Meeting the two founders again after a week of waiting, I stood in front of a pedestal with a wooden box on it.
Inside the box, two ornate feather shaped daggers laid on blue velvet. One had a black leathery grip and a blackened blade. The other one looked almost the same but had a white grip and a whitened, silver blade.
The flat of both blades still had silver-colored feather patterns on them. The part of the knife where the blade met the grip, an ornate, silvery head of a mythical creature spat out the blade with two-ringed guard. Both daggers had rounded pommels with many etched in runes.
"Two daggers? How will I cast spells if I have a dagger in both hands?" I asked after beholding the two daggers that looked sharper than anything I had ever seen.
"Hold the white one," Helga Huffepuff instructed with a smile. When I did as she asked and still refrained from running my finger over the blade's edge to not lose a finger, Hufflepuff continued, "Think of that hidden blade you had on during Hallow's Eve."
When I did, the white fabric of the grip wrapped around my wrist and the blade sunk below my palm, thankfully, without cutting me. They made me a dagger that doubled as a hidden blade. This was too cool. The blade worked perfectly, too. It shot out of my wrist and holstered itself by mere thought alone.
I didn't even want to ask how they knew I had my hidden blade on during Halloween. I was just grateful.
"Now, the black one holds most of your own heart feather," Rowena Ravenclaw's hologram explained. "In a bind, it will double as a wand for you. But most importantly, it has the ability you wanted. With it, you can cut through warded space. Nobody except you and those with your ocular ability would be able to use it properly since only you can see the boundaries of the wards."
"Be mindful that both blades will retain the magical ability of substances you submerge the daggers into. So once you have used them for a while, don't accidentally cut yourself with it," Hufflepuff chimed in, and my head snapped in her direction.
"Like Godric Gryffindor's sword?" I asked incredulously.
"Like his sword, yes," Hufflepuff confirmed with a smile.
I somehow got the feeling the two dared to reforge the famous sword of their friend, but I didn't dare ask.
Following another indepths explanation of the theoretical limits of the weapons created by the two sages and the Forge, a Piece of Eden, Ravenclaw surprised me with the spell 'Ictura' - the blink charm. Once I perfectly learned the spell in the future, I would be able to blink to a place in my vision and reduce the time of spatial transportation via Apparition by several seconds.
Though, Ravenclaw did warn me not to do the initial learning phase of the spell alone. Splinching, as in leaving behind a body part or not arriving unharmed at the other end of the spatial travel was still possible.
In the end, Ravenclaw also informed me that she was still working on the variant 'Ictura Umbris', a theoretically even more silent and faster form of the spell that allowed the caster to travel through shadows. That spell sounded absolutely perfect for me, and I wondered how she knew I would love a spell like that.
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Standing on the Quidditch pitch for the first game of the year versus Slytherin, I was wondering why I even bothered for a short moment. I loved flying, whether in my animagus form or on my broom... but Quidditch was still not a very sane sport, in my opinion.
"It looks like the roster changes are true, Talion Macnair is in full keeper gear!" Lee Jordan announced to the stadium as I gave a wave to the Ravenclaws cheering for me.
I tuned out the rest of the introductions and took my position mid-air in front of the hoops.
The game started explosive. Emboldened by the fact that I was no longer a chaser-beater, Slytherin went all out trying their disdainful tactics that only I prevented by beating them back last year.
In no time, just after Roger Davies scored his second goal, Cho Chang was knocked off her broom by Lucian Bole, one of Slytherin's beaters and brother of Lucas Bole, the one attacker of mine that I had killed during the Quidditch world cup finals. His almost-sister-in-law was still living in Goldsborough, my town.
I learned since then that it was her brother, Peregrine Derrick, the second beater on the team, who had advised their father to sell his older sister. It didn't surprise me then that Peregrine was one of the Slytherin students wearing a headband to hide the 'rapist' branding on his forehead. In fact, the entire unchanged roster compared to last year, except for their keeper Miles Bletchley and their seeker Terrence Higgs, was wearing a headband.
Not a big surprise all-in-all. Though, they all gained it on the same night and that only made me feel icky all over thinking about it.
One player down, Marcus Flint and Adrien Pucey stopped assisting their beaters and joined Graham Montague, who was harrassing Roger Davies and Jeremy Stretton, the two remaining chasers of team Ravenclaw.
After something that would have been recognized as a foul in any other sport, Pucey took the quaffle from Davies and flew towards my hoops.
"Take this!" The arrogant bastard shouted and threw the quaffle right at my face from a short distance away from me, hoping I would dodge and allow a humiliating score to get through.
With a bored expression, I caught the quaffle with one hand, dropped it to my side, and kicked the quaffle with all my might back in the other half of the pitch right at Davies after a short wind-up.
"30-0! Ravenclaw scored another goal after Davies gets an incredibly sharp pass from Keeper Macnair, but Slytherin is back in possession and still one player up while Chang is getting patched up by Madam Pomfrey," Lee commented. "And, ooooh, Bole managed to hit a bludger at Inglebee's ankle. That looked like it hurt!"
I saw one of my beaters scrunch up his face in pain. That definitely sounded like it broke even from across the pitch.
Montague and Flint then tried to score on me by throwing fast passes back and forth but with my Firebolt and ridiculously trained reflexes, I managed to deflect the shot and caused it to miss with the tip of my foot. In no time, I had to dodge another bludger that Derrick hit my way. Thinking themselves smart, Bole appeared diagonally above me and hit the bludger right back at me.
My beaters were nowhere close, but I had seen Bole try to sneak past me and reacted quickly. One hand still on my broom's grip, I dropped from the broom and allowed myself to swing around it, holding the Firebolt with one hand. Using that momentum, I kicked the bludger with all my might right back at Derrick, who was chasing the second bludger to set up another play.
