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The Patronus



Crucio.”

“Aarrgh!” Lysander doubled over until his face pressed to the floor and he clutched at his torso with wildly splayed fingers, tears streaming from his eyes. His mind felt tangled in knots, nerve endings exploding against one another in a tangled weave of furiously zinging sensation. Red sparks struck his back, shaking his spine and sending the messages into his receptors. Then, the sparks stopped, the curse lifted, and he collapsed onto the floor in a liquidy heap, his innards buzzing still in the aftermath. He whimpered and clutched his knees to his chest.

“Who did you send your patronus to?” demanded Medusa, staring down her long nose at him. Her dark hair writhed with snakes that had nested in the matted knots of her curls over the years. They slithered in and out amongst the stands, hissing and waving their tongues as their eyes focused on Lysander.

He trembled, “I didn’t send a --”

Crucio!!” she shouted, and the sparks shot from her wand again, coursing through his body.

He wept openly, unable to contain himself anymore.

“Mother.” The basement door opened and a girl’s voice echoed down the stairwell, followed by gentle footsteps. The girl stopped just a few from the bottom, staring upon the scene of Lysander on the floor and her mother’s cruciatus curse striking him. “The caterwauling charms are going off in the wood.”

Medusa lowered her wand, releasing the spell, and Lysander fell to the floor again.

“Well then go and kill whoever trespasses,” snapped Medusa gruffly, “Can’t you see I’m busy here with your father, Astarte?”

The girl hesitated.

Lysander struggled to roll onto his back and he looked up the steps at Astarte, his eyes pleading with her.

“Don’t you look upon our daughter,” Medusa snarled, and with a flick of her wand she sent him rolling onto his stomach several feet away and stepped between them. She turned back to Astarte, who had shrunk back just a little. The snakes in her hair hissed loudly, coiling angrily as Medusa herself hissed in snakespek, angry, and all but flew up the stairs. “One day, girl, you will be the one to go out into the woods and ---” her voice faded as she stormed out of the house, shouting curses as she went.

Astarte stood on the stairs for a moment, quivering in the ringing silence that followed her mother’s disappearance.

“Astarte,” croaked Lysander from the floor below.

She inched down the stairs, her eyes tipping back up them in anticipation of the return of her mother, and then she ran across the basement floor to his side. His long blonde hair was dirty, matted from the years spent in the cellar. She knelt beside him, running her fingers over the welts on his skin where the cruciatus curse had struck him.

“She is cruel,” Astarte said.

Lysander gripped her hand. “I didn’t send a patronus,” he pleaded.

Astarte felt her throat tighten. “I did,” she whispered.

“You --? But -- why?”

“I thought they might come to rescue you,” she said thickly. “And me.”

Lysander clutched her hand.

“I hate it here,” she said. “You used to tell me that we would go, that we would go to London and escape her.”

Lysander stared up at her. “One day, we will.”

A tear fell from Astarte’s eyes. “I can’t stand it here. I’m almost seventeen. Soon I’ll be of age and I can leave without her putting the Trace on me. I can take you with me.”

“Yes, soon,” he agreed.

Through the open basement door they heard the sound of Medusa’s voice carry on the air - “Avada Kedavra!!!!” -- and Astarte leaned in, closing her eyes, imagining the muggles whose lives were probably just extinguished.

“Where did you send the patronus?” Lysander questioned.

Astarte whispered, “To the Lovegoods,” she replied. “Your mother, you said, right? So my grandmother?”

Lysander nodded.

He paused.

“Could you send another?” he asked.

“Another? To someone besides your family?”

Lysander stared seriously into her face, “I… my mother… she’s kind of known for her - um - unique beliefs… Could you send it to the Auror’s Offices in London? Specifically to Harry Potter? He was the chief, the last I knew… greatest wizard...”

“Potter,” she repeated.

Lysander nodded, “Yes… yes, to Harry Potter. Tell him… tell him I’m alive and a Gorgon imprisons us. Tell him to save me.” Upstairs, the door banged open and Astarte looked ‘round, terrified. Lysander hissed, “Go. Get away from me before she comes down here.”

Astarte leaped up and ran up the stairs two at a time, mentally repeating the name Potter, Potter, Potter.

Her mother had brought home the bodies of three muggles, whose blank stares made the skin of Astarte’s nape crawl with discomfort. The snakes in Medusa’s hair slithered from her, flicking their tails as they wrapped themselves around their dinner.


-*-*-*-*-*-



Astarte waited until her mother had gone to bed. The snakes filled the floors and it was a delicate procedure, stepping among their coiling bodies all around the house. She moved carefully, palms pressing into the wall and the oven and the radio to steady herself. She made it to the door and pulled her cloak from a stout peg, tugging the fabric over her shoulders and covering her head. She rushed into the woods, glancing back to be sure no lights came on behind her. She cast spells to silence the caterwauling charms as she ran, not wanting to awaken her mother, and soon found the old road that led into the village. Running along it, she came to the lake, a great many miles away from the cottage in the woods. She came to a stop at the end of a long pier, surrounded by the water, lit by the moon, and she stared up at the stars overhead and took long, shaking breaths until she’d gathered herself from her escape.

She thought of the possibility of a message getting to it’s destination.

Imagined getting away, her and her father, safe at last from the hatred of her mother.

Expecto Patronum!” she called out and from her wand burst forth a brilliantly glowing Magpie that shot through the air, it’s wings carrying it in loops around her. “Go to - to Potter, an Auror at the Ministry in London,” she said, “Tell him… tell him Lysander Scamander has sent you and he is alive but needs help, he’s imprisoned by a Gorgon. Go on… tell him.” She waved her wand, shooing the ghostly bird away and he twisted in the air, sweeping off across the water, glowing blue in his reflection, and disappeared into the night sky.

Astarte shivered, her eyes following the tiny glow dot until the magpie was gone completely, and then she turned and walked back through the woods.