Stealing From Muggles

As she was driving in a random direction away from where she had committed car theft, it suddenly occurred to Oleandra that what she was doing was completely and utterly mad; she was wilfully breaking every single Wizarding law in the book: using underage magic at will, sneaking into a foreign country through illicit means, stealing from Muggles... And for what? A vague message that may or may not have been destined to her, which she had only seen in a memory of her past life while in a coma? It was crazy, if you thought about it!

It wasn't even an emergency; she could just as easily have gone home to see her family; told them she was still alive. She knew that what she was doing was wrong, too; Oleandra didn't like taking advantage of Muggles like this. Telling herself that the Ministry of Magic did much worse things didn't help much with her conscience, either.

However, Oleandra needed a wand; not a shoddy affair like the one she'd previously owned, but a wand that she was truly compatible with. Voldemort was back, and she didn't like her chances without a wand that complemented her well. But that wasn't all: she also wanted closure; to pay her respects to Viviane's tomb, if she could find it. She had died in the forest of her ancestors, according to Oleandra's vision.

Of course, Oleandra had taken precautions to remain undetected from both magical and Muggle authorities. She had disguised herself as an office lady just in case policemen stopped her, using the power of the rune of Perthro painted on her body.

She had also redisguised her stolen Renault Clio I by using a certain template from her memory. A blood sigil wasn't exactly the most stable of ways to enchant an item, after all; if she accidentally smudged the runes, the magic would instantly dissipate.

And so, she had engraved the reversed form of the rune of concealment Perthro on the car's hood with a pointy pebble, generating a permanent Glamour around the car and giving it the appearance of Ginny's (also stolen) bright yellow Citroën 2CV, complete with licence plate.

For one fleeting moment, Oleandra wondered what had happened to the original car, which Ginny had mentioned she had released into the Forbidden Forest after their voyage to Nidavellir; but then the moment passed, and she concentrated on driving away from the scene of the crime. Oleandra once again offered some silent thanks to Ginny for teaching her how to drive a Muggle car.

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The forest of Brocéliande, her destination, was proving difficult to find. After stopping on the side of the road and spending an hour fruitlessly scanning the map she had found in the glove compartment, Oleandra decided to stop at a tourist information office, where she learned that her information was out of date… by about fifteen hundred years.

The following conversation has been translated from French using Oleandra's Translation Earrings:

"The Forest of Brocéliande is now called Paimpont?" Oleandra confirmed, upon receiving an answer from the lady at the front desk.

"Just like a fire truck!" the woman responded with a laugh. "Easy enough to remember, isn't it? Brocéliande was its name in Breton."

Oleandra didn't get the joke, which had got lost in translation, so she swiftly moved things along and asked the woman for directions.

"It's right here, the A84 will lead you straight to it," the woman said, tapping Oleandra's map with her finger. "It's a fairly popular tourist attraction to the west of Rennes in the department of Ille-et-Vilaine, in Brittany. Something to do with Arthurian legends, I believe—"

Oleandra thanked the lady and returned to her stolen vehicle. The car's fuel gauge indicated that the tank was still relatively full, so thankfully, she wouldn't have to use the money in the wallet she had previously nicked to pay for her bus fare, or rob anyone else along the way to buy more petrol!

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Astoria might have been close friends with Ginny Weasley, but she couldn't understand her obsession with Muggle artefacts. The girl had decorated the shelf on her side of the room with a number of car parts, as well as with miniatures of luxury cars, which looked awfully realistic for what were supposed to be toys.

"Hasn't your father got in enough trouble with the Ministry for enchanting Muggle artefacts already?" Hermione told her in a disapproving tone before dinner. "There's a reason why there are laws against doing so; and you're not supposed to be using magic outside of Hogwarts, either."

"I'm not hurting anybody," said Ginny defensively. "Nobody will ever know, and these will never end up in Muggle hands, anyway."

Oleandra had once told Astoria that Ginny had stolen the Muggle Studies teacher's car and enchanted it to render it capable of flight. Now, Astoria wasn't in the habit of reading Muggle newspapers, but she wagered that if she did get her hands on one, she would find London gripped by a crime spree of luxury car thefts.

"Where did you even get all these things?" Astoria observed, rapping her knuckles on the singing enchanted catalytic converter that was sitting on her bedside table. "Our room looks like a mechanic's workshop."

She had never actually seen one, but she imagined that's what they would like; spare car parts lying around everywhere, bottles of motor oil…

"I just like collecting things, okay?" said Ginny defensively. "Besides, it makes the old hag mad to have all these things inside her precious home, so where's the harm?"

Ginny was referring to the portrait of Sirius's mother, Walburga Black, which would routinely scream at passers-by. The Black family had been for the most part blood supremacists, so one could imagine how the Black matriarch would react to the presence of so many blood traitors and other undesirables inside her home.

The only person she would greet politely was Astoria, despite her looking very much like a mutant, with her half-Kamaitachi bloodline which granted her flaming red Weasley hair, sharp canines and toad-like pupils. It was likely that the portrait had been enchanted to recognize blood purity instead of appearances, and Astoria's blood was the purest there was! Speaking of which…

Pop!

The ugliest House-Elf Astoria had ever seen appeared in front of her, carrying a platter topped with a clean glass of pumpkin juice. Spoopey, the Greengrass family's House-Elf, could be considered a great beauty when compared to Kreacher, the Black family's Elf!

"Would the mistress like a refreshment before dinner?" Kreacher the House-Elf politely inquired. "And shall I get rid of the trash infesting the mistress's room?" he added, shooting a venomous glare at Ginny and her collection of car parts.