Hogwarts One Half
Chapter Four

by Lionheart

I O I O I

Ranko Malfoy, dressed in a tight-fitting ninja outfit, walked into a chamber at the base of a tower, Shampoo at her side dressed the same. Both pulled down their masks, bouncing down the steps and letting the door close behind them as they came into a room that was already occupied.

Ukyo Bones was there, and she smiled at her Ranchan before turning her attention back to the real action. "Ranko-chan," her mother called from the center of a complex diagram in the center of the room. "Don't disturb anything. I spent all last week getting the arithmancy right and double checking everything. The last thing we want is a smudged symbol."

Sparing a rueful, yet resigned, glance to a smashed brass teakettle still bearing the marks of the boulder that had flattened it over on a shelf in the corner, Ranko nodded and put her bag down well short of the magic circle. "I got everything we needed from the greenhouse fine, but I had to smash a lock to get the other ingredients from Snape's private potion stores. He's bound to notice the break in, but an unlocking charm wouldn't work."

"Ah, he remembers." Nodoka mused thoughtfully as she carefully checked her latest drawn symbol. "I was always stealing his potion supplies at school."

"Aiyah! Shampoo no wonder why." The cheerful amazon had put down her own bundle and opened Ranko's, lifting out what looked like half a rhino horn after counting the others. "Seven and a half erumpent horns? Very expensive!"

"I'm a Malfoy, dear. It wasn't the cost. It was that I hated Snape." Nodoka smirked, amused at her antics. "We don't need the half, but I'm glad that you got the seven. That's just barely enough for what I'd planned to do with them. Would you put them over in that cauldron of broth simmering in the corner? That's a good dear."

"Who are they?" Ranko asked of the pair of identical twin girls sitting on the other side of the room, looking more than a little lost and confused, but increasingly willing as they listened to what Cologne was whispering to them. She asked this as she picked out the seven intact horns (grabbing the half for good measure) and went and did her mother's bidding, sliding them into the simmering silver cauldron of orange and yellow polka-dotted potion broth. As she added the horns the potion turned a sudden red, almost as brilliantly colored as her hair.

"When it starts to churn add the dry ingredients I've measured out in that bowl nearby. Then when it starts to bubble fish out those horns again with the tongs, will you? Make sure not to stir anything, that's very important. And they are the Patil twins, the other Dual-House pupils this year. I figured that made them the best candidates to recruit, and we wanted to bring our numbers up to seven anyway. Shampoo, could you be a darling and get me that book by the door? I want to make certain that I've not forgotten anything."

"Mrs Saotome? I'm sorry, Malfoy?" Ukyo blushed. "I think this is ready."

"Oh, good. The occamy eggs have finished dissolving? That's excellent. Go add them to the bowl by Ranko-chan, dear. She can add them along with the powdered ramora scales and other ingredients. I was worried we might have to go on without them. That wouldn't have stopped us, but we'll get better results this way."

"What for we do?" Shampoo asked, proffering the book to Nodoka, who began to check her work against those notes scribbled around the diagrams on the pages.

"Occamy eggs and ramora scales are both highly magical, biological silver, Shampoo dear. There are powdered horns from seven different dragon types in the dry ingredients, among other things. We are performing a transfiguration, although a more controlled and permanent one than you'll likely get out of even the most skilled wand. We are, in essence, brewing a very special magic. Ranko-chan, if you'll look in the cupboard under the cauldron you'll find another seven erumpent horns. I wasn't sure how many Snape would have and wanted to make sure to have enough on hand for us. Go ahead and add them, too. The occamy eggs will make our brew more than strong enough."

"How much are we spending on this potion?" Ukyo asked dubiously, after she'd delivered the dissolved eggs and seen them added as the mix began to churn moments later.

"More than enough to fund Hogwarts school for an entire year. Probably more than enough to run the Ministry of Magic for a year. Almost certainly more than is left of the entire Malfoy fortune - funding dark lords can be so expensive! But the results should be well worth it, Ukyo dear." Nodoka cheerfully replied.

"So that's it?" Ukyo asked, as Ranko carefully watched for bubbling.

"No, Ukyo dear, that's not quite half of it. I am working on the rest."

Cologne had apparently quit her earlier conversation quite satisfied with the results and the twins were completely won over. "Are you sure of everything, Nodoka dear?"

