Return To Innocence :: OPEN ::

The forest was dark and silent, ringing some far off bell in Jake's mind that he just couldn't place. It was familiar to him in some way, but the frantic beating of his heart and the wild thoughts running through his mind overshadowed it. He wanted to look behind him, to see if he was being followed but even as he pushed this urge to the side he knew he was being followed. The witch and some others were following, racing to catch up to him, to stop him from getting away.

He pushed on, using all his will as well as the muscles of this body he'd stolen to go faster, to reach whatever it was that was calling to him. He felt his heart grow almost perceptibly lighter the further away from the damned village he got and yet his panic burned in him. He had to get away, he had to break free of this witch and her darkness and unabashed yearning for someone who was lost to her.

It felt like years that he'd been running, his muscles burning, his breath catching in the stab in his side but he saw the light. Many lights, hanging in the middle of the sky as if suspended by invisible wires. Jake was approaching a very large building and he slowed for merely a second or two, thinking through his options. He couldn't go back and even though the lights scared him he wanted to go to it.

The forest broke and Jake stormed out of the thickness of the trees, running along the edge of a large, black lake. The surface of the water seemed to shimmer as something moved just below the surface and Jake groaned as he took several steps away from the water's edge. He could see great big doors to the building he was running to.

The building itself was probably the biggest thing he'd ever seen, imposing on the landscape and yet inviting him forward. The doors were closed and when he reached them he pounded at the wood with his fists. Not caring how much noise he was making. He stood like that for only a few seconds when the doors inched apart and a dark face stared out at him. "What do you want?!" The voice was harsh and filled with authority.

He stared into the face, his expression anguished and then he gave in and looked back. He saw the shadows of those who'd chased him, they lingered on the border of the trees, almost as if they were scared of approaching the building. "Please!" He half grunted the word at the unknown person in the shadows and sighed in relief when the doors opened more fully. The room was dark but the person who'd allowed him entry waved his hand and several candles lit up. Jake saw a small stick-like object in this person's hand... a wand, just like the witch in the forest.

Jake wasn't sure what to think in the next moment, the one who'd opened for him looked out into the settling darkness and then shut the door before raising the hand with the wand again and locking the great big doors. Jake's breathing was harsh and ragged, he finally felt some kind of peace and as his saviour turned to him Jake felt like he could scream from happiness at getting away.

A moment passed between him and this figure who's face he hadn't yet seen and then everything around him was pain and darkness. His back arched and he felt himself falling...


Light filtered through Jake's eyelids and made his eyes burn. He heard the sound of metal scraping on metal somewhere very nearby and despite the burning of the light his eyes flashed open and he sat up. He heard scuffled movement then and warm hands taking hold of him. "No, no, dear, you must lay down, keep still." The voice was small and female and the woman's face was a kind one. It wasn't the witch and Jake flashed a very toothy, drawn out grin at her. He felt so very tired, his body sore everywhere but the room was clean, this woman was clean and he was nowhere near the witch.

"Thank you, thank you." His voice was hoarse and gruff and his throat hurt when he spoke but he had to express it. He felt so overwhelmed that he was actually free that he seemed to have lost all sense of free will and it was just his body and heart acting now. He looked around the room, there was one other person there, sleeping on a bed in the opposite corner. "Are you the one who opened for me?" He looked back that the woman, his smile still stretching his lips and she shook her head slightly while looking toward the door. Jake followed her gaze but there was no one there but he could hear voices.

A lot of voices drawing closer and closer and he shrank back against the bed. "Now, now, it's just the students going to their classes." The woman patted down the covers and handed Jake a cup. He took a long drink of a very thick liquid that made him think of honey and handed her the cup back as hundreds of students marched past the door to the room where he lay.

Mavis had been waken in the middle of the night with news of a young man, who was not a student, pounding at the large oak doors of the castle. She was told that someone or something seemed to be chasing him. Where he had come from was a mystery though. The only place any of them could think of was the Forbidden Forest. Mavis and some of the other professors had suspected that there were other witches and wizarding living in the Forbidden Forest, but they had not had any proof thus far.

When Mavis arrived at the Hospital Wing, where the boy had been taken, he was still out and the nurse felt that he needed the rest, so Mavis decided to return later. So, as the students began to head to their classes and she had finished her normal morning business, Mavis made her way back to the Hospital Wing. She opened the door just enough to slip through and saw that the boy was awake. "I see you are awake," Mavis said as she entered the Hospital Wing further and closed the door behind her. She looked to the nurse, "May I?"

The din suddenly grew louder and Jake flashed a look at the door, a serious looking woman entered and then closed the door behind her. Jake watched her walk over to his bedside and stared up at her when she stopped. He looked at the nurse when the woman addressed her and the nurse nodded almost tersely but added a smile that couldn't entirely be considered warm - at least she tried. Jake looked back at the new arrival, staring hard at her as if he was trying to read her mind. He was trying to think of anything to say to her but nothing really came to mind, what would interest her any way. "I'm sorry..." He didn't really know what he was sorry for but he felt he needed to apologize for something.

