CH 21: The Abbott Job (Patreon)

It was only the job at the Abbott’s that kept David from wallowing in complete despair, a fact quickly remarked upon by said family’s patriarch when he apparated onto the lawn.

“You look like shite, David.”

David groaned and rubbed his face, not doubting the wizard for a second. He had hardly recognized the man with bloodshot eyes and the shadows of a beard in the mirror this morning. “Got some bad news is all,” he explained, “I’ll be alright in a day or two.” 

Christopher examined him in concern as the two made their way into the manor and out of the morning sun. “Do you want to come back another day? I’m sure Madam Longbottom wouldn’t mind hosting my wife and I for an extra week.”

“No, I need a project to sink my teeth into,” David said, shaking his head before the other man had even finished speaking, “and your family needs the wards. It is a fortunate coincidence that those necessities overlap.” David wasn’t even stretching the truth to be polite, he really could use the distraction; the imminent full moon hung over him like an executioner’s blade. 

Greyback had gone to ground, with no more attacks being reported in any of the towns to the north of Aldeburg, leaving David with no new leads to pursue. It was likely that he was taking the opportunity to secure his gains and stay on high alert after one of his soldiers failed to report back. Whether he knew someone was hunting him specifically or merely thought his packmate had bitten off more than he could chew was impossible to determine, but one didn’t become the fourth most wanted magical by the ICW by being sloppy. Whatever the case, David was forced to wait for him to venture back out once more and stumble into the slowly growing network of alerts that spanned the countryside.

Christopher looked unconvinced but mercifully let the subject drop, focusing instead on the wards that David would be building. “I looked over the list of possible protections,” he said, opening the door to a sitting room and offering David a seat. A mug of tea and a glass of water popped quietly into existence the moment he sat down, followed quickly by a small plate of shortbread fingers. “I was amazed that some of what you offered was Ministry legal. A Sumerian curse to turn intruders into wood? Really, David? I’ve sent wizards to Azkaban for less.”

David brightened, “That’s a good one! It’s based on an old myth about a real incestous god; all the real interesting Sumerian curses relate back to their legends. It makes for a powerful ward scheme, but you have to be a little poetic with the consequences. A fun challenge though. As for the Ministry,” he waved dismissively, “you know as well as I do that what they call Dark is a political definition, not a magical one. No plum robed bastard has gotten their knickers in a twist and outlawed the whole suite of Sumerian protections yet. It’s perfectly legal.”

He had been careful to check, too. Every January he updated his master list of wards to reflect what had been prohibited by the Ministry the previous year. It was an ever growing collection of proscribed techniques–although that only influenced what he could offer to clients like the Abbotts, it served more as an endorsement for his personal collection; more than a few of his favorite wards had been discovered from the Ministry’s banned list–but the Wizengamot’s haphazard approach kept it from expanding too rapidly. Other than the surge in criminalizations after Grindelwald's War, the most common way for a particular scheme to be labelled “Dark” was for some hapless auror to stumble into it during raid rather than anything systematic.

Interestingly, no such wave of bannings occurred after the first Blood War. What that said about the Ministry and the “imperiused” Traditionalist, David refused to speculate.

Christopher gave him an unimpressed look, “You never were one for the spirit of the law, were you? I see that hasn’t changed since Hogwarts.”

David threw up his hands in exasperation, “Surely you can’t still be holding that against me! It was twenty years ago, Christopher.”

“You weren’t the one who had to explain to his mother that he was going to have to floo directly home instead of taking the train for the hols because one of my third years decided to spark a worker’s strike amongst the Hogwarts elves!”

That was unfair, David thought, the elves were too dedicated to go on a proper strike. Avoid cleaning the Hufflepuff common room because he got a little ahead of his skis practicing with runes? Maybe. “You know as well as I do that there was nothing in the charter forbidding what I did. It’s not my fault the rules against students building private wards were defined so narrowly.” Honestly, as long as the wards weren’t “permanent” or "malicious" David was perfectly allowed to practice as he pleased; no one could argue that an unfired clay tablet was a permanent fixture.

Christopher huffed a laugh. “You’re lucky that Dumbledore was impressed by your explanation. Dippet would have come down on you like a sack of bricks.”

