For two days, Big Tom and his gang of followers kept their distance from Harry and Tyler. Frightened by Harry’s apparent ability to command the small viper, and humiliated by that fear, they were loath to give him an opportunity to embarrass them in front of anyone. On the third afternoon following their late-night encounter, however, their courage returned.
Harry was outside visiting with Snowy the owl in a secluded corner of the yard, when she gave him a sudden look of alarm and took flight. Harry looked over his shoulder to see what had startled her. He immediately regretted that action, because a large rock smashed into his face, breaking his nose and knocking him to the ground. He tried groggily to get to his feet, but another rock hit him in the back. He rolled on the ground, trying to avoid getting hit again while he scrambled to see where the sudden attack was coming from. A scream came from his right, and he looked just in time to see Snowy soaring up and away from Big Tom, who was sporting a nasty gash on his cheek, no doubt caused by the owl’s sharp talons. Tom launched his next rock at the large bird, but she avoided it with such ease that she seemed to be taunting him.
Another rock came from Nash, but this time Harry managed to spin out of the way and get to his feet. He had to find a staff member, and fast, or he was going to be pulverized. Throwing a quick glance over his shoulder, he ducked another rock and ran. Tom and his gang were shouting and chasing after him as fast as they could, and Harry could feel himself becoming lightheaded as blood rushed from his broken nose. He could tell by their shouts that they were gaining on him, and still there was no staff member in sight. What he really needed was a weapon.
Quickly changing direction, he sprinted toward the building, where he saw a broom with a sturdy-looking handle leaning against the wall. If he could just get his hands on it, he might by able to buy himself a little more time. A well-aimed rock hit him in the back of the knee, and he fell, rolling several times before coming to a stop. Tom was almost on top of him, hatred etched all over his bloodstained face.
Acting on instinct, Harry thrust his hand out in the direction of the broom, which was still at least five feet out of reach, and yelled, “Accio!” The broom flew into his hand, and he jammed the end of the wooden handle hard into Big Tom’s stomach. Tom crumpled, gasping for breath, as Harry scrambled to his feet and began running once more. As he ran, an uncontrollable urge to fly away on the broomstick came over him. It was absurd, of course, but then again, so was calling it to him the way he had done only seconds before. In a moment of pure insanity, he leapt into the air, throwing himself astride the wooden handle, and crashed hard into the ground. A rock hit him in the back, and he lay still, his energy spent, and awaited the final blow to the head that would surely do him in.
A whistle sounded, and suddenly the air was filled with shouting and the sound of running footsteps. In the midst of it all, he heard Tyler’s voice saying, “I saw them chasing after you, and I got Professor Johnston as fast as I could.”
Slowly, painfully, Harry rolled onto his back and opened his eyes. Big Tom and his gang were being forced rather roughly into the building by several of the larger staff members. As the school matron approached with a stretcher, he closed his eyes once more, and finally allowed the pain and exhaustion to consume him.
Despite having several large bruises and a broken nose, the remainder of October was rather enjoyable for Harry - at least, it was as enjoyable as life at St. Brutus’s ever was. Big Tom and his gang had been locked up and isolated from the rest of the boys for what the staff referred to as a “cooling off period.” Harry spent his days skimming through his classes while doing the least possible amount of work, and hanging out with Tyler during their free time. Most of their free evenings were spent playing with Snowy, the large white owl that had befriended Harry. A couple of times, Harry slipped off alone to talk with Hassseth, but she began hibernating around the twentieth of the month. He had grown fond of the small snake, and it saddened him to know that it would be months before he got to see her again.
The thing that brought the most enjoyment to Harry’s life, however, was his dreams. Nearly every night, he dreamed of the brown-eyed girl’s face, and the dreams seemed to give him the hope and strength he needed in order to face another day at St. Brutus’s. It was stupid, of course, since he knew she probably didn’t even exist outside his own head, but somehow that didn’t matter. Just the thought of her could bring a smile to his face, and that was enough.
As Halloween approached, rumours began circulating among the boys, saying that Big Tom and his gang would be rejoining the rest of them soon. Harry still secretly held onto the hope that they might never come back, but the rest of the school didn’t seem to be taking any chances: Harry and Tyler, known to everyone to be the reason the gang was locked up, were ostracized. Nobody wanted to be associated with an enemy of Big Tom’s.
On Halloween morning, Tom and his friends strolled into the dining hall with an air of arrogance that clearly indicated that their time away had done nothing to change their attitudes. Harry and Tyler ate hurriedly, watching the larger boys warily all the while.
Harry couldn’t quite place why, but the concrete dining hall and stone corridors of St. Brutus’s somehow seemed too empty for Halloween. As he walked from one class to the next, and whenever he allowed his mind to wander during lessons, he saw flashes of elaborate Halloween decorations in his mind. Where did those images come from? Might they be coming from the same place that his dreams and other impulses did? Was it possible that all those things were memories of the past five years that were trying to resurface?
