Harry amidst the Vaults of Stone

Chapter 25 (~~Intermission~~)

"And you're dead set on the Forbidden Forest?" asked the twin who had introduced himself as Fred. Plans were rapidly taking shape.

"He thinks big, this one," commented George. "But there's plenty of other interesting places to visit, you know, without having to go quite as far. Or get so muddy."

Harry wondered if the boys were nervous. He shrugged, and took a stab in the dark. "If I don't do this, I won't break any rules in my first week."

"He's got us bang to rights," Fred sighed.

"Now we have to help you," George agreed. He put one finger to his lip thoughtfully. "Of course, equally tantalising is this reference to a mysterious book which could help us in our quest to end the first-floor bathroom's lamentable lack of a plague of vermin. Haven't I always said a library is a wonderful resource, George?"

"I thought you were George," Harry accused the speaker.

"I'm a Fred I'm afraid," came the immediate response.

Before things could devolve from there, Harry said, "Then corrupting the boring Ravenclaw Boy Who Lived to your wicked ways is a factor?"

The newly confirmed Fred looked at him curiously. "Isn't it always?"

"Well said, George," his twin chimed in.

Harry grimaced in resignation. He'd find the measure of them eventually.

"So, Saturday morning work for you?" one Weasley asked him, glancing down again at the large piece of parchment he was holding close to his robes.

"The goblins call it 'worm-glimmer'," Harry said, to faces lit by an orange flicker. "I believe it's the same as what older books call 'dweomerlight'."

Today's double Charms lesson had introduced the Finger Flames Cantrip, which followed naturally from conjuring sparks. The heatless, fuel-less wisps of fire which most of the Ravenclaw students had managed to create was a faint yellow: poor imitation of true flame. Hermione, though, had conjured an incredibly vivid blue fire in the palm of her hand. And Mandy Brocklehurst had dropped hers and stopped participating upon finding that her curlicues of flame were a particularly sickly red.

Harry was currently carrying gossamer tendrils of a deep, vibrant copper, bordering on orange. "It's one of those spells that can be specialised and, ah, even personalised as you master it," he explained to his friends as they walked idly. He shook his handful of copper flames so that they quivered like jelly. "The imposition of Will over Word and Wand, as Waffling puts it."

Harry had already been learning the spell, goblin-style, when Brother Filius had first appeared in Underfoot. He was therefore quite versed in it already.

"Really. Specialised in what manner?" Blaise asked, in his usual bored tone. He and Padma had caught up with Harry, Terry, Kevin and Hermione after their own classes. Now they were filling in time before dinner. Blaise had appeared a little exasperated to find the group discussing schoolwork out of class.

"There are many variants," Harry replied. "What they call 'The Hands That Burn', and 'The Lights That Dance'... many others, yes. As Professor Flitwick said, you can learn to make it fiercely hot, and create more or less light, and have it hover in the air, or stay lit underwater..." he shrugged. "One of the sorcerers I knew said that the colour is based on your personality. But the books claim that with practise you can create specific colours, too, so I don't know."

Harry let the strange little fire dribble out of his hand and onto the flagstones, where it dulled and then winked out. "Unusual to see a spell with a direct analogue in goblin magic," he mused. "I have to say, it's easier with a wand, even if it doesn't last as long."

"Well, of course it's easier with a wand," Hermione said with a frown. "Wandless magic isn't supposed-"

"No, you miss the point," Harry interrupted. "In my experience, goblin-charms – which are call and sign only, no wands – require greater precision, with a slower effect. The – 'pay-off', yes? – being that they can potentially last considerably longer, as they sustain themselves."

Harry paused, and looked at the faces of Blaise, Terry, Kevin, Padma, and Hermione, which varied along a spectrum from blank to thoughtful. "Watch my example."

He gave the incantation and the four requisite wand loops, each one describing a slightly flatter oval than the last. Flames spilled from his wand at the culmination.

But then he did it again and more sloppily, with the same results. A third time, deliberately twitching his wand, and the bright, coppery flames still appeared. It wasn't until he held his wand in his off-hand and slurred the words that it failed.

"That's wand magic. Now, Inflammara is four syllables and has four gestures, yes? Well, here is a spell with the same length incantation and a similar somatic component."

Remembering his basic magic safety lessons, he cautioned his friends to keep behind him, and lined up on the stone wall.

"I shall show you Brother Hushmaster's Potent Asp-spray", he announced.

