I was surprised by the welcome received in the first couple days, so here's hoping I can keep up with you guys.
Updates will be on Fridays, for those curious people.
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2: Imperio vs Laurel vs Basilisk, Take Two
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It felt like several hours passed before anything interesting happened, and Laurel hastily shoved the book from Ginny back in her pocket when the 'pulling' started again. She reformed in an office, probably in the higher levels of the Ministry since it was well-lit and not made for more than three people. In spite of the physical limitations, there was a fair crowd crammed in.
Strangely enough, Laurel actually knew most - if not all - of the people in the room currently, the first and most prominent being Hermione. That was solely due to her friend attacking the instant she became physical enough for her to wrap trembling arms around the petite woman's shoulders. After being released, and therefore able to see beyond the curtain of her friend's hair, she spotted the current Minister of Magic: Kingsley, Ron, a couple of coworkers from the Department, and an unfamiliar old man.
"Uh, I didn't mean to?" Laurel thought it was best to start with the simple answer.
It was after that the flood of questions began, and she didn't bother restraining her derisive eye-roll at everyone's antics. It's almost like they've forgotten my brief stint as an Auror, and exactly what a disaster that was. Healing wasn't much better, honestly... In fact, I probably should have expected this. She wasn't going to be able to answer any questions at all until people stopped bombarding her, and the Unspeakable was feeling impatient enough to cut them off.
"That's enough." Using the tone of voice able to stop any would-be criminal in their tracks, the room fell silent. "Now, in a way I can actually answer your questions, maybe try that again?" She tilted her head sarcastically, and exchanged a commiserating look with Ron. He knew exactly what she was feeling, since he had so many siblings that needed to be talked over in order to be heard.
"What actually happened?"
"I touched it accidentally, was pulled into a weird metal room, acquired new jewellery, and am presumably the new inhabitant of the lamp." Laurel counted the things off on her fingers, and watched the reaction around the room to her absurd list. "That's all I know really. Now what happened on the outside? Maybe I can clarify some stuff." It could have been worse, like a basilisk inside a centuries-old school for instance, but it wasn't that normal either.
At this point one of the other Unspeakables stepped forward, the one Laurel had contact with the most. Bubbles was also the borrower of her containment gloves. His code name had been a source of laughter when she'd started. But right then Laurel was nowhere near amused, more thinking damned Disney.
"After you touched the lamp, this man took your place. He was the previous inhabitant, and once no longer bound, he said he regained his ability to control himself. It's apparently similar to being under the imperious curse, in that the subject is compelled to fulfill the commands of the 'owner'. Although the subject may be mentally present, they have no control over their own actions while outside the lamp.
"Which is curious in the context of you, Aconite. You seem to be acting as normal."
She shrugged noncommittally. She felt normal.
Laurel shared this observation with the room, and Hermione tentatively suggested they test it by giving her an order.
After thinking about it for a moment, the autumn-haired woman nodded in agreement, and her brunette friend told her to jump once right at that moment, since qualifying a time would get more immediate results.
It was easy at first: she thought about not wanting to jump, and it was just a mild twitch to the contrary which was easily suppressed. The longer she resisted, the more it was like holding a bucket of water above her head, as a tremble worked its way up through her legs, wrapped around her spine, and squeezed her ribs. By the time it reached her skull, she was shaking with the effort, sweat beading on her forehead.
After that, the tremble changed into the burning sensation of standing in snow too long. When that sensation reached her spine, she lost control and Laurel felt her knees bending against her will as she jumped.
She scowled and grumbled wordlessly to the room at large, but inside she was still trembling. Someone can control me. Anyone who picks up this lamp can control me. It was a whisper, but she knew it wouldn't take long before it became a scream. That was the stuff of her worst nightmares; the ones when the possession had worked, when the horcrux took over and she was screaming inside while someone else used her like a meatsuit.
She'd had enough of being a puppet, or being a figurehead, of being someone else's 'crowning glory'.
It was half the reason she'd become an Unspeakable. It made it nearly impossible to brag about 'having' her.
The other half had been due to several life-threatening situations that Laurel was actually unsure how she survived alive to this day. Now that Laurel was free to live her life, she was damn well going to.
Kingsley had a gleam in his eye that Laurel didn't like one bit. They might have been members of the Order together and fought on the same side in the war, but that didn't mean he was principled enough to not use such an asset when it… mmm, "fell into his hands".
Hermione had the crease between her brows that meant she was trying to out-logic something illogical, and Ron was looking concerned and pensieve like he was trying to find the most effective angle to take out the threat. At least her friends would try to help. Whether there was anything to be done was a different question entirely, but it was a much better alternative to giving up immediately.
