Harry Potter - Gamer Neighbour
Summary: The new neighbour over the street at Privet Drive number five seems pretty normal, but not Privet Drive normal. But is anyone with the power of the gamer ever even remotely normal? No fucking way.
Disclaimer: I do own some shit, but not any recognizable characters, places or settings in this particular fanfiction.
Chapter 8:
Nick never wanted to see another speed camera ever again and if he ever encountered the person who first came up with the idea of those accursed things, execution by slow painful torture felt like a pretty appropriate course of action. He was generally tolerant and forgiving, but some things were just plain unforgiveable.
Violet didn't want to hear another burst of cursing over speed cameras ever again and had on multiple occasions during the drive felt tempted to whip out her wand in order to silence the cursing man in the drivers seat, no matter how ill advised it was for her to use magic while her Magic Burns were still troubling her or how much trouble it would cause her with the DMLE.
The temperature was fine, but the day also had clouds and a light summer rain on offer. Nick had never been in Godric's Hollow, so he couldn't Apparate them there. The rain made the thought of going by broomstick highly unappealing, so after an early breakfast and a massage, they'd hopped into Nick's Audi and driven to Godric's Hollow. Violet had also sent Hedwig off with a letter for Ron and the rest of the Weasley family just before they left, but the trip had been somewhat annoying. The amount of speed cameras had prevented him from going at a decent clip for a lot of the drive and he was now seriously regretting not just bundling up, put up rain aversion Charms and going by broomsticks instead. Or asking around for someone living in the village or near it that they could Floo to.
But they had finally arrived and it was with a relieved sigh that Nick parked the car near the village square, a cigarette nearly teleporting into his mouth the moment he was out of the car, as Violet had nixed his desire to smoke in the car on the drive over. The cigarette was lit quickly enough and after that most important business was taken care of, he unfolded his umbrella to protect his precious from the evil rain that threatened to put it out now when he was finally able to smoke again.
Violet smirked evilly at him as she made her way out of the car and moved around it, stopping at the back end of the car under her own umbrella while Nick puffed away on his cancer stick with visible relief.
She slowly turned around and looked around their surroundings.
"So, this is Godric's Hollow?" she mused as her gaze swept around, observing the quaint little village.
"Unless I hallucinated the sign before we drove into it so I could get a smoke faster, yeah." Nick agreed, taking a look around himself.
"Do... Do you know where the house is?" Violet asked and Nick's expression went from lingering irritation at the smoke-less speed camera-filled drive over to sympathy. He gently shook his head.
"No. This trip was a bit spur of the moment, so I haven't really prepared for it. I haven't been here before and haven't seen any Wizarding maps of it, just Muggle satellite imagery and maps." he admitted. "But it's a pretty small place and from what I understand, we can't really miss it. The Ministry apparently turned it into a memorial of sorts and there's supposed to be a statue in the village square as well. I guess we'll spot it soon enough if we walk around a bit or the statue might have directions nearby."
Violet slowly nodded, squared her shoulders and started slowly walking towards the square, Nick following her lead while regaining some peace of mind through nicotine from the annoying drive over.
"That's an obelisk though?" Violet asked as they made their way onto the square.
"World War I monument." Nick responded, spotting the dates on a plaque close to the base. The obelisk itself featured names, likely locals that had perished during the Great War.
However as they got closer to it, the obelisk faded away and instead they found themselves looking at the statue he had expected. It was a pretty nice piece of spell work actually, he hadn't even spotted anything magical. Granted, his Mage Sight was turned off as it was pretty distracting to have it turned on all the time, but he usually managed to spot that sort of thing none the less. He would have commented on how oddly brilliant it was for the usually haphazard and insane wizarding world to manage such a seamless concealment, but he kept silent out of respect for Violet as she moved right up to the statue and stopped, looking up on it in a very sombre mood.
His own gaze darted back and forth over the statue. The base was a square smoothly polished rock, upon which sat a young adult couple holding a small baby girl. He'd seen some pictures of James and Lily Potter while doing some research earlier in the summer and silently admitted that this was damned fine work. He was no art buff or anything, but they looked pretty much like stone versions of real humans. The resemblance was pretty uncanny to the pictures he'd seen. Baby Violet was held in Lily's arms, the back of her head resting against her fathers chest as the two adults were leaning against each other. James had one of his arms wrapped around Lily and the other resting on his knees. Lily's expression was caught in an eternally kind and loving look directed down at her daughter, James sported a solemn expression of quiet pride in his little family. Baby Violet seemed to be laughing, cheerfully and adoringly looking up at her parents.
"Do..." Violet started to say after nearly three minutes of complete silence, but choked up and had to swallow before she could continue. "Do you think it was based on a real picture? I got some from Hagrid in my first year, but nothing like this..." she breathed in a muted tone of voice that was very unlike her normal one. He privately thought that this more solemn Violet felt unnatural, but he could certainly understand why she would be at this moment.
"It almost has to be. Either that or a memory." he replied after a few moments. He looked around to see if there was anything that indicated who'd made the statue, but found nothing of the sort. There was a small plaque, but all it said was 'In Memory of James and Lily Potter, who bravely sacrificed everything so that their daughter, Violet Potter, could live on.'. "I'll see if I can find something in the Ministry archives the next time I'm there. Perhaps the maker has the picture or is willing to part with a copy of the memory." he quietly offered.
"Thank you." she breathed, almost below hearing.
"Think nothing of it." he solemnly responded.
After spending nearly fifteen minutes mostly in silence in front of the statue, they'd stopped at the pub and ate a herby rabbit stew with mash and peas. The locals had been obviously curious about the outsiders, but the magical duo hadn't been approached and instead quietly chatted with each other as they ate. With their stomachs filled, they ventured outside and walked around the village, looking for the Potters old house while under Nick's notice-me-not charms. Ten minutes later, at the end of a lane sparsely dotted with homes, the two came to a stop in front of a wild-looking hedge marking the edge of a property.
The cottage behind it was visible and based on the destruction and decay, it was likely the correct location. There was a small plaque outside revealing that it had been made invisible to the muggles and left as a memorial to the Potters and the events of a terrible Halloween nearly fifteen years ago which confirmed that they were in the right place. There were also many messages, initials and other things that had been scrawled on the sign over the years. Violet seemed to like it and found some amount of comfort in the messages, spending a few minutes going over all of them and committing them to memory.
Nick quietly observed the cottage behind the hedge. The years and lack of upkeep had taken a toll on it, but the most glaringly obvious thing wrong with the house was that a significant part of the second floor just wasn't there anymore. He'd read about the incident, had knowledge of it based on the boy Potter he'd gotten knowledge about, but hadn't seen any pictures of it. It appeared he'd failed to realize just how destructive the events of that Halloween had been. It wasn't just a pretty nasty spell that had bounced off Violets forehead and struck Voldemort down. There had likely also been some form of magical explosion which had more or less removed half the upper floor of the two-story building.
