Book 4: Astoria Greengrass and the Curse of Quennell Park
Song rec: "Pax Deorum" by Enya (best with headphones)
"The fish said to Jonah, 'Dost thou not know that my day has arrived to be devoured in the midst of Leviathan's mouth?'"
- The Chapters of Rabbi Eliezer
"sing ! O leviathan ! sing
lift Your voice and
bellow to us
of Your lost pods
Your wonderful oceans
Your salty maternity"
-"leviathan" by C. Jarvis / SøułSurvivør (hellopoetry)
The great skuas stopped calling, and their brown shapes soared back over the land, away from the water that had given them breakfast. The wind, which had already been a sweeping force that morning, picked up to so great a speed that Astoria feared loss of balance. The professor made them both visible once again, so that they would not lose each other in the sudden windstorm. It howled against the edifice of the rock with more tenor and voice than any ordinary wind.
Narcissa ran back to the house and tried to Blast down the door, not for shelter, but to get the child and Disapparate. Astoria and the professor ran after her, but there was no spell that would get them in the house. Everything they cast reverberated against a hitherto unseen membranous Shield. The spell was invincible, and the Shield made the sound of timpani when it was hit. There was no thunder, only the drums of their spells and the wailing wind. There was no rain, only the spray of saltwater as the waves crashed much higher than they had before.
It was Narcissa's idea to leave empty-handed, and Astoria was glad Narcissa was the one who said it, because she felt it, too. For as windy as it was, the air hung too heavy, leaving the humidity of unfathomably Dark magic upon them. Euphemia Rowle would not kill the child, but she would kill them. Fearing she would be swept into the maddened sea, Astoria reluctantly resolved to turn tail and figure out another plan later. The normal, breezy morning had devolved into a living nightmare. There were voices in the wind, and it was no language of Earth. As they ran past the house, desperately trying to get inland, Astoria could see the cold waters of the North Sea rising.
What spell could possibly…?
"SINISTRA!" Narcissa screamed when she realised the professor was not pursuing them in their flight.
Astoria spun round. Professor Sinistra had not followed them beyond the house. Narcissa's hand clenched Astoria's and tugged her along. All Narcissa would do was call for the professor, not actually go back to get her. Astoria screamed as she was led away… to safety, yes, but away from her beloved mentor.
"PROFESSOR SINISTRA!"
Professor Sinistra stood with her long wand straight up. She was unafraid of the rising water, and Astoria realised why. It would not reach the house the baby was in. It was not progressively rising. It was swelling and receding. It was… breathing.
"MRS MALFOY, WE CAN'T LEAVE HER!" Astoria wailed.
"IF SHE EVER HAD HER MIND, SHE'S LOST IT!"
"MRS MALFOY, LET GO OF ME!"
Narcissa wouldn't. She intended to Disapparate with Astoria by force. Astoria hated to do this, but she raised her wand at Narcissa's unbreakable hold on her hand…
And then they both collided with something and fell to the ground. Narcissa stood up first, pounding her fists on another invisible Shield, and it resounded exactly like the house, a poorly-played timpani. Astoria rolled to her knees and hoisted herself back up.
"Specialis Revelio," she cast, and they both beheld that they were trapped.
The Shield was insurmountably tall, up in the clouds, and the only way round it was an eight-hundred foot drop into the angry sea. They were still within the confines of the Anti-Apparition charm, and since there was no way to break into the house and locate a broom, they tried every Shield-buster they knew. Nothing worked. Narcissa was content with staying near the edge of the trap, but Astoria wasn't. They couldn't win by hanging back and letting Professor Sinistra do all the work. It was hard to run against the force of the wind, but Astoria put flexible Sticking Charms on her feet and made her way back to Professor Sinistra. They didn't have time to greet each other. The professor was trying to twist the rushing clouds. She did not want a clear sky. Astoria studied the clouds quickly. They were too heavy for a light Atmospheric Charm, but not quite ready to rain. Astoria went the intermediate route. She stretched her arm up and said, "Nimbus momentum!"
"Thank you! I'm trying to make a storm!" Professor Sinistra explained.
"Right!" said Astoria, but she didn't really understand the plan.
"Keep the clouds on the water! I want them to join together into one system!"
"All right!"
It was very hard to move an entire trail of clouds, but Astoria's ability had come a long way since working in teams to move one cloud at a time. She had helped control a storm yesterday in the battle. Hopefully, she would be able to manage one today with sore arms. Yet Astoria wondered what good a storm would do in these conditions.
"Where is she‽" Astoria asked.
"In the water!"
"How do you know?"
"Well, that's where she went, isn't it‽ Look at the waves! We need a storm!"
