บท 9: Routine
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Routine
I started my second year at Hogwarts less than a week before when Slughorn approached me. It was on a Saturday, and I was still readjusting to having a regular rhythm of sorts, now that I was no longer living on my own in the results of... better not thinking about it.
Even if my magical escapade had yielded an objectively great result, it would be some time still before I could truly relax in the soft pillow of my hypocrisy. Pragmatically speaking, I didn't die with my first experimental ritual, which was a good point, another was the impossibly good concealing ward grown with the modified ash tree that towered in what was now my property. On the other hand, I had ruthlessly exploited both the naivete of a helpless, dying wizard, and engineered his death so that it would benefit me. Sure, he was already dying, but...
I shook my head, focusing on following my Head of House as he led me to his office.
"You did all of your summer assignments, even if for some reason you don't seem able to reach the required length in your essays..." he started reprimanding me about the quality of my homework.
I didn't bother defending myself, half-assing my written work freed me a lot of time that I could dedicate to stuff that actually managed to challenge me. I focused during classes, but that was mostly because I wanted to master each spell without the need to further practice it on my own. Again, it was only so that I could not waste time and energy that I could dedicate to my own exploring of the possibilities of the world of magic.
"My marks are good enough," I shrugged uncaringly, "and if I spent any more time on my assignments, I would never have discovered how to brew sunlight during the last year."
"Why do you think I haven't taken points or assigned detentions?" Slughorn joyfully pointed out as we turned yet another one of the endless corners that made up the bowels of the castle, "Merlin knows that as long as your grades are on this level, few professors will... how does the youth say it these days?... Oh yes, nag your ears off."
The portly wizard stopped briefly to nod in self-satisfaction before looking at me from above his shoulder as we started to walk down a stretch of staircase: "It is rather obvious that you could do much more if you actually bothered to try with your assignments, but the faculty tends to focus on those that risk to not pass their year, so you're in the clear for now. Your practical work is top-notch, even if your approach isn't always the one we instructed you to follow."
"Sir?" I asked, not understanding why he had breached the topic only to not share his opinion about it.
"The point is, Mr. Hagrid..." he sighed, "The faculty agrees that you're talented, extremely so, and it's bad enough that you are aware of it, but consider this your warning: coasting around your magical education will serve you ill on the long term. Flaunting your disinterest for both House Points and your marks isn't going to win you many friends among the professors."
He eyed me shrewdly then: "On a personal note, and I will deny if I'm asked, I'd say that it would be a pity to see your unique approach to magic being cut down by the... curriculum-orthodoxies... that roam the castle."
"Consider me warned..."
"...but you'll keep doing as you are." Slughorn completed my sentence for me with a satisfied nod, "You're ambitious enough for ten Slytherins, keep it up, but stop flaunting it."
Finally, we reached our destination, and an imposing oaken door let us through as we approached.
The room in which he led me was suitably large, even for a Head of House' Office, meaning that it spanned easily 20 meters in one direction and another fifteen in the other, while it was graced by the natural sunlight that shone through the wall-spanning windows. Everywhere I could look spoke of a rather cushy salary: imposing armchairs, no less than three fireplaces, even what appeared to be a golden brazier of all things, fur carpets, animated tapestries, and an assortment of knick-knacks that elegantly spanned across the furniture.
"Oh, here is where I hold my... I'm sure you've heard about it, don't make that false surprise face, Mr. Hagrid, I perfected it long before you were born you know?" he smiled shrewdly as I walked behind him: "Anyway, here is where I hold my Slug-club, and I make no secret that I'd have invited you in already, sadly, the Headmaster recommended to wait for the students to be in their third years before I... ahem."
When he faux-coughed instead of quoting the likely less-than-respectable term that Dippet used to refer to his power-hungry-master-manipulator-fat-web-spinner- habits, I scoffed: "I'd imagine that waiting for the students to see Hogsmeade would give them the occasion to start seeing and thinking about the wider world..."
