Mephistopheles
By- TheGreyLady (immaculatecalypso@hotmail.com)
Chapter 15- Unsolved Answers
Being on amicable terms with Severus again proved to be a blessing in many ways. He was by no means fluent in Greek but he could pick out specific words in the language and piece simple sentences together with a little effort. Flamel had yet to return. It had been over a week. Hermione couldn't help but be concerned despite her mind's efforts to placate her.
But then again, how easy could it be to bury a friend of over one hundred years?
She'd left the book with Severus, hoping that he could make sense of the jumbled foreign letters. He studied it often, preferring to stay secluded within her room instead of seeking the company of those around him. She shouldn't have expected anything else from him; Severus was a man who was enraptured by his solitude. He seemed fascinated by the texts though he wouldn't tell her why.
She had a sinking suspicion that she didn't really want to know.
Sitting in the kitchen with Harry and Ron, Hermione tried to ease her mind with some mind-numbing entertainment. The boys were well suited for that. Harry was trying to best Ron in a game of chess, which was always an entertaining sight. Ron, ever the strategist, would appear to be beaten only to trap Harry in checkmate two moves later.
Harry was busy calling Ron everything but a kind and wonderful person.
Harry wasn't a good loser but-- then again-- Ron wasn't exactly a very good winner. Things evened out.
The boys fell suddenly silent. She looked up to see the gaunt and unrevealing face of Severus. "I may have found something in the book," he said. Everyone waited in hushed apprehension for him to continue. "I can't be sure but it looks similar to what you've told me…" he stopped speaking but a look of ill-masked concern crossed his face.
"And?" Hermione asked.
Severus sighed, "If I'm correct, we're in a world of trouble."
"I knew it," Harry groaned. "The second this whole thing started, I said that I knew this would end in a world of trouble."
"He did say that," Ron added. At Hermione's disgusted sigh, he added, "What kind of trouble, Severus?" Hermione smiled a little at that. Ron, the quarrelsome redhead, was trying to put himself on amicable terms with Severus. It was mildly cute.
Severus took a deep breath and said, "I think I've found the passage detailing the room… but we may have stumbled into something much, much worse than we had anticipated." He paused, trying to find the right words to begin.
"I cannot read the entire text but a certain phrase summed it up. 'Enas pou troei tis psuches.'" He bowed his head for a moment. "'One that eats souls.' I suppose that should explain most of it."
Hermione stared at Severus. In a flash, she replayed the final moments of her visit to the room. The presence in the pool, whatever it had been that grabbed her foot, the skeletal hands breaking the surface of the blood…
She'd been standing in a pool full of…
"Dementors," Harry finally said.
"But why?" Ron exclaimed, aghast. "How?"
"It makes sense," Severus said clinically as he took a seat. "You take every part of a man except for his body and soul, and build a creature that has to consume souls to survive. Little is known about Dementors; I daresay this could be the reason."
"So you think that room was designed for creating Dementors," Harry asked, leaving Hermione thinking about just how absurd the words sounded. Severus nodded grimly. "So we need to…"
Hermione interrupted, "We need to wait for Nicholas. We don't know for sure what the book says. If we rush in there, we could end up dead."
"I'm with Hermione," Ron chimed in.
"We may not have that kind of time!" Harry argued. "The Dementors aren't loose yet, so they're probably not completed. If we wait, we could lose whatever chance we have!"
Ron shook his head wearily. "That's true," he said.
Hermione took her voice up a notch. "But if we dash in there without knowing the facts, we'll be at an even greater disadvantage!"
"Maybe we should…" Ron began.
Harry quickly cut him off and matched Hermione's tone, letting his voice take a sharp edge as it rose in volume. "We don't know what Fudge is up to, Hermione! You bloody know as well as I do that it can't be anything good if he isn't plastering it across The Daily Prophet!"
She shook her head in disgust at Harry's irrationality and retorted in a near yell, "All we have is speculation from a text that may not even be the one we're looking for! We don't know anything!
"We have to get proof of the room to the Americans so they can do something about it!" Harry spat back, rising from his chair and daring her to challenge him.
She stood and stalked over to him. Even though Harry towered over her, she was still determined to stare him down. "We have to know exactly what's in the room before we try to prove anything!"
"We can't risk the Dementors reappearing!" Harry yelled.
"We can't risk our lives!"
"SILENCE!" Severus' voice echoed through the hollow halls, seizing Hermione and Harry's attention. "Sit!" he commanded.
