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The Severed Souls by Magical Maeve

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Chapter Notes: A million apologies again. I have not abandoned this story and thank you to everyone who has sent encouraging emails.
Maeve’s hand on Neville’s shoulder woke him up. His eyes unglued themselves and he could see her concerned face waving a cup of something at him.

“You need to drink this, Neville. It’s a little poisonous in taste, but it will make that ache you are currently feeling go away.” Her smile was as healing as any brew and forced him into a sitting position, where he immediately realised that the worst of the pain had already gone. It had been slowly dissolving since the moment he had stepped into this haunted place, but then again, when he came to think of, it had been going even sooner. The moment that Lugh Lamfada had appeared before them, he had felt a wave of healing pass over him.

He didn’t trouble to sniff too hard at the cup, bracing himself against the promised bad taste. It slipped down his throat like an unwelcome invasion and settled heavily in his stomach, where he could feel it begin to spread.

“It’s vile,” he coughed, when the last dregs had left his mouth, “and there are bits of leaf in it.”

“Sorry about that; if you crush the Hellebore leaves completely they lose their power. Still, I bet you feel almost like your old self already “ and we really do need your old self.” That smile again, and Neville was more warmed than he had been since first entering the festering building.

He nodded his appreciation “What do you need me to do?”

“I’ve taken some of Harry’s blood and I have instructions for you to carry out. Harry is a little green about the gills; turns out he’s not so good with the sight of blood, especially his own blood when it’s leaving him via a needle. He’s having a lie down.”

For the first time since being bitten, Neville found he still had the ability to smile.

“Poor Harry.” He grinned at her. “He can take on the darkest wizard of all time, but not blood.”

“Let’s be charitable, Neville,” Maeve said, matching the width of his smile with her own. “Come on, if you are ready I’ll show you our makeshift laboratory.”

She gave him a hand to help him to his feet, but with her potion now fairly whizzing around him, he wasn’t in need of the aid. They moved quickly through the bleak corridors, matching each other in stride, until they reached the only room in the bunker that felt it had had its purpose returned to it. A cauldron bubbled, green mist wafting into the air, while along the wall a row of shelves contained jars and a few plants. Unnaturally bright light spilled out from the bare bulb above their heads, making everything very defined and visible.

On the largest table, swamped by its location, rested a small vial that contained a deep ruby liquid. Maeve left Neville to close the door and walked across, picking it up reverentially.

“The power to kill Nagini rests in this small amount of matter. It’s up to us to extract it, Neville “ up to you. There is a parchment there with a list of steps; I want you to follow them to the letter. All the equipment you need is in the cupboards, and you still have your wand?”

“I…” He patted his pocket and was surprised to find his wand safely tucked into it. “Yes, I do.”

“Good. You’ll need that for lighting fires and suchlike.” She glanced around her with a sigh. “I really do wish I could be here to do this with you.”

He walked up to her and felt as if something was required of him. Maeve was taken aback when her pupil opened his arms and gave her a hug. She returned the gesture warmly and Neville broke away, his face a flush of embarrassment.

“I should be back with Ron and Hermione before nightfall. Don’t expect to see Severus or Remus around, yet don’t be surprised if you do. Harry will have recovered soon enough. If you find yourself in need of company when you are not working, I’m sure he will be able to offer it. There is food in the room down the corridor, third on the right. I don’t need to tell you how important this is, do I?”

“No, you don’t. We have to kill Nagini and we probably only have one chance before she kills us.”

Maeve nodded and turned to go.

“Ermm…” Neville looked towards the cauldron. “What’s that?” It looked particularly pungent and powerful, but he wasn’t sure what it would have to do with extracting antidotes.

“Oh, that.” Maeve looked a little embarrassed. “That’s cabbage soup. There are so many growing wild at the back of the bunker and it’s Severus’ favourite. I thought I might as well make the most of the opportunity.”

Neville eyed the soup and then her, praying that the food she had mentioned did not include a previous batch of this green concoction.

