in which hollis rosier falls asleep in the wrong compartment
or the right one, depending on who you ask
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part one of two
editing closed, logged off wattpad (sorry only like half of it is edited, but its obviously still all good)
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"i'm bored, pads"
Lemon sunlight pierced through the light sage green pine needles that coated the trees on the southern side of Lolchant Forest. Coffee, moistureless needles swathed the rusty dirt forest floor, making every movement detectable by the crisp crunch of the strands breaking. Mingling with the crunches of delicate paws or hooves was the regal call of a nesting eagle in a towering pine with a bit of amber sap dripping down it's split trunk. A swarm of happy cerulean dragonflies darted through between the trunks to reach the clear, glittering pond nearby. Their shimmering, translucent plum wings cast tiny shadows in the saffron sunlit forest floor. Bounding gracefully through the woods, a burnt orange pack of kneazles with smashed in faces leaped over a fallen log with several different species of fluorescent mushrooms and fungi.
This balanced serenity was broken by the loud shout of an annoyed teenage boy and heavy, slightly stumbling footsteps plodding against the soft ground.
"If one more of those ridiculously giddy dragonflies practically flies up my goddamn nose, I'm going to turn right back around home and bring back a dozen cans of bug repellent!"
Sirius was not an avid fan of hiking or any outdoor activity that messed up his precious hair in general.
After spending the first few weeks of summer lying around Potter Manor eating ice cream, Mia and Fleamont had shoved their sons out into the forest with backpacks out of exasperation with the instructions to 'get some fresh air'. The boys had been plodding around the forest for two hours now, complaining to one another the whole time.
"If Hollis or Remus would here," complained James as he squinted his eyes at a bush full of succulent yellow berries, "then they could probably tell us what of this shit we could eat without dying and not."
Sirius and James had both eaten their lunches within the first hour of the hike and were both highly regretting devouring their only fuel so early into the day.
"Yea, well, neither of them are, now are they?" Sirius replied flatly.
The two Gryffindors were ridiculously pampered. While at Hogwarts, they always ate at least two plates of the delicious food per meal, and at home Mia and Fleamont both practiced their amazing cooking skills on the two boys. They weren't used to feeling even slightly hungry.
"But Hollis could be," said James as they moved on from the yellow berries. "I still remember that map pretty well."
Sirius was certain Potter had to be joking. Even he wasn't that brash. "Are you mental?" he asked, jogging to catch up to James, who was now taking long, quick strides.
Sirius was too busy mentally preparing his argument on why they shouldn't try to find Rosier Manor to noticed that James had rotated their path an abrupt ninety degrees east. According to James's rough idea of the location of Rosier Manor and the position of the afternoon sun, they were already incredibly close to the approximate location. If we've been walking for three hours, thought James, and Hollis is about ten miles away, and we're doing around a mile for twenty minutes, then if we head directly east for a bit, we should get there soon.
"Prongs!" exclaimed Sirius, snapping his fingers in Potter's zoned-out face. "You could literally get Hollis in so much trouble if you try and see her!"
"I'm bored, Pads," moaned James, still walking quickly towards Rosier Manor.
"YOU'RE BORED?!" shouted Sirius, nearly ready to grab a thick branch off a tree and whack James over his big, stubborn head with it. "What if the other Rosiers see us, huh, genius? They would practically kill Hollis. What if her parents think that she asked us to come there? They have no idea that your idiotic self is doing this out of his own accord!"
Silently, James's pace slowed slightly. Sirius had several points, all valid. Mentally scolding himself for being so selfish, Potter quieted down. Noticing his friend's resigned expression, Sirius felt satisfied that no one would be getting in unnecessary trouble today yet also slightly guilty for stamping out his hope of seeing their friend.
The two boys hiked onwards in the patchworked sun, the light occasionally hitting their faces. A gust of wind blew a thick cloud over the sun, making the day turn dark in less than a second. Hopping over a thick stump, Sirius was looking down as to not lose his footing.
"Besides, even if we wanted to, I highly doubt that we could find it so easily-"
Black's statement was immediately contradicted as he looked up from his dark red converse and off the stone ledge that they were standing on.
"Holy shit," came an awed whisper from James as he held his backpack by the straps across his chest.
On the eastern side of Lolchant, the pines were not the soft, slight green that they were pigmented in the south. Neither of the two boys had ever seen trees with such a dark emerald that they were almost black in color, the shadowy trees densely placed together out in the mountains below the pearly stone ledge they were standing on. At first, James thought that there was a fire because of all the smoke floating between the pines, but after a few moments, he realized that it was a very thick, dim fog that could have easily been mistaken for a cloud from farther away.
Amidst these rocky trees and mountains, there was the largest manor Sirius had seen in his entire life. James wasn't entirely sure what he had been expecting of Hollis's home, but it certainly wasn't this.
Like ink spilled on parchment, black stone was sprawled out for hundreds of feet across the mountainside. Rosier Manor had at least five courtyards and gardens that James and Sirius could see from this angle, along with three twisting spires violently spiking into the sky. The manor itself was made of entirely midnight, inky, smooth stones that shone even from a mile away. Towering iron gates that impossibly stretched above dark green hedges guarded all entrances. It would be impossible to find her even if they somehow managed to get inside; the place was half as large as Hogwarts, and they could say that with full confidence after mapping the whole damn thing.
"Yea, as you were saying," said James, shutting his mouth. "I highly doubt that we could find it easily."
