Chapter 16
The Wand of MacArt
Albus did not see his cousin for any substantial amount of time after the meeting with Caolán, the centaur colt. Even in Transfiguration, which Gryffindor had with the Ravenclaw, Albus was given no opportunities to speak with Rose. All through the class, Rose scanned through textbooks and notebooks at a nearly frantic pace. Frankly, she looked like a madwoman, but no one said a thing. Professor Dugan lectured, some students took notes (and a few of them snickered and pointed), but no one did a thing to interrupt her work, Albus included.
As soon as class ended, Rose raced back to Ravenclaw tower and Albus did not see his cousin for days”not in the Great Hall, the library, or even the corridors.
That came to end, however, on Friday afternoon, as Albus was on his way to the greenhouses for Herbology. When Albus found himself somewhat cut off from the herd of clabbering Gryffindors around him, he heard a voice shouting his name from up above him. When he looked over his shoulder, he could see a messy mass of rumbled black robes, topped with tangled red hair, racing in his direction. Her arms were waving above her head and she looked just as crazy and out of her mind as Albus had ever seen her. Any other person’s first instinct would have been to run, but Albus, of course, stayed right where he was. Any other person would have questioned Albus’ self-preservation instincts.
“Albus!” Rose called out to her cousin. “Albus, stop! Please!”
And so Albus stood there on the path, until, finally, Rose caught up to him. When she finally reached his side, she hunched over, clutching at her sides and breathing hard. “Rose, what is it?” Albus asked once Rose finally steadied herself back on her feet.
Rose stood on her tiptoes to peer over Albus’ shoulder, almost as though she were playing the lookout. “You’re going to have to forgive me for this,” she said rather suddenly.
Albus was confused. “For what?” he asked, immediately cautious.
Instead of offering a verbal answer, however, Rose gave Albus’ right ankle a very sharp kick. A kick that was so sudden and so hard, Albus actually screamed out in pain and crumpled down to the ground. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see a mixture of Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs continuing towards the greenhouse, though Albus couldn’t be sure if anyone had actually seen what had caused the show in front of them. While Albus was still crouched on the ground, groaning in pain, Professor Longbottom came rushing up the path, trying to see what had happened.
Before Albus could say different, Rose took control of the situation. “Albus can’t come to class today, Professor Longbottom,” she told their teacher quickly. “He twisted his ankle on the path…don’t you think I should take him to Madam Pomfrey?”
Before the Herbology teacher could ask Rose what she was doing outside in the first place, or even give permission to take his student back to the castle, Rose hoisted her cousin up off the ground, steadying him with her shoulders, and took off back towards the castle, going much too quickly to be considered therapeutic for anyone. A few times, Albus considered informing Rose of this, but every time he came close to saying anything, he took particular note of the manic expression on his cousin’s face and he thought better of it, and decided to just try and run a little bit faster in order to keep up with her.
By the time they had reached the outside of the Hospital Wing, Rose finally allowed her cousin to drop to the stone floor. “Okay,” Rose turned around to instruct him, “you have to wait until after I go in before you go to Madam Pomfrey yourself. I’m going to tell her I’m sick, so that she will let me stay in the Hospital Wing. You just wait a bit before you come in yourself.”
And, with that, Rose left her cousin on the floor and made her way into the Hospital Wing, her tone changing notably as she began complaining of fake stomach pains and hurting in her head. When the complaining finally became somewhat quieter, Albus struggled to bring himself to his feet and limped his way in after his cousin. When Madam Pomfrey saw him, she simply shook her head and clicked her tongue at what she perceived to be a long line of hurt children in a row. Behind the Mediwitch, Albus could see a great deal of other students”some ill, some injured”waiting to be treated. Madam Pomfrey directed Albus over towards a line of cots, and told him to lie down while he waited. Before Madam Pomfrey even finished her sentence, however she had already turned around to make her way over to the line of still-waiting students.
As Albus made his way over to the row of beds, he could see his cousin lying on top of the sheets, pretending to moan in pain, though pushing herself up once she saw her cousin.
On the hospital bed right next to her sat Scorpius, but there was absolutely nothing fake about his reason for being in the Hospital Wing. He was holding a blood-soaked rag over his nose, and both of his eyes were on the verge of turning black; his expression was one of annoyance, frustration, and still-fading shock.
