Master and Apprentice

Why was Harry on his knees with his head in his hands? What was wrong--?

"Kill the spare," he heard one voice call.

"Avada Kedavra!" screeched a second voice.

A blast of green light struck him, a fiery blaze which, searing his eyeballs, would have blinded Cedric Diggory if it hadn't killed him first.

#

He opened his eyes (for here he wasn't blind) on dim shadow. He got to his feet and, looking down, he saw the gray mists writhing through his torso. Lifting his hand, he stared through his translucent palm into the fathomless darkness that stretched out before him.

Then Cedric heard murmuring, a sound like the faraway rustling of many birds' wings. The sound became that of voices. The murmuring resolved itself into words.

"Come to us. Join us. It is your time."

Cedric turned toward the sound of the voices of the dead. He walked toward them very slowly. Almost reluctantly, as though vestiges of life still clung to him. As though it were not, quite yet, his time.

#

It had been awhile since the Ferryman had chosen Salazar Slytherin to meet a newcomer. Salazar wasn't sure exactly how long. What did the reckoning of time matter when the end of your time enfolded you?

Still, he would have guessed that some years had passed in the world of light, beyond the veil of death, since the Ferryman had poled his boat across the river with Salazar Slytherin aboard and set Salazar down on the opposite bank, where the mists were thinner, where the newcomers stumbled about lost, seeking, if they only knew it, their mentors.

Who would it be this time, Salazar wondered. Another servant of his wayward Heir? What had they called themselves again? Oh, yes. Death Eaters.

When he'd first heard it, Salazar had greeted the term with an ironic smile. Did not every man eat death in the end?

They'd come thick and fast for awhile, those Death Eaters. For awhile it had seemed that the Ferryman was always approaching Salazar, peering at him from eyes shaded beneath the broad brim of his hat and gesturing him into the boat that plied the black waters of the river, letting him off on the farther bank to wait for another Dark wizard who had died at the end of an Auror's wand.

Then, abruptly, his Heir's Death Eaters had stopped coming. Salazar reckoned--if he could reckon it--that it had been years since he had stood on the riverbank waiting to guide a new denizen into the land of the dead, years since he had apprenticed a newcomer to eternity.

Years, Salazar reckoned. Until today.

Salazar craned his neck to peer into the drifting mists, He saw color rise over the slate hillock in the distance like the sun surfacing above the horizon in the living world. He saw the peach-pink of a face, a head topped with sandy hair, black robes with plenty of yellow piping.

Schoolboy robes. Salazar saw the insignia as the figure drew closer, Helga's sturdy badger looking out from a field of yellow and black.

Not a Death Eater this time. A Hogwarts schoolboy, and not one from Salazar's house. This student was a Hufflepuff.

The young wizard came closer. Salazar would have drawn a breath in surprise, if he'd still had breath to draw.

This death could not have been more than minutes old. The wizard wasn't solid, of course. No one here was. Salazar saw through him, to the mists behind him, to the unyielding and lifeless rock beneath his feet.

But not a drop of the youth's color, none of the hues of flesh and blood, had yet leached away. Even his eyes were still bright, the clear gray of living sea and sky, nothing like the tired color of the fog surrounding him.

His death was hardly newer than his life, though. The wizard looked to be about seventeen or eighteen. Just about to embark on life's journey, before life had been taken from him.

And so beautiful, Salazar thought. Many handsome young men had passed through Slytherin House in Salazar's day. But none had been handsomer than this Hufflepuff.

Salazar made the youth a slight bow. "I am Salazar Slytherin. The Ferryman chose me for your mentor into death."

The boy blinked in surprise. Naturally enough. If he'd expected a Founder as his guide, it would have been Helga.

But he returned the bow, quite elegantly for one so young. "I am Cedric Diggory."

Cedric Diggory looked at the black-watered river and at the Ferryman standing in the gunwale of his boat. As was usual for him at ths point in the proceedings, the Ferryman was utterly silent, with his back turned and his head bowed.

Cedric turned to Salazar. "It's not that I'm ungrateful," he said, looking charmingly earnest. "It was good of you to come. But I don't think I'm ready to go yet."

Salazar felt the soft echo of a pang, where his heart had been once. "It's all right, my boy. No one ever is."

Cedric opened his mouth as if to speak, but Salazar heard splashing instead, a churning of the ever-calm waters of the river. He looked around.

An elderly man leaning on a walking stick, whose form and features gleamed pallidly, waded across the river. Beside him, her hand resting in the crook of his arm, waded a round-cheeked young woman. Like the man, she was the color of pale mist, but, in contrast to his keen, sharp look, the vacancy in her eyes told Salazar that her mind was lacking.

Raising foaming waves of water beneath its hooves, a white stag closed in on the old man and the young woman and passed them at a gallop. Astride the stag rode another woman, younger still, slim and silver, with long hair that flew straight behind her like the tail of a comet.

