The blonde was swept off her feet and sucked hungrily through the sea of shards and into the void beyond. With no time to think, only to react, Hazel did the only thing she could.
Dive in headfirst after her.
Chapter 41
Day of the Dead
Hazel expected wind.
That was a reasonable expectation, she would think; any time she had ever fallen from any substantial height, she had felt the wind on her face and rushing over her short hair. Except this place, whatever and wherever it was, had no wind, maybe even no air to create wind. There were no features by which to judge her location, either. The only glimpse of anything she could see were flashes of something from the corners of her eyes, lit only by the blood-red light of her campfire sphere shining into the mirror some unknowable distance above her.
The longer she fell, though, the rarer those flashes became until she could almost imagine herself floating weightlessly in absolute darkness.
A sudden flash of bright light blinded her, and she went from floating to tumbling uncontrollably in the blink of an eye. Hard surfaces smashed into her feet and then her knees. She folded herself into a ball and let the impacts do as they would around her until they finally came to a stop.
Opening her eyes, Hazel watched as a stone wall in front of her shifted like a strange monochrome kaleidoscope, lines orienting themselves as the area of constant movement shrank smaller and smaller until what was left was perfectly still. She lay still for another minute, letting the aches from her crash landing fade from her awareness. What had she gotten herself into this time?
Aggravated chirping caught her attention, and she looked up to find Morgan circling above her head. You didn't have to come along, she told the bird as she pushed herself to her feet. His only response was a sharp, piercing tweet. Well, what was I supposed to do, she demanded, let Sally-Anne fall in and just not care?
Although I have to wonder how much I really needed to worry, she continued while looking at her surroundings. The plain stone walls looked very castle-y, and while she had not been in many castles, her mind immediately went to the most likely option: Hogwarts.
Was that mirror literally just a fancy secret passage within its own secret passage? If so, that would be the most disappointing discovery she had made since learning about this new world of magic.
Although that did not answer the question of the dusty abandoned rucksack, she reminded herself. If this was just a portal to another part of the castle, Titania Ogden would have swung back by to grab her stuff. Something had happened, and it was just a matter of what…
Hazel's eyes found a tapestry hanging on the wall down the corridor a short distance, and she frowned as she walked closer. She would not pretend to have made an inventory of every single tapestry throughout the whole castle, but over the last couple of months she had seen a decent number of them. There was no shared theming or consisted subject, but they had all had the same extremely basic structure: semi-realistic people depicted in realistic activities. Some depicted historical moments, others were essentially woven still lifes, but all of them were of people doing people things. This tapestry, however, was much more abstract, smears of faded color mingling together with neither rhyme nor reason.
Honestly, without any reference she would have guessed the weaver had seen a gallery of modern art and decided he could do it better.
You know, that mirror being a portal to a different castle is looking better and better as an explanation, she told Morgan. And now she was worried whether she had arrived at the same destination as Sally-Anne because she could see no sign of the blonde at all even though she had jumped into the mirror mere instants later. If that had been long enough for them to go different places, there was no way she would be able to find her friend—
"…enoge va hdl uoceh skn ihtuoyode rehw…"
Her head popped up as a strange voice, still just above a whisper, drifted all around her. This sounded different from the first voice she had heard, but she could not tell if it was because she was now within this castle instead of being separated by a pane of glass or if it was truly another voice entirely.
More importantly than anything, however, was the implication. If this was the same voice, simply no longer distorted by the mirror, then she was in the same place she had overheard before they fell through. Which meant that Sally-Anne had to be somewhere around here; it was just a question as to where. If she could speak, or even if she had any other means of making herself heard, she could call out to her friend. As it was, she had no way to do that.
Note to self, work on that next. This might honestly be more important to work on than the countercharm was. She could see it having more ready applications if nothing else.
Although, if all she needed was for someone to make some noise, who said it had to be her who did it? She reached out her hand waited for Morgan to flutter onto her wrist. Okay, I think I have a plan, she told him, but I'm going to need your help. Step one, sing as loud as you can. Step two, we both listen in case Sally-Anne responds. What do you think?
Morgan stared at her for several long seconds, but before she could start explaining the reasoning for her plan, he puffed up as he took a long breath. What then came out of him was really less of a song so much as it was a screech. Nevertheless, she thought as she tried to rub the high-pitched ringing out of her ears, it was definitely loud, and that was what she had asked of him.
She did not hear anything after that, which she could have attributed to either the ringing or there just not being anything to hear, but Morgan's senses were more finely attuned than her own were. He popped his head up and looked to her left, further down the hallway that intersected another corridor, then took wing yet again with a happy chirp. No other options at hand, she shrugged and followed after him.
Morgan took a left, then shortly thereafter took a sharp right down another intersecting hallway. This one was not straight like all the corridors she was used to from Hogwarts, instead curved gracefully, but thankfully following the curve not only kept Morgan in sight but eventually brought another much-appreciated view. Namely a blonde girl in a black robe looking around another corner.
"…suevi g'dluown rohgluse veile btna ci… ded netnie htah wenoyn alle t'cirdogdid… ned dihstie re hwe calpeh t-tatoof daptog…"
The voices – and it was definitely multiple voices, she had no doubts about that anymore – were more defined now, but the way they were talking over each other made it difficult to hear any of them clearly. Sally-Anne also was not turning around to look at her. Could she see the source of the voices? Was that what had her so distracted? Or was it something more malevolent?
Hazel's steps slowed the closer she got to Sally-Anne and the corner, and rather than risk getting her hand torn off when something awful like Sally-Anne being possessed inevitably happened she turned her staff horizontal and tentatively poked the other girl in the shoulder. That was enough to get the attention she desired, Sally-Anne spinning around with a terrified yelp before she could cover her mouth and strangle the sound coming forth. Her eyes met Hazel's, and she would not have needed to be a mind-reader to feel the relief coming from the blonde. "Hazel!" she whispered harshly. "Oh thank you, Jesus. I thought it was something coming to eat me. Don't do that!"
'Why are you whispering?'
"Because I don't want to attract their attention… Just look. I don't know where we are, but I want out of here please."
Those thought were anything but reassuring, and Hazel leaned around the edge with all due caution. What she saw made her eyes widen.
The hallway beyond was filled with spirits. They were not Hogwarts ghosts, but neither were they spirits in the same vein as the hungry ghosts in de Rais's tower or the scoured clearing. They had color, normal human coloration even, but even a short glance was proof that they had no solidity; their flesh and their black robes were transparent. Their movements were also unusual. Some of them walked normally, but others seemed to stutter, disappearing and reappearing a few feet away from where they had stood with no visible transition. A few were walking backwards even, slipping through other spirits who seemed not to notice their fellow entities phasing through them.
