Hogwarts One Half
Chapter Twenty-One

by Lionheart

I O I O I

"Is everything alright, Severus?"

"Yes, perfectly." Snape answered his friend, omitting the usual sneer.

"Then why are you waiting around the castle gates?" Lucius, in a well-trimmed fur cloak, asked with a wave of one expensively gloved hand indicating the ancient stonework.

"I'd heard the former Headmaster has been ordered to leave the grounds. I was hoping to..." Snape gave a significant pause he was sure the other Death Eater understood, "See him off, assure him it was all For The Greater Good."

Lucius enjoyed a chuckle. They both knew of the scheme that had left Dumbledore's mind as open and undefended as a bowl of lemon drops. Among certain circles he was already, very quietly, known as 'Headmaster Ox', because an ox was a dumb brute of an animal that was harnessed by a much weaker farmer, and it's strength became simply his tool.

And, any tool in a Death Eater's hands served Death Eater interests.

"Pity, then, that you missed him," Lucius supplied in amused self-interest. "But he's already left another way; by broom as I recall."

A flash of concern crossed the Potion Master's features. "Indeed? Not what I would have expected of him."

Lucius' manners lost their jovial tone at once, understanding the implications. Snape knew Dumbledore's mind as well as he did his potion classroom - better, as he'd spent more time in the one than the other.

Lucius sucked on the implications a moment, before deliberately pondering aloud thoughts he was sure Snape had already had, "Pity that he chooses now to become unpredictable. Did he let you know what his plans are?"

Snape shook his head slowly, real worry crossing his face briefly. "No, and that concerns me. I'd specifically programmed him to feel compelled to discuss any matters of import with me before making a decision. Moving on from this cherished post, which he understood to be a lifelong position... it should have been impossible for him to consider his next step without consulting me."

"You've had control of him for years," Lucius cautioned. "And you reassured me that you could keep him under tight control despite this. Are you saying that's jeopardized?"

Snape's face became a mask. "Of course not," he scoffed, always polite to this person. "He is likely in shock, acting without thinking. He'll soon seek me out. He always does."

"I suppose," Lucius allowed grudgingly, "in light of recent events a little rebelliousness could be understood, on his part. See to it that it does not grow into more."

Snape felt a cold wind blow as Lucius Malfoy departed.

I O I O I

It was Monday once again, and that meant, after breakfast and the disaster of a Board meeting, that it was time for Ravenclaw and Gryffindor to head over to their Defense class with Professor Nodoka Malfoy.

A few whispered words to her daughter and all three allied Houses sent their first two years to this lesson. The classroom was large enough to handle it, and her pensieve easily vast enough, so it really wasn't much of a problem for her to take so many at once. Also, there was a special reason for it.

As she had told Lupin, as anyone really involved in Defense knew, the most important lesson was not to panic. And panic was most certain to set in when one got caught in a dangerous circumstance by surprise.

Surprises could be arranged.

You could teach a person not to panic, but until they knew what panic was you weren't likely to have any success at it. The sheer, visceral sensation came as a stranger the first few visits and that strangeness was often enough to shatter any well-meaning resolve to avoid it.

Once you had some familiarity with real fear, only then could you really work to overcome it and keep your head about you in times of peril. And to get that familiarity, something had to trigger your deep-seated reaction to danger at least once.

The dangerous circumstances didn't have to be real. In fact, it was better if they weren't. You lost fewer students that way. Nodoka's plan was to teach them a lesson with the pensieve about acromantulas. Then, while she was doing that, Lupin brought the students out, one by one. He would be under an invisibility cloak so they couldn't see him. What they would see was a burst-open set of chamber doors and a giant acromantula charging at them as the other students of the class stood paralyzed, still using the pensieve.

The invisible wall of unbreakable glass between them and the spider should escape the students' notice.

