"Were my eyes playing tricks on me?" Harry said in disbelief, looking at the ripples still spreading across the lake. "I think I just saw a Runespoor?"
Just moments earlier, Hermione had used the Extreme Ice Charm to freeze a large stretch of the pitch-black lake.
The group had thought they could simply walk across the ice, but then something huge had suddenly emerged from the water in the distance, smashing through a great swath of it.
Thanks to the spell Daphne had cast earlier, Harry and the others had made out its shape. It was a snake-a great snake.
Its whole body was grayish white and very unpleasant to look at, but most importantly, the great snake actually had three heads.
Creatures with more than two heads were rare even in the Wizard World. Three heads were rarer still.
A three-headed snake-they all knew of one rather dangerous magical creature that fit that description: the Runespoor.
"Unless my eyes were playing tricks on me too," Sirius said. Clearly, he had seen it as well. Then he turned to Lupin beside him with a puzzled look. "Remus, can Runespoors grow that big?"
As Hogwarts' former Professor of Defense Against the Dark Arts, Lupin was just the right person to ask. Although he had spent the last several years as the CEO of a potions factory, presumably his professional knowledge would not have deserted him so quickly.
Sure enough, Lupin shook his head at the question. "Normally, it's already quite remarkable for a Runespoor to reach three or four meters. I've only ever seen a bigger one once, in an ancient tribe in Africa that had wizards. Their tribe's wizard was a Parseltongue, and he kept a Runespoor. It was a huge creature, a full ten meters long, but..."
Lupin's hesitation