Daphne gave my hand an unnoticeable little squeeze. I wasn't looking at her, so I couldn't say what prompted it.
"And what about the Arch? If it's not a secret."
"Mostly a secret," Susan answered, finishing off the last of her tea and setting the cup aside. "My aunt barely told me anything. Except for one thing — it looks like our anomaly, but dozens of times weaker."
"That's not all," Ernie added, frowning thoughtfully. "My father's at the Ministry practically every day — business, contracts, permits, international affairs, that sort of thing... He says he's noticed a couple of times that someone who works near the chamber with the Arch had a headache one day, and the next was behaving strangely, twitchily. Something's going on there."
"Curious..." Daphne voiced the thought, then caught herself, her face showing a flicker of displeasure.
"Well, that's about all the news, really," Susan concluded, losing her earlier confidence and growing a bit flustered again. "Sorry if it's not much to go on."
"Don't fret," I smiled at her. "Your information's plenty useful."
"Right then, everyone..." the moment Hannah said those words, all the desserts and dishes vanished. "Look at that, timed it just right. Shouldn't we be off to lessons?"
Throughout the whole school day I found myself mulling over what exactly could have happened with the arch Daphne and I had built, and the Arch at the Ministry. It was clear enough, on the surface, that the runes had somehow gone autonomous — but that shouldn't have been possible. The circuit in our arch was built specifically to prevent energy from leaking in from whatever place it connected to — that's basic safety practice when working with stationary or portable portal generators. Yes, such a concept doesn't exist in this world, but I know about it, and everything had been accounted for.
The background magic around Hogwarts couldn't possibly have been enough to feed the runes, under any circumstances. Nor to sustain a breach in the veil. Whatever error had caused this — and I really did need to see it with my own eyes, to understand exactly what "this" even was — could only have arisen from the arch's projection into the death plane. But even that had been accounted for. Unless...
Hm, perhaps at Samhain the Veil thins on its own, sufficiently to project especially powerful magical constructs into the death plane. And our construct had been quite powerful indeed, even by my own standards.
Fine, let's suppose that's the case. But then what did the Ministry's Veil of Death have to do with any of it? This called for thinking, checking, experimenting.
As it happened, it was for the sake of experimentation — or at least visual observation of the resulting anomaly — that after dinner I headed out not to the library, not to the common room or the Room of Requirement, but outdoors, remembering to dress properly for it — early November in the Scottish mountains is already cold of an evening and at night, and the damp only makes it worse. I invited Daphne along too, naturally, since we'd meant to test our new abilities today, but as it turned out, other matters had taken priority.
Slipping off the castle grounds under cover of darkness and Disillusionment Charms, we paused for a moment just past the gates.
"I'll add some runes for extra safety," Daphne said, flicking her wand, and a barely visible chain of runes, glowing blue, spun into being around us.
A clear sense settled over me that we'd become thoroughly invisible, inaudible, and unsmellable, and I smiled.
"Think it's necessary?"
"Best not to underestimate the Unspeakables. Or the Aurors, for that matter."
I made a mental note that the Aurors probably didn't have my artefacts, but the DMLE's field operatives almost certainly did. At least some of them. Yes, the artefacts weren't perfect, but even the modest functionality — modest, by my own standards — that I'd built into them was already a solid advantage. The last thing I needed was to get caught out through sheer carelessness — the sort of minor but irritating, potentially drawn-out headaches that would follow could hardly be overstated.
We set off boldly down the slope, toward that same lakeshore, hidden from view on nearly every side except the water. The castle still had lights burning behind us, a gradually waning but still bright moon hung in the sky, so we reached the treeline easily enough, without any trouble, and from there the familiar glowing night-mist provided more than enough light. Daphne, at least, could see everything perfectly well, perhaps not without help from her runes, charms, or her strange and — frankly — still-unexplained new abilities, while my own eyesight was already far better than any human's.
As we made our way through the woods, the ground now nearly level rather than sloping, a sense of cold set in, one there was no escaping. But, surprisingly, it bothered neither me nor Daphne. As though it were an insignificant change.
"Wait," Daphne whispered — pointlessly, given our concealment. "I see something strange."
"Oh? What exactly?" I made no effort to hide the concern in my voice.
"Remember I saw that odd magic around your head?"
"Yes."
"I'm seeing something similar now, but far less concentrated. And it's stretching out in little streams. Slowly. Like, here, for instance..."
Daphne reached her hand out to the side, took a step, and seemed about to touch something. I, for my part, was ready to do... well, anything at all — every corner of my mind was now fully devoted to processing information, analysis, sorting through potentially useful spells, and so on. I disconnected from the spiders — freed up a good deal of processing capacity.
Beneath Daphne's hand, a faint grey, smoky trickle glowed dimly, a misty little stream.
"And now I can see it with my second eye too," she noted quietly.
Her voice had gone utterly flat and focused — she'd cranked her Occlumency up to full, distancing herself from any feeling or personal sensation. I rarely saw her in such a wound-up, focused state.
"What do you feel?"
"I don't know," she shook her head. "I can't interpret it. Like touching thick, viscous air, except it isn't air, it's magic. Pure, aimed at nothing in particular. Curious."
She didn't even bother protesting her new, unwanted verbal tic this time.
"Now I find it 'curious' too. Where's the little stream coming from?"
"From the arch. It's over there..."
Daphne withdrew her hand from the stream and pointed toward the shore, still some two hundred metres off.
"Shall we go on?" I asked, likewise shutting off any unnecessary emotion.
"Yes."
And on we went.
Barely a hundred metres from the shoreline, Daphne reported that the number of little streams had multiplied several times over, their density climbing slightly higher too. We also spotted an Auror, or someone from the DMLE. Brown coat, hat, scarf — you couldn't tell him from a Muggle.
