Chapter 3 of HP:DHM has been updated!
You can find Chapter 3 of Harry Potter and the Death's Head Mark
Chapter 3:
Harry had seethed for a while after Hogan’s response. He’d been watching the camp’s prisoners and despised the lot as lazy bastards. It was their duty to escape, but they preferred to play at gardening.
He would stare beyond the barbed-wire fence and wish he knew what he could do. But he’d be worthless in a fight against muggle guards. One of Grindelwald’s men had placed anti-apparition wards around the camp, and he had no wandless magic worth mentioning. He didn’t know how to use a gun, let alone take on armed men with nothing but his hands.
He needed his wand. But it was gone-probably resting with Mueller or Grindelwald by now. If only he could steal another wizard’s wand-he might have a chance then.
An answer came to him while standing with Cooke-called Cookie-and Sefton one morning. Sefton was the camp entrepreneur, always off trading with the Jerries. But not normal trading-everyone did that-but real trading. He got eggs, meat, even wine from the Nazis. The others watched him and called him a “collaborator” for it, but Harry could tell the names were only because they were envious. As for Harry, he supposed it made no difference whether one gave the Nazis cigarettes or not. It’s not like Sefton was trading information with them-among the kriegies, there was nothing worth spying on.
Sefton was smoking a pipe, an act Harry had rarely seen before. “It’s not my usual fare,” the American admitted, seeing Harry’s interest. He shifted the pipe to one side of his mouth and grinned lopsidedly. “Won it playing cards.”
Harry shook his head. “I’m not much for pipes.”
Sefton laughed. “It was made in England, you know.” He took the pipe from his mouth and glanced at the side of it. “It’s got the profile of a man on it, wearing some sort of funny hat. Says it was made from holly in some place called Dee-a-gon Alley, London, 1904.”
Harry swallowed and opened his mouth to speak, but found that he had gulped everything down the wrong way. He began coughing.
Cooke and Sefton watched him curiously.
“A-are you o-okay?” stammered Cookie. His plane had been shot down over someplace, and he’d had a stutter ever since.
“Diagon Alley?” Harry asked, finding his voice.
“Yep, that’s what it says,” Sefton replied. “What-that mean something to you?”
“It’s where I live,” Harry lied. He added a shrug. “Lived, I guess. Before the war.”
Cookie was nodding sympathetically. Sefton looked bored, but wasn’t being rude about it. For Sefton, that was kindness.
Harry felt overwhelmed by memories. Diagon Alley. His first exposure to the wizarding world. He’d bought Hedwig there, and walked its streets with Hagrid and Ron and Hermione (no, can’t think of those memories) and barely escaped from Knockturn Alley there and ate ice cream at Fortescue’s (with R-) and (watched his best friends die in the attack th-) bought his first wand there.
His first wand. Thirteen inches, made from holly and phoenix feather.
Holly.
Like the pipe.
“Sefton?” Harry began, making his face a mask. He couldn’t show desire for the pipe-Sefton was above all things an entrepreneur, and showing weakness would merely drive up the price.
But, then again, the price didn’t matter. The currency of P.O.W. camps was Red Cross cigarettes or other useful things like razors or sewing needles. Harry, who didn’t smoke, had been saving his cigarettes for an emergency.
Sefton was perceptive. He knew what Harry was going to ask. “Twenty cigarettes and a bar of soap,” he said.
The price was outrageous. Harry even laughed.
“No soap,” he retorted. “But I’ll give you thirty cigarettes.” He was being more than generous.
Sefton grinned and tossed him the pipe. “Fine, kid,” he conceded. “But only cuz I like you.”
Harry ignored Sefton. The pipe seemed pretty normal. But any pipe from Diagon Alley had known wizards once, and it had the same wood as his wand.
Perhaps it would be enough.
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Alastor and Septimus had decided to see the castle’s situation for themselves. Shortly after breakfast Appell, they slipped out the Great Hall’s side entrance and proceeded to wander around the school. Everywhere they went, they saw soldiers-but the soldiers didn’t stop them, not yet.
The Germans were everywhere. Some officers were living in old staff quarters, while others-mainly the muggle infantrymen-lived in a camp by the lake. New troops were coming in every day, and Alastor watched as the veteran soldiers welcomed their comrades to the magical world by dragging them into the castle. All the muggles had to be forced inside at first, as the anti-muggle charms made them want to avoid Hogwarts. But once they knew it was there, they could come and go as they liked. Then the new recruit would be introduced to a portrait (though they had to be careful which portrait, as some were quite open in their resentment of the occupiers). Or made to watch the suits of armor move around in what the students called The Changing of the Guards. Or shown the charmed ceiling of the Great Hall, or taken to the lake to watch men fire guns at the waters until the Giant Squid surfaced in indignation. Squid-Baiting was perhaps the most popular game for the soldiers.
