Hummingbird [TomRiddlexHarryPotter]

The Wildlands

"What the fuck is that!?" Harry exclaimed tremulously as he watched what looked to be a massive rocky hill rising from just beyond the peak of another. Dirt, rocks, and boulders slipped and rolled off the shifting surface.

He tore his panic-filled eyes away from the sight to look at Tom who had also pulled to a stop just ahead of him. The king steered his horse closer to Harry, but nothing in his features or the set of his posture spoke of the same terror exuding from Harry in that moment.

"It's alright. It's just a Stone Golem." The nonchalance in his tone didn't soothe Harry, rather it just made him want to kick the man.

"Stone Golem?" Harry repeated with slightly less naked terror in his voice. His hands remained fisted around the leather strap of the reins, white and bloodless as they squeezed. Turning back, he could see that there was a little more structure to the mass that was lethargically moving beyond the hill. He could see slight separations in stone under the carpets of grass that shifted together in segments.

"You have nothing to worry about with golems, Harry, I promise. They may be exceptionally huge and a bit intimidating, but they are widely known to be non-aggressive and particularly docile. The only times anyone has ever been hurt by a golem is by getting accidentally stepped on. Long as you don't go treading under its feet, you'll be just fine." Tom assured him and they watched as the golem seemed to dislodge the dirt and vegetation that had settled into the cracks and crevices after being sedentary for so long.

The longer he observed it, the more it took shape beyond appearing to be a hill indistinguishable from the rest of the landscape. It had thick arms that almost reached the ground and short stubby legs. Its body was round and took up the majority of its mass, while the head that emerged from where it had been tucked into the body like a turtle, was small and stout in comparison to the rest of it. Its body sort of resembled that of a gorilla, while its 'face' was overly simplistic with two deep holes for eyes and a seam bisecting the stone where its mouth presumably was.

The stone golem didn't even look their way as it slowly turned and began a lumbering path away from them. Each huge step thundered through the earth and in the distance, he even heard what sounded like another golem moving at a snail's-pace. When the fear faded and he just sat back to observe it from atop his horse, it was truly an incredible experience. It made him feel so very small, watching a creature that stood stories above himself moving about.

"Come on, we're almost at the mouth of the forest." Tom called for him, waiting for him to guide his horse back into motion before doing the same.

They saw glimpses of a few more stone golems roaming about the hills as they rode, but none of them were nearly as close as the first one had been.

"You don't usually see them moving about like this. Golems don't eat, drink, or reproduce. They subsist purely off the ambient magic in the earth and spend most of their long lifetimes sleeping amongst the hills or mountains." Tom stated when he'd noticed Harry's attention once more focused on another golem settling down between two hills, looking like it was getting ready to go right back to sleep.

Before Harry could inundate the other man with questions of how golems came to be, his attention was stolen as they finally crested a large hill. Spreading out before him, as far as the eye could see, was a dense, tall, emerald forest. There were mountains in the distance covered in trees and the road they were on cut through the dense foliage at the tree line, but soon disappeared under the consuming canopies of green.

Harry could tell that this forest was old and so densely packed with magical wildlife that he could taste it like ozone in the air before a storm. It sizzled in the atmosphere, wild and ancient in a way that put Harry on edge the closer they got. His body was a taut cord of tension, but there was almost something familiar about the aura wafting from the forest.