Weft of Power, Warp of Blood: A Tapestry of Desire

Chapter Thirty – Two
The Storm

Head spinning from a combination of wine, shoes with too high of heels and Floo, Jasmine stepped over the golden fireplace grate into the atrium of the Ministry of Magic. Holding Dumbledore’s hand she looked around, blinking. It was either a war zone or an earthquake had struck London. Witches and wizards, looking befuddled, harried or hysterical were scuttling about, many in their pajamas. Suddenly reminded that it was only three in the morning, Jasmine yawned. When she opened her eyes the scene remained the same.

The once lovely, though faintly disturbing, fountain in the middle of the atrium was gone. The large golden witch was shattered on the polished wood floor in a puddle of water; the centaur’s arm, holding its bow, was mixed in with the golden rubble. More golden rubble lay in a pile near the farthest wall; Jasmine assumed it was the statue of the wizard.

“Dumbledore, what is the meaning of this? You are not authorized to create a portkey, even for Potter!! There is a great deal of paperwork involved in that and you’ve just broken several laws!” The Minister of Magic was shouting from the other side of Dumbledore. His normally pink face was turning apoplexy-purple.

“Cornelius, I have said that I will give you a half hour of my time before I go. However, I need some questions of my own answered. Walk with me and I shall explain exactly how you should present yourself to the public,” Dumbledore said and turned around.

Still staring at the ruin the atrium had become, Jasmine barely missed tripping over a statue of a goblin standing next to the fireplace. It reached out to steady her when she lost her balance. Squeaking in surprise, she tugged Dumbledore’s hand, “Professor Grandpa!”

“Ah yes,” Dumbledore said and waved his hand. Once again, the statue was immobile. “Come with me, please, Jasmine. I have a piece of cloth that I’d like you to give me your opinion on, please. I already know the official explanation, but I’d like to know what one of my girls thinks of the stuff.” A tiny, musical whistle sounded from his pocket. Dumbledore peeked into his breast pocket and murmured something. The whistling stopped.

Before Jasmine could respond with more than a sleepy blink, Fudge demanded, “Where are we going, Dumbledore? I am the Minister of Magic! I demand an answer!” The order seemed to carry much less weight as the Minister was wearing yellow and purple polka-dotted pajamas under his pin striped cloak.

“We are going to the Department of Mysteries, Cornelius. You may join us, if you wish, but it will count against your half-hour.” Still holding onto Jasmine’s hand, Dumbledore led her in the direction of the lifts.

“You can’t go down there,” Fudge asserted, trotting to keep up with Dumbledore’s long gait. His voice and the patter of his slipper-shod feet echoed through the room.

“I’ve already been downstairs several times tonight. I am going downstairs again,” Dumbledore said with utmost calm and authority.

Fudge quacked and followed along.

Staring at another pile of rubble beside the wrought gold gratework at the end of the atrium and the smoldering cinders where the security desk used to be, Jasmine followed. Wondering where security had been she noted that they apparently hadn’t done a very good job of securing anything. Jasmine giggled at the thought. Typical, she was in the Ministry of Functional Stupidity. She giggled at the thought. A look from Dumbledore quelled her giggles into quasi-serious remorse for her inappropriate outburst. She did try to straighten up as there had been a serious battle just recently, but as it looked like the Ministry and Order had won the day, she wasn’t terribly worried. It was a selfish thought, and Jasmine felt slightly guilty for it – but it didn’t change her opinion of it all.

She was still boggled, though somewhat pleased that her great-grandfather would want to hear her opinion on something but knowing better than to demand any information. He’d tell her what she needed to know when they got wherever they were going. Not that she could get a word in edgewise between Fudge’s demands for information and assertions that he was the Minister of Magic.

The door to one of the lifts opened as they arrived. Two aurors escorted a muscled man with a baby’s head between them. The man, dressed in a black wool cloak, screamed in infant fury and agony but didn’t fight the aurors. Both men nodded to Dumbledore and Fudge. Jasmine noted, with some amusement, that the deference paid to Dumbledore was much greater than to Fudge. They only gave her a cursory glance as they escorted the squalling man away.

“Who is…” Fudge muttered, still staring at the men. He stumbled into the lift.

“Alphonse Mulciber,” said Dumbledore, as though the name explained it all. “Ninth floor,” he instructed the lift.

“But…”

“Cornelius, do close your mouth if you want me to tell you what’s happened. You look like a gaping carp,” Dumbledore said.