Everything was different. The halls were quiet now, with the sound of students laughing replaced by the clicking of boots on stone. Uniforms were a more common sight than robes, and more people had guns than wands. Patrols wandered the halls at night instead of Apollyon Pringle, the old caretaker. (In fact no one had seen Pringle since before the occupation, though Septimus had gone to his office and found his cane, his cat, and his young assistant, Argus Filch, who’d chased him out and threatened to flay him with a horsewhip if he ever came back.) The hospital was filled with wounded Germans. Alastor could tell that this was the condition the Nazis had set for allowing Madam Pasteur, the school’s healer, to stay at Hogwarts. In fact, Alastor didn’t think the woman would turn the troops away even if she could-she quietly told Alastor and Septimus that she was a healer before everything else, and quoted the Hippocratic Oath. But, she added with a whisper, she would heal all the students who needed her, no matter the reason.
Alastor filed this information away for later. It could be useful.
It was then that two SS men kicked the students out, saying that if they didn’t need medicine, they shouldn’t go to the infirmary. Septimus hadn’t reacted very well to that, sarcastically muttering something about needing potions, not med-i-cine. Alastor then dragged his friend out of the room. Smarting off at the guards did not seem like the best policy. Especially because the guards were clearly kicking them out of the infirmary because of the wounded Germans in there. The guards didn’t want them to see their occupiers as weak-and while that meant that they at least had weaknesses, it also meant that they would be working hard to conceal them. Severe discipline would be the rule.
But other things were eerily familiar. Filch had taken up the task of being Hogwart’s caretaker, and stalked the halls as never before. (Alastor supposed he’d worked out something with the Nazis-why else would they let him wear a whip at his belt?) Dippet’s office was still guarded by a gargoyle that refused to let anyone without the password in. Even the Nazis couldn’t break through, though some men tried with some exploding metal objects shaped like pears. One of the muggleborns called them “grim-aids.” Slughorn and Metrikos seemed to have forgotten the password to the office, claiming they were confunded by an old Hogwarts spell.
It was then that Alastor realized that Dippet must be dead. According to something Minerva had read in Hogwarts, A History, the death of a Hogwarts headmaster caused all the office’s passwords to reset themselves. Only the chosen successor could create new ones and give them out.
“The castle’s in a sort of lockdown,” Minerva phrased it. “An interregnum.”
Alastor wondered if Dippet had ever appointed a successor. Probably Professor Dumbledore. He was the deputy headmaster, after all. But…but if Professor Dumbledore were dead, what then? Would the gargoyles guard the door forever, leaving Hogwarts headmasterless for the rest of time?
But Alastor didn’t want to think of Hogwarts dying like that.
Classes started. Potions was still with Slughorn, but the course had been utterly stultified. All potentially dangerous potions had been removed from the curriculum and Slughorn was left teaching them a steady stream of Pepper-Up Potions and Decreasing Drafts. Slughorn wandered between the desks with a sad little smile on his face, his rosy face growing wan with worry.
According to Minerva, Arithmancy was the same as ever. Metrikos taught as if there were no occupation, as if everything were normal. Alastor concluded that Metrikos was one of those pure Ravenclaw types who wouldn’t care if the world went to hell as long as they had a library to keep them happy. Alastor hated men like that almost as much as he hated the bureaucrats that had dealt with his father.
Saxon Magics was ridiculous. It was basically Professor von Bismarck marching up and teaching them how to do spells they already knew how to do-but with German words instead of Latin and Greek ones. Alastor found the whole thing stupid. He had met a few German wizards before. They’d been the Weimar Republic’s version of Hit Wizards, sent to Britain to help his father track the “Luftpirat,” a German criminal who supposedly raided banks in a zeppelin. They’d never caught him, but two of them grew to be good friends with his father. Alastor had called them “Uncle Fritz” and “Uncle Fred.”
They weren’t very good at magic, from what his dad had told him. They even used muggle weapons instead of wands sometimes. But when they did use magic, they used Latin spells.
Alastor didn’t know much about magical theory, but he would trust the Latin system-the system that had been used for almost two thousand years-over the one that had been used by some halfcracked Viking warlocks, faded away, and then resurrected by some nutty Nazi wizards.
Each class was also larger than normal. The Germans crammed all of the four houses into each class, citing some nonsense about promoting “school comradeship.” That didn’t fool Alastor for a minute, though. They probably just wanted a greater number of students in fewer locations, to make them easier to watch. They would need fewer guards this way, which meant that their resources weren’t yet up to snuff.