He briefly activated his Mage Sight to observe the Potter Cottage. He saw the spell work that made it invisible to Muggles and very old faint traces of other magics, but nothing else. He glanced aside at Violet and observed her magical Aura, then the thick band of magic that went into her from the dome over number four.
He'd figured the mysterious hazy line would go to this house, but it didn't. He couldn't see it from here, but he had indeed seen it head into the village from the car as they drove up to it when he'd activated his Mage Sight for a split second. It hadn't went to the statue back in the square either.
Curiouser and curiouser.
After Violet had gathered some courage, she opened the small gate and made her way into the front yard, Nick absently following and taking in his surroundings.
His left hand held up his umbrella, but his right twitched in his jacket pocket at the unkept state of the front lawn. He wasn't the biggest neat freak on the planet, but seeing this lawn and the hedge around it in such a horrible overgrown weed-riddled state did trigger him somewhat. He let his wand stay in its holster, but it was a near thing and he was terribly tempted to cast a lawn moving and shrubbery trimming spell over his shoulder once they left this place.
Violet also seemed faintly disturbed by the state of the lawn, either because she felt it was disrespectful or because she frequently found herself caring for the garden and lawn at number four. But she kept moving towards the house where she tried the front door, discovering that it was unlocked. Indeed, it looked as if it couldn't be locked as it had once been pushed into the house, leaving it just barely hanging on to the hinges. Riddle had apparently felt that Alohomora was beneath him or had wanted to make an impression.
The two of them stepped inside and strolled around the ground floor for a bit. Dust, old leaves, bird droppings and other debris could be found pretty much everywhere. He saw no personal pictures of the family or otherwise, just paintings and pictures of landscapes, common animals and one dusty abstract painting of the kind that he'd never gotten. Looked like a bunch of differently coloured squiggly lines made by an 'E. Wentworth'.
He shook his head at it. Give him something recognizable and he was happy, this sort of shit only had a place if it was something you had gotten as a present from a young kid practising their painting skills.
And that place was on the refrigerator, not placed on the wall inside a nice gilded frame.
Violet seemed a bit disappointed, he guessed at the lack of pictures of her parents, her, relatives and friends of the family. He wasn't sure if they had been removed right after it happened, if they had been filched by visitors over the years or if there just hadn't been any to begin with, but there were none to be seen. After finding nothing of note on the ground floor, Violet headed upstairs and Nick quietly followed.
They stepped into what must have once been the nursery where Violet became the first person to ever live after being struck with the Killing Curse. It was completely open to the elements, entirely lacking a roof over it and the two outer walls were gone, just faint jagged wooden edges left close to the floor where the walls had once been. A broken wooden rocking horse, a banged-up crib and a sooty carpet was all that was left, all of it covered with dirt, leaves and years worth of accumulated crap.
Violet stood in the centre of the former room, head slowly going back and forth as she observed where everything changed so drastically for her once upon a time. Nick stood quietly just 'inside' next to the doorway, looking at his young charge. She took a deep breath and turned around to face him, her expression determined and her eyes wet with unshed tears.
"My father died downstairs." she declared. "My mother died here." she continued and gestured behind her back near the crib. "Can we do it? Can we destroy Voldemort forever? Can we make him... Can we make him PAY for this?!" she finished, her voice growing increasingly louder and her tears finally starting to trail down her cheeks.
Nick nodded.
"We can." he replied and walked over to her, his wand flicking out of the holster on his right wrist with a twist of his hand. He held on to it tightly and pointed it upwards. He tilted his head slightly downwards so he could look straight into her eyes. "I swear to you Violet Potter. I swear to you on my life and magic that I will help you get your revenge, that the Dark Lord will get his final comeuppance. So mote it be." he promised and a flash of magic sparked into existence for a brief moment. With another flick of his wrist, the wand shot back into the holster and instead he put his right hand on her shoulder. "Against any sort of odds, no matter what stands in your way, I will be right there alongside you to smooth the road and ease the journey."
Violet just stared silently at him in shock and awe for a couple of seconds, then slammed into him and wrapped her arms around him.
"Thank you!" she managed to get out in a strained tone of voice as he returned her hug, gently wrapping his arms around her in turn. "Thank you!" she repeated.
Well, perhaps he wasn't quite so patient a man as he'd always thought after all. That little bit of magic-laced promise was pretty darn impulsive of him. Not quite as impressive as it sounded though, it wasn't like an Unbreakable Oath.
Without a Binder, the consequences of violating the Oath were more unpleasant then as dire as the wording made it sound. Despite the wording, a weaker Oath like this was highly unlikely to deprive him of either life or magic if he violated it. Weaker Oaths acted more like a reminder of what you had promised if you were in danger of violating them, with a bit of unpleasant punishment if you did violate them.
If he did something really bad, like sell her out to Voldemort instead of helping her get rid of him, it might be a grave enough violation to seriously mess him up, perhaps even actually squib or kill him. Letting magic judge the degree of how badly an Oath had been broken and decide the punishment wasn't really an exact science in spite of plenty of people having studied Oaths over the centuries.
Magic was capricious at best and not really constant in how it acted. Trials would be much simpler otherwise, they could just leave it up to magic to decide if someone was guilty or not and then mete out an appropriate punishment.
He didn't regret giving the Oath though. Had there been a Binder present, he might even have considered an Unbreakable Oath.
Violet deserved her revenge and he had been planning to help out with that anyway, so it's not like having magically sworn to do so would change anything. Oddly enough, it just made him feel guiltier rather then ease up on the massive amounts of stockpiled guilt and shame he'd been building ever since getting to know her in person.
"Two things." Violet suddenly spoke up as she ambled along slightly behind Nick who had wanted to go somewhere else in the village after they had left the cottage. "First of all, thank you for taking me here. I... I think I needed it, although I didn't know it before I actually got here and saw the house. It was like finding something I didn't even know was lost." she started and Nick glanced back at her over his shoulder with a small smile, before he faced forward again. She took a deep breath. "Second, answers. You suddenly said this morning that you wanted to go here and asked if I wanted to come along. What brought this about? Why are we here? You would have gone here without me, so why are YOU here?"
Nick was quiet for a few moments, stopping at the crossing of two streets as if searching for something, then headed off back towards the village square.
"What do you know about the protections around number four?" he asked.
