Master in the Trees

The next day, Hermione arrived at work an hour early and left a note for the head of her department explaining that she was taking the day to do more fieldwork. This was not unusual, and as long as she turned in reasonable receipts for reimbursement, there were no questions asked.

Not wishing to disturb the headmistress so early in the day, Flooed to the fireplace at The Three Broomsticks in Hogsmeade. She waved to the bleary-eyed witch who tended the bar in the early morning and made her way down the windswept streets. Several inches of snow had fallen in the night, and it swirled about her feet. The chicken potpies she had baked for the centaurs were in her pocket, magically shrunk and heated, but she had one more stop to make.

Even magic couldn't rid the air in the butcher shop of a slightly ferrous tang. Hagrid's usual Thestral meal of half a cow was entirely too expensive, but the butcher had a sheep that he was willing to part with at a much more reasonable price. The butcher tied it up in brown paper and shrunk it to the size of a Quaffle.

It was a slightly longer walk to the centaur's part of the Forbidden Forest from Hogsmeade, but Hermione didn't notice the cold between her anticipation for the morning's events and the warm pie in her pocket. She soon came to the clearing where she had seen the Thestrals the day before and laid her purchase near a holly bush. She returned the sheep to its normal size and vanished the paper and string. She shoved her mittened hands into her pockets and shifted her weight anxiously from foot to foot.

She did not have long to wait. With a sudden whoosh, an adult male Thestral landed not fifteen feet from her, making her jump in surprise. It sniffed the sheep and raised its head in an eerie shrieking call that echoed from the empty trees. Another Thestral landed in the clearing, this one female, and joined the male by the sheep. Soon, there were seven crowded around the carcass, ripping off small strips of mutton and conversing in soft whickers and snorts. Hermione thought she recognised the Thestral that she had spoken to previously, and her suspicions were confirmed when he left the circle and came over to sniff her. As she patted his pointed snout, he caught her right sleeve in his teeth and tugged gently.

Though startled, she allowed the Thestral to draw her closer to the others. It released her, ripped a chunk of meat from the sheep's shoulder and, with his head, gestured for her to follow him. She did so, only occasionally catching her hair and cloak on the thick underbrush, until they came to a clearing where a female Thestral rested on the ground.

Hermione was surprised to note that this Thestral's wings were held out at an awkward angle.

"Are you all right?" she asked the Thestral, wondering if her knowledge of basic first aid would be of any use to an injured flying horse.

The mare whinnied and spread her wings to reveal her back to Hermione.

Hermione gasped.

Clinging to the Thestral's back was a man. At least, she assumed it was a man, as it had two arms, two legs, and wore rags that appeared to have been clothes at one point, but when he raised his face to look at her, she wasn't entirely convinced of his humanity. The face was a mass of thick beard and was further obscured by the black snarls of hair that hung down in his face. His black eyes darted back and forth between Hermione and the other Thestral, who gently laid the piece of mutton on the ground near him.

A hand with long yellowed claws shot out to seize the raw meat, which he raised to his mouth and began gnawing. Hermione looked helplessly at the Thestral that had brought her, and he nodded at the man encouragingly.

"Erm, hello?" she said tentatively.

The man's head snapped up, eyes wide, and he screamed at her, a wild and awful sound. He leaped from the Thestral's back with the agility of an ape and swung himself into a tree overhead. He screeched at her again, sounding very like a Thestral himself, launched himself into the branches of an adjacent tree, and scrambled higher until Hermione could no longer see him.

The female gave Hermione an admonitory look, then shook her wings and walked away to where the others were feeding.

"What on earth was that?" Hermione asked the male Thestral who had brought her there.

He butted her hand in response, and she scratched his forehead absently. The two of them walked back to the clearing. The other Thestrals had carried away the sheep's remains. Her Thestral chuffed his disapproval and took off after them, leaving Hermione to consider what she had seen.

She was so deep in thought that she didn't notice the centaur standing in front of her until he cleared his throat.

"Oh, Magorian, I'm sorry, I didn't see you there."

"What are you doing here?"

She puzzled for a moment over what he meant and belatedly recalled the purpose of her visit. "I bring a gift for Burnish as a small token of my thanks." She removed the pie from her pocket and enlarged it with her wand.

"Thanks for what?" Hermione was pleased to notice that in spite of his unfriendly demeanour, his nostrils were twitching.

She held out the steaming pie. "In thanks for her generosity in allowing me an audience. Please tell her that I will call on her at her convenience."

"I will tell her what you say, but do not expect an answer."

