"You know, I think we might have underestimated young Al," Angel said, inspecting the lit Goblet of Fire in the little annex off the Entrance Hall which was mostly used as a staging area for new students before the Sorting. "He was going to look like a real moron when Lyra inevitably broke whatever protections he put on this thing to enter herself. This way he can blame you instead."
"Thank you, Angel, I would never have realised that on my own," her companion drawled. "So, did you have anything particular in mind, Uncle? You are the wardcrafter, here."
Lyra might have been imagining it, but she fancied Flamel-as-Slytherin sounded a bit uncertain, offering noncommittally, "I have a few ideas, of course. But first we should decide exactly what we are trying to do, here."
"I'm afraid I have little to contribute to any wardcrafting project. Such things are hardly my area of expertise," Delacour admitted.
"What exactly is your area of expertise, Monsieur Régis?" Angel asked. "Not ritual, and you don't really feel wizardly. Elementalism?"
"...Human–Nonhuman Relations, I suppose you could say. I will admit that I have always had an interest in geomancy and weatherworking, but I was chosen for this assignment more on my experience as an ambassador than my academic qualifications."
"Because Marcel Moreau wanted you safely away from Aquitanian politics, you mean."
That was the Runes Professor from Durmstrang, a tall, thin, sandy-haired man in his late thirties, with just a hint of a Danish accent. He and Ashe were there to ensure that whatever the other judges came up with to keep unauthorised students from entering their names as potential champions was fair to all of the schools. Madame Maxime had declined to send someone to help, just told Delacour that she hoped he would ensure the fairness of whatever they decided to do, and excused herself — probably to discuss the Miskatonites' presence with Dumbledore and Karkaroff. Lyra didn't know for sure, because she'd been keeping an eye on the Cup since they had been dismissed from the Great Hall.
She had expected Dumbledore himself to do something to keep her (and all the other 'underage' students) out of it, and been fairly confident that she would be able to counter any protections he might cast. This lot... Well, that would be more difficult. Flamel alone could probably come up with something to keep Lyra specifically at bay — not indefinitely, but certainly long enough to miss the window of entry — and Ashe was familiar enough with Lyra's abilities to help her figure it out. So, in keeping with the long, noble traditions of the Triwizard Tournament, Lyra was cheating, spying on the preparations from the Shadows.
"I would never suggest such a thing," Delacour said, something in his tone suggesting that the Dane was entirely correct.
He obviously thought so, too, sniggering slightly. "If you say so. Regarding the task at hand, we could start with a simple age line. That was the solution Dumbledore suggested, back in...March? April? Some time ago, in any case."
"No," Ashe said. "Let us be frank about our task, here. As..."
"Angel," Sarah supplied. "That goes for everyone. And I'm Sarah. Sally, if you like. We don't stand much on formality at the University."
"Er...right. But as Angel said, Albus is likely primarily concerned about Lyra Black actually entering the Tournament. She's been telling everyone she's going to be the Hogwarts Champion for months now. A simple age line may keep out most of the underage students, but Black can shadow-walk. Mundane defences will not keep her out."
"Should they, though?" asked...Flamel, of all people? Well. Lyra couldn't say she had expected that. "While I understand there are...reasons, legal ones, to limit the pool of potential champions, personally I can't say I agree with them."
"Ah. So when you say you want a discussion of our purpose here, you mean..." the Dane trailed off suggestively.
"Yes, I mean that if we must limit the pool of potential champions, I believe it should be based on ability and skill rather than age, or an attempt to prevent any specific individual entering."
"Like a pre-Tournament task?" Angel clapped enthusiastically. "I love it, let's do it."
The Dane spoke slowly. "We, Durmstrang and Beauxbatons, selected our delegations with an eye toward their ability to compete in the team events — the most skilled of our students, regardless of their age — on the understanding that while one of the senior students would be the official champion, that was no reason the best of the fifteen- and sixteen-year-olds shouldn't assist in the tasks which appealed to their own areas of expertise. Our best duelist, for example, is only sixteen. So I doubt that the Headmaster or Madame Maxime would object to such an approach."
"Fine with me," Sarah said. "Though we cannot make it too difficult, in that case. At least one student from each school must be capable of reaching the Goblet. Ashe? Delacour?"
Ashe hesitated, giving Delacour the opportunity to say, "I cannot condone purposefully allowing younger students to participate, given the legal and ethical reasons they were initially excluded — people have died in this tournament in the past, you know!"
"Yes, I'm aware. I was there," Flamel pointed out. "I've attended nearly every Triwizard Tournament which has ever been held. Believe it or not, I am making this suggestion with that very concern in mind. The fact that participants have died in the past hardly changes the fact that the Goblet will choose the best available representative for each school. Limiting the pool based on any factor other than ability only makes it more likely that the best will not be good enough to withstand the trials of the competition."
"What if we were to include an age line as well as other precautions?" Ashe suggested. "Leave that as the first challenge for prospective entrants to circumvent."
"I...suppose that would be acceptable," Delacour agreed hesitantly.
"Good," Flamel said decisively. "I was also thinking—"
"Hang on a second."
