Disclaimer: From this chapter onwards, if you need me to repeat the disclaimer, just go to an earlier chapter for it. It still does and always will apply.

A/N: Sorry for the much longer delay between this chapter and the last. A particularly bad length of depression had me with little energy or desire to do more than just function. I'm feeling a bit better now, though, so hopefully I shall be able to get some more written.

Thank you ever so much for the comments, as well. Unless you were one of the couple of anonymous comments that were little more than disgusting homophobia and/or sexist remarks. Those I am not so thankful for. I also want to apologize for any inappropriate use of neutral pronouns (they/them) that I've used. It's a habit I seem to have picked up from conversing with some trans friends and will try to pay more attention too it in my writing. I tried to go back and fix some of that in chapters after the first two.

As it turned out, the dueling club wasn't set to actually be held until after lunch. So, with time to kill Susan and Holly made their way to the Hufflepuff common room. Hannah was the first to greet them and ask if Holly was alright, but a good many other 'puffs did so after her. It brought a tiny smile to the corner of Holly's mouth and she was given a few smiles in return when she told them she was fine if a tiny bit sore.

On their way to their dorm room, Holly and Susan ran into the only second year Hufflepuff that didn't share a room with them. Holly was never quite sure why Sally-Ann Perks had a room to herself, but the girl seemed nice enough if a bit shy. Helping the girl up from the floor Holly quickly became aware of a pretty good reason she might have requested her own room, however.

It was subtle, but as Holly apologized and help Sally-Ann she couldn't help but notice one of her legs was obviously false. It was a fairly decent prosthetic, but it was clearly not magical in any way as it did little better than a peg would have. It hadn't seemed to bother her in her normal movements, but the awkward action of standing up from the floor wasn't quite one that she had practiced. With another apology to Sally-Ann, Holly moved into her dorm with a thought to maybe look into what sorts of false limbs the magical world could produce.

Sitting down at her desk Holly took out the notebook she got for her birthday and started to read over a few of her more recent entries. She had a few ideas she was trying to figure out runes to make work for and started to put more effort into that task while Susan sat with her legs crossed on her bed. It wasn't long that the girls sat before Holly became aware of a problem she needed to take care of with some haste. A small beam of sunlight on her desk from an improperly shut set of curtains had her leaning back in her seat and looking over her shoulder at Susan.

"Hey, do you still have my locket? I saw you pick it up after I got hurt," Holly inquired.

Wandering over to her robes that were draped over the chair to her own desk Susan rummaged through the inner pockets before pulling out the small, busted locket and handed it to Holly. It had been bent and mangled from the impact of the rogue bludger and one of the two tiny hinges seemed to have snapped. Putting on her Magesight Glasses and activating their enchantments Holly opened the locket as much as she could and started to examine it.

She could have just brought it to Professor Flitwick, who she was told had done the bulk of the work making it, but she'd never actually taken the time to examine the thing. Now that she was doing just that she was a bit confused as to why she never did so before. It was also the only piece of enchanted jewelry that she'd never, ever taken off. Normally she took all her things off for showering and most of them for sleeping.

The more she looked at the runes and mostly faded magic on the broken object the more her expression morphed from one of curiosity to mild confusion to anger and outright horror. "What the absolute fuck?" Holly exclaimed with more venom in her voice than Susan had ever heard from the girl.

"What? What's wrong" Susan asked, peeking over Holly's shoulder at the locket on her desk with more than a little concern.

"I... I... This stupid piece of garbage is what's wrong!" Holly gestured angrily to the broken locket. "There are enchantments I sort of expected to be there, a weak sort of light shield to protect me from the sun and a preset glamor, but that's not even close to all that's there.

"There are enchantments for siphoning magic, but instead of being like my Shield Bracelet and needing me to opt in to giving it magic, it just goes and steals it. It doesn't steal a little magic, either, it's set up to take so much if I still used a wand it would probably be just as effective as my knife at casting spells. No wonder my Shield Bracelet can still only hold a pretty weak shield even after I tried to amplify it.

"Even beyond that, there are enchantments that seem to be targeted at affecting the mind of the wearer. I can't tell what exactly they do, but I have a vague idea of a few things it might have done. There's also... Something else. I don't have any idea what, but it has a decent chunk of the same runes for siphoning magic, but... Different."

"Different how? Like, is this thing killing you or something" Susan asked with growing horror, her hand reflexively reaching for the comm earring she wore that could call her Aunt.