This was not Severus. This was Snape. Without another word, the two sat down and stared at the former professor, waiting for him to speak again. Hermione found it odd that the instincts he'd drilled into them as students still held after so much time.
It was sort of nice to have something left unbroken throughout this catastrophe that she called her life.
Long moments passed as the three former students waited for Severus to say his piece.
"Neither of you are wrong. We do need to know what's in the book before we do anything but we also can't waste time waiting for Nicholas to return," he said. "Potter, get your invisibility cloak. We're going to Hogwarts."
* * *
If she could catalog this, Hermione would probably file it under We've-got-nothing-left-to-lose-so-let's-do-something-suicidal… along with dozens of other escapades from her time in this very building.
Aurors were everywhere, patrolling the halls and searching the shadows.
Even with the advantage of invisibility, this was a dangerous game. Severus and Hermione crouched beneath Flamel's cloak. Harry was sharing his own cloak with Ron.
The only seen or, rather, unseen problem with invisibility was that she and Severus had no clue where Harry and Ron were. They gave subtle audible clues occasionally but the school was too quiet to chance anything overt.
Creeping quietly through the silent halls, Severus vigilantly kept her between the wall and his body. Each footstep was painstakingly placed for the obvious reasons. Any slip-up could result in their incarceration.
Slowly, they made their way to the Headmaster's office. Professor McGonagall had been named Headmistress after Albus' disappearance; they'd have to tell her of his fate.
Hermione wasn't looking forward to that discussion.
As they turned the final corner leading to the office, they nearly ran headfirst into an old acquaintance.
Mad-Eye Moody and his magical eye, the eye that could see even the invisible. He'd quit shortly after the war with Voldemort ended. She hadn't known that he'd decided to begin working again. It didn't surprise her, however. Moody had quit at least three times during her sixth year and another two in her seventh.
He claimed that he was too old to continue as an Auror but he always came back within a few weeks after some incident that he would refuse to talk about. She'd heard through Charlie Weasley that he'd nearly blown up a local pub when he thought he had seen a face looming in the fireplace. He threw a severing charm at the figure.
Unfortunately, it was a gas fireplace and completely unconnected to the Floo network. Nobody was hurt in the small explosion, thankfully. He'd returned to the Order's headquarters and reenlisted that night, indignant and cocky as ever.
"Being paranoid is better than being dead," he'd said remorselessly. "I'd rather know what's trying to kill me."
No one ever mentioned it again. Now they stood before the very man who could expose them.
Even though each froze, they may as well have been prancing about in fluorescent pink jumpsuits screaming, "Look at me! Look at me! Look at MEEEEEEEEE!"
Moody's eye stopped and focused on the space Hermione assumed Harry and Ron hid and then onto her own figure. Alastor Moody had a very strong dislike for Severus. She hoped he wouldn't allow that to influence his actions.
With his magical eye trained on Severus, Moody turned to the opulent statue and intoned, "Habeas Fortitudo*"
Moody pretended to examine the wall as they climbed the stair to Dumbledore's… Minerva's office. The professor sat at her desk enraptured in paperwork.
"Alastor?" Professor McGonagall said, searching the room.
"No, Minerva," Severus said as he doffed the cloak, "just an old friend looking for a favor."
"Severus! Miss Granger!" Minerva exclaimed. Harry and Ron revealed themselves as well much to the Headmistress' delight.
"Now is hardly the time for happy reunions, Minerva," Severus said. "We have a text that needs to be translated immediately."
"Immediately? By whom?"
"It's Greek, so I suppose Binns is the best choice. The sooner this can be translated, the better. We may have another crisis on our hands." Severus replied as he opened the book to show her.
Minerva sighed as she stared at the symbols. "Get to the Room of Requirement," she said, pointing absently to the door. "Only Alastor knows about it. You should be safe there. I'll bring this to you as soon as I can."
"Thank you, Minerva. You have no idea what this means to me."
"If you've involved yourself, Severus, I doubt it can be all that good," she replied smoothly. "I'll have Binns hurry."
Without another word, McGonagall and the book were gone.
* * *
Hermione really disliked the Room of Requirement. Naturally, it could be a very helpful tool but for the most part, it tended to be more of a pain.
They had all decided that Harry should create the room as it was the only way Hermione and Ron knew how to find it. Severus, who had only heard of the room, had to follow Hermione's careful guidance to enter.
And so they sat in a suite very similar to the one they had in Mexico, the only difference being that the guest room had been quartered off into two separate bedrooms. Harry had, obviously, taken note of her reconciliation with Severus.
