"Haven't you worked it out yet? The answer lies within you— you simply haven't realised it."
Dumbledore's words echoed inside Oleandra's head as she mulled over the question of her inheritance. Though she couldn't claim an intimate understanding of the old man's genius, she was fairly certain he never did anything without good reason.
…except perhaps for that one time he had said, "Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak!"
That had been rather odd, but at the time, Oleandra had been floored by a massive headache, so she hadn't dwelled on his strange choice of words overlong.
"There has to be a specific reason he chose to give me this book," Oleandra reasoned. "But which one?"
Oleandra called to mind any connections she might have to the world of Britain's flora.
"Did you give me this book because of the Greengrass family's association with plants?" she ventured, staring into Dumbledore's blue eyes. "The faint traces of Wood Nymph bloodline running through our veins? The Bloodline Atavism Potion Daphne drank?"
No, that couldn't be right.
By giving her a book, Dumbledore had clearly wanted to teach her something. But what could he possibly know about her family's affairs that she wouldn't already know herself? Perhaps the answer lay elsewhere.
"Eihwaz, the yew tree rune, and Berkana, the birch tree rune," said Oleandra after thinking for a while. "Is that it?"
There were also lesser runes, like Æsc and Āc— the ash tree and oak tree runes, respectively. But the more Oleandra thought about it, the less sense it made for Dumbledore to be trying to teach her a lesson about Ancient Runes, when she was already the Magical World's foremost expert on the subject— bar Loki.
"Close," Dumbledore said simply, smiling enigmatically.
Oleandra snapped her fingers.
"I learned about the Ogham in Study of Ancient Runes," she blurted out. "The runic magic the Britons used before the Saxons arrived from over the sea with the magic of the stars."
Dumbledore beamed at her, and Oleandra knew she'd guessed correctly. She'd already solved the mystery on some subconscious level, so it had only taken a little idea-bouncing with her reflection in the spectre raised by the Resurrection Stone to bring the solution to the surface.
She'd just discovered a rather unexpected way to use the Hallow!
"If only I'd paid more attention in class," said Oleandra, sighing. "Oh well, I suppose it's not the end of the world…"
She'd only taken Study of Ancient Runes for the free credits, so she'd slept through most of the lessons. The main focus of the class was on the runes she actually knew how to use, with the occasional symbolic tangent into other cultures' runic magic.
A translucid apparition clad in light-blue raiment suddenly shimmered into view above the bed. Oleandra could see the beautiful woman's ghostly lips moving, but she could make neither head nor tails of her gesticulating.
"…" said the apparition, staring mournfully at Oleandra.
"I can't hear you, Viviane," Oleandra sighed. "Try writing in the air, or something… and she's gone."
Ever since Oleandra had completed the ritual Mai had suggested and slept for days beside her sword, Viviane had started reappearing. At first, she'd been so translucent she was barely visible— little more than a flicker at the corner of Oleandra's eye— but lately, she had become more substantial, and she was staying longer and longer.
"I do believe you have a branch of rowan wood in that pouch of yours," Dumbledore suggested. "Try placing it on the book's cover and chanting its name— luis."
"The Resurrection Stone is even more convenient than I thought," said Oleandra. "You can even remember things I've forgotten on my behalf?"
Dumbledore smiled, but for some reason, Oleandra started feeling distinctly unsettled.
"That's enough speaking to the dead for one day," she thought out loud. "I can do the rest on my own."
The last few months had been rather lonely, but Oleandra couldn't decide which was more mentally unhealthy: having only the dead for company, or complete isolation? She had definitely started talking to herself more than she usually cared to— which was saying something, considering she was a Greater Fairy who could talk to her previous incarnations.
Or at least, used to be able to.
At any rate, she had mysteries to uncover, so she pulled the ring from her finger and dropped it into her pouch, causing the shades brought forth by the Resurrection Stone to wink out of existence. And perhaps it was just a trick of the light, but Oleandra could have sworn… no, she must have imagined it. It was probably nothing important.
Oleandra began rummaging through her pouch in search of the rowan wood branch she'd picked up on a whim in the world of the past… only for her fingers to close around the ring again. Her hand twitched. Suddenly, she really wanted to put it back on again.
Shaking her head slightly, Oleandra dropped the ring and reached for the branch and pulled it out. Then, she placed it on The Muggle's Guide to Trees or Whatever and chanted, "Luis!"
To Oleandra's genuine stupefaction, the book morphed into an old notebook and flipped open, its weathered pages riffling rapidly before settling on a particular passage. The yellowed parchment was covered in scribbles, which she recognised as Dumbledore's neat, cursive handwriting— very legible.
"It actually worked," Oleandra whispered. "I'm even cleverer than I thought I was!"
Somehow, Dumbledore had managed to Transfigure his personal notes into a seemingly ordinary Muggle book in such a way that no one had realised he'd used magic on it in the first place. Even Oleandra hadn't seen anything unusual about its aura with her Mystic Eyes!
Oleandra read on:
Gellert–
I've cracked the code,in no small part thanks to these schematics you've procured— though I won't ask how you've obtained them! If my Ancient Gobbledygook is to be trusted (and it is), these markings, which must be hammered into the white-hot silver as it is folded, aren't random at all.
Yes, the Ogham are key to the forging of Goblin Silver!
I believe the Celts of old must have taught the Goblins these runes— and to think, for untold centuries, Goblinkind has withheld from our kind the secrets of their everlasting silver, laughing behind our backs as they used our very own magic! Do you know what this means, Gellert? I'm certain you do…
"Did they really?" Oleandra muttered to herself, pondering the question of who had taught whom first. "But to think that all this time, Dumbledore had the recipe to Goblin Silver in his hands…"
Oleandra's grip tightened. This priceless document could very well lead to yet another Goblin revolt for the history books if it fell into the wrong hands!
"The magic of Ogham is dual in nature…" Oleandra read on. "Both earthly, of the telluric currents in the ground below our feet, and unearthly, of the moon above our heads in the night sky… each of its runes bears the name of a plant or tree."