

Writing with flames? That would be useful and neat, but it should not be an expectation that crushed her. And if she could not do it after all? Translating wizard spells might just not be her skill.

As she let herself drift through a quiet haze, a memory nudged her. Years ago, she could remember standing in the kitchen of Number 4 during Bonfire Night. She had yet to be banished to her cupboard, but only because there were still dishes to clean from dinner and Aunt Petunia had a cold and so did not want to go out into the chilly November air. While she busied herself dunking pots and pans into hot soapy water, she had nonetheless been able to look out the small window above the sink and watch other children her and Dudley's age run around enjoying the fireworks exploding in the sky above. Just one more time they had shoved her nose in the fact that while she might be related to them, they were not really family.

At the time, that was where her attention had been focused, but now that she was free of the Dursleys' grip, she could notice something else. Namely the children. Most of them were too busy watching the display of fire, but she could recall now that some of them were more engaged in their own play. They carried sparklers in their hands, and as they shouted and laughed they waved the sparklers in the air and tried to write their names in smoke and light. None of them were successful, but it had looked like fun nevertheless.

Hazel's eyes opened, her vision taking a moment to adjust to the dimmer light as the sun sank towards the horizon. How long had she been sitting here, she wondered as she stretched her arms and back. The movement woke Morgan, who stretched his neck upwards and twittered to her in confusion.

I'm okay, she told him with a soft smile. That seemed enough to placate him for now, so she turned her eyes to her hand. A sparkler, huh? That was a direction she would not have thought of on her own, but the more she considered it the more she liked it as an answer. It felt right in a way that lighting the tip of her finger on fire did not.

She had never played with a sparkler before, but she could remember what they looked like when she saw them in the rubbish bin the day after: just thin metal sticks, whatever substance that actually made the sparks already used up. It was easy to image a bit of something being present at the tip, though, and she pictured such a thing sitting in her hand and sticking up straight. Her index finger rested upon it, giving her a better sense of control than she would have with it just poking out of her palm. A hard blink, and the top of the metal stick ignited into phantom sparks.

It looked good so far, but she was well aware that this was only in her mind. It was not proof that it would act anything close to the way she wanted in real life. Deep breaths in and out, and she swished it through the air in deliberate motions. An instant later she shot to her feet, a smile stretched wide over her face and her eyes glued to what she had accomplished.

The word 'Hi' made out of flickering, whitish-gold light floating in the air before her.

 

[Silently Watches]

By the end of the night, Hazel almost regretted figuring out how to write in the air.

Or no, that was not quite right. The writing itself she was very happy with. It was showing her new spell to anyone else she regretted.

Marcel was the first person she went to, both because he set the challenge for her and because she wanted to thank him for showing her that it was possible. Hazel knew that his real reason for suggesting she try to learn this was because he wanted her to go away and not ask him about his time at wizard school, but she thought he would at least be impressed that she had figured out how to do it provided she quit poking at his massive sore spot. He might not have finished his schooling, but he still knew useful stuff, and her success was a testament to that. Instead he had watched her form letters made of glowing white sparks, and his thoughts had passed through disbelief and eventually settled on wariness.

The rest of the commune had either yet to return from work or were waiting to use the shower stalls set up in the back of the compound, so not everyone saw her demonstration. Jean Luc and Elise, however, did. Elise had the same reaction to seeing this as she had when Hazel started stirring the cauldron with her ghost hand: disbelief and confusion, including telling herself several times that what was there in front of her eyes was impossible.

Jean Luc's reaction was the most interesting of the three, though it did not bring her any relief. His thoughts had actually become quieter to her ears, and rather than forming sentences they were broken phrases. Hazel had only experienced something like this once two years ago, when Miss Brandine, the school librarian back in Little Whinging, had found out her husband was divorcing her. She had gotten quieter and paid no attention to anything going on around her, and she wore the same deeply contemplative expression that Jean Luc had.

After demonstrating her new talent to three people and with zero positive responses, she decided quickly that she was not going to show anyone else, or not right now anyway. Not until she could figure out just why she was eliciting such…

Her heart sank as she finally put a name to the emotion the werewolves felt upon seeing her magic. Such fear. It was not the same kind of fear the Dursleys had felt, not a fear that turned into anger, but it was present nonetheless. She just could not understand why.

She sat at her own when everyone started eating the roast beef Elise and Amorette had prepared for dinner, her mind half on the conversations going on around her and half on her own task for the evening. When she had started writing her response to Marcel, he had to come to where she was standing in order to read it. She had not thought about that issue, so now she let her fingers drift in the air tracing letters backwards. If she was looking at somebody and writing backwards, they should be able to read it more easily. She was also using her left hand to do this; she was right handed, so if she could write with her left hand and do other things with her right, she would be able to multitask in conversations as well as anybody else could!

Assuming she would ever be able to hold a conversation with anybody without freaking them out, that was.

Movement to the side of the group caught her attention, and she glanced over to find Jean Luc and Marcel walking away towards the cabins. They did not look like they were just headed the same way, either, but instead they were standing close together. What in the world are they doing, she wondered to herself. Setting her plate down on the bench in front of Morgan, who started eagerly pecking at the scraps of beef still sitting there, she breathed out a thin cloud of ignore-me smoke around herself and carefully chased after them.

The pair took a wandering course towards the middle of the compound before they stopped and turned to face each other. "What do you want to talk about," asked Jean Luc, "although I think I know already."

"Hazel," Marcel replied without a moment's hesitation. "As if there was going to be any other topic. Jean Luc, what the hell is up with her?! She learned a brand-new spell she had never heard of in a matter of hours. She's casting multiple spells at the same time without a wand. That would be astounding if she were ninety and had been learning magic all her life. She's nine and a Née-Moldus at that! What she's doing is horrifying… creepy."

"I wouldn't say that she is creepy. Eerie is probably the better term." Jean Luc sighed. "But I understand your concern. The things she can do are unnerving. Impressive, but unnerving. Especially at her age."

"At any age. I couldn't do any of that before school. I can't hold multiple spells like she can now. I've never met anybody who could. Although from what I heard about him, old man Escrim would have given his left testicle to have her in his dueling class. If she learned to hold a Clipeo shield and could still freely curse people?" Marcel shook his head. "You've read a lot more than me. Have you ever read about anything like this?"

"Not that well-read. It is not like I ever thought knowing about wandless would be a priority of mine," Jean Luc told him with a sigh. "Now I wish I had. I want to say I read at one point that the Africans do not use wands, but I don't remember if they actually do wandless magic or use something else. The Gypsies use handmade jewelry to cast spells, I know I read about that years ago, so something like that is a possibility. Even then, they don't cast multiple spells at once like she did this morning. Nor does she have the same excuse. She doesn't have a wand-analogue like they do. It's just all her."

"So we still don't know how she does this. About the only thing I do know is that this isn't just accidental magic. She's totally in control of it. She can learn. And if she can do this now, what will she be able to do in the future?" Marcel wondered to himself. "Wizards can and have made our lives miserable, and with them we know what their limits are. We don't know what she's capable of, and that? That is terrifying. Her magic… It isn't natural, Jean Luc. It sounds almost like what my uncles told me about fighting Grindelwald's army during the War. Dark magic."

Hazel cocked her head and frowned. Dark magic? What was that?

The bald wizard scoffed. "Please do not tell me you think Hazel is a dark witch, Marcel." The younger man radiated embarrassment while Jean Luc continued, "That is preposterous for any number of reasons. Besides," he said after a moment, "I don't know that her magic is unnatural. It might, however, be inhuman."

"Inhuman? What do you mean? What is the difference?" Marcel asked, voicing the same question Hazel had.

"Exactly that. I've been wondering all night whether Hazel is entirely human, or if there is something… else in her bloodline. Part-humans normally inherit traits from their non-human parent, so if one parent was a Moldu and the other was some other type of being? That would explain how a Née-Moldus could have such phenomenal abilities."

"I guess that is not the least possible explanation. What kind of being do you think she is then?"

Jean Luc spread his arms wide. "That, I do not know. None of the combinations I can think of would explain her abilities, but there are too many options to say for sure."

With a frown, Hazel thought about that. She knew this was not the case for her; thanks to Aunt Petunia's memories, she knew her mother had the same talent with magic that she did. Could her mother have had this strange parentage? After a moment, she shook her head. Never mind, that was foolish. Her aunt was her mother's sister, so she should have the same powers.

Then again… It still did not explain why she and her mother had magic and her aunt and cousin did not. When she first heard about Nés-Moldus, she wondered if her mum was one. Did magic just pop up randomly, totally unrelated to whether other members of the family?

She had no way to tell, and really that was not the major problem. What was a concern was the fact that Marcel and Jean Luc were still this worried and scared about it.

As if reading her own mind, Marcel said in a low voice, "What should we tell the others?"

"Tell the others? Why would we tell them anything?"

"What do you mean? Jean Luc, don't you think everyone else needs to know about this?!" he demanded. "This is too big to keep a secret?"

"Is it? Really?" Jean Luc crossed his arms and watched with narrowed eyes before continuing in an almost lecturing tone, "What would you tell them?"

"What we just talked about. What she can do, that she might not be fully human."

"Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. And how, exactly, would that help the group? What would we do differently as a whole with this knowledge?"

"I… don't know."

Jean Luc nodded. "I don't see that anything would change in a beneficial matter. What I worry about is that they would be just as scared of a lone little girl as you are. Will that do Hazel any good?"

Marcel sighed. "…No."

"So my question remains. If there is no benefit to anybody in announcing our suspicions – and that is all they are – we should not do it in the first place. Should Hazel show more of us what she can do, that is her decision, but we will not make it for her. It is not our place to do so. Do you understand?"

Marcel nodded, and Hazel decided this was the time to back away and go somewhere else. Anywhere else. She skirted the edge of the central cooking and dining area and kept walking until she slipped between the trees again into the darkened forest. Only once the campfires were almost out of sight and the rest of the compound was out of earshot did she stop, lean against a tree, and slide down to the ground.

Fluttering in the shadows reached her ears seconds before Morgan flew to her and landed on her knee. He looked up at her and twittered in confusion and concern.

I'm sorry for not coming back for you, she told him as she ran her fingers down his back. I just needed to get away from there.

I'm starting to worry what the future's going to look like. Morgan blinked, so she explained, So far I'm nought for I don't know how many times I thought I would be accepted by other people. It's like no matter what I do, I scare them away. The Dursleys were afraid of me. Everyone I ever met in Little Whinging was afraid of me. She nodded her head in the direction of the compound. Now they're becoming afraid of me. You and that hellhound in Wistman's Wood are the only living things that aren't.

Her head fell to her chest, and tears started welling up in her eyes and dripping down her cheeks. Is it my fault? Is there something wrong with me, and that's why I scare everybody away? How would I change that to make people like me?

How do I become something I'm not when I don't even know what I really am?

xxxxxxxxxxxxx​

Waves gently sloshed against the shore, wet slaps as water hit rock occasionally reaching Hazel's ears. The last time she had walked the shores of Tintagel, rain had been pounding on top of her, and the sea had been a vicious beast eager to gobble her up. Now, in the early afternoon sun and the warmer air as spring was rapidly giving up ground to summer, it was actually rather pleasant.

