Padma rubs the back of Hermione's robes as the girl is still sniffling occasionally after finding out that she only came 5th in the overall rankings for the first years. Behind her, the Hufflepuff first years are all chattering away merrily, as though this is just another dinner rather than the end of the year feast. Not that she can blame them, as she's going to be joining them for two more weeks of education, something that her twin has been taking great pains to rub in.
"Hey, Padma, you doing anything interesting over the summer?"
Padma looks up at Lisa, "I've got two weeks of practical mundane studies, then we're going to India to visit family for 6 weeks."
"That sucks, having to do more school work that is."
Padma shakes her head, "If it's anything like the Spring Holiday, it will be fun. I hope that Skye is out technician again, as she was really helpful."
A cannon blast from the head table interrupts the conversation, as they turn to look at it the headmaster stands up.
"Good evening and welcome to the leaving feast. This year has been full of trials and changes, from the new course for wizarding customs and ettiquite, to changing the name of Muggle Studies to Muggle Magic. I would also like to thank Dr Danann for somehow managing to reign in the schools resident pranksters. Now, as I'm sure that everyone can see, we haven't decorated the hall yet. This is because the counters are not showing a clear winner, an event that hasn't happened for at least 9 years. So, without further ado I will read out the scores. In last place are Gryffindor with 236 points, despite coming 2nd in the Quidditch tournament. In 3rd place are Ravenclaw with 498 points. In 2nd place are Hufflepuff with 526 points, leaving Slytherin to win the cup with 532 points." With a clap of his hands, the banners around the hall change from the normal Hogwarts emblem to the green Slytherin emblem to the cheers of the house.
As if that was a signal, the tables fill with food and all of the students begin to tuck into their meals.
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Once he's sure that Narcissa is visiting her sister, Lucius Malfoy flicks his wand to roll the Indian carpet up from the living room floor. A complicated spell follows to unlock the concealments on the door. Finally, a last flick of his wand has the carpet roll over to the other side of the room, revealing a narrow spiral staircase in the middle of the room. Walking down the stairs, he passes through the decoy room that has some smuggled wine, restricted ingredients, and mildly illegal items in it. Nothing that would warrant more than fine, which for his family is just a cost of doing business. The house above being held up by another 7 stone columns that look much like these stairs would normally. Below that, these stairs travel another 50 feet before hitting bedrock, shortly after that the stairs open up into a small room hewn out of the rock that contains his death eater regalia as well as the dark artifacts that would be an instant Azkaban stay, if not the veil. In truth the spiral staircase and this room are both expanded spaces, with the staircase behind him only being as wide as his fist while the pillar is closed.
With a sigh, he starts to sort through the items down here, trying to locate the items that were setting off Yaxley's detection spells when he arrived yesterday. One of which was even detectable in the main house.
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Skye smiles brittlely from the doorway as she watches the children doing their impossible things in the normal classroom. Glancing to the left, she looks at the impossibly long corridor that leads past the science lab and technician's door. The children had wanted to know if expanded spaces affect the speed of sound, it does, it seems to speed it up by around 10%. While they were at it, they tried to measure the speed of light using a couple of mirrors on tripods and a very expensive laser measure that the university has in its labs for that purpose. Rubbing her eyes, she walks back over to the laser to check it again, while also making sure that the chalk mark against the tape measure on the floor of the corridor hasn't moved. Yes, it's still fluctuating, not much, but the fact it's fluctuating at all is giving her a massive headache. Turning the laser so that it's pointing into the unexpanded lab, the numbers immediately stabilise, showing that it's not the unit that's faulty.
"Ok everyone, quiet down, what did we learn from the last three experiments?"
At the sound of Dr Danann's voice, Skye wanders back over to lean against the doorframe.
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Skye looks pointedly at the open trunk, with the staircase inside it. Taking a deep breath, she walks over to it, takes one of the handles, and heaves it to one side. This leads to her falling over with a loud clatter as the chest is far lighter than it looks. As she stands up with the support of the desk she fell against, Morgana rushes into the room.
"Skye, are you alright?"
Skye waves her off, "Yeah, I'm fine. It's just that this stuff is screwing with my head. Since easter I've been reading up on physics, and then a couple of weeks ago, Dora makes the hallway outside longer than a football pitch just to test the speed of sound. Oh, and lets not forget that according to the laser measure, the hallway was fluctuating in length by 2cm despite the tape measure never moving or even rumpling. Which either means that the speed of light stopped being constant, or the distance it was travelling through did.
