Hermione researches nymphs and naiads
Hermione put down the dry boring book and sighed. It was an interesting perspective, but it was so very very careful. Which meant it had taken several long chapters to get to the point. So very much of it went out of its way to be frightening or reassuring.
It would have been much less frightening, and much more reassuring except for the practical goal that led her to read it in the first place.
She sighed again. Three things stood out to her.
She knelt by her bed and prayed for a very very long time, mostly for protection, and wisdom, and for forgiveness for not praying more often.
And for more kinds of protection.
Finally she found she could not concentrate any more and went downstairs.
Lacking any inspiration as she glanced around the room, Neville seemed the most approachable so she sat near him. He smiled at her but seemed to take her presence as encouragement to renew his focus on the book in his lap. So much for her reputation as a homework nag.
"Neville, before you go back to reading…"
He looked up.
"Are you a Christian?"
Neville's face wrinkled in confusion and defensiveness, "not in any of the ways you are likely to mean. Why do you ask?"
Hermione lowered her voice, "I'm in the mood for … confession."
Neville relaxed, eyed her speculatively for several seconds, then nodded, "ask Seamus, or Professor McGonagall."
"Why … how, what?"
Neville shrugged, "Seamus is proudly Irish, nothing wrong with that, but it might might give him an edge being alert to who the Catholics are."
"So he might not be Catholic, but his name makes him a Schelling Point for beginning my search?"
"Not knowing what a Schelling Point is…" said Neville, "That sounded like you just said, 'I'm not prejudiced, but I think you just told me to be'."
"Not quite. If your friend agreed to meet you in Diagon Alley for a day of window shopping and maybe an ice cream a bit later, but you neglected to agree between you where to meet, where would you check first, or for that matter stand and wait?"
Neville closed his eyes, "Flourish and Blot's unless it was Ron or Draco, the bank if real shopping instead of window shopping was the primary mission."
"Right," said Hermione, "in a completely unknown environment any location is just as likely as any other, but unknown environments are rare, and needing to meet someone you have no knowledge of is rare. Though realising that it's raining and coincidentally the establishment where you had agreed to meet is closed for the day, is significantly less rare. A Schelling Point is a place not so much where you'd expect to find your friend on an average day, but where you'd expect to find your friend on a day when he's also looking for you."
Neville nodded, "In that case: Yes, I agree about Seamus. McGonagall's father and brother were Anglican priests."
"Hmm," said Hermione.
"Or Presbyterian, I can't remember."
"Hmm," said Hermione, "They don't call them priests, but never mind."
Neville made a gesture that probably meant, 'I don't concern myself with these trivialities.'
"Thanks, Neville," she said and wandered on.
.
Seamus wasn't hard to find, and wanted to know all about the battle for which she was preparing, for her to expect to need shriving first, but Hermione didn't want to tell, no doubt giving away that sort of information would drag too many undiplomatic gryffindors along. Also that suspicion and the fear of that attitude made her doubly glad she hadn't gone to her head of house.
In the end he did point her to a sixth or seventh year in each house.
She chose the ravenclaw. If there was gossip it would be slow and about inter-house collaboration on extra-curricular projects, rather than fast and about sneaking after Hermione Granger on her first publicly admitted premeditated adventure in years.
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Mandy, was quick to point out that she wasn't a priest, but the scriptures commanding confession did not seem to specify only to priests, it seemed to specify by faithful and to faithful. And given that there were no priests available nearer than Hogsmeade there was something of a tradition for one or two students per house to end up with these sorts of duties.
Hermione didn't mind that. She had inferred much of it from the shape of Seamus' recommendation.
So after two minutes discussing secrecy oaths, and almost forty five minutes of giving up her right to keep her own secrets, (at first mainly about her fear and loathing of intellectual laziness and the ugly things it made her think about her peers) And later other darker things that had crept into her life in the last two years. (though Amanda reassured her that like anger and jealousy, there was a large moral difference between the temptations arising naturally from the flesh, and the entertaining of those desires, and the acting on them.)
Mandy felt that the scripture, "In your anger do not sin," implied that it was never a sin to feel emotions, or to be tempted, only to act. Though probably making plans to act counted, even if you came to your senses before you began implementing them.
Intellectually Hermione agreed, but she was going to do something she perceived to be risky, and wanted to be as safe as possible.
After a while Hermione ran out of things that ached to be shared, and longer until she ran out of things that seemed desperate to scamper away from her scrutiny.
Finally she sat up and said she was probably done. For a while at least.