The Boxing Club was even larger than the classes. There were two of them-one for the first through fourth years, and another for fifth year on up. The first class had been mainly a demonstration-not that the students needed another one after Malfoy’s cautionary example. Spungen had begun by explaining the proper stance and how to strike with one’s hands. Alastor didn’t have trouble with it-he’d fought with playmates long before buying his first wand. But many students did, so many that Spungen felt another demonstration was in order.
As his partner, he had selected one of the Chinese Hufflepuffs-a lean round-faced boy, the taller of the two Chinamen. Alastor couldn’t remember his name at the time; he could only come up with “Ding.”
“What’s your name?” Spungen had asked, as if reading Alastor’s mind.
“Ping Yuanjia,” the boy said, with as much dignity as he could, considering that Spungen was over a head taller than him.
“Too long,” Spungen laughed, and a couple students joined him. “I won’t remember that. Well, why don’t you come over here, if you please.”
It was not a request.
“Now you will see why you must block the way I have shown you,” said Spungen, to the others.
And that was all the warning Ping got.
A fist flew at the boy’s face, quick as a curse.
Alastor must have blinked, for the next thing he saw was the boy’s left hand held at face level, and Spungen’s fist, a hand’s width to the side of its target.
Spungen blinked. His jaw clenched, and he punched again with his other hand. But, unlike the first strike, which had been aimed straight-on, his arm was curved and aimed at the boy’s temple.
In less than a second, the boy’s left hand shot up and his head dropped down. Blinking, Alastor saw that this was because his knees were now bent and his feet spread a meter apart, his left in front of his right. His left hand was above his head, with his fingers hooked lightly around Spungen’s wrist.
“Shit,” someone swore softly. It was Alphard Black, in the midst of a group of Slytherins. Riddle, standing next to him, shook his head slightly.
A Hufflepuff started forward. It was the other Chinese boy.
“Are you done dancing, Mr. Ping?” Spungen scoffed. Then, without looking up: “Stop right there, Mr. Chang. Let your countryman and I handle this.”
The other Chinaman’s face flickered his surprise at being called by name. He stood still, but called to the other boy in what Alastor assumed was Chinese. Judging from the grimace on his face, Ping didn’t seem to like what Chang said.
But when the next punch came, Ping didn’t dodge it. He fell, his right arm slapping the ground and his left curling around his injured face. Alastor thought he saw blood gathering around his nose.
“And that,” Spungen spat, ignoring the figure at his feet, “is why you have to learn to block.”
Chang had rushed forward to aid his fallen fellow Chinaman. He asked to go to the infirmary, and Spungen sneered that some people couldn’t handle being hit. But he waved his hand dismissively, and the two boys were off.
Alastor and Septimus had looked at each other. Neither got much practice in that day.
A month passed.
Alastor listened and watched. He learned where the patrols went and how many men were in each. He knew which soldiers were safe, and which were not. He went to the library and read about the formation of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, of muggle military tactics, of Aurors. He went to the German class and studied every night.
And he was learning. He could translate the occasional German command and was getting frightfully accurate at identifying Nazi soldiers. He could tell if they were muggle or wizard (the wizards were all SS, but had an extra lightning rune on their left sleeve), what rank they were, and what branch they served in. Mainly, there was the Wehrmacht, or normal army, the Waffen-SS (the all-muggle combat troops of the SS), and the SS-Zauberkampf, which was the wizarding arm of the SS. The word zauber was German for “wizard,” while kampf had some special meaning for the Nazis, as Hitler had written a book called Mein Kampf.
But those men weren’t the only ones marching through Hogwarts. Alastor had once seen a man from the Luftwaffe (the “air force,” made of men who flew muggle aeroplanes and presumably wizards who charmed them to stay up in some way) and the crew of a U-Boot (a type of muggle craft that could go underwater like a wizarding ship) that had spent a few nights docked at the bay by the Quidditch pitch. There was also another type of SS man, which Alastor had seen manning the trains that now thundered past Hogwarts at regular intervals. They did not wear camouflage fatigues like the Waffen-SS or combat half-robes like the SS-Zauberkampfe, but had caps with the insignia of a grinning skull.
A month passed, and a routine was established. The students adjusted to the new curfew, adapting so completely that they were surprised and actually grateful when the Nazis extended it back to the old hours.
Of course, familiarity with the new rules also bred contempt for them. The students eagerly took to hexing the muggle soldiers. The Ravenclaws were as always very academic about their jokes. Once they charmed all the Nazi propaganda posters that lined the halls, turning the pale skin of the Aryan figures into the deepest black and giving the hooked-nosed “Eternal Jew” a Hitler mustache.
The Slytherins were psychological about it, playing to the natural fears of muggle military men in a castle full of magic. When riding staircases with soldiers, a good vertigo charm could leave them reeling for hours. Best of all, it was perfectly untraceable. The Confundus Locorum curse could make a five-minute walk into an hour’s worth of wandering in circles, always narrowly missing the door that would lead them where they needed to go. Nasus Obstructus plugged up noses and Memento Dormire caused fatigue.
