Chapter Twenty One: Ride the Lightening
As it was, lunch was practically over by the time Lucy and Warren had checked the final items off the list and began to haul the large, full, heavy jars into their proper dungeons. Warren took A, and Lucy trudged off down the hall and around the corner to Dungeon B.
She never saw it coming. One moment she was focusing on keeping the jar with the entrails she had just pickled out from under her nose, and the next she was lying flat on her back, watching in unspeakable horror as too many hours of hard and smelly work flew out of her grasp and into the air.
"Immobulus!" The sound came from behind her, and Lucy watched in fascination as the jars froze in the air before scrambling to her feet, whipping about, and coming face to face with Hermione Granger.
"What are you doing?" They both asked at once.
"I am paying my debt to society, or so I've been told," Lucy grumbled as she carefully plucked jars from the air and placed them on the ground. "What are YOU doing here?"
"Your debt to society?"
"This is part of my sentence for ducking the system in January. Snape is in charge of all Gryffindor offenders, and Warren and I spent all morning and all lunch prepping this stuff."
"I'm really sorry Lucy, I'll give you a hand, where are you taking all this?"
"Dungeon B but-"
Before she could question Hermione any further the clever witch had scooped up half the ingredients and hurried away down the hall. By the time Lucy arrived the jars were neatly arranged in the supply cupboard and Hermione was nowhere in sight.
Now what on earth was that all about?
She shut the cabinet door and hurried back through the damp halls towards the ground floor. If she took the shortcut through the BA classroom she could pick up her materials for Care of Magical Creatures, grab a bite to eat from Lynx's stash in the bookcase, and still make it to Hagrid's class on time.
No sooner had she come out from behind the bookcase than she knew THAT plan was definitely not in the cards. Bet was white as a sheet, and laying down on the sofa, her legs dangling over one arm. Lynx was next to her on an overstuffed chair, a cloth over his forehead. Rasheph was crossed legged on the floor, massaging his temples.
"What's going on?"
Bet picked her head up, "We were sort of hoping you could tell us. This thing sort of hit us during lunch...I tried to find you, but DOING anything just seemed to make it worse."
"Make what worse?" Lucy sat on the edge of the table, mystified.
"The headache, the spine wrenching, brain twisting headaches Lucy, are you telling me you honestly don't feel it?" Lynx looked at her in disbelief.
Lucy shook her head, then very carefully peeled away several of her outer shields.
And was hit with the sensation that a little man was inside of her skull with a chainsaw, working his way out. She swore colorfully in Spanish before slamming the shields back up.
"Have you tried reinforcing your shielding?"
Rasheph nodded, "They got completely wiped out. Trying anything now just seems to make it worse."
"Sounds like whatever this was it bruised your channels, hang on." Lucy grounded and centered before carefully imposing the strongest outer shields she could muster over the three suffering students.
Bet sighed, "You can have my firstborn if you promise never to take that away."
Lynx leaned back against the chair, "So why didn't this hurt you, Rasputin?"
Lucy thought for a moment. "I was with Snape all morning and most of lunch, or at least, he threatened to pop in during those times, and I always have my shielding up more vigilantly when I'm around him, gut instinct. The initial whatever this was must have been some release of energy if it affected your channels, but I'm not sure how the hell it targeted us. I don't know of anything that could do that, not even gates backfiring affect everyone, just the person making the gate. That's the only energy backlash I know of."
"But its still going on, you felt it just now, didn't you?"
"Yes, I felt it."
Rasheph lay down on the blessedly cool stone floor, too tired to move. "It's a lucky thing for us that you got here, I was about to vomit, this is worse New Year's fifth year when Keegan MacMurchadha tried out the new distillation spell and we all got schnockered."
Lynx's ears perked up, "She found a better one than Lactusdehydrogenous?"
Rasheph smiled fondly, "Oh yeah, water to 150 proof in less than five minutes."
"Wow," Lynx's eyes glazed over a bite as he imagined the possibilities.
"Leaves you with a nasty hangover, especially since I didn't have Keegan's fabulous Irish tolerance for alcohol and she got a disproportionate amount of pleasure from pitiful state in which I spent the first moments of the year."
Lucy rolled her eyes, she thought it rather strange that the Irish were so proud of their ability to drink massive quantities of beer without falling down. Aislan had often boasted of it, and she had ask Seamus once-
Seamus. Shit.
"I have to go," she blurted out suddenly, grabbed her satchel, and bolted up the stairs.
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Gryffindor tower was normally quiet at this time of day, only disturbed by students dashing in to retrieve a forgotten quill or misplaced homework assignment before dashing off to the next class. But when Lucy entered, the normally tranquil state of the common room was being disturbed by what sounded like the mother of all rows coming from the 6th year boys' dormitory. Which was, sadly, exactly where she was headed.
"You ruined it, why? I just don't understand Hermione, why?"
"For your own good! Don't you two see what could have happened?"
"No, because you never tell me anything, or Harry for that matter! You say you are going to help, and then you find that THING and it becomes like an obsession!"
"It is NOT-"
"I don't care! You can live down there if you want to, but why did you have to go and spoil everything we worked for, I just don't understand Hermione!"
"You COULD HAVE KILLED YOURSELVES! Don't YOU get it? Mucking about with that stuff, not knowing what you were doing, you could have DIED!"
"Oh, I see, so just because YOU weren't helping us, Harry and I were automatically going to fail, that's it?"
Lucy was feeling rather uncomfortable standing in the doorway like this, so she rapped rather loudly on the doorjamb. Hermione and Ron's heads swiveled in her direction.
"Er, I was looking for Seamus?"
Harry, whom she hadn't noticed, sitting so quietly and solemnly on the edge of the bed, pointed towards Seamus's drawn curtains. "He came up during lunch, I think."
"And he's been asking you screeching harpies to bugger off since you walked in the door. Can't you go fight in Hermione's room for a change?" Everyone jumped a bit at the sullen softly muffled voice from behind the curtains.
Hermione gave everyone a withering stare and stormed out, with Ron following her indignantly. Several moments later a slam was heard and a muffled repeat of what Lucy had walked in on ensued.
Harry collapsed on his bed with his shoes still on. Since Lucy had received no further invitation from the boy behind the curtain, she simply sighed, grounded and centered, focused on Seamus, and pulled a sturdy shield around him. She closed the door when she left, gathered her nerve as she drew toward the sound of the melee taking place in her own room as she opened the door.
"WHAT?" Was the angry response to her presence.
"Just needed to get my books," she muttered, searching about under the bed for the proper scrolls and notebooks before beating a hasty retreat to the door, backing out to make sure she wasn't hit with a curse in the back, and closing it behind her.
When she turned around, Seamus was standing before her, looking a bit lost.
"Thanks."
Lucy shifted awkwardly. "You're welcome."
"You look all right."
Lucy nodded, "It didn't really affect me, I had a lot of shields up," she answered lamely.
"Then, how did you know..."
"The BA got hit pretty hard, it was as I was reinforcing them that I realized you were probably in a similar state."
"Felt like I'd been hit by a bloody bludger to the head...make that a couple dozen bludgers to the head, continuously."
Lucy had to smile at that, but she stopped when Seamus abruptly dropped his.
"What is it?"
"You mean, you're putting up shields on all of us?"
"Well I couldn't very well leave you the way I found you now could I?"
"Lucy, you can't possibly keep that up all day, you'll pass out."
"I'm hoping I won't have to, if I can find what caused it."
"So I take it this isn't natural?"
Lucy shook her head, "Not at all, someone has been mucking about with something pretty powerful-"
She paused, mucking about, when had she heard that phrase today....
"Hermione."
Her first thought was to confront Hermione directly, but from the sounds coming out of her room, that sounded like a very good way to get her nose hexed off. That left only one person to go to.
"Harry? Harry? Harry please get up."
"Geerofffeevgotfivemoreminutes."
"Harry!"
Harry sat straight up. "What?"
"Harry, this is really important, I need to know exactly what Hermione was doing that made you so mad."
"Lucy, that's really none of your business."
"Yes it is. Listen, something bad has happened, really bad, and I need to know what Hermione was mucking about with because that might be where the problem is."
"Mucking about?"
