Chapter 50 - Forbidden knowledge
"Alright, here's the issue," Potter began, as she settled down in the abandoned classroom that Daphne had suggested they'd meet in this evening. The girl took a breath, and then began to talk.
"When I was taken to the chamber, someone cast a Memory Charm on me."
A Memory Charm? And why would she come to Daphne with that?
"That someone most likely being Lockhart."
Daphne raised an eyebrow at this bit of information. It did fit with her impression of him, but absolutely not with any logical reasoning resulting from any public knowledge about him.
"The problem is that when Snape found it, he said he couldn't remove it because there was something dangerous buried underneath."
Perhaps some kind of curse? This was turning out very promising indeed. But should she risk a peek again?
"Something dangerous?" Daphne echoed, probing for further information.
"He couldn't say, just that he felt it was 'extremely unwise' to try and lift the Memory Charm without me learning Occlumency first."
Daphne tilted her head to the side. "Well, he would be right about that. Occlumency is the best way to fend of any kind of mental attack, whether a curse or otherwise."
She still wasn't sure where Potter wanted to take this. If this was about her learning Occlumency... That would be an issue. She wished she could just take a glimpse into her thoughts, but two things held her off. First, there was the fact that the girl somehow seemed to have developed some kind of passive Legilimency that had somehow managed to pierce her defenses, but also didn't have any control whatsoever. It had just plainly echoed her surface thoughts the way she did with the girl, which had caused a painful resonance that she had absolutely no intention of experiencing again.
And then there was whatever had happened when she had tried to enter her mind proper. Something... or someone... had interfered. But the more she had seen after the fact, the surer she had grown that this wasn't the doing of Potter, at least, nothing she had done consciously. Which made it all the more worrying.
But that didn't mean that the girl wasn't trying to read her mind right now, and she knew that she could somehow at least get to the surface. Daphne wasn't really feeling anything, but she couldn't be sure either. That's why she'd mostly gone along with it for now. As much as she had faith in her occlumency to keep the important stuff buried, she didn't trust herself to try to come up with anything more than basic plots while someone could still be... listening.
The girl nodded, and continued. "Well, he did offer me Occlumency lessons starting next year. But I can't wait until then. So I went and got a book on the Mind Arts. I think I have gotten something working, but I have no idea if that would work for what is needed if I lift the charm."
Daphne nodded.
"Also, I've tried to put together what happened, I'm still not quite sure, but... I think I have a good idea of what the dangerous thing buried underneath the Memory Charm might be."
Her eyebrows rose in curiosity. "Oh? And what's that?"
Potter hesitated for a moment, and gave her a look. Finally, she replied in barely a whisper. "The Dark Lord's name."
The... Dark. Lord's. Name.
Daphne didn't know what she had been expecting, but it certainly hadn't been that. She really wished she could read her mind right now. She was half-way tempted to try it anyway and damn the consequences.
"What... makes you think that?"
The name of legend. A name who was cursed. It was a curse unlike any other. A piece of mind magic par none. A curse so powerful that it affected anyone even thinking the name. It spread from person to person, when someone learns the name, takes deep root, and never lets go. At least, that's how she imagined it.
Something like this... This was exactly the kind of magic she needed to research. It could be just what she needed. If she could understand that curse, figure out what made it tick... Maybe even attempt to take it apart... Then perhaps... perhaps—
"I... I think that... I may have been the heir. At least, in a way..."
What?
Daphne took a second to gather her thoughts again. After those words she had said to her, and when she had gotten taken to the chamber right after, Daphne had dismissed the idea again. But—
"Apparently, someone was either impersonating me, or maybe... controlling me, while I was inside this room... And... I also was in there... every time an attack has occurred, ever since Christmas."
A room? What in Merlin's name was she—
"And well, the heir seemed to follow the same... philosophy... as the Dark Lord, at least in the way they attacked Muggleborns at the start, and given the fact that You-Know-Who claimed to have been the last Heir to Slytherin, well..."
Well, that was one leap in logic and a half.
