Natalie followed the path further. She now couldn't help noticing the odd stubby tracks. She searched back through her lessons in Care of Magical Creatures, trying desperately to recall if she'd ever seen tracks like that before. It was ominous that she'd never seen the like. That probably meant it was a very dangerous beast that had made the tracks, something OWL students weren't allowed to go near. Natalie tried to reassure herself but she couldn't believe herself that she was just thinking the worse. Her dark thoughts led her to begin searching the path for other marks, like Blood.
She was so busy searching the ground that she jumped about a foot when a large dark haired dog ran straight at her. The dog was about the same size as Treacle, her own dog, so extremely large. Natalie beamed at the dog. She loved dogs.
But this dog was acting in one of the strangest ways she'd ever seen. As soon as it had come up to her it had grabbed the sleeve of her cloak and begun trying to drag her back the way she had come.
"What are you doing? You daft dog! I don't keep food up my sleeve!" she laughed at the Dog utterly bemused by its extraordinary behaviour.
Then she heard it.
It was a roar but nothing like the barking roar of a lion. It was more like a trumpeting of an elephant but so loud it made Natalie's stomach reverberate. It echoed round the mountains and from round the bend of the mountain trail there emerged a large boulder. Well it was what Natalie had thought was a boulder. It was the right colour. A kind of greyish purple, like storm clouds, but far from fluffy. It looked as tough as granite. It was round like a boulder with a humped back, and walked on four legs each ending in a foot of four toes, like a cross between the foot of a chicken and a chimpanzee. It had two horns on its head, like a rhino, but sharper, more like metal spikes. Natalie knew it looked angry and with the clarity of fear she realised she had come across such a beast in Care of Magical Creatures. She'd only read about them though. This was a Graphorn. The only other thing she could recall was that they all were very aggressive.
Natalie stood frozen with fear. There was nothing she could do. She would just die here. Charlie was probably dead too. Natalie felt dread claw at her belly. She was going to die.
Natalie felt pain shooting up her arm. The large black dog had bitten the arm above where he had mangled her sleeve. Natalie came to her senses. She raised her wand and cried
"Stupefy!" red light shot from her wand at the Graphorn but it bounced of the Graphorn's tough hide. It shook its head and roared again, it felt like even the mountains were shaking. Then it began to charge at Natalie. Natalie turned round and began to run. But just like in the nightmares she'd previously recalled the snow slowed her pace. She felt herself fall as the snow held her legs back but her body continued. She landed face first in the snow with the dog barking at her hysterically.
There was a rumbling sound and she imagined it was the footfalls of the monstrous Graphorn, large and hard as a mountain, coming to destroy her. She closed her eyes and felt something grab the back of her cloak and drag her to the left, to the mountain side. She felt herself be dragged off the path but she clenched her eyes tight shut. Ready for the pain which would announce her death.
But it didn't come and the rumbling was still continuing. But that made no sense since the Graphorn had clearly already got to her.
Natalie opened her eyes and saw only white. That seemed to make sense. She'd been killed so quickly she hadn't noticed. The rumbling was growing distant after all, but why were her socks still uncomfortably soaked through?
Natalie pushed herself off the floor and onto her knees. She had been face down in a flurry of snow in front of an opening to a cave. Sat at the entrance to the cave was the large black dog and
"Charlie!" Natalie's heart soared as she saw his curly brown hair sticking out of his winter cloak pulled over his head.