Slughorn seemed unusually exuberant, even for his standards, when he showed me the last project he had started on. He led me across the veritable hall that he somewhat peddled as an 'office' into a smaller room, this one was instead a potion laboratory of respectable dimensions, one with stacked ingredients on numerous shelves that stretched up to the 6 meters tall ceiling, a single slanted window, and the most curious terrarium over a mahogany desk.
It looks like he made liberal use of enlarging charms to turn the office in his Slug-club's Hall and the closet into this. I thought withholding a bout of laughter.
"It appears similar to an extremely large butterfly but with a wolf-like skull in place of an ordinary head." the portly man talked excitedly as he pointed at the terrarium in which I spied a lime-like, spiked carapace, "When it is not flying with its spiked wings, the Swooping Evil shrinks into a green spiny cocoon. It can be quite dangerous, you see, as it is an encephalophage, it feeds on people's brains, and its tough green skin has the ability to deflect at least some spells. It secretes venom that erases memories."
The terrarium itself was a rather large glass sphere, in which seemed like a wizard had captured a stretch of jungle: there, he showed me the strange critter, which was resting inside of his green, spiny cocoon. That's a cool terrarium.
"The same creature used in New York?" I asked, referring mentally to the events I had researched in one of my first attempts to determine whether the events of Fantastical Beasts and Where to Find them depicted something that actually happened.
Surprisingly, the highly insular and heavily opinionated Daily Prophet had mentioned the last greatest Almost-Break of the Statute of Secrecy, even if I had to look for the event in past copies. Thank Merlin the Library keeps an archive of the Prophet's editions.
"The very same!" Slughorn laughed delightedly, "It is a very niche piece of information, I had no idea you were so well read on the happenings on the other side of the ocean."
But my thoughts went suddenly in a very specific direction even as I answered. Can I use it to erase Tom's memories? To give him a blank state? "The venom was diluted through the rain and saved the Statute of Secrecy, it was the highlight of the last few years."
"It was indeed! Speaking of highlight, it is extraordinary that when its venom is diluted enough, it targets only bad memories, if it is because the creature's nature as a brain-eater makes him immediately target those memories, making some suspect that the Aztecs..."
"I'm guessing that there is now another recipe for a forgetfulness potion under your name professor?" I interrupted with an apologetic, if eager, smile. I wanted to hear something actually interesting, the possible ascendancy of the green brain-eater did not fall under that category. Besides, I preferred doing my own research about any interesting magical creature that I came across. And while I was interested somewhat in insect-like ones, it was only because of the Acromantula egg that I had resting on my desk at home that I had dedicated any time at all at Creatures as a subject.
Even if selective crossbreeding could allow me precise ingredients for my brews. I realized it far too late to ask Slughorn for a complete explanation of the magical creature.
"I see that while your brain is active and running, your tongue still gets ahead of it." Slughorn reprimanded me with a piercing look that made me do my best to look bashful: "Well, no matter, it took me a whole year to get my hands on this exemplar, it cost a pretty Galleon, let me tell you, and I spent most of my free time in the last year researching this little critter."
"Hence the improved forgetfulness potion." I guessed. I really need a way to remain abreast of the most recent magical research that isn't Transfiguration Today.
The exalted Potions Professor smiled and slid towards me an open book, pointing excitedly on the index, where 'Daunt-Dimming Draught' was listed as a creation of one Horace Slughorn.
Fascinated by such a mild application of magic, which I guessed required precision in the dosage of each component that was going to be mind-blowing, I quickly turned to the page that listed the recently invented potion.
"Very delicate." I immediately commented as I skimmed the recipe. Two month-long process, necessity to simmer under the moon, usage of a crystal lens to enhance the light of Polar Star, which I'm guessing is used as a guiding tool for the potion... Fucking hell, this bastard applied my method to brew sunlight to the stars! I now know why he was telling me to keep doing whatever I wanted.
"It's revolutionary." I smiled thinly at the professor, and maybe for the first time, I was reminded that there was some worth to Slughorn's name. Potions were extremely complex things, an underpowered potion wasn't a Polijuice that transformed only your hair, it was a poisonous attempt at your life. And not quite for the first time, I reminded myself that he was a fat-bastard of an opportunist.
