Chapter 15: A Little Trip to the Seaside
The air smelled of salt and there was the hissing rush of waves and the muffled roar as they broke on the shore. There was still a little light in the sky to the West; and the breeze offshore dispelled any sea mist close to the coast as the land cooled down, the warmer air over the sea sucking air off the coast. They stood on a rocky outcrop as the sea churned below; behind them a cliff towered.
"Seems a bleak spot to bring kids to" said Harry.
"There is a village halfway along the cliffs behind us" said Dumbledore. "They gave the children sea air and a view of the waves….Ships cannot get here, smuggler stories or no, and no Muggle could get to this point unless they were uncommonly good mountaineers….."
"Or had rappelling kit like Bil" said Krait. "And the journalist who checked it out. Whether my father used ropes or magic, it must have scared the living daylights out of those two kids….which is why he did it, didn't he?"
Dumbledore nodded.
"Yes…he didn't need do any more to them than bring them to reduce them to abject fear. We, however, are bound a little further on…I reconnoitred a little earlier on today." He led them over the treacherous slippery rocks and lit up his wand, revealing a dark fissure into which water hissed and seethed angrily. "Will you object to getting a little wet?"
"Yes" said Krait. "Unless you mind me transfiguring….I can't swim in me-shape."
"CAN'T you?" asked Harry, surprised. "I thought you could do most things."
"Nuns" said Krait. "Girls without any clothes on…or only cossies…in front of males….we were banned from swimming at school. Like we were banned from sex education. Where ignorance is bliss 'tis then more attractive to get your kit off and get pregnant….I bet the orphanage had a higher rate of teenage pregnancy than average…not that that's germane. Why don't we fly in?"
"There are no flying spells….I thought you knew that, Krait." Said Dumbledore gently.
"Well as we have not had the sense to bring brooms, I could be Hippogriff…." She suggested.
"It is too narrow…and I would prefer not so much magic as transfiguration outside…..you will have to trust me to tow you, Krait" said Dumbledore.
She gulped.
"Very well."
Dumbledore jumped into the sea with a remarkable agility, holding his gleaming wand in his teeth. Krait took a deep breath and followed, kicking toward the headmaster.
"Put your hands on my shoulders" he said; and she did so. His strokes seemed effortless, the mark of the skilled at any activity. Harry followed, and as they passed through the narrow cleft, Krait felt the shiver that magic always gave her. the cold made her shiver too, and she absently cast a warming spell. As they got across the cave Dumbledore said
"You can stand here; there are steps."
Krait nodded and climbed out, watching as Dumbledore examined the high cave.
"Yes, this is the place."
"How can you tell?" Harry whispered.
"It has known magic" said Dumbledore simply.
"Sir, I trust you might know enough magic to dry us" said Krait "Because it's one that passed me by, and I don't want to spend all my strength on a warming spell…."
"I'm sorry….I forgot" Dumbledore levelled his wand at each in turn; and at once their clothes were as warm and dry as if they had been hanging in front of a blazing fire.
"This is the antechamber" said Dumbledore. "From hereon in it will be Voldemort's obstacles that stand in our way, rather than nature's…"
"I wish you'd call the creep Riddle, Albus" said Krait edgily. "I know you're too fly to get caught by name power, but it kind of dignifies him and somehow that offends me…"
"Well, my dear, it would never do to offend you" said Dumbledore twinkling teasingly at her. he approached the cave wall and murmured in a tongue neither youngster understood.
"Be a sight more use if we learned magical tongues than ancient runes, and chanting rather than Divination" said Krait to Harry.
"More useful maybe, but the Ministry has its own ideas" Dumbledore answered her as he paused in his investigations. He touched the rock and ran his fingers backward and forward over a particular spot.
"Ah…it is here…the entrance is concealed."
"Like Platform nine-and-three-quarters?" asked Krait. She was impressed by Dumbledore's quiet expertise.