And perhaps strangest of all, they were not walking on the floor. They were all traversing the far wall as if gravity itself was sideways.
Hazel stepped back and pressed herself against the wall beside her. Despite several deep breaths, she could not calm her racing heart nor fully push away the memories of the multiple fae and spirits that had tried to eat her at some point or another. These are not the hungry ghosts, she reminded herself. They are just colorful ghosts, like the ghosts of Hogwarts but dyed. Or like Peeves; annoying but not a threat. You've fought more dangerous entities than these."
"Are you okay? She doesn't look okay. She looks terrified. What does that mean for me?"
She opened her eyes to find Sally-Anne looking at her fearfully, and that was finally enough to force her fears to return to their corners in the back of her mind. She had dealt with worse creatures, worse spirits, and she was not alone. Sally-Anne was not fragile per se, but she did not have experience in the bizarre and occult aspects of the magical world the way Hazel did. If she could not keep her head, neither of them were going to make it out of this place alive.
'I'm fine. Seeing ghosts of any kind bring back bad memories,' she explained with an embarrassed smile. 'It made the first few days of school less than fun. But that's all they are. Just bad memories.'
And that was all they really were, weren't they? The lessons she had learned those days were important to keep with her, but she could not let the emotions of those days rule her. Caution and fear were not the same thing.
Another deep breath, and she looked directly at Sally-Anne. 'I don't think we're in Hogwarts anymore.'
"I don't either," Sally-Anne agreed, "but don't they look like they're wearing Hogwarts robes?"
That was not… Were they? She pushed off the wall and looked around the corner again. Paying closer attention this time, she still was not sure. 'They might be,' she allowed, 'but they could also just be black robes. I have yet to see many wizards wearing normal, modern clothing. Nor do I remember any ghosts that looked like this in the castle.'
"That's true."
As placid as they were behaving, the existence of strange spirits was a sign they should be elsewhere. Just in case this place was more similar to de Rais's tower than it appeared at first glance. 'Take my hands and hold on. I'm going to try teleporting us back to the castle.'
As soon as Sally-Anne was squeezing both her hands tight, she bent all her focus onto the gap in the wall around Hogwarts. She needed to be there, and she needed to open the tunnel wide enough that both she and Sally-Anne could fit through it. Her legs grew taut as she prepared to jump into and out of the strange watery world she traversed whenever she teleported.
Her will was strong. Her destination was clear in her mind. And yet, the dark purple fog that leaked from nowhere during her teleportations refused to appear.
A silent huff, and she wiggled her arm in a signal for Sally-Anne to release her grip. "We're still here. Nothing happened."
'Unfortunately not.' She gave Sally-Anne a shrug. 'It's not the first time that's been stopped, and I doubt it will be the last. It's irritating how wizards put these protections everywhere.
'We aren't out of options, though. We just need to figure out where we are and how to get back to Hogwarts. That means we need to walk past them. Hopefully they'll leave us alone, but if they don't?' She rolled her shoulders, and then a flick of her right wrist created her star knife in her hand. 'I'll take care of it.'
Sally-Anne's eyes grew wide as she stared at Hazel's hand. "What is that? Is that what she used to hurt Peeves? She made that same motion before he ran away, but this never happened!"
Hazel in turn started in surprise before raising the golden throwing dagger that had once upon a time been nothing more than her ghost hand reshaped into something approximating a lawn dart. 'You can see this?'
"Yeah. Am I not supposed to?"
'No one else ever has.' Which only raised more questions about where they were. Pushing said questions to the side until they had more information with which to answer them, she shifted her grip on her staff so she could carry it and her star knife and still be able to write. 'Stay close.'
They stepped around the corner, and when none of the spirits reacted with so much as a glance in their direction they slowly started striding down the hallway. Sally-Anne was following closely, just as Hazel ordered, and in fact was so close that she kept bumping into Hazel's back. It was not the most comfortable way to walk, but it was better than her being far away and Hazel not being able to react if—
A spirit stuttered a few feet away and reappeared right next to them. Morgan chirped in shock. Sally-Anne screamed. Hazel swung her right arm so she could push Sally-Anne behind her while she took a step back.
And by swinging her arm, she also swung her star knife. A line of green and golden sparks shimmered in the path of the blade's motion, and those sparks spread through the spirit's substance like tiny flames engulfing a slip of paper. In the time it took Hazel's racing heart to beat three times, the spirit was completely consumed. Not a scrap of it remained to prove its previous existence.
She rapidly looked to both sides, but none of the other spirits were attacking them for killing their fellow. They did not act as if they had even noticed it.
"You weren't joking about taking care of us," Sally-Anne whispered in relief. "That looked just like what happened to Peeves, except he isn't gone gone. He came back a few weeks later. Do you think it's going to come back?"
With a shrug, Hazel answered, 'I have no idea. I don't exactly go hunting spirits. It's more a matter of hurting them enough they stop chasing me. But if it is coming back, I don't think it will be anytime soon.' Or, more likely, it was truly dead. Or re-dead. Whatever the proper term for dispersing strange almost-ghosts like this was.
"If it won't come back soon, let's get out of here."
She was in no mood to argue, and they hurried down the hallway leaning as far away from the spirits as they could. To their relief there was an open doorway at the end of this section of the corridor, and when they passed through it they were greeted with a complete lack of ghosts. Confused, Hazel turned around to verify that yes, the spirits they had seen still existed. They just were appearing on that side of the doorway and not coming from this side.
How odd.
Sally-Anne visible relaxed now that they were out of the ghosts' reach, and soon the only sound coming to Hazel's ears was the steady tapping of her staff and their feet on the stone floor. This section of the castle had clearly been constructed at a different time than the first one, although the sign was fairly subtle. Namely, the stones that made up the floor and walls were no longer rectangular but instead were semi-consistent hexagons. The floors being built in such a way she could understand, but the walls? She had never heard of walls that were designed like this.
Another doorway, closed this time, waited for them around another bend in the hall, and a silent nod passed between the two girls before Sally-Anne pushed it open and immediately jumped out of sight. Not that her caution was rewarded; the door opened into another intersection, with one hallway continuing on straight and another going to the right and ending in stairs headed downwards. Faded red carpets decorated the floor, and to the left was a large window framed in brass from which sunlight streamed in.
The window was the most welcome sight. 'Let's see where we are,' she told Sally-Anne. There was no guarantee either of them would recognize any landmarks, but if they could see a town or something, they would at least have a source of information. Although just getting out of this castle should be enough to let her jump them both back to Hogwarts. A faint film of moisture coated the glass, but that was quickly wiped away.
What was revealed stole Hazel's breath away.
