The Fangher Mission III

"Soldier!" Snape yelled. His eyes cut through our enemies to meet mine. The message in their dark glitter was as clear as a shout across the room. What's wrong?

"It's locked!"

"To me!" Snape commanded.

I obeyed immediately. William moved on to attack three Fangher guards at once. I wondered why; I had seen his head turn when Snape called.

"Soldier!" Snape barked. "Now!"

Scowling as though he would turn his fiery blade on Snape next, William broke a path to us. "What're you doing?" he snarled with no shortage of invective. "Now they can pick us all off at the same time –"

Snape looked at William as if he were a small yapping dog. "Your wand, please," he said to me. "One of them." I held out Svein's. Snape snatched it and uttered a spell that made the floor drop out from under my feet, and my stomach out from under the rest of me. Darkness sped past, and I gritted my teeth and closed my eyes. When I opened them, we were in a quiet dim room filled with strange, shadowy machinery. Somewhere, water dripped on the marble floor with an ominous plonk plonk.

"Where are we?" I whispered.

"The guards call this the 'salon,'" Snape said. "It is where prisoners are tortured. I've spent many hours here. It is located several floors below Fangher's entrance. We were outnumbered and had to escape. My spell let us drop through the floors." I was about to compliment Snape on his idea, to thank him for saving the mission, when he added, "You should have considered they would put Fangher on lockdown."

"How was I to know?" I was certain there was no such thing mentioned in my extensive reading. Still, my face burned at his criticism. What a thing to say to your rescuer!

"Even Intelligence soldiers can't know everything," Snape said. "Don't worry. If it doesn't kill you, it will make you stronger."

William added, "This is the kind of thing you'll never forget. It'll be in your war stories if you live long enough to tell them."

"What now?" I grumbled. "This seems like a temporary escape. They'll find us soon enough when they search the prison."

"I have an idea," Snape said. "Search the room for the potions cabinet."

"What would they want with potions in a torture salon?" William said.

"You must be an Auxiliary, with that lack of imagination," Snape said with blistering contempt. "Potions have many uses in extracting information from stubborn subjects."

With a queasy feeling in my stomach, I wondered if Snape spoke from experience.

In the course of my search through the dusty cupboards and shelves, I let go of my Influence. There seemed no point in maintaining it with all of Fangher aware I was here. Releasing the spell was like setting down a sack full of bricks. I returned to Snape with an armload of glass bottles of all shapes and sizes, in dark greens, blues, and browns.

"Guard the door," Snape ordered William as I approached. He obeyed immediately this time, but I didn't miss how his lips compressed into a tight line, his blue eyes narrowing.

"And you," Snape started to say. At the sight of me, he stopped, speechless. "Your form before was a spell, then?"

"Yes."

"Clever. Very clever, Miss Granger."

How did he know my name? I wondered. Had we met before?

"If we ever escape this icy hell, we'll have to discuss how you did it," Snape said. "Innovation in wizardry wins wars, after all."

"Yes sir." I couldn't shake the feeling that I had missed an important connection. Despite my curiosity, I didn't feel comfortable telling this stranger how I had lost my memories, let alone trying to determine if he were part of them.

"Pay attention." Snape began to sort the bottles, turning them with his deft white fingers to check for labels, unscrewing caps. "As the Intelligence Soldier of this twosome, you will want to know this." He began to explain what he was looking for, but I lost track of his words in the sound of his voice. Something about the unusual cadence made my heart beat faster, as though in recognition.

Suddenly my heart was thumping the way I thought it only ever would for William. Svein had been a handsome, imposing man, but William was the only one who set off the fireworks in my blood. Or had been. Was I more fickle than I realized? It was strange to say the least; Snape was an older man. Much older.

"Black fire drops, bloodroot, angel's trumpet, chelidonium minisculia," Snape murmured. As I leaned in closer to hear him, I noticed William in the corner nearby. He had released the every face spell, as well as the one that allowed him to blend into the shadows. In his solid form, there was no mistaking his crossed arms and such a scowl. I would have hesitated to pass him on the street with a look like that.

What, I wondered, had brought it on? Had William perceived my attraction for the Intelligence soldier? I nearly shivered at the thought, forced it back just in time. It was possible. William and I had spent a great deal of time together, frequently in intimate situations. Even if I had given no conscious sign, he might have intuited it.

