Chapter 15
Sightings
Rose’s so-called eye witness fell somewhat below the expectations Albus and Scorpius had had for him. After Transfiguration, Rose had snatched Albus up so they could head Scorpius off at the corridor before he left Defense Against the Dark Arts with the other Slytherins.
“C’mon!” Rose had ushered the boys along, nearly dragging them behind her. “I told him to meet us down this way.”
It had been nothing short of amazing how Rose had been able to walk backwards at a pace that the two boys had found difficult to keep up with even at a brisk run. Eventually, they had made it to the library, where Rose had decided to instigate a game of follow the leader and had had the boys follow her in a crouching crabwalk underneath the desk where Madam Pince had been standing, eyes scanning for students engaging in any destructive behaviors towards her beloved books.
More painfully hunched walking had brought the three first-years deeper and deeper into the library stacks. Albus was beginning to notice a pattern to Rose’s choice in meeting places; those Ravenclaws really were starting to have a negative influence on his cousin.
After what had seemed like a highly unnecessary amount of time, Rose had finally stood up normally, allowing the boys to do the same as well. Walking on her tiptoes, Rose had then begun peeking around various corners, tiptoeing again, peeking around corners once more, then tiptoeing again….
“Alright, then,” Rose had said, finally bringing the group to a sudden stop, “here we are!” The redhead had then turned to the creature in front of them. “Sorry I had to keep you waiting so long….”
And there they suddenly were, standing in front of the person that Rose had told them would be able to give them everything they needed, and more. Scorpius scoffed quite vocally, while Albus just found himself frozen and dumbstruck. Perhaps ‘person’ was a poor choice in words…
Rose’s witness was a centaur, and not even one that appeared as though it could be of any assistance to the Arcane ScoRA.
The centaur was young: a mere…colt that didn’t appear to be any older than Albus, Rose, or Scorpius themselves were. Come to think of it, Albus had no idea if centaurs even aged at the same rate as humans were. The colt in front of them had a bay coat with matted black hair, the human half of his body looking as though he had not had a bath in more than a week. Albus didn’t know if this stemmed from being a wild creature or simply from being a child, like of any other species, human or otherwise, with a strong disdain for bathing.
“Boys, this is Caolán,” Rose introduced. “He comes from the Forbidden Forest, he came here with his herd.”
Rose then turned to the young centaur. “Caolán, this is Albus and this is Scorpius. Albus is my cousin, and Scorpius is my friend.”
The young centaur eyed the two boys as though he were just as confused by their presence as much as Albus and Scorpius were by his.
Rose got his attention once again. “They want to know something, and so do I. Why did the creatures from the forests all come into the castle at the same time?”
The conversation was soon interrupted by Scorpius’ shocked outburst. “You must be joking!” he spat, as though he could no longer hold in his emotions.
Caolán, the centaur, looked over Rose’s shoulders, appearing quite offended as well, but almost in a way that seemed as though he didn’t quite understand why he should be so. It was a deathly glare that was shot by Rose, however, that stopped Scorpius’ outburst right in its tracks. As soon as she seemed convinced that there would be no further interruptions, Rose turned back to the centaur colt.
“You know that a lot of creatures have been coming into the castle before you came here, don’t you. But I don’t think, though, that it has been for the same reasons that you and your herd came into the castle.”
The boy/colt cocked his head to the side. “Why do you want to know all this, anyway?”
“Because we are just naturally curious, and, of course, we are concerned about things that could be dangerous to us and our classmates.”
Rose said all of this while smiling a smile Albus had come to recognize as Rose’s ‘nervous smile’: something that only came out when Rose knew she was in trouble or on the losing side of an argument and especially when she thought a cute expression might be able to get her out of it.
Trying to negotiate with the centaur colt, however, was not one of those moments.
“And…because I still have a lot more Licorice Wands,” she added, jiggling the incentive in front of the colt’s face. It took less than a moment for the boy to snatch the package out of Rose hand, munching on a wand while beginning to explain.
“The elders say Orion and Leo are having a power struggle,” Caolán finally said, in-between bites. When he noted the confused looks on Scorpius and Albus’ faces, he elaborated, pointing up towards the ceiling. “The constellations? Orion and Leo? The elders say there is unease between the two of them.”
Scorpius wrinkled his nose and his brow. “What is that supposed to mean?”
Caolán just shrugged. “My mother and father just said we had to go somewhere safe,” he told them, “and then they said Hogwarts was the safest place in the world.”
“Okay,” Rose relented, “and why did you need to go somewhere safe?”
Caolán gulped down the last of his licorice. “Because Orion and Leo are having a power struggle,” he repeated once again, looking at them as though he believed them all to be extremely stupid.
Behind her, Scorpius rolled his eyes, and Albus was extremely grateful for the fact that Rose was too preoccupied to have seen him.
“Alright, then,” Rose said, taking a deep breath before giving up on that line of questioning and moving on. “Has anyone in your herd been saying anything else about what has been happening lately?”
“You mean, besides the elders?” Caolán question as he moved on to another Licorice Wand. “Why would you want to know that?”
Rose’s hand went to her forehead. “Well, you’ll just have to trust me when I say it could be very important. In an investigation, any piece of information could prove to be vital. My father’s an Auror, so I know this to be true.”
“In our herd, the word of our elders is what we live by. So, when they decided we needed to leave the forest, everyone just agreed that it was because Orion and Leo are in a power struggle.”
Scorpius groaned at hearing the same bit of (what he considered to be) useless information, but Caolán wasn’t done yet.
