Chapter 3

The elf ran as fast as her little legs could carry her. She made her way through passageways that had been long forgotten, crawled through spaces that not even the smaller of 1st years could have ever made it through, and made her way from Hogwarts to Hogsmeade; searching for the woman she called Master. She checked her Master's usual hangouts; however she found nary a trace of her anywhere. She climbed into the floo at the abandoned Hog's Head Inn, one of the only 3 floos in Wizarding Europe that even worked anymore, the other two being at Diagon Alley, and one in France. She toppled out of the floo in Diagon Alley and went to search there.

Her Master wasn't in the old stick store, and quite frankly she didn't know why they even had all of those sticks in there when all they did was make peoples magic do weird things. She recalled seeing the two strangers holding sticks, but their sticks worked… Augh, now was not the time to be thinking of that! She needed to find Master. Her search in the ruins of Gringotts proved fruitless and the only thing of value that she found there was some old dragon bones that hadn't been completely carved up into weapons. It wasn't that the people needed weapons anymore, war hadn't been a thing for the wizarding world for over a century, it was just what their families had taught them to do just in case war ever happened again.

She whined in desperation when she remembered another spot that her Master had been frequenting. It was an old joke shop that had been handed down through her Master's family for ages, but most of the items in there had been taken and it was barren. The only reason her Master even knew that it was a joke shop was because the deed stated so. The elf made her way over the piles of metal and trash that littered the streets, then into the joke shop. "Master! Master! Lika has news!" She screeched upon seeing a mop of red hair in a hammock made from old clothing that they'd found in the abandoned robe shop.

The woman with the red hair turned to face the elf and she smiled brightly. "Only good news I hope."

"Lika found them!" The elf said, jumping around and out of breath. She could barely contain her excitement and it showed. "Lika found the savers! Master Weasley is happy?"

The woman's smile fell and she sat up, looking to her elf worriedly. "Lika, you know those are only legends. Saviors don't happen. Merlin, Gryffindor, Dumbledore, Potter, they're all legends. Stories. People only tell them because they're good entertainment and they provide hope for everyone." She said, leaning on her knees and glancing to the ground.

"Potter exists." Lika stated, a crazed happy look on her face. "He be in the castle now, with the dark man from the legend. Say the legend you say it!" She insisted.

Her Master Weasley sighed but relented and repeated the legend as she had heard it. "And it shall be peace once again when the saviors come. A light man with a kind heart and a power unmatched will appear and take pity on the world, and his companion a dark man with the knowledge of rulers past will appear soon after to lead us. As they fight to purify, they fight to restore, and balance will once again reign. The Wizarding World will prosper once more."

Lika only jumped around some more. "The light man with kind heart, that be Potter, Potter woke me up in my castle. He was kind; he didn't hit Lika once for calling him stupid. The dark man, he came later, he was in the hilly room. He made the air clean. No bad smell in the room now. He purified air! They will restore us!" She clapped her hands together eagerly.

Madame Weasley brushed it off for a moment, but when she really let herself think about it… no it couldn't be it- legends were just legends, just stories people told themselves to make them feel better. The legends said nothing about the light man being the fabled boy-who-lived though. She sighed and stood up, nodding to Lika. "Take me to them; I want to see what they do."

Lika nodded and grabbed on to her Master's hand, pulling her off to the working floo nearby to take her back to the castle. When they arrived they immediately went into hiding, the elf's magic only serving to keep them unnoticed by the two men.

Harry panted and slid down the wall in what was once the Great Hall. He looked to Snape who was still throwing air purification charms at the walls. The air in that room couldn't have been any cleaner if they had been paid to do it. "Snape! Snape stop. Is the, is the core any more responsive?"

Severus stilled for a moment and closed his eyes, feeling for the core. Yes, yes it was there, however it wasn't much stronger than before. "I think… it feels like the magic has only been serving to sustain its life. If we expect to save the core completely, we need more people casting more spells all over the castle." He opened his eyes and looked to Harry, a hint of fright noticeable in his eyes. "I think the voice spoke the truth. The castle needs constant spell work, and we need more people. As much as I am positively loathe to admit it, you carry more power than I, you should be the one to cast the spells whilst I go and locate some witches and wizards who are willing to help."

