A/N: There's one thing you can say about me without fail. It's I hate being sick. Probably why I do it so rarely. But so have I been since last Wednesday and I freely admit to being a pain in everyone's arse since. With that said I can say this chapter came along just in time. I loved writing it and hope you enjoy reading it. It introduces probably the cutest character I've ever brought into a story since Bo - Roland. Who and what Roland is will be more than apparent by the end of this chapter. But I will give credit where credit is due. Roland was born out of a germ of an idea that came to me from a Snape/Hermione G-Rated story called 'Teacher's Pet'. It was unbelievably cute with wonderful illustrations. One small problem though, is I can't remember the name of the author of the story. But I can not recommend it enough.
Oh, and yes, part A and B...again.
And as always,
Enjoy.
Disclaimer: Go back and read the one before the one before the one before the one before the one before the one before the one before the one before the one before the one before the one before the one before the one before the one before the one before the one before the one before the one before the one before the one before the one before the one before the one before this one.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO A: ROLAND
For nearly the next hour the group moved slowly through the corridors. To Harry it seemed to progress was more just to keep them from staying in any one place too long as Orion took the lead, conversing every step of the way with his brother. Too far back to hear what they were saying, Harry watched what they were doing more than anything to try and get an idea of what was going on and if Sirius could help sort out any further what the wizard was up to. But nothing much in Sirius' expression changed aside from when he would occasionally glance back at him, favoring his godson with a small smile before turning his attention back to his older brother.
But finally, having allowed what he had categorized as an unprecedented amount of time for idle chit-chat, Voldemort again took control of Sirius' body, warning Orion that it would be some time before he could allow the transfer again. Such things were simply taxing the body too much.
After what seemed like hours of walking through the of the castle, Harry began to notice a series of cages that began to appear in the corridor they were currently in. There seemed no rhyme or reason to how they were hung. Some were hung from the ceiling. Others from posts off the walls. Some were a bit larger than others while others were so small Harry had no idea what they could possibly be used for. The only logic in them seemed that none of them were hung close together.
But try as he might, he couldn't see high enough to see what was in the them or what their function was.
"What do you think these cages are for?" Harry finally asked the wizard next to him.
Voldemort turned to one of the tiny wire boxes he was just walking under. "How should I know?" He answered the teenager irritably.
"They have to be for something." Harry observed. "There's an awful lot of them."
"And as long as I'm not in one of them, I really don't care." Voldemort replied, giving one of the cages overhead a cursory glance.
Harry sighed to himself and continued to walk along.
A bit further down the corridor he saw one of the cage's hanging close to a large stone base that was just high enough that he would be able to reach the cage. Hopping up on the stone, Harry reached up to the cage as Voldemort turned back to him.
"Potter!" He hissed at the boy. "What are you doing?"
"It could be important." Harry replied, tilting the cage as he grabbed the bottom of it, trying to angle it for a better look. But he suddenly let out a small cry as a shower of white sticks fell out of the cage and hit him in the face.
Startled, Harry stepped back and slipped off his stone perch, falling on his backside onto the dirt floor with a slight yelp.
The first person at his side was Voldemort, who was giving him a none to gentle hand back to his feet.
"What are you trying to do?" The dark wizard asked. "Alert the whole bloody castle to our escape?"
But Harry wasn't paying much attention to Voldemort. Most of his attention was focused on the pile of white sticks laying scattered about his feet.
"Bones." Harry whispered. "They're bones."
Voldemort turned to see what Harry was looking at.
Scattered about the boy's feet indeed were an array of small bones. None of them much larger than those of a chicken. Mixed among the grizzly discovery was the unmistakable triangular shape of a skull with two protruding fangs.
"A snake." Voldemort stated quietly, carefully picking up the white skull and looking it over in the light of the burning torch. "These are the bones of a snake."
Orion and the others joined the other two in their discovery.
"But why a snake?" The Unspeakable questioned, looking at the cage from where the bones had come. "Why put a snake in a cage and let it die?"
"Fear."
The two parseltongues turned abruptly to the soft hissing sound. No one else in the group took any notice of it as they continued to look over the small scattering of bones.
"What?" Harry asked the shadows dancing about them.
"Fear." The voice hissed again. "It's because they fear us."
Harry looked about at the array of cages around him. The voice was coming from somewhere close by. But it was so soft and weak, it was hard to tell exactly from where.
"That one," the voice continued, sounding as though each word was a nearly insurmountable effort to get out, "died crying for mercy I was told. I'll soon follow him."