She made sure to stay close but not too close to the family in front of her. Her ignore-me smoke was wrapped tightly around her, and as long as she looked like she could possibly be an additional member of the family of five, she was confident that no one would pay her any mind. She assumed so, anyway; no one had made any mention nor had any thoughts yet about her colorful clothing or her strange satchel or the songbird on her shoulder. She was not eager to try testing that conclusion, though, not when that might mean dodging well-meaning strangers who wanted to take her back to her 'family'. She had too many plans still to work on that running away would interfere with.

Plans such as finally – finally! – returning to Merlin's Cave.

Sand slid and crunched beneath her feet, but she continued her walk towards the large entrance of the cave. No light came from the depths, and she tilted her head this way and that while she drank in its appearance. Any sharp edges were long since worn away, but the interior still had large shelves and protrusions of stone. Several people were already there, talking animatedly and taking pictures, but Hazel found herself both confused and disappointed.

According to legend, this was where Merlin himself had lived during the birth and raising of King Arthur. She had expected... she did not truly know, but something grander. Something worthy of the home and workshop of such a marvelous sorcerer. Arthur and Merlin might have lived roughly 1500 years ago as best as she could figure it, but even with the erosions of time she thought there would be some sign that it had been inhabited at one point in time. From what she could see, it did not look very homey.

She left the family she was following and moved deeper into the sea cave. Her feet splashed through puddles of standing water while the light coming from the mouth dimmed as she ducked behind stone slabs. There had to be something, she knew it. Turning her head slowly along the back wall, she stopped and blinked.

Part of the wall was... undulating, like it was made of paint that had not quite dried and was trying to drip away.

A glance around to make sure nobody was looking at her, and she stepped towards the strangely distorted wall. The closer she got, the more it rippled and shifted like a living thing trying to squirm away from her. She had seen a strange, ever-changing phenomenon before, and following a hunch she closed her right eye and stared at the wall with only her left. Just as she expected, without the help of her crystal lens the wall looked like just an ordinary stone wall.

Her fingers reached out to touch the wall, and it parted before her like oily smoke. What do you think?, she asked Morgan. When he made a small curious chirp, she nodded. Yeah. Me too. Taking a deep breath, she gave the rest of the room one quick glance before stepping into the wall.

She opened her eyes to find darkness waiting for her, so she pulled up the flap of her satchel and started reaching around. Clothes, water bottle, notepad, more clothes... I really need a better way to organize this, she grumbled as she continued digging. Curling her fingers, she summoned her ghost hand to try holding things out of the way while she kept looking for her bloody torch—

A slight coolness washed over the skin of her fingers an instant before a hard metal tube slammed into her palm. Pulling it out, she reached over with her other hand and touched the flared head of her torch. ...Huh, she finally thought. That's convenient. Her thumb pressed the switch to ignite it, and she swept the beam over the new area that had been revealed.

Her grin rivaled her torch in its brightness. Pieces of rotten wood had been jammed into clefts in the wall above natural stone shelves. Remnants of a low frame to one side must have been a bed, and a still functional-looking table was pushed to the back of the cave. It was in the middle of the room that the greatest prize sat, however: a statue carved from a single flawless piece of crystal. A statue depicting an old man only a little taller than herself, his right hand outstretched with fingers curled and his left hand raised above his head grasping a thin wand.

A statue that could be of only one man.

Hazel moved forwards and looked over the many facets of the massive crystal. It might not be a tomb, but it was a beautiful remembrance nonetheless. Merlin was a well-known and well-loved figure of myth in the modern day, but this was proof that he had been respected by others capable of magic back when he was alive. His abilities were magnificent, and he was widely regarded as the greatest wizard ever to have his story told.

A frown crept onto her face at that thought, and she seated herself on the ground with her eyes still fixed on the sculpture. You were a legend even in your day, she told the statue. Your gift of prophecy was famous. You were a marvelous magician. You stood head and shoulders above anybody and everybody, and for this you were adored.

She sighed. I can't help but wonder what the difference is between you and me.

If the legends are right, you were different from the moment of your birth. The son of a mortal woman and a demon. You should have been feared; people should have seen you as a monster. And yet, everyone came to you for answers, for your guidance and wisdom. How?

I'm different, but not like that. I have no voice of my own, and I need no wand to use my magic. Why do people fear my abilities but loved you for yours? To be able to see someone's future is no less scary than hearing their thoughts, and that skill I've kept hidden. Nothing I've done should be terrifying. Why, then, am I looked at with fear and mistrust? I don't understand.

The statue, as expected, had no reply to her questions. Instead she let her gaze play over the speckles of light that were scattered by the facets of the crystal. Her mind followed her eyes in their aimless wanderings, and several minutes passed before a thoughtful expression took over.

Other than your parents, I know nothing about your childhood, she told the statue. I've found no books about it. It makes me wonder. Is the difference between us that your legend has already been told? You accomplished so many incredible things, but they all happened when you were an adult. To be that kind of an adult, you must have been gifted just as much when you were a child. What was that like for you?

Were you adored and praised as a child just like you were when you were grown? Or was young you more like me? Were you also feared for your powers, and that fear just became replaced by awe as you got older and people stopped worrying about how young you were and instead focused on what you could do? She drummed her fingertips on the stone ground. Does that mean that all I need to do to be accepted is just to keep going? To not let their fear get to me?

Silence surrounded them for a while longer before she pushed herself to her feet. I think I understand a little better now, she told the statue. Laying her hand on the crystal, she gave Merlin a small smile. Thank you.

And don't worry. Your secret is safe with me.

xxxxxxxxxxxxx​

The next several days were... unremarkable, at least on the surface. Hazel attended magic-related classes with the other younger werewolves, whether that be potions or history or some basic magical herb lore. On days they learned about maths or writing, she ducked away to walk the woods with Grégoire and check the snares he had set out, in the process learning how to set said snares or identify animal tracks. Other days she pestered Jean Luc, and once he found that she had already learned long multiplication and division in school, he let her help out working with the heavy ledgers that contained all the information about the commune's finances. When he was working he was focused, but whenever he took a few minutes' break he was happy to answer questions and share some of what she soon realized was a font of information on all sorts of subjects.

And as she continued not doing anything unusual, everyone's tension drained away.

Those were the days, though. Night, on the other hand, was her time. Under the cover of darkness with only the trees and the stars to witness her, she stole away from the camp. There was no way she would simply abandon her experiments, but she now recognized that it was in private that she would be allowed to continue pushing her boundaries and learning more about her magic.

Blowing out a frustrated huff, Hazel crossed her arms where she sat on the ground. It would be better if her experiments would actually work. Every night she had tried something different as a means of fighting back if something attacked her, and so far she was not seeing any success. She had tried throwing a fireball. She had tried throwing icicles. She had tried lightning bolts. She had tried blowing out a cloud of poison gas. She had even tried creating a magical shield strictly meant to defend herself.

None of these attempts had shown even a shadow of success.

That did not mean it was a waste of time, not exactly. These failures had taught her a few things about the capabilities, and more importantly the limits, of her particular brand of magic. Her magic could change things, like her healing and her cleaning spells did. She could manipulate both objects and people. What she could not do, on the other hand, was create things out of thin air. That was the conclusion she had drawn from her various attempts. It was also understandably frustrating.

If she could not create something with which to hit back, how was she going to defend herself the next time a hungry fairy or ghost came after her?

Scrubbing her face with her hands, she let her mind relax and her vision go a bit blurry. Creating a new construct, a new tool, was not working out this time around. The last time she was stuck like this, she had gone back to the basics and figured something out from there. Did she already have a spell that would let her do what she wanted?

Teleporting and cleaning were of course right out. She did not think she could lock or unlock anything about an angry fae creature. Her ignore-me smoke... She shrugged. If she was at the point where she was fighting something, she did not think her smoke would do much good. Her ghost hand probably was not strong enough to lift anything the size of the red cap off the ground, although that would have been a neat way to keep it away from her. Her healing, maybe? Could she un-heal something? A small shiver worked its way down her spine. Somehow, she could see that ending badly.

Sure enough, nothing she already knew would help her here. Hazel slapped her hand against the ground and glared into the distance. A moment later, she blinked once. Twice. Thrice, and then she slowly pulled her eyes back to her hand and the dirt below it.

Morgan? The little songbird opened one eye at her and chirped sleepily. I'm an idiot.

He chirped again and closed his eye.

She ignored his dismissal and glared at her dirty hand. She had a hand. If her ghost hand could pick things up and move them around, if it acted just like her normal hand, she could slap with it. She could punch with it.

A good-sized rock sat a short distance away from her, and she climbed to her feet to walk towards it. Would this work? She curled her fingers one by one and called forth her ghost hand. It made a fist that matched the fist her real hand was in. With nothing else to try, she swung her arm in a wide arc. The ghost hand followed and hit the rock.

Nothing happened, but with a silent groan she realized that was not a surprise. Did she really think she could punch a hole in a rock? She looked around for another rock to put on top of this one, but nothing was immediately visible. Fine. Punching the ground it is. Winding up again, she drove her ghost fist into the dirt and knelt closer to peer at the her impromptu target.

It was hard to make out, but was there a little tiny bit of an indentation where she had punched?

She punched several more times trying to make any evidence of its collision larger, but between the dark and how hard the ground was, she could not really tell. She eyed her flesh fist and her ghost fist again. I wonder how hard I'm even hitting. Worst case I guess is that it isn't doing anything, but what if the best case is that my ghost hand punches as hard as I can? Going back to her knees, she reared back and slugged the ground only to pull back from the pain that was now bouncing around between her hand bones. There were definitely rocks just underneath the dirt!

After a minute of waving her hand around to make the pain stop, she looked down again and sighed. She could not say for sure that even her real fist had done anything. Poking her little twig arms explained why that was the case. I'm not going to get much more power out of that, I don't think.

If she could not swing her ghost hand harder, was there anything else she could do to make it just that little bit stronger? Could she change it somehow? She had never tried to do that to any of her spells, but there was no reason she couldn't, she supposed.

Maybe she could make it smaller? She could remember getting hit in the face by a dodgeball a few years back during recess, and that had not been nearly as painful as the time when Dudley threw a cricket ball into her ribs. If she made her fist more compact, it might hit with more force.

She stared at the still-closed ghost hand and narrowed her eyes. It took a few moments, but the fist eventually started getting a little smaller. The more she pushed on it with her mind, the smaller it got, and by the time it was no bigger than a large marble it had also lost all definition between the fingers. It was just a single solid sphere. It still moved in time with her real hand, and with a shrug she swung again at the dirt. This time when she leaned in, she could see a definitive dent in the ground.

Finally! She dropped onto her bum and then her back, looking up through the break in the trees' canopy to the stars above. Turning her head to face Morgan, she continued, It isn't great, and I don't know how much of a punch it will pack, but it's better than what I had before.

She turned her head back to the stars and sighed. Despite the enthusiasm she wanted to display to her friend, she had her doubts that it would work all that well. Dirt was not very hard, and if all she could do was dent it a little, how much would it really scare anything that wanted to eat her?

