บท 61: The Break-In At A.I.D
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The link is also in the synopsis.
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Eddie and Quinn headed towards the History of Magic classroom to attend another history lecture by Cuthbert Binns, the professor ghost of Hogwarts.
"What are we going to study," asked Quinn, "I stopped listening to him months ago."
"Hmm, ah, today we are going to learn about one of the goblin leaders," answered Eddie. Trying to remember topics for today's lecture, "I can't recall the name. It was something followed by a weapon."
That brought a chuckled out Quinn, "Isn't that most of them?"
"Why does Hogwarts let professor Binns teach after his death," wondered Eddie, "He clearly had an obsession with goblins. I mean, look at his classes; he rushes through anything that isn't goblin related and spends most of his time on the goblin rebellions."
Quinn thought about the reasoning and could only come up with reasoning.
"Hogwarts is a school. Professors are its employees, so maybe, they keep letting Binns teach because they don't need to pay him. A ghost doesn't have the use of money. Plus, as far as I know, no law states that ghosts need to be paid," Quinn nodded as he looked at Eddie, "Yeah, I guess that is it."
"So, money is the reason, huh," Eddie held his chin with his hand, "Never thought about that. Maybe you are right."
Quinn bumped Eddie with his shoulder and spoke, "Maybe before we graduate from Hogwarts, we would exorcise professor Binns and save the future generation from boredom incarnate."
Eddie wagged his finger in disagreement, "And, take away the one hour of practically free time from them? I don't think so."
"Hmm, maybe you are right," laughed Quinn, "After a while, everything Binns speaks turns into white background noise."
"Exactly."
Eddie and Quinn laughed as they entered the History of Magic classroom.
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- (Scene Break) -
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Ivy Potter and Hermione Granger walked at a fair distance away from Quinn West, following him, tailing their prime suspect.
Both girls watched Quinn and his friend laughing and joking around like it was any other day.
Ivy grabbed Hermione's arms when they reached the corridor with the History of Magic classroom and hurriedly whispered, "As soon as the class starts, we are going to run to the A.I.D classroom."
Hermione nodded and hid behind a pillar, waiting for the class to start so that they could sneak into the A.I.D classroom-turned-office.
"Do you know what is behind the glass wall in there?" asked Hermione as they waited.
Ivy shook her and replied, "I tried to ask around, but nobody knows what is behind the glass. Everybody has only ever seen the office part."
Both she and Hermione had only been to the A.I.D office once, but they clearly remembered the glass wall. The glass was heavily frosted, so not much visible through the wall panel.
"Maybe we would find something in there," said Ivy, "There was a door built into the wall, so we know there is something in there."
She was anxious about what they were about to do. The Polyjuice plan didn't cause her this much anxiety because they knew Draco was an idiot. But Quinn West? He was an entirely different ballgame.
Quinn West was a smart person. Ivy could still remember the first time he had warned them about the stone's defenses or when he refused to admit that he had been in the chambers, even though he clearly knew what was inside.
When he caught her, Quinn West exactly knew what he was doing. His words and demeanor reflected his end goal, and that was to bring her under his debt, which he succeeded in doing without breaking a beat.
There always had been a sense of mystery around Quinn West, and today would be the day she would remove the curtain of the mystery away from him.
"Ivy, let's go," she heard Hermione speak, "The class has started."
Hermione's words snapped Ivy out of her thoughts. She looked at the empty corridor and could hear the faint sound of Binn droning about goblins and one of the early rebellions.
"Let's go."
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- (Scene Break) -
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Eddie and Quinn sat side-by-side, a deck of mini cards spread on the table in front of them. The cards were regularly sized, but Quinn had shrunk them to fit on the somewhat narrow table.
The two boys played the game, Concentration, Matching Pairs, Match Match, Match Up, Memory, Pelmanism, Shinkei-suijaku, Pexeso, or anything you wanted to call the game.
