8. Chapter 8

The Forbidden Forest is old and vast. It had been around even before Hogwarts castle was built in the tenth century, and its trees are considered ancient. A tangle of beech and oak and pine and sycamore and yew, growing closely enough together to block out what’s left of the daylight. The cool, damp darkness swallows Rey whole.

Lumos, she thinks, and her wand produces a tiny orb of bluish white light. It’s barely enough to see by, but she can’t risk enlarging it— it’s conspicuous enough as it is, and the forest is home to creatures far bigger and more dangerous than erklings. In their second year, she and Finn and Rose had gone exploring and they’d run into an acromantula; that had been one for the books.

There’s a path, though— if Rey had just stuck to it, she wouldn’t be overly worried.

Unfortunately, Mr. Pancakes’d had other ideas. The little gremlin had proven surprisingly and frustratingly adept at dodging her stunners as he ventured further inward. As a result, it’s been roughly an hour since she’d given chase and she has no idea where she is. The path is a distant memory.

The one saving grace is that Mr. Pancakes is so fat that he makes a lot of noise. Thus, it’s easy for Rey to keep track of him even when he vanishes from sight. All she has to do is follow the sound of rustling leaves and twigs being crunched underfoot.

When she finally catches up to him, it’s because he’s gone still. His white-socked paws are tucked under him, haunches curled up, ears laying back and flat against his head. His yellow eyes are as wide as dinner plates, shining in the wandlight.

“There you are, you stupid cat,” Rey mutters, picking him up. He is unresisting but tense, as if prepared to leap at any moment. “Merlin’s beard, you’re heavier than—”

Something crashes through the trees up ahead.

Rey freezes.

Nox, she thinks, and the orb of light vanishes. She's completely in the dark now, Mr. Pancakes all but dead weight in her arms.

Something roars softly, then starts to sing as it roots around in the undergrowth. It's a grotesque parody of a human voice, and it is most definitely not an erkling. Professor Veers had taught the words to the erkling chant for identification purposes last year— "Into darkness, taking flight, whispers on the wings of night, follow us, our lovely tune, as above the smiling moon..."— but this one isn't in any language that Rey recognizes.

She’s not doing Gryffindor House any credit, being as scared as she is, but the song is like a blade trailing down her spine, sharp and arctic.

The thing is several feet away. Even if it can see in the dark like so many other forest creatures, she’s obscured from its sight by tree trunks and vegetation the same way it’s obscured from hers. She can probably inch away, right? She just has to be very quiet…

The song stops, replaced by gusty, rumbling sniffs.

The thing is scenting the air.

Rey breaks into a run.

There’s a roar behind her, and she immediately understands that the hunt is on.

She stumbles through the woods, thorns scratching at her legs. Mr. Pancakes is clinging to her shoulder, his claws gouging at her skin as he emits the most horrific, piteous wails, but they’re nothing compared to the noises of the massive, unknown beast trampling after them. A stitch blossoms in Rey’s side and her heart is bursting out of her chest, but she has no choice, she has to keep running—

The labyrinth of trees opens up into a clearing. The sun has already set, the cloudy sky dotted with the first stars. The mists shift in the twilight.

A branch snaps behind her. Mr. Pancakes hisses, his every hair standing on end.

Rey turns around slowly.

That’s when she sees the manticore.

It’s one of the wizarding world’s most dangerous creatures. She’s only ever encountered illustrations in books up until now. It’s the size of Chewie’s hut, with the tawny, muscular body of a lion and the segmented tail of a scorpion curved high to reveal the wickedly sharp stinger at the end, glistening with beads of lethal venom.

It bears a human face, masculine and bulbous, set amidst a mane of shaggy fur. It stares at her with hungry eyes, lips stretching into a fanged smile.

Manticores don’t speak as such, although they possess the apparatus to do so. They roar and they growl, and they sing when they stalk and eat their prey.

It leaps at her.

Rey points her wand at the beast in a rush of pure instinct, shouting the first incantation that comes to mind. “Stupefy!”

The stunner bounces harmlessly off the manticore’s flank.

Its skin is impervious to most magic— she’d forgotten.

There’s really nothing left to do but run some more.

Rey tears off, back into the trees, Mr. Pancakes screaming and clawing at her in panic. She’s bleeding, but the pain is secondary to the adrenaline. She fires off spell after spell behind her, sawing large branches off of trees to block the way, transfiguring the earth into mud and quicksand, bewitching shrubs and vines to grow and ensnare. Anything to slow down her pursuer, anything to buy her more time.

It starts to rain.

Just a drizzle at first, droplets of water spattering through the minuscule gaps in the forest canopy. But it gradually turns into a full-blown deluge.

Rey makes it to a grove of trees that’s all yew, their silhouettes twisting up to the sky in a frieze of gnarled shadows. She flattens herself against one of the thick, scaly trunks. Mr. Pancakes yowls again and she casts a Levitation Charm, boosting him up onto the nearest branch. At least he has the good sense to make himself scarce, squeezing into the tangle of leaves and vanishing from sight. The manticore won’t bother with a cat while a human— its preferred food— is around.

