Stay away from him

A brief silence fell over the little clearing in the woods.

The spiders did not lunge, and the Aurors did not reply. The Ford Anglia sat in the mud, its engine humming, its player still leaking that wildly inappropriate Muggle tune.

"Dulu~dulu~" echoed through the Forbidden Forest, completely out of time with the clicking of the spiders' pincers.

The oldest of the three Aurors—

a tall, dark-brown-skinned man wearing a deep blue Auror robe—

was the first to recover.

With some effort, he suppressed the shock on his face and restored the expression expected of a trained professional confronting something utterly outside the scope of his training.

But the young witch beside him could not manage that.

Her hair had been pink. The instant she saw Gavin, it flashed pale gold, jumped back to pink, then settled on a bright bubblegum shade.

The third Auror crouched on the ground, a wound on his left arm still oozing blood. His voice sounded strange.

"Shacklebolt—have I already been poisoned? Am I seeing a kid driving the Weasley family's car and playing music with his wand?"

Just then, one spider moved—

as though it could no longer restrain itself, it lunged.

"Watch out!"

The Auror named Shacklebolt immediately shouted, raising his wand to cast a Spider Repelling Charm.

But Gavin was faster.

With a flick of his wand, blue flames sprouted on top of the spider's head while it was still in midair.

"Screee—"

The spider immediately fell, rolling over and over on the ground as it shrieked in agony.

Before long, it could make no sound at all—

because its head had burned away.

The three Aurors stared, their eyes widening.

These spiders were highly resistant to magic. The Spider Repelling Charm could only drive them back, not actually kill them.

Even