A Meeting Post Blossom Ball PV Closed

"I might've seen a flash of Rosie,"

Xailah turned to the dark haired boy, her eyes still little gold rings.

"She's a small girl with curly red hair, about this high,"

She nodded anxiously. That has to be her. Has to be.

"standing right by this super tall giant guy. Right? If that's her, then the last time I saw her she was kind of close to the woods, but not there yet. There were these other kids near her too, a boy and a girl."

She let out a small sigh. "Thank goodness. I don't think ssshe even knows that ssshe could be in danger. Ssshe would be much harder to help if ssshe was out here. I think I sssshould go back to whats left of the party- but first," She opened her umbrella, and produced her wand from a side sleeve that was fixed to the inside of the umbrella's handle. The add on of the sleeve was fairly new. She often lost or even forgot to carry her wand with her, because she never felt the need to use it. But, due to the constant reprimanding of professors she got in the habit of having it around; via attaching it to the umbrella that she carried- which might as well be a part of her now.

"We don't know what's in here. And I don't know about you guys, but there's a lot of stories and rumors about this forest and they certainly aren't about happy bunnies eating carrots in the woods."

She shrugged at the girl Illowy. "Well I think we ssshould be fine, as long as we don't run into any people out here. Animals don't usually attack thingsss unless they're hungry, or if you attacked first. People- well, I don't know about you, but people tend to ssscare me. Plus, I think we sssshould use this place to our advantage if the circumssstance calls for it." She gave Illowy an awkward little side stare, before pointing her wand at a twisted nearby tree. "Aight, so firssst you need to have a clear view of your target- like I sssaid this sspell is harmless, so if you don't have a clear view, no one ssshould get hurt." She took a moment to focus, trying to remember everything in order to cast the spell successfully. She recently started having trouble with spells due to her strange lisp. She didn't have the lisp last year because her baby teeth were coming out. This year she had new teeth coming in, resulting in the lisp. "My targets are the knotsss on that tree." Why? Because they looked like eyes. Evil beady eyes. "Obscuro." She made the motion of a laying eight with her wand. A silky black blindfold shot from the tip, wrapping itself around the trees "eyes". "See? Nifty huh? You guysss try. But be quick, because we need to figure out what to do about the flare and the Rosie situation."

@Xailah Alptraum | @Illowy Magnard | @Dinara Lucey

Mimicking Xailah's defensive stance, Isaac gazed at the roughened trunk of another tree. Its warped wood was twisted into the shape of a screaming face. He certainly didn't want to know how exactly it got that way. For a few moments, he concentrated on the motion he had seen from her wand.

Sort of like a loop-de-loop, he noted.

With speed, he carved the shape of an infinity symbol out with his wand, whispering, "Obscuro." In moments, the soft blindfolding substance shot free like spider's silk, wrapping around the face much to his relief.

With that over with, he grew serious again, thinking about the 'Rosie situation.' Obviously, it would be best to go back to the party and find her, confronting Buzz or Aldwin or whoever. But a part of him was still troubled by the appearance of the flare in the woods, and the creatures that it could've tempted. Reason warred with instinct; this was a rescue mission, but what if discovering the origin of the flare could reveal more about the giants' plot?

One one hand, it was wise to stay together. But he couldn't stop the inevitable tug of terrible curiosity, the urge to split off on his own. Ilowy would hate it. Xailah would think he was stupid. And Dinara, well, best not to get started on her. He'd already suggested a plan like that, and they did the smart thing by rejecting it.

But if there was something that he was bad at, it was thinking of the consequences. For a few moments, he stood around as the group deliberated. But inch by inch, he slid closer to the trees. Until he had disappeared into the brush, following the trail that Xailah had pointed out earlier.

Reducio

welp, that's what happens when you have a reckless 11-year old gryffindor in the woods. // (this is about to get bad...)

Illowy carefully pulled her wand from the pocket of her dress as she observed the older girl preform the spell; a streak of black silk erupting from the tip of her wand to wrap itself tightly around the knotted tree. It certainly didn't look very difficult, she could recall reading about it in her textbook, and simple enough to preform in a state of emergency.

After Isaac took his turn practicing, the girl watching his moves carefully as well, the Illowy stepped up, grasping her wand as well as she could before aiming for her own knot in the tree and tracing the figure through the air .

"Obscuro!"

In turn a silk flung itself from the tip of her wand, winding itself around the tree. Eyes lifted to the Hufflepuff, moving aside to allow her to take her turn if that was what she chose, paying no mind for the moment at the boy inching himself away slyly.

