Tales From Hogwarts: The Forbidden Forest Fallacy

"Lead the way, I guess." Eva lit her own wand and started to walk with Alex, hoping to find a Centaur or an equally helpful creature in the Forest.

After walking for a couple of minutes, Alex began to hear something. "Keep quiet," he whispered to Eva as he creeped with her to the source of the noise. They soon saw a figure hunched over something, making sucking noises. The thing it was hunched over gave a moan, and Alex could just make out the green of her Slytherin colors. A Vampire was feeding on one of the Slytherin pranksters, they must have come to see what the two of them would do. Now one was pretty much a goner, he and Eva would probably be next.

"W-W-What do we do?" she whispered frantically to Alex, her mind running over their recent course about Vampires in DADA, trying to remember some sort of weakness or strategy they could use against the Vampire.

"I, I can't recall," Alex replied in a voice barely audible. "Vampires don't usually attack wizards and witches, they are beings like us." Maybe they were hunting something, and all of them had ended up there by mistake, the vampire too hungry to care. "S-sh-should we help," he asked.

"She might be a Slytherine, but we can't leave her to this horror!" Eva whispered back fiercely. She slowly pointed her wand at the Vampire's back.

"We both stun the thing on the count of three, ok?" she said, trying to sound more brave than she felt.

"Fine," Alex answered. Pointing his own wand at the Vampire, he quietly counted down, "1, 2, 3!" "Stupefy," he cast the stunning spell toward the Vampire, hoping that it would be enough.

"Stupefy!" Eva cast at the same time, and watched as both of their spells slammed into the back of the crouching Vampire, sending him flying into the air, briefly, before he crashed into the ground. After it did not stir for a few seconds, Eva quickly rushed to the Slytherine girl. At this point she was very pale, and barely conscious.

"She's lost a lot of blood....Alex, do you know any spells that might help her?" Eva asked, racking her own brain for some sort of spell that might help the poor girl recover.

"Uh... one, I don't know anything that can heal a vampire bite but I can at least bandage her wound until she gets medical help," Alex quickly said. "Ferula," he cast and a bandage wrapped around her wound. "Hopefully that will help. Tergeo." The excess blood was cleared from the girl, and Alex sighed. "That should keep more beasts from sniffing out the blood."

Eva gave a sigh of relief, but soon her gaze went back to the apparently unconscious Vampire. She stared at it uneasily.

"W-What do we do with....that thing?" she asked, wondering if perhaps they ought to kill the Vampire. Or at least try to bind it or something.

"We can't leave him... or her," Alex said, looking at the vampire. "I guess we bring them with us, we can each levitate one. Incarcerous," he cast the spell to bind the vampire in ropes. "Wingardium Leviosa." The bound vampire rose into the air, as Alex tried breathing calmly. "When we get back to the castle, we can hand the vampire off to the teachers, they should know what to do."

"But what if the barrier's still up?" Eva inquired, frowning at the thought. "If it is, it could be up for hours before whatever put up the Wards takes it down, if it does at all...."

"Well, we'll have to find whatever it is, but we still can't leave these two here," Alex said. "The vampire might wake up and follow us, or might be killed by something else in the forest. We might lose an opportunity to stop whatever's happening in the future."

"Maybe we could..." Eva trailed off as she felt the ground shaking, and then violently rattling as trees began to be uprooted and fell around them.

"An earthquake? Again?!" Eva cried, before stumbling to the ground as she lost her footing.

"So it wasn't us just making out and upsetting the universe," Alex said, a secret fear he'd had since the first rumble. He maintained balance but the shaking made him jerk the vampire around in the air.

All at once, the quaking stopped, and an uneasy peace settled into the forest floor. Silence filled the Forest, until the shaking came back with a vengeance, and a flash of magical light enveloped the Forest. When the dust cleared, Eva, the unconscious Slytherine girl, and Alex were nowhere in sight.

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Eva blinked as she suddenly found herself outside of the Forbidden Forest. She looked around in confusion, and noticed that....she was back in the Room of Requirement, on the same heart-shaped bed from a few days ago. And she was on top of Alex again, and topless, though that was less concerning in Eva's opinion.

"....What the bloody hell just happened?" Eva mumbled, more to herself than to Alex.

"I'm not sure, but, well... you should probably put your clothes back on," Alex said, blushing and looking away from her. It wasn't that he wasn't disoriented and confused about what just happened, but now was not the time for the position they were in. At least they weren't trapped in the forest anymore.

Eva blinked and took full notice of the state of her undress. She blushed a little, but tried to cover it up with a smile.

"Distracted by my beauty, are you?" she teased, leaning in close to Alex. It probably wasn't the time, given what had just happened, but on Eva's part, she was just trying to cope with what had just occurred. So many things didn't make sense, and if just for a few moments, she wanted to ignore it.

Magic could be so confusing, sometimes....

"Do you really want to right now," Alex asked, looking up to her face. "Because I don't. I still see the vampire, I see that Slytherin girl." He closed his eyes and shuddered, haunted by the experience. "Who knows where they are now anyway? She might still be dieing."

"I suppose you're right," Eva sighed, and reached over to grab her bra. "Still...."

The young witch trailed off, and looked around the room again, as something clicked in her mind. After a minute of consideration, she finally voiced her thoughts.

"Alex....the last time we were in this room was....what, two, three days ago? Do you think that, maybe, we were....sent back in time?"

"That's about as likely as anything else I can think of," Alex said. "By which I mean, no possible way. Time travel isn't possible with Time Turners, and after they all got smashed over a decade ago I don't know if there are any more."

"Considering there are all kinds of forbidden magic, it makes sense if time travel is one such thing." Eva argued. She slipped on her bra and her shirt a moment later.

"Well, if we want to see if we've been sent back in time, we may as well find out what day it is."

Alex was going to argue the point some more but decided the easiest way to decide was to do as Eva suggested and seek out the date. "Alright, let's go see if we were sent back in time or not," he said, adding airquotes to further emphasize how ridiculous he thought the idea.

"Fine with me." Eva got off of Alex and the bed and started to go to the Room's exit, but paused mid-step.

"So....who do we ask? Hogwarts doesn't really have a calendar or anything, I think....do we ask the first person we see?" she asked thoughtfully.

"Did you turn in any homework yesterday," Alex asked. "If so, then you can ask someone in your class if it is still due tomorrow. If they say yes, we've time traveled. If they look at you like you're crazy, all's well."

"Better yet...." Eva paused in thought as she considered what to say.

"If we have gone back in time, then it stands to reason that the homework I turned into Charms yesterday would still be in my dorm room. So I should go check it out? Simple as that, I think."