The river Oleandra had seen from afar was far narrower and shallower than she would have liked for a proper escape. "Creek" or "brook" might have been a more fitting appellation— at best, a stream, but hardly a river. To maximise her chances of breaking away from her captors, she would have to wait until the wooden raft reached the centre, where the water rose to about midriff height.
"The city gates are opening," said the Muggle holding Oleandra under his arm, as his companions pushed the raft across the water with long wooden rods. "Looks like the Druid Merwydd is coming out to congratulate us on a job well done, eh, lads?"
The poison coursing through Oleandra's blood was making it terribly difficult for her to collect her thoughts, but she knew her chances of escape would drop to zero the instant an actual Wizard like the Druid got his grubby mitts on her.
'Water!' she internally screamed. 'Wash us all overboard!'
Unfortunately for Oleandra, nothing happened.
Usually, it would take her no more than a mere thought to leverage the Authority of the Lake to bend any freshwater body to her will, but there was something in the poison that kept her from accessing her powers. Her magic was dangling just out of reach, so near, yet so far…
In that moment, Oleandra was as powerless as a teenage Muggle girl, so in her desperation, she did what any girl would have done in her position. She opened her mouth, and—
"What the— she's awake!?" yelped the Muggle holding her under his arm. "Ouch! She bit me, the little bitch!"
Angered by her audacity to resist after she'd already been captured, the man rained blows down on her head, trying to force her to let go. But Oleandra held on tight. In her condition, it wouldn't take much for her to—
…
And the next thing Oleandra knew, she was being strangled by white bedsheets.
"Gah!" she screamed, kicking and punching at the fabric, which only served to entangle herself further.
It wasn't until a few seconds later that Oleandra's fevered mind realised the bedsheets weren't fighting back. She stopped wriggling, and a moment later, her head popped free from the covers. Recognising the familiar décor of the Hospital Wing, Oleandra let out a sigh of relief— Plan B, which was to goad her captors into knocking her unconscious, was a smashing success.
Judging from the soft light streaming into the room from the windows, she had been sleeping for at least a few hours— losing consciousness was the trigger that would cause the time slip, but once she was asleep, she would continue sleeping normally until she woke up, without any further accidental time travelling.
Oleandra glanced around, but Madam Pomfrey didn't appear to be in the room.
However, it was clear the Healer had done her work— the deep gash on her arm had closed, and her bruises were gone. But most importantly, her mind was no longer clouded! It seemed Madam Pomfrey had managed to purge the poison from her body.
Now that her own safety was no longer a pressing concern, Oleandra began to worry about her belongings. She quickly found her Basilisk-skin combat robes, which were neatly folded on her bedside table.
"No, no, no…" groaned Oleandra, as she rifled through its pockets. "They took everything…"
The robes' detached sleeves— which Oleandra used as Wonder Woman bracers, since they were made of durable Basilisk hide— were gone. The sleeves were two-of-a-kind items, but since she didn't have any more of the original material, having sold it all to Madam Malkin, there was no way to make more.
But even that paled in comparison to the loss of her pouch, which contained all of her worldly possessions, apart from her spare clothes and her two broomsticks— her Nimbus 2000 and her Nimbus 2001.
Her schoolbooks, her emergency potions, her Hand of Glory, her set of Divination runestones, and perhaps most tragically, the Book of the Stars— all gone.
All of Oleandra's spells, invented or otherwise, were written in the Book of the Stars— which included the Insigil of Lindorm and the Full Armour of Ægishjálmur. These complicated spells couldn't be invoked through hand signs, dances or incantations alone— they needed to be inscribed in advance without any mistakes, which took hours to do even at the best of times.
"Even if the Sword of the Lake was taken, I can always retrieve it at any time," said Oleandra out loud, in a vain attempt to console herself. "As long as I have some water…"
There was a bedpan at the foot of her bed. Oleandra mechanically reached into her pockets for her wand, wishing to give the pan a good cleaning with the Scouring Charm before reaching into it, but her fingers closed around nothing but lint.
Oleandra felt like crying. Viviane's wand and the Sword of the Lake were her only keepsakes from her other self, and she had just lost one of them.
"Aguamenti," Oleandra sniffled, pointing her finger at the bedpan. "Aguamenti, Aguamenti, Aguamenti…"
Eventually, her wandless Water-Making Spell worked— partly due to her natural gift in Transfiguration and the Authority of the Lake— and she Conjured a trickle of water from the tip of her index. Once the bedpan was full, Oleandra plunged her hand into the cool water and called to her sword… but nothing happened.
"It's okay, I've been through worse," said Oleandra shakily, taking a deep breath to calm herself down. "You can do this, you can do this…"
The Sword of the Lake was nearly indestructible, so in theory, it should have had no trouble surviving the past three thousand years. If it no longer existed in this time period, then logically, Oleandra must have already retrieved it— in the future... in the past. Otherwise, what would stop her from duplicating it by retrieving the sword now, then going back in time and ending up with two?
The alternative was that the Sword of the Lake had been sealed or destroyed… but Oleandra didn't even want to entertain that possibility.
It was then that Oleandra had an idea.
Unbeknownst to Wanderer, she had forged a bond with his spear, and she was fairly certain it also possessed some sort of recalling feature— like how she could pull the Sword of the Lake out of a glass of water, and a true Gryffindor could pull the Sword of Gryffindor out of the Sorting Hat…
"To me, Gungnir!" Oleandra called out, holding out her hand.