The Querent Quest

Chapter 21: The Twa Corbies

It was the most impossible thing he had ever seen. His visions had shown him Bellatrix Lestrange and then Elora walking in on them, but this seemed infinitely more unbelievable.

Elora Longbottom was dead. Her face was chalky, drained of all blood, eyes lifeless and her hand was splayed out, a goblet rolling away, drips of potion falling on the floor. Standing over her was Elora, her face almost as bloodless, but her wand steady. "Riddikulus."

The Elora that lay lifeless on the floor blinked her eyes up at them and shakily sat up, reaching for the goblet. Holding it in her hand again, it refilled itself with a purple liquid, which the boggart of Elora drank and collapsed in a deathly faint again. The real Elora besides him shrugged helplessly. "My spellwork's weak, I came to get in some practice."

"Me too," Scorpius said, stepping forward. Immediately, the boggart changed forms again, back to Bellatrix, malevolent and menacing.

"Do it," she demanded, a weird dementia flickering behind her eyes. "Say it, let's kill her, Draco." Scorpius's wand slipped and he dropped for it, but then Bellatrix reached out and took Elora by the chin. "Go ahead and scream, Alice," she crooned as Elora gasped, a panicked look coming over her face. "Off with your head, are you?"

"Elora, she's not real!" Scorpius shouted, grabbing at Bellatrix's wrist. And before they could pull away, the boggart sank to the ground and became a Bertie Botts' Every Flavored Bean. It was peachy-salmon colored and did nothing. The two of them stared at it, Scorpius's hand still grabbing at thin air where Bellatrix's wrist had just been and Elora's hand were now at her face which slid to her mouth as laughter escaped them.

"A Bertie Botts' Every Flavored Bean!" Scorpius shouted as Elora managed to gasp between giggles. "They're disgusting." Elora wheezed. "Bleck!"

"You hate them too?"

The two of them stared at the candy, which looked innocent there. "I wonder what flavor it is."

"I'm not eating that." Scorpius leaned over and picked it up, chucking it back into the trunk and clicking the padlock shut.

"Who was she? Your boggart."

Scorpius felt doom in the pit of his stomach, his voice came out unnaturally high. "My aunt. Great-aunt. It was Bellatrix Lestrange."

Elora sat down at the desk beside him, her blonde hair falling free from its tie over his shoulder. "Scorpius," Elora said gently. "She's dead. She can't hurt anyone."

"Yes, she does." Scorpius argued, anger rising over any despair he might have felt. "She might be dead, but I'm sure Teddy Lupin is still hurting, he never knew his parents. My dad's got a Dark Mark because of her and my grandmother's a wreck. Elora, she was the one who attacked your grandparents, she's why they're insane!" Elora stared at him. Sometime, in the midst of his shouting they had stood up to face each off.

"They're dead now." Elora said soberly, scuffing the floor with her shoe. "My grandmother Alice died before I was born. I remember going in to see my grandfather though, at St. Mungos. It was awful. Mum said once that after she died, he lost all the will to do anything. She said that he liked me as a kiddy though, always wanting to hold me, liked hearing my middle name. But he died too."

"What is supposed to be funny about a monster like her?" Scorpius asked softly.

"That's your problem then?" Elora caught on. "I watched you do the spell. You say the words right, move your wand, but you're not telling it what you want it to do. Not like me, I'm just rubbish at Defense."

"That's not true," Scorpius argued, sliding his wand between his fingers. "You're thorough; you put it all together but you forget to just…act. Flipendo!" With a dash of orange sparks Elora leapt almost three feet across the room, wand un-used, clutched in her fist; his spell upended the desk. Scorpius grinned as she regained her balance, staring back at him.

"What was that?" She railed. "You tried to jinx me!"

"I was trying to make you react!" He encouraged, stumbling back to his feet and collecting his wand. "You focus too much on what's supposed to happen. Sometimes, you have to go with your intuition, be instinctive, Elora."

.

"Use your intuition, Scorpius."

Scorpius glared at Madam Patil, who looked back at him, as placid as a lotus.

