67 Harry Potter : Chapter 66: The Rule of the Hunt II

I set the complete stone bowl by his side before striding across the smooth transfigured stone that Minerva prepared: by hand, I took each of the Hydra's heads, and in groups of threes, I described as many equilateral triangles as vertices of a bigger triangle, of course, it was still equilateral.

...

As I worked, I spoke out loud, knowing that Riddle would need a little groundwork to not get lost in what he'd see: "Three times three, extremely stable, Arithmancy tells us that much. You, Minerva, and I, three hunters for one prey: and to the victor, so to speak, go the spoils."

I made sure that the geometry was on point before returning to Riddle, whose dark eyes never left me despite his growing pallor: "If you stray, even for an instant, from what you need to take, you'll die, and likely give me a headache." I grinned at the scowl that he didn't manage to hide.

"If you try to take anything that isn't offered, the ritual will see you as something trying to hunt me and Minerva, and given the contrast with the geometry at play, you'll die, technically, you'll die three times, but that's speculation..."

Minerva appeared with a crack and her expression immediately became horrified as she identified the beginning of the ritual I had set up: "By Merlin..."

Grateful for the distraction, I levitated the bowl so that it sat in the middle of the larger triangle, only to take Tom and lift him in my arms to deposit him in one of the three triangles described by the Hydra's heads.

"You'll need to fold together my understanding of the ritual with the hunter's mindset that is her other form, and give back the result to both of us.

Tom was extremely aware of the fact that talking, at least standing to what I had said him, would only accelerate his demise, so he simply glared at me while he hissed with pain, and I simply nodded back seriously: it wouldn't do to mock his powerlessness now.

"The main problem with rituals involving more than one person is that even the faintest unbalance behind the common intent can make everything go catastrophically wrong: I'm setting up a ritual to have us hunter 'conquer', the Hydra we just defeated.

But the creature attacked us first, and one of us thinking predatorily about any of the other two will put him on the Hydra's side, so to speak, and basically he'll be consumed along with the property that we're going to subsume from the creature."

I settled Riddle in one of the three triangles described by the Hydra's heads: he was less than half a meter from the centre of the much bigger triangle that I had drawn, and I made sure that everything was equally distanced before directing Minerva to another triangle.

"This is my version of a pepper-up: you'll feel it." I explained as I handed him the vial: "It will give you the energy to stand and do what you need, but it will also set your heart on a race that will make the venom in you kill you in a matter of minutes."

I settled the stone bowl in the exact center point of the configuration and I casually lit a fire under it. As I poured some water from the bucket that the Gryffindor witch had brought to me, I explained what she'd need to do.

"The brew I'm preparing will be the one shaping, with its story, the purpose of the ritual." and before she could interrupt, as she wasn't forced to keep her mouth shut in fear of dying faster, I went ahead.

"What you need to do, Minerva, is to keep to the forefront of your mind your Animagus' understanding of the hunt, Tom will nudge your thoughts in the necessary way, hold that understanding, do the same with my understanding of the ritual, match those two perspectives, and at his nod, we'll be taking a peek into his mind to synchronize, so to speak, our mindset."

"I never practiced with Legilimency!" the Animagus objected only for Riddle to shake his head slowly and point at himself before nodding.

Still somewhat pleased at the situation that forced Tom to keep his mouth shut, I translated: "He'll take care of it."

"I don't think this is wise." she objected, "Rubeus, rituals are dangerous, how do you even know..."

I began to explain without interrupting my movements: "Slughorn told it in his very first lesson: every potion is a story."

My hands moved while I took bay and olive leaves, only to shift to work with a pestle. Where the leaves had been added whole to maintain a background of enduring conquest, as I used them to call respectively upon the longevity of the olive trees and as the symbol historically used by roman emperors to grasp the meaning of victory.

The carnivorous slugs' shells I was grounding into fine dust would be needed to summon both the concept of defense and that of hunger, which was the primal reason for hunting. Ground as they were, they'd suffuse the potion along with the olive and bay leaves that were already following a clockwise pattern.

What I was going to brew after all was meant to work with the natural order of things: the hunter gained from the hunted it defeated.

I was preparing the ritual with a single, precise purpose: to grant immunity from Hydra venom, nothing more, nothing less. That had arguably the secondary effect that any venom less potent than it would likely be ineffective on us for the rest of our lives.

Permanency after all was the main selling point of Rituals. It was a minor thing, but it was fundamental not to try to tweak things for personal advantage.

