NOTE

Warning for animal death (not graphic), and very brief mentions of death, rape, and miscarriage.

92. Ritual

The sky was dark over Diagon Alley, a cold wind skating down the cobbled street between the jumbled shops. I hadn't been here since the end of August, when I'd been fitted for new robes and Pansy had spat at me, blaming me for Lucius's incarceration.

When he gets out, he's going to kill you.

My stomach went numb to avoid the memory, even uglier in light of recent events.

Then, the street had been bustling and full of people. Now it felt just as it had when the war was on. There were only a few shoppers, headed home late, their footsteps quick and light. The shops were still open, but there was a nervousness in the lit-up windows, as though there was a great deal of darkness surrounding them and they couldn't be sure when a harsh wind would come along and blow out the lamps for good.

We only crossed paths with three people directly. One wizard alone, holding a brown paper package to his chest, his eyes widening behind his spectacles when he saw who we were. And one couple, the witch getting closer to her husband, who kept his eyes straight forward as though to look at us would bring punishment.

As though in answer to my unspoken question, the fluttering sound of paper caught my ear, and I saw The Prophet skittering across the cobblestones. It caught on my shoe and I looked down, able to make out the headline.

MALFOY PATRIARCH MEETS BARBARIC DEATH AT HOGWARTS

My internal organs all squeezed together and pushed into my throat in a tight ball of anxiety. The elegant signature beneath the headline, Rita Skeeter, was enough to assure me that the story was a gross misinterpretation of the circumstances of Lucuis's death, if not an outright lie. Clearly this article was behind our being avoided like the enemy.

On instinct I bent down to read further, but Severus caught my hand and held it tight, his fingers cold. I looked up at him and he shook his head.

He was right. Now was not the time. I could only pray that if any members of the Wizengamot had eyes on the article, they took whatever Rita Skeeter wrote with a healthy handful of salt.

The wind shifted slightly and tugged the paper away. Severus pulled me along.

Gringotts stood at the top of the alley, imposing as ever, its pale white columns and domes illuminated by old flickering lamps.

An old witch in fine robes was just coming out the doors, the light from inside pouring down into the street. The sound of her shoes on the white steps made my heart tighten and I instinctively pressed myself closer to Severus. But she did not even glance our way, chin thrust high in the air, neck concealed by a scarf.

"We are about to close."

The voice was nasal and disagreeable, belonging to a goblin gentleman who stood guard just in front of the doors. He stared at us down his sharply hooked nose, his teeth slightly bared between thin lips. There was the slightest hint of malice in his eyes as he looked at Severus. Protective anger reared up in my chest, but I could not blame the goblin for a lingering hatred of an ex Death Eater, given Voldemort's slaughter of his people during the war.

I put pressure on Severus's hand, willing him to be silent. I knew the goblin would more readily listen to me, though I still had to be very careful with my words.

"Sir," I said, prompting his eyes to narrow, his head swivelling slowly on his shoulders as he looked at me. "Please, we need to see a fault. It is urgent… Ministry business."

"Ministry business," the goblin repeated, dubiously. "I am quite sure we would have been informed if the Ministry had business at Gringotts this evening."

Severus spoke, his voice as smooth as his black silk robes. "Allow us to speak to the head of the bank. It is truly urgent. Regarding the creatures."

There was a weight to his words, and the goblin narrowed his eyes further. Without warning he drew his wand and pointed it at us.

I stiffened, my own wand burning with readiness to defend.

But it was only a spell to be sure we were not impostors, which flitted over me like a small breeze through my hair. I let out a quiet exhale of relief.

The goblin grunted, lifting his eyebrows. Then, without any warmth, he said, "Do follow me."

As we stepped through the doors I felt Severus's grip loosening, and slipped my hand away. I knew it was better that we stand with some distance between us now.

The goblin led us through the towering marble hall, beneath the series of chandeliers. The long bench behind which the goblins usually sat was empty, stools and scales abandoned, and our footsteps echoed coldly off the walls. One could sense the depths of the caverns and vaults extending far beneath the floor.

The goblin walked up to the tall, grand desk and rang a bell, the sound high and unnerving in the empty space. Then he turned and stared at us, his hands clasped behind him as we waited.

Another pair of footsteps sounded, slow and authoritative, and the head goblin came into view. His gold rimmed spectacles sat low on his nose, and his long, neatly trimmed beard ended halfway down his velvet vest, tied with a ribbon. I looked at his hands, the long fingers heavy with rings.

He stood silently before us, and looked at us expectantly, not without suspicion. His gaze drifted over Severus with particular dislike.

