Author's Note - Whoo - State of Origin tonight! ^_^ GO MAROONS!
Oh... And here's another chapter for everyone to read! I hope it's good enough, and helps clear things up... Or does the next chapter do that? ... Ah well! GO MAROONS!
Chapter forty–one.
Hermione breathed a sigh of relief.
"Wow, that spell actually worked…" Hermione looked around the room in amazement. A time ward had been placed over the property, freezing everyone and any magic (or curses) in that moment of time. Well, everyone except for those who enter later on and the caster; giving Hermione free reign to search for the real Alice and remember what she actually looks like, as well as her personality.
According to Alice's diary (unlike Harry's Half Blood Prince's Potion book, Hermione had made sure it was written by someone she knew… or at least had known) Hermione had gone back and found that the spell was an Ancient Germanic enchantment that had been used to escape and surpress a terrible curse... or a prophesy (the legend had been unclear as to what it was) that had been placed on a princess.
Unfortunately, continuing with the legend, the caster had been killed before she could find lift the enchantment and everyone had remained asleep for 100 years. Then a prince from a neighbouring kingdom found the princess and her servants, even though the Notice-Me-Not and Disillusion charms that had the castle looking like ruins surrounded with brambles were still firmly in place. He promptly raped the beautiful sleeping girl and left her still frozen body behind when he returned to his own kingdom.
The girl later gave birth and a couple of Faes found her, still frozen asleep and her two babes crying for food and decided to help. One managed to find a reversal for the enchantment and the princess awoke to find herself a mother to twins.
Thus, the spell had been distinctly not used in the following decades and centuries, for fear of the same thing happening to the subjects.
Thinking of Alice's diary, Hermione thought she'd better go back to where she left it in the room and use it to find her Magical Signature.
Wandering the halls of frozen portraits, Hermione made sure to check each one carefully, in case she could find someone who didn't belong. After all, she now had all night…
Hermione soon found herself back in Alice's old room; it was covered with pictures of places around the world, with various people in it, all waving and smiling. Hermione frowned as she leaned in; the pictures had all one consistency… A smiling, cheerful blonde with eyes the same light tone as her hair… and every once and a while the picture girl would flicker to become a small petite, black haired form that Hermione knew as the Changeling Alice… The magic had yet to change all forms of the Alice Hermione had known to the Alice Hermione now knew… It was all rather confusing, but Hermione now knew one thing; what the real Alice, the Alice whose memory she could only grasp at as it morphed into something different, what she looked like.
The diary lay innocently on the duvet cover of Alice's childhood bed, looking all the while like someone had just left it to wash the dishes or do a chore and any moment now, an Alice Hermione could only faintly remember, would come bouncing in to write more spells and jokes in, and to draw more fantastic creatures that only Luna could recognise.
Hermione smiled; at least she could still remember when she and Luna had sat down by the fire and Alice had told them of many fantastically illogical beasts that were real, Luna'd just deciphered the runes in regards to their locations wrongly. No, wait… Hermione grasped the memory as firmly as she could, but could still feel it slipping away, to be replaced with them gossiping around the fireplace about clothes and boys…
Annoyed at herself, knowing that that wasn't the real memory, but for the life of her, couldn't remember what had really happened instead of gossiping, Hermione grabbed a picture and shoved it into her pocket, Alice's forms still flickering. Hermione reverently picked up the diary and closed her eyes, muttering the Magical Signature Tracing spell. When she opened her eyes again, she could spot the trail of magic that everyone Magical left behind. The trails glowed brightly, distinctly floating through the air; she could see her magic as it trailed into the room, a deep purple that sparkled and hung. Glancing down at the book, it was now incased in a shining blue magic that swirled and sparkled, leaping out the room and to where Alice should be, but hanging threateningly and nearly overwhelmingly over it was the sickly green magic of the Changeling, as it prepared to take over Alice's Magical Signature.
Hermione rushed to follow the blue and green, but as she turned to close the door behind her, she wondered absently as to what had happened to the fairy in the snow globe that had been there the last time she'd come in.
