A little ways down the road things are going to be different. Very much so.

It’s difficult for me to recall the exact train of events that led us here. To a stalemate.

I forget things a lot in general. Even as a kid, I was forgetful, and it came at a great cost, which was my relative’s unearned fury, although even their firm hand and unwarranted anger couldn’t beat it out of me. Even before the cancer reared its ugly little head, I was known by this trait. Nothing outlandish, I forgot things that normal people could forget too, just more frequently than they did; the last meal I had, a homework assignment, where I had put my book, a solitary sock that never came back from the laundry… trivial things like that. Things that could have been early triggers but I laughed them off.

I had no reason to be concerned about. Being absentminded wasn’t a crime.

One time, I caught Percy looking for his glasses AS he was wearing them, which was hilarious, but relatable. People aren’t machines, we’re fragile, like little tea cups with small invisible cracks. We forget things no matter how hard we try. Memory isn’t as reliable as people like it to be. You all think they’re solid, like walls or borders that defines you as a person, but really, they’re just like clay, mess with it long enough, and it becomes pliable in your hands.

No one would bat an eye at me for forgetting my transfiguration essay, but they would certainly bulk at me now for forgetting things that are-for the lack of a better word-too extreme.

This is not an exaggeration, but it’s as if the cancer dialed every shred of what made me into me, up to eleven with a cherry on top; this morning, for ten terrifying seconds, I couldn’t tell my left hand apart from my right.

I forgot.

My mind just drew a blank and I panicked.

It’s what makes this so much harder. Writing things that aren’t reliable, I should have done them the moment they were happening. I made a mistake. I think I did write them daily for a while but life caught up with me, I suppose. That’s what happens when you’re too busy to live. Life happens.

I think John Lennon might have said something of the sort, but really, I’m too lazy to make sure.

You reassure me, you tell me that all people are forgetful. I agree with you Severus. Humans are forgetful. It’s one of our better qualities to be honest, the fact that we can forget things. It reminds us that we aren’t some invincible well-tuned engine, that the thing between our shoulders isn’t an enigma needing to be solved.

It’s corrupted, it can forget the simplest of things easily by getting distracted, or alternatively, it deliberately deletes painful or straining reminiscences. Things you wished that you’d never seen or heard and boom! Your brain gets rid of it one way or another.

It’s funny though Severus, the day you decided that you forgot all about your precious rules was the day I remembered them. Do you remember now? How you dragged me out of bed, all wrapped up in a sheet with my slippers lugging on the floor? You held my arm, took me all the way out to the field and further by the edge of the forest…or even into it, I don’t know, and you looked down at me.

You told me you were proving a point, you told me we were escaping. You told me you’d make my dreams all come true because you needed to prove something to yourself, or to the world. Or to someone that thought you couldn’t.

Do you remember your rules? You made me cross out parachuting because it was too dangerous, you made me swear I’ll never lie to you about my health. I broke that rule. I think the vomiting went on for quite some time before you noticed, or I told you, I’m not sure I recall which.

But I’m not the only one breaking that rule Severus. You broke it too. You lied to me about my health, about what you’ve been dozing me with, that potent scheme you and Dumbledore had made up just for me. You bloody lied to me about that. I remember how that one went down. I caught you red handed. Do you recall?

When I told you that you’re dishonest, you got mad at me, you made me storm out of our car in the middle of the road as it was raining, you were offended by me. It was ludicrous, assuming that even then, you were lying to me through your teeth. You felt guilty about that, I know you did.

It comes as a surprise, but you aren’t normally a liar, just dishonest.

I think there’s a difference, or maybe is it that, you make all the difference. It was difficult for me to tell at the beginning, but I can tell when you’re dishonest with me, your face might remain stoic and cynical, but you have A tell (I remember the poker game, in case you worry). Your hands are always busy when you lie, and you know it, that’s why you cross them when you’re trying to lie to me. You think I won’t notice your fingers clenching and unclenching your arms, but I do.

No one ever noticed your Tell, and you’re proud of that, but the sad truth is, I don’t think anyone ever really looked at you to notice such things. I think that’s the hugest mistake anyone has ever made.

Underestimating you.

The day you kidnapped me, you looked down at me over your nose, you meant to be intimidating, but you didn’t realize that I was too out of it to fully appreciate the effort you put into hating me. At some point, as you were reciting your conditions, you crossed your arms. I’m not sure that you did but you must have, because whenever I try to recall you telling me about our last rule, I remember you crossing your arms across your chest.