And Mandy suggested they pray, and what they should pray.
And they did.
Then Mandy suggested that if she came weekly or monthly instead of yearly, it wouldn't take so long. And praying 'Our Father' at least daily might be a good step.
Hermione couldn't disagree.
"I've taken up more than an hour of your time," sighed Hermione, "do I owe you a spim?"
Mandy shook her head, "I'll handle it, don't worry about it. Besides, what else are non-Hogsmeade Saturdays for."
"Quidditch?" suggested Hermione rhetorically.
Mandy made an expression like she was concerned for Hermione's sanity.
"That's what I think," said Hermione, "remind me why I'm not in Ravenclaw?"
Mandy smirked, "because the eagle door gets tedious by second year?"
Hermione shrugged, "maybe," or maybe because there was a large difference between noticing that you went to school with things that weren't human, choosing to read a book on natural spirits and demons, and actively planning on confronting one or two.
"Go eat lunch," said Mandy, "I'll be down shortly also."
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Tunde: Hermione advances
Tunde, born of the untimely confluence of two streams, one that was temporarily forced from its normal course by a human war, and one that had overflowed it's normal course because of an untimely spring blizzard.
Before she was old enough to know or to choose her own course, rumours of water standing in an unnatural place brought a priest and she was muzzled and cast out to wander.
Few mortals recognised her, fewer still tried to make friendships or alliances. And most of those were less than kind. So she'd learned to make acquaintances on human terms instead of waiting for them to make overtures based on true knowledge.
Now she had an acceptable situation, oath-bound to Dietrich, a boy who respected her, and by some twist of fate could understand her, not only by horse sign language, but now by a magic of his own as well.
Only for his situation to bring him to another place full of people very different from himself. The other school expected her to be strong and brave. This school expected her to be weak and submissive. But she wasn't, or not in the human sign language that they expected, and Dietrich didn't mind and pretended not to comprehend why it mattered.
There were other elementals and half elementals here, and as usual those who feared them and those who didn't. Those who didn't because they didn't recognise them for what they were, and those who knew and didn't mind.
Long ago Tunde had thought that those who didn't mind must be idiotically stupid, but since Dietrich found his power and taken her among other mortals who were powerful enough to teach him, she'd understood differently. If all these mortals had the potential to gain and wield powers as lethal as the powers of air or water that she'd seen unleashed in storms, prejudice had no use in letting one keep at a distance from danger. Though there might still be strategy in making friendships and alliances with the more powerful.
Of course, without speech Tunde had a distinct disadvantage in forming alliances, she tried to make up for it by listening. And when Dietrich started revising with Harriet's clique, another girl stood out.
Hermione was quiet, most of the time, and loud enough to hear clearly the remaining portion of the time. And generally knew exactly what she wanted to say, which meant she often got done saying it faster than others.
At first Tunde thought she wasn't interested in self defence, but gradually she realised that Hermione was so interested in everything, that only by comparison to Tunde and Dietrich and Krum and Neville, that she only seemed not to be as interested.
For instance, Hermione must have been spending a lot of time meditating recently, her mind looked almost as well combed as Harriet and Draco's. Maybe she was taking a class in it, though how and when Tunde couldn't begin to guess.
And today she'd come to lunch looking cried clean, much cleaner than most girls her age bothered with. In fact she looked recognisable as a … Oh!
Tunde shivered, and returned to eating, but she kept an eye out.
.
When Hermione finish eating, she approached like she was on a mission, "Come on, Tunde." She said in a way that Tunde knew better than to attempt to disobey.
She led down to the seawater lake. To Tunde's surprise she actually addressed it, more surprising she addressed it as supplicant rather than with the voice of command that she'd used on Tunde. More evidence that she didn't understand what power she held.
She'd kept Tunde behind her so she had not seen Tunde's signs of confusion. But the lake passed them along to one of its tributaries, maybe out of impatience for, or fear of, a mortal that didn't know her power. Maybe out of consideration for Hermione's tentative attitude.
The stream that the lake directed them to was so small, that Hermione almost missed it. But after Tunde attempted the introduction, Hermione returned to her take-charge attitude, for all of twenty seconds.
"Little stream, come and talk with us if it pleases you." She used the polite words, but her tone was again that of command.
The stream drew herself up and attempted the politeness of projecting a human shape, but it seemed not to be habituated to the practice and her form remained transparent and ripply. And Tunde suspected, she had very little experience with humans older than seventh year or dressed in anything except robes.
