Chapter 4 - Holiday reading

Iris collapsed onto her bed, and began rolling around in the sheets, her body still shivering.

She had overdone it again, hadn't she?

Just like with her housemates, both the first and the second time they had ganged up on her. When she was confronted with someone like that... someone she thought deserved it, and she felt she had the power to do something about it, especially when she really shouldn't have...

Somehow, despite everything that had happened since then, she had fallen right back into that moment in the corridor in front of her common room, when she had confronted her housemates. Once she had started, she had just kept going. At least, she had managed to keep to the initial plan of not actually hurting any of them, but... she had still kind of gone overboard in the end. All thoughts about Harry, about her situation, about the consequences, they all had taken the back seat.

She had really gotten into it. And wasn't that a worrying thought.

But in the end, she had been doing it for her goal, hadn't she? It had been part of the plan. They needed to give up on any ideas of opposing her while she was here, and rest their main hopes on the fact she would be gone forever in two months' time. It wasn't like she had actually hurt any of them this time.

Whatever. She couldn't allow herself to dwell on inconsequential things like that. The time to worry about consequences was past. Not that she had ever done much of that to begin with. From now on, she'd only worry about things that affected her goal first and foremost.

Also, it had been kind of refreshing to break out of her spiraling thoughts for a minute...

Another shiver ran down her spine at specifically what she had done, that dizzying unease of deliberately invading his personal space so thoroughly to make a point. Yeah, refreshing wasn't exactly the word she'd use.

A faint knocking sound from the window alerted her to the fact that Harry's owl had returned from her trip and was demanding entrance to their bedroom.

And she hadn't come with empty talons.

Iris pulled open the window, allowing Hedwig to swoop inside, and drop another Daily Prophet on her desk. Usually those would arrive in the morning, not the middle of the night...

Getting curious, she approached, and unfolded the newspaper to begin to read.

Dark Wizards attack Kings Cross Station!

Barely twenty-four hours have gone by since the tragic passing of one of our most fabled heroes, and it seems the forces of Evil have only been spurred by his demise. Tonight, at ten p.m. a group of masked wizards attacked a beacon of safety right in the center of our treasured community.

Platform Nine and Three Quarters, a gathering point for magical children of all ages, which was supposed to be the safest path to Hogwarts, has been proven anything but! Luckily, according to reports, the platform had at the time been locked down and empty, the only injuries had been to nearby Muggles as well as the Aurors which showed up in response to the situation. It is unclear what the aim of the attack had been, but sources in the Ministry suggest that they were preparing some sort of trap or ambush for our children on the first of September.

A large number of Muggles have witnessed one of them forcefully breaking open the sealed entrance to the platform with a terrifying display of magic, which has kept the Obliviators busy well into the night. Luckily, they managed to account for all the witnesses before they could spread the message via their electronic devices. The struggle to maintain the statute is a permanent and ever-growing one, especially with the rise of technology, and it is incidents like this that remind us just how fragile the balance of our world can be at times.

Iris frowned as she put down the newspaper. She hadn't even considered that, but it made a lot of sense. Magic didn't work with technology. At least, nobody else's seemed to. Therefore, all they could do was run damage control with the people who were there, and if necessary, destroy the devices, but in the end, if the message were to spread over the internet...

She had no idea if or how magic would help with that.

And what if the statute would crumble? If Muggles found out about the Wizarding World? For one, they would be vastly outnumbered. Especially in Magical Britain, there were maybe ten-thousand magicals in total, probably less. Then, given the fact that Voldemort was on the rise, it seemed almost inevitable that breaking the statute would at some point lead to war. It was one thing to try and hide from the Dark Lord and some of his Death Eaters, Dumbledore and the Aurors while doing her research, but from billions of Muggles as well?

Yeah, if anything, that would make things ten times harder, if not impossible. So going forward, she'd have to be very careful. Breaking the statute could jeopardize her goal, so she'd have to be taking extra care to avoid that.

Placing the newspaper down on the desk, she reached in the bag to feed Hedwig some owl-treats, then pulled out a pen and paper, and got to work. Letting her mind run wild, with the help of her Mindlight, she began brainstorming for any and all approaches to look into in order to achieve what she needed to do.

