Chapter 190: The Stilling Bell

 

Sirius worked on the burned arm with a diluted mandrake draught, and every time the liquid touched the charred edge of it the skin hissed and gave up a plume of white smoke that stank.

It went through Edward like an iron straight out of a forge. Cold sweat stood along his hairline and his jaw stayed locked, and he did not let any part of it reach his throat.

"They used Avada Kedavra inside sight of the school." Sirius kept his voice down, and his knuckles had gone white around the bottle. "And that bell is not some Knockturn Alley trinket. That is old alchemy, and it was supposed to be gone."

Edward looked up, and his pupils narrowed in the poor light. Edward said the name quietly, as though testing whether it fit. "A Stilling Bell."

"Something that had no business existing this century." Sirius set the bottle aside, and his face could have been wrung out. "There is fine work cut into the inside of it, and shaking it puts out a note at one exact pitch. It closes on the magic inside a man like a pair of pincers. A good one will leave a grown wizard no different from a Muggle inside ten seconds."

His fingertip came down hard on the table twice.

"That thing is scarcer than a Horntail's egg. Only the mouldy old families would have one sitting in a vault. The Restricted Section at Grimmauld Place has it written up, and even we never laid eyes on a real one. And they brought it out here to spend on a boy in a wood."

Something tightened under Edward's ribs, and the name came out before he had decided to say it. "The Burkes."

"First on the list, and not the only name on it." Sirius's gaze had gone to an edge. "The Burkes built themselves on trading dark antiques, and nobody knows what is at the bottom of their vaults. Caractacus has kept warm with what is left of the Death Eaters for years. There is not a soul in Knockturn Alley who thinks Borgin and Burkes is a furniture shop."

Edward saw the manor again as it had been when he stood in it. The collection behind its glass, arranged the way other families arrange portraits. Old Burke's eyes, half shut and giving away nothing. Then the whole shack jumped.

The door came in rather than open, and the sound of it went through the frame of the building until the beams groaned overhead. Splintered wood came through the gap like rain driven sideways, and both of them were on their feet with wands out before either had thought about standing.

Three figures in black hooded robes came through the wreck of the doorway without slowing. The hoods were down low and there was nothing under them but a pale line of chin apiece, and what came in with them was heavier than anything that had been out in the forest. There was no warning given and nothing said. Three spells left three wands together.

"Avada Kedavra!"

"Crucio!"

"Reducto!"

Green, dark red and a hard white braided into one net that closed off every direction a body might have gone.

"Move!"

Sirius got his left hand into Edward's chest and shoved him bodily aside, and his right arm came round in a short vicious arc. The heavy oak table beside them screamed as its grain unwound and rebuilt itself, swelling and folding until it stood between them as a shield the thickness of a door.

The killing curse went into the middle of it. The wood carbonised outward from the point where it landed, black lines running to the edges like frost across a window, and then the whole shield came apart with a crack that hurt to hear. Burning splinters went everywhere, trailing sparks.

The other two spells took the shield's edge and went past into the stone wall, and left two scorched craters the size of washbasins with the rubble still coming down out of them. Sirius was driven back three steps with the wind knocked flat out of him. This far from the school's old protections, they had stopped pretending to have limits.

Edward stumbled where he had been pushed, and the wound in his left arm tore and turned his vision black for a moment. He bit down on his tongue until he tasted rust, and the shock of it hauled him back upright. Under his skin the gold-red came up burning, as though something molten had started moving through him and had nowhere left to go.

"Incendio!"

The fire came off his wand like a hill opening. The heat bent everything out of shape ahead of it and the dust hanging in the room went up as it passed.

The one in front had clearly not expected anything of the sort from a boy bleeding through his sleeve. The pale chin under the hood jerked, and the wand came up fast.

"Glacius!"

The cold met the fire in the middle of the room and neither won cleanly. Scalding white vapour filled everything forward of them, but the sparks came through it in a spray and landed across the shadow's cloak and cuffs.

The scream started before the flame properly took. Then the cloak went up and swallowed half of him, and the smell that followed turned the stomach. The other two used it. The one on the left flicked his wand and the chains came out.

"Incarcerous!"

Silver links with runes crawling along them whipped at Edward's legs, and while they flew the one on the right brought the bronze out of his robes and snapped his wrist. The note went through the room and straight through bone.

Everything in Edward seized. The fire that had been running through him closed up as though a hand had shut around it, and the patterns under his skin went dim at a speed he could watch. That fused, easy sense of the element being part of him was cut away, and lifting his own wand became like lifting it through mud.

He threw himself sideways on nothing but temper. The chain went past his calf and wrapped the load-bearing pillar behind him instead, biting an inch into the wood and throwing chips across the floor.

Nothing large was going to work while the bell was ringing. He gave up on it and flicked his wand in short strokes instead, and what came off the tip was a spray of needles, each one thin as an ox hair and white at the point.

"Flame Needles!"

The three of them had to break apart to get out of the way, and the ring they had built around him lost its shape.

"Edward! Keep the fire on yourself and leave the bell to me!"

Sirius's shout came over the top of the spellfire. He had seen the shape of the night: while that thing kept ringing they would be ground down and finished here, and the only wall in the room that might hold a killing curse even briefly was the one Edward could make out of his own element.

"Understood!"

Edward set his teeth until the cords stood out in his neck and dragged up every scrap of magic the bell had not managed to pin. The tip of his wand came round slowly, as though something had thickened around it, and the shield built itself in front of him out of turning gold-red fire.

"Fire Shield!"

It was thinner than he could have made it a day ago and it still bent the light around itself. The next three curses came into it and broke apart into flares and scattering flame.

Sirius took the half-second it bought him. His eyes went to the one holding the bell and stayed there. The bell was clamped in the left fist while the right kept the wand up in guard, and the other two had already drifted into position to cover him, which made going at it directly roughly as easy as walking up a wall.

"Impedimenta!"

A wall of nothing dropped into the bell-holder's path mid-stride, and he went into it with a flat thud and stopped dead. Sirius did not look away from him as he shouted.

"Pull them off me! Three seconds is all I want!"

Edward's mouth moved into something that was not a smile. Edward set his feet under himself again. "Three seconds is more than enough."