TriNymphs - Chapter Twenty-Five - Boss fights and Broomsticks
"GET UP!" Atlas screeched. She was currently in the shape of a blob of light, and was hovering beside the bed of one of the three nymph sisters. She screeched more. The glass in a nearby mirror broke, effectively waking up Lyssa. As well as all of her room mates. "Go to the third floor corridor. Run!" Lyssa got up and ran out of the room, her roommates stood and watched her go, confused. Then she realised what she was wearing and pulled better pants over her short shorts, as well as a sweater over her tank top. She raced back out the door.
Atlas went to Chelsea and Alex's room next. Screeching at the top of her lungs. A window broke. Not one of the five girls in the room stirred. She was reduced to head butting them, which luckily they could still slightly feel. Even if it only felt as if someone was blowing on their faces, they felt it and eventually woke up. They took the extra minute to get dressed decently as well. Atlas had gone back to Lyssa to fill her in as she raced down the four or so flights of stairs. Lucky that in both cases she had left before the sisters had taken the time to dress or they would have been told off. And have you ever tried running through a place where there was a very high chance a disgusting looking old man would find you in little more then your underwear? It did not encourage speediness. It encouraged proceeding quietly and ducking in every available hiding place.
Lyssa was nearing the third floor. Atlas had finished explaining by then and gone to explain to the other two what was happening. They had just gotten on the ground floor and were making their way to the huge stair well. Atlas gave them the rap. There was nothing else she could do. She had died looong ago and wasn't able to do much in the human world. She would only distract them now, so she went back to her place with the other deities to sit back and watch, ready to pop back in if someone else showed up and the girls needed warning.
Lyssa burst into the third floor corridor, skidding to a halt in time to see a man just going into a room in the end of the hall. She only saw the back of his head, but she figured he must be the person Atlas warned her about, so she shouted the first spell that came to mind in an effort to stop him. "Wingardium Leviosa!" Lyssa levitated a large stone torch standing at the end of the hall near the man, hitting him away from the door with it. A hood fluttered at the top of the cloak the man was wearing. It had been down so Lyssa hadn't noticed, but it looked awfully like the one the man who kidnapped her had worn.
Lyssa walked cautiously towards the man, who had taken the torch on the head and was currently unconscious. "Who are you?" she asked quietly. It echoed throughout the, mainly empty, corridor. The man woke up, it's not like Wingardium Leviosa was a particularly forceful spell. Lyssa was halfway across the room. The man slowly rolled over to face her, and then stood.
"I believe now is the time where I make some horrible joke about you still having late homework, but I haven't the time to deal with children." Professor Sage Copper, the former defence against the dark arts teacher, sighed.
"It was you?" Lyssas eyes went wide.
"Magical creatures have always been a bit of a hobby of mine, unfortunately nymphs and elementals -like your friend Erik- are hard to find. So you two had to do for the time being. Anyways, as I said, I've not the time to deal with you. Goodbye." he turned away.
"Incendio!" Lyssa set his cloak on fire, continuing to walk towards him.
He sighed and took off his cloak, leaving it to burn itself out. "I'd hoped you weren't going to make me fight you. I really must go."
Lyssa kept her wand pointed at him. Her mind was racing trying to think of any spell in her second year repertoire that would be useful in this fight.
"Rictosempra!"
"Protego." Copper was aiming his wand at Lyssa, but suddenly stopped part way there.
"Duck!" Atlas yelled, in the form of a ball of light. Lyssa didn't hesitate, and still only narrowly dodged a spell coming at her from behind. It hit Copper, whose sheild spell had gone out, and he flew back and hit the wall as well as part of the door, breaking it open. Copper scrambled out of the way to avoid the giant dog head suddenly attacking him.
"Imobulous!" The dog slowed down drastically. Copper shoved him into the room and slammed the door shut, repairing the door just in time to lock it.
Lyssa turned around to look at the new entry. Mr Malfoy. "Damn, this is gonna suck." Lyssa thought. She was out numbered two to one by people with much more experience and skill then herself.
"Do something!" Atlas urged.
"Expelliarmus!" Lyssa shouted, having finally thought of a spell somewhat useful to the situation. Mr Malfoy's wand soared out of his hand and landed somewhere behind Lyssa, who was standing with her back to the wall, one enemy on each side. "One down." she thought. "Or at least, one disarmed and slightly less dangerous at the moment." Luckily he hadn't been paying much attention, and was instead eyeing the door, wondering how to get past the dog.
Mr Malfoy started walking towards her. Lyssa couldn't think of anything to do. And then there were ropes binding her, she couldn't move. Mr Malfoy took his wand back, and took Lyssas from her hand for good measure.
"Proceed." Mr Malfoy nodded towards Copper.
Copper stretched his arm back towards the door, readying his wand arm to shoot a spell at the gigantic dog. His hand was on the door knob. He turned the door knob. Mr Malfoy was walking towards him, to join him. The door was being opened, slowly. The door suddenly ignited in flame.
