AUD:SY;
Summary: Last year went well enough for the four Slytherins and their friends, despite the plots to kill Harry and steal the stone - but now they've got to deal with the looming threat of Voldemort's return, which could happen at any moment, the worry of whether the stone is safe with Parvati's family, the mysterious occurrences of paralysis, the voice in the walls, and the potential closing of Hogwarts - forever... (Not to mention that someone or something is trying to kill Harry, again.)
Notes:
For Before_i_sleep.
It's BACK BABY. Hi let's have fun
(See the end of the work for more notes.)
Summary: Draco Malfoy suffers abroad, Harry doesn't get his letters, Hermione visits Mandy, Parvati and her sister go to India (and Parvati attempts to destroy a certain stone), Ron sends letters and worries about Harry, and Mandy attempts to help Hermione mellow a little. Also Susan gets to understand Blaise a little more, Crabbe, Goyle, Greengrass and Greengrass, Parkinson and Nott see each other properly again - and deal with the fact that their parents are still not over the whole 'not Slytherins' thing. Turpin and Urquhart visit each other, and Turpin sends letters to Parkinson. (Pansy's not allowed to respond. Lisa gets the occasional short note on the back of the envelope when the letter is 'returned to sender' by Pansy's owl.)
Notes: [?. ?] - chapter, part. [i, a] - chapter 1, part a. etc.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Draco attempts to keep his face perfectly blank of real emotion, with only the presence of a slight sneer designed to show contempt for those around him, but he fails miserably because he has to keep repeatedly wiping the sweat from his brow.
Merlin, he hates going abroad. It ruins his composure, and the last year showed he didn't have much of that to lose in the first place. He can't afford this - and yet, here they are.
"You look glum," One of the muggles says, dropping down next to him. The muggle is maybe a year or so his senior, or junior, Draco can't quite tell, and in response Draco attempts to school his expression back into a sneer.
"And who are you?" Draco demands.
"Sam," 'Sam' - how plebian - shoves out his hand, presumably to shake. Draco leaves him hanging, and 'Sam' awkwardly lowers it. "You?" Sam asks.
Not, 'and you', or 'and your name?' just 'you?', like that's a sufficient question.
"Malfoy," Draco says. "Draco Malfoy."
Sam snorts. "Alright, Bond," He says, and Draco's infuriated because he doesn't know what the muggle means. "You don't sound American. Where you from? The UK, right?"
Draco has no idea what the 'UK' is, frankly. Probably some muggle term for Great Britain and Ireland, maybe?
"Britain," Draco says. "Specifically England, though I spend most of my time in Scottland."
"That explains the accent," Sam says. "Living in different places tends to muddle that. I've been all over - mum's job takes us everywhere, y'see - Hong Kong, Australia, Spain, England, the States, even like, Crete - so mine's all messed up."
Draco does not care in the slightest. And his accent is perfect, thank you very much, Hogwarts has not affected it in any way.
"I see," Draco says. He stands and walks off, because he doesn't want to take part in conversations with muggles, and they don't deserve pleasantries.
"Little cousin, I see you keep making mistakes," Tonks drawls from her place splayed out on her front on a lounger. She's trying to tan 'naturally', even though she's a metamorphmagus and she doesn't need to tan, she can control her appearance, for Salazar's sake. If she wanted to be bright pink or neon yellow she could be; tanning is pointless when she can gain the same effect at will.
Draco ignores her and walks past.
On the other side of the pool, his mother is on a lounger with a muggle cocktail, a book, and about seven fawning admirers already. Not so surprising; his mother is here because she's angry with his father, and so... admirers.
His mother is loyal, of course. She'd never do anything, but his father... is inclined to believe that she might, for whatever reason. Regardless, his mother has paid for a holiday photographer, and she will be sending home muggle pictures of the holiday to spite her husband - Draco thinks this isn't going to help matters at all, but his mother's always been vindictive on his behalf. And this is about Draco, make no mistake; if he'd been in Slytherin, they'd be at home now, perhaps planning an event to commemorate the summer solstice alongside the other purebloods, to conclude in a week-long celebration of magic and perhaps a Zabini gala with no murders, this time.