Getting the giant spider to charge every few seconds was no problem at all with it under the Imperius Curse (which was only Unforgivable if cast on other humans, while acromantulas were classified as magical beasts). Lupin would monitor the test, gauge the reactions (blind panic in most cases, a few of the braver ones tried feeble spells) saw to it that nothing went terribly wrong, nor did the moment of panic last too long, then saw off the newly frightened student to a side lab to wait and clean up while the rest of the class got their individual doses of terror.

Best of all, doing so many students in one class period had the associated benefit of them not having an opportunity to tell each about what surprise awaited them, so it was fresh and new to each as they experienced their close personal introduction to panic.

Because only once you've known what fear is can you really be taught to master it.

Once that was out of the way, Nodoka took her shaking students back into her pensive to review the material that most of them had been hauled out of early. They paid a great deal more attention to it the second time through, having had what seemed at the time as a direct and personal encounter with a member of the magical world's most feared race of giant, man-eating spiders.

After that was done she broke with her first week's routine and concluded with a lecture. "Now I know that scary bit with the acromantula charging in may seem terribly unfair to you, but I would like to explain my reasons why I arranged for this little show. Danger has a nasty habit of striking when we are not prepared for it. Voldemort made that one of his primary tactics during the last war, to strike his victims at home, while in bed or a bath, making love or eating, when they were not on their guard. It proved so effective that no one seemed safe, even though his forces lost most of the direct, stand-up fights they got engaged in. So his minions avoided those types of fights whenever possible and struck mostly by surprise, at night, catching victims unprepared - and if possible alone.

"What I am trying to say is that a threat coming unexpected can seem unstoppable. But it isn't, which is good for us because very few things come at us when we are ready for them. The difference is mostly one of attitude, if you can keep your head during a tense situation you are most likely of anyone to survive. That's easy enough to do when you know you are going into danger. The next step is not to panic when danger comes to you. Death Eaters broke down a few doors and died horribly upon the wands of their intended victims, even sometimes when Voldemort himself was part of the assault. Lily and James Potter were two that even the worst attack never seemed to catch totally by surprise, and they dealt with dozens of Voldemort's followers. Each even beat him three times in duels, and one of those times Lily was wearing nothing but a bathrobe with her hair wet and plastered to her face, soap still stinging her eyes. Yet it was Voldemort who fled from her."

Nodoka's eyes softened. Sirius had told her that story, and she'd made him take a drop of Veritaserum and repeat it once before she would believe him. "Those two may be among our more famous heroes during that recent war, but there were others, many others. And the brave few stood against tides of Death Eaters, sheltering our whole world, with fewer wand arms than are standing in this room here with me now."

You've got to teach people that numbers don't always mean victory.

As she swept a kindly, reassuring gaze across that class' upturned faces, Nodoka seethed a bit inwardly. Dumbledore had such resources during that last fight, and he'd squandered them all, getting good men and women killed for no point - and much of that was Snape's doing, passing along vital information that murdered them in ambush after ambush as surely as if the spy had held the wand to cast those fatal spells.

She continued, "Voldemort's bully boys were nothing in a stand-up fight. Why, I earnestly believe that children could stand up to them and win. If it wasn't for attacking by surprise, using forbidden or even Unforgivable curses, the plotting of a schemer and the information of a spy, the latest in what appears to be an endless series of Dark Idiots had a laughably ineffective army that never truly should've been much of a threat to anyone. No matter what his personal power, Tom couldn't win a war alone, and most who fought against him never saw Voldemort in person - they fought his followers. Without their help he was nothing, as there was no way he could do all that needed to be done, be in enough places or cause enough terror, without them supporting him." She snorted, "Truly, if it weren't for his thieving band of cutthroats supplying him with money and safehouses, Voldemort never could've lasted even one year. Yes, he might've been powerful. But as a lone terrorist he could've been located and surrounded and taken out by superior numbers. As strong as he was, if caught in place by twenty or thirty aurors he would've gone down and stayed down. There are only so many spells that you can block or dodge simultaneously, no matter your skill."

