Chapter 11: Quaero Bibliotheca Nicolas Flamel
Meissa was sitting in the sun room at the Malfoy Manor, scribbling and scratching out words as she tried to perfect the idea she came up with.
She had tried to use it the night before when a whole avalanche of books came down on her. It was only her quick thinking and an old sturdy desk that kept her from being crushed. She also had her aunt to thank for ordering Menny to keep a constant eye on her.
When her aunt found her trying to return the books to their places - Menny was a bit of a tattler - she got a bit of scolding for trying to invent her own spell without consulting her or an adult at the very least. Apparently she needed to work on her Latin a bit more.
Day two in her winter break and she was already stressed out about being around Lucius for twenty-four hours. She wanted to go home and just hideaway in her bedroom with a few books.
She was still tempted to make an escape from the manor anyway - but knew that she had no way of keeping her aunt out of the house and from taking her back. The best she could do was try and endure the week until after Christmas - and the ball her aunt was likely already planning - to make her escape.
It didn't mean she had to enjoy it anyway.
"Young Mistress," she hears.
"Menny."
"Mistress calls for Young Mistress," the house-elf tells her nervously, wringing her ears. Meissa could only guess that the elf was afraid she would dismiss her and not go anyway.
"Did she say why?" she inquires as she waves her hand at the parchment next to her.
"No, Mistress said nothing to Menny," the elf answers as she snaps her fingers. With the crack of her magic the wet ink on the parchment was dried and Meissa was free to roll up the parchment.
"Very well," Meissa mutters, "Take this to my room and leave this on my bed. Touch nothing else."
"Yes Young Mistress."
With a crack the elf was gone and Meissa left the sun room, heading to the drawing room where she was likely to find her aunt.
~MJB~
"You want me to forgive him?!" Meissa shouts angrily as she gestures to Draco who was sitting by the fireplace, quiet as she paced hotly in the farthest part of the room she could manage.
"Do not yell, Meissa," Narcissa reprimands.
"DON'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO!" she raged.
A vase shatters without warning, startling her as a few shards bit into her skin.
"Do you think you can stop raging long enough for me to heal your injuries?" Narcissa asks when the girl resumed her pacing.
She had also taken to muttering - a traditional sign for both Malfoys to find a way to lock the girl into a room before she starts to lash out.
Yet as Draco looked at his mother he saw that she made no attempt to move the girl out of the drawing room.
So the Black heiress was allowed to continue pacing like a mad woman, muttering and probably one wrong word from exploding violently. She was unresponsive to any of Narcissa's attempts to calm her down and Draco dared not say anything.
A minute nearly passed before Narcissa called for an elf - the elf appearing with a sharp crack. The same crack causing the girl to jump and wild magic jumped through her outstretched hand. Arching through the air like lighting.
SNAP!
A bright blue shield appeared and protected the Malfoys from the wild magic.
"Mistress!" the elf cries as she ran up to the panting girl, her long spindly arms outstretched. "Did Mistress Meissa call Remmy?"
"Remmy?" Meissa mutters distractedly, her eyes rather vacant. "Why are you here?"
The elf snaps her fingers and produced a mug of hot cocoa with an unhealthy amount of whip cream and a sprinkling of cinnamon. "Mistress Meissa called for Remmy!" the elf announces cheerfully as she gave the mug of cocoa to the baffled girl.
"Remmy, I didn't - ," Meissa tries to say before she found herself seated and being told to drink.
A bit stunned and shaken from her earlier rage, Meissa sips the hot cocoa - licking the whip cream from her nose.
"Better?" the elf asks after a moment had passed and the girl had curled her legs underneath her while sipping the hot cocoa. All Remmy got for her question was a distracted 'mhm'.
"Thank you, Remmy, you can go now," Narcissa dismisses. Meissa looks up from the foamy mug, meeting the house-elf's eyes and with a near unnoticeable nod from the Slytherin girl the elf disapparates from the drawing room.
"Better now dear?"
Meissa eyes her aunt.
"Not in the slightest."
"How long do you intend to hold a grudge against your cousin?"
