Magical Hogwarts

divis mountain peak, belfast, northern ireland | saturday 29 january 2005

“Civilisation, the orderly world in which we live, is frail. We are skating on thin ice.”
-- Zygmunt Bauman

The distant bells of the Albert Clock chimed five times. The sun had "set" mere minutes ago. It was showtime for the Dark Widow and her loyal, growing group of followers who were trying to overthrow the International Statute of Secrecy.

Sadly the eotenas from the folklore of her youth, if they had ever existed in the first place, had been too elusive for her to find. She had considered the risk of conjuring a selma purely for the shock effect, but it was such an aggressively carnivorous beast that she was concerned it would eat some Muggles and perhaps try to eat her too (not that it would succeed, but what a waste it would be to have to kill a majestic serpent like that because of her own hubris).

So instead, she just nodded to her Orphans, who opened the front doors of the boxes each of them carried and allowed a large number of what looked like tiny ice-blue lizards to waddle out. They had, of course, been preshrunk to fit in the boxes so they could be Apparated to the location alongside the wizards that were letting them loose. One by one, the Dark Widow and her Orphans cast "Engorgio" on each of the little beasties to return them to their normal size, and as they did, each frost salamander grew to its normal, though still fairly small, size of about a meter long. On select individuals of the species Cameryn and her crew also cast "Ignis Frigora", the Flame-Freezing Charm, so that when the inevitable opposition force arrived and tried to repel the salamanders with fire, they would fail. Or at least be inconvenienced.

Her miniature army of relatively peaceful but certainly unexpected beasts released, Cameryn turned back around and began her approach to the transmitting station that sat betwixt the peaks of Divis Mountain and Black Mountain. While Muggle wireless operated a different way than Witching wireless, both communicated their transmissions via airwaves, and so it was one of the easier pieces of technology to hijack and adapt to their needs - or so Cameryn had been told by a few tech-savvy Orphans in her entourage. Those men and women (despite the "name") were just finishing up their setup when Cameryn and the rest of the group approached, and a middle-aged man with a sturdy gut handed her a rounded, slitted cube atop a rod which she understood she'd be able to talk into and everyone for miles around them would hear her. Several of the other Orphans began casting Cave Inimicum, Protego Totalum, Muffliato, and Celaro Aspectum in a circle around the area, making it harder for any Ministry officials to see, hear, or find their exact location while the broadcast was going on.

A sharp-jawed woman Orphan flipped a switch on another box contraption that they had connected, a light on its top turned on, and the portly man gave Cameryn a thumbs-up. She cleared her throat and then began chatting merrily into the holes in the cube. "Good evening, BBC Radio, and welcome to a very special broadcast coming to you live from Belfast. I'd like to draw your attention way up to the peak of Divis Mountain, can you see it up there? I'm not sure I can make out the details from where I'm standing," she lied bald-facedly, "but if I'm not mistaken, that's where evening skiers and snowshoers have probably begun to see the most marvelous creatures. I hope anyone who can hear this won't be too alarmed by them. Frost salamanders are relatively harmless, and will leave you alone if you leave them alone. If you want to approach these beautiful creatures that have just come out of hibernation to celebrate winter with Northern Ireland, make sure you do with open hands, and don't get too close to their mouths as they may instinctively bite. Frost salamanders are carnivorous by nature but they don't actually try to attack larger creatures unless they're threatened, so you should be fine. However, if you have any little dogs enjoying this winter weather with you, it may be wise to keep them on a leash, pick them up, or take them indoors.

"If these creatures sound wondrous and incredible and perhaps too unbelievable, or you simply don't remember hearing about them before, I can provide an explanation as to why -- these creatures are, hard as it may be to believe, part of a magical climate that exists alongside the mundane world you are all familiar with. Witches and wizards have been living peaceably among you for centuries - in fact, twelve hundred years ago, they were a well-known and helpful part of the community. Nowadays, however, a small group of magical politicians have decided that they do not want to share these amazing creatures, or their helpful magic such as healing, protection, and self-defense, with the rest of you. They are trying to keep this sort of thing secret from you forever, and in truth, we probably have only minutes before they come searching for my friends and I, try to interrupt this broadcast, and erase anyone's memories of hearing me or seeing the frost salamanders. If you can hear me, and you want to hear more about what you've been missing out on regarding real magic in your real world, grab something to protect yourself and stay close to your radio. I'd now like to turn over the broadcast to one of my friends, who will tell you a little more about what magic can do for you, and why we want to make it available to the rest of the world."

