AN: I'm trying to make the chapters a more reasonable size and more frequent. It doesn't appear to be working that well.
8. Construct Thy Foundations...
Saturday 2nd September, Early Morning
A small violet glow, suspended on translucent wings fluttered through the girls dorms. It ducked and wove along air currents. A gust blew in from the open window. The small charm fluttered through the gap in the bed curtains and sunk towards a bushy haired girl who'd managed to wrap herself into her duvet and was sleeping quite peacefully thank you very much.
The glowing ball of light popped on her nose.
"Meet me in the common room." Harry's voice whispered across her skin. Hermione's eyes flicked open and she spat out some of her hair. Then she tried to move. And couldn't. It was so comfortable like this, why did she have to give it up? But he needed her.
Twenty minutes she emerged from the girls' staircase with bleary eyes and damp hair. "Hello..." She had just enough time to mumble before Harry put an arm round her wait and ran another through her hair. She gasped as he pulled her hair back. Then his mouth met hers.
"I thought you woke up by seven on school days." He whispered as she snuggled into his neck enjoying it when her shirt rode up and a hand touched flesh.
"Mmm, not school yet. You smell nice." She mumbled into his neck.
"You always smell lovely." Harry said softly. "Like lavender in spring. Now, go and get your notes on ley-line and lordship magic and I'll find us something to eat and drink. We need to head up to the seventh floor corridor and get started."
"Yes, Master." Hermione muttered, looking a little lost as he let her go.
Harry watched her leave. There was that word again, Master, once he could discount as his imagination, but twice? The girls didn't see him like that, did they? Swallowing, he put it out of his mind, he could always talk to someone about it later, after they met up again.
Hermione blushed as she put the last book in her carry-bag and remembered what she'd said. If she'd scared him off... Oh hell, how was she going to cope if he wasn't what she needed. Harry was a Nice Guy and would probably stop the moment she put up a fight, or did something a little wrong. But she had a plan for that. It just needed someone she trusted to look it over... Daphne was good with contracts, wasn't she?
OoooOoooO
Twenty minutes later the two sixth years were standing next to a portrait of trolls being taught to dance. "One of the good things about summer was how much time I had to think." Harry started as Hermione carried on eating the muffin he'd smuggled in to the school. "There are so many things we can use the Room of Requirements for, but I kept coming back to one question." He stared at the absent space where the door would form. "How does it work?"
"Well, you walk back and forth three times and whatever you asked for appears." Hermione said as she reached for the levitating cup of coffee. "It's quite simple."
"No, that's how to work it. Not how it works." Harry pointed out. "How does it create a space that's larger than it should be but doesn't interact badly with other expanded spaces? How does it create those items that we use for training, the dummies, how does it replicate books from the library even when those books have just been added? More importantly, why does it always default to the castle's architecture and contents?"
Hermione blinked. "Well, it obeys the principle laws and can't produce food, life or enchanted items... so it must be a form of magic similar to what we use. The three times and wish must be a security feature, or maybe it's just..." She looked up at him. "Look you obviously have a theory, why don't you tell me?"
"Madame Bones suggested a theory to me, that all those tales of Sidhe and fey have a grain of truth in them, but they died with the magic of the land." Harry smirked. "Therefore they lived off ambient magic, which I think the room might work off of. I believe the room is some sort of artificial construction based on fey magic, explaining how the expansion charms on things we carry inside don't interfere with each other or explode, because I'm fairly sure they don't use the same mechanics as our charms. Wishing or need might even be a driving part of the magic required for it's operation."
Hermione gasped as the pieces slotted together in her head. "Then, if it's based on ley-lines then you can bind the room to you and you alone by lordship, and you're even going to ask it for the tools to do it! You're a genius Harry!"
"Yeah. That's why it took me a week to work that out, when you did in ten seconds." Harry sighed. "As with everything else in my life it's probably not going to be that easy and won't have a chance in hell of success if you're not here." Hermione blushed at the complement.
"Well go on then." She pushed him and went back to her coffee.
"If I must." He muttered before beginning to pace back and forth. I need a place to bind the room to me. Once, twice, thrice.
A respectably faded door sprung into existence before them. The wood grain was faded and ravens were engraved along insets clotted with dust. A bronze nameplate caught their attention while an ancient piece of parchment fell to the floor.
'Professor M. E. Ravenclaw
Mistress of Runic Theory & Arithmancy'
"Do not enter on pain of death." Hermione read aloud from the parchment that she'd picked up.