There was no town outside the window. No forest, no pastures, no grassland or desert. There was nothing but cerulean sky. Instead of clouds, she could see great chunks of ground floating weightlessly, and every single one of those rocks had a building upon it. Some of them, much like the castle in which they stood, were stone buildings that looked remarkably like Hogwarts. Another was a Viking-style longhouse built from wood, and over to one side she could just barely make out a shimmering edifice of ice and glass that was less real place and more a child's imagining of a fairy castle. She could even see one building that was not a building so much as it was a squat tree that had branches twisted into rooms and bridges. The sight of it was both awe-inspiring and a source of irrational envy that they had not found themselves there instead.
"Where are we?" asked Sally-Anne. "You haven't looked away from the window for… Oh my goodness. Where are we?"
Hazel shook her head and turned to meet Sally-Anne's brown eyes. 'I don't know,' she admitted. Saying anything else would be an obvious lie. 'But I don't think we're in our world anymore.'
"If we aren't in our world," began Sally-Anne nervously, "what world are we in? No one has ever said anything about other worlds. Wouldn't this be something people are supposed to know so we can stay away from them?"
'There is no way to tell. I haven't seen them explained in any wizard books, but I've found mentions here and there about portals to other worlds. Like the realms of the fae. Not places people typically want to go.' This probably was not a fae world, not with so many versions of Hogwarts floating around, but since the portal to the Greenwild beneath Glastonbury Tor had been shut untold centuries ago and she had refused to interact with the one sitting at the peak of Elva Hill, she could not say anything for certain. The fae could stay in their worlds, and she would stay far far away. 'If the mirror we found is a portal to this place, there should be a second portal to get us home. We just have to find it.'
"A second portal. Do you think it will be another mirror?"
She tilted her head and considered that. It was not an unlikely possibility, and it was a better idea than any she had at the moment. 'Maybe. The only question is where it is. I don't think the mirror on our side was supposed to be in that passage we found, so searching for the passage itself probably won't help us much. Assuming we even could find it in the first place.'
Sally-Anne frowned in thought, both of them trying to work out where they might find a magic mirror portal. "The staircases," Sally-Anne finally said. "Remember how there are all those moving portraits on the walls? If anyone was going to put a magic mirror anywhere, that would make the most sense."
That was better than her guess. She had been wondering if it might be within the trophy room or else one of the bathrooms, but the mirror had been more ornate than anything she had seen in any lavatory within the real Hogwarts. 'That sounds like a good place to start.'
A bone-shaking noise came from outside the window, and they both looked through it to find a scene of devastation. Two of the chunks of earth had collided in the sky, and the force had been enough that they were no longer small planetoids but instead expanding clouds of rock and soil. The buildings upon them had likewise shattered, sending scraps of wood and glass and stone in every direction.
Staring at the destruction, a new worry entered Hazel's mind. Every castle outside had been on a floating piece of rock. Was it more likely that theirs was the exception or that it was just yet another of that number? And if they were also floating aimlessly around, what were the chances they were going to crash into something as well?
Their eyes met, and a second later they turned around and ran for the stairs behind them, taking them two at a time in their haste. Sally-Anne's imagination had clearly gone to the same place hers had. Neither of them wanted to bet on surviving such a collision. After several floors they ran out of stairs, but the landing had a door they shoved open to reveal another room filled with colorful ghosts.
A twinge of anxiety tried to fill her mind, but the knowledge that they were living on an unknown amount of borrowed time was too strong for that fear to find any purchase. They barreled through the crowd of spirits, ethereal essence parting before them like mist rather than anything substantial.
The hallways continued in an unbroken line for several more minutes, and by the time Sally-Anne was flagging and Hazel herself was starting to feel winded, the sight of a dead-end room was almost a relief. 'Almost' because they still needed to backtrack the entire length of the hallways they had just run through. Sally-Anne all but collapsed against the nearest wall – decorated with wooden panels now rather than the stone that had been present in the rest of the building – and shook her head. "I'm done," she panted. "I can't keep going. How is Hazel even standing straight right now? I didn't think I was out of shape, but compared to her I have to be."
'Go ahead and catch your breath.' If they attempted to hurry back the way they came with Sally-Anne in this state, Hazel knew she was going to wind up having to carry the other girl. She might have a greater endurance, one of the benefits of walking back and forth across multiple countries for the last couple of years, but she did not have the strength to carry another person for very long. While Sally-Anne slid to the ground, she took stock of the room they were in. It looked like it was supposed to be a study or personal library of sorts, with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves covering two of the four walls and a window looking out onto that same disturbing sky on the nearest wall.
She wandered over to that window and looked outside, nodding to herself when she saw no planetoid currently hurtling towards them from this side. That did not guarantee their safety from the other side of the castle, but it was something. She also had a good angle of a slanted section of rooftop just below them, which had her staring for several seconds before she could put her finger on just what was bothering her about the scene.
Hogwarts did not have any rooftop like that on the side of the main building. It was only at the top of the building, and while the multitude of towers rose above the roof, they were not currently in a tower. So why would there be tiled rooftop right there?
And for that matter, why was there a personal study here? The common room and the library had no rooms like this, and Professor Sprout's office had not looked like it either. Perhaps Professor Flitwick's office might, but then where were the books?
Had this castle already exploded? It was hard to imagine it coming back together after suffering a collision as massive as the one they had witnessed, but it would explain why this room was wooden instead of stone like the rest of the castle, and even why there had been sections of castle that looked so different than their neighbors. A conglomeration of castle pieces would not be expected to match perfectly. Maybe it was even why spirits were clustered so oddly; they belonged to the rooms they were in, but the adjacent rooms were elsewhere.
She looked out the window again, focusing on the rooftop below her and the wall adjacent to it. Sure enough, the windows did not line up. She could even see a window that was right next to the edge of the visible roof.
…Within arm's reach of the edge, potentially. And that gave her an idea.
Raising her staff like a club, she slammed it against the window. The glass shattered with a surprisingly loud crash, which in turn startled a shriek out of Sally-Anne. "What are you doing?! Has she gone mad? Please don't be going crazy."
'The windows don't have a way to open them,' she quickly wrote out while scraping her staff along the insides of the window she had broken to knock out all the leftover sharp pieces of glass.
"Okay, but why do you need the windows open at all?"
Another swing shattered the other side of the window, leaving only a central support section of the frame with open air on either side. 'There's a window down there that we can use to get to a lower floor. We just need to walk on the roof below us.'
Sally-Anne got up from the floor and walked over to the broken window. "That's a long way down, Hazel," she said, pointing out the obvious. "How are we even supposed to get down there?"
