AN: almost forgot to upload this. Luckily I didn't ;)
I still don't own anything.
CHAPTER 31 - Hide & seek
"So you're saying Voldemort has hidden a piece of his soul in a random cave, then made the place as close to impossible to find as humanly possible?" asked Liliana staring at the deceptively empty natural formation from where she stood at its mouth "I can see the logic in that."
"Honestly I don't," commented Chandra illuminating the inside of the cave with the warm light of her ignited hair "Why not leave a fake in the heavily enchanted cave and throw the real horcrux in the ocean? A treasure can be protected by more than traps and guards, as an ex-thief I should know."
"Let us be thankful Tom wasn't one, and that he loved admiring his trophies," commented Dumbledore as his wand danced in the air.
After the shack, he wanted to be a hundred percent sure not to miss any traps. Losing the pyromancer would be disastrous, to say the least.
"The only protection left is a blood ward," he said after some minutes of continued spellcasting "Some blood will open the way."
"Not exactly the greatest idea if Voldemort dabbled in sangromancy," commented Liliana in a bored tone before glancing at Chandra "Think you can open the way?"
The redhead smirked, donned her goggles and nodded before inundating the warded wall with a torrent of red-hot molten matter. The charmed stones fought valiantly but soon collapsed under the assault.
"Give it a minute to cool off," she commented once the path was open.
Inside the cave there was an underground lake with a small basalt island in the center, all utterly silent and motionless, all bathed in an eerie green light. Over to the left of the entrance, on the lakeshore was a wooden pole with a chain going into the dark waters.
"I'll give him a nice eight out of ten for the ambience," mirthfully commented the necromancer looking around "I guess touching the water is a bad idea, right?"
"Indeed," provided Dumbledore, who had resumed his array of detection spells "There's a ward on the surface, some sort of trigger. What it might be linked to though, I can only speculate. Before we go to the trouble of crossing though, can you confirm if there actually is an horcrux here, miss Vess?"
"Too much dark magic, I can't tell," she said after a moment of concentration shaking her head "What I can tell is that the lakebed is literally crawling with zombies, maybe a hundred corpses."
"That must be what's triggered by breaching the water surface," hypothesized the man "Inferi are notoriously hard to stop and Voldemort had a penchant for using them in the last war. Let us avoid waking them if not strictly necessary. And here's a way to do so: that chain goes all the way to the island, if we can get it taut we might be able to cross."
"If he left it there, he wants thieves to use it, so it's a better idea not doing so," reasoned Chandra before turning to Liliana "If something goes wrong, can we take the zombi army? Or better yet, can you control one zombie to do the dirty job for us?"
"There's many but less than on Amonket... I can control all those zombies, and with just one I might be able to direct it decently enough. Headmaster?"
"It might still trigger the ward... Do give me a minute to prepare some defences in case that happens."
Five minutes later, the lakeshore was covered by angry red explosive runes and flame sigils to stop at least the initial wave. It wasn't much, but it was more than enough to give Liliana time to release the controlled inferus and enslave the whole army. Failing that, they would retreat back in the cave entrance and collapse it on the undead horde. They'd think on how to destroy the horcrux later on.
Once given the go signal, the necromancer's skin lit up with purple runes as she projected her will onto the closest inferus. A mere minute later, it crawled out of the lake and onto the island. None of the others came.
"So far so good," commented Chandra, a fire ribbon charging above her left shoulder.
"Could be better," replied Liliana, eyes closed to see through the undead's empty eyesockets "The pedestal is actually a basin holding some dark liquid, it might damage the zombie if it's an acid. I don't care, mind you, but it could break my control and wake the others."
"We've come this far, we might as well try," said the pyromancer shrugging "Also, we're prepared just for that."
"Indeed," agreed the headmaster "And if you control falters, we'll know not to touch the potion."
Liliana hummed and focused back on ordering the inferus to grab the glinting trinket barely visible under the dark liquid. The undead plunged its left hand in the inky substance and smoke started raising from the basin in great billows, but her control didn't break and soon her thrall was shambling back to shore, a golden necklace in its rotten hands. Unfortunately, as soon as the inferus' feet touched the water, a loud moan rose from the depths.
