A small water beetle flies through the school in the dead of night. As it passes through the familiar halls to a specific door, it slows and begins to land on walls and above paintings.
Eventually it comes to a door that is across the corridor to a portrait of a sleeping Anne Boleyn. Dropping to the floor, the beetle crawls under the door before transforming into a woman.
The woman swiftly and expertly searches the files in the office without leaving a single document out of place. When she finds the document she's looking for, she pulls a camera out of her purse and takes a photo of the single entry that's not written in English.
Her object found and recorded, the woman places the document back where she found it, and transforms back into a beetle.
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Lamia looks around in awe as the chariot rises steadily in the air. As she gets higher and higher first a few pinpricks of light across the horizon become visible, and then those pinpricks slowly grow into large blobs that start to shrink as faint filaments of light connect different sized blobs against the darkness of the earth. As she gets still higher she can see the light of the sun slowly spreading out in front of her, like a divider. At the same time the horizon slowly changes from being a flat line to being a curve, and the clouds go from being above her to below her.
But still the horses fly on higher and faster as the gulf of darkness slowly seems to shrink until it is a tiny crescent against he light of day.
Finally, after less than a span of time, maybe three fingers at most, the world stops receding as the moon hangs directly above her head, and below her the entire world is arrayed in a perfect circle. At the same time, the horses pulling her chariot turn to the west and start to keep pace with the moon above her.
Hanging there in between the stars, the sun's light bathes her in a warm light and she begins to glow a soft silver colour in response.
She's not sure how long she's spent looking around in awe at the amazing clarity of the stars that are visible everywhere, even around the sun. But eventually her eyes return to the earth and one of the tiny silver birds she can just about see racing the rising sun as the earth seems to rotate below her.
Suddenly, she can clearly make out the mechanism that is flying without feathers or flapping. She can see the mortals sitting inside the mechanism, and as she focuses on the mortals she can see through the strange clear stone on the front of the mechnism, she can not only see, but also hear what they're saying.
"Φαίνεται ότι θα είναι μια ωραία μέρα για να πετάξεις."
Lamia tears her eyes away from the mechanism and catches sight of a large settlement near her mothers island. As she does, her eyes just seem to focus on that settlement, and then on a mortal that's walking from another mechanism to a building while carrying clear stone bottles of milk. The numbers on the top of the milk almost look familiar. But then her eyes snap to flash of light on a mountain, and she can make out a telescope slowly lowering inside a large white building.
Flick, she sees someone breaking into a house. Flick she sees a couple struggling in the snow of a country far to the north and east of her home. Flick, flick, flick, flick, every time her eyes move around the earth below her she can see and hear exactly what's going on.
Slowly, Lamia sinks to the floor of her chariot as she becomes overwhelmed by the sights and sounds of everything happening below her. For a few spans of time she can only lay there as she struggles to come to grips with her great-aunts legacy.
Eventually, she's able to tear her gaze from the earth, and back to the stars, the gloriously silent stars. Even when she catches sight of Mars, the faint glimpse of mortal mechanisms is the only thing that draws her eyes. Even further out she can see the faint reflection of sunlight on two things with a strange script on them.
After a while, she look back down at the earth with only a twinge of disorientation and pain as everything below her seems to be in razor sharp focus, like she was looking at a hillside only a few hundred paces away, not the planet an unknown number of leagues below her.
With a smile, she turns her gaze to her home and watches as her mother has started to make a new mould for a dagger to replace the one she gave her. As she lifts the tablet in front of her, a red string becomes visible that seems to connect the tablet with somewhere to the north and west of her home.
With a click of the reigns, Lamia guides her chariot down towards the north, following the red string.
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After a restless night, Beth makes her way down to breakfast as soon as the elves start serving after waiting outside the Headmasters office for an hour before breakfast. Rather than sitting at the head table, she instead takes a seat at the end of the Hufflepuff table, with her trunk lying on the floor beside her.
Half an hour into breakfast Septima joins her, with her own trunk sat behind her as she places a letter of resignation on the table between them.
Over the next hour first a couple of Aurors arrive and take up position next to the door. Then a few more, until it's approaching 8:30am and Madam Bones walks in with Minister Fudge, the entire school board, and the senior members of the department of education. But still the headmaster is absent.
At 8:30 the wards preventing unregistered owls from approaching the school drop for their customary 30 minutes, and suddenly a flood of owls flies into the Great Hall, one of which swoops in front of Beth and drops a copy of the Daily Prophet.
Emblazoned across the top of the paper in fire engine red ink are the words
STOP PRESS!
As she unrolls the newspaper, the front page headline proclaims.
HEADMASTER ATTEMPTS TO MURDER POTTER HEIR!
Immediately below that is a split picture of Beth standing behind the doors to the Great Hall saying something as the doors swing close in front of her, while on the other side of the paper is a still photo of part of the 1991 admittance paperwork, with a Classical Greek address, and the only recognisable word in the entire address is Potter.
Beth's mouth drops open before she even gets to the article, written by one Tobias Turpin, "Well, that explains the Aurors."
Septima glances over Beth's shoulder to read the article, "Indeed, and probably the school board too. It looks like we may not need our resignation letters."