“There’s a touch of parsley in it too,” she added, as if that made it even more appealing.

“Okay,” he said, with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. “I’ll see you later then.”

With little more to be said, and the odour of slowly perishing cabbages in her nostrils, Maeve let the room and its contents to Neville.




Hermione stared at the place where Neville had been and frowned heavily, her eyebrows forming a puzzled crevice above her eyes. Madam Pomfrey was nowhere in evidence and the Hospital Wing was all silence. She picked at the blankets, seeking signs if a struggle, and found none. The events that were currently sweeping over them had such an inevitability that she was not altogether surprised that something else unpredictable should have happened. Her first problem was to ascertain why Neville, who had seemed incapable of any action, had left his bed; her second was that she had no idea how to begin.

A quick search of the area revealed nothing; no conveniently dropped clue that would give her an indication. Brushing hair out of her eyes, she looked again at the bed and whispered a plea that he was still all right. It was now late afternoon and the sun was slowly disappearing beneath the gauze of night. Hermione knew she needed to leave before Madam Pomfrey came back and started asking awkward questions. As she hurried from the ward, she couldn’t help wondering exactly when the people they had formerly looked to for guidance had become a hindrance.

From some distant part of the sky peals of thunder rang out and she shivered, even though she was not cold. With feet that increased in pace by the second, she eventually found herself running in the direction of the common room. She needed Ron; they had to decide between themselves what to do about the Horcruxes now that Harry was “ but no, she couldn’t even think that thought with any clarity yet.

The thunder rumbled closer, bringing with it lightning that cracked against the castle walls with vicious intent. She shuddered as she passed a window that gave her a panoramic view of the storm currently battering Hogwarts. Wherever Neville was, she fervently hoped he was inside.

Having passed several parents leading away weeping children, she was beginning to wonder if there would be anyone left inside the school by the time dinner was served in the Great Hall. Something prodded at her mind; a vague need to look upon the one thing that had caused her the greatest wonder when she first arrived at Hogwarts. She changed direction and found herself standing before the huge doors that had given her such a thrill the first time she had walked through them. From nowhere came a vision of three small children, all in awe of their new surroundings. She had the deep longing to find a Time Turner and go back to those easy times; rediscover what it meant to live in a world where Voldemort was not lurking at every turn.

The loudest clap of thunder yet rent through the air, followed by a sound akin to that of a large landslide which shook the ground. She found herself gripping onto a pillar to stop herself from falling over The doors opened of their own accord, and she caught her breath.

The ceiling of the Great Hall did not reflect the sky: it was the sky. Hermione didn’t know what to look at first; the huge pile of rubble on the floor that was topped by a haze of dust, or the gaping hole that was now allowing rain to pour in and damp down the rising cloud of powdered masonry. Distant shouts of alarm reached her ears, but it was Ron that found her first. His face was white, made paler by the vivid colour of his hair, and he grabbed her shoulders, pulling her away.

“Bloody hell, Hermione, get out!” he was tugging at her hands. “That thing’s come down; the whole sodding castle could be next. We have to get out!”

“What’s the point, Ron?” she asked. Now that they were confronted with the fall of that which they had though inviolable, she felt a deepening sense of defeat. “The school is going to fall.”

“It’s just a bloody bad storm,” Ron insisted, agitation making him shrill. “They’ll fix it up…”

“It’s not a storm that has caused this. Can’t you feel it, Ron? Can’t you feel that darkness? It’s as if we are standing unprotected. I think the magic that keeps Hogwarts safe is failing.”

“Well if that’s the case there’s even more cause for us to get out, isn’t there?”

“You should listen to her, Hermione.”

They both turned to find Maeve standing there, three brooms in her hand and hair plastered to her face and neck. It appeared as if she had stepped out of the very rubble of the ceiling, and her features were powdered with its ashes.

“It’s not really a good night for riding; however, it’s the best way to get out of this place at the moment with the magic in such a state of contradiction. We need to be somewhere else, as quickly as possible.” She threw the brooms at them and instinct forced their hands out to catch them.

