The morning after the Serpent Court, I discovered that punishment had failed to do its job. It was true that Slytherin was still one hundred points poorer,yes. I also remained formally reprimanded until the end of term and Professor McGonagall had not, to my knowledge, reconsidered my detention.
Socially, however, something had gone terribly wrong.
"You realise they like you even more now."
I looked up from the Divination book I had, for once, decided to read in the common room.
Daphne Greengrass sat opposite me with the deeply unimpressed expression of someone who had seen this issue coming from a mile away.
Tracey Davies was sprawled into the armchair beside her, eating toast she had brought down from breakfast.
"Who?" Tracey asked.
Daphne never took her eyes off me.
"The House, Tracey
I glanced around the Slytherin common room.
Several students were scattered through the room before morning lessons. A pair of older students occupied one of the tables near the windows, while three second-years were arguing quietly beside the fireplace.
Nobody appeared particularly interested in me.
"I think you may be exaggerating." I said
"I'm not," Daphne said.
I looked between them.
"Well that's concerning."
That earned me a snort from Tracey.
"You lost us fifty points."
"I am aware." I nodded
"You got caught wandering around after curfew with two Gryffindors." She went on.
"Yes." I nodded once more.
"You were helping them smuggle a dragon through Hogwarts." She chuckled
" Well now. Technically, we were smuggling the dragon out of Hogwarts."
Daphne closed her eyes and Tracey grinned and gave me two thumbs up.
"See? That. That's part of the problem." Daphne muttered and pointed at me.
"What is?" I asked innocently.
"You don't even sound sorry." She accused
"I am extremely sorry about the points," I lied convincingly, in my own biased opinion.
"Not the dragon?" Tracy sniggered from the side and I considered it.
"No, not about the dragon"
Tracey started laughing more boisterously and Daphne pointed out
"That attitude has made things worse."
"For whom?" I asked
"For anyone hoping you might learn something from this." She sighed
"I learned several things." I defended myself.
"Name one." She challenged.
"Norwegian Ridgebacks are considerably heavier at several weeks of age than their proportions would otherwise suggest."
Daphne stared at me, her face fixed in a perfectly neutral mask. Judging by the way her fingers kept twitching, however, she was considering reaching across the table and throttling me.
Tracy's constant chuckling did not help my case at all.
"Also, Professor McGonagall is remarkably difficult to lie to." I added
"You didn't even try!" She ground out.
"I tried once." I defended myself from her malicious slander.
"You told her you and Granger were on a date!" She almost spat out.
"Yes. What else would I have been doing with her in an Astronomy tower at night?."
Tracey nearly choked and Daphne looked toward the ceiling as though asking one of her ancestors for patience since she was all out.
I had expected losing fifty points to damage my standing within the House. That had been part of the appeal. Not the fifty points specifically—I could have done without those—but being caught doing something stupid, receiving an ordinary school punishment and demonstrating publicly that Alexander Hawthorn was not some impossible creature.
I had become too noticeable and far too loud, sadly my solution had been embarrassingly insufficient.
One of the fifth-years walking past our chairs tapped two fingers against the brim of his hat in greeting.
"Hawthorn."
I nodded and he continued toward the dormitories.
Since when have people worn hats? well other than me.
Daphne waited until he was gone.
"You see?" She said elongating her speech to make a point
"I saw someone greet me," I denied immediately.
"He barely knew you existed last week."
"Perhaps he's becoming friendlier." I hedged
"He asked me yesterday whether the Ridgeback was really named Norbert," Tracey piped in.
I paused at what I was about to say to make my case, to the two girls.
"What did you tell him?" I asked curiously.
"That it was." She said then smirked "Although I considered telling him the dragon was actually named Tom. Or Tim. Possibly Harry."
"Good." I said and looked at her weirdly,
Norbert was a perfectly respectable name for a dragon, thank you very much.
Daphne looked between us.
"That is not the important part."
"I think Norbert would disagree." I said
"He's a dragon!"
"Exactly. Very opinionated creatures."
Daphne's eyes narrowed.
I smiled pleasantly back but she wasn't distracted by my smile like Ms. Granger had been.
Perhaps Ms Granger had simply been more afraid of me then. I had briefly suspected she might have one of those crushes Matron had explained to us years ago, considering how red and awkward she occasionally became around me.
Apparently fear produced remarkably similar symptoms.
I thought to myself and realized Daphne was still talking.
"You went into the Court having lost fifty points," she continued, counting on her fingers, "and came out having established that you refused to show Gryffindors any of our passages, refused to tell them how you avoid prefects, helped remove an illegal dragon because you wanted to study it, and then accepted your reprimand without complaining."
"That sounds about right." I said scratching my chin.
"That's the interpretation going around. Apparently, you played the game so well even the Runespoor refused to reprimand you."
Ah,well, that was unfortunate.
Technically, the Runespoor had reprimanded me. My voting rights had been suspended until the end of term.
As first-years did not possess voting rights in the first place, this had rather less practical effect than the impressive wording suggested.
The whole point of getting caught had been to lessen my reputation.
Instead, apparently, I had made it worse.
I thought morosely as Tracey leaned eagerly forward.
"And Malfoy managed to make himself look like an idiot at the same time."
I glanced toward the boys dormitory entrance. Malfoy had not appeared yet.
His censure wasn't something people would forget overnight. Mine was a punishment for recklessness. His, on the other hand, had been a judgment on his conduct toward another member of the House.
As such there was a considerable difference.
"I had very little to do with that." I intoned, more seriously.
Wouldn't do, to appear to be gloating after all.
Tracey raised an eyebrow.
"You stood there while he dug himself a hole." she said with a crooked smile
"What was I supposed to do? At least he didn't mention his father. That would have gone badly." I said composed.
"Yes," Daphne said." Although I suspect he was just too angry to think of it."
Tracy gave her an assessing look and nodded in agreement
"What?" Daphne asked her, "He was angry." She repeated.
Tracy scoffed "He was an arse."
"Those aren't mutually exclusive."
I nodded.
"A surprisingly important philosophical distinction."
Both girls looked at me and I returned to my book to avoid the scrutiny of their gazes while a silence fell between us.
After a few silent moments of me pretended to read hoping they would go on, Tracey spoke again.
"So was it deliberate?"
My hand stopped halfway on its way to turn to the next page. I looked up at them and my eyes met with Daphne's whose gaze seemed to sharpen.
I put the book down.
"Was what deliberate?"
"Getting caught." Said Tracey and Daphne turned toward her surprised.
"You think he deliberately lost fifty points?"
"No." Tracey said, then looked at me,"but I think he deliberately didn't try very hard not to."
Clever girl, I better remember that.
I smiled."Why would I do that?" I asked with my best puzzled face.
"You know passages nobody else knows. You know how to move around after curfew. You've been doing it all year." Tracey accused.
"Allegedly." I said and Daphne scoffed at that.
"You've appeared out of the walls." Tracey went on.
"Architectural enthusiasm is not a crime." I said simply.
"And yet," Tracey continued, "you carried a dragon up ordinary stairs."
"A crate containing a dragon." I corrected her.
"That distinction isn't helping you at all. Dragon was still involved." Tracey narrowed her eyes.
I smiled back innocently, picturing a halo over my own head to better sell the image to myself and through that to them.
Daphne watched the two of us for several seconds. Then her expression changed as if she figured out something.
"Oh, you absolute—"
A sharp crack interrupted her. All three of us looked toward the table.