"Yes," Lucy was getting exasperated, "Ron was yelling at her about mucking about down somewhere with something. I need to know what that was."
Harry looked a bit confused, then, "Oh, the whodoeswhatsit."
"That what?"
"The Thing, the Thing Hermione found, we had no idea what it did, so we called it the whodoeswhatsit."
"Where is the whodoeswhatsit?"
"Down in the dungeons somewhere, where we were working."
The dungeons, where Hermione had run into to her earlier today and then rushed off, right around the time the BA said that the disturbance occurred. It couldn't be a coincidence.
"Can you show me where it is?"
"It's supposed to be a secret."
"But you aren't working down there anymore, right? Hermione messed up whatever it is you were working on?"
Harry groaned, "Don't remind me. Fine, fine, I'll show you. I have to clean up anyway."
"Clean up?"
"Uh huh. I'm bollocks with potions, so that's what I do, I clean up."
As she followed him out of the common room Lucy tried to understand how a potion figured into all this.
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"How did you even find this place?" Lucy coughed as she kicked dust up along the dark and very creepy corridor she was struggling to follow Harry down.
"Hermione found it when she was trying to avoid Mrs. Norris after a trip to the restricted section of the library. She's getting surprisingly good at slipping around the castle. Moaning Myrtle's bathroom was our usual spot, but you can never be sure anymore, once everyone heard how little people went in there, a lot of people started going in there. Don't ask me why, these things are a complete mystery to me. But we couldn't very well have a bunch of people lurking about, we'd get caught, so...here it is." Harry pushed a door in to the right, and Lucy almost tripped following him in, there were five steep steps that led down into the room he had forgotten to warn her about.
"Oops, watch your step there."
"Thanks," Lucy grumbled, reminding herself she hadn't eaten was holding shields on four people, and it would be a very bad idea to lose control of her temper now.
Harry had lit the lanterns and was busy putting various bottles and papers and other bottles into one of five cauldrons that sat around the room on top of large jars.
"What's with the jars?"
"Oh, they held Hermione's portable fires, she didn't trust using the fireplace to brew anything, it doesn't look like its been used in the past century, might make a mess or worse, attract Mrs. Norris."
"So where is the whodoeswhatsit?"
Harry tugged a rug aside, revealing a trap door. "Down there, Hermione found it months and months ago. It's kind of creepy, Ron positively hates it."
Lucy tugged the door open, to reveal a ladder of sorts carved into the stone wall that disappeared into the dark. She lit her wand, held her breath, and descended. After about seven feet she found herself in round chamber with a rather low ceiling. Her wand wouldn't illuminate quite all of it, but there were carvings on the walls, carvings that looked strangely familiar.
As she followed a particular set down the wall, she noticed the floor. It appeard to be solid stone, but the light from her wand glinted off of a piece about 6 inches wide that didn't match the rest. The color was slightly off. As she followed it, she found the jet black stone made a perfect circle, about seven feet in diameter, in the middle of the room. She touched it, and felt a surge.
It was a power circle, a circle of protection and utility, like the one on the floor in Asriel's workroom. But this was different. It wasn't active, at least not in the traditional sense; she could touch it and cross it without any problem. And this was not a workroom, or at least it didn't feel like one. As she paced the circle she noticed the carvings from the walls were also in the floor inside the circle, spiraling inward to the center...
Where there appeared to be a piece missing. In the very center of the circle there was an indentation, as if someone had lifted out a circular piece of stone, about a foot in diameter and three inches thick. In the middle of the depression there was another one, but this one was familiar to Lucy. It was hemisphereical in shape, and about 5 inches in diameter, as if a sphere had been resting in the stone, half embedded in the floor, and the other half inside the missing slab. It looked like the hole in the wall the Maintainers had shown Lucy when they were examining the destroyed locus stone.
But why would there be a locus stone at Hogwarts?
And where the hell was it now?
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**You're certain?**
**Yes.**
**Absolutely certain?**
**Yes.**
**Because, you know, you've only ever really seen the Espiritu stone and-**
**It's a locus stone Faustas, or was. I have no idea where it is now, but I know it was there.**
**What does that mean for this school?**
**You were supposed to tell me!**
**I know what it means for a normal school, Lucy, but Hogwarts was never connected to the Web of the Circle, you would have felt it the minute you set foot here, we would have sensed its presence. So whatever was in that hole was not a normal locus stone. There might not have been a stone at all, but some sort of concentrated energy...it was a very ancient method... Well it was some kind of locus, because it has wreaked havoc on the energy lines around here. If I had my way there'd be a squad of Maintainers out here within the hour to fix all this.**
**And just how to you propose to bring them in, ask the headmaster?**
**This is beyond you Lucy, we don't even know what went wrong.**
**I know.**
**You can't keep shields up on those kids forever, you know that, you must be feeling that.**
**I know.**
**So you have a better idea than bringing in the Maintainers to fix it?**
**And blow the low profile I've been trying to maintain here? The second the Maintainers desheild around here they are going to be hit with the Hogwarts Sick, and then they'll be no good to fix the problem, and I will have to go explain this thing to some council, and they'll never let be come back next year, they'll send me to Siberia to do sampling and I'll never be tan again.**
She heard Faustas's mental sigh. **The Hogwarts Sick?**
**Abraham told me about it. That nausea I get whenever I sink too deep into the energy pool around here. He felt it when he was putting me through the final trial last year, but he didn't need to dredge up any large pools of energy from around here, he could pull from his school. But Maintainers don't do that, right?**
**If they did, they would disrupt the natural flows of energy around their home school. As a rule, power of that magnitude is drawn from the area being treated, and Maintainers almost always use large power resources on restoration projects.**
**They can't do that around here.**
**Not unless you help them.**
**What on earth could a 2nd year Master do to help them?**
**Well, querida, you don't become incapacitated from the "Howarts Sick" do you?**
**I get sick enough, I hurl almost every time I touch that thing.**
**If you can take it, so can they.**
**They would be digging a lot deeper than I have gone, and did you not hear the rest of what I said?**
**What do you want me to do chica? I want to bring in the Circle, you say no, so who than? Don't tell me you can handle it yourself, because you can't.**
**I need to find out what happened.**
**I agree, that would be nice.**
**I need to find Hermione.**
The conversation came an end as Lucy arrived outside Hagrid's hut just in time for the beginning of class. Harry and Ron were standing off to the left with Dean and Neville. Hermione was huddled with Lavender and Parvati, her head tucked down to shelter from the wind.
The wind. It was howling something fierce, and large thunderhead clouds were sweeping across the lake toward the castle. It was the early afternoon, but if you didn't know that you would have thought it was dusk. Lucy eyed the approaching storm with the Sight. Even a novice would have been able to tell this was no natural storm, but a magical one, created when an elemental change so great has occured that the only way for the energy to discharge is in violent weather. She pulled her cloak a little closer around her, gave Bet a weak smile where she stood with the Slytherins, in the wind shadow of Hagrid's house, and made her way over to Hermione.
"I need to talk to you."
Hermione was busy glaring at Harry and Ron. "Not now Lucy, this really isn't a good time."
Now Lucy was starting to get angry. She had learned that the special relationship the trio had was something that no one else would ever be able to penetrate, but they could be so self-absorbed at times that it drove her mad. She spun Hermione back around to face the lake and pointed to the sky.
"See that? THAT is not going to pass through like the others, there will be another one behind it, and another one behind THAT, until we find a way to fix whatever it is you did. Now talk!"
Lavender and Parvati took a step back from Lucy, who pulled Hermione aside.
Hermione struggled against the arm. "Let go of my arm Lucy, there's no need to worry that I'll run away."
Lucy dropped it. "What happened today? In the secret little room, the one Harry showed me, what happened?"
"Harry showed you?"
Lucy rolled her eyes. "I made him, now could you please forget your little fight and concentrate, this is kind of an emergency."
As if to emphasize her point, at that instant a bolt of lightening lit up the sky over the lake, followed sharply by a deafening crack of thunder.
Hagrid emerged from the forest, a bit surprised to see them. "What ere ya doin here? Don't ya see the sky? Get back up to the school and be smart about it, no class today I have too much to tie down!"
Needing no further prompting, the students raced for the castle as another lightening strike over the forest punctuated the meaning of Hagrid's words.
