Kettleburn’s note arrived at breakfast folded around a blade of grass, which Adrian initially mistook for something that had fallen into his porridge.
He rescued the parchment before it touched the bowl and unfolded it beside his plate, while Cedric moved the marmalade out of the way.
Mooncalves tonight, weather permitting.
Meet me by the greenhouses at half past eight.
Professor Sprout has been informed.
Wear something suitable for standing about in the cold.
Adrian read it twice, then checked the enchanted ceiling.
Thin clouds drifted across a pale morning sky, and he was still looking up when Cedric leaned over to see what had interrupted breakfast.
Cedric leaned over to read the note, then glanced towards the enchanted ceiling.
“You’ll get a better look than we did in Astronomy.
I could barely make out their feet from the tower.”
“That’s why I wanna get closer.” Adrian turned the note over, checking for anything Kettleburn might have added on the back.
“We could see the shapes they were making, but every time I tried to follow one, I lost it.”
“I remember.
You kept asking whether I’d seen where it went.” Cedric reached for the toast, smiling.
“Meanwhile, I was trying to finish that star chart before we had to hand it in.”
Adrian folded the parchment and slipped it into his pocket.
“Tonight I get to watch without having homework in the way.”
“You’ll still take notes.” Cedric nodded towards the notebook already sticking out of Adrian’s bag, then caught the toast rack before Toby could carry it farther down the table.
“Leave us a couple, would you?
He hasn’t remembered breakfast yet.”
By half past eight, the glass roofs of the greenhouses reflected a clear sky, and Adrian had both his scarf and the heavier coat his mother had insisted he take back after Christmas.
Hagrid was waiting beside Kettleburn with a shaded lantern in one hand, its light falling across the wet toes of his boots.
“Got yer notebook?” he asked as Adrian approached.
“Best keep it put away till they’ve finished.
Yeh won’t see much with yer nose in a page.”
Kettleburn inspected Adrian’s footwear before starting along the path.
“Stay behind us until we reach the hollow.
Once we’re there, choose somewhere comfortable and remain in it.
They may tolerate an audience, but they have no particular reason to tolerate you scrambling about for a better view.”
Adrian tucked his notebook farther into his pocket and followed.
The route took them beyond the paddocks, across a stretch of uneven grass where Hagrid shortened his stride whenever the ground dipped.
The Forbidden Forest lay farther away to their left, its edge reduced to a dark, crowded line beneath the moon.
Their destination was a shallow hollow sheltered by a low ridge.
Small openings interrupted the bank on the far side, and the grass below them had been pressed into narrow tracks.
Adrian counted five burrows before noticing another half-hidden beneath a tangle of roots.
Hagrid lowered the lantern behind a stone, leaving the hollow silver with moonlight.
Kettleburn indicated a dry patch beside him, and Adrian settled with his knees drawn up, glad of the scarf once he stopped moving.
For several minutes, nothing emerged.
Something small rustled near his boot, but the sound stopped when he turned his head, and he resisted the urge to investigate.
Then a pale face appeared above one of the burrow entrances.
Adrian leaned forward before catching himself.
Two enormous eyes surveyed the hollow, followed by a slender neck and a smooth grey body balanced on feet that looked much too large for the rest of it.
The Mooncalf paused outside its burrow, staring across the grass, while a second squeezed past the roots farther up the bank.
Hagrid’s beard shifted with a smile.
He touched one finger to his lips, although Adrian had forgotten whatever he might have said.
They came out in ones and twos, blinking beneath the open sky.
One stopped to scratch its side with a hind foot and nearly overbalanced, recovering with an indignant little hop that made Adrian press his lips together.
Beside him, Hagrid’s shoulders moved silently.
The first turn was so small that Adrian almost missed it.
A Mooncalf near the centre shifted onto one foot, lifted the other, and swung its body sideways; those nearest followed, opening a space that the next group crossed in a succession of light, awkward-looking steps.
Within moments, the awkwardness disappeared.
Their great feet landed with soft, closely spaced thuds, flattening the grass as they wheeled around one another.
Lines opened and folded, separated, then met again without a collision.
Adrian tried to follow a single animal, lost it behind another, and found himself watching the whole arrangement instead.
He had known what Mooncalves did.
He had read descriptions, studied pictures, and spent far too much time imagining what a gathering might look like.
None of that helped when the line nearest him curved away and another slipped through the gap with such peculiar, solemn grace that he forgot how cold his fingers were.
His right heel lifted inside his boot.
Adrian glanced down and planted it again, smiling at himself.