"Then your son, Harry, just disappears when you realise that you need more books, and comes back with that affront to physics. Not only is it doing the same thing as the hallway, but it's also moveable, and also does horrible things to the laser measure. It's fucking with my head, and I want to know why. Why does it work. So, god damn it, can you introduce me to your husband, please?"
Morgana looks a little surprised at the outburst, then her eyes narrow, "Oh, I did offer that, didn't I. I thought about it after we finished last time, and I like you. So, I'd rather not introduce you to my husband, as he can be very charming when he wants to be. As if he manages to seduce you, I'd rather not need to kill you if you decide you don't like him." Skye's eyes widen as her mouth drops open, "So I checked in on a cousin, and it appears that they didn't make it through the ages. However, their library did. Ecne was one of our best druids, though he, or sometimes she, didn't like the term. If you want, I could leave you at their house so that you can look through their library."
"Sure, it's not like it's any less insane than that trunk."
Morgana beams, and produces one of Kate's crab apples, "Great, just eat this, core as well, and you'll have magic. I'll drop you off after we finish for the day."
"Um, aren't crab apples poisonous?"
"No, just extremely sour and bitter. Marianne's eaten one, it's how she got her own magic."
"You're sure?"
"I am, you'll get some cramping after you eat it, but that's just the magic permeating your body… You can ask her yourself if you want, she's just in there drawing out the culture that they prepared at the beginning of last week."
Skye stares at the apple in her hand, and is still staring at it when Morgana goes back to the lab. Through the rest of the day, she bounces it in her hand whenever she's not in the lab or technicians office. The last straw comes when she follows Hermione, Padma, and Sue, as they take the drop measurement apparatus into the classroom, and start to compare the time to drop a ball-bearing using levitation, to releasing the trap.
After letting Morgana know she's taking a 5 minute break, she makes her way to the staffroom and pours herself a glass of water. After taking a couple of deep breaths, she forces herself to eat the whole crab apple. As she swallows the last bit, and she's reaching for her glass of water, she collapses to the floor as the worst cramps she's ever felt hit, followed by a sensation of heat flowing through her body. The pain passes in only a minute or so, and she staggers to her feet and drains the glass of water.
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Morgana smiles at Skye as she locks up, and Skye can't help but shiver at something about that smile. As they're walking down to security together, she asks, "So, you said there's a library, how am I supposed to read it?"
Morgana nods, "Good question, the answer is desire. If you want to read it, you'll be able to read it. Same as you can currently understand me."
"Wait, what?"
"I'm not speaking English at the moment."
"You are, I can hear you fine."
"Really, I'm not."
Try as she might, Morgana refuses to elaborate on what she said until they get to the security office. Once there, Morgana waves at the security guard, "Have a good weekend sir."
As Skye hands over her keys, the guard leans in and asks, "What did she say?"
Skye startles, "Oh, uh, she wished you a good weekend."
"Tell her thanks, and her class was one of the better behaved ones we've had."
Skye mutters, "You have no idea." louder she continues, "Sure, I'll let her know."
As Skye gets closer Morgana again smiles brightly, "Ready?"
"I guess."
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Skye staggers slightly as the mist abruptly gives way to a small, abandoned, stone built, village in the centre of overgrown fields and surrounded by a forest. Behind the forest is a wall of mist, visible only slightly over the tops of the trees.
"Come on, Ecne's house is over here, attached to the long house. I suppose you might call it a village hall."
Skye follows Morgana dubiously, as the trek through the village, with it's dirt street, is an eerie one. They're passing the well, when she realises that there's no other sounds, not even insects or birds.
"Morgana, where's all the animals?"
Morgana shrugs as she leads Skye to the only two story house in the village, "They probably died shortly after Ecne did. I'm sure you'll be able to fix that later."
"What? What do you mean I'll be able to fix that later?"
"We're here, I think the downstairs was their library, and their living quarters were above it."
Skye squints into the dark interior of the house, around the walls of the single room are piles of carves staves leaning against the walls, 10 deep in places. On a basic table is a single scroll with ivory rollers.
"Where's all the books?"
Morgana laughs, "We didn't have books, look around you, each of these staves is carved with Ogham. You probably want to start with the scroll though, as you may find it easier to start with something more familiar."
"Fuck it, this is already insane." That said, Skye walks over to the table and unrolls the scroll slightly.
