26 Chapter 26
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Inside one of the Slytherin's rooms, a boy could be seen carefully engraving a short stick. This, was Ethan, and he was working on a personal project.
The Study of Ancient Runes was the only subject that went over runes, and it was only taught from Third Year. Since Ethan didn't intend on simply letting his skills rust while waiting for two full years, he decided he would work on his runes while alone in his room.
He had been working on this particular project since the beginning of the year, and he was close to completion.
Ethan had to infuse a small part of his magic as he carved, so his reserves slowly depleted themselves as he carefully engraved rune after rune into the wood. This served another purpose too, as it allowed his magic to grow.
Magic essentially worked like a muscle, meaning that the more it was used, the stronger it would become. However, like every other muscle, the efficiency of one's efforts would depend on their age.
For magic, it would experience an astonishing growth from 11 to 17 years old, before stabilizing and slowing down.
So Ethan had in mind using his magic as much as possible, so that he may form the best reserves possible naturally.
However, this time, Ethan did not stop when he became empty of magic, because he managed to finish his rune carving before his magic could run out.
Sweating lightly, Ethan looked at the wooden stick, which had numerous blue glowing runes carved into it. The glow seemed to intensify as he looked into it.
Ethan carefully put it down on a nearby stool, before plunging his entire arm into his expending bag, while Miyuki watched him curiously.
After looking around for a few seconds, he fished out a target practice, the back of which was covered in runes. This, was a gift from his mother, something he could use for practice, as the runes on it gave it a much stronger resistance to basically any kind of damage.
Ethan placed the target practice down, before grabbing the piece of wood firmly. After taking a deep breath, he tried to stab it into the target.
The tip of the stick turned red as Ethan felt the heat from it, and it finally hit the target.
The two forces clashed against one another as Ethan tried to push the stick into the target, but the target did not show any change as instead Ethan's stick started deteriorating.
Ethan didn't want to give up when he was this close though and kept pushing, but then something unexpected happened. The red tip of the wood quickly turned white as it became even hotter, but before it could deal any kind of damage to the target, the rest of the wood suddenly caught on fire.
"Fuck!"
Ethan was forced to drop the stick as it started burning his hand. It fell to the ground, and the carpet started burning.
Ignoring the pain in his right hand, Ethan opened his palm toward the ground and manifested a stream of water that quickly put out the fire, but also filled the room with steam.
Ethan quickly opened his window, letting the smoke and steam out as his sweating intensified. Ethan looked down at his palm, which had been burnt, and grabbed his wand with his left hand as he used whatever was left of his magic to ease his pain.
It wasn't a proper healing spell, Ethan hadn't learned one yet, but it was better than suffering in silence.
After a few minutes, Ethan's pain disappeared, his hand almost returning to normal, while his room was steam free. His carpet was drenched though.
However, Ethan looked at the target with a smile. A few words had appeared on top of the target.
'Are you setting the Forbidden Forest on fire?'
Knowing what Ethan would use the target for, Helene had input several phrases about different levels of results, as well as their nature. This message told Ethan that his creation was definitely hot enough.
This was a big step forward, as Ethan had managed to figure this one out entirely on his own. Now, all he needed to do was to remove the unnecessary runes, turning this enchantment more compact so that he may add the other enchantments he had in mind. Most of them would have to do with stabilizing the damn thing.
If Runes had to be compared to a muggle practice, then it would be computer coding. The Runes were commands, and just like for a code, there are several ways to reach one result, but the efficiency would depend on the number of characters.
The least amount of characters, the more efficient the code would be. Here, the least runes, the more powerful the enchant. Of course, just like code, a more complex enchant would need a higher minimum amount of runes, so more runes didn't necessarily mean lesser quality. It was a vastly complicated subject.
Anyway, Ethan's idea was to make a weapon for himself, knowing the possible dangers he may have to face while in Hogwarts. Fire was only one of the enchants Ethan intended on placing on his future weapon.
This was supposed to be a kind of secret weapon, something his opponents wouldn't see coming, and something he could use if he didn't have any magic left.
His little experiment over, Ethan turned to look at Miyuki, who looked at him smugly as she bit onto his Herbology book.
Ethan sighed and tried to grab the book, but he found himself unable to pull it out of Miyuki's mouth.
It had already been more than a month since Ethan had entered Hogwarts, almost two considering this was Halloween's eve, and although Miyuki hadn't grown another tail, she had been getting stronger.
After a while of unsuccessful pulling, Ethan gave up and let Miyuki play with the book to her heart's content, he didn't intend on doing much with it anyway, and went to sleep, wondering what would happen the next day.
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"Honestly, Mr Grindelwald, what exactly were you thinking?"
Ethan looked at McGonagall impassively as he tried, "It was an accident?"
McGonagall frowned and said, "I hope it was one, who would put their own room on fire on purpose?"
Ethan scratched his head and said, "Well I was trying some things, and it got a little out of control."
McGonagall sounded grave as she replied, "Your sheets turning blue instead of green is a little out of control. Putting your carpet on fire before flooding goes a step beyond that."
Ethan smiled a little, which prompted McGonagall to add exasperated, "It's not my problem anymore, the Headmaster is waiting for you."
Ethan nodded sheepishly, before going up the stairs leading to the headmaster's office.
As he reached the top though, he saw the headmaster's door open as someone walked out.
This person was a young man, either in 6th or 7th Year, and did not dress like any Hogwarts' students. As they crossed each other, the young man greeted, "Good morning, Grindelwald."
He spoke in English, but he had a strong accent, a Latino accent. The reason, was simply because he wasn't a Hogwarts' student.
Ethan nodded slightly and replied to the older olive skin, green eyed young adult, "Good morning Basco."
Diego Basco was an exchange student from another magical school, Castelbruxo, which was situated in the Amazon rainforest, and which also happened to be the only school Hogwarts exchanged students with.
Diego happened to stay in the Slytherin dungeons, since they were the only ones with individual rooms, hence how they knew each other.
The two weren't friends or anything though, they simply knew each other, and so they stuck to a greeting as Ethan knocked onto the headmaster's door, while Diego walked down the stairs.
"Come on in."
Ethan heard an old man voice from beyond the door, and after taking a breath, he pushed open the door.
Ethan quickly took in the headmaster's office, his eyes lasting on the hung paintings of all the previous headmasters. There was also the phoenix, Fawkes.
Then, Ethan's gaze turned to Dumbledore, who looked a little distracted as they stared at each other. For the first time, Ethan looked into Dumbledore's eyes, but he did not feel any kind of intrusion. No twinkle. Of course, Ethan wasn't bold enough to try anything himself.
He did not linger his gaze on the headmaster's eyes and greeted with a smile, "Headmaster Dumbledore."
