Mythical Creatures and Beings
Ooooh, there's an internet connection here after all. So let's quiz!
One of the wonders of the wizarding world is discovering all those marvelous creatures we thought were only myths. So come along and explore mythical creatures and beings. Fairies and banshees and sphinx, oh my!
Want to give Hermione a run for her money in the know-it-all field? Simply play the quiz by commenting on this post with your answers at any time over the weekend. All comments with answers will be screened until the answer sheet is posted on Monday morning EDT. On Monday, all quizzlings with the correct answers will receive a pretty banner to prove their quiz prowess. Ready? Set? Play!
Match the quotes to the story titles without picking the red herring titles:
Fearsome Beasts by apollinav
The Quest for the Magical MacGuffin by annietalbot
Riddle Me This by bambu345
Fair Weather From The North by dickgloucester
The Silvering Divide by Somigliana
Stampede by ayerf
Summer with Sasquatch by apollinav
A Midsummer's Night's Dream by Jinni
Master in the Trees by mundungus42
The Dark Rose by a_war_goddess
A Walking Shadow by ariadne1
Harvey by scatteredlogic
1. Severus rounded on the woman. She was a woman, a fine figure of a grown witch, but sometimes had the insecurities of a very young witch, so he tried to give Hermione his very best level gaze.
"No, I'm not upset we're working together, and do you really think assigning anyone else to 'cover me' would have been a good idea?" He raised a questioning eyebrow. "That's what I thought. Now, if you don't mind, I'd like some meditative silence all the way to this promised waterfall so that I can think better about this novel and how I'm going to write it."
That shut her up and, he noted, added a happy spring to her step. Severus smirked.
When they reached the inspirational waterfall, Severus felt immeasurably cheated.
"That," he said pointing to it, "is a trickle coming from a rock. I've seen greater torrents from Trolls taking a piss."
She tried to assuage him with cheese and pickle sandwiches and the promise of a good campfire dinner that evening, but Severus told her she'd blown it. The inspirational waterfall had killed his muse. He simply could not write a single word about looking for Sasquatch, nor would he be appeased by the promise of toasting marshmallows.
Severus dared her to say a single word as they headed towards their evening camp destination. His dark glare forbade her from nattering on, and woe betide the witch if she uttered the word baleen again.
2. Men had come again, bringing light into the once-famed seat of learning. In her time, she had learned caution, had learned to her great cost that treachery might lie behind a pleasing façade. These men, too, were compelling in their need, but they bore the taint of the Betrayer, and as was the nature of her kind, she sought swift retribution. In so doing she had broken the covenant granted her as eternal guardian.
Now, she paced relentlessly, her wing muscles aching to stretch to their full extent, but her prison was too confining. Her claws extended, slashing here and there, searching for an opening to exploit, a way out. None could she find, and thus retreated to her domain, and there, amongst the knowledge of the great age, she waited.
Someone would come.
I can be quick and then I'm deadly,
I am a rock, shell and bone medley.
If I were a man I would make people dream
I gather in millions by ocean, sea and stream.
3. She nibbled on her bottom lip for a moment before confessing quietly, "I don't really like Hermione. I'd rather be Jennifer or Sarah or almost anything else."
"Why?" He sounded surprised.
Hermione pulled a face. "Because some of the other kids at school have difficulty saying Hermione, so they call me Hermy." Her mouth tightened before admitting the rest of it. "The mean kids call me Horrible Hermy. I don't like that."
"Mmm," Harvey nodded, long ears flapping gently, "I can understand why you wouldn't. That doesn't fit you at all. You seem very nice."
"Thank you. You seem nice, too," Hermione said. She hesitated, the polite manners her parents had drilled into her struggling with her curiosity. Finally, her curiosity won, and she blurted out, "What are you? You're not truly a rabbit."
"I'm a pooka." Harvey lifted his chin proudly.