"Not much. The Wards are supposed to protect me from Death Eaters and those that might want to harm me. In my first year, they supposedly made Professor Quirrel with his Voldemort tag-along burst into fire as they couldn't stand the love of my mothers sacrifice. Didn't seem to do anything to the diary in my second year, Lockheart vanishing the bones in my fucking arm or Pettigrew in my third year though." she responded somewhat hesitantly. "It's one of those things the Headmaster has never properly explained."
"Not sure he actually knows enough to explain anything, even if he had been inclined to share information for once. While you were snoozing away last night, I headed over and had a look at the protections before I went to bed. Headed over again this morning before I made breakfast to have another look, but I'm not so sure it helped much." Nick replied and shook his head.
He was level 73 now after a few levels gained before he went to bed, after the first time he'd been over to look more closely at the Wards. He'd used the points he gained from farming some dungeons to level both Blood Magic and Wards. He didn't have enough to master either, but he could probably find profitable work as a Warder now if he ever needed to and got to prove his skills instead of having to show non-existent documentation of his skills. But the second visit with his newly raised skill levels hadn't really told him anything new.
"All I was really able to tell, was that it isn't really a Ward. My guess is that whatever form of protection your mother gave you was originally cantered on you, not number four. Makes sense, since you were living with your parents here in Godric's Hollow at the time and I don't think that house ever had any Wards. I didn't see any traces of old Wards at least, so protection there likely lied more in anonymity and the Fidelius Charm. After the protection saved you from the Killing Curse and temporarily got rid of Voldemort, it must have been fading. But you were still in danger, so Dumbledore somehow managed to renew it, strengthen it somehow for a while. Not sure how, but he must have managed to get it to stick around long enough for him to anchor it to number four." Nick explained and scratched the back of his head.
"There is a Ward Stone buried beneath number four as well as four Anchor Stones at all four corners of the yard, but they're not used to hold a Ward as I expected them to. I unearthed one of the Anchor Stones and had a look at it. Those are usually filled with Runes to set a perimeter for the Wards emitted by the Ward Stone. That was not, it was completely clean without even a single Rune on it. I'm not sure, but I expect Dumbledore took some blood from you and used that to key the Anchor Stones to the Ward Stone and all of them to you. That somehow shares whatever sort of protection you have with number four itself. It's my best guess at least." he mused and shrugged. "It's an incredible bit of magic trickery and I have no idea how Dumbledore managed it. It's an incredible feat of magic, seriously impressive. The 'taste' of the magic involved seems focused on Safety, Home, Family and Sharing. All I can really tell about it is that it must have been done with some sort of obscure Blood Magic spell, possibly a dash of Soul Magic as well. But to bind those concepts to the Anchor Stones and Ward Stones without Runes in a way that somehow manages to last for years? Before I saw that Anchor Stone, I would have said that such a thing was impossible..." he trailed off and Violet gave him a semi-gentle tap to the back of his head to get him to snap out of it once he'd been silent for nearly a full minute.
"Ah, sorry. Probably got a bit technical there. Anyway, to dumb it down a bit... Dumbledore made it so that your mothers protection affects number four as well, somehow. I imagine it will work as long as your relatives, your 'Family', calls number four their Home. It gives you and them Safety. There's also a Leyline going through Surrey, it's not directly underneath Privet Drive, but close enough that stray free-flowing magic is available in decent amounts. The Sharing part of the magic I felt is likely being used both to Share your mothers protection with number four, but also for magic from the Leyline to be Shared with the protections around number four. While you are there, excess magic that isn't being used to protect number four keeps your own personal protection from completely fading away as it probably should, recharges you in a way. While you are off at Hogwarts, your protection looses strength, then when you get back to number four in the summers, you get topped up. It's like you are a rechargeable battery and number four is the charger." he explained and scratched his jaw.
"My guess is that the protection hadn't had much to do during most of your childhood and you were constantly being charged by being there, so you were lugging around a fair amount of excess protective power during your first year. That's why it had such spectacular results against your Professor and his passenger. But after that, your batteries were running low, but started recharging during the summer when you were back at number four. But you didn't get fully recharged before second year, so against the diary, after almost a year at Hogwarts which emptied the batteries over the year after your summer recharge, you didn't have much of a protection at all remaining." he continued and then let out a tired sigh. "Or that's the best I can guestimate at least. All of this is mastery-level shit, I need to do a lot of reading to even start figuring out what the hell is going on and how it was done. So all of this is just my best guesses and estimations."
"However, what brought us here is something related, but different. I can see magic in my surroundings if I focus a bit. The protections around number four are connected to you, obviously. I can see magic flowing between you and number four. I can also see magic going off into the distance, likely to Petunia and Dudley. That it isn't connected to Vernon is what leads me to believe Blood Magic is involved somehow, since he doesn't share your blood. There's also a connection going off towards the north, likely to Hogwarts. I suspect that connection leads to something Dumbledore is using to monitor the protections somehow. Your connection is pretty strong and solid. Petunias and Dudleys are quite weak, likely because they have no magic themselves. Whatever it's connected to in Hogwarts has a very weak connection, so probably some sort of object that Dumbledore periodically charges with his own magic to keep the connection going. Then there's another connection that leads us here to Godric's Hollow. It's stronger then the other three, only yours is stronger. But it's also weird, less 'real', less 'connected' then the others. It's like there's bad reception, which is just weird, since this is closer to number four then both Hogwarts, Petunia and Dudley."
"I first thought that it would lead to the Potter Cottage, possibly a Ward Stone or some such at the property, some sort of attempt of Dumbledore to connect already existing Wards there to number four to increase your protection. But it didn't go to the cottage. I saw it when we drove into Godric's Hollow, so I know it winds up somewhere around here, so now we're walking around to see just where it goes." he finished.
Violet was mostly confused at this point.
"Oookay. Any ideas?" she asked, mostly because she didn't know how else to respond.
"None that makes sense." he admitted as they walked into the square again. "Seems to be going to somewhere behind the church, I can see the connection between two houses now." he announced after another look around. "Human belief is pretty powerful, there have been some successful experiments in drawing magic from churches, cathedrals, temples, mosques and synagogues over the years. Incredibly complex to set up and you need a lot of people in the same place believing in the same thing quite intently to generate enough Belief that it's possible to convert some of it into Magic. A small little town church like this? I don't imagine it's all that well frequented, so there'd barely be any magic to get from here. More magic is going to this connection then leaving it anyway, so it doesn't seem to be another way of charging the protections."
She trailed along Church Lane and followed Nick into the graveyard behind the church, where he followed the magic that he apparently saw until he stopped in front of a grave. She took her attention away from him and looked at the gravestone, then jerked in place and gasped in shock.
James Potter.
Lily Potter.
The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.
