Lady Cougar-Trombone: If you see chapter seven, when they first introduce Legacy, Lucy's Slytherin friends were always part of Legacy. They duel against the Riddlers, anyway; they don't know about the pensieve of anything. As for the Pryce sisters, I never noticed that they never officially joined Legacy. Thanks for pointing that out; I've put that into this chapter :P
DemigodOnFire: Thanks so much! Really, you've made my day :D
Also, I've realized this might be a source of confusion, so I'll just clarify it before anyone asks: Al and James are a year apart in age, but James is two school years ahead of Al because Al was born after the school year began, on September 14. Rose was born nearly four months later, on December 29, and Scorpius was born on November 1. Alice, as the youngest of their group, was born the next year.
Disclaimer: This world and these characters belong to J.K. Rowling. The only thing I own is the plot.
Louis cast the clock a brief glance before tossing aside the thick volume in his hands and exhaling in frustration. Most students would be waking up in an hour or two, and he had yet to go to sleep.
They had been researching all night, and Louis hadn't found a single thing. The tome he'd just tossed aside was written entirely in runes, and involved a lot of useless history that gave him a headache trying to first translate, and then comprehend.
Louis's gaze dropped to the bookshelf of classical Muggle literature that Molly had left behind from her old Muggle Studies classes. Romeo and Juliet. He had read it once; the whole tragedy was based on circumstance and impulsiveness.
He froze suddenly, turning to consider the book he'd cast aside with a slightly shocked expression on his face. The minute hand on the clock moved forward with a click, galvanizing him into motion. Louis grabbed the book and flipped open to a page, scanning the text urgently.
"Parchment," he muttered, grabbing a piece and taking his quill. This . . . this was important. This could lead somewhere helpful. Fifteen minutes later, he had copied three lengths of parchment. He had always been the best at Ancient Runes among the four of them (him, Fred, James, and Rowan), and it served him well now. That was one Nastily Exhausting Wizarding Test he would pass.
But now was not the time to think of N.E.W.T.s. Grabbing the parchment, he used colored ink to underline several lines throughout and then stopped at a paragraph. "The legend," he muttered. He circled the paragraph and jumped out of his chair, running a finger along the spines of books as he moved along the shelf, looking for a specific title.
And then he found it. Muttering to himself, Louis flipped through the pages until he found the one he was looking for and paused. ". . . the foundation of many Muggle fairy tales today, the Draught of Living Death will place the drinker under a deathlike slumber . . ."
Like Romeo and Juliet. "This is brilliant!" he exclaimed. "Get over here, you lot; I think I found something!"
They had surrounded him in minutes, and Louis explained his idea to them quickly. James frowned, shoving back and pacing. "But we can't let them be missing–"
"They'll go to the hospital wing," suggested Del.
James shook his head. "They're under the Polyjuice. I think Madam Pomfrey would get a bit suspicious if all of a sudden four sixteen-year-olds start looking like adults that graduated years ago with completely different physical appearances."
"So there are a few kinks in the plan," Del insisted. "It's a good idea, in theory. We just need to work out some of the details."
"In any case, we should get started with the brewing," Cecy advised. "A potion this complicated will be very difficult, and we need to modify it to sustain the outward image the Polyjuice will project. It's very advanced potion-making, which means James shouldn't go anywhere near it – sorry, James, but Potions was the only subject where you didn't get an Outstanding O.W.L. – so I think Fred and I should handle it." She glanced around to see if anyone would object. She was excellent at Potions.
Fred grinned at her. "Why, thank you, Cecy."
Cecy looked thoughtfully at the book Louis had laid on the table. "They're going to rue the day they chose to become Riddlers," she said softly, with a wicked smile on her face.
The others dispersed, and as Fred ran his fingers over certain vials in the potions room, he felt his mouth curl into a smile that mirrored hers.
The first ingredient was belladonna.
Rose ran her hand along the wall, stifling a scream when her hand brushed across something hairy. Please don't let that be a spider, please not a spider, anything but a spider, she chanted in her head.