"So what now?" Laurel queried after they hashed out the sequence of events a couple more times, each one more pointless than the last. She didn't mention anything about the chanting, uneasy at the thought of sharing it with the whole room. I'll tell the researchers in charge later, the witch reassured herself. "I might not be able to help much with this because I don't know how long I can stay outside the lamp without it pulling me back in again. Do I just continue work as normal, or what?"
That was the option she was hoping for the most, honestly. She enjoyed her job, and it'd give her something to busy herself with while she tried to decipher the runes anchored on her wrists, and the others on the inside of the lamp itself.
She'd mentioned the bindings on her wrists briefly, but she was one of the resident experts (on mostly the creative reinterpretation) of runework in spellweaving. If Laurel couldn't figure it out, it was very unlikely anyone else could. Not like anyone would be anywhere near as motivated as I am.
Just in case there was someone cleverer than her (there were a lot of those, 5 years hadn't changed her that much, really), she'd told them about her bindings, since the green-eyed witch was pretty sure the inside was a more complex version of the portable ones. It had to function as an anchor point for a separate mobile rune arrangement anyway, and that was no simple feat.
"We may have to put you under observation."
Laurel narrowed her eyes suspiciously, "Who's observation, exactly?" Her voice was drier than a desert, and she hoped the Minister of Magic noticed.
He didn't, having spent too many years politicking to realize how much of a bad idea getting on her bad side actually was.
She'd been an Auror, and tracked down criminals and dark magic practitioners and who even knows what else.
Laurel had been a healer for a year or so there, and knew exactly how to take a person apart, since that was what they did to fix people.
She'd been in the Department of Mysteries for over 2 months, exploring magic and finding the edges of the definitions and theories she'd been taught in school.
None of that even touched on the studying she'd found herself doing during her year on the run in an effort to bridge the skill gap between her and Voodletort, or afterwards when she'd had too much time in the nights to sit around doing nothing.
Laurel was a lot more practiced at being dangerous now than she was when she'd first become the "woman-who-conquered", and back then at the bare age of 17 she'd been able to defeat the most dangerous Dark Lord in their history.
Nonetheless, Kingsley pushed his luck, "The Unspeakables have offered. We have a few other experts who are prepared to step in, as well."
Ron and Hermione picked up on the tension building in her body, and while the other woman edged toward the lamp behind the Minister's back, Ron distracted the room by walking over and appearing to comfort the smallest of the trio. In reality he was telling her the plan.
"'Mione's got the lamp, we head over to Ginny's place first opportunity, go from there. Hope you don't need any stuff from home, Lore."
She shook her head and leant against his chest gently while he wound an arm around her waist, ready to throw her out the door if it became a necessary part of their escape. "Wait until I give you the signal. We need some things first."
The Minister kept going, "We'll escort you to the Department of Mysteries now, where you can discuss things with Velocity as head of the Department. She'll be in charge of the investigation and its progress."
"Sure, sounds great." Laurel replied, wielding her innocent 'I'm not up to anything, I swear' voice. "Can we pick up the other notes on this thing along the way? I'd like to see what the other Unspeakables found on the lamp. I assume it's coming with me, where tests can be carried out on both ends of the problem?" She arched an expectant eyebrow, thanking her father for his aristocratic genes that made it just that much more effective.
Kingsley nodded in acquiescence, and Hermione gladly picked the object up before anyone else had the chance to. Since she was the current 'master', it was a two-layered protection.
They moved through the levels of the Ministry as a group, and though Laurel wondered why the man who'd been stuck in the lamp before her followed, she didn't question it aloud.
The Potter witch managed to dart into her office and grab what she'd figured out about the lamp before disaster struck once more. A memo had been sent ahead to Velocity, so she should have the rest of the notes collated by the time the group arrived in the Head of Department's office.
Hermione held the lamp securely in her arms, standing in between the other two, and after they reached the designated meeting point, she moved so once Laurel had the notes she could flick through them without being noticed.
The first thing Laurel noticed was every other researcher had been told not to touch the lamp without gloves on at all, and that only one other person hadn't followed through with this.
Second, the person who had skin-contact had been able to communicate verbally with the wizard captured, and subsequently drawn the most information on how the lamp worked, and every report after that was remarkably lacking in comparison.
The third thing was that the previous tenant had known how to exchange the lamp's subject. It wasn't specified exactly how, but it was mentioned it required the current inhabitant to know who was the intended new one, and had to do it from the inside of the lamp.
That meant the ritual required at least one willing participant, since when inside the lamp, the subject was in control of themselves.
