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Act III - Birth Of The Demon
Chapter 27: Opening Salvo
"Interesting," said Albus Dumbledore. "The patterns are absolutely interesting. In all my years of dealing with my fair share of experience with magic, this is a conundrum I had to come across."
Harry and the Headmaster were standing in the middle of the war-struck Defence classroom. After listening to Sue Li and Hermione recount their experiences about reading about the diabolical spell suffix from a book that Dumbledore claimed was authored by the Dark Lord Ekrizdis to create dark witches and wizards, Harry had followed Dumbledore to his office, where the two had studied his memory of the event, only to return to the scene itself for further investigation.
"Appare Vestigium."
Motes of golden particles erupted out of Dumbledore's wand and encompassed the entire classroom floor. Harry watched in amazement as ethereal constructs of Daphne and Sue Li appeared out of thin air, crafted out of those golden motes of light, followed by the ephemeral shades of the other students as well as himself, filled the entire room. It was like watching a pensieve memory play out, only the entire thing was stuck, as if within a large-scale immobilising hex. Dumbledore twisted his wrist slightly, and the characters burst to life, as if someone hit the play button after pausing a film.
Daphne's shade amplified her spell, followed by that clever duplication hex on the rats that were already rendered hostile through the Oppugno spell. Sue Li's expression changed from fear to horror to absolute hysteria as she levelled her wand and cast that diabolical spell, conjuring those cursed flames into existence, manifesting in the shape of a demon boar.
"And that's enough," said Dumbledore with another flick, and the image paused. Even with all the knowledge he now had at his fingertips, Harry knew that something so brazenly intricate as this was just so far beyond his ability to cast that it was almost ridiculous.
"What did that do? It feels like watching a pensieve memory."
"Appare Vestigium," said Dumbledore. "This spell tracks the magical residue present at the site of impact, and uses Abstract magic to conjure a temporal reconstruction of the events that left the residue behind."
"Useful," said Harry wistfully.
Dumbledore chuckled. "Quite. But alas, the MACUSA redacted the use of this spell on grounds that it could be used to delete evidence from a crime scene."
He flicked his wand towards the shades of the students, and all of them vanished into thin air, followed by Daphne, leaving behind the frozen shades of the demonic bear, with Sue Li and Harry's own spectral form standing in defiance against it.
"Observe the density of the magic particles within this form. Compare it to your own spectral form. What do you think?"
Harry took a step forward and inspected them both. "It's⦠denser. More solid." He glanced at Dumbledore. "More magic?"
The Headmaster's eyes twinkled madly. "Precisely. The more dense the form, the greater the magic that dwells within."
"So this boar had more magic in it than I do," said Harry, frowning. Something didn't add up. "How did Li cast it then?"
Harry knew that he boasted more than average raw magical power. Even Sirius, whose skill with a wand was deadly, tired way faster than he did. Sue Li was no different.
The logic was simple. You couldn't cast something that held more magic within itself than you did inside your own body.
"An interesting conundrum," said Dumbledore, with the air of someone explaining something to a student and not someone inspecting an anomalous magical accident. "Can you think of a way that explains it?"
"Because it's Abstract magic," said Harry. "Possibly reaching through the Anima into the real world."
Unlike standard magic that was powered by the caster, Abstract magic had its source deep into the Anima, or so the theory claimed. A power that originated from somewhere else, seeping into the real world through channels hitherto unknown and uncharted.
"But even so, Abstract magic comes with its own esoteric requirements. Mindsets. You can't just memorise a piece of Abstract magic and cast it like a tickling hex, Professor."
"Let's find out. Shall we?" said Dumbledore. ""
He raised his left hand, and tapped the palm with his wand, before pulling the wand further away. The image of the demonic bear began to expand, and with it, did Sue's image as well. To his surprise, Harry noticed a strange inky black tendril that was coiled around Sue Li's form, as if gripping her heart.
"What's that?"
"That," said Dumbledore, "is the reason behind this mess. Here, take a look."
