Chapter Text
Everest hadn’t expected Poppy to actually eat any of the cake woman that had chosen her, but she was. Granted, first she’d chopped the woman up into individual daily servings, minus her head, taking notes about how the woman reported it feeling and how diagnostic spells reported on individual prepared servings.
“Didn’t you spend an hour ranting about Ministry employees with no mental protections?” he finally said, once she’d put down her new pen.
“There are at least three levels of ‘eat her’ compulsions involved,” Poppy replied. “The most troublesome is almost certainly the weakest of the three, which I believe would push someone to find time to sit down and eat as much of her as they could until she was fully consumed. Below that is to have a little bit of her at every meal, which I suspect would still create issues. I’m finding myself unable to resist the strongest, which is to have a little of her every day, though preparing portions ahead of time is my method of ensuring that I don’t succumb to the other compulsions.”
He had to admit that he’d not considered that there might be multiple levels of compulsion. “Now I’m kind of surprised that Harry ate his chocolate woman all at once.”
“Oh, that was almost certainly unrelated and based on his fae natures instead of on the changes themselves. It wouldn’t be the first transformed person he’s eaten, and it probably won’t be his last. He’s also the least likely to succumb to any side effects that eating any of them quickly would cause.”
“I suppose that he’s a special case.”
“He’s not the only one, but yes. His wives and two of his mistresses, the Longbottoms, the Lovegoods, and the Stoddards all strike me as having a good chance of avoiding at least some of the side effects.”
“Huh.”
“Of course, then there’s the question of how this is viewed by the Ministry...or the general public if the Daily Prophet gets pictures of the less-edible test subjects.”
Ah. Yeah, that sounded like it could be incredibly variable. At least the four students had honestly-minimal changes. The biggest problem was Mr. Sims and there were a number of conditions that left individuals incapable of walking on their own. Though they’d also be monitoring the other three for signs of gills for the rest of the year, even that wasn’t any more troublesome than some things that came out of Potions class.
It had taken a few days, but Harry had come to the conclusion that he’d been wrong about what was happening to Brook’s soul. Her soul wasn’t being ‘healed’, it was being consumed, and he assumed that this didn’t disturb him because whatever magic was doing it saw this as perfectly fine. The effect was eating away at the torn ‘edges’ of the soul, where pieces had been split off, and when thinking about it he got the impression that this was impossible with a fully-intact soul.
He’d have appreciated not realizing what was happening by virtue of concluding that her soul tasted awful and then needing to think about why he’d concluded that.
Of course, he’d take that over the issues others that had been latched onto by one of the other edible people had developed. At least ten kilos of fat was kind of obvious if you didn’t spread things out over a period of time and didn’t have some way to ‘ignore’ the calories. Less obvious was picking up one or more physical features from the person’s original appearance, which definitely didn’t sound pleasant to deal with, and that was without adding in the possibility that there might be yet-unnoticed mental effects. Poppy was the sole exception so far, though hadn’t resisted the fae magic urge to eat the one who had latched onto her. Instead, she was taking things a lot more slowly through eating a measured amount of the cake woman each day and cataloging any changes. So far there hadn’t been any changes, but it was hard to say if that was because she’d not eaten enough or if the changes normally only hit when you gorged yourself.
“I think the worst part of ‘eating her soul’ is that it doesn’t even feel like I’m gaining anything from it,” Harry grumbled after dinner.
“You obviously can’t let evil people into heaven,” Lola noted. Because of course she’d see it that way.
“I’m reasonably certain that the power that gives me the ability to hold souls like you is closer to a hell or purgatory realm.”
“The power makes you an afterlife, but obviously doesn’t itself decide what kind of afterlife.”
“And I’m fairly confident that it’s the damage to her soul that’s important in this case, not what kind of person she is.”
Parvati frowned. “Master, the only way I’ve ever heard of to even possibly tear a soul into pieces is through murder.”
Okay, that was admittedly a fair point. It was the only way Riddle had known to tear the soul and Brook had simply known different ways to come back from the dead. In this case, an unwilling but previously-prepared sacrifice having their soul punted from the body so that she could take over. She’d prepared two dozen such individuals, none of which would be able to have children of their own if she didn’t get placed into their bodies, and the process for doing that involved killing another as a sacrifice as part of affecting the mothers of the future potential hosts. Everything then had to be set up again once resurrected though, because the original hosts and any prior soul anchors wouldn’t work after the resurrection ritual reset your expected lifespan to that of the host body.