The main one was, of course, free ritual. You could do anything with free ritual so long as you could symbolize it, and if the sacrifice was adequate. Lockhart had been the best example of that—literally rewriting reality to conform to his books. But there was the major snag of her having already attempted the very ritual that she needed to do before, except it had gone horribly wrong. After her cat Salem had been run over, she had pretty much without thinking gone on a Hail-Mary attempt to bring her back and had set up an impromptu free ritual using a defibrillator as a focus, and her old diary as the sacrifice.

A friend for a friend.

Iris swallowed. That was a part she hadn't even considered yet. One she really didn't want to think about.

But unless she found another way to do what needed to be done...

But... but there was no way. She had sworn to herself that she wouldn't trade them for anything in the world. Except back then, she hadn't considered just what anything might actually include.

No. There had to be another way. It was just one of many avenues, after all. With magic, anything was possible.

Right, so, other ideas.

...Other ideas...

Whatever Voldemort had done?

She knew he had sacrificed something, a piece of jewelry that contained a part of him that was somehow making him immortal. Actually, thinking about it, that sounded kind of similar to the diary that Myrtle had been bound to. Would that mean that there were only three things left making him immortal now? And he had thought it would be quite some time until he could make another one, so apparently it wasn't that easy. From what Myrtle had said, she had placed her life in his hands, and he had taken it. Maybe that was the requirement for this? Not just taking a life, but a life that had been willingly placed in his hands?

Actually...

No. That made too much sense. That had been what he had been trying to do in her first year. And possibly with Greengrass and Malfoy as well. Iris shivered at the thought. He had been trying to get her to trust him, to place her life in his hands, so he could bind a piece of his soul to hers and preserve it like that. Suddenly, she was glad that the year had ended the way it did. Because she could have even seen that working, if Harry hadn't intervened.

On that note, back to Harry. Voldemort had somehow regained a body like that. But would that work for her? He had done pretty much the same ritual, she guessed, except with two major differences. Whatever he had done to make himself immortal meant that his soul was already there when the ritual started. And also, he wanted immortality, so he sacrificed part of his immortality. That wouldn't work for her. She didn't want immortality, she wanted Harry.

And at this point, she wasn't even sure if sacrificing herself would achieve the desired effect. She was kind of doing that anyway. And if it didn't work, she couldn't try again afterwards.

But then, there was still the matter of his soul. Both the ritual she had done, as well as the ritual the Dark Lord had done proved that it was at least possible to bring back the body. Or maybe, at least, create a new one.

But other than that?

Maybe whatever Dumbledore had done with his phoenix? She had no idea how the supposed immortality of phoenixes did actually work, and how that would interact with something like the Killing Curse. So this was definitely on her research list.

Anything else?

Maybe something with Death itself? From what Myrtle had said, rules did not apply in the presence of the being, the purple-eyed Grim. Everything became symbolic. Would that mean that maybe she could make a deal with it? Or maybe just do something entirely different?

Definitely another thing to look up.

Letting her mind wander, she decided to move on to other research topics for now. The first thing that came to mind was what had happened on Platform Nine and Three Quarters. She never wanted to be that helpless again. Somehow, they had bound her polarized magic, and she had found herself entirely out of options. She had somehow managed to delay with the Storm, but in the end, it hadn't changed her situation, and she'd be long dead and gone if Lupin hadn't showed up.

There had to be some way to counter this spell, or at least, their strategy. It seemed like they had assumed she was an Auror, possibly because of the two spells she had opened with, which she had copied from Susan. Maybe she should avoid that next time.

She didn't think that Aurors would either utilize the shadow realm, or even the Killing Curse probably, so the spell to bind her polarized magic must have had some other purpose. And yes, thinking back, her old Defense professor had mentioned that. One of the ways to disperse gathered polarized magic was to cast a burst of the opposite type of polarized magic, most commonly by using a polarized spell that shatters on impact of their shield.

So they had been trying to stop her from interrupting the Killing Curse, except not in the way she had thought.

Still didn't change much of how to deal with that kind of situation. But there did seem to be a major weakness here. Both the Death Eater summoning shadows as well as the one suppressing her polarized magic were left defenseless while channeling their spells, so they needed to have someone else defend them.