It was going to be complex enough with 3 active participants, any personal aims I could have for Parseltongue, which was something I would love to study, would completely send the ritual tits-up. Never mind trying to take something from Minerva's Animagus status.

No, the only element of the ritual that had to give, so to speak, was the Hydra we had conquered, and us three needed to be equal receivers of the boon I was aiming for.

My research and experiments to find a cure for Lycanthropy aided me here: the solution was in overcoming the danger, not fleeing it.

I kept talking before Minerva could hex me: "What he neglected to mention, is that every potion is a localized ritual, in which the magic properties available by sacrificing ingredients are shaped into a concentrated result."

Stirring clockwise three times with one of the bloodied fangs of the Hydra, I imbibed the concoction with the presence of our conquered enemy, and after adding the ground shells, I repeated the motion.

"Rituals are at once much simpler, as far as preparing and organizing ingredients go, than Potion Making. Of course, they are also more dangerous, and more often than not permanent. Can you guess why?"

Minerva looked still scandalized, but the raised eyebrows on Riddle told her that I wasn't spouting bullshit. Even lacking my innate talent for potions, even without having the undisputed genius of Tom, she was as sharp as they came: "Given how you phrased it... because the people involved in a ritual are part of the story?"

I smiled sharply at her as I added the third set of ingredients meant to set the stage of the story this ritual was meant to tell: "But once told, a story remains, doesn't it?

Burned in the memories of those that have heard it, written the blood of those that were present in it, empowering the magic of those that took an active part in it, singing in the souls of those that have been a part of it."

"So you could kill us all." she correctly concluded from my explanation while Riddle was staring at me with wide, wide eyes. I knew that he knew that my mention of memories, blood, magic, and soul was a direct derivation from what he had told me once before.

'I read that the mind exerts Will, the body has strength, magic holds Power, and that the soul is a reflection of them all.'

I also saw the outrage in his conflicted expression: to him, that tidbit had merely been some obscure reference, something that briefly caught his attention only to be discarded when it lacked an immediate purpose.

He was now conflicted between being engrossed in my explanation and despising me for having made something out of a piece of information that he deemed useless.

"Of course, one of the best solutions to the volatility inherent of putting yourself in a ritual is basing it on the number three," I added as I added silvers of oak's bark and a single scale that I had taken from the dead magical creature whose venom was slowly but surely killing Tom.

The oak was the tree of kings, symbolizing rulership, while through the scale I grasped towards the shedding of the skin, which in this context was meant to signify an overcoming of past weaknesses. In particular, now we were all vulnerable to Hydra's venom, and after the ritual, we wouldn't be.

Ultimately, there wasn't time for me to sit down and explain everything in detail, as on Riddle's pale face I could now see the faint outline of his darkening veins.

As soon as the concoction was ready, I summoned the Hydra's heart that I had retrieved from the carcass, and kept it levitating above the potion that simmered of a uniform grey above the stone bowl. I walked toward Tom and handed him the uncorked vial he was meant to down.

I helped him to his feet, and with the bloodied fang I had used to stir the concoction in the stone bowl, with no warning, I quickly jabbed his left hand: he left out a pained wheeze as the fang parted skin and flesh with insulting ease: "It can't kill you twice." I reassured him.

Walking towards Minerva, I saw her conflicted between berating me, crying because of Tom's imminent demise, and running away from my madness: still, she was a Gryffindor at heart, and she had decided to trust me.

"It's the only way." she said it to reassure herself as much as to seek confirmation in my eyes.

She must have seen something she approved of, because with her lips pursed in a thin line, she extended her left hand once I arrived close enough. With a thin smile, I repeated the motion, and Minerva's eyes scrunched for an instant when the pain registered.

I walked over to my position, and stabbed my own left hand: I had to employ a bigger dose of strength, as my skin was far more sturdy than one of my companions, but I too felt the bite of the Hydra, and immediately, the slowly creeping venom through my veins.

"We're all equally marked now." I nodded to Tom, and I brought all my focus to bear on the ritual while I threw the fang away, as it had completed its purpose, linking us together with the concoction that shaped the bulk of the ritual's purpose.

Riddle, downed the vial I had handed him and immediately grasped his wand once more, his dark eyes meeting Minerva's green ones when she nodded: the urgency of the moment enough to push her hesitation aside: as she submerged herself into the peculiar mindset that she had spent considerable time building with Dumbledore, I noticed her body language shift minutely.

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