Her eyes glanced around the sky. She did not know many of the constellations, almost none of them in fact, and she could find even fewer. The only one she had really been able to pick out reliably over the last few months was Orion, and so it was that figure she sought in the night. Maybe it was because her window was so small, or maybe it was just the wrong time of night, but despite a minute or two searching she was unable to locate the Hunter. She would have to try later on, she decided while closing her eyes. It was unfortunate Orion wasn't a real person. It would have been incredible to learn how to defend herself from a mythical hunter, although for all she knew his advice would just be to shoot a bow at whatever was coming after her—

Pushing herself upright again, she stared at nothing with wide eyes. Would that even work? She could not create fire or ice, so how would she create an arrow? She couldn't.

But... But. She raised her hand and nodded to herself. If she could turn her ghost hand into a ball, could she continue to reshape it? One by one her fingers curled in, and once again her ghost hand appeared. She sighed in relief. She was not sure how she would have reacted had she lost the ability to cast one of her first spells.

It took less effort this time to shrink the fist down to an orb, but that was not the end of it. She stretched, for lack of a better description, the orb as if it were a ball of caramel or chewy candy. Two lumps pulled apart, a string of magical whatever-it-was she used to make her constructs strung between them. The far lump became a diamond-shaped head, and the close lump became tilted rectangles that looked mostly like the feathers on an arrow.

The arrow drifted the short distance into her palm, and she rolled it between her fingers. It was... not terrible, she eventually decided, but it did not feel good in her hand. It was just too unbalanced or awkward or something. Maybe if she were older, if her hands were bigger, it might not be as bad, but right now it was not what she needed.

Still, she told herself, I think I'm on the right track. Just not there yet. Twirling the arrow between her fingers, she wondered just what she could do with this. Stab something, maybe? She certainly could not throw it, not as large as it was. If it were smaller? That would be better.

A thought started making the arrow get shorter, and as it shifted she realized what it was starting to look like. The Christmas before she left the Dursleys, almost a year and a half ago now, Dudley had begged and demanded to get a dart board and darts. He snapped the board in half the very next day when he discovered how bad he was at aiming, and then the darts were lost one by one as he remembered he had them and threw them at Hazel while she worked in Aunt Petunia's rose bushes. She might have helped them disappear so they would not get them thrown at her a second time.

Almost as though it knew what she had in mind, the head of the arrow narrowed into a long almost-teardrop shape and fused with the shorter fins. She tossed the dart in her hand a couple of times, then a flick of her wrist flung it into the dirt.

It could have been entirely due to the angle, or possibly this shape truly was stronger, but instead of putting another dent into the ground it threw up a small cloud of dirt.

Hazel stared at the ground where it landed, and a small sharp smile alighted onto her face. As far as driving something off, this had potential. The real question now was whether she had to take the time to reform her ghost hand into the dart every time, or could she go straight to the dart form? Her wrist twitched, and she imagined she could feel the smooth surface of the dart that reappeared in her hand. Again she threw the dart, not with the careful overhand pitching movement Dudley had used but instead by slinging her hand to the side and releasing it from between her index and middle fingers.

This time a trail of glittering sparks, not unlike those formed by her sparkler, followed the dart as it flew true and hit the rock she had aimed at the first time. She shined her torch at the rock, and unless she was very much mistaken, there might actually be a small dent in the stone's surface this time.

Another twitch of her wrist, and Hazel dismissed the dart that appeared yet again. Instead she curled her fingers and watched her ghost hand, completely unharmed by her experiments, take the torch from her fleshy hand and flick off the switch.

She shot her sleeping friend a smile. Morgan, I do believe we have a winner. We don't need to be afraid of fairies or weird ghosts ever again.

 

[Silently Watches]

The day was warm today, and Jean Luc and Hazel had moved from his cabin to a table outside to enjoy the sunlight. In a shocking turn of events, Jean Luc had even finished going through the previously never-ending stack of receipts they had been adding to his ledger, so they were not even doing work outside. Instead they had grabbed a couple of books from his small collection and were reading in the daylight.

Or, really, he was reading while she constantly glanced back and forth between the book in her hands and the dictionary that was being helpfully held aloft by her ghost hand so she could flip through it and looked up all the words she did not know. There were a lot of those.

Loud cracks, three or four of them, came from the other side of the commune, and she looked up to find Jean Luc looking that way with his eyes growing wide. "Damn. I forgot. Hazel, I need you to hide. Now."

Rubbing her fingertips together to create her sparkler, she wrote out, 'Why? What wrong?'

"Wizards from the government are here. They normally come around this time of the month, I just got a little distracted this time and actually have something to hide from them. Go hide in the trees until Grégoire or I come to get you." He looked back at her, his expression still one of worry and fear. "If they find you, none of us are going to like the consequences."

She bit her lip. On the one hand, she did not want to cause the werewolves any trouble, not after how kind they had been to her despite their fear and misgivings. On the other hand, anything that had even Jean Luc panicking like this was something she needed to see, if only so she could be on the lookout for it in the future.

Closing her two books with the three hands, she stuffed them both into her satchel and climbed up the side of the tree until she stood on her feet. She gave him a nod and stepped backwards. As soon as he turned around and started walking towards the sounds, she blew out a cloud of smoke and followed along. Not right behind him, but about fifteen feet away. A couple of times that meant she went around the other side of a cabin and broke her line of sight, but it was easy enough to find him again afterwards.

She had never really pushed the limits of what this spell was capable of, she considered as she crept along. She knew people ignored her, which was the entire goal, but what all she could get away with doing in front of people without the spell breaking she was not sure. At some point she really needed to experiment with that, but this was not the time for that. Instead she was going to do her best to stay just far enough away from Jean Luc and whoever these wizards were so she did not risk the spell breaking.

It turned out to be four wizards who had shown up, all of them wearing bright blue robes that came down to their knees with baggy sleeves cinched tight at the wrists. The sleeves themselves were emblazoned with a repeating pattern of the fleur de lis design that the French were so fond of. Another emblem sat over their hearts, but at this distance she could not tell just what it was other than it was something different. More important than their clothing was their expressions; none of them seemed particularly happy to be here, one of them even sneering at the admittedly plain-looking cabins and kicking a rock with the toe of his tall brown leather boots.

If they were not happy and did not want to be here, she wondered, why had they come in the first place?

"Lieutenant Lemaire, we weren't expecting to see you so soon," Jean Luc called out in greeting. Hazel could tell that his voice was tight, and between that, his command to her, and the thoughts she had heard from a few of the werewolves about wizards, it was not hard to tell that he was just as unhappy about their presence as they were. "Normally you show up closer to the full moon, almost as if you like seeing us in pain as the transformation gets nearer and starts gnawing on our bones."

"I want to get this inspection done sooner than later so I can get it out of the way," the wizard in the front of the arrangement said, disgust dripping from every word. "We have lots to do besides checking up on you, and I don't plan to waste my weekend on it. Pounding Marguerite is going to be so much more enjoyable than coming out here to make sure a bunch of monsters are 'comfortable'."

She could feel her hackles rise as her confusion and concern morphed into anger. Almost a month she had spent here, living and interacting with these people. They were not monsters. No one who spent any time whatsoever with them could possibly think something like that. Who did this man think he was to come in to their home and start insulting them?

The man, Lemaire, waved one hand in an almost negligent fashion at the compound, and the other three wizards drew their wands and split away to walk among the buildings. One of them kicked in a door rather than open it, and she could only watch as Jean Luc gritted his teeth but said nothing in response. "It was not even locked. All he had to do was turn the handle. What kind of enjoyment do these bastards get from breaking what little we have?" he thought.

"Where are the others?" Lemaire asked after a moment. "I only count eight of you freaks, and there should be many more."

"They're at work, just like they were last month you were here Lieutenant," answered Jean Luc through gritted teeth. "You know it's hard for us to get any kind of honest work. None of my people want to lose the opportunities they managed to find."

Another sneer was the only answer his rebuttal earned. "Why would any sane wizard hire a werewolf in the first place? That's my question."

After fifteen or twenty minutes, the other wizards return, and Lemaire demanded, "Find anything? I doubt they would. These beasts are too good at keeping their noses clean, but one of these days we'll find that they're planning something. I just hope I'm around to drag them to the Bastille when we do figure it out. Fine," he added when they all shook their heads. "Then get back to the Ministry. Have a good weekend, werewolf." Lemaire spun on his heel and collapsed in on himself until with another crack, he and his men were gone.

Hazel released the mental hold on her smoke and walked towards Jean Luc, who was still standing in the place as he had while talking to Lemaire. Her hand and sparkler already moving, and she wrote, 'They rude.'

He looked over to her in a little surprise before finding her message. "Thank the Circles she's safe. I thought I told you to hide."

'I hide while they here. They gone now. Who?'

Her admittedly poor sentence structure threw him for a loop for a second, and she rolled her eyes. Yes, she knew she really needed to learn that whole conjugation thing, but it just made no sense. "Those were the Republican Guard. They are a branch of the French Ministry's law enforcement, and among their other duties when they are not harassing us is checking on known 'potential threats', including werewolves." Jean Luc sighed. "They swing by every month or so. Part of it is to make sure that we are here where we're supposed to be, and part of it… Part of it is to make sure there are no non-werewolves hanging around."

Hazel blinked at that, her expression making her confusion plain. They did not want non-werewolves hanging out with werewolves? Why? What purpose did that serve?

"I was not looking forward to this conversation," Jean Luc thought with a grimace as he looked over her face. "We are not the only group of werewolves in the country. We are one of several, and not all of them are as law-abiding as we are. There are even some werewolves who go out of their way to bite and turn as many people as they can for reasons that I will not go into right now and that don't make sense to me outside blind revenge. Because of that, though, part of the inspections is to make sure we are not holding people hostage so we can bite them at the next full moon or something of the like. It is nothing we would ever do, but there are many people in the government who do not trust us even after decades of us doing nothing wrong."

'That why you say hide?'

He nodded. "That is why I told you to hide, yes. Legally, you aren't supposed to be here, and we could get in lots of trouble if they ever find you even if you tell them that you are here of your own free will."

Her eyes went wide. All this time the werewolves had been worried about them being a danger to her on the full moon, but in reality she was a danger to them?! She had not known! After all the kindness they had shown her, her getting them into trouble would be a cruel way to repay them.

She liked them, liked them a lot, but if this was the case it was better if she moved on.

Her fingers moved to starting writing just that, but Jean Luc raised one hand as if he were the one who could read minds. "I know what you are thinking, but that does not mean you should leave, nor do we want you to do so. All of us except the children realize that you just being here could cause trouble, and we are fine with it. We would rather risk the danger than have you leave."

All she could do was stare at him for several seconds. 'Why?'

The simple question startled a laugh out of him. "I suppose I should have expected that question. You've met the children we have here. Claude, Chantal, Serge. None of them are our children, even though there are several couples that have come together over the years. That is because werewolves simply are not capable of having children. The transformations are too violent, and babies are too delicate. None of us will ever have a little one of our own running around, no matter how much some of us would love nothing more." He gave her a crooked smile, and knowing his thoughts she thought she might be able to see the glimmer of a repressed tear in his eyes. "We have been given many young werewolves over the years, but it does not feel the same. Some of it may be because they are not our own blood, or so we thought for a long time, and some of it may be – is – that when we are bitten young, we spend many, many years bitter about how we are victims. It takes time to outgrow that, and by that point we are no longer children.

