#spanish knowledge was correct xD | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

carewyncromwell · 4 years

Text

Ficlet: This’ll Be the Day that I Die [Part 3]

[First] [<<<] [>>>] [Last]

YES! AT LONG LAST WE HAVE PART THREE! *collapses* Geezus, this took forever! Prepare for something long and stuffed to the brim with exposition and world-building...hopefully wrapped up in an entertaining package, but even so. I had a lot of fun trying to explore the characterization of the four Founders of Hogwarts -- although Slytherin is easily the worst of the batch as the resident blood purity nut, it was still fun to try to give him depth the same way I have Rakepick. It was also fun to give some spotlight to Carewyn and Jacob’s magical historian mother, Lane Cromwell! And my precious ghost boy Duncan. ^.^

I apologize in advance for my horrid Old English, Welsh, and Norse: take any translations I’ve done with a grain of salt, I profess no great knowledge of any of them. XD; I did do a good amount of historical research for this, though, so the pieces of that I integrated in should hopefully make the whole thing feel that bit more real, disregarding the magic and dangerous Dark creatures.

Thank you to those of you who reblogged/commented on the last part -- @samshogwarts @dat-silvers-girl @mizutoyama @ruby-and-opal-withers @missnight0wl @that-ravenpuff-witch @weasley-adoptee @cursebreakerelmswood @nightrhea-hphm and @wandsandrings! If you haven’t read the first two parts, I’d highly suggest you do so, as I fear you might be completely and totally lost otherwise. XDD And...yeah, I hope you all enjoy it! Please consider liking/reblogging/commenting if you do, and hopefully part 4 (which will be the last part) will take MUCH less time than this one did to finish!! xoxo

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

While Patricia Rakepick had told her tale to Carewyn, Jacob, and the Circle of Khanna, the battle at the Black Lake had raged, with the Hogwarts professors – led by Heads of House Minerva McGonagall, Severus Snape, Pomona Sprout, and Filius Flitwick – defending both the Lake and the castle from the forces of R. In the midst of the battle, Fawkes the phoenix was sent to the skies to track down his master, Albus Dumbledore, and bring him back to the school at once.

The reason Albus Dumbledore had left Hogwarts none of the teachers had known – for the night hadn't really gone as Dumbledore himself had originally foreseen either.

In the Fenlands of East Anglia, out of open night air, appeared two figures in the high grass surrounding a modest reservoir. One was very tall with a long, white beard, a pointed dark blue velvet hat, and flowing robes the color of a robin's egg and flecked with gold dust. The other was much smaller with shoulder-length blond hair, an off-white sweater with a chunky purple line zigzagged across the chest, and faded jeans tucked into a pair of scuffed-up black boots. This smaller figure released the taller wizard's arm as he glanced around.

“Quite deserted, as to be expected,” said Albus Dumbledore. Once he gave another look around at the stars twinkling over head, he indicated the skyline to his right. “If my navigation is correct, I'd say our destination should be about a hundred paces from here.”

The smaller woman nodded politely, before immediately setting off at a brisk walk. It was impressive that a man so much older than her was able to keep step, given how quickly she moved. As she walked, she kept her wand at her side in her right hand and a very worn scroll close to her chest in the other.

Within a few minutes the pair had reached what appeared to be an old brick warehouse. It was deserted – it was so late that anyone who worked there had no doubt already headed home for the day.

Dumbledore and his traveling companion approached the back of the warehouse, both raising their wands. They silently lit them, looking down at the muddy, wet marshland just underneath the stilts and platform holding the warehouse up and out of the water.

“I daresay Salazar Slytherin would seal any records in such a way that only a fellow Parselmouth could open it,” said Dumbledore airily.

The witch nodded.

“I haven't been able to study Parseltongue very thoroughly,” she spoke in a very soft, almost wispy sort of voice, and yet it was low enough in her throat that she clearly felt no fear or hesitation, “but I know what password Salazar would use – ”

Taking three striding steps forward, the blond-haired witch approached the edge of the marshland, the light from her wand creating dark shadows around her narrowed almond-shaped blue eyes. She opened her mouth and let out a messy cluster of hissing sounds.

At once, there was a rumbling under their feet. One by one, a set of stones burbled out of the murky water, pushing it aside, and formed a long set of cracked gray and black stairs that spiraled down in a wide spiral around and then under the brick warehouse and marshlands.

Dumbledore gave the witch a dewy smile. “Most impressive, Lane, my dear. What phrase was it that Slytherin chose, may I ask?”

“'As pure as the driven snow,'” answered Lane Cromwell, her soft voice sounding rather cool.

“Ah,” said Dumbledore, his own dreamy tone betraying some disgust despite himself, “for that was what Slytherin liked to think he was, in both blood and character. Very good.”

Holding his lit Elder wand aloft, the Hogwarts Headmaster led the way down the wet, cracked stone stairs, down into the depths of the shallow reservoir and then below it, under the ground. The murky water they passed was frozen in place almost as perfectly as the stone and earth under it.

At last they reached the base of the stairs and the small chamber it opened up into. Despite its modest size, it boasted a rather tall ceiling, as well as many completely filled bookcases full of dusty scrolls and books. In the far corner was a very old chair carved out of blackthorn wood, and in the very center of the room was a podium made out of marble, with beautifully intricate carvings of silvery, emerald-eyed serpents slithering up the base.

“Remarkable,” mused Dumbledore. “The library looks to be in very good condition, for its supposed age. This place likely hasn't seen a living soul since Slytherin first abandoned it, oh...nine hundred and fifty years ago, wouldn't you say?”

“Nine hundred and sixty-six,” said Lane gravely. “Since the day it was announced that Godric Gryffindor had passed away. But it's very possible Salazar's descendants may have come down here to check on this place over the years, to maintain it...at least until the last of them left the Fenlands, back in the seventeenth century...”

She tucked the scroll she was carrying in the waist of her jeans as she approached the podium. Bending down, the magical historian trailed a hand along the gleaming serpents carved into the podium.

“...This isn't silver,” she realized. “It's platinum.”

Dumbledore raised his eyebrows. “A rather rare stone to find here, in Britain.”

“Yes, but it's been well-documented that Salazar traveled to South and Central America in his young adulthood...the forests there are the only place he could have found the type of snakewood used to make his wand. And platinum would've been much more easily found in South America, during that period – the Spanish conquistadors found quite a bit of it themselves, when they arrived there in the eighteenth century searching for gold. But these stones...they weren't carved naturally. Judging by the angles here – and here, as well...it's clear that this was constructed with magic. There's even magic inlaid in the emeralds, judging by the slight discoloration around the edges – very true to magical artifacts of that time period...”

It was striking how Lane's volume never seemed to rise, even despite the passion in her voice. The magical historian's blue eyes narrowed as she rose to her feet again and frowned at the podium.

“Salazar clearly created this podium with a special purpose in mind,” she said slowly, “more than just decoration...but I'm not sure what that purpose would be.”

“Perhaps I might be able to discern that.”

With a little nod, Dumbledore took a step toward the podium; Lane politely moved aside so that the Headmaster could examine it himself. He trailed a hand over the marble, looking over the carvings himself; he tapped the podium with his wand in several places and cast several silent, experimental spells. At last, he trailed his wand along the snake carved into the right-hand side of the base.

In an instant, the carved snakes began to glow, silvery light rippling out of their platinum grooves. Short, almost pulsing flashes of green flickered out of their eyes, and a voice seemed to echo throughout the room.

“Secgan! Ic dôð rôf Salazar Slytherin, ûphêah orgilde duguð cýf ealdefæder orgilde Hogwarts Stellan râd Foretâc.”

The voice was low, almost like a hiss, but as fierce as a king giving an order. Lane also noted a unique, rather beautiful accent, though it was hard to place exactly what kind.

Dumbledore raised an eyebrow curiously. “'Speak,' you say? Hmm...”

Trailing his wand along the carved serpent again, he spoke very firmly,

“I am Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore – Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.”

The serpents' emerald eyes stopped pulsing, their light locked in place. There was an ominous hissing, and then another voice bounded off the walls of the small room – it was Albus Dumbledore's voice, echoing back at them in perfect clarity, speaking words the Headmaster had never said.

“Speak! I am the great Salazar Slytherin, one of the four noble Founders of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.”

Lane couldn't hold back a gasp. Dumbledore beamed at Lane.

“It seems we have something of a translating magic here,” he said in an airy kind of amusement. “Upon hearing my response, the podium has repeated the phrase it greeted us with in my voice and language.”

Lane's eyes, identical in color and shape to her children Carewyn and Jacob's, lit up.

“Then this podium...would be able to translate anything written by Salazar Slytherin into Modern English?” she said excitedly, though again, her emotions couldn't manage to make her voice any louder.

“Yes,” said Dumbledore. “It seems that, for all of his faults, Salazar Slytherin was at least shrewd enough to discern that language changes rapidly over time. Any descendants of his might have difficulty understanding his writings, without such a measure.”

Lane immediately descended on the shelves of scrolls and books.

“His family history might also explain that,” she said as she opened several of them and skimmed their contents. “Salazar's family came from what is now modern Spain...evident by the name he was given, which had previously belonged to his maternal great-grandfather, Salazar Ordaño...and he was originally born near the coast of Ireland. People call him 'Slytherin from fen' – but in truth, the Fenlands, where we are now, are merely where Salazar settled in his later years, after he'd married and started a family.”

“Fascinating,” said Dumbledore mildly, as he settled himself down into the blackthorn chair in the corner. “I presume that explains the accent I noted in the first voice we heard – the one that must have been Slytherin's?”

“Yes. By the time Salazar was born, Ireland had transitioned into using early Middle Irish, as opposed to old Gaelic...but people living in England – where Salazar's family moved to, while Ireland faced off against the Norse Vikings – were still using what we today call Old English. That's the language Salazar would've used while speaking to the other three Founders. Early Middle English only started taking hold after Salazar died, after the Norman conquest in 1066 A.D. I daresay what we heard was something of a fusion between an Old Castillian and Middle Irish accent, speaking old English.”

“An interesting mix of cultures, indeed.”

Dumbledore's tone was very pleasant even if it wasn't even half as enthusiastic as Lane's soft-spoken, scholarly voice. He placed his wand back into his robin's-egg-blue robes at last, crossing his arms loosely over his chest and waiting patiently as Lane consulted the documents.

After about thirty minutes, Lane – an excited look in her eyes – brought a rather worn-looking leather portfolio containing a stack of parchment over to Dumbledore for him to look at.

“This looks like it might be a collection of letters...perhaps even a journal that hasn't been properly bound yet,” she said, her hushed voice rather eager. “See the dates there, in the corners?”

Dumbledore peered over his half-moon spectacles at the line of runes and sketched crescent moons in the upper corner of the top page, and then down at the written lines below.

“Yes, that is what this seems to be,” he said, and his light blue eyes twinkled. “Given that I can only read about half of it...I would guess that it contains both Old English and Middle Irish – making it more than probable that this was written in Slytherin's hand, wouldn't you say?”

Lane nodded, looking even more excited. “Yes. Would you say the dates match up too? Judging by the condition of these pages compared to everything else I've seen, I'd guess these would be the newest documents, in this library.”

“I believe you said that Salazar Slytherin left Hogwarts in July 1022, correct? Less than a year before Gryffindor's death? If so...”

Dumbledore turned several pieces of parchment over, consulting each of the dates, before settling on one near the bottom of the stack.

“...Then these moon runes match up perfectly.”

Lane's face was soon consumed by a wide, slightly crooked smile like the one her son Jacob often wore. She moved over to the platform with new confidence, removing the piece of parchment Dumbledore indicated from the stack and placing it down on top of the podium.

The podium gave another low hiss. The piece of parchment fluttered up off the marble as if trapped in a magical gust of wind, rotating in mid-air of its own accord as the podium created by Salazar Slytherin once again spoke in Albus Dumbledore's voice.

“Twentieth day of Harvest Month, 1022.

“Today marks the end of Hogwarts, as we know it.

