Fred Weasley, whose life philosophy revolved around maximum mischief for minimum consequence, felt the undeniable, excruciating confirmation that he was having the single worst night of his very short existence.
The agony radiating from his left arm was a constant, throbbing reminder of his catastrophic error in judgment, an error that had begun with the innocent, joyous proclamation of an "exciting night adventure."
For weeks, he and George had been models of Gryffindor commitment. Driven by the very real, very terrifying threat of being permanently jettisoned from Professor Swann's highly coveted (and potentially very profitable) Alchemy Team, they had dedicated themselves to study with the tireless, almost feverish energy of reformed sinners.
The effort had been physically and mentally draining. Most evenings, Fred barely made it to his pillow before succumbing to a deep, unmoving sleep, his capacity for nocturnal capers utterly exhausted.
The arrival of the Easter holidays was meant to be their glorious, earned reprieve—a license to unleash the pent-up chaos that only a Weasley twin could generate. The adventure had certainly happened. Whether it was enjoyable remained a matter for intense, painful debate.
Right now, as he was dragged blindly through the wilderness, the overwhelming evidence suggested a definitive 'no'. Everything ached—his head, his muscles, and most acutely, his pride.
His initial fear upon seeing Professor Robert—their Defense Against the Dark Arts instructor—turn his wand on him had been a panicked, juvenile concern: Expulsion.
Fred had mentally tallied up his Gryffindor points (a healthy surplus, thanks to their recent academic diligence) and figured the worst punishment would be a mountain of detentions and perhaps the dreaded, three-hour-long lecture from Mum. He and George hadn't lost points in ages; they could afford a minor setback.
But being struck down by a powerful, silent curse the moment he stepped toward the Forest's threshold had changed everything. The realization wasn't just expulsion. The realization was: The professor is actively attacking a student.
Fred had wanted to scream, to bellow an alarm loud enough to wake the House-Elves in the kitchens, but the fear was a paralyzing, wet blanket of terror.
Once Professor Robert had hauled him bodily into the tangled darkness, the vast, echoing reputation of the Forbidden Forest itself—a place where centaurs were prickly, acromantulas were massive, and secrets went to rot—had silenced him completely.
What if I'm actually going to be murdered? The thought was cold and sharp. This is not a prank. This is not points deduction. This is real.
So, when Robert had finally broken the immediate binding spell, Fred had stood up, meek and compliant, following the mad professor with the pathetic obedience of a scared house cat. Robert's presence was completely foreign—gone was the nervous, perpetually flustered instructor from the classroom. This man moved with an unsettling, predatory certainty.
The darkness itself seemed to be magnifying Fred's fear, obscuring Robert's face completely, leaving only a terrifying outline against the minimal moonlight filtering through the dense canopy. The resulting pressure on Fred's chest was so intense he felt he was breathing muddy water.
He prayed silently, desperately, for George to have the presence of mind—the uncharacteristic wisdom—to seek help from someone truly capable. Please, not just Peeves. Please, go to someone with a powerful, sensible wand.
Professor McGonagall would be magnificent. Or even Professor Flitwick! The thought of Snape, while technically a 'capable professor,' made Fred's stomach clench almost as much as the current terror, but even he would be preferable to this.
The journey was a blur of excruciating discomfort. Robert dragged Fred forward by his collar, the tough forest undergrowth snatching and tearing at Fred's robes. His left arm, where Robert had inflicted a precise, deep laceration, pulsed with pain.
Every few hundred meters, they would stop. Robert would regard the wound with a look of repulsive, scientific fascination, and then, using Fred's still-flowing blood, he would smear it across a scrap of parchment or a small piece of stone, activating a low-humming magical charm to ascertain their next navigational bearing.
Fred felt a rising, irrational sense of outrage. Wasn't this meant to be a terrifying, beast-filled wilderness?
Where were the dangerous, legendary magical creatures?Didn't the Centaurs patrol here with bows drawn, forbidding unauthorized approach?Where were the rumors of werewolves, the howls, the ominous red eyes?
It was deafeningly, unnervingly quiet. In the vast, suffocating expanse of the Forbidden Forest, the only sound was the ragged scraping of their footsteps and Professor Robert's low, increasingly manic pronouncements.
"Little Gryffindor, you truly were the most spectacular, necessary accident," Robert suddenly declared, his voice a tight, high rasp that was far more disturbing than a shout. "Forget any thought of resistance or even a whimper of alarm. No one, not even the old fool Dumbledore, can hear you now."
