Magical Paw Prints, 8/9
Title: Magical Paw Prints
Chapter: 8/9
Rating: G
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- - -
“You’ve gotten laid,” was the first thing Shoki said in the morning when Juri sat down into the Gryffindor table for breakfast.
“Huh?” Juri blinked and continued before he actually managed to think about what he was saying, “How did you know?”
“So it’s true?” Kento yelped, almost choking on his pumpkin juice.
“Uh, well. Kind of,” Juri admitted, not looking at his roommates but instead concentrating on choosing the best-looking sandwich on the plate in front of him.
“Don’t you dare think you could have kept such a thing as a secret. It's glowing all over your face,” Shoki said with a sly smile and leaned across the table. At least he had the courtesy to lower his voice when he winked at Juri and asked who the lucky lady was.
“None of your business,” Juri said calmly once he got on track again. He might be a nervous wreck when it came to talking about feelings and other serious things but bantering and joking like this were his specialty; there was no way Shoki was going to outsmart him on his home court.
“Ugh, I wish I had someone too,” Shoki sighed and rested his chin against his palm, “It’s not a long time before the Valentine’s day and I don’t have a date! That’s unacceptable!”
"Huh, what happened to the one you had last night?" Juri asked and took a bite of his sandwich.
"It turned out that the only reason she asked to meet me was to scold me for having tried to hit on her best friend who already has a boyfriend. She wouldn't believe me when I swore it was just a big misunderstanding!"
“Maybe if you hadn’t already tried to woo every single girl in the school older than fourteen, you would have some chance,” Kento chuckled and grinned widely, “Or maybe if you hadn’t turned down the one who would actually wanted to get you once.”
“Oh,” Shoki said as he remembered the girl Kento was talking about, “She can’t be that heartbroken or angry anymore! Maybe I should try her!”
“She’s not heartbroken anymore,” Kento confirmed, “But you’ll only try hitting on her in your dreams anymore. She’s my date now.”
“Who is whose date?”
Juri looked up and saw Hokuto who threw his other leg across the long bench and sat sideways next to Juri, apparently having already finished his own breakfast.
“No-one,” Shoki said gloomily and sighed. His misery didn’t seem to be very deep, though, as only after a moment he reached his head up again, looking around in the Hall and probably trying to spot even one girl that he hadn’t already tried to hit on, excluding everyone who was too young or just didn’t match on his tastes in some way.
“Do you have a date for the Valentine’s day?” Kento asked and Hokuto shook his head. The topic of the conversation changed soon, but for a long time after that Juri was sure he had seen a flash of suppressed emotion behind Hokuto’s carefully composed face.
“How did your essay on hippocampus food turn out?” Kento asked, “I’m afraid mine isn’t long enough but it’ll have to do.”
“Fuck,” Juri murmured; he had completely forgotten about the essay he had left waiting for him two nights ago. “When was the deadline again?” he checked.
“Monday morning,” Kento said, stretched, and waved at someone behind Juri’s back.
“I might have time to finish it tonight,” Juri calculated, “Hokuto, may I borrow your essay and copy some parts on mine? Please?”
“Of course you--” Hokuto started and looked up, suddenly wincing like something horrible had come up to his mind. “Uh, I need to go! Almost forgot something. Bye!”
“What could be so urgent?” Shoki asked, raising his eyebrows when Hokuto jumped up from the table and rushed out of the Great Hall. “It’s Saturday! What’s wrong with him?” The question was pointed to Fuma who went around the table and slumped next to Kento, leaning his head against Kento’s shoulder and looking very tired or very frustrated, or maybe both - Juri couldn't decide.
“I have no idea,” Fuma huffed with a pout, “He won’t tell me, no matter how many times I ask!”
Juri nodded empathetically, acting like Hokuto’s behavior seemed as weird to him as it seemed to the others, while in fact he had a clear supposition about what made their friend act in such an abnormal way. Hokuto liked someone, and Juri knew better than well how it was; purposefully learning another person’s timetables by heart and then staring at the clock in order to be in the right place in the right time, hoping to ‘accidentally’ meet that person in the corridor. Well, of course not everyone was pathetic like that but Juri himself was, and as far as he knew his friends, Hokuto was very similar to him when it came to things like this.
He almost forgot about the whole matter for a while but in the evening of Valentine’s Day he suddenly got a weird idea that started to make more sense the more he thought about it. The realization hit on him after the dinner (a special Valentine-themed menu with practically everything being cooked or baked to be heart-shaped) when he and Shintaro were just about to inconspicuously disappear from the Great Hall, and Fuma jogged after them.
“Do you have a moment?” Fuma asked.
“What is it?” Juri asked curiously in a bit lower voice than usually, Fuma’s expression telling him the topic was something that the whole school didn’t need to hear.
“Have either of you seen Hokuto?” Fuma asked and frowned when Juri shook his head. “Shit. I was sure you'd know where he is.”
“Why would I we know? You’re the one who sleeps in the same dormitory and eats at the same table,” Juri pointed out, “I don’t even see him during the lessons, except in Care of Magical Creatures.”
“Because you’re his friends, moron,” Fuma said and rolled his eyes, “and he has spent his every free second with you guys lately, in case you haven’t noticed.”
Juri thought about it, and suddenly realized Fuma was right. During the last few weeks Hokuto had stuck with him and the rest of their gang even tighter than he usually did. Sometimes he had even switched into other tables to eat with Juri and Jesse, Taiga, or Shintaro and Kouchi. He hung around with them in the evenings, too, only going back to the Ravenclaw Common Room when it was too late to be anywhere else. He had even started to do his homework in the hideout room, rather than in the library or the Common Room.
“I just want to talk to him,” Fuma said and waved his hands helplessly, “But it’s like he’s avoiding me on purpose.”
That was when the small thought came up to Juri’s mind. He didn’t dare to say anything about it, in case he was wrong after all, but he was almost sure he wasn’t. At the same time Fuma let out a resigned sigh and shook his head.
“I guess it’s no use,” he said and looked so disappointed that Juri decided to throw all the solidarity into the trash can. Fuma was his friend as well and this time Juri was definitely on his side - provided that he was right with his conclusion.
“Hey, I’ll help you,” he said and the puzzled yet hopeful look that spread on Fuma’s face told Juri he had made the right decision. “Go upstairs and wait somewhere around the Fat Lady’s painting. You know where it is, right?”
“Of course I do,” Fuma chuckled, “But what good will that do?”
“Hokuto will be there in about twenty minutes,” Juri said with an encouraging grin.
“What are you going to do?” Shintaro asked after a while, jotting alongside when Juri strode by the corridors.
“I’m doing them a favor,” Juri said with a smile.
“How?” Shintaro asked, still not quite getting it.
“By sending an owl.”
Hours later, when it was well past midnight and Juri was already sleeping in his own bed, he woke up when someone tugged on his ear.
“Huh? What do you want?” he murmured drowsily, squinting to see in the dark room.
“I’m very sorry to wake you up, sir,” a tiny and extremely shy-looking house elf whispered apologetically and quickly placed a folded piece of parchment on Juri’s pillow, “But I was asked to deliver this to you.”
“Couldn’t it wait until the morning?” Juri groaned, curiosity not quite overriding the grumpiness of getting woken up in such an untimely hour.
“No, sir, the order was to bring it immediately,” the elf said, bowed deeply and vanished before Juri managed to ask any more questions.
“What the hell…” he murmured and reached for his wand, the folded piece of parchment with his other hand at the same time. “Lumos.”
You twisted Flobberworm Fart are a sneaky traitor and a horrible person in every possible way. I’ll never forgive you, the message said in Hokuto’s familiar handwriting. For a second Juri thought he had made a horrible mistake, until he noticed some very tiny scribbling on the corner of the parchment: Thank you. ♥
“I knew it,” Juri hissed in the darkness, unable to help a wide grin that pulled up the corners of his mouth. He would probably be in trouble in the morning but that would be a small price for being able to say he had made his friends happy in the best possible way.
- - -
“So what’s going on?” Taiga asked on one windy yet warm afternoon in the spring, when he stepped into the hideout where everyone else had already been waiting for him. “Why such a hurry?”
“Come on,” Jesse said impatiently, “We’ve waited for ages already and Shintaro wouldn’t tell us before everyone's here!”
“Say, Taiga,” Shintaro said eagerly and could hardly wait until Taiga sat down on the last empty chair next to the table, “have you ever seen a real centaur?”
“Huh? I haven’t. Why?”
“Anyone else?”
Everyone shook their heads.
“Want to see some?” Shintaro asked with a sly smile and spread a roll of parchment onto the table. It was a map; hand-drawn and only very rough one, but recognizable anyway, and everyone leaned closer to get a better view.
“Where did you get that?” Hokuto asked and Shintaro beamed of self-satisfaction.
“It was Ryutaro’s homework last year,” he explained, “They had to form groups and make presentations about different things in the history of Hogwarts. Ryutaro’s group made their presentation about the Forbidden Forest. They got a very good grade so this must at least be a decent map!”
“What does it have to do with centaurs?” Taiga continued, even though he looked like he was starting to get the point of the conversation.
“There are some in the forest!” Shintaro announced, “And we’re going to go to see them!”
“It’s forbidden, though,” Kouchi pointed out the obvious fact even thought Shintaro didn’t seem to listen to him, “You know, thus the name.”
“You guys don’t have much time left here anymore,” the youngest boy reasoned, “You should at least do something cool before leaving the school!”
“I’m not sure it’s very cool if we get expelled for breaking the rules,” Taiga chuckled but Juri saw the look in his eyes and knew he was hanging on his role as the responsible one just for the habit.
“Do you know where the centaurs live, then?” Hokuto asked and smiled widely, as if he would have been ready to go right away.
“I overheard the Astronomy teacher talking with the Care of Magical Creatures teacher,” Shintaro said and pointed at a spot where the maker of the map had drawn a few stylized hills, “Centaurs like to live in higher places where they can see the sky. The teachers talked about the northern border of the forest, something about how the centaurs have been away for years and just came back from the mountains.”
“Cool,” Jesse breathed, and Juri understood his enthusiasm. Apparently so did Kouchi, Taiga, and Hokuto.
“So what are we waiting for? Let’s go already,” Hokuto said jokingly and coughed when Shintaro nodded eagerly. “No, what? Really?”
“Why not?” Taiga said thoughtfully, “It has to be at night anyway so that no-one will wonder where we are. And it’s the most practical time now that it’s weekend; we can be out in the forest the whole night and sleep tomorrow.”
“Do we need something special with us?” Kouchi wondered, and on the next moment they were already making wild plans for the night.
