"It's okay, remember? We're all going to help each other and it's all going to be okay. You just have to trust us, okay?"
Alex hesitated before relaxing. "O-okay, then, I guess."
The two of them mounted a pair of broomsticks, donned a pair of masks, swigged a pair of ageing potions, took off into the air, swiftly identified the correct hill, and landed, now as Blue Mask and Black Mask.
Blue Mask patted the trunk of the dead whomping willow. "Big fella, isn't he?"
Black Mask didn't reply as she was already clearing the area around the tree and getting ready to paint the huge deathly hallow needed from her shoulder bag of chicken's blood.
Soon, they were ready. The sacrificial cloak, dowel, and stone were placed at each of the three triangle points and the dementor stake pointed up near the middle.
Alex took a deep breath, stepped into the hallow, shot a pulse of magic into it, and raised her ritual sickle. "Death who takes all through the power of wand, stone, and cloak, hear your humble servant."
The clearing grew noticeably colder, even more so than the already December cold Cumbrian air. She shivered. Thank Merlin they now had special ritual robes. Doing this naked didn't bare thinking about.
The Deathly hallow started to glow red.
She walked all the way into the centre and stabbed the bark with her sickle. It embedded itself in the thick trunk. "Death who takes all, I offer you back that which the three brothers took. To raise this container of a soul that you now possess. To bind its magic back to the aether, and to your humble servant."
Alex scampered back outside of the deathly hallow to where Luna stood, coiled and tense, well outside the range of the whomping willow's branches.
The dowel, stone, and cloak started to glow, magics rushed through the clearing, the dementor bone arced a bolt of silent lightning, and the tree gave one massive creak. The cloak, wand, and dowel all evaporated.
Alex readied herself, bringing all her magical powers to her command, ready for the dominance battle with the huge tree, a battle she knew she would lose, but not without testing herself to her absolute limit first. A pair of steaming blue eyes snapped open like two portals into the realm of death.
Alex gulped
A growl like a hellhound crept up her spine and froze her to the spot.
"Black Mask," Luna prompted.
No! She shook herself, thrust out both hands in front of her, and released her magic to intermingle and bind with the whomping willow inferius in front of her. The inferius tree's magic smashed back into her like a battering ram.
She dropped to one knee.
"Black Mask!" She struggled. So strong. Just so, so strong.
A branch smashed into the ground just in front of where she and Luna stood.
But she would NOT be stopped just like that. This was probably the only chance she'd have to practise this for weeks if not months. She forced herself to her feet and glared at the wall of flailing branches and twigs in front of her.
Their magics continued to fight each other. There was no contest. The whomping willows magics were far too strong, but so long as it couldn't get to her, it made no difference.
She winced as a particularly strong wave of magic pushed against her.
There was a massive rumbling noise. Alex felt the ground move.
The mass of branches in front of her raised to reveal the trunk again.
One massive root wrenched itself out of the ground.
"Oh, that isn't good," Luna whispered.
The roots continued to dislodge more and more earth and one massive tree like foot steeped out of the ground.
"Yeah, definitely not good!" Alex shouted. Luna ran.
Alex abandoned her magic dominance battle and dove to the side just as another branch slammed where she'd just been standing. She scrabbled to her feet and made it to the other end of the clearing.
The inferi tree slowly turned to her and took one massive step forward.
"Black Mask! Broomstick! Here!" Luna chucked her her broomstick.
She barely caught it and moments later the two of them zoomed into the sky, leaving a furiously pissed off inferi tree behind them. The both caught their breath.
The tree bent upwards to look at them in the sky and growled.
"The dementor bone," Alex said.
They both looked down at the deathly hallow painted on the ground, now devoid of cloak, dowel, and stone, but very much still containing the stake.
"I'll distract it, you grab it?" Luna suggested.
Alex nodded. "And the sickle."
"Yes."
One horrible dive later, in which Alex was sure she was either going to crash or end up tree food, she'd snatched back the dementor bone, and the dislodged the sickle from an enraged tree, which could do nothing to reach her, so close was she to the trunk.
She and Luna sped back into the air.
The tree snarled at them, apparently frustrated by the fast moving pests. Eventually, it moved back to where they'd first found it, replanted itself back in the ground, and slowly closed its eyes. They waited, but it didn't seem inclined to move any more.
Alex gazed at the now dangerous patch of forest with a worried expression. "That really didn't go like we wanted. I barley got twenty seconds of practise."
Luna shrugged. "These things don't always work out," she said, sage like. "The important thing is that no one catches us."
Alex nodded and moments later the two of them had banished a bunch of leaves over the blood and retreated back across the forest canopy, back towards Greengrass Manor.
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