Hermione raced through the winding halls of the house, still amazed that such a small and unassuming house on the outside could hold this many rooms and stories.
And even then, almost everyone here had opted to sleep outside, under the stars. Although Hermione couldn't blame them (because, hey, she was doing that too!) because, it was so HOT right now; she was sweating in the sweltering night heat! And there was also the fact that Outback Australia was the place where you could see the most stars than anywhere else in the world.
Finally finding the lounge room, where everyone had been frozen seated or pacing as they waited and listened to Padma's screams. Hermione tried not to think of the fact that Padma's face was currently contorted in pain.
She followed the trail past a green faced and worried Ron in mid-pace and out the front door, onto the porch. Outside, the kids had been playing tiggy and had managed to convince one of the teenagers to 'Accio' Harry. This was judging from the frozen faces of glee and clapping hands, as a glowing purple Harry was held mid-air, still in the 'Accio' spell, from his hiding place in the giant Christmas Eucalyptus Tree.
Hermione bounded down the steps, and as she did so, morphed into her wolf form, now leaping and running swiftly across the yard, following the trail of magic. The wind rustled in her fur as she ran quickly, one glowing wolf eye on the trail, the other on the look out for anything suspicious. She took a running leap over the up-coming fence. As she glided over it, her soft fur rustled and turned into gleaming feathers as she transformed into her owl form, figuring it would save time in over coming other obstacles like fences and large rocks.
Alice's magic trail led Hermione off the property and therefore, out of the time spell. Hermione's eyes widened as much as they could in her owl form as she realised that the Changeling must be planning on performing the final take over of Alice's life tonight, just in time for Christmas.
Alice gasped for breath as her crystal shattered around her, the water like trance she had been in, breaking. She gave a great shuddering moan as she felt the other crystal that held her wings breaking as well. But the shards of the crystal still remained imbedded into her skin around the base of her wings, large parts of the glass poking out and surrounding her wings.
Tears poured down her face in gasps as the pain overwhelmed her mind.
"Tut, tut, little Halfling. Is that anyway to greet your cousin?" A familiar voice greeted her in old Celtic.
Alice looked up from the dirt, where rocks and stones embedded themselves into her hands and knees, and into the smirking face of her cousin.
"Cobweb?" She asked weakly, repeating in kind.
"Good work, Little Halfling. Now, stand up like a good Husband stealer."
Alice gasped again in sudden pain as she was hoisted up by her arm, making the muscles in her back clench tighter around the glass.
"H-Husband stealer?"
"Yes, as well as being the Heir of a Kingdom that I should be." Cobweb drawled, bored. She flicked a finger tipped in a dark red nail and Alice's hands were bound and attached to a branch high above her head, Alice once again crying out in pain and confusion.
Somehow, her 'lovely cousin' had managed to suppress all her magic, even outside the crystal, and now she was dangling off a branch, held there by a rope that bit and rubbed into her skin, as her feet barely touched the ground. Blood dripped even more profusely from her back as the crystal shards dug themselves even deeper into her muscles and her wings hung down limply.
Cobweb stalked around the dangling body of a barely conscious Alice and smirked, "You know what I'm going to do, Little Halfling? I am going to take back your Husband and your crown."
Alice croaked out angrily, "I know you can easily take away Harry, with your charms and looks, without enchanting me, but you can't take away the fact that I'm the Heir and if I die, it will automatically go to Draco! Not you!"
Cobweb smiled and tutted again, "My dear cousin… Who said I'd kill you? No, in about five minutes from now, one of your oh-so-loyal friends will be arriving to save you, saying that the pregnant one is having troubles with her baby, but somehow she hasn't gone into labour yet."
Alice's eyes widened, "Padma…" she whispered and Cobweb smiled cruelly.
"Indeed, Padma… Now, you will get there, and well, lets just say that you'll recognise the curse very easily… After all, it is what Mother used on your Aunty Cissa and dear cousin Draco to get your father to hand over the crown..."