Try and error
“Harry, my boy, what brings you here?“
“I wanted to know something, Professor. Do you know anything about horcruxes?“
“What?! No I don‘t know anything about such things and if I would, I would never tell them to a student of this school!“
“But-“
“No! Get out of here immediately!“
were the words that roamed Harry‘s mind as he walked through the forbidden forest.
Horcruxes, huh.
That was the only thing Harry hadn‘t found anything about in the library. And he had made one trip to the restricted section.
Guess another one‘s due.
The fact that he didn‘t find anything about them so far must mean one of two things.
Either, horcruxes were so rare and or so evil that there never was the possibility of including them in the library, or someone, probably Dumbledore, had removed them from there. Or a mixture of both.
He couldn‘t imagine that there was something so evil that it wasn‘t included in the library, especially considering what sort of evil some of the books there contained.
He shuddered.
However, this was Lord Voldemort that he was talking about and he reckoned if someone, then he.
Harry was interrupted in his thought process by rapid galloping.
He whirled around to come face to face, more or less, with the same Thestral that he met the last time.
It seemed in a hurry though.
“What‘s the matter mate?“
The Thestral stared him in the eyes, milky white meeting emerald green.
One second, two seconds, and then he understood.
He stared back in the Thestral‘s eyes and whsipered
“legillimens“
It was probably the weirdest experience Harry ever had, and he had his fair share of weird experiences.
His vision was very weird. He could definetely see something, but he wasn‘t sure what and especially not how.
This was not human eyesight at all and not really animal eyesight as he imagined.
With what felt like minutes passing by, he began to understand what he was seeing. Not how, definetely not how, he had no clue how but he began to develop a feeling for what he was seeing.
There were, trees, little patches of the sky between them, tree branches, leaves, and finally, Thestrals. Other Thestrals.
A whole herd of them and he was in the middle of them, but wait, there was something wrong.
The herd circled around something that was lying on the ground.
He approached the spot.
It was another Thestral, a heavily pregnant one.
It was snorting wildly and desperately.
It was in the process of birth.
But something was wrong.
He was flung back to reality in an instant.
The Thestral standing before him stared at him expectantly.
“Where? Where is it?“
It bowed it‘s head going down on it‘s knees.
“I can‘t believe I‘m doing this again.“
He mounted the animal and got some grip on it‘s thin mane and bony neck as it stood up.
“Oh here we go.“
As if waiting for kickoff, the Thestral began racing at an abnormal speed through the forest.
It was somehow akin to the knight bus, this feeling of unnatural velocity.
In a matter of seconds he was in the place he had already seen with someone else‘s eyes.
It was entirely different in his.
It looked much darker and much more threatening to Harry‘s eyes, what with the thick roof of leaves, allowing only patches of sky to be visible, and the massive heard of huge black animals.
The situation was still the same though and Harry got to his senses at once.
In front of him, there was the dying Thestral.
He fell down on his knees and unpocketed his wand.
“episkey“
Nothing happened.
“God damn it!“
He desperately searched his mind for any other helpful spells but only came up with one solution.
It probably wasn‘t the safest one but it was the only one he got. The one out of the Prince‘s book.
He didn‘t even know if it was a healing spell but he very much hoped so since it was messily written next to a gash healing potion: ‘Just use vulnera sanentur‘
And that he did.
He traced his wand over the horse‘s abdomen and began to almost sing the incantation in an ongoing prayer.
“vulnera sanentur“
“vulnera sanentur“
“vulnera sanentur“
“vulnera sanentur“
The breathing of the horse got more even but this was not a permanent solution. The horse still had much pain. Birth had to be given.
So he continued.
Only the sing-sang of the “vulnera sanentur“ and the steadily weakening snorts of the Thestral could be heard in the clearing of the forest.
And finally, finally there were the first signs of success visible.
The front hooves of the baby peeked out of it‘s mother, closely followed by it‘s head.
The snorting of it‘s mother began to turn frantic.
“Only a bit more, come on, you got this, it‘s only you now.“
he began encouraging the mother without even knowing if it had any effect.
More and more parts of the baby became visible, until it finally flopped out of it‘s mother.
“Yes!“ He exlaimed joyously.
“You‘ve got it, you hear me, you‘ve got it!“
He turned to the mother.
She was unconscious the second the baby dropped out, it seemed.
Only unconscious however, her chest was still visibly expanding and contracting.
“Guess you don‘t hear me.“
“Well,-“ he turned to the newborn once again, which was being tended to by some other Thestrals which probably were female,
“you know how to get the girls. Have some tips for me?“
One Thestral that stood a little to the side snorted.
“You‘re the one who spat in my face aren‘t you.“ He deadpanned.
He got to his feet, while the Thestral whinnied with laughter.
“Oh my god, you really are.“
The newborn tried to imitate him, in terms of getting to one‘s feet, but wasn‘t entirely successful.
It broke down again and again.
“Try and error mate, that‘s the spirit.“