Chapter Seventeen: Livin' On the Edge
There were still questions in the morning. But Hermione was nowhere to be found. She was up and out of the room before breakfast on a Sunday morning and they didn't have an exam coming for weeks. Something was up with her, but then, there was always something up with Harry, Ron, and Hermione. But whatever was brewing had never gotten her out of bed at the crack of dawn before.
Lucy didn't bother to go looking for her, being in no rush to re-connect with whatever she had touched the day before. There was something very wrong about it, and she wasn't sure if she would like what she found when she went about trying to discover how something like that had found its way to Hogwarts. And stayed around too. That was part of what was so troubling, whatever it had been, not only had it been terribly unnatural, but it had hung around for months and months.
She tried to work on other things, to take her mind off of it, but it was fruitless. There was also no one else around for her to talk to since the boys were off at Quidditch practice and Lavender and Parvati had been out at an illicit Ravenclaw party in the Astronomy Tower the night before, and had slipped off their dates' broomsticks and through the window at around dawn. They would sleep till dinner if previous parties were any indication.
After locking herself away in Asriel's workroom to attempt an outline of what she hoped to achieve in her next thesis, she was nearly focused when she felt a tingle in the back of her mind. It was Diego, their signal that a long conversation was ahead that would be less energy draining if she tranced down to receive it. She smoothed out the ripples in her mind and made herself comfortable on a bench near the floor.
**What is it?**
**I did it.**
**Did what?**
**Well, I think I did it.**
**Diego Alvarez if you don't explain yourself in the next ten seconds I'm going to block you out.**
**Oh you could never do that, burro, now be patient and I'll explain.**
**When have you ever known me to be patient?**
**Good point, listen. Remember we had to find a way to link in the void without pulling energy from the environment?**
**Yes...**
**I figured it out.**
**Well....!**
**If we use personal reserves, it won't interfere with the flux.**
**Diego, if you tried that you'd tap yourself out before you ever got to them.**
**Not if I was linked to you, which I pretty much always am, and you were pulling from the ground.**
Lucy paused, it SOUNDED plausible.
**There's something wrong in there somewhere, just give me a second to figure out what it is.**
**It'll work, even Zhara thinks so. Ask Faustas.**
**I can't, he went back to Machu Pichu.**
**What for?**
**He is not accountable to me, as he frequently reminds me, he outranks me on several celestial levels.**
**We need to test this Lucy.**
Her heart stopped. They had always known they were going to do this, no one else would dare, but the thought of it made her mouth go dry.
**You have the locating part worked out?**
**Yup. I'm gonna try to get a fix empathetically, its my strongest chance. I can build from that. You can punch a gate in there and hold it?**
**Yeah, at least in theory, I haven't actually tested it.**
**Well, we will find out then, won't we?**
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In the early weeks of March, most Hogwarts students were trudging through classes, cursing the winter, which still hung onto the land with icy fingertips, and waiting for the Easter holidays, which couldn't get there soon enough.
For the international students of Hogwarts, March was crunch time. It was their final few weeks to try and make sure that after they were sent to London, they had a good chance of coming back. Not only that, but for the rest of the students, the ones who weren't being charged, there was still the matter of raising enough money to get tuition and supplies for next year, and the years after that.
But on what to everyone else must have seemed an ordinary March afternoon, the events of Hogwarts didn't affect Lucy at all. She woke up early, climbed out the window, and sat on the roof of Gryffindor tower, staring out at the sky. When Hermione's yelling brought her back to earth, she had no idea how long she had been up there.
"What on earth were you doing?"
Lucy shrugged and followed her down to breakfast.
She didn't remember what she ate, or if she ate at all. When everyone else got up, so did she, and she followed them back to tower, and then to Herbology. She managed to extract the sleep-inducing sap from her tray of Nocturnal Nettles without any mistakes, but she hardly looked up from the task or really heard Hermione asking her for the eleventh time that morning if she was all right. Lunch proceeded in a similar manner. She was finally free in the later afternoon. Advanced Astronomy was meeting after sunset the next day for a rare comet sighting, so she was finished with classes early, as planned.
She had a little time, so she waited, sitting on the edge of the cliff overlooking the lake, and thought how very different life had seemed at this time last year. Everything had been different. She hadn't known people were capable of such inhumanity, or such incredible resilience. She would never have guessed that Hogwarts would yield up a group like the BA; or that the four houses would ever come together in cooperation as they had among the mutually abused international faction, how students that were little more than strangers would come together to form such a family.
And she would never have imagined how the loss of her own could be so keenly, so constantly painful, even after finding Diego, even after all this time.
The tears that threatened to spill over finally did when she felt the familiar weight of a rough, worn hand on her shoulder. Without a word she turned and buried her face in Diego's white shirt.
"Hey, come on now, I thought you said you were done with all that?"
She sniffed, "I lied."
He stroked her hair and pulled back. "Come on Montero, it won't be long now. The sooner we test this the sooner we bring them home."
She had to say it, to blurt out what had been eating away at her all afternoon.
"What if you don't come back out? What if you get lost?"
Diego ran a hand through his hair. "You think I haven't thought of it? Luce, you're the best anchor in the world, I told you that you could always find me, well that goes both ways. Unexplored parallel vortex dimension be damned, you're ugly orange aura is too darn loud to ignore."
Lucy drew her hand over her eyes, wiping the last of her tears, "It's red orange you idiot."
"It's still loud and crackly and obnoxious. It would be harder to spot Las Vegas at night."
"But-"
"If I didn't know you better, I'd say you were stalling. Not up to your end of the job, Montero?"
Lucy set her jaw. "Fine, let's get to work."
They calmed and centered in unison, on the shore of the lake. Then Lucy planted her feet in the sand, and shrugged off her black school robes, revealing her white Espiritu uniform underneath. Diego grinned, and tossed the black robe onto a rock.
"Well, what are you waiting for, go on!"
Lucy hadn't heard him, she was focusing very hard on doing what was completely unnatural, gating into nowhere. She carefully pulled energy up out of the earth, surprised at how the strangeness of the energy under Hogwarts wasn't making her want to retch, and carefully crafted the frame of her gate. One strand, then another, then another, until there was a solid glowing, pulsing frame of energy outlining where the gate would be. However, because this was a gate into the void, she could not ground it in the earth, it would not open, so she had to ground it in herself, which tickled and made it difficult to concentrate on the next part. She closed her eyes, feeling the edge of the gate, and pushing the far edge into the void, but not so far that it went past it into a physical place. To do that she had to keep her mind absolutely blank, she had to shield against her own thoughts. It took precious moments, but when she had it she didn't hesitate, she pushed...
"Wow," she heard from behind her. She refused to open her eyes until she had stabilized the endpoint. It wasn't really stable, she's have to "hold" it there the whole time, but since she wasn't planning on walking through this gate, that wasn't a problem.
"Well, go on!"
She felt Diego squeeze her hand, and then he was in front of her, a look of stoic determination on his face. But when he reached the threshold he looked back and gave her a grin.
"I think I'll take a look around."
"Just a look, you better be back real soon or I'm coming in after you!"
With a wink, he stepped, and was gone.
