Ancient Magic
September 1st, 1890
London, England
Diagon Alley
Eleazar Fig knew just as well as Winnifred Culpepper that they had their work cut out for them. Five years behind on school work, five years' worth of lessons, homework, and knowledge to catch up on. It was certainly not ideal, but Fig was over the moon to see that he had obtained such a malleable student, with an adeptness for quick learning. Winnie only ever needed to see a spell be performed once or twice, and suddenly she was casting it just as well as any other fifth-year student. Maybe even better.
Winnie had been staying with the elderly Professor since the spring and throughout the remainder of the summer. The short, curt conversations they initially had began to expand slowly but surely. There was more substance to their talks during their remedial classes and even after they had settled down to eat in the evening. The guard that she kept up around her eyes had weakened under Fig's warm praises, but it still remained intact.
Fig began to learn more of the atrocities that the poor girl had experienced during her time at the boarding school, and an inkling of the trauma she was well acquainted with before she arrived there. Although Eleazar disapproved of violence in any form except self-defense, he would say with certainty that he did not feel any remorse for the three girls who were injured during the explosion at Madame Bashaw's.
He soon came to realize after conversations with Winnie and status reports from the Ministry, that Winnie was quite the kind, and persistent young lady when it came to socializing and friends. Quite often, Winnie would carry books and bags for the other girls, she would arrange to complete their homework if they were too busy, and even give up her food for those that were still hungry, all in the hopes of attaining that long-craved notion of friendship. Though many saw this as nothing more than a means to an end, she was frequently mocked, used, and at times abused for her generosity and willingness.
The day of the incident, Winnie had decided to take her lunch to go and eat outside when she was cornered in the hall by three muggle girls. They promptly snatched away her food, despite Winnie's objections, and rushed into the bathroom all while giggling and taunting her. Without missing a beat, one girl dumped Winnie's food into a chamber pot and told the girl to eat it. When Winnie refused, she and the other girls grabbed her and forced her down into the stall, pushing her head into the chamber pot, all while laughing and shouting for her to eat her food.
Winnie stated that she felt something snap. She just wanted them to stop. And that was when a surge of magic coursed through her, slinging the girls away from her like rag dolls until they collided with the wall. The roof and northern wall were blown to charred bits and Winnie could only balk in horror at the damage she had caused.
Children could be so horrible.
And it went without saying that her parents' violent attempts to encourage her magic to fruition so many years ago also played a role in her longing for a place to belong. A place to be cared for. It seemed that the young lass had never known actual love or friendship. Fig only hoped that perhaps, Hogwarts could finally be that place for her.
"Protego!" Winnie quickly cast a shield as Fig sent a stunning spell toward her with incredible speed. Her reflexes at handling a wand had developed nicely. "Again, please!" She insisted as she lowered the spell, her lips tugging with amusement.
"Winnifred, we really must be-," He started when suddenly a bright red hex flew by his ear, startling him into silence.
"I said not to call me that," She huffed at him, lowering her borrowed wand.
"I beg your pardon, did you just try to hex me?" He blithered in dismay.
"Did you forget to call me Winnie?" She raised a brow, rivaling his tone. He sighed heavily, rubbing the back of his neck with his wand.
"Winnie," He attempted again. "We really must be on our way. I can assure you, your wandship has improved beyond measure, but we are running out of time. We are to meet the carriage in Diagon Alley soon."
"Professor," Winnie began to whine like a child. "I just wanted to do it one more time!"
"Perhaps after you get settled into Hogwarts, we can have another bout," Fig flicked his wand and summoned the young witch's luggage and trunks toward the fireplace. Winnie merely grumbled to herself, smoothing out her skirts as she sauntered over to the fireplace, watching as Fig ducked in with her luggage.
"Now, remember, loudly and clearly, like so," He told Winnie as he scooped up a handful of floo powder. He cleared his throat and announce, "Diagon Alley!" He threw the floo powder down at his feet and the professor disappeared in a barrage of green flames, taking her luggage with him.
Magic...Winnie smiled softly as the flames dissipated. She had always wished to be part of the wizarding world, to be able to wield magic with the flick of a wand. But the word 'squib' lingered over her head for nearly four years, chasing away that lofty desire. It seemed surreal, now, that she was able to do this. Her hand dove into the small pot, scooping up a handful of the powder as she stepped into the fireplace, casting one final look around the quaint little cottage that had been her home for the last few months.
"Diagon Alley!"