"You're saying that the Dark Lord was somehow possessing you... and that you somehow learned his name then?"
Potter didn't reply, and was just fumbling with her hands for a bit.
"Not You-Know-Who himself. I'm pretty sure it was that ghost, Myrtle. Maybe she was working for him, or in some other way associated with him. She did seem to know a lot about all sorts of magic, including the illegal stuff."
Daphne pondered this for a second. "But then what makes you think that it is his name at all? If you don't even know if this ghost... was associated with him?"
"Snape... he said that whatever knowledge is buried underneath the charm is something that's incredibly dangerous by itself, to the point where it appears my own mind deems it worth to keep the alteration, in order to protect itself. And there's only one piece of knowledge that I know of, that would act like that."
Daphne's eyes lit up, but she tried to keep her expression calm. Even if they hadn't made a deal, this was an opportunity she could not pass up. She could practically taste the knowledge that awaited her. But she shoved that thought far down. She just hoped that her desire was still obscured enough that the girl wouldn't be able to read it from the front of her mind.
"Alright then. Would you permit me to enter your mind and assess the situation for myself?" Daphne asked, trying to sound as clinical as possible.
Of course, there was still the question of the girl's strange defense, or whatever it was she had encountered the last time. But no matter it's actual nature, most of any mental defense would be rendered more or less ineffective if she managed to get verbal agreement beforehand. Magic would see to that.
Potter was staring back at her hesitantly, seemingly mulling over her options. Finally, she nodded. "Yes, you can enter to analyze the memory charm, and anything it may be hiding."
Daphne raised an eyebrow. Well, so much for that. That had been very deliberately worded. The girl had apparently at least read up on Mind Magic before coming to her. Well, luckily, the thing she was interested in was firmly covered by that statement.
A few more seconds of silence, until Potter started to squirm a bit. "So... uhm... do I... need to do anything?"
In reply Daphne shot her what she hoped was a reassuring look. She couldn't have the girl panic and reconsider before she even got to take a glimpse. "Just hold still, and try not to look away."
And with that, Daphne zeroed in on her eyes, where she felt that foreboding feeling once again, and hesitantly reached out, and within. She just hoped that her agreement would be enough to at least ward off whatever it was that had interfered last time. The pupils widened; grew far beyond where they should, as she felt like a small stone plunging into a well of knowledge.
And like that, she was in. Free from physical constraints; free to wander Potter's mind. She was treading dangerous ground. Leaving her body like this would loosen her grip on her Occlumency. All she could fall back on was her raw talent in the Mind Arts. At least, the girl was sitting right across from her, so the effect was quite limited by the short distance.
The feeling was still there, just lingering in the background, but now that she experienced it again, it was distinctly different from whatever it was that had overwhelmed her last time. That had almost felt like a different person. Something which seemed to be absent so far. But she wouldn't let her guard down that easily.
This time, it was... different. Last time, her mind had been a completely unorganized mess. Just memories floating about, like a tree filled with ripe fruit, ready for her to pick. But this was very different. It was still very much a mess. Chaos didn't even begin to describe it. Somehow, all the parts of her mind seemed to have gained both a form and a life of their own. Instead of loosely floating memories, there were entire buildings, landscapes and people, all torn from random memories and jammed into a dizzying chimera of a mindscape. She was standing in front of a building that defied explanation. At its center stood a clock tower, almost like that of a church, yet the stone and architecture were more similar to that of Hogwarts. The entrance looked distinctly like the doors to their dorm rooms, yet next to it was a window that looked more like it was from a muggle suburban home.
What in Morgana's name had happened here?
This was definitely... some form of Occlumency. But it was unlike anything she had ever encountered. Instead of being meticulously crafted with a specific purpose, from a few select memories that would best serve that purpose, it was more like it had just been forced into existence through a random set of memories from all over her mind.
It was almost as if she somehow managed to direct magic into her own mind—which was the foundation needed to create a magical mindscape—without performing the required mental focusing exercises needed to draw magic into your mind in the first place.
