The miserable have no other medicine

But only hope. –Measure for Measure III.1.2-3

Saysa's head hurt.

That was the first thing she became aware of: dull, ever-present pain. Next she realized that she was in her serpent form. Something seemed wrong about that- hadn't she been a woman before? But her head hurt too much to concentrate.

No, no. There WAS something wrong; she just didn't know what. Something about her head, and her shape, and her destiny.

Why did her head hurt? She struggled to remember. She had gone to the Ministry, she and Tyr and Harry and Sisith. They had been going after the Chalice of the Moon. There had been a room full of random items, most of which were dull to her enchanted eyes. Others, though, others had glowed. And the Chalice had glowed most brightly of all.

It had been too bright. It had hurt her eyes. Was that why her head hurt? That must be it, but it felt wrong.

No, she had returned to normal sight, and her eye ache had lessened immediately. And then Harry-as-Pollux had approached the cup and taken it, and Tyr had charged him….

The ache in her skull faded into insignificance.

They had been attacked. Someone had attacked them, and she had been knocked unconscious. But had they won? Was she safe and sound back in her Chamber, or had the attacker stolen her from under Harry's nose?

She opened her eyes. Sense returned, and she snapped them shut. What if someone had been watching her and they had made eye contact? What if her carelessness had killed someone?

Then she realized what she had seen. Cautiously, the basilisk peeked again.

She was blindfolded. Someone had tied a swath of dark cloth around her head. It covered her eyes completely and tied her jaw shut.

Who did that? She wondered, uncoiling… or trying to. She couldn't move. She could blink, but the rest of her body was paralyzed.

Panic overwhelmed rational thought. Harry and the others would never do this; she had to have been captured. Captured, taken hostage, kidnapped, bound, stolen….

She struggled vainly against the hex which had paralyzed her, but she was stuck. The spell's caster was powerful, so powerful that not even a highly magical creature could break through.

Had Saysa been thinking rationally, she might have attempted to shape-shift. The transformation may have allowed her to free herself, or at least to destroy the blindfold. Then she could have returned to her serpent form, kept her eyes open, and killed the one who had taken her hostage (assuming that the blindfold wasn't enchanted to expand with her- which it was. Still, it was worth a shot).

But she was not thinking rationally. Her life had been quite sheltered, save for the horrible months under Tom Riddle's control. She had been protected since infancy, hidden in a secret chamber for centuries on end.

This was the first time in her life that Saysa had been in true danger, and she was not handling it well. That January she had been too full of hate and rage to be afraid, and the possessed Lucius Malfoy had been so outmatched that she hadn't had any reason to fear him.

But now she was bound, deprived of her natural weapons, away from her comrades, and without any knowledge of her situation. And her head hurt.

After what seemed like an eternity but was really only a few minutes, she gave up. The spell obviously wasn't going to break anytime soon, and struggling against it only made her more frightened.

So she waited for another eternity until footsteps echoed around the room.

Dread surged. She tried to remain hopeful, it might be Harry or Hermione or one of the others, come here to rescue her but the basilisk knew in her bones that it was not.

"Awake, I see," commented a light male voice. He sounded old. His tone was carefully light, but that lightness did little to hide the steel within.

How had he known that she was conscious? She obviously hadn't moved. It must be some kind of enchantment that had alerted him to her waking.

All pretenses of lightness dropped out of the voice. "We are going to have a talk, Madam Saysa. You can either take on human form of your own will. Yes, I know of that, or we can do this the hard way."

Saysa hesitated, torn between instinctive defiance and cold-blooded terror. Shape-changing (why hadn't she thought of that before?) felt like a betrayal, but it would keep her alive. Unless….

Unless she managed to destroy the blindfold, whoever had captured her (probably Albus Dumbledore, the Spider himself, but she couldn't be sure) probably didn't know that her eyes were magical in human form, too. She couldn't kill, but she was more than capable of paralyzing him.

Her escape plans hadn't taken her magically induced paralysis into account. The serpent had a vague, half-formed idea that maybe her captor's hex would disintegrate once she had neutralized him, but nothing definite.

She shifted into her human form. For some reason, her body felt like it was growing bigger, not smaller. How had that happened?

But it didn't matter, because the blindfold grew with her. The serpent-woman's hope of escaping crumbled.

The second her transformation was finished, something shoved itself into her mouth. She tried to spit it back up, tried to force it out, but her mouth had been paralyzed along with the rest of her body.