"No! I said no splitting up." Harry argued.

Severus glared to the boy and swooped in over him. "You made a deal; nothing harmful happened when we did split up for the few moments we did, and you agreed to split up after I proved I was right. I've proven my point, so now it's time for you to hold up your end of the bargain. Go and cast some spells in the center of the room while I find some witches and wizards to help cast spells on this blasted place, or I shall throttle you with my own hands!"

Harry snarled at the man but did as he was told. He didn't like being ordered around one bit. Before Snape left, Harry convinced the man to at least let him try a stitching charm that worked with the Sectumsempra spell to heal it. Luckily for them both it had the desired effect, and though Snape's arm still hurt, it was manageable. Severus made his way outside of the castle to get a good look around. When he came face to face with an overgrown forest that met the castle's doors, he realized that the Forbidden Forest had taken over the grounds. He swallowed thickly, remembering what treacherous dangers lurked in the shadows of the forest and only hoped that they wouldn't be so dangerous this time around.

As he traversed the overgrown land and the Weasley girl followed after him, he couldn't help the feeling that he was being watched. Every now and then he would turn around only to find nothing there, but he simply couldn't shake the feeling. He readied his wand and cleared his throat, stopping in the middle of a heavily green area, trees and bushes all around. The place was absolutely lush with potion ingredients that he would hopefully have a chance to take his pickings from later. "Whoever you are that is following me, show yourself or I shall have you become acquainted with a little spell that sends a stream of fire from my wand to wherever it's pointed. I can have you roasted in a second just by covering a circle around me." He waited for a moment and when nothing happened, he used the spell in a warning. "Fluignus!" He called, sending the fire straight down into the dirt then calling it back. "Do not doubt my power. SHOW YOURSELF!"

At the same time three beings came out of hiding. One from behind a tree, a young man with wild green hair, and two from the elf's magic that had been hiding them. The woman looked to the man with the green hair and raised an eyebrow. "Who are you and why are you following him?" She asked curiously, stepping to the side to get a better look at him.

"I could ask you the same thing." The man said with a huff. "And I wasn't following him, he's wandered into our territory."

The woman disregarded the dark stoic man for a moment and walked over to the green haired man. She watched as his hair changed from green to a dark purple and the man shrank back on himself. "What, you're scared? Don't be scared of me. I won't hurt you."

Snape interrupted their little meeting with a blast of fire between the two, causing them both to yell out in surprise. Lika had disappeared, gone to watch the Potter boy. "Forgive me for intruding," His voice dripped with sarcasm. "but it seems as though you didn't understand me. Identify yourselves or I will set fire to you both!"

The young man eeped and his hair turned to a bright yellow. "Livius Lupin, age 25, skill 2." He recited.

The woman rolled her eyes but obliged. "Romilda Weasley, age 17, skill 3."

Severus narrowed his eyes and lowered his wand only slightly. "Why are you so… military, and what do skill numbers have to do with anything?"

"Geeze, there's no way Lika was right, you don't know anything." Romilda muttered, sitting on a rock. Severus sent a small blast of fire to her fingers, barely making them hot but enough to drive his point. "Fine! The skill levels are 1-7, 1 being magic only in cases of dire emergency and 7 being magic that just happens all the time. He's a 2, that means that he can make magic happen in emergencies that aren't life threatening, and I'm a 3 which means I can make magic happen sometimes at will sometimes not, but both of us are so low that we can't control our magic." She crossed her arms and glared at the stick in his hand. "How about you answer some questions for us? Why does your stick work like that?"

"Because it's a wand, you twat." Snape muttered with half a glare. When the two appeared to not understand, he sighed and pointed the wand to a tree. "What are your strengths? What do you do most when you do magic?" He asked, impatiently waiting.

"Uhm, I don't understand the question." She admitted, looking down to the ground.