A moment later, his weight shifted towards the other foot just before the nearest Mooncalf turned.
He went still.
The next movement arrived with an odd sense of expectation beneath his ribs, as though he had heard the beginning of a familiar song and was waiting for the next note.
The Mooncalves crossed, their feet struck the earth, and the feeling settled exactly where it had seemed it would.
Adrian held his breath through another sequence.
This time he knew when the line would open before he saw the animals begin to move.
He looked towards Kettleburn, but the professor’s attention remained on the hollow.
Hagrid was watching with the comfortable pleasure of someone who had seen this before and still considered it worth an evening in the cold.
Adrian looked back quickly.
One Mooncalf broke from the others to nose at a flattened patch of grass.
The expectation caught awkwardly inside him, leaving him poised for a step that never came.
He blinked, and the sensation returned only after the animal rejoined the repeated movement.
By the time the dance ended, he had his hands clasped around his knees to keep from tapping along.
Adrian waited until the last Mooncalf had disappeared into its burrow before opening his notebook.
He sketched the entrances around the hollow and marked the places where the animals had gathered, then stared at the sentence he had written beneath it.
They all moved together.
He crossed it out so thoroughly that the nib nearly caught in the paper.
There had been enough happening in front of him to fill several pages, and apparently his first contribution was something anyone with eyes could have managed.
“Difficulty?” Kettleburn asked, pulling on a glove.
“I’m trying to remember what started each turn.” Adrian shifted the notebook towards the moonlight.
“The one nearest us moved first a few times, but I lost track of it.
I don’t know if it was always the same one.”
“Then don’t write that it was.” Kettleburn leaned far enough to inspect the sketch.
“Mark what you could follow.
Leave the rest until you’ve seen them again.”
Adrian’s head came up.
“We can come back?”
“If the weather permits, and if your schoolwork does.
Don’t look quite so astonished, boy; I haven’t offered you a Ministry appointment.”
Hagrid laughed as he retrieved the lantern.
Adrian bent over the page again, added three hurried arrows, and closed the notebook before the professor could reconsider.
On the walk back, the lantern swung beside Hagrid’s knee in a steady arc.
Adrian noticed its rhythm almost immediately, although it took several strides before he realised he was anticipating the point where the light would turn. This chapter was copied from g.com without permission.
Hagrid stepped around a muddy rut.
The lantern swung wider, towards the notebook Adrian still carried against his side, and Adrian moved it out of the way before looking down.
His hand had already known where to go.
He stared at the lantern for three more steps, then shifted the notebook again, trying to repeat the movement.
Hagrid stopped to wait for Kettleburn, and Adrian’s arm moved into empty space.
“Yeh all right there?” Hagrid glanced from the book to Adrian’s face.
“Didn’t catch yeh, did I?”
“No.
I just—” Adrian tucked it under his coat, suddenly aware of how that must have looked.
“Thought it was gonna hit the cover.”
Kettleburn joined them, working his boot free of a clinging strand of grass.
Adrian waited until they started walking before following, watching the light travel over the path without moving his hands again.
Cedric was still awake when Adrian returned, sitting near the common-room fire with a Transfiguration book open on his knees.
He took one look at Adrian’s expression and inserted a finger between the pages.
“Well?”
Adrian opened his mouth, glanced at the nearby armchairs, then sat beside him.
His notebook landed on his knees, and for several minutes Cedric received the promised account of the Mooncalves, complete with sketches, corrections, and an explanation that required Adrian to move three abandoned chess pieces around the edge of the table.
Cedric followed more easily once he took charge of one of the pieces.
“This one goes through here, then?
Otherwise they’d run into each other.”
“Yeah, exactly.” Adrian watched Cedric repeat the movement, and the strange expectation stirred again, faint but unmistakable.
He rubbed a hand over his mouth before looking up.
“Okay.
There’s something else.”
By the time he had finished explaining, Cedric had closed his textbook.
“Like the electricity?” he asked quietly.
“I don’t know yet.
Maybe.” Adrian opened his notebook to a blank page, then stopped before writing.
“Something happened while I was watching them.
I could feel the next movement before they made it.”
Cedric considered the chess pieces.
Rather than move them again, he reached into his sewing kit for a spare button and a length of thread.
They tied the button to one end and suspended it above the table.
For the first few swings, Adrian felt foolish, particularly when Eleanor Finch passed behind them and slowed to inspect their work.
“If that’s meant to mend something, you’ve missed a step.” She continued towards the dormitories before either could explain, leaving Cedric smiling as he steadied his wrist.
Adrian let the button swing.