Meissa shifts her gaze towards Draco.
"I don't see him ever changing his ways," she remarks drily.
"You could give him a chance."
Meissa scoffs as she finishes her drink, placing the mug on the small table next to her.
"I know you love him, Aunt Cissy, but he's been bothering Potter since the beginning of the term," the girl scowls at her cousin. "I have had enough with him. It's one thing to make Potter miserable but it's another to use something he knew could affect not just Potter but just about anyone who lost one or BOTH their parents!"
With a huff she gets up from her chair and made to leave the drawing room.
"Meissa, I'm sorry!" Draco cries, speaking for the first time since the conversation started.
"Sorry is worthless to me!" Meissa snarls, her magic becoming visible briefly in her anger. "Sorry is doing it once. But you," she snarls, "Done it for three months straight!"
Meissa stormed out of the room, the two blondes left staring at the partially destroyed door.
Narcissa sighs as she lifts her cup of tea to her lips. It would seem that her son had made a bigger mess than she had originally believed. "How do you propose to fix this, Draco?"
"Is it even possible to fix?"
"Anything is possible, Draco," Narcissa sips. "I thought I would be able to help you but it is clear to me that she has no intention of forgiving you. So if you wish to get back onto her good side then you need to find your own way."
"But-."
"No buts, Draco. You made this mess, you fix it."
Draco sighs reluctantly and leaves the room - he'll need to think extra hard about this one.
~MJB~
It was day three and Meissa was finally ready to test out her spell - she just needed a final bit of approval from her aunt before she could try it out. The upside of the last three days was that she managed to improve her Latin usage. Down side she was finding that she doesn't really have the patience for creating and fine-tuning a spell.
The spell she had tested the first night was actually a poorly strung together sentence - 'Libros mentionem Flamel'. The poor excuse for a spell, instead of bringing only books that mentioned Flamel, it all of the books available in the library - hence the avalanche of books crashing down on her. (1)
"Let's try this again," she mutters quietly to herself, mentally telling herself that she needed to focus on the intent of the spell.
She holds her wand out as if she was going to perform the levitation spell except instead of a swish and flick she flicked her wand up from high down to her waist followed by a tight circle.
"Quaero Bibliotheca Flamel," she intones as clearly as possible, bracing herself for any mishaps. (2)
A few books slid free from their place in the shelves and flew down to her, forming a tight circle around. The books that have flown down snapped open to the page pertaining to the search words.
A few of them didn't pertain to what she was looking for in the first place she motions them shut and sent them back to the shelves. Out of the five books that had responded to her spell only two mentioned Nicolas Flamel.
She was glad that the spell didn't blow up in her face or try to crush her underneath an avalanche of books.
The first book she looked at mentioned the Flamel family and their particular talent for alchemy. It also mentioned a philosopher's stone - a legendary stone that can transmute just about anything into gold and grant immortal life.
When she looks at the second book it goes even deeper details about the philosopher's stone, speculating on how Nicolas Flamel had created the stone.
Meissa was curious about this so she settled down for a read, reading the passages which also contained a circle that contained runes similar to the circle she had given Hermione.
Curious she puts her palm on the page and - with a little bit of magic - she withdrew her hand from it, a small magical copy of the circle contained between her fingers. She then pushes her hand out, releasing the copy into the air.
It was still the same size as the one in the book so Meissa takes opposite sides of it and pulls at it, enlarging the circle so she could see it in better details. The first thing she noted was the six runes laid out in a design similar to what she could identify as a pentagram. Except the sixth rune was positioned in the center of the star - she didn't recognize any of them so she couldn't honestly determine their purposes.
"Curious," she mutters to herself as she enlarges the circle even more so she could make sense of the smaller scripts of runes running along the edge of the circle.
But the runes she could now identify were still unfamiliar to her and she couldn't comprehend any of it. Frustrated by her lack of understanding she picks up her wand, "Quaero Libros Alchemy!"
Two books flew from the shelves and when she motions to a spot on the table they stacked themselves neatly - the faint blue light vanishing the second they settled. She picks up the book on top and flips through the tome, searching for something that could help her with the runes.
