The Raven

Prologue

“I bet you a hundred galleons you can’t find it.  No one ever has.”

Narcissa arched a dark eyebrow and glared at Sam across the glow of the little candle on the coffee table.  

“Oh yeah?” she snapped.  Even at eleven, she had a smart mouth.  

“Yeah.  Legend has it, that when the great and unstoppable Harry Potter dropped it in the vast forbidden forest, a centaur came by, not a month after the end of the war, and trampled it into the ground.  They say it could be no more than a foot underground by now but the forest is so big, no one actually know where it is,” Sam said.

Narcissa thought for a moment before looking down at her homework.  The crumpled parchment paper had a few scrawled words on it.  For Muggle Studies, a class she couldn’t stand.  

“Alright then.  Let’s go,” she said, slapping her hands on the table, knocking the ink over so it spilled all over her paper.  

“Let’s?  Nope.  You have to go on your own,” Sam said, folding his arms over his chest.

Narcissa frowned and stepped around the table.  “Then you have to cover for me.  Got it?”

Sam rolled his eyes.  “Whatever,” he said.  Narcissa snorted and headed up to her room, looking for her mother’s old cloak, tossing it over her shoulders and pulling the black hood up over her head.  She had to get out to the forest without getting caught...  She climb out of the window...that would be easy... But it would be so much safer to go out through the grounds but just as risky...

She decided to go out through the castle, pulling on the cloak as she swept past Sam as he headed upstairs, candle in hand.  “Watch me,” she hissed in his face and then she was gone.

It wasn’t as difficult as she had suspected to get to the Forbidden Forest.  It was almost too easy.  She stood at the end, her cloak whipping gently in the soft wind.  She’d left her wand in the castle.  Which was stupid of her because now she had no protection against anything dark in the forest.  She took a deep breath instead and stepped onto the soil of the Forbidden Forest.  

She felt like she had entered a new world.  A dangerous world.  

“It’s up a ways.  In the clearing.  Exactly nine inches under.  Not too deep.”  

Cissa whipped her head around, looking for the source of the cool, collected voice.  She stumbled further into the dark of the trees, trying to escape it.  

“Yes, darling.  That way.  Deeper into the trees.  It’s a little bit of a clearing.  Too many centaurs in these woods for there to be plants everywhere.  I can tell you when to stop.”

Cissa followed the directions of the voice, venturing deeper into the trees.  

“Alright stop.”

Cissa froze.  

“Yes...Yes.  Step three even steps to the left.”

She obeyed.

“Bend at the waist with your arm out.  Yes like that.”

Cissa bent, arm out, until her fingertips touched the soft, dark earth.

“Now claw back to dirt.  Just a little.  If you aren’t careful, you’ll throw it with the dirt.’

Narcissa obeyed, clutching a handful of dark dirt and pushing it aside.  

“There.”

Her fingers slipped around something round and smooth.  It felt like a smooth diamond.  She held it up to examine it under the moonlight and her eyes widened.  She clutched it in her palm and squeezed it.  

The voice let out a little laugh filled with glee.  And then there was no more of it.  Cissa pocketed the stone and grinned as she turned and slipped out of the trees