The whole thing was very unpleasant to think about, and at the moment he couldn’t go in and just wipe the knowledge from the memory packet. Once the ‘minimum week’ was up he thought that might become an option though, even if the soul was still around, though he’d not actually tried to do much with the packets of the others still kicking around. For all he knew it would take longer if the soul was still present because the only time he’d wanted to wipe things immediately was with Anubis and the asshole left as soon as he could.
After he hadn’t said anything for a couple of minutes, Astoria spoke up. “Have you figured out why she wanted to stop being a Dark Lady?”
He sighed. “Because unlike the first time she died, this time her husband was killed before her. She was his only soul anchor and being resurrected broke his connection to her, meaning he couldn’t be brought back after she was.”
“She...gave up on being evil because she was depressed?”
“No, she only went into being evil and working to take over Europe after Grindelwald was defeated because the man who she eventually married liked ‘bad girls’. It just so happened that she was reasonably good at it when not failing to dodge snipers or choosing the wrong time to try to recruit some giants and had amassed some very loyal but far more naturally evil followers. She was even looking for ways to intentionally hunt fae to claim their magic for her own, and I’m reasonably certain that a couple of her plans had a chance of success if she’d lived long enough to try them.”
Hermione blinked a couple of times. “Master, if she was ‘reasonably good at it’ then that implies that she was probably more skilled than most. How did she get caught?”
He snorted. “She let her temper get the best of her. Most of her followers she brutally killed in what was still technically self-defense as she traveled across Europe, not that she was in the habit of leaving enough evidence behind for anyone to trace their deaths back to her. All but three died that way, before she backtracked instead of continuing on towards Russia and eventually settled down in Dublin. When the last three followers showed up in the area she noticed and hunted them down instead of waiting for them to find her, and Moody’s eye let him see what she was up to after he’d gone out looking for the known evil gits that had shown up in the area. She finished off the three, but reinforcements had been called in by then and she wasn’t good enough to escape the dozen Aurors that stormed the building.”
Parvati was the only one that flinched significantly at that, though she was the only one without fae magic blunting her opinions of some things. She also didn’t say anything though, and he wasn’t deep enough in her mind to know if she’d flinched at the brutality or something else.
He ended up trying to distract himself through experimenting with tying Astoria and Dee up, slipping immovable rods into the ropes as he did so. The two had seemed disappointed at how much mobility they retained, at least until he levitated them and activated the rods. Hanging from the now-stationary rods pulled the ropes tight in ways that they’d not anticipated, but definitely appreciated.
Harry idly wondered how many magicals would recognize the electric train engines he was building for what they were. He was building two of them, so that one could be at either end of the line of carriages, even if only one should be enough to move the entire set four times over with all the enchantments in the mix. If the non-space-expansion enchantments all failed on the carriages and the engines then it should still only need one to move everything.
If the space expansion failed then things would become far too large and misshapen to move, of course.
Working on the train was at least a decent distraction from some of his other issues. He had ideas for how he would get it from Scotland to the Pyrenees, but couldn’t actually test them until he had access to Beauxbatons officially. Even if he suspected he could still slip in unofficially. At least one station was going to be needed though, for the Hogwarts end, and he was hoping he could manage to get a station at the Beauxbatons end without too much hassle. That, of course, meant designing the stations and starting on building them.
The Hogwarts station was going to be underground, out of sight when not needed. A ‘hidden area’ had even been formed by the castle for it, though it was an empty room with some obvious doors right now. Less obvious was that those doors connected to towers that would rise out of the ground, something that he’d been shown in Ravenclaw’s room and that the castle seemed particularly proud of. It would keep direct access to the interior of the castle a little more restricted than connecting directly to the interior. Making a suitably-modern train station that fit in with the castle’s aesthetic was going to be the tricky part there, but he was determined to make an attempt.
Matching the Beauxbatons aesthetic was going to be downright simple compared to trying to make a more modern train station look right for a stone castle.
Things had remained reasonably calm until the April break, the Ministry continuing to use the vanishing cabinets for the students heading home, and that’s when work on properly examining the stasis chest resumed. Or at least Harry’s involvement in said work, anyway, while Hermione and Susan handled basically all of the dorm monitor duties. Most students hadn’t gone home, which meant that they needed more presence than the winter break had necessitated.
“I’m more compatible with the wands now,” Harry noted as he looked over the line of them. “Which means that it’s likely that Bboolyn Khudaldaachin collected magic from the realm their magic comes from.”
“That’s both useful and annoying at the same time,” Croaker pointed out. “Having more chests because you can make them isn’t as nice as being able to produce them ourselves.”
“But being able to make more at all would be a major benefit.”
“Indeed.”
