Written for The Houses Competition and the Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition
Head of House Hufflepuff
Category: Standard
Team: Caerphilly Catapults
Position: Seeker
Prompts: [Negative Pairing] Professor Dumbledore/Professor Sprout, Saw (2004)
In-House challenge: Include death, murder, crows or ravens
Additional Requirement: Includes a letter or a note
Word count: 1,386
Beta: Aya Diefair
Notes: AU. Dumbledore is a tad bit more unhinged than in canon and he and Grindelwald went further in their quest for the Greater Good.
MC4A - Paranormal Phantasm
Fill #1
Representations: Albus Dumbledore, Pomona Sprout, murder, psychological torture
Bonus Challenges: Second Verse (Sitting Hummingbird; Hot Apple)
Pomona Sprout woke up with a start. She recognised the feeling of being stunned and then jolted back back into consciousness with a spell. The fuzz in her mind slowly receded and she took in her surroundings. From what she could see in the semi-darkness, she was sitting on the floor of an abandoned potions lab. She could see the faint shape of a cauldron and there were shelves lining every wall, jars littered sparsely on them.
Uncomfortable with her current position, Pomona shifted and thus found that she had been bound in place via a chain. It lead to a heavy ring set in the floor of the lab and she could see no obvious lock. Concerned, but not overly so, Pomona tugged the chain experimentally and found that it had little slack. Sighing to herself, Pomona reached for her wand safely tucked away in its holster. Only to freeze when her hand met empty leather.
Her wand was gone and she had no prowess in wandless magic. She was trapped. She closed her eyes in despair. She had thought herself safe, everyone had. The Dark Lord Voldemort had been vanquished two years ago by baby Harry Potter and his followers had either been sent to Azkaban or faded into the shadows. A noise from across the room made her jump and she peered into the darkness carefully.
"Who's there?" Pomona called out, her voice reverberating around the walls. There was another groan before a familiar voice spoke.
"Pomona?" It was Albus. Pomona sighed in relief, Albus would be able to help her, he was capable of wandless magic.
"It's me, Albus. Do you know what's going on?"
"I'm afraid not, my dear. It's dreadfully dark in here though, how about a little light, hmm? Lumos."
A small globe of light burst into existence and lit up the room, confirming Pomona's suspicion that they were in a potions lab. She could now see Albus and he was chained just as she was. Between them was the cauldron she had seen, rusted from disuse and age. There was no door to the lab, or at least not a visible one. The ingredients spotted around on the shelves were dusty and she knew they had been sitting there for several years without movement. She wondered absently if any of the contents in the jars were still viable.
A rattling caught her attention and she saw Albus pulling the chain attaching him via ankle to the stone floor. It seemed to be just as solid as hers, the only new things in the old potions lab apparently. Albus frowned and waved his hand over the link around his ankle, "Alohomora."
Nothing happened. Albus repeated the gesture and words with more force and still there was no result. A crack sounded and they both looked up to see two pieces of parchment falling to the ground in front of each of them. Pomona stared at the parchment in front of her for a few seconds before hesitantly reaching out and picking it up.
If you want to be free, kill your companion
She gasped, her hands coming up to cover her mouth as she stared at the note she had dropped in horror. Kill Albus? She couldn't! Even if Albus wasn't a dear friend of hers, she was no murderer, not even if it was to escape an inescapable room. Albus hummed thoughtfully and Pomona looked up at him. He was reading his own piece of parchment and looking around the room.
"It seems I have been challenged to find a way out of this lab." Pomona was confused. A way out? Had they received different notes? Was it only her that had been told to kill the other? Surely, Albus would have said something if he had read the same words she had.
She glanced at the piece of parchment again, wondering who had sent it. As she looked around the room, only one name came to mind. Severus Snape. Accused of being a Death Eater, a servant of Voldemort and only acquitted due to Albus' interference. He was the sort of person that would have an old potions lab. Who knew, they could even be in a lab that Severus had used while he had been working for He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named and then abandoned when the Dark Lord had been defeated.
"Pomona?" Albus was peering at her in concern. "Are you alright?"
Pomona opened her mouth several times without successfully saying anything before finally she croaked out, "I've been told to kill you."
"I see. Well, that would certainly be one way to get out of this place. After all, death is but the next great adventure." Albus' eyes twinkled at her as Pomona gaped in shock.
"You… You want me to kill you? Albus, I can't!"
"I don't see why not, I have no fear of death and you have been given a way to leave this place safely. The only price being my life."
Pomona shook her head furiously. "No, I refuse! And even if I didn't, how would I kill you without my wand?"
Another crack sounded and suddenly there was a dagger lying innocently in front of her, gleaming in the bright light from Albus' spell. "It would appear you have your answer."
There was something in his voice that made Pomona observe Albus more carefully. He was relaxed, she noted. He hadn't tried to get out of his chain after the two spells had failed, he hadn't moved in the limited range offered by the chain to look for exits. He sat against the wall and watched her. There was a gleam in his eyes, so unlike his usual twinkle. There was a sensation of sinister glee being shown through that gleam, his lips kept twitching as though he wanted to smile.
A dreadful thought crashed down on her and Albus must have noticed it as her face changed into one of shocked horror as she stared at him. His lips allowed themselves to curl up into a cruel smirk, "You should have killed me," he said.
Another crack sounded and the dagger in front of her found itself in his open hand. The chain connecting him to the floor vanished as though it was never there. Albus stalked forward and Pomona found herself scrabbling backwards, pressing herself close to the wall in a vain attempt to get away from the man she thought she had known.
Albus chuckled, "You can't get away from me, dear Professor Sprout. I gave you a chance to prevent this, I gave you a chance to stop me. You see, ever since Tom disappeared, I've found myself rather bored. I started reminiscing on the old days when Gellert and I would discuss plans for the future, we had quite a bit of fun with the local livestock. The thought occurred to me, we never made it past livestock. So I decided to continue our research.
"You've been ever so helpful. I always wondered if the urge to survive would be enough to make an innocent kill someone else in cold blood. I will, of course, have to repeat this experiment to have a comprehensive set of data, but you have completed your part. Goodbye, Pomona."
The dagger buried itself in the Herbology Professor's heart and Pomona Sprout died staring at the man that she had trusted. Albus hummed in satisfaction and settled himself back against the wall, the chain coming into existence once more and wrapping itself around his leg. Soon enough, Severus would arrive in a rush, summoned by a piece of parchment that urged him to save his colleagues.
Albus would look suitably distraught and spin a tale of Pomona sacrificing herself as she couldn't bear killing another and hoped that Albus would find a way out. There would be a hunt for the one who had grabbed the two members of Hogwarts staff but the trail would lead nowhere. Only Albus himself and House Elves sworn to silence knew the truth.
There would be no obstacles in his research. He stared at the steadily cooling body of his Herbology Professor and started thinking about who he might be able to get to replace her. He couldn't leave the children without a Herbology Professor, after all.