AN: Check the first chapter for disclaimers
Another 5k words chapter. (Pats on own shoulder)
I welcome all constructive criticisms and reviews. Also, PM me if you find any glaring errors or mistakes. I do my own beta-reading so there are bound to be some errors. {1saaa: NOT ANY MORE (commence evil beta reader laugh)}
There's a lot going on in this chapter, so let's get on with it.
Helen woke up at 3 o'clock in the morning. She grabbed a robe and quietly snuck out of her room into the empty oval. Cautiously, she went down the stairs and on finding no one in the common room, quickly exited it. On approaching the entrance of the room of requirement she promptly summoned a ritual room.
Entering inside, she wished the doors away and made the room soundproof. To put it rather bluntly, the ritual today would be loud. Not the kind of loud you might experience on a muggle motorway, but the kind of loud that could only be produced from the screams of someone under the Cruciatus. From that description you'd expect it to be extremely dark but instead the ritual landed into the centre of the magical spectrum. It channeled ambient magical energy from the air around you through your magical channels. This ritual expanded the channels and created new ones but the process was excruciatingly painful, hence the screaming.
The rate of magic flowing through your body depended on the level of ambient magic in the area. Thus, Hogwarts was both a good and a bad place to do this , because the result would be far more potent and bad because more ambient magic meant more intense pain.
Helen couldn't use any other forms of magic during the ritual without risking some interference, so no muffling charms, no pain dampening potions, nothing. The ritual was of old Sumerian origin and was extremely dangerous. There was no control mechanism to stop the flow of magic, except from the user's interference. If the caster passed during the ritual for whatever reason, the flow wouldn't stop at all. It would instead end up burning through their body completely, killing the caster. There was a risk of a cardiac arrest as well, of course. Not to mention a chance of a seizure, can't forget that.
Shaking off her morbid thoughts, Helen started preparing. This ritual didn't need any ingredients, just a simple runic circle with the user standing in the center. She completed the circle in twenty minutes and checked it over for any mistakes. After finding no errors, Helen left the ritual site, stripped, putting her clothes in the corner and laying her wand on top of them. She willed the lights in the room to dim causing the glowing blue runes to stand out even more. After checking the circle one last time, she stepped in and stood in the center.
Helen took a deep breath and channeled magic into the activation rune. Immediately, her world turned into pain. Pain was all she knew. Pain so intense that even the most powerful cruciatus curse from Voldemort would feel like a tickle in comparison. She only managed a few seconds of silence before she opened her mouth and shrieked! Her eyes were open but she couldn't see anything. All her senses were useless and all she felt was excruciating pain. Every fiber of her being screamed.
She somehow managed to remain aware of the connection with the activation rune which was pulling at her magic. After what seemed like an eternity, which was in reality only about a minute, she couldn't bear the pain any longer. So, with a gargantuan effort, she cut off the magical connection and collapsed in a heap on the stone cold floor. She laid there for a while with her limbs spasming. She could still feel the after effects of pain caused by the violent stream of magic that she had subjected herself too.
Helen willed a mattress to appear on the floor and rolled over onto it, panting like a dog. She had just done a very risky and dangerous ritual. Almost all the old Sumerian rituals were like that. This was because almost all of them were rudimentary and had little to no control system. The ancient Sumerian society was built over a pursuit of power and were willing to risk their very beings to gain more of it. It was no real surprise that their society had collapsed centuries ago. However, their texts had survived and Voldemort had gotten his hands on some of them while on his travels. He had performed this very same ritual once but didn't get much of a return for it because he was already in his late 20s, at which point the magical channels in his body had already developed and matured. This ritual was efficient only when magical channels hadn't had the opportunity to develop much, so the younger the better. But that also increased the ritual's risks, as children didn't have strong control or awareness of their magic. This meant they couldn't cut off the magic flow causing them to burn from inside out.
