A Harry Potter Quest: He who was not

Present Date: 15th​ October 1993
Current Wand: Fagus wood, Phoenix feather core



"Flipendo", you said, wiping your wand forward. With every new casting the spell was getting ever more familiar, flowing out of your wand with more potency than it had ever before. The sound of breaking wood filled the room, when the table in front of you was lifted up into the air and flipped around its own axis to fall on its back again.

"Flipendo", you said again. The table was pushed into the air again and thrown against the wall behind it. One of the massive legs was ripped out of its place. "Flipendo", you repeated. "Flipendo. Flipendo. Flipendo!"

By the end of it the antique table, that could have been part of Hogwarts for as long as the castle had existed for all that you knew, was nothing more than broken wood. Useful for nothing but to be burned in a fireplace and provide warmth.

Then you raised your wand again. This time the movement of your wand was more intricate, the spell more delicate. "Reparo", you said and then simply watched as the splinters and pieces that spread out over the entire room started to move again. They vibrated to a rhythm that you could neither feel nor see.

You felt a pang of sadness, when realization hit you that you didn't feel the flow of mafic. Only recently had you learned that magic was something that one could feel, something that one could taste. The magic that had been potent enough in Sally-Anne had shown you that, but it had been the memory of Lobo that had taught you with finer sensory that even weak and latent magic could be felt in the air if one was just adept at it.

The wolf had been able to feel the magic inside a little boy, no older than a year old. You on the other hand had only felt the most potent magic to have ever crossed your path.

Would you ever be able to change that?

It took a bit, but when the movement came to a stop inside the old classroom that you were using for your hands-on practices, the old wooden table stood next to the wall again, looking better than it had in hundreds of years. The spell had worked perfectly.

Magic was a fantastic friend to have.

"That is excellent work, Mr. Basques, Sir", a shrill and high-pitched voice behind you said.

You had to admit that it startled you. It was only after turning around that you saw the small house-elf stand there near the entrance. Wizards had at least the decency to make some kind of noises when they apparated. Nally could have stood there behind you for minutes and you would have never noticed.

"Thank you", you said after a few seconds of trying to calm your heartbeat. "Next time maybe try to no scare me to death, though. Yes?" you asked her.

Her reaction was a wide grin and a miniscule bow. "Yes, Sir", she said.

Your eyes lingered on the small house-elf for a few moments longer. That she was different somehow, you had realized the first time you met her. But back then you had accredited most of her irregular characteristics to her being a Hogwarts elf. Surely such an odd castle would bring its own brand of odd House-elfs?

Your hypothesis had not survived contact with reality though. By now you knew most of the castle elfs and none of them were as confident and independent as Nally was. She was a very interesting oddity.

You sighed, before turning around to the table behind you and casting the levitation charm. Only when the table was in the exact same spot as you had found it in, did you put your wand away and turned to Nally again.

"You found something, didn't you?", you asked the small House-elf that was still standing in the same spot, looking prouder and taller than she had ever done before.

"Yes, Mr. Basques, Sir. I found another hidden place", she said.

"Would you mind showing me?" you asked her, plastering a grin on her face with your question.

"Please follow me, Sir", Nally said, as she turned around to disappear and reappear across the room right in front of the door that opened itself without her lifting a finger.

Life was unfair.

What would you give for such an incredible inkling into magic?


What have they given up? (Understanding of Magical Creatures + CON + EMP + Perk) DC 85 → 1D100+9 → 38(29 + 9) → Failure!


Whatever it was that had given house-elf these powers was beyond you at the moment.

So, you followed Nally through the dark corridors instead as she disappeared and reappeared almost faster than you could keep up with. Down from the seventh into the fifth floor, then going down two corridors, taking another staircase and down into the fourth, before circling half the castle. Your legs were hurting, and your lungs were burning by the time Nally finally chose to wait for you, but at least you had been able to keep up with her fast pace.


→ +1 Constitution for 2 months of active life, deviating from your past lifestyle


When you finally caught up to Nally, she was standing in an empty corridor, the only objects of interest were a few disinterested paintings and a large mirror that had been imbedded into the wall. The only light brightening the corridor you were standing in was coming from the candles that were burning inside even during the day as it was one of the passages in the castle that had no access to windows or other natural light.