"The ward has been triggered, they're coming!" warned Dumbledore readying his wand.
Mere moments later, a mass of writhing, shambling corpses dragged itself out of the lake. Emaciated, pallid skin taut on often exposed bones. Some sported grievous injuries, some were mutilated, but none seemed to care as they moaned and made their way towards the defensive perimeter. Bright orange flames and loud bangs erupted amongst the first line, sending corpses, body parts and rocky chunks flying back, and yet the breathless horde didn't stop. Dumbledore sent large gouts of crimson flames in their midst, and still they came closer. Chandra turned a quarter of the shore into a tidal wave of magma then crashed down on the zombies, but those not charred didn't stop their advance.
"Whenever you want Liliana!" called Chandra preparing another large spell.
Then the horde stopped, if nothing else because half of theme were trying to claw the faces of the other half off in a frenzied manner, purple light shining in their empty eyesockets.
"Good enough for me!" said the pyromancer turning a large patch of the battlefield into a cloud of bright yellow flames, cremating inferi indiscriminately.
Five minutes later, the lakeshore resembled the panorama around Urborg volcanoes: covered in ashes and littered with scorched corpses. Only one inferus still stood, the one carrying the horcrux to its mistress. Or at least, what they had believed to be an horcrux.
"Hey, haven't we already taken care of this gaudy thing?" asked Chandra staring at Slytherin's locket.
After the fiasco of the horcrux hunt, Chandra had hoped for some peace before the next one. Unfortunately for her it wasn't meant to be: in the last week of November Pansy sent a blanket warning to the members of the defense association regarding a planned raid on the Room of Hidden Things, courtesy of Malfoy. The planned meeting was hastily cancelled with orders to stay hidden while the pyromancer set up a bait in the Room.
Umbridge's face when she blew up the entrance only to find Chandra and Hermione sitting and talking about Innistrad was invaluable, especially since they hadn't technically broken any rule and therefore were completely in the clear.
"Wha-what's going on here?!" demanded the squat witch as soon as she recovered her mental faculties.
"Oh, good afternoon professor," replied Chandra with obviously fake amiability "Since my course got disbanded, I had to make time to teach my successor, as per the Board's request."
"But where are the others?"
"Who might you be referring to professor?" asked Hermione looking around the empty room.
"The rebels!" supplied the woman purpling up.
"Uhm, which rebellion are we speaking of here?" was the pyromancer's pensive reply "Because I'm pretty sure that they count as the new government on Kaladesh nowadays, so they're not technically rebels anymore. On Amonketh, now that's a whole different story..."
"Keep your delusions out of this Nalaar! And the ban on your lessons extends to this, so I want this clandestine meetings to cease right away!" ordered Umbridge before turning towards the three members of the Squad who had accompanied her "You three, scour the room! They must be here!"
They found nobody else, of course.
Despite having pulled one over the Toad, the rebels were hardly safe: their main hideout wasn't safe anymore and Hermione had only barely made it in time to hide the list of members amid her notes before Umbridge's arrival, so she was just a perquisition away from disaster. Also, the pink-clad witch was many things but she wasn't completely stupid: they all had a large target painted on them, and whenever two or more of them congregated someplace there always were members of the Inquisitorial Squad nearby ready to get them in case something prohibited was afoot. It was only a matter of time before Umbridge actually found something, unless they came up with a new hiding place and dropped out of the public eye. Or surrendered, but that wasn't really an option Chandra considered.
Of course, despite the fact that Umbridge had mostly identified them, she couldn't actually do anything more than pester them: with no proof, it was her head that would metaphorically roll if she acted the wrong way.
The rebels initially used a number of obscure secret passages that apparently only the Weasley twins knew of as meeting places, but they were too small for full assemblies and actually got a group caught by the Squad: the youngest Weasley, Thomas, Brown and Gryffindor's Patil got hauled to Umbridge's office to be interrogated, even if the woman herself had been at the Ministry at the time.
"Ok, this has reached breaking point," commented Chandra seeing her pupils getting paraded around like some bizarre and rare catch "Tell the others to meet up where Luna suggested with everything they don't want to leave behind, meanwhile we're breaking our friends out of there."