"Dear Charlie.
You might not know me personally, but your brother Ron has talked a lot about you. Let me introduce myself. I'm Harry, Ron's house mate. Harry Potter. I'm contacting you without the knowledge of Ron or anybody else since this is a delicate matter. I would be grateful, if you do me this one small favor.
Recently, Hagrid had procured a dragon egg and decided he was going to be a dragon mommy. Yes. I said dragon mommy, if you know Hagrid you would know what I mean.
I wish I could have contacted you sooner, but curiosity and wonder got the better of me. For I too had wanted to watch a dragon hatching and so I withheld this letter. The dragon has hatched and its a beautiful little female Norwegian Ridgeback.
I have convinced Hagrid to part from his dragon charge and send it off to your dragon reserve in Romania where he could visit it. (He can visit it, can't he?)
Can you please help us with this and be discreet about it? I don't want to see Hagrid getting dragged of to Azkaban.
Please send us a reply as soon as possible.
Your's, ever grateful,
Harry James Potter"
I sent Hedwig out for the first time in many days and she was more than delighted to oblige. I got a reply a couple of days later with Charlie accepting the task, saying that some of his friends in the country would come by to pick Berta up on the next Thursday, which would be in a few days, as it would be a new moon. This gives us better advantages of going undetected, one there would be no moonlight and new moons generally makes newborn magical creatures pretty docile and calm.
Thursday could not come faster, as I readied everything for my nightly trip to the Astronomy tower to make one of the most illegal acts in magical Britain. But when Thursday came, I went up the tower gave Norberta to Charlie's contact/friend came back to the dorms and slept off. It seemed so uneventful that I half expected my Potter luck to go off and summon Voldemort from God knows where to face me. But nothing of that sort happened and I was almost disappointed by the turn of events.... or lack thereof.
My days were back to their schedule, except now I started learning all the spells I could, my goal being to expand my arsenal of spells. Curses, charms, transfiguration, elemental spells, even parslemagic and of course my personal brand of wandless magic... with the Room of Requirements becoming my battleground, I threw spell after spell trying various combinations of spells. Bone-breaker curse, Blood-boiling curse, Cutting and severing charms, Toungue-tying hex, Entrail-vanishing Hex, Slug-puking hex, banishing spells, silencing charm, disarming spells and Stunners were the first set of spells I had first started on.
I later transitioned to the more powerful spells like the Blasting curse, the explosion spells and defensive spells like the protego and its variant spells. Then came the Elemental spell. This was the part, I had to look into the library for any kind of reference for spells or atleast the theory of spells. Unfortunately I did not get much help from the library for now, so I kept up with my already large artillery of spells.
Yesterday while at Hagrid, he was grumbling furiously about something that had tried to harm the Unicorns but the creature got spooked when Hagrid started came rambling out of his house waving his massive crossbow and roaring his lungs out. The very evening, after classes I had come back to his cottage under my Invisibility Cloak. "Why 're ya here Harry? It's after curfew! Yer gonna get caught." I waved him off, "Bah! Be that as it is, we have more important things to concern ourselves with. Something is attacking the Unicorns and we need to do something about it."
Hagrid was against it at first but I convinced him saying that I would be under the Invisibility Cloak for the whole time. After a short lecture on sticking close to him, we set off with Fang, Hagrid's dog trailing behind us with a low whimper. Should have named him Courage. The forest felt like a living entity with how the shadows moved with the slight wind swaying the branches. But no wind could be felt inside the canopy of trees around us.
We walked around a few more minutes before we heard the sounds of galloping. I could make out the figures before they reached me. "Who goes there?" One of the figures trotted towards us revealing themselves to be half-men and half-horse popularly known as Centaurs. Hagrid came to meet the lead Centaur, Oh, it's you, Ronan." said Hagrid in relief. "How are yeh?" He walked forward and shook the centaur's hand. "Good evening to you, Hagrid." said Ronan, who had a deep, sorrowful voice.
"You have brought a student into the forest Hagrid? At night? Is it wise to do so?" He asked but there was no chiding in his tone just curiousness. "Harry here..." He said patting me on my back with his meaty hand, "... is as gifted as they come. He has offered to help me catch the creature that had hurt the Unicorns." He said with a small smile, leaving me to rub my bruised back from his patting.
Ronan raised an eyebrow, "Truly? One so young as yourself has volunteered to accept such a daunting task. It is commendable little one." He said nodding at me. "We centaurs find that your human foals are weak and coddled. We teach our young lines to hunt and gather at a very young age you see." His gaze shifted to Hagain, "Come I have found traces of the creature. It has attacked another Unicorn, but fled when Bane and Firenze charged the foul beast. Fortunatly it is alive and recovering fast."
