A/N. Chapter Ten is here and though this chapter is on the short side, a LOT happens. You learn quite a bit about what's been going on and a little about Ronia's history and family.

DISCLAIMER: I do not own Harry Potter. I know. It's sad.

…~oOo~…

Chapter Ten: Not A Regular Human

Ronia was still sitting in a far back corner of the library two and a half hours later. She didn't want to move and her face hurt. More than it was sad, the new/old wounds were annoying as fuck. She'd already gone through this once, to have to do it again was tedious. And on top of that, on wounds like these, Dittany didn't work. It had been too long since when she originally go them and on top of that they were werewolf infected marks. It was way different than the usual cuts and slices.

Deciding she needed to stop sulking, she reached to the inside the of her jacket and pulled out the letters from Freckles's boyfriend.

A lot of the translations were very obscure, the writer obviously taking care to not be thorough in case they were found. But one word came up often.

Veil. As in the Veil. Ronia shuddered. Nothing good could come from reading the dozen or so letters, just because of the many mentions of the world after death.

But Ronia was destined to die before thirty anyway. So she began reading.

…

Lying on his back in his bedroom alone, Teddy certainly didn't expect Ronia to fly into the room like the wind of a tornado, slamming the door behind her and looking like she'd just ran a marathon.

"Lupin!" she exclaimed, sounding relieved. Then she got angry again. "I've been looking for you everywhere! Where the fuck -"

"You've been looking everywhere?" Teddy said, raising an eyebrow. "And you didn't think you look in my room?"

"Don't be smart with me, boy," she growled, pointing a finger at his threateningly. "I have information and if you want to hear it, you're going to have to behave."

Teddy considered pointing out to her that between to two if one were more likely to misbehave than it would be her, but kept his mouth shut. It was a good move. He nodded, prompting her to begin talking.

"Freckles boyfriend," she said, holding up the letters that she had been studying for almost an hour. "He isn't what we thought we were."

"You mean he isn't Slytherin?"

"No, I mean he's not anything we thought he was," she said firmer. "While he possesses some serious Slytherin qualities, he's not even a student here. Yet, he lives here. It's a conundrum.

"Listen. I always knew it was strange that Freckles was always gone in the middle of the night," Ronia continued. "I should have been more suspicious, because now she's in deep with something bad. Whoever this Gerard Forest is, in the most recent letter he was trying to convince Freckles to steal potion ingredients from Slughorn's stores. And this list." She sat down on the edge of Teddy's bed next to him, shuffling through the papers urgently until she found the right one. "This list of ingredients…there's some really expensive and dangerous stuff in here. Poisonous things, flammable components, and some in large doses can be lethal. I don't recognize this potion, but I know one this: Even with the magic component, there is no way a regular human could consume this and survive."

"So he's asking her to brew a poison?" Teddy asked, bewildered.

"Not exactly…I don't know. I'm going to need to look into it more. I would as Slughorn, but if I did and then Freckles agreed to steal the ingredients then he would think it was me."

Then something dawned on Teddy. "You say that no regular human could take the potion and live…What type of human could? Like…a werewolf, maybe?"

Ronia considered it. "I'm not sure. They would have to take it during their transformation, when their body is most resilient. Even then, it would be extremely dangerous. With my knowledge of potions, I'd say that the drinker of this potion would already have to be dead."

Eyes like saucers, Teddy said, "What do you mean, like a vampire?"

"Yes, a vampire…or a ghost."

"Ghosts can't drink potions."

"I know that. That's why this doesn't make sense. Freckles isn't dating a vampire, that much is clear. But, as I said, the only other candidate is a ghost." Ronia looked absolutely stumped.

"How do you know he's not a vampire?" Teddy asked curiously. "She does meet him only at night. And this potion requires blood."

"This line is why." She points at something on one of the letters. "Here, he says, 'In my state, I cannot sleep, so I spend many restless hours walking in the forest, soaking up the sunlight and wondering what you're doing in your classes that day'. Whatever Gerard his, he can't sleep and he can be out in sunlight. Not a vampire."

Letting out a long sigh, Teddy rubbed his temples. "This is harder than I thought it would be. I never imagined that whoever Freckles has been dating would be a bloody phantom."

"Well, the good news is, we know the next date that they plan to meet in person. It finds out that though she's gone every night, they only ever see each other once a fortnight. Otherwise, they leave letters for one another is something they just call 'the Room'." Ronia pulled the paper with the date on it. She'd circled it three times. "They just met a few days ago, so we have almost two weeks before they meet again."

