My Deepest Erised (Draco x Kaiye x Harry love triangle)

Part 27 - The Camping Trip (Part 3)

"Maybe... maybe it's just like a pack of flies?" Ron said with a hint of fear in his voice.

After we were finished with setting up our tents, Snape called us over and told us to follow him to another part of the forest, not too far away.
It was supposed to be our first exercise.

I was walking with Hermione, Harry and Ron - all of us trying to guess which creature or creatures we were supposed to be up against.

"Sure Ron, I'm positive you're spot on," Harry mocked.

"But they can't take us to fight anything that's much bigger than them, right?" Ron gulped.

"Bigger than what?" Hermione asked in disbelief, "Flies?"

Ron nodded.

"Oh come on Ron," Harry said, "Whatever it is, I'm sure it's not that bad!"

"Okay everyone," Hagrid said as we came to a sudden stop, "Somewhere close to us is supposed to be a group of Erklings. Can anyone tell me what an Erklin is?"

Hermione's hand shot right up.

"Hermione?"

"An Erkling is a magical beast, a tad bit bigger than a gnome. They let out high pitch cackles which are particularly entrancing to children, and use them to lure the kids away from their guardians and eat them."

Ron silently gasped in disbelief.

"They can't be serious..." Ron muttered.

"Exactly," Hagrid seemed happy with Hermione's description, "These creatures originated in Germany, and are quite rare here. That's why they assigned me to find them in this forest and capture them, then send them back to the German Ministry of Magic."

"Your assignment for today is to find this group of Erklings and bring them to us, without killing them. The method for getting ahold of them is up to you," Snape announced, "The person or group that catches one or more of them will be rewarded some points. Keep in mind that you shouldn't leave the protective bubble Hagrid and I set up a couple of minutes ago - you'll see the end of it when you reach it. Now go!"

Some students literally started running as soon as the words left Snape's mouth, but the four of us most definitely did not.
Instead, we looked at each other, trying to figure out how to approach this situation.

"Ron, are you okay?" Harry asked, "You look a bit... pale..."

"Oh come on Ronald, Erklings aren't nearly as dangerous for you as they are for a small child!" Hermione said, "Not that you aren't behaving like one right now..."

"Hey!" Ron exclaimed, but he seemed to feel better after finding out that Erklings weren't as dangerous as he thought.

"Does anyone have a plan?" I asked.

"Let's just walk around and start looking for them, we'll figure out something along the way," Harry proposed and we agreed.

"Are they the ones with the pointy noses?" Ron asked as we made our way through the thin trees.

"Yeah, see? You know about them!" Hermione sounded really proud of him.

"That's only because I used to draw hair coming out of creatures' noses in my books, and I remember they had really big ones - so I had to figure out whether I wanted the hair to come out the whole length of the nose, or just the tip..."

I let out a small chuckle, but Hermione just huffed at his comment.

"I remember them from that documentary Snape once showed us..." Harry added.