"Lookit it all!" Derek crowed, grinning widely as he danced around. "Just lookit!"
"I see it," Hermione said, amused. "There's a lot."
Hermione had contacted the hedgewitches as soon as possible in order to help them prepare for the upcoming ritual, when they would be beginning setting their silver wards for protection from werewolves. When she'd arrived, Derek had already assembled his friends as well as the necessary materials, and he'd been grinning widely at her as soon as she came into sight, with Clover at his side with her arms folded, smirking.
"There's a shitton of silver there," Derek informed her, cackling.
"That's the proper measurement term," Worm said solemnly, Argin snickering at his side. "One metric shit-ton."
Hermione laughed. "If you say so."
The goblins had been trading in silver with the purebloods, but Hermione had not realized just how much trading they must have been doing. Parchment and ink weren't that expensive, and she wondered if the purebloods were drastically overcharging the goblins, or if the goblins had just decided to document all of goblin history and beyond and buy all the parchment they could get their hands on.
Either way, as a result, there was a giant stack of silver ingots that the hedgewitches had retrieved earlier.
"A few of 'em didn't want to give it up," Derek said. "Longbottom and Selwyn were fine, but Nott and Rosier were almost a problem."
"Almost a problem," Clover said. She smiled nastily. "They seemed to rethink their choices at the last second."
Hermione noticed, for the first time, Clover was wearing a wand openly. The hedgewitches wore fake wands to blend in occasionally, Hermione knew, but it was obvious Clover was wearing a real one - probably to help intimidate the landlords. Hermione didn't know whether to feel alarmed or proud of her, so she settled on sharing a smirk with the hedgewitch, who smirked back, proud.
"So what's next?" Jerran wanted to know. "We got the bunch of silver. Now what?"
"We'll have to melt it and pour it into molds," Hermione said, frowning. She glanced around. "You have a blacksmith around?"
"'Course," Derek said, standing up. "That's Blackbeard, up and around o'er here."
With Derek leading the way, Hermione levitated the pile of silver bullion, almost staggering for a moment as she acclimated to the weight. This amount of silver was heavy, and she walked quickly, careful not to let her magic falter or any of the silver bars fall.
The little village they were walking through was quaint, charming, and positively medieval with many of the houses made of wattle and daub. Some of them had a window or two, but the houses were all relatively small.
The hedgewitches didn't seem to use their houses much, though, Hermione noted. Even now, there were children playing in the streets, kicking around what looked like a weighted leather balloon, and there were adults in a circle under some trees, around a giant cauldron that smelled distinctly more like a stew than any potion Hermione knew of. If everything was done and shared in the collective for the most part, Hermione mused, maybe they would only really need their homes for bathing and sleeping and changing, or in the winter. In that case, it wouldn't matter if your house was small, if you were hardly in it at all.
Around the corner on the far side of the village was the blacksmith, and it was immediately apparent why Derek had called him 'Blackbeard'. The blacksmith was a tall, burly man with a very full black beard. He looked like a pirate or a drawing of a stereotypical blacksmith come to life, and Hermione was immensely amused at the picture.
They seemed to have caught him while he was cleaning out his outdoor workshop, but at some point when he spotted them, he froze, staring, then started laughing, letting out a warm, hearty chuckle.
"This the silver, then?" he asked. He looked at Hermione, eyes sparkling. "And I suppose you're the little wizard-witch who'll tell us how this needs forged?"
"This is Hermione," Derek announced, clapping her on the back. The sudden impact made Hermione trip, and she had to hastily set the pile of silver down before her levitation failed. "She's the one who's gonna help us set up the werewolf wards."
"Well, we'll all owe you a mighty boon, then," Blackbeard said, smiling. He had a friendly manner about him, despite the fact he could probably snap her in half with forearms that size. "I'll admit, when we dug up one of the old runes, it was so tarnished we could scarcely make out what it'd once been."
"That's okay," Hermione said. "I found information about it in some old library books. I don't think it will be hard. I'll show you."
