Viviene - Lady of the Lake
The Shattered Mirror and the Serpent’s Sting
The Great Hall had been cleared of its tables, replaced by rows of mahogany desks that stretched across the stone floor, accommodating every sixth-year student from all four houses. It was a rare, joint session of Defense Against the Dark Arts and Transfiguration, though the atmosphere was far from academic. On the left side of the hall, the Gryffindors were practically vibrating with self-righteous energy. James Potter and Sirius Black were leaning back in their chairs, tossing loud, pointed insults toward the Slytherin section.
"Smell that, Moony?" Sirius barked, waving a hand in front of his nose. "The stench of Dark Magic is particularly pungent today. Must be the Snake Pit brought their favorite curses to class."
Lily Evans nodded fervently from her seat next to James. "It’s honestly a disgrace they’re even allowed in the same room as us. Anyone who clings to those 'Old Ways' is just a bigot in a silk robe."
Across the aisle, the Slytherins sat in a pocket of chilled silence. Bellatrix Black kept her eyes fixed forward, her jaw tight, while her cousin Regulus stared at his parchment, his knuckles white. Lucius Malfoy sat with practiced elegance, his expression a mask of cold indifference, though his eyes flickered with a weary sort of calculation. They knew better than to respond. In Dumbledore’s Hogwarts, a Slytherin’s defense was always framed as an attack, and an attack was framed as a tragedy.
The heavy oak doors groaned open. The boisterous shouting of the Marauders died down instantly, replaced by a reverent hush. Albus Dumbledore swept into the room, his robes a shimmering silver that seemed to catch the torchlight, accompanied by a man in somber, charcoal-grey robes—the Head of the Department of Mysteries.
"Our Savior has arrived," James whispered loudly, his eyes shining with hero worship.
Dumbledore reached the center of the hall, a grandfatherly smile perched upon his lips. "Good morning, students. Today, we step beyond the confines of the curriculum. My dear friend, Unspeakable Croaker, has brought with him a marvel of the Department—the Portal Maker. We shall use it to observe the healing arts of L'École de la Vigne Bleue. A lesson in international cooperation and... transparency."
Lucius Malfoy leaned toward Regulus, his voice a ghost of a whisper. "Transparency. He means espionage. He wants to see why they haven't knelt to his 'Light' yet."
The Unspeakable activated the crystal orb. It rose into the air, humming with a low, thrumming frequency that made the teeth of everyone in the room ache. The air rippled like heat over a summer road, expanding until a massive, glass-clear window into another world sat suspended above the flagstones.
The portal revealed a sun-drenched courtyard in Southern France. The students watched, mesmerized, as a girl with a yellow belt—Meliscent—began a roll call that defied all logic.
"Two zebras, three ostriches, four walking dumplings," she muttered, checking a clipboard. She didn't blink as two massive, venom-tailed Manticores padded past her like overgrown housecats. But then she stopped, squinting. "Four purple ducks? Wait... four purple ducks?"
The Hogwarts students leaned in. The ducks in question were vibrating with a neon-rainbow hue and were periodically vomiting whole, ripe strawberries onto the grass.
"Liliath!" Meliscent yelled.
A younger girl, dragging a bipedal raccoon that looked like it was having a nervous breakdown, shouted back as she ran, "Not me! Blame Melusine! There’s always a Melusine around here!"
A fifth-year student with a blue belt entered the frame, sighing as she levitated the strawberry-barfing ducks into a bubble. "What did she do this time?"
"I don't want to talk about it," Meliscent groaned, before fleeing the scene.
Then, the girl appeared. She dropped from the ceiling of the portal’s view, hanging by her heels, her brownish-black curls with blue highlights dangling in the face of the blue-belted healer.
"Melusine," the older girl sighed. "We need to talk."
"We’re talking right now, aren't we?" Melusine replied with a grin that made Sirius Black look like an amateur.
"No library for a week. The ducks were the final straw."
"Ducks? What ducks?" Melusine asked, pointing behind the healer. The bubble was gone. In its place, two perfectly normal, dull purple ducks waddled across the grass. Melusine’s smile was a masterpiece of feigned innocence. "I have no idea what you're referring to."
The healer stared at the ducks, then at Melusine, then back at the ducks. "I am way underpaid to deal with this shit," she muttered, grabbing the ducks and stomping away.
In the Great Hall, the Slytherins were whispering urgently. "Look at her sleeves," Bellatrix murmured, her eyes sharp. "It’s August in France. Why is she covered up to her wrists? And those runes on the doorframe behind her... those aren't healing wards. Those are containment seals."
"She’s hiding something," Regulus agreed. "The way the others look at her... it’s not just fondness. It’s fear masked as exasperation."
Suddenly, the portal began to scream. The clear image shattered into a kaleidoscope of violet and black. The Unspeakable lunged forward, his hands dancing over the orb, but it was too late. The hum became a roar.
"Get back!" Dumbledore shouted, drawing his wand.
A massive explosion of magical displacement rocked the hall, throwing the front row of desks backward. When the smoke cleared, the Portal Maker was a pile of slag on the floor, and two teenage boys were standing in the center of the room.
They were redheads, tall and built with the lean muscle of people who moved for a living. The eldest, Bill, had hair tied in a practical bun and a dragon-fang earring dangling from his ear. The younger, Charlie, had a hippogriff claw pendant and a satchel strapped to his waist. Both were dressed in high-grade combat robes of deep forest green.
"Where the hell are we?" Charlie asked, his hand instinctively dropping to a dagger at his belt.
"The dampest, ugliest castle in Europe, apparently," Bill replied, coughing through the smoke.
