Chapter Five
by Lionheart
I O I O I
Molly was fretting, wringing her hands together in agony, protesting, "But Albus, there's no way that we can afford it! Arthur doesn't make enough to cover everything we need to have right now! We'll be another two months paying off the debts I entered buying Ron's books and things!"
Albus was nodding. "I understand, Molly. I truly do, yet it is the case that Ginevra has been Sorted and become a student of Hogwarts." The old mage caught sight of the flour still on Molly's hands as the housewife wrung them desperately and he broke into a wide smile. "I believe I have an answer, however. For some time this institution has sorely lacked one of the most practical, eminently valuable lessons on everyday spells. Would you be willing, Molly, to join us as an instructor teaching an elective on Household Magic? I can assure you your salary would be generous, probably surpassing Arthur's, and I can envision myself giving you a few months in advance to pay off your debts and acquire scholarly materials for young Ginny. What do you have to say?"
Mrs. Weasley had gone from severely distressed to relief to disbelief, but had stopped wringing her hands. "Do you really mean it, Albus?" At his kind nod, she considered, "Me, a... a teacher? Oh, I don't know what to say. I never thought... Are you sure I can teach them anything?"
Dumbledore rose from his desk, beaming proudly, and came walking around it to pat Molly on the back reassuringly. "My dear former student, they are only children. No one I know is better qualified to deal with a gaggle of them. You've done a fine job on your own little flock, but now they are leaving the nest perhaps it is best for you to have something to do since they are no longer going to be underfoot. I should say you'll make a fine teacher, and you know the subject matter better than I do myself, better than anyone else I know. I'm sure it would be a great benefit to future generations of young witches and wizards if you would pass that store of knowledge on."
Mrs. Weasley was, by now, happily flustered. "Well, Albus, if you think so. And it would be a great help to have the extra income. Why, I could even keep an eye on them while they are here at school! Fred and George get into so much mischief, you see, well you'd know that as well as anyone, I suppose. But it would reassure me to see them more often. Yes, Albus, I'll take the post!"
"Excellent, excellent." Dumbledore nodded gladly, going back to scratch some writing on a parchment with a quill. "I believe that I shall allow the first week for you to get coursework and textbooks selected. Meanwhile I will ask Minerva to see to it that signups are made available to the students in their common rooms so that you'll have someone to teach, and to subtly encourage attendance so you do not fall below other, more established electives in your course sizes."
There came a knock at the door and Minerva McGonagall entered without being asked, looking flustered. "Albus... Oh, hello Molly I'm glad you're here this concerns you too. I don't know if Albus told you but your son Percy just got resorted from Gryffindor to Slytherin."
From Molly's sputtering in shock she obviously hadn't been told.
Minerva sat down heavily in a chair. "It's devastated the boy, Molly. He can't be allowed to remain a Gryffindor Prefect in Slytherin! And the Slytherin Prefects are already chosen long ago, so unless one of those does something to lose a badge he's lost his special status."
"How... why did he choose to get resorted?" Molly stumbled out, falling into a chair herself.
Minerva shook her head. "All he did was touch the Sorting Hat, Molly! Something must have really changed in that boy for him to be so different from the little Gryffindor we got years ago. Honestly, I wonder why I didn't see his naked ambition before. He was at least twice as upset over losing his prefect status as he was over no longer being a Gryffindor! If he were to return to my House this instant I don't know that I could trust him with a badge. I think I'd give it instead to that Tofu fellow."
Molly's face set itself in stern, motherly disapproval.
"You should probably do so, Minerva." Albus moved to pour them all some tea. "As it stands your House is missing one of its prefects. Another should be appointed, and that young Tofu fellow is an excellent choice. Now that all that is taken care of, we have rather a long night together as there is a great deal to discuss, I'm afraid. Minerva, Molly has just been hired to teach a new elective course at Hogwarts. She is to be our Housekeeping Magic Professor."
McGonagall's face transformed to joy and she hugged the younger woman. "Oh, Molly! Congratulations! Welcome to our staff!"
