Chapter 27: The Search for Snape

After Auror training had ended for the week, Harry and Ron had managed to get to Gringotts and take out some money just before closing time. Then they hurried to the London portkey office where they each bought a return trip to New Orleans. Ron was a bit shocked at the price.

"Hey, wait a minute," Ron said. "We should have brought our brooms. We're going to need some way to get around when we get there."

"We could rent some," Harry observed. "There must be a broom rental place there."

"Rental brooms are probably crummy," Ron said. And costly, he thought. I don't want to spend any more on this crazy project than I have to. Ron was far from wealthy, after all. "We'd better go home and get our own."

"Yeah, you're probably right," Harry agreed. If there was one thing that Harry was fussy about, it was brooms, and the thought of riding an inferior broom didn't appeal to him at all. "I suppose we ought to pack a change of clothes, too."

"Look, it's already pretty late," Ron said. "Let's both go home and pack our brooms and stuff, get some sleep, and meet in the morning." He wasn't eager to go searching for Snape, after all. He'd much prefer a good night's sleep. With luck, maybe Harry might even oversleep.

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Where has my wizard gone, and what is he up to? Fawkes wondered as he flew through the window of the Southern Academy of Magic and into the dark sky. And why can't wizards restrict their misadventures to daytime? This guy's almost as bad as Albus was. A phoenix just can't get a good night's sleep anymore.

It's surprisingly cold tonight, he realized. Freezing cold, in fact. And where did all this fog come from? This can't be natural! I can feel the evil. It's those horrible soul-suckers again! I'm going in for a closer look. Severus will just have to look after himself for a little while.

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"Where did they go?" Kat asked. He was more than a little bit upset. "What has that idiot Saunders done now? What did he do with Slade?"

"I have no idea!" Angie shot back defensively. "He just appeared, grabbed Slade, and apparated away with him."

"This is no time to argue!" Armstrong interjected. "The dementors are still out there, in case you've forgotten. We can search for our friends later, but for now we'll just have to carry on without them. We have to guard the school until they finish evacuating the students. We're their last line of defense."

"Yeah," Kat agreed, "but the dementors haven't even come near us yet, and already we've lost two wizards."

"Well, the Ghoul Busters are still out there, so we probably don't have to worry," Angie told him. "I'm sure they can handle the dementors on their own."

"I hope you're right," Armstrong said, although he had his doubts. He knew that the dementors were causing the unnatural cold, and the cold had generated the fog. He couldn't see the dementors anymore, but he knew they were out there.

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Saunders knelt on the dirt floor in front of the strange symbol. "Just kneel opposite me, Mr Slade, and try to focus your mind on my chanting. I don't know what the words mean, and I hope I never find out, but the spell should siphon power away from the dementors and weaken them."

"This had better work," Severus growled. Holding his wand ready, he took his place on the other side of the symbol, between a vase of ugly black flowers and a small pile of bones.

"I saw it done once, and it worked on things that were even more dreadful than those dementors," Saunders said shyly. He didn't mention what had happened after that, though.

He saw it done once? Severus wondered. I wonder if this kid knows what he's doing? He had a nasty suspicion that there was something that the young wizard wasn't telling him.

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"I think they're weakening," the captain of the Ghoul Busters said as he watched his patronus chasing after a dementor.

"You mean our patronuses?" asked his sergeant. "Yeah, they're getting pretty dim."

"No, you idiot! I mean the dementors! They're getting sort of twitchy."

"It doesn't matter," said the sergeant. He looked lost. "There's no point. There's no point to anything. It's all meaningless."

"You're letting 'em get to you, man!" the captain warned. "Shape up! This is no time for an existential crisis!"

But the sergeant just stood there, staring into the distance.

Then they heard a musical cry above them.

"Look!" cried the captain. "Up in the sky! It's a bird!"

"It's a phoenix!" said the sergeant, as he spotted Fawkes through the swirling mist. His eyes lit up with happiness.

The others must have seen him too, because the patronuses started to glow very brightly.

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Harry arrived at the Burrow at dawn to meet up with Ron. Unfortunately for him, Molly Weasley was already awake. "I'm surprised to see the two of you up so early on a weekend," she said. "I would have had breakfast ready if I had known. By the way, where are the two of you going?"

"We're going to Scotland for some special Auror training sessions," Harry lied. "You remember when we did that before, and we helped capture those Death Eaters and rescue those animals? We'll be back in a few days. We're not sure exactly how long it's going to take."

"You must remember to tell me these things!" she scolded. "You know how I worry." She glanced at the family clock: Fred's arm had vanished after the battle, but a new one had been added for Harry. There was no arm for Hermione, but maybe that would come later.

"Hi, mom!" Ron said as he came down the stairs carrying his broom and his backpack. "What's for breakfast?"

