Chapter Six:
Ginny Weasley could hardly contain the full, satisfied feeling in her stomach, a feeling so intense that she hadn't even been able to eat more than a few bites of the rather solemn but delicious Welcome Back Feast that had just completed. She was now back at Hogwarts, tucked away where her mother thought she would be kept safe from all the war preparations. She wondered, not for the first time, when and how Moody was going to talk to her mum about what she would really be doing when she wasn't in class.
The former Auror had assured Dumbledore that he would handle that, however, so she tried not to worry about it overmuch. She had plenty of other topics to keep her mind busy, like the tid-bit of information she and the former Headmaster had come across just the day before.
Clio was the Greek muse of history. The symbol attributed to Clio was the scroll. She'd seen a scroll on the sign above the doors of the mystery building. There was a museum just outside Wizarding London called the Cliopendium Of Wizarding History. It had become somewhat overshadowed when Hestia's Historia had been built about five years before, but it had been the largest collection of precious metal artifacts in England when Tom Riddle had been going to Hogwarts. The Clio, as it was often called, had, the summer after Riddle had graduated, housed a special display called 'Yesterday's Everyday Wizardry,' the title that she had seen on the banner in her second-hand memory.
Which meant that they had found the museum that even now, housed Helga Hufflepuff's cup, disguised and tainted as it was by the piece of his so-called soul that the Dark Lord had hidden inside of it all those years before. And tomorrow she would be meeting with Moody and Dumbledore back at Grimmauld Place to put together a plan of action for getting a hold of the Horcrux. And as soon as everything was in order, she would be going on the mission to steal the cup from the museum and bring it back to Headquarters, where they could work on destroying it once and for all.
Theories and speculations swirled around and around within her head, blurring her mind as she fell to sleep, twisting through her dreams and shadowing her waking thoughts the next morning and through the day. It was difficult for her to concentrate on her classes, hard for her to wade through it all even long enough for the youngest Weasley to take more than passing notice of her ex-boyfriend when he took his dinner with the staff and students that night. She couldn’t spare an ounce of concentration for anything however, not even Harry. She was having a hard enough time containing her doubts, fears, and the small amount of excitement.
The thoughts and emotions were still churning inside her when she slipped out of the school and Apparated into an alleyway near Number Twelve. They were still there as she, Moody, and Dumbledore worked out a plan. They were still there as she made her way through the rest of week, waiting for Saturday, waiting for the Clio to close and their plan to get underway.
The time crept by slowly, but eventually it was time, and for all the emotions, all the nerves, all the brain-clouding thoughts, Ginny was ready. They were relying on her and she was not going to let anyone down. Not Moody, who wasn't all that sure she could handle the responsibility. Not Dumbledore who was so outwardly sure that she could. Not herself, who needed so badly to put the taunting memories to use against the very thing that made them. She was ready. She had to be.
She had to put the doubts and fears aside as she stood with Moody just outside the school grounds. She had to do this, do it well, do it right. With one last, deep breath, she squared her shoulders and met the single piercing eye that was pinned on her.
"You ready, girl?"
Ginny didn't take away from the time or energy that she needed to maintain the ruthless hold she'd wrangled on her emotions, instead, she simply raised her wand, first at her accomplice, then at herself, and said the words that she had heard so many times in her dreams, in her memories of that first year. She'd heard Ron ask Hermione once how the older girl thought little Ginny Weasley had managed to sneak through the school so many nights, and do the Dark Lord's bidding. She'd wondered herself for a while. Then the dreams had started, the memories resurfaced, and she'd known.
"Pedes Silentium. Dissimulo."
The Silent Steps spell left little more than an odd muffled feeling in her ears as she shifted her feet, but in the instant it took the Concealing Charm to take hold, she felt the air around her shift, blur. She looked hard, carefully, at the space she knew Moody filled, but couldn't quite manage to make him out, and knew Tom's knowledge was once more standing her in good stead, for all the bad he had left her to deal with. The redhead didn't allow herself to think about that too much, simply Apparated, and as soon as she had regained her balance outside the Clio, she started towards the door, trusting that the ex-Auror was right behind her, though she could neither see nor hear him.
Her nerves were jangling, thrumming beneath the surface of her skin when she aimed her wand at the large double doors she had seen for the first time in the remnant of memory that had never belonged in her head.
"Inflecto," she whispered into the quiet, waiting for the heavy wards to flex under the Warping Spell, waiting for them to change just enough under her influence to allow her, and she assumed her accomplice, to slip through with a gentle push and a quiet pop. The residue of magic that the wards left on her skin made her want to scratch at every inch of her body, but she resisted the urge and continued forward.