"But you?" He motioned to her and laughed. "I mean it as no insult or criticism, Hazel, but you have an innocence to you that we have not seen for so long. Even the strangeness of your powers pales in comparison. In just this last month, you brought something to us that some of us had given up on ever seeing. I know several women in the group would love nothing more than to adopt you as their own"—he gave her another grin, brighter than the last—"although with the way you keep popping in and out whenever you want without telling anybody, to me I must say you seem more like a stray cat than a typical child."

Now it was her who had to fight tears. So long, so long she had spent with the Dursleys who wanted nothing to do with her, who had made it clear they hated her and wanted her gone. But here, in the middle of an entirely different country, she had found people who actually truly did want her around. Who cared about her and wanted to keep her safe even if it put an additional burden on themselves.

Was this what people meant when they talked about feeling like a family?

Hazel sniffed and wiped her left eye, knowing full well there was nothing she could do about her right eye without making it obvious she was crying. In an effort to distract herself, she hastily wrote, 'Can I do something to help after this? Fix what they break or something?'

"Yes, I think we can find something for you to do if it makes you feel like you deserve what we will freely give." He turned to give her some privacy and pointed at one of the doors. "We can start there, and maybe between the two of us we will have everything fixed before anybody gets back from work."

xxxxxxxxxxxxx​

The weather continued to warm as summer swelled to its full heat, and as July progressed the energy and excitement in the compound rose. No one told Hazel why that was, and the few times she asked the other person's thoughts and conversation would quickly shift to something else. Whatever it was, they were being very careful not to give her any hints even with their own thoughts.

It was a little maddening.

Something shook her awake one morning, and she pushed the sheet off her face to look blearily at the two women standing over her bed. Amorette, the blonde who often helped Elise teach the other kids, and an even younger dark-haired woman she did not often interact with. Jacqueline, that was her name. She was only a few years older than Claude, and no one was willing to tell Hazel what she did or why she was the only werewolf who worked at night.

Readjusting her monocle, Hazel looked out the door to see that it was indeed still the morning. It was actually a surprise that Jacqueline was even up this early, or maybe she just had not gone to bed yet. Reaching out with one hand, she wrote simply, 'What?'

"Good morning, 'Azel! It's time to wake up!" Amorette said in a sing-song. "We have a few things to do, and we need to get you out of here for a couple of hours. Jackie and I are going shopping in Nice, and we figured you might want to tag along and see what magical stores look like."

She just nodded for a bit, then as her brain kept waking up she waved for the two women to leave the room. 'In a minute.'

"Okay, but do not take too long or we will leave without you!"

The door closed behind them, and Hazel pushed herself up to a sitting position and swung her legs over the edge of the bed. It took her a moment to realize what day it was, namely the very last day of July. Her birthday. She was now ten years old.

Was that why Amorette and Jacqueline were acting weird? Amorette did know when her birthday was; that was something that had been asked the day after she showed Amorette and Elise that she could move things with her ghost hand. They had neither said nor thought the word 'birthday' around her, though, and it was possible that Amorette had simply forgotten or was not thinking about it. She was a newcomer to the werewolves' compound, after all, although if they had forgotten about her birthday it still did not explain why they were behaving the way they were.

She eventually pushed the door open once she had cleaned herself and dressed and deposited Morgan on her shoulder, and before she could do anything else both her arms were grabbed. Amorette and Jacqueline immediately started walking away from the compound with her, their path soon becoming clear. It was the same path the other werewolves took when they walked to the road and summoned the carriage to take them to their jobs. After a couple of minutes she was able to pull her arms free and ask a question that had been circling inside her brain since they started walking. 'Why Nice and not Paris?'

"Nice is a little bit safer and smaller," Jacqueline answered. "It's more of a local shopping area where Paris is more centralized, so the other people there do not ask as many questions. There is less law enforcement running around causing problems, too."

The rest of the walk passed in relative silence, even if Amorette and Jacqueline to a lesser extent were both far more excited that could be justified by a simple excursion like this. Something secret was going on. When they arrived at the road, Amorette pulled out a metal coin or disc a little smaller than her palm and held it up.

Much like the time when she followed the werewolves here and from there to Paris, the road down to the right stretched before a large carriage made of dark wood and pulled by eight clockwork horses faded into view and rolled to a stop in front of them. Unlike the last time, today Hazel followed the other women into the carriage. It truly was larger on the inside that it should have been, with many rows of wooden benches stretching backwards for easily a hundred feet. Several of the benches were already filled with other people, all of them wearing robes or other obviously wizard-y outfits.

A man sat in a small chair in the front with leather reins in his hands. "We're headed to Vendretout in Nice," Amorette told the driver as she tapped the metal disc to a golden box bearing a large round opalescent stone on its front face.

The box chimed, and he grunted. "All right. Got a few more stops to make first." He gave the reins a sharp crack, and through the window she could see the mechanical horses rear up as they prepared to resume their run. They managed to grab a bench three rows down before the carriage actually started rolling forwards. Stuffed into the corner, Hazel could only watch as the world outside stretched and roiled for several seconds before resolving into the same cobblestone square with the burning braziers she had seen the first time she rode this conveyance. "Place Cachée!" he shouted over his shoulder.

It took a few more of those strange transitions before the carriage stopped along a little street that bordered a sandy shore. Hazel could not help but stare out over the glistening waters beyond; it was not the very first time she had seen the sea, but this surely beat out the seaside at Tintagel or Dover.

"Vendretout Marketplace!" the carriage driver called out.

"This way, 'Azel," Amorette told her, shaking her out of her reverie. "We still have lots to do."

As they walked away from the carriage, Hazel took a few seconds to look around at the buildings dotting this little stone street. The shopping district in Paris had been absolutely packed with shops, everything side by side with no space between them. The inside walls of one shop were the other side of the walls of another shop, and the exterior just continued on over multiple stores. Here, however, the stores were actual separate buildings with little alleyways between them. They were also, she could not help but notice, more drab and dilapidated than the stores in Paris.

Jacqueline said this place was better and safer, she recalled. It certainly did not look it. She gave a little tug on said woman's sleeve and wrote quickly, 'Here safe? You sure?'

She gave Hazel a small smile and a laugh. "Yes, I'm sure. It is not as fancy as Paris, I will grant you that one, but sometimes that is a plus all on its own. Not to mention, because it is a smaller and poorer shopping area, we will not get as many second looks because of our clothing."

Hazel glanced around again after that comment, and now that she knew what she was looking for, she could see what Jacqueline meant. Her own tunic and trousers looked no worse for wear than they had been when she stole them from the store, but Amorette's own robe was clearly worn and had been repaired multiple times. Jacqueline's deep red and deep cut robe was nicer looking for sure, but it too was obviously not new. That same thing could be said about the clothing of the other people on the street, though, so they should fit right in.

Most of ninety minutes were spent migrating in and out of different shops, Amorette crossing items off the list she carried and the number of bags steadily increasing. When it became clear just how much they really needed to buy, Hazel had volunteered herself as pack mule and started stuffing all the shopping bags into her bottomless satchel. Neither woman complained about having a weightless space to hold all their necessities.

"And that is most of it," Amorette said, striking out yet another item. "Now for the fun part. 'Azel, you're ten years old today – and a happy birthday, by the way. There comes a time in every girl's life where she has the right to start wearing a little jewelry and making herself look pretty. Have you ever thought about whether you would want to wear earrings?"

Fifteen minutes later, she walked out of a magical tattoo parlor in front of her companions, her ears weighted down the tiniest bit thanks to the new earrings sitting within them. According to the tattooist who did the piercing, a Né-Moldus and a friend of Jacqueline's, the mundane method of piercing ears took weeks to heal from; the magical method, on the other hand, still used a scarily big needle to punch the hole in her earlobes but added a potion called Essence of Dittany to make all that healing happen in seconds. It meant she could start wearing earrings immediately.

The wizard had a wide selection of matching pairs, but she had actually gravitated to the single earrings. Part of it was that it looked like these were cheaper than most of the paired sets, and part of it was that she did not necessarily want the same thing in both ears. What she wore now as she exited the store was a small round stud in her left ear that lazily shifted from one color to another through all the colors of the rainbow and a hoop in her right ear that flowed and jiggled as if it were made of mercury.

A number of long, dangly earrings had attracted her attention at first, too. She just was not sure she could trust Morgan not to constantly peck and pull at them. He was already butting his head against the stud enough that she was starting to get worried.

'That all we need?' she wrote.

"That should be everything," answered Amorette with a smile, "and I think we have distracted you long enough the others she be done with their parts. Let's call the carriage and take it back home."

The others? Their parts? Hazel stared at her uncomprehendingly. Had they been planning something? Trying to hide anything from her was difficult; they would have had to not talk or even think about what they were doing… Oh. 'I can take us back,' she replied after a few moments. There was no need for them to wait for the carriage when she could just as easily jump back to the compound. It would also be faster so she could sooner discover just what they were all up to.

"You can take us back? How?" repeated Jacqueline. The women looked at each other before the dark-haired werewolf shrugged. "Okay. I am willing to give you a chance to prove it, whatever it is."

She reached out her hands and made grabbing gestures, her gut churning with rising worry all the same. She had jumped herself and Morgan to different places plenty of times, but that was just the two of them. She had never tried jumping with another person, let alone two more. She hoped it was going to work.

Their hands wrapped around her own. She took a deep breath in, then out, then in again. There was only way to find out if this was possible. She was worrying over nothing, she told herself. Teleporting itself, throwing herself from one place to another and ignoring all the physical distance in between, was obviously the hardest part of what she was doing, and that was old hat by now. Whether it involved one person or two or ten should make no difference whatsoever. Blowing out her held breath, she coiled her knees below her and jumped harder and higher than she ever had before.

Most of the time, she heard nothing when she left or arrived anywhere. This time, the air itself rang with a crash or a clang, and the normal too-tight tube she had to squeeze herself through today was three sizes too small. Instead of just forcing the last dregs of air out of her lungs, it was as if all the bones in her body were being crushed into a powder and her muscles squashed into jelly. If she had a mouth and a voice and breath to use them, she would be screaming in agony.

A split second later, everything explosively reinflated with another crash, and she collapsed onto the ground. Two more thuds quickly followed. "That was a mistake," she heard Jacqueline think. "That was the most painful teleportation I have ever experienced, and I hope never to do so again."

"We should have just used the carriage," Amorette said in unknowing agreement.

Hazel was not planning to argue with either of them. From now on, she was going to do her best to teleport just herself and Morgan. No more passengers.

Footsteps came towards them, and she looked up to find a familiar bald werewolf looking down at them. "Why do I have the feeling I know what happened here?" Jean Luc asked himself, his thoughts and his smile all but screaming his amusement for the world to hear. "Good trip?"

Jacqueline spat a particularly nasty sentence at him that had Hazel blushing. He was supposed to do what with a burning tree branch?!

"Jacqueline! There are young ears around." He reached down and pulled Hazel up to her feet, then did the same for Amorette. Jacqueline he just looked down at until she climbed upright herself. "You are a little early," he continued once they were all vertical. "Elise is still finishing the cake."

