Change the Future

DH 15

It was snowing by the time Hermione took over the watch at midnight. The snow was still falling thickly, and she greeted with relief his suggestion of packing up early and moving on. 

"We'll go somewhere more sheltered," she agreed, shivering as she pulled on a sweatshirt over her pajamas. 

"I kept thinking I could hear people moving outside, I even thought I saw somebody once or twice." Harry paused in the act of pulling on a jumper and glanced at the silent, motionless Sneakoscope on the table. "I'm sure I imagined it," Hermione said, looking nervous. "The snow in the dark, it plays tricks on your eyes. But perhaps we ought to Disapparate under the Invisibility Cloak, just in case?" Half an hour later, with the tent packed, Harry was wearing the Horcrux, and Hermione clutching the beaded bag, they Disapparated. The usual tightness engulfed them, Harry's feet parted  company with the snowy ground, then slammed hard onto what felt like frozen earth covered with leaves.

"Where are we?" he asked, peering around at a fresh mass of trees as Hermione opened the beaded bag and began tugging at tent poles.

"The Forest of Dean," she said. "'I came camping here once with my mum and dad." They spent most of the day inside the tent, huddled for warmth around the useful bright blue flames that Hermione was so adept at producing, and which could be scooped up and carried around in a jar. That afternoon fresh flakes drifted down upon them, so that even their sheltered clearing had a fresh dusting of powdery snow. After two nights of little sleep, Harry's senses seemed more alert than usual. Their escape from Godric's Hollow had been so narrow that Voldemort seemed somehow closer than before, more threatening. As darkness drew in again Harry refused Hermione's offer to keep watch and told her to go to bed. Harry moved an old cushion into the tent mouth and sat down, wearing all the sweaters he owned but even so, still shivery. The darkness deepened with the passing hours until it was virtually impenetrable. Every tiny movement seemed magnified in the vastness of the forest. Several time he jerked upright, his neck aching because he had fallen asleep, slumped at an awkward angle against the side of the tent. The night reached such a depth of velvety blackness that he might have been suspended in limbo between Disapparition and Apparition. He had just held up a hand in front of his face to see
whether he could make out his fingers when it happened. A bright silver light appeared right ahead of him, moving through the trees. Whatever the source, it was moving soundlessly. The light seemed simply to drift toward him. He jumped to his feet and raised 
Hermione's wand. He screwed up his eyes as the light became blinding, the trees in front of it pitch-black in silhouette, and still the thing came closer. And then the source of the light stepped out from behind an oak. It was a silver-white doe, moon-bright and dazzling, picking her way over the ground, still silent, and leaving no hoofprints in the fine powdering of snow. 

"It's a Patronus" Euphemia whispers.

She stepped toward him, her beautiful head with its wide, long-lashed eyes held high. Harry stared at the creature, filled with wonder, not at her strangeness, but at her inexplicable familiarity. They gazed at each other for several long moments and then she turned an walked away.

"No," he said, and his voice was cracked with lack of use. "Come back!" She continued to step deliberately through the trees, and soon her brightness was striped by their think black trunks. He set off in pursuit. Snow crunched beneath his feet. Deeper and deeper into the forest she led him, and Harry walked quickly. At last, she came to a halt. She turned her beautiful head toward him once more, and he broke into a run, a question burning in him, but as he opened his lips to ask it, she vanished. Though the darkness had swallowed her whole, her burnished image was still imprinted on his retinas; it obscured his vision, brightening when he lowered his eyelids, disorienting him. "Lumos!" he whispered, and the wand-tip ignited. The imprint of the doe faded away with every blink of his eyes as he stood there, listening to the sounds of the forest, to distant crackles of twigs, soft swishes of snow. He held the wand higher. Nobody ran out him, no flash of green light burst from behind a tree. Something gleamed in the light of the wand, and Harry spun about, but all that was there was a small, frozen pool, its cracked black surface glittering as he raised the wand higher to examine it. He moved forward rather cautiously and looked down. The ice reflected his distorted shadow and the beam of wandlight, but deep below the thick, misty grey carapace, something else glinted.