The Sword of Gryffindor
The Great Hall was in a complete and total uproar.
All of the students were still sitting in their seats at the three house tables, but it was a near thing. The younger students were jumping around excitedly, while the older ones looked confused and a little scared. The teachers were solemn and Headmistress McGonagall, with her face stern and disapproving, was standing by her chair, waiting for the roar of voices to die down.
People were speaking a mile a minute, and the Headmistress kept opening her mouth – probably to attempt to control the situation – only to close it again the next second. Nobody was listening to her anyways.
Cory, Gwen, and Leah all took their seats with the rest of Talos. Among the lot, their table was probably the loudest. Cory turned to Sean on his left hand side and asked, “What’s going on?”
His eyes were wide and vibrant. He jittered in his seat as he spoke breathlessly, “Somebody stole the Sword of Gryffindor! Can you believe it? And right out from under McGonagall’s nose!”
Both Cory and Gwen immediately directed their full attention towards Sean, their fighting momentarily put to a halt. Leah eyed the change, bewildered.
“No way,” said Cory.
“I don’t believe it!” shrieked Gwen.
“I didn’t even know it was here! My dad said it’s been lost for years.”
Sean persisted anxiously, as if he couldn’t say it fast enough. “I don’t think anybody did, except McGonagall herself. When she told us, the teachers acted as surprised as we did! She came in, in the middle of dinner, her face all stony and hard in the way it gets, and just said, out of the blue, that it’d been stolen! As you can see, it’s all sort of gone downhill.”
“Excuse me,” Leah interrupted, “but what is this Sword of Griffenhord? I’ve never heard of it before.”
“Not Griffenhord,” Sean laughed, unable to contain his excitement, “Gryffindor. And it’s an ancient sword, encrusted with rubies and magical properties, the legends say. It belonged to Godric Gryffindor, one of the four founders of Hogwarts!”
“It was thought by most of the Wizarding population to be lost during the First Battle for Hogwarts,” said Cory. “Evidently not, though.”
“I can’t imagine who could steal it,” whispered Gwen, amazed. “Who would even know where it was? And McGonagall must’ve put at least some kinds of protection spells around it ...”
At the Head Table, McGonagall was now tapping her silver spoon against her goblet. She cleared her throat. When the students kept ignoring her and talking amongst themselves, she raised her wand to her throat, said an incantation, and then, sounding as if her voice had been amplified by a few hundred decibels, yelled, “QUIET!”
The chatter broke off with the insistency of a battering ram and with a wave of her wand, McGonagall removed the Sonorus charm.
“Thank you,” said the Headmistress more calmly. “Now, as the majority of you all know, Godric Gryffindor’s sword is a priceless relic, an important historical artefact. I do not think I need to tell you how great the ramifications of this theft may be. If the wrong side has gotten a hold of it – namely He Who Must Not Be Named and his followers – it could destroy any far off chance we may still hold of winning this war. Since it was taken yesterday morning, the perpetrator has had ample time in which to dispose of it. Therefore, I must urge you all to keep both eyes and ears open to any information on who may have taken the sword or where it is now. If you hear anything, please report it to a teacher or myself immediately. This matter is not to be taken lightly. Thank you. That will be all.”
Then she took her seat and continued eating. There was a stunned silence and then everyone else settled too, eating quietly and talking in hushed whispers.
“This is really serious,” said Sean, his expression immediately sober, his eyes still wide. “I didn’t realize.”
Cory started helping himself to some mashed potatoes before passing them along to Gwen. “Yeah … but why would You-Know-Who want the sword? It’s cool and all that, but what could he possibly use it for?”
“Maybe he got tired of the Killing Curse,” Gwen giggled.
Cory stared, astonished, at her apparent immaturity. “That’s not even funny.”
“They don’t even know that it was You-Know-Who,” said Leah. She looked up from her own plate of food to the Head Table. McGonagall seemed to be in the middle of a heated argument with Professor Thomas, but over what, Leah had no clue. She scanned the table because something was missing; and then her eyes passed over an empty chair and a gap in the bodies of the teachers. She looked more closely at the individual faces there until she knew what it was that had bothered her.
“Hey, Masen’s not here!”
