The forest was absolute blackness. Even the starlight died in the foliage overhead. Taylor’s bugs spread through it, climbing rough trunks, threading through grasping vines, skittering beneath thorny bushes, and crawling into cavernous canopies. Her hand found her wand, and for a heartbeat she almost whispered Lumos, but light would only make things worse.
Perhaps it was because she couldn’t see in the pitch blackness and had more attention to focus on her other senses, but she picked up so many new things. The forest was alive with noise and movement and magic.
She smelled the same scent through multiple senses at once: to her it was the decaying aroma of leaves; the sweetly rotting smell of fruits mixed with the strong musk of fungus. To her bugs it was a bitter note that many identified as food; an inviting trail that a few bugs wanted to scurry away from instead; a glaring acrid smell that pushed most of the insects to flee. There were so many new scents and sensations that Taylor had trouble cataloging them all.
Then there were the creatures themselves.
Insects the size of her hand scuttled beneath branches and drifts of leaves. Worms thick as her arm moved through the soil like serpents, tunneling deep. Something crab-like and half her height cracked open a hard-shelled fruit deeper into the forest, the shell splitting with a sound like a knuckle popping.
She tried to leave most untouched, aside from a brief confirmation that her power still worked on them.
Unlike protagonists from the fantasy stories she so liked, Taylor felt very vulnerable walking in complete darkness. It didn’t matter that her bugs covered every angle and nothing could approach her unnoticed.
She hadn’t been walking for more than a few minutes when the first hurdle presented itself: a pack of invisible creatures. They were big, carried the faint smell of rotting meat, and had started to move in her direction.
Taylor had no idea what kind of creature was big and invisible, but she wanted nothing to do with them. Her bugs gathered and she had them buzz angrily. That was enough to dissuade the invisible creatures. She heard clapping of what sounded like hooves, and the invisible beings stopped moving toward her.
Then a chill ran down Taylor’s spine. She’d been paying attention to the invisible ones, and almost missed a hidden creature approaching. It had been underground, unmoving, and Taylor had mistaken it for something else. It was close too, almost too close. The thing was a mix of a large cat and something else she couldn’t decide on, its skin was leathery and it had no fur.
More bugs gathered on its path, buzzing again.
But the creature didn’t pay the bugs any heed, still approaching.
Taylor glared in the creature’s direction, before setting the bugs on it. Only, that also didn’t work. The leathery skin was too tough, and its eyes were protected by some transparent skin. Since bugs weren’t working, she sent Bity to take a bite out of the thing.
Bity did its thing, taking a chunk out of the leathery flank. The creature howled, and Taylor set even more bugs on it.
That seemed to finally make it understand that it wasn’t welcome. The creature finally left, after two more bites from her doxy.
After that, despite the many invertebrate tenants, her path through the forest was mostly unimpeded. A few times, she had to sprint to keep up with Hagrid’s large pace, but she managed it.
It didn’t take long until the first anomaly pinged against her power. Almost a kilometer away, small, curious, hairy and many legged.
Taylor stopped dead in her tracks.
The spider, because she was sure it was a spider, welcomed her power like a child who had just found her mother after a full day of searching.
Weirder still was that her power… Taylor had no idea how to even put it into words. It was like a delighted grandma looking at very small puppies and cooing at them, all the while knowing she could stomp the lot and end them with one good foot mashing.
In what felt like a blink of an eye, she had hundreds of the little buggers scurrying at the edges of her awareness, with a few foolishly brave ones — how she knew they were brave or foolish, she had no idea — going in and out of her range.
It was almost like kids who had just discovered a new colorful bug and were poking it to see what it did. Along with the little ones, she felt others. These felt bigger, more mature, for lack of a better word. They skittered in huge hairy legs just at the edges, but not daring to approach.
This was certainly some giant spider nest. Which was strange, because Hagrid was going straight through there, spiders skittering out of his way, a few even waving to him as he passed.
Was this his secret? He was friends with a bunch of giant spiders?
She didn’t get time to ponder that. Taylor heard the sound of hooves and at first, she thought the invisible creatures had returned, then her bugs smelled the acrid scent of fur and sweat and noticed the light.
