AN: Chapter four. Enjoy!

I ended up heading to bed soon after retiring to my room. I manually unpacked and reorganized all of my notes, which included sticking a few on the wall for easy access. I had fully intended on doing some more breaking down of the formulas, as well as working on constructing a spell or two. Although my main project was not specifically spell-crafting, I did dabble in it a bit. The common joke about Arithmancers is that we all think we can figure out the universe given a week's time. It's a fair comment to make, albeit a backhanded one.

I was currently stuck on a spell that would work as a half Apparation of sorts. The caster would "blink" out of existence for a moment, before popping back in the exact same location. It's specifically designed as a Charm, so it wouldn't be stopped by any wards. Well, that's the theory at least. It's complex as all hell, and it's not something I'm willing to guess at, since any mistakes I make will be inevitably taken out on my body if I ever choose to test the spell.

I started at the parchment for a good fifteen minutes, thinking about possibilities and risks. My eyes started crossing soon after, and I'm not one to ignore the call of a bed unless I'm actually making progress, so I once again threw myself onto my bed, and entered the land of Morpheus.

"Daniel!" Matthew's knocking on my door woke me up.

My response was a noise somewhere between a grunt, a groan, and an agitated "What?"

"I'm leaving for the day. I'm collecting some plant samples for the backyard."

"All right!" I called back out as I stood up. "I need to do some shopping anyways."

"Do you-" Matthew paused as I opened the door. He continued at a softer tone. "Do you need a lift?"

He was considerate, if nothing else. "Nah. I have a workaround for the main places I go to."

"What's that?"

I summoned a photo album from the top drawer of my dresser. "I have pictures of the main places I go to regularly. Which reminds me..." I summoned my camera. "I need to take a picture of the front of the house."

"Do you carry the album around with you?" He'd taken it, and was leafing through the dozen or so photos I'd kept thus far.

"Nope. I just keep a few in my wallet. If I need to go somewhere in particular, and I don't have it in my wallet, then I just pop back here first."

"What happens if the place changes?" He asked as he handed back the album.

I shrugged. "It doesn't matter. If you think about the trees around your childhood home, and you picture them in Springtime, but it's Fall or Winter, do you have any difficulty Apparating there?"

"I don't think so..."

I walked past him into the living room, and headed for the front door. "What if you haven't been somewhere in a few years? It's inevitably changed, hasn't it?"

"I hadn't thought of it that way." He mused as he followed me outside.

"Most people don't. You want to go somewhere, and so you do. It's only when something gets in the way of that happening..." I paused. I'd phrased that wrong. "When something interrupts that process... That's when you have to think about it. Until then, you're just going to keep on doing what you're doing. There's no reason to think about the stuff that works perfectly well."

"The blotchy quill gets the sharpening."

I snickered. "The Muggles say 'The squeaky wheel gets the grease,' but that works too." Conversation stopped for a moment as I leveled the camera at the front of the building. The shutter clicked, and a photo slowly emerged from the device. I looked at it for a moment. "That will do."

"I didn't know you were familiar with Muggle phrases."

"Dad's a Muggleborn, and I had a lot of spare time after I stopped going to Hogwarts." I explained.

"Hmmmm." Matthew looked me over for a moment. "Do Muggles usually go outside in just their pants?"

"FUCK." My exclamation only brought more attention to us. I sprinted into the house, with Matthew laughing behind me. I made my way to my bedroom, and summoned proper clothing from the dresser. He was still chuckling by the time he made it to the bedroom door. "You could have said something, you know."

"I didn't realize it until we were outside, and by then, you were busy taking a picture and talking about Muggle phrases."

I rolled my eyes. "A likely story."

"You'll be good going to the store and back then?" He steered us back onto the initial topic.

"Yeah." I absentmindedly responded as I put the photo into my wallet. "I'm going to be heading out now actually." I grabbed my album, flipped to the photo of the grocery store, focused on it, and then popped away, leaving my album to land on my bed.

"Hey Daniel!" Matthew said as he opened the front door. "Whoa, that smells good. I didn't know you could cook."

"This isn't really cooking." I replied. "I'm making Hamburger Helper."

"Hamburger what now?"

I rolled my eyes. "It's a Muggle thing. It started a few years ago in the States. It's pasta, and seasoning in a packet, so all you have to do is cook some Hamburger meat and add it to the cooked pasta."

"That's way easier than cooking an actual meal."

"Exactly." I agreed. "I made enough for both of us."

"Awesome! I need to clean up a bit."

I looked at his dirty hands, and arms, and legs, and face. "Did you swim in it?"

"Shut up." He retorted as he made his way to his bathroom.

The food was done a few minutes later, and Matthew was either a fan or quick shower, or just hungry, because he was out less than five minutes after he'd started. I was seated on the large couch with a bowl of it in my hands. "There's plenty in the kitchen."