Beth shakes her head, "It's not just this moment, it's everything. Where's McGonagall? Who's taking charge of the children? As I know that at least some of them should be heading off to their classes now."
As if called by her words, a dishevelled Deputy Headmistress walks into the Great Hall, along with the Ministry's tournament supervisors, Mr Crouch Sr, and Mr Bagman, along with a man in dark grey robes with a hood.
As soon as she appears, Madam Bones strides forward to have a quiet word with.
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The clip clop of hooves on stone attracts Beth's attention before the shouted commands to stop from some Aurors that must be outside the school turn into shouts of warning.
Suddenly those shouts turn into a scream of agony that is abruptly cut off. As it is, the Aurors inside the hall all draw their wands and face the door while a detachment hurries the Minister out of the line of fire.
She's not sure when it started, but one of the Auror's fires a silent stunner through the doorway. A second later a wooden arrow takes him through the heart and carries him several feet into the hall. Suddenly, all of the Auror's are diving for cover as they fire increasingly more deadly spells through the open doors.
That's when she sees it, a warrior princess right out of Greek mythology fighting her way through the Aurors into the Great Hall. Below her waist is a long snakes tail instead of human legs.
It takes her a fraction of a second longer to realise who this is, than it takes for Madam Maxime and Mr Karkaroff to join the fight to protect the students from the Lamia.
In that fraction of a second, the Lamia spots Madam Maxime and immediately draws an arrow before screaming in pure agony.
For some reason, Beth finds her legs pushing her off the end of the bench as she screams "Stop! Stop! She's the last champion!"
Despite how fast she reacts, it's not fast enough to stop the child from being hit with half a dozen stunners and more lethal spells. It also doesn't stop her from running, arms spread, straight into that hail of spellfire and being bodily launched at the Lamia, not that Beth had more than an instant to recognise that before she was rendered unconscious.
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Lamia struggles to protect her head and upper body as the mortal mages fight to prevent her from presenting herself to the cup. Given that one of the mages attacked her as soon as she showed him the tablet and asked to see the cup.
She should really have expected them to act like that given they're forcing her to appear before the cup or die in agony.
The whole situation switches on a dime when an unarmed mortal runs into the spellfire and uses their body to shield her.
Let it never be said that Lamia is stupid, or ungrateful. With the couple of seconds breathing time the mortals sacrifice has brought her, Lamia grabs the mortal and flees to her chariot.
A flick of the reigns has it turning around and heading for the heavens before any of the enemy mages can follow her.
With her safety now assured, Lamia turns her attention to the mortal that allowed her to escape.
With a grimace, she sees that the mortal is covered with injuries that will prove fatal if untreated, let alone the less immediate injuries that will still kill her. With a sigh, Lamia reaches into her pouch and pulls out a rabbit bladder that's sealed with wax to stop the Nectar from spilling out.
Pinching the neck of the bladder, Lamia easily pulls the wax out, before she tilts the mortals head backwards, and forces her to swallow the contents of the bladder.
That done, she places the mortal in her coils, before turning her chariot towards home.
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Madam Bones looks over the grim cost of a fight that lasted less than 30 seconds. 10 Aurors dead, three emergency portkeyed to St Mungo's for knife wounds, one missing professor, and a hall full of traumatised students and teachers.
Off to one side Shackbolt picks up the bow that the monster was using and tries to draw it, "Merlin, what sort of creature was that thing, I can't even pull this back more than a couple of inches."
Near the place that the fight ended, Retired Auror Moody shakes his head as he leans down and picks something up, "Here you go Bones, and congratulations, the Ministry is now complicit in the attempted murder of the Potter Heir."
Bones carefully steps over a pool of blood as she makes her way to see what Moody has found. There in his hand she looks at a clay tablet that looks very similar to the one that came out of the Goblet of Fire. "Le Fay must be laughing in her grave at us right now. How did nobody notice that before it devolved into a fight?"
Moody gives a bleak laugh, "Unless you're planning on delving into the black arts, we'll never know. Have you had any luck finding the Headmaster?"
Bones nods, "He's in his office with the Goblet of Fire, and he's sealed it off." Indicating the carnage around them, she asks, "What do you think?"
Moody shakes his head, "We're damn lucky that she only had 10 arrows, and that what ever happened when she tried to shoot Madam Maxime happened. I have no doubt that she'd have slaughtered everyone between her and the Goblet."
Bones narrows her eyes, "Why?"
Moody holds up the tablet, "I would bet she can read this. If Professor Babbling is correct about her translation, then I'd have done the same thing. Except I wouldn't have waited for someone to throw the first spell."
Bones shakes her head, "We won't be able to ask her, as she's the professor that ran into the spell fire."
Madam Maxime and Mr Karkaoff both join the two of them and Maxime asks, "Where did the creature go?"
Moody just holds up the tablet so that the two headmasters can see it. As Maxime registers just what she's looking at, she pales, "Mon Dior, we were attacking a child?"
Grimly Bones nods, "We were, and it's quite likely that she thinks we're trying to kill her. When she returns, she's probably going to attack first rather than trying to approach peacefully."