I told you the next chapter wouldn't be until December. I just didn't say when in December.
Chapter 42
Finding the Path
Hazel sighed within her own head as she allowed Sally-Anne to pull her into the crowd. With how many people were all headed in the same direction, she was glad she had stuck her staff into her bag for this trip or else she undoubtedly would have knocked at least a couple of people in the head. She pulled against Sally-Anne's grip on her left arm and spun her index finger. 'Where are we going, exactly?'
Sally-Anne gave her a wide smile. "It's the first Quidditch game of the season! Oh, this feels just like going to Ivanhoe games with Mum and Dad. Everyone is so excited!"
She was glad Sally-Anne was so happy, but neither her words nor the thoughts of the other students around her gave much of an explanation. 'And Quidditch is… what, exactly?'
That earned her an unconcerned shrug from Sally-Anne, but her friend was not the only person to read her question. "You don't know what Quidditch is?" asked Hannah Abbott, looking askance at her as they continued following the crowd. "How can anybody call herself a witch and not know about Quidditch? The Muggleborns I understand, but for the Girl-Who-Lived? Inconceivable. It's a game played on broomsticks. There are four positions, and the best are the Chasers…"
The second blonde girl's explanation lasted them the rest of the way to the large stadium sitting to the north of the castle, just a short distance away from the field where the Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws had their flying classes a couple of weeks after starting lessons at this school and not far at all from the gates that led to Hogsmeade. Six wide towers formed the walls of the stadium, and they climbed the tall staircase set within the tower that was covered in black and yellow curtains. Emerging once more into the light, Hazel looked around at the wooden bleachers placed beneath an overhanging awning that should keep out the rain but did little for the bright sunlight pouring in.
Soon enough, what seemed like every single Hufflepuff had settled into a spot on the bench, although while Sally-Anne and Hannah chatted about player statistics Hazel could not help but be distracted. As more and more people piled in, the edges of the box flickered now and again; not something she could see with her ordinary vision, but it was obvious when viewed through her fairy lens. Each time the flicker happened, she could swear that there were more seats than had been there before. Were the bleachers growing wider to make sure there was always enough space for everyone?
It was a distinct possibility, she decided. After all, her satchel always had extra space to hold new things within, and would this not be a similar process?
A white-haired witch soon marched out to the center of the pitch and took to the air on a flying broomstick. A witch Hazel recognized as Madam Hooch, the very person who had instructed the assembled Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws during their two flying lessons. She had been fair but strict and stern during their lessons, her thoughts providing the explanation that she wanted no horseplay after dealing with the joint Gryffindor and Slytherin class, when one boy had injured himself and two others had gotten detentions for having an airborne quarrel of some kind or another.
It meant their own lessons had been uneventful but still entertaining. Flight was not something Hazel had spent much time considering, not even after learning there was an entire society built around magic, and despite never using a broomstick for anything other than sweeping the floor she felt she might naturally have a bit of a knack for it. It probably helped that this was finally something else the wizards did that she felt could be considered appropriately 'witchy'.
Sadly, flying on her own broomstick was not in the cards for her, or at least not for a very long time. She had asked Madam Hooch how much one might cost, and the rough estimate the woman had given her for even the most basic model was staggering. She was not sure exactly what the conversion rate for wizard galleons and British pounds, but she suspected that it was roughly the cost of a car! She could justify stealing a number of things she needed; neither a broom nor the quantities of gold she would need to buy one honestly counted.
Still, that would be something nice to have. We could go flying together, she thought to Morgan. Maybe we can look into how to make one ourselves after we finally find where the druids are hiding. Assuming they don't have their own version, that is.
Madam Hooch blew a whistle, and a boy in some other box started announcing the names of the players of both sides as they flew out of underground locker rooms. Followed by multiple descriptions, most of which had nothing to do with their skill at the game.
"Ugh, I hoped after last year they would have replaced that guy as the announcer," thought an older Hufflepuff girl from right behind them, the sentiments echoed by the mental grumbling of several other people in the box. "It's only the Gryffindors who even think he's funny. Which is probably the reason McGonagall lets him get away with it at all."
Once the players for both the Gryffindor and Slytherin teams were introduced and in the air, the game began. Several players flew towards a bright scarlet ball while two others flew off under their own power. Of the all-important fourth ball Hannah had mentioned, this one tiny and gold, there was no sign.