And they had been using heavy shields that would probably block anything short of polarized spells, but also left them unable to cast anything either. Therefore, this strategy would only work with five people or upwards. Otherwise, she could just smash through their shields with an overpowered Depulso, or she'd be left free to attack them with nobody being able to cast back.

So the main way past this for now was to avoid encounters against five or more opponents while she was alone. Actually, she'd probably have died even against the first Death Eater, if she hadn't tricked him into thinking she was literally Voldemort. But no matter how good she got, she didn't really see a way out of their strategy, assuming she was alone and unable to otherwise escape.

She supposed she could return with the same spell to prevent the one casting the Killing Curse from gathering even more darkness, but A: that would leave her defenseless with one or more others still attacking her, and B: That spell sounded very much like it would require White light, which meant she'd be unable to cast it.

Alright, enough pondering, time for some action.

Iris flipped her notebook closed, put it in her bag, grabbed a bag of galleons from her trunk and pocketed that as well, and finally shouldered her bag and turned towards the darkest corner of the room.

By now, the way to Diagon Alley through the shadow realm was very familiar to her, allowing her to make good time to London and through the tube, until she found herself once more inside Flourish and Blotts.

The bookstore seemed to be closed at this time of the night, but this was only to her benefit. Even better, it seemed to be entirely empty of people, allowing her to move about the place as she wished. It was completely dark, the only light seemed to be coming from a number of faintly glowing red crystals embedded in the walls. She moved towards the corner in one of the darker sections, causing the crystals to flicker and emit a high-pitched humming sound. Only after she stopped did the sound gradually die back down. It hadn't been loud enough to hear over a distance, but still concerning none the less. She didn't remember seeing those things the last time she'd been here.

Finally, she shook herself, and reached out to peel the shadows open once more. And immediately, the nearest red crystal began pulsing and emitting a loud high-pitched noise, almost like an alarm. Except it seemed to be reacting to the shadows. Fuck.

She quickly abandoned all attempts to draw forth shadows and held her breath as she watched them slowly ebb away. It seemed to have been building up to something, and she really had no intention of finding out what that was. Only once the last specks of shadows had vanished did the crystal slowly calm back down.

Iris glared at the red magical device. This was probably her fault, wasn't it? Of course, they wouldn't just do nothing after she had blatantly attacked Lockhart from the shadows in the middle of the store like that.

That would make things very annoying.

Iris stared down the rifts of the aisles, looking for another spot. If anything, she'd have to find a spot as far away from any crystals as possible and hope that it would be enough. But that would also mean that if someone did enter, she couldn't just quickly disappear into the shadows, at least not without raising a massive alarm, and thereby ensuring that next time, the defenses would be even greater.

Well, now she wanted to slap herself. She had the perfect solution to that, but she had left it in Privet Drive, having assumed that her shadows would provide adequate cover to any situation anyway. But next time, she'd definitely bring their father's cloak.

But for now, while she was already here...

Iris dashed through the space, red crystals angrily humming in her wake, until she found one familiar room. It was the back-office, the one where she had confronted Lockhart and cast the Imperius on him. And as far as she could tell, there didn't seem to be any crystals in there. She could only hope that it would be far enough away from any of the others to trigger them when she peeled open the shadows.

Carefully reaching out, she began to slowly drag them together in the furthest corner, listening intently for even the slightest sign of any of the crystals going off. The rift grew wider and clearer, slowly gaining depth, as the shadows gathered. She could hear a faint humming in the distance, some of the crystals were beginning to react, but it would be fine. She was almost there.

Finally, the growing gap stopped and started to shiver. There. Iris took a quick step forward, and with a sharp tingling sensation, and a bright flash, she was once again flesh and blood, accompanied by a high-pitched humming from outside the door, that thankfully seemed to be slowly descending in volume. That had been close. Once all the shadows finally had safely ebbed away, she reached out and tried the door handle. Unexpectedly, it seemed to be unlocked.

Iris stepped through the door and came right face to face with one of the red crystals, softly glowing on the wall in front of her. She had a sinking feeling that she'd be seeing a lot more of those things in the future, especially if she wasn't careful with her shadows. What she wouldn't give to take one of the things with her to study it a bit... But if they reacted like that just being in the vicinity of shadows, she didn't even want to imagine what would happen if she tried to take one of them to the shadow realm.