Returning to the Daunt-Dimming Brew, as Slughorn had explained in my very first lesson, a potion was a story. A broken story wasn't a potion, was a mess, and considered that potions were mostly brewed in order to be drunk, the consequences were quite dire. Obtaining a potion capable of targeting a very specific thing was a thing, Fred and George had managed that much with their sweets to cause and stop nosebleeds, Skelegro had an exact target.
The Daunt-Dimming Draught was a potion that not only targeted bad memories, but that simply scrubbed them a little, removing the edge of traumatic experiences. It was something that would not remove memories, for that sort of thing there were several options, no, this was... truly extraordinary. And I licked my lips wondering what effects it would have on me.
...bloodied coughs that echoed wetly within the circle of stones...
"There are less than ten people in this castle capable of recognizing the complexity of the effects of this potion, Mr. Hagrid, six of those are members of the staff, and I assure you, no 12 years old student has any business in understanding something of this magnitude." Slughorn's smile was outright predatory, "So I'll spare us the effort of pretending that you didn't notice my use of your solution to concentrate the properties of sunlight in this potion."
The Daunt-Dimming Draught would make my memories of the summer feel... in black and white, for lack of a better comparison.
...roots piercing the skin, eyes shattering like glass...
I shrugged, not seeing Slughorn's point while I tried to focus. Yeah, he was somewhat a cunt because he blatantly made use of something that should have been my intellectual property, but that would teach me why wizards were so damn secretive: "You turned my detentions into lessons, professor, I guess that the least I could do was sharing my reasoning."
"Quite." the Slytherin in front of me replied, "Nevertheless, Saint Mungo ordered a rather large amount of this particular brew, and I was wondering if you'd be interested in joining the other student that will be giving me a hand. It would be an invaluable learning opportunity."
So you get to sell shit brewed by me and another poor sod, while I have to bite my tongue and say thank you? Fuck you. "I'm honored professor, but I'd rather experiment on my own..."
I'd appreciate a dose of this Draught. I forced down the shiver that the horrific death of my 'father' brought me.
"The ingredients for this particular brew are quite rare, I'm afraid that purchasing them is quite beyond your means." the professor replied, letting the 'I'll catch you if you try to steal them' unsaid, "But I understand that you wouldn't do nothing for nothing. So if you're curious about a particular potion, I guess that I could spend the time your work would free for me to instruct you."
"That's... surprisingly fair of you professor." I blinked in surprise.
"Mr. Hagrid, we both know that you'll likely grow to be an exceptional potion Master, why wouldn't I nurture that talent now that nobody else would give you the time of the day?" Slughorn didn't even pretend to not have secondary objectives while helping me, he declared outright that he was lending me a hand in order to be kept on my 'good books' if I ever became a big voice in the larger world of potion-making. Or in the world at large. I corrected my previous statement.
I had accepted at the moment he had made the offer, but that didn't mean that I couldn't take a moment to balk at the sheer balls that Slughorn had to have in order to say such a proposition out loud: "Felix Felicis." I simply replied, remembering my frustrations in being unable to find the relative recipe during my first year at Hogwarts.
"Oho!" Slughorn laughed openly: "Nobody could ever doubt that you're a Slytherin! The old Felix, extremely difficult to brew, outright disastrous with the slightest error. But a deal is a deal, if you manage to make your colleague agree with this choice, then we'll brew a batch together."
Oh, right, another student. I sighed, preparing myself to having to deal with yet another no-name with a mental maturity that, to be fair, was on par with his or her age: "Who is this other student?"
"One Tom Riddle, an older Slytherin."
In hindsight, I don't know why I'm surprised.
A few days later, I was sitting in a comfortable armchair next to a fireplace in the secret room that Minerva, Tom, and I spent so much of our free time on during the previous year. It was still somewhat bland, but personality would come with use. Personally, I was eager to see what was going to happen.
