There is a disclaimer on all previous chapters and I do not recommend you reading this or any subsequent chapters before the earlier ones.
Two updates in as many days, what is this madness? I've decided to finish this. I need to.
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Chapter 36: Warm Blood, Cold Blood and A New Threat.
It wasn't only his language skills that had changed with Nidhogg.
During his evening bath, Harry spoke with him for a long time, trying and failing to understand how he had used the dragon egg.
"I'm sorry, I just don't understand what you mean by that." He said, as Nidhogg bobbed on the surface of the hot water.
"Snakes need sun or Earth warmth to be strong. Don't make heat inside. Don't make themselves warm." Nidhogg said, trying a different approach.
Realisation dawned. "You're talking about warm and cold blooded, aren't you?"
Nidhogg's eyes whirled. "I do not know."
Harry sighed. "I think that's right. So snakes can't keep themselves warm properly?"
"In a way. But I am no longer a snake. Now I am warm from inside."
"No longer a snake?"
"I am different now."
"You're not wrong." Harry said, stroking the tiny frill on Nidhogg's head. "So what are you now?"
"Something different. Something between. I need to see snakes. I am still small, need to learn."
"I don't think there are many snakes around here, Nidhogg."
"There is something. I can smell it, feel it. It is strong, want to eat it too."
"All right. Is everything to do with you about eating things?"
"Not anymore." Nidhogg said, slipping under the water and bobbing back to the surface.
"And you can't explain that either?"
The little head waved back and forth. "Need time to grow. Many strange things in the trees. I feel them."
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The days that followed were dry and grew warmer. There were no distractions from their classes except food, the clubhouse and Quidditch.
As March passed into April and then May, Hermione became increasingly agitated about exams and they saw less and less of the older students as they had to buckle down to preparing for their work.
A major event was a trip out of the school grounds to the Old City in Edinburgh – a kind of Scottish Diagon Alley – for a visit to the oldest alchemist shop in Britain. It was enjoyable, but mainly a chance to get outside and see other things. They all spent as much time as possible in the many shops and cafes before being ushered back to the Hogwart's Express.
After that things settled into a regular pattern of work, revision and practice, interspersed with clubs, activities and food.
On the fifth of May, after they'd settled down to dinner, no one noticed the newcomer over the roar of conversation and cutlery until the teachers all started moving at the same time.
Ron was the first to notice the enormous creature that had just entered the hall. He grabbed Harry's sleeve and pulled him.
"Look, Harry."
Harry turned away from Hermione who went back to her book. Inside the doors of the great hall stood a creature that he couldn't initially make sense of.
For a moment he thought it was a man riding a horse, but then his mind made sense of it. It was a centaur, a man's head, arms and torso on a giant horse body where its head normally would be.
He was massive, standing probably as tall as Hagrid, his body chestnut coloured and gleaming with sweat and sides heaving with exertion.
"Look at all the blood!" Someone shouted from nearer the centaur.
"Headmaster!" He called in a booming voice. He took a few more steps forward and shuddered violently before collapsing forward, his front knees folding under him.
He hit the ground heavily, but a hazy cushion of greenish light appeared under his humanlike torso and head before they could hit too hard.
Snape was the first of the teachers at his side. He spoke, but nothing could be heard over the roaring noise of the hall.
Suddenly the whole hall went silent like someone had put muffs over Harry's ears. Then McGonagall's voice, clear as if she was standing next to him came through.
"All students leave the hall. Dinner will resume momentarily. Leave the hall at once."
Sound returned to the hall in a rush and every other student seemed to have the same reaction. Many started heading immediately for the doors, leaving space around the centaur and his spreading pool of blood.
"Come on Harry." Said Hermione, already around his side of the bench and taking his hand.
Harry, not trying to remove his hand from Hermione, stood on the bench to see around the now rapidly moving crowd. Snape was kneeling next to the centaur and Dumbledore already beside him. Both had wands in hand and were moving them rapidly in some mystery incantations.
"Mate, that's crazy." Dean said, climbing to stand next to him. Being taller than Harry, he had a better view and watched as the teachers did their work.
"Come on Harry, we have to go." Shouted Fay, grabbing the front of their robes and pulling him and Dean down from the bench.
Together, they wound their way out, joining one of the two streams of students leaving the halls and heading anywhere else.
As they left the hall, the crowd stopped moving and started crying out in alarm.
A dog's bark cut through the sound and suddenly Professor Kettleburn, who had been stationed at the door of the great hall was pushing his way through, leading with his right arm – the one carved out of runecarved oak – toward the main door.
