Love Is The Darkest Art

Part 40: Last Stand With The Dead

Scene 67 (cont):

Fire and flame hit the dead boy in the legs. He buckled and dropped Draco to the ice. Hermione ran towards them, knowing the other two were charging her way. The burning boy, his hair writhing on his head, grabbed Draco and began to drag him towards the hole. Hermione dove. She hit the ice hard, barely missing Malfoy. With the wind nearly knocked out of her, she grabbed Draco's legs to keep the creature from dragging him any further. She felt the other dead boys grabbing her, trying to get her to let go. Desperate as she was to rescue Draco, it wasn't enough. As he was pulled from her grasp, she tried one last charm. "Protego!" The dead boy grinned and threw Draco through the hole into the icy waters. For a split second, that last second,  Hermione thought she saw Draco open his eyes, and then he was gone.  "No!" she screamed. "Draco!!"

She tried to break free of the villians, but they held her fast. Hermione sobbed,  slowly giving up the fight. "No, Draco."

"He was always meant to be one of us,"  one of them told her. "A Slytherin to replace the one we lost."

She looked at him, pleading in her eyes. "Please give him back. He's everything to me."

"No," they all said in unison. "We have waited too long. Our vengeance will no bounds. Those who hid us from mind and memory will suffer the most horrible of losses. Now the strength of five will arise anew!"

Hermione crawled over to the hole in the ice. She looked down into its cold, icy depths. A tear fell from her cheek, causing a ripple. Something was rising up from the deep dark water. But it was not five as they had stated. It was only one. Draco rising up, buoyed by the protection charm Hermione had cast before he'd been tossed through the hole. A charm that not only protected him from the ice, but also made the lake reject him. The evil that lived there, whatever it may be, was throwing him back. Hermione quickly grabbed Draco's collar and hauled him up. But though the lake surrendered him, the lost dead boys would not.

"No!" they howled. They lunged towards Hermione and grabbed her, snatching her away from Draco. One of them shook her furiously.

"He will never wake, but sleep the sleep of ice. The old order of Slytherin wins against the new." He threw back his head and cackled. "And as the victors, we will still take another to add to our number." He looked at her and sneered triumphantly. "You..."

"I'm not a Slytherin," Hermione replied defiant.

Again the cold laugh. "Oh, no matter. We're not taking you to join us...only to feed us with the purity of your soul."

An image filled Hermione's head. A horrible, dismal picture of the four lost boys feeding on her, alive and squirming under the ice. Of life without Hogwarts. Without her friends. Her teachers. Her Draco. Just utter frozen loneliness.  Food and sustenance for dead creatures enchanted to live forever, yet never to be free. She began to cry. A scream erupted from her throat as they all held her over the icy hole. Hermione took one last look at Draco. Lifeless in frozen sleep, but protected from harm thanks to her. "I'm sorry, Draco," she said.

She heard the laughter of the lost boys and closed her eyes, waiting for the touch of the icy water. Their hands let her go and she dropped through the hole into the water. But before her body was completely submerged, she heard the command, "Wingardium Leviosa," and then she was rising into the air, away from icy fate.

Scene 68:

The tall, dark figure stood on the ice, towering above his two shorter companions. In his outstretched hand, colors seem to swirl around the tip of his wand as the charm lifted Hermione Granger to safety. Severus Snape moved her out of the way and then the two friends let loose their righteous anger. Both Harry Potter and Ron Weasley shouted, "Augamenti!" and pointed their wands at the dead boys of the lake. But it wasn't color that erupted from the tips. Instead, jets of forced water shot forth, striking the enemy, and sending them skidding across the frozen surface away from the opening in the ice. Then all three heroes ran towards Hermione, Snape lowering her gently to the ground.

"Hermione," shouted Ron, catching her before she could collapse to the ice. She quickly righted herself, just as Harry shouted, "Here they come!" They all turned to see the dead boys regrouped and charging their way.

Severus stepped forward and placed himself protectively in front of the students. His wand swirled among the fingers of his hand like a gunslinger in a muggle's old west movie. "Locomotor Mortis!"

The legs of the attackers locked and they fell face forward on the ice. Upon impact, chips and pieces of ice broke free from the surface, creating fissures as it started to crack.

Harry stepped up next to Snape and issued his own magic attack.  "Oppugno!" he cried, causing the broken pieces to rise in the air and attack the villians, plummeting down like rain upon their heads.

Ron, wanting to contribute, drew alongside Snape and Harry, aiming his wand carefully at the now fallen dead boys. He hesitated a moment, started to say something, then mumbled, "Oh blimey, I forgot..."

Snape looked at him in apparent disgust and let out an exasperated sigh. With a complicated twist of his wand, he muttered something under his breath and summoned the dead boys. They slid across the ice towards him, the leg locking curse still rendering them unable to stand. The one with the pale green hair looked up at him, his eyes going wide. "You," the boy hissed.

Harry and Ron looked at the potions master in confusion, but Severus was looking down at the boys sadly. "Me," he said. "Watching you all those years ago, I should have stopped you then. But I was content under the tree, watching you fools tempt fate." 

Now, Hermione realized what her earlier nightmare had meant. Snape had been there when the boys fell victim to the evil in the lake. He was the fifth boy. The one they claimed to have lost.  As a young boy, he would have succumbed to the curse as well, if he hadn't been sitting under a tree, writing.

"You should have joined us," the lost boy of the lake said. "What was so important, that you couldn't play with us on the lake?"

"I was writing a letter," Snape quietly confessed.

The boy grimaced. "Who could have been more important than your Slytherin brothers?"

For the shortest of moments, Severus glanced at Harry. Too brief to even be noticed, he returned his attention to the cold, cursed boys. "It's not important now." Then he cast a look at the fallen Draco. "But you must return Malfoy now."

"We can't," the boy seemed to cackle. "He is the chosen one....unless...you care to finally join us." The others snickered with him.

A look of anger crossed Snape's face. He muttered some dark and terrible words, jabbed his wand toward the ice and it collapsed under the boys, sending them back into the icy waters that had claimed them long ago. Another few words and blocks of ice materialized to push them towards the bottom, weighing them down like heavy dirt over a grave.

Harry stepped back, fearful of Snape's rage. Ron too, retreated, afraid he'd turn his curses on them in his anger. Snape turned his eyes towards them and they began to think maybe it wasn't such a good idea to come with Snape in search of the rebellious Hermione. But Severus was no longer looking at Harry or Ron. His gaze was on the poor fallen student he was supposed to protect in Lucius Malfoy's absence. Draco. Cold and lifeless, now being held in the arms of a wailing Hermione Granger.