Hello!
This is a sequel to my other story I'm a Riddle, but not the one you're trying to solve. It isn't necessary to have read that one first, but in later chapters, it could be good to have done so.
The actress in the picture is Katie McGrath as it is in IMARBNTOYTTS as well.
This story will mostly follow the canon storyline of the Harry Potter books, but it will also have some changes. Those changes will involve my OC.
I don't own anything about the Harry Potter world, all rights go to JK Rowling.
So, no matter if you are a new reader or an 'old' one, I just want to say:
Enjoy!
Chapter 1: So wake me up when it's all over, when I'm wiser and I'm older
The room was dimly lit by tiny lamps in the ceiling, casting a blue-like light over the room. The room was cold, but that wasn't surprising with its empty, colorless walls, metallic furniture and ice like light. Something that sounded very much like rain hitting a window could faintly be heard around the room. It was strange, seeing as the location of the room was far from the sky. It was located deep under the streets of London. Nobody truly knew what was going on down there in this department. Those who worked there barely knew what they were doing themselves. The place wasn't called the Department of Mysteries for no reason.
In the middle in the room, on a clean metallic bed like one of those in a hospital, was the thing they were currently studying in this room. It was covered in a snow white blanket and from under it you could see strangely looking chains poking out. They were red and if you would lean in closer and feel them, you would be surprised of their pulsating and warmth. The chains were all connected to weird instruments all around the cold room. They were even weird by wizard standards.
The lights in the ceiling flickered as if someone was walking too hard on the floor above. The rain shattering sound continued, but it grew steadier and steadier, just to slow down and be weakened.
White smoke puffed out from one of the instruments in the room and at the same time another instrument set off a terrible sound that sounded like a muggle siren. A self-writing feather quill, black and sleek, jumped up from its place on the freakishly clean desk. It dipped itself in a bottle of watery-like ink and started to write on a piece of parchment. As soon as the ink touched the parchment, it turned deep red. The quill wrote:
It's starting.
. . . .
Brandon Fulcher was awoken by the sound that he had an urgent floo-message. He was out of his bed in an instant, his heart in his throat and he hurried to the small fireplace of the hotel room he was currently renting.
"Yeah, what is it?" he asked groggily as the thin and foxlike face of one of his colleagues appeared in a flash of green flames.
"You will not believe this", Varushka said gleefully, her Russian accent barely traceable. "But Alexander succeeded."
The previously sleepiness disappeared completely and Brandon straightened up, a shocked and disbelieving look upon his young face.
"You can't be serious", he told her, looking as though he waited for her to laugh. "You're pulling my leg. There's absolutely no. . . ."
"We're living in a world of magic", Varushka pointed out, her eyes smirking. "Anything can happen. Now hurry up, he want us both to be there since there is no way of knowing what will happen."
That snapped Brandon out of his thoughts.
"You mean sh. . . . it hasn't woken up yet?" he asked and now he sounded a bit excited, even though he still looked worried.
"No", Varushka sighed and she looked impatient. "Get down here now. You don't want to miss it. Thank God that it chosen this time of the day or I would have missed it."
Brandon thought it was pretty strong of her to thank God, seeing as she was a vampire with no faith whatsoever in anything holy. Brandon, who was a muggleborn wizard, still believed in God even though his fellow wizards claimed that there wasn't any power higher than Merlin's.
"I'll be there in. . . .", he looked at the clock: it was nearing midnight. "I'll be there before the clock strikes twelve."
"I'll hope so", smirked Varushka and disappeared in the flames again, leaving only darkness behind her.
Brandon wildly looked around after some clothes while his mind was reeling: How could Alexander have been right? He was mad. Out of his mind. They had had to use violence when they collected him from his lab since he refused to leave. Not even a personal talk with the Minister that he had to retire and leave had made any impact on Alexander. No, he had fought and continued with his crazy experiments in secret. It was five years ago since he had been fired from the Department, but the project he had been working on had taken him nearly fourteen years and Brandon had only been a part of it for eight of those years.
