The Ambiguous Artifice

by murkybluematter

Harriet Potter's third year masquerading as a pureblood boy promises to be even more complicated than the last two. All she wants is to get through her studies unimpeded, but with pureblood politics, ancient artifacts, and adolescent hormones getting in the way... well, at least she's up to the challenge. Alanna the Lioness take on HP, book three.

14. Chapter 14

A/N: So…you guys should be good by now at this time-turner stuff, right? I know you won't get too confused. My advice on this chapter is: when you get to what looks like the climax, don't get too excited! This one's a marathon. Not a sprint. And it's a bit rough. Basically this chapter is a long slog through a swamp of hopelessness and I want you all to be prepared for that. There's a lot of exposition b/c of the nature of the scenes, but it's all really important, so try your best to get through it! Dun Dun Dun.

The Ambiguous Artifice:

Chapter 14:

Rigel wasn't in the Hospital Wing for very long, but her stay wasn't short enough to get out of explaining to her friends exactly what had put her there. She attempted to shrug off their concern with a vague, "I got sick, that's all," but Pansy and Draco knew her too well, it seemed.

"You suddenly got sick on the same night something in the forest created a wave of sound so strong it shattered most of the windows on that side of the castle?" Draco asked, pausing in putting pepper on his eggs to gesture to where one side of the Great Hall was warded off temporarily to prevent students from messing with the broken glass until architects were brought in to fix them.

"Yes," Rigel said, pursing her lips.

"So I guess Blaise was wrong when he said you were probably down by the forest when it happened," Pansy said, examining her nails casually.

Rigel aimed a slow, betrayed look at Blaise, who shrugged beneath her accusing gaze and said, "I only deduced that it was likely, considering how frequently you go walking down there in the evenings. The odds of you getting into an unrelated accident at the same time all those windows broke are lower than the odds of you being directly involved in whatever happened."

"You wouldn't say that if it were someone else," she complained.

"No one else has luck like you do, Rigel." Blaise smirked. "The odds on you are one of a kind."

"So you were involved," Pansy pressed, looking disappointed. "Rigel, what have we said about—"

"It doesn't matter," Rigel sighed. "It's over now, so what's the point in making you worried over something that already happened? Yes, I was walking by the forest last night. I was close enough to whatever made the noise that it ruptured my eardrums and I had to go to the nurse to have it fixed. Do you feel better now that you know?"

Pansy sniffed and looked away, but Draco said, "Yes, we do. Thank you."

She shook her head in amusement and got back to her breakfast. Her friends were equally endearing and ridiculous, sometimes.

"Do you know what happened to Professor Pettigrew, then?" Theo asked, pointing his knife up at the Head Table. "He's missing this morning and I heard his classes have been canceled."

"He was in the Hospital Wing when I was there," she said honestly. "I guess he ran into some trouble in the forest. Maybe he broke the windows."

Theo was content to debate the likelihood of that with Millicent and Blaise for the rest of breakfast, leaving Rigel to eat her porridge in peace.

"You know we're just worried about you, right, Rigel?" Pansy asked as they were finishing up. "I know we've seen a lot more of you this year, but it still feels like you're a bit distant, somehow. You can talk to us, if you need to."

Rigel smiled with quiet gratitude, but knew that she couldn't, in fact, talk about this with her friends. So many powerful people wanted to get their hands on this jewel. Riddle and the SOW Party wanted it as badly as the goblins did. If she told her friends everything that was happening, they'd be tempted to tell their parents where the jewel was and what it did. Rigel was wary of even telling Dumbledore about the jewel—she didn't think anyone should have such a thing. The best thing was to tell the Auror Department. They would make the right decision on what to do with it. Or at least, they would do what was legally right, which was more than she could presume about any of the other parties. Maybe they'd send it to the Department of Mysteries and let them tinker curiously with it for all eternity. Anything but hand it over to one of the leaders in the political quasi-war that had quietly taken over their world.

"Thanks, Pansy," she said, placing her napkin on the table slowly. "I'm not even thinking about it anymore, though. I'm more worried about the upcoming exams. Professor Snape hasn't told me what he wants to do for my individual Potions final, but it's sure to be grueling, knowing him."

"I'm certain you'll do just fine," Pansy said, still looking a bit concerned, but transitioning topics gracefully nonetheless. "Professor Snape knows your level, after all. He won't make it impossible."

"You say that like you don't know his expectations at all," Rigel grinned.

"He only has such high expectations because you keep meeting them, Rigel," Pansy said admonishingly.

"I'll have to do better at being a disappointment in the future, then," she said wryly.

"Or you could just resign yourself to people thinking highly of you," Draco drawled. "Oh, wait, I forgot who I was talking to for a moment there."

"What's that?" Rigel cupped a hand to her ear curiously. "I can't hear anything over the swelling in my head. Is that you, Draco? You look so small from up here."

"Shut it." Draco nudged Rigel with an amused grin. "Let's get going, before we're late to class."

They filed out of the Great Hall and the day went on, as most days do, in complete normalcy.

-0

[HpHpHp]

-0

A few weeks passed, April bloomed into May, and the days seemed to grow shorter as examinations grew closer. The OWL and NEWT students could be seen traveling in packs, shooting information back and forth aloud in frantic, ever-quavering undertones. The Quidditch season was officially ended, with Slytherin once again in possession of the Quidditch Cup. The House Cup would be theirs, too, if no one messed up royally between now and the end of the year.

Pettigrew was teaching once more, but his extracurricular movements had changed quite a bit since the night he almost became dragon food. The portly professor no longer went to the library at all. He didn't spend long hours pacing in his rooms as he used to, either. He was almost nightly in the forest, and Rigel perpetually attempted to work up the nerve to go out and see what he was doing. She couldn't bring herself to do it, though. She didn't want to go back into that forest ever, if she could help it.

It felt like a betrayal of her principles, sitting in the castle and watching Pettigrew's dot drop off the edge of the Map every evening. He was probably torturing some creature or other and she was doing nothing to stop it. What good would she do, though, wandering through the forest and getting caught up in whatever incredibly foolish thing he was attempting? The dragon had been more than enough hint that she was in over her head, thank you very much. Every day she waited for Aurors to come through the Entrance Hall and demand to know Pettigrew's whereabouts. Every day she was disappointed. Didn't they read their mail at the DMLE?

How long could she afford to wait before taking more drastic measures? Until he got control over a giant and squashed half the school? Until Riddle got his hands on the jewel and changed his mind about being a politician after all and went on to rule the world? Until Pettigrew got himself eaten by a lethifold? Actually, she thought darkly, that might solve a lot of problems all at once. As long as the jewel got eaten, too.

She shook her head and picked up her pace, knowing she had to hurry if she wanted to get to her Magical Theory class on time. She would wait a few days more. The Aurors were probably just taking the time to marshal their case against the man. They would come before the week was out.

-0

[HpHpHp]

-0

Just when she had started to think Pettigrew had forgotten all about her presence that night in the woods, reality intruded and reminded her that power never went unnoticed. Not even by half-dead half-wits who, in her opinion, ought to have had other things on their minds at the time.

She was up late in the common room, going over their Charms notes one last time before bed with Draco and Pansy, when Rosier and Rookwood dropped by their table on their way through. Rigel looked at Rosier expectantly, as he almost never let a chance to say something pithy pass him by, but the golden-eyed boy was quiet, deferring, unusually, to Rookwood as they approached.

"Sorry to disturb your studying," Rookwood said, his low voice rumbling in the air between them. "I have a matter I think Rigel needs to hear."

Rigel straightened from her textbook and blinked inquisitively at the upperclassman. "What is it?"

"Are you acquainted with Professor Pettigrew?" Rookwood asked, eyes deep and searching.

"Not well," she said carefully. "Why?"

"He held me after class today to ask about you," Rookwood told her, a slight frown on his face. "I suppose he heard we were friendly."

"You can say 'friends,'" Rigel smiled slightly.

"Friends, then," Rookwood smiled ever so slightly back. "Pettigrew asked after you, in any case. Said he was an old friend of your parents and was disappointed not to have you in his class. Wanted to know how you were doing, lately. I found it odd, so I thought I'd mention it."

Rigel swallowed thickly. That was… not good. She had played as dumb as a rock after the whole dragon thing. Was he still suspicious? Or just wondering if she'd told anyone what she'd seen?

"Pettigrew asked me about you, too," Pansy said suddenly, eyes sharp. "I didn't think to mention it, because it was in passing, but that's a little strange."

"What did he ask you?" Rigel asked, clenching a fist under the table in nervous anticipation.

"Nothing that made any sense," Pansy said, frowning. "He asked how you were doing in classes and if I thought you were a good wizard. I said I wouldn't be friends with you if you weren't. It was supposed to be a joke, but I don't think he got it."

"Hmm," Rigel said, noncommittally. Her mind was racing. What was Pettigrew looking for? Evidence that she was clever enough to figure out his game?

"Do you know him at all, Rigel?" Draco asked, likely picking up on her unease. "Why is he asking questions about you? You said you only saw him that one time in the Hospital Wing. Did you talk?"

"Not really," Rigel prevaricated. "He is an old friend of my family, so maybe…he's just curious about his friend's son. I'm sure it's nothing."

"Keep away from him," Rookwood advised unexpectedly. "I didn't like the look in his eye. He's up to something."

"If you say so," Rigel said, now a little disturbed. She would have to make extra certain he never caught her watching his movements. Lately, she kept such a distance that there was no way he could have—unless he guessed that Sirius had given his son the Marauder's Map. She blanched, fighting to keep a normal look on her face even as Draco glanced sharply at her. If Pettigrew deduced that, he would have every reason to suspect she knew more than she should. "I'm not in his class," she forced herself to say calmly. "I can't see how we'd cross paths anyway."

Rookwood didn't look entirely reassured, but he and Rosier bid them goodnight all the same. After they left, Draco put down his quill. "You're afraid of this Pettigrew fellow," he said. "Why, if you don't know him?"

"I…" What could she say? "I wonder if he might hold a grudge against me, because of the way he fell out with my dad and uncles. It was before the Marauder joke line made it big, so it's possible he resents not sharing in the success of that venture, which he was technically a part of when it started, I think."

"Oh," Draco said, relaxing a bit. "You think he might be like that Lee Jordan fellow, right? You wouldn't think people would get so worked up over pranking supplies, honestly. Whatever happened to Jordan anyway? Did they catch him after the gala?"

"He ran," Rigel said, having heard the story from her dad before coming back from break. "His father had no idea where he'd gone and, after questioning, it was determined that Jordan Sr. wasn't involved in the assassination attempt on Ogden. Lee was the one behind it, but they haven't tracked him down yet. He'll run out of places to hide, eventually."

"Well, I'm sure Pettigrew won't turn out like that," Pansy said reasonably. "He's a bit strange, and getting stranger as the weeks pass, but he doesn't seem like the type to hold violent grudges. He can barely remember who's turned in their homework and who hasn't. I'm half afraid he'll just assign everyone a random grade at the end of the term."

As Draco reassured Pansy that it was worth studying anyway, Rigel lost herself in worry. Pettigrew had moved at least some of his attention onto her. That didn't bode well. On the one hand, it might detract from the time he focused on the jewel. On the other, it was one more person paying attention to her now. This year really hadn't been a success on the lay-low-o-meter.

-0

[HpHpHp]

-0

Late one evening after brewing in her lab, Rigel stopped by the kitchens on her way to the Come and Go Room. She was absolutely famished. Her usual seat was waiting for her already, and she was beginning to wonder if the house-elves knew about her time-turner. They never seemed surprised that she ate sometimes three full meals in the kitchens with them, despite the fact that she was fairly sure students weren't supposed to eat outside of the Great Hall.

Maybe they'd been informed to cater to the increase in calories she'd found use of the time-turner caused her to crave. Even if she were using the time-turner more judiciously, she thought she'd have to add at least one meal a day to keep herself appropriately fueled. In any case, she hadn't yet got up the nerve to ask. If they didn't know about the time-turner, that would constitute a willful breaking of one of the more stringent of the Department of Mysteries' rules.

Binny was there at her side moments after she sat down, launching into a story about one of the laundry elves who mixed the uniforms for the Gryffindor and Hufflepuff teams into the same load and turned both a lurid orange. "He is being new," Binny giggled in French. "He is not fitting in very well, but I is thinking him funny."

"He sounds entertaining," Rigel said, smiling. She poked a piece of chicken around her plate half-heartedly. Even after all this time, she still hadn't developed a taste for meat. "I hope the others aren't being too hard on him."

"He is being recently dismissed from his family," Binny said, quieter now. "We is understanding."

She nodded distractedly. "That's good."

Binny nudged her with a toe under the table when she lapsed into silence. "Is something being wrong?" She had switched back to English and was using her wide eyes to solemnly intimidate her into answering.

Rigel was ready to brush off the elf's concern, used to not talking about her problems, but something in Binny's earnest gaze made her pause. Why not, really? Who would Binny tell? She never saw anyone besides the Weasley twins down here, and even they were rare visitors. Unlike her friends and Professor Snape, Binny had absolutely no stake in any of this mess. She was also extremely respectful of people's privacy. Binny wouldn't ask pointed questions or try to pry out any more information than Rigel was willing to give.

She smiled at the elf a bit tentatively. "Are you sure you want to know?"

"I is giving very good advice," Binny told her firmly.

"Well," Rigel said slowly, not sure quite where to begin. "Do you remember me telling you about the difficulties I was having with my magic before? Back when we first met?"

Binny nodded quickly, ears flapping. "You is thinking your magic isn't listening to you, but I is telling you that you is not listening to it."

Rigel blinked. "Yes, that's right. You have a great memory, Binny."

"All house-elves is having good memories." Binny sniffed. "It is being necessary for us."

"Makes sense," she said. "Well, I thought I had gotten my magic under control, but this year it sort of broke loose again over the summer—"

"On Young Sir's birthday," Binny said knowingly. "You is being thirteen, now, yes?"

"That's right," Rigel said again, amazed at the elf's perceptiveness. "It grew out of my control again, so I got this ring made to suppress the excess, so I could manage it more easily."

Binny shot the gloves on her hands a nasty look. "That is being a bad idea, Young Sir."

"Just Rigel is fine," Rigel said, frowning. "And yeah, that's what people keep saying. I thought they just didn't approve of me wasting my potential, so I didn't listen, because it's none of their business what I do with my magic, really, but I'm starting to think it isn't a good idea for other reasons."

"It isn't being healthy," Binny said sternly. "It is being like binding ears."

"Like what?" she asked, not having heard such an expression before.

Binny grew very grave. "In old times, it is being the practice to bind the ears of house-elves when they is born. Some wizards is thinking the elves is looking sweeter with little ears all tucked away, but it is hurting baby elves and stunting growth of ears forever. When ears isn't growing properly, they isn't working properly, and elves is being less effective servants, so eventually the tradition is dying out. Young Sir's magic is needing room to grow. Binding magic is being like binding ears—silly and hurtful."

"It doesn't hurt," Rigel protested weakly. Was such a comparison really the case?

"It isn't hurting you," Binny admonished. "You is being like old wizard masters. Your magic is being like baby elf. It is being hurt and you is not noticing, because you is thinking you is knowing better."

Rigel winced. "Is that why the magic is angry with me? I thought it didn't like being kept under control. Am I really hurting it? Can magic feel things like that?"

"I is not knowing," Binny said slowly. "But I is knowing this: wizards is not being given magic they is not being able to control. Nature is knowing what is best. You is meant to be trusting nature, trusting your magic, and trusting yourself. If you is not trusting it, it is not trusting you."

It was hard to trust something that liked to destroy things as much as her magic did. Binny may as well ask her to trust a rabid animal. And she wasn't just trusting it with her own safety—she was trusting it with the safety of everyone around her. She would sooner put an actual rabid dog into her baby sister's cot than rely blindly on the faith that her magic, more powerful than could possibly be natural, wouldn't turn on her will without warning.

"Nature doesn't always know what it's doing," Rigel said eventually. "Sometimes accidents of nature happen and they're no good for the species as a whole. I'm one of them."

"Nature isn't making accidents," Binny argued. "It is carefully preparing and planning all through time. Sometimes it is trying something special. It is being a test, not an accident, and nature is giving the answers, too. You is just needing to look."

Rigel smiled a bit at the elf's wise tone. "How do you know?"

"Everyone is knowing this, deep down," Binny said, giving her an odd look. "Maybe wizards is forgetting, but they is knowing if they is remembering."

She worked through that sentence in her head for a moment. Was she talking about cultural knowledge or instinct? "Were you born knowing this?"

Binny shook her head. "It is being obvious, if you is paying attention." The elf struggled for words visibly before saying, "You is comparing wizards to Muggles, yes?"

"Okay," she said, tilting her head, "on what terms?"

Binny tapped her head. "Smarts. You is coming to Hogwarts when you is eleven. Is you knowing any muggles at eleven?"

"Just my…er, my cousin's cousin," she said, thinking of the brief interactions she'd had with the Dursley family.

"Is this Muggle being like you?" Binny asked. "I is not talking about magic. I is talking about brains. Is he being smart like you? Is he thinking like you?"

"Well, no," Rigel said, frowning, "But he isn't a good example of Muggles in general when it comes to brains."

"You is thinking that, but I is guessing he is being average," Binny said, wagging her finger. "Muggles is not having magic from birth. They is not growing up with great power being at their fingers. They is not needing to be smart until later. Magical children is needing brains sooner. They is needing not to be killing themselves before they is learning, yes?"

"You're saying magical children develop at a faster rate mentally than their Muggle counterparts?" Rigel thought this over with interest. It was a very compelling theory, biologically speaking.

"On average," Binny prevaricated. "Yes. Nature is knowing that wizards is having more dangerous childhood, so nature is making wizards smarter sooner, so wizards is living to make more wizards."

Binny was talking about an evolutionary mechanism in terms of a sentient being of nature, Rigel realized. When pared down to the theory itself, she had to admit it made a certain amount of sense. The idea that magic would have no effect on a child's development would be harder to swallow, she realized. A magical child lived with the magic constantly, even from its time in the womb. It probably did do something to the brain. Was it an effect of the magic itself or of the body's adaptation to the magic, though? Did the magic make its host smarter so that it would be better utilized or did the host grow smarter by necessity of dealing with the magic? She was now desperately curious about the answer.

She would write Archie, she decided. He could talk to his friend Hermione and ask whether she had felt significantly more developed than her peers before joining the Wizarding world. She had never considered her peers' level of maturity unusual, but she supposed she wouldn't notice something like that, ensconced as she was among people like her.

"When do Muggles catch up?" she wondered aloud.

Binny shrugged, "I is not knowing so much about Muggles. I is guessing once they is being on their own."

Sometime around the age a wizard would finish school, then, she presumed. Interesting. She couldn't imagine the catastrophe it would be if wizards didn't gain a measure of maturity until well into their teens. There would probably be a lot of dead teens, she realized with morbid interest.

