"In order to practice adequate magical defense, you have to first think of yourself as absolutely worthy of protection." (Frater V.D.: The School of High Magick)
As she entered, her worst fears were realized. Irina Karkaroff had thrown herself over the prostrate body of her fiancé. Her white nightdress was drenched in blood and she screamed as she shook the lifeless form in her arms. Next to her on the floor Professor Fritz Hauer, the quiddich coach, crawled on his hands and knees, retching and moaning miserably and obviously trying to recover from a cruciatus. She decided that Hauer could take care of himself for now and rushed over to her students. A quick spell showed her that Lars was dead. She tried to move Irina off him and discovered to her horror that the blood on the girl's gown did not come from the dead boy, who seemed outwardly unhurt and had most likely died from a killing spell.
The attacker had obviously managed to murder the unborn child, and the forced abortion was causing Irina to bleed profusely. She pulled the girl up and called over to Lucius. "Floo to the infirmary with her, will you? She's miscarrying. She'll bleed to death without help." The young witch started to fight her. She realized that she was going to be separated from Lars and struggled to get back to him, but Lucius would have none of it. He threw his lover an exasperated look, then roughly pulled the young Karkaroff to him and marched her over to the fireplace. "Hold still!" he hissed at her as he grabbed a fistful of floo powder and disappeared in an explosion of green flame.
Eleanor sighed, she might get help from him, but rarely any sympathy with the victims. The alarm started to fade. She turned to the quiddich professor who had been assigned first watch on the couple. He was now kneeling, sitting back on his heels and dry-heaving and wiping spit and blood from his mouth with the sleeve of his robes. "What's happened?" she addressed him in German. He looked up at her, his blue eyes bloodshot, and tried to speak. After a few attempts he got his croaking voice under control and she crouched next to him as she listened.
"It was Karkaroff, the old headmaster, the Death Eater. He must have apparated right into the room. I only realized he was there when he killed Lars." Professor Hauer coughed and shuddered, but continued. "He must have used an unforgivable, because it triggered the alarm. When I rushed in, he was already attacking Irina. I didn't know what to do. So to stop him I used the avada kedavra curse on him. It, it…" The quiddich coach faltered.
Eleanor raised an eyebrow. "Look, I think you did the right thing. You were under attack by a murderer. Don't worry about it." Then it struck her, there was no dead body. "If you used a killing curse on Karkaroff, where is he?" The man before her rubbed his eyes, then looked at her. "That's what I don't understand. I hit him full force. His whole body was enveloped in green fire, and he just stood there. It was as if it passed right through him. Had absolutely no effect. Then he lifted his wand and put me under the cruciatus before finishing with his curses on Irina."
The witch considered. Fritz Hauer of the House of Earth had once been captain of the German national quiddich team for six years running. He was the best coach the school had ever hand, and he had young talents like Victor Krum to prove it. While he was not a particularly skilled wizard in other areas, the man could be expected to cast a decent killing curse and to recognize if it hit and whether it was effective. What on earth had happened?
She had just thought of another question when several people entered the room. The prefect and Professor Stolcius dragged behind them the body of a dark-haired man in black robes, and right behind them walked the headmistress and the professor of astrology, head of the House of Air. At the same time the fireplace flared green and Lucius Malfoy stepped elegantly over the grate with his wand pulled from his cane as he leisurely cleaned himself of blood and soot.
Stolcius and the prefect dropped the body and the headmistress turned to the blond wizard. "Who is he?" she demanded. Eleanor got up, patting Hauer on the back. "This is Mr. Lucius Malfoy from Wiltshire, England. He is my visitor over the weekend. Lucius, this is Professor Inga Magnusdottir, headmistress of Durmstrang Institute."
The middle-aged headmistress stepped up to them, tossed back her long honey-blonde hair and shook Lucius' hand. Eleanor could have sworn that the witch was using her considerable transformation skills, as her face smoothed itself in a smile, her waist narrowed and her bust under her robes lifted quite perceptibly. She immediately began to engage the rather bemused looking wizard in an animated conversation taking absolutely no further interest in the situation surrounding her.