That got all of Taylor’s attention.
The newcomer was half man, half horse. The upper part was a man’s muscular torso, pale blond hair, and blue eyes. His lower half was covered in a golden coat of fur that matched his hair very well.
Judging by the direction he was travelling, he would pass too close to where Taylor was. She changed direction, giving his path a wide berth. That didn’t work. The centaur stopped, looking at the sky as if he could see it on the other side of the dense canopy. Then he adjusted his path, trotting towards Taylor again.
That was a coincidence, right? She sped up in the opposite direction.
Once again, the centaur stopped, gazed up, then changed directions toward where Taylor had fled.
Panic started to creep in. She thought about running back to the castle and gave up on that idea. There was no way she could outrun a horse. She thought about setting the bugs on him, but unlike the cat creature, he wasn’t sneaking or even had weapons in hand. Attacking without a clear sign the other party was hostile wasn’t something she wanted to do, and deep down, she was curious. Why was a centaur trying to find her?
A strange sort of calm washed over Taylor. In a moment, panic fled and the bugs buzzed. With a clear mind, she knew what to do. She drew all the bugs, blanketing the area. Not enough to block vision, but enough to be threatening. At the center of her swarm, she drew the bugs in a humanoid form, bigger and taller than she was.
That didn’t deter the horseman from approaching. The bugs didn’t seem to worry him. His canter slowed to a trot, then a walk. He stopped as soon as the light washed over her bug construct.
A bug clone and a horse man stared at each other.
He was the first to speak, in a deep, soft voice. “The stars foretold of your coming, oh Dreadful Horror Queen of Hogwarts.”
Those weren’t the words Taylor expected to hear when she met her first actual magical being. Her bugs writhed and buzzed. Taylor wasn’t dreadful, much less a horror.
The centaur raised both hands in a gesture of surrender. “Peace, oh Queen. I meant no offense.”
The swarm stilled, that momentary bout of anger dissipating as inexplicably as it had arrived.
A centaur! Mum wouldn’t believe it when she sent the next letter. Taylor knew nothing about them: Not about their culture, or what they did, and what they found offensive.
Was he a stereotypical member of his species? Did the girl centaurs walk about with boobs on display too? What about families? Or tribes? There were so many questions she wanted to ask. But Hagrid was getting further away the more she delayed. Taylor could come to try to find his secret another day, but she didn’t know when Hagrid would return, or when the next attack would be.
“WHO ARE YOU? HOW DID YOU KNOW WHERE TO FIND ME?”
The swarm voice buzzed all around and it was like a voice from the abyss. It reverberated, sounding louder than she had intended. She hadn’t expected the bug voice to sound so… evil.
“My name is Firenze, oh Queen,” he said. Then he opened his arms. When he spoke again, his voice boomed in the clearing, echoing. “The stars sang of your coming. Of a great evil put to rest. Of a great warrior laid in rest. Of an innocent soul allowed to rest.”
Taylor took a step back at the force of his voice. She almost stumbled, then her mind caught on to what had just happened.
Did Firenze just… prophesied to her about something?
That was… soo cool! A real prophecy!
Then Firenze turned around and trotted away, leaving Taylor more than a little confused.
What, did he just show up to deliver a prophecy then leave? Was he now the mysterious sage for her fantasy journey?
There was this momentary impulse to go after him and ask questions, or maybe create a bug clone to follow him, but that seemed in very bad taste. If he wanted to talk, he’d have stayed.
Firenze and his prophecy would have to wait. Right now, Taylor had a lot to deal with. The lot with many legs that kept skittering near the range of her power, poking it like it was a balloon about to explode.
She took a deep breath, girded her loins, gathered her bugs into an even bigger form, then set out to meet the neighbors.
The reaction was immediate.
With each step she took toward the nest, the spiders scuttled away, in what felt like panic. That didn’t deter Taylor, who marched ever on. A colony of giant spiders living near a magic castle that were friends with a giant was something she had to check for herself.
No, wait.