She strains her ears, listening for any sign of the creature’s approach over the howl of wind and rain. She needs help. She has no idea where the path is, has no idea how to get back to the castle.

No one knows she’s in the forest. Being hunted by a manticore.

She grips her wand tightly with shaking fingers. She concentrates, summoning the happiest thoughts she can manage. Professor Solo telling Jyn she’ll be a good Auror. Jyn promising to put a word in with Cassian Andor himself.

I’m going to get my N.E.W.T.s and then I’m going to work for the Ministry, Rey tells herself, squeezing her eyes shut as rainwater mixes with tears on her cheeks. I’ll have my very own little house, my very own bank account. I’m going to be an Auror. There is a life waiting for me after Hogwarts. There is a life waiting for me after tonight.

Expecto Patronum.

Her silver doe materializes, gleaming in the wet dark as brightly as if it’s spun from moonlight.

“Find Ben Solo,” Rey commands, through the lump in her throat, through the chattering of her teeth. “Tell him I’m in the Forbidden Forest. In a yew grove.”

The doe’s velvety ears twitch and then it springs away, bounding up high over the treetops and leaving a starry trail in its wake. She watches until there’s nothing left of it to see.

Rey crouches down, making herself as small as possible. She sorely regrets discarding her outer robes after class; the rain is falling so hard that it almost cuts her exposed skin like glass and she’s cold and miserable, her legs and arms scratched to hell and back by thorns and Mr. Pancakes’ claws.

The good thing is that she appears to have given the manticore the slip for now. The sheer number of yew, concentrated in about an acre of land, will offer some measure of protection. “It’s a common misconception that yew trees are symbols of death, because they’re found in graveyards,” the Herbology professor Larma D’Acy had told Rey’s class back in their first year. “But what they actually stand for is rebirth. They are neither good nor evil; they keep the balance. They can be used to ward. These are very powerful trees.”

Rey conjures a silver dagger. It’s slippery in her grasp due to the rain, but she’s able to carve a single rune into the trunk— two spread wings centered on a star. The symbol of the phoenix, the glyph of protection against the evil eye. As a class, Study of Ancient Runes leans more toward the theoretical, but it’s not as though she’s overflowing with a wealth of ideas as to how to get out of this predicament. Even if carving a warding rune on a yew tree doesn’t work, it’s better than doing nothing.

She banishes the dagger and she waits. The rain falls in sheets. It gets darker and chillier still.

Her heart skips a beat when she hears the manticore again. It’s unable to scent her right away due to the storm, but it’s prowling around. Its song threads softly through the cacophony of the elements.

It’s getting nearer. Rey chokes back a sob even as she runs through defensive spells in her head, preparing them. Magic won’t penetrate its skin but if she can hit its eyes, or the inside of its open mouth…

She feels so small. So small and so cold and so alone. Her head is filled with the fear that she will die this way.

Suddenly— footsteps. The sound of running. A brief scuffle, followed by the unmistakable whoosh of a spell flying through the air.

The manticore screams in pain. It could almost pass for human, but it’s a bit too raspy and echoing at the edges to actually be so.

The next voice to cry out into the night and the rain and the wind is definitely human, though, and she places its owner at once.

“Rey!”

She hadn’t even known that he knew her nickname. She hadn’t even considered that he’d paid attention when other students called her that in class.

Rey scrambles out from behind the tree, firing off a a shower of red sparks from the tip of her aspen wand that will point Solo to her location. In response, an orb of light blazes into existence several feet away and then she sees him, caught in its bluish white glow as he runs toward her. He's in a white shirt and a black tie and suit trousers, but no jacket or robes. She thinks that he must have been in the middle of dressing for the feast when her Patronus found him.

He reaches her just as the snarling face of the manticore looms up from the gloom beyond his shoulder.

Rey acts fast, shooting off the Conjunctivitis Curse. The manticore stumbles back, its eyes swelling shut. Its side is mangled, a mess of boils and singed fur. Some kind of acid spell— and Dark, by the looks of it. Rey grabs Solo’s arm and tugs him into the shade of the yew tree where she’d carved the phoenix glyph.

They make it just as the manticore’s healing abilities kick in. The skin on its side starts to smoothen out as it blinks at them with eyes as good as new. And then it lunges—

And stops.

“What the...” Solo glances around the yew tree in confusion as the beast takes to circling it, unwilling or unable to come closer. Rey watches her teacher’s dark eyes land on the rune in the trunk, then flicker to her. “You need a silver dagger to achieve a warding of this potency.”

“I know,” Rey says. “I conjured one.”

He stares at her.

It’s actually a little ridiculous how gobsmacked he appears, given the situation. He shakes his head as if to clear it.

Rey gestures at the manticore. “That is not an erkling.”

“Perhaps we can discuss Obi-Wan’s fear mitigation techniques another time,” Solo retorts. “This ward won’t hold for long— and once we fire an offense spell from within its perimeter, it will break. Rey, listen to me.”

