Edited: 4/24/2023
Arya Egg-Bearer
After the story's conclusion, Nar Garzhvog led his family and guest down the lane and through an alley between two longhouses, up a short slope, and into a cavern. The cave entrance was fancied up with decorations and carvings, but Harry was too tired to examine them closely. A tapestry hung above the middle of the arch, richly decorated with details too dark to examine properly.
The interior of the cave was clearly sized for a Kull, the ceiling no shorter than ten feet in any place, most often over twelve. The furnishings were similarly supersized, rough timber affairs upholstered with skins and furs. It lacked some of the intricate decorations and polish Harry had observed out in the village proper, but it exuded a homey and cozy feel regardless. A fireplace in the corner was constructed of brick, the short chimney funneling smoke to the cavern roof where it trickled out of the cave entrance. An enormous bed and several smaller ones were partitioned off by a curtain and kitchen utensils hung over a rough counter next to the fireplace.
There were enough beds for Garzhvog and his family but no extra, so Harry conjured a soft sleeping bag for himself and crawled into it drunkenly. The grog he drank earlier was strong. With nary a peep, the quartet dozed off.
Harry jolted upright with a start. The wards of Ristvak'baen had just gone off. With a pounding head he extricated himself from his bedroll and tried futilely to rouse Garzhvog. The ram slept like a rock. Harry knew Garzhvog had been pounding back the strong wine, but he had to leave, now. Whoever was up there, they weren't politely knocking on the wards. They were tearing into them.
Conjuring a piece of parchment and scrawling a note on it, praying he could read it, Harry spun about his heel and vanished from the cave with a crack.
The instant he arrived at the gates, he was thrust into chaos. The gates hung open askew from the hinges as if blasted. A streak of bloody snow led from the outside threshold, across the grounds, and up to the door of the tower where a tall woman–elf, he corrected himself upon spotting the pointed ears. The woman was speaking frantically, running through what was clearly a rote memorized phrase.
"-the space between target and destination without damaging the target-" she gasped out.
The blue, blood-slicked gem she had clutched to her chest disappeared in a brilliant flash of emerald and a noise like the loudest crack of apparition he had ever heard.
The instant the flash signaled the gem's disappearance, an inhuman scream of rage rolled over the house, shaking its enchanted foundations. Outside, an incredibly pale man with blood red eyes and hair held out a glowing hand, pointing it at the house, and screamed "BREAK!"
With a sound of shattering glass, Harry felt the control he wielded over the wards collapse like paper mache under a sledgehammer. A dome-shaped flash of white light signaled their vulnerability. A colossal crashing noise rang out as painstakingly enchanted so-called 'unbreakable' beams of timber and shingles exploded in a hail of timbers. The protruding tower and the second storey of the house was shorn off in the blast. Debris showered around them, catching Harry in the chest painfully.
Scrambling, Harry pawed his clothes for his wand desperately. He caught a hold of the Elder wand instead of his holly one. The redhead stalked over, withdrawing a long pale sword with a long, deep scratch in it, pacing forwards slowly. He seemed to be reveling in the elf's fear and simultaneously wondering over the mystery of Harry's arrival.
"Expelliarmus!" Harry cried. The man looked surprised at the spell, which splashed across his chest. The disarming hex yanked the sword out of his surprised grasp. An ugly sneer crossed his face, but he continued prowling forwards as if the loss of his weapon was simply an inconvenience. The elf bleeding out on the floor had a panicked look on her face, scrabbling backwards on the blood slicked floorboards in a futile attempt to put distance between the man and herself.
The Shade reached out a crooked finger and pointed it accusingly at Harry. "Die." he spoke with finality. A cold shadow gripped the wizard's heart. The world seemed to grey for a moment, before the sensation passed. Both the Shade and the elf stared at him in open astonishment for a brief lull in the fight. He needed to end this fight now.
Harry pointed his wand at the thing. "Stupefy!" he shouted. The attacker moved with inhuman grace, dodging, ducking, and generally avoiding every red bolt contemptuously.
For all that he had excellent aim, the Shade had nearly closed the distance between them when Harry managed to clip his shoulder with a stunner. The Shade barely even staggered, laughing darkly at him.
Abruptly, a tremendous mental attack rammed into his crude Occlumency shields. They gave out nearly instantly. The Shade hadn't noticed anything about his origins, reviewing his memories reverse-chronologically as he was. Images of the Urgals and the bear raced before Harry's mind. He glanced over his shoulder at the elf, whose face wore an expression of abject fear and desperate loathing.
If ever there was a sentient being who deserved to die, her face said, it is that one.
The cold, menacing tide of magic rose in Harry, the tip of his wand growing poison green. Harry did not resist it. "Avada Kedavra."
The green light winged towards the Shade, splashing against his chest, except, instead of sinking in and dropping the monster, it seemed to have trouble finding purchase on the Shade. With an unearthly howl, his body went translucent, black veins and a corrupted heart in stark contrast with his pale, transparent skin. Then, he vanished.
Convincing the elf that she needed healing was a sketchy proposition. For all that she could barely hold herself upright, the elf was cagey with him, even after he reassured her he meant her no harm.
She openly gawked at the size of the expanded workshop. Built on a ridgeline as the compound was, it was very obvious it was too big to fit into the mountain. The room should have extended dozens of feet out from the cliffside. Harry helped her up onto a freshly conjured table (the old one was still stained with a mixture of Urgal and human blood). He used a bubblehead charm as a sort of replacement for a surgical mask and scourgified his hands raw before conjuring what seemed like plastic gloves. The elf's wounds looked a bit too serious for him to faff about through the Platonic database for the exact material surgical gloves were made of.
Harry dearly hoped that elvish and human physiology was functionally identical. The woman on the table had black hair like his own. She was a good bit taller than himself, though that was a rather low bar. Her features were incredibly beautiful, and she had a figure to die for. Unfortunately, she had also lost a frankly ridiculous amount of blood and likely was staying conscious through sheer force of will alone. He pondered how to phrase what he was about to say without coming across as a perv or worse, rapist, as he conjured a clean plastic poncho over himself.
"Right, I need you to take off your shirt," he said tentatively. The woman glared at him for a second before coming to the realization that yes, she really did need medical attention. She unlaced her shirt with shaky hands, revealing that bras were not invented in olde medieval times.
With burning cheeks, Harry tried very hard to ignore the topless woman who could probably give Fleur Delacour a run for her money. An enormous weeping gash extended from her collar bone to the opposite hip. A deep stab wound went down to bone on her other hip. "Episkey, Episkey, Episkey," Harry chanted frantically, doing his best to focus on whole and healthy muscle tissue, properly connected and shaped.