“Despite all of my objections and disregarding all common sense, Rowena, Helga, and Godric remained obstinate in the decision to allow Mudblooded magical creatures to walk our hallowed halls in the upcoming school year. I urged them to reconsider, to the point that it bordered on pleading, and still, Godric absolutely refused to take heed. To my horror, not even the others would hear reason. I cannot fathom what virtue of theirs could possibly outweigh the safety of our school and our students – whether it is arrogance, ignorance, or just pure delusion – but whatever it was that fueled them to fight against me, it is a demonic magic that I cannot hope to exorcise.

“Although I can't stand by and let Hogwarts fall at the claws of treacherous rats that my friends would deign to call 'students'...I cannot halt my research, when I'm so close to tracking down the answer. Although we were able to petrify the Cetus, and no one should be able to access it without opening all of the Vaults in their proper order, the Beast will claw away at our enchantments the longer it takes for us to find a way to nullify its power. The magic of sacrificial love may indeed be our salvation – and yet a sacrifice made by one who has never feared Death – on the contrary, has frequently been tempted by it, like Odysseus before the Sirens – cannot possibly be powerful enough to destroy it. I only hope that the documents I'll find here in the Fen can help me track down the final answer. It may be the one thing I can still do, to protect my friends and the school we have created, now that they have fallen from grace. In the meantime, the safeguards I put in place should be able to protect the school, even in my absence, now that Garcea, Marvolo, and Amice have started their education – at least until I make my proper return, with the knowledge needed to finally slay the Cetus once and for all.”

The piece of parchment slowly stopped turning, fluttered back down onto the marble, and lay still.

Lane's eyes widened. Dumbledore's lips came together solemnly.

“I would say your hypothesis was correct, Lane,” the Headmaster said softly. “Slytherin was working on a method to destroy the artifact inside the Cursed Vaults.”

Still slightly stunned, Lane reached out to pick up the page of Slytherin's journal, holding it out and gazing down at the lines of Old English and Irish she could barely read herself.

“Even after he left the school,” she whispered, “even after he broke off from the other Founders and ended their friendship over his anti-Muggle-born bigotry...Salazar was still trying to find a way to prevent Godric from sacrificing himself.”

~*~

“Remind me again why it makes sense to unlock the inner door, if we don't want to open the column and set the Cetus free?” said Merula in an incredibly tart voice.

Duncan stuck his head back through the Vault's inner door to look down dully at Merula.

“Hey, you blokes said you wanted to find a way to stop that thing from possessing people and eating their magic, didn't you? Well, inside the inner Vault, there are four painted statues of the Founders. By common sense, those statues were carved and left there, rather than the ones out here, which were all people who got petrified. Plus there's this huge mosaic on the ceiling that sounds like the picture Carewyn saw in Rakepick's head, but there's different writing there than what Rakepick translated.”

“Therefore it's likely the Founders put those things there, as a hint of what to do when someone got inside,” said Bill logically, offering Merula an encouraging look.

“It's something we should investigate, at least,” said Rakepick in a very clipped sort of voice, her arms crossed over her chest, “considering it would take a lot longer for Duncan to jump back and forth through the door telling me each line so I can translate it.”

“You mean so we can translate it,” Jacob snarled.

“Ah yes, pardon me,” Rakepick couldn't help but scoff. “I apologize for not equating myself with a perfect amateur in reading Old English.”

“Don't bother,” Carewyn murmured dully when Jacob looked ready to snap back.

She turned to Rakepick coldly.

“Don't forget our terms, Rakepick – you'll stay under Jacob's and/or my watch at all times...so nothing you do will be just 'you.' It will be 'us.'”

“And for your information, Patty, the words on the mural aren't in Old English,” Duncan added rather coolly. “Otherwise I could've translated it just fine on my own, the Bloody Baron taught me more than enough to get by...”

Everyone turned to blink at Duncan. The ghost looked rather affronted.

“I've been dead for more than seven years, I had to fill that time somehow! Did you really think I just sulked about in the Prefect's Bathroom the whole time?!”

“Maybe not the whole time,” confessed Charlie sheepishly, “but...”

Duncan crossed his arms and gave a loud huff. “I came down to this Vault a lot after I died, I'll have you know. Deluded myself for a year or so that even if I was dead, maybe I could still find a way to break the curse...at least until I finally figured out that no, in fact, it's impossible to break much of anything when you have to give yourself a bloody migraine just to touch something...”

Jacob looked deeply ashamed and upset. The expression clearly bothered Duncan, for he rather gruffly said, “Well, come on, then!” and with a soft pop disappeared fully through the Vault's inner door.

Ben looked at Carewyn, his face betraying some doubt despite himself.

“Carewyn, are you sure we should do this? We're already going to have a hard enough time trying to keep R away from the Cetus as it is without the inner Vault being open.”

His eyes drifted over the rest of the Circle of Khanna, who were spread out over the rest of the glass-domed chamber. Diego, Talbott, Badeea, Jae, Liz, Tulip, and Tonks had started conjuring large Shield Charms around the hall. Meanwhile Beatrice, Penny, Ismelda, Andre, Cedric, and the twins had started levitating the dozens of stone statues off to the sides – as Beatrice had pointed out, it wouldn't be right to let a bunch of innocent people get smashed to pieces in their inevitable fight with R.

Carewyn bowed her head, her eyes resting solemnly on Ben's left shoulder instead of his face.

“I know...but we don't know how many members of R we'll be facing, or how long we'll be able to hold them off. If there's any chance we can destroy the Cetus's power so that no one can use it, R or otherwise – aside from Gryffindor's method, of course – we have to find out for sure.”

“Yeah...and well, just because we unlock the inner Vault now doesn't mean we can't lock it again later, right?” asked Barnaby, trying to be optimistic.

“Presumably yes,” said Rakepick. Her dark blue eyes flickered from the door to over at Carewyn. “Though I'd be hesitant to do it, considering we've come so close to the end...”

Jacob scowled, but he had to agree. He sighed and spared a reluctant nod. “...True. We don't want to take the chance that the Vault's Petrification Curse activates to protect itself, like it did last time. If that happened, we'd have to re-lock and unlock the other four Vaults all over again.”

Tulip, who'd been helping Jae seal any possible openings in the golden dome shield they'd created around the back wall, lowered her wand as she faced the others.

“Even if we don't unlock the door, R could just as easily try blasting it open like you tried to, when they get here,” she pointed out.

“Yeah,” said Jae dryly. “Then the Curse would activate, and we'd have to run for our lives – and anyone who wasn't suddenly a statue would have to go break the Vaults' curses all over again anyway.”

Bill nodded. “It is risky...but it'd be foolish not to try to find out everything we can.”

“Right!” Cedric agreed. He shot Ben a bright smile over his shoulder as he levitated a statue off of one of the stairs leading up to the Vault. “It's like my Dad says – 'nothing ventured, nothing gained.'”

With a sigh, Ben nodded, his eyes narrowing with fresh determination.

“All right, then – let's do this.”

Carewyn nodded too, her eyes just as firm as Ben's. “Merula...will you do the honors?”

Merula also gave a heavy sigh, but nonetheless strode forward, withdrew the coral key from the inside of her robes, and brought it up to the keyhole. Yet again it started to vibrate when it came within inches of the door, and the glowing white writing reappeared.

“Yeah, yeah, we know, 'don't let the Cetus out,'” Merula muttered irritably in the direction of the door.

She forced the key into the rusted keyhole and turned it. With a loud CLICK, the inner doors swung open, just as the outer doors had.

The inner Vault may have been a much smaller room, but that was only because the outer chamber was a hundred feet long with a mile-high green-tinted glass dome for a ceiling. The inner Vault was still almost as large as a standard Hogwarts classroom, though far more ornate and ancient. True to what Duncan had said, four limestone statues – two women and two men, all holding wands – stood in the four corners of the room on black zircon platforms, and on the ceiling was a gigantic, detailed mosaic identical to the picture Carewyn had seen in Rakepick's mind, made up of thousands of tiny colorful tiles. The only light in the room came from the magical blueish-white flames lashing out of the grooves cut into all four sides of the black zircon platforms, which left surreal, blue-tinted shadows on the statues' limestone faces. Even the air itself suddenly felt heavier, making them feel like a large weight had been lowered onto their shoulders, making the group all subconsciously shrink in the face of such a grand, imposing sanctuary. Strikingly, though, the gold-trimmed glass column housing the Cetus was nowhere to be seen – the statues surrounded nothing but an empty white-and-gold-tiled floor, marred by a large inky black stain that branched out like vines toward the walls and double doors.

When Carewyn moved toward the center of the room so as to try to get a better look at the mosaic, she was stopped abruptly by a terrible, booming voice.

“Gan ne latost!”

She whirled around.

The voice had come from the statue she'd just walked past – a large, broad-chested man of about 30 with a short red-painted beard and sparkling eyes made of blue-green agate. The left hand not holding his wand rested on a silver-painted sword hilt at his side.

Bill hurried over to Carewyn's side, crossing in front of the statue next to the first, only to halt in front of Carewyn and whirl around at the sound of a female voice, booming just as gravely down at him.

“FÆr sy hêore.”

The statue Bill had passed was that of a tall, willowy woman about the same age as the man with ebony-painted plaited hair so long it almost reached her feet. There was an odd-looking, silver-painted tiara resting low on her forehead and her eyes were made of smoky quartz.

Rakepick strode forward, not flinching at the sound of the woman's voice again booming“FÆr sy hêore” down at her, as she came up to stand beside Carewyn and Bill, her dark blue eyes narrowing upon the statues.

“Godric Gryffindor and Rowena Ravenclaw,” Rakepick murmured.

“I know,” said Carewyn. She glanced at Rakepick out the side of her eye. Despite knowing she was their ally now, it was hard not to still look at her with suspicion. “...What are they saying?”

“'Go no further,'” said Rakepick. “'There is danger here.'”

She also seemed to have trouble looking Carewyn in the face. Carewyn couldn't sense Rakepick's thoughts anymore, since the older woman was using her Occlumency again, but Carewyn could still surmise that Rakepick also had not expected to be working side by side with her again and was a bit uncomfortable about it.

'She should be uncomfortable,' Carewyn couldn't help but think resentfully. 'No matter what her motives were, I can't forgive her for what she did to Rowan.'

Jacob, Merula, Charlie, Barnaby, and Ben all slowly made their way into the inner Vault. All of them flinched as they walked past the two large statues of Godric Gryffindor and Rowena Ravenclaw, which once again boomed their warnings down at them.

Jacob, the one who was the least warded off by the voices, strode across the tile floor, stopping in front of the statue on the corner across from Gryffindor's – a weedy-looking gentleman of about 35 with a black-painted goatee, his left hand not holding his wand resting on a gold-painted locket resting around the high-collared neck of his robes, and striking eyes made out of grayish Blue John fluorite.

“Nanu, nanu, Slytherin, you old feck,” Jacob said coolly.

He waved an arm broadly in front of Salazar Slytherin's statue and – predictably – another booming, cold voice emanated from it.

“Linnan nû.”

“That'd be something like...'surrender now,'” Jacob translated slowly. Rakepick nodded.

With a determined look on her face, Merula approached the last statue – a round, beautiful woman a few years younger than the first two statues with long pink-painted ribbons braided into her mane of chocolate-painted curls and a pair of boulder opals for eyes, presenting a chalice in the right hand not holding her wand as if she planned to propose a toast. The so-called “Most Powerful Witch at Hogwarts” flinched when the Helga Hufflepuff statue spoke in an older, clearer voice than the rest, but she recovered very quickly.

“Beorgan!”

“'Beware,'” said Duncan idly.

He floated down from the ceiling, hovering next to Jacob's left shoulder.

“They've said those same things every other time I came in here,” he explained. “I figure there's some sort of Sensory Enchantment on them – though I gotta admit, I wouldn't have thought a spell like that could be so sensitive it could even sense a ghost's presence. But yeah...”

He floated up to the ceiling, pointing up at the mosaic.

“That's not Old English. Any guesses, Jacob?”

Jacob squinted up at the line of text. He mouthed something silently to himself, as if he were trying to imagine how the words might sound. Then his eyes lit up.

“Welsh!” he said eagerly. “Old Welsh! Helga Hufflepuff grew up in Wales – this inscription must have been written by her! And that there...”

