Victor Von Doom and the Vibranium Wand (HP/Marvel)

By: Joe-Kerr

Inspired by littlewhitecat's absurdly awesome Carrow series. I thought I might try my hand at a…

Status: ongoing

Published: 2019-02-01

Updated: 2021-08-09

Words: 64403

Chapters: 22

Original source: https/forums./threads/515698

Exported with the assistance of

Victor Von Doom and the Vibranium Wand (HP/Marvel)

Introduction

Chapter 1

Chapter 2.1

Chapter 2.2

Chapter 3.1

Chapter 3.2

Chapter 3.3

Chapter 3.4

Chapter 3.5

Chapter 3.6

Chapter 4.1

Chapter 4.2

Chapter 4.3

Chapter 4.4

Chapter 4.5

Chapter 4.6

Chapter 4.7

Chapter 4.8

Chapter 4.9

Chapter 4.10

Chapter 4.11

Chapter 5

Epilogue

Chapter 1

Inspired by littlewhitecat's absurdly awesome Carrow series. I thought I might try my hand at a similarly styled crossover fic.

Will the wizarding world survive the antics of Victor Von Doom?

Victor Von Doom and the Vibranium Wand

Chapter 1

Cynthia Von Doom relaxed in her brand new kitchen sipping from a cup of tea with just a pinch, well alright, a generous amount of scotch. She sat on a chair admiring the modern technological marvel of cooking appliances that surrounded her. She was particularly enthralled by the burnished steel electric oven, and the milky white refrigerator. And of course there was the washing machine, oh marvel of marvels. Which could do by itself what usually took a whole morning of arduous and exhausting effort. The salesman had personally vowed on his own mother's grave that she'd never have to use a washing board again. Yes it truly was a marvel of luxury and modernity.

She'd burn it all down in an instant to get her Werner back.

She fought against the cold icy hand grasping at her heart, threatening to overwhelm her, she had to be strong, if only for Victor.

The memory of her only child helped dispel the terrible images that her husband's fate at the hands of the baron conjured. Yet, her gloom mood was exchanged not with calm, but anxiety, when she realized that the boy had been missing for a while now. Where had that rascal gotten to?

She stood and walked out the kitchen into the house's backyard, the moment she set foot outside, the sound of power tools coming from her shed, gave away her son's location.

She walked towards the rickety structure, initially a mere wooden cupboard for storing tools, it had been expanded by successive additions until it had become a fully functional workshop. Cynthia opened the door and saw the apple of her eye, her eleven year old son, working with a rotary saw on a piece of complex metal tubing.

"Victor, what are you doing?" she screamed over the din of the power tools.

The boy gave no indication of having heard, he continued working on the piece of metal he was cutting until he was satisfied with it. He then put down the saw and turned around while removing his safety goggles.

"Putting the finishing touches on my magnetic containment unit mother." And with that he turned around again, replaced the heavy duty goggles over his eyes and grabbing an acetylene torch, resumed his work. "I expect it to be finished today."

"Oh okay, just try not to make too much noise, we don't want the neighbours complaining; again."

"Science can occasionally be a noisy mistress mother, And I refuse to cater to the whim of simpletons who fail to recognize the sounds of my workshop symbolize the march of progress."

"Alright Victor, but please, avoid any further explosions this time. I don't want to deal with the police, again." She said, saddling the last word with a weary tone that was meant to convey just how displeased she would be if that indeed actually happened.

"I assure you mother, that incident was due to a completely unpredictable error, my calculations were perfectly accurate, the detonation was the result of faulty manufacturing processes over which I had no control."

"Ok Victor, just, don't lose yourself in your work, we're having tea in an hour. Don't make me come fetch you," and because the universe has somewhat of an unhealthy fetish for rules of three she finished the sentence with another, "again."

"Don't worry mother, I expect to be done within that time period." the boy said while soldering the metal tubing before him.

Cynthia sighed and after closing the workshop's door walked back to the kitchen. The boy could be a handful, but there was no denying his intelligence. What had that doctor called it, a 'polymath' was it? Whatever the term, Victor was a gifted child, before he was two he'd taught himself to read and now he was devouring college level textbooks about things called 'kwon-tum' physics and mechanical engineering and anything else he could lay his hands on from the public library.

And he was always building things, tinkering with whatever caught his fancy. At first it had been cute, he'd been working with gears and clockwork, it had seemed harmless enough and she'd encouraged him buying him a set of precision screwdrivers and the like. He'd been four then. Now Victor was working with bubbling chemicals and power tools and blowtorches and it didn't seems so harmless anymore.

She sat and resumed sipping her tea. How far away their old life seemed now. The days of travelling through the Latverian countryside on their wagons with the rest of their roma family. It seemed to her like memories of days long gone by.

It hadn't even been two years since they had been forced to flee Latveria from their failed insurrection against the baron. Her husband Werner had been arrested and identified as one of the leaders of the revolution and the baron had sworn to make all of his family suffer. Cynthia and her son had to flee their homeland, skulking through the border at night like criminals, which to the baron eyes they pretty much were. After a few months of wandering through Europe they'd finally found asylum in England.

It had been hard at first, settling down, finding a place for them. Money was hard to come by, but Cynthia Von Doom was a strong willed and resourceful woman, and beyond even that, she had some unusual abilities which she was able to monetize after a period of time.

For you see, Cynthia Von Doom was a witch of unusual power and talent.

Not that she really needed her powers, she'd used them at first, a mental suggestion here, a seemingly coincidental occurrence there. Once she'd gotten the ball rolling, word of mouth had gotten around and made her mysterious gipsy fortune-telling business a success. She told her customers vague prophecies over a crystal ball and sold colored water as love potions to lovesick men and women.

Well there was a little bit of magic involved, like that time he'd seen a glimpse of Mr. Flax injury, in the tea leaves of the cup he'd offered him (the crystal ball was bunk, the tea leaves was were the real fortune telling was at, but it was expected of her to have a crystal ball, so she obliged), and advised him to take a few days on holiday leave, which saved him from losing a limb when a piece of heavy machinery malfunctioned at work. Or the salve she made for poor old Henry Bailey, who suffered from a most insidious and itchy rash. Admittedly the salve had very little magic just a mixture of some herbs concocted under moonlight. But it still worked better than anything he could buy at the pharmacist.

Which had brought her into direct conflict with the British Ministry of Magic. Apparently, her little rash salve and other little things she made were magical enough to be considered a breach of the statute of secrecy. The accusations were ludicrous of course, but she happened to be a real witch, and she was telling the muggles' face that she was doing magic, even if technically there was no real magic involved. Things started to get heated and it seemed like she was going to face deportation. Until the night one of those death eater cultists decided to sneak in Cynthia's neighbourhood with plans of executing a massive muggle culling in the name of his Dark Lord. After she was finished with him, what was left of the idiot had a new Dark Mistress to fear.

After the incident, the ministry had no desire to bring attention to the embarrassing incompetence of their aurors. So they cut Cynthia a deal. They would turn a blind eye on her gipsy fortune telling schtick and she wouldn't go to the press with her story of how an immigrant witch had stopped on her own and without a wand a much feared death eater and prevented a muggle massacre while the aurors sat on their thumbs.

She was finishing her tea when she heard the flap of wings approaching her kitchen, and she grimaced. Probably another letter from the ministry, those busybodies just couldn't let it go and had resolved to make her life as bureaucratically difficult as possible.

To her surprise it wasn't the usual owl, but a large tawny one that landed on one of the kitchen chairs before handing over its letter. She took the letter then gave the bird of prey a piece of chicken gizzard she kept in the fridge for just such occasions. The owl hooted in appreciation before taking flight and leaving the way it came.

She looked at the letter and was dismayed when she saw who sent it.

"Hogwarts school of Witchcraft and Wizardry? Oh no!" she cried as she read the parental notice informing her that having become a registered resident, she was now subject to the same rights and privileges as any native wizards. Including of course her child's education. The letter informed her in a gentle and friendly manner how now that her son was about to come of age, he was eligible to start his magical training at Hogwarts. The rest of the letter went on to describe the many benefits of attending such a prestigious institution but Cynthia didn't bother reading it. It was all a load of crap to her. All of a sudden the memories from her 3 years spent at Durmstrang, before she dropped out and never looked back, came back in full force. She had hated every minute of it, the sexism from being one of the very few girls there, the constant harassment from being a 'filthy mudblood', the casual way dark magic was treated and last but not least, the constant cold, chilling her bones everyday. If Hogwarts was anything similar she had no intention of sending her only child to such a place.

Plus, the idea of what a fully trained Victor could do with a wand scared her.

No she would not send her only son to a boarding school hundred of miles away so that he could learn to wave around a fancy stick and transmogrify people's hair into worms. He was much better home, with her, learning science from the library books and…

She was interrupted from her contemplations when a frantic Victor entered the Kitchen as if the devil himself was at his heels.

"Mum, take cover!"

Cynthia knew something was terribly wrong when he'd called her mum. He only did that when he was too nervous to feel embarrassed by the term. She remained sitting on her chair, perplexed, as Victor ran towards and tackled her to the ground.

A moment later a massive flash of light followed by a surge of incredible heat struck against kitchen walls from the outside. The noise from the deflagration arrived a split second later and the windows shattered under the force of the shockwave. The explosion left her rattled for a few seconds until she collected her bearings enough to sit up and ask her son.

"Victor, was that your workshop?"

"Uhm well mum… you see; there seems to have been some sort of problem with the magnetic containment unit of my homemade fusion reactor. Quite fascinating really…"

On second thought, a boarding school hundreds of miles away didn't seem so bad right now.

"What am I being punished for?"

"Victor, you're not being punished for anything, this is a great opportunity for you."

"I am not an idiot mother."

Cynthia pinched the bridge of her nose in frustration. "Okay Victor, if you must know; you made a miniature sun in our backyard and then it exploded."

"I told you that wasn't my fault, the ferromagnetic qualities of the steel tubing used for the containment unit weren't up to specifications. The magnetic field destabilized and…"

"Victor, stop! You built the dam… darned thing, it was your responsibility. Even if the equipment you used wasn't up to par, it still was your fault, you should have checked it more thoroughly."

Victor mumbled something about philistines getting in the way of progress and Cynthia sighed tiredly. She knelt down to look her son in the eye.

"Victor listen, consider this as an opportunity, I know how bored you get at school, I know you were frustrated because I didn't want to send you to university yet. I was afraid of what it'd be like for you with such a large age difference. But look at it this way. You're going to be learning magic with children your own age."

"Children my own age are stupid mother."

"Everybody's stupid compared to you Victor." she leaned forward and hugged her little boy as she kissed him on the cheeks. He made an embarrassed face at first, only to return the hug a few seconds later.

"Just promise me, no more thermonuclear experiments when you're there ok?"

Victor made a face as if she was asking him to cut off his own foot with a rusty knife. But still promised her mother in the end.

"Good now get on that train, and have a great time at school dear."

Victor walked pulling his school trunk behind him. Towards the steam locomotive waiting at platform 9 and three quarters that would carry the students to the Hogwarts school of magic. Cynthia kept waving all the way until he disappeared from her view through one of the train's doors. She dabbed at her eyes with a hankie.

"First time to Hogwarts dear?" asked a plump woman with a kindly face who had noticed her rather emotional state.

"Yes."

The woman smiled reassuringly. "Don't worry dear, Hogwarts is a great school, the teachers will take great care of him, No need to worry over your boy."

"Oh I'm not worried about him." Cynthia replied "I'm worried about everyone else."

Ok, here it is. I do hope you've enjoyed it.

Now, full disclosure, I have no idea where to go with this. Aside from wanting it focus on humour I haven't decided anything else yet. Not even decided what time period to set it in. I'm still choosing between whether to set this fic in the same time period as the original Potter books, make Doom go to school with the marauders during Voldemort's ascendancy. Or even the time period of his original marvel incarnation, which would set it in the early 50's.

Any suggestions and ideas are welcome.

Last edited: Feb 1, 2019

Chapter 2.1

Well, hello there.

Just like a certain teenaged mecha pilot, after experiencing the flood of attention this post gathered, I ran away. Mostly because I was afraid that whatever I came up with could never live up to so many expectations.

Allow me to ramble for a moment, for the longest time, I had no idea of what to do with this. I wrote it on a whim, I only ever thought of that first chapter and I never planned anything beyond that. So I left it on the back burner until I figured something out.

I've only recently discovered that podcasts are a thing that exists. And as such, I've been listening to a lot of audio dramas. Chief amongst them, Wooden Overcoats (if you haven't listened to it yet, go do so now, it's a brilliant). I was laughing along with it when all of a sudden it hit me, that flash of inspiration that had eluded me for so long. The Fawlty Towers approach. That was the direction I needed to take this fic into. And so armed with this newfound inspiration, resolve and nervous fingers, I sat down to write some more. I still don't know if this will measure up, but I wanted to share it with everyone.

Enjoy.

Severus Snape's forehead hit the wooden desk, with a rather loud bang.

Woken up from his sleep so unceremoniously, he mumbled a few choice words about the nature of school desks that any carpenter would have found deeply offensive, and his mother given him a quip behind the ear while profusely apologizing to anyone within earshot. Fortunately for him, he was quite alone in the classroom so no one was able to chastise him for his profanity.

If anything else, it could be said that hanging around Victor Von Doom had improved his vocabulary. The fact that he only truly understood about half of what he had said only added to the words' mystique. He'd probably have been rather disappointed, to find out that most of what he had said was not in fact, anything to do with the virtue (or lack of) of the desk's carpentry, but a rather technical description of the molecular structure of oak wood.

After an initial moment of panic, he realized that he had in fact, not woken up blind, but simply had his eyes covered by a scroll of parchment stuck to his forehead. He pulled it off and looked in distaste at the smudged text where his forehead had hit the still wet ink. He then surveyed the empty classroom he'd dozed off in. Yes, Victor Von Doom may have improved his vocabulary (particularly in the matter of molecular chemistry), but it had also left him very tired and deprived of sleep.

He'd fled to this classroom searching for some peace and quiet to write McGonagall's essay on how transfiguration did not, in fact should not, involve explosions, which he deemed tremendously unfair, since it most certainly had not been his box of matches that had turned into a "nitrate-based explosive", whatever that meant. His own box of matches had been sitting there, looking very much like a silver, well, silver-ish box. He had in fact been trying to help. After all, the moment he'd seen the gleam in Victor's eyes, he knew that he wasn't listening to the professor anymore and that his mind was veering off into some personal quest. That usually involved trouble, of the explosive variety. The best you could do then was brace yourself and try to minimize the damage. He'd tried to explain as much to the professor, but it all that had been meaningless to that woman, in her eyes he was guilty by association.

He looked at the essay with obvious distaste, apparently trying to shame the offending piece of parchment into non-existence by scowling at it. Of course he knew transfiguration class, particularly first year transfiguration class, shouldn't involve explosions, that sort of stuff was reserved to fifth years and up. They were messy, dangerous, painfully loud and seemed to have a grudge against eyebrows.

But, he had to admit, they were also kind of cool. You could say this about Victor Von Doom, being around him, was seldom boring.

As he scribbled away some vacuous platitudes about safety in the classroom that he hoped would placate McGonagall (though he doubted it, the woman was so obviously biased against Slytherins) he heard a distinct set of footsteps on the corridor approaching the classroom. He sighed, well the essay was mostly complete, and sleep was probably overrated anyway.

"Severus, there you are! Come quick, I need an extra pair of hands to complete my latest experiment."

Snape tried not to grumble as he packed away his things and followed after Victor. He knew Victor would just launch on another tirade about the importance of his "research" and how he should feel honoured to be helping him if he hesitated. He simply slung his bag over his shoulder and followed, occasionally breaking into a run to keep up, how did he manage to walk so fast?

"Why were you not in the common room? You are lucky I didn't need to search the castle for you, it'd have been a terrible waste of very valuable time." Then and only as an afterthought did Victor deign to ask. "What were you doing in that classroom?"

"McGonagall's essay, you know, the one she gave us because you turned your box of matches into dynamite?"

"How many times do I have to say it, it wasn't dynamite. Dynamite is a lot more stable, and a lot more powerful. Anyways I'm surprised you're not done, I did mine during lunch hour."

"Some of us like to eat without a notebook on the table Victor"

"That's a waste of a perfectly productive time."

Snape sighed, then he remembered a slightly worrying phrase Victor had just said a moment earlier. "Why did you say you didn't have to search for me?"

"After the last time I went to the common room looking for you and was unable to find you there, I decided to put a locator charm on your school robes. I can now find you anywhere inside the school grounds."

"What?!"

"Indeed, now let's get a move on, I've wasted enough time as it is."

Snape just grumbled under his breath, it was impossible to argue with Victor, he just couldn't see anything wrong with the obvious invasion of privacy he'd just admitted to. He'd just have to go over his clothes with a wide-range neutralizing charm.

Again.

Well at least it gave him an excuse to talk to Lily, she was the best at charms out of the whole year, after Victor of course. Even if she was too modest to admit it.

If anything, being the only member of Victor Von Doom's clique was doing wonders for his academic development. He was probably ahead of second years already in potions, charms and transfiguration, and that was from just trying to catch up to the few crumbs Victor threw his way.

As they walked towards whatever nightmarish contraption Victor had assembled tonight (with some help from professor Tesseract, no doubt, what was the arithmancy teacher thinking?). Snape thought about how in Merlin's name his life had become like this.

Platform 9 had been full of bustle with mothers and little boys crying about getting separated for the first time, friends greeting each other after a whole summer spent away, and the usual hubbub of people being people.

Victor thought it was most undignified.

He walked through the train's corridor searching for an empty compartment while pulling his trunk behind him and cursed the thing's weight. He thought back to that article he'd read in that physics journal written by some american, couldn't remember the name, Slant, Stan, Spark? it didn't matter. It had been about magnetic repulsion and he'd found it quite fascinating. If only he'd had more time he might have been able to tinker with the concept and maybe build a portable unit to attach on the underside of the trunk so that it would glide weightlessly instead of dragging heavily across the train floor.

Alas the last ten days had been somewhat hectic, almost a blur. After the supernova incident (that's what Victor called it, his mother called it, inaccurately, the H-bomb incident) his mother had told him that she was a in fact a witch.

Victor had reacted to this with about the same surprise as if she'd told him that rain was wet.

Then she'd told him that he, Victor, was (probably) a wizard, and that Britain had this large boarding school where they sent all their wizard children to learn magic and become fully trained and capable wizards, and since now they'd become naturalized residents, he'd been invited to join.

That'd last part had sparked some interest in Victor.

"Wait, you mean there is only one school of wizardry for the whole country? How does that even work?"

And of course Victor wasn't so surprised about the fact that he was a wizard as much as he was about the insane logistics involved in having a single school serve a whole country's worth of magical children.

When they went to Diagon Alley, Victor had been trying to work up the total magical population of Britain extrapolating from what he estimated might be a reasonable sized amount of students per year. After taking his first step into magical London, Cynthia had expected him to be somewhat surprised, even bewildered.

She hadn't expected annoyed irritation.

"This place breaks 3 different laws of physics just by existing, it makes no sense." He'd told her when he'd asked why he had such a grumpy face. Then he'd said that he didn't grump, children were grumpy, he simply disapproved expressively.

Then there had been the shopping for school supplies, the books, the cauldron, the set of scales, about which he complained extensively due to its lack of both certification and standardization. He'd spent the following days reading his schoolbooks and trying to figure out some sort of sense out of them.

Before he realized, the day he was to leave for Hogwarts had arrived, and he had four notebooks worth of questions.

He passed by a couple of compartments full of older pupils who were chatting and laughing. He saw a couple of them performing a couple of magic tricks with their wands and frowned. He considered it a personal offense how they somehow violated the second law of thermodynamics with a mere flick of a wooden stick.

He finally found a compartment, occupied with a single boy of his same age, with black, lanky and somewhat greasy hair. He seemed to be engrossed in a book he was reading. Victor deemed this compartment acceptable and entered it pulling his trunk behind him.

The boy looked up from his book at the newcomer and tried to smile in a friendly manner. Which was totally lost on Victor as he was turned with his back towards the boy, struggling with his trunk and putting working on that repulsor unit to the top of his to-do list.

"Hi." said the boy, "My name's Severus Snape, what's yours?"

After he'd finally succeeded pulling the trunk in the compartment, Victor turned around examining the boy. He wondered whether to answer or ignore the question, and thought that it would be counter-productive to start antagonising the rest of the school's pupils before classes had even started.

"Victor Von Doom" he said as he finished setting up his trunk and settled himself on the seats opposite the boy.

Yep, Snape was pretty sure that was the precise moment when his school life had been doomed (no pun intended).

"Damnit, Severus git incoming at 3 o'clock."

Snape wondered what on Earth was Victor talking about, it was half past seven already, before he realized he meant their right.

And right there was Lucius Malfoy, sixth year prefect and all around upper-class twit, walking towards him looking, Snape felt, like an enraged chihuahua.

"Doom, what are you doing out of the Slytherin's common room at this hour?"

"Investigating the nocturnal habits of the dingus ignoramus in the castle. A very unremarkable creature that can be found unlimited in the corridors. We've been at it for just 5 minutes and we've already found one."

"Don't you dare test me Doom."

"Wasn't that what you said to professor McGonagall last spring? Although with a lot more pleading."

"Don't you try to be cheeky with me you little brat… I'm a prefect you know?!"

"How could we not, that badge of yours is shiny enough to blind someone. From how often you polish it, I wondered if you thought it was a knob."

Malfoy's face had flushed crimson with anger, "Doom I'm warning you, if you don't give me an answer right no…"

"We were at McGonagall's office ok? To hand in the essays she gave us this morning, but she rejected Severus' because of all the smeared ink, see?" Doom pulled the parchment poking out from Snape's bag and showed it to the blonde haired prefect as proof.

"At this hour?"

"She did say she wanted them done as soon as possible."

"Right, I guess you're off the hook for being out of bounds, but not for the cheek. You've got detention Doom, and your friend can join in as well."

"Me? What did I do?"

"You were standing close to him, I don't need any more reasons than that."

"Right, same old, same old." Interrupted Doom, defusing the situation before it could get any more serious for Snape. "Be seeing you tomorrow afternoon Lucius, enjoy yourself."

They marched in the direction of the Slytherin common room and heard Malfoy resume his patrol through the corridors for any children out of bounds. Once they were out of earshot Doom pulled on a suit of armour gauntlet and entered through the secret door that had just opened in the wall.

"A bit risky don't you think? What we'll do if he checks with the old battleaxe?" said Snape as they went up the spiral staircase and away from the Slytherin common room.

"He won't, he's terrified of McGonagall since he actually tried to bribe her for an O in his OWL transfiguration exam."

"They say there was actual lightning coming out of her ears." said Snape with both a smirk and shiver. "Whatever could have possessed Malfoy to even think he could try that with the old battleaxe? It's a miracle he was made a prefect."

"Probably Slughorn's fault, he's as pliable as McGonagall is strict."

The door closed behind them, shutting their voices off, and three figures suddenly appeared seemingly out of nowhere, or from under an invisibility cloak. A bespectacled boy marched towards the suit of armour Doom had manipulated and tapped it with his wand.

"Darn, he's bobby-trapped it. Remus, you think you can undo this charm?"

The tallest boy walked towards the suit of armour and used his own wand on it. "Maybe, if you give me a week or two. I don't even understand half of what he's done here. This is OWL, possibly even NEWT level stuff."

"Damn you Victor!"

"He, he, he, knob!"

"Oh come on, Sirius!" said Lupin glaring at the third boy.

"You have to admit it was funny though."

"Well yes…"

"And if anyone deserves it, it's Malfoy."

"Hey, what do you think he really polishes more?"

"The badge!" said the other two in unison.

"Yep, definitely the badge," said the bespectacled boy. "Probably so that he can use it as a mirror."

"I wouldn't put it past that egotistical dullard." said Lupin.

"That what?" asked Sirius with a confused look.

"That stuck up prick."

"Ah!"

"Guys, focus, we need to find out what Doom is up to, it could be something sinister, maybe even nefarious!"

"Yeah right James, you just want to know what he's up to so that you can do it before he does."

"Damn straight, I'm not going to let him pass down in history as Hogwarts' greatest prankster, that's going to be us!" he said with a mischievous smile.

"Yeah James, about that. The thing is, I don't really think those are pranks."

"Not this again Remus. If they're not pranks, what else could they be?"

"Well… they might be… accidents?"

"One or two explosions a month could be an accident, fifteen, in two months is not, that has to be deliberate."

"Well, the guy is a bit mental. You've seen him arguing with McGonagall about how what she does is impossible and demanding to know where she hides the enthrall-pies and the bevels." said Sirius

"I think he actually said enthalpy levels", replied Lupin.

"What in Merlin's beard is that?" asked James.

"I've no idea" said Lupin shrugging, "something to do with muggle science I think."

"See, what did I tell you? Completely mental!"

"Never mind that, guys help me out with this." James focused again on the suit of armour.

"Oh no you don't. My eyebrows haven't grown back yet from the last time we mucked with one of Victor's booby traps. If you want to out-prank Victor, you're just going to have to come up with something yourself." Remus grabbed the smaller boy and dragged him away from the suit of armour.

"Damn you Victor!"

Just then another boy came scurrying from further down the corridor, he was short, portly and had a rodent-like face.

"Twit incoming" he whispered to the other three. As one, all four of them ran down the corridor as silently as they could and away from the approaching prefect.

"What on earth is that?!"

"An electronic calculator."

"A what?"

"Think of it as a muggle thinking engine. They use it to do math."

Snape ignored this, it meant nothing to him. He was more worried about the vast amounts of copper tubing and all the strange and definitely very muggle looking parts he saw spread out all over the rather large room they were in. "What are those weird looking things?" he asked.

"Vacuum tubes, obsolete I know, but much more resistant than transistors. And I need hardened components for this."

"Victor, is this going to explode?"

"No of course not, well, it shouldn't, probably."

"You don't sound very sure Victor."

"My calculations are perfect!" he said in a brisk offended tone. Realizing how he had jumped at Snape's comment, he paused and took a deep breath before carrying on. "But yes, I'm not completely sure, we're treading new ground here Severus. I'm trying to get electronics to work in a highly saturated magical environment and that's something no one has ever even bothered to consider before, we're flying blind here."

"Electro-what?"

"The things that makes the telly work."

"Oh! Does that mean we could get Doctor Who in the castle?"

"If we get a signal, yes, sure."

"Ok. But Victor, what am I supposed to do here?" Snape was looking at some of the notes that littered the room, and the bits of parchment that were stuck all over the contraption. "I don't understand a single thing of what you've written here, isn't this arithmancy? You've been spending time with professor Tesseract again?"

"Yes, and yes, actually professor Tesseract has given me some insight in a particularly elegant runic array that should reduce thaumaturgical buildup in the electrical equipm… never mind that. Don't worry, all I need you is to operate the levers at the appropriate time, just follow my instructions."

"Oh well I guess it's okay then… and I really would like to see more Dalek episodes, just one question Victor."

"Yes?"

"I've seen the inside of a telly once, and this doesn't look at all like it." to emphasize his argument, Snape pointed his finger at all the copper tubing going in concentric circles around the room."

"Well spotted Severus, the truth is that this is not just an electronic calculator, it's also a thaumaturgical particle accelerator."

"A what?"

"Something Tesseract and me have been working on. Now when I tell you, I want you to throw that lever over there okay?"

"Okay."

Chapter 2.2

Well I promised I'd be posting the latter half of this chapter today and here it is. For once I've kept to my own deadlines.

Enjoy.

"There is… a hole… in the north-west tower." declared Minerva McGonagall in the headmaster's office.

Albus Dumbledore looked at his deputy headmistress with a concerned gaze.

"Lemon Drop?" he said while offering her the sweet.

"Albus, there is a very. Large. Hole in the north-west tower!" the transfiguration teacher said much more forcefully.

With a sigh, Dumbledore took back the muggle sweet. Then he rummaged through one of his drawers and brought out a bottle and two glasses.

"Firewhisky?" he said tentatively.

"Yes, thank you."

He poured two glasses, and looked at the bottle. Usually it was the one he got as a present for Christmas, and it lasted him well throughout the whole year. This was a new one, bought barely a month ago, and already well past the halfway mark. With a sigh, he put the bottle back in the drawer and offered one of the glasses to Minerva. They were both drained in one single gulp.

Neither of them seemed bothered in the least to be seen drinking by the two young and scorched boys in the office.

With a satisfied sigh, Dumbledore put down the glass and addressed his deputy headmistress.

"Right, first things first, is the tower in danger of collapsing?"

"No, Hagrid brought up a couple of wooden supports, and I transfigured them into steel. Young Flitwick was very helpful, he was charming the damaged stone so that it wouldn't crumble, from the outside I might add."

"Good, so what should we do with these two?"

"Can it involve the lake?"

Albus Dumbledore sat back in his chair and remained pensive for a few agonizingly long moments, before sighing, for the third time in as many minutes, and addressing the transfiguration teacher.

"I'm afraid not Minerva, but I suppose it's worth taking into consideration."

"Oh come on, you're not seriously thinking of feeding us to the squid are you?" complained a soot covered Snape.

"Seriously? No. Thinking about it; oh yes I am."

"You should better stay quiet young man, you're both in a lot of trouble, so much in fact that even I am not sure how much trouble you're in." Professor McGonagall, looked over at Victor, excitedly poring over a piece of parchment. "And certainly far more than your partner in crime seems to think. Mr. Von Doom, would you please wipe that head-splitting grin off your face so that I can properly chastise you?"

"I am sorry professor, I realize there was some property damage, it's just that these readings…"

Whatever Victor was about to say was interrupted by the sudden arrival of professor Tesseract.

"I just saw the tower, what on Merlin's name happened to…" Tesseract cut himself off when he noticed the two scorched and soot covered boys in the office. One of which was trying very hard to make himself as small as possible, possibly even microscopic, while the other was trying, very unsuccessfully, to keep himself from smiling.

"YOU!" he said in a far too loud voice "And you're smiling. Does that mean…?" he trailed off.

"It does professor, it worked just as we'd hoped. We have definitive proof of the existence of the thaum right here!" Victor said waving the piece of parchment in the air, then he looked at Snape and himself and winced. "Well maybe not exactly as we'd hoped."

Albus Dumbledore suddenly lunged over his desk. "You did WHAT?!" he exclaimed, with a note of disbelief in his voice.

"Found proof for the thaum beyond the purely theoretical." exclaimed Tesseract. "You see Albus, it was all young Victor's idea, he suggested adapting some of the muggle scientific methods geared towards the study of element…"

It was at that point that Minerva McGonagall interrupted by loudly clearing her throat. With an effect not unlike that of a cement mixer crashing a funeral. "Yes thank you professor", she said in the sudden silence that followed, "I'm sure that's all very interesting professor. But you know what I find even more interesting?" Minerva didn't so much advance as loom towards the new arrival. And it was all made all the much worse by the formal shark-like smile she currently had fixed on her face. A smile that seemed to complement the very non-metaphorical sparks that were coming out of her eyes. "The implication that you knew exactly what these boys were up to, and yet somehow chose not to share that information with the rest of the us."

"Oh well, I wouldn't say I knew it exactly. More like I had an inkling of…"

"Otto, you barge in here and the first thing you do is ask Victor over there, who by the way is covered in soot and debris, if it worked!"

"Well it may look that way but you see, I actually…"

"Otto!"

"Hum, well alright, I may have, kind of helped him, design the device he might have used to blow up that hole in the tower."

"OTTO!"

"The runic dampeners were his idea." Victor provided. "They worked fine, up to a point."

"Mr. Von Doom, you're not helping!"

"Otto did you seriously stop to consider the consequences of leaving such a contraption in the hands of an unattended young Victor over there? Did you perhaps conveniently forget what happened two weeks ago at potions class? Otto, they just blew a huge chunk of that tower. They could have been seriously hurt, even killed!

"Now look here, I think you're exaggerating a bit professor, I mean, sure there was some risk involved, I can't deny that. But mortal danger seems like a bit of a stretch, I mean, we've both gotten really good at shield spells."

"We needed to." mumbled Snape.

"Mr. Von Doom you will be quiet!"

"What? No one tells Doom to be q…" As Victor began to stand up two things happened at once. One was that the sparks that had been coming out of McGonagall's eyes turned into actual lightning arcing across the room. The other was that a sudden stab of pain lanced through his left leg, which completely forced him to sit down again and shut him up mid-sentence. And it most certainly had nothing to do with the fact that the only other time he'd seen anyone shoot lightning out of her eyes had been in his home's kitchen after his mother had surveyed the wreckage of the H-bomb incident.

Totally unrelated.

Victor sat down again and mumbled something about choosing his battles. Then brought his attention towards his leg. That pain had been real. Under all the dust and dirt, he had a nasty cut in his thigh, which he'd only noticed now. He looked at his conspirator sitting next to him and saw the way he was carefully holding his right arm.

Oh crap! She'd probably noticed.

"They could have died, killed by something a faculty member had helped them build. That would have made you responsible, it would have made us all responsible! They're our students, we're their teachers, we're supposed to be responsible for them! I am supposed to be responsible, and they've been hurt. Under. My. Watch… and where on Earth is Poppy?!"

"Right here." said the school nurse as she appeared through the door with her medical bag and cup of something steamy in her free hand. "And it looks like I arrived right on time. Here dear, drink this. It's a calming drought."

McGonagall collapsed on one of the chairs as her anger subsided, along with the crackles of lightning around her head. "Thank you Poppy." she took the proffered cup and took a long sip from the warm liquid. "They're hurt, they could have died; oh, I'm a bad teacher…"

"No you're not," argued Madam Pomfrey using a tone she reserved for whenever someone very smart said or did something very dumb "And you know it, if anything you're too good, you care too much, drink the draught dear, it'll soothe your nerves." She glared at Tesseract who at that moment was looking more like a embarrassed schoolboy than a Hogwarts professor and doing his best to blend in with the wall behind him. Then looked at the glasses on the headmaster's table. "Firewhisky?" She asked.

Dumbledore nodded, "she's already had one." He added.

"Pour her another, doctor's orders. Now let's see what damage these two have managed to do to themselves." She said as she took out her wand and started prodding Snape with it.

"If it's any consolation, we wouldn't even be here had it not been for professor Tesseract's runic dampeners." mentioned Victor. "They took long enough to overload for us to reach safety behind the barricade."

Minerva McGonagall clenched her fingers tightly around the ceramic mug Madam Pomfrey had given her before. Then in a very deliberate manner, she asked. "What do you mean, overload?"

"Well, the professor's arrays worked perfectly as intended, drawing ambient magical energy and protecting the electronic components of the device from a thaumic surge. Thus allowing me to conduct the experiment. Unfortunately and having no prior art, I had no way to predict the size of the thaumic buildup upon reaching critical mass, which proved to be much larger than anticipated and caused the dampeners to overload in an explosive manner."

"And if they had malfunctioned?"

"Oh, that would have been the worst of all possible outcomes, I might not have gotten any data at all."

"What?"

"Yes, you see, if they hadn't worked, the electronic parts that control the accelerator would have shorted out before I could get anything done, I'd have had to cancel the experiment and I wouldn't have gotten any results."

There was the sound of broken crockery, and they all looked at the now cracked mug still in McGonagall's hands who was once more glaring at Tesseract with sparks coming out her eyes.

