'How are you back already?' Bagsy had been about to leave the Owlery when Eldritch, her tiny fluff-ball of a tawny owl, had fluttered back to her. She peered down at his talons and saw, clutched in one of them, her letter to her sister still there. 'Eldritch, you need to deliver the letter!' she explained. Eldritch blinked his large, black eyes at her and Bagsy suppressed a shiver. 'Don't look at me like that.' Eldritch held her gaze. 'Alright, I'm sorry, I meant to say could you please deliver that letter to Bontie for me.'
Eldritch took off again, his wings fluttering more loudly than the barn owls they had in residence. Bagsy descended the steps from the Owlery and had only made it to the bottom when, once again, Eldritch returned, letter still clutched in his talons. 'Eldritch!' Bagsy scolded. Eldritch glared at her and fluffed up his feathers, dropping the letter and about to take off. 'Sorry,' Bagsy sighed, picking the letter up. Eldritch folded his wings and groomed his feathers moodily. 'Bontie's down near London, Eldritch. Aesher common. You spent all summer there, remember? Surely you can find your way to her?'
Eldritch held out one leg. Bagsy put the letter in it. Eldritch took to the sky and circled above her expectantly. Bagsy got the feeling he wanted her to follow him. Obliging, she found Eldritch leading her to Hogwarts lake. He flew over the water, becoming a speck over the vast blue, before returning and swooping down, landing on her outstretched arm, still holding the letter.
'Bontie isn't out there, Eldritch,' Bagsy reasoned. Eldritch looked at her silently. With a nervous glance at the lake, she took the letter from Eldritch and sent him back to the owlery. Putting the letter into her robe pocket, she hurried to breakfast.
'The lake?' Mezrielda asked incredulously. Bagsy nodded. 'It sounds to me like you need to check your owl. He could have an illness or fatigue.'
'Eldritch seemed fine to me.' Bagsy frowned in concern. 'I've been trying my best to take good care of him – I even feed him the food Teresa recommends, and she knows what she's talking about when it comes to animals.' Teresa had also, thankfully, obtained her own mischief of pet rats, and had allowed Bill to hang out with them to ensure her twilight years weren't lonely. It had solved Bagsy's trouble with figuring out how to best care of Bill in her old age which, given how much else was on Bagsy's plate, was no small mercy.
Mezrielda hummed thoughtfully and Bagsy's mind moved back to the problem at hand. Suddenly, an image struck her, of a dark, damp place below the lake. Her stomach dropped. But what could Bontie be doing in the under lake? Was she okay? Bagsy's gaze snapped over to the Slytherin table. Tod was sitting chatting with another Slytherin boy who had tan skin and shoulder length curly hair pulled back into a bun.
'Mezrielda?'
'What is it?'
'I need to talk with Tod. Could you distract whoever that is talking with him for me?' Bagsy requested, pointing at the boy.
Mezrielda placed her hand on Bagsy's, forcing it down. 'Don't point. It's rude. Also,' she turned narrowed eyes onto the Slytherin table, 'it will give away what we're about to do.'
'Thanks,' Bagsy said as she stood up, nerves already taking hold of her. The last time she'd gone over to the Slytherin table she'd scuttled off in fear from their glares.
As they got closer Bagsy caught Tod's eye, who waved pleasantly at her.
Mezrielda confidently sat down on the other side of the boy Bagsy didn't know. 'Hello, Hamley,' Mezrielda greeted with as much warmth as a snow ball to the face. Despite her bid for social respect, she still couldn't get friendliness quite right.
'Hi,' Hamley, Bagsy now knew he was called, responded cautiously.
'Have you finished Professor Hilkins homework for Transfiguration?'
Hamely looked down shamefully. 'No. I found it too difficult.'
'Oh,' Mezrielda startled. 'But it was so eas-' she cut herself off. 'Would you like some help?'
'Please.' Hamley nodded in relief, producing some paper from his bag.
'Tod,' Bagsy murmured in a low voice to him, taking her chance.
Tod raised his eyebrows at her. 'News about my favour?' he asked with barely concealed eagerness.
'I've nearly got it,' Bagsy assured him, 'but that's not why I'm here. I was wondering if you still had a boat that could go into the under lake? The one below Hogwarts lake, that is.'
'I'm aware of what it is.' Tod frowned. 'But sadly, you got my last one destroyed.'
Bagsy flinched guiltily. 'That is true…'
'Fortunately, my parents spent no time in getting another boat permitted by Fitzsimmons. I have one. Why do you need it?'
