Chapter Twenty Two: Help
Lucy found the BA assembled when she returned through the bathroom entrance.
"Any luck?" Lynx looked up from where he was cramming for the upcoming O.W.L's.
Lucy nodded, took a seat at the table, and placed the mirror in the middle.
"We finally get to learn what it does, then?" Bet perked up.
"It's a very old communication mirror, and we are going to use it to call some help to clean up this mess."
"How can you work anything with all that racket the moment you unsheild?" Rasheph peered over her shoulder at the mirror.
"That's what this is for. You can call through it without desheilding, it's activated almost automatically," she picked it up and held it in her hand, running her fingers over the raised runes on the back. There, that one, the ancient seal of the Maintainers, from before they carried that name, she pressed it, and it sank a few millimeters into the stone. She turned her attention to the runes on the face that ran around the edge. It was uncanny, how she could funnel energy into the correct sequence of runes without the need to drop shields. The runes began to glow as she activated them in the correct sequence to broadcast "urgent help needed" to the destination, which was the principle Guild House of the Maintainers in Istanbul. It would be someone on the "safe" end of the mirror who would activate the connection.
"Now what?"
Lucy sighed, "Now, we wait."
It took 20 minutes, Lucy had expected a lag, because this was not the most conventional means of communication and it may have taken awhile for someone on the other end to realize what was going on. So it was as Rasheph was about to triumph in his second game of gin that a voice rang out through the room, "Hello?"
The flat stone on the mirror's face wavered, and cleared to reveal the image of a man in his mid fifties wearing a bemused expression staring back at her. Lucy scuttled over and tilted the mirror to bring her face into viewing.
"Yes, my name is Lucy Montero, from the Espiritu school, and I need the help of a maintainer team as soon as possible."
The man raised an eyebrow. "Well Lucy, my name is Jardis, formerly of the Congo Conservatory, and none of our taps have revealed anything disturbed at Espiritu since the wards went back up in December."
Lucy shook her head in frustration, "No, I meant that I have a problem HERE, at Hogwarts."
"Where?"
"I'm at an eastern school of wizardry in the north of England, there has been a major disturbance of ancient magic that has left the energy lines under the area in total chaos, it isn't even safe for Masters and below to deshield for very long."
Jardis pondered that for a moment. "If it's in the eastern circle miss-"
"Since when have borders ever hampered the business of the maintainers?" Lucy countered.
That was the button to push, for Maintainers were stubbornly proud of their ability to fix anything anywhere, no matter the danger.
Jardis took in a few more details of the situation, tilted his head to one side and scratched behind his right ear. "It'd be a rebuilding, sounds like, all that energy goin back into a ward has left the ley lines to trickle down to nothin. Need to scoop out some new riverbeds and flush the whole thing through. Not so bad really, I'll be sending you a team of 6 in 30 minutes."
True to his word, 30 minutes later, just as Lynx had returned from grabbing them snacks from the kitchen, there was a tingling in the air, and the four students turned around to see 6 figures, robed in black cloaks with the distinctive red and yellow trim, standing in a triangular formation like a set of bowling pins in front of the table.
The figure in front stepped forward and pushed back its hood to reveal a smooth ebony head and eyes so brown Lucy swore they were black.
"Which one of you is Lucy Montero?" His gaze swept from Bet to Lucy, but lingered on Lucy even before she timidly stepped forward.
"Thank you so much for-"
He held up a hand, "We fix, it is what we do. I am Virgil, team leader. Behind me to the left is Tess, to the right is Mercelo, and those three in the back are Tuck, Huck, and Puck."
Bet giggled at bit, but covered it with a cough.
"There's a mage storm outside," Mercelo commented.
"And the nearest energy system uncorrupted by eastern magic is several kilometers away," Tess added.
"There's a dry riverbed underneath the magical energy swamp."
"It would be impossible to guarantee that the energy would not be leached back out again and the bed dry up like it did before."
"It would still be more stable than what is out there right now. This is a system already adapted to the mingling of energies."
Virgil silenced what looked to be a growing debate between Tuck, Huck, and Puck with a look.