With that, she handed the cube back to the portly man, who began advertising types of spells that could help everyday people. Meanwhile Cameryn stepped back part of the way she came, and stood at the edge of the hemisphere of protective enchantments, keeping her eyes pealed for the arrival of the Ministry by foot, air, or Apparation. They'd have to respond quicker than normal this time, because she'd just riled up a real snake's -- or amphibian's -- nest.

Oi, Potter, Jinks had said, and just like that, Harry’s day had been ruined. He and the rest of his team had kept Jinks’s radio on full blast as they’d geared up to head to Belfast, getting antsier with each passing moment. It was nice of their opponent to have warned them what they were going up against (the usual assortment of her cronies and a hopefully unchallenging army of salamanders) but Harry was getting a sense that, where the Dark Widow was concerned, it didn’t matter if she tipped her hand, because she had all her aces in her sleeves.

He was too irritated to get his arm into the inside-out sleeve of his robes gracefully, and almost tore it off in his frustration, but finally he and the other Aurors and Hit Wizards were on the scene of the crime… probably. It was twilit and abandoned but for the salamanders she’d mentioned; the Dark Widow and her gang were probably holed up in a nice little Cave Inimicum bubble, if they weren’t under Disillusionment Charms like Harry and his team. (Harry had the extra insurance of his Invisibility Cloak, folded and tucked into a pocket, but in the dim light he didn’t deem it necessary.)

They spread out silently; neither Cave Inimicum nor Disillusionment would prevent them from hearing the Dark Widow and her friends, and they knew they were talking. Harry wasn’t sure yet what progress had been made on jamming or ending the broadcast’s signal – the Invisibility Task Force and the Muggle-Worthy Excuse Committee were hard at work on that, back in London. Everybody here knew the drill – they’d been dealing with the Widow for months now. Some of them headed toward the mountain to start wrangling salamanders; the rest (with Harry) looked for the Widow.

So Harry set off, prowling through the grass, letting his eyes adjust and listening hard. All he could hear was the wind, magnified by the Supersensory Charm and grating on his already frayed nerves, like a buzz in his… like a buzz? How the hell did the Dark Widow know Muffliato? It wouldn’t be the first time that one of the Half-Blood Prince’s spells cropped up unexpectedly; Harry made a mental note to go back to the lists of escaped and presumed-dead Death Eaters in his office, and turned slowly to follow the buzz, until he was face to face with – well, with nothing at all but the sensation that he was about to walk into something, like a ripple in the air. He raised his wand – “Revellio!”

Ah, the remaining actors have arrived, Cameryn thought maliciously as she heard an all too familiar pop-pop-crack of (presumably) the Aurors appearing on the scene, and sensed the new blood with her passive haematomancy. Even fully adult as she had been since her January 1st ritual, she still did not have the full power of her blood magic as she had long ago in the battles against Cynan Dindaethwy, so she could not zero in on precisely where the (apparently) Disillusioned Auror squad was actually at -- and no telltale footprints were showing up either. She was slightly impressed at that; they must be covering their tracks.

From this she inferred that the squad was being led by none other than her old friend, Harry Potter. What a delightful well okay let's be honest it's no surprise at all, she chuckled quietly to herself. Potter had become what passed for her nemesis these days. He lacked the military background and the strategic planning abilities of Cynan, and he wasn't necessarily the most talented wizard she'd encountered since her Resurrection, but he was still a force to be reckoned with due his somewhat emotional ties to the justice he doled out and the spells that he cast. She didn't believe he wanted to kill her, having figured out that she didn't want to kill him -- just maim him slightly and embarrass him a lot more.

"Wands out," she murmured to the Orphans on either side of her against the edge of the hemispherical concealed area, and the passed the word along by whisper and by example. Some distance behind her, Cameryn heard her radio host orphan begin to say, "Ladies and gentlemen, we've just been made aware that those opposing magic politicians we mentioned have arrived nearby and will shortly be trying to interrupt our programme, but we will stay on the air as long as we can. You may shortly hear the sounds of combat behind me, but we believe you have the right to know the truth--"

A voice from beneath the cloak of spellwork called out 'Revelio' and Cameryn didn't hesitate at all. As fate or narrative device would have it, the yellow light of the spell was coming from directly in front of her, so as the area's Disillusionment and Muffling Charms began to disintegrate (it was, after all, a single cast against the layers of charms that multiple Orphans had cast, so it didn't disappear entirely right away), Cameryn thrust her wand forward and wordlessly cast Mimblewimble at whoever was her first opponent of the evening, followed by Waddiwasi to begin forming and pelting soft snowballs at the person(s) outside.

