I sat on the dried stump staring expectantly up at the bewildered creature before me. His expression was a mixture of confusion, and mistrust.
My quill was ready, and my notebook open.
Why should it matter that he had no idea this was going to happen to him today?
I did.
The being I'd ambushed in the Forbidden Forest was one of its most wiley and respected citizens, a Centaur: masters of Astrology. Now don't get me wrong, I'd studied every form of Divination on paper I could find, even that weird one involving fish which seemed to revolve entirely around kelp and worms. My studies had delved me from Chinese Stick Readings through Ovamancy, and quite frankly I was sick of my dungeon laboratory reeking of week-old eggs.
But tonight the stars were exceptionally bright in the absence of the moon, and something in the back of my mind told me to be here, at the stump around midnight for a lesson.
It all seemed perfectly obvious to me.
"What are you doing in our forest, little colt?" he inquired. The soft clack of his hooves as they shuffled nervously distracted me. The break of eye-contact for just a moment to take a closer look at one of the his features that clearly separated our species was not the proper decorum.
What was that old adage? White hooves good, black hooves bad? Well this dudes hooves were black and shrouded by the moonless night. Although it could have been dirt.
An offended snort brought my attention back en pointe. At staring down the barrel of rage. I suppose my musings had been written all over my face. I was terrible at hiding my thoughts. And to him I must have looked like I was passing judgment on him.
"16 years ago, the moon hid among the Scorpion, and within that shroud I saw one of your kind looking back at me. Tonight the moon has turned its back to us, and the scorpion has finally appeared." My pen was flying across my notebook, my jaw agape and my eyes in wide wonder and rapt attention. While this centaurs words were harsh and accusing, it did make sense. I was born right after a Lunar eclipse. Though that makes me a Taurus.
The half-horse pointed fiercely into the sky, toward the horizon, near the center of the Milky Way. Right toward Scorpius. And it hit me.
Right in the face. He's wasn't pointing out the constellation. That was him rearing back.
The last trace of an unshod hoof flashed through my brain before switching off.
The vague smell of tea and stale cakes mixed with wet dog slowly crept through my nose and into my fore-brain. A fog in my mind stood before my waking consciousness and my physical senses.
No time like the present to work this one out, my thoughts came through crisply.
Staring into the night sky in my minds eye I looked once again for Scorpius. There it sat, low in the sky. The moon blocked it, and I could hear my heartbeat, faint, and distant, but more content then I could ever recall it, surrounded by peaceful anticipation.
Slowly, the moon shut its eye, and hid itself. Scorpius came back into view and the moon vanished among it. A lunar eclipse two nights before my birth seemed to be a trigger warning for that particular centaur. The beating of my own heartbeat grew more rapid and I heard my mother cry out in pain.
Looking around franticly, I saw the might bull, Taurus take off across the sky chasing after the scorpion. Neptune stopped in its tracks from its long journey, and being satisfied turned right back around back now in retrograde.
Now it made sense. I vaguely recall my mother guilt-tripping me one time she took out the garbage when she claimed she'd asked me. She told me she'd been in labor for over 30 hours, and didn't expect to have to clean up after me every week for the rest of her life. 30 hours from this eclipse I would be born.
I was the scorpion whom the moon hid behind, and my mother, another Taurus, gave birth to me under her sign as well.
"Easy there, lad. Ye've had quite the knockin' on yer noggin'." came a familiar, and comforting voice. I felt a blast of moist, hot breath on my face before an obscenely long tongue soaked my cheek with slobber.
"Thanks, Fang." reaching out through the last bank of fog to pet the over sized hound, and closest companion to my Care of Magical Creatures Professor. Blech.
I saw Professor Hagrid pouring me a cuppa from an over sized kettle into, perspectively, a comically undersized cup. Perspective was relative given that Rubeus Hagrid was a half-giant, and the cup the size of a toy to him.
I slowly mulled myself off the cushioned chair, only to be promptly replaced by an even larger unconscious, though thoroughly more shaggy occupant.
My head throbbed where that centaur bucked me. I rubbed the spot lightly with a covered hand, using my robes sleeve to softly probe the damage.
"'Tis just a little bump. Nothin' ter worry 'bout. Dorius took it easy on ya'. He's not normally one to take kindly to yer lot, humans." the grounds keeper explained as he took a seat at the large table and gestured for me to sit.
Climbing slightly, I accepted his offer to join him, and slowly sipped at my tea.
"Maybe," I mused aloud. "It's because he was expecting me."