Chapter Twenty-Five – The Durmstrang Circle

Cho had landed our group within the only open spot inside the cavern, which was big enough to accommodate all of us. I suspected that portable benches had been removed to facilitate our arrival. Cho confirmed that there had indeed been stone benches here, but that they had been removed by Viktor, shortly after our Quest began. I counted heads to make sure we hadn't lost anyone en-route or had any of the volunteers, un-volunteer. I was pleased to find everyone, including Aagog, was still with me.

After we counted heads and stored our supplies against the far wall of the cavern, Hermione suggested that we start by using the viewers to examine the circle. I took the Dumbledore viewer, giving the others to Cho and Hermione. As soon as I put the viewer to my head, I saw problems.

The magical forces were jumbled between several stones in the outer ring and between two separated pairs in the inner ring. There was substantial leakage between the lodestone and the crystalline cylinder mounted in the ceiling. Viktor had patched his circle sufficiently to keep it operating and putting out a fair amount of magical power, but the circle was laboring. I doubt it could generate much more than half of its intended power, even fully powered up, as it now was. Operating flat out was a way to allow the citizens of Viktor's nation to experience almost normal magic, but it was an invitation to catastrophic failure of the circle and complete loss of magic. It is extremely dangerous to flow so much magical energy through a flawed circle.

I told Cho as much, concluding "Viktor is very lucky that this circle hasn't already failed catastrophically, with some of the stones and crystals shattering. It has been mis-tuned to compensate for severe flaws."

"I know," Viktor had walked up to us. "There were so many problems in the world, that this just got pushed back. My engineers and I have patched as best we could, but major surgery is needed. Now you know why I insisted that you bring your Quest to Durmstrang. We badly need your help. I know that some of the stones are cracked. With Grindelwalds still running loose, I didn't feel that I should power down for a week to replace them. I'd help with the repairs, I'd willingly give you all of my magical engineers, but my allies and I must be on the surface to guard against mischief, while you fix the circle as quickly as you can. It doesn't have to be one hundred percent. It is important that it be able to safely operate at three quarters power."

"It will," I promised Viktor. "We'll fix the circle, while you do what you must do. Before you go, please walk the circle with us and show us the damaged stones."

Viktor led us on a tour of the circle. Of the eight large basalts in the outer ring, number two had a large crack and numbers three and four had small cracks. The other basalts seemed fine. We moved on to the inner calcite circle.

"These seem to be unusually short calcites for this type of magical circle," I remarked to Viktor.

"They are," He agreed. "Our indigenous calcite crystals are not as good as yours. They tend to spall or crack horizontally near their tops, where they feel greater magical force and a bigger temperature change. As one crystal was damaged, we retuned around it to compensate. As more became damages, we just shortened all of them to compensate. Going back a couple generations, there have been two or three general shortenings. I don't know why the crystals weren't replaced, although legend says they were carefully matched to these basalts. I have researched and found the spot in Ural Mountains from which the original crystals were quarried. My engineers are in the process of harvesting a dozen of them for you. You can select the six you think will work best together."

Viktor pointed to cracks in the number two and number three crystals. It hardly mattered if we were to replace all the crystals with longer ones. I pointed to the lodestone, telling Viktor that I had seen a lot of leakage between the lodestone and the quartz cylinder.

"Yes, the quartz cylinder was badly chipped at the end. We polished it flat, but it is now recessed half an inch into the ceiling. That and a less than great central diamond are the problems. The diamond has been over-heated and that has given it a crack."

We conducted a close inspection. Viktor had provided four ladders for our convenience. Hermione agreed with Viktor's conclusions.

"The tourmalines and spodumenes look to be in great shape, but the central diamond is too damaged to survive. It is close to fracturing. We need to size one of our diamonds to match it, do a very quick shutdown, and substitute diamonds. Otherwise, the circle could explode, while we work on it. The quartz cylinder looks fine. It might be easiest to Witch sculpt away a half inch of ceiling rock all around so that the quartz is properly flush with the ceiling. That will save time and some of us can do that, while others are replacing the diamond. I'd like to work on the diamond, with Cho and Barb helping me."