////\\\\
The trip to Hogwarts had been rather uneventful until a round man named George Osric decided to joining them on their journey to speak in privacy. The carriage, pulled by what Winnie thought was magic, flew through the golden clouds above the highlands, bouncing off gusts of wind ever so often.
"Glad I caught you before you left for Scotland," Osric seemed to sigh in relief, leaning forward in his seat. Winnie continued picking at the wood of her borrowed wand, staring at the mand apprehensively as she sat next to Fig. Whatever was so important that this stranger needed to join them for their trip to Hogwarts?"
"Just barely," Fig said with a hint of amusement, a twinkle of jest in his bright blue eyes. Osric chuckled in good nature, his spectacled eyes drifting over to the young witch sitting next to the elderly professor.
"And who is your travelling companion?" He asked, looking at Winnie expectantly.
"A new student," Fig introduced with a wave of his hand to the young girl sitting next to him. George Osric's eyes widened with disbelief.
"New?" He tested the word incredulously. Winnie cleared her throat and gave a firm nod.
"Yes sir. I'm starting school as a fifth-year," She spoke gently, despite her apprehension toward this stranger. "My name is Winnifred Culpepper, it's a pleasure to make your acquaintance."
"Culpepper?" Osric murmured to himself before seeming to dismiss the thought altogether. "How extraordinary."
"It is, indeed. None of the faculty has ever heard of anyone being admitted to Hogwarts so late," Fig continued.
"Nor have I?" George Osric responded, a quizzical look written across his pudgy face.
"Of course, as the other fifth-years will have been honing their magical skills for four years now, the Headmaster asked if I could get our new student up to speed a bit before the term begins," Professor Fig explained at Winnie's expense as she cast her eyes toward the dingy floor of the carriage. She hated feeling so left behind, but Eleazar Fig had been as equally passionate as she to catch her studies up to the rest of her classmates.
"Well," Osric's eyes grew warm as he looked to the blonde witch. "You couldn't have asked for a better mentor," A smile tweaked her lips as she noticed Fig grinning from ear to ear at his friend's flattery. "Professor Fig is not only an exceptional teacher, he is also a remarkably intuitive - and gifted - wizard."
Her professor bashfully waved the man off as he leaned toward Winnie and said with a chuckle, "Mr. Osric is prone to flattery. I daresay it's one of the reasons he's risen so far at the ministry."
The jovial smile lingered on their companion's face for a moment before he seemed to recall something rather serious and his face slowly dropped. George reached into his cloak and withdrew a rolled, crumpled copy of the Daily Prophet. He unraveled the paper to reveal a rather haunting, gaunt-faced creature on the front page that seemed to snarl into the camera with mutinous disgust, revealing a row of pin-sharp teeth. RANROK'S GOBLIN REBELLION. TRUTH OR GOBBLEDEGOOK?
"Have you seen this?" He asked Eleazar apprehensively.
"I have," The professor seemed to let out an egregious sigh. "Opinions seem to differ as to how great a threat Ranrok really is."
Winnie hated the long-winded debates of politics and news, often besmirching her mentor for entertaining the weekly swill from the prophet dropped off via owl. As the two men conversed, Winnie cast her green eyes over the golden soaked, cottony clouds below that seemed to make a fluffy floor for their carriage to race across. The view was beautiful.
Just below the ceiling of clouds they were flying over, Winnie caught a glimpse of a shadow. A large shadow. As soon as she turned her attention to it....it was gone.
What was that? She wondered, furrowing her brows. A figment of her imagination? The shadow of their carriage? Though the thought unnerved her, she pushed it out of her head for now. It would do her no good to continue mulling over silly shadows and glimpses of something just out of the corner of her eye.
"-and it was your wife, Eleazar, who alerted me to his activities months ago."
At the mention of Fig's late wife, Winnie was alert yet again, her eyes flashing to the forlorn look on Osric's face and then to the confused expression that Fig seemed to don.
"Miriam? How?" Winnie had spent many a night by the fireplace with Professor Fig after her studies, listening to him reminisce on the past, and at times, his lovely wife, Miriam. She was a tender subject for Fig, and her untimely, mysterious death was still a raw topic.
"She wrote to me about Ranrok before she died," Osric sighed. "-wondering what the Ministry knew about his activities..." He began rifling through his cloak again, continuing to speak. "Before I could respond, I received this."
He produced a rather strange capsule in his hands, carved with ornate designs.
"It was the last thing she sent me, Eleazar," George brushed his fingers over the metal fondly before turning his attention back to the gobsmacked Professor. "It came to me via her owl, but with no correspondence, I can only assume-,"
"That she had to get rid of it quickly," Fig cut off his friend, his voice much harsher than it was before as he gently took the capsule from him. "To keep it safe."