Then the stream naiad called all Hermione's bluffs at once, though she seemed only to be returning Hermione's terse form of address: "Hello, small human christian meditator."
"Wha? Oh," said Hermione, "How … do you know all that?"
"How do you know I am a little stream?" said the naiad, "it is obvious, when one looks."
"Oh," said Hermione.
"Most of the humans here don't meditate," said the naiad, "it used to be that all of them did."
"Hmm," said Hermione, "I'm called Hermione, what do you prefer to be called?"
"The centaurs call me Parnassus," said the naiad, and caught sight of Tunde, "what did you bring her for, are you trying to intimidate me?"
"No," said Hermione, "I'm trying to get help for her, I understand that by now she ought to have what you use instead of wands."
Parnassus rippled and looked away, "She already has that, can't you see?"
Hermione stared at Tunde. The naiad pounced on her from behind and covered Hermione's eyes with her transparent fingers.
Hermione jumped at the touch of the water, then tensed at the sight of Tunde.
Did she finally see?
"Oh, Tunde," whispered Hermione, staggered forward, which drew Parnassus after. She felt for Tunde's muzzle but it was not within the same plane as her fingers.
"What do you see?" said Parnassus.
"She doesn't look human, she's made of water, just like you, but she's trapped in only one shape by a net of … lake weeds and magic. I don't think it's letting her breathe properly. Tunde, does it hurt?"
No, Tunde shook her head.
She felt Tunde's cheeks and neck again, "It's like it's under your skin. I have no idea how to remove it or loosen it, or even how to get at it without hurting you."
Tunde didn't move.
"What should I do?" said Hermione.
The other naiad shrugged, "I don't know, but I suspect, what one christian has bound, another can loose."
"Hmm," said Hermione, "any idea how?"
"No. Mortals keep their most powerful abilities couched in long prayers and ceremonies, so that even if we hear them we won't understand."
"Oh, dear," said Hermione. Though she sounded a tiny bit smug. Was that about mortals being powerful, or successfully secretive, or … did she perhaps already know a deeper purpose behind the long prayers and ceremonies than mere obfuscation?
Hermione sighed, "thank you for your advice."
The naiad nodded and retreated a step, but seemed unsure if that was a dismissal.
"Do you have any other advice for me or Tunde?"
The naiad nodded and rippled, then projected what seemed to be a sigh, "Remember your own bindings and sorceries."
"What do you mean?"
"Do you remember persuading a man to fake your death with a water-air surface, to re-correct your ownership away from Light of Air, the story teller, to Father of All, the Knower?"
Hermione shivered and looked off into space for several seconds, then she straightened and her magic and mind cleared, "Yes, I remember that!" and she whispered, "Though We usually call that 'Baptism'."
She said we, has she remembered that she is not alone? From the way her mind continued to clear, perhaps she had.
The naiad nodded, "now you remember it, why did you let yourself forget?"
Hermione shrugged, and her mind clouded again.
The naiad shrugged, "well, stop letting yourself forget, how can you find and follow your course if you forget your bindings and don't keep them fed?"
"Alright, I'll try," said Hermione.
Interlude: Road
For most of the journey Nornton and his assistant walked just behind the scouts who, in spite of the novel colour of the road, seemed confident in their technique to prune it into a gentle and easy slope. The place was not quite a place of honour, given the nature of the expedition through a entirely new type of road-fortress. On the other hand, he just pruned germs into monsters, that didn't make him an expert in the way those changes would actually manifest in the pragmatic world. Especially not when he'd only made changes based on the designs of others rather than his own inspiration.
But it was interesting. And an honour. And he appreciated it. And he would own the rights to all the seeds in the first seven generation of the new kind of fortress, though he had the feeling that the design how to make these new fortress seeds might be worth more than additional fortresses of each and every variety. They wouldn't have been so quick to give him the rights otherwise.
Then again, it was the emergency council, they had more important things to worry about than the economics of who profited from the knowledge generated by the tasks that had to be done to save the worlds.
Finally they stepped out of the road and climbed down the new seedling onto an arid plane. The scouts and their honour guard spread out taking observations in case of hostile life.
The agronomic artists took observations of the soil and light to begin their plans for aggressive subversive agronomics.
Nornton turned back and looked at the road seedling.
That's why they had told him he could have all the seeds. The damn thing spread by runners.
Which wasn't unusual for road fortresses.
Nornton sighed and looked around. There would be time for a lawsuit later. If the world(s) actually survived. Otherwise the honour wouldn't be much use to him anyway.
