Chapter 72

The Eye of Heaven was still spinning away on its weathervane by morning. Snape sat on the roof and began to unroll a packet of instruments. He had a roaring headache from going over the Mayhem Manual the night before, and a sore ear from where Madam Pince had tried to grab it from him and missed. He knelt on the roof and looked at the Eye again.

An Eye was supposed to be a powerful security enchantment. Professor Moody had reinvented the spell on a smaller scale for his own eye. An Eye on the roof would show most of what was going on in Hogwarts if it wasn’t for the school’s wards. A real Eye would’ve been useless, which was probably why this one had completely different spells on it.

It wasn’t an Eye of Heaven, but it had been made to look like one. And there wasn’t a spell Snape recognized on it. It was either Cursed, or enchanted to react like a Cursed item.

After another long moment of study, Snape selected what looked like a set of very dainty copper pliers. He was wearing warded gloves to be safe and had tied his hair back to keep it out of his eyes in the wind. Professor Dormire had offered him a fur-lined hat with earflaps. Snape had refused as politely as he had been able.

There was a series of wires wound around the central piece of the Eye. A tiny line of runes had been engraved on each one from end to end. That much had been done well. It took the Potionsmaster a long search to translate and decide which one to cut. By then, the cold wind was making his nose ache and he was wishing he had brought a hankie.

“How’s it going?” Dormire shouted cheerfully from the only window high enough to be in hearing range of the tower top. Snape was prepared to ignore him, but had learned that Dormire was as relentless in questions as he was in perkiness. He would wait exactly a minute and ask again. Louder.

“Slowly,” Snape answered. The wind whipped his ponytail against the back of his head and kept his voice from carrying.

“What?” Dormire called.

“Slowly!” Snape shouted this time.

“Ah. Do you need anything?”

“No!”

“Good man. Sing out if you do.”

Snape muttered something that Dormire couldn’t hear, but he blamed it on the wind and went back to his own business. He had left the hat on the windowsill in case the Potionsmaster changed his mind. Snape did see the hideous thing sitting there. He ignored it, too.

Back to the Eye, he continued cutting the wires and unwinding them. Tiny sparks of light lit through the other pieces as the line of magic was cut off. An inner wire was wound tight in a coil at the very center of the Eye. Snape’s fingers were cold and he flexed them inside the gloves.

He began to unwind the wire and heard something pop. There was a spray of glass shards and drops of blood. For a moment, he thought he had been cut, but then realized that the blood was dripping from what had been a tiny vial held in the wires. He fumbled for a bottle of his own to catch some in. The rest of the Eye began to crumble and fell on the tower’s shingles with little ringing sounds. The Cursed glow faded out.

“Interesting,” he muttered, holding the bottle to the light to squint at the blood. Then a change in the air pressure made his headache throb and he looked around. Were those idiots from across the water tinkering with the wards again? Or, he thought, glaring closer at the Eye, had something just been activated in the device?

A faint commotion from another tower caught his ear over the wind. There was a crackle of golden magic and more voices rose. What now? The Potionsmaster thought without any real curiosity. He had no doubt he would find out before he was finished, so he went back to work. The Eye was almost completely dismantled and he was putting the pieces in separate pockets of the tool roll when a voice called him.

He had been expecting Dormire, but it was Lorelei. He turned to find her just landing on the rooftop next to him. She was out of breath and the cold left a trace of color in her face.

“Have you seen my sister?” she asked. “Did she come this way?”

Snape slid the last piece into a pocket and started putting his tools away. When he spoke, his voice was careful and slow.

“To my knowledge, your sister was Bound in a mirror-snare in one of the hidden towers.” He looked up at her. “Has Hogwarts lost another prisoner, Ms. Zephyr?”

“One moment she was there, and the next she wasn‘t.” Lorelei didn’t seem terribly upset. Or especially relieved. “They recast the wards to make sure she didn’t get away, but there’s no sign of her yet.” Then, Lorelei’s eyes narrowed as she looked past him. He turned to see a dark smudge running toward the castle from the Forest.

“I’ll think I’ll see what her familiar knows,” she said. “Thank you, Professor.” She stepped off the roof into thin air and swept away on wings pulled from her dark green cloak. He watched her go, even as another throb went through the magical wards.

If the first round didn‘t stop the girl, a second won’t help, he thought sourly. Still, it was impressive that anyone could escape a mirror-snare. It had to be done with outside help. Perhaps her ‘familiar’ had shared a jail-breaking secret or two. Or perhaps, with a powerful sister close at hand, things had fallen into place.

He didn’t know the extent of Lorelei’s abilities. He knew there was more at work than normal magic. He knew that more of it than she liked came from vampiric influence. Vampires are known for their troubles with mirrors, Snape mused, getting ready to go back inside. Perhaps this mirror had trouble with Lorelei.