Harry Potter and the Prince of the Enchanted Forest

Chapter 12: In Which the Society of Wizards Rises Again

Morwen and Telemain must have figured that out as well. They both kept their distance from Snape. Harry saw Morwen always trying to get a seat next to Dumbledore at the staff table. She spent nearly all of her time outside the classroom with Professor McGonagall. Telemain, meanwhile, was pouring over books. Even as he was eating, he was reading Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them quite intently. Hermione reported that he was spending a lot of time researching similar books in the library, not talking to anyone. He also was seen having conversations with Hagrid a lot. It was strange seeing two people from two completely different worlds standing together like that. Hermione guessed that he was trying to find new material for Morwen's class, but Harry had a better idea once he snatched a bit of conversation between Morwen and Professor McGonagall.

"You should become a cat," Professor McGonagall told her. "They're rather smart, and you're so much a cat person."

"Exactly. They'd suspect that. I'd love to be a cat, but I want to be inconspicuous. I was thinking maybe a raccoon? They're clean and rather motherly."

"That would work, except they're aren't many raccoons in England."

Morwen was strongly considering becoming an Animagus. Harry thought that was a good plan. She could hide from the wizards and Vamist that way. It seemed Telemain wanted her to become a magic creature, but she wanted to be more normal. In the end, Harry figured only time would tell what they would do.

Months rolled on by. No attacks occurred. Snape still had his staff well hidden. Morwen gained her confidence back and was teaching the lighthearted way she usually did. Still, the school wasn't allowed to do magic. And exams were on their way.

Each teacher had to give some sort of written exam. Morwen was most disappointed. She wanted to use her exam for the class to investigate the Forbidden Forest, or at least a cave system just off the school property. She ended up making a multiple-choice test with a creative essay question. Harry didn't know which exam was harder, Potions or History of Magic. It was the night of the final exam day when it happened.

"Harry! Harry!" Something was tickling Harry's face. He woke to find Hedwig flapping her wings around his head.

"What is it girl?" Harry asked.

"I just saw on the map. Vamist is in the Forbidden Forest, and he's heading up to the school!"

Harry quickly got up, put his robes and glasses on, and started waking up the others. Daystar shook Genie awake. "Quickly, go to Morwen and Telemain's room. Tell them Vamist is here. They'll contact Father on the magic mirror. Then, hopefully, they'll come help us."

Harry grabbed the Invisibility Cloak and the map. Ron and Hermione joined him underneath his cloak, but when Daystar got in Harry could see their feet sticking out on an adjacent mirror.

"This isn't going to work," he told Daystar. "You're much too tall."

"Sorry." He got out. "That's all right, I have my own ways of being invisible." He pulled something around the hilt of his sword and disappeared.

"Can you see us?" Hermione asked.

"Ooh, case in point. I can sense the magic of the cloak and the map, but we can still get lost. Here." Harry thought he felt something fall on the cloak's fabric, but he couldn't see what. "I'll tie this to my finger. You all lead the way, but don't go too fast."

Daystar managed for them to get out of the common room without going through the portrait door. Harry watched the map. "Strange. He's going to the third floor, toward that corridor that was forbidden when the Sorcerer's Stone was here."

"You don't think it's still forbidden?" Ron asked.

"Can't be. Now that the stone is gone, there would be no reason to keep those enchantments around. Then again, we haven't been out there lately, so I don't know if I can really say."

"Even if they are, we know how to get past them," Hermione said.

The front door to the corridor was locked, but Fluffy wasn't there. Where the trapdoor used to be was a stairway. And at the base of the stairway was the Mirror of Erised. Harry stopped in his tracks.

"Harry, what are you doing?" Ron hissed.

"Well, I just wanted to see Mum and Dad real quick. Just to get a little confidence."

"Mum and Dad?" Daystar repeated. "Strange. My mother and father aren't there."

"You see yourself as king, don't you?" Ron said.

"No, no I don't," Daystar said. "So strange."

Hermione, meanwhile, looked into the mirror and began to weep quietly.