It wasn't until after the fact that she turned to speak to Isaac and realized his disappearance into the trees, "Isaac?" she called, looking around herself in all directions for a moment trying to spot him, the shadows happily masking him from her sight, "Isaac!"

That stupid boy is going to get himself killed, she thought to herself. The anxiety of it causing her to bounce a little on the balls of her feet, wand twirling through her fingers the way her pencils did when she was concentrating on her drawings, "We can't just let him go off on his own." she wasn't sure if she was speaking to the other girls or to herself alone. Her mind raced through every possible solution.

On one hand she could go after him herself, after all she planned to stick to her word. They came in together and they would leave together. Her state was failing to factor into that plan though. Or she could hurry with the girls back to the party and try to find a teacher to help, and that would either resolve in them being too late, or lucking out and finding him before he got hurt. But... at least if she went after him, if something were to happen, perhaps she could make some kind of difference.

The wand twirled through her fingers, as though in a continuous loop. For the love of all things decent, she desperately didn't want to wander further into the forest, but the pride and integrity that she carried in her word to watch out for him and stay together sat heavily on her shoulders; and if there was one thing about Illowy to know, it was that she was a girl of her word, "I can't let him go alone. The bloody idiot will get himself killed." she decided, bringing the twirling of her wand to an abrupt stop the moment she made up her mind, "You two should go back." her eyes flickered to the older girl, "Go make sure your friend is okay, I'll get the boy. If either of you run into a teacher, send them after us, okay?" This had to be the single most stupid decision of her life; running into possibly the most dangerous part of the Hogwarts grounds, to save a stupid Gryffindor who just can't listen to reason. He was going to be the death of her, surely.

Taking a last glance at the other girls, the Slytherin tucked a lock of tangled curls behind her ear before giving a gentle wave of her wand,

"Lumos"

The tip of her wand came to life with light as she turned and started off in the direction of the flare, hoping that she wouldn't have to go far to find him, her body still arguing against each step she took into the darkness. Part of her also wondered if the others would follow her suggestion to go back to the school, or choose to follow after the boy as well.

Interacting with xailah and Dinara, mentions illowy and isaac

The Gryffindor boy and the Slytherin girl. Earlier, they had clearly stated their intentions "too quietly for the professor to hear" while not even bothering to walk away from him, and then had headed straight into the forest. Griffith had been forced to choose between the health of several injured students, a flare, and this bunch, who were apparently responsible for starting the fire that had put quite a large damper on the blossomball. They had lied to his face and then hadn't bothered to do a decent job of covering it up. Who did they think he was?

Why were the students so damn stuck up they couldn't see for a half second that he was a professor, and fully capable of helping them out. When that one boy had come to his stables, he hadn't even been looking for the professor. He had come to ask the professor FOR A SHOVEL. What kind of student body was this even? Did they think the professors weren't going to help? He had spent the greater portion of the night running around at full sprint like a maniac.

When he was leaving the hospital wing, he had noticed another flare through the window, had ditched the power walk and had broken out into a full tilt sprint. There was something wrong, something very, very wrong and the little, half-arsing snots that called themselves the honorable student body of Hogwarts didn't even want to include him in whatever disaster was going on. Well, that was too bad for them because he was going to send enough students to detention to break a world record if he had to.

He had passed by the charred blossomball grounds as swiftly as he possibly could, thankful yet again that he ran every morning, just in case he needed to go somewhere fast, or to go away from somewhere just as swiftly. His shoulder was slightly bruised where he has slipped while going around a corner in the castle and slammed against the wall, but it wasn't bad.

The forest. The forbidden forest. He could almost hear himself, back when he was a student. He, too, had snuck into the forest. A friend of his had been assuring him that the creatures were safe, that they didn't randomly attack. That had been one of the worst days of his time in hogwarts, second only to the day when he was rejected by 7 girls in one afternoon.

His boot crashed into the forest, marking the end of the well groomed grounds. Roots loomed both high and low, threatening to trip any who were not acutely aware of how to walk in the woods. Griffith was very good at navigating forests. That is, he was good at navigating them while walking. He was not walking, far from it he was sprinting as fast as his legs could carry him. Twice his heavy boot caught an ungainly root and sent the man full sprawling, and twice the man got up, clenching his teeth so furiously that his gums began to protest.