Eleanor turned away with a brief snort and walked towards the alchemy professor. Of course, dragging Lucius along clad in nothing but his pants and a half-open shirt and introducing him to the female denizens of Durmstrang could be compared to nailing a sprig of catnip to one's window and then complaining about the lovesick yowling and screeching that would follow all night long.
Stolcius and the prefect looked shaken, and as she bent to the lifeless bundle in black robes she recognized the pale sharp features of her former headmaster. A quick spell convinced her that Igor Karkaroff was quite dead. She raised an eyebrow at her colleague and saw the professor of astrology join them. "What happened?" The alchemist, who wore nothing but a long, rather grotesque nightshirt with a loud dragon print all over shook his head as if he wanted to dislodge some nagging doubt.
"I heard the alarm and ran out to investigate. In the quadrangle I saw Piotr confronting Karkaroff. Karkaroff was getting ready to curse him, so I hurled a killing curse at him. After that I'm not sure what happened. He kind of just stood there, this horrible fixed grin on his face. Piotr had thrown himself on the ground to avoid Karkaroff's attack, but was getting up again. The Death Eater was gathering for another spell, and the prefect and I both cursed him, one after the other. At my second avada he finally went down."
Stolcius blinked and turned to the student who nodded to corroborate his story. "It was so weird, professor. It was as if the first spells went right through him." Now the astrology professor spread out her hands. "That's impossible," she asserted. "No one survives a killing curse. There is no defense against the unforgivables. Everyone knows that. You must have missed the first time." Stolcius bristled at that, but Eleanor interrupted him. "Weird as it may sound, I have just heard the very same thing from Fritz here. He witnessed the same phenomenon when he tried to attack Karkaroff. We will need to investigate this further. But first things first."
She turned to the astronomy professor. "Isadora, would you be so kind and help Fritz to the infirmary. He could really do with some potion to get over the cruciatus Karkaroff hit him with." The teacher nodded and gathered her robes to crouch next to the quiddich coach. Soon she had him on his feet and they stepped into the fireplace to floo off.
Eleanor looked around her. Stolcius was kneeling on the floor to examine their dead attacker for any clues about his strange reaction to the killing curse. Piotr had sat himself down and looked as if he was about to be sick. The headmistress was just in the process of throwing back her head and laughing outrageously at some remark Lucius had made. Eleanor shook her head. "Piotr, I'll be with you in a minute," she told her student. "Ask a house elf to bring you a small fire whisky. I think this situation allows an exception to the usual underage drinking rules."
Then she stepped up to the blond wizard. "Inga," she interrupted and gulped in surprise. The matronly headmistress had grown about ten to fifteen years younger in the interim, and while Eleanor was suitably impressed with the magical prowess this act entailed, she also felt that her superior was neglecting her duties. Professor Magnusdottir slowly peeled her eyes off the man before her and focused on the interruption.
"Inga, we need some aurors here, there have been three killings and they need to be reported to the authorities." The headmistress lifted an eyebrow. "Three killings?" "Yes, Lars here, Irina's unborn child and Karkaroff himself. I think as head of the school you should contact the Ministry office in Reykjavik and have them dispatch an investigation. I'll handle it of course, if you think you are too occupied at the moment." The older witch now glared at her, having understood the insinuation and haughtily swept around. "I am perfectly capable of taking care of it. Thank you," she said. She looked around. "Brief me," she demanded.
Eleanor summed up what she had found out so far, and the headmistress took her leave, shaking Lucius' hand with more intensity than was strictly necessary and expressing her hope to see him again. Then she left the room. Eleanor caught sight of the house elf that was taking the prefect's order and asked for two additional glasses of fire whisky while they waited for the aurors.
Lucius had pulled up two chairs, turned his and straddled it so he could rest his elbows on the back. He gave her a quizzical glance, but she decided not to discuss the headmistress before the ears of the prefect. Gingerly she sat down watching him smirk at her discomfort. "How's Irina?" she asked him. He bent sideways to take the whisky from the house elf. "Oh fine," he shrugged. "She'll live. Terrible mess, though. How can anyone set themselves up voluntarily for something like this?"
Eleanor swallowed down her outrage. "Look, she wasn't asking for it. I'm sorry I stuck you with a bleeding woman, but I thought you could handle it." Lucius shot her a sharp glance. "I'm not referring to the fact that she was miscarrying. I am quite familiar with and capable of handling that."
