Chapter 65: Birthdays and War Gear
"Nice place," I whistled, looking around at the mansion the Portkey had dropped Harry, Remus, Sirius and I off at.
Longbottom Manor – known as Grand Hill because it was built on top of and inside of several large hills – was an impressive sight. It was hard to tell where the front lawn began or ended because of how large it was. Not to mention that the mansion reminded me of the hobbit homes in the Lord of the Rings with grass and plants growing on everything, except scaled up and with a few ivy-strewn towers poking up like giant fingers emerging from the land.
"Whoa, it's beautiful!" Harry exclaimed.
"The Longbottoms made their fortunes in food and construction," Sirius said. "They own many farms and ranches, and used to compete with the Potters for construction deals and contracts. It's no wonder why their ancestral home would be an incredible fusion of both of their specialties."
"My family used to run a construction company?" Harry asked, curious about this little tidbit.
"House Potter was well known for a few different things in the past," Madam Augusta Longbottom said, walking over to our group at a brisk pace. "Besides their dabbling in potions and enchantments, they were famed for their impressive magical buildings, and the creation of animated constructs. I believe the suits of armor and statues in Hogwarts are some examples of their finest work, if I'm not mistaken."
"Their name, 'Potter,' even refers to the way they crafted with clay in the olden days, turning inanimate matter into mobile, animated creatures that could be mistaken for living things," Sirius added.
"Like golems?" I asked, intrigued.
"Similar to the Jewish mystical art, yes," Sirius said, before giving a polite bob of his head to the older woman. "Forgive us for not immediately greeting you, Lady Longbottom."
Harry mirrored his action as well, and Remus and I bowed a little bit deeper out of respect.
She let out a grumpy huff but nodded back at Sirius. "Glad to see you've educated the boy on how to act. I was aghast when Neville told me Harry Potter hardly knew a thing about our world until he attended school! Whoever was in charge of his education was sorely lacking!"
Harry looked a little put off at that verbal jab, clearly annoyed on my behalf since I'd been the one to teach him a bit about the magical stuff before he'd started school.
I didn't mind, though. I'd done my best to teach Harry about the Magical World and its various social customs and norms, but I hadn't been the best teacher in that regard. After all, I hadn't been taught most of the important political stuff after it was discovered I was a Squib, so I was working off of mere scraps of information.
Besides, I knew Madam Longbottom's words were more directed at Dumbledore than anyone else. She may have been part of the Light faction, but the matriarch of one of the Sacred Twenty-Eight, the oldest and most 'pure' magical bloodlines in Magical Britain, was well-known to not be a fan of her faction's nominal leader.
"Well, come along," Madam Longbottom said, turning around and leading the group into the manor. "Neville has been waiting for you."
"Hey, Remus," I whispered to the werewolf as we headed into the mansion. "I didn't know there were Jewish witches and wizards."
"They call themselves something different, but yes, they exist. Most people of Hebrew descent who possess magic attend the school in Prague, which was founded by Rabbi Loew," Remus said to me. "Or they attend the magical school in Jerusalem."
"Didn't know that," I hummed, intrigued.
"The Jewish faith does not have many adherents in the magical world, but it is respected for a variety of reasons. Though many magicals also sympathize and empathize with their history."
"You mean the discrimination?" I asked with a wince.
"Yes," Remus said bitterly.
Deciding to stop talking about such a morbid topic and not ruin the day with it, Remus and I shut up as we entered the ball room that had been decorated for a double birthday party.
Neville was waiting within, and he lit up with a bright smile as he rushed over to greet his grandmother and Harry.
"You're here!" he said happily, giving Harry a hug.
"Of course!" Harry replied. "Worried I wouldn't show up?"
"A little," Neville admitted as he let his friend go. "I've never had a birthday party before with friends."
"Well, that's clearly going to change from now on," Harry declared, putting a comforting hand on Neville's shoulder.
That brought a tiny smile out onto Neville's face, and the two began to speak with each other.
"Thank you," Madam Longbottom said as she went to stand next to the myself and the other two adults.
