No Place Like Home

Gum-Ducks

Ashlynn

"This way please, Miss Scarlett. Mr Gorman, I'm afraid you'll have to follow Mr Keys to the observation room." After another round of side-along aparation, Ashlynn and Seamus had arrived in the Ministry's Artium once again. Seamus was led by one auror through a door to what Ashlynn assumed was an observation room, while she was led into a surprisingly large room painted entirely white with a large two way mirror on one wall that Ashlynn assumed led to the observation room. She waved at it and, though she couldn't see him, she imagined that Seamus waved back from the other side. Ashlynn was nervous, but she tried not to let it show in her body language. The auror stood by the door, and Ashlynn noticed another woman in the room, with a charmed parchment and quill hovering in the air next to her, presumably to take notes.

"Ashlynn, right?" The woman smiled warmly at her. "I'm Tella. I'll be conducting your experiments today. It won't be anything that serious, just a few harmless spells meant to test your reactions to the magic. The worst that might happen is that you'd bee stupefied, but we'd only try that if you show a resistance to the magic. For now though, why don't we have a seat," she gestured to the two chairs in the middle of the room, "and you can tell me all about your magic." Ashlynn nodded warily and did as Tella said. She seemed nice enough, in a motherly sort of way, but Ashlynn wasn't one to trust strangers. She explained everything her father had told her about where her powers came from and how they manifested. She explained her theory about the incronium, and Tella nodded as it she agreed. The entire time the quill scratched feverishly across the parchment.

"Alright then. That's quite a lot of information you've given us, Ashlynn. You've been very helpful." Tella stood up, and the moment Ashlynn followed both chairs vanished. "Now, if you don't mind, I'm going to have Mr Ryland fire a few spells at you. First, he's just going to try and make you float a few inches off the ground, just like this. She pointed her wand at herself and muttered something, rising a few inches off the floor. "See? Nothing to be worried about."

The auror pointed his wand at her, and the moment he opened his mouth, Ashlynn's nunchucks were suddenly in her hand and swinging in a complex pattern that Ashlyn was quite certain she'd never done before. She wasn't entirely certain how the nunchucks had gotten into her hand. She thought she had left them at the Leaky Cauldron, but perhaps she'd forgotten to remove them from inside her coat. Realizing that the nunchucks we're still swinging, Ashlynn slowed them to a stop and looked at them carefully. She'd never actually tested them against magic, but it seemed that they did more than just stop it. Ashlynn hadn't been swinging the nunchucks. They had been swinging themselves. So they would protect her. Even if she didn't want them to.

"What was that?" Tella asked, more than a little confused. Ashlynn supposed they didn't have any use for nunchucks in the wizarding world. "Why didn't it work? What was the blur? what are you holding there?" Tell seemed to have loads of questions.

"I - sorry. I didn't mean to do that. My nunchucks are coated with a protective magic repelling substance from my universe. When I got them, my father made them promise to always protect me. I - here." Ashlynn put them on the ground a few feet away. Here, I won't use them."

"Magic repelling, what did you call them? Gum-ducks?"

"Nunchucks. And I'm sorry, I really didn't mean to use them."

"Oh, no, that's quite alright." Tella reached for the nunchucks, but they rolled away from her seemingly of their own accord. "We'll have to have a look at gum-ducks too."

"No," Ashlynn found herself saying. "That wasn't the deal. I agreed that you could examine me. Not my nunchucks.

"But the gum-ducks-"

"No. I made a deal with the Minister of Magic, and that was not a part of it. I'm keeping my end, and I expect him to keep his." She faced the mirror. "If you wish to examine my nunchucks as well, then I am open to negotiations. But until then, you will not lay hands on them." They all stood there a moment, unsure of what to do. Then the minister's voice floated through the room.

"Very well. We can negotiate for the gum-ducks later. For now, please continue with the examination."

A slightly ruffled Tella told the auror to try again, asking Ashlynn not to use her gum-ducks this time. She put her hands up to show that she wasn't doing anything, but as the auror pointed his wand at her again, the nunchucks sprang into the air between them and spun themselves in the same complex pattern they had used earlier. Tella glared at Ashlynn, all warmth gone as the nunchucks messed up her experiment.

"I swear, I'm not doing anything. The've never acted like this before. I don't know how to stop them." An idea struck. Ashlynn picked up the nunchucks and spoke quietly to them for a moment. "I can get them to stop. I need Seamus. Please." No one spoke, but a moment later, Seamus walked in.

"You didn't tell me you had magical nunchucks. Or gum-ducks for that matter. What's going on?"

"I don't know. Seamus, I need you to hold onto them. They'll trust you. I've told them that the best way they can protect me is by protecting you. They need me. They aren't going to hurt me. I doubt they'll hurt you either, but at least they wont be able to obliviate you. I'll feel better with them protecting you."

"Ashlynn, I don't know how to use nunchucks. What if I wack myself in the face?"

"If you just let them do their thing, they won't wack you. Of course, knowing you, you'll probably find a way to anyway." Tella coughed impatiently. "Just take them." As Seamus left with the nunchucks, a surprising sense of loneliness washed over Ashlynn, as if Seamus had left and taken with him a friend she hadn't known she had. But he was just on the other side of a mirror, and Ashlynn knew that her nunchucks would protect him, simply because it was the best way to protect her.

The experiments began for real this time.