After several passes, the same expectation settled through his hand.
He reached out, pinched the thread just above the button, and caught it at the farthest point of its arc.
Cedric released it again.
This time Adrian looked at the fireplace between passes, turning back only as his fingers closed around the thread.
“Oh, that is weird.” He released it too quickly, sending the button into a crooked swing.
“Do it again.”
They repeated the test until Cedric shortened the thread without warning.
Adrian reached for the place he expected and missed badly enough to knock his knuckles against the table.
Cedric caught the button before it could strike him.
“Sorry.
I wanted to see whether you knew it had changed.”
Adrian rubbed his hand, then leaned forward with a grin that made Cedric glance towards the sleeping portraits.
“No, that’s good.
That’s really good.” He dragged the notebook closer and began writing.
“I wasn’t expecting the right thing until it started repeating again.
It’s not just knowing where it’ll be.”
They tried once more with Cedric interrupting the swing halfway through.
Adrian missed again, and this time the failure excited him almost as much as the successful catches.
It was nearly midnight when Cedric took the thread away.
“You can ask Flitwick tomorrow.
I’m going to bed before you decide we ought to try it with the clock.”
Adrian looked towards the mantelpiece.
Cedric followed his gaze, gathered the chess pieces, and put them firmly back in their box.
Professor Flitwick was arranging small copper discs across his desk when Adrian arrived before Charms the next morning.
Adrian waited until the professor looked up, then set his notebook on the nearest clear patch.
“Professor, something happened last night.
I think it’s another thing I can do.”
Flitwick put down the disc.
Adrian had intended to explain calmly.
Instead, he began with the Mooncalves, doubled back to describe the feeling in his feet, and reached the swinging lantern before remembering that the professor had no reason to know why he had been outside after dark.
“Kettleburn was there,” he added quickly.
“And Hagrid.
It was allowed.”
“Yes, yes, Professor Sprout mentioned the outing.” Flitwick drew the notebook towards him, but his eyes remained on Adrian.
“When you say another thing, Mr Clarke, do you mean something you learnt to do—or something you found yourself doing?”
“The second one.
I could feel it before I figured out what was happening.”
Flitwick’s eyebrows rose so high they nearly met his hairline.
He opened the notebook, read half a page, and returned to the first sentence.
“Good heavens,” he squeaked, looking up over the edge of his desk.
“And you tested it with a button?”
“Cedric had the thread.”
For a moment, Flitwick’s mouth twitched.
Then he adjusted his spectacles and examined the record of Adrian’s missed catches with rather more interest than Adrian had expected.
“Very sensible of you both.
We shall keep this afternoon’s appointment, but leave the electrical exercises until another day.” He tapped the page where Adrian had described the interrupted swing.
“Bring Mr.
Diggory, if he is willing.
I should like to hear precisely what he changed.”
Students were beginning to enter behind him.
Adrian collected the notebook as Flitwick returned to his copper discs, then nearly walked into a desk while trying to locate Cedric.
By the time he sat down, Cedric was looking at him expectantly.
“He wants you there this afternoon.” Adrian tucked the notebook away and lowered his voice.
“I think the button impressed him.”
Cedric glanced towards the professor, who had begun searching a drawer with unusual purpose.
“I don’t think it was the button.”
That afternoon, the button had been replaced by a polished brass weight hanging from a stand. The source of this chapter is g.com.
Flitwick adjusted the thread while Cedric set Adrian’s notes beside a clean sheet of parchment, and Adrian tried not to bounce his knee beneath the desk.
“Before we begin,” Flitwick said, “you are not to force this sensation.
If it fades, tell me.
If you become uncomfortable, we stop.”
Adrian nodded, although the warning did little to settle his excitement.
He had spent the entire day noticing repetition: footsteps on stairs, a dripping tap, the movement of a loose strap against Cedric’s bag.
Most of it had amounted to nothing once he paid attention, but now and then the peculiar certainty had returned.
Flitwick set the weight swinging.
The first passes looked ordinary.
Then Adrian’s fingers loosened against his knee, and the expectation arrived a fraction ahead of the brass weight.
“There.” He leaned forward, eyes following the arc.
“That’s what I mean.”
Flitwick asked him to tap the desk each time the weight reached its farthest point.
Adrian managed it easily, then continued when the professor placed a screen between him and the stand.
Cedric’s quill stopped moving.
Behind the screen, Flitwick caught the weight.
Adrian tapped twice more before the feeling slipped apart.
His hand hovered over the desk, and he looked up.
“You stopped it.”