"Now then," Dumbledore continued. "We should probably inform our new teacher what her career entails, and how best she should prepare for those duties. Something that is bound to take all night and well into the morning, I'm afraid. You do not have the usual summer period to build up to this, my dear."
Above them on a shelf, unnoticed, the Sorting Hat softly hiccuped in its sleep, sending out a small spray of soap bubbles.
I O I O I
Nodoka had pulled out of her cabinet seven cold iron torch scones wrought into fanciful and probably magical shapes framing the functional, if heavy devices. Into the cup of each she poured a vial full of powder, which stayed stuck in the bottom of the bowls as if magnetized and glued down.
Passing these out along with a like number of sealed, brown wicker baskets with doors in their sides, she gave instructions and divided them up into teams, sending Ranko and Ukyo to the Gryffindor common room (Ranko to lead, Ukyo to learn where it was), Cologne and Shampoo to the Ravenclaw suite (Once again, Cologne to lead, Shampoo to learn) and herself took the Patil twins with her to visit the Hufflepuff dorms.
"We are fortunate no one typically stays up past curfew the first night," Nodoka told her charges as they opened the concealed portal and she had them light their torches, which all blazed up with electric blue flames. Once they were burning brightly, she had them open their wicker cages and almost instantly curious pixies poked their heads out, found the light and scent of their torches, and fell into a kind of daze. The little monsters buzzed out like bees to honey, and the Patils were stunned at how many dozens had been held in their little basket cages.
"Pixie dears, heed my cry. Within winks many a weary eye. Find them all, safe and sound. Guide them all to sleep profound. Once they rest safe and tight, see they walk out to the night. Follow me to dreams and rest, where are skills enhanced to best." Nodoka chanted.
A flying tide of tiny, electric blue bodies flooded into the Hufflepuff common room and from thence into every nook and bedroom. Some rare few they found awake, but pixie magic was enough to induce sleep even before being noticed in most cases. The rest the pixies enspelled during their slumber and soon every Hufflepuff was sleepwalking down stairs and out of doors to form a walking line behind Nodoka and the Patils as the professor led them all through the castle out onto the grounds toward a ravine just short of the Forbidden Forest. Along the way they joined up with similar streams of somnambulant pupils coming from the Gryffindor and Ravenclaw common rooms, until they had three Houses following the seven figures across the lawn.
"Professor Malfoy, do you know the way to the Slytherin common room?" Padma whispered during one part of the quiet march.
"Of course I do. Teachers have to know those things. But why do you ask?" The redhaired Malfoy blinked in surprise to hear that question asked.
"Well, aren't we going there next?"
"No, dear. We shall not."
"But why? Aren't they students too? Didn't you say that we are going to do something marvelous for everyone?"
Nodoka opened an old drain grating and directed Cologne to lead the procession in while she thought how to answer Padma's question. Ukyo and Ranko stood by, listening on. The pixies helped shepherd the sleepwalkers every step of the way as they passed by. A steady tide of students from every year, in all sorts of slumberwear, streamed past while she was thinking, before she found the words.
"Dear, during the last war so many Slytherins swelled Voldemort's ranks that if any other House gave him recruits it wasn't obvious. Now, as their Head of House, Snape is their role model. He was and is a murderer many times over, and at least once tried rape. Since he remains unpunished for his crimes and still has power he is, in many ways, the ideal Death Eater. Since Dumbledore does not punish him for his bullying he clearly and obviously gets away with it in the students' eyes, every day flaunting the fact that authority is unable to stop him; and that makes him look strong and admirable to his little flock, who look up to him and want to be Death Eaters like him so they can be strong and get away with things too. Or at least some of them think so, far too many really. Granted both those facts, until it can be proved otherwise on an individual basis, all Slytherins are young Death Eaters just waiting to prove themselves to the dark lord and eager to take his mark as far as we are concerned. It's just too great a risk to think otherwise."
The Patil girls went silent, processing this. It was unusual and strange to think in terms of having enemies and things, or at least people who you couldn't trust or help because they might hurt you. Some of the seriousness of their situation began to sink in.
"Where are we going?" Parvati asked eventually, just to break the silence.