Which was, of course, impossible. But Potter had seemingly yet to look up the meaning of that word.
What she was looking at was almost as if she had somehow—without bringing order to her mind in any way beforehand—just achieved the final stage of Occlumency, which had somehow forced all of her completely unorganized thoughts into solid form in one go.
Daphne had no idea what implications that might have for the girl's mind, and she also didn't particularly care. But the main takeaway from this revelation suddenly hit her, which caused a feeling of excitement. With this... no matter how unorganized... just the fact that it was material in the first place... she could perhaps actually manage to isolate the curse like that. She had planned to take a peek anyway, of course, but this way, she would even be able to maybe keep the girl sane enough to hold up her end of the deal. For all that was worth.
Wandering the mindscape of the impossible girl, Daphne let her thoughts drift, as she peered into different rooms through the windows. There was a room made entirely with old wooden planks as walls, which harbored a prism at its center, but was otherwise empty. Another room painted in red and gold was covered in pictures of what looked like the Boy-who-lived, except one wall was entirely missing. Instead, it opened into a vast night sky, with a telescope sitting underneath. She kind of wanted to take a peek, but all the doors appeared to be locked. This was yet another strangeness of this place. She was sure she could break down the doors if she tried, but there was still both whatever had attacked her the last time to consider, as well as the ominous feeling that she kept sensing from...
The moon? The moon which was... entirely green. That was... she had no idea. But the feeling she had been sensing from the girl whenever she had considered even entering her mind, was definitely coming from that direction.
Why would the moon... No. There was no way the girl was actually a werewolf or something, right? Daphne rolled back her memory catalog of when she had met the girl, and frowned. No. She had definitely seen her on one... no two nights of the full moon at some point. So not that then.
The longer she stared at the gigantic green moon, the less she understood. Something about it felt... magical. Powerful. Other. She had no idea. Could this be what was off with the girl?
From the start, the girl had been defying reason and logic. On her first day she had set the common room up with what Daphne only months later had recognized as an impromptu free ritual with several foci of all things, creating a fire that still burned to this day without a care in the world.
Later she had gone for months not being able to cast any spells in class, until at some point she had started achieving some out of nowhere, and that was where everything had entirely stopped making sense. Somehow the girl kept performing spells almost effortlessly that should be far beyond her, keeping Daphne on her toes and making her doubt herself at every turn, until Potter not only managed to keep up with her, but also overtake her in some areas. And she had been ripping the knowledge out of the heads of older students for Merlin's sake. Yet the girl was performing each and every new spell with the practice of someone who had been learning said spell for years.
And now she had somehow entered the one field of magic that Daphne had dedicated four years of her life to—which should be far beyond her even with a tutor, and very much impossible without one—and had somehow achieved something unheard of, something that by all rights shouldn't be possible.
Well, she'd better get started, she still had a curse to unravel. Daphne closed her eyes and placed one foot in front of the other, only following her instincts, slowly trailing her way through unknown parts of her mind, towards the only place she didn't feel unwelcome. The one place she had gotten permission to enter. Once she finally felt herself closing in on whatever her destination might be, she opened her eyes again.
Daphne found herself walking down a winding asphalt road on a dark and stormy night, dimly illuminated by the orange glow of muggle streetlights. She felt her clothes being drenched by the unrelenting downpour of rain, and her vision was temporarily blinded by the flash of lightning arcing across the sky. In front of her, the road was nearing the slope of a hill; but just before she reached it, she hit a literal roadblock.
Before her stretched a massive concrete barricade, blocking off the entirety of the road and preventing her passage. The barricade was covered in orange reflective tape, and before it, on a massive iron pole, stood a gigantic triangular yellow sign bearing a black exclamation mark. The sign was about as tall as a tree and just as wide at the top, and seemed to creak and sway in the storm. Her eyebrows slowly rose at the sight.
The message could not have been clearer. Whatever lay beyond this road was dangerous. Truly dangerous.
"Whoa... you're here! That's so... weird..."
