ruins ; harry potter [1]

twenty seven ; teenage thoughts

Diana Riddle was in a forest.

The trees were thick and ancient, with trunks gnarled and tangled together to create a vast maze. It was dark; she could only see the vague silhouettes of the forest before her, and she looked up to the sky, which was almost entirely blocked by the thick canopy of leaves above. She could see a sliver of the full moon peeking in between the cracks, which only barely illuminated the forest floor.

She cautiously pulled out her wand, muttering, "Lumos." Her wand ignited, lighting up the old, mysterious, unused part of this forest. The trees weren't any that she had ever seen near Hogwarts; they looked old and unique, most likely originating in some foreign place that Diana had never been. Her eyes trailed along the vague path outlined in the dead leaves by a previous explorer, but other than that, she was utterly lost in this vast expanse.

The was a quick burst of wind. The leaves above rustled deafeningly in the silence and she took a few steps forward. The leaves crunched beneath her feet loudly. Too loudly. She was uneasy as she peered at the darkness before her, but something told her that she needed to wait for something. She didn't know what.

And then, a short gust of wind blew her hair out of her face, though this time, she could not hear the rustling of the leaves. The leaves, she saw, were not even disturbed by the wind she had just felt. As soft as a whisper, another gust trailed it's fingers up her neck and to her ear. She almost felt the urge to turn and see if anyone was touching her, but something in her head told her it was wind. Just the wind.

The fingers seemed to push her forward, nudging her until she began to walk in the direction it pushed her in. Straight ahead she walked, with wispy fingers prodding the back of her neck to urge her on. She continued like this until she reached the trunk of an extraordinarily tall and ancient tree, its trunk so wide that its width was at least Diana's height. The bark was cracked and peeling and dry, unlike most of the other trees, and large knots ran up the tree in almost perfect intervals. It was shorter than the others, but its magnificence more than made up for the lack of height. Diana could almost feel it, the aura surrounding it; it enveloped her kindly in an odd embrace. The tree, she felt, was a living, breathing, conscious thing and she couldn't shake the feeling that it watched her.

The wind fingers pushed her closer to the tree, which she approached with cautious curiosity. Her arm was being lifted by the wind as if she was a puppet, and it dragged her hand slowly to a rather large knot in the trunk that looked to open into some kind of hole. The wind puppeteer pushed her hand inside, and she felt the velvet lining of what seemed to be a jewelry box; it was large, she noticed as she pulled it out, with deep, royal blue velvet covering the entire outside. It looked perfectly preserved, even in the dirty forest, but something told Diana that it was old. Very, very old.

Cautiously, she opened it, her mind eager to see the contents.

The moment the lid was lifted, the surroundings swirled rapidly and she dropped the box before she could see what was inside. She seemed to be traveling somewhere through this rapid, spinning tunnel until she landed on her feet in a deserted corridor on the seventh floor, she recognized. She had been there; it was on her way to the Room of Requirement.

Before her stood a pearly, shimmering woman dressed in a royally beautiful gown embedded with jewels and lined with gold. She watched Diana with an emotionless expression, her eyes holding a deep intelligence that unnerved her.

She said one thing to Diana before she raised her hand, sending Diana hurtling out of her dream and awaking in her bed with a gasp.

"The item you seek is in the place where it is hidden."