Chapter 11: The Tower of Turmoil
"Chaos often breeds life, while order breeds habit."
Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams
\|/\|/\|/
Zero-One-Thirty hours
October 31st
Seven figures cloaked in dark robes gathered near an empty section of wall in an otherwise nondescript section of corridor that snaked through one of Hogwarts' many dungeons.
"Are you sure this is the place?" one asked.
"Yes," answered another.
A moment later a section of hallway opened and an eighth figure stuck its head out. "Ready?"
Seven nods responded and the eighth stepped out into the hall, leaving a foot in the door to keep it open.
"Let's get started then," came the second person who'd spoken.
Two figures produced wands and softly incanted spells, gesturing at each of the other six in turn, and then themselves. Two beakers, half-full of something glowing a gentle green were produced, followed by two steel flasks. The stoppers wedged into the mouths of the beakers were removed and passed to the figure in the door. Two of the figures poured the contents of the flasks into the beakers, which began to gout steam into the air as the figure quickly ducked through the doorway followed by the other seven.
The eighth figure placed one beaker by each of two passages leading away from the room they were in. The room itself was wide and long. The stone wall along one side had a number of fireplaces, opposite it was a bank of absolutely magnificent windows that curved up towards the ceiling. On the other side of those windows was the Black Lake.
"Are you sure those windows are going to hold?" one of the figures asked.
"They have for the past millennia, why do you think they would suddenly stop?" asked the one who had let them in as it moved to a table where more beakers were set up.
"Okay," said the one who had led them down to the hall. "This isn't going to be like the others. So let's do it just like we planned it, right?"
\|/\|/\|/
One Week Prior
Tower of Turmoil
"I hereby call this planning session of the High Lords of Chaos to order," Harry said. "Tonks will start."
The room they were gathered in was small, but had been magically expanded by Tonks, an accomplishment that had probably surprised the pink-haired witch almost as much as it had impressed Harry and the rest of the first years. It seemed likely most of the other rooms were similarly miss-sized, but this was one they had known about for sure, and at Justin's request Tonks and Cedric had charmed the doors to resemble a London police box. It had tiered seating, a feature Harry had wanted after seeing how useful it was in the locker room, but a scale model of Hogwarts had been just too complex to manufacture in six weeks.
If they would ever be able to make one at all.
"Wotcher," Tonks said, tapping the front wall with her wand which caused glowing letters to appear. "I've gotten together with Harry and we've decided to call this Operation: Buttercup." She tapped the wall again and the graphic was replaced by a collection of colored uniforms, and a collection of items.
"Mostly it comes down to what we've already discussed. Harry got together with Padma, Allie, and me, and came up with a timetable and plan. This briefing is on how we're going to execute it. For simplicity's sake I've broken it down into five parts.
"Part one, the Introduction. Padma, you and Parvati are covering that one, right?"
"We almost have the wording down," Padma said. "Some of it still needs work, but we can record whenever you're ready."
"We still have some time on that so go ahead and keep working on it," Tonks told her.
"Part two, the specific pranks on Subjects Shrake and Manticore. Both will be discreetly administered potions that will trigger the planned effects when exposed to a specific magical trigger. That trigger will be embedded into the recording of the Introduction so the effects seem spontaneous."
Padma nodded in approval. The idea to do it that way had been hers after all, rather than require the unbelievably precise timing that a time-delayed potion would entail or the work needed to charm the requisite spells directly into the Introduction. This way combined the ease of delivery with the timing of the Introduction and she'd been quite satisfied that her research hadn't gone to waste, even if it had required the much more accomplished Tonks and Cedric to actually pull off the requisite spell-work.
"Part three. The gifts for Subjects Shrake, Manticore, Fwooper, and Streeler," Tonks continued. "All four will be set at the appropriate places on the tables and a displacement charm cast. The charm will have a contingency-removal tied to the requisite parts of the Introduction. Cedric, are the presents ready?"
"Yes," Cedric said. "Diricawl's is going to take a little more work, though."
"That's fine," Tonks assured him.
"What are we getting Manticore?" Allie asked. "It was still undecided last I heard."
Harry nodded. "You remember that mouse-thing you dropped in front of that cat-familiar that was following us in Diagaon Alley? We're giving McGonagall one of those, only the size of a medium dog."
Allie looked at him quizzically.
"You haven't run into it yet," Cedric said, "but in third year McGonagall briefly touches upon basic human transfiguration and talks about the Animagus transformation. It's a really complex bit of magic that allows a wizard or witch to transform into one animal without using a wand. McGonagall just happens to transform into a housecat. As Gryffindor's mascot is a lion…"
Allie snickered. "I get it, oh, that's funny, Cedric. A mouse sized for a lion… The thing will be bigger than she is."
"I know," Cedric said smugly.
"One suggestion," Ernie piped up. "I can find out what the McGonagall clan tartan is and we can have the mouse done up in that pattern fur."
"There's still some time, sounds good," Tonks said. She penned herself a note, then picked up her wand again and tapped the wall to bring up a generalized floor plan of Hogwarts. It wasn't very specific, Hogwarts, like Cedric had said back on the first day, rearranged itself too much for real maps but a generalized outline of specific areas was just fine. "The Prefect Patrols are supposed to be conducted more or less randomly. Considering the occasionally chaotic nature of Hogwarts' internal geography that is even what usually happens. However, Percy Weasley has made the, uh, unfortunate mistake of not just always following the same route as closely as possible, but doing so with enough regularity that we can set our watches by it.
"Cedric, you and me, with Ernie and Justin for lookouts and transport, will take and emplace the gifts. There is a window two hundred and eighteen seconds long starting at 23:07 for us to get from our common room into the Great Hall and have the doors secured."
Tonks looked at Allie.
"At 23:09 the Little Red-Haired Girl will leave the Great Hall," Allie said, rolling her eyes.
Privately Harry agreed that the seventh year was taking her chance to practice her 'future Auror' routine a little too far, but the rest seemed amused by it and the older girl's enthusiasm was infectious. He pulled himself back to the briefing as Allie continued.
"…goes upstairs, abort, there's someone in the hall. If she goes bouncing her ball down your corridor, you're clear."
The Little Red-Haired Girl was one of Hogwarts' many resident ghosts. She was also widely considered to be the youngest at the time of her death. So far as anyone knew she didn't do much besides giggle and bounce her ball.
"You talked with her?" Tonks asked. "I don't think anyone has ever done that?"
"I passed along a request," Allie said. "She just showed up."
"Thank her for us then, will you?" Tonks asked. She turned back to Cedric, "The four of us will have to get together to decide how we want to do things."
Cedric nodded slowly and jotted down a note on a scroll of parchment he had handy.
"Peeves," Allie said, looking over at their quasi-mascot and prophet, the Poltergeist of Pranks-yet-to-come. "Mr Filch and Mrs Norris roam at random, your chief job tonight and in the following ones is to keep them away from us."
Tonks indicated a general area on the map, "We also need you to distract Prefect Patrols in this area starting at 23:18 tonight and lasting until 23:24."
Peeves snapped to attention and saluted.
Harry knew that Cedric and Tonks were still both disturbed by the idea of the poltergeist working for them, but he'd been impressed with Allie's prank. Allie, in turn, had pointed out how it was better to have him working for them and somewhat controllable, or at least directable, than it was to risk him compromising their plans.
"Ced," Tonks said. "That's how long we'll have to complete the task."