Cake? Cake?! She stared at him before reaching up to touch her new earrings. The tattooist had seemed too prepared for this to all be a spur of the moment plan, which meant… that would have been a present. Cake, a present. It was almost as if…

"Oh well," Jean Luc said with a bright beaming smile towards her. "It looks like we kept it mostly a secret for the time we needed. Everyone decided to pitch in with setting up a party once Amorette told us what today was. It will not be much, but it is what we can do to make today a merry one.

"Happy birthday, Hazel."

xxxxxxxxxxxxx​

There are so many details I throw in solely for my own amusement. It's bad. I should stop.

 

[Silently Watches]

Noise from outside Simone's cottage eventually forced Hazel's eyes open. She was not sleeping inside the building tonight, but rather on the roof. As August faded and approached September, the nights had lost the worst of its heat and was now actually on the pleasant side. The sleeve of her jumper made an excellent face mask to keep the light of the sun out of her eyes, and that meant she could continue sleeping even after the sun rose.

Or she could if everybody would keep their arguments down to a dull roar.

The heated conversation did not stop the way she wanted it to do, and with a long, loud sigh she pulled the jumper off from around her head and stuffed it into her satchel. She teleported down to the ground still in her clothes from the day before, Morgan gliding to her shoulder, and stomped over to the knot of adults still talking in loud voices. 'What?' she wrote. No one glanced up from their own discussion, however, and after several seconds of waiting she clapped her hands as loudly as she could.

That thankfully caught their attention, and they all looked over at her and the question she had asked. "She looks like an angry kitten," was Jean Luc's first thought, which did not improve her mood any. "It is nothing, Hazel. You can go back to bed."

'I no sleep if you talk loud like this. What. Happen?'

Silent chuckles swept through the thoughts of the adults, and she shifted her tired glare between each of them in turn before returning her gaze to Jean Luc. "It is nothing so terrible as you may think. Grégorie noticed some strange signs in the forest for the last week or so, and it looks like there is a boar running around. We are just deciding how best to track it down and deal with it."

'Deal with it?'

Grégoire nodded. "Yeah. Boars are pretty good eating, but they can be a right pain in the butt to track down and hunt. They are also destructive wherever they go, eating anything at all that is edible—"

"Because we are not lacking resources for this upcoming winter already," Jean Luc thought to himself.

"—and the last few times one was around, they came to the compound at night and tore stuff up, too." Grégoire sighed. "And on that this is almost certainly a magical boar, and that just makes it more complicated. That's about it, just need to get rid of it."

Hazel's fingers were already moving. 'I can help.' After everything they had done for her in the last few months – taking her in, teaching her how to make magic potions, even throwing her her very first birthday party – there was no way she was going to ignore them when they had trouble of their own. She did not know exactly how she could help, not yet, but surely there was something she could do.

Grégoire and Jean Luc looked at each other, almost as if they were having a silent conversation. Jean Luc's mind was filled with doubt, but Grégoire? "Having another pair of eyes would not hurt," he finally said. "If nothing else, she could climb a tree faster than I could to take a look from on high."

"Somehow I doubt she would lower herself to simple climbing when she can teleport," Jean Luc thought with a small shake of his head. "If she wants to go and you want to take her with you, I will not say no. Not like either of you would listen anyway. You said you found most of the signs to the northeast?"

"I did. It is where I thought I would start the search."

"Okay then. Marcel and I will take the south and west, respectively. There are a few spells we can use to make sure the boar has not moved into those areas. I do not know they would be as useful for finding where it is, but if you cannot find it today we can search together tomorrow."

Hazel nodded and asked Grégoire, 'Five minutes?' That should be more than enough time for her to change her clothes and use her cleaning spell to get her sweat and stink from the night before off her body. Honestly, she would probably be ready to go in just one minute.

"Sounds good. I will meet you at the shed."

Slipping inside Simone's cabin, sure enough it took her nearly no time at all to clean herself and her clothes and walk back outside. 'The shed' referred to the same little building where they had dragged the bodies of the dead deer the werewolves had killed the first day she was here, the same one that held Grégoire's hunting supplies and all the awful-smelling tanning potions he had used to start turning the hide into leather. He was standing outside waiting for her, a quiver full of arrows slung over his shoulder and a large wooden crossbow held in his callused hands. "Glad you did not need the full five minutes, although once you are a teenager I am sure that you will. Let's go."

The woods of Compiègne were not small, and even searching a third of them would take time, so it did not surprise her that Grégoire was so insistent on starting immediately. What did surprise her, though, was how seriously everyone was taking it, and somehow the idea that a boar was wandering around eating roots and stuff did not explain it all either. Something he had said had her wondering, and after several minutes of walking deeper and deeper into the forest she asked, 'It magic? How?'

Grégoire snorted when he looked up from the ground to read her message. "You did not think humans were the only species that sometimes has magic pop up where it was not before, did you? A few different animals can have that happen and develop strange traits and abilities. Pigs for sure. I've heard rumors of magical monkeys. I once trapped a crow that, considering it managed to escape from a cage I locked inside a wooden chest without having to open either of them, I'm damn sure was magical. There are some other animals that can have magic, too, I bet.

"What matters today is that magical pigs and boars are nasty business. They become almost like trolls or giants in a way. They can grow real big, and they are faster and stronger and tougher than they should be even at that size. Eat more, too, which is why they are such a pest."

Né-Moldus animals? Seriously? She shook her head. 'I never see magic animals.'

"You wouldn't have, not with you being a Née-Moldus yourself. The government does not want knowledge of magic getting out to the Moldus, and super-strong pigs or teleporting crows would tip the Moldus off that something strange was happening. They track magic happening all over the country, and that means keeping an eye and an ear out for any signs of magical animals popping up. If they find one, generally they will kill it and make the Moldus think some wild animal or something got it."

Not for the first time, Hazel wished she could just write out what she wanted to say in English and be understood. She had picked up enough French to be able to have basic conversations, but right now her questions were all more complicated than that. Number one was why it was so important to keep magic a secret. Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia would have hated magic being out and about around them, but they hated anyone and anything that did not perfectly match their idea of 'normal' even when magic was not involved, so that would have happened regardless. Considering how many people liked movies about space aliens or wizards or superheroes, anybody who did have magic would probably become instant celebrities.

What she eventually had to settle for was, 'Why the secret that important?'

"We've always been told that if Moldus found us, they would hate us and kill us. That has never made much sense to me since Né-Moldus were raised in that world and don't want all other wizards dead, but that is the thinking of the people who make these decisions. What we have been told their thinking is, anyway. What would actually happen, I do not know. Maybe it would be terrible, maybe it would be fine. Nobody knows, and nobody wants to find out in case the Moldus really would want us all dead.

"But that is enough philosophy talk for now." He raised his hand for silence and knelt down on the ground. "Come take a look at this."

She crouched down next to him. What he had found was a set of tracks in the dirt, two long indentations set side by side. Hooves, not paws. Hazel looked at him in confusion. They were looking for a gigantic pig, so why was he so excited about finding deer tracks?

"This is a boar track. Your look said everything, even without you saying a word," he added when he looked over at her with a smile and a raised eyebrow. "It looks a lot like a deer's, but you see how the points of the hoof are spread out? A deer hoof has the points both straight forward. Then there are these little indents." His fingers touched two divots behind and slightly to the side of the main hoofmark. "Pigs have dew claws just like deer do, but they're too far to the side. Deer tracks are all on a line, pigs' are pulled more to the sides." Touching his fingers to the bottoms of the tracks, his smile faded. "Clear imprint, so it was made when the ground was wet. The bottom is dry now. Probably a day old or more. We need to keep moving. Knowing where it used to be does not tell us where it is now."

For all that the nights were starting to cool off, the days were not. The higher the sun rose, though, the more confident Grégoire became. "Boars do not like the heat any more than you and I do," he said when she finally asked what had him in such a good mood. "The last few times we had a boar in the forest, they went to one of the nearby rivers around noontime. Cool off in the water, wallow in the mud, have a good time, then go back to digging and eating when the temperature drops again. There are a few streams this way."

She would not mind a dip in a stream herself, honestly, but she trudged along after the older man. Maybe once this chore was taken care of. It took them another twenty minutes or so to stumble upon one of the streams he had mentioned, but not matter how she stretched her neck to look up and down the stream, she saw no massive pig or any other creature.

"Not this one," he agreed. "Or not here, anyway. There's a little watering hole upriver if I remember right, but if the boar is not there we will have to keep looking."

Hazel blew out her breath in a puff. There had to be a better way of tracking this thing down than wandering around blindly! She was a druid, for crying out loud! Magic dealing with nature was supposed to be her area of expertise.

There was no reason she should not experiment, that was certain. This time she was the one who knelt, and her arms stretched out until she could dig most of her fingers into the mud that had formed along the stream's edge. She closed her eyes and breathed deep and slow. Reaching out with her magic, just like she did when she meditated, she let her very essence claw into the earth and the water and the air. I need help, she called out into the silence that seemed to fall over her. The river was muted, her breathing was almost nonexistent. She thought she could vaguely feel Grégoire's eyes staring at her, but none of the words he might be speaking could make it to her ears. We are looking for the boar that has entered these woods. Can anyone hear me? Can you show us where it has gone?

The silence dragged on, but after many long seconds she heard something. A fluttering like wings, but nothing like the sound of Morgan's flight. She opened her eyes to discover that something truly was coming her way. It looked almost like a butterfly, but one larger than she had ever seen. Its wings were also not colorful splashes of color like a regular butterfly's, either. Instead it had wings patterned and colored like the leaves these trees would undoubtedly bear once autumn was here in full force. The spirit – for it was clearly no natural creature – flew until it was only a couple of feet in front of her and hovered there patiently.

Will you help me, she asked. It did not reply by word or emotion or movement, and she cast her mind back to the only other time she had a peaceful interaction with a spirit. The entity that gave her the lavender lens she wore over her right eye now had taken her broken lens in exchange. She still did not understand why it would want a broken glasses lens, but it had. Taking a leap of faith, she told the butterfly spirit in front of her, I'm willing to make a trade.

That seemed to be the sign the spirit wanted. It fluttered from its place before her and landed on her left arm, its spiny legs digging strangely but not really uncomfortably into the skin. Its head dipped towards her shoulder, and she winced as something sharp pinched into the flesh. The sting lasted only an instant; two or three instants after that, the spirit took off again and flapped away. The only sign that it had ever been there in the first place was the small bead of blood that welled up from the spot it had bitten and started rolling down her arm.

"What the hell?!" Grégoire demanded. She looked up to find his eyes affixed firmly to the trail of blood on her arm. "Why would she hurt herself? How did she hurt herself?! Her hands were buried in the dirt."

Hazel raised her hand to explain what had just happened, but as soon as one hand came free from the mud and muck she felt what she could only describe as a tugging sensation in her head. It was as if someone had threaded some string up her nose and glued it to the back of her skull, and now they were pulling on the string to make her go somewhere. I did ask the spirits to show me where the boar was, she reminded herself. Her hand was still up in the air, so with a shrug she wrote, 'I know where boar be.'

"She… What?"