Harry took another step closer. The tendril, if it could even be called that, had no origin, and no end. It almost appeared out of nowhere and vanished into nowhere, entwining around Sue Li's heart, before slithering towards her wand hand before vanishing. Magic that was this dark could only be one thing.
"I see. It's the curse acting out."
Dumbledore's eyes twinkled. "It seems giving you the job was the right idea. The curse has already begun to try to affect its target."
Dumbledore touched the black tendril with his wand, and murmured. "Avenseguim."
Instantly, the tendril burst to life, and began to float away, a feather in the breeze. Swiping his left hand absently, Dumbledore vanished the remains of the temporal construct, and began following the tendril, and Harry followed suit. The best Harry could determine was that it was a different kind of tracking charm that led the object to its origin, not unlike the sympathetic magic he had explored in the Lair.
Contagion, the discipline was called. A thaumaturgy that relied on the interconnectedness of things, and allowed the caster track something or someone with an object that was materially, spiritually, emotionally or physically connected to them. The book even theorised that dementors used Contagion to seek out fugitives by connecting the happy memories they had fed from them, with the fugitives themselves.
Crazy shit, yes, but not even on the top-ten list of creepy things he had found inside the Lair.
The headmaster and the defence professor walked all the way to the stairs that took them to the seventh floor, before fading away. It was a place Harry frequented often, given that the Headmaster's office was on this floor. He quickly conjured a Patronus and sent for Bill and Caroline to get there quickly, and after some thought, sent another one to Fleur telling her the same.
"Do you think this might be it, Professor?" asked Harry.
"I can't say I expected this, my boy," said the Headmaster. "A curse this diabolical, this close to my own office, and yet beyond my ability to sense? It's exciting and troubling at the same time. Quite troubling indeed."
"The seventh floor," said Harry. "Do you think that Voldemort β"
"Might have implanted such a terrible curse right beneath my own nose?" finished Dumbledore. "I dare say he would be arrogant to try something like this, out of spite if nothing else. If only I could've divined his reason for approaching that night."
Harry knew why. It was plain and simple. Voldemort wanted the post of the Defence professor, but there was no way Harry could reveal that without having to reveal how he knew it.
But if he didn't thenβ¦.
Harry closed his eyes and exhaled.
"Something on your mind, my boy?"
He didn't meet the man's eyes. Death-empowered Occlumency or not, he wasn't sure he could look the man in the eye and lie at his face.
"Professor, if I were to tell you something about⦠well, about Hogwarts, would you accept it without asking me how I know it?"
Dumbledore looked at him with a curious expression that was a mix of surprise, confusion, and concern in equal measures. "You mean like how you were able to cast the ice-variant of the Diabolica spell, I presume?"
Harry swallowed.
The man eyed him, before finally saying. "If offered in good faith, I suppose, yes."
Harry took a deep breath. "What do you know about the Hidden Vaults of Hogwarts?"
By the time Fleur Delacour, Bill Weasley and Caroline Rakepick had shown up, Harry had all but winded up his short explanation about what he knew about the Hidden vaults of Hogwarts, their names, and what the Vaults were supposed to contain. If Dumbledore suspected that the Chamber of Secrets was one of those Vaults, his expression did not show it. As promised, he did not pry into Harry's secrets or his source of information, and instead took it at face value. It probably helped that Harry's information matched with the majority of what the Headmaster himself knew about the Vaults, which in all honesty, was unsurprisingly little.
"I'll say, Harry, you do move fast," said Bill. "Not even a month at the job, and already you've got a clue."
"Unlike some," said Fleur, with just a touch of snideness in her voice.
Caroline just rolled her eyes.
The two curse-breakers instantly began going through their litany of spells, half of which were in languages that Harry didn't recognize. Caroline was a polyglot that spoke over a dozen languages and one of the rare few out there that spoke Gobbledegook. Sirius had told him that the goblins were fiercely secretive about their native tongue, so Harry wondered exactly what the woman had over the goblins to allow her to learn their language. He took the opportunity to question the Headmaster about the origins of the Appare Vestigium spell, and was surprised to find out that its creator Eulalie Hicks, was a contemporary of Newt Scamander, and member of Dumbledore's original army against Grindelwald.
