Briallen Bevin and the Snatcher's Cave

Chapter 23: The Worst Spies

Even though it had been a couple of months since Marisol and Toby made up, there were still episodes of students cursing each other with flowers for body parts, the instances briefly increasing during the month of April (especially on April Fool's Day, when even Briallen wasn't able to avoid being hit with a flower curse, and was forced to spend a week with a clump of scarlet pimpernels for ears).

It was now the first Friday of May, though, and things had calmed down considerably. They were even used to Aurors being everywhere, though Briallen still disliked her personal escort. Briallen, Toby and Marisol sat lazily in History of Magic, where the only movement in the room, aside from the professor at the front of the class, was the slight rustling of papers as a warm breeze blew in through the open windows that overlooked the north courtyard.

"And thusly, this goblin rebellion only lasted a mere thirty years," explained Professor Trajan as she wrote the dates of that specific goblin rebellion on the chalkboard. Toby's head suddenly fell onto the table with a loud thud and those that sat near him chuckled quietly. "And I see Mr Davis has decided this is a good place to stop as well. Your homework for the weekend is on the board: a half-roll of parchment explaining Bugo the Broad's role in the goblin rebellion discussed in class today, due on Monday. Have a good weekend everybody."

The students rose sluggishly from their seats and collected their things. Everybody was so hot and tired that hardly anyone spoke as they all made their way down the hallway to the portrait hall. Marisol, using a spell she'd just recently learned in Elemental Magic, had her wand pointed at her face and was making it blow snow out the tip. Toby had taken off his robes, undone his tie and un-tucked his shirt. Briallen took hold of Marisol's wand and pointed it at her own face for a moment before releasing it so that Marisol could point it at herself again.

"Attention students," came a voice from somewhere above them. "This is Dean Bevin with an announcement. All students report to the dining hall immediately for an assembly."

"Where does his voice come from when he makes those announcement? I've never seen a single speaker," wondered Toby as he looked at the ceiling, confused.

"I don't know," mumbled Marisol. "It's magic."

"Well, no duh," said Briallen with a laugh, picking up one of Marisol's favorite words.

"I wonder what this assembly is about," said Toby as they entered the portrait hall and made their way down. "Do you guys think somebody else has disappeared? I mean, I haven't heard anything but maybe it just happened..."

Briallen knotted her forehead. "Impossible. With all these Aurors around?"

"Yvonne said that she heard Tinna and Wendy mention that they heard Julian tell Billy that Dean Bevin is sending the Aurors back to the Ministry because nothing bad, or even suspicious, has happened in, like, forever," cut in Chante, who walking behind Briallen with Kimmy and Noelle.

"I hope so," said Briallen. "If I'm going to try out for the Quodpot team next year I have to practice more. I still can't go up or down without running into the ground or zooming a few hundred feet in the air."

"You don't stand a chance," Noelle said, smiling. "Not with Conall Lonigan as Captain. He expects the absolute best - mediocrity isn't allowed."

"Which is exactly why I have to practice!" said Briallen with false cheerfulness. She knew what Noelle said was true but still wanted to try. She'd even be happy as a substitute, since in a game as dangerous as Quodpot substitutes were more than glorified bench warmers.

When they entered the dining hall, everybody went to their respective house tables, as they now knew was expected during assemblies. The light hum of a room full of people whispering reverberated around them. Briallen sat down next to Benjamin, and Toby sat on her other side.

"So, Briallen, you must know what this is about," said Benjamin with a grin.

"I wish. My grandpa doesn't tell me anything. I haven't even seen him for almost a month."

"May I have your attention, please," said Dean Bevin, louder than he normally spoke. "I know you must all be wondering why I called this assembly today and I want to assure you right now that it is not for a tragic reason as before. Tonight is the last night that you will see many of these fine Aurors, who have been so helpful as to offer us all protection these past few months. Some have agreed to stay behind, for caution's sake, but tomorrow Bergamot will officially return to its normal habits and behaviors. Quodpot and Quidditch will be restarted, however, there will be no cup awarded for either sport this year, because of the number of missed games. And while trips to The Village will be continued, they will be restricted to fifth years and above."