"Oh, we don't have time for that," Harry said quickly. "We have to get going."

"Don't worry, I'm sure there's enough time," Ron said, smiling at his mom. He was happy for any excuse to delay their departure, and as far as he was concerned, a hot breakfast would be a great improvement over searching for Snape.

"I'm going to cook you a little breakfast and I don't want any arguments!" Molly announced. "Now go sit down at the table. I won't be long."

Harry sighed and took a seat.

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Fawkes watched in amazement, along with the Ghoul Busters and the patronuses. "What do you make of that?" the captain asked, but no one could answer him. The nearby dementors were twitching and writhing. Their shrouds had begun to dissolve, revealing their gelatinous grey ectoplasm, and as the souls that they had consumed broke free and streamed upward, the dementors became nothing more than grey shadows. Then they began to move away, all of them heading toward some unknown destination as if drawn by a magnet.

Although he was tempted to start picking off the stragglers, Fawkes knew that something was seriously wrong. I'd better follow them. There's some sort of terrible power pulling them away, something terribly dangerous, and I need to find out what it is.

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Saunders had been chanting for quite a while, although it sounded more like chattering than chanting. He'd gone into a trance, and his voice rose higher and higher until it no longer sounded human. He kept repeating the same short phrase over and over again, and it was incredibly irritating, like claws being scratched across a chalkboard.

Foul smells rose from the things in the bowls and mingled with the smoke from the kerosene lamp. Severus felt nauseous and he had difficulty focusing on the chant. Then he heard a high-pitched chittering noise that seemed to be coming from inside the walls, and he looked up. Grey shadows were marching across the walls toward the darkness at the far end of the shack. It made his skin crawl.

I've never seen anything like this before, he thought, but it reminds me of a spell that I read about once in an ancient book. It opened the gateway to another world that was ruled by ancient beings. They consumed magical energy and dark magic, and anything else that they happened to desire. They may be consuming the power of the dementors now, but such beings are never satisfied. We've awakened them, and soon they'll want more.

He shook his head, trying to clear his mind. The shack seemed to be distorted somehow, in ways that didn't make sense. I must be hallucinating, he thought, or maybe I'm going mad. Everything seemed to be twisting, and the far end of the shack seemed to go on forever. The shadows continued to march toward it as though they were being sucked into the void.

At least nothing's coming out of there," Severus thought. Not yet, anyway. Saunders had better know how to stop this spell, and he'd better do it soon.

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Harry and Ron got to the London portkey office much later than Harry had planned, thanks to Molly's 'little' breakfast, and after a transfer in New York they stepped out of the portkey office in Rue Magique carrying their brooms and backpacks.

"See," Harry said, "it's still dark here. I told you there was a time difference."

"Oh, I wouldn't have noticed that if you hadn't pointed it out," Ron said.

Harry laughed. "Let's get going. Maybe we can get to the Southern Academy in time for a second breakfast."

"Another breakfast? Good idea, that." Ron was still stuffed with his first breakfast, but he knew that wouldn't last. "Do you know how to get there?"

"We'll fly down the river to the coast, and then follow the coast until we detect magic," Harry said. "We can use that variation of the Underage Magic detection spell that we learned last month in Auror training."

"Sounds good," Ron said, as he mounted his broom. "Let's go then. Breakfast awaits!"

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"Welcome to the Bayou Quidditch Dome, home of the Gulf Coast Griffins!" Mayor Finley announced to the assembled students and teachers. "Y'all just make yourselves at home while we conjure up some cots and blankets for ya." The evacuation of the Southern Academy of Magic had been completed and a temporary shelter was being set up in the stadium to house everyone.

"It's a good thing you brought 'em here early, before the hurricane gets any closer," Finley whispered to Mr Cohen. "That was good thinkin'! We don't want to take any chances with the kids."

"The hurricane?" asked Cohen. "You mean Hurricane Georges? I thought that was supposed to hit Florida."

"No, didn't ya'll hear about that? It hit the Florida Keys all right, but then it kinda glanced off and headed northwest. It looks like it's headin' for us now. The muggles are startin' to evacuate parts of the city."

"Oy!" said Cohen. "No, we hadn't heard. We were busy with a different kind of problem. I'd better get back to the school, organize the house elves, and start strengthening our flood-protection charms! Brewster, you're in charge here!" Then he dashed for the floo in the stadium office.

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"We must be getting close," Harry shouted. They'd been flying for more than an hour. "I'm detecting strong magic coming from that fog bank." He could see some sort of faint silvery light moving inside the fog, too. It winked out occasionally, and then after a few moments it would reappear.

Ron flew closer, holding his hand to his ear to indicate that he couldn't hear. There was a very strong wind blowing from the sea, and it swept their words away. Harry tried shouting louder and then he tried the Sonorus spell, but it was hopeless and Ron gestured that they should land. They descended into a small clearing at the edge of the fog.