"Oh give it up," William muttered. "You'll never make anything useful from the garbage laying around in here."

No doubt about it. William was jealous. I tried in vain to curb the smirk creeping up my face. It was, I hated to admit it, rather nice to have his feelings made so plain after all the wondering I had been doing.

"You will not find potions so amusing if you mix them incorrectly." Snape's voice brought me back to reality, somewhat. "Poisoning yourself with noxious fumes is the least dramatic way it can go wrong."

The best part of it, I allowed myself one final consideration of the matter, was that William had nothing to fear. Snape, despite whatever allure he conjured in me, was much too old, not to mention crusty. Why, he was as scathing as General York on his crabbiest day!

"If I may ask, what are you making?" I guessed some sort of weapon.

Snape leaned his fingers against his forehead. "Your Auxiliary is correct in one regard. Whether by design or coincidence, the potions here are useless for weapons making. Fortunately, weapons are not our only option."

"What is?"

"What do you think is?" he challenged me. His dark eyes bored into my in a way that made my scalp tingle. Again I heard the sea shifting smooth stones on the rocky Kent beach. The potential for memories was like a sneeze building up at the base of my skull. I hesitated to answer, savoring the sensation, fighting to keep it, deepen it. What was it about this man?

"There comes a time, Miss Granger, when you will have to ask your own questions and find the answers," Snape said, misinterpreting my silence. "I can't tell you everything, and as I'm sure you've discovered, neither can your trainers, no matter how elite."

"Escape is an alternative to fighting," I ventured.

"So it is." Snape smirked slightly, as though satisfied that his thorny speech had made an impact so soon. "And it is my aim in combining these ingredients. While they create many fine-honed effects for stealing the truth from silent tongues, they are crude for our purposes. With that said, enough knowledge of Potions, a lifetime of it in my case, permits one to substitute."

"Is humility among the ingredients?" William remarked to no one in particular.

"Fetch me a stirring rod," Snape commanded, ignoring William. When I had found one, Snape had lined up bottles and several empty pieces of glassware on the table before him, like soldiers on opposing sides of battle. I stood at his elbow for a moment, watching him eagerly before he said almost gently, "This part, I cannot teach. I will need all my concentration to approximate the mixture I am looking for."

He had just begun adding a substance that poured out in thin silver threads to a to a night-black oily base when the Dementors glided in through a door in the back of the salon.

"Dammit!" William shouted. "Why didn't you tell us Dementors might come to this room?"

"It should have occurred to you, Auxiliary," Snape snapped. "This is Fangher, not some backwater prison in a barn!"

Snape had lit a flame of alternating colors: green, blue, and red and set his mixture on a stand of wire mesh above it. For a moment I feared the pale man was going to hurl the bubbling glass jar right at William. "Is it not an Auxiliary's place to observe? Now go do your brute duties; that seems to be all you're good for! Or are you even capable of that?"

"I'll show you what I'm capable of!"

The flames of William's sword flared to life, and he cut into the first Dementor with renewed strength. I wondered if he were imagining Snape's face beneath the dark robes. I hurried across the torture salon to his aid. Behind the three Dementors that had entered, hordes of their brethren filled the corridor. Their diaphanous robes billowed on the currents of their dark power. Bony, talon-like hands reached toward the salon door, seeking our living heat, our hope.

Panic shook my heart. If all those Dementors should enter, their presence alone would overpower us! I clung to what calm I could. We still had the advantage; only a few Dementors had gotten in, and William was posing more than a challenge to them.

Then the solution became as clear to me as the dawn of a new day! There was no need to defeat them! I simply had to block the door!

There was no particular spell that served the function I needed, despite lists and lists that I had memorized in training. But I recalled Snape's words as though they had been etched in my mind for many years: using prior knowledge to create a new solution! I drew from several spells: one that formed protective barriers, another that turned air to solid matter, and finally, establishing myself as the anchor to hold it all in place. This last spell made my body extremely heavy and forced me into a sitting position. It was also more strenuous than I expected; I could feel my energy draining rapidly as the Dementors fought back, pounding on my barrier and screeching their displeasure.

William felled the last Dementor on our side of the boundary, reducing it to a hissing heap of smoke.