"Where is…" you tried to say but had to stop every few words to provide your burning lungs with fresh air. "… the corridor?"

Nally turned her head to you before disappearing, not providing you with an answer. You tried looking around to see where she had jumped to but could not find the small form of your elf friend.

Knock.

It took a few moments until you realized there was soft noise that was coming from your right.

Knock.

A faint knocking sound came through the wall, always letting a moment of pause between the sounds, before popping into existence again.

Knock... Knock... Knock…

"Ok, understood", you said. "Come back."

And with that Nally appeared back next to you again. Her eyes glistered with pride.

"Good work", you said. "Do you know where the entrance is?", you asked her. Here she shook her head, as her expression changed into an apologetic frown.

"No, Mr. Basques, Sir."

"Ok, then", you said, smiling at her. She hadn't taken the riddle from you, only helped you find it. This was the best outcome you could hope for. Your eyes scanned the room, while you tried to steady your breath again. Touching the wall behind which the next floor was hidden, you stepped alongside it, trying to feel any irregularities in it.

You had encountered enough fake walls by now to want to check for the easiest solution. Like a wall that was no wall and let you fall into darkness, almost breaking your neck with it.

"Does Mr. Basques know how to find the entrance, Sir?" Nally asked as she followed you walking down the corridor.

"Not yet", you said. The stone under your hand was colder than usual as if the pocket of air hidden behind it had been able to circulate into a section of the castle that had not been hit by the summer heat.

Was it maybe a floor leading down into the dungeons? Or maybe even deeper than that?

"But I think I know where it could be", you said, as your hand touched the side of the mirror that had been embedded into the wall. Your brown eyes stared right back at you. The boy in the mirror looked every bit as intrigued as you felt in this moment.

You were beginning to see a muster in the way the riddles had been laid out throughout Hogwarts. There was a reason why there were so many of these hidden floors inside the castle, hidden behind trickery and mystery. The founders had not hidden them away from the students but built them to be found. They build the riddles to teach the students in a subtler way than simple words could.

The castle served as a metaphor for magic itself. Magic and the Castle both had rules that defined their structures. Corridors and staircases had to be memorized and understood by the first years to be able to find their way through the castle, just as they needed to learn the basic rules of magic to be able to use it properly.

But like for magic itself, the castle was not as easy as to be described by solely those easy to see corridors and floors. What lay beneath was a more complex structure that you needed to explore on your own, bit for bit. Only then would you realize that the rules you had learned in the beginning had not been wrong but incomplete.

You had to retest every single one of your misconceptions to see where there was room to grow and understand the complex structure better under the simpler one you had been taught first. Only then would you understand what the rules truly looked like.

Your brown eyes were looking right at you through the mirror in the wall. A smile crept onto the lips of the boy in front of you, because he understood what the riddle at hand meant.

"I am what stands in the way to true understanding", you told yourself, as your hand touched the mirror in front of you. The hand in the mirror came up to your hand as they touched, stopping each other from moving through the surface.

"But what if I'm not?" you asked aloud as you closed your eyes and pushed through. "What if I know that my perception is wrong, and I need to reevaluate the things I thought I knew and saw?"

The moment you closed your eyes, the cold touch of the mirror disappeared under your hand and you were able to walk right through it as if it had never been there to begin with.

Only when your entire body had gone through, did you open your eyes again to realize that you were standing in complete darkness.

"Lumos", you whispered.

You had been crawling through death holes before, searched through murder houses and you had been hit by a sentient tree… so hard indeed that it had hurt for two weeks. You had been thrown around by a spirit, scared to death by it repeatedly and had relived her death as if it was you dying. A book had thrown you back in time and had led you hunt and live another person's live for a night and you had realized that Hogwarts was more than you had thought it to be.

By now, maybe you could call yourself an adventurer already.

When your wand lit the large corridor up and eight large black eyes starred right back at you, it didn't matter that you thought yourself valiant and brave; you screamed as loud as you possibly could, stumbling back and almost falling to the ground in shock.


What is this thing? (Understanding of Magical Creatures + CON + EMP) DC 35 → 1D100+4 → 51(47 + 4) → Success!