"It looks pretty sinister," Ron said. "Just because there's magic there, it doesn't mean that we've found the school. It could be something else." Something dangerous.

"It's probably the school" Harry said confidently. "I'll bet they use the fog to hide the place. It must be a magic fog, after all, or it would be blown away by all this wind. There must be muggle-repelling spells on it to make it seem sinister, too."

Ron was skeptical. "It seems sinister because it's a dark swamp with weird, moss-covered trees looming over everything. And that fog is really thick. It's going to be impossible to see your hand in front of your face in there, even with Lumos. How are we supposed to fly through that?"

"We aren't," Harry declared. "We'll walk. It can't be much farther."

"You're kidding! It's a magical swamp! It's probably full of all sorts of dreadful things, like hungry man-eating plants and poisonous lizagators and bottomless quicksand." And spiders! Lots of spiders! Big ones! "Why don't we wait until the sun comes up and the fog burns off?"

"If it's a magical fog, it won't burn off." Harry said, shouldering his broom. "I'm going in. You can go back if you want."

"No, I'm with you," Ron said quickly as he fell in beside Harry. "I just think that we'd better be careful, that's all." Very careful!

It proved to be slow going. The fog swirled around them, gusts of wind shook the trees, and the two young wizards couldn't see farther than a few yards in any direction. There was almost no dry ground and it was surprisingly cold. Ice crystals sparkled in the air.

"I thought it wasn't supposed to get cold around here," Ron complained as they sloshed through some ankle-deep muck. "It was hot enough in New Orleans. Maybe I should transfigure a coat." He was starting to feel despondent. His thoughts turned to Hermione and how much he loved her. I don't know why Hermione loves me. She probably doesn't, he thought. Not really. She just thinks she does, because of everything we went through together. She'll probably come to her senses soon. I'm not worthy of her.

Harry was lost in his own thoughts, too. I'm not really the hero that everybody thinks I am. It was my mom's sacrifice that defeated Voldemort. And Professor Dumbledore's plan, and all the help from my friends. They're the real heroes. And Snape. He protected me and saved my life, even though he hated me. Snape ...

He imagined Snape sneering at him. "You never figured it out, did you, you clueless moron?" the imaginary Snape said, his voice dripping with disgust. "You were just a pawn, a weapon to be used against the Dark Lord. The least you could have done was pay attention and cooperate, but no, you always knew better. You endangered yourself and your idiot friends repeatedly. You even got your useless godfather killed. It was a miracle that I was able to keep you alive all those years, and then you walked off and left me dying in that filthy shack. I knew you were a lazy, incompetent, rude little brat the first day I saw you, and you proved I was right, time after time."

"No!" Harry shouted. "You were wrong about me! I was brave! I was willing to go to my death!"

"What?" said Ron, who was startled out of his brooding. Then he saw the dementor right in front of them. Its shroud was hanging off it in tattered ribbons and it was twitching a bit, but it was still dangerous. Its huge, gaping mouth was lined with rings of wicked-looking curved teeth, just like the sucker-mouth of a lamprey, and beyond the teeth its throat disappeared into darkness.

"Ack!" Ron cried. He jumped back, thought of Hermione, and pointed his wand at the thing. "Expecto patronum!" His patronus appeared in a silver flash.

That brought Harry to his senses, but before he could bring up his wand, the dementor had fled.

"I … I think it's gone," Ron said as his silver terrier returned. "I've never been so close to one before. I could even smell it." He almost gagged as he remembered the stench. "I feel terrible, like I'm all cold inside and I'll never be warm or happy again."

"That's what they do to you," Harry agreed. He was shaken, too. Dementors had always unnerved him. "They make all your doubts and fears and worst memories bubble up in your mind, until they overwhelm you. They thrive on pain and fear. We're lucky you realized what was happening. Thanks, mate."

"You're welcome." Ron looked around nervously. "I didn't know they had dementors over here in the States. Let's get out of here before it comes back."

"Wait a minute," said Harry. He had to raise his voice a bit so he could be heard over the wind. "That silver light I saw before we landed must have been a patronus! Let's go find it, and it'll lead us to the school. Come on, I think I saw a glow over there."

Ron clutched his wand tightly. The wind was whipping up the water in the swamp and a clump of wet moss blew past his head. "I hope you're right," he said. "We'd better hurry, though. I think there's a storm coming."

I must be out of my mind, Ron thought as they set off toward the glow that Harry had seen. I spend too much money, get up too early in the morning, travel to the other side of the world, wander around in a freezing fog, face a dementor, and for what? To find Snape? He grimaced. With my luck, we might actually find the miserable git, too.

A/N: The eye of Hurricane Georges reached the Gulf Coast east of New Orleans on 28 September, 1998.