Nodoka wiped her eye of a bit of dust. "But Voldy had all of that help, and squad leaders who'd gotten his clowns acting more or less organized." Not that it was terribly hard to set a group of bullies to looting, raping and hurting the helpless or innocent. But then, people like Minister Fudge couldn't lead hungry wolves to meat, much less win a war.

Raising her eyes again to face the class, she concluded, "You can be the heroes of the next war. Any one or all of you could do it, it's not that hard. The most effective weapon in any conflict is your wits. I can train you to keep your head about you in times of stress - and by their very nature, whatever followers our next Dark Idiot comes up with won't, because evil blinds itself. It is part of the fundamental nature of being what they are. Each and every one of them tells themselves going into it that they can be smarter and avoid the mistakes of those who have gone before, and each and every one of them is proven wrong in the end, because of the very nature of the thing they become. The qualities you must possess or acquire if you are to become that evil come with certain blind spots and disadvantages. It's a package deal, and worse, one that feeds on itself. Those who go that route find they have to get continuously more depraved, and are constantly deepening those flaws. That is why evil creatures are so famous for making stupid, stupid mistakes."

She pierced that class with her gaze. "What I am trying to say is that you can face danger and win, no matter its reputation. In fact every Dark Idiot that has ever risen to power has had a reputation as an unbeatable menace, and every one of them has been beaten. They spread those rumors themselves to get the reputations they need. They are always going to be scary - because they depend upon fear, and what they need fear for is to make their victims stop thinking. Once you stop thinking, you cease being able to defend yourself in any useful way or escape if things really get that bad. Once you give in to fear you stop being any kind of threat to them and they can kill you at their leisure, it doesn't matter that you may well be more powerful than your attackers are. Once you give in to fear, you have already lost."

The Professor gave a soft smile. "Fear is actually the only thing that can make their victims stupider than they are, so Dark Idiots and their followers depend upon it religiously. If you can avoid giving in to their little terror tricks, you'll already be accounted as a hero. Because you'll be a terrible, terrible threat to them and all of their plans. People will rally around you and you may well cause the downfall of your enemies just by not being afraid of them."

A Hufflepuff raised her hand. "Professor, you said 'Tom' not to long ago, when you were saying things about the last war. Who were you talking about?"

Nodoka smiled. "Our last Dark Idiot was born to a muggle father and a witch who'd used a love potion to snare him. Their boy was named Tom Marvolo Riddle. He later changed that to Lord Voldemort before he began his rise to power. You'll see that pattern repeat itself with just about every ambitious would-be ruler, throwing away a perfectly good name to call themselves the Half-Blood Prince or whatever."

There were many questions, which Nodoka did her best to answer, then released her class at the bell, after extracting a promise not to say anything to the students coming in. Since she stood outside of the door to prevent whispers or mingling, Nodoka had good success in getting her first and second years filed out and brought the third and fourth year students from the Allied Houses in.

After them, she'd run through the fifth, sixth and seventh years all together, and hopefully by running these classes through one after another in great haste and with no time to talk to one another, she'd get to maintain her surprise to be effective on everybody.

"Good morning, class. Today we will be studying Acromantulas."

I O I O I

"I still don't understand why you can't just find him with magic," Kaneda groused.

"I've told you. I keep telling you," the withered old Cologne sighed. "I've tried every spell and device I own, in every combination. Nothing comes up."

"But surely if you just tried harder..." Kaneda whined.

"It's not as simple as that!" The ancient crone snapped. "This is not about my wanting to succeed or not. Those spells require something to latch onto, a name is the easiest thing to use. See here," the old witch pulled a wand out of her robes. "Point Me Harry Potter."

The stick balanced on her finger swung around sharply to come to a rest in a distinct direction after less than one turn. "Now Point Me Furinkan High School."

The wand swung about sharply to point another way, stopping on one angle poised as purposefully as the best hound.

