Harry Potter: The Golden Viper

0593 Death (LARGE-CHAPTER)

"Dead? Just like that?" Harry asked as his eyes widened with bewilderment behind his glasses. His seemed to stand on end with shock. "But why?"

In fact, they could figure it out themselves without Dobby's answer. The house-elf lying still and silent on the rough wooden table looked very old, its wrinkled skin like old parchment looked far more severe than Kreacher from Sirius' house. Moreover, the length of the white fuzz covering its body was the most exaggerated Harry had ever seen on a house-elf.

"Shouldn't we—" Hermione had forgotten entirely about having Freodom learn from Dobby at this somber moment. Her voice was unusually faint and airy, trailing off uncertainly. One could imagine that facing this sudden and grim situation, she was also at a bit of a loss.

"Shouldn't we call Professor Watson over?"

In her confusion and distress, the first-person Hermione's racing thoughts turned to was Professor Watson. After all, she had rescued Reega and Freodom together with the professor before. 

However, Harry and Ron were both equally unsure how to handle the current situation. They hesitated, exchanging uncertain glances, wondering silently who exactly should be in charge of handling a house-elf's passing.

'Did such matters fall under the jurisdiction of the headmaster? The heads of houses?' The three felt far out of their depth.

But then, something utterly surprising happened, jolting them out of their contemplation.

Reega, Dobby and Freodom beside them, and even poor Winky, who had been lost in the misery of being kicked out, abruptly stopped crying at this moment. They slowly got to their feet and walked towards their fallen elf. The normally frantically busy house-elves bustling in every corner of the vast kitchen also paused in perfect unison, abandoning their work without hesitation and rushing to surround their deceased companion on all sides.

No one had commanded them, and yet the house-elves showed a high degree of silent coordination and order, as if guided by an unseen force. They solemnly surrounded the four sides of the table, staring down at the lifeless elf with deep respect and admiration shining in their eyes.

"Oh, they are—" Ron said softly witnessing the sudden shift to the solemn atmosphere. "They must be mourning it. I'm really surprised. I thought they wouldn't care about such things!"

"This undoubtedly shows—" The warm light in Hermione's brown eyes solidified with conviction. "They are no different from us in their hearts and feel the same sadness at the departure of their companions."

Hermione parted her lips, clearly about to say something more, to talk about the depths of house-elf emotions and the injustice of their plight, but at that precise moment, the house-elves began to sing.

Just like the dirges played at a wizard's funeral, the mournful tune hummed by the house-elves in perfect unison was saturated with a sense of sadness. Moreover, the melody was hauntingly beautiful and ancient bearing no resemblance to the music circulating in the magical or Muggle worlds today.

"This is their tradition, right?" Ron said in hushed surprise. "Look, Dobby and Winky can sing it too, even Freodom... This is probably like how house-elves are born knowing how to work, with the knowledge already deep in their bones."

Hermione shot Ron a glare motioning sharply with her fingers for him to kindly shut his insensitive mouth.

To be honest, the solemnity and beauty of the scene was quite amazing, if somewhat confusing in its strangeness. The sleeping people of the castle above certainly couldn't imagine that while they dreamed, a house-elf funeral of considerable scale was taking place far below their feet in the Hogwarts kitchen.

Harry remembered vividly how in his second year, when Nearly Headless Nick had invited the three of them to attend his 500th Deathday party. To be frank, that had been an exceptionally awful experience, the food was rotten and crawling, the atmosphere was oppressively melancholy, and the attendants were all ghosts.Nôv(el)B\\jnn

About two minutes later, the dirge finally stopped and the house-elves bowed in unison to their deceased companion.

"This is the highest honor for a house-elf, sir, miss—" Dobby finally spoke and his squeaky voice was unusually heavy with solemnity as the tense atmosphere faded slightly. He turned his head and explained softly to them. "Only those house-elves who have worked diligently for wizards all their lives can receive this honor after their death—"

Dobby looked down, his green eyes dimming slightly with a shadow of sadness. He mumbled something quietly, the words were unclear, and he didn't speak further.

Harry understood that Dobby was probably feeling sad for himself. For an unconventional elf like him who dared to demand wages and vacations, such honors were surely unthinkable. He definitely couldn't be considered acceptably diligent or dutiful by the standards of his companions.

Hermione showed dissatisfaction at Dobby's words.

"What happens next?" Ron asked nervously, glancing sideways at Hermione. His voice dropped to a cautious whisper. "You certainly won't bury it here in the kitchen, will you?"

