Chapter 12. Schools of Ice and Fire
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great,
And would suffice.
~Robert Frost
When Gabrielle Delacour was 8 years old, her sister fought a dragon.
Stole from a dragon, to be precise, but only because it was expected of her. Fleur was both extremely loyal, and extremely ladylike; she wouldn't have stolen without permission.
The dragon had not understood the distinction, and for a brief moment, Gabrielle's sister had caught fire.
Gabrielle hadn't seen it, she had not been there, not yet in any case; but she'd pestered Fleur to tell her the story so many times she could almost smell it. Feel the heat on her legs. Taste the smoke in the air.
She needn't imagine any longer.
Gabrielle wasn't 8 anymore, she hadn't been a child for quite some time, and at the moment, she was in hell.
Beauxbatons was one giant inferno, her class had been cut off from the South Corridor, pinned down behind the fountain in the Great Hall, and she could hear the invaders approaching from the East.
Huddled against the side of the fountain with Elodie, Asiatta, and Lydie, she could barely make out the rest of her herbology class sheltering behind the remains of a once priceless, now headless 17th century marble masterpiece. Horace poked his head out from between the legs, a position that would have been comical on any other day, and beckoned for her to join them.
Gabrielle shook her head. Reaching the statuary meant running out in the open, past the entrance to the East corridor. Even now stray spells shot out of it and shattered mirrors and windows clear across the atrium. It'd be mooncalves to the slaughter.
Horace cast a desperate glance behind him, up the stairs. It was imperative they reach the South Corridor, and soon.
"Allez!" She motioned for Horace and the rest to go on ahead to the South Gallery.
Horace shook his head. "Gab-" her name died on his lips as his eyes widened, he placed a hand to his lips and ducked down behind the base of the statue.
Asiatta and Elodie gripped her hands. Someone was coming.
Slowly, ever so slowly, the three girls peered over the edge of the fountain, praying the mist and smoke obscured them from view.
It was a wizard. It was not one of their teachers.
There was blood on his hands, and on his wand where he had re-gripped it, the red stood out when the light from the flames licking up the walls reflected off the ominous wet blotches.
Elodie clamped both hands over her mouth the muffle a whimper. Asiatta started creeping away to the West side of the fountain, motioning for the girls to follow, but Gabrielle barely moved as she motioned again for Horace to try and get to the South Corridor.
The wizard stuck his head in the fountain and drank. Not for the first time that year Gabrielle was fervently grateful that the atrium fountain was the size of a small swimming pool, with water flowing straight up, then out and down in a curtain of water that hid them from view. She and Elodie dropped to their bellies and crawled, slowly and carefully, to the West side, as far away as possible.
Unfortunately, they were also now further from the stairs.
Gabrielle held her breath. All her eyes could make out was black robes, but she prayed the bloody stranger had slaked his thirst and would return to the East corridor.
The fire had spread from the curtains to the carpet. It was smoking and smoldering and flames were licking their way from the baseboards in.
An explosion from the West rattled the chandelier and sent mirrors crashing off the walls. From the flickering light now pouring out of the Western corridor, she guessed the potions lab had just gone up in flames. There would be no escaping that way.
The doors had locked down hours ago, but Gabrielle was considering the possibility of making a run for the windows when the flames finally caught up with them.
As they had lain prone, to avoid detection, flames had spread across the carpet and were now licking up Elodie's stockinged leg and her skirt. Caught unaware, Elodie had let out one shriek before grinding her teeth against the pain as Asiatta tried to pat out the flames.
One shriek, however, was enough to attract the attention of the wizard. He pulled his head out of the fountain and began to circle around toward them, peering through the smoke.
Unable to stand without revealing themselves completely, the three girls slithered backwards around the fountain perimeter. Even as they did it Gabrielle felt a sinking feeling in her stomach. They couldn't circle forever, eventually this was going to end, badly.