“How will we get there?” Juri asked, “The forest is huge; it might take hours to make it to the hills.”
“Are you a man or are you a dog?” Hokuto asked amusedly, and Juri chuckled, at the same time throwing a worried glance at Jesse who was apparently thinking about the same thing.
“I’ll carry you,” Shintaro said to Jesse, “I should be able to do it. Besides, we’re not in a hurry. If I get tired in the middle, we’ll just walk for a while.”
It took almost an hour before they had a finished plan, and by then it was time for obedient school kids to go to sleep.
“At midnight by the greenhouses,” Shintaro whispered as his last words before he, Kouchi, and Taiga left downstairs, towards their Common Rooms.
“See you later,” Hokuto whispered to Juri and Jesse when they separated at the corridor two floors up, Hokuto turning to the Ravenclaw tower while Juri and Jesse continued to the Gryffindor tower.
It was nerve-wrecking to listen to Kento and Shoki talking in their beds, Juri thought and decided to act like he was already sleeping. That would force the two others talk in a lower voice and maybe they would understand to go to sleep quicker that way. Eventually their chatter turned sparser and died completely, and Juri sighed in relief once he heard the quiet noise of slow peaceful breath from the both beds. It was about the time, Juri noticed as he glanced at his wristwatch. It was half past eleven already; he would have to hurry to make it in time.
Jesse was already waiting for him in the silent Common Room when Juri tiptoed down the stairs.
“What took you so long?” Jesse whispered, “We need to be quick so the others won’t have to wait.”
“Sorry. Kento and Shoki stayed awake late,” Juri said and they left the Common Room with as little noise as possible. They first tried to walk as quietly as they could but their shoes made small noises anyway, and on top of that the joints on Jesse’s knees made small snapping sounds every time he stepped a stair down.
“Can’t you do anything to that?” Juri hissed and Jesse shook his head apologetically.
“Sorry, they always do that when I try to be quiet,” he said and grimaced.
“There you are!” Hokuto hissed when they got to the greenhouses, “What took you so long?”
“Nocturnal roommates,” Juri huffed, “Let’s go!”
They walked across the school yards in silence and kept glancing around all the time, determined not to get caught before they had even gotten into the forest. Even though no-one was wandering around in such a late hour, they only dared to stop and talk aloud once they had passed the border of the forest. The night sky had been dark blue, but the tall dense trees covered the view and everything around them was just black darkness. They lighted up the ends of their wands but even with six wands the light was only so bright, and the darkness around their small sphere of light felt even deeper.
Juri wasn’t afraid per se, at least not enough that he would have admitted it aloud, but he decided to walk closer to Shintaro’s side, just to feel a bit better. Shintaro, instead, didn’t look worried at all. He rolled open the map and they gathered around it again.
“Where should we go now?” Kouchi asked.
“Just a second,” Taiga said and laid his wand on his flat palm, “Point me!”
The wand immediately turned to point at somewhere their left, and Shintaro nodded.
“Good; we’ll just have to do that every once in a while and keep following the wand’s direction.”
“Wow,” Hokuto said, “What’s that spell?”
“Don’t you know it?” Shintaro said, his eyes round, “Doesn't everyone know it?”
“It’s like a compass,” Jesse said to Hokuto, “You’ve never needed the spell, that’s all. Here, I’ll show you.”
The spell was very simple and Hokuto learned it easily, but he still looked impressed when they continued walking.
“But compasses are an ancient invention, and they aren’t electrical,” he said thoughtfully after a while, “why don’t wizards use them?”
“We could,” Taiga said, “some of us do. There are, for example, small compasses that you can attach on the handle of your broom whenever you’re traveling long distances. I guess it’s just more useful this way. You always have your wand with you anyway, so why would you carry a compass too?”
“Makes sense,” Hokuto agreed with a nod.
Suddenly they heard weird noise in the darkness and froze on their feet.
“Are you all right?” Shintaro asked quietly, and Juri realized he had grabbed Shintaro’s arm.
“Yeah,” Juri murmured, sincerely hoping Shintaro wouldn’t want to ask more questions. He didn’t, thankfully. Instead, he looked at the map again.
“I guess we’d better change here,” Shintaro said quietly, “There might be weird creatures in the forest but as far as I know, most of them don’t mind animals. Jesse, take the map and keep your wand in your hand too.”
Jesse didn’t need to be told twice and he simply nodded. Juri felt slightly sorry for the boy; somehow the thought of staying in the human form in a place like this felt much scarier than changing into the animal form, even though Juri was only going to be a relatively small sized dog.
“Everything all right?” he asked, and Jesse nodded again. He was silent and slightly paler than usually, but he didn’t look really scared, which made Juri feel a bit better.
“Just ask and we’ll change back immediately,” he still pressed and Jesse gave him a small smile.
“It’s all right,” he said, “Just do it so we can continue.
The others nodded and, one by one, changed forms. Soon Jesse was standing alone in the small circle of his wand light, looking at Juri and the others.
“Are you sure you can take my weight?” Jesse asked Shintaro who nodded and growled gently, turning his back towards Jesse.
“Fine,” Jesse murmured and threw his leg over Shintaro’s back, taking a good hold on the wolf’s neck fur. Shintaro took a few experimental steps and nodded again. He could carry Jesse, at least part of the way.
“To the North Border, please,” Jesse said as if he was traveling by the Knight Bus or a muggle taxi.
Kouchi looked at them from the ground, let out a small cry and ran up Jesse’s leg, settling comfortably in the small patch of Shintaro’s fur between Jesse’s thighs. Juri couldn’t help an amused wave of tail when he saw Shintaro rolling his eyes.
Taiga was the first one to move ahead, flying to the direction his wand had pointed, and the others followed him. At some point Juri wondered if they’d need to stop and check the direction every once in a while. However, Taiga seemed to know where to fly, and it suddenly occurred to Juri that a falcon, just like migratory birds, might have an innate compass in their heads.
Being a dog with dog’s senses made it all much easier for Juri. In human ears every noise in the forest was scary but the dog’s hearing could separate the noises better, and he didn’t need to be worried about every crackle he heard. He could also see better in the dark than he could ever had seen as a human. However, the most important help for him was his nose. Mostly he could only feel the bitter smell of moss and wet soil but every once in a while there was the smell of a living creature. Very often they were hares or squirrels, but sometimes he also smelled a nest of a fox. It felt funny, really. People always told stories about all the horrifying creatures that lived in the Forbidden Forest; no-one ever mentioned that also ordinary animals liked to live in the forest where they very rarely got disturbed by humans.
A wild owl was sitting on a branch of some tree, looking at them keenly, and it suddenly occurred to Juri that the owl must have noticed Kouchi who was now sitting on Jesse’s shoulder. Juri was quite sure that the owl wouldn’t dare to try hunting an animal that was so close to a human being, but it still made him feel nervous. He had only ever been thinking about the dangers of magical creatures; he had never realized there could be non-magical animals that would gladly hunt his friends.
The traveling soon turned monotonous and even boring, and Juri found it really easy to just switch off his human thoughts for a while and let the doglike side of his mind take the lead. He didn’t always see Taiga in the deep darkness but he could hear and smell the bird, as well as the soft gait of Hokuto’s paws in front of him. Juri himself was trotting side by side with Shintaro who was panting lightly but didn’t look particularly weary. Kouchi had jumped back on Jesse’s lap and was probably snoozing off, his small head leaning against Jesse’s knee. Jesse himself looked a bit sleepy but he wasn’t so pale anymore, as far as Juri could tell in the dim light of the boy's wand.
Suddenly, when Juri estimated they had been on the run for at least an hour or maybe even longer with hardly any breaks, Taiga slowed down his pace and landed on some branch of a nearby tree. Hokuto halted under the same branch and both Juri and Shintaro stopped next to him.
“What is it?” Jesse whispered, tilting his head and trying his best to hear any weird noises that would possibly come from the forest.
Taiga waved one of his wings towards something in front of them and Jesse frowned.
“I can’t see anything,” he murmured. Kouchi looked at him and his wand, and then reached to cover the light on the end of the wand with his fluffy tail. “Oh,” Jesse said in understanding, “Nox.”
It took a while of them all before they got used to the deep darkness again, Jesse needing more time than the others, but when his eyes finally adjusted to the new lighting circumstances he gasped aloud. Juri understood his feeling well. He had noticed a while ago already that they were running up a gentle slope, but only now they could really see what was ahead.
They weren’t far from the top of the hill, and the sight ahead was rather mesmerizing. The top of the hill was deforested, only a few bushes growing here and there and they could finally see the nearly full moon and bright stars scattered all around the black cloudless sky. However, no matter how pretty the moon and the stars were, they felt rather insignificant when compared to the black silhouettes of the majestic creatures they had come to see.
Kouchi leaped down from Jesse’s lap and was the first to turn back into himself, Hokuto and Taiga following his example. Jesse scrambled onto his own legs that had grown numb during the long way, and Shintaro could change too.
“Are they really there?” Jesse whispered as they all settled behind some bushes, and Hokuto chuckled quietly.
“What else could they be. You see them, right? I don’t think there are any other magical creatures that’d look like that.”
On the top of the hill, there indeed were three centaurs. At first it was difficult for the boys to see any details, but every now and then the centaurs moved and the moonlight lighted their faces. One of them looked quite young, one was clearly very old, and one didn’t look like either one. Maybe his age was somewhere in the middle of the other two, Juri wondered. The centaurs were looking up to the sky, pointing at the stars and probably having a deep conversation about their positions and meanings.
“Let’s go a bit closer,” Hokuto murmured and tiptoed behind another bush, moving in the shadows until he was right at the edge of the forest and the treeless hilltop. The others followed him slowly, not wanting to disturb the centaurs.
“What are they doing?” Jesse asked when two of the centaurs started to wave their hands like they were drawing invisible lines in the air, and the third imitated the movements of their hands a bit more slowly.
“I think,” Taiga said slowly, “they’re teaching the youngest one. He must be really young then!”
After a while one of the centaurs stepped aside and just watched how the two other ones kept on drawing their lines. Then he turned his back and vanished somewhere behind the hill. It was a pity, but at least there were two left, and the boys followed keenly how the old one probably told the youngest something about connecting the stars with the lines they were drawing.
The movements of their hands and arms were smooth and steady, as if they were doing some extraordinary dance. Juri was fascinated by the centaurs’ serenity and suddenly realized how incredibly lucky they were, being able to see something like that.
He was just about to move a bit to get a better view when an angry voice behind him made them all flinch. Someone cried out of surprise, and the two centaurs on the hilltop turned to look in their direction.
“What are you doing here?”