Hermione's eyes lit up. "I've read about pookas in my copy of A Treasury of Irish Myth, Legend & Folklore." She looked him up and down for a moment. "But in that story, the pooka had horns."
Harvey nodded. "Some pookas take the shape of goats or bulls, others prefer horses. We can take any number of forms, but I believe people find a rabbit less intimidating."
"I don't know..." Dubious, her brow furrowed. "You're a very big rabbit."
4. She returned to her usual path and soon heard the familiar sound of arrows being nocked against bowstrings.
"Hello, Magorian!" she called gaily.
"What do you want, human?"
"To know you, to understand you to the best of my ability, and to represent your interests to my government." The response had become tradition, as had Magorian's reply.
"We have no use for your government, and we seek no audience with humans, whose intelligence we consider to be inferior."
"If you claim your intelligence is superior, then you must be willing to prove it," said Hermione with a smile.
"You didn't say she was insolent," said a melodious voice Hermione didn't know.
"I thought that went without saying, Burnish," rejoined Magorian, stepping out from behind a tree. Six other centaurs revealed themselves, many of whom she recognized as part of Magorian's regular patrol. Several nodded at Hermione in greeting.
The final centaur joined their circle and gazed at Hermione with cold blue eyes. Hermione bowed low immediately upon realising that the new centaur was female. Her heart began beating faster. She really was making headway if a centaur female had come to meet her.
5. "Is it real?" Potter whispered.
Severus bit back a scathing remark. There was no 'of course' about this. No 'of course' about being confronted with a creature so purely out of story and yet somehow present in the flesh. And in a pitiful plight. He glanced at his other companions. Tears were coursing down Hermione's cheeks, but she paid them no attention-her look was compounded of anger and resolve. As for Lucius... Lucius showed nothing beyond a kind of weary recognition as he gazed at the angel. His shoulders had slumped and his fingers were loose on his wand.
Hermione shook herself. "Myth becomes reality, remember? But not for much longer if we don't get it out of there. Sorry, Lucius, I know we're supposed to be looking for something to help Draco, but I'm afraid we have to do this right now. I... I think it's dying."
"I agree," said Severus. "This all ties in anyhow, if we're right about what we've been sensing. Potter, Lucius, keep watch." He didn't wait to see if they obeyed.
"Why is there nobody on guard?" hissed Hermione as they warily approached the sphere. "And where are the Dementors we felt?"
"I don't know-let's just get on with it." Severus' skin crawled as though he were being watched, but there was no sign of the watcher. "We'll just have to trust the others to deal with anything that comes along."
As they drew closer to the enormous sphere, they could see that it was some sort of cage constructed of fine wires interwoven in an abstract design that resolved here and there into a repeating pattern of runes of a sort most wizards and witches were happier never knowing. Between the fine wires, a magical force field shimmered and pulsed. There was nothing to tell them how the structure was held suspended above their heads. The angel writhed. Even through the distortion of the sphere, they could make out the grimace of pain that contorted its features.
6. “Hermione Granger.” His voice deceptively calm, Severus Snape glared at the young woman almost nose-to-nose with him. “Perhaps you would care to enlighten me why I find myself trapped in the middle of the Forbidden Forest up a tree.”
Hermione blinked, startled out of her deer-caught-in-the-headlights impression. “Severus, you were there.” She began to look rather worried. “Did you hit your head?”
“No, I did not.” Although it was a miracle that he hadn’t in the mad scramble up the tree. “Tell me how it is that a virgin can anger a unicorn so much that it’s trying to kill you.”
The tree shook, rammed by the enraged unicorn. Snorting, the beast shook its horn free and cantered off, presumably to run up to ramming the tree again. Thundering hooves heralded the arrival of the others in the unicorn herd, drawn by the screaming roars of the stallion Hermione had approached for clippings from its hooves. Something had gone badly wrong, and it had attempted to first gore and then trample her.
