Silence.
The emptiness of the ancient training hall, projected by the Room of Requirement, weighed a little on the mind, instilled unease, and yet, at the same time, a kind of peace. The latter, perhaps, from exhaustion.
I sat sprawled on a none-too-comfortable little sofa, and beside me, in roughly the same posture of a wizard bereft of strength, sprawled Daphne, having shed every ounce of her charm as a lady of an ancient and most noble family — whatever the Blacks might say about being the only ones of their kind in all of England, it simply isn't so.
And no, it's got nothing to do with any vulgar exploits or foolishness of varying degrees of severity. It's much simpler than that. It's late evening now, nearly a full day has passed since our ill-considered excursion to the anomaly, and, exactly as we'd planned, we've dedicated absolutely every free second after lessons to mastering our new magical abilities.
Summary — an absolute zero! And that's no joke!
The degree of uselessness of this energy in everyday life is simply, catastrophically enormous. You can't use it to affect anything at all in its raw form, and it can only be used to power spells and magical structures that carry at least a scrap of fire, or something akin to it! And even then, not all of them — only "mystical" ones, meaning a plain Incendio can't be powered by death energy at all, whereas something like Protego Diabolica — easily.
Runes? This energy couldn't care less about runes, and runes couldn't care less about it. Doesn't work! Only where "mystical" flame is involved.
And the result of all these manipulations? Nothing, of course! Same as with a raw energetic application — no reaction from the surrounding environment whatsoever. There's exactly one upside — this energy, and spells built on it, pass straight through every known protective spell and ward without the slightest trouble.
Although, come to think of it, there's one more upside to having this energy in mine and Daphne's bodies. The ghosts of Hogwarts steer well clear of us, and Peeves outright flees shrieking into the nearest wall. Ah, yes, one more nuance — walls are no obstacle to this energy, unlike other forms of energy and magic in general. Yes, ordinary walls shield rather insignificantly against magic, but they do shield it at least somewhat — whereas death energy, they don't hold back in the slightest.
"So, what conclusions?" I said lazily, slowly turning my head towards Daphne, sprawled beside me on the sofa.
"Mediocre," she breathed out wearily. "If Death meant to give us some sort of gift, then so far it looks rather… like nothing much."
Evidently, exhaustion wasn't letting the girl express her thoughts in their full splendour, drawing on the whole richness of her turn of phrase and her conversational skill. Just the facts. I, for that matter, found myself in a nearly identical state.
"I'd suppose," I breathed out and put an arm round Daphne, at which she, all but out of strength, immediately leant against me and rested her head on my shoulder, "that Death gave us these abilities purely to solve the problems we created for ourselves. Any regrets?"
"None whatsoever," Daphne's tone carried certainty, and a smile. "It was an interesting experiment. Yes, it could have led to death… Ha — well, it did lead to Death, actually. Or to 'him'?"
"I don't think an entity of that order is terribly dependent on gender. Death is a phenomenon. That creature is its quintessence. Possibly even an egregore of the mass unconscious."
"Ooh… An egregore. I didn't think you'd know a term like that."
"I didn't think a term like that was even in circulation among wizards."
Having sat like that for a good twenty minutes at least, lazily chatting about this and that, we came back around to our abilities.
"Well…" I stroked Daphne's arm. "You can see death magic and its currents, and you can clearly manipulate those currents. I can see these strange spirits and interact with them easily enough. There's surely some sense to be made of that. We just need to work out how to function as a team."
"Quite so. Death's commission needs carrying out. As I've said before, that's not the sort of entity one goes about ignoring."
Such were the experiments, then.
. . . . .
Silence.
That same training hall, but the real one, on the lower floors of the castle, and now I was here alone.
Through the tall, narrow windows filtered the dim light of a dawning day. There were no curtains here, no drapes — only age-old dust on the windows absorbed and scattered the light in every direction, like a dirty old lampshade on an equally old, all but dead fixture.
In this empty hall, on a stone floor that had once been smooth, mirror-bright, sat a single person — me. But not simply sitting — the standard posture for an elf, something like the lotus position, and only a knowledgeable person would spot the differences.
The thing was, well before dawn, nearly a week after our attempt to approach the anomaly, I had finally found enough time for mental and magical training. It was precisely this I was now engaged in. Elven techniques only, no admixture of dwarven, human, or other races' experience. Why?
Training sessions with Daphne were, of course, engaging and reasonably productive, but I wanted to find within myself, to truly feel, understand, and grasp death energy — or whatever it was — far more fully. Its absolute inertness towards every other influence kept driving me into a dead end. I couldn't find or select anything that resonated with it, which meant I couldn't locate it within my own body either. This wasn't ordinary death — it was wrong. Not aggressive, forced death, but not calm, natural death either.
The very idea and concept eluded my understanding, which meant I couldn't feel my way to this energy inside myself.