"Our first priority is, as always, to stabilize. If this storm builds for much longer it will be too strong to work under. We restore the riverbed, which will provide an outlet for the energy freed by the fall of the wards. Once the flow is established we dissipate the storm by leaching the energy away."
"Virg, we do major weatherworking up here the Guild's bound to want to send more people up..." Puck made a face.
"Not if we already have a master here to lend a hand," Virgil caught Lucy in a piercing gaze.
"But I can't deshield, I can't even mindspeek right now-"
"As soon as the normal energy flow is restored your channels will no longer be flooded with raw energy and you will be able to deshield as normal. Then you can See for the weather workers. It would speed things up tremendously."
Tuck shifted uneasily, "Even so Virg, with only one Seer-"
"She can See," Lucy piped up, pointing to Bet.
"I can?"
"You will."
"They're gifted?" Tess blurted out. Virgil, however, didn't seem surprised in the least, he almost looked like he expected this.
Lucy grinned, "They're my students. Come to think of it, they can all ground and center, so it wouldn't take long to get the boys to to start looking at the immediate area through the Sight for you, Bet and I could do distance."
"In that case," Virgil smiled, "We'd better get to work."
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Lynx and Rasheph had "Seen" before, when Lucy had been showing them how to ground and shield, so it only took a quick review for them to understand what the Maintainers wanted. To "See" the energy fields around the land, essentially it meant seeing things in strange, pulsing colors, which would enable to Maintainers to do the weather wizardry more quickly.
But before Lucy and Bet could teach Lynx and Rasheph, they had to wait for Virgil and his team to fix the energy mess. To Lucy's surprise, Virgil didn't want to be taken to the hidden room where the tablet had been, but instead requested that they be lead outside. The four students looked at each other, a bit anxious. The Maintainer group wasn't exactly designed to fit in.
But to their surprise, as they proceeded to the nearest exit, no one so much as glanced in their direction, indeed, they didn't seem to see them at all.
"Are you doing that?" Rasheph asked Virgil.
Mercelo replied, "I am. As a rule, Maintainers are not seen unless they wish to be. It is relatively easy to extend that to you four as well."
"So if they can't see us, how come no one walks into us?" Lynx challenged.
"They simply feel the need to walk to either side."
"You compel them," Bet concluded.
"In a way," Tess replied.
Lucy had stopped listening as she pushed open the door to the covered walkway, and stared out between the pillars at the raging tempest.
"You want to go out there?"
Virgil raised the hood on his cloak, as the others did the same, and nodded. "There's far too much going on in there that I don't want to deal with. These people have lost most of the connection to the land." He smiled down at the students' dubious looks. "Don't worry, we'll be quite all right. Wait here, we'll come for you when you are needed."
Without another word, Virgil led his team out the door, across the open courtyard, and down the path to the lake.
Lucy shuddered, and the students pulled back to sit on the floor by the doors and wait.
Several hands of Exploding Snap, which Lynx never seemed to travel without, later, the door burst open and wind poured into the hall.
Tess was there, sliding back her hood and shaking her hair out, but not in the least perturbed by the lake forming under her feet on the stone.
She nodded at Lucy, "Try it then."
Lucy unshielded, and found that the violence was gone. Her head was fine, she felt nothing for a change since everyone else around her was shielded, three of them by her. She dropped the shields from Seamus, Lynx, Bet, and Rasheph.
"Wow," Rasheph rubbed his head in relief before restoring his own shielding. "Oh, Lucy, thanks for-"
"Don't mention it. Now Lynx, you with me and Bet with Rasheph, lets get the basics down so we can clean up the mess."
It didn't take long, Lynx and Rasheph caught on quickly, and it was good that they did, for almost as soon as Lucy and Lynx finished the door burst open again and Tuck, Huck, and Puck appeared.
"We'd better get going, lighting struck near this giant willow tree and I swear to heaven it looked like the tree tried to strike back."
"Whomping Willow," muttered Bet as the students scrambled to their feet.
"You," Huck pointed to Rasheph, then Lynx, "and you, with me." The three boys headed out into the rain, leaving Lucy and Bet hoping they would be given a dry assignment.
