71 Harry Potter : Chapter 70: Aftermath III

He himself would have refused to recognize it as anything beyond idle curiosity, but it was unsettling how time and time again, Hagrid managed to achieve the unthinkable.

"I wonder what else he'll come up with the next time that his life is in danger."

...

Minerva, catching his drift, eyed once more the silvery, jagged lines that were the scars on their nearing companion, and asked: "I didn't want to pry, but those scars..."

"Werewolves."

The dry answer made the witch choke on her own tongue while she felt molten lead settle in her gut: "What!? Of all the..." she whirled back towards Riddle, her fir wand thrumming nervously in her hand, "Is he..."

"He wasn't bitten, no." Tom immediately assured her while shifting his shoulders, adjusting the way that his weight pulled at the bandages on his arm and thigh, "If he was I'd..."

Riddle wound himself not completing that period: if Hagrid was a werewolf, he'd... what? It wasn't like he had the habit of strolling with Rubeus under the moonlight, and he'd hardly be more dangerous than he could be at the present. Maybe a bit easier to manipulate, if what was written about the wolf's instinct was true.

"What were you talking about?" Hagrid's rumbling voice took his two companions from their reverie, and both turned towards him as he settled the waist-tall cauldron beside the project realized in wood bleached by the sea.

"Minerva was curious about the dark arts." Riddle answered too fast for Minerva to object, even if he earned himself a scathing glare because of it.

With his wand held aloft, Rubeus started to funnel the crystalline liquid in an upwards arc that landed on the top of the white wood: the brew immediately seeped into the solid, almost like sand drinking the water of the waves at every passage.

Second by second, the liquid reached lower upon the structure, as the material beneath it was saturated by the potion: "Strange thing for you to be curious about."

"And what is that supposed to mean?" a slight Scottish burr entered the witch's voice as she snapped towards her tallest friend.

Rubeus shrugged while he kept his focus on spreading the potion over the white wood: "Well, if it isn't about the noble art of Transfiguration, you're hardly ever interested enough as to seek out answers on your own."

"In any case," Riddle cut in before the two could truly get started with their inane bickering, "I too would like to hear your opinion on the matter, Rubeus.

Listening to our professors, the dark arts are anathema to every upstanding wizard or witch, but we can hardly argue against their usefulness after the debacle with the Hydra, can we?"

Hagrid snorted as he tilted back the project crafted out of bleached wood, directing his last mysterious brew in an upward swing that seeped into the bottom of his and Minerva's creation: "Well, just to be clear, there is dark and dark."

His expression turned taunting when he turned, and the Black King piece he was using as a necklace dangled mockingly on his broad chest: "Politically speaking, everything that the government cannot control is a topic... how could I say it?.. Discouraged from being discussed."

"Like Occlumency." Minerva was quick on the uptake, as she still disliked heavily the implication that such an important thing was kept quiet from the masses.

"Dissent takes its first steps in secret." Tom of course was even faster in nailing down the main reason why the Mind Arts were kept from being widely known.

"Also, the more people know Occlumency, the less useful Legilimency becomes, and the less of an advantage certain families can have over the ignorant."

Hagrid nodded quickly, as he sat once more on the sand, the empty cauldron laid forgotten by his side: "Also, one of the main preoccupations for any government is to stop the shaping of elements that can grow more powerful than itself.

For muggles it isn't really a problem, as it is merely a question of numbers, but with Magic thrown in the mix? Individuals can rise far beyond the point where mere numbers can hold them back: look at Grindelwald, and he also has an army believing in him."

"So the more powerful spells are simply... what, erased?" the note of censure in Minerva's voice made Tom grin for a second. It wasn't hard to believe that the Sorting Hat had been undecided between Gryffindor and Ravenclaw with this particular witch.

"I wouldn't say erased." Rubeus smiled mischievously as he hunched forward, his elbows resting on his knees: "Merely restricted. After all, you never know what can become useful later down the line, or when you have to fight fire with fire.

Also, as individualism is such a fundamental part of what makes us wizards and witches, we'd hardly be the first ones to seek forbidden knowledge exactly because it is forbidden: and this is why the Department of Mysteries was created, I think."

"Also to research the kind of distasteful but necessary things to keep Magical Britain from being invaded." Tom added with a thoughtful expression, once more revealing just how intuitively he could disassemble different elements and topics to recreate a single, logic-proof picture.

Minerva walked over the trunk of white wood and touched the tip of her fir wand against the top of what looked like a closed flower, silently levitating it to the side before unfurling the lid in another mesmerizing show. Even as she acted, however, she talked, because her curiosity had hardly been sated.