Cedric stared as the stag mounted the riverbank and with its rider clinging to its neck pounded past him. Thrill shone from his eyes in a light too painfully bright for that land of shadows.

Cedric spun around and ran after the woman and the stag, back in the direction from which he'd come.

"Yes!" Cedric cried in a full-throated voice, whose sound rose above the murmurs and whispers, the dry-leaf rustling of the voices of the dead. "I'm coming, too!"

Throwing off the feeble-minded woman's hand, the old man scrambled up the riverbank and pursued Cedric and the stag at a hobbling run. Salazar did not think he had ever seen anyone, living or dead, limp so fast.

The plump young woman did not let the old man leave her behind. Like the flaring of a candle, a look of singleminded determination suddenly leapt into her empty eyes, and she, too, broke into a run.

Salazar lost sight of Cedric and the others before they reached whatever goal it was they sought. He looked quizzically at the Ferryman, who had turned round to stare at the mists into which Cedric and his companions had disappeared.

"Priori Incantatem," said the Ferryman, in a voice hoarse and gravelly from disuse.

"Ah," Salazar said. "I see. And did the wand kill by accident? Or did the wizard commit murder?"

"It was murder," the Ferryman replied.

Time passed. Salazar and the Ferryman waited patiently, for they knew Cedric must return.

He was not the first to return, however. First came the woman, riding the stag as before. This time, instead of galloping, the stag moved at a steady canter. The woman's back was bowed. Her hair hung around her face, and she pressed her forehead against the stag's neck. She would have looked as though she wept, if the dead could weep.

Was she grieving, Salazar wondered, or joyful? He certainly couldn't tell. It had been a long time since he'd felt anything so strong as grief or joy.

Next came the plump woman, following the stag and his rider across the river. And there was no mistaking her look of calm, deep happiness. The feebleminded vacancy was gone.

The old man appeared then on the farther bank and waded into the river. His limp was slow and weary. He leaned heavily on his walking-stick. But on his face he wore an expression of grim satisfaction.

Finally Cedric returned. And on him Salazar saw the look of a young hero who had accomplished a great deed.

"We did it," Cedric said, looking at Salazar and the Ferryman. "We died by Voldemort's wand. But we kept him from murdering another. Harry Potter's alive; we saved him. He's alive and he's gone home. And he's taken me--" Cedric stopped suddenly. In a quieter voice, he went on. "I mean, he's taken my body with him."

Salazar stared at Cedric. "My Heir killed you? You were one of Tom Riddle's enemies?"

"I was no one's enemy," Cedric said. "Voldemort killed me for standing by my friend."

"Your friend, Harry Potter. The boy who blasted Voldemort out of his body. The baby who stymied my Heir in his search for...." Salazar turned slowly from Cedric to the Ferryman. "Immortality."

The Ferryman looked at him and said nothing.

"You want to show me the consequences of my Heir's striving," Salazar said to the Ferryman. "You mean to acquaint me with the innocents like Cedric who suffer in Voldemort's search for immortality. Immortality!" Salazar paced up and down the riverbank. "You know I had nothing to do with that; I'm here, aren't I? I was no alchemist, no seeker after the Philosopher's Stone. All I ever wanted was to keep us safe from the Muggle witch-hunters."

Salazar stopped and faced the Ferryman. And did he see the pinpoint of a gleam in the Ferryman's eyes? Was that the Ferryman's eyebrow arching in the shadow beneath the broad brim of his hat? Did he tilt his head just slightly in Cedric's direction?

Salazar looked at Cedric. The young wizard regarded him curiously.

Salazar turned back to the Ferryman. "Or do you see that Salazar Slytherin is enchanted by Cedric Diggory?" he asked softly. "Did you see it from the first? Did you always know it would be no Death Eater, no pupil of his own House, no youth too clever by half who could touch the artful, cunning and ambitious Salazar? You chose for him instead a boy of open heart, of unstinting loyalty and courage?"

The Ferryman didn't answer. But Salazar would have sworn that gleam was still in his eye.

"Professor Slytherin?"

Salazar turned.

"I've done what I needed to do," Cedric said. "I'm ready to go now."

"Of course, Cedric," Salazar said. "I beg your pardon." He went to Cedric and placed his hands on Cedric's shoulders. He pressed his lips to Cedric's forehead and, gravely and gently, kissed him.

Cedric shuddered once. Salazar released him. Then he stepped back and watched.

The last of the color of life drained away from Cedric. The rosy, fleshly hue of his face faded to pallor. The black and yellow leaked away from his robes, leaving them grayish-white, like linen that needed bleaching. His hair turned white. The brightness left his eyes. Their gray was no longer that of the sea under a winter sky, but the gray of the mists Salazar saw writhing around him and through him.

"You're ready," Salazar said. He extended one hand to Cedric, and with the other he gestured toward the Ferryman's boat. "Won't you step aboard?"