•••
choke, choke again.
I thought my demons were my friends,
getting me in the end.
They're out to get me ..
•••
Soft hands were stroking the hair out of her face. Lynnea felt her own heartbeat, calm and even, just like her breath. She tried to move, but her muscles laid down heavy, pressed against whatever she was laying on.
"When will she wake up?", she heared her brother's voice speak. "We need to leave."
"You want her to come with us?", Hermione breathed, disbelief swinging in her words. "Harry, I don't think this is a good idea. She's sick. What if she'll get one of these attacks while we're there?"
"What would be the alternative?", Harry hissed at her. "I won't leave her behind. Not again. Last time she almost got caught by a Death Eater. And look at her face! I won't let anything like that happen to her ever again."
Lynnea again tried to move, but it felt like her body was still asleep while her mind was wide awake. The memories flashed through her mind. Harry's touch, the pain, the green light, death. But had this been real or was it just another weird dream?
"She can't travel like this. Not by Apparition!" Hermione's certain voice scolded him. "Do you intend to walk to the Lovegood's house?"
"Of course not."
"Let her recover. Let her wake up. Then we'll see."
"Hermione, we don't have the time. No, let me speak! Ron and I will go, you'll stay here with her. When we come back, we need to find a way to bring her back to the Burrow or Shell Cottage. Anywhere safe. I can't answer her getting hurt or worse."
"I shouldn't have brought her here with me, I'm sorry", a third voice, Ron's, appeared.
"She wouldn't have let you leave her behind", Harry said.
"You're right, I wouldn't." Barely moving her lips, Lynnea pressed the words out, opening her eyes. It was dawning; like last time, she was laying flat on the ground in front of the tent. "What happened?"
The three Gryffindors stared down at her, their faces merely blurry visions.
"How are you feeling?", Harry calmly asked.
"Beautiful", Lynnea snorted, immediately regretting it; every bone in her body seemed to hurt. "Can someone please tell me why I again am lying here?"
"We hoped you could help us solving this mystery", Hermione replied in a whispery voice. "You were recovered from your fever, just to break down again, screaming like being slaughtered. You passed out and lay here for four days now."
"And why would you go visit Mr Lovegood?"
"Have you seen him at the wedding?", Harry asked. "He wore something. A necklace with a strange sign. Triangle with a circle, crossed by a line."
"No, but what -"
"Dumbledore left Hermione a book", Ron explained.
"Someone scribbled the sign on one of the pages", Harry added. "And now we want to find out the meaning."
Life floated back into Lynnea's body like a warm summer wind, her muscles awoke to new live, she sat up, her back aching.
"So when will we leave?", she asked, looking at the three of them.
"You won't leave anywhere", Harry said, shaking his head. "You stay here with Hermione. Ron and I are going."
"Yeah, like splitting the group is a perfect idea", Lynnea snorted. "You know what happens in this muggle horror movies when they split? They die, Harry."
"This is not a movie."
"I don't know, there's a snake-man with seven life's and without a nose out to get us. Sounds pretty horrific to me." She watched him roll his eyes. "I won't stay here. We're in this together, and four wands are stronger than two."
"Lynnea", Harry said in a warning tone, sighing deeply.
"Harry", she emotionless replied. "I'm fine, I can do this. Don't treat me like a child, bad enough Remus is doing this."
Harry threw her a long glare, before he turned around and walked away. In front of the tent he stopped for a second. "We'll leave tomorrow morning. Try to stay healthy tonight."
•••
They walked for a few hours, Harry and Lynnea, at Hermione’s insistence, hidden beneath the Invisibility Cloak. The cluster of low hills appeared to be uninhabited apart from one small cottage, which seemed deserted.
“Do you think it’s theirs, and they’ve gone away for Christmas?”, said Hermione, peering through the window at a neat little kitchen with geraniums on the windowsill. Ron snorted.
“Listen, I’ve got a feeling you’d be able to tell who lived there if you looked through the Lovegoods’ window. Let’s try the next lot of hills.”
So they Disapparated a few miles farther north.
“Aha!”, shouted Ron, as the wind whipped their hair and clothes. Ron was pointing upward, toward the top of the hill on which they had appeared, where a most strange-looking house rose vertically against the sky, a great black cylinder with a ghostly moon hanging behind it in the afternoon sky. “That’s got to be Luna’s house, who else would live in a place like that? It looks like a giant rook!”
“It’s nothing like a bird”, said Hermione, frowning at the tower.
“I was talking about a chess rook”, said Ron. “A castle to you.”
Ron’s legs were the longest and he reached the top of the hill first. When Lynnea, Harry and Hermione caught up with him, panting and clutching stitches in their sides, they found him grinning broadly.
“It’s theirs”, said Ron. “Look.”
Three hand-painted signs had been tacked to a broke-down gate. The first read:
THE QUIBBLER. EDITOR,
X. LOVEGOOD
the second:
PICK YOUR OWN MISTLETOE
the third:
KEEP OFF THE DIRIGIBLE PLUMS
The gate creaked as they opened it. The zigzagging path leading to the front door was overgrown with a variety of odd plants, including a bush covered in orange radishlike fruit Luna sometimes wore as earrings. Two aged crab apple trees, bent with the wind, stripped of leaves but still heavy with berry-sized red fruits and bushy crowns of white beaded mistletoe, stood sentinel on either side of the front door. A little owl with a slightly flattened hawklike head peered down at them from one of the branches.
“You’d better take off the Invisibility Cloak, Harry”, said Hermione. “It’s you Mr. Lovegood wants to help, not us.”
He did as she suggested, looking at Lynnea for a moment as if he was overthinking to covering her again, before handing Hermione the Cloak to stow in the beaded bag. She then rapped three times on the thick black door, which was studded with iron nails and bore a knocker shaped like an eagle.
YOU ARE READING
✔️ 𝐋𝐎𝐒𝐓&𝐅𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐃 → 𝑓. 𝑤𝑒𝑎𝑠𝑙𝑒𝑦
Fanfiction➥COMPLETED ❝Fred Weasley! You're such a pain in the arse!❞, she yelled, throwing her hands up furiously, but he just smirked with the usual mischievous sparkle in his warm eyes, as he bowed slowly down to her, his face merely inches away from Lynnea...