It was the one centaur that had left a moment ago, Juri realized, and a nasty mixture of embarrassment and fear twisted the bottom of his stomach. They had gotten caught, and the blank expression on the centaur’s face together with the quiet anger in his words felt more threatening than shouting or raging would ever have.
“S-sorry,” he said, willing his voice to stay steady, “We didn’t want to disturb, we just--”
“You did not want to disturb, and yet you came here?” the centaur repeated, and Juri lowered his gaze. He couldn’t really explain it in any better way.
“Don’t blame them! It was my idea,” Shintaro said and lowered his head too, “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t take all the responsibility,” Taiga snapped, “We were all equally in the plan.”
The two other centaurs walked to the edge of the forest too, stopping next to the first one. The oldest one’s face was expressionless but the youngest looked rather curious and it made Juri feel slightly better. Maybe the young one would understand their curiosity.
“We just wanted to see you,” Hokuto said in a small voice, “We’ve never seen a real centaur before.”
“What do you think we are? Zoo animals?” the centaur who had found them snapped, and Hokuto fell silent again, clearly ashamed by such a suggestion. Juri suddenly understood that must be how the centaurs felt, even though none of the boys had thought it that way.
“We were not trying to spy on you with any ill purposes,” he said slowly, trying to sound as polite as he ever could, “We just… thought you’re amazing creatures, and we were curious. We’re very sorry.”
“At least they have manners,” the oldest centaur pointed out and Juri swallowed, wondering if he was just imagining or if the centaur really sounded slightly amused.
“What manners does sneaking around others’ areas show?” the angry centaur asked and crossed his arms. “As students of Hogwarts you must be aware you’re not allowed to enter the forest, and yet you did so. I wonder what would happen if your teachers knew what you’re doing in the middle of the night?”
“Please, don’t tell the teachers,” Shintaro gasped miserably, “You know, those four don't have much time left here anyway. They might even get expelled and that wouldn’t be fair!”
“Getting punished after having done wrong is only fair though,” the centaur said coldly.
“But if--” Juri started, but the oldest centaur raised his hand and he immediately shut up. The angry centaur looked like he had wanted to continue but he, too, stayed silent on the command of the oldest.
"Now, now. Be quiet, everyone. You children saw us; that’s what you wanted. Now return to the castle," the old centaur said. His voice was firm and authoritative but not unfriendly, and Juri finally dared to breathe again.
"We will," he said and took a few steps back, the rest of his friends following the example. The three centaurs watched silently at their withdrawing, until the young one shifted restlessly.
"When crossing the forest… take care," he said quickly, and the angriest centaur glared at him.
"We don't meddle with wizards' businesses," he grunted, but even though the youngest looked apologetic there was also a hint of stubbornness in his eyes.
"They have the right to know," he insisted but apparently didn't dare to say more. Juri wondered what the young centaur meant but he didn't even imagine staying any longer and ask. The six boys slowly turned around and walked back into the forest until they were far enough that they couldn’t see the hill anymore.
"That was scary," Hokuto sighed but his smile was starting to get back its usual brightness, "But we did see the centaurs!"
Everyone agreed with him; now that they were safe they didn't regret coming, even if at some point all of them had secretly believed they had made a mistake after all.
“We should go back,” Kouchi said and glanced up by habit, just to notice the sky was covered by the trees again.
They traveled slower this time. Everyone was tired, especially Shintaro who had to carry the weight of Jesse as well. Kouchi was the first to notice Shintaro's weariness and he jumped down, running on the ground for a short while until he made a huge leap and grabbed on Juri’s neck fur instead. Juri didn’t mind the passenger and kept on with the relaxed trot.
Juri didn’t know how long they had been running, but suddenly he realized Shintaro was leaving behind. Juri immediately halted and barked at Hokuto and Taiga so they wouldn’t run away without the rest of the group, and then ran back to see what was wrong.
Jesse had crouched on the ground next to Shintaro, gently scratching the behind of his ear.
“He’s just tired,” Jesse said when Juri nudged Shintaro’s head with his nose and let out a small worried whine. “I’m sorry. I should have stopped him earlier.” Shintaro sniffed and shook his head but he was still panting heavily and didn’t even try acting cheerful or energetic.
“I’ll walk,” Jesse said and stood up again, “Let’s go slowly for a while. We can’t be very far from the castle anymore.” Juri nodded and turned into himself as well. Now that they weren’t moving so fast anymore, he made sure he kept his wand tightly in his hand. Hokuto, Kouchi, and Taiga stayed in their animal forms but adjusted into the new pace of traveling so that they stayed in a one group.
“I hope we’ll make it back into the castle before morning,” Juri murmured, “I’d rather not have to come up with fibs about our whereabouts tonight.”
“Same here,” Jesse agreed, “not only will people in the school be angry; my mother will totally freak out. She honestly believes one is doomed to death on the very moment they take the first step into the forest.”
“Yeah,” Juri said with a nod, “I was only seven that time but I still remember when Koki and his friends had a competition on their last year in the school. They wanted to find out who could break the most rules without getting expelled. He was lucky, the teachers liked him. But you should have seen the fit that our mother pulled. She’s usually rather cool about these things but I guess the twentieth owl from the school staff within a month was the last drop. She sent him a whole basket full of Howlers… what’s that smell?”
“Disgusting,” Jesse agreed and made a face when the smell got even stronger. “Seriously. Like a swamp that mountain trolls have been using as a toilet for three hundred years and--”
He didn’t manage to finish his sentence. Instead, he let out a shocked yelp and suddenly vanished from Juri's side.
“Jesse!” he cried out and suddenly realized he knew where the awful smell had come from. In front of him there was a troll; an ugly, smelly, four-meter tall troll that had grabbed on the back of Jesse’s jacket, and was now holding him up in the air with its index finger and thumb. Juri felt how the fur on Shintaro’s neck quickly fuzzed up and a low rumbling growl came from his throat.
“Shin,” Jesse gasped in a shaky voice, staring into the troll’s cloudy squinted eyes, “don’t… don’t annoy it.”
“Jesse!” they heard Taiga’s voice and Juri gasped for breath as the troll turned to look towards the noise.
“Hey, you big fat moron,” Hokuto yelled from where he was standing with Taiga and Kouchi, “Yes, I was talking to you! Come here!” The troll did not move, but Taiga and Kouchi joined in with Hokuto and started to shout all kinds of insults that kept its attention in them and soon started to turn more and more creative.
“Quick,” Juri hissed to Jesse, “Try to wriggle out of the jacket!”
“Can’t,” Jesse gasped, “I can’t reach the zipper!”
“Well then I’ll make it drop you,” Juri said, “Watch out!”
Apparently the troll got fed up with the noisy boys who had started to throw nasty little spells against it. It took a few quick steps forward and reached its big hand to catch one of them. At the same time Juri waved his wand.
“Relashio!” he yelled, and a jet of fiery sparks hit on the troll’s hand right next to Jesse’s head. The troll groaned in pain and, as Juri had hoped, let go of Jesse’s jacket. The boy fell onto the ground with such a loud thump that it made Juri grimace.
“Are you all right?” he asked when he rushed towards Jesse.
“I am,” Jesse gasped and grimaced, “Nothing’s broken at least.”
“We need to get away from here!” Juri said and helped Jesse up on his feet, “Everyone, run! It’s too big and thick-skinned for our spells, let’s just try to elude him!”
In a wordless agreement all the boys darted in different directions. The troll groaned and ran after them. Juri wished he could have changed; he would have been much faster as a dog. Too bad the situation didn’t give him the time he would have needed to concentrate on the transfiguration. Besides, he couldn’t leave Jesse alone. He was starting to be out of breath, his heart was beating painfully fast, and there was a stinging pain on his side but he only dared to slow down a little bit when he was sure he didn’t hear any noise behind them.
“Let’s go,” Jesse pressed impatiently, hardly even panting yet and Juri made a face at him.
“How can you still run like that?” he asked, “I can’t even--”
A sharp scream stopped them both for a second. Then, without a second thought Jesse turned into the direction of the noise, and Juri didn’t have a choice but run after him, until bushes on the pathway turned too dense for them to get through without the help of their wands.
“The right spell,” Juri murmured and felt a panic rising in his mind; an awful feeling that effectively shut down his ability to think straight.
“Fuck, there’s no time for this,” Jesse growled. He stared at the bush, tears of anger and frustration rising into his eyes. Suddenly, in front of Juri’s eyes, he started to change. His already thin legs narrowed even more; his hands turned into another pair of legs, his ears moved higher on his head and his nose grew longer. When the branchy antlers were complete on the top of his head, Juri was staring at a gorgeous young whitetail deer that let out a surprised chuckle but didn’t wait any more. With a one graceful leap it jumped across the bushes and was gone.
For a second Juri stood on the pathway alone, his mouth open, and stared after Jesse. The moment of staying still calmed his nerves just enough that he could change, too, and soon he wriggled his way under the bushes. As a dog he wasn’t so dependent on the pathways but could go around or under the hindrances faster.
When he arrived to the others, everything was over already. The troll had gone - even its smell had faded away - and the forest was silent around them. Jesse was still in the deer form, standing next to Kouchi and Hokuto, and all of them were looking down at Taiga who was kneeling on the ground, holding something in his lap. He looked up when Juri arrived, and the anxious look in his eyes was alarming enough that cold fear flashed across Juri’s mind when he changed into a human again. Suddenly he felt sick as he realized the thing in Taiga’s lap was Shintaro. The wolf lay on the ground unmoving, and Taiga’s hands were stained with blood.
“The troll,” Taiga said in a thick voice and slowly petted the rough fur of Shintaro's head, “It caught him. He was too tired to run faster.”
“Shintaro,” Juri gasped and slumped down next to his unconscious friend, too shocked to understand Taiga’s words, “He… he isn’t--”
“Not dead,” Taiga said quickly, “But the troll threw him down on the ground quite badly, and I think its claws scratched him. As far as I know, trolls aren’t poisonous in any way, but they’re incredibly filthy, and I’m afraid the wound will get infected if we don’t get him back into the castle soon.”
“What can we do?” Juri asked desperately, trying to come up with anything that would help. It all was starting to be too much for him. He hated it how panicking always made him unable to think clearly, and the tiredness and shock didn’t help at all.
“Shintaro,” Taiga said in a loud voice and shook the wolf's upper body gently, “Shintaro, wake up!”
“Wouldn’t it be better if he stayed unconscious?” Kouchi said quietly, “If he’s badly hurt, I mean. At least he won’t feel the pain like this.”
“I thought so too but we need to know how badly he is hurt. And we can’t take him to the castle like this anyway,” Taiga said and kept calling Shintaro’s name until the wolf winced and whimpered aloud, his canine face twisting in pain.