The blood flow seemed to stem as the red of healthy and unsevered tissue grew back together. Slowly and rather awkwardly tracing the slash wound with his wand, Harry murmured Snape's healing spell and watched the gash seal up like a rather gruesome flesh zipper. "Tergeo," he siphoned the blood from her torso. "Did the sword go all the way through?" he asked her. The elf hesitated, then nodded and rolled over obligingly. Harry ignored the strange tattoo and healed the exit wound. Harry allowed himself to relax slightly. The adrenaline rush had faded and he was harshly reminded by his throbbing head that he was supposed to be sleeping off a hangover right now in a comfy bed. Once he really established the desire to heal, the Elder Wand sort of took over for him, guiding him through unfamiliar healing spells. By the end, the elf looked pale and shaky, but unwounded.
Harry was about to offer back the woman's shirt, but it was clearly mangled beyond repair. The woven cloth was dangling in an odd shape which an intact one definitely didn't make. Instead, he conjured a new set of comfy cotton clothes. Maybe it would make it easier to recover from a stab and slash wound when not covered in blood. No sooner had the garments appeared from thin air than the elf had stared in astonishment at him. No, not him, the clothes, he realized. She must not have seen conjuring before. Harry set the clothes down next to her on the table and turned aside like a gentleman. He waited for her to don the clothes, but the next sound he heard was a loud and rather meaty thump.
"Hello? Are you okay?" he asked.
When she didn't respond, Harry turned and saw a now fully naked and also unconscious elf. Mortified, he conjured a thick blanket and bundled her in it before levitating her up the stairs, intent upon laying her in a guest bedroom. When he emerged from the long staircase, he cursed.
Right. The entire top of the house had been blown off. Groaning miserably, the wizard brought his charge back downstairs and conjured beds for her and himself. He breathed a sigh of relief as Hedwig hobbled out of a corner towards him and Blinky slithered down the stairs behind. Blinky looked unharmed, but Hedwig had rather clearly just gone through an unscheduled burning day.
"What in Merlin's name just happened?" Phineas demanded. The mantle he hung above ended in a jagged break just a foot above the top of his frame.
Harry groaned. "Someone broke in trying to escape a guy trying to kill her."
Phineas raised a brow and pointed at the absent ceiling. "He did a bit more than break in."
Harry so did not need to deal with Phineas at the moment. "Yeah, well, the killing curse reacted oddly to him, too. We're both alive and he's gone, but I'm hung over as all hell, and my bedroom just got spread over half the mountain range."
"How do you know he was alone?" the headmaster pointed out shrewdly.
Harry paused. "Salvio Hexia, Protego Totalum, Cave Imicum…"
Arya stirred from her slumber and sat up. Being truly unconscious was disconcerting to her. Elves were never truly unconscious by choice. Even their deep sleeping was akin to a sort of restful trance – fully aware for the duration and free to ponder the mysteries of the universe.
The elven princess took stock of her surroundings. She was wearing only a blanket. Arya's cheeks burned when she remembered the state she was in when she lost consciousness. Her mysterious magician didn't seem the type to take advantage, but she had thought that before. Thankfully, the clothing he had conjured (conjured?!) was still there, piled on the ground. Rather than the leather clothing she expected which she would wear (under protest) she found a strange, finely woven cloth of the tiniest threads. It wasn't up to the lofty quality of the handspun elven garments she had grown up in, yet it was miles beyond what she had come to expect from humans.
The bed beneath her had been nowhere in sight earlier. It offended her sensibilities to even presume, but even the bed was likely also conjured by the strange magician. As she dressed Arya observed the cavernous room. She revised her belief that the room was a work of mundane construction and clever glamors. Flawless smooth rock floor stretched unbroken to distant textureless white walls and strange corrugated grey metal roofing and scaffolding. It was mostly empty, too. There were two tables, a few wheeled shelves, and a desk covered in fine parchment and unfamiliar stationary tools. Both were covered in blood, one wetter than the other.
Though her most precious cargo was safe and out of her hands, Arya knew that she knew enough dangerous information that her own safety was important and so took stock of the mental presences around her.
She found only three. The man who disembodied Durza was asleep, but his mental shields were admirable in a sort of horrifying way. They felt like shields built from suffering constant mental attacks. Morbidly curious, Arya examined them further. She noticed to her growing horror, that the shields were intertwined with his identity in such a way that suggested he learned to make them in his infancy. Whoever relentlessly mentally attacked a baby deserved a painful death, she thought in disgust.
The other two were undoubtedly animals, yet the most intelligent animals she'd ever entered the mind of. The serpent was fully sapient, intelligent as any human, elf, or dragon. And what a mind she had. Blinky- for that was her name, was over a millennia old. Much of it was spent hibernating, but she had plenty of experience. The basilisk had never been taught to defend her mind, as apparently in this bizarre world she peered into through the serpent's head, it was believed that one could only invade the mind of another with eye contact. And apparently, Arya shivered, making eye contact with a basilisk was instantly lethal.
A green diamond scale serpent head poked over the side of Harry's bed, staring unblinkingly at the elf. Sharp elvish eyesight picked out nictitating membranes over the snake's eyes. They must shield the death-stare, Arya thought.
"Why are you in my mind?"
Arya startled. "I smelled Urgal blood. They are a war loving race, and if one was near, I wished to know. They are dangerous to come across while wounded."
Blinky seemed to digest this. "My servant brought a mortally wounded one back here with injuries himself." The snake sent images of a bloody and broken Kull being supported by a crushed Harry–for that was his name–concern for her master, frantic healing, and then observation. To Arya's surprise, when the Kull woke up, he bound the wizard's wounds and waited for him to wake up.
"I thank you, Blinky." She made to withdraw, but to her surprise, Blinky sent her desire to communicate.
"I have never spoken to one without the serpent's tongue before." Arya sent her confusion to the snake. "The ability to speak to snakes," Blinky clarified. The elf was surprised.
"They all speak the same language? Snakes are generally not sapient."
While they conversed, Arya felt the basilisk prodding at her mind. "I did not know you were proficient in entering others' minds," the elf thought surprised.
"Salazar never taught me Occlumency, for who would dare meet a basilisk's eyes? We are the progenitors of the art of Legilimency, entering others' minds. He did not teach me, It is innate knowledge within our race. Why did you send the dragon egg to Brom, Arya Drottningu?"
Arya stiffened. "You should not have learned that," she sent back angrily. "He will know what it means to have it sent to him. I had no other choice. Ellesmera is behind wards and the Varden are on the opposite side of the world."
"But you were not captured by Durza, were you?" The wily serpent observed. "I will not poke around anymore. I wished to know if someone dangerous was near my master while he was wounded," she poked snarkily.