His eyes looked positively furious, all pretense of calm gone. In the forest, in the forest towards the evening, no less. They were going to get themselves hurt, they were in actual danger and no other professor in the entirety of Hogwarts seemed to be doing anything. Where even were they? Speaking of where were they, where on earth were the little balls of puppy dog tails and backtalk that had run off in the forest in the first place? Did master yoda have to deal with this? NO. Even piccolo didn't have to deal with this many snots. HE only had ONE.

It was only because of a lucky break that he even found them, considering his speed and lack of situational awareness. He had spotted @Illowy Magnard's Lumos, and changed course, erupting out into the clearing too late to spot the slytherin girl or the gryffindor, but with plenty of time to spot the yellow eyes umbrella wielding girl, and one other girl he recognized to be a prefect, probably from hufflepuff, if his memory was at all serving him.

The professor made quite a sight, tall, with wild, long hair entirely tangled, a face smeared with dirt from the times he had faceplanted in the soft ground. His eyes were wild and burned with enough worry and fury to fuel a stargate, and his voice was strained, clearly trying to reign himself in and act calm, collected.

"What. The hell. Do you two thing you are doing in this forest. And I swear to god if either of you tries to run or says a single word that could possibly be construed as a lie I will put you in detention for so long you will forget what the word holiday means."

He was a bit out of breath, and acutely aware of the fact that two of the students were missing, but he wasn't positive where they had gone. He had only found this place by following the same general direction that the students from before had, and then seeing that light. It didn't matter that the other professors weren't here. He was here. Professor Morfran Griffith would run around for the next week if he had to but no student was going to get hurt if he had anything whatsoever to say about it.

Eyes like dying embers watched, as the other companions tried out the new spell. "Oh! well done! Well done!" She whispered, with a little golf clap. She stepped over to where the blindfolds were, and worked one off of the tree. She held the fabric close to her face, observing the black fibers of the cloth. She tried to stretch it, but it wouldn't stretch. She gripped a corner of the fabric between her thumb and index finger, and pulled downward; to see if it would tear. It wouldn't. These things were pretty sturdy- which was great, but they lacked the elasticity that she was looking for. Disappointed, she let the thing fall to the ground.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw movement. It was the boy Isaac. He was apparently determined to find the source of the flare. Ah, a curious soul. Honestly she didn't blame him. She wanted to know too. He slunk into the shadows very slowly. Or maybe the shadows were taking him- nevertheless he was going to disappear further into the forest. She stared right at him. Looked him in the eyes...and did nothing. She said that she would't stop him. She glanced to Illowy, who was already up, and after the Gryffindor boy.

"I can't let him go alone. The bloody idiot will get himself killed."

Xailah nodded, understandingly; then waved to the girl.

"Go make sure your friend is okay, I'll get the boy. If either of you run into a teacher, send them after us, okay?"

"Aight, on it." She was planning on going back anyway. She watched as the little light of Illowys Lumos faded away, just like the curly haired boy. "Whelp, looks like I'm ssstuck with you, Dinara." Or not. There was rustling, and crunching of leaves. She stiffened, looking around like a meerkat. Pupils grew, and shrank from eerie little slits, to large black orbs. And from the brush, jumped some strange and twisted creature.

Xailah jumped back, in surprise, her umbrella raised, ready to beat the crap out of whatever this thing was. But the instead of the thing leaping upon the two children, it paused, and seemed to be...collecting itself? "Ew, what are you?" Ew. What. Are. You. Not hello, or lovely night isn't it? Nah. This is 2019 baby, we greet people by saying: Ew, what are you. But this thing was basically asking for that response- coming out of some bushes looking like a Big Foot, and Cousin Itt love-child.

"What. The hell. Do you two thing you are doing in this forest. And I swear to god if either of you tries to run or says a single word that could possibly be construed as a lie I will put you in detention for so long you will forget what the word holiday means."

Oh. Well this thing, was a Professor. Apparently. You got a little something on your face there, buddy. That is what she would have liked to say. Maybe she should have said that; it would have certainly been a better response than: Ew, what are you.

"Huff... Prof, dude... Huff. I swear we had 2 more kids and they just DISAPPEARED."