Angel's voice cut across Flamel's, the only warning Lyra had before reality shifted abruptly, throwing her back into the Mundane Plane. She hadn't been expecting it, so when gravity suddenly applied to her again she lost her balance, falling flat on her face. "What the hell, Angel!" Lyra hadn't even known that was a thing that could be done — unless Angel had lied back in August, it hadn't been an option when she was stuck on the border between planes. And on top of that, she'd thought they'd been getting along well earlier, when Angel had skipped down to join her at the Gryffindor table (making all kinds of barely veiled hints about herself and Sarah being terrifying, evil Miskatonic scholars, it had been hilarious). She hadn't thought she needed to try to be sneaky about spying on them — she hadn't thought Angel would just give her away!
"Well it would hardly be a good task-ish challenge if you know exactly what we did and how to un-do it, would it? Does everyone here know Lyra?" she asked, helping Lyra up and throwing an arm around her shoulders. Ashe's fingers rose to her temples, threading into her hair, and Flamel rolled her eyes. "Silly question, I guess. This is my baby sister Lyra Black, the Hogwarts Champion. Lyra, this is Sarah, Régis, and Sigurd Nyberg, and of course you know Ashe and...Salazar."
"We've met, yes. Hi. And just because I was doing preemptive research on the protections on the Cup doesn't mean I wouldn't be facing the same challenge as everyone else, it just means I was smart enough to get a head-start on it," she argued — stubbornly refusing to be distracted by the glee that had risen in her chest when Angel called her her sister, or how comfortable it felt to be this close to her, like getting a hug from Eris, surrounded by the darkest of dark magic, the cold soothing and...not safe, but familiar.
Right, she guessed, in a calmer, less mad way than being in the middle of a riot.
Eris's amusement rippled through her mind. Is it really so surprising that you are at home surrounded by dark magic? You did grow up in the House of Black.
That was a good point. Before, in her own time, the Family Magic did kind of feel like this, even just sitting around and not doing anything with it. Less intense, most of the time, but similar. Well, no, it's just... I didn't realise how much I missed it. I should really get back on trying to fix the Family Magic. It was still on her list of projects, she'd just kind of...not forgotten about it—
"Preemptive research?" Delacour repeated.
You forgot about it.
"Angel, you can't just declare that your many-times-removed cousin — not her sister," Sarah added as an aside to the other judges, "we are familiar with the concept of a conflict of interest, they've only met twice before today — is going to be the Hogwarts Champion, just because you think she's adorable. That's for the Goblet to decide." Sarah sounded rather exasperated, but not really surprised, obviously she and Angel knew each other fairly well.
Okay, fine, I did. But only because there were more immediate things to take care of, and I wasn't getting anywhere, anyway. Maybe I can convince Angel to help.
("I think they call that espionage in French," Nyberg said, his tone dry enough to make Snape proud.)
Angel pouted at her companion. "I know that. I'm just saying, if the Goblet doesn't pick her, it's wrong."
There was something highly ambivalent about Eris's answering maybe.
What?
("You misunderstand, I simply marvel at the audacity of such a turn of phrase.")
("But not her spying on us?" Ashe muttered, much to Lyra's amusement.)
"Well if you're so certain I'm going to be the Hogwarts Champion, why not just let me put my name in now?" Lyra suggested. Not that she thought they would, or even really wanted them to, but she thought it was a valid point.
"It wouldn't be fun if it were easy," Angel replied promptly, then grinned. "You didn't think I wasn't going to make you work for the Cup, did you?"
Well, no, she hadn't. It hadn't even occurred to her, actually. "No," she sighed, offering her best imitation of Zee's favourite pout.
It's nothing. I just have my doubts about whether the Dark would be enthusiastic about reviving the House, especially with the man who broke its Covenant at its head.
Angel ruffled her hair. "Go away. We have things to do."
Obviously Sirius is only the legal Head of the House. I'm pretty sure the Dark knows that. Anyway, it can't hurt to ask.
But not now, surrounded by people whose business the state of the Black Family Magic certainly wasn't. "Fine. When can I come back?"
"Sunrise," Sarah said firmly. That was the deadline they'd set for themselves at the end of the feast, telling everyone that they would have the day — sunrise to sunset — to enter their names for consideration. Then there was a strange twanging sort of feeling at the edge of her mind, the phrase absolutely no earlier slipping into her thoughts as though it belonged there.
Which it definitely didn't.
How the hell did she just do that?! Lyra demanded, fury and resentment sparking to life. That wasn't fair at all, mind magic wasn't supposed to work on her!
Er... Bella says you're really bad at occlumency, that's how.
Angel must have guessed what had happened by the way Lyra went tense, glaring at the mind mage and actively stopping herself reaching for her wand. She giggled. "If you were wondering who the most dangerous person in the room is, it's not me."
She hadn't been, though she supposed it went a good way toward explaining Angel's interest in the metamorph. Dangerous people were fun. There was just something infinitely appealing about annoying someone who could actually hurt you...