With the unsettling rise and fall of the sea level, the waves had all become disturbed. They were buckling up, merging with each other, and breaking at unfathomable heights. Each one seemed taller than the last, creating even deeper dips below the sea surface. Each crash echoed with more preternatural sound, like wooden ships cracking, people screaming… But there was no one living out at sea except Euphemia…
"Professor — forgive me — won't a storm make this worse‽ It's not even raining, and the water's already doing this, so…"
"Whatever she's doing down there, she can't control the effects of a storm at the same time! It'd be nice to have Narcissa's help, but that's a lost cause!"
Professor Sinistra had no thunderstorm yet, but the sound soon became one. Astoria lassoed the wind-swept clouds as best she could, but her attention could not remain undivided. The waves began to swirl, and whilst they still crashed at terrible heights above the changing water levels, their spill went deeper still. Steam, not spray, began to exude from the surface of the water, and though it was previously ice cold, it had been brought to an unmistakable boil, where piles of white bubbles appeared over the froth and sizzled into the cool wind.
In the midpoint between where they stood and the horizon, a deep hole opened in the rolling, breathing boil of the water. It was nowhere near where Euphemia had fallen, but it was still too close for comfort. The wind had taken a fetid smell quite suddenly, but Astoria was already holding her breath from fear of the rushing sinkhole opening in the sea. Was Euphemia even alive anymore?
Astoria lay her eyes upon the remains of scores — no, hundreds — of wrecked Muggle ships, dating from all parts of history, decaying green upon the grimy ocean floor. The seafloor lit up bright with magic, or could that be called magic?
Suddenly, the ocean spilled back into the vast pit that had parted open. A guttural, infernal roar came from below. The smell became still more sulphuric, and Astoria gasped it in uncontrollably. An enormous, iridescent, scaled body crested the distressed waves in an arch. The snake was a thousand times the size of the serpent Euphemia had used to rescue Rabastan from the exploding funeral parlour. Another arch of the back emerged from the waves. The monster was tangled like necklaces just below the surface. It was not truly a snake, for in its writhing, a spiny, house-sized fin broke through the hot foam. The fin's sickly grey-blue membrane pulsed with a collection of angry red veins that made it clear this was no fish, either.
"Er… I understand you and Narcissa can't get out‽" Professor Sinistra shouted.
"Nothing worked!" Astoria reported.
Professor Sinistra laughed through her nose. It was not a good laugh; it was a claim laid to the quirk of fate. She continued her fight to master the sky the way Euphemia mastered the sea, but admitted:-
"It seems we're way over our heads!"
The guttural roar sounded again, creating more ripples in the turbulent ocean, and the head of the monster erupted from the water. It looked like a rejected prototype of a dragon, far more prehistoric. It had high slits for a nose on its black-green face. On its crown, it had exposed bone, which tapered like sandstone and darkened like coal into horns that hung behind the head. Its eyes were round and flaming yellow, with vertical, beaded pupils spanning the length of them. The pupils were the only break in the light cast from the eyes, which were false lighthouse lamps, traps for all sea-farers. The fork-tongued mouth of the beast was worse than the mouth of a dementor, not necessarily in appearance, but in the sound and smell. The more noise it made, the more Astoria realised that its roar was made not of one diaphragmatic breath, but thousands of coarse screams.
"Oh, here," came the voice of Narcissa Malfoy, and whilst Astoria and Professor Sinistra worked the sky, she cast Bubble-Head Charms so that they would not suffocate from the stench, which had changed from sulphur to carrion.
"Welcome back to the party, Narcissa!" Professor Sinistra called sardonically. "It seems Euphemia has a demon, or, I should say, it has her!"
"Yes, yes, I realise that, thank you!" snapped Narcissa, and she anchored all their feet more firmly to the ground just in time for the creature to suck in the wind.
Narcissa erected a thick Shield around them, only leaving space at the top for Astoria and Professor Sinistra to keep manipulating the clouds.
"What do you think that is going to do‽" Narcissa criticised.
"Disorient her at the very least! But do you see that little dot between the eyes? That's Euphemia! It'll knock her off!"
Narcissa and Astoria squinted and searched until they saw her. A flash of light had been what caught Astoria. It had come from Euphemia's still-glowing eyes, which matched the demon's. Astoria soon made out the image of Euphemia's hair being tossed into a wild nest by the wind. A powerful feeling of inefficacy grabbed her as she feasted her eyes upon Euphemia and the demon. With an entire childhood and much of an adolescence spent hearing what it meant to be a witch, Astoria wanted Euphemia's power. The longer Astoria fought the clouds, the more sweat that broke, and the more aches that settled in, the deeper she envied Euphemia's manipulation of a beast that could devour the wind and sea. And the more she grew embittered with this feeling, the less control she had over the magic she badly needed to maintain.
What would I do with that thing anyway? Astoria thought, trying to bring herself out of the hypnosis of the fiend's enthralling form. Pet it?