Even though she knew much about magic, she still was astounded at how the classroom for Dumbledore's Army readily transformed into this. She sat on the couch with Severus, clutching his hand, waiting for the undoubtedly bad news.
It wasn't until she looked at his hands that she realized how different they were. Her hands, unmarred by calluses and scars, looked so dainty compared to his. Severus had the hands of a man that used them and her hands looked innocent and untainted in comparison.
While her hands had never cast an Unforgivable, she felt that her eyes had seen more than enough of them to wipe the naivety from her being as quickly as a speck of dust would be cleaned from a window.
Despite the lack of time, the group still found themselves waiting impatiently as the sun, unconcerned with their predicament, turned the sky into reds and purples before beginning to fade into its inevitable disappearance.
It was funny in a 'time doesn't care,' sort of way. It was odd that she allowed herself to be comforted-- even if Cornelius Fudge brought back the Dementors, the sun would still rise and set on its schedule-- but then again, lots of things had been oddly funny recently.
She clutched Severus' hand just a little tighter. He squeezed her hand softly and sighed as he watched Harry and Ron play Wizard's Chess. Hermione knew that they should be spending this time planning for the worst but couldn't deny the boys some much-needed distraction.
The blackness of night fell soon enough. The darkness wrapped itself around the nervous inhabitants the room. Harry and Ron excused themselves to sleep. Hermione had a sinking suspicion that they anticipated bad news.
She could hardly blame them. Something was rotten in England and it was foolish to think otherwise. Fudge, whether in benevolence or evil, was overseeing something dreadful. Ignorance would serve her naught. She needed to face the facts. Something was terribly wrong and it once again fell upon her and her friends to rectify it.
Life wasn't fair.
A soft "Ahem" distracted her from her angst. Professor McGonagall stood in the doorway clutching a stack of parchments as she would a vial of holy water amongst a hoard of vampires.
"Have you found Albus?" she asked with a strange mixture of hope and trepidation in her eyes.
Severus rose to his feet and reached into his pocket to reveal a gold necklace. A gold, ruby-encrusted skeleton key dangled from the chain. Minerva's eyes slid shut as he folded her hands around the precious metal. "He said you would understand," were the only words that he uttered into the dead silence.
"Was he in pain?" her strained voice asked.
Severus lowered his head for a moment before replying, "Not anymore."
Her greyed head sunk under the weight of the revelation. "Thank you, Severus. Thank you for bringing me closure."
"Rest assured I would rather be bringing you happier news."
"Sometimes," she said sadly, "there are no happy endings. Good does not always win." Her voice cracked. "And love does not conquer all."
With those eerie words, Minerva quickly fled the premises. Severus, though visibly shaken from the normally cheerful professor's statement, thumbed through the translated text in pensive silence. Hermione was left to contemplate the words of her mentor.
Someone will die…she stared at Severus. Suddenly, as though she had been transported to another plane of reality, she stared at the face of another Severus.
He lay upon a stone floor, next to something that looked suspiciously like the pool of blood she'd encountered in the room. Blood leaked from his eyes, ears and mouth; bruises were peeking from the edges of his torn ropes. He gaped at her like she was the blessed angel of death before his eyes softly closed and his chest stopped heaving for breath.
God, no… She shook the thoughts from her mind. Hermione had never believed in foreseeing and now would hardly be the time to start in such a mindless venture. Her mind was simply playing tricks on her and nothing more. She stared at her would-be lover again.
Severus sat, reading the words she couldn't bring herself to look at. She knew that Harry was right; they needed to stop Fudge. It was the beginning of the end, she knew. Tomorrow, her fate would be determined but now, as concrete and unyielding as it seemed, her future was malleable. She still had a choice. Tomorrow would bring another almost certain death into her existence, be it her own or of someone she loved.
She wouldn't ask why. 'Why' was just a question that wouldn't yield any answers. It wasn't important anymore. They needed to stop whatever evil was going on in the Ministry. Why? Reasons simply didn't matter any longer.
"What does it say?" she asked.
Severus looked up at her like he'd forgotten her presence. She fought the urge to roll her eyes. Handing the parchments to her, he sat back and waited for her to read:
… something strange happened. After 28 days had passed, the pool began to quiet and die out. The attending wizards (Exact translation "Magic Holders" – Binns) were baffled and afraid that the captives were staging an escape. It wasn't until a weak-willed wizard by the name of Ampelos entered the area that it began to become lively again. Ampelos soon fell into a fit of shaking (seizures? – Binns) before rising calmly and throwing himself into the pool.