"Yes, quite. Everything has been double and triple checked. It is all in order. We only wait for the horns to be ready." Nodoka closed the book and sent Shampoo away, the teenage amazon extraordinarily careful in not touching the precise chalk marks. No one in the room wore any trailing clothing.

"Aiyah! You certain? Is very big spell we do."

"Do recall that I taught Arithmancy for two years, and Potions for another one, Shampoo dear. I am confident we have everything right."

Ranko carefully watched the cauldron, silver tongs at ready, waiting for the bubbling.

Fourteen and a half erumpent horns was probably more than existed in all of the rest of England at that time. It was certainly among the largest collections in Europe. People had to acquire them in ones and twos, usually. Part of that was that the horns were dangerous and subject to strict regulatory control. Potions masters carefully saved up, as you never knew when another horn would become available. Fortunately they lasted quite a while in normal use, gradually cutting off shavings which would then be carefully powdered for use in magic brews. Actually, it was quite remarkable that Snape had used up half of one, and showed he must make a lot of potions on his own, outside of classes. Apothecaries normally only sold the shavings, as so few people had need of a full horn that it paid better to sell just enough for a handful of uses, and that practice helped to spread a rare resource around for more general availability, especially to students.

The rarity wasn't that the horns were hard to harvest, far from it. No, the animals eagerly killed each other during the mating season. That was the problem. They had a slow birth rate and the herds in Africa numbered very few animals to support a worldwide demand, which ran even higher in Asian markets than it did in the Western ones.

It was staggering to see so many used up in a single event, however.

The first bubble of the scarlet potion popped and Ranko's hand dived in with the tongs flashing too fast to be seen. Each of the fourteen was saved, though the half had sludged apart early and was now stuck to the bottom of the cauldron. Trying to save the bits only got the tongs lodged in the mess and melting, too. Snatching the previous fourteen out had taken less than a second, an amount of time an ordinary quick person could have salvaged one at most - and that was all the recipe assumed could be saved, and cautioned that you might have to repeat the process several times to save one, the window of opportunity was so narrow.

But that failed to account for the legendary hand speed of a world class martial artist.

Sighing that she wouldn't be able to get the last bit, Ranko turned off the heat, grabbed some dragonhide mittens and lifted the melty cauldron to pour off its brilliant red brew into a crystal decanter waiting handy with a funnel already put in. When she put down the empty cauldron both it and the tongs and the remaining mass of scales and eggs and dissolved half a horn and who knows what else had all slagged down into a solid mass of silver in the bottom, the remaining walls half melted, looking oddly deformed for a cauldron.

Glistening with now clear fluid, fourteen erumpent horns lay alongside another on a cloth prepared beforehand, all of them solid silver.

"Cologne, your turn." Nodoka sang merrily, as she eagerly spelled down her inscriptions so nothing could disturb them until they were done.

"Living silver," Cologne breathed reverently as she sashayed up, long blue hair swaying like a flag behind her well proportioned hips. The three hundred year old amazon looked every bit as young and attractive as her granddaughter (or what her granddaughter looked like at sixteen anyway, the girl was now a slender eleven) and bore more than a passing resemblance to her. The young appearing matriarch essayed the amount of material in the horns, picking them up one by one and testing on a weighted scale. "I'd say there's enough to do a sword, a spear head, and a knife for each of us, Nodoka-chan."

"Would prefer bonbori," Shampoo whispered, trying not to intrude.

"Yah, and I'd like a set of spatulas, myself." Ukyo demurred the offered types of weapons.

Cologne chuckled. "Girls, there's no point in being difficult. Shampoo, erumpent horns are special for our purpose because they are magically sharp. They'll pierce anything, hide or metal, and so there's no point in wasting that by making blunt weapons out of them. Ukyo-chan, the cooking tools you're used to don't cut through the grill. These will. Better to save your tools for baking. These are for killing. Besides, there's power in matching sets. That's why we're all going to have the same style of weapons: A Chinese spear, a Japanese katana, and an American Bowie knife."

"Bowie knife?" All three formerly teenaged martial artists asked as one. "What for?"