Yet. Here they are.
At least he has his correspondences with the others; Nott is in perhaps even more trouble than he is, and Parkinson's family home is... tense, at the moment, to say the least. Crabbe and Goyle's families don't have the brain cells to care about their respective son's placement, thankfully, because if they did they'd have likely kicked him - the respective child - out of the family, and both Crabbe and Goyle are both too retarded to be able to survive if that happened.
Greengrass is infuratingly perfectly happy and healthy, and Zabini - the less said about that traitor the better, frankly.
Draco sat down on the lounger he'd been designated, near both his mother and his aunt, and a thankful distance away from other people he could mention.
"Draco, dear, chin up," Andromeda says. She's putting her hair up in one of those stretchy head-things some of the swimming muggles are wearing, after which she also puts on the eyewear that leaves stark marks on the skin around some muggles' eyes after they take them off - all while still talking. "Have you gone for a swim yet? The pool's all heated, the water's lovely. Also - you're looking a little red, did you forget to reapply the sunscreen?"
Draco scowls, because he does a really bad job at refraining from doing so. He doesn't see why they can't just use normal sun protection - he's not stupid, he knows why they can't use a bubble-head charm, but he can't see why using muggle sunscreen over their own, much better, ways of protecting oneself from the sun, makes any sense. It's not like it's a spell or anything. Applying their sun protection before they left their hotel rooms would have meant all this stupidity could be avoided.
"I take that as a no, then," Andromeda says, and she's smiling slightly, amused at his plight, probably.
"Why didn't we just use -"
"You know why," Andromeda says, sighing. "Draco, the statute. We're also in America, and their laws are must stricter than ours - no magic can be used around muggles at all, regardless of what it is, which includes -"
"Fine, I know," Draco snaps. He stands. "I'm going to the rooms," He says.
"No you are not," Andromeda says, firmly. "You're going to apply the sunscreen and try out the pool, and then after Narcissa's finished doing... whatever it is she's doing, and Dora's gotten bored of tanning, we're going to go get lunch, after which we're going sightseeing, and then later we'll see a show and get a nice dinner, since your mother is so kindly paying for the best of the best," Andromeda says.
'Your mother', not 'my sister.' Draco's not stupid, he knows that that means - something.
"C'mon, kiddo," Ted Tonks says. He's sitting beside his wife on the next lounge chair over. "It'd be fun here if you'd let it be."
"We're only here for the week," Andromeda reminds him, though Draco hadn't forgotten. He's rather glad of it. "Then we'll be moving on - the cruise lasts the whole summer, so you might as well try and have some fun while we're on it, Draco."
There's two weeks where they're somewhere magical - those are the only two weeks Draco is determined to enjoy. He will not enjoy the others and he will only enjoy those two.
He will.
Maybe his father would realise Draco -
"I'm going to the rooms," Draco repeats, forcefully."
"Nope, little cousin," Tonks says. She sits down next to him, and Draco looks at her warily.
"C'mon," She says, "We're in a fantastic hotel with a brilliant pool and amazing service with the best rooms money can buy, it's not often people get to enjoy this sort'a thing, y'know." She opens the sunscreen, and Draco stands. "No," He says, "I'm going. To. The rooms."
"Fine," Tonks says. "Fine, whatever, little cousin. C'mon."
Tonks drops the sunscreen, and stands. She starts walking in the direction of the hotel building proper, and Draco hurries - not... hurries, more, walks quickly and properly - to keep up.
When they arrive at the rooms, Tonks leaves him there with a wave.
"Remeber the room service number, and try not to shout down the phone!" She calls down the hallway. "We'll be back around eleven, so you better be asleep before then!"
About an hour later, when Draco is sitting in his common area, at the desk and painstakingly finishing off his potions essay, Ted Tonks, Andromeda's - husband, walks in.
