"The cages!" she was shrieking, "How can you – I saw them!"
Her screams were jarringly out of place in the picturesque hall of the palace, whose white-gold bricks glowed with the light of the setting sun. As the students trickled into the hallways in groups, a sea of curious blue, they could see her being carried out the main entrance.
"I saw them! They are real!" Lydia screamed, her face blotchy and damp.
Lynn's legs were shaking as she watched the other girl be escorted out the main gate by two burly men in sinister green robes.
Lydia who had been at school with them since first year, who'd nearly gone to Hogwarts but whose parents opted for the more elegant education at the last moment. Here she was, kicking and screaming, face red and voice hoarse, eyes bouncing about the crowd of her peers wildly as though for someone to put out a fire.
For someone who had a reputation for being almost obnoxiously dependable, she was doing a good job of looking mad.
"It could be any of you next!"
These were her last words before she was at last petrified, this time by Mr. Wench himself, who Lynn only now noticed had been observing contentedly from the sidelines in his expensively-looking robes.
He was an older man, but characterized more by grease than anything else – slicked back hair, slippery smile, beady eyes.
Lynn wondered if it was true that evil twisted from the inside out, twisting and corrupting any features that might have been beautiful, like a warning to the outside world.
She felt the breeze of a large cloak and looked up to see Madame whirling past her. The only glimpse she caught of the headmistress' face was surprisingly sullen, and the witch hurried off down the hall before any could get a question her way.
The crowd shifted as those who had been in class returned and the rest floated between curiosity and shuffling back to their lives.
Lynn started in the direction of the library, but had to walk past the back of Mr. Wench's head on the other side of a column.
"I'd like to thank you for notifying us of this little mishap," he was saying.
"Poor girl," replied a nasally voice. Lynn recognized Dominic Thomsky from the morning only a few days past. "Must have gone mad walking in the woods."
Her heartbeat was suddenly alarmingly quick. She could feel it in her ears and fingers. So Lydia had also been to the clearing.
"Needless to say, you'll be compensated generously as a show of our thanks," said Mr. Wench.
Glancing up for an escape, suddenly certain they could feel her guilt in the crowd, she spotted Dani and Aimee's telltale squabbling figures ahead and found her feet travelling mercifully in their direction.
She looked up - hopefully innocuously - just once as she passed a window to the two men between two columns. Just as the white-gold brick of Beauxbatons Academy of Magic glinted in the sun of the south of France, so did the gold-handled scroll in Dominic Thomsky's thin fingers.
Hufflepuff was not a house known for dignity, Dani realized as she strode through the corridors. It seemed that every group she passed of students with yellow and black ties was composed of giggling girls hanging off of their male counterparts. The latest, a duo of blonde girls, were standing by a window in the seventh floor corridor, leaning quite noticeably toward Cedric Diggory, who stood gloating between them.
Dani found herself on the verge of laughing at the thought of ever having shared the infatuation. He had seemed so full of promise at first. In the end, all she'd really seen him do for the past few months was stand around in hallways with girls brushing at his hair like some docile pet.
It was a leap downward in self-respect too great for any face to merit.
Dani was just coming upon a suit of armor with a rather oversized plumed helmet, satisfied smirk slipped over her lips, when something grabbed her arm and pulled her sharply towards the wall, forcing the air out of her lungs with a sudden gasp. Her body was whipped around until her back was to the suit of armor, facing a smirking Seamus. She rolled her eyes out of habit, though beyond relieved as she caught her breath.
"Honestly," she said, "It's like you want me to die of a heart attack."
Her voice was wispier than its usual deep, bold tone as she recovered. Truthfully, she'd had a moment of terror when she'd felt something latch onto her arm, thinking of things much less well-intended—more reinforcements of Madame's.
Seamus scoffed. Dani was sure he'd noticed her shock but wouldn't say anything. It was the quality about him that suited her best, because she was seldom willing to explain herself and even more rarely gracious toward her emotions being put on display.
"Sorry ma'am."
She smiled and leaned forward, pressing her lips on his slowly.
"Any news?" he asked when she pulled away.
She knew he was talking about Beauxbatons. It was as though the carriage existed in its own personal cone of silence, broken only, of course, by what updates Dani and Aimee managed to purvey to their Hogwarts friends.
Dani shook her head, lips in a tight line.
"No," she said flatly, thinking of Lynn's unchanged terror and Pierre's continued presence.
Seamus smiled half-heartedly back at her, and then pulled her into a kiss again to distract them both. She moved her lips against his gladly, welcoming the comfort after the long day, sliding her hands up his broad shoulders. They separated only when they were suddenly interrupted by a loud thud, at which both looked up, startled.