At the last statement, many students in the fourth year and below began to voice their discontent. "Yes, yes, I'm terribly sorry but we have still not caught the witch or wizard who attacked and kidnapped several of our students. Those who wish to go to The Village must have a permission slip signed by their respective guardians as well. These permission slips can be obtained from the heads of house beginning tomorrow, as well as from the head boy or the head girl. The first trip to The Village is scheduled for next Saturday." Dean Bevin took a deep breath and smiled broadly at all the students before him. "Now, let's eat!"

A feast appeared on the tables. As the students and teachers helped themselves to spaghetti and ravioli and other Italian foods, Briallen took the opportunity to look around. Everybody seemed so happy, as if the past few months had been as normal as ever and nobody had disappeared or even been attacked.

But Briallen could not stop thinking about the missing students, and where they were and if they were safe. Her grandfather had made it clear in his speech that while the operation of the school would return to normal, things were still not normal. Yet, she was convinced that she was the only student who realized this. Even Marisol and Toby seemed to have forgotten their investigation as they happily dug into their bowls spaghetti and meatballs.

But there was that one other person she knew who was as concerned with finding the kidnapper as much as she was. She just had to work up the strength to overcome her negative feelings for him. That is, if he would even speak to her.

No, I'm not giving up on Marisol and Toby just yet, thought Briallen, pushing the previous thought aside.

While everyone around her was talking and laughing, Briallen ate in silence and then left early. She had to come up with a plan of action and actually do something instead of just talking about doing something. She thought over all of the facts while she showered, brushed her hair, and brushed her teeth. And she somehow managed to play two rounds of a magical board game with Chante and Kimmy without them even noticing she wasn't paying attention.

As she moved her game piece, which happened to be a little figure on a broomstick, along the game board, it struck her. She knew exactly what she needed to do to gather the final pieces of information to find out what happened to the missing kids.

The next day, Briallen woke up early. Noelle was still asleep even, and Briallen couldn't remember the last time she'd woken up before Noelle. She dressed as quietly as she could and didn't even bother to tie her sneakers or brush her hair before she tip-toed down the stairs to the common room. She didn't want to be stopped by anyone and waste any time.

"Briallen?" said a voice from behind her. She stopped moving. She was just about to open the door to the portrait hall when she was spotted. She sighed. "Mind if I join you for breakfast?"

She turned around to see Benjamin, who was dressed in his bronze and violet Quodpot uniform. She forced a smile so he wouldn't suspect she was up to anything mischievous. "Sure."

On their walk down to the dining hall Briallen did her best to untangle and straighten her hair by running her fingers through it.

"You know, these things have been invented... I forget the name, but you run it through your hair and gets out all the tangles and makes it smooth..." said Benjamin thoughtfully.

"I think I might have heard of them," said Briallen, playing along. She hoped he didn't ask any questions about why she didn't take the time to brush her hair. "Cushes or brombs or something, right? Hey, why are you in uniform?"

"Game today, already. Practice starts at nine sharp, so says Captain Conall." Benjamin loaded his plate with toast and bacon and a big bowl of oatmeal.

"But... the game is at five isn't it?" asked Briallen, confused. She was too excited and nervous to really eat anything but she nibbled on a piece of toast so that Benjamin wouldn't ask any questions.

"You know Conall," said Benjamin with a mouthful of oatmeal. A little bit of the oatmeal dribbled out the corner of his mouth; he didn't bother wiping it away. "He's really into practice. I wanted to talk to you about that, anyway. If you want to be on the team next year, you're really going to have to buckle down and get in a lot of practice. I know how your parents are, so you should see if you can spend the summer with Dean Bevin and then I can train you everyday. It'd be good practice for me too."