His mouth snapped shut.

“Mulciber, along with several other known Death Eaters, and Voldemort attacked the Ministry this evening. The rest of the Death Eaters are downstairs, bound and under an Anti-Disapparation Jinx.”

Jasmine gasped but was ignored but for Dumbledore’s thumb stroking her hand as he held it. Jasmine understood that he wanted her to keep silent.

Fudge gaped, spluttered and snapped, “He-Who…Yes, yes, you told me that. How did you know? What are you doing here and why were they here?”

“I followed my students here,” Dumbledore said, without explaining how he knew his students had come to be in the Ministry at three a.m. “The Order has captured the Death Eaters and will escort the students back to Hogwarts, where they may heal from their injuries in peace.”

“What were they doing here?” repeated Fudge, clearly not understanding that Dumbledore would tell him what he wanted him to know, when he wanted him to know it.

“They were lured here by Voldemort.”

Fudge paled and spluttered, “Would you stop saying that!”

Almost amused underneath the utter terror that the name and state of the Ministry’s atrium had invoked, Jasmine contemplated chanting ‘Voldemort’ over and over, just to see if the Minister would faint from it. His voice was giving her a headache – it would at least shut him up. She stifled her giggle.

“He’s been and gone, Cornelius. You saw him yourself. He shan’t be back and saying his name will not bring him back – at least not tonight.” Dumbledore’s eyes seemed to twinkle, for a fraction of a second, for the first time that evening.

A cool, mechanical woman’s voice interrupted Fudge’s gasp, “Department of Mysteries.”

The lift doors opened. Jasmine’s eyes hurt from the glare of the flickering torches lighting the hallway, but she followed her great-grandfather as he stepped out of the lift. A door swung itself open inviting them to enter.

They stepped through into a black room with open doors leading off of it; several of the doors were knocked off of their hinges. In every room people were bustling through, either holding captives in black capes or administering aid to injured students. Remus Lupin walked through one of the doors, holding an unconscious girl in a student’s uniform. Ronald Weasley, the young man that had read to Arielle, and a blonde girl with bulging eyes and a nasty gash across her forehead accompanied him. Lupin held the girl as though she were very precious though quite weightless. He did not appear happy in the slightest.

He gained Dumbledore’s attention, saying, “It looks like just a concussion and a bit of a singe, maybe a bit of spell damage but I’ll get Poppy to check her over.”

“I’m sure Miss Granger will be just fine, Remus. You’ll be back, of course?”

“As soon as I get her to Hogwarts.”

“Thank you,” Dumbledore said, dismissing Lupin.

“Hermione Granger?” questioned Jasmine, feeling quite stupid.

“Indeed.”

“She’s a nice girl. I hope she’ll be alright.”

“I am sure she’ll be fine. Poppy Pomfrey will see to her.”

Fudge was conspicuously silent amid the bustle until one of his aurors approached. The man wore scarlet and had a ponytail; he had his hand on the shoulder of Lucius Malfoy, who was bound and gagged. “Malfoy here says he was under Imperious and claims not to know what was going on.”

Jasmine almost giggled the nametag Malfoy had received coming through the visitors’ entrance: Lucius Malfoy – Criminal Activity. He’ll still be needing to pay for that suit I just finished, Jasmine thought, but she decided not to voice the comment. Instead, she made a mental note to get the invoice to Mrs. Malfoy as soon as she got home.

“Azkaban. Take him to Azkaban!” Fudge instructed and looked around, watching for a reaction. When he didn’t get one, he muttered, “If they don’t go to Azkaban the Prophet will have my head on a pike when they hear about this. We’ll sort them out in the morning when we’re done here.” He avoided Malfoy who was glaring curses, but wandered into the room beyond, muttering, “Is that….”

Mention of the prison reminded Jasmine of Sirius and her decision to talk with him. Knowing Dumbledore was too busy to deal with such trivia, Jasmine again held her tongue. Her great-grandfather needed her brain right now; he was not running a lonely-hearts club.

A pudgy young man covered in dried blood assisted a redheaded girl though another door; she was hobbling on an injured foot. “Idb’ll be awight, Giddy,” he was saying around his swollen nose, “we’ll ged id fixed ub at school.”

The girl looked at him with tired thanks that couldn’t disguise her pallor. The students wore badges identifying themselves as Neville Longbottom and Ginny Weasley - Rescue Mission.