Lucy pulled Hermione aside once they were safely indoors. "Come on, you're taking me back to the room and you are showing me what happened."
Hermoine, a little spooked, nodded, and the girls quietly diverged from the flow of Slytherin students chattering happily back to their common room.
"Well?" She asked, when they were standing in the strange little room again.
Hermione sighed, "I didn't know what was going to happen."
"What do you mean?"
"There used to be a round tablet of stone, in the floor, just there. It was red stone, covered with writing."
Lucy had a growing fear of apprehension. "What happened to it, what happened today?"
"I picked it up, turned it over...and it shattered."
Lucy had no idea what that meant, at the moment she was more concerned about a possible locus stone.
"What about the indentation underneath it?"
Hermione shook her head. "That was empty when I picked it up today."
Lucy paused, "Why did you remove the tablet?"
Hermione nodded. "I was trying to translate it, and I had finished copying the top, but the writing ran along the sides and onto the bottom. It took me a while, but today I finally succeeded in turning it over."
"You hadn't done that before today?"
Hermione shook her head. "I was too busy trying to make out the top side, but then I decided it would be easier if I had the whole text, so I pried it up, I had just copied the back, when it shattered. In my hands, cracks started to spread all over and it just, dissolved."
Lucy tried to take it all in, and leaned against the wall.
"Lucy, what's going on?"
Lucy shrugged, "I really have no clue, but the energy around here is completely out of control. That storm building outside is just one of the affects. I have no idea what to do about it...but I'd like a look at that translation."
Hermione nodded. "I keep it locked up in the trunk in my room, come on."
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There were several pages. Hermione had first sketched exactly as she saw, and then copied down the letters straight out on several long sheets of parchment. Lucy ran her fingertips over the writing. It looked familiar, but old. It was not Quechua, not Spanish or Aramaic...but she had seen some of those same characters before. The characters had been in stone, on the back of an ancient mirror. Seamus' long forgotton Christmas present. Those inscriptions had given the mirror its power, Lucy remembered that much about ancient things. What had these done?
"Can I take these?" Knowing it was not really a request, Hermione nodded.
"What's happened Lucy?"
She paused on her way out of the door, "I'm not sure. But I'm going to find out."
The wind was howling through every chink in the castle, causing nasty drafts to turn the hallways icy cold. Lucy hurried as fast as she could to the BA room, grabbed the mirror from the mantle, and made her way to Asriel's workroom. She poured through the notebooks, knowing he had one in here on the ancient tongues of this region, she had read this stuff before.
Brythonic, the script was Brythonic, or some form of it. Heedless of the hour or whatever it was she knew she was supposed to be doing, Lucy took out a clean notebook, and stretched out on the floor with Hermione and Asriel's note before her to begin the painstaking process of translation.
It took hours, Lucy's neck and shoulders screamed with the uncomfortable position they had been forced into, but the stormclouds building over the lake and the gales she knew were buffeting Gryffindor Tower as she worked kept her awake and alert. Progress was made slower by the fact that Asriel had kept his notes in a variety of languages, and Lucy had the luck of finding one of the few books that had not been taken down in Spanish or Portuguese, or any Romance language, for that matter. It was Quechua, the bane of her existence, and her lack of proficiency in THAT language meant she had to quadruple check every phrase she did.
She had completed half a page, and read it over to find it made absolutely no structural sense. She stared at the heap of papers before her, she was working in the middle of the room, and documents radiated away from her in all directions. The effect was enough to make her dizzy.
Dizzy...round, that was why the translation didn't make sense, it was written circularly. She scrambled to find Hermione's sketch of the script as it was written on the disk, and began to fit the translation as closely as possible to the physical layout of the Brythonic text. The line breaks in Hermione's straight copy had been in the wrong place, she had started her text in what was really the middle. Lucy found the beginning, and began to read...
"Holy shit," she gathered up the papers, shoved them in her satchel, and ran from Don Asriel's room as fast as she could manage.
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"You were puttering about with this stuff for quite awhile, weren't you Hermione?" Lucy burst back into the bedroom and shut the door roughly. Without giving Hermione a chance to answer she tossed the papers on the bed.
"I translated it, all of it, and then re-translated. That room, all of it, forms the basis of the wards that surround Hogwarts. So far I've figured out that whatever makes the place LOOK different to Muggles has not been affected, but that could be because it is an illusion and not an active repellent. THAT PLACE you've been poking about in is another story. I went back, there are spells carved all over the walls in a half a dozen languages. And there wasn't any dust on them, someone has been poking at them, so spill, how long have you been fiddling around in there?"
Hermione ran her hands through her hair. "Over the Easter holidays, we needed a new room to work in, I stumbled across that one-"
Lucy glared at her.
"Fine. I knew about the room, I mean, I knew it existed, I wasn't trying to hurt anyone, I thought I might be able to find something there that I could use to help Harry...the boys didn't know of course, they thought I was just going to use the space to work on the animagus project-"
"The what?"
Hermione groaned. "The bane of my existence. Harry's father, and his godfather became animagus when they were at Hogwarts, to help a friend. Harry has been obsessed ever since he found out about it. He wanted to try it so badly, but he and Ron just couldn't make it work, so finally they asked me. I couldn't say no to that face, so I told them I would help.
" I did the research, I poured through the restricted section, I experimented, but I kept coming back to them with bad news. I mean, there is a reason why most people are not animagi, it is hard to do! We would row and make up and then we would try something else and get to a certain point where I would put my foot down because it was too dangerous and then we would row again. We decided to stop, or at least, I thought we had. Then I found out that they hadn't, they had gone on without me, they were thisclose to nearly killing themselves! It was partly my fault, I had found the spell room. They knew I was interested, but when we stopped working on the potion, curiosity got the best of me. First I just looked, but then I started to poke around, try to look under tablets that were clearly written on both sides, it was a compulsion, I HAD to."
Lucy was speechless. But the animagus potion story did explain a good deal about hysterical crying and crabby Hermione and sulky Ron and Harry and loud shouting matches between them.
"You didn't start to really fiddle till Easter break though?"
Hermione nodded, "It was the only period when I had enough time apart from school work."
That corresponded to the time that Rasheph and Bet had said the strange weather, which Lucy was certain was magically altered weather, had started up. No one had been working weather magic, Hermione had unconsciously been shifting something so powerful that it had changed the energy concentration of the area, and the weather had resulted, a means to restore equilibrium, and a violent one at that.
A clap of thunder outside brought her back to the current situation, and the other serious ramification of the dissolved tablet. She began to talk fast, explaining to Hermione about the mage-storms, and about what happened when the tablet dissolved.
Hermione stared at her open-mouthed. "It's impossible."
"It's happening, and we need to stop it fast."
"We?"
"Well, you did it, and frankly you're the only I know of around here smart enough to fix it."
"I'm still not convinced."
Lucy groaned, "I don't have time to convince you Hermione, I don't have any books on hand to back this up, but THAT," Lucy threw an arm toward the window, which, in perfect dramatic timing, lit up with and accompanying clap of thunder, "is only going to get worse, I have a limited amount of time before I pass out to fix this and I don't think I can do it myself. But I think you would agree that this is the sort of thing that needs to be kept as quiet as possible?"
Hermione nodded. "I'm sorry, it's just...we need to see Dumbledore, now."
Lucy nodded, "I think I ought to pick some stuff up first."
Fifteen minutes later, after a sprint through the castle to recover the ancient mirror Seamus had given her, Lucy was standing outside the entrance to Dumbledore's office. Faustas had given her plenty of grief about the fact that he had suggested this hours ago, Lucy told him to shut up.
Professor McGonagall was by their side, mostly because Hermione thought that this warranted the use of the chain of command. The deputy headmistress spoke the password, and the girls followed her up. Lucy was under strict instructions from Hermione not to say a word if possible, which didn't bother her in the least. The less she spoke, the less likely it was that Dumbledore, McGonagall, or even Hermione find out about the BA. Her part was to explain how the disappearance of the tablet had affected her "senses," Hermione thought that was an important point, and a surprising one since it indicated that some kind of western magic had been involved. Lucy was impressed; Hermione had recovered herself completely and seemed totally without fear. Had Lucy not been shielded as tightly as possible, and shielding four other people at distance, even her weak empathetic sense would have told her that the prefect was terrified.
