co-admin lisa, finn kylie nottingham, and 1 more like this
Post by Deleted on Jan 20, 2018 19:55:56 GMT -7
forest, location unknown
31 july, 2024
Ron Weasley didn’t know what he was doing. He had been hired as a consultant on the search for his best friend, Harry Potter, but searching for Harry wasn’t as simple as it sounded. Ron knew Harry like the back of his own hand, but he was beginning to run out of ideas. Harry had disappeared on the last day of April, and three months later, on the last day of July (Harry’s birthday, Ron thought with a small pang in his stomach as he continued to wade through the underbrush) they still didn’t seem any closer to finding him. There were only so many places that they could look, and Ron had exhausted almost all of them.
They were in yet another forest in England, someplace Ron and Hermione and Harry had camped on their Horcrux hunt. Ron had been surprised by his own ability to find the place, since it had been so long ago, and all of the forests looked the same, especially when he was wearing the damn locket, but finding this place had been like following a beacon. He had been a ship, lost in the night, and something in the forest had been his lighthouse, illuminating the stormy seas and drawing him close to shore.
Despite how coming to the forest had felt right, it seemed like nothing much was happening. Just as everything other place they had visited, the forest looked altogether undisturbed. There wasn’t a sign of a struggle, or any telltale drips of blood, or really anything. The best they found was a pile of deer droppings that looked fresh, and that wasn’t exactly something to owl home about. If there was one thing that Ron was known for, though, it was his bullheadedness. He already felt like he was failing people – Hermione, most of all – and he refused to be a failure again. He needed to find Harry. And if he couldn’t find Harry, then he needed to find something that would lead him to his best friend.
Ron continued stepping through the forest, kicking up leaves and checking inside the hollows of trees like Harry could somehow have been hiding under the leaf litter that was still on the forest floor from the previous autumn. He wasn’t. But still, Ron walked, his wand illuminated as he circled further and further away from the rendezvous point that the search party would return to at midnight. The longer he trudged through the forest, the more unsure Ron became. He had thought that the feeling in his stomach had meant something, but he was beginning to realize that it was just wishful thinking that had made him believe he was getting anywhere.
A twig snapped under Ron’s foot. He glanced down at the spot where he had stepped, making sure that he wasn’t going to twist his ankle (which would put a damper on his search), but stopped mid-step when he realized that the twig wasn’t just any twig. It was approximately eleven inches long, made of holly… and a strand of something red-orange was holding together its severed halves. Ron stooped down and picked up the twig, feeling like he was in a daze. He would recognize the twig anywhere, because it wasn’t a twig. It was Harry’s wand. The wand had served his friend well, and had helped him defeat Voldemort. Harry had loved that wand to the point of obsession.
So what was it doing on the forest floor?
Ron didn’t realize that his knees had buckled until he hit the forest floor. He was still clutching the wand like a lifeline, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. Harry wouldn’t have relinquished his wand, ever. He would have rather died than let go of the wand. Which meant… Ron didn’t even want to think the words. He felt sick to his stomach as he continued to blink down at the piece of wood, not even bothering to alert the rest of the search crew that he had found something. They would find out eventually, when Ron didn’t feel like he was about to sick up.
Harry was gone.
