Cursed With Curious Minds | Hp Next Generation

34 - Fidelum Celare

Astrid was sitting on her bed, reading the last page of 'Charms of the Undetectable: How to Hide Even the Simplest of Things'. She shut the book in anger.

"Nothing!" she exclaimed.

Delilah looked up from her essay.

"Not one spell in this book could have been used on that door! There's not one spell about a door that appears and disappears when the caster of the spell is nearby, especially ones that other people can see." Astrid said, frustrated.

There was a small CRACK from Astrid's bookshelf.

"Woah what's that?" Astrid asked, looking at the book that had just appeared.

It looked old. Really old. And it didn't look like a library book, either.

"Don't touch it." Delilah warned. "Remember what happened to Emmeline."

"Wait, hold on." Astrid said, grabbing 'Charms of the Undetectable: How to Hide Even the Simplest of Things'. She flicked to a specific page, and muttered an incantation while pointing her wand at the book. "There's no traces of dark magic."

Delilah wasn't convinced. However, Astrid was, so she picked up the book from the shelf – ignoring Delilah's warnings against it.

"See? It's fine." Astrid said, waving the book around in her hand. There wasn't a title on the cover, so she opened it to the first page. "Oh my-"

"What? What is it?" Delilah asked, looking over Astrid's shoulder. "Holy shit."

The page was blank, apart from a small sentence written neatly, in italics at the bottom: 'Property of Albus Dumbledore'.

"Do you think it's actually his?" Delilah asked.

"How many Albus Dumbledores do you know?" Astrid retorted.

"Ok, but like – are we sure it's not fake?"

"I don't know." Astrid replied. "I mean the bookshelf must've given this to me for a reason."

Astrid opened the book further, and was amazed to see it was what appeared to be Dumbledore's journal. It was full of notes and scribbles about various spells and potions, some of the book was written in ancient runes with translations underneath, and there was the odd sentence sprinkled about in German.

"Do you think the spell is in here?" Astrid asked.

"Probably." Delilah replied. "Dunno how you're gonna find it. He probably wrote it in ancient Greek or something."

Astrid continued flicking through the book, looking for signs of anything that could be a spell, taking special care to look for notes that appeared to be about inventing a spell. She very quickly came across a page that read 'Concealing Charm.'

"Well that was easier than I thought." Astrid replied.

Unfortunately, she had spoken too soon. Apart from the title, nothing on the page was written in English.

"How are we supposed to decode that?" Delilah asked. "Look – he has written it in bloody Greek!"

Astrid thought the formation of the letters and numbers and various symbols looked quite familiar to her. She suddenly realised. "Delilah! It's arithmancy!"

"What?"

"It's the arithmancy formula for the spell! If we can 'decode' this, we can figure out the wand motion, and what the spell does." Astrid replied.

"What about the incantation?"

"Oh, that barely matters. Just say something in Latin that vaguely sounds like what the spell does, and it'll work." Astrid replied.