The Wizard's Guide to Timelords and Other Demons Book 1: The Forgotten War

Dancing With Monsters

"Duck! Now!" Kendra shouted as she pointed her wand directly at Lee Jordan's head. Lee immediately dropped to the floor of the corridor just as the young girl standing near him turned to look behind her and screamed.

"Confringo!" yelled Kendra. The wall at the end of the corridor exploded into flying rubble and the dragon-like creature caught in the debris burst into flames and vanished just seconds before it would have dropped on Lee and the terrified girl and eaten them alive.

"Remind me never to play a prank on you or any of your friends again," Lee said as he lifted himself from the ground, brushing off a layer of dust that had covered him from the blast.

The young boy standing alongside Kendra was doing everything he could to act brave, but his stammering voice betrayed his intense fear of these strange flying creatures.

"W-What are those t-things?" he spluttered.

"I don't know," Kendra replied, "but we need to keep moving."

It had been less than twenty minutes since Kendra and Lee had been sent by Professor Sprout to search for two first-years that had apparently missed Professor McGonagall's earlier call for all students to gather in the Great Hall. They had spent the first half of that time darting across the courtyard and in and out of corridors, dodging debris thrown about by the powerful winds of the storm, as well as the occasional lightning bolt. At last, they found the frightened students—whose names were Holly and Cadmus—hiding in the Gryffindor common room.

Thus far, their journey back to the Great Hall had been fraught with perils similar to those they encountered on their way out, except now they were dodging monsters as well.

The first large, ugly, dragon thing had appeared out of thin air as Kendra and Lee had set out across the courtyard with the two younger students in tow. The creature had long, saw-like arms in addition to wings, and legs which were thick like tree trunks. A most distinctive feature it had was an extra set of jaws embedded in its abdomen, which inspired Kendra to name the unusual beast a Jawbelly.

As that first Jawbelly swooped down to attack them, Kendra and Lee had cast every curse they knew at the creature with little effect beyond etching a large, Z-shaped scar on its torso. It was only after one of Kendra's Reductor curses had missed its target, pulverizing the ceiling above the Jawbelly, and raining down large blocks of stone on top of it, that they realized how to stop the seemingly indestructible monsters. Curses directed straight at them did not work. Only by blasting stone sections of the castle so that the rubble would fall on top of the Jawbellies seemed to kill them—or at least make them disappear in a ball of fire.

The appearance of the second Jawbelly had sent them running back into the corridor towards the Clock Tower with the airborne creature hot on their heels. It was this monster that Kendra had just dispatched while almost removing missing Lee's head.

"I think we should make another go at crossing the Quad," Kendra suggested, believing that that it was the fastest way to the big tower through which they would access the Great Hall. Lee agreed.

The four students cautiously made their way down the corridor without incident and stepped out into the open air of the courtyard. The sky was still dark, except for the soft, blue glow given off by the immense, spinning vortex of clouds above them.

An occasional flash of lightning illuminated the courtyard and the surrounding stone walls of the castle. The constant rumbling of the ground below varied between minor trembling and intermittent jolts of intense shaking strong enough to make it difficult to walk. The wind had grown stronger since they had first set out. The swirling tempest of debris inside the courtyard included papers, books, tree branches, dislodged chunks of old statues and even an occasional piece of classroom furniture.