The abandoned little laboratory by the crypt still held Ophelia as a hostage. Atleast until she had figured out how to help this guy.
Why couldn't she just leave Thomasz here? well good question but she definitely could, but doing it would be extremely heartless and now she saw this as a challenge. And maybe she would learn something about this whole shitshow.
"So the ritual was something about binding something to an object?" Fila asked while reading the very few notes that remained.
Thomasz nodded, "Yes, binding this thing to a object would make it more difficult for something to harm it… it sounds weird but that's all there is in notes."
Yeah this doesn't help with anything, that whole line doesn't even make sense.
"Why would I even want to bind something to an object?" she mumbled to herself.
Thinking through this whole scene made her realize how little she actually knew about this school, and her grandfather. He was a dark wizard, but what dark things could he had done here at such young age.
She sat in another chair by now, nothing better but different. The table had been moved, underneath the table where to so called ritual had taken place. Nothing was there, but maybe she could get something from seeing it.
"something must have happened with me since I'm still here, and this supposed object probably isn't…" Thomasz said and went quiet. And Fila already met his eyes as they had both realized the same thing.
The object could still be here, maybe he is bound to this object because its still in the room.
Fila stood up so fast the chair scraped loudly against the stone.
"Of course," she muttered. "You're not bound to the room. You're bound to whatever he tried to put you into. If the vessel is still here, the tether never broke."
Tomasz looked around the chamber with new urgency.
Together they looked at each shelve, each table and even each lamp.
She threw books that seemed un important to the floor just to look at the bookshelves. Thomasz threw potion bottles into the wall just to break them in case they were involved.
But nothing.
Fila had already spent 12 hours since she first came down here. and she still had nothing, only a ghost who still thought he was alive in some way.
"I don't want to ruin this happy mood, but I cant find anything." He said in frustration.
Fila raised an eyebrow, "Wow giving up already? You've only been down here for what, a couple hundreds years?"
Tomasz shot her a flat look. "Nineteen. And sarcasm isn't helping."
Fila laughed, "You havnt been down here for only nineteen years, grandpa attended here in what, 1899. So alright 90 years give or take." She corrected him.
He stopped looking around and just started blankly at the things he held.
"Has it been that long?" he said quietly, more sad now.
She didn't know how to answer him right away, she had been making fun of him too. "Yeah, im sorry." She said and continued looking.
Tomasz stood frozen in the middle of the ruined laboratory, the broken potion bottle still in his hand. For a long moment he didn't move at all.
"Ninety years," he repeated, voice almost hollow. "I thought… I kept counting the winters I could feel through the stone. I must have lost track after the first few decades."
Fila paused in her search and glanced back at him. The usual sharp edge in her posture softened, just a little.
"You didn't know," she said. "That's not your fault."
He set the bottle down carefully, as if it suddenly mattered how things were placed.
"Everyone I knew is gone. The professors. The other students. Even the ones who might have wondered where I went." He gave a short, empty laugh. "And I spent all that time thinking it had only been nineteen years. Like I still had a life waiting upstairs."
Fila didn't offer empty comfort. She just nodded once and turned back to the wall she had been examining.
"Then let's finish this," she said. "So you don't have to spend another ninety down here."
They searched in silence after that. The earlier frantic energy was gone, replaced by something quieter and more deliberate. Fila moved along the scorched wall again, this time slower, letting her magic sight sink deeper into the stone. Tomasz checked the remaining shelves with careful hands, no longer smashing things.
But it didn't take long for Fila to realize after that. It had been the circle this whole time. she stood where it had been.
"it's the floor." she blurted out while looking at Thomasz.
"What?"
"It's the floor, the ritual went so wrong that it tied you to the fucking floor." she explained.
He seemed to frown, "You sure? It could be anything why do you think it's the floor?"
She sighed, "I know my grandpa, if what happened down he succeeded he would have used it himself after. It clearly didn't, and who would check the floor for a ghost."
