Charmolypi

Chapter 79

Thea walked down the tunnel, and quickly unleashed her sword, ready to fight anything that would appear in front of her. She reached a stone wall with two entwined serpents with emerald eyes. She told them to open in Parsletongue. The serpents parted as the wall cracked open, the halves slid smoothly out of sight.

"Please just go back," James cried, knowing that his daughter was going to face something terrible.

Thea stepped in and found herself standing at the end of a dimly lit chamber. Towering stone pillars intertwined with more carved serpents rose to support a ceiling lost in the darkness, casting long, black shadows through the odd greenish gloom that filled the place.

She was more alert than ever, her sword ready, her eyes scanning the entire room looking for the young Weasley girl. She walked deeper into the Chamber and came face to face with a massive statue of Salazar Slytherin. At the foot of the statue, facedown, lay a small, black-robed figure with flaming red hair.

"Ginny!" Molly gasped in relief, but that relief quickly washed away when she remembered where her daughter was and the entire situation.

"She's going to be alright, Molly," Gideon tried to reassure his sister.

"Yeah, Thea's going to save her I don't doubt it," Fabian added, reassuring his sister with a smile.

Arthur smiled at the siblings, silently thanking the boys for helping and supporting their sister in ways that he would never be able to.

"Ginny!" she muttered as she sprinted to the unconscious girl. She turned her over, to find her face white as marble, and her body was cold as ice. The first thing she did was check for a pulse, which was difficult to find. "Shit! Come on, Ginny! Wake up!"

"My baby girl," Molly cried softly as the three men in her family held her. The kids saw the destress of their mother and joined the hug even if they weren't exactly sure why she was so sad that she was in tears.

"She won't wake," said a soft voice.

"That's the Heir of Slytherin?"

"I don't recognize the voice..."

"Could it have been someone older?"

"Or a teacher maybe? Just like Quirrell in first year?"

Without even thinking about it twice, and as fast as lightning, Thea stood protectively over Ginny's body, her sword pointed at the source of the voice. Her sword was pointing at a tall black-haired boy that was leaning against the nearest pillar, watching her intently.

"Hello, Tom," Thea said in a sultry way, with the tiniest smirk on her face. Tom smirked in response. "She's still alive," she informed the boy.

"Did she just flirt with him?" James asked in shock.

"Are you stupid, James?" Marlene asked, looking at an oblivious James.

"Charm is power, honey," Euphemia explained to her son.

"What does that mean?" he asked clearly confused by what the women were talking about.

"She means," Melania Black intervened, "that a woman's greatest power is her beauty and her charm. If she is able to use her charm and her beauty to her advantage, she could be able to bend any man to her will. Even if it were the Heir of Slytherin."

Regulus' fists were balled in his lap, hating that Thea, and other women, had to go through all of that in their communities. He knew firsthand, through his cousins and best friend, that women in their society were always at a point of disadvantage, especially when it came to the relationship they have with their spouses. It was very uncommon for purebloods to marry for love and not connections and maintaining the purity of the bloodline.