#6 | Into the Woods

Tom found himself wandering off the path, though not too far that he was worried for his safety, as he sought out the primpears. Luckily he didn't have to search too terribly long- their bright colors stood out against the deep and luscious green of the tree leaves and brown of the bark and branches. He spotted a few, but most of them looked not ripe enough and all of them were way high up.

He considered how he would get up to them. Would he climb the tree? That would have been the only option if he were a muggle, but he wasn't. He had magic available to him. So what were his options there? He'd be able to reach the fruit easily with a broom. But he couldn't go back to the pitch and interrupt Amara and extinguish the good will he was building with her, and he couldn't go back to his dorm and grab his broom because he was already right here...

A small sound just barely audible snapped him out of his thoughts. What was it? It just barely broke the stillness of the forest. Hmm... it sounded far away and not exactly intimidating, so he let it slip to the back burner of his mind as he formulated his plan to grab the fruit. Now that he'd made the Quidditch team, completing the potion kit was priority number 1.

Hmm... how to get them... only one thought came to mind, and it wasn't exactly fool proof. Could Tom cast a levitation charm on the fruit to pull one off a branch? Ideally the charm would be cast with enough force to rip the fruit from its branch and then he could control its descent down. If he was able to pull it and not control its descent, he could always cast a slowing charm to make sure the fruit didn't splatter on the ground.

He practiced his wand flick to try to make sure he was aiming his charm directly at the fruit, he didn't want to levitate something else by mistake. After two or three practice flicks he decided he might as well get on with it. "Wingardium Leviosa!" he cried out, almost convinced that this could work. 

Tom felt anticipation rise within him as the primpear began to react to his magic, but his hopes were soon crushed as he realized the stems were strong- like, way stronger than he would have thought possible for a tree. Must have something to do with magic... he considered his options. There were so few spells he really felt comfortable casting.

In the end he decided that the quickest and easiest way would be for him to suck it up and shimmy on up the tree. He began to make his way up through the branches, hugging the trunk of the tree most of the way up to make sure he didn't fall. He wasn't scared of heights most of the time, but most of the time he had a broom beneath his legs to stop him from falling... he just needed to make sure he didn't look down.

The climb up was slow and laborious. The risk averse part of Tom meant that he made absolutely certain he was secure on one branch before he began climbing up another. Most boys might have rocketed up the tree as fast as possible, but not Tom. He wouldn't have done it when he was young and he certainly wasn't going to do it now.

Finally he did achieve his goal and was able to grab at a primpear, finding it was much easier to grab it with his hands than try to pick it using magic. He noticed a few other ripened primpears that he potentially could have grabbed, but they would have required him to climb further out than he felt comfortable with. Not happening. He didn't mind doing a little extra searching to grab the last two ingredients for his kit if it meant he could climb down quicker.

The primpear shoved securely in his robe pocket, Tom cast his eyes back towards the ground and tried to plot out a course for how he was going to get down. As he was planning his route he spotted something strange on the ground- square in shape, almost the same shade as the dirt, but off. What was it? It looked like it was in roughly the same spot he'd heard that sound earlier.

His descent took the same length of time as his trip up, maybe even a bit longer as looking down at the ground was very unnerving for Tom. He didn't have his broom to latch on to, and the only thing separating him from the ground were these tree branches. Eventually he got to a point where he felt like if he fell off he wouldn't die or break anything, so he moved faster.

Eventually he made it to the ground and carefully walked towards the strange shape he'd identified from the tree. His hand held firmly on his wand- he didn't know if it was going to be something dangerous, but at Hogwarts it wasn't a bad idea to assume that anything unknown could kill you. He was really curious though and needed to know what he had heard and saw.

The box was plain and worn by the elements already, or maybe it had just been hastily put together and looked old for that reason. Either way, it was dirty. What had been its purpose? The torn fabric inside indicated it was some kind of bed, although it was the saddest excuse for a bed Tom had ever seen. Had a creature been abandoned in this box?

Immediately Tom began to forage through the bushes around him, trying to move carefully and calmly so he didn't scare off whatever had been in the box with his movements. He made soft cooing noises and spoke in a high pitched voice, telling whatever was out there that he was there to help. Tom felt certain that the noise he had heard earlier had been produced by the creature that had been in the box.

He intended to find it.

He heard a sound again and turned his head to the right, catching a glimpse of a cat's tail, though slower moving than Tom would have expected. Jack pot. Tom had always been a cat person; he hoped the one who'd been living in this box wasn't hurt or malnourished in any way.

He decided that there was no other course of action than to try to help it, or at least check on it. Maybe it was capable of taking care of itself and there was something Tom was missing. He knew that it was easier to get a cat to come to you on its own terms than to try and chase it down. Tom didn't want to scare it off further into the forest if it needed help.

Tom sat on the leaf covered ground not too far from where he'd seen the cat burrow in under a particularly thick bush. "Don't worry, little guy," Tom said to the cat in what he hoped was a soothing voice. "I'm here to help. Come on out, won't ya?" He traced in hand around in circles in the leaves in front of him and tapped his fingers rhythmically on the ground- maybe that would coax the cat out of its hiding place? 

The hiss at least confirmed to him that he was correct in his assumption- it was a cat that was hiding in the bush. That only strengthened his resolve being as he was such a strong cat lover. His parents had never let him own one when he was a kid but he'd always wanted one, and one of his friends from school had a cat at his house that Tom sometimes played with.

Big green eyes stared back at him and Tom couldn't see much else, but the fur seemed to be tangled at matted. Tom's finger drumming and hand swirling had seemingly caught the cat's attention, but that wasn't going to be enough to coax it out. The poor thing was probably traumatized from whatever it had endured.

What would motivate it to come out? The thing looked like it hadn't eaten in weeks, from what Tom could see of its hidden body. It was probably hungry. "Want some food?" he called out in that same high pitched sweet voice, realizing that he didn't even know what he would feed the cat. He felt around in his pockets and found a piece of bread he'd saved from lunch. 

Tom was pretty sure that bread wasn't part of a healthy diet for a cat, but he decided to give it a go anyway. "C'mon, hungry?" Tom waved the primpear slice at the cat, hoping to get a response.