She wasn't sure how long she waited, she remember feeling a tightness in her chest, the only thing reminding her she had been holding her breath since he vanished. She inhaled, and waited.
Something was wrong, it should have taken him only a few moments to be able to "see" the pocket, and that's all he was supposed to do. While still grounding with her right hand, she reached over with her left and fingered the beads around her wrist.
And heard him. **Lucy....Lucy!**
**What's going on!**
**Ow, it hurts, I can't find it....**
**Then just come back** there was a rising panic in her chest.
**I can't find the way out, I can't see the gate.**
There was no telling where he had moved in there, he could be on the other side of the universe.
She took a deep breath. **Just look for me then.**
**What? Luce-**
Before he had finished she had approached the gate, switched grounding to her left hand, and reached her right arm out, into the void.
**See me? Find me!**
He was right, it hurt. The edges of the void were hot, extremely hot, and Lucy's arm felt like she had stuck it straight into a fire. But she held it there waiting, waiting...
Until something grabbed it. Then she pulled, with all of her might she pulled, and fell back onto the grass, with Diego falling out on top of her.
And the gate SCREAMED. Lucy looked up at it with wide eyes, and saw it doing something it never should do; move. Gates glowed, yes, they pulsed, fine, but the last thing a gate was supposed to do was move. Lucy wasn't sure how to fix it, she didn't know how, so she acted on impulse, and simply cut it off.
It was a mistake, and she knew that before she had finished. If gate energy was no dissipated along the proper channels, it always surged back into the grounding point. This could wreak havoc on delicate energy lines and energy pools in the area. But that didn't happen in this case, because the gate wasn't grounded in the land.
It was grounded in Lucy.
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She reluctantly returned to conciousness because something was nibbling her fingers, and because something else was lapping at her ankles.
Upon opening her eyes, she saw Faustas, perched near her left arm, nimbly pecking at her fingers. Beyond Faustas, the lake was lapping at her ankles and legs, thunderheads were forming above, a storm was coming in, and a big one ate that. The wind was causing the waves on the lake, one of which must have pushed water up near her waste, if her sodden uniform was any indication.
**¿Que estaban haciendo Lucy?**
That hurt. The sound of Faustas's voice tore through her head like a ball of razor blades.
"Ow! Stop that!"
**Stop what? I certainly will not stop, not when whatever you have been doing nearly struck me down with a migraine, hauled me halfway across the world in worry, has called up what looks to be the mother of all thunderstorms, and has left Diego like this. So I ask you again, what have you been doing Lucy!**
She didn't answer him, she couldn't sit up, but she looked to her right arm, drawn across her body, to where Diego lay to her left, on his back, his right arm extended and still gripping hers. He wasn't awake, his face was grey...
**He breathes, I checked, but he is in a very serious condition chica. He needs help, and he needs it immediatly. But no one will be able to help him unless I can tell them what happened.**
Lucy tried to block the pain Faustas's voice caused. "He went into the Void. He couldn't find his way back, so I put my arm through and pulled him out."
**Well, that explains the burns. I'll talk to you about this decision later, but right now we need to get him out of here. Can you build a gate?**
"I couldn't build a sandcastle, and at any rate, it wouldn't work, you can't gate out of Hogwarts."
**But, you just...**
"I just built a gate into the Void, technically that isn't out of Hogwarts, its the exact same place in a hole in space-time. Hogwarts was not designed to prevent people from going into a place it did not know existed."
"Clever discovery, chica. So, how did he get here?"
"He probably gated in from outside the barrier. But its too far to walk there, especially now."
**Well, you are going to have to Lucy, he needs medicine I can't give.**
As if an answer to a prayer, Lucy felt the weight of her amulet around her neck. Using her left hand, she pulled it out and off her neck.
"This will get you to Espiritu. Anyone you need can come to you there and bring him wherever he needs to go."
Faustas looked at the amulet carefully, **I had forgotten all about that. Come then, help me with him.**
The first thing Lucy had to do, after sitting up, was to free her right hand. It was then that she realized what Faustas had meant about the burns. Her arm and Diego's were burnt up to the elbow. The skin was still hot to the touch, and she nearly passed out when she had to pull her hand from his grasp.
"Ow..."
**The amulet Lucy, hurry.**
She used her left hand as much as possible. She found the catch on the back, flipped it, and realized very quickly she could not reset the endpoint, trying made her see red and long to pass out.
"You'll just have to end up where I landed last, I think it was on one of the roofs."
Faustas was peering at her very carefully.
**You grounded a gate in yourself, didn't you.**
"It was the only way."
**It was a foolish thing to just drop it all the same. You burnt all your channels clear through when that energy snapped back in you. You won't be able to so much as float a pencil without pain for at least a week.**
"It was the only way."
**I should take you with me.**
"You know I have to stay here."
He sounded old, looked old when she heard him sigh. **I know. Promise me that you will go right to bed, that you will sleep as much as you can? Without the ability to shield the little gods only know what you might be picking up. Sleep might be the only way to shut it all out.**
Lucy nodded, "I promise."
**All right. I will be back as soon as I can.**
"Make sure he's ok."
**I'll guard him with my life chica.**
Lucy sighed, and after flipping the final clasp, making sure Faustas was perched on Diego's left arm, she pressed the amulet, face down, into his palm.
In a moment they flickered and were gone, and Lucy was alone on the beach, the amulet fallen into the sand.
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She was just about to try and carry herself as far as the hospital wing when-
"Oy! Lucy!"
She looked around and saw no one.
"Oy! Up here!"
Lynx Brimstead was charging toward her on his broom. As sharp crack of lightening ripped across the sky behind him, and the clap of thunder pitched him into a dive. Her eyes opened wide in alarm, at that angle it was certain the cheerful boy was going to cheerfully crash, but not three feet from her pulled up, and landed on his feet with a gentle plop.
"What are you doing here?" It came in unison.
Lynx chuckled. "Have you seen the sky? They don't mind having us practice in the rain, but those metal posts are pretty good lightening rods, so we thought we would pack practice in early all the same. I had to go find Constance."
"Who's Constance?"
"A new player, real jittery fourth year, one of the back-up seekers. We have to have more than one back-up because ours tend to take a pounding during games. Anyway, Constance has great eyes, and she's really fast, but she's scared to death of bludgers. One got knocked her way during the scrimmage and she took off, way off. I found her behind a tree over there, and had just sent her home when I saw you. Laying in the sand and water. Care to explain?"
"A spell that didn't exactly work right. Remember where I always told you to ground?"
"Yes..."
"I will later explain exactly why that is very, very important."
Lynx looked her over again.
"Are you ok Lucy?"
"I'll be fine. But, and I can't believe I'm the one saying this, I think I ought to go see Madam Pomfrey about the arm, I don't want it to get infected."
"Well then, my lady, my noble steed and I would be only too proud to escort you," with a gallant flourish Lynx bowed and waved an arm toward his broom.
"And they say chivalry is dead." Lucy played along, trying to get to her feet. Lynx helped her up and onto the back of the broom. When they were both seated and Lucy was hanging on for dear life, he kicked off and flew around the castle in the direction of the hospital wing.