Her other hand was stretched out in front of her to make sure she didn't bump into anything, and she was moving at a snail's pace, using her ears to make sure nobody caught her. She lowered the hand that was feeling along the wall so as to avoid any additional monstrosities.
It was a basement. Of course it had those abominable creatures. Rose found herself hoping that the spiders froze to death.
She felt the wall turn sharply into a corner and stiffened, listening closely. If she could only see . . . hell, if she had her wand with her, this wouldn't be half as bad.
Rose swallowed and turned the corner – and banged right into a set of bars. Her breath hissed out in a harsh exhale, but other than that, there wasn't any noise. Lovely, she thought. I've spent five minutes walking about as many feet to the cell beside mine. They must have put silencing charms on the cells to make them soundproof, or she would have heard what was going on in adjacent cells.
"Rose?" came Scorpius's voice, and she breathed a sigh of relief. She began stroking up and down the bars, looking for the lock, until she heard chains dragging and his hand closed around hers.
"Here," he whispered, moving her hand to the lock. His voice was coming from above her; he must have stood up. He let go of her hand, and Rose brushed her thumb over the cold lock, feeling for where she should insert the tooth.
Her hand was shaking. It took her nearly fifteen minutes, but she finally felt the lock give, and she pushed the cell door open gently, thankful when it didn't squeak.
"Where are you?" she asked in a low voice, and Scorpius took her hand again.
"Right here," he answered in the same tone.
She swallowed, wondering why she was feeling nervous all of a sudden. You're worried you'll get caught, she told herself firmly, ignoring the revelation she'd had when Scorpius yelled at her about giving up. That's all, understand? You are not going to have a Vic-Teddy moment. This is Scorpius. Scorpius Malfoy, your best mate, remember?
"Sit down," she said, and he complied. She knelt beside him, working on his wrists first. "This will take a while," she apologized, head bent over the shackle.
"It's all right. Don't try to rush," Scorpius advised, sounding nervous. Obviously, it wasn't all right – he was worried about getting caught. "If you try to rush, you'll only end up slowing yourself down. Your hands are shaking."
"I know," she snapped, wishing she was better at it. If it was James, he would have sprung them all out by now. "I just – I can't stop thinking about what'll happen if I don't do this fast enough."
"Think about something else," Scorpius suggested. "Anything else."
She wished he hadn't said that. Now she was thinking about him. Rose, she warned herself, it doesn't mean anything. It's inevitable, really – what sixteen-year-old girl at Hogwarts hasn't had a slight crush on Scorpius or Al at one point? And Al's your cousin; you could hardly feel attracted to him. She felt slightly nauseous at the thought. Just pretend it doesn't exist, and it'll go away soon.
"Rose," Scorpius said, "we can't exactly do this at our leisure. You've been staring at that open shackle for about thirty seconds now."
Rose felt her cheeks heat and remembered Dom teasing, "The Weasley blush. Can't escape it."
She hastily grabbed the other shackle and began working, feeling her whole body start to shake. She didn't feel good at all, and it wasn't just her proximity to Scorpius. Not that he had any effect on her.
She was not. Affected. By Scorpius.
"Rose," he said again, sounding worried. She felt the clasp give and quickly moved on to his ankles. He laid his hand on her forehead, and she stiffened momentarily before working even more rapidly than before. "You're feverish."
"I'm fine," she muttered, moving on to the last shackle. Her hands were shaking so badly now that she could hardly keep hold of the tooth.
"I don't have a cloak for you. All I'm wearing are my robes," he apologized. Scorpius leaned forward, and she swore as the tooth slipped from her grasp.
She ran her hands across the ground desperately. She needed that tooth. "Hey!" Scorpius caught her hands gently and pressed the tooth back into them. "Merlin, Rose, are you all right?"
She didn't answer, and he sighed. "Sorry. Stupid question."
The shackle burst open, and Rose exhaled in relief and leaned back as Scorpius stood, rubbing his wrists and leaning against the wall for support. "Come on," he said after a moment, offering her his hand. She took it, and he pulled her up.
"Let's go get the others."
Al crouched behind the battered old sofa, watching as pseudo-Bellatrix (at least, he assumed this was the woman Rose had told him about as she picked the locks on his shackles) turned in her sleep.