"Because I used one for years that I got off an American soldier who came to help us fight World War Two, and it's the best all around utility knife I can think of. You can skin an animal, cut bone, saw wood, or fight with one, use it underhand, overhand or thrown and still get by walking the streets carrying it openly in enough places, or concealed when you have to. The three of you, excuse me, five of you will be able to claim them as part of your Potions tool set, since they're silver. And they'll do excellent work for you there, too." Cologne smirked.

"You wouldn't want them for bonbori anyway, Shampoo dear," Nodoka instructed, having finished her spells. "They're too lightweight to make good crushing weapons. For swords and others as we've got planned, however, they are ideal: as light as a feather, but as hard as dragonscale. You could wield them all day without stopping, and while they won't have the weight to crush armor, they'll cut through it quite handily. A muggle by the name of Tolkien handled a shirt made of this once and the Ministry mishandled the Obliviate, so he put it in his books under the made-up name of mithril."

"Don't katanas take years to make?" One of the Patil twins wondered. "I thought you said we'd be done with this tonight."

"I've been a weaponsmith for almost three hundred years, girl. I've outfitted warriors of our tribe through several wars and outfitted dozens of heroines overnight for battles more times than you've got years. I think I can handle this." Cologne grinned, picking up the first horn and a huge, weighty hammer and going over to a softly glowing gold and crystal anvil.

"Cover your ears, dears." Nodoka tossed around a set of pink, frilly earmuffs Ranko had lifted from one of the greenhouses to each of them. They donned them (the twins fumbled them on while the others did so smoothly), and then Cologne began hammering.

She blurred, her arms disappearing from sight. The Chestnuts Roasting Over An Open Fire secret technique was devastating when used with punches in combat, launching hundreds of blows a second, but used with a hammer while smithing, and the metal flowed like water under her ministrations. Ten thousand strikes later she stopped, revealing in her tongs a perfectly shaped, elegantly deadly katana blade, folded over two hundred times and complete with detailed etching of runes onto the blade. The only thing it lacked was a handle to aid in gripping the full tang hilt.

Twenty minutes later the Chinese Amazon had produced the metal bits for every weapon she had named and used up all of the silver horns. They all took off their pink earmuffs and found it remarkable they'd heard nothing when dust had shaken down from the very stones with the noise. Fortunately, they had silencing charms up around the room.

"So we can proceed," Nodoka declared, going over to open a door.

"Not quite, child," Cologne corrected. "We could, of course, but I think the spell will go better if we use complete weapons. And it will only take a moment to put handles on these." The young ancient pulled a unicorn horn out of a barrel of same, positioned it over the hilt of the katana she was still holding, then waved her wand, muttering a complicated spell. For a half second the pearly horn seemed to melt like wax, then a strange impulse seemed to seize it and it spread itself to carefully and intelligently form a grip for the weapon before hardening. She repeated this process enough times so they had usable knives and swords with pearl seeming unicorn horn hilts, then used dragon bone, wing struts specifically, to grant shafts for their spears. "Alright child, you may fetch the guest for this event."

Professor Malfoy nodded and opened the door.

I O I O I

Nodoka opened a door onto a small cell, pulling back the bolts to do so, and sliding the heavy door away so she could enter. The gaps between the sides and bottom of the massive portal had been so flush with the doorjamb you might not even have been able to slide a piece of paper between them.

Looking in over her shoulder it was possible to see a thin black shape that looked like a rope dangling straight from a hook on the ceiling to hover over a wide, extra large cauldron-like object. From the dangling shape dropped a tiny drip of silvery fluid, obviously the last remnants of a flood, as the kettle was full to nearly the brim with a swirl of three pearlescent fluids, one pearly, one rose, and one coal grey so dark it came near to being black.

Nodoka unhooked the paralyzed serpent that was the black, dangling rope-like object and carried the immobilized snake back into the room with the rest of them. She hooked it back to the ceiling in the center of what was an amazing arrangement of diagrams on the floor, and began talking. "As you all know, not so long ago Britain was paralyzed by a dark lord and I fled to another country while the wizarding world here nearly collapsed. For some years they've said he's gone, but as I got hired on a couple of months ago Dumbledore gave me information saying that wasn't so - that he was merely reduced in power. Unfortunately, he told me this after I'd signed a binding contract, essentially tricking me back into this little war, and since things had gone so bad in my adopted country I didn't have another place to take you all."

A well trained student, even in this private setting Padma Patil raised her hand before asking her, "But Ms. Malfoy, you're to be our DADA teacher. Surely, you must have scored really well on this when you were a student. Why did you run?"