Dumbledore called to the nearest adult, “Mr. Dawlish, please escort Mr. Longbottom and young Miss Weasley here to Hogwarts. Make sure they are seen by Madam Pomfrey in the hospital wing.”

The students sighed in relief at the sight of Dumbledore but said nothing else.

The man bristled a bit but assented and pointed the students to the corridor.

“Miss Weasley needs assistance, Mr. Dawlish. She should not be trying to walk on that ankle,” said Dumbledore looking over the top of his crescent moon glasses.

With a sour expression, Dawlish fetched a chair from one of the rooms and charmed it to float. Assured that his students were being taken care of, Dumbledore gestured to a man leaning against one of the black walls, rummaging in his pockets, while he puffed on a pipe.

“Mundungus? The potion?”

Dirty fingers caressed the lit pipe as he puffed on it. Shifty eyes roved over the room and he seemed to angle himself away from the crowd of aurors subduing a black robed Death Eater as he approached.

“Oh right… that… Do yeh need a hangover potion or are yeh still toasty?” He asked in a thick Yorkshire accent.

“Er…”

Distracted by a call from inside one of the rooms, Dumbledore excuse himself and walked away saying that he’d see Jasmine was she was feeling more herself.

“Right, then,” said the dirty man as he dug through his pockets, pulling out rolling papers, scrolls, a map, several opaque glass jars, furtively looking around he quickly tucked them away, and finally a purple flask, which he handed to her.

Having had the typical childhood lesson of not accepting food or drink from strangers drilled into her from an early age, Jasmine was reluctant to drink from the flask.

As her stomach turned, Jasmine looked again at the man holding the flask. It seemed that Dumbledore trusted this dirty man, no matter how much of a derelict he looked. With that obscure bit of logic, Jasmine took the flask. Ignoring the smell, she drank deeply from it. It tasted of tomatoes and feet after a sweltering summer day.

Immediately, her stomach settled, but her bowels felt like she’d been eating nothing but steak and greasy potatoes all day. Her head felt heavy but cleared after a moment and she felt exhausted beyond all measure. Jasmine also had to go to the bathroom. Beyond badly.

Fletcher chuckled and said, “Got a problem now, eh? You’ll need to head out to solve it.” He pointed back to the door. “Second door on the right, outside the black room. Hurry now– your innards’ll revolt if you don’t.”

Heedless of the looks she knew she’d get, she bolted, scrambling around a herd of aurors entering the room and into the bright, sterile hallway. As she franticly looked around for the proper door, one opened down the hall. Praying that it was the right one, she headed for it. A pink-haired woman she recognized – and didn’t really care from where - exited the ladies loo, drying her hands. Sure she was being rude but feeling like she might already be leaking, Jasmine muttered hello and shut the door on the woman as she said something that sounded like ‘watch out’.

It seemed like forever until she eliminated all of the wine – and everything else, from her system. When she finally recovered enough to get off the loo, Jasmine wiped her mouth – she’d been drooling - and ran trembling fingers through her tangled, rather dirty, hair. Painfully sober now, she zipped her jeans and tried not to teeter on the heels she’d slipped on as she left the house. She both washed her hands and cast a cleaning spell on herself to freshen up before leaving the room.

She met her great-grandfather in the black room – there were fewer people in it now. Dumbledore was once again talking to Fudge and only pointed Jasmine to one of the open doors. She dried her damp palms on the seat of her trousers and went to see why she’d been called to the Ministry of Magic at three a.m.

Just beyond the door, was an amphitheater. The floor of the black room turned into the top of a stone bench once she passed through the door. Hundreds of benches lined the room, descending into a pit where a dais and a freestanding archway stood. Looking more carefully, Jasmine noted that at least half of the stone benches were scorched, broken or completely destroyed. She looked back at Dumbledore, puzzled. Unfortunately, she also drew the attention of the Minister.

“What are you doing in there? You’re not allowed to go in there. That room is for Ministry use only. Get all of these people out!” Fudge commanded.

Dumbledore ignored him and instructed Jasmine to make her way down to the center of the room and find Alastor Moody while he had a word with the Minister. He pointed out the old auror, whom she only knew by reputation, and turned away from Jasmine, his last words a command for her to give Moody a report when she was finished.

