"Severus!"
Halfway down the stairs to the dungeons, Minerva McGonagall tried to regain the wind that had been knocked out of her, catching hold of her colleague's arm in an attempt to steady herself against him. For a moment it seemed the force of their collision had robbed Snape likewise of enough breath to keep them on their feet; then, as he staggered and thrust her off almost spasmodically, she caught sight of his face.
"That's blood." Her voice was sharp, and Snape managed the weary ghost of a snarl, grey lips contorting.
"Of course it's blood. Damn you, McGonagall, do you think I'd have run otherwise? The thing had me by the throat—" He broke off, as the colour began to ebb from Minerva's own face, and caught onto the stair-rail, dragging himself upright.
"It got Lovell." Bitter, unadorned truth. "It went after me for two solid days — drained all it could — and then it got Lovell."
"Oh dear God." Professor McGonagall caught hold of the rail herself, as her knees threatened to betray her. "Magnus. If I'd thought—"
She remembered the boy's parents with a sudden stab; the worn dark beauty of the mother, and the haunted hollows of the father's eyes. Dan Lovell had suffered more than enough already.
"Where is it? Where is…is he?"
Snape's lips twitched again, baring uneven teeth. "It's not what you think, Professor. Don't waste your time on pity. It took him willingly — it's riding his mind, using every spell he knows. The stupid, arrogant little boy—"
McGonagall gasped. "He's alive?" The sick wash of relief was almost more than she could bear. Not, after all, to be responsible for the death of a student. Not to have to break that news….
"Lovell alive?" Snape retorted. "Yes — if you call that 'alive' — and a danger to the whole school every minute he stays that way. With a human mind to channel its power, the only limits on the threat that creature can pose are those of Lovell's own knowledge—"
As she turned to run for Dumbledore, long fingers shot out to clutch at her robes, catching her off-balance, and she missed a step and almost fell. "Where are you going? What do you think you're doing?" Snape hissed.
Professor McGonagall's lips were pressed very firmly together as she reluctantly let his death-like grip drag her back down, grudging every wasted moment. "Severus, this has gone beyond the two of us now. Dumbledore needs to know, no matter what the consequences. I'll not shield myself at the cost of the death of a child—"
She wrenched suddenly at her robes, trying to free herself; but for all the ashen exhaustion in Snape's face, he was grasping onto her with the strength of a drowning man.
"Dark Magic work sanctioned in your name, against the express permission of the Headmaster? You think Dumbledore could — or would — cover up for us then, once the board of governors gets wind of it? Do you think there would be a place for either of us at this school, after that? You have a home, a family — I—"
He broke off, his face twisting, and took a fresh grip, dragging her close.
"We're in this together, Professor." It was the closest she had ever heard him come to a plea. "You and I can get Lovell out of there — deal with that creature ourselves before anyone need know."
He released her, abruptly. "Or you can go running upstairs to tell the world. Throw your future away — and mine. Is that what you want to do?"
"Don't be ridiculous," Minerva said sharply, without thinking. Her stare had deflated hundreds of students in their time, including a certain sullen adolescent Slytherin. It brought little more than a curled lip now, and her own hackles rose instinctively in response.
"You know I'd be only too glad to get out of this any way we can — and I've no intention of using you as the scapegoat, Severus, if that's what's eating your mind. But I'll not do it if it means any danger to the school; and I should never have let you have that boy, at all, if I'd thought there was any danger to him."
The memory of sending Magnus back down here, unhappy with it as he'd been, was still bitter in her throat. "And I all but warned him it was you who'd been affected — all but begged him to keep a close watch—"
"You did what?" Snape's eyes glittered in a sudden furious resentment. "You confirmed him in his own conceit. Encouraged him in flagrant disregard of every warning I gave. Laid him wide open to that mind-predator's wiles…."
"It was your own work did that." The flat words cut him off. "The Free-will Potion, Severus. And your own inimitable teaching style, I've little doubt."
Snape just stared at her, coldly, without a flicker.
"Your well-meaning concern—" He bit back the rest of that phrase with what was obviously an effort. There was a moment's silence.
"Everything I threw at the each uisge was channelled back to the rider," Snape said finally, almost without inflection. "As long as there's a human trapped on its back, no curse you can try is going to touch it without killing the victim first. And no healing you can cast on the rider will take any effect until the creature itself is sated. From the moment he let that horse-thing into his mind, Lovell all but ceased to exist. He's a puppet now, nothing more than a human shell to channel the raw power into shapes the creature can use."