Ranko's mother was glad to get off onto another topic. "Well, Quirrel died the first day of the summer break, and Dumbledore hired me not long after," Nodoka told those girls. "That first week he let spill how dangerous a spot this was, with the dark lord still around somewhere and many of his Death Eaters still walking free. From that time to this I have been frantically preparing as best I can to survive the next war. One thing I did was put some heavy study and research into this castle, which is one likely battleground for the future war. I do like to have an advantage by being intimately familiar with my home ground, you know. It's a wise precaution to have in any case, but in this instance even more vital because Voldemort had studied this castle for years and knew some of its intimate secrets. That made it HIS home ground and I had to make up to counter that advantage so I wasn't in a weakened position."
The girls made themselves comfortable as students from every year filed past, getting on to the tail end of the line. "Anyway, once Cologne arrived she was able to share some of her insights. She'd grown up hearing marvelous tales from her elders about the magical school called Hogwarts, and was quite surprised to discover when she got here that we'd lost track of all of those marvelous wonders. They'd been sealed by Oliver Cromwell three hundred years ago and we'd apparently forgotten them entirely."
"What she's leadin up to is that we found this place called a Pool o Stars." Ranko said over crossed arms. "An from that we've been sorta startin ta find other stuff, like a Vault o History an a Riding Barn. Mom's made us hold off on usin' 'em, sure that Dumbledore would notice, an seeing as how we were the only kids at school it would be kinda obvious that we'd come on somethin special. An we didn't want ta reveal that we'd found these things, sure that he'd force us ta use 'em on the whole school."
"Aren't we doing that?" Ukyo questioned.
"No, dear." Nodoka wearily shook her head, tiredness shaking her limbs. "You'll note the absence of House Slytherin, which is part of the point my daughter was getting to. My plan is to hurt Voldemort as much as possible. These devices we've uncovered are supposed to grant enormous skill, bestowing inherent understanding of a subject matter overnight. That benefit could be vital during our next war. Since everyone but Slytherin should have it, that makes the most likely followers of Voldemort comparatively weak, and those who are most likely to resist him stronger in potential than even his current crop of Death Eaters."
Shampoo arrived, leading a sleepwalking Hagrid, who joined the line. "Assistant to Hagrid have too too many dark objects, so no bring. Ukyo, whole war is really about weak versus strong. Dead Munchies feel they strong, so should rule. Others disagree, much fighting and dying. New crop of Dead Munchies grow up, feel too too weak next to other students. Not feel strong, so no act strong. No have courage to join Moldyshorts for fear they lose."
"Moldyshorts?" Several voices repeated Shampoo's phrase. Mother and daughter Malfoy grinned terribly. "I like the sound of that, and may use it from now on." Nodoka mused.
Ranko goggled suddenly as she saw and recognized Kodachi as she walked past in a rose embroidered nightgown.
I O I O I
Hogwarts had long been touted as the finest school of witchcraft and wizardry in the world.
Why?
Teachers of that mighty institution ranged from competent (a few) to mediocre (most) down to positively dismal (quite a lot, really). Their instructional facilities were unimpressive - while magical feasts and corridors abounded, few actually helped in any degree to teach anything. And, when all was said and done, their students were not selected very carefully to be of outstanding scholarly material.
The names of Crabbe and Goyle came to mind. But for a prestigious institution of learning... they were not the only ones who'd fail to meet entry requirements of Oxford or Cambridge or similarly thought-of schools. The average quality of the Hogwarts student body did not shed overwhelming glory upon the academy they attended.
So why?
How did it come to be known so far and wide and unquestioned that Hogwarts was the best?
Simply put, because reputation sometimes stands even after the glory has faded (often because potential challengers have faded as well). Before Cromwell's rule, Hogwarts had obtained lavish facilities, excellent instructors, and could command the best available of a much larger pool of prospective students. That image of glory remained even as the actual truth of the matter faded to more of a run-down, neighborhood has-been of a school.
But those glory days had been great.