The ritual could only be used efficiently 5 to 6 times because it had a diminishing return after every use. The violent nature of the ritual was important as the magic 'pushed' through the body, making way for itself. And Helen could already feel the results. Her magical channels were expanded considerably and more of them had been created with several new channels running inside her body.
But when she thought of her magical channels, she meant it in a metaphysical way. There weren't any physical channels in her body through which the magic flowed. Right now, she was physically the same as any muggle girl. She was, of course, going to change that via physical enhancement rituals, but those didn't create anything extra in the body. They merely augmented what was already present. To grow extra body parts or regrow lost limbs or such, one needed different kinds of rituals. But those weren't her concern for now.
Casting aside her tangential thoughts, Helen sat up and immediately groaned as her body let out a shriek of pain. Pushing through the pain Helen stood up, she swayed for a few seconds and remained still until the world stopped wobbling. Stumbling her way towards her clothes, Helen picked up her wand. Casting a 'tempus' charm, she saw that it was 4:30 and that she had been lying for almost an hour. Helen started casting a few charms and performed some transfigurations on small objects provided by the room. She immediately noticed that her magic was now far more efficient and very little of it was wasted. She performed some mid level hexes and curses and found that she could do them for an extended period of time, a massive improvement from her previous attempts.
Satisfied, Helen decided to forego swimming today, due to a high risk of her drowning, and summoned a mat to practice Yoga. After practicing for an hour, her body had stabilized and the spasms were mostly gone. After a few more stretches, Helen put on her clothes and went back to Ravenclaw tower. After checking the coast was clear, she climbed up to the first year landing and entered the oval. As it was not even 6 o'clock she pulled out her current favorite book 'The Prince' by Niccolo Machiavelli, curled up on the armchair by the window and continued where she had previously left off.
Thirty minutes later, when her housemates started coming out of their rooms, Helen closed the book, marking the page and got up to get on with the day. She greeted Padma and Lisa, who were also early risers and went to get ready. Half an hour later, she was back in the oval wearing her altered uniform and chatting with Padma about her family.
The Patil family was important in India and could trace its lineage back to the times of Ashoka, the emperor of India in 3rd century BC. It also meant that they had one of the greatest collections of books and scrolls in ancient Sanskrit. Helen was very interested in these texts because they contained the origins of Parseltongue and its uses in magic. Helen didn't know Sanskrit but was determined to learn it. Padma, of course, knew the language, as it was taught to all magical children in Indian families. Helen persuaded Padma to teach her and mentally implanted positive feedback in her head when she agreed. Helen didn't influence Padma's decision but rather reinforced the feeling of positivity for helping and advancing Helen.
By quarter past seven everyone was ready and they left together. Morag was especially excited because they would be having their first flying lesson today. The group reached the great hall while discussing various quidditch teams, though Helen didn't contribute much as she didn't know anything about professional quidditch. When asked about her favorite team, she admitted that she didn't know much. This led to Morag blanching in horror and led to Helen being educated on the intricacies of professional quidditch, the league system, the British and Irish teams throughout the breakfast. Terry, Anthony and Micheal also threw in some pointers now and then.
Soon it was time for charms though and they went up to the third floor to the charms corridor in order to access the class. They had this class with the Gryffindors but Helen decided to sit with Padma instead of Hermione or another Griffindor, mostly because the Ravenclaws were already seated when the Lions came in. Professor Flitwick clambered up a stack of books and started with roll call. As he got to Helen's name, he squeaked excitedly and promptly toppled to the floor as the stack collapsed under him, causing the class to uproar in laughter. Getting up and smiling sillily, Flitwick finished the roll call and started the class.
"Good morning, I am Professor Flitwick. I'm the resident Charms Master here at Hogwarts, and as some of you already know, the Head of House Ravenclaw."
"Now, can anyone tell me exactly what charms are?"
