hi... yes, new update! Sorry for the long long wait >.<

Good news — this chapter is much longer than usual and the next one is almost done

Also a few weeks ago I rewrote the Sorting in chapter 3 to be more interesting!

It was another Hogsmeade weekend in January. Blaise and Wilby had gone off to get haircuts, leaving Sage and Drew to walk up and down High Street, seeing if there were any stores they hadn't shopped in yet.

Sage was the most methodical of Cyndee's personalities. She walked stiffly, placing her feet exactly centre on each cobblestone.

It had been three months since Katie Bell was Imperiused at the Three Broomsticks, and the place hadn't yet lost its ominous aura. They intended to quickly pass by, but heard retching from the side of the building and stopped.

A shattered mead bottle crunched under Malfoy's shoes as he leaned against the wall, and they watched him heave out his guts for the third time this term. He stared into the bricks like they were the answer to everything, his sallow skin clinging to a body as thin as his hair.

Then the ferret noticed them and glared, the skin under his eyes sunk by exhaustion. "Bugger off, Mudblood."

Sage jumped to her defence. "You show all the symptoms of an idiot. Worry about that. And how are you sick from mead?"

That took him aback for a second, but he recovered and shook his head. "Yeah, whatever."

Okay, that was bland.

To spice it up, Drew came in with a scorcher. "You look like a dementor. Maybe stop eating your own soul to fill the void in your skull."

He kicked the glass bottle shards, embedding them in his shoe. "Leave me alone, Getaway."

She and Sage walked off with their heads held high. "We annihilated him," Drew said. "Let's do it more often."

That got a grin from her friend, and they resumed their window shopping.

Madam Puddifoot's Tea Shop was getting more popular. Inside they saw their seventh-year prefect talking animatedly with his Hufflepuff girlfriend. Sebastian insisted on wearing his big sunglasses despite being indoors in the winter.

Sage suddenly cursed. "Stop yelling. What is it?"

Drew took a second to realize Sage wasn't talking to her, and waited for the other person in her to finish talking.

"Oh." Sage then pointed into the distance. "Louis wants to see that dog. I guess we'll go ask if we can pet it."

When Drew placed the black dog among the bustling people, she recognized the owner — a tall young woman with wild brown hair.

They got closer, and Sage stopped in front of her. "Hello, Carolina."

The former prefect looked at her in surprise. "Oh, hi! Cyndee, is it?"

"Sage," she corrected. Zero explanation was given. "Can I pet your dog?"

Carolina was visibly confused. "Oh right, sorry. Cyndee must be someone else. And yes, you may pet Taco." She turned to Drew, saying, "And you're the infamous Drew... right?"

"Yep," Drew said cheerily, giving a little bow. "I'm surprised you're not sure. Didn't Xavier complain about me all the time? I really need to up my game."

She smiled wistfully. "Oh, trust me, he did. Sometimes he'd call you Headache Three."

Drew was offended. "That low? Who's Two?"

She waved her hand dismissively. "Percy Weasley. He was annoying enough in school, but then he shot to the top of the Ministry through sheer bootlicking."

"Wow, that is so wicked and wrong. And One?"

"Voldemort."

"Ah." Drew cleared her throat. "I guess I can't beat that. I'm humbled."

Sage cooed at the excited dog, and Drew asked, "Hey, what's the Ministry like? Do you work there?"

Carolina's eyes widened to Galleon size. "Oh, no. No no. I can't bear bureaucracy."

Drew nodded. "Yeah, understandable. But anyway, I've heard Xavier works in Magical Law Enforcement. I'd love to do that too. Professor McGonagall said to talk to people who actually work in the department to see if I could handle it."

The other girl's face had turned strangely gray. "You want to talk to Xavier?"

"Yeah, is that a problem? He can't be that busy."

"He is," she said, voice hardening. "Law Enforcement is his new boyfriend." Then, before the implication could even sink in, she went on. "You absolutely can't talk to him. And you shouldn't, either. It's not worth it."

"Wait a minute." Drew held up a hand to interrupt her. "Did Xavier and Quentin break up?"

"That's old news, but yes."

"Oh, okay," Drew said, trying to process her words. "So what about — I would still like to talk to someone."

Carolina ran a hand through her messy hair. "I know loads of people who ended up in Law Enforcement, so I'll get someone else to owl you. But if you care about your life, don't try to find Xavier."

Drew was suddenly hyperaware of the winter air on her face. "Why is that? What happened?"