Albus Dumbledore looked at his deputy headmistress, then at his Arithmancy professor, who was looking at him with the kind of look a drowning man gives a life preserver floating past him. He held his gaze for a few seconds before saying one single word.

"Run."

It was impressive how fast a 57 year old man could move when properly motivated. He was out the door and running down the corridor before McGonagall even had a chance to react.

"OTTO GET BACK HERE THIS INSTANT!" She shouted as she jumped from her own chair in pursuit. Thunderstorms coming out of her hat.

"That's odd," said Madam Pomfrey as she finished examining Victor. "She shouldn't be able to crackle like that after the calming draught I gave her. I guess I should go after them."

"Right you are Poppy, and how are our two trouble-makers?"

"They're fine. Mr Snape has a broken arm and Mr. Von Doom has a laceration in his left thigh, but it's nothing I can't take care of. They'll be right as rain after a good night's rest. But can you have someone carry what's left to the infirmary once you're done with them? I don't want them to move around on their own too much."

"I'll call for Hagrid after I'm done here, thank you Poppy." he said to her as she left the office.

As the door closed, Albus dumbledore sunk back in his chair and looked at the ceiling for a few seconds before finally turning his attention towards the two dirt covered boys there.

"Well, well. The question remains gentlemen, on what to do with you two." He glanced at the parchment Victor was still holding. "Here, let me see that Mr. Von Doom".

Victor gave him the parchment with the experiment's data Dumbledore spent the next couple of minutes reading it while humming to himself, sometimes he picked up his own quill and wrote something on a spare piece of parchment. Finally he put it down on his desk and steepled his hands while looking at the ceiling.

"Are you completely sure these findings are correct?"

"Of course" Victor replied instantly, a small note of contempt entering his tone at the suggestion he could be wrong. "I don't make those kinds of mistakes" he then relaxed slightly before continuing. "Of course I still need to repeat the experiment to prove the results are reproducible but…"

Dumbledore interrupted him still looking at Victor's dirty parchment as well as his own notes. "About that Victor, you won't be repeating this mess anytime soon. In fact the only reason I'm not giving you detention until seventh year is because you might just have helped open the door to a whole new branch of magical research."

"Regardless," he continued now looking at both of them directly. "No matter what else you've achieved in the process, the fact of the matter is that you've managed to blow up a good portion of the castle tonight, by yourselves and that should be punished appropriately."

"So here's the thing Victor, we all know by now that you're obviously very adept at making things explode. But what I'd really like to see, is how well you do the opposite. So your punishment will be to help repair the damage to the tower, and you'll do so without any foolish wand waving on your part."

"What? But Sir, that'll take ages, and I'm not a qualified mason anyway, I wouldn't know were to start."

"I'm sure you'll rise to the occasion, just like you always do."

"Did you see what happened to the Slytherin tower last night?"

"I sure did, it was a huge dragon, that crashed into it."

"No you idiot, it exploded from the inside and anyway it was Doom that blew it up."

"Nope it was a dragon, one of my mates said so."

"Did he see the dragon himself"

"Well, he didn't exactly say that he saw it…"

"If you ask me, I find it easier to believe it was Doom than a dragon. A dragon wouldn't be able to slip past Dumbledore, Doom on the other hand."

The large gap on the side of the tower was all that the Hogwarts student were talking about the next morning. Including four first year boys who were admiring the level of destruction and mayhem only Doom was capable of achieving.

For now at least. thought James Potter. He'd very soon show them all who was the true master of pranks at Hogwarts. He turned towards his friends and asked them. "So does anyone know where Victor is?" It'd be disappointing if he'd been expelled and he got to win the title by default.

"From what I've heard, still in the infirmary, he and Severus got caught up in that mess up there."

"Madam Pomfrey said that they'll be out by mid afternoon, tea-time at the latest." mentioned Sirius.

"This is going to be a tough act to follow guys."

Remus grabbed James by the shoulders and started shaking him in that universal gesture of someone who's just heard a friend say something absolutely crazy. "James, no! You're not thinking about blowing up another of the towers are you?!"

"Of course not, that's ridiculous!" he replied as he struggled against Remus' distressed hold of his shoulders. "However I've thought of something else we could do. Hear me out guys."

James voice dropped to a conspiratorial tone and motioned for all of his four other friends to form a huddle. "What if… instead of us blowing up one of the towers, we… and here's the brilliant part guys." James paused for a moment hoping to add a dramatic pause to his next words. "We, launched it into space?!"

Well that's one way of doing it that doesn't involve waving a wand. Thought Dumbledore when he saw what young Victor had cobbled together to fix the hole in the tower's wall.

He looked at young Severus, standing in the middle of the courtyard looking like some sort of strange cross between an armoured knight and a scaffold.

"How you doing in there Severus?"

"Like I have a bulldozer wrapped up around me."

"Alright then, everything seems to be working correctly. Just remember to press the big red button on the chest plate in case anything seems to go wrong. And report to me any problems you find."

"I can't see out of this stupid helmet."

"Here, let me adjust it for you." Victor picked up a rather large mallet and hit the helmet hard enough that the resulting ding carried all over the courtyard. "Is that better?"

"Actually yes, thank you."

"Okay, let's try this out, let's take it easy at first, just put one foot forward."

There was a noise as the motor on the back of the armor revved up and artificial muscle worked in tandem with pneumatic actuators welded to the outside of the suit of armour to reproduce the exact same movement Snape's legs were making.

"How was that?"

"Much better, it's a lot smoother now, it began moving almost at the same moment I did."

"It shouldn't be, almost, but I guess that's good enough for now. Try walking around a bit."

Snape did so, it was a clumsy walk inside the bulky suit of armour, specially with all the added bits on the outside. But compared to the trial run from a few minutes before he moved with the grace of a russian ballerina.

"This is great, I can actually bend my knees now."

"Great, try to pick up one of those stone blocks now. Let's see if we can actually make this pay off."

Snape walked towards the pile of stone neatly arranged by the Hogsmeade mason in the courtyard for them to carry to the tower room. He grabbed one with the large pincers Victor had welded to the gauntlets, and was surprised at how little effort it took to lift it.

"It's almost like I'm carrying nothing at all." Snape said with a note of amusement in his voice seeing how easily he was lifting the 400 pound square slab of granite.

"Right, let's start loading that pallet, with some luck we'll have all the stone up there by supper time." And with that Victor put his own helmet on and started working together with Snape moving granite slabs on the wooden platform.

Dumbledore watched as the two boys put half a dozen blocks of granite on the pallet, then started pulling on the rope attached to the pulley at the top of the tower.

"What on earth are they doing Albus?" Minerva McGonagall asked Dumbledore alarmed at what she was seeing, fearing yet another disaster in the making.

"Fixing their own mess. Without using any spells too."

"What do you mean no spells? I can see the runes from here."

"Well yes, but I told him he couldn't use his wand. And he hasn't. Runes yes, he's made extensive use of them and a few potions too. But he hasn't once used his wand in the making of this contraption."

"No wand? No wait, that's not important right now, Is that them wearing suits of armour? Wait a second are those suits of armour from the castle?"

"Indeed they are."

"Albus those suits of armours are centuries old!"

"And so dreary too. At least now they are good for something useful!"

"What in Merlin's name has he done to them?"

"Something young Victor came up with. From what I gather it's supposed to work like a sort of prosthetic crane. Something that lets them lift heavy loads with ease. I think he called it a suit of self-powered armour."

Last edited: Jan 30, 2019

Chapter 3.1

Astrobot said:

There is nothing stopping you from making all the sisters a few years younger. That or maybe she got hired as a teacher's assistant. That or you have andromeda get involved as she was the rebel of her family.

Click to expand…

Click to shrink…

You know what? I'm just going to run with that. I didn't really check with Lucius and put him in because I wanted to. I just got lucky that he was actually the right age (althought I might have half remembered something about him being with Snape at Hogwarts at some point, but I diggress). I'm just going to make Bella the youngest sister, just because.

Anyway, here's a snippet of Chapter 3, which will be more focused on the marauders.

Enjoy.

James Potter sat in deep concentration, contemplating the importance of the decision he had to make.

Should he have have rhubarb pie or spotted dick for dessert?

When you're eleven and a half years old, dessert is a very important matter.

He looked around the Gryffindor table in the great hall to check on what the rest of his mates had decided on. Sirius was wolfing down a treacle tart, Peter was joyfully nibbling on a large piece of fudge, while Remus was; peeling an orange?! What was wrong with the guy and his annoying tendency to eat fresh fruit instead of sugar laden pastries?

In the end he chose a custard tart, he was about to start on it when he noticed Lily Evans walking towards them. He made a face, Lily was a busybody and at eleven, James was still only starting to shed off his feelings about all things girly being icky, and doing so with considerable reluctance as well. In fact, it had become a mental war of attrition, in which his childhood preconceptions had garrisoned themselves and were viciously fighting a siege from the more adolescent parts of his brain, and other body parts.

In fact, he'd been so busy mentally listing all the ways in which girls were boring, that he hadn't noticed how he'd stopped slouching in his seat and was now sitting ramrod straight while wiping away any custard around his mouth.

"So," she said sitting down on the bench next to Remus. "I heard you boys got in trouble this afternoon."

"Hardly," replied James before Remus could, with a despondent face. "McGonagall caught us trying to sneak into the Slytherin common room, but she forgot about us the instant she heard that Victor was up to something in the courtyard."

"Oh yeah, the construction robots. Only it wasn't robots, it was Victor and Severus wearing suits of armour, with an engine on the back. That was so cool!"

"It's just a load of animated metal. It's not that impressive." James mumbled with a grimace, and looked away towards the Slytherin table. Victor was finishing a sandwich, while writing something down on a muggle style notebook. Severus was slowly eating with a distant glazed look in his eyes.

Of course it had been cool, even he had thought so, so why was he suddenly saying it wasn't and why did he care that Lily thought so?

"It is if you don't use a wand." Lily argued back, then turned her attention back to Remus. "Anyway that's not important, what I wanted to ask is what were you guys doing, trying to sneak into… oh, oh dear, he's done it again. Excuse me for a second James."

Lily got off the bench and walked straight towards the Slytherin table and Severus Snape who was snoring with his face on the mashed potatoes. While the rest of the Slytherin table broke into raucous laughter along with some of the others, Lily woke him up by gently shaking his shoulders and used her hankie to wipe his the still dazed Snape's face clean of gravy, peas and mashed potato.

"It must be exhausting, having to keep up with Victor." Remus said as he watched Lily lick her handkerchief, and rub vigorously Severus' cheeks with it.

"What I want to know," Sirius said in between gulps of his second treacle tart serving. "Is how does Victor keep it up. I mean, when does the smug prick sleep himself?"

"He does drink a lot of coffee." Remus replied, while James took advantage of his momentary distraction to pour treacle all over his now peeled and carefully arranged orange.

Snape was now fully awake and blushing furiously as he tried to pry Lily's handkerchief away from his face, stammering that he was alright. Lily apparently satisfied with Snape's current level of hygiene, put away her handkerchief, and walked back to the Gryffindor table after saying something else to Severus.

There was another commotion at the Slytherin table and they all looked up to see Narcissa Black, smirk firmly set on her face, watch her younger sister Bellatrix say something in an extremely agitated tone before suddenly standing up from the bench and leaving the great hall in a hurry with her face flushed a crimson colour.

"Guys we need to up our game. We can't have Doom hogging all the glory we must to stop him!"

"What glory? They both have detention until Christmas and cost their house 500 points, each. They're basically in the negatives now. And what I need is for you to stop putting sugar on everything I eat. I told you I don't like overly sweet stuff." Remus said as he started peeling another orange.

"That's unnatural if you ask me. Plus Malfoy would have them flogged if he could get away with it. He makes the house cup a personal thing." He said as he chomped down on Remus' discarded orange. "Actually this is delish," he said as he grabbed another orange wedge.

"Well that was weird!" said Lily as she reached her Gryffindor classmates "Bellatrix just told off her sister for; and I quote 'Daring to suggest I'd like a stupid half-blood with piercing brown eyes, not that I know what colour his eyes are, shut up!' before getting up and leaving. Anyway back on track, what were you guys doing, trying to get to the Slytherin common room?"

She was addressing Remus this time as well, but once again James jumped to answer. "Oh nothing really, we were just curious on how Victor was doing, what with all the recent excitement with the tower blowing up, him being in the infirmary, and what all the drilling and hammering noise Slytherins' were complaining had kept them awake last night was."

"Suuure."

"Okay, we were going to hex their furniture, Remus found this totally brilliant spell that you can put on a chair, and when you sit in it, it's like the worst itching powder you've ever felt, and it also sticks you to the chair so you can't…"

"Right, stop right there, I don't want to know anything more." Said Lily holding her hand out before her. "I just wanted to warn you, you're not the only ones who want to get back at Victor, a small group of Hufflepuffs tried to do the same thing earlier today, probably for what happened at Herbology last week. But Victor had tampered with the security."

"I know, we all know, Slughorn was in the infirmary with second degree burns. He also told Victor to take the whole thing down."

"Well apparently he thought that take it down meant changing the weapons system from lethal to non lethal. They all got sent to the infirmary slimed all over."

"Slimed?"

"You remember that potion of passivity we did two weeks ago?"

"The one that's supposed to do absolutely nothing, and makes you do nothing as well?"

"That one, he made it into a slime that you don't have to drink, just rub it over exposed skin and before you know it, you're on the floor unable to do anything at all but complain about how pointless everything is."

"That doesn't sound too bad."

"I wasn't finished, he'd mixed it with essence of skunk."

"Oh, that does sound bad."

"Yes, they're all still soaking in tomato juice. Just thought I'd give you guys a heads up before anything bad happens to any of you." He slowly glanced over the four boys before finally setting her eyes on Remus. "Try to keep these idiots from getting in too much trouble."

"I'll do what I can, but I can't do miracles." chuckled Remus.

"Just take care of yourselves, ok?"

As she left Sirius turned towards Remus, with a quizzical look. "I thought she didn't like us."

"She doesn't like people getting into trouble. She's got nothing against us. Well maybe against Peter"

"Me? What did I ever do to her?"

"They did find you hiding in the girls' changing room." Said Sirius with a smirk.

"Only because you guys told me to!"

"We didn't think you'd actually go for it," replied Remus in a calm voice. Peter you need to stand up for yourself. And learn to say no to obviously stupid idea…"

"I've got it, I know what we can do!" interrupted James.

"Here we go again." said Remus as he took a bite off his orange.

Last edited: Mar 26, 2020

Chapter 3.2

Another short snippet.

Enjoy.

"I'm actually surprised you're not complaining about this." said Sirius.

"Actually, and I will deny ever saying this, I think it's a pretty fun idea." answered Remus. "And it gives me a chance to try out the colour changing charms we just learned."

"Right so what we need is something to practice on. Sirius let me stand on your shoulders."

"What why me?"

"You're the most stocky of all us, Remus is too lanky and Peter is too fat."

"Hey!"

"No offense mate, but you do have a bit of a gut."

"No I mean why do you have to stand on top of me. Why can't I be the one on top?"

"Because I'm too frail to support your massive manly muscles, now shut up and get down!"

Sirius knew that James was being sarcastic but he was unable to keep himself from flexing his arms. Behind him, both Peter and Remus had sudden unexplained bouts of coughing.

Blushing slightly, he let James climb on his shoulders so that he could reach up to the top of the tapestry and take it off the wall.

"Got it! Back to base team."

"You mean the common room?" asked Remus?

"Yes, Peter take a note, we need a secret base where we can scheme away from prying eyes. And it must be cooler than Victor's.

"Hum, I don't have a quill."

"Never mind then."

They made their way back to the common room with Sirius carrying the rolled up tapestry, after having lost at rock paper scissors, under cover of the invisibility cloak.

Sirius yawned so wide Remus thought it a miracle his jaw wasn't dislocated in the process.

"Stop yawning like that Sirius, you're going to make me start too." In truth, he needed little incentive to do so, having spent most of last night's awake, even James' manic energy was almost depleted.

But they'd done done it, they'd managed to come up with a great prank that would be the talk of the school. Remus was quite pleased with himself and his friends. The prank was, funny, notorious and most importantly (to him at least), quite harmless, except to propriety. It'd been hard work, and there had been a couple of roadblocks and missteps on their progress. But they'd managed it.

They'd barely slept 2 hours, the last device had been placed at 5 am, early enough that not Even Filch would be doing rounds. They'd gone back to their bedrooms, collapsed on their beds, and threatened with unforgivable curses those who had woken them up so that they wouldn't miss breakfast.

And Binns droning wasn't certainly helping them stay awake, a couple of his fellow students had altogether given up and had their heads down on their open books, gently snoring away, Peter amongst them. He was sure Sirius was about to join them very soon. The one exception was James, who became more awake as the class went on.

"How much longer?"

"Twenty more minutes, just be patient, there's only a little more left."

"Binns isn't making it easy."

Remus had to agree, Binns could make the bloodiest of magical battles sound as exciting as checkbook balancing.

"You think it'll work?" James asked for the thirteenth time.

"We tested it thoroughly last night. It'll work."

After what felt like an eternity, the bell indicating the end of the lesson rung throughout the castle, and James rushed outside the classroom, eager to see the results of their handywork.

Exactly forty seconds after the bell had stopped, a number of small devices detonated with tiny poof sound simultaneously all over the castle's corridor and covering everything, tapestries and students in glitter.

James rubbed his hands together, they'd worked hard last night to make an enchanted glitter, that upon falling on the castle tapestries, would change their colours into the most eye-watering, garish mess they could imagine, complete with polka dots and patchwork. He was particularly proud of the bit in which the house mottos changed into silly puns and even a few saucy jokes. That one had been his idea. As an added bonus, they'd noticed the glitter also worked on the school robes' fabric, so that everyone could join in on the fun.

When the glitter spread throughout the corridors there were a few ooohs and aaahs of appreciation, a few students pointed to the tapestries to remark on their sudden transformation, others shouted about how their own robes were turning into what looked basically like a clown costume.

But most of it was drowned out by the shouts of, "GET DOWN!" from the team of unspeakables running down the halls, carrying all sorts of weird and strange equipment. They pulled any kids within reach to the floor with them, as they dove to the ground, throwing shield spells to cover as many of them as possible.

Only two unspeakables remained standing, examining the glitter very carefully as if it were a dangerous cursed object. After a few minutes, they finally deemed it harmless and "just an idiot kid's colour charm prank,". They picked up their equipment, lots of which had to be levitated due to how bulky and heavy it was and resumed their frantic dash towards their original destination.

It was Remus who reacted first, grabbing an older kid by the elbow and asking him what on earth was going and why by Merlin's damp underpants there were unspeakables in the castle. James was shocked, he hadn't thought it possible for Remus to swear like that.

"What do you think happened?" the third year asked back, he didn't wait for Remus to reply before saying, "Doom of course."

The four boys looked at each other before running in pursuit of the unspeakables. Along the way, James couldn't help but feel a bit annoyed at how few people took notice of their handywork.

Last edited: Feb 5, 2019

Chapter 3.3

I was pondering wether to update the former post or create a new one, since I don't really like the story posts to be this short.

In the end I've decided to post this as a new snippet following the former one, it just felt wrong to me to leave it like that.

Enjoy.

There was a huge crowd gathered outside the corridor in front of the the charms classroom, were Slytherins and Ravenclaws had been having a joint lesson.

One of the unspeakables was warning all the students rubbernecking to stay behind the safety line. Professor McGonagall was talking to another unspeakable holding a clipboard or at least the unspeakable was trying to talk to her, because she was holding her face with her hands.

Every single Ravenclaw and Slytherin first year who had been attending charms had been lined up in a huge queue. A queue that ended at a folding screen. Behind which the students had a small measure of privacy where they could take their clothes off. They were then given a hospital robe and led into a large baroque wooden wardrobe with a very strange set of dials and knobs on the side.

What was most notable about the students in the line was that every single one of them was a most peculiar colour. And peculiar in this particular case meant that they were every colour you could think of, and some that you couldn't. Colours that were constantly changing at random, without any apparent rhyme or reason. Sometimes their skin would be blue, others red, or purple, other times they would glow with an eerie blue light, others they would be blobs of different shades of red. In some extreme cases they would disappear entirely, and in others, they would become see-through. At one point a boy's clothes just seemed to disappear entirely, the same thing also happened to a girl but in her case, not only her clothes but everything else on her seemed to disappear except for her bones. When one of the unspeakables noticed this, the girl was immediately moved to the start of the queue.

Lily Evans who later became a much sought after sought of information, or outright gossip, as the only Gryffindor past the security line, was also there, holding Snape's hand. She'd worked her way to the front by elbowing people out of their way and had even stood up to the unspeakable guarding the line with a fury such as hell hath none. Snape who'd noticed her had asked if she could stay and the unspeakable had agreed. Snape had apparently become a skeleton twice already and was still waiting to be sent up to the beginning of the queue, so the unspeakable thought a friendly face might calm the poor frightened kid.

Victor Von Doom, who, along with the charms professor, was afflicted by the same condition as his fellow students was arguing very loudly with two other unspeakables, headmaster Dumbledore and professor Tesseract about the correct course of action to take.

"No, no, what we have here is a case of thaumic saturation of their spiritual auras, that's randomly changing the wavelength of the electromagnetic radiation entering it. That's why it keeps cycling through infrared, visible light, ultraviolet, and when they're see-through, it's because of X-rays. What we need to do is syphon away the excess thaumic charge. That way the spell is no longer supercharged and can be dispelled normally. Now what we need is a five pointed binding ritual set to null, with thaumaturgical sinks on every point, lead spikes pounded into the ground to bleed the excess thaums should do the trick and…"

"Kid, what are you going on about, what's all this about electro-magnums and thaums?" asked one unspeakable

"Well the thaum is a theoretical elementary particle of all magic. Well theoretical no long…" said Professor Tesseract.

"I know what the thaum is," interrupted the other unspeakable, "it's an arithmancer's pipe dream, it doesn't exist other than as a justification for research grant requests."

"I assure you gentlemen," said Dumbledore in a frosty voice "the thaum is very real." The faces of the unspeakables were completely hidden by their cowls, but the way they suddenly stood up straight at attention made obvious that they had no intention to argue with him. Heck, he'd probably taught them at some point.

"Wait proff… headmaster Dumbledore, you mean you've managed to obtain hard evidence of the thaum?"

"Not me, him." he said pointing at Victor.

"Him? But he's only, what 11? 12 at most. Kid what by Merlin's sagg… by Merlin's beard went on in there?"

"I've been trying to tell you, But you people think the electromagnetic spectrum is a type of broom. Look we were going over colour changing charms, and I wondered, is it a pigmentation change in the charmed object, or is it perhaps something that affects the light itself. So I tried to cast the charm at a section of empty air."

"That wouldn't cause a whole classroom to start turning every single color at random. It'd just create a small puff of coloured smoke before disappearing."

"Well yes, that is indeed what happened the first time, but the second, well I gave the spell a bit more oomph."

There was a very awkward pause. In the background somebody could be heard shouting 'these readings make no sense'.

After a while, Dumbledore took off his half moon spectacles and pinching the bridge of his nose asked. "Victor, what exactly did you do?"

Well sir, this whole field of thaumaturgical-physics is so interesting that I couldn't just quit it like that could I? So I devised a bunch of harmless experiments. Did you know that you can store a thaumic charge in a bronze container?

"No, No I did not." Dumbledore had a slight suspicion where this was going.

"Well, you can, it doesn't last for very long, but if you use carefully arranged electrum wires, it is possible to discharge that charge into a wand and… wait, how long has that girl been glowing green for?"

They all turned to look at a tiny Ravenclaw girl with dark hair, who was looking all the worse for wear and had a very sick look upon her face, even accounting for all green glow. The question was relayed to one of the unspeakables in charge of the queue.

"I don't know," he told them, "couple of minutes at least. Why is it bad? We weren't told anything about green glow being ba…"

He was interrupted by the sudden sound of over-stressed fabric being torn to shreds, along by a guttural growl of pain and rage.

"Oh dear." said Victor.

"Did she just grow 6 inches?!"

"More like 10, she's crouching."

"Should we do something?"

"PAULA SMASH SQUISHY WIZARDS!"

"Yes, I suggest running." Said the unspeakable.

"Victor." said Dumbledore putting a hand on the boy's shoulder, who, even through all the different hues he was currently cycling through, had somehow managed to pale a little. "This one's all yours."

Last edited: Feb 2, 2019

Chapter 3.4

Here's the marauders second attempt at earning their prankster wings.

Enjoy.

"Did you see that fight between Doom and that green troll-lady?"

"That wasn't a troll."

"I sure did, it was AWESOME!"

"Is that the only thing you Gryffindors can think? Someone could have been hurt."

"This from the girl screaming, 'rip 'is darn 'ead off!' "

"Okay, I'll admit I got a bit over-excited there. But you weren't with Doom in that herbology class so don't judge me!"

"I still don't know what half the spells he used were."

"Not that they did him much good, they mostly bounced off her."

"I don't think I've ever seen anyone run that fast!"

"And then, when he summoned that weird suit of armour, and tried to fight with the monster-lady."

"Not a monster either."

"Oh man that was awesome, and scary too, he got banged up pretty bad."

"One punch, and she threw him out the window, that must have hurt."

"Can't believe he got up from that, almost made me feel sorry for him."

"And I can't believe he planned it that way. He landed right next to that pentagram Snape and Evans had made."

"Yeah, and then managed to hold her just for long enough for the thing to do its work. Mind you he didn't come clean out of it."

"She basically ripped the helmet off his head."

"I saw the breastplate, it was all caved in."

"You know, I saw that too, and there was something odd about the way she was bear-hugging him."

"Where's Victor now?"

"Still in the infirmary, from what I hear he got some really nasty bruises and a couple of broken ribs. And a bunch of other things"

"But madam Pomfrey can heal those in a jiffy."

"Apparently, they're scared that what Victor did yesterday might still interfere with healing spells, and they're letting him heal naturally until they can be sure."

"five sickles say they're doing it on purpose."

"That's a sucker's bet, and ouch, now I actually feel sorry for the guy."

"What was that monster lady anyway, and why was she half naked?"

"That's what I've been telling you, it wasn't a monster, it was Paula Bracegirdle. She got like that after Doom cast her mega-colour charm in the classroom."

"And the naked part?"

"That, I have no idea."

"Hey did you guys notice the thing with the tapestries?"

"The what?"

"Someone changed the colours for half the castle's tapestries, even changed the house mottos into lame puns. And apparently, was also responsible for our school robes turning into clown costumes."

"Oh, I thought that was a side-effect from Victor's spell."

"Ha, no way, that was too harmless to have been Victor's handywork."

"Well, I still think he was involved somehow."

As the large group of third years moved past the courtyard bench, the sound of their conversation faded away so that the four boys sitting on it couldn't hear them anymore. Remus Lupin looked at his friend sitting next to him.

"Jame's relax, stop grinding your teeth, you'll break a tooth."

James Potter unclenched his jaw, and the sudden prickling sensation flooding it made him realize just how hard he'd been grinding his teeth.. He looked at his friend with an embarrassed look in his eyes.

Remus just smiled and took a bite of his sandwich. It was a beautiful day. "Don't worry about it" he said between mouthfuls, "there's always next time."

"What do you mean next time, this was our chance, and it was absolutely great, it was perfect, and Doom stole it from under our feet."

"James, the guy got the ministry involved, got into a fight to the death with a green monster lady, and is now in the infirmary, nursing broken ribs and probably the worst headache ever, without healing magic. I don't think he was trying to outprank us."

"Remus stop, I know you're trying to help, but everything you said just sounds amazing." interjected Sirius.

Lupin went back to his sandwich mumbling something about 'crazy Gryffindors'. There was an awkward silence until Peter cleared his throat."

"So uhmm, that green monster lady…"

"Yes, what about her?" asked Sirius.

"Well, what did you think?"

It should be noted at this point that almost no male student, with a few exceptions, had been able to recognize the torn rags as Ravenclaw robes. Partly, because they were extremely damaged and shredded, almost beyond recognition. But mostly, because of the huge amounts of shapely curves and very attractive, if admittedly green, patches of skin they left exposed. The jade amazon, as she had been named by a poetically minded sixth year, who felt that referring to her as a troll just would not do, stirred in the male student body, again with a few exceptions, a most fascinating mixture of feelings and sensations. Feelings, of the type that are pictured in certain genres of french cinema, the kind with subtitles. And which are probably best exemplified, by three simple french words.

"Oh là là!" said Sirius blushing.

"Yes, oh là là, indeed." agreed Remus, nodding for emphasis.

"I mean… " insisted Peter, who had never even heard of french cinema, "they were almost spilling, these great huge…"

"Yes thank you Peter." Remus interrupted before things got out of hand and required a PG-13 rating. "So anyone knows what's going to happen to Victor?"

"Well," said James, "from what my dad tells me, the ministry has confiscated that battery of his and is going nuts over it. Some of the unspeakables want to relocate the whole charms classroom to the ministry. As for Dumbledore, apparently, since he thinks more detention is pointless, he's planning on having a staff meeting on how to best punish him. I hear they've put up suggestion boxes."

"I thought that letting him heal without magic was the punishment."

"Nah, just a stalling tactic, on the other hand, since those pentagrams of his did actually work in breaking that multi-coloured curse, they will have to be a bit more lenient."

There was another lengthy pause which Sirius broke by asking, "so what do we do now?"

"Now," replied James "we go to herbology."

It was right after lunch, that three bored boys managed to find themselves some temporary entertainment, by watching a prefect lead a fourth year girl to the infirmary. Her face was covered in brown and black fur markings resembling a tabby cat, and whiskers sprouted from each cheek.

"You know, this is going to sound weird, but watching a regular run-of-the-mill magical mishap that doesn't involve dangerous explosions, or green women punching holes in foot-thick stone walls, actually feels reassuring. I'm not sure why."

"Maybe, because it makes you feel as if the world has not gone completely insane yet?" asked Sirius.

"Yes, that's probably it."

"I'm pretty sure she must have botched an animagus transformation." Commented James. "Still, it must be a pretty cool thing, to see, hear and smell, with an animal's senses. Isn't that right Remus?"

"What? Why are you asking me? How should I know, or rather, I've no idea what you're talking about."

"Sure mate, sure."

Another boy approached the trio, which meant that Peter was done scavenging for information. The other boys had soon found out that people let their tongues loose around Peter, mostly because of how unassuming and harmless he looked. It was impossible to imagine Peter using anything they said against them.

"Right, so apparently she was getting nowhere with her animagus transformation, and so, she decided to try a shortcut."

"Spirit Animal Potion?" asked Remus.

"Yes, exactly, and one that she'd made herself, it didn't turn out very well."

"All that fur suddenly growing all over the face. I bet it's really itchy." said Sirius.

"It really is, not that I'd know anything about that of course."

James deadpan face did not quite hide the smirk on his face, "Right you are Remus."

"And anyway, when will people learn," continued Remus, avid to change the subject "spirit animal potion is not a special key to unlock your animagus transformation, it's just a potion that gives you certain animal traits based on your character and personality, and it's only temporary at best."

"Is that so?" asked James.

"Yes, I read it in a book."

"Hmmm." The other three boys all turned to look at their de facto leader. All three of them could almost see the gears grinding away in James head. It was fascinating to watch.

"Gentlemen," he said after a few moments "I have an idea."

"Right, so now that we've got our extra-strong grade potion, there's only the little problem of how do we get people to drink it, any ideas?" Asked James Potter to his three conspirators.

"How about the pumpkin juice?" suggested Sirius?

Remus shook his head "Wouldn't work," he said, "the sugar would just neutralize the worm-warts and onion. Plus we'd have to get past the house elves in the kitchens."

Sirius frowned, "so what can we mix it with?" he asked.

"Water basically, a few drops in a glass should be enough."

"How about that spigot, in the courtyard, next to the quidditch field?" asked Peter.

Remus thought about it for a moment, "That could work, except…"

"What?" asked James.

"How do we get the potion in the pipes in the first place? I don't know if you've noticed, but that spigot comes out of stone."

"There must be a pipe or a valve somewhere."

"Sure, but do any of you know anything about plumbing?"

There was a pause while everyone remained silent.

James' face lit up with the excitement of an idea, "Wait," he said "maybe that tap in the courtyard is a no-go, but what about the ones in changing rooms for the quidditch teams?"

Anabelle Butterleaf tried to console her best friend and member of the Hufflepuff quidditch team, Patricia Woolsey, who was weeping well into her third handkerchief, personally she didn't think it was that bad, and it'd wear off, probably.

"I look like, like something out of a cartoon." she said between sobs.

"Come on, it's not that bad, you got these cute ears on top of your skull, and the twitchy nose is a bit funny, it's all actually kind of cute. If you play your cards right, you could even get the right sort of attention from a few guys."

Patricia gave her best friend a scathing look, "Ana, I have a fox tail sticking out of my butt, everyone is going to be making foxy lady jokes until seven year. Maybe even beyond that."

Anabelle sighed, "Look it could always be worse, at least you got a cute animal, Harrison got an elephant seal's nose. Travis got a vulture's neck and beak, Edwards got elephant ears and tusks and the less said about the Slytherin team the better." she shuddered involuntarily at the memory of so many segmented body parts.

"Ha! I always knew that Crabbe was a cockroach, now we have proof"

"He claims those are beetle bits stuck to him."

"Of course he does, but we know, yes we all know."

"Besides, it's not that big deal, they're saying it's an animal spirit potion, so it should disappear by itself in a few days at most." She gently took the wet handkerchief away from her friend's hands and taking a clean one, started to dab away at her tear-stained cheeks. "Besides, you really should count your blessings, it could always be worse, a lot worse. I mean, just look at the poor suckers who had transfiguration with Doom today."

Minerva McGonagall was wondering if they needed a new transfiguration teacher at Beauxbatons, or a janitor, right now she'd even settle for a job scrubbing toilets, by hand.

She looked at the utterly horrific menagerie of slimy, worm-like, and other more exotic and chitinous creatures that had become the Hogwarts' infirmary. She was specially more horrified by the fact that many of the nightmarish creatures, had only a few hours before been her first year joint Slytherin-Hufflepuff transfiguration class. Well at least there weren't that many victims among Hufflepuff students. He'd have to give Pomona a list of names for her to keep an eye on those.

Young Rowan Bochanan had somehow turned into a stylish crocodile handbag, and despite having no mouth to communicate, had managed to let it be known that he was in no real hurry to be turned back. Instead he insisted on being carried around by any of the fourth year girls. How any of that worked, she didn't want to think too much about it, for her sanity's sake.

One morning, just one morning was all Victor Von Doom had needed to spread new chaos. He hadn't been out of the infirmary no more than a few hours and already he was wreaking havoc. After being bedridden for nearly a week, Poppy had finally relented and used healing magic on Victor's injuries. Partly, because her conscience told her it was the right thing, and partly, because she was afraid that the increasingly frustrated boy would attempt to heal himself.

She thought back about what had just happened a few hours ago. Morphogenic fields were a deviously difficult area of magic, nasty NEWT level stuff, and Victor was already experimenting with it on his first year. What on earth had Victor been thinking when he tried to do this?

"And with a final upwards swing of your wand you should see it acquire the shiny gloss of fine china. After which you will have succeeded into turning your slug into a ceramic one. Once that is done, we will be changing them back again. Any questions?"