There were three other Riddlers in the Room, and he and Alice were on their own – Scorpius and Rose had gone to find an exit. "Al," Alice breathed into his ear, almost inaudibly. "There."
She pointed, and his gaze locked on four wands curled in the first of one of the men. He was lying on the couch opposite them. Al frowned, thinking for a moment – and then an idea struck him. It was brilliant. It was mad.
"Alice," he said in a low voice, "remember what we were working on in Quidditch practice last?"
She looked at him as if he were crazy. "What?"
"The Chasers' technique," he said urgently. "Their last drill – they invited the rest of us to adapt it to our positions."
Her face turned slack with realization. "Oh, no," she said, shaking her head. "No, no, no. Al–"
But he was already moving. He sprang to his feet, grabbed the edge of the couch, and flipped through the air, pretending he was rolling on his broom. He landed soundlessly on the carpet a few feet away from the man with their wands.
Turning around, he mouthed, it works! He gave Alice an encouraging smile. It's just like in Quidditch, he seemed to be assuring her. Alice took a deep breath, closing her eyes and remembering their last practice.
"And then you roll, just like that," James finished. "As Chasers, we use this technique every day, but it struck me the other night that if everyone did it this could be brilliant." Actually, as he later confessed to Al, Alice, Scorpius, Rose, and Rowan, he had watched Harry do a roll on his broom to catch the snitch in the pensieve, and he had immediately thought of what the Chasers did and how they could modify it to fit individual roles on the team.
"James . . ." Del trailed off.
"Right." He looked apologetic. "Del was fighting some Slytherins the other night, and–"
"Is she . . .?" interrupted Rose.
"Sort of," James answered. He looked to Rowan for help.
"Del and Cecy are around us a lot, so they tend to be a target of the Riddlers as well," Rowan explained. "Over the years, they became sort of honorary Legacy members." As James took a look at Del's shoulder, which was bleeding, she added in a low voice, "They both just think that all we do is fight against the Riddlers. They don't know that it's the reason we're top of our classes, or how we learned the real Wizarding War history from it, or about any of the many laws and rules we've broken."
"Do they know about the Room of Requirement?"
Rowan shook her head. "It's not really something we want to tell the world, you know, even if Cecy is James's girlfriend and we know neither of them will rat us out. If we ever show them the Room of Requirement, we'll just tell them that we needed research, so it gave us a room for research."
"Listen," James broke in, returning with Del. "There's something you should watch out for with this move. You need to tuck in one shoulder, while the opposite shoulder pushes out – that's what propels you sideways in a controlled manner. If you leave it to gravity, you won't have control. So if any of you have got hurt shoulders, this isn't for you."
"What do we do if they're right on our tail?" Al asked. "Last time, one of the Slytherins was nearly on top of me when I stopped abruptly to avoid collision. How do we get rid of them if we need them to let go so we can roll? Obviously we can't ram into them, because that won't work."
"Bite them," Scorpius suggested, grinning.
Alice opened her eyes. Tuck in your shoulder. She was going forward, not sideways this time, so she needed to tuck her head in as well. She peered over the top of the couch, giving Al a nod, and he darted forward, clamped his hand over the man's mouth, and sank his teeth into the man's wrist.
Bite them. Scorpius was a genius. Al was a genius. They were both utterly insane.
As the man let out a muffled roar and dropped the wands reflexively, Al stunned him. Alice sprang up from her crouch, grabbed the edge of the couch, and somersaulted over it, rolling to come up beside Al.
He tossed her two wands and she put a full body-bind simultaneously on pseudo-Bellatrix and the third man as Al took care of the fourth. Thank Legacy for teaching them how to duel with both hands. (Obviously, they couldn't cast different spells at the same time, but neither of them would have a problem casting the same spell with two different wands in quick succession, so it seemed like they were casting multiple spells at once).
"Silencio!" they chorused, just for good measure. Casting disillusionment charms to conceal the four Riddlers, they left the room at a run.
