Chapter 18: Herpestes

"It's really nothing personal, you know."

Lily looked up and glared her best glare at the tall boy at the other corner of the lift, thinking about how easy that must have been to say from where he was standing. To her, seated on the ground with a wand pointed at the side of her head to discourage any sudden movements, it definitely felt personal.

"Why not?" The younger boy, the one with a wand trained on her temple, snarled. Lily cringed and tried not to tear up again. She didn't like him much. At all. There was something very off-putting about his gaze, his demeanor, his entire- "She's a Slytherin, after all."

The tone with which he snapped off the name of her house was almost like one would say a particularly filthy swearword. She could feel the hate radiating from him, like heat from a merciless Sun torching her very insides. He had been the one that had hexed the young boy that had tried to stick up for her when Godric's Guard had come across them in the hallways. The bespectacled young lad had been prepared for a fight, but not a sneak attack.

The boy looked down at her and smiled a smile more frightening than his usual look of rage she had become accustomed to seeing.

"All worth it just for the look on Malfoy's face."

Something happened in Lily's stomach when she brought up Malfoy… an unfamiliar roiling of sorts. And it brought out an odd instinct.

"Malfoy's twice the person you'll ever be."

The boy tilted his head quizzically. Lily didn't meet his eyes. She knew she was right; only, she wasn't exactly sure why she'd had such a strong compulsion to say such a thing.

"So you're a Slytherin and you fancy the Malfoys," he finally replied. With a disdainful scoff, he queried, "You sure you're a Potter? Maybe you're adopted or something."

Factually, she knew this was inane. She and her mother were practically twins, give or take a couple of decades. But this question touched in a place that went deeper than fact, to fear. She didn't know her parents' reactions, after all, to her being sorted into Slytherin. She wasn't even sure they knew. Not unless one of her brothers had told them. Had James or Albus sent their parents any letters? Lily wasn't sure. She had no way of knowing, either.

"Never mind." He shook his head, punctuating his dismissal with a grunt of disgust. "Now that I think about it, Harry Potter never had the balls to do what needed done with the Malfoys anyway…"

This time, Lily's impulse prompted her to jump to her feet, and she knew exactly why.

"Don't talk about my father that way," she growled, almost heedless of the wand pointed right between her eyes. "He's a great man that's keeping us all safe."

"SAFE?!" he snapped. Lily shrank back to the corner, which wasn't nearly far enough away, and the only thing that kept the boy away from her was, ironically, the other.

"Keep it together, Vaisey," the older boy implored through grit teeth, physically forcing Vaisey backward. "You're not going to put your hands on her. You're better than that."

Vaisey looked up at the older boy mutinously. "You did."

"Don't be daft," the boy with the Prefect's badge snarled. (Who was ever mad enough to give someone like this a Prefect's badge? She wondered silently. Someone should have a talk with this person.) "That was the only way we could get out of there in one piece. Potter was serious. He was going to try and kill the both of us. You realize that, don't you?"

"What if I'm not scared of dying?" Vaisey replied, and the tone of his voice was something much darker than typical-teenage-boy bravado. But then he turned his eyes on Lily and asked, "So you feel safe?"

At the moment, Lily felt very much unsafe - but she wasn't about to let him know that.

"Must be nice," Vaisey murmured, a faraway look in his eyes. "All it takes for you to feel safe is for a hero to come along and get rid of the blokes that are dangerous to everyone. But, what if somebody's only dangerous to you? Aurors can't burst inside of someone's home without proof dark magic is being used, can they? There are plenty of ways to hurt a person that don't need dark magic. And let me tell you a secret… 'pretty princess Potter…'"

"Don't call me that." Lily looked away from him, very uncomfortable.

"People get hurt every day in this world," Vaisey said. "And, unless there's dark magic being used… your precious daddy and his Auror Office couldn't give two shits about us."

Lily swallowed hard, looking down at her own feet. "Do you hate my family that much?"

There was a pause.

"I never thought about it much before," Vaisey replied, now in a chillingly serene voice. "But now that I am… yeah, I do. I hate all of you."

Lily spoke no more after this; she didn't know much, but she knew enough to know that there was no reasoning with someone like that. She turned to Temple.