Victor wasn't listening, he'd changed the slug in his desk into a ceramic one and back again three times already. Next to him, Severus had struggled with some of the final wand flourishes and his slug had turned into baked clay without any shine. He was already working to undo the transformation and try again.

Victor was unimpressed with the lesson, and a bit bored. He'd told Severus the small details he'd gotten wrong, then criticized the lesson planning. He maintained that it'd be much more useful if McGonagall actually explained the underlying principles of the transfiguration. That way, instead of just mimicking verbatim everything she'd done, everyone could figure out what was happening with the slug and devise their own wand-work. Severus had just shrugged and changed his expression from frown to scowl, which basically meant that he was concentrating.

He sighed and took out a quill and his notebook, he'd been reading up on morphic resonance and morphogenic field theory, a fascinating venue of research with amazing potential. And here he was in transfiguration class with a live slug and a question itching in the back of his brain. Do creatures like slugs have anything approaching a personality of any sort? Well he was about to find out.

He began to scribble on the parchment. A transmutation circle designed to search for the most prominent character traits and amplify their effect on that creature's morphic field by an order of magnitude. Yes, he saw the spell begin to take form before his very eyes.

Of course he needed to make sure it was safe, the prospect of accruing more detention didn't particularly appeal to him. So he installed a safeguard in the spell so that it would only target the slug. To do this, Victor chose its most prominent feature.

On hindsight, designing the spell so that it'd search for and alter the morphogenic field of only slimy creatures, in a classroom full of Slytherins, had probably been a bad idea.

There it is I hope you've liked it.

I'm feeling a bit drained so I'll be taking a short break before tackling the last and final part of this chapter.

Oh and before any of you decry me over the french cinema bit, it's more of a homage.

Last edited: Feb 27, 2019

Chapter 3.5

ARISE!

Well, If you were hoping for a rather large post, I'm afraid you'll be disappointed, this is just a snippet to let everyone know that I'm still working on the story.

As for where or what I have been doing? Well let me just say that last week I discovered Fate GO.

It's consumed me.

Anyways snippet time.

The next day there was a lot of talk throughout the castle about what had happened at the Slytherin first year transfiguration class, And the next day and even into next week. In fact the incident became the sort of conversation topic that would still be spoken about years afterwards. The amount of slime, mucus, segmented body parts and black chitin became the talk of horrified yet fascinated dinner conversations.

Its influence spread even beyond the purely magical community. Of particular interest was the case of a seventh year who after graduation, travelled Europe and befriended a brilliant if strange Swiss artist who used the tale of this particular magical mishap as inspiration for particularly disturbing pieces of art, which would later influence muggle pop culture for decades thanks to his involvement in the design of the monster from a certain famous horror movie.

But currently, people were talking about the transformations themselves, many ravenclaws counted their blessings, a few Gryffindors felt dejected at having missed the opportunity, to find out what it'd be like to have animal body parts. Hufflepuffs just huffed in annoyance. Most students however felt validated about the fact that yes, they now had undeniable evidence that many of the Slytherins first years were indeed slimy gits. However most topics of conversations centered on those who'd received only glancing hits from the spell and suffered mild transformations.

Snape and Doom had been among those, which had prompted him to quickly state that the only reason he'd suffered any effects from the spell, was because he'd been standing at ground zero. And it had overwhelmed his own morphogenic field. Some people found it funny, how he went onto convoluted explanations, when he could just easily have claimed that he'd botched the targeting spell. But Doom did NOT make mistakes. And anyone who suggested otherwise was likely to find himself taken out of the gene pool for peeing in it.

People were very careful NOT to talk about what had happened to the fourth year who had casually called him a mudblood at the beginning of the school term. There was absolutely no evidence linking him to any of it of course, but everybody knew nonetheless. The infamous meatball incident was something no one spoke about, except in hushed tones, usually followed by the words, 'shut up!'

As for what had happened to those two. Well, Snape's arms had become a pair of fully functional bat wings, capable of flight. It had taken him a whole 30 seconds before he found that last bit out, by jumping out of the nearest window. He'd then spent the rest of the afternoon either circling the castle's towers or perched on the gargoyles, practicing overly dramatic, brooding poses. The effect had been somewhat spoiled by the fact that he was trying to brood, not in a dark and stormy night, but in a surprisingly sunny and bright afternoon. He'd only agreed to come down when he'd been warned that, due to the unstable nature of the spell, they could not predict when its effects would disappear. And he could very well lose his newfound flight capability while in midair. They'd all agreed that that, would be very bad indeed.

As for Victor, his own transformation had been both more subtle, and thus, according to some, more terrifying. His skin had turned a grey leaden colour, and become tough and leathery, except for the bits at the joints. Making him resemble a man wearing armour. The worst part though, had been his face, the skin had shifted and thickened, becoming tough and rigid until it formed a fearsome mask. Tendrils of hardened skin had grown over his lips in a criss-crossing pattern, that effectively hid his mouth, but were still flexible enough to let him speak. And all over his face, little pimples had appeared, regular, evenly spaced out and forming straight lines, in a way that that some said, looked like rivets.

Victor had been unfazed by his own transformation, he'd taken one look at himself, shrugged, chalked this one up to 'morphic resonance', whatever that meant, and started pestering Madam Pomfrey about letting him help with the current crisis. At first she'd agreed, after Victor had said that he was intent on 'clearing up his own mess'. But had been thrown out of the infirmary when he'd been found taking samples for some of his fellow student patients.

He'd come through however, working together with professors McGonagall and Slughorn. Since morphogenic fields were resilient things, they'd come to the conclusion that, with the exception of a few cases of chthonic horror, they would eventually reassert themselves to their natural state and dispel the transformations. A little prodding might be required for the more heavily transformed ones, but after giving the professors his notes, Slughorn had managed to work out a potion to rebalance those morphogenic fields.

And so life at Hogwarts returned to something with a passing semblance of normalcy after the 'eldritch worms' incident, as Victor was kept occupied with supervised detention everyday after it. Although never more than one afternoon with any one professor. In order to avoid a repeat of that time a staff member had turned up at Dumbledore's office crying and claiming they had decided to give up both teaching and magic, to become a muggle turnip farmer.

James Potter let his head fall with a thud on top of the open book. "Ugh, this is so boring."

"I'll agree that the history of Roman magicks is not a fascinating subject. But I didn't see you complain this much when we were researching the animal spirit potion, and that book was drier than a kipper, wrapped in salt and left in the desert." remarked Remus.

"That was different, we had a goal with that, but this. Who cares about what effect the gradual substitution of celtic druid rituals, for roman ones, had on the magical community of the time?"

Sirius suddenly cut in the conversation and said, "Well I'm sure people back then cared, since it meant a lot less druids demanding blood sacrifices."

"You actually were paying attention during Binn's class?" aske James, while giving Sirius a scathing look, attempting to convey his full disgust at this betrayal from a close friend.

"No, but Remus lent me his notes."

"Grmblffrgh" he said with admirable verbosity.

Remus sighed, pushing aside his books and essay to center his attention on his friend. "This is isn't about Binn's class being unbearably boring." It was not a question, but a statement of fact.

It took some time for James to reply. When he finally did so, it was with a clear tone of resignation in his voice "No, no it isn't."

"Thought as much, look if it's any consolation, it's been more than a week and the Slytherin quidditch team still wants to murder whoever was responsible."

"Yeah, there's that." James said, before adding in a despondent tone of voice, "On the other hand Patricia Woolsey would probably thank us. I heard she got a boyfriend out of the whole thing."

"That is a bit disturbing." Interjected Sirius.

"Besides, no one cared, what's a couple of beaks and muzzles over a whole classroom full of leech like monstrosities?"

Remus, always the straight man, felt the need to correct his friend, "it wasn't a whole classroom James."

"I know, but what it lacked in numbers it more than made up for sheer grossness."

"It wasn't all gross," argued Sirius.

"I hear Rowan's kind of been adopted by the fifth year girls. That counts as gross in my book"

"You're right I stand corrected," conceded Sirius.

James then closed his book with a slam, startling Peter who had been nibbling on a cracker. "Anyways that's enough ancient history for today, let's head for the great hall, I'm starving."

So a couple of things. First, a warning. What you've just read is a preliminary draft prone to changes down the line as I develop more of the final act of this chapter.

Thing is I've got a bunch of ideas on what I want to write, but I'm finding it hard to thread them all together in a satisfying way.

Thus the snippet, I wanted to bring attention to the fact that I'm still looking for a beta-reader/editor to bounce ideas off and who can tell me what works and what doesn't. And I'm hoping that someone will step forth and lend the helping hand I so desperately need.

As always, I hope you enjoyed it, critiques and comments are welcome

Last edited: Feb 26, 2019

Chapter 3.6

I AM BACK BIATCHEEEES!

So sorry for disappearing like that. I blame FGO and my extremely inconsistent, wishy-washy personality.

As most of you will undoubtedly have absolutely no idea about, I've actually been active in the forum recently, writing a Danmachi crossover fic. This was actually helpful for two reasons.

One: It was a relaxing writing exercise with very little pressure to it. I mean, it's Danmachi, so who cares? No matter what sort of crap I churned out, it couldn't be worse than the source material. Two: It got me back into a writing funk. And as such, I rolled up my sleeves and decided to finally finish the third and final misadventure of the marauders and the main worldbuilding chapter of this fic. Most of it was already done, I only needed the punchline which back in the day, I was stumped with. However this past week I tried looking at it from a different angle and it suddenly clicked. My main problem before was that I was over-complicating things. So I scrapped some of those ideas entirely and came up with something simpler, which I think works a lot better.

Again, sorry for the sudden departure. I hope you'll enjoy this.

"So… Victor's been keeping quiet lately…" said Remus off-handedly while scooping a large serving of mashed potatoes on his plate.

"They're keeping him busy, giving him detention every day, never more than one day with any teacher though, they're afraid he'll break them."

"Poor Mrs. Oizys," Sirius said in a somber tone, while gently shaking his head, "she was crying by the time class was over."

"Slughorn is both, expectant and terrified of his turn. The other day he told him to clean the cauldrons by hand, without using magic. Then when he wasn't looking, Victor concocted some kind of brew that literally ate away the grime at the bottom of the cauldron."

"Didn't he get even more detention for that? I mean, no magic also includes potions, right?" Asked Remus.

"He claims he didn't use any magic, just basic chemistry," James answered in between mouthfuls of toad in the hole, "anyways, he confiscates Victor's cleaning goo, then gets in contact with this friend of his. And before you know it; well my dad says that next week, Slughorn is launching a new cauldron cleaning product ' for the witch and wizard who finds household charms a chore'." He motioned over towards the staff table where Slughorn was using a yorkshire pudding as a gravy goblet. "So basically Dumbledore's got Victor working around the clock, hoping that if they keep him busy enough, and never let him go out of their sight, he won't get in trouble."

"I can't help but think that's not going to work." said Sirius.

"So does everybody else, but apparently the alternative is worse."

"What? What alternative." asked James with a puzzled look.

"Well," Remus stopped looking at the piece of lamb chop on his plate, to meet his friend's gaze, "haven't you thought it odd that no one has even brought up the idea of expelling Victor?".

"Maybe, I haven't really thought much about it. But now that you mention it…"

"Well, that's because if they throw him out, they're afraid you-know-who will offer to finish his education," supplied Remus as he finally bit down on the juicy meat.

Sirius gave Remus a confused look before asking, "who?"

"This… you know," there was an awkward pause as Remus struggled to say the next word, "this Voldemort guy."

"Oh, that you-know-who."

"Exactly," Remus said while stuffing his mouth full of mashed potatoes as if to wash the taste of the word from his mouth.

"I can see where they're coming from with… what was that?" James' expression changed mid-sentence, screwing itself in disgust.

"Oops sorry about that." whispered Peter, looking up with a guilty look from his beans on toast.

Remus reacted even more strongly, his eyes watering as he covered his nose with a napkin. "For goodness sake Peter, you already had beans for lunch." He tried to sound stern and disapproving, but it was spoiled by the fact that he was pinching his nose and talking through the cloth.

"Well I happen to like beans okay?" He said before he bit down on the piece of bread.

"Peter that is vile", James remarked half disgusted, half impressed by his little friend's flatulence, "now, do it again, but aim it at the slytherin table."

"Uhm, it doesn't work that way James. Look, I'm sorry, ok? I'll lay off the beans for a while." He put down the overly burdened piece of bread.

"Speaking of gas escaping, did you know I can belch the school hymn?" Sirius told his friends in an amused tone of voice.

"Really?" Remus tried hard not to feel impressed, but one of his eyebrows traitorously shot up his forehead.

"Yep, used to do it at the table, it made my mom really furious." Sirius was positively beaming. It was obvious that he was immensely proud of this particular ability.

"Bet it did. What do you think of that James? Oy, James?" James didn't reply and when his friends looked at him they noticed the way his face showed he was deep in thought.

"Oh dear." was all that Sirius could think to say.

"Gentlemen, I have an idea."

Four figures stood huddled together conspiratorially in a darkened room, they discussed things of great importance, after all, the title of 'Hogwarts greatest pranksters' was at stake.

"This is going to take a long time." Remus said, "we need to grow the beans themselves. That'll take at least two weeks."

"And we have to constantly care for them, without Sprout catching on what we're doing." remarked Sirius.

"And making Animus musicae is not easy. Not only is it a complicated potion, we need to instill a song in it."

James looked at his co-conspirators in the darkened room, or tried to, since in this darkness, he could barely see them. Plotting in the dark might be romantic and cool, but it was very inconvenient. He addressed a blacker patch of darkness before him. "The school hymn should do it, and Sirius can do it, He's got a lovely voice, I've heard him sing in the shower."

"And we need the ingredients. Which are only available in Slughorn's office," the same blob replied.

"Leave Slughorn to me. I'm sure he'll love having a Potter in that little club of his."

"And even if we manage to do this, there's the bit about managing to serve them, and getting someone to eat them."

A shorter and more rotund blob of darkness that was Peter, suddenly chimed in, "I think I can help with that, the house elves know me, I've been sneaking to the kitchens to get some food."

"Have you, really?" Sirius said, entirely unsurprised. After all, the evidence from his nightly snack runs was pretty obviously spread all around his bed.

"Yes, they're actually quite nice, I mean, they caught me right away, but instead of throwing me out, they offered me leftovers. They won't suspect me if I'm there."

"That's good enough, but we need to make sure there's beans on the menu though."

"Remus, beans are always on the menu." James said, smirking before realizing no one could tell. He was starting to question the wisdom of conspiring in darkness. He was starting to think that maybe it was one of those metaphorical things, or maybe just not total darkness. "Very well men we now have a plan of action and we've all got our objectives. And remember if any of us is discovered, protocol pinky swear goes into effect immediaaugh.. "

"What are you guys doing in here in the dark?" asked Lily Evans disrupting the boys' meeting with no appreciation for the secrecy or utmost importance of the meeting she was interrupting. James was just thankful she didn't mention his rather embarrassing squealing when she'd opened the door.

"We're scheming nefariously." said James, a second later with great gusto. Mostly because he had been looking for an opportunity to use the word 'nefarious' since he'd learned it last week. He was congratulating himself on this when a thought suddenly entered his mind, and before he could stop himself, his mouth was already saying things his brain had not approved and which, in hindsight, probably came from another body part. "Want to join our conspiracy? You can be our spy, we can make use of your feminine wiles." That was another word he had been looking for a chance to use, 'wiles'.

"No thanks, I'm just here to get something from professor Farnsworth's desk. You guys carry on with your nefariousness." She said as she retrieved the object in question. "And open the curtains before you leave, let some sunlight in." She said before slamming the door shut behind her and plunging the classroom into darkness once again.

"James did you just ask Lily Evans, Gryffindor's worst busybody, to join us in pranking the whole school?" Just before the door closed, James had noticed the look that Remus was giving him. It wouldn't have been out of place if he'd grown a second head that had suddenly started singing rock ballads.

"I know," James' mental gears went into overdrive until he came up with a satisfactory answer. "But I knew she'd say no, and this way, we get her off our backs. I mean, we offered her in, but she said no, so now she has no reason to pry into our business. It's called reverse headology." Yep, that seemed plausible enough. He was thankful for the darkness, so that no one could see his panicked face. Avid to change the topic before Remus could poke holes in his theory he looked in the general direction of Sirius and said. "Sirius, we really, really, need a secret base."

"I'll start looking." the boy replied as he walked very carefully towards the window to open the curtains.

"And make sure it has proper windows."

Days passed by, notorious for their absence of any Doom-related incidents. It seemed as if Dumbledore's 'Operation: Keep Victor too busy to get in trouble' was actually working. Some people even relaxed enough to stop attending the joint Slytherin lessons with hardhats and shielding talismans. While others just claimed it was the calm before the storm.

Meanwhile, operation 'Singing Skunk' was coming along quite nicely, especially since they realized they really needn't hide their work from the professors all that much. For one thing, they weren't Doom, and for another, they really weren't Doom (some staff had started double-checking, just to be sure). Sprout had caught them with the beanstalk seedling early on, and the worst she'd done was smack Sirius' hand away for holding the wrong fertilizer bottle. She'd actually been very helpful and given them a corner to work in the greenhouse. Sprout was actually beaming at having four first years interested in herbology, working on a project that involved boring old beans, instead of a: 'customs requisitioned strain of japanese strangling kudzu, that Doom had found when looking for something to do when he'd felt bored with my lesson'. Once, when she was helping them move the beanstalk to a larger pot, she mumbled something about how she still could feel the vines wrapping themselves around… at which point she went very quiet, gave the four boys a blank stare, and left.

As for the other part of the plan, Slughorn had been more than happy to welcome James into his little club of social climbers and hanger-ons. The Potter name was old money, as old as the Malfoys themselves, and it always paid to be in good graces with them. He'd practically given him the keys to the pantry when he casually mentioned that he was working on potions on his spare time, and given free access to all the inexpensive ingredients Slughorn had, and even a few of the not so cheap ones.

James found all this unwarranted trust a bit galling. He'd envisioned having to trick and cajole professors as he worked towards the completion of this awesome prank. But the simple fact that he was not, Victor Von Doom, instantly made the teaching staff trust him. He was just good old James Potter, another regular run of the mill kid.

He'd show them all.

It was three days before Christmas break, when operation 'singing skunk' was completed. Their beanstalk had grown nicely, large and healthy under their careful, tender care, and had absorbed the animus musicae potion with no ill effects at all. Although now whenever a breeze blew over its leaves, it whistled the school hymn.

They'd just gotten their first harvest of beans, and aided by the magical fertilizer, they'd gotten enough to fill a medium sized jar. Their plan was to mix them with the rest of the normal beans in the kitchen, giving anyone who ate them that night a random chance to eat some of their special ones. Of course, there was some concern if a few beans would be capable of achieving the desired effect. This was put to the test by putting a single one of their beans on one Peter's toast. 15 minutes later it had him locked in the toilet, giving a rather beautiful version of the school hymn, as played by a kazoo orchestra.

The rapid deployment of the gas was all due to Sirius, who had once attempted a similar feat at the family table, (minus the musical part) which had worked perfectly and had gotten him grounded for nearly two weeks.

Life at Hogwarts had gone back to normal, with only the usual minor accidents that usually revolved around botched attempts at getting rid of pimples, straightening of frizzy hair, and in one occasion, engorged testicles.

So everyone was caught completely by surprise when during the end of term feast, the Jack-o-lanterns attacked.

Albus Dumbledore looked at the aftermath of the battle, examining the wreckage that it had caused. He gazed upon the remains of the fallen littering the floor. He walked towards one of the corpses and kneeling down, touched its splattered remains with his finger, then brought it to his mouth.

"Hmmm, this is good produce," he said savouring the mushy stuff, "I think we could still get some mighty fine pies out of these."

"Albus," Minerva McGonagall said looking at the Hogwarts headmaster with incredulity, "that's disgusting, not to mention a potential health hazard!"

"Come on Minerva, it's just pumpkin."

"That until a few minutes ago was possessed!"

Dumbledore just shrugged, in his experience possessed vegetables were as edible as non-possessed ones. Not that he had a lot of experience in that matter, but then again, teaching Victor Von Doom was an education in and of itself.

He thought back to forty minutes ago, before this latest debacle had started.

Everything was going swimmingly, the end of term feast was proceeding without any incidents of note, except for a Gryffindor third year that had animated a gravy boat, which then had started pouring gravy on every single dish it came across no matter what it was. He'd also noticed how James Potter and his gang seemed to be uncharacteristically restless, but he didn't give it much thought. It was probably just them being excited at the prospect of going home tomorrow. Homesickness hit first years hardest of all.

He was more interested in what Doom was doing, to his surprise, Doom was simply enjoying his meal. The muggle notebook he always carried around was nowhere to be found. He was just eating and chatting with his partner in crime Severus, who didn't have his usual default expression of trying to dissuade Victor from some near suicidal scheme, but was animatedly talking with him. Dumbledore thought that maybe they were making plans for the holidays.

He smiled at that, Doom had inadvertently facilitated his own christmas planning. Particularly where Christmas gifts were concerned. Every single member of the staff was getting a bottle of extra high grade firewhisky. And a little box of hair-of-the-dog pills for the inevitable morning after.

He had almost convinced himself that it would be a peaceful evening, and was about to let his guard down when a floating armada of jack-o-lanterns entered the great hall and started raining ghostly fire on everyone.

"I was just trying to be helpful, I mean, we went through so many pumpkins last halloween, and every single one was made into a jack-o-lantern, so I thought, what if we could grow the pumpkins already carved? I honestly was just trying to earn back some trust with the faculty."

"Victor is that really all?"

"Well, the greenhouses were about the only place I wasn't banned from. And I was bored"

Dumbledore sighed under the thick oak table where he was taking cover from the floating evil faced pumpkins.

"How was I supposed to know that a lit jack-o-lantern worked as a simple ward against evil spirits, while an unlit one attracted them? I always thought they were just decorations."

"But just that wouldn't cause this!" Slughorn shouted, peeking from under the table and throwing a few defensive spells at the vegetable threat. "Usually the most you'd get from a possessed jack-o-lantern is a creepy laugh or some scary moans. But these are floating, are covered in Saint Elmo's fire and have those creepy tiny bodies made of vines coming from their stems." He ducked back under the table when some of the floating pumpkins turned their attention towards him and lobbed gobs of their pallid blue flame at him.

"Victor, what exactly did you do to the orchard pumpkins?"

The boy had the decency to look embarrassed for a moment, before the sheer pleasure of experimentation threw that feeling out the window as he started to explain his work.

"Well sir, there is this fascinating and revolutionary muggle field of study called genetics, and associated to it, there is a whole newly developed discipline called 'genetic engineering'." Victor then proceeded to describe in minute detail the intricacies of what he had done for the past month at the orchard, not noticing the sheer incredulity and bafflement that spread gradually on the faces of the staff.

"So let me get this straight," Dumbledore said, pinching the bridge of his nose and wondering what on earth a chromosome was before dismissing it as irrelevant to their current predicament. "If I understood you right, you basically pinched bits and pieces that you wanted from other plants, and grafted them in the pumpkins?"

"I wouldn't put it so crudely, but essentially yes." answered Victor, somewhat offended at the oversimplification.

"Victor, what other plants did you use?"

"Well professor, I needed something that resembled a mouth, so I used a Venus flytrap, but I also needed to give it human features like eyes and possibly a nose, so for those I used mandrakes."

Dumbledore looked expectantly at Pomona Sprout who had taken refuge with the rest of them under the staff table. She pondered for a few seconds this new information then gave her professional analysis. "Makes sense in a way, the mandrakes would have given a magical component to the pumpkins, and that would combine with the venus fly trap to become a sort of lure for tiny ghosts and spirits, mostly insects and such. Not much by themselves but if you regularly use pesticide in the area for about a month."

"You'd get something like this, I see. Pomona, any ideas on how to proceed?"

"Not really, at this moment I'm just thankful they're not screaming."

Dumbledore shivered at the thought. Right that moment, Minerva McGonagall crawled towards them under the tables with news to report.

"Well the good news is that you were right Albus, it's not real fire, just some kind of manifestation that looks like it. The bad news is that it's a sort of fear flame. It doesn't burn, but when you get hit by one of those gobs of blue flame, it makes you afraid. The effect varies from a simple jump scare to hallucinating your worst fear."

"The pumpkins must have somehow retained their connection to the halloween festivity." Victor theorized.

Dumbledore ignored Victor and inquired further about one particular detail Minerva had said. "Worst fear you said? Like boggarts?"

"I hadn't thought of it like that, but now that you mention it, yes, a bit like boggarts."

"If so, do you think riddikulus might work on them?"

"It's worth a try." After saying that, professor McGonagall crawled to the edge of the table and aimed her wand at one of the larger floating pumpkins.

"Riddikulus!" she exclaimed and the spell had a most curious effect. The possessed jack-o-lantern began to vibrate, while its carved features changed from a menacing grimace into an amused smile. The aura of ghostly fire surrounding the pumpkin disappeared and for a second it looked as if it was about to laugh. Right before it burst apart and sprayed pulp and seeds all around its immediate vicinity.

"Well yes, I'd say that riddikulus seems to work just fine" Dumbledore said as he helped Minerva get back under the table and safe cover after the rest of the floating pumpkins rained blue fire on the place she had just been a moment before in retaliation.

"Great, now we just need to find a way to do that a hundred more times while avoiding their little gobs of fear." She said with heavy sarcasm, her tone changed suddenly however, becoming heavy with worry when she next addressed Dumbledore. "Albus, if the students panic…"

"I know, I know. if only we could power up that spell so that we could get them all at once."

Behind them Victor cleared his throat meaningfully. The effect was not unlike having ice cold water poured down their backs.

"You have something to contribute Victor?"

"Well yes professor, it's kind of funny you'd say that and that I would happen to have this." Victor rummaged around his pockets and brought out a beautifully carved bronze disk with some wires attached to it. Dumbledore looked at it as if it were a live scorpion.

"I thought the ministry had confiscated those."

"They did, this is a new one. The thaumic battery mark two. Notice the knobs."

Dumbledore pinched the bridge of his nose once more, he just knew he was in for a bad headache. He sighed, adjusted his glasses, then said to Victor.

"Right, before I have the chance to think this through, tell me how to use that blasted thing."

"If nothing else we learned something new today Minerva." Dumbledore said as he picked up a jack-o-lantern that had neatly split in two halves and examined its interior.

"And what was that Headmaster?"

"Victor has quite the green thumb."

Professor McGonagall rolled her eyes, she was about to say something in response but was interrupted by a rather loud and strangely musical flatulence.

Turning around towards the source of the noise she saw an embarrassed Hufflepuff second year girl, surrounded by smirking housemates. Her embarrassment turned to puzzlement when they all heard a similar sound coming from under the Ravenclaw table where some students were still huddling together. Then a second later it was joined by similar sounds from the Gryffindor side of the great hall.

A moment later, a slightly off key rendition of the Hogwarts school hymn was involuntarily improvised by quite a few of the students present in the great hall. Without using instruments or vocal chords. With a musical quality that could only be described as the sound of a vuvuzela orchestra. The music reached a rich and odorous crescendo, just as Hagrid joined in.

Dumbledore just threw his head back and laughed.

It had been twenty four hours since the floating pumpkins incident. This morning the students had gone back home, the dorms were now empty, and in the staff room, the Hogwarts faculty was having an emergency meeting.

'Typical, barely ten minutes into the meeting and already all the cocoa biscuits are gone' thought Dumbledore as he reached out for a custard cream.

"You're his head of house!" said Minerva McGonagall with a loudness that Dumbledore hoped was a product of nervousness and not really intentional. "Can't you do something?"

"What is that even supposed to mean?" answered Slughorn in equal measure "You're his transfiguration teacher, when did you teach him to transmute metals?"

"What? I never taught him that!"

"And yet he already knows how to, if you don't even know what he can do in your own subject, how am I supposed to know, or worse, control everything else he does. I already have a hard enough time keeping his interest in potions long enough for him not to try higher alchemy with first year ingredients. Something I previously would have thought impossible. At least he's stopped asking me ridiculous questions about molecular structures, if I have to hear more nonsense about ecks rays crystal low gra…"

Dumbledore tuned out Slughorn's complaining and looked over at where the head of Ravenclaw was sitting, old Zebediah Farnsworth was animatedly chatting with young Filius Flitwick, which was odd, since he had been under the impression that Flitwick should have departed the castle two days ago. He could probably guess what old Zebediah was aiming for. After all he was already 87 and getting a bit long on the tooth. Plus, Victor could be quite exhausting. Just like Tom used to be.

He was not making that same mistake twice.

He also needed to remind himself not to dare Victor to do anything, ever again. Dumbledore finally realized, that asking Victor Von Doom to do the impossible, merely meant you'd have to wait an extra day for delivery.

Minerva and Horace's argument had devolved into shouting, which meant it was time for him to intervene. He wished he had a staff, a staff had gravitas, it was serious business and you could strike it against the floor in a most satisfying and dramatic manner. As things were, he had to content himself with conjuring a little thunderclap from his wand.

"Enough, we are not here to bicker like children over the last cocoa biscuit. Truth be told I didn't call this faculty meeting to discuss what should be done with Victor Von Doom. No I have called you here to tell you what shall be done with Doom."

The staff room was left in complete silence, except for Horace's nervous gulping. That was good. He very seldom used his angry, no-nonsense voice. That was by design. When he did use it, he wanted to shock people into realizing that things were very much not normal and that he was having none of it.

"Now listen, this is what we'll do…"

And thus concludes chapter 3. I hope you had some fun reading it.

And I promise there is more to come.

Last edited: Mar 9, 2020

Chapter 4.1

Short snippet time. Just to show I'm still working on it.

It was a dark and cold night at the British Museum. It was after all, 2 a.m. of the 28th of December, it'd have been very strange for it to be sunny and warm. This was something which the two robed and hooded figures that suddenly appeared from thin air with loud popping sounds were grateful for. It would have made their mission a lot more complicated if it were.

Somewhat disoriented by their sudden apparition, they looked around themselves for a moment, trying to get their bearings.

"Where are we?", said the shorter and pudgier of the pair, in a voice that suggested its owner had four middle names. "This place looks, foreign." He somehow managed to instill the last word with a sense of disapproval that could only ever be achieved after many generations of noble rearing, and multiple instances of inbreeding.

"Don't be absurd," replied the taller and slimmer one, in a slightly exasperated tone. His accent didn't so much suggest as proclaim that he had at least six middle names, which clearly marked him as the leader of the pair. "We're inside the british museum, obviously. We apparated perfectly, exactly where we intended." He didn't feel the need to add that they had also apparated from basically across the street, both concerned about the dangers of splinching if they attempted to apparate further than a hundred yards.

"Doesn't look very british to me," said his companion with a very obvious distaste as he took in his immediate surroundings.

"That's because we're in the…" he paused to examine more closely the many artifacts and exhibits surrounding them. "The Roman part of the museum obviously," he said in the manner of someone forced to state the painfully obvious, while surreptitiously looking at a plaque that read ' Roman exhibits', in a wall right behind his companion's head. "Yes, this is obviously the Roman department. Very civilized people, the Romans, very organized. Did you know they stopped the obviously barbaric celt druid practice of blood sacrifices?"

Under the hood, his companion's face scrunched into a frown. "Doesn't the Dark Lord do blood sacrifices?" Sometimes these sacrifices involved other organs as well, like the liver, lungs, kidneys, heart, brain and basically, any organ you might need to live.

"Obviously, his blood rituals are a lot more organized than those outdated ancient ones." the taller one hastily replied. This explanation seemed to not convince his companion who frowned even further under his hood. He'd only attended one such ritual, and organized was not the word he would have used to describe it. Messy being the front runner, with bloody being very close behind. "Enough chatter," the taller hooded figure said, using his best, 'I have more middle names than you' voice, which he thought gave him a commanding tone, he was utterly wrong. "We were tasked by the Dark Lord to retrieve a certain artifact and we will do so." He rummaged in his robes' pockets for a folded scrap of parchment until he found it. "Ah yes here," he said unfolding the paper, "we must retrieve exhibit WA-IV, which is kept at the Department of Africa, Oceania and the Americas."

"So, where is that?" the shorter one asked.

The hoods they wore helped hide the baffled expression on the taller man. However with the practiced ease with which those born in a certain class realize it's never their fault, he promptly recovered and threw his shorter companion a furious look that screamed 'you had one job'. Unfortunately, this too was hidden by the hood and lost all of its effect.

"You mean you don't have a map?" He asked exasperated.

Some time and a lot of wandering later, they finally found the Department of Africa, Oceania and the Americas. After they finally accepted that reading and following the signs on the walls was probably the best way to find it, no matter how muggle those signs may be.

"So why does the Dark Lord want this thing?" asked the short death eater.

"It is not our place to question the Dark Lord's designs, just to carry out his orders." replied the taller one with over the top self-importance, which was his normal voice most of the time.

"He didn't tell you, did he?"

"Not a word." he sighed back. "He just said and I quote: here's something so simple that even you two idiots shouldn't be able to botch it'."

"Oh, that's rude, was he in a bad mood?"

"Dennis, when isn't he in a bad mood?"

The newly identified Dennis pondered this for a second and was about to reply, when he realized what the circumstances surrounding those particular moments were usually like. He shivered,disturbed by the recollection and tried to push the memory away. "Still, what do you think he wants with it George? I mean, it's not just that this is a muggle artifact, it's also the fact that it is…" here Dennis paused for a second, unsure of how to voice his concerns, "well african." he said, endeavouring to say the word without letting it touch the inside of his mouth. Somehow conveying that, while being foreign was bad, being african as well, automatically made it a whole order of magnitude worse.

"Search me, I really have no idea what he thinks half the time. All I know is that he's got the right idea on what to do with mudbloods." replied George.

Dennis nodded, choosing to be diplomatic, and not mention the disturbing rumours he'd heard about the Dark Lord's own ancestry. He looked at the different exhibits lining the corridors illuminated by the light of both their lumos spells. His face wore an expression of barely contained distaste and stern disapproval at just how foreign the artifacts surrounding him were.

"Ah here it is, exhibit WA-IV," George said looking down from a glass display to their right, to the piece of parchment in his hand as to confirm that it was indeed their intended target.

Dennis found himself staring at a prime example of african tribal art. Before him stood a finely detailed metal scepter, about the size of a baton. It depicted a very stylized man holding a tablet, above his head, crowning the scepter, was a snarling cat's head. Dennis moved closer to the display to read the printed board next to it.

"Unknown origin… found in 1802 in the current Congo… This finely sculpted baton is thought to be a symbol of authority for a civil bureaucrat (possibly a record keeper or court clerk)… The scepter is a rare example of metalworking art, composed of…"

"Why are you wasting your time reading that?" asked George.

"Just curious," he replied as he pulled away from the text. "I thought we could learn something about why the Dark Lord wants it."

"There's nothing muggles can tell you that's worth listening to." He said with pompous arrogance, and more than a bit of racism. "Anyway we need to get this thing out of its case." He said, pulling out his wand and pointing it at the lock on the side. "Alohomora!" exclaimed George as he performed the wand motion that went with the incantation.