"That still doesn't make any sense, I see your point in it being the floor. but how did you even come to that conclusion." Thomasz said while standing like a questionmark.
Fila tapped the toe of her boot against the faded chalk marks.
"Because everything else was too obvious. Shelves, jars, hidden niches — those are places people look. My grandfather was arrogant, not stupid. If the ritual collapsed and left a tether behind, he would have made sure the only thing still holding it was something no one would think to destroy."
She crouched and pressed her palm flat to the stone.
"The circle is still here. Faded, but not gone. And every time you stand near it, your form gets a little more solid. I noticed it hours ago and didn't put it together until now. The binding didn't need a fancy vessel. It used the floor itself as the anchor when the original focus failed."
Tomasz stared down at the stone beneath his feet like it had personally betrayed him.
"So I'm stuck to a piece of floor."
"Looks like it."
He let out a long, disbelieving breath. "That is the most insulting thing I've heard in ninety years."
Fila almost smiled.
"Insulting or not, it means we don't have to hunt for a hidden disc or a cursed ring. We just have to break whatever's left of the circle without bringing the ceiling down on our heads."
She stood up and brushed the dust from her hands.
"Alright so how do we do this the bestway…" Thomasz began, but Fila had already worked out the best way.
"Bombarda."
Tomasz's eyes went wide.
"Wait—!"
The spell left her wand before he could finish. The explosion was sharp and contained this time, aimed straight down into the center of the faded circle. Stone cracked. Dust blasted upward in a thick gray cloud. The floor shuddered hard enough that several remaining bottles on the shelves toppled and smashed.
When the dust settled, a ragged crater about a meter wide sat where the ritual marks had been. Broken stone and old chalk dust filled the bottom.
Tomasz stood frozen at the edge of the crater, staring down into it.
Then he looked at his hands.
Then he took a careful step backward.
Then another.
Nothing pulled him back.
"…It worked," he said, sounding almost offended. "You blew up the floor and it worked."
Fila lowered her wand and coughed once against the dust.
"Sometimes the simple answer is the right one."
"You tried Bombarda on the door and it made the seal stronger!"
"That was the door. This was the floor." She shrugged. "Different problem."
Tomasz opened his mouth, closed it again, and then started laughing — a short, incredulous, slightly unhinged sound that echoed off the ruined walls.
"Ninety years," he said between breaths. "Ninety years of reading every scrap of parchment in this room, and the solution was one overpowered blasting curse."
Fila stepped back from the crater, brushing dust from her sleeves.
Tomasz looked at the open doorway, then at the stairs beyond it, then back at her. The earlier heaviness in his expression had lightened, replaced by something closer to disbelief and cautious hope.
"I can leave," he said again, as if testing the words. "I can actually leave."
"Then stop standing there and go," Fila replied. "Before the ceiling decides it doesn't like what I just did to its foundation."
He nodded quickly, still half-laughing, and started for the stairs. At the threshold he paused and looked back one last time.
"Thank you, Grindelwald. Really."
Then he turned and climbed up into the dark, his form growing fainter with each step until he was gone.
Fila stood alone in the ruined laboratory, staring at the crater in the floor.
She exhaled, long and slow, and slipped her wand back into her robes.
"Never a dull moment," she muttered.
When coming out into the crypt again she saw no sign of him, he had disappeared. Faded into whatever came afterward.
Fila stood still for a moment in the dusty central aisle, listening.
No footsteps. No lingering cold spot. No faint outline drifting between the pillars. Even the aggressive ghosts and rude portraits remained quiet, as if the whole crypt had decided to pretend nothing unusual had just happened beneath their feet.
Going down here hadn't been a total waste of time. Fila found something that her grandfather would have to tell her about. If he would remember, but knowing him he most likely remembers everything.
Fila climbed the stairs slowly, one hand trailing along the wall. The cracked halves of the black stone sat quiet in her pocket. Whatever connection they had once held to the laboratory felt severed now, or at least dormant.
