A/N: This has no real impact on the chapter or story, but just so you know- series 6- with Chris returning to the past- did happen but Chris and Wyatt knows nothing about it and it is never discussed.
Also in response to a reviewer pointing out that 'muggle' is a derogative term and therefore maybe Chris shouldn't prefer callng his friends it; muggle can be used as an insult by pureblood wizards who believe being a muggle or muggle-born is a bad thing. However the term itself (at least in this story) is simply a technical term like mortal or innocent which simply means a being without power :) Thank you for the review, however, and if anyone else has any questions about my take on either series, please do let me know.
Five days after Christmas, Phoebe invited the whole family out for lunch at her favourite Italian restaurant. Wyatt decided to skip it as two nights ago, when Piper and Leo had taken their kids out for Chinese, Katherine had shown up with her family who then promptly suggested they should joint tables and eat together. Katherine had then spent the rest of the night attempting to slip love potion into Wyatt's glass.
Chris, too, decided to stay home in order to start on the mound of holiday homework he had been blissfully ignoring until now. He had just finished his transfiguration essay and was searching for his herbology textbook, when the doorbell rang downstairs. Wyatt was now refusing to answer either the door or the phone, not knowing where Katherine would pounce next so, with a sigh, Chris orbed downstairs to open the door to Callum.
"Hey." He greeted merrily, pulling off his bobble hat. Manticores aren't naturally bothered by the cold, meaning Callum marked the winter cold not by wrapping up in coats and scarfs, but simply by the addition of a blue and red bobble hat to his traditional t-shirt and jeans. "Did you have a good Christmas?"
Before Chris could answer, however, there came a sudden ear- shattering wail rang through the house and Chris and Callum barely bothered to exchange looks before orbing and shimmering respectively put to Wyatt's room where the sound was emanating from.
When they reappeared, they were confronted with the scene of Wyatt sat crossed legged on his bed, staring intently at the open golden egg from which the noise was apparently coming from. Callum slammed his hands over his ears to protect his highly sensitive manticore ears from the deafening scream, while Chris leapt on to the bed to slam the egg closed. As soon as the egg was closed, the sound stopped and Wyatt seemed suddenly alerted to their presence.
"What the hell was that!?" Exclaimed Callum, cautiously removing his hands from his ears. "It sounded like someone was slaughtering thousands of cats!" Wyatt didn't answer right away, but rather picked up a notepad from besides his bead and began to scribble a few notes down.
"It's meant to be the clue for the next task." Sighed Wyatt, scratching his head with his pencil.
"Huh." Said Callum. "Well I hate to break this to you Wy, knowing your love for the animal kingdom, but from the sounds of it, the next task involves quite a lot of kitty killing." He grinned, hopping on to the bed opposite Wyatt, and tossing the egg between his hands.
"I'm not going to have to murder cats." Dismissed Wyatt, snatching the egg away from his friend.
"You don't know that." Objected the half manticore. "The last task had a fourteen year old fight the largest, angriest dragon in the world armed with nothing more than a flammable stick. I'm telling you, this tournament is messed up." Wyatt rolled his eyes, and turned instead to Chris.
"When you heard the noise before, did you hear anything else?" He asked. Chris frowned, trying to recall the wailing sound, he shrugged, having focused more on making the sound stop rather than what the noise actually was. "So you couldn't hear any worlds?" Clarified Wyatt, glancing down at his notepad. Chris shook his head. "Okay, look, just listen again and try to hear something else." He insisted. Callum tried to protest, but his words were quickly drowned out as Wyatt opened the egg and the wailing resumed.
Chris concentrated harder on the sound this time, wincing slightly as he fought through the waves of screeching to hear something more, and to his surprise he could make out faint words, or at least somewhere in his mind, he was making sense of the wailing.
"...Seek us... voices...cannot sing above... searching, ponder... sorely miss...hour long... recover... prospect's black... too late..." Wyatt kept the egg open for a few minutes, jotting the words he picked up down on his note pad. As Chris listened, he thought he picked up more words, but he had no idea how to infer a meaning from them.
Eventually, Callum had had enough of the screaming, he prised the egg out of Wyatt's hands and slammed it shut... Wyatt turned to Chris hopefully and Chris nodded, taking the note pad from Wyatt to add his own words. Callum stood up to read the words over Chris' shoulder.
"Oh, come on guys." He said disbelievingly, "You can't really expect me to believe you heard words through all that can you?" He laughed, scanning the list. "I mean really- searching, ponder- what does that even mean? And cannot sing is just a description of the wailing." Wyatt rolled his eyes but instead of replying, he calmly took the note pad back from Chris and began writing out both his words and Chris' together- clearly trying to work out the correct order to find the message. "Hey, maybe the wailing is a clue about the monster you have to face next." Suggested Callum after a few minutes of silence. "Maybe you're going up against a banshee or something." Wyatt shook his head.
"I think it must be another language." He said, not looking up from his work. "The wailing I mean. I think that's why we're hearing it differently to you- we half white-lighter so we can understand other languages. This one's clearly really old or rare or something which is why it's taking so long for our brains to process it. Maybe if we listen to it a few more times we could get it all in one go." He suggested- glancing up at the other two for approval. Chris reluctantly nodded his head- not really wanting to subject himself to the deafening screech any more, but Callum shook his head.
