Chapter 351: Capturing Saruman
Saruman, riding in Edward's body, clearly had full access to Edward's memories.
Every spell Edward had learnt, Saruman could cast, and with frightening power, not much weaker than Kael's own.
Perhaps trusting that Kael would not risk killing Edward, he swung the wand in his hand without restraint, hurling curses straight at Kael.
But the wand itself, bound to Edward by long companionship, still carried Edward's will. It rejected Saruman violently and refused to serve him.
Saruman's face darkened. "Accursed wand," he snarled under his breath.
The resistance made his spell‑casting clumsy and uneven.
He quickly pulled out another wand from Merlin knew where and levelled it at Kael again.
But Kael was far from alone. Elrond had already drawn his Elven blade, Vilya gleaming on his finger.
Gandalf and Galadriel pressed in from behind Saruman.
The other professors had their wands out as well, all of them trained on Edward's possessed body.
Out of fear for Edward's life, they refrained from lethal spells, choosing instead charms meant to bind and restrain.
Gandalf raised his staff, flooding the corridor with holy light, and regarded Saruman calmly. "Yield, Saruman. You will not escape today."
Galadriel said nothing. She, too, avoided destructive magic. Lifting her hand, she called upon the Ring of Water.
Outside, the great ward that shrouded Hogwarts shrank at her command, flowing inwards. It slipped through stone and air alike, past Kael and the others, and folded itself around Edward's possessed form, forming a closing net.
Hemmed in on all sides and pressed hardest by Gandalf, Elrond, and Galadriel, three of the mightiest in Middle-earth, Saruman soon found the struggle bitter.
Even at full strength, he could only just hold his ground. Now, forced mostly onto the defensive, his shield of hardened magic armour buckled under Galadriel's tightening barrier, shuddering on the edge of collapse.
Then, as that shimmering prison drew close to sealing him off, Saruman did the last thing any of them expected.
He stopped resisting.
Instead, he rammed his wand up under his own throat. "Move again, and this body dies with me," he snarled. "Take another step and I will kill us both in the next heartbeat."
At the wild light in his eyes, Galadriel froze the barrier where it was.
Gandalf and Elrond also broke off their attacks. None of them doubted that he meant it. Saruman had fallen so far that he would not hesitate to tear Edward apart if it served his spite.
Kael let his wand arm lower a fraction, and the professors behind him did the same, though they kept their eyes fixed warily on the possessed man.
Kael's face was unreadable, his tone level. "Saruman, leave Edward's body now, and I will let you go."
"Headmaster!" several of the professors burst out, staring at him in disbelief.
Even Gandalf, Galadriel, and Elrond were taken aback. None of them had expected Kael to offer release.
Letting Saruman go meant unleashing a bitter enemy who hated both Hogwarts and Kael, and bringing him down a second time would be far harder.
Saruman only laughed, cold and harsh. "Kael, cunning black‑robed wizard," he said. "Do you think I would trust your honeyed tongue? The moment I left this flesh, you would cut me down without a second thought."
"If you doubt my word, I will bind myself by a magical contract," Kael replied. "I will swear not to harm you and to let you leave Hogwarts unharmed."
Saruman snorted, eyes full of scorn. "Your contracts are worth as much as your promises. Nothing."
His gaze flicked over those hemming him in, and then past them, out through a window where Smaug loomed, golden eyes fixed upon him, jaws ready to belch dragonfire at the slightest move.
Saruman's lip curled. He slipped a hand into Edward's pocket and drew out a small beaded bag.
He upended it, and a huge Vanishing Cabinet squeezed its way through the tiny opening and crashed onto the floor.
On the door was a dial of coloured markers, each marked with a name: Hogsmeade, Bree, Isengard, Rivendell, Lothlórien.
Saruman twisted the pointer to Isengard and shot Kael a triumphant look. "I must thank your portrait," he said. "Without its guidance, I would never have reached the dragon's vault and reclaimed this delightful trinket. Rest assured, once I have left safely, I will return this body of your servant to you quite unharmed, so long as you do not meddle."