The surrounding territory was arid, but it wasn't totally a wasteland. There were subtle signs of life, though they were few and far between: the root of an ancient river-tap fortress was obvious in the distance, and some kind of vines hung down from it, something odd and alien stretched from it away and into the south. It was joined and twisted together with several more strands of the same reddish vine.
.
Eventually every team agreed that all the necessary observations had been taken at this location and every member of every team had admitted to having sufficiently memorised the location of the new road sapling, though some were more frightened than others that they had been in this very location before, and seen it verdant and alive, not dry. The scouts who had the most practice with trusting their sense of place, seemed both most disturbed by the seeming change, but also the most capable of trusting and internalising the explanation of 'we are in a different bubble of realms, obviously, that was the whole point of growing the new kind of road-fortress.'
Everyone else just wanted to go home, or to make this more homelike. Nornton and his assistant quietly shared their amusement that each of the artists seemed to favour a different biome and to lobby for it more or less subtly in the discussions and plans that were being made.
Soon there was no more to be observed or said about the hilltop they were on and the scout leader took charge and began dividing up the group into tenths, one for each compass point, one to guard the road-fortress seedling and therefore the path home. And the last group to take detailed observations of the one river-tap fortress in the distance, and hopefully determine why it was the only sign of life, how it had survived whatever plague that had killed everything else.
They were to travel in their assigned direction until they met any form of fauna or hostile life at all. They were to meet back in two days at the river-tap fortress unless something untoward happened, in which case things would be decided on the fly as needed.
Nornton's place in the chain of command was not precisely defined, a problem which he solved by attaching himself to the group investigating the river-tap fortress. He wasn't going home when such a historical mission was in progress. But he also wasn't gallivanting all over desolation after a fools errand when there was a monster vine in obvious evidence, it might be some kind of vine-road rather than fortress-road, how that could be either safe or stable he had no idea. And he wanted to take samples.
.
Two days later the artists reported that the river-tap looked healthy in every way, except that it hadn't felt the guiding hand of an artist in over 500 years. And was a distinctly human ambience to the shape it was growing in.
Nornton reported that the hanging vines were a vernal infestation common to fortresses, especially river-taps, but that the odd red vines consisting of crumbly red stone were neither alive nor developing in any way, and might in fact be of sunrealm origin. But how they got here he could not begin to speculate.
.
The next set of teams had been assigned to travel south to investigate the location of the red vine's trunk, and another to investigate the other several branches that headed east.
Nornton almost stayed in place, but when his assistant hinted that he'd be happy to help by witnessing for whichever team Nornton did not choose. Nornton realised the advantages that might accrue to first observers, even if it meant travelling away from the only river-tap in the area. In fact away from the only mature fortress in evidence. Nornton chose to follow the trunk south. They followed it for most of a week, passing many husks of fortresses of all types, some burnt out, some rotted out, a few both. The trunk and root of the red vine trunk turned out to be located within sight of a massive crater that had been turned into possibly the most ugly and apparently vindictive pit trap Nornton had ever seen. Full of human bones and, it seemed, many ghosts of the same still anchored to the spikes that had impaled them. And above it floating in mid air: Merlin's Portal. The heart of the City of London. Other than that massive crater the land felt right. They were in the correspondence point of where The City of London stood in Sunrealm.
This was the same Albion as at home, but history had diverged. Sometime more recently than Merlin. Diplomatic relations must have shattered quite spectacularly for that crater to have been dropped below the humans' single official entry point into Moonrealm.
And it must have been a mutual hatred for those spikes to have been erected to keep them out.
And again, within sight to the east stood a small stand of goblin shafts. Some trailed up in the direction of Sunrealm. Some down in the direction of the realms of dwarfs and goblins. Some sent runners off into the east almost certainly in the direction of the Labrin's Attic or whatever the goblins of this place were calling their royal ghetto's chimney-top this generation.
They'd been petitioning The Farm to build horizontal across Moonrealm for generations. Nornton had never heard of such petitions being granted. So… that is what Moonrealm would look like if the goblin's had been permitted not just to cross Moonrealm, but to cross Moonrealm at a height convenient to them, not bothering to hide it below the soil, nor fly it above the sky-mist, nor even hide it among green plants to obscure their ugly constructions.
The others muttered even more than Nornton. Nornton's aesthetic senses had been trained to see and refine the value in even the most obscure of fortresses, and trees, and shrubs, and their common and uncommon monsters. He didn't complain about the shafts. He just brooded in his depression at the lack of green of leaf and grey black of live stone and flashing blue of real water. Presumably the kelpies had stolen the water. Or maybe they didn't even need to. How dependant was Moonrealm ecosystem on river-taps bringing water from lakeworld and magic from tap-world?
