lomonaaeren

Thank you again for all the reviews! A note that this story will be going on hiatus until Sunday, August 7th, so that I can concentrate on the summer series of stories I’ll be writing, From Litha to Lammas and Songs of Summer.

Chapter Thirty-Five—Pearls of Wisdom

“You intend to bring in Muggleborn children earlier then, sir?” Lavinia was frowning a little, her eyes fixed on him. “Where will we shelter them? We have some room in the Houses for them, but I thought you said the Sorting magic wouldn’t work on children who were too young.”

Tom nodded grimly. That had happened because he had patterned the school on Hogwarts, something he regretted now. There had been no reason for it except that he had yearned for Hogwarts to be something it was not. “We have room in the dome that—used to belong to Belasha,” he said.

Lavinia closed her eyes for a moment. Then she murmured, “Perhaps you’ll call on Mr. Black to Transfigure some of the walls and establish partitions for bedrooms?”

“Is he that good with Transfiguration?”

“I just realized I was assuming,” Lavinia said, and flushed a little. “He did learn the Animagus transformation, after all.”

“That does not always lend itself to skill with object-to-object Transfiguration,” Tom said, but relented when he saw how red Lavinia’s cheeks had gone. “It is still a good suggestion.” He took a deep breath and heaved himself up from the chair in his office.

Lavinia stood up at once, but Tom waved her off. “I will simply have to get used to the magical exhaustion,” he murmured.

“Is it—permanent, sir?”

Tom shook his head. “No, but I have not had the time to rest in the last day because of the need to have discussions and plan for the Muggleborn evacuations.” And the Muggle ones. Those would be more difficult, because while some parents and other family members might want to come with the Muggleborn children, others would resist, or argue, or disbelieve in the danger. Tom would do what he must in those cases to ensure they were protected.

“You should rest, sir. If someone comes to me with a question, I’ll take care of it, or set aside the questions I can’t answer myself for you to answer when you wake.”

Tom considered it. Lavinia was precise and knew as much about the school as anyone working there, but she had the kind of unemotional detachment that came with being a good Legilimens, and she might not handle all the requests as well as he would have. “You will do your best to respond with warmth?”

Color made its way across her cheeks again. Tom knew he was one of the few people honored with seeing so many emotions on display in her face, and he did consider it an honor. “Yes, sir. Of course.”

Well, if something went wrong, Tom decided that staying awake to deal with it would probably cost him more than it was worth in time and energy. He nodded and made his way from his office to his bedroom, where he lay down with his head on more pillows than usual.

His mind swam in the direction of Belasha, and he drifted off remembering the sound of her voice.

*

“I think I know what the creature is that attacked me.”

Harry watched as Professor Riddle blinked and obviously focused his mind on what Harry was saying. How much time it took him to do that concerned Harry.

Well, no, actually, it upset and frightened him. But yelling at Professor Riddle wouldn’t do any good. He had moved as fast and decisively as anyone could ask for, and Harry was going on a potential Muggleborn rescue mission himself in just a while. Okay, he would have to watch from the background in case Ministry people showed up to attack, but he was still going.

“What is it?”

“The Elder Wand.”

Professor Riddle blinked and sat up, the last clouds of dreariness clearing from his eyes. Harry half-smiled. They were sitting in the professor’s office with a private silver tea service between them, something they did quite often. It was good to see how Professor Riddle picked up his cup and snatched a biscuit a second later, as if the return of his predatory nature had restored his appetite.

“Why do you think that?”

“The magic that surrounded it felt familiar,” Harry said. “I’ve got better at analyzing magic that’s affecting me than I used to be. Or than I was the last time I went to the Malfoy wards.” Harry grimaced. He hated admitting that the Elder Wand could take him out as easily as it did Professor Riddle or anyone else who wasn’t a war wizard. “And it reminds me of that inhuman presence I’ve felt before. I don’t think it was Grindelwald that wanted to attack me at all, or that was afraid of me. It was the Wand.”

Professor Riddle gazed at him above the rim of his teacup. “I have to admit that I have often felt as though Grindelwald was only the human puppet of the Wand. But it doesn’t explain why the Wand is afraid of you. It has already manipulated you once before.”

