Chapter Nine: Attack In Salem
Seth and Chanteau avoided Madison and Angelique on the dance floor. Angelique was steering Madison rather forcibly, and his two friends decided to spare Madison the embarrassment.
It was the last day before the holidays officially began, and the school semester was going to go out with a bang. It always did. Though Coko was seen as old and crotchety, he was very in tune with the social needs of the kids. Some of them suspected that Coko had drunken a very badly made aging potion. It had happened to some people recently.
The music stopped, and a multitude of different sized tables appeared. The dances were held on the Quidditch area, nowhere else being big enough to comfortably accommodate the entire student body.
Coko's voice boomed out over the area. "There will be a brief stoppage of dance music so that you can eat without worry of being trampled on, then it will come back on, and you can dance until you die, and we will be better off."
"AMEN TO THAT!" Madison, Seth, and a bunch of the house Gente members yelled. Angelique hugged Madison. "This is why I love you so much!" She squealed. Madison pried her off, a bit embarrassed, and she led him to a two-person table.
Seth and Chanteau were also at a table like that. "So… What are you doing over the holiday?" Chanteau asked.
"I'm staying here, with Madison." Seth responded. "Why?" Seth shrugged. "I like it better here. And my mother doesn't like me being home." Chanteau looked a bit concerned. "Why is that?" Seth shrugged again. "She thinks there's too many of us." He said, referring to the fact that he was the fifth born child in his family, not including his niece. "I'm sorry," Chanteau told him. Seth shrugged. "I'm used to it," He said.
After a pause, Seth asked, "And what are you doing over the break?" Chanteau rolled her eyes. "My parents are forcing me to come home, though I'd rather stay here. They said they wanted a 'family Christmas'." She explained. Then it dawned on her that she probably shouldn't say stuff like that around Seth.
She knew he didn't have a very good family life, but she had never thought on it. Seth would probably give a lot to have a family Christmas.
"It's okay," Seth said, "I don't like the lot of them very much anyway." Chanteau snickered nervously, and steered the conversation away from that topic.
"Why weren't you dancing?" Emily asked, after sitting down at the table the three friends them had agreed to sit at. Aibyoukai shrugged, and Marit said, "Werewolves aren't allowed to have social lives."
Emily snorted. "You've been thinking about the Madison and Seth incident, haven't you?"
"No," Marit began, "Well yes, but that's not what's angered me. I got some news from Melhane in the Underground. Apparently a group of us were killed during a rescue."
The Underground was an isolated community of werewolves whose purpose was to save as many werewolves as they could and bring them to the town to try and lead a normal life. Though Marit had never lived there, her parents being fine with her condition, she had visited, and took an immediate liking to Melhane, one of the elder werewolves.
"Why do you accept mail from her?" Aibyoukai asked. "She's my friend," Marit told her. "We know that," Aibyoukai explained, "But all the mail you get from her is so damn depressing." Marit shrugged. "It's just good to that I'm not the only one with troubles."
Then a great crashing sound boomed out, and the music stopped. There was complete silence except for the cries of pain coming from the center of the room.
A few of the giant chandeliers that had been hanging from the stalactites on the ceiling seemed to have fallen right into a bunch of tables. Marit looked over the commotion. "They can't have all survived that," She whispered.
Chanteau looked not over the crashed tables, but over the rest of the crowd. "Wait a minute!" She snapped. "Madison and Angelique were sitting in their!" She yelled, then sprung into a run to find her friend. Seth called out, "Wait!" but Chanteau wasn't listening.
She found Madison's telltale black dragon-skin boots sticking out from under a table that had been completely smashed by a chandelier. Tears forming in her eyes, she slowly began levitating some of the stuff off of her friend.
The teachers began forcing the students back to their houses. Some had to be removed forcibly, but others went solemnly.
Professor Wright, the head of House Gente, came up to Chanteau. "You're supposed to go to your house," He told her. Chanteau wiped the tears out of her eyes and nodded. "I know."
Professor Wright sighed, and started helping Chanteau levitate stuff off of Madison. Eventually they came to him.
He had several gashes across his back where the broken wood had stabbed into him, and a piece of glass was embedded in his thigh. Professor Wright wordlessly levitated him off of the ground and up to the Healer's Ward.
Under Madison was Angelique. Madison had seen the chandeliers fall, and had thrown himself over his girlfriend to keep her from being hurt. It had worked. Angelique stood and walked up to the Healer's Ward, trembling and sobbing the whole way.