The thing expelled three drops of warm, slimy liquid into her throat. It met no resistance as it flowed down into her belly- her gag reflex, too, had been neutralized. A wand (it felt tainted, somehow, and much older than she herself) ran itself over her face, removing the paralysis from everything above her neck.

A peculiar lassitude came over the basilisk, the potion inside her seemed to dull her mind.

"Why did you and your companions steal the silver goblet?" her captor demanded.

His words brought a smile to Saysa's lips. Harry and Tyr must have been successful, or he would have said 'try to steal.'

Her smile faded as words clogged her throat like vomit. The potion compelled her to speak, and it compelled her to speak the truth.

She tried to fight, swallowing hard as though the words were physical things that could be choked down, but it was futile. She HAD to speak. The potion wouldn't allow silence.

But the news that Harry and Tyr were safe (and they must know that she was gone, and were probably planning her rescue even now) had returned a great deal of Saysa's reason.

What were the odds that her captor was a Parselmouth?

"The Chalice of the Moon cures lycanthropy," she announced. "Tyr Ulfhednar was there bec-"

Pain. Mind shattering, throat-tearing, sanity-ending PAIN. Her nerves were on fire; her bones melted, twisted, warped; her voice box shattered with the strength of her scream-

And then it was over. Saysa panted like a dog. Black spots burst in her mind. Her frozen muscles tried to twitch, to work off the awful memory of excruciating pain, but they could not.

"I ask you again: why did you and your companions steal the goblet?"

The vomit-words choked her throat. Saysa had two choices. She could answer in Parseltongue (or any form of archaic English or Gaelic), maintain her honor, and be rewarded with torture. Or she could answer in modern English, betray the purpose of her entire life, and save her own sorry hide from more pain.

"The Chalice of-"

The curse lasted longer this time. Pain devoured the world. White pain, hot pain, pain like knives on her nerves, pain and pain and pain and pain-

Relief, blessed relief. Still pain, yes, for it wouldn't be banished by the mere lifting of a curse, but this pain was bearable.

He can't torture me too long, she wildly assured herself. He needs me sane enough to answer. He can't torture me into beasthood. There are limits to what he can do. And Harry will come soon.

Good God, give me the strength to hold out until then. I beg of You, Lord, don't let me talk!

Three more times she was questioned- and three more times she answered in Parseltongue. She tried to revert to her natural form (why was it so small?), but her interrogator Transfigured her back.

He stopped when the Veritaserum wore off. There was no point in dosing her again, not when she held onto hope that her friends would save her. People could do anything; endure anything, when they had hope.

In a few days, when she had been starved and blinded and afraid and alone long enough for her hope to die, he would try again.

Harry/Pollux's room on Founder's Isle was simple and homey: oak bookshelves, a cozy little bed, a small dresser with more books atop it, and a desk with a comfortable plush chair. It was the kind of room he had dreamed of as a child, when he and his brother had been crammed into a cupboard barely large enough for one boy.

Panting, chest heaving, he collapsed onto his bed. His eyes were wide and wild.

Intellectually, the Parselmouth knew that he had had no choice. Saysa had already been taken; Dumbledore had escaped with her before the anti-Apparition wards went up. She had been long-gone when he fled from the Department of Mysteries.

The knowledge did not make coping any easier.

Saysa was a friend, a guide, a guardian, the only adult figure he could trust without reservation. She was not a mother figure (not yet); that job belonged to the shade of Lily Potter, but… by Merlin, she had been family!

With a chill, Harry realized that he was already thinking of her in the past tense. No! She was captured, not dead. Surely Dumbledore wouldn't kill her.

His shoulders shook. The wizard rolled onto his belly, buried his face in his hands.

Don't cry. This is not the time to cry. Think, Potter, think!

But he couldn't think, not until he cried.

Sobs tore through him. His hands clawed the mattress. Tears and snot soaked into the blankets.

Mark. Saysa. His destiny. Lily and James. Everything. But mostly Saysa, for her tragedy was still raw.

He never learned exactly how long he lay there, bawling like a baby, but the moon had climbed high into the sky by the time he finished.

The moon, the almost full moon. He grimaced, wondering how long he had left Tyr paralyzed and invisible. At least it was decently warm out.

The wizard jogged over to the Portkey point. He ran into Sirius on the way. The Animagus opened his mouth, looked once more at Pollux's face, and snapped it shut. He shifted into canine form and followed.

