Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter. Nope, not me.
A/N: Yay for reviews!
The climax. I will say no more.
_____________
Remus sighed. This whole Minister gig is much harder than I thought it would be, he thought, and I had a niggling suspicion it would be pretty hard.
There was a piece of parchment in front of him. Cabinet Under Minister Of Magic Remus J. Lupin was written at the top, but the rest of it was blank. He sighed again and wondered how Fudge had felt in his first few days of office. He wished he had Aemilia here to advise him, but she was taking -
"LUPIN!"
There was no mistaking the urgency in Severus Snape's voice. "What?" Remus asked, hurrying to the fireplace.
There was genuine fear and anguish on Severus's face. "Get to Gringotts," he said hoarsely. "The goblins -"
Severus needed say no more. Remus was out the door in a flash.
The people in the Atrium that day might have wondered what the grey and brown blur that streaked through their midst was. A stray dog, perhaps, or a particularly unkempt representative from the Misuse of Muggle Artefacts department, rushing to a case? More than one person, knocked over by the grey and brown blur, sniffed and said, "He should be sent to the Centaur Office!"
Little did they know that the blur was the Minister for Magic, and little did they know that the world as they knew it was about to change.
*
Remus, Apparating into Gringotts, ended up high above the scene playing out below him. He was standing on a marble plinth. He assumed it was the Minister's Apparition point into Gringotts. He knew well enough that no-one but the Minister for Magic could Apparate into Gringotts itself without being splinched.
And he knew, with a sickened feeling in his heart, that he was late, late, too late.
Sirius stood at the forefront of the group, wand raised menacingly. Regina was at the rear, wand also raised, guarding Sirius's back. Between them, Harry and Ron were sandwiched. Aemilia, Hermione and Ginny were nowhere to be seen. Remus could only hope that they were safe.
Around them was a ring of Death Eaters. The goblins sat back, not participating, merely watching.
"So, Black," a Death Eater spat, "back from the dead."
"So it would seem," Sirius said in reply. Remus admired his friend's restraint.
"And yet not for long!" the Death Eater crooned, in a horrid parody of a mother's voice. He raised his wand. "Avada Keda-"
"Stupefy!"
Remus cast the curse and then somersaulted down from his plinth, wand at the ready. He had lost Sirius once before. He would not lose him again.
And he would not lose his sister. He didn't think he could bear losing her again.
Remus's dramatic entrance had sparked off a battle. Remus hit the floor and came up, cursing everything in sight. Sirius and Regina were both duelling. Harry had his wand out and had Stunned a Death Eater already. Ron too had entered the fray, casting a Tripping Hex on a Death Eater that attacked Remus from behind.
Doom, boom.
The Death Eater Remus was duelling let his wand clatter to the floor. Remus himself froze.
Doom, boom.
Everyone in the room, Death Eater or not, was frozen in fear. Something was coming, a denizen from the bowels of Gringotts, making its horrid way up the stairs.
Doom, boom.
Then Remus the grins on the faces of the goblins all around the room and he knew what they had done.
"Faithless!" he cried.
In lieu of any other sound, his voice echoed.
Faithless, faithless, faithless.
Doom, boom.
"Faithless?" a goblin spoke up, his face belying wickedness. "We swore no oath, Minister Lupin. We serve only our own interests. We do not serve you. We serve neither, much as he thinks we do, the Dark Lord. We serve only ourselves."
Doom, boom.
"You broke your word!" a Death Eater hissed.
"We swore no oath," the goblin repeated.
"They have betrayed us all," Remus breathed.
Doom, boom. Doom, boom. Doom, doom, doom, doom!
"Each Uisge," Remus heard Sirius whisper. "Unseelie wights. Merlin save us all."
*
When they were at school, Remus Lupin and Sirius Black had been the only two students in their year to take an obscure class at NEWT level known as 'Wight Lore.' Remus had taken it because he hoped that somewhere, amidst all that ancient lore, might be a cure for lycanthropy. Sirius had taken it because he was Sirius and he enjoyed knowing things not many others knew.
But in all his life as a wizard, Remus had never seen a wight. No trow, no henkie, no bruney had ever crossed his path, much less one of the great wights, the powerful wights, against whom much of the lore he had learned was useless.
Such a wight stood before him now, and it was not a seelie wight, like the wights that had built Telae Domus and instructed fledgling priestesses in eldritch lore. No, this was an unseelie wight, and that meant death and chaos.
The King of the Wights, the Each Uisge, advanced through the hall. He had taken on the shape of a comely young man, dark hair reaching to his shoulders, clad in fish-green mail. As he walked, the ground shuddered. Remus could feel the magic pouring off him like smoke, and knew the world was lost.
The Each Uisge did not have to speak. It merely smiled, and then behind it were other unseelie wights, all the wights of the deep that could bear to come this far above it - the waterhorses, the fuath, the Glastyn, Nuckelavee. Such an unseelie host was laid out before them, and such a silence had fallen that Remus felt like it could be cloven in two with a knife.
Faithless, faithless, faithless.
Remus knew now why he had never seen a wight. They had gathered, underground, these faithless unseelie eldritch creatures, waiting, waiting, waiting. The goblins. goblins were akin to wights. This Remus knew. These wights possessed dark magic that even Voldemort could not perceive. And so the wights had waited, waited for the mortals to fight, to war, to be splintered, so that they might destroy them all. For Remus had no doubt that this host could destroy them, one by one, painfully, woefully. No man could truly govern a wight. No man.
And the goblins had told them the time was now, and they had come, all these unseelie wights of water, from the depths of Gringotts, from their subterranean lakes, to destroy them all. The wights of land slept on, but there was no need for them to be wakened. Mankind, Remus thought, is not so mighty.
"Who - who are you?" a Death Eater stammered.