"You're insinuating that the Department of Mysteries should be as well called the Dark Arts Department."

"For the truly mysterious pieces of magic." Riddle corrected her with a sly smile while he adjusted once more his position on the chaise longue, a bare single foot lowering itself to touch the fine sand of the beach, "That they happen also to be unreasonably powerful in certain situations, well, that is merely a fortunate consequence, isn't it?"

"What about the other kind of dark arts?" Minerva was walking around the opened flower that was the lid of the trunk she was about to operate her magic on, her curiosity pushing her forward still, "Those that are deemed so not because of politics?"

"I'm hardly an expert..." Rubeus began, only to be interrupted by Riddle.

"But you've thought about it."

"Of course, I've thought about it!" the younger Slytherin snapped back, "It's what I do: I think!"

At Minerva's fake cough, which failed utterly at hiding her amusement, her tallest friend resumed his explanation.

"Casting most curses is rather simple, once you managed to feel the requisite anger, or dread, or whatever. Occlumency helps preciously little in those cases, as you can't trick yourself into truly feeling."

"Would you say that the Patronus is a benign piece of dark arts?"

Rubeus snorted at the snide observation of Riddle, which going by his smile, had been made exactly to irk the tallest wizard, instead of being an actual doubt: "All kinds of Charms that require emotion in some form are far more complex than anything else that can be cast through a wand.

That doesn't make them Dark Arts: I believe that emotion funneled into Transfiguration is the process that delivered us the memorable doors to the Rùnda, unless I've completely misunderstood Minerva's notes on the topic."

"You didn't."

After the witch's distracted confirmation, and a warning glance towards Riddle, Rubeus resumed his speculation: "If we want to be pedantic, we can label 'esoteric' all the pieces of magic that require emotion to be cast properly. When these leverage 'dark' feelings, then we're talking about the Dark Arts."

Minerva stopped her examination of hers and Hagrid's handiwork in order to focus all of her attention on her tallest friend, while Riddle, who had the faintest smile on his features that screamed 'indulgence' managed to drag himself a bit higher on his chaise long, giving the impression of sitting straighter even if he was still mostly horizontal.

"Every act of magic is more or less an imposition of our will upon reality." Rubeus gesticulated animatedly as he spoke, trying to put in order the maelstrom of thoughts that like always raged inside of his uncommon mind.

"Those emotions that have a 'violent' component, tend to be easier to cast: because all living beings have an instinctive 'Fight or Flight' mechanism, both as an answer to the primal fear of death. The Dark Arts are said to be 'seductive', in my opinion.

Because acting following something as... undeniable... as the primal push towards survival, is easier than relying upon the feelings that make up the Patronus Charm, for example, while the effects are arguably just as powerful."

Riddle snorted from his position, his eyes widening with barely restrained disbelief: "Is that your explanation? The Dark Arts are dangerous because they're easier?"

"Also, if you get used to a certain mindset, it's something difficult to abandon." Rubeus didn't miss a beat while his eyes met Tom's, "We are biologically predisposed to answer to any challenge with violence.

To dominate the opposition with overbearing might, to inflict such pain as to never be threatened again, to take joy from the enemy's ruin, to hate and kill those that we see as a threat."

Unfazed by the oblique reference to the Three Unforgivable Curses, Tom narrowed his eyes in suspicion: "Discovered that on your own, did you?"

Hagrid shook his head without taking his eyes off Minerva, who seemed focused on parsing what had been told.

"Merely an observation of mankind's nature: we're creatures of habit. Our circumstances shape us just as our choices shape our circumstances, but while for Muggles constant, repeated choices and mannerisms can only affect their thought patterns, we always have to deal with Mind, Body, and Magic."

"And you think that our Magic gets used to what we cast?" the witch asked with her wand held loosely in her hand, her green eyes fixed upon her tallest friend with uncommon intensity.

"Isn't easier to use a charm you've practiced a thousand times?" Rubeus asked as an answer, only to turn towards Tom, who seemed particularly thoughtful.

"Isn't it odd that Minerva would rather transfigure a tongue of flame into a scarf than to cast a Warming Charm on herself?"

"An interesting concept." the Gryffindor witch nodded while she worked through the heavy words of her tallest friend: he played the fool more often than not, with dimwitted jokes and uncaring attitude, but on some occasions, it was possible to see the mind behind the outrageous notes that littered his desk in the Rùnda.

Not happy with the brief silence that stretched between the three of them, Rubeus spoke again, this time his eyes never left Tom's: "To use a select amount of spells, to stop learning new things, is to stagnate. To stagnate, is to die."

There was something incredibly upsetting about the way he smiled while he mentioned dying.

...

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