Title: Saishū
Yume
Author:
Ex-Professor Remus Lupin
Rating: R
Genre:
Action/Adventure/Alternate Universe/Romance
Era: None
Pairing(s):
Remus/Sirius, Severus/Harry
Summary: It
starts, as a simple kidnapping. It will become an adventure unlike
any other as a group of mismatched heroes find themselves drawn into
a war for not only their lives, but also their very souls.
Disclaimer: This
story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK
Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury
Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc.
No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is
intended.
Author's
Note: This cave is not the same cave that Harry and Dumbledore
enter in Half-Blood Prince, but the irrepressible urge to use the
same title as the chapter was there and I gave in, as I am prone to
do. Forgive me for any out-of-character behavior the characters
engage in.
-
Chapter
Five
The Cave
-
Standing
at the entrance to the cave, Sirius found himself at a loss for
words. In all his years of traveling across the globe, he had never
found any need to approach this marked place in favor of other
routes. Now, looking at the looming ice covered walls, he found the
sight, intimidating and unnerving. It would, he thought to himself,
be better if they had never come to this place, but after Weasley had
succeeded in calming the prince down, he had all but demanded that
they move onward to the cave. He swallowed and adjusted his bag,
preparing himself for what could be a dangerous journey through the
cave to the other side of the mountains.
Nearby, Remus was examining the frost-glazed foliage that stood near the entrance while Weasley was instructing him in the fine art of not touching anything by lecturing anyone that would listen, on the dangerous of curiosity. Severus stood a few feet away, seemingly lost in thought as he tucked his cloak more tightly around himself in the freezing cold.
He spoke calmly after a moment, "I do not like this. It is the beginning of March, this ice should be melting."
Sirius shrugged, not caring. He was dead set against listening to anything the mage said for one simple reason; he hated the man. Instead, he moved carefully down the tunnel that would lead them through to the other side and another day closer to Ravenclaw. Severus scowled at Sirius's back, turned to the prince, and asked quite simply, "Have you heard of this place, your highness?"
Remus, standing now as he slung the quiver into a more comfortable place on his back, nodded.
"I've read something of it in the library at Gryffindor castle. It was in a book of old stories that told of the hero Godric Gryffindor before he became king. The legend said that Gryffindor and Rowena Ravenclaw fought the last of the dragons in the Opal Plains beyond the Forbidden Forest. Some say Rowena called upon an ice spirit to kill the dragon. Perhaps," he looked about the cavern, "this was the result."
Severus frowned.
"They made no mention of Salazar Slytherin?" he asked incredulously.
"Why should they?" Weasley asked sharply, coming up behind the prince. "Slytherin was an evil mage bent upon the destruction of elves and half-elves."
"Should that matter to you knight?" Severus demanded. He knew that Slytherin had not hated elves as much as the legends told because his lover had been half-elf. History, he knew, was filled with lies and half-truths.
"Yes," Ron reached up, removed his helmet to reveal pointed, elven ears, and carefully trimmed bright red hair falling into pale blue eyes, "I am an elf."
Severus sucked in a breath, cursing himself for not seeing something so obvious. The knight carried himself with all the grace of the elves despite the heavy armor that he wore. His bright red hair was thick as it framed his face, giving away his quarter human lineage. But the features were long and delicate, clearly elven.
"You seem to crude to be an elf?" Severus pointed out with a sly smirk.
Weasley sputtered in indignation, searching for an appropriate response, but it was the prince that found the right words when he said quietly, "You are one to speak of elven conduct when you wear the robes of the black mage, half-elf."
Before Severus could ask how the prince had known, Sirius stalked back to them and asked in a loud voice if they planned to gape at each other the rest of the day, because he had every intention of leaving them behind to be eaten.
-
King Cornelius gazed shrewdly at the knight as she made her report that nothing could be found at the crash site except the airship. The girl was in her late teens and she looked frightened as she stood before her king.
He waved his hand.
"Have you searched the forest completely?" he demanded.
"Y-yes, Your Majesty; we found evidence that they somehow found Pegasus and escaped," the girl answered.
"Fine, leave me," he waved the girl out of his chambers.
Waiting until he heard the door click shut, he turned to the two men standing beside his throne. Both were dressed in black mages robes and looking irritated at having to wait.
"We have ways of retrieving your son, Your Majesty," said the man closest to the king as he straightened.
"Do you know, Nott, I need my son alive, not in pieces," the king said coolly.
The other man nodded.
"That can be easily arranged," he said. "We have agents that can be sent to find him."
"Then do it," King Cornelius, preoccupied with his own reasons for wanting his son returned to him, did not see the smile that the two men exchanged as they left.
-
Staring at the map in his hands, Sirius almost didn't see the prince until he was at his shoulder, looking at the map curiously. He jumped when warm breath caressed his neck and glared at Remus when he heard the black mage chuckle at his reaction.
"Perhaps you need a moment to get a 'grip' on thing, thief, before you can think coherently enough to read," Severus said, smirking knowingly.
Thanking the gods that the prince was completely naïve when it came to what the mage was talking about, he pointed to the crudely drawn rendering of the cave on the map and took several deep breaths as the prince sidled up to him.
"This cave splits here, this path to the southeast leads us where we want to go, the other goes northeast to Hufflepuff," he motioned to the right tunnel. "We need to take this one if we want to get to Ravenclaw."