"Hermione, have you stopped them?" he seemed astounded. "There were so many!"

I managed a brief nod. The ground beneath me whirled in response.

Quite without warning, William darted off to another corner of the room. "You might have mentioned the back door!" I heard him yell. His face was grim when he returned.

"There are two entrances to the salon," he informed me. "The Dementors have begun to move toward the opposite one."

The strain of two barriers was incredible. I felt like I wore chains of lead while attempting to scale a vertical wall. It took all my effort to keep my head up, to say nothing of keeping the spell energies in line.

"Hermione!" William's hands, warm and strong, settled on my shoulders. "Are you alright?"

"I don't know how much longer I can keep them out!" Sweat poured down my face. The spell would slip at any moment. I could feel it!

"Snape! We could use some help here!"

"I'm a little busy right now, Auxiliary!" Snape scowled at the pipet he had poised over the steaming beaker.

"Damn! I'll have to hold them off," William muttered.

"It's dangerous," I choked out.

"Release the barriers," William said. "It will be harder to escape if you deplete all your energy. We came here to rescue one wizard, after all."

He was right, though I hated to admit it. "But if you take them on yourself..." I couldn't bear to say it. All I could picture was a pawn toppling to its side on a chessboard.

"Protecting you is my mission," William said. "I'll take as many with me as I can." He touched the ring Alexis had given him. "And there's still this to defend me...as long as it holds out."

"William..." With blurred eyes, I turned away from him and let my spells dissipate. "Officer Snape, what is the status of your plan?"

"Come quickly! There is not much time!" He beckoned to me. I hurried to his side, trying not to think of William surrounded by Dementors groping at him, filling his ears with whispers of despair. "This is what I have made with the time you and your Auxiliary have given me." On his palm glinted a round, perfect stone. Briefly, I thought of Kent. Within Snape's creation, however, I thought I saw tendrils of smoke in violet and blue, and diamond shimmers of stars.

"What is it?"

"This, Miss Granger, is a warp stone, albeit, a somewhat improvised one. It will allow escape from Fangher to the Muggle realm."

For an instant, hope spread its wings in my chest.

But Snape had more to say. "The quantities of the salon were insufficient to make a large stone. Only one person can use one of this size." Snape held out his other hand, revealing another stone cleft down the center. "This would have been its twin, but the battle distracted me during a critical part. It may not work."

"What would you advise?" I said.

"It is dangerous," Snape said simply. "You are the Intelligence Officer on this mission. The decision is yours to make."

It was utterly unfair, I mentally raged. Only two stones! How could I choose between William, to whom I owed my life and this mysterious wizard I had come thousands of miles and undergone incredible risk to seek? If I left him behind, my first mission would be a failure, and I had no illusions left that the low-ranking shaped the fortunes of war.

"We are never given all we need in battle," Snape said. "Sacrifice is inevitable."

I shook my head, unable to accept it. "There must be another way," I whispered.

Snape remained as expressionless as a white pillar draped in funereal black.

What he had just said utterly contrasted with how he had made the stones. Wasn't there something I could do? I scanned the salon frantically. No. There was nothing here I could use. I'd had fundamentals of Potions, but Snape clearly knew more than I did about them.

If only the Dementors hadn't sounded the alarm upstairs and gotten the portal locked! In my mind's eye, I saw William and I outside the mosaic, watched Svein's wand open the way with deceptive ease.

"Give me the wand from before." I held out my hand to Snape.

Suppose...just suppose...I could unlock Fangher from the outside, free Snape, and save William?

"But Miss Granger! You don't know if the door locks both ways!" Despite anticipating my plan, Snape did as I asked.

"My mind is made up," I said, taking both stones from him. "Make your way back to the foyer. I won't leave either of you!"

I had used warp stones in Cyrena. Those were training items, however, with very short ranges. I certainly wasn't crossing magical and Muggle space, let alone that eerie in-between that Fangher occupied. The perfected warp stone brought me back to the church that had seen the suicides of countless Sion teenagers. Through the holes in the roof and broken windows roiled an erratic sky filled with lightning and snow.

Snape had been right when he said the warp stone would only take one person. Standing on the opposite side of the portal, I lowered my gaze to my hands to find Svein's wand, the imperfect stone, and the remains of its better twin: shimmering dust coating the hand that had held it.

