The attacks on students resumed after the Winter break.
The news was shocking enough that I actually pushed my way to the front of the group of students in our common room in order to find out more from the impromptu meeting. “What do you mean there was another attack?” I asked the prefect.
“Just that, it appears there was another attack. The student was petrified, but this time Pomfry was able to revive them. The problem is they have no memory of the attack.”
I glanced at my girls, who were all as shocked as I was, but I didn’t see any that seemed to have an idea of what was going on. Turning towards the prefect I asked again. “Who were they and where were they found?”
The prefect shook his head. “That isn’t being spread around, but the student was a fourth year and was found in the back passageway behind the library. Now everyone back to your rooms, we are all waiting here while the castle is searched again.”
I wanted to talk to my girls, but I knew I wouldn’t get the chance for a while. Not when their roommates would undoubtedly want to talk to them about what had just happened. Hiding themselves in their beds with the current drawn would undoubtedly be suspicious.
Yet, as I was walking back I heard one of the girls whisper to her friend. “Do you think it is safe? I mean Holly is in our dorm after all.” I actually stopped and gawked at the girl, but her friend elbowed her in the arm. “Do you really think Holly Potter, girl-who-lived, is actually a Parselmouth?”
I nearly slapped my forehead as I continued my path up to my dorm room. Either Holly had let it slip or there was a way of finding Parselmouths I wasn’t aware of. The only good news was that apparently most people didn’t believe it. Good for Holly, I guess, since her current treatment was much, much better than canon.
Still, it only made me focus again on the attacks and wondering what the hell was happening there.
Indeed, my roommates were just curious as everyone else, but since none of us knew anything there was only so long we could speculate without actual clues to go over. Ron in particular lost interest relatively quickly and drew the others into a discussion on Quidditch.
That gave me some time to myself. Sitting down on my bed, I closed my curtains before opening up a portal to the safe where I had stuffed Tom’s diary. After some careful prodding, I confirmed that the diary’s soul shard was still there and didn’t seem to be expanding in any way out of the book.
The next suspect was Ron, but I couldn’t exactly examine Ron perfectly while he was awake. Still looking over, he seemed exceptionally focused on reading his Quidditch magazine. Taking the chance, I opened a small portal behind him to look at his soul a little.
Ron’s soul seemed stressed and a little, for lack of a better term, frayed along the edges. However, it already looked better than what I had seen on Halloween. He also didn’t seem to have any strange connections to Tom either.
That check reminded me to check on Holly as soon as I could. We really needed to figure out how to remove Tom’s shard without killing her. Asking her to die wasn’t a very good solution in any world.
Especially if it required Tom to first resurrect himself using her blood, then have Tom cast the killing curse using the Elder wand (the same Elder wand that belonged to Holly), and finally have her killed by a killing curse after committing to willingly sacrificing her own life… Damn canon was a twisted mess of potential factors.
Seriously I didn’t have any idea which of those, if any, were required, in addition to the soul fragment in her scar, for her to survive Tom’s killing curse. I was just sure I didn’t want to have to rely on that in any way, shape, or form.
It was enough for me to once again focus on the here and now. Who the hell was attacking students now?
A part of me wondered if it was Pettigrew since he was a death eater and currently in the Castle, but that didn’t really make sense either, since he shouldn’t be able to open the chamber. But then again, was the Basilisk the one that was still attacking students? However, if it wasn’t the stupid snake, then who the hell was doing it, and how were they doing it in a way that Pomfrey was struggling to treat?
It was incredibly frustrating, especially since even doing a check of all the students who could speak Parseltongue in the castle wouldn’t necessarily find the culprit if they lost the ability when not possessed… if it was even a possession. We also didn’t even have an idea of when the next attack would be, with this year already butterflied as heavily as it had been.
As I sat there and thought about it. I still needed some sort of plan. We couldn’t just give up now that we didn’t have all the answers.
I sighed. Until we knew more, there wasn’t much we could do other than watch the chamber. A small portal that Ahri could use to watch the outside of the bathroom during classes should be sufficient to make sure nothing goes in or out. We then could take turns for the remaining evenings.