The basilisk slithered off to do something. What, she did not know. Annoyed, she entered the mind of the third being in the large room, a bird of some sort. This 'Hedwig' was not quite sapient in the manner of bonded dragons, but she approached the intelligence of wild dragons and with enough experience, Arya imagined Hedwig could learn the basics of a language. She found Hedwig had more cunning than Blagden. She found incredible loyalty towards Harry, lots of pride, and a bit of an ego. Hedwig seemed to notice her poking around for she was thrust from the avian consciousness with a mental flick. Neither animal seemed overly offended by her intrusions, yet everything she discovered merely fed her curiosity. Motion up by the portrait over the mantle of the fireplace caught her gaze but when she looked up, it was merely a still portrait of a severe, grey-eyed human.
Her musings were stalled by a miserable groan. 'Harry' was waking, rubbing his eyes and massaging his temples. The wizard barely lifted his eyelids before cursing in the Ancient Language. He squinted, again displaying his boggling ability to create something out of nothing by conjuring a glass of water he downed.
"Hullo?" he asked groggily. "Whozere?"
She straightened. "I am Arya. I thank you for rescuing me from the Shade Durza. I apologize for breaking into your home."
He squinted at her for a moment, before waving his hand dismissively. "It's fine, I can fix it real quick." The wizard walked delicately up the stairs, Arya doubtfully following him.
He stalked up the staircase to where it ended in twisted, torn wood and shredded carpet. Poking her head over the top of the open roof, the frigid air of the Spine washed over her. It looked even worse now than it had during the battle. Shards of torn twisted wood and shingles were tossed dozens of feet in every direction, mangled and twisted metal sheets and glass shards stuck into the ground. Arya watched in slight bemusement as the wizard cursed and hopped about on bare feet. He had trodden on shattered glass and debris. The only standing wall of the second floor was leaning rather alarmingly inwards.
Harry raised his wand, a knobbly wooden thing, and spoke a word Arya was unfamiliar with and which did not seem to be from the Ancient Language. Before her disbelieving eyes, shards, splinters, and rubble everywhere floated together, seamlessly fusing together into a repaired whole. The elf could not comprehend the strength needed simply to levitate the rubble into the air, much less fuse it back into a whole. At least, she noted, he was panting a bit by the time the spell finished.
The temperature rose to a comfortable level with the elements safely sealed outside by sturdy walls. Now that she was in no danger for her life, Arya could take a moment to really appreciate the beauty of the house. It was the nicest human dwelling she had ever seen. It had a rustic charm that reminded her sorrowfully of Ellesmera and Tialdari hall. Incredibly lifelike landscape paintings moved subtly. Despite their state of animation, she noted that all but the picture over the mantle seemed to be missing occupants. She picked up what looked like a fairth depicting Harry with a couple friends, a redheaded boy and a bushy brown haired girl, smiling in front of an unfamiliar castle on a lake. It was utterly perfect.
Harry stumbled over to the counter and refilled his glass of water. Thankfully, the whole house being nearly ripped apart hadn't damaged the climate noticed his guest was surprised and rather intrigued by the appliances he mimicked with magic. Whether for their enchantments or because she was a backwards medieval hick who'd never seen the devices before, Harry wasn't sure.
"Water?" he offered his guest politely. He saw brief indecision in his eyes and remembered something about medieval society. "It's clean, I promise."
She was unconvinced. Something else occurred to him. "I swear I'm not in league with Galbatorix, nor have I ever knowingly done anything to benefit him, and I don't intend to, either. Also, I'll never tell anyone about the giant blue gem." And like clouds parting before the sun, the elf's demeanor shifted.
She took the offered glass and drank deeply. "Um, hullo, I'm Harry," he awkwardly introduced.
"Arya," she exchanged. The pause stretched on uncomfortably.
"Sooo~, a Shade?" Harry asked. "He was after that giant blue gem?"
Arya hesitated. "It was a dragon egg."
Harry looked surprised. "I thought this Galbatorix fellow and his friends killed them all?"
The elf's face transformed into a rictus of sorrow. "Not quite. Three eggs were spared from the purge, all of which were in the king's possession. I sent the egg to safety."
"And you traveled alone with it, when he rather obviously wanted it back?" Harry asked incredulously.
"No." she said shortly. "My companions, Faolin and Glenwing, were slain."
"Oh. I'm sorry for your loss. Do you know where you sent it?" He gestured for Arya to follow and cautiously tested the repaired staircase, leaning more weight on each stair before eventually jumping up and down on the top landing.
She looked conflicted. "Swear in this language that you are no servant of the king's, and that you never will serve him."
Harry acquiesced in confusion. "Why this particular language?" He traversed the upstairs hallway, hopping up and down along its length. Surprise flitted across Arya's face when he asked his question.
"It is impossible to break an oath sworn in the Ancient Language."
Opening each second-floor room in turn, Harry hopped around the floors of each room to the elf's rather visible exasperation. "What? I'm testing the structural integrity here. Jeez." He was also taking inventory of the rooms, checking to see that no furniture had been lost.
Harry was in the middle of checking his own bedroom when Arya spoke up. "Blinky told me you're from another world."
He spluttered and dropped his book with a thud. §BLINKY!§ he hissed-shouted at the snake, currently trying to fit Hedwig's entire head in her mouth without biting. The serpent uncoiled herself from his chair leg and hawked up the hawk-like bird in her mouth.
§Well, she doesn't need eye contact to use Legilimency.,§ Blinky accused.
He wracked his brain. "Well, uh, you're foolish," he floundered. "Why would you bring the egg out from your forest and into contested territory if you want to keep it safe?"
"So it would hatch," she rolled her eyes. "It's a Rider egg; it will wait in its shell until the dragon within senses someone they wish to bond with for life. I was carrying it between two factions which both want to depose Galbatorix." She closed the book and folded her hands.
"The balance of power in Alagaesia rests on that egg and the two back in Uru'baen. Whoever controls the next generation of riders controls Alagaesia. And the elves would prefer that not be the Mad King."
Harry pondered that for a moment. Helping whoever that egg hatched for sounded like a damn good path to choose. But he also wanted to be ready in case of refugees, injured warriors, and enemy action. Until the egg hatched, Harry understood that it was unlikely radical action would happen. This was the time to prepare–the time after Voldemort's first 'death.' "That Shade, was it Durza?"
Arya shivered. "Indeed. He has been hunting the egg and myself for years now. The Shade is a ruthless, sadistic thing I have had the misfortune of encountering thrice now. You have my thanks for delaying him. Being captured by Durza would certainly not be pleasant."
"The same one who was around to bind Galbatorix's second dragon to him?" he wondered.
The elf looked surprised. "Yes, how did you know?"
"I met an Urgal who invited me to a chanting night. They don't like Galbatorix much, either." Harry explained. "Without going into too much detail, I want to help the good side. It sounds like the continent is in a deadlock until one or more of those eggs hatch. I need to prepare for when events kick off. Can you help me, Arya Drottningu?" He offered his hand to the elf.
