A chill wind seemed to spring up within the confines of the corridor, a dark breath that caressed their faces and touched their hands with ice.
"Fire at her on my count!" shouted the leading voice. "One, two, three!" and maybe-forty voices roared spells, creating a huge concentric array of fiery bolts that lit the wide corridor brighter than the Sun -
- for the short moment before the bolts struck and vanished upon a dark red octagon that appeared in the air around the girls, and then disappeared a moment later.
Hermione saw it, she saw it but she still couldn't imagine it; she couldn't imagine a Shielding Charm that powerful, a spell that would withstand an army.
And Tracey's voice went on chanting, her voice sounding louder and more confident, and her face screwed up like she was trying to remember something very exactly.
"Shuffle, duffle, muzzle, muff.
Fista, wista, mista-cuff."
Now all those present could feel it, heroines and bullies alike, the sensation of some dark will pressing down on them, a tingling in the air as something built and built and built. All the blue hazes around the white robes, all the shielding spells, had died out without any visible hex touching them. There were more flashes of light as more desperate spells were fired, but they fizzled out in midair like candle-flames touching water.
The black barriers at the two ends of the corridor had dissipated like smoke beneath the growing pressure, but their evaporation revealed the exits sealed, blocked by tiled slats of dark metal that looked stained as though with blood; and as Tracey chanted "Lemarchand, Lament, Lemarchand," a dreadful blue light began to shine out from beneath the metal slats and between them; and the six sets of double doors slammed shut all at once, as panicked white-robed bullies began to pound on them and howl.
Then Tracey's hand slashed to her left, and she cried "Khornath!", then her hand pointed below her and "Slaaneth!", above her "Nurgolth!", and then, to her right, "TZINTCHI!"
Tracey paused, took a deep breath; and Hermione found her voice and cried, "Stop! Tracey, stop!"
But there was a strange wild smile on Tracey's face. She raised her hand still higher, and snapped her fingers a third time; and when she spoke again, beneath her high girlish voice there was an undertone as though some lower chorus were chanting along with her.
"Darkness beyond darkness, deeper than pitchest black.
Buried beneath the flow of time...
From darkness to darkness, your voice echoes in the emptiness,
Unknown to death, nor known to life."
"What are you doing?" shrieked Parvati, and the Gryffindor girl stretched out a hand as though to pull down the Slytherin, who was now starting to float upward into the air; and both Daphne and Susan grabbed Parvati's arm at the same time and Daphne cried out, "Don't, we don't know what will happen if the ritual is interrupted!"
"Well what happens if it gets COMPLETED?" screamed Hermione, as close as she'd ever come to total brain meltdown.
Susan's face was white as chalk, and she whispered, "I'm sorry, Mad-Eye..."
And Tracey spoke on, her body floating higher and higher off the floor, her black hair whipping wildly around her in the chill winds.
"You who know the gate, who are the gate, the key and guardian of the gate:
I bid you open the way for him, and manifest his power before me!"
The corridor was plunged then into utter darkness and silence, so that only Tracey could be seen and heard, like there was nothing left in the universe except her and the light illuminating her from some nameless source.
The shining girl raised her hand one final time, and with dreadful gravity, pressed her thumb and forefinger together.
And within the darkness Hermione looked at Tracey's face and saw that the Slytherin girl's eyes were now, to the exact shade, the green of Harry Potter's.
"Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres!
Harry James Potter-Evans-Verres!
HARRY JAMES POTTER-EVANS-VERRES!"
There was a snap like thunder, and then -
Harry had chosen to assume a rather relaxed posture, as he sat in a low chair before the mighty desk of the Headmaster of Hogwarts: one leg cocked over his knee, and his arms sprawling casually to either side. Harry was doing his best to disregard the noise from the surrounding devices, although the one directly behind him that sounded like an owl hooting desperately as it was put through a woodchipper was pretty difficult to ignore.
"Harry," the old wizard said from behind the desk, the aged voice level as the blue eyes stared out at him from beneath the shining half-moon spectacles. Headmaster Dumbledore had garbed himself in robes of midnight purple; not true formal black, but dark enough to come close indeed to deadly seriousness, as the wizarding world counted the meaning of fashions. "Were you... responsible for this?"
"I cannot deny that my influence was at work," Harry said.
The old wizard took off his glasses, leaned forward to stare at Harry directly, blue eyes to green. "I will ask you one question," the Headmaster said in a quiet voice. "Do you think that what you did today was - appropriate?"
"They were bullies and they came to that hallway with the direct intent of hurting Hermione Granger and seven other first-year children," Harry said levelly. "If I am not too young for moral judgment, then neither are they. No, Headmaster, they didn't deserve to die. But they did deserve to be stripped naked and glued to the ceiling."
The old wizard put his glasses back on. For the first time that Harry had seen of him, the Headmaster seemed to be at a loss for words. "As Merlin himself is my witness," said Dumbledore, "I haven't the faintest notion of how I ought to react to this."
"That's pretty much the effect I was aiming for," said Harry. He felt like he ought to be whistling a merry tune, but unfortunately he had never learned how to whistle reliably.
"I need not ask you who is directly responsible," said the Headmaster. "Only three wizards within Hogwarts might be powerful enough. I myself did not do it. Severus has assured me he was not involved. And the third..." The Headmaster shook his head in some dismay. "You loaned the Defense Professor your Cloak, Harry. I do not think that was wise. For now that he has escaped detection by simple Charms, he surely knows that it is a Deathly Hallow - if, indeed, he did not know from its first touch upon his flesh."
"Professor Quirrell had already deduced my possession of an invisibility cloak," Harry said. "And knowing him, he has probably guessed that it is a Deathly Hallow. But in this case, Headmaster, it so happens that Professor Quirrell was under one of those face-concealing white robes."
There was another pause.
"How very cunning," said the Headmaster. He leaned back in his throne and sighed. "I have spoken to the Defense Professor. Just before you, indeed. I did not quite know what to say. I told him that this was not the approved Hogwarts policy for dealing with infractions of hallway discipline, and that I did not feel it was appropriate for a Hogwarts professor to do what he had done."
"And what did Professor Quirrell say to that?" said Harry, who was not impressed with Hogwarts's current policies for enforcing hallway discipline.
The Headmaster wore a look of resignation. "He said: Fire me."