Riddle was tapping his wand distractedly over an area of the wall while Minerva was dutifully stacking a large number of notes while sitting at her desk. I know that the idea was to have a private study room, but this silence is murdering me.
Riddle had quite readily accepted my choice of brewing Felix Felicis under the guide of Slughorn, and so we were spending much of our free tie working together as we assisted our head of house in brewing the potion he invented with the aid of my discoveries. But as a consequence of our prolonged closeness, we were both a bit less tolerating of the other. Personally, I was starting to get twitchy after a few minutes spent near him when I didn't strictly need to.
"How do you enchant musical instruments to play?" I asked distractedly as I finally gave in to my impulses and selected one of the potions I had brewed for recreational purposes. Getting tipsy will make this more bearable. Fucking hell, it's 1941, acceptable music isn't around yet.
While I tried to console myself with the idea that there was a rather large number of live concerts in my future, Minerva took pity on me and deigned herself to answer: "With your wand?" Oh fantastic: sarcasm.
"So runes have nothing to do with wards?" I watched carefully as Tom waved his yew wand over the bare rock: he was attempting to figure out how to build a secret entrance that wouldn't require us to travel each time to the 4th floor, but it was a work in progress. Hogwarts was quirky, but didn't allow just anyone to rearrange it: we had pushed it by walling off an entire corridor, and my working theory was that we needed the Rùnda to become a bit more set in its ways before we could consider it an entity like the Common Rooms. I only hope it doesn't require 1000 years.
"Were you sleeping while I placed the notice-me-not on the Rùnda's entrance last year?" Tom rolled his eyes tiredly at me.
"More or less." Minerva replied distractedly, trying to stop me and Tom from bickering, "Once you're capable enough you can ward something without the need for runes, in the same way you can enchant or curse an object."
"Because you understand the symbols enough to use them only in your head?" I wondered, thinking about 'muffliato', a spell that Harry Potter used willy nilly even while he was on the run. But this explanation from Minerva actually erased several questions I had been unable to answer. It was the same principle behind my workings with fire during the previous academic year and my ritual in the summer. Keeping in mind the collection of meanings associated with fire had made me capable of simply bending the flame of the lit candle to my will, and the ritual... bone and wand and blood... I shuddered, and I didn't know if it was because of disgust or elation, forcing myself to focus on the environment around me.
"The difference between enchanting and warding are more in the classification of their effects than in anything else. Wards are placed over an area, and the most long-lasting tend to be tied to a fixed element within said area. They're anchored to a fixed element, and their effect is turned outwards, affecting something in their proximity." Riddle's tone had turned pedantic than, smirking subtly even as he didn't turn to face me, "Egyptians didn't bother hiding their wards, and displayed their hieroglyphs freely, but that was before Rome and the diffusion of wand-wavers."
"Rome was where wands actually got started?" I asked surprised, taking another sip from my chosen beverage, luxuriating in the taste for a moment. Rome is responsible for the diffusion of wand-lore across the world. That actually made sense, before the Statute of Secrecy, the supremacy of a country had to be somewhat intertwined with the local magical population, be they creatures or wizardkind. Still, this doesn't explain why nobody mentioned this.
"How could they conquer the world otherwise?" Minerva actually stopped whatever she was studying to look at me with something akin to disbelief: "You have the most curious lacunes in your knowledge, Rubeus."
"Well, there have been a lot of conquerors in history, Alexander, Temujin..." I frowned ignoring her gibe while slowly coming to a stop. The great conquerors were single people, it wasn't impossible that their charisma dragged in their wake some wizards willing to help them. Rome was a whole different thing: it was an empire that lasted through the generations, indicating some strong magical presence among the Romans' ranks. It was like comparing a single wave to the slow mounting of the tide.
