CHAPTER 43: ANATOMY OF A THEFT - CLUTCH

Over the course of the following few weeks, Sparhawk found that his little group always had one or two missing from their number and the rest were notoriously tight-lipped about it. He assumed it was something to do with their side project and did not press them on the subject. He was waiting to be pleasantly surprised.

But all good things must come to an end, and all too soon the time of the exams was upon them. Hermione was no longer available for their shenanigans as she was working herself up into a frenzy with revisions and flashcards and whatnot, while the subject of their attentions, Sparhawk, was getting to be increasingly elusive. As it was, pilfering the laundry was stalling to a halt.

Sparhawk on the other hand had his own preparations to make. After extensively consulting with the friar, whom he constantly reassured that spying on the third-floor corridor was all in the name of God, he had worked out a passable plan of action. Most of the path was charted, but even the friar had found the last room impassable. And it would be done on the day the NEWTS ended. According to his source, Dumbledore would be absent that day, gone with the examiners to the ministry. Apparently, this was either to plead for the students who they considered failing or to have hot passionate sex with one madame Marchbanks, whoever she was. Sparhawk did not care. All this meant was that a major obstacle would be out of the way.

The last day of the exams came with a sense of finality. Sparhawk cruised through it with all of his customary efficacy. Hermione had been a bunch of nerves. A brilliant bunch of nerves, but one nonetheless. When the last one ended, she went into a furious conference with Neville and Warrick and stormed off somewhere. Sparhawk slipped away to an unused, out-of-the-way room to wait for the friar. And in no time at all, the friar was rising through the floor, his face set in determination. "The Headmaster is out of the building" he declared. Sparhawk grinned. It was time.

In the dark recesses of the Forbidden forest, a shadowy figure hid. To its eyes were pressed a pair of binoculars, the sights trained towards Hogwarts. It waited for quite some time and as the sun was halfway down its descent through the sky, it spied a gaggle of witches and wizards come through the front doors followed by a man with appalling fashion sense. It tracked them as they made their way to the gates and disappeared one by one. An elderly witch smacked away the proffered arm of the aforementioned man and apparated away. As the Headmaster of Hogwarts finally disappeared, Quirrell smiled. It was time.

Boy and ghost slunk their way through the school, veering ever so gradually toward the third-floor corridor. When they arrived, they were accosted by the figure of Professor Sprout standing guard. The plump woman paced this way and that, her nervousness clearly showing through. Sparhawk would need but a moment.

At a signal from him, the friar disappeared into the walls, while Sparhawk waited. Then all of a sudden, he rose from the floor so that he was almost superimposed over the form of Sprout. The Professor flinched at the sudden intrusion of her private space, there was a bit of shuffling about and some distracting conversation. Nobody noticed The Door open and shut ever so slightly.

A few minutes later, a dark form approached the self-same corridor where Sprout was back to her guarding duties and the friar was floating about. Just as it lifted its wand and pointed it at the professor's back, the friar caught sight of it and raised his voice in warning. Sprout turned just in time to witness the friar interposing himself between her and the incoming green stream. There was a flash and a scream and all of a sudden, nothing.

One thing you can count on a gardener being, is practical. Sprout did not wait to fuck around and find out. She turned tail and disappeared with astonishing speed behind a portrait to get some reinforcements. Quirrell cursed. This had just gotten a lot more complicated.

Sparhawk meanwhile had put the cerebrus to sleep with some uplifting church hymns, which wasn't all that surprising considering it had the same soporific effect on him. Then quickly through the trapdoor to land in some handsy Devil's snare. Sparhawk wasn't a needlessly cruel man, nor was he about to set fire to a plant that he was currently entangled in, so he raised his wand and muttered the words of the admittedly advanced sunlight spell that Aphrael had managed to teach him. She had a thing for natural light. The vines beat a hasty retreat dropping him down into a dusty corridor. Sparhawk landed like a cat and stalked forward deeper into its depths.

Soon enough he heard a strange rustling and clinking. In a few more steps, he found himself in a brilliantly lit chamber full of small glittering birds. Well, keys to be exact. Flying keys. And some brooms standing in a corner. Very convenient, really. Almost as if you wanted people to be able to go through the door. This further increased Sparhawk's suspicion that this was all just one big trap, but there was nothing else but to go for it.

Of course, he wasn't going to try to fly after the key without trying something simpler first. He sidled up to the door and tried a standard 'Alohamora'. When that didn't work, he applied his wand to the door itself and tried transfiguration, but he ran out of luck there too. Well, there was only one way through, it seemed.

He mounted one of the brooms and tested the balance. Far better than the school brooms, really. Then, he swiveled his head this way and that, his enhanced vision picking out the most likely key in a matter of minutes. After that, the poor key really didn't stand a chance.

Quirrell burst into the room to find himself facing three very angry, very canine heads. The Cerebrus might have shown a little restraint with Sparhawk, but he smelled the death rolling off the man in waves and the good doggo wasn't about to waste any time. The heads snapped at him, from three different angles and Quirrell surprised himself with how quickly he ducked and rolled. As it was, they only got the turban, revealing a very focused-looking face. Suddenly, the chamber filled with musical notes and Voldemort opened his mouth. "Am I bluee…"

Sparhawk was puzzling over the best way to get past this next obstacle, when from somewhere back in the distance, he heard an absolutely beautiful voice float through.