Briallen groaned. "Are you serious?"

"Very. I've never seen you fly - I've just heard the stories - but what I've been told, I'm pretty sure you're going to need to practice every moment you can."

"But I don't want to practice all the time," Briallen whined. She wanted to be on the team but not at the expense of her summer vacation. The past year had been intense; she had had to study more and longer just to achieve the same grades she did at Surry Elementary, and to keep up with those kids raised in magical families who seemed to already know everything. She was looking forward to a relaxing, lazy summer.

"Your grandpa would be really proud of you if you made the team, you know," suggested Benjamin. "I bet it'd make him forget all about all the detentions you've had already. Plus, he did buy you the broom and when you get a broom at your age, it's not just for recreation."

Briallen poked at her toast with a knife and grumbled. She didn't like being pushed into things. "You just want to me try-out so you can impress my grandpa anyway. You'd be ignoring me right now if my last name wasn't Bevin."

"What?" Benjamin managed to choke out through his mouthful of toast. He coughed again and then chewed and swallowed as fast as he could. "Excuse me? I want to help you because we're friends, not because I'm a suck up."

"You're sixteen, I'm twelve - we are not friends," said Briallen, annoyed now. She stood up and tried to wipe the crumbs off her frayed denim shorts. Benjamin stared at her, shocked by how mean she suddenly being. "I have things to do. Good luck on your game."

She had wasted too much time humoring Benjamin. Her grandfather had a meeting outside the castle at nine and she had to run all the way up to his office in order to catch him before he left.

"Grandpa!" said Briallen breathlessly as she jogged into Cal Bevin's office. He was standing in front of his fireplace with a bag of Floo Powder in his hand. She was just in time.

"What is it, dear? I have a meeting so you'll have to make this quick," said Cal. He looked over his unkempt granddaughter and raised his brow. Her shirt was buttoned wrong, she had toast crumbs on her shorts, her shoes were untied, and her hair was still a mess.

"I wanted to ask you if I can owl your house-elves and have them send me my broom? Please?" She clasped her hands together and made pleading eyes at him.

"No, you know it's not allowed. First years cannot bring broomsticks to school." Briallen could tell he was growing impatient with her. She had to be quick.

"But we only have a couple weeks of school left! Nobody would notice! And Benjamin wants to start training me right away so that I'm ready for try-outs this fall - you know had bad a flyer I am."

"I said no, Briallen. If I bend the rules for you, then I would have to bend them for everybody and then there would be no point in even having rules, now would there?"

"But I'm your granddaughter!" argued Briallen. She regretted the words the moment they left her mouth. Her grandfather was already being closely watched after accusations of incompetence and bias, neither of which had any weight, but still affected him nonetheless.

"That makes absolutely no difference in my treatment towards you Briallen. When it comes to the rules, you have to follow them the same as everybody else," said Cal Bevin calmly. He wasn't a shouter; and he knew yelling didn't work with Briallen. What worked with her was when he sounded disappointed. And so he did just that. "Briallen, you're a smart girl. You have a lot of friends. I don't understand why you want to cause trouble..."

"What? No, grandpa, I don't want to be a trouble-maker, really. I just - I want you to be proud of me and I thought, now that the school is back to normal, I can practice a bunch and by try-outs I'll be really good and make the team and you can be proud of me again," said Briallen, her eyes watering. She felt horrible manipulating her grandfather like she was, and lying to him but she needed a broomstick for her plan. Besides, she knew her grandfather was doing his disappointment-voice deliberately in effort to make her give in first.

"No, Briallen. That's my final answer. Why don't you go play outside with your friends? It's a beautiful day today. Perfect for a picnic or a swim in the lake."

He won. They both knew it. Briallen caved and nodded to her grandfather. He gave her a quick hug and kissed the top of her head. "Tomorrow, we can have lunch together in The Village, okay?"

"Okay, grandpa," said Briallen, now sullen.