An ominous grumble came from another part of the castle and the ground shifted again, causing Hermione to stumble.

“What about the others?” she shouted above the rising tide of calamity.

“There will be an evacuation plan coming into play as we speak,” Maeve said, although they were not reassured.

“I’m not leaving without Ginny!” Ron looked adamant.

“I am not here for Ginny, just you two. This is how it has to be. Your sister is resourceful and will get herself to safety.”

“If we go, she will think we died,” Hermione pleaded. “After Harry’s… after Harry went, I don’t think we can do that to her.”

“Both of you, get on your brooms now, before the wickedness that is invading the school grows too strong for us to pass through.”

“I’m not leaving Ginny.” Ron’s mouth was now set in stubborn line.

“Not even for Harry?” Maeve looked at him and her eyes pierced his heart.

“Harry is dead!” This came from Hermione, who was growing hysterical.

“Harry is very much alive. We have to go to him and we have to go now. Would you have him fight the rest of this battle alone? Ginny will be safe; you have to trust me.”

A cracked peal tolled from the bell, and there followed a thunderous sound that could only have been the bell tower falling. Maeve straddled her broom, abandoning her side-saddle for the most secure means.

“If you want to get to Harry, you must come with me now.” She rose high, a blast of wind sending her reeling for a moment before she regained control. “NOW!”

Hermione was the first to follow, her need to see if Maeve was telling the truth overriding anything else. She drew level with her and tried to remain steady as they waited for Ron to make the only decision he could.

It took a few agonising moments before he finally came to his senses and kicked off the ground, narrowly missing a piece of falling stone as he did so. Screams were now riding the air as well as the thunder; the sound of running and doors being flung open only just heard beneath the louder sounds of destruction. They rose higher, breaching the gap where once had been the delight of the enchanted ceiling. There was nothing delightful about the sight that met their wind-blasted eyes. Everywhere, it seemed, parts of the building were falling, as if the magic that held it all together was slowly unravelling. None of them knew who was pulling the thread, but it had to be someone of great power.

Maeve looked at Ron’s face and understood the torment he was going through: she had no idea if Severus and Remus had accomplished their task, or if this was a direct result of their attempt to reclaim the sword. For all she knew, she could be leaving her husband behind in the shattered place that Hogwarts had become.

Their brooms fought against them, and only Ron appeared confident that he could remain seated. They pushed higher, seeking the safety that hid above the clouds. Maeve did her best not to look down, yet her eyes were drawn there by some awful need to see how bad the destruction was. The main body of the school still stood, with an open wound were the Great Hall was. The bell tower was gone, and the greenhouses had become a lightning-struck conflagration that burned with venom. Amongst the other smells of wet masonry and despair, the scents of the burning herbs were lost, but the cracking explosions of the glass and the deep sigh of the wood as it succumbed to the fire were heart-rending.

The Quidditch pitch was untouched, as was the Forbidden Forest, even the storm not daring to reach into its depths. As they tumbled through a gap in the whirling mass of cloud, Maeve’s last view was of another flash of lightning splitting the great gates and sending the winged boars crashing to the ground.

Above the dark mantle of cloud all was still. There remained a deep roaring in their ears, but it was an echo of what they had just heard. The darkness was concentrating itself on the school and leaving the higher ether alone. No one spoke; they followed as Maeve turned her broom and headed south. No words would form; no thoughts could make sense what had just happened. Hermione and Ron rode with their heads lowered, only flashing their eyes up to check that Maeve was still in sight. In ordinary circumstances, Hermione would have tried to offer Ron a few snippets of comfort, but she was in need of comfort herself, having seen Hogwarts so wounded.




It seemed they had been flying for days, their clothes plastered to them, their spirits buried deep in despair, but it had only been a few hours. Maeve eventually brought her broom to a halt and hovered in the air for a moment before beckoning them to dip down and land. The clearing they landed in smelled of mouldering bracken and damp earth. As they stepped off their brooms their feet sank into boggy ground and Ron managed a groan of displeasure.

