Chapter 42: Fallen
Hailey awakened slowly, in a haze of confusion. There were voices around her- but it took her a moment to place them.
Then she opened her eyes, and sat up, looking around. She was in the Hospital Wing… and the Gryffindor Quidditch Team, minus Wood but plus Ron, Hermione, Silversong, Morning, Diamond, Ginny, Ariel, and Sadarina, were gathered around her bed. Fred made as if to block her from sitting up, but gave up quickly.
She sighed. “So what’s the damage?” she asked. It had been the dementors. They’d invaded the Quidditch Pitch during the first game of the season… and she must’ve passed out in the air. She’d even been seconds away from winning the match.
“You fell off your broom,” Fred told her. “Must’ve been fifty feet.”
“I’m invulnerable,” she told him. “Well… Except against dementors, I guess. But no simple fall can hurt me.” She looked around. “So what’s the damage?” She paused. “We lost, didn’t we?”
Several people nodded.
She sighed. “Oh well, maybe next time. How about my broom? Where is it?”
“Ahh…” Hermione looked down, out of sight, and back up at her. “It… got blown away. It… It hit the Whomping Willow.”
Hailey raised an eyebrow. “And it didn’t fare as well as I would’ve?”
Hermione let out a small snort; she was by far the fastest to adjust to her nonchalant attitude. She wordlessly reached down, and lifted a small plastic bag with a few bits of wood in it up onto the mattress.
She sighed. “Well, it was good while it lasted. Have a good burial in a landfill somewhere, Nimbus. Or perhaps a paper mill, I don’t know. Oh, I know- let’s cremate it, and plant a Nimbus Tree!” She snickered at her own joke.
The team stared at her.
“But your broom-!” Fred began.
“Was a special allowance by the school,” Hailey answered, before George could finish the question. “As a matter of fact, it technically wasn’t even mine, but Hogwarts’. This way, I can replace it with something that actually means something to me.” She sighed. “But anyways, how’d I get from the sky to the infirmary?”
“It was-!” Ginny began, and paused. “It was… Scary. Very scary.”
“Sadarina was mad,” Hermione muttered. “She went charging out onto the field as you fell, and they just…” She sighed.
“They fled,” Ariel stated. “Like they were afraid of her or something. But they can’t be- can they?”
Hermione nodded. “She didn’t cast any patroni, but they broke and fled as quickly as they could.”
Angelina smiled. “It was amusing to watch them trampling each other in their efforts to leave the Stadium as quickly as possible. Several of them just… disappeared.”
“By the time Dumbledore got on the field,” Diamond told her, “they had already gone. He magicked up a stretcher and rushed you straight here.”
“Ahh,” she muttered, reaching over to lift Sadarina- who had been sitting solemnly in a chair- up onto the mattress with her. “Why the long face?” she asked.
Sadarina only hugged her, burying her face in her side.
Hailey then plucked her wand from an inside pocket. “Expecto Patronum.”
The stag leaped clear over Angelina’s head, landing behind her and trotting around to stand over Sadarina’s seat. Sadarina flinched, and smiled- but it looked like a pained smile.
“What’s wrong?” Hailey repeated, shaking her gently.
She didn’t answer.
“Hey Hermione?”
“Yes, Hailey?”
“How’s your, ahh, Sierra Tango going?”
“My…? Oh, that. It’s not doing very well- I can’t figure out what makes a seer… a seer!”
Hailey scowled. “Oh well, I guess. Can’t be too perfect, I guess.”
She blushed. “Hailey!”
“I solemnly swear I’m up to no good.”
Hermione stared as the ‘spare’ parchment Hailey had laid on the table they were studying on some minutes before, and had just tapped with her wand, blossomed to life as a map. A moving map, displaying the entirety of Hogwarts. “Messers Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs…” she muttered.
Hailey nodded. “Remus Lupin, Peter Pettigrew, Sirius Black, and James Potter, yes. One free, one death eater, one wrongly accused, and one dead. Fred and George gave it to me yesterday- seems they still thought I didn’t get my form signed.”