That river-tap in the north seemed to have rooted so deeply as to be pulling a rich black brine up from the deep.
Finally the scouts had finished arguing:
1) Tracking down and mapping all the branches of the red crumblevine was a task for a larger expedition than had been brought.
2) If the London humans had been in on the rebellion who's carnage still lingered here, it made more sense to contact the humans who nested in the top of the other river-tap and seemed to be taking care of it, rather than try to break through here.
If it had been the goblins whose shafts were spread all across the Moonrealm … well it wasn't that hard to imagine the need for a war with the creatures, they'd been having little honour skirmishes with them on and off for millennia. But better to get some intelligence first and approach from the distance where there was a possibility of subtlety.
3) The seers had suggested the location of the new road fortress, presumably they knew where its runner would root down. Or they merely knew which locations had the best chance of echoing back with a successful campaign.
.
So the party turned around and marched for home or rather 'northward along the appropriate branch of the red crumblevine.' Not that any one of the scouts and most of the artists could not have led the more direct route straight back to the new road fortress.
There was still the questions: Where would the invasion approach from? How to defend against that? How to make sure that some other invasion or retaliation was not triggered by other inhabitants? If there were any.
Maybe the humans that were caring for the river-tap were the only living things left in the whole Sunrealm, just as their river-tap was the most visible sign of life in Moonrealm.
The desolation certainly seemed complete around here.
The only green Nornton had seen since arriving was the vines that grew along the single healthy river-tap that they'd seen. That and his own monster by which they'd arrived.
Oh there had been others fortresses, but most of them had been dying or already desiccated to the point that bringing them back to life was presumably impossible.
It was one of the few times in centuries that Nornton had desired to take up the seeds and tools of an agronomist or agronomic artist. This landscape was sorely in need of a change.
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Another week of travel and they were back at the ancient river-tap. It was not surprising that the base camp had been moved into the lee of that great fortress, in all the surrounding land the air was uncomfortably warm and dry and dead. Only in the lee of the giant was there moisture or magic.
The guard was still mounted at the road sapling. Though the unanimous decision had been to change out said guard so that no one was forced to sleep two nights in a row in the unnatural dead air of the place.
Meanwhile it turned out that some of the guards had been taking their own observations. Most interesting of which was that there were several phoenixes in the Sunrealm nearby and some kind of plants growing nearby in the void where only phoenixes could travel. Except that apparently, these Sunrealm dwellers had such plants, though not true fortresses by any means. They were dubbed phoenix vines until something more was known about their properties.
Once the whole party was in one place, councils were held and reports were given. The red crumble vine was almost certainly of human manufacture, though perhaps with design help from goblins. The stone vine was very definitely of goblin manufacture. This River-tap and the lands surrounding the reservoirs of brine and magic it was drawing up from other realms must be an important settlement: there were the magical signatures of at least six races, though a few were present in small enough numbers to imply that they might be present only as spies or merchants. At any rate none of the signatures matched the descriptive memories of the future oncoming hoard passed on by the seers. These were the natives of this bubble, who also stood to be dispossessed by the oncoming hoard.
The leaders of the honour guards had their own interpretation: They said that the layout of several things suggested 4 separate settlements, perhaps a market town. But that an additional convocation was in progress, bringing in at least four small armies, all with unique enchanted camping arrangements such that … the fact that they didn't have redundant arrangements available heavily implied that they were honour guards NOT armies expecting trouble. Four completely different camping arrangements, four armies, most made up of two or three species of magical signature. It all seemed to mean they were present for some sort of diplomatic convocation.
Though it might be a diplomatic convocation precisely about the need to put aside their differences to face the oncoming hoard. Even if not originally…
It seemed like an ideal time to make contact. Perhaps precisely the ideal time and place that the seers had been trying to aim at when they sent this coalition through when and where they did.
The only questions seemed to be: How best to approach a fortress guarded by 4… or 8 armies. If they wanted war, or to show the maximum amount of surprise and power, they could just scale the river-tap fortress. It is what fortresses were for, bridging between realms, and of course standing steady enough that those bridges would stand. A strong and skilled scout could jump or at least ford between realms anywhere it or she or he might choose. But a caravan must needs have a sturdy bridge. A caravan, or an army. And they could barely qualify as an army, even in the most generous of terms. So they could ford if they must. And it might be best not to antagonise a possible ally by seeming to appear from within.