"In the vast planes of Asia, witches and wizards were more focused on a tribal-like use of magic, rituals to the Sky and other such half-religious things. And while the priests that followed Alexander's army were wizards, they mostly believed their power to be given from the gods, and so far away from Greece, they didn't feel capable of much. Besides, Alexander's bouts of madness are well documented, from the curse he unleashed when he cut the Giordan Knot to the Fading Curse that killed him in the end. The local wizards broke the greek priests' wards over the army around the time fo Bucefalo's death." Riddle explained again.
"Why couldn't Binns talk about this stuff instead of goblins?" Minerva's rhetorical question did nothing to hide her academic interest, and spurned another question out of me.
"Because before Hogwarts there wasn't an actual sense of community of wizardkind, was it?" the realization struck me like lightning, children growing together, learning together, was bound to have massive effects on society. Before Hogwarts, magic was likely either self-taught, passed from master to apprentice, or kept within a single bloodline. But it was a fragmented knowledge, likely intermixed with half-baked ritualisms that didn't actually affect the magic itself, or that outright limited it.
Riddle's youthful face turned towards me with something akin to respect plastered on his features: "There was not."
I could picture it easily, in a younger world, one in which Human Rights weren't a thing, power was dangerous whenever it wasn't firmly grasped in your hand. That meant that families of wizards hid even from each other, at least until they felt capable enough to face a threat. But then again, there would be a family capable of Transfiguration, one capable of Potions, and so on. The sheer magnitude of Hogwarts' founding hadn't hit me yet. Historically, the creation of a community, that then evolved into the concept of 'magical people' was monumental.
"How old is Apparition? Or the magic of Portkey?" I frowned heavily as another piece of the strange world I was into fell into its place, before downing the first gulp of the alcoholic beverage I had chosen from my brews of the previous year. It was a silvery-white concoction, smooth and sweet: I remembered brewing it focusing moonlight into milk enriched by the tiniest amount of whiskey.
"Why do you ask?" Minerva turned her head sideways at my non-sequitur.
"Because what sense of kinship there can be between unknown families of magic practitioners when they're not limited to a single area?" I asked, noticing that Riddle's eyes shone with an understanding that had no place on the face of a 14 years old kid.
"There are, and likely were, many ways to travel large distances." he cautiously replied, "Even before wizards called them Apparition or Portkey. Why, there are many stories of doors that didn't lead anywhere in the vicinity."
"Before Hogwarts there wasn't an actual sense of community of wizardkind." I repeated dully, "Don't you see? This school changed the very world!"
"How?" Minerva sat on a freshly transfigured stone bench, letting out a discreet *yawn* before returning her attention to me.
"Because after voices of Hogwarts traveled across the world, wizards and witches everywhere, that by that time were at most of the dimension of small covens, were either envious or fearful of the implications. With adult mages to keep watch and instruct the children, the parents were free to attend their own business, to claim territory..." Riddle's voice explained the line of thought that I had just stumbled upon like it was obvious, revealing a terrifying insight into the workings of social groups.
Here's the wizard that turned the purist sentiment into the purist Movement. My brief bout of admiration for Tom died immediately as I thought about the war that he would eventually unleash: "So they built their own schools, mostly because at the time the more influential families of wizardkind were intertwined with the local muggle government. So there was an interest in forging the equivalent of a potential militant force capable of holding back invading wizards. It's no coincidence that the Roman Empire, at least the western one, fell in 476: by then the knowledge of wands was somewhat widespread, and the local provinces of the empire were eventually subsumed by local lords, which may have collaborated with a local branch of wizards."
"The Bizantine Empire fell almost a thousand years after that though." Tom's frown briefly displayed the effort he was putting in piecing together the history of the world in a different way than the methodical one depicted in books.
"And merely two hundred years after that we have the Statute of Secrecy." Minerva managed to catch up with our reasoning, displaying once more why she was a fucking badass, "Between 990 A.D. and 1692 A.D. enough communities of wizards formed around the world, and learned to communicate with each other enough to establish an organization to decide in the interest of the witches and wizards of the whole world."