"Well that's reassuring." Harry muttered as he tried the handle and got a sharp cut from it's rusty surface for his troubles.
"You know I hate it when you do that sort of thing." Hermione sighed as her heart jumped. "You don't know what sort of wards are in place yet you still blindly attempt to open something that has a warning about death on it!" Harry half glared at her.
"It worked with the basilisk, besides there's only one ward on the door and I'm fairly sure it's only defensive." Hermione raised an eyebrow. "Look, it feels similar to the wards around Privet Drive did, back before Voldemort resurrected. I'm not a complete idiot." He muttered eventually.
"I know." She said softly, looking down at the ground. "It's just... I need you okay, so don't go dying on me by being reckless. Please?"
Harry's heart melted at the gaze of longing and concern on her face so he pulled her unresisting body into his and kissed her. "With you to come back to, you have no worries about that. Now get that door open, I brought you along for a reason after all."
Blushing, Hermione turned to the unimposing door and started her diagnostic charms. The results were less than conclusive and she'd be willing to bet that some form of concealment had been used to distort the magical signatures she should be getting back. "Alohomora." She tried, for old times sake. Nothing clicked but the doorknob turned under her hand. "That actually worked?" She raised an eyebrow as the door swung open.
The room itself bore little resemblance to the modern classrooms or offices of the castle, its walls where still plain stone, but there the resemblance ended. A large obelisk took center stage in the middle of the room, made mostly of stone but it was etched with metals and substances Harry did not want to guess at. To his senses it was vibrating tower of power, sitting on a pulsing pool of energy and at its base, large blue crystals seemed to have grown from the floor and shimmered with runes and words.
"What are waiting for?" Hermione asked as she darted past him. "Look at those books! And the tools and... Are those tuning forks?" She asked, heading towards one of the corner benches that did actually seem to have a bunch of tuning forks down it's side.
"Hermione." Harry barked sharply. "Get back here and don't touch anything until we know why there was a warning on the door."
"But..." Hermione tried to raise a protest as she backed slowly away from the large book she'd been just about to grab. "It's just a runic research area! She wouldn't have anything dangerous lying around, it would have been on the wards..." Harry's eyes remained cold to her impassioned pleas as he stepped closer. Raising her hand to his lips he licked the blood off of a small cut before replying.
"Hermione, there is a mummified body in amongst those crystals by the obelisk, complete with wand, some kind of gauntlet and various other interesting artefacts. I suggest we work out what killed her before we start touching things." She frowned. "I need need you as much as you need me."
She pouted. "Fine, but after that..." She trailed off.
"After we've done that and worked out how I'm supposed to bind this room to me, you can go over everything to your hearts content." He looked nervously at the obelisk. "That's the keystone though, so you'll have to forgive me if I ask you to move everything to a different room."
Hermione smiled weakly and headed off to examine the books while Harry started examining the remains. The bushy haired girl naturally found the answer first.
"It's in here. The experiment log of Morrigan Ravenclaw. The second to last entry states that she had just finished configuring it, and the keystone's reserves where running low. It seems she'd ordered the room to let no one else into her office and locked it with a ward. She didn't state which. Then one of the other staff members, maybe even the Headmaster himself must have tried very hard to breach the door and find out what she was doing..." Her hands shook as she started to read aloud.
'I have done all I can for now, the rune structure has been adjusted so that this place resides mostly in the Never, therefore reducing the power requirements on the line. I pity whoever is stuck cleaning the corridors now I've redirected the energy from the arrays to do that.
Overall, my idea was both idiotic and foolish. The door back to mortal reality has already faded and I have no way of making it return short of a miracle in recharging the keystone. That same keystone being the only thing keeping this room from dissolving into chaos like a vanished item.
There is but one rational path left for me to take as my dreams of creating living cores within creations of metal and stone die with me: I will imbue the keystone with my own energy and sacrifice in the hope that one day my colleagues will discover and continue my research.
Should another of the gift emerge then the ring, name and vault is theirs. Everything is to be held in trust until that time.
Not much of a last will and testament, but it will have to do.
Farewell.'
Two pairs of eyes turned to the giant stone monolith in the centre of the room. The runes on it flashed and oscillated, the surface rippled. Metal encrustations circled round the base like a growth. Shimmering green metal wrapped its way up the sides, and it's top was coated in a glowing gold.
"Well, that answers that question so we can assume the room is mostly safe." Harry said as the silence dragged out. "You said you'd found working instructions on how to bind ley-line nodes to a person, right?"
