Chapter Five:
Perhaps the most magical thing about Hogwarts was just how fast time seemed to fly. Days blended into weeks marked by endless trips to the library and struggling to catch up in my lessons, repeated attempts at spell work and one quite spectacular cauldron explosion as well as a truly staggering number of broken quills. The sheer number of those I'd broken was embarrassing, I was fast on track to turning an entire flock of birds bald with how many feathered nightmares I'd managed to snap. It was my mysterious gift with Ancient Runes that came to my rescue there, eventually, when I had the idea to engrave a ribbon of runes along the spine rendering it quite unbreakable.
Not sure it would survive Mount Doom or anything, but it stoically endured my many, many essays. Shame runes couldn't improve my penmanship any.
News of my prodigious talent spread quickly among my housemates and beyond. No matter the test I was consistently earning the highest marks thanks to my in built and entirely broken advantage.
It was said renown that led to Anthony approaching me about a secret project during a quiet moment after a particularly gruelling Transfiguration lesson of which nobody had managed to come close to completing the spell work and so Professor McGonagall had demanded an essay twice the length of our usual quota. The essentials, once he'd tripped himself up enough to give the game away, was he wanted someone with runic talent to help make cages for his brother who was something of an amateur Magizoologist apparently.
Seeing no reason to turn down paying work, we agreed to meet his brother during the long-awaited trip to Hogsmeade village. Dumbledore had stubbornly refused to grant permission, but there were ways around that. Finding the statue of the one-eyed witch had proven trickier than I'd expected, but find it I had. As the students strolled through the castle's gate in their carriages - after Filch had examined each and every permission slip thoroughly of course - I descended into the secret passage.
The tunnel was a broken maze of cobwebs and loose stones and more than once I slipped in a way, I'm sure Anthony would have found hilarious, and even with my Lumos charm the darkness felt like it was pressing down on me somehow.
Eventually I made it to Honeydukes cellar, and I felt my nose all but dance on my face as I took in the scents of deliciousness in a hundred flavours. I wasn't normally one for sweets, but there was an undeniable part of me that wanted to chew my way through the heavy boxes scattered through the basement.
The shop itself was more crowded than some concerts I'd been to in another life and I had to elbow my way through to the door, passing by one boy with golden hair gingerly opening a bar of chocolate only to burst into delight as he pulled free a golden ticket.
As wondrous as the sweet shop was Hogsmeade itself was something else entirely, sleepy in a way that felt like place was the dream of some great and gentle being. It was the most picturesque place I'd ever laid eyes on, a blend of small homey cottages and the mismatched crooked buildings that wizards seemed to love so much. A great tree stood before me adorning a hundred candles hidden among the autumn leaves giving the look of a merry bonfire. The street corners had musicians and dancers performing for the students. It was altogether quite magical, pardon the pun, something quite aptly taken straight from a storybook.
But Anthony wasn't the only reason I'd come to this quaint little hamlet, there was something else. As I approached the boundary where the village ended my eyes caught small gleaming silver letters floating as if in an unseen breeze, some alone and others in groups, weaving and wandering endlessly. They seemed to dance with one another playfully, dark letters from a language whose origin was quite unown. Each letter was a part of some great short story that combined to repel muggles at the very least and likely much more. I recognised each and every one, but I couldn't have woven them together like this if I'd tried a thousand times.
This wasn't just runes, this was art.
"Michael!" came a shout, pulling me from my happy musings. I turned to see a thickly bundled Hermione and an even more outrageously bushy mane of hair than usual bursting from a woollen hat. Beside her was the final part of Gryffindor's trio I had yet to really speak to, and judging by the sullen look he was shooting me that wasn't likely to change.
"Hello Hermione, Ron. Enjoying Hogsmeade?" I asked politely
"Oh yes, Ronald might have to visit Madam Pomfrey with all the chocolate he's trying to eat though. I stopped by Tomes and Scrolls, if you haven't already you should really visit there are some truly fascinating books, it's a shame I couldn't afford them all. I'm still not certain I made the right choice either." Hermione began in her usual rapid-fire tone that somehow didn't all blur into a single sound, before she promptly turned and gestured to her companion "This is Ronald Weasley by the way, I'm not sure you've had a proper introduction. You've likely met some of his brothers, the twins especially."
