The Grants Artefacts

14 the Room of Requirement

The Room of Requirement

Teaching was time-consuming. Equally, she had not been prepared for how quickly time would pass as she focused on her teaching. For a number of weeks, the dungeons had been quiet, so much so that the Slytherins moved back to their common room and Snape to his lodgings. Her own classroom was full of students and a growing menagerie of magical creatures (non-venomous), which often escaped. Leading to students playing, 'Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them' (so named after their course textbook) there was even a club. Severus hated the fact that the students seemed to enjoy spending time learning from her. He was so annoyed with her popularity that he'd gone through a period of blanking her. She had prodded and poked him, spoken to him about mundane rubbish and laughed at him until his resolve to despise her melted.

Of news about the Grants Artefacts, there was very little. Amber had sent some reading material regarding cursed objects and power groupings. Lucius wrote to say that the Americans had asked to meet him in January to discuss Gringotts. She continued to do her own research into how to destroy the Artefacts but everything she read suggested that she would not be strong enough. Every moment she had alone was spent training.

On the first day of the Christmas holidays Arun floated cross-legged in the room of requirement, her new training ground, surrounded by a ball of fire. Working magic without a wand required immense concentration and self-control. The benefit of a wand was that it tempered and focused magic, it bended the force to a will but it also reduced it. That's why the most powerful wands were also the most hard-won and the most difficult to control. Arun had her arms as pointers and her fingers to direct but she was likely to cause major damage if she wasn't careful. She moved her hands, like a tai chi master and the fire stopped spinning around her, protecting her, and it flowed like a serpent into the air. She moved it around the room and then directed it towards an empty suit of bewitched armour which was running around with a shield. The fire serpent crashed into him, melting him into a blob.

Arun bewitched a second suit, this time giving it the purpose to attack her. It charged, and she repelled quickly with a volley of curses. The suit dodged, lept into the air with its sword up. She froze it, then blasted it with a cutting curse that shattered it into a cloud of fine dust.

Somebody started to clap.

Arun spun round, "Sev!" she exclaimed.

"If you wanted to duel-" he attacked. She hardly had time to deflect him before a second flick of his wand sent her shooting across the room. She rolled, righted herself and cast an air shield. Severus watched her with his eyes narrowed. He started to mutter under his breath, she felt the shield breaking and in response, she shot a hot blast of fire across the room. Severus cut it in half and was about to attack again when Arun blasted him a second time, he stumbled, a third time and he was hanging in the air. He used his wand like a whip and she felt the skin rip across her arm. She dropped him and disappeared.

Severus picked himself up off the floor, brushed his hair from his face and cast around, "What kind of magic is this?" he hissed. "Reveal yourself."

Arun laughed, Severus spun and sent a volley of attacks which exploded around her and into her and in her surprise and eagerness to block she couldn't remain hidden. "Fight like the Death Eater you are, Sev!" Arun coaxed. "Don't hold back."

"Crucio," Snape roared.

Arun felt the torture curse smack into her like a train at speed. This was what she wanted to train against but Merlin's beard it was horrid. She was being ripped her apart like a thousand papercuts dipped in lemon juice. She collapsed to her knees. Her hands dug into the ground, but Snape didn't let up. She turned her head to him and saw his dark eyes shine, the wetness of his lips and the catch of eager breath in the back of his throat. She saw all the pain he kept bottled up pouring out of him into her and even though she was in the worst agony imaginable she forced herself to channel it. First into her fist, then into a ball in front of her. Severus' eagerness turned to horror as he saw what she was doing, and as his resolve weakened, her power grew. And soon she was floating above him holding a green ball of sparkling light above her, a ball of pain and anger and sorrow, and she chucked it. Not at Severus, she didn't want to kill him, but at the floor between them. The explosion was enormous. It gouged a crater into the floor and caved in the ceiling. Snape swore and immobilized rocks as they fell around him and Arun cast a protective bubble which made the masonry bounce off. When the dust settled they looked at each other in horror and ran from the room as fast as they could. As they ran they heard Filch, "what's' wrong Mrs Norris, what are those evil students up to now?"