"Liechtenstein isn't a member of the ICW." Tom noted with a smirk, explaining at once why my baffled 'why the fuck is it not?' had stolen a snort out of him: "The magical community of Liechtenstein protested because Bonaccord wanted to ban troll hunting and give rights to trolls. A tribe of Mountain Trolls had been causing a lot of trouble in Liechtenstein, so their wizarding community contested Bonaccord's appointment, and refused to join the Confederation as a result."
"Goblins too aren't members, are they?" I asked curiously, receiving a disdainful scoff from Minerva.
"Of course not, it's the International Confederation of Wizards."
"And yet the goblins manage wizardkind's gold." I pointed out, "Be careful of who you're disdainful of." I was still baffled by the mechanisms behind the use of Galleons. How did it make any sense that a job as relatively 'normal' as a bank fell completely under a single species' control? "Besides, I'm pretty sure that goblins have some kind of agreement with the ICW, otherwise there would be some other bank in Diagon, wouldn't it?"
Tom smiled mockingly at Minerva's reddened cheeks, making me wiggle my finger in his direction in an 'I'm-warning-you' fashion: "You shouldn't underestimate muggles either." I laughed softly while I stared at my Slytherin companion, who seemed repulsed by my words.
"Why? They're lesser in every way that counts, they..."
"They manage the impossible every day without the aid of magic." I swirled my glass with a smile on my lips: "Newton's Law, Electromagnetism... we don't really have to care about those, do we? We only need a little swish in order to ignore Physics. Instead, the muggles figured out how to harness those same principles. You know of their..."
"I know of their planes! I know how they rain fire and death indiscriminately! I know how their machines poison the air and clog the lungs!" he hissed, rage burning deep in his eyes, as the carefree tone of our conversation took a sharp dive for the worse.
"Their progress does appear to come at the price of others, doesn't it?" Yeah, I'm not touching that topic with a ten-foot pole. Fucking hell, the bombings have started this year, have they not? Nevertheless, I refused to give the 'let's kill everything' attitude of Riddle any room to breathe: "But then again, wizardkind sits upon the back of all the other magical races."
"That's... that's nonsense! Are you talking about creatures now? Maybe half-breeds too?"
"Do you know what defines 'sentience?" I cut smoothly before he could start a tirade to leave my ears ringing. And I really don't want to risk Minerva being seduced by whatever philosophy Riddle can pull off right now.
"What?" Minerva had lagged a bit behind because of our sharp change of topic, but my non-sequitur gave her a comfortable excuse to ask for clarification without hurting her own pride.
Tom, which I knew couldn't care less about anyone but himself, simply frowned and turned his eyes towards the fire burning merrily in the fireplace as he finally stepped away from the wall and sat in his favorite armchair. My fellow Slytherin remained quiet, most likely because he wasn't willing to let anyone know about his sociopathic tendencies, understandably so. If even he's aware of it. I amended my previous thought. But for some reason, Tom Riddle didn't strike me as a... particularly self-aware person.
"Technically, even a tree is 'sentient', because it senses, in fact, the world around it." I gestured casually with one hand, "If we need to discriminate among living beings, which is somewhat mandatory unless we want to destroy the very idea of civilization worldwide, then you should focus on 'sapience'." Fucking hell this brew is affecting me more than I thought.
"Why would it be mandatory?" Minerva sat on her armchair next to the fire, eyeing me shrewdly while Tom expertly hid his natural reactions to the topic I had breached.
"We reshape the environment to please us. Both out of convenience, and because we can. But ants build their own anthills, do they not? In order to have a civilization of any kind, a people must bend a section of the environment, it doesn't matter if the people are nomad or if they stay still, by civilizing a land, the native wildlife pays the price."
"Should we live in mud-huts then?" Riddle scoffed before taking a sip from his glass of wine.
"Don't be deliberately obtuse, that's not the point. The point is, do we need to bend the world around us in order to make space for our civilization? The reasons don't truly matter in this conversation, it may be for resources or simply because it is a convenient location." I took a long gulp of my tankard, enjoying the buzzing warmth that it carried.
"Yeah, I can see what you're meaning, even if your delivery could use some work." Minerva turned her head to look into the fire, frowning lightly as she considered my words.
