Sorry it's been a while, and this chapter sucks so much, I've been going to weddings lately. I have an original fiction over at fictionpress.com (check my profile for the link if you're lazy). I'll do reviewer responses next time (sorry!). Thanks for reading. -xy
Chapter 22: The Cult of the Spider
"RON!"
"Hermione! Shut up!"
Everything around Harry was a sickening blur of color. There was a bitter, acrid taste of bile in Harry's mouth. The room smelt of smoke, blood and sweat. It was hot, a freezing, icy heat that prickled like a million needles. There was yelling, screaming, cheering and spell casting creating a nauseating song that swirled around Harry in hi-fi.
Ron was there, a sharp image among the blur, Hermione was dashing towards him, throwing caution to the winds. A spider web of blue energy wound itself around her and suddenly she had fallen amongst the screaming crowd.
Harry jumped, throwing himself upon a nearby cultist, trying to grab the wand, keeping low. It was fortunate there were so many there, it was impossible for many to determine the source of the disturbance, and a blind panic was spreading contagiously through the crowd of robed spectators.
Ron's body was still being lowered to a pit full of something, and Harry knew he didn't want to know what was in there. Harry grabbed the legs of another cultist and saw, to Harry's surprise, that he appeared to be a Death Eater as well as a spider cultist.
"C'mon… where's your wand… c'mon…"
Two freezing hands encased Harry's neck. He kicked backwards and connected with something, but the grip only tightened. Flailing wildly, Harry watched the world fall as he rose, held struggling above the heads of the dark monks.
Am I going to live through this? Maybe as a zombie?, wondered Harry dully. And then Harry felt a strange wind beside him.
"Genie?"
Cloaks were flapping; a blue-tinted wind was rising around them, and in the middle of it was…
"LUNA!?"
Luna looked sort of stoned, smiling incoherently, her head cocked to the side, her hands holding an antique oil lamp.
"Dumbledore's here…It'll be okay…"
Dumbledore?
"Well, it looks like you didn't need me after all," said the genie sardonically.
"Professor Dumbledore?"
The genie gave an appreciative smile.
"I thought you were sick…" said Harry as he jumped into the swirling vortex.
"What? You think a wizard as powerful as me would just go away? But, when my physical body dies… so will this body."
"Is there a way to stop you from dying?"
"You'll see in time." He said mysteriously. "Steer me over there, would you kindly, Miss Lovegood?"
Luna, parting the crowd like Moses as blue winds swept up dist around her, tiny lighting bolts spreading between sparks in the wind, walked calmly foreword, studying an oil stain on the lamp, oblivious to the screaming multitudes surrounding her. Ron hung above a pit of enlarged scorpions that were hissing terribly.
"Can I take one as a pet?" asked Luna, reaching out a hand for the pit. To Harry's amazement, a scorpion climbed up her arm and gave her what was definitely a scorpion's idea of a smile.
"Certainly," said the Dumbledore-genie.
"Save me, not the scorpion!" Ron yelled, awakening from a daze.
"Go get 'em, Fluffy," said Luna.
Fluffy? Harry didn't have much time to contemplate Luna's choice of names for the hairless scorpion as he sat in a chair made of wind floating at the top of the storm. The scorpion climbed dexterously up the ropes and gave Luna a strange chirp. A hand of blue wind extended from the tornado between the pit full of the rest of the scorpions and Ron. Luna nodded. With another chirp, Fluffy cut the rope with his (her) mandibles and Ron went flying down into Dumbledore's gigantic hand.
"Hermione!" yelled Ron as he swirled about in the whirlwind.
Dumbledore extended some tendrils and cautiously lifted the screaming Hermione, who was dangling some of the more steadfast cultists who were holding instruments of torture. With a flick, however, they fell angrily back into the crowd, and Hermione was hoisted next to Ron.
"Well? Ready? I don't think there's a gift shop, but you have my permission to take any souvenir you want."
"MY WAND!" yelled Harry and Ron together. Harry realized exactly how important the wand was to a wizard – without it, spell casting was nearly impossible.
"Ah, Arty Artemis has them."
"You mean that same guy that just announced Ron's sacrifice.
"No, that was the living Professor Artemis. He was fetched from the past. The dead one is on our side."
"What?"
But there was time for an explanation. With an unpleasant jolt, Harry fell foreword into the vortex. There were bumps, screams and then it was all over. Luna's face was above his, haloed in dazzling sparkles.
"You're safe now," she said simply.
The world swam into darkness.
"Harry? Harry, stop being so lazy!"
"Urrrrgh… Ron?"
"Look, Mum sent us a bunch of Chocolate Frogs."
Harry was in the hospital wing, Ron and Hermione sitting beside him. Ron was choking on a bug-flavored jelly bean, while Hermione was prowling through Conjuration for Dummies, muttering under her breath about three days lost study time.