Albus’ own eyes went wide as he sat down on his friend’s bed. “What happened to you?” he exclaimed.
Scorpius looked over to glare at Rose. “She hit me in the face with her book bag.”
“Desperate times call for desperate measures, boys,” Rose told them, moving to sit upright on her own bed. “It will be easy enough to fix, though, as soon as Madam Pomfrey finishes up with that poor sap over there.”
“Don’t tell me you’re responsible for that as well,” Scorpius remarked.
For a long time, Rose just looked the boy straight in the eyes without saying a word; definitely not a very good sign. Eventually, Roses snapped back down to her notes, manically flipping through the pages filled with scribbling. “It came to me so very suddenly while I was in History of Magic! Professor Binns was telling everyone to get out their notes…and while I was looking for a clean sheet of paper, I came across this!”
Rose stopped very suddenly, her index finger pointing sharply towards the middle of the page in her lap. “As soon as I began reading, I started remembering…and I began to see it all so clearly, as though it were being spelled out right in front of my eyes.”
“Cormac MacArt,” Rose read out loud, “was a third-century king in Ireland.” Rose looked up. “Muggles know of his existence as well, but like Professor Binns said, they don’t know the whole story behind him.” She glanced back down to continue reading.
“Cormac MacArt was born the illegitimate son of a High King. His mother was a witch who had met the king on the eve of his final battle. The king died before Cormac was even born, and while he was still a toddler, he was separated from his mother and he never saw her again. But luckily for Cormac MacArt, a mother wolf found him, took pity on him, and raised him right alongside her own cubs. As he grew older, he became a full member of the pack, especially when the other wolves saw how useful Cormac’s magic could be to them himself.”
How would a wolf even be able to distinguish what was done by magic? Did wolves even know what magic was? Albus thought to himself. And how would they know that Cormac MacArt was the one responsible for it…unless they spoke English and Cormac told them?
“Now, this was in the days before Hogwarts even existed. Cormac was therefore forced to study magic on his own, in any way he could. That included making his own tools, even his own wand.”
Rose flipped to the next page. “The Wand of MacArt was carved from the femur of a rival pack leader that Cormac himself had slain. The core came from the feather Cormac had taken from a phoenix just before it had burst into flames. Cormac believed that the creature had offered itself to him for the sole purpose of having its feather used in his wand.”
Rose turned yet another page. She had obviously taken a great deal of notes related to this one man. Albus wondered if she had taken them all during class, or if she had just done more of her own research after coming to whatever conclusion it was that she had about everything that had been happening.
“It was only after his wand’s completion that MacArt truly came into his true potential as a wizard.” Rose voice gradually became lower, more severe. “Even though he never learned a great deal in terms of Potions or theory-based magic, he was highly gifted in terms of combat spells and any magic for which he used his wand.
“Because of the way he was raised, MacArt held a strong rapport with the creatures of the forest where he was raised. They came to see him as the pack leader of not only his wolf pack, but of every creature in the wilderness.”
Taking a quick break to breathe, Rose returned to her reading. “When Cormac reached adulthood, he returned to the mountains of Tara in order to take his place as the new High King. He stormed into the then-current king’s castle with his wolf pack following him, serving as his army.”
“But wait,” Scorpius stopped her, “if he was only a toddler when he was separated from his mother, how did he know he was destined to be the king?”
“SCORPIUS, will you shut up and pay attention?” Rose shrieked at the top of her lungs. Albus was shocked that Madam Pomfrey did not seem to hear her. But it did effectively shut up Scorpius, whose lips pursed into a tight little line. As soon as Rose appeared satisfied that she would not be interrupted again, she began her reading once again.
“Those who were in the castle at the time of the siege said Cormac MacArt possessed an unusual ability to control the animals who served as his army, directing them with his handcrafted wand. But when the reigning king sent his own creatures into battle”magical creatures, as well as mundane”they fell under MacArt’s control as well. They had no sense of loyalty to their masters, or even of their own mortality in a lot of cases. All they knew was what MacArt’s wand commanded,” Rose said these last few words with an odd sort of inflection in her voice. “Needless to say, Cormac MacArt overthrew the old king, took the throne, and actually became a great and beloved king.”