"Was I gaaaay? Till Todaaay?"

"Um…My Lord?" That was Quirrell.

"Now she's goooone.."

"We're well past the cerebrus, My Lord"

A silence.

"There's all these keys, my lord."

"Can you ride a broom, Quirrell?" He recognized that. That was Voldemort.

"I'll try, my Lord."

Quirrell hadn't flown like that since he was a kid. And his newly healed ribs reminded him why. Well, what was important, was that he'd finally got the blasted key. They'd wasted far enough time. Dumbledore or his cronies could be back any second.

He hurried to the door, noting absently that the key's wings were slightly bent. Pushing that detail away, he slid it in and turned. He exited into a dark room. He couldn't see more than a foot in front of him. Cautiously, he cast a Lumos, but that wasn't any better. Gingerly, praying to whatever force watched over unwilling minions, he stepped a foot inside, and instantly, the entire tableau lit up.

In front of him, he could see a massive chessboard, occupying most of the room. Each of the individual chess pieces was taller than a full-grown man. On the far side, he spied a door. There was no way to walk around the board. So he decided to walk through it, only for the pawns on the other side to block his way. Maybe they were supposed to play through this. A delaying tactic. Damn. And they were low on time as it already was. And throughout it all, he could not shake the feeling that someone was watching him…

Sparhawk lay flat underneath his invisibility cloak, watching Quirrell. The man moved to the white king and then began the game by calling out loudly, "Bishop to E4!" Or tried to anyway. The face on the back of his head was looking profoundly disappointed.

"Do you even play chess, Quirrell?" it asked, in a long-suffering voice.

"Er…"

Voldemort nearly sighed.

"Shut up and let me do the talking"

Voldemort was growing increasingly frustrated. He'd started with the usual 'Pawn to E4!" and when that hadn't worked, he began thinking that maybe there were particular moves to be made. He went down a list of all the possible starting moves and none of them worked. What he couldn't possibly know, was if there was more than one person in the room, then it took two to tango; And the boy underneath his invisibility cloak wasn't too keen on dancing.

"What are we? School children?!" he finally screamed to himself, and with another vicious burst of magic and much screaming on Quirrel's part, the board was reduced to smithereens. Quirrel, his joints back to normal, was on the floor, sobbing. A good minute paused before his Lord's mad threats frightened him to his feet and propelled him to the next. Neither of them felt the pair of eyes watching them from underneath the invisibility cloak.

Sparhawk had watched the mad wizard in front of him reduce the chessboard to so much rubble. But it seemed the wraith needed to be in control for such feats of power. And it seemed to exhaust it visibly. Even so, this was unexpected. And dangerous.

Sneaking through the debris of fallen chessmen, he cautiously made his way into the next room. Even before he entered, the stench hit him full in the face. 'Troll' his hindbrain warned him, and he slowed down. A quick sweep of his surroundings showed him he could replicate his previous success, but the follow-through where a flaming troll would be running about was bound to be problematic. Thinking furiously, he peeked into the chamber and stopped short. The troll lay on the floor and something in its attitude told Sparhawk it wasn't going to be getting up soon. An unexpected bonus. Voldemort and Quirrel could exhaust themselves on the obstacles and he could follow.

The next room contained a table with seven different bottles arranged in a line on a table. Hardly had he stepped over the threshold when a wall of flames sprung up behind him in the doorway. He turned to see the way forward too blocked by a wall of black flames. Rummaging in his pockets, he got out a hankie and cautiously touched it to the black flames. It disintegrated into ash.

Turning, he studied the paper that was lying next to the bottles. It read

"Danger lies before you, while safety lies behind,

Two of us will help you, whichever you would find,

One among us seven will let you move ahead,

Another will transport the drinker back instead,

Two among our number hold only nettle wine,

Three of us are killers, waiting hidden in line.

Choose, unless you wish to stay here for evermore,

To help you in your choice, we give you these clues four:

First, however slyly the poison tries to hide

You will always find some on nettle wine's left side;

Second, different are those who stand at either end,

But if you would move onwards, neither is your friend;

Third, as you see clearly, all are different size,

Neither dwarf nor giant holds death in their insides;

Fourth, the second left and the second on the right

Are twins once you taste them, though different at first sight"

Sparhawk smiled. A puzzle of logic. Certainly a different approach and while the risks would throw other people off, to a mind like Sparhawk's it was child's play. He quickly figured that the littlest one would send him forward, but then suddenly hesitated. When it said left, did it mean his left or the bottle's left? Did bottles even have that concept? But it was the hesitation of but a moment. He could always fall back on the bezoar. It paid to be read ahead. And besides, he was pretty sure they would want to interrogate any potential thief and the poison would likely be nonlethal. With a shrug, he grabbed 'the dwarf' and chugged it down, and waited. Feeling none the worse for wear, he silently slipped into the room to come upon one of his worst nightmares.

A/N: I almost forgot. Read and review.