Arya paused for a very long time. Harry had almost given up on getting an answer when finally, she said quietly, "I will help you, Harry."
"Who's this?" A nasally voice demanded.
Arya jumped. It had come from the painting over the hearth. The previously still portrait of an old man stared down at her, seemingly perfectly conscious.
"That's Arya." Harry was suddenly at her side, addressing the painting. "She's the one Durza was after."
"You killed him, yes?"
Harry snorted. "As much as a killing curse does, yes."
The painting raised an eyebrow. "Less than it was thought to do in my time, then."
Arya perked up. "If you did not stab Durza through the heart, he will return. It is the only way to kill a Shade. I apologize if I am rude, but you are a sentient painting?"
"Professor Phineas Nigellus Black, Headmaster emeritus of Hogwarts," the portrait introduced himself, like the titles should mean something to her. "And you are?"
"Arya." That was all she was willing to share. Strictly speaking, she should not have let Drottningu slip to Harry, but she was somewhat…frazzled when introducing herself.
"Hmmph. Well, Arya, It occurs to me that you owe Harry your life. If you are not beneath honorably repaying your debts, my woefully untalented student requires information about Alagaesia which you are more poised to deliver." Phineas wormed insinuations of debt, repayment, and favors around her like a silk-tongued, slimy diplomat, and to her frustration, Arya found herself hesitantly agreeing to render Harry some reasonable assistance where she could.
"Sorry," Harry apologized, once they were out of earshot. "He's a Black," he said, as if that should explain his unpleasant nature. "Most hated headmaster to ever exist–though I reckon Severus Snape stole his title since his tenure. You don't have to do anything-"
"It is only honorable," Arya interrupted. "And your goals and mine align for the time being."
The tension left Harry' shoulders. "Brilliant. Phineas is an arsehole, but he's the only teacher I've got right now. I wasn't the most dedicated student at Hogwarts and it's kinda biting me in the arse," he winced.
Arya did not know what 'Hogwarts' was, but she did know a thing or two about mentors.
"What do you need my assistance with?"
Harry paused for a moment. "Can you read?"
"Of course."
"Right." he grinned apologetically. "The people down in Carvahall look like medieval, illiterate peasants. I didn't want to assume-"
"You've been to Carvahall?"
Harry's face lit up. "Oh yeah. I can't speak the language most of them use, just this one old guy, Brom, who I can actually understand. Actually, he told me if three elves came around, I should ask to be 'tested,' and that the Half-Rider said it was okay."
Arya stopped. "The 'test' is to touch the dragon egg. Perhaps we can visit him. I am…familiar with Brom."
"Right. Well, I've got a huge quantity of miscellaneous, unsorted stuff to catalogue, and it would go twice as fast if I had someone else who read and spoke the language…?"
Arya smiled. "That, I can help you with."
Her first reaction was to reject what she saw as an illusion. The impossibility of it was offensive to her. Stepping over the threshold of the miniature castle, Arya was grudgingly forced to ignore her sensibilities and admit that there really was a palace hidden within the leather case, and that every spare bit of volume within was completely stacked with books.
Books were rare, even among elves. They were seen among elves as human status items where a scroll would cheaply serve the same purpose. The volume of information on the books forced her to reconsider her stance. The amount of pages she saw represented in the stacks would be impossible to organize in any other way.
Harry scratched his head. "Er, yeah. There's a lot here. I figure we just need to come up with an intelligent organization scheme, and we can fit books in as we go along."
"Where are you going to keep them?" Arya wondered. "This construct is miraculous and nearly filled to capacity. Can you even begin to replicate it?"
"Actually, I've made a space bigger than this one," he admitted. "I think the space is less impressive than the furnishing and whatnot. We can get started on that first, I suppose."
On the ground floor, Harry pulled down an empty landscape painting to make room on the wall for an archway. He altered the wooden wall to a trimmed doorway like changing matter with magic was some trivial thing and before her disbelieving eyes, the wall fell away behind it.
To his credit, it did look like Harry was concentrating intently. His eyes were screwed shut in thought, and he murmured constantly under his breath numbers that were presumably measurements. The new room was taller than the entirety of the external building, and looked to be sized with two floors in mind.
"Omnifors," Harry murmured. The room filled in before her eyes, masonry bricks and polished wood paneling spread across the walls. "Ten meters?" he asked aloud, as if speaking to himself. Support pillars sprouted from the ground which had also shifted from knotted pine to the same seamless stone floor of the workshop.
"I can keep adding detail forever," Harry admitted to her. "At some point, you have to accept the way it is. Transfiguration is very philosophical and artistic, I think. Concrete floors are boring, I'll spice that up-" The seamless 'concrete' floor changed to polished limestone flagstones. A carpet unrolled itself down the middle, a few meters wide. At first it was a solid white, but at a gesture and with a murmured word, it became bright red.
"That's very…bright," Arya offered.
Harry nodded in agreement. "You're right. What about-" the carpet switched to a dull maroon. She was uncomfortably reminded of Durza's hair. "Nope," Harry agreed cheerfully. "Bad memories. How about dull green?" the carpet obliged.
"Can you do patterns?" She wondered. Completely unfamiliar with the limitations of his magic, Arya found the careless ease at which he altered the room thrilling. She knew elves who would kill to find art so easy–and elves who would balk at the horror of how little effort Harry was putting forth.
"I don't see why not," he shrugged. Harry tried a few colors of trim lines before settling on a muted, dark grey on forest green. The straight lines became knot patterns that folded endlessly over themselves. The pillars grew balconies that flanked the central aisle, shrinking and growing away from the wall as Harry tested how far in he could grow the second floor before the first one felt cramped.
"How do you know your structures will not collapse?" Arya asked.
Harry paused. "Well, if they do, then I'll know that they weren't strong enough."
Three major structural failures and countless minor ones later, Arya decided that for four hours of effort, Harry had produced a miraculously advanced skeleton of a library.
"Phew. I really thought I was going to have to stitch myself up again when the whole second floor collapsed the second time," Harry wiped imaginary sweat off his brow. "I'm starving. Let's get something to eat."
Arya assumed Harry was a meat-eater. She was proven right. He packed shredded beef into a flat circle and cooked it on a pan over ghostly blue fire emanating from a strange countertop, but the majority of his meal consisted of bread buns and a variety of fruits from yet more magical cabinets.
"Want a burger?" Harry offered, already shaping another beef circle.
"Elves do not eat meat unless they have no alternatives," Arya explained, carefully moderating her expression to avoid giving away the distaste she felt at the smell of cooking flesh.
He shrugged. "I don't really know how to cook for vegetarians, but you can look through the fridge for stuff that looks good. Just don't eat the last of anything–I don't know if I'll be able to find more, and I need at least one to grow more."