Horace, at least, had recovered his senses. While the stranger's back was turned away from the South Stair, he sent the rest of the class scurrying to the safety of the South Gallery.
The girls had stopped, frozen, listening for the sound of footsteps. It was difficult to make anything out against the crackling of the flames, the splashing of the fountain, and the ominous noises of dueling coming closer by the minute.
They never heard his footsteps. Gabrielle was letting out a breath when she was jerked to her feet by her hair- the wizard had circled around the other way.
The wand was at her throat, she smelled a faint metallic odor, and squeezed her eyes against the acrid smoke, so much worse up here than it had been on the floor. Keeping a grip on her hair, the wizard motioned to Aisiatta and Elodie to stand.
They had not made it to their knees when the wizard gave a grunt, and released Gabrielle's hair. She leapt away, spinning around in shock to see the long, curved blade of an antique sword emerging from the wizard's stomach.
The other end was attached to an arm that vanished at the elbow into the curtain of water. The girls scrambled out of the way, wands drawn as the wizard sagged to his knees and then fell to his side as the sword was withdrawn.
The arms owner emerged fully from the fountain, kicking the wizard's wand away and wiping hair out of his eyes.
"Michel!" He must have come from the drain into the tunnels. No one was supposed to be down there,
"Êtes-vous blessé?"
Gabrielle and Asiatta shook their heads, but Elodi grimaced, looking down at her leg, "Ma jambe…"
The walls shook as another explosions rocked the building.
Goodbye, Alchemy Lab.
"Allons-y!" Horace was running towards them, rolling out of the way as a small chandelier broke free and crashed to the floor.
"Aidez-moi," Michel handed a wide-eyed Gabrielle the bloody sword and bent down to scoop Elodie into his harms. "Permettez-moi, mademoiselle," he added, with a ghost of a smile.
As they ran up the stairs, he gave Gabrielle and the sword a wary glance. "Attention à ça."
She nodded as the reached the top and bolted for the gallery. She'd be careful. But she also wasn't letting go of it until they were safely away. She had the Delacour loyalty, but ladylike wasn't something Gabrielle had been overly concerned with for quite some time.
The gallery was nearly empty, only a frantic looking Luc and Sophie remained.
"Merci Dieu," Sophie counted heads and sagged with relief as they approached.
Luc eyed the sword in Gabrielle's hand and raised an eyebrow. "Qu'est-ce que c'est, Gabrielle?"
Sophie didn't particularly care about the weapon. "C'est tout la classe?"
Horace nodded. "C'est tout."
The two senior students looked expectantly at Michel, who simply nodded. Gabrielle wondered what on earth could have taken him down into the tunnels.
Out the gallery windows, the students could see flames shooting out the windows of the East Wing. Where the professors were.
If any of them were still alive.
"Il l'heure de partir," Luc ushered Horace and Asiatta away from the windows.
He was right, of course. Gabrielle took a breath and turned away to follow.
It was time to go.
A few hours later….
"Wow."
The Chamber of Secrets made for an excellent hiding place. So excellent, in fact, that the Ravenclaws had been loathe to give the secret up, greater good be damned. It had required three days of secret meetings to convince the necessary super-majority of the International Ravenclaws that it was their duty to reveal the whole truth to the rest of the International Society. The debate had been heated, they'd been forced to resort to the parliamentary procedure on several occasions; parliamentary procedure being the Ravenclaw equivalent of a school yard brawl. Ultimately, while agreeing that it was strategically sub-optimal, they had converged on the necessary votes to declare a moral imperative.
The 'whole truth' being that Ravenclaw house had re-opened and begun painstakingly excavating the Chamber a mere 8 months after it had been officially sealed-off, following the "Heir of Slytherin Incident."
The decision to use "the basement", as Lucy had called it, required extremely delicate selective-altering of the memories of all non-Society Ravenclaws involved in the Chamber project. Fortunately those involved had been limited to the executive council, not the house at large. It was an unpleasant task, unthinkable under most circumstances, but once a moral imperative has been declared, it allows for all sorts of sins.