Making her way into the pit, Jasmine slipped when she was near the bottom. Recovering her balance with an ungraceful sprawl and squeak, Jasmine took a moment to sit and steady herself. She looked down to see what had caused the slip, other than the effects of the wine (which seemed to be quickly wearing off) and a bad choice in footwear. Fresh blood was puddle on the floor; shards of glass mixed with the blood – next to the puddle was her own bloody footprint. A broken wand lay nearby, its unicorn hair core shining on the scorched stone floor.

“I don’t give a good God-damn if you’re an auror-in-training.” From the center of the room, Alastor Moody commanded pajama-clad troops of Order members and aurors while leaning heavily on his walking staff. The young man in front of him trembled. “You could be the Minister of Magic himself and I’d tell you to stop standing around gawking and go find my eye!”

The boy, who looked to be barely out of Hogwarts, blanched and scampered away to do the old man’s bidding. Jasmine gulped when Moody turned around – where his madly rolling magical eye normally was, the socket was empty. His eyelid was sunken in the pit of his skull. The cynical part of Jasmine’s mind was of the opinion that Moody was damned lucky to only be missing an eye. Every spell from every battle the man had ever fought had left its mark on his face in burn scars, pockmarks and missing chunks of flesh.

“Boy!” When the young man froze and turned around wearing a look of impending doom, Moody pointed in the opposite direction and instructed, “Over there.”

Half saluting but obviously trying not to look directly at the grizzled old man, the boy muttered, “Yes, sir, Mr. Mad-Eye, Sir.” He turned around and started his search on his hands and knees underneath the benches.

“What did you say?” the man asked with the merest trace of a growl.

“Sorry, Mr. Moody, Sir! I’ll get it right now” the boy cried from the floor.

“Where do they get these idiots?” Moody muttered to himself as limped to the center of the room. Through a ragged hole in his robes, Jasmine saw that below the knee one of his legs had been replaced with what looked like a sturdy table leg – with the carved foot of a hippogriff. “Glad I retired before they started recruiting lackwit children.”

“Mr. Moody? Dumbledore sent me…” Jasmine called as she reached the floor. Not really wanting to get near the infamously unstable old auror, Jasmine approached with caution.

“You’re the one Dumbledore brought to look at the veil?”

“Er...yes. I don’t know what I…”

The old man harrumphed, “Thought you’d be older.”

“Oh, right, well…my grandmother and mum are on a buying trip and couldn’t be reached,” she said, blushing but not knowing why.

“The great-granddaughter, then. Up there – don’t touch it.” He pointed to the archway in the middle of the room.

From the floor, it looked much larger than it had from the door. A long, black cloth fluttered from the top of the stones, though the cold air of the room was still. Jasmine wasn’t sure how the archway was still standing, other than with complicated spells. It seemed to be so old that the slight weight of the fabric would drag the crumbling stones down at any moment. The more she looked at the fabric the more interesting it seemed. Drawing closer, Jasmine noted that it was, indeed, fluttering though she could feel no breeze in the cold, underground room. Shoving her hands in her pockets, Jasmine wondered why she couldn’t touch the stuff; it looked interesting.

The movement was almost hypnotic; Jasmine edged closer, until she stood at the foot of the dais. No one had been near the cloth since she’d been there, but she had the odd feeling that someone was standing just on the other side. Peering around she could see no one, but the niggling sensation of being watched from behind the cloth remained. The feeling seemed to crawl up and down her back with sharp talons digging into either side of her spine – not hurting - but uncomfortable as it lodged itself at the base of her skull. Looking through the holes in the fabric, she saw nothing but the aftermath of the battle. She idly wondered if the cloth itself was sentient. It wouldn’t be the first time that a wizard had “gifted” an inanimate object with the power to think or act on its own, though she wondered why someone would enchant a piece of fabric in a decrepit stone ruin.

A yelp drew her attention. A wriggling figure in a black robe and white mask was being levitated out of the room by a pair of aurors – one at the bottom of the room, the other at the top. Just as the figure passed over the boy assigned to find Moody’s eye, the boy – the auror-in-training - popped up from behind a bench, clutching something over his head in triumph. “I found it!” The Death Eater’s robe smacked him in the face, but he shouted again, undaunted, “Mr. Moody, I have your...er…eye!”

“Bring it over here, boy,” Moody commanded.

Unsure of what she should be looking for, she looked at Moody for guidance – and wish she hadn’t. He spat on the magical eye and rubbed the saliva over the surface, being sure to dig into several places with his thumbnail. Lifting the hem of his bloodstained shirt, Moody rubbed the eye dry on the shirttail then popped the eye back into its socket. Jasmine could hear the squelch echo in the chamber.