“Shin,” Juri called in relief, “Are you all right?”
The wolf opened his eyes and looked around, but even a small movement seemed to hurt too much and he decided to stay still.
“Shintaro, listen to me,” Taiga said in a low voice, still petting his head. “You need to change back. I know it will hurt, but you have to. We can’t get you back to the castle like this.”
Shintaro nodded and closed his eyes. After a while his fur started to slowly withdraw back into his skin, his tail vanished and ears changed their place back to where they belonged.
“Fuck,” Shintaro murmured when he could talk again, “Sorry to cause trouble.”
“Shut up,” Taiga said gently, “We’ll take care of you.”
“Where’s the troll?” Juri suddenly remembered, and Hokuto flashed a dark grin at him.
“It won’t be disturbing us in a while,” he said, “In fact, it might never want to see a human being again.”
“What did you do to it?” Shintaro asked and tried to turn his head but Taiga wouldn’t let him move an inch.
“It was this guy’s idea in fact,” Hokuto said and patted Kouchi’s shoulder, “He invented some creative ways to use a growth spell.”
“But it was you who cast the spell,” Kouchi chuckled, refusing to take the whole glory to himself.
“Have you ever really thought about how scary squirrels are?” Hokuto asked Juri, “Especially when they are more than sixteen feet tall. I think the troll peed into its pants when he saw Kouchi!”
The thought was really funny, and Juri smiled a bit, until Shintaro’s small whine reminded him about the problem. How would they get the boy out of the forest? He had no idea where they were anymore, and Shintaro couldn’t move like that.
“Where are you hurting exactly?” Taiga asked and studied the boy, “Head? Somewhere inside?”
“I don’t think it's anything serious,” Shintaro murmured and took a deep breath, testing if he still could do it. “But I can’t move my arm at all.”
Taiga ran his palm across the said limb, from Shintaro's neck to the tips of his fingers, carefully looking for all the places where touching made Shintaro whine or grimace.
“The collar bone. Probably something in the wrist, too. The blood on the side and stomach must be just a scratch, then,” Taiga said and everyone sighed in relief.
“Wait a second,” Hokuto said thoughtfully, “If we managed to keep the arm unmoving, do you think you could sit up?”
“I guess,” Shintaro said slowly, “Do whatever you want; it can’t be worse than this, right?”
For a moment Hokuto eyed at Shintaro’s arm. Then he gently tapped on a few places, murmuring a silent spell.
“What did you do?” Shintaro asked with round eyes as a wooden splint and a roll of bandage appeared from the thin air, and wrapped his arm into a neat packet.
“Does it still hurt?”
“Well, it does, but not so badly, now that I don’t need to hold it up with the muscles anymore. What did you do?”
“Good,” Hokuto said and smiled approvingly, “I’m happy it worked. I’ve been practicing before but I’ve never had an opportunity to use it in a real situation; it’s a temporary spell that mediwizards use when the patient is being transported to the hospital. I thought it might make an impression when I apply for the training in Saint Mungo.”
“It works,” Shintaro said and smiled thankfully.
“In case you have forgotten,” Kouchi murmured, “We’re still not safe. Let’s go before the troll changes its mind and decides I wasn’t scary after all!”
“Can you get up?” Taiga asked Shintaro who nodded hesitantly. With Juri and Taiga’s help he got up on his feet.
“Not nice, but tolerable,” Shintaro admitted when he tried to stand without help.
“It sucks to make you walk though,” Hokuto murmured, frowning, “It’ll take ages to get out of here and you can’t even fight if we meet more dangerous creatures.”
With Jesse being so silent everyone had forgotten him for a while, and Juri jumped in surprise when Jesse touched his shoulder with his nose.
“Huh? What is it?” he asked and Jesse moved next to Shintaro, turning sideways in front of him.
“Really?” Taiga asked and bit his lip, “Do you think you can do it? Deer are not made for carrying people, you know. It could seriously hurt your back.”
Jesse nodded, but stayed where he was and wouldn’t move before Shintaro petted his short butterbeer-colored fur.
“I was supposed to carry you though,” he murmured and Jesse shook his head, glancing at the boy expectantly.
“Come on, let’s help him up,” Juri said and together with Taiga, Kouchi, and Hokuto lifted Shintaro until he was sitting on Jesse’s back, looking a bit insecure and only a bit uncomfortable.
“Can you do it?” Juri asked Jesse who nodded after a few tentative steps. His movements were a bit stiff but even in a slow pace he moved faster than Shintaro would have been able to walk, and they decided they had to try. One by one the others changed again, but this time everyone stayed very closely together, even Taiga who flew in front of the others and showed the way.
They hadn't been very deep in the forest after all, and Juri let out a relieved growl when he saw the black silhouette of the castle against the sky that was slowly turning velvet blue instead the former blackness.
By the edge of the forest Jesse stopped and waited until the others changed back and helped Shintaro down. Juri was immediately by Shintaro’s side, supporting him on the healthy arm.
“Are you all right?” he asked and Shintaro nodded quietly. He was tired and hurt, and the journey back hadn’t been the most comfortable way of traveling; a deer’s narrow bony back wasn’t built for anyone to ride on it.
“Yeah,” Shintaro whispered, “But it would be nice to get some sleep.”
“We all need to sleep,” Taiga said, “But first we’ll take you to the hospital wing.”
“We’re so fucked up,” Hokuto murmured aloud what everyone already knew.
“There’s no choice though,” Kouchi said and made a face. “We’ll probably get detention for every single evening for the rest of the spring.” It couldn’t be helped, and everyone prepared themselves to what was waiting ahead as they started walking towards the castle.
“Jesse?” Hokuto asked as he looked back, “Come on, you can’t go to the castle like that.”
Everyone turned to look at Jesse who was still standing by the edge of the forest and looked like he had frozen on his four legs.
“What is it?” Juri asked impatiently. He wanted to get Shintaro to the hospital wing as quickly as possible, and anything that slowed them annoyed him. Jesse’s ears flattened against his head as he shook his head furiously and took a few side steps. He stepped back and forth again, turned around and Juri could see the flash of fear in his big black eyes.
“He can’t turn back,” Kouchi suddenly gasped, and Jesse hung his head sadly.
“No way,” Hokuto whispered and rushed back to their miserable friend, taking his head between his hands. “Jesse, concentrate! Don’t panic. You will change back!” Jesse looked into Hokuto’s eyes and stood still, and for a moment it looked like he believed Hokuto and relaxed a bit. However, nothing else happened and Juri swallowed. They were already in trouble; it hadn’t even come up to his mind that their problems could get even worse.
“What do we do now?” he asked helplessly, still holding tight on Shintaro’s unbroken arm.
“Someone needs to stay here with him,” Taiga said firmly, “I think you should, Juri.”
Juri opened his mouth but he didn’t know what to say and closed it again. He was torn between wanting to take care of his boyfriend and best friend, and didn’t know what to do. Shintaro needed help but so did Jesse, and in fact Jesse might be the one whose problem was more serious one. It was against the rules of the school to go to the forest, but being an unregistered Animagus was downright illegal, and against the national wizarding law.
“We’ll take him to the hospital wing,” Kouchi promised and stepped in to take Juri’s place by Shintaro’s side.
“You’re both Gryffindors,” Taiga explained apologetically, “We'll definitely get into a trouble for not being in our beds, but four getting punished is better than six. They might not come to check the Gryffindor tower at all, if they think it's only us and you two are sleeping in your beds like good kids should. You'll get more time like that.”
The thought of the four boys carrying the responsibility for the two of them wasn't fair at all but Taiga had a point, and Juri nodded. He was reluctant to let Shintaro go but, as he suddenly realized, even more reluctant to leave Jesse alone behind.
“It’s okay,” Shintaro suddenly said to Juri and smiled at him, “I’ll be all right.”
“I know,” Juri said and moved to Jesse’s side. They stood quietly by the edge of the forest and watched the receding backs of their friends until the darkness swallowed them, and Juri and Jesse were alone.
“I wonder what went wrong,” Juri said and carefully petted Jesse’s neck. “Try to change again? Maybe you were just nervous.”
Jesse stood still for a moment but nothing happened and Juri sighed. Jesse lay down on the ground and Juri followed him, sitting as close to him as he could. After a moment Jesse leaned his head on Juri’s shoulder and sighed as well.
“I’m sorry,” Juri said quietly, “This is my entire fault. The whole Animagus thing. I knew how dangerous it could be, and yet I was an idiot who needed to try. And I even talked you guys into it. I shouldn’t have. I’ve had fun as a dog but it’s not worth it if you…” He couldn’t finish the sentence but pressed his face against his knees, pressing his eyes shut and wishing more than anything that everything would be all right once he opened them again. It was a childish wish, and he knew it wouldn’t become true.
A warm puff of air in his ear made him look up again. Jesse was looking at him, and even in the beautiful big black deer eyes Juri could see Jesse’s gentle expression. He wasn’t blaming Juri; instead, he was comforting him. It was just like him, Juri realized. Whenever something went wrong, only rarely Jesse tried to fight back. Whatever happened, he calmly endured it all and let it pass, and survived from any hardship as a winner.
“Don’t worry,” Juri said and started to pet Jesse’s neck and back again. Now that he finally had time to sit down and be quiet, he was starting to feel the effects of not having slept in the whole night. His eyelids felt heavy and as minutes passed, it became harder to keep his head up. In the end he threw his other arm across Jesse’s back and leaned his head down against his side. Jesse was warm next to him and his peaceful breathing was calming enough that Juri couldn’t fight against the sleepiness anymore. He snoozed off, too tired to be afraid of any weird creatures or animals that might see them at the edge of the forest.
He woke up with a startle when he felt something poking his cheek. As he opened his eyes, he had to blink a few times before he believed he wasn’t still dreaming.
“Jesse! How--”
“I fell asleep,” Jesse said, “I don’t know, maybe it helped? I woke up at some point and decided to try once more, and I just changed without any problems at all.” He was grinning widely while talking but Juri could hear the relief in his voice and see the same feeling in his eyes, and Juri couldn’t help himself but stormed up to glomp his best friend.
“I’m glad you’re back,” he said and Jesse nodded.
“Me too. But,” he added and the happiness of his smile forced Juri to smile too, “I finally learned it! And I can do it properly now; I already tried while you slept. Look!” There, in front of Juri’s eyes, Jesse changed into the deer form and back again several times, as if wanting to show he could do it.
The cool air of the early morning was chilly and Juri shivered now that he was awake enough to realize he was freezing.
“Let’s go back,” Juri said, “It's still early enough that we’ll probably be back before anyone wakes up!”
They weren’t that lucky.