He made four passes through the air, ending with his thumbs locked together and fingers splayed, and said with exquisite care, "Gertzlok-speltur."

The spell failed. A fat spark crackled across his hands and there was a smell of mouldering vegetation.

"That should have shot snaking silver darts from my fingertips. I've managed it once or twice, in practise. I took every care just now, but I was still insufficiently precise, yes? I've seen experienced goblins perform that spell in a live hunt, on reflex, to bring down large prey."

"Wicked," Terry muttered.

"Now, compare to the worm-glimmer. I mean the Finger Flames Cantrip," Harry began.

Hermione, however, interrupted, in tones of mild scandal. "Harry, you really oughtn't be doing that sort of magic. You could get in terrible trouble!"

Blaise made a rude noise. "I'm sure we'll see worse – probably before the year's out."

Hermione folded her arms. "Regardless, it's a more dangerous spell, so it's harder. Small wonder it didn't work. Besides, Adalbert Waffling says that wandless magic is innately difficult. That's a far more likely explanation."

Harry was already shaking his head. "I'm not talking about doing wizard spells without a wand. I know of wandless spells for which there is no analogue in wizard magic. Some of those I can do."

He paused, frustrated, and tried again. "Here we have two spells, neither conceptually complex. One summons viscous, coloured, smokeless flames; the other flings corrosive snake-like ribbons. Incantations of the same length. Same number of basic movements. Now, Brother Hushmaster's hex is practically the first instantaneous spell that a cautious sorcerer learns. But that seems to be the key: fast spells, more like those of wizards, are more difficult for goblin work. It requires considerably more, ah, finesse. "

"Oh honestly, Harry. Waffling's text says in the very first chapter that the Natural Hierarchy of Spellwork places spells in increasingly difficult magisteria: essential, wordless, wandless, motionless. It's based on the idea of the development of your magical core..."

Harry grimaced. "So the author agrees with two ideas that were asserted without support by a court mage a dozen centuries ago, because he was too lazy or incompetent to actually work out whether they were supported by evidence."

"You're impossible!" Hermione stormed towards the door, wheeled abruptly, said, "And I'm going to compile all the reasons you're wrong," and then stamped off.

Harry blinked.

"Good flounce," Blaise said appraisingly. "Rigid back. Nice heavy legwork. You did a good job causing that, Harry."

"There will be time to build and to create, and time for all the works and days of hands," Harry said vaguely.

"Which means?"

"Some challenging discussion may be good for her."

"You said the spell doesn't last as long when you're using a wand?" Padma had been paying keen attention to the details.

Harry nodded. "Goblin-charms are generative. Once you have the working right, it will usually continue for a long time. Not drawing magic from the air – I tested that – but from somewhere. Certainly not from your own person."

"Hey." This was Kevin, holding his hands cupped together. "So I've got an idea for the Charms Assignment."

Most of the class had been ordered to practise their Finger Flames Cantrip for class on Monday. Those - Harry and Kevin amongst them - who could conjure flames stable enough to blaze away by themselves on a level surface were to "find a new use for the charm or an aspect of the charm you wouldn't have guessed."

Quivering fire was already pooled in Kevin's hands. "What I'm thinking is... everybody pour their own fire spell into my hands, okay? And then I shake them up as hard as I can."

There was a long pause.

The others shared speculative looks, and then, as one, drew their wands.

"I didn't expect that to happen," Harry mused.

Blaise stopped finger-combing faintly luminous gunk out of his hair, and shot Harry a black look.

"No, really," Harry said, as he helped Terry up, leaving a sooty silhouette on the flagstones. "I know different spells can sometimes react badly, yes. But the same charm? Hmmm. Perhaps because of the heterogeneous personal effects..."

Padma serenely patted out a small patch of heatless fire that was coruscating in merry violet and inky blue on her robes. "So what you are saying is, it was an aspect of the charm you wouldn't have guessed."

Terry sneezed, and looked up. "Right. I guess Kevin has something to write about, huh. Speaking of which... what do we do about him?"

They looked at Kevin.

"His hand is glowing," Padma observed.

"He's crackling, but not much," Blaise said, rather critically.

"I think it's static electricity," said Terry. "His hair's all standing on end, look. It's not just because he's upside down."

"I wouldn't have thought static alone would make him stick to the wall like that, though."

"We had better get Professor Flitwick," Harry decided.

Duly fetched, Filius beheld Kevin's flashing eyes and floating hair, and quickly wove a circle of magic around him thrice, snuffing out the glow. The teacher floated the boy to the ground, and turned a disapproving look upon the five students.

