(A/N This is getting old. Ok here it goes, Harry Potter and co., do not belong to me, they belong to J.K. Rowling. There, now if you don't mind I have a Plane to catch. TAXI!!!! P.S. I'm sorry it took so long to get this chapter out. The floppy it was on started to degrade and I lost most of the chapter. I had to start over from scratch.)
Harry Potter and the Staff of Time
Chapter 22
Trials of the Labyrinth
"What does Merlin mean by that?!" Ron exclaimed.
"How should I know? It isn't as though he were her to ask, is it?" Savana responded irritably.
"Perhaps strength, honor and luck are all attributes we'll need in order to navigate the labyrinth." Hermione suggested. "Then again, he could simply have been wishing us well. Sometimes a banana is just a banana." She giggled, but the others didn't understand what Hermione found so funny.
"It's an old joke..." Hermione began to explain, but stopped when they heard noise in the cavern opening next to Merlin's message.
Savana came stumbling out of the opening, looking like she had just encountered the devil itself. Her hair was dishevaled, her face pale. Her eyes were wide with horror and most of her backside was covered with mud.
"...daggers...whosh!...past my nose..." Savana babbled.
"Calm down, you're not making any sense." Hermione cautioned Savana in a soothing tone of voice.
"I decided to get on with things and take a look at the entryway. But I slipped on something and fell backward onto the ground. Then millions of darts came shooting out of both the walls...some of them went right past my face...they missed me by this much..." Savana held her thumb and forefinger a few centimeters apart to show the others how close the darts had come to hitting her. "...if I hadn't fallen, I'd be a human pin cushion by now!"
"How stupid can you be?! Wandering off alone like that?! You're lucky you didn't get killed!" Alex barked at his sister with something approaching hysteria.
Savana felt her face burn with anger and embaressment. She was thankfull the others couldn't see her face because of the low light.
"From here on, no-one goes off on their own. Agreed?" Alex added.
The others mutely nodded their heads in agreement. It seemed to be a reasonable safety precaution for them to follow.
"No more walking into anything without checking it out first either." Hermione added judiciously.
Once again they nodded in agreement.
"We need to figure out how to successfully get through that corridor, especially since Savana has demonstrated there are traps which must be avoided." Harry commented.
He was attempting to re-focus the group's attention on the task at hand.
Fleur began to speak. "Je pense que..."
"English Please!" Cried Hermione, Ron and Harry in unison.
"Oui, je m'excuse, s'il vous plait." Fleur apologised.
She was not aware that she was still speaking in her native tongue. It was a habit she lapsed into when she was feeling extremely stressed, as she was now.
Alex whispered to her, "Fleur, your apology was also in French."
"Oh! Please, excuse my lapse! I think zhat we are to use a talisman to protect us from zhis trap." Fleur added.
"Yes, I think you are correct. I recall one of the talismans a being shaped like this." Hermione said as she touched the ~ mark beside Merlin's name.
Harry quickly sorted through the talismans until he found the appropriate one.
"I've found it but it looks too long for it to fit the engraving...wait a minute..." Harry manipulated the talisman for a moment, then he seperated it into two pieces. "...now they should fit into those engravings perfectly."
Harry handed the talismans to Hermione who fitted each one precisely into its counterpart. Then everyone looked expectantly at the corridor entrance. A light shone through it, otherwise there was no visible difference.
"The talisman turned the lights on, but I don't know if that trap has been disarmed. And I won't volunteer to be the guinea pig to test it." Savana declared.
"I've got an idea of how to test it." Harry volunteered.
Harry removed his pack, placed it in front of the corridor, and took out his wand. He pointed his wand at the pack and intoned, "Wingardium leviosa!"
The pack rose obediently into the air. Then Harry moved his wand to guide the pack forward through the corridor. The pack began to move into the corridor, then abruptly fell to the ground. No matter what spell Harry tried to use, it would not move again.
"What is the problem here...is something wrong with my wand?" Harry muttered as he shook his wand in frusteration. "Perhaps one of you should give it a go."
"I don't think that will be necessary, Harry." Alex informed him with a laugh. "Take a look at this." He continued while pointing to the message Merlin had left in the cave wall.
Another message had appeared under Merlin's name. It was written in glowing blue light, and in English.
"There is no magic except mine, in this my realm."
Merlin
"The message must have appeared when Hermione placed the talismans in the wall." Harry commented after reading the message.