Arya opened the tall metal cabinet and perused the selection of ingredients. The 'fridge' was room temperature, yet none of the produce was spoiled. More magic, she supposed. She recognized some of the plants, while others were foreign to her. Eventually, she made her selection and ate her fill, a far larger portion than the human.
"Wow," Harry whistled. "You eat like a starving woman. Like Ron, but with table manners."
"If you cannot afford to feed me-" Arya knew elves needed far more sustenance than humans.
"No no, it's fine. I'll just have to set up farming sooner rather than later," Harry assured her. "Did you have any food while traveling?"
Arya swallowed. Two of the three horses that had bore her and her companions were slain far back, deeper in the Spine. The last of them was a ways outside the compound, her pack still tied to his saddle. It did contain supplies, but the prospect of returning filled her with dread. To retrace her desperate flight's path set her ill at ease.
"I can retrieve my pack."
Harry reassured her that it wasn't urgent and did she want to rest then? If only to be polite, Arya agreed.
After dinner, Harry gave her a room on the second floor, one of three other unoccupied ones. The bathroom was briefly explained to her, a familiar taste of Ellesmera's plumbing that Arya had not thought present elsewhere except perhaps in dwarven cities. Apparently one of the other two rooms had been an Urgal's for a night. Through the glass skylight, Arya slept under the stars.
One great advantage elves had over humans was that they only really needed two hours of sleep per day, and they could easily put that off for up to a week before sleep deprivation began to cripple them. The downside to this was that after two hours, Arya was awake and alone in her room.
She took a shower (and what a wonderful idea for cleaning oneself) and pulled back on the cotton clothing Harry had provided over underthings he had blushingly conjured for her. The 'bra' wasn't quite sized right for what it seemed like it was supposed to do, but with some tailoring supplies, Arya thought the undergarments might be rather comfortable and supporting.
It was a pleasant surprise how clean the human kept himself; that was rarely the case among the vast majority of humans, and tended to offend her sensitive nose.
Arya padded barefoot down the carpeted hall and to the living room. The house was dimly lit by sources that were not fire. At first, she suspected they were a form of the flameless lanterns the dwarves made such extensive use out of, but the light was too white. It came from shaded fixtures around little glass bulbs of brilliant light. The shades served to soften the light so as not to hurt her eyes.
As she had expected, Harry was deep asleep, yet over the flickering fireplace, Phineas Nigellus Black was decidedly not.
"Sneaking around in the night, are we?" The portrait wondered with an undertone of menace.
"Elves do not need much sleep," Arya murmured.
Phineas was suspicious, but let the statement slide. "What are you really here for?"
That brought her up short. Really, should she ought to stay up in Ristvak'baen for a moment longer than necessary when her highest priority was down in Carvahall? Wouldn't it be better to retrieve the egg as quickly as possible and dash to Ellesmera without ever looking back? Arya admitted to herself that she truly needed no more than a day or two more to recover with the healing Harry had rendered before she was confident she could make it down to Carvahall and then back to Du Weldenvarden safely. Harry had been helpful, but she could not really be sure he was friendly. Even oaths in the Ancient Language left some doubt–perhaps there was some interpretation of the oath he was able to skirt which would enable him to enact a devastating betrayal, and as the one to come up with the oath himself, he had greater agency in picking words he could skirt around or interpret as he pleased. With the dragon egg involved, the stakes were just too high to make any allowances at all.
And yet, Harry had had her at his mercy after she fell unconscious. He had given his best to slay Durza, and if she was honest, the magic he used alone was enough to be worth lingering a couple weeks longer than she might otherwise have. Brom was a capable man, even in his diminished state. He could wait a bit. The spell she used had no range restrictions, so the Empire would have to scour the whole of Alagaesia to find the egg. Arya amusedly wondered if Carvahall would be left for last because of its proximity to where she was attacked.
"Harry is interesting. I have never seen magic like his." Arya said quietly.
Phineas nodded haughtily. "Our magic is great indeed. You wish to drag him into your battles," he accused.
"He asked me to join my battles," she countered.
The portrait was subtly exasperated. "That wizard seems to obstinately refuse to learn the value of his aid. He barely listens to me in lessons he begs me for, so I have little hope of convincing him otherwise. You may think a painting has little influence, but I swear to you, Arya: the last of the House of Black is worth more than the entirety of your continent, and I will not hesitate to take reparations if you get him killed."
Message received, Arya thought. "Acceptable," she said aloud.
Faced with the prospect of doing nothing until the end of the painfully long human sleep cycle, Arya decided to familiarize herself with the task she had agreed upon.
Reading books was a novel experience. In fact, among the only bound books she had seen was the one title she saw that she recognized: Domina Abr Wyrda. She reached halfway to pick it up, yet hesitated. It was familiar, comfortable (if completely wrong about her species) yet ultimately of little value to one who had learned its history. Instead, she picked up a book written in neat, simplified script wholly unlike the artistic curls she was familiar with. Once she managed to reconcile the angular shape of the familiar letters, Arya began to fly through Standard Book of Spells: Grade 7. By Miranda Goshawk.
The ideas it presented were…out there. To her discerning eye, Arya never made it a single page without encountering at least two spells that should instantly kill any caster for daring to cast a spell that so obviously demanded an infinite energy cost. 'Charms' were the most egregious example. Each one seemed to alter a universal constant as it applied to a target object. Changing friction coefficients, changing susceptibility to gravity, changing actual physical mass, Arya could only imagine achieving similar effects through careful, roundabout magic with the intention of emulating the simple idea the spell encapsulated.
'Transfiguration,' while in theory possible with more energy than the whole forest of Ellesmera combined, at least constrained the demand of its effects to finite quantities. It was known that with magic, you could create matter out of nothing, but it was among the costliest tasks to accomplish. Oddly enough, annihilating matter was not possible. It had to be turned back into some form of energy, again at impractically high costs. Vanishment spoke of annihilating mass with no more violent retort than the subsequent atmospheric disturbance of refilling the void the target had left, if one were careless.
The final revelation Miranda Goshawk's book gave her was that their brand of magic's combat spells were typically pathetic. Through context, Arya was able to piece together that a spell, when cast, did not instantly impart its effect on its target but instead, spawn a 'spellbolt' that shot through the air like an arrow, whereupon its impact would trigger the spell's effect. Further, there were descriptions of generic 'shields' that could block astonishingly wide varieties of magic (though each one noted that Unforgivables, specifically Avada Kedavra were the exception. From Harry's use of that particular spell, she gathered their warfare must revolve around the one sure-fire curse they had.) The book did not go into detail on any truly dangerous spells. It seemed to revolve around incapacitation through stunning, dizziness, and physical impairment rather than lethal, physically injurious effects.
