The Storm
Sendulla got his fill of thunder that very evening. By the time Ginny walked back from the lunchtime meeting, the mountains around the school had disappeared in thick indigo cloud, but there was no rain, at least not yet. The air felt chilled yet heavy, and there was the merest breath of wind around her.
She was walking along the lane towards the Headmistress’s house when she was dazzled by a lightning strike, followed almost instantly by a loud bang of thunder.
There was nothing magical about a thunderstorm, but she was running over the treacherous cobbles, her heart in her mouth. She was scrabbling open the door of the house when another flash painted her shadow across the door, but she was inside now, breathless, her pulse racing.
“Everyone here?” she called out.
“In here,” called Ruby, from Gosse’s studio.
Ginny dumped her bag in the hallway and poked her head cautiously through the studio doorway. Gosse was frowning over his easel, and Ruby was posing. She had no clothes on, something Ginny was having to come to terms with now. Gosse swore there was nothing between Ruby and him, and Ginny just had to hope that Stonelake was more of an attraction to Ruby.
“What’s that?” she asked. Ruby was holding out her hand towards a strange construction, perched on a wooden chair: An upturned raffia basket with an umbrella sticking out of the top of it.
Ruby had to repeat her answer, because her first attempt was drowned in another peal of thunder. “It’s a swan,” said Ruby. “Can’t you tell?”
“Shush,” said Gosse, crossly.
“And I’m Leda,” Ruby added. “About to be rogered by Zeus.”
Gosse gestured furiously with his wand. “How am I supposed to…?” he ranted, but then his attention was back on the painting.
“Is Undine here?” Ginny inquired.
Ruby shook her head.
“Then I’ll get dinner,” Ginny said. “That or starve.”
She decided on fish – perhaps the pouring rain outside sparked the thought – and as she cooked the darkness outside continued to switch to dazzling light, pursued by thunder.
A smaller flash was accompanied by a particularly loud crash, and Ginny was convinced the whole room shook as a result. She hurried back into the studio. Gosse was still painting, looking mulishly angry, presumably because of the thunderstorm, because Ruby was standing perfectly still, as far as Ginny could tell.
“Did you feel that?” Ginny asked Ruby.
Ruby nodded. “The earth moved for me, anyway.”
Ginny gazed out at the lashing rain. “Maybe something’s been hit,” she decided. “I’d better go and check.”
Gosse waved her down angrily, while Ruby stared at her in amazement. “In this weather?” she asked. “You’re mad.”
“I’d better…” said Ginny, already heading for the door.
She had barely opened it when two figures appeared, splashing along the lane. They had their cloaks above their heads and were heading straight for her. She recognised two of her recent recruits when they let their cloaks drop: Concetta was the taller one, and the other Qudra.
The pair looked wet through, but strangely upset as well. She ushered them back into the house, and absentmindedly used her wand to dry them both, so they didn’t drip on the hall rug.
“There’s… You need to…” began Qudra, breathlessly.
“Madam Weasley,” interrupted Concetta. “You need to come!”
“Come where?” asked Ginny. “In this weather?”
“The Durmstrang…” started Qudra.
“The Assembly House!” broke in Concetta, excitedly. “It’s been attacked!”
Qudra was shaking his head. “No! No! It was hit by lightning!”
“It can’t have been…” said Concetta angrily, turning on her.
“But we saw…”
“Two Dementors!” said Concetta, triumphantly, yet terrified. “I think…”
“Dementors?” echoed Ginny. It shouldn’t have been a surprise – Dementors liked dreadful weather like this, and had probably helped cause it…
“They were escaping!” said Qudra. “We watched them!”
“They came out of the hole in the wall…” said Concetta.
“Where the lightning strike…”
“Lightning? That wasn’t lightning!” insisted Concetta.
There was a roar behind Ginny; Swinging round she could see the reason: Ruby was standing in the studio doorway, eyes wide, listening to Concetta and Qudra. The roar had been Gosse, angry at his model deserting him. Ruby hadn’t bothered to cover herself up, and the two pupils were staring at her in amazement.
“We saw the two of them,” insisted Concetta, dragging her eyes away from Ruby. “They came out of the hole, and they flew up into the sky! It was so cold suddenly!” Her teeth were chattering, and so were Qudra’s, but Ginny was included to put that down to excitement and getting wet.
“I need to go and find Mr Sendulla,” Ginny said. “You two had better stay here. If there are Dementors around…”
Ginny hurried out on her own and headed down to the Dining Chamber lawn.
She was thankful for the bright light that her Phoenix wand gave the Lumos spell. In the lashing rain, there were only occasional distant flashes now, and all else was pitch black. There was no sign of any damage around the family houses, and all was quiet – All sensible people were indoors.
What had Concetta and Qudra been doing, out in this weather?
She flicked her wand to form a waterproof shield about her, and hurried down towards the lake, and the school. She could see nothing amiss as she crossed the bridge over the lake. The glass buildings gleamed suddenly in a more distant flash of lightning, and all looked as it should. Even the greenhouses looked intact. She turned left, along the bulk of the House of Assembly, but halfway down she froze.
One of the House of Assembly Jotun statues, one of the three that had survived the journey here, was gone, and only a huge pile of masonry was left in its place. There was a dark chasm visible in the side of the building.
She couldn’t see any Dementors. She bellowed “Expecto Patronum”, and was relieved to see her twin rhinos spring into life and fly through the rain. She sent them high into the sky, where they circled, searching, but there was no sign of any Dementors.
She made a fresh decision and directed the pair of them to find Sendulla.