It was actually the next morning after breakfast that I pulled the precog girls aside to ask my questions.
“Dinah, what is the chance it is one of the students?”
Dinah frowned, but sighed. “Unlikely.”
“What is the chance it was someone using one of the children via possession or some sort of magical or physical compulsion.”
Dinah paused and considered the answer for a moment, still frowning. “Unlikely.”
I frowned. “What is the chance it is one of the faculty?”
Dinah frowned harder. “Unlikely.”
I sighed. “What is the chance it is something, or someone else.”
Dinah blinked and wiped her hand down her face. “Unlikely.”
Amy turned to Dinah, confused and a little worried. Taylor also scowled and looked around before speaking quieter despite our privacy spells. “If it isn’t the students, faculty, or something or someone else. What exactly is going on?”
Dinah sighed and slumped. “I don’t know. I can’t see anything about the attacker. It is hard to even consider looking for him, her, or it” At that point Ahri noticed Dinah’s distress and jumped up to her shoulders in her cat form and began to rub her head across Dinah’s cheek in an obvious attempt to cheer her up.
Luna frowned, staring out into the void but slowly shook her head, incredibly serious. “I can’t see anything about these attacks. They really don’t make sense. It is like there is just a fog over anything and everything related to the whole thing, including the identities of those attacked. The only thing I am certain of is that someone will be attacked again.”
All of us looked at each other, obviously worried. Finally, I sighed before running a hand through my hair. Looking at my Family’s worried faces, I decided to try to break the mood. “Well, let's stick together then. The best we can do is follow Mad Eye Moody’s mantra of ‘Constant Vigilance!’” The girls all smiled at that, even Luna, who had read the Harry Potter books over the Winter Holidays.
I turned to the girls and decided to ask. “We have been focusing on spells and dueling, but what else do you think we should work on?”
Taylor perked up. “I think we need permanent protections. If the Weasley twins could create a hat that blocked most low level curses by year 6 in canon, then all of us working together should be able to do something similar in the next few years. Especially if we focus it on a specific attack like bullets or knives instead of a broad category like harmful spells.”
I blinked and looked at her. “I like it! Good thinking, love! We should look into that hard, maybe order a book on enchanting to get us started, since the enchanting elective only officially starts third year.”
Taylor blushed pink at the endearment, and I smiled, wondering if she would ever grow out of that and hoping she wouldn’t.
Luna raised her hand and I smiled at her. “You don’t need to raise your hand, we are family here.”
Luna blushed, but then smiled a little. “I kinda want to find my animal form like Professor McGonagall. The Lovegoods have been doing it for generations.”
I felt my smile widen. “Good suggestion. Honestly, trying to find and transform into the animal representation of our soul is one of the coolest parts of this world.”
There was nearly a minute of silence as everyone considered their potential animal forms before I got a chorus of slow nods and hums in confirmation. A few more seconds of silence stretched before Amy sighed. “I think we need to work on learning memory charms sooner rather than later. There have been quite a few times when that would have been helpful.”
I nodded my head. I knew Amy still had a fear of messing with people’s minds, but I had been wanting that since nearly the beginning. “You are right. Maybe I will take point on that as well.”
Seeing Amy a little more comfortable now that she wasn’t going to be the only one who would be responsible for memory modifications, I smiled and moved on. “Well, then, let's get to work. I know we have nearly finished this year’s schooling, but let's see if we can’t push into next year’s as well. We are going to have to deal with Tom in less than two years if we want to stop him from getting a body after the tournament. That and we really should keep up our dueling practices.”
Seeing the firm gazes and small nods from everyone, I smiled as we picked up our things to head back to classes for the day.
As the weeks turned into months, the pattern continued. One to four students would be found petrified around the castle, which would be undone by Madam Pomfrey after a few days. However, the students in question would have no memory of their attacks.
In that time, we really focused on our studies, even if we didn’t advertise them to the rest of the school. No reason to let everyone know what we could do beforehand, after all. Our dueling also improved dramatically, even if we couldn’t show our full capabilities to the dueling club.