"So what are you doing here?" she asked, much braver than she felt.

"Not complicated," Temple replied. "I just think when you look at history, our society's better off without House Slytherin."

"What, because of Voldemort?" Lily asked innocently.

Temple chuckled. "Be nice if it started and ended there. But see, Voldemort was never the problem in Britain… sure, he went down in the history books as a terrorist and a mass murderer - but how did he ever get that powerful in the first place? It would have been one thing if it was just one man, even a powerful man, against all of Britain. But he had armies at his disposal - you've heard of the Death Eaters, right?"

Lily was a bit insulted by this question. "Of course I know who the Death Eaters were."

Temple raised his eyebrows. "I'm sure some people were just opportunists looking for a taste of power - but the core of his inner circle? His best and… darkest? All of them believed that the best kind of wizard - the only kind of worthy wizard - was a wizard descended from all wizards. Or a pureblood, in other words. And where did that idea even come from in the first place? Salazar Slytherin himself - who, by the way, was Voldemort's ancestor. Bad blood will out, right?"

Lily remained silent. Some of these things she knew already.

"Professor Wenster knew Voldemort from school - back to when he was a student here, going by his real name. Tom-"

"-Marvolo Riddle," Lily interrupted, a bit weary of Temple's condescension.

Temple didn't seem to have an answer for this, so he moved on.

"Here's the thing a lot of people don't know. Tom Riddle didn't really give a damn about blood purity. At least not to the point that the Death Eaters who followed him believed he did," Temple said. "Hell, Riddle was a half-blood himself. He was named after his Muggle father. That's the reason he hated being called that, even going back to when he was a boy. But he saw an opportunity. If he could take advantage of the division that already existed in the Wizarding world - the division his own ancestor started - he could set himself up as a champion of blood purity, and there would be a force ready and willing to put their lives on the line for him. It all goes back to Salazar Slytherin, a thousand years ago."

Temple seemed to have exhausted his capacity and inclination to lecture. So Lily asked him one question: "What's that got to do with me?"

"What the hell kind of stupid question is that?" Vaisey piped in. "You're a Slytherin, aren't you?"

"Your brother is trying to stop us from protecting our own," Temple explained succinctly, more or less ignoring Vaisey's ranting. "That's why you're here. So don't blame us. Blame him. Now… we're almost at the bottom."

"Finally," Vaisey said, looking restless. "Why is this lift ride so bloody long?"

"Illusion magic," Temple said almost dismissively, as if he had a further explanation and couldn't be arsed to give it. But then he set his eyes on Lily.

"I know you're thinking of running as soon as the doors open," Temple replied. "Sorry, but I can't let you do that."

Temple's wand came out. In a sudden terror, Lily tried to back away, but found herself stopped by the wall in the lift…

"Stupefy!"

Red light… then white light…

Then black.

Albus

"Rose, wait!" Albus and Roxanne both tried to catch up with their other cousin, who had stormed on ahead of them, wand already out and with a disturbing look in her eyes. "Are you sure this is even the right hallway?"

"Lion statues, right?" Rose asked, whirling around to turn her power walk into an alarmingly fast backpedal. "I know where we are. Quit trying to slow me down."

And she took off into a run.

"Damn it," Roxanne sighed, breaking into a run as well. "Rose!"

Albus didn't particularly love running, but conceded mentally that this situation probably warranted a quicker pace. The hallway to Wenster's office - at least, Albus hoped to Merlin that was where they would end up after all this distance - seemed impossibly long. The carpet and wall accents had subtly changed color to match the Gryffindor's scarlet-and-gold motif, which gave Albus some home that they were going in the right direction. Although, the more he thought about it, the less he was sure that arriving at their intended destination was a good thing. What, exactly, were they planning on doing once they reached Wenster? Even if Wenster had them both, what case could they make to say that his rank and position did not give him the right? And even if they could make such a case, what were they honestly going to do about it? Albus couldn't see a single scenario where dueling a Hogwarts professor - particularly one with Wenster's experience and demeanor - could possibly end well.

