NOVEL NEXT 3. Southeast of Acromantula’s nest
Dan woke up not from the blaring alarm clock, as usual, nor from his sister shouting "get your ass out of bed!" and not even from a ray of sun that fell into his eye.
He woke up as his face hit the ground hard.
Moaning in pain, Dan got to his hands and knees and rubbed where his nose used to be, only to encounter two breath holes. He was in great confusion for the first couple of minutes, but then the memories began to come back to him.
"Ah, so it wasn't a dream," he muttered and sat up, looking at the branch he had fallen from. The tree he had teleported to last night was quite tall, with branches only beginning near the top half of the trunk. If an ordinary person fell from such a height, they would die on the spot, or at least break a couple of bones. Dan only had a small bruise on his brow.
Mantis climbed out of his shorts – which miraculously didn't fall off his shoulders – and squeaked something in his ear, but Dan just waved him off. "I'm fine, Mantis. You alright?" Mantis squeaked and climbed on Dan's head.
He scrambled to its feet and looked around. "Where to now?" Mantis tapped his front foot on his head and Dan walked forward, sometimes teleporting to feel the limits of his abilities.
Dan tied his shorts around his neck to keep them from falling off and began to move.
Their hike was monotonous and quiet, filled with landscapes of identical trees and small hills. Dan didn't like this forest, although it felt magical, everything around seemed unnatural. Even the few animals he only glimpsed looked like copies of each other, which is to be expected now that he thinks about it.
The foxes stopped for a second, seeing his form and continued to run about their business. The birds followed him, looking at him with interest, though that might be because of Mantis. Other small animals also followed him, as if he were a druid raising an army, but one irritated sound in their direction, and the animals scattered away in fear.
His druid abilities aside, it wasn't all that bad. Mantis continued to squeak from time to time, as if talking about this or that part of the forest, and after a while, Dan even began to understand him somewhat. Mantis didn't speak in words or sentences; he communicated through emotions. Fear next to the birds and other hunters of this forest, happiness next to the nests of small insects, uncertainty when a lot of animals began to follow Dan.
He just tossed his new understanding of animals into the list of strange things that happened in his life over the past day.
But after a while, the forest actually began to change. Cobwebs on the trees, silhouettes of huge spiders hiding in the shadows, even the ground here smelled of hostility.
"Are you sure there's no other way around?" Mantis jumped on his shoulder and pointed to the left, emitting a squeak full of fear, but when he turned to the right, his squeak was unsure, as if there could be anything even worse than giant webs.
"Fuck me I guess…" Dan muttered and teleported forward.
Mantis crawled into the pocket of his shorts, leaving Dan to his own thoughts and allowing him to focus on his surroundings. That's why he had time to react when a huge spider the size of a car fell on him from a tree. Dan immediately teleported to the side and instinctively fell to all fours.
The spider hissed, raising its front paws and preparing to attack when it made a fatal mistake. He looked into Dan's eyes.
A scorching hot fury boiled in his chest. 'How dare this lower being look into my eyes?!'
With a cry full of rage, Dan rushed forward at the spider, which, not expecting aggression from its prey, barely managed to jump to the side. Dan's claws landed on the spider's leg, tearing it away from the arachnid's body, but he didn't stop there. Teleporting behind the spider, dan placed both of his hands on the monster's body with a satisfying crunch, and it curled up on the ground, dead.
Dan just stood there, panting, still swimming in his rage. Even after the death of the spider, he still felt disgust for this creature.
Clicking and hissing resounded throughout the forest and something inside Dan growled, demanding the death of everyone who gets in his way.
He didn't mind. He didn't mind at all.
Minerva McGonagall looked at the acceptance letter in her hands in confusion for several reasons. For starters, acceptance letters were sent automatically, the owls already knew where to get letters from and where to send them. The second problem was that they didn't send the letters so late, the school year had already begun, what's the point of sending the letter now? The third was the date of birth of their potential student, if what was written on the parchment is true, then Khromov must be in the third year of his magical training, but he wasn't.