"Now Point Me Ranma Saotome."

The wand which had spun so energetically and purposefully before simply failed to move. Twice more she repeated this and got nothing.

"Point Me Genma Saotome's son."

The same.

"Point Me Ranko Tendo."

Nothing.

"Have it point out my fiance!" Kaneda eagerly demanded.

"You broke the engagement, remember? Dozens of times that I recall. This spell can only point to things that actually exist. It does not work on fantasies. Since you have no fiancee, there is nothing for it to find, but I'll show it to you just to prove it. Point Me Kaneda's fiance."

The same results as before got repeated again - absolute lack of movement.

"Point Me to the boy promised to marry Akane Tendo."

The slender rod twitched slightly.

"See! The wand moved!" Kaneda cried excitedly.

"Yes, but you must understand these locator spells always point to the strongest reading. Early on we were quite excited, codifying every twitch and tremor, calculating a destination that was checked out by Miss Hinako months ago. It was the Chardin house; and no, our wayward son of Genma was nowhere to be found. It was the young master Chardin that our spells were pointing to - apparently the closest thing you've got to a fiance, dear."

"Have it look for Ryoga's greatest enemy!"

"This isn't fortune telling, kiddo! I can't Point to a million tons of unclaimed gold or a place to sink a mine shaft and become rich forever! I can't find the Love Of Your Life or other shifty, little emotional dodges! It has to be something real, tangible, stable, and most importantly well known. I can't point out Yakuza secret hideouts because they are just that, secret! If your father had gone about selling you as badly as Genma did HIS son we wouldn't know it from this charm, because we DON'T know it! You could have dozens of fiances out there, but it only twitches weakly towards that poor Chardin boy. And when I use locators that CAN narrow in on 'Who is My Enemy' I find that all of Japan hates Ryoga's guts! If we are to find Happy's Lost Heir we must figure out something that points to him alone! Not to half the nation!"

"That's it! Use that spell to point out Happosai's Lost Heir!"

"I did, but I'll show you again."

Nothing.

"I don't get it. Why won't the wand move?"

The ancient, shriveled old mummy sighed. "Because Happy, in a fit of temper during a failed experiment using a Pill of Obedience, expelled son-in-law from the Anything Goes school and never formally fixed that breach. So, technically speaking, the boy does not represent Anything Goes style anymore, so cannot be its heir."

"So have it point out Kasumi! Or Shampoo, or somebody who might be with Ranma, or know where he is!"

Cologne held her wand up in a tired fashion. "Point Me my great-granddaughter Shampoo."

It moved, but it wasn't what anyone had been hoping for.

That stick, so firm and purposeful before, spun around in a lazy circle, directionless and with a notable lack of any kind of inclination to point one way over another. It spun a full turn or six before slowly drifting to a halt in a lazy, indistinct way.

A repeat of that spell with the same wording got a different, totally random direction when the spin wound down - so very different from the crisp, jarring stop of a successful point. Two more exact repeats made it absolutely certain the wand had nothing to lock on to, and it just came to a stop wherever it ran out of energy spinning, exactly as if that had been a normal stick spun by some child's hand.

"That is what you get when the object of your search has been warded against this spell. It is a fairly standard precaution for politicians, celebrities, and criminals; anyone with enemies who might not want to be found. As great-granddaughter of village matriarch, champion of our village, and from the way our Chinese magical community totally ignores the demands of our communist muggle leaders, Shampoo is all three. Her mother warded her when she was three days old. You won't be able to target anything through a connection to her, even to so strong a link as to find her husband, already married to her by village law. So I can't just Point Me son-in-law."

A repeat of the hazy, indistinct spinning until it ran out of energy on its own.

"So? Point to Kasumi!"

"I don't get it!" Kaneda shouted, when the wand once again began describing lazy circles that had no real direction or purpose to them. "How come it can't find her? She didn't have any warding when she was a kid! We didn't even know about magic back then!"