Finally, Rose finished reading, taking a very large gulp of air as she closed her composition book. While Rose appeared relaxed and content now that her reading was complete, the two boys in front of her had their eyes wide open, jaws dropped down. Rose regaled them with a stare that seemed be questioning what there possibly was to be confused about.
“So…,” Albus’ voice trailed off, “what are you saying, then?”
Rose eyed her cousin, as though she could not believe that Albus wasn’t able to connect the dots himself. “Think for a moment, Albus. This ancient king had a special wand, one that he built himself, one that was able to control any animal he wished. What does this remind you of?”
In order to further illustrate her point, she reopened her composition book and shoved it into Albus’ face so that the print was barely an inch in front of his eyes. “Does any-thing, any object in this story, sound like it could possibly be related to otherwise unexplained events in this school?” Rose shoved the pages closer still, so that they actually hit Albus in the nose.
Scorpius tried to raise his eyebrows and appear as understanding as he possibly could with a broken nose and two black eyes. “You honestly think someone in this castle somehow got their hands on some two thousand-year-old wand, and is now using said wand, which somehow still functions perfectly after all this time?”
While Rose was distracted by the question, Albus pushed the composition book down so he could see the conversation taking place. When Scorpius said it like that, it did seem to be extremely unlikely, but Rose did not seem to be swayed so easily.
“It makes as much sense as anything else does,” she said to Scorpius, trying to persuade him to believe what he currently thought to be an idiotic explanation for everything that been happening to them that year. “Don’t you remember all the questions we were asked when the Aurors came to our school? Maybe, if you can recall some of the more specific details, it might become a bit more likely to you.”
Scorpius scowled, but Albus actually did attempt to think back to the incident that had occurred all those weeks ago. Between the creatures breaking into the school and nearly being eaten alive on a fairly regular basis, being questioned by the Ministry did not seem like such a terribly outstanding event after all.
But mere seconds after following his cousin’s advice, he began to see what it was she was referring to.
“They were completely obsessed with our wands,” Albus realized. “And my dad asked me if I had ever been to Ireland!”
It did seem to make sense…for a while. Again, Scorpius pointed out the sheer flaws in logic that the theory possessed. “And? So what?” he asked. “They think someone just snatched the thing up when no one was looking?”
Rose stared the boy down, confident, prepared for this. “They must have had their suspicions that someone must have gotten their hands on it,” she reasoned. “Even if they don’t know exactly how they found it, they must believe that they somehow must have gotten this tool to work for them. It’s a near-perfect explanation for everything that has been happening this year, don’t you see?”
“But why would they even bother asking to see people’s wands and bring in a wand expert to examine them?” Scorpius brought up yet another good point. “Surely they couldn’t have been stupid enough to think the student would just hand that sort of thing over to the Ministry…unless he was completely daft somehow, despite being clever enough to find and use this wand.”
But, yet again, Rose had an answer pre-prepared for that question as well. It made Albus wonder if she had actually played this debate out in her head before even tracking down her friends. “Maybe they were trying to see if anyone was using their wand less than what would have been expected.” Rose’s fingers began tapping on the cover of her composition book. “I mean, if a person had a powerful wand like the Wand of MacArt, I’m sure they would want to use that a lot more than whatever wand they might have gotten when they were eleven.”
Scorpius furrowed his brow. “And this is supposed to serve as further proof that someone at this school actually has this Wand of MacArt?”
“It serves as proof that the Ministry thinks one of the students here does.” Despite the fact that it was clear that Scorpius remained unconvinced, that did not stop Rose from holding tight to her own theory as though it were fact.
Albus took his turn to join in the conversation. “The only problem is we have no idea who would even have the Wand of MacArt,” he said. “And, if the Ministry’s finest Aurors couldn’t figure it out themselves, what makes you think we have a chance?”
Rose’s eyes drifted upward and her index finger tapped against her chin as the wheels in her head began turning. “There might be a way to find out though.”
Albus felt every muscle in his body clench as Rose prepared to tell him and Scorpius of her plan of action.
“There is a monster in the Forbidden Forest; everyone knows it,” Rose said, her inner know-it-all showing. “All the creatures have fled to the castle because of it, and yet, with all possible food sources gone, we still have yet to see it trying to come into the castle itself. In spite of the fact that all the other creatures we have seen so far have tried.