"Don't look so smug," Puck grinned wickedly, "you two are next, with us, let's go."
They trudged out into the storm, there was no sign of Tess, Virgil, or Mercelo, and when Bet asked about them Tuck just shrugged, "They're busy."
They followed in silence around the castle, until they were at the edge of the cliff, overlooking the lake. Lucy and Bet huddled against the wall for protection, the two Maintainers seemed unaffected by the weather and stared off in the distance for some time before trotting back over. The wind whipped up coming around this side, and Puck had to shout to be heard.
"I need you to Watch the system to the North while I drain it. When that happens, the system to the South is going to break. You need to tell me in how many pieces, and which way they are going. You," he turned to Bet, "are going to work back-up with Tuck, watching for aftershocks. Just tell him exactly what you see, so he doesn't have to lose focus and look for himself. If we're lucky, he won't have to do anything at all."
Bet nodded, and took a seat with a grimace and a squelch on the soggy earth. Bet worked better in trance. Tuck stood behind her. Lucy walked out to the edge of the cliff with Puck, and hoped to hell he knew what he was doing, a good gust and they would both end up in the lake.
She felt a mental "nudge" which was a polite way of Puck asking for her mental link. She settled her breathing and focused far to the North, locked in the location of the system, and passed everything on to Puck.
Since they were working at a longer range, she had no idea what was happening, the rain at Hogwarts continued to pour. But she Watched and waited, as the Northern system dimmed, and slowed, and eventually trickled into nothing. That was her cue to Look to the South. She followed the ball of power to where it sat, and saw it splinter into three cells, one heading North, one heading West, and the rest holding to the South. It looked like Puck had his work cut out for him.
It seemed like hours that Lucy focused, waiting, until finally she felt Puck release her. She sped up her breathing, and opened her eyes.
At first she thought nothing had changed, it was still dark. It was only when she saw the stars above that she realized that it was now night. The storm was gone.
At that moment Virgil came swaggering up. "So, everything go smoothly?"
"Well enough," Tuck responded. "Dumped a lot of the water over London, didn't think they would notice."
Puck grinned, "Pretty routine, although storms picked up speed around here faster than usual."
Virgil nodded, "Fed off the energy currents from the school. Tess had a devil of a time working around those. She and Mercelo are just finishing up a few routine procedures."
Bet and Lucy stared blankly, not really having understood a word since 'London.'
"It's over then?" Lucy looked up hopefully.
Virgil nodded, "For our part, this place is completely safe, energetically speaking," Lucy wasn't sure she liked the look he gave her.
She didn't ponder it long, as just then Lynx and Rasheph came trotting over with Huck.
"I'm starving," the Hufflepuff moaned.
"What time is it?"
"Dinner time," Rasheph replied.
Bet's stomach growled, and she blushed furiously.
"We won't keep you long, then," Virgil smiled and led the way down the hall. When he succeeded in leading them directly to the entrance of the BA room off the kitchen hallway, Lucy was beyond impressed, he'd only seen the way once before, and he'd been answering their questions practically the whole time.
Virgil took a seat, his team remained standing. Lucy sat on the table next to Bet while the boys took chairs.
"I must confess, we aren't used to leaving a site this way," he spoke, slowly, glancing around as he did so.
"What way is that?" Lucy swung her feet, a nervous tick she'd always had.
"This place isn't safe. I told you energetically speaking it was fine, and that was the truth. But something very old has been disturbed and there is no telling what the far reaching effects of that will be, especially the MAGICAL impact."
"Dumbledore said he'd reset everything."
"I don't doubt he will reset everything he knows was in place, but what if more was damaged than meets the eye?"
Bet shook her head, "Dumbledore knows everything that goes on at Hogwarts."
Virgil paused, his gaze falling to the mirror, and then back to Bet, "I sincerely hope so, since I don't like leaving you four here in a place that's still dangerous. It is not what we do. We eliminate the danger. But I can only fight- fix, what I can See."
Lynx sat forward in his chair. "Dumbledore wouldn't let anything happen here, it's the safest place in the wizarding world."
"No place is safe in the wizarding world right now," Virgil muttered, but his eyes returned to the mirror. He stood, and picked it up off the table, "You don't mind, do you?"