The dog's bark didn't sound right, but it was familiar. Harry, still holding Hermione's hand, used his first-year smallness to push through behind Kettleburn, weaving through the larger bodies.
Then they were at the front. Kettleburn was cradling the massive black body of Fang who was whimpering pitifully. There was blood all over the professor's wooden hand as his wand emerged from a socket in his wrist.
"Who's a good boy, Fang?" Kettleburn asked, soothing. The wand shook in his hand as tears ran down his scarred cheeks.
Several older students broke from the crowd and surrounded Kettleburn.
"Professor?" Asked Polly Stewart, a seventh-year and seeker for the Ravenclaw quidditch team.
Kettleburn shook his head. "I can handle this Stewart. You and Boris, go to my office and fetch my kit, you know the one."
Boris, the hulking seventh year Slytherin nodded and took Polly by the hand before turning back into the crowd. "Get out of my bloody way!" He bellowed, shouldering into the pressed bodies and quickly vanishing.
Another girl, unknown to Harry, knelt next to the professor, wand in hand.
"Murphy, good. You know the dreamless sleep incantation, don't you?" Kettleburn said, and Harry was amazed to see the spell Kettleburn was casting uninterrupted by his speaking to the girl.
Murphy nodded, her thick brown hair blowing in the wind. "Professor."
"No. Fang here is in pain and he doesn't need to be. I… can't do both. Please."
"Okay." Said Murphy, tears spilling from her own eyes and onto her robes.
Fang whined.
"Good boy, Fang. Good boy." Murphy said, drawing a complex shape in the air and speaking an incantation that seemed to slow the world around everyone in the crowd.
After a few seconds Fang stopped whining, yawned widely and closed his eyes.
Murphy's hands were shaking violently. "Is he okay?"
Kettleburn nodded. "I think he will be. There seems to be some kind of…" he paused, looking around the crowd. "You know Almantha's Purification, don't you?"
She shook her head. "I… I do but I'm not confident with it.
"I know it, professor!" Fay said, breaking free of the crowd.
Kettleburn, who had never taught Fay frowned. "You?"
"Yes, my mother is a healer and she taught me the purifier years ago when I… had an accident. I know it off by heart."
"Okay, do it quickly. Here." He said, moving his left hand to reveal a deep gash running down Fang's side from just below his hip down his right back leg.
Drawing her wand, Fay closed her eyes and started incanting under her breath. She gripped her wand strangely, holding the shaft in the middle away from the grip and waved it over the wound several times before opening her eyes.
Kettleburn didn't say anything for several seconds, finishing another spell. When he finished he looked at Fay with clear surprise and pleasure on his tear-streaked face. "Well done miss…?"
"Dunbar, sir. Fay."
"Very well done, Dunbar. I think he'll be okay for now."
A commotion started up again at the back of the crowd and Boris surged through, knocking several students aside and over. Behind him, Polly handed Kettleburn a leather satchel.
"Right, inside there is a coil of black bandage, please." The Professor said, sounding calmer now. He cleared his throat. "That's the one. Put it over his eyes please, Stewart. It'll put him deep asleep."
Polly, did as he asked and unwound the coil of bandage, wrapping it around Fang's eyes, under and behind his head.
"What happened, Professor?" Rumbled Boris.
"I don't know." Said Kettleburn, colour flushing his cheeks. "But this does not happen here at Hogwarts. Take him Boris, so I can stand."
Boris reached down and lifted the enormous dog into his arms with a grunt. Kettleburn climbed laboriously to his feet. "Are you okay there?"
"I have him, professor." Boris said.
"To the stables, I think. Stewart, with us. Dunbar, go tell Professor Dumbledore what's happened and that we're taking Fang to the stables." Kettleburn said, slipping his wand back into the socket in his wrist. He started walking away into the twilight then turned. "All of you back to your house rooms at once."
Fay nodded and moved, the crowd parting rapidly for her and Harry, Ron, Dean and Hermione followed her.
The great hall was almost empty, except for the centaur, still down on the floor surrounded by teachers. Flitwick and McGonagall were standing to one side both pale and scared.
Dumbledore was still kneeling beside the centaur, his ear next to his head, listening intently.
But it was Snape that was the most shocking. Harry hadn't seen it earlier, but there was a terrible wound at the bottom of the humanlike torso. Snape's whole wand hand was buried up to the wrist in the injury from which a tiny trickle of blood still ran and smoke puffed out every few seconds.
McGonagall moved over to them quickly, her face pale. "What are you all doing in here? I believe my instructions were clear." She moved to start ushering the group out of the hall.
"But professor, I was told to come here." Fay said.
"By who?" McGonagall asked, not pausing in her shooing.