As unicorns were wary of boys, let alone men, Severus had managed to briefly scare the unicorn off long enough for them to climb the nearest tree.
Severus tightened his hold on both their sheltering tree and Hermione as the unicorns charged at it again and again, a veritable cascade of leaves and insects falling.
“Did you lie to me?” he demanded, leaning close to her ear so that she could hear him over the rumbling of hooves and sharp cracks of contact between horns and tree trunk.
7. "Banshees," Snape repeated as they crossed from the international arrivals to local departures section. "The last documented battle with banshees was nearly sixty years ago. I had thought the Irish Ministry had come to a treaty with them."
"Yes," Gerald agreed, rubbing at his forehead. "After that mishap at Dromineer, they were facing a population tragedy, so the banshees asked for an agreement. We've only gotten the rogue few since I've been born, though those were scary enough to make you sick with nerves for months. But something about this seems off."
With almost cynical dark eyes, Snape slowed his quick stride and glanced over. "This one isn't screaming bloody murder? I find that hard to believe. Banshees are not often considered inventive."
"No, she is. Screaming, that is. But, well... It's just odd, the way she shows up." With a shake of his head at his uncharacteristic loss for words, Gerald brought them to a stop. "Look, I just wanted you to be aware. There's a rogue banshee in Glenshane, which is usually enough to give people pause. If you want to go back to Scotland, I'll understand." The graying head tipped. "Though if you brave my secure laboratory in the middle of a protected village with me, I promise I'll introduce you some of the people they have investigating this. It's not as if the Ministry ignores those of us living in the 'wilds'."
Snape had turned to face his companion when they had halted and found himself now weighing O'Toole's caution. It was a significant warning. A banshee was no small threat, their voice was their primary means of attack and killing them was damned hard. With the treaty in place, at best you cordoned them off until the Ministry could come.
8. She pulled up her robe, weaving through the higher grasses towards the forest. There were lights in there now. She could see them moving amongst the trees, hovering a few feet from the ground. They were yellow and blue, pink and pale purple. Their movements seemed erratic, showing no rhyme or reason that she was immediately aware of. Just jumpy flights between the trees, sometimes seeming to chase one another. It was as if the lights were sentient.
The sounds were coming from them, too.
With her first step into the forest she felt the familiar chill of the evil that surrounded the place. It made her shiver. Unconsciously her hands came up to rub at arms now covered in goosebumps. The warmth of the castle seemed far removed; yet still curiosity prevailed.
Sprites or pixies of some sort was her first guess, as she began to weave her way into the forest. With every step she took the lights seemed to stay just as far away as they had been before, until she began to wonder if it were not some sort of trick being played on her by her former teachers. Perhaps a fellow recent alumni come to visit that saw her wandering and decided on a bit of fun?
Unable to shake the idea that this was real and not just a cruel hoax, she traveled further and further into the forest, careful to keep her bearings as to where she was. . . approximately. Soon, though, that became impossible; as she found herself quite lost, with nothing but the lights to guide her deeper and deeper in.
And then they stopped.
Each step took her closer to the lights and to a clearing of some sort, nestled in the very heart of the Forbidden Forest as far as she was able to tell. She stopped just short of approaching the lights directly, gazing at them from a distance.
Faeries.
Hermione felt her breath catch in her throat. It was impossible, yet not, since they were there and she was, too. And she was seeing them with her very own eyes. Fairy sightings in this part of the world were rare as of late.
9. A little girl stands at the edge of the lake-her naked skin is pale grey like a pearl in the morning light. Strange words and sounds screech and bubble from her lips like water as she points to the leviathan bulge of the giant squid-it descends beneath the black surface, leaving only ripples. The child’s eyes are black and angry, as if the squid has threatened to take her soul away with it, and they bulge with sheer panic-Hermione can see that yellow stains the corneas of her eyes like jaundice. Black, green-tinged hair falls around her like a shroud, and she hugs something slick and silvery to her chest. An eerie growl begins to hiss from her lips.
