Post by charles septimus weasley on Oct 24, 2021 22:13:57 GMT -7
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Mid-March to Mid-April 2026
The Forbidden Forest wasn’t nearly as horrid of a place as most of the students of Hogwarts tended to view it. Were there foolishly brave souls amongst the student body that tended to wander deep into the trees in search of the mysterious werewolf pack or to catch sight of an acromantuala? Absolutely. The fact was that they would never be able to actually locate creatures like this without the guiding hand of the denizens of the forest. The centaur colony that still called the groves home were acutely aware of whenever someone dared delve into the darker, more dangerous parts of the woods. Satiating the students’ curiosity with frequent trips into the clearings right past the edge of the tree line was part of Charlie’s job as Care of Magical Creatures professor, and that did the job for most of them. There was no need for them to tangle with an acromantuala that was looking for dinner or to accidentally bump into one of the Blast-Ended Skrewts that had been let loose decades ago. Even Charlie had been intimidated by the large one he had stumbled upon, immediately causing him to run perpendicular in the opposite direction. He had seen what the smaller ones could do years earlier and wasn’t intent on being burned alive by this monstrosity.
Overall, the Forbidden Forest held onto its reputation because it was necessary to keep the smart students away and satiate the interests of the rest without ever being truly dangerous. Of course that wasn’t always how things turned out. The forest covered a vast expanse of land, and Charlie was positive that there were often creatures that appeared inside the wooded zone that weren’t deposited by Hogwarts or the Ministry. The acromantulas were one of those, but had ultimately fit well into the ecosystem. One of his requirements as Care of Magical Creatures professor was to make sure that animals weren’t being dumped haphazardly into the forest by outsiders. The groundskeeper could only assist so much on expeditions like these, but Charlie was fairly certain that his years of dealing with dragons had been enough practice that he could probably safely squeeze out of any dangerous situations within the forest on his own and with minimal injuries.
It was mid-March when he had first been called up to McGonagall’s office to discuss the sightings of something new amidst the Forbidden Forest. Charlie initially thought the meeting was to be a performance review of sorts, having completed a few months of classes and even field trips to Hy-Brasil and the animal reserve in Hogsmeade. That alone was more than Professor Kettleburn had ever done during Charlie’s time at school. He figured that unless there was a serious complaint from a student or a parent about one of the subjects he had taught, that he was more than likely to be asked back for the next year as well. He quite liked being a professor. It was much more relaxing than trying to teach dragon mating habits to eighteen year-old intern dragonologists who hadn’t even received their first dragon fire burn yet. That was always a sight to behold. Unless they fully ignited. No one ever said dealing with dragons was an easy career…
The entrance to the Headmaster’s Office had always made him chuckle: a password protected gargoyle statue. The few times he had visited during his school years, Dumbledore had always used candy names to gain entry, as he had been notorious for his sweet tooth. Despite McGonagall’s rather stiff disposition and sometimes humorless demeanor, she had apparently decided to keep the tradition going. A chuckle bubbled out of Charlie as he stated Candyfloss to the gargoyle, and without receiving a response from the statue, the stones shifted and the spiraling staircase up into the tower emerged. The various shortcuts and hidden passageways had always amazed him, though they were virtually of no use to him now as a professor, and especially one that spent all of his waking hours out on the grounds talking about animals.
The staircase ended at the thick door to the Headmaster’s Office, and Charlie brought the back of his hand up against it, knocking three times along the solid oak feature. Upon it swinging open, he spotted McGonagall sitting behind her desk at the far end of the room. It was distinctly different than what it had been under Dumbledore, containing bookshelves and objects that had once been homed within McGonagall’s office when she had taught Transfiguration (and in which Charlie had spent considerably more time in as a youth). He didn’t notice the groundskeeper slouched into a chair in the sitting area off to the side of the room until McGonagall motioned for Charlie to go there as well. Comfortably taking his own spot, the conversation that followed could only be described as one of the oddest recounts surrounding Hogwarts that he had ever heard. And he liked to think that the stories his kids used to come back with during the breaks were strange.
