faderift | Sixteen books on magic spells

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Sixteen books on magic spells

WHO: Hermione Granger and rifters (or anyone who saw her note and wants to chat)
WHAT: Adelaide is having Hermione find out about magic in other worlds by interviewing rifters ~~for SCIENCE~~.
WHEN: Mid-Drakonis and onwards. There's no deadline on acquiring knowledge!
WHERE: The default is Skyhold's library, otherwise note in the subject line if your character would have arranged to meet her somewhere else.
NOTES: Nothing comes to mind; will change if necessary.

Anyone frequenting the library has probably become used to the curly-haired young girl who's claimed a small alcove as her own. She can usually be found sitting in the corner, nose buried in a book as her brow furrows, attempting to bridge the gap between her worldview and that of Thedas'. It's not always an easy task, and sometimes names and dates get jumbled, which is why she can sometimes be found just a few steps away at the nearest table, books and journals and bits of parchment scattered about as she tries to make sense out of all the reading she's done.

Still, what at first glance appears to be a mess is actually rather organized, and for however engrossed she seems to be in her work, she's always been happy to talk to new people. After all, each conversation counts towards research, even if it isn't in the particular field she's been asked to study. Go ahead and ask around for her if you don't know where to find her; chances are she's hard to miss, and many will be able to point out the inquisitive rifter if she happens to be around.

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Hermione started as Lara began rattling off familiar terms, things she'd heard her so often entire life that they'd practically lost meaning until right that second. She'd never thought she'd actually feel inspired to sing her national anthem in her entire life.

"Of course I do!" she replied, grinning as she shook Lara's hand. "I just went to see The Mousetrap on the West End about two months ago with my parents, just before being sent back to school in Scotland." She couldn't get more specific about her school, not yet, not without a preamble of sorts, but just the fact that she could say Scotland and someone would know what that is....

But then she remembered about the last person she'd met who'd been from Scotland, and she held her breath. "Er, this might be a strange question, but... what year is it, where you're from?"

The relief was clear, something between a laugh and a soft sob sighing past Lara's lips as she squeezed Hermonie's hand. Someone from home, a connection - she wasn't entirely alone.

"I've seen it," she replied with a little nod of her head, dark hair dancing around her face. "It was one of the first things Sam made me--"

But she broke off, humor stifling at the look at the other woman's face.

"...2015," she said slowly, uncertain. "What year was it for you?"

The Mousetrap had been running for several decades, that was true, but surely....

Hermione had almost expected to hear that she'd come across someone else from the past, but this.... While 2015 might not be that far into the future, it still sounded like something out of a science fiction movie, distant and eerie.

"... oh," she murmured, expression falling just a bit. This was fine, though. Lara could still be from her world, just... much younger back home than she currently was. She could still even hold out the hope that maybe she was a young witch who hadn't yet gotten into Hogwarts in her time.

"I-... it's October of 1998 for me," she explained, wincing a little and suddenly feeling strangely antiquated. "It seems that, despite outward appearances, I'm quite a bit older than you." The teenager would be in her mid-thirties in Lara's world. Possibly even married and/or a mother. That was... quite scary to think about, really.

"1998..." Lara echoed softly, her reaction limited for the moment to the stilted way she breathed the numbers. "...I was six, February of that year."

And yet, here they stood, looking not all that different in age, with her guess for Hermoine right around 20.

Remarkable. Impossible.

Crazy.

She took a breath.

"Well, we are in an alternate universe with magical, glowing marks in our hands." She offered her a wry sort of smile. "What's a few dozen years compartively."

Six. Almost young enough to be Hermione's daughter, if she'd started young. As it was, that put Lara in her early 20s, which meant that she was older than Hermione. Technically. But even more technically, younger.

It was enough to make Hermione's head hurt.

Still, she managed to return her smile, commenting, "There's a reason most people don't indulge in time-traveling. It makes for a few complications, and life is already filled with them. At any rate, whereabouts are you from? Perhaps we have some mutual acquaintances."

"Once, I might have said it was the craziest thing that could happen."

Now, somehow, it seemed like the most obvious. The easiest to swallow.

"I was born, and raised, in Surrey. But I was- living in London." It hadn't been from London that she'd managed to arrive in Thedas, but it was the simplest answer, for now. "I.. you may have heard of my father, Richard Croft?"

She hesitated sightly, saying his name, watching Hermonine's reaction carefully. In her experience, if someone had, the response was usually the same and she was bracing for it.

"So would I. But that would have been a long, long time ago." That was the sort of thing that happened when one discovered one was a witch at the age of eleven.

