The Captive
Ginny spun round in alarm. A slender girl stood there, dressed like the dancers from the painting, with dark curly hair obscuring her eyes, but then she slowly reached up and pulled the dark hair away, revealing the soft brown eyes of Undine. Those eyes were widened in alarm, focusing on the wand pointing at her. Ginny brought it down and then swung it back towards Anthony.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded.
“I don’t know,” said Anthony.
“They had him locked up!” said Undine. “Sendulla and the others!”
Ginny kept her wand on Goldstein, but glanced back at Undine, whom she realised this couldn’t be the one who had lent her the wand. In fact this was the Undine from now, wasn’t it? The unhappy one, of the present.
“You must leave!” said Undine, fearfully.
“How did you get in here?” Ginny asked her.
Undine looked wary. “Tela Carbasum, of course. I… I’m sorry, Ginny. I had to hide him somewhere, and this was all I could think of. Look, you can’t stay here! They’ll wonder where you’ve gone!”
“What about her?” demanded Ginny, pointing her wand at the unconscious Chloe. She knelt briefly beside her, and found she was still breathing, to her huge relief. She spied a heap of blankets on the floor, beyond Chloe.
“I’m sorry!” said Anthony. “I didn’t mean…. She came in here, and I…”
“Hit her with a candlestick,” completed Ginny, angrily. She could recognise now what he was holding.
“I was hiding,” repeated Anthony. “I thought they’d found me…”
Ginny brought up her wand. She was about to use a spell to bring Chloe round, but Undine grabbed her arm. “Wait! Anthony, hide!”
“I am hiding,” said Anthony, in confusion.
“Behind the desk!” urged Undine. She darted forward and pushed him, and he unwillingly ducked down out of sight. “Just stay there!” said Undine.
Ginny’s spell brought Chloe around immediately. The girl groaned and pushed herself up on her hands.
“Are you OK?” Ginny asked.
“Vas…?” asked the girl, turning over.
“You hit your head,” said Undine, quickly.
“I was…”
“Can you get up?” Ginny asked. She took her elbow.
Chloe looked around at them in puzzlement. “Where are we?”
“You took a wrong turn,” said Undine. “You weren’t meant to come in here. It’s just where a picture was painted over.” She was gabbling in her discomfort. “So it was dark, and you must have tripped. And… and hit your head.”
Ginny helped the girl to her feet, until she towered over Ginny. Chloe shakily reached a hand into her pocket and brought out a handful of wooden figures. Ginny recognised them as the tokens the champions were collecting.
“We need to go,” said Ginny, impatiently.
Taking Chloe’s arm, Ginny squeezed back into the workshop painting. She could see Professor Flitwick start with surprise, but then she was surprised in her turn when he pointed his wand at Chloe Langenberg and shouted a spell. The girl disappeared without warning. Flitwick’s wand came round to point at her. She turned her head to look at the still-naked de Fleury. “Thanks…” she started.
Another figure appeared: Sandrin Krum, from Binns’s painting. “What happened?” he demanded angrily. “Where did you go?”
Without warning, she was back in the Senate Room. It was a real pleasure to be fully clothed again, as the room was busy now, and she had to raise her voice to be heard.
“It’s OK,” she said, as definitely as she could. “We found her… She fell…. No, inside a painted-over painting. Yes, she’s fine, just a sore head… I’ve got to go…”
Out of the corner of the eye she could see her painted self fastidiously removing Undine's jacket and trousers. Couldn’t she turn away to do that? thought the real Ginny, grumpily, as she Twisted.
It was a relief to escape the room - and the questions and puzzled looks - and reappear back at the doorway to the Room of Requirement. Then she had to take a deep breath and re-enter the arena, and find the judges and champions. Chloe was being examined by Mr Ziemann. “I must have tripped,” the girl was saying. “It was dark…”
Ginny, relieved, gave a brief description of how she’d found the girl, omitting all mention of Anthony Goldstein.
Pupils and teachers were crowding back into the arena now. “The next challenge first,” Beatrix prompted in her ear.
“Before we announce the results,” began Ginny, trying to clear her thoughts. “Champions, can you guess what will be the nature of the third game?”
The three competitors looked at each other. Jehanne spoke first. “Chess,” she said, unusually tersely.
“That’s right,” said Ginny. “Chess. Each champion had to collect chess pieces.” “But this is no ordinary chess. This is not even ordinary Wizard chess, thanks to your judges!” She spoke in French; behind her stood Sendulla and Stonelake, translating her words into German and English.
