Chapter 56: Wolves

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Luckily, the water had shielded him from the initial landing, but the rocks and stones on the floor hadn't left him without his fair share of cuts and bruises.

"That went a lot worse than I'd imagined," Harry groaned into the ground.

After a few minutes of catching his breath and dusting himself off, he shaped the earth back into its initial shape and made his way past the groundskeeper's wooden hut, trying not to tremble under the sheer force of his loud snores. With a deep sense of anticipation, he stepped into the forbidden forest.

The crescent moon lit the entire forest with an almost dream-like light.

The trees seemed sentient, filling the air with a haunting song with their rustling leaves that spoke of the thousands of years of battles they'd witnessed and the secrets they would forever keep.

Harry shivered and pulled his jacket around him tighter.

He quickly found a tree low enough that he could use it to climb up to the higher ones. Clutching onto a branch, Harry pulled himself up onto it and jumped up, tightly grabbing onto the foot long thick vines than swung from the top and climbing onto a solid branch that was high enough to be out of the reach of ground predators and low enough for him to escape if anything on the tree tried to kill him.

He took a deep breath. Looking straight ahead, his mind plotted out routes along the branches, ways that he could take running and jumping across the treetops and branches that would be most efficient for DEX training.

With some trepidation, he started heading for the one that ran to the deepest part of the forest.

The enchanted forest beckoned him into its heart. The deep, haunting ballad of its ancient song called out to him. In a corner of his mind, Harry absently compared the song to the call of a siren, calling onto its prey before choking it to death.

Almost as if sensing the very thought, the song turned a bit more severe, as if reprimanding him.

Harry realized why this was called the forbidden forest. This amount of mana… the sheer magical weight was not to be taken lightly. There was some ancient magic in this forest.

Harry sent out a mental plea to whatever mysterious creature's magic he was feeling, asking it to not crush him like a bug and give him a chance to prove himself worthy to roam its realm.

Suddenly, almost as if on cue, a pack of beautiful pure white wolves broke out from the various bushes and trees that surrounded the pathway of trees Harry was jumping and converged under him and started running with him under the trees.

Knowing at first glance that these were not werewolves, Harry cast observe on their collective group while adjusting his path to take him a bit higher into the treetops should the wolves try to attack

Forbidden Forest Wolf Pack

If two werewolves meet and mate at the full moon, which is extremely rare, the result of the mating will be wolf cubs which resemble true wolves in everything except their abnormally high intelligence.

Such a litter was once set free, under conditions of extreme secrecy, in the Forbidden Forest at Hogwarts, with the permission of Albus Dumbledore.

The cubs grew into beautiful and unusually intelligent wolves and some of them live there still, which has given rise to the stories about 'werewolves' in the Forest.

They think Harry is interesting and are wondering why the immortals sent them to evaluate a two-legged one.

Harry, upon reading the last line, jumped towards the branch of the next tree, grabbing it with both hands and swinging his whole body around the branch, diffusing the inertia of the high-speed run he was in before swinging into a stable perch.

Noticing that he had stopped, the eight wolves trotted to a halt and sat down on their haunches around the tree, staring up at Harry with their unusually intelligent eyes.

Keeping the last line of their description in his mind, Harry climbed down the tree slowly, not making any sudden movements.

The wolves backed up, almost as if realizing that Harry wasn't at ease. Harry gave them an uneasy smile.

"So… how do you evaluate me?" he asked, "Is there some sort of test? Want me to pull a rabbit out of my hat? Thought I'd have to do that in the sorting but as it turned out, that didn't happen. And I don't have a hat. I do have a jacket though. I could pull something out of that, maybe."

Harry was starting to ramble, hoping to Gods above that the Forest wouldn't kill him with its extremely powerful magic. But the eyes of the wolves looked mildly amused before the largest one shut him up with a bark.

A smaller wolf emerged from the middle of the pack, heading towards Harry slowly, who froze his limbs to prevent himself from lashing out.

Unpleasant memories of another wolf were being stirred in him. The wolf sniffed at Harry's hand for a second, before turning back to his pack mates and letting out a shrill yip.

One by one, each of the wolves came up to him and sniffed him until only the largest one remained. After a moment of tense staring, Harry decided to make the move.

He maintained eye contact and, very slowly and carefully, bowed. Much to his relief, the wolf lowered his own an unmistakable bow back, before letting out a howl that rippled through the forest.

The crushing mana that Harry was feeling immediately lightened and started flowing around him again. The forest, or whatever entity was testing him, was done. The message was clear.

You are worthy.

The howl, though, apparently, was not for his judgment, but a call, because a moment later, over a dozen smaller female wolves burst into the clearing in a trot with some unbelievably adorable cubs that looked barely a month old.

Harry stared flabbergasted as one of the tinier ones ran over to him and started using its paws to claw Harry's pant legs.

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