Kapitel 48: Synesthesia
Under the invisibility cloak, Harry flew. He weaved his way through the trees of the forbidden forest, dark and foreboding. Cobwebs lined the branches. Sharp brambles and bushes littered the ground. Things made strange sounds in all directions. Water dripped from a recently passed storm. Fresh earth and decomposing wood filled his nostrils.
He touched down by the humming ward lines of Hogwarts Castle, pulled out his trunk, disillusioned it, un-shrunk it, and opened the lid.
"Ward stone A," he whispered.
A dainty hand appeared holding a rune-covered, ruler-sized wardstone.
He took it and started installing it a few metres away. A minute ticked by. "Ward stone B."
The hand appeared again.
Four minutes later, he'd set up five ward stones to make a three-by-three metre square. The final stone was in the centre for the key-stone. He closed the trunk again, shrunk it, and popped it back in his pocket. He sat down, under the cloak, and started the occlumency meditation. Twenty minutes ticked by. Harry stood up and touched his wand to the key-stone. He murmured, "fidelius occultum." He felt the fidelius charm catch.
A minute later the trunk was open again. A blonde head popped out, looking around like a meerkat from a burrow. She looked extremely confused. "Where are we? I don't understand."
"We are in the three-by-three metre space just outside the Hogwarts wards, between the large split oak, and the twenty-second dead birch west of the lake."
Daphne blinked.
"Merlin, that felt weird." Her brow furrowed. "So, where's the castle? Why are we in a forest?"
"We can't actually see the castle from here, and anywhere we could carries a higher chance of being spotted before we got the fidelius set up."
Daphne pouted. "That's no fun."
"Yeah, well." He rubbed the back of his head. "How about getting over here, and telling me what you can feel coming from these things?"
Daphne clambered from the trunk and joined him at the edge of the ward line. She closed her eyes, raised her head, and took a deep breath. "I can feel it."
"Good. What can you feel?"
The blonde shifted and tilted her head, as though trying to hear something very faint. "Not much. I can just feel it. I know it's there."
"Okay. Draw your wand. Be very careful not to cast anything."
Daphne drew her brand-new, thirteen-inch Hazel and unicorn hair wand, and held it, tight and uncertain.
He took her wand hand in his and guided her towards the wards. "There," he said. "Feel the magic pooling in your hand from the wand. Can you feel it?"
Daphne's breath hitched. "I can feel it. So many feelings. It's like eating a whole bag of bertie bott's every flavour beans."
He nodded. "You see now why wizards are so fond of their wands, and become reliant on them?"
Daphne gave a small nod. "Is there anything different from what he remembered?"
"No. The wards are as pathetic as ever. You feel the strawberry one?"
Daphne scrunched up her face. "Strawberry? I don't see what—wait. Yes! I feel it. Wow, it really does feel like strawberry. How does that work?"
"It's called synaesthesia. It's a weird thing our brains can do. It allows us to perceive the sensations of one sense as those of another. In this case, our magic sense has a 'taste.'"
"That's so weird."
"Yeah. And the strawberry one is the one that detects dark magic. Only, it's supposed to be raspberry."
"And the detection wards?"
"I'm going to see about them now." He stepped forward, raised his wand to the wards, and closed his eyes. Flavours flooded his mind. He picked them apart until he felt a taste that was overwhelmingly sweet. The detection ward. He focused on it and was surprised when it unravelled in his head, laying itself out to him like a sweets only buffet. Chocolate, cake, carrot, and blueberry were just a few of the tastes he could sense. He counted sixteen tastes in total. "Wow."
"What? What?" She sounded impatient.
"I can feel them. All the people in the castle. The wards let me through their security system. They never let Voldemort do that."
"Because you're Lord Slytherin?"
"That can be the only reason. Huh. That'll make this a lot safer." He thought for a moment. With this, he'd be able to enter the castle, and erase his presence. For anyone who relied on the wards, it would be as though he were never even there. He smiled. "Well, that's all we needed. Let's get going—." He turned, and froze. His voice turned to steel. "Daphne! Don't move!"
Daphne froze, still facing the wards.
There, milling around their square ward perimeter, silent as a shadow, and as large as muggle cars, were three confused-looking giant spiders. Visions of a pet spider kept in a box shot through his head. A spider racing away from Tom Riddle's wand.
He readied his own wand. One of the quirks of the fidelius charm was that shooting anything out of it, in visual range of someone who didn't know the secret, counted as revealing the secret. If he cast a spell against them, they'd be able to see them both. Daphne wouldn't even be capable of casting a spell, not being the secret keeper. Not that she was powerful enough to kill one of these buggers yet.
The acromantula clicked their mandibles at his sudden outburst. They'd heard his conversation with Daphne. They needed to be memory wiped. Or killed.
"Daphne, whatever you do…Do. Not. Leave the wards." He leapt out of the perimeter and immediately hit one of the spiders with an over powered cutting curse. Ichor sprayed everywhere. He heard Daphne scream behind him.
The other two spiders whirled around and closed on him with supernatural speed.
The first crashed down from another cutting curse to the face, exploding spider brains all over the clearing. The last pounced, venomous pincers stabbing the ground where he'd been only a moment before. He flew backwards, cloak whirling in front of him. He took aim, and cast.
The final spider exploded in a shower of spider bits. Decorating the clearing with a fine shine of gore.
He flew back to the wards where Daphne still stood, wide-eyed, shocked, and shaking. The smell was visceral.
"You okay?"
"Y-y-yes I… I'm okay. I just." Her knees gave out. She collapsed to the ground."
"C'mon, let's get out of here. There's a change of robes in the trunk."
Daphne nodded, took his proffered hand, still shaking, and climbed back into the trunk. She took every step as though her legs would betray her again.
He looked around the gore-filled clearing, and sighed. They needed to evacuate fast. Who knew how many others were around? There was no time to recover the ward stones as he'd have liked to. They'd have to be destroyed instead. It seemed he was getting through miniature ward stones almost as fast as ageing potions these days.
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