"Presumably from Ranrok," Winnie could barely hear Osric speaking as her attention seemed drawn, coerced even, to the capsule, a hum growing behind her ears... "I cannot open it. Whatever magic protects this is powerful indeed."
"It looks like goblin metal!" Fig exclaimed, barely audible to Winnie's ears. Heat seemed to blossom behind her eyes as she peered at the device. From the ornate carvings, a pristine light began to glow, a culmination of electric blue and searing white... "That symbol-!"
"What's that glow?" Winnie whispered, pointing at the capsule. Fig blinked owlishly, twirling the device in his hands in confusion.
"I don't see a glow..."
"Nor do I..." Osric murmured, his brows knitting together.
Fig glanced a Winnie, whose eyes never left the bouncing, rippling light that seemed to elude the two men. Without hesitating, he handed the capsule to her. Once the sizeable chunk of hefty metal was laid in her hands, the hum behind her ears transitioned into an indistinguishable serenade of whispers. The metal grew warm in her hands, the light pulsing from the symbol at her contact before it dispersed in a pulse throughout the device. There was a click, and suddenly a chamber fell open, revealing a brass key.
"Merlin's beard! How did you-!?" Osric gasped as Winnie reached down to pick up the key.
"Wait!" Fig hissed, stopping the girl instantly. "We do not know-,"
Everything happened in the blink of an eye.
There was a deafening roar, and suddenly splinters of the carriage were flying into Winnie's face. A scream of horror fled her lips as she closed her eyes and tried to shield her face. Cold air seemed to bite into her skin, and she peeled her eyes open, seeing a severe lack of floor beneath her. Gravity begin pulling her forward and she shrieked, fumbling to grasp for anything that would keep her from falling into the sea of clouds below. Where was Osric?
"Hang on!" Fig managed to bellow over the howl of the wind.
And then she saw him. She could barely hear his screams as he clutched onto the half of the carriage he was trapped in...conveniently caught in the jaws of a sickly gray and blistering red dragon. Its wings and body were tattered and scarred. The collar on the dragon glowed with sickly red and black magic- and it was a goliath of a creature, unlike anything she had ever seen...She could see George fumbling for his wand, struggling to escape.
And that was the last she would see of George as the vicious jaws of the dragon clamped down with brute strength, crushing the carriage (and Oscric) in its horrific mouth. Blood lept through the air like rose petals, it dribbled down the jagged, yellow teeth of the beast...and she saw a mangled, bloody arm fall out of the carriage as the dragon spit out the destroyed carriage that was now a splintered mess of a coffin that held George Osric's body.
Winnie stared, ogled the horrific display as the mutilated, blood-soaked carriage plummeted toward the ground...and at that moment, she felt something inside of her die as well.
Another deafening roar from the gargantuan beast and Winnie spun in her seat, slamming on the window of the carriage and screamed at the coach. As her fists rapped against the window fruitlessly, she saw the air in front of the carriage...change?
As if a veil was being pulled off, rapidly dissolving, Winnie choked on her breath, her hands grabbing at Professor Fig's cloak. Great, winged creatures, skeletal in appearance, like rotted horses, with a sickly grey pallor, were racing through the air, harnessed by the carriage...Thestrals. One could only see if a thestral if they had witnessed death. And as if it wasn't real before, as if it was merely a horrific nightmare, it suddenly became all too real, and Winnie felt a hysteria so great coursing through her body she couldn't even scream anymore.
The jaws of the dragon spread open again as it flew ever closer to their broken carriage, a light building at the back of the beast's throat. She was aware Fig was yelling, but she couldn't hear, all she could do was stare into the blood-red eyes of the dragon, the dark scarlet and obsidian black magic spewing and falling from its mouth like it was frothing as fire began to build in its throat.
Suddenly, she was falling, Fig had thrown her off the carriage, and just in the nick of time as the carriage was obliterated to pieces in a chaos of fire and vengeful teeth. The key was suddenly floating about in the air as they plummeted toward the ground, Fig grabbing helplessly for it like a seeker snatching at the golden snitch.
"Give me your hand!" Fig shouted, and Winnie hastened to take hold of his weathered, wrinkled hand. The dragon had taken a nose dive after them, gaining speed. Surely, they would die. This was it-
"Accio!"
Just as she felt the heat of the dragon's breath closing around them...her body was jerked about and she felt like she was suddenly spinning and traipsing through a wormhole.