Fourth, on Velocity's desk there was a half-hidden report about basilisk venom doses, and she recognised the times as her coffee breaks from the past three weeks. At the bottom of the page, the half of the summary she could see indicated the recipient showed no signs after the first day, and only had a mild reaction.
Laurel remembered that day. She'd finished her tea, thinking it had a strange tang, and when she went to stand up got the worst bout of headrush she'd ever experienced. The tang had been there in every hot drink since, so she assumed it was something the Department added for some reason or another. The possibility of it being poison had never even occurred.
They tried to kill me! Multiple times!
She contained her fury, outwardly only clicking her tongue on the roof of her mouth and frowning minutely. But why had the ministry been trying to kill her? And so subtly - most people trying to off her were nowhere as quiet about it.
Like that one guy who'd tried to blind her and then stab somewhere vital while she was incapacitated. She didn't exactly remember dodging, but once her sight had come back there hadn't been a wound or anything. Her attacker had been bleeding from a serious stab wound in his thigh, which seemed like a logical place for him to hit if she hadn't been where he expected her to be.
Actually, thinking about it then, there'd been more than a couple incidents just like that. It was the reason she'd stopped being an Auror, actually, and even if she'd forgotten why she'd chosen to leave until that moment, she'd always known it was for a good reason.
The incidents returned just before she quit being a healer too, and then the Ministry had offered her a place with the Unspeakables. The main reason she'd accepted was because all her overseas queries had fallen through…
Suddenly, the job offer seemed a lot more suspicious, especially since they'd clearly already used it to try and kill her.
And the refusals from outside England hadn't been for any real reason-
It was like something had been blocking her from being even the slightest bit suspicious about stuff in general going wrong for her, and the Ministry specifically. Most times Laurel was very, very good at assessing when something was not quite right, yet she somehow managed to miss all of this?!
The redhead needed time to think this all through. Alright then, time to draw this conversation to a close.
"Now that we've established that I'll be staying here in the Ministry until the tests are complete, I'm going to change my office into a living space. We can pick this up again first thing tomorrow, I'm sure." She bulldozed over any protests, wielding her charisma in a way she really hated to, but these were exceptional circumstances. Beyond exceptional, really.
Her escape successful, Hermione and Ron followed her as she walked efficiently back to her office - not quite running, but they'd be able to see how much she wanted to. Once behind a closed and Hermione-warded door, Laurel brushed everything off her desk in order to spread out the reports on the lamp. She sat herself behind the desk, buried her face in her hands, and told them what they were looking at.
Her brunette friend made noises of comprehension, but Laurel held back the other part about the venom.
Ron asked, "But what does this have to do with you and what happened?"
When she faced the pair, his blue eyes were suspicious. That's what I like to see. "Well, this goes back to my Auror days, from what I can tell. This first report is dated a couple days after that thing with the Chimera, Ron. You know, when it was only due to sheer dumb luck that I didn't die?" She paused for effect. "When I was somehow bitten by the venomous end, scratched by the claws, and didn't die, unlike every other single person who had one of those injuries, let alone two?"
Their jaws dropped a little, and Laurel shook her head, hands trembling at the rage building back up inside her. "Wait you mean you were actually hit by that thing?!" Hermione gasped. "I thought the papers had it wrong, considering you were out of action for only about two days, when the claws are crippling with the anticoagulant magic, and the fangs are just as bad?"
Ron massaged the bridge of his nose, wedding ring flashing in the lighting. "I assumed since you survived the basilisk, it wouldn't affect you."
"And then a week later there was the slavery ring we took down, and I swear I took an Avada, but when nothing happened, I just kept on going? And after that, there was the necromancer. I could go on. There were at least eight of those, before I gave it up and went into healing. That was fine for the first ten months, before it started up again, and I quit again. Please tell me I'm not the only one seeing this pattern?"
"You can't die?" Hermione was the one who said what they were all thinking.
Laurel shrugged, "All I know is that I survived every one of those, and I still don't know how. Add that to the timing of this," she waved a hand at the lamp. "And, on top of that, the fact that I haven't been able to put this together until I saw the report on Velocity's desk saying they'd been dosing me with Basilisk venom. We all know how well-developed my 'secrets radar' is, and the powers the 'genie' professed to have, which were somehow confirmed…"
"Ah, crap." Ron sighed. "Weren't you trying to go to Europe or somewhere at some point too? What happened to that?"
"They all mysteriously refused, with lame see-through excuses that I didn't see through. For all we know, if I actually tried to leave, they'd have sent me straight back. Now that I'm bound to the lamp, it's almost guaranteed. I count as a creature now, an endangered one at that, and therefore have to have a legal Ministry-employed owner." She wanted to curse something so badly that her fingers were twitching. They would never let any of her friends take custody.