She trembled and would have fallen to her knees if Nick hadn't dropped his umbrella and caught her mid-fall, pulling her up against his side, wrapping his right arm around her shoulders as he steadied her.
"My... My parents." Violet sniffled. "These... My parents are resting here."
Nick was silent, glaring at the magical connection that shot into the ground. He pushed some more magic into his eyes and just barely managed to make out a humanoid outline. It was just one of them and he couldn't make out if it was a male or female. But the protections around number four had a connection to a corpse buried in Godric's Hollow.
What the hell was this?
He looked up and read the inscription on the gravestone. Okay, the Potters. Lily was the one who supposedly cast the protections somehow, so it made sense that she would have once had a connection to them.
But to still have it, even in death?
Once again, what the hell was this?!
He should have grinded more before going to bed, enough to master both Blood Magic, Soul Magic and Wards.
He looked at the gravestone.
And possibly Necromancy, if there was such a skill he could somehow get.
What the hell was this?!
What had Dumbledore done for this to happen?
Nick sat alone on a bench a little bit away from the Potter grave, his legs spread wide apart, his elbows resting on his thighs and his cheeks resting on his palms. It was raining again, but he ignored it. The umbrella was still lying over by the grave, next to where Violet was standing and talking in low tone towards the grave. He'd conjured her a Boquete of lilies and violets for her to place on the gravestone, then staggered off to the bench, giving her some privacy and giving him an opportunity to think.
Okay, time to summarize.
The connection led into the grave. It was probably connected to Lily, he wasn't 100% sure, but it was a fair assumption. She'd been in that grave for almost fifteen years. Magic didn't stay connected to corpses for very long, but it had in this case. After fifteen years, she'd be deader then a doornail even if she had somehow been buried alive. Even if she had been given the Draught of Living Death, the lack of oxygen and nutrients would have still eventually killed her. The gravestone and surrounding area was heavily Warded, likely to protect it from Death Eaters or other assholes wanting to desecrate the grave or unearth the corpses to make Inferi out of them.
He shuddered, that last one was not a happy thought.
He looked at the connection to the protections again. Magic was going in both directions, like it did with Violet, like it did with Petunia and Dudley. The connection to whatever was at the other end in Hogwarts was one-way. Magic went from the dome over number four to Hogwarts, but no magic returned from there to number four.
It went in both directions when it was connected to someone living?
Fifteen years was a long fucking time.
Was Shiro wrong? Perhaps people didn't die when they were killed?
He looked down to the immobile body in the grave again. No movement whatsoever.
Okay, even if they didn't die when they were killed, being buried for fifteen years sure as hell would do the trick.
So why was magic going in both directions? Why was the magic in the corpse acting as if it wasn't a corpse. Why did the corpse have magic that could respond to and interact with the protections?
There was a Ward Stone buried beneath the corpse that somehow didn't act like a corpse, that was what the Wards around the grave were anchored to. So Dumbledore hadn't somehow used Lily's body as an Anchor to protect the grave with Violets protection. It was a plain Ward around the grave, not the same kind of weird unknown bullshittery that went on around number four.
The corpse was interacting with the weird unknown bullshittery around number four. Corpses couldn't use magic, unless they were Vampires or Liches. Vampires had an Aura streaked with black and red and he wasn't sure what the Aura of a Lich would look like, but the corpse didn't have an Aura at all. Just a faint halo of pure magic around it, which regular corpses didn't have.
Not a corpse?
He bent over further and put his right hand against the ground, pushing his magic into it.
The Ward made it a bitch and a half, but he did eventually manage to spread out his magic enough through the ground that his Mage Sight would spot any hidden tunnels, ventilation shafts or the like in the now magic-saturated earth, but found none. He couldn't quite reach the actual body, they must have splurged quite a lot on the coffins for the Potters since they appeared to have held up well to the test of time and fifteen years underground. He pulled his magic back inside his body and reassumed his former position, ignoring the dirt he now smudged over his right cheek with his dirty hand.
No air, so it was indeed a corpse.
He cursed his curiosity which had led him to this little shithole, this shoddy little graveyard and the mysterious corpse that was somehow not a corpse.
Why wasn't he the kind of person who could just find a mystery and turn his back on it, not giving a shit that there was a puzzle to solve?
He shifted his attention to the Ward around the grave, quietly analysing it.
Fluid-rejection. Then intent-based, perimeter, strong aversion, fire-proofing, magic-proofing and some sort of alert?
Rain, paint, piss or other fluids just slide right off. Approach the grave with ill intent and get turned away? Force an approach anyway and an alarm goes off? Fire-proofing and magic-proofing while awaiting whatever responds to the alarm? Aurors?
Who the hell would set a gravestone on fire? Or at least do so with anything less then Fiendfyre, which would just tear through the Ward before consuming the gravestone anyway.
Wizards were idiots.
Sure, someone coming along wanting to do bad shit would likely alert the Aurors and would have to break down the Ward entirely to use magic on the gravestone or unearth the graves. But there was no preventing someone with a sledgehammer from destroying the stone or someone with a shovel and a bit of time from just digging normally.
Okay, what would happen if someone came along wanting to get at the grave with magic but with no ill intent?
He kept staring at the Wards for a bit longer and eventually just gave up hope on the greater majority of the Wizarding World.
He could just fucking walk up to the grave, whip out his wand, unearth the coffin with the corpse-not-a-corpse, levitate it out and restore then grave, then walk off with the coffin floating around behind him, as long as he had no ill intent towards it.
He could... Access the mysterious body within the grave with relatively little effort...
He could... Try to find out what was going on...
He was already the kind of bastard that was grooming a teenager in spite of having unexpectedly deep and affectionate feelings for her considering the short amount of time they had known each other.
Was he now also the kind of bastard that contemplated grave robbery? The kind of bastard who had pretty much already decided to go ahead with it?
Apparently.
He exhaled tiredly and pushed his head harder against his palms.
How the fuck was he going to explain this to Violet?
"All right, give it to me straight." Violet said and Nick jerked in his seat, looking to his side where Violet was seated next to him on the bench, an umbrella held over herself in her right hand, another in her left which was held up over him.
He was soaked already, but he supposed it was the thought that counted.
He leaned back and gently took his umbrella back, holding it up himself.
"Sorry, kinda lost in thought. What did you say?" he apologized.
"No shit. Been sitting here for five minutes before I spoke up." Violet snorted. "I said, give it to me straight. You look like you figured something out, but it's serial-killer-on-the-loose-kinda bad news."
"Not sure I'm capable of doing that. My mind is running in circles at the moment." he admitted.
"What you were looking for, the magic from Surrey. It went into my parents grave? Someone put something in there connected to the protections around number four?" she asked and he sighed, rubbing his forehead.