Dinara had shot right past Xailah; running towards the professor. "Don't touch him Dinara! He might have rabies," Dinara clung to the professor-creature "-Or a disease!" Too late. Game over. game over man. Whelp, at least you tried to warn her. Xailah, trotted over to the Professor, and Dinara; rather reluctantly. But she didn't stop to chat. No. She walked right past the two. The professor said not to run, but he didn't say anything about walking. "Illowy, and Isaac went to look for the ssssource of a flare." She turned, still walking, and pointed towards the direction that they went. She had wasted enough time already, and talking to this professor was only going to waste more. She figured that if he needed answers now, then he was going to have to either put her in detention, and then play 20 questions; or seek answers from Dinara. She was determined to stop these half giants, and get answers of her own. It was then, she began to realize why she had been placed in Gryffindor, and not Ravenclaw, or Slytherin.

Neither of the two acted at all like he was expecting them to. One of them fled to him in what was either an act to make her sentence more lenient, or maybe she had been legitimately scared of something in the forest. She said that the other two children had disappeared, which matched up with what he had seen so far. She seemed alright, although her calling him dude was a funny choice of words. She was probably a muggleborn, then.

It was the other student who was clearly the troublemaker of the pair, walking away from him. His worry faded as quickly as it had ignited, leaving him with the calm he usually tried so hard to maintain. It was difficult for the welshman to appear calm, to such a degree that he studied occlumensy just to get an edge on his temper. But now there was no call for it. He had been rushing to help as best he could, rushing to try and understand what was going on so he could prevent a disaster and this is what he was greeted with.

Did detention solve anything? No, not really. The bad kids were never actually fixed by detention, it was just a minor inconvenience to them that they overcame and then went right on with their rule breaking. That girl clearly had no respect for authority, she clearly did not care what was going on with everyone else and had no fear for detention at all. None. He was going to try and make a difference with his detention, or at least the biggest difference he could.

Lifting the arm with the young girl attached, Griffith moved forward fast, long legs closing the distance between him and the retreating Gryffindor. If Dinara held on, then he would simply carry her along with him, seemingly unhampered by the addition of one first year. If she let go, then that would just make matters slightly easier for him, it didn't really matter.

Unless the Gryffindor sprinted away, he would close the distance and then place a hand on her shoulder firmly, letting her know that he was not going to just let her walk off. His free hand had pulled a wand out of his pocket, and while he thought the likelyhood of this girl trying to jinx him pretty low, he did still consider it a possibility. When calm, Griffith was a pretty paranoid man. Or perhaps the better way to phrase it was careful.

She had done nothing but talk smack since he got there, and by all accounts she was the one who started the fire. It was, honestly, probably to blame on some crazy backstory involving alleyways and lonely forests. But she was young. Now was the time to fix this kind of problem, so it wasn't as blatant later in life. With his hand still on the girl's shoulder, he decided that perhaps a warning would be best, this time in a calm, steady voice.

"Think about what you're doing. Adjust your behavior accordingly."

Without looking over his shoulder, he addressed the other girl.

"Stay there for a second."

@Morfran Griffith | @Illowy Magnard | @Xailah Alptraum | @Dinara Lucey

The forest was deeper and darker than he ever could have imagined.

Tendrils snarled around the ghoulish trees, and a soft mist began to form around the trunks. Small pearly insects scuttled around their roots, and howling continued from afar. It seemed that even the moon had abandoned the forest, and the overcast gloom of shadows snuck over the bony trees. The trail he followed wasn't exactly a trail, but more of a slight rift in the underbrush. As he traveled deeper and deeper, the 'trail' grew even more heavily wooded, and the ground sloped downwards like a hill, plunging until he was ankle-high in bristles.

Twists and turns, twists and turns. The only thing keeping him from getting lost was the image he carefully kept in his mind, of Xailah's pale finger pointing out the plume of fire that had since went out. He himself didn't use his wand, keeping it tucked in his tattered uniform pocket. His dismal spell knowledge meant that he had no clue how to set a small glow, although he did know the spell was Lumos. He wouldn't be counting on magic anytime soon.

The place was growing close. Winding through the brush, the greyed out grass was slowly thinning, and a clearing would soon follow, or so he thought.

Mired in the trees, it was then that he heard a soft rattling. The sound scraped at his ears, fading in and out through the trees. His heartbeat sounded in his ears, but he set his jaw. Perhaps it was just a wild animal passing by, hunting other prey. But no animal he had ever known made a sound like this one. It was deeper and more guttural than a snake, reminding him of the breath rattling in the lungs of the sick.

It grew cold, and more fog rolled in. His breath came out in clouds. Squinting through it, he continued forwards, moving more and more quickly. He had to reach the place where the flare was...he had to.

The rattling pursued him, hissing. A quiet scrape against a tree sounded almost like the rub of cloth against bark. Twigs snapped. His heart pounded.