After flipping through nearly half of the book she finds a chart that had the meaning of each rune.
Glad to have found a chart she places her palm on the page, just like she had done with the previous book and puts it up in the air. She took the liberty of separating the chart so that each rune had its own box with its meanings intact. Enlarging the runes to the same size as the ones she was trying to identify.
The six runes she identifies as spirit, water, fire, earth, and air clockwise with life placed firmly in the center.
A cold sense of dread went down her spine at the rune for life surrounded by the elements.
The smaller script she had a harder time identifying.
"Thousand…Offered…Unwilling… Power…Immortal?" She mutters quietly, slowly piecing it together.
"Life," she mutters pointing to the center - and then, in the spaces between the five runes - "Thousand," she starts naming as she went clockwise, "Offered. Unwilling. Power. Immortal…"
Something starts to click and she draws the book that gave her the design in the first place, reading the passage again.
"The Philosopher's stone is rumored to be capable of transmuting base metals into gold or silver. In addition to this it is believed to hold the ability to heal all forms of illnesses as well as prolong the life of any person who consumes a small part of the stone - perhaps even make them permanently immortal. There is also a belief that a homunculus - a product of a failed human transmutation attempt - can obtain a soul to become fully human with the use of a Philosopher's stone…"
She trails off thoughtfully, thinking about the stone. "A stone possibility capable of extending or granting immortality to the user," she mutters to herself as she stares at the circle. It was like the answer was staring at her.
Staring…
A slow horror dawns onto her as she realizes something.
"A thousand lives offered unwillingly," she strings together breathlessly, "for power and immortality."
She shoves the books away from her, ignoring the few stray tomes falling to the floor, bile thick in her throat. She couldn't… a famous wizard like Nicolas Flamel creating a stone from lives…
She snatches a clean parchment and spelled a quill.
"Dear Hermione," she mutters, the quill scratching away, "I believe I found Nicolas Flamel." She goes into details about what he's famous for - leaving out what she had discovered - and concludes with her suspicions that Fluffy was guarding the entrance to the only known creation of the Philosopher's stone. "If I discover anything else," she concludes, eying the multiple scratched out lines, "I will owl you. Sincerely, Meissa Jean Black."
She makes a face at what she just concluded the letter with.
"Scratch that." The quill seems to look frustrated with her when she commanded this but it did as it was told. "Sincerely, MJB." The quill does this easily and with a bit of a flourish that had her raising an eyebrow at the animated quill. "Was that really necessary?" she inquires, not quite expecting an answer.
It seemed to look at her before it effortlessly sliding into the ink pot. Unsure of what to make of that she shrugs her shoulders. "Remmy!" she calls.
CRACK!
The house-elf appears by the table, bowing to her before busying herself with the fallen books.
"Remmy, you can leave that," she tries to stop the elf but before she could finish the mess was sorted and the elf was waiting for instructions. She sighs fondly at the expectant elf.
"Remmy, can you-." Again the elf is a step ahead of her and she finds herself with a new parchment neatly copied from the draft, the scratched out lines gone from the new version of her letter.
"Can Remmy ask question?"
Meissa smirks fondly at the elf, "I believe you did, but you can ask me your question."
"Was Mistress upset?"
Meissa arches an eyebrow at the elf. "Why do you ask that?" Remmy gestures to the books that she had sorted. "Oh…" The earlier feeling of bile was back. "I found out something I… wished I hadn't figured out." She looks up and realizes for the first time since she started dictating her letter that the circle and the various runes were still floating in the air.
With a frustrated growl she swipes her hand through the fiery marks, breaking the enchantment and causing them to vanish. She shuts her eyes to everything, silently cursing herself for being so curious.
"Remmy can help?"
"Remmy, I would be nothing without you," Meissa smiles distractedly at the elf who was looking at her worriedly.
"Mistress?" the elf whimpers.
The Black heiress sighs and pats Remmy on her head. "Go and get an owl to take my letter to Hermione Granger."
"Mistress is good?"
