Professor Kjerring revelled in the look of horror that passed between Erebus and Zornitsa. The three of them stood in the basement of the Lead Tower, surrounded by empty copper cages.
"You have lost a lot of valuable Erklings..." the Professor croaked, stepping closer to them, clacking her long nails together. "This simply won't do! You, boy, go into the forest and find me a magic creature that is still moving. Don't come back until you have it. Bring it to the basement for me. And you, girl, come with me..."
With that, Erebus was lead back up the stairs to the dim corridor beyond. The Professor waved her wand at one of the doors and ushered him through. Before he knew it, he was standing at the top of a long narrow staircase that led precipitously down the side of the castle wall to the forest below. He briefly saw Zornitsa steeling herself for whatever task laid ahead for her before the door slammed behind him.
Not even three days here, and Erebus was already in deep trouble. He hoped Zornitsa was going to be fine and he wondered whether this would go on a record sent back to Professor McGonnagal. At least he hadn't broken the rules, he consoled himself as he stepped down towards the forest.
Fir trees towered around him as he made his way into the woods. Bracken grew thickly between the trunks. Erebus made his way along a muddy trail leading away from the castle. With a light glowing from the end of his wand, he shined it all around in long sweeps.
He had been walking around for at least half an hour, cold, lost and unsure whether he'd even want to bring a creature back to almost certain doom even if he could find one, when a bright light streaked across the sky above the treetops, from the direction of the castle. A white hot orb crashed down through the branches and landed a quarter of a mile away from where Erebus was walking.
Curiousity overtaking him, Erebus followed the trail of destruction deeper into the woods until he found the crash site. At the end of furrow of mud and crushed ferns, there was a huge metal sphere, banded with stripes of gold and silver. As he got closer, there was a hiss as a quarter of the sphere creaked up on some internal hinge, revealing a cluttered control space within and, in a voluminous leather chair there was a figure in bulky oversuit and bulbous helmet.
"Stop gaping and help me out of here!" said a young man's voice from within the suit.
Erebus rushed forward to help the man extract himself from an elaborate safety harness that strapped him to the chair. He cast an Untangling Charm on the belts and the young man pulled off his helmet, shaking free a head of limp greasy hair. It was Erebus's fellow student in the Tin house, Himmel Drom.
"Are you alright, are you hurt?" Erebus asked as Himmel stepped free of his craft and stretched his limbs.
"No, no I'm fine," said Himmel. "But I really thought it would work that time."
"What were you doing in there?"
"Did you know Erebus, that the muggles landed on the moon over fifty years ago?"
Erebus vaguely recalled the fact from a Muggle Studies class, one of many farfetched and disconnected facts he had to learn over the years.
"Is that what you're trying to do in this thing?" he asked. "Reach the moon?"
"The moon is only the beginning!" Himmel started pacing and his voice became excitable as he warmed to the subject so close to his heart. "So far wizards have constrained their ambitions to one planet. I will go beyond this! What beings live on Mars? Do spells work the same on Jupiter? What does the Milky Way taste like? There are so many questions! Durmstrang has the alchemical resources free to use for my craft, and I hope it to be perfected by the time I leave this place."
Erebus looked sceptically at the metal orb buried in the undergrowth.
"Now I know what you're thinking," said Himmel. "Why don't I use a broom or some other reliable form of transportation?" He started listing them off on his fingers. "Brooms can't fly in a vacuum and they lose power the further you are from the Earth. It's much too far to apparate. And until I get there, there's no portkey. Experiments to launch a portkey that far have so far been in vain, and so I have been perfecting my Void Egg instead."
Erebus nodded. "I don't think I've ever met anyone with this kind of... ambition before."
"What makes a great Wizard or Witch, Erebus?" Himmel asked, his voice low and intense. "Not their power or ability, but their Great Work. That's what made the likes of Grindelwald, or even Voldemort, so compelling. And that's the failure of all those domesticated wizards your country is always churning out."
It was not the first time since coming to Durmstrang that Erebus felt uncomfortable about the way the students spoke about dark wizards. When his father would talk that way after a few glasses of firewhiskey it was one thing, for as much as it pained him, Erebus knew that his father Marcus Flint was a small-minded bigot on the losing side of history. But to hear such sentiments from an ambitious and admirable older student like Himmel was another thing. The young Hufflepuff was keen to change the subject.
"Uh... Bit of a long shot, but you don't happen to know where there are any easy-to-catch magical creatures nearby?" Erebus asked. "Maybe a Puffskein or a Flobberworm?"
Himmel considered the question for a moment before pointing off deeper into the forest. "There's a grove for the different wandwood trees that way, a little bit beyond the ruined hut. You should be able to Stupefy a Bowtruckle. Is this for a Challenge?"
"Professor Kjerring has sent me looking," Erebus said.
"Ah for a midnight snack!" said Himmel. "She's a good teacher, but one of these days she will succumb and eat a student, I'm sure of it."
"Is she really a Hag then?" Erebus asked.
Himmel smiled. "The next time you have a class with the Little Tutor, ask him what the difference between a Hag and a Witch is. He'll tell you it's much like the difference between a Troll and a Wizard. Appetite and in-breeding. I think Professor Kjerring is somewhere on the spectrum of Hagdom, certainly." As he spoke a light rain began to drizzle down on the pair.
