Set Fire to Rain

“Erecto!” I shouted, pointing my wand at a board in front of me. The bored when erect, blocking the curse from me as I ran around a corner through the maze. We were practicing dueling in defense against the dark arts class and I was having a blast. I was good at stuff like this, running through a maze using spells to defeat my opponent. Of course I would be good at this, I was trained for this. But I did have to restrain myself- here I could not mortally hurt someone. And holding back was hard.

I heard footsteps behind me and turned to see Blaise come wheeling around a corner, smiling at me as he ran towards me. It was Slytherin’s versus Ravenclaw, and needless to say we were down in numbers. Ravenclaw was made up of all the smart kids, and they knew spells that were tactful. Most of the Syltherin’s only knew spells that could harm- not fatally- and that didn’t do much use when you had to use your surroundings.

A Ravenclaw came wheeling around a corner, running the opposite way of us. A giant spider came on harry eight legs, turning and looking at us. I raised my wand but the creature twitched and then changed, shifting Blaise froze next to me as the creature finally stopped on a figure, a floating distorted body, hooded and cloaked in ripped, black and bloody cloth. I thanked Merlin that the bogart fed off of Blaise’s fear first, and not my own.
Pointing my wand I yelled, “Expecto Patronum!” Silver shot out of my wand and a bellowing Dragon formed in front of us, beautiful and pure. It bellowed and charged the bogart/ dementor with a blast of its wings. Blaise looked at me incredulously and I smiled big before grabbing him and running.

“How the bloody hell did you do that?” he yelled as we dove out the way of a stunning spell. I landed with a loud grumbled and rolled behind the maze wall. I peered around the corner and saw Draco battling it out with a Ravenclaw. I glared at him but saw another blue robe coming up behind him. Without even thinking about it I pointed my wand and yelled, “Stupify!”
The enemy fell and Draco turned after defeating his opponent looking right at me. We both stared at each other, still mad but there was an understanding in his eyes that I had just protected his back, and even though I hated him at the moment, I would never let someone hurt him. Ever. I didn’t care who it was.

Draco jogged up to us and speaking more to Blaise than me said, “We’re the only three left. There’s four Ravenclaws left, I think we can take them. There’s also giant spiders, a bogart, and a sphinx running around here. Why Snape would put a blood sphinx in, I have no idea. Dangerous, those are.”
“Okay well let’s stay together, we can watch each others backs.”
“Fifteen minutes,” Snapes bored voice echoed over the maze. We all exchanged glances and ran.

We ran for a couple turns, slowly and cautiously when I heard raised voices. We paused and I glanced to the side of me. The raised voices were on the other side of the wall, i exchanged glances with my two partners and Draco raised his wall, yelling, “Bombarda maximo!” The wall exploded, sending up pieces of wood everywhere. Simultaneously all three of us held up our wands and shielded ourselves from the onslaught of debris.

Draco had knocked over two ravenclaws with his blasting curse and acted on command before they could try and get up Draco froze them where they stood. If I wasn’t mad at him and we were actually speaking, I would have told him that he did a good job. Instead, I took a sudden step backwards, pointing forwards. The source of the argument between the two hufflepuffs.

In front of us stood a great creature with the haunches of a tan and mighty lion, and on both shoulder blades larger wings jutted out, white and shining like the wings of an angel would. The face was that of a beautiful woman, with catlike eyes and raven hair. She would be beautiful if she did not have so much cruelty in her face, and if I did not know that she was the great sphinx.
“Why hello there,” she called, voice quite alluring. I clutched my wand desperately in my hand.
“To bad you ruined your friends here riddle.” She sounded extremely please by this. “Now I must eat them.”
“No!” I said quickly just as she rose from her lioness haunches. “I will answer both their riddle and my own, on the condition that no one is hurt but me if I fail to answer.”
The sphinx seemed to contemplate this, purring and fluttering her wings in thought. Draco looked at me in horror, and opened his mouth to say something but I silenced him with a single look.
“You will answer four riddles, one for yourself, each of your companions, and for the lives of these two.”
“Deal.”

She purred. “I shall enjoy destroying you. There are two sisters: One gives birth to the other, and she in return gives birth to the first.”
I thought about everything I knew about a sphinx. We had not covered them much in ancient runes, because there was only so much history on them in runes. But I did remember that she came up in Egyptian and Greek mythology, trying to figure out which she was, was the difficult part. I had to go with thinking the most history was on the sphinx that guarded Thebes, so my best guess what that it had something to do with Greece.
Sisters… they would not be literally sisters. It would be a symbol for something, maybe like the moon and the sun, but the son was not feminine. And then it hit me. The word for night and day in Greek were both feminine, this was one of the riddles she so seldom asked, written in the temple of Thebes.

