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Hermione raises an eyebrow at my explanation, indicating she sees through the lie. Well, I thought it was a damn good one.
"I saw the snitch, Harry. Here's the other thing he carved for me," Neville says, showing off his lion medallion.
Ron shares his Quidditch hoop, for which I had later carved a base so it could stand up. Hermione also shares her bookmark, and I'm sure I'm blushing quite red with the attention.
"I had Professor Flitwick do the unbreakable charm on that, Hermione; I wasn't sure if I could do it myself."
"This is really great stuff, William," Harry says.
"Go on, open the last thing," I say.
Harry reads my note and digs into the bag of rune stones, pulling them out and setting them down carefully. Hermione's eyes bulge at the glowing power rune. "A thurisaz-ingwaz triplet, William? What did you do? Those aren't like mine!"
"Ah, that was a tough one. I had Professors Babbling and Vector help me figure this out," I say with a smile. "Go ahead, Hermione, look at the rest."
"Haglaz, uruz, algiz...ingwaz core...these look like ward stones, but why is everything paired with a mannaz?" She gasps. "Is this a dream ward, William?"
I laugh. "Damn it, Hermione, that took me forever! How can you just go and figure it out in thirty seconds?"
"Deciphering an existing ward scheme is a lot different than actually designing it, William; this is NEWT-level work! Bloody hell, it's probably beyond that!"
I scratch my head and grimace slightly. "First, it wasn't my design alone. I went to Professors Babbling and Vector, and the latter had some contacts in St. Mungo's where they use something similar for the psychiatric ward and the nursery. But theirs is far more complicated and on a larger scale. Mine is a simplified and miniaturized version."
Her eyes glaze over in the way they usually do as she's learning interesting information, and I can almost see the questions form in her mind. Then she shakes her head as she apparently finds a more pressing one. "Are you sure it works?"
I grimace a bit. "I tested it myself and the power rune is quite stable...only minimal leakage. Not completely sure about the rest, I don't really have much in the way of bad dreams." Neville and Ron suddenly find the floor rather interesting.
"I never had any while trying it, and the power rune had partially discharged one time during the night – much more than just the leakage can account for – but that's not totally solid evidence."
Hermione lets out a breath, then pulls her two handheld runes out. One is a sowilo for power with an ansuz to control it, and a kaunan to discharge, and the other is a sowilo, ansuz, and eihwaz.
"This is why you were so drained the past few days. You've been charging runes!"
"A couple days ago I figured out that the runic lanterns and shields—" I say, pointing first to the one with the kaunan and then to the eihwaz, "—work better as spheres. So I was using magic to smooth them, and to do that I had to discharge all of them first and recharge them later."
"All of them?" She asks with an eyebrow raised.
"Yeah, I gave a couple more of those out."
She shakes her head in disbelief. "Bloody hell, William."
"Are you okay, Hermione?" Ron asks with exaggerated concern. "Every time you say that I keep looking for another version of you to start scolding yourself."
"I think William is a bad influence on her language," Neville says with a grin.
Hermione ignores them. "I can't believe you made all this, William...this is unbelievable. It's supposed to take years to learn how to charge runes without using blood. Even uncharged these things are worth several galleons apiece. Harry would have to pay a warder hundreds to make a runic dream ward and he'd still have to charge it with his own magic."
My eyebrows climb up to my hairline with that statement. Then I realised how long I spent on it.
"I guess that makes sense, with the amount of time it took me. Of course if it doesn't work it's not worth that much except for the fairly decent power rune. I wanted to use a naudiz auto-charging set up so he could use it outside of school even if the charge runs out, but I was far too scared to try it."
Hermione lets out a breath. "You had better be too scared to try it, that's definitely mastery level stuff! You could have killed yourself or Harry trying that!"
"I know, that's why I won't try it for at least a few more months."
Hermione presses her lips together and tries to kill me with her eyes again.
"Thank you, William," Harry says quietly. "The fact that you spent so much time on all of this...well, thank you."
I smile. "You're welcome. I'm just glad you all like them. Now quit embarrassing me and let's open the rest!"
Hermione's glare softens, then she leans forward and kisses me on the cheek. "Thank you," she whispers, then goes back to her pile.
Returning to mine, I open the one I had been holding before Hermione attacked me. It's a fine, dark-gray cloak suitable for fall and spring from Professor McGonagall, with a note that this time it is a gift, but I am welcome to continue working with her. Once again I curse myself for not considering her for a gift.
The last of the larger boxes is a similar size, and I open it to find workout gear from Luna. I'm actually kind of surprised at the normalcy of the gift, even considering the bizarre patterns on the sweats and shoes.
At least, I was surprised until a back issue of the Quibbler falls out, detailing the critical importance of colorful shoes when running near water that contains magical creatures.
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Hey guys if u like the fanfic and want to read ahead by 27+ chapters or just want to support take a visit on my patreon.
(P).(A).(T).(R).(E).(O).(N)
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