Just another thing to look up, then.

Speaking of which, she'd better get to work. Iris started to comb through the shelves, began categorizing them by topic, and began to narrow down specific ones that could contain anything related to her bullet point list. She quickly found some books on dueling, as well as most of the advanced charms books for the coming years that she hadn't been allowed to buy yet, but the longer she looked, the more she came to realize the biggest, and most obvious flaw in her plan.

If magic that dealt with the dead, as well as free ritual was illegal, then of course she wouldn't find books on it freely available in a general magical bookstore. Hell, she'd probably have better luck in the Restricted Section of the Hogwarts Library, but she doubted that even that would contain the darkest of texts that she sought.

But where to go from here? She didn't really know any other magical bookstores or had any idea where else she might find books like that.

Iris spent some more time pocketing any and all advanced texts on spells, magical theory in general and the very few books that even mentioned polarized magic or ritual, and finally admitted defeat. She would need a new plan. And she had two more months to come up with one.

~V~

Borgin peered through the grimy storefront window of his shop, watching the flickering streetlamp cast long, eerie shadows in the night along Knockturn Alley. Business had been slow today, but Borgin knew better than to complain. Less traffic meant fewer potential threats and less interference from the Ministry. He idly polished a tarnished silver goblet, his eyes narrowing at the sight of a young girl in the distance. As she approached, Borgin felt a twinge of unease.

The bell above the door jangled as she stepped inside, the sound unnaturally loud in the oppressive silence of the shop. Borgin squinted at her, taking in her youthful features and unassuming appearance. While undeniably pretty, the face framing her bright green eyes had a very definite mark of youth that was not the sort that witches strived to maintain, but rather a sign of a girl who had not quite grown into herself yet. She couldn't have been more than fifteen, and that was stretching it. What could a girl like her possibly want in a place like this? Especially at a time like this?

"Hello?" came a hesitant voice.

Borgin was about to do the girl a favor and kick her out of this place, and Knockturn Alley along with it, but something about her expression stopped him.

She definitely seemed to be out of her depth, eyes darting every which way, a mix of worry and tension on her face. But there was also something about her—an underlying current of power that made him wary. A shadow behind her smile that he didn't like. All his years working in this field had made him especially sensitive to dark magics of all sorts. And this girl reeked of it. Either something had been done to her, or she had done something to someone else.

"Can I help you?" he asked gruffly.

She carefully approached his counter, eyes darting between all the things on display, but lingering on him every second in between. He slowly lowered his right hand down the counter, keeping it as close as possible to his wand without raising suspicion.

"Uhm... Well, I'm looking for something..." she began, and he couldn't help but shoot her a deadpan look. Was she some sort of Ministry plant?

"Well?" he asked impatiently.

She shuffled in place for a bit. "Yeah... I'm not sure what yet, exactly..."

"This place isn't a candy store, you know?" Borgin sneered. "Nor is it cheap."

"I know that!" she replied indignantly. "And I have money."

"So?" he demanded. "If you don't even know why you're here, then you better do yourself a favor and get out."

Borgin didn't like this one bit. Something was off about her, and usually, either people mistakenly ended up in his shop, or they knew exactly what they wanted. That, or they were from the Ministry. What possible reason could the girl have for coming specifically to his shop, despite seemingly knowing barely anything about it, and not having the slightest idea of what she needed to buy?

"I... well, the thing is, I'm looking for a gift... for Draco..."

For... Oh.

Oh.

Well, he'd be damned. He was suddenly glad that he hadn't followed his first instinct. If she was a friend of the Malfoy brat, and looking for a gift... most likely, since she seemed to have no idea why she was here, she had been pointed here by his father. That would have been really tough to explain to him the next time they met.

"Is that so?" he replied, slowly raising his right hand again to pick up the silver goblet and place it back into the glass counter.

"Uhm... do you... have any... I don't know... suggestions? I... I really don't know much about... well..."

Merlin's nutsack, this one was just too precious. He gave her his best attempt at a smile, and replied, "I might have a thing or two that he might enjoy..."