Hazel had already shoved her arm into her satchel, and when she pulled it out she had a bundle of white rope in her hand. More than a year ago, back when she made her bottomless bag, she had cut off a length of this very rope to make the strap that was currently looped around her torso. When she left that little town, she had shoved the remaining length of rope into the bag just in case she needed it. She had then forgotten all about it until the prior month when she cleaned out all the empty food tins and other trash that had gathered inside the infinite space of her bag and did inventory of what was left.
And a good thing she had done that inventory because now it was coming in handy.
"What's that supposed— Oh, no no no no!"
'It will be fine,' she told her friend as she wrapped one end of the rope around the central support of the frame and tied it off tight. A few tugs, and she gave her work a nod. It felt like it would hold, and that was all that really mattered. She was not earning extra points for it being pretty. The other end of the rope was unraveling from being cut to make the satchel strap, but another quick knot had that fixed as well. Picking up the middle of the rope, she tossed the whole thing out the window.
The rope itself was thirty, maybe forty feet long, which meant it fell the entire height of the wall and probably half the width of the sloped roof as well. That should give them plenty of slack. Hazel turned her head to look at the still-panicking Sally-Anne. 'We'll be fine,' she wrote again. 'I'll go first, then you can come down. I'll be there to help you if you slip or get stuck. Here, hold my staff and drop it out the window when I give you the signal.'
Once Sally-Anne was holding her maple staff in a death grip, Hazel stuck her head and then her entire upper body out of the window. From how clear the sky was – ignoring the obvious exception of the floating castles – she had assumed that the air would equally still and calm. Instead a surprisingly fast wind smacked her in the face and blew her hair around as best it could.
The rope was looking better and better in retrospect, and she gripped it in one hand as she wiggled the rest of her body out of the window. A jaunty salute to Sally-Anne was the only warning she gave before pushing away from the stone wall and wrapping her legs around the rope.
Despite the speed of the winds, the slide down the rope was actually uneventful until she reached the rooftop itself. The black tiles were slick with moisture, and it was difficult to keep her footing. Looking up to the window, she found Sally-Anne poking her own head out of the window and trying desperately to hold her hair back out of her face. Hazel made a come-hither motion with her hand, hoping Sally-Anne would get the message.
The blonde head disappeared, and a moment later a long staff extended out of the window and fell.
Her hand was already outstretched, and it took no effort at all to call the staff to her. When she had woken up the morning after being attacked outside the library, she had wanted to slap herself for forgetting this ability of her staff. Without forgetting about it she would not have learned that her staff hated being parted from her as much as it did, but the panic at thinking her staff was potentially gone forever was not something she wanted to go through a second time. Thankfully between it coming to her when she called and the ability to just appear by her side, she would never experience such a fear again.
She crouched as low as she could to minimize the pull of the wind, then using the rope as a guide and her staff as a third leg she started sliding down the slope of the roof. Pulled taut, the rope was nearly long enough to make it all the way to the edge of the roof where there was a section of flat stone roughly a foot wide. She did not know if it was meant to serve as a walkway, but that was the purpose to which they would put it now. The only downside was that she did not know how well Sally-Anne would be able to descend with the rope at an angle like this, and even if she could hang on she would be going so fast that Hazel was unsure if she would be able to catch Sally-Anne without both of them going off the edge.
Hazel lightly pressed the butt of her staff against the stone 'walkway', then she let go and pressed against it with her forearm. The staff remained upright even with the entirety of her weight against it. She had not been sure that this would work, but it made sense; she already knew her staff could support its own weight when she intended it to stand up, so the only question was whether it could hold more than that. Apparently it could.
She let go of the rope and watched it retreat to lay flat against the wall, and with one arm wrapped around the staff she gestured with the other for Sally-Anne to join her.
She then proceeded to wait for what must have been three minutes until Sally-Anne had gathered enough courage to try crawling out of the window.
The other girl was clearly out of her depth when it came to climbing down a rope, which Hazel thought was odd. This was not something she had learned during her two years on the road; this was an exercise she had to do several times in physical education class while she still attended primary school in Little Whinging. The blonde was managing it, though, and at the end of the day that was what they needed.
Everything went fine until Sally-Anne tried to stand up at the base of the wall. Hazel already knew that the tiles were slick, and clearly Sally-Anne was discovering the same thing. The only difference was that Hazel had held onto the rope.
Sally-Anne took a step, slipped, and let go as she screamed.
The girl started sliding down the roof, her trajectory not pointed directly at Hazel but rather at a slight angle. Hazel spun around her staff and reached out with the arm not preoccupied holding herself still. If she could grab Sally-Anne, she should be able to stop her fall—
Their hands collided, except Sally-Anne's speed was too great just as Hazel had feared earlier. Instead of catching them both, Hazel's hand grabbed Sally-Anne's wrist a moment before her feet came off the walkway and her arm was yanked free of the staff.
And then they both were falling.
Pomona leaned back into the upholstered chair in the staffroom, a hot cup of tea warming her hands after the early chill suffusing the grounds and the greenhouses. She hated Thursdays; having both OWL classes on the same day was bad enough, and them being scheduled back to back just made it worse.
At least today's lesson was on self-fertilizing shrubs. Those were easy plants to care for due to their carnivorous natures, and whenever she brought them out she never had to worry about keeping the children's attention focused on the material at hand—
The door to the staffroom banged open, startling Pomona out of a near-doze, and she glanced over to find Minerva storming in with a glare as if the scattered chairs and the single sofa had done something to personally offend her. Then Minerva's seething eyes met her own, and she sighed. Why could whatever was going on not be the chairs' fault, again?
"What is it now?" she asked, knowing one of the few ways to get Minerva to calm down was to let her vent about whatever it was that had riled her up in the first place. The Scotswoman was a good deputy headmistress and a reliable friend most of the time, but whenever her anger had been stoked she was nearly intolerable. More than once Pomona had been tempted to spray the other woman with a blast of water just to see if that would be enough of a shock to derail her, but sadly it was equally likely that all it would do would be to make things worse.
"Potter," Minerva all but snarled. "She skipped class today. Again, and now she has Perks skiving off as well!"
"Oh, you mean detention didn't work?" Perhaps the snark was unnecessary, but Pomona could not help it. Finding out about Potter's latest detention at dinner a couple of nights ago had been a nasty surprise, and hearing afterwards from the prefects about the diatribe Minerva had gone on? That had just made her more upset. "Considering she has apparently spent almost a month avoiding you in general? I doubt trying to humiliate her in the middle of the Great Hall went over well, either."
"Not like you helped, Pomona."
"Because you didn't tell me about it until last week!" she snapped back. "I have had time to talk to her once about it. Once. I explained to her why she needed to go back to class; I even told her she needed to apologize. But she has a specific dislike for you on the level I've only ever seen aimed at Severus, for Merlin's sake.