Hermione's body unlocks slowly as the adrenaline seeps away like a rumour. “What on earth is she?” she murmurs.
She approaches the quivering child with careful steps, like she would approach a wild animal. The green and grey girl bares her yellow teeth-thin, grey lips stretch into a wide grimace-as she regards the young witch with her tightly-bound hair and her surprisingly warm eyes. The morning air chills on the child's ashen skin, sets her crooked teeth chattering. Hermione sees that she tightens her thin arms around the dimly-gleaming silver object; it is patterned and shiny, pearlescent like fish-scales.
Hermione frowns because she cannot recall a magical creature that fits properly with this strange and ugly little girl. She looks uncannily like one of the merpeople, yet she's clearly standing on spindly, knock-kneed legs. Hermione wonders-not for the first time-if she made a mistake in giving Care of Magical Creatures up.
The little girl is staring past Hermione at the grey water, now-her eyes are opaque like mirrors-and quick as a flash, her hands darting like little fish, she wraps the silver fabric around her shoulders and dives into the lake.
Hermione gasps. “Wait!” she cries, afraid that the girl will drown in the murky depths.
10. Freyja and her sister had been searching for magical mates since they'd been exiled, seven years earlier. The Valkyries had earned the wrath of the gods by refusing to escort the nearly-dead Severus Snape to Valhalla, choosing instead to restore him to life.
They could not return without him, and having committed themselves to giving him a long and happy life, they needed to make a home for themselves here. With mortals.
Mortal twins were preferable.
The problem was, they were unambiguously heterosexual. And while wizarding twins were rare, unattached male twins were even more difficult to find. When they'd entered the Ballroom that night and seen the Weasley twins, they knew they'd hit the jackpot.
They hadn't even realised that Fred was dead until they were halfway across the room to introduce themselves. Ah, well. No matter.
To Valkyries, dead warriors had as much substance as living. And they fully intended to take advantage of that fact, as long as they all should live.
One of the wonders of the wizarding world is discovering all those marvelous creatures we thought were only myths. So come along and explore mythical creatures and beings. Fairies and banshees and sphinx, oh my!
Want to give Hermione a run for her money in the know-it-all field? Simply play the quiz by commenting on this post with your answers at any time over the weekend. All comments with answers will be screened until the answer sheet is posted on Monday morning EDT. On Monday, all quizzlings with the correct answers will receive a pretty banner to prove their quiz prowess. Ready? Set? Play!
Match the quotes to the story titles without picking the red herring titles:
Fearsome Beasts by apollinav
The Quest for the Magical MacGuffin by annietalbot
Riddle Me This by bambu345
Fair Weather From The North by dickgloucester
The Silvering Divide by Somigliana
Stampede by ayerf
Summer with Sasquatch by apollinav
A Midsummer's Night's Dream by Jinni
Master in the Trees by mundungus42
The Dark Rose by a_war_goddess
A Walking Shadow by ariadne1
Harvey by scatteredlogic
1. Severus rounded on the woman. She was a woman, a fine figure of a grown witch, but sometimes had the insecurities of a very young witch, so he tried to give Hermione his very best level gaze.
"No, I'm not upset we're working together, and do you really think assigning anyone else to 'cover me' would have been a good idea?" He raised a questioning eyebrow. "That's what I thought. Now, if you don't mind, I'd like some meditative silence all the way to this promised waterfall so that I can think better about this novel and how I'm going to write it."
That shut her up and, he noted, added a happy spring to her step. Severus smirked.
When they reached the inspirational waterfall, Severus felt immeasurably cheated.
"That," he said pointing to it, "is a trickle coming from a rock. I've seen greater torrents from Trolls taking a piss."
She tried to assuage him with cheese and pickle sandwiches and the promise of a good campfire dinner that evening, but Severus told her she'd blown it. The inspirational waterfall had killed his muse. He simply could not write a single word about looking for Sasquatch, nor would he be appeased by the promise of toasting marshmallows.
