Chapter 32: Further Complications

PRESENT: MID-APRIL

Had Meli valued her sanity, she would probably have stopped reading the Daily Prophet after Voldemort's return—or, if not then, certainly after she had discovered the nature and extent of Snape and Zarekael's deep cover activities. She considered her sanity a loss, though, so there was really no point in attempting to preserve it. Then something happened that almost caused her to think better of that decision.

"MINISTRY HIT!" the headline screamed at her in six-inch type. What was left of the front page was devoted to a shocking account of Voldemort's latest attack, which had killed Cornelius Fudge and most of his cabinet with a single blow. Only four ministers had escaped: Lucius Malfoy, who was out of town for a relative's funeral; Arthur Weasley; and the heads of the Department of Aurors and the Department of Mysteries. The last two had left the room just before it was destroyed in an explosion; Weasley had been still on his way to the meeting, which had been scheduled to start three minutes later. Preliminary reports indicated that the explosion had been caused by a mail bomb dropped by an owl.

Meli's credulity with regards to Voldemort's temerity was greater than average, but even she reeled in disbelief at this. In principle, the plan was quite simple, but actually carrying it out, and with such a great success . . . that was something other. It required a great deal of coordination, probably between a half dozen different Death Eaters (at the minimum), and complete secrecy. Given that Voldemort could not trust all of the necessary people, it was entirely possible that only he had known everything involved in the plan—perhaps including the timing of the actual attack—in order to prevent intelligence leaks.

She shook her head. It was possible, of course, and even probable, but it was one more sign that he was bolder and more confident than ever before.

Did Severus or Zarekael know this was coming? she wondered, but after a moment of consideration, she again shook her head. In this case, she didn't have nearly enough information to come to a conclusion, and she most certainly was not going to ask. Since the bomb could have been created using any number of delicate potions, it was entirely possible that one or both of them had been involved and had lacked the appropriate information or opportunity to report on it, but she knew as much now as, in all likelihood, she would ever know.

Her eyes drifted to the Gryffindor table, where all four Weasleys were huddled together over a copy of the newspaper. Ginny shuddered at one point, and Ron put a comforting hand on her shoulder; their father had escaped, after all—but only just barely. As other paper-subscribing students read the front page, murmurs broke out, then slowly crescendoed to a roar.

Dumbledore stood and called the student body to order. His announcement was easily predicted, and Meli was not disappointed: Classes were canceled for the day.

Not all that surprising, really. We wouldn't have accomplished anything academic anyway.

PRESENT: MID-APRIL, ONE WEEK LATER

Monty's nap was disturbed by the sound of shattering glass. He shot his head up over the arm of the reading chair and found that Meli was whimpering over a broken vial. Whatever liquid had been in it was splashed across the stone floor in front of the work table; Meli herself had ducked into the space between the table and the wall. She was huddled up as if in fear.

"What'ss wrong?" he hissed, sliding down from the chair and darting towards her.

She seemed not to hear him. The whimpering continued, then mingled with tears.

Whatever she'd spilt must have had some strange, adverse effect on her. Even had Monty been able to help, he was no potions genius; he had no idea what the liquid was or how to counteract it. He would have to summon assistance.

Fortunately, Meli and Dumbledore had planned for such a situation. She kept a summoning mirror within the python's reach on one of her bookshelves, and its companion lay always on Dumbledore's desk. Monty had been about to use it once the previous November, but the headmaster had come before he'd had to, knowing somehow about Meli's seizure. Dumbledore was not here now, though, so Monty slid over to the shelf and hissed, "Albus Dumbledore." The mirror, which Meli had had the foresight to program in Parseltongue, connected him immediately.

Here Monty ran into a problem. He could understand perfectly Dumbledore's inquiry, but Dumbledore could not understand his reply. After several seconds of trying to explain the situation and failing, Monty resorted to playing Lassie, jerking his head in Meli's direction, then sliding out of the mirror's view, then returning to repeat the process. If only he could . . . No. He didn't know if someone was with Dumbledore just then, and Meli would kill him in any case. Whether or not this got the point across, once Monty fell silent, Dumbledore could hear Meli, who was now sobbing and occasionally whimpering, "No. Please, no."