Fortunately for them, the school nurse was in the other room, giving Lucy the chance to hop in through the window, out through the door, and then to knock and enter like any normal student.
She thought the good woman's eyes would bug out when she saw Lucy coming in of her own volition.
Lucy just sighed, held out her aching arm, and waited for the torture to begin.
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She knew she was in trouble from the moment she woke up. She was groggy, but at least her arm was healed, and Madam Pomfrey had been able to catch it early enough that there wasn't any scarring. But her arm wasn't the problem. The fact that her channels were burned meant not only that she couldn't try to hover, or move things, it also meant that she couldn't block anything. There was a constant headache because hearing thoughts did require the use of a fried channel, but when Lucy tried to put back up the shield that was always there, she couldn't stand to hold it for more than a few seconds. It meant that she could hear whatever people were projecting, everyone, all at once. None of it made sense, and it never stopped.
Care of Magical Creatures was her first class, and after the nightmare that was breakfast Lucy wasn't sure how she was going to handle it.
Then she saw Bet.
After Hagrid had demonstrated the proper technique for safely obtaining silk from spider fish, the class was split up among several tanks full of the rather ugly, potato-sized creatures. Lucy volunteered to get a couple of seives for skimming the silk off the water while the rest of the group at her tank started using their wands to create "shocks" in the water, which spooked the fish and caused them to release clouds of silk.
As she gathered several together at the equipment box, Lucy managed to maneuver herself next to Bet, putting a hand on her arm.
"Lucy, is something wrong?" Bet whispered.
Lucy nodded, "I'll tell you at the meeting this afternoon, but I need you to do me a favor right now."
"Sure, what is it?"
"Can you put a shield on me, from now until the end of class?"
"What on earth do you need that for?"
Lucy's group was starting to look for her, the water in the tank was bubbling fiercely and it looked like Dean really enjoyed torturing the fish.
"Long story, but I don't have anything right now, which means I'm hearing everyone. You know how that feels."
Bet nodded, and instantly Lucy was practically deafened by the silence in her head.
"Oh gods, thank you."
"I'll keep it up as long as I can."
"You're an angel. I'd better go."
Bet nodded and the girls went back to their respective groups.
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"You realize you're the only people at Hogwarts who know the whole story," Lucy said with a sigh.
"But, why?"
"Because I made a promise, a promise to a very good, very important, and very powerful woman that I would do what they said. They feel the best way to protect the people of the Western Circle from You-Know-Who and his followers is to let no one they come in contact with know very much about us. We don't know how much he knows, but by purposefully giving out false information, they hope they'll confuse him, make him doubt what he knows."
"But, when you and your friend were attacked, it was someone who was there, someone from your Circle, wasn't it?"
Lucy shrugged, "Abraham told me that they found whomever it was, but they didn't tell me who, only that they had been watching him for quite some time. I think what happened at Christmas made them realize that they needed to take action, so they did. If we kept reacting, there might be no one left to protect."
"So why let us in?"
"Because you trusted me first, it can't be easy coming forward with a gift like yours in a place like this. And because we're sort of our own little circle, in a way, we shouldn't have big secrets like this."
Rasheph smiled, "So are you going to tell us what made you pass out a couple weeks ago?"
"I was hoping I wouldn't have to think about it," Lucy groaned and leaned back in the armchair. "The Masters Guild requires a few years of service right after you pass your Mastery trials. My job was supposed to be simple, it was a rather obscure task that had always been given to an Espiritu student because our school was the only one left that even recognized the channel for the skill. However, once the schools began being attacked, without any human witnesses, all of a sudden I was in popular demand. It works kind of like Bet's though sensing, but I listen to the earth; it absorbs everything, all the time. Now, most stuff just fades after a few months, but significant deviations from the norm, traumas, can still be felt decades, even centuries later. You see, hear, and feel what is happening, it's like re-living the event. Now, if something isn't a concrete event, but happens over a long period of time, you don't see it so much as you feel it, and get a sense for it. When I took a reading at the request of the Circle, I was looking for something similar to what is causing a disturbance at some of the smaller schools. What I connected with was so... unnatural, it made me pass out. I felt dirty, cold, sad, and empty. Whatever caused this was a being of some sort, it was not environmental, it arrived over three years ago and stayed around for about eight months."
The other three BA members looked at each other, puzzled.
"Well, you know who was hanging around here three years ago, for no one knows how long, don't you?" Lynx said, leaning forward in his chair.
"Who?"
"Sirius Black, the murderer, ever heard of him? He was the one who turned the Potters over to You-Know-Who, and then he blew up a whole street full of Muggles before they arrested him. Three years ago was when he escaped from Azkaban. He came after Harry, even got right into his bedroom, so I heard, before he was caught, and then escaped. I bet touching the traces of him would make me feel dirty too."
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Lucy let what Lynx had said sink in over the next week, but despite her personal dislike of Sirius, she'd been around him before and had never felt the slightest sensation similar to what she had felt that afternoon on the Hogwarts grounds with Bet.
Fortunately, after the meeting with the BA, they were able to work out a schedule, which minimized the times that Lucy had to be completely without shields. A great deal of her studying was done in the library, with a BA member a few tables away. It was only in the tower that she was exposed. She had not told Seamus what she had done or what had happened, and did not plan to.
That part of the plan hurt, but it was necessary. Seamus had never wanted to be a part of the BA, had never wanted to be a part of the community. Even now, aside from keeping his shielding strong and his gift under control, he didn't really care to explore his abilities any further. It was telling that all the other students had developed secondary gifts, and would likely continue to find others, but Seamus hadn't changed at all. Lucy also supposed it was because his channel had been opened so unnaturally. In any case, Seamus was as far removed from the Western Circle as a person with a gift could get, he didn't need to know what they were doing. The BA, on the other hand, might be more involved in Lucy's world someday, and needed to know about it. Not to mention that Lucy wasn't sure she could keep lying to everyone if she knew Seaumus knew how much she was lying, and how often.
Faustas returned four days after the gating attempt, with the reassurance that Diego would be fine in a few weeks, and bringing a blissful end to Lucy's periods of unshielded mental chaos when away from the BA. He also brought back a bracelet; a thin silver chain with a small sphere of what looked like rose quartz, a common focusing stone, dangling in the middle.
**From Abraham and Sofia, for your trip to London. It's like a panic button, if something goes wrong you activate that the same way you do a mirror and you can get one or both of them directly, they have receivers cut from the same stone as the one on the bracelet.**
"They really don't trust these people, do they?"
**They have no reason to chica. You are to where that at all times until you get back to school, understood?**
Lucy nodded. She then reported to Faustas what Lynx had said about Sirius Black and the disturbance she had felt.
**I don't think just one man could have created the problem they have in Siberia. Better keep looking, but discretely.**
"Of course."
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Time was coming up short for the international students. With only ten days until the beginning of Easter holidays and their departure from the relative safety of Hogwarts, Lucy found herself headed towards the Headmaster's office, again. Only this time, she wasn't going for disciplinary reasons.
She stopped at the staircase, checking the note in her pocket for the password of the day that Professor McGonagall had written down.
"Berry lime sublime."
