With a flick of her wand, Oleandra turned the glass-panelled door opaque, ensuring that no nosy passerby could peer into her compartment from the corridor outside. Finding the glass sufficiently reflective, she fished a tube of lipstick from her pouch and began rapidly tracing runes across the smooth surface.
"Ansuz above, Laukaz below, Mannaz centred, Ingwaz before, Ehwo behind… Gebu," said Oleandra, pressing her palm against the glass. "By these words, grant wisdom unto this reflection of mine, and let a partnership be established between us."
Oleandra's reflection in the glass blinked, then lifted its foot and stepped through the surface into the compartment.
"Do you understand what it is you need to do?" asked Oleandra.
She studied her doppelganger's face curiously. Though this was the second time she had summoned a mirror avatar, it was the first occasion she'd had a good look at it— she'd had to work quickly, and in the dark, the previous time. Seeing herself like this was quite unsettling…
"I know everything you know, so yes," replied Oleandra's double. "I'm to pretend I'm the real Oleandra to provide you with an alibi while you go off to help Mai."
Though the mirror doppelganger didn't have an ounce of magic in her body, Oleandra trusted that she would be able to resolve any potential conflicts using her infamy… or her two fists, if it came to that. Still, Oleandra doubted such measures would be needed, for Loki had already rounded up Hogwarts's greatest troublemakers.
"Do you know what's happened to the first avatar I've made?" asked Oleandra. "I've lost track of her."
The reflection shook her head. As previously stated, she knew only what Oleandra knew. It wasn't as though she possessed some sixth sense that told her what her fellow reflections were up to. If Oleandra ever wanted to learn what the first clone had learned, she would simply have to find her again and return her to a mirror and absorb her memories.
Oleandra checked her wristwatch. The Hogwarts Express had been chugging northwards for a good half hour, and it was already nearing half past eleven, leaving her only eight hours to spare. She had to get going.
"Don't do anything I wouldn't do," Oleandra told her reflection, who rolled her eyes.
Oleandra then retrieved a marked acorn from her pocket and dropped it on the floor.
Though Loki's possession of Draco was undoubtedly distressing, he had not actually raised a hand against her yet, which gave her the confidence to resume using the Tree-Portation Spell. If she could not prevent the Aesir amongst the stars above from spying on her actions, and Loki was incapable of directly harming her outside of his schemes, then there was no reason to fret over what might happen if she began using Yggdrasil to travel long distances once more.
"Wunjo, Berkana, Raidhu, Eihwaz, Dagaz!" Oleandra chanted, assuming each stance as she called out each one of the runes' names. "Let this acorn become a gateway! Open the door to the great beyond, and take me through the sea of stars to where I once stood!"
With the sound of wooden doors creaking open, Oleandra vanished from her train compartment in a bright flash of light…
…and reappeared in what appeared to be a clearing in the heart of a forest.
"You're late," came Mai's youthful voice from behind her. "Come on, this way."
Oleandra whirled around.
Mai was leaning against a tall oak tree, but curiously, the base was neatly surrounded by a ring of large, white-and-red-capped toadstools. As the daughter of Magibotanists and being herself rather proficient in Herbology, she immediately recognised the circle as…
"Is that a Fairy Ring?" asked Oleandra curiously, pointing at Mai's feet.
"Yes, that's a Fairy Ring…" sighed Mai. "But judging by that look on your face, you don't seem to have the faintest idea what they're really for. Ugh, did Viviane really teach you nothing?"
As Oleandra had been occupied with the Triwizard Tournament at the time of her past incarnation's awakening, Viviane had mostly concentrated on instiling in her the sort of knowledge that might save her life in a pinch, rather than teaching her about mushroom clusters that grew in peculiar patterns.
"Open your eyes and watch closely," said Mai, pushing off from the trunk and standing perfectly still. "Muin."
Oleandra's eyes widened slightly.
In her Mystic Sight, the air above the otherwise ordinary mushroom circle seemed slightly warped, as though the world had been split in two, the halves haphazardly glued back together at the fracture, their edges failing to meet properly…
But more importantly, Mai had just invoked an Ogham!
"Muin," said Oleandra, searching her memories. "That's the blackberry bramble rune, isn't it?"
Mai closed her eyes, her lips twitching slightly.
"Morganna would like to know why you insist on using the language of the stars," she said after a few seconds, opening her eyes. "The British Isles are one of the few cradles of magic. She wants to know why Viviane didn't teach you the land's language."
Having given the section of Dumbledore's diary about Ogham a cursory read, Oleandra realised that many of the incomprehensible, untranslatable incantations she'd heard ten thousand years in the past were actually Ogham-based spells. All this time, the Druids she'd faced had been using them against her!
"It just comes naturally to me," said Oleandra, sounding helpless. "When I was younger, my magic was very weak, so runic spells always seemed to work far better for me. Maybe I'm just stubborn."
Much like Ireland and Britain, Greece was home to a wide variety of trees: oleanders and daphnes, for instance, not to mention pines, cypresses, figs, pomegranates, mulberries, carobs, olives, and many of Europe's other famous species.
But unlike Europe's primitive Wizards, the Druids, the Ancient Greeks forged a different covenant with the trees of their homelands, creating wands through which they could better channel their own powers, rather than attempting to reproduce the weak magic inherent in the plants themselves through potions, rituals and runes.
In this way, the wands and their wielders grew together as partners, drastically lowering the difficulty of performing magic and allowing mediocre wizards, who might otherwise have led the mundane lives of Muggles, to practise it.
But since Oleandra's magic had been sealed from birth, she naturally found it far easier to draw on the power inherent in other objects rather than on her own… such as the magic of the stars. In fact, it was her almost debilitatingly feeble Magic Circuits that had made learning to wield the runes so remarkably easy for her!
"Maybe you were born for this," said Mai, with a strange look on your face.
In Morgan le Fay's memory, her sister Viviane had always remained static throughout all her incarnations. Always the same personality traits, the same likes and dislikes, her cruelty, her love, her stubbornness, never changing, never growing, despite each new version of her having completely new memories.
But Oleandra? Although she resembled Viviane a lot in spirit… she somehow kept surprising her.
"Come on, it's almost noon," said Mai brusquely, stepping into the centre of the mushroom circle. "Follow me."
And, without so much as a single pop, Mai's figure vanished.