A folded piece of parchment had appeared beside the book.
Tracey blinked.
"Well. That's ominous."
"Just a Hogwarts house elf." Daphne said as I picked it up.
The Hogwarts seal was pressed into the fold.
Daphne immediately forgot whatever accusation she had been about to make and leaned closer.
"What is it?"
"I haven't opened it yet. How exactly am I supposed to know?" I asked, amused.
"So open it." She said
"I was planning to." I answered and slowly turned the letter in my hands.
"You're deliberately taking longer now." She immediately accused me.
"Possibly." I smiled and she kicked my shin beneath the table.
I decided to stop gambling with my life and opened the parchment.The message was brief.
My detention would take place in two weeks' time,after curfew.
I read the location twice. Then a third time, mostly because I hoped it might change and it did not.
Tracey craned her neck.
"Well?"
I folded the parchment.
"The Forbidden Forest." I said flatly.
There was silence and Daphne's amusement disappeared entirely.
"You're joking."
"No."
"With Professor McGonagall?"
I unfolded the parchment again.
"Apparently not."
"Professor Snape then?"
"No, again."
Tracey stopped smiling.
"Then who?"
I looked at the bottom of the notice.
"Mr Filch."
Both girls stared at me and I looked down at the parchment once more.
The Forbidden Forest,after dark. Supervised by Argus Filch.
For perhaps the first time since Professor McGonagall had caught us, I began to suspect that detention might actually be unpleasant.
Daphne held out her hand.
"Give me that."
I passed her the note and slipped my hands in my sleeves and looked at the see through walls, to the depths of the great lake in deep thought.
She read it, frowned, and handed it to Tracey.
"This school is insane." She muttered, shaking her head.
"You know,that possibility has occurred to me before." I answered dryly.
"No, Alexander. I mean genuinely insane. They forbid students from entering the Forest because it's dangerous, and then send students into it because they've broken rules?"
I considered the logic.
"When you phrase it that way, there does appear to be something extra stupid going on"
I admitted as Tracey finished reading it and lowered the parchment.
"Who else?" she asked.
"Potter, Granger and Malfoy, presumably." I said
"Wonderful," Daphne muttered. "At least if something tries to eat you, there are slower options."
I stared at her and Tracey burst out laughing.
Daphne's expression remained perfectly composed but her earlobes seemed to redden slightly, if I saw correctly.
"What?" she asked as I kept staring at her ears.
"That is a remarkably Slytherin thing to say, don't you think?." I said absentmindedly, deciding that I was probably just imagining it.
"I have no idea what you're talking about." She said as Tracey offered the note back to me. Which I took with a smile.
Perhaps I'm rubbing off on her. That's probably something her mother should be warned about by someone who is not me.
The following two weeks passed with considerably less excitement than the previous two had, and I, for one, considered that quite an improvement.
The rest of Hogwarts disagreed.
The fact that four students had managed to lose two hundred House points in a single night became public knowledge by breakfast the following morning and public outrage shortly thereafter.
Curiously, Potter and Granger escaped the worst of it from their own House. Gryffindor was certainly unhappy about losing a hundred points, but the discovery that the same incident had also cost Slytherin a hundred seemed to make the whole affair considerably more forgivable. There was plenty of good-natured ribbing, but apparently dragging your greatest rival down with you went a long way toward soothing wounded House pride.
The rest of the school was rather less charitable.
With four students, two hundred lost points and absolutely no official explanation for what we had been doing, approximately forty different versions of events were circulating by the end of the first day.
According to one particularly imaginative Ravenclaw, Potter, Granger, Malfoy and I had been caught attempting to break into the Astronomy Tower to perform an illegal ritual intended to turn Potter into a dragon Animagus.
A Hufflepuff third-year had somehow arrived at the conclusion that the three boys involved had been duelling on the roof for the love of Ms Granger. In this version, Ms Granger was apparently no damsel in distress. Instead, she had become annoyed when Slytherin started winning, joined the duel herself and beaten the sole remaining contender into submission.
The story did not specify who that unfortunate survivor had been, but the way the girl kept glancing in my direction while telling it made her opinion quite clear.
I found the entire account particularly impressive considering none of the four people supposedly involved appeared to have known we were participating in a love affair.
The dragon, strangely enough, remained a remarkably consistent feature.
Nobody seemed to know precisely where that rumour had originated, but it refused to die. Fortunately, nobody could prove anything. Norbert had disappeared without a trace.
Unless one counted Hagrid.
Hagrid entered a two-day mourning period involving considerable quantities of alcohol, crying and, apparently, singing. When questioned, he denied everything with such spectacular incompetence that I suspected his denials convinced several people there had not merely been a dragon, but possibly six.
Still, suspicion was not proof, and there was very little anyone could do about it now.
The points, unfortunately, were considerably more tangible.
Since Gryffindor had largely forgiven Potter and Granger on account of their having dragged Slytherin down with them.
Much of the school's remaining displeasure—and an impressive amount of schadenfreude—was directed towards us.
Slytherin naturally blamed Malfoy and me.
Or, more accurately, most of Slytherin blamed Malfoy considerably more than me, which continued to be a rather embarrassing failure on my part.
The first few days were unpleasant.
Jinxes flew through corridors with irritating regularity. People followed us around simply to heckle us, and I found myself even more tired than usual.
I found out that spending an entire school day watching for incoming hexes was surprisingly exhausting.
My almost obsessive training helped me dodge quite a few, but I had no hope of avoiding all of them.
I wasn't that good, and there were simply too many students.
Malfoy had it considerably worse.
He was falling over without warning and burping noxious gases. Some of the jinxes became regrettably regular occurrences for me as well.
There was, admittedly, an educational aspect to the whole affair.
By the fourth day I had become considerably better at recognising the peculiar expression people wore immediately before attempting to hex someone from behind.
By the sixth, I had stopped trusting laughter originating from around corners.
By the eighth, Tweak informed me that if I described being repeatedly jinxed as "useful practical training" one more time, she was going to demonstrate several considerably more advanced examples herself.
I stopped mentioning it to Tweak.
After the first tiresome week Ronald Weasley eventually emerged from the Hospital Wing with all ten fingers still attached.
I encountered him at the door of the great hall at lunch on his first day back.
He noticed me looking at his hand and immediately tucked it, in his pocket.
"No."
I smiled and raised my brow
"I haven't said anything."
"You were about to." He said dryly.
"I was going to ask how your hand was." I said defensively.
"No."
Mr Potter was already grinning next to him and Ms Granger looked resigned.
I looked at Weasley's hand again pondering as I followed them to the Gryffindor table. The swelling had almost completely disappeared, although the skin remained slightly discoloured around the original bite.
"Any numbness?"
"No."
"Pain?"
"No."
"Unusual sensitivity to heat?"
"No."
"Cold?"
"No."
"Sudden desire to hoard gold?"
Mr Potter choked on his pumpkin juice, he had just taken a small sip and Mr Weasley glared at me as he pounded the back of his friend.
"No."
I nodded thoughtfully."Interesting." I muttered.
"Hawthorn." He said in a warning tone.
My hand had barely reached inside my robes when Weasley pointed at me.
"Don't."
"I need to record your recovery for.." I started defensively
"You absolutely do not." He interrupted firmly
"..for completeness of the chapter." I finished.
"No." He said almost resigned.
I looked toward Ms.Granger who just shook her head. Mr Potter was still laughing although he hid it by pretending to be eating and looking away but his shoulders kept shaking suspiciously.