The original entrances, such as Moaning Myrtle's bathroom, were, of course, of no use, being both sealed and known. However, as the castle sat on top of a large karst region, there were other tunnels and natural caves leading into and out of the chamber, some no doubt used by Salazaar Slytherin himself, for access to the lake or parts of the grounds. Those routes had already been located and stabilized over the past few years, long before the International Society had agreed that they would house and protect the Durmstrang students should they be forced to flee. The new primary entrance from the castle was accessed through a vanishing stair between the dungeons and the first floor on the side of the castle furthest from the lake. Usually, the vanishing step was a mere annoyance, causing a student to simply fall flat on their face. However, with the proper incantation and jumping technique, on the part of a society member with access privileges, the vanishing step opened a chute, which dropped at a less than gentle angle for a few floors before depositing the jumper in a small chamber containing a ladder that climbed up and out, and a hidden door that led to a narrow sloping passage, which emptied out into one of the main water tunnels leading into the Chamber. Getting out was a tiring business, but it was secure.
Once inside, there had been even more work to be done. And the Ravenclaws as a House had never advanced that far in the project, being more interested in studying the frescoes than cleaning the floors. That work was left to the IS. During Lucy's time in prison the Hogwarts International Society had scrubbed and transfigured and built out of the largest space they could find a habitable hideaway deep below the castle. A charmed fireplace funneled the heat that would have gone up the flu down a side tunnel into water tanks that were heated for bathing. The toilets had been set up by tapping the existing piping and extending off it in areas down another set of side tunnels. Rows upon rows of cots lined two opposite ends of the chamber, with the center filled with a collection of hideous sofas and armchairs. A set of bookcases and some very battered tables were placed haphazardly among them to form a sort of living area.
It was among the hodgepodge of neglected loveseats, her part now played, that Lucy lay, largely forgotten as the Opolchenie laid out the rules of the regime to the younger students. She felt frozen. She'd always been cold at Durmnstrag, but after the hell of the escape, she thought she might never be warm again. Deciding that shivering was as much works as she was prepared for, she'd put her frozen slippers in front of the fire and curled up on a sofa as Dimitri pointed out the finer details of their handiwork.
"Wow…." She said again, as she cast her gaze about before stopping, jaw dropped, eyes fixed on the cavern's centerpiece.
Dimitri kept right on talking.
"You should see the "before" pictures. Which, the Ravenclaws have, of course. Thought of almost everything, they did, including a scouring charm that got rid of all the slime. Believe me, getting decomposing basilisk out of unfinished stone is harder than you'd think."
"And yet, you left the skeleton," Lucy found it impossible to tear her gaze from the massive and intensely creepy vertebrae of the long-dead monster that undulated between a pair of couches before coming to an end at the giant skull, which was being used as a coffee table.
"Oh, that was my idea, a nicely Slytherin touch. Adds atmosphere, not to mention solves a problem; there aren't many ways to dispose of an adult basilisk skeleton discretely. Especially when the lake is occupied by merpeople. But, there's still the matter of food. I don't quite believe that an Easy-Spell-Oven is going to feed this lot."
"Stiva swears by it. Says it doesn't do fancy food, but it is fairly nutritious, and it just needs to be stocked with-"
"Winter-oats," Stiva appeared and sat down on an arm of the sofa. "We've been using one in the school ever since Barrabas became a full time chef- slightly modified of course. One massive incident of salmonella poisoning was more than enough for us."
"But the oats-"
"Sprout in water, don't need any sunlight. The Herbology class engineered a line suited to the Durmstrang winter climate, with very small seeds. Each student has a supply sewn into their pillow. As long as we have a water source, they'll grow like weeds and sustain themselves."
Dimitri shrugged, "We could still bribe the house elves-"
"No, Kostya is most insistent. The fewer people know we are here, the safer we all will be."
Dimitri glanced over to where Kostya was touring the cavern with Gisella and Sergei. "Stiva, isn't it?"