I decided to speak again, careful to balance confidence with respect. "We need to see the vault of Christopher Baddock."

He remained silent for a long time before speaking, in a reedy voice. "For what purpose?"

My palms were cold with sweat. I was well aware that we were acting as the goblin stereotype of entitled wizards, entering their bank at closing time and requesting entry to a vault that did not belong to us, without a proper appointment. We were at dire risk of being thrown out. But that could not be allowed to happen.

I kept my voice even and careful. "We have reason to believe he is keeping… something we need. To bring the attacks of these creatures to an end."

The head goblin watched and listened sharply. It struck me how absurd my words must have sounded to one who had not been on the front lines of the conflict. My empathy briefly expanded to include all the people waiting questioningly, fearfully, inside their homes.

The goblin's eyebrows furrowed deeply. "How do I know this is not a robbery?"

I looked to Severus, and he gave me a nod, small but significant. We had no choice but to send a patronus directly to the Minister. And I had to be the one to do it, because Kingsley would not recognise Severus's raven.

My memory remained the same as it had been for ages now. That day under the snow, out in the street just a short distance from where we stood. It was hard to believe it was almost a full year ago now. Christmas and its cheerfulness seemed nowhere in sight. I worried for a moment that Severus might sneak into my mind as I conjured the patronus. But he didn't. Of course not. Too afraid of what he would–or wouldn't–see. Or simply respectful of my privacy.

I focused my energies on selecting the right words as I relayed the message to Kingsley, explaining what we suspected was in Baddock's vault and asking him to give us his blessing.

There was a yawning silence after my raven disappeared, in which space the head goblin withdrew his golden pocket watch and looked at it pointedly, then closed it again and interlaced his fingers just below the lowest point of his beard.

Finally the blue lynx appeared, and walked in a slow circle over our heads. "Christopher Baddock is being held until his trial, and access may be granted to his family's vault. Wilma and Severus Snape should be treated as trusted emissaries of the Ministry in this case."

The head goblin wore a tight expression, which I sensed concealed a deep resentment. "Very well," he said. "Ironsley, take them down."

The Baddock vault was deep underground, one of many heavily protected vaults belonging to wealthy families. I could feel the stone all around and over me as I stepped out of the cart onto the ledge before the tall door.

I might have been frightened by the feeling of being so deep in the earth. But this was nothing compared to the lake. Though the air was musty and there was a sense of discomfort in breathing it in, at least I could breathe.

The stone seemed to have a life of its own, cold and watchful. Stalactites quietly growing, a thousand years old.

I shivered as the goblin–Ironsley–approached the door, Severus standing by my side. The door was carved with curls and whorls of stone that twisted in a complicated pattern, like vines, or a fingerprint.

Ironsley studied the pattern carefully. Then he lifted his hand and used one finger to trace a path through the maze, his long nail whispering against the stone with a high sound that penetrated my eardrums like a pin.

A low hum emanated from the stone, and then the door melted away into nothing, exposing the vault.

The sheer amount of wealth within was astonishing. Towers of galleons, bricks of silver, heavy valuable furniture covered in heirlooms, chests and trunks stacked against the walls, portraits and mirrors and scrolls…

Though it was likely little compared to the wealth of families like the Malfoys, it was so much more than had ever graced the less protected Weasley vault. But I wasn't here to be envious. I reached for my wand.

"Summoning spells won't work inside," Ironsley informed me, his voice taking on an eerie echo. "They make it too easy for robbers to uncover the most valuable property."

I looked back into the vault, seeing its overwhelming fullness in a new light. How were we to find the horn in all of this?

Severus stepped past me and started taking the heavy trunks down, placing them in a row on the floor of the vault. Ironsley stood still with disdain, and I walked past him to join Severus. I knelt and unlatched the trunks as he took them down, searching through them and checking for any false compartments. Though Accio was unusable we were able to use limited magic, and cast charms to detect shrinking spells in each trunk, each drawer, each wooden box we opened. Our search of the expected places yielded nothing, and I began to wonder whether we had been wrong, and the horn was hidden somewhere else.

Severus's movements were tight and quick with frustration as he went through a gilt wardrobe for the third time.

Not knowing what else to do, I went to a group of paintings leaning together against the wall, touching the frames and looking down at what I could see of each canvas in the shadows. They were mostly portraits, face after face, squinting and grumbling as the smallest bit of light was let in.

I almost missed it.

I'd already moved on to the next painting, of a woman in a dark red hat. Then the image I'd seen last fully registered in my mind, and I went back.

My heart stuttered, and I shifted the other frames aside to examine it fully.

A painting of a unicorn.

