A/N: As alway, a very large amount of thanks to LB Domingo who very graciously beta reads my chapters.
Chapter Eight: Magical Artifacts
The next few weeks passed rather quickly for everyone. All the classes were brought up to speed and were operating as normal. Harry was managing to be a professor, Quidditch captain, and full-time student at the same time. The prefect patrols at night were going very smoothly. So far Harry had only been forced to hand out very minor detentions to a pair or two of snoggers. Word was getting around that the prefect patrols were hard to dodge, especially when Weasley, Granger, or Weasley were involved.
Harry was also bringing the Gryffindor Quidditch team up to speed rather quickly as well. Kirke and Sloper were doing well enough to at least survive a match, the Fairfax twins and Ginny were only getting better, and Ron was practicing every chance he got.
Currently, Harry was sitting in Dumbledore's office as Professor Dumbledore explained how to tell the difference between truth and lies in his dreams of Voldemort.
"First Harry, you must gain control and rationality in the dream," Dumbledore lectured slowly. "You need to be aware of yourself, you then need to step aside from the dream, ignore it, no longer become a part of it. Do you understand?"
Harry nodded, "I think so Professor."
"Good Harry," Dumbledore said as he smiled. "Once you have done that you need to feel your way back to the source. Undermine that source and get into Voldemort's mind Harry, don't let Voldemort know that you are in his mind. From that point on you should be able to discern whether or not what you're dreaming is really happening or not."
"Is that all there is to it sir?" Harry inquired.
Dumbledore shook his head, "I'm afraid not, Harry. Occulmency is a very difficult art to teach Harry. For every wizard or witch that practices it, there is another method or way to do it. I can only give you the basics and the theory. You will need to find your own method, understanding, rationality, and technique. Remember though, practice is the key. You will get better at it every time you try. I suggest that you attempt to isolate yourself from a dream once or twice before we meet again. Don't go any farther than that until we've discussed your experience."
"I'll do that then," Harry promised as he stood up. His lessons with Dumbledore were always short but to the point.
Dumbledore stood up and shook Harry's hand, "Good Harry, I'll see you later then."
Harry left Dumbledore's office and used his ring to transport him to his office. He walked over to his desk, sat down, and pulled out some notes from one of the drawers. Over the past weeks since Hermione had given out assignments to research he had done tons of it but had only found tiny pieces, or vague references. He had only found a couple of useful things.
He stood up and slowly walked around the rooms scanning the titles of the books on his bookshelves. He had already looked through every book that even appeared to be connected with the control of magical objects. There were several topics, even whole books on it. The only problem was that they didn't really cover ancient magical artifacts.
Grumbling, Harry paced back and forth trying to think of something that he may have missed. He finally stopped and looked out the window towards the Quidditch pitch. He could see one of the House teams out on the field practicing. He must have missed dinner if they were already out there.
There was a small knock on the door which was followed by Ginny entering the room. "Hello Harry," Ginny said, a faint tinge of red appearing on her cheeks. "I just wondered if I could use some of your books to study in here, I need to know about Dark magical artifacts too."
"Feel free to anytime," Harry said gesturing towards the bookshelves. "Maybe they'll be of some use to you. I'm not getting much out of them."
Ginny walked over and scanned a shelf as Harry sat back down in his chair. "You're not getting anything?" she asked.
"Well, I have gotten a couple of tidbits," Harry admitted.
"Like what?" Ginny asked as she walked over to Harry's desk with several books and sat down.
"One book mentioned that Dark objects that carried power were treacherous and would serve anyone in order to get their Dark Magic out on the world." Harry said.
Ginny opened one of the books, picked a topic from the table of contents and turned to the page. "Perhaps Voldemort is gambling that Seilftrist was a Dark Lord."
"What if he wasn't?" Harry countered as he leaned back into his chair.
"I suppose you'll have to find out about artifacts that aren't evil then," Ginny said as she scanned several pages.
Harry nodded slowly. "I did get a little from that. It altogether depends on the object. The weaker the object's power, the less resistance it will put up, if any at all. The stronger it is, the more personality it has. It will choose who to serve and how much power to use to help that person."
"Maybe that means it will only surrender to evil, or in this case, Voldemort in steps or rather, levels," Ginny theorized.
"That could be good or bad," Harry said. "It all depends on how much power it takes for Voldemort to overcome the artifact. If he has to fight for every centimeter of power to match what he was that would be okay. If it takes all of his power to get the artifact to surrender partially that's even better."
"Then there's some hope," Ginny said cheerfully. "I just hope that it's not the other way and Voldemort can force it to surrender quickly and absolutely."
Harry nodded silently and thoughtfully. Unless they knew what the key was, any information that Harry managed to find would be useless. "Have you found anything?" Harry asked.