Well, until they actually did hurt you. Then it became abruptly un-fun. Especially when they brought mind magic into the equation like a complete bastard. She hadn't even been acting particularly annoying!
"How did you do that?" she demanded. Bella rubbing it in that Lyra was pants at mind magic wasn't really an explanation.
"Magic. Now, I seem to recall Angelos telling you to leave," Selwyn said, her tone completely flat, face impassive, no hint that she wasn't entirely serious, not playing, do as I say or else. Which, normally, if it was anyone else, Lyra would probably take that as a cue to be even more persistent in annoying them. With someone who could actually get inside her head, though...
"Fine, I can take a hint," she snapped, not even trying to hide the spite in her tone. "See you at sunrise, then."
She slipped back into Shadows before anyone could respond, taking the last word with her. Rude, yes, but she had been told to get the fuck out, twice, by two mages more than capable of forcing her to do so, and if she hadn't left, she almost certainly would have done something incredibly stupid — like, provoking Cygnus -level stupid — because anger and resentment and giddy not-fear always added up to her doing something stupidly reckless, just to prove she could do something.
Aww, look at you, being all self-aware and responsible. My littlest Bellatrice is growing up.
Shut up, Eris. I'm not suicidal.
She wasn't an idiot, either. The steps she needed to take to eliminate this weakness were obvious, and none of them involved annoying stupidly powerful, millennium-old mind mages even Angel considered dangerous. If she had to wait nine hours to start working on entering the Tournament, she had plenty of time to go see if Anomos had found any more obscure mind magic texts for her. She'd started looking into the discipline trying to figure out the omniglot thing (and specifically how to make it work for her, without begging Bella to explain), but learning occlumency had just gotten bumped to the top of her list.
Five and a half hours later, the desperate need to do something had mostly worn off, replaced by extreme frustration. Anomos had found a new text for her, supposedly a treatise on the concept of perfect occlumency, which could be great...but it was in Arabic, which meant that in order to get anything potentially useful out of it she had to translate it, or, since she didn't actually speak Arabic (and translating it herself would therefore take forever), get someone to translate it for her. (Which didn't mean she hadn't spent the last few hours trying anyway.)
Clearly the thing to do, she decided, was to go poke around the Durmstrang ship and Beauxbatons's carriage. The delegations from the other schools might not like her poking at the enchantments on their transportation — she wasn't planning on doing anything, she was just curious how they worked, but people could be proprietary about shite like that — but most of them would probably be asleep by now. Maïa and Gin were, when she slipped back up to the room to drop off the book. (It wasn't illegal, there was no reason she couldn't keep it at school, and if it was on her desk, she was more likely to remember that she needed to get it translated. Normally not something she was likely to forget, but between all the guests around, and the Tournament starting tomorrow, and Samhain...it was probably a good idea to leave it somewhere she'd see it on Tuesday or Wednesday.)
How they could sleep when there was so much going on, Lyra had no idea. Granted, Lyra hadn't been sleeping very well for a while now anyway, just getting five or six hours every other day or so. It didn't really bother her, it wasn't like she was suffering from the lack of sleep like Maïa did when she had bouts of insomnia — and she assumed that wasn't just her being so sleep-deprived that she wasn't noticing herself getting slow and clumsy, because she was pretty sure Maïa would've said something if she were — she just...wasn't tired. But she was also pretty sure even if she did need as much sleep as normal, not mad people, she wouldn't be able to sleep tonight.
Durmstrang's ship was a masterwork of enchanting. It wasn't as complicated as Hogwarts, obviously, but its structural and foundation wards alone were at least as complex and layered as the wards she'd written for Zee, or most of the noble houses she'd ever been to. Much to her disappointment, however, its protective wards completely prohibited her even trying to get at its method of travel without breaking them first. And if she was reading them right, that might actually sink the thing, because up close it wasn't so much a ship as the frame of a ship. The planks of the hull weren't properly sealed, there were actual visible gaps between some of them, faint light glimmering through both above and below the water line, giving the whole thing an almost spectral glow, so she assumed the water was kept out by the wards. And they were too well-integrated and neatly tied off — any weaknesses inside the wards, not unlike not-Professor Riddle's locket-horcrux — to break in without destroying the whole bloody thing, at least from the outside. She'd have to get on-board to pick them apart, and that wasn't exactly likely to happen.
Or, well, at least not tonight. Paranoid bastards had included an element to warn them if anyone shadow-walked (or apparated) onto the ship, but she could probably convince one of the students to invite her aboard at some point, it would be here all year.
(Delightfully, they seemed to be flying raven banners — did they know Britons considered those war colours? She knew it was just a cultural thing for Danes, like a good luck charm, but still...)
In comparison, Beauxbatons's carriage was almost laughably simple. Levitation and gyroscopic elements, a few standard household wards (against scrying and casual intruders and the like), and a space-expansion worked into the walls, which wasn't exactly basic enchanting, but nothing really special, either. The expanded tents everyone seemed to have at the World Cup were more technically impressive, given that they actually folded up on the outside. She had kind of been hoping there might be some phrases there she could steal for the flying motorbike project — Sirius couldn't find his old notes on his NEWT project ("Well excuse me for having more important things on my mind than carefully archiving my old schoolwork — like an entire bloody war!") — and the few things he remembered were... Well, they might work, she could definitely come up with something using those elements that would fly, but the flying enchantments on brooms and carpets were not easily adapted to work with iron. She'd be shocked if it was at all efficient, and in this case inefficient meant slow (and therefore not nearly as fun).