They followed McGonagall in, and remained standing in front of the headmaster's desk.
"How may I help you Miss Granger, Miss Montero?"
"Something rather serious has occurred, sir," Hermione said clearly, in a voice that only quivered a bit.
"Indeed?" The headmaster remained unconcerned.
Hermione went on to explain, in a slightly altered version, which left out any mention of the secret animagus project, her discovery of the tablet and its subsequent destruction.
"While regrettable, Miss Granger, that was clearly an accident."
Hermione sighed in frustration, "But you see sir, Lucy translated what I had copied from the tablet, and we discovered sir that it had an very important purpose."
To Lucy's bewilderment, the headmaster seemed slightly amused, and not in the least perturbed. "And what would that be, Miss Montero?"
Lucy laid her translation before him. "It was the anchoring point for the ancient Hogwarts wards, sir. The magical barriers that prevent anyone from gating or apperating in and out of the school. It must have been set very long ago sir, because the practice of tying a spell of that magnitude to a physical object-"
"Has not been practiced in a very long time. But it had its uses, you see Miss Montero. The people who designed those wards knew their effectiveness would only last if it was impossible for them to be tampered with. So they were hidden. They needed the spell to last as long as the school stood, so it had to be based on something that would endure, in this case, a peculiar type of stone. Surely you, Miss Montero, are familiar with the idea of a stone being the focus of magical energy?"
Lucy nodded, "Its a little like a locus stone, sir, but our locus stones don't create, they are not a source, only a focal point that connects us to a web of energy."
"And what makes you think that Miss Granger's tablet is any different?"
Lucy went to speak, but found she had nothing to refute that with. She stared for a moment at the headmaster's face.
"You knew already."
Dumbledore nodded, "The moment the tablet was crushed."
"But why didn't you-"
"Tell anyone? You of all people should understand that, Miss Montero. The importance of guarding information?"
Lucy didn't answer Hermione's look, but nodded as Dumbledore continued.
"I could not predict when the wards would fall, but I knew they were being sought out, and not by the accidental discovery of Miss Granger. For didn't you find it odd that you seemed the first person in centuries to have found that room? While you are one of the cleverest students to grace Hogwarts' halls in many years, surely you were wise enough not to believe you were the only one clever enough to discover it?"
Hermione nodded, "I had wondered how no one had ever found it before."
"The answer is because it was guarded by a series of illusions and protections that relied on ignorance. If no one knew that the room existed, no one would ever find it. For centuries the entrance could have remained uncovered, it could have had a sign written on it in bright red letters, and no one would have noticed it. And no one ever did. The room could only be discovered by those who knew it existed, and had some idea of where it was, and even then, it would take time."
"But I didn't know it was there, and I didn't know where it was!"
Dumbledore smiled, "No, you didn't. But I imagine that by the time you discovered the room, most of the protections and guards had been worn away by the search efforts of those who had a vague idea of what was in the room, and where it was. You simply got there first, and I, for one, and glad that you did."
Hermione was confused, "Sir?"
Dumbledore sighed. "We have had, unfortunately, some visitors to the school this past year that I could not keep out, not if I didn't want to have to leave for a time and to be honest, I was far too busy to really argue. I regret that," he looked at Lucy as he spoke, "I sincerely regret that. The result was some 60 odd students in my charge were bullied and harassed and scrutinized through no fault of their own and at the urging of the Ministry of Magic."
Lucy's forehead wrinkled, "What does that have to do with this?"
"I'm getting to that, Miss Montero. After the incident on Halloween, there was a request for further investigation. I believed, knew, that any further prying would turn up nothing; no students of mine were planning an attack on the Ministry in the near future, so I permitted our visitors access through the end of the term. They appeared to be doing just as they said, looking into the habits and behavior of the students. I didn't tell the students, as Miss Montero will tell you, because I thought any protest on their part would give fuel to the delusion that they were a threat. I did not wholly anticipate how they would respond, and, in retrospect, much might have been avoided had I been forthcoming. But the Ministry wished it to be secret and such is the penalty for secrecy." Another look at Lucy.
"But what they were looking for did not turn out to be a secret group of terrorist students bent on destruction. As became cleared after the start of the spring term, what the visitors had been looking for was the very room that Hermione found. For, to look for the room, and in the right place, begins to wear away the wards, they were designed that way so that the original creators could adjust them. Those creators depended on the fact that no one would know about the room once they were gone as a means to protect it. And no one came looking for it knew the truth about it until a few months ago. They wore down the guards to the point that a sensitive and observant witch, who WAS looking for a hidden room, if not that room in particular, the desire was enough to allow Hermione to find it."
Hermione nodded, in that slow way she did when she was processing things, "And the tablet?"
"Was not meant to be touched, picked up, or disconnected from the room in which it was placed, and when it was, it lost its energy and dissolved, dissolving the spell. The stone in that room is fused to the stone that forms the castle all the way down to the bedrock of the earth. Should Hogwarts collapse, that column would still stand."
"Like a locus stone," Lucy said softly.
"Exactly so, Miss Montero. But without the stone."
"So this can be fixed?" Hermione said hopefully.
"Yes, Miss Granger. Which is why I am particularly grateful that Miss Montero is with you. For I have notified and expect soon the arrival of the people I know that can reset the wards, but I have the feeling that is not the entire scope of the problem." He raised his eyebrows toward Lucy.
Lucy had forgotten that Dumbledore had traces of Gifts, probably more than traces, he simply did not practice. But anyone with a partially open channel would have felt the impact. It did not seem to be bothering him much.
"I felt something initially, and then it faded away, but I suspect I am not understanding the entire scope as you would," he stated, in response to the question in her eyes.
"Whatever the wards were, they must have been very old, because their destruction has wreaked havoc, to use simple terms, on the flow of energy. It's painful, to be frank, sir, and I don't know how to fix it."
"I suspect that is due to the fact that the wards were built with a combination of eastern and western magic."
Lucy stared at him.
"They must be very old."
"Quite, Miss Montero, for that room is in what would have been the very first castle Hogwarts, before the additions let it grow to what it is now. The wards have been set from the very first days of the school, when the outside world was a dangerous place and, as today, not all wizards were good. The illusion that protects the castle from Muggle eyes was set much later, in a different fashion, and therefore-"
"Remains unaffected," Hermione finished.
"Correct, Miss Granger. Now, Miss Montero, since you are the representative of your circle, what would you suggest?"
Lucy put her hand in her pocket, and curved her fingers around the mirror Seamus had given her. "A call for help, sir, from the Maintainers."
"Refresh me, if you will, on who they are."
"Well, its a guild, really, the Maintainers Guild, they fix things, put things back they way they were, energy lines and such, they would restore them back to the way they were before the wards went down."
"It seems a great deal of natural energy went into the wards then."
Lucy nodded, understanding. "They don't study eastern magic sir, but if western magic was a part of the wards then they would certainly help rebuild them."
Dumbledore smiled, "We shall see. As it is I have a very old friend from the Druidic School in the north that is on his way, we'll see what he can do before we put your Guild in the compromising position of working for the eastern circle, and for me in particular."
Lucy said nothing to the Look, but was relieved. It was going to be hard enough to persuade the guild to send Maintainers to this place, especially since these were the people who had seen first hand the destruction at Espiritu and Chadwicks. She was going to have to count on their unfailing sense of responsibility to heal the land to get them up here, she didn't want to try and get them to help protect the school as well.
"Thank you, sir."
"How soon will your friends be arriving Lucy?"
"As soon as they assemble I guess, they should be able to come here directly since the barrier is down."
Dumbledore nodded, "It might be best, don't you think, for them to perform their work before we reset the guards?"
Lucy nodded again.
"Good, good. Well then, I won't keep you any longer."
Lucy and Hermione turned to go.
"Oh Miss Granger, if you would, I have a few more questions for you."
Hermione paled just a bit, but gave Lucy a grim smile before turning back to the room. For her part, Lucy bolted for the stairs as fast as she could. She wasn't surprised Hermione was staying, she doubted Dumbledore hadn't noticed her dancing around why she was looking for a hidden room.