The - man sits down on the couch, and picks up the strange oblong object, presses on the red circle, and the box comes to life. Draco is used to moving portraits, but he isn't used to ones that turn on and off, so he's momentarily startled. The fact it has audio like a radio is odd, but - muggles. There's a lot he doesn't know about them, and that makes him more wary.
"This is a TV," The - man says. "Remote," He holds up the oblong object and gestures to indicate it. "This turns that on, lets you change the channel like a dial lets you change the radio station."
"I'm not an idiot," Draco says, with scorn. He knows some muggle things, like Helicopters.
The m-an looks at him, and sighs. "C'm'ere," He gestures, pats the couch. Draco sighs, longsufferingly, stands and walks over, and sits on the couch as far away from the - from the - the mudblood as possible.
Draco glares at the TV.
"Look, kid," The mud - the muggleborn starts, "I know your dad doesn't like my - existance," He says, ruefully, "Your aunt's family didn't, either. Especially her elder sister..." The muggle- the mudblood grimaces. Aunt Bella isn't particularly nice, to anyone, ever, Draco knows. This muggleborn isn't anything special because she wants him dead - there are plenty of other people you could say the same for, some of them even purebloods.
"Well - anyway," Ted Tonks shakes his head, as if to dispel whatever the thought of Aunt Bella had made him feel. "My point is, Andromeda doesn't think like that, does she?"
Well, no. Obviously. Draco looks flatly at the mudblood, who chuckles.
"Look, you're my nephew in law, so we're family." The m... man says. "And I was hufflepuff, too, y'know."
Oh, great.
"What about me is it that you hate, kiddo?" Ted Tonks asks, after a minute.
"What you represent," Draco repeats. "People like you make it much easier for the statute to break. Why did you, without any magical heritage, get to have magic while someone else with so much heritage got none? You don't know anything about our world and you don't care to know it, you just want to change it because you don't care for our culture or traditions."
"That's... loaded," Ted Tonks says. "And not particularly true. Because that's not what you think, is it?"
Just because that's what his father taught him doesn't mean Draco doesn't believe it, idiot.
"Why is it loaded?" Draco asks. "It's the truth. What do you know of our history?"
"Quite a bit," Ted Tonks says. "There was a time when your aunt thought, maybe, perhaps, if I knew the culture and traditons and her entire family ancestry then I might just be accepted enough that she wouldn't be cast out. This was not the case. She drilled into my head about fifteen generations worth of knowledge and about four-hundred years worth of history and all the current traditions and cultural awareness of everything that her family's social standing meant, and none of it mattered. She tried to plan a traditonal wedding and to make sure I took the Black name instead of her taking mine, but none of those promises mattered either. So we did the opposite, because in the end she wanted to spite them. Because we proved exactly what you said wrong, but none of the people who said that was the reason they hated us cared, kiddo. None of them."
"You didn't prove anything wrong," Draco says. "You 'learnt' that because you wanted to marry her not because you wanted to - to follow it yourself, and nothing about any of that proves wrong the fact that magical children born to muggles is a massive breach of the statute of secrecy."
"That last part is a topic of debate," Ted Tonks conceeds, "But why, exactly, is it a reason to hate muggleborns?"
"Because if we're found we'll die," Draco says, something he heard his mother say to his father when he should have been asleep in his bedroom, not eavesdropping outside his father's study. "War like you've never seen before. Either that or they'll use us. Limit us and make us tools."
"Now that is your mother talking," Ted says. "She was always more afraid than hateful, though that dosen't mean she wasn't hateful at all - just more fearful."
"There's so many of your sort," Draco says, quietly. "Moon's family says we're dying out, and good riddence to that."
Can't avoid Moon, unfortunately. She and her family are the worst sort of purebloods - the traitor type.
"Now that's just cruel," Ted Tonks says. "Doesn't it remind you of something?"
"No," Draco lies.
"Well then," Ted says. "You're not a very good liar, are you?"
Hey, Pansy!
