Harry Potter and the Sorceress of the Stars

Now that she had emerged from seclusion and completed her preparations, there was no reason for Oleandra to remain hidden in Mr Bertram's house, tucked away in the little village she and Wanderer had once saved from Mountain Giants.

"Jowan?" Oleandra called out as she stepped out of the cottage. "Are you there?"

She was loath to leave without saying goodbye to Jowan. The boy had been her sole companion for the past four and a half months, and her brief tenure as his Herbology teacher had offered a welcome distraction from her loneliness.

"Jowan?" Oleandra called again. "Mr Bertram?"

Raising a hand to her brow to shield her eyes from the glare of the morning sun, Oleandra scanned her surroundings. In her time period, assuming the same amount of time had elapsed since her permanent jaunt backwards through time, it would have been early spring. Here, it was summer. Even at this early hour, the peasants were already hard at work in the fields.

Oleandra was getting worried.

Her eyesight was excellent, but she could see neither father nor son harvesting wheat in their allotted fields. During her stay at their home, she had only requisitioned the kitchen, leaving their bedrooms to them— and she had already checked those, finding them unoccupied.

In the end, after touring the property and peeking into the neighbours' gardens, she found no sign of them, and she decided to leave without saying goodbye. She couldn't risk being seen by the other villagers— even though there were no wanted posters of her, and nor were there any monetary rewards for her capture, they all knew her face from her heroic deeds. She couldn't risk drawing the local warlord's wrath down on them.

And speaking of which, Oleandra still had no idea what dreadful crime Wanderer might have committed to land himself on the Lord of Cameliard's bad side in the first place.

…

Thus began the short trip from the village to the nameless hillfort where Wanderer had been taken, all these months ago. This time, she had no intention of showing mercy— the last time, she had gone easy on her opponents to avoid damaging the timeline by killing needlessly, which had ended with her capture. But this time, nothing would stop her from getting back Wanderer— corpse or not.

As she neared the edge of the Druid Merwydd's domain— the range where he could still command the plants to snare her feet and set the beasts of the plains and forest upon her— Oleandra drew the Book of the Stars from her pouch and flipped to the most recent page. There, she had inscribed a spell of her own devising, based on Sowelo, the Sun Rune. With it, she could create a drought, effectively halving the Druid's strength at its root.

After taking a deep breath, Oleandra dangled a toe over the imaginary line in the grass— then, with a decisive step, she planted her foot on the other side. One step. Two steps. And then a third.

Oleandra frowned.

Why wasn't her opponent reacting to her entry? By now, she ought to have tripped on knotted grass at least five times and landed face first in a cowpat. Squinting, she noticed something else: the hillfort's front gate stood wide open. And the rope ferry was moored on her side of the river, rather than the far bank, where it ought to have been— to guard against invasion from over the river.

Should she take this as an invitation to come in?

"A trap?" Oleandra deduced.

Still unaware that a terrifying creature had chosen to make its home on her skin, Oleandra simply couldn't understand why such a powerful Druid would need to resort to tricks to bring her to heel. His nature magic was uncommonly powerful for his era, and he had plenty of the Lord of Cameliard's men at his command.

But even so, why bother with deception? If his main job was to protect his lord's domain, then why was he presumably trying to lure her into the hillfort? If he wanted to hunt her down, why lay a trap that would obstruct the fort's daily activities?

After crossing over the river on foot, ignoring the ferry, she was met with neither a rain of arrows nor a shower of hot oil. Stepping through the wide open double oaken doors, Oleandra found the hillfort utterly deserted, which only deepened her confusion.

The hillfort, which consisted of a wooden palisade surrounding a hill that had a forest at its back and overlooked a vast sea of plains, was surely too valuable to abandon without a fight. There were no grand palaces or towering stone keeps in this era, of course— those would arise later, around the era of Hogwarts's founding. But even so, the manpower, time, and coin needed to construct such a place must have been staggering. This was the Bronze Age, after all.

Oleandra continued exploring the emptied hillfort.

Naturally, Oleandra had kept her Mystic Eyes wide open the entire time, but there was barely even a flicker of magic to be found in her surroundings. There was a faint scent of ozone in the air, though, so Oleandra followed the odour to the top of the hill, where a longhouse with a thatched roof awaited her.

At the sound of a low, croaking bird call from above, Oleandra looked up— and found a pair of ravens staring back at her, perched on the branch of an ancient, sprawling yew tree growing next to the house. But when she looked down…

"Wanderer…" breathed Oleandra.

Wanderer's corpse hanged from a tall branch, swaying gently in the wind. His side was bloodied, pierced clean through by a golden spear— one she recognised all too well. But for a corpse who'd been left exposed to the elements for a few days, he looked remarkably well conserved.

Even so, Oleandra's Mystic Eyes couldn't be fooled. Wanderer had the aura of a living Wizard, but it was faint— he seemed to be in a state of suspended animation, and as such, he was very much still alive. But before she cut him down, Oleandra realised that she could no longer gauge his level of affection for her with her mutated Mystic Sight, an additional power she had gained after peeking into the Love Room at the Department of Mysteries.

"Diffindo!" said Oleandra, pointing her wand at the rope holding Wanderer aloft.

The matter of her Mystic Eyes could wait until later— for now, her priority was to get Wanderer away from here and nurse him back to health.

But suddenly, feeling hundreds of pairs of eyes upon her, Oleandra knew the trap she had walked into had been sprung.