Not Dead Yet

1991 June

There was something about Care of Magical Creatures that Alana felt tickled her fancy. Perhaps it was the flame-throwing blast-ended skrewts. Maybe it was the mocking, teeth-baring merpeople or even the vicious, grinning redcaps. She couldn't quite put her finger on the cause of her jubilance at seeing professor Silvanus Kettleburn. The reckless man had currently amassed at total fifty-four periods of probation whilst losing several limbs in the process. There was even a betting pool amongst the older years on how long it would be until he was bestowed his next probation period. He was a stout man with white hair sticking out in random directions and a curled moustache of such grandeur that it would have easily given Dumbledore's beard a run for its money. His left hand had been replaced by a wooden claw and a bandage wrapped around his left eye. Rumour said that he had lost the former to a hungry occupant of the Romanian dragon sanctuary.

"All right class! Today we will be looking at fire salamanders!" Professor Kettleburn had a delighted smile on his face as he giggled like a schoolgirl. He proceeded to herd the group of third and second year Ravenclaws and Gryffindors to a stack of crates on the outskirts of the forbidden forest. The class had been made conjoint at the man's request. Naturally, most were interested in what he expected the large group to do. Gryffindors and Ravenclaws were already an interesting mixture of curiosity and recklessness. Both of which were already overly abundant in the professor himself.

"Salamanders are a group of amphibians with slender bodies, blunt snouts and short limbs. They look like lizards and you will find tails on both larvae and a.d.u.l.ts of the species." The man bounced on the balls of his feet excitedly causing many to wonder if he had skipped his medication that morning. "They hibernate in winter in decaying logs with cold bodies and skin that can easily extinguish any fire. In the 1880s the species was hunted for their hides when there was an increase in the cost of dragonhide. The reason for this? Although they are small, they breed very, very quickly."

Alana marvelled at the man's extensive knowledge on the most obscure of creatures. He rarely opened his mouth to speak about anything but his precious creatures. The passion that rolled off him in waves was admirable, to say the least. If only he weren't so… She watched as he continued to prance about the crates with waving arms as though he were part of some strange occult summoning ritual. She saw Charlotte shudder as he passed by a fraction too close.

"Thump!" The sound of the professor's dragon-hide boots hitting the top of the crate was followed by scuttling that would have made the brawniest of wizards' skin crawl. Kettleburn leant over the charmed wooden crates and stroked them affectionately like an old woman stroking her pet cat. The gentleness on his features was more ominous than a black cat walking under a ladder indoors with an open umbrella in its mouth. Terrifying.

Leoen leaned over to nudge Alana and whispered, "He's finally lost it."

The girl glanced at him with ill-concealed amus.e.m.e.nt. "Did he ever have it to begin with?"

There was a click as the crate was opened with a wave of Kettleburn's wand. About a thousand writhing lizards were revealed to the apprehensive students. A few younger children gave squeals of disgust and one fainted at the sight. The salamanders were small things about the size of a human hand with orange and red colouring in various patterns. Their black, beady eyes glanced at the group with unnatural intelligence before they scattered. The professor merely cackled in delight before opening a dozen more crates and instructing the class to catch them. He briefly mentioned having warded the area beforehand so they wouldn't go too far.

"Ahhhh!" A blond Ravenclaw screamed as he ran around the area with a number of salamanders clinging to his robes. His screams ended abruptly as he ran straight into a rather robust tree. A trio of Gryffindors was attempting to cast spells at the quick amphibians but they avoided the hexes easily and jumped onto one of the girls before lighting up in flames.

"Oops. Did I forget to mention they are flammable?" The professor smiled angelically and twirled on his left foot atop a crate. He had already cast a physical shielding spell around him much like Charlotte and Lola who were covering each other and trying different methods of incapacitating the pests. Alana had swiftly scaled an oak tree and was watching the scene with a pair of red-headed twins.

"How do."

"You do,"

"Miss Raven?"

She blinked at the boys who appeared to be twins. Each had finished the sentence of the other with a perverse sort of glee glittering in their brown eyes. The witch's eyes turned suspicious of their own accord. Both wore the Gryffindor ties and were perched on the branch with identical, Cheshire grins. She could almost see the swishing tail and devil horns missing from the picture.

"Quite fine," She replied and shifted her weight to jump if need be.

"That's great," One of them swung an arm over her shoulder and pressed far too close to her person.

"Fantastic even," The second followed up quickly.

The sensation of something wet being pressed against her neck was all she needed to leap off the branch. The twins cackled at her swift exit like a pair of dying hyenas. She tossed a quick hex behind her back for good measure and heard two yelps as they fell off their seats. She crossed the field quickly with one hand rubbing her neck to feel what substance they'd put there. Her fingers came back sticky with a blue, viscous liquid that she sniffed sceptically. It smelt of maggots. A particularly unpleasant memory reared its ugly head in the back of her mind before she hacked it back with an imaginary 5-foot chainsaw.