I hope your summer is going well. Mine's not bad - no holiday, can't affoard one this year, but we're saving for Rome next year so that should be fun! Ayway, this year's going decently. My little brother - I don't think I've told you about him, his name's Daniel - is going to start primary this september, so he's being a little brat right now, but that's to be expected of a three year old, I guess. Also, I've been visiting Vaisey, and vice versa - he's got a really nice house, like, detatched and everything - are all wizarding houses like that? I mean, I can't imagine wizards living in tiny little flats, what with magic - even if you're poor you can build your own house, right? I'd love that. Just a cottage in the woods somwhere, that sounds lovely. Well, anyway! I hope your summer's been good, Pansy! I'd love to hear about it, if you want to tell me.
From,
Lisa.
Lisa rolled up the parchment, put it in a tube and inked pansy parkinson on the side. She handed it off to Vaisey's owl, who hooted then flew off.
"You're putting a lot of effort into this not-friendship, y'know." Vaisey says. "I mean - I don't want to sound pessimistic, but... don't be dissapointed if she doesn't respond, okay?"
"You sound pessimistic," Lisa says, dropping down off the step ladder. "And she'll respond if she can - I figure her parents won't want her to, so if she does it won't be a letter, anyway."
"Her parents definitely won't want her to," Vaisey says. "You know this could get her in a lot of trouble, right?"
"No more than she's already in," Lisa says. "And besides, it your owl. You're not on their list, right?"
"Well, no," Vaisey says. "But I've never sent her a letter, they won't know it's my owl."
"The family crest on your owl's letter holder says otherwise," Lisa says. "C'mon, Vaisey. I know it's a bit of a risk, but it's worth it."
"You're such a Gryff," Vaisey grins. "Yeah, you're probably right."
"I sure hope so," Lisa smiles. "C'mon. I want to try flying on a broom that isn't five hundred years old,"
"I hate the school brooms with a vicious, righteous fury," Vaisey says, solemly. "Someone could die on those decrepid branches."
"Exactly," Lisa says, and links her arm with his. "C'mon, man, I saw that quidditch field outside."
"My dad made it," Vaisey says, as they walk through the house. It's not too big - two storeys, an attic and a basement, eleven rooms in total; kitchen and larder, dining, living, sunroom, study, library, potions lab, two bathrooms and three bedrooms - the first six on the bottom floor, the potions lab in the basement, two of the bedrooms and a bathroom on the second floor, with the last bedroom and onsuite bathroom in the attic - all bedrooms also had a walk-in wardrobe, but they were small, likely repurposed airing cuboards and a boiler room, given this used to be two muggle houses. The shed outside was expanded with magic and turned into a quidditch equiptment storage and broom crafting space, which seemed mildly dangerous but no more so than the potions lab being in the basement.
"He made it before I was born, actually - Mum and Dad had me older than most," Vaisey shrugs. "They were both well established in their careers - Dad works for Nimbus, developing new brooms - and Mum works in the Department for Magical Games and Sports at the Ministry," Vaisey shakes his head. "Like a lot of us, they met at hogwarts - both chasers for their house teams, Slytherin and Ravenclaw respectively."
"Cool," Lisa grins. "Mum's a baker and Dad does temp work, nothing special. We get by, though, and mum's birthday cakes are amazing."
"Temp work?" Vaisey asks.
"Oh, you know, temping in offices," She says. "I don't really know what he does... organising and like, recording stuff I guess? Works with computers sometimes, if the company's got them."
"Cool," Vaisey says.
"It's not that cool," Lisa says, "But it works. They always wanted better for me - especially education. Turns out I'm a witch, though, so now they just want me to do well here, in whatever way here counts as 'well'."
"I'm sure you will," Vaisey says. "C'mon, here we are."
Vaisey unlocks and opens the shed. His dad and his mum are out on a date, so their House Elf has been put in charge of making sure they don't accidentally blow themselves up - which means, at that moment, Dobsy appears with a slight pop.