"For the most part I've found only info on weak non-Dark objects. I've run into a little bit about Dark objects but not much." Ginny answered. "I just thought that I might as well cover potential Dark objects. My problem is that I can't find anything that comes before Arthur except for one thing."
"Oh? What is it?" Harry inquired.
"It doesn't really matter, its power is broken. It was a Dark object." Ginny responded.
"It's still your only discovery," Harry pointed out. "It might be useful to hear about it."
"All right then," Ginny sighed. She replaced the book she had been reading and pulled another from her bag. She opened this to a marked page and continued, "This paragraph begins right after the book explains about how magical artifacts were tied to power." She began to read:
Perhaps the very most powerful and omnipotent magical artifact to exist in the pre-Arthurian period was the Dark staff of power named Nosyl Sharod. Many of the evil sorcerers who wielded its awesome power either died of natural causes or were defeated eventually. In either case the staff would be lost despite the best efforts by the good magical people to find it and destroy it. Time would pass, leaving Nosyl Sharod forgotten until a aspiring Dark sorcerer would find or be attracted to it.
The most notable Dark sorcerer to wield Nosyl Sharod was one by the name of Calayl. Despite the fact that Calayl was a rather shallow person, and not all that powerful or intelligent, he ruled the land with horror and cruelness drawing power from the staff. Few even hoped that his reign would come to an end, for it seemed that the staff was capable of expanding one's life if it was deeply enough embedded within the person's soul. Few did know that there was hope in fact.
After nearly a century of Calayl's reign a young sorcerer, or rather mage, (this fact is rather debated) came to the land from the far north. He began to stir up the oppressed population against Calayl. This unexpected rebellion had caught Calayl off his guard, yet he was not worried. In his view Nosyl Sharod was omnipotent and none could match its power. If Calayl had but known one thing, perhaps his Dark Empire could have been saved. The young mage and leader of the rebellion wielded Nosyl Sharod's sister-staff.
"Sister-staff?" Harry cut in excitedly. "Was it good or bad?"
Ginny shrugged, "I'm not sure, I think it was good. The book says that the sister-staff was able to defeat Nosyl Sharod because it was just as powerful but its power was different somehow and could do something against the evil."
"Did you find out anything else about the staff, its name perhaps?"
"I'm sorry, but I didn't," Ginny answered. "This book is the only one that even refers to it. The author of the book reckons that like you said, powerful objects have personalities, or rather, character. He thinks that Nosyl Sharod's sister staff is um, well. . . shy."
"I suppose that makes it a very difficult staff to find then." Harry mused. "Was there anything else about Nosyl Sharod."
"A little," Ginny replied. "The book just goes on to say that the young mage faced Calayl and the sister-staff ripped apart every single fiber of his being and destroyed it. The reason that Nosyl Sharod was not lost is because it was so deeply ingrained into Calayl's soul that when he was blown from existence the staff's power was broken. It also says that, and I quote "rumor has it that some of the pieces of Nosyl Sharod are still around, passed on from one Dark Lord to another as a symbol of power."
Harry sat up quickly. "What! I thought that it was obliterated leaving nothing behind."
"Its power is broken Harry," Ginny reassured him. "There's nothing to worry about."
"Yes there is!" Harry exclaimed. "It was something that I read but dismissed earlier. . ."
Ginny leaned forward towards Harry. "What was it?"
"Something about the relations between magical objects but I'm not sure. I'd have to go into it more deeply though."
"Well that's your job isn't it?"
"I suppose so. . ." Harry said absently.
* * * * * * *
"So did you two find out anything interesting?" Harry asked quietly as they sat in NEWT Transfiguration attempting to transform their textbooks into animals. Their goal was to get the largest animal possible. Hermione had succeeded in transforming her textbook into a cat. Ron was having trouble and Harry had not gotten around to it yet.
Hermione shook her head and sighed. "Nothing worthwhile. There was one reference and that's all."
"What was it?" Ron asked as he frowned at his furry textbook.
"Well it mentioned Seilftrist in connection with. . . with. . . some strange name. Funny. . . for some reason I can't remember what it was." Hermione said slowly as she tried to remember.
"What do you mean you can't remember?" Harry asked. "You never forget information."
"I know that, but I just can't remember anymore. The book said that Seilftrist and whatever the name was, or who, did something. . . I think that maybe it was another magical person. I kind of remember the word 'lady' in association with it." Hermione said, beginning to sound confused.
"What book was it?" Ron pressed.
"I can't even remember that. . ." Hermione continued hopelessly.
Harry sighed. "It'll probably come to you later." For some reason he felt a great amount of doubt. He reached out his wand and tapped his textbook absently and hardly noticed when everyone jumped back from the giant stag that appeared on the desktop. The next Quidditch match was coming up and all this research was getting rather difficult.