The tug drew her away from the river and deeper into the woods, and she let her feet follow the pull. Grégoire stared at her with confusion swirling through his mind before he eventually started following as well. It did not take long before Hazel pulled herself partway up a tree that had fallen at an angle and stared at what she found. That is a big pig.

The boar did not notice them, its snout shoveling dirt out of the way as it dug for roots or worms or whatever else it was after. It had to be six feet long at the least, and thick black hair coursed down its shoulders and back. It looked up, and while it was chewing its prize the two thick tucks reaching up from its jaw were on prominent display.

"About two meters long," Grégoire said when he in turn looked over the tree. Pulling back the string of his crossbow, he loaded one of the thick bolts. "He's a big boy. I still do not know how you found him in the first place, but you did. Somehow. We need to shoot him in the side. That will give the best chance of injuring something important. If the first shot does not put him down, he'll be after us, and I do not like our chances of outrunning him."

They needed to keep him still? Hazel's fingers tapped on her thigh. She strongly doubted she would be able to create a brand new construct in such a short amount of time. If she wanted to help out here, it would have to be something she already had. Unfortunately, nothing was coming to mind. That was something else she should have worked on, especially since it would have been very useful if she ever ran into something like the ghosts in de Rais's castle again—

Wait.

She thought back to that misadventure. The ghosts had all come after her, and in fact they had not just chased her but managed to grab her. Except then they let her go. It was not because they wanted to, not when they started chasing after her again as soon as she started running away, but something had made them go away. Something she did made them go away.

All I did was tell them to go away, though. Could that really be enough? She had told them to go away… and she had been scared. It would not be the first time that fear had powered her magic. In fact, the more she thought about it, the more she wondered if she might have accidentally done the same thing with Morgan the first time they met. Her hand rose to pet her friend, who twittered comfortingly to her. She was not constantly keeping him under any kind of mind control, but when she wanted one of the birds she saw around Stonehenge to come to her, she had been frustrated and angry. And lo and behold, one had flown down to her just as she had demanded of them.

Could she use the same thing here to deal with the boar? She still had no construct, so emotion would have to work instead to fuel her spell. Hazel closed her eyes and thought. Jean Luc had said he was worried about this boar eating all their food, food they already did not have much of. If they did not have food this winter, they could starve. This family of werewolves, this group of people who had accepted her when no one – no one – had ever done so before, could starve and look just like she had when she looked at her own reflection in that kind man's deli months ago.

She pictured Jean Luc, Amorette, Grégoire, Simone, all with sunken eyes and cheeks while their arms and legs were little more than twigs. It did not take long to imagine these people, her friends, laying listlessly and lifelessly in their beds, too tired and weak to get up to get something, anything to eat. Too weak to survive. The only people she had in the whole wide world, gone.

And it would be ALL. This creature's. FAULT.

"…'Azel? What is wrong?"

Her eyes opened, all of her attention and her anger firmly focused on the boar. Her left hand reached out towards it, her fingers curling like claws. She was not going to be the person to kill it, but she would do her part to protect her people, and that meant it was not going to run away. Go. To. Sleep.

The boar stumbled, almost as if something had pushed it in the side. It shook its head and grunted a few times, but each one was softer than the last. Eventually it could not withstand her psychic assault any longer. Curling its legs beneath it, it laid down on the dirt and closed its eyes. Within seconds, the sound of its breathing had changed.

And a second after that, the crossbow fired a bolt into its side.

Sharp pain flashed between her eyes, forcing her to wince and blink a few times. When she could see again, she looked up to find that the boar was not dead, and it was no longer asleep. It was awake, in pain, and angry.

"Shite shite shite," Grégoire thought, pulling back on the string of the crossbow as fast as he could. Another bolt was already in his hand, just waiting for the bow to be ready.

The boar climbed to its feet, and Hazel knew they were out of time. She had one other thing that might work to keep it from charging them the way it looked like it was about to. Flexing her wrist once, she gripped her magical dart between two fingers and flung her arm out. The dart flew, sparks trailing it along its path, and it sank into the flesh of the boar just behind its front legs. Blood poured out the hole she made, but the beast was still alive. It wheeled around and, seeing them, let out a bellow and charged.

Another dart appeared in her hand and was thrown, this one carving a furrow in the flesh of its forehead. It still ran, its legs carrying it forward faster than she would have guessed they could.

The crossbow twanged again, and the bolt flew true. By the time she saw it hit, the bolt had already sunk most of its length into the animal's neck. This finally did something to the boar, and it staggered forwards for another six feet before crashing heavily into the ground and skidding to a stop.

"Oh, thank goodness," Grégoire said in a voice of pure relief. "I was worried that would not be enough. I do not know what she was doing, but I saw blood fly for a second. Did she have some way to hurt it? I guess that was her plan B, because that was… impressive, what you did. Putting it to sleep, I mean. I did not know you could do that."

'I not know either.'

"That does not exactly fill me with confidence. Well, it worked. This guy will not cause us any more trouble." Looping the strap of the crossbow over his shoulder, Grégoire walked out from behind the tree and looked down at the dead boar. "Now we just need to figure out how we will get him back to the compound."

xxxxxxxxxxxxx​

August rolled into September, and the weather started turning colder faster than Hazel or anyone else in the commune expected. Jackets and jumpers were pulled out of boxes, and Grégoire spent most of his days out in the woods filling bag after bag with acorns that he said would be ground up into flour for breads and porridge. Jean Luc and Elise spent more time together, him working out finances again and her making runs to different shopping districts all over the country to gather nonperishable groceries. Despite it only just now turning to autumn, it was clear that everyone was already gearing up for the winter.

And that meant it was time for her to move on.

She rapped three times on Jean Luc's door and stepped inside. 'I think it is time for me to leave,' she told him, writing out her words in English rather than French. This was something she did not want to be misunderstood, and that meant not using a language she was still not entirely proficient in.

"Leave?" he asked in confusion. His question made Elise look up from where she was flipping through a newspaper for coupons. "Leave where? Where would you go?"

'I never planned to stay in France forever. I did not expect to stay as long as I did,' she admitted. 'I'm headed to Germany for a bit. There are some things I want to check out there.'

France had, sadly, not given her much in terms of ancient magical sites to investigate. German folklore, on the other hand, was absolutely full of tales of magical monsters and witches. Hopefully she would have more luck looking for things further east.

'Besides,' she continued, 'I know you are worried about having enough food and supplies for everybody this winter. I leave, and that is one less mouth to feed. I can take care of myself in the winter. I have done it before.'

"Jean Luc, what is she saying?" Elise asked. "All I can see is that it is written in English, and I never learned that language."

Jean Luc's expression bordered on heartbroken as he turned to look at Elise. "She plans to leave us."

'Not forever! Just for the winter. I will come back in the spring, I promise.'

"A promise to come back does not change that you are talking about heading out into the cold on your own. We can take care of ourselves and you as well."

'But that would just make things harder when they don't have to be. I really, really appreciate that you are worried about me,' she told him, 'but you do not have to be. I will be fine.'

"Maybe you will," he admitted, "but that does not mean we cannot help. None of us could live with ourselves if something happened to you because you left trying to protect us. Elise, do you think you could grab one of the copper pots and put together a pouch of basic ingredients? Elise and Amorette have told me on several occasions that you have an interest in potions," he explained, "and the least we could do is give you the tools to make them while you are out on your own."

'You do not have to do that,' she protested. There were several potions she had learned to make, although if she were honest most of them she would not need to make thanks to her own abilities. Burn creams and pain relievers would be more useful were she not able to heal her own injuries, and likewise with the magical superglue that could only be dissolved with another specific potion. She could fix anything that was broken, although now that she thought about it, it could be useful to stick things together that had not originally been one thing.

She had never been in a position where she had needed that ability, but she could not say that she would never need it.

"We do not have to do it, no. That does not mean we will not."

It took a few minutes, but Elise came back with one of the big copper cooking pots they made their potions in and a bag Hazel could already tell was filled with all sorts of ingredients. Reluctantly she took the presents, more gifts from people that had little enough of their own to start with, and carefully stuffed both of them into her satchel. 'Merci,' she wrote, showing it to both Elise and Jean Luc.

"It is the least we can do," Jean Luc told her. "I am serious about us being able to take care of you. If you run into trouble or simply cannot live out there on your own, you are always welcome to come back. I know you have your ways of getting places quickly."

Hazel gave her thanks to them again and slipped away before they could try to argue against her leaving any more than they already had. From the sad glare Elise shot at Jean Luc while she was doing that, it was an argument that would continue even without her.

There has to be something we can do for them, she told Morgan as she walked quickly away from the compound. They have been so kind to us, never asking for a single thing in return. They welcomed us even though they have practically nothing to spare. Can you think of anything?

Her friend cheeped mournfully, and she sighed. She did not feel right just leaving. What could she do to help them out? Even a short run of good luck for them would be better than nothing!

Thinking of good luck made her mind wander back to the deli in Tavistock she had visited months ago. Before she left, she had tried to leave a blessing for him. Could she do the same here? There was no single building she could touch like she had then, but maybe there were other options.

It did not take her long to gather four acorns, and then using the point of her shears she poked a hole in the tip of her left pinky finger. It was not a deep cut, but it was enough for her to rub some blood over the acorns. A burst of green lighting sealed the cut up. The next thing she pulled out of her bag was the compass she had stolen months ago, and she did her best to judge where due south was from the center of the commune.

One finger she wiggled into the dirt, just enough to make a small pit in which she dropped one of the bloodied acorns. Blood had been important for closing the gate to the Greenwild beneath Glastonbury Tor, and that weird butterfly spirit had taken some blood in exchange for its help. She had no idea if adding her blood to this blessing would do anything at all, but it was possible that it might add some extra oomph. That possibility was good enough for her.

Not a single cruel soul lives within this compound, she told the woods around her and the earth beneath her as she covered the hole with the acorn. They are kind, and they give with no thought of reward or whether they would be better off keeping what they have to themselves. I am not a werewolf, and yet they accepted me as one of their own almost immediately. Yet despite their kindness, they are hated and feared for something they have no control over. Her mind went back to the attitudes of the Republican Guards who had harassed them, but she shoved that away. She did not want indignation, no matter how righteous, interfering with this. All I ask is that these people – these kind, loving people – be protected from those who would wish them harm undeserved. Keep them safe, and let their generosity be returned threefold.

Her blessing given, she checked her compass and jumped to the opposite end of the compound. She recited the same blessing as best as she could remember it, and buried another acorn. Then she did the same to the west, and then to the east.

She may not be able to touch the compound as a whole, but she could surround it and the people who lived within with her prayer for protection.

Morgan chirped, and she brushed her hands off and nodded. Yeah, you're right. We've done what we can. I hope it's enough.

But the sun is still moving forwards, and it is time for us to hit the road again.

xxxxxxxxxxxxx​

Before anyone asks or blindly tries to criticize, yes, wild pigs and boars are still present in France. The idea of boar hunting isn't something that ended in the Renaissance. From what I could find, about 15,000 were killed in 1990 alone.

 

[Silently Watches]

The werewolf commune was in the southwestern portion of the Compiègne Forest, which meant in order to get to Germany Hazel and Morgan had a good long path they needed to travel. Studying her maps, it was clear that just getting to the Black Forest – which was only the first stop she had planned – would take her nearly two weeks of walking.

