When the stone door with its series of bas-relief snakes began to open in rumbling echoes, Snape said urgently, "Students, stand to one side."
Giselle did not need any prompting. She huddled close beside Charlie. Bea, clutching Giselle's arm, pressed up against her, breathing in shallow gasps and trembling. Harry stepped to Charlie's side, too, but how strange, Giselle thought, that Hermione stayed next to Snape, just a little behind him.
Perhaps Hermione had a better view of the Chamber peering from around Snape's arm, than Giselle had peeking out from behind Charlie. She could see only a near corner of the cavernous room; a marble serpent's head gushing water, and a crow standing on the head scratching the wall with its beak. This was so unusual that Giselle momentarily forgot everything else, watching the beak make what looked like a capital M above a triangle atop a square.
A house, Giselle thought, identified by the M. What could it mean? The Ministry of Magic, perhaps? But why was the crow scratching this on the wall, and what was a crow doing in the Chamber of the Slytherin Heir?
Charlie's voice startled her.
"That's the image of a Roc on the wall at the far end, Professor. But the place seems empty."
"It only seems so, Mr Weasley. Keep to my left and a step behind."
Giselle saw Snape give Mrs Dursley a stern look. The muggle woman shook her head at him, too paralyzed with fright and bewilderment to do anything more than that. She had all but glued herself to the passage wall, her bent fingers crawling on the stone as if seeking a door knob.
It's best she stay right there, Giselle thought. And then Snape went onto the broad nave of the Chamber in quick dramatic strides that had Charlie and the students following clumsily by comparison.
Snape had a particular action in mind.
Giselle shook off Bea's hand, nearly stepping on Charlie's heels as she and the others advanced; Harry and Hermione leaving poor Bea behind, just inside the doorway. And then the door closed suddenly, like a peal of thunder. Bea screamed with what little breath she could muster and stumbled forward to grab Giselle's blouse, pulling it out from the elastic skirt waist.
"Oh Beatrice!" said Giselle, her irritation overcoming her nervous awe. "Don't hang on me so. It's--"
Snape's spell and its powerful vibrations had Giselle staggering back against Bea.
The words of the canto seemed to rush like a storm wind down the nave to the far wall. There came an explosive crack and a cloud of dust from the sculpture. The Roc image was splitting in two.
They all heard the full-throated cry coming out from the gaping hole at the base of the ruined sculpture, the eerie cry of the forest monster, but no one expected the figure running out from the drifting cloud of dust, a figure that seemed to be pushed into a run, her arms waving around to keep her balance as she came toward Snape.
"Lily," he whispered.
He lowered his wand. He was astonished at her appearance, the realism of her, the vitality of every detail of her. They were all struck by the incredible sight of her.
Giselle was certain about who this was, and looking over at Harry she saw how dazed he was to see a figure that could not possibly be real and yet couldn't possibly be an illusion. When he began to speak incoherently, Snape glanced back at him and shouted, "Silence!"
Lily stopped and stepped back, glancing from Snape to Charlie as though she were as shocked to see them as they were to see her.
"What is HE doing here?" she said despondently to Snape.
He was surprised by her question. "Who do you mean?"
"I mean Weasley! And is Studmann here, too? Didn't you tell me that THEY colluded with Sirius in revealing my house to Voldemort?"
"What the hell--?" said Charlie.
Harry took a step toward Snape. "So! It's true! You were responsible! And you've blamed everything on Sirius, and now on the Weasleys!"
Snape gritted his teeth. A flick of his wand threw Harry back against Charlie. Hermione leapt to Harry and seized his wand hand as Charlie gripped his shoulders.
"Don't you see?" she said to him. "This is a trick! They're trying to distract and divide us!"
"Severus," Lily said in a choked voice, "who is this boy? Who is he? Don't lie to me!"
"HA!" came the mocking tone of Hexaba from within the depths of the broken sculpture. "Don't lie to her, my love!"
The lowing cry of the Roc echoed out from the settling cloud of stone dust. The sound of an immense body moving outward from the opening grew louder, more distinct. An "Ugh!" from the witch, a man's triumphant laugh from somewhere behind the monster, and Snape, seeing the panic in Lily's beloved eyes, a panic filled with regrets and yearnings, flourished his wand. She was lifted up and carried back toward the door.
"Potter! Guard your mother!"
"Come, Harry!" said Hermione. She pulled him away from Charlie, whose attention was riveted on the massive thing emerging from the ruins, and went pushing the befuddled Harry to where Lily stood like a statue near the splash of a fountain.
'Caww!' screeched the crow.
Hermione turned, wand raised, to stare aghast at the Roc. Its horned head grated against the ceiling, its outspread wings spanning the width of the Chamber; wings that seemed covered in serrated leaves. A boiling red mist appeared between its jaws. It was angling its long scaley neck down toward Snape.
Giselle, terrified, clung to Charlie and waved her wand ineffectively. She felt his arm arching around in a smooth motion. It seemed to her that a hot red ball of acid rain swelled up over Charlie's shield spell and came down in fiery droplets, hissing on the flagstones.
Then a force struck her. It was a wing of the Roc, and the next thing she knew was a bruising pain in her side, the sensation of falling, and icy cold water enveloping her.
She had been knocked into the stream between two fountains, and came up spluttering, her wand stuck behind an ear.
Charlie lay near the door, Hermione helping him up.
Bea lay on her back against the curb of the stream. She was groggy and slightly delirious.