"Hold on, let me..." Holly didn't finish her sentence as she started rummaging around her tiny library of runic reference books. The last enchantment seemed to be written in a variant of Futhark that she wasn't very familiar with. Lucky for her there was a handy little table that let you figure out what variant you were working with since there were quite a handful of Futhark runic languages.

"This section is the one I already knew," she told Susan, pointing with her knife. "It's basically just a prompting to draw energy from one place and move it to another. In most cases the energy type is magic. This line of runes here is that, for example."

"Alright, with you so far," Susan nodded.

"This symbol here is where you'd specify what you're targeting, followed by where you're targeting. In this case the where is the wearer of the locket. The what, however, seems to be... It's, like, a rune not in the book. It sort of looks like a mixture of Othilia and Uruz. The first is a rune for genetics, inherited property and ancestral things. The second is a rune for power, primal creative power and gateways."

"What exactly does that mean?" Susan asked with some confusion.

"Well, first off whoever wrote this is way more advanced with runes than I am, because mixing runes together like that is way high level. It's the only rune like that in the entire sequence, however, so it could just be that they got help with that one single rune by someone better," Holly began. "What it could mean, however, is a little unclear. I'm pretty sure though that it's targeting some sort of inherited or genetic power of mine. The only thing I can think of would be... Vampire stuff, maybe?"

Susan took a few steps back and sat on Holly's bed with a thoughtful expression on her face. She stood back up and returned to where she was to look over Holly's shoulder. "What about the rest? What does that do?"

"Um..." Holly blushed and looked to the side. "The rest only sort of makes sense. It's written in a way that I haven't studied yet. I um... Could maybe guess though?" With a nod from Susan Holly read over the last part of the line of runes a few times before she started to hum and haw about what it could be.

After a somewhat awkwardly long amount of time, during which Susan had sat back down on Holly's bed, Holly looked up from the locket with something of a guess in mind. "Nearest I can figure is that it... Deletes or destroys something?"

"So," Susan offered her own idea. "Basically what you're saying is that enchantment very likely steals your vampiric powers or energy and just gets rid of it?" Holly could only nod with a bit of unsurety and a lot of frustration and not a tiny bit of anger.

Holly got up from her desk chair and flopped onto her bed, her palms covering her eyes. Accidentally pressing her Magesight Glasses into her face she removed them and tossed them onto her desk before returning her palms to her eyes. Why in the world would someone put such a thing on the locket meant to protect her from sunlight? Was it Professor Flitwick that did that or did someone else? One oddity could have been an accident, two could have been written off as gross negligence, but three? Three such things was clearly deliberate.

The possible draining of any sort of vampiric energy wasn't what really worried Holly. Sure, it was absolutely terrible and maybe explained why she wasn't feeling the rushes of energy or growing stronger like she was told she would. It wasn't the worst of the three things though. Hell, not even the extra loss of magical energy was all that bad. It's not like her focus of choice could even use all that much energy at a time anyway.

No, what had Holly shaking as she lay there on her bed were the enchantments that did unknown things with her mind as a target. They could have done anything from force her to follow orders she didn't want to, remove memories, or even change her personality. Unfortunately she would probably never know what exactly the enchantments did because the specifics were, for lack of a better word, programmed into the runes with a charm or some other form of magic that didn't leave marks. It was still sort of there, but only enough for her to tell what kind of magic it was, not what exactly it did.

Swearing under her breath Holly jumped just slightly as she felt someone hug her from the side. Uncovering her eyes she discovered Susan had placed herself beside Holly on her bed to hold her, softly running a hand through her hair. It felt... Really, really nice, actually.

"Whatever it was, whatever that thing was doing to you, is gone now," Susan whispered. "It isn't going to do you any harm anymore and now that you know how it works you can make your own, better one. You're not the smartest person I know, but you're pretty high on that list and think in some pretty weird ways sometimes. So I know you'll be able to take even more than most people could from that thing."

Holly was speechless. She'd never, not ever, been spoken to in a way like Susan was doing now. It was so quite but she could feel such warmth in her voice it gave Holly goosebumps. Slowly, carefully, Holly rolled onto her side and wrapped her arms around Susan similarly to how she was holding Holly. They stayed like that for a good many minutes before Holly finally said anything.

"Thanks," was her simple, whispered message.