"Albus, what am I looking at?" She asked, trying to keep her face in a stern look.
"A letter to a student, of course." Dumbledore replied smiling through his beard, but seeing his Deputy Headmistress look unappreciatively, he sighed heavily and motioned for her to sit down at the table. "I discovered a strange situation with the Book of Acceptance. Yesterday afternoon, a new name was written in the book, right above that name. Oddly enough, his birthday is only a day earlier than Miss Granger's. Well, for one year and one day, to be precise."
Minerva nodded, Miss Granger was one of her favorite students, so she knew when her birthday was. "But how is this possible?"
Dumbledore took an old book out of his desk drawer and placed it in front of Minerva. "I think the answer lies somewhere here, in the work of a Polish magician with no name. He invented interesting enough charms to hide something or someone from the eyes of others." He opened the book to a bookmarked page and showed it to Minerva.
[The Celare charm - usually used to hide the date of occurrence of an event.]
Minerva blinked. "You think someone hid his date of birth? Why?"
"Not just his date of birth, then the Book of Acceptance would only have written his name on the blank page, it wouldn't have been the first time." Dumbledore shook his head. "Someone completely concealed his date of birth, full name and even his place of birth. Everything is in this book."
The old tome was full of bookmarks of different colors and Minerva was sure that she would find proof of his words.
"But I didn't answer the question why? And unfortunately, I don't know the answer to this question. Maybe his parents tried to hide from the persecutors from the former USSR for political reasons, maybe his life was in danger because of the Dark Wizards, it won't be the first time such a thing has happened."
Both teachers knew what he was talking about. Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived, hunted by one of the most terrifying wizards of the century from birth. Even now, Voldemort's followers wanted to lay their hands on young Harry. The name Sirius Black came to mind.
"And you want to send him a letter now? Albus, I'm not sure that's a good idea. If this child was hidden from the world, there was a reason. The boy may believe that any contact with the world is an attempt to find him and do something terrible." Minerva said.
Dumbledore shook his head. "It was my first idea, yes. But then I read the address where the letter should be delivered."
Minerva's eyes dropped back to the letter and she mentally slapped herself for her impatience. But as soon as the words on the parchment registered, fear settled in her stomach.
[To: Danil Grigorievich Khromov.
Southeast of Acromantula's Nest,
Forbidden Forest of Hogwarts,
Scotland.]
"Albus, the forest is full of Dementors, if Khromov hasn't met one yet, it'll be a miracle! I don't even want to think about what he's doing next to this– the Nest!" Minerva's facade cracked. "Why haven't we gone looking for the child yet if we know where he is?!"
Minerva paused to take a breath, but Dumbledore began to speak again. "I already sent Severus, Remus, and Rubeus to bring the child to safety. You don't have to worry so much, Minerva." He calmed the woman, trying to show her his point of view.
Rubeus Hagrid was a friend of Aragog and can negotiate with the spiders if need be. The half-giant's blood increased his resistance to spells and made his skin much thicker than that of an ordinary person.
Remus Lupin, as a werewolf, had a perfect sense of smell and could find a child by scent that didn't belong in the forest, and was able to produce a Corporeal Patronus to ward off Dementors.
And Severus Snape knew enough dark magic to protect a child from the dangers of the forest, not to mention that Severus also knew his way around the Patronus.
It was a solid team that should easily get the kid out of the woods if they didn't have any unexpected obstacles.
The three previously mentioned wizards walked through the forest in complete silence, except for the crunch of leaves under their feet. The cold from the presence of the Dementors was long gone, remaining closer to the school. Hagrid was sure that the spiders would not touch the child, Aragog promised that his family would not hunt Hogwarts students. Remus and Severus weren't so sure.
Severus knew that Khromov was not yet a student at Hogwarts, so he was not protected by this agreement.
Remus just knew the forest was called Forbidden for a reason. The chances that they would find the corpse of a child, rather than a potential student, was high.
