Dodging Prison and Stealing Witches

Chapter 37: BOOK THREE - Nature Red in Cloak and Dagger

Notes:

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Welcome to Book Three of Dodging Prison and Stealing Witches.

One thing before we start...

I've said before that I use my fanfiction as a kind of self-directed apprenticeship in writing — a place where I can experiment with new styles and techniques in a moderately risk free environment. Right now, I'm working on how to write novels in series, so I'm not going to give you the same info dump recap at the start of this book as I did at the start of book two. Instead, I intend for the books from here on out to be reasonably self contained, so that a reader doesn't have to reread the whole story all over again to understand what's going on (unless they want to, of course).

And now...

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Dodging Prison and Stealing Witches

Book Three: Nature Red in Cloak and Dagger
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)

Chapter Text
Prologue

The role of the soul in magic has long been pondered by wizards and witches. Obviously, it can be split, as in the bastardised horcrux ritual, ripped apart for safe keeping in a suitable vessel — or the soul itself can be the vessel, as in the fidelius charm, storing a secret so closely that it disappears from the minds of sentient beings the world over. Animagus hopefuls speak of soul searching, the month long process of using hallucinogens to dream walk among what it is that makes them, them — while seers like to think of the inner eye as the gateway to the soul, and devote countless hours to carefully examining the confusing snatches of vision that smash across their consciousness like the world's worst stain-glass window.

Soul magic is tricky business. It's not for nothing that the number of known fidelius charm users in Great Britain can be counted on just one hand, if you're in the know, and with just one middle-finger, if you're not. Even those users sometimes have problems.

Hidden behind a secret passage-way in the seventh year Hufflepuff girl's shower room, an invisible man in a green and black mask laid a set of miniature rune stones around the second entrance to the chamber of secrets. He sat down in the centre of the formation and stilled in meditation for a good twenty minutes. Distilled magical power radiated out from him in waves.

The man raised his wand over his head and brought it down onto the rune stone in front of him. "Fidelius Occultum." There was a change in the air surrounding the rune stones as the entrance's location was swept from the world. The man nodded to himself before moving on.

Down the hallway, a confused house elf had to fight off the urge to curtsey to empty air as he passed her. His gait was tall and confident, even under disillusionment — perhaps like a king cobra, perhaps like a lion, or perhaps like something else entirely — but definitely like something regal.

Arriving at Hogwarts' ancient quidditch stadium, the man entered the Ravenclaw girl's changing room, hissed to a tiny bronze snake adorning the frame of a large ornate mirror, stepped through the resulting door, and set up another set of rune stones. After another twenty minutes of meditation, the man brought his wand down to the rune stone in front of him and again said, "Fidelius Occultum."

But this time there was no change.

The man stared at the stone for a moment before repeating the meditation, brought his wand down again, and said, "Fidelius Occultum," in a slightly firmer tone of voice.

Again, nothing happened, except, the man thought, for an inexplicable feeling of fullness. He narrowed his eyes and started counting on his fingers while muttering under his breath. When he got to six, he paused, then counted seven by jerking his thumb in direction he'd just come.