Bagsy shuffled on her feet. 'I'm worried my sister may be in the under lake…' Bagsy saw Cora Foncée in her final moments. It had only been a glimpse, but she'd seen the woman disappear beneath a torrent of rocks and rubble, never to move again. Suddenly, in her mind, it wasn't Cora at all, but her frightened sister, alone in the dark and collapsing space.
'Why would your sister be there?'
'I don't know,' Bagsy admitted. 'My owl seems to think so and he's not ill. I guess it's just a hunch. I'll feel better once I've checked.'
Tod looked at her silently, a piteous expression filling his face. Bagsy squirmed uncomfortably beneath it. 'If it will put your mind at rest… I suppose it can't hurt to go and check.'
'You're going to the under lake?' a Slytherin spoke up. Bagsy saw the large, triangular, rose coloured glasses of Maisy Jewel staring at them.
Tod nodded, shooting Maisy a confident grin. 'Sure are. Maybe I'll see that super, extra, massive squid of yours?'
'That's exactly what I was going to say!' Maisy squeaked excitedly, not catching Tod's sarcasm. 'It's really large, and kind of square, and has three long, tall horns on its back.'
'I thought it was more like a horse?' Tod countered.
'No, no, no,' Maisy tutted. 'That's the normal giant squid. The one I saw first and second year. That squid must have been eaten by this bigger one. I haven't seen it all year.'
'If you say so,' Tod grumbled, clearly unconvinced.
'Why doesn't anyone believe me!' Maisy fumed.
'You claim that those silver strings in your braids are unicorn hairs,' Tod pointed out. 'Even though they're obviously enchanted wool. If they were real, given you have about a thousand tiny braids, the cost of them alone would be astronomical.'
Bagsy looked at Maisy; her entire head of hair was carefully and complexly woven into tiny braids that were braided with each other. Most of the braids had streaks of silver running through them.
'Back in Wales I'm friends with a unicorn who gave them to me as a gift. You're just jealous,' Maisy reasoned, turning away and ignoring them.
'Whatever,' Tod murmured, getting up. 'If we hurry, Bagsy, we can check the under lake before Transfiguration.'
'Oh, thank you, Tod,' Bagsy said in relief.
'But,' Tod added as they began to walk, Bagsy shooting Mezrielda a goodbye wave as they went.
Bagsy gulped. 'But?'
'You have to sit next to me in Transfiguration from now on. I don't do things for free, Bagsy.'
Bagsy sighed. 'Alright, then, so long as Mezrielda can sit with us too.'
Tod shrugged. 'I couldn't care less where Mezrielda sits, so long as it's not in my seat.' There was an odd smirk on his face at that, as if he'd told a most amusing joke. Bagsy didn't get it.
At Hogwarts lake, a dark and expansive body of water that made Bagsy shiver, a small row boat emerged from below the surface. Tod stepped on and then helped Bagsy onboard, who had a history of falling over in small, rocking boats. A gannet swooped, like a missile, down onto them, landing on Tod's shoulder. Tod gave the bird a friendly scratch on its head before setting the boat off from the shore.
Soon they were submerging below the waves, a large bubble forming around them as they descended. Bagsy looked out into the depths, Hogwarts lake stretching out before her in its turquoise mystery. Light was swallowed by its mammoth size, and entangled by the tall, swaying reeds. It seemed less full of life than it had been the last time she'd seen it from below the surface. She suppressed a shudder at the memory of the other Hogwarts, which was more lifeless still.
With a judder, the boat dropped through the lake bed into the hidden space below; the under lake. Bagsy wondered just how many connected deep passageways there were, then she thought about how the magic of the boat they were in worked, then she tried to think about anything besides the heavy blackness around her.
The boat came to a gentle stop, sending slow ripples over the otherwise undisturbed water in the great cavernous path. Tod gingerly stepped out of the boat, his shoes tapping into the shallow liquid, and flicked his wand with a lazy 'lumos' to light the space ahead of him. Bagsy went to reach for her own wand, before realising that would be pointless. Then, patting her robe down, Bagsy found the torch she'd been gifted by the muggle-boy last year. Pulling it from her robe and fumbling with the controls, she managed to press the on button. A beam of light flickered unevenly out of the end, as if the thing were only half working.
'Bagsy, are you casting a spell?' Tod asked in disbelief, before his eyes adjusted to the light and saw the torch. 'Oh, Bagsy,' he tutted. 'Muggle stuff doesn't work right in Hogwarts. The magic messes with it.'
'It's better than nothing,' Bagsy snapped irritably back at him, pointing the flickering, flashing beam of light ahead of her, revealing mountains of rocks and stones in front of them. 'Sorry,' she added.
'No worries, I'd be pretty angry if I couldn't cast spells,' Tod grumbled under his breath as they proceeded. 'What are we looking for?'