"Please...this time," I whispered to Svein's wand. I pointed it at the portal and attempted to open it as I had before. But Snape had been right. Fangher was sealed inside and out.

If only I knew a way to blast through to the other side! The energy required would be incredible, maybe even impossible.

Then the gleam of the imperfect stone caught my eye. I sensed the energy, strong and volatile from its flaw. And in Svein's wand, too, a force pulsed within the wood as though it possessed a life itself.

Suddenly I knew what to do. I would use the warp stone, not to transport, but to dismantle, to free the binding that kept the wand's might captive. What remained, I directed at the portal.

The stones wavered, shimmered like a false hope of water in the desert. But it still wasn't enough! High in the rafters, the wind gave a forlorn moan.

No!

"William," I whispered. Impatiently, I brushed the tears from my eyes. This was no time to fall apart! Was there no other source I might use? I patted my own pockets. Trinkets, all of my magical items. William had all the good ones, and he needed them to fight the Dementors. But there was still...my fingers closed around the wand I had been given in Cyrena.

"Even if I never cast another spell... I can't let them die! Please wand...forgive me. Help me to bridge this gap!"

I channeled my own resolve into my own implement of magic, sent its vitality smashing into the portal to Fangher. This time, a crack formed in the implacable fortress. Several gray stones crumbled away, followed by a sizeable chunk of the upper right quarter.

Guards and Dementors still crowded the foyer. Inevitably they turned to the hole I had opened. They started for me, pointing and shouting. I tensed. The living guards, I could contend with well enough. But whether I could summon a Patronus to protect me since I lacked a wand remained to be seen.

Suddenly they stopped. The Dementors stood to the side, almost seeming to form ranks. As for the humans, they could not get out of the way fast enough. They cowered against one another, not seeming to care any longer to pursue me, let alone keep order.

Searching for William and Snape in the chaos, I found the one that had compelled them to draw back: the Dementor of Dementors.

He glided down the passage the Dementors had left open. His approach rooted me to the spot, as if I were caught in a dream where I could neither run nor scream. He had no eyes visible to me beneath the depths of his gray hood, but I still knew that he recognized me.

Slowly, he came for me, his unfinished business.

Wandless, I still attempted to call a Patronus to my aid. The gray Dementor shattered it like thin glass flung against a wall.

Terror of my inescapable doom and rage at the futility of the mission seared and froze my blood – but only for an instant. His proximity numbed all within me. Neither victory nor defeat mattered, for all would be undone. What did it matter how it came about?

His gray, ghoulish hand groped through the portal into the Muggle realm, to me.

Behind him, other things were unfolding. I watched without reaction or understanding, caged in despairing inertia fashioned from the dark places in my own mind.

William raised his sword as high as he could reach. Runes shined out of the blade, which was suddenly afire with lightning streaming in from the Muggle sky.

The Dementor raised his sleeve to shield his face. He attempted to use other hand to block the blow.

A sonic boom resonated through the church, shattering an intact window and knocking old dust off the ceiling.

The chains on my heart evaporated as the white saber clove through the Dementor's robes and revealed him for the illusion he was.

Lightning and Patronus must be born of the same light, I thought in a daze. I would have to ask Snape regarding that matter.

Snape and Will rushed from Fangher to my side.

Could this be? I wondered, still stunned. Had they really worked together, despite their prior animosity?

"Hermione, are you okay?" William demanded. He placed both hands on my shoulders and gazed intently into my eyes.

"Yes," I murmured.

"We must hurry!" Snape urged. "They could regroup at any moment!"

And so I exited the church, supported by William on one side and Snape on the other. Due to their height differences, we moved at a stumbling pace that reminded me of a three-legged race. It seemed miles to reach the car. We almost didn't find it; the snowfall had been so thick during our time in Fangher.

"Hermione, I've got a lot to say to you when we get back to the base!" William scolded as we piled into the car. "You were insanely reckless back there!"

"Drive, you damned fool!" I retorted, more than a little cheekily. Simply being alive, to say nothing of having rescued Snape, was filling me with an incredible euphoria.

William's lips met mine for the briefest, sweetest instant. Then in a squeal of tires through snow, we sped off for the dawn.