If that is true, if my memory isn’t some clay that I’m molding into hallucinatory things, then that mean you were lying when you told me that you weren’t ever going to start caring about me, and I wasn’t allowed to do the same as well. You were just doing it as a favor, you said, you were adamant about it and I was half-delusional. Who cared?

It really didn’t come as a surprise I suppose when you finally came clean this morning. You were acting strangely for so long that I was expecting something worse to happen. But I’m not sure if I’m glad.

You’re sitting in front of me, we’re in the kitchen, it’s a good day for me, I didn’t even have a headache, and I could seat upright on my own. We were shrouded in silence, and I was staring at you. You were staring at the document trembling in my hands.

The parchment wasn’t trembling though. My hands were shaking. My whole body was shaking. You didn’t say anything to me. Your black eyes just bore holes into the parchment as I quivered in my seat, staring at you.

I couldn’t understand the meaning of this. I couldn’t link the words together. It’s not the cancer’s fault, I thought to myself, my brain numb. How could you do this to me? Why would you do this to me? Did you forget? Did you forget our rules?

That morning started out so well. You woke me up, we had chocolate muffins instead of breakfast, you let me have coffee. You sat me down in the kitchen, pulled out an envelope out of the cupboard above the sink (the one that you know I cannot reach) and sat down.

“This decision wasn’t made in haste.” You told me, fiddling with the envelope. “But if I had to pinpoint the exact second that made me change my mind-,” you paused as the envelope finally gave in and opened. “I’d say it was the camping trip.” You said before sliding the document toward me, waiting for me to catch up.

The camping trip was the day you forgot, then. What exactly happened on that wretched trip for you to have a change of heart? I didn’t do anything, and neither did you.

I don’t suppose you forgot because you were distracted. No, it was on purpose.

Your brain wanted to get rid of it, because it was a mistake, in your eyes, and so it did. You put the day you banned me from caring into a small wooden box and threw it in the ocean rumbling in your head. You looked away and suddenly it wasn’t there.

“What is this?” I ask you numbly, you avoid my gaze. I think you’re ashamed.

“An official document,” your answer is dry, efficient. You’re not playing dumb; you just don’t want to get me riled up. I never thought I see the day you flush. You ARE embarrassed.

An official document, a piece of bloody paper that would give me the right to call you a father. This is how you’re doing it then?

I think I’m mad at you. No, I AM mad at you. Why did you make me go by those rules if you were going to bloody break them yourself? You gave yourself the right to do so by disparaging your own words because you found I was abused as child. Just because I’m not James Potter and we’re too much alike, you and I, actually, maybe it has more to do with the fact that I remind you of your dead best friend. Is that it? Am I Lily? Or is this worthless piece of paper your way of making it right for her?

Even so, it doesn’t give you the right to ignore your own oaths and promises to me. You do that a lot more than you realize Sev.
It doesn’t give you the right to decide something this huge, just weeks, WEEKS, before I die.

Go to hell, Severus Snape. Go. To. Fucking. Hell.

***

We went camping at four in the morning.

I’m not kidding, the potion master bundled me up in the make shift nest in the backseat and started driving like a man with a plan. Which he did have apparently two hours after midnight in the witching hour. I was too sleepy to care about his ramblings, so I tuned him out after he mentioned something about Dean.

Dean? The guy who slept in a dorm with me was coming along to camp with us, apparently. He and Annie the goat. I wish I could take Ron and ‘Mione with us too.

Like a mad man, Severus drove twenty minute to a Tesco Superstore and emptied their camping accessories section into his cart. I swear that man has no idea how to shop, he just buys everything he thinks he might need and because he has a ridiculous amount of money, nothing’s stopping him, like the clothes he bought me. He should have given all his money to me. I would have organized our whole trip with a seventy pounds budget with enough to spare.

Well in his defense, he didn’t buy EVERYTHING in the camping accessory section this time; I think he left the electric pumps and the water bottles or anything that was battery related. Good for him, that’s an improvement. I still have that winter jacket he got me from a thrift store, and I’m not even making it past July. His logic defies me.

Since I was asleep, and couldn’t contain his buying spree, instead of sleeping bags, I have an airbed…and the sleeping bags, he got ‘in case of emergencies’. I didn’t know what he meant by that, unless he was going to do me in and use it as a body bag, I didn’t see an emergency occurring any time soon.