"Why would Dumbledore send us to a place like that?' asked Ron.
"I think he wanted us to learn about that cult-thingy…" said Harry, shrugging, "except it didn't really work out."
"Well, we now know that there are two Artemises."
"But what's up with this fetched from the past stuff?"
"Hermione, this is your area of expertise."
"You can't go foreword in time with the time-turner… I'm sure if we checked out that time room in the Department of Mysteries, they'd have the answer."
"Yeah, but even they don't know how to raise the dead."
"I'm not sure… there might be a way to get someone back through that veil…"
Was that what Sirius had meant by I'm not dead? Did he want Harry to go back in time and save him? Harry lay back on the comfortable bed, idly spitting out a hot-pepper flavored bean, replacing it with a rather tasteless water-flavored bean.
"But what about zombies? They're not people from the past?"
"Don't you two ever listen in History of Magic?"
"Um… no…" admitted Ron.
"He said that zombification has been illegal since 1822 when a gaggle of goblins raised a zombie dragon that killed half a town."
"So zombification is just raising a dead body with magic?"
"Well, no, not exactly. It's kind of like creating a ghost out of thin air and giving it a body. Except, the person is never the same."
"So that's why Arty is good when he was bad in life?"
"Pretty much. Except zombification is part of necromancy, which is only practiced by the Cult of the Spider only."
"Goblins are part of the Cult of the Spider?"
"Well, certainly… it was started by an ogre."
"You know, we could have used all this info ages ago."
"Yeah, well Dumbledore told me where to find book about it. Except it doesn't explain the temple beneath Hogwarts."
"Well, whatever the case," said Ron, polishing off a dust-flavored bean, "I'm hungry for some real food."
"Me too," said Hermione. "All this sugar really gets into the teeth."
Harry nodded and they set off for the Great Hall.
As soon as Harry got to his room, he contacted the Order through Sirius's old mirror.
"Annette!" he yelled, "Annette!"
Annette appeared in the mirror, tanned.
"What happened? Why? Were you at school in Africa?"
"Listen, none of that matters right now, I have something I really need to tell you!"
"Annette, I thought…you said…"
Harry was confused. At least Cho had acknowledged that there was something between them.
"Harry… Just get that Drakhen back from my sister NOW!"
"What about that note you left me this summer… can you tell me what's going on."
"I couldn't tell you… There's someone else… But no matter…"
But what she said after that Harry didn't hear. His eyes unfocused, every single muscle inside him twitching inside him. His fist connected with the mirror, which shattered. Blood pumped thickly through Harry's body, he had an odd feeling around his stomach.
"Harry?"
Go away, Neville, damnit! Just let me be alone!
"Harry? You look sick… you should go back to the hospital wing…"
Shattered glass had pierced Harry's hand but it didn't matter. Why did girls always have to abandon him?
"Harry? I'll get Madam Pomphrey…"
"I'm fine!" Harry snarled, blood dripping from his fist.
So this was it, huh? Why did his life have to be so screwy? I mean, he thought, why can't any kind of relationship I have just go right for me?
"Harry?" came another voice. "What happened?"
Devin Malfoy's sudden transition had been so sudden to Harry, but right now he wanted to simply be alone. Stumbling, he muttered something to Devin and Neville and climbed into bet, his eyes pulsing with anger.
"You're not okay," said Devin seriously. "We need to get you out of here."
"No, I'm fine, I'm fine," muttered Harry
"Harry, listen, whatever it is, we can't worry about this right now, the whole school has to go to the Great Hall, there's some kind of meeting."
Harry had calmed somewhat, but he sat moodily squished between Ron and Hermione, hearing Amber speaking over and over in his mind.
"Harry? You really need rest…"
"Shut up, I said. What's this meeting about, anyway?"
"I don't know. McGonagall just called us all here. Maybe Dumbledore is getting worse?"
"I think he would have told us when he was there as a genie."
"I guess so…"
Just then, McGonagall approached where the staff table had been before – the Great Hall had now been set up as an auditorium (much to Hermione's displeasure, as house elves had obviously gone out of their way to make the auditorium nice).
"Students, I have some grave news to present you."
"Yeah," whispered Ron, "it's definitely about Dumbledore."
"Ssh!" hissed Hermione.
Harry watched as magical lights hovered over Professor McGonagall's tight bun of hair, casting uncountable shadows cascading about the almost-ghostly room that had eaten in earlier. It was a new moon, the ceiling was nearly black, and no torches had been lit.
"Our Headmaster, who has recently been within our midst as a genie has lost full control. He has only a few more months to live."
Harry, Ron and Hermione stared at each other.
"We're going to have to go to Azkaban soon," whispered Hermione, fear infecting her voice.