They had not gone very far while clearing the path before they encountered their first magical beast. It was a large rodent covered in brown and tan feathers, and the moment it spotted them, it panicked and fled. "Please tell me your mother did not leave a breeding pair of those here a thousand years ago," Julian said in a pleading tone, and Helena looked away awkwardly. "At least they are usually fairly harmless," Helena said, trying to reassure him. Julian did not feel reassured in the slightest, because the creature had been a colo colo, a Chilean feathered rat. Those things had an unpleasant tendency to drain energy from people, leaving them more and more exhausted over time if they were not dealt with.
They were not considered especially dangerous when encountered alone, but that only remained true up to a point. If too many of them fed on someone while they slept, the victim could be drained into fatal exhaustion, and like most rats, they bred incredibly quickly. An island left undisturbed for a thousand years was a very long time for creatures like that to multiply, so there was no telling how many now infested the place. "Why in Merlin's name did your mother think keeping colo colos was a good idea?" Julian asked seriously.
Helena looked embarrassed. "That was... sort of my fault," she mumbled under her breath, but Julian still heard her perfectly thanks to his sharper elven hearing. "Yeah, I think I have a pretty good idea of how that happened," he said with a teasing grin. "I was once a young and ignorant girl, I will have you know!" Helena shot back defensively. "Sure, sure, but feathered rats? Even I never would have guessed you could find those cute," Julian said, mercilessly teasing his long-dead relative while Ollivander watched with a quietly amused look.
As they continued clearing the path, they came across several other magical creatures, including bowtruckles, horned serpents, and even snawfus, large white deer-like beasts with wooden branches instead of antlers. Thankfully, none of those species were especially difficult to deal with, since they generally preferred to avoid humans. Fortunately, they were also neither unknown nor especially rare, so Julian was not too concerned. That changed with the next creature they encountered, or more accurately, the next creature that found them. It had the body of a lion, bat-like wings, the face of a woman, and the tail of a scorpion.
It was a manticore, and it was enormous, which made sense considering it was likely well over a thousand years old. "Ah, it seems the little mistress has returned, and with such a handsome young one accompanying her," the beast said in a very human sounding voice. "Seram!" Helena cried out happily and rushed toward the huge manticore to hug it. "Haah, how I have missed you, my little one," the manticore said with a broad smile that showed off many sharp teeth as it gently draped one massive paw over Helena in return.
"As touching as this reunion is, would someone mind explaining what exactly is going on?" Julian asked, thoroughly confused as to why a vicious monster like a manticore was behaving in such a warm and protective manner toward a human, or in this case, a ghost. Wild manticores were well documented and infamous man-eaters. Despite their human-like intelligence, they actively hunted wizards in order to feed on magical energy, which was why they had nearly been exterminated. "Seram is the guardian of the island. Mother raised her alongside me when I was still an infant. After so much time, I thought she would have died by now," Helena said, her eyes filling with tears.
Julian could understand why that would hit her so hard. He was not surprised that Seram had survived this long, since manticores, much like basilisks, possessed extremely long lifespans, and according to the records, the oldest known one had lived to be seventeen hundred years old. "I'm afraid your worry was justified," Seram said honestly. "I have barely managed to survive on the offspring of those two feathered rats of yours and the snawfus, and even those provide little enough energy to sustain me."
Helena looked horrified after hearing that. "I'm so sorry I never came back, but I was rather... lost for all that time," she said, fading into her ghostly state. The manticore's expression shifted in surprise. "So you truly have died," it said with a sigh. "After so long, I had assumed as much, but I never imagined you would return as a ghost. It seems the two of us both carry regrets strong enough to keep us lingering in this world," Seram said sadly before her demeanor changed. She grew serious and turned a threatening stare toward Julian and Ollivander.