"No dear, I failed miserably. Our teacher told us it wasn't important, and I made the mistake of believing her. I think I got a 'Troll' on my DADA grade. Then, shortly after, the war against Voldemort broke out and I found myself nearly helpless. It was not a pleasant experience."

Nodoka took a deep breath before continuing. "Voldemort is not too choosy in how he comes by his supporters, and I was, and am, a skilled Potions Mistress, a Charms expert, and several other things he found valuable - without any idea how to defend myself and in a very exposed position, since my younger brother Lucius, who controls the family's fortunes and was master of the house in which I lived, was one of the dark lord's most ardent Death Eaters. Frankly, I didn't care much either way, but when one of his crueler moments rolled by Voldemort decreed that I was too valuable to lay about the sidelines unclaimed and made Snape vow to recruit me, by Imperius Curse if necessary, but his preferred method was equally hideous. I barely escaped rape and mind control and fled the country without a knut, bearing only my wits and wand and the clothes on my back, and not all of those last ones."

The elegant lady stood still for a moment, collecting herself before continuing on in a softer, contemplative tone. "I fled to Japan where they still practice fighting arts, determined to live outwardly as a muggle while learning all that I could about how to defend myself. I became a student of several martial arts, purchased magical texts on defense to study on my own and even found a tutor. You see before you now the result of determined efforts for twenty years to educate myself on a subject I sadly missed the value of during school, and I'm glad to say that I did not neglect other areas for fear of finding some other weakness catch me off guard again. You see, even living as a muggle I had to support myself, and my only real skill was magic. I'm sure that's how Dumbledore eventually found me, by tracing the potions and brooms and things I put up for sale on the wizarding market to fund my education."

Cologne chuckled, commiseratingly. "Of course he caught you just when your only child was having a crisis and you were looking for options, vulnerable to his offer. But daughter, he was absolutely right when he said there were not three witches in the world who had chosen to educate themselves so highly as you have done."

Nodoka nodded, agreeing, "Thank you, I believe you're right. Anyway, all of that was so you know how seriously I take our situation, so you know why I am doing what we are all about to do." She leveled a gaze at all of them, meeting each of their eyes in turn. "The time to prepare for war is before the fighting has begun. During the last war Voldemort had won. It was a cheap accident that cost him that, snatching defeat out of the jaws of victory, like if he had slipped in the tub and broke his neck. The magical community cannot defend itself any better today, and it may even be weaker than they were before. They have fewer brave people willing to stand up for themselves for one, the last war killed most of them. And the dark lord has never lacked for Death Eaters, nor will he if he returns again - and Dumbledore fears that he will. The only question is when."

The Patil twins were wide-eyed. "So, are we preparing to fight him?" Parvati squeaked in terror. Sure, she was a Dual-Gryffindor, but that was a lot to ask of an eleven year old girl.

"No dear, we are preparing to survive long enough to run. I am not a brave woman. I was a Ravenclaw, not a Gryffindor. But if we have to fight I want to win, and you will find that during a crisis is the wrong time to buy anything at all related to defense. Most of what is good and valuable will have been purchased long before you can get to them, and most of what you will find is junk as cheats and charlatans take advantage of panic buyers. Now you could get a top quality sneakoscope or foe glass for a few galleons easily and anywhere. When the time comes that most people want them you won't find one worth having for sale, unless you have a fortune you're willing to drop on it. Then you'll go for battle robes and find that enough orders have been placed before you that to fill them they'd have to skin every dragon alive, and the Ministry will always grab everything first for their people, and the dark lord's followers will have known this was coming and stocked up beforehand, if they could afford to. Then both sides will try to seize hold of suppliers and you'll never see so much as a glove worth of dragonhide for sale again no matter how much money you have." Nodoka sighed mournfully. "Unless it's a garment with holes from injuries that killed the last wearer."

"This is all about being as prepared as we can be, child." Cologne informed the young girls. "And not only for Voldemort, but I'm afraid the rest of us left some troubles behind that may someday find us again. We'd all rather they didn't, but they are determined and powerful, so it is far from impossible. I'd hate to say how dangerous they are, but if they do succeed in catching us none of us really know what they'd do to us."

"We just know most of us would probably rather die," Ranko spoke quietly, as if to herself, then shuddered violently.