"So, Madam Hicks was part of the Order?" He asked, knowing that Dumbledore had already placed themselves under a privacy ward.
"Not quite, Harry. The Order was actually an intel-gathering organisation that me and Alastor had set up back in the late sixties to keep a tap on the cold war between the extremists and the liberal factions. The Order was never meant to be a military organisation, just a way to help victims, and gain vital know-how."
"But Sirius β"
"Sirius and your dad joined the Order in '77, Harry, shortly after graduating. Your father, his friends, your mother, and a couple more of her classmates joined in, because they could not trust the Ministry to act in time. It was actually the combined efforts of Sirius, who was by then, a recognized and feared Hit-wizard by the end of '79, and Alastor that the Order took to war directly."
And yet, Harry thought spitefully, no one lifted a finger to help the man, or question why someone that militarised them to fight against Voldemort would ever want to be a Death Eater. He was almost about to raise his concerns when Caroline cursed out loudly.
"Excusez-moi," said Fleur. "Something zong?"
"Everything," said Caroline, a dark scowl forming over her features. "We expected there might be a hidden passageway somewhere on this corridor where the curse's source has been kept. We've run scans before over every single floor, and checked through every room, passage and broom closet we could find. Even this floor."
"So?" demanded Fleur. "The curse's signature led us 'ere β"
"Yes, but that's the problem," said Caroline. "It's true, the curse arises out of this floor, and yes, we've got proof of that now. But that's all we can say."
Harry noticed the statue of Barnabas the Barmy. He summoned the Map out of his bottomless mokeskin pouch, but not even the Map could help him there.
There was simply nothing there on that floor except Dumbledore's office.
"Perhaps a secret room?" He offered. The Marauder's Map didn't display the Chamber of Secrets either. If it was a Vault, then it was probably unconnected to the Hogwarts wards, and thus, out of the Map's ability to trace it.
"Harry," asked Dumbledore carefully. "Are you perhaps insinuating that β"
"One of the Vaults is on this floor, yes," said Harry, feeling impatient and somewhat grumpy. To come this close only for the trail to go damp felt disappointing. He looked at Bill and Caroline. "What can you say about the source? Any way we can try to identify the origin again?"
The two curse-breakers looked at each other. Finally, Bill spoke. "We, err⦠we might have a way. But for that, we'll need a couple of students."
"William," said Dumbledore softly. "You know I cannot allow students to come to harm for this mission."
"Nothing will happen to the students, professor," said Bill. "This is just an experiment."
After careful deliberation, he had chosen to bring in Ron, Hermione, Tracey and Susan for the experiment. Originally, his idea was to summon just Ron and Hermione, but Bill wanted him to expand the student variety as much as possible, and that included different houses. Just Hermione would've been enough to represent Gryffindor, but he decided that Ron would be a good stabilising factor against Hermione's dangerous curiosity.
And finally, it was time for the experiment.
"Erm, Harry, can you perhaps come and stand here a bit?"
Blinking, Harry walked over to the place right next to the statue of Barnabas the Barmy. "Right here?"
"Yes," said Bill, stepping back, and conjuring a chair for Harry to sit on. Dumbledore helped him by conjuring more for everyone else, while Bill and Caroline stood there, standing.
"I'm going to cast some diagnostic spells on the students," said Bill, before turning to Fleur. "Can you render an exact analysis ofβ"
"I'll get started immediately," said Fleur, conjuring a notebook, and summoning her analysis tools from her own office. Dumbledore helpfully conjured a table and chair for her to sit and work on.
"Erm," said Ron, ignoring the panicked look that Hermione sent him. "Professor Dumbledore, what's going on?"
"I'll explain," said Bill. "Your Defence Professor here is about to teach you something that will help you fight against Dark Magic. Your job is to try to learn it as best as you can."
"Err, but β"
"Ron," snapped Hermione. "Just do as you're told."