Lucy shook her head.
"It's remarkable, no one has seen one of these in years, the secrets of their construction were all but lost..." Virgil stopped speaking, and just stared at the mirror for a full minute.
Which then stretched into two, and then three, until finally Huck coughed.
"Listen, Virgil, I know you love this stuff, but-"
"We could use this."
Rasheph turned his gaze away from the door to the kitchens. "Use it for what?"
"A warning system, a way to keep an eye on you all, on this place."
Lynx turned to Lucy expectantly, but she placed her hands out in front of her, "Don't ask me, he's the professional."
"I could keep it open, keep it active. It would just mean tapping the nearest ley line-"
"Diverting a tiny piece of the energy flow from the line to the mirror, and if that kept the mirror open..." Tess smiled.
Mercelo seemed to understand. "If that thing was open, it would be connected to the Guild, and if it was drawing off the ley line, it would be connected to here...is that legal?"
Lucy looked from one ominous hooded figure to the other, "Is what legal?"
Puck took pity and put a hand on her shoulder, "What our fearless leader here is suggesting is basically jury-rigging you a connection to the Web."
If Puck's hand hadn't of been on her shoulder, Lucy would have fallen off the table.
"It's never been tried..."
"Because there hasn't been a mirror like this lying around anywhere in recent memory. It's just an alert system, not like the kids could draw any power from it, and they aren't advanced enough to try any way, well, maybe her...but they could only draw from Espiritu and that reservoir is untappable, without anyone at the school itself it doesn't exist, so there isn't any danger."
Lynx raised his hand, "Um, question..."
But Bet had followed. "They want to keep a connection between us and the rest of them, the Circle, you know, Lucy's type people," Tuck rolled his eyes at that, but Bet didn't see. "They can use the Mirror to do it, so, if we were in here and anything happened, we could tell them, right?" She looked to Virgil for approval.
He nodded, "And since the ley line feeds into the energy bed, if anything like this mess every happens again, we'll know about it. We could tell the higher ups, should they ever find out, that it was a necessary measure for long term observation of a previously undocumented energy system." He seemed enormously pleased with himself.
Tuck shrugged, "Why not then? Fire it up and lets be on our way."
It took less than ten minutes for the team to force the mirror open, channel a ley line to it, set it for wherever in Guild Headquarters they wanted it directed to, and stabilize the whole thing. Lucy was terribly impressed for the thousandth time that day.
Virgil nodded, "I feel better leaving you with a way out of sorts. Actually, we might be able to get that thing-"
"Enough Virg! This is going beyond duty and into one of your blasted hobbies. If you want to play with the pretty sparkly you can do it on your day off. We're going to be late!"
Lucy couldn't be positive, but it looked like the tall man flushed. "Mercelo is right, we have work to be done. If you ever need us, we're just a shout away."
The team assembled in the triangle formation they had arrived in, and after a wink from Puck in the back, they vanished.
'Well," Lynx hopped off the table, "Thank you for that informative lesson Lucy, it was fascinating, really, but now I am going to attend to some pressing matters of my own."
He and Rasheph were instantly jostling each other at the door for the opportunity to escape to dinner.
Bet smiled and waited as Lucy placed the Mirror on the mantle above the fire, and covered it with one of the polishing rags, obtained during a long ago detention cleaning for Snape, that she had left in the room.
"Hey Luce, he said something I didn't quite understand."
Lucy turned around, amused, "Just ONE thing, Bet?"
Bet grinned, "Well, one in particular. He said he didn't like leaving the FOUR of us here. Was he mistaken? I mean, if they were going to take anyone away it would have been you, right?"
Lucy grinned and shook her head. She hadn't missed that remark, but had been facing Virgil at the time, so Bet hadn't seen the proud glow on her face. "Nope. See, what he understood from the moment he came in here is that we're not four misfit students. We're a school. We're Espiritu. The largest current assembly of Espiritu mages on Earth, in fact. He was concerned for ALL the members, not just me."
Bet smiled, "Oh, that's nice, isn't it?"
Lucy grinned, "Not as nice as dinner."