But the Beauxbatons carriage wasn't actually enchanted to fly — there were no propulsion elements at all, nothing for steering or accelerating or braking. As far as she could tell, there wasn't even anything to improve the aerodynamics of what was essentially a giant cube with wheels being dragged through the air. (Apparently the abraxans weren't just for show.) There was a hell of an unobtrusivity suite, inactive at the moment (presumably so they could make their big entrance), the sort of thing that would obviously be necessary, flying something like this anywhere near any muggles at all. That she might have to take notes on. But later, because the only really interesting thing about the carriage was that someone had stuck some kind of shadow-magic something to it.
Not only was it something she didn't recognise at all, but it was weirdly light — she hadn't known shadow magic could be light. But it definitely was. When she stepped into the Shadows to check it out, it was a weird, glowing...anti-shadow, was the only thing she could think to call it. It was also not a point in the Shadows, but a vector, leading off somewhere into the distance. Her best guess was that it was some kind of...tracking charm? Maybe?
Something to help the person who had cast it orient themselves in the Dark, following the carriage, was the only thing that she could think of that remotely made sense. But she couldn't imagine why anyone would want to. The unobtrusivity wards were great, yes, but they wouldn't deflect the attention of anyone who already knew the carriage was there — which the caster had to, since they'd anchored the spell to the carriage in the Mundane plane.
And if they could see the carriage, there was no reason they couldn't just follow it by sight. Even if they were trying to avoid being detected, they could just take a broom or something and follow it in the air, it was big enough it would be visible well beyond the range of any detection charm that would be able to identify a single person on a broom. Yes, it might be hard to keep up — most people didn't have top-of-the-line racing brooms on hand, and a dozen abraxans had to be fast, even when they were dragging a giant box behind them — but it also wasn't a secret where they'd been heading. Hogwarts's exact location was unplottable, but Hogsmeade wasn't exactly difficult to find, and there was a bloody road between the two. That was definitely common knowledge. Whoever was trying to follow the carriage could easily have just floo'd up and sat around drinking butterbeers until it very obviously flew over the town.
Clearly the whole situation required more investigation.
By which she meant she was going to follow it and see who was on the other end, because she still had a couple of hours to kill before she could start working on the puzzle the judges (and Runes professors) were putting together for her (and everyone else, but they weren't important).
It was hard to tell how far one was travelling in the Shadows, in familiar three-dimensional terms. She was positive she was still on Great Britain, because the Channel made shadow-walking to the Continent impossible. As she'd discovered over the summer, the whole no shadow-walking across salt water thing really had very little to do with the salt water, and more to do with the fact that shadows in the ocean weren't really...contiguous, with the ones on land. Or each other. She'd explored a couple on the edge of the Pacific, swimming with Harry and Blaise, and it was kind of like swimming into a really big shadow-pocket. Her best guess was, the water refracted light, which wasn't quite the same as actually casting a shadow. Maybe if she could get down far enough that there was no light, that would count, but she suspected if such depths did count, they'd still be cut off from the surface shadows.
There was a tunnel between Britain and France now, but the magical currents in there were completely distorted by the fucking trains shooting through it all the time, the one time she'd tried to use it she'd gotten turned around for hours. It was much faster to just stop at Ancient House and use a portal to get to Château Blanc, and she would definitely know if she wandered into it following the tracking spell.
So, she was definitely still on the island.
But the shadow the tracking spell had brought her to was...weird. Thin — though that wasn't entirely unexpected, it was night-time, moonlight threw less contrast than the sun, and they were only a couple of days from the dark of the moon, anyway — and strangely...wibbly. Not unlike the shadows of boats and buoys she'd explored off the coast of California, actually. It wasn't in water, obviously, since she could actually reach it, but... She couldn't really describe how it was weird, it just was.
Also, she thought it might be moving. It was difficult to tell, because it was barely deeper than the ambient night, and that was fairly featureless on the Shadow side of the planar border, but she wasn't moving, and it seemed to be moving away from her as she watched it. Made it difficult to make out what was casting the shadow, all she could really tell was that it was alive, and had the same anti-shadow flavour as the spell it had presumably cast.
Well, there wasn't much point to following it this far if she wasn't going to actually see what it was.
She stepped through and promptly yelped in surprise as she found herself falling through the air, out of the shadow of an enormous bird, featureless against the bright crescent of the moon.
The bird seemed almost as surprised, she thought, its wings missing a beat even as Lyra tried to catch herself with a freeform levitation effect or a gravity negation field, by pushing away from the ground — barely within the range of her ability to sense it, but growing quickly closer — or against the air, as though she was treading water or something.
