Anchored

Chapter 1

There is blood on my hands but it's not mine. A constant red pulsing stream, all I can see is blood. So. Much. Blood.

It's Silva's, a Thestral I've been tracking her and her babies every two days since she gave birth for the past month. I don't know if her birth was normal for a Thestral or not it was the first I had ever witnessed but I could sense she was weak and she had no herd to help her, Thestral's always travel in herds Hagrid told us that barely five minutes into our Thestral lesson but she was all alone, I felt as if it was my duty to keep her and her babies safe from the looming dangers of the forest, a fated meeting.

The forest was dark, it was dinner time at Hogwarts, I had left the great hall early to checkup on Silva. The air was cold, sharp, as if it were biting the back of my neck stubborn and relentless.

A carpet of fog was intertwining around the base of the trees, others would find it ominous, but I find it oddly comforting. The forest, the creatures, and I there was no other place that felt genuinely like home but here.

My hands burned and ached in the wind's vicious bites gripping my wand as it led me to the coordinates for the last place I saw Silva two days prior, she won't have moved far she never usually does but I still always make sure to update the coordinates at the end of every visit, just in case.

The light grew brighter as I reached the area, but I couldn't see Silva or her foal anywhere.

"I suppose we're playing hide and seek then?"

I called out into the forest a playful grin lingered on my face as I crept around trees in hopes of seeing a foot or a wing but still nothing.

"Silva?" The sound of my breath vibrated loudly through my body overwhelmed with the eerie lack of sound, lack of life, lack of anything. A shiver glazed over my spine as the panic began to set in, I clenched my fists until my knuckles whitened.

"No, they're ok! They're just sleeping somewhere hidden to stay safe, she's getting rest"

I took a deep breath then began the twenty-minute walk back to the castle...

An ear-piercing shriek slices through the forest. I throw myself in the direction of the noise running as fast as I can carry myself the air burning my lungs.

Again. I flinch causing my foot to get caught under a tree root, plummeting towards the ground a sharp wrench of pain as my head collided with the floor. Ignoring the pain I pushed myself up and carried on running towards the sound.

I flung my arms around the trunk of a tree as my vision blurred. I inhaled deeply through the flames that had engulfed my insides gasping for air to help drown out the fire, rapidly blinking away the double vision, suddenly feeling a strong tug on my robes.

I gasped as I looked down, Silva's foal were in front of me their wings thrashing as they tugged viciously, something was wrong.

My head throbbed harder with the harsh sound and expeditious motion of their wings

"Take me to your mother please."

before I had finished my sentence they grabbed me by my wrists and started tugging me north. The area was far more open, far less concealed, attackable from every angle.

"oh no Silva you didn't" her foals pulled me into the open and I was on high alert, scanning every inch of the area for potential dangers. Then I saw her. Silva. She was on the ground blood pulsing out of her.

"oh god Silva!" I charged over and collapsed onto my knees in a pool of her blood, anyone could clearly see this was an arterial bleed.

I ripped off my outer robes and used them to apply pressure to and above the wound to stop the blood flow from reaching.