Lucy found the BA assembled when she returned through the bathroom entrance.
"Any luck?" Lynx looked up from where he was cramming for the upcoming O.W.L's.
Lucy nodded, took a seat at the table, and placed the mirror in the middle.
"We finally get to learn what it does, then?" Bet perked up.
"It's a very old communication mirror, and we are going to use it to call some help to clean up this mess."
"How can you work anything with all that racket the moment you unsheild?" Rasheph peered over her shoulder at the mirror.
"That's what this is for. You can call through it without desheilding, it's activated almost automatically," she picked it up and held it in her hand, running her fingers over the raised runes on the back. There, that one, the ancient seal of the Maintainers, from before they carried that name, she pressed it, and it sank a few millimeters into the stone. She turned her attention to the runes on the face that ran around the edge. It was uncanny, how she could funnel energy into the correct sequence of runes without the need to drop shields. The runes began to glow as she activated them in the correct sequence to broadcast "urgent help needed" to the destination, which was the principle Guild House of the Maintainers in Istanbul. It would be someone on the "safe" end of the mirror who would activate the connection.
"Now what?"
Lucy sighed, "Now, we wait."
It took 20 minutes, Lucy had expected a lag, because this was not the most conventional means of communication and it may have taken awhile for someone on the other end to realize what was going on. So it was as Rasheph was about to triumph in his second game of gin that a voice rang out through the room, "Hello?"
The flat stone on the mirror's face wavered, and cleared to reveal the image of a man in his mid fifties wearing a bemused expression staring back at her. Lucy scuttled over and tilted the mirror to bring her face into viewing.
"Yes, my name is Lucy Montero, from the Espiritu school, and I need the help of a maintainer team as soon as possible."
The man raised an eyebrow. "Well Lucy, my name is Jardis, formerly of the Congo Conservatory, and none of our taps have revealed anything disturbed at Espiritu since the wards went back up in December."
Lucy shook her head in frustration, "No, I meant that I have a problem HERE, at Hogwarts."
"Where?"
"I'm at an eastern school of wizardry in the north of England, there has been a major disturbance of ancient magic that has left the energy lines under the area in total chaos, it isn't even safe for Masters and below to deshield for very long."
Jardis pondered that for a moment. "If it's in the eastern circle miss-"
"Since when have borders ever hampered the business of the maintainers?" Lucy countered.
That was the button to push, for Maintainers were stubbornly proud of their ability to fix anything anywhere, no matter the danger.
Jardis took in a few more details of the situation, tilted his head to one side and scratched behind his right ear. "It'd be a rebuilding, sounds like, all that energy goin back into a ward has left the ley lines to trickle down to nothin. Need to scoop out some new riverbeds and flush the whole thing through. Not so bad really, I'll be sending you a team of 6 in 30 minutes."
True to his word, 30 minutes later, just as Lynx had returned from grabbing them snacks from the kitchen, there was a tingling in the air, and the four students turned around to see 6 figures, robed in black cloaks with the distinctive red and yellow trim, standing in a triangular formation like a set of bowling pins in front of the table.
The figure in front stepped forward and pushed back its hood to reveal a smooth ebony head and eyes so brown Lucy swore they were black.
"Which one of you is Lucy Montero?" His gaze swept from Bet to Lucy, but lingered on Lucy even before she timidly stepped forward.
"Thank you so much for-"
He held up a hand, "We fix, it is what we do. I am Virgil, team leader. Behind me to the left is Tess, to the right is Mercelo, and those three in the back are Tuck, Huck, and Puck."
Bet giggled at bit, but covered it with a cough.
"There's a mage storm outside," Mercelo commented.
"And the nearest energy system uncorrupted by eastern magic is several kilometers away," Tess added.
"There's a dry riverbed underneath the magical energy swamp."
"It would be impossible to guarantee that the energy would not be leached back out again and the bed dry up like it did before."
"It would still be more stable than what is out there right now. This is a system already adapted to the mingling of energies."
Virgil silenced what looked to be a growing debate between Tuck, Huck, and Puck with a look.
