It was long after curfew, but the recovering foursome had been ordered to eat whenever they woke up from their potion and spell enhanced healing trances. Hermione had coaxed some of her "bluebell flames" the odd blue coloured fire she had been using unconsciously since about grade three to live in two bedpans Milicent had set up like braziers on either side of Neville's bed and his right flank Harry and left flank Hermione.
"First fanged rule of Slytherin girls Hermione. You don't go to the bathroom alone. I know you badgers are all about group hugs and that rubbish, but the world is full of predators, and ever one of them lives to catch you alone and not at your best. Girls do not ever go to the bathroom alone!"
Harry was translating in soft hisses for Noodle who rose painfully and bopped Hermione in the forehead with his own head.
"$ Water witch is wise Speaker. Maybe I should entrust Mouse Giver to her and not you?$" Noodle hissed.
Hermione and Harry both winced, and Hermione nodded to Milicent, clasping her hands in front of her and giving a short bow used in Pureblood society as an acknowledgement of error. Milicent gave the hair flip used at all levels of female society to indicate 'whatever' or, 'I have heard your apology but accept you will continue to be more yourself than is wise or survivable but choose to be the bigger person and pretend you have learned'. Hair flips are surprisingly communicative, if you have enough wit to read them.
Milicent was spoon feeding Neville, while Harry was looking down on his large white bib on which fat badgers magically cavorted, descending on whatever bit of food his less than perfect spoon control with his offhand landed on the large white bib. The badgers seemed to be getting rather more of the lamb in his stew than he was.
"I am not a baby, I don't need a bib!" Harry Potter snarled, the pain from his re-growing arm bones making him cranky.
"I am a goblin warrior!" Harry replied haughtily, then swore as a good lamb bit fell off the side of his spoon, leaving a delectable taste on the lips it brushed then fell to his bib where the badgers stitched into it descended on it in happy grumbling content. Harry eyed the smug bit of turnip and broth left on the spoon and with a reluctant sigh, shovelled it in awkwardly.
Hermione very carefully worked the wound salve onto Noodle's long form, lines from her own pain and bags under her eyes showed the cost of her own leg, but her gentleness with Noodle showed she had at least as much control of her pain as Harry had.
"I read that Goblin Warriors were feared for being universally ambidextrous, among other things." Hermione lectured sternly. "Whining about having to eat left handed is very gobliny, not very heroic."
Milicent fed Neville another spoonfull of stew, and he closed his lips upon it carefully. While both his arms had been shattered, his neck had very strong opinions about his head being at ground zero for troll decapitating explosions, and he chewed with the care of someone who feared do so with too much vigor might cause his lower jaw to fall off.
"Now Neville was properly heroic, getting both arms blown to minced meat, Madame Pomfrey said she didn't know whether to make a tart or a boy out of what was left. I suppose we should be thankful it was after the Halloween feast or he might be a tart on the teacher's table right now." Milicent mused.
"Yeah, well, I hope Snape and Quirrell both choke on me. What do you suppose they were doing sneaking down the third floor corridor towards the three giant dogs and the magic mirror?" Nevillve snarked.
Milicent wiped the gravy off his chin then corrected him. "One dog. A Cerebos actually. Hagrid was right worried about him when he heard there was a troll found on the third floor. Dumbledore asked to borrow him to look after 'Nicholas Flamel's secret thingy', whatever that was." Milicent frowned with the mou of distaste any Slytherin had for plotting done so poorly as to put Hagrid and secret in the same sentence.
Harry shot upright, then swore. "Merlin's beards bloody beard boggart! Fluffy was a Cerebos. The Fluffy he was chatting with that bloke down the pub who seemed so interested he bought drinks, was a bloody Cerebos? That is what is guarding the trap door the mirror was beside?"
Hermione frowned. "Probably under by now. I mean, that was pretty clearly a set of suspension runic binders. If Dumbledore is hiding something behind a Cerebos, he probably has all sorts of other defenses lined up too. Stuff to keep Dark Wizards like You Know Who's followers away from." She replied firmly.
