Golden Girl: The Missing Piece (2)

11- Asking For Help: A Rare Occasion

Ember didn't know why she hadn't remembered her vision from the summer. The one that Wes had asked about, with the Spruce trees and the ghostly fence with a hole in it. 

Two nights after the Boggart extravaganza Ember had crawled into bed, wiped out from Quidditch practice. Urged on by the pressure to win another House Cup for Horned Serpent, Beau Valentin had been running drills with this year's team for hours on end, every other day. Her shower had been full of aching limbs and halting movements, almost as if she'd been battered by bludgers. Oh wait, she had! That was one of Beau's new exercises, to weave through a hail storm of bludgers. Even he had decided that they wouldn't be repeating that particular challenge. 

Ember hissed at the soreness in her hip as she fell into bed, but was grateful for the exhaustion that swept her into the realm of sleep, far quicker than usual. She wished it were a peaceful sleep, but most often her wishes didn't come true. 

Ember scoped out the common room before she entered it. She didn't want to be given detention again, not when she could swear her wrist still ached from that heavy quill. But it was empty. She darted through on silent feet, swiftly closing the door behind her with a soft click. 

"And where would a second year like yourself be going at such an hour?" A stern, proper voice echoed through the empty hall.

Before she could turn and investigate, the vision faded to black. Then Ilvermorny's hallway was replaced by darkness and the sounds and smells of the forest. She was sneaking through the shadows of pine trees scattered across mountainous terrain. She was in her own body, she realized as she crouched behind a large boulder and glanced at her hands. Her own hands, her own feet. It was a relief, after all the times she'd been in someone else's body for these sorts of dreams.

She peeked out from behind the boulder, and spotted what she was looking for, the end of the Evergreen Boundary. This was where the deed took place, where she needed to be to figure out the hows, whos, and whens. She already knew the whats and whys, so at least she had that covered. Quick mental high-five.

There, between two larger trees, she recognized them as Spruce trees. They weren't common in this area which is why they'd been used as the marker for the border. But most people wouldn't know that or be able to tell them apart from the thousands of other pine trees nearby.

She took a breath and then dashed across the gap between the boulder and those trees, fast as lightning. 

Ember aimed her wand at a seemingly empty space between the two trees, "Terminus Revelio!"

At once, what looked like a holographic, twenty foot-tall fence appeared.

One with an enormous hole right in the middle.

And through it, two red eyes gleamed back at her. 

Ember gasped awake, thankful that she hadn't woken up screaming. It wouldn't have been the first time, nor the last, she'd dare to predict. According to the alarm clock on Addy's nightstand, it was just past two in the morning, so at least she had several more hours before dawn to get some real sleep, if her brain would let her. 

She laid her head back down on the pillow, but thought back to her vision before she could stop herself. Ember knew those Spruce trees. She knew the enormous hedged barrier was just a few miles away from the castle, and she knew those exact trees marked the end of the Evergreen Boundary and the edge of Ilvermorny's grounds. 

But that spell that she'd spoken in the dream, she wasn't familiar with it. Revelio, she knew meant 'reveal,' and Terminus sounded like it meant something about endings or to finish... she hadn't heard of it before. She'd scoured all the books about shield charms in the library, and neither she or her friends had seen any mention of such a spell, so researching wouldn't do much good.