As it was, lunch was practically over by the time Lucy and Warren had checked the final items off the list and began to haul the large, full, heavy jars into their proper dungeons. Warren took A, and Lucy trudged off down the hall and around the corner to Dungeon B.
She never saw it coming. One moment she was focusing on keeping the jar with the entrails she had just pickled out from under her nose, and the next she was lying flat on her back, watching in unspeakable horror as too many hours of hard and smelly work flew out of her grasp and into the air.
"Immobulus!" The sound came from behind her, and Lucy watched in fascination as the jars froze in the air before scrambling to her feet, whipping about, and coming face to face with Hermione Granger.
"What are you doing?" They both asked at once.
"I am paying my debt to society, or so I've been told," Lucy grumbled as she carefully plucked jars from the air and placed them on the ground. "What are YOU doing here?"
"Your debt to society?"
"This is part of my sentence for ducking the system in January. Snape is in charge of all Gryffindor offenders, and Warren and I spent all morning and all lunch prepping this stuff."
"I'm really sorry Lucy, I'll give you a hand, where are you taking all this?"
"Dungeon B but-"
Before she could question Hermione any further the clever witch had scooped up half the ingredients and hurried away down the hall. By the time Lucy arrived the jars were neatly arranged in the supply cupboard and Hermione was nowhere in sight.
Now what on earth was that all about?
She shut the cabinet door and hurried back through the damp halls towards the ground floor. If she took the shortcut through the BA classroom she could pick up her materials for Care of Magical Creatures, grab a bite to eat from Lynx's stash in the bookcase, and still make it to Hagrid's class on time.
No sooner had she come out from behind the bookcase than she knew THAT plan was definitely not in the cards. Bet was white as a sheet, and laying down on the sofa, her legs dangling over one arm. Lynx was next to her on an overstuffed chair, a cloth over his forehead. Rasheph was crossed legged on the floor, massaging his temples.
"What's going on?"
Bet picked her head up, "We were sort of hoping you could tell us. This thing sort of hit us during lunch...I tried to find you, but DOING anything just seemed to make it worse."
"Make what worse?" Lucy sat on the edge of the table, mystified.
"The headache, the spine wrenching, brain twisting headaches Lucy, are you telling me you honestly don't feel it?" Lynx looked at her in disbelief.
Lucy shook her head, then very carefully peeled away several of her outer shields.
And was hit with the sensation that a little man was inside of her skull with a chainsaw, working his way out. She swore colorfully in Spanish before slamming the shields back up.
"Have you tried reinforcing your shielding?"
Rasheph nodded, "They got completely wiped out. Trying anything now just seems to make it worse."
"Sounds like whatever this was it bruised your channels, hang on." Lucy grounded and centered before carefully imposing the strongest outer shields she could muster over the three suffering students.
Bet sighed, "You can have my firstborn if you promise never to take that away."
Lynx leaned back against the chair, "So why didn't this hurt you, Rasputin?"
Lucy thought for a moment. "I was with Snape all morning and most of lunch, or at least, he threatened to pop in during those times, and I always have my shielding up more vigilantly when I'm around him, gut instinct. The initial whatever this was must have been some release of energy if it affected your channels, but I'm not sure how the hell it targeted us. I don't know of anything that could do that, not even gates backfiring affect everyone, just the person making the gate. That's the only energy backlash I know of."
"But its still going on, you felt it just now, didn't you?"
"Yes, I felt it."
Rasheph lay down on the blessedly cool stone floor, too tired to move. "It's a lucky thing for us that you got here, I was about to vomit, this is worse New Year's fifth year when Keegan MacMurchadha tried out the new distillation spell and we all got schnockered."
Lynx's ears perked up, "She found a better one than Lactusdehydrogenous?"
Rasheph smiled fondly, "Oh yeah, water to 150 proof in less than five minutes."
"Wow," Lynx's eyes glazed over a bite as he imagined the possibilities.
"Leaves you with a nasty hangover, especially since I didn't have Keegan's fabulous Irish tolerance for alcohol and she got a disproportionate amount of pleasure from pitiful state in which I spent the first moments of the year."
Lucy rolled her eyes, she thought it rather strange that the Irish were so proud of their ability to drink massive quantities of beer without falling down. Aislan had often boasted of it, and she had ask Seamus once-
Seamus. Shit.
"I have to go," she blurted out suddenly, grabbed her satchel, and bolted up the stairs.
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Gryffindor tower was normally quiet at this time of day, only disturbed by students dashing in to retrieve a forgotten quill or misplaced homework assignment before dashing off to the next class. But when Lucy entered, the normally tranquil state of the common room was being disturbed by what sounded like the mother of all rows coming from the 6th year boys' dormitory. Which was, sadly, exactly where she was headed.
"You ruined it, why? I just don't understand Hermione, why?"
"For your own good! Don't you two see what could have happened?"
"No, because you never tell me anything, or Harry for that matter! You say you are going to help, and then you find that THING and it becomes like an obsession!"
"It is NOT-"
"I don't care! You can live down there if you want to, but why did you have to go and spoil everything we worked for, I just don't understand Hermione!"
"You COULD HAVE KILLED YOURSELVES! Don't YOU get it? Mucking about with that stuff, not knowing what you were doing, you could have DIED!"
"Oh, I see, so just because YOU weren't helping us, Harry and I were automatically going to fail, that's it?"
Lucy was feeling rather uncomfortable standing in the doorway like this, so she rapped rather loudly on the doorjamb. Hermione and Ron's heads swiveled in her direction.
"Er, I was looking for Seamus?"
Harry, whom she hadn't noticed, sitting so quietly and solemnly on the edge of the bed, pointed towards Seamus's drawn curtains. "He came up during lunch, I think."
"And he's been asking you screeching harpies to bugger off since you walked in the door. Can't you go fight in Hermione's room for a change?" Everyone jumped a bit at the sullen softly muffled voice from behind the curtains.
Hermione gave everyone a withering stare and stormed out, with Ron following her indignantly. Several moments later a slam was heard and a muffled repeat of what Lucy had walked in on ensued.
Harry collapsed on his bed with his shoes still on. Since Lucy had received no further invitation from the boy behind the curtain, she simply sighed, grounded and centered, focused on Seamus, and pulled a sturdy shield around him. She closed the door when she left, gathered her nerve as she drew toward the sound of the melee taking place in her own room as she opened the door.
"WHAT?" Was the angry response to her presence.
"Just needed to get my books," she muttered, searching about under the bed for the proper scrolls and notebooks before beating a hasty retreat to the door, backing out to make sure she wasn't hit with a curse in the back, and closing it behind her.
When she turned around, Seamus was standing before her, looking a bit lost.
"Thanks."
Lucy shifted awkwardly. "You're welcome."
"You look all right."
Lucy nodded, "It didn't really affect me, I had a lot of shields up," she answered lamely.
"Then, how did you know..."
"The BA got hit pretty hard, it was as I was reinforcing them that I realized you were probably in a similar state."
"Felt like I'd been hit by a bloody bludger to the head...make that a couple dozen bludgers to the head, continuously."
Lucy had to smile at that, but she stopped when Seamus abruptly dropped his.
"What is it?"
"You mean, you're putting up shields on all of us?"
"Well I couldn't very well leave you the way I found you now could I?"
"Lucy, you can't possibly keep that up all day, you'll pass out."
"I'm hoping I won't have to, if I can find what caused it."
"So I take it this isn't natural?"
Lucy shook her head, "Not at all, someone has been mucking about with something pretty powerful-"
She paused, mucking about, when had she heard that phrase today....
"Hermione."
Her first thought was to confront Hermione directly, but from the sounds coming out of her room, that sounded like a very good way to get her nose hexed off. That left only one person to go to.
"Harry? Harry? Harry please get up."
"Geerofffeevgotfivemoreminutes."
"Harry!"
Harry sat straight up. "What?"
"Harry, this is really important, I need to know exactly what Hermione was doing that made you so mad."
"Lucy, that's really none of your business."
"Yes it is. Listen, something bad has happened, really bad, and I need to know what Hermione was mucking about with because that might be where the problem is."
"Mucking about?"
