Author's Note: Thank you so much for reading and reviewing and favoriting and whatever it is you've done! This is the second to last chapter. The last will be in three perspectives but published all at once (just some minor edits / readthroughs I'd like to do). Thanks again for reading - it means the world to me.
Hope you enjoy! :)
Pierre had left what felt like hours ago, and she was alone in the woods. Every rustle in the bushes nearby since had sounded like a murderer lurking in the undergrowth; every animal's cry a starving monster whose lair she was invading. Lynn had never really thought to be scared of the forest before. The rules were not to enter and so she never had. Care of Magical Creatures was one of her favorite subjects, but the rumors that she knew of the inhabitants of this place only intensified her prickly new fear.
She had already tried to pick the lock.
For starters, this had been a problem because there hadn't really been one. The lock wasn't so much a lock as an incantation that had magically resealed the cage into place around her, so that she was trapped behind the bars of gold with little recourse.
She wondered if this was the end. If Dani and Lynn didn't figure out that she'd chucked the scroll in Aimee's bag while passing...no, they would. She had faith in her friends - they were two of the most highly intelligent people she knew, and that included the Hogwarts students like Hermione who weren't exactly idiots. She was blessed with incredibly gifted friends. They would find it.
They had to, because if they didn't, she knew she would be sold. She would become one of the Beauxbatons girls who disappeared. She would be a more troublesome case for the headmistress and Wench to cover up, having attracted the attention of faculty at the other schools and mingled a little too much with people outside of the Beauxbatons range of control, but she would disappear nonetheless. She had been safe before because she had too much family to miss her, but she had now made herself too much of a liability to be allowed to stay free.
She wondered vaguely what her price would be.
She would never see Oliver again. Never kiss him, never lay beside each other in the same place staring at the ceiling with smiles on their faces, never tell him the secrets she'd been keeping so painfully, never listen to his (hopefully far less dramatic ones) in return. She wondered, not for the first time, if it had been wrong not to really tell him how she'd felt. It had always seemed like the right course of action was to stay away and in turn keep him out of danger, but now that it seemed like it might be the end…
She would never see her friends again, or her family. Never see her sister's bakery finally break even and become a success, never see her parents argue over the morning paper again. She would never find out who it was that Dani finally ended up marrying (because despite Dani's contempt for the institution, Lynn was somehow sure she would marry) after the sordid boy adventures she was certain were still left for her. She would never see the worldly success that she was already sure that Aimee would be. Darker things even than what she was experiencing at that moment were happening in the world, but it felt like the end had rushed up on her too soon. They were supposed to have time to fight the greater darkness, not be cut short by smaller villains.
She paced the grassy floor of the cage, suddenly boiling with frustration. This wasn't it. This wasn't the ending she would accept.
Something rustled in the trees and her blood went instantly cold.
There were eyes in the darkness and they were staring right at her.
"Here!"
Aimee sounded sure and so both girls turned without hesitation, momentarily blinded by the light as they stepped back out into the sunlight of the game.
How funny, Dani thought, that a game could still be happening at a time like this.
Flyers lunged and dove through the air, the crowd at times ducking to avoid them. The school was enraptured by the ongoing action, and Dumbledore not hard to spot in the crowd.
McGonagall was beside him, and both in the third row of the stands. All they had to do was get his attention before Madame could put a halt to their interference.
Aimee sprang to action before Dani could even think, crawling on all fours through the closest row (which was fortunately fairly empty), and then scaling down until she neared the Headmaster. Dani tried to follow suit, but was less accustomed to sneaking quite so nimbly through crowds and so made slower progress. It didn't matter; they only needed one of them.
Madame was seated at the front beside Hagrid, looking anxious as the enormous man babbled on kindly. Her eyes flickered in their direction and Dani's heart dropped as her mouth opened in alarm, but Aimee had made it just in time. The small girl was already tapping the Headmaster on the shoulder.
"Sir, please, we have something urgent for you."
McGonagall looked ruffled and concerned at the small blonde cramped into the row behind them, but Dumbledore stared evenly back.
"It wouldn't happen to be the key to Cinderella's tower, would it?"
Caught at completely the wrong moment to have remembered their conversation in detention, Aimee could do nothing but stare dumbly back. She drew the scroll from her bag and handed it to him, still staring in awe.