"I wish." he moaned. "In all honesty, I also kinda wish that I didn't have to explain this to you." he continued and shook his head again. He'd been doing that so many times since entering this graveyard that he was starting to worry about possible brain damage.
"That bad, huh?" she said and leaned forward, wrapping both hands around the umbrella handle, resting her elbows on her thighs like he had done earlier. She looked in silence over at her parents grave for a very long and quiet minute. "Give it to me straight." she repeated, apparently deciding that she wanted to hear what was on his mind instead of trying to ignore it. "What have you figured out that is so bad?"
"The really bad bit is that I haven't figured it out." he admitted with a very tired sigh. "Yeah, the magic connected to the protections goes into your parents grave and indeed, is connected to one of your parents. I assume it's your mother since she is generally thought of as the one who cast the protection and it's her bloodline that connects to Petunia and Dudley. People get disconnected from their magic when they die and it disperses shortly after, so the connection to your protections shouldn't have lasted for more then a day or so, a week at the most under extremely favourable conditions that are unlikely to ever occur naturally. But that connection is still there and I can't figure out how. There's no air vents or anything else leading down there, so even if she had somehow been buried alive due to a coma, been put into stasis, given Draught of Living Death or the like, she would have died down there. But the magic is still connected." he said and glanced aside, noting Violet's horrified expression and pale complexion, as if her face had been drained of all it's blood. Well, there probably was a less blunt way to have explained all that, but he hadn't been able to think of one. "Yeah, I didn't really want to tell you any of this until I'd done the impossible and found a better way of doing so."
"Probably wasn't a better way." she eventually responded and looked over at the grave, then frowned. "So... Dumbledore turned my dead mother into... Some kind of Ward Stone?" she asked in a dubious tone of voice.
"I don't think so, but I have no plausible explanation or even probable wild guess for what is going on." he admitted. "Could be some sort of failed attempt at doing what you suggested, but that would be a pretty monumental cockup for someone who managed to tie a blood protection originally centred around a person to also cover a property and additional targets as well as the original target. If there was any doubt whatsoever as to if Dumbledore is extremely skilled as a Wizard or not, that piece of awesomeness should dispel any such doubts completely. For someone as skilled as that to fail so miserably at something else that while hard is nowhere near as complex? I doubt it."
"Okay." she responded and was silent for a long time. "So now what? What do you want to do now?" she inquired apprehensively, not knowing what he intended, but quite obviously already knowing that she wouldn't be a fan of it.
"Would you accept it if we just left and I asked you to leave it to me?" he asked, but didn't need to hear a verbal reply to know what she thought about that notion, the expression on her face and the fierce shimmer in her eyes was more then enough to convey her opinion about that. "All right, I'll give it to you straight." he said and took a deep breath. "I want to unearth your mothers coffin and take it back to my laboratory at number five. I want to open it and find out what's going on."
There was another long silence.
"What would that accomplish?" she eventually managed to ask him.
"Not sure if I'm honest. More energy is going here from the protections then what is going back towards them. If there's something wrong and I can fix it, they should charge faster and be stronger. If there's nothing wrong and something that needs to happen for them to work, well, hopefully I can find that out and we'll know. Perhaps Dumbledore did try to do something and failed, in which case there's probably nothing to be done and nothing that can be figured out unless he is brought in on it as I doubt I can fix it myself if he couldn't. It could be pretty pointless in the long run or it could be beneficial. There's just no way of knowing at this stage."
"You can't tell if it would be important or not, but you want to dig up my mother." Violet summed it up and shook her head, then sighed. "You're lucky that you're you. I would probably already have laid them out if it had been anyone else who suggested this." she said and held up her right fist demonstratively in his direction. There was another long silence. "Do it."
The drive back to Surrey had been long and mostly silent. Nick had been too distracted by his thoughts to even curse at the speed cameras and Violet hadn't been any better off either, so the two of them had barely spoken a word to each other after getting into the car. Violet had brought a pet bottle with Sprite with her into the bathroom she most often used, declaring her intentions to take a long relaxing bath and drown her confusion with the carbonated sugary drink. Nick had settled for a quick shower and a change of clothes, then Apparated back to the graveyard. A very powerful notice-me-not and an added Muggle aversion charm later, he stood at the wastebin next to the bench he'd been sitting on earlier and smoked a cigarette while waiting for his spell work to chase away any possible Muggles that might be nearby. The notice-me-not should be enough, but he was taking no chances, so he smoked a cigarette before he approached the grave.
"I'm just curious. I want to help Violet and I think this could do that." he told himself, putting that thought firmly in mind as he withdrew his wand from the holster.
It seemed as if he had succeeded well enough with that and had no ill intent towards the grave or the corpse within it, because there was no Ward blocking him as he carefully peeled back the lawn from over the grave, then started magically digging down towards the coffin with the strange body within. Once the coffin had been unearthed and lifted out to rest on a patch of grass, he'd transfigured an empty flower pot from the waste bin into a coffin of similar size, to compensate for the grave missing one coffin. A hasty etching later to imbue his transfigured coffin with a measure of permanency, he lowered the faux coffin into the ground and carefully restored the grave to make it look undisturbed, then rolled the grass back to it's former position.
He looked the site over with a careful eye, but couldn't really tell the difference.
He walked over to the coffin and gingerly put his left hand on it, stopped feeding his magic to the charms that kept anyone from noticing him and then Apparated to his laboratory back at number five, where the coffin was soon levitated onto a workbench, that he quickly transfigured to have slightly shorter legs, to get the coffin to a lower height.
A few cleaning charms later and the coffin and his laboratory was less dirty.
He put his wand into the holster and crossed his arms, looking at the coffin for several minutes.
Eventually he activated his Mage Sight and peered inside it.
Standing as close to it as he was doing now allowed him to confirm that the body inside was highly unlikely to be James. The years had taken its toll on the body inside, but the general build, skeletal structure and what he guessed were shrivelled up remains of womb and ovaries, kind of hinted at a female corpse rather then a male one.
Completely immobile though.
He turned off his Mage Sight and walked over towards his Potion brewing station, then turned on the powerful fan over that bench, as well as all the other fans around the room. He put on a thick leather apron, a pair of very expensive but durable dragon skin gloves, a charmed face mask and some protective goggles, then capped it all off with a white long-sleaved lab coat and a hair-net.
He approached the coffin and after a quick Reparo, managed to fix and unlock the latch which had broken sometime during the last almost fifteen years the coffin had rested beneath the earth. It was mostly structurally intact, but it had taken a few bangs and a lot of pressure over the years.