I sighed " It's hard to be a curious wizard isn't it?" I said and finally noticed I was sitting at the wrong table and left.
My cards, on the other hand, were producing considerably more cooperative subjects or users I should say.
Three evenings before our detention, I returned to my room to find Tweak sitting at my desk with the book connected to my cards open, and writing down the questions so she could do..Well god knows what she did with them.
Archive perhaps?
That was becoming an increasingly common sight, she had also commissioned a pipe to smoke her cinnamon vanilla in.
Apparently sticks were not suitable for paper work, only for lurking and sculking around. The pipe was the pondering device.
"The master has new questions."
I removed my hat and put it on top of the coat rack, and shrugged off my robe to hang it below the hat.
"How many and what sort?" I asked
"Personal? There's four this time"
"Four? you seemed to have copied far more than four questions there Tweak" I asked curiously
"Twelve came," she admitted immediately.
"And?"
"Tweak has marked four as personal."
I paused halfway through folding my sleeves.
"Four?"
"Yes."
That seemed unusually high.
"Why?"
Tweak picked up the first slip from the left-hand pile near the edge of the table.
"One wants to know where Master Hawthorn goes at night."
I nodded "The next"
"One wants to know whether Master Hawthorn and Miss Greengrass are really courting."
I stared at her waiting for her to say it was a joke but Tweak just stared back.
"Why would anyone ask that?" I asked bewildered
"Master sits with Miss Greengrass, a lot" Tweak said primly
"I sit with lots of people." I said easily, and finished folding my sleeves and sat down to the other chair pulling the book closer to see.
"Master gave Miss Greengrass a present." She added
"I gave lots of people Christmas presents." I said absentmindedly as I found the question on the page and hastily scribbled "no" and watched them glow shortly and then go inert.
"Master has a meeting with Miss Greengrass's mother."
"Well I indeed promised to meet Mrs Greengrass after the train ride, that's it."
Tweak's ears twitched and I narrowed my eyes at her.
"You're enjoying this." I accused and she did not deny it.
"Very much so, master."
She picked up another.
"One asks if the Master sleeps wearing the hat."
I paused. " Someone bought the card from the twins and this is how they spend their money?" I was confused.
Tweak's eyes narrowed in delight " Yes masters coffers are going to be very full if this is how they choose to spend their galleons."
I chuckled and found the question on the page and quickly scribbled quick "absolutely" underneath it and watched it glow hastily and then return to its inert state.
"Master you should spread false information, that's Tweaks job" She chided me with a smile and threw in the bin the useless questions, apparently those aren't worth archiving or whatever she does with them.
I smiled but did not comment, I focused on the next question I could see and this one was a question about whether Hogwarts' moving staircases followed a predictable sequence.
That was actually interesting, and I chose to write more about what I had seen and what I suspected but mostly it boiled down to 'inconclusive' since I haven't studied it enough yet.
The cards had been circulating for months now, and the system was working considerably better than I had originally expected.
Most questions never reached me.
That was the purpose of the books and the cards after all.
Unfortunately, anything genuinely personal still had to come through me and even more unfortunate was that I had to personally answer them for now. Tweak had attempted to answer those too but the books refused her.
We had tried different inks, quills and pens. We tried having her write while I touched the book, having me authorise her beforehand verbally and in writing and one particularly annoying experiment involving a drop of my blood that accomplished nothing except staining three pages.
Whatever magical signature the enchantment expected from an authorised writer, house-elf magic apparently did not qualify.
I suspected the problem could eventually be solved but for now, Tweak simply went through them all, recorded what she deemed important, and I answered the ones she wanted me to first, followed by the silly ones if there was time.
I didn't particularly mind. In fact, I rather enjoyed it.
Someone asked a question and I answered it.
That was the entire interaction.
Nobody expected eye contact, or became offended because I continued reading while they spoke.
No required three minutes of irrelevant conversation before finally getting to the thing they actually wanted.
There were no awkward silences because there was nobody present for the silence to become awkward.
Conversation was substantially improved by removing most of the conversation.
I finished writing my answer and placed the book aside.
Tweak immediately picked it up.
"Next page has a one of the goofy ones master"
I looked at her.
"You enjoy this too much." I said and rubbed my hands to my eyes tiredly.
"I'm a secretary now" She nodded happily
"You appointed yourself secretary now?" I asked and looked
"I noticed the Master needed one,desperately."
That was difficult to dispute.
I pulled the book back and turned the page and read.
Do ghosts dream?
I stopped and blinked in surprise, I could see from the corner of my eye that Tweak was smiling widely.
"I thought the Master would like that one."
I looked at her.
"That is an excellent question." I said
"Yes."
I reached for another sheet of parchment to write a memo for myself.
"We're going to need to ask a ghost." I said kinda curious myself how it worked, I suspected that they could but did not really need to.
"I know several ghosts, master." Tweak volunteered.
"I could possibly ask Professor Binns." I suggested.
Tweak's smile vanished.
"Perhaps the master should talk to the sleep speaker. or he will sleep himself" She said worried
"Too late, I'm curious now" I said with a small chuckle at the elven nickname for the History of Magic professor.
The cards had another unexpected benefit.
People occasionally used them to ask questions they apparently didn't want to ask me directly.
Susan Bones was one of them.
I discovered this a couple of days later when she and Hannah Abbott joined me beneath one of the beech trees near the lake on a spring afternoon.
Examinations were close enough that practically every patch of grass around the castle had acquired students carrying books. I was no different, and I was studying Transfiguration.
Hannah dropped onto the grass beside me.
Susan sat considerably more carefully, setting her books down before opening her bag. As she pulled out her Transfiguration notes, a handful of cards slipped from between the books and scattered across the grass.
She froze.
I looked down.
One of the cards had landed face-up between us.
"You answered one of mine," she declared.
I looked at her.
"Was that not the point of the system?" I asked hesitantly.
Susan gave me a look that suggested I had somehow missed something obvious.
"My question concerned hereditary magical traits and whether repeated magical practices within a family could eventually influence the expression of magic in descendants," she said.
It did ring a bell.
I had spent nearly an hour answering that particular question.
"That was yours?"
Susan nodded.
"You could have simply asked me."
Hannah made a small choking noise.
Susan looked at her.
Hannah was already giggling.
Susan turned back to me with the expression of someone beginning to suspect that I was a particularly slow child.
"I did," she said deadpan.
"When?"
I was genuinely surprised.
"Tuesday," Hannah gasped out, apparently done with most of her laughter.
I searched my memory.
Tuesday had been particularly hectic. I had been jinxed six times before breakfast, and by the time I reached the library I think I was under two hexes. One for certain.
The one I was sure of had filled my ears with random noises, from bird chirps to the flush of a toilet at random intervals.
The general-purpose dispelling spell, Finite Incantatem, did not work on it.
So I had been stuck with it until I could get back to my room and try to get rid of it.
My idea at the time was to use my mind space to see if the magic was directed to my mind. Another idea I had,was to look at myself in the mirror through my Mana Sight and go through my things.
Maybe there was something that was making the noises and making it so I was the only one who could hear them.
Susan had been there at one point. We had been having a conversation concerning Charms, Professor Flitwick, someone's missing quill and—
I sighed.
She had indeed mentioned it, but if I remembered correctly, I heard a trumpet sound in the distance just then, so I had been somewhat distracted.
Hannah started laughing again as I explained the situation to them.