A whisper that she wasn’t sure she heard drew her attention back to the cloth and she felt a strong urge to draw closer to the archway. The fabric was oddly beautiful, but Jasmine wasn’t sure why she thought so. It was ancient and looked like it had a macabre story for every day that it had existed. Marveling at the age of the fabric, Jasmine wondered how it had lasted so long hanging in the archway. Its age alone lent it a grace and beauty but the ragged edges and the … Jasmine couldn’t explain the feeling, but the fabric seemed to be alive instead of just enchanted. She felt the sensation that she was standing near a human, rather than cold stone. She wondered if it was warm to the touch. Inching up the stairs, Jasmine could swear she heard a whispered invitation to touch coming from the fabric. Again, she looked around trying to find who was speaking to her – it must have been a spell or someone on the other side of the archway. She walked around to the other side of the archway, careful not to touch the crumbling stone, seeking the owner of the voice – no one was there. However, the feeling didn’t go away. Once she was on the other side of the archway, Jasmine still felt as though there was someone staring at her – this time standing where she just had been. Intrigued, Jasmine circled the archway again.

The whispers in the cloth drew her closer. The ancient beauty seemed to beg for her touch. Ignoring everything and everyone else in the room, she reached out, intending to feel the texture of the stuff. A shout interrupted her movement and before she could turn to see who had yelled, she was paralyzed. She could hear everything that happened around her, indeed, she heard the rush of feet moving towards her. But she couldn’t move a muscle. Incensed, Jasmine waited to be released, intending to give the wizard who’d Petrified her a stunning lecture on behavior - beginning with a Shrinking Charm on his penis. One set of footfalls came up the stairs behind her in an uneven step-clunk-clunk. Moody.

She felt his callused fingers dig into the wrist of her outstretched hand and jerk it away from the cloth – he didn’t need a spell to unfreeze her. The unfelt wind made the cloth flutter again as she took a deep breath, winding up to blast him with invectives.

Before she could say a word, Moody dropped her hand and said quietly, but in slow tones she couldn’t mistake as a command, “Don’t touch the Veil.”

Deflated and feeling rather silly since she’d already been warned, she asked, “Why not?”

“Because it’s dangerous. Just step back from it, look – don’t touch - and tell me about the cloth itself.” With that, he clomped down the stairs and glared at her – his magical blue eye rolling to see all around.

Suddenly too tired to care how much she disliked the infamous Mad-Eye Moody, Jasmine turned to the cloth again. Its whispers now sounded ominous, rather than inviting. The folds of cloth seemed to be reaching for her, rather than fluttering in the still air of the underground room. The ancient beauty of the fabric melted into something infinitely more dangerous – like a man-eating flower. She wondered if it would snap at her if she touched it.

“May I touch it with my wand then?”

“No,” replied Moody, staying stubbornly closed-mouthed.

“Why not?”

“Because you’d have to stand too close to it. Dumbledore gave instructions to keep you safe down here – that means you stay away from it.”

“Look, I appreciate your efforts to follow orders, but if you want any kind of information, I’m going to need to get close to it.”

“Why’s that?”

Sighing in exhaustion and wondering why the hell she had to give a history lesson at three-thirty in the morning, Jasmine said, “Woven wool and flax fibres were used by Neolithic man. If you want me to be a little more specific on when this could have been made, I’ll have to actually be able to see the stuff.”

Unmoved, Moody just stared at her.

“Now, can I use my wand to touch it, if I promise not to touch it with my hands?”

“Fine, then. If you end up with a problem, there’s no going back.”

“Fairly warned. Thank you.” She knew she sounded like a shrew, but the man was getting on her nerves.

Jasmine drew her wand from the sheath at her hip and slid it over the fabric, noting its nubby texture. Obligingly, the fabric stayed still for her investigation. The threads themselves weren’t smooth; it had a matte finish, rather than the glow of silk and the weave, while tight and even, wasn’t flat- a sure indication that it was linen.

“Can I cut a piece off to burn?” Burning a bit would tell her, with almost one-hundred percent accuracy, what the fibre was. Linen took longer to ignite than cotton because the plant fibres that made up the yarn were longer than with cotton and the fabric closest to the ash left would be brittle and it was more easily extinguished than cotton or silk.

“No.”