After some consideration, we even walked up to the room of requirement and removed the Diadem, just in case that was somehow possessing someone to continue the attacks.
Really, that entire mission was anticlimactic, as we didn’t get within 10 feet of the thing. I simply got close enough to confirm that it was indeed a Horcrux, then dropped it through a portal into another lead box with some suppression runes I found in my textbook for safe keeping.
The following day we were finally able to catch the golden trio on their way back from the Library. Gesturing for Sabah, Dinah, and Luna to pull to the side of the hall, I decided to ask our precogs rather than guess if now was a good time to talk and try to get closer.
“Dinah, would Holly and friends be ok if I asked to inspect her Scar? And would it be alright to tell them a little about our abilities? I don’t want to tell them everything yet, especially if Tom can read her mind and finds out we are collecting his Horcruxes, but she needs to know a little more if we want them to trust us.”
Dinah frowned for a moment before she nodded. “Should be mostly alright.”
Luna interrupted and sighed, a little sadly. “Too many cooks will ruin the pudding.” Turning towards Sabah and Dinah, she took each of their hands and pulled them away towards the Ravenclaw tower.
Blinking, I glanced at Taylor and Amy before sighing. “Well, I guess it is up to us three, then.”
Catching up to the golden trio wasn’t actually too hard, even if I noticed the three of them had palmed their wands as we called out to them until they realized who exactly was calling them. Even then, I noticed Holly and Hermione put their wands away by sliding them up into their sleeves where they could get them back easily, while Ginny didn’t even do that. I thought we were closer than that, but the trio might just be on edge. The entire castle was getting more and more paranoid, even if most people dismissed Holly’s involvement.
“Hey Holly,” I started, “How are you doing?”
Holly looked confused for a moment before she smiled slightly. “Fine, how about you?”
I smiled back, I tried to look calm despite Ginny’s glare. “Good, we have been really studying hard to get ahead. Both because magic is awesome, but we really were serious when we said we wanted to be able to help if you run into issues like last year. Since it looks like that is happening, we wanted to be ready.”
That seemed to bring the trio up short. They probably didn’t think we were serious about helping them out, which made them pause while Amy continued where I left off. “With our abilities and studies, we are hoping we could really help out if anything happens.”
Ginny looked confused and I realized that she hadn’t been told about Amy’s ability, which was actually pretty nice of Hermione and Holly, keeping our secrets like that. However, that thought was instantly dashed when Holly frowned, looking confused, while Hermione looked thoughtful. Did they really just forget what Amy showed them?
Then again, they were probably distracted by the attacks. Predictably, it was Hermione who remembered first. “Ah, yeah, but how can being able to tell if someone is lying be able to help us? Didn’t you have to touch them? Plus, I don’t know how we could go around asking each and every person in the castle if they are the heir of Slytherin.”
Amy blinked before she sighed. “Yeah, that is something I had thought of as well. However, since it was our first meeting, we didn’t explain everything. Yes, I can tell if someone is lying, but it is bigger than that. I actually have the ability to heal just about anything. Well, anything that isn’t immediately fatal… besides brains. I can help a little there, but brains are really, really complex.”
That seemed to surprise the trio, so I continued. “We aren’t going to explain everything right this second because we are still getting to know you, but we do have some gifts to help you three. As for my ability, given enough time, I can open a portal to just about anywhere on earth that isn’t magically protected against my type of magical travel. That includes here at Hogwarts, even if the wards here make it much harder than other places. The caveat is the further away I want to go, the longer it will take for me to open said portal.”
To demonstrate, I exaggerated the difficulty a bit in case Tom saw this memory, and opened a portal to just down the hall from the Gryffindor common room entrance. I made sure it took about a minute, but it still saved us having to walk up 4 flights of stairs.
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Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised when the trio looked nervous going through the portal, but after watching my girls and me walk through without hesitation, the golden trio followed through as well.