Daphne whirled and spotted the impossible girl leaning against a street lamp next to her.
"So strange... I can see you... here... but also... there..." She first pointed at Daphne, then at the empty stretch of road right in front of the girl, presumably pointing at her physical body. A body Daphne could no longer see herself.
"And I thought the shadow realm was confusing..." she mumbled to herself, and then pushed off from the lantern and skipped towards Daphne. "Soo... what is this place, anyway?"
Daphne raised an eyebrow. "This is your mental representation of the memory charm," she replied incredulously.
Did the girl really have a sort of mindscape, and somehow not know about it? Potter shot her a You-don't-say look.
"Well, yeah, but why is it like... like this? I mean I think I've seen it before, originally it was just a vague impression, but..."
Daphne gave her a disbelieving look. "What do you know about the final stage of Occlumency?"
"Well, not much, I just read that you'd need to direct magic into your mind to achieve it," Potter shrugged. Shrugged.
Was there anything that even remotely made sense about the girl? At this point, she'd rather believe that she was the Dark Lord in disguise. Or maybe even...
No. Not him. He was in Azkaban. She was just being paranoid again.
Daphne shook herself, trying to focus on the task at hand. She slowly approached the stone barricade, then carefully rested her hand on it. Closing her eyes, she stopped to listen. Yes. This definitely didn't belong. It was created by someone else, but forced into shape along with the rest of this plane by her magic. As far as she could tell it was a completely normal and regular memory charm, encompassing a flat 12 hours. A bit crude, but it certainly did the job.
With a sigh, she let go, and then, out of curiosity, she reached for the sign. This... this was... definitely born from her own mind. but also... it felt a bit similar to... the moon. Again. Removing her hand from it, she shook it as it had begun feeling slightly numb. Daphne hadn't even noticed any magic acting on her.
Finally, Daphne took the mental equivalent of a breath, and gave Potter a serious look.
"I think... instead of breaking the charm, we could try to modify it. In terms of your material representation, move the barricade, in order to gain more information of the other things buried underneath."
That, and to get closer to the curse. But Daphne wasn't about to tell her that.
Potter's expression lit up. "You can do that? Great, let's try it!"
Daphne nodded, knelt down, and reached out. The barricade was certainly solid, but what she was looking for... There! One... no, two strands of magic, anchoring it to the ground. Sloppy, sloppy. She lashed out, tearing through them like a scalpel through tissue.
The barricade shivered, but remained in place. There. She got back up and turned to look at the girl, who was giving her an expectant expression.
"I managed to dislodge the charm; we should be able to move it. Since this is your mind, it will go a lot faster with your help."
Potter approached and cocked her head. "So, what... do we just... push it?"
Daphne shrugged. "Whatever you deem adequate to make it move down the road. In the end, you make the rules here."
And of course, the girl would do something ridiculous again. Potter raised her hand, covered in a blue glow, and shouted "Depulso!"
A flash of blue sparks, and the entire concrete barrier started moving as one, down the road, with a heavy noise of stone grinding upon stone. As Daphne watched the barrier grind its way down the road, she was distracted by something else. From the woods next to the road came a voice.
"It's a witch! Nasty magics!"
She turned and found herself standing in a small clearing of a forest on a clear moonlit night. At her feet lay the unconscious body of what looked like a Red Cap of all things. And before her stood another one, frozen in shock, as it stared down the clearing into the eyes of—
A swirling vortex of shadow. A pristine white night shirt billowing in the storm of dark magic. Eyes that seemed to glow the same color as the moon. And an expression that froze her in place, the intent clear as day, making her wonder if she had unconsciously slipped into her Legilimency again.
She was about to cast the Killing Curse.
Daphne was frozen in place, as she felt like she was staring into the green eyes of Death itself. Suddenly, a shockwave erupted from the girl's wand, knocking her back, as all the darkness came spilling back forth.
She watched with rising tension as the darkness took form, and slammed down towards Potter—the girl only evading the attack by an inch—only to be 'saved' by what looked like a Merlin-damned acromantula.