One of the Hufflepuff girls Dani had noted earlier had been thrust backward by the shifting stairs upon trying to walk down a staircase. The girl looked first astonished, as she lay sprawled on her bum, before adopting an indignant look and collecting herself and her belongings from the floor. As Dani and Seamus watched from their hiding spot, an eclectic-looking man painted in an armchair in a nearby portrait shouted, "Serves you right, loose wench!"
Dani let out a sharp, loud burst of laughter before managing to contain herself to muffled fits. Seamus, on the other hand, continued to guffaw loudly, even after the Hufflepuff cast an angry glare in their direction.
Dani was still shaking from laughter when the painted man's loosely sexist words suddenly reminded her of something important.
"Wench!" she said, sobering quickly, and grabbing a fist full of Seamus' robes to get his attention.
He calmed himself enough to look her in the eyes confusedly.
"I just remembered," She explained quickly, "We need to meet with everyone. You reckon they're at Quidditch practice?"
Seamus shook his head after a moment's thought, scratching the back of his neck with one hand.
"Nah," he said, thick accent as apparent as ever. "I'd try the Common Room first."
Seeing that this answer satisfied her, Seamus glanced pointedly down at Dani's hand, which still clutched the front of his robes. Dani resisted the slight urge to roll her eyes at his single-mindedness and felt herself smile. She pulled him closer by the front of his robes, kissing him fully. He held her to him tightly and deepened the kiss, making it impossible for her to get away easily, not that she truly cared. Finally, she pulled away slightly and smiled against his lips.
"Happy?" she asked teasingly.
He chuckled.
"Very."
She brushed her lips against his slowly once again, then just as he leaned in to her, pulled away abruptly and began dragging him out into the hallway by the arm.
"Excellent, then off to the Common Room it is," she said, grinning at the flustered Seamus in her wake.
Her question about Quidditch practice was answered soon after they had clambered through the portrait hole. Hermione, Ron, and Harry were all seated in their usual cozy armchairs by the fire, the twins hunched over something on a table, and Ginny sitting nearby with a group of friends.
Seamus stopped to joke with Dean Thomas as Dani continued toward the armchairs. Seeing most of the armchairs already occupied, she plopped down on a sofa close by.
"Good evening, Dani," Hermione greeted, looking relieved.
Dani looked over to see why and saw Ron sitting next to her, brandishing a half-finished essay of looping, messy work.
"Good evening," she said, looking at the other girl pityingly.
"C'mon Hermione, just this once," Ron was saying, shaking the length of parchment in Hermione's face. "I'll never pass Potions otherwise."
Hermione's face was tense and disgruntled, her nostrils flaring in that way that was oh so characteristic of the lead-up to a Hermione-brand lecture. As she began scolding him quietly, Dani nodded to Harry, who was on the armchair across from Ron. He nodded back tiredly, and she could see a pile of textbooks and pieces of parchment littering the space around him. All the work on top of the tournament was taking its toll on him.
She smiled sympathetically at the raven-haired boy as Seamus joined her on the sofa.
"Oy, you lot," Seamus said, addressing the twins, who looked only too suspicious at the table in the corner. "'Ow come you're not at practice?"
"Busy innovating, my friend," George responded without missing a beat.
"Pressing onward in our business ambitions," Fred added.
Seamus scoffed at them, wrapping an arm around Dani's shoulder.
"Also," said George. "Dumbledore ordered no Quidditch practices today, by reason of a storm."
Seamus frowned.
"There was no storm today."
Fred laughed gleefully.
"Ah, but according to Dumbledore, the experts were predicting one, so it was much too dangerous for any of us precious children to be risked."
Everyone within earshot laughed at this, knowing full well that Dumbledore had invented the weather as an excuse to contain Oliver's masochistic training practices. As if on cue, Oliver appeared at the portrait hole, head bowed in thought. He walked straight through the Common Room, frowning with a hardened face, and disappeared up to the Boys' Dormitories.
Dani raised her eyebrows.
"He's been like that for a while now," Hermione said quietly.
It had been hard not to notice, even if one didn't live in the same dormitories. It seemed that the Oliver who they had known, the one who baited the twins, humoured Aimee's antics, and smiled good-naturedly at the many Quidditch jokes at his expense…was gone, or at least faded to the background, somehow replaced by this stony-faced, serious man who responded only in monosyllable sentences to direct questions. A hushed quiet had fallen over their section of the Common Room, as though all of them had suddenly remembered the graver situation at hand. Dani was the first to break it.