It was useless to ask himself these things, of course, especially when he knew that some of the dreams included a girl in the stone corridors of St. Brutus’s. That fact alone meant that it couldn’t have really happened. He was probably just wishing so badly for his memory to return that his mind was trying to invent one for him. As for the ‘magic,’ as Tyler called it, there had to be another explanation - after all, it wasn’t as if witchcraft could really unlock doors and things.
Harry sighed deeply as the loud ringing of a bell brought him back to reality. All around him, the other boys were stowing their books and heading to supper. Once again, Harry had the strange feeling that something wasn’t quite right as he entered the dining hall. He looked around and found nothing out of the ordinary, but perhaps that was the problem. Shouldn’t there be some sort of a feast on Halloween? He shook his head. There were no feasts of any kind at St. Brutus’s. You were lucky to get food that didn’t make you want to vomit.
“What is it?” Tyler asked suddenly.
“Huh?” Harry asked.
“You were sort of staring off into space, and then you shook your head like you were deciding against something.”
“I was just thinking,” Harry said vaguely as he took a bite of what appeared to be rancid oatmeal.
“About...” Tyler prompted.
Harry took a moment to swallow and take a sip of water. Finally, deciding he could confide in Tyler, he said, “It’s stupid, really. I was just thinking how it’s Halloween, so we should be having a big feast with all sorts of, I don’t know, good things to eat. And instead, we’re eating this rubbish.”
Tyler smirked. “A feast for Halloween? I know I don’t get out much, Harry, but I don’t know of anybody who celebrates Halloween with a big feast - except maybe witches.” He winked at Harry, but Harry just shook his head.
“We’ve been through this,” he said. “I don’t know the first thing about witchcraft. And anyway, witches aren’t real. There’s no such thing as magic, remember?”
Tyler lowered his voice to a whisper. “Yeah, I remember really well how you unlocked that door by whispering, ‘Aloha-something-or-other.’ If that wasn’t magic, what was it?”
“I don’t know, alright?” Harry snapped. “Look, there’s no such thing as magic, so just drop it. There has to be some other explanation.”
“Whatever you say, mate.”
They ate in silence until they could stomach no more of the acidic slop, and then headed for the dormitory to work on their daily assignments. Since no one put much effort into their schoolwork, it was relatively easy to keep up, and they were finished by eight o’clock. The rest of the time before bed was passed in games of tic-tac-toe and hangman, which Tyler used as an opportunity to needle Harry by choosing such words as ‘magic,’ ‘witch,’ and ‘broomstick.’
As soon as the dorm was silent except for the light snoring of a few of the boys, Harry nudged Tyler and gestured toward the doorway. Tyler nodded his assent, and they both threw on their dressing gowns and slippers, and padded through the maze of sleeping boys and up the stone staircase. Once outside the building, Harry headed straight for Snowy’s tree and called to her softly. The large, white owl responded immediately with a hoot, and then soared down to land on his outstretched arm.
“I still wish we knew your real name, girl,” Harry said in a quiet voice. “Snowy just isn’t quite right, is it?”
The owl stared at him and hooted in a manner that unmistakably meant, “No.”
As Tyler reached over to gently stroke the white feathers on her head, the sound of muffled voices coming from around the corner of the building startled all three of them, and was enough to make Snowy take flight. Harry and Tyler ran for the cover of the building’s shadow, and peeked around the corner.
Big Tom was over near the outer wall with his gang of four muscular thugs. They were all whispering excitedly, when Tom held up a hand and everyone fell silent. Harry strained to listen, but there was nothing to hear. All he heard was the croak of a bullfrog from the other side of the wall. Big Tom grinned and then hooted like an owl.
“He’s signaling someone,” whispered Tyler. “I wonder if he’s trying to escape.”
“I doubt it,” Harry replied. “Even with a ladder, it wouldn’t be easy getting through all that barbed wire and everything.”
A moment passed in silence, and then something about the size of a football came hurtling over the outer wall. Big Tom picked it up and began unraveling it until Harry could see that it was a heavy sweater. Once it was unraveled, Tom removed something small that had been wrapped up inside the sweater, looked at it for a moment, and then began wrapping the sweater around his right hand, which still held the small object.
“We’ve got to hide,” whispered Tyler. His voice was panicked, and when Harry looked at him, he noticed that his face was pale.
“Why?” Harry asked. “What is it?”
“He’s got a gun!” Tyler hissed. “That little thing he got out of the sweater was a gun, probably a little snub-nosed revolver.”
“How do you know?”
“You see how he’s wrapping that sweater around his hand?” Tyler asked. “That’s to muffle the sound. Silencers are hard to come by.”