Not for the first time, she was glad she did not have to bother with school any longer. If she had to explore in between classes, she did not think she would ever get anywhere. There was just too much to see and too much to learn in the world.

Her route mostly paralleled a road that should get her at least to the border between France and Germany, but she had no intention of making herself easy to spot. She had not wanted to deal much with well-meaning adults who wanted to 'help' her when she first started out, and that was before she had a bottomless bag full of potion ingredients. More questions would be asked than she really wanted, and considering how important wizards believed keeping non-magical Moldus out of their affairs, she doubted the werewolves would appreciate her spilling the beans to the first person who pulled aside to check on her. It was easier for her just to stay out of sight.

Personally, she was torn on the idea of hiding magic from regular people. She was fuzzy on just what made wizards and druids start hiding in the first place other than what Grégoire had said about wizards being afraid they would be hunted down. Whether that was still the case or not, she did not know. On the other hand, the fact that everything was hidden away made her very concerned about Nés-Moldus who, just like her, were magical in a world without magic. How many kids lived in homes where their strange abilities were feared and despised, just as hers had been when she lived in Number 4? How many people's lives would be improved by having a place to go where they would be accepted for who they were?

The road she was following curved to start tracing the edges of yet another forest, and Hazel's steps moved farther away so she could plunge into the sea of trees. So long as she kept the road to her right side, she would be able to find it when she came out the other side of the woods. She had to go in a roughly southeasterly direction, so even if she lost the road she could just follow her compass. It was not as if she had not double-checked a few times already that she was going in the correct direction—

Something tingled at the edge of her perception, and Hazel stopped in her tracks. What was that? Her head swiveled as she looked all around her. She was curious about what that was, but that did not mean she could not be cautious. Step one was to make absolutely sure that whatever strange feeling she had was not the result of something dangerous and hungry sneaking up on her. Squeezing her left eye shut tight, she focused on just what she could see through her right eye and her monocle. Invisibility would not help anything trying to sneak up on her.

Her worried gaze landed on nothing but the trees around her.

That was… good. It was good. Nothing was trying to eat her, so she was safe. Her caution satisfied, her curiosity came back in full force. The tingle was still there and unchanged from how it felt when she first noticed it. What was it?

Her feet led her deeper into the woods, and the further she walked the stronger the tingle became until suddenly, it was gone. What took its place was a low, deep hum, almost too quiet for her to hear. It was just loud enough for her to follow, though, and moving as stealthily as she could she proceeded onwards. Her eyes and ears were still on the lookout for anything, anything at all, that was out of the ordinary.

Moving around yet another tree, Hazel stopped and stared. The source of the hum was before her, and it was just another maple tree no different than all the others she could see nearby. The hum was louder now, but despite the change in volume she still barely hear it.

Dog whistles are too high-pitched for humans to hear, she reminded herself. Could this be the same, but it's too low for me to hear it?

Whatever the cause, it had clearly led her here. What was different about this tree, she wondered as she stepped closer. Was it a dryad's tree, the home of a nature spirit? Or was it just magical? She had never heard of a magical tree before, but then again she had never heard of magical animals before she and Grégoire went hunting for the boar. There was still so much of this hidden world of magic that she did not know about that she should not assume anything.

Standing beneath its boughs, she glanced up. Were the branches moving all on their own?! No, that was not it. She blinked a few times and smiled. It was not the branches that were moving, but instead a number of creatures that looked like twigs but ran around on two legs like little people. If it were not for the thrum of the tree pulsing right in front of her, she might have thought it was these twig-creatures that were making the hum.

Was the tree calling to her, and that was why she heard it? Hazel thought for a moment before shaking her head. There was no way the tree could have known she was nearby. More likely this was a tree's version of purring, a not-quite-sound it made because it was content. She did not want to bother it if that were the case.

But. She looked up at the numerous branches, and an idea tickled the inside of her skull. Wizards had wands, as proven by both the werewolves and the standing stones in Shervage Woods. Those stones also depicted a group of magicians who carried staves. Those would be the druids. Druids used staves, something she did not have, and there had to be a reason for it.

She had never needed one of her own, but she also did not know what they did. There must be some benefit since druids like her did not actually need such a thing to cast spells. Making a staff was not a priority, but considering she had a magical tree of all things right in front of her…

Reaching out her hand until it pressed fully against the trunk, she closed her eyes. Hello, she told the tree. My name is Hazel. I was wondering, would it be okay with you if I took one of your branches? I want to make a staff — she sent it a mental picture of herself with a walking stick — but I didn't want to take one of your branches without asking for permission.

The pulsing of the tree did not change beneath her hand, but it also did not reply in any way. Was this a no? A maybe? Was it considering her request, or was it waiting for something? That question almost made her slap herself. Of course. If this was a dryad's tree, it would be the third time she had interacted with a spirit, and even if it were not a spirit but just a magical tree, it still seemed to have more awareness than a typical plant.

Spirits or magical entities were not going to give something up for free. In their shoes, she would not either.

I am willing to discuss a bargain with you. Is there anything you would like me to give you or do for you in exchange for one of your branches?

In the darkness behind her closed eyelids, colors faded into view. This tree in its little clearing, its leaves entirely red instead of the half-green-half-red they were now. Little brown 'V's fluttered out of its branches and landed on the ground, but once they touched they withered and vanished. An emotion passed through her mind, something muted but tinged with… regret? Sadness? Disappointment? Hazel was not sure.

The scene changed. Now she saw the tree as it was already, and another seed pod fell. The pod stayed in view, but everything around it faded and swirled. When the background came back into focus, Hazel saw a field without any nearby trees. The seed pod touched the ground and sank into it. A small twig poked out from the ground where the seed had disappeared, and as she watched that twig grew with impossible speed into another tree that scattered its own seeds. More trees sprouted from the ground until she no longer was looking at an empty field but a young, lush forest.

The vision faded, but she thought she understood the request behind it. I would be happy to take your seed somewhere it can grow and thrive.

Something light pressed on the top of her head, and Hazel opened her eyes and reached up to touch it. What her hand pulled down into view was one of those angled seed pods she had seen. It seemed the tree was not playing around.

She held up the seed pod in view of the tree's trunk and dropped it into her satchel. The next empty space she saw on her trip, she would plant the seed and let it do its thing. Best she could tell, the vision did not involve any more work on her end than that. Looking up at the numerous branches above her, she asked, Is there a branch you think would be best for me to take?

As she watched, a leafless branch maybe ten feet off the ground flexed faintly. It looked almost as if it were being blown by the wind, but all the other branches were still, and she heard no wind. It could only be intentional. Nodding to herself, she jumped—

—and straddled the thick branch the branch she was after had grown off of. Morgan hopped off her shoulder and landed on a different twig, chirping once or twice but otherwise just keeping an eye on what she was doing. She pressed her chest against the large branch and reached down for the smaller one. It bent rather easily in her hands. She pulled and pulled, scooting herself closer to the trunk bit by bit, and after shifting a couple of feet she heard a series of cracks and snaps. One more hard tug, and the branch snapped off.

Hazel grinned to herself and looked up only to see one of the twig-creatures standing in front of her. It really did look like a little man, she could not help but notice, maybe four inches tall with a couple of leaves coming off its head like hair and with relatively big black eyes staring at her. What was not human-looking were the two long, sharp fingers growing from its hands. As she watched, those fingers curled and relaxed. The twig-man was watching her, but it was not acting aggressively or anything. She gave him it a wave and rolled off the large branch—

—so she would reappear on the ground. Much nicer than actually falling that whole distance.

Plopping her butt onto the dirt at the foot of the tree, she leaned back and looked over the branch in her hand. If she had felt bad at first that she was getting a staff in exchange for such a piddling task as taking the seed somewhere else, she no longer did. This branch did not have any leaves or any twigs coming off it, and the end was crooked and almost zigzagged rather than being straight. It clearly was not doing the tree any good, and sadly the more she looked at it the less she thought it would really work as a staff. It was just too twisted.

Or, she considered as she looked the branch up and down, could she do something to fix that? Healing it would not do any good because being bent like this was still natural, and she did not have any spells per se that would make the wood straighten out. That did not mean she had nothing to try.

If this was to be her staff, she needed to show it to her magic and get them to work together. That did not necessarily require a spell.

Hazel leaned against the trunk of the tree and laid the branch across her crossed legs. Closing her eyes, she pushed her magic outwards. Just like the other times she had meditated, she imagined roots reaching out from below her. Now, though, branches lifted themselves from her shoulders and her hair, and from her hands came vines that wound themselves around the staff. She took a deep breath in and let it out, then repeated the process. With each exhale, her magic pulsed through the branches and the roots and the vines; her inhale pulled magic back from the ground and air, but not the branch. She wanted the magic in the branch to stay there. She imagined she could feel the branch almost like a foot that had fallen asleep, and she willed it to stretch out so she could get rid of the pins and needles feeling.

As she breathed in and out and coaxed the branch into behaving, she slowly became aware of a headache building behind her eyes. It was not unbearable, but she could feel it growing stronger and stronger with each pulse of her magic. It was like when she had done her chain-jumping to get to the Mermaid's Pool, though not nearly as strong. Was this what happened when she pushed her magic to its limit? It had never happened when she meditated before, but then again she had also never tried reshaping a tree branch while meditating.

Opening her eyes, Hazel had to wait a moment for her vision to adjust to the sudden darkness. The sun had not completely set, not yet, but its remaining light was easily matched by the nearly full moon that was rising overhead. It had been the middle of the afternoon when she entered these woods; could several hours have really passed already? A shake of her head, and she looked down at the branch before her eyes widened in astonishment.

What lay in her lap was no twisted tree branch. It was a long, straight staff, tapering gently from top to bottom but not coming to a true point. The vast majority of the bark was gone to reveal a yellowish white wood. What little bark was left were more flecks than anything else, all congregated at the end where the broken end of the branch had smoothed over into a rounded head. Quiet chittering came from her sides, and she turned her head to meet the gaze of a twig-man. Just one of many, in fact. Several of them had climbed down the tree to wrap themselves around her arms and shoulders and, from the itchy feeling of her scalp, had even perched on her head. A twitter from a few feet away turned out to be Morgan hopping backwards with his wings spread as a pair of twig-men advanced, their two-fingered hands outstretched as if to pet his feathers.

Thanks for the company, I guess, but I need to get up now, she told them. Matching action with words, she pushed herself to her feet and pressed her left hand against the tree's trunk again. The twig-men took advantage of the impromptu bridge she offered and scuttled down her arm onto the tree, their long fingers giving them excellent purchase between the chunks of bark as they climbed rapidly back to the boughs from whence they came.

Once she had rid herself of all her hanger-ons, she returned her attention to her new staff. It was clear to her now that it was upright that her staff was as long as she was tall, but for all that it did not feel unwieldy. It just felt sturdy.

She tapped the butt of the staff against the ground. Do you do anything special, she asked the staff. To her absolute lack of surprise, it did not respond in any way.

Morgan flew back to his typical spot on her shoulder, and she shrugged. I have a staff now. I still don't know why druids used them, but it's mine. Maybe I'll figure out what makes them special later.