"I wonder what it means. I wish Merlin would just tell us things straight out instead of communicating with all of this cryptic rubbish!" Ron muttered in frusteration.
"Merlin is from an era in the distant past and they spoke in a very different fashion from the way we speak today. He is probably being as direct as he can be." Hermione reminded Ron.
"I suspect the true meaning of that message is this: We can put away our wands because our magic won't work in here. The only magic which will work in the labyrinth is Merlin's." Alex informed them.
"O.K. Now the first message makes sense. If we can't use magic, we'll be left to our own devices." Savana said with a shake of her head. "So, now what do we do?"
"We pick-up 'arry's pack and go through zhe corridor. Zhe trap ees disarmed." Fleur informed the others.
Then she handed Harry his pack and walked down the corridor. The others tenatively followed her lead and they traversed the corridor with no more trouble.
The corridor ended abruptly at a rock outcropping overlooking a bottomless ravine that was at least half a kilometer across at its narrowest point. The outcropping on which they stood was flat, about three meters wide and stuck out approximately four meters over the ravine.
It was obvious to all of them that Merlin intended for them to cross the ravine, but the method of crossing they were to employ was a mystery.
"What do the writings say we're supposed to do here?" Ron asked.
He looked expectantly at Fleur and Hermione. Fleur and Hermione looked at each other and shrugged their shoulders in confusion.
Ron sighed in response and wondered what had posessed him in the first place, when he had decided to come along on this vacation from hell. He slumped down into a sitting position with his back against the ravine wall and began to rack his brain for a solution to their present predicament.
"This would be easy to solve, if we could only use magic." Ron thought ruefully. "Perhaps Harry and Hermione will come up with something since they grew-up among Muggles."
Hermione and Fleur had been going through the writings as Ron sat in thoughtfull resignation. A short time later, Hermione gleefully cried, "I think we've found something here!"
She waved an open scroll with excitement. Then she spred it out in front of her as the others gathered around it so they could also see the scroll.
"Why are we all trying to look at this? It isn't as though any of us, except Fleur and Hermione, can read the thing!" Ron muttered to himself.
Ron was pleasantly suprised, however, to find that the scroll was dominated by three drawings and a minimum of the troublesome, ancient language. The first drawing depicted the crevasse and rock out-cropping the group now stood upon.
They all recognised the second drawing. It depicted one of the talismans they now carried with them. This particular talisman was a silver disc, a bit larger than an American quarter in size. The engraving on one side of the disc was of a torch and a road. The other side was engraved with the now familiar Celtic writing Merlin preferred to employ. Fleur interpreted the phrase as: "I will light the way to the golden path which leads to safety."
The third drawing was essentially the same as the first one. The only difference was a bridge or a path, it was difficult to tell which, that spanned the void before them.
"The writting underneath each of zhe drawings ees an explaination of zhe picture." Fleur began to explain.
Hermione elaborated for them, "According to these explainations, placement of this talisman into the proper receptacal will either create a bridge over this chasm, or make one visable. I'm not sure which. In any case, we need to get the talisman out..."
"I'm way ahead of you there!" Alex exclaimed and held up the necessary talisman. "But where is this elusive receptacal?"
"Eet ees in one of the torch sconces. 'owever zhis does not indicate which one. We must search for eet." Fleur explained as she rolled up the scroll.
They quickly found the two torch sconces in question. The torches were located on either side of the platform, three meters above them on the ravine wall.
"There's only one talisman...it dosen't seperate, does it?" Savana asked hopefully.
"No such luck...there's only one correct answer this time." Hermione replied.
Hermione craned her neck as she searched the right side sconce for an indication that the talisman belonged there. Her search proved to be fruitless.
A moment later Savana called out, "I've found the receptacal! How are we supposed to put it up there?! It's not as though we can use our magic to accomplish the task. If we could it would be a piece of cake."
"Is there something we could use to climb up there?" Harry asked hopefully. "...something we could use as a ladder, the rock wall, maybe...Orion! No, the talisman is too large...I know! One of us can climb up on Alex's shoulders!..."
"Why don't we just throw ourselves over the edge of the cliff?! It'd be just as effective!" Savana added sarcastically.
Savana stared into the bottomless depths under the torch sconce in wide-eyed terror. She wasn't usually frightened of heights...then again she had never been without the use of magic, either. She suspected that was what she was actually afraid of, not the height.
