DPASW BOOK FOUR:The Gray's Secret

The Gray's Secret - Chapter 4

Zero Days before the Wizengamot Weekend: 1:00am

Clare dreamed. And in her dream, a giant padlock floated before her. She wasn’t sure what the padlock was and had no clue how to open it. Although some part of her — a small part that remembered something her current employer/guide/teacher/lord/crush(!) had once said about memory charms — reflected that maybe she didn’t want to open it, even if she could.

— DPaSW: TGS —

Zero Days before the Wizengamot Weekend 3:00am

Susan dreamed. And in her dream, her Aunt’s London apartment—practically on the Ministry’s door-step—wrapped around her like an enchanted warming blanket. In the apartment Library, the refuge for her dead parents’ family collection, she put down the latest book she’d been reading, feeling that she was nearing the limit of what her occlumency-induced lucid dream would handle for one night, and made a quick detour down the main corridor, towards where normally one might find the cloak-room. Instead of the cloakroom wooden door there was instead a massive vault door, locked with enough magic to put a war ward to shame. Or at least, that’s what she imagined.

Susan bit her dream-self lip as she looked at it. She was pretty sure that, with her current occlumency skill, if she started now, she could maybe break the lock, in say, ten years. But that would go against every lesson every noble child was taught about memory charms.

To be memory charmed as a noble meant that you had voluntarily removed your noble house ring for the charm to be applied. Everyone knew this. Such actions almost always came with magical contracts with clauses explicitly requiring that the memory charm not be tampered with and the consequences of breaking such a contract could be quite terrible.

Susan knew all this and wasn’t going to even start on trying to break the lock. That didn’t mean she wasn’t curious though… Curious and more than a little worried.

— DPaSW: TGS —

Zero Days before the Wizengamot Weekend: 5:00am

Harry dreamed.

And in his dream, the fortress prison of Azkaban rose around him, both a comfort and a curse. Behind him stood a mental portal, leading to whichever of his girls he’d entrusted the dreamscape pendant too, still flickering from his recent exit.

Hermione was doing well with her independent studies.

She’d soon be ready to start exploring the Aether Unpacked properly.

Walking away from the portal, Harry made his way through the corridors of Azkaban, reflecting on the quiet and emptiness — a reflection that was somewhat ruined a few moments later as a dementor glided through an intersection up ahead. There was no fear or soul-sucking depression though. These mental constructs guarded his mind at his behest, not at his enemy’s.

Continuing on, he briefly stopped to look in on the dirty little cell he’d been kept in for upwards of a decade. It seemed incredible, looking back, that such a thing had held him for so long. Since being jail-sprung by his benefactors, he’d build such a position for himself that the prospect of ever finding himself in such a state was highly unlikely, even if a part of his mind—one that he kept an incredibly close eye on—still jabbered in terror at the thought.

Moving on from the grubby little jail cell, Harry hesitated.

But, no, there was no reason for him not to continue.

Walking slower now, each booted step calm and measured, Harry walked up the line of cells until he arrived at one quite unlike any of the others. Instead of metal bars, jagged bolts of lightning crackled, running up and down the space where in other cells a door would have been — green bolts of lightning.