At the sound of her punch, the whole hall falls to silence. As she storms out of the hall every eye follows the sharp click of her heels along the stone floor.
At the main door, Madam Babbling turns around and scans the room before saying, "The forth champion has been condemned to death, as she has three days to appear before the cup before all her vital essence is removed from her body. The headmaster, in his infinite wisdom, has used the cup to summon a student that received their acceptance letter four years ago."
Albus starts to say something, but Babbling just puts her wand to her throat so he can't speak over her without making it obvious, "This child lives somewhere impossible to find or reach, and she probably doesn't even know where to find the school, if she even knows it exists. This child's name is Lamia, remember it because she is likely to be the first, and I hope only she's the only casualty of this farce. Headmaster Karkaroff, Headmistress Maxime, the tablet is written in both Italic and early post-Phoenician Greek if you want your own professors to verify what I said. The Deputy Headmistress should be able to show you the admittance list for 1991, as it's her responsibility to hold onto it. I will be in my office packing if you have any questions. Oh, and for those who…"
A couple of backwards paces as she's talking puts her far enough from the entrance that a wave of her wand, and a muttered incantation between breaths can close the doors to the grand hall in front of her, unfortunately also cutting off whatever she was saying from the people still inside the hall.
It's only when she reaches her office that Babbling realises that she's still holding the tablet in her hand.
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As the doors start to close it's almost like a spell has been broken, as the photographers for the three national newspapers all take a photo of Professor Babbling as she stands there, wand in one hand and the tablet in the other. Her gaze seemingly full of judgement and righteous anger for the people on the other side of the door.
Immediately, the hall explodes with noise as everyone starts talking about what she just said. At the head table one professor discretely stands and makes her way out of the teachers entrance to the hall.
In the middle of it all Albus stands, poleaxed, as the ramifications of not only what he's done, but also what Madam Babbling's words are going to have.
Softly, he says, "None of the history books ever suggested this could happen."
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Slowly, Lamia pushes herself up off the floor as her family all crowd around her. Wordlessly, she holds her hand out for the tablet, and her mother hands it to her.
As she shifts it around in the lamplight, Lamia rubs her chest and asks, "What script is this, as I don't recognise it."
Kirke shakes her head, "I don't know. I'm not sure the answer can be found on this island unless it's in one of those bundles, or the goddesses survived."
As she re-reads the half of the tablet she can read, Lamia sinks into the coils of her tail. As she speaks her voice comes out as a quavering mess, "Mother, what do I do?"
Kirke steps into Lamia's coils, and pulls her into the hug of a mother to a young child, "You have Aunt Selene's heart stone now. Tonight, we hold a vigil and you try to feel her chariot. When the moon rises just before dawn, you'll summon the chariot and follow it to the cup. Then you'll kill whoever they summoned you to kill. Once you're no longer beholden to the cup we will destroy it, and everyone who dares to try to take my daughter from me."
In a small voice, Lamia asks, "How do I do that?"
Everyone around her is reminded of the fact that, while Lamia is an adult, she is still a very young adult with no exposure outside the island and the beings that reside on it. Kirke looks up from her daughter, her own anger warring with her need to look after her only surviving child, "Medusa, get some honeycomb for Lamia. Euryale, Sthenno, find some nymphs and start a bone fire on the eastern beach. We are going to hold a vigil for my daughter, the same one that we used to do for Selene. Lamia, my dear daughter, I don't know how my aunt did it. But my father could always feel the Sun, and at the first glimpse of the sun above the horizon, he could summon his chariot. My brother could do it too, until Zeus killed him. You have around eight spans before moonrise, and this is probably like trying to find your legs. You're older now, and you've already done it before, so it should be easier this time. If you don't manage it tonight then you've got another day to get it before the tablet will extract it's first price."
Lamia shakes her head, "I don't want to die."
As they are alone, Kirke kisses Lamia on the forehead, "Lamia, I don't want you to die either. When the ichor was being pulled out of you, all I could think about was what Athênê wrote about Hestiê, and the heartstone."
To distract herself, Lamia looks up at her mother, "Mother, what is a heartstone?"
Kirke pulls Lamia's head into her chest, "That is a complicated question. On it's most basic level it is crystalised ichor, and it forms in our hearts. Only they only seem to form for Titans and other powerful gods that have a purity of purpose. For my father, it contained his power and purpose, I don't know what it was like for the other Titans. For other people, they can be a source of power, a cause for envy, or a short cut to achieving something. But the biggest thing that they are is a source of true immortality. As long as you have a heartstone, you cannot be killed. No matter what happens to you, you will heal and recover almost overnight. It's what made Promêtheus' punishment so terrible, as the eagle that eats his liver has to inflict mortal wounds that would kill a lesser god, are simply healed because of his heartstone."