She stared at him, wondering for a moment whether she even wanted to know how he had become familiar with something like that, but he took a deep draught of the whisky and offered an explanation of his own. "Narcissa lost two children before Draco. Ugly, messy, but part of the female condition, I guess. You know what they teach about women at the magical college in Jaipur?"
She took a sip of whisky herself and saw Piotr stare at them in shocked disbelief. "No," she said. "What do they teach?" He shrugged his shoulders. "Well, if you mess up as a man in your former life, your bad karma causes you to be reincarnated as a woman." She choked on her drink in outrage. "Lucius, of all the hateful, chauvinistic things…" He pursed his lips at her, and she realized belatedly that he had merely been yanking her chain. She glared at him, but he just lazily stretched his legs.
"So what happens if you mess up as a woman? You come back as a worm?" she challenged him. He smirked. "Why, that would imply that wizards are superior to witches, somehow, my dear. And that cannot be the case, can it now? Of course you get reincarnated as a man."
The prefect laughed nervously and Eleanor almost snorted out some of her fire whisky. "Oh great, so here we are, one failed man and two failed women," she pronounced and held up her drink. "Cheers all around." A few minutes later Daniel Stolcius joined them, shaking his head. "Nothing wrong with him, no talismans, no protection spell residue. Nothing that would explain why he was impervious. He's just plain dead when he should be dead several times over. Can't figure it out." He also ordered a fire whisky and a few minutes later they looked up as they heard the familiar noises of apparitions and five aurors and the headmistress stepped forward to meet them.
The investigation did not take very long, and when the ministry officials had finished questioning the group they removed the corpses and disapparated. The headmistress and the alchemy professor also took off and Eleanor and Lucius walked the prefect back to his room. Finally they made their way back to her own quarters. Eleanor was uncharacteristically quiet, and when they finally closed the door of her study behind them, Lucius turned to her. "Inga got under your skin, didn't she?" he asked casually.
She placed her wand on her desk. "Hm? You were saying?" she said absent-mindedly. He sighed. "The headmistress howling at the moon, it got to you." She faced him. "Not really," she said. "I know she has a weakness for tall, blond and handsome. It was to be expected. I have to say, though, she is better at transformation than I've been giving her credit for. Actually she seemed quite shaggable, even to me, at the end of your little conversation."
Lucius wriggled his eyebrows. "Are you propositioning me for a threesome?" he leered. She shook her head, then decided to play along. "If she takes another five years off and lightens her hair to your shade, I could be tempted. Being stuck in a blond sandwich might be quite delicious… But be warned when you ask her, she is very possessive and does not like to share. We still have a crumple-horned snorkack in our bestiary who used to be a lover of hers." The blond wizard swallowed. "Really?"
Eleanor tried to keep a straight face, turned away from him and walked over to her bookshelf, running her fingers along the spines of some of her older grimoires. Lucius stepped up behind her. "So what's bothering you? That I didn't dissolve in tears over that little Karkaroff slut? How would I, over someone who deliberately bears a mudblood and disgraces their family?" She swiveled back to confront him. "Closer to the mark, Lucius, but then again, I know very well you'd rather wipe a muggle off your shoe than give them the time of day. So let's not talk about it. We'd just fight, all right?"
She pulled an old folio out from among her library and walked over to her desk. "No, I have not been able to get Karkaroff's strange ability out of my mind," she finally explained. "As the astronomy professor put it earlier, no one survives a killing curse. So why did he? I need to know. It's the ultimate defense against the dark arts." She almost ignored her companion as she started leafing through the book. He shifted to peer over her shoulder. "So, how will you find out?" he asked, his curiosity aroused.
Eleanor focused back on him, deliberating. Finally she made up her mind. "Do you want to know? Do you want to help me?" He nodded. "Well I have been working with demon magic for a while, so I intend to call up Taphthartharath, the demon of Mercury, and ask him," she announced. Lucius took a surprised step back. "You are going to do a demon invocation at school?" She smiled inwardly. She rarely got to shock a dark wizard and Death Eater. "Lucius, credit to you as an ex school governor, but the by-laws at Durmstrang are very different from those at Hogwarts, which is what makes this place so exciting and dangerous. You don't have to channel Dumbledore for me."
