Chapter 7 - The Hippogriff, the Wizards and the Cabinet.
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That's when, for a single second, they hear a noise all too far to realize exactly what that is, but surely enough to capture their attention. Then they hear it again, this time a very close and terrifyingly loud animal screech.
Alex turns to Justin with goggled eyes to meet his also scared gape.
"Was that a…?" She partly asks him.
"…Hippogriff!" He completes, shouting an aggravated statement.
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After a second of frozen panic, Justin pulls his wand out of his back pocket and a police-like red and blue light rotates at its tip. Then another sound terrifies them. This one the scream of dozens of students in fear.
"It's coming!" Justin snaps out and his monster hunting training, even if deficient, kicks in. "Let's go! We gotta keep it away!" He says already running away.
"Yeah, good luck with that! Let me know how it goes!" Alex shoots back.
In response, Justin immediately comes back and grabs her arm, then pulling her away with him.
When they get to the patio, Alex and Justin see the crowd of students and teachers running everywhere, and up in the sky, the hippogriff starting a dive against the people.
Thinking fast, Justin raises his wand and fires an energy ball to distract the animal, making it stop the attack. That buys just enough time for the people to empty the patio before the hippogriff starts another dive, this time against Justin and Alex.
The siblings hide back inside and the animal flies up again.
"Alex, we gotta find a way to trap it!" He yells.
Alex thinks for a moment. "I think I got an idea." She yells at Justin just before the animal lets out another screech, then points her wand to the middle of the patio. At her wave, she produces right there the main piece of her marvelous idea: a jar.
Justin glares at her. "SERIOUSLY!" He yells back, aggravated. He has seen her letting hippogriffs out of jars, but put them back inside is a whole new level.
"Don't start, alright? Can you freeze it or… hold it for a few seconds?" Alex yells her question to Justin.
"You better not tell me you're gonna throw the jar at it." He shouts.
"Shut up and do it!" Alex demands.
Justin looks at the hippogriff and waits for it to halt high in the sky preparing to dive for another attack. Then, in the right moment, he comes out pointing his wand at the animal, prepared to fire his attack… when the red and blue lights sparkle again breaking his focus on the animal, making him stare at it for a second. Another screech brings him back to the situation, and to the hippogriff in a steep dive to attack him.
"JUSTIN!" Alex screams for her brother in a fit of panic. Mimicking his action, she fires another energy ball trying to stop the attack. But her aim is not as good, forcing Justin to jump out of the way, avoiding the animal in the nick of time.
He looks up to see the hippogriff take off again, quickly flying up high to make another dive. Justin cannot waste another chance. He points his wand up and fires a spell that hits the animal with the precision expected from a monster hunter. The spell surrounds the hippogriff, trapping it in the sky above them. However, the animal still struggles. Justin holds his wand with both of his hands, fighting against it to keep the animal trapped. The spell Justin cast wasn't supposed to freeze it, merely holding it still long enough for Alex to… well… Justin is not sure, he just hopes she gets it right ...and fast.
Alex points her wand to the hippogriff and chants "That hippogriff may cause too much harm. Make it fit where it's safe. Put it back inside the jar." Her wand shines. Justin's spell breaks and the hippogriff immediately starts to shrink and move down to where the jar is.
"It's actually working!" Justin shouts in surprise for the successful spell Alex produced to trap the animal.
The spell squeezes the hippogriff through the opening and a lid jumps in to seal the jar.
"I can't believe it worked." Justin exclaims again. Who would have guessed she could pull something like this out.
"Don't be so surprised!" She tells him. "But I am surprised you didn't use your monster hunter mind technique!" She lifts her hand with all the fingers pointing away to the same direction.
"I think we can both agree that didn't work!" He responds a little deflated.
Then they hear a chorus of the students' voices happily cheering them for saving the school from the magical world creature, all of them slowly coming outside to surround them. Justin quickly walks to the jar and takes it before any clumsy unlucky student ends up breaking it and releasing the animal again.
Justin and Alex slowly make through the crowd to the inside of the castle while he pointlessly yells at the kids that they should get back to their dormitories and prepare to go to bed. When they get away from the commotion and are finally alone, Alex says. "Hey, what was up with that light thing on your wand? It almost got you killed!"
"I don't know. It was supposed to show when the school is under some threat, but not keep firing at any time. It might have some glitch."
"You think?" She retorts. "And what about this hippogriff? What was it doing here?"