'If the house-elves really did that', Ron shuddered violently in disgust at the thought. He couldn't bear to imagine that the delicious, comforting meals he looked forward to every day were prepared just few feet from the graveyard of house-elves. His stomach churned again at the notion.

"Oh no, sir--" Dobby assured him, shaking his head vigorously. "We house-elves do not bury our dead as wizards do. We usually, oh, they've arrived--"

The two elves closest to the long table bent and lifted their deceased companion off the table. Then, with the same coordination as before, the remaining elves parted to create a path for the two elves. Harry and the others also nimbly retreated to the side of the stove, trying not to disturb the elves'.

Under the gaze of Harry and his two friends, these two elves carried the body to the large fireplace where they had just been talking.

"Oh—" Hermione said frowning with concern. "If you are going to cremate the poor thing, surely using the fireplace is a bit disrespectful? You should take the body properly to the grounds above and notify the staff. Professor Dumbledore, Professor Watson, or Professor McGonagall, they are the headmaster and deputy headmistresses of Hogwarts. There should be at least one of them present... Ah!"

Hermione's increasingly persuasive words were cut off by her own scream of horror, her eyes turned wide as she stumbled back. As for the two boys, Ron was so deeply shocked and frightened by what happened next that he nearly jumped onto the fireplace.

Harry's lightning reflexes had him drawing his wand in a flash, pointing it with shaking fingers at the two elves, his face was rapidly draining of color to a sickly white, and his eyes raged with fury and disbelief.

Harry had originally thought it unthinkable enough for the elves to cremate their deceased companion in the fireplace as if it were little more than rubbish to be disposed of. But what happened next defied his wildest, most morbid imagination.

Completely without warning, one of the elves bearing the body reached out with its finger and snapped it sharply. A blinding silver flash illuminated the still, wrinkled face of the dead house-elf for the fraction of a second.

Gurgle, thud.

In the next instant, the lifeless head of the house-elf tumbled to the hard ground, rolling like a child's toy before coming to rest at Freodom's feet. Blood oozed sluggishly from the severed neck forming a puddle on the old flagstones.

Ignoring the gruesomely severed head, the two-elf continued as if nothing had happened. Just as Harry and the others had first guessed, they tossed the headless corpse abruptly into the fireplace.

"WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING?!" Harry shouted after coming to his senses from the shock and his voice cracked with fury, his knuckles turned white around his wand as he waved it at those two elves. "Why in Merlin's name would you— how could you desecrate the body like that?!"

Harry kept his wand pointed firmly at the elf who had so brutally dismembered its deceased kin, determined to demand a clear explanation for their actions. However, Dobby quickly interrupted his interrogation, tugging urgently at the hem of Harry's robes with his fingers.

"Sir!" Dobby squeaked as he glanced between Harry and the object of his rage. He made a frantic shushing gesture to Harry to lower his wand. "You must understand, this is also a tradition of house-elves, sir. Only house-elves who have who have worked diligently and loyally served wizards can receive this sacred honor after death."

Harry's face, already pale, flushed a deep red as the implications of Dobby's matter-of-fact explanation crashed over him like a tsunami of icy water.

This so-called custom was simply absurd to the extreme!

Perhaps it was a coincidence, but Reega and Freodom stood close together amidst the chaos. Freodom seemed to be stunned by the head at her feet, staring at it blankly, and the light in her eyes was flashing continuously.

Strangely, Reega was completely ignoring the severed head and spreading pool of blood, instead she gazed intently at Freodom with an almost encouraging air.

Without anyone teaching her, Freodom slowly bent down and picked up the head tremblingly, which was still gushing blood.

"Freodom, no!" Hermione cried out in alarm. "Put that down this instant! Throw it away... I mean, drop it immediately!"

To Hermione's shock, for the first time since her birth, Freodom directly disobeyed a command from her. She stared at the head she was holding with eyes full of reverence.

"I'll lead the way for you—" Reega said softly. Then, it gave a warning look to its fellow elves around it and pushed them away from in front of Freodom.

"This too is an honor, Miss Granger," Dobby piped up nervously, clearly anxious to stop Hermione's building outrage and explain. "A newborn elf like Freodom finds it hard to resist this kind of honor, Miss Granger—"

"Carting around a bloody head is an HONOR?" Ron grumbled in disbelief. "Merlin's beard, what is WRONG with you all? Have you all gone completely mental?"