Hermione had painstakingly copied the details and drawings needed onto a new parchment, including weights and dimensions and designs. She pulled it out now, unrolling it on Blackbeard's workbench, and they all crowded around to see.
"The core shape is either going to be a square or a circle," Hermione said, pointing. "We'll need both of these type of sigils to make it work. Rather more circles than squares, I'd say, but a bunch of them all."
"That one looks like a diamond, though," Argin commented, frowning. "What do we need the square for?"
Hermione blinked, looking over at him. Argin was frowning at the parchment in earnest, and Hermione's eyebrows rose high.
"A diamond like that is a square," she said, turning the paper 45 degrees. Argin blinked as the parchment shifted, then reacting with genuine surprise.
"Will you look at that!" he exclaimed. "It's both! Wicked!"
Hermione carefully didn't comment and just rotated the paper back around.
"Each ward is going to weigh about ten pounds," she said. "Each side needs to be eight inches long, with the circle ones having a diameter of 8 inches long. They'll be about half an inch thick."
"Easy enough," Blackbeard said, looking it over. "What about your designs?"
"That's what I was unsure about," Hermione admitted. "Is it possible to cast the metal with the design on the wards? Or do they need drawn on individually?"
"It depends on the magic you're aiming for," Blackbeard said, shrugging. "If the magic is carried by the shape and the silver, we'll be alright just casting them, but if it's caused by intent, you'll need to etch them by hand."
Hermione looked up at Blackbeard slowly, surprised.
"That makes sense," she said slowly. "Do you… do you do much magical smithing?"
Blackbeard grinned, scratching his head.
"Not really," he said modestly. "Just… I remember some of what I heard about at home. Before I left."
"Before you left?" Hermione asked.
Blackbeard winced, then offered a small smile.
"I'm what the wizards call a squib," he told her. "Here, I'm just one of the hedges, but I did grow up in a magical household."
"You did?" Hermione said, surprised. "Which one?"
"Bastard offshoot of the Blacks," he said. "My dad was Lycoris Black's bastard, I think? He kept the name 'Black', which infuriated his dad and uncle, but he ran away out here and kept it. Makes 'Blackbeard' fit me all the more, doesn't it?"
He turned side to side to show off his beard, fluttering his eyelashes, and Hermione laughed.
"You're right, of course," she agreed. "Luckily, the protection will be all in the ward and the metal itself, so we can just make each one without intention."
"So we'll need to make a mold, then," Blackbeard said, nodding. He looked back at his workshop. "Come on."
He led them over to the side of his workshop, where there were some low, flat stones around, as well as a smooth wooden table, legs pounded firmly into the ground.
"Here's some clay," he said, plopping a heavy chunk of clay onto the flat boards. "We'll need to make the molds with this and fire it first."
"So what are we sculpting?" Clover asked, experimentally squishing the clay in her hands. "Are we making the mold itself? Or the ward part?"
"The negative," Blackbeard said. He looked at Hermione. "This'd be easier if we had one silver one to press into the clay and copy. D'you think you can make one yourself?"
Hermione's eyes went wide.
"I—I've never used a forge," she said quickly. "I don't think that's a good idea."
The hedgewitch laughed.
"Not with the forge," Blackbeard said kindly. "With magic. You can do Transfiguration, right?"
"Oh," Hermione said, blinking. "Well. I suppose I could try."
She sat down at the table as well, the smooth stone serving as a low bench. Hesitantly, she duplicated her parchment paper, turned it over, and withdrew a muggle pencil from her bag.
"If we need a real one, it'll have to be life size," she said, taking out the geometry set Harry had gifted her so long ago. She pulled out the ruler. "So we need eight-inch sides…"
Slowly, Hermione drew a life-size sketch of each rune: one large square, and one large circle. She went over the outlines firmly, rounding the corners of the square slightly, before moving on to the rune inside of them.
"These aren't runes I use," Clover said, watching. "What're these ones?"
"These are Celtic runes, for protection," Hermione said, drawing. "These are what the old Druids around here used to use. We usually use the Elder Futhark runes for magic now, as they're more specific, but big, heavy runes like this will help connect the magic to the earth and make it last longer."
