Chapter Text
No one in Beacon Hills, not even the Hale Pack or the Druids who lived in the town before Alan Deaton, knew that the magical tree stump in the middle of the Beacon Hills National Reserve on the outskirts of the town came from an old forest in what is now Northern Ireland, much less said magical tree stump had a twin that was planted, cultivated and cut in the middle of said forest in Northern Ireland.
This, this information that has been forgotten and lost in the annals of time and history, is extremely important.
It's important because there's an ignited Spark bleeding in the Nemeton of Beacon Hills.
They run, the trees a green-brown-black blur around them as huge paws the size of dinner plates left deep pawprints on the organic matter on the ground. The black fur was barely visible, but the same couldn't be said for the fragile load he carried on his back, the grimy white denim jacket with the patch of red flowers on the back almost a shining beacon for their pursuers.
Hermione moaned, aching from the broken bones in her side, the product of a lucky curse of the Snatchers.
"You should have taken the bag and Horcrux and Apparated without me." Mutters the girl, barely able to contain a cry of pain as the jolt of the direwolf leaping over a fallen log jolted her wounds. "I'm nothing but the dead weight you should have left behind."
The wolf growls and shoots her a sharp green glance over his shoulder before returning his attention to the bumpy path between the ever-larger and darker trees.
"You know I'm right." She says, pressing her fingers weakly into the thick fur of his neck. She only remained on his back thanks to a quick glue spell and fervent prayers. "I can't Apparate with my ribs like this without cramping even with you helping me, Harry. You should have left me and moved on."
This time he just wiggles one ear, dismissing her arguments completely before dodging a familiar flash of green light that shattered a tree trunk and dropped a flurry of wood chips, pine needles, and leaves all over them. Annoyed, the direwolf growled deep in his chest and accelerated, cords of muscles tensing and straining under Hermione as he darted through the trees, at that point more concerned with putting distance between them and their pursuers than being subtle.
Not even dead would he leave his friend – his litter sister in all but blood, his only pack now that Ron was gone for good – behind. He would rip out his own heart and put it at Voldemort's feet before even considering it.
"I think a bone just scratched my lung," says Hermione, sounding a little hysterical, and the wolf whimpers in concern for her. They needed to find a safe place fast, preferably before Hermione's condition worsened. And before one of them got hit by another curse, by the way. "Fuck. I fucking hate these shitty assholes."
Harry makes a growl of agreement deep in his throat, winding around a pair of spruce trees, barely hesitating for a second before sprinting into one of his fastest runs across the small clearing whose center was largely occupied by an enormous tree stump that it seemed to pulse with magic almost like a beating heart.
"THEY'RE HERE!" Yell one of the Snatchers who chased them from the sky with brooms, floating just above the treetops and shooting red sparks across the clearing. "HERE!"
Harry had no choice but to keep going, barely able to avoid the shower of spells and hexes that came not only from the Snatcher on the broom but also from the surrounding forest. Hermione did her best to shoot back, but they were sure to be captured or worse if Harry didn't get them out of there at once.
He leaped over the stump, his claws digging into the decaying wood for traction to leap forward, Hermione casting spells right and left and center as best she could now that they had the highest ground not caring if her injuries got worse.
One second, they're in a clearing deep in a forest, stepping on a magical tree stump because they were trying to run away while trying to avoid being shot.
Then there's the pretty familiar and very unpleasant feeling of navel tugging typical of portkeys, and then
The thing about Nemeton is: that they just naturally sprout and grow at a convergence of telluric currents – or ley lines for the layman. That is when an oak or a juniper, a beech or birch, a yew or a holly, a hawthorn or even a willow sprout in a vortex of magic – and this is much rarer than it sounds – this tree has the potential to become a Nemeton if the right ritual sacrifices are made.
And in the entire world, only four trees matched that description.
An ancient baobab tree in the middle of the Zimbabwean desert. A young ash tree in a tiny, unreachable valley between the Himalayan Mountains. And a pair of oaks, twins in every way as they have sprung from the same seed in the dark depths of a forest in the independent north of the UK.
And one day one of these twin buds was harvested and taken to the millennia-old sequoia forests of the interior of California, and planted in the absolute center of a vortex of telluric currents by the ancestors of the Hale of Beacon Hills and their Emissaries.
And as is always the case in packs with bloodlines as old as the Hale's, that little crucial nugget of information was forgotten sometime between one generation and the next, just as the ability to shapeshift between human and wolf was lost to all but the Alpha.
So it's really surprising that Stiles Stilinski of all people and being who and what he is, accidentally awakened both Nemetons at the same time Harry Potter was literally on top of one of them?
(The answer to that is no.)
Given everything he knows about bleeding wounds in areas with high blood flow to the extremities and severe blood loss, Stiles is pretty sure he should be freezing. I mean, a healthy adult male runs at about thirty-six degrees and a half, naturally warmed by the blood flow to his muscles the burning of body fat, and the consumption of glucose by the cells. The extremities – that is, feet and hands – are naturally cooler than the center of the body simply because they have less fat and are exposed to the environment, even with shoes and gloves. The torso runs hotter than the head because it's where the main accumulation of fat mass is and because it's where most of the internal organs are located. The temperature of the head is kept more or less stable thanks to the hair between the scalp and the environment, and the number of blood vessels ensures that the brain is always at the ideal temperature, not to mention the sweating whenever the body is too hot, or the fever when the body is too cold.
But when a serious injury occurs and more than a pint and a half of blood is lost – after all, the normal amount of blood in an adult male is six and a half pints or so –, the body begins to cool down because it can no longer produce heat without replacing lost blood.
So in conclusion: Stiles shouldn't even be cold, he should be dead because he's been bleeding from his wrists nailed with knives to that shitty tree stump for over two hours at the very least. Instead, he was almost melting from the feverish heat that started in his chest and spread to the rest of his body as if what was left of Stiles' blood inside his veins was gunpowder instead of a cluster of cell globules essential for his life.
Fucking hell, he doesn't even know if he's dying or not because his blood just keeps pouring into the Nemeton's roots and Stiles' body keeps getting hotter.
God, he just wants to get this shit over with and go home and hug his dad.
In front of him, Jennifer Blake finished mixing her last ingredients for the ritual.
"Very little left now, little Spark." Tells the Darach, running her fingers smeared with mountain ash mixed with her blood across Stiles' forehead and cheeks, drawing who knows what kind of runes on his fevered skin. "Just a little longer, and the power of the Nemeton will be mine to destroy Deucalion and his Alphas."
Then there's a tug on Stiles' wrists, and he whimpers as Jennifer's knives slice him open from the base of his hand to his elbows, severing his brachial arteries and causing impossibly more blood to flow.
That hurts. He just wants this to end now.
He just wants someone, anyone, to save him.
There's a snap in the back of Stiles' head like a stretched rubber band hitting the skin. The heat in Stiles' veins grows impossibly hotter, the air crackles with static, and the entire forest groans, as if an army of Ents had just awakened like in the 'Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers' movie.
There's the sound of heavy footsteps on the grass, the familiar growl of a very pissed-off werewolf, and then Jennifer is screaming.
The last thing Stiles sees before he passes out is green eyes glowing in the darkness.