"What is it?" he asked, sitting up, which drew Ron's attention to whatever it was she had discovered; forgetting momentarily about his mangled radio lying on the floor.
"I was just..." Hermione finally looked up, her wide eyes looking between their faces. She spoke quickly. "I was reading this book, right?" She held up the cover.
"...right."
"Well, Dumbledore gave it to me months ago. About a week before he passed, actually. It was on my bed with a note attached. I didn't think much of it, and I kind of forgot about it with...everything that was going on at the time," she said warily, looking to Harry, who nodded for her to go on. "I don't think he ever read it. I think he knew his time was running out, so he left it to me. But basically--it's a really old book. Really old. There are only a few copies in existence!" she spoke excitedly, but neither of the boys grasped the book's true significance. She continued, nevertheless, and flicked through the pages.
"It goes really in-depth about magical wars in Europe from thousands of years ago, with real sources from the time. I was reading here about what they call the 'First Wars'--which were like the very first wars involving dark magic versus normal magic...or, that's what I thought, but it says that there used to be three different types of magic--not just Dark and normal. There used to be Light magic. And it doesn't explicitly state what Light magic is, exactly, but essentially it was the polar opposite of Dark magic. Good over evil, healing over destruction, etcetera. There were these massive wars back then which spanned over lifetimes, between the Lights and the Darks!"
Ron and Harry traded confused looks. Hermione sighed, clutching the book closely.
"I'll explain it as simply as I can. They were really big wars. Two sides. The wars did end, but only because so many people had died from both sides that they literally couldn't continue it. Therefore, no one really 'won'. The Lights only had Light magic in them, and vice versa for the Darks. This kind of stuff is ancient, so magical blood is a lot different now--there's no pure light magic or dark magic in everyone anymore; it was very pure magic so a lot more powerful, but we won't get into that. "
"This part of the book," she showed them the pages for a moment, which had inky black diagrams of sorts. "Shows the supposed locations of the mass burial sites of the Darks after the wars--drawn by historians around the thirteenth century. It's an old map, so things have different names now, but see here?" Hermione beckoned the two over, and they stood from their respective seats to look over her shoulder at the pages. She pointed to one of the maps, which had labels in a different language. "This is a close-up of Scotland. And this..." she pointed to a mountainous area around the west of Inverness where the historians had marked a precise black dot, "...is the burial site. Look familiar?"
Harry looked closer. "But...that's where Hogwarts is!"
"More specifically, it's where the Black Lake is." Hermione nodded, and their eyes widened. She spoke excitedly with the accomplishment of her discovery. "The burial site is under the Black Lake!"
Ron scrunched his nose in disgust. "And to think, I've swum in that bloody lake--!"
"It wouldn't do anything to you, Ronald, that's not how it works. But it would do something to someone who already has that ancient Dark magic in them," Hermione flicked to a different chapter in the book, which appeared to list features of the old Dark magic in long detail--accompanied by gruesome cartoon imagery of its capabilities. "Addie's dark magic was unlike any other type seen for millennia: there are no spells around right now to do what she could do..."
Harry felt a stab in his heart at her use of the past tense.
"See, right here," Hermione pointed to the drawings.
One had a picture of a person being frozen--as though with Petrificus Totalus--and then in the picture beside it, that same person was crumbled into pieces on the ground. Another showed a whole crowd of people being put to sleep with a simple click of the wizard's finger. Being able to shoot out different spells from different hands simultaneously. A torture curse much more powerful than any other. Hell, none of the wizards in the pictures were even using wands.
Just like Addie.
"...No one in the Dark Arts can do that sort of magic anymore because it was so advanced. You-know-who knew where this burial site was--why else would he put her under that lake specifically? The dark magic from the burial site probably seeped into the water; accumulating over thousands of years! He would have used some of that dark magic when creating the potion he put Addie in as a baby. Harry, you said the mansion was well beneath the Black Lake?"
He nodded.
"Adeline could never have survived without oxygen for that long. I mean, she had such little air--you could only go that far below the surface because of the Gillyweed, and even then it was a struggle! It was the dark magic in the lake water that kept her alive."
"But..." Harry began, trying to piece everything together. "If it's the dark magic that let her do all...this," he motioned to the pictures. "Then what about the other magic? Like, when she'd make the paper planes fly? When she'd enchant flowers to never die? Hell, what about when she conjured her Patronus? That wasn't dark magic. That wasn't this. And it can't have been her normal magic either because it's still more powerful than that. She could do wandless magic without trying!"
"See, and that's the other part of my theory!" Hermione flicked feverishly to a different page as Ron looked between them, trying to keep up. "It says here that during the war, many of the Darks executed the Lights they had captured by burning them--it was slow and painful and got rid of their magic completely. But during one of the last executions, a Light went unaccounted for. They escaped--and survived to see the end of the war. The historians write here that it is more than likely they rejoined society and kept their powers hidden, so all traces of Light magic were eventually lost." She looked up from her book, closing it. "Until now, that is."
"You think Addie was a descendant, then? of the Light they couldn't burn?" Ron asked, and Hermione nodded. "What would that mean, then?"
"It's hard to say because..." she spoke, biting the inside of her cheek. "Well, this information would be more meaningful if she were still around. It means that she had not only the ancient dark magic in her from the monster, but the ancient light magic as well coincidentally...but the thing is, no one can really hold both in one body--they're conflicting energies. This could explain further why she got sick so severely because it was her dark magic trying to take over the light magic..." she hesitated, "but it could have happened the other way around, too."
"You mean..." Harry started, but his voice trailed off.
"Addie had the power to get rid of the dark magic on her own," Hermione nodded. "She just didn't know it."
><><
a/n:
lore lore lore lore lore lore lore
-g
(pls tell me if any of this doesn't make sense / if u have questions!!)
ch. 5 - love song
Start from the beginning
