Hiss—
A ripple of collective gasps broke out among the crowd gathered before the castle gates. The young wizards who'd retreated cautiously into the entrance hall came pouring back out at the sound, staring at the little filly, entirely unable to tear their eyes away from her.
This centaur-like creature called Polly stood quite a bit shorter than the centaur beside her, Magorian—barely taller, in fact, than Professor Dumbledore himself.
Whatever else she represented diplomatically, she was, in physical terms, nothing more than a small, delicate filly, through and through.
Her coat gleamed like a blanket stretched over something extremely fine in a shimmering platinum-gold that caught what little light remained in the dusk sky. And in that same dying light, her mane took on a soft, powdery pink that seemed to shift and deepen with every small movement of her head.
With her two large, luminous eyes and her long, jet-black lashes framing them, she looked as lovely and entirely otherworldly as something stepped directly out of the pages of a fairy tale.
The young witches of Hogwarts fixed the little filly Polly with burning, hungry eyes, aching to rush forward and simply sweep into their arms this creature more beautiful than any unicorn they'd ever glimpsed.
Even Pansy Parkinson, moments ago spitting venom about filthy monsters, stared at the filly now, dumbstruck and entirely speechless, her earlier complaints were apparently forgotten.
Not everyone in the crowd was quite so taken with Polly, though.
Draco, for one, wasn't.
Compared to this rather striking centaur, he found himself considerably more interested in the children Professor Watson had brought along from the forest—he could sense something distinctive about them, some particular quality he couldn't yet name but felt drawn to regardless.
"They don't look half-blood—"
Nott eyed the children with suspicion.
"There can't possibly be that many pureblood descendants scattered across Britain that we don't already know about through the usual family records, so… they must be foreigners. Do either of you know them? Come to think of it—they are human, aren't they?"
"I'd think so. They don't look like Veela to me."
Draco murmured, still watching Professor Watson rather than the children directly.
"But I don't know them either, no. Maybe Professor Watson invited them over from some other magic school."
"Well then, my task here is done for the evening. I should be getting back to the herd without further delay."
Magorian gave a perfunctory, distinctly abbreviated bow toward Bryan and Dumbledore, as if he genuinely couldn't bear to spend even one additional second standing on wizarding soil longer than the arrangement required.
"Take care of yourself, Polly—"
Before he turned to leave, Magorian spoke to Polly with a voice tinged with something that sounded distinctly like guilt, as though the little filly had already, in some sense, been cast out from her own herd simply by being sent here.
"Don't you worry yourself, Polly—"
Hagrid seemed to know the little filly rather well already. He said it with his usual bluff, uncomplicated cheer.
"I can take yeh back ter visit every single weekend, easy as anything—jus' say the word and we'll go."
"Thank you, Hagrid—"
The little filly said shyly. She'd noticed, how many eyes were fixed on her from every direction, and it frightened her somewhat, though she could tell, that the attention held no malice behind it.
"The students are only curious about you, Polly. After all, they've never seen a filly quite so—well, quite so lovely as you are."
Bryan smiled gently down at her.
"Thank you, Professor Watson."
Polly scraped nervously at the ground with one hoof.
....
"I believe our last guests have arrived as well—"
Professor Dumbledore said with a twinkling smile across his face as he glanced toward the great iron gates now swinging open at the far end of the drive.
Colin's earlier guess, as it turned out, proved to be half right. The goblins had indeed come to Hogwarts by carriage though not the grand, gilded sort typically used at Gringotts, simply the ordinary school carriages drawn by their usual, invisible Thestrals.
The first to step down from the leading carriage was an old goblin Harry recognised immediately; he'd seen this same face before, up in the viewing box during the first task of the Triwizard Tournament.
Filch, having led the carriages up from the gates, brought them to a smooth halt directly before the staff.
"Professor Dumbledore, Professor Watson—"
The elderly goblin, Gerson Barnah, climbed down from his seat with visible, careful difficulty, supported firmly by another, younger goblin at his elbow, and offered his formal greetings once both feet were properly on solid ground.
Both Dumbledore and Bryan crouched down low to properly embrace the elderly goblin in turn.
"I hadn't expected you to lead the delegation here yourself, Gerson—"
Dumbledore said warmly.
"Ah, the goblins understand well the importance of this particular exchange, Professor Dumbledore. We didn't dare take an arrangement of this significance lightly."
Barnah's deep wrinkles eased into a cheerful, genuinely pleased smile.
"I half-feared, if I'm honest, that the goblins had changed their minds somewhere along the way and decided against coming after all—"
Bryan, who evidently knew Barnah rather better than most, glanced briefly toward the sun—now half-sunk beneath the distant horizon and said in a lightly teasing tone.
"Was it the International Trade Department holding things up? Too much red tape somewhere along the process?"
"We were indeed held up by certain matters this afternoon, but not Ministry business, no,"
Barnah chuckled richly.
"Mr. Lupin is a fine and thoroughly capable official in that particular department. He can handle the trade negotiations entirely on his own merits—I merely offered a suggestion or two in passing, nothing more. No, what actually held us up was… I brought the students here some small gifts—"
"There was truly no need for that, Barnah—"
Bryan shook his head lightly with a trace of helplessness in his expression.
"It's nothing especially extravagant, I promise you—"
Barnah said, waving off the concern.
The goblin who'd been supporting him at the elbow snapped his fingers, and the curtain drawn across the window of another carriage pulled itself back to reveal an interior space widened magically far beyond its external, ordinary-looking dimensions, packed nearly to bursting with a small mountain of wrapped gift boxes.