In front of her, all she can see is a horizontal line with shorter vertical lines along it's length, "Is this writing?"
In the doorway behind her, Morgana nods, "It is. Normally it would be read from top to bottom."
"How do I read it then?"
"You need to want to, it may help if you get frustrated with not being able to read. I'm just going to head to the long house next door, so come and find me if you need help."
Skye turns back to the scroll and stares at the lines of text, drawn out with what seems to be charcoal.
"Come on, I want to read you."
It's after another half an hour of fruitless effort on her part, that she slams her hand down on the table, "Why can't I under… Ow fuck!"
Skye lifts her hand and spots a long splinter stuck in the side, blood already welling up under the surface. Gritting her teeth, she carefully pulls the splinter out, before putting her hand down on the scroll as the endorphins hit, leaving her feeling woozy.
As the blood sinks into the paper, the woozy feeling intensifies as the carvings on the staves around the room seem to waver between making sense and not. Then there's the feeling of her perceptions expanding while someone has plugged a transmission cable into her back and is filling her body with the same thing the apple did, but turned up to 12. She's vaguely aware of Morgana returning and trying to speak to her, but she can't focus enough to make out what she's saying, let alone respond. Then Morgana leaves, Skye's not sure how she knows, but she does.
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The rising sunlight hits Skye on the face and she stirs, throwing her arm over her face, before falling off the table. Suddenly awake, she staggers to her feet and looks around at the library. One of the staves catches her attention, 'Care and upkeep of oxen'. Absently she picks up the staff, and her fingers start to run down the length of the staff, reading the careful notes. She's reached the end before she realises just what she's doing, and drops the staff like it's a snake. Staggering back, she gasps as a memory of carving that staff comes to her mind, not her memory, as her own sense of self is enough to differentiate between them, but still she remembers it. Staggering outside, she stops and leans heavily against the wall, as the village now looks familiar yet alien at the same time.
The sun is high in the sky when she can bring herself to move again, and she walks unsteadily over to the well. When she gets there, she looks blankly at the bucket sitting on the wall of the well, until a memory appears of levitating the bucket into the well, and back out. Skye blinks, and tries to replicate what she felt, and watches agog as the bucket does precisely that. Even when she loses control, and the bucket splashes into the water at the bottom of the well, her eyes are still wide because she knows exactly where it is. It takes her another hour to get the bucket out of the well again, and the water tastes absolutely heavenly. Deciding to investigate the other houses, rather than returning to the library, Skye looks inside the nearest one, and sees a pile of staves lying haphazardly on top of someone's clothes. In the next house, it looks like someone's left some mending on a bed, and there's another haphazard pile of staves in here too. This time, she gets a flash of memory, of a woman humming while she darned a trouser leg, her husbands both chattering as one of them carves a staff, and the other is cleaning some clothes. Staggering backwards, she trips and falls on her bum in the middle of the street.
"What's happening to me?"
Hurrying back to the library, she notes that there's a letter written in cursive on the table, but her focus is on the scroll. Hurriedly she unrolls it and starts to read.
To the person reading this. I am sorry, but I am unable to go on. We rescued as much of our recorded lore as we could, but it cost each and every one of my chosen their lives. I am now alone, and the knowledge that we worked so hard to preserve seems like cold comfort now. I have chosen to join my chosen, and so I have separated from my domain. If you are willing to take up my mantle and continue my work of trying to chronicle and understand the natural world, the other world, and how they work together, then place your blood on this scroll and what was mine will be yours.
Just remember, do not trust the Christians, as they come with false promises.
Skye stares at the smear of blood from her hand, bright red against whatever this scroll is made from. Lamb skin her inherited memories prompt. When her eyes start to complain, she blinks rapidly and rolls the scroll up, so that she's no longer looking at that smear of blood. That done, her eye is drawn to Morgana's letter.
Skye,
I'm sorry about leaving you while you're inheriting a domain, however I am taking my family to Scandinavia for a few weeks, and we have a flight to catch in the morning. I expect that we will be completely out of contact for a while, so I've asked Airmed to check in on you in a week in case you haven't worked out how to get home.
I've left a boar slow roasting in the long house, with a pot of vegetable pottage in a cauldron beside it. Before you do return to your home, I suggest that you try to work out how to conceal your magic, as your presence can be harmful to those around you if you don't.
Morgana.
P.S. Congratulations on finding one of the fast paths to immortality, I hope that the cost isn't too high. And welcome to the family.
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