The Gryffindors were equally resourceful. Regular teams went down to the kitchens and spiced up the German barracks’ food, while others spent hours stirring Itching Potion and coating any available surfaces with it. One of Septimus’s Weasley cousins mislabeled the doors to every classroom. A group of Gryffs was particularly reckless when they sang a colorful rewording of the Colonel Bogey March every time the muggle SS had marching drills.
It got bad when someone transfigured a soldier’s head into that of a fish.
Minerva and Septimus had been with him. The metamorphosed man was thrashing on the ground, his head covered with green scales and his mouth open in agony. Alastor knew that he’d be screaming if he had human vocal cords. As it was, the only sound the man made was the slapping of helpless hands on dirt.
Another German, a SS-Hauptscharführer by the look of it, rushed over. The Nazi sergeant took one look at his fallen comrade and grabbed the collar of the nearest wizard, a hapless Slytherin named Avery.
“Make him right!” the German barked. “Schnell!”
“I-I-I didn’t,” Avery sputtered, but the Nazi only tightened his grip.
“Fix him!”
“My God!” Minerva cried, putting a hand to her mouth. “The lungs are partially transfigured!”
The Nazi looked up, his blue eyes wild. “What’s happened to him?”
“He can’t breathe!”
The Nazi pulled out a pistol. “Someone fix him, or God help you, I’ll-”
“Does he have gills?” someone asked, with a voice so calm that it was almost bored. It was Riddle, looking at Minerva. “Can you tell?”
“Y-yes,” Minerva stammered. “But I can’t tell if they’re attached to the rest of his respiratory system or-”
“Aquasphērē!” Riddle commanded, using his wand to draw a circle in the air. A blob of water appeared three feet above the ground, rippling in the breeze. As Riddle lowered his wand, the blob also lowered, until the fallen man’s head was completely submerged.
The man stopped thrashing, and Alastor saw strange swellings on his neck open and close.
“That will give him a few minutes,” Riddle said. “But I can’t change back the head-I’ve only had four years of Transfiguration.” He looked at Minerva, expectantly.
Alastor too was expectant. Minerva was the best of any student at transfiguration, and Dumbledore’s top pupil. She’d know how to reverse it.
“I…I…” Minerva pulled out her wand, her hand shaking. “Finite Incantatem!”
…did nothing.
There was a terrible instant. Alastor would never forget the look on Minerva’s face.
Then, a heartbeat later, she stepped over to the man and knelt by him. Her fear seemed gone as she waved her wand and muttered something Alastor couldn’t catch. A shadowy outline of the man’s body hovered in the air.
“I’m removing his gills and restoring his proper trachea,” she announced, sounding detached, like a professor giving a lecture. “Riddle, remove your spell.”
“Expurgo,” Riddle murmured.
Minerva muttered a mess of Latin and Greek. The man’s body shimmered. His face was still scaly, but he had lips again, and he was breathing.
Minerva’s shoulders slumped. “Madam Pasteur can remove the scales,” she said, swaying slightly as she stood. “This should be done immediately, though he’s not in too much danger now.”
The sergeant hoisted the fallen man onto his shoulders and rushed away, the gun still in his hands.
“Impressive,” boomed a voice from behind her. It was a German woman, one that none of them had ever seen before. Her shoulders were broad, but she was not fat-merely…larger-than-life. Her facial features were also broad, as if drawn by a thicker pencil than everyone else’s. Her brown hair was pinned back in a tight braid, and her smile was that of an eagle-proud, noble, but very, very predatory. “Quite impressive, Miss…?”
“McGonagall,” Minerva said primly. “And you are…?”
“Your new professor of Charms,” the woman stated. “My name is Walkyria Wagner, and I come from the mountains. You wouldn’t know the name of the town, it is so small.”
“Charms?” Minerva repeated. Alastor inwardly groaned. The Nazis were still playing school with them.
“Yes,” Wagner replied. She smiled again, flashing teeth. “Any questions?”
Alastor jerked his head toward the castle, but Minerva ignored him. “Yes, as a matter of fact…I have one question.”
“What is it?”
Again, Alastor tried to nod the Head Girl away, and again, she resolutely ignored him.
Minerva fixed Professor Wagner with her best steely-eyed look. “I want to know when we will be resuming lessons in Transfiguration.”
“Ach, yes, I believe you have just demonstrated the significance of the subject. However, this incident has also demonstrated how dangerous such knowledge can be in the wrong hands…” Wagner cocked an eyebrow at the younger woman. The gesture made Alastor think of a cat, playing with her prey, testing the mettle of her opponent.