Milicent shook her head. "With all due respect to the badgers token scholar, you really need to think more Slytherin about this. Dumbledore announced at the start of year feast and at the Halloween feast to a school full of teenaged Witches and Wizards, drunk on their first taste of actual power, that there is something secret and forbidden literally just two flights of stairs away, but don't go there, nudge nudge, wink bloody wink."
Harry digested that while he attempted to pin a nice looking bit of lamb he was determined to get into his mouth, not onto his bib for the badgers. "So you think Dumbledore was trying to entice students to go after the secret thing from Nicholas Flamel, whoever that is?"
Thinking a second he added. "When he gave me my invisibility cloak which he claimed he borrowed from my birth dad before he got killed, he also warned me not do use it to explore anything forbidden, even though its enchantments would keep me from getting caught."
Milicent groaned and went to press her face against Noodle on Hermione's chest. The snake rubbed his head along the Slytherin girls cheek in shared understanding.
"I swear you badgers common room must be filled with some sort of fairy mind magic mushrooms or something, because it makes you all completely mental. The Griffindors see the "die a most painful death" bit and have all been madly trying to charge it since halfway through the semester. The Ravenclaws see a secret knowledge that could be won by those with the cunning and forethought to overcome the minds, if not the magics of Hogwarts professors, and have been in a feather fluffing frenzy. Slytherins hear the whisper of forbidden power and are in such a state of enhanced lust that it makes you think someone has slipped love potion in the punch bowl again. You Hufflepuffs just burrow into your common room doing homework, and only sneak out to do exercise in the rain, dance naked in the woods, or repot forbidden plants in the greenhouse." Milicent accused them of a total lack of lust for forbidden magic and power that explained how an actual parselmouth managed not to get sorted into Slytherin's own house.
"Well the forbidden thing from Nicholas Flamel obviously means the Philosopher Stone." Said Hermione, as if that was indeed obvious. For a Muggleborn witch, her knowledge of every prominent magical scholar since the burning of the Library of Alexandria was beyond scary.
Neville choked, thankful he wasn't being spoon fed at that instant. "Nicholas Flamel, he's like six hundred years old. Him and his wife are cited as the only currently living immortals because he made the Philosopher stone and can brew the elixir of life. If You Know Who is not all the way dead, but not alive enough to come for Harry himself, what do you think he would give for the stone that allowed you to triumph over death itself and retain your full mind and body's power forever?"
Harry hissed to Noodle.
"$ Snape and Quirrell were both after it. I should kill them both. $" Harry hissed, a very goblin desire for revenge rising within him.
Noodle hissed in reply.
"$ This is why you aren't allowed out without adult supervision. Stupid hot blooded mammal idiocy. If not for boobs that are the only perfect resting place known to serpent kind, I would say bite all of you. Letting you down from the trees in the first place was clearly a waste of time.
One of them is sabotaging the other. Until you know which, you wait in the shadows and watch. You lure them into facing each other, you make them show their hand, and when you know wich is your enemy, and which is a disposable distraction, then you can strike.
Honestly. I fear Mouse Giver will never find any of you worthy of mating, which means my children will have no competent caretakers.$"
Harry had been translating for his friends, but choked when he got to the word mating as his brain derailed. Milicent began laughing outright, making all three of the rest of them blush brightly.
Hermione would later blame what she said on the pain potions she was on, but Milicent remained unsure she accepted it.
"Speaking of boobs, I swore I dreamed of you dancing in the woods on Samhain night when we were in hospital. I know I had planned on being there for the ritual, but I have never actually seen the ritual grove and it is warded so heavily we could never find it. How is it I saw you naked, which I have never seen, in a ritual circle in the woods, that I have never seen?" Hermione asked, uncaring that talking about seeing classmates boobs and said classmates dancing naked in the woods with two of her very male teenage classmates was somewhere beyond socially awkward and well into the invite-dementors-to-the-wedding kind of wrong.
