obliviate | Glowfic Constellation

"Whatever you like, of course!"

Lockhart arranges to borrow them brooms from the school. Fortunately Hogwarts does have a couple nicer ones than the training brooms lying around, a legacy of a professor in years past with a horrible phobia of Apparating and a tendency to wander the nearby countryside. Lockhart presents one to Miranda with a bow.

chanuphis

And she gets on and floats, ready to be led.

It is, as promised, a reasonably short flight. They wind up in a forest, with a couple Muggle villages on the outskirts and not much else. He has them land in a clearing outside the forest. "Not safe to be on brooms near Dementors. Just in case, you know, if they sneak up on you- Harry Potter told me, he fell from his broom once- well. We'll walk from here."

He's not sure exactly where they are- the Ministry hardly has GPS coordinates- but he should be able to at least get them close enough to follow by the cold.

chanuphis

"Okay. And I suppose I had better not cast till we're close or it might notice and escape."

"On point as always," he approves, though he looks rather nervous. "Shouldn't be long, I'm sure. After you."

He might be sweating a little.

chanuphis

Miranda shrugs and goes first, chimaera wand at the ready.

After about ten minutes of wandering, the woods begin to feel noticeably colder. If you look carefully, and don't mind the dark, there is a fluttery shape up ahead.

chanuphis

Miranda squints.

And takes two long steps forward while she casts: "Expecto patronum!"

And here is her shiny person, much taller than its prey, advancing faster than its caster.

The Dementor makes something of a shrieking sound, and turns away- but is clearly not faster than the Patronus.

Meanwhile, as the Patronus heads away from them after the Dementor ahead of them, another approaches from behind them. It is, obviously, silent, but the aura of cold is beyond its control.

chanuphis

Miranda looks over her shoulder and trips. She maintains her hold on her wand, and her Patronus continues to chase the first Dementor, but it can't multitask.

"There's another one, behind you, hold it off!" she shouts at Lockhart.

This was not in the plan, this was not in the plan, there was supposed to be one of them, this was not in the plan at all.

Shaking, Lockhart pulls out his wand. "Expecto Patronum!" he ventures.

Nothing happens. He backs away as the Dementor approaches, clutching his head. "No," he whimpers, "I'm smart, I'm talented, Mother said."

chanuphis

"Lying was a bad idea!" hisses Miranda.

And she pulls her second wand out of her hair and tries, unable to cross her fingers with a wand in each hand:

"Expecto patronum!"

Oh thank goodness - now there are two.

The little one streaks past Lockhart at the second Dementor.

Once there's a Patronus between him and the Dementor, he starts to recover, but slowly. "'m famous, 'm..." he mutters, as the color slowly bleaches back into his skin. "...five-time winner..."

The Dementors, meanwhile, are encountering the Silverlight Patronus charms Miranda sent after them. It's not going well for them. They don't vanish quite instantly, but they get visibly small much faster. After only a second or two of contact with the Silverlights, there's nothing left of them but cloaks.

chanuphis

When the Dementors are dead Miranda dismisses the big Patronus. The little one drifts towards Lockhart, hopefully comfortingly.

Miranda herself is disinclined to be comforting. "You can't cast a Patronus?!"

"This has all been awfully embarrassing," Lockhart mutters. "Don't think it should-"

Out comes his wand. "Obliviate!"

chanuphis

Rrrrrrg - that's harder than the little Confundus and it's harder than the Veritaserum.

She wrestles with the charm for a minute - then shakes her head.

"Hermione said you might try that," she says conversationally, putting her regular wand back in her hair and drawing the chimaera again. "Score one for paranoia. Don't try it again."

Today has not been going according to any plans. Lockhart is very obviously distressed by this.

"That girl," he sighs, almost snarling. Then he plasters back on a smile. "Well, then. Miss Swan, breaker of Patronus charms." No reason to admit he's never had a Patronus, she's broken them before, hasn't she? He didn't say- "What comes now, then?"

chanuphis

"I didn't break yours. I didn't tell you the thing that breaks them."

"I saw your Patronus," he points out. "There's a thing I have to be told? You know this? Confirmed it with the Ministry? Tested it out between classes?"

chanuphis

This gives Miranda pause.

"Has anybody ever seen you cast one?"

"Neither Dementors nor Patronus casters are common, Miss Swan. Tragically, the man who taught me died in the war."

He's rather grateful that this is, in fact, true. Except for the part where he succeeded in learning it, of course, but he did at one point try, and the teacher in question was one of the Auror casualties in retaking the Ministry.

(He's tried anything considered "for exceptional wizards only" at some point in his life. It's just that only if he immediately succeeded that he would continue.)

chanuphis

"If I ask Slughorn for another dose of Veritaserum can you say you had one before?"

"In the interest of saving time, Veritaserum does not work on me." He waves at his not longer quite perfectly coiffed head. "It depends on what you know and believe as truth, you know. My knowledge of what is- is no longer solid enough to work."

He hasn't the faintest idea if any of that's true, but it sounds plausible.

chanuphis

It does sound plausible. And it doesn't work on her now either.

"What were you going to have me believe if it'd worked?" she wonders.