There was something long and thin pressing against her back where her plaid woolen skirt was bunched up. She felt it with a hand. A wand. A wand! Where had it come from? And then she remembered sliding over the wand that the witch in the black gown had discarded in the Trophy Room. Somehow the wand had gotten wedged in her skirt pocket, and she had been too alarmed by her situation to realize it was there, in her pocket all along.
She struggled to sit up. The roars and the motion occuring a short ways in front of her had addled her brain. She could think of only those things that meant nothing at the present moment, like the school wand the witch had firmly placed in her hands in the tower chamber, a wand that had controlled her every word and action until Snape's spell knocked her out of it.
A bright flash of light blinded her. She fell back, covering her face. But Giselle saw it all as she was climbing out of the stream on her knees, soaking wet and shivering.
The light from Snape's wand formed a lightning-like X that whipped itself around the Roc's neck, cinching tighter and tighter. The giant wings beat against floor and ceiling, blowing a wintry wind over Giselle.
She started crawling over to where Charlie was casting stun spells at the beast. They had no apparent effect.
"Crucio!" shouted Hermione in high C.
The Roc spun around in a green blur of folded wings and glittering horns.
Snape had stumbled back. He regained his balance just as the Roc became a gnarly tree of great size, its long serpentine branches hoary with Bloodwort leaves, twisting and swooping about.
It all happened so quickly that it could only have been directed by Sanguino and his consort, Hexaba. The flailing limbs of the carnivorous tree suddenly moved with precision, its flexible twigs snatching up the wands of Snape, Charlie, Hermione, Harry, and of Giselle, yanking out wisps of her hair as it seized the wand behind her ear. It was a simultaneous action, all the wands at once, in hardly more than the blink of an eye.
The tree stood immobile, the clutched wands held above the hideous maw at the top of the trunk.
Bea, whimpering, grasped Giselle's arm, who stood beside Charlie; Harry and Hermione between them and Snape.
The crow alighted on the shoulder of Lily Potter. She was staring straight ahead at nothing.
"Severus, fellow alumnus," said Sanguino. He came out from the ruins brandishing his wand. His brown robe and red turban were dusty and his beard caked with bits of stone. Hexaba followed. She folded her arms and leaned against the tree, idly twiddling the sandalwood wand with the sphinx-hair core. She had eyes only for Snape.
"We're to give you a choice, my love," she said.
"Really," said Snape.
"Sanguino and I will spare the portrait of Lily, and..."
Sanguino laughed out a canto, his wand pointing to the door. It groaned open and in came Petunia Dursley, her feet dragging on the flagstones, her face a mask of horror that was gradually assuming the glazed expression of a deeply hypnotized subject.
"... And Mrs Dursley," Hexaba continued. "She and Lily, spared, in exchange for The Boy Who Lived... Ha... the Hogwarts co-champion. Yes, my love, give us Harry and we shall be merciful to his mother and his aunt. Otherwise we shall curse them to death in front of your eyes."
Snape snickered at her. "You think your word is to be trusted?" he said. "No one will leave this chamber alive except the victors."
"In that case, then," and Hexaba pushed herself away from the tree. She leveled her wand at the muggle woman who stood as still and as mute as the painted woman by the far fountain.
"No!" said Harry.
He started walking toward Sanguino.
Bea whispered in Giselle's ear, a gusty weeping whisper. "Gee, put your hand in my skirt pocket. Do it. I've a wand. Do it. Do it, I can't. I'm too scared. Do it!"
Giselle had been standing there numb with utter despair. Now she was filled with the most frightful hope she had ever imagined.
She slowly inched her hand around to Bea's opposite hip, and, to her amazement, and no little fear, she felt the wand; her fingers closing around it.
"Get it over with, Sanguino," Hexaba was saying. "Our patron demands it. Curse this brat to hell and finish it. I'm tired of this alternate reality."
Harry flinched. He looked back at his mother; at the tearful Hermione, whose lips formed the word 'Don't!' and lastly at Snape. The potions master had his own word to form: 'Wait.'
Harry let out his breath in a shuddering sigh of hopelessness. What was there to wait for?
For the rest of her life Giselle would remember how lucky she was at that moment, when it all came together so perfectly.
The flourish, the canto "Duo Stasis Maximus!" and the total focus that sent the spell into the stunned psyche of her targets.
Snape lost no time. "Expelliarmus," and catching the wand he threw every ounce of his anger and vengeance at Sanguino.
"Avada Kadevra!"
The portrait of Sanguino of Toledo became a work of abstract art on the cold flagstone.
Hexaba shot a killing curse at Snape that was too hasty, too late. He easily blocked it. But his counter curse was itself too tardy.
The witch of the forest had vanished, gone out somewhere into a world regarded as the real one.
"Giselle!"
She turned at the sound of her Auntie's voice and smiled as Bea sank against her, sobbing with relief.
"That was QUITE impressive," said Professor McGonagall. "Fifty points for Hufflepuff!"
Charlie gave both girls a hug.
"Headmaster," Snape said as Dumbledore left Lily's side, the crow on his own shoulder now, and came striding up to Snape with a look of the utmost concern.
Dumbledore was watching Harry and Hermione aiming their wands at the opening in the ruined sculpture, through which Hexaba was thought to have speedily gone. They crept up to it cautiously.
"Does he know, Severus?" Dumbledore asked, nodding his head toward the portrait of Lily.
Snape said, "Yes," and turned to walk to the image of the woman he would love always.
Dumbledore fingered his wand a moment. Then with a deep sigh he pointed it at the back of Harry's head and said softly,
"Obliviate."
No comments:
Post a Comment