A most curious thing happened then. As the spell activated, the two death eaters saw a line of golden sparks shoot out from the tip of George's wand, towards the lock of the glass case, only to ignore it entirely, enter the case through its slits and land on the metal scepter, which glowed with a soft amber light for a second as it absorbed the magical sparks. This was followed by George's wand rapidly vibrating until he was unable to keep hold of it. It flew out of his hand towards the scepter and stuck itself against one of the glass panes of the case.

Both of the robed figures stared in confusion at the display case. Still stubbornly closed but now sporting the addition of a magic wand stuck to one of its sides and a blinking red light making little beeping noises.

"I don't think alohomora is supposed to do that." said Dennis.

As you can see stuff is actually happening now.

Let's see where it takes us.

Last edited: Mar 14, 2020

Chapter 4.2

Hope you enjoyed those two death eaters appearance, because right now, I have no plans to use them again.

Today, we get a tiny glimpse at Hogwarts' present and its possible future.

"Arthur, it's so nice to see you again, old boy," Dumbledore heartily embraced the man that a moment ago had just walked into his office, "how's your beautiful girl doing?"

"Following in her father's footsteps and making a name for herself at the ministry. She'll be head of her own department before I know it." The man replied after returning the hug and letting go of his old transfiguration teacher.

"I'm sure she will, from what I remember she was a very driven and focused girl, unusual for a Ravenclaw. Although she certainly was far more responsible than you were at her age. You certainly were quite the rascal back then."

Arthur Ragthorne froze for a second in his chair, the moment passed, and he smiled good naturedly at Dumbledore. "I've always said it's a good thing you have no real interest in politics Dumbledore, considering how you know all of our most embarrassing stories, the amount of blackmail material you have at your disposal is considerable."

"Arthur, you wound me, I would never stoop so low as to resort to blackmail," then with a smile and a twinkle in his eye he added, "not unless I found it really amusing."

Arthur smiled in turn, although his smile felt a little forced this time and more nervous. "Yes, well, one of the reasons for my visit is so that it doesn't come down to that."

Dumbledore caught on to the particular phrasing and raising an eyebrow asked "One of them dear boy?"

Arthur smirked, "there was a; complication at the british museum two days ago. Voldemort sent two of his cronies to steal something from it."

"Oh dear" Dumbledore's voice was full of concern, "from the way you said it, I hope no one was hurt, although considering this was Tom and his little club, that seems unlikely. Was it serious?"

"Actually, things worked out quite well for us."

Eugene Jordan was a man with a plan and that plan was to see the new James Bond movie that premiered in two days.

He'd always been a fan of Mr. Bond, right from the very start and that Dr. No movie almost nine years ago. He couldn't wait to take the missus along to watch his latest adventure. Furthermore this movie promised the return of Mr. Connery to the leading role. He thought that Lazenby had played a fine Bond, but Sean Connery WAS James Bond to Eugene.

He was so excited that when the telltale light in the control panel of the security guard room at the British Museum lighted up. He didn't even argue with his coworker over who got to check whether or not it had been another false positive. He just stood up from his chair and walked out of the room to confirm the situation at the african exhibits section.

The new alarm and security system was a modern marvel of electronic engineering, or so the sales representatives had said at the one meeting he'd been part of. The technicians, with which he'd had a lot more contact with, had been rather more terse. Basically tossing the manual at them, quite literally too, and telling the night watchmen that it was their problem now.

From what he'd been able to gleam from between all the technical jargon and legalese text of the six hundred page binder, it was indeed a very impressive security system, making use of the most novel technology and incredibly expensive because of that. Old Frank had cursed out when he'd heard how much the museum was 'wasting on some newfangled hokey doodad'. As it happened, events would conspire to allow him to say 'told you so' smugly to anyone who listened, very few did, but he still said it.

The problem with such a new and advanced system was that it was extremely new and advanced, and they were having a lot of teething problems because of that. Every week they had a few false alarms from a badly calibrated sensor.

So he was extremely surprised when expecting to find nothing, he saw two robed and hooded figures arguing over a display case they were doing something to.

He flattened himself against the wall, reached for his walkie-talkie and cursed. He'd been so sure it would be just another false alarm he hadn't bothered with the bulky thing and left it at the security room. If he had to go back now he'd lose precious minutes and who knew what those thieves would do in the meantime. Plus he'd probably get chewed out by management. He couldn't rely on the fuzz showing up either, after the first few times, Scotland Yard had been instructed to wait for security to confirm or deny whether it was a false alarm.

So he was basically alone against a pair of nefarious and devilishly cunning art thieves (they had to be, to have gotten past all the exterior security without being noticed). Excitement began to rise in him. This was just like in one of those Bond movies he loved so much. He thought of the admiration he would get from his fellow coworkers if he managed this situation by himself, of the promotion management would grant him if he apprehended these criminals bare handed. The more he thought about it, the better the idea looked, and the more his heroic antics increased in valor with every iteration. Yes he would deal with these criminals just like Mr. Bond would.

The problem was, Mr. Bond had a Beretta and a license to kill. All he had was a security badge and a battery powered torch.

What would Mr. Bond do in a situation like this?

He looked frantically around the museum, not sure of what to do. His gaze finally rested upon the exhibit of ancient tribal and ceremonial weapons, kept away from the public by stanchions, red velvet rope and a notice that said "Please do not touch". Old Frank had thought the notice was probably overdoing it. No true british person would dare defy the clear boundary marked by the rope, but you could never tell with some foreign types. Eugene gazed upon rows of shields, swords and lances in racks and shelves before him.

"He would improvise". Eugene whispered as he grabbed a lance.

"Really, with a lance?" Dumbledore asked, unable to contain his amusement.

"A lot of lances actually, the man seems to have a natural talent for throwing them. He was also wearing a ceremonial mask, and hollering at the top of his lungs, which probably made him look more fearsome to those idiot death eaters. They probably thought he was a guardian spirit or something."

"But surely, they would have attempted to use their wands, if only for self defense?"

"You would think so but they didn't. We all wondered the same thing when we were watching that memory in the pensieve. Why didn't they cast any spells? They just up and ran away. It wasn't until later, when we started examining what they were after that we found out."

"Oh, I suspect you're going to tell me about it in a moment."

"Yes, turns out they were after this weird african metal scepter. Try to cast a spell too close to it and it messes with it. Your wand goes on the blink and the scepter absorbs the magic. We think that's why they turned tail and ran, their wands were probably disabled at the moment. That and I got the impression those two would-be thieves were utter morons."

Dumbledore nodded, "most of them will be," he said as he took off his half moon spectacles and cleaned them gently with the hem of his robe. "Tom's a gifted speaker, but his rhetoric appeals to a very specific kind of wizard."

"Quite so, quite so." Arthur agreed, not wanting to mention that in his darkest moments, and just before Voldemort had revealed himself as the monster he was proving himself to be, he'd found himself echoing some of the ideas he'd been spreading.

"As fascinating as that artifact seems to be, something that can interfere with a wizard's spell casting is most certainly intriguing from an academic viewpoint. I still do not know how that relates to me or my duties as Hogwarts' headmaster."

"Well yes, we're not sure what it is, but we do know one thing, if Voldemort wants it, we want to keep it away from him. We were thinking you could keep it here safe, at Hogwarts."

Dumbledore finished placing his spectacles back on his nose and gave Arthur a quizzical look "Surely, there are other safe places to store such an item. I'm sure that Gringotts…"

"They won't take it!" Arthur interrupted Dumbledore excitedly. "I already went to see them yesterday. You should have been there Dumbledore, I've never seen anything like that before at a Gringotts meeting. The moment I brought the piece out, the goblins… I'm not sure how to describe it. There were two board members with us. It was only for a moment but… One of them, his face changed, it was the greediest expression I've ever seen on a goblin, and that's saying something. It was like he was looking at an entire Dragon's hoard, concentrated in that single small sculpture. The other one, his face went white and he seemed utterly horrified by the idea of keeping it." Arthur paused and after letting out a sigh, spoke in a more leisurely manner. "They recovered immediately after that and put on their business faces, but still. They started arguing over whether to accept the scepter in their vaults or not. In the end they had to vote on it, the whole board, and they said no. Whatever it is, they don't want it in their vaults."

Dumbledore looked back at Arthur, censure was evident in his eyes "So, you thought it'd be best to leave an object not even the goblins want in a school full of children?"

Arthur was ready for that. "Dumbledore, we know that Voldemort respects no one and fears no one, he doesn't care if it's the ministry or Gringotts, he'd face them head on and laugh all the way to hell. No one but you. You're the only wizard he seems to respect, the only one he's afraid to face in a straight up fight. I believe there's no place safer than Hogwarts to keep this thing in. Besides," and now his expression became a conspiratorial smirk, "We both know it wouldn't be the most dangerous thing kept here anyway." he added, winking.

"Touché." Dumbledore said as he leaned back in his chair tiredly. "So let's say, for the sake of argument, that I agree to take custody of this object." Dumbledore's expression changed, gone was the affable, lenient grandfather that smiled amusedly at everything, in its place a shrewd negotiator forged through many years of wizengamot sessions and navigating ministry bureaucracy stood. "What's in it for me?"

Arthur smiled at that, this was the Dumbledore he'd known ever since leaving Hogwarts and starting a career at the Ministry, and the one he was most comfortable with. A master negotiator he couldn't help but admire. "I'm glad you asked, well just the other day the ministry received a, may I say, quite sizable grant request for a brand new facility here on the Hogwarts grounds. Now, a request of this magnitude usually would take a long time to approve, there would be committees, board meetings, inspections, reports, disputes, appeals… It might take months, even years." Arthur let the word hang in the air for a few seconds as he stared into Dumbledore's eyes. His expression revealed absolutely nothing, just as he expected, but Arthur thought he saw the faintest glimmer of tension in his hands. He was obviously unamused by Arthur's implications to lose his grant request in the red tape of the ministry. "Now however, I believe that in exchange for this one thing, it would free enough tied up personnel, to expedite this grant's approval process so that it'd be done… I don't know, maybe even before the students come back." There it was, Dumbledore's famous eye twinkle. Arthur knew the deal was already agreed to, the only question now was how much more Dumbledore would squeeze out of him.

Dumbledore leaned forward in his chair, "Arthur, let's talk."

The christmas holidays were now over, the Hogwarts castle was once more full of the hustle and bustle of children and teenagers. James Potter and his friends sat together on a bench in an extremely noisy and active courtyard. They had been discussing what they had done over the holidays. Remus spoke at length about his visit to the roman ruins at Bath. Peter gave a detailed account of the best food he'd had during the holidays. Sirius told them despondently how he'd spent most of the holidays grounded in his room, and made a rather funny imitation of his mother as she wailed about the shame he had brought on the family by being sorted into Gryffindor. Finally, when it was James' turn to talk they all groaned when instead of talking about how he'd spent his holidays, he began telling them about Doom. However, they promptly shut up and listened to what he had to say.

"Well, from what my dad told me, Dumbledore probably thought that no amount of detention was going to cut it this time. He was probably afraid that if they put him to write essays, he'd make some sort of self-replicating parchment, that'd flood the castle, then explode. So he came up with something else. Genius really, just what you'd expect from Dumbledore."

"So," Sirius asked James, curious in spite of himself about Doom's ultimate… well, doom, "what was it he thought of?"

James pointed at the courtyard and the many construction workers engaged in frantic activityaround the courtyard, building a whole new annex to the castle. Some distance to their right, a wizard was levitating blocks of stone and directing them to form a wall. To their left, a troll in a hard hat and very little else, was pushing a wheelbarrow the size of a small truck.

"He gave him a job in the ministry."

One thing I found serendipitious is that when writing Eugene's part, I wanted him obsessed with action heros. And in the 70's there was no bigger action hero than James Bond.

It was actually surprising to find out that, according to wikipedia, Diamonds are forever, premiered in the UK the 30th of December of 1971. Making the dates match perfectly with those of the fic.

Last edited: Mar 15, 2020

Chapter 4.3

How are you guys doing? I hope all of you reading this are in good health and well supplied with toilet paper.

I probably either need to shower more often, or just sit down and force myself to type. For the most part, waiting for insipiration to come is a load of horse manure.

Anyways, here's a tiny little bit more. I hope you enjoy technobabble, because there's quite a bit of it in this snippet.

Professor Tesseract was directing a group of ministry employees who were installing the new equipment of what would become Britain's first laboratory for High Energy Magic Procedures or HEMP. It was a laborious task, made more difficult because he barely understood half of what it involved and had to constantly look at the notes Victor had given him. This time however, that wasn't the case.

"No, the copper tubing cannot be installed without drawing the pentagram first." he said angrily addressing a pimply faced wizard. "This is Theodolphus' third asymptotic pentagram we're talking about, you need to be exact in your measurements, you most certainly can't 'rough it out'! Now clean that mess up and start from scratch. And this time you better use a compass and a measuring tape!" He turned away from the young technician with a bit more confidence in his step. He knew where he stood as far as arithmancy was concerned. Well, most arithmancy anyway. Some of the new stuff Victor was coming up with, he struggled with, but it was still fascinating to watch.

A young witch suddenly cut his path and asked, "Sir, what do we do with these…" she looked down to the invoice form on the clipboard she was holding and said, "… Tesla coils?" the strange word feeling alien on her tongue. Behind her stood half a dozen metal pillars, each about six feet tall . They looked like they were made out of copper wire coils and were crowned by a steel doughnut.

Tesseract's face became blank once more. This was another piece of equipment requested by Victor that he didn't understand. He looked down to his own clipboard and to his notes, flipping through the pages until he found a relevant entry.

"Hmm, ah yes! Those go next to the runic dampeners array." He said as he pointed to an area where a couple of goblins were working installing copper filigrees on a variety of surfaces. Tesseract read on and a frown of annoyance appeared on his brow. "However, it seems they need to be installed after the thaumic converters, which we're still waiting for. So just leave them in that corner over there." Tesseract's hand moved to point a corner of the building that accumulated all sorts of haphazardly placed equipment. A reserved area that he had named the ' Do not touch until Victor looks at it first' corner.

Victor walked up to him with his own clipboard and an annoyed expression on his face. The boy obviously hadn't taken well to Dumbledore relegating him to a junior assistant position. He'd also made it clear that all decisions had to go through professor Tesseract first. Tesseract had little doubt that by appointing him head of the new research center, Dumbledore had also made him Victor's official chaperone . Undoubtedly, for his sins.

"Professor, I think we need to double layer the brass runic dampeners. I'm worried about possible thaumic bleed affecting the computational banks. If that were to happen it'd mess up all of our data."

"Right", he said, trying and failing to understand what Victor had just told him. To be fair, most arithmancers' concept of practical applications research usually went as far as 'if the pentagram doesn't blow up or turn you into a body horror abomination, it's good.' Small wonder that most of them kept themselves to the strictly theoretical.

"So we will need an extra six of those." Victor said after a short pause with a very slight chastising tone in his voice after the professor had apparently failed to grasp the implications of what he'd just said.

"Oh yes, of course," Tesseract said looking down at his own clipboard and mercifully missing the eye roll that Victor gave him (although he knew it was there). He scribbled another line in the request sheet at the end of his notes. Tesseract wished for the umpteenth time that Dumbledore was here with him or that he had additional help at the very least. He knew that one of the main reasons behind his new promotion was so that he could stop Victor from getting his hands on anything too dangerous. The problem with that plan was that he was very much out of his depth concerning half the equipment they were working with. Victor could be constructing a doomsday device right under his very nose and he'd never realize it.

"By the way Victor," he asked the boy, resolute in his determination to at the very least try his best to avoid that scenario, "the tesla coils, have just arrived. What are those for?"

"Ambience mostly." The boy said looking down at his own clipboard and checking through the lists on it. "Obviously you cannot have a laboratory in a castle and not have some tesla coils in the background. What sort of person does that?"

Tesseract kept his face diplomatically blank. Victor's explanation about the importance of tesla coils in a laboratory had done nothing to clear up his confusion. But now he suspected it had more to do with aesthetics than anything else. So he kept the incipient smile on his face carefully controlled. For all his genius, Victor was still eleven, and like any eleven year old boy, he still wanted his stuff to look cool.

A young wizard approached the two of them holding a large sheet of graph parchment. "Victor," he said addressing the boy directly, he'd been here since the beginning of the construction work and by now had found out (and more importantly, accepted) whom he really needed to ask about the more technical stuff. "We have a problem with the positioning of the lynchpin spikes for the thaumic transducer. Basically we can't make heads nor tails out of it and we don't want to make a mistake when placing them."

Victor sighed softly under his breath before addressing the young arithmancer. "It's a frequency pattern. The inductors at the gate channel the thaumic flow through the circuit, but we have to change their vibratory frequency, and we do that with a frequency graph representation where the spikes point to the maximum, minimum and inflexion points…"

Tesseract tuned Victor out at that point, and looked at the hubbub of activity around the still unfinished new building in wonder. He knew that the ultimate reason behind the whole complex was just to keep Victor busy and supervised. The hope was that giving him something staff approved to focus on would avoid a repeat of incidents like the Christmas feast. He knew all of this was just to keep one student out of trouble. But the practical applications to just a tiny fraction of what they were setting up made him giddy with excitement.

Tesseract's thoughts were interrupted by a loud wet FWOOMP coming from the chemistry lab in the adjacent wing of the building. He turned around alarmed and saw a bunch of smoke coming out from its doors. Most of the personnel present just groaned in annoyance and opened any closed windows while those closest to the smoke cast bubble head charms on themselves and their coworkers, or used their wands to redirect the smoke towards the nearest open window. Everyone else just shrugged and continued their work.

Both Tesseract and Victor saw the familiar shine of a bubble head charm wrapped around Severus Snape's head, as he and two more people left the smoke filled room.

"What was it this time?" Victor asked Severus with a vexed tone.

"Nothing to worry, nothing at all, it's all under control." Severus said, trying to put some confidence into his words and absolutely failing at it. "We just had a tiny little accident with some acid. Really just an itty-bitty thing, completely unimportant." Severus was smiling rather frantically. Victor just gave him a hard stare until he looked down at the floor and started fidgeting guilty and nervously. "Although, one of the work tables might have melted, then caught fire ." He confessed in an embarrassed whisper.

Victor groaned and pinched the bridge of his nose. No one had ever told him how difficult it was to train a good minion/lab assistant.

Hope you liked that. More to come at an unspecified date.

I'm not entirely sold on the name for the HEMP institute. Anyone care to try their hand at acronym fun?

Last edited: Mar 23, 2020

Chapter 4.4

This was almost painful to write. Mostly because I'm feeling extremely lethargic, and getting the words out felt a lot like trying to squeeze blood from a stone.

Although the fact that since I disassembled my keyboard to clean all the crud inside of it, the keys have felt a lot more spongy and unresponsive, probably contributed a bit as well.

My fingers actually ache.

This probably needs some serious rewriting, but like I said, I'm feeling really lethargic right now, which seriously hampers my decision making process.

So here it is.

Can you spot the brick joke?

"What shall I do Doctor?"

"Replace Hepesh with someone you can trust, your majesty. Now!"

"That's what you should have done from the start!"

"Sirius, hush!" Lily Evans shushed the heckling boy.

"The shame will destroy him."

"It's not easy to be a king Peladon. But unless you replace Hepesh, he will destroy everything that you have worked for!"

"Of course he will, because he's eeevil!"

"Sirius shut up," cut in Snape, "and he's not really evil, he's just misguided."

"Oh come on, don't tell me you believe that, he was conspiring with that dirty slug Arcturus!"

A soft murmur of agreement could be heard before being quelled by Lily's authoritative voice "Both of you hush, or next time McGonagall asks where any of you is hiding I will actually tell her. We can talk about the episode later, now quiet you lot!" She only whispered the last words but she could have been shouting and standing next to a cannon with a lit match in her hand and it wouldn't have made any difference in just how much impact she managed to convey. Silence resumed immediately, only broken by the occasional sound produced by the munching of snack food.

Victor looked at the dozen or so first years sitting on a rug in the middle of the electrical engineering department. Which was basically little more than a spare room with only a piece or parchment fixed in place with spell-o-tape differentiating it from a workshop. They were a mix from all four houses and all were intently watching a television Victor had cobbled together a few weeks ago.

That had been an interesting experiment. Trying to figure out if you can get an electromagnetic carrier wave to transmit through a thaum saturated magical field. The short answer was; no, you couldn't. The long answer was: no, but…

Finding out that 'but' had been an refreshing challenge. In the end he'd solved the problem of magic completely scrambling radio waves by replicating said waves with thaums. And since thaums were basically the magic particle, they flew through the highly magical air of Hogwarts unaffected, they could still suffer interference, but the signal quality remained stable.

Then there had been the problem of actually getting a signal to the castle. So he, Snape and Tesseract had scheduled a field trip to the hills surrounding Hogsmeade. To their surprise they found that the BBC's signal strength was actually pretty decent if a little weak. Nothing that a cobbled together repeater and a 20 feet tall antenna couldn't fix though.

Building the television out of spare parts had barely been a challenge. Tesseract's original runic dampeners were a lot more refined now and they could protect electrical equipment for much longer periods of time without overloading. So he'd just built the thing normally and applied a pair of the copper filigrees to its casing.

All in all, It had taken Victor less than a month to find out how to modulate a thaumic carrier wave and build a television repeater and receiver system. Even he was willing to lean back and pat himself on the back with some indulgence over what he'd achieved within that relatively small time frame. And it opened the door to so many possibilities. His mind was afire with the almost limitless applications of a thaumic wave signal.

He'd most certainly hadn't done it because he himself enjoyed Doctor Who a little bit. No, that would be frivolous. And he hadn't worked around the clock with the hope of catching any more episodes of Monty Python's Flying Circus either. He absolutely despised their crass, low-brow, surreal humour. And he hadn't been at all disappointed when he'd found out that the season had ended right before christmas and there weren't going to be any new episodes in the foreseeable future.

Absolutely not!

Whatever he had or hadn't done. The fact remained that for the last three saturday afternoons a small number of first years were gathering at the HEMP building to watch new Doctor Who episodes. It had all started with Severus telling Lily how Victor was trying to get a telly to work. Lily had asked if it would get the BBC, Severus had shrugged and said 'I suppose'. Then Lily had excitedly asked when Victor would be finished, and if she could go see, because she absolutely had to find out what happened with the Daleks, and things had escalated from there.

Much to Lily's and Severus' dismay, Victor hadn't finished soon enough for them to find out what had been the Daleks' ultimate fate. But they still were happy to get to watch new adventures of the Doctor. After that first afternoon of viewing, word had spread around and a few other Who fans had asked if they could join in. Most of them were muggleborns, the only purebloods in that little group being James Potter and his little posse.

Victor nodded and with a stern face, stepped away from the doorway and went back to one of the workstations.

He'd been designing experiments practically since the minute he'd arrived at the castle and Dumbledore had carried him away and shown him the still under construction new building. But they'd only been able to carry them out for the past week. Victor felt a little frustrated about that, Dumbledore insisted on all sorts of safety inspections and regulations being done before any experiment was carried out, almost like he didn't trust Victor to know what he was doing, which he thought was a bit insulting. A tiny small part of his mind had tried to remark on the irony of that line of thinking. But it had been bullied into silence by his ego.

Nevertheless, they had begun experimenting on Tuesday and the results had been extremely encouraging. The ministry arithmancers had actually shouted in joy when they had flipped the switch on the thaumaturgical accelerator and seen everything work as expected. One of them, a young witch had actually shed a few tears. And they all were ecstatic over the revolutionary method which Victor had designed to collect and collate data. The sheer amount of information they were able to gather, was certainly a vast improvement over what they were used to. Admittedly what they were used to were hastily scribbled annotations in pieces of parchment saying; 'the pentagram glowed blue then green for a moment' or for those working with superior methodology 'it glowed ice blue then forest green'.

Tesseract had even shared a bottle of champagne with the laboratory staff (apple juice for Victor), and started an impromptu party. Everybody had congratulated each other once the auto-quills began to show results, calling the figures appearing on the parchment such things as ground breaking, revolutionary and a seven league leap for the field of arithmancy.

They were also, all of them, subtly wrong.

It wasn't anything major, there were no eye catching or obvious divergences between the expected and the experimental figures. But every single readout gave numbers, that were just a tiny bit too off the mark to be attributed to a simple calibration error. Had it been anyone else, they would have explained the slight variations by assuming they'd made a mistake in the initial experimentation premise and would simply have worked around those, tweaking their hypothesis to explain the moderately different results.

But he was Victor Von Doom, and he did NOT make mistakes. If the universe didn't conform to his expectations it wasn't because he was wrong, but because the universe itself had to be corrected.

He placed the different printouts on the table before him, scanning them for any sort of recognizable pattern there that would help explain away the annoying differences. But so far nothing had caught his eye. He'd been looking at it all morning already and he hadn't had any lu…

Wait, that wasn't quite right.

He was looking at a vibrational frequency readout, it was perfectly normal, except that it shouldn't be. The extra energy should have induced an excited state and produced a different frequency. He kept looking at the vibrational frequencies of specific elements and found similar discrepancies. Most of the readouts showed data that would be expected under normal conditions.

Except that in those experiments the conditions weren't normal.

Something was off here, whatever it was, it was leeching vibrational energy from some particles in their experiments. His mind raced, calculating the different variables that could potentially cause such an occurrence, and came up with four possible explanations. Two were immediately discarded, since they would have been noticed during the setup phase and they had obvious telltales, like massive inter-exchanges of heat in an extremely short time (aka: big booms), or smoke. The third required a physical connection that'd syphon energy away from the equipment, of which there weren't any. Which meant he was left with the fourth option.

Harmonic resonance, working at a distance, leeching off energy from his carefully planned experiments.

He tapped his chin slowly, thinking on what the possible repercussions of such a scenario could be. When he caught himself using 'brobdingnagian' as an adjective, he realized that they were very big indeed.

He looked at the different printouts again, focusing on the specific vibrational frequencies affected. Maybe he could cobble together a portable detector to sniff out whatever it was that was messing with his experiments.

He suddenly knew what he and Severus would be doing tomorrow.

I just wanted to put a little Whovian club in Hogwarts.

PS: The text in italics are actual lines from an episode. Can any of you tell which one?

Last edited: Mar 24, 2020

Chapter 4.5

As I write this, I have not really checked anything of what I've written beyond a casual glance, so there will be grammar, spelling and punctuation errors.

But I still want to post it right now.

Word of warning, I was growing increasingly disatisfied with the style of the writing towards the end. I was telling too much and not showing nearly enough. The former being a style which I absolutely despise. But instead of rewriting everything, I decided to keep what I had and go back to a dialogue heavy style. Causing some serious style inconsistency which the astute reader will spot immediately.

I am aware of it, and will probably attempt to fix it in the near future, but for the moment, I think it's good enough.

So here it is.

Oh, and taalismn, I'm sorry.

Abraxas Malfoy gave his son a dignified, upper class society style hug, the kind which only barely mimicked the basics of an embrace and at the same time managed to keep the other person at arm's length and minimize human contact.

"Lucius, my boy," the man said as he sat down on his chair, his thinning hair now white with age rather than the platinum blonde that was the hallmark of the Malfoy family, "how is school treating you?"

Lucius Malfoy sat in his own chair opposite his father at the three broomsticks inn. "Fine I suppose, I've been busy with my duties as a prefect, and I've been doing my best to stay as far away from McGonagall as possible." he said with a dismissive shrug of his shoulders. "This year has been weird though. And it's got everything to do with that new building."

"Oh yes, I've heard about that through the ministry grapevine. The unspeakables are in an uproar and some of them are at each other's throats over whose particular department has jurisdiction over it. Frankly it doesn't make any kind of sense to me. But Cornelius does tell me that the arithmancer he works with goes bonkers every time they get an owl from Hogwarts. What on earth do they do over there?"

Lucius shrugged once more dismissively. "I have no idea, no one does really. A couple of Ravenclaws pretend they do but for the most part, they're full of it. All we know is that it keeps Doom busy and contained and we're all thankful for that."

"Doom?" asked his father, raising a single eyebrow. It was a skill that had taken him years to master and countless hours of practice before a mirror.

There was a noticeable shift in Lucius' expression, it changed from his usual perpetually bored arrogance, which as a member of the higher caste of wizard nobility he wore by default, to a look of fear and rage, with a lot more of the former than the latter. "He's a threat, a menace, the worst thing to happen to Slytherin in a hundred years. Thanks to him we reached minus two hundred points in the House Cup, and he's just a first year. I'm sure I must have mentioned him at some point in my letters." He threw his father a slightly recriminatory look which Abraxas shrugged with the casual disregard of a true aristocrat. Truth be told, he had never read any of his son's letters. He gave them to his house elf, then instructed the creature to give him a twenty words or less summary.

"The things that filthy mudblood has done…" Lucius ' voice trailed off and felt a shiver run all the way down his back as unwanted memories returned. "He should have been expelled long ago. But instead, Dumbledore sets up a whole new playground just for him." Lucius closed his eyes and took a long breath to soothe himself. "Let's not talk about Doom anyway, what brings you to Hogsmeade father?"

"Hello Mr. Malfoy and Mr. Malfoy," madam Rosmerta's lively young voice cut in, "what can I get you two fine gentlemen?"

Two butterbeers please madam, and two slices of that delicious smelling cottage pie as well." said Abraxas with a winning smile and a raised eyebrow.

"Right you are Mr. Malfoy." She said, and turned around to go back to the kitchen. Both Malfoys took the chance to admire the hypnotic swaying of her hips, and only returned to their former conversation after she went back behind the counter when Lucius politely cleared his throat.

Malfoy senior, somewhat reluctantly, looked away from the counter and back towards his son. "Can't a father just pay a visit to his only son and heir out of love?"

Lucius's expression became somber, for a whole eight seconds. Then his lips twitched and the laughter he had been keeping back poured through. He started laughing behind his hand trying very hard not to guffaw. His father tried to give him a scathing look, but the way the upper corners of his mouth kept twitching along with his son's laughter completely betrayed his own state of mind. Finally he began laughing along with his son.

"Ha, that was a good one. But no seriously, why did you come father?" Lucius asked after he finally stopped laughing.

Abraxas Malfoy expression changed, becoming deadly serious, he leaned forward in a conspiratory manner while gesturing for his son to do the same and lowered his voice to a whisper.

"I bring news, and a task for you my son that could go a long way towards currying you much favour with the right kind of people." He leaned even further and spoke in an even lower voice. "I've been assigned a specific task and I have chosen you, my son, to carry it out."

"What?" replied Lucius.

"I said, that the dark lord…" said Abraxas.

"Look you'll have to speak a little louder, I can't hear anything over the usual hubbub of the pub." Lucius cut in.

The elder Malfoy took a deep breath and after taking a moment to collect his thoughts, spoke again, this time slightly louder.

"I said the dark lord has a mission for you."

Tom Marvolo Riddle was many things, a wizarding genius, a racist, an edgelord supreme, a huge hypocrite, a murderous psychopath but the one thing people were surprised by the most, is that he was a man with a very busy social life. As he ate breakfast, he had his minion-cum-secretary go over his schedule for the day.

"From 9 to 10, there is scheduled a meeting with the local death eater charter, where policies and future plans shall be discussed. From 10 to 13 you have muggle torturing followed by mudblood torturing. At 1 pm you have lunch at the ministry with the head of the magical foreign affairs department. Then a charity appearance at the Madam Woolsey center for squib rehabilitation at 3 pm. Then you have more mudbloods to torture from 5 to 6. Dinner is scheduled at 6:30 at the grand opening of the 'le chaudron delicieux' in Diagon alley. Finally you have one final public appearance at 8 pm at madam Black's charity auction for the defense of the old ways. It's expected to finish somewhere around 11 pm. But if it ends earlier, there's no problem penciling in some time for a good old fashioned muggle murder."

The man who had willingly changed his given name to that of Lord Voldemort (thus confirming that he had never outgrown his teenage edgelord phase), listened to all this as he carefully peeled the shell of the top of his boiled egg. "Tell me", he asked his fellow terrorist-cum-secretary, "How is it possible that a man who has openly stated that muggles should be enslaved and advocated for the internment and culling of mudbloods and squibs, gets to have lunch with ministry officials and attend charity galas?"

His aide responded immediately without missing a beat. "That would be, because we have infiltrated the ministry and the media at every possible level, through guile, intimidation and bribery."

"Ah yes," Tom said as he pushed his spoon inside his egg, "that most ancient of british wizarding traditions. Political corruption."

"I would have thought that to be universal, my lord."

"It is, but we have refined it into an art form, did you know that during the eighteenth century, the now infamous Rudolphus Argintius wrote a manual on bribery etiquette?"

"No my lord, I was unaware of that."

"Oh yes, it is quite a fascinating read, and basic reading for more than half of the ministry employees. Strictly unofficial of course, you do realize? I however think that you're underestimating just how many wizards secretly agree with what I say."

"Perhaps my lord, speaking of the ministry, some of our spies in the muggle affairs department tell us that the scepter has been moved to Hogwarts as a precautionary measure."

"The what?" Tom asked, swallowing a bite of his toast.

"You remember that incident at the british museum my lord?"

"Ah yes, those two idiots, remind me, why did I allow them to become Death Eaters in the first place?"

"Because their families put together have more money than God, my lord."

"It is a good reason, I suppose, although I yearn for the day when it won't be good enough. That is what I hope to accomplish you do realize? A pure meritocracy, where everybody gets their due according to their ability." Tom said this with absolute seriousness, he might even have believed it himself. "You say it has been moved to Hogwarts?"

"Yes my lord, it is not difficult to guess why. They hope that the presence of Albus Dumbledore will act as a deterrent against further attempts to acquire it."

Tom's eyes flashed crimson with anger. A tiny bit of magic he'd practiced in front of a mirror like others would practice the raising of a single eyebrow. He was angry because they were right. Dumbledore was the one wizard he didn't want to face, yet.

He cared little for the scepter. His only interest in it came from the fact that he'd read it once belonged to Eldon Elsrickle, who purportedly had used it to get out of some sticky situations. But the thought of the ministry actually pulling one over him was a blow to his massive and easily bruised ego.

"Don't we have anyone in Hogwarts?" he asked his secretary, even though he already knew the answer.

"Unfortunately, no. Dumbledore has complete control over staffing decisions at the school. We thought to influence Professor Slughorn, but that proved unsuccessful."

"Getting old Horace to pick a side? It'd be easier to freeze the sun." Tom replied as his spoon scratched against the inside bottom of the egg shell. He thought about it for a while. "What about the students? Don't we have people with kids at Hogwarts?"

"So the Dark Lord has chosen to entrust this mission to me?" Lucius said, pride beaming in his eyes.

"Indeed my son, do this and he shall be eternally grateful and welcome you with open arms into his fellowship." Abraxas told his son. He chose to gloss over the fact that the Dark Lord had never even spoken to him about this, and that it had been a request from his secretary.

"I shall not fail father."

"I know you won't Lucius. You will n…"

"Here are your butterbeers, and your cottage pies. Enjoy your conspiring Messrs Malfoys." Madam Rosmerta said with a smile and a wink.

Both Malfoys just stood there, gazing at the sinuous swaying of madam Rosmerta's hips. Much to the horror of Lucius, when he realized his father was just as entranced as he had been, perhaps even more.

"Father, you're a married man!"

"Married son, not dead." he replied as he took a long draught of his drink.

