73 Harry Potter : Chapter 72: New Addition I

From the window of his recently obtained room, Tom looked out in the night, his eyes focused on the dull red light that came from the makeshift forge Rubeus had built after their return from Greece.

The Slytherin Prefect would have preferred to sleep, but he felt somewhat unease: far from the never sleeping London, and away from the reassuring quiet of his dormitory at Hogwarts, the sounds of the Forest of Dean were different from anything he had ever had to grow accustomed to.

Yes, the branches rustled with the changing wind, and he even fancied he had managed to hear a howl or two during his permanence, but he just wasn't used to it, and it'd take a while to feel comfortable about his new arrangements.

Howls that didn't come from a werewolf, that was.

Still standing in front of his window, Tom gave a brief glance to the door of his room: after the use of an innocuous Levitation Charm, meant to test whether the Ministry was truly as incompetent as Hagrid made it out to be, Riddle had of course cursed and warded the entrance to his sleeping place to the best of his ability.

He didn't fancy having the werewolf Rubeus was trying to cure surprise him while he was asleep after all: to be frank, being a werewolf, while disgusting, was still a step up from being a muggle.

At least Marie could have a minute silver of magic in her life: Tom knew that he would choose it in a heartbeat if their positions were reversed.

With a sigh, Riddle turned one last time towards the window that allowed him to see the forge below: it was barely a circular firepit made of stones, with a charming bellow on one side, an anvil where Hagrid was beating furiously with his wand, a barrel of water, and of course, a cauldron holding a liquid that shone oddly as it reflected the flames.

It was just like Rubeus, wasn't it? He had apparently managed to apply the 'every potion is a story' drivel to a ritual capable of granting permanent invulnerability from poisons and venoms that were lesser than the Hydra's.

With Minerva, he had managed to create a rather resilient trunk with an incredibly secure locking mechanism, which was of course enlarged on the inside to the point that they'd been able to store in it the entirety of the nine-headed snake.

They had returned a mere week before, and he was already experimenting with something new. Knowing him, it'd be something mind-numbingly simple in principle, but exasperating when it came to the actual realization.

Tom sighed again, and openly surrendered to his curiosity. He dressed quickly and left his room, walking through the house at the light of his lit wand until he managed to exit and reach the back of the building: the encroaching forest had been cut down in a wide radius, stocking necessary wood to warm Marie's home as well as to stop some unwise animals from coming too close.

Riddle could almost taste on his tongue the fairly tame wards that hovered above the property: they felt like a folded section of air just out of the corner of his eye, fainter than a whisper, but surely enough to keep muggles and other random animals away.

Tom pushed away the small impulse of walking back into the house to kill the beast in its sleep and walked still towards the humongous form of Hagrid.

lit as he was only by the fire of the forge, he somewhat seemed even bigger than usual. He was bare-chested and with short hair matted with sweat that dripped from his brow, his dark eyes glinting like snake scales.

Once Riddle passed an invisible boundary, he finally heard the sounds that accompanied his fellow Slytherin's movements: he rose his wand, and the bellow breathed under the fire of the forge, making the flames climb upwards with an eager wooshing whisper, and he lowered it, his muscles rippling with the force of the blow as a metallic clang thundered off the anvil.

With his off hand, Rubeus raised a piece of cherry red iron, eyeing him curiously under the faint moonlight impeded by the clouds and the flickering flashes offered by the lit forge: "Out for a night stroll, Riddle?"

With the long pincer he was holding, he placed the piece of iron back into the flames and turned towards Tom, lifting a waterskin from his side and taking several deep gulps.

Trying to somewhat mask his burning curiosity, Tom chose not to question him directly about the purpose of his actions, and tackled the issue at an angle: "Why on earth are you doing this at night?"

"I heard that the right color of the metal can be gauged only in darkness, and the nocturnal breeze helps me cool off."

And where would you have heard something like that? Riddle made a show of sniffing the air: "Yes, you could use a bath."

"Of course, I could," his much taller companion retorted, "my body spray is tailored for day-to-day use, this kind of effort would have made it ineffective, and I'll have to wash off in any case."

Of course, he brewed his own deodorant. Tom held back from rolling his eyes, returning his focus to the forge while keeping distant enough that the heat wouldn't be unbearable on him: "How practical of you..."

"We don't have to play this song and dance every time, you know." Rubeus grinned wildly while vaguely gesturing towards Riddle with his wand, "You can ask anything regarding what you're interested in, jus as I do."

Only that it wasn't a wand any longer: on the tip of the length of holly, there was the head of a mallet that seemed to grow out of the wood itself. What?