If anything, Hermione reacted more to hearing where Lara was from than she had the name of her father. "Oh, Surrey! My best friend is from Little Whinging. Or, at least, that was where he lived with his aunt and uncle."

She hesitated for a moment herself, unsure of whether Lara was hoping she had or hadn't heard of her father. At any rate, her answer remained the same. "Sorry, no. Is he in a certain kind of business? Or if he rose to prominence in the past year - that is, 1997 - , I must admit, I hadn't been able to keep up with the news as well as I usually do." At least, she hadn't had much of an interest in any kind of news that hadn't involved the war, and so that was what she'd focused on the few times she'd managed to acquire a newspaper.

"He was an archaeologist," Lara said, voice softening as she spoke of him. "Quite celebrated, he and my mother both, but there was a falling out between him and the greater scientific community. The papers had quite a run with it."

One corner of her mouth pulled upward, a sad, wry, smile, before she let out a breath and wiped it away.

"But it was quite some time ago, even if you had been reading them."

"Oh," Hermione murmured, voice quieting down when she heard the more somber tone of Lara's voice. "No, I don't think I've heard of them after all. Archaeology has always sounded very interesting, though. I don't know that I have the patience for field work, but it makes for interesting reading." Granted, most people thought of it the other way around, but Hermione wasn't most people.

"May I ask what kind of falling out it was? Did he discover something that seemed a bit too fantastical to believe?" If he'd been ridiculed for having come across a hippogriff or some such thing and not having the proof, Hermione would likely feel strangely guilty, just for being part of the community that kept that sort of thing a secret.

"That would be one way of putting it," she replied slowly, carefully. It still sounded fantastic, even to her. Impossible, even though she'd seen herself. Even given her current circumstances. "He was convinced of the possibility of immortality, and he believed he could prove the existence of the human soul. No one believed him, and he was ridiculed, and disgraced."

Hermione was silent for a moment. She had a perfectly logical explanation for that, but that would all depend on whether Lara thought magic to be logical. "Did he have proof, though? Because if he had proof and was still ridiculed, that just speaks to the narrow-mindedness of some people in the scientific community."

"He had theories, but--" She paused, shook her head the grief in her expression hardening. "He never had the chance to see them through. He was murdered before he could prove them."

Hermione almost felt physically pained at the revelation of Lara's father's murder. "Oh-... I- I'm sorry," she murmured softly, voice genuine. "We could... we could stop talking about him, if that's easier. Or keep talking about him, if it helps."

How many times had she thought she'd come to terms with it, only to have it come back on her? She'd accepted it when she'd thought he'd been wrong and the weight of it had pushed him to take his own life; then Yamatai had proved him correct... then Ana had claimed Trinity was behind his death....

She took a deep breath, and took a moment, closing her eyes.

"It's alright," she said finally. "It's not as if I can do anything about it here."

She looked back at Hermonine.

"So... tell me more about you. It sounds as though we might be from the same place - if not time."

Hermione sort of wanted to hug her, partially because she's now under the mentality that, despite the way they look, she's actually much older than Lara. But that would be weird, and though her go-to would ordinarily be to ask if she felt she needed a hug, she seems to be willing to change the subject.

Unfortunately, she didn't really know what all she could say. If they were from the same world, then Lara was clearly a Muggle. But even then, she'd likely find out about Hermione anyway, seeing as how she hasn't exactly been discreet about her abilities since landing in the middle of a demon fight.

She she decided to go about this the pragmatic way, since she wouldn't want Lara discovering the truth later and thinking she'd been lied to. "Well, let me ask you this, first: how much do you know about magic?"

She blinked, then laughed, a low, wry sound.

"Alright, maybe not." She looked away with a little breath, then back. "I have encountered some incredible things in the past few years, not even including the rift that brought me here, but whether or not it's magic...I can't say. It's nothing like this, though."

She gestured lightly, meaning the room, the people in it, the magic of Thedas which she is very aware of - and in awe of.

"What sort of incredible things?" Hermione asked. After all, they could still be from the same world, and Lara could simply be a Muggle. If Lara described things that had been out of the ordinary and they sounded as though they could be explained by magic or magical creatures/beings, well... it would definitely narrow things down.

After all, having met someone from England would just be another disappointment if it was an England Hermione didn't recognize at all.

Lara pulled her lip, uncertain. Leliana had asked her much the same question, and she hadn't been able to answer. Even with everything she'd seen, even in the face of the impossibility of Thedas, it was difficult to talk about.

"...My father wasn't wrong," she said finally. "I didn't believe him either, but then on expedition, I saw something I couldn't explain. I started looking, and he was right. I found proof of immortality."