Now in the hallway outside our common room, I smiled, trying to not spook them too much. “We know we are just first years, and we would appreciate you keeping our abilities secret for now, but we really do just want to help.”
Ginny still looked a little wary, but Hermione actually looked thoughtful, if not a little excited. I could tell she was probably bursting with curiosity, but I didn’t want to deal with that just yet so I changed the subject. “Holly, the common room entrance is just there if you don’t want to, but Amy would like to take a quick look at your scar. We heard that it sometimes hurts and she wanted to see if she could do anything about that.”
That brought the trio up short. However, despite the concern from the other two girls, Holly actually smiled a little sadly. “No one has been able to do anything about it, not even Dumbledore,” then seeing our crestfallen faces she sighed. “But if you really want to take a look, I don’t see the harm.”
Amy smiled and gestured towards an empty classroom a little further away. Once again, Hermione and Ginny both looked concerned. In fact, Ginny was now openly twirling her wand around her fingers. Yet neither one stopped Amy from pulling Holly down the hall, then sitting Holly down on a seat in front of her before holding her hands and letting her eyes go blank and distant.
Trying not to draw attention to myself, I also stepped forward and stared as carefully at her scar as I could. As I focused on my soul sight, I tried to keep my revulsion from my face. Indeed, there was a small leech shaped soul piece latched onto Holly’s soul. Yet it was being mostly kept at bay by some sort of magical barrier with a red hue. Was that the blood sacrifice? Still, I could tell that despite the barrier’s best efforts, a minuscule part of Holly's soul had been blackened ever so slightly. Meanwhile, Tom’s soul had no such mixing.
After a minute or two of study, committing what I saw to memory, I stepped back. Amy must have been waiting for me as she also let go of Holly’s hands.
As I got to thinking, I considered what I had seen. On the one hand, the books seemed correct. There was a soul fragment in Holly. Yet, on the other hand, I was pretty sure there was no formal binding of any kind between the two. That would make severing Tom’s soul from Holly’s relatively easy in theory. I might even be able to just rip the thing off like the leech it was. The only problem was the mostly-metaphorical leech’s hooks. I didn’t know what they could do. How much Tom would be able to fight me and what it would do to Holly.
Ideally, I would just reach in and over power the stupid soul shard, but I wasn’t just wrestling with Tom’s soul which I could almost certainly overpower, but also his magic which I probably couldn’t. Again, I suspected his soul wasn’t as firmly attached as a proper Horcrux, but it was obviously attached somehow.
Really, I needed to figure out some way of dealing with Tom’s magic and soon. While the blood barrier was stopping most of Tom from influencing Holly, there was still the hint of bleed over from his hooks, trying to corrupt her and control her.
Without her mother’s sacrifice blocking Tom, Holly might not have made it to her second birthday without being taken over like the diary had tried to do to Ron.
Again, that sacrifice didn’t excuse Dumbledore for not doing more to try to help Harry prepare for the fight against Tom in canon. It definitely didn’t excuse the abuse Dumbledore allowed to happen under his watch. I also doubted that Harry, and now Holly, actually needed to live with relatives for the protection to work. It seemed too deeply rooted into her soul for it to just fade away. Instead, it probably protected her relatives, helping them and thus allowing Holly to grow up theoretically safe.
Still, Dumbledore was probably right in that it was love, specifically her mother’s sacrifice, that defeated Tom as the power he knew not. I just didn’t believe for a second that Holly was required to die the same way to finish Tom off.
Shaking my head discreetly, I focused on the here and now again. Checking over Holly’s work, I noticed things had improved a little. The scar definitely looked less puffy and red after Amy’s work, but it was still visible. Wordlessly, Hermione pulled out a small mirror from her handbag, and Holly’s mouth dropped while inspecting the scar.
Amy grimaced, obviously frustrated. “Sorry, I couldn’t do much more, there was something blocking me, but maybe if I tried again every few months I might eventually be able to finally heal it.”
There was a moment’s silence before Holly reached forward and hugged Amy, who blinked in shock before she smiled a little and hugged Holly back.