Even Susan agreed that it was pretty irritating and forgave me for my bad manners.
"So, did you figure out how to dispel the hex?" she asked curiously.
I nodded happily.
It was not actually a spell cast on me, so of course Finite Incantatem had done nothing at all.
I told them that there was, rather curiously, a tiny button-sized piece of bone in my pocket that produced the noises, and that it did so in a way that only I could hear them.
Since the sound did not travel through the air but through my personal magical aura, it was rather like the button was a drumstick that kept striking my aura at intervals with tiny hits, producing an effect my magic understood as sound.
"Ingenious little thing, in my opinion, and terribly dangerous if one were to use much more dangerous magic on it. Perhaps I should give it to you so you may give it to your aunt to study. Who knows? It might be a known thing or a completely new invention."
Susan sighed and nodded.
"I can take it to your auntie. Do not expect an award, though."
I smiled.
"No award needed. The idea is far too sneaky to be left unsupervised. Who knows what kind of curses could be done through the method, especially if the enchanted object were to be more inconspicuous than a weird, button-sized, rune-carved bone slipped into my pocket.
"Like an actual button in your favourite shirt."
She nodded, and they moved on to interrogate me once more about the dragon incident and the other rumours surrounding it.
That finally made Susan laugh, and that was another thing I had discovered about Susan Bones and Hannah Abbott.
They were comfortable to be around.
Daphne and Tracey were friends, certainly, but friendship within Slytherin always carried an additional layer.
House politics existed whether we wanted them to or not. Families mattered, along with reputation. Every action had the potential to acquire three meanings it had never possessed when performed.
Susan and Hannah were different.
Not simple by any means, but much easier to relax around.
I had learned enough about the Bones family to know that describing Susan as politically irrelevant would be spectacularly foolish and entirely wrong. Knowing her personally for months now had given me enough perspective to judge that she did not care much for politics, even if they were a constant in her life.
I did not know enough about Hannah's family to say for sure in either direction.
That being said, I did get the impression from her that she was even less interested in political matters than Susan was.
The truth might be something else, but so far neither girl seemed particularly interested in turning every conversation into a contest.
Which, to me, was nice and relaxing amidst all the social finagling I had to endure in Slytherin.
The two weren't excessively formal or excessively familiar. Usually, they simply sat down with me, we did our own homework, and talked about various topics, mostly concerning school.
Sometimes Hannah brought us food, and more often than not Susan asked interesting questions that kept us talking for a long time.
I liked that.
Susan reached into her bag and produced a piece of parchment where she had written down my answer.
"Did you really mean this part?"
Her finger rested against one paragraph, and I squinted at it, trying to read.
"Which part was it?"
"That repeated magical practice might matter as much as blood," she read.
"Possibly more," she finished the paragraph.
Her expression had sharpened in anticipation.
I closed my Transfiguration book.
Now that was worth discussing.
"First off, I am just a first year, and as such have a limited base of knowledge to pull from…"
I paused.
"But, yes. I really think that. Magic is more than just your blood and ancestry, isn't it? It's personal. The most personal thing there is, after your soul, that is. Who knows two might even be a one and the same in someways"
I launched into my speech. I may have, or may have not practiced in hopes it was Susan who asked the question and we got to talking about it..
I had been pondering this for two days and really wanted to discuss how the 'natives' saw the situation compared to my own perspective formed by a few scant months of study.
The detention notice remained folded inside my desk throughout those two weeks.
I did not forget it.
I merely saw little reason to worry prematurely.
Tweak disagreed.
Naturally.
On the evening itself, she inspected everything I intended to carry with the severity of a quartermaster preparing someone for war.
"Wand."
I held it up.
"Knife."
I touched the sheath hidden beneath my robes.
"I am attending a school detention, not invading Albania." I felt the need to point out.
"Since it's in Forbidden Forest we will probably be with Hagrid." I said hopefully.
"Notice says Filch." She spat back clearly worried it was no secret to either of us that the man was a squib, and as such was as useful in a dark magical forest as rubber duck would be in the war zone.
Good distraction but not much else. That remained the troubling part.
I checked the parchment again, hoping that the writing had changed to someone else, but it still said Argus Filch.
There were not many people I would willingly follow into a dangerous magical forest in the light of day, considerably less after dark.
The castle caretaker was not even considered as a joke to be on the hypothetical list.
"I can't just not go, because I do not like the idea of it" I said what had to be hundredth of time already.
Tweak folded her arms.
"You can."
"I shouldn't." I repeated once more.
"Master also shouldn't transport dragons." She said smugly
I pointed at her.
"That argument is becoming overused."
"It keeps working." she said, nodding to herself.
I fastened my outer robe.
The knife stayed in my right hip, we had modified my right robe pocket to have a convenient slit I could push my hand through and pull the knife quite quickly if need be.
I also had several prepared charms, the tiny magical objects not active spells, a small packet of powdered silver in to guard against werewolves, two pieces of chalk, three buttons,
Tweak added another handful of buttons to my pocket and I looked at her questioningly.
"Why?"
"Master ran low." She said firmly. I just sighed and nodded in acceptance.
My journal remained behind since something in the Forbidden Forest required immediate documentation. I could remember it until returning.
Probably.
I looked toward the mirror.
"Tweak." I said.
"Yes, Master?"
"If I'm not back by morning—"
"Tweak comes looking." She said with a gravel in her voice that would make even Fluffy take care to not annoy the tiny elf.
"That wasn't what I was going to say." I started
"Tweak knows." she finished decisively, her expression brook no arguments.
I put on my hat and smiled at her
"Very well."
Then I stepped through the mirror and headed toward the entrance hall.
After getting up to the hall I noticed a small group standing there already. Mr Potter,Ms Granger,Malfoy and Mr Filch were already waiting for me.
Filch stood beside them holding a lantern and gleefully telling them how in the good old days students hang the night from their thumbs in the dungeons.
He smiled when he saw me and it was not a pleasant smile.
"Well, well, well all rulebreakers present finally."
I stopped beside Ms Granger who smiled to me looking pale as a ghost while Mr Potter on her other side gave me a small serious nod.
Malfoy did not acknowledge me at all.
Apparently, the censure remained a sore subject, and because of it, I was not even allowed to acknowledge his existence unless doing so was strictly necessary to maintain appearances outside the House. This was not one of those times.
Filch lifted his lantern.
"Hope you've enjoyed yourselves these last two weeks, and not worried too much about the price of your heinous crimes." He said with clear glee in his voice.
Nobody said anything and his smile widened to ridiculous proportions. So much so that the shadows flitting over his face made him look horrifying.
"Because you're going to be sorry you ever broke school rules by the time tonight's over."
I glanced toward Mr Potter and for once, neither of us had anything clever to say.
Filch led us out of the doors,outside, darkness had swallowed the grounds almost completely at this point.
Far beyond the lawns stood the Forbidden Forest much bigger and oppressive than I had ever seen it. Fog was filling the open spaces making the darkness seem even more eerie.
I had spent most of the year wanting to enter it. Now that someone was actually ordering me inside, I found myself considerably less enthusiastic.
Funny how that worked. As we made our way to the dim light shining near the forest edge, I let out a tiny breath of relief.
Thank god they're not completely mad,we are going with Hagrid not with Filch into the forest.
We soon arrived at his cabin, where Hagrid himself was checking his crossbow and preparing things to take with him, filling his pockets much as I had done before leaving.
