"Flipendo!" shouted the small redhead, flinging a surprisingly decent knockback jinx at Hagrid.
"Protego!" yelled the oversized gamekeeper, interposing the lantern I'd made for him between himself and Ron and managing to erect a shield that stopped the young Weasley's attack. Not that it would have actually done much to Hagrid had it hit.
"Excellent job, Ronald," congratulated Percy, who'd been drilling his little brother on the spell.
"You too, Hagrid," I told the big man, who'd really appreciated the gift but had been a little dubious about the value of a shield spell given his natural resistance to magic. After Percy and I had managed a pair of powerful enough stunners to bring him down as a demonstration, he'd admitted that it wouldn't hurt for him to learn other ways to defend himself.
"Us next!" shouted Fred, as the twins had been bored and cold out by Hagrid's hut while watching their brother and the half-giant figure out the spells.
"Fine. Fred, practice shield spells against Ronald. George, see if you can get jinxes past Hagrid's shield," commanded Percy, who'd taken quite happily to organizing the impromptu tutoring.
Surprising everyone, Ron had taken our warnings to heart about how if he actually wanted to be head boy, he'd never make it at the rate he was going. He'd come to us two days after viewing the mirror and asked for help with his classes. At my suggestion, rather than load him down with more book work, we'd been drilling him on some of the practical and fun stuff he should have been learning so far.
Personally, I expected his enthusiasm to wane again when he had to go back to studying magical theory instead of casting jinxes, but I was the wrong person to be throwing stones about that. After her abortive attempt at detention, McGonagall had been growing increasingly frustrated at trying to get me to put in more than a minimal effort on homework for my classes.
The addition of the twins to the practice session immediately made it more chaotic. Fred was sending nonverbal tickling charms at Ron every time he had a moment to drop his shield between knockbacks. George was trying the entire range of the first through third year syllabus of jinxes at Hagrid, trying to get something through. He actually managed a freezing charm that was probably ahead of the curve for his year, and coated Hagrid's legs in ice. The big man easily moved his legs to crack out of the impediment, but nodded at the hit.
This continued for a while, but we'd started after lunch, and it was already entering twilight before we'd started to get tired of dueling. Hogwarts was so far north, the sun set not long past the middle of the afternoon. Percy was clearly about ready to tell everyone to pack it in when, from the shadows of the forest near Hagrid's hut, we heard a woman's voice scream, "Help! Help me!" Something or someone crashed through the underbrush, and the cry for help continued, receding into the forest.
Buoyed by their irrepressible Gryffindor spirit and the recent successes dueling, the twins were off into the woods before Percy could yell at them to stop, and Hagrid yelled, "C'mon, Fang!" before charging off after them, at least remembering to grab his crossbow on the way in.
"Ronald, no!" shouted Percy, as the youngest Weasley boy started to head after the others. "Go back to the castle and get more help!" Dejectedly, Ron nodded and turned to start running back across the grounds.
It had taken me a crucial few moments to gather my foci, or I probably would have been right into the forest with the others. But while I grabbed my staff and walked slowly toward the trees, stowing my blasting rod, I was listening, trying to trace the sounds of the receding damsel, and I heard a second source of crashing underbrush to my left along the treeline, in the opposite direction from where they were running into the forest.
Having seen to Ron and stayed with me walking slowly toward the forest, Percy caught where I was looking at the second noise and we both watched a large silhouette emerge from the trees. "I never heard that there were moose in the Forbidden Forest," he said, confused. "Whatever happened must have scared it?"
"That's no moose," I growled, sadly realizing my Star Wars reference was totally lost on Percy. While the silhouette definitely appeared to be shaped like some form of deer-like quadruped, it didn't move like one. Instead, its hooved legs bent oddly, and it loped with a predator's hunting stance. I glanced along its path and it seemed to be heading directly for the now-undefended 12-year-old. "It's after Ron!"
"Watch out, Ronald!" yelled Percy as we both took off running at the beast. The little redhead was fast on his feet, and already far enough ahead of us that it was unclear if we were close enough to help immediately.
"Ronald! Keep running!" came an uncannily good impression of Percy. The beast's mouth had flapped, impossibly large, as it mimicked the prefect, and it hadn't slowed in the least.
Ron, who didn't realize he was fleeing from a monster, turned to get clarification only to see the beast bearing down on him. "Blimey!" he half-shouted, but didn't seem to be sure he was in danger from what might look like a charging herbivore. But as he tried to move out of the side hoping it would run past, and it turned back toward him, the boy did have the good sense to whip out his wand and yell, "Flipendo!"
While it was a surprisingly good and accurate knockback jinx, and I was pleased he'd done it reflexively after only an afternoon's training, it washed over the creature with no noticeable effect. "It's magic resistant!" I huffed, more in case Percy hadn't seen than for Ron's benefit. The boy was about to be trampled or worse and I was still too far to be sure of getting him with a seize and pull charm, so I yelled out my standby, "Ventus!" while swinging my staff as I charged forward.
A blast of sideways wind caught Ron and sent him more or less back toward us just as the beast swung its antlers through where he'd been standing. Percy was thankfully quick with a screamed, "Molliare!" to set a cushioning charm on the ground where Ron was flying. The small Weasley, tumbling like he was stuck in a clothes dryer, hit the ground with a couple of bounces instead of a thud. He looked like he was trying not to vomit, but was otherwise unhurt.
The beast skidded its hooves into the grass to make a hard turn, reorienting back towards its prey. Finally seeing it head-on and getting closer in our charge, I could tell that its antlers were two different sizes, and crazily shaped, looking like they were edged in vicious serrations. In the failing sunlight, mad eyes twinkled at us as it flipped its mouth back open and yelled in Percy's voice, "Hold still, Ronald! Hold still!" Its mouth was more like a beak, sharp-looking bone ridges inside instead of teeth.