"The point is being," Binny said pointedly, pulling her back from her thoughts, "that nature is giving wizards what they is needing to deal with the magic they is having. Same as house-elves is being given good memories for the things they is needing to be doing. Thestrals is being given wings for flying and grindylows is being given gills for swimming. Young wizards is being given strong wills for controlling strong magic. It is being obvious, yes?"

It seemed obvious when put in so simple a light, Rigel had to admit. She didn't feel very strong-willed, though. A thestral could see easily whether or not it had wings before it tried to fly. Was she supposed to jump off a metaphorical cliff and just hope for the best?

"You is getting there soon," Binny said comfortingly, patting her arm. "You is only needing to be patient. Nature is not rushing things. Wizards is. And you is needing to stop binding your magic, before it is being too late, Young Sir."

"Just Rigel, Binny," she reminded the elf. After a moment she added, "Thanks. I'll think about it."

She would think about it, she promised herself. If even house-elves were telling her she was being an idiot, then maybe it was time to start listening. She would work on it this summer, once everything was settled and she had the space to experiment without hurting anyone. She would wean herself off of the suppressor, too. Somehow.

-0

[HpHpHp]

-0

She checked the path to the Come and Go Room on the Map once she left the kitchens. She had been extra careful about not getting caught using her time-turner of late. She was in the home stretch and she didn't want any mistakes at this juncture to ruin her perfect record and jeopardize her chances of getting to use it next year, too.

While perusing the Map, she spotted two dots creeping slowly through a corridor on the fifth floor that made her stop and smile slowly. She had been waiting a while for her chance, watching the Map idly for the perfect moment, and it had finally arrived. The Weasley twins were out after curfew, all alone, and they were about to rue the day they challenged Rigel Black.

She took a teacher tracker out of her bag. She'd been saving it for this occasion. She activated the tracker and slipped it into her pocket, taking out the corresponding map to make sure it was working. The two dots overlapped exactly in the center. Perfect. She tucked the parchment away and took out the Marauder's Map instead. She needed to plot her course carefully. There was another version of herself on the Map, and she kept her distance until she saw her other self meet up with the twins. Once all three dots had converged, she began walking slowly but surely in their direction, herding them like sheep in the direction they needed to go. The three dots traveled together for a while, until Rigel's other dot broke in one direction while the twins went another way. Perfect. She waited a good five minutes just to be sure, then took out her time-turner and turned back several hours. It would take a while to set everything up.

A good amount of time later, everything was finally in place. It would be the most epic experience of their little lives, she thought maniacally. By the time the previous version of herself had left the kitchens, Rigel was heading across the fifth floor on an interception course. She destroyed the teacher tracker in her pocket, leaving the only dot on the radar map the one carried by her previous self. A few minutes later, she heard the sound of two footsteps coming around a corner ahead of her. She stopped and turned her back to their approach, making a show of fretting over the piece of parchment in her hand.

She heard their footsteps stop abruptly and whirled, gasping, only to relax when she 'recognized' them. "Oh, it's you two," she said.

"Rigel?" Fred grinned. "What are you doing out at this time of night?"

"Said the pot to the kettle," Rigel snorted.

"George and I have important business," George told her.

"Yeah, me too," Rigel smiled. "Got to get back to it, actually…" She looked down at the parchment again with a prominent frown. "I've got to go. Night."

She began walking away, then stopped, biting her lip. "You guys…aren't going that way, are you?" she asked, gesturing back the way she'd come.

"We are. Why?" Fred asked, frowning at her.

Rigel grimaced. "Don't go that way. Filch is coming."

"How do you know?" George wanted to know. He looked a bit suspicious.

Rigel clutched the parchment as though reluctant, then made a show of caving. "Okay, look. I put a teacher tracker on Filch's lantern. See? This is us, at the center, and that's him." She showed them the dot moving steadily in their direction. "Judging by the distance, he's about two corridors over, but he's been moving systematically through the fifth floor in this direction. You have to come with me if you want to avoid him."

"Smart," Fred said, leaning forward interestedly. "We've tagged his robes before, but it seems a pain to do it every day. He always carries the same lantern though….we really should have thought of that, Freddie."

"Speak for yourself, Georgie," George said with a smirk. "I like the thrill of the chase."

"I'm not sure Gryffindor's hourglass can afford your adrenaline rush," Rigel said, referring to how Gryffindor was in last place for the House Cup.

"At least we can't afford the unpopularity that would result," George admitted. "All right, lead the way."

Rigel took them down a series of side corridors that would circumvent 'Filch,' only to groan aloud in dismay a few minutes later. "He's circling around! Quick, this way." She made to head up a set of stairs one corridor over, but the twins paused, exchanging a glance.

"Actually, we've got it from here," Fred said, smiling. "Thanks for the tip, but we'll go our own way."

She pretended to look confused, then shrugged as though it didn't bother her what they did. "All right. Good luck." She set off up the stairs while the twins took a path that would lead them to a little-known secret passageway that jumped the sixth floor entirely and came out close to Gryffindor Tower. It was the perfect choice for them to avoid Filch and get back to their common room quickly. The route Rigel had tried to take them on was the long way round, after all.

They obviously assumed she didn't know about that particular passage. Poor, innocent little lions. They should know by now not to underestimate their enemy's cunning.

-0

[GwGwGw]

-0

"That was close," Fred whispered as they eased the false door away from the dark passage it concealed. "Good thing Pup warned us."

"Nice of him," George agreed. "Then again, we rule-breakers have to stick together. We'd have done the same for him."

"If we'd thought of it," Fred said. He was still clearly annoyed that they hadn't tagged Filch's lantern. It was an obvious move, in retrospect.

"What do you think he was up to?" George asked as they carefully closed the wall behind them. He didn't bother with a light, as they knew this passage by heart.

"Smelled like the kitchens," Fred noted, taking the lead.

"The kitchens aren't on the fifth floor," George said. "He must have been on his way back down from somewhere higher. The Owlery, maybe?"

"Odd time of night to mail a letter," Fred said. "Maybe he was meeting someone for a little risqué romance."

"If Rigel is seeing someone, I'll eat every one of those seriously suspicious sweets he gave us," George said. Honestly, Rigel with a secret rendezvous? Not likely. The boy barely looked at other people without prompting.

"It's a little worrying that we haven't found anything wrong with them yet," Fred agreed. "Almost like there is nothing wrong with them. Which means—"

Whatever it meant, George never got to hear. The next thing out of his brother's mouth was a shout of surprise. There was a whoosh of displaced air as Fred stumbled forward in the darkness and hit the ground with a splat. Wait, a splat?

"Fred," he said worriedly, groping the air before him blindly. His feet caught in something ropey and he only had time for a surprised "Woah!" before he hit the ground, too.

It was wet. He spluttered and jerked his head back from what felt like at least three inches of…something. It wasn't water—too thick. It smelled like syrup of some kind, but why would there be a huge puddle of syrup in the passage? And what was that he'd tripped on? He rolled over, grimacing as the syrup coated his back, and sat up, fumbling for his wand in the dark. Fred got there first and conjured a light that had them both wincing as their eyes readjusted suddenly.

His twin was as covered in the sticky stuff as he was. On closer inspection, it appeared to be strawberry jam. "What on earth…?"

"Gross," Fred chuckled. "What happened here? Peeves?"

"Didn't know he knew about this passage," George said, looking around. The floor had jam spread all over it, several inches deep and at least as far as their light reached.

"He probably knows all of them by now," Fred reasoned, licking one finger curiously. "Come on, let's get through this mess and clean up on the other side. It looks like it goes all the way through."

George thought about suggesting they double back, rather than walk through a whole corridor of jam. Then he remembered why they'd taken the passage in the first place. The last thing he wanted to do was run into the caretaker while inexplicably covered in strawberry jelly. That was sure to land them a double dose of detention.

As they stood and began moving forward once more, grimacing at the squelching of jam under their boots, a sudden draft of cold air wafted past them, and in its wake came an eerily echoing voice.

"You…" it whispered, seeming to wind its way directly into George's ear. "You…"

"What is that?" Fred stopped walking abruptly. "Do you hear that?"

George nodded, squinting into the darkness of the corridor ahead. He couldn't see anyone or anything. "A ghost?"

"Don't recognize the voice," Fred said, frowning.

"You…" There it was again. Louder, this time. "You have angered the gods…"

"Okay I'm officially creeped out," Fred said. "Let's get out of here."

They moved forward again quickly, peering around them warily.

"The pranking gods," a voice whispered harshly in his ear, just before all hell broke loose.

Fred tripped over something invisible and went down again. George stopped abruptly to avoid the same fate, but a sudden push from behind sent him careening forward with a little scream that did not sound at all girlish.

He attempted to catch his balance, but the jam was suddenly thinner, slipperier, and he went sliding onto his butt with another splat. Fred was way ahead of him, for some reason, carrying the light with him. Before he could call out for him to wait, George realized he was beginning to slide forward. What the—?

It was then he noticed the floor was sloping downwards before him. But how? This passage was uphill! There was no time to work out the improbable physics, as he was quickly sliding down the passage at a speed he was entirely uncomfortable with. As he caught up with Fred, the light from his twin's wand picked up something huge and white blocking the tunnel before them. They were going to smack right into it! It was too late to slow their out-of-control slide. They let out matching cries of dismay and George tried in vain to at least protect his face before they—

Slid with an anti-climactic smoosh into a wall made entirely of marshmallow fluff. It killed their momentum, and he and Fred blinked slowly at one another behind what looked like masks of sticky cotton.

"What…just happened?" Fred asked, sounding a bit numb.

It began to rain chocolate syrup from the ceiling over where they sat. The thick, stick liquid dribbled almost insultingly gently onto their heads, sticking everywhere to the marshmallow and jam combo they were sporting.

"Some booby-trapped this entire passage," George said, filled with the utmost disbelief. He struggled to stand, feeling like some sort of swamp monster, covered in sweet-smelling goo like some sort of demented birthday cake.

"And we walked right into it," Fred complained. "What are the odds? And who would trap a secret passageway so elaborately? There's no way of knowing who'd fall victim to it, and you wouldn't be around to see it…anyway…wait. You don't think…?"

Catching on to his twin's train of thought easily, George shook his head (with difficulty, on account of the pile of red and white and brown glop on his head). "Rigel probably doesn't even know about this passage. And there's no way he'd have time to set this up—it was five minutes after we left him! And how would he know which passage we'd take anyway? It was our idea to come this way to avoid Filch."

"…was it?" Fred asked, struggling to his feet as well. "I mean…maybe he tricked us."

"There's just no way…" he said before trailing off in thought. Rigel was clever. But still…there was no way he could have pulled this off. Too many variables would have been at play.

"Let's just get out of here and worry about who did this to us later," Fred decided.

They began wading forward once more. The passage was still going downhill. Which was impossible. George was starting to feel like he was in the middle of a very surreal dream. They finally reached the end of the passage, a red door with a large, brass handle that George was sure he had never seen before. "This isn't right," he said, exchanging a nervous look with Fred. "The passage ends in a tapestry."

Fred grimaced, glancing back up the way they'd come. "You want to climb back through it all?"

Not a chance in hell. George grasped the knob resignedly and turned. It exploded into gold confetti. He opened his mouth on a groan and immediately regretted it as the golden bits filled his mouth. They were sprinkles, he realized after a moment of trying to scrape them off his tongue. Golden sprinkles. He pushed the door open with annoyed force, but wasn't fast enough to avoid the bucket of something that upturned itself over the doorway as they stumbled out into the corridor. He froze, slowly looking over at Fred in disbelief. His twin was smeared red and white and brown from head to toe with gold sprinkles in a layer over it all. Littered in his hair and stuck to his shoulders were little red balls that he recognized after a moment as de-stemmed cherries.

Fred started to laugh, pointing at George, who no doubt looked similarly ridiculous. He choked out, "A cherry…hahaha…on top…haha. Get it?"

"A cherry…" George had to snort at the sheer cheek of it. "Where's the ice cream, then?"

Like magic, the door across the corridor from them creaked open and out walked one Rigel Black, licking a three-scoop cone of soft serve with so much casualness that George couldn't stop the laughter that escaped him.

"You rang?" the boy drawled, giving a long, exaggerated lick.

"You," Fred groaned, pointing a goopy finger dramatically. "I knew it. But how, Rigel? How?"

Rigel unhurriedly put a hand into her shoulder bag and pulled out a camera. Before they could react, she snapped a picture of their gaping expressions. "This one is going in the Book of Glory."

George had no idea what that was, but it didn't sound good. They had more important things to worry about, though. "Seriously, Rigel, how did you do that?" he asked, utterly bewildered.

"How did I get all the booby-traps to work in smooth synchronization?" Rigel clarified, tilting his head infuriatingly. "How did I know where you'd be tonight? Or how did I make taking that passage seem like your own idea?

"All of it," Fred said. George didn't need to see his face to know he was dying of curiosity. Fred hated not knowing something.

"As to the first," Rigel said, pausing to lick his ice cream. "Immense patience and planning. As to the others—well, I'm psychic."

George had to sigh at their own foolishness. How could they have trusted Rigel for even a second? They'd been so sure his revenge was in the sweets somewhere. Talk about serving it cold, he thought, eyeing the ice cream in Rigel's hand with ironic appreciation. "How did you make the passage seem like it was going downhill?" he asked after a moment. That part didn't make any sense.

Rigel smirked. "That secret passage you two always take doubles as a passage to the third floor, if you press the right stone on your way through. I changed its destination before you got there."

What? What? How could he know that? They'd been taking that passage for years and they didn't know that. Was this the power of a true Marauder? What a legacy. He couldn't help a moment of envy. What other secrets about the castle was their pup privy to?

"I'd show you which stone it is, but I don't fancy getting my favorite boots dirty tonight," Rigel said, yawning widely. "Well, I'm for bed. Good luck getting back to that tower of yours. Filch probably isn't on the fifth floor anymore—if he ever was." Rigel chuckled to himself as he walked off into the darkness slowly.

"We were duped from the start," Fred admitted, sighing. "He never even had a tracker on Filch.

"He's an evil genius," George agreed. They had their work cut out for them, if they were going to top it. They would, though. Their pride as pranksters was on the line. They would just have to work harder. The summer would be upon them soon and they would spend the time wisely. Some of their preliminary products were nearly ready for testing, he recalled with a grin. When they came back next year, Rigel wouldn't know what hit him.

Before that, though, they had to get back to the common room. After cleaning up, he grimaced. Leaving a trail of jam-covered footprints behind them would be an excellent way to get caught and they had to at least deny Rigel that satisfaction.

-0

[HpHpHp]

-0

That Friday evening, she walked with calm steps toward her Head of House's office, for once not looking over her shoulder or worrying about whether anyone caught sight of her. She was not doing anything surreptitious, for the first time in what felt like awhile. She was as prepared as she could be for the upcoming final exams, was nearly finished with Archie's syllabus for the semester, and, after turning in her last set of assignments for Snape, was planning on spending the weekend relaxing. Well, probably not the whole weekend, she mentally amended. Maybe just Saturday.

Unusually, there weren't a handful of other versions of her running around that night, as she was, frankly, running out of things to do. She had brewed so many potions that Krait was complaining about overstock and she'd long since read and reread all of her textbooks. Pettigrew had been almost completely unsuspicious the last couple of weeks. He wandered around the castle a lot, but she hadn't seen him return to the forest for maybe ten days. He seemed to be dialing back work with the jewel, which she could only be hopeful about. If he wanted to spend hours waking in circles, that was fine with her. She had stopped tailing him around the castle after the first time. All he ever did was lurk through the corridors aimlessly.

What would she do this weekend? She could work on her Occlumency, but she was stymied on her work with the construct. The frustration ate away at her concentration, so she kept that project on hold for the moment. She had a stack of books on the roots of mathematical transfigurations, in any case, that she was rather looking forward to reading.

The dungeons were quiet, which was not uncommon, as they were large and sprawling, with so many routes to go through that the Slytherin students rarely met one another in the passages. She heard no footsteps behind her and saw no shadow looming on the walls before her. The only evidence that she wasn't alone in the damp corridor was the barest whisper of a spell that came just moments before her wand abandoned her pocket with a sharp twist.

Rigel whirled to face her attacker and could not find it in her to feign surprise at the sight of Peter Pettigrew holding her wand tightly in his fist. In his other hand was the jewel, shining with an unnatural light.

"Professor," she said, voice even. "May I have my wand back?"

"You won't need it," he said. The usual squeak in his voice was absent, even as his beady eyes darted this way and that in manic nervousness.

The passage they were in wasn't long. There was a turn maybe twenty feet behind her. If she could make it around the corner before he got a spell off, she could throw on her Invisibility Cloak and escape. When Pettigrew took a single step toward her, she made her move. Turning on the ball of her foot, she sprinted down the corridor as fast as she could. Six steps, seven—she was almost there when something like a heat wave enveloped her from behind. Her legs were abruptly trapped in molasses, struggling to move, and the air around her shimmered in a hazy, mirage-like furnace. Sweat broke out from every part of her. Her lungs tightened and shriveled like dried prunes. She gasped in air and fought to turn her head to see Pettigrew coming up the corridor after her, step by slow step, brandishing the jewel before him and squinting against the light it was putting off.

He held it higher, coming within arms reach of her frozen form. The world was starting to develop a surreal quality and she blinked rapidly against the red-orange film that crawled across her eyes. Her mind was floating in the heat, sluggish, sloth-like, and confused. What was she doing? What….what was important? There was a tickle in her brain, behind the heat that seared the frayed edges of her concentration. She reacted on instinct, knowing the feeling of something invading her mind all too well to remain docile, despite every form-driven thought telling her to stop doing anything at all.

Her fist lashed free of the magic holding it, bloodying Pettigrew's nose and jerking her into the realization that the heat wave was in her mind, not in reality. It was the jewel, attempting to subvert her will. She gritted her teeth and pushed back against it mentally, not physically, giving it everything she had. Pettigrew, clutching his nose with the hand not holding the jewel—and what had he done with her wand?—didn't see her break completely free of the compulsion until she'd kicked him in the stomach and followed him to the floor. Her elbow slammed down toward his throat, but fire bathed her mind without warning and she rolled instinctively to the side, clutching her ears as though she could put out the flames between them with her bare hands.

There was hardly room for anything in her head that wasn't pain, but the word "Incarcerous" registered above the white-hot mindlessness. Leo favored that spell heavily in their spars, telling her over and over it was the go-to method for thieves, murderers, rapists, and all sorts of miscellaneous evildoers to neutralize a mark. Her elbow braced itself at an angle automatically, even as the ropes encircled her shoulder to knee and squeezed. Her joint protested even louder than the fire in her head, groaning as the ropes continued to tighten until the spell was satisfied that it had found the limits of its victim's form.

The weakness of the Incarcerous Spell, Leo had lectured, was its non-lethal nature. It wasn't intended to squeeze a person to death, so it only tightened until it registered that the target was compressed as much as could be accomplished without breaking anything. That meant that if you could convince the spell you were bigger than you were, you could break free once it had settled into shape.