Albus's heart jumped into his throat. Even in this situation, his reason was maybe one or two bits of bad news from giving way. He could only think of his brother - impulsive, a bit belligerent by nature, and fiercely protective of his family and loved ones - would be thinking if news of Lily and Hugo's capture had reached his ears by now. If that was the case… if he had beat them there… it might have been too late already to stop something awful from happening.

A loud string of oaths snapped Albus out of his unpleasant mental track. He looked up to see that Rose had stopped. Roxanne was just now arriving at her side.

"Rose-" she tried to put a hand on her younger cousin's shoulder, but it was quickly swatted away.

"GEROFF!" Rose snarled, staring at what appeared to be the end of this hallway. "It's a dead end. It's a dead end."

She paced with an excess of rage-fueled twitch, pulling at several locks of her auburn hair with her right hand and stretching them to their limit until they almost came free of her scalp entirely. A whimper escaped her, like that of a wounded animal, but whatever further sound was going to come after that, she managed to gulp it back. This, however, didn't make her caged-beast demeanor any less disconcerting. Roxanne finally guided her to a stop, putting hands on her shoulders and telling her (foolishly, Albus thought) not to panic. And it occurred to Albus for a second that perhaps he should have been the one doing that. That said, Roxanne was better at it; she always had been.

Next to Victoire, who was distant, aloof, and frankly a touch self-absorbed at times, Roxanne had been the next oldest Weasley girl born after the war. Between the three core families of the Weasley clan that saw each other most often, she was like the big sister, and had carried that air even when all of them were extremely young. She, Albus thought a bit jealously, had the side he did not - sensitive enough to feel with the people she loved, yet strong enough to be leaned on when the time called for it. Albus looked down at his shoes, loathing himself, wondering why he was so weak. It wasn't that he wanted to volunteer for the unenviable task of being the strong cord that held everything together…

Strong cord…

Two of them, on this wall they had believed to be the end of the hallway. Albus had just noticed them and he wasn't sure if anyone else had. What could two strong cords be…

He looked up.

"It's a lift," he said - loudly for him, he thought, but unsure if he had been loud enough to get everyone's attention. Apparently, it had been enough for Roxanne; she looked up as well. And just in time - out of the darkness, a box descended from the heavens, guided to the ground by the strong cords that had been on the wall. It came to a rest on the floor right in front of them, and opened.

Albus's heart nearly stopped.

She was barely standing. In fact, what she was doing barely qualified as standing. Her feet were on the ground, but her entire weight seemed to be held up by the young man directly behind her. Her flaming red hair was askew on her face, which, to Albus's horror, was sporting a pair of lips that was swollen and misshapen on one side.

"LILY!" Rose screamed. Albus, as if outside his own body, heard his own voice join hers, at least initially. "What the hell did you do to her?!"

"Stay back!" The voice that spoke, whose owner clutched Lily's limpish form tightly whilst extending a wand, belonged to Eamonn Temple. But he and Lily were not alone. Out from behind them stepped…

"Vaisey!" Rose snarled. "Where's my brother?! If he's not alright, I'll-"

"You'll do nothing," Vaisey replied, his voice trembling unsettlingly, producing his own wand and pointing it at Lily's lolling head. "Not unless you're amazingly stupid."

"Put your wand down," Albus muttered, feeling his heartbeat accelerate and start pounding in every inch of his body. Particularly as far as Vaisey had gone, he had forgiven much. But there would be no forgiveness for this. Not now, not ever…

"You all first," Vaisey said, gesturing with his own wand at all three of them. Albus hesitated for a moment, not even remembering having drawn his wand in the first place.

"Step away from-" Roxanne said - rather calmly, Albus thought, given the situation. But Vaisey exploded:

"STOP TESTING ME!" his scream was inhuman and reverberated off the walls and down the hallway. This actually caused Lily to stir and try to struggle - but Temple redoubled his grip. "You will not treat me like a weakling! You won't! I won't let you anymore!"

Albus couldn't help the sense that Vaisey was looking at them but seeing someone else. Even for him, this seemed like too much desperation and hatred. He was raving, snarling. Albus even thought he'd heard a growl escape…

No. That sound rumbled too unnaturally, it was much too… bestial…

"Something's wrong," he muttered.