“Night and Day.”
The sphinx looked taken aback and snarled, clearly not happy with my correct answer.
“Cut me I bleed red as my flesh but my heart is made of stone, pray tell me, what am I?”
Easy. “A cherry.”
“I have a head but no arms, I have a tail but no legs, I am not alive but I help people live. What am I?”
“A coin.”
She growled out the last riddle in anger, “The one who makes it sells it, the one who buys it doesn’t use it and the one who uses it doesn’t know he uses it. Pray tell me, what is it that I speak of?”
“A coffin.”
The sphinx let out a might bellow that shook the ground and made us grab onto each other to hold ourselves upright, covering our ears at the noise. In her anger, the sphinx burst into flames, leaving nothing but charred ground and ash behind. We stood up slowly and stared with wide eyes at where the creature had been just before.
I had absolutely no idea how I had known the answers to all those riddles. It was like the came from somewhere else, like I had not really thought of them. I itched the back of my shoulder absently, feeling the tingle of my scar. It was like a voice inside my head told me what the answers were, and it left me feeling strange and confused. Nothing like that had ever happened to me before.

“What is it? “ Draco asked me, suddenly concern written on his face. He touched my arm delicately and something felt different about it. Like I had been shocked, and goose bumps became raised.
“Scar,” I muttered quickly stepping away from him and looking around the maze.
“Time is up!”
The maze around us vibrated for a moment, making the air feel thick before the walls shuttered and vanished completely. I looked around, wondering where they went when I saw Snape walking up, putting his wand back in his robes. The other classmates had watched from the quidditch towers, cheering now that they saw all of who was left.
“50 points to Slytherin for the win, and for Miss Potter’s sheer intelligence with riddles. That’s it for today, next class is Slytherin versus Gryffindor. Now get to your next class. Miss Potter, a word please.”

I glanced at Draco who actually hesitated for a moment, as if he were about to wait for me but it was like suddenly he remember our fight, face going cold and walking away from me without another glance. Blaise looked after him for a moment before giving me a small, sympathetic smile. I smiled some back before turning to fallow Snape, but not before someone caught my eye.

Harry stood ways off, standing with a group of talking gryffindors. He was facing me, and staring right at me. My scar prickled again, strangely familiar to what it had done moments ago. It was in that moment I didn’t know how he knew, or how he did it, but he had known those riddles. Or at least, he understood them once asking Hermione… but it had been him. He had sent them too me somehow. Why did he choose to help me? He was willing to help me when I was willing to kill him?
“Reagan,” Snape said it in the same apathetic voice he always did. “Come to my office at midnight. The Dark Lord wishes to have consul with you. Mr. Malfoy can deal with his task alone tonight, do you understand?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. You may leave.”

I walked to the castle from the quidditch pitch alone and in thought, thinking about both my fight with Draco and how Harry had helped me. He knew as well as I did that I would never help him if it had been him in my place. He was so intent on helping me. He apparently did not know a lost cause when he saw one. But something deep down had me thinking, maybe he saw something in myself that I didn’t. I shook the idea out of my head and kept walking.

“Reagan!” I voice called from my left. I slide my eyes to see Gregory leaning against a tree, looking extremely handsome. I kept walking. “Reagan, I would really like to talk to you.”
“I don’t want to talk to you,” I called, almost to the hallways to head to class. I didn’t want anything to do with Gregory Bane. He knew. He had to know. I could see it in his face, smell it on his breath, feel it in his touch. If he knew, it could be the end of me. No one was supposed to know. Not even Draco new. He would never speak to me again.
“Reagan.”
I flinched. He was behind me all of a sudden, like he had just popped up there when in truth he had fallowed me from that tree. I ignored him, hating the nearness of him. I just wanted him to stay away, if he knew.
“I’m going to be late for class, leave me alone, Bane, or I’m going to do some serious damage.”
“Oh yeah?” he called after me as I left him standing there. “Damage as in when you killed my father.”

I stopped dead in my tracks. My blood ran cold and thin as eyes, and my hand flew to my chest. I couldn’t breath and I swear my heart stopped beating for at least half a minute. He knew. Of course he knew.
“Oh yes, Potter. I know you killed my father.”