I agreed, telling her that Cissy, Adrienne, Tendra and I would handle the ceiling. We each climbed a ladder and studied the rock around the recessed quartz crystal.

"Before I depart, I must show you our Reception Hall," Viktor told us. "It is one of the prides of the magical Germanic peoples. It is used by both Wizard and Goblin."

Viktor led us to a portal on the far side of the circle. He was about to touch his ring to the control marble, but I begged to see if my Mother ring would work. It did. The door rapidly slid smoothly into the ceiling. I followed Viktor through a short tunnel. It hardly counted as a tunnel, being twice as wide and half as long as the one leading to the Sacred Cavern.

I had barely set foot into the tunnel, when I saw the vastness of the Reception Hall opening up in front of me. It was as wide as our Reception Hall, but half again as long and the ceiling was higher. It was lit by half a dozen giant magical chandeliers, made of good-sized pieces of what looked like calcite and quartz crystals.

Viktor spread his arms wide as my team entered the Hall, inviting us to explore its grandeur. I saw that there was a spine of five columns down the center of the Hall, three on the side we walked into and two more off to my right.

I noticed that this Reception Hall had more finished walls and floors than ours did. The floor was so mirror smooth that it was slick and one had to walk with caution. The walls were also mirror smooth. Correction, the walls in this half were mirror smooth, the half to my right had smooth, but rough floor and walls. I walked to the dividing point, running my hands up and down and sliding my feet to fully take in the difference in textures.

"Yes, that half was built after the first half. It was build by Gunter Gran Montine at the height of his powers and as a monument to himself. It also had a practical purpose. He ran the government from Durmstrang and all who assisted him worked in this hall."

I didn't want to insult Viktor, but couldn't help commenting "this Hall looks rather barren compared to ours. There are no statues or paintings."

"Very true. It has held many paintings and statues over the years. When Gran Montine took power, he viewed the decorations as inappropriate. They were hidden away - somewhere. Gran Montine filled the Hall with art honoring him and his magical empire. Those were removed and destroyed after his death. Since then, tradition has been to leave the Hall bare. It is rarely used now."

I saw that Tendra was standing in front of and intently studying the third stone column, which supported the high ceiling. This was monumental construction. Like its partners, Tendra's column was almost five feet across at its base and made of what looked like pure white marble.

Tendra turned to us and shouted in an excited voice "this column does not belong here. Goblins built this part of the cavern. It should have only two columns. This column is unnecessary and is too close to the second column."

Viktor explained to her that the right side wall of the original cavern had been pushed way back to create the half of the Hall on the right side. "Undoubtedly this column had to be added when the wall next to it was pushed back."

"No," Tendra insisted. "This is wrong. The column doesn't belong." She banged it with a bronze knife. "It doesn't sound like other columns. It is wrong."

I walked over to see what Tendra was talking about. Hermione followed me with a metal hammer. Hermione tapped the stone gently, then not so gently.

"Tendra is right. This is heavily-magicked faux stone. I'd say plaster with a lot of spells designed to make it appear to be stone."

That got Viktor's attention. He used a series of wand spells on the stone, gave it a hearty whack, used more spells and announced that we were correct.

Aagog told me "I climb stone." Off she went. She soon scurried back down the column, announcing "other stone touch ceiling. This stone not touch ceiling." She held two of her legs a little more than an inch apart, indicating the size of the gap.

Hermione sat with her back against the column and seemed to enter a trance state. She sat there for fifteen minutes, before announcing "I think there is a real stone column inside this one, but it is only three feet across. I think we should bang our way through to it."

"I'd prefer that you magic your way through it," Viktor requested.

