372 Birthday

Nick woke up as per usual on his birthday and cleaned up before sitting in the common room and working on his arithmancy calculations for the changes of the animagi ritual. He had made pretty good progress in his opinion as he was already on his eighty fifth attempt at getting a success from his predictions. The previous eighty four attempts had ended in decreasingly catastrophic failures that turned him into something closer to a werewolf than a magical Animagus. Still he was getting closer and closer to succeeding at which point he can get an outside opinion on his calculations to see if they are correct.-

The first of his friends down from the dorms was as usual Hermione. "Happy birthday Nick!" she said with a bright smile after seeing him. "I keep telling you guys that it's not a big deal , it's just another day for me." Nick said with a sigh. "Hogwash! It's your birthday and that is always going to be a big deal. At the rate you are going it might given be made a wizarding holiday." she said with a joke at the end.-

"Ugh! Don't even joke about something like that , I think I'd die of embarrassment every year if that happened." Nick shuddered at the idea. He was a rather private person so the thought of the entire world celebrating his birthday gave him unpleasant chills. "You will have done it to yourself , honestly how many mad miracles do you have just floating around in that head of yours?" Hermione asked enviously. "More than I should but less than you'd think." Nick said cryptically. Hermione merely rolled her eyes at that answer since it was the sort of vague answer he usually gave when he didn't want to answer.-

About an hour later Ron and Harry came trudging down the stairs to the boys dorm and Nick shook his head at how tired Ron looked. To be fair though Ron wasn't a morning person so he couldn't exactly be blamed for it. "Happy birthday Nick!" Harry greeted with a smile "What he said." Ron said with a wide yawn. "Since everyone is up lets head over to the great hall and grab some breakfast before you all need to go to class." Nick said while storing away his notebook covered in numbers and symbols.-

They met up with Luna , Daphne and Tracy on the way to the great hall and Nick was once again wished a happy birthday. Breakfast was a simple affair with the standard protein rich foods that the people in England love in the mornings. Nazgul was unfortunately not allowed to partake as given her true size she would clear off the entire Gryffindor table and then ask for seconds. Nick still gave her a taste of the foods she wanted but those were mostly just snacks to keep her happy. He promised to eventually figure out how to make a version of lembas bread that tasted like bacon for her but that was a "for later" project.-

Classes started shortly after breakfast so Nick split with his friends for the next few hours and focused on his calculations during this this time. About halfway through this time Helena floated through the wall. "Decided to skip the door this time I see." Nick said with a raised eyebrow. "Old habits die hard." Helena said with a shrug before looking over his calculations. "You got this part wrong , it should be a six." She said while pointing at a nine in the middle of his work. -

He cursed to himself when he saw that she was right and proceeded to erase all of the formulas and work after that point as it had been tainted by that mistake. Mistakes meant a horrible outcome when the changes to the ritual were implemented so nothing less than perfection would do. Quantifying something was easy as long as it was a static thing which the magical phenomena was. Thanks to Helena's previous work Nick also had the quantification of his race already so all that was left was the actual modification of the ritual.-

Despite that it was horribly difficult even with the knowledge he had at the moment so failing many times was to be expected. "Happy birthday by the way. Do you have all the ingredients for the ritual picked out so far?" Helena asked seriously. Nick nodded but didn't share the details of what exactly he was going to use as a sacrifice. Firstly because it honestly wasn't info she needed to know and because she might try to convince him to save some of it if he did tell her.