New Romantics | Hermione Granger Book IV

|58| Chapter Fifty-Eight

F I F T Y  E I G H T 

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"I'm barely able to see where I'm going," Saffron squeaked, keeping herself upright by gripping a branch, after almost tripping over the root of a tree.

Saffron and Olly had ventured into the woods for about ten minutes and thus far they hadn't found this great unknown spot that could potentially be the best one in Hogsmeade. All they had found was dense shrubbery but also seamless conversation. The direction that they were going in wasn't the direction that Saffron had planned, but she had come to learn that when plans went awry often the best of things could spawn out of them. This felt like one of those times.

"Lumos," Olly muttered, holding his wand up over his head to lighten up the area. The trees were so intertwined that they were covering the sunlight below them. The tip of his wand illuminated Saffron's path and she felt stupid for not coming up with the idea herself. She followed suit in lighting her wand as Olly announced, "I think we're coming out to the end of it now,"

"There better be something good back here," Saffron laughed, pleased that they had reached somewhere that wasn't enclosed. But her words echoed how she felt. She hoped it would be some open stretch of land, somewhere they could talk and if she was honest, do other things too. It was a strange prospect to think about, considering she hadn't had her first kiss yet but she felt ready. As ready as she ever would be.

"Watch it be a cliff or something," snorted Olly amusedly, voicing what felt like Saffron's worst fear at the moment.

Saffron laughed but inwardly prayed it would be somewhere nice. "I feel as though that would be my luck,"

Unbeknownst to her, her luck was much worse than walking out of the woods to find a cliff could ever be.

As when Saffron and Olly walked out of the woods, they were greeted with a nice sight at first. It was worthy of being a contender of one of Hogsmeade's finest locations. The ancient trees that they had walked through seemingly folded into and the sun made even the glades of grass sparkle, even if their shine was ever so slight.

When the pair of them stepped into the new area, it really did feel like the start of something brand new for Saffron. She realised that so many moments marked new beginnings but this was just another one and she truly believed it was the most special one yet because of the person standing next to her. They clicked. They saw each other in ways very few would be able to see them, as they were aware that their pasts were similar. Saffron knew who her parents were but never met them. Olly didn't even know his father's name. They connected because of that but it wasn't their troubled pasts that made Saffron view him so positively. It was how she felt around him. She couldn't quite put a finger on it yet but it felt right, true and real, concepts she had never completely trusted in her past, yet she trusted them with him.

Maybe he didn't feel the same. Saffron was aware that it could very well be unrequited, that maybe he was just doing her a favour in going out with her as a friend, in order to make her feel better about her sister and one of her best friends entering a life-threatening tournament. She knew that in her mind. But her heart told her otherwise. Somehow, her heart knew, it knew that the heart next to her felt the same. Maybe she should have listened to her head as maybe it knew what was best. She wasn't able to, though, she had bottled up her feelings towards Olly for four months and she wasn't sure she could anymore.

All of that was well and good. Perhaps Saffron was even going to tell him how she felt. However, she never got that chance.

As two other people were standing in the enclosed area that Saffron and Olly had just reached.

Saffron found it very bizarre to find Professor Moody talking to a woman with dark skin and long black hair, which was all Saffron could make out as she had their back turned to them, on the outskirts of Hogsmeade. She was quite sure that she didn't want to know what he and the woman were doing. Exchanging one look with Olly, who too looked confused, Saffron jerked her head back in the direction that they had come from. It took Olly a few seconds to process what was going on. With a blank expression look on his face, he looked paralysed to the spot, staring at the adults.

Saffron took Olly's hand and went to pull him away from the scene as she could hear and see out of the corner of her eye that Moody's magic prosthetic eye had spun in their direction. She saw it look her right in the eye and anxiousness crept up Saffron's spine. Her mind ran a mile a minute, mulling over what the man was going to say to them. This area wasn't out of bounds to students, was it? Surely Professor Moody of all people wouldn't be mad, right?

Saffron didn't agree with his methods or the suspicions that he had of her as the man had borderline tried to torture her into telling him her clairvoyance secret. But initially, she didn't think he would be too mad at them as he hadn't been one to abide by the rules of Hogwarts, rather his own particular set of rules. Knowing what she knew about him, Saffron wouldn't have thought that he would be mad at them for simply interrupting a conversation.

Then why did his face twist angrily when he saw with them?

"Sorry," began Olly apologetically, his hand still in Saffrons, looking over his shoulder as he too had noticed that Moody had spotted them. Saffron looked up at him to see that he too looked surprised at how Moody was looking at them, as it wasn't an angry look now. Moody muttered a few words to the woman who let out a high-pitched cackle making Saffron shudder. Something wasn't right here. "We were ... we were just about to---"

But what they were just about to do, Olly never said as Saffron felt his hand fall out of hers when a blue jet of light, the same colour as the boy's eyes that Saffron had been looking into just moments before, hit him square in the face.

The spell sounded like it could crack a skull but it didn't match the enormity of the sounds that an unconscious Olly let out when his body crashed against the floor or the piercing scream that Saffron emitted, as she felt a hand that was full of life only seconds beforehand become lifeless.

Saffron couldn't breathe, she couldn't tell if it was because of what she had just witnessed a split second ago or if Moody had decided to take the breath out of her. Either way, her heart was racing and she didn't know what to do. She didn't know if she was even able to do anything. She felt frozen to the spot, looking down at Olly and thinking about what had just been stolen from her.

Maybe it was just him because maybe he was dead. Maybe it was everything because maybe she was about to die.

It was the sound of Moody speaking above the laugh of the woman to make Saffron look up from the Ravenclaw boy and back towards Moody. His eyes were bulging out of his socket and his skin was retreating back inside of itself. A split second later his hairline started to change but stopped the second the man took a swing from his flask. Consequently, the other features that had began to alter started to reverse.

Saffron gasped. It was polyjuice potion. Which meant that that wasn't Moody.

"Who are you?" Saffron asked. They could be her final words and there was nothing she could do about it. She couldn't make her hands work. She couldn't reach for the wand she had placed into her jeans pocket no less than a minute ago. All she could do was look at the man she had known as Mad-Eye Moody.

"It doesn't matter who I am," The man spoke with a hint of a lisp and licked his lips as he spoke to her. Saffron's lip trembled at the sight of it. She was helpless, with no chance of ever being helped, not with him standing in front of her, with the dark-skinned woman closing in on his shoulder.

Saffron's insides churned. It was the fifth girl in Sage's photo. She had discovered the picture of Sage Gill, her mother Prina Adhani, Lily Evans, Amanda Endacott and finally, the girl version of the woman who stood in front of her. She had never acted on her urge to ask Sage about the woman, never sought out answers, never made a journey to discover everything about her past and now it was too late. This was the end of the road. Moody continued:

"All that matters is your mine, girlie,"

The jet of blue light made impact before Saffron could even blink.

A/N: Leaving this note here to say I intentionally want you guys to be in the dark about who this woman is. All will be revealed in due course. For now, I'll have to leave you in sweet suspense. Let me know what you're thinking thus far:)