Those days had come to an end in the seventeenth century when the Puritans had come to power. Before that, the wizarding world had abided by the Oath of Discretion, which was 'go ahead and do magic, just don't be too obvious about it and we'll trust our neighbors to turn a blind eye'. But Oliver Cromwell spent so much of his time and energy stamping the magical population out, that was when they switched from the Oath of Discretion over to the Statute of Secrecy, which boiled down to fully hiding all of their magic all of the time.
It was an extreme measure that arose during an extreme time, trying to ensure the survival of their race. Most of the all-magical towns and villages were burned during that period so that only Hogsmead was left, and that had to be abandoned for a time when Hogwarts itself was driven underground.
Cromwell had been able to accomplish all of this because he'd been the legitimate head of state at the time, using the powers and authority of government to close down and seal off treasures of the magical community, including portions of Hogwarts itself; things like the original dueling and DADA classroom used up until that period. The Crown expanded it substantially during the War of The Roses, so it got renamed the Rose Tower, but Oliver Cromwell had it closed and sealed off when the Protestants took control after Charles the First was beheaded.
That had been the last time the magical community had dared trust a muggle ruler.
The Pool of Stars was one such wonder long since sealed away. Today's student body had to labor at nights once a week for at least five years to obtain their knowledge of that vital magical subject of Astronomy. The charting and courses of stars and heavenly objects was of prime importance, enough to still rank among a witch or wizards core subjects, for the simple reason that a great many spells or rituals depended upon certain heavenly bodies being in the right place, or you simply couldn't do them right. Others required adaptation to accommodate whatever positions the stars were in at the time of casting. Dangers abounded if you did not plot their positions correctly, and terrible things could go wrong over a casual error. Practically all high and mid level spellcasting depended on at least some awareness of this, rendering Astronomy of importance enough to make it a core magical subject.
Now, the wonders of heavenly bodies explored most fervently on the Astronomy Tower were more on the order of students studying each other in moments of stolen privacy.
The Pool of Stars, on the other hand, was a marvelous teaching tool unrivaled in today's wizarding community. It had cost a great deal of expense from a much larger, healthier and wealthier magical society to create, and repaid that effort handsomely over generations of young magical children emerging from Hogwarts with unparalleled understanding of the patterns and movements of the stars. And, by association, Hogwarts pupils always knew what time it was, as the star knowledge gave them a built in clock and calender by default as an added bonus. So they rarely got confused about what they ought to be attending.
That pool alone had contributed a large share to Hogwarts' widespread reputation, and all it did was to set an... instinct was a good word for it, into the minds of those who bathed there for a night. The school once had a tradition of first years spending their initial night after arrival in that pool, seated upon submerged benches, eating from floating trays, listening to grand stories told by their future instructors, all of that to pass away the time while the magical waterbasin worked its wonder upon them. When they emerged, those students each had a full motion, realtime starmap in their heads, complete with fast forward and rewind, plus reset to current. The enlightened youths could feel the position of the stars much like they felt their fingers, and could without distraction or error plot their course into either the future or past as easily as they could set about demolishing a feast.
A staggering achievement in magical education. One might just as easily wish that muggle schools could implant a calculator into their pupils for handling mathematics. An entire basic, fundamental subject was not only covered completely in that opening ceremony, but new ones became open for immediate instruction once that foundation was laid.
Such a feature was deserving of worldwide attention for a magical institution. All of the time rival schools spent for that same basic knowledge to be taught, Hogwarts pupils could be covering additional material, and with greater competence and fewer errors in underlying calculations. Most mid and high level spells could be taught early with that kind of foundation already laid.
Then the planetarium containing the Pool of Stars got sealed and the Hogwarts Headmaster of the day had to start an Astronomy program, hiring an instructor and setting aside one of the towers to teach it.
Now, those same higher difficulty spells rarely got taught at all, as so few pupils aspired to obtain the foundation principles solidly enough to master them that they could acquire the knowledge of those spells on their own without classes devoted to them.
Nor was that the only supremely special feature of Hogwarts in her heyday. Today's large mechanical clocktower was a recent addition, and hardly as special as the feature it replaced. There was a room sealed up in Hogwarts laid out as a giant sundial whose pillars matched those of Stonehenge save for the fact that instead of large slabs of rock they were slender, yet immense hourglasses whose sand ran continuously and magically downwards without ever reducing the top or overfilling the bottom. That room was not for the telling of time, except in the remotest sense. No, instead it served a matching purpose to the Pool of Stars. It was the Vault of History.