"Don't worry about it," Sirius said, waving her off.
She let out a harumph, but there was also a flicker of a smile that passed over her face as she looked at how happy her grandson was.
A few minutes later, the first guests showed up, the fire place turning green with floo-flames. Ron stepped out, brushed some soot off, and gave the two a grin. "Happy birthday, Harry, Neville!"
He pulled out a pair of presents wrapped up in old newspapers. "Be careful, I think the twins may have snuck some of their prank items in 'em after I left them alone for ten minutes earlier today."
"Noted," Harry said, gingerly accepting the package.
A moment later, more green flames burst to life, and Hermione stepped out with the other Muggleborn girls and Lavender Brown. They'd hitched a ride with Lavender, who let them use her family's floo since the rest didn't have access to their own magical fireplace.
"Happy birthday, Harry! Neville!" the bushy-haired girl said happily, pouncing on them to deliver hugs.
One by one, the rest of the Gryffindors in Harry and Neville's year showed up, along with their friends from the other houses, including Susan and Hannah. Even Daphne and Tracy showed up. The latter to once again thank Harry for saving her sister, and the latter just came along for morale support since they were the only Slytherins attending.
Thankfully, nobody seemed to give them any grief for their house affiliation, and the whole event went well, with cake and party games galore.
"Left! Left!"
"No, to the right!"
"Right there! No, no, not there! Up a bit!"
The kids shouted at a blindfolded Harry and Sally-Anne as they raced to pin the tail on the dragon.
"And Sally wins again!" Hannah called out with a laugh when they stabbed their pins into the posters.
"How are you so good at this?" Daphne asked Sally-Anne, who'd somehow managed to pin the tail accurately each and every time.
"Dunno," the Gryffindor shrugged as she took off her blindfold. "Guess I'm a natural."
"My turn!" Ron said as he rushed over to take Harry's place, and Terry Boot joined him. Neither of them managed to get the tail near the dragon's butt, but Ron was the closer of the two, and he threw his hands into the air gleefully at his victory.
"I think everyone has had a chance to pin the tail on the dragon," Remus said, looking around at the children.
"What's next?" Neville asked.
"It's such a lovely day outside. Be a shame not to take advantage of it," Sirius said with a playful grin on his face. I had a smile of my own as I led the kids outside towards a couple of tables that had been set up in the Longbottom's yard.
"Whoa! Water balloons and squirt guns!" Dean gasped excitedly as he saw what was laid out for them.
"Magical water balloons and squirt guns!" I amended. "The latter have Aguamenticharms on them so you don't have to constantly refill them, and we've cast Duplication charms on the former so they'll never run out."
That got them excited as they rushed to get some
"Should we divide into teams?" Hermione wondered.
"Boys against girls!" Justin shouted in response, grabbing a water balloon off the table and chucking it as Padma who squealed and ducked, causing it to splash against her twin.
"JUSTIN!" the wet girl fumed, while Justin wisely decided to book it, running off in fear as Parvati grabbed two water guns Rambo style and chased after him.
Susan and Daphne grabbed some water balloons and began to rally the girls while the boys grabbed squirt guns and began to fight back against the barrage.
It soon devolved into an all-out water brawl between everyone. The adults even got drawn in, with Sirius cackling madly as he chased Remus and I around the yard, tossing water balloons at us.
"Traitor!" I laughed as I dodged one thrown my way by the Black man-child. I twisted around and fired the squirt gun in my hands at him and nailed him in the face. He spluttered a bit, and was then nailed by two water balloons courtesy of Remus.
"Alright, children!" Madam Longbottom called out. "It's time to cut the cake!"
Because the water was conjured up via spells, we dried off quickly. Which was a good thing, because it was time for food!
Dobby had worked with the Longbottom's House Elf to create a truly amazing cake. It was a thing of beauty, a giant sponge cake made in the likeness of Neville's toad, Trevor (the warts were replicated with gumballs).
The kids stuffed themselves with cake and other snack foods, and most of them ended up with stomach aches when the feeding frenzy was all over.