"So, how does this involve the snake?" Padma asked, reassured that her questions were being answered, and they weren't unreasonable ones either.

"Don't you remember? I told you." Cologne smiled softly. "As part of what we are doing here tonight we are going to kill the snake called Nagini, Voldemort's familiar."

"Hey, I'm up for that. You okay with it?" Ranko quipped, looking over to Ukyo.

"No problems, Sugar."

"WHAT?!" The Patil girls squeaked.

"Is no big deal." Shampoo hauled out a bottle of barbecue sauce.

"Put that away Shampoo, we're going to eat its magic powers, not its body." Cologne smiled fondly.

"Now just so you all know," Nodoka began. "This ritual is classified by most as terribly dark, not just a little dark but very. But before you turn me down I believe you should know some of my thinking. The Ministry classifies spells or rituals or devices as dark for several reasons, let me explain them to do. The one most obvious is that they use unpleasant or revolting components, things like rituals that must be performed in a graveyard at midnight, require a severed hand from a murdered thief, a potion drunk from a witch's skull, or so on. I say nothing in defense of them. They are terribly ugly and do I condone their use. Also, the Ministry has decreed those sorts of dark objects are illegal to create, but shops still run a brisk business in selling items they claim to have gotten from other folk who had them from their grandfather's time, while still trying to hide fresh cut marks. Idiocy on the part of the Ministry to allow that loophole, and if any of you see an item of such a sort in anyone's possession, suspect them immediately. They are most likely very dark, but those who really are that evil are not above planting a few items on an innocent victim a time or two to cast doubt on their opponents and create an excuse to hide behind. Should the true guilty parties get caught they'll claim to have had those items planted on them, just like they did to innocent victims. Still, they create those items to use them, so look carefully into anyone who has them, as they are probably very evil. However, some of the milder effects of those dark items I have been able to duplicate without resorting to grotesque ingredients."

"The next sort," Nodoka went on, toying with her loose hair. "Are those that require the baser sorts of feelings to use, or inspire the same, things like amulets of rage that turn those who wear them into berserk warriors able to fight on in spite of deadly injuries. Those are all classified as dark for very good reason, no good has yet come of them. But again, they are all very common among those who thirst after power, as they think that it only gives them advantages that other, nobler sorts of wizards don't have."

Ms. Malfoy sat down to look out over the faces of her daughter, friends, and new recruits. In her face was concern for their opinion of her as she anxiously went on. "The last sort is also obvious to you, those that injure or kill directly. The Killing Curse and all things like it. It is here that I want to pose a question for you to consider, namely: We all agree that to injure a good person is an evil act, but couldn't it also be a good one to hurt an evil man? You'd have to make very sure of what you were doing, of course, but nobody considered it a crime when a one year old boy used a killing curse on Voldemort. We all celebrated, even in Japan and other places. During the last war the Ministry even allowed the Unforgivables to be used on suspected Death Eaters by their Aurors and Hit Wizards. So really, I think what you injure is the measure of how dark one of the spells is. I think the ultimate question is: Are you trying to destroy or prevent destruction?"

She favored the young ones with a concerned gaze. "Do you agree? Because that's really what this is." She waved a hand indicating the suspended serpent. "This animal is a tool of Voldemort's. He has used it many times to inflict death on innocents and enemies alike. If it were a person it would be worthy of a death sentence. We first sought it out because, as its master's familiar, it holds a tiny portion of his power. When Cologne and I had captured it we discovered that it was far more. Voldemort had hidden a severed portion of his own horrible soul in the beast. That made it a tool far more deadly than anyone believed, and explained how it was so hard to capture."

"We used a Brain Burn spell upon the beast, causing all the contents of its mind to fall out of its ears. That is what is in that basin in the other room, all of Voldemort's memories, skills and personality as of the time he'd stored a portion of himself in his snake. Having that could be a powerful advantage to the Light Side, as we hope to be able to convert those to a less dangerous form and use them to track Voldemort's history and predict his future actions, if not destroy him outright. Plus, and this must not be overlooked, we reduced the snake to a moronic level with no apparent intelligence, only autonomous functions. Though for the sake of caution we have also paralyzed, blinded and deafened it."