"Scorpius, this is not difficult. It's not even Seeing. It's self-association. I say white, you say snow." She picked up his journal, rifling through it. "This dream for example." She read it out loud.

"I was standing on a street curb and it was raining. I wore a raincoat, rainboots, had a hat on and carried an umbrella. Jocasta was standing in the middle of the road and she was dancing, wearing muggle clothes, no coat and her shoes muddy. She wanted me to come and join her but I stayed where I was. I told her that my rabbit's foot said I couldn't"

"But that's not a prophetic dream. It's ordinary." Scorpius protested. And private, he thought to himself.

"Is it? What does it mean to you?" Scorpius was silent and Madam Patil smiled, reading it silently to herself again before she set his journal down between them. "I see that you are trying to protect yourself from things you can't control. That you're trying to cover up your feelings and that you are keeping the dirtiness out."

"She's not dirt!" Scorpius blurted out, all control lost. Madam Patil only smiled at him, in that so-irritating way.

"You're treating her like that. And you're using your abilities as your excuse for not changing."

"But," Scorpius questioned. "You keep telling me that I can't change the future."

"No." she agreed. "Nor the past. The only thing we can do is the present."

Scorpius looked up at her then and caught the smile in a grin that made Padma Patil look years younger and nothing like the woman by Mr. Zabini's side.

"That wasn't a prophetic dream."

"Not unless you do something about it." Madam Patil agreed with him. "Everyone has dreams, Scorpius. You just happen to be better at connecting them to see the future. Now explain this one to your psyche."

Scorpius took his journal back, open to the page she indicated but he didn't read it. "What would happen if I didn't? If I ignored any visions and just lived my way how I wanted to, I mean."

Madam Patil sighed and set down her tea cup. "Interesting question. If you were to say, ignore them, you'd live maybe blissfully but in complete ignorance and with a certain lack of control. You'd be prone to loss of unconsciousness, terrible dreams that tend to linger, and you'd say things you didn't understand. That's how you started in the beginning, when the Seer in you fully emerged. And if you were to keep all that bottled up…" She trailed off and shook her head. "I had Professor Trelawney for a teacher in my school days too. She was like that. Prophecies sprouted out of her and she'd see omens everywhere. But when she started seeing the bad things, she kept them to herself. I understand she had a tendency towards alcohol to counter it."

She looked away from him, around the Divination room, with a sort of pity. "If you learn this, Scorpius, you'll have control of your body and mind again, but you'll have control over your life. Now, translate the meaning of that dream for me and then your tea will be cooled."

.

There it was again. Grumbling furiously to himself, he threw the covers off and glared up at the canopy of his bed, where an old bird cage was hung. They made that noise again.

"Alright, alright!" Scorpius snapped, taking the cage down. Inside Pluto's old cage, was the nest and the baby ravens wanting more food. For such scrawny things they had hatched, they did nothing but eat to the point where Hagrid's supply and anything they could take from the Great Hall would only just satisfy them. They were noisy about it too—Lorcan and Rose had to figure out a tricky sort of spellwork to keep the noise confined to the cage and Scorpius's bed, so not to disturb the other boys.

He carried the cage down to the common room, where Lorcan was already prepared for them. He was waiting with little squeezers full of milk and plenty bits of meat besides. Scorpius settled in beside him and opened the cage, passing one over. They were virtually identical, all black, although the slightly larger one was in Lorcan's hands. Lorcan hummed a bit while he started in on their feeding routine.

Scorpius started to follow the humming along, but not recognizing the melody. "What is it?"

Lorcan looked up through his glasses, looking green through the glasses' tint. "It's an old folksong. Scottish. It's called The Twa Corbies."

"The Twa Corbies?" Scorpius stumbled over the accent. He was accustomed to hearing it, but it was still foreign to his tongue. "What's a corbie? And twa?"

"Corbie's just another word for raven. Twa, twa is two. The Two Ravens, it doesn't sound nearly the same though."

"Could you sing it?"