Ron had an expression that vaguely reminded me of a gorilla about to bang his chest territorially, but it quickly fell as both he and I shared an expression of 'Good God take a breath love' as Hermione somehow continued to talk.
"You alright? Harry said he saw you going to see Dumbledore, didn't think the Ravenclaws could get up to so much trouble?" he asked once he'd finished looking on in bewilderment, not that I could blame him I was starting to debate whether or not she'd found a spell to get around breathing with how fast she spoke.
"It was only once or twice." I waved off with a grin "If the rumours are to be believed you've been there quite a few times yourself."
"Honestly Ron, given Michael's situation Dumbledore probably just wanted to make sure he's adjusting well enough." Hermione reasoned firmly, as if the very notion that a fellow book lover getting sent to the Headmaster's office for nefarious reasons was absurdly offensive. "I hope we can finally get our study group off the ground now? Harry said he'd show up, Ron is being rather obtuse about it all."
There was a very notable hint of something I couldn't place when she spoke about Ron, but for the life of me I couldn't put my finger on what.
"That's the plan, there's a few other Ravenclaws that seemed interested. From what I hear one or two from Hufflepuff as well, but we'll have to see how it goes. Professor Flitwick said we could use the old trophy room on the fourth floor next to the portrait of the lion chasing a witch into a wardrobe. Say tomorrow at five o'clock?"
"Sounds perfect" Hermione grinned widely. A clock began to chime midday somewhere and Ron looked over sourly, tugging at her sleeve
"We best get going, we're off to see the Shrieking Shack. See you back at school." he said with a friendly enough nod before strolling away
"Bye Michael" Hermione waved before turning to follow, the pair getting lost in the crowd soon after. I waved them off before turning to the famous Three Broomsticks which stood at the crossroads of the most travelled paths in all of Hogsmeade towering over everything around it. It would have been impressive if not for the fact the entire building leaned at a worrying angle.
Once inside the utterly crowded space I made a beeline for Anthony once I spied him near the back, sitting alongside the older man who must have been his brother Barry. I hadn't known what to expect from a Magizoologist, but this man certainly wasn't it. The elder Goldstein was a tall and thin man with hair as white as snow slicked back, save for a few stubborn strands which stood out at odd angles. He wore thick, heavy boots caked in mud and robes that where so singed and torn at the bottom they almost qualified as a cape.
"Beranabus Goldstein, a pleasure to meet you. You're right on time." he said in greeting, standing to shake my hand as was proper. He shared the Irish accent of his brother, but there was a twang in there that made me think he'd spent a lot of time elsewhere in the world.
"Stick with Barry, you'll never be able to say Beranabus with a straight face." Anthony sagely offered from his chair before he took a long drink of what I knew to be butterbeer. Barry's handshake was short but firm, and he offered me a seat like a gentleman before resuming his own.
"So, you're the runes genius. I never took it myself but I hear it's a right nasty hurt on the mind. Fortunately for you, we need someone with yer skills. Got a job we'd like some help with. All above board of course." Barry spoke in the upbeat merry tone of someone who worked in sales, and I felt the urge to roll my eyes at it.
"Anthony said you needed cages, but he didn't say why" I prompted giving the younger of the pair a pointed look. He had the decency to look sheepish and I wondered what the big secret was.
"Aye, for some nasty little critters. Need to keep them locked up tight, these aren't the sort you'd want to take for a morning stroll." Barry nodded easily, apparently completely unbothered by the crowds around us. I got the distinct impression if this were an RPG he'd have dumped all his points into charisma.
"And you should listen to him, this nutter never met the beasty he didn't try and tame. Got himself a troll last summer, even named the thing, wanted to train it up. Worked out real well, until it smashed its way through a muggle village." Anthony interjected looking far too amused by what sounded like a shockingly bad idea. Barry only looked the slightest bit sheepish at the words, an odd look of longing dominated his expression.
"Bill didn't mean any harm - he just got hungry is all." he defended with an unhappy frown "It was an honest mistake. Tom and Bert haven't put one step wrong yet!"
"Didn't Tom almost eat you?"
"I smelled like mutton, he got confused. Leave him be!" Barry shot back grumpily.
I wondered if all wizarding families were just bonkers.