Surprisingly enough, Severus was very moderate with the food he got, probably because of my fragile digestive system. He only got ONE bag of marshmallows. Something we’d both come to regret. Honestly, Severus thought of buying an airbed AND sleeping bags, but he didn’t think of buying more than one bag of Marshmallows. That man.

He got us some hot dogs, soft drinks, fruit yogurt for me, potatoes too with some bread, deli meat, veggies, and that was it. Severus paid in cash, carried his ginormous shopping bags all the way to the car and dumped them in the trunk, got in and started driving again in fifteen minutes.
All while I was asleep, snoring away and Annie was eating her way through the car seat.

I woke up on my airbed, in a tent, in the forest of Dean at the crack of dawn. I went to sleep in my fort in some muggle house two blokes away from my childhood home and then woke up alone in a tent.

I was sure I was either hallucinating, or I was dead.

Annie was there too, back into a goat, nibbling on my hair.

As gently as I could, I batted her face away from my head and tried to get up. Our tent was roomy, big enough to have space for the airbed that I was lying on and for Annie to roam around and scream her head off as she gnawed at this and that. I cringed as I noticed a chunk of my hair still dangling from her mouth. I knew I needed to do something about the hair soon.

Wincing, I threw an arm over my face to block that cruel stream of sunshine shining in through the small crack of the entrance. My ears sharpened, registering the sound of wildlife coming from the outside, an occasional chirping, crickets, at this ungodly hour, and something crackling.

The smell of burnt wood and sizzling kindle indicated a fire already going underway. It wasn’t cold. My feet were socked and toasty warm under a familiar black wool blanket and I had never felt more comfortable in my life, never warmer. I liked being this cozy, this change of pace, and for once, no stomach cramps.

This was nice. I allowed the thought to squirm its way into my head, my fingers fiddled with the fibers sticking out from the wool. The wool blanket was the same one from the house. My clothes were different though. I had my black sweater on, no jeans, just my pajama pants and some socks, no shoes.

My hand roamed down to the ground in search for my glasses, while Annie circled the tent with unwarranted enthusiasm one required at sunrise. Her legs slammed into my hand a couple of times, and a sinking feeling told me that my glasses had no chance of survival under Annie’s wandering hooves if she has been here as long as I had been unconscious.

The goat nudged her nose into my hand apologetically and I petted her head, deciding to give up on the glasses for now. I needed to get out of here.
I planned it out in my head for a few seconds, imagined myself peeling the wool blanket off my body inch by inch, exposing it to the morning chill, and then the absurd effort I would have to put into pushing myself to my feet and avoid crashing into an overexcited baby goat that was set on trampling something.

The urge to just roll over and drift away was strong, too strong, and I almost gave in, but the nagging voice in my head, the paranoia, wasn’t letting me seat on the idea for too long. I had just woken in a strange environment, alone (not really, Annie was there), and with Severus nowhere in sight.
I chose to use my famous strategy, and rip the band-aid off by kicking the wool away in one drastic move that excited Annie into jumping headfirst into my chest and knocking the air out of my lungs.

“Oomph!” Annie agreed and brought her hooves down on my stomach to balance herself. Suddenly shivering, gasping, and trying to push a goat off my body, I felt overwhelmed and cranky.

“I liked you better when you were a mouse,” I sulked at Annie as I push her off to alleviate the heavy weight on my stomach.

I don’t pause as I get out of the tent and Annie trails after me. The lack of shoes wasn’t even registered in my head once I saw the scene laid out before my eyes. Trees. Bloody. Everywhere.

I was in a forest. Great. I think I knew that already, normal people wouldn’t camp somewhere that didn’t have some sort of wildlife to offer in return. No one would hear me scream, or beg for my life in here. I was alone. Some little memory in the back of my mind twitched.

There was a thing that I heard Hermione say a long time ago, something about trees falling.

-We were sitting in the common room, just the three of us, it was late, and most students were knocked out already, seventh year Jude Smith, the poor sod had fallen asleep on the stairs, and no one else dared to occupy the common room. Just us, and Jude Smith who was napping off an existential crisis were there that night.

I couldn’t sleep, and instead of acting like normal, functioning people on a school night, my friends, they stayed in the common room with me. Hermione had a tome in her hands, she was cross-legged on the floor, her back was leaning against the couch, and her hair was pouring down around the pages and obscuring her face. Ron and I were just lounging on the couch, mildly arguing about…something that I cannot recall. Probably about Jude.

“If a tree falls in a forest, and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” she suddenly said, looking over her shoulder at us.

We stared at her. “Hermione what on earth are you talking about?”