It was at that moment that Hermione seemed to finally be unable to contain all of her questions anymore. “How did you do that? Where did you get those abilities? Could you teach me to do that? How did you learn how to heal? Who taught you? Why haven’t I heard of anyone who can do what you just did? Does your sister also have abilities? What about your friends?”
Amy looked overwhelmed, while Taylor and Ginny paused before they both actually guffawed at the rapid fire questions. Amy blinked a few more times before she sighed. “No one I know can do exactly what I do. I learned on my own, some is instinct, some was studying medical textbooks, and some was asking doctors. Yes, we each have some abilities, but we can’t really teach you or give you these abilities, not yet at least…” Pausing, she was obviously not entirely sure what to say after that, so I decided to continue.
Gesturing towards Taylor, I nodded. “Yes, we all have abilities, but I am not going to give away my companion's abilities. It is up to them if they want to share them.”
Taylor hummed for a moment before she spoke up. “At the basic level and with a little setup, I can know where everyone and everything is around me in several hundred meters at any given time.”
That seemed to just bring up more questions, but Hermione actually managed to get a hold of herself and we smiled. Amy decided to speak for the rest of us when she explained and cut off the discussion. “We can talk later. We really do want to help, but I am a bit tired now, so we can talk more tomorrow.”
Holly looked surprised before she once again smiled and nodded. “Yeah, we can talk later.”
As we got into our own dorms, I waited for an hour or so before I opened up a tiny, penny sized portal to each of my girls' beds to update them on what we had learned.
Amy had described her inability to heal the scar like it was an infected wound that refused to be cleaned. Even after removing all the scar tissue, the new flesh she created in the area formed the same scar tissue as before. The only thing she was actually able to do was change the skin around the scar to be less easily inflamed. At least the result looked much smaller. She suspected she might eventually devise a type of tissue which would ignore the curse’s effects, but it wouldn’t be easy when she couldn’t actually use her power to influence the curse directly.
After that, I let the girls know what I had found. The girls were suitably horrified that Tom’s soul was trying to stain and overwhelm Holly’s soul.
It was made all the worse when I admitted it was sort of similar to our own bonded souls. Yet despite my inner fears, which my girls confronted and dismissed, our bond had my soul strengthening theirs while they supported mine back. Plus, we seemed to bleed into and influence each other equally. So more of a mixing of equals than the parasitic arrangement Holly had.
Which made sense, I supposed. Tom was using the artifacts or living hosts as sources of power. He wasn’t about to use his very soul to empower others.
Unfortunately, we were unable to meet up with the trio the following day due to another attack, and so we continued our studies. We would just have to meet later.
However, with that focus to improve ourselves, time slipped by and with all of that studying, dueling practice, monitoring the chamber of secrets, and occasional brief surface level talks with the golden trio trying to become better friends, we were somehow caught unaware when Dumbledore was removed from the castle.
Half expecting it from the books or not, it was still astounding to find out he had actually been removed. Maybe there was something I wasn’t understanding, but as the victims were being revived within a couple of days, I didn’t think things were actually all that bad.
Especially in the eyes of the probably bigoted school board of governors since the victims were almost exclusively Muggleborns with a few Half-Bloods.
The problem was no one could figure out who would be targeted next. There were also a mix of years, from a few first years to one seventh year girl, although most of the attacks seemed to be between third and fifth year. The attacks were across all houses except Slytherin and included a mix of both boys and girls.
In the end, no one had any idea what was happening. So why would it make sense to remove Dumbledore while not calling for outside help. Why did they think the teachers would suddenly be able to find the culprit when they were now covering for the missing Headmaster as well?
Worse in my mind, the next day Hagrid was arrested and sent directly to Azkaban.
That legitimately shocked me as it didn’t even make sense. If he was guilty or knew what was attacking students, why wasn’t he being questioned by the department of magical law enforcement, the DMLE? If it was to prove his innocence, then why send him to prison? Wouldn’t a simple ministry holding cell or house arrest work better? Plus, not lead to torturing a potentially innocent man without a trial?