"I'll come down immediately," the headmaster promised quickly, then the mirror went blank. Less than a minute later, there was a noise from the fireplace, and Monty turned to see Dumbledore stepping out of it and around the worktable.

He paused briefly to examine the spilled liquid, then looked over at Monty. "Don't worry about the spill," he said quietly. "It's just an infusion of willow bark." He took two steps further and came face-to-face with Meli.

Her manner was more agitated than before. Between her actions, her words, and her countenance, she seemed to be simultaneously terrified, anguished, angry, and hopeless. She did not appear to have any real awareness of her surroundings or of the people with her, yet she cringed when Dumbledore came near.

"Stop!" she shrieked. "Oh, God make it stop, please!"

Dumbledore drew back in surprise, but he seemed confused. "Can you hear anything, Meli?" he asked.

"Scr—Noooo!" She buried her head in her arms and did not speak again.

Monty looked up anxiously at Dumbledore, but the all-wise headmaster of Hogwarts was at a total loss. "If it's a seizure, it's unlike any I've ever seen," he murmured, glancing at the python. "I don't understand. I don't understand at all . . ."

There was nothing either of them could do for Meli except to stay with her and wait it out. Monty had a skewed sense of time anyway, but here he entirely lost track. Hours seemed to crawl by while Meli's terror fit went on, until at last she subsided and went limp.

Dumbledore gently pulled Meli out of her hiding place, then levitated her to a chair. Monty drew himself up and found that, though her cheeks were tear-stained, she looked peaceful and innocent—and terribly confused.

She proved to be as uninformative now, though, as she had been during her fit. She could not account for it at all and knew only that she had been suddenly seized by a wave of extreme terror, grief, and futile anger.

"I heard something like screams," she told Dumbledore, furrowing her brow. "But they weren't like what I hear during a seizure. He wasn't in pain—not physical pain anyway. And he wasn't screaming out loud." She shook her head. "It was . . . I don't know . . . it was a soul's scream, I think—I can't explain it any better than that."

Dumbledore nodded grimly. "Then perhaps Voldemort had found a way to torture the soul using magic," he said thoughtfully. "It may well be that this was a seizure after all."

Meli shuddered. "In that case, I prefer the other kind. What sort of spell could he possibly have used to do that?"

Dumbledore shook his head. "I don't know."

Meli entered the following day feeling completely and utterly out of step with reality, and the rest of the world, seemingly taking its cue from her, was off-kilter, as well. Professor McGonagall entered a classroom ready to lecture her second year Ravenclaw Transfiguration students, only to find that Flitwick was there, lecturing his sixth year Slytherin Charms students. It was a peculiar thing to have happen, especially given that McGonagall had been teaching at Hogwarts for decades and had never before managed to misplace her own classroom.

During an in-class counter-jinx practice session, two of Meli's most graceful students turned suddenly into klutzes, and her fourth year Hufflepuffs had a graphic demonstration of what happens when a bat-bogey counter-jinx hits a loaded bookshelf not under the effects of a bat-bogey jinx. The students responsible (not that they could truly be considered responsible for what was obviously a disastrous accident, and Meli was the first to admit it) were apologetic; Meli was just confused.

And, topping off the whole, Zarekael was behaving strangely—at least, Meli assumed he was behaving strangely; he wasn't actually around for her to observe him. Any time he caught sight of her, he abruptly disappeared by ducking into an alcove, slipping through a doorway, or stepping around a corner. This behavior bothered her more than any of the day's other oddities, not because she thought Zarekael incapable of being off-step, but because he always, without fail, had a reason for being off-step, and that was what troubled her. If Zarekael took pains to avoid someone, to the extent that the mere sight of that person was enough to make him flee, it meant that he had a problem with that person.