Hermione looked up to double-check that they were alone. They weren’t- but everyone else was on the other side of Hailey’s impressive privacy spell. It was technically her own- she had been the one to invent it- but when Hailey cast it, it was basically impenetrable. As a matter of fact, when Hailey cast it, she could have had a cannon and started firing it in the library, yet even Madam Pince the librarian wouldn’t be able to tell that she wasn’t studying- even if she’d been standing just outside, staring in!
Finally, she looked back down at the map… and noticed the now active spell matrix running it.
“... Inefficient,” she muttered.
Hailey laughed. “I thought you might say that,” she mused. “Think we can build on my dad’s work?”
She looked up at Hailey- and she could see, in the reflection off Hailey’s eyes, that the glint of excitement had returned to her own. Though, perhaps that was in her imagination? That reflection was really tiny. “Well of course,” she told her. “For starters, I think we can improve the interface layer by going mental-direct with a three-dimensional projection rather than relying on a piece of parchment. It’ll also keep it from being destroyed or stolen.” She paused. “So why didn’t you come to Hogsmeade?”
She shrugged. “Well, I wanted to keep Sadarina company. Though Dumbledore has authorized her to go to Hogsmeade too, so that shouldn’t be an issue next time. And I had to attend the Student Instructor Program Management Team Meeting, then bring our final report to Dumbledore. For that reason, even next time, I’m almost certainly not going to be going with you, but catching up after the fact.”
She tilted her head. “And what do you mean, one death eater, one dead? Didn’t both Peter and James die?”
She silently placed her hand on the map, pointing up into the corner.
She looked. “... Oh.” There was a dot labeled Peter Pettigrew, sleeping in the Gryffindor third-year British Boys’ dormitory, on Ron’s bed- while Ron put his books away next to it.
Sirius Black charged down the staircase. Where had Peter gone? He’d gone to all the effort to overhear the password- not that it amounted to much; all he had to do was hide in a broom cupboard. The Weasley Twins had obliged, laden with Honeydukes products no doubt for the celebration inside; Gryffindor had won the second match of the season- which was really no surprise with that fiery Chaser scoring every fifteen seconds and the Seeker riding a Firebolt. Getting in had been easy, no matter how worried the Fat Lady had looked as she obligingly swung forward; per her job, she couldn’t seal the opening against someone with the password, so he’d been able to locate the Weasley. It still seemed odd that a Weasley had brown hair, but he was still a Weasley- and Peter hadn’t been anywhere. Was he in the cabinet? Under the pillow? Under the bed? He needed another clue- another lead.
He froze suddenly on his way through the common room, then twisted to look back at a table.
There lay the Marauder’s Map, fully revealed.
He blinked.
A wand came out of nowhere and tapped it. “Mischief Managed.”
The map went blank.
He looked up.
The empty space on the other side of the table shimmered for a second, before two girls appeared. The black-haired one that had stopped him from attacking the Fat Lady, and her little friend. Her little friend was watching him amusedly. “I’m sorry to say,” the girl began dramatically, sweeping the map off the table. “But Peter has already gone into hiding, about two days ago. He’s not up here anymore.”
“That map,” he said, pointing at it.
She glanced down at it as well, then tucked it into her robes with her wand. “You know why I can’t give it to you.”
He sighed, and resumed his flight. Hopefully, he’d have an opportunity to properly speak with her at some point.
“Yaxley,” Amelia Bones began. “We can do this the easy way, or the hard way.”
Arthur Weasley, standing next to her, had gone through all the appropriate steps. He’d found evidence that Yaxley was hiding something, and come to her to initiate a raid against his home, to ‘make sure it isn’t an enchanted muggle artefact’. That evidence was absolutely not gained by walking past the front of the mansion and glancing at the yard. That would be illegal- something which Amelia was still bothered by- so of course it wasn’t. For some reason, nobody had seen fit to raise the law that said that finding something on a property while on or near the property for other purposes could not be used as justification for a raid- even though so many other ‘reasons’ existed it was easy to start a raid.
Especially since she could initiate a raid herself on no more than a hunch. That had been convenient a couple of times, and netted large pounces. Like this one- officially, she had a hunch.
She’d already cursed Yaxley’s fire breathing lawn ornaments in half and… neutralized his acid-spewing deck chairs, both of which were illegal for attacking a common visitor without provocation.