David would acknowledge that the other man had a point, but he couldn’t find it in himself to feel regretful. The sheer joy he had experienced after finally discovering a branch of magic that he was good at had been euphoric. The first two years of schooling had been an exercise of disappointment; charms took twice the effort as the rest of his classmates, he was constantly one of the last to complete a transfiguration practical, and the less said about potions the better. He had gone into third year taking every elective sans muggle studies just in the hopes he would discover his specialty. Within the first month he had dropped Divination and Care of Magical Creatures and spent every free moment dedicated to the study of runes.

By the end of the first term he was practicing inscribing runes–not wards, no matter what a bunch of upjumped brownies insisted–and evoking singular effects. Precocious certainly, as the professor certainly harangued him, but he was enthusiastic and had a whole extra life’s worth of experience to put toward the task.

“Professor Sprout was rather pleased, despite it all.” David remembered.

“Pomona was just relieved that one of her badgers had found his path at last,” Christopher remarked dryly, “She was worried about you those first few years. You were too quiet for her tastes and didn’t seem to enjoy anything Hogwarts offered even the clubs. I know for a fact she was getting ready to force you to join the Toad Choir under Flitwick.”

That was hardly fair, David thought. Children were exhausting to be around all day, every day, especially on his second time through. Professor Sprout meant well, and biased as he was, David considered her easily the best of the Heads of House, but she could be a bit too matronly at times. 

“If you don’t want to go with the more interesting ones,” David asked, pulling the pair from their reminiscing, “what wards would you like?”

The older Hufflepuff alum took a sip of his tea and hummed thoughtfully. “Aside from the standard anti-transport, anti-muggle protections, as long as you stick to Elder Futhark wards on your list I will be satisfied,” he said.

David grimaced, “If you insist on it I will do so, but I would strongly advise to pick a few from different languages.”

“Why is that?” Christopher questioned.

“Aside from Elder Futhark being the most well known runic language this side of the Danube and thus more easily countered,” David said, “mono-schemes are just a bad idea in general. If someone is trying to tear down your wards and knows what language to expect it allows them to take shortcuts they otherwise wouldn't." Seeing that Christopher was still unconvinced, he added, “at least let me tack on one or two wards from the Hellenic tradition. The Ministry still views them favorably and it would make your protections much safer.”

“Fine,” Christopher conceded, “but nothing that can kill; incapacitation only.”

David blinked in stunned disbelief. “That’s rather… merciful.” Foolish, more like. “No one would fault you for having wards that killed those trying to intrude on your family manor. The older Traditionalist houses almost certainly have schemes that would cut interlopers down rather gruesomely."

Christopher shook his head firmly. “Holdovers from a darker time, David. Let the aurors handle any trespassers once they’ve been subdued.”

David thought the man was being naive, but wasn’t surprised that a Hufflepuff barrister would put his faith in the law. Regardless, he had done his due diligence. He would do the best job he could with the remit he had been granted.

Another hour of discussion hammered out the Abbott’s new ward scheme: alongside the general suite of protections, David would be working in a Greek sleeping curse, a Celtic ward that would envelope anyone not inside the manor in fire-resistant bramble, a protego-maxima offshoot that would serve as a holdout shield for the physical building itself, and a Norse curse that would insight fear into anyone without sufficient will power to resist. “Are you sure I can’t talk you into the Mok Chi’ scheme?” David asked, “It really would be an efficient defense, especially if you had actual beehives somewhere on the property.”

“No, David,” Christopher scolded, “I am not allowing you to inscribe a Mayan curse on my family’s wardstone just because ‘it sounds interesting’ and you ‘want to try it’. Honestly, who needs magically enhanced bees enchanted to target eyeballs?”

It was worth a shot. The Ministry was slow to legislate on anything coming from the New World, dismissive of anything that didn’t come from Europe or Mesopotamia. Absurd when you consider the grisly techniques available to a Voodoo Houngan.

“You’ll have plenty of defense,” David warned, “but very little in the way of offense. If someone sits at your wardline and lays siege, they will break through eventually. It will cost them time and blood, but you’ll be forced to flee or call for aid if there are too many for you to handle personally.”

