Chapter 79: Return
“See you around!” Hailey, Sadarina, Fleur, and Silversong waved cheerfully as Voldemort stepped through the portal Hailey had just conjured with a tiny flick of her wrist, not even her wand.
Voldemort bowed and, standing amidst the German forest Hailey had picked for it to come out in, waved as well. “I’ll be back,” he told them, with a smile- then, as he turned away, Fleur saw him force his face straight moments before he disapparated.
The portal closed, and Hailey sighed. “Well, that’s that.”
Fleur nodded faintly. She felt almost sad to see him go- but he had to.
Unfortunately, his pain tolerance wasn’t strong enough for the accelerated version- something Hailey had found mildly amusing- and the appetite for soups and stews would have been too suspicious to his Death Eaters.
So Bonbon had promised that Dumbledore would die before Hailey graduated, her tone brooking no argument whatsoever. When Voldemort had questioned it anyways, Hailey had interrupted to tell him that Bonbon was one of the most powerful Seers that ever lived, to the point that she could accurately predict exactly how and when someone was going to attack her long before they did, giving her a uniquely effective defense. Reportedly, even Hailey, Queen Indestructible as she was, couldn’t beat her in a duel without breaking the laws of physics.
So, they had agreed that after Dumbledore died, Voldemort would make a move on Hogwarts. When he did, Hailey would meet and ‘defeat’ him in her usual manner, and he would hide away in the Hospital Wing while he got his Papa Tango. At that point, Bonbon had headed out of the room- and on her way out, she’d mentioned that they’d need to buy more straws before that point. Only Hailey had seemed to understand.
Then Voldemort had mentioned his snake, Nagini, who hadn’t been present in the graveyard. Nagini was, apparently, a Maledictus- a human woman, with a blood curse that gave her the ability to turn into a snake… And, eventually, had taken away her ability to return to human form.
So Hailey had shrugged, and suggested he bring her along. Apparently, she, Silver, and quite a few others she didn’t name were actually parselmouths as well, and the Papa Tango would be completely safe for Nagini- and nullify the curse, so they could offer it at that time.
He could, of course, tell Nagini about that future opportunity whenever he wanted, so long as she knew not to tell any other parselmouths about it.
Hailey turned sharply. “Anyways.” She stepped over to her desk, drew a large, rattling bag out of a drawer, and walked back towards them. “Here, Fleur.” She held it out, then smiled. “Your winnings.”
“My… winnings?” Fleur asked.
She nodded. “You won the Triwizard Tournament,” she answered simply. “By a margin of six points. Silver was the second to touch the Cup, by a margin of almost a quarter of a second, but…” She shrugged. “Your final charge was successful.”
Silver chuckled. “Not like I need the gold anyways,” she smiled.
Fleur accepted the bag, and stared at it. “I-!” she began. “I-!”
Hailey chuckled. “A little unexpected?” she asked, then shrugged. “You also defeated Lord Voldemort in under a minute, didn’t you?”
Her jaw articulated up and down for a few seconds, then she set the bag on the tea table and opened it. “It doesn’t-!” She paused, reaching inside, then drew out a small, golden bar, about two inches long and an inch in diameter. “What…?” she muttered.
“That’s a Bar,” Hailey told her. “Equestrian currency.” She pulled a matching bar out of her hair. “If you give it a twist like this, then-!” Her bar suddenly expanded and rattled down onto the table as a pile of about a hundred small gold coins. “One hundred bits,” she finished. She lifted two coins between her fingers. “It’s two bits to the galleon at Gringotts, and if you want some galleons before you return to France, I can take you there.” Then she shrugged, dropped them back onto the pile, then shoved them all at each other, so they collapsed back into the bar. “And back to the bar. That won’t work with any less than a hundred bits.” She put it back in her hair, and gestured towards the bag. “Princess Celestia sent that over a couple weeks ago.
“It came with a condition, of course. In the event that the winning Champion could cross the portal into Equestria, which you can after the Papa Tango, those thousand bars would replace the thousand galleons from the Ministry of Magic- a roughly equivalent value, in terms of real value, no matter how lopsided the exchange rate is.” She chuckled. “The Ministry agreed, so… there it is. All yours.”
“A- A thousand bars?” Fleur asked. “When-!” She paused. “That makes… a hundred thousand bits… fifty thousand galleons?” She looked at Hailey. “Are you sure?”
She nodded. “Yup. There’s supposed to be a presentation ceremony, but after yours and Silver’s deaths, it kinda got canceled.”
“My death!?” Fleur gasped.
Hailey shrugged. “When Cedric returned with the report that you were sacrificing yourself to let him escape, it was assumed that you had died. Speaking of dying.” She turned to Silver. “Silver, how did yours go?”
