Chapter Sixteen
Lyla POV
I tossed a crumpled piece of parchment at Bryant. His back straightened and a low growl rubbles from his chest. Amanda and I ducked our heads and giggled. While our studying in the library and ground to a firm halt, Bryant’s was still plowing forward, making teasing him exponentially more funny. Amanda tossed her quill at him this time.
“Knock it off, you two!” Bryant slammed his own will down, wiping the smudges of ink left behind on this face from our latest attack. “Don’t you have anything important to do?”
“Homework is overrated,” Amanda sighed slouching back in her chair. She was the opposite of her twin. As long as she managed to barely pass the class she was happy. Her belief was that time was much better spent on art.
Bryant rolled his eyes dramcially before turning his quizzical gaze on me. I throw up my hands in surrender.
“Remus was right. There’s next to no reliable information on the diadem. Most of it’s just folklore or theories. Nothing concrete,” I sighed and laid my head on the table. Amanda patted my back, sympathetically. Bryant was not so easily thawed.
“Then find reliable information or choose another topic.”
I groaned. “But that so much work.” Bryant sent a deathly glare my way, full of the promise of punishment.
“Fine.” I sat up, crossing my arms. “Where can I find reliable information.”
“Eyewitness. Trusted historians. Data. Timelines. Monuments. Artifacts,” Bryant listed on his fingers.
“Oh sure, because find eyewitness testimony from hundreds of years ago is a walk in the park,” Amanda retrieved her quill and began doodling on the edge of her parchment.
“Maybe a walk in the park would do you good,” Bryant suggested forcefully. “Clear your head and come back when you can focus.”
Amanda was more understanding. “Go to some of your favorite places. Take your mind off the assignment. It’s not the end of the world.”
“Okay,” I began gathering my things. “I’ll good to the—“ I gasped, the book I was holding slipping from my fingers and landing on the table with a loud thump. Madam Prince glared at me over her sharp nose.
“What?” Amanda asked as Bryant shushed me.
“I can get an eyewitness. Actually, I can get firsthand information.”
“How?” Bryant narrowed his eyes at me, looking doubtful.
“Ghosts!”
***
I found Helena Ravenclaw where I always did, floating down the corridor named after her.
“Helena?” I called she turned and drifted towards me.
“Lyla.”
“Can I ask you a question?” I panted, exhausted from running across the castle.
“You already did,” the Grey Lady lifted her chin. “But you may ask one more.”
I gathered my courage. Slowly, I asked, “What do you know about the Lost Diadem?”
I could hear the ghost’s rattling intake of air, her eyes dial stewing with furious.
“Vile, cursed object!” She cried with a venom I hadn’t known she could possess. I took a step backward. “It should never have been forged! It should never have seen the light of day!”
I raised my hands in a placating gesture. “I don’t want to find it, my lady. I promise. It was just for some stupid history assignment. I’ll go.”
“Don’t.” Helena’s sharp voice cut through me like a knife, keeping my feet planted on the ground. “Do not move.”
She floated closer eyes narrowing as she examined me. Leaning down, she pressed her lips against my ear, sending waves of cold running up and down my body.
“Someone else asked me about the diadem,” the Lady’s voice was smooth, too controlled to be natural. “Do you know what happened?”
“N-no, ma’am,” I fought to keep my voice study, fixing my gaze on a painting across the corridor.
“He…filled it.”
I hesitated, curiously burning in my chest until it defeated my fear.
“Filled it with what?” I asked. Helena pulled away from my ear, choosing to now stare into my eyes.
“Himself.”
I shuddered, cold once again filling my insides. This time, however, dread and sorrow accompanied it.
“No one should have the power the diadem holds. Power currupts. Absolute power currupts absolutely,” She glared at me. I felt naked in her sight. “Do you understand, child?”
“I do.”
“The object is evil. It births evil. It murders good. Do you understand?”
“Y-yes,” I stammered.
“Do you?” The Grey Lady’s voice was a shout now, her tambar bones rattling.
“Yes. I do,” I respond, more firm than before. She stared at me still, and I had the strangest feeling in my heart. It felt as if she was examining my soul. Could ghosts see souls? I barely prevented a shudder.
“You do,” Helena finally agreed, turning and floating away from me. I started to back away, preparing myself to bolt as soon as my legs stopped shaking.
“If you need to ask, you will never know,” the lady turned her head, the picture of mourning and truth and sorrow. “If you know, you need only ask.”
I turned and ran, darting down the corridor. The ghost called after me.
“Lyla.” Her voice was haunting, coldness and death seeping into her worlds. “Lyla. Take caution. It is full of him……Lyla…”
Her words followed me long after I had abandoned her corridor and entered my common room. They stayed with me as I hid under my covers and fell into a fitful sleep.