Robert stopped abruptly, raising his hand to proudly display a thick, black chain necklace hanging against his throat.
"Do you see this masterpiece of applied dark-arts acquisition? This is not some trinket. I acquired it for an exorbitant sum from a shadowed collector during the Christmas break. It is what allows us to move in silence."
He adjusted the heavy amulet with a possessive, greedy gesture. "It creates a perfect, localized Acoustic Nullification Field within a thirty-meter sphere. Furthermore, its core enchantment mimics a low-frequency, highly aggressive Dragon Aura. It doesn't just block sound; it broadcasts a primordial, terrifying threat signal that drives all common magical creatures—centaurs, spiders, even those irritating Thestrals—to flee or freeze in terrified submission. It is, you see, the ultimate nocturnal tool of exploration."
He paused, a suppressed, unsettling giggle escaping his throat. "Wouldn't you say this is… quite the necessity in the Forbidden Forest? A perfect, untraceable transit mechanism?"
He roughly shoved Fred forward, then glanced back at the boy's bleeding arm with a gaze that held nothing but calculating hunger.
"I've waited years to attempt this. The old goat was always too vigilant, his surveillance too intrusive. Your sheer, spectacular recklessness—following me, of all people—gave me the necessary cover. Thank you, little Gryffindor. I wouldn't have dared risk this without the perfect alibi of a 'lost student.'
"As expected of a true descendant of Gryffindor—always stumbling blindly towards grand destiny! Today, I secure everything!" Robert's voice suddenly swelled with a suppressed, unhinged triumph.
Fred's initial resentment dissolved into a fleeting moment of pure, comedic relief: So that's why it's so quiet! I finally know what I need to acquire for a successful night outing! The absurdity of Robert's smug, pompous explanation for the eerie silence was a tiny, illogical comfort. At least I won't be left as bait for a pack of Bowtruckles. Robert clearly wasn't the saving type.
After what felt like an eternity of stumbling, the duo finally reached the deepest, most primordial core of the forest. The trees here were behemoths, their ancient, intertwined branches so dense that they almost entirely obliterated the sky, plunging the ground into Stygian gloom.
Suddenly, they pushed through a final thicket of thorny bushes, and Fred's vision burst open. Before them lay a wide, unnaturally flat circular clearing, devoid of all vegetation. And centered in this space was a single, immense, towering monolith of dark, glossy rock.
Robert's eyes, even in the darkness, flared with a hungry, phosphorescent light. He abandoned Fred completely and rushed toward the rock face, his excitement making him stumble.
Did we actually reach the objective? Fred watched, suspicious, wary, as Robert frantically circled the huge stone.
Robert finally grabbed Fred and dragged him back to the rock's base. With a deliberate, horrifying flourish, he reopened the already lacerated wound on Fred's arm, squeezing out a generous amount of blood. He then smeared the warm, sticky substance across a specific glyph carved deep into the stone, an act that felt nauseatingly sacrificial.
Gripping his wand tightly, Robert pointed the tip at the stained glyph and recited an incantation, his voice vibrating with barely contained, greedy power:
"Sanguine Gryffindororum, ostium haereditatis aperiatur! (With the blood of Gryffindor students, open the door to the treasures of the legacy!)"
The moment the final syllable died, the rock face began to hum. A pulsating, blinding yellow light erupted from the glyph, spreading rapidly until it outlined a shimmering, rectangular door of pure light—an ethereal, glowing entrance slowly solidifying within the massive stone.
Robert released a raw, triumphant shout of pure elation. "Yes! I finally found you! After years! It is real!"
With a look of manic reverence, he threw his arms wide and sprinted toward the glowing gateway, ready to claim his destiny.
PLUNK!
The sound was sharp, metallic, and absurdly anticlimactic. Robert hit the shimmering doorway like a clumsy insect flying into a glass pane. He bounced back, staggering several steps before falling awkwardly onto the dirt, his triumphant expression instantly replaced by bewildered shock.
"How… How is this possible?" he gasped, scrambling backward, rubbing his nose. "It repelled me! I used the ritual perfectly! Why can't I get in?!"
He hammered his wand against the portal repeatedly, sending minor, fizzling sparks harmlessly off the radiant surface. Each attempt resulted in a silent, resolute magical shove that kept him out. Robert was rapidly losing his tenuous grip on reality.