Harry realised about a split second too late that he should have gone into this with a Shield Charm at the ready. For all his care – Disillusioning himself, erasing his footsteps, barely breathing for fear of being heard – he hadn’t thought of the most obvious precaution of all. The Widow’s defenses started to splinter like glass, spiderwebs of light spreading and glimmering outward from where he’d been pointing his wand, and now Harry could hear – as if distantly – the voice of one of her followers speaking in a broadcaster’s emphatic tone, and see through the cracks in the Disillusionment charms.

Before he could feel too satisfied with himself, his tongue curled up on itself in his mouth. Harry, startled by the strange sensation but not unfamiliar with it (he had lived at Grimmauld Place for too long) didn’t try to counteract its effects; they would pass. Instead he tried nonverbally to cast a Shield Charm; the first snowball that formed and assaulted him got him right in the ear, but the next few ricocheted back into the snowdrift around him. Once his tongue had untied, he spat on the ground next to him and regrouped.

The modus operandi made him feel fairly confident that the Widow herself had led the offensive – in the months he’d been pursuing her, he had noticed a certain pattern to her attacks. Much, much earlier into this conflict he would have described it as ‘whimsical’ or ‘playful,’ but by now Harry just thought it was juvenile. Any gratitude he still felt that the Widow wasn’t trying to kill him had been overridden by anger and confusion. Why had she killed the Conways, who had done her no harm, when all she’d ever done to Harry, who was actively opposing her, was play with him? It didn’t make sense.

Unlike the Dark Widow, Harry didn’t particularly enjoy slapstick duelling – tempting though it was to throw snowballs back at her, he was on a schedule. He whipped off as many brute-force combat spells as he could muster in three seconds: Impedimenta, Flipendo, Stupefy, Flipendo again, Stupefy again. It wasn’t going to work – he knew that by now – but hopefully it would alert the other Aurors to their location.

Messing with the Aurors was so much fun, Cameryn almost didn't feel that furthering her cause was truly "work." Fragments of the first snowball still sat one-third melted and one-third invisible atop the Disillusionment Charm of whoever she had hit, but even without that telltale sign, the remaining snowballs were being deflected by a well-cast Shield Charm. A simple step to the left or right would prevent the inevitable return spells from hitting her, but it would also leave her broadcaster Orphan open to attack and he hadn't quite wrapped up his programme.

Fortunately she knew most of the Aurors repertoire under Potter's leadership - the basic policy was "disable but do not kill." The colours of the light jets told Cameryn what she was defending against, even as she pouted that her Tongue-Tying Curse had not lasted as long as she wanted (of course Tongue-Tying did nothing to stop nonverbal casting) - her Shield Charm held against the turquoise light of an Impediment Jinx and the blue light of a Knockback Jinx, but shattered at the red light of a Stunning Spell and Cameryn barely had time to brace herself for the second Knockback Jinx that came her way, thrusting her back and making a straight plowed body-sized line in the snow. One of her Orphans Shielded her from the last cast of the flurry, another Stunning Spell - she'd have to thank him later. In the same instant, the broadcaster grabbed her arm and Disapparated and they Reapparated about two hundred metres across the peak. "Thank you, get yourself to safety," she ordered her Orphan gratefully, knowing that he was primarily a noncombat member of the cause. He nodded curtly and Disapparated again with the radio equipment in his other hand, escaping completely away from the battlefield.

Meanwhile Cameryn hastily cast Celaro Aspectum ⁽¹⁾ on herself, Disapparated, and Reapparated back to... close to where she'd just left. This was a fascinating part of the battle now, with Aurors and Orphans alike having rendered themselves somewhat invisible, and the faint blurring that might otherwise give all of them away to one another obscured by the whipping snow and wind around them. It meant that the Aurors could hit one another and that the Orphans could hit one another, which was why they'd prepared some special manoeuvres. Cameryn hadn't planned on having her tailbone bruised while she did them, but this was centuries far from her first combat, and a little Flipendo from an upstart bootlicker wasn't going to stop her.