He didn't even bother with a verbal reply as he filled a bowl and sat down. "Did you Apparate to the US to get this?"

I nearly snorted my food out my nose. My coughing fit only served to delay my response further. "I can't Apparate across the ocean, Matthew."

"Do they sell it here, then?"

"Not yet."

"How did you get it?"

"One of my uncles lives in the States. I visited him a few months ago. We had it nearly every day, and before I left, I brought several hundred boxes."

Matthew's coughing fit was, if anything, worse than my own. "Several hundred?!" he managed to choke out.

"Yes. It's good, and easy to make."

"How many hundreds?" He asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Six or seven."

"Six or seven hundred?!"

"Yes, Matthew."

"Where do you put them all?!"

"In my other suitcase."

"In the other suitcase? The one you put in the closet?"

"Yes."

"You must have shrunk them all down." He reasoned.

"Five points to Hufflepuff." I responded dryly.

I'd clearly broken him, as he spent the next minute or so muttering about my Hamburger Helper collection. He was still eating it, though, so he'd at least retained his survival instincts.

"Do the Muggles have any other food that's easy to make like this?"

"There's a decent amount of it. We tried a new version called Tuna Helper, but I don't care for fish all that much. They actually have frozen pizzas, too. Toss them in the oven for about 20 minutes and they're done."

"What's pizza?"

I blinked. "I'll bring some home later. I forgot that wizards don't eat pizza."

"Why do they call it Hamburger Helper?" He changed the subject again.

"Probably because the box provides help in preparing dinner for you, and all you have to do is add Hamburger."

He nodded, "That makes sense."

"Did you find anything useful today?"

He shrugged, "Not really. I mainly finished getting the fertilizer from last night analyzed. The other guys in the Guild were about ready to attack me for it. It really is the best fertilizer we've seen so far."

He caught the look I was giving him, "What?"

"The Guild? The Herbology Masters' Guild?" He coughed and looked away. "You're a Master already! How the fuck did you do that?"

He scratched the back of his neck. "I had a project I started back in Fifth Year. By the time I graduated, it was nearly finished. Professor Sprout helped me find sources for the stuff I needed, so I just had to work through it. The information part was easy, since the Hogwarts Library has just about everything."

"You have to be the youngest Master ever..."

He shook his head, "There was a Transfiguration Master at 18 a hundred years or so ago."

I rolled my eyes. "Right. Second youngest master ever. Apologies for the mistake."

He chuckled at my heavy sarcasm. "It wasn't too difficult." He ignored my snort of disbelief. "The Guild was dismissive at first, but they couldn't dispute my work, so they all got excited about it instead."

"I'd ask what you did, but my Herbology knowledge was limited several years ago, and it's only gotten worse since then."

He nodded. "I wouldn't want to bore you anyway."

"You wouldn't bore me." I corrected him. "Well, you would bore me, but not because it's boring. I just wouldn't understand any of it."

He nodded again. "You might end up with a Mastery in Herbology if the fertilizer works out."

"No no no. I don't want anything to do with that. People would be running around using Fiendfyre 'for the good of their plants' all the time, and while I'm normally a fan of watching stupid people doing stupid things, Fiendfyre isn't selective about who it eats. You can take credit for that, and keep your methods under wraps."

He chuckled, "I won't ever use Fiendfyre, so I wouldn't be able to recreate it."

"I don't blame you. It's not the smartest decision I ever made."

"It worked out, though." Matthew pointed out. "Did you get any work done on your Arithmancy?"

"A little bit. I still don't know how to test out my theories on fire. I'm also working on a spell that would put your body out of phase for a few seconds. It would give an alternative to dodging the Unforgivables."

Matthew blinked at me, "How in the hell are you going to test that?"

I put down my empty bowl and picked up a glass of water. "That's the main sticking point."

"So Fiendfyre by yourself is fine, but you draw the line at making yourself temporarily wink out of existence?"

"Is that not a reasonable line to draw?"

Matthew shook his head. "You can't put the words 'reasonable' and 'Fiendfyre' in the same sentence without a negative somewhere."

"Why not?" I countered with a smirk. "The Herbologist Masters Guild could have a law exemption for the Reasonable Use of Fiendfyre for Fertilizer."

"RUFF would be a good thing to call it, if they approved it."

"Why's that?"

"Because they'd have to be barking mad."

The water that once had occupied my mouth managed to escape it, through both the way it came, and through my nostrils. My coughing was drowned out by Matthew's laughter. "Fuck you." I choked out.

He shrugged "You left the door open, and then chastised me for walking through it."

I opened my mouth to retort, but quickly came to the conclusion that Matthew was correct. With an absence of an effective counter-argument, I fell back on an old favorite. "Fuck you."

He was unrepentant, the bastard.

AN: Yes, Hamburger Helper is that old. It started in the 70s.