The next chapter's up!
Hannah accompanied Luke to Hogsmeade, and made small talk. Her insides churned the entire time, and even Luke noticed her inattention. She explained that she was feeling a bit queasy. He was, of course, properly concerned. Finally, he stopped by the Quidditch store while she stopped by the bookstore. Hiding herself behind a stack of books, she raised her wand and performed the spell that would tell the others that she had completed her mission and that she had received urgent information. Then, with a quickness that belied much practice, she began tapping them the message in their own Pre-Aurors' Code.
-Fairy Elf. Lucas Whittaker Confunded. Group of CDDR, Cedric Diggory Demands Revenge. Lucas Whittaker de-Confunded, and aim of group to kill Harry Potter. Meeting. West Tower, Owlery, eleven tonight. End-
Hannah sighed, before buying a book and leaving to meet up with Luke again.
---
Hermione Granger paused her conversation with Ginny as she felt her beeper spread through her wand and warn her that someone had found information. Subtly, her hand went to her wand, and she muttered the words to make it save the information for later. Then, she continued the conversation.
---
Malfoy looked in disgust at Crabbe and Goyle. There was a time, once, when he enjoyed their stupidity and fooling them, when he would have given anything to please his father. But Professor Snape had shown him how truly worthless his father was. Professor Snape had alerted him to the dangers of the Dark Side and the benefit of "good." And Malfoy had slowly come to realize that he was the only one that could control his life.
He sipped his warm of mug of Butterbeer, as his wand alerted him. He curtly ordered Crabbe and Goyle to leave, knowing that they wouldn't be able to remember it later, much less think of it as unusual. With a few muttered words, the wand began whispering words to his ear.
-Fairy Elf. Lucas Whittaker Confunded. Group of CDDR, Cedric Diggory Demands Revenge. Lucas Whittaker de-Confunded, and aim of group to kill Harry Potter. Meeting. West Tower, Owlery, eleven tonight. End-
Draco nodded. Midnight at the Owlery. That was fine.
---
Cho Chang chatted inattentively with some of her friends. As they walked through Hogsmeade, stopping by some of the more interesting stores, Cho suddenly felt the tingling that signified a call from a fellow Pre- Auror. Pleading a stomachache, she escaped to the nearest restroom, and muttered the words. Immediately, her wand began transferring words to her ears.
-Fairy Elf. Lucas Whittaker Confunded. Group of CDDR, Cedric Diggory Demands Revenge. Lucas Whittaker de-Confunded, and aim of group to kill Harry Potter. Meeting. West Tower, Owlery, eleven tonight. End-
Cho's mind immediately raced with all sorts of thoughts. How would she get out without waking her roommates? How would she evade getting caught? Would she have to use her Goldpass? How important was the danger? But her mind raced to a halt as she gathered her calm. She could use the Goldpass if need be, and it her friends were mostly not light sleepers. She wasn't very used to the Invisibility Cloak yet, although it was obviously the only choice.
Breathing and counting to ten, she turned to face her friends again.
---
Hermione finished her conversation with Ginny and they split up. Humming to herself, Hermione casually muttered a few words, and the message drifted up from her wand.
-Fairy Elf. Lucas Whittaker Confunded. Group of CDDR, Cedric Diggory Demands Revenge. Lucas Whittaker de-Confunded, and aim of group to kill Harry Potter. Meeting. West Tower, Owlery, eleven tonight. End-
Hermione kept a normal expression on her face as she made her way through Hogsmeade back towards Hogwarts.
---
The night was silent. Even the normal hoot of the owl was absent, for the owls sensed the irregularity in the air, and fluffed their wings nervously. There was no sound whatsoever, but for the silent swish of the wind. A silent padding of feet was heard, but no one was to be seen. Suddenly, there was a swish, and hissed, "Reveal yourself."
A disembodied head appeared in thin air. The head had a glamour cast upon it, so the face appeared that to be one of a unicorn, with a single horn emerging from the forehead. Another disembodied head appeared. This one was one of a minute fairy with elven ears. "You should have used a Muffling Charm."
"Temporary Displacement," the Lone Unicorn said.
The Temporary Displacement Charm was a prank all Hogwarts students played on at least one person at one point in their life. It temporarily disoriented a person for a while. It lasted for five minutes at most, but was great for disorienting a person long enough to steal their wand or any number of things. It wasn't a very complicated charm to conjure up, but it was very complex in nature.