He unrolled it hastily and Madame rose to her feet only a few rows away.
Aimee watched as he examined the document carefully for full seconds of silence. He looked up at her and she nodded.
Perhaps sensing what was about to unfold, Madame, accompanied by one of Wench's henchman who had materialized from the stands, came hurtling into the conversation.
"'eadmaster you must understand, zere 'as been a terrible misunderstanding-" she began, face an elegant mask, easy as ever.
"If I'm not mistaken" Dumbledore said, chin lowered thoughtfully toward the scroll unravelling in his hands, "This scroll is a rather serious accusation, Madame."
Madame gaped and the crowd shifted around them, heads turning curiously in their direction.
"Eet iz not mine," she stammered finally.
Dani smirked.
"Really? You were seen screaming at a student just before the match for it. But eet iz not yours?"
McGonagall looked at her curiously. A few stray professors had been among the students who had seen Madame's fit. Dani didn't know if McGonagall had been among them but if it came to it, there were plenty of witnesses among the stern witch's colleagues.
"Zat girl is dangerous," Madame said, her voice even higher and jumpier than usual. "She iz trying to stir up trouble because she 'as been in trouble lately with ze school. Eet 'as nothing to do with me."
Dani shook her head in disbelief but before she could respond, footsteps thundered out into the stands behind her. She whipped around and was both startled and hugely relieved to see a rather flushed Lynn hurtling to a stop at the front of the stands, attracting quite a bit of attention in doing so – a Beauxbatons girl in disarray, stray leaves dotting her hair.
"If it's nothing to do with you, why was I just IN A CAGE?" she seethed, advancing furiously toward Madame in an unusually daunting manner for Lynn – golden hair framing intensely angry eyes fixed on the older woman, who seemed almost to be shrinking.
Neither Dani nor Aimee had ever heard Lynn yell, and the hairs on their arms stood strangely on end at the sight. Madame's face drained quickly of blood.
Straightening and sweeping hands briskly through her hair, Lynn turned her attention to Dumbledore.
"Sir, that scroll is a list of graduates of Beauxbatons – all top of their class or beautiful or notable for some classy Beauxbatons trait or another – and the men to whom they were systematically auctioned off following their graduation."
She spoke firmly over the noise of the ongoing game to be heard, eyes hard and posture certain. McGonagall and a few of the other teachers and students nearby gasped.
"While it is not my belief that Madame is directly involved in the transactions, I do believe that Mr. Wench, an adviser and financier of the school, has been using the school for his own profit for quite some time, and the school itself had very little choice in the matter."
Dani couldn't help but think to herself, despite all else that was happening around her at the moment, that it would be nice if Oliver had taken that moment to search the stands as he been doing intermittently for the entire game…If only to see that Lynn had, in fact, made it there, despite everything that had quite physically prevented her from doing so.
She glanced up as Dumbledore examined the scroll more closely to find that the game was focused on the other side of the pitch, where some rather nasty altercations involving the opposite team's Beaters seemed to be taking place. The crowd's attention – or at least those who weren't within earshot of their own developing drama –was captivated by the absurd tactics that the Slytherin team seemed to have stooped to using to knock the others off their brooms.
As she was watching, a bludger was knocked deliberately into Oliver's shoulder just as he reached up to knock the Quaffle away from the posts, and his body fell cleanly off of his broom.
"Is that Wood? Wood's been knocked off his broom by a bludger, savagely beaten over by a snivelling gi–"
"Lee!" McGonagall barked suddenly, Dani jumping beside her.
It was impressive what that woman could do merely on instinct.
"Sorry professor! But blimey–, you really are a lowlife son-of-a–"
"LEE SEBASTIEN JORDAN!"
Dani caught Aimee's eye in a sideways glance and mouthed "Lee's middle name is Sebastien?" to which the other girl shrugged.
Lynn appeared to be having similar difficulty focusing on the matter at hand. Her head had turned swiftly to the pitch at the words "Is that Wood?" and had stayed trained on the distant shape of his body on the ground ever since, mouth crooked with worry.
Her distraction provided for the timely entrance of a surprise figure.
"Now, now, let's not be making rash accusations," said an oily voice from behind Madame.