I saw at least a small bag that I suspected contained silver dust and a fistful of pebbles disappear into his pockets. I also glimpsed what was probably a charm hanging from his left ear, barely visible beneath his shaggy hair and enormous beard.
Well, it could have been just an earring, but I had never seen him wear any before, so I assumed otherwise. Perhaps, like me, he had something to help him see in the dark.
It was the first, and actually quite simple, charm I had learned to make.
Mine was certainly not as long-lived, as I suspect he was.
Especially since I made mine from simple things such as Butterbeer corks marked with symbols for the night and vision and Kneazle-hair cord. Surprisingly, charm-making was more an art of combining things with an intended effect in mind and channeling magic through them as I did so. If the charm worked as imagined and the materials held, then it was done. All that remained was to figure out the limits of the charm and, if necessary, make a better one using better materials.
I had two.
One was what I called a Cats eye Charm, which, as the name suggested, helped me see in the dark like a cat.
The other was a little more difficult to make, though the effect itself was simple and, like the first, also derived from cats. I called it Feline Grace. It helped me move around even more fluidly and prevented me from making a sound while doing so.
I had made it to replace the Predatory Stalking Charm when I could no longer afford to waste even a single drop of mana on something like that.
A nightly visit to a Forbidden forest was on top of that hypothetical list.
… " I'm not going with Potter, Hawthorn can go with him!"
I heard a whiny voice of Malfoy say as I came back to reality.
Hagrid looked between Malfoy and me.
"Actually… maybe that would be a good idea."
"Excellent," I said automatically, and fiddled with my catseye charm around my wrist.
Malfoy glared at me.
"I wasn't talking to you."
"Even better" I shot back with a smile that seemed to irritate him even more.
Hagrid scratched his beard but I was sure he was hiding a smile.
"Harry, you go with Alex. Hermione, yeh come with me an' Malfoy."
Malfoy immediately protested.
"Why do I have to go with her?"
Hermione rounded on him.
"I assure you, Malfoy, if I could,I would rather go with anyone else!"
Hagrid sighed and explained himself.
"Because Harry don't scare easy, Alex seems like he doesn't know how, an' I'm not spendin' the whole bloody night stoppin' you two from hexin' each other. So it's better to have the main culprit gettin' hexed to come with me to keep an eye on him."
I considered correcting several assumptions, but then decided the resulting arrangement suited me perfectly and kept my mouth shut.
Malfoy looked personally offended by the agreement, particularly by the fact that everyone seemed to assume he would be the one left hexed.
Filch had apparently remembered somewhere else he desperately needed to be and vanished into the mist the second we were about to leave.
The Forbidden Forest changed the deeper we went. At first, it had simply been a forest at night with all the noises associated with it.
An enormous and unpleasantly dark forest, admittedly,one filled with trees old enough that their roots had pushed themselves through the earth like the backs of buried serpents, but still recognisably a forest still.
Hagrid's lantern threw warm yellow light across the path. Fang padded beside him, occasionally disappearing into bushes and returning with leaves caught around his muzzle. Somewhere above us, branches creaked whenever the wind moved through them.
There were insects and birds and I think I spotted a few owls.
Something small rustled through the undergrowth and made Malfoy jump badly enough that he almost screamed and I pretended not to notice. Sadly I wasn't the only one to notice.
Harry noticed.
I knew because he looked at me immediately afterward, eyes screaming at me " did you see that!" all the while trying not to smile, or laugh out loud.
Malfoy saw that too.
"Something funny, Potter?"
"No." He said and looked in the sky to keep himself from laughing.
"There better not be."
In a small clearing after a few minutes of walking Hagrid informed us that we were in the Forbidden Forest to look for a wounded unicorn.
He told us something had been hunting unicorns.. A unicorn that so happens to be a magical creature that has no known enemies. Creature which was one of the fastest things to move on the ground known to wizard kind.
Four students, one groundskeeper and one dog made for an inconvenient arrangement, particularly when the task involved searching for an injured unicorn.
That last detail had rather effectively destroyed whatever amusement I'd possessed over the whole affair.
One unicorn had been found dead several days earlier.
The one we were looking for had apparently been injured, as Hagrid pointed out, showing us a puddle of pure silvery liquid almost shining in the moonlight that passed through the canopy. At which point I glanced in the sky almost horrified but sighed in relief when I saw it was only a half moon.
I'm too young to die from a heart attack but apparently I'm trying very hard to manage it.
I thought my heart was beating from the scare I gave to myself as Hagrid explained that he wanted to find it before whatever was hunting them did.
The blood trail split into two directions from the clearing, leaving us with little choice but to divide into the two groups Hagrid had already arranged. Harry and I took one path with Fang while Hagrid took Malfoy and Hermione along the other.
So now Harry and I walked beneath the trees while Fang wandered several steps ahead.
The lantern had gone with Hagrid so I had activated my charm in secret and I regretted it instantly since I could clearly see the multitudes of creatures glancing at us in the safety of the dark as we had our wands lit and would be normally blind to their presence.
Ignorance is bliss indeed.
I thought as I watched something, looking a bit like a bear from a few trees on the left of the path. Except this one had elongated arms and feet, creatures massive eyes that consider me and my companion and silently dismiss us as a threat, it turned around to move on. It looked to be slowly melting to what looked like a cloud of something, as I hastily activated my Mage sight to see properly but sadly it was already gone.
I had been using Mage Sight almost continuously since entering the Forest and before we separated with Hagrid.
Normally I avoided doing that.
Hogwarts was exhausting enough to look at for extended periods. Every wall carried traces of enchantment. Every staircase possessed layers of accumulated magic. Wards crossed other wards, spells overlapping spells, and centuries of students had left enough magical residue behind that looking too closely at the castle sometimes felt like trying to read several books while someone shouted another directly into my ear.
The Forest was vastly different. Not quieter by any means but more pure.
I had difficulty finding another word for it.
Magic didn't sit upon the Forest like it did in Hogwarts walls. It lived and flowed through it in thousands of tiny rivers constantly changing directions like leaves in a wind.
The roots beneath my feet glowed faintly where they crossed one another underground. Mana gathered in tiny pools around certain mushrooms before dispersing again through their spores. Some trees drew ambient magic through their leaves in patterns remarkably similar to respiration, while others seemed almost completely mundane.
On the other side of the path, something enormous moved several hundred yards away.
I can't see its body directly but I saw the magic cloaking it move with it causing all the mana ripple around with its movements, that should have caused noise, but didn't.
" Your eyes are glowing like cat's?" I heard a voice from in the path in front of me, so I turned my head and looked toward Harry who had turned back to look at me.
"What?" I asked
"Like cats eyes in the dark, bit eerie." He cleared and pointed at my face.
"Well you are pointing your wand light at me." I said, as I debated with myself if I should stop using one or the other effects on my eyes.
"They're glowing from inside, not reflecting." He said squinting in my direction.
"They don't glow." I dismissed
"They do."
I frowned.
"How much?"
Harry stared at me.
"How am I supposed to measure how much someone's eyes glow?"
"A little or a lot would suffice."
"A little."
"Hmm Alright, would 'its magic' explanation suffice?" I asked hopefully.
The forest was to my eye full of light and movements since I had my charm and the mage sight both active. I suspected the former made my eyes more cat-like, but honestly it could have been either of them or even both causing it.
He just shook his head and turned back to follow the trail of unicorn blood and fang who came back to look at what was taking us so long.
We continued and I did my best to ignore all the fascinating and horrifying things surrounding us in the dark.
