Year 4 Part 4

"Really? Now? I do need to go to Hogsmeade." Molly sounded more annoyed than mad.

"Oh come on, it's perfect. A whole day where no one is in the castle, and the Professors can't directly find us. Aims said I could go after I learned the Patronus Charm and I did."

"You couldn't give me some warning so I could come prepared?" I huffed.

"You can't tell me you don't have your entire potions case in your bag already." he countered.

"Well-"

"Come on, we're burning daylight." he put his hands in the pockets of his jeans and stepped off into the forest.

Amber and Molly followed him without a second thought, Damian following after just a spare second of pause. Matt held his hand out to Keeli and she took an even longer pause before taking it and following him into the trees. I closed my eyes and sighed heavily before looking up at Louk.

"You coming?"

His scowl was so deep I thought I saw wrinkles actively setting into his skin but he eventually stuffed his hands in his pockets where I knew his wand was stored and breezed past me to follow the others.

Around the edge of the forest my main concern was other students would see us, as it took a few minutes for the trees to really grow thick enough to hide us from the path. We heard laughter and conversation from the students on the trail, but it slowly faded as we walked deeper and was replaced by different animal calls and the wind in the trees. There was no snow but it was still sufficiently cold, and I wrapped my Ravenclaw scarf around my nose to trap my warm breath. Cad was leading our little pack with all the casual air of a Sunday stroll, but the further back in our little group you went the more the nerves started to show. I rummaged through my potions case and selected a few to keep in my pocket just in case, while Louk, Damian, and Keeli had their hands clutching their wands the entire time.

We walked for ages before finally coming up on a stream, the same one I figured the Gryffindor girls had told me about, and taking a seat to rest our legs. We all scattered around on the large rocks by the stream, propping our feet up and taking out any snacks we happened to have on us. Amber pulled out three whole flasks of pumpkin juice out of her bag and I knew they must have at least planned a little. I shared one with Louk who didn't look any more agreeable despite the relative peaceful walk so far. I reached over and tried to take his hand but he just scooted away, handing me the flask before getting up to sit next to Damian. I sighed and stoppered the flask, handing it back to Amber before bringing my knees to my chest and trying to warm up a little.

After maybe ten minutes Cad stood up again and we all followed, some of the others breaking into gentle conversations. Even I had to admit I'd never thought it'd go this smoothly for this long, and I knew we were all wondering how much of the fear around the forest was due to the Professor's telling us stories. We crossed the stream and kept heading in a North-easterly direction, somewhere I presumed Cad knew the way to. At what I figured was around noon due to our grumbling stomachs we finally reached a fork in the path we'd been following, Cad putting his hands on his hips as he debated which way to go.

"North or West?" he asked no one in particular.

"How about back the way we came?" Louk scowled, but everyone ignored him.

"North." Amber decided. "West will take us back towards Hogsmeade."

"North it is. Care to share those sandwiches?"

Amber reached into her bag and handed us each a sandwich in paper wrappings, but I could barely choke down the first half I was so nervous. I knew it must be my paranoia, but the trees seemed to be blocking out more and more light, and the air seemed to get disturbingly colder instead of warmer as it should with the rising sun. The others were just Vanishing their empty wrappers when we heard a noise off to our right. Half of us whipped our wands to face it, but the Gryffindors and Molly just looked over with casual interest.

It started off as a soft rhythm almost like a heartbeat, but it grew louder rather quickly and began to shake the ground. Louk grabbed my arm and shoved me into the bushes that bordered the trail, waving his wand over the both of us to Dissolution us. By the time I looked up the others were nowhere to be seen as well and Louk gripped my hand tightly as we tried not to breathe heavily. Not ten seconds later the rumbling grew so loud it shook my teeth in my head, and no less than thirty Centaurs came thundering through the trees. They had bows bigger than I was and a full quiver of arrows each, some of them holding huge deer or large fish like they weighed no more than a Pygmy Puff. They just seemed to be passing through and not one of them so much as looked to the side as they passed by, but we were very careful in making sure we couldn't hear so much as a whisper of their hooves before we stepped out of the brush.

