Chapter 16

"Yeah, that's basically what I just said. Any unique object I've seen firsthand, or the closest one of a type of object."

"Find her robes," commanded Hermione.

Milo paused.

"I think that's cheating," he said. "Or at least, bending the rules to the point of breaking... I like it." He imagined, as best he could, Hannah's robes in his mind—easy, because they were exactly the same as the ones he and Hermione were wearing. "Locate Object—Hannah's robes."

"So, where is she?"

"Uh. Sort of between forwards and left, and up a little. Now down. Now up again."

"What? Any idea how far?"

"No, except that she has to be within the range of the spell. 560 feet at the outer limit."

They decided to head left, based on the fact that it seemed to have as big a chance of being correct as forwards and they didn't have to deal with Lavender and whoever those other two girls were.

"Wish Neville were here," Milo said.

"Why's that?" Hermione asked as they walked. He was nice enough—for a boy—Hermione supposed, but he wasn't exactly useful.

"Well, see, if he were then he'd be the one who wandered off and got lost. Then we'd be looking for him," he explained, "and not Hannah Abbot."

"You have a very unusual view of the world, you know that? So tell me," she asked slyly, "why would you rather Hannah were here, with us?"

"Because then there'd be three of us, and we'd have a higher chance of making our Spot checks."

"Our what's?"

"Spot checks. You make them when, say, Peeves is sneaking up on you from behind. And I have a feeling we failed one."

"And why is that?"

"Just a feeling I get sometimes—wait. Hannah's moving." The spell stopped tugging him forwards and left, and abruptly started pulling more to the right. And then down, rapidly. "She's falling," he said. "And depending on the distance, it might be pretty fast."

"We should find a professor immediately," Hermione said. "She might be hurt."

"For once, I agree with you—but how are we going to find one? Face it, we're lost."

"Gah!" Hermione said. "There must be something we can do. What other spells do you know?"

Milo started listing. For an ordinary Wizard of his level, there would be only about a dozen or so—but Milo was no ordinary Wizard. He was an optimized Wizard, and one extremely broken ability he'd traded the ability to make magical scrolls for allowed him to cast any kind of wizard Divination spell—spells for finding things, information, and people—he'd heard of. He'd heard rumours that it could be used for non-Wizard spells as well, but Milo was unwilling to risk it. He knew the horror stories of what could happen to those who bent the rules too far... suffice to say that the universe could be capricious.

"You can read people's minds?" Hermione gasped, after Milo explained Detect Thoughts. "You're a Legilimens!"

"First of all, that's not a word, and second of all, only surface thoughts. There's a whole bunch of restrictions on it, too."

"Other than Locate Object, though, there's not much there to help us. A rather large amount of them seem to be focussed on fighting, which can't be very useful."

Milo chuckled slightly.

"Well, not today, maybe. We're completely screwed, aren't we?"

"Unfortunately," Hermione said. She sighed and slid down a wall, sitting on the cold stone floor. "If only we could ask one of the portraits for help."

"M-m-might I b-be of assistance?" Asked a timid voice. Behind them stood the erratic Professor Quirrell.

"See. Told you we failed a spot check," Milo muttered.

"Professor! You have to help us!" Hermione blurted out. "Hannah went missing and everyone ran off to go find her, and now we're hopelessly lost. We can't ask the portraits for help, because we're... in... detention." She said the last three words slowly, as if her mouth found them strange and foreign. Milo shrugged. He'd never been in detention, either, but then again he'd never really gone to school before.

"Sh-shouldn't be t-terribly difficult," he stammered. "W-when I w-was in R-R-Romania once, my p-party was separated by v-v-v-"the blood drained from his face, and he sat down shakily. "v-vampires."

There's vampires in this world? Milo thought worriedly. He made a note to start taking anti-vampire precautions. Garlic, holy symbols... where's a Cleric when you need one? Milo sniffed. Quirrell's turban emanated the distinct odour of garlic. Smart, Milo thought, in case they're recurring characters and come for revenge.

"Hold up," Milo said. "Vampires in this world: do they act like, well, like normal vampires? You know, suck blood, never age, can turn other people into vampires? That sort of thing?"

"Y-y-yes," Quirrell stammered reluctantly. He clearly didn't want to talk about vampires anymore.

"They don't age." Milo repeated again. "So they could live forever unless they ran out of blood or someone stakes 'em?"

"I-I s-s-s-suppose so," Quirrell said. His stammer was increasing in frequency.

"Milo, we have to find Hannah. We'll worry about vampires later, okay?" Hermione said.

"No, this is important," he said. Hermione opened her mouth to say Hannah is important, too, so Milo added, "Really important."

Hermione frowned, but fell silent. Quirrell looked intrigued.

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