So absorbed was she, the rising sun went unnoticed until her ears picked up the quiet barefoot trotting of a wizard descending the stairs. He seemed to be stifling a laugh at the sight of her.
"Merlin, I swear you look exactly like Hermione. I can't tell you how many times I've come down to the common room and she's collapsed, drooling into a book she fell asleep reading. What book enraptured you so much?"
Arya held up The Standard Book of Spells: Grade 7.
"I wish I was that enthusiastic about textbooks," he grinned. "So, what did you think?"
Arya got up and followed him into the kitchen while he began to prepare buttered toast for the both of them. The way he seamlessly integrated her dietary restrictions into his cooking was a consideration she had come to expect lacking in most humans. "I think most of the spells sound impossible. Had I not seen you 'transfigure' the new library, I would not have believed the book."
"What part?" Harry spread fruit preserves over eight slices of toast and slid her five on a ceramic plate that popped into existence at his whim.
"How do you power these spells?" Arya demanded.
"Ourselves?" Harry wondered, as if there was no other option. "With our wands? I dunno."
"No." She said flatly. "There is no way. Even your basic transfiguration would kill even a team of accomplished magicians. It is impossible for a human eleven-year-old to alter the fundamental forces of the universe as they apply to an object to render it frictionless."
"I'm hearing that you can't do that with your magic." Arya tried not to get too frustrated by his very small smile.
She breathed out harshly. "We could accomplish the same effect, but with wards that keep an object from coming into contact with other things. It would have the illusion of frictionlessness, but the properties of the object would remain the same.
"So…what do you do?" Harry gestured for Arya to elaborate.
"The prime law of magic is that the cost of any action done with it is the same as if you had done it with your own limbs. We search for a method of accomplishing a given task that expends the smallest amount of physical force to keep the spell within the bounds of our strength. If a magician attempts a spell they do not have the energy for, they die. No exceptions."
"Well that sounds weak and boring," Phineas suddenly droned. Harry turned to level a glare at the portrait. "What? I far prefer being able to actually get things done with magic. What a sad world to live in." he commented.
"Shut up, Phineas. Please." Harry wiped jam off his chin and washed his hands. "What can you do with your magic?"
Arya followed Harry's example. She made to clear and wash her plate when the dish vanished before her eyes. "Anything we can put into words that we have the strength to cast."
"I'm guessing that little caveat cuts quite a lot down, right?"
Yes, Arya reflected, it certainly did. "There are plenty of spells closed to humans because they lack the strength to power them without killing themselves."
"Ah," Harry realized. "You're all immortal and super-strong. That translates to magical strength?"
"They are the same," Arya agreed. "It is rare to find a starving or corpulent spellcaster since magic seems to burn through the food we eat to fuel itself. Similarly, being in excellent physical shape increases the power of our magic, so those of us who take spellweaving seriously must maintain our bodies as well as our minds."
"And you can't use artifacts?" Harry checked.
The term was unfamiliar. "Can you explain what you mean?"
"You know, items enchanted with magic beforehand?"
Harry was unexpectedly shrewd. "That is the common work-around for a magician who lacks the strength necessary to cast a specific spell. Magical energy can also be stored in gemstones, and can thus be stockpiled in anticipation of a demanding spell," she admitted. "But even if you manage to get some other object to cast a spell for you, it still needs to be provided with the energy necessary to do so. So in practice, artifacts do not actually expand our capabilities overmuch."
Arya could see the question form in Harry's head before he voiced it to the odious portrait.
"Hey Phineas, how come we use magical artifacts if you can cast any piece of magic with a wand?"
The portrait gave a long-suffering sigh. "How do you know that they can?" Harry suddenly went quiet and a bit nervous, like a chastised schoolchild who knew something they shouldn't. "Very well. Name an enchanted object you are familiar with and I shall endeavor to explain it to you."
"Umm…" A few artifacts floated through his mind. The Deathly Hallows, for one. "Time-Turners."
Grudgingly, Phineas was impressed. "I only managed to get my hands on one when I was too old to really use it properly. There exists a charm called the Hour Reversal charm. The only thing a Time-Turner does is interface with that charm. It casts it each time you turn the hourglass over, and maintains it until you pass the point where your past self uses the Time-Turner. Technically, you can cast the Hour Reversal charm with a wand. It's been successfully done by Unspeakables as recently as 1884 that I know of, and presumably had to be done by whoever developed the artifact. The issue is, once you cast the charm, you must maintain it the whole of your jaunt through time. If you release it before your timelines merge, you are instantly erased from existence. Can you see now why it is never used as a spell? Artifacts offer the ability to carry around stable, complex magic too inconvenient or too unstable to cast with a wand.
"They also allow you to indirectly experience their effects. In the case of broomsticks, most charms which add velocity to an object work poorly on humans, or are undesirable to experience firsthand. The propulso spell family is designed with human passengers in mind, yet it is almost never used outside of water since careless use tends to result in a dead caster and a red splatter. It's much easier to rely on an external tool that can hold dozens of safety and propulsion charms at once than be forced to cast all those spells at once or fly without the benefit of a safety net.
"Potions operate on a similar principle, except they lean to the other side of the spectrum. They are usually extremely simple, boiling down to a cure for this ailment or another, an increase to one's luck or to induce deep sleep, or aerosolized fire or whatever else. The difference is that potions offer potency inconveniently difficult to achieve with wandwork. For all that Felix Felicis is horrifically expensive and difficult to brew, its wanded counterpart, the Fortunata charm, can barely skew a roll of dice favorably."
Harry thought for a moment. "So, Voldemort's flight trick is less magically impressive and more suicidal?" The light in his green eyes made it very apparent he took the concept of unassisted flight as a challenge.
Phineas rolled his grey eyes. "Why does a man with Horcruxes need to fear death? Certainly, it requires great skill, but it's not unheard of for wizards to master the propulso family to the extent they can crudely fly. However, if you kill yourself in pursuit of the ability, I will never let anyone forget it. Ever."
The look in Arya's eyes told Harry she had heard a lot of unfamiliar ideas, but pieced enough together to know she wanted to know more. Despite that, she kept silent. "I should probably ask," Harry decided. "How do wizards catalogue books? Muggles are supposed to have a method that uses numbers based on subject matter, but I don't know if we do, too."
The headmaster thought for a moment. "The subject of sorting books has been beneath me, but I do know librarians have spells to manage their catalogs. I would start there, but sorting is less important for anyone who knows the summoning charm."
"How would you find books on a topic you didn't know the names of?"
Phineas gave him a look. "Were you not summoning books with instructions so broad as "The best book for mapmaking?" The summoning charm can take very vague instructions because it can use divination to produce the incomplete parts of your query. In fact, you might find it useful to try even more vague queries. I have found a lot of success asking for "the book most useful to me right now.""