Severus dared her to say a single word as they headed towards their evening camp destination. His dark glare forbade her from nattering on, and woe betide the witch if she uttered the word baleen again.
2. Men had come again, bringing light into the once-famed seat of learning. In her time, she had learned caution, had learned to her great cost that treachery might lie behind a pleasing façade. These men, too, were compelling in their need, but they bore the taint of the Betrayer, and as was the nature of her kind, she sought swift retribution. In so doing she had broken the covenant granted her as eternal guardian.
Now, she paced relentlessly, her wing muscles aching to stretch to their full extent, but her prison was too confining. Her claws extended, slashing here and there, searching for an opening to exploit, a way out. None could she find, and thus retreated to her domain, and there, amongst the knowledge of the great age, she waited.
Someone would come.
I can be quick and then I'm deadly,
I am a rock, shell and bone medley.
If I were a man I would make people dream
I gather in millions by ocean, sea and stream.
3. She nibbled on her bottom lip for a moment before confessing quietly, "I don't really like Hermione. I'd rather be Jennifer or Sarah or almost anything else."
"Why?" He sounded surprised.
Hermione pulled a face. "Because some of the other kids at school have difficulty saying Hermione, so they call me Hermy." Her mouth tightened before admitting the rest of it. "The mean kids call me Horrible Hermy. I don't like that."
"Mmm," Harvey nodded, long ears flapping gently, "I can understand why you wouldn't. That doesn't fit you at all. You seem very nice."
"Thank you. You seem nice, too," Hermione said. She hesitated, the polite manners her parents had drilled into her struggling with her curiosity. Finally, her curiosity won, and she blurted out, "What are you? You're not truly a rabbit."
"I'm a pooka." Harvey lifted his chin proudly.
Hermione's eyes lit up. "I've read about pookas in my copy of A Treasury of Irish Myth, Legend & Folklore." She looked him up and down for a moment. "But in that story, the pooka had horns."
Harvey nodded. "Some pookas take the shape of goats or bulls, others prefer horses. We can take any number of forms, but I believe people find a rabbit less intimidating."
"I don't know..." Dubious, her brow furrowed. "You're a very big rabbit."
4. She returned to her usual path and soon heard the familiar sound of arrows being nocked against bowstrings.
"Hello, Magorian!" she called gaily.
"What do you want, human?"
"To know you, to understand you to the best of my ability, and to represent your interests to my government." The response had become tradition, as had Magorian's reply.
"We have no use for your government, and we seek no audience with humans, whose intelligence we consider to be inferior."
"If you claim your intelligence is superior, then you must be willing to prove it," said Hermione with a smile.
"You didn't say she was insolent," said a melodious voice Hermione didn't know.
"I thought that went without saying, Burnish," rejoined Magorian, stepping out from behind a tree. Six other centaurs revealed themselves, many of whom she recognized as part of Magorian's regular patrol. Several nodded at Hermione in greeting.
The final centaur joined their circle and gazed at Hermione with cold blue eyes. Hermione bowed low immediately upon realising that the new centaur was female. Her heart began beating faster. She really was making headway if a centaur female had come to meet her.
5. "Is it real?" Potter whispered.
Severus bit back a scathing remark. There was no 'of course' about this. No 'of course' about being confronted with a creature so purely out of story and yet somehow present in the flesh. And in a pitiful plight. He glanced at his other companions. Tears were coursing down Hermione's cheeks, but she paid them no attention-her look was compounded of anger and resolve. As for Lucius... Lucius showed nothing beyond a kind of weary recognition as he gazed at the angel. His shoulders had slumped and his fingers were loose on his wand.
Hermione shook herself. "Myth becomes reality, remember? But not for much longer if we don't get it out of there. Sorry, Lucius, I know we're supposed to be looking for something to help Draco, but I'm afraid we have to do this right now. I... I think it's dying."