Harry smiled. “It’s afraid of what I could do, not what I’ve done so far.” He had read and reread Disaster’s book with that in mind, and now he finally thought he had the beginnings of an answer. “The story of the Deathly Hallows says that the Elder Wand is—”

“The ultimate weapon of destruction. The most powerful wand ever to exist. Yes. But what does that have to do with its feelings towards you?”

“What are war wizards, sir?”

Professor Riddle didn’t even take as long to come to the conclusion as Harry had thought he might. His eyes widened. “Weapons of destruction given human form.”

Harry nodded once. “I think that I might be able to master the Elder Wand—not the way Grindelwald has, where his ‘mastery’ just means that the wand can use him, but really subjugate the Elder Wand to me. If it’s true that Malfoy summoned it and Grindelwald from some other world, then it probably didn’t expect to find an opponent like me in this world. Maybe it deliberately chose a world where it didn’t think there would be war wizards. That part, I’m still not sure about.”

Professor Riddle stared at him for a long moment. Then he smiled. Harry reveled in that smile, and tried not to let it show on his face. Professor Riddle would probably chide him for being undignified if he did.

“How sure are you of this?” the professor asked quietly.

“Pretty sure.”

“But the divination seems to imply that Andromeda Tonks will be involved somehow with the recovery of the Elder Wand. Do you have a plan to subjugate it that includes both the wand and her?”

Harry laughed. “Sir, I barely have a plan that includes the wand yet. But I wondered if you have anyone who knows wandlore, so I can start learning from them and planning out a trap. Of course I want to help with hiding Muggleborns and Muggles, but I think taking control of the Elder Wand is the most important blow we can deal to our enemy right now.”

“And you prefer the offensive to the defensive side of magic.”

Harry met his eyes and let his own strength rise to the surface for a moment, shining. He knew he looked different, felt different, when he did that. “Yes, sir.”

Professor Riddle studied him intently for a long second. Then he said, “You could not master the wand the last time you faced it.”

“No, sir. That’s specifically why I do want to study wandlore.”

“And would you like to speak to Andromeda? I warn you, she’s become intransigent lately. Not only does she want us to come up with something that would leave her sister entirely unharmed, but she insists that she be the one to strike the finishing blow to Malfoy.”

Harry smiled. “I don’t mind that, sir. It’s not the same thing as the finishing blow to Malfoy’s regime, and that’s the thing I care about most. I think you do, too,” he added, greatly daring, but even if Professor Riddle reacted badly to that, Harry didn’t think the man would really take it out on Harry himself.

Professor Riddle sat in silence for a moment. Then he nodded. “Very well. I have only one person who knows something about wandlore, and she usually prefers to work on other tasks, but I’ll have her talk to you about this.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“And Harry? I do hope that you’re right, and we have a means of neutralizing our most powerful enemy.”

“If we don’t right now, sir, we will soon.”

Professor Riddle’s thin smile was the only reward Harry needed.

*

Hermione closed her eyes and waited for a long moment, until she felt the connection with Professor Elthis’s mind spring into life.

This was something they had only barely begun to practice when the attack on the school had happened. Now Hermione knew that she was an integral part of the defense, and her hands shook a little before she tucked them under her knees and sat back in her chair.

She had to concentrate. She was nervous, yes, but she would not fail.

“Concentrate,” Professor Elthis said, and so close were they now that Hermione had no idea whether or not she was speaking the words aloud. “Can you feel the difference that magic makes between a Muggle and a magical mind?”

Hermione would have said that it wasn’t quite that simple, because she could also feel a difference between Muggle and Squib minds, even though Squibs didn’t have magic, either. But it wasn’t the right time to correct Professor Elthis on terminology or the like. She needed to use all of her magic to feel the faintest flicker, as though magical minds—or Squib ones—had a fire burning in the center of them that threw a distant heat and light on the thoughts she was touching. And she had to reach out to a neighborhood with some Muggles in it who knew about magic that was quite distant from Fortius.

“Good,” Professor Elthis breathed at last, when Hermione had thought she might need to speak the information aloud. “Now reach out and create that ward I showed you.”