'Any sign of my sister… the owl hovered over the lake. I thought maybe, somehow, she could have ended up here beneath all the rocks and…' Bagsy swallowed, pushing the thought from her mind.
'That's kind of ridiculous, but I suppose there's no harm in checking.' Tod nodded understandingly, swiping his wand from one side to the other, crouching down and checking between cracks, gingerly stepping onto rocks to peek above others. A lot of the debris had been cleared, so there was a pathway for boats to move through the underlake, but most of it had simply been pushed to piles at the side. As they searched there was silence but for the drip, drip, drip of water onto the shallow pool that made the floor of the under lake.
Eventually, Bagsy came across the place she knew, in her bones, was were Cora Foncée had been crushed. Her body was no longer there but trapped between two large boulders Bagsy found a long, dark feather. There was no mistaking it; it was from Cora's wings. She sat down on a rock, holding the feather in her hands. Cora had watched her learn to fly a broom, struggle through the Eagle Club, create spell-sponge gloves, and she'd even been on her side when she'd thrown Primrose's bracelet from the castle.
All of a sudden, Bagsy found herself crying.
'Oh, dear,' Tod muttered, stumbling upon where she was. Self-consciously, she wiped her eyes, turning her head away to hide her grief. She'd trusted Cora, a part of her still did, and yet those dark, purple eyes had held nothing but contempt and aggression when she'd lured her down here to murder her.
'Sorry,' Bagsy sniffled.
'Just… stop. If you can,' Tod asked awkwardly.
Bagsy nodded, wiping her eyes some more and pulling herself together. She let the feather fall into the water. 'I don't think my sister's here,' she sighed in relief, feeling foolish, because of course she wasn't.
'Good, we can leave, then,' Tod breezed, walking swiftly back to the boat. Bagsy stood up stiffly and followed him, shaking the torch and batting it against her hand to try and settle the flashing beam. It didn't fix it much.
Once they'd settled into the boat, and Tod's gannet swooped back to them, landing on his shoulder, Tod set the boat up towards the surface. Looking up, Bagsy saw them ascend towards the water above, catching the odd fish or tendril sneaking into a crevice or shell. Soon, the were entirely surrounded by the water, the magic bubble forming around them, acting as a window overlooking the great lake.
'That's strange…' Tod murmured, his eyes looking, unfocused, into the distance.
'What is?'
'It's like…' Tod trailed off. 'Some form of mirage. My eyes can't quite make sense of it… the water in the distance, Bagsy, it looks strange but I'm struggling to… see it.'
'What do you mean?' Bagsy asked in confusion, looking out. Her eyes had no trouble at all – she could see into the water ahead of her easily, over the reeds and cracks and ravines. She could make out, just barely, a large, dark shape in the distance, with three tall, dark lines reaching up from it but not quite touching the surface. It did look very large, and kind of square, too. Bagsy gulped. Maybe it was the giant squid that had eaten the smaller one that Maisy had reported.
'What do you see?' Tod asked. Bagsy told him. 'Even stranger…' Tod trailed off as the bubble breached the surface and disappeared around them.
With sodden shoes and damp trousers, Bagsy and Tod trudged back to the castle.
'Thank you,' Bagsy said to Tod. 'I know it was silly to think my sister was down there, but I wanted to make sure, for my own peace of mind. If anything happened to my sister…'
'I understand.' Tod nodded his head, not looking at her. His voice sounded choked. Bagsy didn't push the subject, walking in silence instead.
Tod and Bagsy were only a few minutes late for Transfiguration. Mezrielda had to move a seat down so that Bagsy could sit next to Tod, as she'd promised, and Mezrielda was sulking about it the whole lesson, but not so much that she didn't use teporiem to dry Bagsy's shoes for her. She didn't offer Tod the same courtesy, however, who simply cast his own spell to dry off.
When Tod spent the lesson making the occasional comment about how Bagsy could try casting spells to do better and assured her that eventually she'd get the hang of it Bagsy found herself confused why this had been his request in return for letting her borrow his boat. Bagsy couldn't understand what he gained from this. Not only that, but she was also unsure why he was being so positive about her spell casting.
That lesson Professor Hilkins was asking them to transfigure wood into metal, a more advanced transfiguration appropriate for third years but not for one particular third year student; Bagsy. She had yet to transfigure one thing in her entire life, let alone wood into metal. She couldn't even make the wood move, so transformation was out of the question. Her spell casting was nothing to compliment, that was for sure.
Bagsy knew, deep down, she'd never be able to transfigure anything, but that didn't stop her from calmly, and repetitively, performing the wand movement and incantation as perfectly as she could. Bagsy wondered if Tod was simply curious to watch someone run over and over into the same brick wall only to always get back up, dust themselves off, and dash head first into it again.
