Chapter 155: The First Crest

The border camp consisted of three canvas shelters inside a ring of weathered stones. Rain had softened the ground, and the surrounding pines shut out every distant light.

McGonagall checked the Portkey before allowing anyone to move. It still responded. The two-way mirror showed the silver Black star pulling toward the northeast, although its point trembled whenever Edward tilted the glass.

Dumbledore and the two investigators entered the forest. They carried no lanterns. One touched each boundary stone as they passed, leaving a blue mark that faded behind them.

Edward remained beneath the central shelter with McGonagall and Kreacher. He placed the Heart-Flame Crest on his left hand, attuned the bead before both witnesses, and kept his wand in his right. The white stitch faced the camp entrance.

"That object is a last measure," McGonagall said.

"Move, cover, shield."

"In that order."

For twenty minutes, nothing changed. Then the waymark jerked north.

Edward adjusted the mirror and recorded the movement. A moment later it pointed east, then back toward the camp. The motion was too abrupt to represent Sirius walking.

"Something is disturbing the path," he said.

McGonagall sent a silver cat into the trees with a warning. It vanished between two trunks and did not return.

The first curse arrived without sound. A violet streak crossed the boundary stones and struck the shelter pole. Canvas collapsed on one side.

McGonagall threw up a shield and drove Edward behind a stone stove. Kreacher snapped his fingers, folding the fallen canvas away from the Portkey. A second streak hit the professor's shield and scattered.

"Direction?" she asked.

Edward pointed toward a gap between two pines. He had seen no caster.

McGonagall transfigured a tent peg into a raven. It flew low through the gap and burst into a cloud of feathers when another curse found it. That gave her the angle. Her answering spell cut a branch above the hidden attacker.

A man in torn robes ran from cover. He wore no mask and carried a wand in each hand. McGonagall bound him before he reached the boundary. The moment the ropes closed, his body collapsed into dead leaves.

"Construct," she said. "The caster is elsewhere."

Another false attacker rose near the Portkey.

Edward moved first. He reached the stone stove, turned the white stitch toward the figure, and spoke the release phrase. The Crest formed its short barrier just as a yellow bolt struck. The spell dispersed. Edward dropped behind cover before the barrier faded.

McGonagall shattered the leaf figure with a Transfiguration spell. Kreacher crushed Edward's recognition bead at once, disabling the spent prism.

No third attack came.

Edward's hand shook after the danger passed. The glove had worked once, within the narrow condition tested. It had not revealed the caster or made the camp safe.

"Are you injured?" McGonagall asked.

"No."

"Then breathe before you write."

He did. The field entry would state that the barrier stopped an unidentified yellow spell from a temporary construct. It would not call the spell harmless, because they did not know what it was.

Branches broke beyond the boundary. McGonagall raised her wand.

Dumbledore emerged supporting Sirius. One investigator followed with blood on her sleeve; the other walked backward, guarding the trail.

Sirius was conscious. A cut crossed his forehead, and his left ankle would not bear weight, but he greeted Edward with an exhausted curse.

"What part of staying in Britain did you misunderstand?"

"The part where you missed two messages and marked my mirror."

"I marked it so Dumbledore could find me."

"You keyed it to the Black heir."

"I was being chased."

McGonagall ended the argument by sitting Sirius on a camp bed. Kreacher cleaned the cut while Dumbledore reported what they had found.

The second shelter had been abandoned minutes before the search party arrived. A blood trail led to a ravine where Sirius triggered a moving ward. The ward copied his shape and voice, then drove him away from the others. He used the family waymark before the false paths closed.

"Bertha?" Edward asked.

"A woman called for help beyond the ravine," Sirius said. "I saw Ministry-green cloth and Peter Pettigrew dragging someone between the trees."

Dumbledore placed a cracked pair of spectacles on the table. The initials B.J. were scratched inside one arm.

The investigators had preserved the trail. They had also found a ward closing behind Pettigrew. It shifted whenever anyone approached, which explained the unstable waymark and the attack on the camp.

"We can withdraw and request a larger force," McGonagall said.

"By then Bertha may be dead," Sirius replied.

No one disputed the risk. They disputed what could be done without giving the hidden enemy control of the ground.

Dumbledore proposed a narrow rescue. The Portkey would remain active at the camp. McGonagall and the injured investigator would guard it. Sirius would stay because of his ankle. Dumbledore and the other investigator would follow the preserved blood trail for no more than half an hour.

The Black waymark complicated the plan. Its pull had become the clearest sign of where the moving ward crossed the trail, but it responded only while Edward held the mirror.

"I can point from here," Edward said.

"Not once we pass the ravine," the investigator replied. "The ground blocks line of sight."

Sirius rejected the obvious answer before anyone voiced it.

Dumbledore studied the mirror. "Edward will not join the approach. We can use the mark to reach the ravine, copy its direction there, and send him back with Professor McGonagall."

They moved as a group to the ravine. Sirius remained at the camp under protest. McGonagall walked beside Edward, and Kreacher kept one hand on the back of his robes. Dumbledore led with the investigator.

The forest changed within a hundred paces. Pine gave way to twisted beech. Moss covered the ground so evenly that no footprints remained. The mirror's silver point steadied toward a low ridge.

At the ravine, Dumbledore drew the direction onto a blank compass. The needle refused to hold it. It spun and pointed at Edward instead.

"The waymark is bound to the family signature," he said. "A copy will not follow."

"Then we return," McGonagall said.

A woman's scream carried through the trees.

The investigator checked her watch. "Close. Less than five minutes."

Dumbledore made the decision. Edward could accompany them to the next defensible clearing, between McGonagall and Kreacher, with immediate retreat at the first sign of contact. No one would pursue beyond sight of the group.

They crossed the ravine together.

The waymark led them to a scrap of green fabric pinned beneath a stone. Nearby lay a Ministry badge dark with blood. B.J. was engraved on the back.

A voice murmured ahead. Another answered in a frightened, ingratiating tone that Edward recognized from the Shrieking Shack.

Peter Pettigrew was less than fifty paces away.

Dumbledore signalled silence and spread the group into a shallow line. Their purpose remained rescue, not capture. McGonagall kept Edward behind a fallen tree while the adults advanced.

Then the forest floor moved.

Dark roots rose between them like closing bars. Edward reached for McGonagall, but a wall of thorns drove into the gap. Kreacher pulled him backward before the branches closed.

When the roots settled, the adults were no longer visible.

The mirror's silver star pointed through the thorns, toward the place where Bertha had screamed.