Naturally, the task of buying food fell to Hagrid. With the Invisibility Cloak and the concealed Space Ring, Harry could easily smuggle the crates of brandy, broiler chickens, and even dead rats Hagrid brought back into the Room of Requirement, ensuring Norbert could feast whenever he wanted.
Besides paying for Harry's expenses, Hermione also had to help cover for him at school. She helped Harry record all sorts of information and data about Norbert, too, so they could keep improving their rearing plan.
And, relying on her reputation as a model student, she managed to wheedle a few spells essential for raising dragons out of Professor Flitwick.
For example, Episkey, for treating injuries; Reducio, for transporting the dragon; Scourgify, for cleaning up its poop... and so on~
Of course, with the bottomless appetite Norbert would have in the future, Harry and Hermione's little stashes of money would never be enough to keep him fed.
But there was no need to worry that Harry and the others would run out of money. Scamander had already sent a reply.
'Don't worry. Raise that dragon to your heart's content. I'll cover all the money and know-how~'
Harry: This guy really knows how to take advantage of people...
Oh, right. Something else happened during this time.
Some Slytherin brat refused to go to bed and wandered around the Astronomy Tower late at night. When he was caught, he tried to lie and frame Harry and Hermione, who hadn't even been there. In the end, Professor McGonagall decisively docked him fifty points...
And gave him detention for the whole night.
"Draco Malfoy really has nothing going on upstairs. Getting punished is entirely his own fault~"
After dinner, when Mr. Filch mentioned that Malfoy would be serving detention that night, Harry curled his lip in disdain.
Malfoy had indeed been aiming to catch them red-handed. He knew that hiding a dragon egg and hiding a Dragon were not crimes that could be compared, so he had kept quiet until now, planning to expose them at the last possible moment.
But none of his moves escaped Harry's counter-surveillance. Harry had casually told Hermione a few things about sending Norbert away, then let Malfoy 'happen' to overhear his plans. Sure enough, the idiot had foolishly gone to keep watch at the Astronomy Tower in the middle of the night.
Honestly, hadn't he bothered to think it through? The Bat Professor had praised Harry's brazen disregard for school rules in public countless times. If Harry really wanted to send Norbert away, would he need to sneak around and wait until nighttime?
The first-year battle-hardened delinquent who challenged the rules—that title wasn't a joke~
"Kid, I ought to remind you of something." Filch slapped a note down in front of Harry. "Don't forget, you and Granger were also given detention for allegedly tricking Draco Malfoy. You're supposed to patrol the Forbidden Forest tonight at eleven!"
Malfoy had accused Harry and Hermione when he was caught. And since everyone knew he and Harry didn't get along, it made sense that the Granger Siblings would be given detention over a baseless accusation... Yeah, right!
Harry saw right through it. Even if he hadn't had a thing to do with that whole mess, there was no way he was getting out of detention tonight!
The first school year was almost over, and someone was clearly getting anxious~
"Mr. Filch, do you think I'm a child?" Harry asked with a faint smile.
"A child?" Filch was taken aback, then immediately shook his head. "You're a child, my foot! You're a little firecracker!"
After sleeping... er, living with Harry for so long, Filch considered himself to know him inside and out. He would never mistake Harry for an ordinary child.
In his eyes, Harry was as sly as they came, just like the old hands he'd heard about who hung around Knockturn Alley.
"Oh, my... That's quite a high opinion you have of me~" Harry shrugged helplessly, though an amused smile gradually crept across his face. "Fortunately, some people are finally starting to see things your way."
That was right. The person in the Headmaster's Office had finally begun to realize that he couldn't keep treating Harry like a child.
At the very least, the dragon-rearing business should have made it clear that Harry was more mature than Hagrid!
Hagrid could only cry and beg to be allowed to raise Norbert, but Harry could arrange everything so smoothly that no one would notice. That was the difference between them!
And it was this difference, which someone had finally realized, that had led to tonight's inexplicable detention.
"Some people... What are you plotting now?" Filch had no idea what Harry meant. The kid seemed to be getting more and more cryptic lately.
"Just talking to myself~" Harry waved a hand and smiled. "Mr. Filch, could you tell Hermione that her detention tonight is canceled?"
"All right." Filch nodded, agreeing readily.