As she left his office she heard the fireplace roar. She slammed the door shut, abruptly waking old Dean Meyer from his nap, and stomped down the hallway, angry she hadn't gotten her way. She wasn't used to her grandfather saying no to her. The only other time he had made her this angry was when he refused to let her bring her horse, Miko, to school with her last August.

"Briallen... Briallen, dear," called a hypnotic voice from one of the portraits.

"Yes, Professor Ananasi?" asked Briallen, irritated. She despised the nosy former Dean. Briallen had actually stopped visiting her grandfather in his office just to avoid her. "Why are you so upset?"

"My grandfather won't let me have my broom here! Just because I'm a first year... the school year is almost over anyway!" vented Briallen. She may not have liked Professor Ananasi but it felt good to complain to somebody.

"Hm, I see. But does it really matter who's broomstick you use to fly over the north wood's wall?"

"Well, who would let me borrow their... wait - what?"

Professor Ananasi winked at Briallen, and then walked away to another portrait where she began a conversation with yet another former dean of Bergamot. Briallen stood for a moment, unmoving and confused, and then she suddenly smiled. For the first time, she understood what Professor Ananasi said. Briallen made her way to the front grounds of Bergamot as fast as possible without catching anyone's attention, and then she ran to the Quodpot pitch.

The Withers Quodpot team was currently on the pitch practicing plays. Briallen spotted her friends and was glad they were already outside. Marisol and Toby sat in the stands, though they weren't paying any attention to the players on the field. Marisol was attempting to explain the game of Quidditch to Toby, who sat there nodding and smiling but obviously wasn't understanding a thing Marisol said. Briallen jumped up onto the bleacher seat in front of them with a large smile.

"I have a plan!" said Briallen proudly, raising her arms over her head.

"Oh, no," said Marisol, hesitant. "This plan isn't going to get us another detention is it? Because I don't think I could survive another night of cleaning out jars of pickled goat eyes or something just as nasty."

"Okay, firstly, we had to clean out jars of toad tongues, not goat eyes - those are on the second shelf - and secondly, nobody should find out what we're going to do so it'll all be okay."

"I'm sure we'll be just fine," said Toby sarcastically. "That's what you said during spring break when you got the great idea to try and breed pixies with fairies, and you remember how that turned out."

Briallen frowned and shook her head. "I still can't believe that pixie did what he did to that poor fairy... Anyway, this is fool proof! We're just going to borrow a couple of school brooms and fly over the north wood's wall to go exploring and try to find some answers about what happened to all those missing kids. Who knows, maybe we'll even find them!"

"What?" cried Marisol, alarmed, as she dropped the bottle of water she had been holding. "Are you insane? I'm not going in there!"

Toby nodded his head fervently in agreement. "You told us what you saw that night during Astronomy! How much do you want to bet those were werewolves you saw! There was a full moon out that night!"

"No, not werewolves. They were giants!" corrected Marisol.

"Briallen said the creatures were fast, and giants are not fast," argued Toby.

"Listen!" said Briallen, as she shushed her two friends. "If they were werewolves then we have nothing to worry about be right now because it's the middle of the day and there isn't a full moon for a while."

"And if they were giants?" asked Marisol, her eyes wide with fear.

"...Well, giants are stupid and slow, so we'll just be careful. We could outrun them, and definitely out-fly them. Anyway, I think it might have been smugglers, or even the kidnapper and his friends that Lucan and I saw out there. Now tell me that neither of you honestly don't want to know what is in the cave in the north wood?"

Marisol and Toby looked at each other, both unsure and a little frightened but curious just the same.

"Pues... " began Marisol. "I suppose, you know, we could just take a quick look around. But just a quick look, Briallen! No more than an hour or two! Seriamente!"

"No promises!" said Briallen, smiling again. "Now, let's get to the broom shed before somebody notices us. We're going to have to be extra sneaky to get the brooms from the shed to the forest without anybody seeing."