Lucius Malfoy glared at her. "No need to become insulting," he growled. "Of course I'll help you." She gave him a quick grin. Naturally there would be no mischief he would ever turn down. "Great," she told him. "Here, I need you to copy two of the following sigils out of this grimoire onto these two pieces of parchment. Then you could do the circle, and load up the incense burner with this Mercury mix." She passed him a pouch she had pulled from a desk drawer.
He took the incense from her and sniffed it. "Disgusting," he commented. "What are you going to do?" She took a moment to deliberate. "Prepare an item suitable for barter. We'll need to give Taphthartharath something valuable for his information." Lucius pulled up her chair and began to work on the sigils while she bent to a low table by her desk and lifted a cloth from her PC, hooking the device up to a magically powered battery pack. The computer started with a beep and a soft hum and the wizard lifted his head. "What in the name of Azrael is that thing?" he demanded.
She shrugged, knowing he wouldn't like the answer. "Muggle device for storing and manipulating information," she volunteered. He sneered. "Sometimes I wonder," he said. "Knowing about the unflattering nature of witch underwear, I can tolerate your preference for muggle panties, but you love their hideous artifacts just a bit too much for my liking." Still she saw that he stole surreptitious glances at the soft illumination of the screen as she worked. A few minutes later she had stored her work, removed a floppy disk and powered down the machine. Lucius had meanwhile finished the invocation circle in white chalk and now returned to the desk to prepare the burner with some ignited coal.
A few minutes later they both stood at the center of the circle, the incense rising in thick, oily clouds outside of the chalk markings. Eleanor held the grimoire open between them, and they pointed their wands at the smoke in unison incanting the spells that would raise the demon. At the third repetition the smoke seemed to swirl, then solidify, and soon had taken on the form of a young man with silvery skin and a beautiful fair face.
Eleanor addressed him, showing him the sigils that Lucius had drawn and that they had each pinned to their robes over their hearts for protection. "Great Taphthartharath, we are pleased that you followed our summons, and we need to employ your knowledge and wisdom to answer a question." The demon gave a most unearthly and inhuman smile and suddenly rushed at the circle, but was repelled by the barrier of Lucius' chalk marks. Eleanor had expected it and held her ground, though she felt every hair on her body raise in crawling terror.
"Taphthartharath, I hold your presence in this sigil. Attack us again and I will destroy it," she threatened. The spirit snarled at her, but returned to his station. "If you try to harm us, you will be punished. If you help us, you will be rewarded," she held up the disk. The demon spoke and his voice sounded like a great rush of wind, chilling and remote. "What is this, that you offer, mistress?"
She took a step forward, carefully making sure she did not place anything of herself outside the barrier. "This is an artifact of the magic of muggles. It contains stored in it all of the permutations of the names of your three greatest rivals in the kingdom of demons. It is a talisman of power that you can use to subdue your enemies. Would that be worth something to you?"
The demon's eyes glowed in greed. "What do you wish to know, mistress?" he asked. "Have you ever heard of a wizard or witch who survived the incantation of avada kedavra? And if so, how might it be done? If you can tell me that, you will receive the disk." The demon swayed, then focused on her, his lips drawing back from sharp silvery teeth in a sneer. "So many centuries, and few ever asked. Taphthartharath knows this very well. You give me muggle magic for my services, I give you muggle magic back, mistress. Here is the solution to your question, listen well: if someone curses you with the killing spell and you are not there, will you still die?"
The demon shape flickered, seemed to dissolve in smoke for a moment, then Taphthartharath rematerialized right outside the barrier, his voice a whisper. "Now give me my promised reward, mistress." Eleanor exchanged a quick glance with her partner. The answer had been cryptic at best, unsatisfactory at worst. Lucius shrugged his shoulders. Both knew well enough from previous experiences that one could push a demon only so far.
Eleanor gripped a corner of the disk and held it into the barrier until the spirit could grasp it. The silvery figure stepped back. "Taphthartharath is much obliged. It is always a pleasure to do business with a devotee of Mercury." Then he started to laugh and turn. They heard his voice one more time in a hissed whisper as he stepped back into the smoke. "Barter and lies, riddles and tricks." Immediately they turned their faces back to the grimoire and began the incantations for banishing.