And if they did need to attack later, with a real army. It might be better to save for later the surprise that the whole river-tap fortress resembled a port or bridge to anyone attacking from the Moonrealm than any kind of stronghold.
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Hermione researches sorcery
"Draco? Do you have a minute?"
"Probably, what's up?"
"What counts as 'sorcery?'"
"Using power other than your own magic," said the boy, "most people rarely go beyond keeping the festivals, if they do even that much. The next more intimate thing is to use your family's version of the festivals instead of the publicly acknowledged versions. The next level is designing your own alterations, or saving up your major workings until the powers align propitiously, that's when it normally gets called sorcery. After that … um, this is the sort of question that would be more appropriate to address to your sponsor."
"You know I haven't had a sponsorship offer worth considering, I've been doing the best I can on my own. I was just looking for a brief introduction so I know what vocabulary to look for in the library."
"Humph," said the boy, "Anyway, beyond trying to keep your workings in sync with the seasons, you get into potentially irreversible things like designing your own ceremonies, or dedicating yourself to half of or even one of the powers. And I'd definitely recommend waiting until after seventh year runes and arithmancy before you decide that allying with one of the powers is a better method than custom rune work, or for that matter, just combining runes with working with the seasons rather than against them."
"Let's back up," said Hermione, "What exactly are these powers and where does one find the 'publicly acknowledged versions of festivals?"
"You probably want 'The Powers And You,' or 'The Sixteen Moods of Magic, a Child's Introduction to The Powers and Their Symbols.' Both are in the kiddy reference works part of the restricted section, where you can't browse them but you can probably get a book brought to you by merely knowing the title and implying you have it at home… no that wouldn't work for you, implying that your sponsor assigned it as reading wouldn't work either, McClure was complaining he'd needed to write a note for his client to get his hands on something similarly basic. Hmm, pay a second year pureblood to borrow it for you, whatever. Hmm, and festivals … you can find festivals and customisation suggestions for them anywhere: The Old Ways Quarterly," said Draco, "or any decent almanac, 'A Practical Druid of Modern Times', 'The Year in Preview', 'Seasonal Festivals for a Small Planet'. Seriously anywhere."
"Hmm," said Hermione, "You have an interesting definition of 'anywhere' but never mind, so there are sixteen of them and they aren't just a druid pantheon I've never heard of, possibly because people still follow so it can only be taught as religion instead of as literature?"
"No, they aren't gods," said Draco, "I mean, you can do sorcery by gods as well but that usually does require dedications and things, the powers are just … the powers."
"That wasn't very helpful," said Hermione.
"At least skim The Sixteen Moods of Magic," said Draco, "and if that isn't encyclopedic enough or point you to the specific power you need for your sorcery, Ask Theo … or Tom. Theo for an even more encyclopedic version, Tom if you want … a practical summery of everything he thought was important, last time he had to think about it, which might or might not have been years ago or war related. Or more practically if you want to just describe what you want to do and have him tell you which power to call on."
"Hmm, 'call on' sounds like 'visit' or like 'pray to'."
"Yes, both and neither," said Draco, "'visit' matches by time instead of by place, because as the calender turns, we enter and leave seasons where each power has ascendancy. Sorcery via a god is called prayer instead. To some kind of lexical extent it amounts to the same thing, to another it doesn't because gods can think, and have agendas more complex than their names, so it still behoves one to keep your requests specific, but for a different reason. Sorcery via a principality is usually still called sorcery, but you might be better off thinking of it as prayer also, they also think, and their agendas and reputations are often not as well understood."
"Ah!" said Hermione, "I think that will get me started."
.
"Afternoon Blaise," Hermione said when she found him.
"Afternoon Hermione."
"If I asked nice, could you and would you borrow The Sixteen Moods of Magic for me?"
"You haven't already— no I guess you wouldn't already own it." He sighed, "You do realise …" then he smirked and leaned back in his chair. "That could formalise our relationship in a much more preferable direction."
"What?"
"Would you like my mother to sponsor you?"
"I thought you were half blood?"
"I am," he smirked, "so is Mum, but she's the living titular head of two houses that should sponsor soon."
"OK, but…"
"And everyone expects me to want into your robes, just because they all want into mine, or into my Mum's vault."
"I had noticed that."
He shrugged, "someday, perhaps I might inherit my mother's supposed penchant for feasting on the life essence of sex addicts, until then, and until you become significantly more interested and experienced in that sort of thing, you wouldn't hold special interest to me the way they assume."