"Do you remember Newton? Nine years back or so? Remember how he stopped going to Potions class because of Severus's attitude?"
The non sequitur derailed whatever response Minerva had prepared, and after thinking for a moment the dark-haired witch nodded. "Vaguely. He was a Ravenclaw, I think."
"He was. He decided he had had enough of being belittled twice a week, and no number of detentions or amount of points taken from Ravenclaw was going to change his mind. From what Filius told me, it was only by discussing the risks of him failing his Potions OWL that finally got him to go back at all, and then he dropped it before he even left on the Express at the end of the year."
Minerva huffed and crossed her arms. "What's your point?"
"My point is that once a student is willing to go so far as to just start skipping class and damn the consequences, blindly assigning them punishments will not rein them in. It took an entire term to change Newton's mind, and he was a fifth-year. Potter is eleven and already that stubborn." Which, considering the girl's circumstances, was understandable even if it did not excuse her resultant behavior. "If you had been patient for more than one bloody day, I could have talked her into returning to your class, but now she's just as likely to only dig in even more! And frankly," she added, "your attitude is not helping the situation."
"My attitude?!"
"Scolding her in front of both the Hufflepuffs and the Gryffindors? Assigning her detention with Filch without so much as a by-your-leave? Generally overstepping your bounds?" prodded Pomona.
"Overstepping?" Minerva puffed up like an angry cat. "This is my class she refuses to attend!"
"But she's in my house!" Frustration welling up, Pomona stood from her chair and started pacing, her eyes never leaving Minerva's. "That means you do not have the right to start handing out punishments willy-nilly without informing me—"
"Who is doing what willy-nilly?" Pomona and Minerva broke their staring contest so they could both glare at Filius. He, meanwhile, just raised one eyebrow before walking over to the diminutive set of steps placed in front of the bar along the wall so he could reach the kettle. "I don't know what you two are arguing about, but I could hear it coming down the hallway."
"Potter," they both said at once.
"Ah, I see. I agree, she's in an unfortunate situation," he said, his back facing them and therefore missing Minerva's narrowed eyes. "I applaud her determination. Most people would find it too hard to push against those same obstacles day after day."
Still seething, Minerva spat out, "She's decided she's too good for my class."
"Like Newton did with Severus," added Pomona.
"…Oh."
Sighing once more, though this time with a touch of humor despite herself, she turned back to Minerva. "Look, I understand to a degree. We all thought she would be like her parents and go into Gryffindor. But she didn't. She's a Badger, and I expect you to start treating her like you would any of my Hufflepuffs. That means not waiting for three weeks to tell me about this kind of behavior and not trying to punish her without telling me about it beforehand." Pomona raised her left hand and pointed at Minerva. "Especially since both of you are too angry at each other to make good choices. She at least is a child and is expected to make dumb decisions. You don't have that excuse."
Minerva opened her mouth to argue back with her, but with a grimace she closed both mouth and eyes and took several slow, deep breaths. Pomona could almost hear her counting to ten in Scots Gaelic. Finally she let out a long sigh and opened her eyes again. "I'm sorry for not telling you about Potter's behavior when it started. And that I gave her detention with Argus without informing you."
Pomona nodded her acceptance, but before she could say anything more Filius turned around with a cup of fresh tea in his hands and asked, "I assume this has to do with her lack of a wand?"
Wait. Potter had said she stopped going to Transfiguration and Defense Against the Dark Arts because they both required a wand. So did Charms, but the girl had not mentioned that class. Which would mean… "Is she still attending your lectures?"
"Of course. I did not know that she wasn't going to Minerva's."
She glanced over at Minerva, who looked equally confused. "That seems… odd, considering her stated reasons for not going to Transfiguration class." Unless the real reason was whatever dispute they had that made Potter personally dislike the other witch? If that were the case, they might have even more difficult of a fight on their hands.
"Perhaps, but perhaps not." Filius hopped down from his personal stepladder and sipped his tea as he continued, "As focusing on simply wand movements and incantations would be useless to her, I also started teaching what is known about the arithmantic properties of the spells, including what is hypothesized about how the spell functions. In essence, what the spell does to the world itself.
"To be fair, I do not know how useful that has actually been to Miss Potter, but she showcased substantial mastery of the Levitation Charm in my class this morning, including the ability to move objects in multiple directions. This normally requires a more advanced spell than simply levitation, and I will take that as a positive sign."
Minerva's frown had become something closer to a scowl during Filius's explanation. When it was clear he was finished, she replied, "The inner working of transfigurative magics is obtuse enough that it is still debated amongst experts in the field. You'll have to forgive me for refusing to bog down what is already a difficult subject in order to cater to one student's delusions."
"Delusions?" Pomona repeated in surprise. What in the world was Minerva talking about?
"Perhaps 'delusions' is a strong word, but I do not know what else to call her belief that she is incapable of using a wand."
"Except she isn't wrong about that. When you told me about what she said in class, I took her to Ollivander that next weekend," she reminded her colleague. "He confirmed what she said. He was unable to find a wand that would work for her."
All her statement earned was an unimpressed look. "Then you should have taken her to another wandmaker. Ollivander is the best, I won't deny it, but he is not the only one in the British Isles or even London. Just because he did not have the right wand for her means only that, not that the right wand does not exist." She crossed her arms. "I also wonder whether she couldn't use any of them or just couldn't use one to his satisfaction, but as I was not there I will assume it is the former."
"And I asked him about that same thing. It wasn't that he didn't have the right wand; it was that she could not be paired with one. He told me directly that going to anyone else would just get the same result."
"Imagine that, a shopkeeper didn't want you to take your business to his competitors. Color me shocked," replied Minerva sarcastically. "At the end of the day, there are only two possibilities: either Potter is a witch, in which case she needs a wand, or she truly cannot use a wand, in which case she should not be here. Hogwarts is a school for young witches and wizards, not Squibs."
"She's not a Squib." There was no room for doubt in Filius's voice. "I don't know what she is, but it's not that. I know wizards who claim to have learned magic without need for a wand, who spent years studying just such a thing in school. Miss Potter already puts all of them to shame, and she's only going to get better at it. Whether she's truly incapable of using a wand is another matter, but what she's doing is different enough from what is commonly accepted as even being possible that I wouldn't rule it out."
In all honesty, Pomona wished she had Filius's conviction on this topic. For the moment, though, she looked back at Minerva. "And what then? Let's assume for the sake of argument that you are right and we force her to start using a wand. How is someone who can't speak going to learn magic? Unless you think she's 'deluded' about that as well."
