Savage

Disclaimer : Hippity, hoppity, you know the drillity

Chapter 3 : The Ottery's Creature

Albus Dumbledore, sitting alone in his office, surrounded by magical artifacts, was displeased. Two years had passed since Harry's disappearance, meaning that the boy's protection through his family Bloodwards had now ended.

For two years, Albus Dumledore had allocated a substantial amount of his time to the boy's retrieval, to no avail. He even solicited Alastor Moody's help, in the most probable case Harry had been snatched by dark wizards, but not a single one of the twenty-three dark wizards apprehended by Alastor had led to a clue on Harry. Not even surprise raids on known "imperiused" Death Eaters had been helpful.

Yet, Dumbledore knew that Harry was alive. The man might seem to be an awkward looney, sometimes, but he certainly wasn't daft. He had linked the toddler's magical signature to one of his many buzzling magical trinkets, one that informed him of whether the boy was alive or not. And he was.

Paradoxically, there lied down the reason for Albus Dumbledore's displeasure. The boy was alive, the Bloodwards were down, it appeared that no dark wizard had taken him, and yet, no spell, incantation or ritual could find him, even though Dumbledore had used one of Harry's hairlocks, that he had kept until now, to boost them.

Dumbledore rose up and paced in his office, as he usually did when something puzzled him. After a moment, he could see only two answers to this mystery. The first answer would be that Harry had been found by a magical entity, either dark or light, witch, wizard, or magical creature, and was kept behind strong wards. If it was dark wizards, the Moody solution had already been launched. If it was light wizards, then all was good, for they were certainly wise wizards that had kept the boy away from the wizarding world politics until now. If it was creatures… It could only be goblins, vampires, werewolves, veelas or, highly improbable, house elves, for they were the only creatures able to put up such wards. Merlin please, make it so that it was none of them !

The second solution was trickier, and far more worrying. It is possible that a person becomes untraceable when their magical signature changed, effectually making them "another person", in the eyes of magic. Yet, for such a change to occur is not only rare, but the consequence of a terrible event that it had completely twisted and rearranged one's magic.

For now, Albus would contact Gringotts and Remus to put goblins and werewolves off the list. When all options on the first answer list have been be outed, then he will worry about the second answer.

The creature was inside its lair, digesting a freshly hunted hare. Two years ago, the creature had awoken, a morning, and it knew it no longer was a mere boy. Oh, it still looked like one, for sure, but something had changed. For one, the former boy could now eat raw animals without a problem, sometimes even animals bigger than him, for he could now dislocate his own jaw to swallow them and extend his belly skin, if needed. He was more agile, stronger and faster than before, and no illness had struck him.

But above all, none of it frightened him. In fact, he was now indifferent to many things that frightened him when he was a boy. In particular, he was no longer afraid of long dead pasts and would be futures. Not meaning that he wasn't afraid altogether ! Simply that he only feared immediate dangers and obvious risks, even though said fear didn't paralyze him anymore, on the contrary, it led him to action.

Not long after his awakening, the creature had abandoned its pitiful "shack", and started digging a hole into the earth, like a snake would do. He still was near his river, however. Only a fool would distance itself from a source of clean water.

The creature had also been pleased to find that his new (and only) friend the grass snake hadn't left. It reassured him, for he still felt compelled to seek the company and conversation of another. A vestige of his past existence that hadn't died along his childish fears.

And so life went on. Every morning the creature would go out, hunt for a while, and come back to rest in its lair, conversing with his not so friendly friend. Even if you can speak to them, snakes are solitary beings, so they weren't great conversationalists. On the other hand, even concise conversations are better than no conversation at all, and they worked well together to catch small preys.

Most of the time, their discussions revolved around "My name is Harry. Ha-rry. I'm sure you can say it !"

"No. I can't"

April and May had passed, and it became "Harsy ! Say Harsy !"

"Slightly better, but still can't say it."

Then June and July, "Hassy ! It's not that hard !"

` "Yes that I can say, Hassy. Fine, I'll stop calling you hairless."

"Good heavens, thanks !"

It was around the same time that Hassy completely ceased to hear the snake's words as proper English, and understood them for what they were, hissings, and had no problems whatsoever about the fact that he, too, was hissing.