Hermione nodded, "or you could just be saying that…"
"I could," he said, "I did get sorted slytherin. Or I might just have followed my friends Draco and Theo like a properly loyal hufflepuff."
Hermione raised an eyebrow, "I can almost see that." She said, "or maybe I could first year, since then you've given plenty of evidence of being slytherin, or you're growing into your sorting."
"Probably both," said Blaise, "protective coloration is also considered a slytherin trait. But again some people consider the ends or even the priorities for choosing ends rather than the means determine how one ought to be sorted. And the ways follow from which peers you get to watch develop."
"And you?"
"Both of us have a wider range of friends than has been standard for our age group for about a generation and a half, and as such should have a wider repertoire of tactics at our disposal than a strict stereotyped glance at our sorting should predict."
Hermione nodded, "Krum was complaining about how Hogwarts segregates nonsensically."
"Should I be jealous?" said Blaise then winked, "more to the point, would you like a sponsorship offer from my mum?"
"I … will have to think about it. Can you borrow the book for me without that?"
"Oh, certainly. Right away." He hopped up and walked away towards Madam Pince' desk.
.
"Hermione, What are you agitated about?" said Padma, "Usually it's me that is twitching from being so close to the person who I last saw with … the object of my addiction."
"You have no idea how proud of you I am, to hear you admit it so clearly."
Padma shrugged, "so what are you so nervous about?"
"I've been learning about the powers of binding and chaos."
"What powers are these?"
"Apparently magic or nature has moods, that wax and wane throughout the year."
"Certainly."
"And apparently they can be prayed to by name, traditionally on the eight festival days."
"Plausible, though that certainly isn't my religion, perhaps if I followed Kali."
Hermione blinked, "That is also part of my problem."
"Why? What religion is your family?"
"Christian, technically."
"Technically as in 'we're a rare sub-sect' but you're simplifying for the non-christian. Or Technically as in, 'we don't follow that anymore,' but we haven't started following anything else yet?"
"A month ago, I'd have said the second, now I'm just very concerned."
"You're christian?" said their occlumency instructor entering the room, finally, "I mean, I knew you'd read their scriptures, and understood it better than I ever did, but …" Helena Ravenclaw shrugged, "do you pray at all, or just memorise that scripture slightly more aggressively than you memorise Shakespeare and Lewis Carroll."
Hermione blushed, "I'm not sure I memorise it all that much more aggressively than anything else."
Helena shrugged, "Not the point, do you pray?"
"Sometimes, Not regularly, until … recently."
"Why the change."
"I was going to have to confront two water elementals."
"Anyone I know?"
"The little stream between the forbidden forest and the black lake."
"The centaurs' stream?" said Helena with a nod, "She's a good sort, falls by the book, but with a cheerful laughing heart."
Padma twitched, "did you just mix metaphors, or … are water elementals just like that."
"Water elementals are like that," said Helena, "and a good choice for a christian to start with."
"Why's that?" said Hermione.
Helena blinked at her, "because they're temperamentally inclined to bind themselves to Death."
"Death like Pluto?"
"No," said Helena, "Death like Poseidon or Charon or even … Mars, where do you get these ideas, Pluto indeed, he's winter, the other kind of dying. What do they teach these days."
"Nothing," said Hermione, "I was just having this discussion with a quarter of the slytherins my year, if you want to learn anything other than charms, potions and runes, you basically have to ally yourself to an old family and beg access to their library."
Helena sighed, "I knew things weren't going well at Hogwarts, but I didn't realise they'd sunk to handicapping muggleborns that badly. Anyway, yes, there's nothing wrong with communing with naiads and dryads, just be respectful, they aren't humans they don't even possess the right kind of life to be considered mortal or immortal."
"Are you a christian?" said Hermione.
"No," said Helena, "But our resident non-human diplomat was. He'd harp as long as you'd listen on how he perceived the world differently, how he tried to see society and people's places in it in a non-hierarchical way, which gave him an advantage accepting other creatures as they were instead of as their relationships would define them. Given that only beings and shelts and birds, who mate for life, and dragons that sometimes do, and beyond them, only lions and monkeys and ants and mole rats have wars and governments, other things just don't do relationships exactly the way humans do. Myrddin was just very good at seeing personality in stead of status, he blamed it on his Christianity, but I don't know.
Helena shrugged, "Godric would tell you that Christianity provides one of the few logical justifications that courage is not insane, something about a respect for life so strong as to allows for the risk of one's own life. I never got the argument, but then, I never got his obsession with courage or Christianity either."