"Fuck me and my curiosity." he muttered, put his hands on the lid, closed his eyes and then opened the coffin.
He remained stationary for nearly half a minute, then opened his eyes and looked down into the coffin, just barely managing to prevent himself from barfing right into his face mask.
"Right. That's a corpse all right." he managed to get out, feeling extremely grateful for the charmed facemask that kept him from smelling anything. He let the lid go and took half a step back, tilting his head as he looked down at the desiccated body. It wasn't quite as bad as Ötzi the Iceman, which he now recalled having witnessed during a trip to Italy before his awakening, the memory suddenly popping into his mind, but there was no doubt that this was a corpse that had lost a lot of the moisture that was once held inside it when it was still alive. The clothes had held up well and in spite of the dried out appearance, so too had the body. He saw no mould on either body or clothes and the coffin seemed remarkably free of it as well. There were a few mouldy bits here and there where the coffin had slight cracks and minor openings, but nowhere near what he would have expected to see.
He turned on his Mage Sight again and looked down into the coffin.
Magic infused the entire body, filling it from head to toe. The connection to number four was still there, streaking sideway and through the wall of his laboratory towards number four. He observed the magic flowing back and forth for several minutes, but couldn't really make either heads or tails of it. He could tell that magic went in, did something which used up some of it and then some of it flowed back towards the Dursley place, while leaving enough that the corpse actually retained some.
It was pretty much the same he'd observed happening to Violet when he looked at her with Mage Sight active, although her interactions with the protections were more complex and the levels of magic going out were higher in hers, though she still took in a bit more then she gave out.
This was a corpse that behaved as if it was alive. It was a corpse that held magic within it, something he would previously had said was completely impossible without some form of undeath happening.
He cast multiple charms to identify Inferi, Vampires, Liches, Zombies and other forms of undead, but none of them gave a positive result.
A Soul-revealing charm gave no results.
The body had magic, but no Soul.
What the fuck was going on?
It was dead, but not dead. The magic acted like everything was fine and dandy, but it had no Soul.
He scanned the coffin, clothes, the body itself and everything else he could think of, but found nothing that could explain what he was observing with his own fucking eyes and finely tuned magical senses.
He looked downstairs through the floor and saw a faint magical outline of what must be Violet. Seemed as if she was in the bathroom still, likely enjoying a hot bath and trying to ignore whatever he was up to. She had agreed to it, but been highly disturbed by what he wanted to do and wanted nothing at all to do with it in person.
The corpse had magic in it.
Magic was a requirement for Potions to work. A normal corpse would just reject Potions, they would be completely inert without any magic to latch on to. That was why Potion brewers couldn't just mass-produce Potions and sell to Muggles, making billions and billions off things that Muggle medicine just couldn't do.
But this corpse had magic in it.
He slowly walked over to his Potions storage, just letting his gaze sweep across the contents of it for a while, then looked back at the body over his shoulder.
He grabbed four Potions and walked over to the corpse.
"Right, experimentation time..." he mumbled and whipped his wand out.
The first Potion vial he held in his left hand was a Rehydration Potion. Much like the name suggested, it was administered to Witches and Wizards who had been severely dehydrated. He took a deep breath through the face-mask, then magicked the contents of the vial into the stomach of the corpse.
Pretty much nothing visibly happened. While there was magic there, a dead body couldn't absorb and distribute the Potion through its body. The magic was present all over the body including the stomach, but without working bodily functions pushing the Potion around the body, the Potion would only have an effect right where it was at the moment.
"Crucio."
He held the curse for nearly thirty seconds, marvelling as it actually worked. The body jerked and trembled inside the coffin as it was agitated by the powerful curse. Usually when cast on a long-time corpse, Crucio would do nothing. But this was a corpse that still held magic, nearly fifteen years past that magic's expiration date, a body that while it produced no magic still received a constant influx of magic from an outside source.
With the entire body agitated by the Crucio, the potion actually started working it's way through the body. The wear and tear of the jerking body let it work itself out from the stomach, get into dried-up veins and circulate.
After four lengthy applications of Crucio, the body had regained lost moisture and looked remarkably less disgusting then before.
Next he shifted the contents of a Blood Replenishing potion directly into her stomach. Another application of Crucio and she didn't look quite as pale any longer. Although she was now bleeding from several minor wounds and abrasions caused by him repeatedly casting Crucio which caused the body to jerk and twitch.
A Greater Heal Potion was next, one that was unique to him and made with drops from the dungeons he could enter. It was pretty great because it pretty much worked on everything. If something was wrong, this would deal with it. Didn't matter if it was a broken leg, an infected kidney or wound from a dark curse, it could fix an incredibly wide range of issues. Another application of Crucio and it now looked like a very life-like wax doll was resting in the coffin, not a corpse that had been buried for over a decade.
If the wax doll was of a very gaunt, thin and underfed version of Lily Potter.
The Greater Heal fixed a lot, but there was a limit to how much mass it could create. A bit to fix a bleeding wound, okay. Replace a missing finger, okay. Replace a missing arm, no. Fifteen years worth of decay, apparently not.
He took a deep breath again, looking at the last potion.
This was another one of his specials. He hadn't seen any real use for it when the recipe first dropped during one of his dungeon crawls, but he'd made a few while working on making sure his Alchemy and Potion skills worked in real life as well as in theory and his status screen. Now however, now there was a use for it.
Possibly.
He was breaking new ground here.
And completely upsetting some future events.
And acting hastily and impulsive rather then plotting and planning carefully as he usually did.
And probably breaking some sort of natural law and/or greatly upsetting Death, with the future possible Master of Death downstairs in his bath. For the Harry he recalled, Master of Death had pretty much meant not being afraid of dying, but he'd also never possessed all three Hallows at the same time, so perhaps there was something more to it than that.
Fuck it.
He put a powerful stasis charm over the coffin and spent a few minutes looking at maps on his phone. Then he grabbed his broom, cast a powerful notice-me-not on a window, opened it and then left at full speed. It was just a Comet 260, not a powerful Firebolt. But once he was going in the right direction, he started line-of-sight Apparition to shave a lot of distance of his journey, thus increasing the speed to an almost ludicrous degree. He was making better time then a military jet. He did have to stop from time to time to ensure that he was going in the right direction which slowed him down a bit, but he still made incredible time thanks to his repeated Apparations.
Fifteen minutes later, he wanted to both throw up and then take a nap, but slowly made his way down towards Little Hangleton and hovered a ways from what looked like a pile of broken wood.
He just stared at it for a few moments, then got his phone out and looked at the maps again.
"Oookay. I am in the right place, all right. What the hell happened here?" he exclaimed in utter confusion.