"I have news."
The trio by the fire looked up from their work, and Fred and George glanced over from the corner with interest.
"It's about Lynn," She said. "She's in deeper trouble than we thought."
She said the last part a little more quietly, aware of the other Gryffindors scattered about the Common Room. This wasn't a piece of information that needed to be spread outside their group. In fact, only harm could come to Lynn if Madame found out that this knowledge had made its way outside of Beauxbatons.
The group seemed to pick up on her sudden change in tone. Hermione frowned, and Ron and Harry set aside their work only too happily to lean closer into earshot. Fred and George plopped down on the sofa, bringing with them a brown parcel that shook slightly as it settled with them onto the cushions.
Dani paused.
"Where's Aimee?"
As if on cue, several crayons came hurtling from the general direction of the floor.
Aimee sat cross-legged on the carpet aside the other sofa, a knocked-over bucket of crayons at her side, colouring a picture.
"Oh, hullo Aimee," she said, a little surprised at her sudden appearance. She hadn't seen her all day, since Aimee had only just been released from detention with Snape that evening.
Aimee nodded good-naturedly, and then returned to her drawing. Dani shook off the oddness of her appearance and continued to address the group gathered around her.
"…like Ginny told us the other day, Pierre was seen threatening Lynn the morning of the thing in the hallway," She said, carefully casual about the hallway incident that was still a sore memory. "We know with near certainty what he was threatening her with."
She paused, biting her lip. After a moment, during which nothing could be heard but squeaking from the twins' parcel, she kept going.
"Pierre Simon is the son of a…business associate of the school, Mr. Wench—"
She was cut off by the twins' guffaws.
"Wench!?" Fred exclaimed, falling out of his seat laughing.
George clutched his side, laughing so loud that a group of first years seated not far away startled up and distanced themselves.
"What an awful name," Hermione said bemusedly.
Ron sniggered while Harry ducked his head tactfully behind a Defense Against the Dark Arts textbook. Dani sighed.
"This is serious," Dani said flatly, at which the group's attention seemed to settle back to her. "Mr. Wench is a man of an awful lot of power…enough to ruin a person's life forever."
The mood of the room sobered quickly, the eyes on every face suddenly downcast with this new unknown threat.
"But what is he exactly?" said Hermione, frowning, "a school administrator?"
"No one's really sure," said Dani. "He's just around when things get serious, and never in a good way. He was there when his men dragged a girl out of school to go to the loony bin."
Even Ron, who could hardly have been paying much attention, looked shocked.
"What happened?"
Dani shrugged.
"No one knows. She seemed fine up until the day they dragged her screaming out the front gates."
Hermione looked thoughtful.
"So he's Madame's henchman."
"No," Dani said, eyes not quite focused on her friend. "It might be the other way 'round. Madame seems terrified of him."
There was a beat of complete silence as the group digested this idea. Madame, scared? It was hard to imagine, especially to those who'd only recently met her.
"I've always wondered why he hung around a school for 'proper magical education'," Dani said. "But anyone who gets close disappears, one way or another."
Aimee looked up from her drawing to catch her friend's stare. Dani nodded back, as though the two were in silent understanding.
"It wasn't just Lydia Norris. There were others - Blake Templer, Cora Stansy…"
There were more names than even that, she realized as she spoke them – students or administrators who had mysteriously left campus or disappeared due to circumstances that seemed to arise out of nowhere. There were batches of students, many of which were girls thought to be the most beautiful and intelligent in the school – the Fleurs of their class, who graduated and were never really heard from again...though it was a mystery if those two phenomenons were connected.
"What happened to them?" said Harry.
Dani jerked to attention, caught off guard.
"Cora Stansy was accused of stealing from the headmistress. They found a pile of things from Madame's office in her dorm room that looked like they'd appeared overnight. She was expelled and only a few ever spoke to her again….Blake Templer…"
She paused.
"Blake Templer went to school before us," she said, "but he was killed when the Quidditch pitch – the one Beauxbatons used to have, before Madame banned the sport for being 'too bourgeoisie'...he was killed when it burned to the ground."
Silence.
Seamus was the one to break it, clearing his throat suddenly. Dani jumped, having forgotten he was there somehow despite being so very close.
"Lynn's in the middle of all that?"
Dani nodded.
"There must be something we can do," Hermione said logically, though she was badly concealing panic for her friend, less of her usual straight-on gaze and more looking from face to face as though the answer would materialize in one of them.