My heart was pounding and Keeli had a wild look in her eyes, but Cad had one of the largest grins I'd ever seen. He just set back down the path with a whistle and I tried to keep my temper under control. I'd read stories about what happened to witches and wizards who trespassed on Centaur property, if there was enough of them to find that was. Louk removed his charm over us before speeding up to walk next to Damian again. Cad looked back at me and I knew he meant for me to walk with him, but I just stepped over to follow Keeli and Matt instead.

We hadn't even been walking another quarter of an hour when we heard another stream, sitting down to take another rest. Amber hadn't even opened her bag when we heard a strange skittering noise a little upstream of us. We all turned our heads simultaneously to see what the creature was, and I knew I wasn't alone in blinking a few times to make sure I was seeing it properly.

It kind of looked like a fancy mustache, with its two ends curling at the ends towards its body. Each end was tipped with a stinger probably longer than my arm and no matter how hard I looked I couldn't tell which end was which. Legs stuck out from it's hard-shelled body like a scorpion, some of them not long enough to touch the ground but still contracting in the air like it was walking, and it seemed just as comfortable going in one direction as the other which further confused me to which end was which. It seemed to be slowly meandering closer to us but with no eyes I could see it was hard to say if it knew we were there or not. We were all frozen in a kind of trance while we seemingly were waiting for it to either walk away or attack us.

It was pretty clear when it was alerted to our presence because it suddenly froze in its tracks before scrambling madly towards us, a blast of fire out of one end propelling it even faster. We all screamed and ran, going to the only place we thought might be marginally safe: the trees. Louk took my arm and almost single-handedly dragged me a good twenty feet into a yew tree. We stopped at a rather large branch and caught our breath, looking around to make sure the others were okay. Amber and Damian had run up another yew tree about six meters to our left, Cad and Molly an oak tree so close to ours their branches were intertwined, and Matt and Keeli were doing their best to scale a rather small evergreen. The scorpion creature seemed to have targeted them and was scrambling madly closer, and Keeli was having a hard time climbing as tears were streaming down her face. Anger boiled in my gut and I whipped my wand out of my pocket, pointing at the creature.

"Bombarda!" I yelled, but to very little effect.

It did hardly more than twitch, but it bought Keeli enough time to grab Matt's hand and him to haul her up. For one horrifying second it tried to climb the tree after her but it was too heavy to get more than a few inches off the ground before falling over on it's side. It scrambled back up and took to patrolling the ground underneath all our roosting spots, as if waiting to see who would grow impatient first.

"What the bloody hell is that?" Damian called over to Cad.

"No idea!" Cad had a wide smile, like this was the moment of his life. "I've read all of Newt Scamander's works and I've never seen anything like it. Maybe it's an undiscovered species!"

"Then why don't you go down and get it's autograph, and while it eats you we'll run." Louk shouted back with a scowl, but I cut in before they could start yelling too much.

"Can anyone see any weaknesses? Chinks in it's armor, or maybe some eyes?"

They all looked for a second before shaking their heads. Keeli was clearly in the worst state out of all of us, but she took a deep breath and tried to calm down enough to talk.

"When it fell over it didn't look like it had any armor on its belly."

"Like a Fire Crab!" Cad said excitedly. "You know now that you say it does have some resemblance to-"

"More planning, less categorizing." Amber shot over at her housemate. "If it's like a Fire Crab then, how do we get it to go away?"

"If we can flip it, it's belly will be susceptible to offensive spells." Cad finally said.

Louk nodded, pulling his wand out of his pocket. "Alright then, everyone do the Seize and Pull Charm at the same time. When it's flipped, do a Severing Charm and we'll see how it goes."

"On three." I nodded, taking careful aim at the creature. "One, two, three!"