The rain was slackening. She was wet through – her shield hadn’t stopped the driving rain soaking her – and she trudged around the building, looking for more damage, and injured, dead or soulless people, but the building was otherwise intact, and deserted.
Sendulla appeared at last, together with the young woman teacher – what was her name? – the pair of them hurrying through the rain, shielded by a single rainproof spell.
“I didn’t understand your message,” he said as he approached, looking concerned. “Something about lightning damage?”
“There was a lightning strike…” Ginny began. She pointed towards the damage to the House of Assembly. Sendulla’s eyebrows rose in horror and the two Durmstrang teachers were running towards the wrecked Jotun. Ginny jogged after them, and tried to explain about the Dementors.
“They went away?” asked the woman teacher.
“Your Patronus,” said Sendulla. “Of course they didn’t stay.”
“No, they…”
“This is terrible,” said Sendulla, looking at the wreckage in anguish. “Who did this?”
Ginny shook her head in exasperation. “The lightning! Didn’t you hear it?”
But Sendulla was shaking his head, repeatedly. “No! No! This is no lightning strike! This building is a thousand years old. No, this must be spell damage.”
“Henri, be reasonable…” Ginny started. She was cold, wet and beginning to shiver, and wanted to be indoors.
Sendulla ignored her, put his head next to his colleague’s and murmured something. She didn’t look happy either. Ignoring Ginny, the pair of them headed for the gap in the House of Assembly and started to clamber over the fallen masonry.
Ginny didn’t fancy breaking an ankle, or being crushed by falling rocks, so instead she headed for the entrance to the building, but when she got there the doors appeared to be locked, to her grumbling annoyance. She walked back down the side of the building, and clambered over the rubble, as cautiously as she could.
She was in a huge room, the ceiling way above her. Lumos showed a great tree in the middle of the room, only it was stone, she realised. Around the walls, huge tapered columns – five of them – rose up to the ceiling. Her wand wasn’t bright enough to show everything, but she could make out that the columns formed ribs that connected with the central column.
Sendulla appeared around the central column. She couldn’t see his fellow teacher.
“You shouldn’t be in here,” he snapped. “Who was that?” he demanded, angrily.
“Who?”
“I thought I saw someone!”
“I didn’t see anyone…”
“Someone has been in here…” began Sendulla, uncompromisingly.
“Why? What’s happened?”
He struggled to talk, in his anger. “Sabotage!” he spluttered eventually. To Ginny’s left she saw the tall entrance doors opening, and other figures appeared, and gathered around them. Ginny recognised them as Durmstrang teachers. “Please leave us,” said Sendulla to Ginny, rudely. “We have much work to do.”
Ginny stomped back home in some annoyance. The rain was stopping now, and as she approached the Headmistress’s house she saw another figure hurrying up to the door and slipping inside. It was Undine, she discovered, every bit as wet as Ginny, and muddy as well.
“What happened to you?” Ginny asked.
Undine looked white and strained, even when she’d dried herself. “I was at New Hogwarts,” she explained. “I was talking to Professor Sinistra.”
“In this weather?”
“It wasn’t raining when I went over there,” said Undine, unhappily. “We were talking about a new telescope for the Astronomy Tower, and then the thunderstorm started, and I slipped over on the way back.”
Two figures appeared quickly from the kitchen: Qudra and Concetta. Qudra was casually ordering her hair.
“You!” said Ginny, pointing at Qudra, who flinched. “Was this you?”
Qudra looked amazed. “Was what?” she asked.
“Come in here,” Ginny ordered. She took both girls by the elbow, pushed them back into the kitchen and closed the door. “Was that an earthquake?” she demanded. “One of yours?”
“No!”
“So what were you doing out there? The pair of you?”
“Nothing!” said Qudra. “I swear!”
“Really? Wouldn’t it be more convenient to do ‘nothing’ indoors, when it’s sheeting down with rain? And how many other earthquakes do we get round here? No, this had to be you!”
“No it wasn’t!” said Qudra, terrified.
“She was teaching me,” said Concetta, abruptly. “And it had to be out of our house so we didn’t disturb anybody else.”
“Teaching you?”
“For Sandy’s birthday,” nodded Concetta. Her face was pink.
“What are you talking about?” asked Ginny, in confusion. “Who’s Sandy?”
“Sandy Krum,” said Concetta. “I wanted to make the earth move for him.”
“But…”
“I didn’t think it would work,” said Qudra. “I don’t know how I do it, but Concetta wanted to try…”
“And it didn’t work,” said Concetta. “It only works with Qudra and her Gryffindors. But I just wanted to…”
“So you were kissing her?” demanded Ginny. “And you’re sure you didn’t cause an earthquake doing so? I mean, would you even notice in a thunderstorm?”
“We’d… we’d been there for some time…”
“Where’s there?”
“The Dining Chamber,” said Concetta. “And it was very peaceful, no earthquakes, when suddenly we heard this huge crash, outside. So we went outside to see, and then we came and found you.”
“We promise!” added Qudra. “Please don’t tell anyone else!” she pleaded. “If anyone heard…”
Ginny sighed. “They’d all be wanting a go too.”
“No, that’s not what I meant…”
“It’s OK,” said Ginny. “You’re secret’s safe with me. So are you dating Sandrin Krum, Concetta?”
Concetta looked annoyed. “No,” she admitted. “Not yet, anyway. He is the most adored boy in three schools.”
“There’s a queue,” added Qudra, impishly. “Which Concetta was hoping to jump.”
“And as this didn’t work,” Concetta said, examining her reflection in the darkened kitchen window. “I’ll have to try dyeing my hair. Sandy likes redheads, I’ve heard.”
“Oh, does he?” said Ginny.