the_debt_of_time

The silver string pulled and tugged violently again, and Mia followed it out of
Godric's Hollow, over countryside hills, small villages, and bigger cities, until it disappeared
into a small forest that did not look but felt familiar. The string pulled and tugged, and she
disappeared through the trees, following the sound of howling in the distance.
When she stopped, she found herself facing something she had seen before: two
large trees sat in an open area of woods across from a river.
One tree, an elderwood tree, stood tall and beautiful. Its only imperfection was a
petrified-looking horn embedded in the trunk.
The other tree was lush and beautiful—hawthorn if she was correct—and she felt
she had seen the tree before, somewhere in a book. But what book?
Torn between the images of her dream and the memories flooding through her of
ancient tomes and old textbooks, Mia's mind was split in two as her Animagus spirit
focused on the strange feeling of the hawthorn tree and why it was somehow important,
while her human mind thought back to the image of the other tree, horn embedded in the
trunk.
What was so important about this tree? For some reason, she thought of Harry and
Draco. She remembered seeing something in a book about trees long ago that she thought
was funny. One tree was hawthorn—the same wood of which Draco's wand had been
made; the same wand that would one day become famous for destroying Voldemort. Then
there had been the horn of a hart stuck in the trunk of the first tree, the elderwood tree. A
hart—or stag—which, at the time, she associated with Harry.
Then she remembered.
The first tree, the elderwood tree with the horn in the trunk, was famous in the
Muggle world. Called the Harthorn Tree because of the horn, she had once seen the image
of it in a Muggle book which had stated the tree was named after a stag that had injured
itself during a hunt, impaling the tree with its antler while being chased by a greyhound
over a treacherous river nearby. The second tree was famous too, and the name of it was
on the tip of her tongue.
Her mind closed briefly as she felt another tug on the silver string pulling her right
between the two trees where her senses were overwhelmed with the smell of blood and
sweat, but there was the lingering scent of parchment and grass as well.
Moony!