He hastily pulled on a pair of jeans and a black t-shirt with the name Dire Straits printed on the front in white letters. It was when he was brushing his teeth and combing his wild, brown hair that he realized that Varushka had seen him practically half naked moments before. The realization made him blush. The beautiful and deviously clever vampire would surely keep that in mind for her teasing. While Alexander was unpredictable, Varushka usually wasn't.
The clock was a quarter to twelve when Brandon felt somewhat respectable. He grabbed his wand and the key to the lab and after checking that his door was locked, he pulled out some blue powder from one of the hidden boxes under a floorboard under his bed. Floo powder usually was green, but the blue powder could only take you within the Department of Mysteries. Everyone that worked there always had a little stash of it at home in case it would become necessary to work when you least expected it.
Only hesitating slightly, he looked out of the window to make sure that no one saw him. There was no one there in the cold, dark night. Only snow falling like solid tears from the black, velvety sky. Brandon sighed deeply before casting the powder into the fireplace. He watched it take the form of fire, but it was sparkling too much to be fire and the blue color made it more ice-like than a real fire.
"Department of Mysteries, second corridor, dragonfly route", Brandon stated calmly, swallowing the lump in his throat.
With a sound of someone lightening a match, he was swallowed by the blue flames and disappeared, leaving his hotel room behind.
. . . .
Brandon gracefully stepped out of the fireplace, relieved when the alarms didn't start. Travelling with the dragonfly route was always easier and didn't rise as much suspicion as if he had chosen another route.
He stepped out of the small room and into the corridor. The room was small and the most normal one in the whole department. It was their arrival room where they all had a locker to keep their stuff while working.
Brandon prayed that he wouldn't run into anyone while running to get Alexander and Varushka from their usual meeting place. Since neither of them was allowed into the department, Brandon was their key to get in. Sometimes Brandon wondered why he did this: it could cost him his job and a trip to Azkaban. It was illegal. Alexander was banned from the department, even from the Ministry, and Varushka was a vampire. She was as welcomed here as the Black Death.
A wiser man may not have done what Brandon had done, but Brandon was curious. He liked to solve the riddles down here, riddles no other wizards and witches before had solved. And he couldn't deny that Alexander's project was interesting. Mad and impossible, but definitely interesting.
Brandon didn't meet anyone, but he could hear people working in section eleven. He had no idea what they did there. He worked in section three where they tried to make it possible to possess different powers from different magical creatures. And during his spare time, he worked for an illegal scientist.
Alexander and Varushka waited in their usual place. Alexander looked frenetic, his white hair standing in different angles and he hadn't bothered to dress properly. He was still in his nightshirt.
"Hurry my boy", he said loudly as Brandon locked up the invisible door to let them in. "It will soon be over and I can't stand to miss it. Years of research. . . ."
In his hand he held a parchment, but Brandon couldn't read what it was saying since Alexander was waving his arms around. Varushka was elegantly dressed in black and her black eyes were gleaming with mirth. Brandon could partly share their enthusiasm, but he was anxious that they would be discovered.
"Be quiet", he begged Alexander, holding one of his arms in a firm grip like he was a badly behaved child. "You never know who's listening here."
Alexander nodded, but his bright grey eyes were somewhere else. Brandon sighed and his stomach clenched horribly.
"Relax", Varushka said and grabbed both men's arms. "Alexander's right. We need to hurry. I haven't donated blood for fourteen years for nothing."
With that said, and before Brandon could protest, she had dragged them across the corridor in a speed only vampires could manage. Brandon felt sick as they moved faster and faster up and down, turning right and left. The tricky thing in the Department of Mysteries was that the ways around here often could change. So it was lucky to have a vampire who could easily navigate her way around. Alexander didn't have a problem with traveling at vampire speed. The old man had done a lot of weird things in his life that he was prepared for anything.
