Chapter 56
The Quest for the Cup of Hufflepuff Part II
Leo
Once it was decided that I would be cracking the bank vault and Calypso wouldn't be going with us, I went straight to the library in Hogwarts, which was pretty empty of people as folks tried to enjoy just another day or two in the Florida sun before heading back to class. Only Annabeth, Rachel and Hermione were there, researching the protections at the bank vault. I dropped Nico's name and had the ghosts bring me all the advanced curse removal spells which fortunately there were only a few dozen of. The basic one, "Finite Incantatum" countered the spell cast by others, but was based on the strength of the casting wizard vs the countering wizard. I felt confident that spell power vs spell power I could beat about anybody not already on our side, but didn't want to leave it to chance.
I had found an odd little charm that let one run one spell immediately after another, and through my own experimentation I figured out that with this I could program my wand to run spells as a batch, one right after the other in long chains, so I spent a good deal of the evening and into the night programming every counter curse, counter jinx, counter charm and dispelling spell into one batch command that took about a minute to run. If I had cast those spells individually it would have taken an hour or two, so this was a big improvement. Once done, I figured I could do no more magically to remove curses, so I batched some healing spells and personal protection spells as well. I decided this was so useful that I put a three round burst of stunning charms in and would test this one at the practice area before crashing for the night.
I had not realized how late it was but as I left the library the girls were gone already. It was almost dinner time and when I got to the practice area it was clear except for Hermione, who was shooting the straw hats off of drones with a shotgun, and cursing like a sailor every five shots. Then she would stop to reload.
"Having trouble hitting them?"
"No, I'm past that, Rachel worked with me after the library, its just, well, I cast an indetectable extension charm on the magazine, so now it holds around a hundred rounds but doesn't weigh anymore that usual because of"
"Parallel space" I interrupted.
"Exactly! I thought it would make for a great asymmetrical attack, but it still stops at five rounds and five rounds just gives them time to get over being shocked, and then I have to switch weapons and that would give my opponent an open chance to return fire." She exclaimed.
"Hmmm, let me look at that." I asked and she handed me the gun. I wasn't really familiar with shotguns but its mechanisms revealed themselves to me readily. Its a son of Hephaestus thing.
At the end of the magazine was a screwed on cap and as soon as I unscrewed it I found a compression spring on the inside of the cap and 95 rounds of Save O Lot 00 buckshot fell to the ground. That took a good 30 seconds.
"So you fire it, and it automatically reloads?"
"Yes."
"And now it holds a hundred rounds, but still only fires the original five?"
"Yes! Exactly!"
"Well here's your problem" I said as I held up the spring. "This expands as you fire to force the next round through the magazine so the loading mechanism can catch it and shove it into the chamber, but it only expands five rounds long. Lets fix that." I said as I cast the appropriate extension charm and summons an aerial servant to provide the proper shape and compression for the modified spring. It still only looked 5 rounds long, but that was just in this dimension. I inserted it into the tubal magazine and tightened the cap down.
"Here, try it now."
She loaded up around 20 rounds, it would have taken fifteen minutes to load them all, and took aim at the straw mat extended from a drone. With a loud report, the mat blew in half and she was on the next one. She ran out of targets long before she ran out of ammo, and the cycle rate was about the speed a good wizard could cast spells.
"Thanks Leo! You're a genius!"
"Yeah, I get that a lot!" I smiled. "Good thinking on your part too, that will be something our enemies aren't expecting. Come on, lets go to dinner before someone gets all the tofu tacos."
"Uh, could you fix my magazines on the Berretta too?" She smiled, holding up a pistol by the grip.
"Sure, sure" I said with a laugh. "Hey, if you want the aerials can load them for you overnight."
"That would be awesome! I was shoveling shells into the shotgun all afternoon!"
We met everyone at the dining area of Half Blood except Neville, Hazel, Reyna and Frank who were busy getting ready to leave Jupiter again for an unknown period. This time though they planned on spending several hours a day back home thanks to the doors connecting Half Blood and Hogwarts to Jupiter, so they would be able to keep up with the training and regimentation required there. Both Frank and Reyna had expressed concerns at the slacking that had gone on in the four months they had been gone and both were committed deeply that it would not continue.
Dumbledore and Chiron both made comments about how the students of both worlds would need to cooperate to move forward to face the ever growing threats against us but other than that it was pretty subdued.