After he left, the curve of Harry's lips gradually faded.
He was on good terms with Filch, but not so close that Filch would do whatever he said. So if Filch was being this accommodating, it was obvious someone had given him instructions.
Harry couldn't tell whether this was a good thing or a bad one.
But at least the other person was willing to play this sort of riddle with him, the kind that a child shouldn't be able to figure out. That meant the way they saw him was beginning to shift toward seeing him as an adult.
"Looks like I can't get out of tonight's social engagement... Oh well, I'll go early and come back early~"
As night fell, Harry covered himself with the Invisibility Cloak and took the wand he had gotten from Hermione earlier. Without attracting anyone's attention, he left Hogwarts Castle alone.
It was time to visit the Forbidden Forest.
Hogwarts' Forbidden Forest was off-limits to students except in special circumstances. But the ban wasn't all that strict. Many students had sneaked into the woods while the groundskeeper wasn't looking.
The Weasley Brothers, for example. And Harry, right now.
In the original story, Harry and Malfoy should have arrived here at eleven that night. But Harry had come just after nightfall, well ahead of schedule.
He was looking for that centaur... er, that Centaur.
The incident in the Forbidden Forest in the original story had been a little bloody, and Harry didn't want Hermione to see it. He also couldn't be bothered to go with Malfoy, so he had simply come by himself.
Find the Centaur quickly, preferably before running into Voldemort. Listen to him ramble on and assign Harry the main quest, then hurry back to bed... That was Harry's plan for tonight.
In other words, he was just here to go through the motions~
But before he could find the Centaur, he spotted silvery-white streaks of blood on the forest floor.
Looking at the beautiful figure not far in front of him, bathing in moonlight and licking at its wounds, Harry—hidden beneath the Invisibility Cloak—couldn't decide whether to be grateful or upset about his luck.
At the same time, the scar on his forehead was starting to hurt more and more...
The Unicorn Had Been Sacrificed
A Unicorn—Harry had to admit, it was an exceptionally beautiful creature.
In appearance, a Unicorn was simply a white horse with a spiral horn. But the 'white horse' before Harry was surrounded by a faint glow, like a forest darling basking in the moonlight alone.
Even with its mane in disarray and its body mottled with wounds and blood, it still possessed an ethereal grace that made one want to draw near.
Harry could hear cries of magic coming from it, one after another. The plaintive sounds burrowed into his ears and left him in turmoil. At one point, he had even wanted to drop his cover and rush to help.
But Harry had held himself back. Tonight, he was only here to carry out Dumbledore's assignment. He didn't want to complicate matters, and he especially didn't want to suffer the same grotesque visual trauma from Voldemort as in the original story~
"Ho..."
But when he heard that terrifying groan drawing nearer, and the wound on his forehead began to throb with pain, his fists finally clenched of their own accord...
The forest grew restless. The Unicorn's struggles sent dead leaves and twigs flying everywhere. It kept tossing its horn around, trying to drive off the enemy that had been hunting it with this display of bravado.
But the greedy shadow in black robes kept sending curses from its body, striking the Unicorn again and again and drawing pained cries from it.
At last, its injuries left the Unicorn unable to fend off the black-robed figure. As it fell helplessly to the ground, the figure seized it roughly by the neck!
The attacker seemed not to notice Harry at all—or perhaps he was simply too impatient to wait. He pressed the Unicorn to the ground and leaned his disgusting mouth toward its wound!!
"..."
As its life neared its end, the beautiful creature didn't let out a single cry. It only looked helplessly toward the place where Harry was hidden, its eyes seemingly filled with despair.
Watching the light in its eyes grow dimmer and dimmer, and hearing the faint, threadlike voice of magic from its body, Harry felt anger flare in his chest!
All those thoughts about not complicating things, about not revealing his strength in front of Voldemort, were swept away in an instant!
Fuck! Was he really going to let this bastard do whatever he wanted right in front of him?
So what if he was the boss?!
Get him!!
"Waddiwasi!!"
Harry yanked off the Invisibility Cloak and whipped his arm forward. Under the force of the Waddiwasi Spell, a brand-new brick shot out of the Space Ring like a cannonball and slammed squarely into the black-robed figure's face!!
"Waaah!!"
