Chapter 39
Taylor huddled into a dark corner (of the common room) spying on the whole castle. She liked to think of these times like she was some sort of deadly spider, sitting in the centre of her web, hearing and seeing everything.
From one thread of her weave, she saw a trio of Slytherins, led by Malfoy, posturing and being annoying to everyone else. The lead bully walked (escorted by a prefect) with his head high, pointy chin in the air and bleach blond hair stuck to his scalp. Right behind him were the worse versions of Tweedle Dee and Dum.
Taylor had a pixie ready for the first mudblood out of his mouth, but after weeks of being dunked by mud, it seemed that Malfoy had learned his lesson.
He turned his nose up, sniffed and sneered, but there was no name-calling.
On another thread, at the opposite side of the castle, Flint had managed to evade the professor escorting students between classes and was trying to intimidate a lower year Hufflepuff. That wouldn't do. First, Taylor sent her Itchygnat to buzz into his ear (which ended up with Flint slapping his own face), then she had the bug bit him a several times. This old dog was taking his sweet time to learn the new tricks.
In the hospital wing, the golden trio was still petrified and unreachable. Madam Pomfrey had put her foot down: “No more visitors! They won’t even remember it.”
Quidditch also got cancelled, much to Taylor’s dismay. She wasn’t the only one feeling the loss. The day after the announcement, about two thirds of the school was talking and complaining about it.
The professors and prefects were the ones suffering the most. They had to escort students everywhere, do nightly patrols, vigil, and still trying to keep up with their own workload. There must be some sort of magic involved, because Taylor got tired just watching all that.
Getting stuck in each house's common room was not conducive to making friends in other houses.
Not even relationships survived.
Penny broke up with Percy, and the reason wasn’t something Taylor was too clear on about. Penny seemed very angry with the Weasley boy. “You care more about being a prefect than me!” Those were her parting words.
The new professor, Slughorn, had been planning a small party for hand-picked students, or at least he was, until Harry got horrorized. Now, she didn’t know if Slughorn would still have his party without guest star Hero-Harry and Brightest-Witch Hermione.
Lockhart had become even more annoying as of late. When he wasn’t flashing his pearly whites at every student and saying how it was a shame he didn’t have the chance to catch the heir before the minister did it, he was telling everyone how he always knew Hagrid had been the culprit all along.
Taylor had the Itchygnats bite him once or twice, just to prove how useless of a twat he was.
“You’re not a spider,” Luna said, sitting near her, cradling Arabelle.
The Arabelle situation was becoming untenable.
Arabelle had started attracting more attention and she kept growing. People were whispering about the ‘giant spider’ and it wouldn’t take long until more questions came their way. They needed to brew a new potion, but were stuck in Ravenclaw’s dorms without access to their private recluse.
“I’d be an amazing spider,” Taylor said, grinning.
“Have your webs caught anything new, miss Amazing Spider?”
“Nothing has changed,” Taylor sighed.
Taylor had been keeping a closer eye on Ginny ever since she found the possible invisibility cloak on Ginny’s trunk, but there had been no changes. Ginny didn’t take it out, nor did she go gallivanting into the night hidden under the cloak. More importantly, she seemed devastated about her brother, Harry and Hermione.
Was it guilt or genuine sadness?
Ginny also didn’t fit the Heir persona Taylor had built inside her head. In Taylor’s mind (mostly influenced by the gossip of other students), the Heir was some evil mastermind plotting to clear the school out of undesirables, as Draco Malfoy had said more than once to his band of thugs: Mudbloods and blood traitors like Harry and the Weasleys.
“You should just ask her.”
Taylor glanced at Luna. Her friend, like usual, didn’t seem worried about the situation.
“We have classes with her tomorrow,” Luna said.
“But what should I say?” Taylor whispered.
On the next day, on transfiguration, Taylor sat by Ginny’s side. Nneka gave her a strange look, but didn’t complain and sat down with Luna.
Taylor didn’t say anything the whole class. She didn’t even pay too much attention to the explanation and theory for their next spell. She kept going over and over in her head how to ask Ginny about the possible invisibility cloak.
When class ended, Taylor wasn’t anywhere closer to finding how to word her question, but she was also out of time. She held Ginny’s hand to keep the redhead from slipping away, and slowed her pace to be as far away from professor McGonagall as possible.
Ginny looked at Taylor with wide eyes and trembling lips.
Taylor gave her a quick hug then just blurted the question.
“Ginny, why do you have Harry’s cloak in your trunk?”
Ginny pulled away from the hug, looking very lost. “What?”
“Miss Weasley, Miss Hebert,” McGonagall called out from closer than Taylor expected, and both girls jumped. “Do not tarry. You have classes to attend.”
Ginny scurried away after giving Taylor one last look.
Taylor’s question rattled the redhead more than she thought it would. For the rest of the day, she kept observing her friend and as the day progressed Ginny got even more frantic.
Once all classes for the day were finished, Ginny fled to her dorm room, closed the door and went through her trunk like a girl possessed.