“It’s still out there for a reason,” Rose deduced. “The person wielding the Wand of MacArt is keeping it out there.”
Neither of the boys guessed what this could possibly mean, likely because the just didn’t want to. But luckily”or unluckily”Rose was more than willing to draw the conclusion for them.
“If we can find the creature, there is a good chance that we will also be able to find the person who summoned it, as well.”
“Or commit suicide trying!” Scorpius remarked sarcastically still, though it didn’t sound quite right when he said it with a broken nose.
Rose shot him an incredulous look. “But it makes perfect sense,” she tried to argue. “A creature as great and powerful as whatever made everyone in the forest flee is likely not going to obey orders from afar, even with the Wand of MacArt.
“Whoever it was would likely have to spend a great deal of time in the immediate presence of this creature. Meaning that, if we were to find this creature, the chances would be that we would come across the person controlling it as well.”
“You know, Rose,” Scorpius said slowly. “That is actually a brilliant idea.”
Rose’s face lit up. “You really think so?”
“Yes,” he agreed, his tone suddenly becoming snide, “aside from the fact that it is completely and utterly insane!”
Rose’s jaw dropped slightly, in the manner of someone completely offended. Scorpius alluded further. “We have no idea what’s out there!” he tried to make himself clear. “And at any rate, whatever does happen to be out there, do you imagine it is anything a trio of first-years would be able to handle, at least, given the reactions we have seen from our dear guests?”
Despite Scorpius’ insistence, however, Rose did not appear discouraged in the slightest. “We’ve been able to handle every other creature that has come our way,” she argued, shaking her head. “Even the Quintaped, one of the most dangerous creatures in the world….I know it could very well be dangerous, but it won’t be as though we will be diving in head-first.”
“Well, Rose, since you seem to have all the answers here, what do you suggest we do with this new found information?”
Had Albus not gone completely stiff with surprise, he probably would have warned Scorpius of just how bad an idea it was to allow Rose to be given complete control over the choice of action. But Rose beat Albus before he could interject any such remark, however. “Tonight, we’re going to go into the Forbidden Forest ourselves and see if we can find whoever it is who has the Wand of MacArt. Like I said before, if the monster is staying the in forest, then the person controlling it has to be somewhere nearby.”
“But what if we run into the monster instead?” Albus asked in a small voice.
Rose held herself confidently. “Well given our track record, we’ll be much more prepared for that than we would have been for a human being. But either way, no one on earth could be better qualified to find them than the three of us are.”
Rose seemed ready to sprint out to the forest right then and there, but the two boys remained firmly attached to their hospital beds. “Rose,” Scorpius said, “have I neglected to mention how completely and utterly mad you are right now?”
Finally, Rose did stand up, her hands on her hips. “You asked me what we were going to do, and I told you!”
The loud tone of Rose’s voice left no room for argument. The Arcane ScoRA was most definitely going into the Forbidden Forest…and they were going there tonight.
Thanks to a mirage of sick students, coming in one wave after another, Madam Pomfrey found herself unable to pay a great deal of attention to the members of the Arcane ScoRA, although she did manage to eventually fix Scorpius’ nose. They were so greatly ignored, in fact, that Rose was able to leave the Hospital Wing for various intervals for things in her dormitory she thought might prove to useful while scavenging the woods, including the Invisibility Cloak. Albus and Scorpius, on the other hand, elected to stay in the Hospital Wing, being the only members of the Arcane ScoRA who were actually injured and therefore in need of medical attention.
Coincidentally, every time Rose returned to the Hospital Wing, she seemed to bring with her a new cluster of ill and injured students, leading Albus to believe it might not be so coincidental, after all.
Once Madam Pomfrey got around to fixing Scorpius’ black eyes and various other head injuries, she shooed him out of the Hospital Wing so his bed could be given to one of the incoming students”he was doubled over, complaining of the exact same symptoms everyone else had been. Scorpius left the Hospital Wing, a little bit unsteady on his feet, on his way to retrieve the Marauders’ Map, which was still in the Slytherin dormitories.
“I told Scorpius to meet us in the courtyard by the fountain,” Rose told Albus after Scorpius had left. “From there, we can make a straight run to the Forbidden Forest, and if we can just get there without getting caught, we should be fine.”