A closer look at the pair in the sea revealed that Euphemia was a borrower of power rather than a powerful witch on her own. She was attached to the demon umbilically, with a nasty twine coiling down from beneath her dress. It connected not to the monster's own abdomen but to the inside of the hellmouth. Her hair tossed all over her trancelike face, and she moved her outstretched arms in a twisting dance. She had used these moves on the black snake in the Muggle building, except it had been she who was in control. Here, she was nothing more than a shipwrecker from a shipwrecking family, all under the influence of a sea serpent marked by want.
"Cumulonimbus momentum," Astoria re-cast as the clouds became too heavy for her original spell.
"Great catch of the clouds!" Professor Sinistra said. "I felt I was doing something right, but this environment is not what I'm used to!"
The clouds continued to distort from the demon's steam in the ocean water. For as turbulent as Euphemia desired to make the sea, she neglected to consider that the sea and sky were married entities.
"Do you mean to strike lightning against Euphemia, then?" Narcissa questioned as she struggled to maintain the Shield in the sucking wind.
"Oh, that is one of my ideas! I'd like something more, though! You know, since this is a demon we're against!"
"But Sinistra, that would require…!" Narcissa said unsurely, almost nervously. "Can you still…?"
"I make storms all the time!" Professor Sinistra responded. "I just have to — er, forgive me, test the waters. It seems the boiling of the sea will work in our favour!"
Astoria's entire back hurt from all the magic wrestling she was doing against clouds so far offshore. Though she agreed with Narcissa that Professor Sinistra's plan was not fool-proof, and maybe not so sensible, the plan to conjure rain would have to be put into action at all costs. The demon began to spit fire hotter than any dragon known to man. Flames reached all the way from the sea to the edge of the cliff, crashing upon the rock much like the huge waves round the monster's body. The demon dipped back underwater and re-emerged much closer. Euphemia lifted both of her palms like a haphazard maestro conducting an orchestra to become louder. The demon opened its maw again, and the spit came right towards them, engulfing their Shield in a blast of white-hot fire. The small opening at the top allowed heat and flaming cinders inside, and Narcissa was about to close it as one got on her dress.
"DON'T!" Professor Sinistra shouted. "Put up with it! We need to get it to storm! We need this opening in order to cast!"
"It's a hundred degrees in here!" Narcissa screamed back.
"It's a thousand out there, Malfoy, so shut it!" Professor Sinistra said. "She's not going to let us go alive, don't you understand? Astoria, keep piling clouds! Try to get them as tall as you can! Make an even better anvil of the clouds!"
"I'm trying, Professor! I can't see, and I don't have a pressure altimeter!"
"Try harder! Just guess!"
What ever happened to 'very good?'
It had been easy to get a small cloud to burst by accident on the Hogwarts grounds, but to conjure a storm from scratch was a greater workout than running the length of Quennell Park thrice. Astoria wanted to tear off her shirt it was so hot, but Heaven forbid Narcissa see the blood magic on her arm again. What a scandal that had been. Astoria didn't have the free hands to undress herself anyway. Both were clasped on her wand. As far as the wand itself, she liked its lassoing ability much better for atmospheric magic, but she hated to see the cherry relegated to Shield-casting, since it held great power, too.
The fire dissipated for a moment as the monster drew its breath to pull them, and Astoria double-checked that the thing they were fighting for was still there. Thankfully, the house behind them was unscathed. Astoria doubted she could keep this up if anything were to happen to the baby. Euphemia continued to dance upon the head of the creature, and its searchlight eyes fixed upon them, nearly blinding them.
"Colovaria!" said Narcissa, and her Shield turned a deep indigo to stifle the light.
The blackness of the Nidhogg Shield would have also done the trick, but there was no way to leave an opening at the top in that spell. This opening, though, remained a point of weakness. The fires of the demon collided with them again, and then swept back once more as the wind pulled them. The proximity of the monster was becoming a terrible threat, and Narcissa's Shield slid slowly but surely across the rock, towards the ledge… The trio's feet released from the Sticking Charms as they slid due to the magical, cursed heat on the rock beneath them.
"Professor, the Nidhogg Shield may hold us!" Astoria offered, trying to get her to come up with another plan. Still, who was she to criticise the plan when she herself had no clue what to do? Fairness didn't really matter, though, when everyone's feet were burning and sliding toward certain death. Each time the fire let out, the house was further away, and the ocean was closer…
"Oh, this will be perfect!" Professor Sinistra yelped as her wand twisted over her head.
"FORGET PERFECT — IT JUST HAS TO WORK!" Narcissa screamed as the Shield began to crack from the blasts of hellfire near the weak spot above them.
Then, in spite of all the other sound, Astoria heard a strange noise from behind her. It was the call of a bird she had never heard before, a ghost's moan set to idiophonic music. There was no bird in sight, for all creatures had fled. Astoria looked up, and she was met with something on her face — rain.