Then October came. Quickly enough, the grass snake went to hibernate. It came as a surprise to the creature, who didn't feel the need to hibernate. So, he continued to hunt, alone.

And then winter and snow came. Prey animals were rarer and rarer, but the creature was just as hungry as he had been the previous months. As such, his hunting area broadened larger and larger, until one day, he heard them.

Twilight was approaching, the sky darkened by clouds, snow spilling abundantly from their fat, fluffy forms. The creature was crawling, it's belly almost touching the ground, looking for anything that wouldn't hide into a hole.

It was then that loud sounds broke the silence. Footsteps stomping hard on the ground, shouts piercing across the forest. All of it was deafening to the creature, for nothing was as loud as this in the forest. Not even the deer's feet were so heavy, and it was the biggest animal in this forest. Not even the birds' songs were as loud, and they were the most daring of all, for they lived in heights none could reach.

But whatever it was that made those sounds, it had more confidence than all of them.

Intrigued, the creature climbed a nearby tree, slowly approaching the sounds.

Now, he could see them, and he was astonished. Below him, playing in the snow, were hairless mammals, as the grass snake called them. Their skins were covered by colourful and warm… warm… warm what ? He knew the word, but he couldn't remember it. It described some sort of strange, long leaves that hairless mammals wore upon their skins, and he himself had worn it a long time ago.

Another thought had struck him. These mammals were shouting, yes, but he couldn't make a single word out of it. The snake was right ! Hairless mammals don't speak ! Were he and the people he had lived with before exceptions, like the snake had explained ?

While he was in his musings, the creature didn't realise at first that one of the mammals was looking in his direction.

"Hey, guys ! Do you see that, in the trees ?"

However, he did notice when one of them pointed a finger at him. Immediately, he understood that he had been seen, and fled as fast as he could, past the branches.

"Bloody hell ! Was that a fucking monkey ?!"

Around January December 1987, a strange rumour had started spreading in Ottery-St-Catchpole. The previous 20th December, a few muggle teenagers had gone into the forest, 6 miles outside of the village. The teenagers had gone to play in the snow (and drink beers, though they omitted this specific part when they told the story afterwards). They had spent the day there, until had spotted some sort of strange monkey, looking at them in the branches.

Soon enough, the story had been ridiculed, and rational adults told them it was probably nothing more than a big stoat.

But not all Ottery-St-Catchpole lived in a rational world. Quite the opposite, in fact. Those ones lived in a magical world, where winter monkeys living in the Dartmoor was a perfectly plausible phenomenon.

In particular, the story caught the attention of a certain pair of twins, Fred and George Weasley. While the twins were already thought to be the devil's own pair, every attempt from the two 9 years old boys to sneak into the fabled forest had been thoroughly cut short by their mother, whom, if she had been an animagus, would have been a hen, considering how suffocatingly smothering she was.

Even then, none of this had been able to crush their enthusiasm, as they told each other how awesome it would be to have a pet monkey. Maybe they could take it to Hogwarts, teach it tricks and use it as pranking comrade !

And so the enthusiasm survived until the end of June, when their brothers, Bill, Charlie and, woe is them, Percy, came back home from Hogwarts. Bill had been amused by his brothers' story, but he had grown past the time of children rumours. Percy had ridiculed it, like the stuck up incarnation of boredom he was. Charlie had been fascinated.

Charlie had just finished his third year at Hogwarts. There, he had had his first year of Care of Magical Creatures, and he had the best times of his life in this class. Thus, the prospect of going on an adventure to discover a mysterious snow monkey creature hidden somewhere in the Dartmoor was and endearing one, even if the creature revealed itself to be a mere muggle one.

And so, every week-end for the whole month of July 1987, Charlie Weasley went to the discovery of the mysterious creature, armed only with his camera. And his wand, but it's so obvious, is it even worth mentioning ?

At first, the search had been laborious. He had interviewed the teenagers, wandered in the woods they said they had spotted it, but nothing came out of it. So he went deeper and deeper in the forest.

Then he found his first clues. First, there was a zone in the forest that prey animals seemed to avoid, meaning that they had learned to fear a predator there. The second clue were the faeces scattered in the area, full of little bones, but large ones compared to the predators usually found in the forest. What had produced them was the size of a hunting dog, at least.