With the wards bypassed, a simple Alohomora derivative gained the two entrance to the large, impressive building. Several heart pounding minutes saw her making her way through the long hallways, trusting that the infamous 'mad' eye was allowing her accomplice to follow her. What was most likely only a few minutes after she had left Hogwarts, and felt like a few hours, was all it took for her to recognize one particular hall, one particular shelf, one particular, innocent looking cup.
Another pair of Warping and Unlocking Charms later, she was lifting the golden artifact from its place and slipping it into the specially shielded moke-skin bag that the former Headmaster had acquired for her. She watched the magical bag swallow the cup, watched it contract around its contents and seemingly melt into the belt it was hanging on. No one could see, let alone get a hold of the cup now, even if they somehow managed to see her. And no one that did would get her, she reminded herself with a deep breath. Moody was right there, somewhere, and he was protecting her. That was the plan. Everything was going according to plan.
Everything was running smoothly, including the Convincing Charm she placed on the shelf with a quiet Credo to make anyone who might look, believe that everything was just as it should be, that nothing was missing. But something was missing, and it would stay missing, she told herself as she reset the locks and wards on the shelf and headed back the way she'd come. The cup was going to make it back to Grimmauld, and it would be destroyed, she insisted silently as she pushed her way back through the wards and replaced everything with a swish and flick, and another memory.
A weight began to lift from her chest, leaving her to breathe almost normally as she Apparated to the alley outside Headquarters. The answering pop she heard behind her was a reassuring one, and she was able to remove the charms on herself without her wand shaking in her hand and her fellow thief did the same. It had worked, she thought with a smile, surprised to find her expression echoed on Moody's face, albeit in a rather disconcerting manner.
"Let's get that inside, shall we, Miss Weasley?"
It took a moment for her to process it, but as she followed the paranoid and suspicious wizard into Number Twelve, it occurred to her that he had not called her girl, but instead used her name, for the first time since she had met the real him.
Another smile twisted her lips as they made their way to his rooms and recounted the night's events to the wizard waiting for them there. The former professor was well pleased with how things had gone, and a feeling of satisfaction hung between the three, heavy and pleasant. Unfortunately, that feeling had evaporated by the time the three of them saw one another again several weeks later.
"It does not appear to be working," Dumbledore stated with an infuriatingly pleasant tone.
Moody scowled; swished and flicked yet again. "Incendio."
Ginny sighed, ran a hand through her long red hair in frustration. "But all the research, everything we've found, indicates that the only way to destroy a heavily bespelled item of metal is to burn it."
"It would seem we may have misinterpreted some detail," the ex-Headmaster stated calmly.
"Extermino," the ex-Auror muttered irritably.
"I don't think so, I read it all five times." Ginny sighed yet again. "I worked and reworked the Arithmancy. You checked it over yourself, Professor, we were right. The metal itself has to be broken down, the form of the item unmade in order to open the shielding to make it possible for us to break the wards and destroy the Horcrux without our spells rebounding onto us."
"Yes, I still believe that to be true, I also believe it to be where I went wrong in my destruction of the ring. But no spell or charm to burn or alight, that I am aware of seems to work, and we have tried most of them at least twice."
Ginny shook her head, rubbed her tired eyes before opening them and staring resolutely at the small cup. She couldn't think of a single thing that could be altered in their interpretation. The metal... she blinked as her thoughts ground to a halt. "Metal burns, like wood, but it doesn't turn to ash, it turns to liquid. It boils; it melts."
Brown met sparkling blue. "Quite right my dear, it does, doesn't it?"
Alastor Moody let out a rough, nearly acidic laugh. "Melts. Well, bloody hell, that was obvious. Decoquo."
The cup glowed for a moment, far brighter than it had on any of their previous attempts. Then it began to bubble and drip until it was a puddle of liquid gold with a visible film of blue magical residue above it. That film, however, was cracked. Dumbledore aimed his wand directly at the crack and intoned the Disarming Spell he had created himself years before, when Grindelwald had lived.
The crack grew, spread, splintered, until the blue film crumbled and disappeared, leaving a dark smudge in the middle of the golden pool. No one spoke for a moment. Then the aged wizard, one of the only two Voldemort truly feared, cast a single spell and destroyed another little piece of the Dark Lord's soul.
End Chapter Six
Ginny Weasley could hardly contain the full, satisfied feeling in her stomach, a feeling so intense that she hadn't even been able to eat more than a few bites of the rather solemn but delicious Welcome Back Feast that had just completed. She was now back at Hogwarts, tucked away where her mother thought she would be kept safe from all the war preparations. She wondered, not for the first time, when and how Moody was going to talk to her mum about what she would really be doing when she wasn't in class.