"I don't think any of that will be necessary." Alex informed the others as he studied the situation. "Merlin said our magic would be useless, not our natural abilities."
The others didn't appear to register the meaning of Alex's statement at first. So, he prompted them with one word, "telekinesis."
"What are we going to do when the talisman falls into the cravasse because you don't have as much control over your telekinesis as you believe you have? We'd be trapped here!" Savana sounded panicy.
"Oh, ye of little faith, baby sister!" Alex responded with a grin. "Keep in mind, I've had a few more years of training and practice than you have. However, if it'll put your mind at ease, I'll preform a little demonstration for you...right here...in the safety of our living room."
Immediately after saying that, Alex looked at the talisman, which he still held in his hand. It rose into the air and moved toward Savana. Alex made it stop briefly in front of Savana's nose, then spin and bounce back and forth, as if it were dancing. Then Alex guided the talisman to come to a rest on his sister's head.
Savana frowned in consternation while the others chuckled at Alex's antics.
"O.K. You've proven your point!" Savana scowled, snatched the talisman from her head, and handed it back to her brother. "Here, put it in the receptacal and leave me alone!"
"How long has it been since we left the presence of 'His Lordship' ?" Ron asked.
"11 hours and 36 minutes." Harry responded after checking his wrist. "It's an old watch of Dudley's. He broke it, then threw it in the trash. I rescued it from the rubbish bin and fixed it." He added shyly.
"It's a good thing you did that." Ron nodded to Harry with approval. "Your watch may be the only way for us to know how long we've been down here, or when we need to be back..."
Ron stopped talking as he watched Alex manouever the disc into position on the sconce. They heard a snapping noise as the talisman was settled into place.
Almost immediately, the entire ravine exploded into a rainbow of bright lights. When the intensity of the lights had dimmed, they beheld an amazing, and unexpected sight. The abyss was now spanned by hundreds of bridges, at all levels, in all shapes and sizes, and in a multitude of directions. They were of all different colors and hues, but they all shone with an inner light.
"Well isn't that special? How are we supposed to know which of these is the correct bridge?!" Ron muttered. "The picture had only one bridge in it."
"Ron, get a clue! We're in a maze! The correct answer isn't going to be obvious!" Savana snapped at him.
"Merlin did tell us which bridge we must take. We need to find the golden one. The others must be traps and dead ends." Hermione informed the others in her group.
They spent the next few minutes looking over as many of the bridges as they could see and identifying which would be the most likely candidates for the correct route.
"I've identified 10 possible bridges." Alex told the others.
He pointed out those bridges he believed to be the correct ones. The others agreed those were the best choices.
"10 choices are still 9 too many. We need to narrow the field, somehow." Harry added.
"Zhe talisman said we must take zhe golden path. Zhese six," Fleur pointed to the bridges in question as she said this. "Are either stairways, or 'ave stairways in zhem. A path does not contain stairs."
The others agreed with Fleur's hypothosis. They spent the next several minutes eliminating three of the remaining four choices. This left them with one bridge. It was a plain, golden arc over the crevass which ran along the left side of the platform on which they stood.
Hermione felt secure in the group's decision and decided to be daring. She wanted to be the first of them to cross the bridge, so she volunteered to be the test subject.
"Wish me luck!" Hermione said as she stepped down onto the bridge of light.
Hermione screamed and clawed desperately at the rock wall beside her, as the bridge she had sought to step upon, disappeared in a flash of light. Her desperately grasping hands caught hold of a jagged piece of rock which stuck out from the wall.
"HELP!!" She screamed in terror as she hung there clutching the rock.
Ron dropped to his belly, inched his upper body over the edge of the cliff, and reached down to Hermione. She hung just out of his reach.
"Hermione, try to grab my hand." Ron called down to her.
"I can't! My hands are slipping...I'm going to fall!...do something, fast!" Hermione wailed.
"I'll hold your feet..." Harry began to suggest to Ron when Alex interrupted him.
"Let me try something. I'll need you to move over, Ron, so I can see Hermione." Alex interrupted Harry.
Alex moved to a spot where he could clearly see Hermione. Then he concentrated his telekinetic energy, first on stabilizing Hermione. Then he tried to raise her back up to the rock out cropping, but it was too much for him.
"Savana, I need some help over here!" Alex called in a strained voice.
"I'm here for you bro, but I'm not sure how much help I'll be." Savana told him.