"If we could get back to the cages?" I prompted a touch louder than necessary, drawing their attention back to me. The pair locked eyes for a moment, one amused the other annoyed, before they silently agreed to let the matter rest. At least for now.
"Right, well, the long and short of it is we need gold and we need it quick." Anthony admitted with a sigh, pushing his empty bottle across the table with his knuckles absently "You remember what I said about my dad? Well, anyone can make mistakes, and his backfired in a big way. Don't know what happened exactly, but the runes he was working on sort of...froze him, like a statue, only it's like there's a thick skin on him."
"He was supposed to be knocking together a new ward for some Frenchie, but somewhere he got his letters jumbled and boom. French fellow is furious, sank a lot of gold into the venture. And now da' is in St. Mungos, only they're not having much luck knocking him straight" Barry continued looking vaguely ill at the situation, distress clear in his eyes "We've found a bloke who thinks he can undo whatever da' did to himself, but it don't come cheap. To say nothing of getting His Lordly Frenchiness off of our backs."
That hit hard for me. Family was a mixed bag at the best of times, but it was forever.
"I'll help, but what exactly are you thinking about trapping? Not trolls, you can't make more than a few knuts selling what you can get from those." I wondered aloud, my mind flipping through the species I knew lived locally to Hogwarts. Dugbog's where plentiful further south from what I had read, and there were a half dozen Mooncalf dens scattered around the Black Lake. Thestrals maybe?
"Spiders." Anthony said.
I felt my brain grind to a halt.
"Acromantula silk is in high demand in Britian. It has uses in fashion, medicine and potions. Most of what we can get our hands on comes from far out east, a local supplier would undercut them right out of pocket. We could name our price!" Barry continued as if I hadn't just heard him say he wanted to find and trap a carnivorous man-eating giant spider.
I told him as much.
"These are the spiders that eat people? Classified as dangerous as a magical creature can be, those spiders you're talking about?" I asked blankly as my eyes swung from one brother to the other.
"We're not talking about catching an adult." Anthony assured me hurriedly, hands raised placatingly "They breed fast, and grow slow. We catch one of the young and let it mature in captivity, once it reaches maturity, we take what we need from it."
"I took a gander across the books; I can handle the harvesting once they're old enough. We just need something to keep the little devil in. Something that won't snap like twigs when the little beast gets angry, you know?" Barry continued fluidly with an excited, almost manic gleam to his eye. "Got meself a cottage just over the other side o' the lake, away from people. Got everything I need ready, just need the beast and her box and we're ready to roll."
Part of me wanted to turn and run for saner pastures, and maybe slap some sense into the pair for good measure. But another part was already piecing together the runic array I'd need for such a cage. A simple box wouldn't do at all. Too many weak points for what we'd need. It couldn't be a simple Gandalf Esque 'you shall not pass' rune because we'd need to feed and water the thing and take the silk once it was time. Magical beasts where magically resistant as a rule, so our eight-legged cash cow would need something specifically designed to hold her kind.
It was doable...
"And, supposing we don't end up strung up as a snack or worse in Azkaban, how would we split the profits?" I asked after a few moments. Barry grinned widely, while Anthony looked supremely smug as if he'd masterminded all this nonsense.
"Even split, three ways. Minus a percentage to our man who'll sell the stuff once we're in business. So, are we in business?" Anthony asked with a roughish grin that looked out of place on a plump boy like him. But nevertheless, I shook his hand.
"What the hell."
Barry led his brother and I not toward the forbidden forest as I expected but further south from Hogsmeade where the land became more of a swamp than a crag, great patches of willow trees endlessly making the world far more humid that it had any right to be in the Scottish Highlands. Barry helpfully informed us that the trees where a blend of red maple, blackgum and swamp tupelos which weren't at all native but where a favourite of such magical critters such as Giant Purple Toads, Kneazles and Jobberknolls.
We neared what looked like a campsite save for the dozens of cages strewn about the place some as small as to fit in my palm and others large enough to fit my entire flat from before I came to Hogwarts. A small fire was burning merrily in the centre switching colours every few moments, and not far beyond that sitting quite apart from anything else was a dark leather trunk covered in a dozen padlocks.