Hermione started to do just that, not even leaving her seated position. The rest of us joined her. It didn't take long to strip away enough of the magicked plaster to see that the plaster covered a pure white stone cylinder. It wasn't geometrically the same as the White Stone of Azkaban, but the stone itself looked and felt the same. It even had the same slight warmth.

It didn't take long to remove the rest of the covering to reveal a cylinder of uniform width, which ran to within a foot of the ceiling. Viktor was astonished. He told us that there was nothing any of us could do for now to explain the white cylinder, but he was off to his archives to research the subject, while we should get on with repairing the circle.

I took the very strong hint and let my team back to the circle. I knew that I was to start on the quartz cylinder in the ceiling. Adrienne, Cissy, Tendra, and I climbed back atop our ladders. On the way up, Tendra gloated "I knew I was right. Goblins understand these things. We made them."

I congratulated her on her knowledge of Goblin construction practices, but urged her to focus upon the ceiling.

"I assume we need the rock to be flush with the edge of the quartz?" Adrienne asked us. "But, how do you want to accomplish that? Do you want us to cut all the stone down to that level for a distance of perhaps four inches from the quartz, so that it is all one flat plate, or would like us to gradually taper in, like a bowl?"

I didn't know. I thought flat was likely better. This raised another question in my mind: I had never seen a circle in which the rock around the quartz was smooth, not simply unpolished but also not cut to a locations rough sort of smoothness.

"I think flat, but now I'm wondering how un-smooth the surface must be. I think Hermione, Cissy, and I must consult our Light Guardian information. I should know this. The Light Guardian trained me to build a circle."

Hermione joined us for a huddle. She said she didn't need to root around in her unsorted memories. She knew the answer: "It must be a rough surface. That gives less harmful reflection of the magical energy. I suggest flat, rather than tapered. In all the circles I've seen, either in real life or in memory, the rock surface was flat – usually it was curved a little the other way, outward."

I knew she was right as soon as she said that. Yes, I knew that, I just hadn't been able to bring the memory to the top of my mind, but Hermione's comment had surfaced the memory. I now knew exactly how the stone surface had to look, although I had to use the Stone to project the image I was seeing into Adrienne's and Cissy's minds.

Cissy agreed that my vision looked right. Adrienne admitted zero experience in this sort of thing, but told us she knew how to sculpt it. She told us to move our ladders. When we were back atop the ladders in a different part of the cavern, Adrienne told us that she would show us how we must sculpt the rock. She pointed to a spot on the ceiling. As we looked at it, she sculpted it into a reasonable facsimile of the stone surface around the quartz. Actually, she had just bored out an inch-and-a-half circle which was a half inch deep and polished flat inside the depression. As I stared, a thin ring of silver was added at the bottom of depression to create an almost exact replica."

"Now, I clear out the stone to within an eighth inch of the quartz, out to a distance of about four inches."

There was a bit of a bang and I saw that this had been accomplished, although the surface was smoother than I thought it should be. I guess I must have whispered 'too smooth' and Adrienne heard it, because she hastened to explain "this is just the starting rock shelf from which I work. I still have to come down an eight of an inch next to the quartz and progressively more than that as I move away from the quartz. I do it with a series of a lot of little rough scallops, perhaps twenty scallops to make it around the circumference of the quartz."

Bits of stone dropped to the floor as she spoke and she had soon completed her circuit and moved around to the second and then third ring of intersecting scallops.

"This is Goblin-way, but we use chisels," Tendra announce. "According to Goblin magical engineering standards, this will work."

I thought it would also. "You've convinced me, let's move to the real quartz," I told Adrienne.

"Fine, but first I need a break and some food and water," Adrienne pleaded.

I agreed that we all did. Cissy and I told Adrienne that we could do the sculpting.

"I'll be fine. No insult, but I can do this better than you can. Let me at least do the first two rings."

I agreed that this made sense. Eating some fine red curry lamb stew made me quite agreeable. I made sure to down a few large swigs of water.