The scarlet ball was moved across the whole pitch, passed back and forth and being stolen by members of the opposite team, before being thrown towards the set of three hoops stuck into the ground like oversized bubble wands. After several minutes and two goals on each side, Hazel shrugged to herself. It was a decent game, she would give it that much credit, but at this moment she just could not find it in herself to be that interested. Perhaps if she were playing rather than watching, she would think differently, but as things were? She could not help the niggling feeling that her time would be better spent on any number of other topics.
Reaching into her satchel, she pulled out a dog-eared book and opened it to the page she had bookmarked many weeks ago. She had not completely given up hope on finding something, anything, relevant in the massive library here at Hogwarts, but that hope had been severely tempered by her complete lack of success thus far. It would not hurt to look elsewhere for answers; at this point, she would take whatever answers she could find no matter the source. She knew that probably meant she was desperate, but she just did not care anymore.
She really needed to thank Professor Flitwick for the talk they had on the subject of spell creation because it had jostled her memory. Back before she even came to school, she had found a secondhand shop tucked into one corner of Diagon Alley where she had purchased a couple of ratty books, including this one. An introductory text on the field of divination. She had not intended to use it to find the druids – had not intended to do anything with it, honestly – but while she had pushed it to the side in favor of scouring the library's wider selection, she would not hold that against herself. What mattered was that she had remembered in the end.
Now she just had to learn for herself whether the wizards' magic would be more helpful than their history books.
Hannah's disapproval the instant she saw Hazel reading instead of watching the game was obvious even through the general excitement emanating from the rest of the nearby Hufflepuffs. That said, one girl's disapproval, or even the entire house's, was not really her concern. She continued flipping through the pages, skimming the book as best she could in the hope that something would jump out to her.
Most of the book was concerned with looking into the future and predicting events that had yet to pass, and while Hazel could understand the allure of such knowledge, she had to wonder if it was worth the effort. If knowing the future meant being able to change it, that might be a useful talent to have, but her previous dives into folklore meant she had read abridged versions of the stories of Odysseus and Oedipus, and more importantly the prophecies given to them. Prophecies that came true despite, and in fact because of, man's attempts to interfere with destiny.
Her book had not yet stated whether wizard prophecy was mutable or not, but if it were the latter as the old tales told, all foreknowledge granted was anxiety about a future that could not be changed. From that perspective, in her opinion it was better not to know ahead of time. Which, she supposed, might have given her subconscious a reason to put the book to the side when there was a more pertinent and personal question before her.
Predicting the future was not the only use for divination, however. Professor Flitwick had mentioned that it was useful for making new wizard spells, and even in the sections she had read so far there were mentions here and there of using it to view people and places over long distances. Even gathering information about the past that had been lost to time. It was this last option she was most interested in, but that would be useless unless she could either use it on a topic with no other hints to go off of or—
Her rapid page-flipping came to an abrupt halt as she happened onto another chapter of the book. She had not been paying attention to the titles, but the phrase 'find the lost' had jumped out to her eyes. Moving back a couple of pages, she started reading with more focus.
This may be just what we're looking for, she told Morgan after several minutes. It says that stone-casting isn't just for general predictions about the future. It can also be used to find lost objects or even missing people. The first way is all about assigning meanings to each stone and then translating the proximity of specific stones into how those meanings interact, but using it to find things sounds a lot easier to use. You still need to give each stone its own meaning, but then those meanings become landmarks to guide you to the area where whatever you're looking for is.
The location of the druids' towns or villages is pretty lost, wouldn't you say?
The only complication she could see is that when the book talked about 'finding things', it was focused on specific individual objects. Would a place count as an object? She worried the answer was 'no' – after all, places were neither people nor things, and those were all the kinds of nouns she knew of – but she had neither confirmation nor denial from the text. The only option left to her was to try it and find out for herself.
And if it did work? She was going to give the druids a piece of her mind for how much trouble they caused her just to find them.
Seated on the bank of the large lake she had crossed along with the rest of her year on the night of the Sorting Ceremony, Hazel listened with her eyes closed to the splash of waves and the song of nearby birds and the squelch of lake mud between her bare toes. After spending three or so hours stuck in the middle of the rest of the school while they watched Quidditch, this would be a relaxing place to rest even if she did not have another purpose planned.