Stiva nodded.
"I don't mean to pry, but we were expecting quite a few more."
Stiva swallowed hard. "We lost some."
Lucy saw the hard look come over his face and took over.
"The third years, Dimitri. It was… they lost the entire class."
Dimitri swore.
"Not quite the entire class," Stiva sighed, looking across the Chamber to where two students were unrolling small carpets, one behind the other.
"But you said-"
"All of the current third years are gone. But you see that girl, the one praying over there?"
Lucy watched the prayer, familiar from her days spent in the Istanbul school, "Yes."
"That is Rani Harappa. And in front of her is her brother Iskander Harrappa. Rani should have been in third year right now, but over the summer her brother pushed at her to take the fall placement exam for fourth year. Badgered her to study every day of the holidays. She passed in September, she's a fourth year. Isky never said why he wanted her out of third."
"You think he knew?"
Stiva's eyes were un-readable, "Isky's a little bit… different. But he always seems to know when Rani is going to need his help. As long as she's with us, I think it would be a wise decision to listen to any suggestions he may have."
"Like what?"
Stiva nodded to the pile of pillowcases on the floor. Most of the students had been keeping extra sets of clothes in their pillows for weeks, so that they could grab them and leave at a moments notice. Stiva's lay on top, a bit misshapen from the bottle that was lodged in it.
"That mission that Boris and Kostya just came back from?"
Lucy remembered it vaguely, mostly as the ending to her long and frozen ordeal. Her fingers were still numb. "Yeah."
"It was Iskander's idea. He told us not to leave without it."
"When?"
Stiva gave her look. "Two months ago."
"Leave without what, exactly?"
"Stiva." Constantine's voice rang from across the room, and Stiva rose to join him, patting Lucy on the head as he left.
"Thanks for the lift, Luchka."
Dimitri shook his head. Lucy raised an eyebrow. "What?"
"When did you learn Russian?"
Lucy, too emotionally and physically exhausted to smile, managed a weak shrug.
"There's not a lot to do there," she shrugged.
"Well, you might have tried to give us some advance warning about the dogs," Dimitri cast a wary eye over to where the pack of 7 was examining the perimeter of the main cavern, sniffing disdainfully and baring their teeth in what could only be interpreted as disapproval.
"Sergei handled those details, blame him."
"Done. Now, are you going to explain-" he glanced significantly at her foot, her hand, his gaze lingering on the scars on either side of her face.
"No." Lucy cut him off before he could elaborate. "I'm was….away. I'm back now."
Dimitri started to press, then saw the look in Lucy's eye and stopped cold. Whatever caused that, he had no intention of asking her to re-live. "I'll uh, make sure that's clear. Whatever the reason you were gone, we're glad you're back."
Lucy sighed, relieved she wouldn't have to tell the story, and grateful that Dimitri would understand.
"They seem awfully calm for a group that just lost an entire year." Lucy followed Dimitri's gaze to where the 1st year girls stood at attention by their cots, listening to Varnenka lay down the law.
"It's their way. Maybe it's comforting, to have the routine to fall back on, the discipline."
"The Durmstrang discipline," Dimitri spat, "My mother thought it was inhuman. Everything about the school- the isolation, the cold, the relentless running and physical training. She hated it there. Said she felt more like a soldier than a student, and never a child."
"What about your father?"
"Loved it. Thought it made stronger graduates, built a sense of comraderie."
"So how did you end up here?"
"When so many of You-Know-Who's followers came from Durmstrang alumni, father's argument about camaraderie lost its potentcy. Mother didn't want her children to associate with the children of those that managed to avoid prosecution. Our names have been on the roles for Hogwarts since before I could walk. One of the only times my mother won an argument with father."
Lucy contemplated the idea of Dimitri actually answering to a higher authority while the boy himself observed the Durstrang soldiers in action.