It was no good, she realised after only a few seconds. She still didn't know how freeform flight was supposed to work, and the likelihood of her figuring it out before she spattered into the ground was negligible.
Closing her eyes and visualising her bedroom at Ancient House as clearly as she could, she pulled herself into apparation space.
When she reappeared with a crack — definitely not concerned about making a graceful re-entry, at the moment — her momentum had been preserved. She crashed into her bed with another almighty crack, bounced off it slightly before finally coming to rest, just lying there trying to catch her breath. It had been knocked out of her with the impact, and the thin, exhilarated giggles she couldn't seem to stop weren't helping.
So, apparently momentum was preserved when apparating. That was...weird. Neat, but weird. She'd have to see if anyone had written anything about it, because she...really hadn't expected that. She'd thought apparation space was a single point, no room for movement...
Also, ow.
Eris, aren't you supposed to warn me if I'm about to do something that might kill me?
Yes, I would. But you weren't. Admittedly, this was about the worst possible outcome, but you're fine. I'm sure you're not even injured badly enough to keep you from going back.
She didn't actually think she was injured at all. A bit generally sore, maybe, her neck already feeling slightly stiff, but she hadn't broken anything...other than the bedframe. She rolled free of the crater she'd made of the mattress to fix that, even as she admitted, well, no. What the hell— Was that a veela?
She guessed that explained why the shadow was so thin and poorly-defined. It wasn't anchored on a two-dimensional surface, it just kind of petered out into the night.
I think so, yes.
What the hell was a veela doing following the Beauxbatons carriage to Hogwarts? And why was it flying itself? Veela were capable of long-distance flights, but there were about a thousand fucking miles between the two schools. She wasn't sure how fast they were, but she'd expect it to take at least a day and a half to send an owl that far. Maybe twenty-four hours, if it didn't take any breaks. Did it miss the carriage? Had it been purposefully left behind? Was it even associated with the school at all? Her first thought was that it was a student, but there were other veela in France. If it wasn't a student, she was even more curious why it was following them.
Of course she was going to try again. She just had to slip back up to Hogwarts and grab her broom, first.
Lyra didn't really enjoy flying just for the sake of it, especially on a broom (she'd much rather go riding than flying), so she hadn't made a point of getting one when she'd first washed up in this universe, but rumour had it one of the Triwizard challenges was going to be a double-elimination quidditch tournament between the three schools, with the Champions acting as captains. So obviously she'd needed a broom. And equally obviously (at least to her), getting a quidditch broom, or even a racing broom with better-than-average cornering abilities (which was what most quidditch players used these days) would be bloody stupid, she'd probably never use the fucking thing outside the Tournament.
There was only one aerial sport she really liked: stunt flying. Which was exactly what it sounded like — doing stupidly dangerous tricks at fifty-plus miles an hour, a mile and a half above the ground. She'd ended up getting a Peregrine, a relatively high-input model from an Egyptian company, not as fast as the Firebolt or even the last few Nimbus models (except in a death dive, racing brooms had limiters built in so you couldn't hit one-fifty within twenty degrees of straight down, because safety regulations, or something), but with much better turning capabilities and more responsive handling. It wasn't like quidditch was about flat speed, anyway, as Mullet had demonstrated at the World Cup. The bloody pitch wasn't even long enough for a Firebolt to hit full speed.
Stunt brooms were shorter than racing brooms, normally ridden in a jockey sort of position or lying flat on the handle (because cushioning charms interfered with the enchantments to manage the g-forces involved in making point-turns at fifty to a hundred and fifty miles an hour), and had more complicated semi-fixed leg braces, allowing for more hands-free maneuvers. They also tended to have "fletching" rather than bristles, though these days the "feathers" were apparently little fins carved from the same sort of wood as the handle (they had been actual feathers in her old universe).
And they were easier to mount in mid-air, due to a nifty little proximity tether which ensured that if (when) a rider (inevitably) managed to throw themselves free of their broom, it would automatically be summoned to their side. That was pretty much the only safety feature other than the whiplash prevention spells, but Lyra wasn't complaining. If they had to include two safety features, those were the two she would've chosen.
She didn't need it this time — she was already on the broom when she shifted into the shadows, and consequently when she came out of them again — but she still appreciated the fact that it existed. If it didn't, she would've discovered that momentum was preserved in apparation weeks ago, because she'd already thrown herself twice (possibly the most fun she'd ever had on a broom). She also might've been a bit more cautious about sitting side-saddle on it, even though that was pretty much the only halfway-comfortable way to actually sit up on the thing.
She rose slightly, out of the veela's shadow, to hover alongside it, pacing it. It was keeping up a pretty good clip, actually. Kind of hard to tell without landmarks, but she suspected they were going faster than an owl.
It made a chirping, trilling sort of sound at her, which she fancied sounded surprised. She sang back a questioning, who are you, why are you here, sort of idea at it. Thunderbird really was the most useful language she'd ever learned.