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.

"The hell was that?" Vaisey snarled, leveling his wand at Albus. "Don't come any closer!"

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.

Albus whirled around, somewhat against his better judgment with Vaisey at his back.

His heart skipped a beat.

"Roxanne," he called, trying hard not to succumb to panic.

"What?" Roxanne uttered, still oblivious. She turned around as well - and her eyes widened.

They were staring at white, four-legged, slowly moving… creatures of some sort. There were several, and it took all of two seconds for Albus to realize that the low-pitched growls he had been hearing were somehow coming from these. They looked almost… leonine, but made of some sort of material. Marble, or maybe stone. But they moved realistically enough, and despite the fact that they were smaller than real lions (at least Albus assumed - he'd never had the misfortune of being this close to a real lion), they were baring teeth that would certainly cause real pain if they pierced real skin.

"What are those?" Roxanne asked breathlessly. "How did they get into the castle?"

Albus thought for a moment.

"They were already here," he said. "The statues."

"What?" Roxanne looked at him. "But how-"

She stopped herself mid-sentence, and her look of confusion fell into an expression of dawning comprehension. She slowly raised her wand.

"Son of a bitch," she cursed. "This was a setup."

She took a deep breath, and her nostrils flared.

"Albus, stand back," Roxanne implored. Albus went to do as told. But a gut instinct directed him to also turn around. It was a good thing he did. He saw, beat by beat as if someone had thrown the whole world into slow motion, a white jet of light aimed for Roxanne's back, then a shield trailing auburn place itself in between…

KRAKOOOM.

There was a flash of light. Albus felt his feet leave the ground. His back slammed against something. Then a blow to his head. Then everything went fuzzily dark for a moment.

He felt himself pull himself up to his feet, his arms and legs suddenly leaden. Amorphous yells and flashes of light encroached on his muddled senses. It took him a moment to remember where he was. Then another to remember why. Then yet another to remember what was going on.

By this time, the mass of color and light had formed, at the very least, into blurry shapes. Clumps of black and white littered his field of vision, accented by colored sparks. He focused, or attempted to, on one pair on the ground. White over black, with the slightest trace of reddish-brown.

"ROSE!" he roared, breaking into a run as the sight came into focus - the stone lion was crouched atop her prone form, teeth bared. It opened his mouth, rattling the halls with a low, loud roar, and lunged.

But Rose was still aware. With a growl of her own, she turned her body. Her hand produced a wand right as the stone lion's jaws clamped down on her wrist and forearm -

"Bombarda!"

There was a puff of white smoke in the vicinity of where the lion's head was. Rose withdrew her hand from the smoke and let out a yell of pain. To make matters worse, the lion toppled, as stiffly as the statue it had once been, and landed on her legs. They must have been quite heavy, because as Albus was arriving, Rose was still trying to extricate herself - and when she did so, it was with a pained hiss. She shuffled backward on her backside awkwardly, seemingly unsure whether her hand or one of her legs was worth favoring more.

"Rose," Albus breathed as she reached her. "Rose."

"I'm fine," she lied. He could now see, just as she could, the state of her left hand, which was several different colors a hand should not have been. It appeared, although Albus was no Healer, that she had badly burned it. Albus could see the fingers twitching, trying to close - but to no avail.

"Fine? You can't close your hand," Albus said, trying to support her to her feet.

"Lily." Rose's head darted around, her voice a murmur barely audible over a shout of "Confringo!" that sounded like it belonged to Roxanne. "Where's Lily?"

Albus looked around for a trace of his little sister, but could find neither hide nor ginger hair of her.

GRRRRRRRRRRR.

Another stone lion crouched in front of them, ready to attack.

GRRRRRRRRRR.

Albus whirled around to find that his worst fears were confirmed; they were hemmed in from two sides. Worse, Albus felt around his person - he was unarmed.

"Damn it," Rose swore. "Where's your wand?"

"My wand?" muttered Albus. "Where's your wand?"

"I lost it when that curse went off," Rose replied, talking very fast. "That was yours I was using."