A few salamanders scurried behind her and flung their bodies at her cloak only to hit an invisible barrier. The physical shielding spell was one of the few spells she had fully mastered casting with only intent and a wand. Most spells she got stuck at the second stage of casting. The first stage was intent, wand movement and incantation, the second was intent and wand movement, the third was intent with a wand and the fourth required only intent regardless of a wand's presence. A few fields of magic were restricted to certain stages like runes which were intrinsically the third stage upwards. But all of this was inconsequential for Alana at the moment as her amphibian following was increasing drastically with each step she took. Along with this came a creeping suspicion that the phenomenon was very much unnatural. She quickened her pace as a panicking Gryffindor with a similar crowd of admirers attacked the ward ferociously. It would have been amusing were she not currently running to avoid the flying, flaming bodies of salamanders.

The wards shuddered and she blinked in surprise as they crashed down. Physical barriers usually had a more severe backlash on the caster when they failed and she felt an inkling of pity for the professor. The memory of having Aquarius destroyed was still fresh in her mind and the experience was very similar. The pity died a quick death as her following quadrupled. Abandoning the class, she crossed the ward line and ran for her life.

"Professor Kettleburn! Your salamanders have gone insane!" The shout would likely be lost in the madness but she doubted the disoriented man could have helped her predicament in any case. She now had at least half the lizards scurrying after her and was forced to jog to keep the miscreants off her clothes. Wherever she ran, a thousand lizards would follow in a black and orange cloud of death and flailing limbs. Not even the twisty halls of Hogwarts halted them and the rotating staircases only had them jumping after her more energetically.

One hour later...

"Huff… Huff… No more… Damn creatures…" Alana complained as she slid down another bannister. She had never been so physically drained in her life. She would never live down the humiliation of being outdone by amphibians. Whatever those troublesome twins had stuck on her neck had been wiped off but the smell still clung to her clothes. As luck would have it, the cleaning spell wouldn't get it out and she had no inclination to run n.a.k.e.d through the halls. She vaulted the staircase and lamented not being able to use Pisces as her fitness levels were already unnaturally high for a witch. Suspicious teachers were not something she needed. She glared at the salamanders hatefully.

"Know this! Should you vanquish my spirit, the one to transmigrate into my body shall seek vengeance on my behalf. Ha! All wrongs against me shall be paid back tenfold! Run while you still have your legs!"

The bystanders to the strange phenomenon of the black-haired, gold-eyed witch crazily invoking the heavens marvelled at the conviction behind the words although their meaning was incomprehensible.

Suddenly, there was a giant slosh as a bucket of chicken blood was dumped from the ceiling. Alana halted abruptly and the entire corridor seemed to freeze over with dark premonition. Her wide, frightening eyes darted to the silent poltergeist floating above the doorway with an incriminating bucket in his hands. She smiled. The poltergeist, Peeves, shrieked in a way which would make most doubt his gender and fled the scene of a blood-soaked witch. The lizards all sat with their heads tilted quizzically at the loss of the scent they had been tracking. Alana laughed eerily and turned to her small foes. Her entire body was soaked with blood and the red liquid dripped from her hair but she seemed to not notice. The few students who witnessed the crazed glint in her eyes ran unashamedly back to their dorms in fear.

"Turnabout is fair play, my dears." She grinned a sickeningly sweet smile as she lifted her wand arm.

What followed was a massacre so graphic and diabolical that even the seventh years shiver when it is remembered. Water and ice pierced each lizard with inhuman precision bathing the corridor in bloodied ice. Those that were not killed were swiftly encased in ice cages with a theatrical aguamenti and glacius spell. Alana practically danced through the carnage with a grace that would have enraptured any witness of the scene were it not for the blood. Though, there were the odd students who found the blood to add to the chaotic beauty. She was having such a great time that she barely noticed the spectating Leoen who looked both appalled at the creativity of his friend and mildly impressed. The Slytherins were admittedly the least disturbed of the lot when the professor led his class to the scene. Not his wisest decision but he was happy to find out that not all of his pets had met a brutal end. When the last had perished in battle, Alana finally lowered her wand with one final mutter and flick to her uniform. The blood seeped out of the fabric slowly and she was grateful it was not magical or the spell would have had little effect.

"Well!" She clapped her hands merrily and resolved to change her clothes regardless of their clean appearance. "That was fun!"

With that, she turned and made her way back to the dorms with a skip in her step. She had a pair of twins to castrate. Such an industrious person was she. Elsewhere, two second-year students were regaled with the story of a blood-soaked witch wreaking havoc in the school. Many claimed it was a relative of the bloody baron. The two felt a shiver make its way down their spines for no apparent reason. Fred Weasley cast his brother a look only to find that George had already trained his curious orbs on him. Odd. Very odd indeed.

Edited 25.10.2019