The class continued this way with questions and Flitwick kept the class engaged. Finally, they were allowed to practice the simplest of charm, the color changing charm. Again, Helen kept to her policy of not succeeding in the task first. She didn't have to wait for long as soon Hermione had earned 10 points for being the first to change her white feather to Gryffindor red. However, Helen did manage to awe Su by changing her plain feather into a rainbow colored one, with one color blending into another. She switched it to Blue and Bronze of Ravenclaw, before anyone else could see it though. She spent the rest of the class guiding Su to achieve the colorful variety, which she partially did by getting four different colors on it. Flitwick gave her 5 points for her effort causing the small girl to blush prettily.
The class ended when the bell rang and the ravens decided to spend their free period in the library. However, Helen's way was blocked by an angry Redhead. "You lied! You said you weren't Helen Potter, The-girl-who-lived!" Weasley accused pointing a figure in her face.
Annoyed, Helen replied, "I actually never said that I wasn't the girl who lived. You just never asked me."
Weasley's face reddened. "You didn't need to lie to me though." Weasley said, losing some of his initial fire.
"As far as I'm concerned Helen was right. She shouldn't have to interact with people who only care about her because of a scar on her head!" Padma cut in. Weasley's face reddened even more and Helen took a menacing step forward.
"I think it would be best if you left now Weasley." Helen said coldly. The red head took her advice and fled the scene with great haste.
Perceiving Helen's darkened mood, her doormates managed to find various excuses to avoid her. This worked perfectly fine for Helen because it allowed her to start working on filling in the gaps of her knowledge. .
Tom Riddle, later known as Lord Voldemort, was extremely powerful and lightning fast with his wand but he had focused much of his energy to advanced combat magic and magic that could heighten or take advantage of his raw power. Because of this, his abilities in other areas of magic, such as potions or charms, was focused on their potential applications for destroying Voldemort's enemies.
This was a flaw in Helen's knowledge that would have to be rectified. Despite being extremely talented, Helen knew that she could not hope to stand up to Voldemort or Dumbledore in a direct confrontation. Instead she would have to take a more subtle approach. Going down Voldemort's path of forcing the country to crown him as its ruler was both foolhardy and exceptionally risky. Helen wouldn't force the crown on her head, she'd set up the perfect scenario in which it was forced upon her. For that to work, it was vital she upped her skills in things other than combat magic, so she could use her wide array of skills to gain large amounts of influence in magical Britain.
Helen was also very interested in Elemental magic. Elemental magic dealt with the manipulation of various forms of the basic elements viz. Earth, Fire, air and water and their combinations. Ice elemental was a combination of water and fire elements. Helen was most interested in lightning though. It is one of the most difficult forms of magic to perform and to control but once you master it you could shoot lightning from your fingertips! How cool was that! This was another advantage of elemental magic that, once mastered, it could be performed wandlessly. There were only a handful of elemental masters in the whole world though. Dumbledore was one, a water elemental. Voldemort was another being a fire elemental.
Everyone was born with an affinity to a single element, but it didn't matter much in the long run as with practice and dedication one could become master of any elemental form. The affinity just made it easier to control that particular element. Coincidentally, both Voldemort and Helen had affinity for fire.
There were two other fields of magic that Helen wanted to learn but neither were taught in Hogwarts anymore, namely, Alchemy and Enchanting.
Alchemy was a branch of magic and an ancient science concerned with the study of the composition, structure and magical properties of the basic elements, as well as the transmutation of substances; it was thus intimately connected with Potion-making, chemistry and transformation magic. Nicolas Flamel was the most famous Alchemist in the world for having created the holy grail of alchemy, that being The Philosopher's Stone. While Helen wouldn't mind getting her hands on it, she was much more interested in Alchemical Elixirs that she could create for a wide array of positive effects. While most of the effects of the elixirs could be achieved by rituals, they were much riskier and generally far more painful. If you knew alchemy the steps were much more pain free. Getting the results Helen desired would no doubt be challenging but the long term benefits would be extraordinary.