She flicked her wand. Flat foot-square packages appeared in the air in front of each candidate, and they reached out to catch them.
“Each candidate has just received a playing board and a rule book for this special game of chess, for them to study and practise before the third challenge, next term. Now let’s see how many playing pieces each candidate has won, because those pieces will represent the ones they play with at the next challenge.”
It was a relief to hand over to Benjamin Sandberg, who had the results in his hand.
“There are a maximum of sixteen playing pieces per champion,” Sandberg said. “In third place, with eleven pieces, is Chloe Langenberg, in second place, with twelve, is Caroline Moore-Hexham, and in first place, with fourteen pieces, is Jehanne Blavier! Congratulations, all three champions!”
All three champions waved tiredly to the cheering crowd, who made enough noise for the Room of Requirement to ring painfully in Ginny’s ears.
A tall figure appeared from the crowd at their feet, and heaved himself onto the stage. It was Ragge, the real, normally-coloured and -nosed Ragge, who although physically unharmed still weaved slightly as he crossed to Chloe, threw his arms around her then kissed her lengthily. She was kissing him back, her hands wrapped around his head.
“Er… You may all think a game of chess sounds rather tame,” said Sandberg, raising his voice in a vain attempt to divert attention from the clinch. “If so, let me tell you, you are not placing the trust you should in your Triwizard judges! You can look forward to a really interesting final challenge!”
A half-hearted cheer filled the room. Sandberg was looking at Ginny and gesturing urgently for her to finish up. It was hard to concentrate.
“Um…. For all three schools, it’s end of term tomorrow!” Ginny said, trying to be bright and cheery when all she wanted was rest and quiet. The spring holiday dates all coincided now because of the Triwizard tournament timetable. “So have a great holidays, and don’t forget to revise!” A good-natured groan from the Beauxbatons listeners made it hard for her to repeat the same message in English – more groans – and for Sendulla to shout out the German version. By the end of the speeches, the Room sounded as if it was full of bison.
Chloe and Ragge were still locked together. Ginny pleaded a headache and spun back to the house. She was about to open the door when a shadow fell across it. She flinched and turned, reaching for her wand.
It was Sandrin.
“What do you want?” she asked abruptly.
He still looked annoyed. “Just to talk,” he said. He was back to his normal self now, of course, his lips back to their full fleshy twist, his shoulders broad again, his brooding eyes level.
“Then talk,” said Ginny, her voice brittle.
“Can we go inside?” Krum asked, gesturing to her front door.
“No,” said Ginny. Then, “Yes.” She cracked open the door, peered inside, then took his arm and led him into the kitchen, closing the door behind them. Because she had his arm still, he was oppressively close to her. “What?” she hissed. “What do you want?” Gosse was probably in his studio, knowing him, and it seemed prudent to leave him out of this, and keep her voice down.
“What did that man do to you?” Krum demanded. His head was close to hers, but thankfully he was talking quietly.
“What man?”
“The naked one!”
“De Fleury?” Ginny asked in amazement. “He was helping me!”
“Oh yes, of course! And he took his clothes off to do so!”
“No! He doesn’t have clothes! Well, apart from a helmet… And we didn’t have time to get dressed, or anything! We needed to find Chloe, don’t you understand?”
“Oh, I understand,” said Sandrin, hotly. “When I saw you like that, and his eyes on you, I had to rescue you!”
“Rescue me? What are you talking about? I thought you came to find Chloe!”
She was still holding his arm, she realised, and let go, and backed away from him. But he closed the distance and gripped her hand instead. “I still remember Paris,” he said. “Your eyes on me. Even with Gosse Holombec at your feet! But he is weak, that one! And you need strength!”
She dragged her hand from his in amazed annoyance. “I don’t need…! Look, this is none of your business! Gosse is my partner, and you’ve got dozens of girls after you! Why plague me?”
Ginny hoped she wasn’t mirroring Sandrin’s expression of angry disbelief. It made him look like a Troll. “Plague you?” he echoed in annoyance. “I am a man! I seek what I want! What I choose! I am not a… a prize for girls to squabble over! I am the best Quidditch player you will ever meet, the best dueller, and I am here to give you my protection!”
She gaped at him in disbelief. “Sandrin, I don’t need protecting! And I don’t need you insulting Gosse either! Now get back to your own school!”
“You do not speak to me like that!” He was furious now, and no longer whispering.
She cringed, and put her hand on his, placatingly. “Please keep your voice down! Look, I’m flattered OK? I’m… I’m grateful you came to help. But I honestly didn’t need protecting from de Fleury. I promise you. And I’ll let you know if I ever do need any help, OK?”