“Just some light reading,” she shrugged at Ron’s bewildered question. “Now answer the question you guys! Does it make a sound?”
‘Light reading?’ Ron mouthed incredulously, his eyes wide. I stifled a chuckle.

“The tree, does it make a sound?”

“Shouldn’t it?” Ron asked her slowly, his eyes were weary. Hermione rolled her eyes at him.

“I’m reading ‘A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge’ and it asks whether the question is valid in the first place. Interesting isn’t it?”

Ron called it stupid, and Hermione fumed at him. “If something makes a sound, then it just does. It doesn’t matter if you’re there to hear it.” Ron told her hotly.

“You don’t need people all around you gawking with their thumbs up their arses while you’re ‘falling’ ” he made air quotes with his fingers. “ It’s like when you die, that’s it. Being alone while it happens doesn’t make you undead.”

Hermione huffed at him. “It’s more than that!” she looked at me for help and I shrugged. It was too late for their shit. And I never took sides. They should have asked Jude about it, I’m sure he would have been happy to have a say.

(I’m not nearly as subtle about this as I should have been, it’s too late for Jude Smith, but anyone reading this needs to make a difference by lightening the level of pressure N.E.W.T exams put on poor students,)

I think I understood what she meant now. It didn’t matter whether I fell screaming, or mute. If I’m standing alone in the middle of a forest where no one can ever hear me, it won’t change the fact that I died. I would still be very much dead, that is true and Ron was somewhat right, but the fact is…it’s not about the tree at all.

The question didn’t ask whether the tree made a sound in the first place, though it might seem that it is at first glance. The tree makes a sound, just because.

If a tree falls it makes a sound, but the truly wretched thing about it, is that, no one is around to hear that sound and respond to it. If I started screaming at the top of my lungs, right in that second, then I haven’t made any sound at all. Because, virtually I was only real in my own eyes, and no one else’s.

The question is “If you don’t see something, was that thing ever real to YOU?”

My body involuntarily shuddered at my own thoughts. Questioning reality wasn’t bound to be pleasant in the state that I was, my brain barely needed stimulation to let my imagination run wild.

I banished the memory-and Hermione, completely from my mind, opting to observe my surrendering quietly until someone came for me.
I wasn’t completely as helpless as I thought, though, my trunk and some bags were just near the entrance, and there was a fire going, sending a thin trail of smoke up into the canopy of leaves, Annie sped past me into the woods but didn’t wander far.

She looked as baffled as I was, her body kept moving in wide circles and her head was upward, she was probably thinking the same thing that I was; “look at this green shit all around us!”

But for some reason, the only view she could really appreciate was the leaves above. What I saw, was myself at the age of eleven, paired off with an arrogant little shit with a pointy chin to wander into the woods, in the middle of the night, and almost get killed. The resemblance was startling.
I had no idea how I ended up here. Obviously, I wasn’t here against my will. I’ve been kidnapped before; they don’t usually leave you unrestrained in a tent with an airbed in a blanket burrito, with all your shit lying outside.

I was rounding the tent and squinting my eyes at a moving creature squirming on my toe when my brain caught up and things finally clicked. Two things came to me simultaneously.

First, was to shriek my head off, because THERE WAS SOMETHING ON MY FOOT! The thing was the hugest ant I have seen in my life. A flying ant, or something of the sort, it had WINGS! Hastily, I flailed my foot to get it off me, the ant was sent flying into the wilderness and I warily tip toed back into the tent, my body reeling and my foot still itching by the sensation.

The other thing was a passing memory of Severus bundling me up and shoving me into the car last night, his back illuminated by the orange tinged lights in the roads, each passing in a blur and lightening Severus, the man driving in silence.

So he had brought me here, I just had to wait for him to come back.

Gathering my knees to my chest, I rested my forehead against them and closed my eyes, listening to Annie’s mad drivel getting closer to me, as the goat herself lightly crashed into my hip in her excitement, her body titled me to one side. I winced, that was going to leave a bruise.

The grass rustled and the verdant forest floor with all its small twigs, and dried leaves and disgusting insects seemed to be breathing with me. The abundance of LIFE in capital letters was so vivid around me, the small sounds, the trees creaking like old men with noisy bones, and birds that were screaming without a care in the world.

The intensity of the sound almost made me miss the sound of approaching steps trudging on the grass. I looked up at Severus’s blurry figure closing on me, the man’s hair neatly tied at the nape of his neck, he had his robe shirt on but no robes, black attire. The green light that bounced off the foliage emphasized the obvious contrast. The man was so dark and brooding, and the forest was so light and green.