Thankfully, magic could cure much, and Madam Longbottom had expected such a thing to happen and prepared fruit punch laced with stomach soothing potions for them to sip on as they laid around, digesting everything.
Afterwards, the kids played some more, but kept indoors. Gobstones, Exploding Snap, Wizard Chess, and a few other magical boardgames were brought out and enjoyed.
I lost two matches of Gobstones to Harry, and Seamus Finnigan trounced everyone in Exploding Snap. He was extremely good at anything magical related to fire, and it turned out this translated to explosions as well. And of course, Ron beat the pants off of everyone when it came to Wizard Chess. The red-head even managed to impress Madam Longbottom, who was, I was surprised to learn, the equivalent of a Wizard Chess Grandmaster. I had a feeling that promised interesting things in the future if Ron kept his skills up.
But all things end, and one by one, the party-goers flooed back to their homes. Then, when everything was over and people went home, Harry and Neville sat down to open their gifts.
I'd always thought opening up presents in front of other people was a bit rude, and that was something Harry also agreed with me about, and he also rather easily convinced Neville to open the gifts later since the Longbottom heir didn't want to cause any sort of conflict or embarrassment between the party-goers. Also, Pureblood etiquette discouraged opening gifts in front of the gift giver as well, so there was that, too.
"Here you go, kids," I said, handing over the birthday gifts I'd gotten for them. For Harry, it was the enchanted ring of protection I'd gotten in America. As for Neville, I'd gotten him an assortment of fancy and rare magical seedlings for him to plant in his garden.
"Thanks, Ed!" Harry said happily, and Neville nodded along with a wide smile. I smiled back. Seeing both of them enjoy themselves was reward enough.
Today was good day.
111 &&&&& 111
"This is the place, then?" I asked, looking up at the building Sirius had led myself and Remus to. The day after Harry's birthday party, the two Marauders had met up at my office, and then we'd Portkeyed away.
This had been in the works for a while, and I was excited to get started. Though the place that we'd arrived at was quite interesting, to say the least.
"Yup," Sirius drawled, a look of disgust on his face. "One of the many vacation villas the Blacks own. This place is the only location in the British Isles we kept around aside from Grimmauld Place, and a place my parents liked to send me and my brother whenever we misbehaved."
"Let me guess. It was less of a vacation spot and more of a place they could torture you without being overheard?" I guessed, and he nodded, spitting on the porch.
The place he'd taken us was an actual castle on a hillside in the moors of Wales, complete with moat, draw bridge, parapets, and knowing the Blacks, a dungeon. Constructed from black stone, it was not very large, more of a Motte and Bailey with the baily part left to be consumed by nature, but it was still an impressive piece of architecture.
"Welcome to Castle Black, the original home of the Blacks, before they moved to Grimmauld Place," Sirius explained as he waved his wand and lowered the drawbridge. "Took a while to clean it and fix it up. My parents really let it fall into disrepair that not even a House Elf could fix. Thank Merlin you made connections with those dwarves, Ed."
"Why did your family leave?" Remus wondered, looking up at the eerie castle.
"The castle was cursed a long time ago. Anybody who stayed within it would eventually be driven mad," Sirius said with a grimace. "The curse was removed, but it took several generations to cleanse, and by the time it was fixed, London had grown to become the center of Magical Britain and it was decided that it was better to stick close to the seat of power, so to speak."
Remus grunted in acknowledgement, and then shivered as we passed through the entrance. I understood why, of course. There was a creepy feeling hanging over the entire building.
Upon entering, a deathly wail rang out, and I jumped a bit in fright as the sound echoed around us.
"Is that a ghost?" I asked, unnerved.
"Yeah. Not sure who he is. No idea if he's a Black or just one of their unfortunate victims. Don't mind him, though, he's harmless. Just wanders around and screams whenever somebody enters," Sirius said, waving it off.
"I suppose that's an effective alarm system," I muttered, resolving to look up some rituals in Flamel's journal regarding warding rooms against ghostly intrusions.
"Now, we can use this place for testing," Sirius declared as he led our little group into the great hall. It was empty, the tables and furniture pushed up against the walls, leaving a lot of room to work with.