Trapped in a small circular fence, so it could not escape.

A celestial, shining horn sprouting from its pure white forehead.

It hit me all at once. That was the horn. It had been cursed into the painting somehow, made to hide in plain sight.

"Sev!"

He came to me at once, and saw what I had seen. The unicorn had noticed us and looked at us with an expression of beautiful sadness in her face, trapped inside her little fence.

Aiming his wand at the canvas, Severus cast "Alohomora" and the little gate in the fence swung open.

Now the unicorn's blue eyes watched us with shy curiosity. She seemed reluctant to approach us across the lush green meadow.

Severus stepped aside, out of view of the painted creature, leaving me to stand there alone. Only then did the unicorn swish her tail and walk closer to the frame.

Closer.

Soon it was so near I was convinced I could feel its warm breath on my skin. Its blue eyes were crystalline and dazzling, seeming to bore into my soul. But most of my wonder was concentrated on its horn. Just within reach, and yet trapped inside the painting.

"How–" I began.

"Tear the canvas."

"No destruction!" Ironsley demanded from the doorway.

But it was too late. I followed Severus's orders without question, a slash of my wand creating a sharp tear through the canvas. Half of it curled over, a dispirited flap, and through the dark gap fell the horn.

It looked quite different than it had attached to the living unicorn in the painting; not gleaming white, but grey and ashen. Severus picked it up, a sound of accomplishment humming through him. But my eye was drawn back to the flap of the destroyed canvas that had fallen limply over. I reached out, pulled it up again, and gasped quietly to see the unicorn, lying dead and hornless in the grey hay-stubble field that had once been a lovely sunlit meadow.

It had begun to snow aboveground, the flakes as delicate and tiny as motes, dancing through the dark air. Ironsley watched us walk away from the marble steps of Gringotts bank, his disapproval adding to the coldness of the air.

No-one else was around now, and we walked quickly to the apparation point, the horn concealed in Severus's black cloak.

My heart seized with pain, knowing Remus was so close. Out there in the frozen city, in that dark house all alone.

But it would have done no good to try to save him directly. We had to take the end of the conflict one step at a time, and carefully too. I knew that one false step would send our reasonably good fortune shattering into disaster.

Angelina and Minerva did not return to the castle until later that night, and when they did they both looked shaken. I wondered how they had found the human teeth referenced in Salazar's notes, but sensed I did not want to know, and envisioned the door of my mind tightly shut to keep my nose from bleeding.

What had been pretty snow in London was a blizzard up north, and wind and snow lashed the windows as we laid out the components of the ritual. We could not afford to wait until morning, and after each of us had taken a dose of invigoration draught, we began.

A massive cauldron was brought from the dungeons and placed in the centre of the great hall, the tables cleared aside.

The stone would be at its weakest directly after the ritual. We would have to destroy it immediately. The risk was that the ritual would fail, and we would destroy the stone too quickly, not knowing whether the creatures had been put to an end, or the victims released from their slumber. Our solution was to bring George's bed downstairs and to open a patronus connection with the people at the Ministry who were holding the creature captive. Only if George had woken, and the Ministry reported the creature fallen, would we destroy the stone.

The wolves following at our heels, we brought George into the great hall, resting him in the corner just beside the doors. Poppy was the one to send her patronus, and after a brief negotiation a connection was opened.

The enchanted ceiling held strong as the wild blizzard raged over it, the heavy flakes melting before they reached the flames of the many floating candles. Their light had dimmed, the castle itself seeming to sense the dangerous magic that was about to be performed within its walls. It could only help and protect us to a limited extent, but I sensed we would not be left entirely to our own devices. I wondered if my certainty was inspired by the spirit of Slytherin, hovering somewhere, hoping to see the terrible magic he had made finally undone for good.

The preparations were complete.

It was time to begin.

First the stone was placed at the bottom of the cauldron, its furious silver light shining out of it like a beacon, its whispering voice of evil and ugliness trailing like cold fingers along the walls of my mind.

Then the cauldron was filled with salt water. Severus ignited a large blue flame beneath it, the striking hot blueness lapping around the base, and the stone releasing a high, silver hiss that made us all flinch. Angelina covered her ears.

The density of the magic in the hall sent shocks from the crown of my head to the tips of my toes. My heels felt like sharp daggers stuck into the flagstones, keeping me from moving. My wand was hot in my hand, its eagerness enlivening the network of my veins, making me feel my own heartbeat, the flush of blood through the chambers of my heart. I kept my fingers firm around it and let my breath go as we began to chant the countercurse, each of us moving forward one at a time to incorporate the dark ingredients, our voices rising against the power of the stone.