This was not the first time she had used meditation to clear her mind and aid her in learning new and strange magics, but it was the first time she had ever been instructed to do so. Assuming her divination book was accurate – and if it were not, she would be back at square one with no way forward, so she was going to trust what it said – all divination magics required that the witch using them had opened her 'Inner Eye'. A phrase that was familiar to her, although it took a while to remember where she had heard it.
And now she had to wonder if Madam Enigma, the fortune teller she had run into at the circus a year or more ago, had also been a witch or a Squib or if she was a normal person who had been taught the same phrase by sheer happenstance. It was a question that would likely never be answered.
Hazel had never been told or discovered that she had a third eye, physical or otherwise, and with her luck if she did it would have vision just as poor as her other eyes'. The greatest of seeresses and prophets supposedly had been born with their Inner Eyes fully open, but those individuals were few and far between, and thankfully divination was not limited to these lucky individuals. The book detailed several exercises people could use in order to learn how to open their Inner Eye, and while it would inevitably close, the time it was open was normally enough for the witch in question to perform her divinations.
Really, from the way this Inner Eye was described, it sounded less like a body part or an ability so much as a state of mind, especially since meditation was recommended as one technique to open the Inner Eye. Was it a similar state of mind to the one she had used to conceive several of her own spells? That much remained to be seen.
"You're going to catch a cold like that."
The voice coming out of nowhere caught her by surprise, and her eyes flew open while her feet pulled themselves off the muddy shore. Now that she could see again, it was a very short glance to find Professor Quirrell a couple of dozen feet away. He was looking at her, but it was not with a disapproving or angry expression. Instead he looked almost amused, though whether it was due to her position or her startled reaction was anyone's guess.
'Don't scare me like that!'
"If you don't want to be scared, you should pay better attention to your surroundings," he replied simply. "What are you doing out here, anyway?"
'Trying to teach myself how to use divination magic. It has a few steps you have to go through if you don't have the natural talent.' Professor Quirrell hummed in response, and when he said nothing else for a moment she added, 'You're looking a lot better after running into a troll than I was led to believe.'
Professor Quirrell shrugged with one shoulder. "Madam Pomfrey does good work. She was able to patch me up without any trouble. It helped that I did not stand and fight it by myself; my priority was letting the rest of the staff know. I got a minor concussion from the ordeal, but nothing more substantial than that. Certainly I was in a better state than that other girl."
Hazel grimaced both at the professor's casual tone as well as the memory of all she had heard about Hermione Granger's condition. From what many of the upper years had said, the fact that she had to be transferred to St. Mungo's, the primary wizard hospital in Britain, was a worrisome sign of how serious her injuries were. 'Is she really coming back next week? That's the rumor going around.'
"Possibly. I haven't heard anything about it, but that doesn't mean it's false. I just might not be in the loop. Wouldn't be the first time," he added with a nearly inaudible grumble. He shook his head and stepped closer to the water's edge, his gaze focused on the water. "Divination, you say? That's not a branch of magic I ever paid much attention to. It is too vague for my tastes."
'That certainly is the case for predicting the future from what I've read. That's honestly the least interesting part about it, though. I'm more interested in its ability to locate things and learn hidden knowledge that has been forgotten.' She finished her statement with a snap, getting the professor's attention so he would not miss what she had written.
"How fascinating. I do not think I've ever heard of people using divination for anything except looking into the future, but I must agree that the other uses seem far more practical. And of course it would be you who stumbles into a different way of applying magic. Then again—" He cut himself off as he stretched his hand out towards the water, and a flat stone flew out from beneath the surface as if she were watching it being dropped in reverse. Professor Quirrell's fingers closed around the stone, then he tossed it up and caught it once again while Hazel stared at him in shock. "—since you seem to approach everything magical from a unique angle, I suppose it is only appropriate."
'You can also use magic without a wand?!' she demanded. Professor Flitwick had mentioned that he knew people who learned how to do small things without the need for a wand – the very parlor tricks McGonagall seemed to believe were the limits of her capabilities – but all those were wizards who had trained overseas. Was Professor Quirrell one of them? He would have to have lived in Britain for most of his life after that, though, because she could not detect any foreign accent in his speech.
Or was there another school in Britain, one that perhaps was not as 'prestigious' as Hogwarts, that taught such things? If so and she had wasted the last two months here at Hogwarts, she was going to be so angry at herself.
