[This is a work of ‘fanfiction’, essentially a
tribute to the world created by JK Rowling. No infringement of copyright is
intended, and neither is any commercial exploitation.]
Previous Chapters
Chapter 10
Summoning
Martin Lovegood was an enigma wrapped in a riddle to
most people at Hogwarts. He was a sharp-featured, wiry boy with fair hair and a
ready smile who rarely spoke much of his own accord. For the most part, he
seemed more than happy to be a quiet foil to the more domineering Elk, as Rose
was to her flamboyant cousin Albus. He had inherited a keen intelligence and
sunny personality from his mother, Luna Lovegood, that quirky, dreamy heroine
of the last war. Who his father was, no one really knew, though Rose thought
she could guess. It was something neither he nor his mother ever spoke about,
and the Wizarding World largely respected that. Next to Scorpius, he was
probably the smartest student in Rose’s year and unlike the Malfoy boy, Martin
was not a show-off, preferring to laugh off any references to his talents.
Rose found a smile crossing her face as she
contemplated him. As so often happened when Martin got his mind around an
interesting problem, he was engrossed in the book. He murmured to himself and
scratched notes on a parchment as he read slowly through the large pages.
Occasionally he sniffled into a tissue he had conjured, a reminder of the cold
that had kept him confined the previous day.
At around eleven, Filch turned up, Mrs. Norris in tow,
to shoo them out.
“We’ve got permission,” Albus pointed out, presenting
the slips that he had taken from Neville Longbottom.
“Permissions are only valid till eleven o’ clock,” he
replied gruffly.
“Says who, may I ask?” said Albus,
“Says Argus Filch,” he replied, “and that should be
good enough for you. Now get out, before I march you straight to the
Headmistress!”
They marched out, Martin still clutching Rose’s book
and a few others.
“Well, what now?” asked Rose.
“Let’s head to the Gryffindor common room,” suggested
Albus.
“Let’s head to my office,” countered Hugo. “There’s
always a chance of there being a swot or two staying up to do an all-night
studying session in the common rooms.”
“Isn’t there a chance of Filch catching hold of us
there?” asked Albus.
“Not unless he’s learnt spells to counter my
concealment spells,” said Martin. “Hugo had me cast them last week.”
“Well, Martin’s spell-casting I can trust,” agreed
Rose. “Lead on!”
For the second time that day, Rose found herself in
Hugo’s little hovel. In many ways the place felt Dickensian, with the wooden
furniture, rolls of parchment and at least three layers of dust stacked on
everything. Martin sat on a low chair, still muttering to himself as he
translated. Albus and Hugo managed to transfigure a chair into a cricket bat
and fished out a rubber ball from one of the drawers. Since the bat was rather
by way of being crooked, all the shots went in the general direction of Rose,
who was trying to catch a nap in a corner behind Martin.
Finally a frustrated Rose stormed over to the window and
looked out into a starry night. It hadn’t snowed that day, but the air was
still cold and they had kept the window shut against the draft.
“Got a telescope? It’s a lovely night for stargazing.”
Hugo stopped in his bowling stride long enough to
flick his wand at a cabinet in the wall.
“It’s really a glorified spyglass at best,” he
admitted, “but it should do.”
Rose accio’ed the instrument over into her hand
and open the window. Luckily it wasn’t a windy night, so the draft was not
significant. Rose wasn’t exactly a fan of Astronomy class, but she found the
stars fascinating this night. The section of the castle where Hugo had made his
den was facing the lake, and from where the window looked out, Rose could see
not just the sky above, but also the reflection of it on the calm surface of
the lake. It had only thawed a couple of weeks ago, Rose reflected. The whole
of December had been beautiful for skating. She, Albus and Martin had often
waltzed around it, with Elk practising playing ice hockey with a few other
enthusiasts in another corner of the lake.
The tableau persisted for a while. Martin continued to
read while Albus and Hugo proceeded to play out nearly a complete five-test
series. Finally at nearly a half-hour past midnight, Martin laid down his quill
and leaned back. Instantly the other three stopped and turned to face him,
questions writ large in their eyes.
“Well, there’s a lot of stuff here,” said Martin,
getting up and stretching his arms. “I’m really not helped by the fact that the
Sanskrit is a language with more adjectives than any other I’ve ever
encountered, and this damn author seems determined to use each and every one.”
“So they’re all by one author then?” asked Albus.
“Oh, they may or may not be. They’re all attributed to
one chap called Yuyutsu, but it may be a bunch of different people for all I
know.”
“Never mind who wrote it,” said Rose impatiently. “It
could be Stephanie ruddy Mayer for all I care. Did you find anything useful?”