He dashed right past Bill, Rakepick, and Carewyn to the other side of the room and pointed at another cluster of text near the bottom left corner of the mosaic.

“...That looks like some kind of early Germanic language – like Old Norse! Rowena Ravenclaw grew up in Scotland – I think the country was still only about half-formed by that point, so there would've been all sorts of languages floating around back then...”

“...One of which would've been Old Norse,” Carewyn surmised.

“Right!”

Jacob smiled almost wistfully up at the mosaic. “Aw, Mum would love this...”

Carewyn's eyes softened fondly at the thought of how thrilled magical historian Lane would be, seeing a written record by two of the Founders of Hogwarts.

“Can you read what Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw wrote, Jacob?” asked Bill.

Jacob frowned irritably. “Mm, perhaps...I haven't studied either language very thoroughly. But Old Norse, being a Germanic language, is distantly related to modern German and therefore to modern English, so it might be easy enough for me to suss out. And Welsh as a language fortunately hasn't drifted as far as English has, over the centuries – so even if Hufflepuff's is harder to read, I can always compare it to what I know of modern Welsh...”

His gaze settled on Ravenclaw's Old Norse text first.

“'Með imprisonmentrinn ór kreature'...'after the imprisonment of the creature' – no doubt the Cetus – 'we the Founders...created...a series of...false chambers.' The other Vaults, she means. 'Now that you...have opened these chambers...you can now meet it. Take heed – '”

He glanced at Carewyn, who'd come over to stand beside him and look up at the words too.

“' – Cetus...is a living thing. It eats magic to live. It will eat and eat...forever. Only the strongest...weapon – a spell...cast by selfless love...might be enough to...purify it.'”

“Then it's just like Rakepick said, after all,” muttered Charlie, sharing a glance with Carewyn out the side of his eye. “Sacrificial love is the only thing that can stop it...”

“It also means we learned absolutely nothing new, from reading that,” said Merula impatiently.

“That's not true,” said Barnaby softly. He glanced up at the picture of Ceto Annis on the mural. “It said...that the Cetus is alive. I mean, yeah, Rakepick said it's a parasite, but...from the way Ravenclaw was talking about it...it kind of sounds like a magical creature. Like a Puffskein!”

“I reckon it's a bit more like a Dementor, mate,” said Charlie darkly.

Jacob squinted up at one section of the Old Norse lines critically, frowning deeply in thought. He crossed his arms over his chest, his dark eyebrows knitting together tightly as his hollowed-out blue eyes bore into the ceiling.

“Jacob?” asked Carewyn.

Jacob shook his head. “There's something...weird, in the word choice. Ravenclaw uses the word 'ástir' in the final phrase, when discussing the magic of sacrificial love. The ending 'ir' makes it plural. A single act of love would probably use the form 'ásta' instead.”

“So does more than one person have to die, in order to kill that thing?” said Ben, his eyes narrowing.

“Let's not jump to that conclusion,” said Bill very firmly.

Carewyn nodded. “Maybe Hufflepuff wrote something that can help...”

Jacob strode back to where he started, raising his gaze to the two lines of Welsh in the upper right corner of the mosaic.

“Looks like Hufflepuff was a lot more succinct,” he said dryly.

He squinted a bit as he read the couplet several times.

“...'I gael mynediad i'r golofn'...'golofn' means column! It's talking about how to find the column! 'Mae'n rhaid...' Hmm...'you must...walk!' 'Walk'...either 'into' or 'through'...'the past?'”

“'Walk through the past?'” repeated Merula incredulously. “What's that supposed to mean?”

“Maybe we need to use a Time Turner!” suggested Barnaby.

“Doubtful,” scoffed Rakepick. “Anyone who uses a Time Turner ages the amount of years they've gone back on return trip – we'd all be dust, by the time we got back.”

Jacob rested a hand on his chin thoughtfully as he read and reread the second line several times.

“'Datgloi'r basn gyda phedwar ffrind fel allweddi,'” he murmured. His blue eyes drifted up and away, as it often did when he was thinking hard. “...'Unlock the' something...'basn,' 'basn'...”

He straightened up sharply, his whole face lighting up as if a Lumos charm had been cast behind it.

“Basin! 'Basn' means 'basin!' In order to walk through the past, we have to use what wizards in the Dark Ages used to call an 'ingemyndláu' – a 'memory dish' – ”

“A Pensieve,” realized Rakepick, her eyes growing very wide.

Duncan grinned down at Jacob. “That's it! Rather than waste space on the wall trying to write down everything she knew...Hufflepuff must've decided to leave her memories behind instead!”

“Including the memories of when she and the other Founders fought the Cetus in the past!” said Bill, his freckled face nearly as bright as Jacob's. “Brilliant!”

Carewyn looked at her brother with a new determined spark in her eyes. “How do we reach the Pensieve? What's the rest of the line, Jacob?”

“Let's see,” said Jacob, and it was clear he was getting excited too. “'Gyda phedwar'...we need four of something...four friends! 'Ffrind' is 'friends!' We need 'four friends as keys!'”

“Well, there's more than four of us in here,” said Charlie, gesturing widely around at himself and the others. “What are we supposed to do?”

Ben glanced up at the mural of the four Founders and Ceto Annis and then around at the four statues.

“Maybe we need only four people in here,” he said slowly.

He started to walk back toward the door frame. On his way, however, he passed in front of the Gryffindor statue – as soon as Ben's shadow passed over it, the Gryffindor statue's agate eyes flashed as it once again proclaimed, “Gan ne latost!”

“Ben!” said Carewyn.

Ben had noticed the flash too. He backtracked, his eyes narrowing suspiciously. Then, slowly and deliberately, he stepped back in front of Gryffindor's statue. At once, two beams of dazzling blue-green light flared out of the statue's bejeweled eyes as it said again,“Gan ne latost!”

Duncan suddenly looked more excited than anyone had ever seen him – his shoulders were hunched up and both of his translucent fists were clenched over his chest. He whirled on Jacob standing to his right, his ghostly robes flaring as he spun around.

“Jacob! Take a step back so you're in front of Hufflepuff!”

Jacob did so. The Hufflepuff statue once again warned, “Beorgan!” – but her opal eyes didn't glow like Gryffindor's had.

Jacob stepped away from the Hufflepuff statue, shooting it something of a halfhearted glare. Rakepick considered the statue carefully, her white-gloved hand coming to rest over her lower lip in thought.

“It seems that Duncan is on the right track,” she muttered, “but Jacob's placement is wrong, somehow. I've seen rooms like this before, where you need several people to stand in certain places in order to unlock whatever treasure it's hiding. There's generally some sort of correlation between the person in question and where they're standing – such as eye color compared to the color of a platform, or height compared to certain notches on the wall. I would guess any such correlation here would be related to the statues themselves.”

The once-Head Cursebreaker's dark blue eyes narrowed to slits upon Ben and the Godric Gryffindor statue as she considered this.

“...Perhaps gender is the issue.”

Rakepick strode up to stand in front of Hufflepuff's statue herself. Once again, Hufflepuff's warning echoed throughout the room, but still the opal eyes did not light up.

“Apparently not,” said Carewyn.

“Well, duh,” scoffed Duncan. “Slytherin's statue didn't respond to Jacob when he was waving his arm in front of it earlier, did it? I thought it might be an issue of order, like you have to start with Gryffindor and end with Slytherin, but...”

He trailed off, his light-less eyes flickering between Rakepick stepping away from Hufflepuff's statue and Ben standing in front of Gryffindor's statue. Then he seemed to get an idea – with his mouth spread into such a wide grin, he almost resembled his friend, Peeves the poltergeist.

“Wait just a tick – ”

In a flash, the ghost flung himself right through both Ben and the Godric Gryffindor statue (making Ben shudder from the cold) and phased right through the wall back into the outer Vault. A moment later, Duncan had reentered the Vault, soaring back over toward the Hufflepuff statue. Running through the open double doors after him were Cedric and Tulip.

“You! Puffball!” Duncan shot at Cedric. “Stand right here!”

Looking thoroughly confused, Cedric nonetheless walked into the center of the room. He and Tulip both gave a start at the sound of Ravenclaw and Gryffindor's voices bellowing down at them.

“It's okay,” Carewyn reassured them, “it's just a Sensory Enchantment – ”

“Move it!” said Duncan, sweeping around Cedric impatiently and back around to point down at the black and gold tile floor in front of Hufflepuff's statue. “We don't have all day!”

Despite the hesitant look on his face, Cedric obeyed. His eyes still very wide as he looked around, drinking in the rest of the room, he strode over to stand on the spot Duncan indicated.

Once again, the Helga Hufflepuff statue said, “Beorgan!”, but this time the blue-streaked brown gemstones lit up, just as the Gryffindor statue's eyes had.

“Yes!” hissed Duncan.

He whirled on Tulip. “You! Red! In front of Ravenclaw's statue, over there!”

With a braver and much more determined face than Cedric's, Tulip very quickly turned on her heel and darted over to stand in front of the Rowena Ravenclaw statue. Its dark brown gemstone eyes began to glow too as Ravenclaw's “FÆr sy hêore” bounded off the walls.

Jacob's eyes widened, becoming almost over-bright.

“It's house placement!” he cried in delight. “Ashe, you're a genius!”

Duncan smirked. “'Bout time you finally acknowledged it!”

Merula's pink eyes were suddenly alight with a kind of exhilaration better suited to a child before a Little League game.

“Stand back, Cromwell,” she said with a broad, smug grin at Carewyn, “I've got this!”

She darted over to the final corner to stand in front of Salazar Slytherin's statue. Its fluorite eyes blazed grayish-white as it rumbled, “Linnan nû” once more.

All of a sudden, the floor began to quake. Carewyn threw up her arms protectively in front of the others, silently urging them back, as the black and gold tiles rippled apart like water after a stone was skipped across it. Then out of the rippling floor emerged a large, shallow silver dish that looked like it was carved out of pure moonlight. Runes were carved along the edge, and it was full of a strange, half-liquid and half-gas-like substance, almost like dry ice, except fuller-bodied and ethereally sparkling.

Carewyn took a step forward and approached the Pensieve. Bending down beside it, she brought up a hand to trail along the edge, her blue eyes running over the runes carved into the shimmering metal.

“It's beautiful,” she whispered.

Rakepick couldn't stop herself from bending down beside Carewyn, looking just as awed as she was. She brought her own gloved hand onto the other side of the dish, examining the runes.

“This Pensieve is different from any I've seen before,” Rakepick said slowly. “It's too shallow to place one's head in. Judging by the runes...” she rotated the dish a corner turn to the right, “...one would have to step into it, in order to access the memories contained.”

“I did some reading about this,” said Jacob casually, and he not-so-subtly bent down too so that he created a physical barrier between Rakepick and his sister. “Pensieves have actually gone through a lot of changes, over the centuries. The model we use today is considered safer, since it's easier to remove someone from inside the memories – just grab the person by the scruff of the neck and yank their head out of it, you know? The older models, like the kind from the medieval period, ran the risk of the person becoming trapped in someone else's memories.”

“Trapped?” said Cedric anxiously.

Carewyn's eyes narrowed upon the Pensieve. Then she took a deep breath.

“...It's a risk we'll have to take. I'll go.”

“No,” Ben said very harshly.

“No way, Carey!” snarled Charlie, his voice hard with anxiety. “If you get trapped – ”

“Then I'll need to come up with a way out, somehow,” said Carewyn, as she offered her fellow Fireball a small, reassuring smile. “Just like we always have.”

She glanced at Bill. Her best friend had gone very white and his eyes were even more stricken and full of anxiety than Charlie's, but he tried to put on a brave face all the same.

“Carey's right,” Bill said softly. “We have to find a way to stop the Cetus from hurting anyone. ...This might be our only chance.”

Ben and Charlie looked very upset, but they seemed to know in their hearts that Bill was right. Charlie bowed his head and looked away; Ben strode over to Carewyn, bent down, and grabbed her shoulder.

“I'm coming with you.”

“No, Ben – I need you here,” said Carewyn. Ben tried to argue, but she cut him off as kindly as she could, “If I'm going, then you, Merula, Charlie, and Bill will need to lead. There won't be any enemies to fight in the Pensieve, but there will be plenty of them here, if R arrives before I come out. You're better at Charms than anyone else I know, and one of the best duelists too. You need to be here.”