"I wish we had an invisibility cloak," moaned Marisol.

"You say that all the time," said Toby.

Briallen snuck into the broom shed, leaving her friends to watch for teachers and prefects.

"Because I hate it when we get caught! And we are always caught."

"Not always. I got Briallen with a flower curse on April Fool's and she still doesn't know it was me!" whispered Toby conspiratorially.

"I do now!" said Briallen as she popped out of the shed with three brooms. She tucked them all under one arm so that she had a free hand to smack Toby's with. "You jerk! I was practically deaf for a week because of you!"

"Well, imagine being covered with flowers everywhere and you'll know what I went through when Marisol got me! Those were the most uncomfortable seven days of my entire life."

"Can we please not bring this up you guys? I don't want us fighting again," said Marisol sadly. "Why don't you explain your plan to us Briallen. Where exactly are we going and what exactly are we looking for?"

"We're going to the cave in the north wood. That's where I saw those strange shapes during Astronomy. Professor Ananasi said that kids used to sneak off to the cave to make-out so I'm thinking there must be rooms or passages or something in it," explained Briallen.

"Or maybe they just had make-out parties there where they all sat around making out," suggested Marisol, sounding overly excited about the idea of a make-out party.

"What?" said Toby, disgusted. "No way!"

"That's what boyfriends and girlfriends do, Toby! They get a bunch of their friends who have boyfriends, or girlfriends, and then they all go somewhere and make-out."

"I don't believe you because that's disgusting. Kissing in front of other people? Gross," said Toby as he stuck out his tongue.

"Okay, you guys, let's try to concentrate on hunting for clues," said Briallen. She needed them to concentrate and take this seriously. She was beginning to think she invited the wrong people on her clue-hunt..

"So why we have to go this way?" asked Toby as he, Marisol and Briallen walked along the lake shore past the hedge maze. He obviously didn't want to talk about make-out parties anymore either.

"Because if we just went straight to the north wood's wall somebody would see us! This wall goes deep into the woods... it only wraps around part of the north wood - the part with the cave."

"How much further is it?" whined Marisol. "I'm wearing my favorite skirt today! We better not get dirty."

"I told you it wasn't a good idea to wear a skirt! You knew we were hanging out with Briallen today," said Toby.

"Well had I known we would be hiking then I wouldn't have! I thought we were just going to watch Quodpot practice and have a picnic or something," Marisol replied, annoyed, just before she stepped into some slippery mud and nearly fell. "Ay, dios mio!"

Toby shook his head. "You would make the worst spy."

"I would not!"

"The bad guys are in this building and they'll shoot me if they see me but it would be easier and I wouldn't get as messy if I just knock on the door and ask them what they're doing instead of being sneaky and listening in on them," said Toby in a high-pitched voice as he waved his arm around effeminately.

"Oh, whatever, Toby! Remember the night we all wanted to sneak down to the kitchen? Who made the most noise? Oh, yo sé! It was you. Who got us caught by Professor Stalkes? You!"

"That wasn't my fault! Somebody's cat was roaming the halls and it touched me, so of course I jumped because it was dark and I didn't know what it was! It wasn't like I knew there was a vase right next to me."

"Stop being hateful, you two. We should be able to go over the wall from here without being seen," said Briallen, who had stopped walking and surveying the surrounding landscape for security.

"What if there are charms to prevent people from flying over the wall?" asked Toby as he warily mounted his broom.

"Why would there be? Pretty much everybody is afraid to go in there because they think there are monsters and stuff."

Toby nodded and looked at the wall thoughtfully. "True, true. And we're sure there aren't any monsters, right?"

"Would there be a gate leading into this part of the wood if there were monsters?"

"I guess not... I'm ready then."

Marisol and Briallen mounted their own brooms. They all counted to three and then kicked up off the ground and flew up and over the north wood's wall to investigate the mysterious cave.