Lorcan's humming rose into words. The ravens quieted under his voice, a bit high-pitched and with a tremor it was:

"As I was walking all alane,

I heard twa corbies making a mane;

The tane unto the t'other say,

"Where sall we gang and dine today?"

"In behint yon auld fail dyke,

I wot there lies a new slain knight;

And naebody kens that he lies there,

But his hawk, his hound, and lady fair.

"His hound is to the hunting gane,

His hawk to fetch the wild-fowl hame,

His lady's ta'en another mate,

So we may mak our dinner sweet.

"Ye'll sit on his white hause-bane,

And I'll pike out his bonny blue een;

Wi' ae lock o' his gowden hair

We'll theek our nest when it grows bare.

"Mony a one for him makes mane,

But nane sall ken where he is gane;

O'er his white banes, when they are bare,

The wind sall blaw for evermair."

.

At the next D.A. meeting, Professor Longbottom looked surprised to see his daughter and Scorpius partnered up, but chose to comment elsewhere.

"Elora, Scorpius, you're supposed to be learning Indepedimenta, what are you doing?"

"Some basics, Dad." Elora responded, not even looking away, as she brandished her wand. "It was Scorpius's idea."

"Actually, it was Scorpius's idea and my work," Professor Thomas interrupted. "But go on, Mr. Malfoy."

Scorpius raised his wand, a momentary truce. "I realized that we're having the opposite problem with our wandwork, Professor. I usually just go with my instincts that I don't have refined control and Elora—"she nodded—"Elora doesn't use her instincts."

"I suggested that they try an exercise, for Scorpius to really focus on what spells he is using and Elora is defending herself with whatever comes to mind." Professor Thomas commented.

They went at it for awhile, shooting jinxes and counter-jinxes back and forth. There wasn't much time for him to hesitate between thoughts and casting, so Scorpius stuck to his basic spells, although the force installed in them were much more effective than the first year material he was working with. Elora, on the other hand, was really using every spell she could think of, including color-changing charms and now—"Wingardium Levosia!" She said, pointing her wand to him.

Immediately, his feet left the ground and he understood why. Just even a few inches threw his perspective off when casting, ungrounded as he was. As long as she was concentrating, he would keep floating and it would be even harder…he grinned. This would be fun. He twirled his wand through his fingers, taking care to aim for her face. "Mucus ad Nauseam!" She raised her other hand to her nose, trying to stifle it but she involuntarily sneezed. Her eyes closed, her chest heaved with the force of the Curse of the Bogies, rapidly sneezing, a bit of snot drizzling. Scorpius fell out of the air, a good two feet down, and he rolled back up, grabbing his wand and finishing her off. "Glacius."

A streak of white appeared before him, the cold whistling from his wand and attacked Elora's face, freezing her stiff where she stood. The bogies and ice had her frozen, but she wore a half-grin behind the ice.

It was after this, once Scorpius had extinguished the flames he had conjured to melt her and Elora's shirt still smelled of smoke that they were free to go, the older students already out the door and Scorpius saw Jocasta among them heading down to the dungeons.

"Hey," Scorpius called out, pushing his way through. One or two students may have tripped as he tucked his way back into his pocket and sprinted up to her. Her hair was up in a ponytail again and she still looked mad at him, but less as she stiffly nodded to him and continued to glare from there. "I just—I just wanted to say. Sorry." He pushed his hands further into his pockets. "I didn't mean to offend you. I shouldn't have said it anyways but I didn't realize that it was offensive at all. I've never even met a muggle. Well, I just did over the holidays, but I mean, I don't know anything about them."

Jocasta shrugged, her own hands in her pockets too. "It's okay, I guess. I'm just so sick of people thinking that I'm completely oblivious. I'm not stupid."

"You're not." Scorpius said quickly without thinking it first and was relieved to see her smile. "What do they think of us then? Muggles I mean, about wizards."

She almost hesitated and then it spilled out of her. "That we are wicked, have green skin, warts, fly on brooms with our familiars, melt if we touch water and if we marry a mortal—that's what they call themselves, we lose our powers."