"That's disgusting, they should have just killed him."
At the sound of Medusa returning, Kirke releases Lamia as she says, "With very few exceptions, the gods and titans of Greece were not good people. In my isolation, I have come to believe that the primordial gods, the titans, and even the gods born from their unions, were reflections of the societies that gave birth to them. I do mean gave birth, as nowhere in the library of Uruk are the primordial gods ever mentioned despite our own belief that they had always existed. Then there's Zeus's claim that he created the first woman, Pandora, despite the fact that mortals couldn't have existed without them. Yet for all their hubris and arrogance, the younger gods like Hêbê and Ganymêdês were far more gentle and softer than their elders."
Medusa hands over a wooden bowl that contains a honeycomb, "I don't think it's the people, I think it's the power. Look at my sisters, they are the gentlest souls you'll ever meet, and our parents were fine until Poseidon stole my ichor. That's when they started to birth sea monsters until Zeus imprisoned them."
Lamia looks over at Medusa, "Why didn't they give you ambrosia?"
Medusa grimaces, "They did, but consuming ambrosia, it's not painless and every time they did the sea king just ripped it out of me again. You need to remember that Poseidon held a portion of not just Kronos' power, but also Ouranos' power, stolen when Zeus slew his father. They sent me to Olympus once it was clear they couldn't hide me from Poseidon, and it worked for a long while, but even Athena couldn't protect me forever." She looks over at Kirke, "I don't blame her, not anymore. She had to punish someone for Poseidon's actions, lest Zeus take the matter into his own hands."
Lamia shakes her head, "Why do you call Athênê Athena?"
Medusa looks towards the south east, towards the island she used to live on, "Even at the end, we still had the occasional visitors, foolhardy souls who thought they could claim my head to gain fame and favour. I overheard enough of their conversations that it seems natural for me. Same as they knew your mother as Circe not Kirke."
Lamia reaches over and places a comforting hand on Medusa's arm, "Thank you for sharing that. It makes my own situation easier to bear."
As Lamia starts to suck on the honeycomb, Kirke sniffs the air, "They've got the fire started, so we should go."
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Madam Babbling looks up from her packing as a soft voice says, "Beth, is it true?"
Beth nods, "Yes Septima, it's true. My file is over there, and I had Professor McGonagall give me a tracing of the original entry. Compare it to the tablet."
Off to one side of the room there's a loud thump as Septima pulls the file off the shelf and onto a workbench, "Which section should I look at?"
Beth swallows hard, and carefully puts a couple of books that belong to Hogwarts to one side before she answers. "Classical Greek, the one just before Linear B. It should be the first thing in that section."
When Septima gasps, Beth knows exactly what she's found, "Beth, why didn't you tell me?"
"Because it doesn't matter, I've also got Masteries for Linear B, Cuniform, and Italic too. I've also got a standing job offer from Kletbagotts through Gringotts. Compare the name on the tracing to the name on the tablet on my workbench."
"Beth, you could have been rich and famous."
Beth turns around, "Septima, I don't care. That's not why I do this. I do it because I want to know, I want to understand. Not what's written in the books, or the drivel that Binns teaches, I want to know what they said at the time."
After several minutes, Septima looks up from the tracing, "Beth, what does the tablet actually say?"
Beth turns away again, and grabs a mallet before smashing it down on a stone slab that's sat on one of the workbenches, "Septima, it says exactly what I said it did. I can translate the Italic into Latin, and then you can translate the rest yourself."
Septima looks up with pleading eyes, "Please, I want to believe you. But it's Dumbledore, the leader of the Light."
Beth grabs a planning slate and charcoal stick from a shelf, before walking over to the workbench with the tablet and, with sure strokes, copies out each line on the tablet with plenty of space to spare. Below each line she transliterates the Italic into Latin characters, before writing the Latin translation on the line below that.
Given that she's not going to get any peace until Septima is happy that she understands what's written, Beth summons a quill and parchment and starts to write her resignation letter.
After she's written a few lines, her two most promising students cautiously push open the door to her room, the eldest of whom asks, "Professor Babbling, is it true?"
Beth looks up at the second most promising student of ancient languages in this generation, "Is what true Miss Granger?"
The most promising student looks at her, before cocking her head, "Yes."
Beth gives a small smile, "Miss Lovegood, which question are you answering?"
