Hey everyone!
We are now moving to second gear, and I'm getting more excited. I may up the rating in a chapter or two, as the bad guys unfold.
So, let's see! Onwards! Chapter 13
***
Rita Skeeter whimpered, curled up in a ball in the corner of the room in the back storage area of a muggle bar in London. Her fashionable clothes had been torn out of recognition, her hair was disheveled, and she was shaking all over from shock. She wiped her nose on her smooth cashmere sleeve, and it left a bloody trace. Her scalp hurt from all the hair pulling- she was positive one of them had torn off a whole fistful of hair, and there was wetness on her head. Had they tore off flesh, too?
And yet, it had been nothing compared to the Cruciatus.
Her mind still reeled and her throat was yet constricted from the screaming that would never, ever be able to convey just how much pain raked through her system as if all her nerves turned to acid and her flesh into a pulsating mass of inflamed meat.
"This was just a warning, wench," the man said. Rita didn't dare move from her corner, and with the edge of her eyes only saw the tips of his muddy boots. He was red haired and green eyed this time. "Just a warning about what really happens when you disobey."
"Ah… ah- I told you," she managed to speak around her swollen tongue- even that hurt. "T-told you… needed… excuse to… go to him."
"And did you?" the man had a self-important tone to him that was constant, no matter how much his voice changed with his disguises. "Have you brought me what I want?"
"N-not yet-" Rita arched back and screamed, surrounded but the sickly glow of the Unforgivable and leaving her sentence in half.
"Stupid harlot!" the man snarled, pointing the wand directly at her spine as she writhed like a butterfly pinned still living upon the display case. "You don't have any time left- I want his blood tomorrow! You are no use to me after that."
He let the curse up, and Rita cried, her tears mixing with her snot and blood in a salty, dribbling slick upon her face.
"Sorry! I'm sorry!" she managed to utter though her coughs and wheezes.
"Get his blood today, and you don't need to be," the man almost purred. "Will you get his blood today, Rita dear?"
Rita nodded, her head bobbing in a crazed, panicky manner.
"Yes! Yes! As soon- as soon as s-s-second period or-or-or faster! I promise!" she gasped, trying to get on all fours and back into her corner.
"That's my girl," the man cooed, and took Rita in his arms very tenderly, stroking her the whole while. "That's my girl. Why don't we get you fixed up for Hogwarts then, eh? We want our Rita to be in top form for her visit to Hogwarts in a few hours."
"Yes…" Rita whimpered, huddling against the man's chest as he carried her away from the corner. She shut her eyes, and more tears burned her cheeks as the dreaded hand caressed her, and she didn't dare shiver in revulsion.
***
"Finn, why don't you copy this out for your potions essay?" Rasmus shoved a longuish parchment full with his small, neat handwriting. Finn's eyes lightened as he nearly swiped the paper and skimmed through it, then looked up suspiciously.
"Why are you letting me copy this instead of just giving me the outline like you did last time?"
"Because if I can't babysit you, my essay will," Rasmus smirked and patted the top of Finn's spikey dark red hair as he got up where he was sitting with him in the Slytherin common room (right underneath the skull with a pink bow spell-o-taped with a perky tilt on it).
"I'm a fast copier!" Finn called after him. Rasmus shook his head and grinned.
Walking to a particular corridor, Rasmus wondered how Finn had grown to a friendly ease with him so fast, while everyone else still kept him at a distance- especially the seniors who had seen him in the Practical earlier today. Rasmus was not the type who easily made friends. In all his years in the School in Athens, he had only ever made two, and of these two only one was trusted with something more than horsing around. Finn had become an easy friend in a span of mere days.
"You look adequately satisfied."
Rasmus looked at his father's corridor portrait- it was one of him next to the lake, in the outdoors. He smiled a little.
"So far the day's been ok."
"But yet you seek me out," Severus said, approaching to the frame and leaning against it like one did with a window. "What is it?"
"Dad, I need to ask you about Guiren Bai," Rasmus bit his lip as he saw how his father stiffened, even as a two-dimensional figure. "You never mentioned him in your enchanted diary to me."
"There was no reason to mention every single auror I have had to deal with," Severus said cuttingly.
But in the awkward silence, he sighed and leaned against the frame again.
"But I suppose I should have warned you of his vindictive nature a little more than I did."
"What is Antahiga, father?" Rasmus asked softly. "Potter told me it was his invention."
"Did he try to use it on you?" Severus' fist tightened as his eyes darkened and his jaw clenched.