"I managed to, err, acquire one of the little devils from a friend in Borneo. She's toothless though, no venom, no pincers and can't breed. Happens with hybrids. Makes them more of a novelty than a menace. I figure we see if your cage can 'old her before we try it on one of her meaner cousins, you know?" Barry asked with a casualness that really didn't fit to my mind, but if he seemed confident there was probably reason to be.
Or else he was just another nutter.
"She's been trained to heed to this whistle, so if we can't catch her, we can herd her back." he offered almost as an afterthought. And I had to admit that eased my concerns. I'd read about Acromantula in passing across a half dozen books in the library and every last one of them said the worst thing you could possibly do was set one loose. Born hungry the giant spiders where an apex species that could reproduce at an alarming rate and would devour anything living, there was apparently a report made a century ago that a pack of Acromantula had trapped and eaten an entire dragon.
"What could possibly go wrong?" Anthony said wryly as he came to a stop a dozen feet away, wand at the ready just in case. Probably a good idea - I'd learned from our Defence classes that Anthony was surprisingly handy with his curses and jinxes. If I were ever to find myself in a duel and needed a second, he'd be my first choice. I'd even wager him over Harry Potter, protagonist plot armour notwithstanding.
I gazed over the cage Barry gestured towards a flimsy wooden thing that looked like a solid kick would snap the bars in half without magic to support it. There were crude runes already carved across the brow that seemed mostly correct, if out of order. There was also a lack of poise to them, as if someone had taken them straight from a dreary textbook.
"Give me a minute here?" I asked as I pulled my own wand and promptly cleared the surface clean before etching out the runes properly with the symbols glowing in the air with a razor thin pulsing blue light "Fallacia" I murmured softly, shifting the runes into a circle rather than a string before casting them down onto the wood. The letters sank into the grain and carved themselves before they began to glow a merry green.
"Ready as I'll ever be" I decided. No sooner had I said the words than the chest was opened and eight long, almost skeletal legs reached out of the box. A head followed soon after, eight eyes as black as night surrounded by a body of russet red fur watching us patiently, warily, stepping forward with movements so slight it was almost unnoticeable. As large as a hound with a stance as wide as a small car it was eerie in a way I couldn't name, and despite all the power I knew I had at my fingertips I felt like a rabbit before a wolf.
I had never been afraid of spiders, but watching this creature now it was hard not to be terrified. It seemed too otherworldly, so unlike life as I knew it. I felt my skin crawling as its lidless eyes latched onto me. Then faster than a gunshot the spider was suddenly racing forwards in a single powerful leap clean over the fire before sprinting at me in a flurry of lightning-fast legs. It was horrifying how fast it could move; I'd seen horses at full sprint move half as fast. The noise of its fangless maw clicking felt like nails on a chalkboard.
"Depulso!" Anthony cried out blasting a bolt of purple light at the beast when it came too near him, knocking it back a half dozen paces. It rolled like a football with the impact and reversed itself and shooting off like a rocket towards Barry, who was quick to repeat the process and send it back like some bizarre game of tennis between the brothers.
"Come on, over here!" I called out tauntingly.
The spider heard my challenge and raced forward with a shriek, spitting with anger.
"Carpe Retractum!" I yelled, binding the beast's leg with a length of yellow light and yanking sharply making it stumble and roll towards me. With a hurried side step, it barrelled past and straight into the cage which swung shut with a resounding snap. The cage rattled once, twice, a third time before green sparks flew from the lock and it fell still.
We'd done it.
"We did it!" I crowed happily.
Only for the cage to promptly shatter into splinters and the spider leapt at me furiously, blunted fangs barred ready. It was only Anthony's swift reflexes that saved as his bulk smashed into my side sending us both hurtling into the dirt. The spider wasted no time and turned; legs raised like spear tips as she moved forward.
Then the whistle sounded, an odd tin melody and she froze in place.
"Okay, that could have gone better." I admitted in a grumble. Anthony rolled his eyes and smacked me across the back of the head.
"You jinxed it." he accused half-heartedly, and we watched as the spider was sheparded back into its box to be locked away completely. I picked up one of the splinters of wood from the cage and pondered what had gone wrong.
"Not bad for a first try. Just needs a few tweaks don't you think?" Barry asked brightly, reaching down with both hands to lift us up to our feet before clapping me on the shoulder with his usual easy grin etched across his face "Guess you've got some work to do. That is, if you're still up for this, partner?"