"Yes." She tweaks Remmy's ear gently, prompting the elf to wriggle her ears happily. "Off you go."
CRACK!
The elf was gone and Meissa was left alone in the library, thinking about the Philosopher's stone.
The method to create it aside, there were benefits to it - for one, she wanted to know if it was possible for the stone to treat magical injuries that have been deemed incurable by Healers. If it was then it could lead to fixing many issues.
She didn't see herself creating a Philosopher's stone though. The costs were too much for her. A thousand lives for the price of a stone… she couldn't live with herself.
"If," she wonders out loud to herself, pulling out a new parchment and snapped her fingers at the quill. The quill immediately snapped to attention and hopped onto the parchment, ready to record her thoughts. "If a Philosopher's stone is capable of healing any illnesses then is it possible to use the stone to heal any injuries - normal or magical?"
She glances at the quill and watched it finish with a flourish. She rolls her eyes at the quill - its attitude is a bit comical. Animating a quill not only gives it life but also an attitude apparently.
"The Philosopher's stone is," she mutters as she picks up the book regarding Alchemy, "said to have many features but I am most interested in its' healing capabilities. Alice and Frank Longbottom were tortured beyond the point of sanity by Rodolphus and Rabastan Lestrange as well as Barty Crouch Jr. The nature of the Longbottom's issue is due to being tortured by one of the Unforgivable Curses therefore the issue is not a physical one but a mental, magical, and possibly spiritual."
Knock, Knock, Knock.
Meissa looks over her shoulders at the closed door. She snaps her fingers at the quill to indicate that it should stop recording the events around her. "Come in!" she calls out to the person on the other side.
The door swings open as she flips to the next page, skimming through the contents.
"Meissa?"
She pauses in the middle of turning the page, the voice registering in her mind.
"What do you want," she asks flatly.
"Can we talk?"
"Way I see it, we're already talking."
"Can you at least look at me?"
With a sigh she snaps the tome shut, lower her feet from the edge of the table, turning the chair around to face them. "Well?"
Draco fiddles nervously in front of her as she waited for him to say his piece.
She needed to get back to her research - she wanted to think out every bit of the pros and cons of the Philosopher's stone. As much as she didn't want to, she can see the advantages of the stone.
But she was stuck waiting for her cousin to tell her what was on his mind.
~MJB~
Meissa was quiet, sitting in the sun room, staring at the snow falling outside.
She was still disgusted by what she had found. But she couldn't help but think of the implications - she could give Neville his parents back. That was the forethought in her mind - curing the Longbottoms.
Her mind distant as she waved her wand, firing multi-colored sparks from the tips.
She rather be at home, at least there she knew what to expect.
Draco was still trying to get on her good side but he still had a long way to go before she was willing to forgive him.
"Meissa," she hears from behind her. She stills her hand and looks over her shoulder to find that it was her aunt. She was dressed primly with her winter coat on and gloves in hand. "I'm headed to Diagon Alley, do you wish to accompany me?"
Meissa was going to answer negative until she got to thinking about how Christmas was set to happen in two days.
"Actually, yes now that you've mentioned it," Meissa hops up from her seat and waves her wand over her clothes. Wordlessly casting a spell that smoothed out the wrinkles.
"Meissa, dear, you're going to land yourself into trouble casting your spells freely," Narcissa remarks, getting a cheeky grin from her niece. Narcissa smiles fondly at her niece and gestures for the girl to head to the drawing room.
"Come on then, Aunt Cissy!" the girl calls cheerfully to her aunt, fetching the tin of floo powder.
"Meissa Black, calm down," Narcissa laughs, shaking her head in disbelief at the young girl.
She finds her niece wrapping a scarf around her neck. Her long red-highlighted hair cascading over her shoulders.
"Dear, perhaps you should get your earrings?" the blonde suggests to the girl.
"Oh!" Meissa lifts a lock of her hair to her eyes. "You're right! Back in a moment!"
She was off, running out of the room and presumably up the stairs to her room. Narcissa could only shake her head - she was much like her mother in that aspect. All the energy and excitement of a child when their parents weren't looking.