"Carpe Retractum!" eight voices called out, and the creature gave a kind of wiggle before finally being knocked onto it's back closest to Amber and Damian's tree. We all then chanted 'Diffindo!' while it was trying to right itself, and an unholy clicking kind of squeal rang out. It contorted itself enough to get its feet and seemed rather pissed, abandoning its pacing and once again trying to climb the trees we were in. It was now easier to knock on its side but the sight of the huge creature trying to claw its way to us did nothing for my nerves. We had to repeat the knock over and Sever Charm tactic more than a dozen times before it started to take any effect, dark green blood dripping from underneath the creature before it finally decided we weren't worth the trouble and scampered off into the woods.

Louk insisted on throwing rocks around for a while to make sure it hadn't run off to hide and ambush us, and no matter what we said he descended first to make sure the coast was clear. Finally he said we could all come down and I'd never been happier to see the forest floor. My legs were a little shaky and Keeli had to outright hang on Matt to keep from collapsing. Of course Cad looked as chipper as ever, shoving his hands back in his pockets and whistling as he set back off down the trail.

We trudged forward, and now I knew it wasn't my imagination that things were growing darker. It wasn't that late, just past two I'd reckon, but the trees seem to actively soak up all the sunlight leaving us in an even colder and more dangerous wood. I kept having a feeling on the back of my neck like I was being watched, and Louk skirted closer to me while keeping his eyes looking up at the trees. We were passing under a particularly dense bunch of trees when we heard a scampering above us.

We immediately dove to the side of the path again, holding up our wands and wildly swiveling our heads around. Cad stood alone in the middle of the path smiling, waving his wand and summoning a cricket from the nearby dirt. I was about to yell at him to get down as the shaking got worse, before a creature flipped out of the trees and landed on his shoulder.

It jabbered loudly before taking the cricket out of Cad's hand, munching on it with a sickening noise. I now recognized the weird monkey frog creatures we'd seen in Care of Magical Creatures last year. I scowled as I stepped from behind the tree I'd been kneeling as more of the weird little creatures swung down to lower branches to watch their mate get a tasty treat. Cad looked up at me with a teasing grin as the Clabbert scampered around on his shoulders.

"So jumpy."

"You keep those demon monkeys away from me." Amber scowled, who I now saw hadn't thrown herself to the side in fear but instead leapt away to keep from the magical creature.

"They just want to be friends, Amber. Come on, take him!" he held out the arm the Clabbert was crouching on, making her recoil away.

"Those little gremlins can stay well away from my hair, thank you very much." she crossed her arms, purposefully stepping behind Molly and Damian to give herself more distance.

"Spoil sport." he wrinkled his nose, holding his arm over to me. "Want one?"

"We can go to a petting zoo another day, let's get this over with." Louk breezed between us, taking my arm and leading me down the path further on.

I heard Cad sigh and hold his arm back up to a branch, the Clabbert scampering off his arm before Cad finally followed along with our little group. Louk was now stomping in the lead of the group, his anxiety clear in the way he gripped his wand so tightly his knuckles were white. Another small clue was the string of swear words he was muttering under his breath, not an insignificant amount of which were 'damn galavanting Gryffindors and their good for nothing quests'.

He stomped right into a little clearing, although the lack of trees somehow didn't allow any more light through than any other part of the forest. We saw a dim light shining through the trees ahead of us and of course headed towards it. At first I thought the hude mound in the middle of the clearing we found was a pile of rocks because of their rocky grey colour, but Louk ground us to a halt and held his breath. After a few seconds I saw the mound move softly and realized it must be something sleeping.

Louk slowly started to back away while gripping my arm and the others followed his lead, of course except for Cad. Instead of creeping farther away he was creeping closer, circling around to where the head must be. I moved to walk closer but Louk's grip just tightened, and he shook his head firmly when I looked over to him. Once the majority of us were safely at the edge of the trees, I finally risked a whisper-shout.

"Cad! What are you doing?"

"Getting a closer look." he called back in a soft voice. "People usually don't get this close to ogres."

"I wonder why." Louk muttered.

"Leave it alone, you'll wake it up!" I called back.