The Each Uisge smiled. His teeth were pointed, sharp, like poisoned needles. "I am your death," he said. Wights could not lie.
"Do not take your eyes off it," Remus warned, "or they will kill you."
The Death Eater blinked.
Instantly, seven of the fuath fell upon him. As carnivorous goats were they, with their teeth the barbs of arrows tipped with hemlock. No man could defeat them. And there was nothing anyone could do but watch the Death Eater be devoured, blood dripping from the pointed teeth of the fuath.
"You know me?" the Each Uisge said, and Remus knew the question was directed at him.
"You are the Each Uisge," Remus answered, "King of the Unseelie Wights of the Water."
"And you," the wight returned, "are learned."
Remus inclined his head in assent, but did not take his eyes off the Each Uisge. "I am."
"I would you were in the sea," the Each Uisge shot suddenly.
A war of words, then. Remus knew that by gaining the last word over a wight, some measure of immunity from it could be gained. "And a boat under me," he returned.
"A boat with a leak."
"And me with a bucket for bailing."
"And for the bucket to break."
"And for me to use a second bucket."
"And for the mast to fall."
"Onto your head."
"And for my head to be hard."
"Hard compared to jelly."
"And for jellyfish to take you."
"And for me to swim away."
"And for the water to freeze with you beneath it."
"And someone hammering on it."
"And for them to be dead."
"Then someone else instead."
Remus smiled. His line had rhymed with the Each Uisge's. He had won this battle, at least.
"You are wise in word-lore," the Each Uisge acknowledged, "but no mortal man can best the Lords of Eldritch."
"No mortal man, but what of a woman?"
Oh lady, lady, lady.
Regina.
*
The Each Uisge regarded Regina with an odd gleam in his eyes. He was calculating, Remus realised. "What is your name?"
"I am called My Own Self," Regina shot back. To reveal your name to a wight was for them to gain power over you. Regina, Remus remembered suddenly, had been the only person in her year to take Wight Lore, and the subject had been discontinued after that.
Another wight emerged to stand beside the Each Uisge. In silent assent, this wight moved forward to confront Regina, and Remus saw with a shock that the wight had taken on the form of Sirius. A ganconer, then.
"How I love thee," he whispered, taking Regina's shoulders in his hands and drawing her to him. Remus saw his sister melt against the unseelie wight, her arms around his neck, he embracing her. Beware the ganconer, he whose honeyed words are poisoned, Remus remembered from his textbook. The ganconer, the Love Talker.
The ganconer began to trail kisses down Regina's jaw line, and Remus knew those kisses must be both fire and ice.
He also knew that if the ganconer kissed Regina's lips, she would die.
"Who do you cherish?" Regina asked the wight.
Oh wise, Remus thought.
"My Own Self," the ganconer answered.
And Regina pushed the wight from her. "Faithless lover, then, who loves himself better than all others!"
The Each Uisge inclined his head in acknowledgment to Regina. "You have bested the ganconer, lady," he said, "and there are not many that can boast of that. But you can not best all of us."
There was an uncanny gleam in Regina's eyes. "You reckon," she said softly, "without gods."
In a flash, she pulled her wand out of her sleeve. "Vestis Acclaro!"
The air shimmered, inimical forces coalescing.
And the Tapestry was revealed.
*
The Tapestry created by the Moerae and woven by Arachne. The Tapestry into which all lives, mortal and eldritch, were sown. Before them, summoned by Arachne's greatest daughter, it shone, material in a material world, beautiful, terrible, fate, destiny.
The Each Uisge started forward, as if to snatch the Tapestry and destroy it, but Regina began to chant, an ancient chant that Remus remembered from his days studying the lore of wights, the most simple of means to repel wights.
"Hypericum, salt and bread,
"Iron cold and berry red,
"Self-bored stone and daisy bright,
"Save me from unseelie wight."
Remus joined in, helping his sister repel the wights.
"Red verbena, amber, bell,
"Turned-out raiment, ash as well,
"Whistle tunes and rowan-tree,
"Running water, succour me."
Two voices became three as Sirius joined in.
"Rooster with your cock-a-doo,
"Banish wights and darkness too."
Remus, not daring to speak, gestured with his arms, urging all those in the room, Death Eater and not, to join in. Enemies must join to defeat the greater evil.
"Hypericum, salt and bread,
"Iron cold and berry red."
Regina had stopped chanting. Instead, she had stepped forward to the Tapestry. The Each Uisge started forward too, but could not touch her.
"Self-bored stone and daisy bright,
"Save me from unseelie wight."
She laid her hand on the Tapestry, and it did not burn her. She was Arachne's child, after all, the best beloved of that spider goddess.
"Red verbena, amber, bell,
"Turned-out raiment, ash as well."
Regina's eyes left the Each Uisge, and yet neither he nor any of his unseelie host could move against her.
"Whistle tunes and rowan-tree,
"Running water, succour me."
Then, with a pained look on her face, Regina grasped an enormous hank of threads on the Tapestry, and ripped them asunder.
"Rooster with your cock-a-doo."
The Each Uisge stopped, shuddered. Regina held up the hank of threads.
"Banish wights and darkness too."
And he fell, fell, fell.
*
Down, down, down fell the Each Uisge and all the wights that accompanied him, their threads ripped from the Tapestry, torn out of time and space.
All was quiet, all was still. The Tapestry vanished.
And she who had saved them all, Regina Lupin, a hank of threads clutched tight in her fist, lay dead on the floor.
____________
REVIEW!
And if you have any questions regarding the wights. well, ask me!
The chant in this chapter (Hypericum, salt and bread.) is from Cecilia Dart-Thornton's Bitterbynde trilogy - though I think she may have lifted it from somewhere else.
Each Uisge is pronounced ech oosh-kya.