In other words, he had a problem with Meli.

He was fine at dinner last night, she reflected. And I didn't see him after that. What could I have possibly done between then and now?

The only event that came to mind was her panic attack, or seizure, or whatever it had been, but that it could somehow have offended Zarekael was ludicrous. He could only know about it if Dumbledore had said something—and why would he have done that?

If there was one thing that Meli couldn't stand, it was an unresolved interpersonal problem, and when faced with such problems, her immediate impulse was to resolve it as soon as possible. Unfortunately, in this particular case she encountered a fundamental problem, namely that the problem could not be solved without her talking to Zarekael, and if she couldn't see him for more than a split-second at a time, she most certainly couldn't talk to him. The only other course she could think of was to talk with someone who might know why Zarekael was avoiding her, and that meant tracking down Snape.

Snape was not as elusive as Zarekael, but he did seem unusually uptight. He heard Meli out in stone-faced silence, and when he spoke to reassure her, his tone was grim.

"It's nothing you've done, Meli," he told her quietly. "Zarekael's avoiding everyone today, not just you."

"Even you?" she asked.

Snape closed his eyes and nodded once. "Even me," he affirmed. "Perhaps especially me."

Meli furrowed her brow. But he was fine yesterday! she protested silently. Aloud, she simply inquired, "Why?"

Zarekael's father hesitated. He obviously wanted to tell her all that he knew, but she sensed also that it was not his truth to tell. At the same time, though, he was as unwilling to lie to her as she would be to lie to him.

At last Snape met her eye, and while his gaze was guarded, she saw that it was honest. "We all have our fears, our deep hurts, and our consuming shames, Meli," he replied. "When any of those comes to light, our first instinct is to hide from others, even if they know nothing about it."

And that, Meli suspected, was the most she would learn just now, and it was quite enough. Even what Snape had told her was probably too much, for she knew just enough now to pity Zarekael. Whatever had happened the previous night, he had been humiliated and wounded; who could fault him for isolating himself in the wake of such an experience?

She thought again of the mouse Robert Burns had turned up with his plow. Who, indeed, could blame the mouse for running from every plow after being so badly hurt by one?

She couldn't fault him . . . but she hoped fervently that Zarekael would face down whatever demons had come to light and emerge from his self-imposed isolation. She hadn't lost him as a friend to the Goldens; she didn't want to lose him to himself now.

PRESENT: EARLY MAY

Things went quietly for about a fortnight; it seemed that the students had been shocked into meekness by Fudge's assassination and the odd behavior of several of the teachers afterward. Even Malfoy was more or less keeping his nose clean . . . until the quidditch game.

Meli had never been a particularly huge fan of quidditch. She knew how to play, and she knew the rules well enough that she could, if called upon, referee, but in terms of living and dying by match outcomes, she had better things to do with her time. She had, in her youth, followed scores in the professional leagues, but that had been more for the sake of conversation than anything else; she would never have driven six days to see a quidditch game in Pittsburgh, for example.

Hogwarts' teachers were encouraged to attend as many quidditch games as possible during the school term, though, so Meli, who had seen perhaps half a dozen games in seven years as a student, now found herself going to twice that number in a single year. Rain or shine, she sat outside in the objectionable fresh air, providing moral support for (and receiving it from) Snape and Zarekael. She once reflected, with a smirk, that they must have looked a thoroughly miserable threesome—blinking in the sun, breathing in air that was thoroughly free of dankness, and layering clothing and sunscreen in all modes of weather to keep from tanning, freckling, or burning.

A month and a half before the beginning of the summer holiday, the long-anticipated Gryffindor-Slytherin match took place. Theirs was, understandably, the fiercest rivalry, with the result that their games tended to be the most exciting, interesting, and (occasionally) violent. That in itself would have been inducement enough for an ardent hockey fan like Meli to attend, but the game looked to be even more interesting because Zarekael had been chosen to referee it. The choice had been protested by a number of Gryffindors until they noticed that no one in Slytherin was rejoicing; Zarekael, unlike Snape, was known to be painfully just, even to the detriment of his own House.