"Wards look strong," Remus commented, looking at something I couldn't see, and Sirius nodded.
"Yeah, they should be. These are ward for resisting war magic and sieges from mundane armies," Sirius claimed. "If any of our experiments manage to harm this place, I will be shocked."
"Alrighty, then. What should we test first?" I asked, taking off my expanded-space backpack and removing a few items from it. They included a few handguns, bullets, and body armor of various types, ranging from sports gear protection and military grade stuff that 'fell off the back of a truck,' so to speak.
Research into adding magic to modern weapons had hit a few snags recently. Trying to apply runes to bullets was possible, but it really didn't add much to them. Bullets and their shells were so small that engraving runes into either wasn't very efficient. We could imbue them with elemental effects, but while it was cool to see a bullet freeze or burn a target, it wasn't as useful as just getting shot with a regular piece of lead.
Enchanting the guns themselves was slightly more promising, but the more moving parts an object had, as well as the smaller the components used to hold it together like screws and such, the harder it was for the enchantment to properly affect all of it at once. Enchant a mirror or a wardrobe? Easy. But a handgun gun that had a whole bunch of fiddly bits, to say nothing of the bigger weapons? Not so much.
We found some success in miniaturization via the Shrinking spell to hide and store weapons, and found a way to make certain things lighter and better able to handle recoil. The Featherweight Charm made it so even a guy like me could pick up a machine gun without issue (don't ask how we got one). But again we ran into the whole issue of enchanting objects with lots of small and moving parts!
I had no idea how Mr. Weasley had managed to enchant his car, because according to what my researchers told me, it shouldn't have been possible. But given how he'd been tinkering with it for years, they assumed that the spells and enchantments had been layered onto it so much they were simply brute forcing themselves to work, and damn the consequences!
In the end, after numerous failures, we tried to switch gears and find a way to increase the amount of ammunition a gun could have access to instead of making the weapons themselves magical.
Unfortunately, it seemed that trying to use a Doubling Charm on bullets did not work as planned. We could create as many copies of a bullet as we wanted, but said copies wouldn't fire properly. Apparently, the basic duplication spell taught in Hogwarts had trouble with making copies of living things as well as anything too complicated. Bullets fit into that latter category.
Oh, sure, the lead round itself as well as the cartridge could be replicated, but the gunpowder was another story. It was too complex, too many different substances mixed together.
Old fashioned black powder, that is to say, saltpeter, charcoal, and Sulphur, could be duplicated magically albeit with some difficulty and loss of explosive power, but modern gunpowder was a lot more complex than just three ingredients. This meant any bullets we made via magic would often not work, the gunpowder not igniting properly.
And even when we did successfully duplicate a bullet with functional gunpowder, the entire duplicated construct would soon collapse as soon as ignition occurred!
Turns out that explosions, which is how a bullet is propelled from a gun, are really bad for duplicated items to experience, since they are extremely weak and can lose cohesion simply by being hit by a strong gust of wind in the worst-case scenarios. Add in the fact that ignition was caused by the firing pin striking the cartridge's primer, and that impact could also destroy a copy!
The only success we had at creating magical copies of bullets was with the cursed version of the spell, and that was just as useless in the end, as while duplicates made via the Geminiocurse were more durable, they were also insanely unstable. They would try to begin duplicating inside the gun itself the moment they were damaged, like, say, when the gunpowder ignited, which led to jamming and explosions. Plus, there was the whole 'curse' thing. The tainted magic would foul up guns, leading to jams, breakages, disabling and corrupting other enchantments and runes, and in one experiment, caused the entire firearm to fall apart into a pile of ash.
To my annoyance, creating a gun with limitless ammo via the Doubling spell was currently impractical. And none of us who were attempting these experiments were spellcrafters, so for the moment, that option was unavailable for now.
We'd next tried to enchant the magazines themselves to hold more bullets, but we discovered an interesting little snag in the process. The smaller the space you were trying to magically expand, the less amount of space you could create with an Undetectable Expansion Charm.
