Chapter 91

"You mean, it doesn't allow a Will Save?" Milo asked, incredulous. Such a spell was too powerful to exist.

"I'm afraid I don't altogether understand the question," Dumbledore admitted. "Who is Will, and why does he need saving?"

"Uh," Milo said. "I mean, it can't be fought off with strength of will alone?"

"Oh, it is possible," Dumbledore conceded, "but only a handful of exceptionally strong-willed individuals are able to do so."

"You're kidding, right?" Milo asked. These wizards were insanely broken. A spell that killed on a touch attack without a save was bad enough—at least you had to be hit. But add in a spell that lets you Dominate someone indefinitely and had, apparently, an incredibly large bonus to its DC? Milo was briefly surprised that the whole Ministry wasn't run by Dark Wizards, before remembering how many pies Lucius Malfoy had his fingers in.

Well, he thought, that would explain why people don't seem to realize how obviously evil he is. Anyone with any power is probably his thrall already.

A frightening image came to Milo's mind of a thin, pale spider sitting in a large, dark room, surrounded by thousands of silken spider webs, from each of which dangled a major Ministry official like puppets. Milo realized he was badly mixing his metaphors, but, under the circumstances, had other things to worry about.

"So... what do you do about it?" Milo asked. "What's the counter-strategy?"

"There isn't much," Dumbledore admitted. "Keeping a close eye on one's associates and friends to see if they begin acting strangely, occasionally checking if they still remember past events, that sort of thing. It is, at best, only moderately effective."

Milo paled.

"And now, you see why it is that knowledge of these curses is kept to the upper year students," Dumbledore said. "But now, I have another question for you."

"Hit me," Milo said, trying to keep his mind from the horrifying implications of the Imperius.

"I think I will refrain from doing so," Dumbledore said, "as corporal punishment has generally more frowned upon now than it was in the days of Emeric the Evil. Why did you go out in search of Miss Hannah Abbot yesterday morning?"

"Oh," Milo said. "I thought I mentioned. I had to give her her Christmas present."

"Fascinating as that is, that is not precisely the answer I was looking for, as I think you know. To clarify: why, after you discovered that Miss Abbot had left the building, did you head out in search of her?"

Milo sighed.

"I thought something seemed wrong," Milo said, "and that she might be in trouble. And before you ask, no, it never occurred to me to ask a teacher for help."

"And why is that?" Dumbledore pressed.

"Same reason as with the 'Troll,'" Milo explained, as if it were obvious. "It's what I do."

"I rather think not," Dumbledore said. "After Hallowe'en, you explained to me—and I have reason to believe you were telling the truth—that you challenged the Troll rather than doing the sensible thing and running away because fighting monsters was, as you say, what you do. You said, when I asked you then whether it was to protect innocent lives, that that was not the case and doing so was only a... a 'perk' was, I believe, the word you used."

"What's your point?" Milo asked, not used to prolonged conversations with NPCs and not fully realizing that he was being rude.

"Did you have any inkling, when you left, that a monster or Dark Wizard was involved in Hannah Abbot's mysterious exit?"

Milo thought about it.

"No," he admitted.

"Did you suspect, at that point, that she was being forced against her will?"

Milo scratched at his itchy bandages, playing for time. Eventually, he was forced to admit that he hadn't suspected anything of the sort.

"So, as far as you knew, she had simply been exceptionally foolish and wandered out into the snow in harsh winds and subzero temperatures?"

"I hadn't really thought about it," Milo admitted, "but if someone had asked me right then why I thought she was outside, that's probably how I would have answered."

"And you went looking for her."

"Of course," Milo said, still not entirely sure where this was going.

"Not to fight monsters."

"Nope," Milo agreed.

"But to protect an innocent life?" Dumbledore asked.

"I... suppose so? To protect Hannah, mostly."

"It's a start," Dumbledore said. "And you didn't do it because, from a cold, mechanical perspective, she would be of some use to you? Perhaps, in your crusade against Evil?"

"No," Milo said. "I can't see how she would be. Her talents lie in other directions," Milo said, feeling, for some reason, a bit defensive about her. "Not everyone has to be good at fighting to be worth saving, Headmaster."

"I feel, and feel free to correct me if I am wrong, that that may not have been the answer you gave me when we first met."

Milo shrugged.

"She's my friend," Milo said. "I've always protected my..." he trailed off. He had been about to say 'I've always protected my friends,' but, now that he thought about it, he'd never really had friends. He protected his partymembers, of course, but that came with the job description, like fighting monsters. Hannah... Milo was, for once, unsure of her PC/NPC status, but was fairly sure that she wasn't, exactly, in the party. But didn't that make her, by definition, an NPC? Milo went cold. He'd risked his life to save an NPC without any hint or hope of a reward. He'd spent days, thousands of Gold Pieces, and hundreds of XP working on a Magic Item to simply give to an NPC because he'd hurt her feelings. He actually cared about what an NPC felt. What the Hells was happening to him?

Milo felt queasy. I didn't even loot the corpse! He was stunned. He'd simply thrown away the Redcap's sword, which could have probably got him at least 10 gp, assuming it counted as a Short Sword. And who knows what else the grotesque abomination had been carrying? Milo was disgusted with himself. He'd let his emotions run away with him, getting in the way of good old pragmatic greed.

"I think," said Dumbledore, "what you are feeling, right now, and it may be that you are experiencing it for the first time and, as such, it is confusing you, is an aspect of a form of magic more ancient and powerful than any that Voldemort himself possesses."

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