"I think I know exactly where we can find answers to this." He claims.
"Ohhh, yeah! Professor FrankStein!" She accuses, again mispronouncing his name, on purpose of course.
"Uhm! … Actually, no. Stein's kind of afraid of hippogriffs. Something to do with them looking a lot like gargoyles." He muses for a second. "… And stop saying his name like this. It's not nice." Alex just shrugs. "Anyway… I think this one may have come from Fiendl's classroom." Justin explains.
Oh, right! It completely escaped Alex, somehow. The one she saw when she was picking ingredi… …Errr! …Never mind! "Then let's go get him!" She incites with fierceness.
"Not so fast. We're not gonna get anybody. Maybe it just escaped."
"Yeah, right!" She answers with distrust.
"The thing is we don't know how it escaped. Let's find that out first."
Alex gives him a very disdainful shrug.
Alex and Justin arrive at Fiendl's classroom. The doors are open but some kind of spell blocks the entrance. "Fiendl cast a silence spell to block noises from outside." Justin explains.
Alex looks at him, confused. "How d'you know?"
"Some teachers do that during study sessions. …And when you study enough, it gets easier to identify spells." Then he looks at Alex. "I mean 'you' very, very loosely."
"Shut up!" Alex retorts.
Justin steps through the door, ignoring the barrier, then Alex goes through after him. Some kids are still in the class, studying. They remain there, focused, unaware of the confusion that just transpired outside because of the spell. When Fiendl sees the two at the door, he gets up from his desk and crosses the room to meet them.
"Missing something?" Justin questions Fiendl, raising the jar.
"Yeah, Percy!" Alex acts tough.
Fiendl stares at the animal with confusion. "This cannot be my hippogriff." He then walks to his cabinets. "This is not the jar where mine is." He opens the one with live animals for ingredients, then finding the smashed glass on the shelf. "Oh! I guess this is the one!"
"We got your pet on the loose, attacking people outside the castle." Alex tells him.
Justin walks to the cabinet and drops the jar on the shelf just beside the broken glass. "Maybe you should take better care of the dangerous animals you keep in here, Professor!" He says with a somewhat accusatory tone.
"And, maybe, find a safer place to keep creature that can eat us." Alex takes on."Like, not in your cabinet."
"She is right!" Justin agrees.
"But, Sir, I am always careful with all the animals I possess. I have no idea how it could have escaped." He defends himself.
"I suggest you to find out, then." Justin says.
"What?!" Alex complains.
"I surely will investigate, Sir."
And Justin takes one final look at the students in the desks. "And the kids should be going to their dorms, already!" He tells, then he turns around and leaves, followed by Alex.
"So that's it? You're not gonna do anything? You're gonna leave up to him to find out what happened, the guy who owned the animal that escaped." Alex says with a clear disapproval of Justin's decision.
"Yup!" Justin answers.
"You're not even gonna consider that he may have let it loose himself?" She insists.
"Nope!"
"Yeah! Nice move!" Yes, that was pure sarcasm. However, Justin disregards it and just walks away, and he and Alex go separate ways.
Alex goes back to her classroom and finds a perfect position to drop the desk she has just acquired. That is, before a hippogriff on the loose almost ate Justin's head off.
Well, the day for Alex is far from being over. After seeing there is a whole new part of the castle she wasn't aware it existed, she had to check that out for herself. So, past the time all the students must go to bed, she goes out for another trip. She retraces her way back to the Library, going as sneaky as she can be. From there, she checks every closed room. Surprisingly, the doors are not locked with any kind of spell. Apparently Justin thought that normal locks would be enough to keep people away. Well, she is not just any people.
For her dismay, the rooms are not that exciting. Next to the Library, there is a small storage, then an empty classroom after that. And next, what appears to be a small reading room for teachers.
Then Alex gets to the part that called her attention the most. Big twin doors that certainly take to something awesome. The only problem is that this is the only room that seems to be properly locked. Alex quickly waves her wand and the doors open, just a gap big enough for Alex to squeeze herself through. Really, at this point, no one should be surprised that Alex turned out to be particularly good at opening locked doors.
Once inside, she waves her wand again and the lights come to life to illuminate the entire room, a giant ballroom still beautifully decorated and in good condition despite some dust that piles on the floor and over the furniture placed near the walls. No, Alex is not going to organize a ball, although a few plans already bubble in her mind as to how to use this incredible place.