She stepped back as the staicase revealed itself, then stepped on and was taken up to the door, which was partially adjar. She knocked.
"Come in."
Lucy pushed it open the rest of the way and stepped into the room. Dumbledore was standing at the top of the stairs leading to the inner room.
"Miss Montero? What can I do for you?"
Lucy held out the scroll in her hand, "I was wondering if you could sign this, please, sir."
Dumbledore took the scroll and unrolled it, peering at it carefully through his spectacles.
"Could you explain to me what this is? It looks as though a lawyer drafted it."
"It did, well, Warren did actually and he's going to be- well, what it is, its for the international students, sir. We're trying to get a law passed. But before we can even present that to the Ministry, they are requiring that we get signatures, a lot of them."
"Really? What on earth for?"
Lucy shrugged, "They say it prevents superfluous bills from clouding the agenda, whatever that means. Katya thinks it is just a way to try and slow things down. I think she's right. Then they pushed up our deadline, just at the last minute, so we've had to rush. We have to send it off by private owl this evening. That's why I'm here, it was going to be one of the seventh years but they have App. Ed. all afternoon."
"I see, do you have a quill, Lucy?"
"Oh, right, yes, Audrey gave me the one we have to use, anti-forgery quill, apparently they can tell if we didn't use it."
Dumbledore accepted it, "Lets just use the desk for this, hmm?" And lead her back into the inner room.
"You didn't read it, headmaster."
"No, no, why on earth should I?"
"I thought..."
"If you students are trying to pass a law, you should be entitled to have a voice. I should have no right to say whether or not that voice is allowed to be heared."
Lucy didn't know what to say.
"You look rather like a landed fish, Lucy."
"I'm sorry, I guess, its just, most of the other teachers we had to approach acted as if it were their responsibility, Professor Snape wouldn't even sign it. He didn't approve of the way we were going about things."
"Doesn't surprise me one bit."
Lucy jumped at the strange voice, and whirled around to see the man standing near the door, she hadn't seen him when she came in.
Dumbledore smiled. "Ah, Miss Montero, I don't believe you have met our former Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor, Professor Remus Lupin. Professor Lupin, Miss Montero, she's from your old house."
"Hello," Lucy stammered.
Professor Lupin smiled at her, "Always a pleasure to meet a Gryffindor, you must be a recent addition Miss Montero, I was around three years ago and I don't remember you."
Lucy's ears perked up. "Three years ago? You were here three years ago, for a whole year?"
Remus nodded, "A rather exciting year at that, of course, those pesky Dementors did make it a little less than pleasant."
"Dementors? Those things from Azkaban, they were at the school?"
"Oh yes, a royal pain, all year, on account of Sirius Black. I'm surprised you hadn't heard of it."
Lucy wasn't sure how to respond, but she didn't have to. Dumbledore handed her the scroll.
"I think that's all you needed, wasn't it Lucy?"
She nodded, "Thank you headmaster." She headed out the door.
"Miss Montero?"
She turned back at the sound of Dumbledore's voice.
"Yes?"
"You're pen?" Dumbledore was holding Audrey's anti-forgery pen. Automatically, Lucy used her now-healed channel to pull the pen towards her, but she quickly looked at Lupin and thought the better of it. There was an unnaturalness to the man. The pen appeared to rise out of Dumbledore's grasp and fall to the floor.
Lucy hurried over pick it up.
"I'm sorry Lucy," Dumbledore said with an amused smile, "I must be getting arthritic in my old age."
Lucy flashed him and Remus a nervous smile before quickly exiting the room.
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No sooner had the door closed behind her than.
"All right headmaster, now who was that and what was that all about?"
Dumbledore eased back into his chair. "Calm down Remus and have a seat. That was, as I told you, Lucy Montero, a Gryffindor, and she needed a document signed."
"Since when were the students in this school so politically active. What are they trying to do, abolish the uniform?"
"They're trying to secure their right to fair and equal treatment under the British Ministry, if I read the preamble correctly. That Warren Lane is going to be a wonderful lawyer."
"Fair and equal treatment, equal to who?"
"Equal to the treatment of British students. Lucy was just one of about 65 or so of our international students that have come under the close scrutiny of the Ministry ever since Cornerlius Fudge had it planted in his head that the incident last spring and the attacks since last summer have come from foreign enemies slipping into the country and terrorizing wizards and muggles alike."
"And he thinks STUDENTS are responsible? That is the stupidest think I've ever heard."
"So far he has done very little, but what he has done has been very invasive. They have to carry travel papers, a mountain of passes and registration forms, and then he had an official tailing them last term."
"Tailing them?"
"Following then around, collecting evidence."
"Evidence of what?"
"Of nothing, which was why I let him stay, there was nothing for him to find. None of our students are plotting the downfall of magical society, if they were I'd know about it and no one is up to anything nearly that amusing. Since the Weasley twins left things have become rather dull, actually."
'So, why the law?"
"Well, what they did was let the students get themselves into trouble. Almost half of them violated the new codes by returning to school this term without going through immigration and getting their forms filled out. So the Ministry has decided to make an example of them and is bringing them to London during the Easter holidays to be interrogated before they decide on action."
"Action? They're only children!"
"They are children with very little protection under this system. They're an easy scapegoat, and by putting suspicion on foreigners in general Fudge can cleanly avoid any implication that loyal Death Eaters were not completely weeded out sixteen years ago."
"What can they do to them?"
"Well, they have already dissolved all funding for work-study and scholarships for international students. They could deport them, and if they voted to try them as adults the prospects could be even worse."
"How can they try a juvenile as an adult?"
"If the charge is serious enough, they'll do it. It would have to be very serious though, murder, treason or espionage perhaps as well, but nothing below that, I should think."
"You seem very calm about all this."
"If Fudge tried to pull anything with all the children on that list there would be hell to pay, many of them have very influential parents. Now if it were just a few, and they were like Miss Montero, then I would be worried."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, you can get away with a lot worse on a smaller scale. And Lucy has no family, no place to go really, so there would be little or no repercussions. Her home was the target of one of those massive external efforts we saw the Death Eaters doing last year."
"Really?"
"Oh yes, and from what I hear, it killed, or as good as killed, everyone in that school. Its part of the reason why she hate Sirius so much, she'd probably hate you too if she knew you had gathered intelligence."
"I don't understand."
"We knew all of those were coming before they came, but we didn't act because it was more important to keep Severus an active player. If we acted, warned anyone, then they would have known there was a leak, and it would only be a matter of time before they found him out. It was that closed of a matter."
"She found out about that?"
"Hmm, yes, Severus told McGonagall when Lucy's school was being attacked. She realized that the strange sort of link that all the students there have to the school might potentially hurt Lucy, and she managed to cut that before the poor child died of it. But after that she became curious and found the whole thing out. I'm actually not sure as to her attitude toward Sirius, she knows about him, found out accidentally, but I am quite sure she'll hate Severus Snape until the day she dies."
"So she's alone?"
"About as alone as Harry. And she's not the only one in the international student pool to be so. Now, if it were a group of those kind of students, I'd be worried. But I seriously doubt anything will happen to the crowd they're taking to London. They will resent missing their spring holiday, I'm sure."