"Professor Kettleburn." Said Ron.
"Someone hurt Fang, Hagrid's dog!" Fay said, tears in her eyes.
McGonagall stopped and looked at her. "What?"
Seeing she was on the verge of tears, Harry stepped forward. "As we were on our way out, we heard a bark. It was Fang and he was really hurt. Professor Kettleburn took hold of him and started to help. He cast some spells and Fay helped and they've taken him to the stables."
McGonagall's lips pressed into a razor-thin line and she frowned hard. She turned and moved back toward Dumbledore.
As she reached him, his head dropped and he laid a hand over the eyes of the centaur.
"He's gone." Said the Headmaster, standing slowly. "What is it, Minerva?"
Snape shouted in rage and stood, whipping his blood-soaked hand around, spatting blood in an arc across the floor. "Damn it!" He roared, wiping his gory hand on his robes.
"Severus." Dumbledore said in a voice as hard as stone and the potions master quieted. "Something must be done about this, find Kingsley, Nina and Alastor – Professor Vector too."
"At once professor. What about the…'
Dumbledore carried on speaking without acknowledging Snape. "Fillius, I want you to travel by flue to London, use the pensive they have there to prove what you're saying." The old wizard was clearly distressed and anxious. "Minerva, I want you to ensure all the students are secured in their respective houses and lock down the school. If it is Quirrel then…"
"Albus!" McGonagall exclaimed, nodding toward the students.
Dumbledore cleared his throat. "To your dormitories at once."
"Go." Said McGonagall, to your commonroom at the very least and stay there. Food will be sent up soon."
"But professor." Hermione and Fay tried to protest at the same time.
"No buts. Go."
There was no refusing that tone. The group turned and left the hall.
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It took a few minutes as they walked toward Gryffindor Tower for them to calm down, after which they talked amazedly about Fay's casting of the spell to help Kettleburn.
"It was nothing, just a spell I learned last summer to clean out infected scratches. I didn't know it could do things like that." She said, still a little flushed.
"It was brilliant." Said Ron, taking a moment to pause from his complaints about still being hungry to issue a rare compliment.
"It was really impressive." Said Harry, who was deep down amazed at how well and easily she had cast a spell that had seemed very complicated when he had been reading up on healing magic just a few weeks ago.
"Thanks." Fay said, a little sheepishly.
They walked in silence for a few moments until all heard Hermione's audible intake of breath. "Well it was very impressive, no doubt about that, but what I want to know is: How you know how to cast a spell like that in the first place. It's way beyond anything we're going to learn for years yet."
"She already told you, her mum taught her." Dean said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
Harry agreed, not knowing where Hermione was going with it.
"I know that, you already said that." Hermione sighed. "What I mean is how did you actually learn to use it outside of school. We all know we can't use magic outside Hogwarts until we're of age."
"Oh, that." Fay laughed at the same time Ron released a chuckle. "Well the rules are that we can't use magic until we're seventeen, yes, but how do you think they actually keep track of whether we do or not?"
"Guys," Harry said. "I think there are more important things to worry about right now than this.
Hermione's face betrayed a kind of stunned confusion. "They just… know, don't they? They have ways of knowing – you know, spells and things."
"Don't be daft, Hermione." Ron said, trying not to laugh. "I thought you were smart. It is possible to keep track of what someone does with magic, but it's really difficult and you need a little bit of that person every few weeks to keep it up. There's no way the ministry of magic could keep track of what every person under the age of seventeen does at all times. That's just ridiculous."
Hermione stopped walking, mouth agape.
"Ron's right. It is technically illegal for any person under the age of seventeen to consciously use magic, especially with a wand, but there's also no way to know whether or not they actually do."
"What?... What, I?"
"Yep. They can detect magic use when it's big enough, but not who's using it. So if you have a magic family or a muggleborn in a town where there are also some magicians, who's to know whether it was the kid or just someone else who lived nearby?"
Harry blinked, understanding Hermione's surprise. He had wanted desperately to start using magic during his last weeks at the Dursley's.
"So…. You're saying I lost out on three months of practice?" Hermione wailed, pulling at her hair.
"Well don't worry about it, it's not like you've missed out on anything." Fay said. "We all start at basically the same level when we get here.
Harry frowned not quite agreeing, but was relived because the portrait of the Fat Lady had loomed into view through the torchlight. "Right, leave it for now." He said, trying to quiet the others.
The level of noise and shouting from the commonroom was audible through the painting.
"Let's see what's going on here."
The portrait swung open, revealing Christian Darcy, a seventh year, prefect and NEWT Defence Against the Dark Arts specialist. "Get in here you lot. There's been news."
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