"Morgana's honeypot Hermione, you don't just up and say things like that!" Milicent swore, the large girl covering he fully clad chest with crossed arms as if this would prevent two teenage boys from visualizing things once the thought was in the hormone fueled soup that passed for male brains.
With a loud gushing sigh, she gathered herself before meeting Hermione's eyes to answer her.
"If you must know, I asked Madame Pomfrey if I could take your place and stand in for you in the Samhain circle, because they were planning on sending you three and Noodle energy and healing. Because you three, Noodle, and I have been hanging out all year, and do pretty much everything together, I thought I would be the natural focus for the ritual, and through me they could get more energy and healing to all of you. We are bound by choice, so what I accept can be used by you."
That brought Neville to the question that had been bothering him.
"So you mean when I dreamed of all the dancing naked ladies in the rain around that huge fire, that was real, and you know, actually you?" Neville asked.
"Bloody Hell Neville, you too?" Harry said, admitting the part that had been making Neville blush so hard. As he had been in his coma, he could have sworn he saw the dancing circle, not much of it clear, but Milicent had been the one point of unerring focus through the whole dance, as if his consciousness had been somehow following her through the dance.
Goblins not being ones for body modesty, he didn't share the nudity taboos of his friends, and grasped the one practical bit that jumped out and danced in his mind. This had been the thirty first of October in Northern Scotland.
"How didn't you freeze in that rain? I mean, October in the rain is tough enough in Quidditch gear, but starkers on Samhain? I'd have frozen my bits off!" Harry said.
Milicent shrugged. "It doesn't bother me. Not even when I play Quidditch. When I don't want it to, rain doesn't touch me. When I want to be dry, I just sort of ask it to go and it goes."
"$ Water Witch I named her, water witch she is. $" Noodle hissed, not bothering to look up, too tired and sore to move."
Harry translated, not really seeing the seriousness of the statement.
"I wouldn't mind learning that charm." Harry noted. "It sucks playing wet at any kind of speed."
Hermione sighed, conjuring flames to dance in her hands. "It isn't a charm Harry, its an elemental affinity. It can't be taught, any more than Parletongue can be taught. It is just a part of you, a connection to the wild magic and the earth that is woven in your blood."
"That hardly seems fair." Griped Harry.
"You are one to complain Harry, considering the cheat you have with yours." Neville snarked.
"What are you talking about Neville?" Harry objected.
"Your air affinity, you prat. I mean, how many times have you lectured me about not seeing the bludgers coming from behind, below, and above me? Most of us have to use their eyes to see the bloody things. Your 'just sense the disturbance in the air' isn't really a thing. I mean, I figured out you had an air affinity months ago. Even you can't be that dim." Neville griped.
Noodle hissed at Harry demanding a translation. When he received it, he turned to Neville and hissed.
" $The dense one, make him tell his gift. Hurry Speaker, while the ritual that bound you together for healing is still connecting you, MAKE HIM TALK! $" Noodle hissed in obvious agitation.
Neville listened to Noodle with embarrassment. "It's not much of a gift. Gran keeps telling me I have to be an Auror like dad and mom or I won't be living up to their destiny. It is why she was so upset about me not getting into the warrior house of Griffindor. My gift is sort of lame. I mean, I love it. It is the only thing I used to have, back when I thought I had no magic at all. The plants like me." Neville said, and gestured to the roses in the vase on the table at the end of their beds.
He gestured, and the roses bent towards him. Soon the vase shattered, and the roots of the cut plants grew back and enveloped the table. Milicent drew the water from the surrounding pitchers and guided it to the floor for the roots as the roses shot out stems and leaves to grow into a very thick rose bush in the middle of the Hospital wing of Hogwarts. They burst with flowers as the vines all waved in an unseen wind, the scent of fresh earth that was no where in sight mixed with the heady perfume of roses as the Slytherin girl and pair of stunned Hufflepuffs looked at Neville's gift in disbelief.