"What about if the Prefect Patrols come from this direction and over here?" Cedric asked, using his wand to place glowing sparks over a passage and a section of corridors that seldom changed.
"Padma," Tonks said. "This corridor and staircase, here, is almost a direct line from Ravenclaw tower to the passage in question. At 23:15 you need to get locked out of your common room and set up here."
"I can conjure up some sparks here, here, and here," Padma said, using her wand to place glowing sparks on the map. "The first two probably won't do much, but it'll look like I was trying to get attention to anyone who happens by."
"Just be sure you can extinguish them," Tonks said. "At 23:25 you can go back to your common room if you've been undisturbed. Allie?"
"I'll have the other section of corridors, don't worry," Allie told her.
Tonks nodded. "Everyone know your parts?" She looked around. "Excellent."
"What about the Headmas—er, Subject Diricawl's gift?" asked Parvati.
"That one is the sticking point," Harry spoke up at last. "Tonks showed Allie and me where his office is, but it has an animated gargoyle guarding it, and is password-protected. According to Tonks beyond the gargoyle are a rotating staircase and a short hall. They could be…warded, I guess, so that he knows if anyone approaches the door, but the sticking point is the password. We don't have it, without it we can't get in."
"Can we set up the doorbell the same way we're doing the rest?" Cedric said. "I suppose we could try and find a charm so that it just has to be pressed against the door for it to set in place."
"We could, and in fact we're going to need exactly that charm," Allie said. "It was Justin who came up with the solution just this afternoon. "
"Oh?" Tonks asked.
Justin turned in his seat. "It's simple. One of us is going to have to be sent to the Headmaster's office."
"Can I say that I really don't like this plan?" Padma asked.
"Agreed," Cedric said quickly.
"You'll be fine," Allie said. "Besides, there is only one person here that it really can be."
"Oh really?" Tonks asked, crossing her arms. "Who?"
"Me," Allie said.
"How do you arrive at that conclusion?" Tonks asked.
"It can't be you or Cedric," Allie said. "If either of you are caught and end up in detention our chances of pulling this off are effectively nil. If Harry did something big enough to warrant such a trip, such as hopping on a broom when he wasn't supposed to, it'd be unlikely that the Professors would do more than take a bunch of points. Professor Snape might do more, but he'd be more likely to use it to drive Hufflepuff into negative points and block his team practices—unlikely since I'm fairly certain he doesn't know about Harry's…appointment. The rest of you, no offense, but you haven't stood out as trouble makers. If you behave too atypically the Professors will wonder why. We don't have the time for you to figure out just what you need to do to get sent to the Headmaster's office without getting more than a warning."
"And you have a way to get sent there ready to go?" Harry asked.
"No," Allie said. "But I have something that with a little help from human nature will ensure that outcome. A warded diary. A seriously warded diary. So far I've been careful to keep it locked away when I haven't been writing in it, and I did warn all of my dorm-mates against trying to read it. It'll just be a factor of my leaving it unattended for long enough for one to notice. I'm betting it'll be Pansy."
"What kind of ward?" Tonks asked curiously.
/|\/|\/|\
Interlude: Allie
October 29
Allie finished sketching out the spell-diagram, again, and set her quill aside before taking a deep breath and slowly letting it out. She had known when Harry had first extorted Dumbledore into letting her attend Hogwarts that it would be hard. Her year-mates were painfully younger than she was, and the channels—the magical equivalent of muscles—would have had years to atrophy without the intensive study of magic that Hogwarts offered. The magic she could already do, both from natural talent as well as learned, used the equivalent of completely different muscle groups.
Professor Snape had assured her that there was no reason that they would eventually become used to the magic load now thrust upon them, but in the meantime she had to put up with results in transfiguration and charms that were, at best, chaotic, and frequently didn't produce so much as some colored sparks. Worse still the channels ached. It was an always present, entirely unphysical ache that nothing could get rid of. The only thing worse than the ache were the two trips to the hospital wing she had already endured from trying to force the issue and had managed to pump up enough magical throughput so that they burned.
As bad as she had thought it would be, the reality was worse. Almost two months of work and she could get the matchstick to transfigure into a needle maybe one time in four. Charms were no better. This after years of learning to manipulate wards and runes with an ease that most witches and wizards studying for their O.W.L.s couldn't hope of achieving. It wasn't just frustrating, it was…maddening.
Fortunately—and it was very fortunate indeed, she reflected darkly—she had had plenty of practice in dealing with frustration and keeping herself calm. She took another deep breath, held it, and then slowly released it and looked up.
Padma was watching her from across the library table. Harry would have demanded what was wrong. Parvati would have been uncomfortable and probably settle for ignoring it. Allie was privately grateful to Padma, not that she'd ever say it. She fit too well into Slytherin to be that…open. But that didn't change the fact that she was grateful for Padma's open concern but not pressing the issue.
Having Harry as a friend made the difference, she decided. It wasn't something she had counted on or even really considered until he had used the word. Her first concern had been to get the idiot wizard out of the midst of mundanes, and the second had been to keep her new home, not three months old, secure. She had succeeded in the first and not the second, but it wasn't Harry's fault so she didn't blame him for it. But somewhere in that half-day they had become friends.
Even knowing the Patils for years by that point hadn't made the three of them friends. She had been friendly with them, had felt safe enough to relax slightly in the Patil household, but her primary relationship with the family had been Chirag. Mentor, business associate, holder of a life-debt, and all the rest.
"Allie?"
Allie looked up at Padma.
Padma hesitated, then asked, "are you okay?"
"Just thinking," Allie admitted.
"Anything in particular?"
"Not really," she said. "So let me see if I have this correct," she said, gesturing to the parchment she had just finished writing on. "If I start with my wand loosely held, tip angled up, to the left, and outwards and then bring it around in a quarter circle to the right before cutting in—"
She paused and looked up as the doors to the library opened.
Professors Snape and McGonagall strode into the library, the former's face a blank mask while the Deputy Headmistress' was set with righteous fury.
"Show time," Allie whispered softly as they approached where she was sitting.
"Ms. Blackthorn," Professor Snape said in a soft, silky voice. "You will come with us to the Headmaster's office."
"May I ask what this is about?" Allie asked, slowly standing.
"You may not," he told her.
"I see," she said softly.
"You will surrender your wand," Professor McGonagall said.
Allie looked at her. Such a request was expected if Dumbledore decided to expel her after all, though she doubted it would come to that. That the Professors might deprive her of her wand—as useless with the thing as she was—before then had never occurred to her. The phrasing hadn't been a request, but the kind of demand a member of the Law Enforcement Patrol might make.
The rasp of a quickly drawn breath told her that Padma had heard the demand, recognized it for what it was, and drawn the same conclusion.
"I see," Allie said again. She slowly reached into her sleeve and drew out the device before flipping it and presented it grip-first to the suddenly grim-faced Snape, ignoring McGonagall's expectant outstretched hand.
McGonagall's face froze. "I don't know what you think—"
"If we must do this, then let it not be here," Professor Snape said swiftly.
Allie felt a moment of gratitude, but he wouldn't have accepted it even if she had been willing to show it so instead she inclined her head slightly. It was a polite nothing gesture that could have meant anything from respect to a sort of acknowledgement, but Professor Snape's eyes widened slightly before he returned it.
"Allie—" Padma said, but Allie cut her off.
"I'm sure everything will work itself out, Padma," she said.
Padma nodded slowly, and then the three left the library with Professor Snape leading, and McGonagall trailing behind.
