Harry Potter : Chapter 63: Courting Danger II
"And I've wondered more than once how much of what you acted upon was mere speculation instead of an actual understanding of the magic involved.
With this event, you answered to both my interrogatives: for all of your talent in several fields, you're actually just lucky with not having died already, aren't you?"
...
Hagrid ignored the mocking tone to focus on what was implied, and then frowned heavily: "You told me that runes were merely physical confirmation of the symbols used by the wizard attempting to enchant or curse something."
"And they are." Tom spoke as if he was facing a particularly stupid rock: "But you didn't enchant anything did you? You didn't make this seal, merely took this combination straight from a book, and haphazardly tried to repurpose it in an active ritual."
"Which is what the Norsemen did with that seal."
"That seal was used on the hunters!" Tom was actually delighted by the opportunity of taking the taller wizard to school, as it were, and he didn't bother hiding it.
"And you placed it on yourself, while under the effects of who knows what to dedicate yourself to the hunt. Then you followed a prey that you don't want me to know about, and two werewolves, only to not hunt them."
Riddle rose to his feet and threw his arms in the air in a mockery of a cheering fan: "You didn't try to hunt any of those, and then you apparated away: essentially reneging on the promise you made when you stuck that seal on yourself!"
"The seal was meant to give direction and maintain meaning for the werewolves." the taller of the two replied, a frown on his face as he worked through what he was being told.
"Then why didn't you apply it to the beasts? Besides, you didn't use a series of runes, each independent from the others, you used a combination of them, that is basically an antire symbol on its own." Tom was bewildered, he couldn't believe how much Hagrid took for granted.
"Ancient Runes are superfluous for a dedicated enchanter, but you made yourself part of a ritual involving werewolves! You bound yourself to the hunt! Thank your saints for the death of at least one of them, otherwise, there is a very real possibility that you'd have been torn asunder during the apparition!"
"I knew I couldn't splinch myself." Hagrid grinned, even if his hand shook minutely when it landed over his still wounded side.
"Of course, that's what you take away from this conversation." Tom sighed, still conflicted between hilarity and exasperation: he spent every summer worrying for his own life, while Rubeus openly risked his at least once a month.
"Symbols convey the meaning that the caster understands, of course, but when you use more of them, the meanings intertwine to create something that can be wholly different.
That is why most enchanted objects don't have an endless series of unique scratches etched into them, making up symbols doesn't work as well as learning them as something that exists outside of yourself.
And surely setting yourself up as a hunter for a couple of werewolves and another beast... well, the seal might have forced you to fight the werewolf without you realizing it."
Rubeus hummed thoughtfully before speculating further: "If the effects can be as unpredictable as you say, could the seal explain why I didn't think of apparating away immediately."
"It very well might." Riddle replied with a frown, "After all, you aren't one for extreme stupidity, at least once you're already in danger, that is.
"It wasn't the first hunt..." Hagrid looked towards the sky while breathing deeply, his mind going over his memories of the previous attempts.
"Yes, I got that much, thank you." Tom interrupted him, sitting once more as he tried to reconcile the potion-maker that Rubeus shined as with the madman that would endanger himself so thoughtlessly.
"That's spectacularly dumb... you court danger every step of the way, don't you?" the older wizard sighed, his mind warring between being reluctantly awed and contemptuously vexed, as it often was when it came to Hagrid.
After a couple of minutes of silence, during which each wizard tried to elaborate what had been told during the conversation, Tom spoke: "I'll help you with Minerva."
That made Hagrid tilt his head questioningly: "What do you mean?"
"She'll of course insist on inspecting your living conditions." Riddle smiled, smugness positively oozing from his tone: "I imagine she'll feel much better if there is a prefect looking after you."
"Hilarious." Hagrid deadpanned, only to grin deviously, anticipating the punishment that he'd be able to deliver onto his companion with the excuse of 'teaching': "Suddenly, I feel much better at the prospect of teaching you how to apparate."
"Well," Riddle couldn't let the almost suicidal wizard have the last word, not after the unique brand of stupidity that he had just revealed, "at least we won't be taking part in rituals that hold our lives on the line while we do so."
...
Under a sky that looked painted between the dark of a moonless night and the dying sunset, with just a few clouds hovering harmlessly over a forest rich with birch trees, the figures appeared with a deafening crack: the first was maybe three meters tall, and was leading a younger man and a girl.
The three stopped holding hands when the girl fell to her knees and emptied the contents of her stomach on the forest floor, while the regular-sized boy took a couple of steps back and leaned his forehead against the nearest tree, breathing deeply as if willing himself to not imitate his female companion.
"Stop..." Minerva panted, a tiredness stretching over her limbs as she looked at how Hagrid was already preparing himself for another apparition, "I can't apparate again, I need to rest."
"What?" the question was so genuinely confused that she let out a wheezing laugh, a sound that forced Tom to turn on himself and stare disbelievingly at Hagrid, who had placed his hands on his hips in a frustrated mannerism.