“But some of the yearlings,” which Albus assumed must have been the human equivalent of teenagers from the way Caolán described them, “go off by themselves a great deal, and when they come back, they tell us about what they have seen.”
Rose’s face lit up at the first sign of real progress. “Splendid! Maybe you can tell me what some of those stories were….”
But in contrast to Rose’s ecstatic expression, Caolán’s face became very grim, reflecting his knowledge of the subject he was about to speak on. “A monster!” He spoke at a near-whisper. “A bad monster! They found footprints, bones, and even blood that it had left behind. They said that it would get us if we stayed in the forest. And they said that even before the elders said we needed to leave!”
Caolán spoke this last sentence as though it were the greatest scandal in centaur history.
Rose pushed further. “Did any of them say what the monster was called?”
The colt shook his head. “No. They never did give the monster a name.”
Rose nodded slowly. “Did anyone even see the actual monster?”
The room was still for a moment, but eventually, the colt admitted the truth by shaking his head. “No one in the herd saw the monster, but we all knew it was there, because we could all see the evidence it had left behind,” he said. “Oh, and that Orion and Leo are in a power struggle.”
“No way!” Scorpius said, clearly fed up. “Why didn’t you mention that before?”
But Rose and Caolán both ignored this, as though in their own little world. “It wasn’t just us, you know?” the colt continued. “Every other animal in the forest is in this castle.”
“Really? We didn’t notice!” Scorpius shouted, only to still be ignored.
“So it couldn’t just be a mistake with the stars, you know,” the young centaur reasoned. “Every creature in the forest sensed something was wrong. Even you humans seemed to know something is not right. I can tell by the way your adults are carrying themselves and by the way they whisper to one another.”
Scorpius chose this moment to continue practicing his sarcasm. “Yeah, well, we knew something was wrong the first time a monster showed up in the school corridors and tried to eat us!”
Rose finally turned around to meet with Scorpius’ challenges, but she never got a chance to react, because they were happened upon by a rage-filled, librarian looming over them in a way that could strike fear into the hearts of any man.
“WHY IS THERE ONE OF THOSE FILTHY CREATURES IN MY LIBRARY?” Madam Pince shrieked at a volume and pitch that could have shattered glass. “Did you children bring that beast in here? I have NOT been spending every waking hour of these past weeks just to have students sneaking them in behind my back, let me tell you!”
Rose had barely opened her mouth before Madam Pince concluded the monologue with an ear-splitting, “EVERYBODY OUT!” No one argued.
Bodies, feet, and hooves went racing through the stacks of books and out into the school corridor. The three members of the Arcane ScoRA scrambled into a twisted staircase, while Caolánc clopped towards the Great Hall, where all the school’s new resident creatures were supposed to be.
“Well, wasn’t that just so wonderfully productive?” Scorpius remarked once Caolán was out of range and the three friends were fighting with one another for elbow room. “What do we know now that we didn’t know before we arrived here, anyway?”
Rose spun around, smacking Scorpius in the face with her hair. She stared up at him as though the boy had said something so wonderfully oblivious that she couldn’t even believe it. “What on earth are you talking about, Scorpius? Weren’t you paying even the tiniest bit of attention?”
Scorpius looked down at her. “I know than Orion and Leo are having a power struggle right now,” he told her sarcastically. “Your little friend made that quite clear.”
Rose rolled her eyes as she stood to her feet, straightening her robes. “This is why nobody is ever able to figure their way out of anything in this world; they don’t know what to do with the information they””
“You know, Weasley,” Scorpius interrupted, “I think you’ve been buddying around with the rest of those Ravenclaws for too long. You’ve been infected by their attitudes.”
Albus scooted as far back against the wall as he possibly could. He was fairly certain Scorpius hadn’t meant to push that particular button, but from the growing expression of rage on Rose’s face, he had indeed pushed it nonetheless. Also, Albus noted the very vulnerable physical position Scorpius was currently in should Rose choose to act on her anger.
“Centaurs talk in abstracts and riddles. Everyone knows that.” So far so good. At least Rose hadn’t made Scorpius cry…yet. “Caolán was explaining everything as clearly as he possibly knew how to. Now, it’s just a matter of translating it all from centaur to human.
“No worries, though,” Rose said, making her way down the stairs. “I was not placed in Ravenclaw because I’m afraid of a challenge.”
Before disappearing for good, however, the redhead turned to look over her shoulder. “If, however,” Rose made sure to add, “that is too much for your own tiny brain to handle, I can most certainly handle it myself.”
Not taking the insult very well, Scorpius pushed himself to stand and began to follow after Rose before Albus stopped him.
“No!” he insisted, as vehemently as he possibly could.
Scorpius turned to face his Gryffindor friend with a very wronged look on his face. “Did you not hear what she said? You would think that””
“Trust me, Scorpius,” Albus interrupted, knowing he was doing his friend a favor. “Once Rose has given you the opportunity to let something go, you take it! It will only be that much worse if you follow her and try to start that argument up again.”
Snorting loudly, Scorpius looked over his shoulder as Rose disappeared around the corner to Merlin-knows where. “That cousin of yours has too big a head to even be a Ravenclaw!”
“Why are you complaining?” Albus asked. “At least you don’t have to do any of the centaur/human translating.”
But Scorpius still looked over his shoulder, appearing quite wronged as Rose disappeared from sight.
The Arcane ScoRA and the Wand of MacArt by OliveOil_Med
Chapter Notes: Rose finds a first-hand witness to tell what has been happening in the forest. One that falls slightly below Albus and Scorpius' expectations.
Thank you to Apruva, who really is one of the most lovely betas you will ever meet!