"Stop being a baby and stick your hand down that hole!"

"You know, you'd probably sound a lot more convincing if you weren't standing 20 feet away, WITH SHIELD CHARMS AT THE READY!"

"That's just a precaution, besides you're the one wearing the dragon hide gloves and a good half dozen protective spells, you're pretty much indestructible now."

"This is Hagrid we're talking about for all we know, he could be keeping a live manticore in there."

"Don't be ridiculous, a manticore would never fit in a hole that size. Now quit stalling and get me that key!" Lucius Malfoy shouted threateningly at the indecisive Slytherin sixth year.

They were standing on the shore of the great lake, on a patch filled with white sand that looked a lot like what a Scotsman who has never been further south than Dumfries imagined a tropical beach would be like. On the bank there was a rather obvious burrow and kneeling next to it, clad in a heavy duty apron and gloves was a Slytherin student who despite Lucius' encouragement, still felt extremely reluctant to put his hand in it.

"Listen here Percival, if you don't do this you're not getting paid!" shouted Lucius.

That got a reaction out of the sixth year boy, who slowly moved his trembling hand into the burrow's opening. He tried to be gentle and to disturb as little as possible, but the gloves stole away any feeling or dexterity he might have otherwise. He probed around the insides and thought he felt something that approximated the shape of what he was looking for.

Then something clamped down on one of his fingers and he screamed.

"Such a baby, they were just fire crabs for Merlin's sake." Lucius Malfoy told the now bruised and scorched Percival Marchand, who was having his injuries tended to by Marigold Greengrass.

"Yes, but I didn't know that, did I? And you're one to talk, you ran away the moment I started screaming."

"I was merely relocating to a more strategically advantageous position." Malfoy replied with a completely serious face. He was a firm believer in the tenet of 'if you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit'. "Enough chit-chat, you got it?"

"Yes, I got your bloody key, here it is." he said, throwing a large metal key towards Malfoy who was just barely able to catch it.

It had been quite a busy week for Malfoy. Right after his father had entrusted him with his secret mission from the dark lord himself, he'd practically been working around the clock to see it done. That is, he had hired people to work around the clock for him. When your family name was used to describe varying levels of wealth, you got other people to do your dirty work for you.

The first thing he'd done is spread his money around to get a network of informants, who had confirmed that a day before the christmas break was over, a ministry official had delivered a mysterious package to Dumbledore. A week later he'd apparently hidden whatever it was somewhere in the castle and given four keys to four different people for safekeeping.

Slughorn's had been the easiest to find, since he'd practically told them about it, bragging about how much confidence and esteem the headmaster held him in, during one of his little Slug club get-togethers. He most certainly hadn't been half as subtle as he thought he had been when he talked about how Dumbledore had chosen him to safeguard an important item. In his defense, he was halfway through a bottle of fine wine, which Lucius had fortified with a drunkenness charm. His tongue had loosened enough to reveal who the other three keyholders were.

Professor Sprout's key had been the first real difficult trial and had claimed the first victim amongst Malfoy's mercenaries.

Pomona Sprout, showing a Hufflepuff's mental fortitude, and never one to waste anything, had chosen to reuse the surviving vines from the japanese kudzu incident earlier in the school year to protect the key he had buried in a plant pot. Cupid Proctus, a seventh year Slytherin had become the first casualty after falling victim to the plant, and now spent a lot of time looking at nothing with a faraway look in his eyes. Marigold was becoming increasingly worried about him, especially after she had caught him sneaking back into the common room late one night. From the mulch stuck to his robes it was obvious he'd been at the greenhouses and he'd been mumbling something about it 'not being the same'.

McGonagall's had been the absolute worst of all the keys. Of course, this was just Malfoy's point of view and it was shared by absolutely no one else in his crew. But since he was their leader (and employer) and thus the most important person of the group, what anyone else thought really didn't matter. After all, there could be no doubt that his, had been the greatest sacrifice of all.

In order to find the key, Malfoy and his crew required access to McGonagall's office. Once there, they hoped to find some clues as to the key's location. Unfortunately, the only way in which they had agreed this was possible, was for Malfoy to attempt to ingratiate himself again with McGonagall. Something that Malfoy had been the first to point out, would not be easy.

The solution they had come up with, would have horrified a lesser wizard other than a Malfoy, but he was made of sterner stuff. So he agreed to willingly sacrifice his free time, and convince McGonagall that he was indeed very interested in transfiguration, and that he would like to prove it by participating in any extracurricular transfiguration work with no strings attached, just for the sake of improving himself at her subject. Lucius still trembled aghast at the idea of all the extra work that McGonagall had dumped on him, but it was a sacrifice he was willing to do to earn the favour of the dark lord.

Of course, convincing McGonagall wouldn't be that simple, so he'd secured the help of Slytherin's top transfiguration student to vouch for him. A student who incidentally, would also be taking care of all the extra work this ruse would require. However to properly fool McGonagall, he'd still have to read the summaries that nerd, Formeus Jones, would be writing him on top of all the actual work. But he was prepared to undergo such hardships.

Besides it had been well worth it. Someone else might have called what happened a stroke of luck, but Lucius just knew that it had been his considerable leadership skills that deserved the credit. After all, it was Lucius who chose Formeus, a nerd so obsessed with transfiguration, he had chosen to base all of his NEWTs around the subject. Thus causing him to frequently visit McGonagall's office, which allowed him to realize that there was a new and even more tacky porcelain cat on the shelf.

Taking advantage of a moment McGonagall left the office to fetch some forms for Lucius to sign, Formeus cast a quick Veritaformi charm which revealed the tasteless decoration to actually be a transfigured key. Lucius had wasted no time pocketing it and leaving a hastily transfigured decoy in its place.

Finding out where Hagrid had hidden his key had been far simpler, all it had required was for Lucius to open a tab at the Hog's Head inn. A tab that had skyrocketed as the huge oaf kept downing tankards of mead one after the other. However, actually fetching the key, Malfoy realized, would require an idiot. But since he couldn't trust any Gryffindors to keep quiet, he'd settled for someone greedy. Which was where Percival had graciously volunteered, for a price of course.

It had been a long and gruelling week, but now they finally had all four keys, all they had left to do was find out where the object was being hidden. And once more, Lucius' genius had come through to solve the problem. True, it had been Marigold who had suggested spying on Argus Filch to find a clue as to where it could be hidden. After all the squib caretaker knew the castle like the back of his hand. But she had only done so after he had encouraged everyone to come with ideas on how to find the locks to the keys.

It had been a surprisingly good idea, Filch's habit of mumbling and complaining to himself had allowed them to hear his complaints about the headmaster 'giving him another of his bloody toys to hide somewhere, like he didn't have anything better to do with his time, like trying to keep the little tykes from destroying the castle'. So Lucius took full credit for it, and forgot all about how he had mercilessly ridiculed it when it had been first brought up.

And so, they waited until late in the night when there was no one around to make their way to the utilities closet Filch had stored the object in.

"It's a bit anticlimactic don't you think?" said Formeus as he used alohomora to open the closet's door.

"What do you mean?" asked Marigold.

"Well, it's supposed to be this important object that even the Dark Lord wants, but Filch just decides to store it in here, next to the mops, and toilet rolls." He said, pulling the closet's handle to reveal a small sized walk-in room full of cleaning supplies.

"Clearly he doesn't think much of it." replied Marigold.

"He doesn't think much of anybody, all he seems to care about is the castle." chimed Percival. "Cupid, you alright mate?"

"Hmm? Oh yes, of course. Sorry I got distracted for a moment, I was looking at those vines around the castle walls." he said pointing outside the window he was looking through.

"Right, well try to keep your eyes focused on the task at hand." Cupid worried his fellow Slytherin conspirators, he had developed an obsession with plants ever since they had left the greenhouse. That is to say, everyone but Malfoy was worried, who didn't really give a rat's turd.

"Focus people, try to find something we can put these keys into." Malfoy said, taking command and making Marigold think for the fifty-eighth time if she could get away with killing Lucius.

"Uhm Lucius, I think you're looking right at it." said Formeus.

Lucius looked everywhere else for a few seconds, until his head stopped moving and he saw a large wooden box with iron keyholes on each of its sides. It was shaped like a cube and looked to be nearly two feet long on each side. "Ah-ha, I have found our prize!" he shouted triumphantly.

Together, Cupid and Formeus took the large and heavy box from the shelf and deposited it on the floor. Marigold, their security expert, tapped it once with her wand and gave her professional analysis.

"Looks like a standard safebox, proofed against alohomora and any opening spell I can think of. To open it, we need to turn the four keys in simultaneously." She told the rest of the group.

"Good, then everyone, take a key and get ready." Lucius said as he knelt before the box on the floor. He took out the keys from his pocket and distributed them among his mercenaries, who followed suit.

"Now, on the count of three, one, two, THREE!" There was a loud clack as four heavy iron keys were turned simultaneously, and four sets of locks were suddenly released.

"Yes, we have succeeded, the dark lord shall reward me, I mean us with power and riches beyond what any of you could possibly imagine!" Lucius exclaimed with near manic glee in his voice.

"Right, why don't we take a look at what's inside the box first?" quipped Percival, who wasn't even sure he really wanted to be rewarded by Voldemort. Any gift from him probably came with far too many strings attached.

"Of course, we should check it first." Lucius said, reaching down to remove the lid of the box. Everyone inside the small supply room leaned over to get a better look at what was inside.

To their surprise, all they found was a scrap piece of folded parchment.

"Uhm, is this what we were supposed to retrieve?" Asked Formeus, not bothering to hide his disappointment from his voice.

Marigold was the first to react, extending out her hand to pick up the parchment and unfolding it to take a better look at it. "It's a note," she said.

"Well, what does it say?" asked Lucius impatiently.

"You're not going to like it." Marigold replied. Formeus who was looking over her shoulder at the note, nodded in agreement.

"What. Does. It. Say?" Lucius repeated with barely contained anger.

"Uhm, well it reads: 'Dear professor, I am sorry about taking this scepter you obviously took great pains to conceal, but it was causing all of the more sensitive equipment to go haywire and ruining our readings. So I have taken the liberty to take it into personal custody and place it somewhere appropriately shielded where it won't interfere with the HEMP experiments we're running.'"

Marigold looked up from the parchment to Lucius' face which was livid with rage. She then read the last line of the note. "Signed: Victor Von Doom."

Percival looked at Lucius's expression and started counting the seconds in silence. Lucius' composure broke before he reached four.

" DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!"

So there it is. I hope you liked it.

Tell me what you honestly think.

Last edited: Mar 29, 2020

Chapter 4.6

You'd think that a global pandemic that forces you to remain at home with absolutely nothing to do would be conductive to writing a silly fanfic.

It wasn't.

Anyways let's not waste time on unwanted sob stories, I'm resurrecting the thread because I've picked up the fic again.

And here's some more.

Enjoy.

It was a data storage device, he was sure of it.

He'd tried to scan the internals of the scepter, but met a problem in that very few things could get through the mysterious metal. He'd tried doing some X-ray radiography, but that had only produced pictures that showed a solid white silhouette on a black background. He then tried upping the power and using gamma rays, that had worked a bit better, now he could discern barely visible traces of a slightly different hue. The metal absorbed radiation like a vacuum cleaner.

Then he'd tried using ultrasound, and that had almost been a disaster. The metal had either stayed inert, or began to resonate with the emitter and amplify it. He'd had to shut the experiment down the moment he'd seen the first glass spontaneously shatter. But even then, the scepter had kept vibrating on its own for a couple of minutes until it finally died down.

Not one to be discouraged by little things like not having a single glass window left intact, Victor had tried once again. This time however, he'd used proper ear protection and monitoring equipment. He hoped to fine tune the ultrasound emitter, to find a particular frequency he could use to obtain an image of the internal structure. Unfortunately that had only achieved shaking off the tooth fillings of a muggleborn assistant. Just like with the radiation, the metal of the scepter had an uncanny ability to absorb vibrations, but also to reflect and amplify them.

In the end, success had come by accident, like in so many other occasions. An assistant wizard had enough of that infernal racket and took out his wand to throw a silencing charm at the scepter. That had failed spectacularly as the scepter had absorbed the spell and started making twice as much noise, prompting everyone present to either leave the room or lose their eardrums. Later, when Victor was going over the recorded data, he'd noticed that after the spell had been cast, the scepter had started to vibrate in very characteristic patterns. Which had led to the discovery that specific thaumic fields could be used to generate a representation of its internal structure. It wasn't much but it was a start. And what he'd found inside the scepter had been circuitry. Very advanced circuitry, and either he knew nothing about semiconductors (which was obviously not the case, he knew a lot about semiconductors), or he was looking at solid state memory components.

As to what the hell was stored in those components, he could only speculate. He had no way to know how to access the data, what kind of file system the device used or even if it was encrypted or not. The amount of sheer guesswork and trial and error he would need to do to even begin to answer one of those questions was astronomical.

He only realized how tired he was after he caught himself speculating on the possible design of some sort of hot/cold device using a tarot deck as its base to predict whether a particular venue of investigation would yield results or not. He scoffed at himself at the very idea. Using that divination drivel in serious research? Preposterous! Nevertheless, the idea of studying thaumic field interactions with spacetime had merit, he should probably make a note of that.

He pinched the bridge of his nose in a futile attempt to drive back drowsiness and looked wearily at the scepter on the bench next to him, held in a contraption with cables attached to one of his thaumic batteries . It was late; he was working alone in the lab when everybody else had left and most of the castle was already sleeping. He sighed wearily contemplating the possibility of taking a rest.

Or he could have another mug of coffee and get back to work.

···

The sound of a lock being opened furtively was the only noise that could be heard that night in the HEMP laboratory wing, other than the soft snores produced by a sleeping eleven year old.

"Well done Formeus, you've done as instructed, the damnable mudblood is out of the picture, just as I indicated." Said Lucius Malfoy in a voice that tried to be quiet and failed to do so, due to the sheer amount of entitled elitism in it, demanding to be heard.

"Sssht! Not so loud Lucius!" Hissed Forneus actually managing to convey urgency and panic in a surprisingly quiet whisper. "We don't want to wake him up."

Despite being offended at being shushed by a mere commoner, the peril of waking the beast managed to shut Malfoy up. The group of Slytherin students carefully advanced through the laboratory in the stealthy manner of cat burglars, or more accurately, in the manner they imagined a cat burglar would, which wasn't very stealthy, at all.

"So how did you do it?" whispered Marigold to Formeus.

"Pardon?" he replied in the same quiet tone.

"The spell, what spell did you use to make Doom fall asleep?" she asked, letting her wiggling eyebrows act as punctuation.

In response, Formeus raised a single one of his eyebrows and said with a disbelieving expression, "Do I look like an idiot Marigold? I wouldn't try to directly charm Doom even if my life depended on it. It's not just that they say he's the one teaching the Ravenclaw head of house shield spells. But rumour has it that after causing so many accidents, he now wears a couple of protective charms at all times. And some of those can react in very nasty ways to any external spells."

Marigold just nodded, she'd heard the same rumours and they checked out with what they knew about Doom, but she insisted. "So how did you get him to fall asleep then?" she said while pointing in the general direction of a figure, sprawled over a workbench and gently snoring away.

"Simple really, I just snuck in this afternoon and changed the coffee can with decaf." he replied.

Marigold didn't say anything, but the way she raised her eyebrows helped convey her admiration for Formeus' creativity.

They reached their objective, the metal scepter that Victor had stolen from the strongbox they'd tried to steal it themselves a few days ago.

After learning of its new resting place, Malfoy, with an optimism that proved unassailable by defeat or reality, decided to steal the artifact from Doom. When he announced this decision, it immediately prompted two immediate reactions among his posse. The first one was a unanimous but silent questioning of Malfoy's sanity. The second one, a few seconds later, a simultaneous demand of triple their previously agreed-upon fee.

Whispering to avoid waking the snoring beast who slept just a few paces away, Malfoy said 'Right, here it is, now somebody take it."

There was a notorious lack of any taking being done. As everybody tried to look as if they hadn't heard Malfoy or indeed failed to notice the metal scepter, cradled in two clamp stands with cables connected to it. Percival even moved away from the table, apparently still looking for what everybody else had already found.

"Well, isn't anyone going to do as they're told?" The answer to Malfoy's question was a resounding silence.

"Oh I see what's going on. Well perhaps the prospect of currying favour with the dark lord might not be as appealing to you as I might have thought. Well, perhap you should be more worried not to incur his wrath, because after I report to my father, the dark lord will learn about this and he will know that it was you lot who were responsible for the failure tha…"

"Oh for Merlin's beard, stop." Forneus interrupted Malfoy, less motivated by any fear of Voldemort and more worried that Malfoy's ranting might wake up Doom. "Look, I'll do it, I'll take the scepter. You just need to pull off this cable here and…"

And that was the moment Formeus Jones became the first person ever, to touch a non-insulated, live cable still attached to a thaumic battery.

…

Victor Von Doom awoke from his slumber, he'd been having a troubled dream, in which a yappy, blonde chihuahua kept trying to nip at his heels, and whenever he tried to scare it off, it ran just out of reach, shouting about how 'his father will hear of this'. At the end, he must have managed to kick the annoying pest, because it had squealed a high pitched whine of pain and ran away.

Of course that had been the moment Victor had woken up, and the first thing his conscious mind registered was a smell that reminded him of burnt toast. Had he fallen asleep at the great hall again? It had almost happened once before. But a quick cursory glance at his surroundings confirmed that he was still at the HEMP laboratories.

It was telling of how tired he was that he spent almost three full seconds looking at the empty space where the scepter used to be before he realized what was wrong.

The realization that somebody had stolen the scepter jump started his brain into high gear. He looked around for potential clues and inhaled deeply. Yes there it was, a whiff of ozone and something slightly burnt. He looked at the thaumic battery, it still had the cables going out of it, but they weren't attached to anything, it hadn't been tampered with and was still active. Yes, that'd probably explain the smell. He flinched internally at the thought of someone grabbing a live thaumic wire. He probably should start insulating the things. His eyes then rested on his coffee mug and picked it up. It still had some residual heat, so he couldn't have been asleep for long. He put it to his lips and tasted it carefully. He thought he noticed a slight difference in the taste of his usual concoction. He swallowed a large gulp and savoured it in his mouth. Yes, definitely less bitter, probably decaffeinated.

He made a quick mental recap of the situation. Someone had sneaked into the HEMP laboratories, trespassed on his domain. Someone had targeted the scepter he was working on and stolen it right under his nose. But worst of all, someone had tampered with his coffee.

Now it was personal.

And someone was going to pay.

Short, I know, but I'm currently writing some more. And this time I promise I'm not going to stop until I manage to write an ending.

Last edited: Jun 6, 2021

Chapter 4.7

Progress is slow but steady.

Here's a little more. Enjoy.

Severus Snape was dreaming. He dreamt he was at home, playing with Lily and with a cheerful mother who was toiling busily in the kitchen, cooking sweet treats for both children. But something wasn't right, there was a voice, an arrogant, authoritative voice, calling out his name and cutting across his oneiric bliss like a saw across a harp's strings.

"Severus," said the voice, "Severus, wake up now!"

Snape tried to resist, to hold onto the dream, but the voice was too insistent, and weird stuff was happening now, like every pastry his mom took out of the oven exploding for no apparent reason and worst of all, the voice was now coming out of Lily's mouth. With a resigned sigh he opened his eyes.

He half expected to find Victor standing over him, shaking him awake but there was no one there. For a moment he thought that he was losing it and that Victor was now haunting his dreams. Then the voice came again loud and clear right next to his ear. "Severus, are you awake?"

Snape swore.

"Ah good, you are. Listen, we have something of a situation down here at the laboratory."

"Victor, where are you?" inquired Snape, falling back on the theory that he was going insane once more.

"Still at the lab, speaking into a tambourine. I cast a little spell on your pillow, it's just a magical version of a string telephone, all you need is some corn starch and… Look, that doesn't matter. I've got a problem over here, someone or someones has just stolen the scepter."

"What?!" Snape suddenly shouted, eliciting disgruntled groans and at least a very terse 'shut up' from his fellow roommates.

"My thoughts exactly. I'm reassembling the detector we used last time to track it. Shouldn't be too difficult. With all the juice I've been pumping into it these last few weeks, the thing should practically be glowing. Now get dressed and meet me outside the Great Hall, ASAP."

"Victor, if they've stolen the scepter, shouldn't we tell a teacher?" inquired Snape, reluctant to leave his cozy bed.

"Severus, I don't think you realize what just happened over here." replied Victor, his outrage so clear in his tone it practically painted a picture, one with severed heads in it. "They invaded my domain, sought to ridicule me by stealing that which I've been actively researching and worst of all. They dared to mess with Doom's coffee. Whoever these petty thieves are, being caught by a teacher would be far too lenient a punishment for their crimes. No, their retribution shall come by my hand. SO SAYS DOOM!

"Oh dear", mumbled Snape, alarm bells ringing inside his head as he realized how dire things really were, if Victor had started referring to himself in the third person. It'd only happened twice before and both times had involved traditionalist pureblood slytherins. That business with the sixth year who'd had the gall to utter the word mudblood where Victor could hear it. It hadn't been pretty. "Ok fine, just give me five minutes," said Snape quietly to his pillow, mindful of the rest of his sleeping dorm mates.

"You have three, Doom out." The pillow went instantly silent and also a bit sticky, that was probably the corn starch.

Snape sighed and reached out for his school robes.

…

James Potter looked up at the gibbous waning moon in the middle of a cloudless, starry night sky. He was having a rare moment of introspection, made all the more impressive by the fact that he was eleven and had about the same attention span as a ferret. He stood still in silent admiration of the beauty of it all.

Fortunately he was brought out of his contemplative reverie by Peter complaining about the cold and asking why they were out in the middle of the night. James found Peter's complaint about the cold odd. This was Scotland, the weather only had two settings, cold and wet. Sunny was alleged to exist, but had yet to be proven in James' experience.

He turned towards Peter, "because we still haven't found a secret base yet Peter, we're nearing the end of term and frankly, it's getting ridiculous. So we're going exploring tonight until we find someplace we can use. Even if it's in the forbidden forest." He looked towards Lupin who was looking a bit ragged, "you guys ok with that?"

"Absolutely!" claimed Sirius, visibly elated, standing next to Lupin. That didn't surprise James, if it was forbidden in any way, Sirius was in it. Lupin curtly mumbled "guess so", he was trying to sound miffed about having to leave his bed and sneak out in the middle of the night, but James noticed the smile underneath.

Searching for a secret base wasn't, of course, the only reason why they were out of bed well past lights out, not even the main one. Part of it was that James felt that it had been too long since he had broken any rules and had to get himself involved in some mischief, even if it was of the stealthy variety for his own peace of mind, if nothing else. But mostly it was a show of support for Lupin. James had noticed that he'd been away from the dorm recently, apparently he'd been feeling under the weather and spent the last few nights at the infirmary. Just like every single month since he'd been at Hogwarts. Frankly, at this point James was considering whether to come forward and warn him that if he wanted to keep it a secret, he should probably actually go a couple of random days to the infirmary to throw people off. Because someone was bound to notice sooner or later that his illness always seemed to get worse during the full moon.

Apparently from what he'd read on lycanthropy, (he refused to call it werewolfry, no matter what that stuck up prat Arsenius Jigger said) the transformation was quite painful and while the worst happened during the full moon, those affected still suffered some adverse effects in the days before and after. So James had decided that if their friend was going to have a terrible night, they could sneak out and turn it into an awesome one.

And precisely because they were where they weren't supposed to be, they saw Malfoy's little party hurrying across the courtyard in the direction of the forbidden forest.

No one spoke, there was no need to, they just looked at each other and ran after them like foxhounds.

The hunt was on.

···

Marigold was more than a bit worried about Formeus, physically he appeared to be well enough, aside from his hair standing on its end, and crackling occasionally with an octarine coloured discharge. After getting zapped when he grabbed the wire, he'd given a mercifully muted mix of a whine and a scream, then fallen to the floor like a sack of potatoes. They'd rushed to his help while Malfoy, who was suddenly wearing dragon hide gloves, picked up the scepter and legged it. While the rest of the team took umbrage at the callousness of their so-called leader, not a single one of them could fault his reasoning. So picking up Formeus' twitching form between all of them, they ran as fast as they could away from Doom, whose snoring had suddenly and alarmingly changed in tone.

But what really worried her was what happened soon afterwards, when Formeus had regained consciousness, while they were still in the HEMP building, Formeus had scrambled to his feet and proclaimed to the world in general how his eyes had been opened, that the universe was now an open book and the secrets of transfiguration lay bare for him to discover.

Yes, that worried Marigold, but currently she was more concerned with putting as much distance as possible between them and the by now, probably awake, first year of their nightmares. Never a particularly athletic specimen of wizardom, Malfoy had quickly slowed his frantic run down to a brisk power walk, which not only allowed the rest of his team to catch up, but for him to tell them with a completely straight face that he'd done so intentionally. At the moment, speed was the only consideration in everyone's minds, which was the reason she didn't notice the direction they were running until it started to become obvious.

"Lucius!" she shouted, any pretense of stealth abandoned in favour of frantic flight, "where are you taking us?!"

"The forbidden forest!" He told them, "That's where we're going to hide the artifact until the agent from the dark lord comes to retrieve it."

"What?!" Shouted Percival with notable alarm. "Lucius, it's past midnight, with gibbous waning. The forest will be positively full with creepy crawlies. it's insane!"

"Precisely!" Malfoy replied with the unshakable self assurance only real nobility were capable of, which also explained why many of them met untimely ends. "No one will even think we'll try to make our escape there."

"With good reason", mumbled Percival, too low for Malfoy to hear. For a moment the sixth year Slytherin thought about abandoning Malfoy right there, payment be damned, and going back to the castle and pretend none of this had ever happened. But then he remembered that Doom was also in that same direction.

His feet slowed down a bit, but kept heading in the direction of the forbidden forest.

…

Victor examined the readout from his detector device, picking up the energy trail from the scepter was trivial, it practically left a lighted up path in its wake. They'd followed the trail in the general direction of the quidditch field and were now examining where it led off.

"Looks like they're going towards the forbidden forest." Doom said after a couple of seconds studying the vectorial data, then he closed one eye and threw out his thumb against a reference point to double-check.

"What?!" replied Snape in shock. "During the witching hour, and just a day after a full moon? The forest will be bursting with supernatural activity, it's suicidal!"

"Indeed, we should probably avoid following these would-be thieves in there…" Victor paused for a moment and manipulated a section of a steel gauntlet he was wearing until it let out a soft beeping sound. "… Unarmed!" his smile was predatory now, he turned towards Snape "You've got your emergency vials?" he asked.

Snape patted confidently a belt with a couple of pouches he was wearing around his waist. It was designed for an adult, and looked ridiculously oversized on him with the belt going two complete loops around his small waist. "Of course", he replied, "you did say it was an emergency."

"Oh it will be… for them!"

As you can see, we're heading towards the showdown now, I hope you guys enjoy the ride to come.

I've got a good idea of what I want to do, but it's not a clear one. At the moment its details are quite mutable, but I hope that will allow me to be more creative when writing it down.

This time I promise I'm not stopping until it's done.

Last edited: Jun 8, 2021

Chapter 4.8

I've had a couple rough days recently, with even rougher days expected ahead.

Fortunately, writing this story gives me some peace of mind.

Anyways, here's a bit more of Malfoy's misadventures.

Enjoy.

"What was that?" Asked Percival in a voice notoriously close to panic.

"That was you, you stepped on a branch, see?" replied Marigold, as she brought down her lumos spell to illuminate the ground he'd just stepped on, then quickly drew it away as she tried to impose order amongst their ranks. "Formeus no, leave that moss alone, do not turn it to gumdrops! Cupid, walk away from that tree and come back here this instant!" she shouted in matronly tones.

As the self appointed keeper of both Formeus and Cupid and Formeus, Marigold's whole time was devoted to trying to keep them safe and within arm's reach, which they were determined to make very difficult for her. Cupid just kept looking at every vine covered tree with a far away look and Marigold had been forced to grab hold of him several times to avoid having him wander off into the forest, whenever they passed a particularly thick concentration of vegetation.

Meanwhile Formeus kept trying to transfigure everything that caught his fancy and then testing it, to see what unpredictable side effects the spell had. That stone, now it's a stool! Let's check how comfy it is. Those leaves on the trees? Presto, now they're book leaves! Wonder what's written on them. The grass under our feet would be so much better if it was turned to glass… Fortunately Marigold had managed to stop him in time before he could do that one. Her shoes were barely adequate as it were for a nocturnal jaunt through the forbidden forest, she didn't fancy adding razor sharp glass to the mix.

Having to take care of the more vulnerable members of the posse was proving to be pretty exhausting and demanding every last bit of concentration she had, which had the unintended benefit of not giving her any time to panic about their current situation.

Percival, whom if he was a muggle would be prime business school material, had no thoughts to spare for the welfare of his companions, since he was keeping all of those for himself. The trouble with going into the forest under a gibbous waning moon was that while not even the craziest bastard would even consider walking into the forbidden forest under a full moon, gibbous waning was just that tiny bit less dangerous for said bastards to actually try it, with predictable results. Percival thought of it like this. If full moon in the forbidden forest was akin to a wild pub-crawling bender with a bit of football rioting thrown in for good measure, gibbous waning was like the day after, where everybody involved in the mess is nursing a huge hangover and doesn't take kindly to anyone trespassing and making a noise. And then you had to take into consideration that not every forest resident took part in last night's bender and they're understandably a bit miffed about their neighbours thrashing up the place and more than ready to take it out on any unwelcome visitors.

Percival's was quite clear about it, gibbous moon wasn't any better than full moon, it was worse because that apparent decrease in monster activity fooled reckless idiots into a false sense of security. And they had the king (or possibly queen, Percival had wondered about that sometimes. He was often amazed that there existed that many hair care products, let alone that a single person could have and use them all) of all reckless idiots leading them through the forest.

On the other hand, the alternative was facing an eleven year old insane genius with a mean streak and a chip on his shoulder.

Percival gritted his teeth, followed Malfoy's tracks and tried to look at two directions at once. He heard Marigold saying, 'Formeus, we don't need tap dancing snails right now! Save it for once we're back at the castle where others will be able to appreciate the genius of the idea". He sighed and found a little solace in the thought that if anything did happen, he didn't have to outrun any monsters, just the rest of the team.

…

Some distance away from Malfoy and his posse, if one looked really hard at the moonlit darkness between the trees, one would see four pairs of small feet clumsily following Malfoy and then nothing else, because the feet suddenly cut off somewhere above the ankles. However if you listened you would easily be able to hear hushed grunts and whispered complaints seemingly coming out of thin air.

"Peter, you stepped on me, again!" said the voice of Sirius Black, sounding oddly muffled, as if coming through a thick fabric.

"It's not my fault, I can't see where I'm going and we're too cramped in here." replied Peter Pettigrew's voice.

"Everyone, quiet!" shushed Remus Lupin. Then he picked up again in a conciliatory manner. "Look as awesome and huge as this cloak is, I think we can all agree that having four people under it is stretching it a little too far." he paused for a second taking a deep breath. "Me and Peter will get out from under the cloak, I can…"

A high pitched squeal of terror came from somewhere about four feet above Peter's ankles. "Why me? Why do I have to be the one that goes out? What if the centaurs catch me, or… or worse, werewolves!"

"Peter, calm down, if you'll let me finish," said Lupin in a reassuring, but awkward sounding tone, "Look guys, I have… some skills to do with tracking and stealth, and I think I can keep a better no… eye on Malfoy from outside the cloak. As for you Peter, no one here is better at becoming invisible without an actual invisibility cloak than you, you just have to stand still and you practically disappear. You make these two look like clumsy trolls by comparison."

"I'd be offended, but Peter does have a knack for blending with the background." replied James Potter's voice.

There was a rustle of fabric, and Lupin suddenly appeared from under the invisibility cloak. A moment later, he was followed by a reluctant Peter Pettigrew who moved as quietly as a rodent. "Follow me guys, If I make this signal," he stretched out his arm against the moon light and spread out his palm towards them, "hide immediately, and don't come out until I give the all clear. But if I do this," he made a different hand gesture, "we run like heck back to the castle, ok?"

There were two affirmative grunts from under the cloak and a silent nod from Peter, Remus took point and the four gryffindor first years were back stalking the sixth year slytherins.

"So, you've thought of what we're going to do to Malfoy once we catch up to him?" Sirius asked James under the protection of the cloak which now trailed across the forest floor hiding them completely.

"Not really." replied James, "I guess I'll just have to make it up as we go." he said candidly.

"Works for me." Sirius said, gently smacking his fist into his palm.

…

"Have you thought about what you're going to do to them once we catch them?" Asked a slightly nervous Snape.

"Haven't decided yet," replied Victor, "It's tricky, it needs to be something that everyone will know was my doing, while at the same time being untraceable back to me. I have a couple of ideas though. Maybe something ironic and sensorial, like making them feel like a coffee bean being turned to coffee.

Snape flinched at that, "I don't know Victor, that sounds a lot like the cruciatus curse to me."

Victor gave him an offended look, "The cruciatus curse is generalistic and inelegant, what I suggested is highly specific, much more subtle and just retribution for their crimes."

Snape just shrugged, he did not see much point discussing that right now, besides he had other things to worry about. He kept an eye on the shadows between the trees and a hand ready to throw a vial of monster repellent. He knew he probably had very little to worry about, after all, he was with Doom, on the other hand, he was with Doom, and any predators that might be lurking around would instinctively single him as the easier prey.

"We're catching up to them, they've been zig-zagging quite a bit, which has slowed them considerably." said Doom looking up the data from the portable detector.

"You think they're lost?" asked Snape.

"Possibly, the forest is not easy to navigate at night under the best circumstances, and having half a brain is not one of them." Doom fiddled with the detector a bit and lifted an inquisitive eyebrow, "that's odd," he said while manipulating a couple of knobs on the device.

"What is?" asked Snape, looking around himself with suspicion at every shadow.

"There's somebody else up ahead, at least two people and… maybe someone else as well, cloaked somehow, can't get a clear reading." Victor whispered to Snape signalling him to lay low and hide. He kept adjusting the detector while scanning in the direction he'd pointed out previously. "Yes, definitely one more person, camouflaged somehow."

"Ambush?" Snape asked, concerned.

"Unlikely," Victor replied dismissing Snape's worries, "they're moving away from us in the same direction as Malfoy, whoever they are, they're following him as well." He pondered for a few seconds while extrapolating these three new unknown elements' progress compared to Malfoy's progress and came to a conclusion. "Let's stay behind them and observe, I want to be sure what their intentions are."

Snape just nodded, thankful for the extra bodies close enough to attract attention away from him and crawled carefully behind Doom in the same direction as the new group.

…

Malfoy concentrated as he recited the incantation and held out his wand. Yes he definitely could notice the slight tug on his wand growing stronger, they were definitely nearing their destination.

"We're getting close, come on keep up." he said to his team, wary of letting his meat shields lag too much behind where they wouldn't be as useful in case of a sudden monster attack.

Marigold just groaned and moaned something about getting this over with, while pulling on Formeus and Cupid. Percival brought up the rear of the group, checking the shadows for any possible threats. It should be said that Percival wasn't much of a tracker, or of anything really, and thus, remained completely unaware of Lupin's stalking or Peter's scurrying behind them.