"$ Root Singer. He is Root Singer. You have bound all four elements in a living ritual and done nothing with it. I am surrounded by stupid humans. Root Singer of earth, Water Witch of the waves, Mouse Giver who calls fire, and Speaker who hears the wind. $" Noodle hissed.
Milicent and Neville were the only ones who got it. "We have all the towers. We are all the quarters, the guardians of the cardinal points, the elements of a ritual circle." Milicent said huskily, the hunger for a power the detested half-blood of pure blood house.
"To have all four elemental affinities in a single circle happens maybe once a century or so. The last time it happened was bloody Grindewald back in the thirties, before he split with Dumbledore. Most people say if they hadn't fallen out and he had kept his circle intact he'd have won the bloody war." Milicent said with a tremble in her voice none of them could recall ever hearing.
Hermione frowned. "Why is it we don't learn anything about this in class?" Hermione asked.
Neville rolled his eyes. "Elemental affinities are one of those pure blood obsessions. I mean they bred us for it like raising racing Hippogriffs or postal owls. Entire houses rise and fall on the purity of their elemental affinity. You can learn almost any magic if you have the right books, and magic itself throws the dice about how big your magical core potential will be, but elemental affinities are in the bloodlines. You can bet that the high born families want to keep that advantage entirely to themselves, and you can also bet that the Ministry is going to do their best to suppress the knowledge about any source of power they can't regulate or control."
Noodle was swaying back and forth in serpentine bliss, hissing softly to himself, almost singing as Harry translated the conversation.
"We need to tell Professor Dumbledore." Hermione said firmly. "We have all four elements together, and with Professor Sprout's coven to train us, we have the capacity to make a full elemental coven like hasn't been seen since he and Grindewald!"
Noodle rammed his head into her forehead, breaking her train of thought.
"$ Water Witch, educate Mouse Giver. I cannot protect her alone, and the males are too trusting. The Phoenix Lover is not to be trusted! He stinks of sacrifice, yet bears no scars himself. You are fresh from the egg, soft scaled and weak venomed, in a forest of ancient and half seen foes. You must grow your power in secret until your foes are known, and strike from the shadows! $" Noodle hissed as Harry translated almost robotically.
Neville looked at Noodle gravely. Harry skeptically, and Hermione looked offended. Neville finally spoke.
"Harry, your snake's more than a little creepy." Neville said seriously. "I mean, I'm not saying he's wrong. It's just like getting lectured by that Italian wizard Snape always quotes." Neville said.
"Machiavelli" Both Hermione and Milicent said in stereo.
Harry thought about the fight he got Noodle in. He won the goblin silver of the goblins that were killed by Noodle's mother. A normal goblin warrior would take that silver-of-conquest and forge himself a larger blade, a sword to win honour and glory for his clan.
Harry could not forge a sword. He was not a goblin. Harry had forged a Hearth Mistress needle for Hermione. The symbol and key to a goblin family or clan's power the tool that a Hearth Mistress used to bind her family together and amplify their power. Only a goblin could do that.
Harry Potter, heir to the Ancient and Noble House of Potter was a goblin. He had forged a goblin silver needle for his Hearth Mistress. Hermione could not be the Hearth Mistress of a goblin clan. Harry could never be a goblin warrior, he could no more forge the goblin sword of a warrior than he could fly a broom to the moon. Harry Potter was a wizard, and would be a lord. Magic was his weapon, yet he was a goblin too.
Harry shut his eyes, the powerful beat of the drum, the ecstatic wild magic of the dance, the skyclad witches dancing in firelight their feet striking the earth in time with the beating of his heart. This magic called to him. The magic of his blood. The magic of his mother.
His scar burned, the Soweillo rune burned with the power of goblin silver, with the magic of Voldemort's killing curse, with the magic of Voldemort's own soul fragment as he made Harry a Horcrux in the moment of his own reflective destruction from the killing curse.