There were still questions in the morning. But Hermione was nowhere to be found. She was up and out of the room before breakfast on a Sunday morning and they didn't have an exam coming for weeks. Something was up with her, but then, there was always something up with Harry, Ron, and Hermione. But whatever was brewing had never gotten her out of bed at the crack of dawn before.
Lucy didn't bother to go looking for her, being in no rush to re-connect with whatever she had touched the day before. There was something very wrong about it, and she wasn't sure if she would like what she found when she went about trying to discover how something like that had found its way to Hogwarts. And stayed around too. That was part of what was so troubling, whatever it had been, not only had it been terribly unnatural, but it had hung around for months and months.
She tried to work on other things, to take her mind off of it, but it was fruitless. There was also no one else around for her to talk to since the boys were off at Quidditch practice and Lavender and Parvati had been out at an illicit Ravenclaw party in the Astronomy Tower the night before, and had slipped off their dates' broomsticks and through the window at around dawn. They would sleep till dinner if previous parties were any indication.
After locking herself away in Asriel's workroom to attempt an outline of what she hoped to achieve in her next thesis, she was nearly focused when she felt a tingle in the back of her mind. It was Diego, their signal that a long conversation was ahead that would be less energy draining if she tranced down to receive it. She smoothed out the ripples in her mind and made herself comfortable on a bench near the floor.
**What is it?**
**I did it.**
**Did what?**
**Well, I think I did it.**
**Diego Alvarez if you don't explain yourself in the next ten seconds I'm going to block you out.**
**Oh you could never do that, burro, now be patient and I'll explain.**
**When have you ever known me to be patient?**
**Good point, listen. Remember we had to find a way to link in the void without pulling energy from the environment?**
**Yes...**
**I figured it out.**
**Well....!**
**If we use personal reserves, it won't interfere with the flux.**
**Diego, if you tried that you'd tap yourself out before you ever got to them.**
**Not if I was linked to you, which I pretty much always am, and you were pulling from the ground.**
Lucy paused, it SOUNDED plausible.
**There's something wrong in there somewhere, just give me a second to figure out what it is.**
**It'll work, even Zhara thinks so. Ask Faustas.**
**I can't, he went back to Machu Pichu.**
**What for?**
**He is not accountable to me, as he frequently reminds me, he outranks me on several celestial levels.**
**We need to test this Lucy.**
Her heart stopped. They had always known they were going to do this, no one else would dare, but the thought of it made her mouth go dry.
**You have the locating part worked out?**
**Yup. I'm gonna try to get a fix empathetically, its my strongest chance. I can build from that. You can punch a gate in there and hold it?**
**Yeah, at least in theory, I haven't actually tested it.**
**Well, we will find out then, won't we?**
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In the early weeks of March, most Hogwarts students were trudging through classes, cursing the winter, which still hung onto the land with icy fingertips, and waiting for the Easter holidays, which couldn't get there soon enough.
For the international students of Hogwarts, March was crunch time. It was their final few weeks to try and make sure that after they were sent to London, they had a good chance of coming back. Not only that, but for the rest of the students, the ones who weren't being charged, there was still the matter of raising enough money to get tuition and supplies for next year, and the years after that.
But on what to everyone else must have seemed an ordinary March afternoon, the events of Hogwarts didn't affect Lucy at all. She woke up early, climbed out the window, and sat on the roof of Gryffindor tower, staring out at the sky. When Hermione's yelling brought her back to earth, she had no idea how long she had been up there.
"What on earth were you doing?"
Lucy shrugged and followed her down to breakfast.
She didn't remember what she ate, or if she ate at all. When everyone else got up, so did she, and she followed them back to tower, and then to Herbology. She managed to extract the sleep-inducing sap from her tray of Nocturnal Nettles without any mistakes, but she hardly looked up from the task or really heard Hermione asking her for the eleventh time that morning if she was all right. Lunch proceeded in a similar manner. She was finally free in the later afternoon. Advanced Astronomy was meeting after sunset the next day for a rare comet sighting, so she was finished with classes early, as planned.
She had a little time, so she waited, sitting on the edge of the cliff overlooking the lake, and thought how very different life had seemed at this time last year. Everything had been different. She hadn't known people were capable of such inhumanity, or such incredible resilience. She would never have guessed that Hogwarts would yield up a group like the BA; or that the four houses would ever come together in cooperation as they had among the mutually abused international faction, how students that were little more than strangers would come together to form such a family.
And she would never have imagined how the loss of her own could be so keenly, so constantly painful, even after finding Diego, even after all this time.
The tears that threatened to spill over finally did when she felt the familiar weight of a rough, worn hand on her shoulder. Without a word she turned and buried her face in Diego's white shirt.
"Hey, come on now, I thought you said you were done with all that?"
She sniffed, "I lied."
He stroked her hair and pulled back. "Come on Montero, it won't be long now. The sooner we test this the sooner we bring them home."
She had to say it, to blurt out what had been eating away at her all afternoon.
"What if you don't come back out? What if you get lost?"
Diego ran a hand through his hair. "You think I haven't thought of it? Luce, you're the best anchor in the world, I told you that you could always find me, well that goes both ways. Unexplored parallel vortex dimension be damned, you're ugly orange aura is too darn loud to ignore."
Lucy drew her hand over her eyes, wiping the last of her tears, "It's red orange you idiot."
"It's still loud and crackly and obnoxious. It would be harder to spot Las Vegas at night."
"But-"
"If I didn't know you better, I'd say you were stalling. Not up to your end of the job, Montero?"
Lucy set her jaw. "Fine, let's get to work."
They calmed and centered in unison, on the shore of the lake. Then Lucy planted her feet in the sand, and shrugged off her black school robes, revealing her white Espiritu uniform underneath. Diego grinned, and tossed the black robe onto a rock.
"Well, what are you waiting for, go on!"
Lucy hadn't heard him, she was focusing very hard on doing what was completely unnatural, gating into nowhere. She carefully pulled energy up out of the earth, surprised at how the strangeness of the energy under Hogwarts wasn't making her want to retch, and carefully crafted the frame of her gate. One strand, then another, then another, until there was a solid glowing, pulsing frame of energy outlining where the gate would be. However, because this was a gate into the void, she could not ground it in the earth, it would not open, so she had to ground it in herself, which tickled and made it difficult to concentrate on the next part. She closed her eyes, feeling the edge of the gate, and pushing the far edge into the void, but not so far that it went past it into a physical place. To do that she had to keep her mind absolutely blank, she had to shield against her own thoughts. It took precious moments, but when she had it she didn't hesitate, she pushed...
"Wow," she heard from behind her. She refused to open her eyes until she had stabilized the endpoint. It wasn't really stable, she's have to "hold" it there the whole time, but since she wasn't planning on walking through this gate, that wasn't a problem.
"Well, go on!"
She felt Diego squeeze her hand, and then he was in front of her, a look of stoic determination on his face. But when he reached the threshold he looked back and gave her a grin.
"I think I'll take a look around."
"Just a look, you better be back real soon or I'm coming in after you!"
With a wink, he stepped, and was gone.