The former Auror had assured Dumbledore that he would handle that, however, so she tried not to worry about it overmuch. She had plenty of other topics to keep her mind busy, like the tid-bit of information she and the former Headmaster had come across just the day before.
Clio was the Greek muse of history. The symbol attributed to Clio was the scroll. She'd seen a scroll on the sign above the doors of the mystery building. There was a museum just outside Wizarding London called the Cliopendium Of Wizarding History. It had become somewhat overshadowed when Hestia's Historia had been built about five years before, but it had been the largest collection of precious metal artifacts in England when Tom Riddle had been going to Hogwarts. The Clio, as it was often called, had, the summer after Riddle had graduated, housed a special display called 'Yesterday's Everyday Wizardry,' the title that she had seen on the banner in her second-hand memory.
Which meant that they had found the museum that even now, housed Helga Hufflepuff's cup, disguised and tainted as it was by the piece of his so-called soul that the Dark Lord had hidden inside of it all those years before. And tomorrow she would be meeting with Moody and Dumbledore back at Grimmauld Place to put together a plan of action for getting a hold of the Horcrux. And as soon as everything was in order, she would be going on the mission to steal the cup from the museum and bring it back to Headquarters, where they could work on destroying it once and for all.
Theories and speculations swirled around and around within her head, blurring her mind as she fell to sleep, twisting through her dreams and shadowing her waking thoughts the next morning and through the day. It was difficult for her to concentrate on her classes, hard for her to wade through it all even long enough for the youngest Weasley to take more than passing notice of her ex-boyfriend when he took his dinner with the staff and students that night. She couldn’t spare an ounce of concentration for anything however, not even Harry. She was having a hard enough time containing her doubts, fears, and the small amount of excitement.
The thoughts and emotions were still churning inside her when she slipped out of the school and Apparated into an alleyway near Number Twelve. They were still there as she, Moody, and Dumbledore worked out a plan. They were still there as she made her way through the rest of week, waiting for Saturday, waiting for the Clio to close and their plan to get underway.
The time crept by slowly, but eventually it was time, and for all the emotions, all the nerves, all the brain-clouding thoughts, Ginny was ready. They were relying on her and she was not going to let anyone down. Not Moody, who wasn't all that sure she could handle the responsibility. Not Dumbledore who was so outwardly sure that she could. Not herself, who needed so badly to put the taunting memories to use against the very thing that made them. She was ready. She had to be.
She had to put the doubts and fears aside as she stood with Moody just outside the school grounds. She had to do this, do it well, do it right. With one last, deep breath, she squared her shoulders and met the single piercing eye that was pinned on her.
"You ready, girl?"
Ginny didn't take away from the time or energy that she needed to maintain the ruthless hold she'd wrangled on her emotions, instead, she simply raised her wand, first at her accomplice, then at herself, and said the words that she had heard so many times in her dreams, in her memories of that first year. She'd heard Ron ask Hermione once how the older girl thought little Ginny Weasley had managed to sneak through the school so many nights, and do the Dark Lord's bidding. She'd wondered herself for a while. Then the dreams had started, the memories resurfaced, and she'd known.
"Pedes Silentium. Dissimulo."
The Silent Steps spell left little more than an odd muffled feeling in her ears as she shifted her feet, but in the instant it took the Concealing Charm to take hold, she felt the air around her shift, blur. She looked hard, carefully, at the space she knew Moody filled, but couldn't quite manage to make him out, and knew Tom's knowledge was once more standing her in good stead, for all the bad he had left her to deal with. The redhead didn't allow herself to think about that too much, simply Apparated, and as soon as she had regained her balance outside the Clio, she started towards the door, trusting that the ex-Auror was right behind her, though she could neither see nor hear him.
Her nerves were jangling, thrumming beneath the surface of her skin when she aimed her wand at the large double doors she had seen for the first time in the remnant of memory that had never belonged in her head.
"Inflecto," she whispered into the quiet, waiting for the heavy wards to flex under the Warping Spell, waiting for them to change just enough under her influence to allow her, and she assumed her accomplice, to slip through with a gentle push and a quiet pop. The residue of magic that the wards left on her skin made her want to scratch at every inch of her body, but she resisted the urge and continued forward.
With the wards bypassed, a simple Alohomora derivative gained the two entrance to the large, impressive building. Several heart pounding minutes saw her making her way through the long hallways, trusting that the infamous 'mad' eye was allowing her accomplice to follow her. What was most likely only a few minutes after she had left Hogwarts, and felt like a few hours, was all it took for her to recognize one particular hall, one particular shelf, one particular, innocent looking cup.
