S & L

Elsbet crawls on her hands and knees through the bushes, with absolutely no idea where she's going. Well, her heart knows. Her heart tells her to keep going, no matter how prickly the ground is, no matter how thirsty or hungry she is, or how tired she is. There is time for drinking and eating and sleeping and healing after she has done what she has to do. As she crawls through the leaf-litter and sharp rocks, she puts her right hand down hard on something sharp, and it cuts her, cuts her deep. She cries out and jerks back, knocking her stick out from behind her ear where she'd put it for safekeeping....

As soon as they leave the Hall of Chronicles, the birds take wing toward the white-stone home of Brother Perdurabo. Except, that is, for Alphion. Snape watches him peel away from the flock and head north. You are not accompanying us to Ironwood? he asks Cambion's brother, and the raven replies, I tell my kin you know now. He feels Elsbet and Malfoy behind him, feels their gentle touches, and watches until the raven disappears from sight.

Severus? Malfoy thinks, resting his hand on Snape's shoulder, and the ebon-haired wizard turns slowly to his partners. There is much more to that bird than...

Elsbet carefully gathers up the wands, save for the Hickory, and places them back inside the teak box, making certain the antler wands are on opposite ends. Once in her room, she stows the box securely under her bed, then wonders vaguely why she's thinking of it suddenly as hers. Well, really...since Therion is with them now, they can't all sleep in this little bed. Not like they're going to make him sleep alone. And besides, she reasons, the wizards are going to want time to themselves, as well as with her, and anyway, a woman needs to feel that she has her 'own space'.

As she leaves her room,...

As Remus has his experience, Tonks has hers...

Tonks smiles up at the figure at the top of her fountain. It's a dancer, slender, elegant, and graceful; Tonks laughs because the dancer's face and hair resemble hers, and she is none of those things. She watches a butterfly, ghostly white and fragile, alight on a dry patch on the rim of the fountain. "Wotcher, flutterby," she says softly, then laughs when the tiny thing flits up and lands on her shoulder. It's there for only a second or two, just long enough to uncoil its tongue, then coil it up again. She barely has time to smile at it and then...