It was as if even the trees were taken a back at the potion master’s presence within them.

As Severus got closer to hearing range, I stood, jostling Annie who had also gotten sight of the man, she raced past me to welcome him. Severus deftly ignored the excited goat and raised his eyebrows at me.

I was surprised at how well I could gauge the details on his face without my glasses. Huh.

“No greetings from you?” the man asked dryly, and I just stared at him.

“Where are we?” I asked and Severus looked at the fire merrily burning away, his brows furrowed as though contemplating something and then he turned to me. He was surprised that I looked affronted, his weariness alerted me, was I supposed to know where we were? Had I forgotten something?
The potion master spread his arms, gesturing at the trees and the tent with raised eyebrows. “Camping, evidently.”

“You need to stop making me wake up in strange places you know,” I told him. “It’s getting old.”

“Noted,” he grunted, crouching to inspect the plastic bags near my trunk. He reached and pulled out a small strawberry yogurt with a plastic spoon. He offered both to me. “Breakfast?”

I took the yogurt. “Where were you?”

“If you must know,” Sev drawled as he got up. “The bathroom.”

“Oh.” That made sense.

“Which reminds me,” he paused to open his own melon yogurt. The plastic spoon in his mouth as he peeled the lid off. “If you needed to relieve yourself don’t get any further than fifty steps from the tent, the bushes will be efficient.” He immediately dug in, ignoring the sudden look of horror dawning on my face.

“Wait the bushes?” my voice was high pitched. “I need to pee in the bushes?”

“Well seeing as we’re in a forest,” the sarcasm in his voice was thicker than the yogurt. “Away from any kind of population or human contact, I’d say yes.”

This isn’t how I imagined camping, not at all. I don’t know how something as simple as a bathroom break and the amount of…creatures around us had never occurred to me before whilst writing down this wish. Dudley and Ron had made it sound so simple and pleasant. I was only left with flying ants, no bathroom, and an existential crisis. And I knew exactly who to blame.

“But when we camped with the Weasleys we had like a bathroom, and a kitchen-.” That was my initial inspiration, the first image that came to my mind when I thought of camping, not this.

“Our tent isn’t the magical kind, for obvious reasons.” Severus easily pointed out, looking very invested in his breakfast. Grudgingly, I tore the lid off my strawberry nightmare treat and crammed a mouthful in my mouth.

I winced at the taste. This was what happened when people froze cough syrup with milk and sold it off as strawberry. I was just about to exchange mine with Severus’ more delicious looking grub when the man hummed as if remembering something.

“Also stay away from the poison ivy.”

My throat tightened. “Poison ivy?”

There was POISON IVY? The cough syrup felt like starch in my throat.

The potion master nodded, mistaking my dismay with confusion. “If your hand itches, don’t touch any sensitive body parts with it Potter, that’s all I’m asking.” Well guess who was going to hold in their pee for the next three days. Me. That’s who, obviously. I had brain cancer, I wasn’t asking for any more of Mother Nature’s nastiness, thank you very much.

Only if I could have though. Holding my bladder together for three days was a deed my body wasn’t prepared for, and now that I’ve experienced peeing in nature, I have to say, as gross as it sounds, it’s not that bad, as peeing goes in general.

“I think Annie broke my glasses,” I said after a bout of silence. “She was very…enthusiastic when I woke up.”

Shaking his head, Severus reached into his pocket with one hand. “I have your glasses, here.”

Then, he threw a suspicious glance at Annie, who was amusing herself by munching on the grass. “I wouldn’t trust that goat with anything.”
He was hilarious.

Ah, my vision finally cleared as I slipped the glasses on, everything coming into perfect detail. Including the animosity in Severus’s eyes that were fixated on Annie. “Why was she in the tent with me then?”

The man shrugged. “I’m going to take a wild guess and say she chewed her way out of the rope,” he ate his last mouthful of yogurt. “I should have known better.”

“Rope?”

“Am I speaking gibberish? Stop repeating-ugh,” his eyes closed on their own accord, and Severus heaved a dramatic sigh.

“Yes.” He drawled slowly. “Rope. I thought the hiking ropes held more resistance than average ones, alas that thing can probably chew through metal.” At my continued confusion, the man heaved another sigh. “I tied her to the back of the tent.” The confession, much to my relief, was tinged with a tiny amount of guilt.

“She could have wandered off!”