“Alright then,” she muttered and went back to work. Linen was durable – far more than any other woven fibre. Since she didn’t know when then stuff came from, much less where, Jasmine methodically thought through the history of linen, as she knew it.

The cloth was post-Pharonic Egypt, for the simple reason that it was black, not white. Even though silk and cotton were rare and extremely valuable, the Egyptians believed that even the gods wore linen; the Egyptians didn’t use mordants to set dye – the reason why most cloth from that era was white.

Without realizing it, Jasmine muttered to herself, “Not Egyptian, not Mesopotamian – not much linen used here. Not Arab, not Ottoman, not Persian – that was all animal skin and wool for a long time then muslin.”

She leaned in, trying to gauge the thickness of the cloth. “Probably not Greek, even though they had the dye,” she muttered, “bit thick for it unless it’s a slave garment – which it’s not since slaves were naked. Roman plebeians wore stuff like this, but it wasn’t likely to decorate the house – color’s right to, but…” she muttered on. “Odds on, it’s just a bit of Irish linen – it’s too rough to be Flanders’.

“A simple one over- one under tabby weave and older than the sixteenth century but it’s not in shreds since it’s not closed up in some tomb.” She held up the side of the fabric, looking for a hem. She found none. Instead of a hem, the side had a selvage. She settled on the floor, trying to ignore the whispered invitation to touch coming from the fabric. As it fluttered toward her, she scooted back. When it settled again, she leaned closer.

“What are you doing?” barked Moody.

“Looking for needle holes,” replied Jasmine running her wand over the ragged bottom edge of the cloth, holding the edge up for inspection.

“What will that tell?”

“The iron needle wasn’t used until the Middle Ages – after that, needles got a lot smaller. Anything before the Middle ages should have fairly large needle holes – if it was sewn at all.”

“What about spells?”

“They don’t last this long.” She stood again, positive that she hadn’t seen a hem on the bottom of the fabric. With a flick and swish, Jasmine levitated herself to look at the top of the fabric – another selvage. The fabric hadn’t been woven and cut to fit the archway – it had been woven specifically for the arch and finished on the loom, rather than hemmed. Without looking down at Moody, she said, “Since it has selvages on all sides…”

“What does that mean?”

Lecturing between yawns, Jasmine explained. “It’s how a weaver finishes a side, so the threads aren’t hanging out. The thread is wrapped and used for the next row, instead of cut. On magical looms, a special shuttle can weave the ends back in, too, but it’s a pain. It’s easier to cut unless the cloth is being made for some ceremonial purpose where it has to be ‘pretty’.”

The top was the least worn, and from the looks of it, it had been dyed coal black long, long ago. Even though the color had faded from exposure in the folds, the overall dye was uneven. That suggested that it had been dyed as a whole, rather than as yarn. An iron mordant had probably been used – probably after the fabric had been mangled – or beaten to polish and soften- to dye it, otherwise the color would not have lasted so long. The color was dull black with a yellow undernote, either time or peat mud had made it so, perhaps, in combination with gipsywort, meadowsweet, sumac or walnut. Spells used with the mordants had forced the dark color, as linen didn’t take strong dyes well.

Scrubbing at her eyes, Jasmine lowered herself to the floor and contemplated what she knew. It seemed like a sum total of nothing. Old fabric, simple weave, plain, fading dye – and a couple of odd enchantments that made it move and talk. The cloth whispered to her, its voices growing louder, the fabric fluttered again, beckoning her to discover its secrets. Resisting the voices, she stepped back and descended the stairs to lean on the dais. She ignored the man who was still watching her.

She didn’t bother to ask Moody, but wondered at the reason she could look but not touch the fascinating fabric. Idly, she picked up a stone, probably loosened in the battle, fiddling with it. Would the fabric burn flesh? Perhaps it killed by smothering, like a leithfold? The voices grew louder, she couldn’t distinguish specific words, but the tone beckoned. Idly, she tossed the rock under the curtain – as it struck the floor on the other side, a small cloud of dust was raised. Maybe the curtain had a poisonous dust in it? As she thought of it, Jasmine discounted the idea as interminably stupid - the same with the fleeting idea of the cloth having a toxic mold. She picked up another small stone and stared at the curtain more, allowing her eyes to unfocus as she gazed as the rippling fabric. The uneven dye, faded from age… maybe the dye was poison.

She gently tossed the stone at the cloth – it bounced off of it and fell. Apparently, it wasn’t acid – of course, she’d rubbed the fabric with her wand and the wood had survived just fine – if she’d thought about it.

