within striking distance of Harry.
Harry didn’t dare look up to the sky. “That means Mars is coming closer to the Earth, as both planets go around the Sun. Mars is reflecting the same amount of sunlight as always, it’s just getting nearer to us. What do you mean, the stars proclaim my innocence?”
“The night sky speaks to centaurs. It is how we know what we know. Or do they not even tell wizards that much, these days?” A look of contempt crossed the centaur’s face.
“I… tried to look up centaurs, when I was checking out Divination. Most of the authors just ridiculed centaur Divination without explaining why, wizards don’t understand argumentative norms, to them ridiculing an idea or a person feels like casting that idea down just as much as bringing evidence against it… I thought the part about centaurs using astrology was just more ridicule…”
“Why?” the centaur intoned. His head cocked curiously.
“Because the course of the planets is predictable for thousands of years in advance. If I talked to the right Muggles, I could show you a diagram of exactly what the planets will look like from this spot ten years later. Would you be able to make predictions from that?”
The centaur shook his head. “From a diagram? No. The light of the planets, the comets, the subtle shifts in the stars themselves, those I would not see.”
“Cometary orbits are also set thousands of years in advance so they shouldn’t correlate much to current events. And the light of the stars takes years to travel from the stars to Earth, and the stars don’t move much at all, not visibly. So the obvious hypothesis is that centaurs have a native magical talent for Divination which you just, well, project onto the night sky.”
“Perhaps,” the centaur said thoughtfully. His head lowered. “The others would strike you for saying such a thing, but I have ever sought to know what I do not know. Why the night sky can foretell the future— that I surely do not know. It is hard enough to grasp the skill itself. All I can say, son of Lily, is that even if what you are saying is true, it does not seem useful.”
Harry allowed himself to relax a little; being addressed as ‘son of Lily’ implied that the centaur thought of him as more than a random intruder in the forest. Besides, attacking a Hogwarts student would probably bring some kind of huge reprisal upon the non-wizard centaur tribe in the forests, and the centaur probably knew that… “What Muggles have learned is that there is a power in the truth, in all the pieces of the truth which interact with each other, which you can only find by discovering as many truths as possible. To do that you can’t defend false beliefs in any way, not even by saying the false belief is useful. It might not seem to matter whether your predictions are really based on the stars or if it’s an innate talent being projected. But if you wanted to really understand Divination, or for that matter the stars, the real truth about centaur predictions would be a fact that matters to other truths.”
Slowly the centaur nodded. “So the wandless have become wiser than the wizards. What a joke! Tell me, son of Lily, do the Muggles in their wisdom say that soon the skies will be empty?”
“Empty?” Harry said. “Er… no?”
“The other centaurs in this forest have stayed from your presence, for we are sworn not to set ourselves against the heavens’ course. Because, in becoming entangled in your fate, we might become less innocent in what is to come. I alone have dared approach you.”
“I… don’t understand.”
“No. You are innocent, as the stars say. And to slay something innocent to save oneself, that is a terrible deed. One would live only a cursed life, a half-life, from that day. For any centaur would surely be cast out, if he slew a foal.”
The spear made a lightning motion, too fast for Harry’s eyes to follow, and smashed his wand out of his hand.
Another powerful blow smashed into Harry’s solar plexus, and he went gasping and retching to the forest floor.
Harry’s hand reached up toward his robes, for his Time-Turner, and the spear-butt knocked his hand away, almost hard enough to break fingers, he reached with his other hand and that was knocked away too—
“I am sorry, Harry Potter,” the centaur said, and then looked up with widened eyes. The spear spun about and came up, intercepting a red spellbolt. Then the centaur dropped the spear and leaped away desperately, a green flash of light went past him and another green flash of light followed in its wake, then a third green flash hit the centaur straight-on.
The centaur fell and did not move again.
It took a long time for Harry to catch his breath, to stagger to his feet, to pick up his wand, to croak, “What?”
By that time the sense of doom, of power almost tangible in the air, had approached once more.
“P-Professor Quirrell? What are you doing here?”
“Well,” the man in the black cloak said thoughtfully, “you needed to fly into a rage and have a loud tantrum in the Forbidden Forest in the middle of the night, and I needed to go just outside your ability to detect me and keep watch. One does not leave a student alone in the Forbidden Forest.
That should be obvious in retrospect.” Harry stared at the fallen centaur.
The horse-form wasn’t breathing.
“You—you killed him, that was Avada Kedavra—”
“I do not always understand how other people imagine morality to work, Mr. Potter. But even I know that on conventional morality, it is acceptable to kill nonhuman creatures which are about to slay a wizard child. Perhaps you do not care about the nonhuman part, but he was about to kill you. He was hardly innocent—”
The Defense Professor stopped, looking at Harry, who had raised one trembling hand to his mouth.
“Well,” the Defense Professor said then, “I have made my point, and you may think on it. Centaur spears can block many spells, but no one tries to block if they see that the spell is a certain shade of green. For this purpose it is useful to know some green stunning hexes. Really, Mr. Potter, you should understand by now how I operate.”
The Defense Professor came nearer the centaur’s body, and Harry took an involuntary step back, then another, at the terrible rising sense of STOP, DON’T—
The Defense Professor kneeled and pressed his wand to the centaur’s head.
The wand stayed there for a time.
And the centaur rose, eyes blank, breathing once more.
“Remember nothing of this time,” the Defense Professor commanded. “Wander away and forget everything about this night.”
The centaur walked away, the four horse-legs moving in strange synchrony.
“Happy now?” the Defense Professor said, sounding rather sardonic about it.
Harry’s brain still felt broken. “He was trying to kill me.”
“Oh, for Merlin’s sake—yes, he was trying to kill you. Get used to it.
Only boring people never have that experience.”
Harry’s voice emerged, hoarse. “Why—why did he want to—”
“Any number of reasons. I would be lying if I said I’d never considered killing you myself.”
Harry stared at where the centaur had wandered into the trees.
His brain still felt half-broken, like an engine misfiring, but Harry did not see how this could possibly be a good sign.
The news of Draco Malfoy nearly being eaten by a horror had been sufficient to summon back Dumbledore from wherever he’d gone, to wake Lord Malfoy and the Lady Greengrass’s handsome husband, to bring forth Amelia Bones. The supposed presence of the horror had provoked skepticism even from Dumbledore, and the possibility of False Memory Charms had been raised. Harry had said (after some internal debate about the consequences of people believing a demon was on the loose) that he didn’t actually remember making the same effort he’d put forth to frighten the Dementor, the dark thing had just left; which was what you would expect someone to create as a False Memory, if they hadn’t actually known how Harry had done it. The names of Bellatrix Black, Severus Snape, and Quirinus Quirrell had been mentioned in connection with wizards strong enough to subdue everyone present and cast False Memory Charms, and Harry had known that Lucius was thinking of Dumbledore. There had been Aurors testifying, and discussions going in circles, and glares of accusation, and cutting remarks at 2am in the morning. There had been motions, and votes, and consequences.