"Perhaps not as a child, no. But you forget, my twin escaped with them, and she has been doing all things in her power to stay out of our reach, including elaborate wards over the rest of our fugitives for fear of whatever clues they might give us about her if we discovered them. Even that is a sideline for her."

Kaneda blinked, dropping the rock he'd pulverized in his hands during the earlier parts of this conversation. "But wouldn't they all stay together? Except Ranma, that is. Genma was pretty persuasive when he said that his son would run off to hide on his own. That's just the sort of thing that coward would do, too, abandoning my sisters like that."

The former girl growled and began pulverizing a rock again.

Cologne shrugged, unconcerned. "Perhaps they might have stayed together as a group, but I think not. We would've heard stories about someone traveling with a horse and an octopus before now if they did. Regardless, my twin sister has been doing all she can to obscure her trail, even so meager a crumb as to protect your former sisters from my locator spells, just in case they knew something that could point our way to wherever the rest are hiding. No, my twin is so deranged she thinks that falling in love with Happy is worse than death, so she'll have rid herself of any useless and potentially dangerous baggage like your sisters as quickly as she could, so as to blend in more easily. Your sisters are in the sort of place they could easily get lost, some stable and out in the ocean somewhere. It's the way I would've done it. They stand out too easily to be disguised properly, and that makes them too risky for a refugee on the run to try to live unnoticed while carrying them along. So my double could not have done anything else but gotten rid of them, if they have escaped our notice this long.

The elder Cologne sighed tiredly. "So even if we find something that would point to son-in-law, my sister, my cursed twin, would be blocking all of those she could find. We must discover not only a link through which we can find him, but one that my twin has not yet thought of to block, and I admit that I am at my wit's end, having tried all I can think of without success." She gave a serious groan. "Nor do I anticipate any."

Kaneda double-blinked in curiosity, so Cologne explained more fully.

"The person who has the most intimate knowledge of everything I can or might do to track a person is myself, and unfortunately because of Jusenkyo's curse, that is effectively who is acting to block me. It is like dueling with your reflection in a mirror, every move and counter, no matter how fast, is perfectly duplicated in the instant you make it - And because my first few hours after realizing I truly loved Happy after all was all spent with him, making him sure he could count on me by helping him gather panties, my double got several hours lead on my acts. So my reflection is countering every move I make BEFORE I make them. That is not an advantage that can be defeated by simply wishing it would go away."

I O I O I

"This is the sort of raid Dumbledore should have been conducting during the last war." One tiny ninja-dressed fairy addressed another. "Anyone who's ever worn the Dork Mark has probably shopped here, and it's a meeting place for dark witches and wizards. If they see someone shop here, or going in or out that doesn't look scared spitless, they know that is probably their sort of person. It's a vital link in their network. Shut it down and forming large groups of dark wizards becomes virtually impossible. They don't trust easily and without a spot like this to communicate or rub shoulders they'd never get together in large numbers."

That said, the two winged fairies flew down the chimney and out the open flue into a shop filled with disgusting trophies, dark objects and human bones. It was in the pre-dawn hours of the early morning in Knockturn Alley, a time when it was dead, dead, dead, shopkeepers having stayed up most of the night dealing with shadowy customers. Right now all of the merchants were asleep, preparing themselves for the early evening rush.

Flying swiftly and not glowing the two ladies made a swift circuit of the ground floor, then the basement, finally locating their quarry on the second floor above the shop, two men and an assistant sleeping in rude bedrooms whose filthy windows had been half bricked over, torn open again, then reduced to slits sometime in the long distant past. Ragged curtains and dirty bedclothes had been roughly crammed in cracks in the brickwork to shut out light for these late sleepers, who lay in smelly heaps that had probably once been nice beds back before Ranko was born, piled with sodden, rumpled rags that could once have been blankets. On closer inspection it became clear they tossed new covers on top when the old ones had worn through enough to let a breeze in, while the bottom blankets gradually deteriorated into shredded threads of rot.