Ben's hand holding her shoulder had started to tremble. Carewyn's eyes softened as she brought up a hand to take his holding her shoulder and give it a light, supportive squeeze. Ben's eyes narrowed in frustration – then, exhaling through his nose, he moved forward to rest his forehead on the top of Carewyn's head in something of a quasi-hug.

“Promise that you'll come back alive,” he said very lowly.

Carewyn knew Ben was thinking of that terrible night in the Forest – the night he'd refused to let Carewyn go in there alone and tried to protect her and Merula, only for Rowan to jump in front of him and take the Killing Curse meant for him. Carewyn was forced to close her eyes to obscure the pain and raw emotion that had taken them over at the memory.

“I promise,” she whispered.

With a squeeze to Carewyn's hand, Ben lifted his head and pulled away, his dark eyes harder and more determined than ever as he slowly rose to his feet.

“What I will need with me, though,” said Carewyn more solemnly, “is someone who can translate. I don't think anyone in Hufflepuff's memories will be speaking modern English...”

She looked over Jacob's shoulder at Rakepick. Rakepick held Carewyn's gaze and nodded.

“I'll go with you, Miss Cromwell,” she said lowly.

Jacob whirled on Carewyn, his blue eyes flashing.

“There's no way in Hell I'm going to let you go somewhere alone with Rakepick, Pip,” he said fiercely. “Either we go together, or you don't go at all.”

Carewyn exhaled through her nose and nodded. “Fair enough.”

“I'm coming too,” said Duncan.

Carewyn blinked at him in surprise. The ghost crossed his translucent arms irritably.

“It's not like I have anything left to lose,” he said gruffly. “And I reckon I can speak Old English just as well as old Patty here can read it – probably better.”

His light-less eyes flickered beadily in Rakepick's direction. Despite his excuses, Carewyn thought she could sense some genuine suspicion from Duncan toward the ex-professor: he was likely feeling the same kind of protectiveness that Jacob was.

Carewyn gave her brother's best friend a small, soft smile. “Thank you.”

'I guess since Duncan can phase through anything, he'd be able to get out of the Pensieve more easily, if something goes wrong,' she thought to herself.

Duncan averted his eyes uncomfortably, a stubborn grayish flush clinging to his cheeks, as Carewyn turned to Bill.

“Take care of things here – we'll be back soon.”

Bill swallowed and nodded, his shoulders straight and strong even though his freckled face was so pale.

“Please be careful, Carewyn,” said Barnaby very quietly.

Carewyn faced the silver Pensieve on the floor. Her jaw set and her left fist clenched around her wand at her side, she inhaled slowly through her nose...and stepped into the basin.

Rather than touch the bottom, her foot fell right through it as if she'd tried and failed to walk on water. In an instant, Carewyn felt herself somersaulting in mid-air. Her feet were thrown up over her head as she was yanked down into the basin's swirling, misty contents.

~*~

“Something still troubles me, however,” said Dumbledore solemnly. “If Slytherin did, in fact, discover a way to destroy the Cetus artifact...then why is it that it still exists? If he had truly found the answer, would he not have returned to Hogwarts, to cast the proper counter-curses?”

Lane strode back across the small library over to the enchanted podium, ruffling through the loose pages of Slytherin's journal as she went.

“It's a troubling question...but it doesn't prove Salazar's research didn't come to anything,” she murmured, and her soft voice was hard with determination. “Salazar died only two months after Godric did. Plenty of historians theorize that Salazar had been struggling with an illness even while he was still at Hogwarts, given that his appearance aged so dramatically in the last ten years of his life...but whether he was or wasn't, I don't think it's far-fetched to think that there was a connection. Salazar and Godric knew each other the longest out of any of the Founders – it's well-documented by Salazar's descendants that the Slytherin family settled in the area of what would become Godric's Hollow, after they first left Ireland, and that Salazar tutored Godric in magic before they worked together as equals. I remember the Sorting Hat even loved to sing about what good friends Salazar and Godric were, no matter how different they were as people.”

“Indeed, the Hat does reference that rather frequently,” granted Dumbledore. “It is interesting how much good and evil can have in common, at first glance.”

“Yes, but I'm afraid none of the Founders can be boiled down to such shallow words as 'good' and 'evil,' Professor,” said Lane, and her voice actually sounded a bit cool. “Don't forget that it was Godric who stole a sword from a goblin craftsman and then slapped his name on it to claim it as his own.”

Returning the piece of parchment she'd put on the podium back to the stack in her hands, Lane then withdrew the next page and placed it down on the marble. The podium gave another low hiss, and the piece of parchment rotated in mid-air as Dumbledore's disembodied voice again filled the room.

“Autumnal Equinox, 1022.

“Thus far, my search near home has run dry. It's remarkable how a place like the Fen, which has always been so attuned to magic, can be so utterly devoid of the very magical knowledge I need!

“Fortunately, for all of my bitterness toward my sweet Fen, there are witches and wizards here with contacts elsewhere that appear promising. I shall set off for London tomorrow, in the hopes of meeting with Eadric Bald, a wizard who specializes in the study of rare and exotic magics.

“First day of Holy Month, 1022.

“The school year has started. It pains me beyond words that I shall not be present, to welcome the newest members of my house to our school. I thought of sending an owl to Helga, passing along my best wishes for our newest class to her and the others, but in order to do that, I would have to extend those well wishes to the rats that they've seen fit to dress in student robes. And I see no reason to poke the dragon of their ire by purposefully excluding those Mudblooded magic users.

“To my frustration, I am leaving London with no more knowledge than I started with. Bald is a talented wizard, it's true, but his mind is too focused on concrete magics that one can hold in one's hand and bend to their will. Considering love is perhaps one of the least tangible magics one could hope to find, I believe him to be thoroughly unhelpful, in such a situation. Fortunately he was able to provide a Wiggenweld Tonic for my return trip home to Fen.

“Full Moon, Holy Month, 1022. Helga's birthday.

“Followed up with my neighbor Kendrick Creed about a contact of his in Yorkshire who has recently boasted about his invincibility due to a spell of sacrificial love. Although Kendrick himself doubts that the wizard is as protected as he claims, I plan to pay him a visit to make absolutely sure.

“Feast of St. Matthew, 1022.

“Kendrick's contact apparently was rescued by his lover, who threw herself in front of him in order to protect him from another wizard's Killing Curse. The wizard in question was then able to ward off his assassin with the declaration that because the witch sacrificed her life for him, he was protected by her love, and that anyone who tried to hurt him would only be hurt themselves. This worked for about one month until yet another person who this wizard had wronged caught up with him and hurled a javelin through his chest. I might have found some dark humor in the situation were I not so utterly frustrated.

“Will spend the night here in York before returning home in the morning.”

~*~

Carewyn felt as if she was floating down to the bottom of a sparkling, silvery swimming pool, and yet, her loose red hair and her brown and red “Fakepick” robes weren't weighed down with water. Instead they floated upward as if they had no gravity at all, even though Carewyn herself was slowly falling.

'Is this what Alice felt like, when she fell down the rabbit hole?' she couldn't help but wonder, thinking back on one of the Muggle fiction books she'd liked reading as a little kid.

As she fell, murmured voices and broken words she didn't understand swept past her ears. The swirling mist around her took on colors that brightened and then grew, abruptly blooming into deeper, more radiant shades with shadows and highlights and depth and warmth –

Carewyn maneuvered her legs so that when she reached the newly created gray stone floor below, she could land on her feet. She looked around, and she couldn't stop herself from letting out a soft gasp.

'It's Hogwarts...'

It was remarkable how similar her surroundings looked to the castle she'd left earlier that evening. Perhaps some of the portraits were different and everything did look considerably newer, but the gray stone walls, lit torches, and high ceilings were nearly just the same. Even the sunlight pooled through the stained glass window panes and bounded tinted light across the marble floor in just the same way.

Rakepick landed on her feet to Carewyn's right. She brushed her strawberry-blond hair out of her face as her eyes glided around, taking in their new surroundings.

“This would be the fifth floor corridor,” she murmured, “the one that leads to Gryffindor Tower...”

“And Ravenclaw Tower.”

Jacob's feet had barely touched the ground before he'd barreled over to stand between Rakepick and Carewyn again, shooting Rakepick a dirty look. Rakepick's eyes narrowed on Jacob's face in return, but she didn't reply.

Duncan swirled down in leisurely spirals to join them, coming to a halt over Carewyn. He smirked around at the hallway around them – his crossed translucent arms rested on the top of Carewyn's head just enough that it felt like she was standing under a particularly cold air vent.

“Would you look at that, it's my corridor,” said the ghost, his face consumed by a huge, cheeky, over-bright smirk. He nodded to the door just past a portrait of oranges that led to the Prefect's Bathroom. “See, there's my digs – and just past it, the eagle door knocker that guards Ravenclaw Tower. Never did understand why Ravenclaw thought riddles were a better safety measure than passwords...”

“Anyone can regurgitate a password,” said Jacob coolly. “Only clever wizards can use their brains.”

“And get a bunch of clever wizards from other houses sneaking into your dormitory,” Duncan shot back just as coolly.

“We Eagles don't mind company – as long as it's intelligent company.”

“For goodness' sake, will you two focus?” Rakepick said with a roll of her eyes. “We're on a mission.”

Carewyn pointed up the hall. “Look over there.”

Coming up the hall were two figures – a beautiful dark-skinned woman even smaller than Carewyn with a round frame and dark brown curls held out of her face by sunny yellow ribbons, talking to a slightly older, weedy-looking gentleman with thin black hair, striking gray eyes, and a black goatee. They both were around Rakepick's age and wore dress robes, the woman in modest light blue, the man in more elegant black trimmed with white ermine fur.

“Helga Hufflepuff and Salazar Slytherin, in the flesh,” breathed Jacob. “Well – not really, but...”

Hufflepuff was holding Slytherin's arm and talking very animatedly to him as they walked. Although the older man didn't look nearly as excited, his lips were still upturned slightly and his gray eyes were rather soft. Carewyn found it kind of weird to see her house founder – who she'd only ever seen as a haughty old man in his portraits and statues – with such a gentle, almost fond expression on his face.

Whatever they'd been talking about was cut abruptly short, however, by the sound of a loud CRASH outside. Both Founders stiffened, dashing over to the closest window to look out: Carewyn ran after them so she could look out too.

The Training Grounds below had been full of students dressed in black linen robes, but those students were suddenly screaming and running for cover as a horrible, inky darkness descended upon the Hogwarts grounds. It was massive – about the size of a whale – and although its consistency resembled an oddly full-bodied mist, long webbed claws, a long eel-like tail, and gnashing teeth lashed out of its smoky depths, tearing away at the school as it pursued the terrified students.

In alarm, Hufflepuff made as if to run down the hall, but Slytherin grabbed her by the arm. Looking almost more scared himself, but clenching his jaw in determination, he shoved open the window with his wand arm, climbed up onto the ledge, and then reached out a hand to Hufflepuff. She hesitated only for a second, before grabbing her comrade's hand. In an instant, Slytherin had transfigured himself and Hufflepuff into a strange kind of black and white fabric-like shape, which flapped through the air of its own accord down toward the ground.

Carewyn felt a bizarre yank in the area of her pelvis, and all at once, their surroundings had changed, becoming the grounds below. Hufflepuff and Slytherin had reached the ground and turned to face the blackness that awaited them. Hufflepuff looked very scared as she yelled something at Slytherin.

“She's asking what it is,” said Rakepick. She, Jacob, and Duncan had ended up right behind Carewyn, in the same positions they'd been in when they'd still been indoors.

Slytherin shouted something back, his gray eyes narrowing. The inky blackness turned on the two, and with the speed of a cobra, lashed out – Hufflepuff and Slytherin had to hurtle themselves out of the way before its large, fanged jaws clamped around the space they'd just been standing on.

“He called it an abomination,” Duncan said lightly. “Guess the Cetus didn't take kindly to that.”