Nodoka's gaze had steadied somewhat, though it still yearned for support from their faces. "We used a horrible spell, one that has been banned by every country of the International Confederation of Wizards. And the results of what we did were to destroy a tool of evil and make it possible for Light to potentially destroy the worst dark lord in a century. Was what we did bad? We'd never do it casually, yet this creature's past more than warranted death."

Cologne broke in before anyone could answer. "I have found it helpful to say, inside myself when questions like this arose, that I would not harm those that meant no harm to me, and that I would do no more to them than they'd do to me. It leads to fewer mistakes. Sorry, Ranko-chan, my meddling was always for what I'd thought was your own good. But going back to the matter under discussion, Nodoka attempted to stay out of Voldemort's way and yet he would not let her. She nearly fell prey to a horrible fate for nothing she'd done to earn it or deserve such a miserable condition. That removed any 'live and let live' possibility, proved no one could stay neutral and made him an adversary. Then we look at this man's methods, and they are of the blackest sort, favoring murder above all others, and torture for pleasure."

"We don't desire to emulate the man or his followers," Nodoka added. "But surely you can see protecting ourselves from him is going to be as difficult as it is necessary, and doing hurt to him or his many followers is hardly a crime. Destroying his tools is going to be necessary toward defeating, or even evading, him, which is all that I aim to do."

"Why didn't you just kill it? After you'd gotten the memories and stuff, I mean." Ukyo asked.

"We are going to kill it, Ukyo-chan. It's just that we plan on killing it a very special way, one that gains an advantage for us rather than merely hurts our adversary. That is what this whole little get together tonight is about, and why we are warning you beforehand of matters of which you ought to be aware. We'd never planned on leaving it this way." Nodoka touched her sternum in innocent shock.

"So, this 'special way' is some sort of dark ritual? What does it do?" The pretty brown haired chef pressed while her companions listened.

Nodoka's hands went to her lap and clasped together while her head drooped. "The spell is reputed to steal some portion, we cannot tell how much unfortunately, of Voldemort's potential to do magic and add it to our own. The Ministry labeled that ritual a forbidden dark art the same year it was invented, usually there is a ten to twenty year gap even for very dark spells to get a bad enough reputation to be forbidden, so you can tell how frightened they were of it. But what I really think it does is to compare the innate magic potentials of the caster and victim, giving your soul a chance to adopt whichever magical pattern is higher, along with a slight boost from having seen more than one way of doing things so kinks can be fixed. I can't really explain it well, I'm afraid."

"Often there's some kinda major risk of personality infection," Ranko leaned back in her chair to say, revealing that she'd been in on this for some period of time longer than the rest of them. "That's why mom Brain Burned the thing twelve times. One shoulda been enough but she wanted ta be sure an get everything. Then she Obliviated the crap outta it. She put a week inta building an Occlumancy barrier inta these walls before she started, so the snake don't reinfect from the original er nuthin. There ain't nuthin left o that but life force and magic."

Her mother nodded. "I plan to be the filter for the rest of you. If there is any harm in this the inscriptions should terminate the spell immediately, and automatically Obliviate me of the experience to remove the taint. If things go well with me and the Dark Arts detectors don't sound an infection alarm then the rest of this hideously complicated diagram should echo the benefit I receive into the rest of you. I drank a whole cauldron full of potion nicknamed 'Liquid Luck' this evening to prepare for this experience and I don't feel any inclination against going through with it. And I'd tested this batch by going and doing some very risky things under a dose of it. They all turned out fine. I feel this will too."

"You can only do this sort of ritual once," Cologne informed them all. "And you don't exactly get many opportunities like this one. Victims always die, for one, and there aren't that many people who need killing. Then they've got to be so helpless they don't even think to resist - not a problem with this rag doll snake, of course. And there are other problems, but we've solved all of those. This will work, if you are willing. And what we stand to gain is magical potential equal to one of the most powerful mages of this century. It may just be a fragment of soul, but each fragment bears the pattern for the whole thing, so for us the gain should be as great as if we'd gotten Voldemort himself in there."

"He's undoubtedly done this same ritual himself, that man enjoys murder. And whatever he gained from that ritual we won't get a part of. It's all based on the inborn talent of the soul, not whatever boosters they've gotten, and we feel certain he's collected several additions to his native potential, just as we are certain he held great inborn talent to start with." Nodoka felt compelled to add.

