Harry Potter World. (Long time no see.)
After Christmas, time seemed to slow down.
As the weather grew colder and the snow outside built up thicker, more and more outdoor activities had to be cancelled — including the Quidditch matches that most of the students loved. So the young witches and wizards settled into a routine: classes during the day, dormitories the rest of the time, and somehow the days passed all the same.
It was a weekend.
The office fireplace crackled steadily, filling the room with comfortable warmth. The black-and-white cat lay on a rug beside the fire, belly-up, completely dead to the world.
It had made a point of insisting it was not a cat — but its every habit and instinct said otherwise.
Knock knock knock.
The office door. Bernadette closed Tom Riddle's notebook and looked up. "Come in."
The door swung open. Harry, Malfoy, and Hermione filed in together — though the word "together" was generous, since Harry and Hermione walked side by side while Malfoy brought up the rear with a look of theatrical disdain at the arrangement.
"Professor, you wanted to see us?"
Bernadette nodded. "Some time ago, all three of you mentioned wanting to learn more advanced magic."
Malfoy's eyes lit up. "Yes, Professor. Like what you used in the Forbidden Forest that time."
Harry's motivation was somewhat different — he'd simply gotten used to getting almost nothing useful out of Defence Against the Dark Arts under Quirrell, and had wanted Charles to give him something extra. Though since Quirrell's abrupt "resignation" and Snape's takeover of the class, that had improved considerably.
Snape had a difficult personality and an acid tongue, but his command of Defence Against the Dark Arts was exceptional. And since he'd quietly defaulted to treating Harry as his honorary godson, he hadn't gone easier on him exactly — but his actual instruction had been solid and real.
As for Hermione, her questions were mostly theoretical.
Of the three, Bernadette liked Hermione most. Reason: she was clever and she worked for it.
After that, Harry — several weeks of shared experience had made that natural.
And Malfoy was there entirely because of Lucius. Lucius Malfoy had, in recent weeks, become absolutely committed to becoming Charles's most devoted and dependable ally — insurance for whenever Voldemort returned, in the form of someone who could put in a good word on his behalf. He couldn't come to Hogwarts himself to ingratiate himself, so he'd placed all his hopes in his son. Lucius saw nothing odd about this arrangement. Flattering people was flattering people — at least Charles didn't make him literally lick shoes the way Voldemort had.
"Starting now, each of you will have thirty minutes each day to learn magic."
Bernadette looked at all three of them and picked up Voldemort's notebook. "I've made some modifications to this notebook — it's now a self-study tool. Whatever questions you have about magic, write them in here and it will answer them automatically."
"However — thirty minutes per person per day, and not outside my direct sight."
"Yes!"
Bernadette handed the notebook to Harry in the middle. "Begin."
The three of them took it to the sofa. While Harry and Malfoy were still bickering over who got to go first, Hermione had already produced a quill and was writing.
Bernadette smiled faintly. Then she tapped her ring, and several items materialised on the desk: Slytherin's locket, Ravenclaw's diadem, the Resurrection Stone ring.
Three Horcruxes — all located using Vincent's directions over the past little while. The last one, Hufflepuff's cup, was in Gringotts and slightly more involved, so she hadn't retrieved it yet.
Through her study of the Horcruxes, the one that had struck her as most unusual was actually Voldemort's earliest — the diary. The others were simply fragments of soul, but the diary had its own consciousness, and that consciousness could even construct a full "memory space" within its pages.
So Bernadette had made the diary her main focus of study — and through conversations with the young Voldemort inside, she'd extracted some knowledge of "memory magic," and then made modifications to the diary itself, turning it into a self-study tool.
The original consciousness was still intact, though. Which was why she needed to sit here and keep an eye on things while the children used it.
"Malfoy, what are you doing?!"
Harry's voice, sharply alarmed.
"That's an Unforgivable Curse!"
Malfoy hastily passed the notebook back to Harry, muttering: "I was just trying. I didn't know this thing could actually teach that."
Harry, coldly: "You'd end up in Azkaban."
"Oh, calm down — I didn't cast it on anyone."
"Then who were you planning to use an Unforgivable on?"
"Not you, obviously. You don't need an Unforgivable — you're not worth it."
"Then let's just—"
"Both of you, shut up!"
Hermione, finally at the end of her patience: "Professor Charles asked you here to study magic, not to argue. If you want to argue, go outside. Stop disturbing me."
The two boys looked at each other. Both made a dismissive sound simultaneously.
Bernadette's gaze moved between Harry and Malfoy, and her mouth curved very slightly. Being around these children — even with the part of herself that resided here being mostly her divine memories — had left a mark. More than she'd expected.
Which made sense. This Bernadette was only a fragment of a soul, after all — the part that carried divine memories. And Vincent's body contained no divine energy to keep suppressing the human nature in her. Prolonged exposure to very human company had its effects.
Meanwhile, in the LOTM world, the Bernadette who carried the human memories was operating in a body with divine energy inside it — which by rights should have been gradually reasserting her older, more divine self. But the three-day rotation with Vincent kept that from tilting too far in either direction.
Some kind of balance had formed, almost by accident.
Thirty minutes later, Hermione returned the notebook to Bernadette with very evident reluctance. "Professor — you said thirty minutes. Doesn't that mean the three of us together should have an hour and a half total?"
Bernadette nodded. "But it's best if the notebook is closed and rested for half an hour between sessions. So from now on, you three can come at separate times."
"Wonderful!"
Malfoy raised his hand. "Professor Charles — I asked the notebook about the magic you used in the Forbidden Forest. It didn't know."
"The first step to learning that," Bernadette said, "is being able to sense your own magical energy without using a spell — to call it up at will, purely through awareness. That part I can't teach directly."
She swept the notebook and the other Horcruxes into the ring on her finger with an Undetectable Extension Charm. "I need to go see Professor Dumbledore. You're all dismissed."
"Goodbye, Professor."
Bernadette walked directly to the eighth floor — she knew the route well by now — said the password to the stone gargoyle, and rode the rotating staircase up.
"Professor Dumbledore — I'm here."
"Come in, Charles."
Dumbledore was dressed like someone's grandmother, swathed in an extraordinarily fluffy robe, sitting beside his fireplace in an armchair and knitting — something that could have been socks or possibly gloves. Behind his half-moon spectacles, his eyes glanced briefly at Bernadette, then returned to the needles.
"I'm sorry to call you up during your rest time. Please, sit."
Bernadette settled onto the sofa. "You wanted to see me about—"
"One moment — just a few more stitches."
Dumbledore quickened his pace, worked a circle of white yarn into a decorative edging, then held the finished piece up in both hands with quiet satisfaction. "Knitted socks for an old friend. Not bad, hmm?"
To be continued…
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