What It Means To Be

by spinner

8

"I don't suppose either one of you would care to explain how and why an L-9 conduit vortex to the Netherworld opened in your bedroom"

Harry stared at his feet, his bottom lip trembling, hands clasped nervously at his back.  Draco briefly met Minerva McGonagall's ferocious gaze and regretted it.

"When I opened the door. . ."

"Yes, Mr. Malfoy?"

"Nothing, ma'am," Draco withered. 

"Mr. Potter?"

"I'm as surprised as you are," Harry shrugged.  He tried out a half-grin that so mirrored James Potter's that McGonagall clutched her heart.  Harry stared at the floor again, eyes aglow with interest. 

Lightning cracked across the ceiling and a voice like thunder rolled out from within the dark, black abyss that had ripped itself through the floorboards where up until recently a large table, several chairs, textbooks, homework scrolls, quills, pens, and a bird cage had been standing.  Said bird was lucky enough not to be in the cage at the time, but Hedwig was none too happy to have lost her comfortable domicile.  She preened on top of Harry's armoire, shifting her feathers and glaring at both boys for good measure.  Dumbledore and Snape were 'down below' in a sense Harry was trying to wrap his mind around.  Potter wondered if the suite underneath this one had shifted out of existence to make room for the vortex, or if it existed right alongside the vortex but was squeezed by the expansion.  It was hard to stare too long into the abyss.  The wild maelstrom of wind and fury and blackness would have left Captain Ahab shivering under his bed. 

"Stay here," Minerva insisted, levitating herself down into the massive black space.  Harry flattened himself to the ground almost instantly.  Draco followed suit at once.  Malfoy glared at Harry over the edge of the vortex.  Green eyes raised to meet gray ones.

"How in the hell did you do this?" Draco asked in a whisper hardly audible in the din.  Harry broke out another sheepish grin.

"It wasn't me!" Harry laughed. 

"Of course not," Draco mocked. 

"Need any help!!?" Potter shouted down into the chasm.  A shimmering blue tentacle raised up out and fumbled around the opening.  Harry and Draco scrambled back like crabs, kicking at it with their feet.

"Here there by monsters," Draco managed to stammer.

The Floo ignited, and Brim Stoneburne hurried out, followed by Vixen.  Mrs. Stoneburne was pushing out of her black cloak, stretching her fingers and her wand both.  She left the cloak along the back of Harry's settee.  Brim had none of her usual cold composure.  Wringing her hands, she trailed in her mother's wake.   

"It was an accident," Brim defended.

"Poor love, what did you do?" Vixen asked with incredible patience, flexing her wand like a runner stretching a hamstring.  Harry and Draco remained out of her way as Vixen stood directly next to the vortex.  Brim quickly collected a mangled red book that had been hiding under the edge of Harry's bed, and then found her wand in the wide limbs of the Christmas tree, whose ornaments were beginning to shake and tinkle like bells.  The wand was smoldering and hot to the touch.  She winced, but held onto it. 

"Mummy, I'm so sorry!" Brim exclaimed.  Her mother accepted the book and vanished it at once.  Either she recognized it, or she didn't want anyone else to get a good look at it, one of the two. 

"Not to worry.  I can handle this.  Done it myself a time or two," Vixen tutted.  "Bring me the holly branches from the mantle."

Harry and Draco exchanged a curious, puzzled look, getting to their feet and motioning down into the growing hole.  They sputtered words of caution and warning, but Mrs. Stoneburne shushed them.  Brim dragged the woven decoration over to her mother, shaking out candle wax droplets and leaving a trail of gold dust in her wake.  Vixen lay the twisted branches down before the vortex, and touched them with her wand.  They multiplied and wound a complete circle around the hole, holding tight to one another.   Harry noted that the vortex was not churning as violently, and that the hole had stopped widening. 

"Who climbed inside?" Mrs. Stoneburne asked Harry.  By this point, Owen was coming through the Floo too.  Harry could hear Snape and Dumbledore shouting to one another down below in the vortex.  Minerva McGonagall's hand appeared, and Harry latched onto it immediately. 

"What in the- - -!" Owen left the exclamation unspoken, helping Harry lift McGonagall out of the hole.  Dumbledore was close behind her, and breathing heavily. 

"Severus!" Harry shouted downward, trying to make heads or tails out of the swirling red orbs of light that were shadowing the lone figure he could see in shadow, perched on a rocky promontory below.  An unclear hand stretched for him, and Harry clasped at it for half a second before everyone above him screamed in warning, and several people yanked him back out of reach.   Black pointed nails and scabbed, scarred skin snaked away into vortex.

"Back in a second," Vixen said calmly.  She pecked a kiss to Owen's cheek, patted the distraught Brim on the shoulder, and stepped downward.  Harry squirmed out of the grips of the people holding onto him, wondering that they did not seem concerned about Owen's wife.  Mrs. Stoneburne vanished except for her small hand, which clung to the edge.  Owen sat down, most careful not to disturb the circle of holly twigs.  He was waiting with a kind of patience Harry wasn't sure he could have mustered under the circumstances.  Harry stood up behind Owen, but he couldn't see a thing.  Vixen wasn't visible.  Dark clouds were trying to consume her.  Her form shifted out of sight halfway to her elbow.  Owen put both hands over her hand and clung to her wrist.   He was whispering to himself while drawing a circle on the back of her hand with the end of his thumb.

"Bona Dea, Bona Dea, Bona Dea." 