Urien burst into the Hospital wing and stormed over to the bed where the boy, who had been pounding on the large oak doors of Hogwarts, lay. "Gotten any answers out of the boy?" he asked Mavis as he glared down at him. Being who he is, Urien didn't much like being disturbed during one of his drunken strolls around the school. He had seen dark figures running toward the castle and let the boy in, but wasn't about to trust that it wasn't all a trap of some sort. Urien went back to sleep after taking the boy to the Hospital Wing and alerting Mavis. He returned with his strongest truth serum waiting in his pocket.

The door to the hospital wing opened a second time and Jake looked up to see a man approaching. The guy looked somewhat familiar to him even though he was scowling heavily. He stared at the scruffy looking guy after he started talking, his eyebrow raised in question at his aggressive behaviour. "Answers about what exactly?" He asked coldly, wondering what the hell the guy thought he was up to, Jake had rushed to the castle to find asylum, nothing more.

Urien scowled down at the boy and said, “Who you are, where you came from, and how you found Hogwarts would be a great place to start.” He crossed and looked on expectantly. Though using the potion right out would probably save time, Urien liked to see if those he wished to administer the potion to would tell the truth to begin with. So, for the time being, it stayed nestled in his pocket.

Late the night before, Edolie had had a dream that the reason she could no longer use the Resurrection stone to be with Jake was because he had returned to her in the flesh and had found his way back to the school. All morning, she could feel him close by, but had told herself that was only because of the dream. He couldn't come back to life. It was one of the main rules of magic.

Quote :

Who you are, where you came from, and how you found Hogwarts would be a great place to start.

Edolie had opened the door right as Urien made his demands. She paused in surprise and thought about just making a quick exit, but decided that it wouldn't hurt to take up a moment of their time. She held up the parcels that several owls had brought at breakfast for the other student in the Hospital Wing and as Head Girl, she took it for the boy since owls were not allowed in the Hospital Wing. "Post," she said simply and crossed the room to set them on the boy's bedside table. As she did so, Edolie looked over the mystery man with a small amount of hope, but she had never seen him before. Jake seemed closer than ever.

'You're being foolish. It was just a dream,' she thought to herself as she started to make her way for the door again. Though she did have to admit that it was a strange coincidence; a mysterious man being questioned in the Hospital Wing the morning after her dream.

Jake glared at the man beside him darkly, not really paying any attention to the door opening again. He heard whoever it was walk over to the other person occupying a bed and he glanced at her. His heart quickened but the man crossed his arms, drawing Jake's attention back. "Jake, the forest and running. Simple enough for you?" The guy was getting him up in arms but he was distracted. The girl had looked over at him and when his eyes had met hers there was some sense of recognition in him. He pushed himself up into a sitting position and followed her to the door. He didn't want her to leave but he didn't know why and there was no way to make her stop, he was basically trapped where he was by the aggressive man who didn't entirely smell too fresh. "What exactly would you like to accuse me of?" He wasn't looking at the guy and his voice had turned somewhat bland.

Quote :

Jake, the forest and running. Simple enough for you?

Edolie had heard what the boy had said. A sharp pain erupted throughout her body from her heart but she kept walking. Although every fiber in her was in complete and utter shock, she didn't show it on the outside. Hundreds of years of being the living-dead ensured that. His voice echoed in her mind, "Jake". Another coincidence? Edolie thought that it had to be, but she couldn't help but feel that it wasn't. Though she tried to stop herself, Edolie paused when she placed her hand on the door knob and looked over her shoulder at the boy. She locked eyes with him again and stood still as a statue, unable to look away again. There was something there in him that was Jake.

Quote :

Jake, the forest and running. Simple enough for you? What exactly would you like to accuse me of?

"Never said I was accusing you of anything, but we have to know why you showed up on our doorstep!" Urien growled. The blunt answers coming from the boys and the fact that he didn't even have the decency to look at him was really starting to piss Urien off. He didn't understand how anyone wouldn't expect to be question after showing up at the doors of the only school of Magical higher learning. "Security is of utmost importance," he explained.

Mavis had opened her mouth to reply to Urien, but the boys words and then the entance of Edolie delayed her words. She rolled her eyes at Urien's methods and supposed that he would whip out his truth serum at any moment. Mavis followed the boy's gaze after he sat up and saw the look in Edolie's eyes. She elbowed Urien and nodded in Edolie's direction. "Do you two know each other?" she asked Ed and Jake.