Hermione took the deepest of the breaths and wiped her hands one more time on her robes. Then she began to weave the soft strands of the ward together, while Professor Elthis watched for the approach of any enemy. At this point, that would be almost any wizard or witch not already in the area. All of Professor Riddle’s people in the area would be on guard, and Hermione could distinguish the minds of young children, like the Muggleborns living at home with their parents, from those of adults.

She knew the theory behind the ward, and knew she had the strength to create it—but also in theory. She hadn’t done it before because they couldn’t have tested it without finding some random Muggles and then attacking them when the ward was done to see whether it worked. Hermione had to work and trust that Professor Elthis, “listening” to the way that Hermione was entwining magic and thoughts, would alert her if she saw something going wrong.

If she could even do it in time. It wasn’t theoretically impossible for this ward to explode and wipe out Hermione’s and Professor Elthis’s minds with it.

Just statistically unlikely.

Hermione reminded herself of that again and again as she tied together the magic of the people who surrounded the Muggles, mostly Muggleborns and people who worked with Professor Riddle’s school and had decided to visit their relatives, and the thoughts of the Muggles. She could feel her body shaking, her breath coming in gasps. She could feel the cold sweat forming under her arms, and the sudden, ravening hunger swarming up from her belly.

But she didn’t stop until Professor Elthis whispered, “The ward is complete.”

Hermione took a deep breath and opened her eyes. She was slumped back against her chair, and Professor Elthis was holding a clear glass bowl of chocolate and strawberries that she must have asked for from the kitchens when Hermione wasn’t listening to her physical body. She grabbed it and began to eat, hardly waiting for Professor Elthis to offer her the spoon. “You think it’ll work?” she asked, when she had fulfilled some of her body’s sudden need for sweet things.

Professor Elthis gave her a short look. “I would not have told you that you were done if I had thought it wouldn’t.”

Hermione flushed and nodded, then went back to eating. Her hand still shook a little, but that came from nervousness rather than the need for calories.

“It will alert them,” Professor Elthis said quietly when they had spent perhaps five minutes in silence, and Hermione had moved on to the plate of meat and crackers Professor Elthis had pushed towards her. “If someone uses magic around them, it will wake the Muggles even if they are in a deep sleep. And it will prevent them from being Obliviated or having the Imperius used on them, and those are still the most common weapons that purebloods turn to when dealing with large groups of Muggles. Finally, it will alert us. You’ve done it, Miss Granger. Your parents should be protected, and all the others who know at least a little about magic.”

“We can’t do much about all the others who just happen to live in the same neighborhoods and might be victims of the purebloods, though,” Hermione said miserably. It was the sort of thought that haunted her dreams at night, that the purebloods could slaughter people and make the Muggle authorities utterly unable to investigate it.

“That’s what our strike teams who don’t include a practicing Legilimens are for,” Professor Elthis said. “And you know that there are other ways you can be involved in that.”

Hermione nodded again, and resigned herself to eating. Manipulating minds and magic from such a distance tired her out as nothing else did, and she would have to set up wards around multiple Muggle neighborhoods, as many of them as she could manage, before the Ministry started reacting to what they had done.

Hermione was a little surprised that they hadn’t done something already, but maybe the illusion Professor Riddle had layered over the school was more effective than she’d thought.

*

Lucius stood and stared at the broken gates, the trampled earth beyond it, the stone buildings scarred with spellfire. He’d walked through them and felt the smoldering heat still lingering beneath the ground and in the stones. He’d gone up and put his hand on them, and the heat had seared his palm.

He didn’t believe it.

Riddle had always struck him as the quiet, cautious type, because that was the only type that would survive running a secondary school. Most people Lucius knew would have got too ambitious and tried to raise their school up to rival Hogwarts. But Riddle was the sort who didn’t care for personal glory, and even if he had been running a scheme of sorts beneath the surface, as the account books suggested…

It didn’t make sense that he would utterly destroy the school in response to the threat Alicia had presented. And it didn’t make sense that Alicia’s force could have razed Fortius. She hadn’t brought that much power with her.

Lucius stared at what had been a huge dome-like building, and which now was missing its roof and had black streaks running down the walls, as though someone had stuck them again and again with a crazed Lightning Curse. He wondered if that had been the place where the puppetmaster had lived.