Malfoy concentrated on his wand, trying to feel where leaned to, yes, very close now, the wand was definitely pulling him forward towards a specific part of the forest. Yes, towards this tree in particular. He examined the tree closely, trying to find the marker which signalled the drop off point.

"What's that?" asked Marigold.

"What's what?" replied Malfoy showcasing his exemplary wit.

"That!" she repeated, and stretched an arm to point a finger at the base of the tree. "It looks like metal." she elaborated.

Malfoy looked at where she was pointing, sure enough there was something giving off a metallic glint from the light of their lumos spells. He knelt down before the tree, before realizing he was in the middle of the forest and that he'd be getting his robes dirty, like a peasant. He grimaced with distaste at the thought, but sometimes, such sacrifices were necessary in the pursuit of a great cause. And there was no cause greater than getting in the good graces of the Dark Lord. He picked the object in question and found himself holding a small enameled lapel pin showcasing a silver and emerald snake.

"This is it!" he exclaimed standing up in triumph. "Percival, start digging a hole where I found this pin, we shall leave the artifact hidden between the tree roo…"

"You're late", said an unknown voice from the shadows, "you were supposed to do the drop-off at least 40 minutes ago."

Malfoy came very close to chastising himself for not choosing to wear brown pants. But he recovered quite well all things considered. "With only a slight tremor in his voice he said to the disembodied voice. "I have absolutely no idea what you might be talking about sir." Truly Malfoy was a natural born politician. Even in the midst of a pants-ruining situation, he chose to claim total and utter ignorance of what was going on, even in direct contradiction of both reality and every bit of common sense. After all, his father often said; 'common sense is not legally binding'.

"Do you, really?" the voice replied dripping with mockery. "Then I suppose it's just an unlikely coincidence that I found five gormless students who simply happened to be carrying the artifact the dark lord has ordered his followers to retrieve from Hogwarts, while I was having a casual stroll through the forbidden forest late at night. That suits me fine though, I won't have to share credit with anyone."

Malfoy stiffened, "now wait a minute here…" he started before pausing, taking a deep breath and reassessing the situation he was currently in. "Forgive me sir, but I was never informed there would be anyone waiting at the drop off point. We were supposed to hide the object and leave it for someone else to extract it at a later moment."

"And you were right", a cloaked figure stepped out of the shadows. He was wearing one of those masks the Voldemort fan club, the Death Eaters, seemed so fond of. The mask this man was wearing was a porcelain affair, masterfully decorated and exquisitely manufactured. It was obviously an accessory designed to protect its wearer's anonymity while at the same time divulging his level of affluence. "But there's been a slight change of plans. Word has come down the ministry grapevine about the artifact you're carrying and it has piqued the dark lord's interest enough to send someone to secure the exchange."

The death eater was lying, no rumour actually had reached the dark lord about the scepter, nor had his interest in it changed in any way from being entirely superficial, the scepter really wasn't even a blip in Voldemort's radar, but it was a huge blot in his personal secretary's. The man, tasked as he was with monitoring and organizing ministry spionage had had to read dozens of reports about the High Energy Magical Procedures department. Most of them he dismissed as exaggeration and tall tales, but speculation on what really happened there ran rampant through the ministry like beer through a football crowd. Entire departments were feuding with each other over who had jurisdiction over the HEMP progress reports and the valuable data they contained. There was talk coming from the unspeakables department about a battery device that could be connected to a wand and would allow a wizard to cast a spell with ten times more power than normal.

And he figured it was no coincidence that he had received a report from their agents at Hogwarts informing that the scepter had been moved and was now under the custody of the High Energy Magic department. Roughly at about the same time as ministry reports that said that one of the senior researchers there by the name of Doom, had recently acquired a mysterious artifact capable of absorbing and storing magical power on a scale that dwarfed even the best made battery.

An artifact that absorbed magic, and a scepter that could dispel and absorb spells. No, he was sure it wasn't just a coincidence. Which made Voldemort's personal secretary very interested in the scepter all of a sudden.

As someone who interacted with Voldemort on a daily basis and who organized his schedule, he knew Voldemort intimately. He knew Voldemort was a genius, a man of vision, the most powerful wizard alive, but he also was, to put it mildly, an insane murderous psychopath.

He didn't fault him for that, plenty of great wizards had been into mass murder, look at Grindelwald for example. The only problem he saw with dangerous psychos was that you never knew when they might turn on you. He was quite confident he could stay on his good side, but it never hurt to make sure, and thus, any rumour that might lead to him obtaining an edge in such a scenario was, in his opinion, a worthy avenue of investigation.

Which is why he was here now, chasing after a device that could potentially give him that extra edge to survive.

"We're sorry about the delay sir," Malfoy said with apparent contrition, "we ran into some unexpected difficulties when acquiring the object." He offered by way of explanation.

"I can see that." the death eater replied, nodding his head in the direction of Marigold and Formeus who was trying to get Formeus to put away his wand and convince him not to attempt transfiguring a nearby tree into maple syrup. Formeus looked visibly confused by Marigold's insistence and asked her why not.

"Because it's an oak, for starters!"

At which point Formeus gave her a knowing look, tapped the side of his nose and replied "Precisely".

"Did he get hit in the head?" asked the death eater.

"Not exactly." replied Malfoy shrugging insouciantly. Truth was, he didn't care much for what happened to Formeus, or at all. Then he remembered all the mountain of transfiguration work that he had agreed to do for McGonagall that Formeus was going to be doing in his stead and paled visibly. "I do hope it's not permanent."

The death eater gave no indication of mirroring Malfoy's statement in any way, this was a man that truly didn't give a rat's wee about whether Formeus made a full recovery or ended up in a wood chipper.

"Right, I'm sure it's a fascinating story" the sarcasm in his voice was just a mere hair's breadth away from materializing into solid cubes. He looked back at Malfoy, obviously thinking that any social niceties the situation might have required were appropriately dispensed with. "But I'm busy and can't really stay to chat."

He extended a gloved hand towards Malfoy and said "Hand it over."

…

James Potter had seen enough. He stood up from under the invisibility cloak pointing his wand at Malfoy in a menacing gesture.

"Don't you dare give it to him, Malfoy!" he exclaimed with as much authority as he could muster.

Sirius sprung to his feet a moment after his friend revealed himself. He was a bit worried about the death eater, but there was no doubt in his mind that they would manage somehow. He pointed his wand at the masked man and grimaced at him in what he hoped was an intimidating manner. The death eater just returned his stare. His mask completely covered his face, so Sirius had no way to tell if it was working or not, but after a few seconds the death eater said something in an amused voice.

"You should probably eat more fiber boy."

After spending a few seconds with his face buried in his palms, Remus, who was still hiding, tried to signal to his friends that he would circle back behind the death eater and to keep him talking. Unfortunately, James was keeping his eyes focused on Malfoy in case he did any sudden moves, so the only one who saw him was Sirius, who watching from the corner of his eye saw his friend gesticulating and interpreted it as… hand wave, hand wave, spin around, eat something?

Peter yelped very quietly, found a nice big log to hide himself under and remained there.

The death eater looked away from the two young boys, not paying them any attention and centered all of his displeasure on Malfoy.

"You incompetent idiot, you were followed, by children no less, who have just witnessed the whole thing!"

Malfoy reeled back under the sheer venom and cold fury in the man's voice. He pointed his wand at the boys, trying to save some face from this debacle.

"Not to worry, not to worry! I can do a really strong confundus charm, after they're hit by it they won't even remember their own names."

The death eater was about to tell Malfoy where he could shove that confundus charm when he was interrupted by some loud rustling a bit further away from where the two children had suddenly appeared.

…

Victor sighed in disgust, that kid, (Potter was it?) was about to get himself killed, and probably get Victor in a load of trouble for not having prevented it.

He clicked his tongue and said, "Come on Severus, we should probably save that idiot from himself."

They stood up, Snape had a glass vial in each hand at the ready, Victor grabbed his steel covered left arm with his right hand and pointed the armoured hand at Malfoy, a high pitched whine could be heard as the gauntlet powering up.

"I suggest you put down your wand, Malfoy."

"Doom!" Malfoy gasped, just as angry as he was scared. Everything was getting worse by the second. "What are you doing here? How did you find us so fast?"

"Doom?" voiced the death eater incredulously, "this is Doom? The genius wizard whose name figures in practically every single ministry report to come out of Hogwarts these past months?" He looked at the eleven year old wearing an odd steel gauntlet emanating a strange glow from the palm of his hand. "I thought he would have been a professor, or at the very least a former graduate." He snorted dismissively before adding. "He's just a child!"

"I would be flattered if I was not being insulted. Now Malfoy and everyone else, put your wands down!"

"Yes," a deep gravelly voice resonated through the trees "let's all do that, you as well young wizard!"

Everybody looked at the point the latest voice had come from and they saw a centaur stepping through the night's shadows into the small circle of gloomy light afforded by the lumos spells from Malfoy's group. They heard a branch snap in the opposite direction and saw another centaur stepping right into the edge of the light circle, then another and then another one. Until they were surrounded by centaurs on all sides, their bows ready to fire an arrow into any of them at a moment's notice.

"Hmm" said Victor to himself assessing the situation, "this might actually be a challenge yet."

Can you say Mexican Standoff?

Last edited: Jun 12, 2021

Chapter 4.9

I did promise I would deliver a new chappie today didn't I?

Here you go.

The death eater was the first to react. "Centaurs!" he said, somehow managing to instil a sense of disgust into the word as he said it through hidden lips that seemed reluctant to pronounce the word. "What is it you want?"

The leading centaur who had been observing the diverse group of humans gathered at the clearing, focused on the death eater and spoke. "You have laid claim to something over which you have no legitimate right, nor do you have any idea how dangerous it is." he said in a low resonating voice, talking slowly and taking care to enunciate each word as one would when explaining something important to a wayward child. "You have no concept of the consequences your actions would cause. You would tangle the threads of destiny in their skeins and cause disastrous knots to appear in the tapestry of f…"

"Oh spare me the cheap, third rate conjurer, mumbo jumbo! Divination is just a load of bull, or horseshit in this case." The death eater scornfully interrupted the leading centaur. In spite of being surrounded by over a dozen armed centaurs, ready to shoot their arrows at a moment's notice, he didn't sound intimidated, just annoyed. He continued, "is that why you're here? To spout a bunch of nonsense about destiny? Typical centaur!"

The centaur leader snorted loudly through his nostrils, obviously offended at the dark wizard's dismissive words, for a moment it seemed like he would give the order to shoot, but then he spoke again. "Leave the artifact and go, you have no idea of how dangerous it is."

There was no way to know what the death eater's face looked like behind his mask, but the covetous tones of his voice suggested something lizard-like. "You really have no idea how to negotiate, centaur, everything you've said only makes me want it more!"

"You believe the artifact will give you great power, you are wrong. It bears the seal of great spirits, possession of it cannot be taken, only granted." The centaur fixed his stare on the death eater before continuing. "But that is not what makes it dangerous, by itself it's just a tool. But for those with eyes to see, it is a turning point in destiny. It has the potential to become a linchpin for several threads, unravel the tapestry of fate around it, or both!"

"Like I said centaur, you're not selling me on the idea of giving it up." Ice cold eyes stared from behind the mask, greed and a steel like determination could be seen in the death eater's stare.

The centaur just gave back an equally stern glare. "Think it thoroughly, your next choice could have consequences beyon… WHAT IS THAT BOY DOING?!

Everybody followed the centaur's gaze to see Formeus walking towards the centaurs closest to him with a goofy smile on his face, that only managed to make the wand on his hand more threatening.

…

Formeus was feeling quite frustrated. First Marigold had been a wet blanket all night, well more since he'd woken up after being knocked out. Marigold constantly telling him not to do all of these things that were such obviously great ideas had understandably ruined his groove. 'No Formeus, you can't turn the ground into lava to stop any pursuers', she'd said, and when asked why she'd just told him 'One: because we want to throw them off our trail, not lead them to it. Two: because we still have to get back after we're done here. And three: I don't know if you've noticed, but we're IN THE MIDDLE OF A FOREST!'

It was a shame, but he had to admit they were good reasons, still, she didn't need to shout in his face.

And now all of this talking was threatening to bore him out of his mind.

But when the centaurs arrived, Marigold, worried by the possibility of taking an arrow to the kidney, the lung, or any other bit she might need whole and unpunctured, had stopped paying as close attention to Formeus. Something he noticed and which he took as his cue for a chance to test the latest ideas he'd come up with after seeing the latest arrivals to the party.

"Why horses?" thought Formeus, "Could any other animal work? Like, how about a spider? Yes, a giant spider like the one he'd caught a glimpse of when he'd wandered off to see if turning a redcap mushroom into a viable two bedroom house was possible. But Marigold had grabbed him by the ear and pulled him back. Honestly she was such a killjoy. How was he to prove he was the greatest transfigurator that ever existed if she was always there to undermine his groove?"

But Marigold wasn't looking at him right now, and the horse people were standing right there, just waiting for him to test out his brilliant and inspired ideas. He started walking towards them. Barely registering the bows they were holding, beyond the fact they seemed to be made of oak.

"WHAT IS THAT BOY DOING?!" shouted someone.

The centaurs tensed their bows, just as Marigold turned to check on Formeus and saw him several paces away already and walking without a care in the world. She tried to make a grab for him, but that only made more centaurs to pull on the strings of their bows, so she fell flat to the ground attempting very hard not to move while she reached for her wand and angrily whispered at Formeus to: "come back, you maniac!" Unfortunately he didn't give any indication of having heard her and kept on walking.

The centaurs let go of their bow strings.

After he'd recovered consciousness, Formeus had felt supercharged (in a rather literal way as the little octarine sparks flying off the tips of his hair could attest to) and ready to tackle any challenge set before him. His eyes had been opened, his consciousness expanded and his chakras, whatever they were, cleansed. It was as if everything he'd ever known about transfiguration had coalesced together to form a single, perfect entity. Every single piece of separate knowledge, fitting together perfectly into a beautiful whole that granted him new perspective and understanding of the art. Patterns arranged themselves in his mind, he only needed to think about it to envision the precise wand movements necessary for a new spell and knew instinctively how much power to pour into it. Everything was so clear and simple as new and elegant solutions flooded his mind, and he smirked remembering how crude his past efforts had been.

At the time, he was unaware of it, but Formeus had become the first person in wizarding history to suffer a thaumic overload. The effect would later on, often be described as being extremely drunk, with the resulting hangover being ten times worse than what even the cheapest firewhisky could produce.

When he saw the arrows fly, Formeus didn't even break his stride, he lazily waved his wand in a simple pattern and the arrows suddenly became moths fluttering harmlessly past his head into the night sky. The centaurs stood there looking dumbfounded for a moment, before they remembered they were still holding their bows and lined up a second shot.

Whether those arrows would have fared any differently became a moot question as Marigold at that moment tackled him to the ground and saved his life by scant inches from being pierced by arrows aimed at Formeus' back.

The centaurs opposite those he was advancing towards had witnessed the whole thing and as one had decided to test whether he'd be able to defend himself just as readily from a shot from behind. The answer as the arrow flew past the space that a fraction of a second before had been occupied by Formeus' body was a resounding no.

And like a dam breaking, movement exploded all over the clearing as Formeus fell to the ground.

The death eater pulled out his wand and with a cry of "Kill the vermin!" started throwing curses at the centaurs closest to him. Spells flew off his wand by the pairs without incantation, cutting curses, boiling hexes, and all kinds of nasty magics bombarded the centaurs who took cover behind the trees as well as they could. A few were able to release their arrows but the projectiles were deflected by the shield spells the death eater had managed to weave in between the offensive curses.

Malfoy knelt on one knee and tried to imitate him, attempting to throw a wide area hex capable of thinning the victim's blood. But as he finished his incantation, a flurry of octarine sparks instead of the yellow-green light the hex was supposed to be, flew out of his wand and right into the scepter he was still holding in his left hand.

He looked at the thing confused and tried again, disregarding the warmth he was feeling, even through the dragon hide glove. This time he attempted a different spell, a blinding curse. Percival, who was still working out whether it was preferable to help the death eater or lie on the ground and play dead, heard Malfoy's incantation, recognized it and sprang into action.

"Don't!" Percival shouted and if Malfoy hadn't been preoccupied with other things, like a horde of centaurs intent on doing them harm, he'd have taken offense at the tone Percival had used with him. The "you idiot" was left unsaid, but clear enough. He threw himself at Malfoy in much the same way Marigold had tackled Formeus.

Malfoy's curse was a nasty piece of work intended to blind someone by searing their corneas. The worst part was that it wasn't a targeted spell, but rather it was indiscriminate, affecting everyone who looked at the sudden flash of bright purple light. It meant that the caster was the person most at risk since he was standing closest to the curse. Whereas those beyond a certain distance could simply negate the spell's effects by looking away or closing their eyes, the caster would be so close to the light that it would burn him even through closed eyelids. As such, special protection was necessary prior to casting that curse, protection that Malfoy obviously hadn't prepared. He hadn't given his allies any warning of what he intended to do, which meant that if the death eater looked at Malfoy in that precise moment and happened to be blinded, not only would they lose their main line of defense against the centaurs, he'd also be supremely pissed off.

For all those reasons, it was quite fortunate for everybody involved that the spell fizzled out of existence, pretty much the same way as the prior one had. As soon as it began manifesting at the end of his wand, the supposedly sun-bright ball of light sputtered for a second, before finally dissolving into a cloud of golden sparks sucked into the scepter. And this time Malfoy noticed how the scepter got significantly hotter in his hand.

The centaurs confirmed that Malfoy had failed to conjure any spells and broke cover to let loose a volley of arrows at him.

Percival collided against Malfoy just a second before the arrows turned him into a novelty pincushion. The impact made him lose his grip on the scepter which spun through the air several times before falling on the ground halfway between Malfoy and the place where James Potter and Sirius Black were crouching down.

As if activated by a switch, both children sprinted towards the object running as fast as they could while staying low to avoid the whizzing curses.

There was a shout of 'ACCIO' from the death eater, for a second the scepter shuddered but stubbornly remained on the grass it had fallen on.

"Stop them you fools!" Shouted the death eater as he cast a couple more shield charms to deflect even more incoming arrows. Then followed up with a couple of blistering hexes aimed at the tail ends of some retreating centaurs.

Malfoy tried to get to his feet, but found himself pinned under Percival's weight who sensibly refused to stand up while projectiles kept flying all over them.

James Potter reached the scepter unimpeded, scooped it from the ground and held it over his head in victory. A second later, realization hit that he'd just made himself a target for everyone else in the clearing and his face went from triumph to 'oh bugger' in less than a second.

It was very fortunate for him that at that precise moment he was suddenly surrounded by very thick smoke.

…

Victor Von Doom wasn't happy, at all! He'd already been angry when he'd woken up to find his research subject stolen and his coffee tampered with, but everything that had happened since then had only managed to further sour his mood.

Discovering that it had been none other than Malfoy and his cronies who were responsible for the theft at the lab had been part of it. The fact that a bunch of cravenly ignoramuses would even dare to entertain the notion of crossing him, much less actually do it, had been infuriating, to say the least. But the worst of it all had been the sudden appearance of the death eater, suddenly throwing his weight around, taking charge, giving orders and acting like he owned the place. Who did he think he was? That was his job, damnit! The sudden appearance of the centaurs was a minor annoyance by comparison.

Then Formeus, whom Doom suspected might not be all there, had suddenly walked towards the centaurs at the edge of the clearing and the whole thing had gone wahoonie-shaped, turning into a free-for-all.

That was the only silver lining in this whole disastrous situation, at the very least he could claim self-defense for anything that happened from this point on.

He fidgeted with his gauntlet and aimed his steel clad hand towards the nearest centaurs at his right. The disruptor field designed to interfere with a wizard's wand and render it momentarily inoperative would be useless against the centaurs, the modified repulsor beam on the other hand…

He moved his hand almost imperceptibly and a thin, concentrated beam of energy shot out from his palm, striking the side of a tree under which two centaurs stood aiming their bows. The tree exploded, raining splinters and branches on the centaurs who had to fall back to avoid being crushed.

He pivoted to his left and adjusted a setting in the gauntlet and fired the beam again. Incoming arrows were suddenly deflected by a short-range wide-area repulsor beam, visible only by the slight shimmering haze it left in its passing.

"Severus, brambles at nine o'clock if you please." Victor said, as calm as if he'd just asked Snape to pass him the salt on the table, or more likely a reference book in the library.

The words seemed to break through Snape's apparent paralysis and he whipped into action, reaching into his pouches for the appropriate vial and throwing them towards the nearest group of centaurs on his left standing between the bushes. The glass container broke, splashing a green and earthy smelling liquid on the shrubs, which promptly started growing at an explosive rate and surrounding the centaurs with sharp dagger-like thorns that threatened to cut them to ribbons.

Victor, watching out of the corner of his eye, gave an approving nod as he focused a low frequency repulsor beam on a group of three centaurs, the wide area wavering haze from the gauntlet struck all three creatures, throwing them off their hooves. "Good, now glue together the next two at 8:30. Then quicksand the ground under the three, at my 2 o'clock.

Snape's hands moved without conscious thought, finding the adequate vials by instinct. He threw a second vial in the general direction of the centaurs at his left like Victor had said. One of the centaurs ducked out of the way and the vial broke against the side of a tree behind him. It released a white mist which immediately enveloped both of the magical creatures, completely hiding them from everyone else, before it suddenly coalesced into a mess of sticky goo that bound them in place. He faced towards his next target and threw another vial.

In an impressive display of marksmanship, one of the centaurs was able to snipe Snape's vial in mid air before it reached them. This actually proved to be worse for the centaurs it had targeted, since the liquid spread over a wider area when its container broke, instantly turning a much larger patch of ground into a muddy, waist deep bog that immobilized anyone in it.

"Note to self, make some explosive vials." mumbled Snape under his breath.

Victor heard it and grinned, "that's a good idea Severus", he said as he aimed another high energy beam towards an old fallen tree behind which some centaurs were trying to take cover. The rotten dead wood exploded leaving the centaurs without any cover to hide behind and leading to them realizing that discretion was the better part of valour before turning tail and running away. "Perhaps you'd like my assistance?" he said without breaking stride and deflecting a new volley of arrows with another wide area repulsor beam.

"Maybe," he replied, grinning in spite of himself as he felt the adrenaline pumping through his body, "we have to survive this first."

Victor laughed heartily at that. "Come on, Severus, do you honestly think this pitiful attempt at a brawl could even hope to leave a scratch on Doom?" As he said this, he held up his arm and clenched his hand into a fist. A sudden dome of force spread around them, protecting them from the latest coordinated assault of the centaurs which had attempted to attack them simultaneously from opposite directions.

'Still talking in the third person, but now he's laughing, I don't know which is worse.' thought Snape. Out loud he said, "Not really all that worried about them Victor, I'm more worried about Dumbledore tanning our hides after this is over." He replied as he threw a nauseating essence potion at another centaur.

"Ah, but we're legitimately acting in self defense here, Severus." answered Doom as he finally pulled out his wand and started blasting stunning spells at the few centaurs left through the force dome.

Snape considered this and thought it very unlikely, he found himself utterly unable to conceive a scenario in which Victor acted purely in self-defense, maybe self-offense.

There was a triumphant shout and they turned to see James Potter standing tall and holding the metal scepter in his outstretched arm.

Victor sighed in annoyance, "Severus if you'd be so kind as to provide some smoke cover for our suicidal friend over there?" He considered for a fraction of a second before adding, "Bright smoke please, it's nighttime, no need to give away our position with lumos."

"Right!" Snape answered before reaching into his pouch and throwing another vial.

A sudden thick and luminous white fog hid James Potter from view and quickly spread around the whole clearing.

…

From her foxhole, Marigold looked at the mayhem in the clearing and promised herself to stay as far away from Doom as was magically possible.

After Formeus had kickstarted the battle and she'd tackled him to the ground, she'd improvised a foxhole by using a levitation charm on a bunch of earth, literally ripping a hole in the ground. The soft soil had yielded easily to her panic fueled charm. She'd quickly jumped in and pulled Formeus after her and tried to help in the fight however she could, throwing shielding charms to protect both of them, while Formeus used transfiguration offensively. She'd been somewhat impressed when she'd seen him turn the leaves on the branches directly above some centaurs into sharp, jagged, lead slabs.

But very soon, she found her shield charms weren't protecting them from anything much. The centaurs were mostly ignoring her and Formeus and focusing on the two most obvious threats, one of them was the death eater, who was casting a lot of very nasty looking curses, the other was, of course, Doom.

She saw him gesture without a wand and throw out spells towards his attackers, that either toppled them or made things explode. She heard him laugh, laugh! As if the whole thing was nothing more than a game. Worst of all, she saw Doom's stooge, Snape, throwing potions around and giving a damn good account of himself.

It was official, whatever Doom had was contagious.

She crouched down in the foxhole and idly wondered if there were any wizarding jobs available in New Zealand.

…

James Potter was about to thank Merlin for the sudden miraculous appearance of the smoke that covered him, before he realized that it probably wasn't that old geezer sleeping in France whom he should thank, but probably someone much, much closer.

The fog was extremely thick, but also gave off a soft pearly light, which allowed him to see perfectly up to three feet in front of him. Sudden realization of what he'd done struck him and for a moment he felt the icy grasp of terror on his heart. But he remembered his friend Sirius had run with him towards the scepter and had been there next to him all the time. He focused on that and thought and managed to calm down enough to think what he should do next.

"Sirius!" he called out in a soft voice, well aware that Malfoy and the death eater were near. "Sirius, are you there?" he said slightly louder.

"I'm here James." came a voice very near to him, The reply was heavy with restrained fear and a slight nervous trembling, but it was quiet, and James felt proud that his friend had the presence of mind not to give their position away. "What do we do now?"

He pondered for a moment but there really weren't that many choices. He moved slowly closer to the voice until he could see a blurry outline before him, he moved slightly closer until the figure resolved itself into his friend Sirius.

"We run," he said, "we run as fast as we can until we're out of the fog and then we run back to the castle even faster, just like Remus said. We find Dumbledore and tell him what's going on!"

"What about the others?"

"Remus is probably already halfway to the castle, trying to get some help, he's got too much sense to stay here. And if Peter stays hidden, no one will be able to find him."

"So we go back to the castle?" asked Sirius, still worried and not a hundred percent certain about leaving his friends behind.

"And get Dumbledore." replied James.

"I'd rather you didn't, that will just add some unnecessary hassle to this whole affair." A voice suddenly cut through the fog from somewhere behind them.

James and Sirius turned, their wands at the ready. Two shapes came out of the fog towards them and revealed themselves to be Doom and Snape. Doom was holding in front of him some kind of muggle looking device with a weird spinning gauge, which he put away as soon as he was close enough to be seen clearly through the thick fog. "That scepter you're holding was under my custody and stolen by Malfoy from my laboratory earlier tonight, I would appreciate it if you could return it now."

Sirius looked astonished "Are you serious? Didn't you hear what that centaur said?! We have to get it to Dumbledore and away from that death eater!"

"Away from who?" asked Victor, slightly confused by the term Sirius had used.

"That death eater, you know, one of the guys from Volde… the dark lord's army." answered Sirius, growing more nervous by the second.

Victor raised an unimpressed eyebrow. "Dark Lord you say?"

"He means Voldemort, you know, tall, thin, claims to be the greatest wizard ever, has been on the papers a lot recently." supplied Snape helpfully.

"Oh, that, dark lord", Victor said off-handedly while allowing himself one moment of brief recollection, "I think my mother once caught one of his guys in our neighbourhood. We weren't impressed."

Sirius' mouth hung open and James stepped in. "Look it doesn't matter, we have to get away from him before he figures out what's going on and…"

Victor cut him off, "I will deal with this, death eater." the sarcasm dripping off the last two words was palpable. Doom obviously held no respect for the name, and why would he? It was tacky and overly dramatic. "I assure you of that. But now, I'd like the scepter back." He extended an empty hand towards James.

"VENTUS!"

The sudden hurricane wind succeeded in dispersing the thick fog blanketing the clearing. The centaurs had taken advantage of the smoke cover to retreat back into the forest and now only the wizards remained. Malfoy was still struggling to get Percival off him, while Marigold and Formeus peeked up from the edge of their foxhole. Remus and Peter were nowhere to be seen.

The death eater stood alone, his eyes glowing red with rage, through his mask. "GIVE ME THE BLOODY THING! I AM WELL AND TRULY PAST PLAYING AROUND ANYMORE!" He roared.

Victor was unimpressed. "What a coincidence, so am I", he said with a smug smile.

For a moment the death eater focused his hatred filled stare on Doom, he trembled with the effort not to curse Doom right there. The moment passed, his shoulders relaxed and he addressed James Potter who was still holding the metal scepter.

"Give it to me now, and you can all go back to your beds unharmed."

"Very generous of you, however I cannot make you the same offer." Victor said, slightly irritated at being dismissed, but somewhat satisfied at the sudden flash of anger in the death eater's eyes. He then gave James a quizzical look.

"Mr… I'm sorry, what was your name again?"

James gave him an appalled look, not so much at the notion of Doom not knowing his name, but at the dismissive way in which he insisted on treating a powerful, dangerous and very angry dark wizard. "Potter, James Potter." He managed to answer.

"Ah yes, Mr. Potter, you said you wanted to take the scepter back to the castle?" Victor waited patiently for James' answer until the bespectacled boy nodded. "Very well, as much as I fear it will be a terrible headache to recover it from the headmaster custody, you may go. Sometimes I fear one must allow small concessions in favour of the bigger picture." He turned his gaze back towards the death eater. "I will take care of our friend here."

"YOU!" he roared, his anger so great that octarine sparks jumped off his clothes, his eyes now twin smoldering embers of rage. "You think you can stop me?! Me who sits at the right hand of the dark lord, who is amongst his most trusted inner circle! Me, whose power is recognized by none less than the most powerful wizard of this generation! And yet you, a mere child, has the audacity to challenge my power?!"

Victor shrugged. "Is it really audacious to do something that already has a foregone conclusion? Go Mr. Potter, I will join you shortly."

There was an almost imperceptible change in the death eater's posture obscured by the cloak and hood, some tension left his hunched shoulders and he seemed to relax, ever so slightly.

"Yes, Mr. Potter, he will be joining you very soon." The voice was oily and brimming with amused anticipation. "Just not where you think."

"Avada Kedavra!"

Victor raised his gauntleted fist and activated the disruptor field that should, in theory, protect him against even the unforgivable curses. Someone else would probably frown upon the thought of taking such a risk with just a working theory, but theory and practice were pretty much different gradients of the same thing to Victor Von Doom.

The sickeningly green light of the curse shot out from the tip of the death eater's wand and whizzed past Doom and towards James Potter.

Doom turned his head, looking behind him outraged. It hadn't even occurred to Doom that the death eater would target anyone else other than him.

The bolt of green light sped towards James Potter marking him for death.

And hit the scepter James was still holding.

The metal scepter suddenly started to violently shake as the spell coalesced into a green ball of light surrounding the scepter and was slowly decomposed into golden sparks before being absorbed, making it difficult to hold on. It also became very hot, so hot it burned his hands and James Potter was forced to let it go.

The scepter arced through the air away from James and towards the death eater.

Who was staring at James with wide incredulous eyes. The damn thing had protected the boy from a killing curse, from his killing curse. It could shield against even unforgivable curses, if he had it, he could…

Sudden movement brought him out from his reverie as he noticed Doom reach out for the scepter now lying on the grass between them. He lunged for it a split second after Doom. A black velvet glove and a steel gauntlet both reached and grabbed an end of the scepter. The other two hands both held their wands, ready and prepared to unleash an offensive spell on their opponent.

"Expelliarmus!"

"Avada Kedavra!"

The spells met, they orbited each other for a second, then flew directly towards the scepter they were both holding.

Everything went white.

Welp, that was a big 'un. Hope you enjoyed it.

One thing though, I would like an honest opinion on the temporal back and forth I've used to describe the fight with the centaurs. Does anyone find it disorienting? I've read back through it and I think it's clear enough. But then again, I'm the one writing it, of course it should be damn well clear to me after all.

Last edited: Jul 3, 2021

Chapter 4.10

What's this, another update, in just a couple of days? What sorcery is this?

I think I like writing about technobabble a bit too much. I might have gotten carried away, please forgive me.

Enjoy.

Victor Von Doom blinked, he blinked again to be sure, then he looked at his own limbs to confirm his hypothesis and nodded.

No he hadn't lost his vision, he could see perfectly, it was just that there was nothing to see, just an apparently endless, featureless, white space. He then focused his attention on his left arm and the gauntlet he was wearing. It was different, far better made and more refined than the clunky bodged together prototype he'd been wearing seconds before. There were no exposed cables, joints fitted with perfect precision and sported smooth flowing lines. And it reached all the way to his shoulder instead of just above the elbow.

He heard a grunt behind him. That was a good thing, it confirmed that sound existed here, wherever here was, even if air did not. Which wasn't a problem because he apparently didn't need to breathe, even though he still did all the motions.

He turned and looked at the death eater lying prone on the ground. He too was dressed differently now. Gone were the cloak and hood. Instead he was wearing a threadbare three piece suit slightly fraying at the edges. His mask had disappeared as well, and Victor could now see a mousy faced individual, with large wet eyes and a slightly oversized aquiline nose under which could be found a pencil moustache. He stood up with a grunt of effort and looked around himself in a daze.

"What is this?" he asked no one in particular.

Victor sighed at having to explain the obvious. "The astral plane, obviously. We've both been forcefully projected into our astral forms. How or why I can only speculate, but it is evident that this is somehow related to the scepter."

The death eater jumped at the sound of Victor's voice, as if only now realizing he was there as well. He spun on the spot and reached for a wand that wasn't there. A panicked look crossed his face as he started feeling around his clothes for it. Victor sighed tiredly, why was the world so full of ignorant simpletons?

"Wands never follow an astral projection, and you can't cast spells while in astral form, so don't bother." Victor informed the death eater with patient sufferance, while appraising the figure before him. Not exactly a great self-image he thought, unattractive mousy features and tattered clothes. The astral projection that you'd expect of someone lacking in confidence and self-respect. He also looked to be about the same size as him. Either the death eater's astral form was small, or Victor was taller.

The death eater stopped feeling his pockets for his wand as his brain finally registered Doom's words. He looked around himself once more, then at Victor.

"What's with the cloak?" he asked, puzzled at Victor's sudden change in apparel.

Victor raised an eyebrow, cloak? He turned his head to look behind himself.

Sure enough there was a wide emerald cloak flowing majestically from his shoulders. He hadn't even noticed it until it had been pointed out to him. It felt so natural, like it just belonged there.

"I do not know, but our astral projections reflect our own self image." He replied. "Bear that in mind."

The death eater nodded, not so much really agreeing as making the kind of gesture you typically make when you're only half listening. "So what do we do now?"

"A good question, I'd suggest we…"

A booming voice interrupted, coming out of nowhere and seemingly filling the entirety of this limitless white space.

"WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE TWISTING AND BREAKING OF THE BLESSED SEAL PLACED UPON THE TREASURE OF VIBRANIUM? WHO HAS ATTRACTED THE WATCHFUL EYE OF THE PROTECTOR OF THE HIDDEN KINGDOM? WHO DRAWS THE EVER VIGILANT GAZE OF WAKANDA'S GUARDIAN?!"