Susan and Tracey looked at each other and rolled their eyes.
Harry felt like a fool, standing there in the middle of nowhere, about to teach his impromptu class. Deciding that he would be going nowhere until he was teaching, he decided to go ahead with it. Originally, he thought about teaching them the Patronus charm, but he doubted he'd be able to just teach it without the proper props. He doubted any of them would be able to really pick this up, but he supposed that the more impressive the defensive magic, the more it would attract the curse's ire.
"Okay," he said, quickly falling into his teacher-persona. "I'm going to teach you a protective enchantment today. It isn't something anyone expects you to learn as a fifth-year. In fact, I was planning to teach this to seventh-years sometime before Christmas, but I guess you lot are just luckier."
Ron rolled his eyes.
Harry did his best to ignore the fact that Albus Dumbledore was sitting right next to Tracey Davis, giving him a most attentive look.
"Salvio Hexia," he intoned, the tip of his wand glowing an iridescent red as he wrote the incantation in the air using the Flagrate spell. "It's a protective enchantment that creates a boundary around you, and prevents anything powered by Dark magic from crossing the boundary. And that includes dark creatures such as vampires, werewolves, or dementors."
"Dementors?" asked Susan. "I didn't know that there were enchantments that could hold dementors back."
Harry laughed. "If it wasn't, why do you think the dementors never left Azkaban? Or why did they never enter the Hogwarts grounds?"
He tried his best not to think of the horde of dementors that had caught him in the middle of that Quidditch game with Hufflepuff. Salvio Hexia was a powerful enchantment, but it couldn't do anything if Harry himself was out of its boundaries.
"I didn't know you could cast that, 'Arry," said Fleur. "Even I can't cast it properly."
Harry gave her a small smile. "No worries. It's actually one of the more difficult enchantments out there. If you want, I can help you learn it later."
Fleur smiled like a cherub.
"Now, about this enchantment. There are some magical scholars that describe this spell as a counterpart to the Patronus charm. They say that Salvio Hexia and the Patronus Charm are much like holly and ebony wand woods. Can anyone say the difference between those two woods?"
Harry didn't expect anyone to know the answer. Wandlore was, after all, a tricky subject that very few ended up pursuing. Much like curse-breaking, Wandcrafting was an art that only the most magically sensitive could opt for. So he was truly surprised when Tracey raised her hand.
"Ebony and Holly are both woods that create wands best suited for defence against the Dark Arts, and heavily favoured by those that eventually become aurors and hit-wizards," said the Slytherin girl, making everyone look at her in surprise. "But while Holly denotes protection by sacrifice, ebony denotes protection by power."
Harry blinked owlishly. "That's, err⦠impressive. Take five points for Slytherin."
Tracey beamed and sat down.
"Yes, as Miss Davis put it, Ebony denotes protection by power, while Holly denotes protection by sacrifice. Keep in mind, while both of them provide protection, their core nature are exact opposites. The owner of a ebony wand would likely be a person making a last stand to protect those he loves, while the owner of a holly wand would likely be the last stand himself, offering to buy time while the others escape."
"By sacrificing themselves," concluded Hermione. "Kind of like your mother did."
Harry smiled. "Yes. I suppose it's not surprising that she had a holly wand."
Harry knew he was being too simplistic, but it got the point across.
"Salvio Hexia is much like that," he went on. "When we cover the Patronus charm later, you will find out that the Patronus isn't just a protector, it's a weapon against the Dark. Your weapon, crafted out of your ability to stand against the Dark and fill it with the light of your hopes. Compared to that, Salvio Hexia is but a plea. A request, a prayer for someone, anyone, even oneself, to give their everything, to stand against the darkness and say 'No'. It's heightened by your desperation, by an earnest need to save what you love, even if doing so might mean brushing against that darkness yourself. You do not cast Salvio Hexia to fight. You become Salvio Hexia, you empower it with your willingness to fight, your strength to resist, your defiance to stand tall amongst overwhelming odds. That power, that courage, that defiance becomes your magic and forms the barrier. To know that Death is at the door, and yet to hear the sound of your beating heart and know that you are, and that you must stay alive, that you must keep your loved ones safe. To have the courage to look at Death in the face and say, 'Not today.'"