"Our first priority is, as always, to stabilize. If this storm builds for much longer it will be too strong to work under. We restore the riverbed, which will provide an outlet for the energy freed by the fall of the wards. Once the flow is established we dissipate the storm by leaching the energy away."
"Virg, we do major weatherworking up here the Guild's bound to want to send more people up..." Puck made a face.
"Not if we already have a master here to lend a hand," Virgil caught Lucy in a piercing gaze.
"But I can't deshield, I can't even mindspeek right now-"
"As soon as the normal energy flow is restored your channels will no longer be flooded with raw energy and you will be able to deshield as normal. Then you can See for the weather workers. It would speed things up tremendously."
Tuck shifted uneasily, "Even so Virg, with only one Seer-"
"She can See," Lucy piped up, pointing to Bet.
"I can?"
"You will."
"They're gifted?" Tess blurted out. Virgil, however, didn't seem surprised in the least, he almost looked like he expected this.
Lucy grinned, "They're my students. Come to think of it, they can all ground and center, so it wouldn't take long to get the boys to to start looking at the immediate area through the Sight for you, Bet and I could do distance."
"In that case," Virgil smiled, "We'd better get to work."
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Lynx and Rasheph had "Seen" before, when Lucy had been showing them how to ground and shield, so it only took a quick review for them to understand what the Maintainers wanted. To "See" the energy fields around the land, essentially it meant seeing things in strange, pulsing colors, which would enable to Maintainers to do the weather wizardry more quickly.
But before Lucy and Bet could teach Lynx and Rasheph, they had to wait for Virgil and his team to fix the energy mess. To Lucy's surprise, Virgil didn't want to be taken to the hidden room where the tablet had been, but instead requested that they be lead outside. The four students looked at each other, a bit anxious. The Maintainer group wasn't exactly designed to fit in.
But to their surprise, as they proceeded to the nearest exit, no one so much as glanced in their direction, indeed, they didn't seem to see them at all.
"Are you doing that?" Rasheph asked Virgil.
Mercelo replied, "I am. As a rule, Maintainers are not seen unless they wish to be. It is relatively easy to extend that to you four as well."
"So if they can't see us, how come no one walks into us?" Lynx challenged.
"They simply feel the need to walk to either side."
"You compel them," Bet concluded.
"In a way," Tess replied.
Lucy had stopped listening as she pushed open the door to the covered walkway, and stared out between the pillars at the raging tempest.
"You want to go out there?"
Virgil raised the hood on his cloak, as the others did the same, and nodded. "There's far too much going on in there that I don't want to deal with. These people have lost most of the connection to the land." He smiled down at the students' dubious looks. "Don't worry, we'll be quite all right. Wait here, we'll come for you when you are needed."
Without another word, Virgil led his team out the door, across the open courtyard, and down the path to the lake.
Lucy shuddered, and the students pulled back to sit on the floor by the doors and wait.
Several hands of Exploding Snap, which Lynx never seemed to travel without, later, the door burst open and wind poured into the hall.
Tess was there, sliding back her hood and shaking her hair out, but not in the least perturbed by the lake forming under her feet on the stone.
She nodded at Lucy, "Try it then."
Lucy unshielded, and found that the violence was gone. Her head was fine, she felt nothing for a change since everyone else around her was shielded, three of them by her. She dropped the shields from Seamus, Lynx, Bet, and Rasheph.
"Wow," Rasheph rubbed his head in relief before restoring his own shielding. "Oh, Lucy, thanks for-"
"Don't mention it. Now Lynx, you with me and Bet with Rasheph, lets get the basics down so we can clean up the mess."
It didn't take long, Lynx and Rasheph caught on quickly, and it was good that they did, for almost as soon as Lucy and Lynx finished the door burst open again and Tuck, Huck, and Puck appeared.
"We'd better get going, lighting struck near this giant willow tree and I swear to heaven it looked like the tree tried to strike back."
"Whomping Willow," muttered Bet as the students scrambled to their feet.
"You," Huck pointed to Rasheph, then Lynx, "and you, with me." The three boys headed out into the rain, leaving Lucy and Bet hoping they would be given a dry assignment.