She fought against the jewel's influence with everything she had while the binding spell solidified into place. She needed her senses for this next part. When she felt the ropes begin to harden, she collapsed her bent elbow, using the split-second of loose slack to slip her right arm between the coils and grab for the golden chain around her neck. Just one turn and this would all be over.

Her fist found the little hourglass at once, digits fumbling over the sides for the dial. That was when it slipped from her between her fingers—not, not slipped, flew. It jerked away from her grasp, clipping her in the ear as it whizzed over her shoulder and landed, to her horror, in Pettigrew's outstretched hand. The blood running down her neck from where the outer edge of her ear had been torn open was easy to ignore in her shock and dismay. How had he…the Notice-Me-Not Charm was no good if she drew attention to it, she realized. He'd simply summoned it away when he saw her go for it. And why would there not be anti-summoning wards on a time-turner? In her frustration, she wasted precious seconds cursing her own stupidity and the Ministry's incompetence. The next Incarcerous came before she could brace her free arm against it. Not that Pettigrew would have let her use the same trick twice, she thought dully.

She opened her mouth to scream, acutely aware that her choices in methods of resistance were dwindling. A hastily conjured gag caught her mid-yell. She glared over it at her attacker, who stood, panting around a broken nose, glaring right back. Pettigrew opened his fist slowly, looking down to examine the golden thing he'd caught within it, and she took that second to look down at the ropes frantically. Her right hand was bound close to her face, but the suppressor ring was on her left hand, making an attempt to pull it off with her teeth rather moot. She felt like crying. The one time she wanted to take off her suppressor and unleash her wandless magic capabilities, she couldn't. The irony felt like a slap from the universe.

"What is this?" he muttered, turning the time-turner over in his hands. She hoped he fumbled the dial and sent himself back hours into time. That would let her escape the same as if she'd used it herself. "This…it can't be…" He sounded awed and breathless. Not a good sign. "How did you get one of these?" She grunted somewhat sarcastically from behind her gag, but he only smiled at her, suddenly calm once more. "It is Fate. It knew I needed more time to figure this out. Now… I have all the time I need."

Rigel shuddered with trepidation at those words. What was he going to do? What had she done, letting him get his hands on that? She calmed herself by remembering that the time-turner only went back a week. What could he possibly do to the time stream in seven days? It wasn't the end of the world. When she got out of this mess, she would go to Snape, and he would inform the Department of Mysteries and they would send a team to take it back. Yes. There were still ways to fix this. He wasn't supreme overlord of a new world order yet.

While she was thinking, Pettigrew had been marshaling himself as well. An egg yolk running down her neck let her know that she'd been Disillusioned. Pettigrew shimmered out of sight a moment later and she felt a chain draping itself around her neck. No, she panicked, throwing her head to the side as much as her bonds would allow. Her skull cracked into Pettigrew's with a sharp pain, but it wasn't enough to stop him turning the dial. She could feel the sensation of time-travel coming on and wondered desperately how far back they were going as the world began to fade away. She thought she saw a figure in black robes come around the corner into their passageway just before they melted temporally out of existence, but she couldn't be sure. It didn't matter now. Whenever they were going, that person would be long gone. She was beyond the reach of the present, for now.

-0

[HpHpHp]

-0

After kicking her vindictively for nearly cracking open his skull, Pettigrew had cast a quick Tempus to orient himself. "A week," the squat man said. "Only a week." He sounded displeased, but Rigel could not believe her ears. Had he seriously just turned the dial as far as it would go without knowing how far that was? What if she'd had a more powerful time-turner? What if it had taken them back months?

He levitated her out of the dungeons carefully. She wondered a bit hysterically if they would pass the version of her that had been on her way to hand in last week's assignments at this time on Friday evening, but Pettigrew was careful to take the least used of avenues toward the Entrance Hall.

He took her quickly across the lawn, making a beeline toward the last place in the world Rigel wanted to be taken. They were headed for the Forbidden Forest. Was he going to kill and bury her, then make his escape a full week before anyone noticed either of them missing? It was clever, if getting rid of her was the goal. He'd accosted her before he knew of the time-turner, though, so he must have had some escape plan that didn't rely on having a lot of time. At least, that was what she assumed.

Pettigrew took off the Disillusionment Charm once they were far enough into the trees that no one was going to see him heading off with her. He traipsed through the forest with the ease of familiarity, seeming to know exactly where he was going. Rigel kept her eyes peeled, trying to memorize their general route so that she could find her way back, once she escaped. And she would escape. She just had to be patient for now. Everyone made mistakes, eventually. She refused to believe that Pettigrew would prove a more effective kidnapper than Tom Riddle Jr.

Her every faculty was bent toward formulating as many escape plans as she could think up, while she still had the wherewithal to think of anything at all. She knew the odds that he wouldn't use the jewel on her again were extremely low. It was hard to concentrate, though, with Pettigrew's constant, mind-numbing mumbling. He apparently considered himself 'home-free' already.

"No one will even notice you're missing," he muttered, obviously pleased. "And my alibi is air-tight. No one will suspect until it's too late. Even then, they won't look for me. It will be a mystery." He paused in walking for a moment to gaze down at the golden device in his hand with naked lust. "Think of all I could accomplish with endless time."

She could certainly relate to that sentiment, but surely it had never sounded so sinister in her head. She had to wonder if Pettigrew knew how time-turners actually worked—about the rules and limits. Maybe he would destabilize his core by trying to use it too many times at once. It would serve him right, she thought. Just who did he think he was, kidnapping her?

As they moved deeper into the forest, she couldn't help but worry. If she had been trapped in time a week ago—from the perspective of her most current self, at least—then that meant she hadn't been freed in that week, because if she had, then something would have happened in the regular time stream, like Pettigrew being arrested. Was she really going to be trapped a whole week? No, she calmed herself. That wasn't certain. Maybe she'd been rescued quickly and they'd kept it quiet to keep the time stream intact. Her first thought was they better not have let me get kidnapped just to preserve the integrity of other people's temporal reality. Then she realized that all of that was wishful thinking, anyway. No one would even know she was missing until Friday evening at the very earliest. There would be no reason to look for her, before that, and a week was a long time. Hadn't her father said once that most kidnapping cases were decided one way or another in the first two days? Either the victim was found or they were dead.

She shook off those morbid thoughts. She would escape.

Rigel had to wonder why she hadn't noticed herself going missing—that is, why she hadn't seen Pettigrew taking a version of herself into the forest at this time last week—this week—no—ugh never mind. She supposed whatever versions of herself there were at the moment simply weren't looking at the Map. One was in Snape's office, she recalled, and another brewing in her lab…she thought. It was increasingly hard to remember.

It didn't matter, anyway. She didn't remember noticing herself getting dragged into the forest, which meant she wouldn't notice this time around either. They finally stopped moving as Pettigrew stepped into a clearing surrounded by thick-trunked trees that must have been a least a couple of miles from the school. It was well off the edge of the Marauder's Map.

Pettigrew dropped his levitation charm unceremoniously, letting her fall to the soft dirt with an irritated grunt. She wiggled until she could roll enough to see what he was doing. If he was going to kill her, she wanted to see it coming. He held the jewel aloft, pointing its energy toward—the ground. Confused, she squinted through the darkness. What was he doing? The earth began to tremble at his feet, churning almost as if it were liquid in some way. It parted before the jewel, creating an opening that expanded slowly until it was large enough for a person to drop comfortably through.

Thus, it was somewhat unsurprising when she was nudged to the lip of the hole and pushed in. The predictability didn't make it hurt any less, she discovered as she hit a dirt floor six feet down. She landed on her left side, the dirt sending a pulsing throb resonating through her hip and shoulder. That was rather petty, she thought, considering he was perfectly capable of levitating her down. Far be it from her to try to impress manners on her accoster, however.

Pettigrew joined her underground a moment later and it was short work after that for him to use the jewel's power to close the hole in the ceiling once more. It was pitch dark until Pettigrew lit a single lantern. Its light barely reached the edges of the dug out cavern, which stretched about fifteen feet across its diameter, from what she could tell. The edges of the room sloped downwards in a dome, giving the entire cavern the feeling of being inside a very small circus tent. It smelled of earth and damp musk and appeared to be entirely empty, with no distinguishing features beyond the lantern that hung by a wooden peg pushed into the dirt wall and a pile of animal carcasses on the other side, all of which looked fresh.

"I prepared this place weeks ago," Pettigrew said, his voice distorted by his still-broken nose. "Ever since it became clear to me what I had to do. I had my creatures working on it by moonlight. They were not so eager, at first, but I persuaded them to my way of thinking. Do you like it?"

She wondered why he would ask such an inane question, but there was a vaguely disoriented look in his eyes that made her question whether he even knew what he was saying.

"I can make all sorts of creatures do my bidding, after so much practice. I can make them mine, such that they do not even remember a time when they had wills of their own," Pettigrew said. He stood looking down at the jewel, the time-turner now tucked away in a pocket, no doubt. There was desperation in his gaze, only tempered by the disorientation that made him look more helpless than hungry. "Even the rocks and plants bend to do my bidding, now. The natural world moves at my command. And yet…it's not enough."

The last was said with a growl, in which she heard a year's worth of frustration. His whole body shook briefly, before settling once more. He stretched his neck almost casually. "I knew, after you saw me that night with the jewel, that it had to be you. Fate chose you for me. Brought you to me to show me the path I must take, revealed me to you to force my hand. I built this prison for you, you know. I waited and waited for the right time, looked and looked until I caught you walking alone. And it's almost complete…"

Rigel didn't like the sound of that, or anything else that had happened so far, come to that. All those nights she'd seen him going back into the forest after the dragon debacle: this is what he'd been doing? All the time she'd been unknowingly witnessing the construction of her own cage? And the time she'd followed him around the castle he'd been looking for her?

Pettigrew looked over at the pile of dead animals—nifflers, she thought, following his gaze with a sickened clench of her stomach. "Perfect," he said, beginning to smile. "Just what I need." He said that as if he wasn't the one who put them there, as if they were a gift from some higher power. She was starting to realize just how far from sane Pettigrew was at this point.

He moved to where the dead animals lay and picked one up by its tail, causing the blood from its wounds to drip onto the dirt floor grotesquely. He tucked the jewel away into his coat and used his now-empty palm to catch the blood. It pooled sluggishly across his fingers. He dropped the niffler carelessly and walked to a seemingly arbitrary section of dirt wall, where he began smearing the blood carefully, drawing something with great concentration. She shuddered to think what he could be intending; blood magic was rarely benign.

When the symbol was complete, it lit with an iridescent glow that didn't come from the blood itself. Lines of magic shot out from what she belatedly realized was a rune to connect to dozens of other points all over the cavern, forming a matrix that covered the walls, ceiling, and floor. It was a ward, that much was obvious, but the pattern of runic placement indicated a protective barrier of some kind. Was he hoping to keep out anyone who might come to her rescue?

"It took ages to find the right ward," Pettigrew said, turning back to face her once the rune sequence, now completed, sank invisibly into the dirt once more. "It had to be something unbreakable, to keep you here no matter what. I had no intention of spending the rest of my life down her, however. So I got a little…creative."

He approached her and took her chin between his blood-covered fingers. She fought against her stomach's reaction to the smell as he turned her head forcibly toward the lantern. "Do you see that?" She blinked at the light, wondering what she was supposed to make of it. "That," he repeated, shaking her head a little and pointing with his other hand to a spot below the lantern that she hadn't noticed until now. It was a small hole, no more than six inches across, which sat at the base of the wall. "That is the only way in or out of this cave, now. Can you fit in there?" He moved her head back and forth in the parody of a shake with his hand. "Well I can." He turned into a rat and back to a man so fast his body was one continuous blur.

Rigel stared at the tiny hole with dawning alarm. He'd sealed them off…completely? How could she escape through that? It was impossible, unless she could figure out a way to take the ward down. Maybe he would leave her alone at some point and she could make an attempt to find the ward's weak spot. Very few designs lacked something that could be exploited. She refused to give up hope. Not yet.

"Your father thought it was so funny," Pettigrew sneered. "Peter the rat. Wormtail. But it got me this, didn't it?" He fished the jewel from his pocket and held it toward her. She flinched, but he wasn't using it. Just showing it off to her. "My master sent me into the tomb because no one else could do it. I crept through air pockets and drainage canals no wizard could ever fit through, ones the Egyptians didn't bother booby-trapping, they were so small. I carried my destiny out with my wormy tail, didn't I? So who's laughing now?" He barked out a long and bitterly triumphant laugh, in case there was any doubt.

"Well?" he demanded suddenly. "Why aren't you laughing?"

The gag vanished from within her mouth, sending pain shooting through her stiff jaw as it suddenly snapped closed. She tasted blood where her teeth had come down on her tongue and spat it out onto the dirt floor with a grimace.

"Now, now, don't go desecrating this place." Pettigrew wagged a finger at her slowly. "You're going to be here a long time. The longest of time, actually. Did you know the ancient pharaohs spent ages touring their burial complexes before they died? It was a matter of grave importance, their final resting place. You should try to come to terms with your tomb while you can. Not many wizards these days get such a chance."

"I'm…not going to let you kill me," she said, coughing a bit.

"That's the spirit," Pettigrew said. He seemed entirely detached. "In any case, I don't have to kill you. I just have to leave you here, once I've taken your magic."

So he was too cowardly to kill her himself. That was fine with her. She would start planning a way out now, then, and wait for the moment he left her alone. "How can you take my magic?" Rigel asked, not really wanting to know. The first rule of being kidnapped was keep the other person talking, though, and so she would, despite the way Pettigrew's whole demeanor was giving her the creeps. "It's bound to me."

"The jewel can do anything," he said surely. "I am Fated to, in any case. 'Take control or be took by another.' 'Master the other.' It is the only way to succeed."

"It also said 'keep power alive,'" Rigel said suddenly, deciding that keeping cards off the table wasn't going to help her at this point.

"How do you know that?" Pettigrew dove for her, grabbing her shoulder in one hand and thrusting the jewel in her face with the other. "What do you know of this?"

"I saw that piece of paper you dropped," she told him. "I read it. It definitely said you should keep me alive."

"Only until I control your power." Pettigrew frowned. "Don't try to trick me. I know what I'm doing." He stepped back and looked down at her. She was lying in what was possibly the most uncomfortable position on earth, bound with two layers of thick ropes that were cutting off circulation just about everywhere, one hand pressed against her side while the other was bound close across her chest. "I should take more precautions. I don't trust you."

"The feeling is mutual," she bit out.

Pettigrew reached into his coat's expanded pocket mechanically and pulled out a very familiar bag. It was hers. She supposed he'd picked it up from the corridor after binding her. Clever, to not leave any evidence behind. Her eyes must have lit up at the sight of the shoulder bag, for Pettigrew chuckled a bit cruelly. "You want it? Come take it." He held the bag out to her in one hand, the jewel clenched tightly in the other. She didn't see why he bothered with his nonsensical jokes. She glared up at him from where she was restrained. To her utter shock, the ropes around her slackened, and feeling, sharp and painful and beautiful, raced back to her extremities.

She rolled immediately to her feet, ignoring the tingling needles that were jabbing numbness away everywhere they advanced. She lunged for the bag and hooked it away from him swiftly. Before she could make a proper retreat to the other end of the cavern, roiling heat erupted around her and drove her to her knees, panting. The world was a desert and she was dying slowly, baked and sizzling before the might of a thousand suns.

A cool breeze swept across her face. Open the bag. The what? She turned her head toward the feeling. Please, please, come back. Open the bag. The bag? What, this? Her attention turned slowly, sluggishly toward the thing in her lap. What was she doing? What was important? Open the bag. Her fingers floated toward the clasp, deftly undoing it and peering dumbly into the reinforced fabric. Take out the potion. The what? The potion. Which one? Confusion tried to assert itself, but the desert wind blew it back. It didn't matter. What didn't matter? What was she doing? The potion.

A picture came into her mind. There was a dragon, and a skinny boy with dark hair was pouring something onto the ground in a circle. Recognition lit somewhere inside her and her hand moved unconsciously into the bag, rooting around automatically until the correct vial came to her fingers. She pulled it out dazedly, blinking at it. There was something important about this. What was it?

Give it here. She held out her hand, but then retracted it sharply. Something was wrong. What was wrong? Nothing. Give it here. Something. Give it here. Her head hurt. It didn't feel good anymore. Why had it felt good, again?

The potion was snatched from her hand and she snapped out of it, gasping for air in the wake of such utter deprivation of herself. How did it do that? She hadn't known anything. She hadn't remembered who she was or—or anything. It was the most terrifying thing she'd ever experienced. She shook off the aftereffects with difficulty, grasping for a linear thought amidst the senselessness that had taken hold. She looked up to see Pettigrew standing a good distance away from her, shoulder bag back in his hands and an empty vial in the other.

She stood, as though in a dream, and stumbled forward on pain-filled legs. She hit an invisible wall before she'd made it two steps. She leaned against it, mind haltingly whirling. She looked down. There was a line of potion on the floor and it circled back around to…to enclose her completely. The Protection Potion. He'd used it when she was disoriented. She was trapped. No, she wasn't, she realized. She struggled to keep a smile off of her face. She could break the ward easily with a ward-disrupter. As soon as Pettigrew left her unattended she would take off her suppressor, then—then what, exactly?

If she got out of the barrier without electrocuting herself with her unsuppressed magic, then what? She was still trapped underground until she found a way around the ward Pettigrew had set up. She backed away from the side of the round barrier that Pettigrew stood beyond, sitting down in the middle and pulling her knees into her chest slowly. What should she do? She stared out at Pettigrew and he stared back. She felt like a caged animal, put on display for someone's amusement.

"I'd never seen this potion before that night in the forest," Pettigrew said, almost conversationally. "It held up against dragon fire, though. It ought to hold you without much trouble."

Don't count on it, she promised silently.

Pettigrew cast a Tempus and read the result. It was deep into Friday night. How long had she struggled with the jewel? It had felt like minutes—could it really have been hours? Pettigrew did look exhausted, she noticed. He pulled out a wand—his, not hers—and conjured a basic pallet to sleep on. He laid himself down, shifted fitfully for several minutes, and finally turned away from her accusing eyes completely. He slept facing the wall, and Rigel debated for nearly half an hour over what she ought to do.

She could take off her suppressor and break free of the barrier, then attempt to break the ward—but wards were not like shields. They couldn't be broken with brute force alone. The runes that fed the design fueled it with power outside of the magic used to cast the ward. It drew strength from the air around it, from the ground it was anchored to, and so on. Her magic probably wouldn't be able to just bust through it, unless it had been cast improperly.