“I was hoping that she would actually, but she didn’t.” Severus admitted once again with disappointment. We both watched Annie chasing a ladybug with over exaggerated moves. I wanted to feel angry, or at least some level of contempt at Severus, but honestly, all I could muster up was amusement.
Never in my life, had I seen the day, when I wouldn’t feel any revulsion or anger towards the man sitting next to me, idly gobbling on melon yogurt and hating on goats.

When I said nothing, Severus huffed. He stood and bagged his empty breakfast utensils. I looked at him fuss, feeling somewhat baffled at the scene. It was so strange, that after all this time I still wasn’t used to Severus doing normal stuff.

Every once in a while, I looked at the man, and all I saw was the cranky potion master, dressed all in black, dramatic robes, and a permanent sneer on his face, then the man would go and do something like bagging his trash and then suddenly…all I saw was SEVERUS.

Two different people. Two different life times. Maybe even two different versions of me.

When I looked up, Annie was still going after the bug, and with a loud inhumane squeal (which was rather the point in her being a goat) she face planted on the ground.

Severus and I both stared at her. “That goat is absurdly smart.”

I snickered. “Yeah,” I drawled, cocking my head back at him as Annie struggled to get upright. “Smart.”

I stood, deciding that the abomination in my hand would rather speed up my death instead of reducing hunger. I dumped the whole yogurt into Severus’s make shift bin. By then, Severus was up and about, shifting my trunk and the food bags back into the tent.

“Why didn’t you let her stay as a mouse?” I asked him.

The man sneered for the first time that day. “Because searching for a needle in a stack of hay is harder than finding a goat in that stack.”

“What-.”

His shoulders slumped just a fraction. I could tell it was from the frustration, and probably something akin to resignation. “I’m not going to ruin our whole trip trying to find that blasted thing as a mouse in a forest this vast, since you won’t let it stay lost for long. I’m not senseless. Finding her as a goat, when she wanders off-.”

“If-,”

“Yes,” he rolled his eyes. “IF she happened to wander off is easier, and more productive.”

“We could put her on a leash?”

Sev stared at me. “Did you see the rope she chewed through? That rope can hold more than you and I weight combined.”

“She didn’t want to be leashed anyways, right Annie?” the goat, once again rammed into my legs in her excitement, this time with a loud verbal response.

“BAAA!”

I suppose she really didn’t want to be leashed then. I wondered if she was the equivalent of a small child. Maybe that was why parents weren’t exactly hyped up about having kids lately. If I had a tiny, screaming, messy human glued to me twenty-four seven, I wouldn’t be too pleased either.
The thought made me pause, my hand stilled on Annie’s head, and she bleated, wondering why the stroking had stopped so abruptly. Severus was too busy to glare at Annie to notice the dark look falling over my face.

Children.

I’ll never have children.

I wouldn’t have to worry about screaming messy babies, because in four months, I wouldn’t exist, and with that sad finale, the Potter line, would cease to exist. That thought actually made me sad, the thought of not having children. Not only I would never experience the love of a parent, I wouldn’t be able give that love to another human being.

What a lonely existence. I hated being a lonely tree.

The thought passed faster than a lightning, and fortunately, I was easy to recover. My hand clutched Annie’s neck in a tight grip and Severus’s glare darkened even more. “Mark my words Potter,” he began forebodingly. “One night, she’s going to come for our blood, and it’s going to be the last thing we see, and then I would haunt your ghost for eternity because of that.”

I couldn’t resist the eye-roll. “Why do you hate the goat so much? Isn’t she adorable?”

“Her screech will haunt our nightmares,”

I started ushering Annie away, smiling in spite of myself. “I think you’re being dramatic,”

“Her eyes are like two lines straight out of the depths of Hades,”

Oh. “Oh so you’re scared of her.”

The man ignored me, carrying on. “And it would bash your head in with her hooves.”

“She’s just a goat,” I wondered what the story about that goat kebab in Greece was really about. Clearly, the potion master was leaving out more than I originally thought.

“She doesn’t scream like one,”

I knew what he was worried about, he was worried he’d wake up in the same exact fashion as I, with a goat munching on my hair, and trampling him underfoot in his sleep. I would have been fine; I was the one with the airbed. Severus however…

“She didn’t stay in the leash,” I pointed out weakly, delight coursing in my veins.

“She will not sleep in the tent with us.”

I feigned a sigh. “Alright then, sorry Annie, seems like you’re not sleeping in the tent with us,”

Annie hung her head. “Yeah I know,” I shrugged at her. “I did my best.”