“After your third tap,” Flitwick said.
He removed the screen and set the weight moving again.
“You continued twice.
That is useful.”
Adrian sat back, thinking.
He had not sensed the weight stopping; he had carried on expecting it to move.
They changed the length of the thread, the size of the arc, and how long Adrian was allowed to watch before the screen went up.
Repeated movement became easier to follow once he had seen enough of it, but an unexpected interruption left him reaching or tapping at the wrong moment.
Flitwick looked thoroughly pleased by the failures.
“Splendid.
We are beginning to find the edges of it.” He made another note, then glanced at Adrian’s hand.
“And you say the sensation began while your own feet were attempting to follow the dance?”
Adrian demonstrated as well as he could, standing beside the desk and shifting his weight.
Without the Mooncalves in front of him, it felt embarrassingly like an unsuccessful dance lesson.
Flitwick watched seriously throughout.
“I wasn’t trying to copy them,” Adrian said, stopping.
“My body just started doing it.
After that, I could tell when the next part was coming.”
“The repeated part,” Cedric added from his chair.
He turned the notebook towards Flitwick.
“There was one that stopped, and he lost it then as well.”
“Quite right.” Flitwick underlined something before setting down his quill.
“I cannot tell you today why this has happened.
I can tell you that the effect is consistent enough to investigate, and that Mr Diggory has saved us some time by paying attention to the occasions when it failed.”
Cedric looked down at the notes, pleased despite himself.
Adrian nudged his shoe beneath the table, and his friend nudged back without looking up.
By the end of the session, Adrian’s successful taps had begun drifting late.
He tried to correct them, which only made the feeling harder to catch.
Flitwick stopped the weight before Adrian could ask for another attempt.
“That will do.
Write down how you feel this evening, but no more experiments until tomorrow.” He began gathering the apparatus, then paused with the brass weight in his hand.
“And Mr Clarke?
Discovering something interesting does not excuse arriving at breakfast half asleep.
I should hate to have to prescribe an earlier bedtime alongside your exercises.”
Cedric’s expression became offensively innocent.
Adrian picked up his notebook and decided against explaining whose idea the button had been.
In the common room that evening, Adrian turned to a fresh page and wrote Lunar Rhythm across the top.
He considered the name for a moment, added a question mark, and began listing what they had actually tested.
Cedric leaned over while reaching for his Charms book.
“Lunar?”
“The Mooncalves.” Adrian kept writing, then stopped with the quill above the page.
“I needed to call it something.”
Cedric read the next few lines.
“Put the interrupted swing in there.
Otherwise you’ll look at this next week and convince yourself you can catch anything.”
Adrian added it beneath the successful tests.
Below that, he wrote that exhaustion made the sensation unreliable, and that knowing when something ought to happen did not help when it did something else.
Three days later, Flitwick gave him a practical demonstration of precisely that problem.
A wooden ball rested on the desk between two hoops, which the professor had enchanted to move from side to side.
Adrian lifted the ball with his wand and waited for the openings to align.
“Float.”
The familiar ease settled into the charm.
He watched the hoops pass one another, felt their movement become predictable, and guided the ball forward at the next opening.
It passed through both without touching the rims.
Adrian grinned so broadly that Flitwick chuckled.
“Again, please.
Bring it back to the starting position first.”
The second attempt was cleaner.
On the third, Flitwick altered one hoop’s movement just as Adrian sent the ball towards it.
Wood struck wood with a sharp clack, and the ball bounced sideways.
Adrian caught it with the charm before it could roll off the desk, then looked at the professor.
“That was cheating.”
“That was a change in circumstances.” Flitwick restored the original movement, looking entirely untroubled by the accusation.
“An opponent is unlikely to continue obligingly once he notices what you are doing.
Neither, I suspect, will a frightened creature.”
Adrian returned the ball to its starting point, his smile fading into concentration.
On his next attempt, he watched for longer and moved more cautiously; when Flitwick changed the pattern, he stopped the ball rather than trying to force it through.
“Much better!” The professor clapped his hands, then pointed to the desk.
“Now put it down before enthusiasm undoes your good work.”
Adrian lowered the ball and reached for his notebook.
He added the exercise beneath the pendulum tests, drawing one neat path through the hoops and a second that ended against the rim.
Flitwick leaned over to inspect the page while Adrian labelled the failed attempt.
Beside the little collision mark, he had written Professor cheats.
“I believe we established that I changed the circumstances,” Flitwick observed.
Adrian glanced up, then added two words beneath the drawing: Without warning.
The professor laughed and set the hoops moving again.