"Seriously, if I have to listen to that any more, my ears are going to start bleeding." He said- sounding the most sincere Chris could ever remember him sounding. "You guys don't need me for this any way." He pointed out. Wyatt nodded his head, and Callum left, chucking the egg back to Wyatt as he did so.
"Ready?" Chris asked Wyatt when they heard the front door close after Callum. Chris sighed, but nodded.
The boys spent the next hour trying to decode the egg. They could still only get small snippets of the message at a time, but as with each try they heard one or two new words, by the time the rest of the family returned home, they had a pretty good idea of what the message said.
"Come seek us where voices sound,
Cannot sing above the ground,
And while you're searching ponder this,
We've taken you'll sorely miss,
An hour long you'll have
To recover what we took,
But past- the prospect's black,
Too late it's gone, won't come back." Recited Wyatt for the tenth time, leaning back on the bed. "I still don't understand it." He sighed. Chris ran his hand through his hair, trying to make sense of the message.
"I think the problem is that we've understood the message to quickly." He stated. Wyatt stared at him, clearly thinking his little brother was insane.
"What are you talking about?" He asked. "That took us over an hour to decipher and I don't think I'll ever hear well again."
"I just mean none of the other champions have omnilingualism." He pointed out. "There is clearly another way to do it- come seek us where voices sound- maybe you can only here their voices in a certain room of the castle or in the forest somewhere. Maybe the voices that need to source are the monsters- or whatever- that you're going to face. If we know where to hear them, then we'd be on stage closer to knowing what you're up against." Wyatt nodded- it made sense. He glanced back down at the pad, trying to see if there was any clue as to where their voices' might sound.
"Cannot sing above the ground." He read, looking up at Chris. "Hey, you talk to Hogwarts kids, have any of them mentioned secret tunnels under the castle or the grounds? Any legends about monsters under the school?" Chris considered it for a minute.
"You mean apart from Snape in the dungeons?" He joked- but Wyatt felt he was too close to a solution to accept anything less than a serious answer. "Well, Ron mentioned something about this thing that was attacking students in their second year- apparently a giant snake was living in this massive chamber under the school and then was moving around through the pipes." Wyatt frowned- suddenly alarmed at the sort of place they were staying in. "Though thinking about it, it's probably not that as Ron said Harry killed the snake and sealed the chamber."
"Wait- he killed a giant snake in a secret underground chamber when he was twelve?" Questioned Wyatt incredulously- beginning to think maybe Harry didn't need his help as much as he though.
"Yep, and as far as I know, that's the only legendary monster under the grounds at Hogwarts- the only other monsters I know about are in the forbidden forest, oh and apparently there's a giant squid in the lake, but by all accounts it's actually quite friendly and likes to be tickled in the summer time." Wyatt's eyes suddenly lit up.
"The lake!" He exclaimed. "That must be it! The next challenge is in the lake and their voices must be audible under water- that's how the other champions are meant to solve the clue!" Before even giving Chris a chance to respond, he leapt off the bed, and practically sprinted to the bathroom. By the time Chris followed him, he bath taps was already running and a few minutes later, when the egg was completely submerged, Wyatt thrust his head beneath the surface and let out a gurgled cheer.
The boys returned to Hogwarts on the final day before term restarted. Wyatt had hoped to use the book of Shadows to find a spell or potion to help him breath underwater, but Piper had refused pointing out that using the book to win the competition could count as personal gain and so he would have to use the school library like the other Champions. Chris offered his help looking through the thousands of books that the library must hold, but Wyatt refused it- returning to his previous stance that he had to complete the tasks alone as the rules dictated, so instead Chris went to find Hermione whom he hadn't seen since the Yuel Ball.
"You're back!" Exclaimed Hermione as he entered Gryffindor tower. She leapt up from where she sat with Harry and Ron and embraced him in a hug before leading him towards a pair of armchairs in the corner of the room. As he passed the boys, Harry gave him a small wave and a welcoming smile, but Chris noticed that Ron seemed considerably less happy to see him.
"Is Ron ok?" Asked Chris, feeling Ron still glaring at him across the room. "He's not mad at me for not telling him about you and me is he?"
"What? No." Replied Hermione. "He's just being an idiot. He's annoy I agreed to go with you rather than wait around for weeks just in case they were too cowardly to ask someone 'better'," she explained, thinking back to their argument at the Yuel ball, "and he's hiding this by saying that I shouldn't be dating you because you're from magic school, your brother is competing with Harry. He says I'm fraternising with the enemy." Chris didn't know whether to laugh or feel indignant.
"What?" He said, glancing over to Ron who was still sending occasional glares his way, "That's ridiculous; I thought the whole point of this was to 'fraternise' with other schools. Besides, we've been hanging out since I got here, he promised to teach me Quidditch, I got him his prom date!" Hermione smiled and took Chris' hand- which made him feel somewhat better.
"Don't take it too personally." She reassured him. "Like I said, he's an idiot. He didn't talk to his best friend for over a month just because someone put Harry's name into the Goblet of Fire and now their best friends again like nothing happened. Last year he thought my Cat ate his Rat and that I was trying to sabotage Harry's position on the Quidditch team, and now he's jealous because someone asked me to a ball. Trust me; you two will be playing Quidditch before you know it." She promised, before leaning in and pecking him shyly on the lips.