Nothing he could think of that he'd done to change things around should have made someone want to blow up the Gaunt shack instead of just letting it rot away in peace like it had been doing since Voldemort left a Horcrux here. But something had happened here, someone had managed to completely level the building so that all that remained was a pile of broken bits of the former shack.
Was the ring even still here?
A quick Soul-detection charm got a weak hit from underneath the pile. So the ring with the sliver of Voldemorts Soul attached to it was still around.
Fuck it. He was messing up future events anyway, at the moment he didn't care what had caused the building to collapse, he'd just try to deal with whatever was upsetting the future later. He wasn't here for the house anyway and it did give him a pretty nifty shortcut to getting the ring without having to mess about with the Wards he could feel around the place. He shook his head and put a sticking charm to his left dragonhide glove, aimed his wand at the pile and put his left hand up in front of his wand, palm out.
"Accio Gaunts Ring!" he cried out and put a fair amount of power into it. There was a bit of creaking as the pile shifted a bit, but less then fifteen seconds later, something shiny came flying towards him and slammed into his gloved left palm. He'd put a significant amount of power into that summon, so he wouldn't be looking at the ring for very long. The curse on that thing had managed to basically kill Dumbledore, even if it had been Snape who delivered the final blow. He had no desire to share that fate, so he hoped that his Mind Arts Mastery along with just not really looking at the ring would prevent him from being cursed to high heavens.
He didn't look at it now either, just clenched his dragonhide-covered left fist around it and flipped his wand back into the holster, then grabbed the broom and flew a bit away from the shack, in case some sort of magical defences would go for him or somebody come around later to try tracking him down. Five minutes flight away from the shack, he set down and Apparated back to his laboratory.
He closed the window, stopped feeding magic to the notice-me-not over it and put the broom away.
Right, cursed Horcrux Hallow acquired. Time for curse and Horcrux elimination.
From the top shelf of his Potions supply, an area that was unnoticeable to anyone besides him, he got out a pretty large porcelain vial that was probably the most magical thing in his entire house with the possible exception of Violet and her ridiculously potent magical reserves.
It pretty much had to be, since it contained farmed Basillisk venom from India, which was notorious for eating its way through pretty much everything. So not only was the vial heavily reinforced with magic and Runes, it was also lined with triple layers of Basillisk skin inside. The vial itself had cost nearly as much as the actual venom it held inside. He brought it over to a sink and started running water into the sink from the tap at full blast, uncorked the vial and then started pouring at the same time as he unclenched his left hand and held it palm up underneath the small stream of Basillisk venom.
There was a horrible scream emitted from the ring, making him glad for the extensive sound proofing his laboratory had, in case of unexpected explosions. Smoke now rose from both the ring and the melting dragonhide glove. He put the vial down and quickly took the glove off, letting it drop into the sink along with the ring with water running over them. He was glad he had invested in quality protective materials, the glove had actually stood up to the venom long enough to protect his hand from being lost.
He mentally apologized to the neighbourhood. The Basillisk venom he'd just flushed down the sink would likely eventually lead to the pipes needing to be changed in the entire area. They might even have to dig up and redo the local sewer system, depending on how water and waste was handled here, he hadn't really looked into it. But even if the venom didn't instantly make lots of holes in the pipes, it would severely weaken them. Depending how the quality of the pipes, there would likely be major leakage sometime in the next two to four years. He resolved to change every single pipe in his own house long before that.
Basillisk venom was some seriously nasty shit.
The expensive dragonhide glove soon melted completely away, leaving just the ring in the sink with a steady stream of water flowing across it. A quick glance with Mage Sight revealed that the ring itself was now empty of magic. He was pretty impressed that the ring hadn't melted too, but apparently the Peverell line commissioned only the best for their jewellery. Not only had it stood the test of time well since the stone was set into it, but it had also survived housing a Horcrux, being cursed and then soaked in Basillisk venom, all it had lost was the magic within it, but the ring itself was actually still fine.
But as impressive as that was, the Deadly Hallow was made of even sterner stuff, The Resurrection stone still had vast amounts of magic in it and not a scratch on it. He was immensely impressed by that.
Once it had been under running water for nearly five minutes, he finally felt confident enough to reach down with his right gloved hand and pick the ring out of the sink. He held the ring directly under the running water for another minute, twisting and turning it to ensure that there was no venom still clinging to it. The remaining glove was still all right and not smoking as a drop of venom ate it's way through the dragon-hide, so there probably hadn't been any venom left in the first place, but there was no point in taking unnecessary risks.
Thought the guy who just went after a Horcrux on his own, the same Horcrux that would eventually have killed Dumbledore if he hadn't gotten Snape to kill him first.
Well, hypocrisy and clear proof that he wasn't a patient man at all aside, he now had the Resurrection Stone in his hand and a Soul-Entrapment Potion next to the coffin holding a mostly dead body.
The Potion could be used to bind a Soul to an object. From what he'd gotten from the description when the recipe first dropped, it had been used to trap Souls into objects as a form of punishment. It mostly sounded like a big waste of time to him. If he wanted to punish someone, that wouldn't be his chosen method.
But he now had the original body of the Soul he was going to summon, what would happen if he trapped that Soul inside her old body? Both Souls and bodies were somewhat malleable, would the Soul readapt to being housed in its old home and the body readjust to having its old Soul back?
He undid the stasis charm over the coffin and instantly started casting all sort of medical diagnostic spells on the corpse, ordering the displayed outputs for easy viewing.
He frowned, her spirit probably wouldn't appreciate just hanging around while he Crucioed her old body over and over again, would it? If this actually worked, did he really want Violets mother running around being resentful over him having Crucio:ed her, even if it was for a good cause?
He went over to the Potion supply again, quickly returning with Lightning-in-a-bottle and another Greater Heal vial. He poured a tiny splash of the Greater Heal one into the sink, then very carefully topped it up with a small amount of the Lightening-in-a-bottle.
He chuckled, wondering how crazy someone would have to be in order to use what basically was an electric hand-grenade to make a magic defibrillator. Toss the vial of Lightning-in-a-bottle at a group of enemies and they'd get electrocuted to hell and back, it was basically crowd control with a deadly outcome. So a diluted version of it administered orally? Diluted with something that healed all ills when ingested? Should excite the body just as much as Crucio, but be somewhat less disturbing to witness for a bodyless Lily Potter and the healing component should prevent the body from being cooked from the inside out. It should also help with the fact that the body had been repeatedly Crucio:ed, hopefully the Potion and some rest should clear up whatever damage being repeatedly hit by the torture curse had caused.
Right. The Soul of one dead mother, coming right up.
