Harry Potter : Chapter 88: Means to an End III

"Don't say it." her peremptory tone was enough to make Tom close his mouth, but not enough to erase his all-too-persuasive words. 

Minerva hardly appreciated being talked to in such a way, she enjoyed even less being told she was wrong. But she was a Gryffindor, and no matter how much she hated it, there was merit to Riddle's words.

...

Again, the witch sighed, recognizing that most of her indignation came from Rubeus' choice of magics in his search for a cure than from the failed final result. That had been more a warning sign of what she had truly been a part of since the Rùnda had been founded, and perhaps, a part of her had been frightened that the clear-and-cut ways of the world could be more like guidelines than anything else. She feared what her friends could become if they kept their neverending research going as unbound by conventional norms as it had been, and she has used Marie's situation as an excuse.

In any case, Marie's future was more important than some discomfort in Minerva's present. And worse, she now regretted her only conversation with Rubeus since their return from the Forest of Dean, when filled with unfocused rage, she had given her ultimatum: she knew that, if only to rise to the challenge, Hagrid would be trying to turn Marie to human before the next full moon.

It was the same thing she had done when they had first met, only scaled up to their vastly grown capabilities.

As her green eyes turned onto a Riddle that was barely hiding the smugness that oozed off him, she sniffed in irritation before a small idea for payback came to mind. Even if he was right, it didn't mean that he could simply get away with talking to her that way: she was Gryffindor, for Merlin's sake!

"Do you know what would help, Tom?" she grinned fiercely at his politely curious expression, "A fresh perspective. Test Filius, this week if you please, or I'll get him into the Rùnda myself."

With her piece said, she simply walked away, her chosen tomes floating behind like ducklings after their mother, and the feline gait that only the animagus could possess.

"If you gloat some more, you'll begin to purr, Minerva." Riddle didn't bother to hide his grimace as he began to walk by her side, but he nimbly avoided the elbow that the witch casually tried to plant in his side.

Together, the two left the Library, objectives clearer and clearer in their minds.

...

The shadows in the small courtyard flickered and moved with every strike of my wand on the anvil, small flashes accompanied by hissing embers echoing my every action.

The sky above was cloudy, even if it wasn't raining quite yet, and while the wind moved the immense boughs of the shadow-tree born from the death of Hagrid's father, not a sound could be heard beyond the low whoosh of the flames and my own breath. After all, I wasn't using my magic to forge something capable of sound.

The not-so-small roll of iron merged with shadows that I had crafted in preparation for our last hunt for a Chimaera sat silently on the anvil, not unlike a coiled snake basking in the warmth, as the metal glowed cherry red, the cracks in each link showing only a deep blackness that had once been a potion that held as its main ingredient the leaves of the tree that was the linchpin of the wards of my true abode.

I breathed in deeply, rising my wand high above my head, the mallet at the top of the length of holly and phoenix feather heavy even in the hands of my half-giant's constitution, and let it fall, my shoulders twisting to accompany the movement, my right leg slightly forward as if I could push a whole step into the motion. 

The wand temporarily adapted as a hammer crashed on the length of the chain with a muffled, easily dismissed sound, and finally, the iron chain began to fall apart beyond the widening of the cracks that had always been a part of it.

The principle behind the idea of the shadow-chain, back when I had first thought about it, had been simple.

If I could use the bone of a werewolf to fashion a handle for iron knives tempered in a battery of potions capable of infusing meaning in what would have otherwise been a merely enchanted object, rather than a physical manifestation of a piece of magic, then I could surely repurpose some of the leaves shed by the shadow-ash tree that stood tall on the hill where my home was.

Having a magically crafted chain always on hand, nestled without a true width between my sleeve and my skin, where the shadows that were a part of it could be exploited, had sounded like a genius idea. 

And the realization, with a bit of tinkering when it came down to choosing the exact sequence of untested potions to use, hadn't been beyond my ability, requiring only a few trial runs before producing an actual, tangible result.

Almost alone in the courtyard, I observed how each link of the chain began losing its purpose now that I had brought the light of the same fire that had created it to bear in order to undo the fruit of my labors.

I took a step back from the anvil, grateful for the cool winter air that washed over my overheated form, taking away just a bit of the smell of clinging smoke and overbearing sweat that pervaded my sinuses: "Okay then."

A counterclockwise turn of my wrist later, and my wand returned to normal, the transfiguration imbued with charms that I had grown familiar with unraveling with ease as the holly and phoenix feather resumed the Shape first granted them by Ollivander's far more expert hands. 

Silently, I pointed it at the incandescent amalgamation of repurposed iron and quickly dying shadows that rested on the anvil, only to levitate the whole thing into a nearby stone cauldron, which had sat quietly over a flickering handful of blue flames.

I exhaled gutsly, raising my free hand to push back the hair from my forehead, only to hit something metallic, and immediately abort the motion, adjusting it in order to not dislodge Ravenclaw's Diadem from my brow.

As if summoned, a sapphire-eyed version of myself appeared in the corner of my eye, sitting weightless and without shadows of his own not far from my open-air workshop: "Didn't you already know that it was conceptually weak?"

"I hardly need Rowena's priceless Artefact to tell myself this much." I muttered with annoyance as I walked towards a succession of smaller pewter cauldrons, critically inspecting the progression of the different preparations before I began adjusting them here and there, knowing that I had some time before the unraveled mixture of shadow and iron was ready to be messed with. 

In any case, broken apart in its base components as it was soon going to be, I hoped to repurpose it: there was an unique magic to the tree that had been born from Hagrid's father's life and wand, and uniquely tied to me. I wsn't going to waste a single leaf.

The first experiment I had ever done with one of those had simply been the crystallization of one leaf in order to replicate something similar to Marvolo Gaunt's ring, and the 'unimportant' nature of the shadow would be enough to guarantee that the man would never notice the difference, not that he was brilliant enough to do so with a random switch in my opinion, but one could never be sure.

"Then why did you create it in the first place?" my own voice reached my ears, unable to stop even now that I had learned how to remain present in the real world while Ravenclaw's own version of a Path to Wisdom needled me.

"It was one of the side projects for Marie." I justified out loud, knowing that I was only talking to myself, but also aware that saying something out loud made it harder to reinterpret it later in order to follow what was more convenient. 

And since my self-imposed session with the Diadem was meant to help me gain some clarity, or perhaps a solution for my werewolf situation, it could only help to forestall any of my distracted, future attempts to avoid uncomfortable topics.

"Gleipnir was inspiration enough: I needed something without any physical attribute that a werewolf would be able to break, and the esoteric nature of the ash tree..."

"Wasn't it something that you did only to see if you could?" my own voice rang in my head as I used a pestle to crush some dried Valeriana roots.

"Isn't that why you tested it for the first time against the Chimaera you hunted with your friends?"

The mention of the chimera made me think about the enormous Goat head that I hadn't sold alongside most of the carcass to Slughorn. 

Of course, its cost had come out of my cut of the earnings, but Tom and Minerva had hardly complained, given that the first had kept one fang from the snake-tail and Minerva one from the lion-head.

They had simply thought that, given the way that I used to kill my designated third of the magical creature, I had simply wished for a greater trophy to remind myself of our success. At least once I clarified that I wouldn't be stuffing it and placing it in the Rùnda.

...

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