“I may have,” replied Martin. “If you’ll give me a
chance to begin.” He began to pace around the room a little gingerly at first,
his legs obviously a little cramped from the long time spent sitting. “It’s a
series of stories told by this chap, supposedly heard by him from various
people he met during his travels all around India. There’s a bit about the
creation myth – it’s a pantheonic religion, so there’s a lot about various Gods
and Goddesses. There’s a ruling triumvirate – Brahma, Vishnu and Mahesh. Below
them are the gods. The King of these gods is a guy called Indra – think Zeus
with the thunderbolts et al. There
are various minor gods under him, Varuna of the Sea, Agni of Fire, Yama of
Death, Vayu of the Wind and so on and so forth. It was Brahma who created
the world and everything in it, including humans, animals, plants, demi-gods,
demons and all other magical creatures. Humans – we – exist on a certain plane
of existence and cannot ascend or descend to any other. However, the
power to summon creatures from a lower plane has always been entrusted to us. A
trained wizard or witch can, using the right spell, bring to this world many
creatures. The highest of such creatures are the Asuras, a humanoid clan
of demons possessing immense strength, magical and physical. They look not
dissimilar to humans, though some choose to disfigure themselves in many ways
to distinguish themselves from us. There are Asuras who can wield fire,
water, cold and such and often adapt their appearance in alignment with their
powers. For the most part, though, these rely on brute physical strength and
wizards have been known to summon entire armies of Asuras to achieve their own
ends. In particular – well, I won’t delve into the details, but there have been
at least three recorded instances of Asuras being summoned to fight
large-scale wars across the Asian continent.”
“So it’s possible that the Routers could…” the
question was left unasked by Rose.
“Well, we don’t know how much they know. Certainly the
creatures from the lower plans of existence are not very difficult to summon,
if this text is anything to go by. It talks of one war – the Battle for
Uttarakhand – where the Emperor Hadji Diom summoned an army of half-a-million
Asuras and twenty thousand assorted animals to lay siege to the capital of King
Puru.”
“And won, I suppose?” asked Albus.
“No. King Puru was, at the time, married to an Apsara
named Urvashi who it seems was insanely powerful. Despite being outnumbered by
almost fifty-to-one, the siege was broken and the Emperor had to sue for
peace.”
“Sounds like a dangerous woman to cross,” said Hugo.
“So I’m assuming Apsaras are from a different ‘plane’ as well?”
“Yes, the highest one in fact. Apsaras could not be
summoned until the time of this King Puru. There’s an interesting story about
how that came about. As a prince, the young Puru often had the opportunity to
visit the court of Indra, King of Gods, as his father was one of the trusted
allies of the divine powers. He was fascinated by the heavenly courts and their
prized adornments, the Apsaras. When he assumed the throne himself, he too
often fought by the side of the Gods in their perpetual battle against the evil
demons of the netherworld. It was during a feast after one such battle that the
Apsara Urvashi first noticed the young man and was smitten by his looks. She
stole away with his men, disguised as one of them, and managed to enter his
palace, which she found fascinating, particularly the gardens, where she fell
in love with the growing grass, the frolicking animals and singing birds.”
“Stop getting poetic,” admonished Hugo.
“Oh, yes, I was rather quoting there,” agreed Martin.
“Anyway, to cut a long story short, she fell asleep in the garden, where Puru
found her the following day. They fell in love, blah blah, lots of sex, some
wars and finally Indra, getting rather pissed off by the fact that his
favourite Apsara was enjoying life on earth rather too much, kills the King so
that he can have her back in his abode. She returns but is so distraught with
grief that she cannot dance and, if my vocabulary is not completely off, she is
no longer able to enjoy sexual relations with anyone, which leads her into a
slow decline. Finally, Indra relents and offers to bring her lover back to life
if he promises never to summon her again. She agrees and they go to the God of
Death to negotiate the resurrection of the earthly King. Finally a deal is
struck with Yama, the death-god and her King comes back to life. Indra allows
Urvashi one final rendezvous with her lover before he must make a vow to
renounce her forever. She gives him a parting gift – a tiny statue of herself.
And here’s where she tries to play a trick. She imbues a magic in the statue
such that by placing the statue in the grove and chanting a summoning spell,
which is essentially a song they used to sing together, her lover will be able
to recall her for one night, once more before he dies. But she doesn’t get the
time to tell him what the statue can do, because Indra, realising what she has
done, takes her away before the appointed time for parting. The King dies,
never seeing his Apsara again and the statue passes down through the ages,
until a descendant of the king moves the statue out from the palace in the
garden. This chap has a young daughter who, while tending the garden, happens
to sing that same song. The spell takes effect, the Apsara is summoned, and
with her – who but old Indra himself, livid with her for allowing herself to be
thus summoned again.