Now that Harry had seen the enchantment's effects, he knew what Dumbledore had done to the Chalice of the Moon. It was a curse so obscure that no one had bothered naming it, a curse which paralyzed all living flesh which made contact with the bewitched object. The curse spread through flesh like electricity spread through metal, so that if someone touched the poor fool holding the enchanted object, he too would be frozen. If the wizard was powerful enough, the curse could hold up to thirty people.

Fortunately, the curse was easy enough to counter. That was why Voldemort had never used it to guard his Horcruxes. Harry murmured a soft "Finite incantatem" (Why hadn't he thought of that before? His idiocy had gotten Saysa captured!) And helped Tyr up.

"Where is she?" were the werewolf's first words.

Harry hung his head. Tyr cursed.

"What happened?" yelped Sirius.

In a dull, tired voice, Harry related everything: his stupidity, his paralysis, how Tyr had saved him, how Saysa had been captured, and his desperate flight from the Aurors….

The other students, Remus, and Dudley were waiting in Tyr's cottage. They took one look at Harry's forlorn face and blanched. Pallas stood, stepped forward, stopped. "What-" She fell silent.

Pollux lacked the strength to tell his tale again, so Tyr narrated the whole sad sorry story.

"So you won, but you lost," Dudley observed.

The Muggle hadn't intended for his statement to be profound. He was just stating an observation. Wisdom from the mouth of a fool….

"We have to rescue her." Pallas's face was drawn and pale. She had been the first human Harry introduced to Saysa; they had spent hours talking about history and magic and philosophy. The two females, one ancient and the other so very young, were close as favorite aunt and niece.

"How?" Pollux erupted, flinging up his arms. "We don't even know where she is!"

"So we should sit around and do nothing?" sneered Apollo. "I expected better of you."

"Don't be like that," Alexander ordered.

"What, are you just gonna-"

"Apollo, Al, stop fight-"

"Now you want to sit around too?"

"Of course not!"

"He was just saying that we need to find her first!" Al yelled. He clenched his fists. "No one said anything about sitting around and doing nothing."

"Enough!" Bianca shrieked. Her classmates froze. "We won't achieve anything by squabbling like bratty toddlers." She sucked in a deep breath, shoulders heaving with suppressed emotion. She hadn't known Saysa as long as the others, but that didn't mean she wasn't close to the serpent-woman. "We know that Dumbledore has her. Where would he hide her?"

"Hogwarts?" Alexander suggested meekly. "I… I don't think he has a house. I think he lives there full-time. And Hogwarts is pretty big." He shrugged helplessly.

"Doesn't he have a brother?" wondered Apollo. He seemed to have forgotten his earlier animosity towards the other male, for he turned to Alexander and asked, "What was the fellow's name again?"

"Aberforth," the Gryffindor replied.

"Yeah. Aberforth. Maybe he's in on it."

"He had a couple hidey-holes for the Order of the Phoenix," Remus remembered, "but they were just houses. People live there, so he probably isn't using them."

Sirius groaned. "I wish we still had the Marauder's Map. That'd be a fast way of checking Hogwarts. Most of it, anyway, I doubt that anyone knows the entire castle."

"Except Dumbledore," Pollux muttered. "But you're right, Padfoot. Do you have any idea where it might be?"

"It was confiscated late our seventh year," Remus answered. "We got careless one night- Filch caught us on our way back to the dorm. James managed to wipe the map clean, but Filch knew that it was magical."

"So it would be in his office, then?" asked Pallas.

"Bianca and I can get it," Apollo volunteered.

"I'll see if Aberforth knows anything," Pollux decided.

"Alexander and I could tell the centaurs and goblins what's happened," Pallas suggested, not wanting to sit around doing nothing. But she knew even as she said it that it was a bad idea.

"Tell them that the arbiter of the Treaty of the Wood was taken captive on my and Tyr's watch?" Pollux echoed. "No thanks. Until we get Saysa back, we can't tell them anything. We can't even tell them we managed to nick the Chalice." His jaw clicked shut as he realized what he had said.

They had lost, yes… but they had won. In the horror of Saysa's capture, he had forgotten that their mission was technically a success.

Everyone's eyes turned to the silver cup, which had cost so much; too much, in Harry's opinion.

"Does it work?" Dudley demanded after a long moment of silence. "Because if it works, Tyr and Remus should drink it right away. Maybe their werewolf powers can help find Saysa." He shot a brief but nasty glare in Pollux's direction; it was clear whom he held responsible for the serpent-woman's capture.