She wasn't sure how long she waited, she remember feeling a tightness in her chest, the only thing reminding her she had been holding her breath since he vanished. She inhaled, and waited.
Something was wrong, it should have taken him only a few moments to be able to "see" the pocket, and that's all he was supposed to do. While still grounding with her right hand, she reached over with her left and fingered the beads around her wrist.
And heard him. **Lucy....Lucy!**
**What's going on!**
**Ow, it hurts, I can't find it....**
**Then just come back** there was a rising panic in her chest.
**I can't find the way out, I can't see the gate.**
There was no telling where he had moved in there, he could be on the other side of the universe.
She took a deep breath. **Just look for me then.**
**What? Luce-**
Before he had finished she had approached the gate, switched grounding to her left hand, and reached her right arm out, into the void.
**See me? Find me!**
He was right, it hurt. The edges of the void were hot, extremely hot, and Lucy's arm felt like she had stuck it straight into a fire. But she held it there waiting, waiting...
Until something grabbed it. Then she pulled, with all of her might she pulled, and fell back onto the grass, with Diego falling out on top of her.
And the gate SCREAMED. Lucy looked up at it with wide eyes, and saw it doing something it never should do; move. Gates glowed, yes, they pulsed, fine, but the last thing a gate was supposed to do was move. Lucy wasn't sure how to fix it, she didn't know how, so she acted on impulse, and simply cut it off.
It was a mistake, and she knew that before she had finished. If gate energy was no dissipated along the proper channels, it always surged back into the grounding point. This could wreak havoc on delicate energy lines and energy pools in the area. But that didn't happen in this case, because the gate wasn't grounded in the land.
It was grounded in Lucy.
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She reluctantly returned to conciousness because something was nibbling her fingers, and because something else was lapping at her ankles.
Upon opening her eyes, she saw Faustas, perched near her left arm, nimbly pecking at her fingers. Beyond Faustas, the lake was lapping at her ankles and legs, thunderheads were forming above, a storm was coming in, and a big one ate that. The wind was causing the waves on the lake, one of which must have pushed water up near her waste, if her sodden uniform was any indication.
**¿Que estaban haciendo Lucy?**
That hurt. The sound of Faustas's voice tore through her head like a ball of razor blades.
"Ow! Stop that!"
**Stop what? I certainly will not stop, not when whatever you have been doing nearly struck me down with a migraine, hauled me halfway across the world in worry, has called up what looks to be the mother of all thunderstorms, and has left Diego like this. So I ask you again, what have you been doing Lucy!**
She didn't answer him, she couldn't sit up, but she looked to her right arm, drawn across her body, to where Diego lay to her left, on his back, his right arm extended and still gripping hers. He wasn't awake, his face was grey...
**He breathes, I checked, but he is in a very serious condition chica. He needs help, and he needs it immediatly. But no one will be able to help him unless I can tell them what happened.**
Lucy tried to block the pain Faustas's voice caused. "He went into the Void. He couldn't find his way back, so I put my arm through and pulled him out."
**Well, that explains the burns. I'll talk to you about this decision later, but right now we need to get him out of here. Can you build a gate?**
"I couldn't build a sandcastle, and at any rate, it wouldn't work, you can't gate out of Hogwarts."
**But, you just...**
"I just built a gate into the Void, technically that isn't out of Hogwarts, its the exact same place in a hole in space-time. Hogwarts was not designed to prevent people from going into a place it did not know existed."
"Clever discovery, chica. So, how did he get here?"
"He probably gated in from outside the barrier. But its too far to walk there, especially now."
**Well, you are going to have to Lucy, he needs medicine I can't give.**
As if an answer to a prayer, Lucy felt the weight of her amulet around her neck. Using her left hand, she pulled it out and off her neck.
"This will get you to Espiritu. Anyone you need can come to you there and bring him wherever he needs to go."
Faustas looked at the amulet carefully, **I had forgotten all about that. Come then, help me with him.**
The first thing Lucy had to do, after sitting up, was to free her right hand. It was then that she realized what Faustas had meant about the burns. Her arm and Diego's were burnt up to the elbow. The skin was still hot to the touch, and she nearly passed out when she had to pull her hand from his grasp.
"Ow..."
**The amulet Lucy, hurry.**
She used her left hand as much as possible. She found the catch on the back, flipped it, and realized very quickly she could not reset the endpoint, trying made her see red and long to pass out.
"You'll just have to end up where I landed last, I think it was on one of the roofs."
Faustas was peering at her very carefully.
**You grounded a gate in yourself, didn't you.**
"It was the only way."
**It was a foolish thing to just drop it all the same. You burnt all your channels clear through when that energy snapped back in you. You won't be able to so much as float a pencil without pain for at least a week.**
"It was the only way."
**I should take you with me.**
"You know I have to stay here."
He sounded old, looked old when she heard him sigh. **I know. Promise me that you will go right to bed, that you will sleep as much as you can? Without the ability to shield the little gods only know what you might be picking up. Sleep might be the only way to shut it all out.**
Lucy nodded, "I promise."
**All right. I will be back as soon as I can.**
"Make sure he's ok."
**I'll guard him with my life chica.**
Lucy sighed, and after flipping the final clasp, making sure Faustas was perched on Diego's left arm, she pressed the amulet, face down, into his palm.
In a moment they flickered and were gone, and Lucy was alone on the beach, the amulet fallen into the sand.
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She was just about to try and carry herself as far as the hospital wing when-
"Oy! Lucy!"
She looked around and saw no one.
"Oy! Up here!"
Lynx Brimstead was charging toward her on his broom. As sharp crack of lightening ripped across the sky behind him, and the clap of thunder pitched him into a dive. Her eyes opened wide in alarm, at that angle it was certain the cheerful boy was going to cheerfully crash, but not three feet from her pulled up, and landed on his feet with a gentle plop.
"What are you doing here?" It came in unison.
Lynx chuckled. "Have you seen the sky? They don't mind having us practice in the rain, but those metal posts are pretty good lightening rods, so we thought we would pack practice in early all the same. I had to go find Constance."
"Who's Constance?"
"A new player, real jittery fourth year, one of the back-up seekers. We have to have more than one back-up because ours tend to take a pounding during games. Anyway, Constance has great eyes, and she's really fast, but she's scared to death of bludgers. One got knocked her way during the scrimmage and she took off, way off. I found her behind a tree over there, and had just sent her home when I saw you. Laying in the sand and water. Care to explain?"
"A spell that didn't exactly work right. Remember where I always told you to ground?"
"Yes..."
"I will later explain exactly why that is very, very important."
Lynx looked her over again.
"Are you ok Lucy?"
"I'll be fine. But, and I can't believe I'm the one saying this, I think I ought to go see Madam Pomfrey about the arm, I don't want it to get infected."
"Well then, my lady, my noble steed and I would be only too proud to escort you," with a gallant flourish Lynx bowed and waved an arm toward his broom.
"And they say chivalry is dead." Lucy played along, trying to get to her feet. Lynx helped her up and onto the back of the broom. When they were both seated and Lucy was hanging on for dear life, he kicked off and flew around the castle in the direction of the hospital wing.
