In_memoriam: Lumos
Title: Instant Darkness Powder
Fandom: Harry Potter
Prompt: Spells - Lumos
Characters: Charity Burbage, Fred W, George W, Poppy P, Albus D
Rating: G
Word Count: 607
Summary: Charity felt responsible for the headmaster's death, because she had taught Fred and George to think outside the box. Deathly Hallows SPOILERS. For
in_memoriam_7
Charity felt responsible for Dumbledore’s death. She hadn’t been in any way related to the Death Eater plots, of course - but maybe the Death Eaters would have been defeated at the first hurdle if it hadn’t been for Charity and her belief in free thinking.
Malfoy had purchased Peruvian Instant Darkness Powder and used it to distract the students who stood ready to defend Hogwarts. It was quite possible that if he hadn’t been able to plunge that seventh floor corridor into utter darkness, he and the Death Eaters would have been defeated by Dumbledore’s Army and Snape would never have been called to the scene.
If you insist of blaming a non-Death Eater, Poppy told her, blame the people who sold Malfoy the powder in the first place. But although Charity considered herself an honest person, she couldn’t bring herself to tell her best friend her most guilty secret.
Fred and George Weasley had come to Charity and asked her for suggestions and inspiration from the Muggle world for their defensive range.
“A power cut can defeat many covert operations,” Charity had informed them. “Without lighting or access to essential computers could easily foil even the most well-laid plots.”
There wasn’t a way to cut off all connections to magic short of performing a Dark ritual involving thirteen powerful wizards, twelve equally powerful witches and the blood of a muggle child. Obviously the Weasley twins weren’t going to go for that, and Charity would have been seriously worried if they’d considered it.
Darkness also posed a problem. A simple ‘lumos’ charm could provide light anywhere, anytime, and was one of the most simple charms around. Charity, who was a muggleborn and still partly retained the belief that magic could do anything if you could only do complicated enough Arithmancy to find out how, had dismissed Fred and George’s worries at once.
“Just find a less common darkness spell that Lumos can’t penetrate,” Charity had said, privately wondering how purebloods had survived for so long with their utter inability to think around the rules. If the Weasley twins - just about the most creative people Charity had ever met with the exception of the Marauders who she’d gone to school with - couldn’t think of such a simple solution, how had the Crabbes and Goyles managed to survive long enough to procreate? It was hardly suprising really that almost all spell creators had had a muggle upbringing if these two creative purebloods had the taught rules of magic ingrained so firmly into their heads.
Inspired by Charity’s statement of the obvious, Fred and George had gone looking for impenetrable darkness. They’d found it in an old, obscure tome written by a Peruvian wizard: a mention of a powder used often in years gone by. Instant Darkness Powder had gone on sale a week later.
Charity Burbage would not live long enough to discover that Albus Dumbledore had already been dying or that he had wanted Snape to kill him. All she knew was her employer - once the benevolent teacher who’d laughed when she accidentally turned his beard pink, once the man given the unpleasant ask of informing her that her parents had died in a car crash, one the smiling man lying unconscious with a blackened hand in a hospital bed who Charity had felt the need to mother even though he was more than a hundred years older than her - had died on that fateful night in June because of something Charity had said. Charity didn’t even survive the second war long enough to discover that his - and her own - killer would replace him as headmaster of Hogwarts.
Fandom: Harry Potter
Prompt: Spells - Lumos
Characters: Charity Burbage, Fred W, George W, Poppy P, Albus D
Rating: G
Word Count: 607
Summary: Charity felt responsible for the headmaster's death, because she had taught Fred and George to think outside the box. Deathly Hallows SPOILERS. For
in_memoriam_7
Charity felt responsible for Dumbledore’s death. She hadn’t been in any way related to the Death Eater plots, of course - but maybe the Death Eaters would have been defeated at the first hurdle if it hadn’t been for Charity and her belief in free thinking.
Malfoy had purchased Peruvian Instant Darkness Powder and used it to distract the students who stood ready to defend Hogwarts. It was quite possible that if he hadn’t been able to plunge that seventh floor corridor into utter darkness, he and the Death Eaters would have been defeated by Dumbledore’s Army and Snape would never have been called to the scene.
If you insist of blaming a non-Death Eater, Poppy told her, blame the people who sold Malfoy the powder in the first place. But although Charity considered herself an honest person, she couldn’t bring herself to tell her best friend her most guilty secret.
Fred and George Weasley had come to Charity and asked her for suggestions and inspiration from the Muggle world for their defensive range.
“A power cut can defeat many covert operations,” Charity had informed them. “Without lighting or access to essential computers could easily foil even the most well-laid plots.”
There wasn’t a way to cut off all connections to magic short of performing a Dark ritual involving thirteen powerful wizards, twelve equally powerful witches and the blood of a muggle child. Obviously the Weasley twins weren’t going to go for that, and Charity would have been seriously worried if they’d considered it.
Darkness also posed a problem. A simple ‘lumos’ charm could provide light anywhere, anytime, and was one of the most simple charms around. Charity, who was a muggleborn and still partly retained the belief that magic could do anything if you could only do complicated enough Arithmancy to find out how, had dismissed Fred and George’s worries at once.
“Just find a less common darkness spell that Lumos can’t penetrate,” Charity had said, privately wondering how purebloods had survived for so long with their utter inability to think around the rules. If the Weasley twins - just about the most creative people Charity had ever met with the exception of the Marauders who she’d gone to school with - couldn’t think of such a simple solution, how had the Crabbes and Goyles managed to survive long enough to procreate? It was hardly suprising really that almost all spell creators had had a muggle upbringing if these two creative purebloods had the taught rules of magic ingrained so firmly into their heads.
Inspired by Charity’s statement of the obvious, Fred and George had gone looking for impenetrable darkness. They’d found it in an old, obscure tome written by a Peruvian wizard: a mention of a powder used often in years gone by. Instant Darkness Powder had gone on sale a week later.
Charity Burbage would not live long enough to discover that Albus Dumbledore had already been dying or that he had wanted Snape to kill him. All she knew was her employer - once the benevolent teacher who’d laughed when she accidentally turned his beard pink, once the man given the unpleasant ask of informing her that her parents had died in a car crash, one the smiling man lying unconscious with a blackened hand in a hospital bed who Charity had felt the need to mother even though he was more than a hundred years older than her - had died on that fateful night in June because of something Charity had said. Charity didn’t even survive the second war long enough to discover that his - and her own - killer would replace him as headmaster of Hogwarts.