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Chapter  One.

Lysander took a slow, deep breath. Cold air filled his lungs with the faintest scent of pine hugging on the oxygen molecules. The sun had not yet risen, and the entire Swedish mountainside was muffled in the silence that you only hear after submerging yourself in water.

Lorcan, beside him, sighed impatiently and kicked the earth with one laced-up boot. Rocks and tangles of root skidded off the side of the cliff until they disappeared in a cloud of fog that rose from the depths of the canyon.

“Where on earth is Mom?” he grumbled, kicking the group again. “She said she’d be here by now.”

Lysander glanced at his angry brother. “She and Dad probably just got turned around while getting water,” he said quietly. The Scamander family lived on a small cottage built into the side of a mountain. While it may be beautiful, and perfect for finding and caring for magical creatures, it had no plumbing, which caused the family to continually have to go down to the river three times a day.

“Or they found signs of a Crumple-Horned Snorkack,” Lorcan sneered nastily.

Lysander glanced at his brother, surprised by the amount of aloofness coming from him. He shifted his footing. “We’ve been living here in Sweden forever, and have never seen… the you know.” Lysander opened his mouth, paused, and continued. “Do you think that they even exist?”

“Of course they don’t, Lysander,” Lorcan said patronizingly. His blue eyes were wide and cold, not looking at Lysander’s heart-broken face. “Did you honestly expect something as outlandish as a Crumple-Horned Snorkack could exactly exist?” He snorted and didn’t let Lysander speak. “You can’t be so gullible.”

“So… you don’t think they exist?” Lysander asked. He bit his lip nervously and looked up at the sun, which had now risen partially above the forest of pine.

Lorcan shook his head vigorously. His curly blond hair shook. “Grandpa just made it up. Mom’s spent her entire life looking for something that doesn’t exist.”

Lysander opened his mouth, then closed it sadly. He looked back at the ground, belief in the mysterious creature diminished.

“I think it exists,” he said, surprising himself. Lorcan began to say something, and Lysander cut him off, speaking quickly. “I know it does. Remember that time when I saw one? I know I did— no other creature has a horn that fine.”

“You didn’t see one, even Mom admits it. It was a tree branch.” Lorcan turned to his brother, hands on his hips. “Listen, Lysander. Closely. A Crumple-Horned Snorkack does not exist. It is fake!”

“It is not,” Lysander snapped. He glared at Lorcan, resisting the urge to push him off the cliff.

Lorcan rolled his eyes. “Well, if you must believe in that stupid story, don’t let on to the other kids at Hogwarts. There is a reason Mom was known as ‘Loony Lovegood’.” He smirked at his twin. “Think of all the things that go with ‘Scamander.’” Lorcan turned and began trotting to the Scamander’s cottage.

Lysander stood there for a moment, then called back to his brother. “Nothing rhymes with Scamander!”

“Whatever, Lysander.”

Lysander sat down heavily on the grass, feeling the wetness soak into his pants and cloak. He stared off to the pine forest that bordered the dip beneath the mountain, searching for his Mom or Dad coming back to their house. There was no sign or sound of them.

Sighing, the boy leaned heavily on his hand and let his gaze wander across the forest below him. The sun had fully risen now, and it was astonishing to see the different reds and yellows dapple the forest, driving away all the darkness.

“I know they’re real,” Lysander murmured to himself. “I know they are.” He, like his mother, had inherited the trait of believing in things that often had no evidence attached to them. Then, he gasped.

A slow-moving blur of purple was weaving in-between the trees. Lysander’s eyes grew wider and wider, and he fumbled for the pair of binoculars on the pouch in his cloak. Wishing he had a wand to magnify what he was seeing, Lysander pressed the cold metal to his eye sockets and almost fell off the cliff in shock.

Looking like it had appeared directly out of one of his grandpa’s drawings, the Crumple-Horned Snorkack stopped moving and looked up at Lysander. With his breath caught in his throat, Lysander took one hand off of his binoculars and waved tentatively. The creature reared away in shock, and then, with flash, disappeared into the pine forest.