Both of Minerva's hands rose defensively. "That one I believe," she quickly denied. "A Killing Curse to the throat 'killing' her voice makes too much sense, and I have not heard her make a single sound. Not even involuntarily. But as for learning magic? We teach students how to cast spells silently, so there is no reason she could not start there."
"You mean other than how difficult it is for sixth-year students to do it? Or competent witches who have already graduated? I don't know about you, but trying to cast silently is still something I struggle with for everything except the most basic of spells, and you expect an eleven-year-old girl to learn magic that way from the very beginning? Girl-Who-Lived or not, that is too high of a bar.
"What would you do in this situation?" Pomona asked Filius. "You seem to be the only one of us who has connected to her at all. If she were in your house and Minerva told you she was skipping class, what would you tell her?"
"Er…" That was not reassuring. "I would… probably talk to her about how important it is to learn the information, even if it is not directly practical? Magical knowledge is interconnected, although several of those connections are murky or hotly debated—"
"Blasted Vanishing Charm," muttered Minerva.
Filius nodded. Pomona, on the other hand, merely rolled her eyes. They debated how that spell worked during the winter holidays every single year; did they really need to get into it now? "Regardless, by learning the theoretical underpinnings of Transfiguration, it would still advance her understanding of magic as a whole and may in turn help her with the kinds of magic she is capable of using."
"I'm sure the OWL examiners would love that explanation," muttered Minerva. "Let's not forget that it isn't just our classes she needs to pass. Do you think the Ministry will care about her excuses? Catering to her will only leave her unprepared for the OWLs and unable to do anything of worth if she makes it to graduation."
On that point, Pomona had nothing to say because Minerva was right. She might need to use Filius's argument the next time she talked to Potter about this – although she personally did not think it was much different from what she had already told the girl. Maybe she should have Filius tell her that himself in case she would be more open to hearing those arguments coming from someone she held in higher esteem? – but it would not change anything outside of the castle.
She had never taught a mute student nor one who could not use a wand, and both of those put together? To the best of her knowledge and Irma's research, no such child had attended Hogwarts in the couple hundred years and possibly ever. How was she, were any of them, supposed to know how best to help Potter?
Filius huffed to himself. "At least we don't have to worry about explaining any of this to her parents."
The wry comment put a reluctant smile on Pomona's face. That was not appropriate. True, and amusingly phrased, but not appropriate.
"No, we would just have to explain it to Albus," Minerva muttered bitterly.
"What does he even think of all this?"
The Transfiguration professor shook her head. "You know him. As long as it isn't going to get a student killed, he keeps his hands to himself. 'Experience is the best teacher, my dear,'" she quoted in an exaggerated old man wheeze, "'and we should encourage learning however it is found.' I tried to bring it up again the last time we spoke over the Floo, but his attention is focused entirely on whatever he is working on in Geneva. Some dispute between the Ministries of Greece and Turkey; he didn't go into details."
The three of them exchanged long-suffering looks. Not for the first, the tenth, or even the hundredth time Pomona wondered what Hogwarts would be like if Albus would focus his attention solely on Hogwarts instead of splitting his time between three different full-time positions in two different countries. She doubted anything about how he managed situations in the school would change, but having the headmaster be available at any given moment would be nice.
And it would probably improve Minerva's temper dramatically if she were not playing the roles of professor, deputy headmistress, and acting headmistress all at the same time.
"This situation does not end with Potter, however," Minerva continued. "As I said earlier, it was not just Potter who skipped class. Perks did not show up, either. This is the danger of letting her refusal to come to class go unanswered. If other students see her getting away with it, no matter the justification, they may start skipping classes they find too difficult or even simply uninteresting. What do you think would happen if we allowed our students to ignore necessary classes just because they don't want to go?"
"Severus's classes would be empty," Filius said over the rim of his teacup.
Minerva's lips were pressed into a thin line as she glared at the other professor, but his cheerful mood was unflappable. After several moments, she huffed through her nose. "Besides that, we also risk the majority of our students failing their OWLs and being incapable of qualifying for the careers they want.
"Hogwarts is considered the finest institute of magic in Britain, arguably in Europe itself, and we cannot risk the loss of that prestige in order to cater to a single student."
"Catering is a matter of perspective," Filius replied, "but there will be plenty of time to argue about that in the coming days and weeks, I'm sure. I think we're all hungry, and that shortens tempers. Let us head to the feast before we discuss anything else."
Something wrapped around Hazel's own wrist, and she silently screamed when she felt both her arms try to pull out of their sockets at the same time. The pain did not diminish, which she supposed should be a good thing; it meant both arms were still attached.
Now she just needed to figure out how to get them to safely.
Her right arm was the first one she tried to move. Sally-Anne was heavy, no matter how weightless she looked dangling out in the cloudless sky, but with a near Herculean effort she finally managed to bring the other girl close enough to wrap her entire arm around her. That was half the problem solved.
She looked over to the left to discover who in this strange world had stopped her own fall, and her eyes widened in utter shock. There was no hand wrapped around her wrist; it was instead a tangle of vines. Vines that stretched several feet back to the head of her staff. She gripped the vines with her hand, pulling herself back to her staff and the castle, and the vines themselves seemed to respond to the motion and pull on her as well. In short order her toes touched the edge of the building, and then she lurched forwards to put both herself and Sally-Anne back onto solid stone.
While the blonde was busy clutching onto the stone and shaking in terror at the near-death experience she had just experienced, Hazel watched the vines retract from around her arm. They were pulled back into the staff, and the last few inches curled around the staff and appeared to merge with the wood. There was no readily obvious sign they had ever existed, no cracks or carvings, but now that she was paying attention she could almost see the outlines of individual vines in the grain of the wood.
That was new. Her staff had never done anything like that before.
Another blast of wind hit them, and her hand lashed out like a viper to grab the collar of Sally-Anne's robe. She did not want to chance them flying off the edge once again. A quick pull brought Sally-Anne upright, and then they had both grabbed the staff. For a moment the staff wobbled, sending a fresh shiver of fear down her spine, but then it held firm once more.
'Hold on tight,' she told Sally-Anne, and only when the blonde nodded did she reach out her hand. A waggle of her fingers conjured a ghostly hand that latched onto the knot at the end of the rope and pulled it towards them. A gap of a mere few feet separated them.
Waiting for the next gust of wind to die down as little as it was going to do, she lunged forwards and caught the knot. A relieved sigh escaped her; that was the hard part done. After adjusting her grip slightly to free her left hand, she wrote, 'Okay, take my hand.'
"What happens when I do?!" Sally-Anne shouted to be heard over the roaring winds. "Your staff is still stuck!"
'Let me worry about that.'
