As she approached the last area, Hope caught sight of a small golden blur whizzing here and there and all around her. She couldn't even get a good glimpse of it until it paused for just a moment on the twig of a nearby tree. Oh, my goodness--could this be what Hope thought it was? If so, it was very, very rare and, as she remembered reading, rather fragile. Hope didn't dare try to catch it with her hands, she might injure it. "What do you think, Jerry?" she said to her loyal moke companion, still on her shoulder after all the boggart trauma. "Could you summon a creature with magic, do you think?" Well, it was worth a try. "Accio, snidget!" Hope intoned, point her want in the general direction of the tiny bird.
She wasn't really at all sure she had come anywhere near her target, but, whether it was magic or just curiosity, suddenly, for just a moment, there was a little, fluffy, nearly-weightless golden creature perched on Hope's outstretched hand that held her wand. For a brief and yet seemingly-endless moment, they all froze there in time and space, just looking at each other--Hope, the golden snidget, and the tiny moke.
Then abruptly the snidget whizzed off again and at the same time, the moke seemed to vanish from Hope's shoulder, and she was left standing alone, at the end of the course. |