"Don't look so smug," Puck grinned wickedly, "you two are next, with us, let's go."
They trudged out into the storm, there was no sign of Tess, Virgil, or Mercelo, and when Bet asked about them Tuck just shrugged, "They're busy."
They followed in silence around the castle, until they were at the edge of the cliff, overlooking the lake. Lucy and Bet huddled against the wall for protection, the two Maintainers seemed unaffected by the weather and stared off in the distance for some time before trotting back over. The wind whipped up coming around this side, and Puck had to shout to be heard.
"I need you to Watch the system to the North while I drain it. When that happens, the system to the South is going to break. You need to tell me in how many pieces, and which way they are going. You," he turned to Bet, "are going to work back-up with Tuck, watching for aftershocks. Just tell him exactly what you see, so he doesn't have to lose focus and look for himself. If we're lucky, he won't have to do anything at all."
Bet nodded, and took a seat with a grimace and a squelch on the soggy earth. Bet worked better in trance. Tuck stood behind her. Lucy walked out to the edge of the cliff with Puck, and hoped to hell he knew what he was doing, a good gust and they would both end up in the lake.
She felt a mental "nudge" which was a polite way of Puck asking for her mental link. She settled her breathing and focused far to the North, locked in the location of the system, and passed everything on to Puck.
Since they were working at a longer range, she had no idea what was happening, the rain at Hogwarts continued to pour. But she Watched and waited, as the Northern system dimmed, and slowed, and eventually trickled into nothing. That was her cue to Look to the South. She followed the ball of power to where it sat, and saw it splinter into three cells, one heading North, one heading West, and the rest holding to the South. It looked like Puck had his work cut out for him.
It seemed like hours that Lucy focused, waiting, until finally she felt Puck release her. She sped up her breathing, and opened her eyes.
At first she thought nothing had changed, it was still dark. It was only when she saw the stars above that she realized that it was now night. The storm was gone.
At that moment Virgil came swaggering up. "So, everything go smoothly?"
"Well enough," Tuck responded. "Dumped a lot of the water over London, didn't think they would notice."
Puck grinned, "Pretty routine, although storms picked up speed around here faster than usual."
Virgil nodded, "Fed off the energy currents from the school. Tess had a devil of a time working around those. She and Mercelo are just finishing up a few routine procedures."
Bet and Lucy stared blankly, not really having understood a word since 'London.'
"It's over then?" Lucy looked up hopefully.
Virgil nodded, "For our part, this place is completely safe, energetically speaking," Lucy wasn't sure she liked the look he gave her.
She didn't ponder it long, as just then Lynx and Rasheph came trotting over with Huck.
"I'm starving," the Hufflepuff moaned.
"What time is it?"
"Dinner time," Rasheph replied.
Bet's stomach growled, and she blushed furiously.
"We won't keep you long, then," Virgil smiled and led the way down the hall. When he succeeded in leading them directly to the entrance of the BA room off the kitchen hallway, Lucy was beyond impressed, he'd only seen the way once before, and he'd been answering their questions practically the whole time.
Virgil took a seat, his team remained standing. Lucy sat on the table next to Bet while the boys took chairs.
"I must confess, we aren't used to leaving a site this way," he spoke, slowly, glancing around as he did so.
"What way is that?" Lucy swung her feet, a nervous tick she'd always had.
"This place isn't safe. I told you energetically speaking it was fine, and that was the truth. But something very old has been disturbed and there is no telling what the far reaching effects of that will be, especially the MAGICAL impact."
"Dumbledore said he'd reset everything."
"I don't doubt he will reset everything he knows was in place, but what if more was damaged than meets the eye?"
Bet shook her head, "Dumbledore knows everything that goes on at Hogwarts."
Virgil paused, his gaze falling to the mirror, and then back to Bet, "I sincerely hope so, since I don't like leaving you four here in a place that's still dangerous. It is not what we do. We eliminate the danger. But I can only fight- fix, what I can See."
Lynx sat forward in his chair. "Dumbledore wouldn't let anything happen here, it's the safest place in the wizarding world."
"No place is safe in the wizarding world right now," Virgil muttered, but his eyes returned to the mirror. He stood, and picked it up off the table, "You don't mind, do you?"