After dinner it was off to the Leodis Library and Study room to review both what we had learned and review the plan. No one had found any other security measures at Gringotts which didn't surprise me. It didn't make sense to me that a bank would advertise how to defeat its security measures by publishing what they were, and Hermione agreed that the reference to the Theives Downfall that she had read was only know because it had worked once and the thief talked about it. Nico had no problem shadow traveling around the protections of Hogwarts, having made several trips. On one he went purely through dirt and still made it just fine. Apparently protection spells don't protect anything from shadows.
I figured if we were a few hundred yards underground we had maybe a couple of minutes before security arrived to stop us. After that it would be a fire fight to get out. Given our crew I wasn't worried about the fire fight, although I didn't really want to have to kill a bunch of innocent security guards and gremlins whose only crime was doing their job and trying to keep other peoples wealth safe. After some talk we decided to stun that sort of guy but if any of Voldemort's people showed we would shoot to kill and not worry about it.
I went back to the library afterwards to load a batch of detection charms into my wand. I wasn't sure how much memory it had, but so far I had not come close to over loading it. Being hopelessly ADHD I got distracted and loaded up on some other stuff. One created a wall of either high or low frequency sound that would shoot out and either stun everyone in front of it or knock down a wall potentially, while another made plants grow really fast and entangle persons caught in them. These seemed useful, at least in that no one else had used them around me so I loaded them up too. Then it was off to sleep, finally to see my beloved for the first time since breakfast.
"You have to end this fast. I cannot bear this much longer."
"I thought you were asleep." I replied, and truthfully I thought she was. "Anyway, that's the plan. After tomorrow just one more to find, then we go after Voldemort and his damn snake, then you and I can, well we can do whatever we want." I smiled.
"Do you... well, you wouldn't know."
"What's that? Do I what?" I asked.
"Its just... well, everything seems like its going to work out for us. I don't know how though, but, well, uh, what do you think?" Calypso asked. We had this conversation every night for a month. Before then it had been the pretending to be asleep while she cried half the night and made prayers about how she didn't want to give me up.
"Look, when Artemis, Aphrodite and Poseidon all say its going to work out, its going to work out. I don't know how, just, chill. Its going to be fine." I said, trying to reassure her.
"Yes but... I... won't stop worrying until we know. You have to hurry, you have to find these horcrux things and kill the people that need to be killed. Please! Please promise me! When I had something to do, well, it was easier somehow. Now all I can do is watch and worry. And if you die, well, send me back to Ogygia, I don't want to... I can't live without my Leo."
"And you won't have to, I'll be careful. Besides, I already died once. I got better." I grinned.
"That's not funny. When you landed, I thought Festus had brought me your body to bury. You didn't move or even breath for... it seemed a lifetime."
"I don't remember that. I remember coming in for a landing and seeing you on the beach. I was pretty banged up and"
"You were delirious. When I saw Festus I knew it was you and waited for you to land, then you fell at my feet. For several days you were in and out."
" I just remember waking up with you and Festus hovering over me. That was the first time I was sure the plan had worked."
"At first you were so still... I, well I thought 'He came back for me. My hero came back for me. And the idiot was dead.'" She grinned.
"Like I promised, and we'll never be apart again. I promise." I said, and like every other night before since we left Ogygia a month or so after I returned, I meant it.
The next morning began with lots of Calypso kisses and breakfast, then midmorning we met up at Bob's to knock over a bank. I admit I was feeling more gangsta than at anytime since I got sent to Wilderness Camp.
The first problem to overcome was how to get there. Without Jennifer we could not teleport, and with none of the Order or Professors going with us there was no obvious way to arrive. The Argo III wasn't in port yet and wouldn't be for three or four more days. We considered regular air travel by dragon, pegasi and golden dragon, but Reyna and Percy felt it was a bit of a reach for the Pegusi to make the round trip loaded, and there wouldn't be room on Festus and Frank for eleven people. Our other options were shadow travel with Nico, or unlicensed apparating with the Americans' taking the lead. The problem with that was the only one of us that had lept that far was Percy and on his return we had all seen him smack into a protection barrier. There was no doubt that all of the American's could, but there was also a severe trust factor.