Still staring in a stupor of disbelief, Daphne watched as the impossible girl somehow escaped Death's clutches by a hair's breadth yet again, only to produce an unending mass of the very same shadows who had just attempted to murder her, and step right inside them.
What happened next, had her almost convinced that her throwaway musings on the girl being the Dark Lord in disguise actually had some substance to them. Were those even real memories? Or was Potter just messing with her?
As she watched the shadowy outline of the girl stumble through what looked like a Dark Lord's fever dream, the only thing she could pin the idea that she had in fact not gone insane on was the actual girl standing next to her, looking wide-eyed at their shadowy surroundings, as if she was just as distressed as Daphne herself. Had someone manipulated the girl's memories even underneath the charm, or...
"You... you weren't supposed to see that..." Potter mumbled.
Well, so much for that. Apparently, the girl knew exactly what this insanity was all about. Why was she even surprised.
Only seconds later, they found themselves in front of the familiar entrance of Hogwarts, but instead of the main door, there was the concrete barrier again.
"Promise me you won't tell anyone about that," came Potter's voice from next to her, and as she turned to look at her, she was met with the exact same expression she had worn before she had somehow taken down half of Slytherin house all by herself. Daphne hesitated, but then nodded. "Very well, I promise."
If an inconsequential promise like that would get the girl to calm down... But no. Daphne realized she'd still have to be careful, in case Potter was somehow still reading her mind. If her own promise had made it back to her own mind... No. As long as she couldn't figure out how to completely block her out, or otherwise deal with her, it was best she didn't attempt to deceive the girl any more than absolutely necessary.
Daphne turned back to face the castle gates, and paused. Then, she blinked. In front of the castle once again loomed the metallic warning sign. Except this time, it was as tall as the astronomy tower. Lightning struck the top of the sign, causing it to glow yellow for a moment.
The two girls' eyes met each other and exchanged a wary look, but a mutual nod signaled their decision to continue. Potter raised a glowing hand again, and they continued down the path.
What followed was a scene that was painfully familiar, except from a different perspective. Daphne winced as she watched herself get overwhelmed by that thrice-damned polarized spell. Ever since she had realized that the girl had access to that kind of power, and how useless her defenses were in face of magic like that, she had scoured the minds of older students—mostly Slytherins—for any bit of knowledge or experience with that particular topic. Yet, to no avail. The few that had even looked into polarized magic hadn't managed to cast it, and the most she had found was knowledge on how to cast the Tenebris spell, but nothing on how one would actually cast proper polarized spells. She hadn't dared to try and take a peek into Lockhart's mind, who might have known something about that, and even thinking about attempting the same with Snape was bordering on suicide.
Maybe, this was something the girl could actually help with, if she had been serious with her offer. If none of her other ideas panned out, it might come down to him... and if she had to first break into Azkaban, and then get him to help her, well, both of those things required at least polarized magic, if not outright the Unforgivables.
"So that's why you knew about it..." Potter muttered next to her, to which Daphne just shot her a flat look. "Sorry."
With her younger self soundly defeated, they followed Potter back into her room, where the bloodied message from the heir awaited, and then once again into a room that by all means shouldn't be there.
Something was very odd about this room. The more Daphne looked at it, the less it felt like a physical room, but instead a mindscape. Which was silly, those were memories of the real world, after all. She watched the girl lose her mind and the ghost—which she had never seen before but was probably the ghost that Potter had been talking about—make excellent use of the girl's distraught state to bait her into several verbal agreements, probably in order to entrap her within the Pensieve.
Which was exactly what happened, once Potter touched the surface of the silvery bowl. She wondered whether the ghost used the magic of the Pensieve itself, or rather the magic of this peculiar room. If it really was a place that was not quite real, but still material, similar rules as if inside a mindscape could apply there.
The three girls tumbled down a swirling vortex of bricks until they ended up in a large dilapidated Muggle building within what looked like London, except... from a different time.