Hermione nodded mutely. "Yes, it's a couple of blood runes and rest is all willpower." She looked at him nervously. "I'm not sure this is a good idea with a pre-established enchantments though. Do I really have to spell out how bad an idea breaking this thing is?"
Harry chuckled. "Well them, we'll just have to adjust the runes and intent. It should be easy enough with you at my side and the personal library of a Ravenclaw." He smiled and she shook her head.
"Fine. I'll look through these for information on what this keystone is. You... meditate and rest. Whatever happens, it's probably going to hurt." She said softly, drifting over the tomes as Harry seated himself in front of the keystone and closed his eyes.
Hermione gasped as she opened the second book, her thoughts jumping and tumbling like cats as what felt like a wave of confidence and inspiration washed through and caressed her. Biting her lip, she turned to the oblivious young man that was meditating on the floor. So much... power. She couldn't wait till he claimed her... The books soared past beneath her hands as she worked, wording and rewording, altering runes, reaching higher and higher heights of understanding and inspiration.
OoooOoooO
Daphne checked her mail again as the owl nicked her breakfast. Two Gringotts letters and one large package from the same owl sealed with blood charms. Her house mates were openly staring at her, so she did the discrete thing and placed them in her bag. "You're not going to open them?" Pansy asked, staring at her. "It could be a marriage contract, you know. My parents where trying to arrange one with the previous Lord Malfoy." She sighed and made dreamy eyes at Draco.
Daphne's spoon clattered on the plate. "I prefer my private business to remain private." She stated coldly. "Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to find out why the goblins deemed it necessary to send me twenty feet of parchment." And with that she strode away.
OoooOoooO
3 Hours Later...
Harry opened his eyes. The patterns that twisted through the air and could warp and twist this world to his will glowed. He kind of understood them now, on an instinctual level, the interactions of the keystone and the plane of existence they were currently in. He'd tasted the magic with his awareness and it was starting to make sense. Standing, he placed his palm flat against the warm, pulsing, stone, felt it's power pushing against his own essence.
"Done, I think that should- Harry, you're back." His bushy haired genius exclaimed happily and handed him several pieces of parchment. He read through them slowly.
"Are you sure this is correct?" He asked once he reached the final part, a runic circle that would have be inscribed into his palm. "It's a little complex and I don't recognise half the runes involved." She blushed.
"They're from her personal collection." She muttered with a cute frown. "I've studied them as well as I can and they were used in the rooms construction to dominate this realm instead of being consumed by it. We're sitting in chaos, or something close to it. We've... almost vanished, if that makes sense."
"It does." He answered, holding his right hand up to her. "But you'll be doing the carving, I'd just mess it up." She nodded and nervously pulled him over to a workbench, replacing the stick of lead in one of the compasses with a small scalpel blade that Harry carried for harvesting potion ingredients.
"Do not move." She warned, and he slammed down his mental defences as the pain began.
Blood dripped across the ground as movement aggravated the deep cuts in palm. The tendons to his fingers had been severed as he'd twitched unexpectedly so he was forced to use his left hand to trace runes on the stone, the crimson hissing and spitting as they formed correctly. That done he pressed his palm against the very peak of the keystone, where his will could flow through and claim the structure instead of at the bottom, which he'd have done if he just wanted to claim the ley-line.
"By blood and will I claim Dominion of this realm!" Harry yelled. There was silence as his eyes narrowed in focus. His teeth clenched.
Sweat dripped off his brow and onto the floor.
Light eclipsed them suddenly, forcing Hermione to look away, stumbling as everything in the room was pulled towards him and the reek of burning flesh seared her nostrils. She coughed.
It was over.
Shaking she crawled over to the pale and shaking form of her Lord. Then she heard it, the faint wheezy chuckling. He was laughing. How dare he be laughing after scaring her like that.
Harry James Potter looked up into the burning eyes of his girlfriend and gulped. "Sorry, it's just such a rush..." He muttered as Hermione grabbed at his hand, frowned and uncorked a blood replenishment potion. It wasn't one of his. He coughed, he spluttered, he spat the taste of it from his mouth. Then he glared.
"Serves you right for worrying me, how do you feel?"
"Like a limp noodle that's been stuck in a mains socket." Harry replied. "And that made far more sense in my head."
"I'm sure it did." She answered, reaching down to pull him off the floor. "I'm sure it did. Your hand is fucked by the way."