He flung the cabinet door open. Facing Kael and the others, he backed slowly into the darkness within and pulled the door shut after him.
He did not for a moment look worried that they might try to destroy the cabinet.
Watching the set to their faces as he vanished from sight—the grim eyes of Kael and Gandalf, the thwarted frustration in the professors who dared not risk a curse—filled him with savage satisfaction.
As he stepped through the black between, he felt the faint shift and twist of space. He knew he had emerged into the twin cabinet.
Even as bitter envy gnawed at him over Kael's mastery of such craft, he put his hands to the door and shoved it open.
The sight that met him wiped the smile from his face.
His wand came up in a flash, but he was an instant too slow.
A massive serpent's head hung down above the cabinet, its enormous yellow‑orange eyes like the gaze of Death itself.
Their eyes met.
"No!" Saruman's face contorted in terror, fury, and utter unwillingness.
His fingers clenched harder on the wand, straining to lift it, to do anything, but his body was already turning to stone. Grey crept over him from head to toe, hardening flesh and robe and wand into cold rock.
This was no Body‑Bind Curse. That spell merely paralysed. Saruman, wearing Edward's flesh, had been transformed into a true statue.
The cause of that petrification was simple enough.
Herpo the basilisk still wore the enchanted diving goggles Kael had fixed over his eyes with a Sticking Charm. The thick glass blocked and diffused the direct killing force of his gaze, but even weakened, it was enough.
"Well done, Herpo," Kael's voice said from the doorway.
He entered the chamber with Gandalf, Galadriel, Elrond, and a cluster of professors at his back.
The moment Herpo sensed his master, the basilisk squeezed his eyes shut and let out a long, sibilant hiss.
To Kael's ear, it was pure petulant pride, the sound of a monstrous serpent demanding praise. To everyone else, it was a skin‑crawling noise that made their nerves twitch.
The Vanishing Cabinet had not taken Saruman to Isengard.
It had brought him to Herpo's "larder".
Once, this room had been stacked with the corpses of giant spiders from Mirkwood, kept as emergency rations for the basilisk. After ten years, those supplies had long since been eaten.
The rich meals had done Herpo good. By now, he was even larger than the thousand‑year basilisk in the other Hogwarts, and every bit as deadly.
After soothing and praising Herpo, Kael turned his eyes to the stone Edward.
The reason the cabinet that should have led to Isengard had actually opened here was simple: Kael's trap.
After shutting down every fireplace to cut off the Floo, he had also moved all the Vanishing Cabinets into Smaug's vault.
But even with a dragon on guard, he had not felt entirely secure. As a final precaution, he had altered the Cabinets so that all of them, whatever destination they claimed, ultimately connected only to the one in Herpo's lair.
It had been meant as a contingency, in case Saruman ever tried to flee via the Cabinets.
With Galadriel's barrier sealing the grounds and the fireplaces dead, the Cabinets were the only remaining doorway out.
As Kael had feared, Saruman had sensed the danger, possessed Edward, and gone to the Headmaster's portrait under the pretence of asking for help, when what he really wanted was access to the vault and the Cabinets.
He had no idea that his painstakingly acquired escape route was in fact a carefully baited pit.
Standing before the stone figure, Kael still did not relax. Even now, he flicked his wand and sent Edward's petrified hand twitching, disarming him. The wand leapt free and flew into Kael's grasp.
"Headmaster… will Professor Edward be all right?" Luke asked anxiously. He and Edward had always been on good terms, and the sight of his colleague turned into a statue clearly shook him.
Kael knew what he feared and shook his head. "There is no need to worry. Edward is merely petrified. Once Saruman has been driven from his body, Professor Allensis can brew a Mandrake restorative to cure him."
Then he looked to Gandalf, Elrond, and Galadriel. "For now, Saruman is still lodged inside Edward," he said. "Do any of you have a way to drive him out?"