However, they quickly came to a grinding halt. The one doorway that they were standing right in front of was once again blocked off by a familiar concrete barricade covered in orange reflective tape. And this time, the entire wall was plastered in yellow warning signs of all sizes. This... this was it, then. Beyond this door lay the secret that her mind was trying to protect itself from.
The Dark Lord's name.
"You were right..." whispered the girl standing next to her.
Daphne turned to look into the eyes of the girl, shining in the same green color as the moonlight pouring in through the window at the end of the hall.
"The heir... It really was me..."
Daphne turned from the redhead back to the barricade, and placed her hand upon it. She could definitely feel... something... on the other side. Now more than ever. It felt so... strange. Alien. Other. And also somehow familiar. But this definitely had to be it.
"Shall we?" she asked with anticipation.
Potter gave her a look and squirmed in place nervously. "I... well..."
Daphne raised an expectant eyebrow.
"Do you think we could... try and... modify the charm from the other side as well? I... well I just need to know what happened to Harry, I don't really need to learn his name... well, again..."
Daphne frowned. That wouldn't do. She was this close.
Taking a breath, she closed her eyes, and reached a little further. Stretching out her mind and her magic, she tried to feel beyond the barricade, tried to find the source of the oppressive feeling on the other side. With all her senses, she was looking. Looking for the faintest trace. The first signs that would herald a mental curse of this caliber. Any second now, she'd see it, at least... some part of it. If only she could glimpse a tiny part of it, the things she could learn...
"What are you doing?" asked the girl standing next to her, and began to approach her with a frown.
No. She had to know. There was nobody else who could do it. Nobody else who would. Nobody else who cared.
Reaching just a bit further, she began to feel around, slowly inching closer to the sensation, trying to feel the beginnings of a masterwork such as this. The oppressive feeling grew and grew, and she knew she was right there, almost about to touch it and—
A shiver ran down her spine as she felt it. This was...
Oh. Oh no.
She had misjudged.
No, she really had misjudged. What was this? This wasn't a curse! But it was—so familiar—so very strange...
Her eyes widening, she pulled back, all the way through the barricade, and finally took a deep breath.
What in Morgana's name had that been? It was definitely... a Name. The Dark Lord's Name. But it wasn't a curse. No, it wasn't any kind of mind magic at all. But then what was it?
A crack next to her head caused her to jump in surprise. A small splinter of concrete had just burst from the massive barricade, in the very place she had reached through just before. Oh.
This wasn't good.
"What have you done?" snarled Potter as the girl pushed her away from the barricade, her hands beginning to glow blue.
Another sharp crack, then another. Daphne and Potter turned as one and watched wide-eyed as the memory charm started to fail before their very eyes. Stone was crumbling away, and red light started shining through the cracks as the stone gave way, and Daphne had no idea what to do. Should she attempt to leave? But she had been the one to lead it here, would it just follow her? Whatever it was.
A deafening sound of shattering concrete, and the door fell open in a cloud of dust, angry red light pouring through. Both of them were coughing, blinking their eyes, and trying to brace for what awaited on the other side.
The dust cleared to reveal more red light. The door was filled with it and it was...
Another moon, filling the entire room. But this one was glowing in an angry red. Daphne blinked, trying to make sense of what she was seeing.
And make sense it did. As she kept staring at the massive floating globe in the room, it felt like it was casting a reflection right inside her own mind. Her eyes were still locked onto the red orb, and only after several seconds did Daphne realize that to her horror, she couldn't look away! No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't wrench her gaze from it.
"What is this?" shouted Potter next to her.
Daphne was breathing fast, her mind and gaze still trapped on the gigantic red sphere. It seemed to echo within her mind, getting louder, stronger, until suddenly it formed into a single word.
Voldemort
Immediately, Daphne understood. It all made sense now. It was perfect.
V̶̮̗́͑͂̓ò̷̡̭̈́͒͘l̴̞̼̠̹͉͂͌͋͘͝d̵̢͈͎̤̠̏͛̀̎͘ë̸̝́̓̊͒m̴͈̝͉̥͐̔̾̂o̷̳̟͋̈́̎͘r̸̘̽t̵̗̆͑̍.