The black-robed figure let out a shrill scream. The sudden brick knocked him head over heels, forcing him to let go of the delicacy that had been just within reach.
"Go!" Harry roared. He didn't know whether the Unicorn could understand him, but he raised his wand and struck at Voldemort again!
Lumos Solem! Expelliarmus!
One Lumos Solem blinded the attacker, and one Expelliarmus sent the black-robed monster flying again. The Unicorn, which had been on the verge of death, took the chance to get up and stagger behind Harry.
"Ha...rry Po...tter, you dare?!"
The black-robed monster roared furiously. But the brick had evidently knocked out one of his front teeth, because not only did he get Harry's name wrong, he had a noticeable lisp, too.
The guy was still formidable with magic, though. Harry hadn't even heard him cast a spell. The black-robed monster had only flailed around for a moment before vines suddenly sprouted and bound Harry tightly against a dead tree.
The vines tightened further, but the black-robed monster seemed to have no time to deal with Harry. He immediately threw himself onto the ground and began lapping at the blood the Unicorn had spilled!
"To stay alive, you're willing to turn yourself into this?" Harry frowned slightly. Honestly, he felt that Voldemort was a little pitiful.
He was supposed to be a fearsome Dark Lord, but now he was like a defeated stray dog, lying on the ground and swallowing blood mixed with dirt without a shred of dignity... The sight was too twisted.
But on the other hand, there was often a good reason for someone to be pitiful!
And Harry hated Voldemort to the core!
After finally seeing the possessed Voldemort in person, Harry realized he couldn't ignore him as he had thought he could when he first arrived in this world.
He kept thinking of that night eleven years ago, of the devil's hideous laughter, and of that flash of sickly green light!
The man in front of him—the thing that was neither man nor ghost—had killed his parents in this life?!
That was...
Unbearable!!
Buzz!!
The tangled vines shattered. The Obscurus became a terrifying gale, driven by Harry's fury, and howled toward Voldemort!!
"Damn it!" The instant the Obscurus wrapped around Voldemort, Harry heard a gloomy roar.
The black-robed monster then quickly floated backward, leaving behind only a bloodstained scrap of robe.
"He ran just like that... So much for a boss having any presence."
After silently sneering at Voldemort for fleeing the battle, Harry could only laugh bitterly at the plot of the Sorcerer's Stone, which he had more or less figured out by now.
Quirrell, possessed by Voldemort, was powerful, but he was surely no match for the Dark Lord at his peak. At least, in Harry's eyes, his teacher Professor Flitwick might well have been stronger.
And yet Dumbledore let someone like that run amok through the school. It was obvious he had already given up on treating Quirrell, and was instead using him as a pawn to scheme against Voldemort.
"Ah, you poor thing. You were being used, too~"
The Unicorn hadn't gone far before it fell to the ground again. By the time Harry reached it, it was still wary of him, but it could no longer stand.
"I was wrong not to save you right away. I'm truly sorry..."
As he cleaned the Unicorn's wounds and staunched the bleeding, Harry kept apologizing softly.
This wasn't the first Unicorn Voldemort had attacked. Hagrid had worriedly told Harry earlier that one had died last Wednesday. And earlier this week, this Unicorn had already been ambushed and badly wounded.
Dumbledore must have known about it, too. He must have known that the weakened Voldemort would come back to attack the wounded Unicorn, or he couldn't have timed the detention so perfectly.
So the Unicorns in the Forbidden Forest were like Quirrell: pawns, things that could be sacrificed...
No. They were different from Quirrell, who was already under Voldemort's control.
A Unicorn was a completely innocent life. It hadn't been abandoned—it had been sacrificed!
Harry knew all these abandonments and sacrifices had been meant to make him face Voldemort.
But... why?
What was so special about him that made Dumbledore pay so much attention to him, keep his eyes fixed on him, and even risk dragging the lives of others into it?!
"Are you all right?!"
A shout arrived with the clatter of hooves. A powerful figure came to an abrupt halt in front of Harry, raising a pair of front legs high into the air!
The Centaur had arrived!
Firenze's Silence Had Its Reasons
A Centaur was, as the name suggested, half human and half horse. The one in front of Harry looked fairly young. He had platinum-blond hair and the body of an Abraxan.
Before you continue