110 The Winter is Coming of Our Discontent

Over the following weeks, Oleandra and Harry would return to Professor Lupin to practise the Patronus Charm. Harry made some progress; the silvery mists he emitted gained more substance. He still couldn't produce a Corporeal Patronus; whenever he used the charm, his wand would emit a tornado-like swirl of dense silvery energy.

As for Oleandra, her Incorporeal Patronus inexplicably remained in liquid form. Professor Lupin assumed she was making progress, because the pool of silvery liquid she created had increased in diameter compared to the first time she had cast the charm.

In the end, she never did ask Professor Lupin whether or not he was a werewolf; the man did take time off his busy schedule to teach her personally, after all. It didn't sit right with Oleandra to sling accusations at her benefactor with no real proof.

As days passed and nights grew longer, the incessant rain that plagued the Scottish countryside transformed into powdery snowfall; winter had come at last, bringing with it the holiday season and the end of classes. 

Professor Flitwick had procured some fairies to give his classroom a festive feel. The tiny, fluttering fairies didn't mind acting as decorations; they were rather coquettish creatures who liked the attention. They'd pull their tongues at some of the prettier girls in class, but for some reason, they'd always chitter excitedly whenever Oleandra passed by them. What, did they think she wasn't beautiful enough to warrant being made faces at?

On the subject of teachers, Professor McGonagall was profoundly stumped when it came to Oleandra. At first, she had thought that the girl had absolutely no talent when it came to Transfiguration. She was even worse than Longbottom and Weasley, and that was a feat in and of itself. And then, she had caught the girl performing human Transfiguration in her first year, an extremely complex and dangerous branch of this school of magic. Thinking that Oleandra was simply pretending to be unskilled to be lazy, she pushed the girl even harder. However, that turned out to be a fruitless endeavour; the girl truly seemed to be a Transfiguration dunce. 

But halfway through November, Oleandra suddenly began pulling off Transfigurations in class on her first attempts, right after being taught the spell. At first, Professor McGonagall thought that the Greengrass twins had swapped places to play a trick on her, but that didn't turn out to be the case. Talent wasn't something that could be changed, so the only explanation that Professor McGonagall could come up with was that Oleandra had been a prodigy all along. That Slytherin she-devil had been messing with her on purpose!

In truth, what Oleandra had used to disguise herself back then hadn't been human Transfiguration, it had been a runic façade: an illusion. And Oleandra truly hadn't been messing with Professor McGonagall on purpose, she had simply been cursed!

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Even the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry, Ginny Weasley had soon found out. It had taken a few weeks for the fusion of the halves of Voldemort's and Ginny's souls to stabilize and for their inner turmoil to calm down. Before classes had even started again, they had now truly become one. Voldemort decided to make a clean break from his past by adopting his body's name: Ginevra Weasley. Ironically enough, his new body had purer Wizard blood than his last!

Despite hating Muggles, Ginny was still fascinated by them; despite hating Harry for annihilating Voldemort Prime's body, she couldn't help but love him. Humans are contradictory beings by definition, and Ginny was just as conflicted as any other person.

Ginny's plans had met more than a few setbacks since she had first laid them out as the soul in Tom Riddle's diary. The whole point of risking to fuse souls was to steal Oleandra's rune magic for herself and to conquer foreign realms. Indeed, in order to take root, twenty-four runes needed to be engraved on a sound and whole soul; half a soul did not have enough surface area. However, it turned out that even with one hundred percent soul volume, the patchwork nature of Ginny's soul made it impossible for her to learn the magic of the stars.

Ginny was actually sort of glad she was incompatible with star magic. Whenever she peeked at Oleandra's or her friends' souls, Ginny would feel as if a malignant intelligence had directed an iota of their attention on her. She couldn't help but shiver whenever its sinister gaze landed on her; it wasn't even contempt, it was utter indifference. For Merlin's sake, people were still afraid to say the name Voldemort even a decade after his apparent death, and this mysterious presence would only spare the slightest bit of attention on her!

In any case, there was no escaping it; in order for her plans of domination to come to fruition, Ginny would need Oleandra's help. But thanks to the protection the runes afforded Oleandra's soul, Ginny couldn't simply control her through brute force by modifying her memories or using the Imperius Curse. 

And thus, Ginny had come up with a new plan: she simply had to plunge Oleandra into despair, and make herself the only light in her life. Psychological manipulation 101, Voldemort had been rather good at it back when he still had his looks. 

Incidentally, it had been the Bloodline Atavism Potion that had stolen Voldemort's nose and transformed his appearance. Daphne had been rather lucky in that her family's bloodline origin, the wood nymph, possessed a human-like appearance and great beauty, so her appearance had remained mostly unchanged.

Ginny looked up from the book she had been pretending to read and observed her body's brothers, Fred and George, sneaking up on Astoria Greengrass, who was sitting across the table from her. Ginny didn't hate Astoria as much as the other Gryffindors she needed to pretend to like.

"Shh!" both twins signalled to her by putting a finger in front of their lips and winking.

"Legilimens!" Ginny took the opportunity to look straight into Fred's eyes, silently and wandlessly reading through his memories!

"I can't wait to see her reaction when these fireworks explode in her pocket!"

Ginny focused; not deep enough, were they still going through with it?

"Harry's looking miserable. I guess we'll give it to him in advance. What do you think, George?"

"Fine by me, Fred!"

Hold on, what was George's voice doing in Fred's head? Ginny looked a little deeper.

"I wonder who's Peter Pettigrew? I've never heard of a Gryffindor by that name, and he spends an awful lot of time with lil bro. Eh, who cares."

Ginny didn't really care about this Peter Pettigrew. He sounded like an unimportant person, so she withdrew from her brother's mind. In any case, she had got the information she needed. Oh, and…

"Astoria," Ginny called out. "You might want to look behind you."

"Aww, come on, Gin!" Fred and George exclaimed. "Let us avenge you a little!"