Not a curse, not any kind of magic. Just... a Name.
Daphne! Snap out of it! You have to do something!
Daphne blinked. She was right! What had she been doing? Her eyes still fixed onto the angry red moon in front of her, her focus turned inwards, towards the word that had forced its way into her mind. She opened up a coffin in the deepest pits of her mind, the lowest levels that nobody would ever explore, and forced the letters into it. It was incredibly difficult to do so, without actually attempting to read them again, but hearing her voice again had given her the necessary motivation. She snapped and bolted it shut, and buried it in the lowest corner, locking the door behind her.
She had been hoping to study a curse unlike any other, but what she had found instead... She really shouldn't have peered that deeply, and now she had paid the price. Finally wrenching her gaze away from the moon, her eyes fell onto Potter. The girl was standing there in a daze, not even so much as blinking.
"Potter! Get it together!" Daphne called out, but the girl just kept staring. She took a step towards her and shook her shoulders, but that had just as little effect. The room had begun crumbling, as well as everything else around them, as the angry red glow of the moon pierced through the cracks to engulf more and more of the girl's mind.
She grabbed her by both shoulders and pinned her under a gaze, staring directly at her. "Iris! You have to fight it. Bury it, as deep as it will go!"
"W-who..." Potter whispered. "Who is..."
Merlin, she was losing her.
Daphne had to do something. There was no way she'd allow another girl's mind to be broken due to her own miscalculation. But she was comparatively powerless here. This was Potter's mind. She was just a guest. And if she attempted anything larger, then she'd overstay her welcome, and run the risk of being attacked by that ominous...
Could... could that work? She had no idea what the moon meant, but as with everything here, it was a representation the girl's mind had come up with, so it must have had some meaning to her. And if the one was a Name, then...
Her eyes flashed up towards the sky, where the bright green moon still shone across the landscape.
Daphne whirled back around to take her face in her hands and stare at her intently. "What is your Name?"
The girl just blinked at her; her mouth opened, but she didn't reply.
"What. is. your. Name?" Daphne reiterated.
A whisper, almost too silent to hear, from her lips. "V-Vol—"
Daphne's eyes widened as she felt the contents of the coffin in the deepest corner of her mind come alive, scratching and tearing against its walls. She forced it down with all her might, wrenched the girl's head around, cutting her off, and turned her gaze away from the red moon onto the green one in the sky.
Potter's eyes widened, and they seemed to shimmer in the moonlight.
Daphne took another breath, and then quietly repeated one final time.
"What is your Name?"
Her erratic breathing slowed, then almost stopped. Finally, the girl's mouth opened a sliver, and formed a single four-letter word.
~V~
"Focus, Potter!"
Who was that?
"Snap out of it!"
Out of what? Also... who... who was...
A snap of pain, and... what? Fingers reached up to rub the soft skin, still uncomprehending what had just happened.
Slowly, she got up. She had no idea what was going on, but somehow, the motions flowed all by themselves. She felt herself place one foot in front of the other, past the other girl, down the hall and towards... she didn't know.
The lights changed, grew brighter again, and there was a bloodcurdling scream from out of nowhere. Suddenly, she was someplace else entirely. A large stone room covered in serpentine statues. The floor littered with deformed skeletons. Her mind ringing like a bell and echoing a single word over and over again. A word that she didn't want to comprehend. As she rolled to her side, she noticed a familiar visage, and her eyes widened. "P-professor..."
Then she stumbled again, disoriented. The echoing word growing louder and louder, and the room started to spin again. She shook herself and tried to force her balance.
"Miss Potter, you're back? Are you okay?"
Was she? Was she okay? The room spun faster and faster, she stumbled and—
The lights changed again. She looked up, and realized that it wasn't her that was shaky, it was everything. She was sitting in a sort of... wooden room? Cabin? But through the windows she could tell that it was moving. Like... a carriage...