Severus fought with himself to keep from insulting her yet again. "When your magic 'happens', what does it do?"

"Oh it uh, well it turns things into other things." She said, scratching her head. "Last week my doorknob got turned into a hamster."

"Then a wand suited for transfiguration is what you need." He stated, looking back to the tree and racking his brain trying to remember what woods worked best with transfiguration. Fir! He muttered a spell and the tree before them shifted into a fir tree. He then stripped a bit of its bark and shaped it into a narrow and long triangle before transfiguring a rock into a bucket and sending a jet of water into it. He let the bit of wood soak in there. "Merlin's sake, what do you use to control your magic if not wands?"

The girl shrugged, however Livius soon piped up. "Wands were taken away during the third wizarding war… or was it the fourth? Either way, the rulers took everyone's wands away because everyone was a suspect and since then nobody's needed wands for anything."

Snape raised an eyebrow as he looked over the flora covering the forest's floor for a good transfiguration-type core. "And those rulers… are they still around?" He asked lowly.

"No, we've been without rulers for nearly 40 years now. Nobody was able to anymore when they all died off." Livius replied, watching with rapt fascination as the wood in the bucket curled in on itself.

"I see." Severus thought things over for a moment. No rulers, no ministry. That means no laws, meaning the three forbidden curses wouldn't be considered forbidden anymore. It also meant that so many spells and potions had been lost over time. Merlin he was going to be teaching soon, he and Potter were going to have to teach an entire bloody generation how to perform magic! How many must there be? Surely the Blacks and the Weasleys had kept multiplying. "How many witches and wizards are there in wizarding London, roughly?" He asked, returning to searching for a decent core.

Romilda laughed. "Not many. We've only 12 on Diagon Alley, another 3 or 4 I've seen living on Knockturn Alley. Hogsmeade only has about 7 people, unless the old woman's died by now, and Wizarding Paris only has about 13 or 14 people from what I've been told."

Snape stopped everything he was doing. Of all the families to have survived, and of all the old names that have been passed throughout centuries, Lupin and Weasley were among the survivors? He looked back to the boy who was focused on the wood. His hair had changed color to a light blue. That boy had to have been a descendant of Remus and Nymphadora, it was the only explanation for his metamorphmagus traits and that last name combined. He resumed his search and finally had an idea.

"Stand back, I'm going to summon a very poisonous snake and neither of you want to be bitten by it. Understood?" He glanced back to see them both stepping away from him slightly, then pointed his wand to the ground and summoned a snake with a serpensortia, using transfiguration to shift it into a boomslang. Within seconds he had the snake trapped and was milking its venom, pouring it into a poorly transfigured vial. He banished the snake and crystalized the venom, then took the wood from the bucket, placed the crystalized venom along the center line of the wood, and charmed it so that the wood would roll in on itself completely, sealing any cracks. With another flick of his own wand, he shaved off the rough edges of the bark, and gave the bigger end a curve so that it could be held easier. All in all the wand looked like a fallen branch, however he handed it to the girl. "Point that at no one until my say so, and for Merlin's sake, don't lose that! I take no fault or responsibility if it doesn't work correctly; I'm a potions master not a wand crafter."

He followed along the same plan for the Lupin boy's wand, however since his magic was mostly well rounded, he used a sprig of betony that he'd found on the forest floor which was good for charms and healing, and rowan wood for the defensive properties. He gave a sigh as he thought about what they were going to have to do. So few people existed that the girl knew of, but perhaps if he did a little digging himself he would be able to find out whether or not she told the truth. "You two, go back to the castle. Find Potter, he is in the Great Hall- er, the room… just follow the sound of his voice, he's bound to be yelling spells to feed the core. I will search for more witches and wizards." He ordered, his voice leaving no room for argument and his posture intimidating.

Etymology of Non-Canon Spells used in this chapter:

Fluignus –comes from the Latin, 'flumen ignis', meaning, 'a stream of fire'. This is a curse in which flames shoot from the wand's tip like a stream of water would from a hose. A 7th year curse taught at Hogwarts.