Silver grinned. “Apparently, I earned an Ascension when I dove in front of Cedric and blocked the Killing Curse with the last of my magic, then only needed a trigger event to get it. And apparently, getting resurrected is a suitable trigger event.” She shrugged. “Means I have wings now, and I’ll be asking you and Hermione to teach me to fly.”
Hailey chuckled. “How’d the resurrection go, then?”
She chuckled too. “Oh, that was fun.”
“Where do you think you’re going, young lady?”
Silversong could only vaguely sense her surroundings. She seemed to have lost her body, become a spirit, and had been drifting towards what she recognized as the afterlife… But something plucked her back away from it.
The voice was that of Professor Snape.
She wasn’t able to answer.
“Salazar,” Mad-Eye Moody’s voice barked. “What are you doing? Don’t you know Hailey will be mad if she finds out you’re favoring her friends?”
“Calm, Godric,” Professor McGonagall’s voice rang out. “He’s not favoring her. We gave Silver a mission six years ago, did we not?”
“Well… Yes,” Moody answered. “But can’t we pass that mission on to someone else?”
“No We Will Not,” Madam Pomfrey’s voice cut in. “Hailey might be perfectly capable of defeating Voldemort, but you know she hates hurting people.”
“Exactly, Helga,” Snape agreed. “Aside from that, Fleur also has a mission, does she not?”
“Fleur?” Moody asked, sounding surprised.
“You haven’t heard?” Snape asked inquisitively. “I take it you haven’t told them, Rowena?”
“No, I haven’t,” Professor McGonagall answered. “It was just last night. We will need her powers and talents both before and after Voldemort is defeated.”
“What does Fleur have to do with anything?” Moody asked.
“Without Silver, she’s likely to be killed,” Snape answered. “By resurrecting Silver, we can kill two birds with one stone. Er… We may need to change that saying.”
“We may,” McGonagall agreed, “now that students are becoming human birds left and right.”
“Do you think Silver is going to be one?” Madam Pomfrey asked.
“No idea,” McGonagall answered. “The way I hear it, nobody understands how Ascension works, nor knows any way to see if it will happen or not. Not even the Equestrians.” She sighed. “For myself, I’ve been wondering how likely it is that one of us will ascend. I know it won’t happen without the Papa Tango, but Hailey checked and confirmed it will work on us this afternoon- we’ll just ignore the symptoms, as energy beings.”
“Now that sounds interesting,” Moody grunted. “If we all do that, we might actually be able to compare to her once again.” He laughed harshly.
“So, with Silversong,” Snape barked.
“Go ahead and resurrect her,” McGonagall said. “I will refill her magic reserves.”
“We’ll need her body,” Madam Pomfrey muttered. “Allow me.”
Moody sighed. “You know what? I’ll give her my sword. Harmonia only knows if she’ll need it or not.”
“I doubt it,” McGonagall muttered. “She’s already at least as good with magic as Hailey is, though a little less powerful and I think she doesn’t know as many spells, either.”
“A little,” Moody laughed. “A little!”
“Well, she is,” Madam Pomfrey told him. “It’s only five orders of magnitude… that we’ve seen so far. Salazar, where do you want her body?”
“Y-You’ve got four literal gods working at Hogwarts?” Fleur gasped.
“Two gods and two goddesses,” Hailey corrected, “but yes. Then I’m basically a proto-goddess myself, so we’ll see how long that lasts.” She tilted her head. “I haven’t grown more powerful yet this year,” she mused. “Either I’m due for a surprise power-up sometime soon, or the pattern has been broken. But anyways, I’ve got a time loop to close out and it’s well past bed time.” She smiled. “Don’t be surprised if people go a little nuts- everybody thinks both of you are dead bodies in the Little Hangleton graveyard right now.” She grinned. “I wonder what the muggle police will think when they see that spike forest you made?”
Fleur sighed as she stepped out the great oak front doors of the castle. Her muscles were still aching from the damage the Cruciatus Curse had done- and her joints had grown stiff. “Stupid pain,” she muttered softly, as she stepped out onto the grass. She’d forced herself to move normally through the conversation, to not show weakness- but it would take weeks for Veela-specialized healers to repair the damage.
Finally, she looked at the ground. “So I can… swim through stone?” she muttered. She crouched down, knowing standing up was going to be painful, and stuck a finger through the grass, to the dirt underneath… And kept going. When she wanted it to, her hand went straight through the dirt, rock, and even grass, without leaving a mark.
When she pulled her hand back out, her skin was clean, smooth, and uninjured. The cuts she’d gotten when dodging one of Moody’s- no, Crouch’s- spells had forced her to flatten herself against a hedge were simply… gone.