Magic of an Ancient and Noble house, Magic of a Dark Lord, Magic of the Goblin nation, Magic of the covens and elements all bound to his blood. He was not any of them, he was all of them, and...more?
Voldemort was coming for him, Voldemort and all his death eaters. Harry was a goblin warrior who could never forge a sword to defend himself, yet when Frithweaver bound Voldemort and his mother's magic through goblin silver to Harry's own soul she had created something new. Something stronger.
He could not forge a sword of goblin silver, but he could forge a weapon. A weapon neither Voldemort nor Dumbledore could understand, because neither one would ever think to give their power to another.
Moving carefully, he undid his hospital robes, and bared his chest to his classmates. Neville had seen it before, but Hermione blushed and Milicent's eyes grew wide as she saw the other two runes of Goblin Silver woven into his chest.
Othala and ALgiz burned in bright silver of the firelight, adding to the reflected gleam of the Soweilo of his scar's sun rune.
"These are the runes of a clan's acceptance. I shouldn't have been given them until I was an adult, but because of my birth mother's contract with Gringotts, Griphook my goblin father had no choice but to have Frithweaver my mother weave them all into me as a baby. They bound the protection of my mother to my own magic, and to eat Voldemort's soul fragment that used to be bound to my scar." Harry said.
"Morgana's nipples Harry, this is the kind of secret you cut throats to keep, you don't just go ahead and tell people!" Milicent hissed, wishing not for the first time that she was advanced enough to cast the privacy charms.
Harry cut her off with a wave of his good hand.
"NO! You aren't just people. Look, these runes bind a clan together and amplify our magic. Goblin's can't use wands, so their runes are their power amplifiers. Goblin warriors can lay down their power and intent through a sort of alchemy to produce larger and larger blades until they have the goblin sword they will use to channel, deflect, and cut through magic all their lives. Goblin maidens get a needle of goblin silver made of their mates own magic that they use to weave those runes of power into the rest of their clan to bind them together so their magics can be shared. Goblins are not nearly as powerful as wizards or witches, but when they work together they can match them in their works." Harry said.
"Do you mean you married Hermione in charms class?" Neville blurted out.
"$ He has far to go to be worthy of Mouse Giver. I will not allow it. Ask me again when you have done something worthy. $" Noodle hissed angrily.
Harry blushed, shot his snake a look, and answered. "No, apparently I need Noodles permission to marry Mouse Giver, and I haven't done anything that impressive yet." Harry said sarcastically.
He carried on with sincerity though. "She is the only one I can think of being Hearth Mistress though, she is the one who weaves us together, and I want her to do that for real." Harry said.
Neville hissed this time. "You mean mark us with goblin runes of power like you have? That is the kind of magic goblins would kill wizards for even trying to learn."
Harry sneered. "I am a goblin of Gringotts. That silver I took from the bodies of me dead enemies, and it is to be used to forge the weapon I will use to defend my clan. My clan is Potter, the house of my mother and father who died that I might live. My house is Hematite, the goblin clan that bound me in their magic and their love while I was too young and too weak to defend myself, and my clan is you three idiots and our designated reptile adult. No one tells a goblin warrior what he may do with the the spoils of his victories. That is goblin law." Harry said in a voice so cold they were surprised frost didn't form on the floor.
Hermione's mind was moving faster than her filter, and she spoke her thoughts out loud.
"As powerful as a full elemental circle is, and if what I am hearing from Neville and Milicent is true, then what I learned from Professor Sprout is really the heavily edited 'don't scare the newbies' version of what a coven can do, then I can't imagine what a full circle augmented by goblin power amplifying runes could be. Runes aren't like wands, they are not passive amplifiers. Runes shape the kind of wild magic that the coven's raise, they don't have to run it all through you. That is the limitation to a wand, you can't put more power through it than your body can sustain, or you will burn yourself into a squib.
You can't use a wand in a coven circle because the power is shared. If you brought a wand into it, you would either burn out whoever was the focus, or blow up the wand channeling more power than it could hold. If all four of us were bound by the same runes, then we could get the same sort of amplification of a wand, without having to bring the energy into ourselves to get burned out.