"Yes," Lucy was getting exasperated, "Ron was yelling at her about mucking about down somewhere with something. I need to know what that was."
Harry looked a bit confused, then, "Oh, the whodoeswhatsit."
"That what?"
"The Thing, the Thing Hermione found, we had no idea what it did, so we called it the whodoeswhatsit."
"Where is the whodoeswhatsit?"
"Down in the dungeons somewhere, where we were working."
The dungeons, where Hermione had run into to her earlier today and then rushed off, right around the time the BA said that the disturbance occurred. It couldn't be a coincidence.
"Can you show me where it is?"
"It's supposed to be a secret."
"But you aren't working down there anymore, right? Hermione messed up whatever it is you were working on?"
Harry groaned, "Don't remind me. Fine, fine, I'll show you. I have to clean up anyway."
"Clean up?"
"Uh huh. I'm bollocks with potions, so that's what I do, I clean up."
As she followed him out of the common room Lucy tried to understand how a potion figured into all this.
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"How did you even find this place?" Lucy coughed as she kicked dust up along the dark and very creepy corridor she was struggling to follow Harry down.
"Hermione found it when she was trying to avoid Mrs. Norris after a trip to the restricted section of the library. She's getting surprisingly good at slipping around the castle. Moaning Myrtle's bathroom was our usual spot, but you can never be sure anymore, once everyone heard how little people went in there, a lot of people started going in there. Don't ask me why, these things are a complete mystery to me. But we couldn't very well have a bunch of people lurking about, we'd get caught, so...here it is." Harry pushed a door in to the right, and Lucy almost tripped following him in, there were five steep steps that led down into the room he had forgotten to warn her about.
"Oops, watch your step there."
"Thanks," Lucy grumbled, reminding herself she hadn't eaten was holding shields on four people, and it would be a very bad idea to lose control of her temper now.
Harry had lit the lanterns and was busy putting various bottles and papers and other bottles into one of five cauldrons that sat around the room on top of large jars.
"What's with the jars?"
"Oh, they held Hermione's portable fires, she didn't trust using the fireplace to brew anything, it doesn't look like its been used in the past century, might make a mess or worse, attract Mrs. Norris."
"So where is the whodoeswhatsit?"
Harry tugged a rug aside, revealing a trap door. "Down there, Hermione found it months and months ago. It's kind of creepy, Ron positively hates it."
Lucy tugged the door open, to reveal a ladder of sorts carved into the stone wall that disappeared into the dark. She lit her wand, held her breath, and descended. After about seven feet she found herself in round chamber with a rather low ceiling. Her wand wouldn't illuminate quite all of it, but there were carvings on the walls, carvings that looked strangely familiar.
As she followed a particular set down the wall, she noticed the floor. It appeard to be solid stone, but the light from her wand glinted off of a piece about 6 inches wide that didn't match the rest. The color was slightly off. As she followed it, she found the jet black stone made a perfect circle, about seven feet in diameter, in the middle of the room. She touched it, and felt a surge.
It was a power circle, a circle of protection and utility, like the one on the floor in Asriel's workroom. But this was different. It wasn't active, at least not in the traditional sense; she could touch it and cross it without any problem. And this was not a workroom, or at least it didn't feel like one. As she paced the circle she noticed the carvings from the walls were also in the floor inside the circle, spiraling inward to the center...
Where there appeared to be a piece missing. In the very center of the circle there was an indentation, as if someone had lifted out a circular piece of stone, about a foot in diameter and three inches thick. In the middle of the depression there was another one, but this one was familiar to Lucy. It was hemisphereical in shape, and about 5 inches in diameter, as if a sphere had been resting in the stone, half embedded in the floor, and the other half inside the missing slab. It looked like the hole in the wall the Maintainers had shown Lucy when they were examining the destroyed locus stone.
But why would there be a locus stone at Hogwarts?
And where the hell was it now?
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**You're certain?**
**Yes.**
**Absolutely certain?**
**Yes.**
**Because, you know, you've only ever really seen the Espiritu stone and-**
**It's a locus stone Faustas, or was. I have no idea where it is now, but I know it was there.**
**What does that mean for this school?**
**You were supposed to tell me!**
**I know what it means for a normal school, Lucy, but Hogwarts was never connected to the Web of the Circle, you would have felt it the minute you set foot here, we would have sensed its presence. So whatever was in that hole was not a normal locus stone. There might not have been a stone at all, but some sort of concentrated energy...it was a very ancient method... Well it was some kind of locus, because it has wreaked havoc on the energy lines around here. If I had my way there'd be a squad of Maintainers out here within the hour to fix all this.**
**And just how to you propose to bring them in, ask the headmaster?**
**This is beyond you Lucy, we don't even know what went wrong.**
**I know.**
**You can't keep shields up on those kids forever, you know that, you must be feeling that.**
**I know.**
**So you have a better idea than bringing in the Maintainers to fix it?**
**And blow the low profile I've been trying to maintain here? The second the Maintainers desheild around here they are going to be hit with the Hogwarts Sick, and then they'll be no good to fix the problem, and I will have to go explain this thing to some council, and they'll never let be come back next year, they'll send me to Siberia to do sampling and I'll never be tan again.**
She heard Faustas's mental sigh. **The Hogwarts Sick?**
**Abraham told me about it. That nausea I get whenever I sink too deep into the energy pool around here. He felt it when he was putting me through the final trial last year, but he didn't need to dredge up any large pools of energy from around here, he could pull from his school. But Maintainers don't do that, right?**
**If they did, they would disrupt the natural flows of energy around their home school. As a rule, power of that magnitude is drawn from the area being treated, and Maintainers almost always use large power resources on restoration projects.**
**They can't do that around here.**
**Not unless you help them.**
**What on earth could a 2nd year Master do to help them?**
**Well, querida, you don't become incapacitated from the "Howarts Sick" do you?**
**I get sick enough, I hurl almost every time I touch that thing.**
**If you can take it, so can they.**
**They would be digging a lot deeper than I have gone, and did you not hear the rest of what I said?**
**What do you want me to do chica? I want to bring in the Circle, you say no, so who than? Don't tell me you can handle it yourself, because you can't.**
**I need to find out what happened.**
**I agree, that would be nice.**
**I need to find Hermione.**
The conversation came an end as Lucy arrived outside Hagrid's hut just in time for the beginning of class. Harry and Ron were standing off to the left with Dean and Neville. Hermione was huddled with Lavender and Parvati, her head tucked down to shelter from the wind.
The wind. It was howling something fierce, and large thunderhead clouds were sweeping across the lake toward the castle. It was the early afternoon, but if you didn't know that you would have thought it was dusk. Lucy eyed the approaching storm with the Sight. Even a novice would have been able to tell this was no natural storm, but a magical one, created when an elemental change so great has occured that the only way for the energy to discharge is in violent weather. She pulled her cloak a little closer around her, gave Bet a weak smile where she stood with the Slytherins, in the wind shadow of Hagrid's house, and made her way over to Hermione.
"I need to talk to you."
Hermione was busy glaring at Harry and Ron. "Not now Lucy, this really isn't a good time."
Now Lucy was starting to get angry. She had learned that the special relationship the trio had was something that no one else would ever be able to penetrate, but they could be so self-absorbed at times that it drove her mad. She spun Hermione back around to face the lake and pointed to the sky.
"See that? THAT is not going to pass through like the others, there will be another one behind it, and another one behind THAT, until we find a way to fix whatever it is you did. Now talk!"
Lavender and Parvati took a step back from Lucy, who pulled Hermione aside.
Hermione struggled against the arm. "Let go of my arm Lucy, there's no need to worry that I'll run away."
Lucy dropped it. "What happened today? In the secret little room, the one Harry showed me, what happened?"
"Harry showed you?"
Lucy rolled her eyes. "I made him, now could you please forget your little fight and concentrate, this is kind of an emergency."
As if to emphasize her point, at that instant a bolt of lightening lit up the sky over the lake, followed sharply by a deafening crack of thunder.
Hagrid emerged from the forest, a bit surprised to see them. "What ere ya doin here? Don't ya see the sky? Get back up to the school and be smart about it, no class today I have too much to tie down!"
Needing no further prompting, the students raced for the castle as another lightening strike over the forest punctuated the meaning of Hagrid's words.
