Harry Potter and the Sorceress of the Stars

"You've done WHAT?" said Madam Bones, half dismayed and half amazed.

"I used your Portkey to send Voldemort away," Oleandra repeated herself. "I didn't have much of a choice— it was the only way I could think of to save us both. Trapped under that pile of fallen debris, he would have had an easier time shooting us than a Graphorn in a tight corridor..."

What was left of Amelia's dizziness after getting smacked in the head by a piece of wood was quickly evaporating.

"Miss Greengrass, that Portkey leads straight to the Aurors' headquarters," said Madam Bones, all colour draining from her face. "He can strike at the heart of operations at any time, with that Portkey!"

"Oh," said Oleandra with a small voice. "I hope no one was there."

It was getting rather late, and the British Auror Bureau wasn't open twenty-four hours a day— luckily for Oleandra and the good men and women in uniform, nobody had been there to welcome Voldemort upon his arrival. Which was a shame, because had someone been working at this late hour, they would have been greeted with the comical sight of an extremely spooked Dark Lord wearing frilly pink slippers!

…

Voldemort feared the unknown— it was the reason he wanted to avoid death at all costs, to the extent of purposefully shattering his own soul. He would not and could not afford the risk of there being no great hereafter, and that is why he had anchored his soul to the material world.

Indeed, fear guided Voldemort's every decision.

At first, Voldemort hadn't thought much of this teenage girl, but after four separate encounters with the wild card known as Oleandra, Voldemort had grown to fear her even more than Dumbledore. The old man was a known quantity, since at the very least, they used the same type of magic, but Oleandra?

She was more than just a runic magic user; she was an enigma.

In her first year, she had used a strange song and dance to Disapparate within Hogwarts and destroy the Philosopher's Stone at the same time.

In her fourth year, he had definitely struck her with the Killing Curse, but she had somehow survived.

In her fifth year, she, her sisters and their friend had summoned against him a virtually invincible projection of a tireless engine of destruction in the shape of a dragon, and as much as he hated to admit it, they had defeated him.

Of course, knowing that Dumbledore might show up at any moment to disrupt his plans, Voldemort had made certain to take precautions to obtain the Dark Lady and her sisters, one way or the other. Naturally, Voldemort's plan B had succeeded, leading him to capture all three Greengrass sisters at once, despite Dumbledore's intervention and the loss of Trelawney's prophecy.

But then, somehow, despite having witnessed Wormtail crushing her heart within her breast, Oleandra had somehow recovered, to the extent that she was now gallivanting about playing the hero. As if the loss of a vital internal organ were somehow no worse than a bad cough!

And now, Oleandra had somehow Banished him!

She hadn't made any runic hand signs or stances, and she hadn't spoken any magic spells, either. Not knowing how she had forcefully displaced him had terrified him— what if the next time she said 'farewell,' she sent him straight into the heart of a volcano?

Of course, after fleeing from the Ministry in a panic, Voldemort had ended up realising that his shoes had at some point got swapped for a pair of slippers. After removing them in a hurry to perform a cursory examination, he had determined that the two slippers were not Cursed, but actually a single Portkey— though that still did not explain how they had managed to find their way onto his feet.

He knew there was more to Oleandra's magic than a simple Switching Spell— because the Portkey slippers had never changed back to their 'original' form. Switching was not Space-Time magic like Apparition, but a rather clever application of Transfiguration. And when Transfiguration spells were performed correctly, they would wear off after a while.

A Switching spell didn't technically make a pair of items swap locations, but rather, it caused a pair of items to exchange certain features between themselves. For example, one could use a Switching spell to create an apple with an orange peel and an orange with an apple peel, making it look like the two fruits had changed places.

However, like many other types of spells, Switching Spells only worked properly on mundane objects. It was impossible to, say, grant a certain item a powerful artefact's power by Switching them— the original artefact would conserve its power; like a Portkey, for instance.

At any rate, the deeper Voldemort dug, the less he understood.

Voldemort knew that Oleandra used runic magic, but he didn't know the extent of what could be achieved with such power, which was deeply unsettling to him. Furthermore, Voldemort was certain that runic magic wasn't the only weapon in her arsenal; some things just couldn't simply be explained through runic magic, like her ability to cling to life like a cockroach, and the way she had sneaked slippers under his feet without his noticing.

After all, how could he have possibly guessed that Oleandra was actually one of the only two remaining Greater Fairies on the planet Earth? She had used her Fairy Magic on Voldemort, fuelled by tricking him into thinking that the Dusk-Elf was her ally, to swap his shoes' coordinates with the slippers.

For as long as he lived, Voldemort would probably never manage to understand how she had managed to pull the wool over his eyes…

…

"The police," said Oleandra sharply. "I can hear them downstairs— I think that they might have run into the Death Eaters guarding your front door!"

The street outside was briefly illuminated with the sickeningly green aura of the Killing Curse.

"Those fools!" hissed Amelia. "Do they not care about the Statute of Secrecy?"

The burden of maintaining the Statute lied with the Ministry of Magic— the Death Eaters didn't need to worry about cleaning up their tracks, because they knew government officials would do it for them!