A wave of his wand tore the expensive coffin apart and vanished the pieces. Another stripped the unmoving body and a third cleaned her off from tip to toe. A mouth freshening charm later and he felt pretty much ready to do something really crazy.
Then again, pretty much everything that had happened since he went back to Godric's Hollow had been pretty darn crazy, so what was another little piece of it?
He laughed out loud, then shook his head and cleared his throat.
Right, no more of that. He was turning into an evil mad scientist from exhaustion and depleting his magical reserves. Getting to Little Hangleton in a hurry and repeatedly casting a pretty darn powerful torture curse had left him feeling a bit loopy from near-magical-exhaustion. No more white lab coats for him.
He removed his lab coat and while he was at it, hairnet, face-mask, sole remaining glove and the apron.
He turned around and moved everything he would need over to the workbench that now held a nude female body with a bunch of magical diagnostic results hovering over her. He conjured a white cotton sheet to cover most of her body and took a deep breath, then reached for the Resurrection Stone.
"Lily Potter." he spoke clearly and turned the stone three times, then put the ring on his left ring finger so he'd be in constant contact with it and able to feed it magic.
"Nooooooo... Why did you call me? Release me!" the spirit that appeared in front of him said almost immediately, her expression pleading and horrified, as if it was some great horrible chore to be in the land of the living for a couple of seconds.
"Never mind that now! You are Lily Potter, mother of Violet Potter?" he asked to make sure he had the right Soul and the spirit nodded instead of griping about being there. "Great. Hang around for a bit and move inside your own old body when I tell you too." he instructed, then turned to face the motionless body. He poured the chain-lightning AoE he'd mixed with a Potion that could pretty much cure everything other then death into her mouth, then put his mouth against hers and blew into her mouth twice.
He felt the body starting to twitch and jerk as he pulled back, then started with chest compressions, glancing at what his diagnostic spells were telling him. The electric shocks were distributing the Potion throughout the body just as well as the Crucios had, perhaps even better.
"WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING TO MY BODY?!" the spirit of Lily Potter protested in a banshee-like wail.
He ignored the dead spirit and instead focused on her dead body.
Thirty compressions later, he bent over and again sealed his lips to hers, giving her another two breaths of life.
He was really glad that he cleaned her up and cast that breath-freshening charm earlier. Restored corpse or not, he did not want to imagine how bad her breath would have been after so many years below ground.
"ANSWER ME! WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?! THAT'S MY BODY!" the spirit howled, but he ignored her in order to start up chest compressions again, her body still jerking on its own underneath his hands as electricity moved around it.
"Shut the fuck up. I'm trying to save your life. Just be ready to go inside your body when I tell you to do so." Nick snarled at the floating Lily without a body, while trying to focus on the immobile Lily without a Soul.
"I'M DEAD, YOU SICK TWISTED FUCK! I'VE BEEN DEAD FOR YEARS! STOP KISSING AND FONDLING MY BODY!" the spirit violently protested and tried to hit him, only to have her hands move straight through his body without effect. "STOP THAT!" she yelled and tried to kick him, with equally pointless results. The dead woman certainly knew what CPR was, but the shock of being summoned only to see her old body being man-handled still made her pretty darn furious. It wasn't like CPR would do any good at all to a long-dead body, so to her, it seemed more like an act of Necrophilia with a touch of spirit Voyeurism then anything more benevolent.
What sort of sick fucker summoned the dead spirit of the body they were violating to spectate? This sort of sick fucker right in front of her!
"Holy shit!" came an exclamation from the door and Nick quickly glanced aside only to see a wet Violet in the doorway, a towel hastily wrapped around her body. Apparently she'd heard something and came running straight from the bath.
What did she think she'd accomplish without her wand? Flash whomever was making what she probably thought was some unknown female scream like that? Strangle them with her towel? Glare helplessly at them while dripping water on the floor?
"Quit your yelling, you howling banshee. You dragged your daughter out of her bath with your bitching." Nick got out as he finished his compressions, then went for another two breaths of life, ignoring the fact that Violet had arrived. The body abruptly stopped jerking, the effects of the lightening not fading, but abruptly stopping. His gaze shifted to Lily's chest out of the corner of his eye, his Mage Sight revealing that the electricity only remained around her heart now.
"Violet?" the spirit of Lily asked, swinging around mid-air only to come face to face with her daughter, freezing in place.
"MOM?!" Violet exclaimed, her eyes opened up wide as she stared as her floating mom and her moms body which Nick was apparently trying to preform CPR on.
One of the diagnostic displays suddenly flashed and Nicks head snapped around to it with a wild-eyed expression.
"Fuck yes! Your body, you whiny Witch. Return to it now!" he yelled and forced some of his own magic into the Hallow as he uncorked the Soul-Entrapment Potion. He wasn't sure adding magic to the Hallow would do anything, but hopefully it would make her more likely to obey his command instead of being stunned at the sight of her daughter. The spirit lady jerked in place where she was floating frozen in position, staring at her daughter. She spun around on his order and flew straight into her own old body and Nick swiftly up-ended the Potion over her face.
"Mom? Where did she... What did she.. What the hell did you do?!" Violet asked hysterically as she stalked her way over towards him. She clenched both her fists and apparently was too upset to notice that the towel she'd hastily wrapped around herself had come undone and fell to the ground. He noted it out of the corner of his eyes, but kept most of his focus on the medical displays and the still unmoving body. He held a palm up in Violets direction.
"Shhh. Hit me later, I'm doing delicate work here." he snapped, feeling very light-headed and admittedly somewhat hysterical.
Had it worked? Had his impulsive crazy spur-of-the-moment plan worked?
"Work, dammit!" he exclaimed and slapped his palm down on the frozen bodys forehead, like if it was an old-school malfunctioning TV instead of a formerly living body.
He recalled coming across an old CRT television in a hunting lodge when he had tagged along with his father to hunt for deer as a child. He'd turned it on only to be greeted with a somewhat wonky image and faded colours. His father had walked over and given the television a surprisingly solid thunk to the top, which had fixed both the image and the colours.
Seemed to work well for deceased mothers as well.
"Ow!" it cried out. "What the hell?! What's wrong with you?" Lily demanded to know as she opened her eyes.
Correction, once again living body of a non-deceased mother.
"Mom?!" Violet cried out and looked faint, as if she was only moments away from fainting in shock.
Nick looked between the two of them for a moment, then he couldn't help himself.
He had to do it. He needed to do it. The situation called for it!
It was a tad too mad-scientist-like, especially as he'd already done the mad laugh earlier, but he didn't care.
He threw his hands up into the air, his lips widened in a victorious grin and he tilted his head back to look up at the ceiling.
"IT'S AAALIVE!" he cried out.