"Unbelievable!" he shrieked, jumping to his feet, eyes wild. "The inscription! The blood! The door opened! It must be a dosage issue! The required quantity of the offering is insufficient!"
He spun around, fixing his crazed, desperate gaze entirely upon Fred, who was standing a safe distance away, rubbing his injured arm. Robert's roar was the sound of complete, unhinged mania.
"You! Get over here! Now! The ritual requires more!"
Fred's heart plummeted, a cold lead weight hitting the floor of his stomach. The professor before him was no longer merely suspicious; he was utterly, irretrievably insane. Even if he fails ten more times, he'll just keep trying to bleed me dry!
This is it. This is the moment where I stop waiting for an Auror to arrive and start saving my own skin.
Fleeing into the dense maze of the Forbidden Forest offered a microscopic, desperate chance of survival, relying on the chance that Robert's Dragon Aura necklace might run out of battery or that a particularly suicidal group of giant spiders might wander into the acoustic void. But staying here, in this wide-open space with a blood-crazed academic, was guaranteed suicide.
Acting on pure instinct, Fred adopted a pose of maximum terror, trembling visibly as he began to stumble obligingly toward Professor Robert.
Simultaneously, his right hand slipped smoothly into the cavernous pocket of his robes—a pocket that, by long-standing Weasley tradition, was never empty. It retrieved a generously proportioned, highly volatile prank item: a Daylight Disaster Fertilizer Bomb.
"Hurry, boy! Don't waste the moment of apotheosis!" Robert urged, his hands already twitching toward Fred's collar.
Fred counted the paces in his mind, his concentration absolute.
Three steps!
Two steps!
One step!
He halted directly in front of the professor, raising his injured left arm with trembling obedience. As Robert leaned in, eyes fixed greedily on the wound, Fred executed his move. His right hand flashed out from his pocket, throwing the volatile sphere of high-quality magical fertilizer directly into Robert's face.
"Bok ye!" Fred yelled the crude, invented spell with desperate force, an old, chaotic Weasley tradition for initiating a powerful prank.
He immediately wheeled around and bolted. He never expected a fertilizer bomb to stop a dark wizard; he simply needed the immediate, stunning effect of foul odor and slimy consistency.
Ten seconds! I need ten seconds!
No! Five! Just five!
His only goal was to clear the open ground, reach the impenetrable camouflage of the surrounding thickets, and attempt to use the terrain to lose or confuse the now-slicked professor.
Fred's tactic was sound, born of years of practice avoiding Filch, but he tragically miscalculated the speed, reach, and sheer furious adrenaline of his attacker.
He managed only two steps before a heavy, crushing grip fastened onto the back of his robe. Robert hauled him back with brutal force. Fred was yanked off his feet, his world dissolved into a dizzying smear of stars and pain as he hit the ground, all remaining strength knocked clean out of his body.
"To… to vomit…" Robert's voice was wet, thick with fury and the disgusting residue of the fertilizer bomb, which now clung to his face, hair, and robes like a sickly green mask.
With a powerful, inhuman heave, Robert reached out with his left hand, grabbing Fred's collar and lifting him bodily off the forest floor. He was dangling, choking, his feet kicking uselessly in the air.
Robert gripped his wand in his right hand, the tip of the wood pressing hard into Fred's temple, dangerously close to his eye.
"You insolent, contemptible little brat!" Robert's voice was no longer mad; it was cold, incandescent with murderous rage. "Why would you be so fundamentally dishonest! Was it not infinitely simpler to merely donate the required element? If you value your insignificant life so little, then I shall ensure this is where…"
"Sufficient!"
The word sliced through the clearing, low, cold, and utterly devastating, carrying the weight of ancient command.
Simultaneously, a sharp, crimson-glowing spell shot out of the bushes to Robert's left. It was not aimed at Robert himself, but struck the ground precisely at the edge of the yellow glowing portal, vaporizing the dry dirt and leaving a small, smoking crater—a warning shot of surgical precision.
Professor Severus Snape emerged from the concealing shadows of the thicket. He moved like a ghost, his black robes barely disturbing the branches, his face an expressionless mask of pale, granite-hard resolve. His wand was held steady and high, the tip pointed with lethal focus directly at the startled Robert.
Snape's voice, devoid of all feeling, was like the cutting edge of a frost-hardened blade:
"This farce of a 'ritual' and your childish theatrics are now conclusively terminated. Lower your instrument of mischief, Robert, and release the student. The nonsense ends now."