"But what about the potion?"

"I'll pay attention to the letters. I'll try my hand at picking up Hungarian, maybe ask Loki a favor. When she goes to sleep, I'll slip a peek at the earliest letter and see what she says about stealing the ingredients for him." She shrugged. "This is Freckles we're talking about. She's smarter than to steal from a teacher, but this guy is manipulative. That much I can tell. At the very least, she steals the ingredients, but it looks to take about two moon cycles to brew, so he can't take it this next time they meet. We'll have to watch her closely over the brewing period."

"Abe knows a lot about potions," Teddy said, looking at the potion-making process again, looking down the list and directions. Ronia was right, this was a really delicate potion. "More than Slughorn, I'd bet. He should take a look at this."

Ronia hesitated. "Are you sure you want to get Abe involved in this?"

Teddy nodded. "Parker too. Freckles is his sister and Abe's the smartest person I know."

The Russian girl swallowed hard and took a deep breath. "There's one more thing I need to tell you about these letters." She pulled out the scariest paper out of all of them with a slight shake in her hand. "This one. Vampire or ghost, Gerard is very familiar with the Veil. He claims…we he claims to have gone through."

"But…" The blood in Teddy's veins was ice water. "Once you go through the Veil, you can't come back as even a ghost."

"Exactly. More than claiming to having gone through…he claims to have come back."

…

"Oh, this isn't your usual medicine cabinet potion, that's for bloody sure," Abe said, reading through the list with fear in his eyes. He rubbed the side of his scruffy jaw and looked up at his three friends in front of him.

The quartet was sitting in the backmost part of the library, sitting on the ground in between a pair of shelves with a broken lamp over it, making their light sparse. Abe was sitting in the window seat, the nighttime sky behind him. It was after dinner and Freckles was off to a Prefect meeting, so Teddy and Ronia took this time to fill their friends in.

"I knew that," Ronia said with a roll of her eyes.

"I don't know if you two realized this, but this process for potions is very unique. I've only ever seen it used for one other potion…" Abe mused.

"What potion is that?" Parker asked. He wasn't really taking all of this information well. He looked like he would rip someone's throat out at the drop of a hat.

"It's a variation of the Mandrake Restorative Draught," Abe explained. "I asked Madame Pomfrey about it when I was doing my essay on Mandragora because she used it when she was restoring a petrified ghost, back before the Second War. See, ghosts can't drink potions obviously, so the only potion is made into a vapor. It's a very tedious process, but the only way a ghost can consume it."

"So," Ronia said slowly, "this potion is going to be…a vapor?"

"Yes," Abe confirmed.

"Other than the ghost thing," Teddy inquired, "why would someone need a potion as a vapor?" He needed to know all the possibilities.

Abe shrugged. "I haven't the foggiest. The only other reason I could imagine were to poison someone without having to put it in their food. Making poison airborne could be very effective. But it can't be done for every potion.

"You see, potions have balances. Some have very fragile balances, others have more flexible balances. Because the Mandrake Restorative Draught can't be rendered useless by adding the needed components to make it a vapor, it has a more flexible balance. Essentially, by making a potion a vapor, it's like adding one potion to another. So potions like…Wolfsbane, let's say. Adding any additional ingredients to Wolfsbane will negate its effects and the drinker will have to go through its normal Change."

Ronia was nodding. "I learned that the hard way when I was small. I tried adding sugar."

"Exactly. Wolfsbane has a delicate balance," Abe continued, reaching into his bag for his textbooks and pulls out his Advanced Potions text. He flipped through the pages. "Ah! See this? Felix Felicis can't be made a vapor either because it would wreck the Felix."

Abe turned back to the potion in the letter. "This potion…I don't know what it is, but there's no telling how making it a vapor will effect it. And it already has the potential to kill a man, so it really is a mystery."

Ronia smirked humorlessly. "He's a ghost. I know he is. He has to be. He claims to have been through the Veil. He needs a potion that no living person could take. Said potion needs to be made into a vapor, which would only be beneficial to a ghost. It's all pointing to him being a disembodied spirit."

Everyone soaked this in for a long minute.

Parker, who'd been fairly quiet this entire time, declared, "Ghost or not, I'm still gonna fucking kill him."

…~oOo~…

By Quidditch tryouts, Ronia was fully recovered from her transformation and her face was almost completely healed, so she was feeling good. This reflected in her performance of catching the Snitch in record time and soaking in the godsmacked, jaw-dropped looks of co-Captain Parker and the team Captain Theo Greenwood. They apparently hadn't been expecting such a performance.

