This increase in productivity is brought to you by NaNoWriMo.
Here's to hoping I don't run out of steam.
It's going to take a ton of effort (and a small dive in marks for History of Ma… History of Boring…), but Ginny's certain she can get caught back up in her classes, enough to make up for the week and a bit she spent tied up who-knows where awaiting her chance to be put at the bottom of the lake.
Speaking of which, I was rather curious about where exactly she was being kept.
From what she remembers, she was unconscious a majority of the time. Occasionally, she would awake to hear the sound of students passing by, but she could never stay awake long enough to spend much time at all examining her surroundings.
The room itself was apparently pretty bare: besides herself and the other captives, only a set of beds (there was one per captive, likely enchanted, but she doesn't know exactly what with), a small table, and a bookshelf. The beds were definitely enchanted to avoid escape: she couldn't leave hers, regardless of what she tried. There were no windows or visible doors either.
The waking periods were irregular in duration, and with nothing to gauge time, impossible to figure out just how often they were happening.
None of the other captives were awake during the whole thing, only her. If I'm to guess, I'd say the robes were doing their job, weakening the effects of whatever-the-hell was afflicting her.
Too bad they weren't effective enough to help her escape. Speaking of which, she was still wearing my robes when under the lake. To be honest, I'm going to probably steam-clean them to get all of the crap out of them.
Still, if she was captured and held just for this stupid contest, then no one is safe, really. The first one was bad for the competitor. The second, bad for those close to the competitor.
What's the third, then? Bad for everybody? I'm not waiting around to find out.
The Twins bumped into me earlier, just as we were heading back to our dorm. They said they wanted to talk to me tomorrow, 6 AM sharp.
It's going to suck, but I'll get it done.
Some time at around six, the Twins were waiting for me in the common room. A nice change, as opposed to finding me in the hallways, like everyone else does.
They hadn't been in the loop: they had only discovered that their sister had gone missing after the fact. Even worse, they had learned this information from their eldest brother, who apparently wasn't exactly on speaking terms with the two. Still, at least the guy wasn't enough of a bastard to not tell his younger brothers about their sister's disappearance.
Having two panicking, over-protective brothers attempting to grill me for information wasn't exactly the most pleasant experience. And the past while has been nothing but a non-stop party of unpleasant experiences.
Still, at least they did their level best to get the most information they could. I told them basically everything Ginny had told me (they admitted later that they were only asking me because they were giving Ginny time to recover, which I can respect, I guess)
By the end of it, the pair promised to help me out if I ever needed assistance, mostly because they owed me a debt for helping out their little sister.
As if I did anything. I spent the entire week and a half pretty much useless. I absolutely hate feeling useless.
And you know what?
Let's find a way to fix that.
They want to make our lives hell?
Let's make them work for it.
Just before I left, I remembered to give Ginny her Christmas present: she was staring at me practically googly-eyed when I handed her a Comet 260. Sure, it's not the newest broom any more, but from word of mouth, they're apparently extremely good for a chaser. Plus, it's not fancy enough to get her brothers on her case.
She, of course hugged me.
I had planned to give it to her just after the ball, but with the random kidnapping, my plans sort of went awry.
It felt nice, to know my gift was appreciated.
She, in turn, got me a starter kit of potions ingredients, mostly medium-quality. I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to do with them, but honestly, I've never said no to having more options in front of me.
I spent the winter break going over spells, looking for possibilities on what we could do.
I have some ideas now, but I know they'll need a bit more work before they're usable.
The library was the important stop of the day, as soon as I got back to the castle. Granger was there, as always.
Exactly the person I was looking for.
She of course, had her nose directly into a book, and had to be poked a few times to be snapped out of it.
She briefly asked about Veela rights (something I wasn't exactly an expert on), but I cut her off.
This was important, dammit.
I asked her if there was any way to quickly message people.
Of course, her first response was a cell phone.
My question was narrowed. Was there a way to quickly message people, on something that isn't incredibly vulnerable to being obliterated by whatever is chasing said person, doesn't run out of charge, and isn't affected by anti-electronic charms?
With that, I received a blank stare, before she charged off towards the charms section, retrieving a tome labeled 'Utility Charms'. From there, she flipped through the pages, finally coming to rest at a particular passage.
The Protean Charm.