Fortunately for them, the school nurse was in the other room, giving Lucy the chance to hop in through the window, out through the door, and then to knock and enter like any normal student.
She thought the good woman's eyes would bug out when she saw Lucy coming in of her own volition.
Lucy just sighed, held out her aching arm, and waited for the torture to begin.
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She knew she was in trouble from the moment she woke up. She was groggy, but at least her arm was healed, and Madam Pomfrey had been able to catch it early enough that there wasn't any scarring. But her arm wasn't the problem. The fact that her channels were burned meant not only that she couldn't try to hover, or move things, it also meant that she couldn't block anything. There was a constant headache because hearing thoughts did require the use of a fried channel, but when Lucy tried to put back up the shield that was always there, she couldn't stand to hold it for more than a few seconds. It meant that she could hear whatever people were projecting, everyone, all at once. None of it made sense, and it never stopped.
Care of Magical Creatures was her first class, and after the nightmare that was breakfast Lucy wasn't sure how she was going to handle it.
Then she saw Bet.
After Hagrid had demonstrated the proper technique for safely obtaining silk from spider fish, the class was split up among several tanks full of the rather ugly, potato-sized creatures. Lucy volunteered to get a couple of seives for skimming the silk off the water while the rest of the group at her tank started using their wands to create "shocks" in the water, which spooked the fish and caused them to release clouds of silk.
As she gathered several together at the equipment box, Lucy managed to maneuver herself next to Bet, putting a hand on her arm.
"Lucy, is something wrong?" Bet whispered.
Lucy nodded, "I'll tell you at the meeting this afternoon, but I need you to do me a favor right now."
"Sure, what is it?"
"Can you put a shield on me, from now until the end of class?"
"What on earth do you need that for?"
Lucy's group was starting to look for her, the water in the tank was bubbling fiercely and it looked like Dean really enjoyed torturing the fish.
"Long story, but I don't have anything right now, which means I'm hearing everyone. You know how that feels."
Bet nodded, and instantly Lucy was practically deafened by the silence in her head.
"Oh gods, thank you."
"I'll keep it up as long as I can."
"You're an angel. I'd better go."
Bet nodded and the girls went back to their respective groups.
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"You realize you're the only people at Hogwarts who know the whole story," Lucy said with a sigh.
"But, why?"
"Because I made a promise, a promise to a very good, very important, and very powerful woman that I would do what they said. They feel the best way to protect the people of the Western Circle from You-Know-Who and his followers is to let no one they come in contact with know very much about us. We don't know how much he knows, but by purposefully giving out false information, they hope they'll confuse him, make him doubt what he knows."
"But, when you and your friend were attacked, it was someone who was there, someone from your Circle, wasn't it?"
Lucy shrugged, "Abraham told me that they found whomever it was, but they didn't tell me who, only that they had been watching him for quite some time. I think what happened at Christmas made them realize that they needed to take action, so they did. If we kept reacting, there might be no one left to protect."
"So why let us in?"
"Because you trusted me first, it can't be easy coming forward with a gift like yours in a place like this. And because we're sort of our own little circle, in a way, we shouldn't have big secrets like this."
Rasheph smiled, "So are you going to tell us what made you pass out a couple weeks ago?"
"I was hoping I wouldn't have to think about it," Lucy groaned and leaned back in the armchair. "The Masters Guild requires a few years of service right after you pass your Mastery trials. My job was supposed to be simple, it was a rather obscure task that had always been given to an Espiritu student because our school was the only one left that even recognized the channel for the skill. However, once the schools began being attacked, without any human witnesses, all of a sudden I was in popular demand. It works kind of like Bet's though sensing, but I listen to the earth; it absorbs everything, all the time. Now, most stuff just fades after a few months, but significant deviations from the norm, traumas, can still be felt decades, even centuries later. You see, hear, and feel what is happening, it's like re-living the event. Now, if something isn't a concrete event, but happens over a long period of time, you don't see it so much as you feel it, and get a sense for it. When I took a reading at the request of the Circle, I was looking for something similar to what is causing a disturbance at some of the smaller schools. What I connected with was so... unnatural, it made me pass out. I felt dirty, cold, sad, and empty. Whatever caused this was a being of some sort, it was not environmental, it arrived over three years ago and stayed around for about eight months."
The other three BA members looked at each other, puzzled.
"Well, you know who was hanging around here three years ago, for no one knows how long, don't you?" Lynx said, leaning forward in his chair.
"Who?"
"Sirius Black, the murderer, ever heard of him? He was the one who turned the Potters over to You-Know-Who, and then he blew up a whole street full of Muggles before they arrested him. Three years ago was when he escaped from Azkaban. He came after Harry, even got right into his bedroom, so I heard, before he was caught, and then escaped. I bet touching the traces of him would make me feel dirty too."
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Lucy let what Lynx had said sink in over the next week, but despite her personal dislike of Sirius, she'd been around him before and had never felt the slightest sensation similar to what she had felt that afternoon on the Hogwarts grounds with Bet.
Fortunately, after the meeting with the BA, they were able to work out a schedule, which minimized the times that Lucy had to be completely without shields. A great deal of her studying was done in the library, with a BA member a few tables away. It was only in the tower that she was exposed. She had not told Seamus what she had done or what had happened, and did not plan to.
That part of the plan hurt, but it was necessary. Seamus had never wanted to be a part of the BA, had never wanted to be a part of the community. Even now, aside from keeping his shielding strong and his gift under control, he didn't really care to explore his abilities any further. It was telling that all the other students had developed secondary gifts, and would likely continue to find others, but Seamus hadn't changed at all. Lucy also supposed it was because his channel had been opened so unnaturally. In any case, Seamus was as far removed from the Western Circle as a person with a gift could get, he didn't need to know what they were doing. The BA, on the other hand, might be more involved in Lucy's world someday, and needed to know about it. Not to mention that Lucy wasn't sure she could keep lying to everyone if she knew Seaumus knew how much she was lying, and how often.
Faustas returned four days after the gating attempt, with the reassurance that Diego would be fine in a few weeks, and bringing a blissful end to Lucy's periods of unshielded mental chaos when away from the BA. He also brought back a bracelet; a thin silver chain with a small sphere of what looked like rose quartz, a common focusing stone, dangling in the middle.
**From Abraham and Sofia, for your trip to London. It's like a panic button, if something goes wrong you activate that the same way you do a mirror and you can get one or both of them directly, they have receivers cut from the same stone as the one on the bracelet.**
"They really don't trust these people, do they?"
**They have no reason to chica. You are to where that at all times until you get back to school, understood?**
Lucy nodded. She then reported to Faustas what Lynx had said about Sirius Black and the disturbance she had felt.
**I don't think just one man could have created the problem they have in Siberia. Better keep looking, but discretely.**
"Of course."
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Time was coming up short for the international students. With only ten days until the beginning of Easter holidays and their departure from the relative safety of Hogwarts, Lucy found herself headed towards the Headmaster's office, again. Only this time, she wasn't going for disciplinary reasons.
She stopped at the staircase, checking the note in her pocket for the password of the day that Professor McGonagall had written down.
"Berry lime sublime."