Seeing where his gaze was pointing, Rubeus chuckled: "Don't tell me you don't recognize this small transfiguration? Minerva made a note of the spell needed to turn your own wand into something useful for small, day-to-day tasks.

And you were so insightful to add a variation that would turn the wand instead into the handle of a whip, while the weapon itself would be able to be used like a living extension of your will to ensnare an opponent."

Of course, Riddle remembered: his prodigious mind recalled with perfect clarity the notes from the Rùnda, and his own choice to add the tame variation of the constraining curse.

He had derived it from a rather niche section of dueling transfigurations, usually meant to stall in extremely close quarters, as in competitions only a wand was allowed, and turning the part of your chosen magical tool into a knife took a fraction of the time needed for a conjuration, and was easy to conceal.

Of course, the partial conjuration of a whip directly from your wand was a clever application on its own, logically followed by turning the extension of your wand into a cursed rope of some kind: "And you thought to turn part of your wand into a mallet, striking with it metal hot enough to set the wood of the wand on fire?"

The tone was surprisingly tame considering how mind-numbingly stupid that sounded, but unsurprisingly, Rubeus simply laughed it off, rolling his shoulders to work out the kinks caused by the repeated work on the anvil: "I'm getting good at working with fire."

"I've noticed yes." Tom replied while he walked a bit closer, suddenly spotting the small table that had been covered until that moment by Hagrid's bulk.

On it there was a selection of simple daggers that differed one from the other in the dimensions of the blades, as well as the shapes of the handles.

It was basically a sequence of butcher knives, scaled for the massive size of Rubeus, and now that Riddle had the time to think about it, it clicked.

"You're realizing your own set of carving knives... for the Hydra?" disgust welled in his tone as he distractedly cast a cooling charm on himself, "You mean to do the rendering by hand?"

Rubeus simply nodded, as if it was the obvious conclusion: "I had prepared myself for a chimaera, in particular, to take its blood as it was the most important part: but siphoning off liquids is relatively simple despite the magical resistance of the creature in question, the book I read mentioned that it had to do with the intrinsic nature of blood or venom to flow."

His tone changed then, carrying with it a subtle cheer that Riddel found entirely out of line.

"You probably didn't notice because you were dying, but carving out the heart of the Hydra ruined all the surrounding flesh: spells to kill work well enough, and a werewolf is naturally inclined to tear through a wizard's magic, it can't oppose even a hippogriff, which is arguably less dangerous."

"This is what you've been doing all this time?" Riddle pushed aside the odd certainty in how Rubeus dictated who would the winner be between a werewolf and a hippogriff, focusing instead on the more pressing issue: "But you built the forge only today."

"Forging with magic is considerably faster than its counterpart. I tried to enchant transfigured knives as a start: Minerva researched how the proper enchantment can 'pin in place' a new Shape, remember?" with Tom's nod, Rubeus kept talking.

"But those dulled fairly quickly when working on the Hydra's hide, nevermind when it came to working with the muscle groups or the bones.

I used the first attempts on a single neck, so I could familiarize myself with its anatomy, I have another eight necks to go through, but I'd rather perfect my tools on the first one."

Riddle remained silent as Hagrid fished the iron out of the forge and placed it one more on the anvil: now that he managed to give it a good look, he saw that it was already shaped like a blade.

His holly wand descended with a metallic clang that rivaled thunder, and Tom grimaced at the incredibly loud noise, his eyes fixed on how Rubeus seemed to be working over the edge of the knife-to-be.

"I thought about using the bones of another magical creature to improve this experiment, but the blades needed to carve bone are completely different from what I'd need for the Hydra: so I'm doing an attempt with simple forging for now, otherwise, tomorrow night I'll forge the tools to forge the tools."

The improvised, self-taught smith spoke after several blows, and with a flick of the wrist, he returned his wand to its natural form before pointing it at the edge of the knife.

The shimmer was lost on the air wavering because of the high temperatures, but Tom noticed that Hagrid seemed satisfied by the result.

With a decisive movement, he buried the still cherry red metal into the water barrel by his side, and glanced away in order to avoid the cloud of steam that rose as an answer. He seemed to be counting internally, and after seven seconds, he retreated the metal from the water and plunged it into the cauldron to his left.

There was no hissing cloud of steam erupting by the concoction, no flash of light rush of perceivable magic, but Rubeus seemed content with stirring his brew clockwise with the newly quenched piece of iron.

"Maybe it'd be better if I knew how to forge steel, or if I figured out how to do the same with gold or silver, but they melt as such low temperatures..."

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