"And we agree that it is somewhat of a... pity, or outright waste, to ruin the life of someone else without reason?" I needed them, refusing to let the topic die uselessly.
"What are you going on about now?" Riddle sighed, carefully exuding the right mixture of pandering and annoyance to push anyone into changing topics, lest they appear an idiot.
Unfortunately for him, I couldn't care less about how I appeared: "Well, following my logic: we want civilization, so someone must pay the price, if only because of the limited nature of the world. Then we also agree that killing off portions of the planet, which include but are not limited to other races, either muggles or creatures or simple plants, is a waste. The next logical step would be to ensure that our civilization doesn't kill without need, and that when it does, only the less important things are killed."
"I don't think you can put the life of different beings on a scale and then decide which to sacrifice on the altar of your... how are you calling this philosophy of yours? Cheap Civilization?" Minerva sniped at my admittedly cold logic.
"The name of my half-drunk philosophy is meaningless for now, but focusing on your objection: if I were to kill a Hippogriff, you'd be sad, outraged, or something equally irritating. If I were to kill a bush of roses, however, nobody would bat an eye."
"You can't seriously think..." the Gryffindor witch appeared incensed.
"I don't. But you've made my point: what makes it worse to kill a hippogriff instead of a bush of roses? Is it the complexity of the creature? Is it because the beast is magical and you can pet it, while the roses have no inherent magic of their own and you can just as well smell another kind of flower?" I looked at her expectantly.
"But it's obvious!"
"If it's obvious there shouldn't be any problem with putting it into words." Tom pointed out, his eyes now thoughtfully staring into the fire.
"Is it because the hippogriff would feel pain? I assure you that plants feel pain, in their own way, only because they cannot scream, it doesn't mean that they don't mind." I insisted while taking another sip of my... Moonsilk. I decided, enjoying the smooth texture of the beverage. I'm calling this one Moonsilk.
"I hate when you get all philosophical." Minerva faux-huffed, but she seemed to enjoy the effort she had to put into our conversation. Talking about magic was always interesting, doing magic even more so, but I was the first one to breach the topic of 'philosophy'. Not many people, least of all teenagers, were prone to question the mentality of those around them or even their own as long as they were part of a group with the same ideas.
And the conversation flows so easily too! I was honestly curious about history, but being able to blatantly poke the mentality of the future Dark Lord, while dragging Minerva around for the ride, maybe making her think about something not Transfiguration-related, was a nice bonus.
"Though." I shrugged uncaringly as an answer to Minerva's faux-indignation. Admittedly, the beverage that I had affectionally called Moonsilk seemed to be singularly efficient in pushing one's mind towards self-analysis and general reminiscing of 'What-ifs'.
"You were talking about sentience earlier. You want a criterium upon which you can measure the worth of a species?" Tom clarified, receiving a nod as an answer.
"I appreciate that you're using the term 'species' instead of race."
"I'm not categorizing wizardkind with the same box as muggles." Tom scowled at my implication, making me snort.
"Sub-race then?" I mocked him, "Grindelwald would love to chat with you. Or even Hitler, now that I think about it."
"Sapience." Minerva frowned, guessing where I was going with my tipsy analysis of the world and our place in it.
"Yes! The muggles have tracked the origin of mankind, you know? Our species is named as Homo Sapiens. They've tracked what mankind was before our first appearance: Australopithecus, Homo Erectus, Homo Sapiens Neanderthalensis, Homo Sapiens, and finally Homo Sapiens Sapiens. But what is sapience?" I let the silence settle for a few seconds before straightening in my seat.
"Is it the ability to 'speak'? Parrots and Crows are capable of saying words, but that hardly qualifies them on the same plan of mankind, don't you think? Even an Acromantula, once it grows old enough, is capable of talking." I spoke remembered Aragog from the books of Harry Potter, "But I don't know if I'd place them on the same plan of Veela or Merpeople. Or even Sphinxes for that matter."