He took a breath, his mouth tightening further. "That thing trapped down there is in essence now the most powerful sixth-year wizard you'll ever face— but it is only a sixth-year wizard. Unless and until it reaches water, it's trapped within the limits of Lovell's knowledge — restricted by the spells that he knows."
Despite herself, McGonagall's eyes had been drawn against her will down into the shadows of the dungeon corridor below, straining for signs of movement in the dark. Snape, turning to glance over his own shoulder, allowed himself a bitter smile. "I sealed that door behind me with the most effective spell I know. No student in this school could break it — and, as witnessed by the fact that you and I are still standing here and still sane—" the smile twisted further as she shuddered— "neither, it seems, can the each uisge."
Raw black hunger in the darkness below, held back by the fragile fabric of Severus' infamous, intricate sealing spells. For a moment she could almost taste the life of the school above her, moist and warm and so very, very tempting….
"No!" she said sharply. "No—" An indrawn breath. "Maybe it can't get out, Severus. But it can reach us here. And sooner or later it will find a way—"
"Agreed." Snape's voice was grim. "We have to deal with it, and now. Before Lovell's mind is gone beyond recall."
"Dumbledore—"
"Dumbledore could do nothing, save get the boy killed too. Is that what you claim to want?" He didn't even bother to wait for a reply. "No amount of wand-waving will so much as scratch that creature while it has a rider to take the hurt — and no-one has ever dragged the rider from a living each uisge and lasted to tell the tale."
Catriona…. But the long years had dulled that grief; and, to do him justice, she thought that this time at least Severus had not meant his words to wound. She would not see Magnus Lovell end as her sister had ended, though; would not let him become what Riona had become….
The clear brown waters of the burn had run through her nightmares for years, afterwards. She'd been a woman grown before she could hear the sound of rippling water and not remember.
"Water," Snape said softly into the silence, so apt to the mark that she caught her breath. "Water is the key. Water is its power. Let it once reach running water, and it will be free from all control; but strip the water from its body, and it will die…."
"As would you — or I — or any living thing." Her voice was sharp with disappointment. "Magnus would be the first to suffer; and I'll not permit—"
"Anhydraserum. Desiccating Potion. Through clothing, it blisters; on bare skin, it will burn; but on the flesh of an each uisge it will kill, and kill before any human would take more than passing harm." Snape's eyes were glittering with anticipation. He looked across at her for a moment, his face framed in shadows.
"Ten minutes in my office is all I need. Ten minutes, with someone to guard my back…." From anyone else, it would have been an appeal.
Their eyes met. McGonagall nodded. It made sense — of a sort — and yet— Something was nagging at her. Anhydraserum? "You don't think…a simple Drying Charm?"
"I tried that." Flatly. One hand brushed at the blood that had smeared along his jaw. "With all due respect, Professor—" the tone belied the words— "we are wasting time. If you are still determined to damn us both in the eyes of the governors—"
"I think you misjudge them," Minerva said softly.
Snape's lip curled. "I judge the world as I find it, Professor McGonagall; and I find it lacking in charity."
Small wonder, Severus.... She sighed, watching his rigid back sweep down the stairs. At the mouth of the dark corridor below, he stopped, lit his wand, and glanced up.
She nodded, slowly, drawing her own wand in response to the unspoken question. "I'm coming."
The each uisge almost got them both in the moment after Snape opened the door. It must have been waiting, she thought, in a cold moment of absolute clarity as the black jaws came down; waiting by the exit, when it found that strength alone would not serve. Or else — colder yet — waiting, not to get out, but for its victims to come in….
And then instinct took over, with reflexes she'd thought forgotten, and she had hurled a Skewering Hex at the crimson eyes as the towering stallion struck down at them, swamping the light like a thundercloud of malice and rage. She remembered Magnus, too late. The each uisge didn't even falter.
Snape's voice, beside her, broke on the last word of a hissed spell. "Jump!"
Not understanding, she felt herself dragged forward in the last moment, as carrion-breath touched her face. Forwards and upwards, as Snape's fingers bit into her arm, and the Leaping Charm he'd flung over them took effect.
