Chapter 52
The Ramora Stone is one of the strangest magical creatures in existence—so strange, in fact, that it took the wizarding world more than a century to agree it even belonged in the category of magical creatures at all.
Ramora Stones usually appear as ordinary rocks of various types: limestone, granite, sandstone, and many others have been identified.
No one suspected their existence for a very long time. The first hint came when a wizard noticed that a particular stone in his family garden had shifted half a metre over the course of several decades.
When he compared it to an old family sketch of the garden, he realised the stone had been moving steadily for generations—dozens of metres in total, slowly crossing the entire plot.
At first he assumed it was some curious natural phenomenon, or perhaps the rock itself carried an inherent magical property.
Then one day, while touching the stone, he heard a faint but perfectly clear sound coming from within.
"Ra~"
The sound continued without pause, always on the same unchanging note.
Similar reports began to surface from all over the world. Once people started paying attention, Ramora Stones became a sensation overnight.
It turned out that these slowly migrating stones existed on every continent; they had simply gone unnoticed because no one had ever bothered to track the position of random garden rocks over decades.
The only sounds they ever made were variations of "Ra" and "Mo"—hence the name Ramora Stone.
Most people assumed they were a peculiar natural oddity. In a world of magic, after all, there were already phenomena such as ever-burning trees and uphill-flowing waterfalls; a wandering rock hardly seemed remarkable.
But after thorough investigation by the Society for the Study of Remarkable Phenomena, a startling announcement was made to the wizarding world.
Ramora Stones were not a natural phenomenon. Nor were they truly stones.
They were magical creatures.
Despite their rock-like appearance, their rock-like hardness, and every other physical property that screamed "stone," they were living beings—and social ones at that.
All the Ramora Stones on a given continent form a single extended colony. They communicate through those simple, repetitive vocalisations and use them to coordinate their slow, collective movement.
The most famous example is Stonehenge.
It has been confirmed beyond doubt that every upright stone at Stonehenge is a Ramora Stone.
Since arranging themselves into that formation centuries ago, they have remained perfectly still, indistinguishable from ordinary rock.
No one knows how long it took them to travel into position. No one knows why they chose that arrangement. The Ramora Stone remains surrounded by far more questions than answers, and much work remains to be done before its mysteries are fully unravelled.
There is, however, one practical piece of advice: Ramora Stones appear to interfere with a person's sense of time. Anyone who discovers one in their garden or on their property is strongly recommended to remove it promptly, to avoid any unfortunate distortion of temporal perception.
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