Albus's eyes darted around, scanning the floor. A few feet away from one of the stone lions, almost against its front paw, was a length of yew wood Albus recognized. His heart sank - he didn't have the slightest chance of getting there. But he had to think of something. Almost instinctively, his hand went to his wand sheath.

This isn't just for decoration, you know, his father had told him with a wink at one point that Christmas Day. Squeezing the gold-inlaid sheath, he tried to remember that conversation, how it had gone…

The stone beast in front of him let out a growl of what must have been surprise as Albus's wand leapt from the ground, eluding a swipe of the living statue's claw. With a roar, the other stone lion, seemingly sensing danger, charged. Albus's wand was turning over and over in midair, hurtling toward him quickly but not quickly enough. Looking over his shoulder briefly, he knew he had no time to aim properly. He reached behind himself and felt the wand hit his hand. His fingers closed over it immediately and he brought it forward in one motion: "Bombarda!"

He had never used the spell before and the blast that issued forth from his wand had a kickback that almost knocked him over. The stone lion had leapt into the air, defying its own weightiness, but could not dodge and took the jet of golden light flush to the face. An odd-sounding yelp disappeared behind the sound of an explosion, and the stone lion behind a cloud of smoke.

Despite himself, Albus felt his body heave with the heady rush of success. At least, until the stone lion emerged from the smoke, chunk missing from where an eye would have been but still very much animated. It leapt again.

"ROSE!" Albus shouted, shoving his cousin away. She fell to the ground with a yell. A moment later, pressed down by the weight of the beast, so did he. He heard and felt something crack within his torso as the animated statue came down upon Albus's chest, pinning him to the ground. Fortunately, he still had wand and his right arm free… "Lumos!"

If the stone lion was actually using those eyes, it had one good one left, and with a well applied flash of light would be completely blinded. The beast recoiled, roaring loudly and thrashing as if in pain. But then…

"AARGH!"

"ALBUS!"

Something heavy clouted Albus over the side of the head for a second time. He had been fortunate to have had his eyes closed, or he too might have lost one, as the stone lion raised a paw and swiped furiously across his forehead. The pain was awful - like someone had set fire to his entire face. Albus's head lolled back and his eyes looked up.

A snarling, bestial face was above his own, upside-down. Albus's green eyes were looking directly into a stone maw…..

Another awful explosion - this one worse than any before it. Albus shut his eyes, nevertheless perceiving a bright light through them, and covered himself up as best he could. He felt the crushing weight on his chest instantly lift and a cough issue forth from his body. It took several moments of silence before Albus found the courage to open his eyes again, unsure of what would greet him when he did.

One of the stone lions was standing in front of him, but backpedaling as if in fear. Trying to ignore the terrible pain in his ribs, Albus raised his wand…

A jet of bluish light tore out of the smoke and hit the flank of the creature, enveloping it and seemingly eating away it at for a moment until nothing was left but dust.

A bit wildly, Albus raised his wand in front of him.

"Ventus!" he shouted. No light came forth from his wand, as was the case with most spells, but the airspace in front of him warped and distorted, as if a strong wind had kicked up in the area. More crucially, the smog of all the spells being fired off began to dissipate so Albus could sit a bit more clearly. He already saw Rose, but Roxanne came into view a bit into the distance along with Eamonn Temple. She might have been dueling with the latter based on their positions, but both now had turned their head toward the back wall.

Albus felt his heart jolt; James was walking - well, limping - from the lift, his wand aloft. As he approached closer, though, Albus got a better look at his face, and did not like what he saw. James was clearly in rough shape, his lip cut and dribbling blood, a particularly nasty grayish-purple bruise blossoming right underneath his eye.

"James," Roxanne breathed, sprinting over toward him. But he did not so much as acknowledge her, limping on in the direction of Temple, with no apparent focus on anything or anyone else.

"Temple," he called. "Where is my sister?"

Albus's heart jolted again. He looked around. He saw Vaisey, who was on the ground several feet away, jump to his feet. Albus got to his own first - "Expelliarmus!"

No sooner than Vaisey had tried to pull out his wand, it left his hand again, clattering to the ground as he flailed his arm in discomfort. Meanwhile, James was still advancing on Temple.