They walked through the halls without speaking until McGonagall snapped the password at the gargoyle guarding the Headmaster's office. Professor Snape quickly strode to the spiral staircase and Professor McGonagall indicated that Allie should precede her up. Once they were on the spiral staircase Allie dipped her left hand into a pocket and came up with the doorbell in her palm. A practiced finger flick poked it up into the sleeve of her robes.
Professor Snape knocked at the door, and opened it at the Headmaster's order and went in. Allie let her left hand slap softly against the wall as she went in, a slight jerk deposited the doorbell into her palm long enough for the practiced brush to plant the device and she hoped that the disguise charms worked fast enough to hide it from McGonagall.
Apparently they did because the Transfiguration Professor didn't say anything and Allie allowed herself to look around the office. It was…impressive. There were walls lined with bookcases that were filled with books that made her fingers itch. Several spindly tables held a vast assortment of magical instruments, of which she recognized a half-dozen and guessed several more were decorative more than functional, but it still left a score and more with no purpose she could identify. The walls above the bookcases were filled with portraits of past headmasters and headmistresses, though all appeared to be sleeping. A soft cry made her turn to the right and suddenly freeze.
Sitting on top of a perch was a scarlet and gold-plumed bird. A phoenix.
"You know Professor McGonagall and Professor Snape, I believe," Dumbledore said from where he stood before a tidy little fireplace. "I think you should meet Fawkes."
Allie jerked a nod towards the bird. Fawkes, in turn, regarded her levelly for a moment before turning his attention elsewhere.
"I am in the habit of granting a second chance to those that desire it," Dumbledore said softly, "So perhaps we should begin with you explaining yourself."
There were a lot of flippant remarks that Allie really wanted to say, starting with asking when he had given her a first chance. Instead she simply shrugged slightly. "I'm not sure what the point would be, Headmaster, since you have already decided to expel me."
Dumbledore paused and looked at her. "Have I?" he asked impassively.
"Why else would the Deputy Headmistress demand that I surrender my wand before the entire school. Well, what there was of it in the library," she shrugged. "It amounts to much the same thing."
Dumbledore looked past her. "Minerva?" he asked.
Next to her Professor McGonagall shifted unhappily. "Under the circumstances I thought it best."
Dumbledore didn't say anything as Professor Snape returned her wand to her with the same precision that she had entrusted it to him. Professor McGonagall didn't say anything during the process, but Allie could read the humiliation-stoked anger in her expression.
"Thank you, Professor," she told Professor Snape who inclined his head the same way they both had in the library. Allie turned back to Dumbledore, "As for what you want me to explain, no one has yet told me what the problem is."
"You recall a certain conversation we had at the beginning of the year," Dumbledore said.
"Yes, about my Talent," Allie said. "My bed is warded, as you well know. Whoever you got to do the job was competent enough, though I note that you didn't tell him exactly what I was—thank you for that, by the way. I added a few of my own, and Professor Snape has checked it at least three times that I am aware of and probably thrice as many times that I am not."
"Four times as many," Snape said.
Allie flipped up her right sleeve to show a simple band of silver. "I also have my own ways of monitoring myself. Nothing has happened."
"You brought a dark artifact into my school," Dumbledore said, the air in the office suddenly thick with anger-fueled magic. "Now a student of mine is blind. Her eyes burned from their sockets." He lifted a leather-bound book closed with two leather latches and tiny gold locks and tossed it onto the floor where it cracked like a thunderclap in the office.
Allie crossed to it and picked it up. "This is my magic journal, my workbook. Grimoire, if you prefer the older term. I told Professor Snape this morning that it went missing while I was at breakfast."
"You fail to understand the gravity of the situation," Professor McGonagall said.
"I understand perfectly well," Allie said shortly. "It isn't just any book. It's a grimoire in the oldest sense, Professor McGonagall. It holds not just my secrets but pieces of my magic. It would have been the height of irresponsibility, not to mention dangerous for me as well as anyone foolish enough to use it, to not take precautions and place protections in it to ensure that it is able to securely contain what it holds; especially since I am unable to completely physically secure it, as its theft demonstrates.
"I admit that many of the defenses are not of my design or crafting, I don't have the skill or knowledge to adequately ward the book for what I was going to put in it, but all of the wards and protections are crafted with my power.
"All of my property is warded. I explained this our first night, along with warnings to leave my things alone. If someone wants to ignore my advice that isn't my fault," she paused. "Unless it wasn't someone warned. I mean, you haven't told me who it is. I assumed it was someone I warned, but I guess it could be a girl from a different year. As far as I know there are no wards to keep people out of dorm rooms other than their own, so one of the upper year Slytherin girls could have gotten to it."
"It was Pansy Parkinson," Professor Snape said.
"No, I warned her," Allie admitted. She shook her head. "It doesn't matter. I even put a warning in. It's tied to the wards. It's impossible to miss."
"What do you mean?" Dumbledore asked curiously.
Allie touched the two clasps and they parted. The leather straps that had been holding the book closed now undone, she set it on a small table. "No matter what page you open it to, you'll always open to one particular page. If you close the book, you'll still open to that page. It's a warning and a ward. You can't pass it without reading it."
Professor Snape swiftly crossed to the book and flipped it open. Allie could see his lips move ever so slightly as his eyes raced back and forth. He stopped suddenly and stared up at her before wordlessly passing the book to Dumbledore.
The Headmaster considered him for a moment before taking the book and perusing the page. He closed the book and opened it again, and then repeated this twice more, opening to a different page each time. "This is very similar to what the goblins use at Gringotts," he said.
Allie nodded.
"It gives the book power over the reader," he continued.
"It gives the wards power over a person reading it without my permission," Allie corrected.
"And those wards are capable of burning peoples' eyes."
"Knowledge is dangerous," Allie said flatly. "A little knowledge can be even more dangerous than complete knowledge. But as…drastic as the wards are, the effects are not irreversible. She just has to forget what she read. A memory charm, so very easily broken, will not suffice. It must be true forgetfulness. I would ask that you encourage her not to speak of what she read. Depending on what secrets of mine she stole the effects could be far worse, and far more permanent.
"Oh," she said, remembering something else. "It must be all the knowledge she took. If she told anyone what she read, they must forget as well. Any written or recorded copies must be destroyed."
"Can you determine what all she read?" Dumbledore asked.
Allie shrugged and accepted the book back when he levitated it to her. She flipped through it for a moment, then shrugged again. "She didn't steal anything dangerous, but she did steal—"
"Ms. Parkinson did not steal from you," Professor McGonagall snapped.
"Yes, Professor, she did," Allie said coolly. "Not anything overtly dangerous, perhaps, but she did illicitly acquire several parts of me, my power, my secrets. If she wants to go into debt to me for the value of the stolen knowledge and swears a binding blood-oath to never reveal those secrets she stole, I can bypass the forgetfulness-clause on the ward. I can't, and won't, for anything less."
Dumbledore didn't say anything, just stroked his beard for a minute. "Your opinions, Minerva, Severus?"
"She brought a dark artifact into the school," McGonagall said coolly. "You described it as such yourself, Albus. That artifact has caused another student to lose their eyesight, and she refuses to provide aid that could restore the student's sight."
"That is hardly what Ms. Blackthorn said," Professor Snape said. "I was there, Professor Dumbledore, when she warned her dorm-mates, to check that the wards on her bed were sufficient and satisfactory. If Ms. Parkinson was so idiotic as to ignore my warnings as well as Ms. Blackthorn's, and the warning inside the book as well, then she has only herself to blame for her circumstances."