Carolina seemed like she was trying to sound angry while actually being sad. "Nothing happened. It's fine. Xavier just hates to be bothered." Then she walked past her, tugging at the lead of her now growling dog.

It seemed as if the entire atmosphere had changed. Drew spun to Sage in disbelief. "What was that?"

The other girl could only shrug.

* ° * ° *

They went inside the hair salon to find the boys, where they shared their conversation with Carolina.

Drew was leaning on the back of Wilby's chair, poking at his newly conditioned curls, and she watched his solemn face in the mirror. Finally, he stopped fiddling with the flying scissors and said, "I take it that Xavier doesn't like you."

"I mean..." she hesitated, remembering his warning to her on the train. "I'm pretty sure he warmed up to me."

"You truly have a reputation," Blaise tsked as he dug through a stack of fashion magazines in front of him. His hairstyling was still ongoing.

Drew groaned, "I don't get in that much trouble."

"Really?" Sage said dully from beside her. "I heard you've been on speaking terms with every Slytherin prefect since Quentin because of your constant troublemaking."

"Further than that," Wilby said with a sly grin. "The Head Boy from our first year — Walter, I think — would recognize your face anywhere. He might even see it everywhere. Haunting him."

"It's a strategy," Drew grumbled. "I'm building connections."

"It did work in your favour," Blaise admitted. "I want to be a lawyer, so help me find someone from the Wizemgamot, hm? I already asked Cyndee."

"Since you gave me and Cyndee your Christmas party invitation, yes, I'll try."

He muttered something as he took a magazine and flipped it open. "That should not be the one reason you do anything nice for me. I did say your outfit was decent one time. It was not my fault that it was Cyndee who picked it for you."

Drew ignored him. "Anyway, I am more concerned about the real news — Xavier and Quentin are no more. That's probably a better explanation for...why he doesn't want to talk to anyone."

Sage had been sorting various combs by size and colour, and stopped now to tap one on her chin. "What's the big deal? People break up all the time. School relationships in particular hardly ever last."

Drew scowled. "I know that. I was just hoping..."

Blaise peered at her over Witch Weekly. "Hoping for what? That there's one couple out there that lives happily ever after? Ha, I'd love to see one too." His tone was mocking, just as pessimistic as her.

Sage frowned critically. "From what I see, Cyndee's mum and dad are fine."

Wilby nodded distractedly. "My mum and her boyfriend are pretty great. Christmas with them was nice."

"Yeah, but..." Drew trailed off. But my parents used to get along, too. Only she didn't want to question Cecilia Blue's relationship or act like she had the worst childhood when she obviously didn't, so she shut up.

"There we go, all done," Blaise's hairstylist said, beaming proudly and putting the hair pick down.

Blaise paid her, and Sage pulled him out of the chair to take his place. "I'm going to get a haircut," she declared, ruffling her blonde hair in the mirror. "It's my turn to decide our look. Zabini, help me choose. And don't tell Cyndee it was me. Blame Gabriella."

"Your therapist told you to get along with every personality," Wilby reminded her.

Sage shooked her head. "You wouldn't understand. No one here likes Gabriella."

"I'll get one too, I suppose," Drew mused, examining the moving pictures on the wall for inspiration.

Blaise hovered over Sage and fired out hair critiques, with her nodding and agreeing.

Wilby let Drew have his chair and edged towards the door. "I'm going to read at Tomes and Scrolls. I'll be back soon, okay?"

"Sure," Drew said, waving him off.

Wilby flashed a brief doe-eyed smile and left the salon.

Drew waved over a stylist and indicated just past her shoulders where she wanted her hair cut. "And layer it nicely."

The man nodded and started piling shampoo and water into her hair, which all floated and never soaked the back of her shirt. Ah, to live in a world of magic. Drew did a magazine quiz about what kind of rock she was.

Then did the quiz again because limestone was boring and did not seem right. She wasn't stopping until she got diamond.

Then came the snip snip snipping of the scissors. The rhythmic sound became more and more ominous as time went on.

A bad feeling was knocking at her mind, and she was anxious to open up and see if it was anything at all.

Wilby's eyes had looked a little odd. Distant, almost. Rounder than usual.

And then she jumped out of her chair because the only time Wilby widened his eyes like that was when he lied.

She made for the exit. "Blaise, pay for me. I'm finding Wilby."

He spluttered, "What? Don't go out looking like that!"

Drew stepped into the middle of High Street, shoving her choppy hair under her green scarf. She was pretty sure Wilby had turned left, deeper into the village.