"I agree," said Severus. "This all ties in anyhow, if we're right about what we've been sensing. Potter, Lucius, keep watch." He didn't wait to see if they obeyed.
"Why is there nobody on guard?" hissed Hermione as they warily approached the sphere. "And where are the Dementors we felt?"
"I don't know-let's just get on with it." Severus' skin crawled as though he were being watched, but there was no sign of the watcher. "We'll just have to trust the others to deal with anything that comes along."
As they drew closer to the enormous sphere, they could see that it was some sort of cage constructed of fine wires interwoven in an abstract design that resolved here and there into a repeating pattern of runes of a sort most wizards and witches were happier never knowing. Between the fine wires, a magical force field shimmered and pulsed. There was nothing to tell them how the structure was held suspended above their heads. The angel writhed. Even through the distortion of the sphere, they could make out the grimace of pain that contorted its features.
6. “Hermione Granger.” His voice deceptively calm, Severus Snape glared at the young woman almost nose-to-nose with him. “Perhaps you would care to enlighten me why I find myself trapped in the middle of the Forbidden Forest up a tree.”
Hermione blinked, startled out of her deer-caught-in-the-headlights impression. “Severus, you were there.” She began to look rather worried. “Did you hit your head?”
“No, I did not.” Although it was a miracle that he hadn’t in the mad scramble up the tree. “Tell me how it is that a virgin can anger a unicorn so much that it’s trying to kill you.”
The tree shook, rammed by the enraged unicorn. Snorting, the beast shook its horn free and cantered off, presumably to run up to ramming the tree again. Thundering hooves heralded the arrival of the others in the unicorn herd, drawn by the screaming roars of the stallion Hermione had approached for clippings from its hooves. Something had gone badly wrong, and it had attempted to first gore and then trample her.
As unicorns were wary of boys, let alone men, Severus had managed to briefly scare the unicorn off long enough for them to climb the nearest tree.
Severus tightened his hold on both their sheltering tree and Hermione as the unicorns charged at it again and again, a veritable cascade of leaves and insects falling.
“Did you lie to me?” he demanded, leaning close to her ear so that she could hear him over the rumbling of hooves and sharp cracks of contact between horns and tree trunk.
7. "Banshees," Snape repeated as they crossed from the international arrivals to local departures section. "The last documented battle with banshees was nearly sixty years ago. I had thought the Irish Ministry had come to a treaty with them."
"Yes," Gerald agreed, rubbing at his forehead. "After that mishap at Dromineer, they were facing a population tragedy, so the banshees asked for an agreement. We've only gotten the rogue few since I've been born, though those were scary enough to make you sick with nerves for months. But something about this seems off."
With almost cynical dark eyes, Snape slowed his quick stride and glanced over. "This one isn't screaming bloody murder? I find that hard to believe. Banshees are not often considered inventive."
"No, she is. Screaming, that is. But, well... It's just odd, the way she shows up." With a shake of his head at his uncharacteristic loss for words, Gerald brought them to a stop. "Look, I just wanted you to be aware. There's a rogue banshee in Glenshane, which is usually enough to give people pause. If you want to go back to Scotland, I'll understand." The graying head tipped. "Though if you brave my secure laboratory in the middle of a protected village with me, I promise I'll introduce you some of the people they have investigating this. It's not as if the Ministry ignores those of us living in the 'wilds'."
Snape had turned to face his companion when they had halted and found himself now weighing O'Toole's caution. It was a significant warning. A banshee was no small threat, their voice was their primary means of attack and killing them was damned hard. With the treaty in place, at best you cordoned them off until the Ministry could come.
8. She pulled up her robe, weaving through the higher grasses towards the forest. There were lights in there now. She could see them moving amongst the trees, hovering a few feet from the ground. They were yellow and blue, pink and pale purple. Their movements seemed erratic, showing no rhyme or reason that she was immediately aware of. Just jumpy flights between the trees, sometimes seeming to chase one another. It was as if the lights were sentient.