In nature, what happens is that the caster calls, "Tempus Fugit." Time Flies. Well, what literally happens for castee, is he/she is almost Petrified for five minutes. Then, they come back to life, and it is as if the spell had just been cast upon him/her. The spell leaves a person very disoriented and woozy, and he/she'll have to revive him/herself slowly. It's against school rules to cast it on someone, but by the time someone has recovered from it, the person is usually too embarrassed to admit that it was cast on him/her. Besides, the caster is usually just as, if not more, disoriented as the castee.
Another head appeared. This one had the glamour of a phoenix head on it. "Where's the Black Dragon?"
There was a silent swish, before a final head appeared, and a glamour of the Black Dragon's head appeared.
They didn't all own Invisibility Cloaks, of course. That would be too expensive. Hermione was "borrowing" Harry's cloak. (How she managed to steal it out from under his nose, no one knows.) Cho was utilizing an Invisibility Amulet, which were more common, but less reliable because of their tendency to run out of magic in the middle of an important prank. Hannah had cast an Invisibility Charm on herself, and Extra-Strength-ed it. Invisibility Charms were easy to render useless, but lasted longer and were more powerful when combined with an Extra Strength Potion, which was hard to obtain. Draco had his own Invisibility Cloak, bought from the finest Weaver by his great-great-great-great-grandfather ages ago.
"All right," the Fairy Elf assumed control of the meeting, as she was the one who had called it to order. She related the events that had taken place, leaving out specific details that would reveal her identity, making it sound as if she and Lucas Whittaker were just friends. If they knew she was going out with him, it would be moments before her identity would be revealed. She explained that she had gone around trying to gather more information afterwards. "From what I obliquely found out, there should be a meeting tonight, at midnight."
"In forty-five minutes," the Black Dragon noted.
"Some will be arriving over half and hour early," the Fairy Elf continued, "for 'setting up', they sad. Whatever that means. I think CDDR will consist mostly of Hufflepuffs, because Tom Riddle didn't want to risk everything on Inter-House Rivalry. I performed a series of charms on my parchment a couple of months ago. Do you remember? That weird combination. I'm still trying to figure that one out. Anyways, the parchment said it had something to do with 'loyalty stronger than rivalry'. I didn't particularly understand it, and I'm not even sure it's correct, as the parchment seems mostly to work by Divination and a little bit of Arithmancy, but I thought that would be useful information."
"There will, of course, be passwords and charms we will have to overcome," the Lone Unicorn said matter-of-factly. "We will have to overcome them."
"Dumbledore?" the Flaming Phoenix required, not needing to continue the words that formed her question.
"He knows," the Fairy Elf confirmed. "He will have one or two Mystic Members on the scene, but he believes they will be unable to get through the wards, which seem to be able to detect fully-grown wizards, however, seem to be unable to detect underage wizards and witches."
"He knows this because-" the Black Dragon waited expectantly for an answer. He did not mean to doubt Dumbledore's words; he merely wanted to know how Dumbledore had obtained his information, and whether they could attempt to ease their mission by doing some of the same.
"Headmaster Magic," the Fairy Elf said simply. Everyone knew that Hogwarts had become almost sentient over the years of soaking in spare magic. The Headmaster was an important defense mechanism of the castle, able to sense every time magic was performed on its grounds that was potentially dangerous to the school. Thus, at his disposal, Professor Dumbledore had a mighty tool if ever Lord Voldemort decided to invade Hogwarts, but his omniscience and omnipotence reached the end of the Hogwarts grounds. He was intuitive, perceptive, and skilled in all sorts of magic, but he did not know everything, and thus, was not as powerful once off Hogwarts grounds.
"All right," the Lone Unicorn got down to business. "Do we have a plan?"
"We sneak in and storm the place," the Flaming Phoenix said wryly.
"We probably have to wait until this Tom Riddle shows up," the Fairy Elf noted, "if we truly want to know who is behind it all."
"And we must get rid of the Confundus charms," the Black Dragon reminded.
"So that's what we'll do," the Lone Unicorn decided.
The other three nodded in confirmation.
So they donned their respective Invisibility Amulets, Invisibility Cloaks, and Invisibility Charms and prepared for their first important mission.
To be continued .
P.S. Thought I would explain something. Earlier on, when Hermione becomes the "Reserve Everything" for the Quidditch team; that was a minor mission. She was supposed to keep an eye and Harry, and make sure nobody pulls a Quirrell or a Dobby. (As in nobody tries to hex him off his broom or send enchanted Bludgers after him.)