“Give me a few minutes of your time,” Minerva demanded. At Alastor’s look, she tacked on a dignified “please.”
“Certainly, Miss McGonagall,” Wagner replied. “If you would follow me to my office…”
As the two women walked away, Alastor and Septimus shared looks of horror. Alastor had been worried about that happening. They’d have to wait up now, make sure the Nazis didn’t do anything to Minerva…
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And wait they did.
For hours.
Four hours.
And Minerva still hadn’t returned.
“We’ll have to look for her,” Alastor said.
“It’s past curfew,” Septimus nodded, “we’ll have to get Potter’s invisibility cloak.”
Scorning an offer of assistance from Gawain, the two of them went over to the second-year dormitory where Joseph Potter was playing Exploding Snap with Marcus Macnair and Quintus Quirrell. They were a real trio. Potter regularly led his friends on late-night visits to the kitchens under cover of night, where Macnair would ask the house-elves to make cake, which he then sold to first-years stupid enough to believe it was from Hogsmeade. Or at least, he had done so until the occupation. They now hung out in the (safer) common room, near the mural of some red knights fighting green knights, leaning against the wall in the manner of prepubescent boys trying to look tough. Which, Alastor thought, was pretty impossible, given Macnair’s rosy cheeks and Quirrell’s habit of wearing a fez.
“It’s past curfew,” Alastor greeted, striding into the room. He grinned for maximum effect.
The three boys leapt up.
Potter was the first to open his mouth. “We were just-”
“Playing Exploding Snap,” Septimus replied. “It’s okay. We’re not here to make you go to bed.”
“Where’s your Invisibility Cloak?” Alastor interrupted, making Quirrell jump so suddenly the fez tumbled from his head. Alastor didn’t care. Minerva was gone-and time was far more essential than the feelings of three twelve-year-old boys.
“My what?” asked Potter, clumsily attempting to look innocent.
“Plug it, Potter. We know you and these two have been gallivanting to the kitchens since your first month here. So where’s the cloak?”
Potter went to his trunk and pulled out the cloak. It looked ragged, with thin threads and faded colors. Nothing remarkable.
“That’s it?” asked Septimus, sounding almost disappointed.
Potter grinned. “Yup,” he said, throwing it over his head.
And then he was gone.
Alastor reached out, but touched nothing. But the barest whisper of noise betrayed Potter’s location-behind Macnair and Quirrell, by one of the beds. Whirling around and darting between the two boys, Alastor threw out a hand and felt fabric. He gave a tug and pulled the cloak from Potter’s shoulders.
Septimus whistled his admiration. “That’s a nice cloak,” he told Potter.
“Thanks,” said Potter. Then his brow furrowed. “Why do you need it?”
Alastor thought for a moment, then decided it was best to tell the kids the truth. They had to learn how serious things were for them now, now that Nazis had occupied Hogwarts.
“Minerva McGonagall went to meet with one of the Nazis over four hours ago,” he told them, his clipped voice hiding his unease. “She was asking about the curriculum, and probably trying to find a way for all you younger years to get back to your families. But she hasn’t come back yet. We need to look for her, but it’s past curfew.”
Potter nodded, his face uncommonly serious. “I understand.”
“You need to,” Alastor told them, fixing each of the boys with one of his looks. “You haven’t been using it, have you? Since the Nazis came?”
Macnair looked sheepish. “I was going to, but Quint stopped me. Said it was too dangerous.” Then his expression grew challenging-a twelve year old trying to talk back like a man. “Is it, then? It didn’t sound too bad to me.”
“Yes,” Septimus replied. “There’s a lot more at stake now than house points.”
Alastor was blunter. “They catch you with that and they’ll probably kill you. The muggle way.”
Their eyes widened with the appropriate fear.
Good.
“Hey, where’s Hagrid?” Septimus asked, referring to the only other second-year boy. While Potter, Quirrell, and Macnair were not exactly friends with the awkward half-giant, they were roommates-and Rubeus Hagrid currently wasn’t in their room.
Macnair shrugged. “He said ‘got ter be feedin’ Arrer-gog’ and left an hour ago,” he offered, in a decent imitation of the half-giant’s particular voice.
“Left?” Septimus repeated. “You mean left Gryffindor Tower? Broke curfew?”
The three boys looked scared-and not only for themselves this time. They knew some of the danger now.
Alastor opened his mouth, but held back. Septimus was angry-and he never got angry.
“He’s been doing this often?” Septimus hissed, his face red as his hair.
“About once a week,” Potter replied, looking down.
“How long has he been gone?”
The boys didn’t know. Macnair’s best guess was “an hour or maybe three.”
“And who’s ‘Arrer-gog’? Not another werewolf cub?”
