Harry Potter and the Final Prophecy

     --- Chapter Eleven ---

     Banished

Ginny finally reappeared at breakfast the next morning, she sat silently between Hermione and Seamus, mechanically eating the strange sour gruel.

`Are you ok?' Hermione asked.

`Yeah,' muttered Ginny. She came out of her daze and suddenly seemed to notice what she was eating, and stopped and stared at it in disgusted disbelief. `It was my fault he died,' she gasped, trying to hold back tears, `he was shielding me, it should have been me that was killed.'

`We were lucky that they only got one of us,' Ron said, obviously without thinking about his choice of words.

```Lucky?"' Ginny shrieked, `how dare you call his death lucky, you ... you ...' She glared at him, speechless with fury, then burst into tears and fled from the dining hall.

Hermione shook her head resignedly at Ron's lack of tact. Harry himself felt an increasing sense of guilt about what had happened at Beauxbatons. Once the immediate shock had worn off, he had realised that the school had been attacked just because he was there, he had been the target, it had been an attempt to capture or kill him. So it was really his fault that Dean had died, and that how ever many others had lost their lives there ...

The first day of lessons at Durmstrang did not improve Harry's mood or his opinion of the place. As they walked to Professor Flitwick's class the paintings of former headmasters on the walls hurled curses at them, their faces contorted in fury and eyes bulging in apoplexy at these unwelcome invaders of their school.

Break was outside in a yard, despite an icy gale of sleet. As they tried to shelter behind a clump of bare-branched trees, Ron suddenly yelped in pain. A squat bush of thorns had extended a thick tendril covered in inch-long spikes and wrapped this around his ankle, and was now pulling him towards itself, like an angler reeling in a fish. Hermione and Harry quickly directed severing charms against the tentacle, which broke apart with an angry hiss, but then the bush retaliated by flailing at them with a dozen more vicious branches and spraying noxious sap from its base. `This place is a nightmare,' Ron said in disgust as they retreated out of range.

Ginny was not at lunch. Hermione, Ron and Harry exchanged worried looks, but none of them had any idea of how they could help her. To Harry's relief however Hagrid turned up at dinner, together with Professor Gnyevski. `Had ter bring Olympe's horses,' he explained when they came to greet him after the meal, `couldn't leave 'em there fer Macnair an' the other murderers.'

Harry went to bed early to avoid the cold of the common room, but slept fitfully, unsettled by a disturbing dream in which he saw himself back at Hogwarts, waiting alone in Dumbledore's office, watching the former head teachers of the school dozing in their portraits, when he suddenly noticed something strange, that there was an extra, blank, painting, labelled `Albus Dumbledore: 1969--1998'. He realised it was being prepared for inhabitation by Dumbledore's ghost image. Yet in the dream he remained waiting endlessly in the office and no-one ever came to meet him there. When he woke he had forgotten the details of the dream, but the vague memory of it filled him with a nagging sense of unease.

At breakfast Ginny sat beside Luna, instead of with the Gryffindors, and seemed to have recovered a little. Professor Dumbledore gave a short speech explaining that as they were guests of Durmstrang, they must obey the rules of the school, and not put themselves in danger by going out of bounds. `Under no circumstances is anyone to leave the school grounds,' he emphasised.

`Not that there's anything outside the school grounds worth seeing, anyway,' muttered Ron.

     *

April arrived, but the weather was still bitterly cold. Hagrid's Care of Magical Creatures class was conducted outside in sweeping gusts of icy rain. Even Hermione's impervious charm, which she'd set up around them, did little to make Harry feel warmer. Hagrid led them carefully across the crackling frozen ground to the edge of a lake of ice, surrounded by dark stockades of fir trees. `Now today, we're doin' Lodubiyt's, they're ice creatures, `ibernate in permafrost in summer but the rest of the time they live in the ice of lakes an' rivers, an' they're very difficul' ter spot. They feed off anythin' that goes onta the ice, like this.' He took out a small sack from within his cloak and undid it, revealing a mangy-looking brown rat, which struggled desperately against his grasp, squeaking pitifully. Hagrid hurled it twenty feet out onto the solid surface of the lake. But before it could scrabble to its feet, a ghoulish translucent white arm suddenly broke out of the ice with a sound like a gunshot and crushed the rat into a bloody mass with three long metallic talons before rapidly pulling it down out of sight. Several students let out gasps of horror.