Enchanting was the branch of magic concerned with altering an object permanently. The alteration could either be physical or meta-physical. For example, you could take a wooden block and transfigure it into a beautiful glass figurine and enchant it to remain so for the rest of its existence; or you could take the same wooden block and enchanted it to produce light. While alchemy was a very creative and free flowing branch of magic, Enchanting was, by its very nature, structured and systematic.
Helen decided that instead of studying the same combat focused material again, she would instead focus her time in Hogwarts to overcome Voldemort's deficiencies and use his lack of knowledge in those areas to her advantage. After all, she was a Ravenclaw. Coming out of her musing, Helen pulled out a potions reference book and a book on animate transfiguration and went to a secluded corner away from her classmates to start reading.
Helen closed the book when the bell rang and placed them back into the correct shelves. She then joined her dorm-mates and together they went out to the Quidditch pitch for their first flying lesson. They found the Hufflepuff members already waiting. Helen greeted Susan and Hannah and then idly chatted with the rest of the Hufflepuff year-mates, making sure to implant good impressions associated with herself into the badger's minds.
Madam Hooch arrived with a broom on her shoulder and ordered the girls to go to the changing room and wear something appropriate for flying. Helen had the Ravenclaw girls pack a pair of tights in their bags earlier in the morning for the same reason. Pleated skirts and brooms together meant exposed knickers. The Hufflepuff girls had to make do with the pants provided in the changing room. When they returned, there were two rows of brooms lying on the ground. The brooms were so old that Helen thought they might be the same ones Riddle used to learn flying.
Hooch ordered them to stand in the row with brooms on their dominant hand side. When everyone was in their position, Hooch instructed them to hold their hand out over the broom and in clear voice command it up. Everyone did as instructed. Helen said "UP" and the broomstick jumped straight into her hand. She glanced around to see who else managed to do the same. Morag had her's in her hand and so did Anthony and Su. In Hufflepuff only Macmillan had got it. Terry somehow managed to get hit in the face by his broom. Most of the students got it on their second or third try. Hannah's broom however just kept rolling over the ground so Hooch asked her to just pick it up.
She then showed them the proper way to mount and grip a broom. After correcting those who had it wrong, she taught them how to kick off the ground, hover a bit and then come back down. All the students followed her instructions to a varying degree of success. Helen along with a few others managed to rise steadily and hovered a few feet above ground but most of the students rose shakily and painfully wobbled in place.
When Helen landed back on the ground she glanced up in the skies to see the ever nervous Hannah steadily rising to the required height. Seizing an opportunity, Helen began to eye the broom intently, muttering the necessary words under her breath. Tom Riddle had learned how to curse a broomstick in order to make Quidditch more 'interesting' to watch; Helen used this knowledge to great effect, sending Hannah and her broomstick far above the height Hooch outlined. Trusting the now panicking Hannah to do the rest of her work for her, Helen seized an opportunity to play hero.
The Ravenclaw witch rocketed up into the skies on her broomstick, approaching the flailing Hannah in order to rescue her. With a hidden flick of her wand Hannah's broom viciously jerked, sending the blonde girl into a terrifying freefall. After making some swift calculations Helen took a steep dive in order to match the Hufflepuff's falling speed and then snagged her with one arm, guiding her onto her broom. With her other hand, Helen pulled out of the dive to flatten her trajectory and came to a halt a foot above the ground and several yards away from the crowd, with Hannah clinging to her back. Helen gently eased the arms around her and got both of them safely on the ground. Hannah hugged her shuddering "I thought I was going to die" she sobbed.
"I'd never let that happen my friend." Helen replied soothingly while rubbing Hannah's back.
Hooch and the rest of the group had approached by then "In all my years I haven't ever seen someone fly like that. Where did you learn to do that?"
Helen feigned a blush when she gained everyone's attention and replied "That was my first time on a broom."
Hooch was astonished and muttered something about 'natural' and 'ronski faint'. However, she came to her senses quickly, and started checking Hannah. Despite not finding any injury she took her to the Hospital, but not before ordering that every broom should remain firmly on the ground. She returned quite quickly and the class continued normally after that but the lingering looks on Helen only increased as the class continued. No Legilimency would be required for Helen to benefit over her little stunt today.