“A pebble won’t do it,” Moody said. “What all do you think about the cloth, so far?”

Narrowing her eyes, she looked at Moody and picked up another stone- larger this time. Moody’s magical eye followed her movements, but the normal, brown eye stayed fixed on hers. Not a pebble, she thought. Offhandedly she said, “Old. Interesting.”

When he harrumphed, she hefted the rock in one hand. With a thought to not tearing the fabric, Jasmine tossed the rock at the fabric. Again, it bounced off. Surprised, Jasmine looked at Moody. His magical eye had followed the stone, but his other still remained fixed on her. The weight of the rock should have made the fabric yield back. The stone should have landed on the other side of the archway.

“And what was that test for, missy?”

“To see what would happen,” Jasmine said with a raised eyebrow. Even the effort to do that was a bit much this late at night, but she refused to be intimidated by old Mad-Eye Moody.

“Nothing happened.”

“Sure it did. It’s spelled so the rock bounced instead of falling to the other side.”

Grudgingly, Moody said, “The rock isn’t alive.”

She stood still for a moment, pondering his words. Then, blessing all of the summertime practice she’d done to impress her Transfigurations Master great-grandfather when she had been twelve, Jasmine waved her wand over a half-scorched rock laying on the floor and, without uttering a spell, turned it into a rabbit. It would only be a rabbit for a short time, but it would be long enough. Moody seemed unimpressed. The small rabbit had beige fur with a black stripe – probably from the scorch mark on the stone. Jasmine hadn’t worried too much about the color of the rabbit, since it was only a temporary enchantment. It let out a small squeak of outrage when she picked it up and Jasmine felt a twinge of guilt but quashed it in the name of study – it wasn’t a real rabbit, after all.

She looked at Moody, who nodded, and again at the rabbit before she gently tossed it. The rabbit worked its tiny legs midair and its ears were laid back against its head before it made contact with the fabric. Fluttering as though in a high wind, the fabric seemed to reach for the rabbit. Then the rabbit, once a broken stone – was gone.

Inhaling quickly, Jasmine rushed to the other side of the archway. The fabric settled into its gentle movement again but the rabbit was gone.

Moody clunked to her side and asked, “What did you figure out about the cloth?”

Stunned, Jasmine sank to the steps of the dais. She had expected the rabbit to die or be injured or turn into a replica of Esmerelda Fudge’s ugly daughter but not just… disappear. Portkey? Doorway? Death? She didn’t know much about the fabric, but someone – not something, had disappeared just like that rabbit and more than simple curiosity drove her to bargain, “Tit for tat?”

Moody nodded and produced an Ever-Inked quill and notebook, ready to take down her observations.

She took a deep breath, turned and looked at the fabric and began, “Probably Irish grown flax with French seed – likely woven in Ireland. Done Mid-fifteenth to sixteenth century – after that, the guilds were really established, even among wizards. Since I’ve not read anything about this before, it wasn’t done by a guild – they keep meticulous records on the more … interesting pieces. Probably not done before the mid-fifteenth century because – well, it’s still here, not rotted away. Woven on an enchanted loom with a special shuttle specifically for the archway and specifically for ceremonial purpose.” Jasmine took a deep breath and waited for Moody to catch up. “The weave itself isn’t complicated, it’s a tabby – one over, one under. It was dyed after it was woven. Natural dye, likely done by a woman because it was taboo for men and they probably used an iron pot to do it in. Iron was probably used as the mordant. It was soaked in bog mire as an additional source of both iron and dye with plant dye added – meadowsweet is my guess because the black has a sallow undertone.” She looked at Moody, who was still writing. “I don’t know when or how the… enchantment was put on it.”

Finished, Moody said, “The Ministry doesn’t either, but it was used for executions for two hundred years before the Dementors were brought to Azkaban and started using the Kiss.”

“So it’s not a Portkey or a doorway?”

“Not to anywhere that’s ever been seen.” He motioned around the room. “This is called the Death Chamber. People who go through the veil never come back. They’re dead – or considered so.”

Jasmine took a moment to absorb that before asking slowly, “Who went through the veil?”

“No one you’d worry about,” Moody replied. His voice was carefully blank.

“Mr. Moody, who went through the veil?” This time looking at the old man, Jasmine asked once again, with twin feelings of curiosity and dread.

Both of his eyes were fixed on her when he answered, “Sirius Black.”