Upwards— For a second her robes tangled about her, and it seemed the low vaulting above would strike them in the face. And then they were down, with half the room between them and the monster, and aloft in another great bound as the magic ebbed. The second leap ended short, in a jarring landing.
Snape staggered for a moment, clutching at the edge of the desk to steady himself. He looked completely ashen now, with no reserves left. Across the dungeon, the each uisge was just beginning to turn, cloven hooves raking. A stick-like figure lolled on its back. McGonagall flinched.
"Another hex like that, and you'll kill the boy." Snape's teeth were bared in the semblance of a snarl. "And without one mark on that slick black hide…."
His tone sharpened. The each uisge had regained all four feet, ears back, head low and beginning to snake wickedly. "Barrier spells — which was your best?"
"Fire…." For an instant she hardly understood the question. Hunger was beating against her, black dark fury and need. It wanted to feed — but more than that, it wanted revenge. And she had ordered this thing brought to the school, in the hopes of staving off a worse evil—
"Fire," she said again, groping for meaning as Severus' voice stabbed at her, urgent now and rising. "Fire — I was always best at fire…."
"Then cast fire and cast it now! Before—"
Darkness rushing towards her, as if in slow motion, like the shadow of leaping water upon the wall; like the breaking of a dam. Forty years or more, she remembered, since she'd last used the Barriers — since anyone had used the Barriers — since anyone had learned the Barriers….
Everything snapped back at once: understanding, memory, control. An old spell, a flawed spell — but a flaw so old that Magnus Lovell did not, could not know it. And the each uisge could not use him to break through—
"Inferno!" Her wand leaped with half-forgotten fire; and the flames roared up.
Something screamed, high and shrill and human. For a moment, heart twisting, she thought it was the boy. Then the creature screamed again, and she heard it for what it was.
Not human agony, but fury, pealing so high that the very heat of the flame-wall seemed to flicker. For an instant, eyes screwed tight against the white hot burning, she thought she saw the brightness dim, as if the shadow of dark water had seeped through the Barrier itself. But the element held; and the scream died away to a yammering howl, and at last to a low, bubbling menace.
She let out a long breath she didn't even remember taking, and gave her colleague a somewhat shaky smile. "Schoolgirl stuff; but it should gain us a breathing-space, at least." The fire-Barrier stretched from side to side of the room, lapping at the vaulting overhead in a wall of pure elemental force.
She remembered drilling at it even now, as a child in Defence Against the Dark Arts, with old Professor Ginevra rapping at her knuckles. "Wand straight, child — straight, I said—"
The Auror's first line of defence, supposedly. Wildly impressive, all but impervious to head-on assault — and quite, quite useless, once the attacker stopped trying to batter his way through by brute force and tried any of the modern charms. No-one had used the Barriers seriously in the field since the young Arithmancer Rejewski first demonstrated how to break them with ease, back in the days of Grindelwald.
Long before Snape's day, let alone Lovell's. She hoped, fervently, that poor Dan Lovell hadn't seen fit to take as much interest in the history of the Dark Arts as Severus' own unlamented parents.
"How long do you think— ?"
"Long enough, perhaps." Supporting himself against the edge of the desk, Snape had closed his eyes for a moment. Now he pulled himself to his feet. "Any sixth-year student at Hogwarts has half a dozen hexes that can break an Elemental Barrier, we both know that…. It's just a matter of time."
From beyond the wall, the low growl rose again. Snape stirred, slightly. "How long could you hold the spell?"
"Not indefinitely." Her voice was somewhat tart. "It's been many years, Severus…. An hour, maybe — before I collapse."
"We won't need that long." A sour curl of the lip. "And I very much doubt that we'll get it."
As did she. Minerva sighed, keeping her wand trained firmly on the protective wall. Behind her, she heard the sound of Snape's soft steps receding towards his office, followed by half-heard movements from inside. There was the muffled clank of a cauldron.
The empty room flickered, lit by the glow of the Barrier. Now, if ever, Minerva reflected ruefully, thinking of the doorway at her back, some of Severus' sealing spells would come in handy…. But she'd fought enough Dark Magic in her time to know that half a dungeon's width of clear ground was an advantage not to be lightly thrown away; and with spells of that nature she was not sure that Severus could any longer afford either the time or the power needed to set them.