Out of nowhere, it seemed, had appeared Wench himself. His small, black eyes and cold smile trained on the girl in front of him. Quite suddenly it was the physical scene of David and Goliath – the rather ample businessman and the small, thin girl in a ripped blue uniform.
"I am myself appalled at these accusations," he said to Dumbledore, face twisted into what Dani could only assume he thought was an endearing mask, "I have done nothing but support this school and its mission of academic excellence and social grace. My apologies, but this girl seems to be both tragically mistaken and perhaps deeply troubled."
He had placed himself between Dumbledore and Lynn with purpose, and behind him, Aimee's glare threatened to bore a hole in his greasy head.
"Are we to believe, truly, that her own headmistress would have her locked in a cage?" he laughed lightly as though it were all a joke. Dani noted that no one else did, though Dumbledore regarded him without expression.
"I think that the pressure and excitement of this tournament has been a bit much, and if I'm not mistaken, Ms. Poesy could use time to rest – away from school."
It was at this, and somehow not the insinuation that she was crazy, that Lynn finally tore her eyes from the field to address the loathsome man in front of her.
"No," she said, eyes blazing, "I will not be so easily dismissed. I will not be expelled from school under mysterious circumstances, not be done away with by mysterious arson. And yes, I have deduced some incriminating details about just how you've done so in the past."
Wench's smile was fading fast. Dumbledore's, on the other hand, seemed conversely to be beaming with pride for a student who wasn't even his own.
"We have all of us dealt with your flimsy excuses for cruelty for too long, and yes, I can prove that I was held in a cage in the Forbidden Forest for taking that scroll from Madame's offices, because waiting outside this stadium and fully prepared to corroborate my story is a lovely centaur named Firenze."
She stopped to smirk, and seeing his henchman glance nervously toward his boss for direction, continued.
"I don't recommend trying to interfere with Firenze's testimony, as you've so efficiently done with witnesses in the past, because he doesn't seem terribly inclined toward patience after finding a young human in a cage in his territory."
She paused and turned to Dumbledore.
"I would estimate that close to his entire herd also saw me, in case it's a matter of numbers. I'm not familiar with–" she faltered for just a second, blinking as the adrenaline began to fade from her bones.
"I–is that enough?" she said to Dumbledore, eyes tired.
There was a distinct twinkle in the older wizard's eye as he regarded her.
"Yes, young lady, it is more than enough," he said. "It so happens that we have Ministry officials among us visiting campus who would be happy to see to the immediate arrests of those responsible."
Lynn nodded once, a relieved smile breaking across her face.
She turned to her friends with a huge, though exhausted, grin before, in a moment that could only be described (and would be, by Aimee, several times over dinner for the rest of the week) as "pure badassery", Summoning Oliver's fallen broom from the ground below, jumping on, and flying the distance from the stands to the ground below the goalposts where Madame Hooch and a small crowd of players too far away to have noticed the commotion in the stands stood around his fallen body.
"Ms. Poesy," Madame Hooch greeted with an efficient nod.
It crossed her mind briefly to wonder why the woman knew her name. But then there was Oliver, splayed unconscious on the ground, mouth slightly open and limbs she was afraid to look directly at in case what breakfast she'd managed that morning decided to reappear. And she'd been so fearless only seconds before, saving hundreds more girls from lives sold away as beautiful objects. She felt strangely powerless all at once again at the fact that there was nothing she could do about this blood, this fall, this person.
He'd had worse, right? She didn't know for sure. Hooch was muttering to herself about students and pushing back the crowd and all she seemed able to do was stay rooted there, sinking into this man's face on the muddy ground. A face she hadn't had nearly enough time to examine properly up close, to memorize.
All she could think was that this couldn't happen now, not when she was finally free, the adrenaline of her final battle still seeping from her mind.
"He'll be alright."
Madame Hooch's voice broke her out of her own mind for a moment, her face flushed. She touched a hand to her eyes and noticed for the first time that at some point between standing in the bleachers and then, she'd been crying.
"Let's get him to Madame Pomfrey," Hooch said.
She stood and brushed the bottom of her robes off, then paused to touch Lynn briefly on the shoulder before beginning to levitate the body toward the castle, the girl and the rest of the players behind her as the stands around them erupted in chaos.