Morag was incredibly excited by Helen's stunt and explained to her what 'Wronski Feint' was. She informed Helen that flying must have been in her blood, with James Potter also being a great player. Morag encouraged Helen to try for the Quidditch team to which Helen eventually agreed, she highly doubted that many captains would refuse her after her little performance today. Other Hufflepuff students showed their gratitude for Helen's actions and thanked her sincerely for saving one of their own, they were the house of loyalty after all.
After lunch, Helen headed for the library, with Padma and Anthony tagging along with her. They met Daphne and Tracey at the entrance and decided to commandeer a table together. Helen picked up the potions book again and sat down, while the others browsed for other books nearby. Before she could even read a single word though, Malfoy decided to take this opportunity to join Helen.
After taking the closest seat, Malfoy spoke in a rehearsed voice, "Miss Potter you're new to our world so I wanted to give you an advice. You'll find that some wizarding families are better than others. You don't want to make friends with the wrong sort. I can help you there."
Helen smiled sweetly and replied, "Thank you Mr. Malfoy, that's very nice of you." As Malfoy started smirking, she continued, "Though, I'm curious as to how you think I'm making friends with the wrong sort as you put it." She looked at Daphne and Tracey approaching, "Were you referring to my companions? Or were you referring to Miss Patil and Mr. Goldstein?" She glanced at the pair hovering by the nearest bookshelf. "I wonder what their Lord fathers would feel about the Heir Malfoy's opinion of them. They would surely be devastated."
Malfoy went as white as a sheet, obviously imagining what his father would do if he heard about his sons implied insults. He quickly made a flimsy excuse and rushed away. Helen chuckled softly at the little boy trying to play a big boy's game.
After the aggravating distraction left, Helen immersed herself into her potions text. It described in detail why the steps were done in the way they were done. Why did Porcupine quills when added to a lit cauldron have such an explosive reaction? How did adding a counter-clockwise stir to a potion after a series of clockwise stirs change its properties? She got so engaged in her book that she didn't even notice her friends leaving. After a solid three hours of reading she noted the page she was on and closed the book. Realizing her friends were long gone and that she was alone, Helen decided to go check the forbidden corridor on the 3rd floor.
As she left Helen checked the time. It was 3:40 so most of the students and teachers would be in their classes. Going down a floor she approached the forbidden corridor and expanded her magical senses as she entered the area. She didn't find anything out of ordinary until the last door. On that door , Helen detected a ward on its frame. Upon inspection she found it was a simple perimeter ward which would let the caster know that the ward was tripped but nothing else. This meant the identity of the trespasser would remain unknown.
This ward seemed like Dumbledore's work. He could have picked something far more complex but instead went for something painfully simple. It was probably a trap, designed to lull Voldemort (or any other would be trespasser) into a false sense of security.
Helen took out her handkerchief and transfigured it into a yard long stick with a hooked end. She then carefully pushed the door open with it, making sure no part of her body would trip the ward. What she found inside shocked her, There was a huge hellhound napping on the floor. It didn't wake up due to her quiet approach so she spent a moment observing the monstrous beast. The Cerberus was about 9 foot tall, it had three heads and dark brown fur. Most importantly one of its paws was lying on a trapdoor. After making sure there wasn't anything else of importance in the room, Helen carefully closed the door using the hooked end and left the corridor, after cancelling her transfiguration.
Dumbledore was either crazy or guarding something very important. They were called hell hounds for a reason, Cerberus were in the XXXXX category of beasts. They had immense strength and were very agile despite their bulk. As if that wasn't enough, they also had teeth capable of ripping through practically all magically enhanced objects and anything muggles could produce. A pack of Cerberus could tear through an army with ease.
Now even more curious, Helen decided to amp up her enchanting studies as she had a particular item in her mind that would be useful.