Chanteau wiped her eyes and stopped sobbing. She knew Madison was going to be all right. But it didn't seem fair. He had been injured shortly before, by what Madison had never told her, and now again.
Chanteau knew that Madison's arm would never be right again. He had blacked out during a Quidditch match. A bludger had hit his injured arm, a hit Madison would normally have been able to shrug off, and he had blacked out from the pain. It would be like this until he died, Chanteau thought.
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"You know what this means?" Coko asked of the two former aurors, and the still active one. Professor Rhodes had just retired from the demanding job a few years ago. Professor Cada, a man who was much older than he looked, had been retired from the job ever since he had gone over the age limit. And Davver, the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, was still one, assigned to keep Salem safe.
The three of them nodded. "The chandeliers couldn't have fallen except by means of dark magic," Coko stated, even though the three knew the information anyway.
"If he's still here, we'll find him," Professor Rhodes told the headmaster. "Good," Coko said, nodding. "I'll make sure the students are kept tightly under control until this mess is fixed. And make sure the wards on the entrance to the forest are fine."
The three men nodded, and set out to their task of making sure the school was safe.
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"I guess the whole thing was settled, then. And how long was I unconscious?" Madison asked. "Two days," Dugger responded. Madison looked around, and was a bit surprised to find that Angelique wasn't sitting beside him.
Dugger sat down where Angelique normally would have. Seeing Madison's surprise, Dugger said, "They just let us out for the holidays, and your Angelique person was being forced to go home.
"How do you know?" Madison asked, surprised that Dugger would know this bit of information that even he didn't know. "I overheard her in the hallways," Dugger explained. Madison shrugged and winced. "How's about getting me out of here?" He asked of his friend. Dugger shrugged and helped his friend to limp to the Gente common room.
They were the only people there, strangely. A lot of people had gone home for the holidays. And Seth was likely out on the Quidditch field. Dugger set to brewing the same potion he had given Madison for his arm, and Madison fell back into his chair.
"So what was the whole incident about?" Madison asked. "A dark wizard wanted to cause some commotion. He did so pretty well, it seems. Killed seven people." Madison looked a bit surprised, though, considering his state, he shouldn't have been.
"Any from house Gente?" He asked. Dugger nodded, adding another ingredient to his potion. "Yeah, Erik Pitt. And that's all I know about the whole situation."
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"And here's a pass to the Haunted Library," Professor Cada said, handing said pass over to Seth.
"Why are you giving this to me?" Seth asked with wonder. Cada sighed, and his shoulders drooped, showing his advanced age. "I won't lie to you." He told him. "Some girl in your house, a first year, had a vision of some Dark Wizard come back from the dead."
Cada took a moment to collect his thoughts. "We're on the cusp of a war, and we'll need all the help we can get." Seth nodded. "I'll do my best. And when do you think this war will start?" He asked.
Cada shrugged, pushing his chair back from his desk, and stood to stretch. "A while, and, if I'm right, not within this year." Seth nodded, and stood as well.
"Can I get you not to tell anyone of this?" Cada asked. Seth smirked as he walked to the door. "Most of it, anyway." Cada chuckled. "You know," He said, "I was in House Gente when I came here."
Seth slowly turned around. "You don't act like it." Cada chuckled again. "I've read too many dark books." Seth chuckled.
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"How do we resurrect her?" Vexter asked.
They were in the massive tomb of Raven's. The Dark Witch had been buried along with all of her tomes of evil magic, and Wildes was poring through one of them right now. She cast it aside, and picked up another.
"One of these books will have the instructions in them." Vexter nodded. He looked around at the tomb. He didn't like the look of the place.
There were human bones strewn about everywhere. Bloodstains marked almost everything near the tomb. The coffin lid in the center of the room was slightly ajar, but Vexter didn't dare look at it.
"Why are there so many bones and bloodstains in here?" He asked, shivering slightly. "Get used to it," Wildes told him. "And Raven was killed here." Vexter nodded.
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Hannah snapped out of her vision. She, unlike Madison, had gone home for the holidays. She was very careful not to mention Madison's wounds; lest her parents call him home and she suffer her brother's wrath.
She sighed. Hannah disliked having visions so often. They were usually minor glimpses of things, and this was the first big one in a while.
She jotted all of it down on a piece of parchment, and sent it to Coko via her owl Bobo. (Madison had been the one to name it)