Then there was the fact that the barrier would not break quietly and she would lose the element of surprise the instant she was free. As long as he had the jewel, he could turn her will against her at any time. If he merely restrained her physically with it, she thought she could fight it off. She recognized the feeling, now. If he attacked her mind, though…well, she didn't know how she could fight without the idea of resistance to even remind her that she ought to be fighting. Retrospectively, it had been like losing her conscious self completely. Did she want that to happen when her magic was free? She shuddered. Definitely not. It would kill her for him if left to roam without a will opposing it, like as not. She would wait, then. There would be an opportune moment. Eventually.

She resigned herself to getting some sleep. If he was going to be well rested for whatever came next, then so was she. It was all she could do, at this point, to improve her odds.

-0

[PpPpPp]

-0

His dreams swam around him in circles, just out of reach. They mocked him. He knew he had to catch them, but didn't know how. When he woke, he wasn't any clearer on what he was to do. He had brought the boy here. The Jewel had been happy; he'd felt its pleasure wafting through him as he bent the child's will toward his commands. Now, though, it only felt empty. Cold. Distant. His mind was washed in confusion. He'd been so full of purpose, hadn't he? What was he to do now? Why didn't the Jewel respond to him? It was supposed to guide him now that he had control over the boy, the 'other' that the Jewel had led him to. It was supposed to transform him, giving him power beyond his dreams. Had he run out of time? No, he couldn't have. He controlled time, too, now. It bent to his will. So why didn't the Jewel? He didn't understand.

He sat up and looked across the cavern to where the boy now slept. He supposed he hadn't met the requirements for controlling the boy, yet. He needed to control his magic. He didn't know what was so important about this child's magic in particular. It was powerful, he'd seen, but immature. The boy didn't control it well. Was that why? Was he meant to control it instead? How?

It doesn't matter how, he thought staunchly, making his way to stand before the barrier. He would control it. He refused to fail.

The boy looked small, curled up in sleep. Why did it have to be Sirius' boy? His old friend would never forgive him…he shook off the thought before it gripped him fully. He didn't care what Sirius thought anymore. He didn't care about any of them. He was the one who had moved on to better things while they were still making their little toys.

He held the stone up to the barrier, then paused. What was he doing, really? This wasn't a dragon. It was a person. A child. His fingers shook. Was this what he had come to? Killing children for power? The Jewel perked up at the thought of power. Not killing, he corrected himself slowly. Just…controlling. The stone in his hand thrummed soothingly. Once he had the boy's magic under his control, the Jewel would give its full allegiance to him. That's what the prophecy said. If Dominion is desired, domination is required. He had to. Anyway, it was too late to turn back. The boy had seen too much and knew too much. He had to be dealt with. It was just economical to make his demise useful, wasn't it?

He nodded slowly, the fog clearing from his mind. It must have been a dream. He was waking, now. His thoughts were sharp again. Get control. That was important. And he would be important. Just like his old master had always promised. Peter would thank him, one day, for leading him to the Jewel. He felt a flicker of guilt. Hadn't he meant to give the Jewel to that man? A shudder of rejection flowed through him. Give it away? Never. Why give the world to another when it's already in my hands?

He was so close. He just needed to focus a little longer. How many creatures had he already bent to his will? Too many to count. One more would be easy. He would subjugate the boy's power and make it his own. With all that magic at his command, the Jewel would be persuaded fully to his side. It would grant him all the power he could imagine and he would be unstoppable. He just had to do this one thing.

Just one more thing, and then the universe would unfold before him. Greatness beckoned. He raised his fist once more. The Jewel glowed. The boy screamed.

-0

[HpHpHp]

-0

She woke in flames. It wasn't the heat of a desert pressing on her from without, this time. The fire was inside of her and it wanted out. She was screaming, but that was immaterial to the pain. It felt as if something was being pulled from her soul but had got trapped by her skin on its way through. There was no thought, only agony, for immeasurable time.

When the pain receded, she came back to herself slowly, almost uncertainly. Did she want to know? In the end, the answer was yes, of course she wanted to know. She opened her eyes, finding her vision blurred and painful. It was possible she'd damaged something in her delicate eye tissue screaming. She was still inside the barrier and Pettigrew was looking at her with alarmed bewilderment. His beady eyes flicked from the stone in his hand to her and back again, utterly nonplussed.

"What…did you do?" she asked, her voice raw.

"I…it wasn't supposed to hurt that much," Pettigrew stuttered.

She prodded her brain into coming up with an answer that made sense. What had he been trying to do with the jewel? Oh, she grew into the realization slowly. He must have tried to take her magic. Unsuccessfully. She could still feel it like fire in her veins. Why hadn't it worked? She thought carefully. Something had resisted the jewel's ability to draw out her magic. The only answer that made sense was…the suppressor? It didn't suppress all her magic, of course, but her magic was still bound together as one entity. Part of it was simply stifled. If the jewel was unable to take the free part without taking the bound part as well, it would explain the failure. And the pain.

On the bright side, the suppressor was extremely effective. She'd have to recommend Frein to her friends. A hysterical giggle left her lips. She stifled it quickly, but not before Pettigrew took a half-step back uncertainly.

"Why didn't it work?" he asked. She didn't know if he was talking to himself or actually asking her, but she figured it was a good opportunity.

"It's impossible," she told him, making up what she thought was a plausible falsehood. "You can't take another wizard's magic. It's bound to me—you're going to kill me if you try, and that violates the prophecy."

"Shut up!" Pettigrew began pacing back and forth before the barrier. "That's not right. I've done this before, with creatures. I can use their powers as my own, once I control them. How do you think I got that prophecy in the first place, you stupid child?"

She had to concede that he was probably right. If he'd done it before, then the jewel must have some way of superseding the bond between one's magic and one's will. Still, he didn't seem entirely sure of himself. She could probably still divert him, if she stepped carefully. "It's probably different with wizards," she said, trying to be convincingly firm despite her slur. "I mean, humans and creatures aren't the same at all. Isn't our magic greater? I bet the bond between a human and his magic is much stronger. Maybe the jewel can't break it."

"Maybe I need to try harder," Pettigrew said quietly.

She scarcely had time to regret how quickly that had backfired before her world narrowed to the existence of pain alone. As she wasn't taken by surprise, she was slightly more aware this time as the magic in her core flooded through her forcefully, searching desperately for a way out. She didn't know how the jewel had managed to awaken her magic's will, as normally the ring didn't allow it to do anything while it was repressed. She did know that the push and pull between the jewel and her suppressor was going to slowly tear her apart from the inside out.

As the torment persisted, Rigel lost all sense of herself in the tide of pain that blossomed and receded and peaked again in a cycle of contention that ceased to have either beginning or end.

At some point, consciousness stopped being possible, and she fell away from reality, into dreams about drowning in a lake of fire. When the torture ended for her body, her mind dragged her far beneath the riptide of thought. She slept there at the bottom of the ocean of her mind, hoping she never resurfaced.

She did, of course, some time later, to spasms of pain in every limb and a throb in her neck where she'd probably strained something thrashing. She knew, medically, what to expect if this continued. It was with a detached sense of shame that she acknowledge the evidence of her bowel control having deserted her at some point. She forced herself to take things in a practical lens. This solved the problem of her modesty, and losing her dignity now meant it wouldn't be something she had to fight for later.

She didn't see Pettigrew anywhere in the cavern. With a groan, she pushed herself up and noticed with mixed feelings that the barrier around her had faded. Had it been more than twelve hours already? She forced herself to stretch every muscle painstakingly until she could move more or less at human levels of coordination. She stood and crossed the cavern carefully, eyes on the discarded shoulder bag by Pettigrew's abandoned sleeping mat.

She sank to the ground beside it, pulling it open and taking things out as fast as her twitching fingers would allow, looking for anything that would help her survive. There was a canister left over from her run on Friday morning. She uncapped it with an eagerness that would have embarrassed her at any other time. There was maybe a third of the bottle of water left inside. She drained it greedily, pausing only afterwards to wonder if she should have saved a little for later. She put the empty container aside and continued looking. Her potions kit was broken open. She must have done it while under the jewel's control, or maybe Pettigrew had been going through her things.

Any panic she may have felt at that was squashed quickly. She meticulously began cataloging the contents of the bag. Was there anything that he could have found to use against her? She didn't keep the letters Archie sent her after reading them and there were no new ones in her bag that she could recall. Her work for Flint was long finished, with nothing incriminating left. She had a potion for menstrual cramps in her potions kit, but she doubted Pettigrew would recognize it. Even if he did, she had a lot of potions in her kit, many of which made no sense for a thirteen-year-old boy to carry, such as the ones she brewed for Krait.

In fact…she dug quickly through the extended compartments until she found a Pain Relief Potion. Perfect. She downed it immediately and thought about taking another, but in the end decided to save the other doses. There was no guarantee she wouldn't need them. She went through the rest of her bag carefully. Aside from textbooks on subjects she wasn't officially taking, which would be moot to disguise since Pettigrew already knew she had a time-turner, there wasn't anything besides her Invisibility Cloak and maybe the Marauder's Map that she didn't want Pettigrew to find.

Rigel considered her options. She could hide under the Invisibility Cloak. Then, when he came back, he might assume she'd escaped and…what? Leave, probably, which left her still trapped with no way out. She tucked the Invisibility Cloak away into an extended compartment and then stacked books on top of it, so that it was marginally hidden from casual perusal. The Map she put into her own pocket. She also filled the pockets of her outer robe with all the potions that might be useful. Vials of Pain Relief Potion along with those of Nutrient Potion, Blood-Replenishing Potion, Invigoration Draught, Pepper-up Potion, Numbing Potion, and even Gasnik's Gastric Solution, in case she went hungry for a while and needed to dull the ache.

She considered pouring out the rest of the vials of her Protection Potion, but thought better of it and merely added the vials of the antidote to her pockets instead. That way, she'd have a way out of the barrier and Pettigrew would have a sense of security, however false. If she didn't leave him some of the Protection Potion, he'd probably find another way to contain her, she reasoned. One she couldn't counter.

Rigel carried her outer robe back to where she'd slept, in the center of the room, and folded it carefully as though she'd been using it as a pillow. Hopefully, he wouldn't think to check it for anything hidden when he returned. She took a moment to wonder where he'd gone, then decided she didn't care. She would use the time given to her gratefully. It was time to examine those wards.

-0

[HpHpHp]

-0

Pettigrew returned not long after she'd searched the entire cavern end to end for her wand. She'd found nothing, which she supposed wasn't surprising. He probably had it on him, along with the jewel. She'd attempted to dig a hole in the dirt wall, something that would have been easy, were there not magic involved. The ward sprang up in the way of every attempt to penetrate its boundary.

She took to hitting the walls with a rock she found and watching the patterns of runes that appeared around the room until she thought she had them all memorized. She was paging through her Ancient Runes textbook in hopes of identifying one of the runes that she wasn't familiar with when she heard a soft scrabbling coming from the hole Pettigrew had indicated as the only way in and out of the cavern.

Rigel hurried to replace the book and take up a position flat against the wall near the tiny entrance. If Pettigrew didn't know that the barrier should have faded by now, she could take him by surprise. A rat scrambled awkwardly through the hole, a small rope between its teeth. It tugged a small sack behind it slowly—an easy target. Her foot shot out with all the strength she could put behind it, catching the rat square in the underbelly and sending it careening into the dirt wall across the room. She leapt after it, but Pettigrew retook human form before she got close enough to try knocking the rodent out. He was disheveled and crumpled into a defensive ball, but he had enough wherewithal to grasp the jewel and send her reeling back before its power.

"Don't. Come. Any. Closer." Pettigrew's breathing was so ragged he was barely comprehensible, but the jewel's will made the command very clear as it rooted her feet to the dirt. Rigel fought against the oppressive heat, glaring down at her captor as she struggled to throw off the mental compulsion. She hadn't expected that to work, but she'd got unexpectedly close to turning the tables. To have that taken away was infuriating.

Pettigrew reached blindly with his free hand into the pouch that lay beside him. He pulled out a loaf of bread and Rigel's mouth began watering mindlessly. She swallowed against it, even as she eyed the bread with undisguised longing. It had been almost a full day since she'd eaten and she was not accustomed to hunger in the slightest. "You want this? I'll feed you, if you do as I say."

She tilted her head wordlessly. She was not above bargaining for sustenance, in these circumstances.

"Food and water, if you go quietly into the barrier," he said.

"You have to feed me anyway, if you want to keep me alive," she said.

"And you'll be forced into the barrier anyway if I use this jewel," Pettigrew growled.

She wondered why he didn't simply use it, then, but realized after a moment he was probably trying to save his strength for conquering her magic. She would save her strength, too, then. "Deal," she said, retreating slowly toward where her outer robe lay.

Pettigrew scurried over to her bag, which she'd left lying open, if only to prevent him using the jewel on her again to reopen it. She was getting sick of that thing enslaving her to this pathetic man's whims. Pettigrew pulled a potion out and, as he approached her to pour it on the ground, she couldn't quite contain a sneer.

"That's a Deflating Draft," she told him flatly. "Going to ease your swollen head?"

"Shut up," Pettigrew hissed, throwing the potion in a fit of anger and letting the vial smash against the wall. What a waste, she thought, annoyed. Pettigrew stomped back to the bag and dug about inside it until he pulled out a potion he was apparently satisfied with. She wondered how someone who didn't even bother checking the labels on potions vials had engineered so effective a prison. Was it dumb luck? Or was he marginally intelligent when he bothered to concentrate on something in earnest?

He cast the barrier around her, almost forgetting to toss half the loaf of bread and a canteen of water to her before sealing it completely. She wolfed down the bread and sipped lightly at the water, stowing the rest next to her cloak almost protectively, like a dragon guarding a pile of gold.

When the food was gone and Pettigrew rose from his pallet to face her across the barrier once more, she knew that the truce, whatever it had been, was over. She moved as far from the precious glass vials tucked into her 'pillow' as she could, telling herself with trepidation that bracing for the pain would only make it worse.

It was worse, in any case. Her nerve endings, or whatever parts of her brain the magic was pressing against trying to get out, were still sore and they flared with a vengeance when the jewel tried once again to force the power out of her. The suppressor held firm, but amidst of sea of suffering it was hard to muster gratitude for that.

When it stopped again and Pettigrew took to his pacing, Rigel pushed herself to her knees and fought a tumultuous battle with her stomach. She was not going to loose the bread she'd just put into it. Her mind felt scrambled, thoughts going in all directions in a desperate attempt to find a way that led away from the pain. She could take the suppressor off. She could just take it off and all of this pain would stop. She knew that. She stared down at her gloved fingers, barely visible through the tears and snot that dripped between her eyes and nose and got tangled in the sweat-soaked fringe clinging to her forehead.

Something hard in her gut protested this, though. Despite the pain, despite the utter senselessness that threatened to wipe her mind of any coherence at all, she was still Rigel Black and there were some things that Rigel Black could not do. She forced her mind away from the present, sending it back to one year earlier. Do you remember? Remember the Chamber? She had been willing to die to keep the unstable construct from controlling her magic. She could not be less willing to endure mere physical pain to keep Pettigrew from the same. Consistency was important. She didn't remember why, exactly, but it was.

She held onto this knowledge. It was not anything as strong as a mantra and it did not soothe the pain in any way. It held her to herself, though, and when the pain began again, it was the only thing left that mattered.

Eventually, Pettigrew gave up. She could dimly hear him railing aloud in anger and frustration, but the words were a garbled mess to her ears. He brain was having trouble doing the interpretation thing, at the moment. She closed her eyes for a long minute and woke to find it quiet. Pettigrew was asleep across the cavern and she knew she should being doing something—taking advantage of his guard being down to do—something. She couldn't move, though. She couldn't even find the strength to crawl to her robes, even though she knew there were potions there that would take the pain away. It devastated her to be so close to relief, but unable to close the distance. She lost the fight for consciousness again and collapsed within herself.

She didn't know what time it was when she awoke. She wasn't even sure what day it was. Sunday? The lantern in the cavern was her only light source and it burned day and night, not giving much clue as to how much time was passing. Pettigrew wasn't there, but the barrier was down. Perhaps he'd gone for food again. She hoped so. She was terribly hungry once more and the small amount of Nutrient Potion she drank did nothing to fill her stomach.

It took her quite a while to master herself enough to stand, but when she had the strength, she limped to her bag and settled into scouring her Runes book. She had to figure out a way out of here. Nearly an hour later, she found a piece of the puzzle. The rune she hadn't recognized wasn't drawn in her textbook, but it was described in general terms under the section of non-human runic adaptations.

One species in particular is known for their extensive and creative appropriation of Wizarding runic systems for their own gain. Goblins have long since devised ways of using runes in place of wands to direct and channel natural magic to achieve their ends. The complex warding system that protects the thousands of vaults at Gringotts is an excellent example of goblin-designed and forged runic anchors. Over the years, goblins have also developed a runic alphabet that is particular to their language, with symbols for many complex ideas that our own languages don't have words to capture succinctly. Recognizable by their square, almost seal-like nature, such runes are notoriously difficult for wizards to counter, and were put to devastating use in the goblin wars of the sixteenth century in particular—

"What are you doing?"

Rigel twisted with a gasp to find Pettigrew standing over her, burlap sack in one hand and jewel held warily in the other. How hadn't she heard him come back? As he dropped the bag and stepped toward her threateningly, she noted the lack of sound accompanying his movements and realized that he had cast a Silencing Charm to prevent her ambushing him again. Rigel tried to push the book away surreptitiously into her bag, but he caught sight of the title before she could.

"Trying to find a way out?" Pettigrew actually laughed. "This is a goblin ward. They used it for wizard prisoners of war, a long time ago. It excludes humans in particular from crossing the ward without a creature's assistance. You can't get out unless I take you out. And no one can get in unless I help them in. It's no perfect, of course. The goblins stopped using it so much when wizards figured out an Animagus could slip through it and help the prisoners escape. I don't think you're an Animagus, though, are you?"

He laughed again at the shadow of defeat that crossed her face. She wouldn't be able to escape on her own, if he told the truth. Not without dismantling the entire ward system. That could take weeks, though, without the runes that unlocked the sequence. She didn't know any goblin runes. What was she going to do now? She doubted Pettigrew would be so kind as to escort her out in his rat form—and through what door, anyway? The passage that led away from the cavern was too small. She had briefly considered trying to somehow brew a Shrinking Solution with what she had in her Potions kit. She had no cauldron, and it wasn't meant to be used on living things anyway, but it had been a slim ray of hope. That possibility vanished with the knowledge that even a tiny human wouldn't actually be able to walk through the wards.

Pettigrew bent to retrieve a bag of peanuts and two bananas from his burlap sack. "Don't look so glum," he said, smirking at the despair in her eyes. "Look what I brought you. It's all yours if you go back to the ring."

She stood shakily, eyeing the jewel in his hand consideringly. Could she knock it away before he used it on her? Probably not, she admitted, with the current state of her muscles. She would not be quick enough. She hobbled slowly back to her circle, feeling much like a circus elephant rewarded for performing a trick when the bag of peanuts landed in her soiled lap.

