Balance: by rabbit
Disclaimer: Anything you recognize isn't mine.
Chapter 10: Into the Woods
Summary: The rescue party has to make a hard decision.
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Harry was so startled, he dropped the lantern as he jumped to his feet and turned to see what had touched him. It went out. For a moment, everything was dark except for two glowing red eyes near his feet. Then the lightning flashed and Harry could breathe again. "Mrs. Norris!" He held out his arms, and the scrawny caretakers cat jumped up into them, butting her head against his chest. Never in his life had Harry expected to be glad to see her, but now he stroked her soggy fur and wished that he had some of Hermione's earplugs for her. "I'm so glad you're not a werewolf," he told her. "What are you doing in the forest?"
She yowled at him and set her teeth gently around his thumb, tugging at it twice in the same direction before pausing to look up at him, and then doing the same again.
"Are you trying to answer me?" he asked, and she nodded as if she were human.
"Harry!" Elisa shouted, catching him by the shoulder. "Are you all right? What happened to the lantern?"
"I'm sorry. I dropped it," Harry said, looking up to find Fritz and Draco just arriving. "Look. It's Mrs. Norris. She just came out of nowhere."
"Mrs. Norris?" the others exclaimed. Draco frowned. "Filch must be here somewhere," he said.
Immediately the scrawny cat yowled again and leaped from Harry's arms to Draco, who caught her with an astonished look before she touched her nose against his cheek and then jumped once more to land on the ground and pace up and down, yowling with impatience.
"I think she wants us to follow her," Fritz said.
"But what about Professor Snape?" Draco protested.
"Maybe she knows where he is," Elisa said, already following the cat on foot. Fritz bent to pick up the lantern and lit it before following the Ravenclaw girl. Draco and Harry exchanged worried looks.
"We'd better go too," Harry said. "I don't think Mrs. Norris would have come far."
"At least she's sort of going the right way," Draco said. "But I don't think she's taking us to the teachers."
"I don't either," Harry admitted. "But if Filch is out here…" he shrugged. "If it takes too long, we'll keep going after Snape and McGonagall."
Draco looked at him, curious. "That doesn't sound like you, Potter. I thought you were trying to rescue everyone, right down to the rats."
"I am," Harry said. "But without Professor McGonagall and Snape, I don't think there's going to be any point." He looked after Fritz and Elisa, thoughtfully, and realized that the lantern had stopped moving. "Look."
They caught up after a few seconds of flight and found Fritz and Elisa kneeling by a fallen tree, Mrs. Norris pacing along one of the branches. And under the tangle of branches, just visible in the lantern light, they saw Filch, looking even more pained than usual and quite unconscious.
"I think," said Draco, "that this is going to take some time."
"I think it's going to take more time than Dumbledore's got," Harry said unhappily.
"What do you mean?" Fritz asked.
"Madame Pomfrey was talking to Professor Trelawney. She said she needed Snape and McGonagall to keep Dumbledore from slipping away," Harry said. "We've got to hurry."
"We can't leave Filch alone here. He's hurt," Elisa said. "Look, I'll stay. You three go on."
"But we need four of us," Harry protested weakly, hating the idea of leaving Elisa alone with the unconscious caretaker.
"No, we don't. Not really. Elisa can stay here and I'll get some help from the castle. Look, I've found Filch's lantern. You can take this one," Fritz said, handing it to Draco. "It's you two who are the seekers. You seek out the professors and then signal for more help if you need it."
"Signals!" Harry exclaimed, pulling off the pack George had given him. "I forgot." He found two of the muggle fireworks and gave them to Fritz. "You stay with Elisa and use these. George will send help when he sees them."
"Great," Fritz took the fireworks. "Listen, you should leave blazes behind you as you go, so you can find the way back more easily. One go ahead like before, but as the other one catches up, stop every few trees along and set some leaves glowing with the foxfire spell. Do you need me to teach it to you?"
"I know it," Harry said. They'd learned it in Herbology. Wasn't it last month? Or had it been earlier.