Everything around him had become strangely blurred and muffled, Jake didn't know where all this was coming from but he suddenly felt the overwhelming urge to laugh and weep at the same time. He was aware that his breathing had sped up and his heart was hammering in his throat. She'd stopped and was staring at him just as he stared at her. His vision was getting blurry from the tearing in his eyes and he blinked impatiently, wanting only to look at the girl... Edolie. It was a thought that just popped up in his mind... a name? His brows pulled together. "Edolie?"

He didn't need her to acknowledge it, he simply just knew, he just knew. The world came back in a rush and he caught the woman's question. He looked at her, confusion in his eyes. "Yes..." He glanced back at the girl by the door. "No..." Jake closed his eyes. "I don't really know, I think so, but..." There was no way he was telling these people what had happened to him, not the full story anyway. There was no guarantee that they wouldn't just hand him over to the psychopath he'd escaped from.

"Look, I was in the village, okay, a village in the forest. They were keeping me against my will and I just got away. It wasn't my intention to come to your precious castle, but this is where I ended up." Throughout this speech he couldn't help glancing back to the spot where the girl stood. Edolie. Her name caused his heart to stutter as much as her eyes did, he could've sworn he knew her, but from where? He'd only been in the village, she definitely wasn't from that stinking village.

Her name coming from the lips of the boy in the bed made Edolie's heart ache. 'It isn't possible," she thought to herself, 'it just isn't possible!' She stood there, fixed where she stood and listened to him speak. Finally she shook her head and said, "I have never seen him before." She tore her eyes from his, turned, marched out of the Hospital Wing and kept going until she was alone in a corridor hidden behind a tapestry.

Edolie fell against the rough stone wall and let herself sink to the floor. She took the resurrection stone from her pocket at stared at it. The symbol of the Deathly Hallows with the crack down the line that was meant to be the Elder Wand seemed to stare back at her. "It is not possible," she said out loud to herself with conviction.

With that said, she held her breath and turned the stone three times in her hand with her thoughts on only Jake.

Nothing happened.

"I have never seen him before."

There was something completely and ultimately tragic about hearing those words coming from Edolie's mouth and it felt like Jake's heart had imploded. His face crumbled before he could stop it and he stared at the spot where she'd been feeling as empty as that space and then he looked at the two older people standing next to him and steeled himself. His body wanted to rush after the girl, and for a moment he contemplated his chances of getting out the door.

The chances seemed pretty strong and so without giving them any warning he threw himself out of the bed and rushed toward the door.

The strange moment and the fact that the boy knew Edolie's name told Mavis that they had to know each other, but she didn't understand why Edolie would lie to her. She had been up front about everything else since she met her. Mavis thought it best to confront Edolie later and in private.

Sudden movement and the flight of the boy made Mavis whip out her wand and non-verbally cast a binding charm on the boy. "I am terribly sorry young man," she said as she walked to him and knelt at his side, "for the safety of the students, we can not have you running around the castle until we know exactly what is going on."

Jake growled as his body stiffened and his legs locked together causing him to fall like a great tower and land on his back. He stared up at the woman, the glare evident only in his eyes. He was surprised at the effect of the spell even in his anger and annoyance. He couldn't even speak, only his eyes were allowed to move, though he couldn't blink either. All he could do was grunt at her words and try to quell the fire in his eyes.

Urien strolled over to the door and magically locked it. He then turned his wand on Jake and used a non-verbal spell to lift him to the bed again. "You seriously think we're going to just let some stranger roam the school of his own accord?" Urien asked, extremely irritated by the whole situation. He wasn't exactly fond of youth and had only agreed to teach at the school because Mavis had asked him to.

"There is a village in the forest then?" Urien asked the boy as he gave Mavis a significant look.

Jake forced as much incredulity into his eyes as he could and stared at the male professor who'd come across as too hostile, now he was just annoying in what Jake could only see as ignorance. No doubt the spell that had been cast on him was a known spell, there was no way Jake was answering anything until they lifted the spell and his mind was too preoccupied with the girl he'd seen to really think clearly about anything else. He started remembering the witch in the forest and then her face was obliterated by the face of the girl called Edolie. Though Jake couldn't visibly relax if felt as though a great weight was suddenly lifted off his heart and he had the distinct notion that he wouldn't really need to worry about anything as savage as the forest ever again... as long as he'd have Edolie with him. As long as she would have him all would be well with the world and nothing would ever seem too much.

With a wave of her wand, Mavis created ropes that bound the boy to the bed and released him from the previous spell. She shot Urien a stern look and said, “Please summon the healer so that she can look him over and be sure that he is not injured.”

Mavis then knelt beside Jake and said, “We need to get through a screening before you can go to any other part of the castle. We offer you complete sanctuary, but you must cooperate. Please, in great detail, tell me how you came to be here.”

((Can't remember if the healer had been in there earlier and wasn't able to look when I wrote this.))