Pettigrew looked entirely pleased at her docility, at least. He had no way of knowing that it cost her nothing to agree to a prison she could break out of anytime. She ate half the peanuts—cursing and biting back tears as her spasming fingers made the task infinitely more frustrating—and one banana. No sense in counting on the man's generosity continuing, after all. He waited impatiently for her to finish—wary of making her choke to death accidentally, no doubt.

As she set the food she was saving aside, she tried to reason with him again. "It's fruitless, you know. Maybe you've misinterpreted the prophecy. You should try to get power another way. Or leave England while you still can. Now is a good time to escape, actually. No one will notice you've gone for several more days."

"No," Pettigrew said, shuddering. "Nowhere is safe. They will come after the jewel no matter where I go. My old master… will not be forgiving, if it is he who finds me. I must master this power. If I can control other wizards…only then will I be safe again."

She wondered how it was that the idea of leaving the jewel and making a run for it by himself didn't even occur to him. Had the jewel really done so much for him? She thought it still seemed like more trouble than it was worth. She also thought he already could control other wizards, if his using it against her was any indication. The control was imperfect and she thought she would be able to fight it with enough time, but it was certainly enough to win advantage in a fair fight. Why wasn't it enough for Pettigrew? Was this the influence of the jewel? Or his own stubborn ambition?

He bent the jewel to taking her magic once more and this time Rigel found her mind centered in the pain, but intact. Was the jewel growing weaker, or was she growing better at being tortured? She had the faculties this time to think that withstanding torturous amounts of pain had not been on her list of things-to-get-good-at. She didn't know if cynicism in the face of pain was beneficial or detrimental to her mental health at this point. It didn't make her feel better, at any rate. She almost preferred the mindlessness of the last time. It didn't leave room for self-reflection and she didn't have to second-guess her own sanity, as it was already absent in the first place. She also hadn't noticed her bowels releasing last time. This time she did.

As Pettigrew's efforts faded into livid curses and whimpering pleas, Rigel rolled shakily onto her back, drawing in air slowly and shallowly.

"How are you doing this?" he demanded.

"It's not…me," she coughed. "Don't you think…I would make it stop, if I could?"

This argument stymied him for a moment, but a second later he was growling, "I know it is within the jewel's ability to do this. I've been researching all day and there's nothing that differentiates a wizard's magic from a creature's in that way."

"Look…again," she huffed, struggling upwards onto her elbows. The smell of her shame hit her nose and she raised her arm against it, grimacing.

Pettigrew took his wand out and spelled her clothes clean with a derisive sneer. She ignored him, rolling over to face the opposite wall. Her body was a trembling pile of uselessness at the moment. She needed rest. She had to keep her strength up.

She tried to ignore the little voice in her head that suggested she was acting tougher than she was to stave off the deep sense of despair that crept over her with each passing hour. The voice got louder, however, the longer she lied to herself. It was becoming increasingly clear that escape was a very narrow window, receding into the distance and getting smaller all the time.

-0

[PpPpPp]

-0

He rose on Monday with panic in every fiber of his being. His failure overwhelmed him, making it harder and harder to focus on the task. Why did the Jewel keep failing? Was it him? No, he was doing everything right. It was the boy. Somehow the boy was keeping his magic locked away beyond his reach. But how?

He would find out. Somewhere in the vast library at Hogwarts there were answers. He calmed himself, patting the pocket where he kept his time-turner reassuringly. He had time to figure it out. The boy would not thwart him forever. Already, he should be losing strength. The herbs he'd been straining into the boy's water should see to that. They would weaken his resolve, slow his mind. Sooner or later he would give into despair and doubt, and his resistance would crumble completely.

In the meantime, he would figure out what about that child in particular was thwarting his Jewel. He slipped out of the cavern and into the forest in his rat form. When he reached the castle, he would Disillusion himself and make his way to the library. There wouldn't be anyone there, with classes in session. He slipped past his very own Creatures class on his way across the lawn. How strange this time-turner was. When he mastered the Jewel, he would turn his attention to unleashing its full potential as well.

He looked through book after book, trying to find something that would explain the magic's unheard-of resistance to the power of the Jewel. It was as if the magic was trapped, somehow… but what could do such a thing? Was it Occlumency? Some sort of trick? He didn't know. But he would find out.

Hours later, he despaired. There was nothing in the books about mind arts that would explain the inaccessibility of the boy's magic. He was so tired, so tired of trying. And for what? He was having trouble remembering. The world around him was growing heavy. So heavy…

He jolted awake to a prodding finger, whirling and nearly attacking the sandy-haired Ravenclaw student blinking back at him. "Um…Professor? It's almost breakfast. You don't want to miss it." The student smiled and walked away toward the library exit. Peter realized his Disillusionment Charm had faded away sometime after he'd fallen asleep. He gazed in panic at the window. He'd been gone all night! Oh, no. The boy. There was no way he could have escaped…right?

He hastened to get to the kitchens and collect the food he needed to keep the boy in line. There was no telling what he'd prepared for him with all the time alone he'd had. His ribs still hurt from that kick. He'd thought a child would be easy to control. Why was it all going so wrong?

When he crept silently into the pit, he expected to meet some sinister challenge and. as such was carrying the Jewel in his mouth, fairly certain he could still use it in his Animagus form if he had to. What he saw was…the boy, sleeping fitfully within the circle of the faded barrier. Why was he still sleeping? He had been gone so long. Was he faking? He reassumed his true form and stepped closer, wary of a trap.

No…he was just sleeping. Peter frowned down at the shaking child. He slept an unnaturally long time. Some of it could be from his time-turner use, Peter reasoned carefully. If he was awake longer in the day, maybe his habits had altered to keep him well rested. He shouldn't be sleeping all day, though. Unless…maybe the Jewel was doing more damage to the boy than Peter had thought. He'd certainly screamed a lot, but children were notoriously dramatic. Well, the boy was breathing, so he supposed it couldn't be doing too much injury. Whatever he was doing to resist the Jewel was probably just tiring him out.

The Jewel was an impatient presence at the back of his mind, giving him a headache that worsened the longer he went without making any progress. Pettigrew set the food and water inside the circle next to the boy and then cast a new barrier quickly. He had to get back to the library. He had to find the answer soon.

-0

[HpHpHp]

-0

She opened her eyes once Pettigrew had left the cavern. She'd woken as he placed the bag of food beside her, but pretended to sleep. It had been nearly a full day since he left and now he was leaving again? She allowed herself a small smirk as she sat up. He must be having a hard time figuring out that she was wearing a suppressor. With luck, he'd give up soon. The smugness faded from her mind almost immediately. If he gave up, what would he do with her? Probably kill her immediately. Unless he was exceptionally good at Memory Charms. Even then…if she were evil, she had to admit she wouldn't take the chance of leaving her alive.

She wondered if he even was evil. He seemed very conflicted the whole time he threatened her. Why would someone so unsure of themselves try and do something so unequivocally dastardly, anyway? It was stupid. Someone like him should be an undersecretary somewhere, toadying his way into modest influence and letting other people do the thinking.

She opened the bag and began going through it. Water! She gulped half the canteen down immediately. She was beginning to live for the moments that water appeared before her. She'd tried to ration the food she had yesterday, but in the end had succumbed and eaten it all before going to sleep. Her stomach still rumbled and she promised herself she'd never take Hogwarts cooking for granted again. She pulled out three muffins and an apple from the bag. The apple she saved. The muffins she scarfed down with abandon. Her body needed the energy, she told herself. She suspected the truth of it just came down to the ache in her belly.

She spent a few hours going through her spell books for anything that might be helpful in ward dismantling. The problem was, wards were designed precisely so that they couldn't be dismantled from certain angles. For protective wards, like the kind put on houses, the ward could only really be taken down from the inside. To break it from the outside required unimaginable preparation and exact application of specific runic counters. The inverse was true for the kind of containment ward she was in. It would take skill she didn't have to figure out a way through. The longer she spent analyzing the problem, the more convinced she became that her only option was to overpower Pettigrew physically and wrest the time-turner away from him. If she could get back to a point in time before Pettigrew had activated the wards, she could blast her way out with magic.

The jewel was a problem. It could cripple her body before she got close enough to take Pettigrew down. If she could just find a way around it, she would be on her way to freedom.

Pettigrew was gone for hours and hours. It felt as though most of the day (or night, she wasn't sure anymore) had passed before he appeared again. She was caught off guard, having been attempting to scratch an identification rune into the wall in a bid to learn more about how the ward was constructed. His angry voice caused the rock in her hand to slip and her heart rate to skyrocket as she turned to see him bearing down on her.

"I finally figured it out," he said, looking entirely too manic to make any deduction, must less correct ones. He held the jewel in front of him like garlic held before a vampire and she found herself scrambling back before it, much to her disgust. "I know how you're doing it. You have a magic suppressor, don't you? This whole time, you've been wearing something that locked your magic up beyond my reach. Clever little beast, aren't you? Well. That ends tonight."

So it was nighttime, she thought in a distant part of her mind. That would make it…Tuesday evening? Three full days until anyone would notice her missing. She needed to stall longer, somehow.

Her herded her with the jewel back into her circle. He cast the Protective Potion around her again and she wondered how exactly he was planning on getting her suppressor off, now that he knew it was there. He clearly wasn't planning on taking it off of her physically—as if he could. It was irremovable to anyone but herself. She could outlast Pettigrew's determination. She was sure of it.

"Take the suppressor off," Pettigrew said, fists clenched in ire on the other side of the barrier.

She shook her head silently, waiting for his true attempt.

"I will take everything on you away, item by item, until I discover which it is," Pettigrew snarled.

She blanched, an icy fear that came from a place she rarely even acknowledged suddenly making itself known. He…wouldn't really… She took in his resolute expression. He would, she realized. And then he would know her secret, the one thing she wanted to protect above all else. She would have to—she cut off that thought ruthlessly. She did not have to do anything.

Her choices lay before her, crystal clear. She could take off her suppressor, surrendering her magic to the control of the jewel, and keep her secret. She could also hold onto her suppressor and resign herself to the uncovering of her deepest deception. The suppressor could not be taken off of her without her consent. As long as she hung onto it, even if all other articles of her clothing were stripped away, she would retain control of her magic. If she gave over the magic to Pettigrew's attempt to control it…he would probably kill her as soon as he had what he needed to fulfill the prophecy.

Would she die, then, to protect her secret? Would she take it to the grave? It was a moment of utter clarity for her. The answer was so immediate that she didn't have to even think about it long. No. She wouldn't. Not in these circumstances.

She folded her arms around herself protectively, but resolutely shook her head again. She would not take the suppressor off. Not even if it meant her secret was revealed. Some things, she discovered in that moment, were more important than her ruse.

Pettigrew growled in annoyance. She said, hoping against hope to dissuade him against all odds, "It can't be summoned. You'll be wasting your time. This whole thing is a waste of time."

"We'll see," he said, pulling out his wand. "Accio suppressor!"

She felt a brief, intense pain in the finger on her left hand, but did not react to it. The spell hadn't worked. She could see the wheels working in his head as he took in the barrier between them. How slowly they must turn, she thought scornfully.

After a time, he seemed to strike on an idea. The jewel shone brightly as he turned it toward her. The heat that enveloped her was entirely predictable and she was heartily sick of it.

Take off the suppressor. Her mind focused unnaturally on that one idea, even as another part of her swam angrily against the current in protest. Take the suppressor off now. He hands, apparently detached from her good sense, began moving outside of her consciousness. They stripped her left glove away and twitched toward the jade ring before she ground their movement to a halt through sheer, concentrated willpower. No! She refused to give in at this juncture when she'd endured so much to keep Pettigrew away from her magic. She clenched her fists and pulls her hands as far apart as she could, panting wildly at the strain even so simple a directive put on her mind. Take the suppressor off. The jewel hummed in her head insistently, but she was onto its game. She could fight it, she now knew.

"I…won't," she ground out between her teeth.

The pressure on her skull abruptly stopped. Pettigrew was gazing at her with considering eyes. "My control usually gets easier with each successive attempt. You seem to be getting better at resisting, somehow. It doesn't matter, though. Now I know your suppressor is one of those rings. If I can't make you take it off with the jewel, I will use other means to persuade you."

That was the only warning she got before pain invaded her senses and drove her to the dirt. What was he playing at? He knew he couldn't draw her magic out by force! He was using the pain to try and force her into giving in and taking the ring off. That—she didn't have the words. That he would sink to actual torture to get his way—! She didn't know why, but a part of her felt betrayed. Until now, it had seemed like Pettigrew felt he had to act the way he did, in order to achieve his ends. Now, though…he was torturing her to speed things along in lieu of any actual cunning or power. Well, screw that.

She rolled with the pain gamely. It was tearing up her body, this constant pressure on her magical coils, but she didn't care anymore. She was angry. Her magic could go boil itself for all she cared. Pettigrew and the jewel, too. She wouldn't give him the satisfaction. Not even if it crippled her.

She held onto consciousness much longer than she had previously, she thought. It wasn't a happy thought, but it gave her a certain grim satisfaction that she would not have recognized in herself just days ago. What was this place doing to her? There was no time to wonder in what form she might emerge, if she ever did escape. She was already slipping into the blackness of oblivion once more.

When she woke, it was to the feeling of someone fumbling eagerly with her left hand. She clenched it in silent denial, but it was pressed flat to the floor with the exception of the finger she wore her rings on. The basilisk ring was pulled off carelessly, then fingers slid for purchase on the ring of jade. Pettigrew cursed, the sound so close it sent air wafting against her neck. She tried to lift her head, but a rippling agony shot through her muscles each time she attempted to tense them.

"Why won't it move?" Pettigrew hissed.

"It's irremovable," she garbled, trying the same lie that hadn't worked on Riddle.

"No," Pettigrew seethed. "It can't be. I'll—I'll cut it off."

She clenched her teeth at that mental image. Should she just take it off? Her hands meant a lot to her. It wasn't her knife-wielding hand, but still…if he was going to cut her finger off then the suppressor would come off either way.

"No…wait. What's this?" Pettigrew's breathing picked up and his hand stroked over the jade band slowly. "This is…it's creature magic."

A pool of dread bled into her gut and her breath hitched abruptly. No. Surely he couldn't—

Pettigrew began to laugh gleefully. "This is too perfect. This whole time, the answer was right in front of me."

She squinted from the corner of her eye to see him holding the jewel close to her hand. The ring on her finger got hot all of a sudden. It hurt, but nothing like when Riddle had tried to force it off, and Riddle's attempt paled in relation to the pain she'd been introduced to in the last few days, in any case. This pain was a shadow of true pain. A blip on the radar of suffering. Pettigrew's gleeful muttering was far more devastating. "It is Fate, that it should come down to this. Creature magic is my purview. I'll have this off in a sec—" He paused abruptly. "No. That isn't—I have to be smarter." She felt him leave her side and heard his quick footsteps scraping through the dirt. She tried to get some response from her body while he was gone, but her muscles felt completely shredded. Just breathing hurt in places she hadn't known even had nerve endings.

She heard the now-familiar sound of a potion being poured onto the ground and intuited his plan. He was enclosing her in a barrier, now that he knew how to remove the suppressor. Once it left her finger, her magic would be unleashed and he didn't want to risk it getting at him before he could control it. He was almost annoyingly cautious. She supposed someone like him had to be, as opposed to someone like Riddle Jr., whose arrogance was in part a reflection of his faith in his own ability.

It seemed entirely unfair that the powers of the jewel could reach through the barrier while regular magic and physical things could not. Rigel supposed it was not the Protective Potion's fault. The shield it was based on must not have been designed to withstand mysteriously omnipotent artifacts. She would fix that, if she ever got the chance.

She tried to think of some way to stop Pettigrew from getting at her magic. She had run out of things to try, however. She had no more diversions or misdirections up her sleeve. When the suppressor began to heat once more, she clenched her eyes in true despair. There was nothing she could do. When the jade ring shattered, she braced herself for the storm.

-0

[PpPpPp]

-0

At last. He could feel the power unfurling on the other side of the shield and it delighted him. He was finally succeeding. With this magic under his control, the prophecy would be fulfilled and the Jewel would fully bond with him. Then he would be unstoppable.

He bent the Jewel's power toward the barrier. He would make sure the magic was under control, first. Then he would soak it up into the Jewel like a sponge soaking up water. He felt the Jewel's happy thrum in response to his plan and smiled slowly. He was so close. All of his efforts were finally going to pay off.

CRACK.

He jumped backwards and stared, shocked, at the barrier. It had shuddered underneath the assault of the boy's magic. What was it doing? How was the boy controlling it without a wand? Once he drew it out of the boy, it should have been aimless. Dangerous, yes, but wild, like all the other creatures whose magic he'd taken. And yet his eyes told him frantically that the magic was coiling, marshaling itself, and aiming for the side of the barrier closest to him. As though it knew he was a threat. As though it were resisting with a modicum of intelligence.

Peter shook his head rapidly. That wasn't possible. It was the boy—he must have some kind of wandless magic capabilities that came out when his magic was released. He didn't waste time wondering why the boy had so much magic locked away in the first place. What did he care why the boy did anything? All that mattered was severing his unnatural control over the freed magic.

He readjusted the Jewel's target. Instead of attempting to soothe the magic, it would wrap itself around the boy. If Pettigrew could make him fall asleep, his will would be severed and the cohesion keeping the magic together would scatter. Go to sleep, he commanded. Go to sleep now. It should have been easy. The boy was obviously still weakened from his attempt to hold out against removing his suppressor. That, combined with the mind weakening herbs should have made him incredibly pliant. Instead, Peter felt a desperate scrabbling against the power of the Jewel, as though falling asleep were the scariest thing the boy had ever been made to do. Peter scowled and poured all of the power he could muster into the command. Go to sleep.

The boy resisted several long minutes before his body finally collapsed in unconsciousness. Peter felt a rush of triumph—until the barrier CRACK-ed loudly once more under the assault of the boy's magic. He stumbled back, utterly terrified. It shouldn't be possible. The boy was asleep—no one could use magic in their sleep. He desperately turned the Jewel back to the cloud of magic that hung menacingly suspended on the other side of a transparent—and worryingly flimsy, it seemed—shield.

His every attempt to wear the magic down with the Jewel was met with implacable defiance. The Jewel slid away from the magic like water over glass, utterly ineffectual. He could feel the Jewel itself becoming frustrated and he channeled that on top of his own desperation, unable to believe that this child's magic had a will that was stronger than the Dominion Jewel. It had subjugated nations. It had transformed the souls of countless unworthy wielders and raised them to from obscurity to prominence. It could not be thwarted by the wild energies of an underdeveloped fleshling—

Peter grasped his head with his free hand in sudden pain. Were those… were those his thoughts? He didn't think so. Was the Jewel…? He felt a rush of glee at his realization. It was bonding with him. It was finally recognizing him as its rightful master. It would come into his soul, now, and make him stronger, smarter, better looking, and—focus.

Yes. He had to get control of that magic. That was the most important thing. Together with the Jewel, they could not fail.

