Chapter 18
If anyone were to wander onto the Astronomy Tower’s top floor, they would have been confronted by quite an odd sight. Three rings of stones, and a student in their center, who was periodically moving certain stones into different positions with ichor-slicked tentacles.
Such was the sight that Fred and Geroge Weasley were confronted with.
“Don’t enter the circles!”
“Okay. Why?” George asked.
“I’m fine-tuning the positioning of the tablets. The introduction of unaligned or misaligned energies could cause the matrix to implode, vaporizing us, and destroying the top of the Astronomy Tower.”
“Okay, no entering the death rings.” Fred said, pausing before continuing. “You’ve had those tablets ready for a while. Why wait until the night before the Leaving Feast?”
“Well, you see Fred-“ Harry began, still conducting the conjured appendages. “Disrupting the matrices of the Staff of the Tyrant will, in essence, render it useless. Given that it belongs to Dumbledore, I’d rather not be present for when he realizes that his primary focus is no longer viable.”
“That… is fair.”
“Now, you’ll want to be leaving.” Harry said, dismissing the last of the tentacles he had been using. “Seeing as I’m going to be heisting Dumbledore now.”
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Looking around Dumbledore’s office from his shadow-wreathed position, Harry was mostly baffled at the sheer amount of devices on the shelves.
“You wouldn’t happen to sense any form of tracking device keyed to me, would you, Lord Mora? Given the prophecy, and who relayed it to my parents it seems a relevant concern.”
“One that ascertains whether you are healthy. Beyond that, I sense no other devices linked to you.”
“Well, least I won’t have to worry about that.”
Ignoring the rest of the devices, as well as what seemed to be a phoenix sleeping on a perch by the fireplace, Harry looked at the walls. Ignoring the portraits crowding the wall behind the desk, Harry focused on his goal and waved his palm through the air causing it to come to rest just underneath his chin, creating a ghostly blue spectral trail leading into a bookshelf pushed against the western wall.
Wandering over to the shelf, Harry took a measured look at the contents, as well as the surrounding wall section. By and large, the contents and the wall looked much the same as everything else in the tower. Or it would have if he were viewing the tower through regular reality.
Wreathed in shadows as he was, he noticed the odd lack of true shadows surrounding a metallic-looking obelisk. They were certainly convincing facsimiles of the real thing and would likely have deceived him had he been fully corporeal, but convincing artifice would not alter the truth of the matter.
Reaching out, Harry twisted the obelisk, revealing a glyph that had been hidden. Pushing on it, the blank stretch of wall next to the shelf pushed back and slid to the side.
Looking into the dark passage, Harry has one thought.
“Well, that’s ominous. Onwards and forwards, I suppose.”
In reality, it was rather less ominous from the inside of the passage than the outside. The one thing that Harry noted was that it was long. And tall. Eventually, he came to a halt outside of a wooden door. Temporarily materializing his hand, Harry gave two sharp raps against the wood, before rapidly returning it to the shadows, as well as waiting a few minutes before he opened the door.
Revealing what seemed to be a study, instead of a bedroom.
“Well then. I can’t say I was expecting this.” Harry thought, browsing the bookshelves. “Ooh, The Secrets of the Darkest Arte, and Spiritus Vitae: The Harnessing and Manipulation of Such Matters. Taking those.”
“Ah, a compass, I presume?”
“Figure it’ll make hunting the rest of the phylacteries easier. Now, where is the focus?”
Turning his attention back to the ephemeral trail created by his casting of Clairvoyance, Harry was drawn to a portrait of what appeared to be a castle high in the mountains. Giving the frame a quick Knock, Harry tried to pull it open. Failing, he felt around the frame for a switch, finding one in an indent right above the odd castle.
Pressing it, the painting swung forward, revealing a small recess, in which lay a stand, upon which rested the raven skull-hilted wand.
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Materializing mid-step, Harry walked forward, entering the circles of glyph-engraved tablets, and setting the wand in the center of the final ring. Walking to the northernmost tablet in the first ring, Harry ran a pulse of magicka through it, causing a shield of sickly-looking cyan energy to spring to life around himself, the stones, and the wand.
Now cut off from the rest of the wall, Harry walked to the central circle, shooting a pulse of magicka through the eastern and western tablets on the shielding ring, causing the Elder Wand to slowly rise into the air, standing to point.
Feeling more than looking, Harry found the first of the Anuic glyphs, giving it a tap with his boot, specifically enchanted by Luna for this purpose. He wasn’t planning on leaving anything up to chance, and the risk of destabilizing the charge of the glyphs with his casting was too high.
Walking clockwise, Harry repeated his actions with the first glyph with the rest of them. Stepping into the central ring, Harry knelt down, giving the first Padomaic glyph a pulse of energy. Walking counterclockwise, Harry did the same to the relevant tablets, using different fingers each time.
As he activated each glyph, he could feel the space he was in become thick with magic, starting as a still weight in the air, like the palpable tension before the first strike of thunder, but turning into a veritable riptide of counter currents as he went along the Padomaic glyphs, activating the chaotic counterparts to the prior stillness.
Walking to the wand, unbothered by the maelstrom surrounding him, Harry extended a single hand out and spoke a name and word.
And then the maelstrom twisted in upon itself, devouring what had been split in twain. And Harry, bearing the brunt of the raging forces surrounding him, fell to the ground, unconscious.