Chapter 164 - 164 Rolf and Luna
Chapter 164: Rolf and Luna
The light of the moon shone through the trees into the forbidden forest, and the trees of varying heights shed mottled black shadows, as if they were ghosts.
The snow-covered pine trees swayed, occasionally dropping a few loose snowflakes onto a head of disheveled, dirty blonde hair.
"Maybe we\'ll find it?" Luna grabbed some crumbs of snow from her hair and watched with a somewhat dazed expression as it gradually melted into her hands.
Rolf looked helplessly at the somewhat crazy little witch, wanting to say something.
"I still can\'t believe that magical creatures like bent-horned hearty beasts, bubble-nosed monsters and codling hooks really exist?" He asked, "I don\'t understand how my grandfather, who is considered an authority on magical creatures, has searched his whole life and found no trace of these magical creatures you say exist."
Rolf and Luna quickly became good friends as desk mates in Potions class.
Rolf was pleasantly surprised to find that Luna was also very interested in magical animals, just like himself, and often talked about those cute little guys.
What surprised him even more was that Luna confidently admitted that she knew about many rare magical creatures that had not been recorded in Where the Magical Creatures Are, such as the Bent Horned Hearty Beast, the Bubble Snot Monster, the Coddling Hook, and the Harassing Gadfly. ...
So after a month of thoroughly familiarizing himself with Hogwarts Castle and its surroundings, Rolf made it a point to invite Luna to join him on a nighttime excursion into the Forbidden Forest to look for signs of those new creatures.
Luna gave Rolf a somewhat surprised look, as if she couldn\'t believe that her friend would be suspicious of these magical creatures.
"Of course it\'s true, my dad got the horn of a bent-horned hearty beast once." She said with a serious look on her face, "I have that horn with me all the time ..."
"What? There\'s actually such an important piece of evidence?!" Rolf instantly became excited and couldn\'t wait to come over to Luna\'s side, "Take it out and take a look!"
Luna\'s face was calm as she peeled inside her silver sequin-encrusted robe, a string of chains made of metal bottle caps rattling around inside her clothes, emitting a crisp ringing sound.
"Found it."
She found a large what looked like a rhinoceros horn from the top of one of the strands of chain, and held it up to Rolf\'s eyes.
"Look." Luna said in a fluttering tone.
Rolf excitedly turned his sight to the large animal horn in Luna\'s hand, his heart especially exhilarated.
He felt that he could be recognized by his grandfather as one of the youngest magical zoologists in the magical world if he could help Luna confirm the existence of the bent-horned hearty beast!
However, the next moment, Rolf\'s hopeful eyes went out.
"Luna, you\'re telling me that this is the horn of the Bent Horned Sound Beast?" His face stiffened a bit, and he seemed to have an urge to curse, but he didn\'t have the heart to do so in front of Luna.
"Uh-huh!" Luna nodded gently with a calm face.
"But this is actually the horn of a poisonous horned beast ah ..." Rolf covered his face helplessly, thinking in his heart that his dream of being a magical zoologist wouldn\'t be realized for a while, I\'m afraid.
"Luna, were you tricked by your father?" He asked.
"I can feel that this is the horn of the Bent Horned Sound Beast." Luna cupped her hands around the large animal horn and said in a firm tone, "The Bent Horned Sound Beast will definitely help us tonight."
Rolf despaired.
He always felt that according to Luna\'s unreliability in talking about the so-called "Bent Horned Beast", it was very likely that the other magical animals not discovered by Newt were also either fabricated by her or lied to by her father. ...
"I knew ... there was no way my grandfather could have missed so many magical creatures after a lifetime of busy work." Rolf said helplessly, "Forget it, anyway, this time we came to the Forbidden Forest not only to find those few magical animals."
"The little curly-winged devil still has no food for these days ... I can\'t go and steal the little sheep that Hagrid raised again, he seems to have already realized that the sheep is lost, and today I saw him reinforcing the fence where the sheep is penned."
Listening to Rolf\'s skepticism, Luna, however, seemed to take this in stride, and looked as if she cared nothing at all. Her hands were still cupped around the bent-horned sound beast, or poison horn, and her eyes drifted around the forbidden forest.
"Rolf, haven\'t you stolen like ten sheep this month? Did Hagrid not realize until now?" She asked curiously.