Except, they did. Over and over for hours until Pettigrew was quite sure the magic was some sort of preternatural force of nature that had been possessing the child somehow. The Jewel just couldn't get a grasp on it from any direction. Its power was jolted away at every angle by an untiring unruliness the likes of which Peter had never imagined. The first time he saw the protective barrier around the boy begin to crack, he could not quite fathom it. He had seen this shield deflect dragon fire, for Merlin's sake. He was barely able to get a second shield poured around the first before it shattered completely.

From then on, he ran through potion after potion, trying to keep a barrier between himself and the magic. There was not an endless supply of the potion, however. After pouring a vial onto the dirt and watching it smoke and fizzle uselessly, he realized he was out of the potion he needed completely. The final barrier began to flicker ominously each time the magic slammed against it and Peter admitted he could not go on in this way. Something would give, and he was certain it would be the shield.

Bitter and angry, he fled the cavern. The wards would keep the magic locked in until he came up with another plan. It seemed he had another unexpected hurdle to overcome. As he slunk through the small tunnel that led to the surface, he had to wonder if he shouldn't just find some other kid to control. This one was clearly too much for him. The Jewel gave a displeased jolt of magic that dug into his head painfully at the thought. It wanted that magic. And it would have it. He felt the certainty seep from the Jewel into himself, calming his mind and steadying his nerve. Yes. He would have that power. One way or another.

-0

[HpHpHp]

-0

Rigel awoke slowly, wondering if she'd been transported to a far-off island. She could feel the breeze on her face. It smelled of salt. She must be close enough to see the ocean. If only she could open her eyes. They felt caked shut. Probably got some sand in them, she sighed. She started to stretch, then groaned as her every muscle protested. Why did her limbs feel like noodles? Had she been swimming too long? As if on cue, a cramp made itself known in her abdomen. She gasped, but breathing was difficult, too. Was she underwater? She struggled to open her eyes despite the gritty buildup keeping them closed.

She was met with dimly lit darkness and the sight of dirt all around her. She moaned in disappointment as reality crept back into her head, almost apologetically. Her magic was free, swirling restlessly around the little circle she was stuck in. Its movement had been the breeze she felt. The smell of salt was the crusted sweat all over her face. She couldn't breathe because her lungs were bruised from all the exertion they'd been through in the last few days. The pain in her abdomen wasn't a swimmer's cramp—it was ravenous hunger.

She had to sit up, she told her muscles firmly. They politely refused. She had to sit up, she told them. She needed the apple that was stashed under her robes—

The apple dropped onto her cheek and bounced onto the dirt beside her face. What…? She strained her eyes in the semi-darkness to see her magic hovering curiously above her. She laughed weakly, then winced at the pain that caused. "Great," she whispered hoarsely. "Now…can you lift it into my mouth?"

The apple twitched, then rolled from the dirt up the side of her face, coming to a stop on top of her lips. She opened her mouth and took a bite. Sloppy, yet effective, she thought with dark amusement. The magic obligingly held the apple in place until she'd eaten every bit that wasn't stem or seed.

Now a Pain Relief Potion, she thought hopefully. The clinking of a vial was music to her ears, and a moment later she was struggling not to choke as the liquid was poured down her throat. It took mere minutes to kick in and she was then able to override her muscles' complaints and sit up fully.

Pettigrew was nowhere to be seen. He couldn't have left more than twelve hours ago, or the barrier would have fallen, she reasoned, so she figured it was…Wednesday? Maybe? Two more days. She could hold out for two more days, surely. She didn't know how she expected anyone to find her, even once they noticed her missing, but she didn't want to discount the possibility just yet. There were a lot of people who would care if she disappeared…right? One of them would find a way. Sirius was an Animagus, even. He might be able to widen the tunnel enough to fit his shaggy dog form through. She just had to be patient.

She made her way to her pile of robes and took a quick inventory. There was a little bit of water left, which she polished off quickly. She downed a Nutrient Potion—her last one—and thought about taking another dose of Pain Relief, but reasoned she should save them.

Taking the potions was about the extent of what her energy reserves would allow her to physically accomplish. She sat, hunched over her lap and clutching her shoulders in opposite hands wearily. She lost track of time, there in the eye of her magic's lazy hurricane, trying not to think about anything, because every thought that led back to Pettigrew or her current situation was a thought that sent her magic buzzing angrily around her. Its anger and hate was a palpable thing and she hoped vaguely that Pettigrew had some sort of plan for when he came back. Her magic was ready to kill him.

Ignoring the sinister pleasure that coursed through her magic at that idle thought, she wondered if that wouldn't be a good thing. If her magic killed Pettigrew, she could take the time-turner from his corpse and turn back to before the wards were set on her prison, letting her escape. Despite her magic's excitement at that plan, something bothered Rigel about it. What was the matter with it?

Setting aside questions of morality, which she felt were entirely ambiguous at this stage from anyone's point of view, there was something about the idea of taking the time-turner and turning back to before Friday evening that sent an unconscious shiver of fear down her spine. What was it? It was like she was forgetting something she wasn't supposed to—

"No," she whispered aloud, shocked into voicing her denial by the force with which the despair suddenly hit her. No, no, no. She couldn't go back to before the wards were set. Why hadn't she remembered the first rule of time-turning? There could never be more than six versions of oneself in any given time. Tuesday, how many times had she done Tuesday morning? Three in the course of her normal class schedule, once brewing in the Room of Requirement, and once…once out running on the other side of the lake while everyone was in class. That was five times. It hadn't seemed reckless at the time. But now…Pettigrew had taken her back a full week, so she now had six selves existing simultaneously on Tuesday morning. If she went back again…well, she wasn't sure what would happen, but she was pretty sure the words 'crippled magically for life' had been tossed around while Snape was explaining it.

She felt tears well as the full realization of her doom came upon her. She couldn't use the time-turner to escape. It had been the last resort left to her that depended on her own impetus. All that remained was the hope that someone would come or Pettigrew would leave himself open to some manipulation that would get him to let her out.

She took deep, slow breaths for a long time, just focusing on getting through the next second, then the next, then the next. Once she was certain she wasn't going to fall apart, she turned her attention to modifying her immediate plans. Pettigrew could not die. He was one of the two tickets out she could come up with.

Her magic roared in fury at that resolution, denial in every drop. It slammed into her seated form and sent her bowling to the side. The winds grew sharp, cutting her exposed skin and ripping into her clothing mercilessly. Okay, she thought at it frantically, all right. She would not think of keeping Pettigrew alive, then. She would not think of him at all.

Her magic remained suspicious, so she began reciting the ingredients for a Befuddlement Draught in alphabetical order until it went back to circling their prison slowly, almost peacefully. She hoped it was enjoying its time free. Once she was out of here, she would be finding a way to remedy that. The magic growled. It was more of a feeling than a noise, but she ignored it all the same and stuck her tongue out at it for good measure.

They settled into an uneasy truce after that and she passed the time watching the Marauder's Map. She could see all of her other selves walking about the castle, innocently oblivious to what would befall them in a matter of days. She watched her friends go from class to class and tried to imagine their faces where the little dots were. She strained her memory to recall what they'd been talking about when one of her dots converged on one of theirs, and made up fanciful dialogue to substitute for the conversations that had been too short or inane to remember.

She watched them until her eyes slid in and out of focus dispiritedly. Pettigrew's dot was in the library, where it had been all day. Why hadn't she thought to keep track of him this way earlier? Her mind had not been as sharp as it usually was, throughout this entire trial. When her friends all converged in their beds, she assumed curfew had fallen up in the castle. Pettigrew's dot didn't look to be going anywhere, so she guessed he hadn't yet come up with a way to get what he wanted out of her magic.

Said magic perked up as her thoughts turned its way. The barrier had long since fallen and it had spent the day exploring the small cavern they were trapped in over and over. It didn't seem to have much luck with the wards, which didn't surprise her. They were designed to keep wizards in, and she didn't think the goblins would be careless enough to leave a loophole that allowed a wizard's magic to leave the containment by itself.

If she died in the cavern, perhaps her magic would be smart enough to latch itself onto an animal that wandered down the hole someday. Imagining a squirrel possessed by her demonic magic gave her a tiny amount of amusement, before she recalled that she was dead in that scenario.

She tucked the Map away and curled up on the dirt. She didn't want to sleep, since it meant leaving her magic largely unattended. It couldn't really do anything besides loom at the moment, though, and her body needed the rest. She had to keep herself together until Friday night. Her last thought before drifting off was two more days…

-0

[HpHpHp]

-0

It was late in the day on Thursday when Pettigrew finally returned. He came in as a rat while Rigel was staring up at the ceiling listlessly. She didn't notice until his human self loomed suddenly over her. Even as her head tilted slightly to take in his determined expression, her magic struck from above and behind him, breaking like a wave against a rock.

She eyed the ward that shimmered into existence around the man curiously, but distantly. She was finding it difficult to focus her emotions into anything stronger than boredom. She was so tired, but she couldn't sleep. She was hungry, but the thought of choking down another potion on an empty stomach made her want to retch.

"Get up," Pettigrew said.

She blinked, slowly attempting to put some energy into her body. Her arms moved after much resistance, sliding under her slowly to prop her into a sitting position. Her legs were entirely uncooperative, though. She looked at him blankly, wondering what he wanted with her. It was her magic he cared about now, wasn't it?

He pulled out a bag and her vision narrowed alarmingly. Was there food inside? Water?

"I'll make a trade with you," Pettigrew said, ignoring for the moment the way her magic battered at whatever ward he's managed to erect around his person. Her mind tore itself away from wondering if he'd drawn the runes onto his clothes or onto his skin, refocusing on the bag with almost painful longing as he shook it to keep her attention. "You can have this, if you take an oath for me."

Her mind stuttered to a halt as her gut said No, rather forcefully. Wait, the hungry part of her whined. Let's hear it out.

"An oath to do what?" she croaked.

Pettigrew smirked. "An oath that you will not try to kill me."

She paused for a moment, thinking that over. "What makes you think I would try to kill you?" He gestured to the magic currently hammering away at his rune-powered armor. "That's not me," she said quietly. "I can't keep my magic from killing you."

Pettigrew sneered. "You'll forgive me if I do not believe you. You must be directing it somehow and even if you aren't, I want your word that you will not add your will to the magic's attempts."

"This won't help you," she said, frowning up at him. "Trust me. I kept my magic locked away for a reason and it had nothing to do with that jewel of yours. It's dangerous. And easily provoked. It will try to kill you without my help, if you keep angering it."

"As long as it is without your will, I can control it," Pettigrew said. That was what he'd come up with over the past day? Controlling her to control her magic? If her magic were controllable she would have done it already. Didn't he see that?

Her stomach growled and she forced her mind to consider the problem at hand. If she took an oath not to attempt to kill him, would her magic's actions be considered a violation of the oath? She supposed as long as she acted against her magic trying to kill him as best she could, that would constitute upholding it. She wanted Pettigrew alive, anyway, and she needed the food…it seemed like a positive scenario for her. Was she missing anything? It was so hard to think, lately. Her body's aches constantly distracted her mind and ideas that had once seemed very clear were becoming increasingly muddled.

"Your oath, or the food stops now," Pettigrew warned.

"The prophecy," she tried.

"It will take some time for you to starve," Pettigrew said, looking unconcerned. "I'm sure by then you'll be weak enough that your magic will have lost its forcefulness."

She didn't think the strength of her magic was related at all to the strength of her body, but if Pettigrew believed that, then he really would be willing to watch her slowly waste away. Should she….? Rigel didn't think any other choice would help her more. "All right," she said slowly. "I'll need my wand to swear—"

"Nice try," Pettigrew sneered. "I'll be doing the bonding." He pulled out his wand and stepped toward her. Rigel's magic collected near Pettigrew's wand like a hive of angry bees, but it could not get through the ward that seemed to cover Pettigrew from head to toe, flashing into existence each time her magic got within a foot of the squat man. She wondered where he was getting such effective rune systems. They didn't seem to fit with the bumbling image she had of the man, but she supposed it didn't take a genius to look up an array that someone else had designed and copy down the symbols. Anyway, she shouldn't disparage someone who had successfully beaten her into the dirt for nearly a week. It was an indirect insult to herself.

She eyed Pettigrew's wand, considering, but he kept it well back from her reach, and her muscles had not the strength to move at anything above a snail's pace, anyway. He clasped her hand and raised it to the proper position for her, then said, "Make the oath."

She gathered her thoughts and willed them with difficulty into coherent words. "I…" she paused. She could not say her name. She would do what she had when she swore the oath with Flint and merely refer to herself by intent. "…do hereby swear not to conspire with my magic to kill Peter Pettigrew, nor to make any attempt myself to end his life." She waited to see if he was satisfied and, after a long moment, he nodded and sealed the oath.

"So mote it be."

"So mote it be," she echoed. A golden thread wrapped around her wrist and disappeared, leaving no trace. It was done, for better or worse.

Pettigrew dropped the bag into her lap and she dug in eagerly. There was a single raw potato inside, and a canteen only half-filled with water. Her fists clenched angrily on the sides of the sack, but she pulled the contents out anyway. It was all she had.

Her magic, enraged at the disappointed bitterness that had engulfed her at the thought of eating raw potato, reacted rather predictably. It lashed at Pettigrew from every angle, engulfing his ward-protected form in a vortex of slashing winds.

"Stop it! You swore!" Pettigrew cried out fearfully.

Rigel didn't think her oath constituted a promise to keep her magic from reacting on her behalf, but just in case, she swiftly cleared her mind of anything related to Pettigrew or the potato, chanting the thirty-six uses of the Aloe Vera plant. Antifungal, antiviral, antibacterial, burns, constipation, stomach cramps, inflammation…

Her magic calmed marginally, but still hovered suspiciously over Pettigrew's head. "I can stop it from attacking you on my behalf, but I can't make it not react in its own defense," she warned him. "You'd better leave it alone, if you're so afraid of it."

"I'm not afraid," Pettigrew snapped. He had the jewel in his hand once more, however, and his thumb stroked over it in a way that was blatantly self-reassuring.

You should be, she thought. Her magic was as wild as she'd ever seen it and she suspected the only reason it hadn't done something more drastic by now was because it was marginally free to move about and exert its will, for once. As soon as Pettigrew succeeded at all in gaining a measure of control over it, the magic would probably show its true colors. She hoped dearly that Friday would come before he made any progress. Otherwise they were both in trouble. Just one day more…

-0

[PpPpPp]

-0

The world was conspiring against him. Every step he took landed him two paces back. It wasn't fair! He'd done everything the Jewel told him to. He'd earned the power and yet it floated tantalizingly out of his reach. No matter what he did, the boy's magic resisted. He'd given himself a blinding headache trying to batter it into submission, but his desperation made no difference.

The Jewel was growing angry with him. Each new failure sent a backlash of pain resonating in his head that made it harder and harder to focus. The prophecy rang tauntingly in the back of his mind. 'Ere the moment be expired…'

He needed more time. Yes, that was all. He could figure it out, if he just had more time. Time. He had time, of course, what was he thinking? He would have to work quickly, of course, but then—no, he had no need to. This place…it could easily be made to accommodate his needs. And it had been! He smirked gleefully. The boy looked uneasy at the expression on his face. As well he should. He had great plans. First he would need a little help, but soon they would come to fruition. There was no turning back, now. The die was cast.

-0

[HpHpHp]

-0

As Pettigrew inexplicably slipped out of the cavern on Thursday night, Rigel had to wonder what he was up to now. The last day had been an exercise in patience, on her part, at least. Keeping her mind continually occupied with things that didn't involve maiming Pettigrew had become more and more difficult the longer he provoked her magic with that blasted jewel of his. He either had no sense of self-preservation or he honestly thought he was going to be able to control her magic. Even watching him try, it had become clear to her early on that he wasn't making any headway at all. It was a little terrifying, actually, knowing that her magic had been able to shrug off so easily the powers of the Dominion Jewel, when she herself had been so quickly ensnared by it.

She supposed she ought to be grateful for her magic's implacable nature, for once. It was the only thing standing between her and Pettigrew deciding she'd lost her usefulness. The thought of Pettigrew leaving her to die riled her magic to a dull roar, so she quickly thought about something else. Like the fact that she needed to relieve her bladder before Pettigrew got back. Her body ached weakly in response to even the thought of moving far enough that she wouldn't be offended by the proximity of the waste.

Before she had mustered the strength to do anything about her body's pressing need, a very alarming invisible tug moved her in a kind of self-levitation several feet away. That was…convenient. Her freed magic was quite the unexpected boon, it seemed. When it wasn't lurking menacingly over her shoulder, that is. The magic slunk off toward the other end of the cavern, seemingly in response to her wry thought. She had to admit, it was almost like having company.

Pettigrew came back an hour or so after he left. When he reentered the cavern, however, he was not alone. There were five live nifflers following close behind him. They barely squeezed through the entrance hole and, once inside, they lined up like soldiers before their general, apparently awaiting Pettigrew's command.

"What are those for?" she asked, struggling to lift her head from the floor. She knew she ought to be stretching her muscles and working her way back to full movement, but it hurt too much to contemplate, so she just turned her head sideways from where she was lying and squinted at the nifflers in confusion.

"Don't you recognize them?" Pettigrew asked, sounding very excited about something.

She didn't know any nifflers personally, so she wasn't sure how he expected her to recognize them. The only ones she'd even seen recently were the dead…wait… She shifted her head slightly to take in the spot where there was a pile of dead nifflers. Oh. No. This was bad. If they were the same nifflers as had been dead on Friday evening, then… She looked at the five perky nifflers with a newfound sense of horror. How did their dead bodies get into the past? Surely Pettigrew wasn't going to…he wasn't going to go back another week, was he? She thought hard. What good would that do him, besides allowing him to plant the dead nifflers for his past self to use to finish up the rune sequence on the cavern?

He must realize he was running out of time before someone noticed her missing. How did he plan on getting more time to control her magic without… her there to…?

"No," she said, struggling against the pain to try desperately to sit up. Her muscles locked and seized and she growled in impotence. "You can't."

"Caught on, have you?" Pettigrew sneered. "You didn't think your imprisonment was nearly over, did you? I have as much time with you as it takes to—"

"You don't understand," she snapped, panting harshly as the effort it took her lungs to speak. "You can't take me back to the past again. There's a limit to how many times a person can turn back. You can't live a single moment more than six different times. It causes a resonance in the core that—"

"What are you talking about?" Pettigrew growled. "This plan is perfect. And anyway, I've already done it, don't you see? That's why the nifflers were left there. I finally figured it out—it's a sign. So I know what I have to do—or what I've done…" He looked very close to scratching his head in confusion, but shook it instead. "Look, I know what I'm doing. I have to take you back, to get more time with your magic. I don't even have to build a whole new prison because…well, you'll see."

"I'm telling you it isn't possible," she said, coughing as the strain on her voice became too great. "You…can't take me back. I've already done parts of this week six times."

"You're lying," Pettigrew snapped. "It isn't going to work."

