The Marauders - Order of the Phoenix - Part One

I Am In Need of Your Assistance

There was a great squall in the mountainous ranges, the spires of the castle reaching high into the skies. Snow bore down heavier than usual in Novemeber, so that the walls were buried beneath the fall.

Newt Scamander glanced back at the briefcase he'd left rather precariously balanced on the cliff edge. But however precarious the briefcase was, it was right steady compared to his own balancing act. His toes on a rock, leaned over a narrow crevice in the stone, palms splayed on a sheer face across from the cliffside, and a deadly drop below him... save for the one nest and its clutch of eggs about twenty feet below where he stood. He held his wand between his teeth and his gray and auburn hair moved over his forehead with the wind.

Struggling to keep from falling, he inched his right foot slowly across the other side of the crevice, so that he stood, split in mid air, firmly planted between two haves of a precipice. Tenderly, he lowered one stabilizing palm from the rock face and released the clench of his teeth to take up his wand.

"Accio nest," he tried. Nothing. Of course not - he hadn't truly expected anything. They were impervious from spells as part of their nature so it would have been quite disappointing if the nest had responded - it would have meant he did not have a clutchful of kookylulas after all. But if they had come it would've been such a lot easier.

He sighed and bit back onto the wand, and then began shuffling carefully, lowering himself down into the space between the mountains.

"Not - not a-as -ugh- young as I- I once - one was," he muttered to himself.

Hands shaking, he slowly skuffed and slid his way down until he was close enough to grab hold of the branch the nest sat upon and he used it to steady himself. Then carefully bent forward over double and dropped into the nest itself.

Huge and warm with feathers and eggs, Newt was nearly the size of a baby kookylula. The eggs were up to his waist, and the same pale blue as an American Robin egg. He lay his palm on the shell of the closest egg. It was cold.

"Sollright," he murmured, taking up his wand again. He pointed it at the eggs and set a warming spell over them, and started checking each egg over carefully. There were four total. It was four more than he ever thought he would see again. It had been believed (by him) that there has been an extinction of kookylulas. That clearly wasn't entirely true, but he would use these eggs to save their kind entirely... if he could figure out how to get them back up the cliff.

He stared up, the jaggedy rocks he had started from were so far away.

He could apparate, but he wasn't sure how that would be with the kookylulas, it it would affect them or not, and he worried about taking the chance.

Suddenly, there was a great CRACK! and Newt grabbed onto one of the eggs instinctively, as though it would help him in the event of the branch breaking and their fall to the depths unfathomable below. But it wasn't the branch, it was a disapparation... and there seated on the edge of the nest, was Albus Dumbledore.

Newt blinked in surprise, "P-P-Professor!" he said. "W-w-what--"

"I am in need of your assistance."

Newt hesitated, then turned to the eggs. He took off his coat and laid it over the eggs, running his hands over the wool. Around them the storm squalled and Newt's skin ached with the cold but he focused on those eggs. "I - I am in the m-middle of -- v - very imp-important," he said.

Dumbledore looked over the edge of the nest they stood in, closed his eyes a moment, and raised his wand and his palm together, like the conductor of an orchestra. A great gust of wind came up the crevice - warm and tornadic, like a funnel which rose up beneath the nest, cradling it, and lifting it up from the branch, and up - up - up until it had safely deposited them on the ledge above, beside Newt's briefcase, which flipped up and fell open to receive the nest.

"Let us try this again, shall we?" Dumbledore smiled as Newt's eyes were still darting about in shock and awe, once they had safely landed inside the briefcase. "I require your assistance. Now, Mr. Scamander."

Newt nodded, "Y - y - yes sir."

Numengard stood on a cliffside as well, though a much different one than where they'd been. Newt Scamander had the briefcase tight in his fist and he stared warily at the castle, his coat pulled tight around him, and a hat pulled down on his forehead. He walked briskly down the stone bridge to the castle-prison, and up to the door guards.

A few words passed between them, less than Newt would have expected, but Dumbledore had coached him the precise wording to use, and there must have been some magic or some key words involved for the guards sprang into action to guide Mr. Scamander up through the castle, past the cells, to the very tower.

He stood outside the iron bars of the small enclosure, uneasy and nervously shifting his weight. The guards confiscated his wand for protective handling and promised to return it after the visitation, then left him there outside the cell he had asked to be led to.

Newt put down the briefcase when the coast was clear, and unsnapped its hinges. Albus Dumbledore climbed out, clothed in a dark hooded robe, pulled so close round his face that it would be impossible from a distance to recognize him. He, too, looked about the corridor, then walked quickly up to the gates, and - with a flicker - directly through them.

Newt shivered at the idea of how easy it had actually been to come into this place, to break into this place, and worried that perhaps it only would take a bit of cleverness to break out of it equally easily.

Albus Dumbledore walked across the cell, a pale shaft of moonlight coming in the window and spilling over the floor. In the corner of the room was a single chair and on it sat the unmoving form of Gellert Grindelwald, staring up at the window far overhead, through which the light poured. Albus lowered the cloak hood.

Grindelwald did not turn, he simply stared on into the moonlight. "What could you possibly want from me, Albus?" he murmured, "What could I possibly give you that would be worth your trouble of coming all the way here? Why not send your bird with one of your useless letters and trinkets?"

Dumbledore stood, still and tense before the other man. "I have questions, Gellert."

Grindelwald's eyes were tired and bagged below, they moved slowly from the moonlight to flicker to Dumbledore before him.

Dumbledore drew his wand, but he held it up so that Gellert could see it. Gellert let out a low, curdled sounding laugh. "Why are you showing that old stick to me? As though I haven't seen it before?"

"I need to know, Gellert. Is this old stick truly what you once claimed it to be?"

Grindelwald was quiet.

Dumbledore, frustrated, said, "Gellert, talk to me. Talk to me about this."

Grindelwald grinned. "Oh so now you want to talk about the Deathly Hallows? It's been a long time since you were interested in that fairytale nonsense, hasn't it, Albus?" his eyes twinkled dangerously.

Albus's hand shook the wand at Gellert.

"It is exactly what I told you it was."