Greenda would be in the infirmary for a few nights. She had three broken ribs, a dislocated shoulder, and a broken leg as well as some organ damage that had to be fixed. The internal bleeding was nothing to sniff at, either. Nurse Jones said she was lucky the brain damage she'd sustained was the kind that a potion could cure, instead of needing an invasive spell restoration.
Bagsy was sitting next to Greenda, making a get-well card from coloured paper and stickers as there wasn't time to go and buy one, and seeing if the other players would come to the hospital wing to sign it.
Greenda woke up, looking very groggy, and turned her brown eyes to her. 'Bagsy?' she slurred, one side of her face sagging from the magical pain-killing spells Nurse Jones had cast on it.
Bagsy smiled. 'Last time I checked, yep. Unless I've been replaced by a doppelganger.'
Greenda smiled back. 'You doing okay?'
'My shoulder hurts,' she said. She hadn't wanted to trouble Nurse Jones when he was sorting Greenda's treatments so she'd kept quiet about it. Maybe tomorrow she'd stop by and ask for him to take a look. It felt odd and didn't move quite right. 'That was one big fall you took, Greenda.'
'I really wanted the snitch…' Greenda sighed. 'I remember missing it. That feeling was worse than hitting the ground.'
They sat in silence.
'I'm sorry for avoiding you,' Greenda said at last. 'It's… stupid, really. I figured that you were probably bored of me and would be better off making friends with students your own age.' She pursed her lips. 'It wasn't just that, though. I thought that if I stopped talking to you, if I stood up for myself and if I caught the snitch, then Emmeline would talk to me again and I'd feel better. Better about… everything.'
'What don't you feel good about?'
Greenda swallowed. 'Something I did. Bloody hell, everything hurts,' she hissed. 'What's wrong with me?'
'You've broken, like, a bunch of bones,' Bagsy said. 'You've had some spells and ointments put on them, but Nurse Jones said it'd hurt until the healing was done.'
'He was right,' Greenda grimaced.
'What did you do?' Bagsy asked in a small voice. Something had gone down between Greenda and Emmeline, and she wanted to know what.
Greenda sat still, maybe from pain, maybe from the question. 'Something not good, Bagsy. I thought… I thought I knew something about someone. I thought I'd found out some grand conspiracy, some terribly immoral action. I thought I was helping someone who deserved to know the truth.' She shook her head ruefully. 'Somehow, I only ended up hurting innocent people.'
Bagsy listened patiently, not understanding what Greenda was saying in the slightest, but nodding along politely all the same. If Greenda didn't want to be specific, even if it was killing Bagsy not knowing, she wouldn't push her. At least, not right then.
'Emmeline is right. I don't deserve forgiveness…' Greenda's eyes glistened. 'I still can't bring myself to admit to her what I did, even though we both know the truth. I couldn't even describe it accurately to you, just then. I twisted it all around to make myself sound less in the wrong…'
Emmeline walked into the infirmary and Greenda quickly wiped her eyes, quieting what she'd been saying.
'Come to mock me? There's nothing you can say I haven't already told myself,' Greenda sniffed. 'I should have caught it. Instead, all I caught were a bunch of broken bones and-'
'I'm sorry,' Emmeline cut over her. Greenda and Bagsy looked at her in stunned silence. Emmeline, just now noticing Bagsy sitting there, stammered. 'I'm sorry for telling you to fly faster. I shouldn't have. It wasn't safe. It's my fault you were injured.'
'It's not your fault,' Greenda insisted, looking at Emmeline like someone who'd found a childhood teddy bear they thought they'd lost.
Emmeline shook her head but didn't argue further. 'Get well soon and don't be so dumb next time,' she hissed before leaving. Bagsy looked at Greenda, who looked back, both surprised.
Bagsy was forced out of the hospital wing by night time, Nurse Jones Insisting Greenda needed rest, and found Cora waiting for her to escort her to the common room. She walked past the other Hufflepuffs in the main room, heading straight for the girls dormitory. It wasn't that late, so she was blessedly alone. Once Bagsy was by her bed she collapsed onto it, running through the day's events in her head. As she lay, she felt a dull pain in her shoulder and sat up, propping up a mirror on her bed side table. Pulling the robes over her shoulder down, Bagsy peered at the three, white hot marks just below her left shoulder, running along the side of her arm. Their depth into her arm hadn't lessened with time and they still felt sore.