The death-eater- she was fairly sure he was the real thing, not one of the ones that had been forced to join- sighed. The entire wizarding community knew that when she arrived on the scene of a raid, there was no point resisting- since said resistance would instantly result in a perfectly valid hunch… which she’d promptly act on with a team of aurors.
Just like this time; she had six aurors standing behind her.
“Amelia!” It was a messenger, running up from behind them. He handed her a piece of parchment.
She took it, unfolded it, read the message, and sighed. Of course Black would choose right that moment to appear at Hogwarts again- or at least, for the word of such to reach her. The sun was already setting, so he was making a long day even longer. She looked up at Yaxley, and raised an eyebrow.
He flinched. “Oh alright,” he muttered, and held the door open.
She waved Mr. Weasley, and the team of aurors, past. “You know what to do,” she told them. “I’m needed elsewhere.”
They nodded, and entered- several with wands drawn.
Meanwhile, she walked back down the walk to the entrance with the messenger. They didn’t exchange words- but once they left the property, they apparated away, messenger first.
She felt the familiar sensation of hurtling through a very tight rubber tube… then, just before it ended, a sudden tearing, slicing feeling, like she’d been wrapped in razor wire.
It was only for a fraction of a second, before she emerged just outside the Hogwarts gates.
She collapsed straight to the ground, doing her level best not to scream in agony. She could feel the blood welling up from several cuts; her right hand and entire left leg were both gone and bleeding profusely. Yaxley must have included some highly dangerous and equally illegal apparition-based attacks in his wards.
Then, she felt the cold of the Dementors- and, in the fleeting moment in which that gave her hope, she looked up at them. It was through her that the Ministry would give them orders, after all.
“Get… Help,” she commanded, before the darkness swallowed her whole.
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Well, on the bright side, they can arrest him for that...on the dark side...Oh nuuuuuuu!!!
Also, is it ever going to be clarified why Ron has brown hair, or are you counting on the readers to just put it to genetics?
11091103
Well, he didn’t have brown hair before, and Ginny noticed it (It’s also apparently long, like a girl’s, or Bill Weasley’s) during the summer after he went through the same thing that Hermione had wings after…. It’s implied, but not explicit until, um, chapter 52, which I’m applying the finishing touches to right now.
11091149
Ohhh, got it
So I assume he's either an Etrah or...what was the term, Magi?
Yaxly is gonna get hit for that?
I wonder... are you saying the incompetent Dumbledore still didn't know Sirius is running around inside the school?
11092221
Oh, he was plenty competent, the problem being Hogwarts was never built for security- so he didn’t know time-of, until McGonagall arrived to investigate Ron’s yell, as in canon. That’s what Sirius was fleeing from.
11091152
The three tribes are Etrah, Aethr, and Raeth- anagrams of one another, in order of Earth, Pegasus, Unicorn. I think you’re thinking about the Raeth tribe.
11093154
Oh, right, sorry. Magi was a name I came up with for the unicorns. So Ron's either Etrah or Raeth?
11093163
No problem, that's about what I expected. I mean, it's kinda hard to construe 'magi' as meaning 'pegasus'... Honestly, at least back when I was adopting that system, I had to keep looking back at it and doublechecking that I was using the right one.
11093206
Yeah, I can see why. I do like that you went with something more unique, though. Magi sounds a lot more obvious than Raeth
11093207
Yeah, me too. I like that the three terms, Etrah, Raeth, and Aethr, are anagrams not just with themselves but with Heart and Earth. It puts a lot of meaning into the ancient tribal names.
... A bit unlike how "Tom Marvolo Riddle" is an anagram for "I Am Lord Voldemort"... and "Mr. Tom, A Dildo Lover" among other things.
11093224
Wait-oh fu-
I never realized that his name could-pffft-
There was a theory that McGonagall used Harry's money to buy Nimbus 2000. If you want an explanation it is quite easy to get money from someone else bank account (I guess JK Rowling is stupid, or something), some random cat brought an order that paid for Harry's new broom with Sirius Black money. I think, realistically, it would have been far more believable that the school brought Harry Comet instead of Nimbus, anyway. And even then the school would have preferred to lock that broom inside of school lockers and not allow for student to use it outside of Quidditch hours