Lucy pulled Hermione aside once they were safely indoors. "Come on, you're taking me back to the room and you are showing me what happened."
Hermoine, a little spooked, nodded, and the girls quietly diverged from the flow of Slytherin students chattering happily back to their common room.
"Well?" She asked, when they were standing in the strange little room again.
Hermione sighed, "I didn't know what was going to happen."
"What do you mean?"
"There used to be a round tablet of stone, in the floor, just there. It was red stone, covered with writing."
Lucy had a growing fear of apprehension. "What happened to it, what happened today?"
"I picked it up, turned it over...and it shattered."
Lucy had no idea what that meant, at the moment she was more concerned about a possible locus stone.
"What about the indentation underneath it?"
Hermione shook her head. "That was empty when I picked it up today."
Lucy paused, "Why did you remove the tablet?"
Hermione nodded. "I was trying to translate it, and I had finished copying the top, but the writing ran along the sides and onto the bottom. It took me a while, but today I finally succeeded in turning it over."
"You hadn't done that before today?"
Hermione shook her head. "I was too busy trying to make out the top side, but then I decided it would be easier if I had the whole text, so I pried it up, I had just copied the back, when it shattered. In my hands, cracks started to spread all over and it just, dissolved."
Lucy tried to take it all in, and leaned against the wall.
"Lucy, what's going on?"
Lucy shrugged, "I really have no clue, but the energy around here is completely out of control. That storm building outside is just one of the affects. I have no idea what to do about it...but I'd like a look at that translation."
Hermione nodded. "I keep it locked up in the trunk in my room, come on."
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There were several pages. Hermione had first sketched exactly as she saw, and then copied down the letters straight out on several long sheets of parchment. Lucy ran her fingertips over the writing. It looked familiar, but old. It was not Quechua, not Spanish or Aramaic...but she had seen some of those same characters before. The characters had been in stone, on the back of an ancient mirror. Seamus' long forgotton Christmas present. Those inscriptions had given the mirror its power, Lucy remembered that much about ancient things. What had these done?
"Can I take these?" Knowing it was not really a request, Hermione nodded.
"What's happened Lucy?"
She paused on her way out of the door, "I'm not sure. But I'm going to find out."
The wind was howling through every chink in the castle, causing nasty drafts to turn the hallways icy cold. Lucy hurried as fast as she could to the BA room, grabbed the mirror from the mantle, and made her way to Asriel's workroom. She poured through the notebooks, knowing he had one in here on the ancient tongues of this region, she had read this stuff before.
Brythonic, the script was Brythonic, or some form of it. Heedless of the hour or whatever it was she knew she was supposed to be doing, Lucy took out a clean notebook, and stretched out on the floor with Hermione and Asriel's note before her to begin the painstaking process of translation.
It took hours, Lucy's neck and shoulders screamed with the uncomfortable position they had been forced into, but the stormclouds building over the lake and the gales she knew were buffeting Gryffindor Tower as she worked kept her awake and alert. Progress was made slower by the fact that Asriel had kept his notes in a variety of languages, and Lucy had the luck of finding one of the few books that had not been taken down in Spanish or Portuguese, or any Romance language, for that matter. It was Quechua, the bane of her existence, and her lack of proficiency in THAT language meant she had to quadruple check every phrase she did.
She had completed half a page, and read it over to find it made absolutely no structural sense. She stared at the heap of papers before her, she was working in the middle of the room, and documents radiated away from her in all directions. The effect was enough to make her dizzy.
Dizzy...round, that was why the translation didn't make sense, it was written circularly. She scrambled to find Hermione's sketch of the script as it was written on the disk, and began to fit the translation as closely as possible to the physical layout of the Brythonic text. The line breaks in Hermione's straight copy had been in the wrong place, she had started her text in what was really the middle. Lucy found the beginning, and began to read...
"Holy shit," she gathered up the papers, shoved them in her satchel, and ran from Don Asriel's room as fast as she could manage.
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"You were puttering about with this stuff for quite awhile, weren't you Hermione?" Lucy burst back into the bedroom and shut the door roughly. Without giving Hermione a chance to answer she tossed the papers on the bed.
"I translated it, all of it, and then re-translated. That room, all of it, forms the basis of the wards that surround Hogwarts. So far I've figured out that whatever makes the place LOOK different to Muggles has not been affected, but that could be because it is an illusion and not an active repellent. THAT PLACE you've been poking about in is another story. I went back, there are spells carved all over the walls in a half a dozen languages. And there wasn't any dust on them, someone has been poking at them, so spill, how long have you been fiddling around in there?"
Hermione ran her hands through her hair. "Over the Easter holidays, we needed a new room to work in, I stumbled across that one-"
Lucy glared at her.
"Fine. I knew about the room, I mean, I knew it existed, I wasn't trying to hurt anyone, I thought I might be able to find something there that I could use to help Harry...the boys didn't know of course, they thought I was just going to use the space to work on the animagus project-"
"The what?"
Hermione groaned. "The bane of my existence. Harry's father, and his godfather became animagus when they were at Hogwarts, to help a friend. Harry has been obsessed ever since he found out about it. He wanted to try it so badly, but he and Ron just couldn't make it work, so finally they asked me. I couldn't say no to that face, so I told them I would help.
" I did the research, I poured through the restricted section, I experimented, but I kept coming back to them with bad news. I mean, there is a reason why most people are not animagi, it is hard to do! We would row and make up and then we would try something else and get to a certain point where I would put my foot down because it was too dangerous and then we would row again. We decided to stop, or at least, I thought we had. Then I found out that they hadn't, they had gone on without me, they were thisclose to nearly killing themselves! It was partly my fault, I had found the spell room. They knew I was interested, but when we stopped working on the potion, curiosity got the best of me. First I just looked, but then I started to poke around, try to look under tablets that were clearly written on both sides, it was a compulsion, I HAD to."
Lucy was speechless. But the animagus potion story did explain a good deal about hysterical crying and crabby Hermione and sulky Ron and Harry and loud shouting matches between them.
"You didn't start to really fiddle till Easter break though?"
Hermione nodded, "It was the only period when I had enough time apart from school work."
That corresponded to the time that Rasheph and Bet had said the strange weather, which Lucy was certain was magically altered weather, had started up. No one had been working weather magic, Hermione had unconsciously been shifting something so powerful that it had changed the energy concentration of the area, and the weather had resulted, a means to restore equilibrium, and a violent one at that.
A clap of thunder outside brought her back to the current situation, and the other serious ramification of the dissolved tablet. She began to talk fast, explaining to Hermione about the mage-storms, and about what happened when the tablet dissolved.
Hermione stared at her open-mouthed. "It's impossible."
"It's happening, and we need to stop it fast."
"We?"
"Well, you did it, and frankly you're the only I know of around here smart enough to fix it."
"I'm still not convinced."
Lucy groaned, "I don't have time to convince you Hermione, I don't have any books on hand to back this up, but THAT," Lucy threw an arm toward the window, which, in perfect dramatic timing, lit up with and accompanying clap of thunder, "is only going to get worse, I have a limited amount of time before I pass out to fix this and I don't think I can do it myself. But I think you would agree that this is the sort of thing that needs to be kept as quiet as possible?"
Hermione nodded. "I'm sorry, it's just...we need to see Dumbledore, now."
Lucy nodded, "I think I ought to pick some stuff up first."
Fifteen minutes later, after a sprint through the castle to recover the ancient mirror Seamus had given her, Lucy was standing outside the entrance to Dumbledore's office. Faustas had given her plenty of grief about the fact that he had suggested this hours ago, Lucy told him to shut up.
Professor McGonagall was by their side, mostly because Hermione thought that this warranted the use of the chain of command. The deputy headmistress spoke the password, and the girls followed her up. Lucy was under strict instructions from Hermione not to say a word if possible, which didn't bother her in the least. The less she spoke, the less likely it was that Dumbledore, McGonagall, or even Hermione find out about the BA. Her part was to explain how the disappearance of the tablet had affected her "senses," Hermione thought that was an important point, and a surprising one since it indicated that some kind of western magic had been involved. Lucy was impressed; Hermione had recovered herself completely and seemed totally without fear. Had Lucy not been shielded as tightly as possible, and shielding four other people at distance, even her weak empathetic sense would have told her that the prefect was terrified.