"Where is my sister?" he queried a second time. "I'm not going to ask you again."

Vaisey looked around and let out an oath. Temple looked a bit unnerved.

"I don't know," he said.

"Don't play stupid with me - you had her!" James answered, suddenly raising his voice. "Where is she?!"

Temple shook his head.

"What the hell happened?" Vaisey asked, now sounding a bit panicked.

"How the hell am I supposed to know?" Temple snapped back. "Those things attacked and I looked up and she was gone."

James looked down at his own shoes for a moment and appeared, oddly, to teeter, almost as if he was about to lose balance.

Then his gait steeled, and in one motion, he brought up his wand, a blank look in his eye.

Roxanne must have seen some very ill intentions in his motion, because she tried to pull him back. "James, hold on. Think about this."

"I already did," James answered, sounding oddly - eerily - calm. Golden light began to swirl around his wand as he planted his feet firmly into the floor. He took a step to the side. Then several, all at once, becoming increasingly unbalanced as his wand extinguished. With a nasty crunch, he collided shoulder-first with the wall, then slid limply to the floor.

"Oh my god - James!" Roxanne went to go aid him.

"I'd stop there, Miss Weasley," a stern, old voice echoed through the hallway. "You've made enough of a mess as is."

Albus's heart stopped. He knew that voice. He whirled around, looking for a sign of the blood red robes, but saw nothing. Nothing except -

A bright light stood on the ground, a stone's throw away. 'Stood' because, as odd as it was, the light itself appeared to have a shape. And that shape appeared to have feet. It was short - a couple of feet tall, if that - and had a rodent-ish look about it in the midst of its glow of silver-white.

But then, almost as quickly as it had appeared, it was gone, dispersed into many tiny little specks of light. Albus had barely had time to figure out -

"It's a nonmagical beast - mainly native to the Asian and African continents. Herpestes: more commonly known as the mongoose." Professor Lucan Wenster's voice was calm and didactic as he approached - the same tone he typically employed while lecturing. The darkness of his crimson robes caused him to come into view gradually, almost like an approaching specter. He walked with a weight that seemed to defy the laws of nature. Footsteps on carpet should not have been nearly as loud as they sounded, yet the small noises bounced across the walls and up and down the long hallway as he came into view feet away. "Or, at least, that is the form my personal charm takes after it is cast. The charm itself is known as Patronus and has… well, a fair few different uses that many of you will learn in time."

He finally came to a stop, surveying the scene. Nobody moved.

"That is assuming, of course, that our Heads of House and Headmaster Flitwick allow you to continue learning here at Hogwarts," he added very ominously. "To that end, I can promise nothing."

James

"LILY!"

James sat bolt upright, then squinted. As black as his world had been seemingly been a moment ago, it was now blindingly white. Trying to peer through his overly sensitive pupils, he watched a room come into focus around him. He became aware of the fact that he was seated on a bed, and as his vision became more clear, he realized the bed was one of many. It was rather hard - and irritatingly enough, he could feel a dull ache in his back where he'd been lying prone.

"Please do try to be quiet, Potter," a matronly voice with an aged creak implored him from several feet away in the room. "I do have other patients that need tending to."

James had suffered enough injuries in his three-plus years as a Hogwarts student to recognize the creaky, mothering voice as that of the matron, Madam Pomfrey, which confirmed his initial thought upon seeing the room. He was in the hospital wing.

The odd thing, however, was that, aside from Madam Pomfrey and himself, he appeared to be all alone. She had just said something about other patients, had she not?

"Madam Pomfrey," James called. The old matron shuffled around. James frowned. Nadine Lear, the blonde twentysomething that served as Madam Pomfrey's assistant, probably should have taken over as full-time matron at least a year or two ago. (Where was she? James didn't see a sign of her.) But either Madam Pomfrey just didn't have the heart to leave or Headmaster Flitwick hadn't had the heart to make her. Probably a bit of both. But she was getting on now - nearly ninety, James estimated, although no one had the sheer brass to ask her to her face.

"What is it, Potter?" She seemed a bit snippy, as if James was keeping her from something important.