Alastor hoped not. He remembered the chaos after the cubs Hagrid was hiding under his bed had gotten loose last year. It had taken ages to coax the furniture back to the common room. The chairs still trembled whenever someone brought a dog past the Fat Lady.
“I think it’s a s-spider,” Quirrell mumbled. “Hagrid left a book on spiders on his trunk last week.”
“Great,” Septimus growled. “Looks like we’re looking for someone else now.”
“You three stay here until we get back,” Alastor ordered.
The boys nodded. They knew they were in enough trouble as it was.
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“Accio!” Harry hissed, waving the pipe at his unmoving boot. The holly pipe was no longer pipelike in shape; he had carved it and made it more like a wand. But though it now resembled a wand in looks, it had all the power of a stick.
“It needs a magical core,” Harry muttered to himself, after failing for the last time. He kicked the boot with his bare foot. What was it that Ollivander had said about types of wand cores? The pipe would be useless without one.
His old wand’s core had been a feather from Fawkes, Dumbledore’s phoenix. Ron’s wand had had unicorn hair in it. Neville had a dragon heartstring in his wand. Those were the three most common, but there were others. Fleur’s wand had veela hair, while Bill’s had a sphinx’s claw. One of the Slytherins-Terrence something or other-had claimed to have a Naga’s fang inside his.
Harry grinned to himself, remembering the occasion he’d heard that one. The Slytherin and Gryffindor quidditch teams had been fighting over the pitch for practice again, and the argument had degenerated into a discussion of who was the best hand in wizard dueling. Flint said he could hex Oliver “nine ways from Sunday.” Oliver Wood had laughed and retorted that “a Sangrefè wand like yours couldn’t hex a worm.”
Harry, who at the time hadn’t even known what a Parselmouth was, knew nothing about other wandmakers. Sangrefè was apparently a Spaniard wandmaker popular among pureblood families. Wood had muttered darkly that the reason his wands were so popular was probably because the ministry had a harder time monitoring them than Ollivander’s. “It’s certainly not the quality,” Wood told Harry. “Ollivander wands put Sangrefè’s to shame.” It was for that reason that Malfoy had gotten an Ollivander wand, though he apparently had a Sangrefè at home to use during the summer.
The argument then turned into who had the best wand. Flint and Terrence lauded the “ingenuity” of Sangrefè’s use of wand cores. Flint’s core was of stone-the heart of a gargoyle. That had been news to Harry, who hadn’t even known that gargoyles were real, let alone had hearts. Terrence had added his bit about Naga’s fang and then Malfoy had spoken.
“My Sangrefè has dragon’s blood,” he announced. “From a Horntail.”
Wood had gasped at that. “Dragon’s blood?” he’d repeated, glowering at the boy.
“That’s disgusting,” Katie spat.
“What’s so wrong about it?” Flint had asked. He waggled his massive eyebrows at the girl, who scoffed and shook her head. “Blood’s as strong a core as anything. Stronger even.”
“They say Slytherin had a wand core of griffin’s blood,” Wood murmured to Harry.
Flint scoffed. “Just an old wise tale. Why would he have a wand with griffin blood anyway? Now, Gryffindor’s blood he could actually use…”
“That’s sick!” Wood roared, and threw the first punch.
Harry had tried to ask Wood about what Flint had said later, after the two teams had slunk back to their dormitories, attempting to avoid the prying eyes of prefects. (“The last thing we need is a detention for fighting,” Katie had explained.) But Harry’s questions were for nothing. Apparently the idea of using blood-especially human blood-in a wand was so abhorrent that no one even wanted to talk about it. Harry wasn’t sure why. Blood was a natural thing-how was it any more insidious than a dragon heartstring or phoenix feather? Maybe because it was powerful-too powerful?
Snape had said something about blood once, when subbing for Professor Lupin when the latter was “sick.” He’d been talking about vampires, and why they needed blood to “live.”
“Blood is a powerful conduit of magical energy,” Snape began, his voice with the caress he always had in it when talking about the Dark Arts. “However, most spells involving blood are rather dark in nature.” Yes, there it was. “Nevertheless, blood is often used in potions for its potency.”
Harry shook his head. Much as he hated to admit it, Snape had something there.
“The potency of blood depends on its magical content,” Snape’s voice continued. “For example, a vampire could take a pint of blood from a muggle and subsist for a few days, perhaps a week. But the same vampire could take the same amount of blood from a wizard and live for a month.”
He looked down at his arm and spotted the barest of blue veins. His blood was magical blood. He’d never read anything on wizarding genetics, but he was willing to bet that was where the magic was. His DNA. His blood.
Where else would it be? His mind? Was magic a fluke in brain matter? Perhaps. Was it in the soul? No. Sometimes he wasn’t even sure that such a thing existed.