Ron's horrified exclamation perfectly echoed Harry and Hermione's own thoughts, especially Hermione's. The unthinkable events unfolding before their disbelieving eyes made Hermione realize with increasing dismay that despite her tireless efforts to understand and advocate for house-elves, she seemed to know nothing about them and had overlooked the difficulty of changing their ways.

"I want to see for myself—" Harry gritted out through clenched teeth. His voice was still rough with residual anger. Adjusting his grip on his wand, he took the lead, determined to get to the bottom of this no matter how shocking or stomach-turning it might be.

Under the stares of the remaining elves, Reega led Freodom to a dark, secluded corner of the kitchen, far from the heat and bustle of food preparation, to where a massive unused stove stood. The stove was pitch-black inside, without a single spark, and even cobwebs filled its opening.

For house-elves, the size and location of this stove was just right. Reega lifted her leg and stepped in without bending over, while Freodom followed suit without much hesitation, carefully holding the head as he went in.

"What in Merlin's name is going on?" Ron asked, turning helplessly to Hermione. He looked as overwhelmed and confused as Harry felt, struggling to make sense of the events the elves' actions had sparked tonight. "They butcher their own dead, chop the heads clean off just to, what? Burn the bodies separately like rubbish? Why?"

"You misunderstand, sir," Dobby told Ron as his shrill voice trembled with excitement born from the yearning in his soul. "The heads won't be burned like the rest, oh no! They will be preserved permanently, just as they are—"

"Preserved permanently?" Harry repeated slowly his eyes widening behind his lenses. He turned to exchange a glance with Hermione and the implication was written clearly across his face.

"I'm going in," Hermione said with determination. She met the boys' worried gazes without flinching. "I have to see through this…"

Her answer came as no surprise to Harry and Ron.

"I knew it—" Ron muttered under his breath, looking less than thrilled by this development as he eyed the pitch-black mouth of the stove uneasily. It stared before them like the entrance to an unknown tomb, and was not much larger than a Kennel's door.

Hermione had already sprung into action, she put out her black outer robes and tossed them aside, and rolled up the sleeves of her shirt. Dropping to her hands and knees, she took a deep breath and determinedly crawled into the stove after Freodom.

Harry didn't hesitate to follow her lead either. Pulling out his wand, he silently cast a wordless Lumos. A bright ball of bluish-white wandlight blossomed from the tip, illuminating the cramped tunnel before him. Carefully holding the lit wand between his teeth so that both of his hands were free, he scrambled nimbly into the claustrophobic passageway.

"You don't reckon there will be any hidden dangers lurking in there, do you?" Ron hissed urgently to Dobby worrying for his friends as he watched Harry vanish after Hermione.

Dobby blinked up at him with a weird expression, but before he could answer, Ron muttered 'never mind' and took the plunge himself, folding his body practically in half to fit through the tiny opening.

Unlike Dobby, the rest of the elves made no move to follow. They gathered silently around the stove's entrance for a long moment, watching intently, before gradually dispersing one by one to return to their endless chores.

For them, the mournful funeral rites had concluded, the time to properly honor their fallen companion come to a dignified close. Now it was time to return to their duties to perfectly serve the wizards and witches sleeping peacefully above their heads.

Clang! Bang! Sizzle!

The bustle and noise of the massive kitchen at night was, if anything, even more frantic than during the long daylight hours. While house-elves were magical creatures who required far less rest than humans, they couldn't go entirely without sleep. To feed the countless hungry mouths in the castle, the elves had long ago divided into two shifts to ensure hot food was always ready.

Half the elves slept in batches from midnight until two-thirty in the morning, across the long tables. The other half then rotated out, stealing what rest they could from two-thirty until five o'clock, before most cooking began for the day.

The flames heating the stoves never ceased. The night shift crew scurried to and fro with each elf operating two or more of the massive appliances simultaneously to ensure the breakfast tables in the Great Hall above overflowed with a sumptuous range of choices to tempt even the pickiest young witch or wizard.

Thus, it was that when an ashen-faced Reega returned with an incredibly alarmed Bryan Watson, the swarming elves instantly fell into utter pandemonium at the sight. They frantically woke up their companions sleeping on the four long tables and then swarmed in front of Bryan.

"How can we assist you, Professor Watson, sir!" Many elves said this, while a solemn-faced Bryan waved his hand, signaling the elves to make way.