Its wings missed another beat, as it had the first time she'd appeared, falling out of the air just ahead of it. For a moment it glided, wobbling slightly indecisively before clearly deciding that this was a conversation that was going to require actual words, descending abruptly toward a dark patch of ground. That was the nice thing about flying at night, Lyra supposed — it was easy to avoid being spotted by any humans on the ground because they always had light to hand. As they grew closer, the dark patch resolved into a scrubby little copse on the edge of a field. The veela swooped down to within a few feet of the ground, fluttered like a duck about to land on a lake, and shifted abruptly back into her more human form — a wave of wild, hot magic fled from her, like a sudden gust of wind, but it surprisingly didn't hurt at all, tickled more than anything — and dropped unceremoniously to the leaves. After a moment of frowning concentration, she conjured a handful of fire, not to defend herself, apparently, but just for light, since she just stood there staring as Lyra hovered before her.
She was younger than Lyra had expected. Assuming veela aged the same as normal humans — which, judging by the veela who had come with the Beauxbatons delegation, she was pretty sure they did — this one couldn't be older than fourteen or fifteen. She wrapped her free arm around herself, shivering visibly in her loose, sleeveless shift, bright hair glimmering in the firelight as she shook it back over her shoulders.
"Are you real?" she asked in faintly accented French. Apparently remembering she was in Britain, she switched to rather strained English to say, "I mean, you are...a person?"
"A person who speaks French, even," Lyra drawled (in French). "Who are you? Why are you flying to Hogwarts?"
"Who are you? Where did you come from?"
Lyra smirked. "I asked you first."
The little veela girl (who was probably actually taller than Lyra, but not the point) glared at her, teeth chattering slightly. Apparently that fire wasn't keeping her very warm. "Gabrielle Delacour. And I promised my father I would not go to Hogwarts with the other students. So I am not going to Hogwarts with the other students. I am going alone."
She sounded a little defensive about that, but honestly, that was fucking hilarious. Lyra tried not to laugh too hard pointing out, "You do realise there are easier ways to get to Hogwarts than flying a thousand fucking miles?"
"I didn't think it would be that far — Britain's just on the other side of the Channel!"
"Yes, congratulations, you've found it. But Hogwarts is in Scotland. Northern Scotland." She cast a few quick divining charms to find their current location. They were barely in Britain, still a few dozen miles south of London. "You're barely halfway there."
The kid groaned, throwing her head back dramatically and pacing in a tiny, frustrated circle. "But it's been hours! And you never answered my questions," she added suddenly, as though she'd gotten distracted and just realised that.
"Lyra Black, and I came from Hogwarts. In case you were wondering, shadow walking is much faster than flying."
"I know, but I can't shadow walk. My friend Evi can, but she doesn't know I'm going to Hogwarts because she can't keep secrets, and she would tell everyone, and then Fleur would find out, and Papa, and then they would make me go home! And anyway, she's not here. And I can't just flame there, I tried, and they're too far away and fuzzy, and I wouldn't even have tried because if I flamed to Fleur I would also be sent home, but I'm tired and hungry and it's cold, and this was a terrible idea!"
Lyra giggled. "I don't have any food on me, but...want a warming charm?"
The pouting, shivering veela glared at her for a second before admitting, "Yes," adding after a moment, "Can hallucinations cast warming charms?"
"I'm pretty sure I'm real," Lyra said. She cast the charm just a little more strongly than she normally would have — she thought she remembered something about veela normally being warmer-blooded than humans, creatures of fire, and all that.
The girl shuddered, but relaxed into the heat after a moment. "I'm not sure. You are too...quiet, your mind. Empty. There are no feelings at all."
Oh. Huh. She did recall Bella mentioning something about the dementors calling them quiet things, now that the kid mentioned it. Somehow it hadn't occurred to her that she would probably seem really fucking weird to veela, too. "I'm real, I promise. Admittedly kind of fucked in the head, but real."
"That's what an hallucination would say, I think."
"Ah, but can hallucinations cast warming charms?" Lyra shot back, giggling. "I think I met your Fleur earlier? A cousin? Sister? She said she was a Delacour, anyway, and her father is the I.C.W. judge. Why would they send you home?"
Gabrielle, who had perked up briefly when Lyra mentioned that she'd met Fleur, scowled again at the question. "My big sister. And they did not want me to come in the first place. Papa and Mama think I am too young to control myself, and that humans at Hogwarts are racist and terrible and bad things would happen because it's hard, sometimes, holding the magic in, but I can do it! And I think Fleur has a really good chance of being picked, and Papa is going to be here all year, and I want to be here with them, especially if Fleur is our Champion! And so I thought I could just go, and then when nothing bad happens, they will have to admit that it's fine for me to be there. I just didn't realise how far away it is."
Lyra grinned — mostly because that sounded like exactly the sort of thing she would do, trying to prove she could do a thing by just running off and doing it, without any actual plan to speak of. And she would be lying if she said that offering (informal) patronage to a renegade teenage veela, especially one with less-than-perfect control over their conspicuous mind magic, didn't seem like it would be even more provocative to the insufferably non-reactive twats than her muggleborn Slytherin.