"I stopped him," Rasmus hurried to say. "I used the tachycardia spell. There was a book in the library called The Fighting Mediwitch: Your Skills Are Weapons and it really worked."
"That self-righteous bastard will answer to Minerva only because she's the viable option," growled Severus, but then the portrait stilled. Rasmus looked down a little.
"You did well," his father's portrait said, the voice measured, but full of force. "Antahiga is Bai's way of a painful death. It involves literally setting the sum of your blood on fire. If it hits at the torso, it cannot be countered."
Rasmus breathed in and asked the question that lingered in the air.
"Did you kill his family?"
"No," Severus said, but the pause was pregnant enough for Rasmus' heart not to ease. Snape turned from his son a little, looking back towards his lake background.
"I just put them out of their misery," he added a little more softly than before.
Rasmus knew exactly what his father's work as a spy entailed, because he had no compunction in telling his boy only truths, and never lies- his son would not grow up with lies as far as he was concerned; and he knew that Aello was unable to be less than truthful herself. So he knew that a spy was not the iconic creaseless James Bond or the mysterious but dashing Humphrey Bogart, but someone willing to die literally in the grit he or she fights- and risks losing more than life. He knew his father had risked his soul.
"That's all I need, father. Thank you," Rasmus said softly, and with a gentle touch of the canvas where his father's hand was, he left.
***
Nobody had yet stirred except the house elves. This was how early it was, and it was a Saturday- the second weekend of the school term.
Septima walked all the way to the North Tower, and up to the sixth floor. No student ever went to the sixth floor of the North Tower because few could see through the glamour and other concealment charms to realize there was a sixth floor. Also, the fact that Trelawny's residence still was there was better than any ward for repelling the curious or the nosey. Even Septima quickened her pace and cast whatever was necessary for her not to be noticed.
Going up through the trap door to the sixth floor, she looked for the wooden door to the right of the corridor, and pushed it open. The room inside was underlit in the soft heralding light of the very early dawn, and two tall candles on floor candlesticks on either side of the large arithmantic table the man was standing before. Septima shivered. Already the ink upon the large arithmantic chart was glistening in the eerie manner it had upon the walls and floor of the flat in Hogsmeade.
She approached cautiously- the man was staring intensely at the paper, his wand moving as he was forming symbols upon it. He smiled without raising his head.
"Hello, Professor Vector. I hope it is not too early for you."
"Not at all. I would stay up for this as long as I had to anyway," Septima said quietly, her expression eager.
Nikos smiled thinly. He looked tired, as if he had been up casting all night. The tapers' height certainly attested to that.
"How is Rasmus doing?" Nikos asked, swishing his wand once without word. The ink stopped glistening. The man sank to the chair behind him, and reached for a cup- Septima suspected it was charmed to be perpetually filled with coffee.
"He is adjusting very well. I am sure he would love to tell you personally."
"No, I don't want anyone to think I am not in Hogsmeade," Nikos shook his head, sipping coffee tiredly. "This was the mutual agreement with the Headmistress."
Septima sighed, looking to the side as she sat in the only other chair available in the large room. She suspected the Greek slept in some adjacent room. Then she turned her eyes back to him.
"How do you do it?" she breathed. "Arithmantic Augury is said to be lost in the ages."
"It is- to the weak at heart," chuckled Nikos. "Since the chances to die suddenly or end up drooling on your clothes for a few years are good and part of the occupational hazard."
Septima grinned. "But you are brave?"
"Oh heavens no," Nikos laughed. "I'm definitely not brave. Just in need. I needed Arithmantic Augury to save my sister's life, or prolong it, so I did it. And after that, I sort of kept needing it. Nothing to do with bravery, my dear professor."
"Call me Septima," Professor Vector said. Nikos grinned again. He set his mug to the side and got up with a little pat on his thighs.
"So- how it's done: with the use of sigils. Very powerful inscriptions invoking the magic calculations to evolve through time or dimensions to allow the Arithmancer to actually see the fabric of time or situations. The bold and daring also use them for summoning spirits. I, however, use it to see: If you know the arithmantic imprint of a person, you can see what affects aspects of their lives- and in that sense, you predict what can happen. Or more accurately, you see what is very likely to occur if something is not done to alter the equations."
There was silence as Professor Vector was taught by this so very easy-mannered man who was describing one of the most potent forms of magic ever to be harnessed by wizards as if it was first year charms. It took her a few paces to realize that she was simply staring at him before she shook herself and cleared her throat.