"Hm..." Now it was my turn to study this wizard thoughtfully. "Can you see a faint grey haze around him, like a trail?"
"No. Sounds like you're seeing something of your own. Grey as well, though."
"Right..."
The Auror — I'll call him that, for convenience — paced along some boundary known only to himself, occasionally rubbing his temples, clearly suffering from a headache. Only now did I make out that within that grey haze, some faint silhouette was barely visible.
Thin, without lower limbs, like a nearly-vanished ghost. Impossible to make out a face, though if it had one, it wouldn't have looked much different from a mummy's. More important, though, were the withered hands of this near-dead spectre, resting against the Auror's head. The figure was pressed right up against the Auror's back, its head positioned slightly above his, as though it were whispering something to the wizard. I could almost swear I heard some distant, distant whisper, one that would've been lost at the very edge of perception even in absolute silence.
"And the spectral figure?" I asked Daphne again.
"Not that either. Curious."
We decided to move a bit closer, a scant dozen metres. It was at that exact moment that the nearly invisible spectre jerked, whirling sharply toward us. An instant later it yanked its hands away from the Auror and seemed to draw some stream of something out of him, absorbing it. The Auror crumpled like a puppet with its strings cut, and the spectre grew far more distinct, more visible, though the haze still robbed it of any real detail.
"Full defences. All of it," I bit out shortly.
Daphne raised her wand, weaving a dozen runic chains around us and across the ground, glowing bright blue — she'd poured a considerable amount of magic into it. It was at that exact moment the spectre lunged toward us at speed.
My wand was already in hand, aimed at the spectre. A metre-wide diagram of an elven spell for banishing spirits, ghosts, and other immaterial undead lit up at its tip.
The spectre struck Daphne's barriers, which had appeared in an instant. Some of the barriers collapsed; others it passed straight through. Worrying.
"I see it," Daphne announced briefly, spinning her wand through a devilishly fast, complex gesture.
My spell finally triggered. Yellow, spectral chains shot instantly from the seal, meant to bind the spectre, but they had no effect on it whatsoever. Cancelling the cast at once, I focused my will and formulated the conditions for a Protego Diabolica, meaning to layer it over my free hand, when I finally felt that new energy in my head — the one Daphne had seen.
"Let's dance..."
I poured that energy, along with my ordinary magic, into the Protego Diabolica; grey flame, tinged with blue, wrapped around my left hand from elbow to fingertips, and with that hand I seized the spectre by the throat.
A howl, a shriek, a roar — the spectre produced all three at once, its hideous maw gaping open as it seized my arm with one limb, reaching the other toward my face, meaning to tear, to rend, or whatever else that aggressively grasping hand of withered fingers had in mind.
The effectiveness of my actions was very much in question. The Protego flame was clearly burning the spectre, inflicting hellish agony, but nothing more than that. I needed to get rid of it entirely.
Like a flash of insight, a spark, a sudden illumination — understanding of a simple seal, in some unknown language, came to me. What to do, how, and why, and most importantly, what the result would be. With one motion I returned my wand to its holster, formed a small seal — palm-sized — in my right hand, charging it purely with this new energy of mine. A swing, and with a hard slap of my palm against the spectre's forehead, I branded it there. Well, why not — it had frightened me, even if I hadn't actually been scared.
The spectre wailed louder still, and an enormous quantity of energy began pouring out from the seal on its forehead — not as a stream, not as background emanation, but in winding little rivulets, flowing straight toward Daphne and me. My mind understood, rationally, that this was now simply energy — and yet I still flinched.
What did I feel? Nothing. Nothing at all. Daphne reacted the exact same way.
The process wasn't quick — it took some ten seconds. The spectre evaporated entirely, leaving behind only a glowing black point. An instant later, that too crumbled into white dust, and vanished.
"Turn around," Daphne said.
I turned at once. She peered at me with her left eye, faintly hazy and grey.
"The unknown energy in you has grown denser. I'd assume, if it's in me too, the situation's much the same."
Her "ice queen" mode was still active, which made sense. We hadn't achieved our goal yet.
"I'd suggest leaving the reconnaissance for another day," I noted, just as calmly. "We need to analyse the situation first, and learn more about what's happening to us, and how it might prove useful."
"Agreed. Let's head back."
We returned to Hogwarts the same way we'd come. There was still time before curfew, and the wicket gate was open, unlike the main gates themselves, so we slipped through easily and unnoticed, despite Filch's watchful presence, standing in a corner and stroking his cat.
We only dropped the concealment charms on each other once we reached the Slytherin common room. Daphne let her self-control drop back down to its usual level, as did I, so she no longer resembled some soulless machine, but rather a shaken, somewhat troubled, perhaps faintly frightened, yet still perfectly ordinary and composed girl.
"That was..."
"Curious," I finished with a smile, and immediately pulled her into my arms.
Her response was entirely symmetrical.
"Tomorrow," she muttered, practically into my neck — she is tall, after all, and in heeled boots besides — "we're definitely going to sort out what's what. Attempting reconnaissance tonight was needlessly reckless."
"Agreed."
After a quick exchange of this and that, we decided to part ways — there was sleep to catch up on, and much to think over. A goodnight kiss, and Daphne vanished through the entrance to her house's common room, while I made my way unhurriedly through the castle corridors — still had rounds to do tonight, being a prefect and all. Might as well think things over while I was at it. Or perhaps not. All of this was simply too strange, too unclear, given the lack of proper information and knowledge. And I don't much care for that.
---------------
Give me Powerstones if you like the story.
If you want to read 60+ advance chapters, you can do so on my Patreon.
Patreon(.)com/TheRedSpell