I dreamt of scalding fire and tremulous water. They consume me.
Iris’s POV
I had opted out of joining Mel and Liam at Hogsmeade. It wasn’t because I was hiding from Regulus. Not at all. It was because I didn’t find wading through mountains of snow and slush and dirt to be terribly appealing. It was depressing to see all the Christmas decorations being taken down.
Once February hit and I was bored out of my mind, I was sure I’d jump at the opportunity to soak my robes through while slipping along the icy, decoration-less paths. But for today, it was reading and hot butterbeer, rinse and repeat.
My dash from the common room to the kitchens was short, and no one disturbed me. But then I overheard the house elves talking about beef stew for dinner and knew that I at least had to venture to the great hall for that.
I climbed up the stairs, yawning, book in hand, unwilling to part from it. But as I rounded the landing of the main hall, there was a commotion of shouting and hustling and the giant oak doors being thrown open against the howling winter wind.
I gasped as I took in the sight.
A crowd of professors, Hogsmeade business owners, and some students were hustling four floating stretchers through the hall and up the stairs towards the hospital wing. A crowd of students was starting to gather, all murmuring under their breaths and craning their necks for a better view. Some people were crying.
My heart sank to my toes as the professors magiced the stretchers past me. Each stretcher held a student covered in blood. Then my heart stopped altogether as the fourth student floated past me, prone on the fabric, ugly slashes all across her chest and face.
Mel.
I felt myself stumble back, running into someone who cursed under their breath at me. I hardly even noticed. The room was spinning and I couldn’t focus on anything. My heartbeat pounded in my ears and the rest of the room became hazy as I tried to process what was happening.
It was only when Liam came running in from the cold, shaking and crying and dashing right past me in pursuit of Mel that I snapped out of it. Cold fear laced around my heart as I forced my feet to move.
My breath was coming in short, shallow gasps and my head spun. Tears sprung to my eyes but I forced myself to disassociate. There was no need to panic yet. I just had to figure out what was going on. Then I’d be able to assess how worried I needed to be. Just hold on a second. Just pause.
I slammed the door to the hospital wing open and it was packed. For once, Madam Pomphrey didn’t reprimand a lack of manners. I doubted she could even see me over the heads. Everyone from the crowd of adults downstairs was here, plus some government officials I recognized from the Daily Prophet, plus Dumbledore.
The noise was something akin to a dull roar. Beds were getting flown out of the way, panicked voices were being raised above the din, and professors dashed from one student to another. I pushed my way through, stepping on toes, but too intent to mutter my apologies. I got to the first bed and saw a Ravenclaw boy sitting up. The fact that he was conscious and healthy enough to sit up sent a temporary wave of relief through me.
I pushed farther forward, searching, scanning. Finally I saw a glimpse of her light brown hair, matted and wet from the snow. I pushed towards her, nearly losing my balance, but finally made it to her bedside. Professor McGonagal was aiming her wand at Mel’s wounds, her face paler than I had ever seen it, though her mouth remained firmly set in a thin line.
Liam was already there, his hands shaking as he openly weeped. It broke something inside of me and I reached to take his hand, noting with detached surprise that mine was shaking too.
“What happened?” It came out as a whimper but somehow McGonagal heard it over the crowd.
“A death eater attack,” she said in an only slightly uneven tone.
“In Hogsmeade?” I gasped. She just nodded. “But Mel is not even Muggle born!”
“She doesn’t have to be,” she said as she slowly sealed up her wounds. I could barely look at them without my stomach heaving. “No one is safe. The attack was on Muggleborns but she, and the other students, were simply collateral damage.”
Collateral damage. No one was safe.
I realized, as undiluted fear coursed through my veins, that until this very moment the war had not been something I had fully grasped.
Of course I’d stayed informed on it, and knew it was happening, and felt sad for the people who were suffering for it (in the genuine, if not overwhelming way you feel sad for someone you don’t know). But for some reason, it hadn’t really hit me until my best friend was bleeding out on a hospital bed, that it could affect me.
I’d know it, in the logical, clinical way someone knows a fact for a test. I was Muggleborn, my parents were Muggles, of course I’d known it. But I hadn’t felt it in this physical, visceral, terrifyingly mortal way, that death was this suffocating force hovering above me and everyone I loved, ready to smother us at any moment.
I hated myself that only now, only when I personally was being faced with the consequences of war, did the full horror of what was happening to our world hit me.