It was suggested that we just get Lupin or Dumbledore to give us a lift, but that was rejected on the off chance we did get caught. Hermione and Ron were okay with putting it off until the ship was back, but the rest of us were not, including Harry. In the end it was Harry who pushed the vote over to going now with everyone apparating in pairs with an American.
We decided to land at the pier where the ship would be docking and then walk the four or five blocks as we figured it would be odd all of us dropping down in front of Gringotts. In addition, we took off a minute or so apart so we wouldn't all show up at once. This worked and we all met up at the coffee shop we had met up with Nico when we first arrived with no injuries and very little vomiting. Those half bloods that were not going would man the communications at Hogwarts, and the Order listened in as well.
We got a little lost on the way to Diagon Alley, and once in the Leaky Caldron had trouble remember which bricks to touch and in what order, but Ron finally figured it out. The alley was pretty quiet and the day was cool and overcast. At the other end sat Gringotts and about halfway there was the little cafe we had decided to work from. We got a table with no one around us fortunately, but we were almost the only patrons anyway, and Hazel got to work with pencil and paper drawing out what she sensed beneath us.
After a bit she looked up and said "Okay, so down about 50 stories is about as deep as it gets. Essentially there are three deep caverns I can sense, any deeper than that and you might land inside a rock. The caverns are interconnected with hallways. Oh! And there is something very large and very alive at the one most under the bank. It seems to pretty much go straight down below the bank itself, and parts of it seem to be a natural cave as opposed to the other parts that are carved out of the rock."
Before anyone could say anything Nico said "See ya in a few" and disappeared into the shadow under our table. Will of course was furious but his rage was impotent with no one to vent it at. We had wondered how we would be sure as to depths and distances and had never arrived at a sure way for Hazel to communicate her gift of sensing underground passages and Nico's shadow travel, although Nico had assured us he could sense what was rock and earth versus what was air and space. Never the less his wand was primed with a spell to arrest his fall should he need it.
A few seconds later, no more than ten, Nico popped back out of the shadow and into his seat as though he had never left.
"There is plenty of room for all of us to land and I'm pretty sure its the right vault." Nico announced.
"How can you tell?" Someone asked.
"It had a dragon."
"What sort of dragon?" Ron asked.
"Hmmm, you know that kind thats about two feet long, covered in rainbows and seems to giggle and laugh when you tickle it?" Nico asked.
"Uh, no I"
"Well its not that kind. Its as big a locomotive with a coal car attached, snorts fire and is pale gray all over. Oh, and its chained up and asleep at the moment. I suggest we don't wake it up."
"Okay, well we drop in, kill the dragon then hit the vault. Who wants to attack" Percy said before Nico interrupted.
"I'd rather not kill it. I think its been tortured. Dragons are under my father's protection as creatures from the pit. If we must, I will kill it, but I'd rather find another way."
"You want to leave it alive so it can go on being tortured? That doesn't make sense, it would be more merciful to just kill it." Will said.
"I was thinking of freeing it. Look, when we crack the vault odds are alarms are going to go off. I'm thinking a dragon running amok would be good cover for an escape."
"All right then, Nico, Piper, you are our dragon preservation team. But if so much as looks at one of us like we're a snack, kill it." Hazel said.
"Why me?" Piper asked.
"If you can talk Gaea into falling asleep then keeping a dragon asleep should be easy." Hazel replied.
"When we land nobody move, I want to check the floor for traps." I said and all agreed. With nothing else to discuss, we held hands and a moment later we were at the bottom of a vast cavern with at least one of us stepping on a switch hidden under one of the tiles on the floor that set off the alarm. Oh, and there was a very pissed off dragon waking up.
One of the Hogwarts kids shot off a silencing spell at the nearest red flashing alarm, but it only made it quiet in our area, we could still hear the alarms ringing all over the rest of the cavern. It did make it impossible for Piper to calm the Dragon by voice and Nico was at a loss as to what to do. I didn't want to hurt it, it clearly showed scars from being whipped, and a chain wrapped so tight around its neck that it had cut into the flesh and scarred over repeatedly. On the other hand I didn't want it to kill us all either. I was closest to it thankfully when it first breathed fire. A protection spell blocked the actual flame but the heat would have been unbearable to most had I not taken the biggest blow from it.