From over the horizon came movement, in the distance, the white nothingness parted like mist to reveal a gigantic ebon panther the size of a large building advancing towards them with a lithe gait.

The death eater's face went white and pointed an accusatory finger at Doom.

The giant feline covered the huge distance unnaturally fast. One moment it was far off into the horizon, miles away, then three steps later, it was standing right before and over them. But now it was just the size of a small house.

"Really, I guess you had no part to play whatsoever then?" The panther asked the death eater in a playful tone, amused at his rather blatant attempt to shift blame.

"I assume this is about the metal scepter then?" said Victor after it became obvious that there was no reply coming from the death eater other than a muted 'eeep'.

The giant panther prowled before them, now the size of a small elephant. It's fur was black as a moonless night, but here and there, small pinpricks of light like stars could be seen on its coat.

"You are correct in your assumptions young wizard, now, what were you two doing with that old data wand that you actually managed to break the ownership seal on it?" The voice was no longer booming or menacing. The panther spoke softly with an undefined west african accent, its voice held a mellifluous cadence and sounded remarkably female.

"I'm not sure, we were duelling over it," Victor nodded towards the death eater who was trying to keep Victor's body between and the huge feline at all times. "I used a disarming charm, he used a killing curse, the next thing we know, we're here."

The huge predator kept shifting in size as it paced around them. It now was about the size of a small horse. It seemed to ponder Victor's words for moments, its enormous tail wagging back and forth. "Really? That's odd, to say the least. Even allowing for the strange magicks you wizards use, this shouldn't have happened.

It stepped around them, almost close enough to touch. At this distance Doom could see that the tiny glints of light in the panther's fur were tiny diamonds, swishing around her coat as if travelling on sea currents. The panther was now barely the size of a tiger. "Give me a second, I need to check something," she said. She put her head to the ground and sniffed something on the spot. After a couple of seconds a mirage of the scepter appeared on the ground where the feline was sniffing, she raised her head and the scepter followed, floating through the air to levitate at a small distance from her nose. The huge cat furrowed her brow as it examined the astral form of the scepter.

"It looks like you blew a fuse, at least I think it's a fuse, I'm no engineer. Maybe it was a capacitor? Damn it Ptah is the one who knows this stuff." It looked at the wizards, it was now the size of a regular black panther, her coat had lost the glint of diamonds and just looked like that of a normal leopard with darker markings on it. She looked like a perfectly ordinary panther, except for the fact that her eyes were pure silver. "Which shouldn't be possible, vibranium capacitors are practically limitless, even those of handheld devices, how on the multiple earths did you manage to overload it?"

In spite of the obviously mystical nature of the being standing before him, Victor lost any apprehension he might have held until that point. Excited to meet someone who even if they claimed to have no knowledge of engineering, at the very least knew the word capacitor.

"I don't know, I was only able to get a rough ultrasound of its components, but it absorbs every spell cast close to it.

The cat, for that was what it was, a normal black house cat with green eyes looked back at the wavering image of the scepter. "Really? That's strange." It sniffed at the scepter again, now almost as tall as she was. "Yes, it smells of your strange magicks, it's saturated with it. But just a few spells even if one of them is a killing curse…"

"Actually it was two killing curses." said the eater, eager to take part in the conversation even if he didn't understand what they were saying.

"Right, two killing curses," the cat gave the death eater a strange appraising look, and made the feline equivalent of scrunching your face before continuing. "But even then, that wouldn't cut it. You'd need to keep blasting spells at it non stop for weeks to come close to overload…"

Victor's eyebrow had shot up in surprise but aside from that, nothing in his expression gave anything away. The cat purred in amusement.

"You have a good poker face young wizard, but here in the astral realm, I can see and smell your surprise in your aura. Now care to tell me what it is you just realized?"

"Well, you said it'd take weeks." Victor replied, with just the tiny smidge of awkwardness, unnoticeable unless you had a cat's fine senses "And that's how long I've had it in my lab, weeks, subjecting it to all kinds of experiments." He scratched the back of its head absentmindedly. "It's been absorbing every single spell we cast near it for weeks, and I've been pumping it full of thaums on top of that."

"Thaums?" inquired the cat. She hadn't shifted from that form in the last minute or so, perhaps she was trying to put them at ease? It's certainly easier to speak to a talking cat than to a tiger.

"Elementary magic particle, theorized to exist, but never proven, until I did just that a few months ago."

"Oh, you mean swayi." The cat purred "I like what you've called them though, thaums. Still this is very unusual, it should not be absorbing spells just like… Oh!" it stopped talking suddenly and examined at a specific point in the scepter's astral projection. "Well, that'd do it."

"What would?" Victor asked of the cat.

"Leaving it on automatic recharge," she sniffed the scepter again, "for two hundred years." she shook her head in mild disapproval.

"So," Doom asked, feeling slightly wary of the possible response. "Is that what brought this about? The experiments finally charging it up to full capacity?"

"Well it certainly didn't help, but what really drove it over the edge was that killing curse. Nasty piece of magic, that one, doesn't play well with others at all. Which I suppose is kind of the point of it, is it not?" The cat brought its nose closer to the scepter's after-image and sniffed it once more, it sneezed adorably, just like a kitten would. "Ugh, really, really nasty magic, my guess is that it didn't like being mixed in with the rest and caused some sort of reaction. Kind of like drinking spoiled milk after you've had a huge meal. It's not going to be pretty."

At this point, the death eater, who was feeling considerably more brave, seeing that their interlocutor had remained in a small and non-threatening shape for the last few minutes, stepped forward rather aggressively.

"Now look here, it's damn obvious that this is nothing more than a trick, an illusion of some sort. Now, I don't know who you think you are, but I can assure you, you either undo this illusion and let me; us go or there will be… consequences."

"Oh," the black cat looked up at the dark wizard in that special cat-like way that makes you feel as if they've just seen the funniest thing in the world and you are it. "And what exactly would those consequences be?"

"I happen to be Lord Voldemort's right hand man! I am one of his most trusted advisors, and values my counsel above all others. And the dark lord will make you pay dearly for any indignities or ill-treatment you would dare to visit upon my person."

"Goodness me, I suppose I really shouldn't do any of that then." said the cat with mock dread. "And yet it strikes me as odd that you would choose to keep your presence here and the datawand a secret from your dark lord. Trying to get one up on the old man are you?" It should be impossible for a cat to wiggle its eyebrows, but this one did it.

The death eater was left speechless, "how… ?" he managed to stammer.

"We're in the astral realm", Victor explained patiently while pinching the bridge of his nose, exasperated at having to explain something so simple. "Our auras broadcast our emotions, and to someone with the ability to see, they can read much more than that."

"That is quite correct, young wizard!" added the cat with a smile in its voice. "Goodness, but he sounds posh even when he tries to threaten you doesn't he?" it paused for a moment pondering something "And that name, Voldemort, is he french?"

The death eater sputtered in anger, "The dark lord is NOT french, he's the greatest wizard Britain has ever produced!"

"Well that's not really saying much is it?" said the cat dismissively.

The death eater was seriously angry by now. It advanced threateningly on the elegant black cat, he loomed over her with barely contained rage. "Listen here you lousy, obnoxious, fleabag, you help us go back to the physical realm, right this instant or I'm going to…" He stopped suddenly through his rant when he noticed a huge shadow had fallen over him

"You'll do what exactly?" asked the cat with what sounded like nothing more than eager curiosity.

The death eater turned his head to the side to look behind him.

There was another cat there, but this one was once more the size of a house.

"I… I'll…"

"Yes indeed." said the normal sized cat, before the large one threw its head down and bit down on the death eater. It raised its head, the legs of its prey still dangling outside its mouth and kicking in midair, then threw its head back to better swallow and gobbled down the death eater with a rather loud gulp. A second later, the huge feline disappeared behind wisps of white mist.

"Ugh," complained the kitten by Victor's feet, her face screwed with disgust, "tastes like rat that's been marinating in sewer water."

Victor just looked on approvingly, seeing the death eater being swallowed like a wriggling fish had been quite satisfying, however curiosity and social norms demanded he made the obvious next question.

"Is he…?" he said, letting the ellipsis ask the question for him.

"No, I just sent the little cretin somewhere else, but I didn't feel like being nice about it." The cat seemed to smile, "Don't be scared young wizard, you've been nothing but polite." It said soothingly.

Annoyance flashed across Victor's eyes, he crossed his arms over his chest and defiantly stated, "Doom does not scare so easily."

"Doom?" The cat repeated, opening its eyes wide in genuine surprise and even some alarm. It stepped towards Victor, it's body morphing mid-stride into that of a young and beautiful african woman with her long hair held in a high ponytail, feline features and eyes of pure silver. She stood directly before Victor, examining him very closely with an unblinking and slightly unnerving stare.

Victor didn't flinch.

"I should have realized sooner," the woman said before taking a step back and letting a small smile appear on her lips. "Hello Victor, I am Bast."

So there you have it.

What exactly is Bast doing here, what is her plan, what's going to happen now?

More to come soon.

Last edited: Jul 8, 2021

Chapter 4.11

It's late, and I should probably go to bed and proofread this in the morning after having some rest before posting it. But I'm reasonably content with what I've written and what the hell.

This one kind of got away from me. At first I thought it'd be just a very short chappie, but it began to grow as I kept writing more scenes of Bast and Victor interacting with each other, until it reached a respectable length.

Word of advice, this is my own depiction of Bast, from my own headcanon, not based on any former interpretation. Also, while it might look like Green's post could have influened this version of Bast, I was pretty much going to write her this way even before he said that.

Well here's the chapter, enjoy.

Bast's eyes lost their silver shine and became a vibrant shade of green with vertical pupils. "We should talk," she said, "come with me, we'll be a lot more comfortable over there," and walked past Victor.

Victor was about to ask how one spot was different from another when they were in the middle of a barren white nothingness, when he noticed the sound of water running. He turned around, and saw a beautiful grassland scenery. Two streams snaked through the landscape until they joined together. The ground was covered with fresh verdant grass and the occasional tree. Thicker vegetation lined the sides of the rivers until their confluence, where wide sandy banks allowed easy access to the water.

"This used to be one of my favorite places." Bast said, taking a momentarily stunned Doom by the hand and leading him towards the sandy shores. "See those sand banks where the two rivers meet? Three different villages used this as their watering place. The women came here to do their laundry and I used to sneak among them and gossip." Tiny smile lines appeared on her face as the fond memories resurfaced.

"Then one day, this little girl, cute as a button, she took one look at me and instantly knew who I really was. She walked straight towards me, all polite, bowed deeply and asked if there was any service she could provide for her goddess." She sighed wistfully before continuing. "Well her mother didn't like that, at all. Here was her little girl claiming this random washer woman was, well, me. She got angry and hit her hoping that'd be the end of all this nonsense. But the girl just kept stubbornly saying that's who I really was and her mother became furious." She turned her head to look at Victor. "I shouldn't have intervened, but I did, I grabbed the mother's hand to stop her and showed them all who I really was."

"Next thing I know, the place is now sacred because it's the place where the goddess comes to bathe or something like that. Obviously the waters must be blessed and it'd be sacrilege to do something as mundane as your laundry here." A small frown appeared between her handsome eyes as she addressed Victor directly. "All a load of cow pat of course, I just came here for the saucy gossip."

Victor took his eyes away from the cat-like woman and examined the pastoral scenery around him.

"That's unavoidable, power changes how others see you." He replied.

Bast stepped in front of Doom, she'd shifted again and now sported the appearance of a teenage girl, garbed in tribal african clothing of unknown ethnicity. "That's exactly right Victor, come sit with me by that tree." She smiled like a cat that had got the canary, spun around on her heels and actually skipped to the tree.

Victor grumbled slightly as he followed, "shouldn't you act a bit more… I don't know, dignified?"

"When you're as old as I am you realize you can be as childish as you want, who's going to criticize you for it, anyway?" She closed that statement with a mischievous wink and sat down on an exposed tree root. "You, however, are the one acting weird here. I mean, you are totally unfazed even now. You do know who I am, don't you?

Victor nodded, "Bast or Bastet, egyptian goddess of cats, protection, perfumes and ointments among other things. Considered to be an aspect of Sekhmet, a warrior and sun goddess usually depicted with a lion's head."

"And you don't think it's weird?"

Victor sat down on the grass, next to the cat goddess and shrugged. "Lady Bast, if you'd asked me that same question seven months ago, I'd have said yes, absolutely. But since I started at Hogwarts, I've seen magic, wizards, goblins and unicorns and all manner of impossible things. That there are also greater spirits, doesn't strike me as surprising, so much as a necessary part of a complete set." he paused for a second, admiring the beauty of the landscape. "It's really a… hey, don't… !"

Victor turned his head around towards where Bast was sitting and was startled to find her practically on top of him, smiling like a cat that had just heard the can opener. Before he could react, she was holding him in a poorly executed chokehold and ruffling his hair.

"Lady Bast? Look at you being so polite and courteous. I think I like this you." She chuckled while Victor tried to free himself and keep her hand away from his hair and failed at both. She let go a couple of seconds later, with a head splitting grin across her face. "Call me Bast Victor, no need to be so formal, not today at least." Victor grumbled something about avenging this indignity as he ran his fingers through his hair, trying to comb it back into place.

With no trace of levity in her voice, Bast suddenly asked, "Victor, do you have any idea what Gods are really like?"

The sudden shift in tone, from playfully mischievous to solemn seriousness caught Victor's attention, he looked directly at her and slowly shook his head.

Bast smiled and started talking in the same lecturing tone many of the teachers used at Hogwarts. "We are paradoxical existences, potent yet frail, belief empowers us. We exist both inside and apart from reality. In some ways, we are akin to a shared dream." Victor examined Bast, her gaze was unfocused and seemed to be looking at something way past the horizon that only she could see. "Dreams are a funny thing Victor, if you were to say that they're just bits of nonsense your brain comes up with while it's resting, you'd be right. And if you were to say that they're a shared realm that every sentient being enters and contributes to when they go to sleep, you'd be right too." She broke out of her reverie and focused her attention back on Victor. "Does that make any sense to you?"

Victor considered this for a moment then said. "Yes and no."

"Cheeky!" she answered with a good natured smile and continued. "Like I said, dreams are like portals to a realm that everyone can enter, think of it as a mundane form of astral projection. By our very nature, Gods get a privileged seat to many of these dreams. The dreaming is a chaotic place Victor, the usual rules do not apply there. Sometimes we catch glimpses of dreams from the past, of things that were, sometimes we gaze upon dreams of the future, of things that will or might be. Other times, we get to see dreams of what could have been. And a few times, we even gaze upon dreams of things that never were, yet somehow, still are. Dreams from other places, places outside our own little patch of reality, where things developed differently."

"You're talking about alternate universes?" Victor asked, enthralled.

"Something like that, yes," she let out a small sigh and looked directly at Victor, "obviously it's massive oversimplification, I haven't even mentioned transdimensional observational collapse, consensus oneiric actuality or pan-universal void flux. But that's a whole different kettle of fish. What I want you to understand is that yes, we catch glimpses of other realities, and in every single one I've ever seen, Victor Von Doom is always destined for great things." She paused and gave Victor a wistful look before continuing. "Not necessarily good things, mind you, but great nonetheless."

Bast took a second to examine closely what effect this revelation had had on the eleven year old sitting next to her and found that it had absolutely none at all. To Victor, the confirmation that he was fated to take part in great deeds, was about as surprising as being told that water was wet. Bast sighed, well, this part of the boy was certainly very much Doom-like.

"Now here's the kicker, remember how I also said that sometimes we get glimpses of the future? Well neither me, nor anyone else I know had even the slightest inkling of your coming in this reality. You're an anomaly, a cosmic surprise Victor, completely unexpected and I find that… fascinating."

She stood up and Victor noticed that she had changed form once more. She now looked like a girl about his same age, maybe an inch taller than he was. She walked towards the river banks and knelt down, looking for something. Victor noticed there were many small stones and pebbles half buried in the sand, she made a small happy noise and stood up holding a small, round, flat stone. She walked to the edge of the and threw it along the water surface, the stone skipped once, twice, a total of five times before it sank in the water. She turned back towards Victor with an expression of triumph on her face.

"Think you can beat that?"

Victor stood up. "Never tried, but Doom never backs down from a challenge." He walked towards where she was, trying to find a suitable stone along the way.

"Of course you don't," answered Bast, "You see Victor, I have absolutely no idea what will become of you, whether it'll be good, or bad, will you be the inventor of new technological wonders or the discoverer of new magical terrors? Ha! Only one skip, you've got a long way before you can beat me." Her tone was playful and somewhat mocking. Victor thought it strange, it should have irritated the hell out of him, but somehow he didn't seem to mind, too much. He started looking for another stone.

"The thing is Victor, that whenever you get involved in stuff, you're usually kind of a big deal, a mover and shaker. But here you are, completely by surprise, which shouldn't be possible by the way. And I don't know what to expect." She stopped talking and watched Victor as he swung his arm and threw another stone across the water. "Three skips, you're getting better."

Victor looked for another stone and Bast continued "So what will it be? Will you revolutionize the wizarding world and bring it kicking and screaming into the twentieth century? Will you be responsible for the advent of a new age of Marvels, or will you be the one to doom us all?"

Victor looked up, another stone in his hand and an eyebrow raised in distaste. "That last one was really bad."

"I'll admit it was low hanging fruit but I couldn't resist,"she replied teasingly. "Well I don't know, and that's unusual for a God, we're normally so certain about everything."

Victor threw his stone, it flew and jumped off the surface of the water once, twice, thrice, it kept going and skipped five times before sinking. He faced Bast with a small smile on his face.

"Not bad, but you ain't seen nothing yet, stand back." She picked another stone and threw it in one smooth underarm motion. The stone skipped three, four, five times, it kept going, eight, nine, ten… It reached the other side of the river, struck a small boulder and ricocheted back the way it had come, skipping all the way over the water, right into Bast's hand.

"Okay, now you're just showing off." Victor said, letting some irritation spill into his voice.

"I don't like losing anymore than you do," she told him as he walked towards him and stood mere inches before Victor, looking directly into his eyes. "So the question remains, what should I do with you?"

Victor chose to ignore the implied threat in the question. "You said that I'm destined for great things, just that they don't have to be good." He turned around and fished around for another stone, found a suitable one and threw it. "Ugh, just four," he looked back at Bast, his voice earnest and sincere. "I can understand your apprehension, but let me say something to that effect. You said that you don't know what's going to happen and neither do I. Now, I can't make assurances as to the moral quality of things to come, but what I can guarantee is that no matter what it is the future has in store, I will help make it interesting." He shrugged noncommittally, "ultimately, it's your decision to make."

Bast's expression relaxed, and a charming smile spread over her face. "There might be hope for you yet Victor," she said as she turned around and walked back towards the tree. "Now, some may call me naive for this, but I prefer to think of myself as an optimist. You know what they say, do good deeds and good deeds will be returned to you."

"Uh, well…"

"Don't burst my bubble Mr. Smartass," she scolded playfully. "So here's the thing, I'm going to take a leap of faith and trust that you will do the right thing. And I'm going to help you decide what that is."

"You've already done a lot, I'm thankful for it."

"No you don't understand Victor, I'm not talking about getting rid of that dark wizard or warning you about a possible future. I'm going to do something really big for you, so that you'll always remember this moment and the warning I gave you."

Victor followed the young girl, the landscape spread all around him until the horizon and there wasn't a single detail that gave it away as a projection of Bast's mind. The grasslands rolled east to west, mountains rose to the south and a dark dense forest to the north. Bast walked past the tree and kept going. Victor wondered where she was going before he saw the ghostly image of the scepter, lying on the grass ahead of them.

"I'm going to make you a gift." Bast said and Victor saw that she had transformed back into a tall statuesque woman as she reached down and grabbed the metal ornament.

"The scepter, you're giving it to me?"

"Well yes and no. What would you do with an old, obsolete datawand from some no-name, accounting clerk? I'm sure there's nothing but invoices in here." Then she added sotto voce, "and porn too, somehow there's always porn."

"Sorry, what?"

"It doesn't matter, now, I might not have Ptah's skill when it comes to this kind of thing, but even I should be able to do this much." She grabbed the scepter's astral projection with both hands and squeezed.

The scepter became more solid, more real, then it started to glow with heat, first a low orange glow, then a brilliant white, it flowed in Bast's hands and shaped itself as she squeezed and rolled the metal in her hands as if it was clay. Until finally her hands stopped.

"I'm giving you a new wand." Bast spread her hands open, showing the wand resting on them. It measured about eleven inches and it had a simple utilitarian design, with a straight tip and smooth curves on the handle for a better grip. What made it unique was the fact that unlike every other wand he'd ever seen, this one was made entirely of metal. The only discernible ornamentation was a small line of tiny rivets along the handle.

"Take it, it's yours."

Victor reached out and took the offered object, already it felt cool to the touch. He admired its elegant simplicity for a moment and the way it fitted perfectly in his hand.

"Thank you it's beautiful, it really is and it feels…" he trailed off and sighed mournfully, "but I can't accept it. I haven't done anything to earn it and I already have a wand."

"Uhm, about that, you don't anymore."

"What?!"

"Yeah, not sure what you two did, but your wands sort of exploded, it was part of what triggered the datawand's swayi pulse, thaums. I can smell the charred wood from here."

"Oh no, that was my mum's wand, she's going to be pissed." There was a noticeable amount of nervousness in Victor's voice and if you listened carefully, you could discern an edge of tightly controlled panic.

Bast's eyes shot wide open with astonishment at Victor's words. Slowly, understanding replaced surprise, her eyes narrowed and a smug smile spread all over her face. "There really is hope for you yet Victor, more than you even realize."

The boy still seemed reluctant to accept the gift. "Take it, it's freely given, I only ask for one thing in return. When you use it, remember this moment and use it to do what's right. Not what is better or convenient, but what is right. And remember that I trusted you to decide what that is."

Victor's hand gripped his new wand tightly, it felt comfortable in his grip. "It is a small price for such a great gift."

"It really isn't," Bast said, shaking her head. "A debt of gratitude from Victor Von Doom is an invaluable thing in any universe." She smiled, "Now, it's time for you to go back."

"Hum, about that, how? We were forcefully projected out of our bodies and astral projection is a seventh year elective, I don't think I know how to do it."

"Don't worry about that Victor, close your eyes and leave it to me, go with my blessing."

Victor did as instructed, he closed his eyes and a second later, felt something on his face as if someone was blowing on it.

Then he was suddenly falling down, falling down through the astral plane, down reality and into…

His body, still lying on the grass of the clearing where he'd lunged for the scepter and dueled the death eater.

He raised himself slowly with a slight grunt of effort into a sitting position. He noticed the wand in his right hand, it was broken just like Bast had said. The blast from two opposing powerful spells activating when the tips were practically touching each other had probably been too much for the wood to handle. He noticed the wand was still smoking, how much time had passed?

"Victor, are you alright?!" asked a voice full of worry he recognized.

"I'm just fine, Severus, nothing's wrong."

There was a muffled grunt and Victor noticed the death eater groaning painfully in the ground barely six feet before him. He tried to stand up, but his arms gave out from under him and fell flat on his face.

'He's probably feeling as if he was chewed, digested and had just come out the other end.' Victor thought as he stood up.

He looked down at his gauntlet and saw it was gripping his new wand. He opened up his fist and examined it closely, it looked exactly the same as the one Bast had fashioned.

From some distance away, he heard Malfoy scream. "Doom, what in the nine hells did you just do?"

Victor didn't bother to look at him, focused as he was in the examination of his wand, but he calmly replied to his angry question. "I dealt with him, just like I said I would, do not force me to deal with you as well."

The extremely unsubtle threat managed to shut Malfoy up. After all, Malfoy had just seen two figures go down as they dueled each other, one of them a powerful death eater and then watched as only Doom got back up. It might have been a fluke, but even so, it paid to be cautious.

"Has anyone seen Cupid?" asked Marigold from her foxhole.

"I saw him leave towards a part of the forest thick with vines." Answered Formeus next to her.

"And you didn't think to stop him?!"

"Victor, what's that?" asked Severus, noticing for the first time what he was holding.

"A wand." he said matter of factly.

"Nu-uh!" Sirius Black suddenly interrupted, coming closer to take a better look. "Everyone knows wands are made out of wood, not metal," he used that tone of voice one would use to explain a fundamental truth of the universe.

"This one is." replied Victor with detached calm.

Noises came from the forest beyond the clearing and professors Slughorn, Tesseract, McGonagall and Dumbledore suddenly appeared at the edge of the clearing, wands at the ready. Shortly behind them trailed Hagrid, carrying a hunting crossbow almost as large as he was that looked less like a crossbow and more like a medieval siege weapon. Apparently McGonagall, still grading papers, had noticed the light show coming from the forbidden forest through her office's window and had immediately alerted the headmaster and the head of the house of those she felt were most likely to be responsible for this latest mess as well as their designated chaperone.

Dumbledore took notice of the estate of the clearing, with two six year students crouching down in a foxhole, broken branches and exploded trees, centaur arrows scattered all over the ground and stuck on trees, the slowly disappearing evidence of Snape's potions and a moaning death eater lying on the ground, struggling to get up.

"What on Merlin's name happened here?"

"We thwarted a robbery." answered Victor in a completely nonchalant voice. "Malfoy can fill you in on the details, he was instrumental in doing so."

"A robbery?" exclaimed a disbelieving Slughorn, "what would be worth the risk of trying to steal something right from under Dumbledore's nose?"

"Vibranium." Victor replied in a soft voice.

"What?" asked Slughorn.

"It doesn't matter, obviously he thought it was worth it." interjected Dumbledore, moving towards the death eater who still seemed to be unable to do anything else other than roll on the ground and moan in pain.

Victor thought back to what he'd just experienced, to his conversation with the panther goddess. How she'd told him she trusted him to do what was right.

What a silly, ridiculous idea, he was Victor Von Doom, by definition whatever he chose was necessarily right.

Wasn't it?

He examined his new wand once more, it felt really comfortable in his hand, he thought it looked beautiful. Then it suddenly hit him.

"Oh no!" shouted Victor.

"What, what's wrong?" shouted everybody else in the clearing almost in unison.

"Now I'll never find out what the information stored in it was."

Well here we have it at last. The infamous vibranium wand finally revealed.

It's not over yet, we still have a bit more ride left.

Last edited: Jul 11, 2021

Chapter 5

Well, this one took me longer than anticipated. I kept struggling with it and found numerous roadblocks along the way. From your typical writer's block, to slight health issues, but the biggest issues were metereological in nature. Trying to write in a room with no AC while it's almost 40C outside is certainly not optimal.

Nevertheless here it is. The final chapter.

I hope you like it.

Chapter 5: XP Rewards

Albus Dumbledore was sitting at his office desk, he had just finished pouring himself a nice, hot cup of tea, he put the pot down and was staring silently at the freshly served cup. After a couple of seconds, he shrugged and reached down to the second drawer to his right. He brought out a bottle of firewhiskey and poured a generous amount into the tea cup.

He sighed with contentment as he felt the liquid warm up his insides and the firewhisky soothe a bit of the tension accumulated on his shoulders. Firewhisky seemed to be the one thing that helped him relax nowadays. Normally he wouldn't have risked the wrath of Madam Pomfrey and her disapproving glare, but lately, Dumbledore had noticed the odd bottle of firewhiskey over at the infirmary, and it never had the same amount twice.

For a while, he'd been worried his staff might turn to alcoholism to cope, but according to his monitoring charms, alcohol consumption in the castle had peaked just after Christmas, then plateaued for a while and had been steadily decreasing since Easter. He wasn't so naive as to believe it'd ever go back to previous levels but the risk that any of his staff might end up at St. Mungo's with a busted liver was looking less likely every day.

Besides, Dumbledore wasn't big enough of a hypocrite to prohibit their teachers this particular vice when he himself was partaking of it, he'd been going through almost a bottle of firewhiskey per month. Although to be fair he only ever tasted half of it. The other half usually went to the nerve-wracked teachers visiting his office.

Nevertheless, he decided to indulge himself with a celebratory drink and he had a good cause to celebrate.

For starters, the school year ended tomorrow, which meant that for the next two months Victor Von Doom would be someone else's problem.

He leaned back on his chair and reminisced about all that happened in the month and a half since the death eater incident at the forbidden forest.

…

Dumbledore looked around the clearing where a battle had just taken place, trying to drink as many of the details of the scene as he could.

Marigold Greengrass and Formeus Jones were climbing out of a hole in the ground that they seemed to have been using as a foxhole of sorts. In front of him, James Potter, Sirius Black and Severus Snape crowded around Victor Von Doom who was kneeling on the ground, examining with fascination a strange metal wand. Some further distance away stood Lucius Malfoy and Percival Marchand were standing close to each other, each trying to put their best 'I just got here, what is going on, where am I, what's my name?' face.

There was a rustling somewhere close and Dumbledore turned his head to see Remus Lupin come out from behind a nearby tree with his wand still held tightly in his hand.

"Peter," he called, "come on out, it's over, the professors are here!"

Upon hearing Remus, a slight look of embarrassment crossed both Sirius and James' faces and both joined the search for their mutual friend immediately. A couple of seconds later, beyond the edge of the clearing came the sound of another rustle and a bunch of moss stood up to reveal the slightly portly figure of Peter Pettigrew.

He looked down at the death eater by his feet, rolling around on the ground, still unable to do anything but groan, tremble and curl up in a fetal position. 'Is that everyone?' he silently wondered, hoping there would be no more surprises.

"Please, you have to find Cupid, I lost track of him for a moment and he went off somewhere, I don't know where!" Marigold Greengrass begged Hagrid with genuine concern in her voice.

"Apparently not." He mentally sighed.

"I saw him leave that way," Formeus pointed a helpful finger, while Marigold threw him a glare that seemed intent on setting him on fire. "He seemed particularly interested in areas of vegetation thickly covered with vines."

Hagrid looked down Formeus' finger and a soft 'bugger' left his huge lips. He frowned with worry and set off immediately.

He paused at the edge for a moment and looked back. "Ye two better stay 'ere!" he said as an afterthought before disappearing into the darkness.

"Is there anyone else hiding in the bushes, still unaccounted for?" Dumbledore asked at the gaggle of first years. The Gryffindors and Snape all shook their heads.

"Very well, now would anyone please tell me what, by all the magic in Avalon, happened here?"

There was a moment of confusion as everybody attempted to look as innocent and nonchalant as possible. The first years looked at their feet, suddenly fascinated by what lay on the ground. Lucius and Percival automatically pointed at each other while paradoxically sporting expressions that claimed they had absolutely no idea what had transpired. Some distance back, Marigold just sat on the grass, exhausted, while Formeus was ignoring the headmaster and talking to McGonagall, who, in spite of herself, was listening with an expression of horrified fascination.

Victor's voice could be clearly heard across the clearing.

"Prefect Malfoy, along with his courageous companions saved the day, or rather the night headmaster. His actions proved invaluable in the defeat of the death eater by your feet." Which was not technically a lie, Malfoy's incompetence had proved to be a valuable asset against the death eater.

James Potter's eyes shot wide open in surprise while Sirius Black took a step forward, ready to argue the point. "What? Wait that's noaaargh!" He said as Snape's foot shot out and clumsily stepped on top of Sirius' toes with evident gusto. James's head turned to the side and his eyes narrowed as he watched Snape's greasy haired figure throw his arm around Sirius.

"Careful there Black, you almost tripped on that root." claimed Snape with transparent falseness.

"What? No I didn…"

"Yes, you did, I saw it." James suddenly interrupted, upholding Snape's version of the events. Sirius gave his friend a look of hurt betrayal but James mouthed him to wait and shut up. The three stepped to the side and huddled together to confer in as much secrecy as three eleven year olds in plain sight are capable of.

Both Lupin and Dumbledore sighed simultaneously and Dumbledore addressed Malfoy directly next.

"Well, Mr. Malfoy?"

"Hrm, well… that is…"

"Indeed it is sir, if Mr. Malfoy sounds a bit hesitant to admit his part, no doubt due to his natural modesty. But I can assure you, he played a major role in tonight's incident. From what I was able to piece together, Mr Malfoy here, caught wind through the grapevine of some upcoming mischief by some first year Gryffindors. Obviously as a prefect he felt it his duty to prevent this. And so he went off into the night hoping to catch Mr. Potter and his friends before they could start trouble or get in it. This proved to be serendipitous, because when Mr. Malfoy caught up to the Gryffindor pranksters, they all caught a glimpse of the thieves leaving the HEMP building under cover of night. I'm sure at that moment, Mr. Malfoy faced a most terrible decision. Having to choose between following the thieves and his sense of civic duty, or the safety of the first years he was, as a prefect, responsible for now. A decision that was however taken out of his hands when with characteristic Gryffindor derring-do, Mr. Potter and his friends shot out in pursuit of the burglars. Then with typical Slytherin determination and courage, he decided to both protect the first years and foil this robber." Victor gave Malfoy a long look then, as if daring him to deny his words. "It is a good thing he did too, for I was able to follow his trail much more clearly than that of the professional burglar."

Victor's satisfied smirk was the polar opposite of Malfoy's sour face.

"Is that so?" asked Dumbledore with a carefully neutral expression.

"Yeeees?" answered Malfoy tentatively after a short pause of stunned silence, "I mean, yes of course! That is exactly what happened, I mean, me and my; followers had heard some Gryffindors were about to do some kind of prank, so I thought it was my duty to stop it. You know, being a prefect and all that. And then we saw this man running across the school grounds in the dead of night, and we thought, 'what could he possibly be doing?' so we followed him and we risked life and limb to thwart his plan."

A muffled "But that's not…" could be overheard from the small group of first years not far behind Doom, before it was cut off by a whispered "hush, he's got a plan, just wait."

Dumbledore aimed a piercing glare at the eleven year olds.

"Is that what happened then?" He asked the younger boys.

The boys looked at Dumbledore, then at Victor, they looked at Dumbledore again and swallowed nervously.

"Uhm, yes? I mean yes, yes that's what happened, I s'pose."

Dumbledore sighed inwardly, there were times when the kind grandfatherly image he cultivated came back to bite him in the ass. Of course they'd be more scared of upsetting Victor than himself.

"Very well Mr. Malfoy, it would appear that congratulations are in order for your actions tonight. But I would advise you to exercise caution when celebrating your lucky star." He said with narrowed eyes. "Nevertheless, I expect a full report of events tomorrow in my office, consider it part of your duties as a prefect."

There was the sound of dry undergrowth splintering under enormous boots and Hagrid came back into the clearing carrying a large white bundle on his shoulder. A bundle which upon closer inspection, proved to be the missing sixth year, Cupid, cocooned in white silk.

"Found the little blighter!" said Hagrid with a large smile on his face. "An acromantula got to 'im just before I did. Was webbin' the kid up for laters when I foun' 'em. But I convinced the critter to let 'im go."

Dumbledore removed his spectacles and very deliberately pinched the bridge of his nose.

"Hagrid, since when are there acromantulas in the forbidden forest?"

…

That had been a rough night, and he'd gotten little sleep. There was a lot of liaisoning to do with the ministry because suddenly a high ranking death eater had suddenly appeared unconscious in his backyard.

