Chaos and Order - A Multiverse Fanfic

Darcie didn't hurl herself toward the stall.

She had many friends, but none were closer than calmness and composedness. Darcie thought of all she could, as much as her age and brilliant mind allowed her, at least.

The first thing that struck her as odd was the seller himself. There was almost a guarantee that there were no cursed objects on display, as he wouldn't have gotten the permit from the ministry to set up the stall without a thorough screening of the objects.

However, a sense of oddity remained in her heart.

The second thing was the low number of objects.

There were truly too few, only a dozen or so.

Darcie had not forgotten that it was a 3-day long fair, and this was only the first night.

Logic told that one must put as many good items on display as possible to garner the attention of the customers. But this second point didn't adhere to logic.

Darcie reflected the seller wasn't overly enthusiastic about selling the objects himself.

It's almost like he knows some people will come to buy his items by themselves, Darcie thought, her eyes narrowing. Should I call father?

She did have a mind to bring her father into the picture. Once he was to know what Dobby had told her, he would take care of the situation in no time.

Yet, Darcie knew her father would never let her come close to that object again.

Dobby had classified it as a terrifying magical object. Once her father got to hear these words, the possibility of her seeing and researching this item would almost vanish as well.

Darcie's curiosity was at its peak, and her resolve arrived with a bombastic breath.

She had decided.

"Dobby," Darcie whispered, bringing the house-elf away from the crowd, "can you change my appearance?"

Dobby blinked at her, his large green eyes trembling in nervousness. He nodded.

"But it won't be true change, miss," he told her. "They would still know that it's not your genuine appearance, and the time limit will be short, too. Oh, no! Dobby has failed, miss. Dobby must punish himself."

And the house-elf almost rushed out of the Invisibility Cloak, trying to bang his head against the wall nearby.

Darcie pulled him back in.

"That would do, Dobby," she hurriedly calmed the house-elf down. "Do it."

The house-elf looked solemn, and then he snapped his fingers.

In the next moment, Mana covered Darcie like another cloak.

The color of her clothes changed, her height increased by several feet, and the contours of her face adjusted, giving her a mature appearance.

The Invisibility Cloak was large enough to envelop her crouched figure.

Darcie now looked like a 15-16-year-old girl, with quite a childish appearance.

She touched her face in wonder and looked down at her clothes. A smile surfaced on her face naturally.

"Dobby!" She shrieked out a whisper, pinching the house-elf's cheeks. "You are the best!"

Dobby's chest almost swelled out of the cloak.

Darcie crawled towards her left, bringing the stall into their line of sight. "Which one is it, Dobby?"

"Dobby thinks it's the black piece, miss," the house-elf replied, regaining his nervous tone.

Darcie went quiet for a moment.

"Listen," she whispered, bringing her mouth near Dobby's large, floppy ears. "I will pretend to buy something. You keep yourself under the Invisibility Cloak. When you confirm that it's the black piece, you give a tug on my jacket.

"If you sense something truly harmful, then throw the cloak off and petrify him on the spot. We can't let someone like him sell cursed objects so openly, OK? We will let father deal with him."

"Dobby will protect you, miss," the house-elf thumped his chest.

Darcie smiled at him, giving him a trustful nod.

Then she waited to confirm that none had their eyes towards the corner they were at, before hurriedly coming out of the Invisibility Cloak.

She looked down and felt Dobby pressed against her legs.

If it wasn't for this, then she would have no way of finding that there was someone just by her side. Not if she wasn't specifically looking for a cloaked, invisible person.

With brisk steps, Darcie approached the stall and acted as though she was just looking at the items casually.

The hooded seller didn't even flinch and kept his straight posture as if there was a statue underneath that black cowl.

There were indeed very odd objects on display over the stall, Darcie noticed.

There was an eyeball with a purple-slitted pupil, floating in a greenish liquid within a jar.

A needle, with a red string running through it. However, the red string looked more like hair to Darcie, and that discovery unnerved her a bit.

Then there was a knife, covered in blood spots and rust. From time to time, its edge kept giving off a silvery-red glow.

The most eye-catching, and the one Darcie felt truly dangerous, was a hideous shrunken and decayed finger with a gold ring around it. Darcie's heart screamed that if it wasn't for the ring, just looking at the finger would have harmed her.

Compared to these horrors, the black object truly looked unordinary and insignificant.

It was only palm-sized and didn't even have a proper rectangular shape.

It almost looked as though someone had forcefully torn off a sizable piece from a wooden slab. Its surface was pitch black, but Darcie could see some odd depressions on its face.

Darcie's tall figure kept walking and pausing as if the only thing that was keeping her from moving on was the weirdness of the objects.

However, she was nothing but a child.

No matter how much farther she had planned, her experiences and interactions weren't great enough for them to truly come to fruition.

The silence of the seller kicked the tower of her plans to the ground in no time.

What to do now? Why hadn't he asked her something? How was this behavior of a seller? Should she initiate a conversation? Wouldn't that make the leverage slip out of her hands?

The tug arrived suddenly.

It startled Darcie, making her come out of her reverie, and she looked around.

In the very next moment, she went rigid, remembering that it was Dobby.

A rosy blush popped out on her cheeks. Was she discovered?

Darcie peeped at the seller, but his face was hidden thickly under the hood. She truly wanted to use Magic. But she advised herself against it.

Her Magic, though non-verbal and Wandless, was not precise, and her control dwindled now and then.

It would bode nothing good if she was to get caught doing magic now. Her mother would throw her into the velvet room, and who knew for how long?

No. She couldn't take the chance. Not here.

"I want this," she blurted, pointing at the black object.

With no other choice, being direct was also a strategy in itself.

For the first time, the seller stirred. A hoarse voice gurgled out of the hood as if he hadn't spoken for ages.

"Then take it."

Huh?! Darcie gaped at the words. What? Take it?! Just like that?!!

Her mind went into alert mode instantaneously. Little she might be, but she wasn't a fool.

There was no free meal in this world, Darcie had learned from the books. There must be something going on under the rugs, it seemed.

"Is it cursed?" she asked a little louder, trying to unnerve the seller. "Why are you giving it to me for free?"

Silence.

The seller had gone mute once again.

Darcie fired a few more insinuating questions, making even others look at her and the stall. But after taking a look at the objects, no one stayed for long.

The seller said nothing, no matter who came and went.

Darcie bit her lips. "Good," she blurted. "I want all of them, then."

To Darcie's great astonishment, the seller's broken voice echoed once again in her ears.

"You don't want them."

Darcie was about to retort when she felt another tug. It meant her appearance was about to return to her original state.

"Why don't I want them?" Darcie asked, confused.

Once again silence replied to her, almost sneering at her pretense.

Today… she seemed to have met her match.

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