When it was revealed who exactly would be in charge of the dueling club Holly and Susan couldn't help but let out a small groan while Hannah and Hermione both looked excited. The latter reaction seemed to be more common amongst the female population of the school, but it wasn't as common as it would have been earlier in the year.

By and large, however, the reaction to seeing Professor Snape wipe the floor with Lockhart with a single spell was soft laughter. The next widespread reaction shared by the crowd was a mixture of mild confusion and surprise. Not at the suggestion that two students should come up to demonstrate instead of Lockhart and Snape, but at who exactly was called up.

Summoned to the stage by Professor Snape was the one and only Draco Malfoy. However, called up by Professor Lockhart was the wandless Holly Potter. She, as well as a few others, tried to argue that point, she couldn't exactly duel in the manner expected of her without a wand, but Lockhart wouldn't hear it. He all but physically pulled her onto the dueling platform and told her he was certain she would 'figure it out' and that was that.

So it was that Holly found herself standing opposite Draco Malfoy on a dueling platform in front of a very large percentage of the entire student body and more than a couple professors. Saying she was nervous was putting it lightly. She quickly asked if she was even allowed to use her knife, and she was thankfully, or maybe not so thankfully, told she could use it. She was also told that she couldn't actually cut or stab Malfoy with it though.

"Wands at the ready," came the mildly inaccurate command from Professor Lockhart.

Holly raised her dagger in front of her face in much the same way as Malfoy raised his wand as they were shown. "Scared, Potter?" was the attempt at messing with Holly that Malfoy offered and Holly couldn't help but be disappointed that was all he'd managed to cook up. Even still, the situation had her rapidly starting to bleed off her nervous energy and fill with a sort of... Excitement. She couldn't help but offer a tiny grin as her response to Malfoy, starting to shake a little with the excess energy flooding her limbs. She also couldn't help but notice that her blade morphed in her hand. Unlike last time where it turned into what she playfully called 'carving mode' this time the only change was the blade turning almost comically dull.

Turning on their heels and lowering their wands Holly and Malfoy stepped to their respective ends of the platform. With each step Holly couldn't help but almost feel the growing disadvantage on her end. She knew how to cast spells a bit more effectively than before, but it was limited to melee range. She was fast, sure, but she doubted she was fast enough to clear the entire distance between them before Malfoy got off a spell, maybe even two.

"On the count of three," Lockhart called out. "One... Two..."

Two was as far as he got before Malfoy started to cast his first spell. "Everte Statum!" he called out before an orange colored wave rocketed from his wand.

Holly's first thought was probably the most Hufflepuff thing she could imagine. But that isn't a disarming spell! Then reality caught up with her as she was thrown back several feet, doing a flip in the air before slamming down onto the floor. Quickly getting to her feet Holly couldn't help but internally bemoan the impracticality of dueling in robes.

Rushing forwards and clearing an almost scary amount of distance Holly managed to dodge Malfoy's next spell. Holly wasn't entirely sure what it was that Malfoy threw at her, but her dodge had managed to get her robes tangled in her feet and she tumbled to the ground. Swearing as everyone laughed at her Holly rapidly shed her robe before rolling out of the way of another spell from Malfoy, who had failed to cast his previous spell because he, too, was laughing at Holly.

Growling in frustration Holly once again sped towards her opponent, the world almost seeming to slow down a little as she did. She ignored a few gasps at just how fast she cleared the distance between Malfoy and herself. He let loose another spell, this one seeming to conjure something. Holly thought it was rope in the tiny amount of time she had to process it, so just slashed at it with her dagger, which became sharp exactly when she needed it to.

The next thing she knew Holly was standing over the somewhat curled up body of a groaning Draco Malfoy. He was holding his stomach that she'd just punched and she was holding his wand. Holly was barely even breathing a bit more heavily, her heart beating quite quickly in comparison. Glancing over her shoulder she saw what looked like a mostly formed snake sliced in half on the stage behind her.

Looking down at Draco, Holly couldn't help but give him a large smile before laughing. "Do you even know the disarming spell? I mean, I don't, but at least I thought of alternative means of taking your wand from you instead of flinging snakes at peo-"

Holly was abruptly cut off by a screaming Draco Malfoy. She might have mocked the girlyness of the shriek, but the words that came out after it had her paralyzed in terror.

"Monster! Dark Creature! She's a Merlin-damned vampire!"