He looked down at the shimmering gold metal that had seared itself into the rune circle and felt the resistance as he flexed it with his other hand. There was magic in that metal, powerful magic that he wasn't entirely sure was his. It was no longer a case of a simple episkey or a trip to the hospital wing to heal that injury. The worst he'd been expecting was a scar.
"Shit." He spat, fumbling a small vial of black liquid from his back pocket. "Nerve and muscle healing accelerator." He answered her before she had a chance to ask. "Normally used for Cruciatus exposure but I don't have a muscle fixer on me. That probably says something about my life." Hermione snorted.
"That definitely wasn't supposed to happen, so what do we do now?" She asked him.
"Now..." Harry said with a frown as he lent back. "Now we construct ourselves a headquarters, liberally stealing ideas from the Department of Mysteries. Come to think of it, I wonder whether their entire department is based on this kind of construct?"
Hermione gave him The Look and they started going over Harry's designs.
OoooOoooO
"It was right there." Draco pointed to the embossed wall relief of what appeared to be a goddess of justice standing under a gateway formed of stars. "I swear..." He started pacing backwards and forwards.
"Yeah, right, a magic room that turns itself into whatever you like? I swear you just like looking at the carving of a blindfolded women in scandalous robes." Pansy snapped at him. "Now is there a reason we're stuck up here looking at something some randy idiot etched on the wall? I hate climbing that many stairs just after lunch."
"Looks a lot like Granger." Nott remarked idly. The others snickered as Malfoy stopped pacing and stared at the engraving.
"It's always been a door, or nothing." Malfoy stated. "I just don't understand why someone would put that there? Maybe Dumbledore found out and sealed it off or..."
"Maybe some idiot broke it. Assuming this room even existed in the first place." Pansy put forward rolling her eyes. Malfoy twitched. There had been the second half of that vanishing cabinet here, he was sure of it and now his 'friends' were pretending he'd made it all up. "Let's go and do something useful like work a way to get someone out of the castle without Potter or Dumbledore stopping us."
"The floo in Snape's office would be the obvious choice." Nott put forward. The group looked at him like he'd grown an extra head. "Sometimes I think you lot couldn't get drunk in a winery, so I'll leave you to work out how to separate Granger from her friends. Just to see if you can." He said before turning and leaving the other stunned Slytherins behind them.
"How did he know what our mission is if he doesn't follow our Lord?" Pansy asked uneasily.
"His father must have told him." Draco glared. "There's no other way he could have known." He told himself. Because if anyone could guess then Granger would, who'd tell Potter who'd... Hells, he had no idea what Potter would do, even if he was sure he could beat him in a duel now. Potter hadn't spent all Summer being trained by Death Eaters, had he?
OoooOoooO
"Now, stay out of our way and we won't have to have another talk like this. Agreed?" Erin froze as she heard Ginny's voice echo down the corridor. The words were achingly familiar. Snapping out of it, she ran round the corridor. The Weasley held her wand on the whimpering Slytherin and turned to glare at her, two boys shadowing her.
"What do you want Mantle? Come to join in?" Erin reacted as though she were being slapped.
"N-No... Just- leave her alone. What did she ever do to you?" Erin demanded warily, a click of her fingers shooting her wand into her hand from the enchanted holster. "When did you get so mean?"
"Since the man I thought I loved found out my family had been screwing him since his parents died." She spat. "What the hell do you care anyway?" She glared at the intruder. "Come on boys, let's get away from the hypocrite. Oh, and five points from Slytherin for crying in the corridor."
Erin rolled her eyes. Who had died and made her a prefect? "Are you okay? Hurt at all?" She asked the tear streaked little girl who'd hastily snatched her own wand from where it had fallen.
She shook her head mutely. "I just asked for help finding the Gryffindor common room because I wanted to talk to Harry and I got lost." Erin sat down beside her. "I guess I'm just lucky she didn't hex me or something, she was about to. I think."
"Yeah. I don't know what got into her." She knelt down next to the Slytherin. "Maybe it was her time of the month or something." The sat in silence for a moment.
"Why are you making excuses for her?" The firsty asked unexpectedly after a couple of minutes. Erin stiffened.
"Because I was a lot worse to others than she was to you." Erin stood slowly. "Look, you probably don't want to hand around with me since I'm a muggleborn, so why don't we head back to the great hall, or the dungeons or something?"
"Not the Gryffindor common room?" She asked innocently.