- - -
Chapter 9
Chapter: 8/9
Rating: G
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
- - -
“You’ve gotten laid,” was the first thing Shoki said in the morning when Juri sat down into the Gryffindor table for breakfast.
“Huh?” Juri blinked and continued before he actually managed to think about what he was saying, “How did you know?”
“So it’s true?” Kento yelped, almost choking on his pumpkin juice.
“Uh, well. Kind of,” Juri admitted, not looking at his roommates but instead concentrating on choosing the best-looking sandwich on the plate in front of him.
“Don’t you dare think you could have kept such a thing as a secret. It's glowing all over your face,” Shoki said with a sly smile and leaned across the table. At least he had the courtesy to lower his voice when he winked at Juri and asked who the lucky lady was.
“None of your business,” Juri said calmly once he got on track again. He might be a nervous wreck when it came to talking about feelings and other serious things but bantering and joking like this were his specialty; there was no way Shoki was going to outsmart him on his home court.
“Ugh, I wish I had someone too,” Shoki sighed and rested his chin against his palm, “It’s not a long time before the Valentine’s day and I don’t have a date! That’s unacceptable!”
"Huh, what happened to the one you had last night?" Juri asked and took a bite of his sandwich.
"It turned out that the only reason she asked to meet me was to scold me for having tried to hit on her best friend who already has a boyfriend. She wouldn't believe me when I swore it was just a big misunderstanding!"
“Maybe if you hadn’t already tried to woo every single girl in the school older than fourteen, you would have some chance,” Kento chuckled and grinned widely, “Or maybe if you hadn’t turned down the one who would actually wanted to get you once.”
“Oh,” Shoki said as he remembered the girl Kento was talking about, “She can’t be that heartbroken or angry anymore! Maybe I should try her!”
“She’s not heartbroken anymore,” Kento confirmed, “But you’ll only try hitting on her in your dreams anymore. She’s my date now.”
“Who is whose date?”
Juri looked up and saw Hokuto who threw his other leg across the long bench and sat sideways next to Juri, apparently having already finished his own breakfast.
“No-one,” Shoki said gloomily and sighed. His misery didn’t seem to be very deep, though, as only after a moment he reached his head up again, looking around in the Hall and probably trying to spot even one girl that he hadn’t already tried to hit on, excluding everyone who was too young or just didn’t match on his tastes in some way.
“Do you have a date for the Valentine’s day?” Kento asked and Hokuto shook his head. The topic of the conversation changed soon, but for a long time after that Juri was sure he had seen a flash of suppressed emotion behind Hokuto’s carefully composed face.
“How did your essay on hippocampus food turn out?” Kento asked, “I’m afraid mine isn’t long enough but it’ll have to do.”
“Fuck,” Juri murmured; he had completely forgotten about the essay he had left waiting for him two nights ago. “When was the deadline again?” he checked.
“Monday morning,” Kento said, stretched, and waved at someone behind Juri’s back.
“I might have time to finish it tonight,” Juri calculated, “Hokuto, may I borrow your essay and copy some parts on mine? Please?”
“Of course you--” Hokuto started and looked up, suddenly wincing like something horrible had come up to his mind. “Uh, I need to go! Almost forgot something. Bye!”
“What could be so urgent?” Shoki asked, raising his eyebrows when Hokuto jumped up from the table and rushed out of the Great Hall. “It’s Saturday! What’s wrong with him?” The question was pointed to Fuma who went around the table and slumped next to Kento, leaning his head against Kento’s shoulder and looking very tired or very frustrated, or maybe both - Juri couldn't decide.
“I have no idea,” Fuma huffed with a pout, “He won’t tell me, no matter how many times I ask!”
Juri nodded empathetically, acting like Hokuto’s behavior seemed as weird to him as it seemed to the others, while in fact he had a clear supposition about what made their friend act in such an abnormal way. Hokuto liked someone, and Juri knew better than well how it was; purposefully learning another person’s timetables by heart and then staring at the clock in order to be in the right place in the right time, hoping to ‘accidentally’ meet that person in the corridor. Well, of course not everyone was pathetic like that but Juri himself was, and as far as he knew his friends, Hokuto was very similar to him when it came to things like this.
He almost forgot about the whole matter for a while but in the evening of Valentine’s Day he suddenly got a weird idea that started to make more sense the more he thought about it. The realization hit on him after the dinner (a special Valentine-themed menu with practically everything being cooked or baked to be heart-shaped) when he and Shintaro were just about to inconspicuously disappear from the Great Hall, and Fuma jogged after them.
“Do you have a moment?” Fuma asked.
“What is it?” Juri asked curiously in a bit lower voice than usually, Fuma’s expression telling him the topic was something that the whole school didn’t need to hear.
“Have either of you seen Hokuto?” Fuma asked and frowned when Juri shook his head. “Shit. I was sure you'd know where he is.”
“Why would I we know? You’re the one who sleeps in the same dormitory and eats at the same table,” Juri pointed out, “I don’t even see him during the lessons, except in Care of Magical Creatures.”
“Because you’re his friends, moron,” Fuma said and rolled his eyes, “and he has spent his every free second with you guys lately, in case you haven’t noticed.”
Juri thought about it, and suddenly realized Fuma was right. During the last few weeks Hokuto had stuck with him and the rest of their gang even tighter than he usually did. Sometimes he had even switched into other tables to eat with Juri and Jesse, Taiga, or Shintaro and Kouchi. He hung around with them in the evenings, too, only going back to the Ravenclaw Common Room when it was too late to be anywhere else. He had even started to do his homework in the hideout room, rather than in the library or the Common Room.
“I just want to talk to him,” Fuma said and waved his hands helplessly, “But it’s like he’s avoiding me on purpose.”
That was when the small thought came up to Juri’s mind. He didn’t dare to say anything about it, in case he was wrong after all, but he was almost sure he wasn’t. At the same time Fuma let out a resigned sigh and shook his head.
“I guess it’s no use,” he said and looked so disappointed that Juri decided to throw all the solidarity into the trash can. Fuma was his friend as well and this time Juri was definitely on his side - provided that he was right with his conclusion.
“Hey, I’ll help you,” he said and the puzzled yet hopeful look that spread on Fuma’s face told Juri he had made the right decision. “Go upstairs and wait somewhere around the Fat Lady’s painting. You know where it is, right?”
“Of course I do,” Fuma chuckled, “But what good will that do?”
“Hokuto will be there in about twenty minutes,” Juri said with an encouraging grin.
“What are you going to do?” Shintaro asked after a while, jotting alongside when Juri strode by the corridors.
“I’m doing them a favor,” Juri said with a smile.
“How?” Shintaro asked, still not quite getting it.
“By sending an owl.”
Hours later, when it was well past midnight and Juri was already sleeping in his own bed, he woke up when someone tugged on his ear.
“Huh? What do you want?” he murmured drowsily, squinting to see in the dark room.
“I’m very sorry to wake you up, sir,” a tiny and extremely shy-looking house elf whispered apologetically and quickly placed a folded piece of parchment on Juri’s pillow, “But I was asked to deliver this to you.”
“Couldn’t it wait until the morning?” Juri groaned, curiosity not quite overriding the grumpiness of getting woken up in such an untimely hour.
“No, sir, the order was to bring it immediately,” the elf said, bowed deeply and vanished before Juri managed to ask any more questions.
“What the hell…” he murmured and reached for his wand, the folded piece of parchment with his other hand at the same time. “Lumos.”
You twisted Flobberworm Fart are a sneaky traitor and a horrible person in every possible way. I’ll never forgive you, the message said in Hokuto’s familiar handwriting. For a second Juri thought he had made a horrible mistake, until he noticed some very tiny scribbling on the corner of the parchment: Thank you. ♥
“I knew it,” Juri hissed in the darkness, unable to help a wide grin that pulled up the corners of his mouth. He would probably be in trouble in the morning but that would be a small price for being able to say he had made his friends happy in the best possible way.
- - -
“So what’s going on?” Taiga asked on one windy yet warm afternoon in the spring, when he stepped into the hideout where everyone else had already been waiting for him. “Why such a hurry?”
“Come on,” Jesse said impatiently, “We’ve waited for ages already and Shintaro wouldn’t tell us before everyone's here!”
“Say, Taiga,” Shintaro said eagerly and could hardly wait until Taiga sat down on the last empty chair next to the table, “have you ever seen a real centaur?”
“Huh? I haven’t. Why?”
“Anyone else?”
Everyone shook their heads.
“Want to see some?” Shintaro asked with a sly smile and spread a roll of parchment onto the table. It was a map; hand-drawn and only very rough one, but recognizable anyway, and everyone leaned closer to get a better view.
“Where did you get that?” Hokuto asked and Shintaro beamed of self-satisfaction.
“It was Ryutaro’s homework last year,” he explained, “They had to form groups and make presentations about different things in the history of Hogwarts. Ryutaro’s group made their presentation about the Forbidden Forest. They got a very good grade so this must at least be a decent map!”
“What does it have to do with centaurs?” Taiga continued, even though he looked like he was starting to get the point of the conversation.
“There are some in the forest!” Shintaro announced, “And we’re going to go to see them!”
“It’s forbidden, though,” Kouchi pointed out the obvious fact even thought Shintaro didn’t seem to listen to him, “You know, thus the name.”
“You guys don’t have much time left here anymore,” the youngest boy reasoned, “You should at least do something cool before leaving the school!”
“I’m not sure it’s very cool if we get expelled for breaking the rules,” Taiga chuckled but Juri saw the look in his eyes and knew he was hanging on his role as the responsible one just for the habit.
“Do you know where the centaurs live, then?” Hokuto asked and smiled widely, as if he would have been ready to go right away.
“I overheard the Astronomy teacher talking with the Care of Magical Creatures teacher,” Shintaro said and pointed at a spot where the maker of the map had drawn a few stylized hills, “Centaurs like to live in higher places where they can see the sky. The teachers talked about the northern border of the forest, something about how the centaurs have been away for years and just came back from the mountains.”
“Cool,” Jesse breathed, and Juri understood his enthusiasm. Apparently so did Kouchi, Taiga, and Hokuto.
“So what are we waiting for? Let’s go already,” Hokuto said jokingly and coughed when Shintaro nodded eagerly. “No, what? Really?”
“Why not?” Taiga said thoughtfully, “It has to be at night anyway so that no-one will wonder where we are. And it’s the most practical time now that it’s weekend; we can be out in the forest the whole night and sleep tomorrow.”
“Do we need something special with us?” Kouchi wondered, and on the next moment they were already making wild plans for the night.
“How will we get there?” Juri asked, “The forest is huge; it might take hours to make it to the hills.”