The sounds were coming from them, too.
With her first step into the forest she felt the familiar chill of the evil that surrounded the place. It made her shiver. Unconsciously her hands came up to rub at arms now covered in goosebumps. The warmth of the castle seemed far removed; yet still curiosity prevailed.
Sprites or pixies of some sort was her first guess, as she began to weave her way into the forest. With every step she took the lights seemed to stay just as far away as they had been before, until she began to wonder if it were not some sort of trick being played on her by her former teachers. Perhaps a fellow recent alumni come to visit that saw her wandering and decided on a bit of fun?
Unable to shake the idea that this was real and not just a cruel hoax, she traveled further and further into the forest, careful to keep her bearings as to where she was. . . approximately. Soon, though, that became impossible; as she found herself quite lost, with nothing but the lights to guide her deeper and deeper in.
And then they stopped.
Each step took her closer to the lights and to a clearing of some sort, nestled in the very heart of the Forbidden Forest as far as she was able to tell. She stopped just short of approaching the lights directly, gazing at them from a distance.
Faeries.
Hermione felt her breath catch in her throat. It was impossible, yet not, since they were there and she was, too. And she was seeing them with her very own eyes. Fairy sightings in this part of the world were rare as of late.
9. A little girl stands at the edge of the lake-her naked skin is pale grey like a pearl in the morning light. Strange words and sounds screech and bubble from her lips like water as she points to the leviathan bulge of the giant squid-it descends beneath the black surface, leaving only ripples. The child’s eyes are black and angry, as if the squid has threatened to take her soul away with it, and they bulge with sheer panic-Hermione can see that yellow stains the corneas of her eyes like jaundice. Black, green-tinged hair falls around her like a shroud, and she hugs something slick and silvery to her chest. An eerie growl begins to hiss from her lips.
Hermione's body unlocks slowly as the adrenaline seeps away like a rumour. “What on earth is she?” she murmurs.
She approaches the quivering child with careful steps, like she would approach a wild animal. The green and grey girl bares her yellow teeth-thin, grey lips stretch into a wide grimace-as she regards the young witch with her tightly-bound hair and her surprisingly warm eyes. The morning air chills on the child's ashen skin, sets her crooked teeth chattering. Hermione sees that she tightens her thin arms around the dimly-gleaming silver object; it is patterned and shiny, pearlescent like fish-scales.
Hermione frowns because she cannot recall a magical creature that fits properly with this strange and ugly little girl. She looks uncannily like one of the merpeople, yet she's clearly standing on spindly, knock-kneed legs. Hermione wonders-not for the first time-if she made a mistake in giving Care of Magical Creatures up.
The little girl is staring past Hermione at the grey water, now-her eyes are opaque like mirrors-and quick as a flash, her hands darting like little fish, she wraps the silver fabric around her shoulders and dives into the lake.
Hermione gasps. “Wait!” she cries, afraid that the girl will drown in the murky depths.
10. Freyja and her sister had been searching for magical mates since they'd been exiled, seven years earlier. The Valkyries had earned the wrath of the gods by refusing to escort the nearly-dead Severus Snape to Valhalla, choosing instead to restore him to life.
They could not return without him, and having committed themselves to giving him a long and happy life, they needed to make a home for themselves here. With mortals.
Mortal twins were preferable.
The problem was, they were unambiguously heterosexual. And while wizarding twins were rare, unattached male twins were even more difficult to find. When they'd entered the Ballroom that night and seen the Weasley twins, they knew they'd hit the jackpot.
They hadn't even realised that Fred was dead until they were halfway across the room to introduce themselves. Ah, well. No matter.
To Valkyries, dead warriors had as much substance as living. And they fully intended to take advantage of that fact, as long as they all should live.