Because someone had commanded Riddle to do this, had pulled his strings and made him act in a way that had overridden his natural caution—although Lucius still thought Riddle would probably have insisted that all the students and books and treasures be moved somewhere safe first.

It would have had to be someone who had enormous power, a pureblood whom Riddle would have feared and obeyed.

Who better than Roland Peverell?

Lucius smiled with only his lips.

And perhaps this was an illusion, one that Lucius could penetrate to see the real places left underneath. Riddle might have intended to come back with his students once the Ministry was fooled into withdrawing. Lucius would have to make sure that he couldn’t do so.

But he also wasn’t powerful enough to pull down such a wide-ranging illusion by himself. He would have to arrange help.

Lucius gave the place a thoughtful look and walked out the blasted, twisted gates. He suspected that Fortius’s secrets were waiting to be discovered, and if Peverell had lived here—perhaps inside the magnificent dome—he would return when he saw them threatened.

And then Lucius could make sure Peverell was pinned in the open.

Easy prey for his lord.

*

Tom paused when he opened the door and found Angelina Johnson slumped over the table in front of her, in the midst of what looked like a dead faint.

“What’s wrong with her?” Nora demanded, moving past him. She put down the tray of soup she was carrying on the edge of the table and cast a swift charm at her younger cousin. It did nothing. She glanced at Tom with narrowed eyes.

“Exhaustion, I suspect,” Tom said, and looked at the chart in front of his student. It was a combination of the one he had made of the alchemical requirements from the parchment hidden in Secrets of the Damned and the runes Harry had given him. Even though Tom considered himself something of an expert on Runes, his favorite branch of magic after Dark Arts and Legilimency, he had no idea what to make of these.

“Magical?”

“No, I just fell asleep studying,” said Angelina, pushing her braids away from her face and reaching to accept the soup that Nora offered. “Sorry. I’m really tired.”

“Have you made progress on realizing what the runes mean?” Tom asked, sitting down in the chair next to the table on the other side. “It looks if you may have joined them to the alchemical symbols in a way I am not sure I understand.” He studied the parchment again, but it was no more comprehensible from the other side of the table and upside-down.

“Not really, sir.” Angelina hesitated until Nora frowned at her, and then she started eating her soup again. But Tom waited until she had eaten enough to push the bowl away a little and ask, “Are you sure that these runes are correct, sir? I mean, correctly drawn or copied from their source?”

“As far as I know, they are. Why?”

“It’s—they feel unfinished.”

“Unfinished.”

“Sorry, sir, I can’t explain it better than that.” Angelina now looked a few breaths away from snapping her quill in a fit of frustration. But she managed to keep it whole enough to turn the parchment around and trace one of the new runes with the edge of it. “Look at this. This bar through Algiz. Why isn’t it longer?”

Tom arched his eyebrows. “I think most people would be asking why it’s there at all, Miss Johnson.”

“I know it’s there to change the rune, to charge the rune, to feed it power.” Angelina bobbed her head decisively. “But it doesn’t feel as though the line is long enough. As though whoever drew the rune was interrupted before they could finish. And I know that, but I don’t know how to make it long enough! Where I would stop drawing if I tried to finish it!”

She looked close to tears, but that was probably just the few late nights and the exhaustion. Tom put his hand over hers. “Please don’t drive yourself mad trying to solve this, Miss Johnson. The person who gave me the runes couldn’t explain them, so even what you’re saying now is more information than we had before.”

“But we could use them for so much if we could just solve them.”

“Solve them?”

“Yes, professor. They’re put of an equation, or they could be, the way that Arithmantic numbers are. Can’t you feel them?”

It was still never easy for Tom to admit a shortcoming. He had a voice, or what felt like a voice, hissing in the back of his head, They’ll attack you if you’re weak, they’ll hate you, they’ll shun you. But long years as a teacher had modified that somewhat. Students did surpass their teachers, often, in time. So he was able to smile and shake his head. “I’m sorry, Miss Johnson. I don’t know what you mean.”