Another ten minutes passed as we walked when suddenly a silence filled the forest. All then the insects had and little creatures stopped their noises.
One moment there had been hundreds of tiny noises surrounding us. and the next nothing.
I stopped on my tracks Fang doing the same further down the trail even faster than I did. Harry took a few more before noticing the unnatural silence.
"What?" He started but I raised a hand and he went quiet immediately.
Fang had slowly been backing off and was now close to us and our circle of wand light.
The boarhound stood near Harry body rigid, nose raised toward the darkness. His tail slowly lowered between his legs.
"Fang?"
Harry whispered the dog's name but Fang didn't move and just stared into the darkness.
I looked around and the Forest felt different, I couldn't see any creatures anymore and more mist seemed to gather around and between the trees.
Magic naturally moved through environments.
Toward life. Away from certain materials. Along roots and water, through creatures and plants, and through whatever deeper structures governed places like this.
Here, however, there was a direction to it.
Not a current exactly.
More like a gathering.
Something was drawing magic towards a particular point in the Forest.
I turned my head towards the faint pull.
Something pale gleamed between the trees.
"Harry," I whispered.
He followed my gaze and nodded.
We moved carefully away from the path we had been following.
Fang came with us reluctantly.
He whined for a few steps then he stopped. His entire body stiffened,he didn't bark or growl.
He simply turned and bolted back the way we'd come.
"Fang!" Harry let out and started after him but I caught his arm.
"Don't."
Harry looked at me but I wasn't looking at Fang anymore.
Something was moving between the trees ahead of us. At first I thought it was merely yet another creature shifting in the darkness between the trunks.
Then it moved again. It seemed to flow through the shadows, human size shadows clung to him like black robes dragging behind it as though the darkness itself had learned to move like a human.
I felt the faint magical pull strengthen. Whatever it was, wasn't moving towards us but towards the pull.
So naturally we did the dumbest imaginable. We followed it.
Soon the trees opened into a clearing, where moonlight reached the ground and beneath that moonlight lay a unicorn. the white thing we had glimpsed from the path.
For several seconds, I forgot everything else.
I'd seen unicorns at a distance once before, during one of Hagrid's lessons for older students that I'd managed to observe from somewhere I technically wasn't supposed to be.
This one was larger or perhaps it just seemed so since I was much closer. Its coat should have been white but instead, silver blood covered its neck and chest and soaked the leaves beneath it.
Its legs twitched at times and its chest rose as the creature breathed laboredly
It was still alive if only just
Then the thing in black entered the clearing and I could make out it indeed looked to be a man in black robes.
It stopped beside the unicorn and crouched down, but the way it did so like a puppet with its strings cut noiselessly dropping down. Made it seem even more revolting to me somehow.
Then its hooded head lowered against the unicorn's neck.
Then a horrifying sound came.
Wet and greedy as the creature drank the blood of the unicorn.
Harry made a tiny noise beside me.
The figure stopped drinking.
Slowly—Very slowly—its head began to rise and the creature turned around to look at us.
Silver blood ran from beneath the hood.
My wand was already in my hand shinih ligt just like Harry did and I think that light had prevented me from seeing the thing throug my mage sight properly before.
Now I looked at it and saw a swirling and pulsating mass of black.
I blinked confused, not understanding what I saw.
My sight seemed sharpened automatically.
Black was still all I saw, it was not the robes. Not the shadows of our wand lights or darkness of the night.
This wasn't darkness or shadow. There was something standing in front of me.
I knew there was.
Ordinary sight showed robes, hands, the suggestion of a body beneath cloth.
Mage Sight however—Black.
A hole cut into everything else, some luminescent silver flowing and dying in that darkness like the magic of the unicorns was being dissolved inside that ravenous darkness.
It was utterly alien to anything I had seen before.
The trees behind it possessed magic, the ground beneath it possessed magic. Even the dying unicorn at its feet burned silver-white.
The figure itself was a section of the world someone had painted over.
My curiosity surged, my need to understand dampening the rising horror of the thing in front of me.
Then the unicorn moved slightly,its foreleg scraped weakly against the earth.
My eyes dropped towards it and everything else disappeared.
Something was wrong with it. Not with its wounds, those were terrible.
But understandable and somewhat natural.
Flesh had been torn and the blood was leaving the body.
Mana leaked with it making the creature become one with nature slowly but surely. Those things made sense.
Something beneath them didn't.
They changed when creatures died.I knew that much.
I'd seen a bird strike one of Hogwarts' windows during winter.
I'd watched a mouse die after Mrs Norris caught it.
Morbid perhaps, but important to know nonetheless.
Life stopped and something loosened.
Then withdrew beyond where my Sight could not follow.
I had assumed that was simply another magical process associated with death.
Unicorn wasn't doing that.
The silver structure inside the unicorn stretched toward its ruined throat.
I leaned forward without meaning to and looked, there seemed to be a strand pulled loose.
It did not fully unravel but clearly something inside the beast had been torn.
The unicorn convulsed and the hooded figure bent again ignoring us and this time I saw it.
Silver blood disappeared beneath the hood and something inside the unicorn went with it.
Not just the creature's mana.
Something deeper. Something that should not have moved that way.
Something that should not have been coming apart at all.
I knew absolutely nothing about what I was looking at.
But I knew one thing with absolute certainty.
This was wrong.
Not just dangerous or illegal.
Not Dark according to some Ministry classification written by people who liked putting things into tidy categories.
Wrong.
The way a malformed bone was wrong. The way flesh growing backward would be wrong.
A violation of something so fundamental that I understood it without possessing the words to describe it.
The figure drank again.
Something tore from the whole that was the unicorn and I became furious.
Not frightened but Furious. My fury was utterly taking over my mind.
"Stop."
The figure's head lifted and Harry said something.
I didn't hear him.
"STOP!" I growled this time my wand raised without intending to do so.
There was no incantation or spell in mind.
I didn't have one. Nothing I'd learned seemed remotely adequate.
Some carefully constructed piece of classroom magic?
No. I wanted it away. I wanted to harm this creature who in its own greed tore down something innocent. Irreconcilably harming it in a way that couldn't be fixed by anything.
Magic flooded down my arm towards my wand.
Too much, most of my reserves in fact.
My wand screamed as I did so. There was no other word for it.
The wood vibrated violently in my hand and white-blue light erupted from its tip without shape or structure. looking like a lance of pure light.
Not a spell, just my mana.
Raw, furious, barely directed mana.
It crossed the clearing in a blink of an eye, lighting the dark forest like midday sun.
The hooded figure moved.
Fast, far too fast. Its body twisted away from the unicorn in effort to dodge it but not fast enough.
The blast struck across one shoulder.
The sound of the collision was enormous, it produced not an explosion but more like the air itself had been slapped. Less like thunder but more like the sound of too huge boulders striking together.
The figure was hurled sideways and struck a tree hard enough to shake leaves from its branches.
Harry shouted my name and I barely heard him.
I was already moving towards the unicorn who lay still. The pulling had stopped.
That was all I cared about.
I stepped between the unicorn and the figure.
My wand shook violently in my hand,so did my arm. My mage sight felt draining so I forcibly pulled my mana from my eyes to savor what little I had left. Cats eye charm was the only thing left now.
The spell—if it could even be called one—had taken far more out of me than I'd expected.
I couldn't feel two of my fingers properly.
Fine.
The black thing moved.