Something with the volume of an empty backpack, like the one I'd bought in New Orleans, could contain approximately five times that much when given an Expansion Charm. An empty shipping container could have a hundred times as much compared to the original volume and a chest or steam trunk could contain as much an entire room within it. But anything smaller than a backpack? You began to get diminishing returns.
Simply put, the more initial space you had to work with, the bigger the magically expanded area could be. Which explained how places like Gringotts or the Ministry of Magic, which had been built underground, could exist without anybody up above them in London noticing.
But it also meant that trying to enchant a handgun or rifle magazine resulted in it only being able to hold up to 1.5 times as many bullets at a time. Useful to a degree, but not quite what we'd been hoping for, ultimately.
Now, in all fairness, the people doing these enchantments and experiments were not actual Enchanters or masters of their respective magical crafts. It was just me, Sirius, Remus, Delilah, and occasionally Sam who were doing the work.
It wasn't that we didn't trust our employees or other people with these things… but that was exactly the reason. Trust. Even with magical oaths and bonds enforcing the NDAs and contracts, nothing was fool proof. The only way to ensure total secrecy was to keep the group small.
I'd already pushed too far with my magically assisted businesses, and I was growing worried that the thin line keeping me out of the crosshairs of the magical world was growing too frayed for comfort.
Now that I was thinking more clearly after no longer using Occlumency constantly – which was a bit of an ironic statement in my opinion – I could see just how arrogant and rash I'd been, and wished I could travel back in time and slap some sense into my past self.
Seriously, what had I been thinking? Selling watered down potions in the open? It would have been far safer to keep my head down while experimenting with runes and alchemy and figure out a way to cast Reparospells on broken things if I wanted to discreetly amass wealth. Remus had done so, after all, and he'd only been limited by his lack of understanding of the Muggle world.
Honestly, my potions business was a side gig at this point. I was making far more money through my garbage recycling and shipping businesses per week than I'd made selling potions in a single year!
But that was the past. I had to accept the reality that I'd fucked up, and deal with any consequences that came along with said fucking up.
That was why the three of us were out here today, testing magically enhanced gear in a secret wizard castle. Because some of this stuff was going to be used against Voldemort and his goons, and with his revival right around the corner, I wanted to be ready for it.
I took out three pairs of earmuffs, passing them out to everyone, before picking up a gun.
"Okay! First test! One ordinary Glock 17 handgun, no modifications!" I called out. I then passed it over to Remus, who carefully took it from me. I'd put him through gun safety training and shooting practice for his job as head of Crucible Security Solutions, and he was a pretty decent shot.
A paper shooting target had been set up at the end of the great hall with an old bed mattress behind it to catch any stray bullets. I took up a spot near Sirius, and he conjured a shield for us to stand behind in case of ricochet or misfires.
Gun in hand, Remus took a deep breath, removed the safety, aimed, and fired. A sharp retort barked out and the empty casing clattered to the stone floor. Sirius flinched back, as even with the ear protection the sound was loud.
"Ow!" he grunted. "Are all guns that loud?"
"Some are louder," I replied as I checked a large device on the floor next to Remus. It was a machine for measuring decibels. A bit bulky compared to what the future would someday have, but it was portable, at least. "Hmm, 162 decibels. Sounds about right."
Sirius snickered at the unintentional pun and I rolled my eyes as Remus put the safety back on. I handed him his next weapon. It was another Glock 17, but this time it had a single Silencing rune etched into the back of the slide, near the sights.
Since the runes needed the radiant magic of a mage to trigger, and Remus was the only one of us who had any shooting skills, he had the honor of testing our first experimental runic weapon.
Once again, Remus repeated the safety procedures, aimed, and fired, putting another round through the target. This time, the sound was noticeably quieter.
"How much did it reduce things by?" Sirius asked as he rubbed his left ear.
"It's down to 108 decibels. Seems like a single rune reduced the sound by a little more than a third," I told him as I checked the decibel measuring device. "Don't forget the fact that runic enchantments don't work that well with a complicated mechanical tool like a gun, so that's actually pretty good."