'That's not what I think it is… is it?' Teresa's voice sounded behind Bagsy, taking her by surprise. She hadn't noticed anyone else in the dorm – Teresa must have entered when she was focussing on her scar, which she quickly covered.
'What do you mean?' asked Bagsy innocently. Teresa grabbed Bagsy's robes and pulled them down to see the side of her left shoulder, the meek protest from Bagsy ignored.
Teresa sucked in a shocked breath. 'That's a mark.'
Bagsy felt fear drip through her like an acidic chemical. 'A mark?' she asked, even though she remembered what they were. A mark was something a predator, a marker, left on their prey.
'Bagsy… this is huge. This is ten times the size I've ever seen before…What did this to you?' She inspected the scar closely, Bagsy squirming under her gaze.
'Nothing, it's a birth mark,' Bagsy lied, pulling her robe back up and twisting her shoulder out of her reach.
Teresa looked unconvinced. 'Bagsy, that is definitely a mark, from a marker, but it's way too large to belong to any of the creatures I can think of.' She paused, looking her up and down. 'You need to understand more. For your own sake.' Teresa rushed over to her side of the room and pulled her book, Magical Creatures – Practical Practise, out of her bedside table's drawer, shoving an assortment of treats and bedding she used for her animal companions to the side. Handing the book to Bagsy, Teresa doused her in instructions. 'Lower your head into the book and hold your breath. Keep your eyes open and watch what happens closely.'
'Teresa, what do you mean-?' Bagsy asked, only to have Teresa open the book in front of her face and push her head forwards. Bagsy took a breath and held it, the pages of the book looming before her. Then the pages were wrapping around her. The text stretched out so that black, inked words swirled around the beige world of parchment that engulfed her senses. Bagsy wanted to scream as she began to fall through the page, down and down and down, but found her lungs didn't work how they were meant to.
Eventually, with a thud, she landed on a leaf. Only, the leaf was twice the size of Bagsy. Looking above her, she saw a magnified world. Plants stood like sky scrapers, pebbles were mountains, and puddles of water great lakes.
Even stranger, was Bagsy was no longer Bagsy. Instead, she was a dragonfly, four wings vibrating quickly on her back as she flew around.
A narrator's voice sounded in the world around her, clear and crisp like a sports announcer. 'The prey manticore,' it said, 'would wipe the human race out were it big enough. Luckily, it is no longer than a finger nail, and poses us no harm. However, as we study the system of marking, used by a handful of dangerous magical creatures, the prey manticore is a clear example of how it functions. First, the prey manticore catches its prey.'
Something thudded into Bagsy's side and snapped her out of the air. She found herself, a dragonfly, pinned between the sharp pincers of a menacing bug four times her size. It stared at her with large, insectoid eyes void of emotion.
'Once it has its prey caught,' the narrator continued, to the horrified Bagsy, 'it marks them.' Hot, white pain shot through her as a pincer impaled the dragonfly through the end of its tail. 'Then, it lets it go.' The dragonfly was released and Bagsy, wanting anything but to be near that prey manticore, flew off as best she could. Eventually, her wings grew tired and her body, racked with pain, crashed into the ground.
She started seeing things. Eyes glinting in the shadows, creatures crawling towards her, one thousand ants pulling her dragonfly body apart piece by piece. Bagsy writhed and screamed, her mind alive with horror.
'Once it's prey is scared to its satisfaction, the prey manticore drains it of its vitalities, killing it.'
Something turned Bagsy over, looking down at her. Sensing Bagsy's worst fear, the eyes changed to the dripping, red sludge of the blood eyed beast. Bagsy froze, finally ceasing her thrashing.
The prey manticore began to eat the dragonfly and Bagsy was relieved to find she wasn't sharing in this pain with the creature. She did, however, feel like a carton of pumpkin juice being poured away, as if her insides where being turned into a smoothie and sucked out.
Slowly, she grew colder and colder as the prey manticore fed, draining the dragonfly of everything it had. Once it was done, and the dragon fly lay dead, Bagsy watched out of its unmoving eyes. The prey manticore straightened up. It towered over the dead dragonfly and, to Bagsy's great surprise, sprouted four dragonfly wings.