“Now here’s the twist. Indra now sees this young
princess, and like all pantheonic Gods, being inclined to think with his nether
regions, immediately falls in love with her and moves in to seduce her. The
girl is frightened and calls for her father, who falls upon the King of Gods
with a sword. Indra moves to kill the father, but the Princess threatens to
kill herself if he does. The Apsara, sensing her chance, offers to intercede on
Indra’s behalf with the girl’s father. She will stay on Earth with the girl’s
father for as long as the daughter stays with Indra in heaven as a hostage against
the girl’s safe return. Apparently, having sex with a God was not a bad thing –
what her father was angry about was the possibility of her being spirited away
and preventing him from marrying her off into a powerful neighbouring royal
family. Indra agrees, and here Urvashi makes her bargain with her master final
– he will allow her to be summoned to the Earth by whoever places the statue in
the grove and sings the song. Indra adds a caveat – that she must return when
the person who has thus summoned her dies or when he or she sings the ‘song of
parting’, again placing her statue in the grove.
“That, according to this story, is the original of the
summoning magic of ancient India. As the years passed, the other Apsaras also
struck similar bargains, their taste for earthly pleasures increasing with each
visit. It wasn’t long before the magical communities began to refine the
summoning spells and charms to bring it to the more scientific form that is
being used today. Each summoning requires a spell to be incanted, but the more
powerful the being you wish to summon, the more parameters enter the equation.”
Martin sat back in the chair, exhausted, and conjured
a glass of water for himself.
“So…magical statues, eh? I suppose Hubstein found
enough of those in his studies of eastern magic,” said Rose, “and learned the
spells as well.”
Martin nodded. “I would not be surprised. I’m
wondering how he managed to reconstruct the garden, though.”
“There’s probably an easier way that actually growing
a garden, I’m sure,” said Albus.
“Oh well, I guess that tells us something, though I’m
not sure how useful it is,” said Rose. “Anything else in there?”
“Well, a number of stories about the Apsaras. Your
friend Cherry, or Chitralekha appears to be a particularly dangerous one – she
appears in many stories as a clever manipulator, usually functioning as an
assassin. The Fire Apsara – Maitreyi, the favourite of the Sun God, if you’re
interested in knowing her name – is the most commonly summoned one, used as a
brute battering ram of force. There are some Apsaras who chose not to be
summoned at all, including Jananidhara the life-giver and Mrityunjayi, mistress
of death.”
“So how many can be summoned, then?”
“Apart from Chitralekha and Maitreyi, there is Ragini
the mistress of weapons, Saudamini the weather-witch, Ayushi the healer and the
one who started it all, Urvashi.”
“I wonder how many the Routers have succeeded in
summoning.”
Martin passed a hand over his brow.
“We only know of one so far. Let’s hope it’s not more
than that. I hope they haven’t got Urvashi, though. Did you know about the
connection between her and Hogwarts?”
“Hogwarts!” the other three cried out together.
“Yes, Hogwarts. Interesting little story. Not in the
book. Deduced it.” He gave them a mysterious smile.
“What are you driveling about, Martin?” asked Rose.
“Not driveling. Think, guys…I’ve told you everything
you need to know.”
“If you have, then we’re Watsons to your Holmes,” said
Hugo matter-of-factly.
“Can’t you tie it in with Hogwarts, a History?”
“Martin,” said Rose, speaking slowly, “if you are
under the impression that any of us has read that book…”
“Ah yes, of course,” said Martin, jumping to his feet,
“you wouldn’t have. Well, then, let me give you the précis version. The four founders of Hogwarts all hail from
different parts of the British islands. They came together when they united
against the tyrant Emperor Brusillian who conquered all of Wizarding Europe and
launched an assault on England in the eleventh century. Brusillian’s charge was
led by his consort Ursula, the most devastating battle-mage of all time. She
wielded a mysterious wooden staff rather than a wand, and could wipe out entire
armies single-handedly. Beautiful, proud and utterly devastating, Ursula led
Brusillian’s navy to the coasts of Dover from where they invaded the country,
destroying all that they saw right up to the borders of Caledonia – or
Scotland, as we now know it. It was here that Gryffindor, Slytherin, Ravenclaw
and Hufflepuff, the four mightiest wizards in England made their last stand,
from a strategically located forest. The few remaining Wizards gathered to make
their last stand from an ancient castle on the borders of the forest. The final
battle was fought over a lake and Ursula was finally defeated when the foursome
challenged her to fight them without her army behind her. She successfully
fought and defeated Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw in single combat, and had almost
defeated Gryffindor when Slytherin, as had been planned previously, cut through
the personal guard of Emperor Brusillian himself and assassinated him. The
moment co-incided with Gryffindor firing the killing curse at Ursula which
seemed to hit, though her body was never recovered. Naturally, the site of the
great victory was where the Founders chose to build Hogwarts, their legacy to
posterity.”
He gave them a half-smile, as if daring them to say
what was so blindingly obvious to him.
“So this Ursula…?”