"What's wrong, Hermione?" Ron asked, but she shook her head.

Though the others couldn't see him, Daystar stared at the mirror, dazed. Harry heard him whisper, "Magic mirror, reveal to me these strange visions that I see."

"Go, Harry, go!" Hermione cried, pushing him forward.

Harry nodded. He peered at the mirror just enough to see each member of his family smile and give him an encouraging nod as if to say, "Good luck."

The four made their way down the corridor to the spacious room where the Mirror of Erised used to stand. Now there was a man standing in the middle, setting up some kind of magical equipment while chanting something in a language Harry didn't understand. He wore the same billowing robes as Snape's. He almost looked like Snape, but younger. He had many tattoos on his face and arms, and he wore a sinister look. There was something in the air that made Harry scared, like when he faced Voldemort the last time but not quite as strong. Suddenly, the stranger shrieked and poured something upon the ground.

The room went icy. Something white and bubbly was spilling out from the floor. The man basked into the white light coming from the unseen source in the earth. Then, something came out of the floor and hovered in the air. It was a ghost. Harry recognized him from the chocolate frog card--Zemenar. He was followed by another ghost, one who looked much like Zemenar but much younger. It must have been Antorell.

Harry remembered that Telemain said black magic could raise the dead. He had no idea that this was what Vamist was really intending to do.

"Welcome to Hogwarts, honorable leaders of the Society of the Wizards," Vamist said bowing.

"You are rather slow, Vamist," Zemenar frowned. "There are only a few days of school left."

"The ingredients for this spell were hard to come by. Besides, it will be best if we do it when the students are carefree and unsuspecting." Vamist glared. "We are not alone."

Harry held his breath.

"Of course not," the younger wizard answered. "Our flesh brother is due to come soon to be inducted."

"Yes, and he shall be here soon, but there is a bystander." Vamist yelled something and turned a ring on his hand. Daystar appeared.

"Mendanbar!" Zemenar yelled. "How could you have escaped?"

"That's not Mendanbar," Antorell said irritated. "That's his good-for-nothing son."

"How could he have had a son where he was?"

"We both neglected to notice that the Queen was expecting, a fatal error."

"Yes, an error easily remedied."

"All in good time. We have things to do," Vamist ordered them sharply. Then, he looked in Harry's direction and smiled. "And they're about to get much simpler. For I see yet another bystander. His scar glows like a beacon, even underneath that cloak of darkness."

Harry gasped. Vamist somehow could see through his invisibility cloak. He stood still, not sure what to do, when Vamist reached him and tore the cloak off.

"You know this young man?" Vamist said to the specters. "This is the boy we have come to visit."

"Oh yes," Antorell nodded. "That man who helped resurrect us last time will be so pleased. What was his name again?"

"It started with a 'V.' Vulture?" Zemenar thought.

"Idiots!" Vamist screamed. "How dare you deny the name of the greatest dark wizard since Faust? Voldemort." He spoke the name in an awed whisper. Ron and Hermione gasped. Daystar put his hand over his mouth, possibly suppressing a chuckle. Harry simply looked back in shock.

"You came only for me? Not Morwen, not the rest of the school, but me?"

"Well, the rest of it is icing on the cake, but you are the main reason boy. When I heard of the true power of the Lake of Weeping Dreamers, I used it for my own advantage. I came to this world, to see what there was to see. By chance, I ran into Wormtail and the Master of Masters. They wanted to kill me, but once they heard where I was from, they wanted to learn how to invade Australia with that powerful Minister of Magic. I told them about the Society of Wizards who had been so helpful to my father. They thought the idea was perfect."

"What for? To weaken me so he could kill me next time we meet?"

"Oh no. You know that a little essence of Voldemort slipped into your soul on your first encounter. We're not here to steal it but to take it back and to give it to its rightful owner."

"What do you mean? I know he still has those gifts."