Mobiliarbus, she cast nonverbally at a hawthorn tree near the radio tower but some distance from her, making it hover as though it was about to be fired in an unknown direction. It would draw the attention of the Aurors, and also served as a predetermined signal for the Orphans to nonverbally cast Protego Effusionis ⁽²⁾ on themselves. Thus they were protected from the next spell in the programme, Catena ⁽³⁾ - which would fork from the nearest unprotected target out to any nearby targets and hit them all simultaneously. It wasn't a perfect plan; Cameryn kept her mind shut tight from any Legilimens, and none of the Orphans knew that Cameryn was going to cast the Chaining Hex, only that they needed to cast the Spreading Shield as soon as the tree lifted, but any Legilimens that caught the shield casting with enough warning time could protect themselves at least. As she murmured the incantatino, Cameryn could see where all of the unprotected bodies in the battle arena were, as she saw the arcs of faint golden and sickly blue light jump from person to person.

Then, as the Aurors turned their attention to the source of the spellcasting, Cameryn Disapparated and Reapparated once more a mere twenty meters back, starting to lose her breath, as she cast Irreligatus Nebulus ⁽⁴⁾ on the entire area where she had "seen" the Aurors get hit. She had no idea as she cast the Limbo Mist that Harry Potter himself had once dealt with this very charm, just once, nine and a half years prior. She only knew that it would mess with their minds and bodies while her Orphans finished getting away and returning to their alibis far, far from Belfast.


⁽¹⁾⁽²⁾⁽³⁾⁽⁴⁾ As always when I use weird spells, I refer my thread partner and other readers to the Magical Hogwarts Spellwork Compilation. Celaro Aspectum, Catena, and Irreligatus Nebula are known canon spells which I invented incantations for; Protego Effusionis is a form of Shield Charm completely invented but for more purposes than just resisting the Cascading Jinx.

Whoever his invisible opponent was, Harry had nailed them – for about two seconds. There was a flurry of flying snow, noise, light, and wind, and though Harry easily deflected the Stunning spell and tried to redirect his attack at the opponent-shaped hole in the snowdrift, it was immediately obvious that they had Apparated away. He turned around, trying to spot a disturbance in the snow that might clue him into where they’d gone. He had anticipated having to find something like a footprint or a dark spot the wind and light couldn’t permeate – something subtle – and was so focussed on this hypothetical, barely detectable giveaway that he almost missed seeing the tree she was levitating.

He put up another Shield Charm and Apparated to the foot of the radio tower. The last thing he wanted – well, after being driven into the ground by an entire uprooted tree – was for the tower to go down. That would bring even more unwanted Muggle attention to them. He shouted (not particularly fussed at the moment about being found) for the Lead Auror on the mission, trying to alert him to the flying tree, but in another moment there was a strange sparking effect in the distance. Harry squinted – the light was catching like a fire, or some sort of electrical signal, and he realised a split second before it happened that it was going to get him too, not quite quick enough to put up any defenses.

It was a pretty run-of-the-mill pain jinx. Harry, now hiking through the snow toward where the rest of the Aurors were clustered, staggered but didn’t break his stride (he was no longer bothering to hide his tracks, either.) He swore vividly under his breath, remembered suddenly about the levitating tree, and turned around, trying to wrest control over it with his own locomotion spell.

Then – the world flipped around him, as though the entire globe had turned inside out. He grabbed at his glasses, feeling like they were about to slip off his nose into the sky, which stretched white and unending below him; he craned his neck but could see nothing else around him. Harry pressed in a panic at his robes, to prevent them falling over his head, and realised that they were still hanging from him like gravity was working properly.

Oh, he thought, then he shut his eyes and wrenched his right foot away from the ground.

In his fourth year, the odd gravity-inverting mist he’d run through had been confined to a single patch of the ground, which he’d fallen immediately out of when he lifted his foot off the ground. This time it was all around him, and though Harry flailed and stumbled over, he still felt like he was clutching to the ceiling of the world, utterly disoriented. He shook his head, trying to force himself to get over the strange sensation, and then spun as best he could (he was sitting on his arse in the snow). The first spot he Apparated to was still in the affected zone; the second wasn’t, but he could see the mist just a few yards in front of him, shimmering innocuously.

Harry waved his wand a little lackadaisically – “Ventus!” he shouted, though his breath was still rather short after two straight minutes of gravity playing games with him. He watched the wind gust through the blanket of mist and flatten it away; the Aurors, some of them now visible, were getting back to their feet. The wind had blown a number of the ice salamanders onto their backs. He couldn’t see any sign of the Widow or her followers; he turned around on the spot, his frustration rising up again through his relief. “Hey!” he shouted furiously, but he already suspected that the enemy had gone. “Get back here!”

