Charles, Claudia and Emerick jumped back, scared, their chairs falling on the floor.
"What do you want?" Dreogan asked Azrail, dismissively. "Sad, I ousted father from Professor Adams? Don't worry, he can't apparate or use the Floo network in here, this only allows him to project his ugly face, nothing more."
"Quite the contrary, dear brother. You did me a service by exposing father", Azrail said, his lips curving up to a smile.
"What do you want?" Dreogan replied.
"To thank you, brother. For once, he is angrier with you than he is with me."
"Yet, he still wants me to rule his Imperium Arcana, yes?" Dreogan twisted the knife creating insult.
"He will change his mind, or his shadow will be less…desirable than it once was", Azrail's face lost its smirk.
"Oh, then it was your idea to use your invented spell, "Family Disaster" last year against a friend of mine, was it? To torture me as you once did?"
"What's he doing? Adding salt to injury?" Claudia thought to herself, feeling tense.
"No one but me knows that spell!" Azrail spat at him, angry.
"Someone does, it was used against Emerick, and thankfully I knew how to counter it", Dreogan motioned with his head, to where Emerick stood behind him.
"Impossible…no, he wouldn't, couldn't have…and you! You have the audacity to stop one of my spells!" Azrail mumbled to himself.
"With ease, brother", Dreogan cracked a smirk.
"I will grant you the worst curse of them all. Hope", Azrail breathed deeply. "You can find her in Bwana farm. Dare you go through the portal?" A portal opened as the flamed face vanished.
"Hope? Find her?" Dreogan looked behind him, at his friends.
"Where have I heard that farm before?" Charles scratched his head.
"Used to belong to my father, he sold it to Joymother… "Africa is mother to us all", he told me once…mother, my mum? It can't be? Can it?" His fists clenched.
"Dreogan, it is most likely a trap", Claudia tried to prevent what she knew was going on inside his head, the decision he had, already, made.
"Most likely, but if my mum's in there…fuck it", Dreogan run into the portal with a stride.
"Dreogan wait! Ugh…Emerick, go! Get Professors Adams, Horsewood and Jordan! Charles, with me. Wands out", They went through the portal as Emerick ran out of the Great Hall as fast as his legs allowed him.
Dreogan jumped out of the portal, in a savannah-like landscape amidst a large plantation of trees, evenly spread out between them. It was late evening, and yet there were still, worn-down-looking House-Elves picking fruits and bark from them, arranging them in large, wooden baskets. And now they looked astonished at the intrusion.
Dreogan run through them, barely noticing them, heading to the large house in the other side of the estate.
Even during night it was hot and humid. Dreogan panted and sweated as he reached the house's entrance, searching inside every granary, stable and barn he could find before blasting open the main door and entering the house.
The main floor was empty, except for furniture with no apparent signs of habitation. After searching through every door, all of them open, he ascended the stairs to the upper floor.
This floor was different than the lower one, it had one corridor with only one room at the end of it, with its door closed.
Dreogan walked up to it, with increasing tension and hesitation, every step labored and second-thoughted.
His right hand stretched, not touching the heavy-looking ebony wood door for a mere half inch. Moving it back and forth, push the door open, don't push the door open.
He whimpered taking a breath.
Someone placed a hand on his shoulder, Dreogan didn't need to turn to know who it was. The owner's breathing pattern told him who.
"I'm scared…" Dreogan took another breath. "what if she hates me?"
"Hate you? You've done nothing wrong, mate", Charles replied in a similarly whispered voice.
"I exist."
"She won't hate you for that, she can't hate you for what you had no choice in", Claudia's voice came, gentle and caring.
"If you don't go in there, yo know you'll regret it forever", Charles gave him a tender squeeze.
"Right…" Dreogan sighed, pushing his hand up against the door. It creaked open. With a final push he shoved it ajar exposing the chamber inside.
Taking a tentative step, he let his eyes adjust to the well-lit environment, in contrast to the corridor outside it. The room, unlike the rest of the house, was decorated like a British cottage, with all the furniture, small items and wall and floor tapestries and carpet and ceiling lights. Everything, including the colours pointed to an affluent cottage in rural Britain.
In the Center of the room there was a relic from the past a rocking chair was placed away from the rest of the furniture. Desk, wardrobe, and bed placed in the corners of the room.
Sitting on the chair was a woman, she looked to be in her late thirties or perhaps early forties, tall with long, black hair falling on her neck and face, cyan eyes and a narrow face ending in a cupped chin and ruby, tight lips.
"I grow tired of your illusions, Azrail", she said, angry. "You do not fool me anymore!" She let the book she was holding fall on the carpeted floor.
Dreogan stood there, frozen his eyes beginning to water up and tremble.
"M…mum?" His voice cracked.
"You do not fool me! This is how it always goes. Felix comes through the door, hesitant and just when I believe it, he vanishes replaced by your fucking face encircled in fiery wings and my heart breaks. Go away!" She waved her hand at him, dismissively.