The toneless nature of her writing calmed the churning pit of worry within Sally-Anne's belly, and the other girl waited just as she had before reaching out to grab Hazel's outstretched hand at the wrist. Now that both of them were linked to the rope, the staff seemed to understand that it was no longer necessary. Sally-Anne staggered when it came free from the stone walkway.
Hazel gave her a smile and jerked her head towards the window that was their goal. Now that they both had the security of the rope, the winds were not so terrifying. The rooftop was still slick, and more than once one or the other slipped and fell to one knee, but soon they were close enough to their destination that they could see the wooden walls within. They were also close enough to realize they had a major issue: the rope that was their safety line to the castle at large was too short to let them walk all the way to the window.
"The rope is too short. How are we going to get over there?!"
Why did Sally-Anne have to be perceptive enough to see the same issue Hazel did? She bit her lower lip and tried to think. Could they use her staff as an anchor point and make a human chain to reach the window? She looked at the distance again before shaking her head. That would be a stretch, pun not intended, and the winds were too dangerous to act rashly. The idea to use the staff's vines crossed her mind but was immediately dismissed for the simple fact that she had no idea how the staff had done that in the first place; it had not been an act of her will, that much was sure. If she could just jump over there, that would make all this simplicity itself, but the castle still had those blasted protections over it—
Or did it?
Hazel cast her mind back to her previous attempt at teleportation. She had been trying to get from here to Hogwarts, and when that failed she assumed it was because of magic preventing just that. Of course, she had also assumed they were on Earth, and they most definitively were not. The only other time she had stepped foot in another plane of existence was during her fight with the spirit of the scoured clearing, and at that time she had also been unable to jump away.
Was jumping across realities impossible? That was all too easy to believe, and it would neatly explain everything she had seen thus far. It also meant her favorite option to handle problems was still open to her. And testing this possibility was also easy; after all, she could see the interior of the room beyond the window.
A deep breath to steady her own nerves as her legs tightened in preparation, and she let go of the rope. She pushed forwards with mind and body both—
—and she and Sally-Anne stumbled into a classroom that looked like it would be right at home within one of those recreated one-room schoolhouses from a couple of hundred years ago. She adjusted her robes from where they had been blown around by the winds and shrugged when Sally-Anne stared at her. 'That's how we are going to get over here.'
"I can't deal with any more of this. I just want the world to start making sense again. Can we leave now?" pleaded Sally-Anne.
The door opened into another hallway, this time once more made from stone, but luckily for them they could see what looked like a landing for stairs. Stairs, they realized looking down, were missing. The thoughts swirling within Sally-Anne's mind proved she was close to crying. "Can you do that teleport thing again?"
Taking Sally-Anne's hand, she did just that, moving them four flights of stairs down to reach the lowest floor. A floor that looked more than a little familiar, she realized glancing down the tall hallway that was revealed to them. 'Doesn't that look like the front doors of the castle?' she asked, pointing at the massive doors in question sitting in the distance. Because if those were the front doors, then the broken staircase they had just bypassed should have been the main staircase for the castle. The very place they had been searching for.
She glanced up to look at the walls of the staircase. No portraits to ask for directions, and definitely no mirrors.
"The front doors are just going to take us outside again, aren't they?"
'Probably,' she admitted. 'Let's go to the Great Hall and take a breather. We can figure out our next steps there.'
Sally-Anne gave her a weary nod, and they started the short walk to the doors of the Great Hall. Pushing the doors open, they cast their eyes about the space, and both of them were tempted to scream in some mixture of horror and frustration.
The enchanted ceiling did not show a cloudy sky. It did not even show the sky filled with crashing planetoids that surrounded them. Instead the entire ceiling had been replaced with pulsating grey-black fleshy material shot through with bloody red; it was as if the school was part cancerous tumor instead of stone and magic. None of the house tables were present, either, although there now were great gaping holes in the floor that neither of them wanted to fall into. As far as correlations to their Hogwarts went, this was the least inviting of them all.
Morgan chirped loudly in her ear, and she glanced over before following his gaze to the walls. Unlike the real world, here clearly portraits had been hung up along the walls of the Great Hall, and sure enough Morgan had spotted a mirror up in the corner with a blocky ugly frame that was a perfect match for their own. She nudged Sally-Anne in the side and pointed the mirror out, earning a sigh of relief from the other girl.
Now they just had to bring it down to the floor so they could see about activating it. Hazel could not remember using her ghost hand on anything that far away, but this was the perfect time to try. She sent the hand out while walking forward, intending to meet the mirror at the wall. Her spell succeeded in pulling the mirror off the wall, but it succeeded at something else as well.
The whole building seemed to shake, and disgusting slurping sounds came from the ceiling above them. The fleshy substance rippled and twisted, strands of material she could not even assign a name to pulling away to reveal a mouth with teeth poking out every which way. A mouth that then opened, revealing not a throat but an enormous yellow eye that rolled around examining the room before locking onto them with terrifying deliberateness.
"Hazel…"
'Run!' she wrote even as she pushed her feet to move faster than they had all day. Her ghost hand was still lowering the mirror, and she refused to let their avenue of escape vanish.
More wet sounds came from the ceiling followed by strands of tissue ending in chubby hands started descending from within the tumor, and Hazel had no intention of finding out what they would do to anyone they caught. The mirror was right there, and now that she was closer she could see that not only was it unbroken, but it showed a caved-in tunnel containing only a dusty rucksack and a wooden sphere glowing with red flames lying upon the ground. The sound of feet pounding on stone floor followed her, Sally-Anne still hot on her heels, so Hazel kept running. The instant the mirror touched the floor, she dismissed her ghost hand and leapt into the glass.
The transition from material world to lightless void was faster this time, as was the trip back out. Probably because she had moved into a solid, unbroken mirror this time. She tumbled out and crashed into a stone wall, Sally-Anne coming out less than a second later. The blonde lay on the ground, tears of relief pouring down her face, and muttered to no one, "No more adventures. No more. This was too much."
Hazel reached out to pat her on the head consolingly before climbing back to her feet. The mirror was still shattered on their end, which raised a number of questions. If someone touched it, would they be taken back to the same castle they had just escaped? A different one? Would they once again run into whatever that fleshy eye-mouth thing was—
One of the shards of glass turned jet black as a sulfurous yellow eye opened. Then another shard adjacent to it did the same. And a third. A fourth. A fifth.
Her star knife formed before she even had time to think about what she was doing and flew into the middle of the mirror. The pieces of glass next to the hole she had just created fell free, more following it in a shimmering, tinkling ripple. When the ripple hit the glass that showed that evil eye, they lost their darkness and reflected normal stone once again. Soon all that was left was an empty frame, which was still ominously creaking. The bottom of the frame lifted off the ground as the metal and wood collapsed onto itself with shrieks of tearing metal and the cracks of splintered wood. Everything crumpled smaller and smaller until it just vanished, not a sign left of the mirror except for the carpet of glass shards laying harmlessly on the floor.