Savana concentrated on adding her telekinetic power to Alex's, but she didn't have his strength, or control. The addition of Savana's efforts was the deciding factor and between them, Alex and Savana were able to raise Hermione to Harry's and Ron's waiting hands. They easily pulled Hermione the rest of the way to safety.
Hermione sat with her knees drawn to her chest, her head down and her arms wrapped around her shaking legs. Her fingers and hands bled where the rock had torn the skin from them.
Fleur rubbed Hermione's shoulders and spoke softly to her while Ron and Harry also added words of comfort. Savana and Alex had collapsed in exhaustion near the tunnel entrance. Neither of them had ever tried to move anything as big as a person with telekinesis and the experience had left them drained of energy.
Thirty minutes later, they felt recovered enough from their ordeal to renew their search for the correct bridge.
Savana and Alex began testing their bridge choices by telekineticly lobbing rocks onto the bridge in question. One by one, the bridges they tested disappeared in a flash of light. Soon they had eliminated all 10 of their original choices, as well as several other possibilities.
"Now what do we do? We could spend the next three weeks testing these things and still not find the correct bridge! Plus, this has given me a pounding headache." Savana sighed in frusteration.
"I give up. We've eliminated every bridge in the vicinity that could possibly be considered gold, yellow, or even brown." Alex said and he joined his younger sister.
Harry and Ron continued searching for the correct bridge while the others rested and vented their frusterations.
"Fleur, would you tell me what that phrase on the talisman said once more?" Harry asked a short time later.
Fleur repeated the phrase for Harry.
"I think we've been barking up the wrong tree, so to speak." Harry said. "Take a look at this bridge and tell me what you think."
The others moved over next to Harry and looked at the bridge he was pointing to. It was about one meter below the platform on its far right side. The bridge in question looked like a rainbow with a tarnished gold path down the middle of it. It curved in a long, lazy arc toward the far ravine wall, where it ended in a series of downward spirals.
"Test eet." Fleur suggested.
Alex obligingly dropped a rock onto the path below. The rock landed on the path, bounced, then rolled to a stop along one side. The bridge was still there.
"Boys and girls, I think we've found our winner!" Alex crowed. "It's time to be movin' on."
"...just follow the yellow brick road...." Savana chirped in a high, Munchkinsque
voice.
She began to sing, 'Follow the Yellow Brick Road' 1 as Alex executed a side vault over the cliff edge and onto the golden path below. Alex was quickly followed by Fleur, Harry, and Savana.
Hermione gazed uncertainly over the edge. She was feeling quite sore and stiff after her fall earlier. The entire incident shook her sense of trust and of self-confidence.
"I'll help you." Ron whispered into Hermione's ear.
"Thankyou. I'd appreciate the help." Hermione wore a small smile as she responded.
Ron vaulted down then reached up and held Hermione around the waist. He helped to ease her down onto the path from there. Once there, they began to follow the others on the golden path over the ravine. When they were about three quarters of the way across, the path began to descend in a gradual spiral. It added almost one third of a kilometer to their journey, but eventually they reached the end of the path and the far side of the ravine. The path ended on a platform which was similar to the one they had recently left behind. They could also see a corridor located in the ravine's rock wall.
Ron and the others cautiously peered into the mouth of the corridor.
"It's as dark as a moonless night in there. I assume we need another talisman to activate it." Ron commented.
Ron, Harry, Savana and Alex looked expectantly at Fleur and Hermione.
Fleur told them, "I must 'ave a minute to think."
Then she took out the scroll with the pictures of the talismans and studied them.
"I believe I understand what we must do, but I must check with one last scroll." Fleur told the others while she checked through the scrolls and withdrew the object of her search.
The others, with the exception of Hermione who studied the scroll along with Fleur, busied themselves exploring their surroundings while they waited.
"What is this?" Ron muttered as he examined a vertical slot in the rock wall.
"It looks like the slot in a vending machine." Harry laughed.
Ron, Savana and Alex gave Harry a puzzled look.
"It's a Muggle device." Harry explained. "...one places money in the slot and recieves the item they paid for in return...oh, forget about it, you'd need to see it to understand what I'm talking about." He concluded weakly.
"If it's any comfort to you, I do know what you're talking about." Hermione told Harry.
"We 'ave figured out what we must do 'ere." Fleur added and she held up a golden, octagonal, talisman. It was the size of a silver dollar. "We must put zhis into zhat slot."