Cory, Gwen, and Sean looked up and followed her gaze to Masen’s empty seat.
Sean’s brow furrowed. “Weird,” he said. “But not unusual. He’s a solitary guy, been known to skip out on the odd meal or two.”
“But today?” Leah answered dubiously. “You would think, what with the sword gone, that McGonagall would want all of the professors to be here to tell them … so they’d be on alert, know what to watch for.”
Gwen shrugged. “Maybe he already knows.”
Her master called and the great snake slithered through the wet grass to meet him. He was standing beneath a hideous gnarled tree, facing her, his hands clasped behind his back. She approached him and she hissed in greeting, raising her long neck for him to gently caress it.
His pale hands stayed behind him, though, and she cocked her head, wondering. She came closer. Something was different in his eyes lately, and they were like that now: they didn’t soften when they saw her; they didn’t smile in satisfaction when she came.
But she was devoted to him above all else; she alone was his best servant, his favourite. And she trusted him – not blindly – but as if she had no reason not to, for she didn’t. So she did not hesitate to slide up onto his shoulders when he reached his arm out in that familiar way to her, started to curl her strong body around those firm muscles and tendons without second thought.
She didn’t distrust it when that familiar hand grasped her around the neck, the bone-like fingers digging into her skin. She waited for his explanation, unafraid, when he held her up against the rough, peeling bark, but it never came. And when the piercing thing entered her, she just stared at him, her own eyes trusting while his hardened; and she waited, until she could no longer.
The four of them didn’t say any more on the topic of the missing sword for the rest of the meal. The other students had also calmed down from their initial shock and had become interested in other, more light-hearted topics of discussion. Leah picked at her vegetables, her fork scraping around the plate, her head propped up on one hand.
“You know … I’ve always hated turnip,” she mused some minutes later. “All orange … and gross tasting. I don’t see why anybody would like it, or why they insist on feeding it to us.”
“Leah, everybody hates turnip,” Gwen replied distractedly; she was playing with her own dinner, not really eating it.
Leah stabbed a piece of the offending vegetable with her fork and put it in her mouth, grimacing in disgust as she chewed and swallowed. “Well, evidently the teachers don’t, or they wouldn’t force these horrible atrocities on us.”
“Then why on Earth are you even eating it? Pick something else.”
Leah just sighed and put more turnip in her mouth.
Gwen shook her head mournfully. Looking up from the Quidditch magazine he’d taken out of his bag to read, Cory smiled, but it did not reach his eyes.
“You remind me of my sister,” he said, “because, secretly, I think you really do like it and are instead just hell-bent on pretending you hate it.”
Leah glared. “Which sister?” she asked, ignoring his second point.
He thought for a moment, and then he grinned smugly. “Both of them,” he answered.
Leah was about to shoot back a retort – Cory had two sisters, Molly and Elizabeth, both eight and six respectively, as well as a brother (Will, who was Molly’s twin), and there was no possible way that he’d just paid her a compliment – when a high, drawn out shriek suddenly interrupted their banter. The students in the Great Hall, already on edge from the news of the stolen sword, all stopped what they were doing immediately, seemingly stunned in their seats. The teachers at the Head table exchanged similar terrified looks and rushed out of the room, nearly all of the students right on their heels once they’d gotten over their own surprise.
At the moment of the disturbance, Leah had just been about ready to fling a large, mushy chunk of turnip at Cory’s head with her fork; her attention now shifted elsewhere, however, she accidentally let go and none of them noticed where it landed. They were already out of their seats, on their feet, and running full throttle after the mass of students hurrying towards the noise.
They did not have to wait long to find out what it had been that had made that awful scream. Just outside the front doors by an old tree, the mob of students had gathered, all forming some sort of open ring around another person. A small second year girl that Leah had noticed around the school was crying and shaking, clearly in shock, as she gazed unseeingly at the spectacle before her. Leah turned to her friends, wanting to know what they were thinking, and was even more surprised to see Gwen quiet, with dazed, non-understanding eyes. But Cory looked even worse than that: he gaped at what the girl’s stare, and everyone else’s, was fixed upon, his whole torso trembling like a tuning fork, as he let out a small moan.