“We are almost there,” Maeve said, wiping wet hair away from her face and eyes.

“Almost where?” Hermione asked, her voice dull with disbelief.

“It’s a secret place that seems to rapidly becoming a headquarters for the few people left who can fight what is growing about us.” She looked around anxiously, fearing that even the trees would betray them. “We will walk the rest of the way.”

Ron looked at his broom with disgust.

“You can leave it here, Ron. We won’t have any further need of brooms and I borrowed them from Hogwarts.”

“Don’t think they’ll be asking for them back anytime soon, do you?” he replied bitterly.

“If we walk, isn’t there a chance we could have been followed?” Hermione was ever practical, even now.

“We weren’t followed this far so I hardly think we will be picked up now. With the cover of the trees, we should be fine. I’d have stayed in the air, but we are too close to Cambridge and things are in such a state that I don’t want to risk anything.”

“Is what happened at Hogwarts happening anywhere else?” Ron looked suddenly worried, as if the thought that every magical place in the country might be suffering the same fate.

“I haven’t heard any news. No one expected what happened at Hogwarts. I was on my way to find you anyway when I was caught by a message from someone, which alerted me to the fact something terrible could be about to happen. There was no time to warn anyone at the school, and what must be must be.” She shrugged in such a way that Hermione’s anger rose.

“What must be must be?” she shrieked, to instant pleas to hush from both Maeve and Ron. “That is our school! It’s being completely destroyed and you are talking about it as if it had to happen.”

Maeve put a hand on Hermione’s shoulder and tried to placate her. “By now, there will be people from the Ministry all over the place. Warnings were sent to them and they will have their best Aurors up there trying to dispel that storm. Hogwarts will not be destroyed; there will be deeper magic protecting the core of the school. Come on, we have stood here long enough.” She flicked her wand at them and dried off their clothes, the best she could do to make their last leg of the journey more comfortable.




The cabbage soup was making Neville feel slightly nauseous. Its sickly steam was permeating every bit of the laboratory and he was sure it couldn’t be good for his own work. Still, Maeve had left it there so she must be happy that it was harmless; harmless unless you tried to eat it that is. He added some asphodel to the slowly simmering tincture of henbane and waited for the expected reaction; when the water turned slate blue he allowed three drops of Harry’s blood to fall into it and placed a damp cloth over the cauldron.

His forehead was moist with concentration and he wiped at it with his sleeve. Time had come to take a break. The little clock in the corner told him that it was almost midnight and he had been working on this all afternoon without setting foot beyond the laboratory. Harry had been completely absent, and Maeve was not yet back, which gave his stomach a quick tremor of worry. Surely it did not take that long to get back from Hogwarts?

The bunker was silent as he opened the door. It had taken just the short time he had been here for him to figure out that the painted lines along the floor were a means of navigation. The red led to the exits, the blue to the dormitories and the yellow, well, yellow had lead to the laboratory. If he followed the blue he would find Harry’s resting place and at least then he wouldn’t feel quite so alone.

The bunker trembled for a moment, a ripple of movement that ran through its walls. Neville glanced around him, holding his breath to better hear any distant sound. A voice reached him, loud, strident then silence. A door opened and was closed. Another voice spoke, lower than the first. He was about to run back to the laboratory and barricade himself in when he realised he recognised the second voice. It was Professor Lupin.

Following the sound, he found himself in the room that he had first occupied. On a chair he found Severus slumped, his robe torn and a large lump of matted hair falling across his eye. Remus was also sitting, his head propped up on his hands as he stared at the floor.

“Sir?” It was a question for both of them, but only Remus looked up.

“Neville, are you still up?” His voice was clogged up with something and his words were ragged.

“I was finishing of the potion for the night. I heard you come in.”

Severus raised his head and Neville winced at the gash that cut across his forehead. It had run blood into his hair and was the cause of the matting. Dark flakes of dried ruby cracked as his brow furrowed and a small, fresh well of blood rose to the surface.