Urien opened his mouth to argue, but the look in Mavis’ eyes told him to just do as she said. He gave the boy a long, hard look before swiftly turning and making his way out of the hospital wing to fetch the residential healer. Like always, Urien had his own agenda. When he found her, he told her that she was needed in the Hospital wing to care for a stranger and handed her the bottle of veritaserum and told her to put it in some sort of beverage and give it to the boy. He followed her back toward the Hospital Wing.

((I can’t remember either…))

Jake would have bolted from the room as soon as he’d felt that first inkling of release from the woman’s spell but the ropes that snaked around him stopped him from any such move. The release was only momentary and his muscles tensed again when the ropes bound him, this time in frustration that he was banned from any kind of movement. Jake glared at the woman but followed her gaze to the man who stood beside her and at her words his expression relaxed somewhat.

He followed the man as he walked away but looked back at the woman when he felt her by his side. Jake nodded earnestly and swallowed, pressing his lips together for an instant before opening his mouth. “All I remember is being kept prisoner by a woman in the forest. It wasn’t just her though, there were others, though they had almost nothing to do with her holding me captive. Tonight I saw a chance for escape and I took it. Though I didn’t know which direction to run in, I ran on instinct and that instinct led me to the lights of this place.” He thought for a moment, trying hard to remember anything before the woman in the forest but everything was black.

“I can’t remember anything before.” He thought for a moment and a shock wrapped itself around his brain. This woman who stared down at him now with such warmth had done things to him that weren’t possible… not in the normal sense. Indeed, the ropes that bound him would have taken any normal person several minutes to wrap around him. The ropes had appeared in seconds and no one had approached him to tie him in such a way.

“She did what you can do.” His mind and heart were thrown into confusion. She was comforting in her own way and had offered him sanctuary and though she could do things without following the norm. “She could do magic, like you. Though, she did other things, darker things than that which you’ve shown me.” His heart was pounding, hoping he hadn’t said too much. There was no way for him to know whether this woman was in league with the forest people. There was no way for him to know that she wouldn’t offer sanctuary, learn of his origins and return him to the hateful witch who sought to murder him.

At that moment a woman in white appeared next to him along with the aggressive older man. She held a vial in her hand and though Jake would have accepted such only moments ago there was something in the male’s eyes that made him pause and he felt certain that the vial didn’t hold any kind of healing elixir. He stared up at the woman in white as she offered the liquid to him but before he made any move to obey he whispered. “Will this harm me?” Jake stared straight into her eyes and saw the sincerity there. He drank the contents of the vial and waited as the woman did her best to examine him through the ropes that were still binding him.

Mavis listened raptly to the boys tail. Her suspicions that there was a community of witches and wizards hidden in the Forbidden Forest had just been confirmed. However, this only troubled her to realize that dark magic was being practiced within the school grounds. Mavis watched the Healer and Urien enter and inwardly sighed when the Healer had offered the boy the truth serum.

She pulled Urien to the side and whispered, "There was no need for that. He told me where he came from and I whole heartedly believe him. We will be welcoming him here, wizard or not. Besides, there has got to be some magic in him if he could see Hogwarts as it really is." She gave Urien a dark look to keep him from interrupting her. "We were right about the Forest. There does seem to be a community of witches and wizards in there, however, they seem to be practicing dark magic. We need to set up a meeting as soon as possible with the other professors and decide on an action."

As the boy took what the Healer gave him, Urien let his lips curl slightly in triumph. However, this did not last long because Cerdwin pulled him aside. He let her lead him away and half listened to what she had to say. He thought her foolish in so many ways, but it was oddly endearing. He was about to interrupt to tell her how foolish she was, but the stern look she gave him made him falter, thus letting her go on.

"Very well, I will send out word to all of them as soon as I question the boy further..." he said defiantly.

((We don't have to go through the questioning if you don't want to.))

Jake didn't fail to hear the male professor's defiance. As far as he was concerned Jake was hiding something and Jake didn't really know how to change his mind. The guy was just plain annoying and Jake was sure that if they had met in different circumstances he wouldn't have hesitated in hurting the guy.

Jake's eyes widened at his thoughts, wondering where that had come from. Since his, for lack of a better word, birth in the forest he'd never felt that way towards anyone who'd merely taunted him with words. The only ones he'd wanted to do things to were the ones who did things to him. He swallowed nervously and stared at the stubborn guy. He didn't want to be in that room anymore, THAT he felt with a strong ache in the back of his legs, as if the muscles were already flexing to run. "Could you possibly hurry it up then?"

Urien rolled his eyes and looked over at the boy and back at Mavis. After getting a hesitant nod of consent from her, he approached the boy again and began questioning him. When that was done with, he had to grudgingly say that he was satisfied and said that Jake could skip around the castle in his underwear for all he cared. Then Urien stormed out in his usual manner and sent word to all of the professors about the forest people.