After casting up a quick Umbrella Charm, Himmel turned around and started to levitate his Void Egg. The craft slowly broke free of the bracken and hovered above him. "I best be getting this back to the roof," he said. "Good luck!"
"Thanks, I'll need it," Erebus replied. He faced in the direction Himmel had pointed to and begun trudging through the dark.
It was not long before he came upon the ruined hut. Three stone walls, moss-covered, and half a slate roof were still intact. The rest had collapsed in and the whole was overgrown with thick brambles. Erebus decided to duck inside out of the wet while he planned his next move. He was trying to remember a charm for moving plants, when he recalled the spell Ditte had cast back in the cold hut at the end of the pier when they were waiting for the ship to Durmstrang.
"Hjemligøre!" he cried, swishing his wand in an appropriate pattern for invoking homeliness. A table burst out of the centre of the room, pushing aside the thorny bushes. Banners streamed down the sides of the walls, and parts of an old leather chair unrusted from the soil and reassembled into a seat once again. While rain still streamed down in half of the old hut, the space was now warm and well lit. Erebus reasoned that for this kind of effect, both huts must have been prepared in advance. This seemed confirmed by the unique designs on the banners here. They were emblazoned with a runic symbol that looked familiar to Erebus. It was a combined triangle, circle and vertical line overlaid on one another.
The young wizard didn't consider the symbol for long as his thoughts quickly returned to what to do about Professor Kjerring's midnight snack. He felt like it would be an awful shame to go to all the trouble to rescue the Erklings, only to sacrifice up some other intelligent creature. He wasn't sure about Bowtruckles, those twig-shaped tree guardians. Were they no more than insects? Unfeeling living automata? Or did they have rich inner lives, like Goblins, Elves and, dim as they were, even Trolls? With the power of magic to give the semblance of life to so many things, it was hard to know. In Herbology classes he would tell himself that Mandrake Roots only looked like babies, and were really just plants that mimicked sentient behaviour. That they were no more intelligent or self-aware than a stem of ginger or gingseng root. And yet, when they struggled in his hands, it would always give him pause. A Bowtruckle, in protecting their trees, seemed to have at least an animal's sense of territory. But even if it was somewhat intelligent, better to bring one back before the Professor gave into cravings and ate Zornitsa!
As his mind raced with these conflicting considerations, Erebus sat in the reconstructed leather chair that faced the wide table before him. He was considering the line between enchanted lifelikeness, animals, and intelligent beings when a bright idea came to him. With sudden purpose, he leapt off the chair and ran from the hut towards the wandwood grove. He couldn't remember how to return the space to how it had been but didn't see the harm in leaving it as it was.
Less than an hour later, Erebus carefully made his way back up the outer stairs of the castle. He came to the outer door and found it unlocked. He retraced his steps to the basement of the Lead Tower and made his way down the cold stairway once again. In the large basement room, he saw that the cages and banding around the room had been returned to lead. Professor Kjerring, beneath a ragged shawl, was stalking the boundaries of the room, inspecting her handiwork.
"Ah, child, did you bring me what I sought?"
Erebus reached into his robes and pulled out a chocolate frog. He had remembered that Ditte had said she had tried coaxing the Bowtruckles with them only yesterday, and luckily for him there was still one hopping about in the well-tended grove.
"Here is a magic creature, still moving, as you requested!" Erebus said, with a great grin on his face.
Professor Kjerring screwed up her warty face and shuffled closer to him. "I suppose you think yourself very clever, boy," she said. "I'm afraid I have a greater taste for clever boys than wriggling sweets."
Erebus's heart sank. He considered trying to flee, but he knew that he stood before a seasoned dueller. She could readily detain him if she wanted.
"Please, child, tell me you have a real magical being upon your person," she said, moving to within arms reach.
Erebus went through the motions of reaching into the pockets of his robes. There was his quill, still in chalk-form from his last Alchemy lesson; a few Chocolate Frog cards he had been hoping to trade; and, at last, his fingers touched on a small jar. He pulled out the stoppered, empty-seeming jar in a last ditch attempt at saving himself.
"Here's a jar of Nargles!" he said. He had bought the jar from the bargain bin at Weasley's Wizard Wheezes last summer. It was probably just a gag item, nothing more than an empty jar with a humorous label, but he had been assured at the time that they were genuine. Apparently with the right goggles you could see them. But he didn't have enough pocket money to afford the goggles back then.
"Really?" said Professor Kjerring, taking the jar, and peering intently into it. "Nargles?"
"Really!" said Erebus. "But you've got to be careful opening it, they fly out quickly!"
"Intriguing..." said the Professor, licking her thin lips.
"Well I'll be going to bed now..." said Erebus, as he backed towards the stairs.
"Yes, yes." Professor Kjerring waved a bony hand, dismissing him. Her eyes were fixed on the jar.
Erebus didn't have to be told twice. He raced back up the stairs and quickly made his way back to the Tin dormitories. There was no one in the common room when he got there but he hoped that Zornitsa had made it back safe as well. With one last look around, he made his way up to his shared room.
Finally, sinking beneath his sheets, he allowed himself to finally relax. Somehow he had survived another day at Durmstrang.