She stepped back as the staicase revealed itself, then stepped on and was taken up to the door, which was partially adjar. She knocked.
"Come in."
Lucy pushed it open the rest of the way and stepped into the room. Dumbledore was standing at the top of the stairs leading to the inner room.
"Miss Montero? What can I do for you?"
Lucy held out the scroll in her hand, "I was wondering if you could sign this, please, sir."
Dumbledore took the scroll and unrolled it, peering at it carefully through his spectacles.
"Could you explain to me what this is? It looks as though a lawyer drafted it."
"It did, well, Warren did actually and he's going to be- well, what it is, its for the international students, sir. We're trying to get a law passed. But before we can even present that to the Ministry, they are requiring that we get signatures, a lot of them."
"Really? What on earth for?"
Lucy shrugged, "They say it prevents superfluous bills from clouding the agenda, whatever that means. Katya thinks it is just a way to try and slow things down. I think she's right. Then they pushed up our deadline, just at the last minute, so we've had to rush. We have to send it off by private owl this evening. That's why I'm here, it was going to be one of the seventh years but they have App. Ed. all afternoon."
"I see, do you have a quill, Lucy?"
"Oh, right, yes, Audrey gave me the one we have to use, anti-forgery quill, apparently they can tell if we didn't use it."
Dumbledore accepted it, "Lets just use the desk for this, hmm?" And lead her back into the inner room.
"You didn't read it, headmaster."
"No, no, why on earth should I?"
"I thought..."
"If you students are trying to pass a law, you should be entitled to have a voice. I should have no right to say whether or not that voice is allowed to be heared."
Lucy didn't know what to say.
"You look rather like a landed fish, Lucy."
"I'm sorry, I guess, its just, most of the other teachers we had to approach acted as if it were their responsibility, Professor Snape wouldn't even sign it. He didn't approve of the way we were going about things."
"Doesn't surprise me one bit."
Lucy jumped at the strange voice, and whirled around to see the man standing near the door, she hadn't seen him when she came in.
Dumbledore smiled. "Ah, Miss Montero, I don't believe you have met our former Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor, Professor Remus Lupin. Professor Lupin, Miss Montero, she's from your old house."
"Hello," Lucy stammered.
Professor Lupin smiled at her, "Always a pleasure to meet a Gryffindor, you must be a recent addition Miss Montero, I was around three years ago and I don't remember you."
Lucy's ears perked up. "Three years ago? You were here three years ago, for a whole year?"
Remus nodded, "A rather exciting year at that, of course, those pesky Dementors did make it a little less than pleasant."
"Dementors? Those things from Azkaban, they were at the school?"
"Oh yes, a royal pain, all year, on account of Sirius Black. I'm surprised you hadn't heard of it."
Lucy wasn't sure how to respond, but she didn't have to. Dumbledore handed her the scroll.
"I think that's all you needed, wasn't it Lucy?"
She nodded, "Thank you headmaster." She headed out the door.
"Miss Montero?"
She turned back at the sound of Dumbledore's voice.
"Yes?"
"You're pen?" Dumbledore was holding Audrey's anti-forgery pen. Automatically, Lucy used her now-healed channel to pull the pen towards her, but she quickly looked at Lupin and thought the better of it. There was an unnaturalness to the man. The pen appeared to rise out of Dumbledore's grasp and fall to the floor.
Lucy hurried over pick it up.
"I'm sorry Lucy," Dumbledore said with an amused smile, "I must be getting arthritic in my old age."
Lucy flashed him and Remus a nervous smile before quickly exiting the room.
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No sooner had the door closed behind her than.
"All right headmaster, now who was that and what was that all about?"
Dumbledore eased back into his chair. "Calm down Remus and have a seat. That was, as I told you, Lucy Montero, a Gryffindor, and she needed a document signed."
"Since when were the students in this school so politically active. What are they trying to do, abolish the uniform?"
"They're trying to secure their right to fair and equal treatment under the British Ministry, if I read the preamble correctly. That Warren Lane is going to be a wonderful lawyer."
"Fair and equal treatment, equal to who?"
"Equal to the treatment of British students. Lucy was just one of about 65 or so of our international students that have come under the close scrutiny of the Ministry ever since Cornerlius Fudge had it planted in his head that the incident last spring and the attacks since last summer have come from foreign enemies slipping into the country and terrorizing wizards and muggles alike."
"And he thinks STUDENTS are responsible? That is the stupidest think I've ever heard."
"So far he has done very little, but what he has done has been very invasive. They have to carry travel papers, a mountain of passes and registration forms, and then he had an official tailing them last term."
"Tailing them?"
"Following then around, collecting evidence."
"Evidence of what?"
"Of nothing, which was why I let him stay, there was nothing for him to find. None of our students are plotting the downfall of magical society, if they were I'd know about it and no one is up to anything nearly that amusing. Since the Weasley twins left things have become rather dull, actually."
'So, why the law?"
"Well, what they did was let the students get themselves into trouble. Almost half of them violated the new codes by returning to school this term without going through immigration and getting their forms filled out. So the Ministry has decided to make an example of them and is bringing them to London during the Easter holidays to be interrogated before they decide on action."
"Action? They're only children!"
"They are children with very little protection under this system. They're an easy scapegoat, and by putting suspicion on foreigners in general Fudge can cleanly avoid any implication that loyal Death Eaters were not completely weeded out sixteen years ago."
"What can they do to them?"
"Well, they have already dissolved all funding for work-study and scholarships for international students. They could deport them, and if they voted to try them as adults the prospects could be even worse."
"How can they try a juvenile as an adult?"
"If the charge is serious enough, they'll do it. It would have to be very serious though, murder, treason or espionage perhaps as well, but nothing below that, I should think."
"You seem very calm about all this."
"If Fudge tried to pull anything with all the children on that list there would be hell to pay, many of them have very influential parents. Now if it were just a few, and they were like Miss Montero, then I would be worried."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, you can get away with a lot worse on a smaller scale. And Lucy has no family, no place to go really, so there would be little or no repercussions. Her home was the target of one of those massive external efforts we saw the Death Eaters doing last year."
"Really?"
"Oh yes, and from what I hear, it killed, or as good as killed, everyone in that school. Its part of the reason why she hate Sirius so much, she'd probably hate you too if she knew you had gathered intelligence."
"I don't understand."
"We knew all of those were coming before they came, but we didn't act because it was more important to keep Severus an active player. If we acted, warned anyone, then they would have known there was a leak, and it would only be a matter of time before they found him out. It was that closed of a matter."
"She found out about that?"
"Hmm, yes, Severus told McGonagall when Lucy's school was being attacked. She realized that the strange sort of link that all the students there have to the school might potentially hurt Lucy, and she managed to cut that before the poor child died of it. But after that she became curious and found the whole thing out. I'm actually not sure as to her attitude toward Sirius, she knows about him, found out accidentally, but I am quite sure she'll hate Severus Snape until the day she dies."
"So she's alone?"
"About as alone as Harry. And she's not the only one in the international student pool to be so. Now, if it were a group of those kind of students, I'd be worried. But I seriously doubt anything will happen to the crowd they're taking to London. They will resent missing their spring holiday, I'm sure."