Lily Emberwick's Arc

Chapter 5 of 5

Lily met McGonagall at the edge of the forest before dawn. The castle rose behind them in the gray light, its spires still dark against the sky. McGonagall carried a small silver-framed mirror that showed no reflection, only shifting light in the shape of Lily's own magic. "It will pulse brighter as we near the altar," the professor said. "Whoever built the site tied it to the vial's signature. Yours brushed against it long enough to leave a trace." Lily took the mirror and slipped it into her sleeve. They started into the trees. The altar clearing looked wrong before Lily understood why. The stones had been dragged wider apart. A second flat slab now sat beside the first, its surface still damp. Fresh feathers lay in a ring around it, longer and paler than the ones from the crashed Thunderbird. Lily crouched at the edge and held the mirror flat in her palm. The light inside it pulled toward the new slab and steadied there, bright and cold. "They expanded it," she said. "For a second creature." McGonagall did not answer at once. She walked the perimeter, counting the feathers. Lily found the mark behind the second slab. A dark pool had eaten into the stone and the packed earth around it, the edges cracked white where the residue had burned the ground. Something large had been laid there and then lifted away. The shape was wrong for a Thunderbird chick and wrong for a full-grown one. She measured it with her hands and felt the size settle in her chest. "This wasn't done last night," she said. "The burn is old. Days, maybe a week." McGonagall knelt beside her and touched the cracked rim. "Before the crash." Lily understood then what the mirror had been trying to show her. The Thunderbird she had found in the forest was not the first. Someone had taken another creature before it, drained it here, and moved on. The crashed bird had been the second attempt, and the vial in her pocket that first afternoon had been meant to carry more. The rival watching her stillness practice was not preparing for one theft. They were building a collection. She stood up slowly and looked back through the trees toward the hospital wing, where the injured Thunderbird still lay with its broken wing bound. "We have to move it," Lily said. "Tonight. Before they come back for the one they didn't finish." McGonagall folded a feather into a cloth and put it away. "The hospital wing is warded. Moving the creature will hurt it." "Leaving it will kill it." The professor looked at her for a long moment, then nodded once. Lily closed her hand around the mirror. The light inside it was still pulling, steady, toward whatever had been carried out of the clearing and was not yet done being used.