"Just give me a few, take a chance to rest." he waved me off, circling around the ogre where we couldn't see him anymore.

The others seemed happy enough to follow his advice, sitting down and whispering between each other. I moved to follow but Louk just shook his head while he remained in a crouching position.

"Don't get comfortable, we won't be here long."

"It's Cad and an ogre." Amber gave him a look. "We'll probably be here for a few hours."

Louk didn't get time to say anything clever back as a roar that rattled around in my head erupted around the clearing. I didn't have to look over to know what'd happened but I did nonetheless, and saw the huge greyish creature floundering to stand. Cad came running around the side with a kind of wild s mile.

"Off we pop, lads."

"What did you do?!" Matt asked as they scurried to their feet.

"Complete fluke, a branch snapped in the woods and he just happened to open his eyes and see me. Doesn't matter now."

The ogre finally gained his feet and reached out to wrap his hand around a nearby tree, ripping it straight out of the ground like it was nothing. His following roar shook the ground so hard Louk reached out to help me get my feet. We all booked it as soon as we could, moving in a pack through the trees so maybe a few obstacles would be in our way. The ogre however didn't seem to get the message as he just batted each tree larger than fifteen feet tall aside like it was nothing, swinging his makeshift club in an arc to clear out groups of smaller ones. He was easily twenty-five feet tall which luckily meant his swings were too high to be of immediate decapitation risk, but his footsteps alone shook the ground so much we almost fell down every four seconds.

I cast my eyes around wildly as we ran, trying to think of anything that could help us, but every time the ogre roared my intelligence seemed to fly out my ear to make way for the all-consuming fear. The only thing that remained constant was Louk's hand keeping hold of my wrist and pulling me deeper into the forest. Everyone had their wands out but I was pretty sure they were at just as much of a loss as I was because we just kept looking back and forth between each other. We came upon a little rocky protrusion in the ground, a spire or something, and we split around it like a parting sea. I looked back to see the ogre look both ways a few times like he was confused before just swinging his tree and breaking the rock in half. Huge boulders flew around the clearing and Keeli screamed as we all tried not to get knocked out. The ogre stepped over the shattered rock and roared again.

Cad turned around and this seemed to be where he was going to take his stand, but I grabbed the sleeve of his coat and pulled him along next to me.

"What do ogres hate?" I asked before he could yell at me for ending his dramatic moment.

"Nothing, they'll pretty much smash it all!" he yelled as the heavy footsteps started up again to follow us.

"Aren't they stupid?" I asked.

"Yeah."

"Take cover!" Matt called ahead of us, and we dove to the sides.

The ogre's club landed on the ground some ten feet behind us, shaking the ground so hard the trees groaned. We all screamed and scrambled to our feet, trying to put more distance between us and him in case he swung again. We splayed ourselves out into a line, staying out of a cluster so he couldn't hit us all at once, and I took advantage of our positions to shout down the line.

"We need to confuse it!" I shouted.

"Any suggestions?" Damian called back, but Louk spoke up for me.

"Shoot sparks out of your wand, all different colors. As soon as you do, split up before sneaking further North to regroup."

We all pulled out our wands and waited for the ogre to pause, raising his club high in the air to swing again. We all waved our wands and eight different colors of sparkling lights flew around his head like bothersome flies. He growled and started swinging at them in anger. I slipped on my ring and the others likewise did their best to disappear, ducking into the brush while he was distracted. I didn't strictly stick to the foliage as in the shadowy forest cover I knew I'd be next to invisible, instead heading straight down the path in the direction Louk had pointed. I'd made it about a meter before the troll gave another roar and flung his club down in frustration. I landed not an inch from my face and I was thrown to the ground with the force of it. I knew it was unwise, but I couldn't stop the scream that escaped my throat. I covered my head with my hands and assumed the fetal position as the ogre started stomping around the clearing looking for the source of the noise. It hadn't hit me, but I must have hit the ground pretty hard because I felt something wet coming from my head and matting my hair. For the first time in my life my brain was completely devoid of thought, nothing but fear gripping my insides. Tears pricked my eyes as the feeling of helplessness grew more potent, and I heard nothing but the stomping of the ogre growing closer.