"It looks complicated," Jerran said, frowning.
"It is a bit," Hermione admitted. "Just be glad we don't have to etch them all by hand."
The first was a Celtic Shield knot, an odd knot that looked square but was still somehow round. It had four little areas, and each one a quarter-sized wedge with one right angle and a curvy hypotenuse part made up of two curved lines. The middle of each wedge had a knotted part that connected to the surrounding wedges, making a square shape come through within the overall circle shape. Hermione was careful to detail which way the lines went, where it went over or under itself, while briefly wondering just how, exactly, that was going to work when it was poured out in metal.
The second one was a Quarternary knot. This was a knot that looked like a circle, but it was actually rather square in shape. This one was a bit easier to draw – the circle in the middle connected only with itself, and just interloped with the rest of the knot.
After she'd sketched out what she needed, she levitated over a couple ingots of silver, frowned, and pulled out her wand.
"I'm not entirely sure how well this is going to go," she admitted. She looked up at Blackbeard. "The pattern on them should be recessed, don't you think?"
"If they're going to be channels that fill up with blood and magic?" Blackbeard said. "Most likely."
Biting her lip, Hermione waved her wand.
Transfiguring the silver ingot into a large square wasn't hard, nor was a circle. Once she had the base shapes down, she shifted them aside to better look at her work, standing and carefully tracing the knot design into the metal with her wand.
"Over here, under here…" she muttered, wincing. "This one goes over…"
"Is this how normal Transfiguration works?" Clover wanted to know.
"Not really," Hermione said, distracted. "But when you get good enough, you can kind of feel some things out."
Once she was done, she grimaced down at her work.
"I mean, I have it, but it looks a mess," she admitted. "I don't know what I'm doing, here."
Blackbeard laughed.
"Here, we'll work together," he told her, coming to stand behind her. He took her hand in his to guide her, engulfing her hand with his massive palm. "If you transfigure, I'll trace the design, and we'll get it right this time."
"Okay…"
Blackbeard had a much better idea of what he was doing. Hermione had traced the shape with her wand, following one smooth path, but it hadn't turned out well at all, looking wrong somehow. With Blackbeard drawing, lifting and replacing her wand as he came to crossings, the knot slowly started looking right again.
"You're not just drawing, you're knotting," he explained as he traced. "Over, under, over, under. You're weaving the lines together, not just putting them down."
The Shield knot looked perfect once Blackbeard had taken a pass at it. Invigorated, Hermione took a try on the Quarternary knot, only to fail.
"This one doesn't weave!" she complained. "I did it right, but it looks all wrong."
Blackbeard chuckled, and once more took her hand.
"Here, we'll draw the circle first," he said. "Now, we'll decide we're going to go over the ring when we go out to make a point, and then under when we come back in."
"We'll go over this channel in the middle, though," Hermione pointed out. "So shouldn't we go over there, and then under on the way back out?"
"Let's just focus on making the crossings on the ring all look the same," Blackbeard said easily, "and then we'll see how weaving the middle comes out."
He made it sound so simple, and under his hand, it was – the knot came out effortlessly. Hermione felt a jab of jealousy – she'd wanted to impress the others by effortlessly producing a beautiful rune in silver for them to use the first time she tried.
She sighed, shoving the envy aside. At least they had what they needed.
"Now we press this into the clay," Blackbeard instructed, and the others took the silver runes. "Make sure to press the clay deep into the nooks and crannies to fill them out."
"How are we going to get the silver out?" Jerran complained. "It's not going to peel out easily."
"Once the mold is fired, we'll melt the original one out," Blackbeard assured him. "After that, we'll coat the mold with something so the silver will come out easier when we cast it."
Once the two big clay molds were complete, Blackbeard took them and fired up his kiln once after the molds were safely inside.
"It'll take a while to get up to temperature," he told them. "I'll handle this part. If you want to come back in a few days, I'll make sure to have them all poured for you."