Padma and Hermione shared their now common amused eye-roll at what in anyone else would have been blatant name-dropping, but for Helena was just acknowledging her sources.
"Hinduism has several books that distinguish the several categories of courage and argue various reasons as foundational for each of them," sighed Padma, "could we get back to the point, and then move on to our practice session?"
Helena glared at her for a second, and shrugged. "Hermione, stay after if you really want to talk about Myrddin or communing with naiads or their reverence for Death, or what was the other thing? Which powers Christians are traditionally expected to align toward and when their festival calender diverges from ours."
"Thanks," said Hermione, "I mostly just want the Christian perspective on the powers, and everything you know about naiads."
"Certainly," said Helena.
.
"Blaise," said Hermione, "do you know if there are any white mages around?"
"Thanks Hermione," Blaise rolled his eyes, "I love you too."
"What?"
"You've let me feel I'm not living up to my reputation."
"I'm not getting you, at all."
"Never mind," said Blaise, "No, I've no clue who the white mages are around here, Ask Draco."
"That's better. Clear and concise. Was that so hard?"
Blaise smirked, but stuck out his tongue.
"So mature," said Hermione.
.
"Draco," said Hermione, "Do you know if there are any white mages around?"
"Hi, Hermione, still on about sorcery?" said Padma.
"Not exactly," said Hermione, "that was just what I had to ask to learn enough to ask this question."
Draco blinked, "Are you asking me as your friendly neighbourhood pureblood, or…"
"I'm asking you because Blaise told me to."
"Alright, then you're intending to ask me as the closest connection you have immediate access to who is likely to be a dark mage by family tradition, rather than by desire."
"Does that make a difference?"
"Only politically," said Draco and sighed, "And Dad has been adamant and kept Mom from forcing me to celebrate Lamas or darker, her way until I'm seventeen. So no, I can't tell white mages from normal people the moment they enter the room, but … I'd bet on Luna Lovegood. Penny Clearwater definitely was, she broke truce my first year trying to lead a festival with a non-ecumenical ritual. Luckily that got recognised and shut down before anyone lost choice or called up anything we weren't ready to absorb. But there was a lot of drama about it afterwards. During which I managed to gain a bit of notoriety back from Harriet by playing peace maker. Sometimes I can't quite figure out Daphne Greengrass, which I've thought a couple times might imply a light alignment, or just that she has hidden priorities or was taught a different play style. And Verity Burbank skips festivals randomly, the pattern might match which she can run on her own, or she might have a coven who have made their choice already."
"So currently at Hogwarts, and visible, is Luna Lovegood."
"Yes," said Draco, "and she might be more than merely dedicated to the light powers."
"What do you mean?"
"She might be more dedicated to fewer powers. Youthful maybe. Though that doesn't explain the seer issues."
"Do the seer issues explain the dedication?"
"What do you mean?"
"You wouldn't happen to have read Frank Herbert's Dune, and Children of Dune?"
"No."
"Hmm, in the books they have a drug that makes the future possible for some to calculate by arithmancy, or possible for other adepts to remember wholesale by cultural or hereditary memory working backwards. It's very very against tradition to give the drug to children before puberty. One character steals it at ten or so to get a leg up planning how to avenge his father's death. And his sister receives it in the womb by accident. Her experience of having more knowledge of the world before she is born than anyone normally ever gets in their entire lifetime, and the power this gives her over her caretakers before she can walk, were the basis I used for … accepting that … Luna has always been older that I will ever get."
"I think I got most of that before, from context."
"Right," said Hermione, "did you notice that in spite of that fact she manages to seem her age, or a bit younger?"
"Yes," he said, "you think dedication to the Youthful power might have been a not quite sufficient defence from being too mature too fast."
"It's a theory," said Hermione, "I meant it as a cause vs. effect critique of your logic. Now it feels more like gossip so I'm going to shut up."
Draco nodded, "right, sorry. Anyway, if she isn't the white mage you're wishing to consult, she might still be able to point you to one."
"Or to someone who knows what I need to know," agreed Hermione.
"Exactly," said Draco.
"Thanks, I should have thought of her."
Draco shrugged.
Hermione left.
"It's hard to think of asking for advice from those younger than oneself," said Draco diplomatically and returned to his studies, "Of course, Whether that applies to Luna is best left to the exercise of the individual's own prejudice."
Padma snorted again, but didn't look up again.
.
{End Chapter 10}