"A harsh thing to say about the poor girl in the hospital wing who doesn't have any eyes because someone left a cursed book lying about," McGonagall said.
"Minerva, Severus, please," Dumbledore said.
Both stopped and looked at him.
"You will not be expelled, Ms. Blackthorn," Dumbledore said, "This time." He held Allie's gaze until she nodded grudgingly. "And one hundred points will be assessed from Slytherin House for recklessly endangering another student."
"I will see to dismantling the wards on my journal and personal possessions immediately," Allie said. "Professor Snape, if you would remove the ones on my bed? I wouldn't want them to pose a danger to any of my dorm-mates after all."
She bowed slightly, then turned for the door.
"Stop," Dumbledore ordered.
"Professor?" Allie asked.
Dumbledore gave her a searching look. "You may keep the wards for now, but the loss of points stands."
"Telling me that I may keep them isn't the same as saying that I must keep them," Allie said coolly. "But if it makes you feel better to blame me for your other student's carelessness and inability to follow simple directions, by all means, go ahead."
"I really must protest," Severus said once the door of the office had closed behind his student. "Ms. Blackthorn was impertinent, Headmaster, but she was not wrong. The taking of points was unjust. The only person at fault here is Ms. Parkinson."
"Who lost her sight!" McGonagall snapped.
"Do you not warn your students of the dangers of what you teach them?" Snape asked the Transfiguration Mistress. "I know that I certainly do. Perhaps now they will all be more inclined to actually listen and pay attention to those warnings." He shook his head in disgust, "once again you penalize a Slytherin for a situation that is not of her making."
"This isn't the same situation as the one with you and Black," McGonagall said.
"No," Snape agreed, "it is not. Nobody tricked Ms. Parkinson into reading the book. She did it entirely on her own. Nor, for that matter, was her life in danger…or anyone else's."
"What James Potter did was—"
"I am not talking about Potter," Snape spat. He gave his former teacher a very cold smile, "You do remember what the Ministry policy is for any werewolf that bites a human, do you not, Minerva? I do wonder, on occasion, what message you gave to Lupin when you let the…man who nearly got him executed off with no punishment."
He smirked as for once in the very few times he could recall, both Dumbledore and McGonagall were left speechless. Then he turned and left the office, the door slamming shut behind him.
/|\/|\/|\
The Tower of Turmoil
"What kind of ward?" Tonks asked curiously.
"The kind that will burn out the eyeballs of everyone who reads it and doesn't take its one warning seriously," Allie said. "Debilitating, class-disrupting, correcting the problem is straightforward but painful. I have a hard time believing that I wouldn't be sent to the Headmaster's office."
"Something like that could get you expelled," Cedric said.
"I warned them that my property was warded," Allie said. "I even have witnesses, if they aren't too cowardly to back out. Besides which, I have other reasons for believing that I won't be expelled."
"Like what?" Ernie asked.
"You're not blackmailing Dumbledore are you?" Justin asked. When Allie didn't respond he breathed, "Good Lord, you are."
"No," she said. "I am not blackmailing him and to the best of my knowledge no one else is either, but it is hardly my fault if he thinks he is being blackmailed…or extorted for that matter."
She gestured at the doorbell, and Harry was grateful for the change of subject. He really rather that people didn't know about his demand that Dumbledore allow Allie to attend Hogwarts, and in a way it kind of hurt that now it was going to be used against the ancient wizard.
"The hard part will be either me learning how to cast a displacement charm in time, or incorporating one into the present so that I just have to slap the thing on the wall next to the door."
Cedric nodded slowly. "We were going to use something similar to put it in anyway, so enchanting the thing to meld into the door shouldn't be a problem. The displacement charm might be. It's bound to be unstable…we might be able to give you a day, two at the most."
"That…might be sufficient time. Tonks?"
"I don't think we have much of a choice," the older girl said. "Ced, if you can, do a test article immediately so we have a better idea of timing. But we might just have to go with it. We'll lose some effect if it isn't timed as neatly, though we have some leeway because he'll be at the feast."
"Um…I might need a bit of help with the charm, but what if I layer a simple glamour over it? I mean, he doesn't use fancy bricks or something, does he? The walls outside his office are just like those of the rest of the school?"
Tonks nodded. "Yep, and I think that might work too. Good idea, Ced." She turned back to her briefing. "This brings us to part five of Operation Butterfly, the fourth part being the deployment of Dumbledore's present. We thought about trying to co-opt the house-elfs, but Ernie reports that they're too firmly entrenched in the Weasley camp at this point in time. Instead he suggested we go back to what we did with the table and try doing the spell elsewhere but have it anchored to the benches at the house tables.
"The problem with doing it that way is transference, making the charm 'stick' to the robes after being on the benches. We'd have to charm each bench for an exact number of people. If too many people sat at the bench the charm would likely fall off. If not enough sat at it the concentrated charms could, at least in theory, inflict damage on the robes. We can, and are, going to use that method for the chairs at the High Table since they only seat one a piece, but we can't use it for the benches."
"So how are we going to do it?" Justin asked.
"With these," Padma said, passing him a piece of metal.
"That's the Hogwarts crest," Ernie said, leaning over his shoulder. "Like what we had on our robes before being Sorted."
"That's exactly what it is," Padma said. "Everyone has one. Or rather, everyone has a House badge which amounts to the exact same thing. We come up with a set of custom-runes to tag the badges with, and then run the spell through the runes just like the switching spells were run through the runes on the tables in the Great Hall. For now we'll only use four runes, one per house."
"We might, eventually, be able to use it to track peoples' movements," Tonks said. "Each badge would need a unique rune if we wanted more than a generalized 'someone from Ravenclaw is approaching', but right now the sticking point for that idea is the model of Hogwarts."
"That's going to take at least a year or two of work," Cedric said. "Unfortunately. What about that Prefect-detector, Allie?"
"Prefect-detector?" Harry asked. Allie had told him what she was trying to do and had informed him of the results, but to the best of his knowledge she hadn't told the others.
"I spent some time examining my house badge and, uh, borrowed a Prefect badge for a couple of days," Allie said, "Long enough for Tonks to make a couple of copies for me to experiment with. To the best of my ability to detect, the house badges aren't charmed or enchanted.
"Instead I think they act as mobile nodes for at least some of Hogwarts' wards. I mean, it looks like they are tied directly into the wards themselves. What I think is they are sort of a 'someone is here' alert to the wards. That way in case of a large fire or something the wards can alert the Headmaster if there is someone in the area, but not who…I don't think. The Prefect Badges are a bit more complex, some of it looks like it is trying to provide for a limited communication capability, but I think that is for dealing with the point-system.
"It was my hope that the Prefect badges put out some kind of magical signature that I could track. Unfortunately the ambient magic signature is too high for the normal detection magic I use."
"So you can't do it?" Harry asked.
Allie nodded. "Not at this time. The easiest way to do it would be to tie into Hogwarts' wards since that's what normally monitors the badges. For obvious reasons, that isn't practical."
"What did you do with the copies?" Tonks asked.
"I destroyed most of them, though I still have one sample of each locked up in a magic-free vault in my lab," she said, referring to the room she'd selected to use as a place to experiment in.
"Were you detected?" Cedric asked.
