บท 54: Year Three - Chapter Five
I didn't want to make a fuss out of it. I didn't want any hippogriffs to get hurt, or anything to happen to Hagrid. Nobody was born perfect; everyone made mistakes at first. One saying that we Italians are proud of is that failure fuels the craft. Those who are perfect will never achieve the craft. They'll be natural born talented people, but they'll never be the blacksmith, the wood carver, the man in the heat or climbing the electrical cables. Sure, sometimes it was better never to fail, for failure meant death usually, but generally failure was a step, a single step on a humongous ladder that led someone to become something more.
It made him someone worthy of being called a craftsman.
Ancient Runes, in that regard, was more about reading the tales of old, dodgy wizards and Beetle the Bard's untranslatable texts. When I said untranslatable, I meant it literally. They were charmed to prevent translation. One could understand them, one could even talk about them, and their key motifs. The tale of the magical frog shattering the scorpion for being a treacherous bastard was an interesting one, for example, but you couldn't pen them down in English.
You could try, but the words would become gibberish. The story itself had been charmed to prevent reading by the 'enemy' of the times, which in turn meant that pretty much any future inhabitant of England was stuck having to learn the ancient tongue of ancient runes, and then hold it in memory with said runes. It was like talking Latin; utterly boring and unneeded, but also the only way to discuss the points behind the frog's usage of ancient magic without a wand.
Those paranoid monsters needed some good dose of chilling from beyond the grave, but the damage was done, and thus certain books were to be read, understood, and then spoken of in ancient tongue.
Thankfully, that would all happen in the latest years. As it was, we had to learn the alphabet. The very damning, very evil, very nasty alphabet of doom and gloom that killed our hopes for a new tomorrow.
"Fehu," Megan said.
"Cattle," I said, "Wealth. Because for them, it was the same thing." I clicked my tongue against my teeth as I looked at another rune, "Kaunan or Jera?"
"It's only one, so it's got to be Kaunan," Megan answered. "Ansuz-"
"The Aesir," I said, "One of the Nordic gods, like burisaz-Thor, the Giant."
Still, battling with the ancient runes was nothing when compared to the incredible battles I went through with my own orchestra. The wizards, of course, didn't have anything more modern than Mozart's times. Hence, if I wanted an electric guitar to play, I needed to buy one and then charm it myself into being 'magically automatic'. To that, I couldn't just transfigure a rock into a guitar, because I didn't know how they were made inside.
Hence, since magic was the solution and the problem, the answer and the question, I had no choice but to practice a spell that didn't exist yet.
The results were...incredibly problematic.
A sparkling crackle of lightning shrieked like a wild banshee. Electricus Guitarrus having apparently formed some kind of semi-sentient sphere of lightning which reacted to noise. I could barely breathe, the thing sparkling and thrumming at a low voltage with little noise, but growing ever so powerful the louder something went. The Tuba had died first, the drums had exploded, and the harp was my only instrument remaining that could bring the sentient globe of lightning the hell away from me, and allow me to reach the door.
It did so, sacrificing itself at the swish of my wand as I pummeled through the door, sharply closing it behind me as a lightning bolt struck the doorway behind me.
Magical spell creation was an extremely dangerous, highly lethal job.
"Ah," I grumbled as I flipped a Wizard-Latin to English dictionary. "Guitarrus was interpreted as Guit Arr Us, Department to silence us," I sighed, and thumped my head against the dictionary. I'd need rubber gloves, and rubber armor, before I stepped inside to launch a Finite Incantatem on the thing. This, in turn, meant I needed to learn how to transfigure things into rubber. It was time for another trip for tea and scones, I reckoned.
Though this time, I'd go for the head honcho himself. The Headmaster had been a transfiguration professor in his youth, if I wasn't wrong and my memory didn't take a plunge for the bad. And even if he wasn't, then he'd know all the same.
"Cockroach Cluster," I said to the gargoyle, which leaped aside and allowed me to climb up the familiar spiraling staircase up.
The headmaster was apparently expecting me, judging by how the regular tea and sherbet lemons were at the ready. "Mister Umbrus, I was beginning to wonder when you would make your appearance for this year's start of our regular meetings."
"I'd have come sooner, Headmaster," I answered as I took a seat, "But I got raked by Hippogriffs and then had to get a cart of bread for Squiddie as thanks for saving my hide."
"I've heard of the accident," the Headmaster answered, "it is quite the ironic thing," he continued in a soft whisper, "How you could face a Basilisk and yet fell to something as a flock of Hippogriffs. I would have expected to be lacking a herd from the forest, rather than have one Mister Umbrus in the infirmary."
I grimaced. "I didn't want to kill any of them. I just wanted to keep them away from the other students, when I realized there were after me and I'd never make it to the castle, I just ran for the lake shore. I expected Squiddie to scare them off, not pummel one into meat pie paste."
The Headmaster's brows furrowed ever so slightly, but then he seemed to nod to himself, if with a slight grimace. "That was an unfortunate circumstance. The Giant Squid is quite protective of the students in general, because they tend to feed it." He smiled, "And what about the lack of permission to visit Hogsmeade, Mister Umbrus? Will you not try to change my mind?"