"Most of them. He's still a Parselmouth, but you still possess a few of those gifts that used to make the master truly great. We tried easy ways to get it back. We created that Zemenar trading card and rigged the cart so that you would get it, but that wretched Morwen destroyed the card. We resurrected Antorell, made him a staff, and sent him to the Quidditch game so he could take your magic when it was at its peak. Yet again, he was interrupted. In the end, we knew we had to get someone Voldemort trusted, a hand of flesh within the school walls. Someone who is easily manipulated. Someone who has great ambition that can be molded to our purposes. Someone who already has a great disgust for you."

As Vamist spoke, another person entered the room. He wore brown robes with the hood up and was carrying a long, polished staff. Vamist smiled as he looked up at the new man. "And here he is now."

The man walked closer to the ghosts. "Don't do this, Professor," Daystar said. "You'll regret it. I respect you. I don't want to call forces from home against you. Please, Professor Snape, do not do this!"

But as the man threw off the hood on his robe, Harry was amazed to see once again that he put the blame on Snape wrongfully.

"Welcome, brother Argus," Zemenar nodded.

The caretaker of the castle bowed before the ghosts and Vamist.

"Filch?" Harry, Ron, and Hermione whispered together.

"This can't be," Harry said hoarsely. "We all saw Snape with the staff. We saw how excited he was to be the new Headwizard."

"Yes, Severus was our first choice," Vamist answered. "He showed much promise. Yet, when we met him just a few weeks after Christmas, he got cold feet. 'I do not want to lose the rapport I have with Telemain and Morwen. They clearly do not like this. I feel rather insecure about what you wish for me to do. I could lose my job, permanently. Then there was the anger of my own student Prince Daystar.'" Vamist shook his head. "Wimp."

"This isn't like You-Know-Who!" Ron yelled. "He's definitely anti-muggle, and we know Filch is a Squib."

"A what?" Daystar answered.

"He was born into a wizard family but has no magical power of his own," Harry explained.

"This wasn't Voldemort's decision, it was mine!" Vamist yelled. "We didn't have any other alternative! Voldemort didn't want to risk losing his own magic. I couldn't take the staff because of the profession I chose. It was either Snape or Filch, and since Snape didn't want to--"

"Now that story doesn't make any sense at all," Daystar said. "What would Professor Snape care about my opinion? He dislikes me, and he goes out of his way to show it every class period. The more polite and diplomatic I tried to be, the nastier he got! He even called me the devil! He led the whole school to believe--"

"All a pretense," Filch answered.

Daystar looked at him in surprise. "Mr. Filch. You do talk. I was beginning to wonder."

"Silence!" Filch ordered. "Severus spoke to us faculty privately. That first day when you had that talk with him, he admired what you had to say. You showed great ambition, and that is what he respects. You know that; he is head of Slytherin house after all. He only pushed you so hard because he believed it would make you better. He was a fool to fall for your hypocritical system."

"What?"

"Yes, I saw through it all the day you first came to Hogwarts. That's how all you royalty are. You appear to be good and friendly, but you're corrupt. It is no point making friends with you. You call your friends in for favors, and when they need help you abandon them."

"It's not true!" Daystar answered shaking his head. "I'm trying my hardest not to be this way."

"Oh, but it is true. It's always true."

"This isn't the issue though," Harry cried. "Why are you doing this?"

Filch turned and glared at Harry. "Why? I thought to you that it would be the clearest why. All my life I've been among wizards. I've seen them do wonderful, delightful things. Yet every time I held a wand, it went dead in my hands. They called me a Squib, an ugly name. Dumbledore insulted me by giving me a job here. I remained among wizards, daily reminded of what I could not have. But now, I can take my own power. Now I can do magic beyond anything I have ever dreamed. No more useless Kwickspells for me. This staff does it all. And now, I go from nothing to the greatest wizard of all. Now I will be the head of a very powerful society of wizards."

"And you shall be Headwizard," Vamist answered. "All that remains for you to do is to take the magic out of this boy."

"With pleasure." Filch gave a quick flick with his staff. Ropes flew out of the tip and tied Harry to a column in the room. Ron, Hermione, and Daystar were similarly tied. Filch walked toward the boy with a twisted smile.

"There is no escape, Potter. Your powers are mine."