Worse, why weren’t the magical police force, or Aurors here in droves? People were being attacked. The Ministry obviously knew it was happening, since the Minister had shown up to take Hagrid.
What was everyone smoking? If I had been a parent and heard how bad it was, I would have pulled my kid from school, just to be safe, yet only two students who had been attacked actually left.
To make things worse, Hagrid’s arrest was immediately after one of the attacks, so another attack wasn’t due for another two weeks or so. That was a long time to be stuck on Azkaban Island for what was almost certainly an innocent man… thinking about that also made me feel worse about not doing anything for Sirius yet.
Still, as we waited and watched to try to catch the attacker, we continued to see nothing. It was infuriating.
Luna and Dinah were perhaps the worst off. The two of them seemed to be running themselves ragged trying to see what was going on but continued to get nothing. If nothing else, it was showing us how easily our planning could be derailed by blocking our precogs.
It got bad enough that I actually sat down to think about it during lunch. I didn’t know why or how the culprit was hiding here, but there were blind spots via powers on Earth Bet so theoretically we could run into them in other worlds as well… the question was what we were going to do about it when we encountered these blind spots.
I got up to head towards the Library. Maybe I could find something in the library about privacy charms and if there were stronger variants.
Yet before I could do anything to actually help Luna or Dinah… or at least try to convince them to take a break, the two came running up to Amy and me.
Out of breath, Dinah was the first to speak. “The trio are headed out to the forbidden forest. They plan on visiting the spiders. They are looking for the Acromantula nest right now.”
I froze for a moment before I nearly facepalmed. They didn’t have the Weasley car to rescue them. Plus, I was pretty sure I hadn’t seen any spiders leaving the castle since Halloween. So why were they heading out there? I nearly facepalmed again. I supposed that Hargid might have told them something while he was being led away. That was still an absolutely stupid thing to do. Powerful or not, the trio were still just second year students and the Acromantula were 3X tier on the danger rating alone and a nest was a 5X, top tier, threat.
Pulling myself back into the present, I turned to Luna, “could you bring Taylor to that classroom,” I said, pointing to an empty unused classroom down the hall. As she agreed and ran towards the library, I sighed internally. Of all the days for the trio to head into the forest, why did it have to be the day our family decided to split up and decompress after so much studying together.
Once inside the room in question, I started opening a portal in front of me while moving the other side around, trying to find the trio in the forest. Unfortunately, despite Dinah pointing me in the general direction, I didn't find anything except the edge of the webs before Taylor arrived. The forest was just too thick and dark.
As she arrived looking worried, staring out of the portal, I brought her up to speed. “I have no idea where the trio is right now. Can you find them with your bugs through the portal? Also, can you control the Acromantula?”
Taylor glanced at me and nodded, “I will start looking now.” Before letting her eyes go blank as she focused on the area on the other side of the portal. She searched for a moment before she paused and grimaced while explaining. “And no, it looks like I can’t control them, not really. I just found a few smaller ones along the edge of the web to test on. And yes, I can control the newborns and juveniles, but none of the older ones.”
I bit back a curse before I saw Taylor point along a path between the trees. “Found them! They are fine, but they seem to be approaching the main nest right now.”
Nodding, I pushed the portal forward before while making it smaller, no reason to let the spiders know what we were doing. Turning to Ahri, who was sitting next to us on one of the desks, I asked. “Can you hide the portal or distract the spiders if we need to help the trio escape?”
Ahri in her cat form looked at me before staring back at the portal, “yes.”
We slowly moved our portal closer to the trio and watched as the trio interrogated the Acromantula chief. This time Aragog didn’t seem to know what was going on in the castle, but told the same story as in the books about how Hagrid was raising him but got blamed for the Chamber of Secrets the first time.
It was then, when Aragog said he would let his children eat them, that we moved to rescue the trio. Yet before I could do anything, Holly and Hermione whipped out their wands and cast a bluebell flames charm while Ginny whirled around, pointing her glowing wand at any spider that got too close.
Holly practically yelled. “Get any closer, and we will set this entire web ablaze!”