Lucy shook her head.
"It's remarkable, no one has seen one of these in years, the secrets of their construction were all but lost..." Virgil stopped speaking, and just stared at the mirror for a full minute.
Which then stretched into two, and then three, until finally Huck coughed.
"Listen, Virgil, I know you love this stuff, but-"
"We could use this."
Rasheph turned his gaze away from the door to the kitchens. "Use it for what?"
"A warning system, a way to keep an eye on you all, on this place."
Lynx turned to Lucy expectantly, but she placed her hands out in front of her, "Don't ask me, he's the professional."
"I could keep it open, keep it active. It would just mean tapping the nearest ley line-"
"Diverting a tiny piece of the energy flow from the line to the mirror, and if that kept the mirror open..." Tess smiled.
Mercelo seemed to understand. "If that thing was open, it would be connected to the Guild, and if it was drawing off the ley line, it would be connected to here...is that legal?"
Lucy looked from one ominous hooded figure to the other, "Is what legal?"
Puck took pity and put a hand on her shoulder, "What our fearless leader here is suggesting is basically jury-rigging you a connection to the Web."
If Puck's hand hadn't of been on her shoulder, Lucy would have fallen off the table.
"It's never been tried..."
"Because there hasn't been a mirror like this lying around anywhere in recent memory. It's just an alert system, not like the kids could draw any power from it, and they aren't advanced enough to try any way, well, maybe her...but they could only draw from Espiritu and that reservoir is untappable, without anyone at the school itself it doesn't exist, so there isn't any danger."
Lynx raised his hand, "Um, question..."
But Bet had followed. "They want to keep a connection between us and the rest of them, the Circle, you know, Lucy's type people," Tuck rolled his eyes at that, but Bet didn't see. "They can use the Mirror to do it, so, if we were in here and anything happened, we could tell them, right?" She looked to Virgil for approval.
He nodded, "And since the ley line feeds into the energy bed, if anything like this mess every happens again, we'll know about it. We could tell the higher ups, should they ever find out, that it was a necessary measure for long term observation of a previously undocumented energy system." He seemed enormously pleased with himself.
Tuck shrugged, "Why not then? Fire it up and lets be on our way."
It took less than ten minutes for the team to force the mirror open, channel a ley line to it, set it for wherever in Guild Headquarters they wanted it directed to, and stabilize the whole thing. Lucy was terribly impressed for the thousandth time that day.
Virgil nodded, "I feel better leaving you with a way out of sorts. Actually, we might be able to get that thing-"
"Enough Virg! This is going beyond duty and into one of your blasted hobbies. If you want to play with the pretty sparkly you can do it on your day off. We're going to be late!"
Lucy couldn't be positive, but it looked like the tall man flushed. "Mercelo is right, we have work to be done. If you ever need us, we're just a shout away."
The team assembled in the triangle formation they had arrived in, and after a wink from Puck in the back, they vanished.
'Well," Lynx hopped off the table, "Thank you for that informative lesson Lucy, it was fascinating, really, but now I am going to attend to some pressing matters of my own."
He and Rasheph were instantly jostling each other at the door for the opportunity to escape to dinner.
Bet smiled and waited as Lucy placed the Mirror on the mantle above the fire, and covered it with one of the polishing rags, obtained during a long ago detention cleaning for Snape, that she had left in the room.
"Hey Luce, he said something I didn't quite understand."
Lucy turned around, amused, "Just ONE thing, Bet?"
Bet grinned, "Well, one in particular. He said he didn't like leaving the FOUR of us here. Was he mistaken? I mean, if they were going to take anyone away it would have been you, right?"
Lucy grinned and shook her head. She hadn't missed that remark, but had been facing Virgil at the time, so Bet hadn't seen the proud glow on her face. "Nope. See, what he understood from the moment he came in here is that we're not four misfit students. We're a school. We're Espiritu. The largest current assembly of Espiritu mages on Earth, in fact. He was concerned for ALL the members, not just me."
Bet smiled, "Oh, that's nice, isn't it?"
Lucy grinned, "Not as nice as dinner."