The general summation from the groundskeeper’s story came to this: a few weeks prior, several students had wandered a little too deep into the forest and spent an entire afternoon stomping through the woods until they were found right before dinnertime by the groundskeeper. The three of them were quietly chattering to each other about the strange shadowy shapes they had seen off in the distance, one contemplating whether or not it was a trick of the light as it was cast through the canopy, the other two swearing on Godric Gryffindor’s honor that they had actually seen the outline of a large creature. The groundskeeper, like Charlie and the majority of the Hogwarts faculty, was obviously aware that there were magical creatures inside the forest that were still unknown to the student population – like the rumored ‘werewolves’ that resided inside were simply a pack of highly intelligent wolves – but there was something with the way these three were describing what they had witnessed.
A couple more days of digging and the groundskeeper had come to the conclusion that there was something new, and that they didn’t like it one bit. Animals were being preyed upon that hadn’t been before and the underbrush was kicked up either by something extremely large or by a sizeable pack. Even the centaurs were unaware of the existence of this new intruder, if that was even what it was. The haunted look that was currently looming over them as McGonagall and Charlie listened was certainly palpable, and told him that the reason he was called up to the Headmaster’s Office was because this was about to be his problem to deal with. Potentially large, unknown creature inside the forest? Better send the guy in that was used to dodging fire blasts and fangs the size of a small child.
Gathering the geographical location of where the groundskeeper had last encountered signs of whatever was possibly in the forest and approximating a wider range from that, Charlie set out the next morning into the woods after his first class with the intention of not making much ground on this mystery. He was absolutely wrong in assuming that, and very quickly found strange tracks once he got near to where the groundskeeper had pointed him. The only problem was that he started second guessing himself, because the prints looked dog-like. That boded well due to the fact that this was probably just from the wolf pack getting closer to the school than they had in recent years.
Content with that answer for the day and having to rush back to the grounds for his afternoon class, Charlie made a mental note of the location so he knew where to begin on his day off later in the week. He also had some questions regarding the relative size of the prints he had found, positive that they were a tad too large for the wolves he had encountered in there before. If, and this was a big if, they had a werewolf roaming loose in the woods once a month, it wouldn’t have lined up with the stories he had heard thus far due to the time of day and the moon cycle, but he still had to double-check to rule that out completely. The first person he needed to consult with was his niece, Lily, to confirm that she wasn’t the culprit (because that was honestly his first thought once he stumbled upon the tracks), and then he could go from there. The other students that also happened to be afflicted by lycanthropy weren’t nearly as reckless as she was, so he didn’t feel it was necessary to question them in the same manner he would with Lily.
Catching her after one of his lessons a few days later, Charlie was immediately able to cross werewolves off the list. The full moon had been at the beginning of the month and April’s was still two weeks away. Unless werewolves were mutating in order to change at will, they were not what he was looking for. So back to the drawing board it was.
The rest of March slowly plodded by, mostly taken up by students asking questions about the final exams and what to expect. Charlie took any moment he had free to traverse the woods, checking off areas in a grid-like pattern, still not getting anywhere closer than the tracks he stumbled upon his first time out. McGonagall wasn’t too pushy on the matter as there hadn’t been anymore sightings by students or the groundskeeper, but Charlie was fully invested now. He wanted to know what was out there and why it hadn’t even made an appearance to the centaurs yet. His first test was April 1st, which was a full moon. He stayed up all night, with the help of the groundskeeper, patrolling the edge of the forest to make sure none of the student werewolves snuck into them. Not even one of them attempted it. That finally ruled out the Hogwarts werewolves once and for all.