To her surprised relief her words or gesture seemed to calm him. He stared at her, mercifully silent now, then he stepped forward, put his hands on her arms, kissed her bruisingly on the cheek and left.
She could still feel his lips on her cheek, her hands on her skin, still see the anger in his eyes at the thought of de Fleury taking advantage of her. And that somehow led her to de Fleury’s naked body against hers, his strongly working limbs. She made herself take deep breaths, then breathe normally, and reach out a shaking hand to the kitchen door handle.
She found Gosse on his own, working alone on a painting, unsurprisingly. He didn’t look up and see the blush in her cheeks, or notice the unsteadiness of her voice. He merely shook his head when she asked about Undine, so Ginny hurried up to Undine’s room.
No Undine, but there was a painting propped up against the wall, showing only a blank stone wall. But as she watched, a figure darted into view. It was the painted Undine. Ginny drew her wand and spoke the words to break the Carbasum spell, and suddenly Undine was in the room, accompanied by a strong whiff of paint. The painting wasn’t one of Gosse’s, she realised: A less confident, more delicate style that had to be Undine’s own.
Undine was her more familiar self now, unlike her image in the painting. “We have to go back,” she said, shakily. “We can’t leave him there!”
“We can’t!” snapped Ginny. “Not with everybody still looking at the paintings. And how did you get out without people seeing you?”
Undine shrugged. “I was just one of the dancers,” she said. “Nobody noticed me, once the challenge was over. But I told Antony to wait.”
“Because don’t you trust him?” asked Ginny.
“No! I do! But…”
“So tell me what the hell’s going on here!”
Undine’s worried expression grew more so. “It’s complicated,” she said, woefully. “I’d never seen a building like it…”
“Like what?” asked Ginny, baffled.
“The House of Assembly!” said Undine, unhappily. “I really needed to see the inside. You probably don’t understand…”
“You’re an architect,” said Ginny, consolingly. “Of course you had to see it.”
“No,” said Undine. “I don’t mean that. Although…” She looked even more uncomfortable.
“Although what?”
“I’m not mad,” Undine said, although she sounded uncertain herself. “Perhaps it’s because I am an architect…. Or because… I don’t know. Maybe not.”
“Am I needed in this conversation,” demanded Ginny. “Or shall I go now?”
Undine was suddenly shouting. “Just listen!” she snarled. She took a shaky breath. “It… It…. The House of Assembly… It talks to me!”
“A building talks to you?” echoed Ginny in amazement. “How can it?”
Undine gestured, tiredly. “I hear it… in my head. I thought… I thought I was going mad at first. This voice… And in a foreign language. It wouldn’t go away. I thought it was trying to take over my mind.”
“Why didn’t you tell me? Or Gosse?”
“I was too scared. I’m not mad, but who’d believe me?”
“I’d believe you, Undine…”
But it was if Undine hadn’t heard. “But it kept saying the same thing,” she said, fretfully. “Hyelp mig. It sounded a bit like ‘Help me’ in English. I kept telling it to go away, to leave me alone, but after a while I wasn’t so scared, so I said, help you how? It didn’t understand what I said to it, but whenever I said something, it kept quiet. So it was listening, but not understanding, see?”
“Scary,” said Ginny, confused.
“But then I was able to think, because I wasn’t so scared, I suppose. It wasn’t speaking English, but it was likeEnglish, and eventually I realised it had to be Danish. Well, it’s old Danish, actually, but I only realised that later.”
“Why does it have to be Danish?”
“This had to be to do with Durmstrang or Hogwarts. The new foreigners amongst us. But it wasn’t speaking English, or German. But I was thinking about what Chloe told us - about Seidhr magic being Danish. I… I got a book out of the library about Danish.
“It was very easy, Danish, then. It was as if I already knew the words, I just needed reminding. Which was so strange. My father’s family comes from Denmark, although he couldn’t speak it, but his mother could. Could that be it, do you think?”
“Did your grandmother speak Danish to you, maybe?”
“I don’t think so. Anyway. So now I could ask questions. I said, How can I help you? Then I wished I hadn’t.”
“Why not? What did it say?”
“It said, kill me,” said Undine. The grey lines under her eyes were more marked now, and Ginny could see the pain in them.
“It wanted to kill you? Oh, Undine!”
“No! It wanted me to kill it!”
“But it’s a building…”
“A building that talks. Because it’s in pain.”