The game was simple: all the cards were laid face down on the table, and two cards were flipped face up over each turn. The object of the game is to turn over pairs of matching cards.
"You know you never win this game," whispered Quinn, "Yet, you still challenge me to this every so often. Why is that? You do know that we can play something else instead."
He had his cheek resting on his palm, with his elbow on the table, looking like a standard laid-back fellow.
"One day, I will win against you," said Eddie, flipping over two similar cards, gaining a point for himself, "And when that day comes, victory will be that much sweeter. Oh, Merlin, it will be glorious, and you will rue the day."
A low scoff came from Quinn before he spoke, "The only way you can beat me at this to drug me till I am doozy and then challenge me." He turned a pair of similar cards and gained a point, followed by another identical pair, gaining yet another point for himself.
"Yeah, that is my last option, my plan-Z as to speak," spoke Eddie as he hovered his hand over the cards, deciding which one to flip, "If I don't win till we are in our seventh year, I am going to hand you the dessert you like with tons of potion mixed in and then challenge you to a game."
"...," Quinn stared at his friend with stunned silence, "That won't be a genuine victory, you know?"
"So? It is your fault. Who told you to be so good at this game."
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- (Scene Break) -
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Ivy and Hermione reached the west corner corridor of the fifth floor. This hallway was where the A.I.D office lived, right on the main corridor, so it was easy to find.
The two girls stood in front of the door to the classroom-turned-office. They stared at it for a few seconds before Hermione took action.
She took out her wand and pointed it at the door lock, "Alohomora," the whisper of the incantation left her mouth accompanied by an invisible spell light to the door lock.
Hermione's eye twitched when the door didn't unlock. She turned to Ivy and spoke, "He has charmed it against the unlocking spell." She bit her lower lip, "Just like professor Flitwick did in the stone's defenses."
"I thought he might do that, so," the redhead put her hands in her robe pocket and revealed a key in her head, "I swiped the key from Filch's key hoop. He has keys to all the rooms in the castle."
The redhead, green-eyed Potter looked proud as she inserted the key into the lock hole and turned it to unlock the door. There was a click before the lock released the door from its bindings.
She held the doorknob and looked at Hermione before pushing the door to enter inside.
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- (Scene Break) -
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Inside the History of Magic classroom, Quinn inhaled a deep breath and sat up straight in his chair, his eye wide open as he stared straight ahead.
The ward on the front door of his office triggered itself. Someone had opened just opened the front door and entered his office.
It was a simple sensory ward used on doors and entrances that warned the caster if someone opened the door and entered. The ward was simple to cast and had a simple yet elegant function, plus the ward had an added hidden ability which made it moderately problematic to detect.
Of course, it did have its disadvantages; the ward once found was easy to dismantle or bypass without the caster's knowledge.
But that didn't matter right now because, with a flash of red on his nape, Quinn felt anger building inside him as someone had just broken into his office.
Quinn didn't know who it was, but that didn't matter.
He hadn't done anything to warrant a spot check from the professors if the intruder was a faculty member. They had no proper justification for going through his stuff.
This was the better scenario because he couldn't do anything drastic against the professors.
But, if it was not a faculty member, which meant it was a student. And if the intruder was indeed a student, then they didn't know what was good for them. Cause there was a f***ing storm going to rain down on their bloody heads.
The red on Quinn's deepened as he thought about the intruder in his office.
'I have to know who it is?' fumed Quinn. He needed to get out of here.
Neither the office nor the workshop had currently any defenses set up that stopped people from going in if they really tried to break in.
He had removed the shock on the doorknob because he was afraid that someone would get shocked while he was not in the office and it might get the professors involved. Even though the A.I.D cards clearly stated if he has in or out of the office, the reality wasn't so ideal and people still showed up when he was not in.
And, around a month ago, he was feeling especially sleepy while he working in the workshop, so he just left for the night by locking the door. Ever since then there had been no magical defenses on the workshop door. Plus, this was a first, no one actually tried to break into his workshop since the time he opened shop, so he might have been lax on security.