Scorpius goggled at her for a moment, not sure if she was joking or not. "Right then. Do you want to try this again?"

"Another?"

"Another what?"

"You know…"

Scorpius cottoned on. "Da—next Hogsmeade trip?"

"Next Hogsmeade trip."

"Sure."

They left it at that, turning off to their separate ways, but she called after him. "Good night, Scorpius."

.

The next morning, he found himself in the middle of one of Professor Longbottom's lectures. "Don't be afraid! The Wild Rice enjoys a good soak. It's impossible to drown. Oh, watch it!" He snatched Zaneeta's hand back of the way. "It's called Wild Rice for a reason. Very hard to control. Rather like a teenager, it is." That's all they were doing for the entire class, was watering the quantity of the Wild Rice which was dull except with Professor Longbottom prowling around and stunning the Rice from escaping and the one time he hit Johanna Boot with the spell instead. Scorpius was not the only one running from the Greenhouse to Defense but he was sure he was the only one eager for the actual class.

As usual of late, Professor Thomas set them up writing essays on the meaning of their boggarts while she took students who had yet to defeat their boggarts into the back room. The numbers had been shrinking consistently all term so Scorpius was the second student in.

"Are you ready?" Professor Thomas asked kindly, her eyes still flitting to the trunk with worry. "I could work with you next DA meeting."

"Don't worry. I think I know what to do now." Scorpius said, pulling out his wand and pointing it to the trunk. Professor Thomas hesitated to open it, so Scorpius flicked the end of his wand. "Alohamora."

Bellatrix came at him, her high heeled boots first out of the trunk and then the rest of her. She flashed those deep-lidded eyes, laughed at the sight of him and twirled her wand, looking absolutely wicked. That was the last thing she ever did.

"Riddikulus!" Scorpius commanded.

Bellatrix's laugh turned into a weird cackle that she gagged on. Her hands flew to her throat in a green blur and her pale, skinny face sagged now, a wart popping up near her nose. Then she was dripping wet on the floor. She shrieked as the green skin and black robes started to slide off and she collapse into a puddle of melted witch on the ground.

Scorpius stared at the puddle, wand still up. This was just too weird. Behind him though, he heard a funny choking sound. He turned and saw Professor Thomas trying not to laugh.

"Whatever you do, don't laugh!" She ordered, struggling herself. "I can't laugh, I need the boggart still, but Merlin!" She wheezed. "I would have paid anything to see that."

Then Bellatrix joined in laughing behind him. "What a wittle schoolboy, can't even pay attention to his wessons, now can't he?" She taunted, mimicking baby-talk as Scorpius spun in shock. He had dropped his concentration and the boggart was back, the puddle had reformed itself into her.

"Don't finish her off, Scorpius. Force her back into that trunk for the next student." He heard Professor Thomas caution. For a moment, Scorpius wanted to destroy her. He wanted to blast her out of the classroom, out of his family, out of the past. It couldn't be that hard, if a sweater-knitting, lemonade mixing granny, Mrs. Weasley could kill her.

"Riddikulus!" Scorpius said finally and he flicked the end of his wand.

Bellatrix screamed as knitting needles came flying at her out of nowhere. She turned and drove straight back into the trunk, shutting the lid behind her and the needles plunged into the trunk. Scorpius held his position as Professor Thomas hurried over and locked the trunk herself and then he let his arm drop and the needles vanished.

"That was fabulous!" She enthused and then she turned back to him. "Er, well-done, Mr. Malfoy. Fifteen points to Ravenclaw for the double-defeat of Boggart Bellatrix. Mr. Malfoy? Mr-Malf—"

"—Scorpius? Can you hear me Scorpius? Are you alright?"

"Yeah." Scorpius said, woozing a bit. "Yeah. I'm on the floor."

"You collapsed." Professor Thomas said, kneeling beside him. "Don't get up yet. You're exausated. Have some chocolate."

"Did I do too much magic?" Scorpius asked, accepting the chocolate without complaint.

"Scorpius," Professor Thomas started, looking at him with something akin to wonder. "You said a prophecy."