“That said, it’s dawned on me that we’re approaching at least one aspect of this entirely wrong.” The entire room turned to look at him, and he gestured at the plain chests piled up for testing. “Why are we using chests? Something closer to a wardrobe that can be walked into would be a lot easier for medics to get patients into and out of.”
Granted, he knew that the answer was that step one for this kind of thing was to duplicate things exactly first, but it wasn’t like they’d found any indication that the form of the ‘exterior’ was important. The interior had to be expanded and you had to be able to close the space off to trigger things, but that was about it. Experimenting with a form factor that was easier for their use case and easier to work inside of seemed like an obvious thing to be doing.
He let others handle getting something suitably vertical while he started examining the chest from scratch, figuring that new magical natures meant that his previous examination was partially invalidated. It came as no surprise that his examination was a lot easier now, though he wasn’t sure if it was possible to cast the needed spells through the wands without some of the origin realm’s magic as well. Kind of like how the Peverell wand had probably been better at mending than other wands, but to get the full capability out of it you needed to have some of the other realm’s magic.
At this point he was also reasonably certain that he could do better than the chest though. Bboolyn Khudaldaachin had intentionally sought out magic that could keep any number of creatures locked up, and the combination led to far more useful options.
Still, to start with he grabbed one of the wands and an unenchanted chest. A light string of runes around the edge of the chest’s internals defined the entry and trigger point for the ‘stasis’ effect. They also formed half of the expansion anchoring, the other half going into the bottom corners of the chest. With everything in place he cast spells in quick succession, expanding the inside of the chest and making it so that the expanded area could be disconnected from the normal flow of time.
Kind of. He was positive that if he was inside then it wouldn’t work. Possibly anyone with the traveling fae magic, but definitely any who had pocket spaces and were bound to them. Even being bound tightly to another by the handfasting balls might be enough to prevent the separation from happening if the entire bound group wasn’t present.
When he was done he had a chest with an inside that was nearly a third larger than the original’s. He conjured a stick that should only last thirty seconds and dropped it into the chest, then closed the lid. Over a minute later he opened the lid, hearing the stick hit the bottom as he did so, and around twenty seconds later the stick vanished as the conjuration ended.
“Definitely not something I think anyone else here is going to be able to duplicate,” he said as he closed the lid again, moving over to his notes to add to them. “The wands channel the magic properly, but don’t provide enough on their own to accomplish the ‘stasis’ effect.”
There was pouting, but it was something they’d been worried about right along. If they could find the family that made the wands then they might have another source of things, but there hadn’t been any success and there was a chance that the last members had died off. This didn’t stop the others from making copies of his notes, grabbing chests, and attempting to duplicate things anyway though.
He focused more on ideas for how to modify things for a walk-in instead of a drop-in entryway.
A few days later they had a good reason to use chests with the magic instead of wardrobes, namely that the other realm’s space expansion magic tied to things had gravity push you ‘away’ from the opening no matter the orientation of the containing object. A wardrobe entry just meant that gravity suddenly shifted ninety degrees on you when you stepped in and you would be falling to the ‘far wall’. This applied to any expanded space you made with the other realm wands that wasn’t anchored to the ground in some fashion, even if you couldn’t disconnect the space from the flow of time. Anchoring one to the ground, such as by putting it in a room in a building, negated the ability for it to disconnect from the flow of time as well.
It made for incredibly useful containers, admittedly, because opening the lids would never cause them to spill no matter what orientation they were in. A second team was now looking into that use case.
Harry had switched to using other magic that he now had to make a better setup. Some of what he could do only worked in a pocket space, unfortunately, but expanded spaces were just enough for the pieces he thought would be most useful anyway. Instead of a wardrobe he was working with a custom-built cube, four meters per side, that he’d space expanded into a much wider and deeper area with only minimal added height. Dobby and Taps had then built out a hallway with rooms to either side of it, each room having a door that would operate normally, and even built them all out as hospital rooms.
If they weren’t preparing everything needed to repeat this, including a duplicate of the original cube, then he’d have to check what disaster they’d been responding to and/or cleaning up instead.
But now he was working on adding the magic needed to turn these ‘examination rooms’ into ‘timestop rooms’. The trigger was going to be engaging the deadbolt lock on each door, though unlike a normal deadbolt the thumbturn was on the wall instead of the door and the bolt stuck into the door from there. For safety, each room could only be ‘stopped’ for twenty-eight days at a time before the deadbolt would open itself again. A key system underneath each deadbolt would allow shifting that downward, but wouldn’t allow disabling it entirely. Having a healer check at least once a month shouldn’t be a hardship anyway.
He was three rooms in when his mirror vibrated. It took a minute to dig it out, and he found that it was Ai. “Is something wrong?”