"Hogsmeade is almost directly outside of this cave, should we not stop there before going onward?" Remus asked.
"We should get to Hogsmeade by nightfall so yes; it would be a good idea to stop. It'll be three days journey to Ravenclaw," he answered. It seemed so simple, only a few days more and he would be back home and rid of the prince because as the mage was so very glad to point out, Sirius's feelings for the heir of the Gryffindor throne were anything but pure.
He blamed the new clothes.
"It is nearly midday, we should move onward," Weasley said. Sirius tucked the map back into its case on his belt and looked at the knight. The elf had taken this entire thing quite easily considering he had been so set that the prince return to Gryffindor. Of course, the elf was taking the fact that his prince was now a Werewolf. In elven society, Werewolves were usually destroyed before their first full moon.
With a sigh, he removed the torch – the mage been kind enough to light it – from the ice near his feet. The flames created beautiful reflections upon the smooth ice covered walls of the tunnel, as they turned south.
-
Squeezing through a fifty-foot expanse of narrow tunnel, the group entered the largest of the caves so far seemingly endless caverns. The darkened room was filled with sunlight that bounced from the walls and onto the terrifying sight that stood before the group – a dragon, fifteen feet long, its skin the pure white of freshly fallen snow, encased completely in ice. The dragon's wings were spread as if it were preparing for flight. Its expression was fierce at it towered over them.
"B-but, dragons aren't real!" Ron stammered, backing away from the monster.
"I would think that they were," Severus said sharply, his lips drawn in a tight line and hands clenched at his sides.
"An illusion perhaps," Remus suggested quietly, gold eyes wide with fear.
Sirius shook his head. He'd fought and killed a Chimera when he had been sixteen. He wasn't about to let some frozen lizard stop him from completing this mission and getting the prince out of his life. Especially since the exit was on the other side of the room. He stepped forward, prepared to just walk past the creature, despite the tremors of fear that ran up his spine, when there was a loud crack of ice.
"Sirius!" looking up, he had time to jump out of the way as a huge piece of ice came crashing down where he had been standing.
The torch fell to the ground and sputtered out leaving them in the dull light from the ice and Sirius wincing in pain. Imbedded in his calf was a piece of ice. The freezing temperature of the ice traveled up his spine and he howled in pain.
Remus knelt beside him and removed the shrapnel, healing the wound quickly as blood gushed from the wound. Sirius nodded his appreciation just as he heard the mage cry out in pain and the ground shuddered. Looking away from his leg, he glanced back at the two standing at the cavern's entrance.
Ron was standing before the crumbled form of the mage as the ferocious dragon that had, just moments before, been a block of ice drew back and licked the blood from its claws. It narrowed red eyes at the knight as he stood his ground, his two handed sword drawn and ready for the ensuing battle.
"Puny mortal, I'll tear you apart," the dragon growled. It lashed out once more with its claws, but the knight managed to dodge the blow and stab upward, cutting the delicate claw as it pulled away quickly.
The dragon howled in pain and this time its blow knocked the knight to the ground, silver dragon blood standing out brightly on the steel armor that he wore. But, Ron was struggling to his feet a moment later, using his sword as leverage. The dragon pulled back to take another swipe, but another two-leg attacked her, daggers stabbing into her scaled hide.
Her skin was thick and the dark haired fighter was only an irritation for her, but she still lashed at him, missing him by mere inches. The knight saw his chance as he drew more silver blood as his sword buried itself in the membrane of her wing, cutting the muscles that made the delicate appendages move. The simple cut kept her grounded.
Remus, had by this time, drawn his bow and was aiming his shot at the dragon's head, hoping to hit an eye. But, the white dragon would not remain still and shaking his head, Remus rushed to the mage's side and felt for a pulse.
Weak and fluttery, the mage's black robes were soaked with blood that flowed from his stomach. A long fingered hand had pressed over the wound, holding his slippery insides from falling out of his body. Remus closed his eyes and held his own hands over the mage's and hoped that he would have the energy to heal this wound before the mage expired.
Meanwhile, Sirius, his wrist already healed once after Remus had clawed him, was nursing a bleeding arm as he tripped over the prince's forgotten bow. Grabbing it and the quiver up, he fitted an arrow onto the bow and took aim just as the dragon prepared to strike the battered Weasley with her claws.
The arrow flew true and with a cry of pain, the dragon reared onto her back legs, blood flowing from her right eye.
"Ron, the underbelly!" Sirius yelled to the knight even as he had seen his chance.
Rushing forward, sword drawn and ready, Ron Weasley sent the blade upward into the beasts belly creating a deadly wound. The dragon cried out once more and fell away from the sword, her entrails escaping the gaping hole in her stomach to cover the ground with silver blood and black organs.
Sirius breathed a sigh of relief and collapsed backwards as Ron fell to his knees with a loud clang of armor, muttering softly in elvish. Nearby, he could hear Remus whispering softly in the language of magic, repeating the same nonsensical words over and over.
"Thank the gods," the prince breathed after a moment as a moan of pain fell from the mage's lips.
"I'm not dead," Severus whispered, looking up at the white mage hovering above him.
"Not today."
-
Author's
Note: I am far more pleased with this chapter than the last. I hope
that you readers are as well.
Next Chapter: The group arrives in Hogsmeade...