"So they've finally got you right where they want you: an undefeatable weapon to aim wherever the Ministry wants. With no foreseeable way out. Am I missing anything?" Hermione summed up succinctly, going to twist a lock of hair around her finger until she remembered she put her hair up for work.
"Yeah. There is a way out. But you'll probably think I'm insane, and there's no way you can follow me." Laurel had an inkling, a whisper of a plan; less than an idea but just as potent. She'd been dreaming the same thing for weeks, months even.
In the Wizarding world, recurring dreams that weren't nightmares meant something. The fact that they'd been interrupting her normal nightmares was even more of a hint that they weren't ordinary.
"I've been dreaming of the Veil of Death, and something tells me I can survive it. Wherever that leads is far beyond the reach of the Ministry. And I can figure out a way out of the lamp, and then come home."
Her best friends were courteous enough to let her finish before telling her in no uncertain terms exactly how crazy she was.
"You can't possibly-"
"I've never heard-"
"- Believe you've got a-"
"- Anything so stupid-"
"- Chance of surviving-"
"- And I'm including the thing-"
"- A trip through the-"
"- With the final battle!"
"- Veil of Death, Laurel!"
When they paused for breath, she broke in, "And now that you've got that out of your systems, can I explain the rest of it?" The glares that were sent her way warmed her heart, but nothing else.
"Now, first question, do either of you truly believe there's a place I can go and safely live out the rest of my life where the Ministry, or Britain in general can't find me?" They did glorious fish impressions, but no answers were forthcoming since they both knew her definition of 'live'.
"We've all seen proof of the Deathly Hallows, and that they work as illustrated in the fairytale. I can't die. I united the Hallows, and even accidentally that still has power. Like the Goblet of Fire: the contract was still binding even if I didn't volunteer myself for it. How do you prove, with those facts, that I'm not the 'Master of Death'? And if I am, then how could the Veil of Death kill me, when everything else can't?"
She locked eyes with both, the warm chocolate brown of Hermione's and the clear morning blue of Ron's, willing them to believe her.
She'd do it without them, the certainty was so solid, but she'd prefer them to be with her as far as they could go. Laurel let them see the determination inside her through her face, and Hermione caved first, always the one to be more faith-bound out of the two. Ron would have to test it against his own instincts first, while the brunette willingly put aside her beloved logic to have faith in Laurel's loyalty.
"Alright," the Weasley agreed, voice gruff with concern. "What're we doing then?"
"First of all, I need a couple things from my house, just in case. Then we need to sort out something I can use as an anchor, so when I get free I can come back. It'll have to be heavy in magic, but preferably something I can wear or keep close to me. I've no idea what would happen if it was away from a power source from the same dimension-plane-world-thing. It might taint the signature I'm going to need to come back."
"Better to be safe than sorry," Hermione agreed. "I can look into that, I better get onto it right away. But, uh, Laurel?" The taller woman hesitated visibly. "What are we going to do about the lamp?"
"Uh…" She hadn't thought of that. "I'll hide it," Laurel scanned the room, absently searching her pockets. "Oh! Right, I can hide it in my emergency bag." She wiggled her fingers so Hermione would give her the metal object, fishing the miniaturised bag out with the other.
Ron watched all this with mild amusement, pointing out, "Do you even know if you can touch it?" just as her fingers grasped over the handle.
"Apparently yes," the green-eyed witch observed. "But I get the feeling not for long, with the way my fingers are slowly going numb." She opened the mouth of the bag, stuffed the stupid thing in, and tugged the zip closed. "Now that that's dealt with, I have a list of things I need from you, Ron, since Hermione's going to be very busy. Wait, 'Mione? Maybe talk to Luna if you can't find anything, you know she's always had that little bit of useful intuition."
She nodded, and opened the door to go get that underway.
After the door was once again sealed, Laurel talked while she gathered up the reports in chronological order so she could go over them more thoroughly later. "I need stuff to make it look like I'm staying, so bedsheets or whatever, since having to transfigure a lot of stuff is not really something they'd expect me to do. Stupid 'Chosen One' bullshit, you know how it is. I'd also really appreciate anything you can get off Fred and George, since their stuff is always surprisingly useful. And any journals I left around the house. Could you also grab the rest of my potions stash? I've got them in my bathroom cabinet."
She paused, running through a mental list to ensure she'd remembered all the important things. "And any more recommendations from Ginny, if you can, since the last one has been pretty good. Please?"
He nodded, and hugged her before leaving as well.
Laurel was left alone to her thoughts and the reports, and forced herself to focus on what she could do to stop herself freaking out about being a 'genie' and all that came with that.
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