"Ahem, Hagrid was a bit careless and never counted the number of sheep." Rolf said with some embarrassment, "That is, I\'ve been stealing a bit too much lately, and at a glance it looked out of place, which aroused suspicion."
"I\'d say so ...," Luna looked thoughtfully at the snow-covered floor, "Lamb has been showing up a lot at meals in the auditorium lately."
Upon hearing this clueless remark, Rolf\'s expression became even more awkward.
Magical animals like Curlwing Demons usually fed on the brains of animals, and undomesticated Curlwing Demons even preferred to eat the brains of humans.
Rolf had to feed the Curlwing Demon he carried with him on time in order to keep the Curlwing Demon from getting too hungry and prevent his own brain from being eaten first.
So he hit upon the small stockyard that Hagrid, the Hogwarts Hunt Warden, had circled by the Forbidden Forest ...
Every few days, Rolf would go to Hagrid\'s sheepfold to steal a sheep and feed its brains to the curly-winged demons.
As for the rest of the lamb, he would use the convenience of the location of the Hufflepuff common room to find a time when no one was around to sneak it inside the Hogwarts kitchens and give it to the house elf working in the kitchens to dispose of.
Luna, although she looked crazy, had unknowingly seen the truth and guessed that the recent changes in the auditorium\'s recipes must have been caused by Rolf.
Just then, the curled winged demon curled into a large green cocoon in Rolf\'s coat pocket stirred.
"Hold your horses for a moment, little one, I promise I\'ll find something else to eat today." Rolf hurriedly patted the bulging pocket to calm down the curled-winged demon.
He then looked over at Luna and smiled helplessly, "Curlywing Demon is hungry."
"And this little guy is also a picky eater, it has eaten sheep\'s brain too many times during this period of time, it has long felt dissatisfied, and was even protesting with me a few days ago." Rolf said.
Luna cocked her head and glanced at Rolf\'s bulging shirt pocket, what looked like an orange radish and was actually called a blimp Lee\'s earring bobbing just below her earlobe.
"So what are we waiting for?" And without seeing her square her head, she just cocked her head and said to Rolf, "Hurry up and go find food for the curly-winged demon!"
With that, she hopped towards the depths of the forbidden forest.
Rolf looked at Luna\'s back when she said she was leaving and didn\'t react for a moment, and froze for a while before following.
...
Rolf and Luna\'s luck was quite good, and it didn\'t take long to spot a big, fat boar.
Rolf made an instant decision to throw the Curled Wing Demon.
The Curled Wing Demon immediately changed from the form of a cocoon, spreading its wings to take the form of a large blue-green butterfly, and very skillfully wrapped the boar\'s head with its two spiked wings.
"The next image will be a bit gory, why don\'t you look somewhere else first?" Rolf thought of the curled-winged demon\'s hunting method and looked at Luna beside him with some concern.
He felt that such a simple little witch should not be able to accept such a bloody and brutal hunting scene.
However, Luna gently shook her head, her face calm as she looked at the picture in front of her -
The boar, wrapped around its head and blindfolded, felt the sharp pain coming from its head and began to struggle violently.
It was blindfolded by the Curled Wing Demon\'s wings, and with darkness before its eyes, it couldn\'t see the direction, so it could only run around aimlessly, wailing, and flinging its head around like a madman in an attempt to shake off the Curled Wing Demon on its head.
However, the small body of the curled-winged demon was exceptionally powerful, firmly imprisoning the boar\'s head, never giving it any chance to break free.
As time passed, the boar\'s struggles gradually became weak.
Finally, its fat body fell heavily on the snow, splashing a flying snowflake ...
The curled-winged demon ate and drank enough, retracted its wings, flew up from the boar\'s head, and once again landed back on Rolf\'s palm, changing back to its cocoon-like form.
The boar on the ground, however, was drenched in blood on its head, and a large hole seemed to have hollowed out in the back of its head, the skin on that part of the brain drying out, and nothing left in the large hole but a patch of still-flowing blood.
"Are you okay, Luna?" Rolf looked at the bloody scene and rushed to look at Luna beside him, wanting to comfort and console her young mind.
However, he was surprised to find that Luna didn\'t have a trace of fear on her face, but was only slightly dazed, her eyes foggy.