“Are you a man or are you a dog?” Hokuto asked amusedly, and Juri chuckled, at the same time throwing a worried glance at Jesse who was apparently thinking about the same thing.
“I’ll carry you,” Shintaro said to Jesse, “I should be able to do it. Besides, we’re not in a hurry. If I get tired in the middle, we’ll just walk for a while.”
It took almost an hour before they had a finished plan, and by then it was time for obedient school kids to go to sleep.
“At midnight by the greenhouses,” Shintaro whispered as his last words before he, Kouchi, and Taiga left downstairs, towards their Common Rooms.
“See you later,” Hokuto whispered to Juri and Jesse when they separated at the corridor two floors up, Hokuto turning to the Ravenclaw tower while Juri and Jesse continued to the Gryffindor tower.
It was nerve-wrecking to listen to Kento and Shoki talking in their beds, Juri thought and decided to act like he was already sleeping. That would force the two others talk in a lower voice and maybe they would understand to go to sleep quicker that way. Eventually their chatter turned sparser and died completely, and Juri sighed in relief once he heard the quiet noise of slow peaceful breath from the both beds. It was about the time, Juri noticed as he glanced at his wristwatch. It was half past eleven already; he would have to hurry to make it in time.
Jesse was already waiting for him in the silent Common Room when Juri tiptoed down the stairs.
“What took you so long?” Jesse whispered, “We need to be quick so the others won’t have to wait.”
“Sorry. Kento and Shoki stayed awake late,” Juri said and they left the Common Room with as little noise as possible. They first tried to walk as quietly as they could but their shoes made small noises anyway, and on top of that the joints on Jesse’s knees made small snapping sounds every time he stepped a stair down.
“Can’t you do anything to that?” Juri hissed and Jesse shook his head apologetically.
“Sorry, they always do that when I try to be quiet,” he said and grimaced.
“There you are!” Hokuto hissed when they got to the greenhouses, “What took you so long?”
“Nocturnal roommates,” Juri huffed, “Let’s go!”
They walked across the school yards in silence and kept glancing around all the time, determined not to get caught before they had even gotten into the forest. Even though no-one was wandering around in such a late hour, they only dared to stop and talk aloud once they had passed the border of the forest. The night sky had been dark blue, but the tall dense trees covered the view and everything around them was just black darkness. They lighted up the ends of their wands but even with six wands the light was only so bright, and the darkness around their small sphere of light felt even deeper.
Juri wasn’t afraid per se, at least not enough that he would have admitted it aloud, but he decided to walk closer to Shintaro’s side, just to feel a bit better. Shintaro, instead, didn’t look worried at all. He rolled open the map and they gathered around it again.
“Where should we go now?” Kouchi asked.
“Just a second,” Taiga said and laid his wand on his flat palm, “Point me!”
The wand immediately turned to point at somewhere their left, and Shintaro nodded.
“Good; we’ll just have to do that every once in a while and keep following the wand’s direction.”
“Wow,” Hokuto said, “What’s that spell?”
“Don’t you know it?” Shintaro said, his eyes round, “Doesn't everyone know it?”
“It’s like a compass,” Jesse said to Hokuto, “You’ve never needed the spell, that’s all. Here, I’ll show you.”
The spell was very simple and Hokuto learned it easily, but he still looked impressed when they continued walking.
“But compasses are an ancient invention, and they aren’t electrical,” he said thoughtfully after a while, “why don’t wizards use them?”
“We could,” Taiga said, “some of us do. There are, for example, small compasses that you can attach on the handle of your broom whenever you’re traveling long distances. I guess it’s just more useful this way. You always have your wand with you anyway, so why would you carry a compass too?”
“Makes sense,” Hokuto agreed with a nod.
Suddenly they heard weird noise in the darkness and froze on their feet.
“Are you all right?” Shintaro asked quietly, and Juri realized he had grabbed Shintaro’s arm.
“Yeah,” Juri murmured, sincerely hoping Shintaro wouldn’t want to ask more questions. He didn’t, thankfully. Instead, he looked at the map again.
“I guess we’d better change here,” Shintaro said quietly, “There might be weird creatures in the forest but as far as I know, most of them don’t mind animals. Jesse, take the map and keep your wand in your hand too.”
Jesse didn’t need to be told twice and he simply nodded. Juri felt slightly sorry for the boy; somehow the thought of staying in the human form in a place like this felt much scarier than changing into the animal form, even though Juri was only going to be a relatively small sized dog.
“Everything all right?” he asked, and Jesse nodded again. He was silent and slightly paler than usually, but he didn’t look really scared, which made Juri feel a bit better.
“Just ask and we’ll change back immediately,” he still pressed and Jesse gave him a small smile.
“It’s all right,” he said, “Just do it so we can continue.
The others nodded and, one by one, changed forms. Soon Jesse was standing alone in the small circle of his wand light, looking at Juri and the others.
“Are you sure you can take my weight?” Jesse asked Shintaro who nodded and growled gently, turning his back towards Jesse.
“Fine,” Jesse murmured and threw his leg over Shintaro’s back, taking a good hold on the wolf’s neck fur. Shintaro took a few experimental steps and nodded again. He could carry Jesse, at least part of the way.
“To the North Border, please,” Jesse said as if he was traveling by the Knight Bus or a muggle taxi.
Kouchi looked at them from the ground, let out a small cry and ran up Jesse’s leg, settling comfortably in the small patch of Shintaro’s fur between Jesse’s thighs. Juri couldn’t help an amused wave of tail when he saw Shintaro rolling his eyes.
Taiga was the first one to move ahead, flying to the direction his wand had pointed, and the others followed him. At some point Juri wondered if they’d need to stop and check the direction every once in a while. However, Taiga seemed to know where to fly, and it suddenly occurred to Juri that a falcon, just like migratory birds, might have an innate compass in their heads.
Being a dog with dog’s senses made it all much easier for Juri. In human ears every noise in the forest was scary but the dog’s hearing could separate the noises better, and he didn’t need to be worried about every crackle he heard. He could also see better in the dark than he could ever had seen as a human. However, the most important help for him was his nose. Mostly he could only feel the bitter smell of moss and wet soil but every once in a while there was the smell of a living creature. Very often they were hares or squirrels, but sometimes he also smelled a nest of a fox. It felt funny, really. People always told stories about all the horrifying creatures that lived in the Forbidden Forest; no-one ever mentioned that also ordinary animals liked to live in the forest where they very rarely got disturbed by humans.
A wild owl was sitting on a branch of some tree, looking at them keenly, and it suddenly occurred to Juri that the owl must have noticed Kouchi who was now sitting on Jesse’s shoulder. Juri was quite sure that the owl wouldn’t dare to try hunting an animal that was so close to a human being, but it still made him feel nervous. He had only ever been thinking about the dangers of magical creatures; he had never realized there could be non-magical animals that would gladly hunt his friends.
The traveling soon turned monotonous and even boring, and Juri found it really easy to just switch off his human thoughts for a while and let the doglike side of his mind take the lead. He didn’t always see Taiga in the deep darkness but he could hear and smell the bird, as well as the soft gait of Hokuto’s paws in front of him. Juri himself was trotting side by side with Shintaro who was panting lightly but didn’t look particularly weary. Kouchi had jumped back on Jesse’s lap and was probably snoozing off, his small head leaning against Jesse’s knee. Jesse himself looked a bit sleepy but he wasn’t so pale anymore, as far as Juri could tell in the dim light of the boy's wand.
Suddenly, when Juri estimated they had been on the run for at least an hour or maybe even longer with hardly any breaks, Taiga slowed down his pace and landed on some branch of a nearby tree. Hokuto halted under the same branch and both Juri and Shintaro stopped next to him.
“What is it?” Jesse whispered, tilting his head and trying his best to hear any weird noises that would possibly come from the forest.
Taiga waved one of his wings towards something in front of them and Jesse frowned.
“I can’t see anything,” he murmured. Kouchi looked at him and his wand, and then reached to cover the light on the end of the wand with his fluffy tail. “Oh,” Jesse said in understanding, “Nox.”
It took a while of them all before they got used to the deep darkness again, Jesse needing more time than the others, but when his eyes finally adjusted to the new lighting circumstances he gasped aloud. Juri understood his feeling well. He had noticed a while ago already that they were running up a gentle slope, but only now they could really see what was ahead.
They weren’t far from the top of the hill, and the sight ahead was rather mesmerizing. The top of the hill was deforested, only a few bushes growing here and there and they could finally see the nearly full moon and bright stars scattered all around the black cloudless sky. However, no matter how pretty the moon and the stars were, they felt rather insignificant when compared to the black silhouettes of the majestic creatures they had come to see.
Kouchi leaped down from Jesse’s lap and was the first to turn back into himself, Hokuto and Taiga following his example. Jesse scrambled onto his own legs that had grown numb during the long way, and Shintaro could change too.
“Are they really there?” Jesse whispered as they all settled behind some bushes, and Hokuto chuckled quietly.
“What else could they be. You see them, right? I don’t think there are any other magical creatures that’d look like that.”
On the top of the hill, there indeed were three centaurs. At first it was difficult for the boys to see any details, but every now and then the centaurs moved and the moonlight lighted their faces. One of them looked quite young, one was clearly very old, and one didn’t look like either one. Maybe his age was somewhere in the middle of the other two, Juri wondered. The centaurs were looking up to the sky, pointing at the stars and probably having a deep conversation about their positions and meanings.
“Let’s go a bit closer,” Hokuto murmured and tiptoed behind another bush, moving in the shadows until he was right at the edge of the forest and the treeless hilltop. The others followed him slowly, not wanting to disturb the centaurs.
“What are they doing?” Jesse asked when two of the centaurs started to wave their hands like they were drawing invisible lines in the air, and the third imitated the movements of their hands a bit more slowly.
“I think,” Taiga said slowly, “they’re teaching the youngest one. He must be really young then!”
After a while one of the centaurs stepped aside and just watched how the two other ones kept on drawing their lines. Then he turned his back and vanished somewhere behind the hill. It was a pity, but at least there were two left, and the boys followed keenly how the old one probably told the youngest something about connecting the stars with the lines they were drawing.
The movements of their hands and arms were smooth and steady, as if they were doing some extraordinary dance. Juri was fascinated by the centaurs’ serenity and suddenly realized how incredibly lucky they were, being able to see something like that.
He was just about to move a bit to get a better view when an angry voice behind him made them all flinch. Someone cried out of surprise, and the two centaurs on the hilltop turned to look in their direction.
“What are you doing here?”