"Most of it was simple observation," Allie said with a shake of her head. "Some of the work in order to make those observations was fairly involved, but that was it. And I did all my work inside a double-laid circle, one to contain any accidents and the other to keep out any contaminating magic. The most noticeable thing was the destruction of the badges, but I did that in a remote dungeon with lodestones for magic-sinks, and after I cleaned up the circles I tossed iron filings and rock salt on the floor to disrupt magic that was used to investigate."
"What about the Prefects bath?" Tonks asked. "I had to get Janice to open it up for me. Do you know if it detects the badge, or if it is passworded?"
"I didn't see anything that looked like some kind of magic key," Allie said. "Since the Common Rooms don't seem to track the house badges I'd guess that it's the same case where the Prefect Bath and Lounge are concerned. However, since Prefects do get a pass on the exclusion wards that keep wizards from going into the witches' dorms I'm guess that that is a function of the badge. It's a feature that I've been unable to test, and that I haven't been able to identify any specific rune-sequences or charms that would allow it."
"What about the Restricted Section?" Padma asked.
Parvati gave her sister a look. "You aren't trying to channel my room-mate, are you?"
"Brocklehurst bet that Granger would be the first person in our year to get inside," Padma said shortly.
"The Restricted Section isn't really warded," Tonks said. "Too many upper years need it. And not just for Defense Against the Dark Arts either. A lot of the section is filled with advanced charms and potions that are incredibly difficult or very dangerous, or both. There's a gate, but the main thing keeping people out is Madam Pince. The really dark stuff is kept in the Vault, and unlike the Restricted Section, that one is warded."
"Thank you," Padma said. She turned back to Allie.
"Hey," Ernie said. "Allie, you said that the Prefect Badges have some way of communicating house points, right?"
Allie nodded slowly.
"Prefects can hand out points," Tonks said, "what's your point?"
"Can we manipulate the house points?"
"Without getting caught?" Allie asked. "I seriously doubt it. And there's no way at all that it won't be noticed. I'm almost certain the points are logged somewhere including entries for who awarded the points, where, when, and to who for what. What happens when they compare the official log?"
"Still," Justin said. "It might be something we can do at the end of the school year, after the leaving feast I mean."
"What do you mean?" Harry asked.
"Well, they give the house cup at the feast, right? So then the points go back to zero the next morning before we leave." He looked at Tonks and Cedric who both shrugged in reply.
"Can't say that I've ever noticed," Cedric said.
"So they wouldn't count," Harry said. "But what would we do with them?"
"Some sort of code or numeric riddle, maybe?" Padma suggested.
"It's an idea, I suppose," Harry allowed. "But to get back to—"
"Actually, Harry, there is one thing I discovered that I think we can use," Allie said.
The room fell silent.
"Not how to give Malfoy detentions, I assume?" Parvati asked.
"Actually…" Allie looked thoughtful for a moment before shaking her head. "I discovered how to bypass the exclusion locks on all the house team locker rooms."
"What?" Cedric asked.
"Tonks told me that Prefects have access to all of the locker rooms," Allie said.
"For emergencies," Tonks said.
Allie nodded. "But they have access, and the locker rooms don't require passwords and unlike the common rooms they are exclusive. They normally keep people from other houses out, or at least the exterior doors won't open. Even for people that are on other teams."
Harry remembered staring at his best friend with a sickly sort of horrified silence when she had first revealed to him the results of her experiments. Considering the sound, or rather the lack thereof, coming from the others in the room they felt much the same way now that he had then.
"You aren't serious," Cedric said slowly.
"There are limitations," Allie said. "I wouldn't want to take the copied Prefect badge out of containment, but since team captains aren't tied into giving/taking points we only have to worry about the minor warding on the locker rooms that determine who was access. I'm pretty confident that I can bypass those."
Cedric whistled softly. "I know you said you were good with wards and runes, but that's…"
"Unbelievable," Tonks said flatly.
Allie shrugged. "I may be beans at transfiguration and charms, but I've been studying warding and runes and ritual magic, for longer than you've been in Hogwarts, Tonks. I am very good at it."
"But we can't use any of it?" Harry asked, already knowing the answer.
"At this time, no," Allie said. "It's too risky taking the Prefect badge-copy out of the lab. Since I don't want to try getting past anything on the internal witch/wizard door that you told me about, Harry, I may have to make two sets of passes for each locker room if there is an inner boundary. Assuming Tonks can help me, I don't run into any unforeseen problems, and I am able to acquire some special materials, I should have the passes set up by the middle of November."
"Since the students are all carrying something, does that mean the Professors do as well?"
Everyone in the room turned.
"What do you mean, Padma?" Harry asked.
"What I mean is, do the Professors have to carry something like the Prefects do in order to give and take points?"
Harry looked at Tonks and Cedric who shrugged in reply, then turned to Allie.
"I don't know. If I was the one who set the thing up, I'd use a ritual, maybe even blood-oaths," Allie said. "Mostly wards as old and powerful as these are in family hands and are passed through lineage, blood-lines. There'd have to be something that substitutes for that, and allows people to be added and removed with relatively little trouble. I suppose some kind of anchor, probably crystal-based, would make sense.
"If that's the case it might be possible to create sympathetic crystals that are keyed to their presence. Unless we bring in someone with a lot of background knowledge on crystal-based magic that's at least a year or two's worth of research away from us—plus fabrication time, and I'm not prepared to even guess on how long that would take."
"Well set that one aside for now," Harry said. "Allie has kept me informed about this in my role as First Lord. Now I want a vote from my...my—" he turned to Justin, "what was that word again? The polite one that meant 'minion'?"
"Retainers," Justin said with a grin.
"—right, my retainers. Do we pursue locker-room access or not?"
"It does give us Prefect access that we don't have," Parvati noted.
"And access to all the locker rooms," Cedric added. "Pranking a Quidditch team isn't something the Weasleys have pulled off yet."
Parvati frowned suddenly at him. "That sounds like an opening to a pranking war. I really don't want to have to share a house with the Twins if they decide someone is challenging them."
The others traded looks. "Look, even if we build the things we don't have to use them, right?" Padma asked. "Then I say go ahead."
Justin and Ernie both nodded in agreement with that idea. But Parvati still shook her head.
"So Cedric, Padma, Justin, and Ernie are all for it," Harry said. "Tonks, you and Parvati are against?"
"I guess I just can't think of any funny pranks to pull on a Quidditch team," Tonks said. "And that's really all that the pseudo-badges Allie's talking about are going to give us the opportunity for. I can't think of anything funny to do with Professor-level access either, for that matter."
Harry turned to Allie who shrugged. "I'm interested in the challenge, Harry."
"Okay then, I guess I'll think about it," Harry said. "Tonks, would you help Allie if she asks?"
"I suppose that's what I agreed to do when I joined this…" the seventh year waved her hand at the room they were in and the tower beyond it.
"So," Harry said, realizing that the change in conversation had damped everyone's spirits and gotten them far off track. "Operation Buttercup. Part Five."
"Sorry about that," Tonks said. She tapped the wall once more and maps began to spread across it. Detailed maps. Maps too detailed for most of Hogwarts, but for one of the places that never changed…
"These are the dorms," Tonks said unnecessarily. "What few people realize, or even think about, is that they only have one house badge for three sets of robes. When a house-elf takes the robe for cleaning it puts the badge in the top drawer of that person's bedside cupboard. When a person pulls a robe on, the badge fixes itself to that robe in the correct position.