“A large crocodile has shown up and politely asked about the whereabouts of the bear fae,” Ai replied.
Ah. It was about time that had come up. “I’ll be over shortly.”
“Thank you, Master.”
Four others had rushed out of the room at that, but he stowed his Unspeakables robe and used a linking page to arrive at the orphanage. There, nervously but politely waiting, was a large bipedal crocodile creature named ‘Snappy’. Obviously a traveling fae, and the name sounded interesting to get the story of, but he pushed that aside as he moved towards them. “I understand that you’re looking for the idiot.”
Snappy looked at him, feeling like they were going to say something insulting, then froze as soon as their eyes properly focused on him. This lasted for at least twenty seconds before they tore their eyes away and backed up several steps. They took a few moments to recover, but kept their eyes averted as they looked mostly in his direction. “It is obvious now that my...hmmm.”
“Energy group member, as I understand the terminology?”
“That is accurate, yet not quite detailed enough. Suitable for now, I suppose. You defeated them and took everything that had been theirs.”
“They were trying to take slaves from this world for others to examine, and intentionally targeted those that could be seen as under my direct protection to make a point. Of course, as you likely know, they failed to make that point as well.”
“I can see that. There was little most of us could do about their behavior.”
“And likely very few of you cared.”
“No, we greatly disliked their actions and the ire it drew as they became more bold in their...acquisitions, but they held the master keys to the group’s energy stores. Only one who could guarantee victory against them would dare attempt to go after them, and none of us had managed to obtain the skills needed to do so.”
Huh. “Master keys?”
“They should’ve had two.”
Interesting. That implied that the other three were for something else. “I see. And you hope to?”
“I wish to recover the keys at a minimum, and can offer personal alliance with you against other threats for three of your centuries in addition to items that I brought to bargain with.”
“I don’t believe I have a problem with that, though I will need some way of telling that you have a legitimate claim to the keys and aren’t just trying to grab them before the group they should be going to can reach me.”
“My personal keys should resonate with the master keys in a manner you can detect.”
Harry nodded. “That sounds reasonable. Shall we start with checking that? If for some reason the items I believe you’re looking for aren’t in my possession then we don’t need to waste any additional time on things.”
Snappy half-bowed his agreement. “I shall only need a minute to fetch my keys from their hiding places.”
“I’ll be right back with things as well.”
Two minutes later he could feel the connections between the two keys Snappy had produced and the pair of keys he had. There was zero connection to the other three keys, sitting safely in his handbag. With that confirmed, what looked like a merchant’s cart of items was rolled out of the fae’s pocket space. Ninety percent of it was crystals of magic in containment bubbles, grouped by the realm they appeared to come from.
“Quite the selection you’ve got here,” Harry said as he looked over things.
“Others pooled their collections to provide you with a suitable set of options,” Snappy replied. “Though many of these can be dangerously incompatible with each other, I can offer ten crystals per key.”
“Oh yes, the incompatibility issues are obvious. Honestly, none of the bird-realm ones to the left should be released to anyone from this realm and the less said about the aquatic ones the better. But it looks like you’ve also got a collection of books?”
“Most of those describe peculiarities of a given realm’s magic that my group has discovered.”
“Well, that sounds more useful than my usual ‘had to kill someone and figure it out later’ acquisition method. Where did you get truth realm crystals?”
“I don’t know where those came from specifically, just that it was a very recent acquisition during an altercation with a minor member of the realm.”
That made sense. You didn’t have to kill a queen to get magic, after all. “Well, I think that to start with I’d like eight each of the Rebndmo and memory vampire crystals. Doubly so if you have books for either of them.”
They paused as they looked at him, flinching away after a moment. “I unfortunately don’t have books on those, but very few people know Rebndmo by name.”
“I’ve visited it repeatedly and killed three lesser crown holders on one visit. Met Fllbxlfpf and spawned Wehhlg to keep the other minor leaders in line too. But I have a feeling that the combination will be personally useful.”
Snappy felt confused about that particular combination, but it didn’t take long to gather ten crystals of each. There were only eleven of the memory vampire crystals and thirteen of the Rebndmo ones, but in the latter case he was picky about which eight were collected. He wanted the same kind he’d gotten, instead of the ones that felt like they were more holiday-tainted. “That leaves four more crystals.”
“Instead of that, would you happen to have any tips on creating crystals like these without killing someone to get them?”
“It is very traditionally thought of as something that should be discovered anew.”
“I’m not looking for step by step instructions. A starting point would be appreciated at a minimum, if only because my eventual kids are less likely to inherit a number of useful items from me and being able to prepare crystals for them might be nice.”
They gave him a look, flinching again, before half-bowing. “Understandable. I have some personal notes that I can make a quick copy of.”