Hannah accompanied Luke to Hogsmeade, and made small talk. Her insides churned the entire time, and even Luke noticed her inattention. She explained that she was feeling a bit queasy. He was, of course, properly concerned. Finally, he stopped by the Quidditch store while she stopped by the bookstore. Hiding herself behind a stack of books, she raised her wand and performed the spell that would tell the others that she had completed her mission and that she had received urgent information. Then, with a quickness that belied much practice, she began tapping them the message in their own Pre-Aurors' Code.
-Fairy Elf. Lucas Whittaker Confunded. Group of CDDR, Cedric Diggory Demands Revenge. Lucas Whittaker de-Confunded, and aim of group to kill Harry Potter. Meeting. West Tower, Owlery, eleven tonight. End-
Hannah sighed, before buying a book and leaving to meet up with Luke again.
---
Hermione Granger paused her conversation with Ginny as she felt her beeper spread through her wand and warn her that someone had found information. Subtly, her hand went to her wand, and she muttered the words to make it save the information for later. Then, she continued the conversation.
---
Malfoy looked in disgust at Crabbe and Goyle. There was a time, once, when he enjoyed their stupidity and fooling them, when he would have given anything to please his father. But Professor Snape had shown him how truly worthless his father was. Professor Snape had alerted him to the dangers of the Dark Side and the benefit of "good." And Malfoy had slowly come to realize that he was the only one that could control his life.
He sipped his warm of mug of Butterbeer, as his wand alerted him. He curtly ordered Crabbe and Goyle to leave, knowing that they wouldn't be able to remember it later, much less think of it as unusual. With a few muttered words, the wand began whispering words to his ear.
-Fairy Elf. Lucas Whittaker Confunded. Group of CDDR, Cedric Diggory Demands Revenge. Lucas Whittaker de-Confunded, and aim of group to kill Harry Potter. Meeting. West Tower, Owlery, eleven tonight. End-
Draco nodded. Midnight at the Owlery. That was fine.
---
Cho Chang chatted inattentively with some of her friends. As they walked through Hogsmeade, stopping by some of the more interesting stores, Cho suddenly felt the tingling that signified a call from a fellow Pre- Auror. Pleading a stomachache, she escaped to the nearest restroom, and muttered the words. Immediately, her wand began transferring words to her ears.
-Fairy Elf. Lucas Whittaker Confunded. Group of CDDR, Cedric Diggory Demands Revenge. Lucas Whittaker de-Confunded, and aim of group to kill Harry Potter. Meeting. West Tower, Owlery, eleven tonight. End-
Cho's mind immediately raced with all sorts of thoughts. How would she get out without waking her roommates? How would she evade getting caught? Would she have to use her Goldpass? How important was the danger? But her mind raced to a halt as she gathered her calm. She could use the Goldpass if need be, and it her friends were mostly not light sleepers. She wasn't very used to the Invisibility Cloak yet, although it was obviously the only choice.
Breathing and counting to ten, she turned to face her friends again.
---
Hermione finished her conversation with Ginny and they split up. Humming to herself, Hermione casually muttered a few words, and the message drifted up from her wand.
-Fairy Elf. Lucas Whittaker Confunded. Group of CDDR, Cedric Diggory Demands Revenge. Lucas Whittaker de-Confunded, and aim of group to kill Harry Potter. Meeting. West Tower, Owlery, eleven tonight. End-
Hermione kept a normal expression on her face as she made her way through Hogsmeade back towards Hogwarts.
---
The night was silent. Even the normal hoot of the owl was absent, for the owls sensed the irregularity in the air, and fluffed their wings nervously. There was no sound whatsoever, but for the silent swish of the wind. A silent padding of feet was heard, but no one was to be seen. Suddenly, there was a swish, and hissed, "Reveal yourself."
A disembodied head appeared in thin air. The head had a glamour cast upon it, so the face appeared that to be one of a unicorn, with a single horn emerging from the forehead. Another disembodied head appeared. This one was one of a minute fairy with elven ears. "You should have used a Muffling Charm."
"Temporary Displacement," the Lone Unicorn said.
The Temporary Displacement Charm was a prank all Hogwarts students played on at least one person at one point in their life. It temporarily disoriented a person for a while. It lasted for five minutes at most, but was great for disorienting a person long enough to steal their wand or any number of things. It wasn't a very complicated charm to conjure up, but it was very complex in nature.