Albus nodded, but found himself squirming further into his hospital bed. He just could not bring himself to the level of excitement and confidence Rose possessed in their undertaking…he could not even manage the reluctant acceptance that Scorpius had. Some Gryffindor he was, apparently.
Even after Madam Pomfrey had healed his injured ankle, Rose had allowed her cousin to remain in his bed for some time, in order to mentally prepare himself for the journey to the forest. But Albus knew that, deep down, that no matter how long he was allowed to wait, it probably wouldn’t help him feel any braver about running off into the Forbidden Forest. Finally, he just assured his cousin that he was ready to go, even though it wasn’t completely true.
“Madam Pomfrey,” Rose called out, “Albus says he’s feeling a lot better, and so am I. May be go back to our towers, please?”
Madam Pomfrey clearly still found herself too preoccupied with other patients to give the remaining members of the Arcane ScoRA her full attention, she just waved them off while multi-tasking medical care between two beds. Rose reached down under her own bed for her book bag and ushered her cousin out into the corridor, pushing gently at his shoulder.
Once they were out of the Hospital Wing, Rose pulled the Invisibility Cloak from her bag in a single, flourishing movement and draped it over their heads. It gave Albus a small twinge of security knowing that they would not be caught by any of the teachers or prefects, but not all that much”the Cloak was only helping them move faster towards the pit of beasts.
They made it to the castle courtyard without any incident; from beneath the Cloak, Albus could see Scorpius sitting on the edge of the fountain, back straight, an expression of vigilance across his face. Before Albus could even perceive what was happening, Rose began moving forward faster, pulling the Cloak up off Albus as she took it with her; then she was gone. It took barely a moment, though, before Albus was able to see the scene for himself: Rose threw the Cloak off her body and grabbed Scorpius roughly and suddenly by the shoulder. The boy very nearly screamed, but he quickly clamped his hands over his mouth as he struggled to keep his balance on the edge of the fountain. Rose had her own hands over her mouth as well, in order to muffle her laughter, while Scorpius’s own hands did nothing to hide the furious expression on his face. Even Albus couldn’t help but snicker slightly at the scene in front of him, though it fortunately remained unheard.
Rose and Scorpius exchanged combative looks all the way across the grounds, and Albus amused himself by watching them. In fact, by the time they eventually did reach the edge of the forest, they appeared to be shocked at their location and their close proximity to the thick shield of trees. The three children stood frozen for the moment, as though blinded by exceedingly bright lights.
Scorpius finally broke the silence. “So what do we do now, Madam Leader Weasley?”
The condescending tone appeared to be what it took for Rose to snap out of her state of shock and shoot Scorpius an angered glare. “I would think that would be obvious, Master Malfoy.”
It was with that that Rose simply began moving forward. Her gait became slightly more acrobatic once she reached the dense brush. Lifting at the hems of her robes, she made her eay deeper and deeper into the forest, until it became more and more of a trial for Albus to see her. When that point came, Scorpius followed after her, but Albus rushed ahead of him so that Rose would not see that Albus had been the last one to be courageous enough follow after her.
For a long stretch into the forest, the three children scrambled their way through the obstacle course of fallen branches, damp and slimy leaves, and the occasional stone cutting across the soles of their feet. Eventually, Scorpius was again the first to break the silence.
“Does anyone else find this a bit odd?” he asked as he stumbled over a pile of fallen branches.
“How so?” Albus could hear Rose call out from her head start.
“I mean, with all we have heard from the teachers about students not being allowed into the Forbidden Forest, it would seem logical that it would be pretty hard to get into, and we just sort of ‘walked into it,’ didn’t we?”
“It’s surprisingly less difficult than you might think,” Rose told him over the sound of trigs cracking beneath her feet. “They used to have kids do detentions in here before the school finally made that sort of punishment against school policy.”
“And, according to our Uncle George, our family has been sneaking into this forest for generations,” Albus added, trying to contemplate the best way to climb through a fallen oak limb.
Rose took her turn to shout over her shoulder. “It’s all in our blood, and that’s probably why Albus and I can sneak into the Forbidden Forest so easily. As for you, I have no idea. Maybe you’re just a freak of nature.”
