The Ring
David tried to keep his head down and out of the firing line. The castle seemed to understand that he could not be connected to anything out of the ordinary and her demands on him were limited to really important events. He had had to show up to stop Umbridge getting rid of Hagrid. Like he had with Trelawney, David made the gates of the castle grounds refuse to let Hagrid through. He lost his position as Care of Magical Creatures professor, but remained as gamekeeper. It was a partial victory.
The Easter holidays approached and David was only too keen to leave Hogwarts. He arrived at Lions' Den to find Dumbledore had taken him up on his mental offer and was staying in the guest wing. Dumbledore was wearing a large ring with a black stone in it. A very familiar ring.
"You found it?" asked David excitedly.
"Yes," said Dumbledore. "And we need to destroy it. I thought you should be here for that."
The next day the four wizards and the young Zia gathered after breakfast in a small basement room. Severus started putting up very strong wards around the room, to contain whatever magical backlash they released. Dumbledore conjured up a table in the middle of the room and laid the ring on it. The others stood against the wall as Dumbledore approached the table and began waving his wand at the ring. David had his eyes closed. He was concentrating on his magical senses, feeling the magic in the room.
Dumbledore began chanting as he pointed his wand at the ring. All of a sudden the ring cracked and a black cloud started rising from it, trying to attack Dumbledore. The watching wizards immediately had their wands pointed at the cloud, but they could not affect it as it entered Dumbledore's mouth and his skin began turning black.
David ignored the other people in the room as he ran forward and placed his hands on Dumbledore's chest. He forced his core-healing magic through his hands and fought the blackness. Slowly Dumbledore's face became pink once more, and then his neck and so on as David forced the dark magic towards Dumbledore's right hand. The wrist turned pink and then the palm of his hand. Eventually all that was left of the blackness was Dumbledore's right little finger. That was pitch black and looked dead.
David fell to the floor.
"We thought we'd lost you," said Remus, lifting David off Dumbledore and helping him to sit up.
"I'm like a bad penny," said David weakly. "I keep coming back." They looked over at Severus who was waving his wand over Dumbledore and frowning. He turned around and started waving it at David.
"What happened?" shouted Cedric running into the room. He had been about to leave for work when he had sensed David's danger and had apparated to Lions' Den instead. Once there he had followed his nose to find them.
"Don't let them move," said Severus as he left the room.
"What can I do to help?" asked Cedric kneeling beside David.
"Hold his hand," croaked Dumbledore. "He can draw on your strength to survive."
A few moments later Severus returned with a pair of potion bottles; one was pink and the other bright green.
"Revitalicorpus," he said handing the pink bottle to Sirius and the green one to Cedric. The two wizards helped their charges to drink their potions. A few minutes later they were looking much more like themselves. Dumbledore retrieved the ring and put it on an un-blackened finger and they all left the basement and retired to a small sitting room in the guest wing.
"So what happened?" asked Cedric again, sitting with his arm protectively around David. Dumbledore explained briefly that they were destroying one of Voldemort's horcruxes. He also explained briefly what a Horcrux was. Cedric was horrified both at the concept and the number.
"I must thank you, Master Crimson," said Dumbledore. "I had not expected that cloud." He looked down at the ring which now had a large crack across it. "Well, we are making progress, two down and just four to go," said Dumbledore wearily. He pulled the ring off his finger. "I suppose I'd better not wear this," he said. "If Voldemort were to find out he would guess we are after his Horcruxes. So how are things at Hogwarts?"
"Well, as you know from the Daily Prophet, Fudge appointed Umbridge as headmistress – but the castle won't recognise her as such. She can't get into your office and some of her plans keep going subtly awry," said David. He laughed. "She tried to get rid of Professor Trelawney but 'the castle' would not let Trelawney or her things through the door."
"Was that your idea?" asked Sirius smirking.
"Well, the castle seems to think I'm… I don't know… like I'm a teacher or something. She keeps involving me when there is a problem…"
"That could be dangerous," said Cedric getting up to return to the atrium. If he left now he'd be late for work, but not too late. "If you are always in the wrong place at the wrong time…"
"I know, but I can't ignore Lady Hogwarts… It doesn't work like that."
Dumbledore chuckled. "No it doesn't," he said.
"Oh," said David, "the castle has appointed Firenze the centaur as the replacement Divination teacher. All Professor Trelawney's former students somehow found themselves in his 'classroom' and I don't think Umbridge has found out yet."
"There will be fireworks when that happens!" said Severus.
"How did a centaur end up in the castle?" asked Sirius.
The Easter holidays were very enjoyable and felt much too short. Cedric had saved up much of his holiday for the middle week and stayed with them. He had explained to his parents that he was going traveling in the muggle world to learn about their culture. Dumbledore was taking advantage of staying at Lions' Den to tutor David. They had a session each morning which Cedric attended for interest. During their first lesson Dumbledore tested David's occlumency skill and was satisfied that Voldemort was unlikely to be able to gain access to David's thoughts.