"You're on the team!" Greenwood immediately said, scribbling on the clipboard frantically like if he didn't get her name down fast enough that she'd disappear. "First practice is this upcoming Sunday, six in the morning sharp."

Giving a nod, Ronia marched off to pitch.

She ran right into a familiar face, the Captain of the Slytherin team. With him was another boy that she did not recognize, but wore a co-Captain badge.

"Loki," she acknowledged. "What are you doing around the pitch?"

Ronia's half-brother had his hair tied back in a ponytail against his neck and his dark eyes sparkled with energy. "Sytherin's tryouts are right after your Gryffindors drag their slow arses off the field. And you?"

"Just tried out for the position of Gryffindor Seeker. I made it." She gave him a sly smile.

Loki froze almost undetectably before saying, "Congratulations."

"Oh, my dear brother, is that…" - she took a deep, dramatic inhale - "fear I smell on you? Worried it'll be just like old times, eh? Don't worry, I'm sure you've improved."

The co-Captain of Loki's team looked over at him. "What is she talking about, Vargstrom?"

"He didn't tell you about how I used to whip his ass on a broomstick?" Ronia said, obviously amused. "When we were both little deti in Russia our dad used to release a Snitch in the yard and send us both after it. What's the current score again?" She feigned forgetfulness.

Loki's glare was murderous.

"Oh, yes!" Ronia said, pretending to just remember. "92 for me and…3 for you. And one of those times you managed to get it first, you jinxed my broom."

"We aren't children any longer," Loki sneered, saying it all in Russian. He reverted back to English when he said, "We'll see who's the better flier at our first match, da?"

"Da," Ronia confirmed. She started walking away from him backwards. She spat out in Russian, "I don't know how you can be the better flier, though, when you didn't even have the courage to go to Durmstrang and begged Father to transfer you to Hogwarts before you even turned eleven."

Loki's sneer deepened, his hand twitching towards his wand.

"Do svidaniya," Ronia said with a wave, walking away. She smiled to herself, knowing that she would be getting hell from her father for provoking her brother later.

At dinner that night, sure enough Ronia received a letter.

Completely in Russian, it said this,

My lovely Ronia,

Please try your best to stop taunting your brother. You know how sensitive he is. And provoking him in front of his friend is just impolite! I suggest you apologize to his face or send him an apology gift. You know his weakness for sweets, so I would send him some chocolate cauldrons if I were you. Not that you especially want his forgiveness, but it doesn't hurt to be on his good side. I hear he's made quite the impression on his House. He is dubbed the Prince of Slytherin, so I would prefer if you did not tarnish his reputation in such a powerful House as the snakes.

How is your year so far? I know you must miss Durmstrang. Ambrus told me about your request that he visit and about how you got a few drinks together and talked about old times. I'm proud of you, Ronia, for reaching out to him. I know he is not someone you'd typical choose as a partner, but I hope you reconsider because he does care deeply for you.

Loki writes to me about the friends you've made. He says they are a bad choice as far as friends go, but I assume that his opinion has much to do with House rivalry. You have a good judgment of character, so I have a feeling they are good children and you should invite them to our England home for a day during winter holiday. Helga would love to have more people to cook for, after all. She is getting sick of it just being me when I'm in the country for business.

I wanted to avoid talking about this, but as a father I'm afraid I must address this. Loki tells me about the hex that reopened your wounds. I am aware of how you hate it when I bring up your scars, but still I need to. What exactly happened? How are you healing? Did the person who hexed you receive appropriate punishment? If not, I will be in England in a second. I'm serious, Ronia. If you are having a difficult time at Hogwarts, I will come and talk to the Headmistress in person. If it comes to it, I will take you out of school.

After all, I know you'd rather give up education altogether than go to Beauxbaton's. Frankly, I'd rather pitch myself off of a building into the ocean before sending you to that all-girls school. And no offense, your French has always been terrible anyway.

Your warrant in Russia has been de-prioritized, so for now they have stopped searching. From what I hear, there is no news of crossing borders for you. They would not be granted permission even if they tried. You are safe there, my sweet Ronia Delling Vargstrom.

I love you, my daughter.

Love,

Your Father

...~oOo~...

A/N. PLEASE REVIEW. PLEASE PLEASE DO. I WOULD REALLY APPRECIATE IT.

~ So Long And Thanks For All The Fish ~