"Mum, it's me. Dreogan", He moved closer in slow, laboured steps.
Claudia and Charles stood behind him, just inside the door.
"That was never the name I chose for him! Never would I name my child, my son, my flesh and blood "he who suffers", NEVER!" Her voice intensified, enraged. "His name reflects what he is. Elario Felix Burton. My joy and happiness. That dreaded name was his father's choice when he reaped him from my arms, right after his birth. And you know it! Filth", She spat at his direction.
Dreogan walked closer still. "It really is me, mum. Flesh, bones and emotions. I...I love you", Tears streaked down his cheeks, his chest heaving in effort to contain himself, his emotions, his mind racing at break-neck speed, his heart beating fast.
She hesitated. "This is the part. This is where…" He cut her off, taking one more step, Now standing in front of her.
"My brother's illusions, did they ever kneel in front of you? Did they place their head on your knees or hug you like their life depends on it?" He asked her in a pained voice, as he kneeled in front of her, placed his head on her lap and hugged her as tight as his hands could.
He heard her scream as surprised as she had ever thought she could be, before hesitant, smooth, gentle hands touched his hair, then his cheeks, not wanting to believe, not being able not to. He was then pulled up in a tight embrace, his mother kissing every inch of his head, and forehead. Wailing cries coming from her. His composure gave way sobbing, eyes closed, taking in the scent he never before had experienced. His mother's.
"Oh, my baby, my soul, light of my life…", she kept repeating amidst hiccups and heaving sobs.
"Mum…" he whispered, registering her existence, her being.
"Look at you, all grown up. Proper gentleman. I have missed you so hurtfully much, look at you!" she exclaimed, raising his head from his chin to look at him.
"Sorry to interrupt", Claudia said. "But we need to go, this place is by no means safe."
Dreogan kept still for a few moments more, before standing up. He took his mother's hand in his own. "Mum follow me. We'll take you to safety, back to Hogwarts."
She stood up. "Lead the way. I'm sick and tired of this place."
Dreogan let them exit the room, before exiting it himself. Half in, half out the door he pointed at the bed covers with his wand. "Incendio!" He casted the spell at various points in the room. On the tapestries on the wall, on the carpet, everywhere and continued casting it across the corridors in the rest of the house.
The House-Elves unable to put it out, fled the burning house, screaming. Some run out, some dissapparated out.
Exiting the house, they run across the estate to the portal.
"Fuck! Now what?" Dreogan cussed, seeing the portal closing just as they were near it.
"Now?" A female voice said from behind them, in the trees. "Now, you suffer and die. I am Sandra, one of four arbiters of death", Dreogan, wand out, turned to see a short, black-haired woman with teeth sticking out of her mouth at odd angles and amber eyes full of self-loathing with a hunchback looking at them; she looked to be in her mid-twenties. Alongside her stood a tall man with scarlet eyes and a head half with deep crimson short hair, half-shaven with no facial hair and strong-looking body musculature, and on her left side another woman clad in golden hair, tall stature, a narrow face with plush purple lips and blue eyes contrasting her ebony skin.
"Bloodfang's the name and this is Marigold. Sandra I'm taking the girl. I know you like to emasculate the boys", the man said, a smirk revealing elongated canines. His eyes falling on Claudia he run his tongue over them.
Bloodfang jumped back with cat-like lithe agility as the very air around him exploded where he previously stood.
"Over my dead body!" Dreogan had stepped in front of his mother and friends.
"D'awwww the pup has learned a trick or two. As for the dead part…that my tender friend is the plan", Bloodfang retrieved his wand.
"Bombarda! If you think I'll let you touch a HAIR out of my mum and friends' heads you are delusional!" Dreogan spat at the older wizard.
"Crucio! Bow before me, boy!" Sandra focused her attention on him. Dreogan felt the familiar brain-debilitating pain flare across his body, his back arching backwards he fell on his knees.
"Crucio! Crucio!" Sandra kept hitting him with it.
Dreogan whimpered, his teeth grinding from the excruciating pain as his muscles contracted and spasmed causing him additional agony.
"Scream you fuckwad! Crucio!"
Blood came out of the corners of his mouth. "To the likes of you? Never", He tried to stand back up, his knees trembled and fell back down. His hands touched the soil, but his head looked ahead, at her, defiantly.
"Depulso maxima!" Claudia screamed. "Get. Away. From HIM!" Sandra focused as she was at hurting Dreogan had no time to reply and was thrown back against a tree, snapping the thin trunk in two.
Bloodfang threw himself at Claudia but Charles threw him a vial with a yellow liquid, smashing it on his left elbow.
"Ugh! You little shit, ugh what is this!" Bloodfang felt the world spin, losing his balance.
"Feeling vertigo and nausea, are you? A lil' something Emerick gave me the other day. Expulso!" Charles yelled. Bloodfang was blown back, smearing against the soft soil.