It took a surprising amount of self-control for Cameryn not to giggle at how well the combination had worked. She never used to giggle, but she was fully aware by now of one of the unforeseen consequences of how her Regeneration had come about. For one thing, she'd never necromanced a corpse as a disembodied Horcrux before, so there had been a steep learning curve. Secondly, the damage that Cynan Dindaethwy had done to her body while suffocating and killing her, had made it very difficult for her to restitch nerves and muscles in the face, throat, lungs, and heart.  It took over twelve centuries of painstaking, dedicated practice and work to get to that point and fully (with proper dictation) recite the incantation for the Regeneration Brew.

Then, mere seconds after she had succeeded - magic vanished. She'd learned much later it was the cosmic backlash of the Wizengamot's punishment assigned to Æthelsine, a witch Cameryn probably would have loved to work with if she'd been around in 1000 AD. The brew had been activated, so it contained her bones, her flesh, her Horcrux, the intrinsic biomagical instruction to make a human, but it had been interrupted, and for a week it sat inert and slowly evaporating. When the switch turned back on and the Ritual completed, the brew had only had enough substance to make her body as it was at 11 years old. It wouldn't be for over four and a half years until she remedied that, with her New Year's rites this year at Sgor Chaonasaid.

But it hadn't just been Cameryn's body that had been shorted by the procedure. Her soul was gone, of course, the Horcrux consumed in the process; she found she wasn't much bothered by its absence. Her knowledge of magic had been retained, but her command of it had come back much slower. She had slept as normal for many years, but now it seemed to be more a habit than a requirement; she could go days at a time without it. Oh, and while she had maintained decades worth of battle experience and wisdom, her impulse control seemed to be slipping. She could still plan, and plan well, as this current escapade showed, but the filters that impeded her immediate actions were wearing down.

Dispergo ⁽¹⁾, she cast nonverbally on a point about ten meters away from herself, and watched in satisfaction as nine different sets of footprints in the deep snow began fanning out in random directions from that location as if several people were sprinting away in escape. Thinking about how the Aurors were going to chase themselves around in circles trying to find the Orphans those footprints belonged to, as well as the time they'd have to waste rounding up the frost salamanders that had escaped the net and were making their way down toward downtown Belfast, Cameryn actually did giggle quietly, a split second before Disapparating back to Broch Baniccaid in triumph. She'd made a fool of Potter, and the Aurors, once again; people were really starting to see how useless the Ministry of Magic was.

[𝑂𝑏𝑠𝑐𝑢𝑟𝑎 𝑉𝑖𝑑𝑢𝑎 𝑒𝑥𝑖𝑣𝑖𝑡]

⁽¹⁾ Anyone hazard a guess about this opposite charm of Oblitesco? Check the Magical Hogwarts Spellwork Compilation if needed, as always.

Harry trudged back toward the clustered Aurors, most of them now visible either because they’d undone their Disillusionment Charms in a panic or by their footprints scattering through the snow. Chaos, per usual – that, he’d come to understand, was what the Dark Widow had embraced as readily as Voldemort had embraced violence. He was sick of it. He rapped himself on the head with his wand, with rather more force than he’d

Now fairly positive that both she and her followers had gone, he addressed the Aurors instead: “Oi! They split, we chased them off.” It was poor consolation when they’d been – again – late to the party and were now stuck cleaning it up, but they’d dispatched the threat a lot more handily and with a lot fewer casualties than the strike at the train station in Newcastle. It was up to the Muggle Liaisons and the DMAC to deal with whatever damage had been done through her antics with the radio – that was far, far out of Harry’s wheelpark.

He came close enough to the rest of the Aurors (that weren’t still running around) to not have to bellow, and scratched his head, and said, “Well… unless Pest Advisory can get off their arses in two minutes flat, I reckon it’s on us to catch these things before they get to Belfast, so…” he gestured, vaguely, at the surrounding area and watched as his colleagues, looking rather put out, started to spread out toward the salamanders.

This wasn’t an admission of defeat – Harry didn’t think of it as a defeat, just as another postponement. They had been in a stalemate – a demoralising, frustrating, petty stalemate, to be sure – for months now, and would be in a stalemate until the day “WIZARDS LIVE AMONG US” was the headlining news at The Times. The situation was under control - still – just barely. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and then set off after the rest of the Aurors.


END