In nature, what happens is that the caster calls, "Tempus Fugit." Time Flies. Well, what literally happens for castee, is he/she is almost Petrified for five minutes. Then, they come back to life, and it is as if the spell had just been cast upon him/her. The spell leaves a person very disoriented and woozy, and he/she'll have to revive him/herself slowly. It's against school rules to cast it on someone, but by the time someone has recovered from it, the person is usually too embarrassed to admit that it was cast on him/her. Besides, the caster is usually just as, if not more, disoriented as the castee.
Another head appeared. This one had the glamour of a phoenix head on it. "Where's the Black Dragon?"
There was a silent swish, before a final head appeared, and a glamour of the Black Dragon's head appeared.
They didn't all own Invisibility Cloaks, of course. That would be too expensive. Hermione was "borrowing" Harry's cloak. (How she managed to steal it out from under his nose, no one knows.) Cho was utilizing an Invisibility Amulet, which were more common, but less reliable because of their tendency to run out of magic in the middle of an important prank. Hannah had cast an Invisibility Charm on herself, and Extra-Strength-ed it. Invisibility Charms were easy to render useless, but lasted longer and were more powerful when combined with an Extra Strength Potion, which was hard to obtain. Draco had his own Invisibility Cloak, bought from the finest Weaver by his great-great-great-great-grandfather ages ago.
"All right," the Fairy Elf assumed control of the meeting, as she was the one who had called it to order. She related the events that had taken place, leaving out specific details that would reveal her identity, making it sound as if she and Lucas Whittaker were just friends. If they knew she was going out with him, it would be moments before her identity would be revealed. She explained that she had gone around trying to gather more information afterwards. "From what I obliquely found out, there should be a meeting tonight, at midnight."
"In forty-five minutes," the Black Dragon noted.
"Some will be arriving over half and hour early," the Fairy Elf continued, "for 'setting up', they sad. Whatever that means. I think CDDR will consist mostly of Hufflepuffs, because Tom Riddle didn't want to risk everything on Inter-House Rivalry. I performed a series of charms on my parchment a couple of months ago. Do you remember? That weird combination. I'm still trying to figure that one out. Anyways, the parchment said it had something to do with 'loyalty stronger than rivalry'. I didn't particularly understand it, and I'm not even sure it's correct, as the parchment seems mostly to work by Divination and a little bit of Arithmancy, but I thought that would be useful information."
"There will, of course, be passwords and charms we will have to overcome," the Lone Unicorn said matter-of-factly. "We will have to overcome them."
"Dumbledore?" the Flaming Phoenix required, not needing to continue the words that formed her question.
"He knows," the Fairy Elf confirmed. "He will have one or two Mystic Members on the scene, but he believes they will be unable to get through the wards, which seem to be able to detect fully-grown wizards, however, seem to be unable to detect underage wizards and witches."
"He knows this because-" the Black Dragon waited expectantly for an answer. He did not mean to doubt Dumbledore's words; he merely wanted to know how Dumbledore had obtained his information, and whether they could attempt to ease their mission by doing some of the same.
"Headmaster Magic," the Fairy Elf said simply. Everyone knew that Hogwarts had become almost sentient over the years of soaking in spare magic. The Headmaster was an important defense mechanism of the castle, able to sense every time magic was performed on its grounds that was potentially dangerous to the school. Thus, at his disposal, Professor Dumbledore had a mighty tool if ever Lord Voldemort decided to invade Hogwarts, but his omniscience and omnipotence reached the end of the Hogwarts grounds. He was intuitive, perceptive, and skilled in all sorts of magic, but he did not know everything, and thus, was not as powerful once off Hogwarts grounds.
"All right," the Lone Unicorn got down to business. "Do we have a plan?"
"We sneak in and storm the place," the Flaming Phoenix said wryly.
"We probably have to wait until this Tom Riddle shows up," the Fairy Elf noted, "if we truly want to know who is behind it all."
"And we must get rid of the Confundus charms," the Black Dragon reminded.
"So that's what we'll do," the Lone Unicorn decided.
The other three nodded in confirmation.
So they donned their respective Invisibility Amulets, Invisibility Cloaks, and Invisibility Charms and prepared for their first important mission.
To be continued .
P.S. Thought I would explain something. Earlier on, when Hermione becomes the "Reserve Everything" for the Quidditch team; that was a minor mission. She was supposed to keep an eye and Harry, and make sure nobody pulls a Quirrell or a Dobby. (As in nobody tries to hex him off his broom or send enchanted Bludgers after him.)