The Hollow Beneath Hogwarts

67. Eureka!

The truth of the matter was that trying to find anything on these creatures was damn near impossible.

For one thing, nobody even knew what they were called.

It was difficult enough researching a magical creature when you had a name. When all you had was a rough description, a handful of sightings, and several traumatised witnesses who couldn't even agree on how many joints the bloody things possessed, it became a nightmare.

So the group descended upon the library.

Within an hour Hermione, Harry, Sloane, Joanna, Narcissa and Draco had claimed the Restricted Section as their headquarters.

Books were stacked across every available surface.

Tables.

Chairs.

Windowsills.

The floor.

Even Madam Pince's usually immaculate shelves looked like a tornado had passed through them.

They split the work as evenly as possible. Hermione immediately devised a system involving colour-coded bookmarks and notes. Nobody else understood it, but they trusted her enough not to question it.

Each person took a shelf and began pulling down every book remotely related to dark creatures, cursed beings, magical constructs, ancient guardians, forbidden enchantments, and obscure magical history.

One by one they worked through them.

And found absolutely nothing.

Meanwhile Blaise was working with the forensic sketch artist downstairs.

The original sketches had been good, but now they had more witnesses and a fresh description of the torso creature that had apparently decided it wanted to serve as a guard dog.

The artist was beginning to look slightly haunted.

Every version looked wrong.

Too human. Too animal. Too alive. Not alive enough.

Every time someone thought they had captured it accurately, another witness would point out some horrifying detail that had been forgotten.

"No, the fingers were longer."

"The head was wider."

"The teeth were sharper."

"The shoulders weren't attached properly."

"The eyes were lower."

"The eyes were higher."

"The eyes weren't even in the same place every time."

That last correction had caused the artist to put his head on the table for a solid minute.

Elsewhere Ginny had commandeered Professor Flitwick.

Together they had located several enormous chalkboards in a forgotten storage room somewhere beneath the castle. The boards had been levitated into the Transfiguration classroom where Luna had transformed the space into something resembling a war room.

Every known fact had been written down. Every sighting. Every attack. Every witness statement. Every injury. Every description. Every possible pattern.

Names. Dates. Locations.

Questions. Hundreds of questions.

Unfortunately the answers remained stubbornly absent.

Ron had taken himself back to bed. Sloane worried about him. More than she wanted to admit.