Looking down at Sally-Anne's thousand-yard stare, Hazel shook her head. 'I think it's over now. I don't intend to stick around and find out.'
"Me neither." Sally-Anne stood and spent a moment trying to brush off the dust before giving up. "I don't care anymore. Professor McGonagall will just have to deal with me being dirty."
'You could always do like I do and skip,' teased Hazel, hoping the weak attempt at a joke would be enough to put a little life back into her friend. She reached down and grabbed the rucksack off the ground before slinging it over one shoulder. They still did not know what had happened to Titania Ogden, but considering the monster in the Great Hall? She doubted it had been anything fun or enjoyable. Or even survivable.
That, however, was not something Sally-Anne needed to hear right now. She would have better luck asking Professor Sprout or Professor Flitwick if they knew anything about a missing student from several years back.
Pushing the tapestry out of the way, Hazel frowned when she saw the torches set in the walls. Normally they burned quite brightly, but during her numerous episodes sneaking into the library she had learned that they automatically dimmed themselves whenever curfew arrived. The torches visible to her looked that same way right now, but how could that be? It had been mid-afternoon when they found the mirror, and surely they had not been running around that other Hogwarts for more than an hour. So why were the flames so dull now?
"Transfiguration is probably almost over by now, isn't it?" asked Sally-Anne, unaware of the direction of Hazel's thoughts. She stepped out of the tunnel as well and frowned. "Why is it so dark?"
'I think it might be later than we thought. Let's just go to the common room. Worst case scenario, we'll go to the Great Hall or something else afterwards.'
The dimmed lights were not limited to this section of hallway. As they continued to the main staircase and downwards towards the dungeons, every torch and lantern they passed were in the same state. A glance out of the nearest window revealed the answer why: while they were back in the real world, it was already late at night. Considering how many stories of time moving weirdly in the fae realms and other planes of existence, that much was not a surprise.
At this point Hazel just hoped it was still the same day and year!
A strange mixture of relief, anger, and lingering fear hit her when they were descending the stairs to the ground floor, and Hazel looked over at the source to find a familiar older girl with dyed yellow and purple hair running their way. Sidonia Smith looked both of them up and down when she came closer, her thoughts revealing just how worried she was on the inside. "Oh thank Merlin. They're walking under their own power, so they didn't get attacked. They had better have a damn good reason for being wherever they were! Potter! Perks! Where have you been?!"
Sally-Anne cringed backwards at the sharp tone of the prefect's voice, but Hazel honestly was too mentally exhausted to care. Rather than answer Sidonia's question directly, she asked, 'Have you ever heard of an enchanted mirror that sucks you into an alternate version of Hogwarts surrounded by a bunch of other Hogwartses floating in the sky? And occasionally they crash into each other and maybe come back together but with pieces of other castles replacing the ones they lost?'
"…What in the world is she talking about? Did they hit their heads and that's why they've been missing? There are lots of different types of enchanted mirrors, like the ones you can find in some of the bathrooms through the castle," Sidonia answered, latching onto the one thing Hazel had said that made any sense to her, "but I don't think I've ever heard of one that takes you to an alternate Hogwarts. That sounds all sorts of crazy, but so has nearly every other weird thing that's ever happened in this place. And most of the time they do start around Halloween. Dear Merlin, I really hope this year's 'mystery' isn't that we will have portals to who-knows-where popping up randomly all over the place. Even if it would explain the troll better than any other theory proposed so far. Ugh! The unmelting ice was bad enough!"
Hazel had not considered that, but the older students had told all of them about the strange things that happened on a yearly basis at this school. Was this what was going on now? And what did Sidonia mean about a troll? 'Well, if you run into one, I don't recommend touching it. It's not a fun place. I don't think we were the first ones to find it, either.' Curiosity rose within Sidonia's mind, and shrugging to herself Hazel offered up the only piece of evidence she had.
Sidonia caught the dusty rucksack and after a confused look at the pair started digging through the contents. Hazel could tell when she found the essays and notes because her interest sky-rocketed followed quickly by a swell of confusion. "This is homework. Not exactly the same as I had to do, but the topics are similar. But if it is real, how in the world would Hazel and Sally-Anne have gotten their hands on it? No first year would know these subjects were even taught. So it being fake makes no sense, and thus the only alternative is that it is, in fact, real." When Sidonia turned her gaze back to them, a sense of dawning realization and reluctant acceptance was building behind her eyes.
Deciding to give Sidonia a few minutes reprieve from the thoughts she did not want to think, Hazel asked, 'You looked really panicked when you saw us. What's going on?' The troll comment was a big hint that something strange had happened, something more concerning than the simple absence of a couple of first-year students.
"Oh, right. If they really disappeared inside some magic mirror, and I'm almost convinced they really did, they wouldn't know. A troll broke into the castle during the feast. Quirrell saw it and told us about it in the Great Hall. He's in the hospital wing last I heard, although whether he was injured or just fainted I don't know. What I wouldn't give to have a decent Defense professor more than one year out of three, I swear." Sidonia frowned. "I probably shouldn't tell them this, but if she's really wondering why I was so worried we already know of one girl who definitely was injured by the troll. She's at St. Mungo's now. Then we realized you two were missing, and here we are. I'll need to let Professor Sprout know she can call off the manhunt."
Sally-Anne had grabbed Hazel's hand during the explanation, and her grip had tightened to the point it was nearly painful. "What's St. M-M-Mungo's? I can't believe we were actually safer inside the mirror than we could have been out here."
"It's the magical hospital here in Britain. Madam Pomfrey is good, but she isn't a full Healer. I guess the girl's injuries were too bad to be fixed here. Oh no, she's looking very green right now. Please don't throw up. Last I heard, though, she was still breathing at the moment doing okay, so I'm sure they'll have her patched up and back to school in no time.
"But that's something for other people to worry about. You two sound like you had enough of an adventure all on your own. Let's get you back to the dorms so you can relax. And maybe clean yourselves up," she hinted.
A rumbling gurgle came from the direction of Sally-Anne's belly. Her thoughts and bright red blush revealed the depths of her embarrassment while Hazel just shook her head with a small smile. 'Mind if we pass by the kitchens first? We kind of missed dinner.'
Whoof. It took more than one sleepless night to get this done in time to post it today, but here we are. I couldn't let the scariest day of the year pass by without throwing Hazel and Sally-Anne into a little mortal danger!
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to take a nap and not write anything until December at least.
Silently Watches out.