`Never go walkin' or skatin' on a lake with Lodubiyt's in it, or even walk roun' the edge,' Hagrid continued, rather unnecessarily after this demonstration, `they'll grab yeh before yeh have time ter defend yerself. Prof Gnyevski tells me that all the lakes here are infested with 'em, so don' take any chances!'

They returned in a rather subdued mood for dinner, which today consisted of a pie filled with some unidentifiable substance, grey and pink and gooey, which had a vaguely rotted smell.

By now Ron had taken to wearing double layers of Mrs Weasley's pullovers under his cloak, and Harry and many other students followed his example, wrapping themselves in multiple layers of whatever clothes they could obtain. Dobby was doing his best to make the Durmstrang basement warm and comfortable, but the walls themselves seemed to drain heat and light from the room, so that the students were always huddled in cold depressed groups in the dim shadows. Even the fires appeared to absorb heat instead of giving it out, the hearths filled with logs of some strange wood that never seemed to be consumed, which burned with a frigid blue flame.

In Defence Against the Dark Arts, Professor Vanadair had begun to cover the most dangerous forms of dark being, Dementors and Liches. Harry was only too familiar with Dementors and their characteristics, so didn't pay much attention until the lessons moved on to Liches. `Liches,' Vanadair explained, `are skeletal demons found mainly in the depths of East European forests, where they remain concealed, awaiting unwary travellers.' She unrolled a large sheet of parchment and fastened it on the board. Hermione shuddered in horror at the animated photograph, which showed five maniacally-grinning skeletons surrounding and dismembering, alive, an unfortunate Muggle.

`Notice the dagger-like bones of the hands, which the Liches use to tear flesh from their victims,' Professor Vanadair continued calmly. `Liches feed from death, terror and pain, just as Dementors consume all happiness and hope from their victims. The only known defence is the Patronus charm.' She tapped the screen with her wand and the image changed to show a wizard launching a Patronus in the form of an eagle from his wand and the Patronus driving off a gang of Liches that had encircled him. `Only the most powerful wizards will be able to produce a Patronus strong enough to repel Liches, so the best policy with these creatures is simply to avoid places where they may dwell. Thankfully, they have never been known to emerge from their forest homes,' she said, trying to reassure the class, before plunging them into fearfulness once more with the comment `There are reputed to be many Liches in the forests surrounding this school.'

     *

The atmosphere here was even less friendly than at Beauxbatons, none of the Durmstrang students seemed willing to talk to them, but simply scowled in disgust when they saw them, and the caretaker, Madam Alecto, was a wizened old crone who muttered foul curses under her breath as she passed them in the corridors.

Particularly threatening were gangs of crop-haired students who all wore emblems of a screaming skull on their cloaks. `Death Brigade,' Hermione whispered to Harry and Ron as she read the words ``CMEPT ..." beneath the symbol. The gang made a violent throat-cutting gesture as they noticed the Hogwarts pupils watching them.

Unpleasant `accidents' kept happening to the Hogwarts and Beauxbatons students whenever these sinister figures were around. One morning, as Harry left the common room to go to breakfast, a bludger suddenly hurtled towards him, and he had no time to reach his wand, so had to attempt the deflection hex without it, simultaneously diving to the ground. The spell succeeding in redirecting the heavy ball enough so that it just skimmed his hair and crashed forcefully into the corridor wall, embedding itself several inches deep in the stone. Harry looked round in time to see a jeering mob of Death Brigade students disappearing around the corner.

With all the problems of life at Durmstang, Harry was not expecting that they would still be made to do exams, but to his horror Hermione presented them with revision timetables as the Easter holidays approached. `Professor McGonagall told me that Dumbledore still plans to organise the NEWT exams in June,' she said hopefully, as Ron stared, too shocked to speak, at the neatly coloured schedule she'd handed to him.