"You do the first two rings and then we'll each do three more rings of scallops," I told her. Cissy and Tendra agreed. I didn't know whether or not Tendra actually knew how to Witch sculpt. Perhaps she planned to use mallet and chisel. I would give her the two outermost rings to complete. Not much harm could be done at that distance.

Hermione's crew came over to join us and consume some of the curry and water. I told Hermione that we were ready to complete our assignment whenever she wished and that it would take us no more than ten minutes.

"We're ready also. Let us relax and eat and then Cho can message Viktor to prepare for a fifteen minute magical outage. We've decided that when we power back up, that we won't take the circle beyond three-quarters power. That's much safer than the way Viktor has been running it. With the changes we're making to the diamond and quartz, I doubt if anyone will even notice a reduction in magical force."

Cho messaged Viktor that magic was going down in fifteen minutes. I warned those who were working on the basalts to arm themselves with the swords and prepare to defend us without magic. We chatted while Hermione and her crew finished lunch, then hurried back to the lodestone. Cho turned off the circle. It only took Cho and Hermione five minutes to replace the diamond.

We raced up our ladders. Everyone seemed so excited that I cautioned "I know we said only a fifteen minute outage, but don't rush. Better to do this right than to finish fast."

Adrienne's look told me that she thought my warning was totally unneeded. She did her two rings in little more than a minute. Cissy wanted to go next and I allowed her to. She worked quite a bit slower than Adrienne had, but I saw no errors. I knocked out the next two rings in about two minutes. I also made a small error, but I fixed it. Tendra was going to do her rings without chisel. She stood on the very top of her ladder. I heard a bang, and she stepped down two levels, to what I regarded as a far safer place to stand.

I was afraid to look at the rock surface. I had expected several minutes of quiet work, not ten seconds and a bang. I was amazed. She had completed three perfect rings. I gave her a look of incredulity.

"Goblins think very well in three dimensions. I do far better at that than most Goblins. Female Goblin are generally better at this than males. I am even better than my mother."

Well there! All good, we just needed to clear the dust and little pieces of rock from the top of the gems and the lodestone. That took almost no time at all. We stepped away and I pointed at Cho, telling her "we are done. Energize the circle."

The circle sprang to life.

"Just thirteen minutes," Cho proudly announced.

Our guards put down their swords and gathered around us. Jaden had been leading this group. They were assessing the basalts. We had brought two basalts with us, or rather our Keepers had brought two for us.

"We can probably get busy just replacing the worst of the basalts," Jaden told us. Either of the two we brought with us is adequate for the job, with just a touch of Witch sculpting. To do the job properly, we need to go and get another basalt. What do you want us to do?"

"I think either approach is fine," I told her. "We'll install more efficient silver webbing, so the circle will put out more magic, without being fully powered up and that will be easier on the basalts. It depends upon how much time the circle will have to be down to fix the calcites. I think the calcites are the longer job, so you should prepare to replace the three basalts. We'll check with Harry and Viktor to find out if they can quickly get us another basalt."

While I was whisper-reaching for Harry, Viktor arrived in person with his magical engineers and the dozen calcites. They were mainly a foot taller than the calcites now in the inner circle.

{{Hi Harry. I'm good. We just improved Viktor's circle with only a fifteen minute outage of magic. I'm so proud of my team. We need another basalt to fix this circle properly. Can you get us one?}}

{I've got the basalts that we took out of the Azkaban circle. Shall I bring it?}

{{No, I don't want to cheat too much. We'll come for it. Meet you on the floor of the pyramid. I've got to get Viktor and his engineers out of here. They brought our calcites, but they really shouldn't be here.}}

I mentioned this to Cho and Cho gave Viktor a goodbye snog and sent him on his way. I suggested that the others start selecting calcites, while Barb, Cissy, Jaden, and I fetched a couple of basalts from Hogwarts.