Hufflepuff and Slytherin cast different spells in an attempt to force the creature back. Unfortunately thanks to its body's smoky consistency, the Cetus was able to twist and contort around their blasts. It once again lashed out, snapping jaws that seemed unnaturally large and grotesque even for how massive it already was. Before long, the Cetus had cornered the two, backing Hufflepuff and Slytherin into a corner. Slytherin conjured up a large gold-domed Shield Charm around himself and Hufflepuff, trying to use the barrier to shove the creature back away from them. But instead of keeping the Cetus back, the creature instead gnashed its teeth at the Shield, biting off chunks of golden light.

“It's eating Slytherin's Shield Charm!” said Carewyn, her eyes widening.

“It possesses witches and wizards in order to feed off of their magic and life force,” said Rakepick. “This must be why the Cetus is so difficult to destroy. It drains the life out of anything in its path, yet every spell you cast to try to defend yourself only strengthens it and makes it pursue you even more.”

“Magister Slytherin!”

A young witch, likely the same age as Beatrice, dashed out onto the grounds. Her curly blond hair had come loose of the hood she was wearing – Carewyn guessed the hood was the school's original variation on house ties, given that it was a bright Slytherin green with silver trim.

The Slytherin student began blasting Incendio charms at the Cetus's back. The smoky mass gave a startled, shrieking sound, but it didn't sound like it was hurt: if anything, it kind of reminded Carewyn of a dolphin...if the dolphin had somehow been turned into a vampire.

'She's trying to distract the Cetus,' Carewyn surmised. 'Make it chase after her, so that it'll back off of Slytherin and Hufflepuff...'

Slytherin shouted something at his student, but it was too late. In an instant, the Cetus had whirled around, violently slapping the air like a whip. The young witch was snatched up by the Cetus's flippered, eel-like tail and then, just as quickly, disappeared into its inky depths all together.

Hufflepuff screamed. Slytherin, his gray eyes wide with panic, ran forward, lashing out at the creature with fierce violet and black spells from his wand –

Suddenly, from out of the creature grew a large, golden dome, just like the Shield Charm Slytherin had cast mere moments ago. Slytherin's spells bounded off, right back at their owner, who had to leap out of the way once again to avoid them.

The black mist had largely dissipated to reveal the young Slytherin witch floating overhead. Her hair whipped at the air in much the same way as the Cetus's mist had and black mist trickled out of her mouth and nose and out of the corners of her pitch-black, pupil-less eyes. Her wand had fallen to the ground, discarded – the Shield Charm itself seemed to have come solely from her hands, which had grown a terrible set of black, claw-like nails.

“So that's what it looks like, when the Cetus possesses someone,” murmured Jacob.

Hufflepuff stared up at the young witch bleeding black smoke from her eyes, mouth, and nose, her hazel-brown eyes widening in horrified realization.

“Ceto?” she whispered.

Slytherin turned to look at Hufflepuff in confusion, but before he could say anything, the young witch raised a clawed hand and pointed at Slytherin. A flare of yellow burst from her finger like a blowtorch, and Hufflepuff was forced to hurl herself in front of Slytherin and conjure another Shield Charm to protect them from the blast.

“SALAZAR! HELGA!”

Gryffindor had arrived, his brown-fur-trimmed gold robes billowing behind him. His russet-colored beard was a little longer than the modest one worn by his statue back in the Vault, but his wide blue-green eyes were the exact same color as the agate gemstones inlaid into the limestone statue's eyes.

He unsheathed the silver sword at his side and charged at the person attacking his comrades. Carewyn couldn't stop herself from subconsciously lurching forward and raising her wand.

'Stop! You can't – !'

“Godric, BID!” screamed Hufflepuff.

The young witch turned around, and Gryffindor instantly froze up, his sword halting over his head – he must not have realized that it was one of their students, or that she was possessed. The Cetus, however, showed none of the hesitation Gryffindor had. As soon as he'd halted, the young witch brought up a hand to the older man's chest –

BANG.

In a large blast of white light, Gryffindor was blasted clean off his feet. He was thrown full-force into the closest wall back first, before he collapsed in a shuddering heap, the chest of his gold robes stained with scarlet.

His face blanching with terror and rage, Slytherin barreled forward. He conjured up thick black manacles that flung themselves at the young witch and lashed her to the ground. The witch threw back her head, shrieking in frustration as more black smoke leaked out of her mouth and eyes.

Slytherin and Hufflepuff both ran to Gryffindor's side. Hufflepuff immediately raised her wand and got to work trying to heal the damage to Gryffindor's chest. Slytherin appeared too scared to help; instead he was muttering something very quickly under his breath at Gryffindor.

“He's scolding Gryffindor for being so stupid,” said Duncan.

'Scolding – no,' thought Carewyn. 'That's only what it sounds like.'

Slytherin's expression was too upset and tense to truly be angry. It reminded Carewyn of when she'd disappeared for a whole 24 hours after Rowan's death and Duncan, after finding her curled up in a closet in the Astronomy Tower, yelled at her to the point of tears.

Within moments, however, the black mist trailing out of the young witch's eyes had effectively nibbled away at the chains binding her. With a loud SNAP, she broke the chains, turning on the three Founders once again. The young witch raised her hand and it lit up with violent light blue lightning –

WHAM. CRASH.

The Cetus's attack was blocked by a massive crystal ball that had abruptly materialized around Hufflepuff, Slytherin, and Gryffindor. The spell was strong enough to shatter the crystal and sent it flying, making Hufflepuff and Slytherin huddle over Gryffindor protectively to shield him from the falling shards.

Standing in front of the school with her bronze-painted wand pointed at the young witch was Rowena Ravenclaw. There were some age lines and shadows on her face that her statue didn't have, but otherwise she looked very much the same, from her floor-length black plait to her sparkling dark eyes. She was dressed in violet silk trimmed with sparkling silver embroidery the same color as the tiara resting over her brow.

As Ravenclaw rushed to confront the Cetus, Hufflepuff yelled over to her, her face very worried.

“'Rowena, look at her eyes!'” translated Duncan. “'Didn't Ceto's magic used to black out her eyes the same way, when she didn't have a wand?'”

Ravenclaw's eyes flickered with a strange, horrified light. As the young witch blasted another spell and Ravenclaw blocked it, the dark-haired Founder shouted up at her.

Rakepick and Duncan both looked oddly stricken.

“She's...appealing to it,” said Duncan.

“To her,” corrected Rakepick in a hushed voice. “She's appealing to Ceto Annis – saying she doesn't want to hurt her...”

Carewyn could tell why Rakepick and Duncan were so shocked. She could see it in Ravenclaw's face – this wasn't an act of mercy: it was a plea. It was desperation, worry, and caring, all rolled up into one.

The young witch possessed by the Cetus at first seemed to consider Ravenclaw, her posture very stiff and guarded as her pupil-less black eyes bore into her. The dark-haired Founder's face broke out into a very fragile, scared smile as she took several slow, cautious steps forward, still talking in as reassuring of a voice as she could muster.

Jacob's eyes widened too as he listened to Ravenclaw. “'Leorningcild' – did Ravenclaw just call Ceto one of her students?”

“Yeah,” breathed Duncan, his light-less eyes just as wide.

The young witch suddenly gave an abrupt lurch forward in mid-air. Her chest contorted like she was having trouble breathing.

“NE!” screamed Slytherin.

Ravenclaw just barely managed to grab hold of her comrade's arm to prevent him from attacking, but there was nothing any of them could do. In an instant, the young witch's mouth was almost ripped open by the Cetus's mass of black smoke as it left her body and returned to the air. The little Slytherin student was thrown to the ground in a motionless heap.

Slytherin tore out of Ravenclaw's grip and ran over to his student, turning her over. Her broken jaw was covered with blood, her veins were pitch black, and she was very pale and shaking from head to toe. Slytherin cradled the small girl in the crook of his left arm, murmuring as gently as he could despite the fear in his face as he trailed his wand along her arms, trying to heal the damage.

The Cetus, however, hadn't seemed to slow down at all. Ignoring Ravenclaw's continued pleas, it lurched through the air toward Hogwarts, slamming its tail against the side of the castle as it went.

“The Cetus must've taken all of the magic it could from that little girl,” said Jacob, his eyes narrowing upon the black smoke-like mass in hatred, “so it's looking for more victims to feed off of...”

Rakepick nodded grimly. “Ravenclaw's pleas were useless. The documents say that when Ceto Annis reduced herself down to her barest essence, all that was left was a parasitic shade. A monster, more than a human being. There was no point in appealing to Ceto's better instincts...because Ceto Annis the person no longer existed.”

Duncan and Carewyn exchanged a glance before they both looked up at the Cetus smashing stone off of one of Hogwarts' ramparts, shrieking that piercing, dolphin-like cry.

“Rakepick,” said Carewyn slowly, “you said that the Cetus was all that was left of Ceto's magic...and that it needs a host to strengthen and protect itself. And Ravenclaw, she said...that the Cetus eats magic to survive...”

Her almond-shaped blue eyes drifted over to Ravenclaw, who had started conjuring shields around the school to try to drive the Cetus back.

“...I think Ravenclaw must have realized...the Cetus wasn't doing any of this because it wanted to hurt people. It was made by Dark magic...but it lost any humanity or moral code when Ceto stripped herself down so much that she...well, lost 'herself' completely.”

Carewyn looked up at the Cetus. She tried to make out where its eel-like tail and sharp webbed claws were, inside the hulking smoke, but it was too opaque to see.

“Barnaby was right,” she said, her heart full of pity. “It's not a monster – it's a magical creature.”

~*~

“Fourth day of Winter Full Moon, 1022,” the podium read the next page of Slytherin's journal aloud in Dumbledore's voice, “Upon discussing the matter of sacrificial love with my dear Cyneburga, I've come to a thought I had not yet considered. There's nothing inherent in the word 'sacrifice' that slims it down to just the giving up of one's life. Is it not possible, therefore, that such magical love could be invoked by more means than dying? It's something I hope to examine further.

“Tomorrow I shall set off for Kent to follow up with the witch Merry Millard, who specializes in the study of love-centric spells and potions.

“Twentieth day of Winter Full Moon, 1022.

“Fie! My trip to Kent was a loss and a waste. I was forced to sleep in the woods outside Kent for the night before starting homeward, for all inns and residences in the area were owned by Muggles. I was able to conjure up a bluebell fire to keep me warm, but was unable to do much more for fear of drawing unwanted attention.

“All Saints Day, 1022.

“Thanks to my brother-in-law, Oswine, I was given access to the records owned by a wizard in Tamworth of a successful application of sacrificial love from the 9th century. The records testified to a young wizard who protected his younger brother during a Viking Raid. The boy was sick in bed, and the young wizard refused to leave his brother's side, no matter how the Norsemen urged him to get out of the way and let them take what they wanted. In the struggle, the young wizard was killed, and when the Norsemen made one step toward his brother's bed, they were thrown backward by a massive Shield Charm.

“I must confess that the account brought many things back to my mind that I wish it hadn't. The younger brother was even described as having bright scarlet hair.

“Full Moon, Month of Sacrifice, 1022.

“The flight home from Tamworth was delayed by heavy snow, which forced me to take shelter at the Peverell estate just outside London. My lateness greatly upset Cyneburga. She has grown very restless about my frequent traveling, expressing concerns for my health, but she needn't worry. Once the Cetus has been slain once and for all, there shall be much more time for us to enjoy each other's company.

“New Moon, Month of Sacrifice, 1022.

“The wizard I spoke to in Tamworth followed up with me by owl, forwarding me a copy of a passage from a book of White magic from the 5th century. The passage discusses another such instance of successfully applied sacrificial love, where a witch was imprisoned and later executed, only for her son to be magically shielded from harm when he was nearly killed in a duel several years later. I find it interesting that the spell she cast didn't manifest for so long – perhaps because the son's life hadn't been in life-threatening danger until that point? There are some details missing, but the question of whether or not the witch sacrificing her freedom or her life was what cast the spell would lend some credence to the idea that the sacrifice one makes does not have to be one's life.

“There has been a terrible chill in the air, as of late. I remember Godric once saying that the coldest winters exist so that you better appreciate the glory of summer – well, I certainly do long for summer, if only to thaw the ice that encases me every time I step out my door.

“Feast of St. Andrew, 1022.

“I have tracked down a promising lead just outside Oxford. Will write more, upon my return.”