I was only a boy when these events transpired but they remain in my mind. The images my father, Kephalos, and I, confounded by the terrifying sight unraveling before us, will stain me forever.
The pool began to bubble more vigorously than ever. The body of Ampelos was spat unceremoniously from the blood. The mild-mannered man looked as though the flesh had been ripped from his body. His heart, genitals, nose, eyes, ears, mouth, hands and throat had been torn away. The pool continued to thrive for another 28 days until it began to die out again.
It was correctly assumed that the pool needed regular sacrifices in order to sustain the energy needed to captivate these criminal men. Another sacrifice was supplied and the pool lived again. These victims were provided for the sake of the greater good until another strange occurrence took place.
After 270 days had passed, something unforeseen happened. The lives of these criminals seemed to decay. Their essences faded from noticeable existence. From the otherwise empty pool, hideous creatures were borne. They looked to be long dead. Flesh, muscles, and organs were missing from the fiends' bodies.
Looking to the past, it should have been obvious the observers that this would happen. Many reported feelings of fear and stress when approaching the pool. Some even said that they had seen hands or skulls rising above the blood when they were panicked.
These claims were ignored and blamed on taking too much Belladonna. Oh, how foolish they were to ignore the testimonies of seven people, nearly one third of the group.
We know little of these beings that emerge aside from the following:
These "Life Eaters" (rough translation- Binns) will feed from the essence of all that is good in man. When it nears a living being, all happiness seems to be forgotten. If its lips mar a man's, he will turn undead (The exact translation is "Dead but alive" – Binns.)
Something to be considered is the amount of time that it takes to complete this transformation. It is almost the same amount of time required for a woman to birth a child. Are we bearing these beasts with our magic?
These creatures instill an overwhelming feeling of dread in everyone they near. Men cannot overcome these feelings and revert to infantile (exact translation "baby-like" – Binns) states of mind. Women carrying children will miscarry if exposed to them too long and young children will have nightmares for months. Babies, who seldom have negative memories, have either died or become seriously corrupted when they reach middle-adulthood after being confronted by the Life-Eaters.
It is impossible to reverse this procedure. Many great wizards have tried to rid the world of the evil that we have wrought upon it. These creatures can only be controlled by one who practices the dark, making them a perfect army for those who wish mankind harm.
We know not how long it would take for them to die naturally. The first ritual was performed over two hundred years ago (A Greek year is 336 days (based from the lunar cycle) and a modern year is 365 days so this calculation would be 67,200 days or approximately 184 modern years – Binns.) Since the advent of these creatures, these monsters show no signs of age or fatigue. They continue to thrive and terrorize innocent people with no remorse or regret. Therefore, I propose the theory that they can live indefinitely so long as living people are around for it to feed upon.
There are no obvious ways to destroy these creatures. We have burned them and tried Unforgivables (exact translation "Damned Magic" which is a common phrase for Unforgivable Curses – Binns) and nothing has killed them. We've decided to ban them to an island well away from cultured civilization. When we discover how to destroy them, we will do so with a relentless fist. Until then, we can only continue to explore the test subject we've managed to subdue.
My comrades (Colleagues or coworkers would be more accurate – Binns) scoff at my conjectures but I stand steadfast in my beliefs. These monsters will be the fall of mankind. I only hope that future generations will absolve us these trespasses against the very fabric of our moral fiber.
May the gods pardon us for the evil that we have unleashed upon the world and may my descendants forgive me for my inability to annihilate it.
-- Aristides, son of Kephalos
Hermione didn't know what to think. The only words she could force past her lips were, "Fudge utilized them…"
"More than likely, knowing exactly what they are," Severus finished without a pause. She looked dumbly up at him. "Are you ready?"
The implications of those words were more than she could bear. "No," she said. Bowing her head and fighting her cracking voice, she brokenly asked, "How soon can we leave?"
"How soon is now?" Severus replied morosely.
*Habeas Fortitudo- Latin. 'You have the strength'
Author's Notes- I'd like to start by apologizing to the readers for the late update. I don't really want to go into it but let's just say that someone I really cared about is trying to take me for more than I'm worth (a LOT more than I'm worth, monetarily.) I've been doing a lot of soul searching and trying to figure out exactly what a friendship is and if it's worth the amount of money that I stand to lose in this frivolous lawsuit.
Thank you's will be up later today