Location from harry-potter-philosophers-stone by
A vast, ancient, and dangerous woodland on the Hogwarts grounds — strictly off-limits to students, home to centaurs, unicorns, and darker things, and the place where Harry serves his detention.
The Forbidden Forest is forbidden for excellent reasons, and sending four first-years into it at midnight as detention is the kind of decision that makes Hogwarts' safety record look exactly as bad as it is. Harry, Hermione, Neville, and Draco are sent into the forest with Hagrid and Fang to find a wounded unicorn. What they find is worse — a cloaked figure drinking unicorn blood in a clearing, silver and terrible in the moonlight. Harry's scar burns. The centaur Firenze carries him to safety and tells him what the figure was: Voldemort, sustaining himself on cursed blood. The forest is old in the way mountains are old. Centaurs claim it as their territory and read fate in the stars. Unicorns drink from hidden streams. Things with too many legs live in the deeper hollows. Hagrid loves it. Every other sane person avoids it after dark.
Dense, towering trees so old their canopy blocks most sunlight even at midday. The undergrowth is thick with ferns and brambles, and the paths twist unpredictably. At night the forest is impenetrable black, punctuated by the gleam of eyes and the crack of branches under large, unseen bodies. The trees grow closer together the deeper you go.
Also known as: the Forbidden Forest, Forbidden Forest, the forest