“No … oh, Merlin, no …”
It was this reaction more than anything that startled Leah into finally seeing what had caught everyone’s attention so thoroughly, though she did not at once understand it. She noticed vaguely that Professors McGonagall and Thomas were looking at each other very significantly, and they shared sinister expressions full of something Leah couldn’t quite name. Leah didn’t know what to think, what to feel, but she knew that something dreadful was certainly happening in her beloved school.
Because, stabbed through the aged elm tree by a gleaming ruby-hilted sword, dangling length-wise down the trunk with its grotesque face captured brightly by the sun was a huge dead and mutilated snake. And on the nearby castle wall, crudely painted with a dark red substance that was certainly the snake’s still wet blood, was one word: HA.
Like Ha ha. A laugh.
The following morning, the Great Hall was deathly silent; all the students sat quietly, not bothering with eating much or talking, all lost in their own thoughts. Between news of the sword and finding the snake the day before, it seemed as if any possibility of a happy meal was now lost. The mystery of who’d done it still weighed heavily down upon everyone and nobody was in a mood to smile. People were on edge, some even going so far as to cast scared glances at the front doors every few seconds, as if at any time they might hear more screams coming from outside.
“What do you think –?”
“I don’t know, Leah.” Cory’s gaze was fixed studiously on his eggs and sausages and he refused to look up.
“But how did the snake …?” she tried again. Gwen just shook her head.
And that was the end of that conversation, if it could be called one.
When Leah suggested some time later that they should hurry along to class before they ended up late, neither Cory nor Gwen argued; instead, they both stood silently and followed Leah out of the Hall and up to the second floor.
The Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom seemed abnormally gloomy that day, even more so than usual. Maybe it was just that everyone was already in such a depressing mood, or because outside it had begun to rain once more. But Leah thought that it was rather Professor Masen’s deep scowl and burning eyes that bored into each of the students’ so murderously as they took their seats that were the cause.
Masen did not address anything about the events of the previous day. He started right into the lesson, writing impossible directions and unpronounceable incantations on the board. But the ferocity with which he flicked his wand and his horrible silence belied just how agitated he truly was.
“What are you all waiting for?” he barked, turning on them. “Get to work!” His black eyes sparked like embers, whether from the flickering lamps, or as of something else more disturbing that Leah couldn’t imagine, and she followed the rest of the class in hurrying to copy down the note.
When they were done he peered at them each in turn and said, “Now who’d like to be our guinea pig for today?” Everyone shrunk in their seats but Masen had eyes for only one. “Ah, Mr Weasley … perhaps you would be so kind as to try the Stinging Hex for us this time?”
Cory shook his head slowly.
“Now, Mr Weasley, we both know how imperative it is for the class to see the spell put into practice. You wouldn’t want to deprive your classmates of their education, would you?”
Cory whimpered and slid lower in his seat beside Leah. On his other side, Gwen nudged him in the ribs. “You’ve got to stand up to him,” she urged.
“Easy for you to say,” he mumbled. Then, taking a deep breath, he steeled himself and said, just above a whisper, “No, thank you,” to Masen.
Masen stopped for a minute in shock before bristling. “What did you just say to me, boy?”
Cory stood up, ramrod straight, from his desk, his muscles tensed. “I said no, thank you. I would not like to try.”
The students gasped at this unusual display of open defiance. Leah could feel her eyes popping out of her head. The professor looked at Cory, his burning eyes contracting into snake-like slits.
Leah suddenly realized that Cory wanted, more than anything, to run, to flee in that moment; so she grabbed his arm up into a death grip and refused to let go, holding on even while he begged her wordlessly to do just that. He was too far into this now.
“Excuse me?”
“I refuse to continue being your chew toy every lesson.”
“Cory, don’t!”
“Gwen, you told me to!”
She grabbed his other sleeve and Gwen and Leah sat like two sentinels on either side of Cory, ready to pull him back from where he stood at the slightest need. “To say no ... not to goad him. Look at him!”
Cory did and his blue eyes widened in confusion before shifting to horror at the sight of the dark form bending over him. He recoiled.
“DETENTION!” Masen roared, spit flying.
“You guys don’t understand!”