It was the one centaur that had left a moment ago, Juri realized, and a nasty mixture of embarrassment and fear twisted the bottom of his stomach. They had gotten caught, and the blank expression on the centaur’s face together with the quiet anger in his words felt more threatening than shouting or raging would ever have.
“S-sorry,” he said, willing his voice to stay steady, “We didn’t want to disturb, we just--”
“You did not want to disturb, and yet you came here?” the centaur repeated, and Juri lowered his gaze. He couldn’t really explain it in any better way.
“Don’t blame them! It was my idea,” Shintaro said and lowered his head too, “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t take all the responsibility,” Taiga snapped, “We were all equally in the plan.”
The two other centaurs walked to the edge of the forest too, stopping next to the first one. The oldest one’s face was expressionless but the youngest looked rather curious and it made Juri feel slightly better. Maybe the young one would understand their curiosity.
“We just wanted to see you,” Hokuto said in a small voice, “We’ve never seen a real centaur before.”
“What do you think we are? Zoo animals?” the centaur who had found them snapped, and Hokuto fell silent again, clearly ashamed by such a suggestion. Juri suddenly understood that must be how the centaurs felt, even though none of the boys had thought it that way.
“We were not trying to spy on you with any ill purposes,” he said slowly, trying to sound as polite as he ever could, “We just… thought you’re amazing creatures, and we were curious. We’re very sorry.”
“At least they have manners,” the oldest centaur pointed out and Juri swallowed, wondering if he was just imagining or if the centaur really sounded slightly amused.
“What manners does sneaking around others’ areas show?” the angry centaur asked and crossed his arms. “As students of Hogwarts you must be aware you’re not allowed to enter the forest, and yet you did so. I wonder what would happen if your teachers knew what you’re doing in the middle of the night?”
“Please, don’t tell the teachers,” Shintaro gasped miserably, “You know, those four don't have much time left here anyway. They might even get expelled and that wouldn’t be fair!”
“Getting punished after having done wrong is only fair though,” the centaur said coldly.
“But if--” Juri started, but the oldest centaur raised his hand and he immediately shut up. The angry centaur looked like he had wanted to continue but he, too, stayed silent on the command of the oldest.
"Now, now. Be quiet, everyone. You children saw us; that’s what you wanted. Now return to the castle," the old centaur said. His voice was firm and authoritative but not unfriendly, and Juri finally dared to breathe again.
"We will," he said and took a few steps back, the rest of his friends following the example. The three centaurs watched silently at their withdrawing, until the young one shifted restlessly.
"When crossing the forest… take care," he said quickly, and the angriest centaur glared at him.
"We don't meddle with wizards' businesses," he grunted, but even though the youngest looked apologetic there was also a hint of stubbornness in his eyes.
"They have the right to know," he insisted but apparently didn't dare to say more. Juri wondered what the young centaur meant but he didn't even imagine staying any longer and ask. The six boys slowly turned around and walked back into the forest until they were far enough that they couldn’t see the hill anymore.
"That was scary," Hokuto sighed but his smile was starting to get back its usual brightness, "But we did see the centaurs!"
Everyone agreed with him; now that they were safe they didn't regret coming, even if at some point all of them had secretly believed they had made a mistake after all.
“We should go back,” Kouchi said and glanced up by habit, just to notice the sky was covered by the trees again.
They traveled slower this time. Everyone was tired, especially Shintaro who had to carry the weight of Jesse as well. Kouchi was the first to notice Shintaro's weariness and he jumped down, running on the ground for a short while until he made a huge leap and grabbed on Juri’s neck fur instead. Juri didn’t mind the passenger and kept on with the relaxed trot.
Juri didn’t know how long they had been running, but suddenly he realized Shintaro was leaving behind. Juri immediately halted and barked at Hokuto and Taiga so they wouldn’t run away without the rest of the group, and then ran back to see what was wrong.
Jesse had crouched on the ground next to Shintaro, gently scratching the behind of his ear.
“He’s just tired,” Jesse said when Juri nudged Shintaro’s head with his nose and let out a small worried whine. “I’m sorry. I should have stopped him earlier.” Shintaro sniffed and shook his head but he was still panting heavily and didn’t even try acting cheerful or energetic.
“I’ll walk,” Jesse said and stood up again, “Let’s go slowly for a while. We can’t be very far from the castle anymore.” Juri nodded and turned into himself as well. Now that they weren’t moving so fast anymore, he made sure he kept his wand tightly in his hand. Hokuto, Kouchi, and Taiga stayed in their animal forms but adjusted into the new pace of traveling so that they stayed in a one group.
“I hope we’ll make it back into the castle before morning,” Juri murmured, “I’d rather not have to come up with fibs about our whereabouts tonight.”
“Same here,” Jesse agreed, “not only will people in the school be angry; my mother will totally freak out. She honestly believes one is doomed to death on the very moment they take the first step into the forest.”
“Yeah,” Juri said with a nod, “I was only seven that time but I still remember when Koki and his friends had a competition on their last year in the school. They wanted to find out who could break the most rules without getting expelled. He was lucky, the teachers liked him. But you should have seen the fit that our mother pulled. She’s usually rather cool about these things but I guess the twentieth owl from the school staff within a month was the last drop. She sent him a whole basket full of Howlers… what’s that smell?”
“Disgusting,” Jesse agreed and made a face when the smell got even stronger. “Seriously. Like a swamp that mountain trolls have been using as a toilet for three hundred years and--”
He didn’t manage to finish his sentence. Instead, he let out a shocked yelp and suddenly vanished from Juri's side.
“Jesse!” he cried out and suddenly realized he knew where the awful smell had come from. In front of him there was a troll; an ugly, smelly, four-meter tall troll that had grabbed on the back of Jesse’s jacket, and was now holding him up in the air with its index finger and thumb. Juri felt how the fur on Shintaro’s neck quickly fuzzed up and a low rumbling growl came from his throat.
“Shin,” Jesse gasped in a shaky voice, staring into the troll’s cloudy squinted eyes, “don’t… don’t annoy it.”
“Jesse!” they heard Taiga’s voice and Juri gasped for breath as the troll turned to look towards the noise.
“Hey, you big fat moron,” Hokuto yelled from where he was standing with Taiga and Kouchi, “Yes, I was talking to you! Come here!” The troll did not move, but Taiga and Kouchi joined in with Hokuto and started to shout all kinds of insults that kept its attention in them and soon started to turn more and more creative.
“Quick,” Juri hissed to Jesse, “Try to wriggle out of the jacket!”
“Can’t,” Jesse gasped, “I can’t reach the zipper!”
“Well then I’ll make it drop you,” Juri said, “Watch out!”
Apparently the troll got fed up with the noisy boys who had started to throw nasty little spells against it. It took a few quick steps forward and reached its big hand to catch one of them. At the same time Juri waved his wand.
“Relashio!” he yelled, and a jet of fiery sparks hit on the troll’s hand right next to Jesse’s head. The troll groaned in pain and, as Juri had hoped, let go of Jesse’s jacket. The boy fell onto the ground with such a loud thump that it made Juri grimace.
“Are you all right?” he asked when he rushed towards Jesse.
“I am,” Jesse gasped and grimaced, “Nothing’s broken at least.”
“We need to get away from here!” Juri said and helped Jesse up on his feet, “Everyone, run! It’s too big and thick-skinned for our spells, let’s just try to elude him!”
In a wordless agreement all the boys darted in different directions. The troll groaned and ran after them. Juri wished he could have changed; he would have been much faster as a dog. Too bad the situation didn’t give him the time he would have needed to concentrate on the transfiguration. Besides, he couldn’t leave Jesse alone. He was starting to be out of breath, his heart was beating painfully fast, and there was a stinging pain on his side but he only dared to slow down a little bit when he was sure he didn’t hear any noise behind them.
“Let’s go,” Jesse pressed impatiently, hardly even panting yet and Juri made a face at him.
“How can you still run like that?” he asked, “I can’t even--”
A sharp scream stopped them both for a second. Then, without a second thought Jesse turned into the direction of the noise, and Juri didn’t have a choice but run after him, until bushes on the pathway turned too dense for them to get through without the help of their wands.
“The right spell,” Juri murmured and felt a panic rising in his mind; an awful feeling that effectively shut down his ability to think straight.
“Fuck, there’s no time for this,” Jesse growled. He stared at the bush, tears of anger and frustration rising into his eyes. Suddenly, in front of Juri’s eyes, he started to change. His already thin legs narrowed even more; his hands turned into another pair of legs, his ears moved higher on his head and his nose grew longer. When the branchy antlers were complete on the top of his head, Juri was staring at a gorgeous young whitetail deer that let out a surprised chuckle but didn’t wait any more. With a one graceful leap it jumped across the bushes and was gone.
For a second Juri stood on the pathway alone, his mouth open, and stared after Jesse. The moment of staying still calmed his nerves just enough that he could change, too, and soon he wriggled his way under the bushes. As a dog he wasn’t so dependent on the pathways but could go around or under the hindrances faster.
When he arrived to the others, everything was over already. The troll had gone - even its smell had faded away - and the forest was silent around them. Jesse was still in the deer form, standing next to Kouchi and Hokuto, and all of them were looking down at Taiga who was kneeling on the ground, holding something in his lap. He looked up when Juri arrived, and the anxious look in his eyes was alarming enough that cold fear flashed across Juri’s mind when he changed into a human again. Suddenly he felt sick as he realized the thing in Taiga’s lap was Shintaro. The wolf lay on the ground unmoving, and Taiga’s hands were stained with blood.
“The troll,” Taiga said in a thick voice and slowly petted the rough fur of Shintaro's head, “It caught him. He was too tired to run faster.”
“Shintaro,” Juri gasped and slumped down next to his unconscious friend, too shocked to understand Taiga’s words, “He… he isn’t--”
“Not dead,” Taiga said quickly, “But the troll threw him down on the ground quite badly, and I think its claws scratched him. As far as I know, trolls aren’t poisonous in any way, but they’re incredibly filthy, and I’m afraid the wound will get infected if we don’t get him back into the castle soon.”
“What can we do?” Juri asked desperately, trying to come up with anything that would help. It all was starting to be too much for him. He hated it how panicking always made him unable to think clearly, and the tiredness and shock didn’t help at all.
“Shintaro,” Taiga said in a loud voice and shook the wolf's upper body gently, “Shintaro, wake up!”
“Wouldn’t it be better if he stayed unconscious?” Kouchi said quietly, “If he’s badly hurt, I mean. At least he won’t feel the pain like this.”
“I thought so too but we need to know how badly he is hurt. And we can’t take him to the castle like this anyway,” Taiga said and kept calling Shintaro’s name until the wolf winced and whimpered aloud, his canine face twisting in pain.