At the top of the stairs she paused and looked back down into the dark.
"Rest easy, Tomasz Varga," she said under her breath.
Then she turned and walked into the main corridors of Durmstrang.
The castle was settling into evening. A few students still moved between common rooms and the library. No one paid her extra attention; dust on robes and a tired expression were common enough after long study sessions or outside tasks.
She found Aleksei near the entrance to the Great Hall, leaning against the wall with a book open in one hand. He glanced up as she approached, took in the state of her robes, and closed the book without comment.
"Should I even ask?" he asked while looking her up and down.
She stretched out her arms and pulled him into a hug, for the sole purpose to make him dirty too.
"Oh come on." He complained. "where have you even been, you didn't even sleep in the dorm I heard."
She pushed past him into the great hall where dinner was still being served and sat down, Aleksei and Hanna who had been standing beside him sat down too.
"I saved a ghost from the crypt." She said and took a bite of stew.
Aleksei stared at her.
Hanna, who had been reaching for the bread basket, froze with her hand halfway there.
"…You what?" Aleksei said.
Fila chewed, swallowed, and shrugged like she had just announced she had finished a particularly boring essay.
"Ghost. Crypt. Ninety years stuck to a ritual circle my grandfather left behind. I blew up the floor. He left. End of story."
Hanna slowly pulled her hand back from the bread.
"You spent the entire night in the crypts," she said carefully, "saving a ghost."
"And most of the day," Fila added, pointing her spoon at the dust still clinging to her sleeves. "Hence the look."
Aleksei leaned back on the bench, dragging a hand down his face.
"Of course you did. Because a normal evening would have been too much to ask."
"I told you I was following up on something," Fila said mildly. "You just didn't ask what."
"I assumed it was a book. Or a grudge. Or another second-year with floating ink bottles." He glanced at her robes again. "Not a ninety-year-old ghost."
Fila chewed some of her food, and shrugged yet again. "Well to be fair, I didn't know about the ghost at first. He just happened by surprise."
Both Hanna and Aleksei looked at each other, both having the same look.
"Alright lets jump passed this. you know you leave in just a week right?" He said.
Fila paused with her spoon halfway to her mouth.
"I'm aware."
"Just making sure," Aleksei said. "Because you've spent the last day and a half underground playing ghost liberator, and the week is getting short."
Hanna finally took a piece of bread, though she still looked like she was recovering from the earlier conversation.
"Have you packed anything?" she asked.
During that time in the crypt she had actually let go of the idea of leaving the school, yet she also knew that she wanted to see Hogwarts. And most of all, she really missed her Ilvermorny.
The nice moment didn't last at the table.
"Ophelia! There you are, ive been looking all over for you" that same annoying voice. Igor. But this time she wouldn't give him the time.
He tried to sit down next to her but her plants had already wrapped around him like a vest.
"What are you doing!" he shouted out, but the plants didn't stop and started pulling him out of the window where they had come in from. "OPHELIA STOP THIS!" he shouted as he soon disappeared out of the window.
The nearest students turned at the noise. A couple of first-years actually stood up to look. Outside there was a distant, undignified yelp followed by the sound of someone hitting a snowbank.
Fila calmly returned to her stew.
Hanna stared at the open window, bread forgotten in her hand.
Aleksei pinched the bridge of his nose.
"…Was that necessary?"
"Yes."
"He's going to complain to someone."
Both Fila and Hanna looked at him and he realized. "Right, you are Ophelia."
She smiled. "Omg did you finally remember my name, your so sweet Aleksei." She said in her fakest cute voice.
Leaving Durmstrang, what an odd thing to even think about. And yet she wasn't even a normal student, just an exchange student for a couple of months and this had already become a second home.
While she loved how this school for what it was, not the professors, not even the location. But the friends who made sure this school became a home instead of a prison school. That's something she will remember for a long time.