"What do you need me to do?"
"I and the Headmistress …have taken some steps to prevent … well, to set a trap for some really bad people," Nikos smiled again, but his eyes did not. Not this time. Septima noticed his eyes became almost yellow in this light and with this steely anger firing them. "And today is a very important day in the plans of these people. The equations are not definite on what sort of target they will try to shoot for today, but it definitely will be in Hogwarts."
Septima nodded, pulling out her wand, to demonstrate she was ready to offer assistance.
"I will teach you two sigils- think of them as the two anchors for the entire Augury chart I am about to activate. The only thing you have to do is keep signing them throughout the cast- and if I leave running, you will continue until I return. All right?"
"All right," Septima said a little uncertainly. Would she be able to do it well at first time, at a time so important as this?
Nikos misread this hesitation as fear.
"You won't be in any danger doing this. The danger comes only after you cast the entire Augury chart and choose to see in the fabric. You won't be doing anything of the sort," he placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder.
"That was not my concern. Shaming Hogwarts' Professor of Arithmancy to a foreigner was," she quipped and Nikos laughed.
"Not to worry," he said and winked, then pulled her by the hand and as soon as she was standing next to him he added: "Let's start on the first Angelic Seal, shall we?"
***
Rasmus' eyes snapped open wide at the unsettling feeling that something – somethings- were slithering under his covers along with him. Betty was hissing at the foot of the bed already.
He jumped off the bed, wand in hand- he slept with it under his pillow- and swished it to throw the bedcovers off. They were crawling with all sorts of bugs, from cockroaches to spiders to centipedes. Some were still crawling on him- his legs, the name of his neck, his hair.
"Damn it!" he swore in Greek and pointed his wand at himself first, casting successive delousing charms like the ones he had learned when he was sent to summer camp. Then he shot a comprehensive hex upon the bed that completely destroyed the sheets and everything upon them. He grit his teeth, glancing around.
Everyone was still asleep, not stirring at all, even Finn. It didn't take long to realize they were under a sleeping charm, and this prank had been prepared only for him. He growled and charmed his clothes on- something he hated doing- and about turned to find the one who was responsible for ruining his sleep.
"Hodd! You one-legged manticore!" he bellowed as he ran wand-first to where Hodd, who was always trying to reclaim his favourite bed spot, was sleeping. The cot was empty.
"You can run but you won't hide!" he snarled. "It's easier to find you in an empty castle."
Quickly, he cast a locating charm using Hodd's discarded pajama and ran out of the Slytherin common room. His wand tugged at him and he ran all out, not caring if his steps echoed in the empty corridors until he found himself outside in the courtyard.
"If you don't come out right now and face me like a man, I'll transfigure you into the roach you are, Hodd!" Rasmus yelled, turning around himself, trying to find where the boy was hiding.
And there he was, standing still like a living statue, at the far end of the courtyard, as far away from the corridors as possible. He wasn't making any evasive motions, but Rasmus was not suspicious- Hodd always froze when he was cornered. He didn't know how to fight back, only how to intimidate. Rasmus snorted and marched up at Hodd, fully intending to cast a jinx that would cause him to spend the day with cockroach antennae on his rather boxy head, but he never had the chance.
A spell, a silent spell, hit him from behind, and all he could do was yell in pain he had never felt before.
In fact it felt as if the whole of his blood was on fire.
***
And that's that! Insert evil cackle here.
Duj: Bai can certainly be dangerous and he definitely is dangerous for Rasmus.
Sindie: I usually don't go for OCs myself. In fact when I began the story, I only had in mind to have just Rasmus and Nikos. But now I realized I pretty much need an army of OCs, which is a bother since they need to be established as personalities- canon characters just need to be written dialogue for. And since Rasmus is not in Gryffindor, I can't use Harry and co more than I already had in mind to use them. (And that's a lot, but still I need OCs…)
Why I Don't Capitalize: 2 reasons. One, my keyboard has a very quirky shift key, and often I need to go back to capitalize things, and because I speed-type to make the daily installment, I am too lazy to go back for every 'Mr' and 'Mrs'. Two, I tend to write tone/gravity into capitals, and when the 'mr' is not really meant, I may be reluctant to capitalize it anyway. But mainly it's the shift key and the fact I have no time to just proof read the thing.
RebeccaRoy: Excellent! How do you like this chapter?
So, I'm uploading in haste (need to prepare food) and see you tomorrow!