I got out the third Glock. This one had three Silencing runes engraved into it. One on the back of the slide, like the second one, but with two more on either side of the slide, above the trigger.
Why three? Because arithmancy proved that magic liked to do things that way. Three runes worked more synergistically than just one or two.
Remus took it, repeated the safety steps, and fired a single shot. For a moment I wondered if it had actually fired, as I hadn't heard anything. But when he gave us a nod, I went over to check the target the first, then the meter.
The former had a hole in it that hadn't been there before, and the meter showed a number I was absolutely pleased with.
"It worked!" I cheered. "Zero decibels!"
We checked again, this time by removing our earmuffs, but once more the gun fired completely silently, the only sounds being the muffled thump of the bullet hitting the mattress and the clatter of the empty shell hitting the ground.
"Damn, that's kinda scary," Sirius muttered, eyeing the holes in the paper target. "The loudness was startling, but the silence… it's a bit worrying."
"Agreed," Remus nodded, eyeing the weapon in his hands warily. "So odd. To think these are in the hands of so many Muggles the world over."
"Yeah, and a lot of them are much more dangerous than a Glock," I said. "That's why we have defensive gear to test, too."
I went to grab the items we were going to test out of my backpack while Remus and Sirius set up the room to accommodate them.
Defensive equipment was tricky. Sure, anybody could wear rings, jewelry, and the like that carried enchantments, but we did not have any Enchanters on hand to make something like that. So, we had to rely on what we did have. Potions, alchemy, and most importantly, runes.
Weaving runes into Kevlar or etching them onto ceramic or steel plates that'd fit into body armor would work well enough, but only until they got damaged. If a bullet or spell put a hole through a single rune, then the whole array would fail and it would stop being magical, which could be a death sentence in a fight.
Now, it might seem like the solution would be putting the runic sequences somewhere they couldn't be easily targeted, but, as a famous quote said, location, location, location. You want to make a Bubblehead charm to protect a person's head? The runes better be as close to the head as possible. And a Shield charm? As close to the heart as you can get, for the magical symbolism of protection.
Not to mention, some runic sequences were quite big, and if we wanted to create personal Protego shields or Bubblehead arrays they'd be quite large, even if we tried to make the runes as small as possible. And the smaller the runes, the weaker the effect.
To make a Protegothat could appear anywhere on the body capable of stopping small arms fire out of runes, the entire array would need to cover approximately 30 square centimeters. And that was a lot of space. And thus, a lot of points of failure if a single bullet or some other attack managed to damage something important.
But there were benefits to this method that warranted investigation. For one, it was a personal forcefield of sorts, enough to keep a person safe from stray shots from heavier weapons and several direct hits from sidearms like a Glock. Add in a Bubblehead charm, and it was also a superior gas mask! The runes were also designed to draw in ambient magic, so as not to rely on a person's own magical energy, though it could, and if worn by a Squib or mage, it would make the shields slightly stronger. Around twenty to forty percent stronger, in fact!
And if the Protegodid get broken, it'd take a few seconds for the magic to recharge it. If the person wearing the body armor could get into cover, then there was a chance they could keep going when they regained their shield. Plus, it was still body armor, even if its defensive capabilities were reduced.
To that end, we'd woven the Protego's runic sequence into the Kevlar in a spot that was somewhat unlikely to be hit; around the sides of the body, near the ribs and underneath the arms, near the armpits. It had been cleverly broken into two parts so it didn't have to wrap around the torso, and thus negate the whole point of putting it elsewhere. Most shots would generally come from the front or back. The sides were a smaller target, and the perfect place to put some runes. As for the Bubblehead's array, it was woven into the fabric around the collar.
"Test firing against the first suit of Avalon Mark 1 body armor!" Remus called out after I'd set up the body armor on a mannequin.
The grandiosely named equipment was just a standard Level IIIA Soft Armor ballistic vest made of Kevlar and Twaron strands. It had a faint, barely discernable shimmer of pale white energy, proof of the shield being up.