* ° * ° *

Wouldn't you know it, the guy was actually at Tomes and Scrolls. She climbed into the dingy attic and let the trapdoor slam shut in a plume of dust. Wilby yelped and dropped his book, sending up even more dust around them.

He got his breath back, which was not a good idea and he coughed. "How — how did you even find me here?"

Drew crossed her arms, then uncrossed them so she could bat away the dust bunnies. "The shopkeeper wouldn't tell me anything, so I grilled his assistant."

"The frail old man?"

"I mean, yeah."

Wilby bent down and picked up the thick book. "Look, it's just more research. No big deal."

Drew surveyed the gloomy room. Piles of tottering books and tilted shelves everywhere. A few artifacts scattered around like a knock-off Borgins and Burkes. "I didn't know there was another section up here. You're telling me this generic bookstore's dodgy attic has something we can't find in the Restricted Section?"

"The library was supposed to have this book. A student stole it in the 70s, and it never got replaced. I paid the shopkeeper a lot of money to track this copy down for me."

"So, what is it?"

He showed her the cover. It was a black leather book with an image of a Y-shaped branch gilded in gold. The title was too curly and fancy to read easily.

"It says Deus scit omnia — 'God knows all'," Wilby translated. "It's Latin, but that's not important." He thumbed to the table of contents. "There's a lot of old tracking and surveillance spells in here. There are ones we know, like Avensegium or Legilimens. But some have been long forgotten. Tracking someone is extremely difficult, you know. Otherwise, Dark Wizards could hunt and be hunted easily."

"Yeah," she nodded. "And each time a new tracking spell crops up, there's a counterjinx just as fast."

"Right. Obviously, a lot of tracking is illegal, so even beyond the power of the Ministry to use. Now the Homunculus Charm is supposed to be in this book. It lets you track everyone in a square kilometre at once. Extremely illegal and difficult to cast. It's so obscure that you wouldn't even know it was illegal if you heard about it. What's great is that you can cast it onto a map."

"But a kilometre isn't a lot," she pointed out. "That's only about the size of Hogwarts."

"True, but it's insanely accurate and unblockable, so I hope to combine it with a spell that's more built for distance."

Drew frowned. She'd had a bad feeling for no reason, it seemed. "Why were you so sketchy then?"

"What do you mean?"

"What's confusing to you?"

"What?"

At her narrowed eyes, he relented. "Okay, I only found one mention of the Homunculus Charm in another book, and it was very bad. Whoever coined it a 'charm' wanted to mislead. I had to check the instructions to see if it's all true. Or necessary."

She didn't like where this was going, and she was sure that showed in her face. "And? What's so bad about it?"

The trapdoor banged open. "Oh, there you two are," Sage exclaimed, climbing up. "Luckily the shopkeeper's assistant had some kind of panic reaction and immediately told us where you were."

Blaise coughed and waved at the dust as he joined them. "I can tell from smell alone that this place will ruin my clothes and hair."

"Oh no, it's already turning red," Drew despaired.

Blaise automatically checked, then glared. "You are my worst demon. Please stop tormenting me. What do you have there, Wilby?"

Wilby gave the two a rundown. "But it doesn't matter. The Homunculus Charm isn't even in here. I checked for invisibility ink, too. Maybe it's in code."

"You read the whole thing?" Sage questioned, eyeing it suspiciously.

He shrugged. "I skimmed, but maybe I missed it. I'll check it more thoroughly later."

"Let me see it," Blaise said, holding out his hand. Wilby gave it over, and he said, "My mother has her fair share of ancient storybooks. Sometimes they hide extra pages of all sorts of forbidden content."

He lit his wand and examined the sides. Then he abruptly used the Severing Charm to slice off the edge of the cover. A nerd somewhere probably screamed.

Blaise held it up. "I was right. Look."

He peeled back the leather. Underneath was not a board but dozens of pages pressed tightly together.

Blaise peeled the rest away and handed it all back to Wilby, who carefully set them on a low shelf to examine.

Drew leaned over him to read the cursive ink. The top read Q. potion, and all the instructions were written on top of each other, overlapping in all directions until it was a vortex of messy scrawls. The other pages were the same — the final one saying H. charm.

"It's here," Wilby said with relief. Then he scratched his head as he studied the paper. "This could take a while. I did find the blood spell I want to merge it with, and that looked difficult enough with readable instructions."

Sage frowned. "Blood spell? That sounds ominous."