"Professor Watson, sir, this way, quickly—" Reega called over her shoulder. She wasted no time in leading the way, running rapidly past the four long tables.

Bryan followed at once until he arrived at the mouth of the stove into which Harry and the others had disappeared few minutes ago. Dropping to one knee, he leaned forward slightly to closely examine it.

"Tell me what happened as simply and clearly as possible, Reega--" Bryan said in a deep voice.

Back in the office, upon hearing the three little ones were in danger, Bryan immediately ordered Reega to take him to the scene without having a chance to ask what exactly happened.

While listening to Reega's frantic narration, Bryan squatted down and narrowed his eyes to observe the stove.

Obviously, this stove was not so simple. The deep stove opening far exceeded that of a normal one, and the opening itself connected to a space magically expanded many times over the long centuries.

Without waiting for Reega to finish her stumbling narration, Bryan, who had carefully studied it for a while, stood up and drew out his wand.

Accompanied by complex and swift spellcasting movements, the space encompassed by the dark stove opening began to distort, as if an invisible giant hand was stirring a calm water surface. As the distortion intensified, the stove opening rapidly expanded like a balloon into a space where an adult could pass through normally.

"Keep talking as we walk--" Bryan dropped this sentence and took the lead in stepping into the black hole.

Bryan walked quickly, but the speed at which his body moved was far faster than his footsteps. The extremely compressed space made Bryan feel as if he was experiencing shrinking earth with every step, and space whistled past his ears.

It was a curious sensation; one he had felt only a few times before in all his long years. The space anchoring the hidden passageway had very clearly been heavily modified, reinforced by powerful magic that compressed and expanded the distance in a way that bore resemblance to the wizarding world's standard Undetectable Extension Charm.

Otherwise, even after traversing across Hogwarts, one wouldn't find such a long corridor.

As soon as he entered this dark corridor, the cold air pressing in from all sides made even the magically powerful Bryan involuntarily shiver, feeling as if he had walked into a cold storage. As his gaze swept the surroundings, he also understood why Reega hadn't directly apparated him here.

Hogwarts' castle covered an area with powerful anti-apparition magic, making apparition impossible. The corridor before him was even more thorough in this regard. Hidden in the void yet connected to the environment, the powerful and ancient magic not only prohibited wizards from apparating but also probably banned house-elves' means of teleportation. Bryan even suspected that Fawkes' abilities wouldn't work here either.

"Let's go--" Bryan tossed a luminous orb into the air, glanced at Reega who followed him in, and took the lead in striding forward.

To be honest, Bryan had never seen such a terrifying place in Hogwarts.

The four walls of the spacious corridor were all dark black. On the hard-stone walls on both sides, a wooden shelf was nailed at intervals, each holding a house-elf's skull. Some of these elf skulls had existed here for hundreds or even thousands of years. Even though the low temperature here was conducive to preservation, these skulls had shriveled to near mummies!

Below each wooden shelf, deep brown stains extended from the stone wall to the ground and the traces of blood had flowed down from when the skulls were first placed here. The stench of decay permeating the air reminded Bryan of the underground world of Knockturn Alley.

At a glance, there were endless humble, smiling skulls. Bryan looked for a while, then averted his gaze and sighed softly.

Both for these pitiful house-elves and for Harry, Hermione, and Ron.

One could imagine that the three of them must have been frightened enough by the sight before them. As young wizards, the most sensible thing to do now was to quickly get away, but these three stubborn little ones insisted on getting to the bottom of it.

Since graduating, Bryan had run through many ruins, including cruel mass graves and seas of blood. The scene before him didn't give him the same feeling as the path he saw underground in Azkaban, made with house-elf palms as steps and skulls as handrails, nor the inferi-infested lake Voldemort created in a secret seaside cave. Soon, he put these skulls behind him and hurried on.

Drip, drip.

Twenty minutes later, Bryan had reached the deepest part of this long corridor. The house-elf skull displayed on the right stone wall was still dripping blood to the ground, and there were no more skulls on the shelves ahead.

"It's just ahead, Mr. Watson--" Reega said in a low voice, enduring the urgency in her heart.

After another ten minutes or so of hurrying through the corridor filled with cold, ripples gradually began to appear in the dead still air. A cold wind blew from ahead, and the further they went, the stronger the wind became, until it blew Bryan's gray hair.

Finally, half an hour after entering the corridor, a stone wall emitting a faint blue light, like an icy surface, blocked Bryan's path.

*******************************
For More /FicFrenzy