"In some respects….you have amazing talents, my dear, but there is always more to learn…in due course you will understand a great deal more than can be taught in a mere few years at school."
"I look forward to it…."
Dumbledore smiled and stepped back, pointing his wand at the rock. For a moment an archway appeared, outlined by blazing light as though through a crack.
"You've done it!" said Harry.
"Of course he done it" said Krait with no regard to grammar. "Order and method. The little grey cells. He's a great man. How does one make a concealed doorway anyway?"
Dumbledore smiled again as he stared intently at the rocky wall.
"What sets you aside from your father, my dear child, is that you have a thirst for knowledge of the simple things too, the trivial and the merely interesting, not those that give you power alone….he has learned what he needed to know for the purposes he intended them….and used something so crude I can scarcely believe it…."
"It looked quite sophisticated to me" said Krait.
"Not the gateway….the means of entrance. We are required to make payment…."
"Blood?" asked Krait.
Dumbledore drew out a silver knife similar to their familiar potion ingredient chopping knives.
"Even so" he said disdainfully. "I suppose that the idea is that your enemy weaken himself to enter. Once again, Vol…RIDDLE fails to grasp that there are more terrible things than physical injury."
"Better to avoid it.." said Harry.
"Sometimes it is unavoidable" said Dumbledore shaking back his sleeve and exposing a forearm.
"Better for me or Harry to" said Krait. "Our strength has backing back home…."
Dumbledore smiled and there was a flash of silver and a spurt of blood drops. He passed the tip of his wand over the wound so it healed seamlessly, instantly.
"But we might need that strength….and you have blood ties, both of you, to Riddle….he might come this way and find out….."
"Logical" said Krait, nodding. "Ah, the archway is back…. And the rock where you spurted seems to have disappeared."
"After me" said Dumbledore, walking through the archway. They followed, lighting their wands.
They were on the bank of a lake in the centre of which shone a greenish misty light. The darkness was scarcely penetrated by the light; and somehow it was oppressively densely dark.
"Green light stinks of dark magic" said Krait with distaste. "Why do I think of the lake outside Khazad-dum?"
"Because this place is nasty" said Harry, who had finally been bullied into reading Tolkein.
"Don't touch the water" said Dumbledore.
"Like we need to be given advice that obvious?" muttered Krait, viewing the lake with dislike.
"Professor? Do you think the horcrux is here?" asked Harry.
"Oh yes….the whole place is set up to protect it. The question is getting to it…."
"Is using a summoning charm too simple?"
"Do you want to try?" asked Dumbledore.
"Meh, it'll set off something if you do" said Krait. "Anything connected to the horcrux gotta be trapped….or why bother, might as well keep it in a shoebox under his bed…"
"We can always try" said Dumbledore "It will give us an idea what we are up against."
"GRYFFINDORS!" said Krait. "Go on Harry, it was your idea…..then you duck and I'll cover."
Harry gave her an uncertain look and cleared his throat.
"Accio Horcrux!"
there was a noise like an explosion and something large and pale erupted from the water some twenty feet away. It was impossible to make out any detail before it had vanished beneath the water again with a loud splash. There were great, deep ripples on the mirrored surface in its wake. Harry leaped backwards in shock.
"We – we're going to have to cross that lake, aren't we?" asked Harry.
"I'm afraid so. I doubt that was the only one of its kind…..they are guarding the island out there. There will be….ah yes…." Dumbledore stopped and felt about him, in mid air; and with a grunt of satisfaction closed his fist about something, and with a tap of his wand revealed it as a thick coppery green chain. It was attached to a boat that Dumbledore pulled ashore. "Magic leaves traces" he said. "I taught Tom Riddle….I know his style."
"And we are going to ride in a tippy little tub when we can fly?" said Krait. "There's room to go hippogriff here….I'm a metamorphagus, Albus, it barely makes a whisper of magical sound, it's all inward directed, even if it's magic those things detect….and if it was, they'd feel our lights too, and your revealing the chain."