Lovegood smiles, "Both of them."
Beth nods and looks at Granger, who flounders for a moment, before asking, "How do you know it's going to kill her?"
Beth sighs before walking over to a pile of her own books and pulling out a muggle book on Diodorus Siculus, specifically one that has the original greek on one half of the page and an english translation on the other. Handing it to the two students she forces a smile, "If I'm right, then the person that is referenced on the tablet is named after a queen of Libya. If you want to know the legend, it's book 22."
Granger almost immediately grabs the book, while Lovegood just nods and walks over to look at the tablet from the other side, after a while she asks, "How old is this dialect?"
Beth smiles, "At least 1500BC."
Lovegood cocks her head to one side, "Did they even know that Britian existed then?"
"According to everything we know about them, no, they didn't. Their entire world was the Mediterranean Sea and a few hundred miles inland from there."
Lovegood nods, "Even by broom it would take a few weeks to reach here from the Sea, and portkeys were invented in 1738. I believe this is probably the best intentioned murder attempt I've ever heard of."
Beth blinks multiple times, as she tries to catch up with Lovegood's thought processes, "You'll have to explain your thought processes for that one."
Lovegood looks at Beth owlishly before pointing at the tracing still visible in her file, "That is an address written by the book of admissions, as the name Potter is written the same way it was for my acceptance letter. Harry Potter should have started school in 1991, but that is the same name as the name on this tablet. Which you said was Lamia. That means that Harry Potter grew up in a society somewhere in the Mediterranean Sea, it also means that his Magical Guardian of record didn't know where he was. With this new information, we can now rule out the Rotfang conspiracy for his lack of knowledge.
"You also need to take into account that the headmaster has always been surrounded by Wrackspurts, but this term Blibbering Humdingers have started feeding on him too. It's well known that Blibbering Humdingers prevent people from being able to view the future consequenses of their actions, only how they will help their current goals. Thus, this is the best intentioned murder attempt I've ever heard of."
Granger looks up from the book for a moment, "How do you know who Harry's magical guardian is, for that matter, what is a magical guardian? Also, who is his magical guardian?"
Septima looks up from her translation, "Miss Granger, a Magical Guardian is the person assigned to represent a child's interests in the magical world when their legal guardians are unable to do represent them themselves. Typically only orphans and muggleborn children have a Magical Guardian. Your Magical Guardian will normally be your head of house, or the headmaster of the school if you don't have a head of house. An orphan's magical guardian would normally be the sitting Chief Warlock at the time they were orphaned, and transferred to their new family when they're fostered or adopted."
Lovegood smiles vapidly, "Also, the Quibbler did an exposé on the subject when Harry Potter failed to turn up at Hogwarts in 1991. I'll have to write to father to let him know that Harry was turned into a girl and spirited off to an island of Amazon warriors in order to be trained to fight the Rotfang conspiracy."
Beth sighs, "Miss Lovegood, if he was sent anywhere, it was to live with Circe."
Lovegood slumps, "Oh, then it might be a mercy killing."
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Lamia dances, spins, and stomps around the fire in time with the drumbeat that Kirke is beating out to the side of the fire. At first she was joined by all the nymphs and gorgons on the island, but now it's only her feet that are following the ancient dance that venerates Selene, and also calls for her blessing. A dance that she's only read about before tonight, yet her movements suggest she's been performing this dance every month since she could walk.
Even after she's done it 1,000 times, Lamia will never be able to explain how she knows the exact moment that the moon pokes above the Horizon. But the exact moment it does, her dance ends and she turns to face the faintest point of the waning crescent moon. At the same time she shouts "έρχομαι".
For the first time in over 3,000 years, the light of the moon races over the sky towards something rather than following the arc of the sky.
From her position seated with the drums, Kirke smiles as her daughter accepts her aunt's power, and the power judges her worthy in return as Selene's crest appears on Lamia's forehead. The crescent moon arcing up on either side of her forehead, forming stylised horns.
As the light of the moon gets closer, the moonlight on Lamia's forehead slowly turns into the Celestial Bronze circlet that her aunt was known to wear. "Well done child, well done for reaching for Selene's power with no expectation that you deserve to have it."
As the faded moon crests the horizon, racing along the light of the moon a chariot drawn by two winged horses becomes visible, illuminated by the moonlight. Almost as soon as there's a fingers span between the dark horizon and the moon, the chariot sets down on the beach, and the horses fold their wings before walking towards Lamia.
In return Lamia allows her legs to vanish as she moves forward to embrace the two horses.