Across from her sat a girl with black hair bearing a blank expression, but when she met her eyes, they widened. "Potter! Stay with me!"
Again, who? She opened her mouth to respond, but felt dizzy once more.
The room changed back, and the person before her changed yet again into the familiar smile of her Defense professor.
"Come on, the basilisk is defeated, we need to find our way out of here!"
Looking between him, the gigantic snake-like... thing on the ground, and all the scattered skeletons, she blinked, then voiced an entirely different question.
"W-where's Harry?"
Hadn't he been taken to the chamber? Or no, he hadn't, she had been... Merlin, this was confusing, what was going on?
"Mister Potter? I sent him back to his dorm, right after he unlocked the entrance for me."
Iris blinked. He hadn't come along with him? She had been so sure...
"He was very much opposed, but I just couldn't in good conscience allow a student to face something like a basilisk," he gave her an apologetic smile.
She guessed that made sense, but she was also sure Harry wouldn't have simply accepted that, unless he didn't have another choice...
"I'm sure he's just as eagerly awaiting our return as the rest of the school," he said with a warming smile, as he held out a hand to her. "Not to worry. The heir has been taken care of. I'll make sure to get you back to the castle safely."
The heir? But hadn't that been... hadn't that... Iris glanced around the room again with hesitation, looking for any sign of Harry, but couldn't find anything else. Finally, she relented and accepted the offered appendage, the echoing word in her mind growing louder once more, and she had to steady herself against his grip. Only once the noise slowed and faded once more, she looked up with a hesitant smile, but she froze as she noticed the wand held to his side.
The room tilted once more, and she stumbled forwards, and tumbled off the seat.
"You're back? Focus! Look at me, Potter, we don't have much time left!"
She groaned, rolled to her side and looked up. In the center of what looked like a compartment of the Hogwarts Express stood that girl... Greengrass. The compartment was otherwise empty. Where... where were all the others? Others... others like...
"You're lying!"
Those two words wrenched her right back into the stone chamber, staring down the widened eyes of Gilderoy Lockhart.
The echoing word grew louder and louder, but the loudest thing in her mind right now was the wand that was clutched in his hand. The wand that was oh-so-very familiar.
"If you sent him back to his dorm... then why do you have his wand?" she whispered.
He stared back at her hesitantly, and then sighed. "I told you this before, Miss Potter..."
"What have you done to him?" Iris hissed.
His wand started to turn, until it was aiming right at her. "You really are too clever for your own good."
Iris' eyes widened as the wand started to glow, and she fumbled for her own, but just as her fingers touched the handle, there was a shout, "Confundo!"
Erm... what was she doing again? Right, she was looking for Harry, but Harry was probably fine anyway. And so was she... thanks to Lockhart, no less. But wait, what was he doing with his wand? Was—
"Obliviate!"
Iris stumbled and her head hit something. And there was something across her chest, some sort of rope. Why was she tied down? What was that noise? Everything was moving.
"Let me go!"
She felt her entire body pressed forwards into the rope... the belt... as the movement came to a sudden stop.
She collapsed back as the deceleration ended, and blinked, as a painfully familiar face emerged right in front of her. "Bloody hell, girl! We're here already. No need for any of your freakishness, alright? Get out already!"
Iris just sat there, desperately attempting to gather her thoughts. She... she was home. But how? And why? They weren't supposed to leave for a few days yet, what had happened? Had she been that out of it when she—
Something scraped against the back of her mind, and she instinctually pushed back hard. Right. That's what had happened. She had learned his Name. Again. She only remembered a mad haze, a desperate struggle between trying to bury an angry red glowing moon, being forced through memories of what had happened after she had woken up in the chamber, and finally, the worst of all the revelations.
Her eyes trailed across to the other rear seat of Vernon's car, which sat glaringly empty. Harry hadn't returned with her. They hadn't found him after all. Because Lockhart had done something to him.
And now the only person who knew anything else about what had happened was God-knows where. Now, it was up to her.
She would have to find him... and make him talk.