Chapter 10 – The Mountain

The three friends, guided by their Magickal World professor Frey Azaki, made very good time on their way to the summit of Mt. Muldoon.

"One of you tell me, please, why we are seeing red sandstones in this formation instead of the gneiss and schist we see closer to the school?"

Severus raised his hand out of habit, and everyone laughed in good humor. "This area buckled up when continents collided around a billion years ago. This also created basins and low areas through which rivers flowed. The mountains eroded and it all washed into these river basins and layered and layered until they were pressed into sandstone."

"Ooooh isn't he smaaaaart," James grinned. "Fifty bazillion points for Slytherin."

"Hey, that's my line," Professor Azaki laughed. "Ten points will do nicely, Severus. Well done."

"Of course it was," Severus returned, unable to resist returning the zinger. "I think that given the geologic history of this area, it makes sense to tell Potter to pound sand."

All four groaned at the dreadful pun.

Lily reached over and patted Sev's face in a gesture of spontaneous affection. He had been feeling rather chilly so far, but his face felt positively hot just then.

"You're blushing," Lily said in her sweet-natured way. "It looks so cute!"

Sev ducked his head and grinned in sheer delight, and to his heart's content. No one would be able to see his face behind that wall of black hair, after all!

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After enjoying a snack of pineapple cottage cheese, grapes, and bananas (as well as the lemon creams the Headmaster had donated to the cause), Professor Azaki showed the students how to tie themselves together for their mutual safety. "This is called the belay," he said. "All right, Severus, climb up to that rock up there and fix the line."

Fueled by Sugar Infusion a la Dumbledore, Sev had no trouble scrambling up the side of the rock face and tying his line securely around a large boulder.

"Okay, Lily and James, go ahead and clip on." They did so, and were very proud of themselves.

"Well done, students," Professor Azaki said. "If we were climbing a mountain with a greater angle of ascent, we would need to do this. All right, all three of you can – "

"Sir," James interrupted. "Are there garnets in sandstone?"

The teacher shook his head. "Uh, no. They are associated with extreme metamorphism, and that process takes place deep within the Earth."

"Well, what is this, then?" James pointed at a nearby rock face.

"Oh, it's so pretty!" Lily said, and reached over to touch it.

"NO! NO! DON'T – "Severus shrieked, but it was too late.

The three children – joined together by the rope – vanished.

In the sky directly above Mt. Muldoon, the image of a skull entwined with a snake appeared.

That was when Professor Azaki began to scream.

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For the first time in years, Albus Dumbledore was afraid.

Frey had made his way back to the Castle, raving that all three children were gone, leaving their wands and packs behind. "Where are they?" the professor had shrieked over and over, clinging to the Headmaster for dear life.

Albus had immediately led the exhausted and terrified man to his office. After calming the distraught wizard, Albus pushed him close to his scrying ball and bade him look with his mind as well as his eyes.

Both saw a swirling snowstorm and the three students huddled together in the middle of it.

"Now, young ones, where in the World are you?" Albus whispered, his fingers delicately holding the outside of the quartz ball. A series of phrases came to his mind like the answer to a prayer:

"Curious as you may be
As children three you see
High up Cotopaxi -- "

Dumbledore recited the verse for Frey.

"Oh gods, Albus! Where on Cotopaxi?" he hissed, his anxiety clouding his psychic eye.

The swirling storm now resolved into coordinates written in a tiny and ornate crabbed scrawl; Albus wrote them down before they vanished back into mist.

Both wizards then saw the mountain itself and the great red beacon that beckoned them to join the lost children.

Professor Azaki trembled and grabbed at Dumbledore's robes once again. "If they're on Cotopaxi, they're dying! Their bodies can't acclimate at such an altitude in such a short time period! They'll only get a third as much oxygen there as they do here! They'll freeze -- "

"I know, my boy," Dumbledore said, holding the professor's jittering hands. "If you would be kind enough to unhand me, I'll go fetch them."

Dumbledore turned, and his hands melted into the scrying ball itself. It grew, glittering, until it encompassed the old wizard entirely.

The Magickal World professor now stood alone once again.

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The wind screamed down from the summit of Mt. Cotopaxi, the highest peak in the Wizarding world at 29,528 feet. The children – grossly underdressed for even its lower latitudes and gasping for breath – clung to one another.

"GARNET!" Severus shrieked, feeling his fingers beginning to freeze.

Lily and James looked at him dully, not comprehending.

"PORTKEY!" the Slytherin boy screamed.

"WHERE?" Lily screamed back.

"COTOPAXI!" Sev cried. He recognized their location from pictures in one of the library books back at Hogwarts. He looked up to see a vertical face of crumbling schist above them; and then the dead white of the screaming gale and the ultraviolet radiation from the Sun struck him snow-blind.

Severus Snape began to cry as he snuggled closer to his freezing friends. His tears immediately froze, creating little balls of ice that hung like grapes on his eyelashes.

"HELP US!" James screamed to anyone who might hear them.

Then the wind tore the words away and the children remained all alone – Severus with his snow blindness and James with his freezing hands and feet. Lily was hopelessly entangled in the fixed line, desperately praying for rescue until high altitude cerebral edema smeared her thoughts into nonsense.

Sev felt Dark tendrils digging into him; teasing, insinuating, and inviting him to disapparate to some terrible place and for some terrible reason.

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