"Only quills, that's all, really—"
Bryan and Dumbledore exchanged a quick, telling glance between themselves at the sheer scale of "only quills."
After a moment's further thought, Dumbledore nodded gratefully, accepting the gesture in the spirit it was plainly intended.
"On behalf of every student here at Hogwarts, I thank you sincerely for your generosity, Gerson—"
With that, Dumbledore drew his own wand and gave it a single, sharp flick toward the carriage like a whip cracking through still air.
Nearly a thousand gift boxes rose smoothly into the darkening air all at once, moving swiftly but never once colliding or growing chaotic in their flight, settling one by one into the bewildered, outstretched hands of the young wizards gathered below.
They were, indeed, only quills inside but self-correcting ones, their wooden barrels etched with elegant gilt patterns that doubled cleverly as a non-slip grip for the writing hand.
"Seventeen Galleons apiece!"
Hermione blurted out to Harry the very moment she'd opened her own box.
"I saw these at Scribbulus Writing Implements over the summer—far too expensive for what they are, I thought at the time. I never once let myself actually buy one!"
Rich goblins indeed, handing out what amounted to nearly twenty thousand Galleons' worth of quills as nothing more than a casual courtesy gift to an entire school!
Harry wasn't remotely the only one running that particular calculation in his head; plenty of the young wizards around him were clearly thinking the exact same startled thought.
But the practical effect of the gift was plain to see almost immediately. The young wizards found that the ten identical goblins now walking down together from the remaining carriages didn't look quite so unpleasant to look at anymore.
"I've also brought along some books, while I'm at it—"
The silver-tongued old goblin was hardly one to neglect the professors in his generosity. He'd prepared a separate copy for every single member of staff—a handsome volume bound in silver and gold leaf, its cover engraved with the title Chronicle of Twin Moons.
"Compiled by goblin historians over several generations. It recounts a good portion of our people's history since the Middle Ages, translated properly for the first time into a form your own scholars might actually make use of—"
Barnah said.
"Ah, my genuine thanks for this. History is the most precious of treasures any people can offer another—through it, one glimpses the remarkable, hard-won wisdom of a whole civilisation. I've no doubt this book will help all of us understand your kind considerably better than we currently do—"
Dumbledore accepted his copy with real, visible pleasure.
Filch had brought four carriages up from the gates in total: one carrying Barnah and his personal attendants, one loaded entirely with the promised gifts, one carrying the goblins who'd actually come to Hogwarts specifically for the exchange programme itself and the last carriage, which showed no sign of any movement at all, its curtains were drawn tight against the gathering dark.
"I imagine they're feeling a touch shy—"
Bryan said with a small chuckle, and walked over himself to open the still door and draw back the heavy curtain personally.
Inside, the carriage sat entirely empty of obvious light and dim throughout, the air within was strangely cold compared to the mild evening outside.
In the vast, shadowed cabin sat only two passengers—a boy and a girl, both of them were children by appearance.
Looking at the two small figures tucked into the gloom, Bryan smiled warmly.
"We've arrived, my most distinguished lord and lady. Whatever are you both still doing sitting in here?"
The boy inside jumped, startled badly by Bryan's face suddenly poking through the open doorway into the carriage. He stammered out a response, glancing nervously toward the girl sitting across from him for some cue.
"B-because… n-nobody told me to get out yet, and, and she still hasn't gotten off either, so I thought—"
Bryan turned his gaze smoothly toward the girl instead.
"The sun hasn't fully set yet—"
The little girl eyed Bryan with clear, unmistakable wariness then said, in a voice young and clear but tinged with a certain haughty, practised coldness:
"I don't care for moving about while the sun's still up."
Even as she spoke the words, the very last ray of visible light sank fully below the distant horizon behind her.
The moon had not yet gathered its full strength for the night, and the castle, blazing now with warm light against the deepening dark, shone as bright and full of promise as the fire Prometheus was said to have stolen from the gods in Greek mythology.
"I believe now would be precisely the moment, then."
Bryan paid no particular mind to the rudeness in the girl's tone. Smiling, he extended one hand into the carriage with gentlemanly grace, offering it for her to take.
When the last two passengers of that final, mysterious carriage finally stepped down onto the gravel drive, another fresh wave of murmurs broke out immediately among the young wizards.
The boy with his chestnut hair a little tousled from the journey, though handsome enough in his own right—drew some attention of his own from a few curious eyes. Yet far, far more attention turned instead toward the girl walking just behind him.
Against the backdrop of so many ordinary, robed wizards standing in loose clusters across the lawn, this particular girl was dressed far too magnificently for the occasion.
She looked as though she'd stepped directly out of some medieval fairy tale—a princess emerging from an old, forgotten castle—dressed in a deep black cake-style gown trimmed with white tassels, white cotton socks tucked neatly into small black leather shoes, her hair was cascading like a dark waterfall over both shoulders, her face was finer and more precisely composed than anything the most skilled craftsman alive could ever hope to properly shape from mere stone or paint.
"A Veela!"
Feeling a distinct heat and restlessness stirring somewhere in his own blood, Ron delivered his verdict without a single shred of doubt.
"Right, then! Everyone—!"
Bryan, who'd been on the verge of ushering the students properly in toward the dining hall for the evening's feast, suddenly remembered something important and clapped one hand sharply to his own forehead.
"Kreacher! Freodom! Dobby!"
The three house-elves appeared out of the cool evening air in quick series, each one visibly quaking with nerves, and only once all three had properly, fully appeared before him did Bryan finally say in high spirits:
"Come on, then, everyone—let's eat!"
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