"Where are you?" Al hissed into his coin. Alice stopped in front of him, breathing hard, listening for approaching Riddlers.
"Right behind you," Scorpius drawled, smirking. Rose had one hand on his shoulder and her other hand against the wall. Alice still couldn't believe she was blind.
"There are more," Rose warned them. "Get ready for a duel. We had to outrun them because we stole two of their wands. There are wards surrounding this house and only three different exits."
"They didn't expect us to know how to put down the wards," Scorpius continued hurriedly. "Right now, we're in the center of the house – not the best place for escape, but the perfect place to defend ourselves in a duel."
He was right – the room they were in had four doors, one in each wall. They could each take a door. They could handle the Riddlers –
"You'll need these, then," Al said, tossing them their wands. Rose caught hers with the reflexes of a Chaser – although she couldn't see, she could sense when something was hurtling towards her face, and it was instinct to catch it.
"I can't duel!"
Rose. She was blind. Swearing, Scorpius grabbed her and led the way out of the house. They could hear footsteps behind them, and the remaining Riddlers caught up to them when they were right in front of an exit.
Several crowded in front of the exit, and several more stood in the doorway so they couldn't go back the way they came. "We'll have to fight," Alice hissed. She glanced back at Rose. "There are seven of them."
"Memorize their faces," Rose hissed back. She let go of Scorpius's shoulder. "I'll cover you. Just make sure they don't hit me."
And then the first spells hit. "Protego!" Rose shouted, and she felt several spells bounce off the powerful shield charm. She swore, wishing she could do more.
She felt Scorpius spin on his heel, ducking to avoid a spell, and she yelled, "Stupefy!" in the direction from which he'd come.
"Thanks," he said briefly. "Impedimenta!"
She may not be at her best, but they had practiced fighting in the dark loads of times. She could use her ears. "Oppugno!" she yelled, pointing at the wall. She had felt a bookshelf there when coming in, and she smiled in satisfaction as books started attacking one of the Riddlers.
Ducking under another spell, she screamed, "Reducto!" at another one; the Riddler was ganging up on Scorpius with a friend.
"Nice one, Rose," he laughed. "Stupefy!" The other Riddler was thrown back, and he landed on the ground with a thud, knocked unconscious.
"Langlock!" Another one down, unable to speak.
The one under the books roared, "Deprimo!" and the books flew to the side, blasted away.
"Silencio!"
And then there was silence, not just from the Riddler who had been silenced, but from everyone. Apparently the duel was over. "Let's–"
Scorpius tackled Rose, and a Killing Curse went over their heads. "Locomotor Mortis!" he yelled.
"Reducto!" Alice finished, and there was a last muffled thud.
"Wordless magic," Scorpius explained to Rose. "These Riddlers are actually good duelers."
Rose stood up shakily. "Thanks," she breathed. He'd saved her life.
"She cast the Avada Kedavra," Scorpius said darkly. "They really aren't afraid to kill us."
"Let's tie them up and get out of here," Al suggested. "Incarcerous."
"Incarcerous," they echoed.
Alice moved Rose's hand to the left a little. "There."
"Incarcerous," said Rose miserably. She couldn't even fight properly.
When they were all tied up, they left the house quickly. The air was crisp, and there were leaves underfoot. "My eyes!" A bright, blinding light seared their vision as their eyes adjusted to the daylight after having stayed in darkness for so long.
Scorpius, Al, and Alice stood, shielding their faces, but Rose had stiffened. "What is it?" Al asked, noticing as his vision began to clear slightly.
"I see light," she said.
They had spent several hours figuring out how to modify the potion, but they finally managed to agree that they'd gotten it right. Fred was 95% sure that the potion would work as planned. In theory, it was brilliant.
It had all the regular ingredients – infusion of wormwood, powdered root of asphodel, sloth brain, Sopophorous bean juice, etc. It also had deadly nightshade, hemlock, and aconite. It took them quite a bit of time to figure out which poisons and additional sleep-inducing plants to use. Poppy, hellebore, clove, foxglove – there were so many that made sense.