“I don’t…”
“Just listen! I said, but who are you? It took me days to understand the answer. I realised eventually the voice was loudest near the House of Assembly, but at first I just thought it meant someone was trapped in the building. So I broke in. I had to do it at night, at first, so I waited until Ruby went out and Gosse was snoring…”
“Gosse doesn’t snore…”
Undine screwed her eyes shut and waved this away. “You both snore,” she said.
“Me?”
“Please listen! I went to the door of the House of Assembly, and tried Alohamora and things like that, but nothing happened, and eventually I just said, Please open, in Danish, and the door opened.”
“So? It’s a Danish door,” Ginny pointed out.
“No! It told me later, it knew who I was, but not what I looked like. But it knew my voice. But when I went inside, I still thought I was looking for someone. I shouted, and no-one shouted back, but then the voice was in my head again. It never spoke out loud, just in my head.”
“So what happened?”
“He… It… showed me everything. And he showed me what he does!”
“Does?”
“Ginny, it’s not called the House of Assembly because people assemble there. It’s called that because it assembles things! It’s a factory!”
“What do you mean?” Ginny asked. Is Undine losing her mind? “Is this what Anthony told you?”
“No! Anthony doesn’t know! I keep meaning to tell him, but he’s been so upset while he’s been in the painting, he hates it in there, and I didn’t dare upset him any more… But it explains everything, don’t you see? This is why Sendulla and Brecht and the other teachers didn’t care about the rest of the school. They’re worried because the factory is broken.”
“Did I break it?” Ginny asked in horror. “When I brought it here?”
Undine nodded. “Yes, you broke it, but you did the right thing!”
“Right thing how? Undine, I don’t understand any of this.”
“It’s a Dementor factory,” said Undine.
“What?”
“I thought… I always thought Dementors were just magical animals. Didn’t you?”
“Well, yes,” said Ginny, uncertainly. “Of course.”
“They’re not! Durmstrang make them! In the House of Assembly!”
“But Dementors are alive…”
“No, they’re not. They’re dead. They’re ghosts. But ghosts locked in a cage! They can’t get out! It’s… vile. A Dementor’s mouth isn’t really a mouth, it’s a kind of valve. And the ghost inside can’t escape, but it can pull other ghosts – other souls – into the cage.”
“That makes no sense. Why would they do that?”
“Because they’re lonely, I think. Desperately lonely. Wouldn’t you?”
“I… don’t know,” said Ginny numbly. “So a Demmy Slicer…”
“A Demmy Slicer breaks the cage, so the souls – the ghosts – can escape.”
“But they’ve never said…”
“Who?”
“The ghosts that come out of a Dementor. Why didn’t they say anything?”
Undine shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe they didn’t know what they were inside. Maybe they thought we knew, because we released them.”
“So why?” demanded Ginny. “Why build a Dementor? Why would Durmstrang?”
“Because they’re not meant to attack us,” said Undine, unhappily. “They were designed to attack Giants. Nothing else stops a Giant, but a Dementor can steal a Giant’s soul. And everybody’s afraid of Giants.”
There was a huge sinking feeling inside Ginny now. “But… Wait… Do the Giants know all this?”
“I don’t think so,” said Undine. “Why?”
“Because… Because the Giants destroyed Durmstrang. Was that why? Because of the House of Assembly?”
Undine stared at her, her eyes wide with shock. “I don’t know. Maybe…”
“And I’ve brought it here,” Ginny said with growing horror. “What happens when the Giants realise?”
“Tell them!” said Undine. “Tell them it’s broken!”
“Tell them? How do I do that?”
“You’ve spoken to them,” said Undine.
Ginny shook her head. “Not really. I’ve talked to a Goblin, who talked to them.”
“Well, tell him!”
“He’s a her,” Ginny explained. “But tell her how? How do I get a message to Shorgak?”
“Ask Magon…”
“Seriously? Can I tell her all this?”
“What else can we do?”
“Destroy it, of course!” Ginny urged. “Like it wants! Didn’t you say that? It wants to die…”
“Destroy it how?” Undine asked fretfully. “It’s not just a building! It must need a special curse. Or a weapon like the Demmy Slicer. I told it, I don’t know how to kill a building.”
“Do you think Sendulla knows?” Ginny asked. “How to destroy it, I mean?”
Undine shrugged. “Maybe. But he won’t tell you, will he?”
“Look, why don’t we just destroy it?” Ginny suggested. “Knock the building down, so the Giants can see it’s gone?”
“Because someone will build another, and the Giants will blame us!”
“So we just need to stop that someone from building another,” Ginny said in frustration. “Look, we just need to stop the Giants coming here! That’s what matters!”