"How long is 'a while'?" Clover wanted to know. "I'm not that impatient. We can wait."
Blackbeard laughed. "It takes about eight hours to get up to temperature, and then another twelve to cool."
Clover blanched. "…okay, maybe I am a bit impatient…"
"Is it the time that's important, or the temperature?" Hermione asked. "I could use magic to heat it up faster, but if it's a process that happens over time, that probably wouldn't help."
Blackbeard considered.
"I think heating it too quick could trap moisture inside," he advised. "Better not."
"We can practice channeling the ley line again while we wait," Clover said.
"Or literally anythin' else," Derek pointed out. "He said it'll take a few days to finish 'em all."
"We need to prepare for the ritual!" Clover objected. "It's best we're all ready."
"We've told everyone," Jerran grumbled. "They'll be ready, Clover. Most all 'em need to do is bleed."
Hermione was looking at Blackbeard closely, curious.
"Can you touch the ley line?" she asked. "Have you been able to use magic with it?"
Blackbeard paused.
"I have touched it," he said carefully. "I can hold it. I just can't use it."
"You can hold it, but you can't use it?" Hermione repeated, surprised. "Really?"
"Really." He looked uncomfortable. "Like I said. I'm a squib. It didn't exactly come as a surprise."
The fact he could hold magic at all came as a surprise to Hermione. She withdrew her wand.
"Do you mind if I cast a spell?" she asked. "I'm curious to see how your core interacts with the ley line magic."
Blackbeard waved a hand. "Whatever you like."
Casting Snape's visualization spell, Hermione leaned forward, eager to see what she would see.
At first glance, Blackbeard's magic container looked normal – fairly large, but he was a large man. He was full of magic, and it had the feel of the energy from the ley lines, and it was only when she looked closer did she realize the issue – he didn't have a magical core.
She flicked her wand, spreading the visualization to the hedgewitches. They each had a magical core and container, and their cores, though weak, had been able to spin on their own and generate some magic before. They'd managed to reverse the spin on their cores to harmonize with the ley line magic, but they still had cores – whereas Blackbeard had none.
Was that the difference, then? Hermione wondered. A squib could hold magic, and interact with magic, but could produce or control none of their own. Without a magical core to direct and control magic, a squib wouldn't be able to get magic to go where they wanted it to go, even if they had a wand and a container brimming full of magic.
That had to be the difference, then – squibs could still feel and hold magic, while muggles were born completely without magical containers at all, oblivious to magic's existence entirely. Squibs couldn't direct magic properly, but they could at least feel it and know it was there.
Hermione wondered if it was some sort of birth defect. If there was a magical gene, for example, did too many copies of it cause a magical deformity in utero? Or was it a recessive trait on a gene, and not a genetic issue with an extra chromosome at all?
Not for the first time, Hermione wondered if any DNA studies had been done with magical blood. She sincerely doubted it, but oh, she wished there had! It was fascinating to consider what scientists might find. For just that reason, though, she doubted it had ever been studied – the last thing the wizarding world would want would be for the muggles to discover that some of them were unquestionably different in their very genetic makeup.
"Can the runes all be done by Saturday?" Hermione asked hopefully. "The full moon's that night, and it'll be the optimal time to set up the runes."
"Maybe." Blackbeard stroked his beard thoughtfully. "Possibly. Depends how good the weather is, and how many I can pour."
Clover looked sideways at Hermione. "Anything you could do to help with that?"
Hermione bit her lip.
"If you owl me once the molds are done, there's a chance I could magically duplicate them," she said. "That way, more than one of each can be poured at once."
Blackbeard laughed.
"That'd be a huge help," he told her. "If you can make me more molds, I can make as many runes as we need."
"Make more than we need," Clover stressed. "We're doing the biggest villages on Sunday, but we'll have to do the other villages next month, too."
"I'll melt all the silver we get," Blackbeard agreed. He was suddenly serious. "Silver wards will go a long way toward keeping everybody safe. And I've seen too many tragedies from what can happen when werewolves get into a town."