Despite her outward confidence that Harry would absolutely demolish the tournament, Hermione found herself a bundle of stress on the inside. Harry was fourteen, competing against three fully-grown wizards three years older than him. Lockhart's horrifying stories of tournaments past ran endlessly through her head, Hermione trying to recall all his stories to analyze how best to go about facing various types of threats.

It didn't help that the prophecy her coven had heard over the summer kept echoing through her head.

But one will be lost before the game is done…

By the time it was finally the night of the new moon, Hermione was more than ready for a distraction. After dinner, she gathered her Shadows on the side of the lake, where they met Viktor and a small crew from Durmstrang, wands illuminated.

"We are going to a place called Marisco castle, on Lundy," she said, pointing to the small island on a map. "You can't Apparate from inside of Hogwarts, though. You all will need to head that way to the Hogwarts Gates, toward Hogsmeade village. Once you're off the grounds, you'll be able to Apparate."

Viktor looked at Hermione curiously. "You not coming with us?"

"None of us are of age," Hermione said wryly, rolling up the map to give Viktor. "We can't safely Apparate."

"Then how you get there?" one Durmstrang boy asked, visibly puzzled.

Luna winked at him, grinning. "It's a secret."

"We'll meet you there," Hermione said with a nod. "Careful of the Forbidden Forest as you walk across the grounds – don't go too far inside in search of a short cut."

After the Durmstrang students set off for the gate, Hermione turned to the assembled Shadows, looking them over. "Ready?"

There was a chorus of "ready" back, and they all jumped the ley line.


Lundy in the dark was dark. With so little on the island at all, there was no ambient light from civilization, and the moon was entirely black, leaving them only with the faint light of the stars. The Blackwell students all knew Lumos now, though, and they sent floating globes of light out from their staffs to illuminate the wilderness of the island as they led their visitors toward their hidden groves.

"Iron Man is already down there," Taco said, leading them with the light of her bright orange staff. "He'll probably want to talk to you all. He's avoided Pansy, but with this many of you, I'm sure he'll want to talk to somebody else with a wand."

"It's not like we're a different species," Blaise quipped, amused. "Wand wielders and staff casters are the same people, you realize. We just pick up a pencil instead of a pen."

Taco seemed to consider this for a moment, before she dismissed it.

"Nah," she said. "Wands can break too easy. I'll keep my staff."

They walked through a ripple in the air, and suddenly the empty scrubland was full of trees, everyone exclaiming aloud as they passed through.

"That is seriously impressive," Susan said approvingly. "Do you maintain that barrier?"

"I think?" Taco guessed. "You'd have to ask Variol."

Taco led them down a hill and through the trees into the midst of a druid grove – there was a large circle cleared out, with a ring of full-grown trees of different sorts around it, more of the same type of tree growing behind each one. Glowing orbs of light floated around the space, illuminating it in a phantom moonlight. There was a middle-age man sitting on a rock there in the middle, with children sitting cross-legged before him, a few of them with staffs laid across their laps. As their group approached, he stood up.

"Hello," he said, extending his hand. "Iron Man. Head of Blackwell."

"Hello," Hermione said, amused. She took his hand, shaking it formally. "I'm Hermione Granger, head of… this delegation, I suppose." She grinned. "Is your name really 'iron man'?"

"It didn't used to be," the man admitted, smiling. "But part of initiation into Blackwell is you give up your old name and take a new one. My old name… we don't use it anymore."

"Are you allowed to tell us what it was?" Draco asked curiously. "They said you have a wand."

"It doesn't matter," Iron Man dismissed, and that was that.

The Durmstrang students seemed unsettled to realize they were expected to sit down on the ground, but they dutifully followed the Hogwarts students' example. Hermione remained standing to make an introduction.

"Hello," she said, bowing to them all. "I just wanted to thank you all so much for agreeing to teach us how to make staffs—"

"Staves," corrected Iron Man.

"—staves, then," Hermione went on. "We are interested in understanding more of the nature behind magic, and of anyone, you all seem to keep to the ancient Druid traditions the most."

The Blackwell students looked pleased and flattered by this, exchanging grins.

"You're welcome," Iron Man said, nodding to her in dismissal, and Hermione went to sit down. "It's more than fair for us, in exchange for all the books and supplies you brought us." He looked up at them all. "A lot of you have already heard this ancient knowledge, but pay attention anyway – someday it will be your turn to tell the tale."

And to Hermione's surprise, he began to tell them a story, weaving aloud a legend:

.

One day, Merlin went for a walk in the woods to contemplate the nature of magic, but a spy saw him go, quickly telling his enemies that Merlin was without protection and alone.

Merlin had been walking in the wood only for a short while before a giant boar leapt out at him, breathing fire and charging at him with his horrible tusks. The heat of the boar's fire frightened Merlin and made him sweat, so Merlin quickly changed into a sparrow and flew to the top of a nearby tree to escape the evil boar, knowing a boar of such power was no ordinary creature and must have been sent by his enemies to kill him.