"Does the scroll mention what will happen when we do that?" Ron asked suspiciously. "I would hate to use that talisman only to discover that it makes this platform disappear, or something equally unpleasant."
The others swallowed hard and nodded in agreement.
"The scroll says: The golden path will lead to a riddle, which must be solved in order for the traveler to reach the Staff of Time." Hermione informed the group, while frequently referring to the scroll. "There is nothing written here which would indicate any sort of trap."
"Why don't I find that reassuring?" Ron muttered.
Fleur put the scrolls back into the pack while Hermione placed the talisman into the slot in the wall. She was rather disconcerted when the talisman rolled into the wall and out-of-sight. The other talismans had remained where they had been placed.
"I wonder where it went?" Hermione thought with rising panic. "What if this is the wrong slot...maybe it was meant to be placed elsewhere..."
Hermione's thoughts were interrupted when the corrider before her was flooded with light and words appeared in glowing purple above the slot.
"Roses are red, violets are blue. Here is a riddle from me to you." Savana thought as she read the riddle. (It was actually more of a question.)
It read: "Who is the most famous of the Gorgans?"2
"I realise I'm admitting my ignorance by asking this, but what is a Gorgan?" Harry asked. "I don't recall studying them yet."
"The Gorgans are women with snakes for hair. Looking at them will turn one to stone. Medusa is the most famous of the Gorgans." Savana responded. Then she added, "I love Greek mythology."
The group studied the corridor before them, now that it was visible. The walls and ceiling were unremarkable. The floor, however, consisted of hundreds of tiles, each of which was engraved with two letters, one upper-case and one lower-case. Each tile square measured one third of a meter on each side. They filled the corridor floor from one wall to the other, and from one end to the other. The tiles spanned a distance of approximately 75 meters. The letters on the tiles were a mixture of several different alphabets. They were able to identify the English, Greek, Gaelic, Celtic, and Phonetician alphabets, among others.
The letter tiles were mixed in no discernable pattern. There were English letter tiles between tiles with Greek letters, or Gaelic letters, etc.
"Isn't this just lovely? We know the answer, but not the language we're supposed to answer in." Savana grumbled.
"Medusa was a character from Greek mythology. Perhaps we are meant to respond een Greek. 'owever, I do no read, write or speak Greek, can any of you?" Fleur asked.
The others shook their heads 'no' in response to her question.
"I think Merlin intended us to answer in English." Ron suggested with more assurance than he felt. "He asked us the question in English...it's only logical that we answer in English."
"Then why are all these other alphabets mixed in here?" Savana asked.
"Their obvious purpose is to confuse us. This is a maze, remember?" Alex responded. "And I think, since it's Ron's theory we're testing, that Ron should have the honor of going through the corridor first. We'll follow once we know it's safe. All those in favor say 'aye'!"
"NAY!" Ron shouted as the others giggled.
"Oh, allright. I guess someone has to be brave enough to give it a go." He relented a moment later.
Ron faced the corridor and began to select his route. He found the tile with the English upper and lower case M in the second row of tiles. Then he thought he saw the letter M in the first row, next to the corridor's left wall. Ron edged over to the wall and looked at the letter in question more closely. The upper case letters were both the same; M. The lower case letters, while greatly similar, had one difference, an extra flourish on the second tile's lower case letter.
Ron blinked, then muttered, "Merlin is one tricky, old, devil...now I know why all of these tiles contain an upper case and a lower case letter...it's the only way to tell some of them apart...this is the Greek letter Mu, not an English M...if I had stepped on that tile!...I'm also beginning to understand what Merlin meant when he wrote, 'May luck be your lover...' "
"So can I...luck must be closer to us than a good friend, if we hope to survive this place. I wonder what he meant by the strength and honor comments..." Alex mused.
"I don't know, and I don't want to know!" Savana announced. "Ron, why didn't you tell us you could read Greek when Fleur asked us?"
"Because, I can't read Greek." Ron responded with a shrug of his shoulders. Then he elaborated by telling the others, "Fred and George made me learn the Greek alphabet before they would let me join their club when we were little. They thought I wouldn't be able to do it. I still remember it." He grinned sheepishly as he said this last bit.
"Are you ready to do this puzzle now?" Hermione asked nervously.
She hoped they had figured out the correct answer because she didn't want anymore unpleasant suprises.