Copper stumbled back, away from the door. His hand had been burned; he shook it, trying to cool it down. Finally he remembered he could shoot water out of his wand and he poured some onto his hand, cooling the burn. Alex walked it. "Miss me?" she smiled.
"Way to steal my dramatic entrance." huffed Chelsea, walking up next to Alex after having setting the door on fire. Power over fire was proving useful. Chelsea saw Lyssa on the floor, bound and gagged, and rushed over. The gag was removed. Chelsea took a while severing the ropes with a spell. They were very tangled and several times she had to cut through the same rope in more then one place.
"Stupify." Mr Malfoy shot a binding spell at Chelsea as she was working on Lyssa's ropes, and then turned his wand towards Alex. Chelsea dove to the side, attempting to avoid the spell. Luckily though, a few moments before the spell would have hit, vines crashed through the window. One shot forward and headed off the spell. The vine froze. Alex scowled. She had had to call for those things like five minutes straight before anything could grow all the way up to the third floor from the greenhouse below the windows. Now one of them was already out of commission. Alex started concentrating on calling up a third. Chelsea resumed untying Lyssa, then they both scrambled back towards the door, ready to make a hasty exit if need be.
Mr Malfoy shot a curse at the girls. They ducked out of the way. Chelsea decided to test something. If Alex's vines could stop a spell, could her fireballs? It wasn't as likely. Especially considering it wasn't a living thing and didn't have a particular mass. Stuff could move through fire easily. She started on the incantation anyways, waiting to say the last word until Mr Malfoy used another spell. They were going to hit. A ball of red and yellow, and a spell of blue. They hit head on, sparks flew off; but the spell was effectively stopped. Now she was in business. Chelsea smiled.
Atlas floated over from the side, where she had been observing. She stopped in front of Lyssas face. She was close to the door, ready to hail Filch to go get help if he happened to walk by, or hell even Peeves. But no one came. She threw in the occasional spell as well, but she didn't have anything as useful as fireballs or vines, even. "Do something! " Atlas shouted at Lyssa.
And then Lyssa was fed up. Atlas must have noticed over the past months that no amount of nagging or attacks would make whatever powers she had inherited from her nymph mother appear. She was starting to doubt that she even had any. Maybe she had had just enough for that one burst in the room under the lake. Maybe that was all the power she had and she used it up in that one hit. It was fine with her. She considered that a damn fine way for it to have gone. She had saved her life, and her friend Erik's life.
Whatever. She would stand here and help her sisters however much she could with her limited abilities and she would grow up and work on being a witch. And she would ignore Atlas. She was done with her bitching.
Chelsea threw a fireball to head off a spell Copper had cast. It hit on the side and the spell was knocked off course, but didn't break into little sparks like it would have if it had hit head on. The spell hit the wall near Lyssas head, bursting open the wall. Apparently there had been pipes in there, because suddenly a torrent of water was headed at Lyssa's face.
She stepped back and flung her arm up to cover her face, out of instinct. When nothing hit her, she looked up. The small torrent had stopped right in front of her hand. Lyssa's eyes widened. She flung her hand towards the two death eaters her sisters were fighting. The water followed, but didn't stop with her hand. It kept going and hit the two men. For a minute they were surprised, and that was all the time Alex needed, she flung the third vine through the window to tie the men up. It had barely gotten there in time.
And just as the two were tied up, a first year flew through the door. The other one having gotten off to open the door, she walked in after. Lyssa moved away from the wall that water was still spraying from and looked at the two. "Aren't you Ron and Hermione?" she asked. She had seen them around the Gryffindor common room.
Ron landed and the two of them paused for a minute, taking in the destruction and putting their broomsticks to the side. There were dents in the wall, all from the deatheaters spells. Being in their second year at Hogwarts the triplets hadn't learnt spells quite good enough for that. There were also burns on the walls, from where Chelsea's fireballs had hit. And thanks to Alex and her vines, half the windows were broken and plants were strewn across the room. And then there was the water on the ground halfway across the room from the hole it had come from. And how could you forget the stone torch that had been thrown across the room at the beginning?
The two first years only took a second to take this in, then Hermione pushed Ron into action, "We have to hurry!" and they ran thought the corridor into the stairwell, effectively running into the Headmaster on their way.
"Dumbledore!" said Ron.
"We were just going to find you! Harry is in trouble, he's in the last room down that trapdoor!"
Dumbledore nodded and hurried forward. He would have time to ask about the wreckage of his corridor later. The students watched him head through the door, and then looked around awkwardly. It was rather... Anti-climatic. Then Chelsea noticed something and raced towards where Alex's vines lay on the ground. "They got away!" She looked around incredulously. "All that and no one thought to take their wands?" Her voice was reaching a rather high pitch and it was getting hard to hear her. She looked out the window onto the grounds, which Mr Malfoy was currently flying over on a hijacked broom. Mr Malfoy waved to the group from the edge of the forest. He would walk around the castle then through the gates, after all, he was allowed on the grounds anyway.