Professor Quirrell flicked his eyes towards her question and allowed a small smirk to become visible. "Perhaps a little. The occasional spell here and there." He rolled the rock around in his fingers again before tossing it back into the water a short distance away. "Although calling them spells is not quite accurate. It is not as if wandless magic is as straightforward as speaking the incantation and waving a finger around in place of a wand. That is where weaker wizards who try it get it wrong, and when they fail they claim it an impossibility. If their tricks and shortcuts don't work, nothing will, they think.
"Except we know different. It is both so much simpler and so much harder than that. Isn't it, Hazel?" Now his eyes were boring into Hazel's own, dull green and bright green locked together, and his voice held a strength and a confidence she had never heard in his classroom. "Wandless magic is an expression of pure will. Imagine what you want to happen, and then force the world to accept that as its new reality. Every time we do, we prove that is we who have the power to change the world. Not our wands, not even lessons learned in stuffy classrooms. Our determination is all we need."
A long moment passed before Professor Quirrell broke the staring contest. Without him staring into the depths of her soul, Hazel felt herself take a near-desperate breath and let it out in a shaky sigh. That was… intense. The way he spoke of using wandless magic was so very close to her own methods, and it almost made her feel embarrassed that she had to rely on imagined tools to make her magic do what she wanted it to do.
Would this wizard, the first and so far only one truly to share this aspect of her magic, consider her tools to be another kind of trick or shortcut?
While she navigated the currents of her own sudden self-doubts, Professor Quirrell levitated another stone into his hand and gave it a nod. Cocking his arm to the side, he swung it in a wide arc and sent the stone skipping three, four times over the surface of the lake.
'How did you learn?'
The smirk was gone now, replaced by a full grin albeit one that lacked a certain warmth. "I suspect it was similar to the way you did. I realized while I was still a child that I could make the impossible happen, and I took hold of that ability with both hands. I pushed myself until I could do magic without a crutch." He blew out a loud huff through his nostrils. "Unfortunately, I did not have the restrictions that you do, and when I took to wand magic with ease, I did not keep up the effort I had in my youth. It took many years for me to regain my previous level of skill."
He was right about the similarities, especially when it was not the history she would have expected from a wizard. 'There really should be a school for people like us,' she wrote out with a scowl. 'Like the African school whose name I don't remember. Somewhere we wouldn't be stuck with the choice of magic with a wand or no magic at all.'
"Finding students would be the difficult part. It takes more effort than the typical European wizard wants to put into… well, most anything, frankly."
She found herself nodding along with his words. From her own experiences in France and Germany and Albania and all the way to Greece, people were people no matter where they were found. It made sense the same would be true of wizards more specifically. A thought crossed her mind then, and she blinked in confused realization. 'But now something doesn't make sense where it did before. You don't need a wand, and I don't need a wand… Then why when I asked you how to defend myself without a wand did you tell me that I should run? Why didn't you tell me then that you can also do it?'
"Two reasons." He raised his hand and lifted a single finger. "Unless you have a reason to stay and fight, a reason that is worth the risk of injury or death, getting away from the source of danger as quickly as possible is the only rational decision."
…He was not wrong there.
A second finger joined the first. "It is embarrassing to admit, but as do nearly all students here, I learned how to fight with a wand. When I resumed my wandless practice, it was with an eye more for ways to approach problems from a different angle or that just seemed obviously useful. Duplicating spells I could already cast with a wand just to do so was worth my time.
"And for a third reason," he added thoughtfully, "to some degree I fell into the same trap as the other professors in treating you like a normal witch. For anyone dependent on a wand, having it be stolen or broken means escape is not just the best but the only feasible option. I must ask for your forgiveness for that lapse."
Hazel waved away his apology. 'I know I'm different from the rest of the students. It is the repeated ignorance of my needs that I find irritating, not the first time it happens.'
"Your graciousness is appreciated."
She grinned at the droll tone that comment was delivered in. 'I also want to thank you for not mentioning my absences from class to Professor Sprout. She found out when we were talking about me dropping Transfiguration, but that was a shock to her when it came out. It was nice to have someone respect my side of things for once.'
"I'm aware she is now aware. She wanted to make it an issue, but…" Professor Quirrell shrugged. "My class, my rules. You sitting there bored because I cannot teach you anything you can use would do nothing but waste both your time and mine. If I refuse to punish you for circumstances beyond your control, that is my prerogative."
'So far you're the only professor who thinks that way,' she wrote with a scowl. If Hogwarts had a wandless magic class with Professor Quirrell teaching it, she would sign up without a moment's hesitation. He was engaging, clever, quick-witted, and it was so much easier to talk to him this way when it was one-on-one and his stutter was not… acting… up…
…Wait.