~*~

Little by little, the memory of Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw trying to beat the Cetus back away from Hogwarts began to blur. Carewyn watched as their surroundings melted and darkened – soon it was night, and the battle between the Founders and the Cetus raged on. There were several more students and teachers lying prone across the grounds, their veins pitch black and their bodies motionless. The four Founders had managed to steer the Cetus toward the Black Lake, encircling it in an attempt to keep it from escaping into the Forest or returning to the castle.

“Nûna!” cried Gryffindor.

At the same time, the two witches and two wizards shot blasts of blueish-white light from their wands. The light grew and grew, expanding and brightening, until it had completely enveloped the Cetus's mist. The creature shrieked in fury, its darkness lashing out; the light grew brighter still and more violent, like flames; Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin all hunched in on themselves as their wands began to quake in their hands – the blueish-white light began to crack through their wands, spilling out at both ends and lashing at their hands –

“The magic's so strong that they're having trouble controlling it,” said Jacob, his hollowed-out eyes narrowing tensely. “Wands are supposed to help you focus your magic – if what they're doing is so destructive that their wands can't channel it properly – ”

The blueish-white light attempted to suffocate the Cetus, pushing and shoving it into submission in the same way someone might try to shove some extra clothing into a suitcase. With every bit of force it used to trap the Cetus, however, that light also seemed to drain the Founders of their life and strength. Gryffindor had fallen to his knees, his wand arm visibly shaking; Ravenclaw was breathing very heavily and her eyes were so unfocused and glassy it was likely that she was barely conscious; Hufflepuff was holding her crackling, quaking wand with both hands and struggling not to collapse; Slytherin's hair and beard had turned gray and he clutched at his chest, gasping for air.

At long, long last, the Cetus was completely encased in light and began to shrink. With one last massive blue-tinted flare, the Cetus collided with the ground and fell still, encased in a thick stone shell that was about the size of an ostrich egg.

All four Founders collapsed, unable to stand and barely able to breathe. Carewyn couldn't help but walk up to them – she knew they were only memories that she couldn't touch, and in Slytherin's case, he was a blood purist bigot that she could never like as a person...but it didn't stop her from wanting to try to help them to their feet, when they were clearly in so much pain.

Jacob brought an arm around Carewyn and squeezed her against his side.

“It took that much out of them, just to imprison the Cetus,” he murmured.

“And even with that,” said Rakepick lowly, “the Cetus's power wasn't destroyed.”

She pointed to the egg-like artifact on the ground, which was already starting to form tiny black cracks.

~*~

“Sixth day of Old Yule, 1022. Godric's birthday.

“My research in Oxford has uncovered a story of a wizard who successfully applied the magic of sacrificial love in order to save his wife. The wife in question was a magic-less Muggle, so I hardly think he should have bothered – but nonetheless, the protective magic created something of a barrier around the deceased wizard's home, making it so that anyone who tried to attack the Muggle was instead injured with their own weapons. A local magical family was forced to intervene so that things didn't escalate. It's through that magical family that I acquired some interesting details –

“First, the wizard's Muggle wife was the target of the witch-hunters' wrath. Apparently it was a case of mistaken identity, where the Muggle townspeople saw some evidence of the wizard's magic and stupidly assigned blame to the one living thing in the house that wasn't able to cast magic.

“Second, the witch-hunters – since they presumed the wizard's innocence – gave him the chance to step aside, saying that he wouldn't be harmed if he bent to their will. The wizard, however, refused, and pleaded with the witch-hunters to take him in his wife's place. It was only after he refused to move that the witch-hunters attacked and killed him, and thus the protective enchantment was cast.

“These two facts reinforce what other successful cases have shown. In order to invoke the magic of sacrificial love, there must be a choice presented. Simply hurtling yourself in front of someone in the height of battle or dying with others in mind would not create that kind of postmortem shield. Therefore any sacrifice like the kind Godric has suggested would not invoke the magic needed to destroy the Cetus's power. Even if his emotions would no doubt be sincere, the Cetus would still have the power needed to eat away at the enchantments we've cast to contain it. Once it does that, it could theoretically turn our own Cursed Vaults against us and against Hogwarts itself. The Vaults we created to protect our students would attack them instead.

“Still looking into my second theory, regarding the nature of sacrifice. Hopefully I shall have a proper answer to that question, once I'm able to follow up with Johannes Eriugena.

“This winter has been colder than any I've ever seen. I may need to spend a few days in Oxford before setting off for home.”

~*~

The Black Lake dissolved, and suddenly Carewyn, Jacob, Rakepick and Duncan were inside the Cursed Vault they'd just left. It was devoid of the dozens of statues they'd seen when they arrived, so there was nothing halting Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw from running across the hall toward the Inner Vault. Both women looked a good ten years older than they'd been last, and they only looked about half-dressed, given that Hufflepuff's mane of brown curls and Ravenclaw's graying dark tresses flapped freely behind them and Ravenclaw wasn't even wearing her tiara.

Hufflepuff reached the inner doors first, taking out the same coral key Merula had used not too long ago – when the key came close to the keyhole, it began to vibrate, which alarmed Hufflepuff. She and Ravenclaw watched in horror as the silvery-white written warning appeared.

“Godric,” Hufflepuff breathed.

Ravenclaw turned to Hufflepuff, her face as white as a skull's as she frantically cried something else.

“She says he must have written that message, in case something went wrong,” said Duncan, and he actually looked rather troubled himself. He looked at Carewyn. “This was the day that...”

Carewyn nodded, her blue eyes welling up with pain as she watched Hufflepuff quickly unlock the door and the double doors swung open.

Lying in a heap on the floor beside a gold-trimmed glass column in the center of the Inner Vault's floor was the lifeless form of Godric Gryffindor. Like the two women, he looked a good ten years older than he had when he fought the Cetus, as well as quite a bit broader in the chest – but, Carewyn thought, he only looked a little older than Professor McGonagall. He was far too young to have died like this...

Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw both ran to their friend's side. Hufflepuff desperately pulled at Gryffindor's shoulders, talking rapidly as if she were begging him to wake up. Ravenclaw said nothing, instead staring down at Gryffindor helplessly through her tears. Her hands trembling, she rather quickly turned to look at the column – in a flash, she'd dashed over to it, before she raised her wand and silently lit it.

As Ravenclaw stared at the column, however, both she and Carewyn standing behind her could see a mass of inky black smoke throbbing dangerously just under the enchanted glass.

Ravenclaw's wand clattered to the floor. She covered her face in her hands and began to cry.

“She says that Gryffindor's spell failed,” said Rakepick. Her own face had lost most of its color as she stared at the inky darkness pulsing inside the column.

“'The Vaults...must remain locked,'” Duncan translated sadly.

Tears streaming down her face, Hufflepuff clutched the back of Gryffindor's red and white robes, hoisting him up and off the ground with as much strength as she could in a vain attempt to turn him over. When her strength failed her, she fell upon Gryffindor's back, and the room was filled with her scream of utter despair.

~*~

“Last Day of Yule, New Year 1023

“As expected, Johannes is a true philosopher among wizards! I think the answer to the Cetus dilemma may finally be within my grasp!

“Sacrificial love is, in truth, just that – a sacrifice, namely, anything that one would be hard pressed to lose, made solely out of the purest, most sincere love. Therefore, as you might presume, one needn't necessarily sacrifice their life in order to activate it, if there was something of equal or somehow greater value to give instead.

“The one problem this leaves us with, however, is how to purposefully cast such an enchantment – for now that I know the power that such a spell might have over the Cetus, my motivation for casting it would no longer be done out of selfless love, but for my own gain. One could always try to deceive another person into making such a sacrifice, but I would hesitate to try it, for deception is deathly poisonous to all forms of love. Nevertheless, it may be something to broach with Rowena, if she will accept my owl. Perhaps if I start with Helga, it will be easier – she knows the demons of despair Godric has faced over the years, and I know she cares for his safety as much as I.

“Will spend several more nights in London before starting the journey home. Hopefully the weather will have improved enough by then that the broom flight will be speedy.”

The last page of Slytherin's journal flapped back down onto the podium and fell still.

Lane picked it up, her blue eyes trailing helplessly over the Old English words, so much more shakily written than the ones written in the previous months. Dumbledore looked at Lane sadly.

“It looks like that's all he wrote,” he said softly.

Lane closed her eyes. “Godric's death was recorded on January 5th, 1023. Salazar would've learned of it either as soon as he got home, or en route.”

She bowed her head.

“...Salazar put in so much work, to try to save Godric's life. With Godric dead...he must have lost the will to keep fighting.”

~*~

Hufflepuff's scream echoed endlessly until it had faded away completely. Then the inner Vault's walls again began to quake, and molt, and change. The blueish-tinted darkness of the Vault was broken up by the warm, golden glow of firelight, and suddenly Jacob, Duncan, Rakepick, and Carewyn found themselves in the main room of a small cottage.

The ceilings were so much lower than back at Hogwarts – had this not been a memory, Carewyn thought that Bill and Ben would've probably hit their heads on it, were they standing at full height. The walls were made of dark red bricks and the low rafters, decorated with carvings of galloping unicorns and rearing dragons, were crafted out of warm cherry wood. There was a long table and stools set up on the far end by the sooty brick fireplace in the far right corner, while on the far left corner, there was a small library with two oak bookshelves full of well-worn books and two small, rounded Dante chairs with soft emerald green cushions.

Sitting in the Dante chair closest to the stained-glass window was Helga Hufflepuff, resting the Pensieve she'd left in the Cursed Vault for them down on a small table next to her. She looked far older now – her chocolate brown curls had gone gray, her dark skin was wrinkled and age-spotted, and she looked incredibly frail. And yet she smiled toward the empty Dante chair beside her and talked to herself with as much composure as she would at a fine feast.

Duncan and Rakepick both stiffened uncomfortably.

“What is it?” asked Carewyn.

“She said 'hello,' but...” said Duncan uneasily, “...there's nobody there.”

As Hufflepuff continued to speak, Rakepick's eyes narrowed upon her face.

“She's reassuring the chair that she's not mad,” she said, her eyebrows raised scornfully.

Her dark blue eyes then abruptly widened.

“...She knows we're listening.”

“What?” said Jacob, taken aback. “But she can't know that – this is just a memory!”

“Yes,” said Rakepick, her eyes still very wide upon Hufflepuff. “And she knows that, as well. Hufflepuff knows this memory of herself will go into the Pensieve – so she's talking as if the person who will find the Pensieve in the future is sitting with her in this room!”

Carewyn looked from Rakepick to Hufflepuff. The little old woman did indeed look like she was having a pleasant, but still serious conversation with an unseen person in the chair beside her.

With a purposeful stride, Carewyn crossed the room, settling herself down on the ground in front of the chair Hufflepuff was speaking to.

“Translate everything she's saying, to the word,” Carewyn told Rakepick firmly, keeping her eyes locked on the old woman's face.

Rakepick followed Carewyn across the room, slowly lowering herself to the ground so that she was bent down beside Carewyn, her eyes also on Hufflepuff.

“'You must have put in a lot of work, to end up here,'” Rakepick translated little by little. “'I applaud your courage – I can only hope that you either are or were one of my students.'”

Hufflepuff laughed softly, before growing much more serious.

“'The same day that Godric passed away, I received a letter from Salazar. Although he'd left the school, he'd continued his research into how to use sacrificial love – the strongest white magic there is – to purify the Cetus of its evil, parasitic power. Unfortunately his letter did not arrive soon enough to save Godric's life...and after the news of Godric's passing reached Salazar, his health declined very quickly. I never received another letter from him again.

“'Several years later, Rowena's health also started to fail. Like Salazar, she had trouble recovering from the Cetus's attack, thanks in no small part to her emotional attachment to Ceto, when she was still alive. Despite the animosity that grew between them in later years, Ceto was Rowena's first student and – I would think – something of a daughter to her, long before she gave birth to Helena. Sometimes I wonder if the reason Rowena had such difficulty relating to Helena all the way up until her death was that she never fully recovered from the heartbreak of Ceto embracing Dark magic and turning her back on Rowena's teachings.