So it was that a sunny Saturday morning in early May found Meli blinking, overheating, paranoid about freckles—and smiling in anticipation. Snape, who sat beside her, seemed a bit more than usually on-edge, and he did not share her love for her athletic violence—particularly when it might fall to him to punish the entertaining parties later.

Zarekael was likewise uncomfortable, and Meli suspected that there was more to his discomfiture than the prospect of riding his broomstick (an activity he did not at all relish). He had only just begun to emerge from his isolation, so she couldn't be sure, but she didn't have to wait long to find confirmation of her suspicions.

A few minutes later, when the teams came out and took their positions, she saw that the two Seekers hovered across from one another, devoting more attention to glaring at each other than to the snitch when it was released. The Potter-Malfoy rivalry had grown stiffer all year, and now the two would face off in a game in which anything could happen.

No, she thought, her smile fading, I wouldn't want to referee this one, either. Poor Ruthvencairn!

The quaffle was released, and the pandemonium began. Someone from Gryffindor caught it, then zipped off, a red blur suddenly surrounded by green. Harry and Malfoy retreated from the hornets' nest of activity to watch for the snitch, leaving Weasley hovering by himself in front of Gryffindor's goal rings.

Zarekael, too, hung back from the action and a little higher, benefiting from the clearer view it offered him. He hovered near the center of the pitch, his back to Malfoy, Harry, and Ron . . .

A tiny gold flash zipped past. Harry, seeing it, took off after it . . . then suddenly stopped dead in the air, a thoroughly bewildered look on his face. His features opened up in utter astonishment as he seemed suddenly to realize that he was over a hundred feet up in the air.

Meli's eyes had already tracked to Malfoy, who sat at ease atop his broomstick, his wand still out and a self-satisfied smile on his face. She reached for her own wand, then stopped when Snape drew his, recognizing a potential Death Eater in-fight when she saw one.

"Expeliarmus!" Snape said aloud, and Malfoy nearly fell from his broomstick as his wand was ripped from his hand. Snape intercepted it, but he had no time to do or say anything further.

"Harry!" Ron screamed, and Meli whipped around in time to see the Keeper head downward at a steep angle. Harry had toppled from his broomstick, in all likelihood thanks to a bludger that was now rocketing away.

Zarekael had not been idle; he, too, was speeding towards the ground to catch Harry. It was fortunate that he did, for there was no way Ron could have made it in time. Zarekael leveled off just in time to intercept Gryffindor's fallen Seeker, whom he lowered the rest of the way to the grass before calling a halt to the game.

Fortunately for Draco Malfoy, Harry survived and came away more or less unscathed. Had the outcome been otherwise, expulsion would have been the least of his worries; there was no doubt in anyone's mind that Ron would have killed him before he could be arrested for murder. What was less widely known was that Ron would have moved far too slowly to have the satisfaction of doing the deed himself. Snape and Zarekael would have beaten him to it, with the full approval of Voldemort and the understanding (if not outright approval) of the Order of the Phoenix. Neither Voldemort nor the two spies could afford for Hogwarts to be under Aurors' scrutiny just then.

Harry's condition was actually less "unscathed" than Dumbledore led the students to believe. As it happened, he had taken the bludger to the head. The resulting injury wasn't the worst Poppy had seen ("At least he's conscious," she sighed. "Oliver Wood was in a coma for a fortnight when a bludger got him!"), but it was bad enough that he was confined to the hospital wing for several days while he recovered from a nasty concussion.

Malfoy, meanwhile, was to serve detentions for the rest of the term. His first week was with Snape, who made him thoroughly miserable; his second, with McGonagall, who made him wish he'd stayed with Snape. Meli was supposed to administer his third week of detentions, but a fortnight after the quidditch game, something happened that prevented that from going as planned.