Written for the Costume Party at Hogwarts (prompt: Centaur!Regulus).

Hunt

Regulus was strolling through the forest, gazing up in the sky.

Mars was bright, just as he had been for the last three months. Venus was just barely visible, as was Jupiter

War, love, and jollity.

The centaur continued his journey northward. This was his first hunt alone, he could not disappoint the herd.

He held bow and arrow in his hand, ready to shoot in a couple of seconds. He had a quiver holding as many arrows as possible around the humanoid part of his body and had placed as many bags in his reach as he could reasonably carry on a hunting trip.

Regulus should be prepared for every eventuality. He had had eleven years of training. There was no reason why this would not go over well.

He followed the footprints of a rabbit until they crossed part with four pairs of human ones.

What were humans doing in the forest? Wasn't it forbidden to them?

That was irrelevant. He should continue on his hunting trip.

But those seemed to be children—foals—that were in danger. It had not been that long ago that he had been one himself. Not to forget the fact that his first rule of hunting was to make sure young ones did not come to harm.

Thinking of Firenze, his teacher, he decided to follow the young humans. If nothing else it would put his mind at ease before he continued his hunting trip. He might as well return to the herd right now if he decided to hunt while his mind was somewhere else; it was simply pointless.

Regulus frowned as he noticed the direction in which the human footprints were leading. No, they wouldn't be stupid enough to go there, would they?

They would, because they had no idea, the centaur realized, speeding up his movements.

Now that he was galloping along the path, he would soon catch up to them.

Hopefully he wasn't too late.

He arrived just as the spiders were surrounding the four young boys who seemed to be frozen in fear. Regulus readied his bow and arrow as he hurried to get into a good position.

"Stop!" he yelled, firing his arrow into the largest one. He grabbed two arrows out of his quiver and fired them at the same time, but there was no way that he was going to win this alone; they were simply too many.

In a split second, he made a decision that would most likely result in him being thrown out of the herd should anyone see him.

He knelt down in front of the four humans.

"Get on my back. Fast!" Regulus ordered.

Finally, the humans started to move again. One by one, they climbed onto his back. Luckily, three of them were very small and light—though he should be concerned about that if they ever made it out here—so he would still be able to gallop.

"You should all hold onto the one who is sitting before you. The first one should hold onto my quiver or, preferably, me directly," Regulus advised the young humans as he stood up. "Otherwise you might fall off."

Hoping and begging the starts that all of them had listened to him, he galloped the same way back.

The spiders were slow. He just needed to put a distance between them and himself and the humans.

It was not long until he started to tire. He wanted to slow down, to rest, but he forced himself forward. Just a couple hundred metres more.

The centaur just barely managed to run far enough before he finally gave in and slowed down.

Regulus trotted another couple of metres before kneeling down again.
"Thank you," one of the boys, one with a lot of scars muttered.

The other three nodded.

The boy with high cheekbones continued. "Yes, without you we would have died. How can we ever thank you for that?"

Regulus smiled. "Just don't tell anyone about it."

Please tell me what you think!

~Marvelgeek42