The Phoenix Prophecy

Chapter 17: Epilogue - Part 10

Monday — July 21^st

Harry:

“Don’t look at them!” Hermione screamed as the basilisks steadily rose up on their coils to look at us.

Instinctively, I turned my head to look the other way while pointing my wand in the general direction of the basilisks. I could hear a shape crackling noise as my spell collided with something. Whether it was the shield or the basilisks, I had no idea.

Standing sideways, I thrust my left hand out, away from the basilisks, for Hermione and Alec to grab a hold of, in the hope that direct physical contact between us would once again increase the power of our spells. They must have both understood what I had in mind as they quickly placed their left hands on top of mine.

Just like when our shoulders touched, I felt a dramatic increase in the energy flowing through my body. My whole body felt as if it were vibrating. The crackling and sizzling noises created by our combined spells raised the level of noise to an almost unbearable roar.

But this time, something different was happening. I felt as if my physical body was dissolving, and turning to liquid. When our left hands melted together, I almost dropped my wand in astonishment.

“Yikes, what in the bloody blazes of hell is going on here?” Hermione demanded shrilly as I just continued to stare at our arms, which were melting together in the same way that our hands did.

Before I could open my mouth to say anything, I felt a strange sensation wash over me. For a split second, I felt as if I was loosing my shape. An instant later, I realized that I was changing into something else. It was very much like the feeling I got when I changed into the stag, but yet, quite different. I looked down at my left hand, expecting to see some glob of melted goo. Instead, I saw a perfectly shaped hand attached to an arm that connected to my shoulder. The trouble was; this was most definitely not my hand. This hand was old, very old, with long boney fingers. Dark veins stood out vividly against the pale, thin skin covering the hand.

“Harry, look at the reflection on the shield,” Alec demanded, interrupting my preoccupation with the hand attached to my body.

As I looked up to see what Alec was talking about, I realized that Alec’s voice had come from inside of me. The sheer volume of noise being produced by our combined spells made it impossible to hear anything but the noise. As startling as hearing Alec’s voice in my head was, it was nothing in comparison to the shock that I received when I saw the image of an old wizard staring back at me.

“Hermione, where are you?” I shouted when I did not see any sign of her.

“I’m right here,” I heard her reply from inside my head.

Even though it seemed much longer, the entire process of being transfigured into a single being took two seconds, at the very most.

“Lookout!” Alec screamed, just as one of the basilisks struck at me—us?—from the left.

Twisting abruptly, I managed to move just enough so that the basilisk missed sinking its fangs into my leg by a fraction of an inch.

“That was close, too close!” Hermione’s voice yelped.

“You sure got that right,” I replied as I could have reached out and touched the back of the basilisk’s head as it passed us by.

“What do we do now?” Alec asked. “They have us surrounded.”

Hoping that the other basilisk was attempting to attack from the right side, I leapt in the direction the first basilisk had attacked from, while waving my wand in every direction behind me.

“What’s happened to us?” Hermione asked when we were close enough to the shield to see the reflection of an old wizard, and the reflections of the basilisks, which thankfully, were a fair distance behind us.

“I don’t know,” I replied as I divided my attention between the reflection of the old wizard and the two basilisks.

“Could this have something to do with the ancient wand that we all handled yesterday?” Alec asked, his voice trailing off as if he were lost in thought.

“It is either that, or it has something to do with this world,” Hermione replied.

“Maybe it is a combination of both,” I offered. “I think we must have come in physical contact with each other at least once yesterday, and nothing like this happened.”

“Harry, I think you are right,” Alec replied. “This world does seem to possess an incredible amount of power that we can tap into. Somehow, the knowledge we gained from the ancient wand is drawing on the vast amounts of energy supplied by this world”

“Yow, did either of you just see the same image I did?” Alec asked before I could reply.

“If you mean an image of a man-sized dragon, then I just visualized the same image that you did,” Hermione answered.

I was too stunned to answer as I had just witnessed an image of the old wizard transfiguring himself into a dragon of comparable size. I could have sworn that the old wizard had looked right at me and smiled just before he changed, and that the dragon had smiled at me as well. I was losing my mind; there was no doubt about it. If I tried to explain to Hermione and Alec what I had just visualized, they would know that I had lost my mind for sure.

“Harry, did you see anything?” Hermione asked.

“Here they come again!” Alec shouted just as I was about to answer Hermione.

Gretchen:

I had been so busy trying to calm the baby that I did not realize that Ron was not right behind me when Martha and I reached the edge of the stream. With all of the dust in the air, it was hard to see exactly what was going on near the cottage. It wasn’t until I heard Professor Dumbledore’s call to Madelyn for help that I looked around to see what Ron was doing. When I heard Walt ask Ron what had happened to him, I knew something dreadful had happened. My stomach leapt to the back of my throat as I jumped up and headed towards the spot where the others were standing. Madelyn had her back to me, her attention focused on something in front of her. When I reached Madelyn’s side and saw a large, blood soaked, wooden splinter sticking out of Ron’s thigh, I screamed and Ron fainted. My scream startled the baby, and she started screaming again.

“Ron, will be all right,” Madelyn said, looking up at me as I tried to get the baby to calm down once again. Fortunately, she was tired and went right back to sleep almost immediately.

Ron regained consciousness as soon as Madelyn started working on him. I’m sure it would have been easier on him if he had remained unconscious until after Madelyn had finished. The pain that was showing on his face was putting me through considerable agony. I could only imagine what Ron was going through.

