Shaking himself. Their protective enchantments had worked for weeks; why should they

break now? And yet he could no throw off the feeling that something was different

Tonight.

Several times 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 Disapparation

And Apparation. He had just held 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, his voice frozen in his throat, 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. 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 her

Inexplicable familiarity. He felt that he had been waiting for her to come, but that he had

Forgotten, until this moment, that they had arranged to meet. His impulse to shout for

Hermione, which had been so strong a moment ago, had gone. He knew, he would have

Staked his life on it, that she had come for him, and him alone.

They gazed at each other for several long moments and then she turned and

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 he brightness was

Striped by their thick black trunks. For one trembling second he hesitated. Caution

Murmured it could be a trick, a lure, a trap. But instinct, overwhelming instinct, told him

That this was not Dark Magic. He set off in pursuit.

Snow crunched beneath his feet, but the doe made no noise as she passed through

The trees, for she was nothing but light. Deeper and deeper into the forest she led him,

And Harry walked quickly, sure that when she stopped, she would allow him to approach

Her properly. And then she would speak and the voice would tell him what he needed to

Know.

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. Now fear came: Her presence had meant safety.

"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,

Date: 2015-12-11; view: 837