“'This is why I am the only one who can give you this final piece of wisdom, in how best to defeat the Cetus. According to Salazar's research, a spell of sacrificial love requires that the spell's caster be given a choice of whether or not to make a sacrifice, and that they choose to make the sacrifice for someone else, for no other reason than pure, selfless love. The sacrifice needn't be one's life, but it must be something of equal or greater value that they would be hard-pressed to give up. There can also be no element of righteousness or self-gain in play. The reason Godric's sacrifice failed is not just because he struggled with whether or not to value his own life many times over the years...but because, in the end, he chose to die with the aim of defeating the Cetus and saving our school from evil – because he made the choice in order to live up to the code of honor and chivalry he aspired to, not solely to protect those he loved most and who loved him in return. Therefore he was not invoking sacrificial love, when he gave up his own life. It was a noble act – but it was not an expression of true love.'”

Rakepick's voice had become very quiet. Carewyn glanced at her out the side of her eye – she'd lowered her gaze to her gloved hand resting on her thigh.

Hufflepuff's hazel-brown eyes flickered with a bit more sadness.

“'This is, sadly, where Salazar noted a terrible paradox,'” Rakepick translated her once more. “'In your pursuit to discover a way to purify the Cetus so as to protect yourself and others, you've come seeking a way to invoke the magic of sacrificial love. But now that you know that sacrificial love could be strong enough to defeat the Cetus...any attempt you might make to use it will likely be tainted by your desire to defeat it, rather than simply being about expressing love for the people you cherish most. The magic you seek to invoke...you cannot...simply because you wish to purposefully invoke it.'”

Duncan lashed through the air down toward Hufflepuff, hovering over her with righteous anger. “WHAT?! So you're saying that even if we know what to do now, it won't even work!?”

Carewyn's face blanched. 'No – no, that can't be! There has to be some way we – !'

Hufflepuff's expression softened with a smile, but her eyes were still far too sad and full of regret to be anything happy.

“'It's possible that a third party could cast the spell of love in your place – making the sacrifice for you, without knowing that it would serve as the counter-curse you need...but for that to come true, you would have to keep the knowledge you've learned completely to yourself. The person would have to make a sacrifice...without knowing that it could save your life, or the lives of others.'”

Jacob glanced at Rakepick out the side of his eye warily.

“'I myself could never do such a thing, to anyone I truly loved...but perhaps this is why, in the end...I'll die before I can ensure the Cetus never harms my Hogwarts or my students again.'”

Hufflepuff's gaze drifted down to the seat of the chair. It almost looked like she was looking Carewyn right in the face, though of course her eyes never lit up in acknowledgment of her.

“'...You must be a very brave, clever, hard-working, and determined person to have made it this far. I almost wish I could see your face as clearly as you must see mine, in whatever future you live in. I wish I could give you all the answers – I wish I could tell you how best to protect yourself and the ones you love from the Cetus. And I'm sorry – so sorry – to leave this heavy burden on your shoulders. One thing I do know, however, is that love is most powerful when it's reciprocated. Even if you can't invoke the otherworldly protection of sacrificial love...I truly believe, with all of my heart and soul, in the power that comes from loving someone who loves you in return.'”

Hufflepuff's eyes had filled with tears as she raised her gaze back to the chair itself.

“'Cherish your friends. Embrace your differences. Think of their well-being before your own pride. Let their memory give you strength and their love give you courage.'”

Her lips spread into a soft smile as the tears trailed down her wrinkled face.

“ ...Now go. The column will be waiting for you, when you get back. The Pensieve might be a bit hard to navigate, but you should be able to pull yourself up and out with a proper Ascending Charm. It always worked well for Rowena, whenever she consulted her past memories.'”

And with one final smile, Helga Hufflepuff's old, wrinkled, tear-stained face slowly faded away and disappeared once again into endless, silvery mist.

~*~

All of a sudden, echoing through the walls of the underground library came a wonderful, otherworldly song. The sound made Lane's heart swell, despite never having heard anything quite so beautiful before in her life.

Dumbledore blinked up at the ceiling in surprise, but rose from the blackwood chair at once.

“Come, Lane – we should return to the surface, quickly.”

With a sweep of his robes, he climbed the stairs up and out of Slytherin's library, Lane at his heels.

When they reached solid ground once more, they found Fawkes the phoenix soaring down toward them. Dumbledore extended an arm for the scarlet bird to land on, taking the scroll from his shining beak and unrolling it. His light blue eyes narrowed upon each word.

“Lane, my dear,” he said very gravely, as he looked up at her, “it appears that Carewyn and Jacob have entered the final Cursed Vault.”

“Jacob?” gasped Lane. “He's...”

“He's alive,” said Dumbledore as kindly as he could. “My guess is that he seeks to atone for the mistakes he has made. Nonetheless...Hogwarts is under attack, by those who would seek to use the Cetus for their own evil ends – I must return at once – ”

Lane grabbed the older wizard by the sleeve of his robes.

“Professor, please, take me with you,” she urged him. Despite the frailness of her voice, her grip on his arm was very firm.

Dumbledore looked upon Lane with a rather concerned expression. “I understand your feelings. But I must warn you – you do not just have family on the side protecting Hogwarts.”

Lane's blue eyes narrowed upon Dumbledore's face. She clearly understood what he meant – her father and siblings were there too, trying to break into the Vault.

“This battle will be very dangerous,” said Dumbledore, “far more dangerous for you than most.”

“If I'm in danger, then so are my bairns,” Lane shot back, her soft, level voice low in the back of her throat with determination. “Please take me with you.”

The Headmaster inclined his head respectfully to Lane. “Very well. Hold on tightly.”

He raised his arm – Fawkes took flight, and Dumbledore seized hold of his pet's tail. In a flash of scarlet and gold flames, Lane and Dumbledore vanished. Mere moments later, the steps leading down to Slytherin's library melted away back into the reservoir from whence they came, leaving no trace that anyone had been there.

~*~

When Jacob and Rakepick both helped her out of the Pensieve, Carewyn soon found herself enveloped in a gigantic hug by Barnaby, Ben, Charlie, and Bill, all of whom looked very pale and relieved at the sight of her. True to Hufflepuff's words, just over Bill and Barnaby's arms, she could see a gold-trimmed glass column, identical to the ones in the other Vaults, waiting for her – Bill had said it appeared just before Duncan and Jacob first emerged from the Pensieve. Just like back in Helga’s memories, Carewyn could see a large shadow burbling behind the glass -- there were also more inky black stains covering the base of the column, not unlike the stain that spread across the white and gold tile floor.

“Not long after you left, there were these really bad rumbling sounds, coming from outside the Vault,” Charlie told Carewyn. “Liz and Tonks went to investigate, and they'd found the Giant Squid attacking what looked like four red-robed figures...”

“One had black trim around the hood of his robe,” said Bill solemnly. “Jae said he sounded like the Leader you saw at the meeting with R.”

Rakepick's shoulders straightened tensely.

“Charles Cromwell,” growled Jacob.

A chill ran down Carewyn's spine at the memory of Charles's cold, cruel face in Rakepick's mind, alongside her tortured screams and his heartless taunt.

“It's what you deserve, isn't it?”

Ben's eyes narrowed. “Badeea and I conjured up the strongest shields we could around the front doors and Talbott helped me Transfigure the doors into a wall, to keep them out, but...”

“If we don't do something soon, it could turn into a siege, Cromwell,” said Merula very solemnly. “What's the plan? How do we destroy the Cetus?”

Carewyn didn't reply for a long moment. Hufflepuff's words once again echoed in her ears.

“It's possible that a third party could cast the spell of love in your place – making the sacrifice for you, without knowing that it would serve as the counter-curse you need...'”

'I could lie to my friends, to save them,' she thought, 'just like I tried before, when I first decided to go after the last Vault alone...but...'

The memory of Rowan pushing Ben out of the way of Rakepick's Killing Curse – of her being tossed to the ground by the force, and her eyes staring unblinkingly and lifelessly up at Carewyn as she grabbed hold of her, screaming –

'Rowan's death couldn't even evoke the magic of sacrificial love because she wasn't given a choice,' thought Carewyn, and her clenched fists began to shake her sides. 'She loved us more than anyone – yet I would give just about anything, if it meant she could still be here – '

The leader of the Circle of Khanna closed her eyes. She was silent for a very long moment before she finally responded.

“We...can't destroy the Cetus, Merula.”

Everyone straightened up, startled. No one looked more surprised than Rakepick.

“Miss Cromwell – ” she started, her usually cool, haughty face betraying genuine concern.

“I will not lie to them, Rakepick!” Carewyn cut her off fiercely. Her voice lowered significantly as she regained control of her temper. “...Not this time.”

~*~

And so Carewyn gathered the entire Circle of Khanna together, just outside the inner doors of the Vault. She told them everything that she'd seen in the Pensieve. She told them about the Founders' battle with the Cetus, how much damage it had done to them, and what Helga Hufflepuff had said.

“The spell needed to destroy the Cetus's power requires an act of selfless love – something done with no thought of morality or self-gain,” said Carewyn. “But it's a spell I can't cast. Neither can Jacob. Neither can Rakepick. Because all of us are too focused on making sure that R is defeated and that the Cursed Vaults never hurt anyone again. If we tried to make that sacrifice, we'd just end up like Gryffindor – dead, with nothing to show for it.”

Carewyn bowed her head, unable to look any of her friends in the face.

“Hufflepuff said that if I kept the knowledge to myself...someone else could make the sacrifice instead, ignorant of the power it would have, and it could work...but...”

Her blue eyes welled up with pain – she closed them to try to keep her composure.

“...I cannot and will not lie to you, if it means I might lose you forever. I've already learned the cost of not trusting the ones you care for most. I do not intend to make that mistake again.”

She swallowed back the lump in her throat that made her want to cry.

“So all that's left to do...is to plan a proper evacuation.”

Everyone looked shocked.

“What?” said Talbott.

“Carewyn...” murmured Andre, looking stunned and horrified.

“Merula said it best – if we don't do something soon, this'll turn into a siege,” said Carewyn. “There's only one way in and out of this place – once R reaches those outer doors, there'll be no way out for any of us. And if my grandfather is leading the group on its way here...then he won't hesitate to kill every last person who stands between him and the Cetus.”

‘Jacob, Rakepick, and I...there is no going back for us,’ she thought. ‘We can’t run from this...but...’

Carewyn steadied her grip on her wand, forcing herself to raise her head and look up at her friends. Her blue eyes were swimming with tears, but she put on the bravest expression she could.

“I'm grateful to all of you...for everything you've done. But I don't want you becoming martyrs. So I'm disbanding the Circle of Khanna. Everyone is free to go. I'll cover your retreat. Go back to the castle. Go find the teachers and send them down here, if you want. You've all done more than I ever could've asked for or dreamed of, and...”

She choked.

“...And...thank you.”

There was a resounding silence. Then Bill came up beside Carewyn, bringing an arm around her so that he could clutch her shoulder.

“We'll cover the retreat,” he corrected firmly, “of anyone who decides to go.”

Carewyn looked up at Bill, her eyes widening.

“Bill, it's suicide. If you stay here, you'll die!”

“I'm not afraid of dying, Carey,” Bill said sharply. “You know what my Boggart is – what it's always been. It's losing the ones who mean the most to me, and that includes you.”

He used the hand he'd anchored on her shoulder to pull her closer to him so he could take hold of her other shoulder too and look her straight-on in the face.

“Carey...we started this thing together,” he said, his brown eyes boring into her blue, “and I promised myself a long time ago that we'd finish it the same way. No matter what that 'finish' is – I'm with you.”

Carewyn stared at Bill, disbelieving and speechless. Charlie strode up behind Carewyn, wrapping his arms around her from behind and leaning his head on her shoulder.

“We're with you,” he said with a small smile. “Fireballs, remember? We fight together.”

Ben took Carewyn's hand on Bill's shoulder and gave it an affectionate squeeze, his dark eyes very hard and determined. “We'll fight together and fall together.”

“Right!” said Barnaby brightly. “And we'll kick R's tail real good, too!”

“Reckon they could use a good Dungbomb to the face too, while we're at it,” said George.

“Chuck it down their throats!” laughed Fred.