“Where is Maeve?” he asked, more urgent than Remus.

“She hasn’t come back yet.” Neville now felt real worry. “What happened?”

Severus stood up, shaking slightly as he did so. “She’s there, Lupin. She didn’t get out.”

There was a weight of grief in his voice that made Neville feel numb.

“She will have got them out, Severus. She is not there. Maeve was ahead of us and would have missed the worst of it.” He pushed his own, dust-covered hair out of his eyes. “What is important is that we achieved our aim, and she will have done the same.”

Neville now noticed the tear in Remus trouser leg and the cuts across his knuckles. Something dire had happened, something at Hogwarts. He found he couldn’t ask.

“I’m going to look for her!” Severus moved towards the door, dragging his right leg slightly.

“Don’t be stupid, Severus.” Remus made to follow him. “You can’t go back out there. You have the sword and the ruby back together; it must be kept safe until we can destroy it.”

“I have to find my wife.”

“She would not want you to risk what you have achieved by running off on a wild goose chase after her.”

The watching boy trembled slightly. It looked as if they were about to come to blows over this, and the worry on Severus’ face was making Neville feel queasy.

“You think saving my wife is a wild goose chase, Lupin! Would you say the same thing about your own wife?” Anger fought with worry and won.

“Stay here, Severus. I will go and look for her.”

“You?”

“I’m less important that you are.” Neville flinched at this open admission from Remus. “I can scour the surrounding area and, if necessary, return to Hogwarts.”

The sound of the main door opening brought them all to their senses. Severus had his wand out and was hobbling as best he could towards the main door. “Hide the sword, Lupin!” he shouted as he made his way with Neville in pursuit, towards the main door.


The door closed before they got there, heaving itself shut against the black of the night. Maeve flicked on the light and they were soaked in a small pool of illumination that emphasised their tired, pale faces. Hermione and Ron looked about them in bemusement, while Maeve shook more dampness off her cloak. She leant against the wall for a moment to orientate herself, looking up only as the door to the hallway was wrenched open. Her eyes connected with Severus’ and then roamed about his wounds with increasing dismay.

“You were there?” she asked.

“I was.”

“You succeeded?”

“I did.”

She didn’t notice her first tear fall, or the subsequent ones. She did recognise that she hadn’t known she was so worried until her worries were dispelled.

“You are injured,” she spluttered through her relief.

“Nothing to concern ourselves with. You also succeeded.” He nodded towards Hermione and Ron, who were, for once, speechless.

“It was falling as we left,” she said. “The bell tower had gone, and the Great Hall was open to the elements. I think more must have fallen before you left.”

“We were in Dumbledore’s “ McGonagall’s “ office. The wall cracked from ground to roof. McGonagall was not there.” He moved towards her slowly, his leg causing him to bite down on the pain.

“Did you see anyone?”

“We were too quick. I think perhaps the Ministry people arrived as we Disapparated.”

He was standing in front of her now, fear for her safety replaced with release. His fingers reached up, their cracks filled with dust and dirt. She felt the rough edge of the remnants of Hogwarts as they traced the line of her cheek.

“We must contact the Ministry. We need to know who is safe and who is…”

Neville beckoned to Hermione and Ron, feeling suddenly intrusive and knowing that sooner or later husband and wife would kiss. He had a strong stomach, but he didn’t think he was up to that. He led them away, knowing they would want to see Harry and not listen to the conversation that was not for their ears.

“We will contact them tomorrow. I have things that need to be done now.” Severus had bent close to her, examining her eyelashes with great care. His studious attention roamed everywhere, as if he had thought never to see any part of her again.
“I need to clean your wounds and you need to shower. You are doing nothing in that state.”

“Nothing?”

She shook her head.

“Not even kiss you?”

Her mouth could not stop the smile. “I think I could allow that.”

It was a good thing that Neville had taken the others and left them to it, for they would have been embarrassed by the display of keen affection “ not that Maeve or Severus even realised they had gone.