“Vampires are classified as Dark creatures,” Snape’s continued.
“Why?” a girl had asked. It was one of the Ravenclaws, Victoria Burke, who Harry vaguely remembered as changing her name to “Chantarelle” sometime in their fourth year. She’d done so around the time she’d started wearing black stockings and scarves with her uniform, losing plenty of house points for dress code violations. She’d been in good company, Harry remembered-a lot of the Ravenclaws were weird like that. The sort that wore black and wrote poetry. The sort that secretly dreamed of meeting vampires in the night.
Idiots.
“Because of their use of human blood,” Snape said slowly, as if speaking to a six-year-old. “Which, as I have said, is often used in matters of rather…sinister…intent.”
Dark spells.
Know the spells first-hand, Snivellus? Harry had wanted to ask. They’re Dark, after all.
But why? Why were they Dark?
Because of the amount of blood used? Or maybe the blood had to be from an unwilling donor-as Harry had been, when Pettigrew (the bastard) had stolen his blood for the potion to resurrect Voldemort? No, maybe they were Dark simply because they involved blood. Maybe it was simply unclean to use blood. In anything.
Or maybe they were Dark because blood was considered too potent, too powerful.
That would make sense.
Harry looked down at his hand. The Dursleys had taken him to a doctor once. He’d been sick for a week and they’d been scared their precious Dudders would catch what he had. So they’d carted him off to the doctor’s, muttering how he should be grateful to them. Harry hadn’t really listened-he’d been too busy concentrating on keeping the contents of his stomach where they belonged. He’d been nervous too-he’d never been to a doctor’s before. He’d seen things in movies about them, about how kids often got scared because of needles and “tests.”
He got both that day. They’d pricked his thumb with a syringe and took out some blood.
“Why the thumb?” he’d asked, before Aunt Petunia had hushed him, apologizing to the doctor and telling him that her nephew was “not right in the head, you understand.”
The doctor had gazed at Harry with a sort of pity and explained, very slowly, that the thumb was good because it had tough skin and cuts healed easily there. The doctor gave him a sticker then. It was the first gift he ever got, other than socks and Dudley’s old clothes.
Harry’d hid it from Dudley before they got back to the car and kept it in his cupboard. It had been a sticker of Superman, his favorite hero.
For a moment, Harry was eight years old again, scared and shivering under the stairs. He looked out through the barbed wire.
Maybe something in him was meant to be a prisoner, he thought. Of the Dursleys, of the Nazis, of Destiny.
He shook his head. He didn’t care anymore. His mind was numb to it.
He’d had enough.
He reached out to touch the wire.
Five minutes later, his left thumb was bleeding. But his “Accio” worked.
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Alastor and Septimus had found Minerva in the common room. Apparently, she’d gotten back during their interrogation of Potter’s gang. She was aglow with triumph, saying that she’d convinced the Nazis to let her teach the younger years Transfiguration.
“I’m not as good as one of the old professors,” she said. “But I’m the best the kids can hope for now, and they need to learn it. Transfiguration’s important. If Doppelburg had his way, they wouldn’t learn it at all-it’d make them too powerful. But I managed to convince Wagner…she thinks that the elementary Transfig curriculum isn’t too dangerous. But,” -she grinned triumphantly- “it’s the foundation that’s important. If the kids learn that, they can learn advanced transfiguration in no time. The Nazis can’t take away our education, and it’s our education that will allow us to fight.”
Alastor wasn’t so sure that Minerva’s teaching would work. They’d probably have a Nazi wizard sit in on all her lessons, making sure she wasn’t teaching anything important.
But he reflected that even if Transfiguration classes didn’t help, they couldn’t hurt.
With Hagrid still missing, Alastor and Septimus left, this time turning down Minerva’s offer to help along with Gawain’s. Two was enough and three was a crowd. Besides, something in Alastor felt that endangering women in a mission of rescue would be wrong. Even Minerva McGonagall, capable as she was.
They slipped the cloak over the both of them and slipped out, ignoring the Fat Lady’s loud whisper of: “Oh, not again, Mr. Potter…”
They found Hagrid in an unused coat closet with no mere spider, but an acromantula.
“A bloody acromantula!” Alastor had exclaimed. He was the first to recognize it, as he had taken Care of Magical Creatures. He hadn’t had any real love for the subject-he’d only taken it because Professor Thornberry was an easy prof-but he knew enough to recognize half-meter-long poisonous spiders when he saw them. “Do you know how dangerous those are, kid? This is even worse than those cubs you snuck in!”
“But Aragog never hurt no one…” Hagrid protested. “He’s a good ’un, he is…”
“Your pet could kill someone, Rubeus!” Septimus told him, craning his head back in order to look the younger boy in the eyes. “Yes, kill. This was…stupider than I could ever dream of being! And to sneak out, after curfew-do you know what the Nazis would do if they found us?”