“What happed to you,” I asked Ron, after Madelyn removed the wooden splinter and applied a makeshift pressure dressing to Ron’s wound.

“I’m not exactly sure. One of the beams in the ceiling must have shattered and I was unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Ron replied.

“Ron, Martha and I owe you more than words can express,” Walt said, after Ron started to relax a little. “You got Katie out unharmed. If she had still been with me when the ceiling finally cut loose, I’m not sure I would have been able to get us both out in time.”

“You don’t owe me anything. We all did what was necessary,” Ron replied and smiled up at me, which instantly brought tears to my eyes.

“Ron, where was the last place you saw Harry and Alec,” Professor Dumbledore asked when he walked up beside us, brushing the dust from his robes.

“They were headed into the forest just beyond the first bend in the path,” Ron replied and pointed in the direction we had come from not more than an hour ago.

When everyone looked in the direction Ron was pointing, a dark shadow passed over us accompanied by a shrill whooshing noise. A strong gust of wind immediately followed, which further stirred up the dust in the air.

Before anyone had a chance to question what had just happen, the dark shadow returned and settled to the ground, a mere twenty feet away. It wasn’t necessary for the dust to clear to realize what had just landed directly in front of us. It was one very large dragon staring directly at us.

Hermione:

The image that had flashed through my mind was so extremely vivid that it sent shivers up and down my spine. I knew that sharing this particular image at this exact moment must have had some meaning that was important to us. Harry was just about to answer me when the basilisks charged us for a second time.

Everything was happening so fast that I didn’t have time to think about what was taking place, and that was driving me crazy. I knew that if I could just take some time to think, I would be able to make some sense out of everything that had happened to us since Alec and I placed our left hands on top of Harry’s hand. We had gone through some kind of animagus change, that much was certain. The transformation was completely unexpected, especially the fact that we were now a single being with three minds, instead of three separate beings. The shock of seeing a reflection of an old wizard instead of seeing our own reflections had caught me totally off guard.

“Jump!” Harry’s voice screamed as the two basilisks struck at us from two different angles.

I felt as though I was in my cougar form as I pushed off hard with my rear legs. I was soaring through the air as the two basilisks buried their fangs in the exact spot we had been standing a moment before. I seemed to possess all the grace and agility of my cougar form as I twisted and turned in mid air, and then landed gracefully on my feet some twenty feet behind the basilisks.

My body felt slightly numb when I landed. Vaguely, I remembered looking at the basilisks as they passed beneath me. I may have made momentary eye contact with one of them, just long enough to cause the numbness I was feeling, but not long enough to cause petrifaction or death.

“My hands and feet are tingling,” Alec said as soon as I straightened up.

“Mine too,” Harry added.

“I think I may have glanced at one of the basilisks as they passed under us. Hopefully it will wear off quickly.”

“We are not going to be able to avoid them indefinitely,” Alec said, echoing my thoughts.

“We really need Professor Dumbledore. I can’t imagine why he hasn’t shown up yet,” Harry said as I watched the basilisks’ reflections moving in the shield.

“Surely Nicole and Ron have told the others by now,” Alec added.

“Something must have happened. Professor Dumbledore has never let us down in the past,” I said as the basilisks spotted the fact that we were behind them.

“The basilisks are getting ready to attack,” Alec said. “We have to come up with something, and soon.”

“The fact that all of us visualized the same image at the same time has to mean something. I just can’t figure out what the dragon symbolizes,” I said, trying hard to come up with some reason for the image showing up when it did.

“I know you are going to think I’m crazy,” Harry began. “The image I saw in my mind was one in which the old wizard changed into a dragon. On top of that, the old wizard seems vaguely familiar to me.”

“Watch out!” I screamed as one of the basilisks attacked from the left while the other remained on the opposite side of the shielded area.

I leaped into the air not a moment too soon. This time when I landed, we were mid way between the two basilisks and they attacked the instant I hit the ground. I knew that they were expecting me to leap into the air as they attacked the spot directly over my head. Fortunately, I had decided to dive for the shield, diagonally away from the attacking basilisks. Curling into a ball, I rolled over next to the shield and jumped to my feet all in one swift, smooth motion.

“That was too damn close!” Alec exclaimed.

“Harry, the reflection of the old wizard is vaguely familiar to me as well,” I said, thinking back to what Harry had said just before the basilisks attacked. “The more I think about it, the more certain I become that I have seen him before.”

“Gawain! It’s Gawain!” Harry screamed and the reflection of the old wizard suddenly came clearly into focus. It was definitely Gawain, but he looked different. Younger, but still quite old.

“You’re right. It is Gawain,” Alec added, the astonishment in his voice was unmistakable.

At that instant in time, a vision pasted through my mind that showed Gawain transfiguring into a dragon and taking flight. He had obtained the unobtainable. He had mastered the power and secrets of the dragons.

“Did you two just see what I saw?” Harry asked as soon as the vision vanished.

“Yes I did, but I can hardly believe it,” Alec replied.

“So did I,” I answered as my brain raced at the implications of what the image might mean.

“The basilisks are closing in on us,” Alec exclaimed.

“Picture the image of the dragon in your minds. Think of nothing but the dragon,” I demanded as the basilisks drew nearer and nearer. This time there was not going to be any way of escaping from them.