Book Three: The Heir and The Champions

VIII - Five of Cups

Harry Potter, October 31st.

Harry did not have a good night's sleep, he had tossed and turned for hours trying to put the odd girl and her little sister out of his mind and her hauntingly familiar eyes out from behind his eyes, he had told Hermione and Ron about the havoc the girl played on the Hunt and how it was pushing him to kill her among other things. Bad thoughts aside he was worried that the girl had the same urges for the bloodshed that he did, and if she would listen to them or not, she had called him a Half-Blood, and Harry was pretty sure she didn't mean the wixen term for it. When he finally fell asleep, well past midnight, he had dreamed of a dark woods, the full moon overhead.

As he walked through the woods he heard the growling and yowling of two great beasts, when he had come across a clearing in those dark woods he saw them in the glow of the silver moonlight. One was a powerfully built panther-like creature, it stood on six legs and Harry could see the thick bands of muscles pulled taught underneath midnight back fur that ended in silver claws that looked as if they could cleave through trees. From its back rose whip-like tentacles that ended in spikes that could rend flesh from bone, its tail curved and ended in some sort of barbed stinger, and its maw was filled with rows of silver fangs as its eyes were like that of the girls, Yellowish-orange with a horizontally split pupil. The great beast was alien and wrong, but still lethal as it hissed and spit at the other beast it was circling around.

The other beast was a great wolf, ever-shifting in its fur, from black, to gray, to brown, and white, like a kaleidoscope of all things that hunted in its name, the wolf was as big as a Russian brown bear and its jaw extended halfway down its body as it seemed to open it wide splitting it's form almost in two as it does, ready to swallow all and any who was foolish enough to get lost in its woods. Eyes of amber and countless of them bloomed all over its sides just above its ever-hungry maw. Chains with links as thick as Harry's arm hung off of it from large pitons driven into its body, the ends were snapped and broken as if to show that it would never be chained or held back, forever hungry and free, it's growl was like thunder and its howl signaled the promised end to the hunt that it was forever on.

But before Harry could approach these great beasts, bloodless and pale hands, as cold as ice, covered his eyes and pulled him from his dream, back into the waking world with a whisper of a promise he had soon forgotten.

Harry had woken up just past eight and got dressed for the day, reluctantly, throwing on a robe before making his way down to breakfast with Ron and Hermione, passing the Goblet without even glancing at it as they sat down at the Gryffindor table. Ron piled his plate up with a small mountain of eggs, sausage, bacon, and grilled tomatoes, Hermione with a book propped up against a pitcher of milk had a small bowl of fruit while Harry helped himself to a stack of waffles and was Happily enjoying them before he felt two pair of eyes on him, sighing and looking up at Hermione, he swallows before speaking.

"Hermione," Harry says, and she makes a sound as if she was answering while popping a piece of pineapple into her mouth as she continues to read, "Can you look behind me and see if I have any watchers?" he asks and sees Hermione's eyes flick back and forth between her book and over his shoulder.

"You do," she says after swallowing, "and it's exactly who you think it is, Harry," the bookworm says before turning a page.

Harry sighs ignoring the call to Hunt, "Great," he says before going back to his waffles.

"You know mate," Ron says with a mouth full of eggs and bacon, "If I had a bird as pretty as that watching me, I wouldn't care much about the why," he says with a grin just before, without looking up from her book, Hermione swats him.