There was no way that worked. Harry halfway expected Phineas to shout 'gotcha!' in his face when the spell failed. Nevertheless, he raised his wand. "Accio, the book most useful to me right now."
Sure enough, a tome clattered from the pile of books in the big tent and soared into his hands. Forging, by Hephaestus Peverell.
"Er, does anyone need something forged at the moment?"
After a moment of silence, Arya shamefully raised her hand.
Pop culture had given Harry a vague idea of how forging worked; stick a bar of metal into a really hot forge until it softened, then bang it into shape with a hammer and stick it in water. As it turned out, not so.
The book he had was written by Hephaestus Peverell, and was closer to a journal than a textbook. If his great grandfather's journal was any indication, journals were far more likely to have crazy unknown spells in them than textbooks. If a person invented a spell and never thought to publicize it, then died, their journals would be the only place that spell existed in. Harry regarded the stack of books with awe. That was the real treasure of a long family history. The collective work his ancestors left behind was available for him to use.
He had lived and died almost a thousand years ago and the book's simplicity reflected that. No mention of acetylene torches or belt sanders, just good old coal-fueled smelting and clay casts, anvils and hammers wielded by hand, and a whole lot of magic to make everything easier.
The workshop had evolved a bit under his wand. Harry liked the clean aesthetic he'd captured with it. The ceiling was corrugated steel, brilliant white lights resembling halogen rods hung from cables attached to decorative scaffolding and supports, illuminating the wide open space. He kept smooth, nearly featureless concrete for the floor and used cream drywall for the walls.
Harry had left muggle education at the ripe age of eleven for stranger things, but it was impossible to live in the twenty-first century, own (dubiously) a laptop, and have free time without learning a little bit of everything. It was called the information age for a reason, and Harry was of the impression that the reason for all the forges and coal and stuff was to get iron to its melting point, hot enough that open wood fires didn't cut it. Harry was not limited to wooden fires, and nor was Hephaestus Peverell.
In between the prose of millenia-old English, Harry managed to parse together a reasonable translation that went something like this:
Magic can be a potent replacement for everything under the sun, but the best witches and wizards know that it knows when you cut corners. The masses like to think about strength and power and direct contests of the two as the deciding factor, but magic is like telling a story or giving an idea influence over the real world. The rich novel of a sword mined by hand beneath a fabled mountain and smelted in true dragonfire in a forge atop Mount Olympus is always going to beat the oversized toothpick some kid conjured out of nothing with his new wand.
Don't cut corners. Make legendary swords.
Getting hold of iron ore wasn't exactly as easy as accio-ing it from within the earth. It might work, but even if it did, it would apparently detract from the product. Arya followed him around during his task, lending urgency to it. Harry used point-me to find a seam of hematite within the Mountain closest to home. Mining by hand was an awkward challenge with a conjured pick, but Arya actually had helpful advice to give him on that score. Harry ran out of steam after a few cubic meters of hematite, which was probably enough.
"I don't want to get only enough for one sword, then make a mistake and have to come back out here," he panted.
"You have never forged anything before?" Arya clarified.
Harry shrugged. "How hard can it be?"
Hard, as it turned out. But also easier than he might have expected halfway through.
A smeltery and forge were easy enough to conjure from diagrams in Forging, and Harry was fortunate enough to have access to phoenix fire to heat them. Smelting hematite was more involved than Minecraft would have him believe. It didn't melt down into pure iron, instead separating out into slag, the molten rock that the iron was embedded in. Some of the iron dripped into the slag despite the tested design of the forge, and some of the slag clung to the purer iron left within the smeltery.
Arya watched impassively, Forging in her lap, paging through it. "Reckon I'm doing anything wrong?" Harry asked her.
"I am no blacksmith."
"Yeah, but I knew nothing before today."
"Perhaps you could try these spells?" Arya turned the book to Harry. "This is an old dialect of the Ancient Language. Elves have lived in Alagaesia for thousands of years and scarce few of us remember the language before it was modernized."
Harry nodded. "It's probably six or seven hundred years old. At least the letters are the same. I wonder…" he pieced together a spell for filtration from context and familiar terms, at least he thought it was. Another moderated heat from even magical sources (excepting fiendfyre) and a third was supposed to enable alloying.
"Damn," Harry realized. "I screwed it up. There's supposed to be charcoal in there even if it's not the fuel source. It says steel needs carbon. I think I have some real logs left over."
The creation process continued along a similar vein. Arya had some vague knowledge of forging, about the level Harry might expect from having a friend interested in the subject, but she rarely caught his mistakes before they were made. Forging was a thick, complicated book and Harry kept trying to do the next steps without parsing together its archaic phrasing, which led to repeated mistakes. He blew through half the hematite he gathered on the first day first by forgetting to use the spells on the smeltery to perfect it, then by not putting a carbon source in with the phoenix fire, then using charcoal that hadn't been properly processed to burn off the non-carbon bits. Once he finally produced an ugly, lumpy, but usable billet of steel, Arya caught what could have been an endless string of failures by pointing out a spell that was supposed to tell him the grade of alloy of an ingot. The spell showed that the steel was three percent carbon, so much that it would snap under even moderate stress.
Four more attempts went by before Harry could reproduce 1% carbon steel, still a high amount but suitable for blade edges. Forging advised using two different types of steel for a double-edged sword. Harder, higher carbon for the edges and lower, softer steel for the spine to make the sword durable. By this time, Harry had some understanding of how to control the grade of steel based on the charcoal he put in, so it only took two tries to get workable soft steel.
It was hot, sweaty, demanding work, but it made caveman Harry feel great. Next came the process of actually shaping the blade. Arya had quickly grown more fluent in reading old English than Harry and took to translating Forging. Harry used the shitty, failed steel billets to practice first. There were spells to guard his hand from the heat of the forge, spells to impart force on the billet in lieu of a hammer (Arya relayed Hephaestus's note that this method was suboptimal), and spells to hasten the softening of metal and accelerate the shaping process.
Despite all the convenient magic, Harry managed to put out the forge two separate times by leaving the billet in too long and letting it melt all over the white phoenix fire. (Hedwig was very put out with being fetched repeatedly to relight the fire). Later, once he managed to keep it intact, he vacillated between barely warming the metal for a couple good hammer strikes and accidentally ruining the steel by melting it enough for the carbon to escape.
The problem was, intellectual understanding of what was happening to the metal and what he ought to do didn't matter when Harry hadn't the muscle memory or instinctual timing for when the steel would be ready. He could technically make something with low-heat hammering, but it was wasteful because every reheating and every hammering, steel 'scale' formed on the outside of the red-hot billet and flaked off with every strike. Being quick meant it took less total steel to forge something.
If Harry had expected the hammering to be simple, he was again disappointed. It was deceptively hard to put a lot of force behind a hammer stroke that was also accurate, and he embarrassed himself several times winding up for a big slam, only to whiff the whole blade and stumble awkwardly with the weight of the forge hammer.