"Okay, fuck this shit. Nobody breaths fire on me!" I thought as I held my hands up and shot flames back into its face. The flesh didn't burn, it was fire proof like me, but it neither liked nor expected it. I grabbed my wand and followed the heat with a cold shot, then my rapid fire stuns. It was this last set that knocked out like something in a Rocky sequel. His head fell right beside the door to the only vault.
I jumped on his back and walked up his neck.
"Hang on and don't move I said, although I don't know if anyone could hear me, so I pointed to the floor and crossed my hands, hoping others would understand. They didn't.
Finally Hermione shot the alarm with lightning and whoever cast the silence lifted it. Of course, the alarm was still sounding everywhere else.
"Lets get out of here!" Ginny said.
"Give me a sec, don't step on the floor, its trapped, but I think I can get us in. Harry, Percy, come on up here." I shouted.
I cast my curse detection spell batch and sure enough there were a couple on the door, but I cast to remove and on the next check, they were gone. The door had a padlock and I grabbed a screw driver and allen wrench from my tool belt and it revealed itself quicker than Hermione's shotgun did. Still the door didn't open. I shoved myself against it several times but it wouldn't budge, then I remembered when we had made our withdraws back in the fall we had to insert our wand into a portal on the door. I looked and sure enough, there it was. I didn't bother detecting magic as of course it was. This was a conundrum. I didnt' have the right wand, and couldn't think of a way to fake it.
"Throw rocks at it" Hazel had said.
"Guards are coming" Hermione said,
"Okay, give me a sec."
"Thats what you said a minute ago" Ron said.
"Okay, I thought to myself. Blocked by magic. What beats magic? Uh, nothing I can think of. Okay, what do we know about the door? Well, its oak, probably about a thousand years old... I bet" and then it hit me.
"Stand back guys" I said as I pressed both hands against it and turned on all the heat and fire I could. Nothing happened for a second or so, then it smoldered, then exploded into flame. I kept pressing against it and it became white hot as it consumed itself. Finally, the ashes and coals separated and fell to the floor. Only the small divot where the wand would be inserted remained, suspended in the air as if by, well, magic.
The vault was piled high with gold and silver and looked like how I imagined Blackbeard's treasure to be, except those treasures nearest the door were melted into a lovely golden slag. Harry started to step forward but I held up my still smoking hand to stop him. I shook my other hand to cool it off some, the wrapped it in my shirt tail and pulled out my wand.
A curse detection batch sent the whole room to glowing, but high atop everything, on the highest shelf a cup lit up brilliantly.
"The whole room is cursed, but the cup is up there," I pointed "and is cursed more than anything else."
"The guards!" Piper cried out.
"Can you remove the curse?" Harry asked.
"No time. Percy, that whip spell you do, think you can grab it and throw it in a bag?"
Percy didn't bother answering, instead he flicked his wand and a stream of energy poured out of it, wrapped itself around the cup and yanked it back to Percy who caught it with his survival bag.
"Lets go" he said as he reached out his hands towards myself and Nico"
"Just a second" I said as I shot the collar off the dragon, then used a wall of sound to start a roof collapse towards his tail. As I did this I reached for Harry's hand and the instant the wall started collapsing I shouted "Now!"
We were suddenly back at the coffee shop, just as the waitress rounded the corner and took out a quill and pad to take our orders. We ordered coffee, which never arrived as a few moments later we felt the earth shake from the rock fall I instigated and a minute or so later an old gray dragon burst from the roof of Gringotts and took off flying.
We apparated straight to Bob's from there, feeling pretty good about ourselves and our successful mission. Percy poured out his bag and the cup was among the things that came out, along with his survival gear and a basilisk fang.
Hermione grabbed the fang just as I shouted "Wait."
Now that it was away from everything else I cast another detect curse batch and it appeared to be carrying just the one curse. I passed this info on and Hermione slammed the basilisk fang into it. At once demonic black clouds of mist spewed forth circling us with screaming images of Voldemort before evaporating away.
"Well now. That must have been exciting" Bob said, "Is anyone injured?"
"No, but I learned something important." Percy replied, "Next time, lets just send Nico and Leo. You guys were awesome!"
There was a chorus of shouts as everyone patted Nico and I on the back and rewarded us with praise. The door to the mansion opened Calypso ran out and threw her arms around me.
"Jennifer, your boyfriend is the greatest!" Annabeth near shouted.
"I know. I know." She whispered, only loud enough for me to hear.