Finally feeling like I was close enough, I yelled, "Carpe retractum!" and yanked back on my staff. Ron, thankfully, flew back toward us on a thin beam of light, and Percy was ready with another cushioning charm as he bounced to a stop at our feet. We both stopped, flanking Ron and dropping into a guard stance.
Ron started to ask, "What is– erp!" and then did vomit behind us after the two unexpected flights through the air.
"Impedimentia! Immobulus! Locomotor wibbly! Arresto momentum!" cast Percy in an impressively fast series of attempts to slow or stop the creature that was now charging directly at us, his wand a blur in the air in front of him. All four simply seemed to wash over the creature just like the troll on my birthday.
Rather than waste time asking why he didn't believe me that it was magic resistant, I held my staff in my left hand and drew my blasting rod. "Bombarda!" I yelled, pointing at the ground ahead of the charging monster. My exploding charm hit the lawn like a crashing meteor, kicking up a person-sized crater and flinging a hail of sod into its face.
Apparently expecting another spell that would just wash over it, the beast hadn't slowed down, and stumbled, blinded, into the impromptu pit, its antlers planting into the dirt on the far side and nearly flipping before flopping back into the hole, dirt settling around it. Unfortunately, it seemed to only be down for a moment while getting its bearings, only about twenty feet away. From this distance, I could make out the strange mottled black color of its fur and how its face didn't really look like any kind of natural animal. It was as big as a moose, though, and that was not ideal for our current proximity.
"Hit it with its club!" suggested Ron as he wiped off his mouth and tried to shake off his dizziness and stand back up.
Percy was clearly about to explain that it didn't have a club, but I'd been thinking along the same lines and had a hunch, so I cut him off with, "Can you transfigure some iron spikes?"
"Out of what?" the prefect asked, reasonably, but did a quick, "Accio rocks!" and started trying to make what I'd asked for.
Meanwhile, my lack of wand making me much slower at transfiguration than Percy, I had switched back to my staff and was trying to help with a hissed, "Oppugno!" as I tried to get any rocks closer to the beast to fly into it. It worked but didn't do much other than slow it a bit more as it staggered to its feet and gave us a baleful look from its mad eyes.
It had regained all four feet and hunched down for another charge when Percy said, "Ready!" and held out a handful of dark gray, pencil-shaped lengths of transfigured metal.
Hoping it was enough, I told him to, "Throw them up!" and then yelled, "Depulso!" as I baseball swung my staff at the improvised missiles. Backed up by my banishing charm, the spikes flew like a shotgun blast into the monster's face.
The thing shrieked in a voice that shifted quickly through a range of pitches, and then cut off as it fell over, barely a couple of yards away from us. We could feel it as it hit the dirt, and oddly bluish blood began running out of its face where the spikes had entered its brain through those hateful eyes.
After a few moments of shocked silence, Ron whispered, "Wicked."
The downside of an immense lawn around a thick-walled castle was that even my exploding charm hadn't been loud enough to draw attention from the inside, so after a brief conference about what to do, the three of us walked back to the castle, our adrenaline crash making us wobbly in the legs.
In all honesty, if Ron had gone to get help, he might have had a hard time being coherent or believable enough to get much, but Percy was a prefect and not prone to exaggeration. So we quickly had McGonagall, Filch, Flitwick, and Kettleburn down to look at the creature and potentially go look for Hagrid and the twins. Fortunately, by the time we were heading back down to where we'd fought, I could make out Hagrid's silhouette and magical lantern coming out of the woods, flanked by the twins and Fang, dragging something huge behind him.
I hadn't had much to do with Professor Kettleburn, who was an older wizard with magical prosthetics for both of his legs and one of his arms. Upon seeing the corpse of the monster he let out a whistle and excitedly said, "A leucrotta! These haven't been in Britain for centuries! Amazing. Shame you couldn't take it alive. Ornery buggers."
"It tried to trick us into splitting up so it could pick off Ron," I explained.
"Oh, yes. Clever predators, these. Children make an excellent meal." Ron looked like he was going to vomit again.
"Oy! There's another one!" shouted Fred, and as Hagrid got closer I could tell that he was dragging a leucrotta of his own. One of the absurdly large crossbow bolts that fit in Hagrid's hand-held ballista protruded from the beast's eye socket.
"I see!" barked Kettleburn. "A mated pair, I'd wager! One tried to draw off the bulk of the group, leaving the others undefended."
As Hagrid dragged his up, a terrible stench came with them, and I could see that, in addition to the quarrel in its eye, their leucrotta's face was covered in something brown. "Did you… hit it in the face with a dungbomb?" I asked the twins.
"Our spells just bounced off and we needed a distraction for Hagrid to shoot it," shrugged George.
"I hated to kill the poor thing," boomed Hagrid, "but it came after the boys an' it wouldn't stop."
"He did ask very politely," said Fred.
"Look at the serrations on these antlers, Hagrid!" enthused Kettleburn. "And the pattern on the fur! Even the ones I saw on display weren't nearly this distinctive. These are excellent specimens! I wonder where they came from?"
"Well, until the two of you figure that out," lectured McGonagall, clearly upset at the entire situation, "we'll need to keep students far away from the forest."
I didn't voice my suspicion, because the Hogwarts staff didn't seem to want to believe in what they considered fairy tales. But given how well the iron spikes had worked, I figured these had come from the Nevernever. And that was terrifying, because nothing bigger than doxies was supposed to be able to get out.