I had a quick snog with Harry, while fetching the basalts. By dinnertime, we had selecting the three basalts that we wanted to use, as well as the best six calcites. We would shape the calcites after dinner, along with sculpting one of the basalts. I wouldn't turn off the circle until we were all lined up to quickly slam the replacement stones into place. I estimated that we would be ready for that by late morning.

Cho suggested that we sculpt all twelve of the calcites. That way we could choose the best six among the final products and Viktor would have spares. That made sense, especially since I had so many Questers eager to sculpt. Hermione, Jaden, Adrienne, Cissy, Cho, Tendra, Catta, Barb, Mafalda, and I would sculpt a calcite. Scathach and Brighid admitted that they had no experience with Witch sculpting, but said they wanted to learn. Adrienne gave them a demonstration and a couple hours of instruction, using chunks of rock she gouged from the side wall of the cavern.

We gathered in a large circle with our calcites and visualized the final shape we wanted to achieve. Some of us did it in one or two sculptings. Others did it in three, four, or even five stages. We then ranked the final products. We all had met the primary requirements on height, width, and degree of taper. Barb's and Catta's crystals had cracks and were eliminated. Naturally, Adrienne had produced the best calcite. Equally unsurprising, Hermione was second best. I came in sixth, just barely making the cut. Tendra, Brighid, and Cissy also had their calcites selected. We knew the order in which we would install them and which would be Viktor's four spares. The two cracked ones might be cut down to work for a smaller circle, like the one in Tibet.

I had a good whisper chat with Harry. He was pleased that we had made so much progress. He mentioned that my Dad was upset by a Daily Prophet article complaining that he and Harry had allowed too many Ministry resources to be expended in Hermione's and my 'new hobby of camping underground with members of as many different species as possible, including, as hard as it may be for our readers to accept, a quite large and frightening talking spider. Perhaps the spider in question will simply bite one or both of these feckless Witches and end the drain on our treasury, which will inevitably have to be made up through higher taxes on you, our readers.' Harry was quite indignant. I accepted that this was merely a return to the normal Prophet.

After a hearty breakfast, we line up all of the basalts and calcites next to the specific stones they would replace. We drew the silver ingots into eighth inch wires, which we could easily convert into webbing. Aagog was ready to plug any gaps in the silver web, should that be needed. At eleven, Cho messaged Viktor that magic would pause in half an hour, likely for as long as a day. Viktor and his aurors were ready.

We drank water, rehearsed our actions in our heads, then stood in small groups around the particular stones which were each group's initial responsibility. Cho blew a whistle, just as she lowered magic. Each group stripped the silver mesh from its stone, apparated it to the far end of the cavern, then walked back to levitate and lower the replacement stone into the hole. A repeat of this exercise had all of the basalts in place.

We all took a quick break, then melted silver to secure the basalts within their holes. After a break for lunch, we repeated this pattern with the calcites, although it took fewer of us to handle these smaller stones, so we did them all in one round. We soon had all of the stones silvered into place.

Cho divided us into teams of three to install the silver lattice webbing between pairs of stones. Everyone had studied and practiced what was our preferred webbing design. We had used it both in the Chamber of Secrets and Tibet. We made good progress and had the basalts wired, when we took our dinner break.

I was determined to have the circle powered up before we slept. That would make life far easier for Viktor. He didn't have nearly as many aurors as Harry did and they were spread out over a much larger territory. The chaos which a loss of magic could cause, would be difficult for so few aurors to manage. Every auror would be on duty until magic was restored. I didn't want them to have to try to stay alert for a whole day. That's the sort of thing that led to the errors which led to dead aurors. Viktor had mentioned that there were still Grindelwalds about. I owed it to Viktor's aurors to keep my crew working until the job was finished.

We all got to work drawing and installing the silver lattice web between the calcites. I had just added the repeated V wiring between the second and third course of the webbing, which Cissy and Tendra were stretching out for me, when I was startled by a booming male voice from the rear of the cavern.