After a stern lecture about experimenting with magic, particularly in the corridors, they were let free. Kevin was bundled off to the Hospital Wing, but wandered into the Great Hall partway through dinner, soot still snarled in his hair. Apparently not a whit of harm to his person had been found or imagined by the school's zealous matron.

Dinner itself proved to be a quiet affair, featuring neither inopportune missives nor verminous malfeasance. Harry ate 'Yorkshire Pudding', whatever that was, with gravy.

That evening, with a cry of "Hey, Potter!", Michael Corner waved Harry over to a table in, appropriately enough, the corner of the Ravenclaw common room.

Harry had so far found the blue-eyed boy, who was in the other dormitory room with Stephen and Anthony, to be argumentative and brusque.

"You know much about history? Goblin wars and things?"

Harry slowly sat. "Some, yes."

"Right. I was starting this history homework for Binns. Looking at the Clef-Kondraki Incident of 1678, because that has to be interesting, right?"

The tone suggested this was a joke. Harry shrugged.

"So anyway," Michael brandished his essay, "there's a bunch that the book glosses over, or that doesn't make much sense. Like, what's this bit about 'traversing the luminiferous aether'?"

"That's what they used to call Apparition," Harry said absently. "May I?" He took the parchment, and scanned down it. "That's correct. That too. That part sounds right, but I don't remember the specifics. I never heard this whole part about the stolen plough. You spelt 'succession' with two too many c's. And there's nothing here on the background to the incident."

"That's what I wanted to ask about."

Harry laced his fingers together. The details, first learned in some stone room in Underfoot Library, came back to him. "In essence: Clef Senior was opposed to the Brotherhood of Goblins controlling the, ah, 'coin of the realm'. His father had been a goldsmith, I believe. He feared insurrection, so he tried to sideline the goblins before it could actually begin."

Michael wrinkled his nose. "People still worry about that, though. My father does, anyway. So why aren't they trying to drive the goblins out of Hogsmeade nowadays? I mean... I grew up knowing the goblins hold all the money, and never to cross them, and everyone has to walk on eggshells around 'em as they'll rebel at the drop of a hat."

Harry couldn't suppress his snort. "You're pureblood?"

Michael hesitated. "My dad's a wizard, my mom got to know him because her sister's a witch. Doesn't matter. But, no offence, why are the goblins trusted with all the wizarding world's wealth? This battle happened right outside Hogsmeade, and a bunch of local farmers got killed, and then a month later they were back to banking with the goblins and everything. Seems like Gringotts is this on-and-off hostile power with all its own laws and pretty much complete control over our economy."

"It's not quite as simple as you hew it out," Harry said, attempting to think of it at least partly from a wizard's perspective. "But mainly what you are seeing is the common, cultivated perception of goblins, overlaying a thousand years of concessions and conflicts and power plays. And, ah, the inertia of people's daily lives, yes? They bank at Gringotts because it is what they have done, and what their fathers have done before them."

Then he told the story of how Kondraki, wielding the ancestral warhammer Nakbluhnak, or That Which Fears No Anvil, shattered Clef's enchanted sword Ribbledfwlch, more commonly known to the Brotherhood as The Legendary Piece Of Scrap, so that the two halves fell into the muck of the fields and were lost to time. The goblin and his brother went on to slay five of the Younger Clef's men in pitched battle; Kondraki lost an ear and a sibling for his trouble, then escaped a trio of marshalls by breaking his Staff of Moths over his knee, releasing its remaining power in a legion of livid lepidoptera.

Harry's historical account meandered on through the razing of the barley fields, the accidental self-destruction of a local tavern (used to store pots of lime) by a mysterious war engine of the wizards, and a treacherous besom-maker's ill-fated attempt to stop the ratification of the peace treaty by using a Switching Spell on the official quill and a candle snuffer. He hadn't thought it terribly interesting, but before he was halfway done, he'd attracted a small crowd of first and second years.

Before it was time to turn in, Harry found time to go through the meticulous notes from his Potions text, working out a system for cross-referencing them with One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi. The latter book was so well-written and comprehensive that Harry had sometimes considered obtaining a spare copy.

In the corner, two older students had charmed themselves to speak backwards, and were singing a round. Nearby, a small cluster of boys had conjured mice in a bowl and were trying to make them fight. Mostly, though, people were making the air thick with idle conversation. Harry worked laboriously through an old mathematics textbook from his muggle collection, and drafted a letter home. Such was life in the Ravenclaw common room.