They followed McGonagall in, and remained standing in front of the headmaster's desk.
"How may I help you Miss Granger, Miss Montero?"
"Something rather serious has occurred, sir," Hermione said clearly, in a voice that only quivered a bit.
"Indeed?" The headmaster remained unconcerned.
Hermione went on to explain, in a slightly altered version, which left out any mention of the secret animagus project, her discovery of the tablet and its subsequent destruction.
"While regrettable, Miss Granger, that was clearly an accident."
Hermione sighed in frustration, "But you see sir, Lucy translated what I had copied from the tablet, and we discovered sir that it had an very important purpose."
To Lucy's bewilderment, the headmaster seemed slightly amused, and not in the least perturbed. "And what would that be, Miss Montero?"
Lucy laid her translation before him. "It was the anchoring point for the ancient Hogwarts wards, sir. The magical barriers that prevent anyone from gating or apperating in and out of the school. It must have been set very long ago sir, because the practice of tying a spell of that magnitude to a physical object-"
"Has not been practiced in a very long time. But it had its uses, you see Miss Montero. The people who designed those wards knew their effectiveness would only last if it was impossible for them to be tampered with. So they were hidden. They needed the spell to last as long as the school stood, so it had to be based on something that would endure, in this case, a peculiar type of stone. Surely you, Miss Montero, are familiar with the idea of a stone being the focus of magical energy?"
Lucy nodded, "Its a little like a locus stone, sir, but our locus stones don't create, they are not a source, only a focal point that connects us to a web of energy."
"And what makes you think that Miss Granger's tablet is any different?"
Lucy went to speak, but found she had nothing to refute that with. She stared for a moment at the headmaster's face.
"You knew already."
Dumbledore nodded, "The moment the tablet was crushed."
"But why didn't you-"
"Tell anyone? You of all people should understand that, Miss Montero. The importance of guarding information?"
Lucy didn't answer Hermione's look, but nodded as Dumbledore continued.
"I could not predict when the wards would fall, but I knew they were being sought out, and not by the accidental discovery of Miss Granger. For didn't you find it odd that you seemed the first person in centuries to have found that room? While you are one of the cleverest students to grace Hogwarts' halls in many years, surely you were wise enough not to believe you were the only one clever enough to discover it?"
Hermione nodded, "I had wondered how no one had ever found it before."
"The answer is because it was guarded by a series of illusions and protections that relied on ignorance. If no one knew that the room existed, no one would ever find it. For centuries the entrance could have remained uncovered, it could have had a sign written on it in bright red letters, and no one would have noticed it. And no one ever did. The room could only be discovered by those who knew it existed, and had some idea of where it was, and even then, it would take time."
"But I didn't know it was there, and I didn't know where it was!"
Dumbledore smiled, "No, you didn't. But I imagine that by the time you discovered the room, most of the protections and guards had been worn away by the search efforts of those who had a vague idea of what was in the room, and where it was. You simply got there first, and I, for one, and glad that you did."
Hermione was confused, "Sir?"
Dumbledore sighed. "We have had, unfortunately, some visitors to the school this past year that I could not keep out, not if I didn't want to have to leave for a time and to be honest, I was far too busy to really argue. I regret that," he looked at Lucy as he spoke, "I sincerely regret that. The result was some 60 odd students in my charge were bullied and harassed and scrutinized through no fault of their own and at the urging of the Ministry of Magic."
Lucy's forehead wrinkled, "What does that have to do with this?"
"I'm getting to that, Miss Montero. After the incident on Halloween, there was a request for further investigation. I believed, knew, that any further prying would turn up nothing; no students of mine were planning an attack on the Ministry in the near future, so I permitted our visitors access through the end of the term. They appeared to be doing just as they said, looking into the habits and behavior of the students. I didn't tell the students, as Miss Montero will tell you, because I thought any protest on their part would give fuel to the delusion that they were a threat. I did not wholly anticipate how they would respond, and, in retrospect, much might have been avoided had I been forthcoming. But the Ministry wished it to be secret and such is the penalty for secrecy." Another look at Lucy.
"But what they were looking for did not turn out to be a secret group of terrorist students bent on destruction. As became cleared after the start of the spring term, what the visitors had been looking for was the very room that Hermione found. For, to look for the room, and in the right place, begins to wear away the wards, they were designed that way so that the original creators could adjust them. Those creators depended on the fact that no one would know about the room once they were gone as a means to protect it. And no one came looking for it knew the truth about it until a few months ago. They wore down the guards to the point that a sensitive and observant witch, who WAS looking for a hidden room, if not that room in particular, the desire was enough to allow Hermione to find it."
Hermione nodded, in that slow way she did when she was processing things, "And the tablet?"
"Was not meant to be touched, picked up, or disconnected from the room in which it was placed, and when it was, it lost its energy and dissolved, dissolving the spell. The stone in that room is fused to the stone that forms the castle all the way down to the bedrock of the earth. Should Hogwarts collapse, that column would still stand."
"Like a locus stone," Lucy said softly.
"Exactly so, Miss Montero. But without the stone."
"So this can be fixed?" Hermione said hopefully.
"Yes, Miss Granger. Which is why I am particularly grateful that Miss Montero is with you. For I have notified and expect soon the arrival of the people I know that can reset the wards, but I have the feeling that is not the entire scope of the problem." He raised his eyebrows toward Lucy.
Lucy had forgotten that Dumbledore had traces of Gifts, probably more than traces, he simply did not practice. But anyone with a partially open channel would have felt the impact. It did not seem to be bothering him much.
"I felt something initially, and then it faded away, but I suspect I am not understanding the entire scope as you would," he stated, in response to the question in her eyes.
"Whatever the wards were, they must have been very old, because their destruction has wreaked havoc, to use simple terms, on the flow of energy. It's painful, to be frank, sir, and I don't know how to fix it."
"I suspect that is due to the fact that the wards were built with a combination of eastern and western magic."
Lucy stared at him.
"They must be very old."
"Quite, Miss Montero, for that room is in what would have been the very first castle Hogwarts, before the additions let it grow to what it is now. The wards have been set from the very first days of the school, when the outside world was a dangerous place and, as today, not all wizards were good. The illusion that protects the castle from Muggle eyes was set much later, in a different fashion, and therefore-"
"Remains unaffected," Hermione finished.
"Correct, Miss Granger. Now, Miss Montero, since you are the representative of your circle, what would you suggest?"
Lucy put her hand in her pocket, and curved her fingers around the mirror Seamus had given her. "A call for help, sir, from the Maintainers."
"Refresh me, if you will, on who they are."
"Well, its a guild, really, the Maintainers Guild, they fix things, put things back they way they were, energy lines and such, they would restore them back to the way they were before the wards went down."
"It seems a great deal of natural energy went into the wards then."
Lucy nodded, understanding. "They don't study eastern magic sir, but if western magic was a part of the wards then they would certainly help rebuild them."
Dumbledore smiled, "We shall see. As it is I have a very old friend from the Druidic School in the north that is on his way, we'll see what he can do before we put your Guild in the compromising position of working for the eastern circle, and for me in particular."
Lucy said nothing to the Look, but was relieved. It was going to be hard enough to persuade the guild to send Maintainers to this place, especially since these were the people who had seen first hand the destruction at Espiritu and Chadwicks. She was going to have to count on their unfailing sense of responsibility to heal the land to get them up here, she didn't want to try and get them to help protect the school as well.
"Thank you, sir."
"How soon will your friends be arriving Lucy?"
"As soon as they assemble I guess, they should be able to come here directly since the barrier is down."
Dumbledore nodded, "It might be best, don't you think, for them to perform their work before we reset the guards?"
Lucy nodded again.
"Good, good. Well then, I won't keep you any longer."
Lucy and Hermione turned to go.
"Oh Miss Granger, if you would, I have a few more questions for you."
Hermione paled just a bit, but gave Lucy a grim smile before turning back to the room. For her part, Lucy bolted for the stairs as fast as she could. She wasn't surprised Hermione was staying, she doubted Dumbledore hadn't noticed her dancing around why she was looking for a hidden room.