"So do I," Draco pulled on Harry's arm. "Come on." He started scanning for the voices again, his thin face intense. "Come on, Professor, say something."
Harry gave once last glance to Fritz and Elisa, already discussing exactly how to go about rescuing Filch, and then took position beside Draco, listening. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. He closed his eyes, listening all the harder.
"But it doesn't make sense!" The voice was younger than his own. Could there be another student out here?"
"Try again," That was McGonagall. Harry raised his hand quickly, to mark the right way, and hesitated when the young voice came again.
"I thought teachers were supposed to explain things." It wasn't quite a whine, but it did sound petulant.
"If you'd done the reading…"
"I did. It didn't make sense. It kept on going on about this stupid notion of 'looking deep'."
"You look deep, Mr. Snape, so as to understand what it is that you wish to change. If you do not understand the nature of the matchstick, you cannot coax it into becoming a needle."
Mister Snape? Harry opened his eyes and looked at Draco, who was pointing the same way as he was, and looked just as flabbergasted. Harry swallowed his uncertainty and double checked, concentrating along the line of his pointing finger.
"…Potions make sense! How am I supposed to know what's in a hedgehog if I'm not allowed to taste it?"
"Well, if it's Potions you prefer, then, give me a list of the contents of the Potions cupboards."
"If I have to," the young Snape voice said. "All right. Aconite. Also known as monkshood and wolfbane. It's a poison, but can be used for…"
"We'd better hurry," Draco took to the air. "Don't let me get too far astray, Potter."
"Right." Harry kept pointing the way with one hand and got his wand ready with a lumos spell. It was fairly tricky, actually, keeping an eye on Draco's lantern, and sending him left or right, and still "tuning in" now and then to the distant conversation.
"Brighteye. Used in vision potions mostly. Brightfeather. A substitute for pheonix feathers, but not reliable unless it's been combined with Flamewort..." With each name, at least, Snape's voice seemed to get a little older. It cracked as he was in among the 'M's, just as Draco stopped to wave the lantern from side to side.
It was bloody frightening, trying to fly through a forest in the dark, even with the will-o-the-wisp of the lantern ahead. Harry found himself grateful for the lightning, and the excuse to stop every so often and light up a bank of moss on a tree. He looked behind him as he went along and realized that the foxfire was making a kind of a line that they could follow if for some reason they stopped hearing the teachers.
Draco was already concentrating when Harry caught up, and he'd had the bright idea of using a stick stuck into the ground to mark the direction so his arm wouldn't get so tired. He handed off the lantern to Harry without a word, but Harry paused to catch his breath and listen for a moment before he went on.
"Sweet William, which in spite of its name is not sweet, is used for…" At least Snape sounded like Snape now. Harry wished Professor McGonagall would say something, but he didn't want to take the time to wait for her to get a chance.
When he reached the limits of his turn with the lantern, he waved it at Draco and then found a notch to rest it in while he found a stick to mark the new heading and lined himself up as best he could to listen. His nose itched with the smell of wet burned wood, and he tried to ignore it as he turned his head, listening…
"…canthus," said Snape with a familiar dryness. "There are other things in the cupboards, Minerva, but you're not authorized to know what they are."
"Not authorized? I like that," Professor McGonagall sounded relieved. "Nice to have you back, Severus."
"I wish I could say that it were nice to be here," Snape said. "Why haven't you let go, yet?"
"Because I won't," McGonagall said flatly. "You've got your eyes open again, haven't you?"
"I did," Snape grunted, and then sighed. "There's no magic down here, Minerva."
There was a silence. "That's not good," she answered, while Harry tried to figure it what Snape meant by 'down here'.
There was no answer from Snape.
Draco landed next to Harry and started to pick up the lantern, but Harry waved at him to listen, wondering if he'd somehow lost the conversation. Then, after a long while, McGonagall spoke again. "How's the leg?"
"Still attached."
"And the arm?"
"Strangely…" Snape seemed, for once, to be at a loss for the right word. "Unattached," he settled for at last. "It doesn't hurt at all. Not even…when it should. It's as if there's nothing there."