"Do you still get visions of what he is doing?" asked Dumbledore.
"Not for a while," said David. "But that doesn't mean I won't in the future. I just hope that it won't happen in front of Umbridge. I don't think he means to send me those, it's just like his emotions overflow into me. Nothing like legilimency."
"Very well," said Dumbledore. "Let us turn to your other studies. How are they progressing?"
"Well, Potions and Transfiguration are fine with my father and Professor McGonagall teaching me them. Cedric and I have been reading up on the History of Magic with Remus and I've been quite enjoying it. I've also been reading through the more interesting books in the library here."
"And what have you found?"
"We've been looking at languages," answered Cedric. "We're going to have to look out for Britain's interests and that will probably mean travelling around the world. David has started to learn Russian and Welsh, while I've been concentrating on French, which Remus taught David during his third year."
"How're your Russian and Welsh coming, Crimson?"
"Okay, as far as the books are concerned, but I have not had anyone to practice conversation with."
"Now you do," said Dumbledore dropping into Russian. "But perhaps we should concentrate on French for now, so that both of you can practice." He switched languages. "Let's discuss the theory behind the floo network."
"It's similar to apparition except the focus of the magic is external and is triggered by the combination of fire and floo powder," began David also speaking French. They discussed the floo for some time without transferring back to English. After that Dumbledore took all of their sessions in foreign languages. If Cedric was there they spoke French, otherwise they alternated between Russian and Welsh. It meant that David had to concentrate more, but given that the magic they discussed came easily to him, it did turn their sessions into a challenge.
Dumbledore and David covered magical theory as they had before Umbridge had come to Hogwarts. Cedric and David were astonished by the amount of wandless magic Dumbledore, a wizard, could do. He could easily have been a first maternal. For that he would have needed a soul-bond; perhaps that was why Dumbledore was so keen to get David married off; maybe he had been unable to marry his soul-mate and start a Zia house. David desperately wanted to ask Dumbledore about this, just to talk to someone who had been in that situation, but he knew they were not close enough for such a discussion. It was far too personal.
After a happy week, Cedric had to return to work, but he promised to try to take some time off over the summer to join them at Lions' Den once more. The night before he left, they all gathered together for a meal cooked by David, muggle style. Cedric was supposed to be learning about muggles and David thought he should return with some new knowledge about them.
"Cedric," said David, concentrating on chopping vegetables and not looking up, "do you fancy me?"
"Not really," said Cedric.
"Good," said David. "Cos, I don't really fancy you either… I just thought that I should."
"I was worried about that too," said Cedric. "I had a talk with your father – that took a bit of courage – and he explained that it's because of the magic. It didn't make much sense before, I mean, there were three pregnancy scares in my last year at Hogwarts, and those were the ones I heard about. I knew that underage people could be attracted to of age people and vice versa."
"So it's the bond that's stopping it?"
"Yeah, there's a lot of ancient magic around Zias. The punishment set by the Fora for raping a Zia, and it would be rape because you are underage and I'm not, is death. It was set in Roman times which makes it death by crucifixion."
David blanched slightly. "Perhaps we should be glad the magic is working properly then," he said.
"I don't want the temptation," agreed Cedric.
At that moment, Padfoot came running in through the open kitchen door, to see what they were doing. He nearly knocked the vegetables to the floor. They banished Padfoot from the kitchen before he could upset all the ingredients and then David showed Cedric how to use the oven, egg whisks and blender. The result was edible, despite Cedric's inexperience, after all David had had a lot of practice.
"Today I would like to discuss defensive charms," said Dumbledore during the last week of the holiday. "In case you are ever in the situation you were in last summer, I think you need to know how to escape. The most obvious way is apparition, which you have already mastered to some extent I believe." David nodded. "So that is how to escape, but you may not be able to get past the anti-apparition wards. In that case you need to shield yourself as you escape to such a distance that you can apparate away. If you construct the shield charm correctly, then you will be able to deflect many curses and hexes and if you concentrate you can deflect them rather than counteract them and the shield will not be so obvious. Your attackers may be led to believe that their aim is off, rather than that you are shielding yourself."
"How do I begin?" asked David.
"Stretch your magic outside your body, to a diameter of about one metre," said Dumbledore. "Watch me first." He raised his wand and drew a circle in the air. David sensed the magic building around his teacher. Yes, he could do that too. David pushed out his magic and Dumbledore watched it solidify around David. "Now I'm going to send a curse your way," he said. "Don't think about blocking it, think about deflecting it."
David concentrated and saw the curse coming towards his head. His magical senses told him it was a colour change curse for his hair. David thought hard about deflecting it and it bounced off his shield and dissipated harmlessly against a wall. After several more attempts David was able to deflect the spells so that they missed him but did not bounce back at Dumbledore.
The next day they continued and then moved on to maintaining a shield without counteracting each spell deliberately, just letting the shield deal with them automatically. What with his ability to not ingest foreign potions and this new shield knowledge, David felt much more confident about evading both the Ministry and Voldemort.