"Yeah, I've located the first three tiles we need to step on. I suggest you only step on the same tiles as I do. There's no telling what will happen if one of us steps on the wrong tile, and I don't want to find out." Ron said as he prepared to jump onto the M tile.
Ron lept and landed upon the first of the six tiles he needed to hit in order to successfully navigate the corridor. Then he lept to the E tile and Hermione lept to the M tile. Ron and the others continued on in this fashion until Ron stood upon the S, Hermione the U, Savana the D, Harry the E, Alex the M, and Fleur waited her turn at the beginning.
"One last jump and I'll be out of here." Ron thought with relief.
He had spotted the A in the final row of tiles, near the right wall. Ron looked at the tile and jumped. He realised his error a millisecond before he landed on the A square. Rather than choosing the English A tile, Ron had mistakenly chosen and landed upon, the Greek letter Alpha tile.
Ron heard the others advance behind him as stone slabs began to drop down over the corridor exits and the walls began to press inward on them.
They were going to be crushed and there was no escape!
...`~*~`...
Draco approached the door to Professor Snape's office and knocked hesitantly upon it. He was unsure of the wisdom in alerting Professor Snape to his feelings concerning Savana Walker, but he wanted to find out what had happened to Savana.
"Enter." Professor Snape's fatigued voice responded to the knock.
Draco opened the door, walked into the room and closed the door behind him. He noted that Professor Snape looked exhausted.
"I...uum...I just wanted to ask you if...umm...if you knew what has happened to Savana Walker? She's been absent from class the past three days...I just wanted to find out if she's allright,...not ill, or something..." Draco felt tongue tied.
"I am already aware of your romantic interest in the girl, Mr. Malfoy. You needn't fear that you are revealing any intimate secrets to me." Professor Snape replied smoothly. "However, I am unsure of her current status. We have only been informed that there was some sort of family emergency, nothing more."
Professor Snape was telling the truth, for the most part. Professor Dumbledore had only told the faculty there was a family emergency. However, he knew far more than he had told Draco. Unfortuneately, he was not free to discuss anything more with the obviously uncomfortable teenager who now stood before him.
"Thankyou anyway." Draco replied.
Then he turned to leave, but Professor Snape said something which made Draco pause.
"Don't make the same mistake I made in my youth, Mr. Malfoy. If you truly love her, then act on it. Do not disreguard it and hope you will find love again, for you will not. Then you will regret what you did not grasp when you had the chance."
"Yes sir." Draco replied with a bit of confusion.
He turned and let himself out. Once Draco was outside the door, he paused and wondered why Professor Snape would say anything so revealing to him and why he would behave in such an uncharacteristic manner.
"He must have had a tragic romance in the past which he now regrets." Draco thought.
He looked up and saw an unfamiliar man approach him in the hallway.
The man was tall, in his late twenties, had fair skin and dark hair. The man paused outside of Professor Snape's door and looked at Draco.
"Perhaps I should ask him..." Draco began to think, but Crabbe and Goyle approached him at that moment.
Draco didn't want to explain why he was there, or what he had been doing, to his friends. So he fell in step with them and chose to save his ruminations for another, more private, time.
Raven strode arrogantly into Severus' office without even the curtesy of knocking.
"How dare you show your face here?! Even an American should know better than to enter Hogwart's grounds if he is a servant of Lord Voldemort." Severus sneered.
Raven donned a superior expression and smiled unpleasantly at Severus before telling him, "I was sent here by the Dark Lord himself. He would like to know why you did not come to him when he summoned you three days ago. Lord Voldemort is not very happy with you, at the moment. You must rectify the situation immediately." Raven smirked as he said this.
Severus glared at the pompous intruder and replied, "I need not explain myself to the likes of you. Suffice it to say, I had my reasons...and before you get too high and mighty, I know exactly who you are and why you are here, in the United Kingdom." Severus's tone of voice implied a threat.
Raven merely raised an eyebrow and responded, "Then you also know it is imperative that I not compromise myself, or my mission, by discussing these matters further."
"Then state your purpose in comming here." Severus hissed impatiently.
Raven answered simply, and with a veiled threat of his own. "I am here to escort you to Lord Voldemort, at Stonehenge."
1. Baum, Frank; THE WIZARD OF OZ; Movie by MGM Studios.
2. The Gorgans were three sisters in Greek mythology with snakes on their heads. They were said to be so hideous
that looking upon them would turn a person to stone. Medusa was the most famous of the sisters.