"You have a point, my dear" said Dumbledore. "If you are prepared to carry us then…."
"Meh, piece of cake" said Krait. She shifted into hippogriff form easily and readily. Dumbledore and Harry climbed up and she leaped up with a simultaneous powerful downstroke of her great feathered wings.
Krait enjoyed flying; she had practised at times during the early morning constitutionals as a variant on running, though being a female hippogriff had its risks and she was careful to mentally check the time in her personal cycles so as not to attract the flirtatious attentions of Buckbeak.
-/-
Krait looked down through the water and her heart lurched; and she looked up again, concentrating on reaching the island. It was as though the whole island glowed green; but as Krait came in to backwing down onto the small smooth rock no larger than Severus' office she could see that the light source was a bowl similar to the Pensieve. She waited for her passengers to dismount and shrugged back into her own form with its efficient human vocal chords.
"The lake's chock full of inferii" she said grimly. "All laid out neatly like so many bodies in a morgue after a major disaster….why do I think they might all of them once have gone to the orphanage…"
Harry shuddered.
"They are harmless at the moment" said Dumbledore "They will only be activated if we disturb the water. There is nothing to be feared from a corpse, any more than there is anything to fear about darkness…Riddle would disagree, for he secretly fears both, as he fears death too, hence his deliberate soul-death to prolong a semblance of life….he reveals again his lack of wisdom, for it is the unknown we fear when we fear death and darkness, nothing more."
"Like coming to a boarding school" said Krait. "Or having a baby. Everything's scary first time round…."
"You don't do death more than once…." Said Harry.
"Unless you believe in reincarnation…" said Krait "Not that this is a good time for that much philosophy….what's the liquid light in aid of Albus?"
"I am not sure" said Dumbledore. "Something more worrisome than blood and bodies, however." He reached out towards the liquid.
"Sir, don't touch!" cried Harry.
"Assume he knows what he's doing" said Krait. "He needs to feel what it is….he can't touch, look."
"Quite right" said Dumbledore smiling faintly. "There is a barrier…." He made complicated movements over the bowl with his wand, murmuring soundlessly.
"Is it there?" asked Harry when Dumbledore withdrew his wand.
"Oh yes….but how to reach it….this potion cannot be penetrated by hand, Vanished, Parted, scooped up nor siphoned away, nor transfigured, Charmed or made to change its nature."
"I knew we needed Severus" said Krait gloomily. "Nobody knows potions like Severus…."
"You have your link…." Said Harry.
"Yes….it might be a bit hit and miss operating through me….and we've no antidote ingredients anyway" she said frowning. "Do you want me to get Severus in my head and see what he can determine?"
"I can make one conclusion" said Dumbledore conjuring a goblet from mid air. "It is supposed to be drunk."
"I don't even like it sober" Krait quipped sombrely.
"I think that it has been set up so that only by drinking it can I empty the basin and see what lies at the depths."
"What if it kills you?" asked Harry.
"I doubt it works like that….Riddle would want to question anyone who penetrated his secret island. It may make me act in a way that distracts me or create pain or render me incapable in some way….and in that case, it is your jobs to remember your promise to me and see that I keep drinking even if you have to tip it in my protesting mouth. You understand?"
Harry looked horrified. Krait was frowning in deep thought.
"You are the only wizard my father ever feared" she said "And you taught him….he would set up defences aimed at YOU, Albus, that would force YOU to drink it, as being the only way a self-sacrificing, noble Gryffindor could see of doing it….the only way a wizard born and bred or despising muggle ways would see to do it, the only way he could see you being able to do it….he is flawed and you have a serious limit to your powers, sir."
"If there is another way I would rather try it…but you have seen that the muggle method of physical penetration is impossible" said Dumbledore. "I really do not see that we have any choice…" he reached towards the liquid with the goblet.