"What\'s wrong with you, Luna?" Rolf asked with some concern. He felt that this display was beyond his comprehension.
"Nothing, I have friends over." Luna shook her head and looked toward a few pine trees near the boar neighborhood.
Rolf moved his eyes over as well, but saw nothing.
"Crap, Luna couldn\'t have been scared silly by this bloodshed, could she?" He was shocked and hurriedly reached out his hand in front of Luna\'s eyes, "Luna ... Luna ... do you still recognize me?"
"I\'m really fine, Rolf." Luna smiled very happily as she watched Rolf\'s behavior, "It\'s true a few friends have come here."
Rolf willfully moved his eyes once again to where Luna was looking, but still found nothing but the unchanging pine trees and snow in the distance.
\'Surely it\'s still Luna\'s brain that\'s freaking out.\' He secretly made a judgment.
Just as Rolf wanted to turn around and forcefully take Luna to the school infirmary to see if she was sick, the accident suddenly happened---.
A horseshoe-like footprint suddenly landed on the snow-covered ground, very abrupt and clear, and in the blink of an eye, it connected from a single footprint to a piece.
The number of these footprints increased, but the eyes remained empty, as if the footprints had appeared out of nowhere.
The footprints extended out far and wide, stretching from behind a tall tree to the headless boar before stopping.
Immediately afterward, there was the frightening sight of the boar\'s meat being easily torn apart, yet pieces of it disappeared into the air ...
"Horseshoe-like footprints, invisible bodies, flesh-eating habits ..." Rolf muttered as he looked at the incomprehensible scene in front of him, "So there\'s a Night Tiara in the Forbidden Forest?!" He looked to Luna.
Luna nodded happily.
"It was Hagrid who adopted a baby Night Tiara decades ago, and then gradually nurtured it into a bunch as big as it is now." She explained, "The carriages at Hogwarts for the school holidays are pulled by night Ti\'s."
With that, Luna stepped forward and spoke happily into a patch of air.
"So that\'s what Hogwarts carriages are like?" Rolf froze.
He had arguably smuggled himself into Hogwarts with a door key, and had never ridden in, or even seen, a Hogwarts carriage at all, so he had absolutely no idea what Luna was talking about.
Wait, the point doesn\'t seem to be here ...
The point is, Luna actually chatted to herself with those Night Tiaras that Rolf couldn\'t see, and seemed to look like she was familiar with them.
Watching Luna\'s move of talking with the Night Ti, an extraordinarily complicated look emerged in Rolf\'s eyes.
After all, he was Rolf who was motivated to become a future magical zoologist, and even without having seen it with his own eyes, he was well aware of one of the Night Ti\'s major characteristics-
Only those who had truly witnessed death could see the Night Ti!
In other words, Luna had already truly witnessed death just by being a freshly enrolled Hogwarts grade?
Rolf hesitated for half a second, feeling like he was suddenly suffering from his grandfather\'s characteristic inability to speak, not knowing what to say.
"Bang," "Snort," "Bare." ...
Just then, a strange rattling in the distance suddenly caught Rolf and Luna\'s attention.
Rolf just didn\'t know what to say to comfort Luna and hurriedly changed the topic.
"It seems like someone is using magic deep in the Forbidden Forest." He walked over to Luna and whispered to her.
Luna\'s eyes drifted over there.
"Night Ti told me ... there is great danger in that direction." She said. The voice seemed more fluttering than the eyes.
"You can talk to Night Ti?" Rolf looked at Luna in shock.
"I can\'t understand what Night Ti is saying." Luna shook her head and said imploringly, "But it\'s easy to read what\'s going on in their eyes ah ..."
The corner of Rolf\'s mouth twitched, always feeling that what Luna said was a bit unreliable.
Reading what animals are thinking from their eyes ... He felt that his grandfather couldn\'t even do such an amazing thing.
"Harassing gadflies." Luna said suddenly.
"What?" Rolf froze.
"You\'re getting harassing gadflies in your head." Luna said, "I can see a whole bunch of harassing gadflies flying around in your brain."
Rolf, now in complete disbelief of the novelty of the magical creature coming out of Luna\'s mouth, just shrugged casually.
"So how am I going to drive them away?" He coped.
Luna reached out and tugged on Rolf\'s sleeve, handing him something like a rhino horn.