Following the traces, he came near a river. That's it! If you've found a river, you've found wildlife. From this point onwards, Charlie mustered all the knowledge he had accumulated in CoMC, even the ones he had read in advanced books, as an extracurricular pleasure.

Day after day, he had prepared his observation post, now, he had masked his own scent, and waited, his camera in his hand. Specially for the occasion, he had bought a small modern camera. He didn't know why wizarding journalists still used those old 1920 camera, when you could do the same things with newer ones, including the potioning process to have them move, without this horrible flash that stuns people.

So he waited. For hours. For once, he mentally thanked his mom for having stuffed his bag with food.

He waited.

For so long.

After around five hours of looking at nothing, a sound caught his attention.

A bush had moved and… There it was !

The creature was nothing like Charlie had imagined. It looked like a naked, young boy with very long and very messy black hairs. The creature was covered in dirt, but he could still see that it was very muscular, although quite thin. It was walking on its rear legs, although it never really extended them fully, always crouched, walking as near to the ground as it could.

The creature had to vivid green eyes. Something in its eyes unsettled Charlie. Was it the colour ? Sure, he never had seen such a glowing green before, but that wasn't…

Never mind, the creature had long nails, and in his hands, a dead hare.

Wait, a dead hare ? It was going to eat ! immediately, Charlie snapped out of his fascinated musing and prepared his camera. Through it, he saw the frightening creature open its mouth. When Charlie thought that the creature had attained the extent of his mouth opening, its jaw suddenly dislocated and opened even further. Then, the creature had put the hare inside his mouth, and it had let it slide slowly inside its throat.

During the whole process, Charlie Weasley had shot around 10 photos of the phenomenon.

Once it had finished, the creature looked around itself, and went on, further in forest, until it completely disappeared from Charlie's view.

Charlie waited for a few minutes, before he packed his belongings had ran as fast as he could to his home. He told all of it to his family.

At first, the Weasleys were flabbergasted by Charlie's story. After seeing the photos, Molly, Arthur, Ron and Ginny were terrified, while Bill, Fred and George were fascinated. Charlie, for one, was looking like if Christmas had came in July.

His enthusiasm attained its peak the following day, when he reached two conclusions : One, Magical Creatures are definitely wicked ! And they're becoming his job. Non negotiable.

Two, you could get 50 galleons from the Daily Prophet with a couple good photo.

The 31st of July 1987 had seen an uproar for all those who read the Daily Prophet.

Mysterious Magical Creature spotted near Ottery-St-Catchpole (Devon), the title said, this day. All around magical Britain, people had seen the moving photos of the terrifying creature swallowing a hare. All had seen its hairy face, athletic, though dirty, body, long claw-like nails. However, since the Daily Prophet publishes in black and white, none could have seen its vivid green eyes, although it was thoroughly described in the article, along with the tale of promising student Charlie Weasley.

Following the uproar, many had tried to define the creature. Was it a dark creature ? Was it humanoid ? Simian ? Did it even really exist ?

The last option had been raised by many muggle-born, more attached to scepticism and rationality than the rest of the magical world, ready to accept its existence alright.

Unfortunately for them, pretty much nobody cares about what muggle-born have to say, and the speculation continued. At some point, a Daily Prophet journalist raised the idea that it could be a goblin subspecies. The idea was quickly discarded when Gringotts threatened to close the Daily Prophet's vaults if an apology hadn't been publicly given to Goblinkind 24 hours after the offence.

The frustration reached its maximum when the infamous Quibler, drove forward by the insatiable thirst for provocation of his editor, Xenophilius Lovegood,hypothesized that the creature might be the the Boy-Who-Lived, unseen by the magical world since 1981.

The following day, said Xenophilius Lovegood had received the highest amount of howlers ever, and this feat had been added to The Firewhisky Book of Wizarding World Records.

Author's note : Yeah, so, the whole point to have Harry thrown in the Dartmoor was that because Ottery-St-Catchpole was in the Devon and that I wanted this scene with Charlie. Otherwise, I would probably have launched him somewhere even wilder in Scottland, or something.