The huge spider hanging from the wall was covered in thick black hair. It was hanging from a thick rope of web that were attached to its legs – each almost as long as yours. Acromantulas possessed a set of giant pedipalps which you knew it could use to eat live prey or their own dead kin.

Everything that filled your mind right now was how it would easily be able to push them right through your body.

A clicking sound filled the huge corridor that caved out into the darkness behind the spider. The first clicking the spider produced echoed around, coming back to join the next clicking… and then the next. Soon the air was filled with the echoing of that clicking as the spider's eyes locked onto you.

Only when the spider climbed her thick rope upwards to grab on to the ceiling as if there was no gravity pulling her down, did you register that you had stopped breathing.

Your wand followed the spider upwards in reflex. Your brain had shut down completely, paralyzed in fear.

It was only later that you would realize the seriousness of the situation that you had been in; the only thing allowing you to follow the Acromantula's movement was the light emitted by the wand in your hand… but you had never learned to keep a spell up, while trying to cast another. A handicap that could cost you your life.


Jacob Defense → (Charms + Understanding of Magical Creatures + CRT + INT + Wand - 10 for Darkness) DC 35 1D100+6 → 102(96 + 6) → Critical Success!

Jacob Attack (Charms + Understanding of Magical Creatures + CRT + INT + Wand - 10 for Darkness + 10 Crit Roll) DC 45 → 1D100+16 → 30(14 + 16) → Failure!


Your brain shut down completely.

Your strongest weapon had just stopped working, leaving the rest of your body to fend for itself. Who would have thought that it wouldn't impede your actions in the least? Seeing the Acromantula crawl over the ceiling surrounded by darkness, let everything feel surreal. You felt out of place as if nothing of this was real, but in the end you didn't need to actively process what was happening.

Your body moved on its own.

"Flipendo!", you shouted out the spell that had become second nature as the spider jumped from the ceiling, redirecting its venomous pedipalps downwards to move them straight through your chest.

The creature was rocketed backwards with a force strong enough to rip out two of its eight legs. The spider was thrown against the ceiling again, before it crashed downwards into the ground, leaving only a dark liquid behind where it broke the walls of the old chamber that you were in.

It was as if your own shouting had brought you back to life again. Your brain started to unfreeze, looking for a way out of this mess as you searched with the light of your wand through the darkness that surrounded you, trying to locate the spider again that had disappeared into the shadows.

"Incendio!", you cried out and light filled the room, brightened by the small fireball that shot out of your wand. The spell crossed the large chamber, allowing you to see it in its entirety for the first time.

The hidden corridor was at least as wide as a classroom, looking worn and old. Its structure transformed into a dark manmade cave where your spell lost its momentum and crashed down to burn the ground.

Then it was darkness that reigned your world again. Everything fell into silence, which was only disrupted by your rapid breathing.

Darkness was all around you.

Then something moved to your left.

"Incendio!", you shouted again, shooting another spell into nothingness. The second fireball brightened the room, only to shoot past a dark shadow that resisted the illumination, hiding itself in darkness.

You saw the shadow move behind a broken stone pillar. For a moment eight eyes were looking at two again. Then came back the darkness.

Shadows and silence surrounded you.


Jacob Defense (Charms + Understanding of Magical Creatures + CRT + INT + Wand - 10 for Darkness) DC 35→ 1D100+6 → 81(75 + 6) → Success!

Jacob Attack (Charms + Understanding of Magical Creatures + CRT + INT + Wand - 10 for Darkness) DC 45→ 1D100+16 → 55(39 + 16) → Success!

Collapsing tunnel (+ LCK) DC 70 → 1D100+2 → 82(80 + 2)


You didn't see it lunge at you, nor were you able to hear it, but you knew that it was about to happen.

"Reparo!", you shouted, moving your wand into the direction you had seen the shadow lurking and stalking. A moment later you heard the sound of something soft crashing against something hard, before dropping to the ground again.

"Incendio", you said, and a third fireball shot out of your wand, traversing the darkness to hit a stone pillar that had been broken and withered just seconds before, but now stood proud in the old chamber, holding the old ceiling up, stronger than ever. Before your spell hit the pillar, you had already located the Acromantula that had fallen down next to the stone pillar as it had tried to jump you from behind it.