Even though there was nothing in the workshop other than some files, he still wanted to go there right now.
He looked to his side at Eddie and whispered, "I am not feeling well. I am going to the hospital wing."
"Now?" asked Eddie as they were in the middle of a class.
Quinn nodded as he packed his book bag and spoke, "Yeah, I am going right now. See you later."
He stood up and directly spoke to Binns. "Professor Binns, I am not feeling well. I am going to the hospital wing."
The ghost of a professor looked at Quinn before nodding. No more words were spoken as Quinn briskly walked outside of the classroom.
As soon as Quinn was out, he immediately pulled out Recon and activated it while walking.
"Fifth floor, west corner, main corridor!" Quinn spoke with raging heat behind his words. Red flashed on his nape.
The Hogwarts tracking map immediately obeyed its master's orders, and the ink on the fabric shifted to show the precise location that Quinn had specified.
With a look from Quinn, the map zoomed and honed on the A.I.D office, and the second he saw two blue dots on the map in his office, his feet stopped, and he came to a halt.
Blue dot meant that the person on the map was a student.
Quinn stared at the text tags above the two blue dots, and his gaze turned into a glare, his face twisting into a fierce expression before every expression drained from his face.
It wasn't occlumency that took expressions away from his face, the look on Quinn's face was an expression of ice-cold anger.
Recon showed two names,
「Ivy Potter」 and 「Hermione Granger」.
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- (Scene Break) -
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Ivy and Hermione looked around the office area of the classroom, and the room was dark with no windows to provide light to the room.
Hermione looked up at the ceiling with her wand raised but saw that there were no chandeliers with ever-burning candles on the roof.
"There are no chandeliers on the roof," she said as her wand tip lit up, "Use the Lumos charm."
Ivy took out her wand, and her wand tip lit up after a murmur of the incantation.
In the light from the two glowing tips of wands, the room revealed itself in the light.
The room had changed from the last time they had been inside. A lot more wall decor on the walls. Odd trinkets that somehow looked right in place in their current arrangements.
The door in the glass wall immediately attracted Ivy's attention, as it was the entrance to a place no one had seen.
"I will go inside there. You try to find if there is anything in here," Ivy said to Hermione and moved towards the door in the glass wall.
She didn't have the key to this door, and the Unlocking charm (Alohomora) didn't unlock the door. The only thing that remained was to break the door down.
She knelt in front of the door and pointed her wand at the door, and took a deep breath.
"Diffindo," she spoke the incantation, and the lower half of the wooden door suddenly had a shallow cut on the in it.
Ivy frowned at the result of her magic. The Severing Charm (Diffindo) was a charm used to precisely and accurately cut something. Her mastery over the spell wasn't at the level where she could cut through the wood in one fell swoop.
She shook her head and cast multiple Severing Charm to create cuts in the outline of a rectangle.
"Ugh!" she silently cursed that the door didn't cut all the way through. Ivy made a decision and sat down on the floor. With both of her feet in front of her body, she kicked the carved outline. The next second, a rectangular chunk of wood broke with a woody snap.
The sudden noise startled Hermione as she snapped her head towards Ivy and exclaimed, "What are you doing?! Why did you break the door?!"
"The door wasn't opening, so I kicked it down." Ivy got on all fours and carefully crawled inside.
"Are you mad?!" screamed Hermione. "West would know someone was here."
"No, he won't," came Ivy's voice from the other side of the door. "A simple Repairing Charm and the door would be back to normal. No one will ever know that the door was broken."
"Oh," came out of Hermione. Not knowing a retort to that. So, she continued to search in the office.
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- (Scene Break) -
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Quinn was fuming in rage as he watched Recon and saw Ivy Potter enter his workshop. He was so angry that his fists were shaking with anger as he moved towards his office.
'How dare they break into my office!' thought Quinn as he stepped on the fifth floor.