That got the spiders to back up again, and the trio slowly started to back away from the nest, holding their wands ready to fight and burn anything that got too near.
I had to admit that it was a good bluff. The bluebell flames wouldn’t burn anything except magic, but the spiders didn’t know that, so it allowed them to be surrounded by floating flames while keeping their wands free and ready to fight.
Yet as they continued to back away, getting closer to the edge of the web, I realized that the spiders were creating an ambush behind them.
Whispering to Ahri I moved the portal to a spot a few paces behind them while still in front of the spiders and gestured to Ahri to create an illusion surrounding the trio. Immediately, the illusions took a slight turn to head towards the majority of the spiders.
I opened the portal behind the trio fully, calling out as softly as I could. “Holly, Hermione, Ginny. We are behind you.”
It was that moment that the plan went tits up. The spiders must have had much better hearing than I had thought, as the spiders immediately lunged towards both my voice and Ahri’s illusions, and after a moment, the trio’s current location.
I supposed they didn’t know what had happened, so they attacked the sound, the visuals, and perhaps the vibrations they were getting from any remaining webs.
Still, after only a split second of hesitation, the trio turned and sprinted towards our portal.
Getting out of the way, I stuck my wand outside the portal and angled it away from the trio before casting, “Incendio”, and watching as a small pillar of fire was shot to the trio’s left side. Amy turned and did the same for the right.
That seemed to make the trio run even faster as they jumped for the portal but before Ginny could make it through she was tackled by a large, pony sized spider just inches from the door. Turning around, Holly’s face turned into a mask of anger as she yelled out, “Dispulso”, with more force than I thought possible.
The spider on top of Ginny was literally blasted back, smearing itself across a half dozen of its kin, probably killing them as well.
Damn, that was a lot of power!
Hermione wasn’t far behind as she literally summoned Ginny by yelling “Accio Ginny’s clothes.” And I watched as Ginny literally flew into Hermione, knocking them both back.
Luckily for all of us, that didn’t distract me enough to not close the portal right after she got back. Yet, as I watched the sea of angry spiders through the closing portal, I noticed arrows beginning to fly into the horde.
Was that the centaurs? Were the Centaurs how Holly and friends were supposed to survive this? Or was this the world’s new way of protecting the chosen one until she could fight Tom? Was fate, or whatever controlled prophecies, somehow forcing things to happen to make Tom and Holly got to that final fight?
No, I needed to focus. “Are you three alright?”
Yet before they could answer, Amy was already poking each of them. Ginny actually sighed in relief as her probably bruises were healed, but the other two seemed mostly alright.
Ginny started shivering before she answered. “Yeah… I, uh… I am never going to make fun of Ron for being afraid of spiders again.”
All of us, including Ginny, actually chuckled at that. Hermione and Holly looked at us before Holly nodded. “Thanks, You all really saved our butts out there.”
Ginny finally seemed to realize that Luna was here with us. She looked exceptionally confused, probably because she had known Luna before Luna had met us, so it didn’t make sense to her. Not when we said all our group had abilities, but she obviously decided to drop it for now.
I sighed. “Look, we really do want to help you and we can do a lot, but you need to let us know what you are planning for us to be able to help.”
Holly grimaced, but Hermione sighed. “We are looking for the heir of Slytherin alright? So unless you know who that is, there isn’t much you can do.”
We all winced and the trio looked shocked. I held up my hand to slow down the questions. “We are pretty sure we stopped the first attacker. The one that got Filch’s Cat. But we haven’t been able to find out who took over after New Years.”
The trio looked shocked again, but Hermione narrowed her eyes. “How are you sure you got them if the attacks are still happening? And why didn’t we hear anything about them being caught?”
I sighed. “The culprit was a possession via a cursed book. We caught the student in question in the act. We have isolated the book so no one can be possessed again, and we were going to bring it to Dumbledore when the attacks started again. As for how we know…” I turned to Dinah and Luna.
Dinah sighed. “Luna and I are Seers. We can often see a bit of the future. Yet whoever has taken over is somehow blocking our sight.”