Edited 2016-03-24 10:31 (UTC)

Hermione tensed at Lara's explanation. "Do you mean the Philosopher's Stone?" she asked. "Did you find the Philosopher's Stone?" It had been her understanding that there had only been one, and that it had been destroyed, but all things considered, hearing of a surviving Philosopher's Stone wouldn't be the strangest thing to have ever happened to her.

"The Philosopher's--" It caught her by surprise, both how Hermoine said and how she said it. Convicted, as if she already knew the answer. "...He didn't say anything about it turning lead to gold."

But her heart thudded, a now familiar rush of adrenaline running through her as questions began to form in her mind. She gestured to the table and chairs.

"May I?"

This might take some time.

Hermione blinked, tilting her head a bit curiously. Nodding towards the table and chairs, she asked, "So you knew about its other properties?"

That wasn't the important question, though. The important question was the one she asked next. "What happened to it?"

"The Philosopher's Stone is a well known legend, like the Holy Grail or the Ark of the Covenant," Lara replied as she pulled out a chair and sank into it, her free hand gesturing as she spoke. "I've heard of it, and I know it was supposed to be able to grant immortality... but what I found, was the Divine Source."

A lesser shared story, to be certain.

"Said to hold a piece of God's soul, and able to grant immortality and a whole host of supernatural powers." Her mouth twisted, a humorless and small smile. "It turned out it wasn't divine in any way, but it was powerful. More powerful than anything I've ever seen. More dangerous."

Edited 2016-03-28 12:17 (UTC)

Hermione didn't know quite how to respond to the idea of a magical artifact having any divine roots, but she managed not to look as though she was outright scoffing. People had very different ideas and opinions about religion, and she couldn't simply assume that they were all as easy-going about it as some people could be.

"Nicolas Flamel created the stone, in the mid-fourteenth century," she explained. "He used it to keep himself and his wife alive for centuries. He agreed to destroy it about six years ago, when it was almost used to bring a very powerful, very evil man back to full power. Not that Voldemort was a man anymore, of course, not by that point."

She paused for a moment before murmuring, "I didn't know there were two of them. Unless, of course, you come from an alternate universe or dimension or what not. I think I'd almost prefer that to there being another Philosopher's Stone in the world."

Lara considered for a moment, recalling the Divine Source, glowing in Ana's grasp, seeming to come to life under her touch. How it had felt, unexpectedly heavy and oddly warm in her own hands as she'd hefted it above her head...

"I'm not entirely convinced we're thinking of the same artifact. Not that it isn't possible...." A part of her liked the idea too, if only to be able to say, yes, their worlds were one and same, as different as their experiences were. "I don't recall any stories of the Philosopher's Stone granting power. Jacob-- the Deathless Prophet as the stories called him, was able to perform miracles. I saw him do it, as crazy as it sounds. Neither am I aware of the stone behaving differently depending on its - seeker, if you will. Jacob was granted all its wonder, but the others who used it throughout the centuries...."

She trailed off, something fast and dark flashing through her eyes. Fear and disgust.

"Humans aren't meant to be immortal. It isn't natural, and I've come to think that it was part of the price of the Divine Source. In order to use it, you had to become inhuman."

Accept for Jacob.

The things she would liked to ask him, if only there had been more time....

Edited 2016-03-28 17:21 (UTC)

"Voldemort wouldn't have used the stone to gain power," Hermione replied. "He'd been... it's... complicated." But then, Lara had trusted her with the idea of a Deathless Prophet who could perform miracles, so Hermione should probably give her the benefit of the doubt, Muggle or no.

Taking a deep breath, she explained, "Voldemort had found a way to gain a sort of immortality by creating what's known as a Horcrux. Traditionally, a Horcrux is made when a person has committed murder, thus splitting his soul in two; half of that soul lives on in his body, but the other half can be hidden inside an inanimate object, to be kept safely away until it can acquire a body of its own once the primary soul dies. Voldemort... made seven Horcruxes."

That bit of background information had been the hard part, and Hermione quickly waves through the rest, considering that, like Lara, she'd never exactly been overly thrilled with the concept of immortality in human beings. "His primary body had been killed, but Voldemort lived on, his soul split so many times that he wasn't even recognizable as human. If he'd drunk the Elixir from the Philosopher's Stone, he not only would have acquired a proper body of his own, but he could have returned to full power, and even with a mangled soul he would have been impossible to kill."

That was why Flamel had agreed to destroy it, though it cost him and his wife their immortality. Even after all these years, Hermione couldn't help feeling a little sad about that.

"Immortality always comes with a price, no matter how you go about achieving it."

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