Chapter Text
Wide eyed, a child peeked through the thorny bushes shielding a surprisingly well lit clearing that nearly mirrored the moon's glow.
The sight shimmered with the haze of a dream, drenched in the intoxicating perfume of roses.
One after the other, strange people drifted by, arms and legs elegantly long and mostly uncovered, hair moving as if underwater. They were dancing and intertwining in shadow and light.
Flocks of cheerful little bugs surrounded them, surging and waving, dancing and singing in voices ringing like silver bells.
Laughter rippled through the night and turned into music in just a few notes.
It was a breathtakingly beautiful spectacle. A great garden ball, bathed in moonlight, attended by creatures made of pure joy.
The girl took fast breaths of rose-tinted air and decided that it looked like the greatest merriment, one she could not possibly bear to miss being part of for a single second more.
She took a step forward, pushing through the thorny bushes with already bleeding hands, her feet sinking into soft moss.
And another. And another. And another.
Footprints, left behind by small feet, filled with fresh moss. No trace left behind.
Alhena had not wanted to go this far past the first trees at all. Not at all, no. But it was exciting to finally find a place she could explore on her own and technically the forest fell within the broad boundaries of Elmwood Hall's lands.
She had not left the grounds and therefore all would be well. Fally would be cross with her for coming back after nightfall, but she could certainly always be pacified by the promise of spending some time with her in the music room or library.
Fally had been her friend for years, exploring the manor alongside her. The particularly small house elf had shown her many secrets the old estate held. No secret room had been left slumbering in darkness.
They had even found the old ritual rooms beneath the wine cellars. On a rainy day she remembered well. As the one day her father had had a smile on his lips whilst he looked at her, talking kindly about all kinds of things in the evening hours, her brothers occupied otherwise with the exciting discovery.
She cherished the memory of something given to her that was usually granted to the twins alone. Her father was an important man with little time on his hands and the boys would inherit all he had built for them one day.
It left Alhena a bit lonely most of the time.
Just as Fally was her friend, she was also her parents' watchful eye, and that fact dampened the fun somewhat.
So what else was there to do but explore Elmwood Hall's grounds? Somewhere the house elf would hesitate to follow, tightly bound to the manor and used to remain indoors.
Alhena took to exploring outside the paths she had followed through the gardens in early childhood "like a plimpy takes to water", as her dear aunt Callidora used to say.
First, she learned all secrets the terraces held, with their bubbling fountains, moving statues and colourful water lilies.
She had moved on after tiring of the attempt to catch one of the frogs to answer the question if they changed colours when hopping from flower to flower or if the flowers themselves did so.
She would have caught one, if it weren't for the young crow that had mimicked her attempts and drove the frogs away even quicker. The impudent bird had laughed at her defeat and clacked with his beak when she tried to shoo it away.
The days spent in the herber were mostly uneventful yet pleasant in their own way.
Following the best scents was difficult in the tightly knit structure of three combined herb gardens. Three very different generations of gardeners produced temperamental, petulant plants when their work was put together without much thought.
It had taken a lot of coddling and cooing to enjoy the whole range of scents the garden had to offer. From spicy dittany to sweet lavender, to a strangely citrusy thyme, to the sharpest notes of wormwood, hinting strongly at the bitterness of its taste. Once the herbs presented their scents in union, they formed a heady ballett of aromas.
Alhena was quite proud of the successful bout of diplomacy, it assured her that she would have no difficulties in herbology classes once she followed her brothers to attend Hogwarts.
Her parents had not listened to a word she spoke at the dinner table when she had tried to gloat like the twins sometimes did.
Before crossing over to the orchard, Alhena had planned to inspect a few newly dug gnome burrows near the vegetable patches. One growl and a flash of sharp teeth were all it took for her to decide against further interaction with the savage creatures.
This time it was two crows laughing at her, high in the branches of a nearby oak, but at least not the one that had frightened all the frogs away.
The orchard failed to pique her interest any more than the gnomes had. Apples, plums and cherries were not ripe enough to pluck yet and the gardeners had surrounded all the bushes heavy with berries with protective spells meant to prevent foraging by magical pests.
Sadly, it also prevented the hands of hungry little girls from reaching the sweet reward she'd intended to receive for dealing with the gnomes' rudeness.
Finally, weeks after her decision to explore the grounds properly, Alhena entered the vast rose garden, bordered and intersected by imposing hedges.
The roses were proud plants, easily won over by detailed compliments.
They revealed their scents a lot quicker than the herber's plants and were deeply involved in a cut-stem, intense competition of beauty. Every visitor was a new judge and the girl took it as seriously as she could and took the time to inspect each plant closely to find interesting colours, curious scents and the bushes with the longest spikes.
She had even brought a chattering measure stick the second day of judging, just to promptly lose the tool in the depth of the garden. Alhena was half convinced it had been the crows.
They had mocked her again, three this time, though she had to admit that these three birds matched the rose garden in a way, with their beautifully glossy feathers. She told them so and they had been gentler after. Watching more, laughing less.
It took a long time to reach out to all roses. The last day, she had decreed, would decide which rose would be pronounced superiour.
After dropping all without adequate length of spikes or definition of colour from the lists, most of the hedge roses, one unruly floribunda rose, a misplaced hollyhock and a climbing rose that kept tripping her, were left sulking.
To honour her success with the herber, Alhena concentrated most on scents to choose the best.
She walked from rose to rose for hours in the late afternoon sun and enjoyed the sweet wind, teeming with magic. When the sun began to sink, little lightning bugs filled the air, attracted by the heavy fragrance of hundreds of competing rose bushes.
Thus, she did not notice at first, when she reached the far end of the garden. The dark shadows, cast by overhanging trees by day, had vanished into the night, leaving it just as bright as the rest of the garden now, with lightning bugs and moonlight guiding her way.
Alhena could have sworn that there had been a meadow between the last hedge and the forest, but as she stepped from a hidden, rose-clad tunnel that had been cleverly disguised by the hedges, there was no meadow. Only a beautiful forest with its paths of soft moss, tall trees and an abundance of flowers.
The rose garden had grown into the forest, the flowers' sweet scent even richer here, with roses in full bloom in near darkness.
The thought of Fally scolding her, even if she turned back to the manor right now, only intensified the urge to continue her search for the sweetest rose.
Keeping her hands stretched out, Alhena felt the soft petals and wiry stems beneath her fingertips, and the rough bark of the trees, growing thicker the deeper she wandered into the forest.
Strangely, the moonlight shone in a way that seemed unhindered by the dense treetops.
Stronger and stronger the scent of roses got, until it was all she could smell, all she could taste, all she could think about.
It had been instinctual, to crouch in front of another thorny bush, to lean closer to another arrangement of fragrant blossoms.
The sight that met her eyes, as she became aware of the peals of laughter, left her enchanted.
Through loose leaves and spindly stems, a wide clearing had taken shape, filled with wonder.
Morning light filtered through leaves, never quite reaching the mossy forest floor stretching beyond Elmwood Hall's lands.
The moss did not care. It was sated, soaked with blood, nourished by flesh.
Scattered bones lay beyond its reach, in a clearing stripped completely of life and surrounded by scraggly hawthorn bushes.
Death turned the roses into ash with the ascend of the sun. A warm summer wind scattered the ashes over the forest and Elmwood Hall's silent grounds.