"You do not tire with Apparition?" Riddle asked while he slid down against the birch tree at his back until he unceremoniously sat on the ground, "We must be halfway across France already."
Rubeus, understanding that his two companions wouldn't continue, no matter what he said, slung off the knapsack he held across his chest: "We apparated only 5 times."
"And we crossed an incredible distance each time." Minerva almost hissed as she recovered, "You dragged us across the Channel without Apparating close to either shore, it took me a while to realize that we had crossed the sea, and we were already inland by then."
"Well," Hagrid hesitated, as if unsure how to address the situation, "maybe you're apparating wrong, what's the problem?"
"Feeling squeezed and twisted doesn't bother you at all, does it? No matter the distance."
"I wouldn't say that," the incredibly tall Slytherin replied, "it's like... holding your breath, or taking a really long step: there is a limit to how far you can go, even if I haven't measured it. As for being squeezed... I simply push back until it's comfortable."
"You push back." Minerva rose back to her feet with disbelief clear on her face, "You push back? What kind of nonsense..."
In the quiet of the forest, the silence was broken by Tom's laughter: his head was thrown back against the bark of the tree, not caring about the impact, as he let out the first loud, unrestrained laughter of his life. There was none of his controlled, usual flair, no thought for how he'd be seen, no plan about how to use that moment to his advantage.
It was a strange feeling. He had felt it rise deep from his belly, bubbling up only to explode past his lips without his conscious consent.
He had barely processed the revelations about Hagrid's mad attempts to find a cure, barely managed to exploit his good fortune by saving himself from muggle London, barely worked through his new arrangements for the summers, and Rubeus just...
He lost his breath in a wheezing bout of laughter. There just was no end, was there? For the first time, he found himself willingly swallowing the impossible, constant annoyance that Hagrid's existence caused: he gained too much from simply being near him.
He had learned Apparition in an afternoon, like it was expected from someone of his blood and genius, and now Rubeus, who by the way had been able to apparate since he was eleven, casually revealed that it was possible to push back the feeling of being squeezed.
"It's not possible to push back, Rubeus." Minerva spoke tiredly, rubbing the bridge of her nose with a motion she was growing increasingly familiar with since she allowed Rubeus to enter her life.
"The tightness around you is the magic of the Apparition, even if it was possible to simply push, it'd break the process, and you'll end up splinched, or flung into a tree, or whatever, at speeds able to kill you."
Tom started to recover his breathing, and by the time the good bickering between Minerva and Rubeus ended, the sunset was almost finished.
He led them a bit further under the trees, until they entered a small clearing that was for the most part occupied by some strange hedge that described some sort of square.
Then the pieces fell together, and under the light of their lit wands, they suddenly realized that this was one of the shacks that Hagrid had mentioned.
It blended in with the surrounding greenery to the point that even during the day, Tom suspected he wouldn't have recognized it if he hadn't been looking for it. Shack didn't really describe what he was seeing.
"Wow." Minerva was much more open in her reactions, and she entered without hesitating, "Well, the sleeping arrangements will be a bit cramped."
"We'll just prepare some hammocks, I'll sleep near the ground on the long side, you two can figure out a way to climb." Hagrid spoke while Tom entered, taking in the transfigured tiles on the floor and the once improvised chimney that was restored with a little wandwork.
Soon enough, Minerva and Tom devoured the rations that they each had prepared, eyeing with barely contained suspicion the vials that Hagrid insisted worked perfectly well to sustain him through his travels.
As he had cautiously avoided mentioning that those potions were the only thing he ate consistently through each summers, the Gryffindor witch hadn't nagged him too much: potions holding the energy for patients unable to eat were a known thing after all.
On the other hand, the Slytherin prefect wasn't going to annoy Hagrid when he clearly hadn't died after several summers and winter holidays spent surviving on it.
"How good are you at expansion charms?" Rubeus asked distractedly while he stretched on his low hammock, only for the other two to snort and scoff.
"They're too complex to be applied willy-nilly, they don't last as much as they need to, and they're easy to destabilize." Minerva answered with a huff, "No, we won't be sleeping in a shack turned into a cottage anytime soon."
"Now sleep, both of you." Riddle spoke drily, "we'll move with the dawn, no?"
"Shouldn't you be sleeping too?" Minerva asked from her own hammock, raising her head enough for her face to be lit by the lumos that the Slytherin was using to work through a bundle of parchment.
"I need to figure out how to make portkeys, since Hagrid didn't manage it." Riddle replied slyly, "Unless you want to make the return trip through endless Apparition too?"
"Don't antagonize him deliberately, Tom." she reprimanded him slightly, only for the soft snore of the tallest wizard in the shack to rumble low across their bones.
The tallest wizard was already asleep, and Minerva exchanged another snort with Riddle before closing her eyes, letting the tiredness of the day wash over her and drag her under.
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