"Go Feral! Enough playing around!" Marigold snapped at Bloodfang, trying to cast a curse at Charles.
"Incarcerus!" Dreogan pointed his wand at her. Large thorned vines sprang from the soil tying in knots around her. "You are not hurting my friends! Impedimenta!" Marigold's legs froze, her joints unable to move.
Bloodfang pointed his black, elongated wand at him murmuring something.
"Crucio! Crucio! Crucio!" Sandra yelled, maliciously. Saliva dripped from her lips.
"Protego totalus!" Dreogan cast, but the curses went right through it. All four of them fell on the ground writhing in crippling pain. Charles and Claudia's voices filled the night air. Dreogan refused with every fiber of his being to give her that satisfaction.
Dreogan's mother, seeing her child suffer, tried to run, and throw herself at Sandra but Marigold, having escaped the tightening vines forced her on her back with a flick of her wand.
Bloodfang, now transformed into a bat-like, bipedal creature with red fur and large tusk-like canines forcing themselves out of his mouth, walked at them, towering over. Feral black eyes focusing on Claudia.
The next second, he was thrown back up against a thick acacia tree with such a force it snapped it at half.
"Why don't you brutes take on someone your size?" Horsewood's voice echoed through the trees.
Various different streams of liquid smoke appeared all around them.
"Sorry we're late, we brought friends!" Emerick said, standing next to Professor Horsewood.
"Mr. Stalwart, you know what to do", Professor Adams said, making the earth near Sandra erupt, sending debris and molten rock at her.
"Right!" He run to them and stretched a hand out. "Everyone! Grab on!" Dreogan and Claudia grabbed on to his hand with Charles and Dreogan's mother grabbing on to Dreogan, who was closer.
Emerick nodded at the Headmistress who threw at him an object. Emerick caught it with his free hand and in an instant the ground vanished beneath their feet and the environment dissolved in a vortex-like feeling, replaced by a rectangular chamber with lots of beds one next to each other and in two rows opposite.
They were in Hogwarts' Hospital Wing.
The Nurse started treating them, as Professor Jordan helped Dreogan's mother on her feet, giving her a vial. "Drink this."
She downed it. "Ugh, tastes horrible."
"Counter to Polyjuice Potion", Dreogan saw him holding his wand in his other hand, ready to strike depending on the outcome of Hope drinking the potion. "No reaction, good."
Next Professor Jordan pointed his wand at her. "Finite Incantatem", He spoke some more spells, directing them at her. She did not seem to react to them.
"Sorry about that, had to make sure you weren't Azrail or a trick of his. All good", Dreogan, Charles and Claudia vomited.
"Ugh, every time…I wonder if I'll ever get crucioed without vomiting after", Dreogan complained, now lying in bed, the nurse running around to the others.
Professor Jordan fixed his attention to them. "You were crucioed? By whom?"
"Friend of Azrail's called Sandra…bitch…" Charles held his tummy in a near fetal position, lying in a bed next to Dreogan as the nurse was looking after Claudia.
"Sandra Ziran? So, she is working with him. Who else was there?" Professor Jordan hid his wand in his sleeve, standing next to Dreogan's mother who held her son's hand in hers.
"Guy named Bloodfang and a woman named Marigold", Claudia answered.
"What did she look like, Marigold?"
Claudia described her. "Why? You know her, sir?"
Professor Jordan answered not, but his fists clenched tightly. Just then Horsewood and the headmistress apparated in along with a few of the Aurors. One of them was missing his right hand, blood spilling out of the wound.
"Ives?" The Headmistress asked, looking tense.
"All clear like a winter's dusk", he said. She nodded relaxing and hiding her wand.
"Dreogan's mother, I presume? What shall I call you?" Adams asked her.
"Hope, Hope Burton. Where are we? What happened?"
"We are in Hogwarts School of witchcraft and Wizardry, in the Hospital Wing. As to what happened, I enchanted the pen to act as a portkey, to enable it to travel you all here as fast as possible. I imagine you are aware of the existence of magic?" Hope nodded.
Before Hope, or anyone else could utter another word, Charles stood up on the bed's edge. "Hope Burton?" He looked positively alarmed or surprised out of his socks.
"Why is that significant, Mr. Blake?" Professor Horsewood asked.
"Blake? What's your parents' names?" Hope looked at him just as surprised.
"Helen and Peter. You were taken, kidnapped twelve years ago? Yes?" Charles replied with a question, gazing right in her eyes.
"I was out celebrating with my sister, I don't remember most of the night but when I woke up the man told me his name was Cillian Gaunt and I would breed his child, that I was the descendant of someone called Godric Gryffindor…my sister's husband's surname was Blake", Hope recounted.
Charles and Dreogan stared at each other, jaws slacking, eyes wide in disbelief. Claudia and Emerick looked equally stunned.
"We are cousins!"
8