Without a Trace

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

Iris woke slowly to an inconsistent rasping noise.

She tried to drop back into sleep, but the usual issues she had when waking up came upon her, and a return to unconsciousness evaded her.

The thought that she wouldn't even see the Dursleys this summer, and hopefully ever again worked to cheered her up a little as she rubbed her face against her pillow.

Reluctantly, she pushed herself up and sat wearily on the edge of her bed.

Her small room was warm and bright. She had only been using it for a few days, so it was still a little spartan. The apartment she and Shirou were renting had come furnished, so her room had included a bed and a desk. She had managed to cover some of the empty wall space with some of the posters and paraphernalia she had unexpectedly received from the Kanto Katanas. Her trunk was open, with some of its contents spilling out onto the floor, and Hedwig was sleeping soundly on a perch attached to her desk.

She smiled at the room in general. It wasn't permanent, since she and Shirou were only renting the place for the summer. But for the duration she stayed here, this room was hers.

The rasping noise came again, and Iris made her way out of her room, searching for the source of the disturbance.

She passed Shirou's room and the bathroom as she made her way down the short hallway that led into the living room.

"Good morning, Shirou." Iris said sleepily, catching sight of her flatmate sitting on the floor of the living room, staring intently at a wooden board.

"Good afternoon, Iris." Shirou replied distractedly. "I made breakfast and lunch, and the leftovers are in the fridge."

Iris rubbed at her face and glanced around.

"I guess it is pretty bright for morning... What are you working on?"

Shirou lifted a sharp knife from the floor next to him and dragged it down the wood, creating a familiar rasping noise.

"I'm working to set up a bounded field." He eventually said.

"A what?"

Shirou perked up, and seemed to realized that he had an audience.

He sighed loudly, glanced up at her, then frowned.

"Do you need me to do laundry?" He asked.

Iris looked down at herself. She was still wearing the short sleeping shorts and tank top she used for sleeping during the hot summer nights.

"No. I just wanted to find out what was making that rasping noise that woke me up."

"Sorry." Shirou actually looked abashed for having woken her up despite her sleeping this late into the day. "I'll be done in a minute, and you can go back to sleep if you want."

"I'm up." She waved him off. "And I'll go change clothes once you tell me what you're making."

Shirou frowned and scrunched his face up a familiar way that Iris was beginning to associate with Shirou debating sharing a secret.

"A 'bounded field'," Shirou began, "is something like a barrier. It can be configured to do certain things depending on the skill and knowledge of the person making it."

"Do you think we need extra protection?" Iris asked. "The realtor said that the apartments already had the latest and greatest protection and anti-theft Charms on them. And it's not like the muggles in the surrounding neighborhoods can even get past the Muggle-Repelling Charms."

"Active defense bounded fields are not my speciality." Shirou said. "And while I would argue that there's no such thing as too much defensive preparation, this is something else entirely."

He stood up and carried the wooden board over to the corner of the room, where a small thread hung down from the ceiling.

Iris followed the thread with her eyes, and noticed that it turned at the ceiling and followed the perimeter of the room, creating a box on the ceiling, with a single thread dropping into the corner that Shirou now occupied.

He tied his crafted wood to the thread and then concentrated for a moment.

Iris felt the air change, like it was slightly charged, before it returned to normal.

"This field," Shirou turned to face her, "will limit the spread of magical effects and contain spells within it. It is mainly powered by excess magical energy from spells, so it's quite efficient."

Iris's eyes lit up.

"Does that mean we'll be able to practice magic over the summer with this in place?"

"That was my intent." Shirou nodded. "But the bounded field is only half of the solution." He held up his hand and motes of light coalesced into the familiar, wicked looking shape of Rule Breaker. "This is the other half.

"A Trace Charm is placed onto all underage magicals in Britain. It reports to the Ministry whenever specific types of magic happen in locations near them. Since we are in a magical apartment complex, any reports sent from us should be mostly ignored, but we can use Rule Breaker to eliminate the risk entirely."

"Let's do it!" Iris said, excited by the thought of using magic outside of school, though her movements were cautious as she approached the unnerving weapon and Shirou, who held it.

In some ways the blade was beautiful to look at, in many more ways, strangely sickening. But Iris would always associate it with pain and the cloying feeling that rushed through her body when a shard of Voldemort's soul was forced from her skull.

"Where do you need to stab me?" Iris said teasingly when she was within stabbing range.

"I'll need to get a read on the Trace Charm." Shirou ignored her and held his hand out. She grasped it.

Immediately, she began to feel the tingling sensation she was beginning to associate with foreign magics coming in contact with her own.

The tingling receded, and Shirou raised the crooked knife to rest over the back of her hand.

"Rule Breaker." He said in a no-nonsense tone, which sounded to Iris like a spell, despite being said in English.

He lowered the blade, and pricked her with the very tip of it.

A tiny spark suffered for a moment at the point where the blade met her skin, and Iris felt an itching sensation crawl along her body.

The spark and the sensation vanished, and Shirou pulled the blade back, and it vanished back into motes of light.

"That was..." Iris started. "Not nearly as bad as I was expecting."

"From what I understand, the backlash tends to depend on the strength of the spell being broken." Shirou explained. "But then again, Rule Breaker can be quite finicky."

"Don't you need to break your own Trace Charm?" Iris asked.

Shirou stared at her for a second, then opened and closed his mouth.

"Already broke mine." He explained hurriedly.

She rolled her eyes.

Iris was good at spotting liars. After all, she had grown up with some of the greatest liars in the world.

The Dursleys managed to convince everyone around them that they were a normal, wholesome, caring family. A lie which the entire neighborhood she had lived in seemed to be perpetuating about their own families. A lie that they would protect with their lives, while simultaneously trying to expose everyone else in their lies, if the amount of waspish gossip Iris had overheard in her lifetime was anything to go by.

Shirou was no Dursley. He was perhaps the opposite of a Dursley, and maybe as a side effect, was a terrible liar.

"Right." She acknowledged. Shirou had secrets. That was par for the course. Getting him to spill everything was just a question of waiting him out. He was terrible at keeping them for long. "We're good then?"

Shirou flicked his wrist, and his wand leapt into his hand from the wand holster she had gotten him for Christmas.

"Lumos." He said, causing a small white light to appear at the end of his wand.

They both glanced around, waiting for something to happen.

Aurors to bust down the doors. Secret Ministry Special Agents to drop from the ceiling. Maybe an owl with a strongly worded letter.

Nothing.

"Nox." Shirou said, killing the light. "It looks like we're all set."

But Iris was already sprinting down the hallway to her bedroom.

She snatched up her wand and holster from her bedside, then began digging through her trunk for the dueling book that Shirou had lent to her.

She hadn't been expecting to use it over the summer, so it was buried, but she had suddenly found herself with a lot of time she could put into learning some interesting spells.