Luna smiled. “You are starting to remove all the Nargles from your path. Yet the Humdinggers have made the soup too thick to stir.”
We all rolled our eyes while the trio just gaped, open-mouthed. I sighed. “Luna, less cryptic please.”
Luna actually giggled at that. “You aren’t as blind anymore, but even we don’t know everything, as there are too many tangles to make out the weaver.”
I sighed. “Good enough. Look, girls. We can talk about this more, but I am sure you don’t want to play 20 questions right now, since we don’t actually have any big answers yet. We can talk more once you have had some time to clean up and rest.”
Nodding, the trio thanked us once more before they filed out of the classroom, a little amazed at being back inside the castle, and walked towards the dorms.
Turning towards Amy and Taylor I sighed. “We are going to have to figure out a way of killing the Acromantula.”
The two nodded before I looked at a frowning Luna, but before I could say anything she looked up and agreed. “You are right, Max, sometimes things like this need to happen.”
Amy frowned before sighing. “I might be able to design some sort of magical plague to kill them all. Or we might be able to surround them with wards to keep them from escaping and snipe them from our pocket dimension… it might be tedious, but it is probably doable.”
I nodded. “Good, worst case scenario, in which we aren’t able to stop Tom and everything goes like it did in the books, we don’t want them to join the death eaters and start attacking the castle again.”
I turned to Taylor. “Still, if we can get a few juveniles and put them into a pocket space, do you think you could weave some clothes for us? I assume Acromantula silk robes would be super strong like regular spider silk and might even be magically resistant.”
Taylor frowned for a moment before nodding. “Yes, easily.”
I sighed. “Well, at least we will have that at least.”
Interlude Sabah:
Sabah sighed as she put her feet up and sipped at the tea that Max handed her while leaning back against Amy.
She had to admit that the start to this crazy adventure had been rocky.
No, it had been nearly disastrous, but Dinah had been right that evening. She had been relatively happy.
The problem was Max. She was worried about him. He was changing.
Oh, it was mostly a good thing in that he was more concerned with their feelings and opinions. Yet, he was getting quieter.
She didn’t know what to think about that.
Additionally, Amy seemed to be getting more and more nervous. That one was a little more obvious. They had been in this world for nearly a year and so hadn’t had the opportunity to receive or send mail to Earth Bet.
Sabah could understand conceptually, even if she had been thrown out of her family when she had dropped out of her engineering degree, she did miss them a little.
Taking a deep breath, she sighed and set the cup down on the saucer before pulling up the textbook once more.
These thoughts weren’t helpful. She could relax on their weekly date night because Max and Taylor were right. They needed to work hard if they wanted to help Holly take down Tom before the end of her fourth year.
Then they could actually relax in this world.
Plus, deep down, she had to admit that Max had been right. She was very curious to see what a Veela was like. So best make a good impression, especially since she would appear to be a young teenager when Fleur arrived.
It wasn’t like she was even going to try to seduce Fluer, just wanted to make sure she wasn’t embarrassing herself or Max.
Interlude Holly:
Holly paced back and forth in her room.
She knew things were going to get worse. She felt it in her very bones.
It was nice of the Alcotts and Heberts to offer to help, but she didn’t want them to be in danger.
No, she could admit that part of her just didn’t want to ask them for help. Asking for help had never worked before, why would that change now?
Ginny and Hermione had basically forced their way into her life and had stayed there. It had helped… But they also nearly both died last year.
How could she ask for anyone else to do the same?
Maybe it would have been better if she had walked into the forest alone…
No! Focus Holly!
Then again, if Dinah and Luna had just let them know about the spiders. That it wasn’t necessary to ask the man eating spiders for information…if ANYONE would just tell her what was going on.
No! That wasn’t fair either. Kicking her trunk and then wincing at her aching toes, she slumped onto her bed.
Ok… Find the new bloody heir, kick his ass, then think about why everything always seems to happen to her…
Why her… when she just wanted to be left alone… not be a freak.
Holly sighed again.
Damn it!