"Why do they fear you?" Harry asked, still frantically searching the cages around him for where the voice was coming from.
The others in the group were staring at him in something like amazement, but not one of them said a word.
"They think we are servants of the dark lord." The voice softly hissed its answer. "No snake is safe here. All die."
"Nonsense!" Voldemort spoke up, searching the area around them as well. "Do they think the dark lord controls every snake in the world?"
"Safe or sorry." The voice hissed back.
"It's horrible." Harry whispered back, again looking at the scattered bones at his feet. "They just leave you in a cage to die?"
The voice sounded softer now, and much more despairing. "Yes."
"That's barbaric."
"The way things are."
Harry continued to frantically search the hanging cages, looking for any sign of movement in the sparsely straw covered bottoms. "Where are you?" He asked the voice.
"Above."
"But where? There are so many cages. Which one are you in?"
As Harry continued to desperately look for any movement above him, he abruptly caught sight of a small thin rope hanging from the side of one of the cages close by. The rope was very thin. Thin enough to see the bones underneath it's skin.
The rope twitched ever so slightly, then hung limp again.
Harry ran over to the cage and reached for it, but it was just out of his reach.
"He's here." Harry cried out in a whisper. "We have to get him down."
The others gathered under the small cage, which remained stubbornly just out of the reach of the tallest of them.
"If we use magic they'll know where we are." Orion stated.
"Then why bother?" Voldemort asked. "Going through all this trouble over a half dead snake? It's a waste of time. We could be out of here by now."
"The point is is that he is only half dead." Remus put in. "Which makes him also half alive. Come on, Harry." He stated. "Two of us should be able to reach the cage easily."
Harry felt himself suddenly lifted off the ground and in an instant he was seated on Lupin's shoulders. The werewolf had lifted him as though he were no more weight to him than a few pounds of potatoes in a sack.
Harry quickly reached for the cage and lifted it off its hanger. As soon as he had the cage securely in his hands, Lupin quickly lifted him back over his shoulders and set him carefully back on the ground.
Harry quickly turned his attention to the prize in his hands. But his hope quickly turned to despair as he caught his first glimpse of the cage's occupant.
Laying on the thin covering of straw was a small green snake no more than a foot in length. What skin there was on him clung to every rib along his body. Cuts showed still on the paper thin sheath, brutal evidence to the little snake's futile attempts to gain his freedom by trying to press his body through the small openings in the wire cage. Even to Harry the little snake looked like he was barely still alive at all.
"Arabella," Harry asked his godmother hopefully, "what about those potions Analisa gave you before we left? Could any of them help him?"
Arabella paused for a moment, having completely forgotten about the handful of small bottles the young woman had given her before they left.
Voldemort cut the suggestion off before Arabella could answer. "Those potions are suppose to be in case one of us is injured." He reminded Harry. "Not doled out to every...creature we cross paths with."
"But what if he dies?" Harry asked, meeting Voldemort's cold stare without backing down even a little.
"What if he does?" Voldemort struck back. "For all we know he's getting what he deserves."
At Voldemort's words the little snake lifted his head with painful slowness and turned it towards Harry. He just met the young wizard's gaze before the last of his strength seemed to leave him and he collapsed back onto the cage floor.
Harry turned quickly back to his godmother. "Arabella? Anything?"
Arabella searched quickly through the various bottles she had in the small satchel she carried in her robes and finally pulled out a small bottle with a pale blue liquid in it.
"The whole bottle would be enough for an adult human." She told her godson as Harry took the bottle from her. "It shouldn't take more than a small drop to get some reaction."
Voldemort again voiced his disapproval with a slight sound in his throat as Harry worked a few of the wires apart to make a small opening in the cage. He put a single drop of the thick liquid on the tip of his finger and then pressed it under the little snake's nose.
"Come on." He coaxed, rubbing the liquid over the very tip of the snake's snout. "Just stick your tongue out and try a little."
Whether on instinct or because he actually understood, the snake's tongue suddenly darted out and flickered over Harry finger, getting a good coating of the potion on it before it disappeared back into his mouth.
Harry watched in silence, forgetting to even breath as he watched for any reaction from the little snake. But a few seconds later the tongue flickered out again. This time bathing itself in the potion before disappearing back into the snake's mouth. The third time the snake managed to drag it's head forward as it laid its snout down in the drop of potion and quickly lapped it up with short flicks of it's tongue over Harry's finger.
Whatever reaction Harry had hoped for, he could discern very little difference in the snake's appearance or overall state once the potion was all gone from his fingertip. The only notable change was that the snake seemed to stretch very slightly, then slowly coiled itself up and go to sleep.