"It lets me track people and their immediate family with their blood over any distance."

That wasn't as scary as it sounded. Drew nodded in approval. "Go on."

He located the right chapter and pointed. "Blood-related spells, well, always require a lot of blood. The caster needs to draw it within an hour of preparing the spell."

"It's not too bad," Blaise said, squinting as he read. "It says one pint of blood. That's what, the amount Muggles typically donate, right?"

"Oh, that's true," Wilby mused. "I forgot about that. It's still a difficult spell regardless. And I may need more, depending on what alterations I make."

Then Drew asked her burning question. "Okay, so the blood spell's relatively safe, but you said the Homunculus Charm was 'really bad'. How bad?"

" 'Homunculus' means 'humanoid creature'. Basically, this spell makes the map alive and all-knowing. And to do that, we infuse a bit of life and death into it so it can track souls."

Well, that was macabre. Drew asked, "And you do that by...?"

He said it quietly, but she caught every word. "By casting it on the verge of death. As in, seven seconds from death."

Sage made a disgruntled sound, and Drew's eyes practically popped out of her head. "Seven seconds!? That is unhinged. Don't tell me it gets worse."

Wilby tucked the loose pages in the book and shut it. "That's the worst of it. And I already have a lot of ideas."

"Merlin," Blaise remarked. "No wonder that spell isn't more popular. Are you sure about this? Drew's right that it's pretty mental."

"I don't see why not," Wilby said. "There are plenty of poisons or curses that take exactly some amount of time to kill you. With an antidote ready, there's not much danger."

Drew felt her eye twitch and her fingers flex as she resisted tearing up the book into little pieces. "SEVEN SECONDS to death, and there's no danger? What are you on about?"

"The map would be really useful outside of his father," Sage pointed out, somehow considering this insane idea. "To track anyone through their blood... that's valuable."

"Yes," Wilby said, utterly unfazed at his horrific plan. "It's completely unblockable. If it all goes well, we can cast it onto any map. I plan to use a world map."

Sage frowned. "Would that be enough? A world map isn't very detailed."

"I'm going to try a magical map that can zoom in like a camera. If that doesn't work, I can go to the country or city it shows me and do the blood spell on its own, which should be enough."

"How long will it take?" Drew asked through grit teeth. "Forever, maybe?" It had taken him years to find these spells, and they looked far from easy. Dark Magic usually was.

Wilby sighed. "There's a potion aspect to both. That can take months, not including the time it takes to decipher the writing, figure out how to combine the two spells, and get ingredients."

Drew hated this idea. She despised it and it scared her. But she had to admit with a sinking heart that a map like this was useful enough to be life-saving, especially with a war brewing.

Wilby could read her expression. "In the Wizarding War, people went missing by the thousands. Many still are. This isn't just about my obsession. Okay?"

She wrinkled her nose. "This is the worst idea."

"I agree," said Blaise. "And I make a point of never agreeing with Drew out of spite, so do understand the gravity of what I just said. Cyndee would think the same."

Sage glared. "My input counts too, right?"

"It's really important to me," Wilby pleaded. "Look, I've poured through hundreds of books and tried every alternative I could. This is my best shot."

Drew scoffed. "So it is about your obsession."

"I said it was both things." He was getting annoyed now, gripping the book so intensely it might snap. "I've spent nearly six years working for this. The least you can do is consider it."

Drew shook her head. "Seven seconds. No way am I letting Death so close to you. You're being careless with your own life."

"We'll make it safe," Sage said. "Seven seconds is a lot of time to drink an antidote if you think about it."

"Shut up Sage," Drew growled. "As the person who helps Cyndee study, you should know that most poisons literally block your ability to swallow."

Sage rolled her eyes. "Okay, I'm just saying."

"And she's still right," Wilby said. "There's plenty of poisons out there that would work fine. And I'll make sure the spell won't backfire on me."

Blaise looked at Drew warily. "I don't think he's changing his mind, Drew."

She knew he was right, and she knew that she had stopped and delayed him long enough. "Fine. You win. As long as it's completely one hundred percent not going to kill you."

Wilby nodded, satisfied. "So it's settled. I'm thinking we can do it by this summer, but we'll need a lot of room and privacy."

Blaise sighed. "Alright, I volunteer my house. And we have enough ghosts, so please do not die in it. Or worse, bleed on the carpet."

Drew irritably heaved open the trapdoor. "Yeah, we're in Hogsmeade, so let's get a start on those ingredients. And I'll get my hair fixed."