Disclaimer: If you recognise it, it isn't mine, if you don't, well that might not be mine either.


Salvation in the Devil's Triangle

Chapter 8: Guardians of Light

It seemed that ever since Halloween and Alex's defeat of Aidan Gröthmer, the heir to the main kiss of the vampire house of envy, that he was awash with vampire politics. Every vampire in the school, it seemed, either wanted to fight him or turn him into a vampire. Alex was pretty sure the latter was impossible as the process involved a vampire drinking his blood, which would, of course, kill the vamp before the change could be made.

Alex ignored the vampires mostly, and with Claire's help avoided most of the fights, and won the rest. Of course, this was rather problematic. He hadn't been challenged by anyone with any kind of real power yet but he knew it was only a matter of time. In the mean time he could use the combat experience, Alex had found that he was a kinesthetic learner, he learned best by doing, so the more he got to actually fight, the better he got at it.

Of course, to most of the school he was still just a bookworm who had gotten into a scuffle with the vampires. He didn't mind though, his time as Harry Potter had taught him that he didn't like being noticed all that much.

Finals were approaching and Alex lost most of his free study time under the necessary review that he needed. A few of his classes had given out projects instead of having a test at the end, including blood magic. Professor Nydel had tasked them to create a blood magic enchantment of any purpose but had to be able to be keyed to other users besides the maker's, have a consequence for those that weren't keyed in but tried to use it anyway, and had to bestow some sort of ability to the enchanted object. Alex was determined to create something that would prove to the professor that he would be able to succeed if he were allowed to skip a level or two the next semester.

Alex had run through various ideas before settling on enchanting a sea serpent. Living beings, especially those with brains, were very difficult to work blood magic on, add that to the other required enchantments and Alex had delegated himself what should have been beyond him, but he was confident in his abilities. The difficulty was a lot of the reason that he had chosen to work with a snake, that way he could communicate with it, and knowing the subject made it a lot easier to work blood magic.

For the enchantments, Alex decided that to key someone into it he would set it up so that the serpent just had to ingest the subject's blood, for a security measure anyone who wasn't keyed in would be shocked enough to knock them out for a minute or two, he also decided to give it the ability to breathe air instead of only through its gills. The last was the hardest part, but it actually would make the whole project easier, as he would only have to do the first enchantment underwater, then the snake would be able to come inside and Alex would be able to do the rest.

Finding a sea serpent ended up not being half as difficult as Alex had thought it was going to be as the beasts were abundant in the water surrounding the school and Alex, under a bubble head charm had been able to talk one into being his lab rat. The serpent didn't have a name pronounceable in English so Alex decided to call him Frank.

The hardest part ended up just figuring out how to enchant Frank to breathe normal air. In the end, Alex settled on a series of seals that modified his gills to breathe only normal air, but would be able to magically convert water into air. They tried a few test runs in both environments and they seemed to work fine. The next trick part was to rig the security system so that it would only go off for humanoids, that is things that weren't animals because Alex wanted to be able to release Frank after the project was over and not make him have to worry about accidentally harming the other water creatures. Alex was somehow able to talk Claire into testing the keying system and that seemed to work as well.

The day the projects were due was a day of pride for Alex as he wowed the rest of the class with Frank's show of abilities. No one else had even attempted to enchant something that was living. Professor Nydel only gave a quiet smirk at his presentation, but that was enough for Alex. Of course, the end of the project also meant that he would have to say goodbye to Frank. Alex almost teared at the snake's departure, but both had promised to visit, and Frank was eager to show his family his new tricks.

In preparation for their trip to Brazil over winter break, Alex and Claire had been studying the patronus charm just in case they ran into lethifolds. It was probably the hardest piece of magic that either had ever attempted, and both had trouble finding a memory that was powerful enough to fuel a corporal patronus, however seeing the beings of pure positive energy leap into being out of their wands had been worth it.

Alex had a real hard time finding the right memory. His childhood with the Dursley's was out, and he didn't remember anything from the brief time he had spent with his parents. His Hogwarts days were tainted by his departure, and while he had enjoyed himself immensely at his new school, it wasn't exactly what you would call a joyful environment. That didn't exactly give him much to work with, actually it left him nothing to work with, and so it was nothing that he used. He made up a memory.

Making up a memory is a lot harder than it sounds, Alex had to create a situation that filled him with pure happiness and he didn't have a lot to draw from. Finally, he decided to summon the image of him resurrecting Hedwig, and how happy he would be once she was with him again. Afterwards, Alex would hypothesize that what ever memory you used when you first summoned a corporal patronus decided its form, in his case it was a shining white owl. Of course, Claire's cockroach certainly made him curious as to what she had been thinking about. She, naturally, wasn't telling.

Alex had continued writing back and forth with Remus, but there hadn't been any progress made. Neither could really do anything as long as the rat remained missing, and neither came up with a way to locate him that succeeded. Both were left slightly depressed about the whole situation, but without a course of action they were stuck. Perhaps winter break would clear their minds and an idea would pop into their heads.

At long last, school let out for the holidays and Alex and Claire found themselves back on surface and port-keying to a new location. Both unaware of what surprises were in store for them, of course one always had to account for the "Grey" factor, as Claire had taken to calling it. With Alex around there was no way things could be boring.


A/n: Some people have noticed some similarities between this story and Miranda Flairgold's A Second Chance at Life series and I would just like to say that I realize that some things probably seem the same but that I am making every possible effort to make this story my own and I hope that becomes clear as this story goes on. Anyways, thanks for reading and I hope you continue to do so.