Two Minutes Earlier
"Are you sure this is the right way, Ron?" Harry asked, rubbing his forehead. He looked at the somewhat familiar suit of armor standing before them and confirmed with Ron for what felt like the umpteenth time. "This corridor looks familiar, but I could swear we passed it going the other direction."
Ron scratched his red hair vigorously, making it stick up. His face was full of uncertainty. "Erm... I think so? Maybe? Isn't the Transfiguration classroom supposed to be over there somewhere?"
He gestured vaguely down a darkened corridor to their left. "We just came down those stairs, then passed through a corridor with all those portraits of medieval wizards, then turned... or did we turn before that corridor?"
"Okay, I don't remember anymore," Ron admitted, giving up the struggle to reconstruct their path. He threw up his hands in surrender. "We're properly lost."
Harry sighed deeply, momentarily at a loss for words. This was becoming a frustrating pattern.
So, their current situation was quite obvious and rather embarrassing—in attempting to find tomorrow's Potions classroom location early, wanting to know exactly where to go so they wouldn't be late on their first day, the two of them had successfully gotten completely lost in the castle's maze-like interior.
It was their first full day at Hogwarts, and the castle was still deeply unfamiliar territory.
Harry figured they must have gone to the wrong floor, because that particular moving staircase they'd taken kept quietly changing direction whenever they weren't paying direct attention to it. He'd seen it shift twice, swinging away from where it had been leading just moments before.
Absolutely infuriating design.
Their destination should still be upstairs from where they currently stood. Or possibly downstairs. Honestly, Harry wasn't entirely sure anymore which direction was which.
Just then, as Ron was about to suggest they give up and ask a portrait for directions, Harry caught sight of something strange out of the corner of his eye. His attention was drawn toward up by an odd skittering sound.
On the stone ceiling above their heads, a black shadow was moving rapidly.
"Ron, look up!" Harry said in a low, urgent voice, tugging sharply at Ron's sleeve to get his attention. "Above us!"
Ron looked up blankly, his mouth still half-open from whatever he'd been about to say.
Then he saw a sight he would never, ever forget for the rest of his life.
On the stone ceiling, a huge, furry black creature was scuttling rapidly along on eight thin, jointed legs.
"Spi... spi... spider..." Ron managed to choke out, his voice was strangled with absolute terror.
Sometimes, as the old saying went, the more you fear something, the more likely it is to manifest in your life. The universe has a cruel sense of irony.
Before Ron could finish speaking his warning, before Harry could react or grab his arm to run, the spider suddenly shot down toward them like black lightning!
It dropped from the ceiling with frightening speed and precision, legs splayed wide, mandibles visible and glistening.
It moved far too fast. Ron didn't even have time to react, to dodge or raise his arms defensively, before the spider landed heavily on his lower leg with a solid thump of impact.
He felt instant, piercing pain shoot through the side of his right calf like a hot knife.
"Aaahh—!" Ron let out a short, agonized cry that echoed through the empty corridor.
The spider had bitten down viciously hard on his trouser leg, its sharp mandibles designed to pierce and inject were already penetrating through the cloth, through skin and into flesh. Blood began gushing out immediately, soaking into the cloth and dripping onto the stone floor in dark spots.
"Get off!! GET OFF ME!" Ron screamed, his voice was cracking with panic.
Ron was scared absolutely out of his wits, his worst nightmare was literally attached to his leg. He began kicking wildly, thrashing his leg back and forth, trying desperately to shake the creature off through sheer force.
But the spider's bite was horrifyingly firm. As Ron moved and kicked, it swung along with his violent motions like some kind of grotesque ornament, only making the wound tear larger with each movement. More blood flowed, the pain was intensifying.
Seeing this horrific scene unfold before him, Harry's mind went completely blank.
He had no time to think rationally. But the sudden surge of adrenaline flooding his system made him react on pure instinct, bypassing conscious thought.
Harry rushed forward without hesitation, covering the distance in two quick steps. He lifted his foot and, with all the might his eleven-year-old body could muster, kicked viciously at the black monster still biting Ron's bloody calf!
"Thump!"
His shoe connected solidly with the spider's soft abdomen
The spider flew through the air like a ball of yarn, tumbling several times end-over-end before smacking against the stone wall with an audible "thwack" that reverberated.
However, before Harry could breathe even a momentary sigh of relief, before he could check on Ron's injury, the kicked spider actually shook its head and got back up. It adapted itself quickly, and its cold multiple eyes locked firmly on Harry with hostile intent.
If only I'd already learned magic— that was Harry's only thought at that moment.
The spider's body tensed, legs were coiling, preparing to launch itself at Harry's face:
"Stupefy!" A clear voice rang out from the darkness.
A spell shot from the other end of the corridor like a bolt of red light, striking the spider with precision just as it began to leap.
The spider's body stiffened. Then it collapsed limply to the ground completely unconscious.
Harry turned quickly to look and saw three older students rapidly approaching at a run. Two of them were instantly recognizable, the identical red-haired Weasley brothers he'd seen at the Gryffindor table during the opening feast.