"Mummy, be careful!" Brim continued to hover, nervous and agitated.  Owen glanced up at her, and she dodged her questioning look. 

Dumbledore aimed his wand down into the vortex and then reached a hand downwards as well.  He drew a panting, heaving, screaming figure up onto solid ground.  It took a second or two to recognize Severus, for he was wild-eyed with fear and screaming as shrilly as tiny girl.  X    Harry latched onto Snape and drew him further back from the vortex with the help from McGonagall and Dumbledore.  Malfoy immediately rocketed over to his part of the room and rummaged through his many colored bottles on the shelf by his favorite window.  He came back with a shining silver vial.  Harry had often wondered what that contained.  It alone was unlabeled among the others.

Malfoy uncorked the vial and thrust it into Snape's shaking hands.  Severus stopped screaming long enough to gag down the contents of the shining vial.  The glass article bounced aside when it slid from his grasp.  It rolled near to the vortex, and melted into the ground.  Rasping and panting yet, Severus stopped trembling and began to compose himself, at least until something red and skeletal and snarling and ghastly came snapping up out of the hole.  It snatched the edges of Snape's already-tattered black cloak and began gnawing at him. Severus kicked and writhed out of reach to no avail.  Draco was on his feet with his wand, and the thing  cackled at him and took a swipe.  Harry fought his way through several arms to help Severus as well, and dodged back barely in time to avoid a matching set of three claw marks across his face when the manifestation took a swipe at him. 

"BAAAACK!" Harry shouted, aiming his wand and his free hand both at the creature.   Draco aimed his wand as well.  With a flash of a red, bat-like wings with see-through skin and spidery veins, it scampered over the floor in an uneven gait.  Dumbledore and Owen were helping Vixen up to her feet.  She was completely unscathed, it appeared, except for wild, ruffled hair.   She smoothed down her hair and sighed her amusement, moving slightly aside.  The thing that had been threatening Severus and the boys dropped down into the whirling black clouds of the vortex as it began to close.  The last thing Harry saw was the end of a pointed-end.  He blinked, shook his spinning head, and gaped at Severus, but Snape wasn't ready to offer an explanation, at least not a coherent one. 

"Have to close them from the inside.  It's the only way," Vixen explained cheerfully.

"I'm so sorry," Brim stammered, shaking her head, covering her red face. 

"Dear, when you aren't sure, don't be afraid to ask Mummy for help," Vixen said to Brim, who was struggling not to cry.  Vixen hugged her, kissed her on the cheek, and pointed her towards the Floo.  Brim went without a fight.  Harry hadn't even noticed Burnie and Hermione's heads blinking in mute surprise until he faced that direction. 

"Everything all right?"  Burnie tentatively asked his sister. 

"Go jump in the loch!" Brim shouted at him, pushing past him to get into the Floo. 

"Mum, she's trying to drown me again," Burnie wailed in half-feigned protest.  Vixen shook a finger at him, and he and Hermione vanished, leaving the portal open for his parents.

"What was she doing?" Owen asked Vixen.  Mrs. Stoneburne looked to Harry, and if only for the briefest of moments, she smiled conspiratorially at him.

"Kids these days," Vixen said to Owen.  "Come on now, don't dawdle.  I've got a roast in the oven."

"Thanks," Harry said, waving to them.

"Most welcome," Vixen replied.  "Happy Christmas!" 

Owen looked to Harry in hopes of an explanation, but Harry shrugged, and Owen gave up very quickly.  He followed Vixen through the Floo and it fell silent.  Everyone gathered over Severus, who sat on the floor listening to his own racing heart.

"Need another dose?" Draco asked, watching the puddle that had once been a vial. 

"One dose is quite sufficient.  Thank you."

"Not at all," Malfoy bowed.  He took Snape's hand and eased him into a standing position.  

"Dear boy, are you all right?" Albus asked, all glowing with paternal warmth and concern. 

"In the future, if I should tell you that I can handle a dangerous situation, that you should go ahead without me, that I'll be fine, you may safely assume I am over-estimating my own abilities, and you should at once remind me of this particular incident," Severus concluded. 

"Nonsense.  You handled it very well," Dumbledore twinkled, and how Severus hated that twinkle at times.   "You may have to change your clothes before dinner, however."

"If only you knew," Severus tried to joke as he lifted the tattered end of his robe and gaped at claw marks and fang-tears.   Harry impulsively hugged Snape tight again, and Minerva scanned the tower room with her back-to-business attitude as firmly in place as her pointy hat. 

"You gentlemen are going to need another table and chairs, it would seem.  Textbooks, of course.  Quills.  Parchment.  Ink.  Don't think for a second this bit of excitement is going to mitigate the completion of your assignments.  Rest assured I shall expect it first thing when holidays are over.  And your owl is going to need a new cage, Mr. Potter."

"Yes, ma'am," Harry and Draco answered in unison.

"Severus, you might want to take a glance in the mirror.  Tidy up, as it were," she said, turning to him.  She used the exact same tone of voice with him as she had used with Harry and Draco, and it made Snape bristle, made his eyes tense up in irritation.

"What did you see?  What was that thing?"  Harry worried, clutching one of Snape's hands in his own. 

"Nothing," Severus laughed it off, his chuckle cold and hollow.   "What are you staring at?" he asked when Harry leaned to the side and folded his mouth in up on itself.   

"Nothing to worry about," Draco assured Snape bracingly.  "Plenty of good hair dyes on the market these days."

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