She looked at the ground… Then put her hands together, and dove in. Hailey had given her a quick lesson on ‘hammerspace’- it really was easy- so her winnings were embedded in her hair.
It was quite a wonderful feeling. All her aches and pains just went away while she floated weightlessly in the stone. She was breathing naturally as well, almost as if she’d taken some Gillyweed and jumped in the lake again, but better.
She rolled over, flipping herself upright, and looked around.
She could see for miles. Hogwarts had a bunch of little passages reaching away from it, towards the local village. She could see the dungeons, floating amidst the stone- though she couldn’t see through their far walls, making for a very strange layering effect.
She took a deep breath, turned, and shot through the ground towards the Beauxbatons carriage. It looked like the groundskeeper’s hut had a wooden floor, but there was a particularly large bone buried in front of his cabin for some reason.
But no matter. She popped out of the ground near the door to the carriage, wobbled as she landed on her feet, and grinned as she glanced down at herself. All those aches and pains, cuts, scratches, and whatever else… were simply gone.
She was going to have to practice that some, so she could emerge casually.
She reached up one hand, and knocked on the door. At this hour, it would be locked- and she was supposed to knock before entering anyways.
Finally, it opened. Madame Maxime stood in the doorway for perhaps two seconds before she stepped back. “Miss Delacour,” she greeted. “You’re alive.”
“I am,” she nodded, climbing the steps up into the carriage. “Turns out Volde- sorry, you know who- is vulnerable to Veela.” For as much as Hailey’s fearlessness regarding the name had bled off onto her long before, she knew it hadn’t for the rest of her schoolmates, and Madame Maxime still didn’t like hearing it. Perhaps she hadn’t spoken to Hailey enough?
“You killed him, then?” Maxime asked.
She shook her head. “You know I can’t do that,” she told her. “Just a little suggestion to get them running in circles long enough to escape.” She sighed. It was true; before her Papa Tango, she had lacked the power to imprint on anyone except the weakest… and her aura was weak enough, even when she pushed it, that only about a third of boys’ heads turned- a third of the ones that had never trained to defend against a Veela. It was to the point where any defense at all was enough to block her out- and combined with how her aura was weak enough only a few heads turned when she wasn’t pushing it, that was why she had been allowed to attend a human school.
Yet, Voldemort had defenses- she’d sensed them… and crashed straight through them. Had that been an effect of the Papa Tango? She hadn’t noticed any more heads turning when she had walked through the Castle before the Third Task- as a matter of fact, she hadn’t noticed any. That wasn’t uncommon; there were so many of them she’d long grown desensitized to it.
Madame Maxime took a deep breath. “Well. We won- you won.”
She nodded. “Yeah, Hailey told me.” She sighed. “A thousand bars. What the hell am I going to use that for?”
“I’m sure there will be something,” Maxime told her.
Fleur sighed again. “I don’t know if you know,” she muttered, “but I come from a very poor family. The Veela don’t want anything to do with us half-breeds, and neither do pure wizards- except for sexual stuff, of course.” She wrinkled her nose in disgust. “Father makes hardly five galleons a week- and there are five of us.”
“Five?” Maxime asked.
She nodded. “Five. Three of my sisters are homeschooled.” She sighed. “I was the oldest, but my aura is very tame, so I was allowed to attend a human school.” She sat in an armchair, and leaned back to stare at the ceiling. “Gabrielle- the youngest- doesn’t seem to have an aura, so she will probably also come to Beauxbatons.”
She sighed, sitting in her own chair. “I noticed you’ve been studying hard this year. Learn anything interesting?”
She smiled. “Aside from how to multicast? Yes, actually- quite a bit. Apparently Twilight Sparkle combined Ancient Runes and Arithmancy to create a…” She paused. “Hermione called it a ‘programming language’, but Twilight didn’t seem to know what that was either. In either case, a language of sorts that she could use to construct a complicated spell with complicated, well-defined behaviors. She taught me, and I’m pretty good at it, so that’s actually how I solved the Third Task- I designed and cast a spell that gave me a live-updating best route that avoided everything I wasn’t sure I could beat.”
“Then you won by the slimmest of margins,” Maxime told her.
“Well, yes. The fastest route had some of those monster crab things- Blast Ended Screwts, Hailey called them- some giant spiders, a sphinx, two dementors, and a dragon.” She sighed. “I avoided all those. Though I will admit, I did end up skipping past a sphinx while it wasn’t looking. Didn’t realize I could do that until I was doing it while fleeing from Moody and any other possible attackers.”
“You knew it was Moody?” she asked.
She nodded. “I cast a spell that let me see over the hedge,” she told her. Then she scowled. “Hailey said something about a trial?”