A stupid little charm, which caused a link between two or more items. Pretty much infinite in range, instant in effect. Any magic affecting one linked object, would affect all of the linked objects. The easiest thing to do would be to make the objects all heat up when activated.
Apparently, she had spent some time going over the charm herself. It's a reasonably difficult spell to cast, requiring finicky spellcraft, along with a hefty dose of concentrated power.
Unfortunately, it lacks a method to trace the activated object, rendering the charm useless as a tracking device, or as a rescue beacon.
Still, it was better than nothing. If something were to happen, we'd be able to at least alert people that something had gone wrong, right?
I had to bribe her with one of the Chamber books.
The book was on warding, of course. I'm not letting the Dark books out of my sight. I found a bookmark in one of them, directly to a page that detailed a curse that caused contagious, magical, pretty much non-dispellable necrosis. Needless to say, it definitely was a nasty thing to read about, and it isn't even the darkest thing in the books.
Anyway, I bribed her with a Chamber book, in exchange for having her help me fabricate a couple of the Protean-linked items.
Granger's certain she can handle the spellcraft, and I'm definitely sure I can power the runes. Still, I'm going to want to get some field testing of the charmed things first. I'm not risking using a thing that hasn't been tested.
Plus, y'know, I'd need to get the sensitivities right. Don't want to be scalding people by accident, right?
We started making some mock-ups today. We didn't really have much to work with, resources wise, so we threw around various ideas on what to enchant.
Sure, the wood was great for practicing on, and we made a few test pieces out of a few inch-square discs, but they're too fragile and aren't magically conductive enough to handle more than six links. Besides, they'd too obvious to carry around everywhere.
Speaking of practice, I accidentally burned Granger when charging the second item: turns out if I put too much power into it, the heat carries over to the active copies.
I apologised, but she was definitely more interested in that effect, far more than the personal harm she had received. To be honest, it's sort of unnerving how much she's into this whole 'spell experimenting' thing. One of these days, she's either going to invent something awesome, or end the world.
Anyway, we've got a set of three or four done now, so we just need to start working on seeing what the limits for them are.
Maybe, after we're done, we'll see if we can't get them to do things other than heat up.
Ginny's noticed that I've been out of the room a lot more often than usual. She's been keeping an eye on me, apparently, because being kidnapped as often as she is, she's starting to project her worries a bit.
When I mentioned that I was preparing for Potter's third task, she pretty much paled, then started stammering about how she forgot. And then she dashed off, either to apologise to Potter, or to go prepare for something. Honestly, as long as she's doing something, it'll be an improvement.
I ended up meeting back up with Monique and Luna again today. Needless to say, neither of the two are impressed that Fleur's little sister was put at the bottom of the lake, nor are they looking forward to the aftereffects of whatever the hell the third task is.
To be honest, Monique's looking a bit frantic. The fact that not a single member of the Hogwarts crowd, who were the closest to Fleur when she came up, gave a single damn about the wounded Veela, and it was up to me to patch her up before she bled out…
Well, she's a bit shaken in her belief in humanity, that's for sure. Or in English humanity, at least. She's basically itching to leave Hogwarts, as quickly as she can, which is something that both make sense, and is heavily recommended if you wish to stay the hell out of Potter's danger zone. Unfortunately, she's stuck her as long as this tournament is still going.
Fleur probably would have been fine for another minute and a bit, but I don't regret helping her as much as I could.
Also, Fleur wants to thank me personally. Apparently, she wasn't as out of it as she seemed to be, and fully remembers us coming over to help. And my rather angry outburst. I'm not sure whether or not she was able to understand me, which might be an interesting thing to look into.
Monique also stated with a wink that, although there was no written proof of this, Fleur agreed with me on my opinion of the organizers whole-heartedly.
Potter walked in on Hermione and I charging another set of discs, this set enchanted to have a flat limit to the amount magic sent through.
He was basically just coming in to beg for quick-dose potions, poultices and bandages. Just something to keep him going and alive if he managed to 'get [himself] stabbed by another bloody spear'. His words, not mine.
Of course, he was interested in what exactly we were doing.
Turns out, I completely forgot to mention to Granger why exactly I needed these discs done.
Needless to say, she was all for it: emergency distress beacons are, in her eyes, a very good thing to have. Especially on Potter.
Turns out, even Potter's little group of friends consider him disaster-prone.