Pupils availed themselves of stone benches and books to study and pass the time for a period between dawn and dusk, obtaining benefit they did nothing to deserve and all out of proportion to their efforts. As with the Pool of Stars all students had to do was remain in the chamber for a short period of time and it would impart to them a sense of how vast a scope of history lay behind them, by implanting an inherent understanding of some of what had passed before, along with relevant details, vast interconnections and recollection of past peoples and events almost as keen as if students had lived among them for a short time.
Of course by today's standards that knowledge imparted by studying a day in that Vault was dated, out of fashion, and remote at best, so hardly ever taught in any great detail. A shame because it was among the most relevant periods in the development of modern European society.
As the records of history recorded in the Vault to be implanted into students were at least three hundred years old it properly ought to be called Ancient History, as obviously it failed to cover the period of separation of magical and muggle worlds - seeing as how it got sealed at the start of that transition. Before then the histories of muggles and mages were closely linked and hardly separate at all, though of course having a magical perspective gave them an entirely different depth and flavor to what got taught in muggle schools.
However, it was interesting to note that the Vault had recorded many details of past eras that had gotten lost to both muggles and mages over the past three hundred years. For a true student of history it was a treasure without equal.
It has been truly said that no one knows where they are or where they are going unless they know where they've been. Another great quote was that those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it; Things like wars and the collapses of civilizations.
It had been hoped that by building the Vault of History, Hogwarts students would be able to climb on the successes of their forbearers without repeating their mistakes. Sadly, it was hardly a year into operation before Cromwell sealed it up, denying wizards a chance to halt their decline by outsmarting the cycles of time.
The Vault of History was the last such marvelous device completed.
Of course, a certain silliness had always existed in wizard culture, then and now. And while the Vault was the last, and the Pool the first, a third had been invented and installed in those great halls and had been in operation almost as long as the Pool of Stars. One of the era's potent sponsors of Hogwarts, a pureblood proud of his alma matter, had paid for a similar teaching device devoted to the instruction of students in the fine art of riding horses, as a need for well-trained cavalry would always be with them - or so he'd thought.
Fortunately, those enchanters hired to create the device had seen that dragon cavalry had always before then been the wizarding community's main force of battle, along with winged horses, hippogriffs, griffins, giant birds, and a plethora of sea mounts as were available then acting as useful second rank troops or specialized auxiliaries to the commanding nobility of the war dragons. So they included competence in handling all of those mounts, at their own expense, along with the elite horsemanship the wealthy pureblood sponsor had paid for. As the essential abilities were quite similar and they had the experts on hand, this could be done for a tiny fraction of the full expense and included as an extra.
While not as sublime in importance as Astronomy or History, graduates of Hogwarts rode instead of walked wherever they went, and that too gave some element of mystery adding to their school's worldwide reputation.
Wizards of Britain for a long time rode horses only among the poorest strata of their ranks, much like muggle peasants walked everywhere only because they had no better way to get them there. The training of Hogwarts meant that all wizards could ride, and the lowest of them back then could still transfigure a horse out of mice or rabbits. Those more skilled were wealthier and could afford better, so got more outstanding mounts than horses.
Dragon riders were few and elite in magical societies, primarily from the difficulty in training them properly, the time and expense as well as dangerous accidents that could occur early on before a trainee grew competent. Britain could have been a growing force in world affairs if they had used that resource, as Hogwarts' new feature allowed them to skip the worst of those problems. But it was a thought a hundred years percolating, and then before they put that into operation, acquiring dragons and accelerating their training, came the Puritans.