It rose up slowly, not like a man using its hands. No, the creature lifted itself up like smoke from fire or perhaps a snake ready to strike head first.
I did not seem harmed in any way, it should have hurt it.
I had seen it hit. There should have been something, some damage or anything at all.
Instead the figure straightened. Now the anger loosened enough for another emotion to get through.
Fear then revulsion.
A very simple recognition.
I don't know what this is, but it's an unnatural thing.
The figure faced me.
Something moved beneath the hood.
Then it glided forward.
Harry stumbled backward, and fell behind me.
I didn't. Not because I was brave.
My legs had apparently forgotten how to. I was rooted to the spot my mind twisted in anger, fear and revulsion.
I raised my wand again and like a miracle the figure stopped.
Perhaps it saw something in my face, or perhaps it sensed magic gathering. Better yet,perhaps the first strike had actually hurt more than it appeared.
I would never know. I drew mana again despite the protest of my wand
Fine.Break. I didn't care! I would rather die than let this creature ruin anything more in my presence.
The black figure shifted slightly as if assessing then something enormous crashed through the trees.
Hooves struck the earth. The figure recoiled away as a centaur burst into the clearing.
For one impossible instant everything seemed to stop. Moonlight caught a palomino body. Human torso with a white-blond hair.
Bow already drawn towards the thing.
The hooded figure looked from the centaur to me, then it fled.
It did not run like a person.
It flowed between the trees, black robes whipping behind it, and within seconds the Forest swallowed it completely.
I kept my wand pointed after it.
"Alexander."
Harry gasped hoarsely. I turned towards him hand lowering tiredly to see that Harry was staring at me.
He looked frightened.
Not toward the Forest where the creature had fled but at me.
My arm immediately began shaking badly enough that I had to grip my wrist with the other hand.
"Sorry." I muttered.
Harry blinked.
"For what?"
I didn't know, but I did feel tired and sorry.
The centaur moved past us, his bow back on his back and arrow in its quiver like he never held them.
He lowered himself beside the unicorn and whatever relief I'd felt vanished and was replaced by deep melancholy.
The unicorn wasn't breathing anymore and for one second I wished to not see the devastation the dark thing had caused inside the beautiful creature.
I couldn't understand why I wanted to cry. I hadn't known the creature personally.
I had never seen this unicorn truly alive. I didn't know whether it had been old or young, whether unicorns had personalities as humans understood them, or whether they had offspring somewhere deeper in the forest.
None of that should have mattered.
Yet looking at it hurt,hurt so bad my throat closed and my breath was stuck in my chest.
Something beautiful had been taken out of the world.
And somehow, impossibly, the world felt poorer for it.
For a moment I simply watched how moonlight was shining on the corpse like a spotlight on the tragedies last scene.
Struggling to keep my composure and swallow my unreasonable grief. Then the moment passed and I let out a tired sigh.
I closed my eyes and ever so slowly gathered what mana I had left towards my eyes.
Then I opened my mage sight again. It had been a while since I had felt this drained.
The silver structures inside the unicorn were collapsing mostly naturally as was expected.
Mana bled gently outward to me and Harry, even a little went toward the centaur as expected. Nature knows not to waste.
I stepped closer to the centaur and the corpse.
"Wait."
The centaur looked at me but I ignored him. focusing on the neck of the creature and there. The structure I'd seen tearing before,now most of it was already slipping somewhere beyond my perception, not onwards to the surrounding nature as it was supposed to.
Portions remained wrong. Jagged and incomplete. I stared until my eyes hurt, my eyes burning in loss I couldn't understand.
Blood was sympathetic. I knew that.
Hair. Blood. Bone. Things that had belonged to something remained connected to the whole.
My eyes dropped to the wooden ring around my finger.
Hagrid had grown it around my blood.
"They became part of it" I whispered to myself with numb lips.
I looked back at the unicorn. Then at the silver blood running from its wound.
My stomach turned.
"No."
It wasn't drinking the blood.
Or rather—it wasn't only drinking the blood.
"No." I repeated in horror about the realization I had had about magical creatures.
Harry came closer to me.
"What?"
"You know." I said firmly to the centaur, needing confirmation not just my own guesses.
He said nothing.
"You know what I saw." I said again.
His eyes returned to the dead unicorn and he sighed sadly. When he finally spoke, his voice was quiet.
"You have been burdened by an unusual sight child."
"What. Was. It? Don't say it was just its blood and mana. I'm not that naïve" I growled angrily, unsure exactly where the anger came from.
A heavy silence filled the clearing, until the palomino centaur said somberly
"The soul."
I looked down at the unicorn sadly as the centaur confirmed my horrible guess.
No..not this.
My mind rebelled at the horrible truth, of a creature vile enough to feast on something so sacrosanct as soul. Maybe it was just ignorance, maybe not. It was utterly vile and contemptible from my point of view.
"It has many names. The creature that is." Centaur hinted helpfully glancing at Harry over my shoulder.
"Killing doesn't do that." I interrupted
"No."The centaur's answer was immediate.
I looked at him.
"Then how? Why? What did the thing do? Was that a Dementor? " I asked rapidly, the only thing I hear ever to be feasting on human souls, but why would such a thing harm a unicorn? they shouldn't even be able to do that. Unicorns were too pure for Dementor to come close.
"He was but a man, not a Dementor. Man who consumed what should never be consumed. One of the purest beings on this side of the Deep wilds" Centaur said solemnly
The centaur understood how I felt I could tell, it did nothing to ease my unusually emotional response.
His eyes were ancient in a way no human face I'd ever seen had been as he continued.
"What remains will pass beyond this world."
I stared at him.
"Whole?" I demanded but the centaur just looked back at me sadly.
For several seconds I couldn't speak. I looked down at my wand and the hand holding it, that was still shaking.
Not from exhaustion anymore.
I had wanted to know about souls, of course I had. Who wouldn't?
Ghosts existed and even portraits seemed to think. Memories could be stored.
People spoke about death as though everyone understood precisely where the line between body and person lay, while providing remarkably little useful evidence.
I had questions. Hundreds of them. I'd written some down in my notebook.
Experiments too, eventually, when I knew enough to design ones that weren't idiotic.
The thought made me sick now. Not because knowledge itself had changed.
Because I'd just discovered what one of the answers looked like.
Silver strands stretching while something greedily devoured them stretched what seemed like small eternity until something gave and they started to tear.
A creature dying in a way that no creature ever should, losing parts of the whole.
I looked toward the darkness.
"Why?"
The centaur misunderstood.
"One who drinks unicorn blood—"
"No."
I turned on him with some of the anger returning to me.
"Why did you and yours let this happen?" I asked with righteous anger in my voice, not even bothering to try and mask my feelings. I was far too tired and off balance to do so.
Harry inhaled sharply and the centaur's expression hardened somewhat.
"Take care, young wizard. We are not.."
I interrupted him and gestured toward the unicorn.
"You knew. You knew something was hunting them."
"Yes."
"And you did nothing?"
"We searched for it, youngling. Unicorns are one of,if not the fastest running beings in this forest. We did our best."
"Not enough." The words came out before I could stop them.
The centaur's ears flattened slightly which I took both as guilt and anger.
"The Forest is vast." he said more defencively
"And now she's dead." I said spitefully
His face changed a bit in defeat and I pressed on.
"You knew something unnatural was happening. You knew unicorns were dying. You knew—"
"We did not know what creature walked beneath the canopy" He defended himself
"Neither did I!"My voice echoed through the clearing and birds burst from a distant tree.