"I'm not stupid enough to get involved with the Slytherin-Gryffindor feud so... no." Erin said firmly. "If you want to talk to Harry that bad you can always go and talk to him at dinner tonight. Malfoy definitely tries to taunt him frequently enough." The little Slytherin shivered.
"Malfoy and his friends give me the creeps." She replied as they walked along. "So... why did you do it?"
"Why did I... Oh." Erin sighed, debating telling her story to a Slytherin of all people. "Well, I guess I could say that my parents had... expectations." She sighed. "They still do. Magic is something beneath their time or a tool to use for profit in the non-magical world. I was private schooled and they wouldn't settle for anything less than the best magical one. It's not that I was taught not to look down on people who were different, or 'stupid' it was just expected. Being a 'Claw doesn't help much. If the Gryffindor flaw is acting without thinking, then Ravenclaw's is elitism."
"Then why did you stop?"
"One day I looked in the mirror and didn't like what looked back." Erin answered as truthfully as she could. "Come on, let's get you back to the dungeons."
OoooOoooO
3rd October, 1992
"This isn't a good idea." Erin tried, nervously. Su sent a scathing look in her direction. "What if a teacher sees us or something?" Luna was backed up against the wall, eying them with nervous eyes.
"Scared, Mantle?" The second year taunted. "We're Ravenclaws, we know the teachers schedule and there isn't going to be any coming for a long time." She seemed almost gleeful at that fact. Erin's stomach turned, the feelings that had been building up for the last week crawling like ants under her skin. The first hex hit the cowering blond in the face. Something inside her snapped.
"Stop it." She said quietly. "Just stop it." She said a little louder. No one paid her any attention. "I said stop!" They did.
"Look, we're just putting the Loony in her place." Su said coldly. "If you didn't want to be part of it, you shouldn't have joined in in the first place."
Erin gulped as the rest of the groups wands pointed at her. "Expelliarmus!" Everyone's eyes followed the path of Su's wand as Harry Potter snatched it out the air.
"Get the hell away from her before I hurt you." He threatened, behind him Padma, Hermione and a Gryffindor she didn't recognise spread out to reinforce the threat. Throwing Luna a weak smile, Erin fled from both groups. The Ravens' hesitated for a second before giving chase.
Hermione went up to the crying first year as Daphne poked her head out of the invisibility cloak long enough to tell them the coast looked clear. "I'm sorry we didn't get here sooner." Hermione said, slowly reversing the charms that Luna had been afflicted with.
"You promised you wouldn't tell anyone!" Luna glared at Padma as she sat down beside the younger Ravenclaw, glistening trails running down her face.
"No I didn't, I promised you I wouldn't tell a professor. So I told my friends instead, and they want to help, see? Now, how would you like to study with us and learn how to stop that sort of thing in future?" Luna looked up at her, wide eyed.
"You have a wrackspurt in your hair." She stated softly.
"Is-is that a yes?" A nervous Neville stuttered.
Two months later...
"Finite." The blond hair witch tucked her wand back behind her ear as her roommate's teeth stopped chattering and her hair changed back to it's natural black.
"Thank you." Erin said softly, not stuttering for the first time that day. "I know I don't deserve it but... thank you." Ever since she'd stood up for the strange blond they'd been picking on her instead, choosing rare and exotic spells just so she couldn't find the counters to easily. It made her wonder how she'd cope for the rest of the year. She was already behind on the assignments her mother insisted she did alongside her magical stuff and that was suffering too.
"That's okay. The nargles would have been disappointed in me if I hadn't helped you." Luna's weary eyes looked back up at her. "I can teach it to you if you like, the general counter spell, it's just tiring."
"Thank you." Erin hugged herself, reminding herself of who she wanted to be. "Maybe I could teach you some maths or chemistry in return. I haven't been doing that well since... you know."
"Chemistry, that's a muggle thing, isn't it?" Luna tilted her head to one said as though listening to something. "That would work. You could go and teach it to Hermione instead. She likes that kind of thing. Just be careful of Harry."
Erin looked up, frowning. "Why?" She asked a little hesitantly.
Luna's eyes found the floor. "He's very protective of his friends." Erin blinked. Oh, yeah. That.
Some day, she told herself firmly, some day she'd find a place she fitted in. Until then, maybe Luna was willing to be a friend.
OoooOoooO
AN: Thus ends the flashbacks of how the study group ended up being formed, along with adding a little depth to a few characters. Hopefully you won't crucio me for what I'm planning on doing with Dobby.