A terrible hawk with sharp claws of iron then screeched and dived through the air to try and catch Merlin, the wind in its wings, and Merlin quickly turned into a squirrel, scurrying to safely hide inside of the tree, though the hawk's claws did manage to scratch him before he could escape, matting his fur with blood. Never had Merlin seen so furious a hawk with talons of iron before, and he knew his enemies must be nearby.

Enraged, his enemy then emerged from his hiding place and set fire to the tree, satisfied that even Merlin could not escape fire, and he left him trapped in the tree to die. But his enemies did not know that Merlin knew the ways of the Old Druids, and so, Merlin wept for himself and the tree as he sang rain and wind into the woods, and the fire was put out.

Once the fire was out, Merlin came down from the branches of the tree and bowed to the tree, thanking it for its protection. He ran his hands along the tree, blessing it with protective magic to keep it safe, and the tree dropped a branch at his feet as a gift.

Having shared his blood, sweat, and tears with the tree, Merlin realized the tree had given him a staff of Ogham wood that would be able to channel the magic of the earth. He thanked the tree again took the staff home with him, where he chipped off the bark, rubbed it with linseed oil, and carved holy Druidic runes into it to carry his magical power.

Once he was done, Merlin looked over his staff, but he felt it was not finished.

"I have a mighty staff with which to channel magic," he said, "but nothing to help control where I want the magic to go."

Unsure how to resolve his problem, Merlin went to the mighty Stonehenge on the summer solstice, where he meditated for three full days and three full nights. When he awoke from his trance, he found a strange ball of stone at his feet, one that had not been there before. Knowing not what it was, Merlin thanked the henge nonetheless and affixed the stone atop his staff, before planting the staff into the earth to channel magic.

Upon channeling the magic of the earth through his staff for the first time, something amazing happened: the stone he had placed at the top suddenly changed before his eyes and shone with mystic blue light, the stone having metamorphosized into a brilliant blue sapphire, and Merlin knew his staff was complete.

.

"And so too do we now," Iron Man said, looking around the group. "When we find an Ogham wood tree we feel resonates with our magic, we offer our blood, sweat, and tears to the tree, so it might gift us a branch. We take our gifts and treat them well, carving them with care and rubbing them with linseed oil so they might survive. And when it is time, our staves take a stone, just as we take a stone as our name. And when mage and staff unite in magical power for the first time, a gem of power will emerge and alight to guide us on our journeys in magic, wherever that might take us."

As he finished, the Blackwell students began clapping, the Hogwarts students and Durmstrang group quickly joining in. The Blackwell students began standing and stretching, before they started moving about the grove. Hermione stood up as well, watching as the Blackwell children moved confidently in the dark despite the uneven landscape. The Durmstrang and Hogwarts students followed, watching and asking them questions as the Blackwell students began approaching different trees, leaning their hands on them.

"I presume the finer details of the way to make a staff are written down somewhere?" Hermione asked Iron Man. "What runes to write, how to make linseed oil…"

Iron Man's smile was wry, even in the darkness. "You'd be surprised. The entire thing is rather imprecise. It takes a long time and a lot of meditation – trying to feel what rune your magic wants you to place next, one after the next."

That did surprise Hermione. "There's no systematic way of it?"

"There might be," Iron Man said. "One of the books you brought – it has Runes knowledge. Some of the older students have begun studying it, trying to decipher what the runes strands they've carved onto their own staves mean. Maybe they'll discover what systems we've fallen into."

Some of the Blackwell kids were climbing trees in the darkness, ignoring the shouts of alarm from the Durmstrang students. Hermione shot Iron Man a questioning glance.

"A good way to tell if you resonate with a tree is to sleep in it," Iron Man said, shrugging. "If the tree and your magic get along, you'll wake up cradled in its branches. If they don't, you'll wake up on the ground."

Hermione's jaw dropped. "You just fall?"

"They know not to sleep in the highest branches," Iron Man said, amused. "They're just showing off for our visitors."

Luna wandered over to look at Iron Man, her hair glowing oddly in the magical light in the clearing.

"They say you're trapped here," she said quietly, looking up at him.

Iron Man's face was pained. "I am."

"How?" she asked.

Iron Man hesitated.

"That is a very personal story, and a very painful one," he said finally. "The short version of it is that I made a bet with a Faerie, and because of how things played out, this is the end result."

"For you to be trapped?" Hermione echoed. "I mean, surely there's some way to get you off this island, even if not by ley line or boat. We could get a helicopter, even—"

Iron Man smiled. It was a small, sad smile.

"Here," he said, holding out his hand. "Look at my magic, my core. And tell me how that could possibly be done."

It took Hermione only a moment to settle into her own magic before sending it out to look at his. To her astonishment, she could immediately sense the issue he had.

The old man's magical core wasn't just a container for his magic – it was plated, like armor, surrounded by the essence of metal. There was a small pathway for magic to escape out of it, and when Hermione peered inside, she could sense that his magical core was also metal, a gleaming, spinning sphere.

Startled, she drew back, her eyes flickering open, and Iron Man gave her a wry smile.

"I can't leave this island," he said again gently. "My magic's been magnetically tuned to the island itself. If I left, my magic would rip itself free to stay here – and I don't think I would survive."