Despite their current state of shock, the Durmstrangers set about occupying the cavern with typical precision and order. Girls were assigned to the beds to the left of the large and disturbing statue of Salazaar Slytherin, the boys across the Chamber to his right. First years took the beds closest to the fire and farthest from any cavern entrance, followed by second, fourth, fifth, and sixth years. Seventh years were scattered throughout the three deep column of cots to maintain order. Lucy noted that her pillowcase had been deposited on a cot towards the back of the column.
She didn't bother offering to help. Aside from the unavoidable fact that her head was throbbing and she barely had the energy to stand up, let alone hobble, there was a certain rhythm to the way the students worked that she would only interrupt. After all, she may have been dressed like them, and she could speak like them, but she really wasn't one of them.
So here she sat, in the basement of her old school, no longer providing any services, but still attached…the appendix of the Durmstrang contingent.
Dimitri eventually dragged her back to reality when he broke out a packet of cauldron cakes and filled her in on the situation with the new Hogwarts teachers. Especially the Carrows.
"It's why we're glad we hid this place so well. I have to tell you, when the Ravenclaws proposed not two, but three successive cave-ins to block the old entrances, I was tempted to strangle that sweet little Ducasse girl myself."
"You set off cave-ins?"
" 'Controlled rock falls', is what Sergei called it. 'Controlled' my Aunt Isengard! I broke a toe!"
"Must have been excruciating," Lucy commented dryly.
Dimitri, glancing down at Lucy's crooked foot, recognized his blunder and quickly rambled on. "Anyway, if anyone does get past the first cave-in, they'll find the tunnel collapsed again 20 meters ahead. And if they get past that one, there's the next cave-in, and so on and so on, they'll give up; and if they don't, we'll have quite a bit of warning."
Which reminded Lucy. "How did you know we were coming?" The plan had been for the Hogwarts students to be informed in advance so as to be prepared for their arrival. That obviously had not happened.
"We left the bell," Dimitri waved his hand towards the basilisk coffee table, on which sat a small ordinary looking handbell, with a piece of paper tied onto the handle on which was scrawled, "Ring for service."
"You ring that one, it rings a matching one that Gisella shrank and attached to her watch. Apparently her great-great grandmother didn't believe in house elves, so she used the bells in her old age to let her family know when she needed something. Someone's been wearing that watch for weeks to make sure we were always ready. I had it today, so I activated the duty tree."
"There's a duty tree?" Lucy had always associated those with snow days and room mothers.
Dimitri raised an eyebrow. "Do I really need to say it?"
"Ravenclaws," Lucy sighed.
Some things never changed. Satisfied that with the Ravenclaws in control there was very little left for her to do, Lucy snuggled back into the sofa and fell into a well-deserved sleep.
In what felt like no time at all, she was awakened by a deep voice announcing "We have visitors!"
The sound of many tiny footsteps heralded the approach of Marguerite Ducasse, who burst out of the side tunnel, her skirt soaked from splashing through puddles, and from the looks of the stains, falling in at least once on her way.
She cast a frantic look about, clearly familiar with the chamber, but not reacting at all to the strangers now populating it. She paused only until her eyes found Sergei, then took off, making a beeline across the chamber straight for him.
Standing at Sergei's side, Stiva said nothing but raised his eyebrows at a slightly nonplussed Yuri, the duty sentry, who had strolled out of the tunnel behind Marguerite at a more measured pace.
Yuri shrugged, "If she's a threat than we have bigger problems than I thought," and returned to his post.
Marguerite didn't pause to ask Stiva's name, but skidded to a stop in front of the two boys, her face pale, and thrust a newspaper into Sergei's hands.
It was a special edition of Le Monde Magique, and although Sergei could not read it's flashing headline, one word, combined with the picture below, said enough. "Beauxbatons," and a palace in flames.
Her voice shook, her eyes were wild, and she didn't seem to realize that she wasn't babbling in English. "Un incendie…Il est completement perdu. … Il ne reste rien."
She shook her head, "There's nothing left."