"Over the last two weeks Allie has been helping us to prepare maps of the dormitories of our houses. Using the sleeping gas potion that we discovered while starting to go through the contents of the library on the top floor, we will gas an entire common room and inscribe a rune on all of the house badges."
"How do we keep from being affected by the gas?" Padma asked.
"Bubblehead charms," Tonks said as Allie sat again. "They're normally used to breathe underwater, or to filter out noxious fumes. I'll be teaching Cedric the charm and we can spell you."
"What about the runes? Won't they be noticeable?" this from Justin.
Harry shook his head. "I had the same worry. We'll be using our wands to inscribe the rune magically. It'll disappear after a moment or two."
"Unless someone starts poking at it the rune is effectively undetectable," Allie said. "And unless they have a badge from another house to compare it to, they'll have no way of knowing it isn't supposed to be there."
"And by this time the newness of the badge should have worn off," Tonks concluded. "After the first couple of months everyone really just takes the badges for granted. I can't think of seeing anyone ever really examining them after the first month or so of the first year."
"What about the Prefect Patrols?" Cedric asked. "They're still running an all-night patrol schedule. That normally doesn't end until after Halloween."
"True," Tonks said. "But the patrols shift on a rotating basis so that the Prefects get enough sleep. There are a couple of hours each night when everyone in a single house is, or at least is supposed to be, asleep. Allie was able to get that schedule."
Cedric turned and looked at the Slytherin. He wasn't the only one. "How did you—no," the Hufflepuff said, holding up a hand. "I've decided that I don't want to know."
"The ghosts," Tonks said.
Allie stilled. "Excuse me?"
Tonks was wearing a satisfied smirk on her face. "I figured it out. The Weasleys have the house-elfs which people never notice, so you've gotten the ghosts to help you because everyone takes them for granted. The Bloody Baron and the Little Red-Haired Girl to scout for us. That Piper who keeps waking people up so they go towards him to shut him up instead of finding us. That's how you got your hands on the patrol schedule, isn't it? You've gotten the ghosts to help you."
"They are old," Allie said slowly, "and they do not have much to do. They are bored. I made an offer and they accepted. It is as simple as that."
"I'm not complaining," Tonks said. "I thought it was really clever, actually. Do you get Binns to curve your grades?"
"Binns doesn't even realize he's dead," Cedric joked. "Why the need for the detailed maps?"
"Because some students have taken to warding their things," Allie said. "Hufflepuff isn't a problem, no offense."
"None taken," Tonks said.
"Gryffindor, much the same on the girls' side, the boys' side is a different story."
"The Weasley twins," Parvati said.
"Nearly-Headless Nick informed me that there is something of a gentleman's agreement to not prank the dorms, and it even holds true for the younger years. In the case of the upper years it is more of a case of if and when on one side and healthy paranoia on the other."
Allie gestured with her wand to Ravenclaw Tower. "The 'claws have warding on both sides, but it isn't consistent. Some students have wards, others do not. Most of the ones they do have look like studies in archaic and complex ward-structures rather than practical systems of defensive magic. Most will be even easier to bypass than those in Gryffindor, though there are one or two that I'll want to crack a few books for."
"And Slytherin?" Ernie asked.
"Slytherin is a den of snakes," Allie said dryly.
"A better question is can you defeat them?" Justin asked.
"Yes," Allie said. "Though breaking them will inform everyone that someone was doing something. We want to temporarily bypass them and that is always more complicated, so I won't be around all that often over the next week as I come up with bypasses."
"Does anyone see any problems with this plan?" Harry asked.
"I don't know," Justin said as he traded looks with Ernie. "It all just seems very complicated, part 5 in particular. Isn't there a simpler way we could do this? I mean…quite honestly, I'm not even sure what the point of all this is besides a good way to get caught."
"Actually this is pretty simple," Tonks said. "Or at least straightforward. It's a basic principal of magic that a part of something can influence the whole."
"But you aren't suggesting that at all," Justin said.
"Yes we are," Allie said. "The principal is usually applied to singular entities, a hair to a person for example. We're simply applying the principal to a collective whole."
"We considered a Protean charm," Tonks added, "but it's a N.E.W.T.-standard charm and I'm the only ones capable of pulling it off. It'd take us too long to enspell each badge that way, and this is a lot less noticable. This way takes less time for us to do, and since we're only putting a magic-inscribed rune on each badge the only thing for people to discover is the rune itself. A simple tracing spell would quickly reveal that each other badge in the house had the same rune on it and that's it."
"And if this doesn't work?" Cedric asked.
Tonks looked nervously around the room and Padma looked very unhappy.
"Plan B resorts to potions," Allie admitted. "Tonks has been learning about suspending a charm inside a potion. We think we can modify the recipe so that the effects are triggered by a time delay starting from when the potion is cooled below a certain temperature. If we're going to have any chance of pulling it off we need the Introduction done and timed so that we can determine the interval. The Introduction will have to be played based off of the timing of the potions. We aren't going to be able to wait until the pause between meal courses like we would in the primary plan because we can't guarantee when that pause will come.
"Timing the potions is going to be very difficult, but with Tonks and I think we can brew them if we have some help. However, it is in my opinion that delivering the potions, without alerting the Weasley twins, is going to be practically impossible."
"Would it matter when the potions were drunk?" Harry asked.
Tonks shook her head. "No. As Allie said it'd be timed based off a temperature reading of the cooling potion. They could be drunk right away, or four seconds before the charm activated."
"Let's go with both then," Harry said. "Any house we can't take care of with runes we dose with potions."
Tonks grimaced. "I can see I'm not getting any sleep or schoolwork done this week. Okay. We'll get started as soon as the Introduction is finished." She turned to the ninth being in the room. "Peeves, you're our Poltergeist of Pranks-yet-to-come. Are you ready?"
"Peevesie is," Peeves said with a wide grin.
"Just remember our supply stocks are limited," Tonks said warningly.
He jumped to attention in mid-air, saluted, and then disappeared with a last raspberry.
"Right, then," Harry said. "I'll see you all tonight."
"You know, Harry," Allie said as the others began to file out of the room, "You're getting awfully good at this being in charge, thing."
"Well it's not like you gave me a lot of choice," Harry grimaced.
"Still, you could have held back, avoided it, but you didn't," Allie said. "You're doing good, Harry, keep it up."
Harry watched her go, but he couldn't help feeling that for the first time since he'd met her, Allie was dead wrong.
\|/\|/\|/
Zero-one-thirty-seven
October 31st
Tonks, her normally bright hair a dark green, led Padma and Parvati into the female dorms armed with a map. Each dorm had a beaker, glowing a soft blue and sending up cloud-shaped puffs of orange smoke every three seconds, set just inside the room far enough from the door that opening it wouldn't spill the potion. She shut the door of the first-year dorms behind the twins, then went over to the first bed. The map was annotated to show what wards needed to by bypassed to open the standing wardrobes where robes hung, or bedside cupboards where the house-elfs placed the badges from robes they had taken to wash.
In the boy dorms Cedric did much the same thing with Justin and Ernie, though in his case he usually had to resort to using a number of magical devices that Allie and Tonks had created. Allie and Harry instead moved immediately to the seventh year boys and got to work.
"Are we going to have enough time?" Harry asked as she finally spelled open the drawer of the second person in the room. In Hufflepuff they had split into four groups of two, and it had taken little more than five minutes to inscribe the runes in any given dorm. Gryffindor and Ravenclaw had both taken longer, of course, but not much.