On reaching the oval she found the rest of her dorm-mates engaged in some sort of activity. Lisa and Padma were playing wizarding chess by the window. Terry was lounging in a love seat with a potions text in his hands but his eyes were focused on the game of exploding snap going on next to him, which everyone else was playing. Helen waved at them all and went to freshen up, changing into a black pinstriped T-shirt dress with a belt and white sneakers. She took out a text on organic chemistry and joined the rest of her year mates in the oval. She had Terry scooch over so she could join him on the love seat. Crossing her legs she opened her book on her lap but like Terry, her eyes were on the game in progress. They all laughed when Mandy got the exploding card. Padma and Lisa joined them too with books in hand after their match (Padma won) was over. They all enjoyed a few more rounds of exploding snap, with occasional explosions and accompanying laughter but very little studying.
After the last game, Su asked Helen about her skill in charms, quoting about the rainbow feather she had produced in the class. When everyone else expressed their interest, Helen decided to show off a bit and changed the color of all the walls with the same effect as earlier. Everyone looked around in amazement and begged her to teach them to do the same. Helen agreed and soon they were trying to match her work. On being questioned why she didn't do the same in front of the class or its professor, Helen professed modesty and said she didn't want any more fame than she already had. Grateful as they were, Helen's friends agreed to keep her secret.
At 6:30 they left for dinner while having a discussion on the role of chemistry in potion making. They found dinner already in full swing when they entered the great hall. Immediately, Hannah called Helen to join her on the Hufflepuff table. She allowed her dorm-mates to continue to the Ravenclaw table, who were still discussing chemical reactions on different ingredients. Shaking her head in amusement, she joined Hannah at the edge of the first year Hufflepuff group. After putting together her dinner (beans and green salad) she joined in the current discussion.
During dinner the boy next to her introduced himself. "Hello, Heiress Potter, I'm Cedric Diggory, it's nice to make your acquaintance" he said with a polite smile.
He was a handsome boy with light boy hair and kind brown eyes who seemed very friendly and good-natured. Helen returned her own charming smile "Helen Potter, a pleasure to meet you." She said, offering her hand.
He took her hand and after bowing, touched her knuckles with his lips. Hannah and Susan, who were sitting opposite her, swooned. Smirking at her companions, Helen started a conversation with Diggory.
The Diggorys were a light leaning pureblood house who had a seat in the Wizengamot and if Helen wasn't mistaken, Cedric was the only heir. They talked throughout the dinner on topics ranging from her muggle upbringing, his electives (runes and CoMC) and why he chose them, his family history and their business, Quidditch and his hopes of getting selected as Seeker and Helen's skill with a broom. At the end of dinner, he helped her up, "It was nice talking with you, Heiress Potter" he said courteously.
"Same for me, Heir Digg..."
"Please call me Cedric" he interrupted with a smile.
"Very well, It was the same for me, Cedric. Hope we meet up again." Helen replied with a ladylike smile. "You may call me Helen" she said, as she offered him her hand.
He bowed and kissed her hand again "Goodnight, Helen." Cedric said.
Hannah and Susan immediately swarmed her, gushing about her tête-à-tête with Cedric. Apparently, he was the heart-throb of Hufflepuff house and most of the girls harbored a crush on him. Helen saw the truth in that from the jealous looks she was getting from a few upper years, not that their pathetic ire at all bothered her. Helen was also quite interested in the boy. She found time spent in his company as somewhat enjoyable and Helen wouldn't be opposed to spending more time with him.
The girls left soon as well, citing their need for a nap before a late night astronomy class. Helen agreed to that and joined her dorm-mates to ascend to the Ravenclaw tower to get a little kip of her own. They got up as late as humanly possible and the ten students made their way towards the astronomy tower without changing into their uniforms, as astronomy was the only class in which other clothing was allowed, and considering the timing of the class it would have been a useless bother. Afterwards, they returned at midnight and promptly went to sleep.
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