Aconite, or wolfsbane, was the only obvious one. Instead of the traditional blue of that the Draught of Living Death should take on, this potion was more the hue of a crushed blackcurrant. Cecy figured it was the extra valerian root they had added.
The potion's effects slowed the Polyjuice down, so it would only need to be re-administered every three hours, as opposed to every hour. The sleep the potion induced could only be broken by the people who administered the potion, which was very similar to a certain self-inflicted sleeping draught that took a week to brew the antidote to. (The idea was that Madam Pomfrey would identify it as the sleeping draught and believe it was "self-inflicted" because they had been making the potion themselves, and they had caused the accident). However, it gave both Legacy and the Riddlers a time limit: one week.
Pouring the poison carefully into four vials, Fred and Cecy went to find James, Louis, Rowan, and Del. "It's done," said Fred.
Rowan narrowed her eyes at the vials. "You're sure it will work?"
"It's untested," Cecy pointed out, biting her lip. "We don't know for sure. But we went over the theory a hundred times before we began making the potion, and we're fairly certain it should."
"All right," James decided. "Now we have to find a way to get it to them, and come up with a cover story as to how they were knocked unconscious."
Rowan gave him a look. "Have you forgotten who we are? It's not that difficult. We've had to do things like this loads of times before."
"They're fifth years," said Louis. "They'll be studying for O.W.L.s. Don't the fifth years always congregate in the dungeons to practice potions? All sorts of things could happen in there."
"It would be so easy for some sort of potions mishap to occur and for four unsuspecting fifth year students to be sent to the hospital wing, comatose, from the unfortunate accident," Del added, smiling.
"Of course, we'd just have to have a discussion alone with our dear family members, perhaps during dinner, when nobody would know where they'd be," Fred continued. "They could be in the dungeons, for all anyone would know. Who's to say they were anywhere else?"
"And who do we know," said James with a smile, "who might be able to witness such an event, even though the students were working while everyone else was at dinner?"
It seemed Lily, Morgan, and Lorcan had yet another job to accomplish.
"The wards must have been around the house, and that's what made me believe I was blind," Rose realized, pacing. "They wanted me to feel despair, and this way, they wouldn't need someone with very advanced medical training to see if they could repair my vision. They could just lift the spell."
"Thank Merlin," Al breathed in relief. He smiled at Rose. "We got out of there alive."
"Yeah," Alice said, "and now we're stuck in a forest somewhere, freezing to death, and there are more bloody wards around the forest that ensure we can't leave! Not to mention somewhere out there, eleven Riddlers are hunting for us."
"We need to contact Teddy," Scorpius said. He took out his Legacy coin.
"Not a word about my temporary blindness," Rose warned. "Or how Al and Alice were both unconscious, and how you guys were tortured using the Cruciatus."
The Hogwarts students still weren't answering, but the graduates answered immediately. "Are you all right? What's happening?"
"We've escaped," Scorpius answered quickly, "but we're stuck in a forest now. Can you tell where we are?"
"Lucy and Will have been trying to use the Trace to track you," Molly answered. "We still can't track you. The wards around that forest must be blocking it. Can you take them down?"
"Don't you think we've tried?" Alice demanded, rolling her eyes.
"We broke through the wards around the house, but the forest ones are too strong," Al clarified.
"We've got descriptions of the Riddler graduates, though," Rose added.
"Can you tell me?" Teddy asked.
Alice, Al, and Scorpius relayed the information to him, speaking rapidly. As Teddy finished writing it all down, he scowled. "I recognize some of these," he growled. "Is that all of them?"
"They didn't want to take any chances with us," Scorpius answered. "All the graduated Riddlers besides the ones at Hogwarts impersonating us are here."
"All right," said Teddy. "Describe the forest."
After they'd finished describing the cold temperatures (there was frost on the ground, but no snow; the light snow they'd had before seemed to have melted) and the types of trees and such, Vic assured them that it was incredibly helpful and they would be able to find them within a few days.
"All right, thanks," said Scorpius, and then he put the coin away and the four of them stared at one another. All they had to do was manage to last in the forest with eleven Riddlers hunting for them with murderous intentions.
"This'll be fun," sighed Al.