"Yous shouldn't be in here wi'out supervision, Mumsie and Daddy says," She says, sternly, jabbing Vaisey in the knee with a bony finger. "So Is be 'ere to keep yous safe."
"Aww, c'mon," Vaisey complains. "We're just going to get a couple brooms, Dobsy," He wheedles.
Dobsy folds her arms. "An' Dobsy will watch yous as yous do so," She says, firmly.
"Hi, Dobsy," Lisa says.
"Miss Lisa," Dobsy says, "Yous is smart and not reckless, yes? You keeps Mister Vaisey safe, yes?"
"Definitely," Lisa salutes her. "You can count on me."
"Goods," Dobsy nods, sharply. "Is stay down on the ground, in case either of yous fall. Dobsy will catch you."
"Thanks," Lisa smiles. Vaisey returns with two brooms. "nimbus or nimbus?" He asks, dryly.
"Oh, I think I'll go for the third option; the nimbus," Lisa grins, and makes grabby hands for the left broom. Vaisey hands it over and the three leave the shed.
"Yous be careful now," Dobsy says, as she snaps her fingers and summons the quidditch equiptment. She snaps her fingers and opens the box, and then snaps her fingers and frees the quaffles. "Is not free the bludgers, yous too small children for that yet. Is free the snitch when yous up in the air. Is release the first quaffle when yous are up there, the second if you drop it. Understood?"
"Yessir," Vaisey salutes. Dobsy smiles and nods, sharply.
The two mount their brooms.
"It's on," Lisa grins, and they both shoot upwards into the sky. Thankfully, the anti-muggle and notice-me-not wards reach a lot higher than they can go.
Hermione knocks on Mandy's door, as her parents stand nearby. She's not entirely sure why they're worried - Hermione couldn't have possibly gotten the address or the directions wrong, since Mandy told her and Hermione wrote it down. Hermione has never once forgotten anything she's a) been told, b) read or c) wrote, not even a little bit, so their worry is dumb and annoying.
The door is opened by one of Mandy's cousins, who smiles. "Hey, I'm Harrison," He says. "You're Mandy's friend, Hermione, right?"
"Yes," Hermione says, smiling. Friend. That's nice. Plus, he got her name correct, which is relieving. Hermione doesn't want to have to correct people all the time on the pronunciation of things.
Just some of the time.
He nods and steps aside. "See you in a week," Hermione says to her parents, and walks inside.
Being back in a place of magic after a very dull few weeks of summer is refreshing, to say the least. Hermione smiles happily at the moving pictures on the walls, which were stood still while her parents peered into the house.
"Do they know to keep the statute up?" Hermione asks Harrison.
"That we do, dearie," One old woman says, and Hermione blinks at her. Not all magical portraits or paintings can talk, but some do, and it seems these ones are that sort. "Oh, hello," Hermione smiles. "Well, that's great!"
"Keeps us all safe, and that, lass," An old, beared man states. "Be a wee bit ridiculous for us not to know."
"Well, yes," Hermione says. "Of course," She adds.
"C'mon," Harrison says. "Mandy's in the living room."
Hermione nods, glances back at the old couple and gives them a wave before following Harrison into the living room.
Mandy switches off the TV and stands. "Hey! Thanks Harris, run a long now," She punches him in the arm and grins. Harrison rolls his eyes, but walks off as she asked.
"Alright, C'mon, fewer nosy little cousins in my room," Mandy says, eyeing three small children who look up at them innocently as she guides Hermione out of the living room and up the stairs. "We need to talk," Mandy mutters, "Parvati send you anything yet?" She asks, as they enter her bedroom. Mandy shuts it, locks it, and drops onto her bed.