"Tyr first," Remus decided. His hands trembled in excitement. "He risked more, did more, than me."

The elder werewolf leaned forward. "There's no point in delaying," he decreed roughly. "Aguamenti."

Water, clear and pure, gushed from his wand into the cup. It filled the silvery chalice almost to overflowing.

Very slowly, very solemnly, Tyr Ulfhednar raised the Chalice of the Moon to his lips. He drank deeply, draining the goblet.

The others waited breathlessly for some sign that the magic was working. They weren't entirely certain what to expect- a full-fledged transformation, perhaps, or some kind of magical light show. They didn't expect the room to remain silent and dim, for the light in Tyr's eyes to dull. But that is what happened.

Pallas buried her face in her hands.

"It'll be all right." Tyr's voice was not cut out for comforting people, nor was his personality. Still, he tried. "You'll save Saysa. And…." He paused, searched for a way to explain what he'd felt. "The chalice… something is missing. The magic is still there- I can feel it- but I can't access it."

"No," Remus moaned. "You're deluding yourself, Tyr. It's lost its powers."

Harry was almost ready to start crying again. Bad enough that Saysa had been captured; now the thing she'd been captured for was defective? And even worse… if lycanthropy remained cursed, they wouldn't get allies from the other races. Without help from the goblins and veela and dwarves and all the others, they couldn't fulfill the prophecies. Without the prophecies, Saysa's life was meaningless.

Good Merlin. He'd managed to destroy both Saysa and her entire life's work in just a few minutes.

Tyr's mouth tightened. He re-cast the spell, shoved the water-filled cup into Remus's face. "Drink," the elder werewolf ordered.

"What's the point?" the younger hissed.

"Drink," Tyr repeated in the voice of an alpha.

Remus huffed heavily but accepted the goblet. He sipped. His eyes went wide. "Great Merlin!" he rasped. His knuckles tightened around the cup's stem. He gulped the rest greedily, literally wolfing it down.

When he had finished, his eyes glowed with new emotion. There was joy in his face, and hope, and despair. "Tyr's right," he announced without aplomb. "It's- it's like I'm almost all the way to the top of the hill, almost done with a race, but then it's like I fall and can't get to the end. The magic is so close to working, but-" He shook his head. "I can't explain it any better than that, but the Chalice still has its magic."

"It's a potion," Alexander breathed. He took hold of the cup, rolled it in his hands.

"That doesn't narrow it down much, though," Pollux lamented. And, more importantly, it didn't do anything about Saysa. "There are millions of potion ingredients that can be combined in millions of different ways. For now, we should focus on getting Saysa back before Dumbledore- does something that can't be fixed." He wouldn't kill her. He wouldn't. Couldn't.

"I like Saysa," Dudley agreed. "How soon can Apollo and Bianca get the map thingy?"

"Tomorrow," Bianca declared. "We can have it by lunch tomorrow."

"Maybe one of my Dreams will help us find her," Apollo suggested suddenly. He'd obviously only just thought of that.

Pallas tilted back her head. "I can try and research Dumbledore family properties," she sighed, "but I can't think of anything else that would help." She felt useless, worse than useless. "And if I can't find anything useful about Dumbledore, I can try to decode the lycanthropy potion."

"But you don't have to!" Alexander exclaimed.

The room turned to stare at him. The Prince of Flowers fidgeted. "Look at it," he ordered, brandishing the Chalice. "It's got leaves on it. Potions ingredients. They're all written on the goblet- hemp, boneset, adders tongue, aconite, parosela. They're right here."

The group peered closer. The tiny carvings on the double-crescent base loomed larger than life. Everyone had assumed that they were just symbolic decorations, not anything more significant. But if Alexander was right, these innocuous-looking traceries held the key to the werewolves' salvation.

"Can you get these ingredients?" Tyr demanded.

"I think so, yes," Alexander replied.

"Then do it," the werewolf ordered. "Sirius, you and I can try to figure out the exact proportions. Moony, you and Sirius should write down all Dumbledore's old safe houses and allies, anyplace he might be hiding Saysa."

The meeting adjourned fairly quickly after that. Everyone had their own task. Now they just had to fulfill them.

*sniffles* Poor Saysa. Poor, poor Saysa. I feel so bad for doing this to you.

So, on this pleasant note of torture and panic... Merry Christmas!

If you have a moment, please pop over to my profile and vote on the poll so I know what Blaise's Animagus form should be. Thanks.

-Antares