Harry turned an anxious stare to his godmother.
"It's all right, Harry." She reassured him with a small smile. "He's sleeping now. But I think he'll be all right."
"Wonderful." Voldemort stated in irritation. "Now that we've managed to save this poor little creature from whatever awaited it, can we possibly turn our attention back to the more pressing need of finding our own way out of here? Unless the boy finds some other helpless thing in need of rescuing."
"I would have thought you would have been happy to have saved his life." Harry pointed out.
"Why?" Voldemort sneered down at him.
"Well, he's a snake. Your lineage's crest is a snake."
"So?"
"Well," Harry paused for a moment, "I would have thought you would have had some particular affiliation with snakes."
"I do, Potter." Voldemort stated, turning back to face him. "And let me tell you what it has taught me. That not all snakes are part of that lineage. And not all care for it. This snake could very well turn out to be nothing more than a scaly little opportunist at his best. Or he could turn out to be a spy for this other wizard at his worst. We simply have no way of knowing his loyalties. Our best course of action would have been well to have left him to his end. Instead we now have one more to look after and one more to mistrust."
Harry watched as the dark wizard turned about abruptly and started off down the corridor. He turned briefly to his godmother, who favored him with a small smile and a gentle push in the back to get him moving again, with Orion, Katlin, and Lupin bringing up the rear.
As the group made its way along the torch lit corridors, Harry busied himself with undoing the complex mesh of wiring that made up the little snake's prison.
Even though, thanks to Katlin, they now had their wands back, Orion had cautioned them against using any magic. He pointed out that magic was probably the easiest way to track their whereabouts and they were simply better off not giving the wizard any more help in finding them than he probably already had.
So since they couldn't undo it by magic, he was forced to carefully work the wires free by hand. But finally the painstaking task was done enough that he could reach his hand into the small cage and slide it under the coiled up snake. Once in his hand, Harry quickly discarded the cage. Despite the potion he had been given, the little snake still looked very much the worse for wear.
"Here, let me see him." Katlin said, holding her hand out.
Harry carefully slipped the little snake onto her hand. Katlin held the little snake up for a moment, gently stroking its head with her finger. She then placed her other hand over the one that held the small creature and closed her eyes.
"Griss!"
Katlin turned to face her husband.
"'No magic!' What part of that didn't you understand?" Orion snapped at her.
Katlin regarded him as one would a minor annoyance. "My healing is an innate ability. It leaves no trace. If you had spent more time in your classes learning to be something other than 'charming', Mr. Black, you'd have known that."
Dropping her attention from him without what appeared to be a second thought, Katlin again turned it to the little snake in her hand. It had lifted its head now and stared up at her with something akin to fear in its eyes.
"Oh, now what do you think I'm going to do to you?" She cooed at it, gently stroking its head. "I happen to be a first rate healer of animals. And I know a great many cows that will give me a very good reference if you'd like. Now just lay your head back down..." she added, gently easing the little snake's head back down over it's coiled body, "...and very soon you're going to feel a great deal better."
Making sure that all of the little snake was safely coiled up in her hand, Katlin again place her other hand over the one holding the snake and closed her eyes. As Harry watched, a soft blue light emanated from between her joined hands, then slowly dimmed as she opened them again.
"What did you do?" Harry asked. But looking over the little snake, he could already see the results of Katlin's work. Most of the cuts and scrapes on his body were healed over and places were scales had been scraped off were now replaced with fresh ones.
Katlin gave the snake a gentle little prodding, which got her no more of a reaction than for the snake to lift its head slightly, then curl it back over itself and seemed to go back to sleep.
"Potions are all well and good, Harry." The Elite answered. "But their even better when backed up with a good heal spell. The poor thing had a lot of internal injuries to that little body. Probably from trying to squeeze his way out of that cage."
"Well, he seems to be better." Arabella stated with a smile as Harry watched the small creature change hands again from Katlin to his godmother. "But I think what he needs now is a good sound sleep."
Turning Harry back about, Arabella made a small cocoon in the hood of his sweater and slipped the little snake into it. "He'll be safe and warm in there, Harry." Arabella told him. "And you'll be close by if he needs anything."
Wrapped up in the soft, warm material, Harry thought he heard the little snake give a soft, contented sigh, then slip back into a relaxed sleep.
"He sounds happy." Harry commented with a smile.
Voldemort watched the scene from his position by the wall. Shaking his head he finally turned and walked off after Orion, who had already started off down the corridor.