"We're getting close," Hagrid said, clutching the crossbow in his huge hands, pointing to the cobwebs all around. "Aragog's territory begins here."
"Great. Knowing that there is an Acromantula colony in the forest next to a school is quite helpful." Snape sneered. "Just what else lives in this forest?" His wand was tightly clenched in his right hand, the pale skin in stark contrast to the dark wood of the wand.
"Oh, quiet down. The children of Aragog might think we've come here to fight." Hagrid whispered.
But the further they went into their territory, the stranger things got. The places where Acromantula used to sit to guard their territory were empty, small spiders ran away at one loud sound. The colony was seemingly empty.
"Is this normal?" Remus asked.
Hagrid frowned, also noticing the oddity in their situation. "No, they only act like this when there's a war or they find new pray…"
The three men looked at each other and, with silent curses on their lips, ran towards the center of the colony.
"I said we should have gotten rid of the spiders a long time ago!" Snape swore and for once, Hagrid didn't find the strength to protect the blameless, innocent creatures.
Finally reaching their goal, the teachers were greeted by a bloody scene. The corpses of spiders, large and small, lay on the ground. Severed limbs, crushed bodies, the colony was dead, their nest now a grave. Hagrid nearly dropped his crossbow, tears in his eyes.
"Aragog?" He called his friend, but received no answer. "Aragog!" Hagrid called again.
"Hagrid? Friend, is that you?" An old voice sounded from the woods a little further on.
Hagrid dropped the crossbow and it hung on his belt; the giant ran to the place where the sound came from. Remus and Severus ran after the giant, but their legs were much shorter than his, so they had to catch up with him.
Hagrid stood opposite Aragog, who was surrounded by his children and the children of his children. From the huge colony of Acromantula, only a dozen representatives remained.
"What happened here?" Remus asked as he stopped next to Hagrid.
The spider twitched, unfamiliar with the voice of the new man in his land, but answered the question. "A monster has… massacred my family."
Once a mighty king of his nest, now just a shell of himself. Aragog spoke with difficulty, his vocal cords were not designed for human speech, his old age did not help matters.
"He came from the Southeast, a monster… blacker than the night... purple eyes in his scull… my children say." The teachers' nervousness grew with every word he said. The School had enough problems, they weren't ready for another one. "Ripped and rattled my land… killed my kind… Hatred in his cries… malice in his attacks…. My son led him away from… the center of the nest… never came back."
Hagrid wept for the dead spiders and lost lives, but Remus and Severus were able to breathe a sigh of relief. Huge venomous spiders shouldn't have been so close to the school, they could agree on that. 'But what could kill hundreds of Acromantulas?' There was a thought in their minds.
"I'll hope that this monster meets Black. It's even better if they take each other out of this world." Severus muttered.
"None of your children saw a person here? A human child, to be exact." Remus asked, trying to get back to their original mission.
Aragog clicked. "A human child? No… no, the last children we saw… came last year… Asked about the dread creature they did."
Hagrid stopped crying and quickly turned white, as if he understood what the arachnid was talking about. Remus, on the other hand, smelled an unfamiliar smell, which was hiding behind the stench of blood and entrails. There was something human in this smell, but at the same time something animal. It was similar to the smell of an Animagus, but all animagi smelled more like humans, even in their animal forms. Human smell is not easy to get rid of. Of course, if someone stays in the other form long enough, they will start to smell like an animal, but the human smell lingered.
This smell was different. It was as if someone had mixed the smell of a human and an unknown magical creature that traveled through the forest for a few days. But he was human enough for Remus to follow him. If Khromov was around, there was a good chance that it was his scent.
"Gentlemen, although this event is also important, I think I can smell Mr. Khromov." Remus said, nodding to the side.
Hagrid quickly said goodbye to Aragog, leaving a promise to visit him later, and the three professors continued their search for the child with one last warning from the arachnid.
"If you meet this monster… Don't look him in the eyes." He hissed and crawled into the cover of his webs, knowing he would be the hardest to reach there.