"I wouldn't dare," said Hermione with a deferential nod. "I will leave you in peace. Thank you very much for helping me."

"I am not taking it to help you," he said with habitual scorn. "I deliver your gift because it is in my interest to do so."

"I hope she gives you a piece," said Hermione with a smile, quite accustomed to the centaur gruffness.

Magorian snorted in response and trotted off.

)()()()()()()()()()()()()()()()(

Hermione had only visited the Werewolf Support Services Office once before to ask where to find office supplies. The blank stares she received then were identical to the ones she received when she asked them if the creature she encountered in the Forbidden Forest could have been a werewolf.

By the time she returned to her office, she was in a foul mood.

"That bad, eh?" asked Ron, who seemed to have the gift of appearing in her ceiling whenever Hermione's desk was in danger of being permanently dented from contact with her forehead.

"If I ever have the bright idea to go next door again, please beat me with something," said Hermione, crossly. "A more useless bunch of bureaucrats I've never seen."

"Now you understand why I became an Auror. None of that office nonsense unless we do something bad. Why did you bother with next door, anyway?"

"Oh, I saw something in the forest today, and I thought it might be a werewolf."

"Couldn't you tell from looking at him?"

"That's what made me wonder. I haven't seen someone that fierce looking since Fenrir Greyback."

Ron blinked in surprise. "Do you want an escort next time?"

Hermione gave a half-shrug. "No, my guide wouldn't have brought me to see him if he were likely to hurt me."

"Well, thank goodness you're free until after Christmas."

"Actually, Firenze said that consistency will be key if I want the herd's head females to speak with me, so I'll be bringing gifts every day until I can get a proper audience."

"You'd think horses would be suspicious of Greeks bearing gifts," remarked Ron.

"They're plenty suspicious enough," said Hermione, wearily pulling out a quill and her leather-bound notebook. "I'm sorry to cut this conversation short, but I've three days of notes to write up."

"You'll work yourself into an early grave if you keep up at this rate," said Ron. "Just let me know if you need anything."

"I almost hate to ask, but if you have any real tea in your office, I'd kill for a cup. All we've left down here is chamomile, and I'll need something a bit stronger if I want to finish tonight."

Ron nodded. "Real tea. I'll see what I can do."

He disappeared from her fireplace, and Hermione began to write about her experiences of the past few days, pausing in her narrative to update the index cards that she used for keeping track of the centaurs and their status in the herd, or to look up a detail of a previous visit. She wrote down everything she could recall from her conversation with Firenze, updated her card on Burnish, and reluctantly made a card for the obnoxious centaur she'd met at Firenze's club, reminding herself that it was her job to be aware of what centaurs wanted, even if it was only a one-night stand.

She wasn't certain how much to write about the Thestrals. Certainly she felt drawn to them, and they were important in centaur culture, but she wasn't entirely sure they fell under her jurisdiction. Still, if the head of the Magical Creatures division had a problem with her purchasing a sheep for the Thestrals, she would simply rescind her request for reimbursement, and she'd have her answer.

Her mind drifted back to the creature she'd found clinging to the back of the mare, and her quill hand absently began sketching him. He didn't seem to have been hurting the Thestral, as she had feared. In fact, the filly had seemed almost sorry when he retreated to the trees. But why, then, had the male Thestral led her to him?

"Guardians of the aggrieved," Firenze had called them. She glanced down at her drawing, snorting at the messy lines that formed a surprisingly accurate rendering of his hair. He'd been so thin, nearly as skeletal as the Thestrals, which wasn't surprising, considering the fact that he seemed to have been adopted by carrion eaters. She couldn't help wondering what he was doing there. Was he a feral denizen of the forest? No, his clothes fit him well, for all that they had been torn to shreds. Was he perhaps someone who had sought the Thestrals out for comfort? Unlikely, since she was one of only a handful of humans who knew the reptilian horses' true purpose. Then, she concluded, he must be someone on the run, hiding on the fringes of civilization.

Her quill scratched across the surface of her parchment, capturing an approximation of the shocked look on the man's face before he had screamed at her. He reminded her strongly of Sirius in the Shrieking Shack, terrifyingly rough and wild. Even when Sirius had begun convincing them of the truth, she had been so relieved when Professor Snape had arrived-

Her quill slipped, bisecting the sketch with a thick black slash.

She started as her fireplace flared to life and Ron appeared, carefully holding a steaming mug of dark, fragrant tea perpendicular to the floor. "Alright, Hermione? You look like you've seen a ghost."

"I rather think I have," said Hermione softly.