Turns out that under that mask was none other than Nigel Trumpet Schmeep III. A notorious political activist and pureblood supremacist. The ministry had long suspected him of being a member of Voldemort's clique, but now they had definitive proof. Which annoyed many ministry officials to no end, because now they would have to take action and face the wrath of a distinguished and influential, if not all that wealthy, family.

Dumbledore had no sympathy to spare for the ministry officials dealing with the political fallout. Whomsoever complained about the annoying bickering of old wizarding families had never faced the righteous fury of Minerva McGonagall.

…

"I'm going to show him, take me for a fool will he? Transfiguration extra-credit he says, all morose and guilty looking. Start again fresh he sez. An' me, Ah joos fell for it! Weel, if it's extra tutoring he wants, extra tutoring he'll get! Ah'm aboot to school him in whit's lek to cross me! When Ah'm dun wi' the scabby wee eejit, Ah'll mek him wish he was deid!"

Dumbledore watched fascinated as Minerva McGonagall became so angry that she reverted to her native scottish accent. He gently coughed before she launched in a tirade of traditional highland swearing.

The small sound seemed to break the spell and dispel Minerva's anger fueled ranting. She blinked once, realized what she'd just said a few seconds ago, blushed very slightly with embarrassment and sat ramrod straight in her chair as she straightened the lap of her skirt.

Dumbledore sighed silently. This was not a conversation he had been looking forward to having, but after seeing Victor's strange new wand, that shoe had definitely dropped, and after a cursory examination of both the keys and the contents of the box he'd given Mr. Filch for safekeeping, the conclusion was inescapable. Malfoy had tried to get the scepter, only to find Victor had gotten to it first.

Minerva's feelings towards Malfoy, who was already on thin ice with her, were understandable. Dumbledore suspected it was probably worse for McGonagall, she loved to teach and automatically assumed that anyone who asked for her guidance did so from a genuine love of learning. The feeling of betrayal must have cut deep.

The problem was that Victor was covering for the slimy git. He didn't know why and it probably didn't matter. But so far as Victor was providing him with a cover story, complete with witnesses, he was officially off the hook, at least from anything that Dumbledore could do.

But if Malfoy thought that avoiding an official reprimand and going unpunished were the same thing, he was in for a very rude awakening.

The problem he now faced was simple, yet hard. Could he accept the moral implications of going along with whatever Victor's plan was?

If it involved Malfoy? Yes, yes he could!

Of course now he had to convince Minerva of agreeing to leave Malfoy at the mercy of an eleven year old mad genius. And everybody knew Victor had precious little mercy. She might have serious qualms about allowing Victor to dispense discipline.

He cleared his throat. "About that, Minerva, I realize Lucius' late behaviour has been… well questionable would be one word of many. And I know he agreed to do all that extra transfiguration work for you to earn some extra credit. Which was really just a ploy to get access to your office and steal the key. But I was wondering," he paused for a second to breathe in before letting the next phrase out in one go, "if you might not be persuaded to commute his sentence and let him serve his time at the H.E.M.P. workshops. In the transfiguration department of course."

Many emotions passed through Minerva McGonagall's face at that point. Surprise was the very first, followed very closely by visible confusion. Slowly her expression morphed from confounded to befuddled. Eventually the first glimpses of understanding began to surface in her features. Then with a speed that could be best described as glacial, her cheeks tensed ever so slightly, as satisfaction began to dominate her mental state and a shit eating grin started to appear form on her face.

"Make Malfoy work in Victor's dungeon? I knew that little terror would eventually do something that'd make me happy."

…

That had been a lot easier than expected. He had thought Minerva would raise more of an objection, but he must have underestimated how deeply under her skin that bleached twit had gotten with the whole bribe thing from last year.

Besides, he hadn't even told her about the best part of Malfoy's comeuppance.

…

James Potter rang a silver bell and waited.

A minute or so later, Lucius Malfoy entered the room, carrying a tray and grinding his teeth.

"How may I be of assistance, master Potter?" to the untrained eye it might not have looked like it, but it really was quite a feat to be able to enunciate so clearly through such tightly clenched teeth.

James Potter pointed to a couple of empty glasses and a tray with just crumbs left on it.

"Ah yes, Malfoy dear chap, we require more refreshments, butterbeers for me and Sirius, some pumpkin juice for Remus and another hot chocolate for Peter."

"And more snacks!" Sirius added.

"Yes, more snacks would be appreciated, and be quick about it will you?"

Malfoy mumbled under his breath something that no eleven year old was supposed to hear, and sixteen year olds could get in trouble for saying.

"What was that old chap?" asked James with a smug smile.

Malfoy grumbled, breathed in, breathed out and finally said. "I meant to ask what sort of snacks will Sirs be having."

"Oh, just bring us whatever you think we might fancy." said Sirius, unhelpfully helpful.

"Last time I did that you little t…" he managed to stop himself when he noticed James' hand reach for the bell. He took a moment to recompose himself and continued after letting out a heavy sigh, " I mean the young Sirs kept me coming and going to the kitchen five times."

"That's just because we didn't fancy them." replied Sirius, who was able to keep the laughter from his chest but not his eyes.

"You ended up choosing a pastry I brought three runs earlier."

"Well, I didn't fancy it the first time I saw it, but I did later." replied Sirius with a shrug.

Malfoy rubbed his eyes with the balls of his hands and counted to three before putting down his hands and glaring at the four first years in the empty classroom. "This is ridiculous, you guys are supposed to be having detention here, not tea and snacks."

"We are in detention" replied Sirius, "for being recklessly brave, professor Dumbledore said. He also said that he had urgent business to attend to and he had to leave, but that he trusted us to do the responsible thing and stay here until detention was over and not to sneak to the kitchen for some food."

"And we are being very responsible, we haven't moved at all." Said James.

"But he never said anything about the food being brought to us." Sirius added with a triumphant smirk.

"He even winked when he said it, that's how serious you know he was." Remus said, feeling he needed to contribute to the conversation.

"There you have it, Malfoy my good man, Remus, Peter do you guys want something else?"

"I'm good, I'll let Malfoy decide for us."

"Actually I'd like more cinnamon in my cocoa."

"Right ho! So remember that, bit more of cinnamon in Peter's cocoa, now get right down to it, old bean and make it snappy, pip, pip, tally ho, and all that!"

Malfoy sent James a glare that was meant to incinerate him on the spot. Unfortunately James Potter was not flammable enough and he walked out of the room grumbling between his teeth.

Once they were sure Malfoy was out of hearing range, Remus turned to James with a puzzled look on his face.

"Pip, pip, tally ho?" he asked incredulously.

"Search me," James said as he shrugged, "I've no idea what it means either." Then he smiled, "but it did annoy him."

…

Dumbledore thought that the best part of using house-elves as spies is that they weren't even really spying. Content house-elves were simply, naturally gossipy, and if you earned their trust, they would share their gossip with you.

He'd chuckled heartily after one of the house elf cleaning staff had relayed that scene to him. Still he couldn't help but wonder how on Earth had Potter and his merry friends been able to strong arm Malfoy into becoming their personal butler.

…

Victor Von Doom stored a roll of magnetic tape in a special container box. It wouldn't do for either magnetic or thaumic interference to wipe its contents.

He couldn't remember when he'd come up with the idea to add a sound recorder to the portable thaumic detector, but the thing had been the prototype for over half a dozen handheld devices. He'd just kept piling new bits on top of old ones until at some point he had been forced to make it modular.

The microphone wasn't of the best quality, but it was good enough and in the silence of the forest late at night, Malfoy's shrill voice had carried over distinctly enough to be recognized and heard clearly.

Of course Victor had wasted no time arranging a private meeting with Malfoy and letting him know the contents of the tape.

Malfoy had panicked and pointed out that he was now a part of it since he had lied too. Victor cooly replied that Dumbledore already knew they were all lying, the only question was, what would the consequences of the lie being exposed be? Who risked losing the most?

Malfoy had swallowed loudly and shut up.

And because thinking of ways to humiliate Malfoy was a waste of his valuable time and brain, he had brought Potter and his friends into this arrangement so that they would do it in his stead. He'd even given them a silver bell paired with a glamoured shock collar that Malfoy had to wear at all times.

Blackmail was such an ugly word, he prefered to call it leverage.

…

Dumbledore thought it must be something really nasty to make Malfoy swallow his pride like that.

There was a knock at the door, Dumbledore looked startled at one of the timepieces in his office. Well this was unusual, his visitor was early, but he reasoned it was probably better this way, best to get this whole mess over and done with as quickly as possible.

"Enter!" He said loudly enough to carry through the thick oak.

But instead of the person he was expecting, in came Formeus Jones bringing his mid-morning coffee. He looked down at the teacup on his desk with the extra firewhisky in it and realized he'd completely forgotten about that. Maybe he'd gotten a bit too used to having an occasional drink during his workday. He probably should cut down a bit on that. Thus he promised himself not to touch the bottle, until September at the earliest. Formeus was carrying a tray with a tall coffee cup and a small plate of chocolate hobnobs biscuits. Dumbledore smiled, thankful for the gesture.

"Please do come in Mr. Jones, give me a second and I'll clear a bit of space for you." Dumbledore waved his wand and a bunch of folders scattered across his desk floated on top of each other to form a neat pile, leaving an empty space on the table for the sixth year boy to place his tray.

Formeus took the lid off the cup and a wonderful aroma filled the room.

"Your special blend headmaster, although I played a bit with the sugar and cream today, I know you don't much care for the bitterness."

"You're right, I don't," Dumbledore said, eyeing the dark hot beverage with a happy smile. "But do sit down Mr. Jones, I would very much like to have a final word before you leave. Please tell me, how are things over at the hemp workshops?"

"Fine, things have finally gotten a lot quieter now that exams are finally over. These past few days have been positively lazy compared to the frantic pace of the last two weeks." Formeus replied as he pulled on one of the chairs before the headmaster's desk. "Things are even peaceful, everybody's just packing up and cleaning up shop, except for one or two people who are still trying to do their experiments until the very last minute."

"Good, good. I must confess Mr. Jones, that I was slightly concerned about how you'd fare at Victor's domain when you were sentenced to serve time there along with Malfoy. But I must say that you have adapted splendidly."

"Well sir, some of the transfiguration work they're doing over there is quite fascinating, so I'm really glad to be part of it, no matter how small that part is. It also helps that if you have any useful skills, Victor will recognize it and make the most out of it."

…

"Hey, coffee boy, get us two standard brews for these potion stirrers and a hemp special brew for me, will you?"

"You'll have to wait a couple of minutes, the special's still brewing." said Formeus as he moved with practiced ease behind the bar, reached for a coffee pot behind him and served two cups of coffee.

"Here you go guys." he said as he presented the wizards with their beverages.

"Thanks coffee boy" there was no malice or mockery in the name they gave it, rather, they said it with respect, and even reverence.

Well, maybe the last part was just Formeus' giving himself airs. But it was true that almost everyone at the HEMP labs claimed his coffee was some of the best they'd ever had. So good in fact, that he'd been given his own corner of the building to set up a little coffee shop.

Formeus smiled at the current state of affairs. When he'd first arrived he had absolutely no misconceptions about why he and Malfoy had been sent to the HEMP building. They were there to be punished. They weren't interns so much as indentured errand boys to be given every humiliating task and bit of manual back-breaking labour anyone could come up with.

Formeus had no idea how in Merlin's name Victor had found out, but it was obvious he knew he was the one who'd switched regular with decaf, because amongst the many menial chores Victor had assigned to Formeus, making sure there was always coffee at the ready was chief among them.

"And it'd better be really good coffee, or I will find something else for you to do." He'd said, which meant that he would find some horribly unpleasant task for him.

Spurred by the mysteriously vague threat, and the conviction that he'd much rather not find out about what it entailed. He'd used up some of the money he'd earned from Malfoy and bought the absolute best and most expensive coffee he could find. Then he'd returned it after he'd learned what that involved and bought a cheaper but less disgusting pack of coffee beans. After that he'd begun experimenting with different filters and coffee makers, also bought from his own pocket.

To his own surprise, he found he enjoyed the task, almost as much as he liked getting praised by the quality of his brews. Before long, he noticed that Victor was giving him less work just so that he could focus on always keeping a pot or two going, improving his coffee making skills and was even allowed to participate in some actual research work with the rest of the staff.

And it had been while helping with an experiment on ' the effects of thaumic infusion in mundane objects and a measurement of thaumic saturation of different materials' that he'd had the idea.

Ever since the unfortunate incident that had caused him to be shocked with a thaumic current, he'd been unable to forget how it had made him feel. So he'd started to wonder if that effect could be reproduced on a smaller scale, because he vividly remembered the after effects and he most certainly didn't want to experience those again.

What would happen if they infused thaums in the coffee filters? He asked the researchers.

And because no one could come up with a reason not to, they all replied "Let's find out."

After a couple of failed attempts, including one in which their taster literally crawled up the walls, they found the sweet spot of just enough thaums in the filter that would supercharge the caffeine in the beans.

They called it the HEMP special brew.

He never knew who spilled the beans (pun intended), but before long word had spread out and panicked seventh years revising for their N.E.W.T.S were queuing outside the HEMP building begging for a cup of the special brew.

Percival who could smell money even better than a niffler, had swooped in and somehow convinced Doom to set up a little corner shop in the building next to a window through which they could serve their customers.

It'd been tough, their most busy hours had been around midnight, which was the time their customers usually realized they could either go for a coffee or a noose, but it'd also been fun. And they'd all made a few galleons, which was never a bad thing.

He noticed the pot of special brew had stopped dripping, so he took out the filter and filled a mug with the piping hot liquid for his waiting customer.

"Here you go Sean, one special brew."

"Thanks coffee boy," he took a small careful sip that made him give out a groan of pleasure, "I don't mind telling you Formeus, I'm going to miss your coffee during the summer holidays."

Formeus smiled, "Thank you Sean, have a great summer."

"Same to you coffee boy." He replied and walked off somewhere else with the other two wizards.

"Another satisfied customer Mr. Jones?"

"Not really a customer, I don't charge HEMP staff, no matter how much Percival argues I should. I told him that he needs to talk to you first. I take it he hasn't convinced you yet Doom?"

"He hasn't tried to, which is most wise on his part. Give me a standard blend Mr. Jones, while we discuss your future prospects."

"What future prospects?" He replied worriedly after almost dropping the mug he'd just picked up.

"I'd be a fool if I didn't recognize the contribution you've made to the High Energy department in the last month or so. And I'm not talking just about your coffee making skills, which are highly appreciated, but as a researcher." Victor picked up the mug set before him and took a small sip, careful not to burn himself. "You're curious and inventive Mr. Jones, qualities much desired for in investigation. Just look at what you've come up with, thaumic infused coffee filters, ingenious. And so I wondered, would you be interested in joining HEMP as a staff member next year?"

Formeus managed a dumbfounded "Wha?"

"You'd be joining the transfiguration department, whose members you already know quite well, I hear. Of course you'd still be expected to supply the laboratory with coffee, not as the coffee boy thought, but as a business owner." Victor took another sip and a small smile of pleasure appeared on his face. "It's really good coffee after all."

"I… I'm not sure what to say, gosh I'd really like to, I mean, even though I was just the guy holding the clipboard, it was amazing to be involved in their experiments."

"Good, then it's decided, I will talk with professor Tesseract, you will receive the necessary paperwork during the summer so that you can join as a student-researcher next year. As for the business side of things, I've already spoken to Mr. Marchand, he assures me he already has a business plan figured out, probably even with arrangements for franchise openings over the next two years."

"That… that's great!"

"Glad you agree, welcome aboard Formeus. Now I should hurry, it's already five minutes past eleven and I'm sure the headmaster is awaiting his morning coffee."

Formeus spun his head to look at a wall clock. "Oh darn, you're right, sorry Doom, I need to take care of this."

"I understand, and Formeus."

"Yes?"

"Have a great summer."

…

"He's actually been civil, even polite as of late." Formeus told the headmaster.

"I'm very glad to hear so, I just wish your housemate could have adapted as well as you had." Dumbledore replied with a tinge of sorrow in his voice.

"Oh well, there's no helping some people." replied Formeus.

…

How dared these filthy commoners assign him manual work like he was a… a common house elf. He was a Malfoy, a pureblooded member of an ancient and distinguished wizarding family. He was better than this, better than all of them and he would make sure to teach them this. He would make them rue the day they affronted Lucius Malfoy.

As soon as Doom was out of sight he was going to stop actually cleaning the beakers and just pretend to be doing it.

That should teach these alchemists a lesson.

"Oy, whipping boy, come over here!"

And that was another thing, the way they referred to him, it made him incredibly angry, but he had to swallow his pride as long as Doom was within earshot. But he already had plans for revenge in motion, as soon as his father got word of this, he would use all the power and influence of the Malfoy family to ruin their standing in wizarding society.

Except that most of them were muggleborns whose families had little to no contact with wizarding society.

That could be an issue.

He gritted his teeth and dragged his feet towards the 'researcher' that had called him.

"Get a move on will you?"

Malfoy's jaw tensed up some more, but he did walk a bit faster.

And that was another thing, researcher? What a joke, there wasn't a single bubbly cauldron or dribbly candle on a skull anywhere, and the building didn't have an oubliette or even a gibbet. Everybody knew these were basic necessities of any magical research. And he wasted no opportunities to tell them of this fact.

"Took your time, didn't you? Here hold these." the fake researcher said, handing him a pair of copper wires.

"Uh, what am I supposed to do with these?" Malfoy asked, confused.

"Just hold one in each hand, like that and stand there."

"Uh, wait, shouldn't I be wearing some form of protection?"

"Probably, Alice, throw the switch!"

There was a crackling sound followed by a loud shrill scream and the smell of burnt hair. Almost immediately, chuckles started spreading among the nearby researchers.

"That never gets old!" said one of them, rubbing a tear off his eye.

…

"I tried to give him some advice once, but you know how he can be." Formeus told the headmaster.

"Indeed I do." replied Dumbledore. "Well if nothing else, I'm glad it worked out for you Mr. Jones. Now, let me be the first to congratulate you on your new posting as an official staff member of the HEMP workshops."

Formeus suddenly looked at Dumbledore, baffled. "I only heard it from Victor just now, how did you…?"

Dumbledore just smiled and let the twinkle in his eye do the talking.

"Right, well, thank you Headmaster. Now if there's nothing else, I'll be taking my leave."

"Good, have a good summer Mr. Jones."

"You too headmaster." said Formeus as he closed the door behind him.

Dumbledore picked up the coffee and took a sip. It really was excellent coffee, the boy had a gift. That was at least one good thing that had come out of this whole fiasco.

Correction, it was another good thing that had come out of this fiasco, he told himself as he looked down at the piles of paperwork lying on his desk. They were grade reports and as he signed them, he'd noticed that the academic record for this year, particularly in arithmancy, had gone through the roof.

That had been another minor victory he was quite proud of. He knew Victor could be useful, he just needed to find out where and how to minimize the danger to everyone else. He smiled as he thought of his latest approach to the Doom problem.

…

The classroom was filled with an assortment of students from different years awaiting remedial lessons. They were there due to failing arithmancy, a fiendishly difficult subject that every year claimed a fair number of repeats.

While attendance to these make-up lessons was not exactly voluntary, it usually wasn't strictly enforced either, with teachers trusting the students to exercise personal responsibility. But this year the threat of detention, or worse, had been widely used to convince the students to go, in pretty much the same way blackjacks had once been used by naval recruiters to convince sailors to join the navy.

The extra motivation had been deemed necessary because a rumour had spread among the student body about who would be in charge of giving these extra lessons.

The door was pushed open by a foot and a small figure walked in, struggling under the weight of the many books he was carrying under his arms. The first year ignored the rest of the students in the classroom, made a beeline towards the teacher's desk and unceremoniously dumped his cargo on it.

"Right," Victor Von Doom said, rubbing his hands together and turning around to face the classroom. "As many of you have no doubt already heard, our esteemed headmaster has deemed that giving me further detention time is meaningless at this point. And rather than have me wasting time in meaningless punishments, like writing lines or vacuous, drivel-filled essays, my time should be invested in something more productive. Thus I'm here after my appointment as 'tutor in charge of remedial lessons'." He looked over the assembled students, taking notice of the more incredulous gazes, making a mental note to pay special attention to those in case they turned out to be problem students.

"Nevertheless, headmaster Dumbledore has given me this task to complete and Doom never backs down from a challenge. Now, we have a little less than four weeks before the exams, and I have formulated a comprehensive study plan that will allow every single one of you to pass your arithmancy exam with at least an O score easily. If after receiving my lessons, any of you obtains anything less than an E, I will be very disappointed." He paused for a moment before letting the next words fall like lead slabs in the silence of the classroom. "You do not want to disappoint me."

There was a collective gulping sound.

"Great, now open your copies of Numerology and Grammatica at page 78 and I will explain why almost everything you've been taught is wrong."

…

Yes, that had been quite an ingenious idea. Instead of giving Victor a timeout style detention that would simply let his mind wander and allow him to come up with new and inventive ways to destroy more sections of the castle, give him a specific task to focus on that will keep his mind occupied and away from more potentially lethal endeavours. He'd also hoped that trying to teach others would give Victor a small taste of what it was trying to teach him.

He'd been told often enough that he was an outrageous optimist, he wasn't going to change that at this point in his life.

Just as he was finishing his coffee when there was another knock at the door. He checked the time and smiled. Barely three minutes past the scheduled time, this must surely be his appointment.

He set down the cup and bellowed 'enter' once more. The door opened and a visibly contrite Arthur Ragthorne came into his office.

Dumbledore didn't need a crystal ball or his multitude of contacts within the ministry to guess what it was the purpose of this meeting was. He'd hoped he was wrong, but Arthur's gloomy mood when he entered just confirmed his suspicions.

"Please sit down Arthur, I imagine this isn't easy for you."

"How do you…" he stopped suddenly when Dumbledore raised his hand.

"I do not, but I suspect, what else could make you travel all the way here from London on the very last day of the school year?"

Arthur sat down heavily on the chair opposite Dumbledore. "Well, it's probably what you expect." His shoulders sagged and he sighed heavily. "It's Schmeep, the idiot death eater that got himself captured at Hogwarts, they found him dead inside his cell at Azkaban yesterday."

Dumbledore said nothing, he simply steepled his hands together while he considered this information with a stone face.

"I see," he said at last, "any clues as to how it happened?"

"None whatsoever, the Minister of Magic has told us it has to be ruled a suicide, as if that's any better."

"No clues, any theories?"

"A few, none that I would care to admit publicly, but frankly, any idiot with half a brain can see that it was an inside job." He leaned back on the chair and Dumbledore noticed the deep bags under his eyes, he'd probably not slept at all. "What I don't get is why wait until we've sent him to Azkaban, after we've interrogated him. We know he's infiltrated the ministry, we know he's got agents everywhere. There were half a dozen other places he could have done this much easier to get to than Azkaban and more importantly, before he talked."

"Did he really?" asked Dumbledore with a raised eyebrow.

Arthur gave Dumbledore an awkward look. "No, he mostly talked nonsense or stuff we already knew. We got nothing of value out of him."

Dumbledore nodded. "I'd be very surprised if you had, I doubt Voldemort inspires much loyalty, but fear, that he provides in spades. On top of that, I'm convinced his agents in the ministry would have hindered any effective interrogation. As for your former question, it's a power move. A way of showing us all that he can get at anyone he wants, anywhere he wants, anytime he wants."

"I thought the same," said Arthur as he rubbed his eyes wearily. "I just wanted to tell you before I tell the papers. Oh they're going to have a field day with this one!" He looked at Dumbledore with sad, hopeful eyes. "I also wondered if you could possibly lend me a hand with this mess."

"Arthur, I'm the Headmaster of Hogwarts, whereas you're the official spokesperson for the auror's office. I wouldn't even know where to begin." His tone was serious and flat, he took his half moon spectacles off and cleaned them with a handkerchief before continuing. "However, I wouldn't be opposed to standing behind you when you give your statement, as well as field any questions related to Voldemort and his ascendancy. Purely as a way to raise public awareness to the danger he represents, you understand?"

Arthur gave Dumbledore a tired smile. "That's more than I hoped for. We'll be making a public statement at seven later today, you think you'll be able to be there?"

"I'll floo directly to the ministry."

Arthur stood up, "thank you very much, headmaster." He said and extended his hand. Dumbledore shook it warmly and wished him well before he left.

When the door closed he let himself sink down in his chair. The death eater's death was not surprising at all, but that didn't make it any less horrible, and he feared that sooner than anyone realized, it would be just another tally in a much greater count.

He took out a quill and parchment. He should probably write something for the public statement later tonight, something that would help the people realize just how dangerous Tom could be without raising a panic.

There was another knock on his door. He looked up from his writings, puzzled, he wasn't expecting anyone else.

The knocker opened the door without waiting for a reply and in came Minerva McGonagall.

"I just saw Arthur leaving the castle with a haunted look. Bad news?"

"Dead in his cell at Azkaban."

"Can't say I'm surprised" she said sadly and sat on the same chair Arthur had occupied minutes before, then from somewhere in her dress, she brought out a bottle of firewhisky and two glasses.

Dumbledore eyed them with a frown. "I'd promised myself I wouldn't open the bottle again until the new school year."

"Well that's alright then, because this is my bottle, so you won't be touching yours at all." Minerva replied with a mischievous smile. "Besides if not for the bad news, today would be a day to celebrate and be merry, the little terror is going away for two months."

"I think Victor would object to you calling him little."

"Ha! He probably would do that." She said with a wide smile, but soon the happy expression faded to be replaced by one of concern. "Albus, I'm worried, that new wand of his…"

"I understand Minerva, I worried as well, which is why I requested Mr. Ollivander expertise on the matter and asked to pay us a visit."

"And that went swimmingly!" Minerva said as she served the firewhisky.

…

Garrick Olivander sat in the Hogwarts staff room, sipping on a calming drought brought to him by Madam Pomfrey to calm his frayed nerves.

"Breathe Ollivander, breathe, nice and easy." Dumbledore told him while he gave his shoulder a comforting squeeze.

"I'm… I'm alright now. Thank you madam Pomfrey."

"Not to worry, Mr. Ollivander, I've had a lot of experience with people hyperventilating, especially this year."

"So Mr. Ollivander," Dumbledore said, using his best grandfatherly voice in an attempt to soothe the nervous wand maker. "I'm sorry if I seem a bit crass, but we really need to know. In your professional opinion, what on earth is that metal wand?"

"It's… It's difficult to say. I'm not even sure it's a wand. I mean, it looks like a wand and it works like a wand, although an extremely powerful one but… " he paused for a moment to collect his thoughts "For example there's the thing with its core."

"What of it?"

"It doesn't have one, the whole thing is the core."

"I see."

"It's unheard of. You use a body part from a magical beast as a core to act as a focus for magic, and surround it with a wooden body to dampen it and channel the wizard's will. But this thing. The metal just absorbs magic and spits it out raw and unfiltered with a mere gesture! And it's so sensitive, all I did was a simple flourish for coloured sparkles and it blew a hole in the wall. And that's not even half of it!"

"Oh, and what would the other half be?"

"The wand is locked to him. I couldn't even get it to sparkle, which is the most basic of flourishes, until he specifically forced the wand to recognize me as a user."

"Hmm yes, that sounds unusual."

"It's supposed to be so difficult as to be near impossible. Some wizards have tried to make their wands attuned exclusively only to themselves, but the narrower the range the more inefficient the core becomes. And then there's the… the vision for lack of a better term."

"Yes, you worried us there Mr. Ollivander, we thought you'd gone into shock. Can you perhaps describe what it was?

"I… I cannot remember what I saw, but I remember how it felt. Whoever crafted the wand left its signature mark upon it, and it was a big mark, almost… almost…"

"Almost what?"

Ollivander sighed, reluctant to say it but unable to call it anything else. "Divine," he said looking at Dumbledore straight in the eye, "what you've got there isn't so much a wand as a blessed relic."

Ollivander looked through the staff room's window down at the courtyard, where they could just see the figure of Victor Von Doom practicing reparo on the damaged wall with his new wand.

"And may Merlin help us all, it belongs to him."

…

"Well at least we learned that Voldemort can't use it." said Dumbledore.

"I'm afraid that won't be enough to deter him. He was already after the thing when it was just a curiosity. Now that it's a functional wand, who knows what he might do?"

"If he took it, he'd have to take Victor as well just to use it. And somehow I can't imagine Voldemort being able to convince Victor to give up his brand new wand."

"Neither can I. And that's the point. He might steal it just to keep it away from a potential threat." She said as she closed the bottle and tucked it away somewhere in her skirts. She picked up her glass but didn't drink it, instead contemplating the surface of the amber coloured liquid. "Albus, do you ever get the impression we're just raising a new monster to replace the old one?"

"That won't happen." Dumbledore said with absolute certainty in his voice "I won't allow it."

McGonagall smiled at the comforting words from her old friend. "Well, whatever happens it won't be boring, I'm sure of that."

Dumbledore answered McGonagall's words with a hearty good natured chuckle.

"What's so funny?" She asked slightly miffed, suspecting she might be being laughed at.

"Nothing, you just reminded me of an old chinese curse, 'May you live in interesting times'."

McGonagall smiled gently at that. "That seems about right," she raised a toast. "To interesting times!" she said.

"To interesting times," said Dumbledore raising his own glass. "That they may soon become boring."

FIN

Last edited: Aug 7, 2021

Epilogue

Epilogue

Roland Graham was meditating, he wasn't particularly good at it, but he tried just as hard as anyone else. Unfortunately it seldom did him much good, he was too hard wired in his understanding of magic to let go of the idea of using a wand and mastering wandless spells.

Not that he really cared, he had never been a particularly brilliant wizard, he'd been much more interested in history, specially the history of exotic and far away cultures, than on how to transfigure a box of matches.

Which was what had led him to leave his native England and journey all the way to India, then Nepal and to this particular mystic sect in the Himalayas.

It had taken some time, english wizards were not particularly well thought of in this part of the world. And he frankly couldn't fault them for being wary of anything british. But he'd eventually gained their trust and finally their acceptance.

He'd even somehow managed to turn his lack of aptitude with wandless spells into a boon. For all their mystical wisdom, the sect still required supplies, food, water, the occasional carpenter to repair a leaky roof. And he'd been more than happy to liaise with the nearby towns and take care of the more mundane tasks necessary for the maintenance of the sect, such as finance and record keeping. He wasn't particularly interested in accounting, but access to the records, that's what he'd really been after.

He'd already written two books and was currently working on a third, describing the history of magic throughout India and the Himalayas. Large scholarly books that could stop not just a door but a castle gate, full of sources and references that almost no one would ever read.

He knew all this, and he didn't care. He felt happier now than he'd ever felt at home, far happier than he'd ever been during his short tenure as a ministry paper-pusher.

But part of the philosophy he had embraced since starting his new life her was to never stop trying to improve yourself. And thus everyday he strived to improve his spells and meditation techniques if only by a small fraction.

It was hard for him, he wasn't very skilled at opening his chakras, or aligning the flow of his Qi, both of them prerequisites for achieving spiritual transcendence and reaching the astral realm. He just couldn't quite get there.

So it was incredibly surprising for him when he felt his spirit completely slip into the astral realm, just before he received the brunt of the vision.

…

Shanti, a young junior disciple of the sect, opened the door to the meditation room and found Senior disciple Graham sprawled on the floor, groaning.

He rushed to his aid immediately, senior disciple Graham had a reputation as a calm, patient, and knowledgeable person. But more importantly, he shared the same struggles that many of the younger disciples went through when trying to master techniques and spells. The elders knew this, which is why he'd been assigned as a teacher to the most junior disciples. He was respected and well liked among them, so much so that they even called him master, even though he technically wasn't one.

"Master Graham, are you alright?" he shouted nervously, gently shaking the older man on the ground.

"Ugh, wah, Sh… Shanti, is that you? Why are you shaking me?"

"I had come to fetch you when I found you passed out on the floor."

"Agh, my head… " His eyes opened wide as his memory recalled the last few minutes. "I've had a vision Shanti, a vision from the… wait, fetch me?"

"There is a visitor, Master Graham, from your homeland, he speaks only english but even so, he has made it clear that he has travelled here looking for you."

"For me? That makes no sense." He'd left his old life in England behind him. His only connection to his old country was through his publisher, and that guy was an academic bookworm that would never leave his office.

He remembered the vision.

"Take me to him." He said as he, unsteadily, tried to stand.

The man was clad in a thick woolen parka with a fur lined hood around his head. He was trembling and warming himself before a fire, small bits of ice clung to his beard and eyebrows. His right hand was shaking and held a wand that he was currently pointing at the fire.

"Don't!" He shouted at him, interrupting whatever spell he was trying. "Your hands are shaking too much for you to get the wand movements correctly. We don't want to set the room on fire." He turned to the junior disciple standing beside him. "Shanti get some hot water and more fuel for the fire if you'd please."

"At once master." He said before he left.

He frowned, at the man, who was, quite unmistakably, a wizard. He'd probably tried to apparate here from the town and got turned away by the sect's mystical defenses to end up lost somewhere in the mountain. The idiot should have checked before jumping, but that was always the problem with most wand waving wizards. Too damn cock sure of themselves and their own superiority over muggles.

"May I?" He said, holding out his hand towards the man's wand. He looked at him for a moment, confused, before realizing what he was being asked and giving his wand to Graham.

He waved it around and did a simple warming charm. Immediately, the man stopped trembling. Shanti came back a moment later with another junior disciple in tow, carrying wood for the fire and a bowl of steaming water.

After a few minutes the man was looking in much better health and all the ice in his face had melted away. He pulled back the hood of his parka revealing a strong face with hard lines and one or two scars.

"Probably an auror," thought Roland.

"I am Roland Graham and who might you be?" he said to the man.

"I am William Gladdenbolt. I work for the ministry of magic."

"You're a long way from the ministry, or home, Mr. Gladdenbolt, what brings you all the way here to the Himalayas?"

"I'm on a mission, there is a new sect in Britain, led by a dark wizard by the name of Lord Voldemort. They call themselves death eaters and they are slowly consolidating their power base among wizarding society. The ministry believes they are a threat."

Graham nodded, just business as usual for Europe. Another dark wizard just like Grindelwald had been. They sprouted like mushrooms in the dark and had been one of the main reasons he had left home.

"For the past few months, we've noticed they've been all over the place, collecting ancient relics and texts. No one knows what they want them for, but no one thinks it's for anything good. We also have no idea what these objects are. All we know is that they are old, remote and no wizard we've spoken with has ever heard of them. We spent weeks searching for someone who could give us a clue to what Voldemort wants with these things, with no success."

Graham nodded again indicating he was listening and urging the man to continue.

"Then Phineas Womblesnot mentioned you."

"My publisher? What does he have to do with anything?"

"He said that if anyone might know what these objects are, it would be you. You're the only expert not on Voldemort's employ we've been able to locate." The man's gaze grew intense with determination and looked Graham straight in the eyes. "I've travelled thousands of miles, crossed oceans, deserts and even freezing mountains to find you so that I could ask you one question."

"Tell me please, what is the mystery of the Vishanti?"

Victor Von Doom will return in:

Victor Von Doom and

the Mystery of the Vishanti

Last edited: Aug 9, 2021