Whatever sort of snarky expression Scorpius chose to take on would probably been a great deal more effective had it not been for the inconveniently-placed pile of decomposing forest material that caused him to suddenly fall flat on his face, his school robe tearing to shreds on the limb Albus had just maneuvered his way through.
“Not”a”word!” the blond boy managed to hiss, still face-down in the damp earth. Up ahead, Albus was vaguely certain he could hear his cousin snickering at the display, though making sure to keep it at a decibel that Scorpius would not be able to hear.
Albus doubled back through the twisting branches to help Scorpius to his feet, though the robe was a lost cause; they left it dangling in shreds in the limbs, scraps flying in the wind. Scorpius, however, didn’t appear to mourn the loss, undoing his tie and stuffing it into his trouser pocket before he could accidentally hang himself with it next. After Albus helped Scorpius to stand steady on his feet for the first few strides, the boys made their way forward until they were finally able to catch up to Rose, who was waiting rather impatiently beside a moss-covered elm.
By the time they began walking again, Scorpius pushed away from Albus so that he could walk on his own once again. It was a matter of Malfoy pride, after all; he could hardly have anyone see him dangling from a Potter. Even if they were friends…or whatever the three first-years considered themselves to be, and even if there appeared to be no one else in the forest. “So how are we even supposed to find this creature when we don’t even have any idea what it is we are looking for?”
“Well, to start with, anyone who is afraid of the monster is in the castle right now,” Rose said to the two boys, almost perfectly imitating the know-it-all tone that Aunt Hermione used so well herself, “so, not only will any fresh tracking signs we come across mostly likely be from the monster in question, but probably any intimidating creature that we come across will probably be the one we are looking for.”
Scorpius raised his eyebrows, befuddled. “What are tracking signs anyway?”
Rose rolled her eyes, as though she were disgusted by what she must have perceived as Scorpius’ ‘sheltered, highbred upbringing.’ “Things like this,” she said, pointing out damage to the tree branch just above her head. “The twigs on this branch are damaged, but still hanging by flexible bark. That means it happened recently, like maybe after all the forest creature came to the castle.”
“What about things like this?” Albus asked suddenly, pointing down towards what he had first perceived as a shallow hole.
But it was, in fact, when Albus looked down to examine it further, a footprint: a very large footprint. It was a deep one too, showing that whatever had made it was very heavy, as well as very massive in size. Albus could make out every single one of its toes, as well as the smaller dots that had to the creature’s claws. Albus could tell just from the beast’s footprint that it was one that he most certainly did not want to meet any time soon.
“Wow!” Scorpius exclaimed as he and Rose made their way closer to see it for themselves. “Those are very, very big footprints!”
Rose knelt down to the ground, brushing her finger over the indentation that one of the toes had made. With the other hand, she reached for the book bag hoisted over her shoulder and extracted her burgundy copy of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. With her eyes still on the ground, she began thumbing her way through the pages, not really settling on any section in particular.
“They look like they belong to a lion,” Albus remarked, crouching down beside Rose to get a better look.
Scorpius just shook his head. “I don’t think even lions are that big.” He, in fact, was beginning to back away from the footprint, as though even that could potentially be dangerous.
Rose nodded her head confidently, standing up straight. “I think we have just found our first important clue,” she said to the boys, holding the textbook, reading and walking at the same time. “We may become professional Creature Trackers yet.”
When Rose started making a substantial amount of distance between them, Scorpius yelled after her, “Wait! What are we doing?”
Rose gave the boy a look as though she could not believe that he did not know the answer for himself. “We’re following them,” she stated bluntly. “Normally when you follow a set of footprints, it will eventually lead you to whatever made them, you know.”
Albus could tell that Scorpius wanted to protest, but he never got the chance to. Whatever conversation that might have occurred was interrupted right then and there by a terrifyingly loud cry that echoed through the whole forest. Once the initial pain of the sheer volume of it had died down, Albus was able to actually listen to the cry. It was almost like what the tuning of the world’s worst orchestra would sound like if it were intensified by a hundred different wizards casting Sonorus charms. It sounded extraordinarily un-poetic when Albus whispered it to himself, but he could think of no other way to describe it.
As soon as it ended though, the forest air continued to ring with an echo. For a long time, no one in the group spoke.