Dumbledore stepped forward, his eyes twinkling with a forced calm. "My dear boys, there is no need for alarm. I am Albus Dumbledore. You seem to have been... caught in a magical accident."
"An accident?" Bill’s voice went cold. He looked at the remnants of the portal. "You were using a temporal-spatial anchor without a secondary stabilizer? You didn't 'accidentally' do anything. You plucked us out of our home."
James Potter stood up, pointing his wand at the newcomers. "Watch your tone with the Headmaster! You lot look like you’ve been rolling in Dark Arts. Look at those scars! Only Dark wizards carry trophies from beasts like that."
Charlie turned a flat, unimpressed look on James. "We just teleported here against our will, and you start barking about Dark Magic? Is everyone in this country a complete moron, or is it just the ones in red?"
"How dare you!" Lily Evans shrieked. "We have a right as students to know what kind of threat has been dropped into our school! You’re probably spies for the Dark Lord!"
"Spies?" Bill laughed, a harsh, jagged sound. "We were in our living room. We were reading. Now we’re in a room full of children who think 'Dark' is a personality trait instead of a branch of magic. This is kidnapping, Dumbledore."
The Unspeakable tried to intervene. "Now see here, young man, the Department of Mysteries—"
"Can shove their mysteries where the sun doesn't shine," Charlie snapped.
The air in the room suddenly grew heavy. A second rumble shook the foundations of the castle, more violent than the first. A fissure of dark purple light tore open in the air—not a portal made by a machine, but a wound in reality torn open by sheer will.
Out of the darkness stepped Melusine.
She looked different than she had in the portal. The schoolgirl facade was gone. She wore a sleeveless black tank top that revealed arms covered in a terrifying tapestry of scars and tattoos—vines of wisteria and belladonna entwined with the silhouettes of dragons and serpents. A midnight-blue cloak shifted with moving constellations on her shoulders, and her eyes were lined with thick, lethal kohl.
She landed silently on the stone floor, her platform boots clicking once. She looked around the Great Hall with a look of pure, unadulterated loathing.
"I had forgotten how much I truly, deeply hate this place," she said, her voice carrying to every corner of the room.
Dumbledore opened his mouth to speak, his "my dear girl" already forming on his lips.
Melusine didn't even look at him. She raised a hand, a spark of violet fire dancing between her fingers. "Headmaster, with all due respect—which is currently none—shut your mouth or I will hex you into the next century. Thank you. Sorry, not sorry."
The hall went deathly silent. Even Sirius Black looked stunned.
Melusine turned to Bill and Charlie. "Where have you two been? Aunt Cassiopeia has been pacing the floors so hard she’s nearly worn a hole through the marble."
The two boys looked at her, confusion flickering in their eyes for a split second before Melusine leaned in. "The dragon's breath illuminates the patio at midnight," she whispered.
Recognition slammed into Bill’s face. He relaxed his stance. "Oh. Right. We just apparated here because this... gentleman... summoned us."
Melusine whirled on Dumbledore and the Unspeakable. "You summoned my brothers? To a school they don't even attend? Do you have any idea the level of international violation you’ve just committed? You plucked them from our living room!"
"Living room?" Dumbledore asked, his brow furrowed.
"Yes," Melusine said, talking slowly as if to a particularly dim-witted child. "Portal + unstable magic = time fractures. My brothers were dumped here in the middle of your soggy, damp castle. Seriously, do you not have heating charms? It’s October. It’s like a tomb in here."
She looked over at the Slytherin table. Her eyes softened for a fraction of a second as she took in the sight of Bellatrix, Regulus, and Lucius. She gave them a small, knowing smile—a promise of something yet to come. Then, she turned to the Gryffindors and scowled so fiercely that Peter Pettigrew actually fell off his bench. She gave a respectful nod to the Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws, who were mostly just trying to stay out of the crossfire.
"I’m taking them home," Melusine announced.
"Now, wait just one moment—" the Unspeakable started.
"No," Melusine snapped. "I am not talking to you about how irresponsible this was. Favoritism and incompetence seem to be the only things you teach here."
She grabbed Bill and Charlie by the arms. The air around them began to twist and warp, smelling of ozone and ancient, deep-water magic.
"We’ll be seeing you again, Albus," Melusine said, her eyes flashing with a terrifying, ancient light. "Samhain is just around the corner, after all. It’s a traditional time for... homecomings."
With a sound like a whip cracking, the three of them vanished, leaving the Great Hall in a state of absolute chaos. Dumbledore stood in the center of the room, his face pale, staring at the spot where they had been.
At the Slytherin table, Bellatrix Black finally let out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding. "Did you see her arms?" she whispered to Lucius. "The runes... they weren't just tattoos. They were anchors. She’s siphoning something."
Lucius nodded, his eyes narrowed. "And she called them her brothers. Redheads, with that much power? They aren't Weasleys. Not any Weasleys I’ve ever heard of."
"She smiled at us," Regulus noted, a strange spark of hope in his chest. "She looked at the Gryffindors like they were dirt, but she smiled at us."
"The dragon's breath," Bellatrix murmured, repeating the phrase she had overheard. "I think the 'Light' just made a very, very big mistake."
In the front of the room, James Potter was yelling about how they should have been detained, and Lily was complaining about the lack of respect for authority, but for the first time in years, the Slytherins weren't listening. They were looking at the empty space in the air where a girl with blue-highlighted hair had just told the most powerful wizard in Britain to shut up.
The game had changed. And for once, the Snakes felt like they might finally have a hand worth playing.