After lunch, Sariah usually trudged up the pristine marble staircase to endure a double lesson of Professor Binns' imagining. The postponement of his History of Magic class was a blessing; his ghostly thin voice droned on endlessly like buzzing static. He was also more translucent than any other of the Hogwarts ghosts, as if he was in danger of fading to nothingness during each lesson. Eager to check up on her car, Sariah left lunch early. The sooner she left, the more time she'd have before her afternoon potions lesson.

Back in her dormitory, she slipped her powered down phone into her right robe pocket and patted her left one for reassurance that she hadn't lost her wand again. After gathering her dragon-skin gloves and a mismatched combination of brushes, shears, cloths, sandpaper, and sealant into a lightweight bucket, she set off outside the castle. Rather ironically, Sariah thought, glancing at the gloves that flapped over the edge of her black bucket, she looked like an enthused Herbology student.

She slipped around the edge of the lake, disturbing the water fowl that had been ducking for weeds at its edge. She was only meters away from the Oak Clearing when she noticed that it wasn't empty. A Ravenclaw (she could tell by his blue and silver scarf) was making the most of his time off class too. Although his headphones were clapped firmly around his ears and he seemed very much engrossed in his screen, Sariah decided to take a detour around the massive white oak.

She walked for what felt like an age, checking the time on her phone occasionally; that was all it was good for this far from the clearing. The forest had no path and every tree looked as unnervingly uniform as the next. This made for slow progress. What if she never found the Anglia's tree root shelter again? The thought of it waiting for her for the rest of eternity made her heart ache. What sort of idiot would try looking for a tree in a forest, anyway? she =wondered moodily. What if she encountered a werewolf, or a mutant spider, or-? Some branches creaked in the distance. Sariah pulled her wand from her pocket, grimacing with the knowledge that if any of the creatures knew of her academic record, they'd be more likely to laugh than to cower with fear. Nothing appeared. Had she done Scorpius' assignment for nothing, after all? She stumbled on some vein-like roots. Looking down, she spotted a wine-gum wrapper on the ground.

A few minutes later she spotted the shelter, shrouded in a coating of deep green moss. It looked like something you'd find in a fairytale: Tree branches felled by a previous storm rested firmly on two massive, adjoining roots. Moss and small creepers snaked over the top like an living thatched roof. She moved inside, noting how the ground tilted downward. The Anglia's engine coughed half-heartedly at her arrival, and a grin broke out across her face.

"Hey you," she purred, patting the vehicle's top. "Let's get you cleaned up."

There was so much organic growth on the car that she could barely discern its silhouette. Sariah pulled her dragon-skin gloves on and tasked herself with what she did best in Herbology: killing plants. She weeded the car liberally, using her shears to cut away the unwelcome vines and pulling living debris from the car's mangled exterior. Slowly, she reclaimed the car's form from the forest. Vines of poison ivy piled up on the car's hood, and the pile grew as she uprooted green weeds whose straggling roots clung to dirt wedged in crevices and flat surfaces alike. She pulled more seedlings from the ledge between the broken windshield and bonnet. Sariah had to make several trips to haul the weeds out of the shelter. Much to her unhappiness, the plants had concealed a great many of the Anglia's flaws. More dents appeared, as well as more patches of rust. The arrow heads were so embedded in the car's sides that they refused to be pried free. She felt a sense of trepidation about cleaning it further, afraid of what other flaws might be revealed when the final layer of grime was removed.

She pointed her wand at the driver's door. "Scorgio," she ordered, pointing her wand at the moss still clinging defiantly to the car's body. A small blue oval appeared from among the brown. "Scorgio. Scorgio. Scorgio!" It was excruciatingly slow work, which is what she had been expecting, so she reached for the bucket and sponge, searching her mind, before casting "Aguamenti" to fill it.

When she'd talked about her project with her family - before she'd even thought that it might be against the wizarding law - her father's main concern had been that structural rust would make it too unsafe to drive. She washed the car cautiously, pleased to watch the car slowly reclaim its original colour. However, the bulging growth of moss on the front bonnet dismayed her. The water turned from clear to orange, then brown, and eventually a dirty black as she scrubbed at it. When her arm began to ache, she eased the bonnet up to confirm her worst fears. Her heart skipped a beat. While the other rust patches looked like they could be sanded out, this one had gnawed its way through the entire width of the bonnet plate. Removing it - like a surgeon would amputate an infected limb - would leave a gaping, uneven hole over the engine. She peeled her gloves off and warmed her hands on the Anglia's lights, vowing to check the battery and lights on her next trip.

"It's not good," she admitted to the car, tracing an idle finger around the territory the rust had claimed. "I'll have to cut it out somehow. I really hope you can't feel pain."

The Anglia creaked its breaks gently in response.

Besides having to convince her parents to tie a portable, battery-powered sander to an owl, the bigger challenge was what she was going to fill the hole with afterwards. Sheet metal wasn't exactly owl friendly, Hogwarts was too remote for Scottish scrap yards, and Amazon's drones wouldn't deliver to any address within 10 kilometers of the castle. She'd checked. Her phone buzzed in her pocket. 2:40. Surely that couldn't be right. How had the time sped by so quickly? She was due to be sitting in the dungeon for potions in only twenty minutes. Her heart jolted in her chest. The trip out to her car had taken thirty.