Anyway. Onward! She pointed the top of her staff in the direction she had been traveling before she made this little detour. We still have a whole other country to get to, and we are wasting moonlight.

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Hazel slipped beneath another fallen tree and looked down at the small valley the tree had hidden. All around her stood tall trees of all kinds, their canopies blocking out nearly all sunlight from above. It made her walk an easy one as there was little to no underbrush, but it also gave the woods a foreboding, eerie feeling, as if there might well be something dangerous and lethal always just out of sight.

It was, she supposed, an appropriate feeling for the Black Forest to evoke.

This had been the first place she wanted to stop in Germany for a few different reasons. First, the Black Forest featured prominently in several of the Brothers' Grimm fairy tales. From what she had found in her research, the Brothers had not made up these stories so much as collected them from all over Germany. These were folk tales, and as she had proven when she stumbled onto the standing stones of Shervage Wood and the road to the Greenwild and the Mermaid's Pool and the rift at Elva Hill, the old Celtic folk tales were more right than most people gave them credit for nowadays. The same might just be the case for the German variants.

Second, so many of her self-discoveries and new ideas had come while surrounded by nature, not necessarily in cities of men. That only made sense considering the connection between her magic and the natural world. If she wanted a place to meditate, an ancient forest would be the best place to do so, although after being here she was starting to have her doubts about how good of an idea that would be. If there was magic here, it was not the kindly sort.

Third, she had learned her lesson from the last time she entered a new country. After leaving the forest where she made her staff and finding somewhere with recognizable landmarks, she had jumped back to the library in Bristol and borrowed an introductory book on the German language and its grammar as well as a dictionary. Much to her displeasure, it looked like she was going to have to deal with different endings on words just the same as the French did, although German did not seem to be quite as complicated as French in that regard. Flipping through those books had been what she spent every night of the last two weeks and change doing. It slowed her travel down some, but she would rather take an extra couple of days getting here than show up early with no idea how to write the language. Exploring the woods gave her a few more days to get the language down than heading straight to a town would do.

She glanced up at the tree canopies again. It was getting late, which meant it was probably close to time for her to return to her campsite. Not that her camp was really worth the name since all it contained was an extinguished fire pit. Thanks to the lessons Grégoire had given her over the last couple of months about how to survive in the wild woods, she now knew how to keep a fire going through the night and how to stay warm when she nestled herself in the branches of trees to sleep. Trees were not as comfortable to sleep on as the cot she had used in Simone's cottage, but it was no worse than any of the places she had slept within when she was wandering around England.

Regardless, she would need to make her way back. Just jumping back was an option, but that meant she could not explore more of the woods. If she walked back, she could cover more ground, and it was not as if getting lost was currently a problem. Hazel looked over at the staff she held in her right hand. She had not really noticed it on the way over here, but in the last several days as she explored the Black Forest she had realized that whenever she wanted to return to camp, her feet always seemed to know how to get there even when her head was sure she was completely lost.

She took a step and slid down the slope of the hill on which she stood into the valley below. It ran basically perpendicular to the route she had taken, so it would make sense for her to walk along it for another hour or so before turning back and searching another area of the forest back towards her camp. If she were lucky, she might even run into some berry bushes or some squirrels or something. Hunting was not her favorite thing to do, nor was the actual butchering of the animals she killed, but the more fresh game she ate the less she needed the canned food in her satchel, which meant the longer she could go before she had to sneak into a store and take more.

Hazel pulled her torch out of her bag and flipped it on. She wanted to be able to see any prints in the ground, which would tell her if there were anything to—

What was that?

Kneeling down, she reached out one hand and prodded a larger print than she had expected. It had sharper edges than many of the animal prints Grégoire had shown her, and it was much more regular. Semicircular in shape, it looked almost like… Hazel walked around to the other side of the print and nodded. It did not look like a boot print; it was a boot print. And it was pointing further down the valley.

Now that she knew what she was looking for, she could see other prints further off that were also pointed in that direction. She did not know how old the prints were, but they were here in the middle of the forest with no other signs that anybody lived nearby. Where were they headed?

She started walking, her eyes all but glued to the ground to make sure she did not lose the trail she was following. Five minutes passed, then ten and fifteen. The sun completely vanished from sight, night overtaking the forest, and with only her torch to light the way she continued onwards.

After an hour, she reached the tracks' destination. Here in the middle of the woods stood a small wooden cabin. A dim light shone from the windows, not the yellow or white of typical lights but a pale blue, and the closer Hazel crept the clearer she could hear voices coming from within. People lived here, that was for sure, but were they wizards or regular people? That she did not know.

She stepped up to the door and raised her hand to knock when she stopped. The last time she went into a possibly magical building where she did not know what was inside, she had been attacked by hungry spirits and could not jump out to safety. There was no telling whether that same magic might be here. There were no enchanted chains in sight, but that did not necessarily mean anything. She needed to be sure she could escape if everything went south on her.

A small jump, and she reappeared ten feet away from the house just as she had wanted. She nodded to herself, now secure in the fact that she could get herself to safety, and returned to the door. Lifting her staff this time, she rapped three times on the door.

The voices stopped for several seconds, and then a woman called out, "Komm herein."

That sounded mostly like what Hazel thought was German for 'come in', so with a mental shrug she opened the door and stepped inside. The cabin was not all that large, and from what she could see most of the building was taken up by the large room she had entered. A long table with three chairs stood in the middle of the room, already set for dinner. The back portion of this living space was clearly being used as a kitchen based on the strings of herb bundles that dangled from the ceiling along with a number of dead rabbits. There was no television or radio in sight, but the side of the room furthest from the door had several low bookshelves with a few books and decks of cards and what looked like different game boards stacked on top. The entire room was lit by several glass lanterns and lamps and even a couple of Mason jars that all held flickering blue flames within. It was very clearly a magical home.

The inhabitants were no less strange. Three women, one clearly middle-aged and one who looked to be in her twenties sitting in the chairs at the table, while the last who appeared to be only a little younger than the first had risen from her own chair and taken a step towards the door. What made them odd was that even in the blue light from the lanterns their skin was a pale green, and while they all had long noses the two older women's were heavily warted. Not wanting to be rude, Hazel lifted her finger and in sparks wrote, 'Hallo'.

A snort came from the oldest woman. "Dumb little girl to wander in here. She looks so juicy and tender."

The woman who had risen from the table smiled at her with crooked, pointed teeth. She spoke in German, but her thoughts were, just like the werewolves', easily understood. "Hello, little wand-waver. You are far from home, are you not?"

'Yes.' Hazel pulled out her dictionary and flipped through the pages for a moment to find the word she wanted. 'Exploring the forest. Then I found your house.' She tilted her head. 'You are not human.'

"Then you must be alone. No, we are not."

Green skin, covered in warts, living in a cabin in the forest, and – if the other woman's thoughts were any indication – ate children? She was pretty sure she knew what she was dealing with now. 'Hags?'

The woman, the hag, chuckled and started walking closer. "Very good. If you know what we are, you also know this is not a place for curious little boys and girls. You look like you would make a nice snack."

The other hags stood up from the table, their intent clear. Hazel could feel fear bubbling in her chest, but strangely it was not as strong as it had been when she faced the ghosts beneath de Rais's tower. Was it because she knew escape was just a jump away? Because she had something to protect herself with now? Suiting action to thought, she let go of her staff for a moment so she could bend her left hand back and forth and close her fingers over the starry dart that appeared.

The hag she had been talking to shifted her gaze over to her hand when it moved but seemed to relax when nothing visible happened. In that moment of distraction, Hazel wrote, 'I prefer to talk.'

"Yes, most do. You would do better running." The hag took another step and suddenly stopped. Her nostrils flared as she took several long, deep breaths. "What is that smell?"

Now that was just mean! She might not ready access to a shower or a bathtub, but she used her cleaning spell on herself every day without fail. She knew she did not stink! 'I wash myself.'

"Mother, what is wrong?" asked the youngest of the hags.

The mother hag shook her head and stared at Hazel with luminous yellow eyes. "What are you? You smell like hag magic."

That pronouncement caught the others' attention, and the youngest hag hurried to her mother's side and also took several sniffs. "You are right, Mother. I smell some wand-waver magic on her, but little. It is almost hidden."

"She is too young to carry a wand, Hedwig."

"That is not what I mean." Hedwig leaned closer to Hazel's staff and smelled before shaking her head and slipping out of sight behind Hazel's back. A few sniffs came from right next to her ear. "Here. Her earrings are all the wand-waver I smell. The staff and… this bag are what smell like us." The hag's face popped back into view only to frown. Grabbing Hazel's head in hands far stronger than they first appeared, Hedwig leaned closer to her face to smell some more. "What in the world? Mother, her eyepatch. It… Tell me what you think."

Her head was turned to face the mother hag, and she sighed. The worry that she was going to be eaten had been supplanted by utter confusion, at least for the moment, but while she was fine not being treated as dinner she would also appreciate not being manhandled like this.

The mother took several more deep inhalations from around her monocle. "You are right. It smells like the scoured clearing. What dealings do you have with spirits, girl?"

'My name is Hazel, not girl,' she told them with a scowl. 'And I talk to whoever I want. Now what do you mean that I smell like hag magic?'

"Exactly that. These were made by hags, not humans." The older hag's expression turned dark. "No hag would just give her Makings to a wand-waver, though. Who did you steal them from?"

'I did not steal them! I made them on my own.'

Hedwig's eyes shot to her mother. "She knows the Making?"

"That is not possible. Wand-wavers cannot do such a thing, but… if that is the case, how does she have these things on her? She should not have been able to overpower one of us without one of her people's wands, and no hag would give up such treasures without a fight. If she did not steal them, how else could she have obtained them?" The mother hag's face softened, though she still wore a frown. "You claim to have made these yourself?"

Hazel nodded.

"Very well. In the morning, we will test that. You may stay here for the night, and if you run, we will know you for a liar and hunt you down."

She doesn't sound like she'll take no for an answer, does she?, Hazel asked Morgan. Her friend just kept looking around without any display of fear, but then again, he was not the one they wanted to eat. She had no idea how good their sense of smell was, and the mental picture of them chasing after her on all fours like bloodhounds was more disturbing than it was amusing. 'You promise I am safe tonight?'

"Yes. You will not be disturbed," the hag said with a long look at the oldest of the trio. "Not tonight. We will see what tomorrow brings. If your words are false, I will take great pleasure in sucking the marrow from your bones. If you are telling the truth… I do not know what that will mean."

Dismissing the dart between her fingers, Hazel drummed her fingertips against her staff. On the face of it, this seemed extremely foolish. The hags had admitted they wanted to eat her. But if they were truthful about leaving her alone? She had no clue what they meant about her staff and her bag smelling like hag magic, but it sounded like they knew more about them than she did. Maybe they had answers to other questions she had?

And if all else failed, there was no reason she could not just jump to safety, secure in the knowledge that the Grimm stories held at least some truth.

'Very well. I look forward to tomorrow.'

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Funny thing, from my reading the German word "Hexe" can mean both hag and witch. I would assume that witches in Harry Potter's Germany would call themselves something else, probably something more closely related to the word for wizard.

My notes are all sorted now. Germany will take the same number of chapters as France, and then we're back to jolly old England.