I took a deep gulp of my drink, finally finishing it, "And yet, I'd guess that phoenixes understanding of the world around us outstrips our own, wouldn't you agree?"
"You were aggravating by mere virtue of your existence, now it seems that you've actually engaged in being consciously annoying." Tom snapped as he rose from his seat, "I have... something to do."
As the Dark-lord to be fled from our verbal joust, I smiled in self-satisfaction. You gave cognitive dissonance to a 14 years old orphan, feel proud of yourself, yeah, just like that.
"You pushed him on purpose." Minerva pursed her lips with a reprimanding tone.
"I did." I admitted, "He needed to address the bombings of London sooner rather than later." I tried to justify myself.
"Bombings?"
"Who is now the one with curious lacunes in her knowledge?" I grinned at the Griffindor witch, before eyeing contemplatively my reserves of beverages.
"I think you've drunk enough." she stopped me before I could summon anything.
"Sorry," I smiled self-deprecatingly, "with all the extra potions that I'm brewing with Tom, the less time we spend this close to each other, the better. Luckily the Felix will need to rest for the entirety of December, so I'll be able to leave for Winter Break." I need to start traveling towards Albania, and it will be line-of-sight teleportation for now. I need to set up checkpoints to speed up my traveling in any case. Didn't Harry Potter side-apparate a dying Dumbledore across the country in his sixth year?
"I admit I am somewhat jealous at the thought of private advanced lessons with a professor." Minerva scrunched her nose while her eyes turned towards my carefully labeled brews, "I can only imagine how would it be to do the same with professor Dumbledore..."
"Well, it's not exactly rainbows and unicorns, you know? We basically run around in order to shorten the time needed to brew stuff that Slughorn then sells to St. Mungo, and many of those brews have to be completed at night under the open sky." I tried to deflect.
"By the way, how does it go with the Animagus thing?" I asked, deciding to address the wistful tone in my friend's voice instead of simply ignoring it, "Tom and I helped set up the research, but then between my brews, the Rùnda, and whatever Tom does in his free time we kind of left you alone to punch through tome after tome."
"I'm done with the theory." she admitted with a thin smile, "and I'm comfortable enough with animal-to-animal transfiguration that I was going to get started soon with human to animal, but I'd prefer to have some solid ability with Transfiguration-Reversal before attempting stuff on myself."
That's fucking advanced. I thought with a whistle. As Dumbledore said: reversing a transfiguration wasn't something that your everyday joe could hope to master. I really have to read through N.E.W.T. Transfiguration Theory.
"That calls for a celebration then!" I rose from my seat with little to no wobbling due to the alcohol I had ingested, "You're a 15 years old Scottish witch! I say it's high time that you taste my whiskey-based brews!"
AN
Okay, another piece of worldbuilding here, a bit of character exploration setting the general tone for the academic year. You'll see what the MC managed to obtain as a result of his summer's ritual in the next chapter, because as he stated, he's hopping home for the holidays.
As I've said, I don't want to make this fic entirely and only about magic like I did for 'The Bigger Picture', for a variety of reasons. So I'm using the routine at Hogwarts to set up character interaction and a bit of world-building, while it's obvious that the true adventures will be outside of the school, like the summer's ritual. There is no adventure-plot for regular years spent at school unless you enjoy teen-angst and drama (which is not my case), and if the Forbidden Forest was actually deadly for the students, I'm supposing that there would be some kind of actual magical barrier between it and the castle. Given the fact that canon!hagrid went in there to punch trolls, that harry&co went in and out on yearly basis, and that Fred and George are openly reprimanded that Forbidden actually means Forbidden, but are otherwise left alone by the staff, I'm short of things to throw at the MC to make his schooling years life-threatening amd thusly particularly engaging.
I've seen countless Snape!mentor or Dumbledore!mentor fics, but not one in which Slughorn actually teaches: so in this chapter we see the first open maneuvers he does to reach out to a student aware enough to spot manipulation when it's thrown at his face.
Is Minerva changed enough to affect her Animagus form? What should she become? Ideas?
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