'Once the prey manticore has fed, it gains the strengths of its victim. This prey manticore has only feasted twice, now, but the longer it lives, and the more abilities it gains, the more powerful it will become. Because of the sheer power of the system of marking, only small creatures can survive its weight. The smaller a creature is, the more favourable the ratio of marking to body integrity is. This concludes everything you need to know on markers and their unique hunting techniques for your exams.'
Bagsy snapped out of the book, falling onto her bed with gasping breaths. She swore for a second she could still feel four dragonfly wings squashed below her shirt and pressing against her back, but as she came back to her senses, realising there was no way she had any dragonfly wings, the feeling of them vanished.
Teresa closed her book and put it back on her bed before returning. 'This is serious. What gave you that mark? If you're marked, Bagsy, you're in danger.'
Bagsy was non-responsive. She was staring at the canopy of her bed, tears filling her eyes as dread clogged her throat. Was that to be her fate? Slowly eaten alive by the blood eyed beast while it leeched her soul away?
At last, she managed to speak. 'Fitzsimmons already knows,' she breathed quietly. 'They gave me a necklace to block my marker from messing with my mind and locating me using the mark.' It made perfect sense. Why hadn't Fitzsimmons told Bagsy how marking worked? It didn't take long for her to realise – now that she knew what being marked meant she wished she didn't.
Teresa looked around uncertainly. 'Well, if you're sure you're safe…'
'I'm not,' Bagsy murmured, 'but what else can I do?'
'You could have it killed?' Teresa offered. 'Listen,I never recommend the killing of magical beings. But markers are another breed, and if one had marked you then it might be a good idea. If the marker dies the mark disappears. And if the marker's dead, it can't hurt you, right?'
Bagsy nodded glumly.
'I'll… leave you be…' Teresa said awkwardly, leaving the room. Bagsy lay very still, scared that if she moved the beast would find her and snuff her out. That night, with Teresa snoring loudly, and the other students wearing earplugs so they could sleep, Bagsy sat up, knees drawn to her chest, not daring to blink.
She couldn't even consider drinking some potion for dreamless sleep – how could she risk closing her eyes when a monster stalked the world, thirsting for her horrifying death? How could she rest when a thin, invisible necklace was all that stood between her and a torturous end?
She was shivering from exhaustion and fear by the time the sun rose over the horizon and peeked through the high windows in the dormitory. She'd been thinking of ways she could kill the blood eyed beast, but none of them would work. She paid no attention in her subjects, didn't bother casting spells and didn't register Professor Starrett's remarks, who seemed confused, and perhaps even worried, by Bagsy's dead-faced behaviour. Mezrielda was concerned but Bagsy couldn't bring herself to explain what was wrong.
In Herbology Teresa was kind enough to do most of the work whilst keeping an eye on Bagsy who, in her misty-eyed state, was always one mistake away from killing their patch of trees. Teresa, surprisingly, was rather understanding. Her being sympathetic towards Bagsy made her realise just how bad her situation was. Being sympathetic wasn't something Teresa was known for.
In Astronomy and History of Magic Bagsy sat, not paying attention, and not doing anything. What was the point? She was just going to die, eventually, so why bother learning? In Potions, she stood staring at her cauldron. Occasionally, she would add an ingredient and stir, but without any intention of brewing what they'd been instructed to. The rest of the class copied her and found thire results not as profitable as they had been every time before.
Professor Blythurst lumbered over to Bagsy at the end of the lesson. 'Are you alright, Ms Beetlehorn?' he asked in a hoarse voice.
Bagsy shrugged. 'For now,' she murmured cryptically, pulling her bag onto her shoulder and traipsing out of the room.
She didn't bother attending Quidditch practise. Teresa said she'd cover for her.
Greenda begged Bagsy to tell her what was wrong. Mezrielda kept trying to figure out how to cheer her up, from conjuring little badgers which, to be honest, did help somewhat, to doing silly doodles of Professor Starrett hit with the tarantallegra spell and dancing like the world was going to end. But Mezrielda soon found Bagsy was inconsolable for a reason she simply couldn't say.
Professor Starrett held Bagsy back one lesson. 'What's wrong, Miss Beetlehorn?'