“What in Merlin’s name was that?” Scorpius shouted, as though he had gone partially deaf and did not know how loud he was speaking.
“It almost sounded like a trumpet.” Albus decided not to share his initial description with his friends.
Albus, and probably Scorpius also, waited for Rose to offer her comment on the matter, but when nothing was heard, both boys looked up to see what could possibly be keeping the Weasley girl so quiet.
Rose’s eyes were wide and her bottom lip was quivering, her shoulders shaking. Her expression was one of heavy dread, her arms wrapped around the textbook, holding it over her chest like a breastplate.
“What?” Albus asked her, though he wasn’t quite sure he wanted to know what was wrong.
Rose’s eyes drifted down to the ground and she began chewing on her bottom lip.
“You know what creature it is that’s here, don’t you?” Scorpius accused, pointing at the book that she was hanging onto for dear life. “You’ve been reading that book obsessively for weeks now, and I know that look on your face well enough by now.”
Rose kept her eyes cast downward, as though she thought that if she just didn’t make eye contact with Scorpius, he would just leave her alone. Of course, that didn’t work. Scorpius moved forward until he was standing mere inches from Rose’s face. He would have been standing nose to nose with her if she would just look up.
“Even if you don’t know for certain what it is, you have a very strong guess,” Scorpius pressed further, tilting his head to the side as he bent down to try and meet her gaze. “You need to tell me and Albus. You know that’s not fair for the two of us to go one step further if we don’t know what we’re getting ourselves into.”
The girl shifted her head up, but instead of meeting eyes with Scorpius, she looked to her cousin, as though he could offer her some sort of answer, even though from all past experience, Albus knew he could not make his cousin do anything.
Finally, though, Rose allowed the book to fall open to a marked page; she held it up for the boys to see. The page held up in front of them depicted a most fearsome-looking beast. A drawing showed what appeared to be a lion with a remarkably human-looking face flexing its multitude of muscles. On its hind end, however, was a massive tail that could only otherwise be found on a scorpion, with a stinger that looked as though it had to be at least as large as Albus’ own arm.
“Manticore,” Rose recited, her voice shaking. “A carnivorous beast native to Greece, considered by Magizoologists to be the most dangerous magical creature in existence.”
Both boys leaned forward to get a better look at the illustrations in the book. Like in all of their textbook, the ink drawing was moving, making eye contact with Albus and Scorpius as though it were ready to pounce on them for its next meal.
“It has the ability to speak in human languages, a remarkable amount of physical body strength, and the stinger at the end of its tail contains enough venom to kill five men in one strike.”
Rose turned the book so the pages were facing her, so that she could face the beast as well. “Its tail, however, is not the only method of killing that the creature uses. Its claws can grow to be up to foot long, and it has more than fifty sharp teeth capable of shattering a human skull. It has a fondness, especially, for human flesh, and it is even said to croon while it eats.”
With those final words, Rose carefully closed the textbook and went back to holding it against the boys. Peeking up through her bright red fringe, she watched the boys for whatever reaction they might have. But, to be fair, Rose looked as though she would not object if the boys decided they wanted to run back to the castle right then and there.
But Scorpius surprised the whole group. “Alright, then!” He clapped his hands together. “Let’s keep following those footprints, shall we?”
And with that, Scorpius moved on ahead of the group, leaving a very shocked Albus and Rose standing in the brush. When the boy finally did realize he was alone, he looked over his shoulder at his very bewildered companions. “What? You’re both honestly going to have me take a manticore on all by myself?”
Rose’s jaw dropped slightly; she still was clutching her book, to the point where her knuckles were beginning to whiten, but she did step forward. “Are you sure?”
Scorpius gestured to draw attention to his missing robes, as well as the tears in his clothing and the scratches across his arms and legs. “I did not get dragged all this way just for you to decide you don’t feel like tracking this thing down anymore!” he said loudly, though in a way that did not contain any real malice. “We’re finding this manticore, or whatever it is, whether you like it or not!”
It was with that Scorpius marched off into the forest, following the line that the gigantic tracks had made. After a few moments, Rose finally followed after him, Albus at her side. Glancing in his cousin’s direction, Albus could see an expression of near-awe on Rose’s face, and probably as close to a smile as the girl could possibly have in this situation.