When Bagsy felt frustration sparking in her belly she found looking over at Mezrielda's work was always the best solution. Transfiguration was the only subject Mezrielda put any effort into when she was at Hogwarts, and it showed. Hilkins provided her with extra materials and exercises to stretch her talents. Currently, the block of wood that had been placed in front of Mezrielda had been transformed into three silver serpents each with incredibly detailed scales that shifted in waves, catching the light in brilliant patterns. Mezrielda, noticing Bagsy was looking at her work, and that her own wooden block hadn't changed, pointed her white wand at it. Wondering what Mezrielda was going to do, Bagsy looked at her own wooden block and watched, transfixed, as Mezrielda shaped it into three tiny, shuffling badgers made of brass. They snuffed their noses over the desk and waddled adorably from one side to the other.
Tod grumbled, 'Oh, stop smiling, it's not that impressive.' Bagsy couldn't have stopped smiling if she'd wanted to, though.
After History of Magic, which marked the end of Wednesday's morning lessons, Tod left Mezrielda and Bagsy to eat lunch in peace.
'Mezrielda,' Bagsy began, 'last night I tried to brew a potion and, well, I might need your help fixing its results.'
Mezrielda frowned. 'What were you brewing?'
'The potion Pepsini gave me the ingredients to. Remember?'
'I remember, but why were you wanting to brew that?' Mezrielda asked, casting a glance in the direction of the Slytherin table where Tod was sitting. 'Is it to do with Tod's favour, by any chance?'
Bagsy squirmed under Mezrielda's gaze. 'Maybe…' she admitted.
'And what exactly is that favour, may I ask?'
'It's not really for me to say,' Bagsy offered lamely. Mezrielda narrowed her eyes. 'I'm sorry, but Tod asked me to keep it between myself and him.'
'Of course, he did,' Mezrielda sighed angrily, stabbing her fork into a tomato with such frustrated precision it speared it cleanly in two.
'Mezrielda, please, I need your help,' Bagsy said.
Mezrielda stilled, clearly thinking. With a muted nod, she looked at Bagsy. 'Fine. If you really need my help, I won't say no. But I'm not happy about this…'
'The potion I brewed gives off fumes that are really bad. They smell disgusting-'
'So, open a window.' Mezrielda interrupted, waving a hand dismissively.
'-and the fumes made my skin itch and hurt and go really pale… it was like a bunch of tiny razors were being dragged up and down my arms and legs and face.' Bagsy held back a shudder at the memory. It had been most unpleasant.
Mezrielda looked concerned. 'Bagsy, please tell me, what kind of potion were you brewing?'
'The one Pepsini-'
'I know, you said,' Mezrielda cut in again, 'but what exactly is that potion? What does it do?'
Bagsy paused, thinking how she could describe it without giving Tod's favour away – she had promised him she'd keep it a secret. 'According to my reading, it's meant to overload doppelgangers so that they keep shifting until there's nothing left. I'm trying to replicate some of its effects, but not all of them, so I figured if I made a replica of the original I could use it as a basis for my work. Clearly, something went wrong.' Mezrielda was very silent for longer than felt normal. 'What?' Bagsy asked in concern.
'Is there any chance Pepsini lied to you? Or your research is mistaken? Or you made a mistake while brewing it?'
'Yes.' Bagsy nodded. 'My best guess is my research is incomplete or I made a slip up while brewing it.'
Despite having suggested such explanations herself, something in Mezrielda's expression seemed deeply unconvinced. Was she suspicious of Pepsini? He'd seemed trustworthy when they'd met him. 'I'm guessing you want me to get rid of the offending potion using my magic?' Mezrielda offered and Bagsy nodded, relieved. 'Your roommates must have been thrilled with you,' she added.
'Oh, no,' Bagsy laughed, 'I'm not that bad. I didn't brew it in the dorm, I brewed it in.' Bagsy stopped talking abruptly.
'Brewed it in what?' Mezrielda asked, her eyes narrowing again.
Bagsy opened her mouth and then closed it, her eyes widening in panic. Had she lost the ability to speak?
'Are you alright, Bagsy?' Mezrielda asked worriedly, placing an arm on her shoulder and giving her a small shake.
'I can't speak!' Bagsy squeaked, then, 'oh thank goodness,' when she realised she now could again. 'I was just trying to say that I brewed the potion in my.' It happened again. Bagsy simply stopped speaking, as if her mind had closed off the channel between itself and her mouth.
'Take me there,' Mezrielda said suddenly, standing up. 'To where you brewed it.'
