I know what it is you're thinking. Professor Umbridge, a respectable witch, wanting to befriend creatures like that? Giving them things? I can offer no reasonable explanation. I was a very young girl, remember...naive and foolish. I'm sure you'll be even more disgusted by the end of this tale. But I'll carry on telling it...confess the things I've done.
*****
I ventured back into the forest a few days later. It took me longer to find them this time. I ran into Parath first.
"Hello!" I said brightly.
"Hello," he said in a resigned tone.
"Did you like my present?"
"It was helpful." he said.
He was standing by a small river. I sat down beside him.
"I'd like you to go away now," he hissed. Then a fish swam up the stream...and he reached out, grabbed it with his bare hands as fast as lightening, and held it above the water until it stopped struggling.
"Lunch," he said in a deadpan tone.
"Disgusting!"
"Humans eat fish, don't they?"
"Not like that!"
He shrugged, and trotted off. I followed him, and we came to that clearing again. He laid the fish down on the flat rock.
"Malrie! Rinlen!"
Malrie and Rinlen came out of the bushes. I noticed my umbrella, propped up against a tree.
"Hello," Malrie said to me. "Ooh, fish!"
Parath tried to start a fire, but couldn't. He was doing it the Muggle
way, with sticks.
"Let me," I said, and cast a spell that set fire to the wood. Parath nodded up at me. I think he was grateful. Then the three of them ate the fish, in a throughly disgusting way.
"Stop it," I complained. "You use a knife and fork."
"We don't have any," Rinlen said.
"Well, make some then."
They ignored me for the rest of the meal, if indeed you could call it that. As soon as they had finished, Parath glanced over at me.
"I imagine there's no point in telling you to leave."
"No," I said excitedly.
Parath shook his head.
*****
Centaurs are not only inhuman....they're boring! Thinking back on that day, we didn't do much at all. Malrie, who seemed to like me the most, took me back to the river.
"Dad says humans like swimming. Do you like swimming, er...Dollo...D..."
"Dolores," I said, and added. "No. I hate swimming."
"What do you like?" she persisted.
"Um..not much really."
"So what do you want to do?"
I shrugged.
We wound up just walking about, and then Malrie practised with her bow. She had some arrows now. She was quite good at it. Rinlen joined us at some point and asked me (again) why I didn't just go home.
"I don't want to," I answered.
"Why? You can't hate your family that much."
"I don't hate them, it's just...they like my sister better."
"Do you have a mummy?" Malrie spoke up suddenly.
"Yes," I answered, surprised. "Don't..." And then I realised, she didn't. They didn't.
Rinlen glared at me angrily. "You shouldn't be here, you know. My father says humans bring nothing but trouble."
"He said once he'd kill the next one to walk into the forest." Malrie said seriously.
"That's horrible!" I said, and then it hit me. "But...why didn't he..."
"Kill you?" Rinlen said nonchalantly. "I don't know. Maybe because you were so young. Centaurs do not kill foals."
"They don't?"
"No...not like humans," he added nastily.
"I'm a human and I've never killed anyone!"
"Yes, but there's nothing to say you never will."
"Well, I won't."
And he simply shrugged his shoulders.