"Please, I'm not," she begged. "You can go look it up in the library—it'll be in any book about time-travel, honest—"

"Oh, yes, go looking through the library again and in the meantime you'll wait patiently for someone to notice your absence and come and save you, is that it?" Pettigrew laughed. "I'm not going to ever allow you that chance. We'll turn back tonight and do the week again. If I need more time, we'll turn back another week, and another, until I find a way."

"I'm telling you I'll die," she said weakly.

"I know," Pettigrew said. He looked hesitant for a moment, then added, "I've known you were going to die for a while, actually. I can smell it."

She had no idea what he was talking about, but she knew she couldn't let him take her back in time. She struggled to sit up, gasping and crying at the knives that shot through every part of her as she did so. She needed to sit up. She had to move past the pain. There was no other choice.

As Pettigrew was coaxing the nifflers one by one into his burlap sack, Rigel was focusing all her attention on finding a way to stand, to get away from the man. She made it to her knees,and then, amazingly, felt an alien strength flooding into her muscles. Her magic was trying to help her, she realized. It sent air into her lungs even as the organs shuddered and stalled. It cleared the pain from her mind as she put first one foot beneath her, then the other. It steadied her legs when her knees threatened to buckle and it solidified her stomach muscles in anticipation of the coming fight. She would not let this happen.

When Pettigrew saw her standing, he gave her a pitying look. "You haven't the strength to fight anymore, boy."

Her trembling limbs agreed with him, but Rigel was stubborn. She would fight, because to do otherwise was to concede to death willingly.

Pettigrew stepped forward slowly and she sank into a trembling crouch. He dropped the sack from his left hand and took his right out of his pocket. To her surprise, she didn't see a wand or the jewel in his other hand. It was curled into a fist. Could he really be so arrogant? She opened her eyes wide and focused entirely on the way Pettigrew's body shifted back and forth uncertainly. He was not an experienced fighter, from the look of his stance. She was in no shape to be tussling with anyone, but if her magic would keep her propped up, she could last long enough to knock him out, maybe. The oath prevented her from killing him, but she could at least destroy the time-turner.

She ignored the doubtful voice in the back of her head that said she couldn't have destroyed the time-turner if there was a pile of niffler carcasses in the cavern when she'd arrived. Not unless she had escaped and then requested that a Ministry official kill some nifflers and plant them at a certain time to protect the time stream.

There was no more time for doubts, though, as Pettigrew made his move. His fist shot forward toward her and she had no trouble at all dodging to the left, the strength from her magic lending her a speed that she considered acceptable in the circumstances. His fist flew past her ear and she thrust her own toward his solar plexus. She connected solidly, pulling a gasp from Pettigrew as he retracted his fist instinctively. On its way back toward him, however, the fist opened and a spray of dark powder caught her square in the nose and eyes.

Sleeping Dust, was all she had time to comprehend before the world went black.

-0

[HpHpHp]

-0

She awoke feeling surprisingly good—not good, she amended, but better than she had in a while. How long had she been asleep? Her mind went back to the last thing she remembered and her blood ran cold. She sat up swiftly and looked around her. She was still in the cavern. She frantically looked to where the pile of nifflers had sat—there. She slumped in relief. They were still there. Then she hadn't been taken back in—wait. There were only four. Where was—

A sickening squeal followed by an ugly squelch had her turning slowly to the other side of the room. Pettigrew held the last niffler by the tail and his wand had just perforated its guts from groin to liver.

She glared at the Animagus as he tossed the last carcass carelessly into the pile. How infuriating that he would act so casual about killing things. She supposed she shouldn't be surprised. He'd just killed her, after all. She started to shake as it sank in that she was truly finished. Come Tuesday morning, there would be seven of her in existence. Her core would resonate wildly and, if a regular wizard could expect to be crippled or maimed by the experience, she could only imagine what the resonance of a core as big as hers would cause. She imagined being split into a thousand different pieces and cringed. What an awful way to go. She wondered how much time she had left.

"How long…" She couldn't complete the sentence; instead she coughed through her disused throat uncontrollably.

"You've been asleep almost an entire day," Pettigrew told her, wiping his knife off slowly. "It's Friday afternoon. You missed my nifflers' excellent work. Oh, well. I suppose you'll get to see if firsthand, won't you?"

He gestured to a spot a few feet away, where there was a good-sized hole in the dirt floor of the cavern. But where did it go? Why would he bother digging a hole underneath the hole they were already in? Her mind caught up a moment later. They were about to overlap their own time stream, of course. She and Peter would show up in the cavern Friday evening, which meant the two of them couldn't also be there, obviously. He was going to move her to a lower chamber of the same prison. He must have had the nifflers building it all day.

She moved forward to look down the hole with a grimace. It was much smaller than this cavern. Her gaze flicked to her folded robes, pockets stuffed with what was left of her useful potions stash. She needed to take that with her. Even if she only lived another three days, she could at least make them comfortable days. No one deserved to die in pain.

She looked around the cavern for her magic and found it unexpectedly settled near the dirt roof, rather docile. Had it calmed down while she was asleep? Was it running out of steam? A rumbling feeling of disagreement rolled through her. It was waiting. For what?

"It's been quite well-behaved," Pettigrew told her, smirking triumphantly. "That Sleeping Dust really did the trick. Too bad your family will never know how useful I found their little joke product." He laughed at the irony of her attempt being thwarted by a Marauder product in particular, then looked up at where her magic hovered like an overgrown bat. "I've let it be and its strength seems to be waning. Soon, it will be easy to control. First, we must move locations, though."

She ignored him as he went about the room, erasing all signs of their having been there. She had to marvel at how different the cavern looked, just one week earlier. She had forgotten how smooth the floor had been before so many Protection Potions had been pored on it. The whole cavern smelled cleaner, which she supposed reflected the lack of a week's worth of waste buildup. She wished she could say the same about herself. She stank royally and her teeth were so fuzzy she thought they might be growing a winter coat.

"Feeling nostalgic?" Pettigrew asked, rather cruelly. "Enjoy your last look around. You won't see it again."

"You seem pretty sure," Rigel said, her voice empty.

"I am," Pettigrew said flatly. He beckoned her forward toward the hole. She pondered whether she wanted to go quietly or not. She felt like resisting on principle, at this point, but she also wanted to keep her stash of potion vials. In the end, she decided it wasn't worth the fight. She gathered her robes into her arms slowly, as though reluctant. Really, she was just hiding the faint sound of clinking. She came to the edge of the hole and looked down. It wasn't more than four feet down. She wouldn't even be able to stand up in the lower cavern, it seemed. She hesitated at the edge, really not wanting to go down there, but a push from Pettigrew solved her reticence. Belatedly, she realized that the wards must have been modified sometime while she was asleep so that they stretched far enough down to cover the lower level. Otherwise, she could never have passed through the floors without being accompanied by Pettigrew in his Animagus form. When was this guy going to make a mistake? she thought with utter frustration as she fell.

She dropped to her knees and moved out of the way before Pettigrew could toss the lantern on top of her. Instead of that, he tossed her bag down, which she just managed to catch before it hit the ground. She clutched it to her, backing away as far as she could. It wasn't far. The entire hole seemed to be ten feet across. When Pettigrew jumped into the hole without the lantern, she frowned until she realized with dismay that the lantern had been in the upper chamber when they'd first arrived. They couldn't take it with them.

Pettigrew closed the ceiling behind them with the jewel, its light the only thing distinguishing the space around them. She had to wonder what exactly his plan consisted of, at this point. As far as she could tell, he had brought no provisions. She spotted a hole close to where she was sitting and supposed he must have created an alternate exit for himself from this lower chamber. Was he planning on doing something similar to the week before, leaving every day or so and gathering sustenance? That would get old quickly, she thought—then again, she probably wouldn't be around the whole week, this time.

"The last few days I've wondered where the smell was coming from," Pettigrew said casually as he took out his wand. "I thought it was just you, at first. It wasn't until I realized I was going to build this room that I recognized the scent as death." Her breath caught in her throat as he turned to her with cold eyes. "You're going to die here. Haven't you noticed the rotting garbage smell at all over your own stench? That was you, I'm afraid."

It couldn't be. Her stomach rebelled in protest. She'd been smelling…her own corpse? That was beyond twisted. She watched in horror as Pettigrew set up a Secrecy Charm. She didn't know why he bothered, as no one would hear them fifteen feet below ground, but then she realized that it was so the versions of themselves that would shortly be above them wouldn't hear anything. And they wouldn't be able to hear them, either. It was so creepy to think of two parallel versions of herself existing so close, with one having no idea of the tragic future that awaited her. She felt an acute sympathy for the her of one week ago. She'd been so sure that if she was patient enough and clever enough she could get out of anything. How ridiculous. In the end, her greatest ruse had been one of self-deception.

What did she think, that just because Riddle Jr. had been arrogant and careless that every villain was so? That just because Pettigrew wasn't impressive meant he wasn't dangerous? Wasn't ruthless? How foolish she'd been. And all the time she'd been thinking he was the fool. She wondered morbidly if it was the destabilization of her core on Tuesday that killed her, or if Pettigrew wrangled control of her magic before then and did her in himself. She'd noticed his hesitation and reluctance fading away over the past week. He was coming into this whole 'evildoer' thing. He'd probably have no compunction about killing her himself, at this point.

He certainly seemed to be in no hurry, as he curled into a ball to sleep on the other side of the small hole. She knew how endless time could seem, when you held its lever in your hand. She thought he was putting an awful lot of faith in his personal ward, however. Wards that weren't tied to an anchor of nature didn't typically last very long. She figured he had a few days at best until the runes were corrupted by being exposed all the time. And that was without her magic hammering away at it.

She supposed it didn't matter. Her magic hadn't been doing any hammering lately. She looked up at it, curled in the dome of the new ceiling, and wondered if it had given up. A thrumming negation went through her bones, but that was all the answer she received. She settled down into a kind of detached depression. She didn't really want to sleep. Not if she only had a few more days left to live. What did she want to do? Cure lycanthropy, maybe. She wondered if she thought about it for three days straight if she could come up with a new idea. Then she closed her eyes in new despair.

Even if she cured lycanthropy in her mind, what would she do with her new idea? Scratch it into the dirt? No one would find it. All her ideas would die with her. It would be better not to try, than to risk getting a stroke of brilliance only to die with the knowledge that it would never be realized.

She heard soft snores fill the small cavern and had to think wryly that that was just the icing on the bloody cake. In the moment between that thought and the next snore, her tiny world exploded into chaos.

She was blown back into the wall as her magic descended like a bird of prey without warning. She couldn't see anything in the darkness, but she could feel the incredible wake of the jet stream even at its peripheries. Pettigrew cried out in surprise at being woken by such a battering and a moment later the jewel glowed with light as Pettigrew attempted belatedly to fight back against the sudden assault.

He was pinned to the ground, she realized, amazed. The force of the magic coming down on him was so strong that it was keeping her pressed back against the dirt. How powerful the concentrated propulsion must be. She could see Pettigrew struggling against the current, trying to move out of the way or even lift his hand with the jewel against the magic. He couldn't, though, and the longer he stayed splayed on the dirt like some kind of rare insect on a collector's board, the more amazed she became. Where was her magic getting this power? Had it been biding its time, growing stronger? She didn't put that kind of strategy past her magic, exactly, but she couldn't help but wonder if the influx of freedom was affecting it. It also seemed rather clever to wait until Pettigrew was asleep to launch a counterattack. Her magic was many things, but patient? Not the magic she knew.

Sparks of magic began to fly from where Pettigrew was pressed to the floor and her eyes widened as she realized what she was seeing. The ward Pettigrew had constructed around his person was being forcefully ground against the ward around the chamber that ran through the floor beneath him. The magic in each ward was attempting to neutralize the other and, even before it happened, she could predict the result: the lesser ward would give—in this case, the one around Pettigrew.

It was brilliant. She was terrified and impressed all at once. Was it a coincidence or had her magic come up with that strategy on its own? Caught up in her speculation, she almost didn't recall the oath that she'd made. Should she do something? It was clear from the amount of malevolence coming from her magic what would happen when Pettigrew's personal ward fell. She wasn't breaking the letter of the oath by doing nothing, unless the magic interpreted her silence as allowance or encouragement to do as it pleased. She grimaced. Perhaps she would have to do something after all.

She almost didn't want to. She felt a curious ennui that had been tightening its hold on her ever since she realized that her death was a very likely possibility. What did it matter if the oath turned on her for breaking it, at this point?

Pettigrew's cry of pain and fear moved something within her that she hadn't known still existed, after everything that happened. Even if death awaited her, even if the oath didn't technically require her to come to Pettigrew's defense, she was still Rigel Black. Sitting silently while her magic killed someone was not something she could do, no matter the circumstances that preceded it or those that would follow. She was better than that, even now.

Her body, while much recovered either from her magic's assistance in her stand against Pettigrew or the long stasis that had followed, was not up to the task of physically rescuing Pettigrew from her magic's wrath. She could not control it with mere willpower, either, at this point—she felt drained, emotionally and mentally, and probably wouldn't succeed in controlling a wounded puppy in her current state.

There was something else, though, that she might be able to do.

It had come to her at some point in the past few days, the slow, steady growth of an idea that she'd tucked carefully away from conscious thought, just in case she needed a last resort against her magic's complete separation.

Rigel sank backwards into her own mind, swimming mentally away from reality with relief that was tempered by the knowledge of what she needed to do. The last time she'd seen her magic, it had looked different to her mental senses: visibly changed by the suppressor she had worn. In reality, the ring was only a physical manifestation of the runic configuration that locked her magic away. What could be done physically could be done mentally, in the realm of magic. She thought, with the proper application of Occlumency, she might be able to replicate the effects of the suppressor on the sun in her space room. She could build a cage, perhaps, or some other sort of mental barrier that would have the same result as the physical barrier the ring had created. In theory, at least. And why did it always seem to come down to that? She really ought to experiment more before she was caught in do-or-die scenarios. Or do-and-die, in this case.

Her mindscape was bright. She knew it was the artificial, sourceless light of her own imagination, but after so many days in near-darkness it was like finding religion. The mountain appeared just as it had when she'd left it last, snowy and still. She flitted into the mountainside cave and noted distractedly the construct that sat in an armchair with blank eyes, an empty shell that she hadn't ever been able to fill. Another project that would go unfinished.

The tunnels under the trapdoor were warm. No, she noticed with a slow frown. They were hot. She began walking faster, now concerned that all was not right in her mental sphere. Temperature wasn't logically consistent in a mental world. Unless one specifically constructed the likeness of the sensation, the mind would be devoid of that sense. She could think of only one thing that might produce true heat in a mindscape—magic.

The door to her space room looked innocuous, but some premonition snagged her attention as she touched the doorknob. There was a sudden shock of energy, like the shot of heat that might be felt in the knob of a door that separated one from a house fire. She couldn't run the other way, though. This was her mind. If there was something wrong, she wanted to know what it was.

She flung open the door to a conflagration. In the center, where the sun of her magic should have been rotating, there was a massive tornado of fire. It swept all the orbs in the room around it in a frantic tailspin, and everywhere flames lashed out and licked at the edges of the room. At the opening of the door, the entire scene seemed to contract in surprise before expanding at a rate that flung her back into the passage with the force if its approach. She stumbled backwards and turned on her heels, sprinting back up the corridor with speed born of desperation. What was that? Her magic had completely broken from its regular mold. There was barely a cohesive shape remaining to the firestorm that she'd witnessed in that room. Had it really run so utterly wild since being set free at last by the breaking of her suppressor?

She jumped the rungs up into her potions lab frantically, flames licking at her heels, and slammed the trapdoor shut behind her to buy herself a little time. What now? she thought. Her plan was completely moot. The fire would consume her if she even tried to contain it. All she could do was slow its progress—

Even that thought was interrupted by the roiling appearance of fire spreading out from beneath the area rug that covered the trap door. She noticed with confusion that the fire wasn't burning anything. The rug remained completely unaffected. It was simply spreading, much as the sleeping sickness had. Would the spread of her magic in such a way also correspond to the loss of control of her body? She hoped not. She stuck a toe nervously in the direction of the closest crawling ember, only to jerk her leg back with a hiss as the magic burnt her. So she was not as immune as her mindscape was. She supposed that made sense. There was no point in her magic destroying the mental landscape—its target was herself, the consciousness that represented the will that had suppressed it for so long, in one form or another.

As her potions lab became infested with fire across every surface, she retreated onto the mountain. Maybe the snow would slow the fire down.

It didn't.

Ice melted away before the unstoppable march of fire. Step by step it chased her further up the mountain, until she finally looked up to find it sliding down the mountain top toward her as well, having crested the other side of the peak to encircle her. With the diameter of snow between her and her magic evaporating beneath her feet, Rigel slowly sat down and put her head in her hands in utter defeat.

So, this is the end. Burned to death in my own mind by my own magic. I didn't see that coming, so at least it was unpredictable. She let out a harsh laugh at the idea that an element of surprise somehow brought some quality of interest to her death. She slammed her fist angrily against the mountain beneath her. What kind of contest did she think she was winning—what is that?

She looked down at where her fist had landed on something that didn't feel like rock at all. It was squishy and black. A leftover piece of the Sleeping Sickness? No, it wasn't that. It was a small orb, half-buried in the rock and still dripping from the snow that had melted away to reveal it. Distracted from her impending doom, she dug her fingers around the sphere and pried it loose. It looked like a memory orb, but it was pure black. She'd never seen one that color, and what was it doing out here, anyway? All her memories were in the space room. She was sure she'd never even seen this one before…

She pulled it closer to her face, trying to make out the memory within. Usually she could tell which one an orb contained by peering into it, but this one seemed to be completely opaque. She shook it a little, wondering if somehow the memory had become congealed by being left under the snow for so long. Instantly, the mindscape around her faded away. She had triggered the memory, she realized as her vision cleared. She looked around, curious. All thoughts of the fire raging out of control in her mind or the magic equally out of control in the cavern faded away as she was immersed in the past.

She stepped out of fog and into the receiving room at Grimmauld Place. There were several adults standing around the room, easily recognizable despite their younger appearances. Sirius was there with Diana, whom she almost didn't recognize. It felt like so long since she'd last seen the beautiful witch, faded and wan, in St. Mungo's disease ward. The couple stood along with James, Lily, and Alice Longbottom. She looked around for herself, knowing that the memory could only have been in her mind if it was hers.

She found herself on the other side of the room, with little black pigtails that she could recall clearly telling her mother she would never wear again on her seventh birthday. She would be six, then, or slightly younger. Archie was squatting on the floor next to her, his chubby fingers drawing a terribly unfortunate picture of a griffin in the dust. His imaginary friend, she remembered dimly. He'd named it something ridiculous, like Finny, and for years had required a seat at every meal to be saved for the invisible griffin, who only ate raisins and whole sticks of butter.