Ginny was still very subdued, a month after the murder of Dean, and many of the other Hogwarts students were also behaving in a very depressed and downcast manner. Harry realised that they were all feeling the effects of being displaced and exiled, not once, but twice, and banished, moreover, to a castle which was doing its very best to make them feel unwelcome.

The next morning, trying to get to Potions, which was taught by a somewhat alarming old warlock whose potions always seemed to involve pixie blood or Pogrebin brains, Harry took a wrong turning in the dark dungeon corridors and suddenly felt waves of unreasoning terror rising within him with each step he took. He stopped, unable to see anything that could cause him to feel such fear. The corridor was dark and quiet, and seemed quite harmless, at least as harmless as corridors at Durmstrang ever were. But his heart was racing and his mind filled with panic, as if he was facing an army of Dementors. He was frozen, unable to move forwards or backwards. `Harry!' Hermione called from behind him, `get out of there, come on!' He summoned up all his willpower and took a step back and the irrational feeling of fear receded slightly. Turning, he hurried back to the beginning of the corridor where Ron and Hermione were waiting, and gradually the eerie sourceless terror lifted from him, although his heart continued to pound in reaction.

`It must have a formido curse on it, which induces total fear,' Hermione suggested, peering curiously down the dark passage. `That's often used to protect treasure or important things from intruders.'

Harry shuddered, his own curiosity about the corridor now completely assuaged.

News about the world outside filtered through very slowly to the pupils, via uncertain and unreliable chains of rumour. Ron had heard from Fred that France was now completely under Voldemort's control, that Germany was close to succumbing, and that there had been a vampire takeover in Romania. Harry noticed some very intense discussions between Professor Vanadair, Dumbledore and Pendragon at the staff table, followed by a mysterious dissappearance for several days by Vanadair, which seemed to give credence to the latter rumour at least. Her mission did not seem to have succeeded, however, since Charlie Weasley turned up soon after Vanadair's return, battle-scarred and carrying a large casket of dragon eggs, rare Norwegian Ridgebacks, Antipodean Opaleyes and Romanian Longhorns.

`We didn't have a chance,' he told Harry and Ron, after handing over the eggs to an ecstatic Hagrid, to rear for eventual release into the dragon stockade at the far end of the school grounds, `You-Know-Who had been stirring up the vampires for months, offering them full status as beings if they came over to his side, plus unrestricted use of Muggles as prey ...'

A few days later Charlie left to go on another mission for the order, but like Sirius, was unable to tell them anything about it. The twins angrily accused him of not trusting them, and Harry himself was growing very tired of this world with all its secrets and deceptions. Somehow, he felt, even if Voldemort was defeated, something more fundamental would have to change in wizarding society if this evil was not to grow up yet again.

     *

Hermione had rapidly taught herself Russian in order to use the Durmstrang library, which turned out, unsurprisingly, to consist mainly of books on the dark arts. The shelves were filled with rows and rows of textbooks with blood-red covers and images of skulls, serpents or fangs on their bindings.

On the evening of Easter Friday, when Ron had gone up to the dormitory early to escape from the frigid common room, she took out a very sinister-looking black-bound book from her bag and quietly asked Harry if he'd heard of the Nexus curse, and if he'd realised what this might mean for him.

`Yeah, I know all about that,' Harry said heavily.

`But ...' she began.

`I know what the but is as well,' Harry continued grimly.

`Oh! You're so brave!' she said, putting a hand on his shoulder.

Harry didn't feel brave at all, he felt that fate was propelling him inexorably and inevitably towards the possible sacrifice of his life, and he could do nothing to change this. He just felt numb with the weight of expectation that was being placed upon him, and the fear that even if he succeeded, he still might die. `Maybe,' he said. `It would be brave if there was any choice about doing all this, but there is no choice ...'