Why was he siding with her way of thinking instead of that of the professors? Why did he not defend the utility of their classes the way they did for each other?
He silently raised one eyebrow in response to her probing stare, and that was the last clue she needed. 'You aren't Professor Quirrell.'
"You will have to explain what you mean by that."
Now that she was paying attention, she heard it. His speech had a kind of flatness to it, similar to what she experienced when Professor Snape talked to her while hiding his thoughts. It was subtle, far more than her previous experience and enough that if she were not looking for it she doubted she would catch it. Knew she would not catch it, actually; after all, this was now the second conversations where she hadn't.
And most importantly, she had always been able to hear Professor Quirrell's thoughts. This mental silence was not normal from him. She could not tell him that outright, not without having to explain many other things alongside it, but…
'You don't have Professor Quirrell's stutter, and you have a different mindset about how a professor should behave than all the other teachers here. Almost like you aren't one yourself. And you act differently, too; he comes off as very timid, but you are much more confident and eloquent. It's a nice change, but it isn't like Professor Quirrell.'
Except if this man wearing Professor Quirrell's face was not truly Professor Quirrell, it raised the question of just who was he? How did he look like and have the memories of Professor Quirrell? And then where was the real Professor Quirrell? When and how had he made the switch without anyone being the wiser? How was he able to emulate Professor Quirrell's mannerisms that day in class until it was just the two of them?
Memories from television shows came to mind, not the ones Dudley watched but instead the kind Petunia preferred to watch in the middle of the day. Stupid, sappy stories about people who would not know how to navigate their own friendships and love lives with a map and a personal advisor, admittedly, but even some of the wilder story beats had a grain of truth. And if she were right, it would tie up all her questions with a neat little bow.
Her suspicious frown bloomed into a relieved smile as she came to her realization. 'You have split personalities, don't you? That's how you can be so different but know the same things. You aren't the one teaching us. Although I kind of wish you were.'
Not-Professor-Quirrell watched her, the way he was rocking back and forth on his heels with his hands behind his back making it look like he was utterly unconcerned about everything she had just written. After a long moment, he hummed while the corners of his mouth curled just the tiniest bit. "Quirinus would be so upset to hear that. He has always wanted to be a teacher, even if I agree with you that he is not the best at it. He tries, though, and we should give him credit where it is due."
'That's fair, I guess.' No matter how much she stood with her previous statement. 'No one else knows about you and Professor Quirrell, do they? I expect split personalities aren't any more common in wizard society than they are among normal people. If you are trying to keep it private, I won't tell anyone.' She had already had one person she shared an unusual ability with decide he hated everything about her, and she would much rather not have a second Professor Snape in her life.
Tilting his head, Not-Professor-Quirrell looked her up and down almost as if he were judging her trustworthiness. "No one would believe you anyway."
That statement hurt, but she could not say he was wrong. Her encounters with werewolves and hags were much less unbelievable than this, and everyone bar Sally-Anne thought she was lying about those. 'You're probably right. But even if they would, I'm still willing to keep your secret. I just want one thing.'
A wave of one hand to get on with it was his only response.
'What do I call you specifically? I can't just call you both Professor Quirrell. That would get confusing right quick.'
The wizard snorted quietly before turning around and striding back towards the castle. "Good luck with your divination practice, although I would recommend you be more discreet should you discover any other secrets."
Crossing her arms, Hazel turned her head to look out over the lake. That… had not gone as poorly as her meeting with Professor Snape? Not that that was a high bar to clear. A long sigh escaped her and tears prickled at the corners of her eyes. Even more important than another mind-reader, she had completely on accident found someone else who knew what it was like not to need a wand, someone like her and her mother, and once again she blew it!
…Was it her who was the problem? Would she drive off the druids if and when she ever met them?
"Oh, and Hazel?" She whipped her head around to find Not-Professor-Quirrell standing still only a short distance from where he had stood while they spoke, no longer focused on the castle but instead looking at her over his shoulder. He gave her a quick wink, one she almost missed, before he started walking away from her again. "You can call me Marvolo."
My streak of having the local Harry-analogue not be interested in Quidditch continues! Look, I'm just not a big sports person, okay? And that's definitely the most important event of this whole chapter, without question.
Silently Watches out.