In Mandy's room, the walls are purple and there are about a dozen posters everywhere; there's a fair few hollyhead harpies posters, a weird sisters band poster, a couple muggle posters, mostly comic related, though there's one star wars poster, worn and old, probably older than Mandy herself. Her bedspread is purple, and she has about seven cushions. Her bedside table is littered with crisp packets and empty drink cartons, and about seven half-read books with random bits of paper or actual bookmarks shoved i them to keep her page. There's a comic peaking out from under her pillows, and about ten more scattered around the floor. She has a desk, in the window alcove, on which her work sits - textbooks piled up and random bits of parchment from what looks like all the essays they've been set carelessly strewn about. Her chair isn't tucked in under the desk, because there's a box of comics in the way. In the corner, there's a shelf with more books, next to which there's her school trunk and a bag of 'quidditch supplies'. On the wall next to the door is a mirror, under which is a dresser, which has various parephenalia and her gameboy haphazardly cluttering the top. Half the drawers are open - her sock drawer, her top drawer, her dresses drawer - and her shoes are piled in the corner between the door and the dresser.
It's a horrible, cluttered mess. Hermione stares around, horrified. How does she find anything in here? How do her parents let her live like this? How does she let herself live like this?
"Earth to Hermione," Mandy says, and Hermione blinks. "Sorry," Hermione says, "It's just..."
"I know, it's a mess," Mandy says, none too bothered by this fact. "I like it that way. Now - Has parvati sent you anything?"
"Oh, yes! Of course," Hermione says, and she takes off her backpack and drops it onto Mandy's bed, riffling through it's contents to find Parvati's letter. It's a thick envelope, sealed with wax and written on the back, in perfect calligraphy, is Hermione's name and address, with a first class stamp on the corner.
At least some wizards know how to use muggle post.
Hermione carefully opens the envelope and pulls out the letter, then hands it over to Mandy.
"I haven't read it yet, just in case," Hermione says. "Here."
Mandy reads it over. She looks at it with a frown on her face, for a moment, then her expression smoothes over and she sighs - relieved, maybe, Hermione thinks.
Mandy nods. "She did it," Mandy says.
"Oh, good," Hermione says, dropping onto the bed, relieved. That was one thing dealt with.
Mandy rips up the letter. Hermione hands her the envelope, which she also rips up, after which she throws the remains of the correspondance into the bin in the corner of her room - on thelleft of the desk's alcove.
"Okay," Hermione says. "Well."
"C'mon," Mandy says, standing. She's smiling, looking pleased - probably because they don't have to deal with the worry of the stone anymore.
"Where are we going?" Hermione asks.
"To, I don't know, have fun?" Mandy responds, shrugging. "What do you think we were going to do this week, sit in awkward silence?"
"Well, no," Hermione denies, because she hadn't thought that, that'd be ridiculous. Still, she's not really sure what Mandy finds fun - probably not what Hermione finds fun, Hermione thinks despondantly.
"We've got a fair bunch of stuff," Mandy says. "Atari, some tapes - you know, like Star Wars and stuff, we have some box sets of some shows, too - some of which are rented, so we should watch those soon before Mum takes them back - we've got board games, too, just general stuff. C'mon, let's have a look," She says, gesturing for Hermione to follow her out of the room. Hermione hesitates, but does so.
See, the thing is.
Mandy lied.
Parvati watches her dad take their post with him on his portkey trip back home - work emergency, and he thought he might as well make sure letters and gifts and the like got anywhere near on-time while back in England - then turns away, and walks in the direction of her room.
She walked inside, and closed the door behind herself.
Her bedroom in their family home in India is very much influenced by her own tastes, in that it's almost identical to her home in England, save the wood paneled walls and the more luxurious bed, along with the unfortunate magical paintings of some of her ancestors on the walls.
At least at home she gets more privacy.
Parvati sighs, walks around the room and shoves the recently added curtains over each of the paintings shut, then walks over to where her trunk is, and taps the panelling behind it with her wand. The panel slides back and left, going into some space that shouldn't exist, and then Parvati pulls herself up into the secret room. It's not really a room, though at her current height and age she can stand quite comfortably within it - it's more of a nook, with a bookshelf and a cosy chair - but it suits her purposes. When she'd first found it, the place had been covered in dust, like it had been left alone for a while. Now, it's clean, because she cleans it whenever she comes here.