“Shin,” Juri called in relief, “Are you all right?”
The wolf opened his eyes and looked around, but even a small movement seemed to hurt too much and he decided to stay still.
“Shintaro, listen to me,” Taiga said in a low voice, still petting his head. “You need to change back. I know it will hurt, but you have to. We can’t get you back to the castle like this.”
Shintaro nodded and closed his eyes. After a while his fur started to slowly withdraw back into his skin, his tail vanished and ears changed their place back to where they belonged.
“Fuck,” Shintaro murmured when he could talk again, “Sorry to cause trouble.”
“Shut up,” Taiga said gently, “We’ll take care of you.”
“Where’s the troll?” Juri suddenly remembered, and Hokuto flashed a dark grin at him.
“It won’t be disturbing us in a while,” he said, “In fact, it might never want to see a human being again.”
“What did you do to it?” Shintaro asked and tried to turn his head but Taiga wouldn’t let him move an inch.
“It was this guy’s idea in fact,” Hokuto said and patted Kouchi’s shoulder, “He invented some creative ways to use a growth spell.”
“But it was you who cast the spell,” Kouchi chuckled, refusing to take the whole glory to himself.
“Have you ever really thought about how scary squirrels are?” Hokuto asked Juri, “Especially when they are more than sixteen feet tall. I think the troll peed into its pants when he saw Kouchi!”
The thought was really funny, and Juri smiled a bit, until Shintaro’s small whine reminded him about the problem. How would they get the boy out of the forest? He had no idea where they were anymore, and Shintaro couldn’t move like that.
“Where are you hurting exactly?” Taiga asked and studied the boy, “Head? Somewhere inside?”
“I don’t think it's anything serious,” Shintaro murmured and took a deep breath, testing if he still could do it. “But I can’t move my arm at all.”
Taiga ran his palm across the said limb, from Shintaro's neck to the tips of his fingers, carefully looking for all the places where touching made Shintaro whine or grimace.
“The collar bone. Probably something in the wrist, too. The blood on the side and stomach must be just a scratch, then,” Taiga said and everyone sighed in relief.
“Wait a second,” Hokuto said thoughtfully, “If we managed to keep the arm unmoving, do you think you could sit up?”
“I guess,” Shintaro said slowly, “Do whatever you want; it can’t be worse than this, right?”
For a moment Hokuto eyed at Shintaro’s arm. Then he gently tapped on a few places, murmuring a silent spell.
“What did you do?” Shintaro asked with round eyes as a wooden splint and a roll of bandage appeared from the thin air, and wrapped his arm into a neat packet.
“Does it still hurt?”
“Well, it does, but not so badly, now that I don’t need to hold it up with the muscles anymore. What did you do?”
“Good,” Hokuto said and smiled approvingly, “I’m happy it worked. I’ve been practicing before but I’ve never had an opportunity to use it in a real situation; it’s a temporary spell that mediwizards use when the patient is being transported to the hospital. I thought it might make an impression when I apply for the training in Saint Mungo.”
“It works,” Shintaro said and smiled thankfully.
“In case you have forgotten,” Kouchi murmured, “We’re still not safe. Let’s go before the troll changes its mind and decides I wasn’t scary after all!”
“Can you get up?” Taiga asked Shintaro who nodded hesitantly. With Juri and Taiga’s help he got up on his feet.
“Not nice, but tolerable,” Shintaro admitted when he tried to stand without help.
“It sucks to make you walk though,” Hokuto murmured, frowning, “It’ll take ages to get out of here and you can’t even fight if we meet more dangerous creatures.”
With Jesse being so silent everyone had forgotten him for a while, and Juri jumped in surprise when Jesse touched his shoulder with his nose.
“Huh? What is it?” he asked and Jesse moved next to Shintaro, turning sideways in front of him.
“Really?” Taiga asked and bit his lip, “Do you think you can do it? Deer are not made for carrying people, you know. It could seriously hurt your back.”
Jesse nodded, but stayed where he was and wouldn’t move before Shintaro petted his short butterbeer-colored fur.
“I was supposed to carry you though,” he murmured and Jesse shook his head, glancing at the boy expectantly.
“Come on, let’s help him up,” Juri said and together with Taiga, Kouchi, and Hokuto lifted Shintaro until he was sitting on Jesse’s back, looking a bit insecure and only a bit uncomfortable.
“Can you do it?” Juri asked Jesse who nodded after a few tentative steps. His movements were a bit stiff but even in a slow pace he moved faster than Shintaro would have been able to walk, and they decided they had to try. One by one the others changed again, but this time everyone stayed very closely together, even Taiga who flew in front of the others and showed the way.
They hadn't been very deep in the forest after all, and Juri let out a relieved growl when he saw the black silhouette of the castle against the sky that was slowly turning velvet blue instead the former blackness.
By the edge of the forest Jesse stopped and waited until the others changed back and helped Shintaro down. Juri was immediately by Shintaro’s side, supporting him on the healthy arm.
“Are you all right?” he asked and Shintaro nodded quietly. He was tired and hurt, and the journey back hadn’t been the most comfortable way of traveling; a deer’s narrow bony back wasn’t built for anyone to ride on it.
“Yeah,” Shintaro whispered, “But it would be nice to get some sleep.”
“We all need to sleep,” Taiga said, “But first we’ll take you to the hospital wing.”
“We’re so fucked up,” Hokuto murmured aloud what everyone already knew.
“There’s no choice though,” Kouchi said and made a face. “We’ll probably get detention for every single evening for the rest of the spring.” It couldn’t be helped, and everyone prepared themselves to what was waiting ahead as they started walking towards the castle.
“Jesse?” Hokuto asked as he looked back, “Come on, you can’t go to the castle like that.”
Everyone turned to look at Jesse who was still standing by the edge of the forest and looked like he had frozen on his four legs.
“What is it?” Juri asked impatiently. He wanted to get Shintaro to the hospital wing as quickly as possible, and anything that slowed them annoyed him. Jesse’s ears flattened against his head as he shook his head furiously and took a few side steps. He stepped back and forth again, turned around and Juri could see the flash of fear in his big black eyes.
“He can’t turn back,” Kouchi suddenly gasped, and Jesse hung his head sadly.
“No way,” Hokuto whispered and rushed back to their miserable friend, taking his head between his hands. “Jesse, concentrate! Don’t panic. You will change back!” Jesse looked into Hokuto’s eyes and stood still, and for a moment it looked like he believed Hokuto and relaxed a bit. However, nothing else happened and Juri swallowed. They were already in trouble; it hadn’t even come up to his mind that their problems could get even worse.
“What do we do now?” he asked helplessly, still holding tight on Shintaro’s unbroken arm.
“Someone needs to stay here with him,” Taiga said firmly, “I think you should, Juri.”
Juri opened his mouth but he didn’t know what to say and closed it again. He was torn between wanting to take care of his boyfriend and best friend, and didn’t know what to do. Shintaro needed help but so did Jesse, and in fact Jesse might be the one whose problem was more serious one. It was against the rules of the school to go to the forest, but being an unregistered Animagus was downright illegal, and against the national wizarding law.
“We’ll take him to the hospital wing,” Kouchi promised and stepped in to take Juri’s place by Shintaro’s side.
“You’re both Gryffindors,” Taiga explained apologetically, “We'll definitely get into a trouble for not being in our beds, but four getting punished is better than six. They might not come to check the Gryffindor tower at all, if they think it's only us and you two are sleeping in your beds like good kids should. You'll get more time like that.”
The thought of the four boys carrying the responsibility for the two of them wasn't fair at all but Taiga had a point, and Juri nodded. He was reluctant to let Shintaro go but, as he suddenly realized, even more reluctant to leave Jesse alone behind.
“It’s okay,” Shintaro suddenly said to Juri and smiled at him, “I’ll be all right.”
“I know,” Juri said and moved to Jesse’s side. They stood quietly by the edge of the forest and watched the receding backs of their friends until the darkness swallowed them, and Juri and Jesse were alone.
“I wonder what went wrong,” Juri said and carefully petted Jesse’s neck. “Try to change again? Maybe you were just nervous.”
Jesse stood still for a moment but nothing happened and Juri sighed. Jesse lay down on the ground and Juri followed him, sitting as close to him as he could. After a moment Jesse leaned his head on Juri’s shoulder and sighed as well.
“I’m sorry,” Juri said quietly, “This is my entire fault. The whole Animagus thing. I knew how dangerous it could be, and yet I was an idiot who needed to try. And I even talked you guys into it. I shouldn’t have. I’ve had fun as a dog but it’s not worth it if you…” He couldn’t finish the sentence but pressed his face against his knees, pressing his eyes shut and wishing more than anything that everything would be all right once he opened them again. It was a childish wish, and he knew it wouldn’t become true.
A warm puff of air in his ear made him look up again. Jesse was looking at him, and even in the beautiful big black deer eyes Juri could see Jesse’s gentle expression. He wasn’t blaming Juri; instead, he was comforting him. It was just like him, Juri realized. Whenever something went wrong, only rarely Jesse tried to fight back. Whatever happened, he calmly endured it all and let it pass, and survived from any hardship as a winner.
“Don’t worry,” Juri said and started to pet Jesse’s neck and back again. Now that he finally had time to sit down and be quiet, he was starting to feel the effects of not having slept in the whole night. His eyelids felt heavy and as minutes passed, it became harder to keep his head up. In the end he threw his other arm across Jesse’s back and leaned his head down against his side. Jesse was warm next to him and his peaceful breathing was calming enough that Juri couldn’t fight against the sleepiness anymore. He snoozed off, too tired to be afraid of any weird creatures or animals that might see them at the edge of the forest.
He woke up with a startle when he felt something poking his cheek. As he opened his eyes, he had to blink a few times before he believed he wasn’t still dreaming.
“Jesse! How--”
“I fell asleep,” Jesse said, “I don’t know, maybe it helped? I woke up at some point and decided to try once more, and I just changed without any problems at all.” He was grinning widely while talking but Juri could hear the relief in his voice and see the same feeling in his eyes, and Juri couldn’t help himself but stormed up to glomp his best friend.
“I’m glad you’re back,” he said and Jesse nodded.
“Me too. But,” he added and the happiness of his smile forced Juri to smile too, “I finally learned it! And I can do it properly now; I already tried while you slept. Look!” There, in front of Juri’s eyes, Jesse changed into the deer form and back again several times, as if wanting to show he could do it.
The cool air of the early morning was chilly and Juri shivered now that he was awake enough to realize he was freezing.
“Let’s go back,” Juri said, “It's still early enough that we’ll probably be back before anyone wakes up!”
They weren’t that lucky.
- - -
Chapter 9