Leah and Gwen hurried along in Cory’s wake as he walked, nearly ran, through the corridors away from Professor Masen’s room. He had spoken hardly a word in the twenty minutes since they had left the disastrous Defence class and Leah was now seriously concerned for his mental health. He looked back at them over his shoulder, his face screwed up as if he were trying to hold in tears.
“Then tell us!” Gwen called.
“I only just realized … I knew I’d seen that sword around here before. I don’t know why Masen of all people reminded me; something about his eyes. Just follow me,” he said cryptically, and then there was no more talking as the two girls huffed along behind him, letting him take them where he may.
They turned another corridor and entered a long, skinny hallway with no windows. On their right hand side was a doorway to an unused classroom and as they slowed down, they heard muffled, raised voices coming from the other side. Cory stopped and plastered himself against the wall, then motioned for Leah and Gwen to do the same, holding one finger against his lips in a silent warning to be quiet.
“– But you must see the significance of this, Minerva! If it got out that His snake –”
“This travesty getting out is the least that I am worried about right now, Rolanda. Surely you realize …”
“Of course I do,” the woman named Rolanda answered curtly, and Leah recognized the voice of Madam Hooch, the flying teacher. “But we all remember what Granger and Weasley told us that thing was, surely!”
“What do you think, Hagrid?” asked McGonagall suddenly.
“Well, I dunno now. We shouldn’t jump teh conclusions,” came the part-giant’s gruff baritone.
Professor Thomas said, “If that thing is indeed Nagini, then we shouldn’t be complaining; we’re one step closer now to finishing him for good than we ever were! I think that the real question should be who did this? Who would have had access to the snake that knows what it was? And have they destroyed any more?”
“That shouldn’t be difficult, there’s hardly anybody left who’d remember,” replied another familiar voice.
“There are a few, Poppy,” answered McGonagall.
Leah shifted uncomfortably in her space against the bricks. There was a sharp edge jabbing into her back, and she was getting rather restless. Beside her, Gwen transferred her weight from one foot to the other and Cory remained still, like a statue.
“Last time this happened it was because of the Chamber –”
“Dean, you can’t be suggesting … really, You-Know-Who controls Hogwarts now. He already knows how to open it. And he’d never warn us, all the way from Scotland, that he’d opened it, if he had.”
“No, of course not, Minerva … All I’m suggesting is that we call some of the Order – Luna, Charlie, maybe Cho – for extra security.”
“I agree,” stated Poppy. “Our students could be in danger –”
“Hush! I hear something.”
The voices stopped and Leah realized belatedly that, as she’d been moving around, she had kicked a small pebble and it had rolled across the stone floor, making a racket that echoed up and down the long passage. They could hear footsteps coming from within and she nearly screamed in surprise, but then Gwen clamped a sweaty hand over her mouth and pulled her back into the shadows of a recess in the wall. The door they’d been listening outside of cracked open, somebody mumbled, “Nobody out there, but we should take this somewhere else,” and it closed again.
In the recess, the trio were breathing heavily, their backs pressed up against the cold wall. A few seconds later the door opened again and most of the staff of Kootenay streamed out, uneasy and stressed-looking. As soon as they’d passed, Cory grabbed both Leah and Gwen’s arms and continued hauling them toward his mystery destination.
He pulled them up a flight of stairs, making Gwen stumble and fall. Picking herself up, she ranted at him madly as she brushed the dirt off her knees, “Cory, if you don’t tell us where we’re going right now, I’m going to put my foot somewhere and it won’t be pleasant!”
“We’re here,” he snapped back.
He was standing in front of a tiny oil painting, his eyes narrowed and holding a spark in them Leah didn’t like to see because it meant that he was upset about something. Depicted in the painting was a dark scene of a boy holding something long and shiny up against a huge monstrous snake that filled almost the entire frame. On the ground, appearing unconscious, was a smaller red-haired girl. The shimmering metal thing in the young boy’s hand, Leah was shocked to see, was a sword with a gold and ruby encrusted handle: the Sword of Gryffindor.
“Do you know the story behind this picture, Gwen?” Cory demanded.
She saw the fury in his face and stammered, “N-no.”
“Well, I do. And I need to talk to Hagrid. The weekend cannot come soon enough.”