That took ten minutes, plus a couple to ensure that the notes were able to be read. A quick pact of alliance was made and the two keys were traded for the sixteen crystals of magic and the notes, all which were stored away before the other three keys were produced. “Would you happen to know what these ones go to?”
Snappy obviously hadn’t expected to see more keys, but backed away after a moment. “Those...are realm keys.”
“Realm keys?”
“They allow one to access a realm that has been sealed off due to being too troublesome. None are places one would normally wish to visit, but the keys work over long distances. To have one would be unusual, but three is unheard of.”
“Huh. My other contact didn’t recognize them, and they feel related to one another.”
“I was the custodian of one such key for a time, which is how I can recognize them. If they feel similar then they likely go to different entry points of the same realm.”
Well, that was fun. He put them back in his bag, figuring that at least now he had more information to bring up with Merlyn. “Oh well. I don’t suppose that you’re willing to tell me why you keep having issues looking directly at me?”
“I have the ability to see the most powerful beings an individual has killed...and you’ve killed realm leaders in their seats of power.”
Ah. Yeah, that could be distracting. “It was, unfortunately for them, only after they sent people to kill me.”
“I’ve heard the stories of what you accomplished, but I wasn’t expecting the vision that I get when looking at you to be so powerful...or for Bboolyn Khudaldaachin to not count as powerful enough. They’ve been unopposed for so long thanks to their shield that could stop true name magic from affecting them...”
“Luckily for me, I have ways to get around such things.”
“Should you ever discover which realm grants that ability then their magic will be in high demand.”
“And I’m sure that they’d rather I not reveal where the ability came from.” Especially since it was this realm, or the one they’d just recently split off from.
“...very true. I thank you for being more reasonable than we’d feared regarding the keys. The pact will warn me when you are in need of my assistance, but I hope you understand if I otherwise wish that we do not interact much with one another.”
“That’s understandable.”
The fae felt relieved to be leaving, and Harry sighed. He was going to have to fill out more parchmentwork because of this.
“Just so you know,” Eaglet said as he looked over the parchmentwork. “We’ve got more volunteers for some of those transformation items.”
Harry blinked. “You do?”
“Couple of squibs that seem to like the idea of being dolls, three individuals without magic that are oddly excited about the idea of being a mannequin for some reason. Nobody sane enough to deal with wants to be turned into living food and eaten, at least in my opinion, but this stems from your comment about the things probably only working on those who have magic. Mostly it’s testing to see how dangerous they should be considered, because if they don’t work without someone magic holding them then they’re safer than most fae items.”
On one hand, it felt like he should’ve kept his mouth shut about that detail. But on the other hand, knowing that for certain in either direction actually felt useful. Having fully willing test subjects that wanted the effects of the items was odd, at least without an incentive like it possibly helping get out of Azkaban, but he was reasonably certain that there were people that were interested in weirder things out there. “Can I just hand the things over and let you run those tests without me?”
“Nope. Officially they’re currently filed as safely in your custody. Handing them over for testing would require knowing how dangerous they are, so that we know what precautions are needed, which we can’t determine until after the testing is completed and we’ve done a ‘will people be compelled to use these when outside of your presence’ evaluation. The latter is particularly annoying with this kind of thing, and we’re likely to not want to bother.”
“...so officially I’m in charge of them until such a time as testing that may never be completed is done to determine how dangerous they are?”
“Yes, but the testing we want to complete will tell us if you’re getting paid a ‘keep dangerous fae items out of circulation’ bonus.”
“I don’t need more money.”
“Fair point, but if you’re right about their need for a magical to activate them then that also goes on record and future insights are less likely to be deemed to need testing.”
Which meant this was a ‘allow this test to happen, or future things will probably require far more testing instead of them listening to him’ deal. Fun. “You’re going to have to handle everything other than me showing up with the things.”
“Of course. That’s standard procedure unless you want to be more involved. We’re probably going to want to see one of these ‘realm keys’ too, by the way, since you didn’t seem to think they were dangerous.”
“They aren’t dangerous to me, as someone who can always get home. No guarantee that without the latter bit that I wouldn’t be trying to launch them into a black hole somewhere.”
“True, but that’s a topic for another day. You getting back to the stasis chest thing?”
“I’ll probably continue that on Monday at this point.”
“Doubt anyone will care about you wanting some time away from things.”
“Oh, there are five individuals that are going to care quite a bit.”
Eaglet blinked, and looked up from where he’d just put the parchmentwork down. “What? Who?”
“My wives and mistresses are going to need to help me de-stress.”
“Ooooh. Lucky bastard.”