Fearing for a moment that he might be mad for asking the question, he decided to ask it anyway: "Where are all the other patients?"

Madam Pomfrey frowned.

"Is your eyesight alright, child?" she asked, now sounding genuinely concerned. "There are three other patients in this room."

She pointed with her chin to one of the beds - which, from James's point of view, were clearly empty.

He simply shook his head. Then, with a jolt, he remembered something.

"Have you seen Lily?" he asked. "Lily Potter? My sister?"

Madam Pomfrey frowned again. "Can't say I have. Your brother was in here for a moment, though. Nasty cut on his forehead - from what, he wouldn't say…"

"That'll do, Poppy."

James's body tensed as he heard the low, grave voice of Professor Wenster precede the man into the room from a nearby door.

"Oh. Hello, Lucan," Madam Pomfrey turned to the Professor and addressed him rather casually. "Back so soon?"

Lucan Wenster's face was set in a firm line.

"I thought I requested that you inform me immediately when Potter was awake," he said scoldingly.

"He's only just awoken about two minutes ago." Madam Pomfrey, for what it was worth, seemed for one reason or another completely impervious to the aura of intimidation the acting Head of Gryffindor House put forth - usually to considerable success. "How immediately did you want? Not everyone has aged as… gracefully as you have."

Madam Pomfrey seemed to be trying for a bit of humor. Wenster, though, clearly wasn't in the mood.

"No matter," he said, almost dismissively. "Potter, you are to make yourself decent and come with me immediately. I will be waiting just outside. Forcing me to wait longer will not help your case."

"Just now?" Madam Pomfrey seemed to disapprove. "You realize this boy's just been knocked out for six hours?"

With a rush of panic, James looked around, finding a window and noticing that the sky outside of it was dark. Six hours?! Merlin's beard, it must have been… at least seven or eight o'clock at that rate. What had happened while he had been sleeping?

"He should be good and rested, then," Wenster replied icily. "Potter, five minutes. If you don't come willingly, I've brought a rather large friend who is more than capable of carrying you."

"What's happened, Lucan?" Madam Pomfrey asked as Wenster tried to turn to leave.

"I thought the matron's job was not to ask questions," Wenster answered.

"And normally I don't," Madam Pomfrey contended, "but when no less than five children arrive in my hospital wing within an afternoon all showing signs of having been in duels to the death, you can't blame me for being concerned."

"Duels to the death? Don't exaggerate," Wenster answered. "This was just a bunch of miscreants causing trouble. And I'm here to ensure they're all dealt with appropriately."

"Appropriately?" repeated Madam Pomfrey. "Or just appropriately from your point of view?"

Wenster angled his head.

"You've known me for years, Poppy. Decades," Wenster said, with a tone edging closer to humanity than James had ever heard from him. "When have you ever known me to be dishonest?"

"...Never," Madam Pomfrey answered. "But there were a lot of things I never knew you to be before -"

"Don't finish that sentence." Wenster said, in a foreboding tone that made even Madam Pomfrey go silent. Switching attention to James without looking at him, he said, "I said make yourself decent, not gawk at adult conversations, Potter. You now have three minutes."

Then, with a swish of his cloak, he attempted to leave. But James had not had one question answered. And he was tired of waiting for the answer. Throwing himself out of the bed and leaping to his feet, he shouted at Wenster's back. "Where is my sister?!"

Wenster stopped.

"Your rage won't move me, James Potter. I outgrew being one of you scared, little boys decades ago," he said, his contempt disallowing him from even turning around to look James in the eye. "I know your overly inflated head can't possibly fathom this concept, but there are things - many things - in this world that are much bigger than you or your family. And besides that, I can say with all honesty that I haven't seen the girl all evening. You have two minutes."

There was a brief, mad moment where James thought to reach for his wand - only to realize that it was nowhere to be found.

"I have it," Wenster said. "Or, rather, we do. One minute, forty-five seconds."

He left the room, and James knew he was out of options. Hastily, he rummaged around his hospital bed, found his proper clothes, and yanked the curtain around his bed shut to dress. In this state and with no wand, he stood no chance against Wenster's large friend - whomever that was.

Unless and until a different opportunity presented itself, he was powerless.