Cromwell had ended all of that because he rightly feared dragon-mounted wizards, so he sealed away the Riding Barn, filled with bunks and pillows and with ceremonies much like that one surrounding the Pool of Stars. Undercut, with most of their best instructors dead, and a flying dragon leading legions of soldiers to your door, the concept of dragon cavalry had dwindled until private ownership of those beasts was finally deemed too dangerous by the Ministry, and outlawed. The two causes named for that ban were the great difficulty in keeping such great animals a secret, which was sadly true, and the many accidents associated with their handling, which the competence imparted by a night slept in the magic Barn would largely have negated.
Though many more had been planned, some even researched, those were the only trio of magic devices granting inherent understanding of a subject matter ever created at Hogwarts, and no others had been built in all the world. So they became something of a lost wonder, all but forgotten where once they'd been taken for granted.
And yet the program of creating items for magical instruction had not ever been intended to stop with the Vault of History.
Basic alchemy had been the next, great unfinished device, with some parts already paid for and assembled. Another planned, already researched yet unassembled device had been music. Since the creation of such a wonder often killed the master having his skills duplicated into it, their construction was far from guaranteed, however, even if they could otherwise be found and completed.
Losing such teaching resources was in some ways worse than never having had them, as you had to rediscover how to impart subjects to your students. It didn't help in the least that later upheavals prevented much of a rebound. More than one Goblin Rebellion occurred in Britain as those creatures felt they stood a greater chance of victory against the weakened wizards. Many experts were lost in that fighting. During the French Revolution more witches and wizards died than aristocrats, and Beubaxtons got burned to the ground, only to later be rebuilt afresh in secrecy. That tumult was followed by Napoleon marching the length and breadth of Europe. Countries called out their magical forces to defend alongside muggle armies, and those drafted wizards most often did not return home.
The magical schools of Austria, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Russia and Poland all got sacked by Frenchmen led by French wizards seeking magical equipment and tomes to replace those lost at the burning of Beubaxtons. The wars grew deadly and ugly and fierce for magical communities fighting to retain the best tools and knowledge for future education, and only France came out victorious. Bulgaria hid their school in silence, accepting refugees from war-torn magical communities and secretly building defenses against possible attacks by the French.
Germany did eventually rebuild their school, only to lose it once more to Allies fighting off Grindewald in World War II. High altitude bombers flown by magical guidance bombed that academy into ruin, from which secret treaties still forbade it be recovered.
Some part of this contributed, no doubt, to Hogwarts keeping its 'best magical school' title in spite of their own protracted slump, as competition had largely been eliminated.
One might even say, with some accuracy, that the Golden Age of Wizardry had ended, and one of the first blows of that fall was dealt by Oliver Cromwell purging England of the magical communities.
I O I O I
In some ways using those ancient teaching devices was easy. All you had to do was get the students in them to spend some time. Doing that in perfect secrecy, however, was tough.
By sleepwalking the students and using pixies to herd them (which the pixies loved as it seemed like the greatest prank to them, and they were under magical control anyway so errors were less) it was possible to get them there unawares. Keeping them or moving them from one device to another was simplicity itself using those same methods.
But how to return them so no one knew you'd stolen three quarters of the school for about thirty two hours? Ah, now that was more difficult.
On deciding she had to do this, Nodoka had prepared a giant magic circle in one of those abandoned rooms in the sealed sections of the castle. It was just large enough for what they'd intended to do. So they'd gathered their stolen students (and Hagrid, Shampoo was not the only one with a soft spot for him among their group) onto the circle, divided the flock into five equal groups, took out the five Time Turners they had acquired and spread the chains over every throat. Cologne and Nodoka cast the most powerful boosting charms they could manage, then they gave the magical hourglasses thirty two backward turns.
It worked. The combination of those boosting charms and the magic circle made it work, the once. But all of their Time Turners exploded in harmless displays of glass and dust after the crowd arrived. Still, they got the students back to bed quickly. Just as their previous selves were walking out one end of the castle, they led them back in another, got them back to their rooms and tucked in with no one the wiser.
Then they had leisure to worry about it.
Leaving the others to put their pixies away, Cologne got dressed up in stealth attire and went off on a mission to the Ministry to break into the Department of Mysteries to acquire replacements for their Time Turners, and perhaps a few extras just in case of future accident. Once the pixies were packed away, Nodoka sent the other girls off to bed for a well earned rest and set off to lead a slumbering Hagrid back off to his hut.