The snake venom, which made the cauldron boil. The skin of the rat. The sting of a blind worm. The teeth of the virgin boy. Hemlock root. Dragon scale. Slips of yew. And, finally, the horn of the Netherlandic Unicorn.

My body thrummed with the vibrations of my own voice as I repeated the countercurse over and over, the sound magnified by the force of my magic. The air itself buzzed with our combined voices, mine linking with Severus's linking with Minerva's and Angelina's. My magic ran through me like water through a fountain, my blood hot, hot, hot.

The stone shone with excruciating brightness. I made eye contact with Minerva across the tower of green smoke billowing from the cauldron, and she gave me a tense nod. It was time, and together we began to chant the last line of the incantation.

Then the stone screamed.

It was the scream of a human. A tortured scream. Layers of dark magic peeling away and casting themselves off into the room. Angelina stumbled back from the cauldron and steadied herself against the wall, on the verge of fainting.

Then the sound ebbed, leaving my ears ringing.

There was the slightest moan from the corner of the room, and I turned to see George, slowly rolling over in his bed, leaning over the edge and vomiting. Everything slowed, my senses narrowing to a surreal line as I watched Poppy's face, her ear bent close to the patronus.

"It's done," she said, turning at once to begin tending to George. "It's dead."

"Look!" Minerva warned.

My head whipped around again. The stone was rising out of the cauldron, shining its white pulsing light on us, the rhythm weakening like a failing heartbeat. Its wicked voice was speaking again, spreading through the hall for all to hear.

The next moments were a blur.

Someone shouted "NOW!"

My arm straightened, every instinct in me surging down to my fingertips and through my wand as I cast the strongest spell of destruction that I knew.

The spell should have hit the stone and then disappeared. A bolt of magic hurtling through the air and striking its target, either failing or succeeding.

But none of those things happened.

The order of things, the laws of our world and its practices, seemed to become disjointed. Like a cracked vertebrae, sending the whole spine of reason and rightness into misalignment.

Instead of functioning as they should have done, our spells seemed to stick to the stone, forming long lines of magic through the air, each pummeling continuously into the silver stone. Tension wrapped around my arm, all the way up, the force of my magic being shoved back into my bones with equal force. It felt like my shoulder had been dislocated and my hand tried to loosen around my wand in self-preservation. But my fingers stayed frozen around the hawthorn wood. The wand would not be dropped. Couldn't be.

The air was swarmed with deafening fluttering noises, felty sounds, pumping my ears full of pressure. My body went extremely cold, and I realised the enchantment overhead had failed, letting the full force of the freezing blizzard descend into the hall. Snow and wind filled the air and made me burn, but still I could not move or think. I was not even trying to maintain the spell now. It was simply surging through me uncontrollably, and I watched the magic spilling from my wand as though it were my blood, my voice shaking with shock and terror at the loss of control. Can't let go. Can't let go.

One by one, the others failed.

Their sounds of agony and anger reached my ears through the howling wind and snow, and each time a little more weight slammed through my arm and into my heart. My wand's phoenix core was heating up, burning into my hand, blurring my eyesight with red pain.

With otherworldly dizziness, I understood that I was now taking on the stone alone.

My whole body shook as it fought to channel the magic, my heart beating so fast I should have been dead. My head surrendered to splitting agony and everything in me kept pushing, PUSHING, the magic offering up my body as a sacrifice, cell by cell, for the sake of the stone's destruction.

And it was fighting back.

Its terrible voice now spoke solely to me. Long strands of ugly black growth crept up the hot white beam of my magic, vines of rot and decay crawling towards my wand, tugging on every muscle and sinew of my arm, threatening to pull me apart.

As the darkness advanced, my worst memories filled my body and mind, dragging my soul into the deepest depths to which it had ever descended. A realm untouched by hope, gentleness, or self-forgiveness. I relived my first Cruciatus. Sobbing over Fred's corpse when I'd first seen him after the battle. Being invaded and humiliated and hurt. The aching as the blood of potential life abandoned my body. And, underneath, in the darkest crevices of me, the memory of being a lonely little child. Carrying the weight of my world inside me. Standing in the hallways of the orphanage. Misunderstood. Watching from dark corners. And the terror that this would be my secret fate forever.

Hands.

Hands…

Severus's hands behind me, supporting me, pressing into my back, giving me his magic too.

His presence behind me was the only thing stopping the world from ending.

His voice echoed through me, and I could not tell whether he was speaking aloud or planting his message in my mind. "I CAN HOLD YOU BUT YOU HAVE TO FIGHT IT."