"I don't know," Allie said and Harry nodded silently as he inscribed the rune.
He'd known going in that the Slytherin students had the most complex wards of all the students. But thanks to Allie they had also had the most complete description of the wards being used, which removed some of the uncertainty they had faced in Ravenclaw and Gryffindor. The rune finished on the badge he replaced it in the drawer and slid it shut. There was a soft pop as the wards slid back into place.
"You know that Parvati thought you were going to be expelled?" Harry asked.
"She told me," Allie said. "In the end, Dumbledore decided it was probably a good thing I had my diary warded, even if he wasn't particularly pleased about what those wards did."
"Because otherwise they could read about you being like the Pied Piper?" Harry asked.
Allie gave him a startled look.
"Padma came up with the idea," Harry said. "That you have some sort of instinctive compulsion magic like the Pied Piper."
"It's a good one," she replied after awhile. "Of course, in my case it doesn't involve any instruments."
"So what happened?" Harry asked, moving around a bed to inscribe another rune.
"You remember that ward in Gringotts?" Allie asked.
"The poem? Yes," Harry said.
"Well I have something similar in my diary. No matter what page you open to it's the first thing you see and there's a minor compulsion on it so that the reader does read it," Allie said. "It gives you one warning, and then if you go on reading it without my express permission it burns out your eyes. It wasn't designed to be permanent, but it is painful."
A silvery glow appeared on one wall just before the Bloody Baron glided through.
"The Head of Slytherin approaches," he told Allie in a soft, ominous voice that was nothing like the rusty croak Harry imagined he would use.
Allie spat a rude word. "Warn Cedric!" she snapped at him. "Then come down and grab the potions. "No wait, I'll take them and warn Tonks." She turned and fled from the room.
Harry followed after, almost lost his footing, and managed to recover only to slam into Cedric coming out of the fourth-year dorms.
"Snape's coming, Allie is going to distract him," he told the older boy.
"There's only one way out of here," Cedric said, his eyes wide.
"I don't think there's time for that," Harry said.
"Hide then, first-year dorms," Cedric said. "Ernie, Justin, go, we can hide in the wardrobes."
Harry winced. Each of the wardrobes were really thin on the outside, barely deep enough to hang one set of robes face-on, but the inside was much deeper. Even so they weren't terribly big and while he and the other first years could hide in them he wasn't sure if Cedric could. He started to follow Cedric and the others into the room, but hesitated and then crept back down the hall until he was just out of sight of the common room.
A door opened somewhere and he hoped that Allie had gotten into place to do whatever it was she was planning.
"Ms. Blackthorn," Snape's voice hissed.
"Professor Snape," Allie replied levelly. "So, where are the tracking charms?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"Tracking charms, that let you know when we're out of bed," Allie said. "They aren't on our robes, and I checked my bed and dorm room pretty thoroughly."
"Those charms," Snape said neutrally, as though they were something barely worth his notice. "There is only a minor one that informs me when the common room is occupied long after everyone should be in bed. Your housemates would not tolerate someone spying on all of their movements."
"Not if they didn't know about it," Allie said.
Harry couldn't see how Snape responded to that, and the Professor didn't say anything.
"You have been up many of the past nights?"
"I've had trouble sleeping," Allie said.
"You should have come to see me," Snape told her. "I could easily brew a potion to help you."
"Nightmares," Allie amplified. "Potions might help once in a while, but there isn't anything I can take on a consistent basis without all sorts of unpleasant effects."
"Perhaps talking to someone would help," Snape said. "I am sure the…alienation you must feel in my House is not helping. Perhaps if you were to cultivate friends in Slytherin instead of always eating with the 'puffs or working with that insufferable Longbottom—"
"Who, exactly, do you think I should approach?" Allie asked. "To my dorm-mates I'm 'that creepy older girl', to my age-mates I'm that strange first year. Draco Malfoy and his minions are, at best, condescending and idiots respectively. I might be able to put up with that, but every fourth and fifth words out of his mouth are 'my' and 'father', and I'm beginning to strongly suspect that he has not one original idea in his brain. The upper years have already figured out who I am and have made overtures, but they're interested in me because of my family and the magic backing it. Besides, the looks Marcus Flint has been giving me are disturbing at best."
"Marcus Flint is a fine young man, from a fine family," Snape said.
"And I'll grant you that he even has some skill on a broom," Allie said. "It doesn't change how I feel about how he's looking at me. Besides, there is one very big flaw in how those upper years view me."
"And that is?" Snape asked.
"The wizards are looking at me as a witch, considering what wealth and magic and prestige I can bring to their families, while the witches are sizing me up as a potential rival. The problem is that the Thornes are matriarchal. They'll be marrying into my family, not I into theirs, and most of Britain, at least the wizarding side, is too patriarchal to really understand what that means.
"Besides, I have reasons for my associations."
"Do tell," Snape said dryly.
"Longbottom is my ticket to passing more than potions, and fixing his mistakes is not only educational, but proving more challenging that the other first year work. No offense intended, I understand why I am in first year Potions and I don't hold it against you, sir. As for the 'puffs, I'm associating myself with Harry Potter, who has, quit unwittingly I'm sure, surrounded himself with a number of people who might prove useful in the future, and having the ear of the Boy-Who-Lived is not a small thing."
"And when he finds out that your father was one of the Dark Lord's minions? That he is responsible for an unknowable number of deaths among both the wizarding world and muggles?"
"What makes you think he doesn't already know, Professor?" Allie asked.
Harry snuck down the stairs a little more until he could peek around the corner. The Potion Master was standing with his arms crossed, peering down at Allie who was curled in a high-backed leather chair, holding one knee to her chest.
"He was there when Headmaster Dumbledore tried to bar my admittance to Hogwarts," she said, "again."
\|/\|/\|/
Interlude: Tonks
15:43 hours
28th October
Tonks slowly slid her wand from the gel-like contents of the cauldron. A gossamer web of iridescent magic traced a delicate web through the translucent substance.
"Charms have been implanted."
"That's four," Padma said breathlessly. "It's beautiful."
Tonks nodded in agreement.
"Okay, let's start heating them up again for the next step," Allie said, poking at the fire under it.
"What a way to ruin a moment," Tonks muttered, moving to an identical cauldron. She'd been a bit dubious about the Slytherin despite the first prank, and she had quickly decided after the first two times she'd agreed to help the witch practice that she didn't want to be around if Allie was doing anything with transfiguration or most charms, but also that it was impossible to deny that the Snake was a genius with runes. As far as potions were concerned she didn't have the range of knowledge that Tonks had as an N.E.W.T.-level potion student, but the seventh year would readily admit that she did have a much better depth of understanding in the range she did have.
For all of that knowledge, Tonks much preferred working with Padma when it came to brewing. It wasn't because the first year wasn't a Slytherin or had some fascinating new insight into potions—though those were and were not the case, respectively. It was because Allie treated potions with a cold precision and saw none of the beauty in them that Padma could find.
With a sigh and a shake of her head, Tonks whispered a word. The fire under the cauldron grew hotter as Allie and Padma moved on to adjust the fires under two more cauldrons.
"Time?" Allie asked.
Tonks glanced at the large clock mounted on the wall, the sand-glass timers by each of the four cauldrons, and then pulled out a gold pocket watch and compared its seven hands to the other five timepieces. "Fifteen-forty-three and…seventeen seconds."