Already, the centre of the flame had dimmed for a second time, sinking down almost halfway to the ground before regaining its force, as the each uisge — easier to think of it so; easier to forget Lovell's voice, Lovell's hands — sent yet another fire-charm questing against the Barrier's heart. No screams of rage now. Only the murmur of magic beyond the wall, and the steady, increasing drain on her own strength.
"It's almost through already," Snape said softly at her elbow, returning. "Those aren't random charms. It knows what it's doing, and it knows why—"
There were smears of cobweb on the shoulder of his robes, and the vial in his hands was furred with dust, with dark glass beneath, where his touch had brushed it free. "Take this; it's the last of what I had in store. Not enough there to kill — but it might be enough to teach the creature a taste of fear."
He must have misinterpreted her expression. The harsh look on his face twisted a little further. "Oh, don't worry, Professor — it's quite legal, if that's what troubles your conscience. The Ministry permits a store of Anhydraserum for medical purposes…and as Madam Pomfrey will assure you, our Professor Sprout is a martyr to water on the knee."
He thrust the vial into her free hand and swung round, staring at the wavering Barrier. "I need more time." It was less a plea than a demand. "Potions can't be hurried — and this one's lethal enough without any added mistakes."
"I'll do my best," McGonagall told him tightly. The Barrier dimmed again, and began to fade, and her lips thinned further. "But we may not have time."
"Then make time!" Snape snapped over his shoulder — courtesy under stress had never been his strong point, she reminded herself through clenched teeth — before vanishing again in the direction of his office, and whatever obscure activities were involved in the preparation of Anhydraserum. Minerva McGonagall was not sure she wanted to know.
The vial between her fingers was cold as a breath from the grave. She had seen one like it before, a feather-light bubble of glass — in the instant before the Death Eater, Rosier, had flung it to shatter in Dan Lovell's eyes.
Laughing young Dan, who would never paint again. Who had never hurt a fly in his life, but had taken up his wand and gone after the Death Eaters who'd burned his brother alive; and come home to his wife and child on a conjured stretcher, with his eyes seared out in a mass of scars. While Rosier had escaped. It had been a waste — such a waste….
"Teach him a taste of fear—" She knew, now, where she'd heard those words before. On the lips of the man who had been Severus Snape's closest crony at school. The man who'd used Desiccating Potion to cripple Magnus' own father.
Every Slytherin of that year had been lost to Voldemort; only one had ever returned. Snape had never spoken of it. But it was his information, later, that had brought down Rosier and the rest.
She would not lose another student to the Dark—
A sudden wrench, as the Barrier ebbed abruptly to nothing more than a heatwave shimmer in the air. Then died, as the counter-charm slid neatly in to cut it off.
Minerva's wand flew upwards as if a tether had snapped, and despite herself she gasped. It was like being slapped across the face with raw power. No sixth-year charm had any right to cut off a spell as brutally as that. She didn't even dare think how much strength that thing must have been leeching, these last few days — from Snape — from Lovell— She should never, never have taken the risk.
"Severus—" She flung up the ice-spell as the each uisge slid forward between the desks, open jaws leering in mockery. An ice-Barrier wasn't going to hold it for more than a second or two, not now that it had worked out how to break the first.
"Severus!"
The crystalline wall of cold ended as abruptly as its predecessor, in a fading sparkle of ice-blue dust, and she bit her lip. If Severus were not ready soon—
She sent out a shower of urgent hexes that should at least have slowed the creature down. High on its back, the puppet-figure of the boy jerked and shuddered as every spell struck home; but the each uisge's own limbs never even faltered. It flowed forward with predator's grace and a terrible, blurring speed that ate up the ground between them, and there was nothing, nothing she could throw at it.
Kill Lovell now, for the sake of the school — even if she could bring herself to do it — and in the next moment the creature would take her or Snape. Either would be enough. Even the Unspeakables couldn't stand against a water-horse riding a fully trained wizard's mind.
She raised her wand, with a dry sob of breath. Bring down the roof — bury them all—
And then the boy's dead black eyes were staring down onto her out of the past. It was Catriona reaching out, Catriona on the creature's back, the mirthless hungry grin distorting her sister's face….
Only a tiny whimper broke from Professor McGonagall's throat as the each uisge sank its first bite into her shoulder. It was the sound, not of pain, but of a small child's uncomprehending fear.