My kick connected with the Slytherin beater's shoulder, and the beater lost his one-handed grip on the broom to fall forward. Sadly for the world, Madam Hooch managed to catch the boy before hitting the floor, but despite being a keeper, I knocked out yet another Slytherin player.
Shooting Bole a taunting look, I stayed silent. But I enjoyed the remaining beater and two of the three chasers in my half of the pitch, shooting me venomous glares.
"Nothing can keep Macnair from being the bane of all things Quidditch when it comes to Slytherin. Just like last year, he knocked out another player on their team with a kicked bludger!" Lee shouted into his magi-phone. "And Davies scores another as Flint picks up the beater bat for a score of 40-0."
"Potter, 6 and 5!" I shouted, not at all in the mood to see Flint repeat his disastrous performance from last year where he picked up the beater bat and kept losing the grip on it so that it would hit someone in the face.
My shout, of course, gave Harry the position of the snitch relative to where he was looking. Since it was a three-dimensional sport, giving him just one coordinate with the face of a clock wouldn't allow him to turn his head in the direction of the golden snitch. But with two of them, he could turn left and right, followed by up and down. The snitch was behind and below him.
As Harry sprung into action, closely followed by Higgs, Slytherin's seeker, an angry looking Flint was making his way in my direction.
"Flint, bludger!" Montague shouted from the other side of the pitch, and Flint used that clearly rehearsed excuse to swing the bat and lose it, sending it right at me when Flint was aimlessly flying above me.
I dodged to the side, caught the bat by the loop at the end, and swung it back at Flint right at the moment, Lee shouted, "Potter caught the snitch, he caught the snitch! Ravenclaw wins 190-0! No, 200-0!"
I didn't celebrate with my team on the pitch, I didn't wait to see if I hit Flint with the bat he threw at me, I just flew to the showers and got ready to spend the rest of my day at the greenhouses. Maybe the decision to play keeper was wrong. This half hour on the pitch was deeply boring.
"Thanks," Harry said to me after I stepped out of the shower.
"Sure, didn't want to see Flint use that shit with the bat again. Dude's not right in the head," I pointed out as I buttoned up my shirt.
"Can you just see the snitch every time?" Harry asked as he got out of his own clothes and ready to shower. I only shrugged in return and walked over to Samuels, one of our beaters.
"Inglebee going to be okay?"
The beater nodded and answered, "Yeah. Madam Pomfrey put him on a stretcher, gave him a splint, and took him to the hospital wing. After a potion and a good night's sleep, she said he'll be fine in no time."
Giving him a thumbs up, I said, "If you meet Chang in the hospital wing later, wish her my best for me."
Since she was closer to Harry, I should have probably told him... but I chose not to. Samuels was bound to visit his partner before the day ended, so he would see the witch there, too. He could bring my message just as good.
Flying over to the greenhouses on my broom after properly drying off my hair, I pondered about all the changes to relationships at Hogwarts these past few weeks.
Harry was shunned by most people for being a parselmouth, but it was more of silent disdain than insults and fear-mongering. In the wake of it, for some reason, I didn't bother finding out he broke up with Lisa Turpin. Lisa had been inconsolable ever since and rarely said a word to anybody... and Harry was busy deciding between dating the older Cho Chang or the younger Ginny Weasley. Both of them didn't bother to hide that they wanted to replace Lisa, especially Cho, who was constantly hounding Harry in the common room.
Then, there was Sue Li, who started dating Kevin Entwhistle. The muggleborn witch from my year wasn't as inconsequential as I thought before. Though technically a muggleborn since both of his parents were muggles, it turned out he used to have an aunt who was a witch as well. A witch who turned out to have married into the Bones family before the war and died before it ended. So, technically, he was a nephew of Amelia Bones and a cousin of Susan.
Ah yes, Susan. The red-haired girl had approached me three weeks ago to make amends, but I had simply ignored her. She was a young girl who still had much potential for growth, but she slighted me too much to just forgive her. She'd get the cold shoulder for these next few years for sure.
Plus, she had terrible taste in men. For some reason, she started dating Gryffindor seeker Michael Corner after Gryffindor won their first match of the season.
"Hello Talion," Luna greeted me while hung from her ankles by a winding ivy plant near the entrance as I entered the greenhouse eight. It looked like it had been a while... and it also looked like Luna didn't mind.
"Hi Luna. Everything alright there?"
"I'm trying to turn my world upside down," Luna answered nonchalantly.
"Any particular reason?"
"Hmmm," Luna hummed in thought. "No."
"Call out if you need help," I said with an exasperated sigh and started to busy myself with something that I was tasked with by Professor Sprout.
I'd be taking my O.W.L. exam in Herbology this year and my N.E.W.T. exam, in case I'd ace the O.W.L. I spent so much time in here, Sprout taught me everything needed to be learned during the Hogwarts curriculum. That fact was honestly a little worrying because Flitwick had said something similar for Charms... but I barely focused on studying last year in comparison to just getting better in wanded spells and dueling.
It struck me as a little odd that I was able to learn an entire seven year curriculum in less than two years... maybe I should tell the two founders to raise the level of education at their schools a little.
How anyone could get anything below A for Average in the core subjects was absolutely bonkers to me. The actual content of the lessons outside of the busywork assignments where you'd learn to use the knowledge acquired to think about problems was way too little for my tastes.
Initially, I had hoped it would get better in the later years, but having Sprout urge me to take my O.W.L. examination in Herbology early because I had already dealt with every plant and knew their specifics, characteristics, and uses... it made me realise that there was no way I'd need all seven years to finish school.