Another pair of Warping and Unlocking Charms later, she was lifting the golden artifact from its place and slipping it into the specially shielded moke-skin bag that the former Headmaster had acquired for her. She watched the magical bag swallow the cup, watched it contract around its contents and seemingly melt into the belt it was hanging on. No one could see, let alone get a hold of the cup now, even if they somehow managed to see her. And no one that did would get her, she reminded herself with a deep breath. Moody was right there, somewhere, and he was protecting her. That was the plan. Everything was going according to plan.
Everything was running smoothly, including the Convincing Charm she placed on the shelf with a quiet Credo to make anyone who might look, believe that everything was just as it should be, that nothing was missing. But something was missing, and it would stay missing, she told herself as she reset the locks and wards on the shelf and headed back the way she'd come. The cup was going to make it back to Grimmauld, and it would be destroyed, she insisted silently as she pushed her way back through the wards and replaced everything with a swish and flick, and another memory.
A weight began to lift from her chest, leaving her to breathe almost normally as she Apparated to the alley outside Headquarters. The answering pop she heard behind her was a reassuring one, and she was able to remove the charms on herself without her wand shaking in her hand and her fellow thief did the same. It had worked, she thought with a smile, surprised to find her expression echoed on Moody's face, albeit in a rather disconcerting manner.
"Let's get that inside, shall we, Miss Weasley?"
It took a moment for her to process it, but as she followed the paranoid and suspicious wizard into Number Twelve, it occurred to her that he had not called her girl, but instead used her name, for the first time since she had met the real him.
Another smile twisted her lips as they made their way to his rooms and recounted the night's events to the wizard waiting for them there. The former professor was well pleased with how things had gone, and a feeling of satisfaction hung between the three, heavy and pleasant. Unfortunately, that feeling had evaporated by the time the three of them saw one another again several weeks later.
"It does not appear to be working," Dumbledore stated with an infuriatingly pleasant tone.
Moody scowled; swished and flicked yet again. "Incendio."
Ginny sighed, ran a hand through her long red hair in frustration. "But all the research, everything we've found, indicates that the only way to destroy a heavily bespelled item of metal is to burn it."
"It would seem we may have misinterpreted some detail," the ex-Headmaster stated calmly.
"Extermino," the ex-Auror muttered irritably.
"I don't think so, I read it all five times." Ginny sighed yet again. "I worked and reworked the Arithmancy. You checked it over yourself, Professor, we were right. The metal itself has to be broken down, the form of the item unmade in order to open the shielding to make it possible for us to break the wards and destroy the Horcrux without our spells rebounding onto us."
"Yes, I still believe that to be true, I also believe it to be where I went wrong in my destruction of the ring. But no spell or charm to burn or alight, that I am aware of seems to work, and we have tried most of them at least twice."
Ginny shook her head, rubbed her tired eyes before opening them and staring resolutely at the small cup. She couldn't think of a single thing that could be altered in their interpretation. The metal... she blinked as her thoughts ground to a halt. "Metal burns, like wood, but it doesn't turn to ash, it turns to liquid. It boils; it melts."
Brown met sparkling blue. "Quite right my dear, it does, doesn't it?"
Alastor Moody let out a rough, nearly acidic laugh. "Melts. Well, bloody hell, that was obvious. Decoquo."
The cup glowed for a moment, far brighter than it had on any of their previous attempts. Then it began to bubble and drip until it was a puddle of liquid gold with a visible film of blue magical residue above it. That film, however, was cracked. Dumbledore aimed his wand directly at the crack and intoned the Disarming Spell he had created himself years before, when Grindelwald had lived.
The crack grew, spread, splintered, until the blue film crumbled and disappeared, leaving a dark smudge in the middle of the golden pool. No one spoke for a moment. Then the aged wizard, one of the only two Voldemort truly feared, cast a single spell and destroyed another little piece of the Dark Lord's soul.
End Chapter Six
Author notes: Author's Notes:
The spells I used here that were not cannon are of my own creation. I looked them up in several Latin dictionaries online, but having no knowledge of the language, I couldn't conjugate them, but I am fairly happy with the results anyway. If there's anyone out there that does know the proper conjugation, please let me know.
The translations, for anyone who is curious, are as follows:
Pedes Silentium: going on foot, walking; silence, obscurity
Dissimulo: to conceal, disguise, keep secret, leave unnoticed
Inflecto: to warp, change, sway
Credo: to believe, trust
Extermino: burn down, set on fire
Decoquo: to boil down, boil away (metals), melt away
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