When they felt it was safe, they stepped outside of the circle, only to both explode in a fit of coughing. The incense stank horribly and the smoke was almost choking them. Lucius gritted out a spell to purify the air, and Eleanor burned the parchment with the sigils. Finally they sat down by the fireplace, wiping acrid tears from their faces. Eleanor felt drained as she called on a house elf to bring them something to drink. Demon invocation wasn't exactly fun and games. Lucius asked for some water and some whisky and she decided to join him.
She took a thoughtful sip from the heavy cut glass tumbler and swirled the burning liquid round her mouth. "If someone curses you with the killing spell and you are not there, will you still die?" she repeated the words of the demon. Lucius crossed his legs and threw back his head to drain his cup of water. "What kind of an answer is that," he complained. "Of course you don't die. You are not there. Stupid!" Eleanor took another sip. "But Karkaroff was there. Fritz saw him, Piotr saw him and Daniel saw him. The spells hit him at point blank. So if he was there, they should have killed him. We are back to square one."
The blond wizard reached over for his whisky. "That's what you get for using 'muggle magic,'" he sneered. "Utter and contemptible crap." Something stuck in Eleanor's mind. "You give me muggle magic for my service, I give you muggle magic back," she said softly. A spirit of Mercury would never use language frivolously. Oh yes, tricks and lies were their domain, but a deal was a deal, a barter a barter. "Muggle magic..." Suddenly she moved forward and placed a kiss squarely on Lucius' mouth. "You are a genius," she exclaimed.
He stared at her. "What did I do?" he asked. "Muggle magic," she cried excitedly. "Muggles actually do perform magic, they call it illusionism, and it is based on misdirection." "Misdirection, as in giving someone false instructions on how to apparate somewhere?" Lucius asked. She smiled "Something like that. You direct someone's attention to a scenario, and while their focus is on that, you can do all sorts of other things to them, without them really noticing. For example show them a card trick with your left and pick their pocket with your right hand."
Lucius shook his head. "Why would you want to do that?" "Well, if you have no true magical abilities, that's the best chance you have to get at someone's wallet without clubbing them," she explained. "Of course if you are a wizard, you can just hex their purse out of their pocket, no misdirection required."
"Karkaroff, the sneaky bastard must have done something like this," she said getting up and reaching for her wand. Lucius watched her as she concentrated and first murmured an apparition spell that took her from the fireplace to the door and then an imago spell that put a projected image of her in her old place. She then resolved the imago and reapparated in her old place. "Of course he was much, much smoother and faster than I am."
She sat down again. "Should just be a question of practice. Bloody brilliant," she admitted grudgingly. "There we have spent centuries devising impossible countermagic for the unforgivables, when we could have literally sidestepped the issue all along. And all it took was a demon and some muggle-thinking."
Lucius gave her a searching look. "If you were instantaneous on both counts, you'd get away with it," he admitted slowly. "The person casting the curse would be preoccupied with hexing you, they would not notice that you stood a little bit off to the side watching the substituted imago getting hit. Then, when the curse had run its course, you'd be back. But why did Karkaroff die when he got hit by two spells?"
Eleanor thought about that. "Perhaps he returned too quickly. He may have sidestepped the first avada, but when he reapparated, the second one was still potent." Suddenly a sickening thought struck her. "Will you share this knowledge with Voldemort and the other Death Eaters?"
The blond wizard stared at her. "Why? Karkaroff never let on, as far as I know, even though he was a Death Eater for some time. Why in the blazes would I give up important leverage like this to someone who recently threatened to crucio me? Think me ruthless all you want, but don't take me for stupid, will you?" He seemed genuinely insulted by her suggestion, and she decided to believe him. Nothing was more reliable than the old self-interest of a Slytherin, after all.
She drank down the last of her whisky and cast a glace over to the enchanted hourglass on the mantelpiece. It was already way into the early hours of the morning. She sighed, thinking suddenly about the pale, lifeless form of Irina's fiancé on the floor of their student bedroom. "How about we call it a night?" she asked him. "I'm spanked, fucked, steamed and generally hexed out. Plus I have lost a student tonight, and I haven't even begun to start to think about that. There'll be a lot to take care of tomorrow."