Forging came in clutch once more, Hephaestus noting that treating the hammer a bit like a wand during transfiguration made it easier to get strikes to do what he wanted. Transfiguration was Harry's forte, and if anything Hephaestus had underestimated the potency of the effect. Harry could (and did) still whiff occasionally on heavy strikes, but by envisioning a simple, straight-edged sword and pushing a bit of magic into the wooden handle of the hammer, he managed a simple sword blade.
Arya had read ahead to heat treatment, crucial for higher carbon steels where tempering could literally make or break the brittle metal. Harry gathered a barrel of snow to render into water and added silt to make brine. Oil was ideal, but he didn't have easy access to it and a temperature-controlled brine, while not perfect, was certainly good enough.
He again prevailed upon Hedwig to provide flames to heat the water to the exact right temperature to quench the blade. Forging suggested superior alternatives to brine or even oil; alchemical compounds and potions that could infuse hot steel with permanent magical properties, as well as alternatives to mundane steel, but they were all beyond the scope of producing one sword for Arya so she could defend herself.
Despite Forging's valuable advice on heat treatment, Harry's first sword formed hairline cracks and chips that spelled the end of that particular weapon. It was all about the crystalline structure iron or steel formed as it cooled. Iron had larger slip planes where the faces of crystals formed together. The four relevant formations were ferrite, austenite, cementite, and martensite. Ferrite was iron's 'default' configuration, austenite was the term for heated iron or steel that could be worked with forging tools, cementite was what happened if the forging process got screwed up, and martensite was the tough steel structure heat treatment aimed to achieve.
The first step was normalization, essentially resetting the forged, shaped, and finished product to its basic ferrite configuration, relieving internal stresses left over from beating on it with a hammer. Normalization was accomplished by putting the piece back into the forge inside of a tube that would evenly heat the entire piece to the point where the ferrite crystal formation shifted to austenite at 727 °C, then letting it slowly cool in the air back to ferrite. All the problems beating on the sword with a hammer caused were fixed by normalization.
After normalization came the process Harry was familiar with where the glowing hot sword was plunged into billowing, steamy fluid. Quenching sought to lower the temperature of carbon-bonded austenite quickly enough that the carbon could not escape, forming martensite. Quenching served to lower the temperature of the surface almost instantly, while cooling the interior much slower and allowing it to retain some of the flexibility needed to withstand stress. Slowly cooling steel tended to let the carbon diffuse into the metal instead of trapping it within the crystal structure.
The final step was to warm it to merely baking temperature to ease some of the internal stresses formed by quenching, leaving a finished, heat-treated martensite blade and tang that lacked only a hilt and enchantments.
While Harry was puzzling together the mysteries of metallurgy, Arya left him to make the hilt. She returned an hour later from the courtyard with a wooden handle carved in the shape of a howling wolf on one side and a pair of wings on the other.
She said nothing when she returned, though her demeanor was almost fragile and emotionally wrought. Harry thought maybe the carvings were for her fallen companions.
Harry finished his second blade with the proper steel on the fourth day. It survived its dip into the barrel of water and it survived all the finishing Harry inflicted upon it with sandpaper and files.
"Will you enchant it?" Arya asked. She indicated the Forging book open on its spine to the last quarter. "All the last quarter of the book are enchantments for forged items."
Harry leafed through it. "What do you want from the sword? If my work isn't better than you can get back at your home, does it have to be legendary?"
Arya shook her head. "If the egg hatches, I may not be able to return to Ellesmera for years. It must be good enough to trust my life with. I am familiar enough with metallurgy to know your weapon is passable as is, I simply wish for guarantees that it can handle even my greater strength."
"Then let's look for durability spells, first, and think about sharpness and whatnot later."
Forging's section on enchantments was an excellent resource for building on Harry's understanding of enchantments. According to it, there were reasons why harder to cast enchantments were used in favor of the charms that did the same. Loads of enchantments replicated charms Harry was familiar with. According to Forging, charming something was while not quite temporary, usually superficial, like a layer of paint instead of pigmented material. Charms added properties to items, enchantments changed the identity of their targets. It sounded like semantics, but enchantments had the added benefit of being the sort of permanent that took deliberate, educated effort to remove, where charms had to be designed against finite if they wanted to last through one.
Additionally, the fact that enchanting took more effort was better on the face of it for the identity of the object. It added to the story, the nature of a blade that it was made to last.
Forging had blurbs for each of the enchantments, and a lengthy index that labeled which enchantments were useful for what weapons, which ones were nearly necessities and which were optional. Unbreakability, sharpness, temperature protection, and corrosion resistance featured at the front of the list, though Harry was surprised to find that Hephaestus knew enough chemistry to write out why there needed to be six different anti-corrosion spells and which materials they applied to.
For more esoteric enchantments, Forging outlined the benefits and drawbacks. Frictionlessness was incredibly useful for knives and some swords – it let a sharpened blade glide through anything like air, effortlessly cutting through any material the blade was sharp and hard enough to penetrate (with the previous enchantments, this usually meant virtually everything) – but it meant accidents and mishandling could inflict crippling wounds to the wielder, made it annoying to sheathe the blades, and required handguards and adjustment to fighting style since it was impossible to lock blades with an opponent, lest one blade slip right down the other.
Disillusionment required loads of practice to master. The invisibility was extremely good because it only had to fool one set of eyes from one perspective and against monocular opponents, it was truly invisible, but it worked poorly in large pitched battles against several opponents and was hard to track for the wielder. It demanded perfect muscle memory and spatial awareness. You had to truly know exactly how long it was at all times when you couldn't see it, and Forging warned that self-inflicted injuries were common and to never use a disillusioned blade with sharpness enchantments until mastering the blade.
There were gradients of the enchantments, and Forging did recommend slight reductions in friction or for wielders with especially keen eyesight, low level disillusion that made the sword a hazy grey glass instead of opacity.
Experimentation with analogous temporary charms, Arya decided she liked half friction, sharpened and hardened blades with full opacity. Harry couldn't help but fantasize about some of the later enchantments recommended for masters. There were spells that let the wielder turn their blades incorporeal and corporeal at will, enabling them to slash through enemy weapons and then attack from behind, blades that left lingering areas where they'd cut through that if reentered, inflicted minor curses, 'singing' blades that could be controlled entirely with ones mind, retrieval enchantments that let a blade be recalled after thrown, and more. There was enough in there to keep a master swordsman learning for their entire life.
As it was, Arya announced she was happy with the blade. It looked like nothing special, just a straight-edged sword of plain steel, but the intricately carved wooden handle and the testing Harry put it through proved it was anything but.
"Du Sundavar Freohr," Arya decided. "A good name for a sword."