The following weekend was when Charlie finally found them. He was heading past the point where the tracks had first been located, going deeper in than he had over the last few weeks, when he heard the rustling. The forest had a habit of getting darker the further in one went, so he assumed, like the story from the students, that what caught his attention at first was just a light trick from the trees and the shadows they were casting. But then there was another out of the corner of his left eye at the same time as one to his right, and he realized that he had stumbled right into a grove full of these…things.
They were doglike, but only in their face and paws, which he could tell from a distance matched the tracks he had seen back in March. The fact that they even left behind evidence was amazing, as they gracefully stepped around trees, light on their feet with long, sweeping tails trailing behind them. Charlie didn’t even hear the one that was creeping around a tree directly next to him until he heard a twig snap under it, causing him to jump back in fright, wand suddenly finding its way into his hand. Large dogs didn’t scare him, but there was something about these ones that was so unnatural and unnerving that it made him extremely nervous. The tingling nerve-endings of his fingertips, turning white against the death-grip he had around his wand only matched the pounding heartrate as more and more of these animals started to turn around and look at him.
It was then that he noticed the endless pits of black where their eyes should have been, though the occasional turn of the head would cause a glint of something to be seen further within. Even more eerie were the forked tongues, lizard-like in the way they flicked out to taste the air around them. Under one of the less-curious creatures was the corpse of a fox, the tongue of the beast looping around the deceased’s skull in a cyclical manner. It was only upon further investigation on a much later date that Charlie realized that these creatures liked to pull out the eyes of their prey, though he wasn’t sure if they actually did attack other animals or were simply of the scavenger sort. It was always the eyes, and only that. He wondered if the lack of their own was part of their predatory drive to consume or if that was merely happenstance. Birds of prey that feasted on carrion did the same thing, targeting the softest part first. The only difference here was that these dog things left everything else as it was. How thoughtful of them.
After successfully locating the pack two more times, Charlie had come to a few conclusions: he had no idea what these things were and that they were starting to branch out in terms of territory. A fateful trip to Hogsmeade one afternoon to pick up supplies for a class led him into a discussion with a few of the locals, who were asking him if there was some new animal let loose into the forest. Of course scavenger type creatures would make their way closer to civilization. In his few, brief experiences with them, they didn’t seem harmful to humans. But he also didn’t think all dragons were dangerous either. The way he scaled things was far different than how the average witch or wizard did.
The fourth encounter was by far the most reassuring, though equally strange. While Charlie was sure he hadn’t crept up on the pack, they seemed so used to his presence now that they barely looked at him as he approached. That allowed him to finally see that, aside from the eyeball slurping, they also ate leaves and berries. The eyes were still the prize though, and he had witnessed a rather brutal standoff between two small groups of the creatures over one set. He had yet to see them without a kill nearby, but it still remained to be seen if they were the ones doing the killing. Even odder was that a badger seemed to be hanging around the pack now. The fact that they, the creatures, weren’t attacking the badger was absolutely of interest to him, and he made sure to make notes about the whole experience. By mid-April when he found them again, the badger was still there and had seemingly adopted the inky black eye sockets of its new pack mates. He felt weird even contemplating that it had been adopted into their group, but it certainly seemed that way to him.
Further discussions with McGonagall at this point regarding the behavior and nature of the beasts led to the conclusion that whatever was going on inside the Forbidden Forest was not to be taken lightly. With the recent investigations of the mysterious island by the Ministry, McGonagall made the conclusion that what they were dealing with was potentially of that sort and Charlie agreed. Though how they had arrived on the grounds of Hogwarts was certainly still to be discovered. The headmistress indicated that from here on out, Charlie was to be vigilant about making sure students wouldn’t enter the forest and that any remaining classes scheduled to be along the edge either needed to have a second professor or the groundkeeper attending as well. Just to be safe. That was good enough for him, though he was hoping the Ministry and magizoologists that would probably be flooding onto the grounds over summer break to study the creatures would end up asking him to help as well. Without dragons in his life, he did need something to pass the time now.
Professor McGonagall ● 2,645 ● song by artist
MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOX 2.0