We four could be as powerful and Grindewald and Dumbleore would have been, if their falling out hadn't broken their circle!" Hermione gushed, eyes alight with the possibilities.
Harry had been hissing along in translation.
"$ Five.$" Hissed Noodle. "$ It is clear you cannot be allowed out without reptilian supervision, lest you do something mammal and leave me alone with only the night pigeon for company! $" Hissed Noodle, choosing to remind them that if they died, he would be left looking after Hedwig, Nevilles owl.
"Dumbledore will lose his mind. He doesn't approve of covens, doesn't trust goblins, and has some pretty firm ideas about making sure Harry only learns what Dumbledore thinks is for the Greater Good and all that." Neville muttered. While he hated politics, his Gran was very firm that he would be Longbottom of Longbottom, a power that the Wizagamot was forced to listen closely to. He was never permitted to be innocent of the power blocks that controlled that august body.
Milicent shrugged. "So we don't tell him. We don't tell anyone we don't actually need." She never had figured out why the other houses had such problems with the realities of power. She was a half blood in a pure blooded house, she was too strong to be ignored, too impure to be approved, and too smart to let House Bulstrode decide how they would expend her for some petty gain they understood.
When a grim looking Griphook, Frithweaver, and an angry looking Augusta Longbottom were permitted into the Medwing guided by Madame Pomfrey who had finished explaining their children's injuries (extensive) and prognosis (read to walk out, just need to keep potioning for bone density for a week), they met four very serious looking children, and a very broken Rock Viper in need of a good molt.
"Gran, I broke dad's wand. I am not going to say sorry. Hermione was trapped, and the troll would not stay dead. We are first years, and nothing we could do was going to stop it." Neville said with tears in his eyes, but the clenched and upthrust jaw Frank had whenever he stepped into a battle he did not intend to leave short of death or victory.
"It was very brave of you. Your parents would have been so proud. It was a very Griffindor thing to do, and I'm sure you will be as great an Auror as he was." Augusta said her own voice quavering with emotion her iron control of occlumency was not totally able to overcome.
Neville winced as if struck. "That is just it Gran. I am not Griffindor. I didn't go there to be a hero, I didn't stay there to be brave. Hermione is mine. Like Harry or Milicent. I wouldn't leave them,;they wouldn't leave me. If we could have all got out and run away, we would have run so fast a snitch couldn't catch us."
Augusta opened her mouth to object, but Griphook nodded and smiled a tooth bare grin.
"Fight for blood, fight for profit. Fighting for glory is for paupers, wizards, and fools. I approve Harry, this one is ruthless and wise enough almost to be a goblin." Griphook said.
Harry was the one who flinched that time.
"Almost a goblin, that is the thing. That is what I am. All I am." Harry said.
Frithweaver came forward as Griphook flinched this time. She laid her clawed hand on his curse scar and its rune.
"No Harry, I wove that into you with my own needle, with silver from my own marriage knife. You are my child, as much as Fangborn or Glitterbright." Frithweaver said, her smile softer than any who had never seen goblins at home behind their house wards would know.
"It makes me family, and part of the clan, but to the nation I will always be an outsider. I am a goblin, and you are as much my parents as James and Lilly Potter, but I can never be a goblin warrior like Fangborn." Harry said, trying hard not to be hurt as both his parents flinched a little at his saying outright what they took such pains not to bring up.
"Father, I ask for my silver. I ask for that which I won in blood, that I forge for myself the weapon I will use to fill my vaults with gold, and my name with glory. I wish to take up the silver taken from the dead to forge the weapon I will wash in the blood of Voldemort, murderer of my first parents." Harry asked and while Poppy and Augusta stopped knowing something important had just been said, and Griphook's reaction was simply surprise, it was Frithweaver whose eyes darted to the other children in the hospital beds in growing alarm and awareness.