That incident with the ghost had been nothing more than a moment's flash of insight, no more. That insight had helped me get through the crisis. Which meant something needed to be done about it. The single seal, seemingly instilled into my mind by Death, had of course been effective against ghosts, but that was the only thing I could count on when using it. And the runic language of the seal itself told me absolutely nothing, which was unusual — here it was, a genuine challenge to intellect and skill! And already I wanted to spit on it and give up. Remarkable, how accustomed I'd grown to having everything handed to me, so to speak.
As for the school week that had just passed…
Stability — a marker of success.
Nothing in the castle had changed. No fresh attempts to harm Muggleborns from the purebloods had been observed, and lessons carried on as usual. The one thing that stood out was that Professor Hunt seemed as though she'd rather be somewhere else entirely, and glanced towards the anomaly with an unconcealed glint in her eye, as though sensing there was someone to fight there. Ah, yes, one small nuance — our "field practicals" had been moved out to the Quidditch pitch. Plenty of open space there, and the whole thing could be regarded as drilling for combat engagements in open terrain. That was where the handful of transfiguration prodigies really got to cut loose.
Smethwyck had given me a fortnight off. I couldn't come up with a reason, and turning up in the Hospital Wing in some inexplicable state could hardly count as one. So the reason lay elsewhere. Perhaps he himself was very busy with something.
That, essentially, was the lot. And, yes, my meditations weren't yielding any success at all. It was as though I were pounding against an impenetrable adamantine wall.
Having finished with meditation, I left the training hall, closed the door, which promptly "sealed itself," disguising itself as a tapestry — how I'd ever found this place in the first place, I honestly couldn't say — and headed off to breakfast myself. It was Saturday, a day off; I could relax a little, might even make a solo excursion to the anomaly, so as not to draw Daphne into danger — research and calculations were one thing, but this was real danger.
Incidentally, the anomaly's status still hadn't changed. That "auror," it turned out, had survived and hadn't even sustained any harm beyond severe, temporary magical exhaustion. At least, that's what the school rumour mill said.
Having reached the Great Hall and joined the others, I set briskly to breakfast, heaping myself a generous portion of just about everything, and even bland porridge inevitably found its way onto my plate.
"Mr Granger…"
Snape's voice from behind me caught me entirely by surprise. And it wasn't only I who flinched or turned sharply — the rest of the lot did exactly the same. And here I'd thought the ones sitting across from me at the table might have somehow signalled the approach of this grim herald of bad news. He rarely brought any other kind.
"Headmaster Snape," I got hold of myself instantly, chiding myself for my own carelessness and lapse in guard — I almost never allowed myself such disregard for my surroundings.
"I expect you in my office directly after breakfast."
With a sharp swirl of his black robes, the Headmaster set off with quick strides towards the staff table, leaving the rest of us who'd overheard him to puzzle over the reasons for such a summons.
"What was that about?" Zacharias whispered quietly, as though Snape were currently teaching a Potions lesson — that's what you'd call conditioning.
"The Headmaster's summoned me," I shrugged, carrying on with breakfast.
"That much I gathered," Zacharias nodded. "The question's something else. What could he possibly want?"
"I'll find out."
"Aren't you even curious?" This time it was Ernie who couldn't hide either his curiosity or his astonishment.
"There could be any number of guesses. What I can say, though, is that I'm not guilty of anything."
"Oh, sure, of course," Hannah smirked, and with an unobtrusive flick of her wand under the table cast an unseen privacy charm around our group. "What if he's worked out who thumped Nott with magic?"
"Doesn't matter."
That incident, incidentally, had rather departed from my usual manner of behaviour, which had surprised even me.
I suspected that this sort of "radically unrestrained" conduct was a consequence of the death energy's influence, though I couldn't say so with any certainty. But was it a possibility? Yes. Especially given that the concentration of this energy, according to Daphne, sat in my head.
"By the way," Zacharias looked at me with the utmost seriousness. "Have you recovered enough from the Hospital Wing yet?"
"I'd say so."
"Then be so good as to attend practice. The couple of times you did make it certainly helped the new team's cohesion, but we need more. Good thing the season opener's Gryffindor versus Slytherin, as always. We'll have time."
"I'll be there, I'll be there. Tomorrow, then?"
"Yes, in the morning. Straight after breakfast. So eat well tonight — flying on a full stomach is rubbish."
After a hearty, satisfying breakfast, I met Daphne, as usual, at the doors of the Great Hall, said hello, and told her I was off to see Snape.
"Then I'll wait for you in the library," she smiled. "We may not have got to the bottom of the abilities, but we ought at least to work out where the error might be hiding in the runic schemes. By the way, how's the phoenix?"
"Still transforming. The process is dragging on. And though it's within the bounds of my calculations, something about it doesn't sit right with me."
"We used absurdly complex runic schemes," Daphne laid a hand on my chest, letting it linger there a moment — she'd taken a real liking, of late, to these small, minor, brief gestures, each expressing something different, but mostly warmth, support, and other such positive things. "It's remarkable we achieved the intended result at all, even with a few small quirks."
"I'm tempted to say something ironic, like: 'Death really is just a minor quirk on the path of a true wizard,' but—"
"That's not your style."
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