I stared down at Mel’s beautiful face, now covered in gaping wounds. In some cuts I could see all the way to her cheekbone. My stomach heaved again. They weren’t even after her; she just happened to be an innocent person in the wrong place at the wrong time. If she had been two steps closer to the scene would she have died? Would I never again have heard her laugh, or seen her smile, or watched her flippantly turn down some lovesick fanboy?
My heart ached at the thought, and now I was crying, the room had blurred, and I couldn’t seem to stop and I barely realized that I was melting to the floor in some pathetic human puddle. Sobs wrenched out of me as I watched Mel’s eerily still face being sewn back together and felt my world’s axis irreversibly shift.
Remus POV
I couldn’t find Lyla anywhere. I’d looked in the library, the Great Hall, the astronomy tower and the owlery, but there was still no sign of my girlfriend. I had even waited outside of her common room until Amanda came out. I’d recruited her and her twin to the search when they admitted they hadn’t seen her since their last study session together.
That at least sent a small wave of relief coursing through my bones because it meant she couldn’t have been at Hogsmeade where the attack had happened.
I’d been there, but I was all the way by the Hogs Head watching James and Sirius wrestle with each other in their animagus forms when it had happened. By the time we had sprinted over to the Three Broomsticks, the fight was over.
I had recognized two of the injured. One, a Ravenclaw boy in my year named Thomas, and the second, Mel.
Where could she be? I thought, running a hand through his hair, still damp from the snow. Did she even know about the attack? I couldn’t be sure. All I knew was that she hadn’t been in the Hospital Wing. Or anywhere else I had looked.
My shoulder bumped another student as he hurried around a corner, and I turned to apologize.
Regulus Black stood in front of me, purple bruises under his eyes accented by pale white skin. The boy started to leave.
“Regulus, wait!” I cried. He hesitated, half turning his head towards me.
“Are you okay?” I asked after a moment. I knew him and Iris weren’t on great terms and I had no clue if he even knew Mel was injured, but he looked half dead and ghostlike, some emotion rotting in him that I couldn’t help asking about.
“Fine,” he turned to leave but paused again.
“Lupin?” he asked. It sounded like a cry for help.
“Yes?”
“You need to be careful,” he warned, finally turning to look into my eyes. His pupils were blown wide, enveloping his irises in black. “You need to get them out of here.”
I didn’t have to ask who he was talking about. There were only two people we both cared about.
I nodded my head, heart chilled by thinking about what he meant. What did he mean? Wasn’t Hogwarts as safe as it could get?
“I will.” I promised anyway, if only to get the haunted look out of the younger Black brother’s eyes.
Regulus didn’t move, looking torn. Finally he said, “Get him out too.”
I didn’t have to ask who he meant this time either. Regulus disappeared around the corner before I could say anything else.
I didn’t chase after him, instead continuing my search for Lyla.
Perhaps she was…I crashed right into her.
Lyla’s eyes were blown wide and tinted red, her whole body quivering and pale.
“Lyla!”
“Remus, is it true?” She cried, clinging to the front of my robes.
“Yes.” Lyla gasped, choking on it in panic. “But your sister is okay, and last I heard Mel will be too.”
Lyla sighed, and collapsed into me. For a moment, I could see Sirius in my arms falling apart, but the thought was gone as quickly as it would come, only leaving a feeling that siblinghood was something I would never be able to fully understand.
“It’s okay. It’s okay,” I repeated into her hair, holding her.
“It’s not,” she whimpered. “Can you see?” She pulled back, still holding onto my robes and staring deep into my eyes with her own piercing blue ones. “Something is happening.”
I thought of Regulus’s warning, Sirius’s fear, the attack so close to Hogwarts.
“I know,” I said. “But what?”
“I don’t know!” Lyla shivered. “But the dead do.”
“What does that mean?” I asked, brushing her hair off of her face.
“My project on the diadem,” she said, and I nodded my head in acknowledgment. “I talked to Helena, the Grey Lady, about it.”
My mouth opened in a round ‘O’. “That’s genius.”
“I know,” Lyla gave a half smile before it fell back into a frown. “She said I wasn’t the first to ask about it. She said it was filled with him.”
I matched her frown. “With who?”
“I don’t know! I don’t know!” Lyla buried her face in her hands. “It was terrifying, Remus! Something about the way she said it, the way she warned me about it!”
“It’s okay,” I said again, rubbing her arms. “It’s okay. Right now we should check on your sister and get our friends together. Maybe we can hole up in the kitchens together or somewhere else safe. I’m sure that would make us all feel a little bet—“
Lyla jerked out of my arms.
“Merlin’s Beard!” She whispered. “It’s filled with him!” She turned her wide eyes towards me, imploring me to understand.
“It’s filled with Voldemort!”