It was unmistakable the moment Ginny found the cloak. She grabbed the cloak like it was a snake out to bite her. She held it at arms length, then threw it into the trunk and locked it shut again.
The waterworks started soon after.
“I don’t know,” Taylor whispered to Luna. “She didn’t know I was watching, and it didn’t look like she knew the cloak was there.”
“You think someone else put it there?”
Taylor turned around until she was staring into Luna’s silvery eyes.
“But who, and why?”
That question haunted Taylor until late into the night. She kept trying to find out who could have done it, or even trying to remember if she knew where Ginny had been during the previous attacks.
And she couldn’t.
The first attack was during Halloween and she hadn’t been paying attention. Colin had been petrified in the middle of the night, and Taylor had awoken hours after the fact with a nasty headache.
On the last attack, she woke up soon after it happened, but given the circumstances, there was no way she could have looked where Ginny was at the time.
Taylor tossed and turned, only falling asleep after Luna pulled her close, mumbling something about nargles. That night, Taylor dreamt about the brunette again.
Brunette-Taylor was in some sort of cell, hands cuffed to a metal table. An older man, with the poise of a career soldier, sat on the chair opposite her. Another, tall and lanky, stood protectively near Dream-Taylor. By the wall, there was a costumed hero: a woman dressed in military fatigues and using a flag to hide the lower part of her face.
In an office somewhere above, Brunette-Taylor worked furiously with her bugs. Roaches clicked on phone buttons trying to send a message to someone who seemed frantic on the other side of the line. Dream-Taylor couldn’t understand through her bugs, but Taylor could.
“They’re giving you bad info, Boss. They’re lying. No one got captured.”
A reinforced van pulled into the parking lot. From inside, a group of guards pulled a body bag. They were laughing. At that moment, Dream-Taylor and Taylor believed one of her friends had died. Rachel or Brian, given the size.
“Taylor,” the tall man by her side murmured.
“Yes?”
“You’re shaking,” he whispered.
“Oh.”
When the strongest woman in the world returned, flying through a hole in the roof, she didn’t get far. Brunette-Taylor had bugs crawl into her mouth, weave silk into her lungs, and block her air passageways. The woman was invincible, but she still needed to breathe.
The heroine shot up, breaking more of the roof, disappearing out of Dream-Taylor’s range.
The soldier on the other side of the table suddenly stood, trying to draw his gun. His voice was a roar. “She knows!”
The silk thread that Dream-Taylor had tied to the weapon saved her from being shot.
Brunette-Taylor was trapped and tied to a table, but that didn’t save the soldier from being bitten to death by all manner of nasty bugs. Amidst all the ensuing chaos, Dream-Taylor cried for the death of a friend.
Strangely, after the dream ended, Taylor didn’t wake up. She was aware that she was still sleeping and was dragged into yet another dream.
Dream-Taylor was dressed in blue and silver instead of black, fighting another of the city destroying monsters. The architecture was familiar yet strange. India.
There was nothing she could physically do to the monster, but Brunette-Taylor’s ability to organise and plan carried her and her allies through the fight until that point.
There was a crash, one of the heroes punted into a temple.
Dream-Taylor heard the murmurs as the most powerful woman in the world advanced from where she’d been thrown. The woman who was supposed to be dead found her way to the end of the crowd to the far left of Dream-Taylor. A group of heroes followed in her wake.
The most powerful woman glanced over at where Brunette-Taylor was, and her eyes moved right past Dream-Taylor, not even recognising the girl who had killed her. For the briefest instant, Brunette-Taylor met the eyes behind that steel helmet, and she saw that one had a pink iris.
It wasn’t the woman Brunette-Taylor had killed, but someone piloting her body around.
Taylor opened her eyes and was instantly awake. The two dreams burned in the back of her head. She wanted to feel sick at the deaths and all the horror, but she felt detached, disconnected from her feelings. Her mind was drawn to something else that had changed while she slept.
Ginny’s bed was empty. Her trunk was open, and the diary and the cloak were missing.
There was a new message by Myrtle’s corridor.
HER SKELETON WILL LIE IN THE CHAMBER FOREVER.
McGonagall, Flitwick and Slughorn stood in front of the glowing message.
“Which student was taken?” The potions master asked in a heavy tone.
“A Gryffindor. Ginny Weasley.”
Flitwick burst into tears. “What do we do?”
McGonagall shook her head. “We send the students home in the morning. This is the end of Hogwarts.”
The professors moved fast after that. They gathered all faculty members and prefects, discussing what needed to be done. Lockhart arrived late and dishevelled, and when called out on his bullshit, he fled to his room and started packing.
All the while, Taylor had been running scenarios in her mind. She knew where the chamber entrance was. She knew how to avoid getting killed by the monster. Now, she only needed a bigger monster.
“What is it?” Luna asked, sounding sleepy.
“Ginny has been taken by the Heir.”
Luna sat up.
“And I need your help to rescue her.”
Luna’s eyes lost all the sleepiness. They were sharp and serious. “How?”
“Can you fly a broom while carrying someone else?”