There was no ability to think happy thoughts. No willpower involved. There was only the need to surrender to the power. I understood this, and my body shook harder in resistance. All I had to do was release it. But it was so frightening.

Severus's hands pushed more firmly into my shoulder blades, his heat filling me, his mind encircling mine in protection.

Something in me let go.

Stopped holding on.

And I screamed.

The sound poured out of me, as constant and unceasing as the light that shot from my wand, sizzling in the air, sending sparks flying as my final burst of strength slammed into the stone.

It screamed with me, and vibrated, its light more blinding than a million suns.

And then it died.

Simply.

Collapsing in an instant, like a giant star into a dwarf.

The light vanished, and all that was left under the high cold roaring of the wind was a simple clunk as the stone fell to the bottom of the dark cauldron.

My wand fell to the floor and I followed, my knees colliding with the flagstones. I thought I would tip forward face first but Severus stopped me, kneeling at my side and pulling my body against his. He kissed me then, and I thought for a moment that this was strange, until I realised he was giving me breath.

My heart had, indeed, stopped.

Only for a moment or two.

Then his air filled my lungs and I drew away gasping. Tears of release streamed down my face and Severus gripped me, his voice in my ear, fraught with anxious sincerity. "You need to stop dying. You will drive me mad."

"Okay," I croaked.

My hand was shaking, red and burned, seared violently by the shock of the intense magic. Severus summoned a salve from somewhere and it flew into his hand. He applied it, his fingertips like cold blades against my flaming skin. Quickly the pain faded, but the entire palm of my hand tingled as curse scars were said to. I stared down at it and Severus cradled it in his larger hand, my skin absorbing the salve as quickly as dry earth takes in water.

Minerva went forward and pointed her wand into the cauldron, making the stone hover in the air. Its voice had been silenced. It was nothing more than a normal dark grey rock. The same it must have been when Salazar Slytherin had selected it for his experiment a thousand years ago.

Now holding the stone in her hand, Minerva turned and stared at me with uncomprehending eyes. Then she looked away and cast an enchantment that restored the ceiling. The snow settled, finding its way into the corners of the hall, filling up the windowsills, covering the tables and the rim of the cauldron. With another spell she vanished it, and again there was calm and quiet in the air, Severus's warm body pressing around me as I rested limply against him.

I thought I saw one last pale flash of white under the archway. The ghostly shape of the Bloody Baron, perhaps. Then I blinked and the illusion was gone.

My body was returning to order, and my wand called to me again. I crawled away from Severus, picked up my throbbing wand, and got to my feet.

The stone was destroyed. But I felt no thrill of success.

On wobbly knees, the walls careening in my vision, I went to George's side. He was sitting up in bed, his face flushed and his hands trembling. Angelina was standing next to him, her hand on his shoulder. He seemed soothed by her touch, but it was for me that his eyes regained life.

"Complete darkness," he said, knowing my silent question. "Nothingness. I thought I was dead… Is it all over?"

"No," Minerva said. "There's still Dolohov to track down, and Rowle and Macnair. Rodolphus Lestrange hasn't done any damage, but there's him to find too."

George nodded. "The creatures?"

"The Ministry took the one that got you," Poppy answered. "They said it just dropped dead. Died like an animal." She'd finished running diagnostic spells on him and vanished his vomit from the floor. "You may feel fine but you should continue resting."

"No," he said, getting to his feet.

Both Angelina and I stepped closer, prepared for him to topple. But he didn't, surprisingly steady on his feet. "Dolohov. I want to find him." He turned to me imploringly. "He tortured mum's brothers. And he got Tonks."

I agreed with a nod. My body was a beast now, ready to hunt, ready to fight, with little tolerance for deep emotion.

Poppy didn't bother advising against this. "I am going to St. Mungo's to help… the others will have woken."

I thought of Andromeda and Hagrid waking up. Theirs were like names from another life. Characters from a long lost story.

Poppy went directly by floo, using her special powder. Together the rest of us left the castle behind, with only the wolves to occupy it and be provided for by its magic.

On the walk over the viaduct bridge, high winds biting me from every side, I was stopped by a moment of premonition.

There was no clear image. No clear thought. Only a sense of danger. A tiny protestation in my mind against going.

Severus came close, his hand around my arm, his voice in my mind. Alright?

Yes, I replied, and forced my feet to move again.

The sense of disquiet faded as I walked. But in the back of my consciousness lingered the feeling that every step taken was a step closer to some terrible fate.

NOTE

PLEASE MIND THE CONTENT WARNINGS FOR THE NEXT TWO CHAPTERS.