“There’s an energy to them that I’ve only ever felt with Arithmancy.” Angelina was scowling at the parchment. “The Arithmantic equations almost rush ahead to their solutions, if you use them well enough. But that’s because equations have solutions. It feels like these runes could—could create new ones, could create something on the other side of…”

“Of what?”

“I don’t know.”

Tom nodded. He supposed he had felt a similar kind of energy around the runes, although he hadn’t connected it to Arithmancy. “It’s all right, Miss Johnson. If you continue to work on this project, then it’s the most important thing you can do right now. I have some information to indicate that these runes will be an important part of our defenses in the future.” He stood.

“All right, professor.”

Nora gave Tom one more narrow look, but decided to stay and attend to her cousin while Tom left. Tom stepped out of Angelina’s room in Phoenix House and stared at the dome that had housed Belasha. Some of the Muggleborn students had convinced their families to move in there, and Sirius Black had indeed proven useful with Transfiguring plain stone walls and floors into partitions and rooms.

If Tom squinted, he could make out the illusion of the ruined dome that would be showing to Ministry eyes.

If he closed his eyes, he could fool himself into thinking Belasha was still alive.

Tom shook his head and walked towards his office again. He would have to find another Parseltongue-based method of defending the school, since he didn’t have the kind of time that breeding another basilisk would require, but it was not the sort of thing that could occupy his mind right now.

*

“I have not been able to find any trace of a man named Roland Peverell or of the Peverell bloodline continuing under that name in recent times, sir.”

Andromeda kept her eyes lowered as she handed the report to Lucius. Lucius scanned it and bit back a curse. Yes, she had been most diligent in tracing the bloodlines to their end. The Gaunt family had ended when their last member, Morfin, had died in Little Hangleton, and he had had no children. The Potter family carried some of their blood, but of course hadn’t existed under the Peverell name in centuries.

“What does this note near the end mean?” Lucius asked, squinting at it.

“There is a family with the last name Perryvale whom I tracked to the States,” Andromeda said. “They once lived here in Britain. But the magical community where they live has made the records of many families in it a matter of public record, and I was able to determine that the name is a coincidence. They have no Peverell ancestors.”

Lucius shook his head. “Then he must have stolen it. A pureblood with green eyes and dark hair, Andromeda. Use that information. Track him down and search for someone of the right age and look who might have vanished or appeared to die.”

“Yes, sir.”

Arthur hovered behind when Andromeda and the other members of Lucius’s research task force left the office. It took an effort for Lucius to force a pleasant edge to his smile. Arthur had become a worse than useless ally since the death of his potionborn eldest daughter. He was forever interested in harvests and not much else. “Yes, Arthur?”

“I just wondered if you know a way to heal a potionborn child without harvesting?”

Lucius paused. That was at least a new question. “I don’t know of one. Why do you ask?”

“Molly wrote to me to say that she found one. And she and Evangeline are coming home.” Arthur licked his lips. “Of course I’ll be delighted to see them, and I couldn’t wish for better than to know that Evangeline is out of danger…”

“But?” Lucius asked delicately when Arthur trailed off.

“I’m afraid that she might have found something illegal to save Evangeline. She’s so fierce in defense of her children, my Molly.” Arthur kept his head bowed, his fingers twisting. “I’d just like to make sure that she isn’t prosecuted when she gets home.”

Lucius felt like bursting out laughing, but he settled for patting Arthur’s shoulder. “Of course not, my dear fellow. A magical discovery like that will be hailed by the researchers working to perfect the potion. And as long as it doesn’t harm purebloods, what does it matter?”

Arthur gave him a smile full of desperate relief and scuttled away. Lucius rolled his eyes. Yes, Arthur was in some ways a useless ally, but more than that, he was naïve, not to have understood the way their world worked before now.

*

Arthur smiled a little as the lift carried him down to the Atrium, where he could Floo home. He could write back to Molly and reassure her that her fears about coming home and publicizing her discovery were unjustified.

Yes, well, he hadn’t told Lucius outright that her discovery involved blood magic, but he had hinted at it, and Lucius had said it was all right. And all that really mattered was that Evangeline would survive.

It was too late for poor Victoria, but we need to focus on keeping the living safe.