Septimus continued his lecture, and Hagrid hung his head in shame. Alastor felt almost sorry for the kid. Septimus was scary when he actually acted like a prefect.
Alastor heard the clock tower strike once…twice…eleven times.
“We’ve got to get back,” he said. Septimus nodded.
It took a while to decide what to do with the spider, but the two eventually concluded that it was too dangerous to kill it right then. Neither of them was trained in putting down dangerous creatures, and such spells were noisy ones, anyway. It was best to just leave it there for the night. So they each put the acromantula’s cage under at least five different containment charms and left it in the cupboard. Hagrid told it to “be good” and the three of them left.
Hagrid would pitch a fit once he realized the acromantula had to die. Alastor did not look forward to telling the kid-he really thought it was just a harmless pet.
Septimus handed the cloak to Hagrid. The cloak was just big enough for either the boy or the two of them, and there was no way Alastor and Septimus would leave a kid defenseless so that they could be invisible. Besides, the fact that the kid in question was a clumsy twelve-year-old half-giant who desperately needed some means of disguising his presence was also important.
They took a back route back to Gryffindor Tower, one that Septimus and Alphard Black had discovered while breaking into the prefect’s bathroom in their fourth year. It was slow going, as they didn’t dare to light their wands and wake the portraits. They narrowly missed a patrol once, but fortunately those Nazi boots made enough racket to wake the undead. With the amount of warning they got, they had enough time to hide in the nearest classroom five times over.
After the hall was clear, they ventured out again. They were almost there-a mere staircase away-when it happened.
The voice.
From the deepest depths of nowhere, stopping the three of them in their tracks.
“Ach so…” said Siegfried Spungen, stepping into the light. “What are you boys doing here?”
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MINI GLOSSARY:
Luftpirat - (German for “air-pirate”) otherwise known as Captain Mors, hero of a German space opera novel series from the 1920s. More here: http // www. geocities. com / jessnevins / mors . html (without spaces).
Kampf - German for “struggle.” So Zauberkampf means something like “magical combat.”
Aryan - the Nazi “master race.” Nazi writers believed that the Aryans (a group of non-Semitic Indo-European peoples) were the originators of all civilization in the world and that all other races were inferior to them. This word began as a way of describing a specific racial group, but the Nazis have resulted in its no longer being used much today. I’m oversimplifying; Wikipedia for more.
Sangrefè - Spanish. “Sangre” means “blood” and “fè” means “faith.”
Chantarelle - a nod to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Season 2 had an episode about a group of Goth kids who wanted to become vampires. Chantarelle was the name of one of them. She later became known as Anne, a mildly recurring character in Buffy and Angel.
AUTHOR’S NOTE:
On the use of the word “Chinaman” in this fic:
The word “Chinaman” is not meant to offend anyone - it’s merely a stylistic device. I’m not using British grammar or anything, but I am using the occasional archaic word to show the mindset of the times. (Note that wizards are more “behind the times” than muggles are, so they’ll keep with certain words and beliefs a generation or so after the muggles stop using them.) People just weren’t politically correct back then. Racism is one of the themes of the books and it is a theme of this story as well. Alastor is rather brusque and insensitive, and he’s a bit prejudiced too. Most of the students are-the biggest exception to the rule would be the Soviet witch Ludmila Dolohova, who despite having a rather Slytherin personality (as you’ll find out), believes so strongly in communism that she willed herself into Hufflepuff, the house she saw as the most “proletarian.”
While we’re on the note of China, Ping Yuanjia and Chang Fei-Hung take their names from two Chinese folk heroes. Ping is based off Huo Yuanjia, whom the recent movie Fearless is about. (I suggest you Wikipedia him too, though - he’s an interesting guy.) Ping is a word for “soldier.” Chang Fei-Hung is based off Huang (Wong) Fei-Hung, a man known as the “Robin Hood” of China. Several movies have been made about this character, particularly the Once Upon a Time in China series and Jackie Chan’s Legend of the Drunken Master. I gave him the surname Chang because he is related to someone we know from the books. (Three guesses who.)
I stuck Ping and Chang in this story because I wanted to explore what a non-European magic system would be like. I envision the Chinese wizarding world as having a sort of wuxia Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon feel about it - filled with men and women who blend magic and martial arts and use their abilities to run up walls and attempt kicks that “muggle” martial artists wouldn’t dream of using in a real fight. The martial arts would give young Chinese (and Japanese too, I imagine) wizards the discipline necessary to manipulate magic in ways British wizards have often never seen.
At least, not in the 1940s, before the popularization of martial arts in the Western world. But by Harry’s time, perhaps some Western wizards have attempted this synthesis as well. Hmmm…