Placing her drums to one side, Kirke picks up Lamia's bow and quiver as well as the tablet. Standing up, she makes her way across the sand as the gorgon sisters and nymphs gather respectfully on the landward side of the beach.
"My daughter, it is long past time that I acknowledge your prowess as both a scholar and a hunter. However it seems fitting that I do so as you are about to embark on your second labour."
Lamia startles at the sound of her mothers voice, but smoothly turns around and lowers herself to the ground as if she was kneeling on one knee.
With both hands Kirke holds out Lamia's bow and quiver, "A huntress should never be without her bow and her arrows."
Formally, Lamia takes the bundle before strapping it on her back with practiced movements.
Kirke removes the dagger from her belt, "When I first ventured out into the world, my mother gave me this dagger, and now I give it to you. Remember, a dagger is a tool not a weapon. It can be used to build, to create, and to cook. It can also be used to defend yourself. This is a dagger of the gods, and it was made from celestial bronze, no mortal weapon will be able to break this blade."
As she takes the dagger and slides it into her belt, Lamia says, "You honour me mother."
Kirke smiles and slides off the bronze bracers that she's worn for so long that Lamia forgot they were even bracers and not part of her mother. "A huntress also needs some means to defend herself if she is caught off guard. These were gifted to me by Athênê, and are the same as those born by the legendary Amazon hunters. I enchanted these the same as the bracers that I enchanted for her hunters. Since you first picked up the bow, I have further enchanted these to provide protection against mortal magics. In addition to their ability to first attract, and then deflect arrows and other projectiles, these bracers will also do the same for mortal spells. Addtionally, once placed only you will ever be able to remove them, no god or mortal will be able to part them from you."
As her mother slides each bracer home on her arm Lamia looks on with awe, "Mother, you honour me far more than I deserve."
Kirke pulls her daughter up into a hug before kissing her on each cheek and her forehead, "Nonsense. You have honoured me far more by becoming both a huntress and a scholar. I could not ask for more, except perhaps that you were better at weaving."
Lamia smiles, "At least I can make useable cloth."
Kirke nods, and pulls Lamia into another hug as she whispers, "As you are going into the world, you may need to know the secret to Celestial Bronze. Add an equal volume of ichor to tin to the copper as you melt them. Be warned that once the bronze has cooled, there were no mortal fires that could melt the bronze once more, so don't make any mistakes in the pour." More loudly she adds, "I am proud of you my daughter, and I charge you with one task. Return home healthy and safe."
As she steps back, she removes a carved bone ring from her pouch, "Finally, my last gift to you is a way home. If you hold this talisman to your eye, you will always be able to find this island, even if you have been stripped of your immortality. Now go and face your labour."
As she takes the talisman, Lamia pulls Kirke into a hug, "Thank you mother, will you be taking on grandfathers heartstone? As I think he'd want you to."
Kirke steps back and bows her head as she holds out the tablet, "I don't know. I don't feel like I'm worthy of that."
Lamia catches the wink from Medusa and reflexively raises her hand to catch the pouch the gorgon throws at her. With a broad smile she breaks the seal with one hand as the other lashes out to grab her mothers head.
A moment later, she's overcome Kirke's attempts to prevent Lamia forcing the Heartstone past her front teeth, where it lodges in the back of her throat.
As she steps back, Lamia says, "If anyone is worthy of grandfathers legacy, it is his daughter. Though, I doubt you need to worry about overseeing oaths, as I doubt that Styx would have given up that particular aspect of grandfathers power."
Tears streaming down her face, Kirke gives Lamia a looks that is a mixture of pain, pride, and momentary hatred for taking the choice away from her. In her daughters eyes, she sees the pain reflected back at her along with the resolve to see this through to the end.
Over the next few minutes, Kirke fights to accept the large mass of crystalised ichor as her body fights to reject something it insists is killing her. As her vision is going grey, and her legs give out beneath her, she finally overcomes both her mental and physical need to reject the gift. As she does, the whole thing seems to dissolve and flow down into her lungs, and then her heart.
Coughing on the floor, Kirke looks up as her daughter turns away to her chariot, "Lamia, even with this I am very fond of you. Come back safe so that I can administer your punishment personally."
Lamia laughs as she takes up the reigns, "I will mother, and I will be as quick as I can so that you have less time to get creative with my punishment." With a click of her tongue, and a wave of the reigns, the winged horses move into a trot towards the moon. As they set foot on the sea they spread their wings and, with one massive beat, pull the chariot into the air faster than an arrow launched from a bow.