I shrugged, and rubbed the side of my chin. "All in all, it's not that bad of a thing. I mean, I'll be honest professor, I could easily go to Hogsmeade with or without your approval, I know the passageways to get there," I said with a slightly nervous smile, "But I won't, because I don't like going against the law if I can avoid it and...well, I realized that even if I went to Hogsmeade, I'd soon run out of money. All I have is the galleon the Giant Squid gave me, and unless it does a repeat performance this year too...a Christmas allowance of one galleon isn't going to make it for the trips to Hogsmeade." I sighed. "And I don't really want to be a burden to any of my friends."
"You think you would be a burden to them, Mister Umbrus? That they would not relish your company in exchange for whatever pittance you may ask of them?" the Headmaster asked, his voice quietly contemplating.
"It's my pride, professor," I sighed. "Either I earn the money I spend, or I refuse to be a weight to others. I can't help it for the school's supplies, but I will for whatever else I can manage."
"Pride is a dangerous beast, Mister Umbrus," Dumbledore answered. "It ruins the best wizards, and turns them into shallow creatures."
"Too much pride will do that," I nodded. "But too little won't help you either. The right amount is what one needs to be able to sleep properly at night. That's my motto: never do anything that can keep me awake at night, because I like my sleep very much." I grinned as I said that and sipped the offered tea. "I'm sure it won't ever be that way, and eventually I'll do something that may keep me wide awake, but I hope it will be the kind of stuff that I can fix with an apology, and never something bigger than that."
Dumbledore sighed. "Life has a bad way of keeping one awake at night, Mister Umbrus. The tiniest of things snowball beyond our control and make us worry."
"But that's why we've got other people to turn to for help when that happens, don't we?" I replied, innocently. "For example, Headmaster, let us say a bored student practiced spell-creating and coincidentally ended up creating a lightning-empowered noise-seeking ball of death. How would that student transfigure himself a rubber armor and gloves to have the time to throw a Finite Incantatem at the ball without ending up burned or electrocuted to death?"
The Headmaster, very slowly, took a sip of his tea cup.
"Mister Umbrus," he said in the end. "Would you like permission to head to Hogsmeade?"
"No, Headmaster, I don't have the money to spend on trifling things, so why not practice?" I answered, as innocently as I could, while a treacherous smile formed on my lips.
"Mister Umbrus," the headmaster continued, "I insist."
"Headmaster, I refuse," I said very quietly. "Unless you find me a job."
The headmaster took a deep breath. He then looked out of the window. "If someone very prideful, and quite arrogant, did an unforgivable thing to the likes of you," he began in a quiet, thoughtful voice. "Would you forgive him? Would you do him a favor if he came asking for it?"
"Headmaster," I muttered, "I wouldn't," I acquiesced. "But...I'm not you," I continued, "I don't have as much mercy, or kindness, as I should. I don't believe in second chances; I don't believe in mercifully showing the other cheek. I will treat everyone with respect, and kindness, but if they betray me, I will destroy them. I am not good, I try, I can try as much as I can, and I don't want to hurt anyone at all but deep down, that's just the kind of person I am," I grimaced. "I can forgive mistakes. I can tolerate errors. I can accept that not everyone will be able to do everything they are tasked with, and I won't ask perfection of everyone around me. However...I can't tolerate spitting on deals, or oaths, or the friendship we share for some personal benefit."
I looked down at my reflection in the tea cup. I could have lied. I could have said I would totally forgive everyone like the nicest of shounen heroes, or the greatest of paladins, but that wasn't who I was, and while it wasn't wise to say this, it was even worse to lie to Dumbledore to his face. "But at the same time," I exhaled, "Time heals everything, and if not everything, makes the sting less hurtful," I swallowed another gulp of tea, which swished down my throat. "People we swear we will slaughter for their betrayal are merely annoying individuals we won't ever speak to after a few months, and with time, perhaps years, the hate simmers down to antipathy, and finally apathy."
I unwrapped a sherbet lemon, popping it into my mouth. "So if this someone came to me, and told me honestly why they did what they did, and begged me to help them in their time of need for some valid reason, something beyond another personal gain for the likes of them, then I'd probably hear them out at least," I sucked on the candy. "If nothing else, because if there's someone else involved, a third party, then why should they suffer the punishment that is rightfully of the betrayer?"
"Mister Umbrus," the Headmaster whispered in the end, in the stretching silence that echoed like a dull throb between us, in an unspoken agreement that we wouldn't speak further until he was ready to answer. "The Flexilis spell will turn objects into rubber, though may I simply suggest casting the spell Non-Verbally to terminate the enchantment on this theoretical globe of noise-seeking death?"
I grimaced. "I tried that. It didn't seem to work."
Dumbledore's grimace soon mimicked mine. "Are you sure, young Raven, you did not conjure forth a ball of lightning rather than merely cast a spell? For in that case, conjuration never really lasts for long."
I stared at the Headmaster.
"If...if that was the case, do I just...wait?"
The headmaster nodded.
He also swiftly added how I could not, should not, and would never be allowed to practice in any empty classroom that was not my already official practicing room.
That one, at least, had little chance to get students who didn't know of its existence in danger.
I happily accepted those limitations.
Now, if only I could an electric guitar smuggled on school grounds, I'd be set to begin my epic metal showdown with a truly symphonic orchestra.
A man needed a dream.
Mine was to take the Wizard World by rock and roll.
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