Maxime nodded. “Yes. That was actually Barty Crouch, Jr- the son of the Triwizard Judge by the same name- using Polyjuice Potion… and working to revive You Know Who.”
“... Oh,” Fleur muttered. “Well, he was successful.”
Maxime sighed. “You know we’ll be returning to Beuxbatons just in time for the graduation, right?”
She blinked. “Uhh… Yeah, I guess it is that time already, isn’t it?”
“And unlike half the rest of the students we brought, you’ve been studying hard enough that I have no qualms about letting you skip the final exam too,” she told her. “May I ask what you’re planning after graduation?”
She let out a sigh. “Oh, I don’t know,” she muttered. “Winning the Triwizard Tournament won’t make me any more appealing to employers, so…” She shrugged. “Maybe I’ll come back to Hogwarts to see if I can get a job here. With this many students, they’re bound to need more Professors, Student Instructor Program or not, and I can hope the Headmaster is able to recognize that.” She sighed again. “I don’t feel like I’m ready to teach the way they were doing, though. Even though they’ve only gone through half the schooling I have!”
“Must be something in the water,” Maxime grumbled.
She snorted. “Then I should’ve caught it too, after spending so much time breathing the stuff. Me, I think they’ve brought new knowledge and skills in from Equestria, and that was the result. No, I know they have- they told me as much.” She sighed. “Doesn’t explain how Hailey and Hermione- both British witches- managed to climb all the way to the top of their instruction program, though.”
Hermione looked up, in the middle of changing into her pajamas, when the door opened. Hailey must’ve finished with whatever she was doing, and come up to bed.
But it wasn’t Hailey that entered.
“Hi Hermione,” Silversong smiled, waving, as she headed for her own bed.
Hermione dropped her pajamas on the floor and charged to hug her. “S-Silver!” she cried. “You’re alive! I thought you died!”
“Well… I did.”
She blinked, then leaned back from her. “What? How does that work?”
“Easy,” Silver answered, then grinned. “I got resurrected. By the Gods, no less. Godric gave me his sword.”
“Where’s Hailey?” Parvati asked, trotting over from her own bed.
Silver shrugged. “She said she had some work to do in the Room of Requirement, and would be up in a few minutes.”
“In the meantime,” Hermione mumbled, hugging her again. “Think we can cuddle tonight?”
She could feel Silver’s grin. “Thought you’d never ask.”
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Aww, snuggle party!
Fleurs vision while rock swiming reminds me of removing camera limits on Second Life in complex areas, if theres tunnels and caverns, the near wall is invisible from the back so you see the far wall as usual. Makes it easier to find that hidden location.
It's a wonder they have managed to keep it from Dumbledore this long.
11305927
Or any noclip cheat really. Backface culling is a standard optimization in 3D rendering.
11305927
11306037
Yes, that's exactly what I was imagining when I wrote that description.
11305927
I was thinking of a really good X-ray pack for Minecraft my self.
11305992
they code throw it in his face and he would not see it. he is a twit.
Annoying when that happens, isn't it?
11306593
It is. But at least I've got a backlog 5 months long, so it won't really matter if it locks up on writer's block for a while!
11306858
Just don't fluff off on doing any writing in that story for six months, like I did mine.
11306937
Yeah no, it's going much too strong.
What does Fleur see if she looks down while rock swimming? Does she see all the way through the planet?
11311809
Caves. And between them... I don't know. Perhaps an empty Void (because she can't just see forever, that'd be cheating)?
11366158
As anyone that has fought againt a group with pack tactics can tell you: It is.
11311814
Actually people with perfect vision do "see forever" it is just that the refraction makes anything after a certain distance be vague in details.
11377098
Yes, but any vision, including 20/20, still has a focal point beyond which it's impossible to make out details, independent of atmospheric distortion. Now, it's entirely possible to have vision good enough that atmospheric distortion is the limiter, but...
Yes, she probably can see a cave on the other side of the planet. It's just so small from her position that she can't see it. Just like a cave a hundred miles away... She can tell it's there, but probably can't see any of the details because her eyes aren't made for that kind of distance.
11473964
In the beginning, at least, It was like a story being told from the perspective of a single Gryffindor student, Harry Potter. I don't remember much but I think Ginny was a lot better-written character compared to her movie version. I think in the book Ron was a better friend to Harry and in the book, Hermione didn't steal the book Ron's job
I hope this story continues on unlike the other stories like The Gate and on the implications of parallel worlds.
11599185
That's the plan. I expect I'll be rereading it soon to see if my muse can pick out what I did wrong and reawaken this thing. I've even got an idea that might save it- that is to say, simply violate Hailey's expectation. She doesn't need to get more powerful every year, after all.