"You cannot mean them!" Frithweaver shouted in gobbledygook, pointing at Hermione, Neville and Milicent.
"I have made my needle, mother. Hermione will be Hearth Mistress, and I ask that you teach her the weavings of my clan, that she may mark the brothers and sisters that have chosen to stand with me against fire and fang, spell and sword." Harry answered in gobbledygook, the only language that weighed blood and gold, honour and vengeance on the same scales, and understood that no means were forbidden to balance those scales.
Frithweaver looked over at Hermione and watched her raise her hand, to show the goblin silver needle that orbited it like a happy moon around its chosen planet. Griphook and Frithweaver froze, but it was Griphook who broke the silence with the sort of rasping laugh that belonged somewhere deep in Hell where things that the light shouldn't disturb were kept.
Turning to Augusta Longbottom, he bowed.
"Clan Hematite greets Clan Longbottom. My son has decided that the silver he has won from his first death battle shall be used to mark your son, and these two witches, as part of his clan. It seems, at age twelve, he has chosen his Hearth Mistress, and decided to set his clan of four against the whole of the wizarding world, and the goblin nation, to get revenge for his parent's death."
Augusta snapped reflexively . "He will do no such thing. My Neville..." That is so far as she got before Neville stepped in.
"I bloody well will. Harry's parent's died, but he grew up with Griphook and Frithweaver to guide him, Fangborn and Glitterbright as his siblings. I grew up being terrified to be dragged into St Mungo's to see dad and mum writhing in agony and not being allowed to die. I grew up waiting for Uncle Algie to accidentally kill me and remove the stain of a bloody squib on the Longbottom name. Probably for the best because I was never going to be the Auror grandson to replace my dad.
I'm just Neville. I talk to plants, and want to make things grow but when my friends need my help I bloody well want to be strong enough to do it. I don't think my soul could take having to visit Milicent or Hermione beside mum and dad because some Death Eater got to them and I was too weak to stop it.
This time Gran, this time I will bloody well be strong enough to stop it!" Neville shouted, and as he had been shouting the roses had climbed around his bed and a wall of writhing thorns surrounded him like a moving cloak of floral serpents.
Hermione called fire into her hands, drawing attention to her.
"We are stronger together. We found out what we were when the school's coven bound us together in a healing ritual. Neville is meant to be a part of us, and us a part of him." Hermione said, letting the fire dance in her hand, drawing every eye.
Harry called up a tornado that spun fast enough to be visible, as Milicent opened her own hand, and summoned water from the pitchers around to form a serpent of water that hissed and swayed before them.
"Merlin's beard!" Augusta swore. "A full elemental circle!" She turned and looked around her in alarm. Poppy Pomfrey stepped forward and raised her hands in a calming gesture.
"Relax Augusta. You are safe behind the Medwitch wards of Hogwarts. Not even the Headmaster can scry here. Hogwarts has known many headmasters, but only four founders, and they wove their protections into this place knowing how fickle politics can be. Only Professor Sprout and those of us in the coven leadership know, and we have sealed it to the circle magically. You couldn't Imperius it out of us and I could bathe in veritus serum and not whisper a word. " Poppy Pomfrey said simply, as if Albus Dumbledore could be dismissed so easily, except this time perhaps he could.
Griphook and Frithweaver looked at the witches with suspicion, then Griphook asked.
"This elemental thing, it is powerful? Powerful enough to risk drawing the ire of the Ministry and Dumbledore?" Griphook asked.
Augusta nodded slowly. "A proper elemental coven, one with all four elements together can do ritual magic of unbelievable power. It was a full twelve of elementals, witches and wizards both who gave their lives to enact the statute of secrecy and separate the worlds of magic and muggle. With four, and young as they are, they won't be reshaping the world any time soon, but together, with training, they could perhaps be a threat to Voldemort himself."
Frithweaver's eyes grew wide, and she demanded. "Why was this not done already, why was Voldemort not stopped by one before he slaughtered half a generation?"