It probably wasn’t that Rose wasn’t especially impressed at Scorpius’ behavior, but that she felt a lot more at ease knowing that her friends were willing to stand beside her in all of this and she would not have to face this monster alone…as though Albus would even allow that to be a possibility.
And so the three member of the Arcane ScoRA continued to follow the footprints, one after the other, rushing between the massive strides that they made. All along the trail of footprints, various other clues were littered across the ground. Bones, more bones, a few bits of fur, broken branches, blood, more blood, red blood, silver blood, green blood, purple blood…
The trail of footprints dissolved into darkness as they disappeared into a dank cave, carved into the side of a cliff. Scattered around the entrance were even more littered remains even more animal bones, and even more splotches of dried blood all across the stone walls and the earth just in front of the entrance. A great deal of the dirt was upset as well, from where the creature had apparently clawed at the earth with its great claws, more so than any plow could ever hope to do. The entire effect made for a greatly imposing scene, one that would have struck fear into wizards far greater than the three children standing before it.
“Let me guess,” Scorpius said to no one in particular. “We’re all going into the dark scary cave with all the bones in front of it, right?”
Albus wasn’t quite sure why Scorpius had said this, though, because he was the first one to make his way forward. Even though he had complained and grumbled about their stupidity the whole way, he now took on the role of leader, stepping high over the rib bones of a unicorn, or possibly a centaur.
The inside of the cave was dank and dim, just as anyone would have expected. Three separate wands cast Lumos charms one they reached the cave’s deep darkness. The cave’s interior showed more evidence of the presence of a massive and dangerous creature, certainly, but it held more clues and secrets still. Across the cave wall were primitive sorts of paintings, ones that couldn’t be terribly old, from the way they smudged when Rose brushed her fingertips across them, in addition to the colorful packaging that candies were usually wrapped in, as well as bits of newsprint and crumpled note paper, and many other things that suggested the presence of an easily-bored witch or wizard. Of course, from the nature of the events that had been occurring all these months, that likely could have been a given.
As they ventured further into the cavern, they only saw more evidence of a human presence alongside that of the manticore.
“What did I tell you?” Rose remarked, eyes cast down towards the ground. “I have a feeling that manticores do not read the Quidditch reports.” Rose picked up more litter. “Or eat Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans.”
“Yes, yes, Rosie was right,” Scorpius drawled, eyeing over the evidence Rose had found. “All hail the great and wise firstborn Weasley!”
Rose offer a slight snort of satisfaction, but did not remain distracted for very long.
“Nothing in here seems particularly identifying, though,” she said, kicking at the bits of trash. “Candy wrappers…Quidditch magazines…crumpled, unidentifiable school notes…for we know, Albus has been summoning all these creatures into the castle.”
Rose snickered, but Albus felt himself stiffen at what sounded like a potential accusation. “I’m haven’t been, just for the record.”
Scorpius raised his eyebrows and Rose wrinkled her nose, but Albus wanted to make certain that there was no possibility that any of what had been happening this year could possibly be blamed on him. He had heard of a great deal of Muggle movies where such things happened.
“We know that, Albus,” Scorpius assured him in a slightly snide manner, grinding at the earth at his feet.
Once this was established, though, no one made a move to go any further, quite possibly because no one knew where to go from here. Yes, they had just figured out what sort of creature was wandering the woods, they knew how it was being controlled, and they had even stumbled upon this lair and this incredible amount of evidence that had only served to prove they were right. But what were they supposed to do with all of it? They couldn’t very well waltz into Professor Flitwick’s office and tell him all they had seen. Not without bring a thousand other questions”and possibly punishments”into the equation.
Looking around the cavern, holding his lighted wand high, Albus could see the varying expressions of frustration, even anger on his friends’ faces, from the annoyed twitching all across Scorpius’ face and frame to Rose twisting at her hair, looking as though she was about ready to start tearing it out.
They were saved from needing to solve this dilemma themselves as a familiar voice greeted them from behind.
The Arcane ScoRA and the Wand of MacArt by OliveOil_Med
Chapter Notes: Rose delves head first into a theory she has as to why everything that has been happening during the school year, and she drags the boys along with her so that she can prove it.
Thank you again to Apruva, who has done so much hard work in helping me with my writing!