They arrived outside a small, bland door in an abandoned corridor a very long distance under the rest of the department. As soon as Varushka let them go, Alexander threw himself at the door, eager to get in.
"Open!" he cried and put an ear to the door. "I can hear it!"
"The key", Varushka hissed at Brandon as he shakily locked up the door.
Alexander even beat Varushka into the room and he looked like Christmas had come early. The pale and dull room was no longer as dull and cold as it usually was. The metallic instruments made odd noises, blinking in different colors so Brandon felt like he was in a muggle nightclub. Varushka grimaced, narrowing her eyes and putting her hands over her ears. White and green smoke oozed around the room and Brandon started to cough.
"What's going on?" he managed to say over all the noise.
"I don't know", Varushka spat out, sounding like every word caused her pain.
Alexander didn't care. He was filled with happiness. After fourteen years of experimenting and theories, he would finally gain a result. He hurried to the metallic bed and pulled off the white blanket. The look upon his old face was gentle, almost like a father who looked upon his firstborn.
"Come on", Brandon coughed and dragged Varushka across the room.
The smoke smelled of raspberries and magic. Very strong magic. It was overwhelming. Brandon imagined it would smell like this in a store with perfumes for women. Varushka looked sick, well, as sick as a vampire could look.
Suddenly the room went quiet. The lamps were still blinking in irregular movements, but the noises had died down. Looking relieved, Varushka removed her hands from her ears.
"Look at her", Alexander spoke tenderly, his eyes holding nothing but affection. "Isn't she beautiful?"
Brandon and Varushka looked down at the girl lying on the bed. She could barely be out of her late teens. She was pale, horribly so. All over her body, she had scars that looked like someone had tried to patch her up. Which in this case was the truth. The scars, or seams, were either dark red, gold or faint blue, almost silver. They went all over her, neatly or sloppy, straight or zigzag. There wasn't a place on her whole body that didn't have some kind of mark. Her hair was dark and tousled. One of her eyes was closed while the other was missing. It was like a hole and in that hole were thin, wormlike seams in gold. The girl barely looked human. She looked magical and with a certain beauty, yes. But it had taken the three of them years to make her look like that. And all would be for nothing if she didn't have the right functions in her head.
They could hear a faint beating, almost like a heart. Brandon's breath caught in his throat, Varushka looked curious and Alexander had tears of joy in his eyes.
The beating got faster and the chains that held the girl to the bed slowly retreated. Brandon was prepared to get some salve to ease the tiny wounds on her body were the chains had been stuck. But Varushka stopped him.
"Watch", she whispered breathlessly.
And Brandon did.
Before his eyes, the girl healed. The golden lines on her body shone brightly and the red ones were pounding. Where the small wounds had been seconds before, was now smooth skin again. He took a deep breath and slowly a smile was breaking out on his sunburned face.
"Unbelievable", he muttered, fascinated beyond words.
"We did it", Varushka said in triumph and her smirk was back in place.
Alexander didn't speak. Words were failing him. The three colleagues stood in silence, save for the beating of a heart.
The girl's only eye opened. It was dark green, like a pines needles.
"Beautiful", Alexander mumbled again.
The girl looked wildly around, trying to adjust to the light and her surroundings. She parted her lips, carefully, and said in a raspy voice:
"Where am I?"
"You're currently in the Department of Mysteries", Alexander explained gently, but with wildness in his eyes. "The year is 1992 and the date. . . . well, it's probably early morning, the twentieth first December. My name is Alexander Flamel and this is Brandon Fulcher and Varushka. We've been taking care of you. "
The girl looked thoughtful, gathering her thoughts. The others didn't press her. They needed to see how she could manage herself. After a while, the girl asked:
"Who am I?"
So, how about that as a start?
Please leave a comment on what you thought about the chapter! I'm open to any kind of constructive criticism.