Taylor was doing this because she needed to find the heir and the horror, then make sure the cute giant spiders weren’t the horror.
It didn’t take long until more and more spiders fell under her power. She could feel their minds buzzing with questions. She could hear them asking questions out-loud. These weren’t simple bugs, their minds were too complex and normal bugs couldn’t talk.
To her power, it wouldn’t make any difference. No matter the mind or size, it was still an ant trying to lift a planet. It didn’t matter if the ant was a little bigger.
Taylor made a point of not overwriting any of the spiders that fell inside her power, and more and more, now more curious than spooked, entered her range. The smaller one, the kids of the nest, as she had taken to thinking of them, scuttled closer trying to find what this new thing was, chittering all the while.
She prevented those from getting too close. They were giant spiders after all, and Taylor didn’t want to get bitten for no reason.
Not long after she restarted her trek, she found her target. The mind felt old and heavy. She couldn’t see from its eyes, but she could feel the huge, heavy limbs moving with deceptive slowness. The spider was big as a house, towering above even the car sized ones that had got into her range.
“It’s time you leave, Hagrid,” she heard the old, wizened voice say.
“What? Why Aragog?”
“A queen approaches,” Aragog said. “I cannot guarantee you’ll survive her coming.”
Why was there a second magical being calling her a queen in the same night? But the big spider was right. Taylor didn’t want to reveal herself to Hagrid, at least not if she could help it. So she stopped, waiting to see what he would do.
“No!” Hagrid said, gripping his crossbow. “I’m not leavin’ yer alone ter deal with this queen.”
Aragog said nothing, but Taylor could feel through her power that he was appreciative of the gesture.
She considered what to do. At the end of the night, she’d accomplished what she wanted. She didn’t think that Aragog was the Slytherin horror. The big un was blind, and too big to move around the school unseen. Poking around with her power, she couldn’t find anything that resembled a petrification ability. Aragog and the brood were just spiders. Big, intelligent spiders, but just spiders.
Taylor turned around and retraced her steps back towards the castle. She knew where to find Aragog now. She could visit another day when Hagrid wasn’t around to complicate things.
“The queen retreats,” she heard him say before he was out of her range.
The return trip was a lot less interesting. Aside from a few new bugs and small animals, she didn’t find anything magical or exceptional. The forest was too quiet, now that Taylor paid enough attention.
Inside the castle, Taylor took a meandering path to avoid a pair of prefects, a couple of gossipy portraits and a suit of armor blocking the end of a corridor. Quiet as a mouse, she uttered the riddle’s answer, climbed the stairs and snuck back into her room. She dropped the many layers of clothing by the bed, too tired to fold them and properly store it now. She’d do that in the morning.
Then, still quiet as could be, she crawled into bed without waking up Luna.
Or she tried to.
As soon as she opened the curtains and pulled up the blanket to sneak in, Luna turned, her pretty eyes gleaming in the semi darkness.
“Did you find the horror?”
Taylor froze. All around the school, her bugs buzzed and writhed. “What?” she managed to squeak.
“You went out to find the horror.”
Taylor’s mouth opened and closed like a dying fish.
“You used your secret to track him down.”
“You knew?!” Taylor squeaked again.
Luna tilted her head. Taylor imagined a confused puppy and had to hold in the urge to extend her hand and offer scritches; which made no sense at all. She wasn’t a cat, or dog person.
“I know what your secret is.”
Taylor sucked in a deep breath. “How?” Her voice came out a little too high.
“You always know where the walls end before you look. After the first day, you never got lost. You always know which corridor has the fewer Slytherins in. You can see through walls, and you know what people are saying even if they are far away.”
That hurt a little. Taylor always thought she’d done a good job keeping her secret a secret. She hadn’t thought anyone was watching that closely. “And you’re not weirded out?” It would be a big bummer if Luna decided she didn’t like bugs.
“Why would I be? It’s wonderful. You’re a HereSeer. I’ve never met one before!”
Taylor couldn’t stop her mouth from opening. “A what?”
“A HereSeer. A seer who sees the here, instead of the there-and-later like the ones in books.”