I'd picked it up, along with the guns, during my extended stay in America. Say what you like about gun laws in the U.S., it sure made buying them, and other things like this, pretty damn easy.
The first shot Remus fired into it was stopped dead in its tracks, the bullet flattening into a coin against a semi-translucent blue shield the size of a dinner plate that popped up, causing it to flare brightly, becoming fully visible. The second and third shots bounced off, and I flinched as one round got a bit too close for comfort. Even behind Sirius's own Protego, it was still nerve-wracking to be so close to a live fire exercise.
"Okay, note to self, include some sort of inertial dampeners to prevent ricochets," I muttered.
It took a total of six rounds to cause the shield to collapse, and the bullet that managed to do so managed to strike the chest, but failed to penetrate.
The next test was to see how well the shields held up if the shooting came from other directions. To this end, Remus enchanted the mannequin to spin around slowly. He then fired at the test dummy, and we all noted carefully how each quickly the shield would appear, and how well it could handle it when the shots came from different angles.
"It doesn't handle shots that are too low," I noted, examining the damage done to the bottom half of the life-sized doll. "The legs aren't protected enough."
"Makes sense. The runic sequence is centered on the torso, and it focuses on protect the more vital areas located in the chest and head," Remus nodded.
"I also saw that the Protegosdidn't appear fast enough if the shots aimed at wildly different areas," Sirius commented. "When Remus shot at the right arm, then followed up with a shot to the head, the shield was much slower to form and almost didn't manage to block the bullet."
"Yeah, good point. What if we made the Protegobigger? Right now it's small, and so the runic array has to constantly shift the shield around to counter each and every bullet, but if the shield itself was larger, then it wouldn't need to worry about that," I suggested.
"Hmm. We could try to combine the Protegospell with a modified, full body Bubblehead Charm. Create a forcefield around the entire person," Sirius suggested.
"That would require a lot of work, and a genuine Spellcrafter if we wanted it done right," Remus pointed out. "Not to mention the size of the array would be significantly larger. It wouldn't fit in the place we currently are using."
"Why don't we use a Compression Enchantment to shrink it down to size so it fits?" Sirius wondered. "That's what we did to make the Marauders Map. Without it, the thing would be the size and thickness of an encyclopedia!"
"Something to explore for sure," I hummed. "But if that doesn't work out, why don't we put the runic array on a large sheet of fabric and just fold it up a bunch of times then stuff into a small space on the body armor?"
"Like stuffing a folded up quilt into a pillow!" Sirius said, realizing what I was going for.
"Unorthodox, but it could work," Remus mused. "I'll look into both options. But before that, time for the final test."
Remus then put on a suit of Avalon Armor himself, to test if he could still shoot while wearing his own piece of shielded equipment. Turned out he could. The Protegodid not interfere with being able to shoot through it.
"Good first round of testing," I said, congratulating the two when the guns and armor had been tested a bit more, mainly with shooting the body armor with spells instead of bullets to see how well it stood up to magic. Fairly well, all things considered. The Avalon Armor could stop a Piercing Hex, one of the most common combat spells in the Wizarding World, up to two times before needing to recharge.
"We'll need to find a way to reduce the amount of light produced whenever the armor is hit," Remus said, giving his two pence based on what he'd experienced so far. "The flash of light whenever a bullet strikes the Protegocould blind and disorient the person wearing it. Especially if its dark."
"Hmm. Yes, nice catch," I nodded. "The flash could give away a person's position, too."
"Still, the results seem decent," Sirius hummed. "Need to check the performance when it's being worn in action, of course. See how different things are when the runes are being powered by the wearer's magic in the middle of a fight. But it looks promising so far!"
"That it does," I said with a smile. There were other things to experiment with.
Making more of my Bullet Time rings to improve reaction time. Seeing if it was possible to dye clothing with potions to make them resistant to things like fire or provide other effects. Exploring the world of magical tattoos and certain types of combat rituals as well as something Nicholas Flamel had called 'War Alchemy' in his notes.
There was a lot to do, and I could feel my excitement building as I thought about everything we'd have to do. This was going to change the world. I could tell!