"She's really loving this, isn't she?" Padma whispered to Allie loud enough for Tonks to hear.
Tonks blushed, but didn't let it reach her skin as the other girl nodded mutely. "Three leafs from tierce-brush," she said out loud, "In…ten seconds." She picked up three leaves, already prepared, with her left hand while the other held her watch. Padma likewise picked up leafs and moved to a cauldron, while Allie held leafs over the last two. "Five," Tonks said. "Four…three…two…one…now."
Three leafs dropped into four cauldrons each.
"Color change," Allie reported. "Cauldron R to light blue and bronze."
"Gryffindor, red and gold," Padma said. "Sly—"
Tonks nodded in satisfaction. "A change to the initial colors of the target is a good sign."
"Except that Cauldron S has not only liquefied like it should," Allie said, "it is now starting to simmer."
Tonks frowned. "That isn't in the recipe," she said unnecessarily. Just to be sure she grabbed the heavy book that the potion had been found, a sheaf of parchment notes, and the small tome that their own recipe was in.
"I know, I'm reducing heat."
"Cauldrons G and R are starting to boil," Padma said quickly as she tapped her wand at the fires under the two cauldrons.
Definitely wasn't in the books. "Okay," she said, setting them down on a lab bench. "I'm reducing heat on Cauldron H. It's at a rolling boil."
"I've turned off the fires on G and S," Padma said. "The boiling is increasing."
Okay, that wasn't a good sign.
"Maybe its siphoning heat and we're looking at a runaway endothermic reaction?" Tonks asked, at a loss for a better explanation.
Allie held up a thermometer. "Temperature in the room isn't dropping any. It can't be sucking in heat. Not in sufficient quantity."
"It could be exothermic, but we just had them over a fire," Padma said. "It'll be a bit before we can determine if the heat being shed is normal, or if the potion is producing heat as a byproduct."
There was a relatively straight-forward way to check for that, and, if the reaction was heat-based, stopping it in its tracks. "I'm going to try applying cooling charms."
"I don't see how this could be an excess heat issue, not for this extreme a reaction," Allie said as Tonks began to carefully layer a trio of weak cooling charms on top of one-another—a somewhat safer and much more controllable alternative to hitting it with one massive cooling spell. Metal cauldrons had been known to shatter when subjected to rapid temperature change. "We're on the verge of a runaway. We may have a bad reaction."
"Bad reaction with what?" Padma asked. "You said that these were all from your personal stores, or from the school's potion supply closet."
"I had to owl-order a few things," Allie said. "And my usual shop doesn't place owl orders. It could be that some of them were contaminated, that or maybe the timing wasn't quite exact enough because we're trying to do four cauldrons at once?"
Tonks stared at the cauldron as it seemed to consume the cooling charms, sucking the shimmering magic of coldness into its very being.
"Tonks?" Padma asked.
"It's absorbing magic," Tonks said in a voice soft with confusion.
"What?" Allie asked.
"I'm applying cooling charms, but the cauldron is…absorbing them, I guess," Tonks said, describing the effect. "I think the potion is…endo-magical, I suppose. Absorbing magic."
"That's insane," Allie said.
"Or maybe it's just some of the ingredients reacting, breaking down and giving off some gasses," Padma said. "Did anyone try getting a temperature of the contents of the cauldrons?"
Allie picked up a pair of thermometers and Tonks stepped to one side as she stuck one in the yellow and black cauldron, then crossed the room and stuck the other in the blue and bronze cauldron. "Cauldron R, thermometers reads 'getting hotter'," she reported.
Tonks felt a sinking sensation at the little image of a phoenix in flames. "Cauldron H says 'heat increasing rapidly'."
*Pop*
She jerked back as a yellow bubble with black banding about the size of Padma's fist popped into the air above the Hufflepuff cauldron. It hovered there peacefully.
Tonks reached up and poked one bubble with her wand. Instantly it split into three identical bubbles that began to slowly bounce in the air.
*Pop*
"I have a bad feeling about this," the seventh year said as a blue/bronze bubble popped into the air above the Ravenclaw cauldron.
"Tonks, make sure the fires are off. Padma, grab the supplies," Allie snapped as the rate of bubble production began to increase.
It was unnecessary. Tonks had already extinguished all the flames and placed sealing spells over the tops of the cauldrons so that no more bubbles could escape. It was no use. The sealing spells shimmered briefly, then, like the cooling charms, disappeared.
Allie crossed to the door. On the wall next to it was a glowing red button four inches across. Written on it in big block letters was 'DON'T PANIC'.
As soon as Padma and Tonks stepped back Allie pushed the button. Instantly the button changed to a bright green as the words changed to 'PANIC!' as a muted alarm throbbed in the air. Silver rings of magic circles flared into existence when the panic button had been pressed, containing the results of the incorrectly-made potion.
"Containment Systems…Holding," Tonks' voice echoed in the room. Despite the situation the vocal warning caused Tonks to smile slightly. Her dad still frequently watched the muggle telly, and was particularly a fan of muggle 'science fiction'. She'd gotten the idea of a vocal warning from one of his shows, and was privately certain that he'd have appreciated it if he knew about it.
There was pounding on the door, and after a moment a small hatch slid open.
"Tonks, are you all right?" Cedric asked.
"We're fine, Ced," Tonks said. "We, uh, had a bit of a problem, but the containment circles worked just fine."
"Automatic?" he asked.
"No, Allie hit her PANIC button," Tonks said.
"So it's safe to open the door?"
"Pretty much, yeah," Tonks said.
Cedric cracked open the door. When nothing happened he opened it wide and walked in. "What happened?"
"We're not sure," Tonks admitted. She glanced at Allie before adding, "Our best guess is probably ingredient contamination.
"The potions were going perfectly. We had the gel-state spell-matrix. The charms were inserted cleanly. No indication of unstable tendencies. Then we added the tierce-bush leafs and suddenly the cauldrons began to boil."
"Don't cauldrons normally do that?"
"Not after they've been pulled from the fires and had cooling charms layered on them," Tonks told him dryly.
"Oh."
*Pop*
*PopPop*
*PopPopPop*
All four High Lords of Chaos turned to find a half-dozen more bubbles floating over the cauldrons.
"Any idea of how many bubbles each of those cauldrons is capable of producing?" Cedric asked.
"Not a clue," Tonks said. "Kind of nifty though."
*Pop*
A bubble burst from the Gryffindor cauldron and drifted into another bubble.
*PopPopPopPop*
Both bubbles burst, and where there had been two bubbles now there were four.
*PopPopPopPopPopPopPopPopPopP opPopPopPopPopPopPopPopPopPo pPopPop*
\|/\|/\|/
Harry ducked back as Professor Snape started to turn.
"Very well then, I will not tell you who to associate with, though I will continue to encourage you to look to your own house. That is why we have the house system in the first place."
"Understood," Allie said coolly.
"Do try to at least rest, even if you don't sleep," Professor Snape said. "If you continue to remain up in the Common Room at all hours of the night I will dose you with sleeping potions. Have I made myself clear?"
"You have."
Harry listened for the sound of the entrance opening, and then waited until it was closed again before drawing a shaky breath. He counted to five, then crept into the common room just as Tonks was emerging from the female dorms.
"Are we still good?" Tonks asked softly.
"Yes," Allie said.
"How are things going?" Harry asked, gesturing to the female dorms.
"It's going to be tight," Tonks allowed. "But if we hurry I think we can make it."