Harry touched my shoulder.
I shrugged him off.
For the first time, I saw something like unease cross his face. Apparently Centaurs hated the thought of children fighting as much as I did.
"The heavens have warned us that something moves within the Forest," he said slowly. "Mars has been unusually bright."
I stared at him.
Harry shifted awkwardly.
"Mars." I said listlessly
"The movements of the heavens—"
"Mars." My voice had gone very calm. Somewhere in the back of my mind a memory reminded me that Romans had a god of war called Mars, the same one they named the planet after. I ignored it mostly in my anger.
"A unicorn has just had pieces torn from its soul, and you're talking to me about a planets."
The centaur's face hardened.
"You mock what you do not understand."
"Then explain it."
He went silent.
I stepped closer.
"If the stars told you this was going to happen, why didn't you stop it?"
"That is not how the heavens speak."
"Then what use was knowing?Are you not the interpreters of the heavens? not clowns of the heavenly courts?" I challenged
The centaur looked toward the sky through the canopy.
"We read what is written. We do not command what is written. So perhaps we are indeed the clowns of the heavenly court" He said patiently with a hint of amusement that I just got more angry.
"And because you couldn't see precisely where the pieces fell, you waited for them to fall." I needled him, not able to curb my sharp tongue.
The centaur's jaw tightened.
"There are things greater than one life." He said a bit angry for the first time and more than a little defensive.
I looked at the unicorn whose silver blood gleamed beneath the moon.
I wasn't naïve enough to believe otherwise but that wasn't what bothered me.
"You didn't lose one life." I said tiredly, fighting leaving me suddenly leaving me cold and tired. The centaur looked at me still clearly on guard.
"You let something damage whatever comes after it, it's not going to ever be whole if there even is such things after."
Silence.
"That is different." He said softly.
His face changed in a way that I knew I'd struck something deep.
I didn't think there was anything here to win but he understood now my anger.
sound came through the trees more hooves.Considering this one's calm attitude, most likely more centaurs. Soon the sound distanced from us again without anything coming to greet us.
The one before us glanced toward Harry.
"You must leave."
Harry finally found his voice or perhaps I just finally could hear him again.
"What was that thing?"
The centaur studied him for a long moment. Then his gaze moved toward Harry's forehead.
The scar.
"There are few things capable of such an act," he said. "Fewer still who would accept its price."
"What price?" Harry asked.
"To slay a unicorn and drink its blood will preserve a life even when death is near."
Centaur glanced at me then continued.
"But a terrible price follows such an act. The drinker lives a cursed life from the moment the blood touches his lips."
I looked at the unicorn in silence.
Harry looked between us.
"Who would do that?"
The centaur's gaze returned to Harry.
"Someone desperate, someone who has almost no life remaining to lose."
Harry went pale " you mean" he started and I barely noticed.
I was looking at the blood. The preserver of life.
There were questions there.
Enormous and important ones. Questions I would normally have chased until somebody physically prevented me.
I felt no desire whatsoever to chase these. That frightened me almost as much as the answers.
The centaur stepped closer to me and finally introduced himself.
"My name is Firenze."
I looked at him.
"Alexander Hawthorn." I said trying a polite smile but judging his face, I failed utterly.
"I know." He said with a smile similar to mine, that was utterly void of joy.
Of course he did. Firenze looked toward the dead unicorn.
"There are forms of magic, Alexander Hawthorn, whose cost is not understood until after it has been paid."
I followed his gaze.
"I think that's an argument for understanding them before using them."
To my surprise, Firenze almost smiled genuinely at that
"Perhaps it is so"
Then his expression became grave again.
"But curiosity is no protection against the consequences."
That hit closer than I liked but I said nothing. Simply nodded in agreement.
Because he was right. Curiosity had brought me to Norbert.
Curiosity had taken me through half of the hidden places in Hogwarts.
It was curiosity that had made me touch things, open things, follow things and study things that sensible people apparently possessed enough self-preservation to leave alone.
Usually I consider that one of my better qualities.
Tonight however..
I looked down at the dead unicorn again. The unicorn's eyes were still wide open. I crouched and, after hesitating a moment. I gently closed them.
My fingers came away stained silver. Magic clung to them.
Beautiful,complex and dying.
For the first time since discovering magic existed, I looked at something magical and did not want to know more.
No. That wasn't true. I desperately wanted to know more.
I wanted to understand what I'd seen. What the soul was and how flesh could anchor it.
Why unicorns were different and how blood could sustain another creature.
Why whatever had stood beneath that hood appeared utterly black to my Sight.
How someone could damage something that normal killing itself left untouched.
A hundred questions were already forming.
I crushed them ruthlessly.
Not forever,I knew myself better than that,but there would be rules.
Distance and books first. Theory and history if any is available then perhaps people who actually knew what they were doing.
No experiments simply because something looked interesting and definitely no touching things merely to discover what happened.
Absolutely no magic involving souls until I understood enough to know precisely why I should probably never use it.
I wiped the silver blood carefully onto a leaf.
Harry watched me not truly comprehending my moody attitude, which I counted as a blessing.
"You all right?" He asked
"No." I said straightforwardly
He seemed to be surprised by the answer.
So was I but didn't let myself ruminate on it more and just stood up.
"Are you?"
Harry looked toward where the hooded figure had disappeared.
"No."
"Good."
He frowned.
"Good?"
"It means neither of us is stupid enough to think that what happened here tonight was normal."
Harry gave a weak laugh as Firenze just watched us both.
Then we heard a howl from somewhere far away. This one answered by something deeper from the forest.
Noises seemed to return and the forest suddenly felt enormous again.
"We should find Hagrid," Harry said.
"Yes we should." I agreed.
I put my wand away slowly,this time in my robe pocket since my fingers didn't want to release it at all.
I forced them but left my hands in my robe pockets so it was comfortably close.
Before leaving, I looked back once. Moonlight lay across the clearing.
Across silver blood and the still white body.
My eyes shifted toward the darkness beyond it.
Nothing remained of the hooded figure. Only trees and some snapped branches.
I memorised the sight anyway.
The unicorn.
The torn structures.
The way something had stretched where nothing should have stretched.
The moment I'd understood, without knowing why, that what I was witnessing violated something deeper than law.
Years later, I would read books that called certain branches of magic forbidden. Others called them Dark.
Some authors would insist that no knowledge was inherently evil. Only some of its applications were.
Others claimed there were spells whose very creation required intentions no decent person could possess.
I would find arguments on every side.
Some intelligent and some idiotic.
Some obviously written by people who had never touched the magic they condemned so vehemently.
Curiosity would remain curiosity since here would always be another book. Another ritual and another mysterious book whose margins seemed to whisper:
Wouldn't you like to know?
Usually, the answer would be yes.
But whenever curiosity carried me too close to certain doors, I would remember a clearing beneath the moon.
Silver blood and a pure white body.
Something beautiful being torn apart by a creature that did not even understand what it was destroying.
Some doors deserved study while others deserved caution.
Yet some—Some should never be opened.
Curiosity was an easy excuse when ignorant, and when you did not understand what waited on the other side.
I did and if I ever found myself standing before that door again, with my hand upon the handle, I would remember this night.
I would remember the sound the unicorn made as it died, and the wet sound the thing made as it ripped its soul apart in ignorance as it drank the blood in hopes of saving itself .
Not because I feared what was behind the door.
I understood it well enough to know that, if I opened the door, I might never be able to close it again.