Heavy, leaden eyelids refused to lift. The morning sunlight filtering through the window brought on a headache. Though, truth be told, my head ached even without the sunlight's help. Not badly, but the heaviness itself was remarkable. The dwarf shard of memory had rich experience with hangovers, but even it couldn't boast recollections of quite so extensive a state of non-functioning — I didn't even have the strength to move. This, I suppose, was what mornings used to feel like for my base-self, the one who'd lived through the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, on the mornings his health failed him, minus the alcohol.
Fighting through the weight of my own eyelids, I finally managed to open my eyes, immediately squinting — the sun really was shining in through the window, having only just risen over the Scottish mountains. Who am I? Where am I? What's even... Ah, right... I'd forgotten that waking up isn't always instantaneous — sometimes it takes a while just to work out what time it is, what day it is, what you're even meant to be doing.
Trying to sit up in the bed — clearly in the Hogwarts Hospital Wing — I managed it only with difficulty, meanwhile arranging the pillow so I'd end up at least somewhat propped up in a half-sitting position.
Next stage — restoring my fully severed connections to my artefacts... Artefacts! Daphne!
The moment memory of our experiment came flooding back, I spread my energy-sensitivity across the Hospital Wing, and immediately felt Daphne, deep in a healthy sleep — she was on the next bed over, screened off by a curtain.
Right, that all seemed fine. Artefacts...
I found them at once, the moment I turned my gaze to the bedside table on my right. A large box sat there, covered in runes. Something to do with shielding and isolation, if my initial reading was right. But it was definitely there that I felt all my artefacts.
Just as I reached out toward the box, the curtain in front of my bed was flung fully and abruptly open, revealing a stern Madam Pomfrey, dressed properly in her uniform — a maroon-and-white outfit rather like a nurse's habit.
"Mr Granger," she said dryly. "I see you're awake. No artefacts—"
She'd clearly caught on to my intentions of getting my artefacts back.
"I trust, Mr Granger, that you're perfectly well aware blood magic is banned for use by anyone in England who isn't a licensed master?"
"I trust, in turn, that you're bound by medical ethics regarding the disclosure of personal information?" I answered with a half-smile.
"Naturally. Fortunately for you, your artefacts respond to a standard runic 'Intent' contract. Otherwise they might have complicated your treatment. And no, Mr Granger, I haven't the faintest idea what function they serve."
"Good... I suppose. Can I have them back?"
"Only after diagnostics, and immediately before discharge. In case magical intervention is required. And I, being a Master Healer, am not inclined toward experimenting on my patients."
"Lovely..."
Madam Pomfrey briskly began casting a variety of diagnostic charms and spells around me, most of which I already recognised, the rest evidently of her own devising.
The results showed I was healthy, could do with a Strengthening Potion, and, in principle, could clear off out of here — at least, that's what this stern woman's expression was telling me.
"How's Daphne?" I couldn't help but ask the burning question.
"Perfectly well, Mr Granger. She should wake within five to ten minutes, if the magic's to be believed."
I assumed she meant the runic chains woven into the beds, combined with various charms.
Getting up, changing, and putting on all my artefacts, I immediately reconnected to the spider network, felt the scaled bracelet of little triangles, sensed the bow's readiness to shoot-kill-destroy-extinguish-stuff, felt the response from the clearance ring for spellcasting at my parents' house, and so on.
A flood of information swept through my brain for a moment, but that moment lasted precisely as briefly as its name suggests — extremely short. Having processed all of it, I found myself frowning slightly, quite without meaning to. It seemed all it took was for me to drop out of life for four days, and the castle had already stirred up some unclear turmoil, activity, and the like. Not on a mass scale, admittedly, but it needed nipping in the bud all the same. My phoenix-self was still in the process of forming, so I decided not to trouble its semi-material shell, currently engaged in creating — well, at this point, who even knew what.
While I was getting myself, my thoughts, and my perception in order, and recalibrating my artefacts, Daphne woke up. At first it was hard for her too, but her condition normalised quickly on its own, and the moment she'd changed and put on my bracelet, the last traces of malaise vanished entirely.
We left the Hospital Wing. There was nobody around, so Daphne allowed herself to fling herself at me abruptly, wrapping her arms around my neck and pressing herself as close as physically possible. No words, no fuss. We simply stood there — she holding me, me holding her. The reason was simple — she remembered exactly what had happened, just as well as I did. If death itself holds no emotion, then right now she was rapidly working through everything she ought to have felt back then, during the incident.
Almost without meaning to, I switched into "soother mode," holding her close with one arm, stroking her with the other, murmuring all sorts of everyday nonsense, all the while sensing the powerful emotional storm inside her gradually subsiding. And yes, there's one detail worth noting. Daphne had gained a fully grey, even white, thin streak of hair. Her hairstyle is somewhat voluminous, parted on the left, and the streak grew right above her left eye, part of it falling to the left side, part to the right.