Borgin turned towards the display on the wall behind him and opened the tiny glass box containing one of the more expensive yet in truth useless artifacts he had on display. Oh, yes, if the girl really had the money—and he'd assume she did, if Mr. Malfoy sent her here—then he'd be able to make a very pretty Galleon off—

He suddenly felt a shiver run down his spine. Something was wrong. No, something was very very wrong.

The darkness he had been sensing, the taint, the magic, before it had been like a gentle cloak surrounding her, but now, it was a raging storm. He dropped the silver amulet he had been holding, and whirled, stumbling his own steps, as he fumbled for his wand at his side. His fingers closed around the handle, and he drew, as his eyes met—

An abyss of shadows, the likes of which he had only ever seen in his presence. Borgin froze in place at the sheer terror, and it was that very second of hesitation that cost him.

The shadows were drawn inwards, into the glowing wand the girl was holding, aimed right at him. Desperately, he began to cast the strongest shield he knew, but he knew that it wouldn't be enough. Kaleidoscopic rays of a deep blue and yellow began to burst from her wand, dancing rapidly around the tip, painting the entirety of the dusty shop in a hypnotic onslaught of shapes and color.

"Imperio!"

Oh. Well.

Borgin stared down at the wand in his hand, unsure what to do with it. His hair was dangling across his face, and he found himself annoyed by the motion. He really should have cut it a long time ago, but he just couldn't be arsed to do anything about his appearance these days.

What was... right. He was supposed to tell her about the books on dark magic. That sounded easy enough.

"We do have a number of books on all sorts of dark magics, but if you're looking for the really dark stuff, you'll probably have to look in the libraries of all the Pureblood families. They don't really hand out those kinds of books to anyone, Merlin, I bet most of them don't even know the stuff they keep around anymore. The only ones that you're going to find are the ones from the families that got wiped out in the last war. Other than that, you'll have to look abroad."

Abroad? What did he mean by that?

"It's where I got all the books that aren't from some family library or another. But most of those are in foreign languages."

He wondered what she wanted with those kinds of books. Most of them really weren't worth the hassle after all.

Also, he realized, he was supposed to tell her where he got the books abroad, and how she could get there.

"There's a place in Germany..." his mouth just kept moving on his own, he wasn't even listening to the words, and still, it was all he could think about.

"Right, anything else?" he asked, wondering what else he was supposed to do.

"Show me the ones you have here," she said, and he nodded.

"Follow me."

Borgin made his way towards the back, opened the secret compartment behind one of the storage shelves, then opened the hidden floor inside that room as well. On a single shelf, there sat a small collection of tomes, his proud collection he had accumulated over years. Some he had sold, others he had bought. And now he would hand them all over to her. And he'd do so without question.

Oh, and he'd tell her about any hidden curses or traps on the books.

"Just the ones at the end, the red and the blue one. Don't touch those without Dragonhide gloves."

Well, that seemed easy enough. Also, he was supposed to tell her if there was anything else she should be aware of, any way for someone to track the books, or herself, if she took them, or another way she could get hurt.

"Of course, if you're stupid enough to cast the spells in there, you'll probably get hurt..." he replied with a deadpan voice.

He supposed that was good enough.

Borgin watched her as she slowly gathered up the books and placed them inside her magically expanded bookbag.

Right, now for the final part. Just like she had done with Lockhart.

"I order you to forget anything that happened here today."

Ah, yes. Well, there was just a slight issue with that.

"Can't do that, missy," Borgin said.

"Why not?" she replied.

He sighed and scratched his head. "Don't know the Obliviation charm."

Well, that was an issue.

It certainly was. He was supposed to forget, but he couldn't just forget, especially after the Imperius ran out. Still, he wanted to forget. But even running through all the items he had in the shop, there was nothing here that would help him forget.

How was she supposed to make him forget? If she couldn't cast the charm, and he couldn't cast the charm, was there any way that wouldn't kill him? And there was no way that she'd do something like that. Not after what happened to Lockhart...

But that was a great idea. It would neatly solve the problem. The dead wouldn't remember anything, after all. And he was supposed to forget.

"Don't worry your pretty little head about it," he said with his best approximation of a smile.

He slowly raised the wand he was still holding, moved it up higher, and finally, stuck it to his neck.

"Wait! No! What are you doing? St—"

"Reducto."