Talbott looked at Carewyn very seriously. “Whatever anyone else chooses to do, Carewyn...I'm staying right here.”

“Me too,” said Penny, her eyes full of tears.

“Both of us will,” agreed Beatrice.

“All of us will,” corrected Andre.

“You bet!” said Tonks, and Liz, Jae, Diego, Tulip, and Cedric all nodded.

“We love you, Carewyn,” said Chiara gently. “Even if we can't cast that spell...Hufflepuff said love is strongest when it's reciprocated. We're stronger together than we could ever be apart.”

“You said you didn't want us to be martyrs,” said Merula harshly. “Well, you haven't presented a better option, save us leaving you to fend for yourself.”

Her pink eyes bore into Carewyn's face with a kind of fire she'd never seen before.

“If it takes every last one of us to keep R's slimy mitts off the Cetus...then so be it.”

The flood of affection was too much for Carewyn to handle. She couldn't summon any words at all – all she could do was just stand there, wrapped up in Bill and Charlie's arms and holding Ben's hand, while trying to contain the trembling in her shoulders.

Carewyn caught Jacob's eye as he stood off to the side, Duncan floating just over his shoulder. The older Cromwell's eyes were also filled with tears, his expression touched by a very soft smile. He looked like he'd never been so proud of his sister in his life.

“Thank you,” Carewyn's voice came out as a very fragile, tear-soaked whisper, even though she managed not to actually cry. “...Thank you.”

~*~

Within moments, the entire Circle of Khanna had gotten into formation in front of the Vault's inner doors like an army prepared for war. The younger students – Fred, George, Cedric, and Beatrice – were scattered among the ranks so that they each had two sixth years on either side of them who could support and protect them. Carewyn stood toward the back of the formation on the top stair in front of the Vault, flanked by Rakepick and Bill on her left and Jacob and Merula on her right.

As the Circle stood tall and waited, listening to the rumbles and crashes of Charles Cromwell and his reinforcements fighting off the Giant Squid and barraging the outside of the Vault, an eerie stillness filled the air. It made time feel like it was moving very slowly – like every lone beat of your heart echoed over several times in your ear.

Despite being a ghost who wouldn't be able to do much fighting, Duncan had nonetheless also chosen to stay. He drifted up between Jacob and Carewyn, his light-less eyes likewise focused on the reinforced outer doors of the Vault in the distance.

“I didn't think I'd have to worry about you two dying,” he said quietly. “Especially you, Carewyn.”

Jacob gave Duncan a dark smile. “You mean you didn't really think I was going to get myself killed, all those times you got mad at me for doing something dangerous?”

“Piss off,” snapped Duncan.

Jacob tried to give a light “ha” of laughter, but it died before he could fully open his mouth. The smile slid off his face as easily as if it had been wiped off with a handkerchief.

“Just promise me one thing,” Duncan said lowly.

“What?” asked Carewyn.

“Promise me that you won't stay behind.”

Jacob looked up at Duncan, startled.

“I stayed behind because I was too much of a coward to die,” mumbled Duncan, his head falling noticeably. “Because I couldn't accept that I couldn't do all the great things I'd wanted to do – that nothing I'd done really mattered – that my life was so insignificant that...nobody would really care, after I was gone.”

“Ashe...” murmured Jacob, but Duncan shook his head and forcefully cut him off.

“But you...neither of you are like me. You're not cowardly. And...there are people who love you. So...so don't stay behind. Even if you're worried about me being lonely or something stupid like that – don't. Because if this is the day you die...”

Duncan's face cracked into a bittersweet smile.

“...I want you to let go! Be free. Sing and laugh and...rest. Not...linger.”

Jacob's blue eyes were full of pain as he stared up at the ghost of his best friend. Carewyn's eyes rested on Duncan's ghostly hand instead of his face, feeling genuinely touched by the sentiment.

'You may have been hard to deal with sometimes, Duncan,' she thought, 'but I'm really glad that I got to be your friend, too...like Jacob did.'

She looked up, once again looking out at the outer doors in the distance.

'If this is the day I die...'

The thought hurt her too much to contemplate. If it was her last day, she'd never see Hogwarts again. She'd never play in Quidditch friendlies again, or challenge her friends to Wizard Duels, or sing to the creatures at the Magical Creature Preserve again. She'd never had the chance to tell Professor McGonagall how much she admired her or thank Professor Snape properly for teaching her Legilimency and Occlumency. She'd never see Orion fly with the Montrose Magpies. She'd never be able to visit Torvus again or to help Hagrid with his magical creatures. She’d never graduate school. She’d never join the Department of Magical Law Enforcement or help anyone with their legal problems, like she’d dreamed. She’d never be able to live the life she’d always wanted, free of the Cursed Vaults and R, with her brother beside her. ...She'd never see her mother again...never hug her tight again, never listen to any more of her historical lectures...never sing Christmas carols with her again.

Carewyn closed her eyes, exhaling heavily. Then she took a deep breath.

“A long, long time ago...

I can still remember how that music used to make me smile...”

On the other side of Bill, Rakepick stiffened visibly. Everyone else turned to glance at Carewyn. Her voice was very soft and low in her throat, to the point that it was almost a whisper – it was only because the Vault had been so very still and eerily quiet that her voice could've been heard at all.

“And I knew if I had my chance that I could make those people dance,

And maybe they'd be happy for a while...

But February made me shiver – with every paper I'd deliver,

Bad news on the doorstep...I couldn't take one more step...

I can't remember if I cried when I read about his widowed bride...

But something touched me deep inside...the day...the music...died...”

Carewyn's voice trailed off into silence. She brought her right hand not holding her wand up onto her shoulder, as if subconsciously wanting to shift the terrible invisible weight that rested there.

The unsettling quiet returned, settling down over everyone like a cold blanket. Then, abruptly, the silence was broken by Duncan, who had leaned backward in mid-air in a “lying down” sort of posture with his left leg crossed over his right and his arms behind his head.

“So bye, bye, Miss American Pie –

Drove my Chevy to the levee, but the levee was dry.

Them good old boys were drinking whiskey and rye – ”

His voice was less melancholy than Carewyn's had been, but no less quiet. He glanced at her out the side of his eye, and Carewyn couldn't help but smile at him as she again slipped in,

“ – Singing, 'this'll be the day that I die'...'this'll be the day that I die...'”

Another voice had joined Duncan and Carewyn's on the last word. They both turned to Jacob, whose face broke into a smile as he continued the song, picking up the tempo and lightening the tone.

“Did you write the book of love, and do you have faith in God above, If the Bible tells you so? Ahh, do you believe in rock and roll? Can music save your mortal soul, and Can you teach me how to dance real sloooow?”

It didn't take long for Jacob's enthusiasm to rub off on Duncan and Carewyn. Regardless of how strange it must have looked, the three sing the song a bit louder and cheerfully, in spite of the dark Vault they were in or how heavy the hopelessness of their situation weighed on their shoulders. Duncan swirled around Jacob in lackadaisical spirals, his translucent hands passing through Jacob's shoulder and hair a few times as the two danced around each other.

“Well, I know that you're in love with him, 'cause I saw you dancin' in the gym! You both kicked off your shoes... Man, I dig those rhythm and bluuUUUES!”

Jacob's high note was excellently pitched despite the flippancy with which he sang. Merula couldn't keep the huge, amused grin off her face.

“I was a lonely teenage broncin' buck with a pink carnation and a pickup truck, But I knew I was out of luck the day the music died...”

Soon everyone else was laughing and smiling – some of the half-bloods like Penny, Beatrice, Chiara and Badeea were starting to sing along, in places. Ben, the lone Muggle-born in the group, even sang along with the chorus when they reached it again.

“I started singing,

'Bye, bye Miss American Pie!' Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry. And them good ole boys were drinking whiskey and rye, Singing 'this'll be the day that I die'...'this'll be the day that I die!'”

Before long, this miserable, rag-tag band had devolved into a laughing, singing, dancing gaggle of teenagers. Duncan, Jacob, and Carewyn took turns singing different stanzas, passing the invisible “microphone” from one to the other with over-dramatic flourishes, as those who knew the words jumped in when they could and those who didn't danced and swayed along. Diego was dancing more passionately than anyone, of course, but Tulip was giving him a run for his money. Fred and George pretty consistently shoved themselves in front of whomever was dancing so as to hilariously upstage them. Diego was even able to somehow rope Ismelda into dancing with him for a stanza. Before long, even those students raised by wizards who'd never heard the song in their lives like Andre and the Weasleys were able to sing gleefully along to the chorus.

“Oh, and there we were all in one place, a generation lost in space, With no time left to start again...

So come on, Jack be nimble, Jack be quick –

Jack Flash sat on a candlestick 'cause...fire is the devil's only frieeeend...

Oh, and as I watched him on the stage,

My hands were clenched in fists of rage – No angel born in Hell could break that Satan's spell!

And as the flames climbed high into the night to light the sacrificial rite, I saw Satan laughing with delight the day the music died... He was singing,

'Bye, bye, Miss American Pie!' Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry. Them good ole boys were drinking whiskey and rye, Singing, 'this'll be the day that I die' – 'this'll be the day that I – '”

BOOM.

Everyone came to an abrupt halt.

The rumbling, blasting sounds that had echoed over their heads previously hadn't been so close as the one they heard now. It came from the outer doors of the Vault – as if someone was ramming at the other side with a battering ram.

The entire Circle of Khanna stared at the doors once more, all cheer and laughter fading from their faces. All at once, the gravity of the situation had returned.

Any minute, R would be ramming down that door – and then they'd have to fight with everything they had, with no guarantee that they'd survive to see another day. It made them suddenly feel both incredibly stupid and so much, much younger than they'd felt just ten minutes ago.

Before the freezing cold silence could completely congeal, another lower, more resounding voice broke through.

“I met a girl who sang the blues, and I asked her for some happy news,

But she just smiled and turned away...”

It was Rakepick.

The entire Circle of Khanna turned to face the ex-professor. She'd not joined into any of their revelry, staying on the sidelines and silently watching – but in that moment, her dark blue eyes locked on the outer doors much the same way as everyone else’s had been earlier, she sang the next stanzas in a soft, crisp, untrained voice that reminded Carewyn of the crackling of autumn leaves.

“I went down to the sacred store where I'd heard the music years before, But the man there said the music wouldn't play...

And in the streets, the children screamed,

The lovers cried, and the poets dreamed, But not a word was spoken – The church bells all were broken...”

Carewyn walked over to stand beside Rakepick, watching her silently.

Was that pain in her eyes? Were there tears? Carewyn couldn't poke around in Rakepick's head – but she couldn't help but wonder how much of what Rakepick had told them, about her background with R and about all of the regrets she had about what had happened with Jacob and...well, Carewyn herself...was running through the ex-professor's mind, in that moment.

‘She learned all the words, in that time after she heard me singing American Pie, as a kid,’ thought Carewyn. ‘Even though before then, she’d turned her back on all things Muggle.’

Rakepick’s dark blue eyes grew a bit smaller, almost sadder, upon the far wall.

“And the three men I admire most – the Father, Son, and the Holy Ghost – They caught the last train for the coast the day...the music...died...”

“And they were singing – ”

Rakepick looked up, startled, as Carewyn joined her, her almond-shaped eyes also resting on the outer doors on the far end as she sang a sweet harmony part over her.

“'Bye, bye, Miss American Pie...' Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry. Them good ole boys were drinking whiskey and rye, Singing, 'this'll be the day that I die'...'this'll be the day that I die'...”

In that moment, the Circle of Khanna seemed to have regained their posture.

Yes, it was silly – yes, it was stupid, to find any bit of comfort in something so insignificant and pointless – but no, in fact, it wasn't pointless. Perhaps things were hopeless. Perhaps they would fail. Perhaps they would die and never see their loved ones again. But they were together – and in that togetherness, they felt strong. In that community, they felt courageous – enough to sing about the specter of Death looming over them with optimism and heart rather than despair.

These children were, in truth, an army.

“They were singing, ‘Bye, bye, Miss American Pie...’ Drove my Chevy to the levee but the levee was dry. Them good ole boys were drinking whiskey and rye, Singing, 'this'll be the day that I die.'”

[To be concluded...]

44 notes · View notes