Parvati grabs the box that's on the bookshelf and opens it. Inside, the stone sits, innocuous and dangerous and damned hard to destroy.
Parvati kind of wishes she hadn't sent Hermione the letter, now, but oh well. Maybe the other girl will know more. Maybe Parvati will even attempt to destroy it if she does.
Parvati taps it with her wand, and it glows that strange red it glows whenever she does that, but, as always, nothing happens. She chews her lip in worried contemplation, as she turns the rock over in her hand.
Parvati puts down her wand, and fishes the rock she'd borrowed from the garden from her pocket. She places it on the top of the bookshelf, and then places the stone next to it.
"Attempt forty-two," she mutters to herself. She grabs the little note-book from under her chair, and jots this down. "What will it do with stone?"
Parvati puts the notebook down on the bookshelf. "Okay," She mutters. "Right."
It had made a few materials disappear, for some reason. Sometimes it worked. One through ten hadn't, but eleven and twelve had, but thirteen hadn't, however fourteen through seventeen had.
Maybe there was a kind of... material wealth? She'd used a relatively precious metal for thirteen - and maybe the materials used one through ten added up to enough for eleven and twelve to have worked...
Parvati hums to herself, considering this, as she touches the tip of her wand to the philosopher's stone. She concentrates, imagines a string connecting her wand to the stone, and then moves her wand over to the mundane stone she'd picked up from the garden, and places the tip of her wand on that. She focuses, and imagies the string transferring it's connection to her wand over to the mundane stone - leaving the philosopher's stone free reign over what it did with the mundane stone.
The stone dissappears. One moment, there - she blinks, and it's gone.
And her notebook is made of stone now. Parvati yelps, picks it up. It's somewhat hefty - and now, she considers that putting it on the other side of the Philosopher's stone had been somewhat foolish - so she puts it back down. The pages don't turn, obviously, it's all - fused together, but the words she'd written on it... they're there - embossed, slightly raised from the surface like the ink had been transformed into stone, too; the same stone, as the black letters are now grey.
"Okay," Parvati says, and drops the stone notebook into the pile of used notebooks. They could take about ten tests with the stone each, because she tended to write a lot about each test in between actual testing.
Parvati picks up another notebook, writes it's purpose on the front and then charms it with the spells Hermione had sent her in the first letter Parvati had ever gotten from the girl, to make sure their correspondance about the stone is kept secret enough.
Parvati worries about the fact that there's five of them that know about the stone properly - Harry hadn't mentioned getting it when he'd told the compartment full of random people who'd decided to sit with them all on the way to london, but they knew that it was no longer in Nicholas Flamel's posession, because explaining most of what happened wouldn't work without the reason for it all happening... anyway, the point is, Parvati worries about the fact so many people know, because - well, nobody has to say anything willingly, obviously none of the five are going to rat each other out - but, there's other means of people finding out, especially in their world.
Parvati puts the stone back in it's box, a family heirloom that can only be opened by members of the Patil bloodline - useful, but not completely secure, however it will have to do for now - then searches the bookshelf for what she needs.
Parvati finds it where her great-great-grandmother's estranged, disowned sister's young-ish portrait said she'd find it, then smiles. Parvati pulls out the diary, old and worn, from the shelf, and flicks through to the fifth page. She taps it with her wand and says "लुकाना*."
The text swirls on the page, rearranging and changing. When she turns the page she finds new ones, as well, where there hadn't been pages before.
Parvati grabs her stationery bag and pulls out some parchment and a dicta-quill.
"Occlumency," She reads quietly, translating as she goes. "Is a form of the mind-arts that I found, not so long ago, which will allow me to protect myself and my secrets - I will document my learnings in case a future generation of my family will be in need of such skills..."
*[english translation(s): stash, secrete, keep away from, keep back, hide, subduct]
Notes: WE'RE BACK BINCHES
Notes: And, as always; this series is a gift to Before_I_Sleep due to it being born from a prompt :). Amazing writer, great commenter, please go check out Before_I_Sleep's own fics!