Nodoka wondered if they thought the decomposition process helped keep them warm.

But whatever she thought of their bedding, or lack of hygiene, there was nothing to fault in their magical protections. Except one thing, they all were keyed to inform the owners of an intrusion, not alert law enforcement. Natural, she supposed, for someone who broke the law so frequently and did not want a nosy policeman tromping through in an official capacity in a store piled high with items of varying stages of illegality.

But today it was going to cost them.

While she would have loved so simple a method as poison, no one in the wizarding world (aside from Voldemort, whom they'd trained) knew as much about poisons, and how to acquire long term immunity to them, as these fellows here. No toxin she had could she be certain would work. And as much as she'd love to get that information out of them, she could not think of a way to do so safely.

Imperius Curse? Borgin and Burkes dealt with dark wizards as their sole customer base. If they didn't have ability to throw that off they'd have given out enough deals and bargains so far they'd have gone out of business nearly a century ago.

Torture? Not only was that distasteful, if they couldn't resist it they couldn't stay in business, and she had no desire to keep them alive and contained in spite of the many tricks they had to have for escaping. Once again, that had to have been tried on them before. Legilimency and other tricks likewise. If they couldn't resist it, they wouldn't be up to dealing with the dark wizards who formed their sole clientele.

No, she dared not risk probing them for their secrets.

Since the floor was warded, Nodoka landed on a bed, shifting back into human form just as Cologne let loose with a wardbreaker, one like Lucius had used on her tower; an object that, due to its very nature, no magic wards could be put upon it as it broke down any it came in contact with. They'd found one flitting through the shop downstairs (and the two had quickly liberated it after disarmed the muggle trap on its box).

With two quick slashes Nodoka had killed the occupants of two of the beds. When she tried to kick down the closed door of the other bedroom she bounced off the unbreakable surface. The death of so many wards at once had awakened the man inside, and he came to his strongly protected door to peer through a peephole to see what was going on.

When he did, Nodoka stabbed him right through the wooden slats, her magic sword cutting a neat hole through the protective spells and the man on the other side, piercing his heart and killing him instantly. When he died, the last protection spells on the shop vanished.

They looted that store, and the owners' private living spaces, as ruthlessly and effectively as they had Snape's house, doing a thorough and efficient job as well as a lot of damage. Piling all of the objects too dark to take, with no conceivable use for Light, into a pile in the basement, they spilled some acids, started a few fires, rigged an explosion and vanished, drinking potions to resume fairy size and darting away with their stolen horde.

Behind them, on Knockturn Alley, the shop of Borgin and Burkes exploded, flinging shards and splinters all over Diagon Alley and starting small fires that would be out in minutes as the magical district roused itself to the noise.

As they were making their escape, Nodoka was fingering a tiny device, just a triangle of some blue stone she'd found burgling the place. It had been hidden within the covers of a old book, one with the Malfoy family crest on it. That book had once graced her library when she was still very young and tender. She'd never opened it, and Lucius had sold it as just too dangerous to have around the house bearing their coat of arms (although he kept many other copies of that same book, just more deniable without their family's distinct markings). From the impression left on the pages around it, the stone triangle had been holding that place for a century or more. By whatever fluke the book had not been opened for that long (they'd always had many copies as long as she could remember, it was a very respected Dark Arts book). But she was sure she recalled this stone from somewhere.

Then she had it. She knew where she had seen it before, not this stone precisely, but the imprint on the book's pages gave her the idea.

I O I O I

Author's Notes:

And that, my friends, is the end of the old stuff. I know I cut off the chapter end a trifle early, but I thought I'd make it easy for all of those vultures hovering about to swoop in on the new material by jumping straight to the next chapter.

Then again, I resent them badly enough I may put off posting anything new for a year or more, just to let them stew.

Nah! The stuff's already written. No need to make those I actually care about wait.