We started following him at a slow pace, our heads were still on the swivel, looking out for predators or other dark creatures that lurked the woods of the aptly named "Forbidden Forest". After searching for a couple of hours we gave up and went back. After not being able to find the "creature" we headed back to the castle, where I sneaked into the kitchen satisfied my grumbling stomach after that long walk and went to bed. I had started going into the forest everyday and patrolled the forest with Hagrid but could not find any hide nor hair of Quirrellmorte in the forest, but I still did not stop. Hagrid took this opportunity to introduce me to his close friendly Aragog.
Never have I been so afraid, nor felt powerless in front of a creature. I knew in my heart that I could burn down the whole nest of spiders, if I give it my all.... but it will surely die taking me with them as they die. My heart hammered not even registering the words which were exchanged Hagrid and Aragog. I could not understand how the Original Harry could stand in its presence and hold a conversation with him. I was more than relieved when Hagrid said his farewells and we left the place, under hundreds of sets of black, beady and hungry eyes.
A week had passed and I was walking through the forest with Ronan and Firenze as Hagrid, Bane and Fang, when Ronan hummed as he watched the sky above still walking in front of us, "Mars is bright tonight." He gazed at the stats as if pondering something as Firenze nodded he too gazing at the stars and added, "Unusually bright." Hearing this from them I suddenly remembered what had happened in the story and got tense. The "creature" would appear tonight.
I took out my wand and started looking for clues as Firenze and Ronan had also became more tense seeing the signs in the stars. After going deeper into the woods we heard a strangled neigh in the distance. "GO! I'll be fine! Find it before it hurts more!Ronan took off following the sound and Firenze looked on with a bit of impatience before telling me, "Climb on Harry Potter. We must make haste." I did not need to be told twice as I jumped on his back.
Firenze started running through the wooded forest, vaulting over huge knots of tree roots that protruded from the Earth. He suddenly came upon a clearing where a hooded figure was bent over a dead unicorn, disgusting slurping noises disturbed the silent night air. I climbed off the palomino body of Firenze and pointed my wand at Quirrel. But before I could cast a spell the Centaur rushed at that hooded figure raising his bow and about to loose a bow when a powerful banishing spell threw the Centaur to the side making him fall on his side.
I jumped behind a tree to hide after casting a chain of spells, which he easily deflected with a simple defensive barrier. "CRUCIO!" I heard his strangled voice, just as I threw myself behind another tree dodging the unforgivable curse by bit and threw another round of spells, ducking from tree to tree trying to use as much cover as possible. "KILL HIM!!" I heard a raspy voice which gavile me a stabbing headache.
after throwing a few more spells I hid behind a knot of tree roots. Seeing that my spells were useless, I steadied myself, taking careful aim as Ronan was firing arrows at it. I was about to throw a spell towards him when another stream of red light hit the spot I was previously hiding.
I had rolled out of the way and whipped out my wand, ! I blindly threw the spell, not even affecting him as he stood up to his full height, dark Mist flowing out of his robes as the smell of death and decay wafted through the clearing, burning my throat and nose, making my eyes water. bolts of magic charged at the hooded figure which was easily deflected again. I was about to throw another stream of spells and curses when Firenze barreled into the creature and kicked him with his front legs sending the creature sprawling.
We heard shouts and galloping and I immediately shouted, "OVER HERE! THE CREATURE! ITS OVER HERE!" The next second, I heard a Dangerous and menacing growl as Quirrel quickly turned into black, smoke like apparition and bolted into the trees. It(Quirrellmorte) knocked both Bane and Hagrid over and continued semi-flying away as Ronan chased after it followed by a furious Bane screaming and letting loose arrow after arrow wildly at him.
"Well. That went well, I guess..." Hagrid snorted at my words by heaved a sigh of relief patting my shoulder, "Yer really lucky Ronan and Firenze were with you Harry. Don't wanna know what would've happened if they weren't. But what kind of a creature was that, though?" I shook my head expressing my thoughts, "That was no creature. It was a human, male or female? I don't know. But they were definitely human. Had a wand with them and put up a strong shield to stop my spells and by the look of it, Ronan's and Firenze's arrows too.
"Who ever they were, they'll be living a cursed life any way. Killing a Unicorn? Bad way to go." I shrugged as I followed him out off the forest. Hagrid waved it off and said, "You would think, Harry. But there be a lot of desperate folk in need of the one thing they don't have. Time. Unicorn blood would make ya live a cursed life.... but you'll still live, mind ya'."
We reached Hagrid's house and I departed from this mini adventure after securing the Invisibility Cloak around me and marching off towards the castle and entering my common room with none the wiser. I did want to include Ron and Hermione, but the chances of messing up something or the other rose significantly. It turned out to be the best decision with Quirrellmorte being more aggressive in the forest with throwing an Unforgivable curse at me and all that.
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A/N: hey guys. Just dropping in. I understand that the upload schedule is slow but please know that I have a full time job and I'm doing the best I can. Also, I would appreciate it if you would please leave a review and rate my work.
P.S: I enjoy reading the Paragraph comments more than the chapter comments. So leave a Para comment!
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