“I would be very surprised if it was otherwise,” he
said simply.
“Well, what I’d like to know is,” said Albus. “What do
we do next?”
“Tell your father what we’re up against,” said Rose.
“Oh yes, of course. That’s right. Tell him WHAT? And
HOW?”
“It’s not as easy as just dropping an owl to Uncle
Harry.” said Hugo, “For one thing, we definitely do not want him to know that
we are…aware of what’s going on.”
For people who, as kids, invariably poked their noses
into the business of their elders, Uncle Harry and his friends were certainly
very conservative when it came to their own children. Rose and Hugo had never
quite been told by their own parents the events of last war, apart from some
vague explanations about why the wizarding world regarded them with such awe.
It wasn’t until coming to Hogwarts that they had quite realised how famous
their parents were, or how young they had been when they had done the deeds
that made them famous. It had been the same with James and Albus, she knew, the
brothers barely knowing of the deeds of their parents or the people they were
named after until fairly recently. Rose wondered how much Lily knew, or had
bothered to find out, about the family of which she was the most attractive and
least intelligent part.
“No, we don’t,” agreed Albus. “Father would throw
several fits, and mother would have us get home-schooled if she found out we
were involved in this stuff.”
“I guess it falls to me, then,” sighed Martin.
“Yes,” Hugo concurred. “It will.”
“What?” asked Rose and Albus together.
“Mrs. Scamander is the one person who probably has a
practical view of the world,” replied Hugo, “ironic as that might sound. Where
our parents would go ballistic about our safety and how we acquired the
information, I’m suspecting she would, with perhaps an odd reference to
snorcacks and nargles, go to Uncle Harry or Mom, tell what she had learned and
refuse to divulge the source. Is that correct?”
“Who is Mrs. Scamander?” asked Rose, curious to know
about this new person.
Hugo, Albus and Martin gave loud sighs.
“Rose, you attended the wedding!” said Martin at last.
“Don’t you remember getting drunk and dancing the tango with Yuki Uribe from
your house? It was during last year’s Christmas hols!”
“I have no…”
“Why do you think half the school is convinced your
bisexual?” asked Albus, looking genuinely surprised, “At least twenty of us saw
you dance most suggestively indeed with her!”
“I…erm,” Rose coloured as the recollections flooded
across her brain. “Well, that’s not important anyway. What’s important is that
I now remember that Martin’s mother married Rolf Scamander the naturalist.
Anyway, I agree with Hugo, that’s our best bet.”
Martin got to his feet.
“I’ll owl mother first thing tomorrow morning and tell
her I’ve seen a spotted camel or something. That should bring her down by
tomorrow evening. We can all meet her then. For now, I think it’s best we get
to bed.”
Albus yawned.
“I second that. Who’s guarding Rose today?”
“I refuse to be guarded! There’s nothing to be
concern…”
She didn’t get to complete the sentence, as her cousin
Lily chose that moment to wander into the room and say, turning a vacant gaze
upon her brother,
“I thought I might find you here.”
“Lily! What on earth are you doing here?”
“I was looking for you. I went up to Rose’s dorm but
she wasn’t sleeping there. So then I went into Albus’s dorm but he wasn’t there
either, only that strange boy Ruthven, who tried to persuade me that Albus was
in bed with him and I could find him by getting under the sheets with him.”
“Ruthven’s a dead man,” said Albus, matter-of-factly.
“I’ll have a chat with him,” said Hugo. “But WHY were
you looking for us, sister dearest?”
“Oh. I had something to tell you.”
“What might that be? We don’t have all night.” said
Rose testily.
“What I’d like to know is how she got in here,” said
Hugo. “Martin, I thought you said you’d put protective spells on this place
against anyone entering without my permission.”
“It’s a blood ward,” replied Martin, “and she’s half a
Weasley.”
“Well, someone put her back in bed before she enters
another boy’s wet dreams,” said Rose.
They trooped out of the room and entered the corridor.
Hugo locked the door behind him with a tap of his wand.
It wasn’t until they were at the place where Martin
had to separate from them to go to the Ravenclaw common room that Albus
remembered to ask,
“What was it you’d come to tell us anyway, Lily?”
“Oh yes. I remember. James and Scorpius are duelling
out on the grounds, near the lake. I think they’ve been at it nearly
half-an-hour by now.”
"What!" Rose's alarmed expression was
apparent to her cousins even in the darkness.
"Oh yes, and Scorpius looked badly hurt when
Estelle told me to run and get you. He was lying on his back and just...what's
the word...twitching."
"Don't let anyone tell you apparition isn't
possible inside Hogwarts," said Hugo to Albus and Martin as they watched
Rose bolt in the direction of the main door of the castle, "When a girl
can move that fast, it becomes irrelevant. Shall we follow, gentlemen? And you
too, of course, my fair cousin. Onward, march!"