Meissa was back just as fast as she was gone, her hair the color of a raven and her skin a shade lighter. A carbon copy of her mother when she was that age. Her hair tussled and freely bouncing over the girl's shoulders. The very definition of a free spirit.
"Alright then. Off we go," Narcissa declares as Meissa produces the tin of floo powder. A pinch of power, a bit of fire, and off they were.
~MJB~
Diagon Alley was a winter wonder land besieged by a crowd of last minute Christmas shoppers.
Meissa was never one to handle crowds well on most days but on this day, in this moment, the girl was peering at a case, eyeing a pendant set on a long thin silver chain. The pendant was a black raven in flight, each feather perfectly etched out, the beak in near stark relief against the body - there was no mistaking the bird for anything else.
"Ah, I see you have an interest in this lovely necklace," she suddenly heard a slimy voice say. She looks up to see a wizard smile at her from the other side of the case - the owner if she had to make a guess. "Did you know that in some myths the raven was considered to be a harbinger of death?" the wizard inquires, "And some of the muggles believed that we have the ability to transform into ravens to evade capture."
Meissa couldn't fault the muggles for believing that. There were some wizards and witches animagi who were ravens.
But she wasn't interested in the fact that they were harbingers of death or what muggles believed. No, she was interested in their history as messengers.
She thought it was a suitable gift to give and was interested in purchasing it.
"I'll buy it," she declares and noted right away the twinkle in the man's eyes.
"Lovely! That'll be twenty galleons." (3)
She arches an eyebrow at him. So that's what he wants to play…
"Ten."
He frowns at her. "The price is twenty."
"Five," she lowers and she can only suppose he saw that she wasn't joking.
"Fifteen," he tries.
"Two galleons," she drawls, her eyes daring him to try her.
"Two," he agrees with a reluctant sigh. (4)
She sets the coins in front of him, keeping her fingers firmly on them until he handed the necklace over, neatly wrapped.
"Pleasure doing business with you," she smiles at him before wordlessly sliding the package into her coat pocket.
She leaves the store, humming to a song she had heard on the Wizarding Wireless Network. It was quite catchy - though she probably shouldn't let her aunt know she listens to the WWN.
She wonders through the crowd, on a look out for something when she found her aunt tucking away a shrunken package.
"All done dear?" her aunt asks.
"No…" she frowns as she peers around a bit more.
"What seems to be the problem."
"I don't know what to get a friend."
Narcissa smiles - though she hid it quickly when Meissa turned to look at her. She was pleased to hear that her niece had made a friend at Hogwarts.
"Well, what do your friend likes?"
"Um… reading. She really loves to read and study." Narcissa nods her head, thinking about Flourish and Blotts. "But I don't know what she has and don't have." Narcissa frowns in thought, she could see her niece's argument there. It wouldn't do to have two copies of the same book. "I thought about an owl, because I don't think she has one, but I don't want to make the decision for her…"
"Whatever do you mean?"
"Well, we're only allowed to bring one."
"Where did you read that?"
"It was in the acceptance letter," Meissa remarks. "They especially expressed the word OR a few times in that one line." Narcissa sighs, trust her niece to notice something like that.
"Perhaps we should go with books then?" Narcissa suggests. "A few books in the field your friend is interested in?"
"She's interested in lots of stuff, Aunt Cissy," Meissa tells the woman as they head for Flourish and Blotts. "If she could I think she would buy just about every book in the world."
"I suppose we could help her along then," Narcissa remarks drily. She did not fancy being the owl, lugging along the books her niece may decide on.
~MJB~
Translation bits and notes are below. If there's any question please don't hesitate to ask. Oh and thank you all for the follows and favorites. Don't be afraid to ask me questions whether it's in a review or in a pm. If I don't know what confuses you how can I clarify it in the story so that those who follows in your footsteps can understand?
Libros mentionem Flamel - Books mentioning Flamel
Quaero Bibliotheca _ - Search the library for _
20 Galleons - $200 roughly
2 Galleons - $20 roughly