It was moving erratically, as if it was confused and hurt.

For the first time since you had entered the dark chamber, you felt calm again. Your breathing was short and fast and your heart was beating with a force against your chest that you had never felt before, but at least you could think clearly again.

"I am sorry", you said, as you raised your wand again: "Incendio."

And the room was brightened another time and it would hold for minutes, as the Acromantula burned while her painful cries filled the air. Her high-pitched shrieks echoing around instead of the clicking sound that it had made before.

You let yourself fall to the ground, when you finally heard steps to your right and knew that you were finally save.

"Mr. Basques, Sir?" Nally asked, entering the hidden floor with visible confusion. "How did you pass the mirror, Sir? Nally was trying and it was not possible for Nally, Sir."

The spider burning alight just a few meters away from you didn't seem to interest her too much. It was only then that you realized that you hadn't been fighting for hours at end as it had felt. The entire interaction had taken maybe half a minute.

Why were your legs and hands trembling as if you had been fighting for days?

"Nally", you said, your voice just as shaky as your limbs. "Could you bring me a vial?" you asked her. "And could you take the venom out of that spider over there, before everything is burned out, please?"

"Oh… Yes, Mr. Basques. Nally can do that, Sir", the quirky House-elf said, before she disappeared again.

You let yourself fall on your back, only now taking time to actually look at the old ceiling. The wall had started crumbling under your spells and the Acromantula's weight. Would it have held its weight if you hadn't cast the Reparo to safe yourself? Would the floor still exist if you had not learned the spell as if you had prepared for this specific moment?

Not for the first time in your life you asked yourself if there was such a thing as destiny. Not for the first time in your life were you left with more questions than answers. But that was ok. You had come survived the encounter and would live to see one more day and ask at least one more question.

A plop made you look up again to see a severed Acromantula head float into the air, before half of his face was ripped of just like you had seen the House-elfs in the kitchen do to the slaughtered animals before cooking. Its poisonous venom flew out of the sacks in the severed head and straight into a glass vial that Nally had brought from somewhere.

Acromantula venom was a highly valuable fluid that one had to secrete from the pincers of an Acromantula. Due to the nature of the Acromantula, the venom was virtually impossible to collect from a live specimen. Good that you had no live specimen around anymore.

Because of the rarity of the venom, it may fetch up to a hundred Galleons a pint on the open market. What this one spider had given you would be around a tenth of that… at most. But, you may be able to do something more interesting with it instead.

Then the head was discarded again and joined the rest of the burning corpse on the ground.

"Nally", you asked after a moment. "Where does this corridor end?"

It was as if you had known the answer, before you heard the words.

"In the Forbidden Forrest, Sir. Do you want Nally to show you the way?"

Did you want to go there indeed…?


+ 20 Exp

+ 1 Vial of Acromantula Venom – Highly valuable and with interesting properties.


Perk gained:
I love surprises – If you walk into a trap or are surprised otherwise, you get a +5 on the next roll


A most interesting resource has fallen into your hands and you think that it may be possible to make something useful out of it. What will your first own Potion Research creation be?


[ ] Red Wideye Potion I – Learning the Awakening Potion gave you an idea; it is clear that some of the ingredients act as a suppressant for tiredness and sleepiness. If you tweak the recipe and try to understand how the ingredients interact with each other… you may be able to make the potion more useful. Gives +5 to all spellcasting and physical rolls for one hour. Can be taken once in 24 hours without repercussions, if taken more often it may take its due toll. (Requires Awakening Potion learned & Potion skill of at least P-), Cost for ingredients: 5 Galleons, DC: 100 & 1 Vial of Acromantula Venom

[ ] Blue Wideye Potion – Learning the Awakening Potion gave you an idea; it is clear that some of the ingredients act as a suppressant for tiredness and sleepiness. If you tweak the recipe and try to understand how the ingredients interact with each other… you may be able to make the potion more useful. If taken, it gives you one Personal Action more per potion. Can only safely consume one dose per month. (Requires Awakening Potion learned & Potion skill of at least P-), Cost for ingredients: 5 Galleons, DC: 200 & 1 Vial of Acromantula Venom