Convinced, Harry started backing away just as Tom and his boys began walking toward where he and Tyler were hidden in the shadows. Before they reached the front doors of the school, however, a shout went up behind them, and they knew they’d been spotted.
“Run!” Harry yelled. He and Tyler burst through the doorway and ran blindly through the corridors, determined to stay far enough ahead that Tom wouldn’t get a clear shot. They turned right, then left, then left again, and found themselves running down a long, straight corridor. Harry glanced over his shoulder and saw Big Tom stop and take aim. There was no way he could aim properly with his sweater wrapped around the gun the way it was, but even if he missed, the chances were good that one of his targets would be hit by the bullet ricocheting off the stone of the narrow corridor, and a wounded target just became that much easier to finish off. Without even realizing the insanity of his actions, Harry stopped running, turned to face Big Tom, and threw out his hands, yelling, “Protego!” just as Tom pulled the trigger.
Even with the makeshift silencer in place, the gunshot wasn’t exactly quiet. Harry felt as if someone had given his hands a light push, and looked down to see the flattened lead bullet lying on the floor a few paces in front of him.
“Harry, let’s go!” shouted Tyler, who had finally looked back and realized that his friend was no longer running. He was nearly to the end of the corridor, and was jumping up and down to emphasize his words.
“It’s okay, Tyler,” said Harry with a confidence that he didn’t really feel. “You go and get help. I’ll hold them off.”
“Are you mad?” Tyler demanded.
“Just go!” Harry shouted. He might be able to hold them off for a while, but it wouldn’t be easy, especially if he had to worry about protecting Tyler too.
Tom, along with Lyon, Nash, and Wilkins, jogged down the hallway toward Harry, stopping only when they were within ten feet of him.
“Decided to accept the inevitable, eh?” Tom asked as he raised the pistol. He pulled the trigger, and in the narrow confines of the corridor, the muffled explosion caused Harry’s ears to ring. A second flattened bullet fell to the ground in front of him. Like the first one, it had apparently been blocked by an invisible shield.
“Not bloody likely,” Harry spat. Behind him, the soft sound of Tyler’s receding footsteps told him that his friend had finally decided to run.
Tom looked from Harry to the bullets on the floor to his wrapped right hand, and growled before firing the rest of his bullets in rapid succession. Each time, Harry felt a gentle push against his hands, but nothing more as his invisible shield blocked the bullets.
Harry glared at Tom, and Tom glared back. It was a standoff, and both of them knew it. If Harry lowered his shield to try and escape, he would be vulnerable to attack by Big Tom and the three goons that stood with him.
Three? Harry asked himself suddenly. Weren’t there four of them with him?
The instant he saw Tom’s expression change to a satisfied smirk, Harry knew he’d been tricked. He spun to look behind him, but it was too late; Lloyd Hodges, the missing member of Big Tom’s gang, hit him hard across the side of the head with Madam Davies’ aluminum baseball bat. The taste of blood immediately filled his mouth. Harry struggled to get to his feet, but was quickly mobbed by the rest of the gang as they poured through his now collapsed shield. Vicious blows landed all across his body, but still he fought to stand. He somehow managed to get his right leg under him, but Hodges dealt him a sharp blow to the chest with the baseball bat, and sent him sprawling once more.
As Harry struggled to roll over, an elbow came down hard in the center of his left hamstring, causing it to knot painfully. Before he had time to recover, a heel slammed into the center of his right hamstring. Both legs curled underneath him involuntarily, and he found himself unable to straighten them. He twisted onto his back, swinging his fists wildly, but Big Tom caught his right wrist with a laugh, and threw him against the wall.
There was a sickening crack as Harry’s head hit the hard stone, but still he fought to stay conscious. Pushing himself up the wall as best he could with his nearly useless legs, he glared at the blurry shapes in front of him and realized in an almost detached sort of way that his glasses must have gotten knocked off at some point. He threw a feeble punch that didn’t connect with anything, and immediately felt a foot crash against his jaw, causing his head to impact the wall once again. The hall echoed with laughter as Big Tom and his gang began taunting him, but Harry’s head was throbbing so badly that he couldn’t even understand their jeers.
Shakily, knowing that the last of his energy was nearly spent, Harry pushed himself up on his arms. He looked up just in time to see Big Tom swinging the pistol toward him. It collided with the side of his head and sent him back to the floor. The gang was laughing louder now, and Harry knew it was all over; there was no way he could get back up. The blows continued, but he was already in so much pain that he almost didn’t notice, except when he was hit by the bat. Finally, one last blow to the head left him blissfully unconscious.
A/N: I had originally planned to kill Tyler off in this chapter, but after thinking about it, I realized that there wasn’t really a good reason to do it. So Tyler lives on. I hope that makes you happy. :)