Christopher shrugged, “That’s a risk I’m willing to take, especially with the addition you offered to make to my wardstone. It’s a fascinating technique, I’m surprised I hadn’t heard of it before.”

That’s because it was an invention of his own, David thought, and one he wouldn’t be spreading without a secrecy contract. 

A natural consequence of learning how to set wards was learning how to break them, including anti-portkey nets. The most common way wizards and witches sheltered in a magical holdfast died was someone raised counter anti-transport wards at the beginning of the siege that the defenders were unable to pierce before the attackers reached them. What David had offered to do, and Christopher had accepted, was to turn the Abbott wardstone into something of a bastardized portkey. Upon the wardholder’s command, any energy left in the stone would be shunted into a partial portkey that would rip through containment with far more enthusiasm than anyone could hope to shield, opening a temporary escape route for the besieged to follow behind.

It was only tenuously legal because the wardstone wasn’t enchanted to arrive anywhere, merely depart with bombastic effect, thus skirting the formal definition of a portkey and falling in a legal grey area. Not that it would make a good portkey even if it had an arrival point. Anyone that was foolish enough to be touching it at the moment of activation would rather quickly become more acquainted with their insides than was preferable; even a mostly drained wardstone contained orders of magnitude more energy than a long-distance portkey.

“But where does it go?” Christopher asked, not for the first time. “It’s not getting vanished, otherwise it wouldn’t work as you described, so it must go somewhere.”

David scratched his neck sheepishly. “I don’t know,” he admitted, “wherever we transit when we apparate or portkey I suppose. Maybe its constituent parts are scattered across the hemisphere, maybe you’ll inadvertently bombard the fey realm. Just can’t say, really.”

There were plenty of theories of how portkeys and apparation worked, most of them involving other dimensions or wormholes, but at the end of the day they were just theories. Maybe some of the crazies buried in the Department of Mysteries understood it, but to most wizards it was just magic, why bother interrogating further?

“You have to understand how unsettling that is,” Christopher said.

“All I have to know is that it works,” David replied, “and it does, I’ve tested it thoroughly.”

Much to the displeasure of the gulls up in Orkney. It was an energetic technique.

“Don’t expect the room holding your wardstone to survive if you need to use it,” he continued, “although if you’re in a situation that calls for it, I suspect your manor is lost anyway.” Like he said, an energetic technique.

Christopher nodded grimly, before changing the subject. “I’ve collected the list of those who would like you to inspect their wards, when you have the chance. There were ten families that were willing to pay for the consultation. More will likely reach out to a different warder.”

That was to be expected. Any warder worth their craft signed stringent secrecy contracts with clients that prevented casual disclosure of the client’s wards, but unless they were foolish enough to swear an unbreakable vow it could still be tortured out of the warder. David was reclusive even by the standards of his peers, but you didn’t last long in the business without formidable protections of your own and a habit of secrecy. 

“I can knock that out in a couple of afternoons while I wait for your wardstone to charge,” David said. “In the old days blood spilled on the construct would fast track the empowering process, but now that’s considered blood magic and is thus illegal. Absurd of course, but the slow it is; it’ll be a process of weeks before your wards are fully erected.” Let Christopher make of that hint as he may. If David came back one morning to discover that the runes had "miraculously" charged overnight he certainly wasn’t going to say anything.

“I’ll knock off a third of my fee to any family that lets me peruse their library,” David offered. It would cut into his already discounted fee, but the opportunity to paw through the collection of the old families wasn’t one to be passed up.

“I’ll let them know,” Christopher said. “Is there anything you need before you can start on my wards? Despite my earlier offer, the sooner I’m away from Augusta the better; I’m worried that my wife might learn some of her techniques.”

David barked a laugh, not having expected the suddenly harried expression on the other man’s face. “You procured the physical stone for me?” At the older Hufflepuff’s nod he finished his tea and stood, “then I’m ready to get started.”

A little working mediation would hopefully be just what he needed to determine his next steps on the case.

A/N: Rather pleased with this one. I have the major plot points for the rest of the first book (there will be some number of sequels, although how many is TBD) mapped out, but these in between chapters are tricky for me. Hope you enjoy!