Of course, the mention of keeping her magic to herself did raise the question of how the little veela was planning to get whatever mind-magic energy they needed from humans if no one knew she was in Britain — presumably the actual delegation had brought humans who were willing to help their veela classmates with that problem, but just showing up at an orgy wasn't exactly low-key. But Lyra wasn't about to bring it up and possibly make the girl decide that this actually was a bad idea and maybe she should just turn around and go home. They'd figure something out, she was sure. (If all else failed, she was all but certain Blaise would be willing to take one for the team. He was happy enough to feed his ridiculous pocket boggart, and Coco didn't even get him off.) "Impeccable logic."
"Shut up, you're mean." The veela pouted at her as though she hadn't just been complimented.
"I wasn't being sarcastic, I mean it. I'll even help you get to the school, and you can sleep in my bed until your father and sister realise you're there."
It was almost like talking to an elf, how quickly her mood shifted. "Really?!"
"Sure? I don't generally make offers I don't plan to follow through on. Maïa, my muggleborn girlfriend, sometimes has inexplicable issues with people doing things that sane adults don't approve of, so it's within the realm of possibility that she would turn you in, so you should probably try to avoid her for a couple days. But I don't think Gin will care, she tends to be more reasonable about this sort of thing — that's actually one of her best qualities as a minion."
"Er...minion?"
Lyra thought it spoke highly of the veela girl that that was the only bit of that she'd questioned. But then, she had thought it seemed like a good idea to try to fly to Hogwarts, on her own, because her parents said she couldn't go to Hogwarts with people, for what even Lyra would admit was a pretty good reason — she could only imagine how much trouble a teenage veela could get into if she lost control of her magic.
Clearly, they were going to get along great.
"Well, not really, I don't have anything for her to do. It just annoys her to be called a minion. Come on! We have a house in the City, we can floo up to Hogsmeade and sneak in through the tunnels to get past the wards, and raid the kitchens before we head up to the Tower. I think the elves will be up already, and I still have an hour and a half or so until sunrise."
"Do they not enchant the windows at Hogwarts to protect you from the sun?"
What? Protect from the... "Oh! I'm not a vampire. I mean, I'm not a huge fan of the sun, but it won't kill me."
"But you said you shadow-walked here!"
"I did, but I'm not a vampire. I'm just killing time until they get done with whatever they're doing to make it harder to put my name in the Goblet of Fire. Angel said spying on them was cheating — disallowed cheating. Stupid mind mage said I couldn't come back until sunrise. But, no, the only windows that are enchanted to protect vampires at Hogwarts are in the Defence classroom and Cassie's bedroom. Not that I've actually seen Cassie's bedroom, I just assume it's easier to have sex if you're not wearing head-to-toe protective covering, and I know the Castle puts windows in every sleeping room. Even in Slytherin, it's weird. I still don't know if those are actual windows, or just projections, or what, the entire snake pit is six kinds of screwy with space manipulation enchantments. I tried to map it for the new firsties this year, and I couldn't do it. And I mean, I don't admit that I can't do things very often, it just doesn't work in two dimensions, or even three..."
That whole project had been one long exercise in frustration. The only explanation for the snake pit was, she'd decided, that it didn't actually exist, as a physical object, and never had. Which made it infuriatingly difficult to model physically, especially since it shifted about three times as fast as any other area of the school, apparently at random. Eventually, she had just told Rachel the same thing the prefects always told everyone. (Just follow the tunnels marked with an ouroboros and she'd get back to the commons eventually.) She kind of wished Flamel really was Slytherin, just so she could annoy the bitch until she explained what the fuck was going on down there, seriously, it was absurd.
"Never mind. What was I— Oh! Right! Lovegood brought the vampire she's shagging to assist with her classes — she's teaching Defence this year — because she doesn't do dark magic. Stacey's probably the only vampire who's been at Hogwarts in centuries. They have even fewer rights than veela here, you know."
Gabrielle just stood there staring for a long moment, silence stretching between them, before asking (saying, Lyra was fairly certain it was rhetorical), "Is this how other people feel meeting me? Because, I know I talk a lot, like a lot a lot, but— Wait! Did you say you're going to put your name in? But you're my age, aren't you? Or, are you? I mean, humans age about the same as veela, and vampires, but you said you're not, so I guess I don't really know what you are, so—"
Lyra smirked at her. "It's not important. I'm fourteen, and yes, I'm going to be the Hogwarts Champion. Assuming I didn't annoy Selwyn so badly she actually convinces Ashe and fake-Slytherin to make it so I personally can't enter. Which, I don't think I did. I mean, Angel wants me to represent the House, and I left when she did her creepy mind mage thing — I really need to figure out how she did that. And also learn occlumency. You don't read Arabic, do you?" The veela shook her head. "Didn't really expect you to, though it would've been convenient if you did."
"But how are you— Fleur said I couldn't enter because everyone has to be seventeen! Not that I think I'd be picked over her, but—"
"Yes, and? I mean, I just explained this to her, you could go— Actually, wait, no, you can't ask her, I guess. Who else was... Harry! You could ask Harry."
"Who?"