Harry and Ron both grimaced. The twins, under control now, were patting their parcel with blank expressions. All looked up hopefully when Hermione sighed.
"I suppose it's all up to Lynn," she said with an air of resignation. She looked defeated.
Dani felt like crying, an instinct that shocked her. She hadn't cried in years, and certainly not in front of people. Swallowing down the lump in her throat, she considered what Hermione was saying, but the outlook wasn't great. Convincing Lynn to get on a broomstick with a stranger was one thing, a chance that was amusing to watch her struggle to take. But persuading her to take any action now, when she was basically imprisoned already just for knowing too much...that would be impossible. Better, it would be a death wish.
Dani saw Cora Stansy in her mind's eye, staring aghast at the incriminating evidence in her dorm room. She had tried to ask, Dani remembered, and gotten out, "Is this because of the–" before she was silenced and removed from the tower.
Her mouth went dry. She caught Hermione's eye, and the other girl looked apologetic.
"There is no other way," she said. "No one knows whatever it is that Lynn does. Without her, knowledge of it doesn't exist. If something goes wrong…the knowledge dies with her."
Her last word rung out with a resounding finality that felt to Dani like a strike across the face. Some of the others blanched visibly – she was surprised to see who. It had escaped her that they might really care. She wasn't accustomed to strangers investing in the troubles of others, and still had difficulty believing it...but it was clear that this concerned all of them now. Not just their little trio, as it had always been.
After a few minutes of sitting there, all of them burrowed deep in their own thoughts, Aimee continuing to scribble from her spot on the floor, Seamus broke the gloomy silence.
"What've you got in there, baby dragons?" he said, motioning to the cardboard parcel that was still sitting between them on the sofa, wriggling up every few moments in spasms.
The twins grinned, nudging each other.
"Smurfles," said George.
"Our newest development," Fred added cheerfully.
"Soon-to-be delightful wizarding pets," George said, beaming, "Although they've still got a ways to go…we've had some biters."
Dani noted the look of alarm on Ron's face with amusement.
"And droolers," Fred added.
There was a commotion from the floor as Aimee knocked her supplies over all over again, rolling about laughing. They had forgotten the Silencing Charm over the week, so she produced no sound still.
Dani nodded at her friend.
"What've you been drawing all this time?" She asked, trying to keep her voice even after the steep dive her thoughts had taken in only the past few minutes.
Her suspicions of another diagram of secret passageways or blueprints were short-lived.
Aimee grinned widely, and held up a large piece of parchment with a wildly colorful caricature of a wizard on it; a wizard who sported a tall, crooked blue hat, long white beard, and half-moon spectacles…
"Is that…Dumbledore?" Harry asked incredulously.
Aimee nodded, proud. She mouthed something to Dani.
"Um...Lynn?"
Dani narrowed her eyes at Aimee but nodded slowly.
"Sure, she'll adore it," she said somewhat sarcastically.
Aimee ignored her tone of voice and looked back at her drawing in satisfaction. Fred and George both beamed like proud parents down at her, as though producing nonsensical drawings was the most marvelous thing she could do. The two of them them looked first at the squirming parcel on the sofa and then to each other.
"Better dispose of this batch," Fred said.
"Absolutely. To the forest?" said George.
They nodded in unison before picking up the box and loping toward the portrait hole.
Aimee's head shot up and she ambled after them, throwing stray crayons to get their attention.
She was halfway to the portrait hole, where the twins' red-haired heads were already disappearing, before anyone could stop her. Dani rolled her eyes.
"Curfew's in a half hour!" She yelled after her petite friend.
Aimee waved her off with the back of her hand before trotting out of sight cheerily. Dani shrugged, looking only vaguely concerned about any possible punishments awaiting the two of them in the future. There was only so much more Madame could do…well, or at least was likely to do.
Hermione was shaking her head, as though silently scolding her disregard for rules and regulations. She returned to her work quickly though, her face set in studious focus. Harry and Ron returned to their work as well, albeit with less enthusiasm. Dani stared at her the friends around her for a beat - flooded suddenly with the wish that things could be that peaceful for all of them always and knowing in the same instant that it couldn't be true.
Feeling overcome and uncomfortable about it, she did the first thing she could think of and turned to Seamus, who was rubbing her shoulder absentmindedly with the hand he had resting on it.
"Well Aimee's missing curfew..." She said, hoping he didn't notice the waver in her voice as she trailed a hand up his shirt.
She thought she caught a flash of concern in his eyes but in the next he had pulled her towards him, only too pleased to obey.