The crunching grew louder and louder. The eerie noise thundered in his ears. He dashed, racing as quickly as he could, leaping through brush and mire, dodging the sparse trees.

Then at last, he reached the clearing. But the second he did, he fell to the ground, rocks knocking the breath out of him. Turning around, he was face to face with the most horrific creature.

Like something out of a nightmare, the black cloaked predator loomed over him.

He was going to die.

Perhaps if she had only waited a little longer, if she had heard his heavy steps through the trees, or his voice in the clearing, perhaps she would've been better off. At least then she would've had some means of protection from this place that she didn't want to come to in the beginning; but she'd already made up her mind to find the damn Gryffindor if it was the last thing she did... and it quite possibly could be.

Even with the light of her wand aiding her sight, the dense fog of the forest seemed to swallow the light almost entirely, as though the forest itself had a goal to keep all who entered in a constant state of disorientation, "Isaac?" she called constantly looking around herself, trying to keep wary eyes sharp for any hint of the boy as well as try to keep in a straight line as she walked.

For a moment, the girl paused, trying to gain some kind of bearing as to her location. It felt as though she'd been going on for hours, but realistically she knew she couldn't have been walking for very long. It only felt that way here, in the maze of trees and fog. Illowy ran her hand through her hair, "Isaac! Where are you?" she called into the night. Somewhere, an owl responded to her, causing her to nearly jump out of her skin. Her heart pounded as she tried to calm and reassure herself. That was... until something hidden in the thick fog of the forest floor brushed past her leg.

The unwarranted, unexpected touch stole a scream from her lungs as she took off as fast as she could in the direction she thought she was going. The only thing that stopped the scared witless girl was a hidden tree root that tripped her up, sending her tumbling to the ground. It took the girl a few minutes to recover, the wind knocked out of her; even once regained, putting her burning lungs into a fit of coughing.

She had to get back up and keep going, though. It wasn't an option to sit and hope someone else would find the two. Swallowing hard, the girl pushed herself to her feet. He couldn't be far. The forest couldn't go on forever, and Illowy didn't know the meaning of the word quit. The girl pressed on.

As she walked, somewhere up ahead she could hear footsteps pounding. They sounded light and erratic... possibly like a boy running away from something? Just as well, she could feel the temperature dropping, the rattle of chains and sweep of cloth brushing through the trees. She'd have to take that chances as she forced herself to run once more. Cold blue eyes looked for any sign of the boy. And she found it... along with something she could recognize instantly from her mother's stories.

That... creature, if one could dare to call it such a thing, chilled her to the bone.

Once upon a time her mother had told her about the spell to repel such creatures. Years ago her mother had used it to ease her to sleep with its comforting, loving light. But any thought of love or light was escaping her in that moment, along with the name of the spell.

Beneath it was her friend. She had to do something.

"Flippendo!"

The girl screamed, a force pulsating from her wand and throwing thing back. It couldn't kill the creature, she knew, but perhaps stun it enough so they might escape. With whatever time she might've given herself, she charged towards the boy, "Get up, you bloody idiot!" she begged, doing everything she could not to directly look at the creature as she grabbed Isaac by the shoulder of his shirt, "Now! Run!"

A firm hand fell on her shoulder. She spun around, only to find a wand pointed at her, and the dirty face of the professor. She shook his hand off. Really, she didn't have time for this.

"Think about what you're doing. Adjust your behavior accordingly."

What? Did this man even know what was going on? Most likely not. "Well, considering the fact that I'm on my way to jump a half-giant; who was trying to sssseclude, and possibly harm sssome poor sssecond year; I think my behavior has been adjusted accordingly." Did that make any sense? No not really. But hopefully it got the point across. After all she was only a (mostly) harmless twelve year old- not a walking English book.

"Look, you're wasting my time. Ssssomeone needs my help. Isaac and Illowy need yours-" And as soon as she said that, she heard a small noise off in the distance. Or maybe it was a big noise, and just sounded small due to distance. It was a voice. Maybe. Xailah couldn't quite tell, but judging by the tone; she figured someone had cast a defensive spell.

She raised a thin eyebrow at the professor. "Can Dinara come with me? Please?" There was a slight change in her urgent tone of voice. She looked up at him with large glistening eyes. But she wouldn't wait for an answer. Pulling her skirt up, she sprinted back towards the charred remains of the Blossom Ball. If he really wanted to stop her now, then he was going to have to chase her.