"Looks like we're not too late," Fred said with relief, putting away his wand and breathing out heavily. "Thank Merlin. Thought we'd find someone seriously hurt."
"No, I'm afraid we're still a bit late actually," Morris said, pointing at Ron, who was now lying on the floor with a face gone pale from pain and shock. "This kid doesn't look too good at all. That's a significant amount of blood."
George walked over to his youngest brother quickly and crouched down beside him. He pulled aside Ron's blood-soaked trouser leg carefully to reveal the horrifying looking wound beneath.
However, after examining the injury, George just waved his hand dismissively. "Oh, just a minor flesh wound. Nothing particularly serious."
"Really?" Morris asked with skepticism.
By Morris's Muggle medical standards, this should be considered a fairly serious wound requiring quick professional attention.
Roughly estimated, even with proper modern Muggle treatment, it would take several weeks to heal properly, possibly months for full recovery.
But in a wizard's apparently more experienced eyes, it was just a minor flesh wound, barely worth concern.
It seemed that wizards' medical capabilities and standards were indeed far superior to Muggles'.
"Go collect the spider first," George said to Morris, pulling bandages from his pocket. "Maybe we shouldn't have used a simple wooden box to contain it."
"Then I'll need to transfigure a box from more durable material," Morris responded practically.
"Use that," Fred suggested, pointing at the head of a nearby suit of armor standing against the wall.
"!" The armor seemed to sense Fred's malicious intent toward it.
It dropped the sword it had been holding and clutched its helmet tightly with both metal gauntlets.
"Seems it's unwilling to donate parts," Morris said shrugging with amusement.
He had no choice but to walk forward carefully and pick up the unconscious Acromantula in his hands then immediately added a Weakening Curse for good measure. Extra security couldn't hurt.
Meanwhile, Ron was still grimacing in severe pain, his forehead was now covered in sweat that dripped into his eyes.
Seeing Fred and George apparently still discussing other matters at a leisurely pace as if they had all the time in the world, he growled with a desperate mix of tears and anger, "Stop standing around talking and get me to the hospital wing immediately! I'm dying here! Bleeding to death!"
In this moment, Ron deeply and sincerely doubted whether he was truly these two heartless fellows' real brother, or if he'd been adopted from some other family. How could they be so casual about his suffering?
"Don't worry, ickle Ronniekins," Fred said with an infuriating smile. "You're quite far from actual death. With this kind of injury, there's really no need to go to the hospital wing at all."
"George, did you bring the Dittany?" he asked his twin.
"Of course I did," George replied, already pulling out a small glass vial of green-tinted potion and half a roll of clean white bandages from his robe pocket.
"We get injured often enough from various activities," George explained casually to Morris while skillfully dripping several drops of Dittany essence onto the bandages, soaking them thoroughly.
"So, we've learned to carry medical supplies with us at all times. I suppose you don't know yet—Dittany is an extract of Dittany plant that can heal most wounds almost instantly."
After quickly and efficiently wrapping the soaked bandage around Ron's wound, applying pressure to stop the bleeding, he patted his brother's shoulder firmly (causing Ron to grimace and hiss in pain again). "See? You're completely fine. The injuries we get from our various magical experiments and invention testing are much worse than this. Burns, explosions, that sort of thing. So, stop whimpering like a baby."
Morris felt this wasn't exactly something to be proud of.
Ron looked down at his hastily bandaged leg, tentatively moving it. Though it still hurt, it was indeed much better than just moments before. The pain had decreased from agonizing to merely unpleasant. The bleeding had stopped completely.
Only then did he finally relax his tensed muscles with relief.
"Don't underestimate me," Ron said defensively, trying to salvage his dignity. "I wasn't crying. Those were... pain tears."
"Sure, Ronniekins," Fred grinned.
Harry, who had been standing to the side watching this entire medical procedure, finally turned his attention to the unconscious black creature in Morris's hands.
He asked with lingering fear, "What exactly is that thing? Why did it suddenly attack us?"
Morris glanced at the Weasley twins and saw them making subtle eye gestures at him.
Unfortunately, Morris didn't have Legilimency skills and couldn't accurately read the twins' unspoken meaning or decode their complex eyebrow language.
But he could probably guess what they wanted: don't mention the Forbidden Forest, don't explain too much, don't get anyone in trouble.
"Just a mischievous pet spider that escaped," Morris said smoothly. He extended his hand to Harry, changing the subject before more questions could arise. "Ah, by the way, you're Harry Potter, aren't you? I'm Morris Black, first year Ravenclaw."
"Hello, I'm Harry Potter. Just call me Harry," Harry responded, shaking Morris's offered hand. But his gaze remained fixed on the Acromantula.
Magical world spiders were actually this vicious and aggressive, completely different from the harmless tiny ones he'd encountered in the Muggle world growing up.
He'd spent years living in a cupboard under the stairs at the Dursleys' house, after all. The largest spider he'd ever seen before tonight was only about the size of a fingernail, and it would quickly hide away in crevices at the sight of people, more afraid of him than he was of it.
It seemed he'd have to be extremely careful in the future.
If a spider like this suddenly appeared and bit him while he was sleeping in his dormitory, that would be no joke at all.