Leaning close to the picture, nodding interestedly with each disproportionately added feature, was a child who, upon closer inspection, she gathered to be Neville Longbottom. He was cheerful-looking and gap-toothed, and he asserted himself quickly by adding a sword and shield to the picture, laughing. "It's the Sword of Griffin-dor, see?"

"He needs a bad guy," young Harry said, poking her own finger into the dust. "To fight."

She watched as her six-year-old self drew a monster with a plethora of teeth. The Floo going off didn't disturb the children, but it caused her to look around in time to see Mrs. Longbottom taking her leave. She had dropped Neville off to play, then. Her vague suspicions confirmed, she watched eagerly to see what would happen next. She had no memory of this day and she desperately wanted to know why.

Sirius called over to the children. "Why don't you all run along and play upstairs in Archie's room?"

Archie and Harry jumped up immediately, Neville only a short beat behind. They raced out of the room and up the narrow staircase. When they got to Archie's room, they slowed to a stop. "We could play vampires and werewolves," Neville suggested, looking between them uncertainly as neither Harry nor Archie made any move to go into the room.

"We don't play that," Archie said, frowning. They hadn't, because Remus' condition was never hidden from them, even at a young age.

"Let's play in the attic," Harry said, smiling slowly as Archie continued to frown.

"We're not allowed…" He drew out the objection in a considering way. He always did that, she remembered, and they always played in the attic anyway.

"What's in the attic?" Neville asked, looking excited.

"Monsters," Harry whispered dramatically.

Neville giggled. "Let's go see!"

Archie finally grinned. "Yeah, let's go. Dad won't check on us for awhile."

They traipsed up another couple of stories, winding through the maze-like house until they came to the door that led up to the attic where Sirius and Diana stored all the old things they didn't want to leave lying about, but also didn't feel right getting rid of. She remembered playing there many times as a child. It was full of old crotchety portraits, forgotten pieces of Black Family memorabilia, and furniture that no longer fit in the rest of the house.

She and Archie had treated it like their own private clubhouse, when they were little. She didn't see what was so unusual about them taking Neville up there. What had happened that was worth forgetting about? And how had she forgotten in the first place?

She watched little Archie try the door and huff, "It's locked." She expected them to turn around and find something else to do—it was what they'd always done when Sirius remembered to renew the locking charm on the attic door. Instead, her younger self stepped forward with a smile.

"No problem," Harry said, reaching forward with her hand. She didn't touch the door, but she scrunched her face into a frown and glared at it for a long moment. To her amazement, the door swung open before her six-year-old self's smug smile. She'd never done that…had she?

"Woah, cool!" Neville said, clapping enthusiastically.

"Come on, show off," Archie laughed, leading the way up the attic stairs. They filed into the attic and Neville gaped appreciatively at the piles of random things scattered in every direction.

"There's so much stuff," he said, eyes wide. "What should we play?"

"Dress up!" Harry said at once. It had been her favorite game. She rushed across the attic to a trunk that sat on an old end table. Throwing it open, the young girl pulled out a long, black cloak with purple fur around the collar. She draped it around her in a pool of silk, lifting her chin haughtily and saying, "I am the great dragon-rider, Targof! I will fly to the moon!"

Archie pulled a hat off a nearby coatrack and flicked the feather out of his face with a grin. "Oh yeah? Well I'm Baniby the Beast Tamer! Uh, Neville, who are you going to be?"

Neville searched the room quickly and grabbed a large golden sheet off the painting behind him. "I am Merlin! My magic cloak of gold protects me from all evil!"

Archie frowned. "You can't be Merlin. Then you'd always win."

"Not if I'm Morgana!" Harry shouted, pointing her finger dramatically at Neville, who looked quite ridiculous swathed in a giant gold toga. "I will defeat you, Merlin, and Camelot will be mine at last! Haha!"

They played in this vein for a long while, each new character becoming more outlandish than the last. She watched them with a frown, still not seeing anything unusual about this memory. It was almost touchingly innocent, in fact.

Eventually the play dissolved into a spirited conversation about what they were going to be when they grew up. "I'll be a Knight of Gryffindor!" Neville cried, brandishing an imaginary wand. "I'll zap my enemies away and be the strongest wizard in all the land."

"What if they sneak up behind you?" Harry said slyly, climbing onto a table and jumping at Neville from above. "Attack!"

Neville leapt aside, pointing his imaginary wand in her direction. "Die, evil wizard!"

Harry pretended to get stunned, stiffening and falling backwards dramatically. She watched in horror as her younger self swooned directly into the path of a ceremonial sword set precariously on a stack of dining room chairs.

Her younger self was not impaled, however. An invisible force caught her just before she hit the pointed tip, pushing her gently back to her feet so smoothly that her younger self giggled and went right back to playing, not noticing anything odd, apparently.

What was going on? Her magic hadn't been that way. She didn't remember anything like the benevolent watchfulness she had just seen.

"This is fun," Neville said after a little bit, breathing heavily and plopping down to rest. "Are you guys gonna be in Gryffindor when you're grown up, too? We should be friends forever."

"Yeah!" Archie said, grinning ear to ear. "We can be just like our dads were—the Marauders return! Right, Harry?"

Harry nodded so fast her pigtails bounced. Then she paused. "What if I'm in Ravenclaw? Is that okay?"

"Of course," Archie said, laughing. "Maybe I'll be in Ravenclaw, too."

"No, you have to be in Gryffindor with me," Neville said, frowning.

Archie looked torn. "Well—"

"Oh, do shut up," a sharp voice cut across their conversation.

"Who's there?" Neville asked, looking frightened. "Is it a monster?"

"It's just a dumb portrait," Archie said, folding his arms. "We must have woke one up."

"We have portraits at my house, too!" Neville said. His fear had gone as quickly as it had come. "They remind me to do stuff sometimes, like tie my shoes or make my bed, and my great-great-great-great aunt Minnie tells me where Papa hides the crisps."

"These ones are mean," Harry whispered, unsuccessfully trying to keep her voice down.

"Yeah, and some say things to Harry that are really rude," Archie agreed.

"Where is it?" Neville said, frowning fiercely. Archie pointed at the portrait Neville had uncovered earlier. She moved through the memory to take a closer look, but she didn't recognize the portrait as one of the ones, like Walburga, who used to yell at her. Neville marched right up to the painting and stuck his finger out angrily. "Don't you be mean to Harry. If you don't have nice things to say, then you shouldn't say anything, that's what Papa says."

She smiled at the future Gryffindor's swift defense. Her younger self just looked worriedly between Neville and the painting. The man depicted had long, dark brown hair and a close-trimmed beard. He sneered at Neville without restraint, drawling. "How the House of Longbottom has fallen."

"Be quiet!" Harry said. "We'll cover you back up if you don't."

"Go ahead," the painting sneered. "Anything would be preferable to watching the utter desecration of the House of Black. Children running wild. Halfblood whelps polluting the air with their obscene naivety."

"I'm not a…a whelp," Harry said quietly. She wondered if she'd even known what that word meant, at that age.

"You are an impertinent fool," the portrait said, painted eyes cold. "And worse, you're an ignorant, impertinent fool."

"Am not," Harry whispered, bright green eyes beginning to fill with tears.

"You speak of attending Hogwarts with your little friends as though they allow your kind to disgrace those halls," the portrait snapped.

"They—they do," Archie piped up, uncertainly. "Uncle Remus went and he wasn't…um…fullblood."

"Yeah!" Neville said, nodding fiercely. "Everyone can go to Hogwarts. You just have to be really good and eat all your vegit-bles."

"Haven't you heard?" The portrait smirked. "Those days are over. How sad that the Heir to the House of Black is less informed than the paintings on his walls." The long-haired man began to laugh darkly, louder and louder.

"Shut up!" Harry shouted, her little fists in tiny balls. "I am too gonna go to Hogwarts."

"You will never set so much as a toe inside the wards, halfblood." The portrait's face twisted in disgust.

"You're a liar," Harry growled. "I can do whatever I want." At the last word, flames engulfed the painting without warning, sending Archie and Neville skipping backwards with shouts of alarm. Little Harry stared angrily at the portrait, watching it burn. It screamed and Harry only glared at it harder. "You're just a stupid painting," the young girl muttered. "I don't have to listen to you."

Archie and Neville ran to hide behind a nearby stack of boxes, both whimpering and looking terrified.

"Stop! Stop it, please," the painting begged, even as oil and canvas melted and twisted together.

"I don't want to," Harry said, her lower lip trembling. She watched solemnly as the rest of the painting was engulfed. Its subject's cries gradually faded as the painting crumbled to ashes, and Harry turned wet eyes to look for her friends. A few leftover embers from her magic jumped from the pile of ash to her hands and traveled up her shoulders in a parody of a hug. It made her look like she was aflame.

She watched her younger self peer about in confusion, wondering where Archie and Neville had gone, and was utterly speechless. How had such a thing happened? Was it real?

Young Harry called out, "Hello? Where'd you go?"

"Is it gone?" Neville's voice was small and timid, nothing like the boisterous fearlessness he'd shown just minutes earlier.

"Yeah, the portrait is all gone," Harry said.

"No, the fire," Neville whispered, peeking out from behind the box.

"Huh?" Harry looked down at the flames that had settled into a warm glow about her shoulders.

"AH!" Neville ducked back into hiding, "Make it go away!"

Harry frowned, looking at herself in confusion. "I…I don't know how."

Archie crept out from behind his box slowly. He eyed the ashes on the floor with a low moan. "Oh, no. We're gonna be in so much trouble."

"We can sweep them up," Harry suggested, yawning a little. She wondered if the potent use of magic had tired her younger self out.

"No, we hafta tell," Neville said, darting from the box to stand behind Archie, eyeing Harry with obvious fear. "When there's a fire you hafta tell a grown up."

She watched her younger self's eyes go wide with panic. "We can't tell!"

"Maybe we should," Archie said, biting his lip.

"No!" Harry said loudly. The magic on her shoulders moved restlessly and Neville squeaked, dipping his head behind Archie's shoulders. Even Archie looked a little scared.

She moved to her younger self's side and placed a phantom hand on the little girl's shoulder. The emotions that flooded her were heartbreaking. She was confused, scared, tired, and hurt. She didn't like how Archie was looking at her. She didn't want to tell. What if Mummy looked at her like that? What if Daddy did, too? Shame made her tremble hard and start to cry. Why did she get so angry? Archie said mean things sometimes, but she never got mad like that at him. It wasn't fair. She didn't mean to.

Archie held out a calming hand, even as the little boy swallowed hard. "It's okay, Harry. Dad won't be too mad. He doesn't like these paintings."

"You can't tell," Harry said desperately. "I—I won't let you."

The magic moved before any of them could react. It swept Archie and Neville up into a glowing fog. Both boys slumped, their eyes closing slowly as their bodies fell to the floor. Harry gasped and ran forward, shaking their shoulders frantically. "Oh, no, no, no. Wake up. Wake up."

The little girl started to cry, fat tears falling to collect under her chin. She watched her cry, finally starting to understand the nature of the memory. She found herself waiting with bated breath for the little boys to wake up, even though she knew they both ended up just fine.

Not long after, Sirius came hurrying into the attic with a worried expression. "Archie? Harry?"

"Over here," Harry said, sniffling. "They won't wake up."

She had never seen Sirius's face so white. He fell to his knees beside his son and checked his pulse frantically. After a long moment he sucked in air and sat back on his ankles, running a hand through his hair. "They're sleeping, Harry. It's okay."

"Really?" Hope came back to Harry's eyes. "They're okay?"

"Yes," Sirius said, now eyeing her sternly. "How many times do I have to tell you two not to play up here? It's incredibly dangerous. I don't even know everything that's up here. You could come into contact with anything."

"I'm sorry," Harry began to cry again. "I didn't mean to. I didn't mean to hurt anyone."

"Oh, Harry, it's not your fault," Sirius said, looking immediately regretful. "I just want you lot to be safe. Run and get Aunty Diana, okay? I'll stay with the boys."

Harry nodded and raced from the room and the memory faded. Everything dissolved into fog, then reformed in a darkened corridor. She spotted her younger self standing silently in the shadows before a cracked doorway. The light inside the room illuminated Sirius talking quietly with Neville's parents.

"How is he feeling?" Sirius was asking, voice tight with concern.

"He seems just fine," Alice said. It was clear she was attempting to be reassuring while confused herself. "He doesn't remember what happened, though."

"Nether does Archie," Sirius said. "He woke up just fine, but can't recall most of the day. I asked Harry what happened, but she didn't want to talk about it. I think whatever happened scared her pretty bad." Sirius blew out a breath. "There's all kind of junk in there. They could have come across anything from sleeping powder to a cursed cummerbund. I don't even know how they got up there. I just renewed the locking charm this morning. I'm so sorry, Alice, Frank. I should have been watching them more closely."

"Neville is a very curious child," Frank Longbottom said, smiling ruefully. "He gets into scrapes all the time. It wasn't your fault. We'll keep a close eye on him, but I don't think there was any real damage done, whatever it was."

"Still…" Sirius trailed off with a frown. "I'll let you know if I find out what it was. Whatever did it needs to be taken out of this house, before it hurts someone else."

Harry smothered a gasp and ran back down the corridor with fear and self-loathing written all over her face.

The scene dissolved and solidified in Archie's room. By the light of a night light she could see Archie sprawled on a pile of blankets on the floor, snoring. Her younger self was lying awake beside him. They must have decided to have a sleepover that night.

Tears dripped silently into the pillow beneath her as Harry stared up at the ceiling with wide, solemn eyes. A stirring of wind brushed against her cheek, ruffling her hair in an almost caressing breeze. Harry bit her lip and shook her head sharply. "Go away," she whispered, her voice choked with sadness.

The wind picked up restlessly around her and Archie stirred slightly in his sleep. "No, go away," Harry hissed into the dark. "Go away and don't come back!"

The wind fell still and Archie sat up with a befuddled, "Wha—?" He looked around and saw Harry awake. "What's wrong?" he asked blearily.

"Nothing," Harry said, turning over so that her tearstained face was hidden. "Nothing's wrong. Go to sleep, Archie."

She knelt down by her six-year-old self's curled up form and patted her head helplessly. At the brief touch, the emotions running through the child blasted through her. Sorrow and shame mixed together with fear of what her family would think if they found out. She wished the day hadn't happened. She just wanted to forget, and she wanted it to never happen again.

-0

[HpHpHp]

-0

The memory stuttered to a halt and Rigel opened her eyes to an alien landscape. The wintery snow of her cold mountain was gone and in its place a lake of golden fire bathed the rock and warmed the air. She took in a deep breath and wiped the tears from her avatar's face. The fire around her had ceased expanding, having claimed every inch of physical territory that her mind would allow. It licked at the mountainside beneath her feet, but she felt no pain. She felt entirely calm, for the first time in a long while.

She understood, now, what she'd been so afraid of all this time. She wasn't afraid of her magic. She was afraid of her own anger. Afraid and ashamed of herself for something that had, in retrospect, been a simple case of overzealous accidental magic. The feeling of dread that crept inside her at the very idea of her magic being more powerful than she liked had stemmed from an infected memory that had festered, like a sore, beneath the skin of her consciousness for all these years.

It relaxed her, to finally know that fear and be able to confront it, to see it for what it was. She could see, now, that it was a child's fear, grown larger and more important than it was by an aura of mystery and a lack of understanding. She was afraid of what other people would think of her, and of her magic, and that was okay. It didn't mean she had to be afraid of herself. She was not a scared little girl anymore. She had grown a lot since then. She was not going to go to her death pale and frightened, a rabbit before a wolf. She refused to let an old memory make a coward of her for a single minute more.

She summoned every ounce of determination she possessed. It was hard. She was tired and drained emotionally. She wanted to curl up and sleep. Instead, she forced herself to remember other memories. She brought to mind the stubbornness and gumption that had brought a halfblood girl to Hogwarts. She thought of her determination to study under Master Snape, of all the bitter sacrifices she made along the way—her relationship with her parents, her appearance, her chance to be recognized by Professor Snape on her own terms, and more. She focused on the fortitude that brought her through obstacles like a basilisk, and on the everyday perseverance it took to lie, over and over, to the people she loved and respected the most.

All of this she drew into her consciousness, like a tree sapping strength from the earth. She channeled it, determined that now, for once and for all, her magic would bow to her—not to her will, a fickle, fleeting, changeable thing, but to her principles. Her magic would bow not to her desires, but to everything she stood for and believed in. To her ironclad character traits. To the part of her that refused to let her magic kill even the man who had imprisoned and tormented her.

You will not hurt anyone else, she thought with all the fierceness in her heart. You will not disobey me. You will act in a way deserving of the power you represent. Starting now, you will be held to the standards to which I hold myself. Irrevocably. Forever.

The fire slid away before her avatar, as krill before a whale. She threw a hand imperiously away from her and the magic was thrown from her mountain in a single swift movement, a blanket cast off after a long sleep. She banished it back into the inner reaches of her mind, following, unhurried, behind its retreat. When she reached the space room, she took in the newly compressed sun, burning brightly and flexing a bit defiantly, as she approached. She sunk her hands into the fire unhesitatingly.

"I'm sorry for how I've been acting," she told it seriously. "But I'm not afraid of you anymore. So you have to act differently, too, now."

The warmth that came emanating from the sun wasn't entirely forgiving, but it was welcoming. She smiled, just a tiny bit regretful. Imagine how much happier she might have been, if she had been wiser sooner.

She whispered a soft goodbye, then let her mindscape slip away and crawled her way back, however reluctantly, to her physical body. She would have liked to stay there, in the peace of her mind, but there was reality to be faced. And she was finally ready to face it.

-0

[PpPpPp]

-0

He could feel the inevitability of his struggle. He felt it in his bones, crushed beneath the weight of a magic he was only now re-estimating. He felt it in his heart, worn thin and flinching by all he had given to this task—this impossible, doomed task. The Jewel was silent and cold in his hand. It had assisted him, at first, but as the tide of magic was proven stronger than Pettigrew's ability to fight it off, the support of the Jewel had waned.

He supposed that was all he needed to know that he had failed. He couldn't fulfill the prophecy after all. His great plans would come to nothing. When the energies of the Jewel turned against him, taking strength instead of giving it, he mustered no surprise. He felt nothing but bitter resignation. Even his despair was gone and he had to wonder how much of that desperation had been the Jewel, pushing him forward on a path he could neither see nor understand.

At least, he thought faintly as he caught sight of the unconscious boy by the light of the treacherous Jewel, I did not kill the boy after all. He would at least die without that sin on his soul. He knew the boy didn't have much hope of getting rescued, but, he thought, he hadn't directly killed him. That would count for something. Wouldn't it?

No answer came to him as his life force poured out, sucked greedily away by the very artifact that had promised his victory and engineered his defeat. What an ambiguous thing, power had turned out to be.

-0—0—0

-0—0

-0

[end of chapter fourteen].

A/N: This is not the end of the book. I split this last chapter in half, so don't bother reviewing this one; just keep on reading, lovely readers.