After another series of lengthy arguments too tedious to repeat, Harry put his foot down and decided that he would accompany Sirius to the location Oleandra had marked on the map, the entrance to the Muggle-Born sanctuary. Hermione, he reasoned, would simply have to purchase her potion ingredients when they came back to fetch the rest of the group, if they determined it was safe, but Oleandra had no intention of being there when that happened.
"An entire morning wasted because of indecision," Oleandra muttered angrily to herself as she watched Harry and Sirius Disapparate before her eyes. Stuffing her hands into her pockets, she stormed back into the tent, while Ron and Hermione remained outside by themselves, for some reason. "No wonder they haven't found even one Horcrux yet!"
Oleandra had grown used to going to bed early, since Daphne required her full nine hours of beauty sleep, so she usually turned in around half past ten. It was a few minutes past noon right now, which meant that by her usual schedule she had exactly ten hours, starting now, to do something about her immediate predicament before the Marauder's Map revealed a different woman's name sleeping in her bed.
As far as magical artefacts went, the Marauder's Map was quite special, since Harry's father and his friends had made it from a stolen page of the Book of Admittance. Oleandra did not know much about the magic of names, since that topic was covered in Arithmancy, a class she had never taken, but having borrowed the Marauder's Map more than a few times, she knew it would always reveal the true names of the people within the castle's walls without fail.
"Still, the name Viviane…" Oleandra murmured to herself. "One of Loki's tricks? No, it couldn't be, he couldn't have tampered with the Map without getting his hands on it…"
When Oleandra had first awakened in this body, she had assumed that some glitch in her magic had somehow swapped her consciousness with that of her reflection-doppelganger.
After all, she had been using runic magic half-gleaned from the vanishing dregs of Odin's soul after he failed to take over her body. Like the possession ritual, it had never been meant to be used by the Fae Folk, non-human species that weren't endemic to Scandinavia, runic magic's homeland in the north. Indeed, the Reflection Spell was meant to create a temporary facsimile of the mind, body and soul of a human being.
So, in retrospect, it wasn't strange for something to have gone awry.
"Rather than a swap…" Oleandra rationalised, "maybe it would be more accurate to say that my soul was pushed out…?"
Ordinarily, the memories of a Greater Fairy's past incarnations would be relegated to mere shadows of their former selves: the part of the soul unique to Fairies called the Soul's Shadow. However, since Oleandra had performed the ritual of sleeping with Viviane's soul-imprinted sword for two more days than Mai's recommended seven, her reconstituted Shadow had somehow gained equal rights over Oleandra's body alongside Oleandra's soul, the current incarnation.
So, putting all the clues together…
"Whatever her reasons, Viviane tried taking over," Oleandra said thoughtfully, "but instead of pushing down my consciousness, the Reflection Spell made it so my soul had somewhere else to go, besides beneath the lake in my inner world…?"
Oleandra frowned.
Her theory held water, but how exactly was she supposed to return to her body now? Her soul had been dislodged from her body, so even if Viviane tried switching back, there would be nothing for her to switch back to.
She peeked out of a window, wondering what was taking Ron and Hermione so long to return. A low moan reached her ears, and she finally found them: snogging behind the privacy of a tree. It rather looked as though they were trying to eat each other's faces, and judging by the way Ron's hands roamed freely over Hermione, things were about to get interesting.
"Let's give Ron five minutes," Oleandra murmured. "Just to be on the safe side."
Oleandra ducked out of sight before the oblivious couple noticed they were being spied on, and she tiptoed to the boys' room. Before Harry's departure, she had seen him return there with the Map, and since she had not noticed it on him when he came out, logic dictated that he had left it there.
The boys' room was much like her own; drab red and yellowed-white striped curtains that reeked of cat urine. Just like the rest of the tent, it was much bigger on the inside than it was on the outside.
"Wish I could just Summon the Map…" Oleandra said glumly, kicking a pile of dirty underwear out of her way as she walked into the bedroom. "Come on, where are you…"
Oleandra's heartbeat quickened as she searched.
Time was running out, and Ron and Hermione would be done with their session of fun sooner rather than later. Perhaps it would have been a better idea to drop everything and run, and seek Mai's help in the Muggle-Born Sanctuary, instead of wasting time searching for the Marauder's Map?
"Ugh, why can this body smell things but not taste them?" Oleandra groaned, wrinkling her nose as she rummaged through a discarded clothes bag left on the floor. "This spell isn't consistent at all!"
Naturally, the answer was that taste was not a crucial sense when it came to scouting, which was what this spell had originally been designed for. The sense of smell, on the other hand, was quite important— unless your goal was to walk straight into an enemy Wizard's cloud of miasma and choke to death.
If only she had some help—
…and then it hit her.
"Dobby, come over here, please," Oleandra called out.
One agonisingly, heart-stoppingly long instant later, there was a loud popping noise, and Dobby appeared before her. As expected, since House-Elves were both blood-bound and soul-bound to wizarding bloodlines, she could still summon thehelp, even though she had no magic and wasn't even in the right body!
"Mistress called?" said Dobby, before shrieking loudly and hopping onto one foot. "Eek, clothes!"
Oleandra had turned the boys' room upside down in her search for the Marauder's Map. The floor was covered in smelly clothes, books that had clearly never been opened, and even a few animated novelty 'action figures' whose magic had long since run out, leaving them as motionless as their Muggle counterparts.
"You don't have to touch the clothes if you don't want to," said Oleandra quickly. "I need your help, I'm looking for an old map."
"Anything for Mistress Greengrass," Dobby said with a little bow, before snapping his fingers.
At once, every loose object in the room, anything not nailed down, began floating into the air.
"I heard a scream," came Hermione's voice behind her. "Is everything all right—"
Back already!? It hadn't even been five minutes!
Oleandra whirled around towards the source of the voice. All of a sudden, all the floating objects came raining back down as Dobby lost his focus, and a pair of men's underwear fell flat on her face.
"Cor blimey!" Ron cried out as he rushed into the room."What the bloody hell are you doing!?"
"I swear," Oleandra said, brushing the (thankfully clean) pair of briefs from her face. "It's not what it looks like."