"Just try and stop me." I shot back with a smirk. "We've got work to do."
The rest of the school week passed in a frenzied blur of research on top of our steadily mounting class demands trying to search for the answer to the riddle of what exactly was missing from the runic array I'd created. The only answer I'd managed to come up with was the command was just too simple and that we needed something more specific, but the exact details remained elusive because no matter how hard I looked there just didn't seem to be anything that quite fit the pattern and homework left us with far less time to look than we'd have liked.
Barry had been very clear in that if we wanted to farm an arcomantula's silk they needed to be at least six months old and it would take time to properly harvest, meaning we needed the cage built before the Christmas period at the latest if we wanted to see profits within the year.
No pressure.
Adding to the list of time demands, but not an unwelcome one, was our study group I'd managed to pull together. The bones of it where the same as what will one day become Dumbledore's Army in that we met outside lessons to help one another with the practical part of our spell work, Professor Flitwick had gone all out to accommodate us in that regard offering the use of a disused trophy room with the new addition of a training dummy he'd once used on his path to becoming a duelling champion. Today we were supposed to be experimenting with chain casting, which was apparently worth extra credit in the end of year exams. I was eager more for the practical aspect, as I imagined knowing how to fluidly shift between spells would be a very useful skill in the coming years.
Our motley group consisted mostly of Ravenclaws - myself, Anthony, Lisa Turpin, Padma Patil and Morag MacDougal - but there was a scattering of lions and badgers as well including Susan Bones, Hannah Abbot, Ernie Macmillan and Zacharias Smith from Hufflepuff and Neville Longbottom and Dean Thomas from Gryffindor, as well as the golden trio.
The lack of Slytherins was very telling.
It was a far greater turn out than I'd expected honestly, I hadn't anticipated more than one or two beyond Hermione. But I suppose the chance to show off and do some practical spellcasting was hard to resist for many.
Attendance was sporadic with various other commitments but they were always welcome. Some of the more academically inclined - read, Hermione and every fellow Ravenclaw - brought books to read while others practised. After I'd managed to pull off a successful combination of the knockback jinx and the dangling jinx to make the dummy spin and roll in the air in such a way even, I felt nauseous, I joined Hermione to sit against a particularly grim display of a stuffed werewolf and started to thumb through my runes book again.
I noticed she was reading up on werewolves herself, and wondered if that was because of the creature behind the glass or if she already suspected Lupin's secret. It wouldn't have surprised me even with Snape's essay on the matter months away, if anything the books had undersold just how tenacious and brilliant Hermione was. A half dozen times she'd managed to make me trip over my now paper-thin story of Ilvermony.
"Seems like people are really getting a lot out of all this" I mused aloud mostly for the sake of making conversation.
"Most definitely. Harry and Ron mostly wanted to come to make sure this wasn't all some elaborate attempt to jinx me at first, but they've come around. I actually caught Ronald in the library of his own accord the other day looking for a book on advanced incantations. I almost couldn't believe my eyes." Hermione practically beamed
"I'm glad to hear it. Did he find anything useful?" I asked lightly. I couldn't deny her enthusiasm was infectious, but I suspected her finding Ron in the library appealed to her for many other reasons I didn't want to get into.
"We found a few yes, mostly from more advanced spellbooks we'll likely not read until next year if not beyond. But there's no reason we can't study ahead of the curriculum. Harry and I put together a list, though some of them do look awfully tricky. There was one spell - Arrofirus - that shoots an arrow than can piece shield charms, which involves conjuration which is always difficult. Or there was another which Ronald seemed most interested in, Draconifors, which turns objects into dragons. That one is immensely difficult, not just in practise but in controlling it. But it's possible, it's a variant on the spell we learned last year to transform an object into a lizard, just... more." she answered promptly, waving her hand in the air to express her point.
I stopped paying attention half way through her explanation on the final spell. Because it gave me an epiphany. The exactitude of the creature was what allowed the spell to work, the demand was beside the point. I couldn't just trap a creature in the cage, I needed to trap a spider in the cage. Specifically, an Acromantula. The challenge there was those weren't a naturally occurring species, so there wouldn't be a singular rune to signify them. I'd have to get creative. A hybrid species needed a hybrid rune.
I couldn't just write the runes.
I had to create one.
Eureka.