Bagsy shrugged. 'Nothing.'
'You look like someone who's given up,' Starrett said. Bagsy looked at her uncertainly. 'I'm surprised. You've always seemed rather stubborn to me, digging your heels in even when all logic cries for you to let go. I didn't think you were the type to give up.' Starrett turned her attention to her paperwork, ignoring Bagsy. 'Dismissed,' she mumbled, flipping through the pages of a book. Bagsy left, casting a final glance at Starrett before leaving and heading to the great hall for lunch.
Mezrielda sat down next to Bagsy. Teresa looked over, about to say something against her presence but Greenda, who was sitting nearby, shot her a silencing look.
Mezrielda unceremoniously slammed the Book of Beasts onto the table with glares at the Hufflepuffs around them, daring them to eavesdrop and see what would happen. She lowered her voice to a whisper. 'I found a chapter on the Corvid Trials.'
Bagsy's eyes widened. It was the first time since Teresa's book that Bagsy had stopped thinking about the blood eyed beast. 'How? I thought you said there was nothing in that book?'
Mezrielda shook her head in confusion. 'I swear there wasn't. I was very thorough in my search – I didn't find anything in here. Until… I was reading it again last night to see if there was anything I'd missed, and lo and behold-' Mezrielda thumped the book open to a chapter titled The Corvid Trials.
'How did you miss that!' Bagsy gasped, tracing her finger over the inked words.
'I have absolutely not the foggiest idea,' Mezrielda muttered in frustration, then winced. 'Or, to put it more precisely, two of the pages were very neatly stuck together, and it was only on closer inspection later on that I realised this was the case.'
'So when you said you had not the foggiest idea what you really meant was you knew exactly how you missed it.'
Mezrielda shot an icy stare at her. 'We better read this quickly, before lunch ends and the Eagle Club begins,' she said instead of insulting Bagsy.
Cautiously curious, they both turned their attention to the book.
The Corvid Trials
For centuries, through doors of shadows, tradition calls for the familial growth of Corvids. The Queen demands followers, and the followers share in the Queen's demands. The greater her number of followers, the greater the power the Queen holds. The greater the power the Queen holds, the more shared power the followers may use. Seekers of shared power seek the shadows, and deny the turncoats of worms, who wish end the Corvid Family. Lies can be found in the ground, power can be found in the shadows. Seekers of shared power seek the shadows, seekers of shared power enter through the doorway of darkness and take our trial, seekers of shared power show the shadows you are worthy.
'What?' Bagsy said. 'What on earth is this?'
'It means,' Mezrielda said, as if speaking to a toddler, 'that the crows are a part of something called the Corvid family, and this family shares their powers, and seeks new members.'
'The worms can't be trusted?' Bagsy read, uncertainly. 'That doesn't sound right…'
'It could make sense. If the worms were untrustworthy, and wanted to stop the corvid trials, they would lie.' Mezrielda froze, as if she'd felt a sudden spark of acceleration and was bracing against it. 'What if we're meant to take the corvid trials?' Mezrielda looked back at the book. 'And the worms have been trying to dissuade us…'
'You mean-'
Mezrielda said, 'The worms told you to beware of shadows, right?' Bagsy nodded. 'If the worms wanted to prevent us taking the corvid trials they'd want you to be scared of shadows. This chapter must mean that to take the trials you have to pass through a shadow to get to them, which you wouldn't dream of doing if some strange worms had warned you not to.'
Bagsy read the passage again. 'What sort of powers do you think it gives people who it deems worthy and pass the trials?'
'Who knows, but I imagine it would be a grand boost to your spell casting abilities.'
Bagsy felt a thrill of excitement. She wanted to be a good spellcaster for another reason, now, too; so she could fend off the blood eyed beast.
'I want to take them,' Bagsy announced, feeling better than she had in a while. 'I want to take the corvid trials. I want to join the corvid family.'
Mezrielda nodded excitedly. 'Me too.'
'We'll need to practise first,' Bagsy cautioned.
Mezrielda snorted in amusement. 'You'll need to practise,' she corrected her with a flick of her hair.
'And once we're ready?' Bagsy asked.
Mezrielda grinned devilishly. 'Into the shadows.'