Anyway, I ended up handing Potter off some of my supplies, as well as telling him how exactly to use them. I'm about two-thirds through my supplies, and I have a feeling I'll only go through more of it next year. That is, if we make it that long. That's always an option: we could all die, and that'd really simplify things.
The newest version of the discs did their job reasonably well: no matter how much power I pumped into them, the linked disc never got hot enough to burn Granger. Unfortunately, from what I could tell, the modified charm had a maximum range of about a quarter of a mile. Oh, and there was a pretty large energy bleed, meaning they were pretty hard to activate on purpose. I had a hell of a time explaining how I knew, but it made sense and Granger accepted it.
We're still trying to find a happy medium between range (which, let's be honest here, is going to be important), ease of use, and danger to the user.
Once we get that going, only then can we get started on multiple triggers.
Who knows? We might even be able to sell the damn things after.
Fleur basically just wanted to thank me for patching her up. Along with rather vocally stating her dissatisfaction with the school for doing nothing. Turns out, Veela-blooded are known for holding grudges. Who would've guessed.
Although she wasn't entirely happy with me for bringing Luna along.
Turns out, Luna wanted her interview, and she was getting it, my opinion-be-damned.
Basically: ten minutes of hearty mockery of the idiots in Hogwarts, followed by twenty of Luna all-but-interrogating Fleur for information. Turns out Fleur, not only being a Veela-blooded, but also a Champion, was pretty much the perfect capstone for whatever article she'd been throwing together over the year.
I'm actually pretty interested in what it'll look like when it's done.
Monique must've ended up 'leaking' that I'm a Veela-blooded, or at least something close, and am in hiding. This is of course because a few of the others were looking at me with looks somewhere between interest and pity. As awesome as learning more about how V-bloods are raised would be, I don't think I'd be able to hold up to the scrutiny of more than one at a time.
Oh, an interesting fact: due to a Veela's bird-like nature, the average Veela-blooded has a near demigod-level of heat tolerance. As in, able to eat chilies like candy. Silly and mostly inconsequential, but honestly, not a single book I've read on the topic has even hinted at that. Luna has a way with sussing out interesting information.
We thanked our gracious hosts, then headed our separate ways. Fleur tried to thank me in something that sounded a bit like Infernal, but her phrasing was wrong, and there was too much emphasis on the wrong parts of her words.
Pretty much all of the other V-bloods stared at her in confusion when she spoke. I doubt whatever she was speaking is a commonly-used tongue.
Luna left with a skip in her step, a whistle on her lips, and a foot-and-a-half of hastily scrawled notes.
I left confused, unsure of what exactly to make of that revelation.
Ginny's finally realised that I'm spending a good amount of time talking to the French, and finally confronted me about it.
I mean, it's probably a bit mean messing with her like this, but hinting that I 'had a lot in common with some of them' practically shut her down for a good hour, while she attempted to make connections in her mind.
Plus, it's not like she can complain with me making friends. She complains enough about me sitting around being asocial enough for it to be quite annoying. It's not like she can take it back without looking like a liar.
While I've been out, she's been searching for the room she was being held in, mostly on a gut feeling. She's certain she's found the general area, but there's something stopping her from finding the exact location.
I promised to help her look, once the tournament was done, assuming she hasn't found it herself by then.
We finally made a breakthrough with the discs.
By chaining a Warming Charm to the Protean Charm, and then routing it through a Fire glyph, Granger and I managed to mock up a disc able to work at a range of about two miles, with pretty much no danger risk.
Unfortunately, to activate it, you need to channel into the rune, which means that it takes effort to activate, rather than something you could use while running. Also, it goes off if you get blasted by a powerful enough fire spell. However, since to accidentally activate it, you need to be hit hard enough to light your possessions on fire, we deemed this as 'not a bug', and kept the feature.
I mean, I could definitely use it while running, but Potter and Granger don't have quite my affinity. Still, anything is better than nothing, and we'll start training everyone to use the damn things tomorrow. It'd be ideal if we get the thing set up as soon as we can, who knows when the challenge will start.
We'll give a disc each to me, Ginny, Weasley, and Potter, as well as leaving one for Granger. We also made a spare, in case we manage to damage one.
We're finally ahead of the game.
Now for everything to go horribly wrong.
V3