"Er...you know Lise Delacour, the bioalchemist?" Lyra wasn't exactly sure how large most veela clans were, but she'd gotten the impression from Sirius at the World Cup that they were large enough that it was possible she didn't.
The veela nodded enthusiastically. "She's my favourite auntie! I work in her shop sometimes, in the summer, and she's been teaching me, not really a lot, just easy basic enchanting, but she said next summer I can start blood alchemy! Well, if I get my Transfiguration marks up, but I don't have Mister Sartini anymore, and, well, he's still at Beauxbatons, so it would be kind of hard to have him now, but he doesn't teach intermediate classes anyway, so I don't think it will be a problem. Once Fleur knows I'm here, I'm sure she'll teach me, she's much more fun and interesting than Mister Sartini!"
"Neat!" Lyra would love to learn blood alchemy. She didn't even like potions and she thought that would be neat. The theory, at least, was fascinating, and if she actually did decide to try to make herself a skinchanger someday, she'd definitely need more practical experience. Éanna was more than willing to talk about alchemy theory, but she was pretty sure Snape had told him not to actually teach her anything practical about bioalchemy lest she accidentally turn herself into a new type of werewolf or something. (Because Snape always had to ruin her fun.) "Lise Delacour used to be Elizabeth Potter. She was disowned, twice, so they've never met, but Harry is her former brother's son."
"So, Harry...Potter? Like in those silly adventure stories for little children?"
Lyra never had gotten around to reading those. She probably should, they were almost certain to be terrible, in so many ways. Maybe she'd buy them for Harry for Yule or something, she could read them when he got frustrated with them using his name for something so ridiculous. She nodded. "That's the one. He's also Lise's stepmother's godson's godson. So, I don't know how veela reckon kinship, but I'd call anyone who shares an aunt a cousin, so that's probably close enough. He was there, he can tell you exactly how many fucks I give about people telling me what I am and am not allowed to do. Actually, he's probably the most normal person I know, so he can do that in general. But we should get going, Grimmauld Place is about forty miles north of here, and I do have things to do today."
Gabrielle was tired and reluctant to return to the sky, but given that the options were pretty much fly to Grimmauld or let Lyra apparate them both, and she still didn't entirely believe Lyra was a real person, and certainly didn't trust some (possibly) human girl she'd just met to be dragging her in and out of apparation space, she had done so after only a little moaning. (Lyra really didn't see what the big deal was, Hogwarts was still over four hundred miles away, and she'd been planning to fly there, but whatever.)
The sky had just begun to grow light as they stumbled out of Meda's floo. Meda, making breakfast for herself before heading to her office, startled badly enough that she nearly hexed them, but after she realised the unexpected intruder was just Lyra, she'd adjusted annoyingly quickly to the fact that she was being accompanied by a rogue veela. She'd chided Lyra for not finding more weather-appropriate clothes for Gabrielle (as though veela could transform just any clothes when they shifted to their bird form, honestly, Meda!) and gave them half a dozen muffins to tide them over until they managed to infiltrate the school (and more specifically the kitchens). She also made them wait while she found one of Dora's old cloaks for Gabrielle, but since she promised not to tell anyone they'd been there, Lyra guessed that was fine. (She had no idea how her little sister had turned into such a mum, it was still bloody weird.)
It did mean it was definitely sunrise by the time Lyra finally poked her head into her room. Gin was already up, getting ready for her morning run. "Morning! Is Maïa up yet?"
"Maïa? She's in the loo." Gin was not the most talkative of people before breakfast. Or ever, really.
"Good." She dragged Gabrielle into the room with the picnic basket they'd acquired in the kitchens — that new elf, Winky, had practically thrown an assortment of fruits and leftover-chicken sandwiches at them, lecturing Lyra all the while about interrupting the breakfast preparations. "That's my bed, you can crash there." She always kept the curtains closed, anyway, as a signal for the elves to leave her section of the room alone, so Maïa wasn't likely to notice that it was occupied. "This is Ginevra. Gin, this is Gabrielle—"
"Gabbie," she interjected, with a little wave. "Hello."
"She's definitely not supposed to be here, so don't tell anyone, including Maïa—"
Gin just gave her a completely blank stare. "English, Lyra?"
Er. Right. She'd forgotten Gin didn't speak French. (Really, the Weasleys were the worst not-quite-noble family she could think of off the top of her head. Cedrella had admittedly always been a bit of a lazy bitch, probably didn't care, but Lucy would not approve.) She repeated herself quickly, adding, "I have to go, I have a tournament to enter."
Both Gin and Gabbie looked a bit confused as she grabbed her notebook and skipped back out of the room, but they'd be fine. Gin was already going back to putting on her trainers, and Gabbie had been planning on figuring out everything about sneaking up here by herself — figuring out how not to get caught now she was here was really nothing in comparison.
This is a great plan, clearly nothing will go wrong, how could it, when Gabbie and Lyra are both such rational, logical people? —Leigha
Oh, yes, this will be a certain success, no doubt about that.
Leigha is particularly proud of her "preemptive research" term. Because both Lyra and Leigha think they're hilarious xD —Lysandra