Poppy Pomfrey sighed. "Two reasons. First because they are so rare the last time a circle was found with four compatable elementalists it was Cassiopeia Black, Perenelle Flamel, Albus Dumbledore and Gellert Grindewald."
Griphook, sensing the problem begged the question. "And the second reason?"
"Because Albus Dumbledore knows that if he hadn't broken the circle before, Grindewald would have conquered the world. There is no knowing what he would do to stop another from rising." Madame Pomfrey said with the grave expression that allowed the leader of the light, the headmaster of her school, may indeed be one of the dangers she must protect her charges from.
Frithweaver looked to Augusta Longbottom and Hermione Granger and said softly.
"I do not know this coven magic, but I know the blood and rune magic of gobin clan weaving. I will need your assistance Madame Longbottom, in training Hermione to bind them properly." Frithweaver said.
"I will need an oath that you will never share this magic or use it on another. This is taught Hearth Mistress to Hearth Mistress, and is a goblin secret."
Augusta nodded. "I will need an oath from all to make sure that no word of this is to be shared beyond those bound together. To make an alliance with an outside power, to use the magic of the covens, and to ally two Ancient and Noble Houses outside the bonds of the Wizardgamot is tantamount to rebellion."
Milicent chose to ask the question delicately. "So you oppose us all being bound because it is treason?"
Augusta flared. "My son and his wife lie suffering in torment, Harry's parents lie in forgotten graves in Godric's hollow and I have to exchange pleasantries with marked Death Eaters upon the wizargamot floor because to do otherwise is to be the one the law will punish. I piss on treason, and fart on the wishes of the Supreme Mugwump Albus bloody Dumbledore.
I will lend my blood, my magic, and my silence to your binding. So mote it be!" Augusta snapped her wand raised and her power flaring in a magical oath that washed over all in the infirmary.
Frithweaver drew her marriage knife, and cut open her palm, speaking her own oath.
"I will lend my blood, my magic, and my silence to this binding. So mote it be!" With a flash, the cut on her palm healed, and the falling blood was consumed by fire, marking both oaths sealed.
"$ You will bind five of us, not four. I keep telling you foolish mammals, you are too emotional to be allowed off leash. I cannot properly care for the four that I have if I am not bound so that I can always find them. $" Noodle hissed.
When Harry translated, Augusta looked shocked, Frithweaver looked horrified, and Poppy looked...intrigued.
The ritual began at midnight, and lasted until dawn. In his bed that night, Dumbledore was tormented by visions of snakes and badgers, they snarled and snapped at him from every vision as he used his own limited gifts of precognition to map how to best guide the children around Harry Potter so he could be set on the path to his destiny.
Harry's battle with the troll had taken all of Dumbledore's brute force to make happen, and even then, they had not been chased by the troll into the forbidden corridor and the confrontation with Voldemort, but had instead fought the thing. Dumbledore needed his limited precognition to map out how to manipulate the children, lest they fail to point Harry to his prophesied battle. He was no seer himself, he could not see more than a few paces beyond the veil of time, and his dreams were the vehicles.
Now there were snakes and badgers blocking his path. He knew Tom had been heir of Slytherin, but even he had never used parselmagic to block his dreams. The inclusion of badgers was unexpected. It was known that all four of the Hogwarts founders had the gift of prophesy, Helga Huflepuff being no exception. He could not understand who had the power to invoke her to block his sight. Certainly Professor Sprout had no touch of the gift, nor had she ever been able to invoke Helga Hufflepuff's secrets buried in the castle itself. As Headmaster he knew the founders all had their gifts locked within Hogwarts. Godric Griffindor's hat sat on chair in his office, gossiping with his phoenix in a language neither would teach him.
Well, if he was denied prophesy, he still had pawns. After all, Severus had made several mistakes in his earlier life and was quite reliant on Albus intervention for his continued health and position. He would have to make more use of this tool. Children were given him for guidance after all, it was for the Greater Good.