He didn't notice it then, but every single person was listening to him with undivided attention.
Even Albus Dumbledore.
Harry closed his eyes., and took a deep breath. He might have been standing there in front of everyone, but to himself, he was away, cocooned in a protection of his own imagination, isolated from everything else. A utopia that nothing, not even Death could penetrate.
"Close your eyes. Project yourself inward. Think of what you want. Who you wish to protect. Who or what it is you want to protect them from. Sometimes you'll have all the answers, sometimes you won't. But it doesn't matter. Just close your eyes. Think of your loved ones. Think of your love for them forming a shield around them. A cry, a prayer, a hope for salvation. And thenβ¦" his words faded to almost a whisper. "Give that protection form."
"Salvio Hexia," he whispered, and instantly, a dome of the brightest white erupted out of his wand, spreading outward in a spideresque fashion. Every single one of them watched as a dome of pure energy manifested into existence, not around Harry himself, but around Fleur, who was looking at him with eyes that were glistening with tears.
Harry opened his eyes, and matched his gaze with Fleur. A deep primal understanding was exchanged between his green orbs and her hazel ones.
"Of course," said the irate voice of Hermione Granger. "You'd always choose her, wouldn't you? Her and the Slytherin princess. You don't care about your friends that stayed with you through thick and thin at all, don't you? I was right. You really have changed."
Harry blinked. "Hermione, I cast the spell around Fleur to make a point."
"Isn't everything you do now to make a point? To impress her and Greengrass? Really, there are better ways than to be a Defence professor and try teaching students if all you want is to impress her. Really, it's not like you're not already sleeping β"
"Hermione," snapped Ron. "what are you saying?"
"What am I saying?" Hermione retorted. "And what about what he β"
"Petrificus totalus!" said Caroline.
Hermione went ramrod stiff, and would've fallen down if not for Ron quickly holding her. He looked at the curse-breaker with glaring eyes, while Bill raised both hands in surrender, trying to pacify his younger brother down.
"Fleur," said Bill. "I'll cast the diagnostic spell on Miss Granger. Do you have the rendering complete?"
"Oui."
Harry went from gaping at Hermione to gaping at Bill. "Wait, do you think β"
"Let's find out," said Bill, and began casting spells non-stop on Hermione that splashed all over her frozen form in a multitude of colours. He waited with baited breath as Fleur drew a new rendition of Hermione's magical constitution, and then both Bill and Caroline huddled around her to verify her conclusions.
"What is it?" asked Harry.
"Exactly what we thought, Harry," said Bill sombrely. "The curse is acting out, and quite aggressively. It took root in Hermione's thoughts, and amplified the negative thoughts festering within her, making her lash out. I apologise for petrifying her like that, but there was a chance she might'veβ¦"
Harry nodded his head. "I understand."
The students were quickly asked to leave, leaving Harry, Fleur and Dumbledore remaining behind as the two curse-breakers kept casting diagnosis charms that Harry couldn't make heads or tails of. Finally after several excruciating minutes, both curse-breakers turned to them with a disgruntled expression.
"Okay," said Bill. "We've good news and bad news."
He met with Harry's expectant gaze, and went on. "Good news is that we've identified the location of the curse."
He pointed at the empty sheet of wall behind the statue of Barnabas the Barmy.
"This is the place that was showing maximum energy readings. We expect that the origin of the curse was lying somewhere behind this wall."
"Was?" Dumbledore caught on.
Bill and Caroline exchanged worried looks. "Yeah, that's the bad part. Turns out we were looking for the wrong thing, Professor. We were focussing on where the Origin of the curse lay. Instead, we should've been focusing on when."
"William, you cannot possibly mean β"
"Yes, Professor," said Bill. "The curse isn't operating in three dimensions. It's operating on four."
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