"Amelia!" a desperate voice called somewhere nearby, and I latched onto it like a life preserver.

"I'm- I'm here." I whimpered.

I heard something shuffle off to my right but I couldn't see anything, feeling a hand suddenly bump into me as they'd been searching around. I grasped onto it and it returned the pressure firmly, hauling me to my feet with ease. I looked up and saw in the clearing behind us Cad had illuminated his wand with a red light waving it around like a lunatic.

"Oi! Melon head!" he shouted, running on the edge of the clearing away from us.

"Cad!" I tried to shout but the invisible person clamped their hand over my mouth.

"Shut up and get moving."

They dragged me towards the trees and I stumbled as I tried to keep looking behind us to make sure Cad was alright. Only when we were safely behind a large tree where four other people were hiding did they let go.

"What's the plan?" Matt asked with a serious look on his face, wand at the ready.

"You let him go out there without a plan?!" I hissed.

"We couldn't stop him." Molly just shook her head.

"Maybe we could trip it somehow, then trap it while it's on our level?" Keeli was cowering behind Matt.

"Sure, but how? That thing is like two tonnes!" Amber was having to be held back by Damian.

I took a deep and shaky breath, reaching my hand into my invisible bag. "Leave it to me."

"Amelia, you can't-" the invisible person next to me who I figured was Louk tried to take my hand again but I jerked out of his grasp, heading back toward the towering creature.

"Get Cad away from it!"

I ran around the clearing in the opposite direction Cad had, taking two ultra-thin phials out of my purse where they'd been resting in their protective lining. Cad was still waving his wand around, weaving between trees so the ogre couldn't get a good enough line of sight on him to lash out. It's tree club was still laying on the ground at the other side of the clearing but it would take it about two seconds to pick it up again. I waited until Cad mysteriously vanished, his wand extinguishing a few seconds later, before throwing the first phial towards the ogre's feet, keeping it closer to me than to where Cad had disappeared. As soon as it hit the ground and cracked the slightest bit, the green fluid in the phial exploded violently. It shook the clearing and the ogre roared in pain as tree branches and stones were thrown into him from the force. I hoped that gave the others enough of a cue of what I was doing and they hustled out of the area, but I still waited until the ogre had almost completely recovered before tossing the second phial right between the grey-skinned feet.

The ogre's scream was so loud I clamped my hands over my ears, falling to my knees from the force of the explosion and a sudden lack of balance. A second later I felt another force shake the ground and I knew the ogre had at least stumbled to his knees.

A chorus of voices yelled "Orbis!" directly after, and I opened my eyes to see the ground suck in the ogre like quicksand. It was only swallowed up to its waist but it was enough to ground it. It roared something awful, picking up anything it could reach and hurling it randomly around the clearing, but retreating past the first few trees lining the treeline was enough to avoid the worst of the projectiles.

I hurried back to where they'd been ducking down a few seconds ago, and everyone was panting heavily while leaning against the rough bark. Louk was visible again along with everyone else, putting their wands away while we all calmed down.

"That's what I'm talking about!" Cad alone was beaming, holding his hand up for a high five that never came.

"Are you stupid?!" I yelled, picking up a broken stick nearby and throwing it at him. "You charged it head on!"

"Yeah I did!" he beamed, picking me up and spinning me around despite my attempts to escape. "That was- that was awesome!"

"You are the single stupidest person I've ever met." I slapped his chest and he released me, crossing my arms once I was back on my feet. "He could have squashed you, or ripped you in half, or-"

"But he didn't, did he? You know why? Because we're the best team I've ever seen!" he looked around at the others. "Louk, that Orbis Jinx idea was brilliant! And thinking to get him on the ground like that? Inspired."

They all looked at each other like they couldn't believe what they were hearing, all except for Keeli who was looking up at the sky. "Guys...where are we?"