Every step of Quinn's feet left a patch of ice on the floor, which instantly evaporated into mist by the next second. The red hue on his nape had become deeper than ever before. And, his magic was now in control of his magic, accidental magic happening with his every step.
'Ivy Potter!' Quinn growled in his mind. 'I helped her out not too long ago, and this is how she repays me?! What gall!'
Quinn's mind wasn't even considering that he was the one to trap and blackmail her. The help he was talking about was to let her go with her owing a debt to him.
The office door finally came into his views, and immediately Recon turned off, folded itself with snappy motions, and flew into Quinn's robes.
Quinn cracked his neck for it to create popping noises.
And, the second he was in touching distance of the door, the wood on the door parted from the middle, thin slivers of wood continuously moved to the side as the wooden door created a space for Quinn to step inside, showing Quinn's skill in transmutation.
All noise disappeared for Quinn as he stepped inside the office through the opening in the door, and the first thing he saw was Hermione looking at the bookshelf behind his desk, reading a book.
He saw her ears perk up from the noise of wood moving aside, but the second she saw Quinn step inside and her eyes widen in shock, darkness overtook her.
Quinn, in the span of two to three seconds, had stunned Hermione Granger. He followed by putting her into a full-body bind and conjured ropes to bind her body.
The conjured ropes felt a tug as they moved with Quinn's wishes, and by using them, Hermione's unconscious body was lifted into the air and carelessly dumped into one of the client chairs.
Quinn's expressionless, angry face turned towards the door in the glass wall which led to his workshop, and he clenched his fist tighter.
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- (Scene Break) -
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Ivy Potter looked at the darkroom, illuminated by the light from her wand tip with wonder. There were a lot of fascinating things in here that she wasn't expecting.
There were a lot of tables, cabinets, and cupboards along the walls. She could see various potion vials behind the glass of the cupboards; there were many potions, and she could see all the rainbow colors.
As she moved around the room, she was tools hung on walls. She could see hammers, picks, measures, grip pliers, blades, try squares, gloves, goggles, scissors, snips, handsaws, and clamps.
When she opened one of the shallow but wide drawers inside it were large sheets of different fabrics. Another similar drawer had distinct qualities and varieties of papers.
She saw tons of different metals and woods in deep drawers. There were in the form of blocks, planks, strips, and even scraps.
When she was walking around, she also found what looked like drafts for the notes that Quinn West had made last year, and surprisingly, there was another set for third-year subjects.
Ivy decided to hurry and opened what looked like a file cabinet and saw a few manila folders. Each had a title on them. She lifted them each to read the titles.
...
「Project: Watch」
「Project: Vaults (Overview)」
「Project: Fax」
「Project: Edison」
「Project: Engraver」
「Project: Icebox」
「Project: Noir」
「Project: Drone-Vision」
...
But Ivy couldn't even manage to open the manilla folders as they were sealed, and they didn't unseal with the use of Finite, so she had to put all of them back into the cabinet with frustration.
It was at that point when she heard a thump and on the other side of the door.
"Hermione, did you find something," she said as she looked at more stuff, "There is a lot of weird stuff in here."
She froze when she heard the sound of a door opening with a creak.
Ivy Potter turned on instinct, and the last thing Ivy saw before darkness took over her was the face of Quinn West staring at her from the door that she had previously broken.
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Blue - _ L O T _ <-- > A C _ D _ _
Pink - _ U S _ <-- > L _ X U _ I _
Red - W R A T H <-- > I R A
Yellow - _ _ E E _ <-- > _ _ A _ I T I _
Violet - _ R I _ E <-- > S _ P E _ B _ _
Green - _ N V _ <-- > I _ V I _ I _
Orange - _ L _ T T _ N _ <--> _ U L _
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Quinn West - Owner of A.I.D - Anger, Rage, Fury.
Hermione Granger - Infiltrator #1 - Covers the front office.
Ivy Potter - Infiltrator #2 - Covers the back workshop.
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