During their first year as new students, Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Draco were punished with detention and encountered a hooded figure in the Forbidden Forest. It was drinking a Unicorn's blood.
Of course, everyone later learned that it was Quirrell, possessed by Voldemort. But nobody knew that at the time, so it was still terrifying.
Draco was the first to run, followed closely by Fang. The other three young Gryffindor Lions, perhaps frightened senseless, stood rooted to the spot until the Centaur Firenze came to their rescue.
Centaurs were not half-human, half-beast creatures, but an entirely independent species. They disliked being offended, especially when the insult concerned their race. There were no horses among their kind, and calling them "mongrel half-breeds" would end the same way it had for Umbridge.
Centaurs rarely took the initiative to interfere in human affairs. In their words, "the will of the heavens cannot be defied." Firenze's involvement in human affairs, as well as his teaching at Hogwarts, made him an outcast among Centaurs.
To humans, unclothed Centaurs were barbarians, but in the Centaurs' eyes, they were far wiser than humans.
Since humans classified Vampires and Hags as "people," Centaurs would rather be categorized as "beasts," protected like magical creatures, than share the identity of "people" with those two.
It was difficult to make Muggles understand just how lowly the "noble blood clans" were in the magical world. What was wrong with being forever young and beautiful?
Thus, Centaurs and some humans would never speak the same language, though Centaurs could speak human languages too.
If Florence was the cradle of the Renaissance, then Renaissance-era Padua drew countless foreigners here to "drink deeply of philosophy's sweetness."
As medical students and tourists cheered for the anatomical theater, human thought began to change as well.
For a