A book falling as two students moved to grasp it, landing open on the floor of the school library, should not have been An Event. It happened frightfully often at Hogwarts, really: books falling, books falling on people, books falling open, books misplaced, books misused. Indeed, so many benign interactions began with a book moving from one place to another within the library that the Gryffindor thoguht nothing of it—why should she?

She certainly did not expect a flower to bloom up from the pages, and could not have anticipated a bee flying off of that flower. Had she anticipated either of these events, she might have anticipated the bee stinging her, her bumping into another student, that student dropping their book (this was, after all, a library). The strange shadow that clambered out from the pages of that book, though? Simply a bridge too far.

"What in Merlin's trousers is that thing?!" Maddy asked wide-eyed, any sense of Gryffindor bravery or lingering pain from her bee sting utterly forgotten as she backed away from the shadow and into one of her peers as the shade writhed before them.