She does, turning away from the beast to gaze up at him. Drenched with rainwater, his dark hair is plastered to his pale, narrow face. His eyes are burning, intent, but right now he’s the safest thing she knows.

“I’ll teach you a curse. We have to cast it at the same time— according to my research, our twin wand cores will increase its power tenfold and we should be able to kill this thing, but we have only one shot at it. You have to get it right on the first try. Can you do that for me?”

She nods. He’d come barging into the Forbidden Forest to save her. She won’t fail him.

Solo talks her through the spell. She practices the incantation first, followed by the wand movement. All the while the manticore surrounds them, prowling back and forth, scorpion tail flicking, human face sneering. Humming softly.

“Ready?” Solo asks.

“Yes.”

They move in unison, mirrors of each other, aiming their wands at the lumbering shape in the dark. The incantation is Sectumsempra, it rolls off of Rey’s tongue as her wrist slashes through the air in tandem with Professor Solo’s.

The magic courses through her veins and flows out her fingers, into feather and aspen, and then into the air, where it emerges as a burst of blinding white light, side by side with the one from Solo's wand, the two beams merging.

Rey feels the exact moment that the ward disintegrates, and the manticore notices, too. It lunges at them, swift as lightning. The combined curse hits it square in the chest.

The magic is so powerful that it slams the creature to the ground. The effect is terrifying, and immediate. Multiple lacerations knit through the leonine form, opening wider and wider until the creature's fur is awash in so much inky blood that even the heavy downpour fails to wash all of it away. The manticore moans and writhes on the grass. More blood pours out of its wounds. Those all too human eyes go glassy and unseeing, a slimy tongue lolling out of a fanged mouth.

It's dead. Rey is transfixed by the corpse. She'd done it.

She'd killed a manticore.

Well— with Solo's help.

And speaking of Solo…

“You’re bleeding.”

She hears rather than sees him say it. She’s still looking at the dead creature, its limp form being battered by the rain in the meager wandlight.

“The cat,” she murmurs, dazed as the exhaustion of the last few hours sets in. “Plutt’s cat, I mean— he ran into the woods so I went after him. He scratched me.”

Solo makes no response. Rey tears her gaze away from the fallen manticore to peer up into the shadowy branches of the yew. “He should still be up there, we need to find a way to get him down—”

Her sentence cuts off on a sharp intake of breath as Solo abruptly steps into her personal space. Again. He really likes doing that, it seems.

He also really likes scowling down at her. Only this time the mask is nowhere to be found. His face is drained of all color, the features tense with some barely contained fury. His dark glare cuts sharper than any knife.

Rey lifts her chin in defiance, although she doesn’t know why.

“Am I given to understand,” Solo bites out, “that a girl who could use the Patronus Charm to send a message, who knew that a ward could be constructed from silver and yew and the phoenix rune—” His every syllable is dangerously soft, but easy to hear over the pouring rain because he’s standing so close to her— “a girl who pulled off an esoteric Dark curse on her first try— are you telling me that this same girl was somehow also so lacking in common sense and self-preservation instinct that she went into the Forbidden Forest to chase after a cat?”

Rey’s own temper starts to spike. “First of all, Obi-Wan said it was an erkling infestation. We were taught how to deal with those Dark creatures in sixth year, and since I’m of age I assumed I’d be immune from their lure. If the faculty had just been honest from the start—”

“We didn’t want to cause a panic,” Solo interrupts. “We’ve been hunting the manticore since the first week of term, and on our third encounter with it Obi-Wan was able to obtain the blood necessary for a containment hex. It could not leave the forest. You would have been safe if you’d just followed the rules and stayed out.”

“Suppose I should’ve just let Mr. Pancakes get eaten, then—”

“It’s a cat! Furthermore, its name is Mr. Pancakes, which— don’t even get me started on how stupid that is— it’s a fucking cat!” Solo’s raised his voice only the slightest bit, and it’s somehow even all the more menacing for that. As if his rage is simmering, coiled, waiting to pounce. “It’s a fucking cat, and you could have died—”

“But I didn’t!” Rey shouts back.

“Only because you were able to get word to me. And why is that, Miss Niima?” With one long-legged stride he’s suddenly even closer, backing her up against the tree trunk. “You could have called for Obi-Wan. Or Mothma, your Head of House. But you sent your Patronus to me instead. Why?”

Rey swallows. The yew’s ridged, scaly bark digs into her back. “I don’t know—”

Solo’s mask is off. His eyes are wild. “I think you do,” he growls.

And Rey only has the space of a heartbeat to realize that she’s in trouble— to realize that none of the dangers the manticore had posed can compare to what Ben Solo can wreak— before his hands are slamming into the tree trunk on either side of her head, caging her in, and his lips are crashing into hers in a hard, fierce kiss that tastes like rainwater and Dark magic. A kiss that is every bit as tumultuous as the roaring, windswept night that surrounds them both.