I, for that matter, had also gained more grey — or rather, I'd call it thickly white — hair: my temples at eye level, all the way to the back of my head, meeting there.
In truth, none of this was particularly surprising. Direct contact with a bearer and source of death energy, especially of such magnitude — planetary in scale — doesn't pass without leaving a mark. This world might find such a thing astonishing, but the elven shard, the dwarven one, and the pair of archmage shards — the latter, admittedly, just useless fragments, and far too small at that — could all say with certainty that such contact changes a person. Inside, outside, mentally, magically — it made no difference.
So why hadn't I, as a wizard, changed in colour or otherwise when I'd cultivated affinities with various energy planes? Well, humans in this world are rather weak magical beings. Humanity's history barely amounts to anything, and as a more-or-less sentient race, it's nothing at all. In the elf's world, human society had existed for over a hundred and twenty thousand years, and magic — as a phenomenon, an ability, simply a physiological function — had rooted itself far too deeply in people. Here, everyone's still a "newcomer" to the whole business.
Were it not for reason and intellect, humans here would rank, by the standards of magical danger, as second class at best, third at worst. Because of this weakness, wizards resist the effects of spells, charms, magic, and energies in general rather poorly. Hence the grey hair...
"There, there..." I started to say something soothing.
"Don't you 'there, there' me," Daphne muttered quietly, still holding onto me, her breath almost against my neck. "You're rubbish at things that need doing without complete control of your thoughts, without pragmatism. And I'm quite certain that if you ever stopped controlling your thoughts... you'd suffocate on your own contradictions."
"Then let's just stand here a while longer. Honestly, I'm in shock too, and I'd also like a minute of warmth, quiet, and calm."
So we stood there. For a long time. Barely moving. I just stroked Daphne and murmured something pleasant and soothing, drawing on the memories of the elven shard — not a womaniser by any stretch, but over a thousand-odd years he'd found himself in the long-term and not-so-long-term company of several women whose differences in temperament covered nearly the entire possible spectrum of feminine behavioural patterns.
Before long Daphne had fully settled whatever needed settling within her, roused whatever needed rousing, drew back from me with a faint smile, and glanced out the window.
"Oh," she breathed. "Morning."
Reaching for her wand, Daphne quite unintentionally cast a wandless Tempus.
The numbers glowed above her hand, which had frozen halfway to her wand. I froze too, staring at it. As far as I knew, she'd never even attempted wandless magic beyond the basics — moving objects and Lumos!
"Curious..." Daphne said, then stared at me in shock. "I even started talking like this... this someone."
"Now that really is 'curious,'" I couldn't help smiling encouragingly. "Pay Death a visit, come away having learned wandless magic."
"You already knew how," Daphne curled her hand into a fist, and the numbers crumbled into light, unnoticeable sparkles that vanished at once. "I didn't. If I'd known your limits, maybe I could've asked you to do something like this for an experiment."
"Hm... Then do 'something like this' yourself."
"Then..." Daphne swept her hand elegantly through the air, conjuring a floating whip of fire, tethered to her fingers.
Giving it a couple of daring flicks, making the whip perform some strange dance meant to look elegant, Daphne clenched her hand into a fist, dispelling the magic, and winced.
"Fire's very difficult."
A couple more experiments with reasonably complex spells and charms made it clear that anything tied to the elements came hard, while magic without elemental colouring came rather easily. What's more, Daphne even managed to Transfigure a large mug out of thin air — one I'd never seen before.
The girl correctly read my surprised look and explained:
"My favourite mug from home," she said, tossing it aside with a careless gesture, making it vanish. "I know it by touch better than anything, and I understand exactly what ceramic is. But... it's strange."
I'm not sure at what point we turned into magical-research fanatics, but my immediately voiced idea of quickly testing mental abilities found an eager response — Daphne began answering my questions, framed as "such-and-such equation, here's the system, give me the answer." And Daphne was producing those answers practically before I'd finished the sentence.
"Oh!" she was so genuinely astonished that now I was astonished too. "Have I actually gotten smarter?"
I stepped closer to her and reached a hand toward her shoulder, but didn't touch it.
"May I?"
"You didn't even need to ask."
Placing my hand on her shoulder, I focused and released faint, barely perceptible waves of magic through my palm, waiting for a response — the closest available concepts to describe it would be resonance and echolocation. Or, without the concepts, it all boils down to "feel the Force, Luke."
The sensation of magic within Daphne was strikingly different from what one would expect from an ordinary local wizard. Setting aside, of course, unique individuals who'd managed to alter, enhance, or twist themselves — Amber, for instance. Beyond the neutral energy flowing gently in small quantities, typical of a wizard's calm state, there was also death energy, clearly bound to Daphne's head, and specifically to her eye. It was from that side that the grey streak grew.
So what, then, did the entire "clearing" of grey hair at my own temples mean? At this rate I'd end up looking like a hero out of one of Justin's comic-book collections!
---------------
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