"You won't get another chance like this one." Cologne summarized.

"I'm up for it." Ranko stayed almost criminally relaxed.

"Yah, count me in too, Sugar."

"Shampoo too."

Eyes swiveled to the Patil twins.

"What? You expect us to turn down power to equal You-Know-Who? Of course we accept!" Parvati chirruped, echoed quickly by her eager sister, who said, "Strike a blow for Light and get a major power boost into the bargain? You bet!"

"Good." Nodoka nodded, and everyone relaxed.

Soon everyone was arranged, Nodoka in the center of a wide magic circle and the others standing in smaller rings at the ends of a six-pointed star surrounding her. She raised her wand and the three sets of seven nearly identical weapons floated into place, poised in rings to strike at the suspended serpent. "Spears to the heart, swords to the throat, knives to the gut," Nodoka directed the weapons, which flew into patterns around their selected targets. "Slay Evil Swiftly!"

As she spoke those last three words identical inscriptions glowed on those blades, and at the final syllable they plunged in a single motion into Nagini, who perished instantly. A huge pulse of power swept out as they did so, striking Nodoka first, then radiating echoes out to the other participants who all glowed and rose several inches from off the ground, electrical arcs playing across their forms for a brief second before all was over and they fell sprawling back down to the ground, a slight spark here or there on someone's clothes the only sign left that anything had happened, other than ash where the white chalk dust of the inscriptions had burned like flame through the split-second event.

"Nice motto." Ranko grunted from where she could barely move upon the floor. Cologne was out. Three hundred years of close personal acquaintance with her own personal power flows had left this a sudden shock difficult to cope with. Ukyo and the Patils were faring the best of all, being able to move before any of the chi-adepts. Shampoo was next, then Ranko and her mother. Cologne was still frozen in the depths of self-realization when Ms. Malfoy tiredly waved her wand to clean up, erasing any physical traces of that ceremony aside from the cluster of still hovering weapons.

It was close to twenty minutes after the fact that Nodoka replied to her daughter's comment. "Yes, thank you. It was actually the least restricting of the Oaths of Activation for those sorts of weapons I could find, and we needed a holy bent to counteract some of the evil that still may have tainted the ceremony. But we did not pledge to fight constantly, serve anyone, or protect anything (which is always a full time job), only to finish our fights quickly as an ideal where possible. Basically we've promised not to dawdle finishing off what we've chosen to be fights to the death, which is a rule we should be adhering to anyway."

"There is another element," Cologne stirred at last, shaking herself and rising up to her hands and knees, hair falling down to form a curtain around her face. "Your chosen oath inherently suggests we may choose to fight evil more frequently than we might otherwise be inclined, and we'll find it more difficult, I am sure, to let certain people alone."

"So long as it doesn't make us idiots," Nodoka quipped, banishing the weapons back to racks upon their walls.

"No, I'm sure it won't do that. A trifle bloodthirsty perhaps, but not idiots." Cologne chuckled softly in her throat. "You've chosen well, daughter."

"What happens now?" Ukyo asked, taking deep breaths and trying not to think about thin layers of sweat like she'd been exerting heavily or was lightly sick.

Ranko crawled over to a table and reached out for a very special Dark Arts Detector, pulling it down with her to puddle on the floor, checking the reading from somewhere within a pool of limbs. "No sign of personality contamination. Looks like Brain Burning the thing worked out right."

Nodoka lurched over to a counter, finding her balance on the way. "Well dears, our bodies and our spirits have a great deal of adjusting to do, but our minds are not going to be overly busy for I'd say roughly two nights and a day. So I'd thought of something beforehand we could be doing to enhance our chances in this war."

"Such as?" Ukyo queried, thinking that maybe Nodoka was right, as this adjusting thing had left her mind remarkably clear even while her body felt like a lead weight. She could still move, but didn't much want to.

Nodoka's devious smile glittered in spite of leaden limbs. "Something that ought to perturb Voldemort almost as much as losing his familiar."

I O I O I

Author's Notes:

Bad guys create stuff. Ancient people long dead created stuff. But nobody in the here-and-now creates anything that isn't A) trivial, or B) evil.

We see a ton of magical artifacts in the Harry Potter series, but no one ever constructs one (well, except for horcruxes, but those don't count).

So, anyway, I thought I'd explore this oft-neglected school of magic.