“And we let them keep building Dementors? Is that what you’re saying?”
“No! But what can we do about that?”
“I don’t know!” said Undine, unhappily.
“So where does Anthony come into this?” Ginny asked, her head hurting now. “Wait – He’s not a ghost, is he?”
“No! Look, you know where the Jotun are, on the outside? Well, on the inside in the same places are these columns, very wide at the bottom, rising to the ceiling. They look like trees, but they’re stone.”
“I saw them,” Ginny said encouragingly when Undine stopped talking. Undine’s eyes were back on her hands, which were locked together now.
“They don’t have doors. But you can… slip past and get inside. The building wanted me to see.”
“What do you mean?”
“The… the walls… overlap. They look solid, but you slip between the layers. It feels very strange. It’s very small inside, so the walls must be very thick. And there were these… bulges in the walls. All around. They were like heads, looking down at me.”
“Creepy,” said Ginny.
“It – the building - said these were Dementors, being built. And they were like Dementors - They had no eyes, just mouths. But one… did. Eyes, nose. And while I was looking at the face, the eyes opened. I think I screamed. Even when the eyes opened, they weren’t white, just stone, but they moved. And the mouth moved too. And it said, Get me out of here. In English.”
“A statue spoke?”
“He wasn’t a statue! I asked the building about it, and it said it was just holding someone, because it had been told to. I tried to make it release him, but it said it couldn’t. I tried to get him out myself. I couldn’t break the stone, and I was asking him – asking Anthony - how to release him. He said Confringo would probably work. Because Confringo doesn’t hurt people.”
“Couldn’t you just have left him there?” Ginny asked, worried now. “They must have had him there for a reason…”
“Ginny, there’s no harm in him! He’s… he’s so kind, and gentle…”
“You don’t know that…”
“I know!”
“So what happened?”
“I used a thunderstorm spell…” said Undine, unhappily.
“So it was a lightning strike!”
“No! I just used it as cover. I was terrified, but every time there was a strike, I used Confringo on the wall, so people wouldn’t realise. I had to tell the building what I was going to do, but it said it didn’t mind.
“But Confringo didn’t just make a hole, it wrecked the room, and part of the building, and an entire statue came down. Huge stones, falling… One only just missed me. That was when two Dementors came out, and I was even more terrified, but they just flew away, and Anthony was out of the wall, crawling across the floor. He could hardly walk, and I had to carry him, almost.”
“So where did you take him?”
“I hid him in the Choc pavilion, but he nearly got caught – two kids went in there, he said – and that was when you told us about the Carbasum spell. And do you remember Gosse talking about Professor Binns’s portrait? I realised the old painting was still there, somewhere. So I painted pictures of Anthony, and me, so I could hide him in there. I… I painted myself dressed as one of the country dancers, so people didn’t notice me.”
She crossed to her wardrobe, and from the back of it hauled out another canvas, showing just a stone wall, similar to Undine’s own portrait. “We don’t have to go back in there,” she said. “We just have to wait for him to escape from Hogwarts and come here.” She drew her wand, her hand shaking.
“Wait!” said Ginny, in alarm, reaching out to push Undine’s hand down. “Not here!”
“Where, then?”
“What’s Gosse going to say? Or Ruby?”
“They don’t have to know! I can sleep on the floor…”
“What?” exclaimed Ginny. “Keep him here? In your room?”
“Where else can he go?”
“Look, Undine! He must have been in there for a reason! Durmstrang wouldn’t have imprisoned him for fun!”
“It must have been a mistake! I’ve talked to him…”
“So what did he say? Did he tell you why he was there?”
“He said they captured him. But that he’d been tricked.”
Without warning the painting was occupied: Anthony Goldstone was there, looking out at them, then fearfully over his shoulder.
“By Sendulla, you mean?” asked Ginny, urgently.
“No. By somebody else.”
“Who?”
“It’s best you listen to him,” Undine said firmly. “Ginny, he’s innocent! I know he is! We can’t leave him there!”
Undine brought up her wand suddenly, there was a flash, and there was a figure in the room, dropping to the carpet.
The painting still showed him, impossibly handsome. The real Anthony was pushing himself to his hands and knees, looking around in wonder. He was the same man, but round faced, chubby-featured. Undine knelt quickly beside him, and he put his arms around her. He was shaking – crying, Ginny realised. He was repeating something, his voice muffled.
“Thank you,” he was saying. “Thank you, thank you.” Undine put her arms around him as well, and looked up at Ginny, her eyes sorrowful yet full of hope.