Hidden Wings - Part I

Rita Skeeter

Mioha was glad of the fires and thick walls of Hogwarts every time she passed the Durmstrang ship on the lake, which was pitching in the high winds, its black sails billowing against the dark skies.
She thought the Beauxbatons caravan was likely to be pretty chilly too.
She and Hagrid kept Madame Maxime's horses well provided with their preferred drink of single-malt whiskey; the fumes wafting from the trough in the corner of their paddock was enough to make the entire Care of Magical Creatures class light-headed.
This was unhelpful, as many still had troubles with their Blast-Ended Skrewts and needed their wits about them.

"I'm not sure whether they hibernate or not," Hagrid told the shivering class in the windy pumpkin patch next lesson.
"Thought we'd jus' try an see if they fancied a kip... we'll jus' settle 'em down in these boxes..."

There were still six skrewts, apparently their desire to kill one another had lessened with their freedom to move in their paddock.
Each of them was now approaching six feet in length.
Their thick gray armor; their powerful, scuttling legs; their fire-blasting ends; their stings and their suckers, combined to make the skrewts the most interesting things Mioha had ever seen.

The class looked dispiritedly at the enormous boxes Hagrid had brought out, all lined with pillows and fluffy blankets.

"We'll jus' lead 'em in here," Hagrid said, "an' put the lids on, and we'll see what happens."

That won't go well, Mioha predicted silently.

And she was right.

The skrewts, it transpired, did not hibernate, and did not appreciate being forced into pillow-lined boxes and nailed in.
Hagrid was soon yelling, "Don panic, now, don' panic!" while the skrewts rampaged around the pumpkin patch, now strewn with the smoldering wreckage of the boxes.
Mioha had her fair share of trying to calm the skrewts down, since their fear of being nailed into a box made the skrewts waddle furiously around in circles.
Most of the class - Draco, Vincent, and Gregory in the lead - had fled into Hagrid's cabin through the back door and barricaded themselves in; Harry, Ron, Hermione and Mioha, however, were among those who remained outside trying to help Hagrid.
Together they managed to restrain five of the skrewts and put them back into the paddock, though at the cost of numerous burns and cuts; finally, only one skrewt was left.

"Don' frighten him, now!" Hagrid shouted as Ron and Harry used their wands to shoot jets of fiery sparks at the skrewt, which was advancing menacingly on them, its sting arched, quivering, over its back.

"Jus' try an slip the rope 'round his sting, so he won hurt any o' the others!"

"Yeah, we wouldn't want that!" Ron shouted angrily as he and Harry backed into the wall of Hagrid's cabin, still holding the skrewt off with their sparks.

Mioha finally jumped in front of them, her hands outstretched to connect with the skrewt, and convinced it after it shot several angry blasts out of its end to return to the paddock.