Arriving without incident, she eyed the extension to his cottage fondly, then tucked the big man in, couldn't resist giving the big infant a kiss goodnight on his cheek, then slipped out. As she did so, however, she spotted a unicorn that had come to the edge of the forest. Using a quick summoning spell and then a placement charm she put a golden bridle on the animal and led the now docile creature back to her lab, humming merrily under her breath.
Nodoka sighed in relief as she brought the unicorn around, using the golden reigns, to where the magnificent animal could breathe heavily on her racks of silver weapons. Then she heard the tower door open and her blood ran chill as she recognized the Headmaster' jovial tone.
"Aha! I thought I'd detected a major ritual of the Dark Arts taking place this evening. But this was the first time that I could get away from McGonagall and Mrs. Weasley." Dumbledore walked spryly down her steps, his phoenix on his shoulder as he took in everything. "And I see that you have acted quite responsibly in erasing all traces. Very good of you, Nodoka, we would not wish to alarm the students or excite certain members of our staff. And you are purifying the taint out of this room and those weapons with unicorn breath, a most excellent idea. But if I might offer Fawkes here? One might get suitable results out of a magic device purified by unicorn breath or phoenix tears, but I've found the combination to be far more effective, and in the end the devices are more potent."
Nodoka released the reins to step back, away from the silver implements of death, and waved a wand to spell them all down to the counter top. Dumbledore gladly lifted his arm and Fawkes flew over to begin crying over the armaments while the unicorn breathed on them. As they did so, the implements glowed softly white, levitating a couple of inches.
Dumbledore smiled, but it did not reach his eyes. "Indeed, I do not believe that I have ever seen a more potent weapon. To behold seven sets of three at once is most disquieting, as it would have required an echo circle I am not sure that our dear Professor Vector could have inscribed properly. I do not suppose you would do me the courtesy of informing me who died in your little ritual? Especially as anyone so powerful is bound to be missed soon and questions raised?"
Nodoka lifted her chin. "I see no reason to conceal it from you, Headmaster. When you told me Voldemort was not dead I went looking for Nagini, knowing full well that a certain residual magic exists in the familiar of a powerful wizard, and intending to steal that."
"No one could begrudge it to you." Dumbledore was nodding. "But these were not created using the power flash out of a mere familiar, even Voldemort's."
"Of course," she admitted freely. "However, upon successfully capturing the snake I learned that it had a soul fragment of Voldemort's bound to it. I brain burned it to avoid contamination and that is what died tonight."
Albus' face had gone grave indeed, and did not lift in the slightest as she showed him the Dark Arts Detector still showing that no personality transfer was made. Soon he explained, "Nodoka, I happened to glance at one of my monitoring devices before excusing myself to come down, and Voldemort still lives. Yet you say that you have just destroyed what could only have been a Horcrux. I suspected he might have used one, but to learn that was true, yet its loss did not destroy him as it should, puzzles me greatly. And I do not like the line of conjecture this puzzle has called up. Indeed, I find it most disturbing."
Still riding on the boost from her liquid luck, after all she had drunk a cauldron full, Ms Malfoy suddenly asked him, "If you fear him so why have you done so little about it?"
Dumbledore shook himself out of his daze. "I have already put countless days into research on Voldemort, Professor Malfoy. Yet new puzzles are forming all of the time. I would enjoy describing them to you, but now is not the appropriate moment. I do not have a great deal of time before I must return to instructing Molly on how to be a teacher, and wish to check to see if Severus has returned." He moved back toward the door. "Do try to refrain from major dark rituals in the future, Professor Malfoy. It would be a pity to lose our twentieth Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher in a row."
The door slammed before his face. Nodoka cracked her knuckles while she innocently asked him, "Would you care to elaborate on that statement, Dumbledore?"
I O I O I
Author's Notes:
This story, originally posted in parallel with another, did not actually have any information on the specifics of the amazing learning devices I proposed Hogwarts once had. The two fics were published on the same site at the same time, and I felt that reprinting the information in both of them was redundant.
Now, however, it is not.