The morning sky was an undiluted overcast, the grounds bereft of the barest breeze, the grass and topiaries glistening with dew but completely still. It was as if whoever lathed the workpiece of the weather into its usual contours had submitted an untouched blank today.

Bogripple had warned Harry that forest trolls and other creatures dwelled deep in the woods. He therefore took his staff and knife when he joined Fred and George in slipping away before breakfast was over.

"It's about timing as much as route," one twin rambled as they ambled. Harry was performing hunting charms to dampen their scent. It wasn't easy to do while walking. "We two have an unfortunate tendency to look suspicious regardless of where we're going."

"The teachers are occupied with filling their plates now," the other twin chimed in, "but that doesn't mean you can't get caught. Have to avoid Hagrid, for one thing."

"So even though the gully near his house is out of sight of the castle, we won't take that way. There's a few other routes. That path skirting the Lake runs under the treeline for a while. But the best cover is the dolmen near the Hogsmeade road. The way the grounds curve means you're out of sight for a good stretch."

His brother kicked an empty bottle down the slope. "Which is why the seventh-years come here to drink."

"Probably not first thing on a Saturday morning, though."

"Unless they passed out the night before."

"Unless they passed out the night before," the other Weasley agreed, peering down the small hole made by a burrowing creature, as if a student might somehow be lodged there unconscious.

"In which case they'd be feeling a bit of a chill and not be inclined to chat."

"Can we hold for a few minutes?" Harry said asked.

"Sure." They paused in the shadow of the vast stone menhirs. It took a few minutes, but Harry managed to apply a glamour in a hazy but recognisable leaf pattern to their cloaks. The twins muttered to each other, with associated eyebrow wagglings, at the way he used his staff of white oak.

Standing at the treeline, the twin who might have been George spoke. "Well, if you're quite sure you don't want to gallavant somewhere else..."

"-and we know some really ripping spots for gallavanting," plausibly-Fred interrupted.

"...then let's get to it. The thing about the forest is," as they stepped under the quiet eaves, "it kind of has moods. There are warning signs when you're in trouble. The paths are mainly safe, and you can tell if you're straying too deep by the colour of the leaves."

"And the wind starts muttering if a creature starts approaching."

"...And George imagines voices on the winds, yeah. I agree that's a sign, but good manners forbids me from specifying what of."

After the necessary roughhousing this entailed, the third-years picked themselves up, brushed the leafmould off each other, and led the way once again.

As they walked, the trees closed in thicker and greyer, becoming sufficiently tunnel-like that Harry found himself wondering why he had heard neither the echoing hiss of rock wyrms nor the shrill, distant cry of their common predator, the scaly vole.

Almost as he said it, one of the twins muttered, "No birdsong." Different worlds, Harry thought.

His staff lit their way, the bipartite headpiece splitting the path in a pool of warm amber and opalescent green. Harry was enjoying the peaceful stillness and shadows, and before he knew it, he was singing softly.

"The path goes ever on and on, under rock and through plateau. By caves where never light has gone, past rivers to the Great Below. Up from the chasms in turmoil, past horrors in the halls of stone. Where slitherlings bask on mossy soil, we look on lights we long have known..."

The twins made a half-hearted attempt to follow the tune by whistling shrilly. They were marching close together, cloaks all a-flurry, and after a while Harry brushed a cobweb from his face and asked, "How often have you wandered around here?"

"Oh, a few times. More than we should have."

"We've a spell that points to the nearest magical buildup, which is always the school," said one twin, sounding less confident than he might have.

"And we wouldn't come at night, of course."

The redhead looked around. "It's not that dangerous. You can hear any creatures coming a mile off, because of the wind."

At which point, something stepped out of the undergrowth and onto the trail ahead of them.

Author's afterthoughts:

→ A few people told me they preferred it when I did make note of the references I was making – which, to be clear, I really only do for the hell of it – because they often didn't spot them. It feels almost like spoiling the fun, but I'm too obscenely self-satisfied not to draw attention to my Tolkien Eliot SCP Discworld D&D Homestuck Coleridge DresdenCodak 8x reference combo in this intermission; booyeah. Also bonus points to anyone who spots my self-referential errata-based callback.

→ An average of 60 reviews per chapter seemed like an auspicious time to post this intermission. Seriously though, that's an amazing figure, and in fact quite hard for me to even grasp. You reviewers are wonderful and you should feel wonderful.